December 16, 2008

Saw-whet Owl (White Pine, painted)

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"In the cellar of my parents’ house in Arlington I began my own woodworking endeavors at the age of 10 or 11 (around 1926) while in the company of my father, who was an amateur astronomer. He ground the glass lens for an 8-inch reflecting telescope he built and spent many nights observing variable stars out in our back yard. When he was building his telescope I puttered around the workbench making simple things out of wood, among them a model of Charles Lindberg’s airplane, “The Spirit of St. Louis,” out of solid wood (which I never finished). I also made a wooden scooter using old-fashioned roller skates on each end of a length of 2 x 4 on which was mounted a wooden box with handles for support, and an “electric shock machine” out of a Ford dynamo."

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