• Cadie(15) Writes about a sledding
• Titi(18) Writes about driving
• Rundy(22) Writes about grafting

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Sledding
By Cadie

(Note: This actually happened sometime in January, but I was having trouble finishing the article.)

"It’s really good for sledding!" Evan kept saying. It was a beautiful day out, with the sun shining and the icicles dripping, and Evan and Owen had just come in from sledding. Owen was excitedly recounting his exploits to me, and Evan exclaimed, "I almost broke my neck going up the snow mound!"

We had not gone sledding very many times so far this winter; it seemed like the snow just didn’t want to cooperate. Evan, Owen, and I went once early on in December when the snow was melting–perfect for sledding. But after that the snow always seemed to be dry, fluffy, useless snow that you couldn’t pack to save your life. If you tried to sled in it, the sled would sink into it and plow it like a snowplow, as we found out when we tried it a couple of days earlier. It had been a gloomy, gray day out, and I was sick and tired of being stuck in the house, so I had convinced the skeptical little kids to come sledding with me. I had stubbornly plowed along through the snow in the sled, trying to make a trail. Once I had become convinced of the uselessness of that endeavor, I had gone over to help the little kids with what they were doing. Evan had grandly announced that he was going to make a snow statue! That wound up just being a pile of snow. But we had managed to find a way to make it pack–we had all knelt down and paddled the snow behind us like dogs, with me stopping to pack it down every once in a while. It had been somehow very satisfying to dig into the snow and watch it disappear behind you, causing our little snow mound to pile up into a big snow drift. But once we had tired of doing that, we had a big snow mound that we didn’t know what do with.

But now, the boys insisted, it was better. I got out there as quick as I could to try it out. The first time I tried it out, I was almost surprised by how quickly the sled started up; it had been so long since I went sledding, I’d almost forgotten what it was like! The sled slipped this way and that, out of control. I went down with Evan and Owen next, and we nearly crashed into the snow mound we had built the day before. It was right where our sled was headed, like a big roadblock! "Yikes!" we all said. We managed to squeak past it in a frantic rush of paddling and went on down the path, laughing. But Owen had fallen out of the sled! "Are you all right, Owen?" I called up to him. "Yeah, I just got lawn-mowed somehow on my head by the sled!" he retorted, in his usual animated style of talking. We all looked at each other and laughed, and then ran up to try it again.

Collin came up a little while later. It was his first time sledding this year; usually only Owen and Evan went sledding together–being two energetic boys, they do a lot of things together–and sometimes Justin and I. Collin usually likes to stay inside and read books. He watched me as I went down, and then he went up to try it. I saw him laughing as the sled did its usual antics of swerving this way and that on the slicked-down bump area. Amazingly, he managed to avoid the snow mound, sledding swiftly around it, but then he came to a sharp standstill lower down in the valley, where I was. "Somebody really has to make this track," Collin said. "Yeah, I know, I’ve been trying to by just sledding down it, but if you want to, go ahead!" I said. He was sure he knew how to make it better, but in the end he had to give it up, too.

The snow was odd: it was dry, fluffy snow that does not pack well, but the top layer of it was melting, so that it could get slicked down easily. The sled would glide along it easily, but it wouldn’t pack well enough to make any walls to keep it on the right track. You were subjected to the will of the sled to go wherever it led you. I remember tracks Arlie had made in previous years that were really fast–the sled would go roaring along, and then flying off the jump, and the walls kept it going where it was supposed to. But this snow refused to be made into any sort of a track, and it wouldn’t go very fast, either. We sledded down it again and again, trying to make a track, but it insisted on going down a different way each time. And then when we went down, it kept changing its mind about which track it wanted to be on! It went back and forth from one person’s sled trail to another person’s. It was a sloppy ride, but very funny to ride down on because of the sled’s antics. First the sled is soaring down the hill, just like it’s supposed to; then it switches to a "slow lane" and slows down, then it runs along hardened footsteps and you’re jostled and jolted, and then it suddenly comes to a violent stop. You feel quite discombobulated by the time you get out of the sled! The whole area around the bump, where our hill drops down, was all slicked over, also, and this was one of the sled’s favorite spots to go awry.

I had fun watching other people go down on the sleds. Evan zoomed down into the pond on the saucer sled. "That was perfect!" he said, beaming at me as he came to a stop next to me. "Except that it slowed down just now." The track seemed almost really good, as if you went down just one more time it would go right.

It was the most fun for me to go down with other people. This time, the black sled, which can hold a lot of people, actually worked pretty good. Usually the round saucer sled and the snowboards work the best–the black sled is designed very poorly. For it to work well, you need to have a lot of people in it to weigh it down and keep it going. It’s a very wayward sled, never staying on the track properly. But for this kind of sledding, that’s okay! When I went down with Evan and Owen, Owen exclaimed, "That was like a rocket!"

After walking up the hill and sledding down many times, the hill gets covered with footprints, and the lighting made it look especially dramatic. One time when Justin and I were about to walk up the hill and sled down, I stopped and said, "Look at all the footprints on the hill, Justin! Thousands and thousands of them, like a sea of them."

"Yeah, and they’re all yellow!" he said. The pattern of the footprints were all jaggedy and bumpy, and the sun made them glow yellow in some spots and blue in the shadowed places.

I took turns going down in the black sled with the boys for a while, and then I grabbed the round sled to go down on that. "Can I come with you?" Justin asked. "Oh, sure!" We tried going down it once, but it didn’t work very well. "Does anyone else really bad want to go down on the round sled, or can I go down with Justin again?" I asked. Collin, Evan, and Owen were in a heap at the bottom of the hill. "You can have it!" Evan called to me. "The way Cassandra did it," Justin said to me, referring to one of my friends, "is she sat with her legs crossed, and then had me sit on her with my legs crossed, facing her!"

"Okay, let’s try it Cassandra’s way!" I said, and we ran up the hill again. But the sled still did not want to cooperate. We tried to sit on the sled the way Justin had said, but once we were weighing it down it did not want to start up. "Okay, fine, just do it however yo
u fancy!" I finally exclaimed jokingly. "I fancy this!" Justin cried goofily, and plopped onto my lap. The sled took off and was going great; it was soaring down smoothly and fast, and we were having a great time. But suddenly Evan was shouting, "Hey!! Stop! You’re going the wrong way!"

"What?–oh, we are!" I cried. Instead of going on over the bump like we intended, the sled had swerved to the right, cornerwise, straight toward the wall Evan was making. Evan put out his hands and stopped us before we could ruin his wall, and we came to a screeching halt.

"C’mon, Justy, let’s try it again!" I said, laughing. That sled seemed to have a mind of its own. It always insisted on going exactly where you did not want it to go, and it never wanted to go over the bump and down the hill. It was always pushing to the right with all its might, trying to veer off the path, and you had to use all your force to get it to go over the bump like it was supposed to. Most of the times, however, you failed, and the sled went roaring down to the snow mound and smacked you into it with satisfaction. It seemed to enjoy doing that! Another one of its favorite tricks was to play along with you, pretending to go on the path you wanted to go, until at the last minute it would veer to the right, using all the momentum you’d built up to crash you into the snow mound especially hard. But, if you steered especially cleverly (like Collin claimed he always did), you could outwit it by scraping around the right edge of the mound and soaring on down the bumpy hill until you hit the scraggly bush at the edge of the pond.

While Justin and I were stopping to build up the wall some more, Evan came up and said, "Hey Justy! Want to go down with me?", holding out the round sled. They plopped into the round sled together, and I could hear the sound of Justin’s giggling as it soared down the hill, and Evan’s giggle as it slammed into the snow mound. Justin usually laughs while going down; Evan laughs once it crashes!

This time, when Justin and I went up to try it again, I noticed that Collin and Owen were still in the black sled further up on the hill. "C’mon, Justin, let’s get going, we’re holding them up," I said. "They’ve been waiting for us all this time."

"No they’re not!" Evan called out gleefully. "They’re paddling!"

"Oh…Yikes!" I said, as I saw the flurry of hands that meant they were "paddling" with their arms, coming behind us. "Paddle, paddle, Justin!" I urged him. But they were gaining on us too quickly–they were going to crash into us! I bailed out of the sled and gave Justin a shove to push him down the rest of the way by himself. But to my surprise and perplexion, Evan stopped him with his hands. "Hey! Why are you doing that?!" I exclaimed. He gave me a sneaky glance and then hopped into the sled. He stopped only to make a face at us and exclaim "HA, HA!" in a comical voice, before he was off, soaring down the hill and giggling. He had hijacked the sled! I yelled after him with mock indignation, "Hey!! The stinker!", but just then something hard bumped into me. "Sorry," came a voice behind me. I turned around, and Collin’s face was in my ear, laughing–he and Owen had run into me on their sled, I was so busy paying attention to Evan. I started laughing, too, and watched as they continued down, chasing Evan. But now Justin was saying, "No! That’s the wrong way!" There was a flurry of movement as the sled swerved this way and that, the sled desiring to go down and crash into the mound, and Justin obstinately pushing it back towards the bump. Then Collin and Owen sailed over the bump after Evan, and Justin and I were left alone up there. It felt good to lay on the snow and watch the figures down at the pond. They all seemed to be huddling around something at the pond wall, and Evan wasn’t bringing up the sled. I went down to see what they were doing. When I asked Collin, he said, "Ohhh…just playing a game," and Owen echoed, "A really fun game!" They were breaking up the ice on the pond.

* * *

Pretty soon Collin, Evan, and Owen got tired of it, and they called up to us from the pond that they were going down. Evan had decided it wasn’t so fun after all. I was surprised; it seemed we’d just got started, and then they were going in. Collin explained, "Yeah, well…if we had a track, it’d be different…but we don’t even have a track, and my feet feel like ice!" I looked at Justin.

"Do you want to go down to the house?" I asked.

"No!"

"I’m not cold in the slightest, are you?"

"No!" he exclaimed indignantly. (Big surprise, coming from Justin–he always goes around the house in short-sleeved shirts while the rest of us are wearing sweaters!)

So we went sledding without them for a while. We talked as we walked up the hill, about the sleds, and how the black one actually worked better today. "The black sled’s usually too heavy," I said. "Yeah, one half of the black sled goes over the jump, but the other half’s still not over it yet!" Justin said, and we both laughed about that. We used to have a green sled that worked really well, but it’s busted now. "We kept duct-taping that one up forever!" Justin said. Every time it got another crack in it, we just duct-taped it, never wanting to admit it was broken. "Until one time we went sledding down and–" Justin pantomined a noise of something crumbling apart–"we looked back and all the pieces of the sled were laying behind us!"

The last time we went sledding, we went all the way up to the top. "Don’t your legs just ache you while you walk up?" I asked Justin. "Yeah…" he groaned, and a little bit later he flopped down onto the ground as I walked on by. "Oh, you wimp!" I teased him. "My legs are aching me really bad, too, but I’m still going!"

You always want to go down sledding just one more time–and one more, and one more. But we finally decided we’d go sledding two more times and then go in. It was funny how Justin and I always agreed with each other.

"I have to go the bathroom, anyway," I said.

"Me too!"

But after that I said, "Well…actually, Justy, how about we go sledding down one more time?"

"Sure!"

"I don’t have to go the bathroom anymore, anyway."

"I don’t, either!"

So we went down one last time.

Comments, questions? Write to Cadie at purdyville@earthlink.net

Driving
By Titi

Here I am, driving a tan Geo Prism down the road I live on, a smile on my face. Guess why I’m smiling? Is it because I like driving? WRONG!! I am smiling because, currently, I know where I am, I know where I’m going, I haven’t had an accident, and the car hasn’t betrayed me with malfunction. I am smiling out of sheer relief that nothing has gone wrong yet.

Yet.

I HATE driving.

Unfortunately, driving in this day in age is pretty much one of the necessities of life. That doesn’t make me like it anymore, but it did make me learn how to drive, take Driver Ed., and get my license. Previously, I have avoided being out on the road, alone and unguided. I’d either go out shopping with my Mom, so that she could ride shotgun and make sure I didn’t take any wrong exits. Or I would hitch a ride with a friend who wanted to shop at the same places. Occasionally I’d drive myself, but t
hen it wouldn’t be over a 12 mile drive. People would always tell me "You’re never going to get used to driving till you have to do it by yourself." Yes, but, as long as I didn’t have to do it by myself, I wasn’t going to.

So, technically, it was probably very good for me to volunteer to help my Grandmother do Spring cleaning. There was absolutely no reason for anyone else to be driving me, and it was going to take several trips. Now, to anyone who is experienced in driving or likes driving, or doesn’t hate driving with ever fiber of their being, driving to Grandma’s is easy. It’s a straight shot, with very little merging, and very little room for making mistakes. It is, though, highway driving (city driving is worse), include this one place where the speed limit is (gasp!) 65 mph. And there’s all these other cars on the road! And trucks! And cops, who might pull you over, and you’re haven’t finished the probation that is automatically tacked on for the first year of your license!!!!

The first time I went out, yes, I did make it alive, whole, and without major disasters. I was incredibly tense the whole time long, from my face to the soles of my feet, but I did do it. It’s about 30 or 40 minute drive, depending on who’s driving and when. Apparently I still managed to do it in less time then my Grandpa.

"You’re here early–were you speeding?"

"I had to, Grandpa, otherwise I would have been run over! I only went 5 mph over the speed limit, and people were still passing me left and right!"

When I took Driver Ed, my instructor was in a really tight spot. See, there were three students in the car that he had to teach. One was this perfect driver who never did wrong. The next was me, super cautious, super paranoid, and not by any means beyond stupid mistakes. The third was a teen-aged boy who already had his license (an an accident), a grade-A reckless speed demon. When the Speed Demon was behind the wheel, it was all the instructor could do to keep him driving reasonably. In the end, he laid down a ultimatum: You drive above the speed limit, you get out from behind the wheel. And then I get behind the wheel, and it’s all the instructor can do to keep me driving reasonably, as I’d much rather be going slower than the speed limit. One time, when I was dutifully driving 55 mph, he finally broke down and, with the Speed Demon in the backseat, told me that I really ought to be going faster because all the cars were going so much faster that it really wasn’t safe for me to be going the speed limit.

Which Grandpa concedes.

"Just don’t get caught, because it’s awful expensive!" As if I didn’t already have enough things to be worried about when I was driving.

I made it home alive, too. I considered all of this to be a major accomplishment. Next time I went out housecleaning, though, I also had to do some shopping. Can somebody please start playing the ominous music now? I really, really did not the trip to be any more complicated then I already felt it was, but I had no choice. It was the only way to get my precious sewing machine out of the repair shop. So I bravely (or not so bravely) embarked on that trip too.

I got to my first shopping stop okay, but I was running late. Then the fun and games began. I got lost, thoroughly lost. I was supposed to be done with my shopping and at my Grandparent’s by lunch, and it was already quite apparent that wasn’t going to happen. I took wrong turns, went miles out of my way, pulled over and looked at maps, and was incredibly grateful to the guy in the pick up truck who saw me realize that I was in the wrong lane (turn only when I wanted to go straight, or something), and graciously stopped and let me move in front of him. (I would just like to say, to all drivers out there, I am always incredibly relieved when you can see I’m being an idiot and you’re nice to me anyway. I’m not trying to be an idiot, it just comes naturally. Next time you see someone cutting you off at the last minute, or changing lanes every few minutes, or going way too slow, have pity. They might just be totally clueless–it might even be me!)

I finally did get myself straightened out, and to my Grandparent’s house. I was totally flustered, upset, aggravated, and not in the least bit looking forward to the drive home, especially since now I had to stop on the way back to pick up my sewing machine. But, seeing as I hadn’t felt any wings sprout out of my back, thus enabling myself to fly home instead of drive, I undertook that task as well. (Though not with daisies and rainbows dancing over my head.)

It wasn’t any better, and in fact might have been worse. I got lost, lost, lost, lost. By the time I got home, I was pretty darn good at pulling over and looking at maps, reading road signs, and getting lost anyway.

When I finally got home and confessed to my disasters, Rundy grinned and said "Yep, Baptism by Fire! The only way you learn is when it gets burned into you!"

Yea, verily. But I wasn’t so cheerful about it.

Comments, questions? Write to Titi at purdyville@earthlink.net

Grafting Amateur
By Rundy

Note: This peice was originally published in Letters From A Silverware Thief. You can find other writing by Rundy at this website.

When we moved into this place there were three original apple trees of undetermined origin, a pear tree of also undetermined stock, and a concord grape vine. The three apple trees continue to plug along, producing fruit, or attempting to produce, every year. Harvest from the grape vine has been erratic as well, again due mostly to late frosts in spring and early frosts in fall. Most recently the grape vine was afflicted with black rot. I used this as an excuse to move the grape vine out of its old location, which wasn’t very good in my opinion. In the process of moving the grape vine I managed to get five plantable sections . . . I could have planted more sections, but five was enough to fill up the length where I was planting.

Then there is the pear tree. Of all the original stock on this property the pear tree has been the ultimate problem child. I don’t know what variety it is. Perhaps part of the problem is that the previous owner planted a pear type that isn’t meant to grow in this climate. In any case, this pear tree was small and rather uninspiring to begin with and in the many years that we’ve lived here it produced fruit only once . . . three pears if I remember right. Sometime shortly after that point it contracted either an infestation of some time of bug or else a disease because most of the tree promptly died. But, oddly enough, not all of it. One, and only one, branch of the pear tree remained alive. As a source of amusement, and an object lesson in hope I suppose, I left this sawed-down-one-branch-stump-of-a-pear-tree supported with wire to grow or die as it would.

The pear tree continued to live. Since it was very small I was content to let it struggle away–until now. The pear tree was planted smack up against the concord grape vine, right under the shadow of one of the apple trees (what the previous owners were thinking planting those three so close together I’ve no idea). Now that the concord grape vine was moved, the pear tree was the only thing left in this space I wanted opened up for something more useful. As the pear tree has never really produced a harvest and in its diminished state likely never would there wasn’t any good reason to keep the tree hogging space.

I could have just cut the tree down. But as I considered the idea a thought formed in my mind. Last year the big willow tree fell down and smashed several limbs on one of the apple trees. This past winter rabbits chewed all the bark off the twigs on the lowest limb. This pretty well
completely trashed the limb and I had resigned myself to cutting the limb off. Then the idea came to me: why not trim back all the ravaged twigs and graft various small portions of the good pear limb onto the apple tree?

For those of you who are not educated on this sort of thing, grafting pear onto apple is actually possible. You can actually cross graft several different types of fruit trees, but I don’t remember all of them. What inspired this idea in me is an article I read about someone who actually did graft a whole bunch of different fruits onto an apple tree. One limb produced one type of fruit and another limb produced another type, and so on.

I’ve never grafted before. The entire repertoire of my knowledge on this subject consists in what I’ve read and my skill . . . well, my skill is yet to be proved. In theory, and I suppose, in practice (at least once you’ve got the hang of it), the traditional basic fruit tree grafting is pretty easy. It’s done all the time. It’s what the fruit industry is built upon. All the fruit trees that grow the same type of apple are grafted scions. The general ease of this procedure being acknowledged, I think grafting onto a full grown tree is slightly harder, at least because working with a branch that is still attached to a tree is more awkward than working with a small bit of root stock.

No one has ever showed me how to graft and I’ve no real idea of how successful a first attempt generally is. However, I was game to try. The pear tree had to go, and the apple limb would end up sawed off if it wasn’t put to use, so I didn’t have much to lose.

You can buy special knives for grafting and special tape to cover up the graft joint. Then you can also buy stuff to put on the graft joint to help retain the moisture. They say any sharp knife should work and you can use electrician’s tape, so that is what I decided to do.

The first thing I did was sharpen my knife. Once I figured it was sharp enough I took all of my equipment outside to begin work.

It quickly became apparent that what looks pretty easy in the book isn’t quite so easy in reality. Being acquainted with Murphy’s Law I wasn’t surprised but it was still frustrating. There are several different methods you can use to graft but I was sticking to the easiest. In this method you cut both the root stock and the graft material at an angle and then place them together and bind them tight.

I learned a few things pretty quickly. First off, cutting two matching angles isn’t as easy as you might hope. Second, there is a reason you’re told not to use mature wood. Third, there is a right and a wrong way to use a knife when grafting. Take these three all together and yes, one of the first things I did was cut myself.

It happened while I was working on my first graft. I had chosen stock that was too thick and I was having difficulty cutting it and was attempting to correct the angle of my cut. I was holding the knife improperly due to my frustration in trying to get a correct angle to the cut. In the back of my mind I knew it was a very bad idea, but the more impatient part of my mind said I had everything under control and I would be careful and it would be only this once and–oops.

One thing that can be said is, the sharper a knife is the less it hurts when it cuts you. Ever notice that when you hit your finger with a hammer it hurts like all get out but if you accidentally cut yourself with a sharp piece of glass you can give yourself a really bad cut and scarcely notice? In the same manner I wasn’t initially sure if I had cut myself. I felt the blade make fast contact with the back of my finger and my instinctive thought was that, being a sharp blade, I had just cut myself. But it didn’t hurt, and on initial examination it looked as if I had just scraped the surface.

Something didn’t seem quite right so I took a closer look. Further examination showed that I was indeed cut. How badly was the next question. Could I just keep working or had I better go get something to put over the wound? Experience has taught me that for cuts that don’t hit a major artery you can often have a few seconds grace . . . somehow the blood sometimes doesn’t start leaking out right away, especially if it is a very clean cut. With this in mind I looked at the cut on my finger and saw that blood was just starting to come out. I decided it would not just be a few drops and I’d better get a band-aid to stem the flow.

I was down to the front door by the time my finger started bleeding in earnest. In the bathroom I washed off the initial blood, then wiped off more blood with a towel as I dried my finger. Soon as I had my finger dry I slapped on a band-aid. Then I went back out to work.

After cutting myself I recalled to mind the proper method for holding a knife when grafting. You have to hold the blade against your thumb. This gives you much better control and if it ever does slip you don’t end up cutting yourself. It is a little strange, but feels quite natural once you get the hang of it. I didn’t cut myself again, but I continued to bleed as I worked. The blood leaked out from around the band-aid and onto the adjoining finger and onto the tape I was using as well. Eventually it stopped.

The rest of the grafting went without mishap. How successful my efforts were only a few months time will tell. I suspect my chances are something like that of winning the lottery. After all, it was my first attempt. I got the hang of the cutting procedure a little bit but taping the two halves together never felt like it went right. For a successful graft you need the two pieces lined up precisely, and I always found that whenever I did this I ended up having my fingers exactly where I needed to put tape. So, things ended up slipping and I’d try to readjust. I’d tape and then wonder if things were still aligned right under the tape and generally think that I probably ought to laugh at myself.

The material I’ve read said it was good to apply wax to the cut to help retain moisture. After I had everything throughly taped up with electricians tape I wasn’t sure how wax was really going to help retain any more moisture. For a bit I considered just skipping that step, but then I decided to be a good little boy and do everything. Not having a chunk of wax I could melt I decided to make do with the supplies I had on hand. I got the stub of a candle used when the power was out and used that to drip wax onto the taped joints. Sad to say, it ended up looking rather pathetic and I don’t think the dripped wax added anything. Looking at my efforts, I can’t help but think that if a professional grafter came along he would have his laugh of the month looking at what I’ve done.

Most likely my attempt will end in abysmal failure. But it was worth the learning experience if nothing else. And, until the pear grafts shrivel up I can entertain the fantasy that it will actually work and I will have pear wood growing on an apple tree. That would really tickle me.

Yeah, dream on, Rundy.

Comments, questions? Write to Rundy at purdyville@earthlink.net

• Cadie(14) Writes about a winter walk
• Rundy(22) Writes about changing a light fixture

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Winter Walk
By Cadie

Today was one of those beautiful days when the sun is actually shining and the icicles are dripping. I can never stand to be cooped up in the house for too long, and it’s especially bad in winter, so despite the cold and the snow I go for walks outside as often as possible. Besides, such a day cannot be spent inside; the blue sky just begs me to come out!

The original plan was for me to go outside and take a walk in the woods, taking pictures along the way. As it turned out, it was quite a feat just to walk up our hill! The snow was very hard to walk through, because besides being deep, the top layer of it had frozen over.

You could almost walk on top of it. At first the snow broke apart like ice when I walked on it, but then as it got deeper, I’d sink down through the snow suddenly every now and again, all eighteen inches of it. I never knew when it was going to happen, and it became like a game to try to stay on top of the snow as long as I could. Every time I went down, there was a delightful crumbling, sinking sensation. Then you had to pull your feet out of the deep caves they had made, hoist yourself up onto the snow, and continue to clamber clumsily up the hill–until you fell through again.

The pattern of the snow on the hill to my left (our main hill splits down into two side hills as it goes down) caught my eye. The snow was draped elegantly over a long hump on the hill, and the trees down by the empty pond where I was cast dramatic shadows on the hill. I was going to go up and try to take a picture of it, but the snow seemed determined to keep me from getting up there. It yanked at my feet, pulling me this way and that.

Then, when I got to the crest of the hill, there was a queer sensation of feeling like I was on the verge of falling backward down the hill! I felt very high up, as if I was on a platform, and I had to balance precariously to take a picture. I tried to take a picture of the little tree to my right, but just as I was about to, the snow yanked one foot down, so I was holding the camera crooked. I thought it was all very funny; the snow seemed to have a mind of its own, and almost angry I made it up the hill. The challenge made it fun in one way. The hill seemed to be laying there imperiously, daring anyone to come across it. But after a while, the constant falling through the snow started seeming grating, like an alarm-clock continually going off just when you’re about to fall asleep.

I stopped and looked at the scene around me halfway up the hill. The sun was on the verge of disappearing behind the hill opposite us, which made everything look especially dramatic. On that hill there was a pattern of deep blue shadows interjecting into the whiteness of the hill; streaks and splotches of it in some spots, and settling more heavily in pools of shadow in other spots.

But our hill was being lit up by the sun, and it looked broad and majestic. All across it was a sea of ripples in it that the wind had made, in an ever-continuing pattern, and here and there were pools of pearly-looking snow that gleamed in the sun. (I wasn’t sure what made the snow look different there; maybe the snow starting to melt there?) It looked graceful and eloquent, following all of the curves of the hill in one broad expanse of rippling snow. In one spot on the hill it rose up and down in waves.

I never did take my walk up in the woods. But even with all the struggle and hassle it took just to get up the hill, I was not sorry I came out.

Comments, questions? Write to Cadie at purdyville@earthlink.net

How Many Does It Take to Change a Light Fixture?
By Rundy

Note: This peice was originally published on February 16th a Letters From A Silverware Thief. You can find other writing by Rundy at this website.

Changing a light fixture is supposed to be one of those simple easy things. How hard can it be? Well, in our defense, it depends on what light fixture you’re trying to replace, and what house you’re working in. In a very old house fixing anything is difficult, and sometimes it can seem downright impossible. Replacing a ceiling light fixture, in our case, falls into that category.

How many people does it take to change a light fixture? Insert your punch-line here. We could be the butt of many jokes, if you find humor in catastrophes. But–honestly–it isn’t an indication of our lack of ability that it takes three men to change a light fixture. It just shows the difficulties of electrical modifications in a house that is older than indoor plumbing.

So, you see, when we set about changing the ceiling fixture in the kitchen a two or so years back, things did not go well at all. One problem followed after another, involving the fact that the wiring had degraded so we were forced to rip a section out and . . . well, by the time we finished installing the new light fixture we had a gaping hole in the kitchen ceiling.

Yeah. Just for changing one light fixture. Talk about a simple little project turning into a big nightmare.

It was for this reason that Dad really didn’t want to replace the dining room ceiling light fixture. If replacing the kitchen light resulted in a huge hole in the kitchen ceiling, who knew what doing the dining room light might bring about?

With this boogey-man of possible catastrophe waiting for the unwary fixer-upper, the dining room went without a ceiling light for many years. We set up a small stand lamp on a book shelf and ate under its meager light, occasionally talking about how someone really ought to replace the dining room light. But it always seemed easier to eat in the bad light than to venture attempting to fix anything.

Then I decided I was sick and tired of eating in the dim light. Dim lighting is depressing. The long winter nights are bad enough–poor lighting can make them miserable. Night after night of this and I finally had enough. I decided I preferred a hole in the ceiling with some good light. Plus, visions of unmitigated disaster don’t cause me to pause like it does Dad. So I asked Dad if he cared if I replaced the dining room light.

He decided it was safer if he did it.

So, today we replaced the dining room light. Viewed against the background of the incident of replacing the kitchen light, today was a pretty good success. We didn’t end up with a gaping hole in the dining room ceiling–we have only a very small hole, that you might not even notice unless you look. (The ceiling plate covers up a lot.)

Does this success mean the project was easy? No. It took three of us three hours to mount the new lamp fixture. Lachlan ran about finding supplies and tools and generally holding things while Dad wired and I helped. Our ceiling has lath laid over with sheet rock–basically one ceiling laid on top of another–and the electrical fixture box is of old design as well. So we spent our time wrestling with a small hole in the ceiling whilst standing on the table. Getting a new-fangled lamp to mount onto old-fangled hardware is a taxing experience. It requires ingenuity and a good deal of trial and error. We took things down and compared them.
Then we put stuff back up, and found out that something wouldn’t work. So we took things back down again.

Meanwhile, both Dad and I are waiting with almost breathless dread, expecting something to go terribly wrong. Nothing went terribly wrong. It was with a sense of unbelief that we saw the light work when the circuit was switched on.

The dining room is now well lit, and only now can we truly begin to appreciate how badly lit it was before. It is much more pleasant. My only regret is that we didn’t do this sooner. But who could have known after the kitchen?

Comments, questions? Write to Rundy at purdyville@earthlink.net

• Rundy(22) Writes about blogs, and where you can read more Purdyville writing
• Titi(18) Writes about Deidre

Find the current issue of TWIP on the web at http://www.purdyville.com/twip/current.html
Find the archives of TWIP on the web at http://www.purdyville.com/twip/archive.html

What is a Blog?
By Rundy

Perhaps you know what a blog is. But then, maybe you don’t. Blogging of those up and coming things, in the online computer world, and if you aren’t into keeping up with new technology you might still be pretty well oblivious. If you don’t know what a blog is, you might wonder if it’s somehow a distant relative of a blob, or else if it is some type of socally dangerous activity.

No, not quite. I’ll admit that the word blog is a mutilation of the English language, and perhaps a harbinger of the decline of literature. It is certainly true that some people who write blogs might be classified as blobs, but that doesn’t really get to the heart of what blogs are, or why you should care.

I wanted to give you the dictionary definition of what a blog is, but apparently blog has not been in the language long enough for Merriam-Webster Online to carry a definition of the word. Instead, I found another non-offical definition which suffices:

A blog is basically a journal that is available on the web. The activity of updating a blog is "blogging" and someone who keeps a blog is a "blogger." Blogs are typically updated daily using software that allows people with little or no technical background to update and maintain the blog.

Postings on a blog are almost always arranged in chronological order with the most recent additions featured most prominently." (This found at http://www.matisse.net/files/glossary.html)

The above definition is concise and technically correct (though people argue over what exactly distinguishes a blog from other online postings), but is scarcely able to grasp the depth and breadth of what is out there in the online digital world. In my own mind, there are two things wrapped up in the idea of "blog." There is the technology behind blogging, and there are the blogs themselves.

The technology behing blogging is brilliant. Without trying to get into the details, the various different types of blogging software allow people (both techies and regular folks) to easily post information on the Internet, store it, organize it, and share it with the entire world. Being a writer who likes to store, organize, and share what I write, I can tell you this has been a great boon. The technical end of things can take care of themselves and I can devote more of my time to simply writing.

Blogs themselves now . . . well, that’s a different issue.

The first blogs to come out were basically collected links that were posted with some commentary. Mostly these first bloggers were people sharing what they found interesting on the internet. As the blogging world has expanded the types of blogs have expanded as well. Some people loudly proclaim that these other people aren’t blogging but rather writing online journals. Be that as it may, there are now probably more blogs of people writing their own creative (or not so creative) text, than the old link-content blogs.

Some people find this explosion of written content to be very exciting. However, as the general standard of writing in the world is not very high, this ease of publication means a lot of ignorant self-centered people now have a chance to fill up cyber-space with their ignorant and self-centered opinions.

This is not to say that all blogs are bad, or that there is no use for blogging. Quite the contrary. There are useful blogs, and there are interesting blogs. But technology hasn’t made people as a whole any better writers than they were before technology came along. Blogging is very useful, and for some it allows them to get their voice out where it can be heard. For the vast majority of bloggers out there, they are mostly talking to themselves.

Here in Purdyville we have done some experimentation with blogs. This is where blogs and blogging concern you. Yes, indeed, the creative writing talent around here has not been limited to TWIP. We have diversified. This wasn’t exactly deliberate, but as we each followed our various interests, the blogs sort of . . . came into existence. Mom has her gardening blog, then there is the family blog, our dinner blog, my blog, Cadie’s blog (but she isn’t writing in it), and Titi wants me to set her up a blog. For some time our TWIP readers have remained largely ignorant of this collection of written work, so I decided it was time to explain everything.

Where Are The Writers?
By Rundy

We haven’t dropped off the face of the earth. Some writers in Purdyville have moved on to other things. Others of us have simply, somehow, wandered into other places of writing and somewhat accidentally left you all behind. Part of this was because putting together an e-mail newsletter involves a bit of work (compiling is the real headache). When blogging technology arrived, it presented an easier way of publishing our writing. We no longer had to wait for other people to finish their writing–we could simply finish our own and send it out. This convenience and ease led us naturally to shift to the blogging form. For some time now blog posts have been stolen to make content for TWIP. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it seemed good to me to keep all our readers up to date on what is going on.

TWIP will continue to bring you a bit of unique content, so I encourage all our readers to stay tuned. However, it by no means is covering all of the wonderful prose that Purdyville is putting out. Those of you who enjoy reading what we write will be interested in knowing of the other sources now available for reading. Below is a list:

(1)Mom has been running a professional-looking gardening blog for over a year now. This provides a fairly steady stream of gardening-related writing. If you’re interested in seeing what is up you can go over to http://weblog.coldclimategardening.com/

(2)There is also a family blog, which is something like the twin of TWIP. It has only recently been started, and who knows if it will go anywhere. Mostly it is an attempt by Mom to collect various and disparate bits of family writing that pop up in electronic media all over the place. You will see stuff from other blogs appearing here. Posting is erratic. If you want to take a look at what you’ve been missing, go to http://www.purdyville.com/twip/blog/

(3)Then there is my blog. This is where all my writing has ended up. Technically, I don’t call it a blog, since I don’t update it often enough to be called that. I call it Letters From The Silverware Thief, and I update it fairly often. If you’re interested in what’s going on in my life, or just interested in my most wonderful writing, you can take a look at http://homefront.silverwarethief.com/ If you’re wondering why I’ve called it Letters From The Silverware Thief, read what is written here http://homefront.silverwarethief.com/about.html

(4)We also have a dinner blog. This is something of the brain child of Mom, another one of those really interesting ideas, which in reality requires just a little bit more work than a
nyone is willing to put into it. It is updated, sporadically, by Mom. For the curious, look at http://www.purdyville.com/kitchen/dinner/

I’ve also set Cadie up with a blog so that she can easily share her writing with those interested in reading. However, she is something of a techno-phobe and so far hasn’t touched it. I would like her to get comfortable using her blog so I didn’t have to handle all of her writing in the process of publication. However, she is still TWIP bound at the moment.

Titi wants me to set her up with a blog, but I’m not sure what that will contain, and I haven’t got around to doing it . . . yet.

What About Receiving blogs by e-mail?

So . . . all of this blogging has made things much easier for us writers in Purdyville, but for our readers, what about them? Our writing is all over the place, and how can you make sure you can read it all?

Well, you can bookmark the various blogs and check them out often. However, if you have a busy schedule, this probably isn’t practical. A more reasonable option is to sign up for e-mail notification when an entry is added to the blogs you are interested in. I have this option on my blog, which I strongly recommend you take advantage of.

But what if you want to continue receiving your reading material in your e-mail inbox? Currently, most blog software does not have the ability to send out every post as a full fledged e-mail list. However, I know someone people do not find it convenient to go onto the internet, or else simply prefer to receive their reading material in their e-mail inbox. As an experiment I am willing to try sending out my blog entries as e-mails to those who are interested. If you are interested in receiving my blogs into your e-mail box, write me at rundypurdy@earthlink.net and ask to be added to my blog list. Note: This is experimental, and if I find it doesn’t work out I will have to discontinue the feature.

Whether you choose to simply continue recieving TWIP or decide to start reading a blog or two, we hope you enjoy the writing from Purdyville!

Comments, questions? Write to Rundy at purdyville@earthlink.net

Life With Deidre
By Titi

Are you my little sister?

Deirdre and I have this game we play. It’s basically making small talk with a kid who’s almost 2. It’s called "Are you my little sister?" And Deirdre, being a kid who’s almost 2, says "Nooooooooo."

"Oh! Well, then, are you my little. . .porcupine?"

"No!" she says cheerfully.

"Then are you my little. . .orangatang?"

"Nooo!" She says, as though I was making a ridiculous statement, throwing back her head and dragging out the word.

"Well, are you my little. . .kangaroo?"

"No," she says in her squeaky little aren’t-I-cute-when-I-say-no? voice.

"Maybe you’re my little armadillo!"

"NO!" she yells.

"How about my little penguin?"

"No-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o–" Deirdre, in case you hadn’t noticed, knows 101 ways to say the word "no".

"Then are you my flamingo?"

"-o-o! Pang! Pang!" She stops off half way through her "no" and starts talking very earnestly at me, peering up into my face.

"Oh! Are you my little penguin?!"

"Pang!" In that satisfied, contented voice only Deirdre can conjure up.

"Oh, you’re my little penguin! Are you a nice penguin?"

"Nice!" Game over. Now we go back to whatever we were doing before. (You’ll note she never actually said yes, by the way.) Sometimes I guess what she is on the first try. Sometimes it takes forever for me to guess. Yesterday I had almost exhausted my list of exotic animals that I could think of when she decided she was a buffalo. I don’t think she has any idea whatsoever what a buffalo is, but she certainly decided that was what she was. I suppose she just listens to the words till she finds one that she likes. She’s always something different, too. But in reality, we all know what she is. She’s my little nut-case!

Tony-Tails!

Deirdre’s hair keeps getting longer and longer. Being the one in charge of haircuts, I made the executive decision that Deidre was going to grow her bangs out. This, of course, means that her bangs are usually in her eyes right about now. She has her own stubborn opinions about her hair. You brush the hair out of her eyes; she determinedly brushes the hair back in. You put a barrett in her hair, she pu-u-ulls it right out (along with a few hairs, and a sqinch-eyed look). The one agreement we can usually come to is—Tony Tails!!

The first couple of times I put them in, she wasn’t too sure about it. But, since it was universally decided they made her look cute, and she decided she liked being cute, she accepted them. It went like this: I, being the wonderful big sister that I was, put the ponytails into the squirming little girl. Then I said, "There, go show Lachlach! Go show Lachlach your ponytails!" So she doubtfully walked off to find Lachlach.

"Tony-tails." She said faintly, one hand on either ponytail.

"Tony-tails!" Skreched Lachlach, grinning hugely and pointing at her.

"Aren’t they cute, Lachlach?" I subtly prompt him.

"Yes! They’re very cute! Dear-duh looks very cute!"

"Cute!" Deirdre says quite firmly, obviously satisfied.

"Now go show Mommy!"

"Mommy!" And away she toddles to go show Mommy, and be properly admired by her. Once everyone had their turns to be able to shower praises on her, she pulled them out. Sigh.

But, she really does like them. Now when I put them in her hair, she likes to walk around the house, one hand flipping one pony-tail, the other hand flipping the other pony-tail singing "To-ny tails, To-ny tails!" with the goofiest grin you ever saw on her face.–TAP

Comments, questions? Write to Titi at purdyville@earthlink.net

• Arlan(20) Writes about birthdays
• Caleb(3) Writes about Deidre
• Evan(10) Writes about his garden
• Owen(6) Writes about the Summer Reading Program

Find the current issue of TWIP on the web at http://www.purdyville.com/twip/current.html

Many Happy Returns
By Arlan

At our house birthdays only come 14 times a year—and never when you need them, like January and February. You get the most birthdays when you need them least. Yes, in our case all those birthdays are of family members, which is a lot of family birthdays; but it is hardly enough birthdays to contain the birthday excitement.

There are certain Purdyville birthday traditions which are not strictly followed, but generally expected. One is that Grandma and Grandpa Purdy will come for birthdays. Another is blowing up balloons and keeping them out of the kitchen so Mom is buffered from the shock of their popping. Another is singing the Happy Birthday song in as many torturous ways as possible, all at once of course, which is probably a happy resignation to the degree of musical talent thus far evident in our family but could be just a twisted sense of humor. Some gifts are also obligatory; you would not lose money betting that at least one of the assorted packages contained home-made, ah, “bookmarks,’ and at least one other package will hold certificates redeemable for the substitutionary undertaking of a chore or, increasingly, the production of a treat.

Those are some of the traditions. There are others. On birthdays, we break out straws and drink in style; we deck the walls with signs of best wishes and family jokes and graffiti. Sometimes the graffiti gets on the gift-wrap, too, although lately that has given way to the refined decorative art of Talitha, one of the extraordinary sisters. Titi might also bear the blame for the latest tradition, but that depends on how you define it. It could be my fault, too, or somebody else whom history has forgotten.

This latest trend bears roots back to the very purpose of gift-wrapping itself. You wrap a gift so the gift itself will not be immediately apparent. Thus, if you have a person skilled in the art of package espionage, who can deduce the contents of a package with reasonable accuracy knowing only the giver of the gift and the wishlist of the recipient—to wit, the self-same dectective—gift wrap becomes inadequate. Counter-measures must be taken.

We first turned to rocks. What this indicates anthropologically about the primitive roots of our Purdyville society I cannot say; but I do know that unless very carefully secured, a rock is not a good counter-espionage device. I have seen through a great number of them, and cannot recall any success using them myself.

Sometime early on in the history of arcane packagery, humor became equally important as mystery. Thus you saw boxes stuffed with coal, rather than sytrofoam peanuts; or very small gifts in very large packages. Somehow I became known as the foremost perpetrator of such mischief. I don´t remember if there was in fact any even to warrant this association; but if there were, it would probably be something akin to my last great masterpiece.

The actual gift was the result of some amount of work, and I felt it was worthy of dramatic presentation. The victim—professional jargon for recipient—was my sister Cadie. I was short on time and not sure I could devise a worthy package of my prize until I hit on a brilliant idea; I put the gift in the bottom of a shoebox and laid on top of it a pair of sneakers long since deceased. If you had seen the look on Cadie´s face when she lifted the lid. . .

But I must remind you, that particular masterstroke is recent history. The retaliation for something I presumably did has been going on since well before then. One Christmas I got a gift from a relative concealed within so many layers of boxes and wrappers that it took a considerable amount of time to get through it all—and that trial was posed by a relative who had never suffered under my hand before. My reputation precedes me, and exceeds me.

I make mention of that event because I was the only one so blessed with such a shy present that year, and it indicates how the general tradition of nonstandard gift-wrapping has developed a definite focus on me. My most recent birthday has established that fact beyond doubt, I think, but to explain it, I must refer back to another birthday party.

I dislike snakes in general, but I cannot stand a snake by surprise. What do you think my siblings did, then, but procure a rubber snake for my birthday? And how do you imagine they wrapped it? Just laid it out straight and rolled it up in paper? That would be impossible. The snake came coiled up, and when it was stretched and relaxed it tended to writhe in an eerily snake-like fashion. So they put it in a box, tied it on a string, cut a hole in the box, and wrote on the outside that the present was to be obtained by pulling the string. Thus pulling the snake out. Stretchily. So when the pulling stopped, the writhing began.

A classic moment in Purdy history, I think.

My reaction must have been too good, because this year they went for new records. There was such an air of defiant excitement and daring in the air that I had to start guessing what my presents were. I have been trying to avoid that, because as I intimated before, my guessing tends to be too astute, and ruin all suspense. But they threw down the gauntlet.

One present was contained within a huge box, originally used to ship a computer monitor. I immediately wrote that off as a bluff, and all but dismissed the hints that such a box was required for the item within. Most curious was the way the presents were being spoken of, an odd twist on the possessive—“Evan´s’—that said something more than who the present was from. All or most of the presents were of one type. It was, I thought, an inference which would unravel the whole plot. And it almost did. One of the presents I could positively identify as having been constructed of paper machè wrapped over a balloon. I was sure of that because I once made a helmet using just such a method.

Helmet, I thought. Aha. Recently Lachlan and I made several suits of cardboard “armor’ (the exoskeleton of a gigantic robot, if you want the technical specification) for Evan, the many suits ensuring that more than one boy could get in on the action; and also recently, Titi made dramatic capes for all the little boys. At the time there was much jesting about who else needed a superhero cape, myself being one of the foremost candidates.

The pieces all added up. I was going to get some six-year-old´s fantasy for my twentieth birthday; some fantastical construct equal to my ego. My disappointment was only in that I had, once again, guessed ahead of time. My suspicions were confirmed when traces of paper-machè were evident on the edge of the table, fugitives from a clean up that was doubtless intended to purge all hints of my surprise. It is lonely being brilliant.

It is even more lonely when you think you are more brilliant than you really are. No one can deny me one thing: I was right about the balloon and paper machè. But it wasn´t a helmet; it was the head of a monster, an alien, the trophy from an imaginary hunting trip—playing the role of a piggy bank. Another box revealed an alligator, teeth on display and birds perched on the back, which flipped up to admit pencils. There was also a giraffe-esque pencil holder in a riotous medley of post-modern-abstractionist colors. There was a frog, who didn´t serve any purpose in parti
cular but got along quite well with my growing menagerie. At this point I shot a decidedly uncertain look at the massive box so recently dismissed as a red herring. What could be waiting within?

It retrospect, it seems wholly self-evident that my siblings, in their sudden fit of taxidermology, would not neglect the Tyrannus Nocturnus, that is to say, your common under-the-bed type of monster (of which we doubtless have plenty). It was a domestic nightmare, the beast that roams about at night consuming all those things you can´t find the next day. At its heart, it was a trash can. The utilitarian volume was comparable to a coffee can, but from this modest receptacle a huge monster had grown, complete with pot belly, spiked tail, and three eyes. His massive jaws made throwing something out a very final proposition indeed.

Another present turned out to be, under its tough, two-inch thick shell of reinforced wrapping paper, a hazy gelatinous ball, in which two lizards floated. Squeezing the ball caused all the liquid within to abruptly shift to one side, stretching the skin to transparency and magnifying the creatures within. The effect was of the lizards suddenly leaping out at you and clearly recalled the reptilian ambush of bygone birthdays. The lizards, though quite artificial, did appear to become animate if the ball was squeezed rhythmically.

Clearly, every effort was being made to test the limits of my endurance of the gross, the odd, and the startling. Please keep this in mind when I ask what kind of idiot would, under those conditions, stick his hand through the hole in the top of the last box to pull out the last present? I thought it entirely likely that I would be bitten by something; if not an actual beast, than at least something contrived to simulate biting. Or else it might be that mucousal substance that had turned up at other kids´ birthdays (only then, properly contained). Any sensible person would have turned the box upside down and shaken it, or attempted to open the box from any angle other than the one proscribed. Being me, I stuck my hand in.

It had died.
Whatever it was in there, I decided, it had been dead and preserved in some substance that kept the flesh in a permanent state of artificial half-rottedness, horribly soft but not naturally decayed, persevered by black science in its original whole.

It wound up being something totally artificial, of course, but nevertheless, if you ever start wondering what it will be like when the undead frogs arise to take over the world: I can show you.

I have already noticed my enthusiasm for balloons and straws decline as I slip into geezerly old age, but the thing I fear most about my next birthday is not the sags, the wrinkles, the lack of sufficient breath to extinguish the candles; it is the presents. What did I ever do to deserve this?–AJP

Comments, questions? Write to Arlan at purdyville@earthlink.net

All About Deirdre
By Caleb (age 3)

Deirdre’s very funny. Whenever I laugh, Deirdre laughs. Um, sometimes she pretends to run away from me and then runs back. ‘Cause she thinks it’s fun. She just plays with me pretty much. Deirdre runs after me and she tries to find me. And I hide again when she finds me. And Deirdre brings some toy soldiers to me and I get out the toys for her. And sometimes Deirdre gets out the toys herself. And sometimes she just plays with herself. She just makes some kinds of "Rah" noises because she pretends monsters are attacking. Deirdre’s my best friend. And that’s why I play with her a lot, and that’s why she gives me hugs a lot. I like the way she plays on the computer. But one thing I don’t like, is she can’t play Lego Racers in multiplayer. Most of the time Deirdre just sits in the computer game chair with me and just watches while I’m playing the computer game, like SimTunes, Lego Racers, and Re-Volt…(racing games). She’s been screaming while she’s happy, she goes "ah!" when she’s grinning. It’s good if she’s screaming when she’s happy. It’s basically good when she’s pretending Jo-Jo’s crying. Well, it’s basically good, Deirdre thinks it’s good. Jo-Jo’s just Deirdre’s baby doll. Deirdre likes to put Jo-Jo to bed. But now I want to talk about what Deirdre does with her rabbit. Deirdre likes to change her rabbit’s diaper! It doesn’t have a diaper in real-true life. She calls Jo-Jo "Go-Go". I think it’s silly! Deirdre tries to swing on the swingset with me. –CCP

Comments, questions? Write to Caleb at purdyville@earthlink.net

The following article was originally written 7/13/03–Ed.

Botanical Gardens
By Evan

Recently Owen and I made a pretend Baby Chick Botanical Garden. Originally we weren’t even going to make a botanical garden; originally what we were doing was playing a game where I was a big fat baby chick and Owen was trying to make me be not so fat. First Owen made me play tetherball, which was "Exercise-Ball" in our game. Every time one of us won, I lost 75 calories. And Owen was trying to make me lose 775 calories. After I won about 5 times, Owen made me ride my bike which was sort of like an exercise bike. First I got on it, and I said, "You can’t make me do it!" and Owen prodded me with a little stick to try to make me ride. I swerved around so Owen couldn’t prod me and then I stalled out. Then Owen started catching up to me and prodding me and I drove around slowly. After a while, I said, "175 calories are all gone now!" And then Owen got a good idea. He picked a really sweet honey flower and ran away. I started chasing after him really fast to get the honey flower, while Owen called, "Try to get the honey flower!" After I came up the driveway after chasing after Owen, I announced that 275 calories were gone because I’d went around the house so fast! I started to catch up with Owen and then I jumped off my bike and snatched up the flower and ate it. Owen just laughed. Besides, it only gave me 50 calories. And after that, Owen told me to get off my bike and we played a little bit more of Exercise-Ball until I turned into a very good-working, not fat, strong baby chick. And then I started to lean down and eat some honey-flowers, but Owen said, "Hey, you can’t eat those!" So then I waited till Owen was looking away and doing something else, and I started to lean down to eat some honey flowers! And then Owen turned around and put the things he was collecting in a container, and he saw me just about to eat it. Owen couldn’t understand how to teach me not to eat sweet things, so I gave him some advice. I told him that he should tell me some good things to eat and tell me that I could eat the sweet things only sometimes, so Owen did that.

And then we did some other stuff, and this is how it wound up turning into a botanical garden. Owen and I were going up to the woodchip pile. All the toys and everything were jumbled in a big pile and there were tools laying around. I picked up the rake, and I got onto the red pool. I waved my rake in the air, and said, "It’s going to rain!" in my baby chick voice, and Owen started saying it too. The air was misty with a cool breeze with lots of dark, stormy cloud moving in. It really felt like it was going to rain, with trees rustling like they do when it’s about to rain. (Although it didn’t actually rain.) After scuttling around the red pool and chanting, "It’s going to rain! It’s going to rain!" Owen asked if he could be a baby chick too, and I said yes he could. Us two, the two baby chicks, liked it when it was going to rain, so we chanted it very happily! And then we organized the stuff up and we raked paths. To make it more like
a botanical garden, I raked paths, and got bamboo, and put them in big buckets with rocks to support them. The next day I brought pot gardens and other little plants I had put in the other day. When Collin saw it, and I told him it was my botanical garden, he said something like, "A couple bamboo sticks and a lot of woodchips!" But the best part for me was how I imagined it!

Here’s what you’d see if you came to my Botanical Garden the way that I imagine it:

Let’s say you’re in a cart with a horse pulling it along. You’re going along a dirt road with streams running alongside it. You keep on going until you see a big mound of woodchips with a path going up it. You can hear the sound of really loud rushing water as you go up the woodchip mound. Once you’re almost at the top of the hill you are stopped by a monkey who tells you to pay one coin for admission, and he tells you to put your horse to one side of him, where all the other animals are, next to the hay. And he also points to a deep cave where you put your cart which has a path leading to it. There’s an arced wooden sign above you that says "Baby Chick Botanical Garden". The sign is covered with moss and vines and is drippy with water–it’s always cool and breezy there, and there’s always a lot of fog because of the ponds and because the temperature’s always right for it.

You come up the path, and then you turn off to one side, and there’s a big pool with a path going all around it. (This is a pool for bathing in. All the animals and birds that live there drink and bathe in it.) You keep on rolling along the path, pulling your cart to the cave the monkey showed you, and when you look back on the path you see that there’s a old rock passageway in the air, with water rushing across it. It had vines dangling off it, and the water had been running in it constantly so it was really waterworn. It’s attached to the sign, with two wooden posts and the monkey’s stand helping hold it up. When you first came up, you heard really loud rushing water, but you couldn’t see it because the sign was hiding it.

When you get to the cave, you put your cart in there. It’s slightly dark, but there’s a couple of candles hanging from the ceiling, and there’s lots of other carts there, too. The cave is dim and echoey with the sound of water dripping and you can hear the huge rushing of water rushing over the cave. You walk out back onto the woodchip path, and you keep on walking for a little ways until you get to two other pools. There’s 3 pools: one for drinking out of, one for saving, and one for bathing in. And there’s a path that goes in between the pools into a grove of exotic fruit trees. So you keep on going, and you get to a fun slide. It’s a huge slide that goes very quick, with a tree growing up next to it. You climb up the fun slide and you look around.

To the north, you see a tall and pointy, crumbly rock, like a mountain except not as big, with water rushing down either side. One side of the water going down the mountain races off to the the rock passageway, flows over the cave, and splashes into both the drinking and saving pool. The other side of the water runs parallel to the stone wall that covers the whole Botanical Garden, and does a slight arc over the path, rushing off into the air, and then falls into the bathing pool with lots of splashing. You notice that there’s holes in the bottom of each pool and water going into them. (The holes in the bottom of each pool goes into a tube up into the crusty hill, and the water comes up either side, but you can’t see the tubes.) Next to the crumbly mountain, there’s a tool holder and two wheelbarrows that hold fertilizer water guns.

Now you slide down the fun slide, whizzing very fast, and land with a bump on woodchips. You walk along, the only way you can go, until you get to some pot gardens with some extraordinary flowers, and sunflowers and sundrops are growing up along the stone wall. The wall is like a castle wall except lower down–they’re all very big rocks, and it’s almost like they’re glued together. And you look up, and you realize you’re right next to the big crumbly mountain. And you follow the path along, until you get to the grove of trees, looking at all the weird kind of trees, with weird kinds of fruits you’ve never seen before. And you hear all sorts of weird birds that are very loud and echoey, and you see a hummingbird go to one of the blossoms on one of the trees. You come to a bi-i-ig tree that’s been grafted so that it has all the fruits you can possibly cram on it! It has a lot of green and red fruits, and it has lots of other fruits on it.

You continue along the path, heading south, and you come to a clearing, which is like a huge sandbox, with huge mounds of different kinds of soil. This is the place where the Botanical Garden stores all their manure and their fertilizer. You look to the corner, toward the northeast, and you see a shed and pygmy goats eating weeds that were pulled up. The people that take care of the Botanical Garden dump all their weeds where the goats are, and they eat them up, and when they digest them they turn it into manure.

That’s all the things that you’d see if you were in my Botanical Garden! In real true life, these were the things I used: For the trees that were in the garden, I put bamboo in a bucket and I put heavy rocks in a bucket to make sure they wouldn’t fall over. And for the ponds, I took kiddie pools and placed them in the places I wanted to. And our slide was for the fun slide at one end of it, and I brought up tools for the tool rack. And towards the sandbox there was bamboo growing up, and those were the grove of trees, and I pretended the sandbox was a mound of different manures, where goats were, just like I said before. And the funny thing about it was I actually made it on a woodchip pile! And I even got a tourist, her name was Cadie! (Really truly it was just Cadie, she came with a camera, but she wasn’t taking pictures of us, just of clouds.) And she and the other kids ran around the pool, which was the path around the bathing pond in my imaginary one, and slid down the fun slide and bonked her head on the tools because she was too tall! And she said, "You bonk your head on this!" and I said, "Not us shorties!"

I really like my Baby Chick Botanical Garden, and I had a lot of fun with it! The way I imagined it was really good! (I wish I could go to a real Botanical Garden sometime!) –ESP

Comments, questions? Write to Evan at purdyville@earthlink.net

The following article was also written sometime in August–Ed.

Summer Reading Program
By Owen

When we go to the library, they have a Summer Reading Program. When you read 5 books, they give you a free book, and they do programs to watch.

One program there was a guy with a helicopter hat thing on him, and there was black things over a peanut butter and jelly jar to hide them. It was a magic show. (But the peanut butter and jelly weren’t in the same jar.) And also, what happened, is, he all suddenly made the peanut butter to turn to where the jelly was kept, and the jelly to turn where the peanut butter was kept, somehow. I liked it pretty much. Also, there was a big box with a doggy inside it, and the doggy liked kissing him! And he could jump through hoops! And he pretended they were flaming hoops. (It was just one hoop, though.) Also, there was a coloring book, and we thought there was 3 coloring books and three children, and the children were going wild! And one child kept picking up a balloon that she wasn’t supposed to! She was screwing up the show, and it was kind of funny. My dad thought it was funny, too. And also what he did, is we thought whoever was in the middle had the already colored-in coloring book. But then, when
we saw that one, the one guy in the middle didn’t have that already colored in book! And it kept on changing who got the already-colored in book! Evan said really truly all of them are colored in, just not in all one part. It’s so cool! And there was a 3-D pretend TV, and the dog all-suddenly jumped out of it when he opened it up. When the people did a drawing, Caleb won a flashlight! Caleb said he felt happy. We always write our names on a piece of paper in the first place, so when they pick out a name they get a prize! They always do a drawing at the end.

A different program was a music one. The first music that he did, I liked pretty much. He had little things, and there was big things that he whacked on that would make noises. And there would be a guy that would play on a guitar, too. And there would be a guy playing on a piano, I think. One song that he was playing was, it was "Shame, shame, shame, the Johnson boys, they raised from the ashes" or something like that. And then I remember the beautiful girl part, that I think was the face of the beautiful girl made them free, I think I heard that. Justy said it was actually, "The side[sight] of a pretty girl made them afraid." ‘Cause Evey said they were afraid to get married. They were scared of their own shadow. I didn’t really think it was a too good song, but one song it was really hard to follow along with. [For one version of the lyrics see http://www.nsknet.or.jp/~motoya/BG/T/The_Johnson_boys.html]

The first program was juggling, and he juggled flaming torches! I didn’t think the flame was really real, but it might’ve been. Justin said it was real. Collin said the guy kept pretending it was fake flame, but it wasn’t. He pretended to juggle behind his back, but he really truly didn’t! And then he really truly did.

I always like going to the programs pretty much. I like them because they do silly things. I liked the magic show one the best. It was really cool!–OTP

Comments, questions? Write to Owen at purdyville@earthlink.net

• Rundy(21) Writes about picking blackberries
• Collin(12) Writes about playing on the Gameboy
• Collin(12) Writes about playing with his brothers

Find the current issue of TWIP on the web at http://www.purdyville.com/twip/current.html

The following peice titled Blackberries, a Bear, and Bees was initially published on my blog (found at http://homefront.silverwarethief.com/) .–Rundy, TWIP Senior Editor.

Blackberries, a Bear, and Bees
By Rundy

The afternoon of the 17th Titi, Lachlan, Cadie, Collin, Evan, Justin, and myself went picking blackberries. K.D, a friend of ours a street down, has blackberries all over her back hill. She lets us go picking every year. To our amazement, she doesn’t even like blackberries herself.

Some parts of New York State are absolutely picturesque, and the view from K.D’s back hill is just that. After you’ve gone through her goat pasture and climbed over the fence, the mostly overgrown pasture goes up and up. If you look back as you climb you can see a broad valley spreading out below, and the hills ringing it on every side. Somehow, the trees on the hills manage to hide most of the roads and houses, so the land looks almost as uninhabited as the area might have been a hundred years ago.

Once the hill has finished rising it levels out to a large field that covers the top of the hill. From here you can stand and get a view of the sprawling vista. Though there is a road not too far below, and houses not much further beyond, the field on top of that hill feels like it is isolated out in the middle of nowhere. Standing in the middle of that field, it feels as if you are standing on top of the world. I find it a liberating and exhilarating feeling. Peaceful. Quiet. I like to think that when I get rich and famous I’ll be able to convince K.D to sell off the second half of her property so I can build up on top of the hill. (At the same time the other half of my brain is thinking about how outrageously expensive it would be to build way up on top of the hill and why on earth would I want to spend my money doing that?)

The year before last we picked a large amount of blackberries off the hill. If my memory serves me right, we took in a total of 72 cups in one trip. Compared to that, last year was an utter failure. The dry weather last year decimated the crop . . . there were only a few scraggly berries . . . nothing worth picking. This year we were hoping that with all the rain the blackberry crop would be very good. The sight of the first bushes quickly proved us right. The blackberries were large, fat, and plentiful. The initial signs were pointing to an even better harvest than the year of 72 cups.

But there was something else different about this year. As we were starting up the hill K.D called out that we should keep our eyes open for a bear. She said the people over on the other side of the hill had seen one moving through a few days ago.

It’s not every day there is a bear about. They are quite rare around here. Most likely the bear was feasting on the berries. And, most likely, we wouldn’t see hide nor hair of the creature. If the bear wasn’t long gone, the sound of us stamping and tromping up the hill would probably scare it off. Still, being an older brother, I thought it my duty to see how much fear and terror I might be able to milk out of the youngest kids present. Alas, Evan and Justin were too old to show much fear at the prospect of seeing a bear. Perhaps they were able to reason well enough to figure the bear would not stick around, or else they simply figured that big old Rundy would keep them safe. In either case, after a few suggestive jibes I realized I would not get anywhere and so gave the subject up.

Still–I’ll confess–deep down inside me I was hoping to see the bear. I thought it would be pretty neat.

We picked our way up through the field and went on into the woods. Picking blackberries in this house is a semi-competitive event. Somehow, I am the best blackberry picker. I say somehow because I don’t know why I hold this position. I’ve no secret trick or special skill and I’m always somewhat surprised when the picking is done and I’ve the most berries.

It is the unsaid goal of everyone to unseat Rundy from the position of most picked berries. I’ve gone three years without being bested, but they have time yet. Most of them are still young.

Going into the idea of getting the most berries picked is finding the best patch of berries. Nobody hogs a patch to themselves, and nobody leaves a patch unpicked while searching out for a better one, but eyes are always open for the next strategic move. In the field we all generally pick in the same area, but once we get up into the woods the blackberries are spread out all over the place, and the most efficient method of picking is for us to split up on either side of the trail and spread out, picking over as much an area as we can handle.

The general rule is to stay within shouting distance. The blackberries seem to go on forever, the thick patches spread out so that you are leap-frogging from one bunch to another, always going further. A person could wander on all day (so it seems), so we call out with a shout to one another to make sure no one has wandered too far off. If everyone were competent adults who could drive themselves home we could each wander off our own way and come home once our bucket was filled. As it is, we try to keep close enough together to share intelligence and not leave anyone too far behind.

As well as keeping tabs on where everyone else is located, the shouting is also used as an attempt to gauge how well the pickings are elsewhere on the hill. There is slight variation in the quality of picking at different locations, and there are a very few "super" spots, but I think most perceived differences in picking quality are only imagined. I only call out to other people on occasion to see how good their picking is, but I overhear all the shouting from other people. The dialogue is usually something like this:

"Hey!"

"What?"

"How good is it over there on your side of the trail?"

"Pretty good!"

"How good?"

"Well, it’s in patches, but the berries are really big!"

"Oh."

"What about you?"

"Mine’s good. I can’t pick fast enough."

Often the description offered by both berry pickers sounds better than the spot at which I am picking, but by now I’m nearly 100% certain that most of the difference is merely pyschological perception. With all the people that have acclaimed their great pickings–either the spots they have aren’t so much better than mine, or else they’re much worse pickers, because they never come back with the heaping buckets I would expect from the luscious patches of berries they were shouting about. So I keep to my patch until it is finished out, and if someone is hollering that they really want more help on their wonderful spot, I’ll move on over there next.

The worse thing for me about picking blackberries is finding the time to do it. The actual picking I find a grand old country kind of thing to do. It is fun and peaceful up on the hill picking. It feels like a time out in the wild–well, out in the woods, at least. There is something pleasant and uncomplicated about moving amongst the trees, walking in and out of the shadows. Only sometimes do I wish other people would stop shouting so much and let me pick in peace and quiet.

I said the worse thing about
picking blackerries is finding the time, because I must let something else slide if I am going to give up a weekend afternoon to pick. Lost time being the worst thing about blackberry picking might surprise some of you. What about the thorns, you say. Yes, well, there are a lot of thorns. If you have a delicate constitution it’s best not to go. It doesn’t bother me most of the time. I wear jeans, a long sleeved shirt, and a hat. I still get a couple of bloody scrapes on my legs, and a few on my arms, but mostly it is almost unnoticed scratches on my hands.

As far as thorns go, there are two things I really don’t like. The first is when a thorn sticks me good and deep, straight in, and then breaks off. This hurts, and the thorns can be hard to get out. Second, it annoys me very much when the blackberries are growing so thick that they tower over my head and catch my hat. When the thorns get this vigorous and thick they can bind up my hat and shirt so thoroughly that I feel quite impeded in my berry picking. I must stop what I’m doing and unwind and wrench myself free. This is all very hard on my clothing. My shirt was looking threadbare and my pants quite worn by the time we were finished that day.

This year the picking was going well for everyone. We were making slow progress up the hill because there was so many blackberries to pick, and some people were growing impatient. We usually make a full circuit up the hill and down again, but we were were going so slow some people were afraid we’d run out of time before we completed the trip. I wasn’t worried about this. I thought we had great pickings, and I was filling my bucket up so fast I thought I had a good chance of topping it off before we made it to the halfway point in our journey.

At the quarter mark everyone was called back to the trail so we could uniformly begin the next leg of the trip. From that point on everyone else was eager to quickly go up to the halfway point where they knew there was another good patch. But I found more berries near where we had all gathered. Everyone else hurried up, but I stayed where I was. There weren’t "heaps and heaps of berries," but I had steady picking, and the berries I picked were big and juicy. The thorns were also exceptionally thick, and this was frustrating me, but the berry size was filling up my bucket quickly, so I found it worth my while to keep fighting away. Everyone else was going up, but I thought it madness to move on when I could still see plenty more good picking. If they were in a hurry, let them hurry, I thought. I would catch up with them once my bucket was full. The bucket was filling up in good time.

I picked away until I heard some very distant shouting. Great, I thought, a bit irritated. Now they’re wondering why I didn’t want to rush along with them. So I kept picking. Let them come back if they wanted me, I decided. Or else they could wait until I had the last bit of my bucket topped off. I wasn’t going to extract myself and tromp the rest of the way up the hill to converse with them.

They came back a little closer and shouted again. I answered them. Titi called out again:

"Rundy, we need to talk!"

"Why!" I shouted back.

"We need to talk!"

"Then come down here!" I called out. I couldn’t figure out why on earth <i>we needed to talk.</i> It sounded like she wanted to call a committee and elect a leader to save us from some dire end. Either something terrible had happened, in which case I wished she would convey the news a little quicker, or else it was nothing important, and for that I didn’t want to be disturbed.

"Some people were stung by a bunch of bees and we need to go down!"

That made me pause. "A bunch of bees" and "stung" was a little too vague. She did not sound utterly panicked, so I quickly assumed that nothing horrible or irreparable had happened. But her damage assessment was none too clear. Except for my judgement of her tone, she could very well have been saying that someone was stung a hundred times, had swollen up terribly, and they had to rush the said person to the hospital immediately.

"Well, come down then," I said, working on my assumption that since she wasn’t screaming or crying the situation must have been fairly under control.

They came on down. Nobody sounded grieviously hurt, so I continued to hurriedly pick. I had just a few more berries to top of my bucket. Then I extracted myself from the thorns and joined them on the trail.

I got a quick recount of what had happened. They had stumbled upon a nest of ground wasps in amongst the blackberries and Lachlan and Evan both suffered several stings each. Lachlan (16) was clearly doing fine. Evan (10) was looking miserable, but he wasn’t swelling up, so I felt better. I still wanted them home as soon as possible so they could be doctored up, but we did not seem to have a crisis on our hands.

We went down to the van and drove home, a rather glum ending to the trip for most people, as I was the only one to have picked a full bucket. There was no bear. Instead we had found bees, and not made it more than halfway through the trip.

Once we were home, Titi, being something of a statitician, measured the berries that each person had picked. Then she found me and said I had picked 20 cups of black berries out of the total 54, and I had picked 6 cups more than the nearest person. Obviously one person was keeping precise tally. For one more day, and perhaps one more year, I was not humbled by some younger sibling.

Next summer is coming.

Comments, questions? Write to Rundy at purdyville@earthlink.net

[The following article didn't make it to my desk until around the time the last TWIP issue went out. I assume it must have been mis-placed or else lost among the wild bytes out there, because it is a really old article--Ed.]

Gameboy
By Collin

These last weeks I’ve been playing a lot on our Gameboy Advance that my uncle Rob gave us for Christmas, particularly because Mom said after a month she was going to limit our time on it. That’s fine by me, as long as I finish my game first. This isn’t an easy thing, considering it (the game) is supposed to last for months and months. This particular game I’m playing is called Zelda: Link to the Past, which I think is a pun, because the character you play is named Link. Ha, ha. I admit it, I’m no genius. Whenever I got really, really, stuck (about 7 or 6 times) I wouldn’t try everything I could think of a million times like you’re supposed to. Instead, I would get on the internet, go to www.google.com and type in Zelda/walk through. Yeah, I know, I can hear the yells of "Cheater! Cheater!" all the way from here.

I’ll start with my problems with this game: you can’t save except at the beginning of levels! I know why, really. It would have taken up a lot of memory to store all the saved games and also made it too easy, but still–think of it–you work your way through the level, and then you fight the boss, and lose! Then you have to do the whole level over. Well, not quite the whole level. You still get to keep your keys. The same for when you die on a hard puzzle: back to square one. It got pretty annoying. The real reason I got so flustered is because I felt under a deadline.

Now, for the good part. It’s a very big game, so it can last for a while. There are a lot of characters to talk to, and talking to them can be very important. For instance, you talk to the blacksmith, and he’ll say: "If my lost partner returns, I can temper your sword, but until then I can’t do anything." So, of course, you have to rescue his partner, and then you get a better swor
d. The thing I liked most about this game is it seems like a real world, not just a brainless "kill this guy, kill this guy, get this thing" game. For example, when you rescue the princess from the bad guy, he puts up signs saying "Wanted: For capturing Princess Zelda" with a picture of your face. Then, when you’re in the village, some people run away from you, others call the guards, and some, namely an old lady, say "Oh, Collin, someone’s been spreading rumors, saying you captured the princess, but I still trust you. The last (but not least) thing I liked about this game is all the items you can collect: 24 in total, not counting special items: shovel, flute, fire rod, bottle, net,and boomarang, to name a few. I also hope someone else I know gets this game so I can buy the cable and play multiplayer with them! There’s even more things to do in the multiplayer version, but I can’t play it without being connected to another player.—C.J.P.

Comments, questions? Write to Collin at purdyville@earthlink.net

A game I played with the little kids
By Collin

Our game started out with the little kids playing a game where two "sides" (teams) were Animal or Human. The Human side had to build houses for its people, barns or zoos for the animals they captured, and they had to feed, milk, etc. animals they captured. (With most of our games like this we pretend boy cows can give milk too because nobody wants to be a girl.) The Human side goal was to capture and tame all the animals, while the Animal side goal was to untame all the animals and kill the humans. The Animal side tried to escape or kill Human capturers, destroy the Human side buildings, and generally make themselves nuisances. Both sides could have a leader ( a Animal or Human with more strength ) if all its members voted for the same person. The leader would also receive a leader stick (a long weed).

I invented this game but I was clearing the table while they started it. I decided to join the game, so I put up signs saying that an artist was going to be for hire. After I finished my job I put up a new sign saying that an artist was for hire, but for the first time only the Animal side leader with his leader stick could find him . Then, I ran upstairs and grabbed my cape that Titi had made for me on my birth-day, its sort of like a rich travelers cloak: red satin on the inside, black on the outside with a mysterious hood. The little kids tried to find me, but I evaded them.

Then, finally, Evan, being the Animal side leader and carrying the leader stick crawled up the path mooing! He’d chosen to be a cow, of all things! But he was still the Animal side leader so I jumped in front of him. "What do you want?" I said in my shady character voice. He just stuttered and mooed, so I said " I will bring you a gift" and ran back to my hideout (where I had art supplies and a wooden sword), to make the "gift." I couldn’t think of anything so I decided I would lead him to my hideout instead. Not a very good gift, since my hideout was easy to find, but I made it more fun by slipping him a paper that said: follow the signs. Then I put down a path of signs with arrows on them to point the way.

After he was there, he and the other little kids wanted to know why it was a gift, so I told them the only time you could talk to the Artist was if he was in his hideout. I told them all the things you could do with the Artist: hire him to kill enemies, pay him to write and draw, or to steal things and demoralize people. For example, he could sneak into people’s (or animals’, of course) homes and tack up signs with skulls and warnings drawn on them, make things placed in queer places, and (this last one’s my favorite) drop signs with arrows on them leading through prickers only to end up with a sign that says Ha, Ha.

Unfortunately, they asked me to do none of this. They just sat around looking gloomy till I finally showered them with ideas of what to do. Then I decided to make some rules: 1. No barging around in the Artist’s house. 2. No wearing capes or treasure in the Artist’s house or he will snatch and keep them, but it’s all right to carry them. Justin took rule 1. too seriously. He would inchy squinchy all the way to and through my house. (My house because I was always the Artist) .

Evan had me draw him two signs a little bit later. One said: The Butcher, and the other said: Warning: all animals should stay undercover. (In our games Butchers loved to kill any animal, especially baby chicks!) Then he put them and some other signs that were colored red all along part of the path. Evan, being the Butcher, patrolled all along his path until he was killed by Owen and Justin. Owen was being the Animal side leader and Justin was being a bounty hunter hired by Owen. (In our games bounty hunters were people who could be hired to kill or steal.)

After Evan had left to be a Butcher, I had put up Closed signs at my home and pretended the Artist was on vacation. The new character I chose to be was the bird that had carried the Artist to his vacation and had been rewarded with a sword. I came flying up just in time to see the Butcher die. As he died, he dropped an egg that hatched into the new Evan: a bird. I gave him to Owen to raise. Once he was big enough I taught him to fly, and he flew off to make a nest out of hay. (It was really big.) I got tired of being a bird, so I pretended to be the pack-up man and packed up the Artist’s place.

After that I decided to be a mysterious Ninja who you only saw if he was being hired to kill you. I was going to accomplish this by having Caleb be my messenger. But as soon as I picked my hideout–a great place on a woodpile where I could see everybody but they couldn’t see me–it was time for the little kids to go to bed! Ah, well. That was a really fun game.-C.J.P.

Comments, questions? Write to Collin at purdyville@earthlink.net

• Titi(18) Writes about a morning in Purdyville
• Rundy(21) Writes about pruning

Find the current issue of TWIP on the web at http://www.purdyville.com/twip/current.html

Both of the following peices were written earlier this year. In the case of "A Hard Day" it was initially published on my blog (found at http://homefront.silverwarethief.com/) in April. The writings are included here because of their interest value to TWIP’s general readership.–Rundy, TWIP Senior Editor.

Just A Day
By Titi

Last night was library night. Mom, Collin, Evan, Justin, Owen and Caleb went to the library. Dad went to bed. Teman was on his computer. Rundy, Arlie and Lachlan disappeared somewhere upstairs. So Cadie and I (who were washing the supper dishes) got stuck with Deirdre the Great. Deirdre the Great, who was rapidly getting tired, and had a cold. At first she was content to pull all of the cups out of the cup cabinet, and stack them, and pretend to drink out of them. Soon she got a lot more whiny, but Cadie and I refused to stop washing to attend to the needs of her royal highness. So every time she got almost unbearable, we would start singing some nursery rhyme, which always makes her thoroughly forget what she was whining about. There’s nothing more amusing than watching a little one-year-old (little enough that, after climbing up on the stools to reach the kitchen table, only her head shows) hanging on to the kitchen table with one hand and doing "The Eensy Weensy Spider" hand motions with the other hand. Just one little hand, and one little head, singing the Eensy Weensy Spider! Of course, I always play a music CD while I wash the dishes, and Watermarks was not exactly singing the Eensy Weensy Spider, so it wasn’t really very musical with two totally different songs being sung at the same time. And then the phone rang, and of course no one was around to answer it but us. I went for the phone, Cadie went for the CD player. (Lots of times when Deirdre hears the phone ring or sees someone pick it up, she starts saying "Hewwo? Hewwo?") It was our uncle Nate, who wanted to know if our chicks had come yet. (If he had read his email, he would have known that they came this past Monday.) So he thinks he will come down this Sunday.

We turned on the CD player again, sang a few more songs to the increasingly exhausted Deirdre, and the phone rang again! I went for the phone, Cadie went for the CD player. This time it was Marianne, and she had read her email, and she and her family want to come down on Saturday! It’s amazing how a batch of very cute chicks will draw the visitors.

This morning I got stuck with Deirdre again, because Teman and Dad went to work, Rundy went on his morning bike ride, Mom went back to bed, and no one else was up. So I put her in her high chair and sat her at the table like a Big Girl, which is very important. We had plain, bite-sized shredded wheat with raisins and milk. First Deirdre drank all the milk out of her bowl (half of it went down her front). Then she sorted between shredded wheat and raisins (shredded wheat goes on the table, you eat the raisins). Then she decided that everything nutritionally important, or at least that tasted good, had been eaten, and the shredded wheat was obviously something to play with. She grabbed someone else’s used bowl and began transferring her half-soggy building blocks from one bowl to another. Then she got a really brilliant idea!! She started climbing out of her chair, even though she was strapped in. Titi vetoed the idea. Deirdre became heart-broken, and she was never going to recover. Titi didn’t care, and told her to knock it off. Bummer. Failing at getting what she wanted her own way, she resorted to actually asking for help. You point at what you want (the cereal box, just out of reach), and repeatedly say "uuh? uuh? uuh? uuh?" until someone gets it for you. Then you say "Thank You" by saying "huuhhhhhh!" with a very satisfied expression on your face. I thought she wanted to look at the back of the cereal box, like she has other days, and like all of her role models (Caleb through Evan) do. Instead she plunged her hand into the box and pulled out a fistful of shredded wheat, and dumped them into the "somebody else’s" bowl. Seeing she obviously never intended to actually eat them, I refused to let her take any more.

Then I got her down, and in the time it took me to get a washcloth she managed to wiggle out of her straps and turn around, holding on to the back of the high chair. This position is known as "The Lookout Tower on the Top of the Universe" and is so enjoyable she almost didn’t want to get down into my arms.

The rest of her morning was spent doing other daring things: trying to help Titi type (one fingered typing is very cool; Deirdre considers herself an expert), pushing chairs around (Mighty and Very Clever Deirdre), and reading books with Justin, who had gotten up. Reading is also a Highly Esteemed thing. Deirdre rarely rips newspapers on purpose. She sits very importantly on the couch and seriously reads The Wall Street Journal. While it’s upside down.

She loves any kind of chasing game, and the louder you scream the more she likes to chase you. (What, you thought we chased her? Ha ha ha. Deirdre chases everybody!) In fact, if you forget your role, she will politely remind you by screaming. And if you do properly scream, she decides it’s soo much fun she simply must join in.

And just about the only time she is quiet, paradoxically, is when she is saying "No." She figured that she could quite clearly tell someone she doesn’t want something without saying a word, and she loves this new-found power. A silent shake of her head, and everything stops! Almost. Every time she sees me coming with a tissue to wipe her nose, frantic head-shaking ensues. Unfortunately, it never works, and her nose always get wiped.

She like playing with the refrigerator magnets, especially the ones that have the photos of all us kids as babies. She likes clapping her hands, and the words "roll over." She is completely convinced that she is the Most Cleverest Person in the Whole Wide World. After all, she can eat with silverware, can’t she? What more do you need?

Comments, questions? Write to Titi at purdyville@earthlink.net

A Hard Day
By Rundy

While pruning the apple trees this spring I noticed extensive bark damage on two trees, similar to damage I saw on the third apple tree last year. Since the problem was mostly located on a single tree last year, I simply removed the affected bark and took a wait-and-see attitude. That was probably not a good idea. It was clear this year that the infestation had spread.

The damage was caused by a bug–that much was clear from my observation. There were little round entry holes in the effected portions of the bark, and when I stripped off the dead bark I found gnawed tunnels along the branches, and little holes in the limbs which held white larvae. A bug. A pest. But what pest was this?

To find the answer I had to do a bit of research. I had no idea what the name of my pest was, but I searched the Internet (via Google, of course,) for "Apple tree pests" and then started to wade through the results. The initial search results brought up nothing close to my problem. Then I came upon the Ministry of Agriculture, Food & Fisheries for British Columbia. The site had a long list of apple tree pests. I scanned the list, reading the various names and won
dering if I would have to click on every one to find what I wanted. Near the bottom of the list was a pest named Shothole Borer. Descriptive name, and it sounded like my beast.

I clicked on the link and was immediately greeted with pictures that looked just like my problem. The page gave a concise description of the bug, its habits, and how to control it. The information confirmed my worst fears. The most effective way to control Shothole Borers was to cut off the affected wood, and repeated attacks by heavy populations would kill healthy trees.

When I saw the damage done to the trees I already subconsciously feared these very facts. I had hoped that somehow the information I found would tell me everything was okay and I had nothing to worry about. Hah. The dreadful premonition was right. I had a major catastrophe on my hands.

I still didn’t want to admit to the facts. I reasoned to myself that since I stripped off all the affected bark, perhaps I had contained the problem and I wouldn’t have to go lopping off major limbs. Perhaps because I subconsciously realized the stupidity of that logic, I dragged Dad outside to get his verdict on the case.

Dad was as dismayed as I to see the damage wrought on the trees, but he was firm in his verdict. Cut off all the affected wood, he said, and burn it. This was the best hope, and even then, the trees might continue to succumb.

This was news I didn’t want to hear, but it was the truth. Coming to grips with these facts required a great deal of mental readjustment. The trees are my babies. I have worked years, pruning and caring for them in the hopes of many wonderful harvests. And now I was going to turn around and cruelly saw off major limbs? The trees would be disfigured for the rest of their lives. How many apples lost in one year? A hundred? Then make that a thousand for ten years.

I stared at the apple trees, and thought about shearing the limbs off. It was both terrible, and not as bad as it could be. I only had to take one minor limb from the middle apple tree. I had to remove one major and one minor limb from both of the other trees. Crushing yes, but I thought about losing all three of the trees entirely. What is the loss of one fifth of the harvest when everything could be lost instead? I considered this, and firmed my resolve to do what was required.

Once I came to the decision in my own mind, there was no point in putting off the action. I climbed into the trees and removed the smaller limbs with a hand saw. I brought out the chainsaw to execute the major limbs. It was all quick and ruthless.

Then it was cleanup time. I dragged the large limbs up the hill to the burn pile. All the twigs from the spring pruning I raked up and carted by wheelbarrow to the burn pile.

I’m still in mental shock, I think. Or else I’ve truly gotten over it, and things don’t feel so bad anymore. How do you know the difference? The trees don’t look so very bad. Where the limbs were removed I see an empty spot. I suppose they don’t look too unbalanced. Maybe someone who hadn’t seen the trees before the surgery wouldn’t see anything amiss. But I still see.

The cuts were clean. All the refuse was cleaned up. I hope the trees heal.

Comments, questions? Write to Rundy at purdyville@earthlink.net

• Arlan(19) Writes about his trip to NYC
• Rundy(21) Writes about Calf Hunting
• Rundy(21) Brings prolegomenon to The Word Corner

Find the current issue of TWIP on the web at http://www.purdyville.com/twip/current.html

Early this semester Arlan took a trip down to NYC for his art class. I’ve converted his report back into an article for your enjoyment.–Rundy, TWIP Senior Editor.

My Trip To NYC
By Arlan

Recently I took a trip down to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City for an art class. I’ve been down there once before, on the subway and up in the Statue of Liberty and the ill-fated Towers, but that was years ago so my memories are imperfect. I do remember getting a headache, although the Statue and the Towers and the ferry ride figure more prominently in my recollections.

We were supposed to leave at 6:00 AM, but he bus was late picking us up. That was a good thing because I might have missed it if it wasn’t. I didn’t want to get up too early and be frogging around in the cold and the dark with nothing to do and no sleep, but I cut it way to close.

The trip down seemed surreal. The bus seemed as wide as our bathroom and as long as our house– and taller. If you had moved me horizontally from the bus into the other lane, my heels wouldn’t have hit the car underneath. I was amazed when we got under a 13′ bridge.

Being that high up made you feel like you were going roughly 20 mph slower than you really were, and the windows were treated in such a way that they mirrored the interior of the bus—actually not so much the interior as the outside surroundings on the opposite side. In the dark it was often very hard to tell if what I saw out my window was really there or if it was on the other side of the bus.

For most of the trip we were heading south and east, going over hills–mountains, I guess–so there were a lot of beautiful scenes with sunrises and cliffs. So many cool cliffs. . .one time we went over a bridge so tall that it was above another tall train trestle.

The city itself snuck up on me. The closer we got the more huge developments we passed, but consistent development sort of sprung up on one side of an underpass. All of a sudden it was there. "Metropolis" doesn’t really describe a city like that. It’s really a world-city, a cosmopolis. You don’t feel like you’re in a city because the city is the universe. You identify your location by neighborhood or something because to think of yourself as living in NYC is meaningless. NYC is everything.

I was looking for the skyscrapers, but they surprised me, too. I didn’t see any tall buildings–I just noticed that the far distant horizon was blocky. I was looking for buildings and I saw pointy hills. Now I know why it bothers NYC people so much to have the Twin Towers gone–it’s like removing a hillside from your horizon.

All things considered, I would say the traffic in the city was good. Our first standstills occurred miles out–at least an hour from the museum—but generally we were moving along OK. The teacher didn’t think the driver was aggressive enough and didn’t like the route he took (we went down through Pennsylvania–later somebody said they have higher speed limits that way), but I wouldn’t complain. It seemed to me that he stuck his nose into every space he could without getting smacked.

We went through the Lincoln tunnel, which was totally boring except for the thought that not only were we underground, we were underwater, too. Then we hit downtown. It was like coming out of a cave and finding yourself in a ravine–buildings everywhere, hemming you in, trapping you on the street. It made you hope it wouldn’t rain for fear of flash-floods. I couldn’t believe how long we maneuvered through these streets–I was sure we were being taken on a tour of downtown.

Finally we got to the museum. We had to have our bags checked, but I guess they were only looking for big bombs because I surely could have hidden something in the bottom of my sack that they wouldn’t have seen. At least, not the guy who looked in. I don’t know what they had hidden in the walls. The place was crawling with security.

When we went upstairs I felt a little queasy. There was an incredible amount of vibration–primarily up and down the range of audible sound, but there was something I thought was the subway that made the floor pulse(the teacher thought it was related to the renovations, which makes more sense–but it felt like a train passing underground). I think the air bothered me too, in some way. At any rate I was nurturing a headache all afternoon.

We were supposed to go to the daVinci exhibit and copy one of his drawings, but it turned out that you weren’t allowed to sketch in that part of the museum. Some of my classmates, lifelong New Yorkers or simply more brazen, tried in anyway (in some cases repeatedly), but I didn’t want to get anybody mad at me. At about this point the group dispersed and I hardly saw anyone till we left.

After my first tour of the daVinci exhibit I had to go eat, because I had only gotten half of my breakfast. I found the cafeteria all right and had plenty packed, so that was all right. But I really felt like a country idiot. There were two different signs, one for the public cafeteria and one for the restaurant. I thought I was in the cafeteria, but then I saw a waiter picking up a tip. So I forced myself to ask him if I was eating in the right place. I guess I was, but I felt obliged to leave a tip anyway. Only I didn’t buy anything, and I couldn’t remember the tipping rate anyway. So I left two dollars. I know that wouldn’t be an acceptable tip if I had been in a restaurant, but I didn’t buy anything and I didn’t make a mess, so I figured it was a big enough percent of nothing.

I went back to the daVinci to try to memorize my assignment and then wandered around looking for a place to draw. I finally found a spot, after drifting through countless exhibits. It was a relatively quite spot with some benches and fountains. I had a print-out from the web of the daVinci sketch I was doing and I pretty much did my initial sketch off that.

It was hard to do anything all day long. I was pretty much in shock from the moment I got on the bus until the moment I got off. It was an experience too radically different from anything I’d done before for me to be able to do anything but cope with it. I couldn’t really appreciate anything in the museum because it was just too overwhelming. I couldn’t afford to be amazed by the fantastic paintings or I would have swooned. I kind of walked through the museum mentally saying, "Yep, there’s another priceless treasure." I couldn’t think about the object any more than that because there was something else unbelievably old around the next corner.

It was hard to remember that the stuff was old. A lot of things were no doubt corroded or faded with age, but since it was well kept-up it looked like the original artist had intended for the piece to look exactly as it did.

When you’re faced with paintings where you cannot see the brush strokes, stones originally cut and stacked in ancient Egypt, and all those impossibly old and well-crafted things, you can’t deal with the reality. You just have to accept it, without really thinking about the guy who made it, how he made it, what he did with it, what other people in his day thought of it–it’s too much. You just accept it as is, just like all the everyday things in life today that, in reality, have an incredible amount of work put into them. You don’t think about it, you just accept it, and that kind of takes the fun out of a museum where you can’t touch or use anything. Touring the museum become
s little different than walking around on your daily life, not interacting with or contemplating the things around you.

But it still was different. Despite the overwhelmingness of it all, and the very limited extent with which one could interact with the displays, it was a fascinating experience. I had all day there and I couldn’t manage to tour all the galleries. It was too much.

One of the ones I did spend some time on was the "Arms & Armor." Even that I couldn’t do justice to, but it was cool to look at the suits of armor and imagine how heavy it would be, and why you would want to wear such a thing, and how you would bear any weight if it would keep you from getting killed. There wasn’t enough of that stuff. Too many variants of full-body suit armor and not enough varieties of real swords (fencing swords don’t count).

In late afternoon I was walking off somewhere and one of the security guys told me I had to check my bag. It was the exact same backpack I’d been carrying all day long, but for some reason this one guy wanted me to leave it with the luggage claim. In the end I just went a different way. That was the closest I got to causing a terror alert.

I thought I would be bored all afternoon long, but I wound up feeling like there was too much to do and not enough time to do it. That didn’t stop me from being in a hurry to leave, since the building was giving me a headache. The bus was supposed to arrive at 5:45, the museum closed at5:30, and the galleries closed at 5:20. As soon as they started to warn that the museum was going to close I started leave. It was a long process, not so much because of the checkout as simply because of the size of the museum.

But I did get out, and it was good for my head, except that it was cold and windy and the bus was good and late. I don’t mind cold very much if I can keep moving, but I was staying put to keep the frigid wind off of someone in a wheelchair. It must have worked since she said she was fine while thirst of us (her helpers were also blocking the wind) were freezing. Then I tried going up and down the stairs to stay warm, which warmed up my legs just fine but made my headache worse.

Eventually the bus arrived and we piled on. I finished off my packed food and dozed for a while, but as we were leaving the bus stopped at some shopping plaza (we were never told why) and I did some reading homework. I didn’t have a problem reading or dozing on the bus, although the constant talking kept me from ever really sleeping.

It was a fantastic trip in the sense that it seemed like a fantasy. Getting up at five thirty, riding through a picturesque landscape into the sunrise, and then into a landscape where natural features dot the landscape the way man-made features do here, through constructions going higher and lower than could be believed, walking amidst things whose creators have died in the distant past–it was fantastic.

The fantastical idea of living in a castle has appealed to me, but in reality castles tended to be cold and dirty. It was about the same with NYC. I loved the unbelievable, incredible sights, but I’d never want to live there. Ever.

Comments, questions? Write to Arlan at purdyville@earthlink.net

Calf Hunting
By Rundy

Last Friday afternoon Lachlan walked into the den holding the telephone in one hand.

"Are you available to work for Mr. P this afternoon?"

I looked at him. It already was the afternoon, and I was in the middle of editing work. I don’t like interruptions in my writing time, and even when I’m not writing I don’t like unscheduled odd jobs dropped into my lap. I tried to think of a polite way to decline, but then had the thought that the job in question might not be the normal odd job. Mr. P doesn’t normally call us up on a moment’s notice and ask if we are available right then.

I checked my desire to decline and said, "It depends on how desperate the work is."

The job was urgent.

Mr. P is a small time beef farmer who lives down the street. Early spring is birthing time for cattle and Mr. P’s first calf came while he was recovering from surgery. The first he heard of this was when he came home from the hospital. As second hand stories from neighbors are wont, the information he had was confused.

The story went something like this: The donkeys from further up the street had escaped and taken flight down the road. One neighbor claimed to have seen the two donkeys chasing the calf down the side of the road. Someone else saw the calf lying in the ditch at the side of the road. It was now after one in the afternoon, and there were no calf sightings since yesterday.

How the calf ended up being (supposedly) chased by donkeys is conjecture, but Mr. P thought the donkeys running along the road probably spooked the calf, which then bolted through the fence and took off town the road in terror. Where the calf was now he couldn’t guess. Since the people who sighted the calf said it was the same dingy brown as dead grass the creature could be hiding anywhere. It was important for the calf to turn up before it starved, died from exposure, or was discovered by the coyotes.

Mr. P is retired, a tall big boned man now small time farming because he enjoys it. He has led a rough life, and for years one of his feet has troubled him because of serious injuries suffered earlier in life. When I heard that he had come back from surgery I guessed that he had undergone an operation to deal with the problems in his foot. This was not the case. When Lachlan and I met him at the side of the road he had a piece of cloth gauze taped firmly over his left eye.

I was a little taken aback, and tried to hide it. Cataract surgery, was my first thought. But wasn’t cataract surgery a minor affair? Why did he need his eye bandaged shut if it was only cataract surgery? My mind then leapt to other gruesome possibilities. Had a splinter of wood gouged his eye? Or had a flying piece of metal struck him in one of the most unguarded portions of human the anatomy?

At the first polite moment I asked him what had happened to his eye.

"Cataract surgery," he said, and then went on to explain the unpleasant details.

What was initially just simple cataract surgery had gone bad. The cause was his eye–scarred from ancient head injuries. Instead of leaving it at that, Mr. P went on. What was supposed to be a twenty-minute operation had turned into a two hour procedure, he said, with him lying on the table, his eye all opened up while they tried to fix him. As if that wasn’t enough to create a revolting mental picture, he went on to describe how the scar tissue on his eye had made it difficult to remove the lens. The doctor was unable to extract the lens in one clean cut and was forced to extract it using many small cuts–"Like a can opener cutting off the lid of a can" Mr. P said.

Just wonderful. I can stomach many things that make other people queasy, but talking about eyeball dissection is one thing I’d rather avoid.

Mr. P continued. This took a lot of time, he said, and things were starting to get difficult because of all the blood. The doctor had trouble attaching the new lens due to the problem with scar damage. After much effort the doctor felt confident he had the new lens firmly attached to the eye.

The story didn’t end there. Mr. P went home and went to bed only to wake up the next day with terrible pain in his eye. In excruciating pain, he returned to the doctor only to learn that the lens had come detached and fallen back into his eye.

This was beginning to sound like a horror story. A lens falling back into an eyeball? It sounded like something worth screaming about. It sounded like the end of his eye.

Somehow, they managed to reattach the lens. Further difficulties came when the pressure in Mr. P’s eye rose too high. They gave him medication and drain some of the fluid from his eyeball. Then the pressure went too low, and there was the danger that the back of his eyeball would suck forward.

At this point I had heard quite enough about cataract surgery. I was very glad I could not see his eyeball, and, frankly, I just wanted to get on with finding the calf. I thought it remarkable that he was holding up so well considering it seemed possible he would never see out of his left eye again.

Leaving Mr. P at the edge of the road, Mrs. P, Lachlan, and myself began the search. It was clear from the start that nobody had even the faintest idea of the calf’s location. The ditches along the road searched before Lachlan and I arrived, and now we were supposed to fan out across the swampy ground leading down to the brook. If we didn’t find the calf there Lachlan and I were supposed to go up to the other side of the road and check the pines above the field.

This all seemed unlikely to have any success. The calf was no more than a few days old, and I couldn’t imagine that it had traveled very far, terrified or not. There were no good hoof tracks to show where the calf had left the road, and if it wasn’t lying in the ditch somewhere along the road, I doubted it was anywhere. But I kept my opinions to myself and crossed the swamp, checking every clump of brush or grass. What could have been very difficult turned out easy because the heavy winter snow had flattened all the undergrowth. The March melt was only recently finished, and no fresh greenery was up, so we had the clearest view of the land anyone would have all year.

We reached the brook with no sign of the calf. The first possible location was gone. Next Lachlan and I searched the two stands of pine trees across the road. We thought this was foolish because if the calf was going to hide in the pines it had to climb an embankment and cross a field. Highly unlikely, but when it is a $500 calf missing no corner can go unexamined. We dutifully combed through the bramble among the pines and found nothing.

From the pines we moved to the forest behind Mr. P’s house and circled back down to the road. Then we followed the fence line around the cow pasture. Still nothing. Next, we went north up the road and checked among the blue berry bushes of a U-pick. Not a sign of the missing calf, so we went south to the other side of the farm and began to systematically check the hedgerows around the fields, hunting for any sign of the creature.

By the time Mr. P decided we were so far from his farm that the calf couldn’t possibly be any further afield, we had spent nearly three hours tromping cross-country. With no more leads to follow, Mr. P called off the search. He was going to have Lachlan and myself help him retie some tarps back over his stacks of round bales, but I begged off and let Lachlan do it alone. Israel was supposed to come over to our house after work and I wanted to be there to greet him.

Lachlan came home with a little more information to add to the story.

The elderly lady who spotted the calf last had called Mr. P. Apparently, she had been driving home sometime after dark the night before and spotted the calf sitting at the side of the road. She had recently undergone foot surgery and couldn’t go after the calf herself, so she went home and called the nearest neighbor. When he went out the calf was gone and his flashlight was too weak to search the brush. The neighbor found a better light, but when he came back and looked there was no sign of the calf.

Based on this new information one last search was launched, but with no success.

It is my suspicion that the calf was snatched. It was last seen near the road, and to disappear so suddenly is suspicious. Someone could have easily spotted the calf, stopped, and tossed it in the back of a pickup truck. Or, they might have accidentally hit the calf, killed it, and decided to take away the evidence. Some people make venison out of deer they hit. Why not veal?

Mr. P’s eye continued to bother him. Lachlan thought the pain grew worse for Mr. P, but the farmer didn’t say much. His biggest comment, Lachlan said, was to mention that when he bent over he could feel his eyeball draining.

Draining eyeballs. I didn’t care to hear about that at the dinner table. I’m sorry about the lost calf, but I’m more sorry about Mr. P’s eye.

Comments, questions? Write to Rundy at purdyville@earthlink.net

The Word Corner
By Rundy

This week’s word: prolegomenon [pro le gom e non]

Definition: Prefatory remarks or introductory observations; specifically a formal essay or critical discussion serving to introduce and interpret an extended work.

Rundy’s comment: Before the speech I’d like to give a prolegomenon. Okay, I don’t, but wouldn’t that be a good start to a speech?

Who came up with the word prolegomenon? Blame, or thank, the Greeks. It is the Greek neuter present passive participle of prolegein which means "to say beforehand." Simple meaning, but what a big word we got out of the deal.–RP

Comments, questions? Write to Rundy at purdyville@earthlink.net

• Teman(22) Writes about education
• Rundy(21) Writes about the cold weather
• Rundy(21) Brings catharsis to The Word Corner

Find the current issue of TWIP on the web at http://www.purdyville.com/twip/current.html

Teman doesn’t normally write for TWIP. The following article wasn’t written for TWIP either. Teman is currently taking an economics college course on-line through Empire State College. This following article was originally a discussion post in his course forum. It wasn’t an official writing assignment, but I thought the quality and idea presented were good enough, and interesting enough, for TWIP. There are a few references in his writing which are obscure to someone not familiar with economics, but most of it is straight forward.–Rundy, TWIP Senior Editor.

Investing in Education
By Teman

How should a country invest in the education of its people?

Unfortunately, no easy answers to that question can be found in textbooks. However, if we take the question of the use and utility of formal education out of the realm of the theoretical and into the world of the real, then we find that matters become more complicated. Our first problem is one of opportunity costs. Formal education may indeed move the Production Possibilities Frontier outward, but does it do so better than other ways we could expend those same resources? Second, we must not uncritically accept the assertion that formal education increases human capital. Only when we have examined both of these questions can we consider how we should apportion resources between the various forms of formal education.

Like most questions in economics, it is impossible to give a definitive answer to the question of whether formal education is the best way of building human capital. Furthermore, our goal for this course is to explore the basics of economics, not various theories of education. However, many people in this course seem to assume that the only way to build human capital is in a setting where a teacher addresses a number of students in a classroom and maybe does some lab work on the side.

This view ignores the fact that throughout human history the most common way of increasing human capital was through the means of apprenticeships. Indeed, such apprenticeships (for our purposes we will define apprenticeship as guided learning while producing goods and services) are still around. They are common in much of Western Europe as a way of learning a variety of skills. Doctors in this country must go through a period of apprenticeship before being able to practice medicine. Much of the way in which the military trains its personnel would fit my definition of apprenticeship. In fact, the higher you go in higher education, the more it tends to resemble an apprenticeship in form and function. Think of how many classes at the lower levels of college are taught by student TA’s or how Ph.D students will help their professors with research projects. Even at the primary school level alternatives to formal schooling can be found, primarily in the growing homeschooling movement.

All this is just to point out that the resources we devote to formal education have a real opportunity cost. Not just in the sense that we can not use the resources we devote to education to building houses or acquiring clothes, but that we can not pursue other means of building human capital as well as we might. Furthermore, we should not assume that just because formal education is the most commonly used method of increasing human capital in the developed world, it therefore must be the best.

In fact, there is some anecdotal evidence to suggest that the opposite is true. In France, the les compagnons (as the people who have been through the various guild apprenticeship programs are called) almost always find a job right away even though the unemployment rate among young people with college degrees is quite high. In Germany, the extensive apprenticeship program is usually given a large share of credit for Germany’s post-war economic success. Back here in the United States, homeschooling has been gaining growing acceptance because people who have been educated in this way tend to do well on any kind of test.

It is such anecdotal evidence that leads some people like John Holt to question the value of formal education. They tend to assert that all such learning actually destroys human capital. Among the sins they accuse formal education of are: Segregating people based on age and intelligence, thus destroying the social fabric. Squelching people’s natural desire to learn because the formal method of learning does not resonate with what they have experienced in their life. And crushing people’s ability to think for themselves because formal education puts the emphases on finding the answers that the teacher wants. Indeed, if you listened to some people who follow John Holt’s way thinking, you might get the impression that formal education was the root cause of all that is wrong with the world.

I believe that such an extreme view of formal education is an error. It springs from the mistaken belief that everything that is imposed by society is bad and that every thing that comes from a person’s own nature is good (John Holt owed a lot to Jean-Jacques Rousseau). But if society does not impose a way of spelling "the" then how will we be able to communicate? That is not to say spelling "the" the way we do is any more morally correct than any other way, only that it is necessary to be able to communicate. Thus, many times, accepting the formal impositions of society allows us to be more productive and creative because we can share our ideas with others and receive their ideas in turn. That is to say, sometimes the right answer to give is the one the teacher wants. This distinction seems to be lost on the people associated with John Holt.

Having said that, I think that it is worth paying attention to what John Holt has to say, if only to counteract the equally extreme (but far more prevalent) view that formal education is an unalloyed good. John Holt may be wrong in his belief that everything imposed by society hampers intellectual growth, but today’s educators need to realize that our classroom-based forms of education are failing to help students increase their creativity and their independent thinking abilities. In the past, those failings were well-disguised by the demands of the industrial economy, as doing the right thing on the industrial production line was more important than independent thought. But we are now in the post-industrial era where service jobs outnumber the old production line jobs and it is becoming increasingly clear that our old education model is failing us.

To some, the answer is to throw more resources at the problem. But I believe that much of what we spend now is wasted, and to spend more would only compound the problem.Our educational needs are more akin to the craftsman of 200 years ago than they are to the factory worker of 50 years ago. It would be wise to remember that people in pre-industrial era were not too stupid to figure out how to have one person stand up in a room and teach 30 other people. In fact, they did do some teaching in the formal form, often for things like writing, math, and reading, but also for anything that the authorities wanted to control (such as religious teaching). But for most of their educational needs they stuck to the apprenticeship form as the best way to train people for jobs that needed technical skill, creativity, and good judgment.

I believe that as our economy grows ever more service oriented, we also will discover that a like form of learning will best suit our needs. In fact, I think that is the case
right now and that it is only inertia that keeps us on our present course. That is not say that I think formal education does not have any use. As long as we have to read and write, and do other things where conformity across broad sectors is desirable, there will always be a need for formal education.

To sum up, I believe that we spend way too much money on formal education. Of the resources our country does devote to formal education, I think that most of it should go towards the primary level. What resources are spent on higher education should be in the way of preparing the ground work for an advanced apprenticeship (sort of the way that doctors do it now).–TP

Comments, questions? Write to Teman at purdyville@earthlink.net

Riding a Bicycle in The Winter
By Rundy

Why?

Why ride a bicycle during the miserable weather of a northern winter? I haven’t found a good explanation, but I’m trying. When friends and family learn of my habitual early morning trek out into snow and sub-zero temperatures their reaction is horror, disbelief, or both. There is that sideways look, as if they are reevaluating previous assumptions about my sanity. Then there is the spoken, or almost spoken, question. Why?

Why would any sane, reasonable, normal, intelligent person go out for a bicycle ride when there is snow covering the road, or when the temperature is sub-zero, even without factoring in the wind chill? No one has said it exactly that way, but the half-laughed comments and askance looks say enough. How do I explain? When the bicycle riding experience is couched in such negative terms I’m left hunting around for an answer. Why am I, after all? It didn’t seem so strange a few minutes ago. Now that you mention it the idea does seem a little peculiar. Rather than stuttering about how riding in the winter it isn’t really so bad–which would only earn me more knowing smiles–I simply give a big grin, and hope they don’t lock me up. There is a good reason for what I do–somewhere. I just haven’t found it yet.

Riding a bicycle in winter weather isn’t so very horrible. Really. I don’t freeze to death or suffer from . . . um . . . well, okay–riding a bicycle in the winter isn’t for everyone. Maybe I’m just so stubborn that I refuse to alter my schedule for a bit of frigid weather. Or perhaps I like a little variation in my experience and enjoy the chill and snow as something new and different. So? You should try it sometime. It’s not all so bad as you might think. I can explain.

The Dark

This may surprise you, but above all else the worst thing about bicycle riding on winter mornings is the darkness. This is worse than snow, worse than cold. No, not because I can’t see. I can see. If I couldn’t see I wouldn’t ride, because, let me assure you, if I can’t see I can’t stay on the road. The issue isn’t other people not seeing me, either. When I ride in the dark I wear a highly visible orange fluorescent reflective vest over my riding gear. The great trouble with riding in the dark is psychological.

Darkness is for sleeping. I’m a firm believer in this. Rising early doesn’t bother me–so long as it is light out. Rising with the dawn is fine. But rising before dawn is a type of punishment. In the cruelest most dark days of winter a 7:00 AM bicycle ride is decidedly on the dark side of dawn. When I step out into that darkness, climb onto the bicycle, and begin to pedal down the road–then, above all other times I’m inclined to wonder whose brilliantly idea it was to go riding at this time of day.

The best I can say is that the worst of the darkness last only from December to January. Long enough, thank you, but by February 7:00 AM is almost dawn. The semi-light of soon breaking day is more bearable, and hopeful, with the promise of full day. November is grim because I know it is going to grow worse. It’s something like driving into a dark, dank and foul smelling tunnel. February is better because I know every morning will be brighter. February is like driving out the other side of the dark, dank, and foul smelling tunnel. From February on out things must get better

The Snow

Snow can be one of the most enjoyable aspects of winter bicycle riding. The operative phrase here is "It depends." If the morning is bright, with crisp air, pure blue sky, and sheets of white snow–yes, indeed. There is a cool refreshing pleasantness to such a ride. Otherwise, snow can be annoying.

Snow is annoying anytime it actively falls from the sky. Gently descending snow is one of those pleasant things to watch through a window, but riding in it is another issue entirely. The experience is akin to having someone constantly throwing snow in my face. My forward momentum sends me careening through those innocent snow flakes and I’m either blinking like some malfunctioning light-bulb or I’m forced to screw my eyes up into teeny slits and bow my head to avoid the brunt of the incoming snowflakes. This is neither very cold, nor very difficult, but it is exceptionally annoying and I’m glad I’ve not had to live through it very often.

When the road is covered with snow, riding a bicycle becomes fun. Fun, as in a little dangerous but not too dangerous. A light dusting of snow is inconsequential, but any significant snow accumulation begins to have an effect on the riding experience. Narrow bicycle tires have almost no traction on snow. Anything more than a dusting of snow makes a traditional speed bicycle impossible to ride. I ride a mountain bike, which is better, but still bogs out on snowfall over an inch deep.

A bicycle ride in snow is difficult because of resistance, but the trickiest part is remaining upright and seated. Poor tire traction means wiping out is even easier than on loose gravel. Yes, if you want to practice wiping out, I advice you to go for a bike ride when there is snow on the ground. Myself, I like practicing not wiping out. I haven’t wiped out yet, but I’ve had many close calls. The chance of wiping out isn’t much of a danger even though it is very possible. The road is covered with snow, I’m all bundled up for the winter weather, and I can’t go particularly fast with snow everywhere. The worst I face is a bump or two, and an injured dignity.

Besides maintaining good balance, there is a trick to not wiping out when riding a bicycle in the snow. When the snow plow hasn’t cleared the road the only place where snow is packed down is where car tires have passed. This situation offers me some amusement and diversion from monotony as I’ve perfected the game of "drive in the car tire tracks so I won’t wipe out." So long as I stay in the tire tracks I’m okay. Drift out and I begin to bog down and slide. This becomes an even trickier game when the snow has become slush, which makes a slick road cover. I’ve fish-tailed and slid, but I haven’t wiped out–not yet.

Snow plows are also a concern. I’m of the firm conviction that snow plow operators are not amused to find themselves driving behind some idiot bicycle rider who decided to go out early some snowy morning. Because of this opinion I try to keep both eyes and ears open for the deep rumble which signals an approaching plow. If a driveway is nearby I can pull off to the side and let the plow pass. If visibility is good I also have the option of switching to the other side of the road until the plow has passed. I’ve only had to get out of the way twice so far all winter. I guess my chosen time for riding is not the time the plow operators normally clear our local roads.

The Cold

Of all the things involved in bicycle riding in the winter, the idea that I ride in sub-zero temperatures provokes the most shock from people. It’s i
nsane to go out in that weather, they say, if not outright unsafe. It could be, yes. An unprepared person could freeze themselves badly in such cold weather. But it is entirely possible to go on a safe, and even fairly comfortable, bicycle ride in negative ten degree weather. I can say this because I’ve done it. I’ve gone on my morning bicycle ride many times in subzero weather. I rode in subzero weather all January, and conditions haven’t improved much in February. So, much as some people might want to doubt, it is a proven fact that sub-zero weather is not the mark of death.

Having said this, I must also stress that a ride in subzero weather isn’t the same thing as a bicycle ride on a nice spring morning. A person must dress properly, and be aware of what is possible and what is foolhardy. I ride in the cold, but I dress for the occasion. Dressing for the occasion doesn’t mean amazing arctic gear. It means common sense. I’ve ridden for an hour in these biting subzero temperatures without any amazing arctic clothing, and suffered no serious chill. I could have been even more comfortable if I chose to bundle up more, but I try to strike a balance between how much clothing I carry and how much cold I’m willing to take. This depends on personal taste.

How do I dress properly? Let me give you a hint; it involves more than putting on gloves and a hat. The ability to dress properly requires an understanding of bodily heat loss. Three basic ideas need to be kept in mind. First, heat is lost more quickly from smaller body parts, and extremities. Second, the body is more concerned about keeping the vital organs warm, so more blood goes to the head and torso when cold air encroaches. Most important of all–especially in such very cold conditions–is knowing that the number one cause of heat loss is wind. The colder air is, the worse any wind chill effects a person. A temperature of zero degrees Fahrenheit is only so-so cold when the air is still. A temperature of zero with a stiff breeze is absolutely brutal. Thus, the most important factor in keeping warm is the ability to cut down on wind penetration. An excellent garment for wearing in cold weather is one which creates an interior pocket of air for your body to heat up, and is impervious to wind.

Grim description, right? But I’ve never gone on a bike ride in subzero temperatures with a natural wind. That would be very uncomfortable, and possibly even dangerous. When it is very cold in the morning the air is usually still. Even so, I must deal with wind chill because I create my own wind by my body hurtling through the frigid morning air. I’m not sure what kind of wind chill I give myself, but it has a very noticeable effect on my body.

This is what I normally wear on a subzero bicycle ride: two pairs of underwear, long underwear, sweat pants, two pairs of socks, shoes, undershirt, heavy shirt, winter coat, headband, winter gloves, bicycle helmet. This is the minimum–sufficient only to keep from freezing. Being warm means wearing more. By the time I come back from a ride dressed as above I’m beginning to feel that if I don’t get home soon I’ll begin to get seriously cold. My hands and feet suffer worst. My fingers because they are so small they can’t keep themselves warm, and my feet because I wear shoes designed to allow my feet to breath–and this means air flows easily through my shoes. Not conducive to warm feet.

One alteration I’ve tried in my clothing was to wear a sweater along with everything else. When I did that I had too many layers of clothing on my upper body and I sweated on my torso while my fingers and toes still grew cold. Then a tried wearing a second pair of sweat pants. That helped more, but fingers and toes still suffered some. I’ve decided further improvements on my gear would be a change to wool socks, and maybe finding good mittens instead of gloves.

Once dressed against the cold, riding in sub-zero weather isn’t so bad. Some people have visions of nose and ears freezing solid and falling off, or throat and lungs catching chill. None of these things have happened to me. So long as I keep the collar of my coat zipped up to my chin my face feels fine. A little surprising, even to me.

Then there is the ice. This is the most impressive visual display from riding in the cold. When I come back from my rides in the subzero weather my face is caked with ice. My breath freezes as it leaves my mouth and condenses on my facial hair. By the time I finish my ride I look like some arctic explorer. This has started something of a running joke in our family along the lines of "We’re not impressed with those National Geographic explorers anymore. Those guys have ice on their faces and think their so tough! Well, Rundy can do the same thing by taking a bike ride."

The sight of a face encrusted with ice appears impressive, but it is rather meaningless in fact. The hairs are encrusted with ice, but it the mass of ice isn’t lying against my flesh. It doesn’t feel cold. But we like to take pictures of me anyhow, and see how many gullible people we can impress. Or else, how many people we can convince that I’m crazy.–RP.

Want to see the pictures of how Rundy looks after riding in the subzero cold? Click here to view the collection.

Comments, questions? Write to Rundy at purdyville@earthlink.net

The Word Corner
By Rundy

This week’s word: catharsis [ca thar sis]

Definition: The purification or purgation of the emotions (as pity and fear) primarily through art. b: Any purification or release from tension.

Rundy’s comment: I didn’t find the above description very helpful. What exactly does "the purification or purgation of the emotion" mean? Webster’s usage example is helpful: "these drawings served as a catharsis, relieving him of his burden of terrible memories, at the same time releasing hidden creative force"–Eva Michaelis-Stern.

Let me try to explain this a little more. When we say some action or thing is cathartic for a grieving person, we mean that thing helps the person deal with and release their grief. Or something might be cathartic for fear, helping a person deal with their fear.–RP

Comments, questions? Write to Rundy at purdyville@earthlink.net

In this issue:

• Rundy(21) Writes about the cold weather
• Arlan(19) Writes about making thank-you notes
• Rundy(21) Asks if people still want The Word Corner in TWIP

Hello everyone, and welcome to a new year of This Week in Purdyville! Thanks from us to all of the loyal subscribers who renewed. As always, we are striving to improve TWIP, and we’ve started the new year with a slightly spiffed up format. I hope these slight tweaks will help provide a clear reading format. If you have any further suggestions for improvement, please contact me at rundypurdy@earthlink.net.–Rundy, TWIP Senior Editor.

Cold Weather
By Rundy

Before I can moan and complain about the weather I’m required to admit that it could be worse. Yes, there are colder places in the world than this little section of NY. Yes, in living history, even in my lifetime, it has reached lower temperatures around here. But enough talk about the North pole–they have misery all the time. And enough talk about ten years ago. That was ten years ago, and since that time this current weather is the longest and coldest of my life experience.

How cold? Not north pole cold, but anything negative is cold enough. Negative 11 is plenty cold–and that is the lowest it has become–so far. Nights are routinely down in the negative temperatures. The past two weeks, on whole, have been persistently below normal temperatures.

How do we suffer? How do we cope?

That depends on who you ask. Me, I don’t suffer too much, and I cope by putting on more clothes. But the inability to send little kids to play outside because of the frigid temperatures does begin to drag. Watching, and hearing, kids run around the house gets very old.

With the past heavy snow falls of this winter the world is locked under a white covering. Perfect for play, except with the outside chill it seems as if we’re now living much closer to the arctic circle than I previously remembered. The world is a barren wasteland–it feels–we’re all trapped, and spring will never come.

Well, we tell ourselves that spring will come, and that it is coming in a few months. In the middle of January that is as good as never. Especially when it is cold, dark, and the wind is blowing.

I cope–if it can be called coping–by doing what I always do. Ten below? Dark out? I go for the morning bike ride, just as I have for the months before. Yes, I wear more clothes, and I do dread (just a little) any ride in sub zero weather. But that is for another story. Sufficient for the present, I wear more clothes and don’t let the arctic air stop me. The air is frigid, but it’s fresh.

Writing in the den can be difficult, too. The den was added onto the rest of the house and there are no heating vents in the room. All the warm air the room has comes in from the kitchen. The den isn’t frigid, but, shall we say, on really cold days the room has a noticeable chill. It doesn’t help to sit still. Remaining practically motionless for several hours–working at the computer–can be difficult if you’re trying to keep warm. I’ve learned how to deal with the situation to a certain extent: On the really cold days I end up wearing an undershirt, a shirt, a wool sweater, and another sweater over that, along with a wool hat. It works . . . most of the time. If I go have a cold glass of milk I’m freezing again. The equilibrium of heat and cold is that fine.

But such conditions are only the worst days. The rest of the time I’m quite comfortable–even now, when it is ten degrees at three in the afternoon with a wind blowing. Actually, after ten below, ten above just feels a bit nippy, that’s all. Hey, when thirty degrees comes around it will feel like a heat wave.

And spring–well, we won’t think about spring yet.–RP

Comments, questions? Write to Rundy at purdyville@earthlink.net

Impractical Applications for Word:
Mass-Produced Thank-You Notes
By Arlan

It’s that time of year again: time to write Thank-You notes. If you haven’t gotten yours done yet, maybe you need the help only a computer can provide. Here’s how to get Word to write your Thank-You’s for you. (Note: the author is not responsible for any damages to relationships, emotions, or other tangible or intangible things caused by using computer-generated Thank-You notes.)

What we want is a template, a form letter that we can use to quickly dispatch our polite thanksgiving. Templates can be used for any kind of form—around the office, for an address book or cookbook, or anything where you are entering the same sort of information over and over. Word comes with a bunch of pre-made templates that might work perfectly for you—look them over sometime (you may have to get them off of your Word installation CD).

Although we are making a template, you can start the same way you would any normal document. Once you have a blank document open, you’ll want to pick a nice informal looking font. It’ll be a lot easier if the list of fonts shows what each font will look like, and the more recent versions of Word can do this. If your version lists all fonts the same (in the selection box; usually it says “Times New Roman”), go to Tools: Customize {Options} and make sure “List font names in their font” is checked.

Find some font that appeals to you. It’s important to realize that amusing fonts are often hard to read, but you certainly don’t want to leave the font at boring old Times New Roman. When you find a good font, click Format: Style [New], enter a name for the style, check the box for “Add to template,” and click Okay. Now you’re ready to write. But keep in mind that we are ultimately going to be re-using this letter, so be careful how you write. The following is a suggested text, with the replaceable text in italics:

Dear Relative,

It was so delightful to see you this past holiday season. I hope we can get together more during this coming year. I’d make it a New Year’s resolution, but then we’d know for sure it wouldn’t happen!

I’m writing this little note to let you know how much I enjoyed your gift. I always love cotton sweaters, and this one is so cozy! It will be used and much appreciated when I am out and about on those nippy days.

We’re all recuperating from the holiday excitement. Once again I’m amazed at the outpouring of love this season always brings. It gives me such hope as we begin another year.

Wishing you the best of health and joy now and for the years to come.

Love,

Billy

Now we’ll make the letter customizable for anybody, using our example. Select “Relative” and delete it; then click Insert: Field. . . In the “Categories” box, select Mail Merge. In the “Field names” box, chose Fill-in. Look to the bottom of the window; you’ll see an entry box with “FILLIN” in it. Above that there’ll be a brief
example of how to use the box. What we’ll want to put in the box should look like this:

FILLIN “Type the name of the generous party:”

The “FILLIN” part is a field command, followed by a space. The bit in quotes is the prompt. We did not use switches for this blank. To be honest, I couldn’t figure out for sure what the check box in the corner did. It sounds like it is meant to keep the words that get filled in the blank from changing when the style (remember Word styles?) gets changed, so if you have problems with the fill-ins looking different than the rest of your letter, delete the fill-in field and try it again with the box unchecked. The options button down there will show you the switches you can use and what they do. You can also learn more in Word’s help files.

When you’re done and you click “Okay,” a box will pop up asking to “Type in the name of the generous party:” Enter whoever you’re writing to.

Now, delete “see” and insert another Fill-in field. In the entry box, put:

FILLIN “Enter Communication: see, hear from, visit, etc” /d “see”

This time we are using a switch. “/d” means set a default value; “see” is what we want to show up automatically. “See” is a nice general word, so it makes a good default here. Make sure there is a space after your field, or you will have run-on words. (If you need to see the field codes, click Tools: Options {View} and check the box for “Show Field Codes.” You can print your letter with the field codes showing without fear; when they print the real word will show up instead of the gobbledygook code. Click File: Print Preview if you want to check how things will print.)

Continue replacing italicized text with Fill-in fields. “I” could be “we,” “gift” could be “gifts,” etc. Check for agreement! You don’t want to say “Your gift are wonderful.”

You don’t need to use Fill-in for “Billy.” Instead, choose the field category “Document Information” and the field name “Author.” This gets the name from the document properties (File: Properties {Summary}; and by the way, you can have Word ask you for these when you save your document by checking “Prompt for document properties” at Tools: Options {Save}). If you are the only one using this copy of Word, you can also use the “Name” field from the “User Information” category (which refers to Tools: Options {User Information}).

A nice border is required for something like this. Go to Format: Borders and Shading. . .{Page Border} and, in the box for Art, choose something wintry. The right half of the window lets you chose which sides you want the border to show up on. You probably won’t need to change any of the options, but go ahead and click the button. You’ll see options on where you want the border to appear, measured in points from either the edge of the page or from the text.

As always, make sure the “Apply to” box is set correctly.

You may want to color the text. Click Edit: Select All and then click on the font color button (the letter ‘A’ with a bar of color under it). Choose a dark color; bright colors are very hard to read on white paper. If you don’t like the colors on the box that pops up, click “More colors. . .” The {Standard} tab gives a good selection, but you can get picky and choose custom. To customize the color, drag the white plus around until the bar on the right shows the right range of colors; then use that bar to adjust the brightness.

A proper letter has a date header, but chances are your border is where your header will show up. To fix this, go to File: Page Setup {Margins} and increase the amount for headers, in the “From Edge” box—try an inch. You’ll also have to increase the distance for the top of the text so the header doesn’t get squashed.

To put in the header, click to View: Header and Footer. You should automatically be in the header (all your other text will be grayed out). Right-justify (there’s a button on your toolbar that’s called Align Right), then click Insert: Date and Time… Choose the style that appeals to you most. Make sure the font style and color matches the rest of your document.

If you have a digital camera, or if you can scan in photos, you could include a photo of yourself adoring the gift in question. Click to Insert: Picture> From File. . . and find your picture. The picture is probably in a bad spot and messing up your letter, so right-click on it and choose Format Picture. . .{Layout} [Advanced] {Text Wrapping}. When you choose anything but that miserable default, “In Line,” you get options for how close you want the text to come to the picture. But you can just choose “Square” and leave the numbers alone. Go to the {Picture Position} tab and set both of the boxes to “Page” (one of them probably says “Column”). You can adjust where the picture appears on the page with the number boxes, but we won’t do that now. Note that, if the picture is positioned relative to the page, the box for Move With Text comes unchecked. This is good. It means that if we edit our document, the picture won’t follow around whatever word it thinks it’s attached to.

When you’ve got that all straightened out, you can drag the picture around to wherever you want it on the page. If it’s way too big, right-click on it, chose the {Size} tab, and enter a reasonable size in one of the boxes. You will have the option of changing the size in percents of the original size, but that isn’t useful now. And you might notice that, if the “Lock aspect ratio” box is checked, any time you change one number, the other changes automatically. This is to keep the picture from getting stretched.

You can also adjust the size of the picture by hand. Click once on the picture to select it, then put your cursor over one of the white boxes around the edge and drag it to change the size. If you hold down shift while dragging on a corner box, the picture won’t get stretched—it will “scale” up and down.

Look over you letter to check for problems, and if it’s good, click File: Save As… Change the "File Type" to "Document Template." Call it "Thank-You note." When you’ve saved all your hard work, close down all the documents in Word and click File: New> More Word templates… That’s where you’ll find your form letter. Open it and it’ll ask you to fill in all the blanks.

When you are using templates, Word may ask if you want to save changes to your template, or to the Normal template. If you have been careful to save your template when you are done with it, you probably do not want to save changes to any template. If you do, your Thank-You note template could wind up looking like the last Thank-You you turned out (it is harder to mess up the Normal template, but you want to leave it alone).

Remember the Golden Rule of Mastering Word: if at first you don’t understand, try it and see! Very nearly everything is easily undoable; the few things that aren’t, I’ve probably already tried, had a heart attack, and fixed. If yo
u get stuck, drop me a line.

Comments, questions? Write to Arlan at purdyville@earthlink.net

What About The Word Corner?
By Rundy

Looking over my files, I see that I’ve written ninety-seven editions of The Word Corner. This makes The Word Corner the longest running feature in the history of TWIP. But all good features have their end, and at the beginning of this new TWIP year I think it good to ask if the time for The Word Corner’s end has come.

I know The Word Corner was always something for only part of the TWIP audience. People in the past have commented that they never read The Word Corner. However, I know there are few people like to read about the obscure words I find.

The Word Corner doesn’t consume very much of my time, but I don’t want to waste space on something which nobody reads. I’m asking all our readers who would like to see The Word Corner continue to drop me a quick note telling me so. If enough people in our audience are still interested, I’ll continue. If not, I’ll free up the little electronic bits for some other purpose.–RP

Comments, questions? Write to Rundy at purdyville@earthlink.net