Advanced Chain Saw

Posted: September 11, 2026 | Author: David | Filed under: Chronicles of a First Time Parent, What is an Art Farm | 1 Comment

Recently a violent thunderstorm passed through our town, leaving wreckage along a narrow localized path. 10 minutes north nothing happened, but in the storm’s path trees were felled everywhere. The storm arose suddenly. The rain fell in torrents, with quarter sized hail, plus 65 mile-per-hour gusts.

Visibility was zero, while the sound was deafening. I laid in bed, icing my hip, and was unable to get up to close any windows. It was about 30 minutes of mayhem, followed by stunned quiet, as the clouds passed and blue skies returned. Our gardens and grounds were covered with ice.

For the next several days arborists did emergency clean up day and night. Awake at 2am I would lie in bed listening to chain saws and wood chippers just a block away. For the most part our property seemed spared, until my son examined the back yard and found one Norway Maple had sheared at the trunk, was blown over, leaning against another tree, the branches caught in the canopy. High up, almost 30 feet above, the trunk had snapped leaving a large section overhead, like the Sword of Damocles.

We had a widow-maker in our back yard.

Because of my hip I could do nothing, not even walk into the yard to take a look. My son took photos and made a plan. Only two weeks before, he had taken the chain saw use and safety class. His confidence is high but this task was beyond his skills, beyond my comprehension. What I clearly understood is that a widow maker cannot be ignored.

I called the Everything Man. I sent him my son’s photos and he stopped by to take a look. He was unfazed, said “no problem, I will be in touch.” An advanced chain saw class became a plan in my mind, but my son had other ideas.

“Dad, talk to me before you make any plans.” I sensed his hesitation but kept my mouth quiet.

A few days later I told him my thoughts, that the Everything Man would get the tree down and then my son would handle the brush and cut everything to length. “Dad, talk to me before you make any plans,” he repeated.

My son is comfortable using the chain saw but he has his own struggle with social interaction. My two part plan directly pushed his buttons; I wanted him to help the Man get the tree down onto the ground and then take over. The Man was available on a Friday so I put that on the calendar.

“Dad, did I not say talk to me before you made any plans?”

“Well, I was offered Friday so I took it. The tree cannot wait and I can do nothing. The family needs this, so I need you to step up. There is not much to discuss.”

“But Dad…!”

He returned to his gaming. The task festered. His days were long, sullen and withdrawn. My frustration mounted, until I boiled over. Other chores that I had asked my children’s help on went unfinished. I reached my breaking point. In no uncertain terms I made clear that household chores need be done now, not at your convenience; life demands stepping up sometimes.

My harangue hit the mark.

When push came to shove, the chores got done, and I noticed a change in my son. He was awake and dressed on Friday morning, ready when the Everything Man arrived. Without a word he went down to the workshop to put on his personal protective gear. The Everything Man met him in the workshop. They gathered the tools and walked out into the back yard, talking quietly about small incidental things, chit-chat while preparing for their work.

The first class was about use of the chain saw. The advanced class was about rope, a 100 foot high strength nylon rope with 1800 pounds of snapping strength; an inner core of tightly wound high strength nylon threads, surrounded with an outer sheath. The plan was not so much to cut down the tree as to pull it down.

The “bowline” knot is one of the classic and essential knots of all time. Nicknamed the “king of knots,” it forms a secure, non-slip loop at the end – or in the middle – of the rope, which despite holding massive tension, is famously easy to untie.

The Man explained it simply.

A small loop is formed, which is the “rabbit hole.” Grabbing the end of the rope, “the rabbit comes out of the hole, runs around the tree, and goes back down the hole.” The knot as formed. The rope can then be pulled tight, but the bowline will never become a knot that “jams,” that cannot be loosened.

The Man tied a bowline at the end of the line, then patiently heaved the line up into the tree overhead. It took repeated attempts – my son was given several chances – until finally he had lofted it up over the widow maker and back down the other side.

He had lassoed the tree.

He then ran the line from the lasso overhead, down to the root crown of another tree about 40 feet away. He encircled the anchor tree, and made two more bowlines in his rope. He passed the line back and forth between the two bowlines repeatedly, which now acted like pulleys, making a block and tackle.

Silently he worked, then explained to my son, “This is how you do it by yourself, deep in the woods, when you carry all of your tools in by yourself.”

By example, not by long-winded explanation, my son learned the formula F = W / MA, where F is the effort force, W is the weight of the load, and MA is the mechanical advantage. Each loop of the rope increases the pulling force, while adding friction. By using four loops, the Man created a theoretical 4 times the leverage, meaning a 500 pound weight could be moved using 125 pounds of force.

Focused on the moving rather than the math, the Man pulled the rope and the entire tree was moved away slightly from the canopy, closer to us. He repeated this two more times, to free the tree up.

My son watched closely.

The Everything Man grabbed his chain saw and began to cut low on the trunk. On the underside he made the hinge cut, which removes a wedge to mark the direction in which the tree should fall. On the back side he began his plunge cut into the trunk. He proceeded cautiously, making small cuts and then stopping to look around.

The tree was held in tension, the block and tackle and the root crown forming a triangle. From the anchor tree to the lasso was the hypotenuse. Cutting at the root crown was removing one of the legs, the point from which the tree was expected to hinge, crashing down, pulling the widow maker with it.

Except it didn’t.

The canopy was still caught up in the branches above. The Man changed his plan.

He cut out a four foot section of trunk, allowing the entire tree to drop downward rather than hinge forward. He let gravity, mechanical advantage, and notch cutting work to his advantage. He did not force a dangerous, unpredictable gamble. He repeated his cuts several times, notching the tree down, until freed of the canopy overhead, the Norway Maple came resting on the ground.

I sat on the porch watching from afar.

Because of my hip replacement, I was still using a cane and any sudden movement was beyond question; the task had no room for cowboys. Once the tree was safely down, the suspense was lifted, and I left my son to his work and went inside.

A large pile of brush was cut away, and then my son got to work, cutting 16 inch lengths for our winter firewood. The Man and my son busily hauled the brush, stacked the logs. Everything was cleaned up, the tools put away. My son, on his own, cleaned out the chain saw and sharpened the blade.

When the Man came into our house for his pay, he said, “I mostly don’t enjoy working with teenagers, but I like your son.”

My son said nothing, but I could see satisfaction in his posture, his voice quiet but upbeat, humming a song to himself. He had overcome two immense obstacles, the Norway Maple widow maker, and his own internal struggles with stepping up. A man’s work, in one morning.

For the most part I said nothing. No reason to spoil the moment. I let him bask in his accomplishment.

He had earned his independence.

Strike from the Void

Posted: August 28, 2026 | Author: David | Filed under: Chronicles of a First Time Parent, consciousness | 1 Comment

One peaceful Sunday morning on the island of Oahu, American sailors gathered for breakfast and went about their routine, enjoying the pacific calm before church service. Incoming B-17 bombers were scheduled so planes in the distance went unnoticed.

Heavy clouds hung low as the first wave of planes approached from the north/northwest, descending low, opening fire. Two waves of aircraft – torpedo bombers, dive bombers, horizontal bombers and Mitsubishi A6M2 Zeros – 353 aircraft in total unleashed a fusillade of fire in a stunning display of strategy.

300 years earlier Miyamoto Musashi’s “The Book of Five Rings,” a classic guide to samurai strategy and the way of the warrior, taught one must “strike from the void.” Pearl Harbor was its own strike from the void: unexpected, devastating, and brilliantly executed. 19 American naval ships, including 8 battleships, were destroyed or damaged, 188 aircraft lost or severally damaged, 2,403 American sailors and soldiers killed.

The next day, December 8, 1941 the United States declared war against Japan. On December 11, 1941 Germany and Italy declared war on the United States, prompting the U.S. to enter the European conflict. The world was at war.

War is good for business and the military-industrial complex kicked into high gear. Henry Ford, at his River Rouge Complex, halted all civilian automobile production. The plant’s employment surged to roughly 120,000 workers converting raw materials into tanks, engines and military vehicles. The total American industrial output built 297,000 aircraft, 86,000 tanks, 124,000 ships, 2.4 million military trucks and 2.6 million machine guns.

The Axis powers were overwhelmed, fascism was defeated. The “Greatest Generation” rallied to the cause, put everything aside, took seriously its task. My father’s three older brothers all volunteered for the Army Air Corps, but the oldest, Danny, was assigned to Iwo Jima where he was killed, stabbed in his heart by Japanese swordsmen while sleeping at night. Many paid the ultimate price. The fortunate, however, lived to see the end and then return home.

William Levitt was a Lieutenant in the Pacific Theatre who served in the U.S. Navy Seabees’ “Naval Construction Force” with motto “Construimus, Batuimus” (“We Build, We Fight.”). Levitt managed a construction unit in Hawaii, as well as in Norfolk, Virginia, where he mastered military logistics and rapid-building techniques. As war is good for business, the war was transformative for the Levitt family business.

Approximately 15.6 million service members survived and returned home alive from World War 2. Housing demand skyrocketed to millions of homes needed. William Levitt had met his market. As Henry Ford had mastered assembly line automation at the Rouge River Complex, so Levitt mastered assembly line housing with Levittown, first on Long Island and next in Bucks County, PA. Levitt could build an entire house in less than six weeks, sold for as low as $100 down payment.

The cover story on Time magazine for July 3, 1950 pictured Levitt with the tag line “For Sale: a new way of life.” The commodification of housing, the American Dream on steroids, everyman could have his suburban castle with white picket fence.

As the crow flies, New Hope, PA is 23 miles from Levittown, but as a philosophy of building it is worlds away. George Nakashima was a Japanese-American woodworker and architect who launched his studio and workshop there. Before the war he studied at MIT then, in 1931, went abroad using a round-the-world tramp steamship ticket.

In Paris, France he was introduced to Le Corbusier, one of the titans of modern architecture. They shared thoughts on architecture as a spiritual activity, with a moral obligation to society. In Japan, he worked on the Imperial Hotel and took time to study Japanese architecture. In Puducherry, India he was a construction consultant for an ashram dormitory. He made furniture for the first time.

He returned to the United States just before WW2. Because he was Japanese American, he and his family were arrested and incarcerated at the Minidoka War Relocation Camp in Idaho.

In life, it seems, the good you seek is seeking you. While locked up at Minidoka, Nakashima was tutored by a man trained in traditional Japanese carpentry. He mastered hand tools and joinery, gained the discipline slowly to focus on perfection every step of the way. Where Le Corbusier spoke of building “as a spiritual activity, with a moral obligation,” at Minidoka Nakashima grounded those ideals into practice.

William Levitt and George Nakashima, both builders of the Greatest Generation, left starkly different legacies. Levitt shaped the physical landscape of millions of lives, casting the blueprint for assembly-line post-war American suburbia. Homeownership was made possible for millions of families, but at a dependence on the automobile. The thought of purchasing one of his homes for $1 down is a relic of the distant past.

In the pantheon of American craftsmen, George Nakashima is a towering figure, who ranks among the founding generation of “Studio Furniture” makers. His influence is profoundly broad. His work honors the “soul of the tree” – making as a spiritual practice.

Levitt addressed, and solved for his time, the need for affordable housing. Nakashima brought to the market objects of exquisite natural beauty, heirlooms worthy of generations. Now is my time to work through these questions.

I am a carpenter. I work with my hands. I make things for my bread labor. I have built handcrafted furniture for Thos Moser and cabinets for private commissions. At times I have been on crew building custom castles by the sea, other times renovating a working man’s home. I have fabricated and installed multiple Public Art projects.

A teacher of mine once wisely said, “You need to go out and break your heart, and then you will come back to what you love.” As a young man I worked in the Chicago commodity markets – the old “open outcry pits” – then spent a decade on a vision quest pursuing humanitarian finance, an oxymoron, my version of “a spiritual activity, with a moral obligation.” Like Icarus I flew too close to the sun, crashed and burned.

Learning to walk again, I met a German woodworker of the Studio Furniture tradition. I managed his Apprentice program and taught woodworking to adults. I came to building late, after failure, but this work has grounded me.

Building is my bread labor, but my full time job is homeschooling my son. I am a Boomer homeschooling a Zoomer, at the dawn of the post literate age.

COVID haunted my son’s 1st grade year, and I homeschooled during the shutdown through 2nd grade. Nationwide, the return to public schools brought a surge of disruptive behavior, absenteeism, and mental health challenges. Locally, an epidemic of teen suicide raged through our town.

Middle school was a huge adjustment – his 5th grade moved to the same building as 8th graders – and although his experience started off well enough, intense bullying could not be controlled. Finally, he made the call and our DIY experiment began.

The picture-postcard paradise of Levittown’s affordable American Dream shaped the world that my generation, the Boomers, inherited. For my son and his Zoomers, however, that seems outdated, unachievable, a dystopian mirage of mass marketing.

Homeschool is not for the faint of heart. But nor is felling a tree, to mill and dry its wood, to handcraft a family heirloom, passed down through the generations.

As with a chisel, I shape wood into a chair, so with words, numbers, ideas, and patience, I shape my son’s mind. Together we learn. He teaches me about his world of AI and online gaming, which makes me reflect upon the starkly different forces that shaped my generation.

From where did we come? To where do we go?

Father and son.

The summer ends. Greek, Latin and English languages are on deck. Our 8th grade is set to begin.

____________________________________

Lead photo by Milo

Ignorance or Arrogance

Posted: July 31, 2026 | Author: David | Filed under: Child Centered Activities, Chronicles of a First Time Parent | 2 Comments

When I was a boy, a common saying was “A man’s word is his bond.” I haven’t heard that spoken in decades. Today we speak of fake news, deep fake AIs, identity theft, accusations of fraud, corruption and cover ups. We liberally condemn each other with name calling like a grade school playground, but to speak of integrity seems increasingly uncommon. Our culture, it seems, wants to fight to the bottom.

Talk is cheap but we are accountable. Actions have consequences. This week’s homeschool lesson was a moral equivalent of Newton’s Third Law of Motion: every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Rather than give my son a lecture, I bought him a chain saw. My goal was to teach personal responsibility not as an abstraction but as a tactile physical experience.

I was not qualified to teach this class. My father was a wordsmith, who didn’t know a hammer from a nail; his tool was a typewriter and thesaurus, with which he was exceptionally skilled. He and I never bonded over power tools. I learned use of a chain saw through on-the-job-training: “this is the brake, here is the trigger, hold it like this. Go.” With a chain saw I am competent, but most certainly I have no command. I would have been pushing my limit to teach this course.

Often a boy learns best from an unrelated teacher, so I hired a journeyman; a 240 pound, 6 foot 3 inch tall, tattooed, muscular, shaved head white male who grew up on a homestead in the woods of New Hampshire. He has been using a chain saw since he was ten. A carpenter by trade, his skills are many, including plumbing and electric, a licensed firearms instructor, with training as a field medic. A published author, he is “The Everything Man.”

He required my son to buy and wear personal protective equipment: a helmet with face screen and ear protection plus chaps to protect his legs, steel toed boots and gloves. The class began at the back of his pick-up truck where an array of tools were laid out: a camp axe and a felling axe, his handmade bow saw, a machette and two gas powered chain saws. My son has an electric 16” chain saw and a pole saw.

A chain saw spins between 12,000 and 14,500 RPMs at full throttle, which is more than 6 times the RPM of an airplane propeller. You must respect that the blade will cut you down in an instant. During a brief opening lecture the Man explained that mistakes are caused “by ignorance or arrogance.” On the one hand is the lack of information, knowledge or training, while on the other is an excess of pride, a lack of respect for the tool. The class was designed to avoid the first problem, while the teacher’s humble honesty addressed the second.

Dressed in his protective gear, my son and the Man walked to the backyard to cut down a rotting maple tree. It is located outside our fence line, beside the sidewalk along a busy road. I had asked the town to take it down, but the arborist replied that it was our responsibility, and, once brought to his attention, it was on his list of trees to watch.

The trunk is thoroughly rotted. One large section fell years ago – before we owned this house – while the remaining branches reach over the fence, stretching almost thirty feet into our back yard. One large limb, about 14” diameter, grows straight up and becomes enmeshed in branches of other trees. This tree was a challenge, a lesson in strategy and gravity.

My son could use the pole saw to reach the lower limbs, but he needed to be mindful of where the limb would fall and then stand behind that. By cutting from above, the branch would fall down and his saw would not get pinched. A saw can get pinched, though, and that can become a serious issue. I was once cutting down an invasive maple, 8” diameter and 40 feet tall. A friend was holding a rope to pull the tree, but the rope was not firm enough and as I cut deeply, the tree swayed back pinching the saw. The saw could not cut, nor could I remove it; a frighteningly serious problem. I knew you cannot leave a tree halfway cut through the trunk. But I had no axe. I had ignorance. But thankfully, I had a neighbor who knew what to do, had a tree rope and chain saw, and saved the day. The Everything Man ensured my son learned from my mistake.

Once the limbs were on the ground, my son was handed a razor sharp machette and taught how to swing that blade, to slash cut away the smaller limbs, removing the clutter before using the chain saw. There is a logical process, moving from the smaller branches to the larger end, when cutting for firewood. The 16” blade equals the length of logs usable in our wood stove, and my son was shown how to use the blade as his measuring stick, for cutting to length. This work went quickly, but the tree was so rotted, we gained little useable firewood.

An electric chain saw is surprisingly quiet, while gas powered saws are ferociously loud and aggressive, commanding immediate respect. Its raw power leaves no room for carelessness.

The final exam came when The Everything Man got out his gas powered Stihl chain saw. He reviewed all the features, then handed it to my son. In learning how to handle such a powerful tool, my son grew in confidence. He experienced what it meant to command his tool, making each cut under his control. This lesson of accountability was a direct physical experience, not theory, not logic, not gaming online.

That one limb, 14” diameter, growing straight up into the canopy above, we left in place. That requires an arborist who can climb the tree, using tools beyond what we had. It would have been ignorance or arrogance, or both, to attempt to fell that, so our prudence was its own lesson of setting boundaries.

When the cutting was done, the class returned to the pickup truck, for a discussion about cleaning and maintenance. The Everything Man showed both how to dismantle the saw to clean wood chips from the inner parts, and how to sharpen the blade. It is a slow methodical process, three passes at 30 degrees, essential to maintaining the blade’s sharp edge, which is another form of integrity, of accountability. The teacher gave examples of one chain lasting a lifetime, or needing to buy new chains frequently; the only difference is care.

“Chop wood, carry water” is a maxim of Chan Buddhism, that teaches life is lived through ordinary work, not abstractions. Much about life is repetitive, dull, and unremarkable. Integrity is forged in the care of our tools, the honoring of our words, and the acceptance of responsibility. The chain saw was the lesson this week. I said very little. He repeatedly said “thank you.”

Failure

Posted: July 17, 2026 | Author: David | Filed under: Child Centered Activities, Chronicles of a First Time Parent, consciousness | 1 Comment

Here at the Art Farm Homeschool, summertime living is easy, but not idle. We have created a July Book Club, in which the Magister zooms in, via telecomm, to discuss with my son a short story masterpiece. My son’s recalcitrance to join any club with peers, his aversion to leaving the house, his preoccupation with online gaming left us no choice. The book club is only 4 weeks, while summer break is 12, so the balance of time is definitely skewed to his leisure, but this month, like a fulcrum, he will engage in reading and thoughtful discussion.

This week’s short story is “The Egg,” by Sherwood Anderson. The story is set in the first decade of the 1900s in the fictional town of Bidwell, Ohio. The story’s narrator is a young child, and its protagonist, “the Father,” was “a cheerful and kindly man” whose work was idyllic as a farm hand on a pre-industrial farm. Once married, he “became ambitious. The American passion for getting up in the world took possession.…”

Their path to success was to raise chickens, but the venture fails badly. Having lost that farm, they move into town to start over. They borrow a horse and wagon, load their “cheap chairs” and a crate of live chickens, on top of which, like a crown jewel, the narrator’s baby carriage. “Why we stuck to the baby carriage I don’t know. It was unlikely other children would be born and the wheels were broken. People who have few possessions cling tightly to those they have. That is one of the facts that make life so discouraging.”

The father rode on the wagon, while the Mother and son walked the long eight miles into town, “…a tiny caravan of hope looking for a new place from which to start on our upward journey through life.” The scene eerily foreshadows Steinbeck’s “Grapes of Wrath,” when the migrants flee the Dust Belt, traveling Route 66 to the promised land of California. Long is the dark shadow of the American Dream.

Sherwood Anderson revolutionized 20th-century fiction with a probing and unsparing prose. His stories are set during the Second Industrial Revolution, the transition from steam to electricity, from iron to steel, assembly line production, urbanization, corporate consolidation. His core theme was the lonely, isolated individual, whose youthful truth had grown hardened, an unfulfilled longing, struggling for connection.

During the First Industrial Revolution, seventy years before Anderson, Henry David Thoreau railed at the “Iron Horse” of the Fitchburg Railroad, the tracks laid one-third of a mile from his beloved Walden Pond. The deafening roar of industry intruding on his idyll, he wrote, ”We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us.” He warned the machines were becoming our masters, rendering people into an impotent servitude, “The mass of men lead quiet lives of desperation.”

From Thoreau to Anderson the Industrial Revolutions had completely altered the American landscape. And yet the American Dream held firm, the myth of upward mobility, that each generation would succeed its parents; the tireless labor of one’s youth to acquire wealth, spent in later years to regain health. “Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.”

As a child, I remember family discussions, at the Kitchen table, about the American Dream. For my generation the realization has been remarkable. Nearly 90% of Americans born in the 1940s and 50s earned more than their parents. Because of compounding asset growth in real estate and an essentially bull market since the 1980s, the Baby Boomers hold over $85 trillion in household assets.

The Third Industrial Revolution, the advent of semiconductors and the internet, unfolded during the careers of we Boomers. Since 1993, when the browser Mosaic was launched, catalyzing widespread access to the world-wide-web, the stock market has surged 3,100% further widening the gap between the have and have nots.

Now the world of algorithms and artificial intelligence represent the Fourth Industrial Revolution, during which my son’s generation, the Zoomers, come of age. It goes almost without question that the American Dream fades, the thought of upward mobility increasingly out of reach, while the mental health epidemic spikes.

A recent study published by the Dove Medical Press, an open access peer-reviewed journal, found that “17.14-24.19% of adolescents developed AI dependencies over time, while studies consistently show that mental health problems predict subsequent AI dependence, with social anxiety, loneliness, and depression serving as primary risk factors.” The isolation that Sherwood Anderson wrote about, and the desolation of which Thoreau warned, have only increased. Jacob Needleman, the high school teacher my son learned about in May, cautioned, “When thought races ahead of Being, a civilization is racing towards destruction.”

My son will not read juvenile fiction this summer. The short stories that the Magister has chosen are considered masterpieces, and their hard edge is appropriate for a young man coming of age. Among his age peers, suicide rates have increased 62% since 2007, with boys having significantly higher rates, while Black youths ages 10 to 17 have increased 144% over the same period.

My son comes of age in a conflicted time, an age of skepticism. Sitting on the front porch, we discussed the American Dream, to which he replied, “That may be what it was supposed to be, but that is not how it is.” He is already aware that the American Dream was, at best, a cultural myth, or at least an historical aberration.

It is a sad irony that bankruptcy is used with increasing frequency by older individuals. According to the Consumer Bankruptcy Project, in the last 20 years, the number of people 65 and older filing for bankruptcy has increased to become its fastest-growing demographic group. We Boomers have enjoyed an economic abundance of historic proportions, but now aging, increasing numbers are falling behind.

At the age of 44 I declared a Chapter 7 bankruptcy. Mine was the good fortune to fail while young, to still have time to start over. I learned that forgiveness lies at the core of civil jurisprudence, and failure can bring a “fresh start.”

The legal doctrine known as the “Fresh Start” came from the 1934 landmark Supreme Court ruling in Local Loan Co v Hunt, 292 U.S. 234, in which the unanimous opinion, written by Justice George Sutherland, reads,

“One of the primary purposes of the Bankruptcy Act is to ‘relieve the honest debtor from the weight of oppressive indebtedness, and permit him to start afresh free from the obligations and responsibilities consequent upon business misfortunes.’ … [It] gives to the honest but unfortunate debtor… a new opportunity in life and a clear field for future effort, unhampered by the pressure and discouragement of pre-existing debt.”

A financial reset is a civil right, but an interior reset is a human necessity. The depth of my experience redirected my life and taught me that the purpose of life is healing, forgiveness a means to that end, which stands in stark contrast to American culture. Jacob Needleman commented, “The root of materialism is a poverty of ideas about the inner and outer world. Less and less does our contemporary culture have, or even seek, commerce with great ideas, and it is that lack that is weakening the human spirit. This is the essence of materialism. Materialism is a disease of the mind starved for ideas.” Our antidote to the isolation that AI and gaming breed is for my son and the Magister to read short stories during July and exchange ideas.

“The Egg” is told from the perspective of the son, as a grown man, remembering his Father’s failures. My son, a keen observer, forms his own thoughts now, which will include his reflections on my failures. His inheritance from me will be moral more than material. My task is to teach him skill with his tools, depth of character, and an informed view on the isolation plaguing his generation. What he chooses to do with that will become his healing story.

My career advice, should he ever ask, shall come from Thomas Carlyle, who influenced Thoreau and the Transcendentalists, “Make yourself an honest man, and then you may be sure that there is one less scoundrel in the world.”

Red Cherry, Black Crow

Posted: July 10, 2026 | Author: David | Filed under: Art & Healing, Chronicles of a First Time Parent, Farming off the Farm | Leave a comment

The 7th grade has officially been completed. This week Our Aristotle, a State of Maine certified teacher, completed his annual assessment which I delivered to the School Department.

The interim Superintendent had quit, having been replaced by an Interim-Interim Superintendent. A new Superintendent reportedly has been hired and will begin later this month. They never confirm receipt; I am like a paperboy throwing news into the void, but regardless, we go forward. To reach their office – their sanctus sanctorum – I had to go through two sets of high security doors, that required someone to buzz me in; if our homeschool is relational the School Department seems transactional.

It is summertime. These days the living is not so easy, but the pace here has slowed. We have been working the garden and spreading straw to suppress weeds. Potatoes are thriving. Pole beans snake up the trellis. Tomatoes form on the vine. Coneflowers shout to the sky. Lavender abounds with bees. In the kitchen we have begun making pickles.

Each summer we plant one cucumber seedling, of the pickling varieties, which provides more than we can keep up with. As the roots go down, the shoots sprout up, flowering and bringing our bounty.

Several years ago I worked at the Chebeague Island Inn. The chef had a stellar recipe for Bread-n-Butter pickles, which hotel quantity had to be scaled down for a family of four. This one is a keeper, to be passed down generations.

Slice 4 cucumbers at about 1/4″ thickness, then in a sauce pan combine:

1/2 large, onion, sliced thin
1T + 2t salt, kosher
1/2 C + 1t white vinegar
1/4 C + 2T + 2t apple cider vinegar
3/4 C + 2T + 2t sugar
2 1/2 t mustard seed
1/2 t red chili flakes
1/4t + celery seed
1 cinnamon stick
3 allspice berries
3 whole cloves
Pinch turmeric
2 1/2 dried chilis

Bring all to a boil, let it cool. Into a one quart Mason jar add the sliced cukes, then pour in the brine. These BnB pickles will keep in the fridge for several weeks.

In other news, the sour cherries have been abundant, more than we can pick, which inspired this haiku:

Red cherries, Black crows

A murder, in our orchard

All sour, no sweet

Urine

Posted: July 3, 2026 | Author: David | Filed under: Chronicles of a First Time Parent | 1 Comment

Our homeschool topic, “What is a Person?” was motivated by an Elder in our community, who has a storied history of decency, civility and commitment both to community and to the Earth.

As a young man, the Elder worked with Helen and Scott Nearing, the grandparents of the back to the land movement. During the March from Selma to Montgomery, the Elder managed the crew of Seminarians who set up all the tents for the Marchers’ daily meals and sleeping. After the March, he stayed and helped build the Selma Free Public Library.

During the Vietnam war he organized protests, then was exiled to Canada where he managed large scale urban construction projects. In 1973 he was arrested, on his return to the United States, for violation of the Selective Service Act. Charges against him were later dropped. He worked in various Union factories, and became, in 1980, a labor activist for the AFL-CIO. In 1987, he helped organize the historic Jay, Maine Paper mill strike against International Paper Company. My son studied this in depth.

The Elder lives off-the-grid on a homestead powered by solar energy, with houses, barns and workshops all built by hand. He and his wife grow their caloric needs raising legumes, chickens, bees, all varieties of annual and perennial vegetables and a forest farm of berries and nuts; they do, though, buy dairy, oils, nuts, seeds, and citrus when needed.

In May I drove my son to their homestead, eagerly anticipating a vital discussion about “What is a Person?” I was stopped by a most unexpected issue: urine.

In keeping with his frugal, wholly integrated living with the natural environment, the Elder saves all their urine, and in the spring, dilutes it with water at a ratio of 1:10 and then applies it to the garden’s root zone as a free, highly concentrated nutrient rich source of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium (NPK). Consumers at Big-Box garden centers pay between $1 to $3 per pound for NPK-rich organic fertilizers. Since bombing began on the Fertile Crescent, birth-place of agriculture, the cost of fossil fuel-based fertilizers has jumped 30% to 40% in the past three months. The Elder is no fool.

Like almost 90% of American citizens, my children have been raised on city water, using flush toilets on a sewer, so this organic frugality was overwhelming. What to my son seemed a bio-hazard used to fertilize food was a brew too toxic, he was rendered catatonic. After a tour of the gardens, the Elders shared home pressed apple cider and muffins but his appetite was gone. I carried the conversation.

In fact, this was an essential learning opportunity. Here at our Homeschool Academy, I raise my son to question authority, ground his opinions on fact, and consider all sides of a topic. To the mainstream this is a “cringe” factor, but “pee cycling,” the technical term for this practice, is the vanguard; large-scale grassroots community programs are under way in Sweden, China and Vermont. For my son’s Zoomer generation, this will be an increasing issue.

The Global Water Monitoring Report released by the World Bank in November 2025 reported the world is losing 324 billion cubic meters of freshwater every year, enough to meet the needs of 280 million people annually. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that roughly 27% of indoor household water is used just to flush toilets, and four out of five flushes are solely for urine. Human urine makes up less than 1% of the total volume of municipal wastewater, yet it contains roughly 75% of the nitrogen and 55% of the phosphorus.

Municipal waste water systems in the United States pump, treat and distribute more than 39 billion gallons of water per day, consuming 30% to 40% of municipal government energy use while emitting greenhouse gasses, discharging residual nitrogen and phosphorus into local watersheds, catalyzing algae blooms that choke out oxygen, creating dead zones.

My son needs to learn there are two sides to every story, and the fact remains that prior to the advent of modern sewage systems infectious diseases like cholera and dysentery killed millions of people around the world. Arguably, indoor plumbing represents one of the major success stories of government. Even today, India has battled cholera, dysentery and diarrhea and so in 2014 Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Clean India Mission was launched to modernize solid waste management. More than 100 million latrines have been installed, with nationwide practices to ensure safe drinking water supplies. The World Health Organization has estimated that Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) interventions prevent an estimated 1.4 million deaths and 74 million disability-adjusted life-years annually worldwide.

Municipal waste systems come at a high cost. The Congressional Budget Office reports that, in the United States between 1956 and 2014 – the Boomer generation – federal, state, and local governments have spent over $4.1 trillion (adjusted for inflation) on operations, maintenance, and capital infrastructure of water and wastewater utilities. That aging infrastructure increasingly leaks water, and becomes less efficient. The AWWA estimates updating drinking water infrastructure will cost $2.1–$2.4 trillion over the next 25 years (2026–2050), a cost my son’s generation will bear, in addition to national debt exceeding $39 trillion. And growing. People complain about fraud and government waste, but then flush it all down the golden toilet.

In January, the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH) published “Global Water Bankruptcy: Living Beyond Our Hydrological Means in the Post-Crisis Era,” declaring the dawn of an era of global water bankruptcy. For my son and his peers, this issue will be not abstract but omnipresent. Creative solutions will be needed.

Reclaiming urine reduces the consumption of water while converting a major pollutant into a free hyper-local resource. If “pee-cycling” seems outrageous now, its time may be near. ScienceDirect, a scientific research platform operated by Elsevier, the respected academic publishing house, conducted a multi-national survey of 3763 respondents at 20 different universities across 16 countries asking “people’s willingness to consume food grown using human urine as fertilizer.” 68% of the respondents favored recycling human urine, 59% stated a willingness to eat urine-fertilized food, and only 11% believed that urine posed health risks that could not be mitigated by treatment.

With urine as number 1 on our list, the number 2 topic is feces. A hyper-local solution is readily available in the “humanure” movement. Recycling human excrement has been practiced for thousands of years, including “night soil” collected in towns of China, Korea, and Japan. Evidently it was common throughout the Middle Ages, but fell out of favor around the 19th century with the advent of flush toilets and municipal water systems. Since the mid-90s, however, “night soil” has regained traction.

The Mother Tree, who teaches my son “biogeochemistry” – a/k/a Soil Science – is at the vanguard of the “humanure” movement. In 2008, she launched the “Humble Pile” project as a nutrient recovery project in dense urban Chicago. She recruited 22 volunteer households, providing “dry bucket toilets,” snap on seats, and sawdust to eliminate odors and catalyze the carbon-to-nitrogen balance. Her goal was to “transform waste into fertility, pollution into resource, and isolation into connection.”

For three months she personally collected the buckets and transported them – by bicycle – to a location outside the city, for the high-heat composting process, to ensure pathogens like E. Coli were killed off. In total, she diverted 1,500 gallons of waste from Chicago’s water treatment system. And in the end, “The Great Giveback” returned the nutrient soil back to the volunteers, in parcels, for use in their gardens. The cycle was complete. Community, connected.

In 2009, Time Magazine published “Humanure: Goodbye, Toilets. Hello, Extreme Composting” that described projects in rural Pennsylvania; Austin, Texas; Marin County, California; as well as Chicago’s “Humble Pile.” The Mother Tree was introduced as “…a self-described radical ecologist” and quoted, “I’ve sent a sample in for a coliform test. There is zero detectable fecal bacteria.”

In Arthur Magazine, she was quoted, “I’m not treating it chemically. I trust microorganisms to do it for me. As an ecologist, I don’t expect law to keep up with me—it’s more important to get this done. I’m just interested in people understanding that their body is producing soil all the time, and there’s no reason not to return it back to earth.”

My son’s visit to the Elder was not a waste, but an awakening. Where I hoped for dialogue, he experienced a basic physical truth, uncomfortable as that may be. To the mainstream, we live on Planet Earth. The Anxious Generation has been trained to experience life through a screen. But the Mother Tree and the Elder show him we live with Planet Earth.

In terms of “What is a Person?” they each demonstrate, quietly and profoundly, in my son’s presence, that a person is not a passive consumer, but an accountable participant in our community and ecosystem. To the consumer, life is linear, a constant quest for accumulation of more, regardless of the waste left behind. To the steward, life is circular where recycling creates nutrient rich soil, to grow nutrient rich foods to nourish the body; by owning the full consequences of living, an environmental pollutant is converted into life-giving food.

Humanure is but a humble lesson in entropy: heat – 135 to 160 degrees F – kills off the pathogens, creating bio-rich soil, sweet smelling, as fresh as the forest. Complex organic matter is violently broken down in thermophilic (hot) compost; fragmented, and disassembled. Humus is left behind —an incredibly stable, chemically complex, and highly organized soil matrix. The stuff of life. Giving off heat, the microbes build a structured, nutrient-dense masterpiece in the soil.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics states the total entropy of the universe always increases: the “Arrow of Time” points ever forward. But through stewardship, my son’s generation can return the cycle to a restorative, nurturing future: waste converted into growth, into nourishing food.

Any city-raised boy can learn this lesson. Very likely all the Zoomers will need to learn this humble lesson. This will be our 8th grade lesson.

Hanging

Posted: June 26, 2026 | Author: David | Filed under: Art & Healing, Chronicles of a First Time Parent | 2 Comments

“You can get used to hanging, if you have to,” my father would say so often, when I was a boy. I grew up in the era of free love, but my Father was of a different era, of the Silent Generation.

He had grown up in Kentucky, in an extended family generations of whom worked on the railroad, as Laborers, Shop Foremen, Section Supervisor, although his Father had risen to be an Engineer. The saying is “beneath every railroad tie lies a dead Irishman” and I can only imagine how hard those times must have been. My Father was silent on that.

My Father’s oldest brother, Danny, broke the mold, at the age of 26, when he became the Business Manager of the Calumet Farm, in the thoroughbred bluegrass region. During the championship years when the legendary Whirlaway ran like the wind, Danny managed the operation, winning the Triple Crown – the Kentucky Derby, Preakness Stakes, and Belmont Stakes – in 1941. While Danny worked, my Father, age 13 (my son’s age now), would idle away the hours, reading under the Bur Oak, Blue Ash, or Kentucky Coffeetrees towering overhead; an idyllic, wildly exciting, and defining era at the iconic racing stable.

After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, in December of 1941, Danny enlisted in the United States Army Air Corp. Old enough not to go, he volunteered, such was his Code of Honor. Eventually he was sent to Iwo Jima where he was killed, stabbed while he slept, on March 26, 1945. Japanese kamikazes were hiding on the island, and struck in the dead of night, when the Marines’ guard was down.

The US Army Messengers drove to the family’s house, then walked to the front porch to deliver the news. My Father, home alone, would have greeted them, his world crushing down upon him, his world slipping away. Danny had been like a father to him, they shared a very close bond, and this news must have been devastating. Which he received in solitude, standing on the front porch, in Paris, Kentucky.

“You can get used to hanging, if you have to,” my Father would say so often, but I could not fathom the generations of pain that lay buried behind those words. My Father never spoke of Danny.

Even during the “make love, not war,” era when I came of age, the ethos still, voiced by every male authority figure – coaches, Priests and teachers – was “no pain, no gain! Play through the pain!” My generation’s masculinity was forged in a cauldron not so very different from my Father; among alpha Boomers, dominance seems on steroids these days.

For countless generations a set of unwritten, unspoken rules have largely defined masculinity, with the emphasis upon toughness, stoicism and emotional suppression. Referred to as the “Boy Code” its core tenets are:

The Sturdy Oak: be not vulnerable and project strength
Give ‘em Hell: aggressive, competitive risk taking is the key to success
The Big Wheel: the alpha male, driven to dominate, and achieve status and power
No Sissy Stuff: thou shalt not show emotion, nor any feminine traits
The Cowboy: self-reliance needs no help

Increasingly I am convinced that this Code, and its dominant alpha males are the dinosaurs, flailing as their “no pain, no gain” and “money is the measure of the man” ethos begins to crack, fail, and fall. The “Copernican Moment” of multi-dimensional consciousness is coming.

The futurist Alvin Toffler famously argued that the public educational system was designed during the Industrial Revolution, training obedient, punctual workers for assembly lines, rather than creative, independent thinkers. The industrial model used three symbols: the bell, the authoritarian teacher, and repetitive work. The bell taught when to begin and to end, like a factory shift. The hierarchical top-down model of authority taught obedience, not to question authority. Straight rows, grouped by age, rote memorization taught to the standardized test, molded children to an imposed order. Such was my generation’s educational model. I vividly recall in my 8th grade, the smell of mimeographed math worksheets, a teacher who smelled of whiskey endlessly passing the damp purple pages down the straight line of desks, her worksheets replacing engagement with rote repetition.

Toffler famously said, “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read or write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” As to what this “continual learning and relearning” means I turned for advice to Our Aristotle, who provides the annual assessment for my son’s homeschooling.

Our Aristotle works on the front lines of the local public school system. Over six years, he has worked in three different local school districts, teaching all ages from K through middle school. He values connection, and holds the high distinction of being fired 30-minutes before the end of the school year, for refusing – at the order of an authoritarian Assistant Principal – to abandon his students on the last day, their final minutes, refusing to change classes to be mere marshall for a different class. Our Aristotle stood his ground, and so the Assistant Principal fired him, but gained nothing.

At his most recent position Our Aristotle was chastised for being not stern enough, not “cracking the whip,” being too playful. He values connection, empathy and relationship, but the administration wants to impose order, strict rules, shaming.

In his first teaching position he was a “Special Needs Ed Tech,” lowest on the totem pole, which also meant closest to the front line; working daily with children on the spectrum of ADHD, ADD, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and Oppositional Defiant Disorder. His mantra was:

Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, …to me.

He learned patience. He taught connection. He got on the floor and played. He saw, and sees, the educational system as a broken and outdated model, teaching to the test, to metrics designed by accountants and economists, to inculcate ever-increasing efficiency from the next generation of worker bees; pliant cogs in the industrial machine.

His approach is relational, emotional, about belonging, to which he explains, “…students will not care about things unless they seem relevant to their lives. Like learning about probability via poker or … about elements of the periodic table alongside welding. School should provide opportunities for students to see how their learning applies to their reality, and it can also be used to connect students with their communities. That’s impossible when they feel that school itself is alien to their lives, and it feels alien because they have to learn about concepts and ideas in a vacuum in order to score well on assessments. All that knowledge goes out the window post test since it isn’t grounded in anything real.”

Our Aristotle’s approach is grounded, historically, in the writings of Lev Vygotsky, from the 1930s, whose sociocultural theory emphasized the role of social interaction and culture in learning. Vygotsky taught that the “More Knowledgeable Other” guides the learner forward, along their path. The role of the Other is to observe and find the optimal spot where the young student can proceed independently, while receiving guidance and encouragement from the avuncular Other. Not an authoritarian dominant master, but one offering encouragement, a sense of belonging; agency in a cooperative affirming way.

In terms of my family, Great Uncle Danny – stabbed as he slept on the black rocks of Iwo Jima – was the “More Knowledgeable Other” shaping my Father’s childhood.

The old guard of stoic accountability and testing continues to hold sway. Margaret Spellings, a secretary of education when the No Child Left Behind Act was signed, advocates to restore “the muscle of accountability, the muscle of assessment.”

“The Nation’s Report Card” shows that 8th-grade reading scores on national assessments are currently at their lowest point since 1990. But metrics of failing accountability are vastly different from a student flourishing. Danny was there for my Father, but many children today – boys especially – lack the “More Knowledgeable Other.”

The Center for Disease Control data shows that 40 percent of high school students report persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness. One in five had seriously considered suicide; nearly one in 10 had attempted it. 23% of students were chronically absent in the 2024-25 school year, far above the pre-pandemic rate of 15%. The SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins found that 40 percent of Zoomers believe political violence can be justified, compared with 11 percent of Boomers.

Science and history support the fact that life and learning are cooperative. Suzanne Simard is the groundbreaking forestry scientist whose Mother Tree Project teaches forests are deeply interconnected systems, not just Darwinian collections of individual trees. Yuval Noah Harari is a historian trained at Oxford University, whose books have sold forty-five million copies in sixty-five languages. His core thesis is simply that cooperation is the key to human societies; our ability to create collective stories is unique among animals thereby guiding diverse humans to cooperate flexibly.

When compassion becomes key, then “spare the rod and spoil the child” will no longer pertain. The change from the “Cowboy Big Wheel” to a cooperative culture will be a long slow transition, its realization not preordained. Certainly not in my lifetime, maybe not even in my son’s, but a cooperative nurturing culture is a goal worthy of pursuit.

I am homeschooling my son. My task is to prepare him for his future, not my past; I can be as a hinge, this moment a fulcrum, my role as “Knowledgeable Other” to provide my son with a grounded sense of belonging, in a culture when competition gives way to cooperation, to continual learning and relearning, to a shared flourishing.

____________________________

It Came To Pass

Posted: June 19, 2026 | Author: David | Filed under: Chronicles of a First Time Parent | Tags: jacob-needleman, jay-local-14 | 2 Comments

Whereas it is written, “In the beginning was the word” so our homeschool began with words. For our Language Arts class, I was fortunate to hire the Magister, a scholar of Greek and Latin, who has taught all ages Latin and English, and, to adults, the crafts of grammar, logic and rhetoric – the essence of writing. He agreed to teach my son.

The Magister began, in September, introducing the three elements of language: words, phrases and clauses. “We combine these three elements, along with a few marks of punctuation, to build sentences and express our thoughts, no matter how simple or complex.” My son learned the difference between subject and predicate, between verb and noun; fragments as different from sentences simple, complex, or compound. Structure and method applied, the Magister lead my son through the maze of meaning, made clear.

My son was challenged to use a dictionary – not online, but the plain, old fashioned, heavy tactile book taken off the shelf – both to define words and to find synonyms of words. My son was taxed to handwrite his answers, using pencil on paper, like generations who have gone down this path, before him.

Deeper into the maze, he learned that words express ideas using syntax, grammar, and the eight parts of speech. Nouns are common or proper, and never the two shall meet. Verbs have objects, but so too prepositions, and the same word can be a preposition or an adverb; preposition denotes relationship, while an adverb answers to “where, when, how, how much, why.”

Many verbs take an object, but some do not, thus are intransitive. There are verbs of existence, like the verb to be, which takes no object, thus being is subject only, no separation, meaning that all life is one. The study of words leads to questions of being.

And so, deeper still into the maze of meaning, my son was lead by the Magister. The Greek alphabet was memorized, because its non-Roman characters afford the young mind a sense that symbols are arbitrary yet infinitely powerful tools for expression; mark making is meaning making.

My son was challenged to memorize poetry, and he also learned to read the Koine Greek Gospel of John, chapter 1, verse 1, a text essential to the corpus of Occidental culture. Some argue that culture is being replaced; my son, then, shall know well both its core belief and the larger truth that all people are created equal. Ever deeper the magister went, and my son followed, showing up always prepared for class, tete-a-tete, no hiding in the back of the classroom. Homeschool is a one-on-one intellectual chess match. Seeds have been planted.

Now in the 10th month, we bring all this together, Language Arts and Humanities, in a final summative essay on the topic “What is a Person?” This topic arose around 1 May – May Day, the International Workers’ Day – when I drove north to Jay, Maine, the site of a vicious labor strike where International Paper Corporation – a fictive person – laid low and cut down without regret the real persons residing in Jay. If “what is a person?” is abstract, paper mills on the Androscoggin River Valley are specific, tangible and real. Knowledge can be general and abstract, but specific particularity makes it concrete. Jay, Maine has been our exhibit A.

My son learned the concept of an outline, structure that gives form to thought, and so we began. Each week’s Friday “art farm” post has been my son’s Monday weekly reading. The Magister assigned an essay by the philosopher Jacob Needleman, a commencement address given to high school students, “The One Great Question.” From the library I checked out the book Pain on Their Faces: Testimonies on the Paper Mill Strike, Jay, Maine, 1987-1988 published 1998 by the Jay-Livermore Falls Working Class History Project. My son read his primary source materials.

As a carpenter, of the trades and not a professional, I used an analogy to help my son understand our process: imagine we are at the lumber yard, going through a stack of 2x4s to find those few straight and true, and reject the curved, twisted or split: many are culled, few are chosen. The 2x4s are the noun phrases which define the heading, subheading, and smaller ideas, together, all of which frame the logical argument.

The outlines having been crafted, my analogy changed to a mason laying bricks. The noun phrases, fragments, were now substantives, like bricks held by the mortar of grammar and punctuation. The outline gave clarity in forethought, allowing the writing to proceed clearly. In fact, a mason worked next door laying stone, building a wall as my son built his argument.

Here then, is my son’s final summative essay, a work not possible in September but 10-months into this holy experiment, his written word has been accomplished. We have climbed a mountain, scaled a wall, and at the top, his view is both honest and expansive.

What is a Person?

Throughout my life, I don’t think I’ve ever really thought about the question, “What is a person?” And although it might seem like a simple answer, it’s far (and I mean like FAR) from simple. To start to understand this question, we need to break it down. A good way to do that is by making an outline. We can start with the topic of “what is a person?” Then make two more groups from the topic which are called the “real persons,” and the “fictive person.”

A “real person” is pretty much exactly what it sounds like; a living and breathing thing. Plato described them as “featherless bipeds,” Aristotle said a “thought bearing political animal,” and the Buddhists went with a suffering self – the burden bearer – experiencing birth, death and rebirth.

A “fictive person,” is (in legal terms) a non-human entity – like a corporation – with legal rights, duties, and responsibilities, legally distinct from the humans who manage or own them. The word “Corporation” is derived from the Latin corpus which translates to the word body.

In 1987, in the small town of Jay, Maine, the International Paper Company (a.k.a IP) ran into a problem, but little did they know, it would shape labor history forever. IP was doing quite well, their profits having risen 33%, and their net sales up 42% to $7.8 billion. Because that clearly wasn’t enough, IP started cutting wages, high monthly health insurance payments, stopping double-time pay on Sundays, and cutting all holidays (which includes Christmas). So, Jay Local 14 (the union they were all in) went on strike. They would form picket lines, a long row of strikers standing outside of the main entrance road and gates to the mill, holding picket signs.

This is a perfect example of the fictive person against the real person. Unfortunately, after a 16 month long strike, IP broke Local 14. The strikers were permanently replaced with scabs (scabs were workers that chose to go back to work instead of continuing the strike with their coworkers). In 2006 the mill was sold. Its waste remains, contaminating the Androscoggin River, known today as “Cancer Valley.” From Rumford downstream, incidences of cancer and illness are well above average, both from the chemicals discharged into the river and the mountains trapping pollutants in the air.

Here is a short story from the book, Pain on Their Faces: Testimonies on the Paper Mill Strike Jay, Maine, 1987-1988, by the Jay-Livermore Falls Working Class History Project, where Janice Brackett, a wife of one of the mill employees, shares her perspective on IP during the strike.

“It was horrible. I had to work two jobs to help keep things going. I hope I don’t see another strike like it. I worked every week at the food bank. We handled a lot of food for the people. At the beginning of the strike, I was on the picket line as often as I could be, no matter what the weather was, but we were there for a good reason. I went on bus trips and caravans near and far and we fought hard. I attended every weekly meeting. I was hard on the picket lines to see those scabs going in and taking our husbands’ jobs. This was all due to IP being greedy.”

Jacob Needleman taught high school philosophy, and his “The One Great Question” was a high school Commencement speech given in 2004, that asked:

“Who am I? …What is man? What is a human being? …What am I? Am I what I am told by my environment? Am I my ethnic identity? Am I my national identity? Am I my sexual identity? Am I my physical characteristics? Am I the opinions which have come into my mind from hearing people speak, from television, from newspapers, from my peers? …This is a great question of the heart…”

He concluded, “In the history of the world, in all the cultures of the world, the search to come in touch with the voice of the great self within, which is sometimes reflected in what we call conscience – the search for that contact requires the support of companions, friends, community.”

“How?” is different from “what?” How should we act? How should we live? How can we connect with “companions, friends, community”? My Mom came across a quote written by Lao Tzu: “Watch your thoughts, they become your words; watch your words, they become your actions; watch your actions, they become your character; watch your character, it becomes your destiny.”

The question “What is a person?” is a surprisingly hard question to answer. The non-philosophical answer (which would have been my answer a few weeks ago) might be something like “skin and bones” (real creative…), but it’s so much more complex. I hope this answered the question at least a bit.

____________________________

School has finished. The solstice is near. Summer is here.

Probably

Posted: June 11, 2026 | Author: David | Filed under: Child Centered Activities, Chronicles of a First Time Parent | 3 Comments

It is probable that teaching my son probability by playing Poker is considered morally degenerate, to some.

But then again, consider the society in which he comes of age: total lottery sales exceed $110 Billion per year, sports betting exceeds $166 Billion, while $391 Billion per year in total is spent on games of chance, a roll of the dice. How then to explain that his great grandfather, in 1918, was unable to borrow money to buy a car because auto loans were considered immoral, debt was viewed as a character flaw, cars were for pleasure not a necessity? Probability is a lesson in history and math.

The word “probability” comes from the Latin root probare which means “to test or prove,” while the word itself is derived from the adjective probabilis meaning “plausible, provable, that may be assumed to be believed.” The Roman orator Cicero built an argument upon that word, rejecting the idea that humans could attain absolute, perfect knowledge, he argued that probabilities were far more practical, politically feasible, a means to move the crowd in your favor. In 15th century Middle English the word was linked to legal credibility until it became a mathematical term around 1718.

I teach the mathematical application here at our homeschool. I am of an age that math properly should be taught using a sharpened pencil on lined paper, not online interactive like a game. I purchased a textbook from a local store. It has served us well, except, more than a few times the solutions were wrong. But even that is a teaching moment. “To test, to prove” teaches my son to question actively, not receive passively, the answers of authority. Textbooks, algorithms, and AI are not settled truth. My son needs to learn to roll up his sleeves, match and raise, have skin in the game.

My son did well on the probability chapter, but the textbook referenced playing cards several times; a noteworthy assumption. My son was unable to answer because he had never played cards. He did not know what was being asked. I was dumbstruck! I ran back to that bookstore to buy poker chips and playing cards.

I easily use equations in my carpentry, but teaching the volume or surface area of a dodecahedron, or a quadratic equation challenged me to relearn long-forgotten theorems. Ours is not the blind leading the blind, but more like the French proverb, “”Au royaume des aveugles, les borgnes sont rois” (“In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed men are kings.”)

“Papa,” my son’s Grandfather, on the other hand, is the rare bird who flies high in the world of pure mathematical truth. A PhD in Physical Chemistry/Theoretical Physics, in his first published paper, in 1977, he announced “a very fundamental conceptual error present in the traditional formulation of the entropic force between the ends of a single Gaussian macromolecule.” In other words, the classical theory of the academy was wrong.

His pioneering “Entropic approach to Brownian movement” was published in 1980 in the American Journal of Physics, and is considered the grandfather of modern Brownian entropic force modeling. In Brownian motion a particle’s movement is entirely random, but, connecting pure geometry and probability to thermodynamics, he showed that by measuring the probability distribution of a particle’s movement, there is a measurable intrinsic entropic force.

In his 2001 paper “Entropic Elasticity of Weakly Perturbed Polymers” Papa reasoned:

The probability of occurrence of an end-to-end separation r (r =|r|) for such a chain is described by r2P(r), where P(r) is the normalized field-free end-to-end distribution function, b3π−3/2exp(-b2r2) for r << Na.

From r2P(r) one may determine the standard deviation or dispersion (σ o) in r and compare it with the average value of r for a freely orienting chain not subject to an external force. σ ο 2 = <r2>o – (<r>o)2 = .23/b2. The absence of an external force is denoted by the subscript o. The result is:

σ o/<r>o = .42

Hard pressed to grasp that, my probability teaching centers on the mathematical truth:

________n!________

C ( n, k ) = k! ( n – k )!

Where n = 52 cards in the deck, k = the number of cards in the hand, and ! = the factorial function, which for 5 card stud is (5x4x3x2x1). My son’s probability of drawing any one specific hand is 1 out of 2,598,960. Steep odds, and so we began. I taught him to shuffle, to deal the cards, and the value of chips. “Applied theory” is my approach both to life as to probability; math lives at the intersection of intuition and calculation.

In poker, as in life, the odds of getting nothing are high, almost 50-50, but more precisely 0.9953015 : 1. One pair is an everyday occurrence, 1.36477 : 1, while a flush – the basic kind, neither a straight nor a royal – comes in at 507.8019 : 1, until at the apex, the summa elite, the royal flush has steep odds against, at 649,739 : 1. The unspoken lesson is that rare events can happen, so you should hold out hope.

Our poker playing plan was devilishly clever. My son is of the “anxious generation” also known as “the loneliest generation.” According to the National Social Anxiety Center, 60% of his peers report significant mental health challenges, including social anxiety, which can be paralyzing. Factors driving this spike include pandemic disruptions, consuming social media use, and diminished face-to-face interactions. Our homeschooling did not arise in a vacuum.

My son would prefer not to leave his gaming corner, let alone to leave the house, and so what better pedagogical tool than playing a game where bluffing is strategic, a “poker” face reveals nothing, while watching for “tells” is key. We play the game face-to-face, cards held high like a Maginot wall, each of us huddled behind our defense. In this bounded rule-governed space, interactions are intentional. If anxiety feels inevitable, probability suggests “we can think about this, we can figure the odds, you must play the hand you are dealt.”

We have alternated between the math text book and our game of chance. He does well with the pencil and paper – often doing the calculations in his head – but he beats me at betting more often than not. Poker between two players is less fun than with more, and he yearned to widen the circle.

That is a math lesson all its own. The odds of any one specific hand remain 1 out of 2,598,960 no matter the number of players, but the relative value of a premium hand increases. In our heads-up matches, one pair often wins. But with more players, a single pair will rarely win the pot. That means, mathematically, in a larger group you should bet more aggressively with a strong hand. Bluffing, on the other hand, is less effective with a larger group. With more people playing, the probability is high that someone else holds the premium hand, and anyone player can call your bluff, which means the odds of everyone else folding is highly improbable.

My son asked his sister and his Mother, the Goddess, repeatedly to join us, but somehow that never worked out; between work and school they are quite busy. So we invited my son’s former classmate, a close friend from before the pandemic, to come over to our house. He agreed. My son was ready with his chips and cards.

His classmate, of keen eagle eye and sharp mind, taught us to play black jack. Black jack, the most widely played casino banking game in the world, is significantly less social than 5-card stud. Blackjack unfolds between one player and the dealer, its focus only the math to reach 21. Quiet pervades, conversation is limited.

My goal inviting the “eagle eye” to our house was not math but socialization. My agenda not so hidden, nor did I intend it to be, I wanted my son to engage in play. What unfolded was exquisite and rare, more precisely a probability of 1 in 229,000 (.00044%), or maybe it was 1 in 401,138, or then again 1 in 1,153,500. My son and I are still calculating the odds.

My son dealt the cards, and we played several rounds, chatting away amicably. The pots increased in size, the chips moved back and forth. We played 5-card stud with three draws and betting rounds per hand. On the last hand, the Eagle Eye began to bet aggressively. I matched and raised. My son held back. Laying down his cards, all black, all spades, Queen, Jack, 10, 9 and a 4, the Eagle Eye smiled and quietly, confidently said, “Flush.” He was one card away from the Royal Flush.

I had an Ace up my sleeve: all black, all clubs, Ace, Jack, 7, 4, 3. Not royal, rather commoner, but Ace high beats Queen. Incredulously we gazed at the cards.

Quietly my son is coming to realize that anxiety is not an absolute, but probably, with love, devotion and surrender, he can find his way out of the gauntlet of his generation.

_____________________________________

Human, Flourishing

Posted: June 5, 2026 | Author: David | Filed under: Chronicles of a First Time Parent, What is an Art Farm | 1 Comment

What to the Romans was named Terra, to the Greeks Gaia, astronomically is classified as Sol III – the third planet from the Sun being an ocean world that harbors life with liquid surface water. Given a mass of (5.97217±0.00028)×10²⁴ kg rotating at a breakneck speed of 1,037 miles per hour at its equator, here at 43° 38′ 29″ N / 70° 14′ 27″ W a real person coming of age learns about the materiality of life.

With the Mother Tree, he studies soil, more precisely “applied biogeochemistry,” starting with applied chemistry through field work and kitchen-based experiments. For the past eleven weeks he has examined soil, taken samples from multiple sites. He is learning that specificity is an essential attribute of knowledge.

Our backyard, for example, for centuries was the dumping ground for the real persons who have lived in this “Big House-Little House-Back House-Barn,” the classic New England farmhouse from the 1800s. Long before municipal waste collection, the people would toss their detritus “out back.” Their attention was focused on their vegetable fields growing in front of the house, so the back yard was left untended, a waste heap. We endlessly dig up broken glass, as well as a perfectly intact coffee mug, empty bottles of elixir, and other assorted sundry items.

My son has been digging holes out back, to study the soil, which is not “dirt” but something wonderfully complex, biotically rich, far more specific and particular. Of the Hollis Fine Sandy Loam variety, the soil here is classified by the Natural Resources Conservation Service as prime farmland. This 200-year old farmhouse was not built with heavy equipment pushing fill, and then landscaped with commercial sod grown on some industrial farm a few states away; original to this site, our soil is a biological archive of hundreds or thousands of years.

As guided by the Mother Tree, my son has used transects to mark a section of the back yard and drawn a map. He dug holes 6” deep and, having taken soil samples from five sites, studied their percolation rates, to understand compaction and composition. This hole is not like that hole; this hole percolates 1” per 3 minutes while that hole percolates 1/16” per 3 minutes. “Why is that?” we asked.

He made a quadrat – a standardized sampling frame, a window into place – then threw it randomly within the marked off section, to isolate specific areas, to systematically count, identify and measure the abundance, or lack, of plants and bio-mass. “What is that?” we asked.

On the space-time continuum, my son, a real person, during this academic year has been constructing a mental framework – structure and method, applied – to learn about place, one specific place, this yard, where he is becoming an adult real person. The Mother Tree has helped him to “think well,” not by locked logic but creatively.

Cynefin is a word among the Welsh people, with no direct translation into English. Literally it can mean “habitat” or “familiar place” but at a deeper level it describes an integral sense of belonging, the deeply intertwined factors of being, heritage, stories and traditions shared within family and community. In my teaching, emotional connection lies at the core of cynefin. This treasure trove among real persons, AI’s Ziggurat of the cloud lacks, entirely. The young real person growing here, on the Hollis Fine Sandy Loam of this art farm, accrues daily, slowly, a specific knowledge, grounded in emotional intelligence, that will become his identity.

Our quest to define “what is a person?” expanded this week to include “what is place?” which lead us to have a chat with his Cousin, the Professor of Law. I had expected to discuss the legal fiction of corpus fictum but the Cousin took the conversation in an entirely different, magnificent, direction.

Me: So, let’s begin with the definitions of a person: do you remember Plato’s?

My son: Uhhh…the chicken…with no feathers?

Me: correct. And Aristotle…?

My son: (silence)

Me: The animal…the political animal?

My son: Right.

Me: We also had the Sanskrit and the buddhist…with materiality shared among all of the definitions. Materiality seems basic to personhood. Our bodies.

Cousin: But is that a distinction of kind or form? I have a colleague here who studies bio-ethics, which is ethics at the edge of humanity. For example, genetically engineered monkeys replacing their genes with human genes to give birth to humans. Or pigs used to grow human organs.

My son: What do they feed it?

Cousin: Great question. Would a monkey with human ovaries and a womb need human food? To define humans as material is not precise. A person with a mechanical heart – a pacemaker – is still a person. This is a logical puzzle. A pig with a human organ is not human, but a human with a mechanical heart is still a human. So the distinction is not only material but form defines a human. Form = ends. Do you know the Greek word telos? It means what is something pointed towards? What is its ultimate aim? So, what is the end purpose in Aristotle’s definition?

My son: (pause, leans back in his chair) As simple as politics?

Cousin: Politics, yes, but what does he mean? (Pause) A “polity” = a political society.

Me: I should say, the words are derived from the Greek “polis” which means “city.” Metropolis is a city area. Metropolitan Transit is the bus line serving the city. The political animals live in cities, some organization, which is political.

Cousin: Aristotle’s definition of a political society is “a free people coming together to debate how ought we to order our lives together?” So what makes us distinctively human? What is the key word there?

My son: “Free” ?

Cousin: What about “free” makes us different from other animals?

My son: Well…humans are more developed, we have more opportunities.

Cousin: Is there a difference between human and animal? Is the difference of degree or kind? A categorical difference? Think back to “free”. Is there a kind of opportunity that we have that is different from animals?

My son: Humans have…I think about this some times, “why are humans the most developed? Why don’t guinea pigs drive cars?” We have more opportunities because we are more developed. We have choices.

Cousin: “Choosing”…that is huge.

My son: (leans back in his chair) Our dog has choices in…maybe this is too broad…she can decide to eat or not, she can go in the yard BUT we can choose other foods but she cannot. Maisie gets only one kind of food. She cannot communicate – she can bark but not talk. So it is harder for her to communicate. We make decisions for her. An animal in the wild has more choices. Domesticated animals…we make more choices for them. We make the major decisions.

Cousin: So you tie freedom with communication. Aristotle used the word “debate” in his definition. Let’s push further. What is the one word that we confront here, that is the key in his definition: “a free people coming together to debate how ought we to order our lives together?”

My son: (pause)

Me: We know we are talking about people… we have discussed “free” the adjective. And “debate” the verb. The key term is not going to be the pronouns “we” or “our” so…

My son: It is not going to be “together” because animals live in a pack. (Pause). “Ought?”

Cousin: What do we mean by “ought?”

My son: You “should”

Cousin: What kind of judgment is that? If I say “you ought to give a dollar” or “you ought not hit someone” ?

My son: You are proposing an idea?

Cousin: The “ought” has a meaning that begins with the letter M…

My son: Is “ought”…(pause)…a “mandate”?

Cousin: A dog could have a mandate. It needs to eat. What kind of a judgment…what is the basis for saying that?

My son: (pause)

Cousin: The word is “moral”

My son: Ohhhh!!!

Cousin: It is distinct to humans about morality. A dog might make a mess but that is not immoral. Humans as moral is the through line. Morality gives weight to the decisions that we make. It is ordering our lives together – so do packs of animals but the human form of animal is different due to the moral element. We are not only biological but a human flourishing. We are moral agents. How does that sound to you?

My son: (pause) I think I understand the topic better.

Cousin: Do animals have morality?

My son: I think animals – well, I don’t know how they process thoughts – but in the wild animals do not think of a moral question. They need to survive. I have heard that dog squeaky toys = the sound of an animal suffering. Dogs like that sound. But humans…do all humans have a moral capacity? Yes, but some are more aware than others. Not all vegans but many see that as a moral issue. Some vegans eat that way for health, but some as morally wrong. Others have no concern. All humans have some amount of morality, but it is stronger for some people.

Me: Do you remember last year we discussed Plato and the virtues: the good, the true and the beautiful; the ultimate divine reality. We are touching on that here. I have been thinking about compassion and here we talk about morality. How are those different? Morality can imply a guilt and remorse.

Cousin: Once we have the idea of morality as a defining characteristic then “what do we mean by morality?” There are three basic types:

Utilitarianism: our goal is to maximize pleasure for the greatest number of persons
Ontological reality: we live by a set of rules (as an architecture of the mind, we perceive the unknowable by imposing innate rules and categories)
Virtue ethics: our purpose is to cultivate virtues (not by rules or consequences but by character, itself). Compassion is a virtue.

Me: So utilitarianism would be “homo economicus” – real persons as narrowly selfish agents driven entirely to maximize utility and personal gain.

Cousin: Correct. Ontological would be Immanuel Kant. He established rules for how we think. For the “Virtue Ethics” Aquinas said there are 7 cardinal virtues.

Me: “Cardinal” here means “primary”

My son: Like the cardinal directions…

Me: …north, east, south and west. Correct.

Cousin: Aquinas said there are three theological virtues: faith, hope and charity plus Aristotle’s four virtues: fortitude, temperance, prudence, justice. Justice means that everyone should get their due. Fortitude means courage. Temperance means self-restraint. What is compassion? A blend of charity and justice. Compassion is a virtue ethic, a morally flourishing person cultivating virtues. Any virtue like compassion is a secondary…the cardinal virtues are like the palette used to blend the other virtues.

* * * *

As our year draws to a close, we plan a summative project that will include art-making; the “cardinal virtues like the palette” is perfect. The act of making is particular, manifest and specific; the artist must choose, which mirrors precisely the action of moral agency.

Our definition of a person expands to become “a thought bearing biped mammal, not only biological but a human flourishing as moral agent, with consciousness of purpose, meaning, intuition and connection.” We go deeper into our understanding of persons and place, the specificity of being, further from the delusion of Ziggurats in the AI cloud.

an Art Farm

ponderings and practices on an Art Farm in Maine

Advanced Chain Saw

Strike from the Void

Ignorance or Arrogance

Failure

Red Cherry, Black Crow

Urine

Hanging

It Came To Pass

Probably

Human, Flourishing

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