October 4, 2008  

     In three days last week a group of men from church put in a new sidewalk.  First we broke up the old sidewalk with a jackhammer.  At first it was easy, but near the end the concrete was seven inches thick and took a lot of hammering to break.  Here we're relaxing at the end of the first day's work.  The second day we built wood frames to hold the stone dust underlayment and the pavers temporarily.  We distributed three yards of the stone dust and had to carefully scrape it level .  The final step was laying the pavers in a random pattern.  Some cutting was necessary at the edges.  Nice work by the crew—Don Alusic, Andy Bridge, Keith Danskin, Doug Keith, Mike Miller, and me.  Joan Miller planted a memorial Rose of Sharon next to the walk.
     Every Thursday I meet with a group of home-schoolers to advise them on a Rube Goldberg project.  Each student is designing and building a stage that has a trigger to release some stored energy (an elevated ball or a spring) and, after five seconds or so, trigger the following stage.  I supervised a similar project last year at Jaffrey Elementary School.
     The fall colors are rather early this year—starting about September 25.  I used to think that desciduous trees lost their leaves in the fall, while evergreen just kept their needles all year long.  Actually, white pines lose about 20% of their needles the first half of October.  Here's a movie of the needles coming down, and here's some accumulation on the shed roof.  I found some "fallen apples" on the lawn.  They turned out to be mushrooms!  The morning glories seem to take forever to bloom, but they're going strong now.  A very fat robin was sitting on our fence today.  Stored energy for his trip south?  Lynn's dahlias were superb this year—full and dark. 
     Last night Lynn and I performed with the Souhegan Valleyaires at an Eagle Scout Honor Court. We sang the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" as part of the ceremony.  State Senator Sheila Roberge was there to give recognition to Alexander Petrie from the State government.  

Feature: Galaxies colliding.  Movie of collision simulation

Quote: "There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear." — I John 4:18

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