this week we learned that the
tusgeegee air camp and it's air men
was a trial to find out weather or not
african american men could handle being piolets
and if so how good they would be compared to
the white piolets of the air core. Much to many
peoples' surprize, many of the african american
piolets being trained were very capable young men.
Few of these many brave men were lucky enough to
survive into modern times but we were lucky enough
to hear one's story on thursday of this week.
We also had the emancipation proclomation read to
us by a local artist and poet I have heard it before
but having reinforced always helps. The demonstration
we were given on cannon fire was more pain than help
for me, but i think my brother and most of the people
liked it.

Whistle project was a fail. 10 failed attempts. I know how the air moves, but not how to get it to move that way. Decided to make a bamboo cane instead. Cut it out of the ground. Cut it the right height. Cut all the roots off of it. Filed the roots down to the wood. Still working on it.

This week, I learned how to use a grinder, what a grimmel is and how to use it, a lot about cars, a bit about oil rigs, how to cook salmon, and a lot about kitchen fires!

buddhist holidays- just a small part, not all

Magha Puja is a holiday usually celebrated in February. The goal for the day is generally to commit no sins and do only good. Many Buddhist can be found in a light procession, visiting temples and other Buddhists, wearing robes, practising meditation and generally getting reacquainted with their faith.
Asalha Puja looks to me like a day at church. The day is spent listening to sermons, donating to temples.

My favorite Buddhist holiday
Buddha's birthday is celebrated on a holiday known as Vesak and is on the first full moon in may. (June in leap years) the official name for this holiday is "Vesākha." The date varies from year to year on which this holiday falls, but it is normally in the 5th or 6th lunar month according to wikipedia.com. The decision to agree to celebrate Vesākha as Buddha’s birthday was formalized at the first Conference of the World Fellowship of Buddhists held in Sri Lanka in 1950, but this festival held every year in Buddhist communities is a centuries-old tradition.
Celebrating Vesākha also means making efforts to bring happiness and help to the unfortunate like the old people, the crippled, and the sick. To this day, Buddhists give out gifts of cash to various charitable homes throughout the country. Vesākha is a time for joy and happiness, expressed not by buying worldly things for yourself or someone you know but by helping and donating to others in need. Also concentrating on useful activities like cooperating and lighting temples, painting and creating scenes from Buddha's life for the public's view. Devout Buddhists also work together to provide food, drinks and vegetarian food to followers who visit the temple to pay their respect to the Enlightened One, otherwise known as Buddha.
I tried looking up Halloween but very few religions actually celebrate this holiday. It is forbidden by Islamic culture and religion from what i have found, most Christians see the holiday as secular and celebrate it because of the fun and good times their kids and they have. Celtic Pagans see it as a holy day while some wiccans see halloween as offensive and stereotypical. Jehova's Witnesses do not celebrate it because they believe that anything that came from a pagen holiday should not be celebrated by "true" Christians.
In my opinion haloween is just like alot of holidays celebrated in the U.S.A. what i mean is it is just another day of the year that our government uses to make money. Some small shops like Treasured Vessels survive because of holidays, many people come in for christmas decorations and haloween ones as well, so the extra income is a good thing in many cases. Where would flower shops be without valentines day? Our America realy needs holidays to survive but that does not in any way make them holy while a few people celebrate our big holidays because of religous reasons many only do so because they feel they have to, we are surrounded by decorations and gifts and people running around crazy just to find the perfect gift. If you celebrate a holiday because you feel you have to, or give a gift because of the time of year not because you want to do something for that person, than why bother? That person you forgot always loves you just as much as they would have if you got them something shiney, just because you showed up.

Piano Lesson #1

This is me playing piano the first time.

Vambrace

step1: measure your wrist and forearm, draw a parallelogram the top measuring the same as your wrist did and the bottom measuring the same as your forearm, make sure it is as long as your forearm and the sides of the parallelogram angle the same as your arm does. This piece of paper is your pattern, the same one should work for both arms.
Step2: mark down one side of the paper, you want to make dots ever half inch; these will be where your laces go through the leather. You will have to hole punch all of these, so keep that in mind; if you are not very strong you could do the holes farther apart so there are less of them.
Step3: fold the paper in half and mark the same holes on the other side so when you lace your vambraces up they look even.
Step4:trace your pattern onto the leather you are using and cut it out (repeat this step for our second vambrace)
step5: punch out the holes in the pattern, then set the pattern over your cut-out leather and just punch holes through where you just made holes in the pattern, once all of the holes are punched in both vambraces you can lace them up and show off to all of your friends.


Materials
leather
hole punch
shoe laces from your local dollar store
paper
pencil
tailors' measuring tape
leather sheers

Making a deck box

step 1: measure your deck and allow ¼Th of an inch on each side
step 2: use a ruler to make your six sides and one extra piece for a flap
step 3: once all of your sides are drawn, carefully cut everything out and try to keep them even
step 4: punch holes anywhere 2 pieces of leather will be attached, make sure your holes on both of the sides match up because you will need to lace or stitch them together later
step 5: attach all of the punched sided with lace and check to see if everything fits in the box or not
step 6: assuming everything fit and you didn't have to start over like I did , add Velcro for your clasp and you're done


Materials-
leather sheers
leather lace
dyes (optional)
stamps (optional)
leather hole punch
Velcro (or anything you want to use as a clasp)