Pencil Equipment

Every now and the I get a mad idea, such as attempting to create an anti-gravity device.

Others are somewhat less impractical, such as starting a pencil factory in a disused building, in an under-served neighborhood, as part of a program to teach local students reading, writing and 'rithmatic, as well as responsibility, deportment, initiative, there's no free lunch, etc.

I figure actually making the pencils can be done with little risk of harm, while offering a basis for lots of education - cost control, quality control, marketing.
Students would immediately see the value of math when they are called upon to compute the profit maragin of pencil brand X.

Any ideas as to where I might acquire some gently used pencil making equipment?

Thanks to you all.

Thank You, Baker, Donelson

This piece was originally submitted to The Tennessean some days ago.  As it does not appear to have been published, I thought I would resort to self help.

Back at the end of May, I was laid off from my job in the Nashville office of the Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz law firm.  Given the economy, I could not question the decision, although it was a painful one.  It meant much struggle and uncertainty for my family, and leaving an office, and a team, I truly enjoyed.

But all was not gloom and doom.  Management of the Nashville office agreed to a severance package that would cover my insurance premiums at least through the summer.  It was a prescient decision; on August 31 I had multiple bypass surgery.  But for the generosity of the Baker partners - extended at a time when many of them were taking it in the shorts - to use a legal term of art - I might not have had the surgery, or would have emerged from it with a crushing debt. 

In an age in which "management" is routinely attacked for abusing and discarding staff, I believe Baker's decision deserves public recognition.  Needless to say, I am personally thankful for it.

Tom Hall
Racine, Wisconsin

Gone To The Farm

I remembered most of what I needed - pen and notebook, camera phone, GPS unit.  But I forgot my hat and rubber boots.  I could go where I wanted, and get the information I sought, but would do so with cold ears and wet feet.

My brother, Mike, had taken me to the family farm to celebrate my recuperation from triple bypass surgery.  I was set on documenting some of the property's more interesting features - corners, cave, old growth trees and the like.  Happily, Mike was willing to help, for I would have been lost without him.  The farm is 30 acres of heavy woods and steep ravines.  In contrast, I can get lost in a 15' x15' office with my name on the door.

The farm is currently inactive, the house is in disrepair.  No one who would like to live there has the wherewithal to build their dream house.  Certainly the baronial mansion I envision must wait until I win the lottery or sell some of my fiction.  That leaves a significant problem.  The generation that lived there is dying off.  Only one or two of their successors - my generation - know the history, let alone the geography, of the place.  Where is the cave in which our parents played?  Where are the old growth trees (and how old are they)?  Where was the Native American encampment? WAS there such an encampment?  Where was Grandpa's still?  (BEEP!!! Trick question.  Grandpa did not have a still, much to my chagrin.)

As it happens, Mike knows the land as well as anyone living, having spent several summers there as a teen.  For my part, I've always wanted to be Joe Cartographer.  Thus we set off with Mike's knowledge, my GPS unit, phone and a Clairfontaine notebook.  Mike would lead me to a point of interest, I would record it with GPS, photograph it with camera phone and record the reference data in the notebook.  Happily Mike was very patient, for the process was most inefficient - fumble with the GPS, then the camera, drop the pen and grope for amidst the thick carpet of oak leaves, etc. 

No doubt there are those who could avoid this rigamarole.  They have the talent to map features using compass headings AND to draw recognizeable renderings of the feature in question.  I have long advocated, with tongue firmly in cheek, that such people should be eliminated, for they make the rest of us look bad.  For my part, I must resort to a computer to paste together maps and images and notes to create what I hope will be a useful work product, something I can share with those near and far descended from my grandparents.  How DaVinci, or even John Wesley Powell, would laugh!

I mentioned old growth trees.  We measured estimated the diameter of this one at 36", putting its age at over 400 years.  This estimate allows for the thin soil in which it stands.  In better soil, an oak can reach this size in 100 years or so. 

Visiting the property always refreshes me.  Beyond the family history, it is a remarkably beautiful piece of land, combining rolling hills and steep ravines, not to mention the views that come with being the highest point in the county.

It also provides perspective.  There is no water on the property.  My dad and his siblings fetched water from a spring a quarter mile away - downhill.  The smoke house still stands, attesting to life without refrigeration.  (Electricity did not reach the farm until after WW II.)  Meat was eaten fresh, smoked, salted or done without.  Somehow giving up fast food burgers in the wake of my surgery no longer seems such a hardship. 

Despite my mapping efforts, mysteries remain.  Where are/were the Native American graves (if they ever existed)?  Is Grandpa's long-buried wine stash still intact?  Are there more arrowheads lost in the soil behind the barn?  Or - my favorite - is there a cave system beneath the land, as the geology and topography suggest?  Perhaps the future will provide answers.  In the short term, I'll focus on being able to answer the simple, practical question Mike put to me after I rode my butt down a steep slope and landed in a mud wallow with a tremendous splash:  "Can you find your way back to the truck?"