First, happy 50th post!
Phew. Done with the pleasantries.
Now, I knew from the beginning that I wasn't going to earn the Pioneering badge. There are some aspects of it that are just incompatible with my city-bound lifestyle -- (requirement 1, for example: "Fell a nine-inch tree or pole in a prescribed direction neatly and quickly.") While I can get away with a lot in the park, chopping down trees would probably not fly. (Neither does the kite I built. But still.)
That said, I thought I had a great intersection between my working life and my pursuit of badges -- I'm teaching a unit on architecture, and I thought it would be really, really fantastic to link it up with the Handbook. Pioneering requirement 6 calls for the aspiring scout to "build a shack of one kind of another suitable for three occupants." While there are no guidelines for size, shape, durability, anything like that, the general size seemed prohibitive. Until I decided (because I am an idiot) to build a geodesic dome.
Now, I do not eat only sprouted breads. I don't even wear hemp socks. But a geodesic dome? This seemed like the kind of hippiedom I could get behind. Plus, it's just triangles! Even I understand triangles! I made a bunch of tubes out of newspapers (for the frame) and set to work.
An aside: When I was a tiny kid, my parents decided that I was ready to enter kindergarten early. I was reading, writing, all that. So my mother took me to the school board offices to enroll me, only to learn that I would have to pass an entrance exam. I would have to show my prowess. My intellect. My insight. I would have to draw a circle and cut out a square. And? I failed. This is the level of crafty coordination I displayed as a child, and it's pretty much where I still function.
Now then.
Three hours later? Still on the floor in a tangle of tubing and tape. I can't get the damn thing to stay up, try as I might. And I KNOW it's doable -- I'm using these plans (go to the website and see kids a third my age (gah!) building one successfully), but things are an absolute mess. Bits of tape got stuck in my hair. At two separate points, I was holding up different newspaper tubes with each hand, the top of the head, and my mouth. (By the way, spit? Does not contribute to the structural integrity of the newspaper.)
Okay. Also? I have to go to bed right now right now right now because it is a big, long day tomorrow. Except some disaster-dome photos today. (And yes. I have been calling it Thunderdome in my head, because wouldn't you?)
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True they are a third your age, but there are at LEAST five of them putting this up! Get some help, you can totally put that up!
ReplyDeleteDid you see that they specifically mentioned that you shouldn't stick the tape to your head? And I'm with Wendy - that structure isn't stable until it's completely together, so I think it would be difficult to do it without people holding it up for support. Make it a class project!
ReplyDeleteThe whole thing is just ridiculously undoable -- the best way I can think of to do it (because I'm insane) is to reinforce the newspaper beams with dowels or something else rigid and light, then lash the whole shebang together. But this is both frustrating and not leading towards a badge, so I think I have to just cut my losses for now.
ReplyDelete(Also, Tracy, I totally tried to do this with three of my classes, but sadly I'm roughly as coordinated as your average third-grader, so working with a big group just led to lots of comical fallings-down.)
So, with regards to the whole felling a tree thing? Come to Connecticut. My parents are cutting down trees on their hillside. If I can fell a tree, so can you.
ReplyDeleteYou've felled a tree? I'm both excited and jealous, in roughly equal measures.
ReplyDeleteThis may be a sign that Pioneering isn't dead, just on hold.