Being of 1971 vintage, I had the good fortune to have as my 2nd grade teacher Valera Vargason. She started teaching in a one room schoolhouse in 1939, in Brookings, SD. She taught classes of 40 or more students across the full range of ages from 5 to 18 while just 19 years old.
Teaching a class of 25 7 year old kids in 1976-1977 was a piece of cake for her. Today's teachers gripe about 18 or 19 kids in a class being too many. Valera "Leah" Vargason, November 23, 1920 to April 11, 2009. https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/idahostatesman/name/valera-vargason-obituary?id=13352777 On Friday, April 12, 2024 at 09:32:34 AM MDT, Chris Albertson <albertson.ch...@gmail.com> wrote: > All very true and well for someone equipt with the income and mental gear to > use that chain of tools profitably. But I'm an old Iowa farm kid, we made > what we needed. The "store" was 15 miles of horse drawn wagon over a mud > road the county graded about 2x a year and all of a days ride in a wagon > away. So we grew it, or made it from the woodyard, whatever. 2 miles to the 1 > room school, I rode an old gentle mare the first mile but had to walk the 2nd > mile because there wasn't a barn for the mare during the day any closer to > the school when the weather was bad. Grandpa across the road had electricity, > a 32 volt delco wet glass batteries, charged by a zenith windcharger. The > prop broke, so mother who was the only girl in the 1929 class on aviation > technology at Des Moines Tech Hi School, proceeded to teach her father how to > carve the wing chord in a new prop. Worked well in less wind than the one we > could get from Chicago. That led to grandpa having the first electric > washing machine in Madison County Ia when the Maytag hit & miss tried to > start backwards, broke the starter gears and grandma's ankle. A wagon load of > shelled corn went to town, and was replaced by an electric motor and enough > heavy wire to convert the Maytag. I still wear scars on one hand from getting > it caught in the wringer when I was 5. We did not want for anything, we "made > do" That is a hard habit to outgrow. But today you own a computer, lots of CNC equipment, a 3D printer and education is free and just a mouse click away. None of the stuff I wrote about costs even one dollar. I’m the old ririred guy now. Fusion360 is free to use. I can print ther prats and then if. Needed sand the same design to CNC machine or to an injection molder I think you are right about relativity, Einstein very much admired James Clerk Maxwell. Someone said Einstein ”stood on the shoulders of Newton”. Einstein corrected him and said “I stood on Maxwell’s shoulders”. Thanks for the story. I always like to hear those “when I was a kid…” stories. My four grandparents were born in 1902 through 1911 they could talk about the days before radio broadcasting and one-room schoolhouses. One grandfather was a professional boxer in the 1920s and traveled a lot. But even more interesting to me, my wife’s parents and uncles were born in pre-war Japan. I think they lived through more change than any living American. Sadly the last of them is in very poor health. My wife is visting her mom in Tokyo right now. Maybe when I am older I will talk about the days of manually driven gas cars. _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
