Autumn 2008

Fall has always been my favorite time of year.  There is something about the change in the air, especially here in NY, that I just love.  I’ve always liked wearing flannel and having extra blankets on the bed.

It’s a been quite a while since I posted.  The kids are now in the local public school, enjoying daily, half-day preschool.  They are getting quite a kick out of waiting for the bus every day.  Usually we wait 10 to 15 minutes outside because they can’t stand to wait inside until closer to bus time.

It was Homecoming and the 125 Anniversary of celebration for Houghton College this past weekend.  It was really a great event.  The biggest highlight, especially for the kids, was the festivities on the Quad — there was a Ferris wheel and a couple of those giant blow-up slides/obstacle courses.  Everything else going on paled in comparison to those (well, with the possible exception of the candy gathered from the parade).  (Click on the Flickr box to the left for some images of Homecoming & the kids.)

The biggest thing about Homecoming for me was the general atmosphere of excitement and crowds.  Because of our location and the woodland setting, even when college is in session, campus can feel empty and the college’s problems can feel overwhelming.  (I know the Lord will provided as long as He wants us here, but the feeling persists if you let it.)  With the crowds, laughing children, silly college students, smiling professors (well, mostly smiling) and friends from the community all packed onto campus and enjoying the festivities, cares and concerns seem distant and of less importance.

I’m sure this is one reason why the Lord prescribed Feast Days for his people.  There were specific times of gathering, eating, joyously talking and the inevitable silliness that ensues.  All of this, when done in the proper context and with the right attitudes, amounts to a kind of worship — taking God at His word and enjoying a feast He Himself has prescribed for us.

Yes, the troubles remain, the problems must be solved.  But like a tired worker coming in from the fields, the work can be taken up again with renewed strength after a hearty meal and table fellowship with fellow workers.

Perhaps this is another reason I like the Fall season — it is a time when several feast days are close together; a promise of renewal amidst the falling leaves and failing warmth.

Marriage, Sex, and the Kingdom

As Paul Evdokimov says, “Under the grace of the sacrament [of marriage] the sexual life is lived without causing the slightest decline of the inner life.”  Marriage, like monasticism, is a sign of God’s kingdom, because it begins to restore the unity of mankind (and the cosmos as a whole) which has been broken up by sin.  Thus marriage is both a great mystery in itself and represents a greater mystery, the unity of redeemed mankind in Christ.

from Introduction by Catharine P. Roth to St. Chysostom’s On Marriage and Family Life, St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, Crestwood, NY. 1986.  p.10

First Time Fun

The last few weeks have been a whirlwind of travel, family, dirt and new experiences for the kidders. It began with a week long visit to Karen’s family in DE. Jon’s family from Hawaii was able to come in, so we had a rare chance to visit with all Karen’s brothers & families. Warren and Nicole have met everyone in the past, but I think this is the first time they will remember.

One of the goals for this trip to DE was to get the kids to the beach. We headed south to Cape Henlopen, a traditional spot for the Reeses. It’s the quintessential East Coast beach, complete with large crowd blanked around the boardwalk access — all in all, everything a beach is supposed to be to people living on this end of the country.

Nicole and Warren both got right into the waves. This surprised us a bit as Warren woke up scared to go to the beach that morning (there might be sharks!). The surf was high, so we were able to get some body-boarding in & the kids got to experience getting bowled over by the ocean. (Nicole was quite proud of herself for going all the way underwater.) The rest of the day was spent running in and out of the waves, catching sand crabs and digging in the sand.

Later in the week, Nicole and Warren got to see their first in-theater movie, “Wall-E”. It’s billed as a kids movie and rated G, but I think 90% of it was way over kid’s heads. There was more social criticism than entertainment in it — but there was also lots of robots running, flying, scooting, and bouncing around, so fun was had by all. Well, almost… Nicole declared herself bored about 45 minutes in, but I suspect that would have been true of any movie.

Last week JP, Josie & Jordan came from Indiana to go hunting Herkimer “diamonds” with us. This was a trip JP & I had discussed for literally years. Middleville, NY is about 3 hours from here, at the base of the Adirondacks. We camped & worked at the Ace of Diamonds Mine. There are other options in the area, but most rock-hounds end up at the Ace.

This was Nicole & Warren’s first camping trip and first real rock-hounding experience. They did very well camping (using sleeping bags in the tent actually out-shined ’smores). Rock picking was a bit harder on them. We had a few problems, mostly associated with just being 4 year olds.

The first day, we tried breaking some of the hard rock beneath the pocket layer of the mine (feel free to ask if you really want to know). That involves real sledge & wedge work, not exactly 4 year old fare. We got a few good crystals out of it, but it was just too boring for JP’s girls & our kids. We had good luck hunting about the debris piles for crystals others missed; the Thorpes went home with some really nice pieces.

Because the first day was rough around the edges, we debated leaving a day earlier than planned. But we finally decided to stay. We changed venue a bit though and went for the well-weathered material at the top of the hill. The crystals there are not as nice as those in the deeper layers, but they’re much easier to get to — and you can work in the shade. A big plus since day 2 turned out to be cloudless & around 90.

The kids had a lot more fun working in the dirt, but only made it to about mid-day before they were obviously ready to head home. Even so, I’d call it a successful trip for a first go. They’re already talking fondly of it and speculating on which friend they’ll take along next time.

So the summer is half gone. Things promise to get quicker from here. Karen has a conference coming up in Bloomington, I have a business trip later in August and the semester begins in earnest shortly after. It’s almost time to start thinking about where to go for a family rock hunt next year…. we haven’t been to the South in quite a while.

Evolution Ascendent

Listening to talk radio while on a sans-kids shopping trip, I heard this on an otherwise informative feature about nutrition:

Evolution designed apples to be very nutritious…. it was a very sophisticated Darwinian process.

I’m amazed that anyone can say this, especially someone who is intelligent enough to make some good observations about our eating habits. I don’t read newspapers or watch much cable TV, so maybe I’m behind the times. Could someone email me and let me know when Evolution stopped being a natural , impersonal process and become a transcendental being capable of forethought & design?

(Sorry, I didn’t get the nutritionists’ name… if I find out who is to blame for this quote, I’ll edit this post.)

New Flickr photostream

I just created a new Flickr user for uploading family stuff. I think it’s important to keep work stuff separate from family stuff. Here’s the link:

http://www.flickr.com/people/27842200@N05/

I try to make comments on the pictures, so you may want to click through to the larger images.

If you’re unfamiliar, Flickr is a fantastic photo hosting service and community, but it has loose rules regarding what can be posted. Check out an earlier blog post for a couple warnings about exploring Flickr:

http://torraca.wordpress.com/2007/07/14/flickr/

BTW — the older post links the photostream I maintain for exhibiting my work.

Archives available

I found a tool for exporting my old blog’s posts and importing them here.  I’m pretty happy about this as it took some doing — it was sorta fun to get my hands into coding for a little bit.  Guess I haven’t lost it completely.

Comments are not active for the older posts, but I’ll leave them active for future ones — unless the spam filters on this system fail me.

I hope to get a real family update here soon.

Moving Around

I realized the other day that Providence has changed my life significantly since I started my blog over at torraca.net. When I began that blog, I was still interested in doing the all of the behind the scenes coding work myself. Today, I’m much more deeply involved in business and keeping up with the kids.

Happily, I found that WordPress has this free blog space available — it works the same as my old blog, but I don’t have to mess with updated, spam filters, and all the other minutia of website admin. I don’t have complete control over design elements, but, hey, it’s free.

I’ll be changing torraca.net into a business site in the near future.  Until then, I’ll let the old blog stand.

A Little Catching Up

It’s a exceptionally cold day here. Sub-20 and windy. Both the wood stove and the heat-pump are working to keep the house in the 65 degree range. But it’s also delightful — Karen and I snoozed on the couch while the kids watched a movie (Cars, again). As I type, Karen and the kids are playing a game, fresh bread is rising bread, corned beef (a special treat) is simmering, and I’ve managed to squeak a few moments here on the computer for something not work related. I’m not sure if this is a traditional Sabbath, but I’ll be better rested for it.

Karen’s first semester went very well. Though some students were less than thrilled about her high standards (i.e., she required them to actually expend effort and think), there were many good reviews from students and her peers. It wasn’t all perfect of course, but for a first semester it was good.

The Spring semester is going to be rather more challenging. Karen has two course preps and, therefore, two lab preps — in some ways, especially grading, it’s like carrying four courses. There are other challenges too, but that gets into faculty issues — suffice to say, we’ll be relying heavily on the Grace of God for things to go well this round. I’m confident God will provide, even if He lets us get tired & stretched in the process.

Warren and Nicole have thrived at preschool. I can frequently see the positive change in them as they volunteer details about what they’ve learned and demonstrate new skills they’ve picked up. Most recently, they have been just on the edge of reading smaller words. They can pick out letters readily enough and can usually give me the sound each letter makes, but it hasn’t clicked that they can put those sounds together to make words yet. I suspect we’re very close.

Our friends Mark & Christie sent along a birth announcement and picture of their new son, Matthew. It was a thrill to see the picture as I know it fulfills a God-given desire of their hearts. It was strange telling the kids “when little Matthew is 4 years old like you, you’ll be 8 years old.” Just 4 years ago they were smaller than baby Matthew is now. Not less than 5 months ago we were wishing, praying, cajoling, and doing whatever else we could think of to get the kids out of diapers. Now they have a full semester of preschool behind them and have been using the potty the whole time. No doubt I’ll be warning younger parents about the speed at which time flies in another year or so….

I haven’t posted in a very long time, so I’ll get this online for you. I’ll try to add some pictures later. Thanks for checking in!

CZ Retro-reflector

Yeah, I know it’s been far too long since I posted anything with substance. I’ll do my best to get something out this week. For now, here’s something I was playing with — with positive results for a change!

3.13ct CZ in my Retro-hex design. It’s hardly a novel design in the cutting world, but I can lay some claim here as I did this one from scratch. I’m waiting for my machine to come back from the shop so I can try some other ideas I’ve had a few weeks to ponder.

For the record, the image above is hosted by Flickr. Flickr makes things rather easy and gives double-exposure (which may come in handy if I ever go back in to business). Feel free to click the image and poke around my other pics.

An Expenditure of Words

Read authors who stretch you and introduce you to other writings as well. Great writers stimulate your capacity to think beyond their ideas, spawning fresh insights and extensions of your own. Good reading is indispensable to impartation of truth. An expenditure of words without the income of ideas leads to conceptual bankruptcy.

Ravi Zacharias, “The Dying Art of Thinking”, 1992. http://www.rzim.org/resources/jttran.php?seqid=2