Vademecum

Sometimes the Great Clean Up project has unexpected results.  As the family member best able to judge such things I was charged with dealing with my dad's library of medical books.  Yes, you remember books.  I'll have more on this in a bit, but basically only a handful were worth preserving.  Mostly well illustrated older texts and a few I kept because a small mystery is involved.

And there there are things like this:      

                                                                                                       

This one gave my memory a good old nudge.  Because I remember a concoction called "Vademecum".  I was a bit fuzzy on details, I just knew it came in a tube and was pink.  My brother recalled that it was a European tooth paste.  Hey, its still sold today albeit not by the company that started marketing it in Sweden in the late 1890's.

So what's the connection?  Vade Mecum is a Latin phrase that translates to "Go with me".  It has long been used for portable hand books, often of a medical nature.  The sort of thing that would contain tips to diagnoses and lots of make 'em yourself remedies for same.  The first such use is said to be from circa 1629.  And as modern medicine advanced and this sort of reference became less important, this early 20th century example would have been near the end of the long and distinguished line.  I assume the tooth paste was a marketing concept based on the notion that there were all sorts of great formulas to be found in the Vade Mecum.

A bit more on the etymology of Vade-Mecum, including its link to "vamoose" and "wade", with a tarty chambermaid thrown in for good measure.

Portraits

Me, about age 3.  I had a sort of impish charm back then.

Me, age 25.  Good lookin' if in part by association.....

Me, a year or two back.  In case you can't tell I'm the one on the right.  Hey, what happened?

Fall Smorgasbord

Adhering mostly to my three times a week schedule; it seems likely that for a stretch we'll have one each of Robots, Hunting and The Great Clean Up/Clear Out.  Of course the number of people out there who find all three interesting is perhaps low, but fwiw this is my Life these days.  So lets have a quick sampler.

Robots:

Here's what the middle school crew is going to build.  It is designed to pick up and launch a volleyball.  There are suspicions that the FIRST game for the high school team might have that sort of game element, so its a chance to try stuff out.  If you can make something work with a short time frame and a labor force of squirrels, you've accomplished much.

I have not been out hunting yet.  Too busy and its been warm.  Best to wait, there will be more leaves down in a week or so, and the cooler weather makes the logistics of getting the deer processed much easier.  But from our trail cams, it appears somebody in our area is impatient.....

Probably should have taken a bit more time lining up that shot.  Bucky does not seem too bothered by this, so it may be "only a flesh wound".

Much could be said about digging through the Junk of Generations at my parents house.  Maybe this will suffice for today.

Rescuing the damn Donkeys

In the Great Clean Up there are moments of whimsey and of despair.  Sometimes they coincide.  Digging through strata of long irrelevant junk paper I came across this:

By this point my routine of shuffle, glance, identify, sort had become quite efficient.  But what the heck was this???

Well you have to know that sadly for the last decade or so that my mom lived at home she was bombarded by scammers.  The phone rang every hour (and it still does occasionally), the mailbox was full of appeals.  When one loosely uses the term "a ton" its usually hyperbole.  But I'm sure she got five pounds of mail every day, virtually all of it useless and a large percentage of it scamsters.  That's a ton every 18 months or so.  What she was getting on the internet before she lost the ability to use it, I don't want to know.

Finds of this nature are becoming less common in "the stacks".  Its one area we've been able to take stuff out wholesale.  But they keep coming.  Whoever occupies this house next will get them for another decade at least.

My brother and I have a bit of dark humor regards this stuff.  She got appeals from every end and each fringe of the political spectrum.  "At least they've found something to agree on".  There were certain themes.  Animal rescue.  Famine relief.  Political prisoners in faraway lands.  After a bit they started mixing and matching.  We expected to see appeals to "Free the starving Ethiopian donkeys".

This is in that vein.

It's a deck of playing cards from a place that is a Donkey Rescue ranch.  Why cards?  Well, lots of these outfits will send you some small trinket.  Mailing labels.  Stickers.  Sometimes a nickel or a dime glued to their appeal.  Playing cards were a new one to me.  Maybe they figure their core mark demographic sits around playing solitaire.

Anyway, sans future comment, here's a few pics.  I was mildly curious about the Peaceful Valley Donkey Rescue folks.  They seem to own a very large tract of land out west.  Where they get the donkeys in need of rescue was not clear.  If you also get curious and look 'em up, don't send them any money.  

Robot School 6.0

Ah, Robot School.  I claim credit here, as it was pretty much my invention.  I'd been working with middle school students for years doing basic DIY robot stuff.  When the high school FIRST Robotics team started up we had no "farm system".  Alumni of the earlier after school programs turned up, but as the complexity increased we needed more students, and students who knew more.

In the summer of 2019 I just invited a batch of kids to come do a bit of summer work with the high school team.  They'd just finished 6th, 7th, or 8th grade.  My fellow coaches thought I was crazy.  Hey, fair point, I think that myself at times.

The name?  Well, my first grandson was pretty young at the time and thought that what we were doing with robots was pretty cool.  He coined the phrase Robot School and somehow it stuck.

In general about half the middle school kids we work with go on to the high school team.  Of that initial group we had a future team captain, a couple of valedictorians, a national merit scholar and a girl who won Dean's List, the highest award in FIRST Robotics.

That was Robot School 1.0.  Covid of course imploded the entire edifice of public education, so it was not until summer of 2021 that we ran RS-2.  This was an official summer school offering.  Another outstanding group, the core of a team that came inches from going to Worlds two years later.

2022 was an off year.  We moved our build space to the more accommodating environs of the middle school tech ed area.  That allowed us to run after school versions of Robot School in fall of 2023 and 2024.  Smaller groups, and perhaps reflecting the post Covid learning crater, fewer kids stepping up with the ability and industry to do technology way beyond high school levels.

For 2025 we decided, what the heck.  I've reported on our successful summer build (Robot School 5.0) and now we are back with the biggest group to date.  15 students.  And 9 instructors ranging from ancient geezers, me, to members of the high school team.  The middle school kids learn a lot more from them.  And from each other.

A few photos from the swirling chaos of adolescents with power tools....

OK, that last one was of me just prior to delivering the eulogy for Ketchup, the robot they were about to dismantle for parts.  When hats were doffed I spoke the traditional words for such occasions:

"Bolts to bolts.  Widgets to widgets.  From parts it came and to parts it shall return.  Amen."

Indian Guides

A major house clean up/clean out has different categories of difficulty.  The hideous decades old pickles....very carefully dispose of them.  But other things take thought, moments of reflection.  Old clothes for instance.  They are part of our memories of the people who wore them, the places they wore them.......

Two views of an unusual garment, adult size.

This goes back to the 1960's.  Both my older brother and I remember being involved in a Father-Son thing called "Indian Guides".  It was run by the YMCA.  Dads and sons, later daughters were also brought in, got together in small groups and did stuff.  I have vague memories of craft projects.  There was a patina of Native American culture, talk about The Great Spirit and so forth.  I have a distinct impression that it was something our dad did to try and connect with us a bit.  I can sympathize, being a father of boys myself.  And it must have been harder with four sons, one with special needs, and a work ethic that went way beyond reasonable.  I've mentioned before that it was not until I went away to college that I found out that not everyone eats dinner at 8pm!  Heck, nowadays that's not far from bed time!  But what really was Indian Guides?

It was as I said, a group associated with the YMCA.  It was established back in 1926 by two friends, one of whom actually was Native.  It's heyday was in the 1960's, which corresponds with our involvement.  From various photos I've seen the "attire" varied.  Lots of head bands and feathers.  Some vests, and it looks like they were more common for the dads than the sons.

If you think this sounds a bit out of step with modern sensibilities, you'd be correct.  A more detailed history of the organization and the cultural appropriation aspects of it can be found HERE.

I think our involvement with Indian Guides was fairly short.  Pretty soon my brother and I were in Cub Scouts.  My dad didn't get involved in that.  My mom was a Den Mother, but oddly my brother and I were in different "Dens" and I was not in hers.

One to One Thousand Ratio Confirmed

You'll have to tolerate a series of observations spinning off of the great clean up/clean out of my parent's house.   There's so much that could be said.  But sometimes the old adage about a picture being worth a thousand words.......

Our possessions are almost entirely just "stuff".  If you don't maintain control of them they will in time be in control of you.