My oldest daughter just finished 8th grade at Brooklyn Friends School. She’s been there since pre-K and one thing I found interesting was that in Lower School (K-4) they have woodworking class. And it’s for real woodworking. They have very young kids using very sharp tools, including power versions, and no one gets hurt (at least to my knowledge). Both my daughters loved woodworking and neither are particularly into that sort of thing, so the teacher must be doing something right.
One year (3rd grade?) the project was to build a chair with whatever creative thing you wanted to add to it, so my daughter build a bench like chair with a cow head that swiveled. Imagine a very sturdy small bench with a carved cow head, painted white with black spots. And it was really sturdy. Pretty good for a 3rd grader.
We have a regular homeless person on our block. An older Asian woman who is clearly not all there, but crazy in a mostly harmless sort of way. She camps out in front of the Belarusian Autocephalous Orthodox Church on the corner (doesn’t everyone have one of those?). She does some clean up and other stuff for the church and the church clearly looks out for her as do the other local businesses and most folks. Crazy but our crazy. Welcome to Brooklyn.
My daughter is leaving for sleep-away camp for four weeks. I know people do this all the time at earlier ages and for longer, but this is a big deal for us. Four weeks without her will be really strange. While she’s out we want to paint her room. We want to push all the furniture to the middle of the room and throw a big drop cloth over it. But it’s not that big a room, so we needed her to get rid of a bunch of old stuff.
She did great and threw out a ton of stuff. The cow bench got pitched.
In Brooklyn garbage goes out front. We are in a large building with 58 units, so it’s a bunch of garbage. It goes out in the evening and is picked up early in the morning.
Our homeless lady now has the cow bench.
The swivel head is gone, but without that it’s basically a very sturdy small bench. Ideal for her during the day. It’s just hard not to chuckle as I walk past.
Urban recycling.
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