Lessons Learned

The vibration of the table saw radiates up your arms.   The smell of fresh cut wood is in the air.   The whirling distinct sound of a carbide tip blade ripping through hardwoods makes the home workshop a sensory experience.   Your hand reaches for a tool that you first swiped from your Dad’s toolbox so many years ago to make a fort.    The memories are so thick that you can brush them away like snowflakes during a lake effect snowstorm.   Working with tools is a memorable experience. A home workshop is a solitude place.    A person escapes to the workshop from the stressors of daily life picking up tools to fix or make something useful.    Sometimes the useful experience is adding to the scrap box.   Only your most trusted friends are ever invited into the workshop and only a few of them are trusted to borrow your tools.   The home workshop is not a fancy place. It is as simple as a corner of the garage ...

  Executive Summary:   Oxley Thing Research Findings With my tongue firmly “planted in my cheek”,   I set out on my psychological research quest in March of 1962 to determine if the Oxley Thing is a genetically predisposition or a set of learned   behaviors.    I selected a unique group of Oxley’s to observe and document for the past 52 years. I could have chosen the descendents of John Oxley who was a historically significant explorer and surveyor of Australia.    For the purpose of this research,   I selected an obscure clan of Oxley’s who are the descendants of Ira and Margret Oxley from a small desolate rural village known by the locals as Penline, Pennsylvania.    The Ira Oxley Clan is descendants of English immigrants from the Staffordshire region of England.     The Oxley name is location originated meaning   “a clearing for Oxen”.   It could be said that Oxley’s have walked in...