Tiny boxes...

Much of my work on the Froebel book is now complete and in the hands of the publisher, so I am getting ready to start a book about making tiny boxes. Tiny boxes in my mind are not scaled down to a size in which they are useless. I simply use the term to describe a range of size smaller than what box makers normally make. They can be used for any number of things, but because they as so small, they invite close examination, and thus require a higher degree of precision in their making.

As with my other books, Tiny Boxes will offer a variety of boxes using a variety of techniques, ranging from the known to the unknown, from the simple to the complex, from the easy to the more difficult, and from the concrete to the abstract. So, in that I believe that you can discover just as I have that the principles of educational Sloyd can apply to more than just woodworking education.

Yesterday I wrote about the closure of SWEPCO's case at the APSC to build their monstrously destructive, unnecessary power line across the Ozarks. The wide clear cut swath of its right of way, kept sterile of natural forest growth for generations would have divided our community but brought it together instead, in vociferous opposition to it. SWEPCO's Shipe Road to Kings River power line would have been the second leg of a disruptive power transmission system ranging all the way across our state, with no leg of it needed for anything but SWEPCO profits. So our small victory is actually a large defeat for SWEPCO/AEP's quest for hegemony. Not only did we manage to keep it from happening here, we have effectively shut down their plans for stringing extra high voltage power lines all across the state.

The Southwest Power Pool (the regional transmission organization that SWEPCO is a member of) was expelled from most of Arkansas when Entergy left it to join MISO (Mid-Continent Independent Systems Operators). So, building this massive new network of extra high voltage power lines would have been a way for Southwest Power Pool to have leveraged its way back across the state. This SWEPCO fiasco was a disaster for the SPP, as it had to be confronted with its malfeasance, and held accountable for having embarrassed its members.

In granting SWEPCO's withdrawal and the termination of their application, the APSC refused to strike our expert witness testimony, thus allowing it to remain part of the public record so that anyone can go and read about their intended malfeasance. I hope that this document serves as a warning to power companies that they won't always get what they want, and they'd best not misrepresent the facts of a case. The expert testimony by Dr. Hyde Merrill, addressing their malfeasance and misrepresentations begins on page 10 of this document.

In any case, it appears that my own horizons are being cleared for making boxes. Tiny ones.

Make, fix and create...