Unaccompanied Miner (Day 1)

Unaccompanied Miner

Day 1
I've woken up on this strange island. I'll document my adventures here. I'm in the middle of a valley, and there are a couple trees around, but that's about it. The first thing I'll need is a shelter, and I suppose wood is the best material for that. But how to cut down the trees? I suppose I can try and pull some branches off to make an axe. Woah! I'm much stronger here! I can just pull the trees to the ground! However, these logs aren't very suitable for building a house out of. Let's see if I can make some planks out of them.
There we go! That's much better! Now I can start work on my shelter. First, I'll need to clear some space.
Done! Now for the shelter itself.
Ta-da! That's all well and good, but I'll need some more planks if I want to finish this shelter, and that means I need an axe. However, I don't think I can hold all the pieces together. I'll need something to put them on while I piece together the axe. Maybe a workbench?
Sweet! Now I can make an axe! Maybe I should make a sword as well, in case there's anything I need to defend myself against on this island. And maybe a pickaxe, so I can make some stronger tools. First I'll need some handles.
Next the axe head.
Now for a sword.

And lastly, a pickaxe!

There! Now I'll go chop some more trees down, and finish up my shelter.

But what is this! Sheep, and a cow! The sheep will provide wool, and I may be able to make some makeshift leather armor out of the cow's hide!
I need to grab my sword from my pack, and rush over to the fauna before they escape.
Take that, cow! Now to harvest the wool from the sheep, and get back to chopping wood. Oh look, another cow! I almost have enough leather for some boots now!
Uh-oh, it's getting dark. I'd better head back to my homestead and finish building that house.
Hopefully I don't run into anything nasty while I'm finishing the house. If something sneaks up on me, I'm not sure my wooden sword will hold out.

There. Done with my house. I'll go ahead and get a good night's sleep, who knows when I'll have another opportunity to sleep. In the morning, I'll look for some coal, so I can make torches. If I'm lucky, I'll find some other useful materials.


Midnight.

(This story is about the game called Minecraft, and is from the perspective of the character you play.)

North Creek Park Outing

Last week a group of us piled into the Clearwater bus and drove up to North Creek Park. If you live in the area and haven't visited this park, it's well worth a trip. It's a wetland with a boardwalk through it, lots of wildlife and interpretive signs. The flora and fauna vary with the seasons and different wildlife are visible at different times of day.

The day we were there was warm. Although the weather was dry, there are several areas of the board walk that are prone to sink slightly below water level when a bunch of people walk along them at the same time. That was a source of amusement and challenge for several Clearwater students, who wanted all of us to walk or stand on a section, submerging it so they could have the fun of escaping the deluge or wading in it.

Heading down to the boardwalk

One interpretive sign talked about the importance of wetlands, describing them metaphorically as the kidneys of the earth. Clearwater staff member Matt thought it would be fun to talk about his own kidneys as the wetlands of the body. A little later, a student extended the metaphor further and suggested that lakes might be the bladders of the earth.

Reading about the function of wetlands

Delicate floating duckweed

Girls returning from a boardwalk spur to a peat bog

Because wetlands help clean storm water, the fact that Clearwater is downstream of North Creek Park means that the creek is cleaner when it gets to us than before it goes through the park. In fact, we noticed areas of water in the park that had an oily sheen and the appearance of sludge.

We also noticed and heard lots of birds and insects, and saw the occasional garter snake.

Fun with flooded boardwalk

Girls voluntarily trapping themselves on platform

Common Touch-Me-Not or Jewelweed (Impatiens noli-tangere)

Water Smartweed (Polygonum amphibium)

A lovely nosegay made by a student

In spite of one minor injury (a nettle sting), everyone spent a lot of time exploring the board walk and dirt trails of the park. After exploring the wetland, we all met up at the playground by the parking lot, where everyone played. Photos and information about that part of the trip will be in a post later this week.

End of post.

First Week of School

The first week of school has ended and the second week begins at Clearwater. The word that best describes the week for me is joy. Everyone is so happy about being back and hanging out with friends. There is so much to talk about, to do, to try, to experience. Everyone is a little older, more mature, more themselves. Of course, this happens through the school year, too, but the three-month gap makes the difference seem more striking and even miraculous.Even after being on staff for 15 years, I feel such wonder and gratitude to be able to know the incredible people who attend Clearwater and witness their growth.

The big news in terms of our physical environment is that a lot of sockeye salmon are returning to spawn in North Creek. The bulk of their bodies are an intense red-orange color, the head and tail are green, and the top of their snout is hooked down to enable them to dig depressions for egg laying in the silt of the creek bed. After two previous years with no salmon sightings, it is wonderful to be able to see their tenacity as they move upstream past little rapids and waterfalls.

The glare on the water inteferred with really clear photos of the fish, but the red bodies are visible even through the glare. Many salmon rest for long periods in a calm, deep pool south of the foot bridge before marshalling their energy to push upstream again.





Three girls who performed acrobatics on the spinning bar at Whistlepig last spring are continuing to refine their technique, experiment and add new moves. It is mesmerizing to see their focus, their willingness to try things even when the results look awkward. They are planning to have a whole new routine to present at Whistlepig next spring. Two of them are pictured here.








The foosball table also saw some action.


The punching bag in the basement attracted 5- and 6-year-old girls who walloped it within an inch of its life.


Several students want to learn and practice tennis, which inspired Matt, staff member and sports guru, to create a tennis/pickle ball court in the active room.



While two younger students waited for Matt and Robert to finish their game so they could take the court, they served as skilled ball boys.









End of post.

Back-to-School Reading for Parents

Alternatives to the traditional four-year university are the subject of two interesting books published recently. The books, "DIY U: Edupunks, Edupreneurs, and the Coming Transformation of Higher Education", and Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work are two different perspectives on paths young people can take to finding livelihoods. Parents of kids who are not marching along the path of admission to a four-year college should find either book, or both, interesting and helpful. Shop Class will be of particular interest to anyone who knows (or is) someone who is not interested in college at all, and DIY U is a must-read for the rest of us.

When the New York Times Magazine published an adapted essay from Shop Class, The Case for Working With Your Hands, it was an unexpected sensation. Written by Matthew Crawford, a man who inhabits the worlds of academia and garages, the essay makes a (somewhat) simple case for the satisfaction that comes from making a livelihood from solving puzzles through your hands. In some ways, the essay is better than the book; it's that word 'somewhat' that can be a problem. In his little blurb on the University of Virgina website, where he is a fellow, the synopsis of this book reads:

Matthew is currently writing a book for The Penguin Press that will explicate the experiences of making things and fixing things. These activities illuminate the mutual entanglement of mind and hand, and thereby shed light on certain permanent requirements of human flourishing that material culture must answer to.

And, I'm sorry to say, this isn't just UV Institute for Advanced Studies In Culture claptrap, a good bit of the book reads this way. If this is how your brain picks through words then it's a really great read. The essay is much more palatable, but like a good dessert, isn't as nutritious. Mr. Crawford's background in philosophy is evident on every page, for example when he makes the case that "The trades are then a natural home for anyone who would live by his own powers, free not only of deadening abstraction but also of the insidious hopes and rising insecurities that seem to be endemic in our current economic life. Freedom from hope and fear is the Stoic ideal."  The thought that choosing a career that is free from ambition could be liberating is certainly novel in our culture, and it is a neat trick.

It might take me the rest of the summer to finish this (my kid is 14 - there is no hurry and there are mysteries to be read), but every time I pick this up I'm glad for the time I spend in this guy's head, glad for the new perspective. I'll finish with a paragraph from an early chapter that summarizes a thought that is not new to those in the Sudbury world, and makes this book reassuring:


"So what advice should one give to a young person? If you have a natural bent for scholarship: if you are attracted to the most difficult books out of an urgent need, and can spare four years to devote yourself to them, go to college. In fact, approach college in the spirit of craftsmanship, going deep into liberal arts and sciences. But if this is not the case; if the thought of four more years sitting in a classroom makes your skin crawl, the good news that that you don't have to go through the motions and jump through the hoops for the sake of making a decent living. Even if you do go to college, learn a trade in the summers. You're likely to be less damaged, and quite possibly better paid, as an independent tradesman than as a cubicle-dwelling tender of information systems or low-level "creative." To heed such advice would require a certain contrarian streak, as it entails rejecting a life course mapped out by other as obligatory and inevitable."

One might add that if you feel that you can spare a great deal of money, go to college. But we'll get to that in the next post, when we cover "DIY U".

Copyrighted text used with permission, Penguin Press c. 2009

End of post.

Cooking Class with Young Students

Robert and Braden, who have spent a lot of time under Mat's tutelage in the Clearwater kitchen, are doing their cooking and eating in Denmark for the next month and a half. (For their ongoing posts, look for the "Denmark" tag.) Meanwhile, cooking at Clearwater continues even in their absence.

Last week, I loved watching Mat work with a group of nine- and ten-year-olds, who wanted to make sushi and teriyaki to eat. These students don't have the expertise some of our older student cooks have, but they are learning more skills almost effortlessly thanks to Mat's ability to work with students at their particular skill level. They prepared ingredients, rolled rice balls, cleaned, and had a great time. Plus, the food they made was delicious.

Peeling carrots and cutting cucumbers

Mat purchased some whole squid and the four students cleaned them: removing heads, innards and skin. They were simultaneously fascinated and mildly repelled by the task. They all know a lot more about squid anatomy than they did before.

Cleaning whole squid

While they were all rolling rice balls, a six-year-old student wandered in to watch and eventually rolled her own rice ball. Watching her watch her older peers so intently reminded me again of the incalculable advantages of a school where all ages share all the spaces throughout the day. The learning and rich interactions that happen daily because everyone has access to each other all the time are sometimes obvious (as in this cooking class) and and other times more difficult to discern.

Rolling rice balls

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Batch of completed rice balls

The younger girl watched the others roll rice balls, stood on a chair to see Mat fry up the squid, then watched him improvise rolled sushi after discovering that the package of nori in the cupboard had disappeared. I later realized she also paid attention when I took photos of a couple of the students' rice-covered hands.

Fashioning sushi rolls without nori

Rice-covered hands

The six-year-old asked to roll a rice ball and found out that before she could begin, she had to wash her hands with soap, which surprised her. Perhaps she didn't intially see the difference between rice-messy and mud-messy hands. She also discovered that rolling a rice ball was not a slam dunk. She found she had to use quite a lot of pressure to fashion a ball that would stick together.

Rice ball with carrot and fried squid

Although the six-year-old girl may have wandered into cooking classes with the teenage students, I don't remember seeing her spend a lot of time watching much older students cook. I suspect what held her interest last week was the fact that the group was only three to four years older than her and what they were doing seemed therefore more accessible and possible.

I can guess but don't really know what of her experience that day seemed important to her, what new thoughts will bubble up, or what will ultimately stick with her. It doesn't matter whether I know. What matters is that she was able to be a part of a complex and rich experience that she chose and had meaning for her.

After she was done making her rice ball she came over to me and asked me to take a picture of her rice-covered hands. In addition to whatever she took away from the experience, as a bonus she got to share the experience of having and showing off messy hands.

Proud of rice-covered hands

End of post.

Denmark

The new house we are staying at is great. They have a guitar and a piano, so I have been practicing with both of those. Herbie's mom is a fantastic cook, so its been good eating really good food. On Saturday, it's their cousin's birthday and my birthday, so I'm going to go to their birthday party. I'm excited to be having my birthday in another country.

Sadly, I just got over being sick which was kind of lame, but I kept pushing on and having fun. It's a blast here! I can't wait to come back here when I can.
--Robert

New Host

Braden and I are staying at a new house for the week. It's a boy, Hebie's house. He is American, so it's cool to be staying at a house where people speak English well.

There is only one problem--I can't send emails out from his house. I dont know why, but I can't. So if I have been emailing you, sorry, it will be a bit before I can email anyone again.
--Robert