Chaos Theory

Student: I was just listening to a TED talk about time and how the universe starts orderly and then entropy sets in. It said that when you watch something in reverse, you can immediately tell something is wrong, because things are becoming more organized, Entropy is the natural sate of things. 

Socrates: The key tenant to Western Culture is organization; a constant focus on creating categorization and organization. Trying to control and annotate the natural world is unnatural. Native American Culture is exactly opposite; trying to live in the natural world. If living in the natural world is chaos, then the history of the Western World is about trying to unsuccessfully control chaos.

Implementation of Plans

The hardest part of the last eight months has been that it has been nothing but planning, planning, planning. In the last month I have had at least three dreams about visiting the Facilities Planning office at the Ohio Historical Society. Last night I had a dream that I went to visit the office. Fred was there. But everyone else was a little kid. when they weren't looking I snuck into my office to look at old plans of projects that I had completed.

This week we completed the gift shop installation and had our first logo products arrive. I have been talking about the importance of getting a gift shop open since I first arrived.

In a planning document dated April 7 I proposed: "The gift shop is a key component of the visitor information center. The FY 2011 budget includes $6000 in gift shop receipts. Slat wall shelving will need to be purchased and installed. The museum has a supply of desert related books, but museum specific items logo items such as hats, cups, and prints will need to be produced and purchased."

A couple weeks later I went to Yosemite National park with Bryan and saw the gift shop I envisioned.

Davis graduates high school. What????

I just sent a message to Blue Water Divers letting Mitch know that Davis wants to complete his Master Diver certification on Grand Turk. This has made me reflect on a few things. 

This blog that I wrote for many years was about me, and my adventure. But, this week Davis is graduating high school and is moving on to a university to study marine biology. In the future, it may bear out that my adventure was really about Davis.

While we were on Grand Turk, Davis learned to love the sea, and the ecosystems that the sea offers. In fact, when he wanted to to get his dive cert we said no. But he would not take no for an answer. He went over to Mitch's house, got a book, studied, passed his test, and got his cert. He was 12. 

He has never changed. He has had a determination to succeed, and he has done it on his own. This week he will graduate Southwest High School, in El Centro, California, Magna Cum Laude, with a grade point of 4.25. As he states, he will graduate with the highest grade point average of any "Hitch" in history. 

I think he is right. I graduated high school with a 3.95, fifth in my class from West High School, under four valedictorians, and I graduated Magna Cum Laude, fourth in my class from The Ohio State University, with a 3.58 grade point average, with Distinction in Architecture. But these things don't matter, and no one remembers.

Final Exhibit Text

For the last year, we have been working with Dean Weldon Exhibits to design and fabricate a permanent exhibit at the Imperial Valley Desert Museum. Today, we reviewed the final text panels for the first printing.

For six months I have been writing exhibit text. We have gone through prototyping and visitor evaluations. I had different groups of people come out the the museum and read the text out loud as fast as they could. This was to see how things read, and in fact this caught lots of issues.

On a panel about using natural materials as pigments for decorating ceramics 5 out of 6 readers read the word "plant"out loud instead of the word "paint." This got corrected.

But today was about a final reading. Changing a "to" to a "for." Finding a sentence that used the word "might" twice.

I hate this part of a project. I love the big ideas and the dreams. Now we are down to the details, and in a day or two we will be in print.