Holiday Wishes and Movie Review

 I hope all of you are enjoying your holiday season. A belated Happy Hannukah and Merry Christmas as appropriate, althought it's related belated with still ten days of Christmas left.

It's been a quiet but pleasant holiday season so far. Yesterday we saw the Imitation Game, the movie about Alan Turing and his development of a computer-like machine to break the enigma code used by the Nazis in WWII. I am sure it took some liberties with the facts but it is fine and powerful movie with excellent performances. A central theme was the inability of bureaucracy and its practitioners to treat unconventional people decently.

Short Break from a Dreary Autumn

There were three nice days recently, a welcome break from what has been one of the dampest and grayest autumns I can remember. The last two days have been back to cool drizzle, but here are some pictures from Saturday.  As you can see, have entered the white season up here.

General Relativity

I am still cogitating about the nature of space/time. If it is simply the interval between events would it have any intrinsic properties? How do virtual particle pairs and dark energy fit in this? Obviously, I need to do a lot more reading.

Nightstand project update

More on my nightstand project - non woodworkers are excused. Finished the practice piece a few days ago. It's in pine and spruce and the only reason I stained it a dark color was to gain some perspective on how it would look if built of mahogany. 

I decided I would make the legs slightly greater in diameter and make one larger drawer. Here is  the final design drawing. Now to work. 

The real reason for the internet: cats

Since we all know the real purpose of the internet was to provide a purpose to owning a cat, here are a few feline photos.

 Where's my booster seat. ... Natalie apparently has just sat down for dinner but is not quite satisfied with the arrangements.

That really is a cat in the basket. Sally finds some odd places to sleep. The basket is how we hope to keep the newly reupholstered chair from becoming fur covered.

Tommy is a neighbor's cat and terrorizes the rest of the neighborhood; but he is a good looking bully.

A very busy seven days

Just returned from a marathon weekend last night. Drove to New Jersey through a snowstorm on Wednesday. Had a quiet and very pleasant Thanksgiving with our friends the Rapps in Glen Rock. On Friday drove 600 miles to Detroit with our friend Helen. The drive went smoothly except for the last twenty miles of icy roads with  more minor accidents then I have ever seen before in one month let alone one hour.

Stayed at a great place, the Inn on Ferry Street which comprises four converted upper middle class late nineteenth century mansions.  Spent three hours in the very impressive Detroit Institute of Art, then changed and went to Adam Breslawski's wedding to Erin Tobin. The wedding took place in the beautiful Cathedral of the Most Blessed Sacrament and the reception at the elegant and very traditional Detroit Athletic Club. Was great to spend time with our friends Gina and Tom and their families and to meet the delightful Tobin Clan. On Sunday morning we had breakfast with great friends met through scouting in Glen Rock, the Foglemans. We had seen them briefly the night before when they were dining at the Detroit Athletic Club. Detroit has real resources and there is a great deal of activity and investment going on . We'll have to wait to see to what degree it will help resurrect the city.

Drove back to Glen Rock Sunday with only about one hour of heavy traffic. Visited an old friend in Ridgewood Monday morning and then down to Basking Ridge to see the staff, faculty, and  Sarah B. Everyone looked great despite the turbulence caused by the latest education deforms [ the d is not a typo.]

Yesterday went up to Yaw Paw, the local scout camp in Mahwah, visited with the ranger,  and delivered two vises I had repaired. [ Now I have fewer vises but no increase in virtues.] Then did some shopping for delicatessen and bagels  [ can't get good cold cuts or bagels in our part of Western Massachusetts]; we had lunch with an aunt and cousins on Jean's side; we did some more cold cut buying; and then we stopped to visit  my sister and brother in law and some of her family in Connecticut and got home around nine in light snow.

During the night we were treated to being awakened three times by our nineteen year old cat who literally shouts either for attention or while arguing with her water fountain. Anyone interested in adopting a cat?

Visiting New Jersey

I hope to be at Ridge the afternoon of 12/1. Let me know by comment if you will be around.

Furniture Making... work in progress

Here is what I have been working at lately. It is a prototype in spruce and pine of a nightstand. I will attempt to make two of these in mahogany, when I am sure I have all the required techniques down pat.

Here's a detail of a leg. I learned to turn reasonably well, but I am still working out the best way to cut the reeding into the tapered leg.

The What and Why of Some Math

I now know more about rational polynomial functions than I ever wanted or needed to know. A benefit ( or maybe not) of tutoring. The behavior ( symmetry or antisymmetry) of functions at vertical asymptotes is determined by whether the exponent of the term in the denominator responsible for the asymptote is even or odd. Obvious when one thinks about it, and I guess making one think is the best reason for learning this stuff.

Speaking of math; I think you'll get a kick out of this

http://i.imgur.com/MPUYyI8.jpg

Like

The Joys of Front Wheel Drive Cars

Last week spent two days replacing the PVC system in Jeans Volvo V70. Only requires removing the turbo intake, the temperature sensor, the thermostat connection to the radiator hose, the fuel connection, the valve cover, the timing belt cover, the air filter cover, the radiator bottom shield, draining the radiator, breaking two banjo connections to the coolant system, undoing five hose connections, removing the intake manifold, releasing the dipstick tube bolt, replacing the oil separator with its two connections to the engine block, and a few other things, and of course the reverse of all the above. An oil change took almost half a day because the dealer's mechanics over torqued everything at the last change and I had to get a special oil filter wrench, buy new bolts for the engine shield, and chase the threads on the oil sump plug. A few weeks ago I replaced the timing belt, which among other things, required removing the passenger side front wheel. The two major repairs, PVC and timing belt, should last another 120,000 miles.

Now, after all this, Jean wants to buy a new(er) car.

Concert Reviews

It's been a good cultural stretch. We heard the Hartford Symphony on the seventeenth. They did a nice job with the 1812 Overture ( I forget how much really pretty music there is in this piece), a Koto Concerto, and a suite from Porgy and Bess. Last Friday and Saturday Jean was at LWV meetings Friday and Saturday so she missed the following.

Friday I heard the Amherst College Orchestra play Stokowski's transcription of Bach's Toccata in F (?), Beethoven's 4th piano concerto with a superb student soloist ( triple major in math, music, and French), and Brahm's 2nd Symphony. The French horns were much better in the Brahm's than the Beethoven but overall the playing was quite good. Seeing all those young faces brought back lots of good memories.

Last night it was the Pioneer Valley Symphony, which consists of volunteer adult players from the area. They did a pretty good job with a Tchaikovsky Sleeping Beauty suite; a trombone concerto which had some nice solo passages that were played beautifully; and Brahm's 4th symphony.

This afternoon we are off to see a play about Poe. A good choice for this time of year.

Very Local News

On the home front my neighbor's chickens are invading our stream bed and lawns.  I assume they will eventually run out of bugs to eat and leaves us alone.

The battle against invasive plants goes on. I was a bit dismayed to see how much nightshade and oriental bittersweet were growing along our stream. However that was nothing compared to what I felt when I went to cut them out. I discovered a small jungle of multiflora rose  with some plants having stems well over an inch in diameter. I attacked them as best I could but they fought back viciously. I'll enter the fray again as soon as I get a transfusion ( well maybe I'll just eat some red meat).

I then went and bagged some yellow flag iris that was invading a swale running down our pastureland.

A movie review

We saw the movie "the Judge" last night. Much of it was filmed in Shelburne Falls, a town about 9 miles from here. I thought the film was powerful, both the performances and the material. It delved into family relationships and what happens when a man's very strong principles, and even self righteousness, combine with his very real and imperfect humanity. It was suspenseful and absorbing, and despite the serious nature of the subjects handled, it was entertaining.

Success

This thought struck me this morning. In our classes the measure of our success (teacher's and students') was not how much you knew when you left but how much you understood. Even more so, the measure of success was how much more you wanted to understand.

The Dead Branch

The Westfield River was designated a Wild and Scenic River some time ago. A local association looks after the river and Jean and I took a walk on a tributary as part of their monitoring program. The name of the tributary is the Dead Branch, I don't know why. Here are a few pictures of a stream that is anything but dead.

More on "Enemy of the People"

This is a play written by Henrik Ibsen and adapted by Arthur Miller.  A doctor discovers that the waters  in a recently built health spring are contaminated. The spring is vital to the town's economy and to modify the water supply properly would require  a new tax levied on the not very prosperous town and two years. The play explores how the town is turned against the doctor and how most townspeople refuse to even hear what the doctor has to say, but are willing to see him as utterly evil and even threaten his safety and that of his family.  I am afraid that this type of behavior is becoming more common.

The play also has many subthemes. For example, it explores the mixed motives of a born rebel against authority (the doctor) who imagines himself as being lauded while showing the world how he is right and the people in power who chose the wrong water source were wrong. It shows the cupidity of journalists who are all for overthrowing authority until they see that opposing authority might threaten the circulation and income of their newspaper. It asks does an individual have the right to endanger his family in pursuit of  what he sees as the right. But the main theme is how an unthinking populace, egged on by demagogues, can turn a deaf ear to truth and become unreasoning and violent mob.

Busy Start to October

It's been another busy stretch. During the last ten days: went to the dentist and got a clean bill of oral health; attended a lecture by Nobel Winner Sheldon Glashow on how basic research has yielded much of the basis of our current economy and our improved health technology; reorganized shelving and bought, cut to fit, installed eight two by 8 by ten foot long braces on the first floor and in the loft of the barn; attended services for the holidays; helped build a sukkhot; finished all the anchoring, new supports, trimming the door, and cutting and installing new trim for the doorway in the barn basement; tutored twice; got some nice walks and one ride in ; explored two nearby towns; did a tour of our property with a botanist to identify invasive species; bought lots of tools and CDs I didn't need, heard some good fiddle music, and spent a lot of time wandering around our outstanding and very crowded fall festival; attended a demonstration of colonial era woodworking ( learned a lot of good stuff there); saw a very good performance of the Ibsen/Miller play: "An Enemy of the People" ( more on this later); enjoyed a visit from friends from New Jersey; and went to an antique show and visited some museums in old Deerfield.


Took a walk around the neighborhood and took some pictures  including one of the neighbor's dog, Jessie who is getting too round to move much. The Swiss chard shown below is the size of a medium hippo. The horses seen in a neighbor's pasture are retired Amish draft horses and soon after this picture was taken wandered up to another neighbor's orchard where they entertained the pick your own apple crowd for a while. I think the flowers are called flox up here but that might not be their correct name.

Cure for Knotweed

Saturday I spent three hours walking in the Westfield River learning about invasive and edible plants. Seems like the best cure for Japanese knotweed, which is overrunning stream banks and road sides in much of New England is (are) goats. They love to eat it. A stretch of river that was covered with knotweed is now covered with a very diverse and robust assortment of native plants as a result of goat browsing and careful replanting of the native species after the goats were removed.

Foodbank Fundraiser

Sunday, Jean and I did a charity ride for the Western MA Food Bank. We feel very strongly that no one in this country should go hungry or have to decide between feeding their families or paying the utility bill. We pledged $500 and if any of you out there would like to help us reach that goal, please let me know. Any amount is appreciated $5, $10, $15, etc. If you would like to help, please send me a comment with your email address, an email (if you have my address) or message on facebook ( if we are friends) for details. We'll need the checks by October 20th since we will need to get them in by the 25th.

General Relativity Musing

Einstein, and most others who have followed, talk ( actually write) about masses ( including energy) as curving space time. I wonder if it might be more appropriate to say they alter the density of  space time. The correct general relativity solution to bending of light around masses shows twice the deflection that simply taking into account the energy (mass) of the light interacting with a Newtonian gravitational field would yield. I think this makes sense if spacetime density is increased rather than just space. I'll have to think about how to take this thought and use it to make a calculation.

More on SAT review

After further review I have lowered my opinion of the SAT review book I've been using several notches. Some glaring errors in a probability practice section and using the opening of a beribboned gift as an analogy for the solution of algebra problems and  introducing special pyramids to address rate problems all have caused me to almost give up on it.

Fall Fruit and Flowers

As I mentioned in an earlier post, we are being overrun with fruit. Our apple tree, while not as productive as least year is doing pretty well for what has been a poor year for most local orchards. You'll need to enlarge the photo to spot all the apples. 

The pear tree is fruiting its little heart out. The results are misshapen but tasty.

 There are also some late blooming flowers, including our hydrangea which has responded to being trimmed back by growing even larger than its pre-trim oversizedness.

A few lilies refuse to accept the end of summer.

Barn Basement

Project report; all non-carpenters are excused. The barn east wall had drifted out a bit and the foundation drifted in some over the last 85 years or so. This led to the greater part of the east wall being about 2/12 inches east of the where the bottom of its studs are. Any further drift would put a lot of torque around the base of the studs and might pull them off the plate leading to a collapse. To forestall this I placed additional 2"x4"'s leading from the first floor joists STRAIGHT down to the plate to take the load without any torque and I added some diagonal bracing to prevent further drift. I also added a steel I beam to reinforce an undersized ten foot long 4" x 8" which was sagging pretty badly over the lower door. This header , holding up 8 long floor joists, ten feet of wall, a ten foot wide swath of 15 foot long loft and a similar width of roof is supported by all of one 2"x4" post at each end. Pretty sadly under-designed, but still very much standing. With the beam in place and resting on temporary columns the opening is now dead straight and level - something of a surprise to me. When I am done, the steel beam will take most of the load and be supported by two additional 2x 4s at each end. I'm currently waiting for some fittings to attach the joists to the steel beam.

John Fry for Board of Education

For those of you who still reside in Bernards Township, great news: John Fry is running for the board of ed. Please vote for him for the sake of any of the faculty you liked and for the students.

If you know Mr. Fry then I  don't need to tell you anything. If you don't know him, let me tell you that he is intelligent, thoughtful, kind, hardworking, perceptive, and many more good things. I usually describe my feelings about John with this: " John Fry is who I want to be when I finally grow up."

SAT Tutoring

I am also trying to help my student prepare for the math portion of the SAT. Therefore I have been doing some of the practice problems in a review book. While some are simply annoying attempts to trap you into making careless errors ( something I am expert at) and many others are just routine algebra or geometry, I find that several of them are really geared to making one think. Perhaps there is some hope.

Autumn is fruit time

It is autumn and our two large apple trees are looking pretty productive. I'll eat some I can grab. Neighbors will collect the majority of the apples and make cider.

Jean has been busy collecting pears from our small but very full tree. She's canning them, freezing them, and giving them away in great numbers. They are very misshapen but also very tasty. We'll probably get over 100 pounds total. If you want some come and get them.

Kinda business as usual

Been busy again: A long ride around our section of the Connecticut River Valley on Saturday. I followed the route of a local bike club's fund raising ride. I was not an official participant because the club refunded my registration fee because of some glitch in the on line registration. However I did get to be passed by lots of very fast and some not so fast folks on the ride. I also stopped by to see what the post ride party was like. There were 900 cyclists there. Not bad for a club from a town of 30,000.

Sunday I attacked the barn basement putting up more supports and braces to try to make sure it still will be standing in fifty years. Monday the barn counterattacked. At least that's what it felt like as I was trying to install a ten foot steel I beam over the basement door. I finally got it in place, but not before collecting more bruises than a hot Saturday night in a mining town saloon usually sees. Today was spent trying to find some parts I need, jacking the beam into the correct position and installing most of the remaining braces in the barn basement, so it was almost a rest day.  

I need to quit stalling and refurbish the positive crankcase vent ( PCV) system on my wife's car. I did the timing belt earlier this month and was very encouraged about being able to maintain such a complex beast. Now, looking over the job, seeing that the manual describes this job on the non turbo engine which doesn't have the banjo fittings that circulate water to keep oil seeping past the turbo seals from congealing, etc., as pretty tough,  I am not feeling nearly as confident. Wish me luck when I work up the courage to try.

More on Math Tutoring

I find the text the student I am tutoring is using seems to pursue the subject in pretty much the wrong way. While it does offer some derivations, explanations, and applications, the emphasis is on procedures that will yield the right answer to some pretty arcane questions. Being able to find the roots of polynomials or the three forms of equations to describe a translated and amplified parabola are not skills that most people will need, so knowing how to do these things is of very little value. On the other hand, being able to figure how a dependent value responds to changes in an independent value can be very useful in many walks of life, but the emphasis should be on the overall logical approach not specific techniques. providing software that helps find the answers makes things even worse.  We must recognize the difference between being told how to get answers to examples and learning to solve problems and teach accordingly.

Tutoring

I have start tutoring a student in Pre-Calculus. Since I don't have the text I am largely guessing what I'll have to be teaching. I find myself deriving equations that I haven't thought about in years. At about 3 AM this morning I found my self coming up with an alternate derivation of the quadratic equation.

Last week I wasted a couple of hours deriving trig relations for added angles. I don't look any of this up because I keep telling the student that while I am not sure he will find the equations for translated parabolas of any use in later life, figuring out the logic behind the procedures is valuable exercise for developing analytical thinking, and I need to get some of that exercise for myself.

Catskills and Vermont

While it is really nice here, I need to get out to some higher hills when I can.  We just got back from 2 and 1/2 days in Southern Vermont. Jean kayaked on Lake St Catherine and I got to bike ride on some of my favorite roads. The scenery is beautiful and there are many very attractive old buildings. Jean loved the Lake (it's more than 5 miles end to end.) We hope be going back soon.

Last week we were in the Catskills with our friends the Rapps. We went to a farmers market and town garage sale in the town of Andes. They make some outstanding cheese there. We also did a bit of hiking in a spot called Kelly's Hollow. Some us found the going somewhat trying (see the photo)

Did some cycling in the Catskills including some on a steep road over a shoulder Bellayre Mountain.

Drought

 I finished putting gutters on the front of the house about a month ago. Since then our rainfall rate dropped from about 2" per week to more like 1" per month. I hope I didn't hurt the farmers too badly.

I don't think the gutters affect the appearance of the house too much, although this may change when I take the gutters down for the winter and leave only the brackets up.

Trip to Vermont

We spent two days in Vermont visiting with cousins Larry and Sue Kopel who were staying at the Wilburton Inn in Manchester. It was great to see my cousins who have led an adventurous life including crossing both the Pacific and the Atlantic in their 39 foot sailboat. (The puppy in the picture belongs to the inn's owner.)

The views from the terrace of the turn of the century Wilburton mansion were beautiful.

While Jean kayaked around Emerald Lake, I took a ride and went past one of our favorite places to stay, the Marble West Inn, in Dorset. We haven't been there in a while and it has changed hands since we last stayed.

On the way home we played a round of miniature golf. Jean beat me by 12 strokes.

Local Fairs

We have lots of local fairs here. One of the bigger ones occurs on the weekend before Labor Day Weekend. There were : 

sheep, both wooly and shorn; 

cattle of many varieties, lots of kids taking good care of their animals; 

some huge oxen including some massive white ones (Charlais ?) standing well over 6 feet high at the shoulder and weighing well over a ton; 

and a midway full of rides and serving such healthful foods as deep fried Snickers. 

There was a nice assortment of tractors and old engines, but I don't have any pictures of these.

A busy week in August

Been a busy few days. Most of last Saturday evening was spent recovering from the day's fundraising ride. Sunday was spent, very slowly getting ladders set and some brackets in for our upper level gutters. Monday began with more work on gutters but changed radically as we headed for Tanglewood for a Beach Boys concert. It was a beautiful day and evening and there was a good sized crowd for a concert that was arranged at the last minute and held on a Monday night.

They produced an amazing number of hits in their heyday and they sang most of these, including eight without any stops in between to start the concert. We were there with our friends Denise and Doc. Here are some pictures from the concert.

Tanglewood is a beautiful spot with great views. It also has some very impressive trees including a Norway spruce with more trunks than a herd of elephants.

Tuesday was a great day for a ride, so I rode up through Buckland, and along the Deerfield River, through Charlemont and Rowe in Massachusetts to Readsboro and Jacksonville in Vermont. It was a long, tough ride but the scenery made it worthwhile. The highlight of the trip was seeing a pair of bald eagles perched above the river. I was close enough so that I could clearly hear the female's wings flapping when she took off. I hope to take some pictures of the route soon to post here.

I said it was a busy few days and I meant it. Wednesday we went to Boston to have lunch with Julianne Viola, see the Museum of Fine Arts, and attend a Red Sox game. It was great to see Julianne and to hear of her impending studies at Oxford.

We focused on the impressive collection of American art at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts including some wonderful pieces of Newport furniture from the late 18th century.

Then a walk ( a little longer than necessary due to my map reading error) to Fenway Park for the game. We were there with our son Chris and his family as part of a League of Woman Voters event, so there were about 80 LWV members and family.

The stadium is tightly set within the surrounding city and the streets around the stadium take on the air of an urban carnival. The game was not particularly well played and both teams went through most of their relief pitching staff, partly because the Angel's starter injured himself while covering first early in the game. LA A 8 Bos 3 was the result. We left at the end of seven innings since it was about 11 PM and it takes about 3 hours to get home. The people were all friendly and good natured, even in the extremely crowded subway.

Gutter Picture

Since I forgot to take my (actually Jean's) camera on my ride and didn't take pictures of the Shakespeare and Company campus, all I can offer you is a picture of some of the gutter I installed. It's flexible plastic and is pretty light. It snaps into (and I hope out of) the brackets, and I plan to take it down for the winter so the ice and snow won't destroy it.