Activity Update and Schedule Change

Hi all,

A few news tidbits:

First, I need to postpone this Thursday's hewing until next week, as I've got a new student gathering to attend in North Andover.  So, we will NOT be working on Thursday, August 16.  I'll digest the calendar

Second, we've had a couple of fun sessions over the last few weeks.  At one, traditional building stalwarts Hunter '16, Travis '13, and (mom) Betsy Jacques cranked out some good work constructing hewing horses, and Tim Purinton '88 stopped by to arrange his delivery of bricks for our chimney.  Last night,  Kasie (Jacobs) Van Faasen '97 and her two fantastic carpenter sons, Henry ('27?) and Teddy ('30?), pitched in with peg-shaving and some additional horse work.  The Van Faasens take the gold medal for snack contributions, sharing delicious, wholesome lemon balls, trail mix, and a heavenly basil-lime-cucumber juice that's an absolute nectar of the carpenter gods.  Pingree legend (parent, trustee, hockey nut, boatbuilding patron and aficionado...) and overseer Ned Rowland visited, drawn -- as he always is -- like a bee to honey to any fun building project at school, and promises to keep tabs on progress.  

Thanks to all who propel us forward, and stay tuned for additional summer evening dates.  I'll get 'em up here soon.

JE

Hewing this week

Hi All,

Hewing, from 5:00-8:00 tonight (7/10) and Thursday (7/12).  Gorgeous weather for evening work!  Turnout's been slight so far, so we'd love to see new faces.  Athalia split some new white oak peg stock last week, so she's keen to mount the shaving horse and give drawknife lessons to all comers.  Bring your friends!

Also, a new blog feature:  If you'd like to receive blog posts via your email rather than checking here, sign up for direct email notification in the new subscription box, upper right corner of home page.  Enjoy!

JE

Summer, 2012, Work Schedule

Weather and unforeseen interference allowing, I'll be at Pingree hewing logs on the following dates.  I'm hoping I can add a few more opportunities as my calendar gels, but below are what I've got for now.  Times for all dates are 5:00-8:00 PM.  Please check here on the blog if the weather looks rainy.  I'll try my best to post updates by 3:30 PM on wet-weather days.  Look forward to seeing folks on site! 


July 2, 5, 10, 12, 16, 31

August 6, 13, 16

Please remember that you'll need to dress appropriately, which means in sturdy, closed shoes and in clothes you won't mind soiling with pine pitch.  You'll want to bring a water bottle too.

Postponed

Still looks mighty wet.  Let's postpone until next Monday, July 2, 5:00-8:00.

Weather alert

Hi all,

NOAA.gov forecasts 100% chance of "heavy rain and thunderstorms" through this evening.  It doesn't look good for hewing tonight.  I'll post again today at 3:30 PM to either confirm or postpone.  Keep your fingers crossed.

Also, almost no one ever comments on these posts, so I'm not even sure that function works.  Anyone want to test this for me?!  Thanks.

Jay

Hewing, June 25!

Ailsa inspires at Baccalaureate, June 9, 2012.  (She's always craved amplification and five microphones...!)



Hi all,

I'm just back from a second Monhegan sojourn -- this time to replace windows in the cottages with my daughter Athalia and other friends and family.  Since I dashed from a final day of Pingree meetings to Markham Lumber, to Port Clyde and the Laura B out to the (blessedly computer-less) island, it's been a while since I last posted.

I want to let folks know that we'll be resuming work at the hewing site this coming week, and I'm hoping to gather at least once a week all summer.  I'm still trying to get a handle on various summer league schedules that occupy my family's attention, so I'll post a longer-term schedule by the end of this weekend.  Meantime, know that I'll be working this Monday, June 25, from 5:00-8:00.  I'll bring tools, sunscreen, bug dope, and a few pairs of work gloves, but you'll want to bring sturdy shoes and a water bottle.  If you're a newcomer, our work site is on the right-hand side of the Pingree exit driveway, about a hundred yards west of Johnson Rink.  There'll be jobs for builders of all ages.

Please don't hesitate to contact me if you have questions/concerns.  My email's jesty@pingree.org.  All are welcome.


See you at the hewing site!

Jay

Ailsa's Big Monhegan Adventure!

     Back from Monhegan last Saturday and it's been a Pingree sprint since...  Our island group was terrific, made so by both the seniors who composed it and Alex Tinari and first-ever alumna intern Meaghan Souza.  For the first time in the roughly fifteen years Ailsa and I have been running these courses, we incorporated a service element, this year helping Monhegan Museum curators Jen Pye and Emily Grey prepare for the late-June opening of the museum.  Photos below of our gang pitching in.  After we'd cleaned, transported, cleared, etc., Emily and Jen brought us up the newly de-leaded lighthouse and into the museum's art vault -- fabulously fun island haunts!

Ailsa and Alex de-mildew the gallery doors.

Meaghan and Shelby DiFiore clean out the fish house.

Keith Morency hauls exhibit materials.

Charlie Parker delivers pizza...  (??!!)

Amanda Monteforte clears the cemetery trail.

The view from the lighthouse!

And, at the end of the day, the group enjoys a well-earned meal.

     This weekend (June 8-10) at Pingree is filled with the rituals of year's end.  Awards Ceremony tonight, Baccalaureate Saturday, and Commencement Sunday.  Ailsa's speaking at Baccalaureate and is sure to bring the extraordinary perspective of her nearly half-century's work at school.  Please join us if you're nearby.

     I'll post a summer work schedule here on the blog as soon as I get my act together (and cross-reference the Esty family calendar.)  I'm hoping to establish a weekly evening or two, starting the last week in June, during which any and all can come to our work site for a few hours and keep Ailsa's house project moving.  Lots have expressed interest, so it should be lively!  Keep checking here for more info.

Happy Birthday, Ralph!

"Standing on the bare ground, — my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, — all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God."  RWE, Nature

Happy 209th Birthday to Ralph Waldo Emerson, transcendentalist, journal-ist, "sage of Concord," and HDT's erstwhile landlord at Walden Pond.

Ailsa and I head to Monhegan Island, Maine, on Sunday, with twelve Pingree seniors, former Pingree English teacher Alex Tinari, and alumna teaching intern Meaghan Souza.  It's our Landscape and Narrative senior project trip.  Stay tuned for photos and the tale of the trip after June 2.

The last two weeks

It's been a rainy couple of weeks since my last post, but we pushed through wet weather and end-of-year scheduling challenges to produce some good work.  We're just about done hewing all four floor joists and a corner post.  We've got two sill pieces and a wall plate under way, and we're about to finish up our second set of hewing horses.

This past Friday, Dave Carpenter '87 delivered a trailer-load of white pine lengths to replenish our log stock (see photos below) and stayed to hew with us for the afternoon.  Yesterday, I enjoyed a too-short visit (with my daughter Athalia and our friend Jenna Roncarati) to the replica of Thoreau's house at Walden Pond.  We took photos, measurements, and scribbled notes and sketches.  Athalia couldn't believe how uncomfortable Hank's bed was.

 
Kiera Parece, Michaela Byrne, Karly Cohen (all Pingree '13), and I rolling Dave Carpenter's logs onto nylon slings for transport onto our work site.

Gravity's our friend as we roll the logs down the hill.

Dave Carpenter '87 hews a sill plate.  The sill dimensions are marked on the log end.  After we flatten one face, we'll turn the log on the horses to hew successive sides.  The plates need to finish at 6" x 8".

Dave knows what he's doing with a broadaxe.  He and I first met in 2009 when he was a vital member of the crew that hewed and constructed a replica 1634 Settlement House frame in Ipswich.  (see ipswichcbc.wordpress.com)  Dave's a practiced hand (and eye) at hewing to the line.  Please note (admire!) our custom-built hewing horse supporting the log.

A seldom-photographed view of the rear gable end of Thoreau's house.  I wanted to get details of the woodshed and chimney construction (more info to follow in later post.)  That's Athalia on the left, and the Thoreau statue in the right background.

Photographer Athalia captures Jenna's spectral reflection in the window.  Note that Thoreau's cabin sits directly on the ground.  On our Pingree house, we'll need to decide how to balance historical accuracy with building for longevity.  We're considering a dry-stacked fieldstone foundation, so the sills aren't rotting away on the grade.  There's a reason that, eighty years after Thoreau built his house, no one in Concord even knew where it had stood...  (It wasn't until after World War II that amateur archaeologist Roland Wells Robbins excavated and discovered the actual location.)

There I was, minding my own business, when Hank challenged me to an arm-wrestling smackdown.  As I was no match for his transcendental powers, he made short work of me...

Another harbinger of the Apocalypse...

The end is near... :

http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/04/30/thoreaus-walden-the-video-game/

Celebrating Ailsa!

Tremendous celebration today of Ailsa and her years of inspirational teaching.  So many extraordinary expressions of admiration and love!  Arthur, Langley, and Russell Steinert, along with Tim Purinton, helped kick off the public announcement of "Hank and Ailsa's House" project.  Below are photos of post-festivities work at the hewing site:

Russell Steinert with wife Janice, daughters Odette and Beatrice, flanked by Brigham and Tim.

Beatrice and Odette show their skills with a drawknife.

 Team Truesdale ripping a corner post.

Dueling broadaxes for Brigham and Tim...

 ... Until they can admire their handiwork.

Athalia Esty shaves her second peg.

Reinhold Willcox wraps up a floor joist.

Neale Truesdale and Ailsa supervise the progress!

What a fun day!

Climate Impacts Day

350.org

Celebrating Ailsa, 350.org and The Roost

“I do not propose to write an ode to dejection, but to brag as lustily as chanticleer in the morning, standing on his roost, if only to wake my neighbors up.” -Walden 

We celebrate Ailsa's 46-year career at Pingree today.  What an incredible inspiration to all teachers and learners!  If you haven't read it already, I direct you  to the "Project Description" link above.  We intend to sustain Ailsa's inimitable brand of neighborly wake-up calls -- to action, to poetry, to meaningful reflection on big ideas, to her unshakable faith in family and friends.  We love you, Ailsa!

In addition to being Ailsa Day, Cinco de Mayo, and my dog Django's 6th (42nd...?) birthday, it's Climate Impacts Day at Bill McKibben's 350.org.  Check out the website to see folks "Connect The Dots" on climate change.  I'm posting a photo there (and here!) later today to add Pingree to the mosaic.  I'm thinking about a dot and a sign reading:  "Six snow closures at Pingree in 2011; none in 2012 and an 80-degree week in March..."

If Thoreau were around today, his moral and political engagement would without question center on climate change.  For more info on a Thoreau-climate connection, visit Wen Stephenson's blog called The Roost at http://thoreaufarm.org/theroost/.  Wen will be visiting Pingree in the weeks ahead to discuss his environmental work at Thoreau Farm with Ed Kloman, students, and me.  Ed and I are hoping to build a relationship with Wen in connection with our Sustainability and Engaging With Thoreau electives.

Hewing Away

We just got the logs from the tree we chopped down brought to us at our hewing site, so we've been able to start work on those. We've also started to make a few work horses for ourselves. Not sure when those will be done, but they're sure to be a great help. Myself, along with Tracy and Mr. Esty, went on a search for some wood to use in the woods just yesterday. Sadly we didn't find much of use, but what we do have should work quite well!

Rainy Day

We were inside today due to poor weather. We read the parts of Walden in which Thoreau describes the actual construction of the house. It was admirable to see that the house was not only inexpensive, (about 650$ in today's money) but also build out of some scavenged pieces. The building of the house put a mere dent in both Thoreau's wallet and the environment.

Thoughts Around Earth Day

I'm reading John Vaillant's book, The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness, and Greed, in which he presents much vividly detailed history of British Columbian Forestry and the socioeconomic, environmental, cultural, and moral conflicts that arise from it still.  To start chapter four, Vaillant includes this poem, by Donald A. Fraser, "adapted by Margaret Horsfield".  The notes of what we now know as a misguided manifest destiny echo through the song.  And while, on Ailsa's house, we're being mindful in our materials selection and means of acquisition, we must, as we contemplate our link with centuries of foresters, sawyers, and builders, consider our place in the great balance.  

The Song of the Axe


I am the tooth of the human race,
Biting its way through the forest vast,
Chip by chip, and tree by tree,
'Til the fields gleam forth at last,
Eating its heart with keen delight,
Into the groaning tree I bite.
Every stroke the land doth bless,
And joy o'erflows the wilderness.

MARLEY film release yesterday

As tribute to yesterday's national film premiere of Marley, we present the favorite Bob song of the International Hewers' Guild:

Dear fellow Thoreausians,

What an honor it has been to work with you these past few weeks. From lopping down 90 ft pines to raising logs to be sawed in half, from hewing timber to hauling trunks, and all the laughs along the way, we have made a great season thus far. Let us maintain our enthusiasm, our always good natured heckling, and our profound inertia throughout the rest of the year, so as to best wish off the seniors in our future forestry ventures.

This past (4-day) week, we hauled the five sections of the white pine we felled behind the pond.  We got them out of the woods and as far as the faculty parking lot, where Dave Jones and his guys will haul them down to our hewing site off the exit driveway.  Todd Mazzeo brought us some shin pads (and lent us his own pair) after we sent out a school-wide request for used pairs to use while we hew with our broadaxes.  Thanks, Todd!  We continued our hewing and also cut more cribbing to support our logs at the worksite.  I'm hoping Allegra will upload the video she shot today of our buzzing hewing site...  Allegra?  ...Hello...?...  

Our one rainy day

Last week it rained one day.  Since our tools were sharp, we repaired to room 301 and watched Alone in the Wilderness, the story of Dick Proenneke's log cabin construction in Alaska, 1968.  Proenneke's expertise with traditional tools much like those we're using inspires us, as does his relentlessly efficient work ethic and self-sufficiency.  Here's a trailer:

Day: 1 Injury count: 0

We got off to a bit of a slow start but have gotten moving quite fast!! It's been a ton of fun so far, and it only looks to get better. :) Thankfully we're all alive and maintaining appendages, and with our precautions this patter should continue without a problem. The other day, we decided to prove sexism wrong. With the excused absences of a few of our members, it was left to 7 girls (and Nick) to move the parts of the 90 ft tree we cut down on week two! We still need to bring those logs the rest of the way to our hewing site, but we're well on our way now.

What Happens in the Woods Stays in the Woods

Although, we got a slow start to the spring season, things have started to pick up quickly. We're in the fourth week of our project and our group has almost doubled in numbers. Last week we took down a white pine out in the Pingree woods and have now started to move the logs up the long and tiring journey to the boat shop. Can't wait for more hueing!!! And time with Nick Kritikos!

Toughest Kids On The Block

Though we started out small, our numbers soon swelled allowing for eight hewers at one time, but not to worry, we are very safe ax wielders with our catcher and hockey shin-guards. We have already taken down one white pine tree and transported what felt like twenty, but that's just how we do. Come check us out!!!!!!!!!!!

Chopping Down a 90-foot tree

House building has been good so far! The most exciting part has been cutting down the 90-foot tree.  After chopping at the tree for about a half an hour,  it fell down with a thundering crash.  The tough part now is carrying the tree from the woods to the field. Hopefully, we can carry all of the parts down by the end of the week, if we are strong enough :)

TIMBERRR!!!

Varsity Co-ed Experimental thus far

I suffered a severe injury last week.  My finger was sliced open.  But it was ok, because I put dandalions on people's cars.  I think Thoreau would be proud of my combination of nature and modern technology.  I really enjoy debarking trees as well.  It is fun.  I'm really having fun so far in this whole endevor.  Go team axe throwing!!

The First Strike! English Teachers Gone Wild!

Captain's Log (Haha, get it?)

The Varisty Experimental Coeducational Afternoon Activity Team is beginning Week 4 of their long journey. We've made great progress despite the rambunctious actions of one Michaela Byrne. In the coming weeks we will continue hewing, and eat more dried mangoes, because that's just the way we flirt.

-Dictated but not read,
His Royal Highness Nicholas Dimetri Kritikos of the greater Salem area

Day 1: Chopping with the Moores!