paperfuge...

Yesterday I sanded boxes to send to Appalachian Spring Gallery, and today I'll apply Danish Oil to a variety of projects that have been waiting for it. With my income these days being balanced between writing, teaching and making, the selling of work gets pushed to the back burner. In addition to oiling boxes, I'll take breaks to clean the wood shop at school, and to work on a product review and an article for Fine Woodworking. Unless I get distracted from all that.

My daughter, teaching chemistry and physics in New York City, marched in the Science parade in New York, and her sign, acknowledging both her position as a teacher and the importance of science in all things, brought new friends. My own spirits are lifted by a generation that will sooner or later send us back in the right direction and reverse the efforts of the Trump administration. I hope we once again protect our air, water, lands and forests from corporate predation. Corporations are NOT people, have no soul, and must be controlled by regulations to prevent them from inflicting huge irreparable damage on the planet.

My daughter alerted me to two new science tools. One is the origami microscope that can be bought for a dollar and that folds to fit your pocket. Another is the use of the button toy model to make a paper centrifuge or paperfuge.

We've made hundreds of button toys in the wood shop at Clear Spring School, but never thought of them being for something so important. But why should it be any surprise that a toy might serve as a model for a useful tool? Toys are tools for learning, and are most effective when children have made them themselves. The sound of the paperfuge at work is one that my students know

The seesaw that the students and I made at Clear Spring School continues to be the main attraction at recess. There are nearly always 4 students on at a time, with one or two standing by for a turn. Is it because they'd never seen seesaws before or because they had taken a hand in the making of it? I know the latter to be true.

Make, fix, create, and enjoy helping others to learn likewise.