scissor tail

I have taken a break from cleaning to assemble a "scissor tail" guitar, as you can see in the photos above and below. I've formed a small hatch at the back so that the electronic components can be fitted in. The body of the guitar will be painted with milk paints.

The following is from Susan Blow's book on Froebel, Symbolic Education.

The prayer of the hero utters the craving of all human hearts. Everywhere man strives and toils to make his children better than himself. Ignorance is ambitious that its children shall be wise, and Sin rarely so sinful as not to pray that its babes may be unstained. And what father and mother crave for their children, each generation as a whole craves for the generations that are to follow it. -- Susan Blow, Symbolic Education.

This may be the case when normal people are concerned but not when it comes to those in business and government. Folks currently in the financial sector are centered in their attention on short term return on investment. Folks in government are simply concerned with the power they can exert over each other and over us. My new favorite quote is from a letter Amelia Earhart sent to her sister in 1937:

"Given a little power over another, little natures swell to hideous proportions."

In other words, if you are looking for heroes in the financial sector or government, forget about it, and Earhart's observation explain why.

I seem to have become obsessed with hogs on two fronts. First feral hogs have visited our garden 6 times now and it's like having an army of roto-tillers run amok.

On the other front, the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality gave and has continued to give permission for the operation of a massive hog operation in the headwaters of the Buffalo National River. In the process of approving that stupid, destructive thing, they've chosen to ignore the fact that karst terrain allows the pig poop direct access to groundwater, which then feeds untreated animal wastes directly into the river, thus endangering the 800,000 tourists who float or visit the river each year. In fact, they have claimed that there is no evidence of karst in sight, even though the site is surrounded by limestone bluffs and fractured creek beds. You would have to be a complete ignoramus or a liar to make the claim there is no karst.

If there were heroes in Arkansas government, the hog farm would have been halted before built, and if built, then not allowed to continue polluting our nation's first national river.

Stupidity is a self-perpetuating cycle that can be passed half-unwittedly from one generation to the next. Failure to engage the hands in learning and making, leaves children out of touch, disconnected from reality, and lacking a basic, healthy sense of self.  It also leaves them disconnected and estranged from the full breadth of human culture, and from the natural world.

Take Donald Trump as an example. On the one hand, he claims that Global warming is a scientific hoax, and on the other hand, that a sea wall must be built to protect his golf course in Scotland that is threatened by rising sea levels. The man is a boor*, a liar and a hypocrite, that many Americans have come to love and support for reasons I'll never understand.

In contrast, deep engagement in learning that comes when the hands are involved can lead to heroic behavior.

Make, fix, create, and extend an invitation that others may learn likewise.

*readers should become acquainted with the definitions of three English words that sound exactly alike, bore, boor and boar. While I have my troubles with boars and pigs in general, the US is having trouble with homonyms. The word boar might also apply to the case in consideration.