atoms into suns

And my fishing bobbers, cookie sheets, magnets, roll of aluminum foil, paper clips, cotton balls, toy train, molecular model sets, and a bunch of other stuff.

The local homeschool group has a coop for a few classes, like drama, science, and crafts. I teach the science class, and I like to bring in lots of hands-on stuff for the kids to make a mess with. Today I did what several of us do every week: pulled the car up to the building, unloaded my stuff, parked in the lot, walked to the building with the kids, took one load and the kids inside, got the kids settled, then went back out to get the things I'd left outside.

It was all gone. A small plastic bin and a paper grocery bag full of stuff. We searched the building, the grounds, even checked the dumpster, but didn't find a scrap of it.

It's not like I left it next to a busy street with a big FREE sign on it. The classes are in the community building of a cohousing community and the stuff was left on a sidewalk on a cul-de-sac for a max of 20 minutes. The only people who'd be in the area were the residents of the cohousing community and us homeschool folks.

The whole thing just bummed me out, because it made it hard to teach a good class. I had accumulated a bin full of supplies that were good props for teaching science to little kids but which wouldn't really have much use for most people. The things that bum me out the most are my kid's wooden train cars, for obvious reasons, and my molecular model sets, because they're expensive to replace.

I guess I've been lucky until now, since I haven't really had to deal with theft before, or at least not on such a personal level. The people who call me to tell me I owe them money on a credit card I've never had? They piss me off, but it's not personal -- they're a voice on the phone. Besides, with them I have some recourse -- I'm going to be placing nice phone calls to a couple of state attorneys general soon. But with this, there was actually a flesh-and-blood person who walked within 20 feet of me and on the other side of a wall, saw my stuff there, and decided to walk off with it. It's a lot more personal.

I hope I'm wrong. Maybe somebody did think it was just sitting there for the taking and will return it all when they see the big LOST signs on the doors, but lately I'm not very optimistic about human nature.

My brain just produced this in the course of everyday conversation:

Incidentally, I was feeling a little rusty on my understanding of "laissez-faire", so I looked up the Wikipedia entry. There was a link to "wu wei", so I skimmed that too. Now I have this little sing-songy bounce in my head about wu wei and wei wu wei. Sort of like wax-on, wax-off meets Wu-Tang Clan. It's a Daoist thing, and somehow it all seems to fit together.

Sculpture by Mike Combs of Mike's Metal-ing. Picture taken with permission.

We're back, and boy oh boy did we have fun. We ogled mountain ranges, got caught in a sandstorm, got hailed on, and splooshed though a stream. And that was all within 15 minutes! Pictures and stories to come.

In a couple of hours, we're all going to pile in the car and zoom off to New Mexico for a wedding. I love, love, love New Mexico (or is it the high desert I love?), so I'll probably post some pictures when we get back.

In the meantime, I leave you with this quote:

To die of hunger is an intellectual absurdity and morally repulsive.

     --Bob Geldof