Eighth Grade Graduation

Adam graduated from 8th Grade at LTMS. He was one of several students that were honored with the Presidents Academic Achievement award given to students meeting the President's criteria for all three years of middle school in terms of grades and in standardized testing.

He really enjoyed his social studies class because he got along with his teacher, Mr. Holliday (pictured on the left at graduation). I'm glad that this happened. We all need to understand and appreciate history if we have any hope of enjoying the significance of the presence and the impact of our decisions upon the future.

In addition to receiving the president's award at graduation, Adam also was chosen for "Best Hair" in the year book. We are so proud.

After a busy summer of baseball practice, games and tournaments and overlapping football practice for Tates Creek High School, we are sure that Adam will hit the ground running at Tates Creek High School.

Becca's Birthday

Becca got her ears pierced for her birthday this year. Emily went with her to the store to make it more like a party.

After the ear piercing party, Emily joined us all to watch Becca blow out the candles on her cake and open a few gifts.

Although Becca was hoping for a cell phone and expressing that hope often, she was thrilled with the volleyball net that is fun for the whole family.

She was excited about the ceiling fan that she opened up. The one in her room hasn't worked for quite some time.

The present that she opened with the most expression was from Emily. She picked out a pair of ear rings for her to wear after the long, long waiting period with the earstretchers that she got at the ear ring store.

Happy Mother's Day

Just yesterday, I finished trimming all the bushes, shrubs and trees around the house and was wondering what to do with the Bradford Pear.

As I was mowing the lawn, I was looking at the weight of what was left of the tree and decided that the tree was going to end up on the house one day if I didn't have a tree service come take it out.

Last night, I told Jackie that we were going to lose the tree and that we needed go ahead and get it removed.

This morning, while we were at church, or while we at Tony Roma's celebrating Mother's day, a thunderstorm took care of getting it down, placing it directly on the deck.

When the family walked into the kitchen after lunch, they thought some fast growing ivy had grown up on the deck while we were gone, but quickly ruled that out as something that only happens in the movies.

I've been wanting to open up the deck for several years, so I guess this will give me a summer project. I already had one project in painting the deck, doors, and other trim to match the new window color. I need more projects.

I saw it as a project, but Adam saw it as a chance to invent a new game called "tree diving". He's in the picture if you can find him. We all thought the "tree diving" game looked fun until I realized that each dive was applying more pressure to Jackie's azaleas.

Resolution of Craftsmen

I'm currently reading "The Craftsman" by Richard Sennett.

I read tonight about the conflict between the designer and the craftsman that occurred in Peachtree Center in Atlanta. The problem was that the designers used CAD to plan the whole thing and never visited the city to know it was hot outside in the summer. The community of craftsman fixed many of the remote ideal design flaws, but they couldn't fix them all.

I found it quite ironic that I struggled for a week with a very similar issue within one of the office complexes there several years ago. Overall, the combination of design and craft worked well there.

So here is Richard's section on conflicting standards, one of my favorites so far:

What do we mean by good-quality work? One answer is how something should be down, the other is getting it to work. This is a difference between correctness and functionality. Ideally, there should be no conflict; in the real world, there is. Often we subscribe to a standard of correctness that is rarely if ever reached. We might alternatively work according to the standard of what is possible, just good enough-- but this can be a recipe for frustration. The desire to do good work is seldom satisfied by just getting by.

Thus, following the absolute measure of quality, the writer will obsess about every comma until the rhythm of a sentence comes out right, and the woodworker will shave a mortise-and-tenon joint until the two pieces are completely rigid, needing no screws. Following the measure of functionality, the writer will deliver on time, no matter that every comma is in place, the point of writing being to read. The functionally minded carpenter will curb worry about each detail, knowing that small defects can be corrected by hidden screws. Again, the point is to finish so that the piece can be used. To the absolutist in every craftsman, each imperfection is a failure; to the practitioner, obsession with perfection seems a prescription for failure.

A philosophical nicety is necessary to bring out this conflict. Practice and practical share a root in language. It might seem that the more people train and practice in developing a skill, the more practical minded they will become, focusing on the possible and the particular. In fact, the long experience of practice can lead in the opposite direction. Another variant of the "Isaac Stern rule" is : the better your technique, the more impossible your standards. (Depending on his mood, Isaac Stern worked many, many variations of the "Isaac Stern rule" on the virtue of repeated practice.) Linux can operate in a similar fashion. The people most skilled in using it are usually the ones thinking about the program's ideal and endless possibilities.

What's up with Carmen

Last Sunday afternoon, I spent what seemed like hours watching Carmen polish off the last few kinks of parallel parking so that she could pass her driving test during the week. She was "fearing the worst" like a good student or athlete, but it was hard for me to see any "hope for the best" coming from her even though I knew it was there.

She has now taken to the streets, driving herself to two volleyball practices and I'm hoping that this will take a dent out of our gas expenses with less running around for Jackie.

This weekend, Jackie and Carmen headed to Louisville for a volleyball tournament. They stayed overnight with Alice and Sierra. Carmen and Sierra are playing for the same TEVA 16-3 volleyball team and have lots of history to share together even though they play volleyball for different high schools and haven't spent much time together for the last eight years.

Prior to playing volleyball, Carmen and Sierra performed in some of Jackie's musical performances at church, as I recall, Sierra was a louder singer than Carmen but both were outstaged by Adam's antics.

Years before digital cameras, Sierra attended some of Carmen's birthday parties and those pictures are available to be scanned some day.

Expelled

Our whole family just got back from the movie theater where we enjoyed Ben Stein's movie.

Well, enjoyed is not really accurate. I was absorbed. Absolutely absorbed.

Adam, Carmen and Anthony got bored with it before the end, but Carmen kept answering questions out loud with her opinion throughout the movie well past her boredom stage so I know she didn't disengage completely.

I'm not sure where Becca stands on her review, but I'll figure that out in the next few days.

If you have an active brain, you need to watch this movie. If you believe in freedom, you need to watch this movie. If you believe in education, you need to watch this movie. If you are under 20, you may be bored with Ben Stein's pace and dry humor, but go anyway.

I just looked at his blog and apparently there are many people that feel strongly about his views and the movie: Ben's Blog

After third round, Cardinal chances still looking good

An alert reader revealed the fact that I was not counting Ohio, Illinois, Virginia and West Virginia in my Cardinal stats. Each of these states share the Cardinal as their state bird along with the ones that I have lived in: Indiana, North Carolina and Kentucky.

Welcome Xavier, WVU and Kent State to the Cardinal stats.

We know that at least one Cardinal will fall today when Louisville plays UNC...

	Third Round	Teams Left	Remaining Teams
Cardinal	33%	4	Louisville, UNC, Davidson, Xavier
North Carolina	67%	2	UNC, Davidson
Ohio	50%	1	Xavier
Kentucky	33%	1	Louisville
Tennessee	25%	1	Memphis

	Wins	Losses	Penetration
Big Ten	5	4	R1: Indiana R2: Purdue R3: Wisconsin, Michigan State
SEC	4	6	R1: Kentucky, Georgia, Vanderbilt R2: Arkansas, Mississippi State R3: Tennesse
West Virginia	2	1	R3: West Virginia
Indiana	3	4	R1: Indiana R2: Purdue, Butler, Notre Dame
Illinois	0	0
Virginia	0	0

Second round strips Indiana of its State Bird

I'm not sure how Butler, Purdue and Notre Dame all ended up losing in the second round, but they did. Butler's loss to the only remaining SEC team was particularly embarrassing.

I had lunch with a UofL graduate today and he seemed to think Louisville's chances in the tournament were unrelated to their Cardinal status. We'll see.

	Second Round	Teams Left	Remaining Teams
Cardinal	50%	5	Stanford, WKU, Louisville, UNC, Davidson
Kentucky	67%	2	WKU, Louisville
North Carolina	67%	2	UNC, Davidson
Big Ten	50%	2	Wisconsin, Mich State
Tennessee	50%	2	Memphis, Tennessee
SEC	17%	1	Tennessee
Indiana	0%	0

Indiana University let me down yesterday

I went to bed last night with great confidence the coachless Indiana University Hoosiers could come back against the champion of the SEC conference, but was disappointed this morning to find that they couldn't pull it off.

Indiana was the only team in Indiana to lose, and the only team in the Big Ten to lose. Indiana and Kentucky were the only teams in my "Cardinal Connection" group to lose.

I used to wear a shirt that said I cheered for two teams: "Purdue and whoever plays IU", but last night they really let me down.

I'm still a believer that this is the year of the Cardinal. Eight teams left... but I think the second round could give the state of Tennesee a chance to move up a few notches in this list.

	First Round	Teams Left
North Carolina	100%	3
Cardinal	80%	8
Big Ten	75%	3
Indiana	75%	3
Kentucky	67%	2
Tennessee	50%	2
SEC	50%	3

Adam heads to Washington

Adam left Thursday night on a school field trip to Washington, DC. They drove all night and had a tour of the White House on Friday morning to start out a three day weekend. Adam's Uncle Keith planned on walking down to see him on Friday but it was raining.

The two of them hooked up on Saturday: Adam in DC

As I read Keith's blog about him buying Adam an Oreo McFlurry, my mind raced back to the evening that we spent with Keith's friends during 2001. That evening, Adam made chocolate milk shakes for about 10 people and climbed all over everyone. I think he thought he had about four extra Uncles.

In 2001, Carmen was tougher than Adam as she demonstrated by wearing shorts on a cold day.
In 2001, Adam's hair was the same length as his Uncle's.
2001 was only seven years ago....

Six Lanes of Slush around Six Flags, St. Louis

I made a trip to Rolla, Missouri on Tuesday to speak to the Tau Beta Pi engineering honor society at the Missouri University of Science and Technology and the interview some candidates on Wednesday morning. As I headed around the Southeast side of St. Louis, the traffic crews closed the roads while they cleared trucks off the hills near the Six Flags exit of I-44. I migrated my way around several tractionless trucks and stopped at the St. Louis Bread Company to have lunch and read 300 emails that had accumulated in the first six hours of my trip.

Bradford Pear: Designed to break

While we were in Nashville a few weekends ago, there were strong winds there overnight. Apparently those same winds made it to Lexington on Sunday morning and pruned a Bradford pear tree in our back yard.

It took Adam, Becca and I two weekends to get this cleaned up, but it is done now.

I cut up small branches for Becca to carry to the front yard, but I couldn't get her to stick at it very long. The only way I could motivate her to help was to suggest that she play a game with Buster while moving the sticks.

Adam, on the other hand, motivated himself in a couple of different manners. First, the opportunity to use a hatchet and second, the potential of creating a fire.

The picture on the right side is the "fire pit" after it sat outside a week in the rain. Obviously, he never got around to the fire part.

Now to the question... Why would God design a tree to break?

These trees are the beautiful flowering variety that are found all over the commonwealth of Kentucky. Yet, in every ice storm or windstorm they are the first to go.

We purchased our house with one in the front yard, but it collapsed before we moved in. Inspecting the bark, a neighbor pointed out that this particular branch had started to fall away years ago.

This is the tree that the kids climbed and swung in while they were growing up and I was always telling them to be careful with all the contraptions that they put in the tree because of its weakness.

Looking back on the two weekends of work to remove the branches, I now think I was wasting my breath with the kids. Although these trees were designed to break, knowing that a half damaged branch could sustain that much weight through the torque of many storms, makes me believe there is nothing the kids could possibly do to damage a 20 year old tree with weight or leverage from swings or stands.

I'd still like to keep Adam's hatchet and fire away from all of our things in our yard.

Pictures from Aunt Helen's Photo Album

Cardinal Connections in College Basketball

I've only lived in three states. All three have two things in common, basketball and state birds. This restricts my mobility, but it does give me a unique view of the top 17 college basketball teams in the country. ( BTW, those youngsters at Purdue are hanging in there....)

I think the nation should be watching out for Louisville, they have a multiplying Cardinal factor. The might even get cubic cardinal points if you consider the fact that Louisville has a high concentration of catholic residents.

Rank	Team	Record	State	Cardinal Connection
4	UCLA	25-3	CA
8	Stanford	23-4	CA	Mascot
15	Connecticut	22-6	CN
11	Georgetown	23-4	DC
12	Indiana	24-4	IN	State Bird
14	Butler	26-3	IN	State Bird
16	Purdue	22-6	IN	State Bird
17	Notre Dame	21-6	IN	State Bird
6	Kansas	25-3	KS
13	Louisville	23-6	KY	State Bird & Mascot
3	UNC	26-2	NC	State Bird
7	Duke	24-3	NC	State Bird
9	Xavier	24-4	OH
1	Tennessee	25-3	TN
2	Memphis	27-1	TN
5	Texas	24-4	TX
10	Wisconsin	24-4	WI

Eby Family Heritage

Converting Dad's slides to digital pictures was a lot of fun and I sent DVDs to my cousin Gene Klein. Gene went up to his Mom's recently and took these digital photos of Aunt Helen's photo album.

These photos of my Dad (Kenneth) with his pet cow and my Grandpa (Charles Victor) with his mules explains at least partially why Becca loves animals.

I wish I had a bigger picture of the old mules or workhorses.

Thanks for sharing these, Gene!

Lunar Eclipse

I took a few pictures of the moon from our front porch and something got in the way... I've been assured that it won't block my view again until 2010.

Impact Tournament in Nashville

Carmen will be playing at the Impact tournament in Nashville next weekend. It doesn't look like there is much to do in the area other than play volleyball in what I hear is a very congested matrix of courts.


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College Basketball in Indiana

I've only lived in three states my entire life. All three have a high respect for the game of basketball.

I was born in Indiana where high school basketball was the biggest deal going. High school basketball took a drop down when the IHSAA decided to have 5 champions instead of one.

I moved to North Carolina where college basketball is king. That state has several schools that hold National Championships and the whole state watches college basketball and neighbors align with one of the several choices: UNC, Duke, NC State, Wake Forest, UNCC, etc...

I then moved to Kentucky, which worshiped UK Basketball at the time. Now it seems like the fans are tearing it apart piece by piece.

One of the things that happens in Lexington is that SEC is elevated above every other conference in order to make everyone believe that UK Basketball has a harder time than say a team like Purdue.

As Purdue faces Wisconsin tonight to battle for the top position in a lesser conference like the Big Ten, I thought I would look at the rankings and I noticed that there were 4 teams from Indiana in the Top 25.

It looks like basketball in Indiana has moved from High School to College in the last 20 years.

I wish I knew which teams were in the SEC so I could count them.

	Rank	Team	Record	State
	5	UCLA	21-2	CA
	9	Stanford	19-3	CA
	19	Connecticut	17-5	CN
	6	Georgetown	19-2	DC
	16	Marquette	16-5	WI
	10	Butler	20-2	IN
	14	Indiana	19-3	IN
	22	Notre Dame	17-4	IN
	24	Purdue	18-5	IN
	15	Drake	21-1	IA
	4	Kansas	22-1	KS
	20	Kansas State	16-5	KS
	11	Michigan State	19-3	MI
	2	Duke	20-1	NC
	3	North Carolina	21-2	NC
	13	Xavier	19-4	OH
	21	Pittsburgh	18-5	PA
	1	Memphis (72)	22-0	TN
	7	Tennessee	20-2	TN
	23	Vanderbilt	19-4	TN
	12	Texas	18-4	TX
	18	Texas A&M	19-4	TX
	17	Washington State	17-5	WA
	8	Wisconsin	19-3	WI

Gathering in Columbus

I'm exhausted after a weekend of watching 8th, 9th and 10th graders praise God, learn how to share their faith, share their faith, confirm they dedication to the Kingdom and help each other.

Because of some last minute changes the day before we left for Columbus we added several adults to the trip that had not planned on going. One of these folks was Don Vanzant who is starting a church near Hamburg.

While we gathered in Columbus, I thoroughly enjoyed hearing his testimony, calling and methods for planting a church in an area of Lexington that is exploding.

If you would like to check out his church, please do so: The Gathering I love the name and the people oriented, relationship oriented purpose of a church in equipping the saints.

I would suggest the best way to meet Don would be to seek the truth by attending Bible 101... studying truth is one of the best ways to interact with a stranger because the truth will be a constant in any stage of any relationship.

I hope Tatesbrook will eventually be able to offer some of the same foundational teaching as a part of our outreach to the community around us.

Dare2Share "Survive"

Tomorrow, we will be heading for Columbus for Dare2Share. There are over 30 eighth graders and graduates from Southern Middle School. Some of these teens will be experiencing this weekend training for the first time and some have been there several times.

We will be staying at Beechwold Christian Church. This is the third year that they have hosted a group from Lexington and it is exciting to see the similarities in their vision, the calling that God gave to me when I was a teen, and the theme of this year's dare to share.

It is also exciting to see these friends of my children desiring to know God.