The Year of Ideas

New York Times - 8th Annual Year in Ideas

My favorite so far - Snowball the dancing cockatoo.

Thomas Kinkade is rather stupid

I just read (via the Chronicle's Arts & Letters Daily) a Vanity Fair article about some really banal movie that Thomas Kinkade has made/painted...

What babble- the movie, not the article. The article was sort of interesting – especially Kinkade's 16 Guidelines for making the movie have the "Kincade Look". Gag. Gag. Gag.

If the article is factual, it seems that Mr. Kinkade is another religious person solely focused on the external, on appearances. I find that disingenuous in an artist - but right on course for people who parade their religious views as models of charity and love, but use them for profit. As an artist I find Kinkade pitiful. The aesthetic of his work is puerile romantic meaningless drivel. The aggravating thing is that people buy this crap.

We live in a Kinkade world where the mundane is worshiped as being "for the people," where anti-intellectualism runs rampant, where people see technical ability as artistic ability. Thomas Kinkade's work is the embodiment of all that is mundane. The places in Thomas Kinkade paintings have never existed outside of someone's mind and I suppose that is why he is popular. People love to pretend that things are different than they really are. We tell ourselves lies whenever possible, and believe them as gospel truth.

Oh, and I also hate the tendency for cover artists who do movie covers/posters to have photos of people with other people's names above them. What's the matter with them?

Further Thoughts on a Priority

On the priority of attracting and retaining a diverse and qualified student body-(see taking a stand in a town hall meeting)-most people spoke to the diversity aspect of this priority. A few spoke on educational standards for college entrance. Others talked about disadvantaged students and their needs.

I think that one thing that was not mentioned was that even though we would all love to attract "qualified" students, the most important thing is not their qualifications when they arrive, but their qualifications when they leave.

How to take the less prepared students and get them "qualified" before they leave WITHOUT degrading the education and experience for the exemplary students is an important thing to consider.

And perhaps one of the more difficult things to do.

Taking a Stand in a Town Hall Meeting

Today, in a "town hall" meeting, we discussed a group of priorities for moving the university forward. We have a new president and he is reaching out to everyone in a number of ways, looking for input on where each group, each person, thinks the university needs to focus efforts and energy.

I did not bring home my notes, but there were eight priorities laid out for discussion. I think I can remember them: the university's Catholic, Lasallian heritage/identity; an excellent teaching and learning environment; a diverse and qualified student body; financial vigor and viability of the university; the well-being of all; internal & external communication; preparing students for an increasingly "global" world. I am forgetting one of them. Perhaps it will come to me as I pull my thoughts together here. Oh yeah, enhancing technology to support learning. That was number five I think.

The president, after taking perhaps 15 or 20 minutes to introduce the priorities, simply stood as moderator, pointing out members of the audience/gathering so that they could speak their thoughts on these priorities.

For the most part people brought up ideas that would either support or question the feasibility of a given priority. Concerns were voiced that we should respect the financial health of the university, but not let economics strangle its essence. Several faculty members mentioned a deficit in the teaching of foreign languages bringing up the idea that we need more language instructors. I think I would take it even further - we need to teach more languages. Simply offering French and Spanish isn't good enough anymore. Yes I know we also have Latin and Greek, and we also offer the occasional Arabic course, but I am thinking we need to offer Chinese. We need to have a fully established program in Arabic.

At one point someone made mention of the vocational vs. liberal arts education models, claiming that we need to decide which we will be and what it means to be one or the other, as well as a few other points that I have to admit did not really stick in my mind.

The idea that education - higher education everywhere, not just at our university - is sorely lacking in its ability to engage students in intellectual discourse (that heady, inspiring dialogue that leaves you reeling, that pushes you right up against the abyss, leaving you tottering on the edge of all of your prejudices, your assumptions, your ignorance, while you strain for a transcendent moment, a crystal clarity, that moment when you realize a tiny particle of truth, the moment that makes you feel truly alive and vibrant) was a point that many voiced. Faculty and students alike mentioned that they missed the challenge that this kind of thinking, this kind of being embodies, they missed, whether or not they even knew it existed, the high brought on by intense mental engagement.

I found much to agree with in the discussion of creating intellectual dialogue. I believe that college, without this experience, is just advanced high school.

I was impressed by the solidarity expressed by those who chose to speak and those who listened with total concentration. For the most part it was a very civil and respectful discussion.

The students that came and spoke were probably mostly seminarians - although one female student also spoke. One student spoke several times. One of my co-workers mentioned that she thought he did very well with the first point he brought up. She thought he perhaps came with that statement prepared ahead of time. I think she may be correct. He definitely did not do as well on the second, third or fourth time he spoke.

I think it was the second time he spoke, maybe the third, when he joined in on the discussion of the "intellectual life" at the university. He used those moments to praise the merits of taking logic courses, taking philosophy courses. I would have been fine with what he said, except he implied that philosophy courses are more important than other courses. He said something along the lines of why would anyone want/need to take a ceramics course - why would a university worth its salt offer a ceramics course but not make logic (a philosophy course we offer) required for every student - what possible good could someone get from taking ceramics, etc.

I admit that I sort of got fired up about this statement (and the implied lesser worthiness in vocational education that a faculty member stated earlier). It wasn't soley that he was a bit arrogant. It wasn't solely that he was getting great pleasure from hearing himself speak. It wasn't that he dismissed art as having any value - at least not entirely.

What I cannot get past is the elitism, expressed here as my course/major/department/program has more worth, is more essential to what is that defines intellectual discourse, than your course/major/department/program. It was the implication that as a philosopher he was worth more than someone who took art classes.

And that is just plain wrongheadedness. So I had to say something.

You cannot build intellectual discourse without passion. Not everyone has the same passions. The real work of a university is to engage the student from within the context of his or her passion. An art course, a business course, a philosophy course or a language course - any course can inspire passion which can then lay the foundation for intellectual dialogue.

I absolutely, totally, passionately(!) believe that lasting , meaningful learning, that true expansion of one's awareness comes from discovering a passion and exploring it.

I hope I was more eloquent when I spoke than I have been here. I need to think about this more.

Mosaic - The Flock

The Flock, 14" x 39", vitreous glass tiles.

The Flock (this piece's current title, which may change) is almost finished. All the tesserae have been placed and glued to the fiberglass mesh. I've turned it upside down (with the help of Abelisto) so that the back side can dry.

Once it's dried overnight I will attach the mosaic to a substrate using thinset (a concrete-based adhesive). When that dries I will grout the mosaic. I have bags of medium gray, dark gray and black grout. I still need to do a grout study. Part of me wants to just go ahead and grout the mosaics, guessing which grout would give the best results. But this time, for once, I am going to be patient and test the grout colors. I am too happy with this mosaic (and The Lion Roars) to mess it up with a bad grout choice.

Waiting is always the hardest part of any project.

In the meanwhile, I've started another mosaic.

Mosaics

I've been very passionately working on the mosaic, which has become two-soon-to-be-three mosaics.

Here is The Lion Roars. It still needs to be grouted and framed, but you can get a good idea of what it is going to look like now. It (I really want to call it He) is around 11" tall and 14" wide. It is a mixture of opus palladium, opus tessellatum, opus vermiculatum, and a rough approximation of opus regulatum. That's likely too many types of andamento in one small mosaic - probably a common beginner's mistake.

The major thing I learned from this piece is that I want to break my glass tesserae into fourths. They come as 20mm (aprox. 3/4") square tiles that are very regular in size and shape. When I did the background for The Lion Roars I realized that I was going to be doing a considerable amount of cutting to outline the lion. I decided to quarter the tiles, again probably not the best combination (some full, some chipped and some quartered), but for this it seems to work okay. Anyway, what I discovered along the way is that I REALLY like the lack of uniformity in the quartered tesserae. I love the less regimented, more organic feel.

While I was waiting for Lion to finish drying I started another mosaic. This one doesn't have a name yet. I've called it The Birds as a working title, but I'm not locked into that for the actual title.

I'm quartering all the tiles for it and using primarily opus tessellatum.

This first image shows the cartoon and some initial color selections for the eyes.

A close up of two of the birds' eyes, which also shows the cartoon in detail.

Second try at the first bird's head. I peeled the first attempt up after it dried. It was too chaotic and undefined. This is when I decided to use opus tessellatum instead of opus palladium. I like the way it defines the bird's head.

Bird one is done. I particularly liked the way that the beak edge came out. I had done the birds as an encaustic painting and never could get the divide between the upper and lower beak defined like I wanted.

Bird two, partially done. this was a stopping point on the second night of working on this project.

Here is how The Birds currently looks. I hope to finish the piece by the weekend so that I can grout both mosaics at the same time. I will need to do a tile sample to test the grout color, but right now I'm thinking of a dark grey or black - have to see how that tests out with the beak colors.

Meanwhile, mosaic three is rattling around inside my head.

To do or to write about doing

I've been focused on doing rather than writing about doing lately. When I get home I need to do something with my hands instead of typing. I've been looking at a computer screen for around 9 hours a day at work, and the last thing I want to do is turn on a computer when I get home.

Luckily, I have plenty of art to do.

I am participating in a community Art Tour in December. Members of the community go around by foot and vehicle to various artist studios, and hopefully find items they want to buy. Most of my art is probably too highly priced for most Winona people, and I hesitate to underprice myself. Underpricing one's not only hurts the artist who is cutting prices, but also hurts other artists who then feel pressured to lower their prices.

I sell my paintings for between $95 and $300, my tapestries between $75 and $1,500, and I will be selling mosaics for between $100 and 500. None of those are going to be of interest to most of the people coming to the Art Tour.

So I pulled out all the gourds that I had on hand, and purchased some additional small ones, and I've been doing some gourd pieces that should sell from between $30 and $100 - except for the gourd drums, which will sell for between $250 and $400.

Assorted gourd work in various stages of completion.

Here you can see some bowls, some sculptural (non-functional) pieces, some musical instruments (snake gourds - the otter in front and the unfinished gourds in the upper right; and the beginnings of a large gourd drum, upper center. and some shakers, near the drum and near the leather dye), some bowls with lids and a couple some hinged boxes.

The Lion Roars, mosaic, Venetian glass tiles.
I am waiting for more glass tiles to come from Tile Shack.
The Lion Roars is based on the textile work of Jude Hill.

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I really don't get upset if my art doesn't sell. I am not trying to make my living off of it - which makes it even more important that I don't underprice and handicap other artists.

Metatarsophalangeal Joint Arthrodesis - Part II

It's been 10 days since the surgery. The incision site doesn't seem too tender and actual bone that was worked on isn't too painful. However the rest of my foot is quite tender. I had to unwrap the dressing a few days ago; it was slipping off of the end of my foot. I was a bit nervous about unwrapping it, but I did not see much of a choice. It was either unwrap it myself, or drag Abelisto out of class and have him drive me to LaCrosse and get the podiatry nurse to rewrap it.

I did not want Abelisto to miss any more of his classes (his students would have probably not minded, but he hates getting behind the schedule he sets in his syllabi), so I did it myself. I took off the big black space boot that covered the dressing on my foot. It has some of the best velcro I have ever seen - it grabs onto itself very securely and the ripping sound it makes when it is unbelted and opened up is tremendous.

Lifting my foot out of the boot I saw that somewhere I had lost one of the elastic bandage clips (found it later in the bedding at home). Since I did not have any new cotton batting, I tried to gently remove the old batting and carefully roll it up as I took it off so that I could put it back on. The sight as the last layer of batting came off was a wee bit scary - the foot had swelled considerably. I had deep red, purple, and greenish-yellow bruising all over my foot, and a large crack in the callous on the bottom of my foot. I lifted the gauze and pad off of the incision site and saw that the swelling had expanded the skin to where the stitched area was stretched out nearly flat.

My foot looked like a mugging victim.

I had spent nearly a full day at work the day before, and I am guessing that was too much. I sort of knew it was because about 11 the foot had started some pretty serious throbbing and burning, which of course, I ignored - with the above results. Since then I have come in in the morning and worked until the throbbing starts and then gone home and put my foot up with a cold pack on it. Yesterday I brought a cold pack to work in hopes of extending my time there a bit, mainly because today is the president's inauguration and I will likely be here most of the day.

I do work at home, but sometimes I end up taking pain medication when I get there and that puts me to sleep. I had worried about having this sort of down-time during the website redesign, but this has not been too bothersome, since at this point most of the work is being done by the vendor. Soon though, I will need to be back at full-force and ready to start working with the content management system and doing some pretty extensive Flash work. However, I am lucky in that even if I need to be home with my foot up, I can still do my work because most of it is done online anyway. And I do have an almost-comfortable way to sit in bed and work.

I have another doctor appointment in three days. Hopefully he won't tell me I really screwed up.

Self-Reliance and Sustainability

I've been rereading Emerson's essay on Self-Reliance and sustainability. Foremost in my thoughts about it at this point is that I think Emerson loved words, or maybe more accurately loved himself using words - lots of words. However this may be a significant misjudgment on my part. Even though I resist it, I am as addicted to the sound-bite summary, the cliff notes version, the easy path to enlightenment, as anyone.

I also just read the Steampunk Magazine's A Steampunk's Guide to Surviving an Apocalypse.

There's some connection going on between these two documents - inside my head.

Emerson begins this essay with:
Ne te quaesiveris extra - Do not seek for anything outside of thyself.

He seems to be extolling the virtues of thinking for yourself,taking care of yourself, by yourself, experiencing yourself as potentate - at least of your own existence. He writes: It is only as a man puts off all foreign support, and stands alone, that I see him to be strong and to prevail. He is weaker by every recruit to his banner. Is not a man better than a town?

I am not sure.

I think that being self-reliant is knowing and accepting oneself. I think that this can happen whether I am standing alone or as part of a group, a tribe, or a movement.

If I know myself I should be able to recognize when I am not being true to my self. I should be able to know when I am off-kilter, so to speak. To be self-reliant is to be emotionally healthy, not needy, not seeking to verify who I am in another person's approval. However this does not mean that I should be distant or disconnected from others.

It seems that Emerson was reacting to social pressures as he created this essay. However, this is just the feeling lingering after my first reread in three years. I will have to read it again and see what I think.

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It's interesting the different meanings we attribute to words and concepts. Self-reliance has so many meanings.

Self-reliance in regard to sustainability

There are two areas in which one can be self-reliant – production and consumption – and both are needed for true sustainability.

Self-reliance in production means that one can make much of what they need. This can be as simple as making a cake from scratch, or as complex as building a structure to live in shaping raw materials with the use of a few tools. Production by the self-reliant is gauged by its use value, rather than its market value. Self-reliance in production means that quality is the focus, not quantity. Quality can be sustainable, quantity often is not.

Self-reliance in consumption means that one doesn't really need a lot of things in order to exist contently – things like fancy toys or the latest style of clothing or a lavish home. A self-reliant identity does not come from the things one can buy and flaunt. A self-reliant lifestyle is unpretentious and grounded in thoughtful consumption. Considerate consumption is sustainable, conspicuous consumption never is.

Self-reliance and community

Generally one thinks of a self-reliant person being independent and unfettered by a need of others. The paradox is that self-reliance cannot truly exist without the community of trust.

"One can achieve everything in solitude - except character." ~ Henri Stendhal

Community is necessary in order to establish our identity. Without knowledge of the other there can be no knowledge of the self. Meaning is arrived at through distinctions.

Without a community of trust, an individual cannot come to know themselves fully. Without the ability to explore ideas in a safe atmosphere, the demanding, often frightening steps necessary to knowing oneself become exponentially more difficult. When thoughts and words have to be carefully guarded, when all energy is spent on simply maintaining one's existence in the seclusion of one's own mind – sanity, not growth, is the focus.

Without trust there is insecurity and an urge to hoard – both skills and things. Without trust I am not able to allow you to produce and consume in your natural patterns – I cannot trust that your intentions are towards quality, not quantity, and your consumption is considerate and not conspicuous.

Metatarsophalangeal Joint Arthrodesis

I've been recovering from a surgery I had this week - Metatarsophalangeal Joint Arthrodesis. The lines on the above image only roughly represent the work that was done.

The bone connecting to my right big toe was too long. This was putting all the weight of my body on the toe joint when I walked or stood, instead of distributing it across all the toes.

the right foot, awaiting the surgeon's skill
(arrgh, I haven't seen that leg shaved in over 20 years)
the left decked out in a fancy stocking and
pressurized anklet to keep my blood flowing like it should...

I am now, 3 days after the surgery, doing better. The surgery itself went well, but recovery has been rough. I had a pretty severe reaction to the pain medicines they gave me (vomiting and mild hallucinations - crawly things all over me) and have sworn off prescribed drugs for now. I am only taking Tylenol.

what I saw today at the doctor's office

Today I got to see my foot when they took off the first cast (they would not let me stay awake and photograph the procedure - everyone quit talking and just stared at me when I asked, so I took that as a NO). I took pictures of my foot before they put the new dressings on it

the new boot, at least for the next few weeks I will get to wear

all my favorite socks that have had mates go missing

I now have a walking boot on my foot, but it is still too tender to walk on much. However, I am fairly tough, with a reasonable tolerance for pain, and I heal quickly... and I surely do hate crutches. Once this is over I am so going on a shoe-buying spree...

However, this damn boot isn't going to be easy to sleep in. And I will have to go to work in sweat pants - that's all that will fit over it (big hardship there...).

I've avoided reading about the procedure as a matter of principle, but you can if you want. Here's the Google search.

The Greene County Daily World

Dad's obituary was in the weekly paper one year ago today, along with a photo of him with his motorcycle (although they cropped most of the motorcycle out of the image). It said:

Keith L. May, 78, of Linton, passed away at 8:45 p.m., Friday, August 31, 2007 at his residence.
He was born on March 25, 1929, the son of Curtis and Emma (Wilson) May. He served in the U.S. Army and was a veteran of the Korean War. He worked as a truck driver, a regional service representative for Fiat, a service manager at a foreign car dealership, and later worked for Williams Brothers Pharmacy in delivery until his retirement in July of 2007. He was a memeter of the Bloomington Masonic Lodge and the Linton Goldwing Club.
Survivors include his wife whom he married June 22, 1956, Constance E. (Johnston) May of Linton; two daughters, Monta Gael May (Wes Miller) of Winona, MN and Michelle (Chris) Mattox of Bloomfield; two sons Aaron Douglas May (Jennifer Sparks) of Bloomfield and Brian Keith (Susan) May of Atoka TN; two sisters Mary Jo May of Bedford and Wanda Rush of Bloomington; one brother, Bill May of Bedford; 11 grandchildren Aluna, Nova, Sheba, Emerald, Eli, Aaron (Erin), Tena, Rebecca, Jessica, Blaise and Ava; and two great-grandchildren Taylor and Dominic.
He was preceded in death by his father Curtis May; mother Emma May-Stancombe; and a brother Harry May.
Memorial services were held at the Welch & Cornett Funeral Home, Linton Chapel, at 11:00 on Tuesday.
Online condolences can be sent to the family at www.welchcornett.com.

There was also a color photo of dad on the front page of the paper.

The week's front page headlines were:
Counterfeit bills surface in Linton
Police have suspect in bomb threat cases
Families help break ground on new homes
Music fesitval exceeds expectations

We were already home in Winona when the weekly paper came out. My mother got copies of the paper for all of us. I have copies of the newspaper for all of the kids. I haven't given them to them. The papers are sitting on my dresser. This is the first I have looked at them in a year.

Google Chrome

I just downloaded Chrome.

Seems like it renders text ala Firefox, images come across well, and it is FAST,FAST, FAST in regard to scripts and multimedia.

Side-by-side comparison of text rendering: (left-to-right) Firefox, Chrome, Safari, IE7.

It also uploads fast. The image above uploaded so fast I thought I was seeing things...

I will be checking out my favorite bandwidth-heavy sites and see if it really is as fast as it seems.

The last time I saw my father

Last year at this time I saw my father for the very last time.

He was laying on a table in the mortuary. Cold and smooth. I touched his face, I held his hand, I could not let him go without doing those things.

9-1-2007

I started this blog on August 2nd of last year. I had just learned my father was dying of lung cancer. The bridge in Minneapolis had just collapsed, or was collapsing - I cannot quite remember the order of things.

One year ago yesterday, one year and 12 hours ago, my father died. I was on the road, desperately trying to get there before he passed on. I did not make it.

One year ago today I was helping with funeral arrangements, trying to transfer airline tickets for our daughters and granddaughter to fly in from Las Vegas, and trying to arrange a ticket for our son, Eli, to fly down from Winona (he stayed home since we had more people than would fit in the station wagon and we never dreamed my father would die that night).

Eli's ticket was not a problem. Transferring the girls' tickets was a nightmare. In the end we ended up spending nearly $3,000 for the airline tickets we purchased that day and the ones we had purchased two days before, since they would not let us transfer the original tickets without paying fees and the difference between the ticket prices. That would have been more than buying new tickets, so we bought new tickets. After that we learned that the initial ticket order had been duplicated and so we owned 8 tickets. Nova and Taylor would fly in from Vegas that night. Aluna would fly in the next morning so that she could work her shift (it was impossible to get a substitute at that late notice). Eli would fly down from Minnesota that night, just a couple hours ahead of Nova and Tay. Eli doesn't drive, didn't drive, so Princess and Matt took him to the airport - a 2-hour drive from Winona.

I am amazed now, looking back, that it all worked out.

One year ago...

I made the biggest mistake I can remember making.

My father was dying. We knew this. Over the last few days he had nearly stopped eating. The lung cancer that had metastasized and taken up residence in his bones was winning. We knew it would, he knew it would - but we thought he had a few months to live. They told us at the end of July that he had two to nine months to live.

The 31st was a Friday. Wednesday of that week my mother had called and said she thought he wasn't going to be with us much longer. I called the girls in Vegas right after that phone call and told them they needed to get to Indiana if they wanted to see their grandfather before he died. Nova had been there in July. Aluna had taken a new job that summer and did not feel that she could take time off. When I told her she needed to get to Indiana now, she went to her new boss and got the time off and made plans to fly herself, Nova and Tay out the following Tuesday.

What was my mistake you ask? The mistake I made was putting my job and my normal life ahead of my father and my family. In all honesty, none of us expected him to pass that day. So I went to work in the morning with plans to leave around noon.

It's a 10-hour drive from Winona to my parent's home in Linton Indiana. If I had piled everyone in the car and left early in the day we would have made it in time.

Instead, leaving at noon meant that we were somewhere between Bloomington/Normal and Danville, Illinois when my brother called to tell us that my father had passed away. They told me that he knew - as much as one can know in the final hours of life - that we were coming, but he just could not wait for us to be there. He died at 8:45pm.

I wasn't there. Forever I will know that my decision to work those 4 or 5 hours meant that I was racing down a highway in a futile attempt to be there when my father died.

I hate it sometimes, that my family is so spread out over the country. I know something like this will happen again.

A New Budget

September always brings new budgets in our house. Every year, at this time of year, at least one person in the household (and probably more) is retooling, rethinking and reassessing wants, needs and how far a dollar (or $20) can be stretched.

It's the time of year when school shopping has been my love-to-do/hate-to-do task (one I no longer face since everyone is out of high school and either done with college, or paying for their own stuff). Love the "organizational" shopping that notebooks, pens & pencils & markers, post-it notes, binders and those nifty zipper pockets for them, implies. Hate the list of "must-have-on-first-day-of-school" that the public school sent out every year (divided by grade level). Hate the fact that kids can be so cruel and if daughters and son came in less-than-stylish clothing they would be tortured, cut to the bone with a glance and a snicker.

For the last 20 years or so, I have had to postpone a birthday celebration for myself (d.o.b. 9/13) because school shopping would so blow the budget. We would finally recover in time to do the Christmas shopping sometime late-October or early-November. Not a bad thing, since I have way too much stuff anyway. But some years there wasn't even enough left to have a cake and ice cream.

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Thinking about McCain's $5-million-dollar-is-rich jokey response to the discussion of class and wealth...
NY Times Op-Ed by economist Paul Krugman

Endangered Species Act - Part II

A few days ago I posted a link to a NY Times article about the Endangered Species Act and some upcoming changes the Bush administration wants to push through. I also included the link to the information on public comments.

The proposed changes are on the government website where you can submit comments. This evening I plan to read through the change document and make some comments.

Tire Pressure

This weekend I got a very dramatic lesson in how tire pressure affects gas mileage - from my bicycle.

Abelisto and I usually ride our bikes to the Farmer's Market in Winona on Saturday mornings. We have panniers on our bikes that can hold the equivalent of 2 brown paper grocery bags each. Together we can get over a week's groceries in the panniers.

Anyway, over the last couple weeks I had been having more and more trouble riding the bike. I was cursing poor Adventure Cycle, thinking that they were at fault (had a recent tune up and one of the problems following it was this difficulty/trouble with riding - the other problem, erratic shifting issues still is going on). On Saturday morning Abelisto noticed that my rear tire was extremely low on air. We quickly went to the service station and added quite a bit of air pressure to both my tires.

Getting back on the bike was amazing - it now rolled so freely, so effortlessly... The difference in energy expenditure was unbelievable. It must be much the same with a car, except we do not notice it since we aren't doing the pedaling...

Now I have got to check the tires on all the vehicles in the household.

Now I need to check the tire pressures on all the vehicles.

Mead Update

Got some advice from Jon (a veteran mead & wine maker) concerning the mead. He said to date it and put it in a dark, cool place for 12 months to mellow the taste.


So on the 16th of August in 2009 we will open a bottle and test it.

Mead Making

Tonight Eli and I bottled the first batch of mead. This mead was made with honey from a local beekeeper that we got at the Farmer's Market in Winona. I do not drink alcohol so I do not really know myself, but others in my household think it tastes good.

This batch was made sort of willy-nilly. I did read the meadmaker book, but I did not have any special equipment for doing it other than the carboy and the fermentation lock. I did not even have a thermometer. I guess I was really lucky that it made at all. It took DAYS for it to start fermenting, and it was not very vigorous when it did start. There was maybe a bubble every 15 seconds. We worried that we were going to end up with honey vinegar, or something like that.

A week or so ago I stopped by the Wine & Beer Making Supply store just north of Rochester on Hwy 52. I bought a polycarbonate carboy, another fermentation lock, a racking tube and hose, a floating thermometer, a hydrometer and testing tube, some stabilizer, and some yeast energizer (or maybe it was nutrient - don't remember and the box is in the other room).

Abelisto and I picked up 12 pounds raw honey at the food co-op. I started a second batch of mead with part of it last weekend when I moved the first batch to the secondary fermentation carboy (the rest of the honey went to the roofers in appreciation of taking such good care not to drop old shingles on the bee hives). I really did not need to move the first batch into a secondary fermentation carboy, it was absolutely done with the fermenting, but it did help clarify it. Anyway, the second batch of mead was bubbling away about 4 hours after I mixed it up. The bubbles were rising through the fermentation lock at about 1 bubble every 2.5 to 3 seconds this time. I took specific gravity and temperature measurements and am keeping better records with this batch. 

It will be interesting to see how it comes out.