sawdust...

This morning, I emptied my sawdust bin where I collect sawdust from various operations in the wood shop. The bin was full to the top, and I emptied 15 32 gallon garbage can loads into the back of the truck to haul to school where it will be used to build the soil for the school garden after thorough composting is complete. We will need to find a source for nitrogen to add and make it useful to the garden.

My first paid article was about using a sawdust pee bucket as a means to make use of wood shop and human by-products at the same time. I was paid $50.00 for that article by Mother Earth News, and I've inquired to see if it was ever published. Since 1982 when I submitted my article, Mother Earth News has published over 35 similar articles, as it seems a thing I discovered on my own has also been discovered by others. Is that not the way the world works? When folks accurately observe and share their observations so that they may be tested by others, we have science.

In New York, we walked among the columns at St. John the Divine, and found the place to be more a monument to the holiness of man, than to an abstract God. The point is not that man is to be worshiped, or that his works should be exalted, but that the works of man should be inspired toward greater things. When folks come together in the name of their beliefs and thereby collectivize great creative works in their communities that enable the growth of craftsmen in character and intellect, far more is accomplished than by worship alone. St. John the Divine, as the only great cathedral in the US, was conceived as an ecumenical center in which the provincial qualities of individualized beliefs might become overshadowed by the greater spirit of man.

The image at left is artist Meredith Bergmann's response to the disaster of 9/11 on display at St. John the Divine.

Today the Arkansas Public Service Commission closed the docket in our case against the gargantuan power line that SWEPCO and the Southwest  Power Pool tried to build through Northwest Arkansas. While we won the case by stopping the thing from being built, we were not granted the rights to payment of legal fees. On the one hand, we stand united in victory, and on the other have regrets that the utility was not required to make amends for their malfeasance.

It feels as though we've come to the end of an era in which a destructive force was attempting to disrupt our community.

Make, fix and create...