Weekly Learning Log

Having a place to write down "what I learned" helps people articulate, reflect on, and consolidate their memories. Harvard University, I've heard, has students do this on a weekly basis. What did I learn this week? For Wed., August 18th: Gary Jorgensen in the Boston area and at autogary.com has been a godsend. He brings clarity to a subject fraught with daily advertising bombardments and shell-game manipulations, with mechanics and dealerships who befuddle and gouge Joe Public by recommending debatable and expensive repairs. He listens to people -- and he listens to cars. He knows the worth and the value of cars and the cost of their repairs. I am happy to write this testimony. Here’s why: After our purchase of a used car through Gary, he has remained an amazing resource for second opinions on car repairs. I showed up at a dealer nearby for an oil change and to establish a connection. With the oil change, they recommended new front brake pads (for $260) and new back rear brake pads and rotors (for $560). Yikes -- the total was staggering for a car I just purchased. I asked to see what the mechanic was talking about; with the sales rep standing nearby, he removed a back tire and showed me, but his descriptions were unclear and I remained unconvinced. I called Gary. He told me frankly how the dealer wanted to sell me, a new customer showing up with a used car, a brake job. (As an academic person, I must seem gullible.) After overhearing my conversation with Gary, the sales rep produced another technician's report and shifted the recommendation, saying it was only the back brakes which needed repair, a reversal which, sadly and not surprisingly, lost them my trust.

Later, in his driveway, Gary showed to me clearly how the brake pads were fine in the front, probably recently replaced, and only one in the back was wearing thin. There was clarity in his descriptions and the direct visual pointing of his finger and flashlight. He changed the back pads, since they come in pairs anyway for the cost of parts, and the rotors, because they were inexpensive. (Gary will, as time allows, do a brake job for a customer for the cost of parts, as a way to offset the fee he charges. That afternoon, he saved me about $700.) He put me in touch with a local auto parts store specializing in international cars, so I could run over and get the parts I needed. For other repairs in the future, he is steering me to a car repair shop he recommends for reasonably priced repairs. So for second opinions, the savings from his recommendations after the purchase might well surpass the fee he charges! Besides that, I ask: how do you measure the value of confidence in your car?

During the purchase process -- before this bonanza of good will he has elicited from me -- he brought to my wife and me a rich resourcefulness on the subject of the features of various different cars, coupled with a knowledge of their dependability. Gary helped us identify the best car to fit our needs, and without any pressure guided us through the purchase. The price was reasonable, too. Simply put, we love the car. So before and after, I unstintingly say Gary Jorgensen has earned my high regard and my trust. Purchasing a car is not an easy experience, but now I feel supported and wiser.

What will I explore today? It's Tuesday, August 17th. Today I want to explore Andrew Wyeth's painting Soaring. This piece is at the Shelburne Museum. I notice the horizontality of the wings of the visually largest turkey vulture so matching the low hilly undulations that resolve into a flat distance. The browns in the low hills and valleys, which seem mostly from the day's shadows, have a somber tone, and the sky has a neutral gray or silver display of its own, with a shadow as well, a lowly-lying darker cloud, in the distance. Cloudy feathers seem connected and arched upward from this cloud, faintly reminiscent of the turkey vulture, perhaps its "spirit double." The low-lying hills, and our point of view just behind and slightly above the largest bird, does make us feel we could very well venture to those distant spirit clouds. Gosh, the wingspan of this bird almost fills the painting! No wonder it is called Soaring. The bird feathers have a mosaic quality, almost a Native American headdress pattern where the feathers meet the wing bones. The mild graininess of the land directly below makes it feel as though we are passing over land at great speeds. I like the hint of green in the brown, but the landscape does seem barren or arid.

Yet for all this horizontality and sense of soaring above these hills into distance, the other two vultures are not soaring horizontally. They are descending around and over a white farmhouse, seen minutely below, casting late-day shadows to the left. The question Why are they descending there? suddenly looms, and they seem to be spiralling down out of interest. Then the vultureness of these birds with their tiny, ugly heads, their scavenger aspect belying their colossal beauty and wingspan emerges. Why? What do they see or sense near this farmhouse? It is purely "farm management" related -- vegetable compost or chicken entrails, perhaps? Farmhouses are notorious for being steeped in the practicalities of life and its constant recycling. Chickens eat yesterday's household scraps, making tomorrow's eggs from it. So does the contrast of spiritual soaring with such practical matters as scavenging and eating spell out this painting's message? Very Buddhist!

Or is there something more insidious and sinister suggested by these ugly avian monsters spiralling down on the tiny farmhouse. The house seems off-center, leaning to the left toward its shadow and toward a larger darker zone reminiscent of a depression in the land. Depression? The very word casts a shadow and then resonates darkly into the painting's other dark patches. The whiteness of the house seems so brave and declarative, but so small, almost tucked into the highest vulture's wing, while the lowest vulture seems to aim for it, its visually smaller wingspan wider than the house itself. Will the highest vulture also descend? That is the biggest question for me. Will it form the pattern, the famous pattern of three so celebrated in ancient stories, the confirming number, the empowering and entrancing number, possibly spelling out the answer to this question. On the back of that question, I ride. -- John Chamberlain

What will I encounter today?

It's Monday, August 16th. Today we went to the Shelburne Museum in Shelburne, Vermont. I had sent Katie's piece about "the last time I saw Grandma" over to Jane Burks, the curator of the museum and the Alzheimer's Quilt Exhibit, on the thought that, as a text, it could accompany the quilts. Even if it's too late for this exhibit, having it recommended by a friend of Nick Clary for that purpose was pretty exciting for Katie. Anyway, we went to the museum as visitors, as museum-goers, and it was great. It's set up like Strawbery Banke in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, with a wide open layout of numerous houses and barns and free-standing exhibits, such as the actual ship, the Ticonderoga, and actual Shelburne train stations and train cars from eras long bygone. We first went to the red, round barn to see the Alzheimer's Quilts, which were both sad and powerful. Many of them were thoughtful metaphors for the disease, such as a tree in three stages, one full of green leaves stitched with words in the leaves referring to their cognitive and emotional qualities, the next half full with many of these qualities fallen to the ground, and the last with only a few leaves referrring to their basic connections to life, such as brother, father, while the fullness and glorious summer of their lives lay below, lost. We then went to see the exhibit of Ansel Adams photographs in another house, which was great, and vividly juxtaposed to another photographer who focused on images of environmental degradation.

It's Sunday, August 15th. Today, among other things, I learned about corn. We were walking around Laura and Marc's acreage in Cornwall, Vermont, and picking corn at their garden. Nearby on another hill was a farm with acres and acres of cow corn. I was asking Marc about the differences between the cow corn and the human corn, and we got into a discussion about corn in general. Marc is an environmental biologist who teaches at Middlebury and he loves talking about plants and our relationships and interactions with them. Did you know what the purpose of corn silk is? 53 years old, and I didn't. Well, it brings the corn pollen from outside the ear of corn to tiny seeds inside and fertilizes them, so they grow into larger seeds. If they aren't fertilized, the ear doesn't grow. The tops of the corn plant, the male part, produces the pollen -- the top is called the tassel and the ear of corn is the female part. When the corn silk is no longer pinkish, but turns brown, then the corn is ripe and won't be growing anymore, so it's ready for harvest. That was cool.

What also is neat is that corn has actually evolved from a grass. It was cultivated by the Aztecs from a much smaller grass, called teosinte, which I've read means "God's corn" to be much larger and to produce much larger seeds. You can notice similarities with grass if you look carefully at the leaves of corn -- they are like large blades of grass. Most of the grass on our lawns never gets tall enough to reach the seed stage, but when it does, it forms similar structures of a corn plant. Corn can reach up to 9 feet tall, and it's a huge part of our civilization and food system.

7th grade students last year who read "The Omnivore's Dilemma" read a lot about corn and its role in our world and its reach into so many different food products. I'm hoping we can continue to build on that educational foundation through some of our nonfiction readings this year.