School Consolidation

In the 1930's the cost to educate one child was around $400 per year. Now, its around $8000 per year. Ya ya, times have changed, we all know that. But that doesn't deter us from asking if school consolidation has really returned good benefits, or if there might have been a different approach to educating children.
Recent studies on school consolidation--its been happening since the 1920's---have suggested that the drivers for school consolidation were two: efficiency and quality of education. So, how have each faired. This report goes on to say that at first, efficiency was gained by consolidation, but then lost as large districts got to be more bureaucratic and government loaded them up with new requirements. So far, that does not intersect with the quality of education---get to that later.
Efficiency improvement might have been achieved by a different route: Some parts can be consolidated into central management, like purchasing, but that would not mean that local control has to be lost. (more on this later)

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Aermotor Windmill Lives

The Aermotor windmill is probably the oldest iconic windmill In the United States today. We bought one that was very old at a seller's booth at the Round Top antique market. This was back in the late 1900s. So that makes it 20 years ago or so. We first erected this windmill In Fulshear in the backyard. We had to get Architectural Control Committee approval to do this. Because some of our neighbors may have some bad experiences with a neighboring windmill, we had to assure them that we would not let the brake slide and provide that nasty shrieking noise. Other than that, there was no objection to looking at a windmill. W e erected the windmill in Fulshear. It was quite a chore for us as we had no idea where all the parts fit together and how they were arranged. For example, we learned that the sail wheel with its struts is built with the same concept as a bicycle wheel with its spokes. After much head scratching and consulting the internet we had it to ...

Back to Cuero, Texas

You may recall the museum display of some 2000 reamers, or "juicers" as we always called them---the kitchen device that you use to squeeze the juice from a half of an orange.. That display is enough to draw one to this museum, but we read more recently that the museum is the new owner of a vast collection of hand painted Japanese porcelain cups, saucers and tea pots. So, a trip to Cuero on the 25th of March, but first lunch now that we have arrived in Cuero about noon. We went to a place familiar to us, the Main Street Kaffee haus and bakery. The special for the day was either barbequed beef on a waffle or barbequed beef spaghetti. I advised the congenial order person behind the order counter that both sounded horrible. Dee made amends for me by saying that I was a traditionalist when it came to barbeque. I picked up on that and ordered a bbq beef sandwich. It was good. Here is the inside of the self order café. The café is owned by ...

Cat's nightly Vigilance

The Cat, aka Amber, has taken up a position at the front door side windows for the last few months. These side windows go all the way to the floor, so she can crouch there and look out at whatever happens outside. There has been a stray cat that wanders by on occasions and we often wonder if the stray cat is what she waits for each night. Not at all sure how a cat who has only seen her mother some years ago can recognize another cat out the window, but that is a whole other story. So, we happened to think that maybe the raccoon is her nightly visitor. So, last night we put the game camera on the front step, and sure enough, there it is. We wonder what the raccoon thinks when it sees the cat grinning through the glass pane?

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