Birthdays

by Phil Houseal as published in the Kerrville TX Community Journal & Boerne TX Hill Country Weekly - March 24, 2010  


Birthdays are beguiling commodities.

Early in life, they take too long to arrive for the youngster aching to be a teen, to drive a car, or to legally get in a club. By midlife, they become a nuisance - nagging milestones keeping track of how far we’ve come and how little we’ve done.

Past age 50, birthdays tumble upon us like marbles hitting a washtub - hounding us toward another year of uncovering new aches with irritating persistence.

Similarly, the raiment of birthday celebrations evolves. As children, we expect the world to stop and celebrate, though simple math shows we share our birthday week with 140 million others.

In midlife, we still expect accolades simply for being born two or three decades before, and admit feeling slightly hurt if we get through the workday without sufficient birthday wishes.

At our acme, more of us go out of our way to hide the day’s arrival, but curses - computer calendars and smart phones mark our day with chimes and ringtones.

I used to toy with how I reported birthdays. When my students asked the indelicate question of my age, I would respond with correct but confusing numbers. That is how I went from age 39 to “thirty-ten,” “thirty-eleven,” and so on. That worked until they learned enough math to penetrate my deception.

Why discuss birthdays? Well, March is my birthday month, and I started thinking about that when my cousin reminded me (via Facebook) that our ages overlapped (Thank you, Mary Kay).

It got me to thinking that as we travel through life we should worry less about the odometer and more about enjoying the adventure.

As a lad in my early 20s I remember debating my brother about when was too old to learn to play guitar. He maintained you had to learn skills as a child, invoking the “old dog/new trick” argument. I disagreed, arguing that if as an adult we worked as hard at learning as we had as children we could learn just as much, just as quickly. Think back. As a 10-year-old, though we loathed practicing, we did it for hours, daily. As adult learners, we pick up the instrument once a week for 10 minutes and expect a chair in the orchestra.

Good thing I disagreed. Because if I had stopped learning in my 20s, I - along with many of you Club Ed compadres - would today be missing the joys of tap dancing, playing violin, acting, and even writing this column, all skills I did not even begin to pursue until I was long past “twenty-eleven.”

xxx

Club Ed has lots of learning left, both this year and for years to come. For information or to sign up, click www.clubed.net, or call 830-895-4386.

Club Ed is the Community Education program of the Kerrville Independent School District. Each year, we offer more than 400 classes throughout the Texas Hill Country, along with online courses, business and individual training, and after-school and summer camps. Comment online at clubedcomments.blogspot.com, or follow us on Twitter @clubedtx.

From Little Rock to little rocks

by Phil Houseal as published in the Kerrville TX Community Journal & Boerne TX Hill Country Weekly - Mar 17, 2010

I guess it’s appropriate that a guy from Little Rock drove to the Hill Country to chip little rocks. Even though it is a more than 16-hour drive, John Miller thinks it is worth it.

I spoke with Miller last fall when he called Club Ed to ask about taking our flintknapping class.

“Flintknapping has been a hobby since I was a little kid,” said Miller, who works as an archeologist with the Arkansas Highway and Transportation department. “I’ve always been interested in experiential archeology.”

Miller had read about Woody Blackwell in the New Yorker magazine. Blackwell is the internationally-known knapper who teaches the Club Ed flintknapping classes.

So Miller decided to combine business and pleasure, and took his first trip to the Texas Hill Country to take Blackwell’s class. Given Miller’s professional archeology status, one wonders whether the hobby is a stress reliever or intellectual pursuit.

“It is a little of both,” he said. “In my work, I analyze stone tools. So knowing how to make them can give you a little bit of an edge when analyzing the real thing. But it's also therapy - knapping is a pretty cheap relief for letting off steam after work.”

In his work with the Arkansas transportation department, Miller’s job is to go in and conduct archeological surveys before the construction of roads. Depending on his results, the department can proceed with building the road, or send in a team to do further research. Miller’s interest in other primitive crafts, including pottery, metals, and woodworking, gives him a useful perspective on making that decision.

“When you know more about the makers, and when you can make them yourself, it gives you a little more insight into the collections you analyze.”

Expert Blackwell understands both the appeal the lithic arts hold for modern men and women.

“I think there may be genetic component,” Blackwell said. “It's something our species has been doing for 2.5 million years. For a lot of guys - me included - when we find our first arrowhead, it becomes a passion. We have to find more, collect them, then figure out how they were made. Everybody who knaps has the same story.”

In his class, Blackwell teaches the basics of flintknapping. That includes learning what kinds of material work, how to remove flakes, and basic safety. At the end of the day, everyone goes home with a finished point.

For his more experienced students, Blackwell will share his secrets. “I hate to teach them my style, because it’s not necessarily the best, it’s just my style. Basically I show them advanced techniques, then turn them loose.”

Miller, meanwhile, enjoyed his knapping trip to Texas.

“I just saw the course online, and I have been meaning to get down that way, anyhow,” he said. “I know central Texas is loaded with all kinds of good rock, and I’ve worked some of it before. I always thought the hill country was an interesting place to visit, so I thought I’d come down and spend a week poking around, picking up rock and taking a class.”

“Besides, it was a good chance to try out my camper.”

XXX

Expert flintknapper Woody Blackwell will teach Beginning, Intermediate, and Advanced Flintknapping on Saturday and Sunday, April 24 and 25, at the Tivy Education Center. For information or to sign up, click www.clubed.net, or call 830-895-4386.

Club Ed is the Community Education program of the Kerrville Independent School District. Each year, we offer more than 400 classes throughout the Texas Hill Country, along with online courses, business and individual training, and after-school and summer camps. Comment online at clubedcomments.blogspot.com, or follow us on Twitter @clubedtx.

Make your own rain barrel

by Phil Houseal as published in the Kerrville TX Community Journal & Boerne TX Hill Country Weekly - Mar 10, 2010


Back on the farm, there was nothing like water from the rain barrel for steam ironing clothes or watering plants. Sweet and soft, the pure water had no iron, calcium, or salt to clog pipes or strangle the geraniums.

It was juice fresh-squeezed from the sky.

Anne Brown, Certified Master Gardener and Rainwater Harvesting Specialist, wants to help modern day pioneers enjoy those benefits of rainwater. So she’ll be showing us how to build an inexpensive rain barrel using common materials.

“A rain barrel is just what our grandmas used to collect water,” she said. “It is really pure water. Plants like it because it is pH neutral, and grandma used it to wash her hair.”

Brown has streamlined the barrel building process to where the average person can assemble one in an hour for under $35 in materials cost.

She crafts the setup using plastic downspouts, a recycled plastic flowerpot, and a filter to keep debris and mosquitoes out. The item hardest to procure is the barrel itself. But Brown has connected with a dairy that sells used food grade plastic barrels in bulk.

Near the bottom of the barrel, she attaches a common hose bib so she can use a garden hose to fill buckets to water the houseplants. And while the water collected in this system is not suitable for human consumption, boy, do the plants drink it up.

“I have seen a visible difference in houseplants in just two months. It’s amazing. We have an African violet that doubled in size. Plants just like it better.”

The one dilemma is that people quickly discover one 55-gallon barrel of water is not enough to quench their collective thirst. Brown notes that you can fill a barrel of that size with just 1/4 inch of rain. Her system is easily expandable. She’ll show you how to daisy chain as many barrels as you want, connecting them with a 2-inch pipe.

The popularity of this low-tech collection system has become a torrent. The Master Gardeners showed them at Market Days and sold out all they had plus took orders to build 65 more.

How interesting that something our grandparents did 100 years ago may help save a resource 100 years from now.

“I am concerned not for me, but for our grandkids,” Brown said. “They are not going to have any water. The state of Texas projects a water shortage in the next century because of our population growth. It is important we start doing what we can do now.”

XXX

Anne Brown will conduct Make Your Own Rain Barrel on Wed, April 14 from 10 a.m. to 12 noon. Fee is $25, plus materials cost. For information or to sign up, click www.clubed.net, or call 830-895-4386.

Club Ed is the Community Education program of the Kerrville Independent School District. Each year, we offer more than 400 classes throughout the Texas Hill Country, along with online courses, business and individual training, and after-school and summer camps. Comment online at clubedcomments.blogspot.com, or follow us on Twitter @clubedtx.