Astronomy Project

The boys have been studying astronomy in science. Caleb was supposed to make a solar system poster to compare the different planets. That's all well and good, but we decided to take it a little farther. Why be content with a poster when we could make a scale model of the solar system?

Our first step was to make scale models of the planets. I helped out by making a printout with the planets scaled to an 8 inch sun. Caleb then used Model Magic to sculpt out the planets to match up. 

Mercury and Pluto were tiny. Less than 0.5 mm in diameter. Jupiter and Saturn were a little over an inch in diameter.

Next we attached them to dowel rods. 

Here they are in order with an 8 inch yellow balloon in the back to represent the Sun. 

So far so good, but I wanted the boys to get an appreciation of the immensity of the solar system. I forced Will to sit down with me and calculate the planets' distances from the Sun. Based on the sun being 8 inches (20 cm), we were using a scale of 7,000,000,000:1.

We headed out to the end of a road near our house. We placed the Sun near the stop sign so we would have a good reference point from farther away. 

Now we moved 8 meters away. This reflected Mercury's orbit. 

Here is the closest planet, burning up in the Sun's heat. Hard to believe when you are looking at a speck the size of a poppy seed 25 feet away an 8 inch balloon. 

Next we moved out to a distance of 15 meters. This is where we placed Venus. 

At this difference the average temperature is 860°F!

Next we moved out to place Earth it it's place 23 meters away from our Sun. 

If you zoom in on the picture you can see the Earth model and the Sun. This will give you an idea of the scale. I was starting to feel pretty small. 

Mars on this scale would be another 10 meters farther out. Zooming in, you can still see the sun, but it's getting difficult. Mars is the last inner planet. To understand why it's called that we just need to move out to Jupiter's orbit. 

We are now 111 meters away from the center of our solar system. The Sun is just a spot now.  We are almost 5 times farther away than the Earth. 

Saturn is almost twice as far away as Jupiter at 205 meters. 

Oops!  We lost Uranus somewhere along the road, bu at least we could still mark it's orbit at 411 meters out. That's twice the distance of Saturn. No wonder no one discovered this 3rd largest planet until the telescope was invented. 

With Neptune we were really starting to get far away. 643 meters out. We could barely see the stop sign, let alone the Sun. This is the last of the planets these days. Now Pluto is the first of the dwarf planets. 

Over a kilometer away from the Sun in our model at the farthest part of its orbit (845 meter would be the average), Pluto appeared a mere speck lost in space. And while that's as far as we went with our model, the solar system goes out much further. 

Beyond Pluto lie Haumea, Makemake, Eris, and Sedna which at it's furthest point would be 20 km or 12 miles away on our model. 

If you really want to be overwhelmed, on this scale the next closest star Alpha Centauri A would be somewhere in Panama 3600 miles away. 

I hope the boys got a good sense of the sheer enormity of space.  Even with this I really cannot comprehend such distance. 

Fun in the leaves: 2013

Popularity

    There are many things I want my children to be: honest, respectful, honorable, truthful, caring, kind, resourceful, hard-working. One thing I never want my children to be is popular. Certainly I want people to like my kids. I want them to have friends and I want those friendships to be deep and true. But please don't let them be popular.
 
     Popular is a fad and never lasts. To be popular is an endless race to conform to what everyone else is doing today. Tomorrow you must change again. There is no time to focus on who you really are as a person. All your time must be focused on what you look like, or what you are wearing, or just keeping up on the latest trends.

     Popularity is what turns a Disney princess into a drugged-out train-wreck prostituting herself in an attempt to shock the world and win a few more moments in the spotlight. The very nature of popularity forces you to compromise what you believe in. Let's be honest, having core values and principles that you stand by will often put you in very unpopular positions. Being popular is easy.  Being true to who you are is very difficult. It takes a very strong and confident person to hold true to what they believe with the cultural winds shifting from moment to moment.

     It has been said that character is who you are when no one is looking. I want that to be what my children focus on.  Most people don't have a clue what their true character is. How could they? We never take the time to ask ourselves what really make us who we are.  We flood our lives with so much stimulation that we don't have a moment to be quiet and contemplate the important things.  Our life has become a non-stop flood of flashing lights and noise. The quiet makes us uncomfortable. Being alone forces us to look at ourselves, and we don't like to do that.  We need to though. We need to take time to ask ourselves what we really believe. Not just what we think we should believe, but what truly drives the decisions we make every day. A person of character lives their lives the same when they are alone in their bedroom as they do when they are in the public spotlight.

     I want my children to be people of integrity.  The kind of people who are true to themselves and their convictions. I want them to be willing to take a stand for the truth when doing so is decidedly unpopular. Yes, they will be ridiculed.  They will be made fun of and uncomfortable and pressured to conform. But if I raise them right, then hopefully they will realize they are strong enough to handle the pressure. They will understand that trying to please other people is an impossible and pointless goal. A person of integrity stands for God and His principles which never change. At the end of the day they can look at them selves in the mirror without shame.

     Sure the popular people get all the attention and fame.  They can make fortunes selling themselves for public consumption. But popularity does not make you happy or content. If it did, then all those celebrities in their multi-million dollar mansions should be the happiest people in the world.  There would be no tabloids talking about their endless failed relationships and drug rehab stents.

     It is people of integrity and character who change the world.  They are focused on more than just the moment. They are willing to give up instant gratification for something more lasting and real.  They are often lambasted and ridiculed, dismissed as out of touch or crazy. The popular folks don't like them because they have no power over them.  The "In Crowd" is jealous of the fact that they are content with being true to themselves, and so seek to destroy them. But when the noise dies down and when the latest style has changed for the hundredth time, it is always those people with integrity and character who have changed the world and made it better.

     

    

A Reflection on Summer

     Summertime, I understand, is most people's favorite time of year.  I've never been one much inclined to that belief. I prefer the crisp fall air to the burning heat.  I love the quiet stillness that envelopes the world when winter lays a downy blanket of snow on the ground.  I relish the promise of life in the budding green of spring.  Summer has always struck me as a time to endure the baking of the sun.
     This summer has been an exception for me.  Maybe if I wanted to wax philosophical, I would stop to ponder that now I am solidly in the "summer" of my years, but I don't know that I want to swell on that. Whether or not that plays a part, I have enjoyed this summer.  It has not been excessively hot or dry.  I have spent more time than I usually do with my family.We have had some good times this year to be certain, but I think that something else has been happening to me.
     This has been a summer where I feel like I have become more creative.  I mean this in the literal sense.  It has been a season of making and doing.  I have gotten myself less entrenched in the virtual world that so often sucks me in and more involved in the real.
     It started with the bees.  Beekeeping has been very therapeutic to me. There is something magical about bees. The ritual of lighting the smoker and gathering up my tools, of donning my suit (although I have mostly abandoned that, preferring to work my hives unencumbered), of approaching the hives and watching the girls darting in and out of the hive in there incessant business. I enjoy the electric hum of life rising out of the hive when I lift off the lid. I really enjoy prying out the frames and looking for new eggs and growing larva.  I smile when I see the frames of honey filling up, anticipating its sweetness come harvest time.  And as I watch a hundred thousand bees in their ceaseless toil,  I can't help but wonder if this is not in some way how God views us.
     This summer has also seen my first successful attempt at gardening.  Now, I know I am a far cry short of a master gardener, but for the first time our freezer is stocked with bags of frozen veggies. I bought a pressure cooker and took up canning. As a child I would help my parents and grandparents pick and snap green beans. The work was monotonous, and yet the time I spent with my family was the kind of quality time that seems to be nonexistent today. Unfortunately, I have not had much success convincing my own family of the great benefits of bean snapping.  I however am finding that I really enjoy the time picking and snapping beans.  Sure it's hot and uncomfortable and leaves my middle aged back aching, but looking at a shelf stocked with quart jars full of home canned beans gives me such a sense of accomplishment.  And yes, they really do taste as good as I remember them tasting as a child. Now I know why I never liked the taste of beans from a grocery store can.  There really is no comparison.
     Then there was the kitchen table.  Karlye had been wanting a new one for quite some time. When my friend Mark Scribner built one, I knew that I wanted to do the same.  My grandfather had been a carpenter. I remember longingly looking at his tools as a small boy.  He died far to young, and I never learned from him. (I recently learned that he stubbornly refused to take his coumadin, which most likely contributed to his sudden death.  As a physician that really saddens me.) I feel like God provided a replacement grandfather for me this summer in the form of a 90 year old gentleman named Mel Taylor.  Mel has been a wood worker and teacher for 70 years.  When he moved into an assisted living facility several years ago, he donated his tools, along with his incredible expertise, to a group of men in our church. Every day Mel is at the woodshop, still teaching and still creating.  He seems at least 15 years younger than his true age. When I asked him if he would help me build a table, he not only agreed, he almost seemed passionate about the project.
     Within a day he showed up at my office with patterns cut out of parchment paper taken from the assisted living center's kitchen.  He had 4 designs in mind and wanted Karlye and I to decide which we thought we would like the best.  He went with me to a lumber mill and hand selected the rough cut lumber we would use.  He promised me that on my next day off, he would work with me to plane out the boards and cut the pieces.  Two days later when I showed up to start work, he and his troupe of woodworking disciples had already cut out most of the pieces and started gluing them together.  I watched in awe as his aged but nimble hands (the right one is missing 2 fingers) turned out the legs for the table and benches on the lathe.  My role was to watch and learn, and sand. My oldest son Will came along to help.  Together we sanded for hours. It was great to see Will so enraptured with learning as we saw the table coming together.  Mel even let him turn a wooden pen on the lathe.
    Once the table was done, I took it home and spent the next two weeks sanding more, scraping out the glue marks, and staining the wood. It felt good to be making something with my own hands. I woke up early one Saturday before the rest of the family was stirring and went out to work on the table. I heard a voice and turned around to see Mel carrying a big air compressor and air hose into my garage.  He was getting everything set up to spray the table with polyurethane. He spent the next 30 minutes instructing me on the finer points of using a scraper to make sure I had no imperfections in the stain.  I'm just glad I chose not to sleep in that morning.
     Now that the table is in place in the kitchen and has been broken in, I can't help walking past it without stopping and regarding it with a little bit of pride. I know I did very little of the actual building of it. Without Mel, and Mike Cook, and Larry Anderson, the table would not look anything close to how well it looks, if it even existed. Still though, I had a hand in creating something solid and real. I like to think that someday my grandchildren and great grandchildren will gather for dinner around that table, and in that room through my descendants and that table, I will have left my mark on the world.
     But now the summer is wrapping up and fall is quickly approaching.  School has started up.  I took my little girl to kindergarten this week. She is so small and yet so grown up. It has all happened far to quickly. On the second day of school I was walking her to her class, letting her lead me to show me that she could do it on her own.  She was holding my hand and chattering the whole way down the hall.  Suddenly she stopped and looked at me smiling as she let go of my hand. "You don't have to hold my hand any more" she said.  Those words stopped me dead in my tracks. I was overwhelmed with a twinge of sadness and a gush of pride. I had a glimpse for a moment of the not so distant future and a day when I would have to hand her off to some other man, trusting him to take care of her. It was the first realization for both of us that she is growing in independence. We continued on down the hall separated by just a few inches that now seemed like miles to me. She continued talking away, overjoyed by the thought of "big kid school".  Thirty seconds later she unconsciously reached up and took my hand again and I breathed a sigh of relief.  For now she was still my little girl. Then she saw her classroom and without looking back sprinted off to the adventures that awaited within.

Fathers Day

     Well, another Fathers Day is drawing to a close and as usual while I appreciate my family telling me they are grateful for me, I also feel a little less than adequate. While I don't believe I am a bad dad, I also feel like I'm not as good a dad as my kids deserve. I seem to always come up short on patience and understanding. I feel like I'm far too often the grouchy middle aged dad so ridiculed and picked apart on endless sitcoms. It's not how I ever wanted my kids to see me, but I wonder if they do. 

     I feel like sometimes I'm losing control over the kids and they constantly challenge what I say and refuse to obey until I lose control over myself. Then I want to kick myself for losing my temper and not responding in love the way a good Christian father should. 

     Then somehow, just when I feel like I've obviously failed at fathering, some complete stranger comes up and tells me what wonderfully well behaved children I have. Or one of the kids tackles me with a big hug. Or something ridiculous happens and the whole family is laughing together. It's then that it hits me that even though I am far from perfect, maybe I'm not a complete failure. 

       One of these days I really want to sit down with my dad and ask him how he felt when he was my age and in the thick of fathering a large unruly family. Did he have the same doubts and insecurities?  I know he wasn't perfect either, but he did a darn good job of being a dad. I wonder why I've never asked him how he survived. I'll make that my Fathers Day resolution this year. I could really use a good father son talk. He's a great resource that I've failed to take advantage of. Despite being a dad, I never really have stopped needing a dad. 

      I've been on vacation with my family for over a week now. While there have been more than a few moments that really tried everyone's patience, we've also had some really great times together. I think I'll end this little blog with some pictures, a sort of highlight reel. I know that in the years to come the negative moments from this trip will be forgotten, but the fun moments are the ones that will last. I guess that's what makes fatherhood so rewarding in the long run. 

We are beekeepers!

    Well the long expected day finally arrived and we got our bees. My amazing wife overcame her fears and picked them up for me bringing home about 20,000 bees in out minivan. They were all safely tucked away in a couple of screened wooden boxes. Still though, she went above and beyond.

  
   We let them stay in our basement a day until the weather warmed up enough to get them safely tucked away in their hives. Having never done this, I didn't really know how hard it would be.  It turns out it really wasn't all that hard.  We had a nice sunny day if just a little on the cool side.  Karlye invited several of her friends to witness the momentous occasion. I think mainly people came to see if I was going to get myself stung.

After getting everything set up, we had the kids step back and we opened up the box of bees and took out the queen (in her own little box) and then literally dumped in the bees.

    Josiah almost felt brave in his little "astronaut" get-up.

    

     After getting the majority of the bees in, I hung the queen's cage (one in each hive) and then shook as many more bees as possible over the top of her.  When you first put a new queen in a hive, you have to give the bees a few days to get acquainted with her, otherwise they might kill her.  If you leave her in her cage, they can feed her and get used to her but she will be safe until she is accepted.

     Once that was done, we closed everything up and called it a day.  We all had fun ( I think) and no one got stung.  I was quite happy with that.

     If you noticed that the two hives look different, it's because I wanted to run a little experiment.  You can use wood frames or plastic.  I wanted to see if the bees liked one better than the other and so I'm going to have one hive with wood frames.  That hive belongs to "Karlye Bee".  The one with the black plastic frames belongs to "Gracie Bee". (We decided that each of the ladies in this house needed a queen named after them.)

Elijah seemed to enjoy the whole process

     I then gave them a couple of days to get settled in and used to their new queens.  Today me and a couple of the boys headed back out to check on them, see if they had started drawing out any comb, and to let the queens free to start laying eggs.

  

Hives all set up with bees installed

I opened up both hives and was happy to see that after 2 days, the girls had already gotten down to work and had drawn out a small amount of comb about 1/4 of an inch deep.  I got out the queens and then popped out the cork that was holding them in their cages.

Gracie Bee

     I then set the cages down and the little gals just walked on out and slipped down between the frames to begin their reigns. 

Gracie Bee as she leaves her cage and gets ready to start laying lots of eggs.

     And that's about all there is to say at this point about my new adventure. So far so good.  No stings, no problems.  I know they will come, but for now I'm quite content. Karlye is being supportive, although I know she really doesn't care all that much.  The boys are excited for now.  I'd like to think that that will last for the next few years, but I'm not going to hold my breath. At least for now it's something we can do as a family and enjoy.  That alone almost makes it worth the effort.