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.

Mid August Shakespeare, Gutters, and Rides

1) Last Thursday we saw Julius Caesar, the play, not the guy.  While the subject of the play includes all the ingredients of great tragedy and there are many great speeches, I think it does not not achieve the power of some of Shakespeare's other works. Two of the main characters lack tragic stature.

Brutus is  more of a bumbling fool  who gets everything wrong than a great statesman who merits the respect he is shown by all around him. He let's Marcus Antonius live. He lets Marcus Antonius give a eulogy without monitoring what he says. He chooses to fight at Phillipi instead of waiting for his enemies' rabble forces to dissipate. He is full of platitudes and faulty reasoning and is still very convincing. Thus, he may be more realistic than many truly tragic figures.

Marcus Antonius is a conniver and self seeking rabble rouser, and a perhaps sincere sycophant of Caesar. The only character of real depth and tragic stature is Cassius, who is constant in his refusal to be ruled by a tyrant and his dedication to the Roman tradition of freedom (for some). It is his misfortune to link his fate with Brutus.

While the play may lack the power of great tragedy, it is still an effective play. Both Julius Caesar and Brutus fail to take good advice. Caesar ignores the soothsayer's warning about the Ides of March and his wife's pleas for him to stay at home. He does this out of vanity and ambition for the crown.

Brutus ignores the good advice he receives from his fellow conspirators, especially Cassius, out of his conceit that he knows best. It may be considered a play about the havoc caused by a man of good will but small understanding, who is revered beyond his merit and placed by others, and by circumstances, in a position to alter history.

2) Two years ago, when we had our septic redone, I had the contractors install a system of drain lines to which I would connect the downspouts of gutters. Last week I finally installed 44 feet of gutter and downspouts. It had been so long that I had trouble finding the outlets of the drains so I could make sure the lines were clear. A lot of brush had grown up  around them. I still have to install about 20 feet at the higher roof level, and that will only take care of  the front.

3) Yesterday I went for my longest ride of the year so far, a 75 mile tour of the Hoosic River Valley. It was a fund raiser for the Hoosic River Watershed Association, who are trying to clean up and restore the environs of this river. The ride covered some of the northwest corner of Massachusetts and nearby New York and Vermont. It was a pretty ride on mostly back roads. There was one major climb and an enormous number of short climbs of rolling hills, including some ridiculously steep pitches ( over 16%) for a total of  a vertical mile of climbing. For those who cycle, my low gear was a 39/26, a bad choice for this terrain and my legs. I was among the  oldest and slowest riders. Still need to lose ten pounds, although I'll still be old and slow.

Frankenstein, the Play

A few weeks ago we went to see a play based on Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein, with the author (of the play, not the novel) playing Frankenstein's monster. The play was interesting if not overwhelming. The actor/author chose to play the opening scene of the monster coming to life in the nude.  I thought about this for a while and decided it was inappropriate. After all, anyone who has seen a picture of Frankenstein's monster knows that he never appears without a stitch.

House Painted

I keep forgetting to mention that we had the house, at least the front and both sides, painted and I've finished installing new storm windows and reinstalling the shutters.  We got rid of the pink and purple highlights and added a few green ones. Still not sure I like the color of the doors. Jean thinks it's brownish brick, but I thinks it's more like salmon.