February fun

Well, so not all of this blog post will have actually occurred in February, such as the Pinewood Derby that Stephen won (pictured above), nor some of the robotics competitions given below, but close enough...

More on the Pinewood Derby later...Much of the last month has been spent with our boys (both Stephen and Kenny) participating in various robotics competitions with their schools or 4-H clubs.  Since Kenny's occurred with his school at various locations out of town, we didn't get any pictures of him in action.  But we got a number of Stephen and his team with the St. Marks Catholic Church 4-H club.  Below are Stephen and his teammates working on their remotely controlled robot, for which they assemble themselves out of part kits:

These robots are programmed and built to do a variety of tasks in a competition that pits teams from across the state.  You may or may not be able to tell from the picture below, but they are trying to lift or push the colored rings to various places in this mini-arena:

Depending on where the rings are placed, they can get points, and the team with the most points at the end of the short round wins.  Below is another picture of Stephen and some of his team:

The picture below doesn't show much--I just really liked Stephen's goofy face in it:

I think he may have been disapproving of what they had to change the team's name to for this competition--from "St. Mark's Catholic Coders" to "Mark's Machines" to not emphasize that this 4-H club is affiliated with a church and not a public school.

Hope just came in with some big news regarding this robotics team--they've qualified for a state tournament in a couple weeks!  Woohoo!!

Not all of our time has been spent on robotics--Hope and I joined dozens of our fellow parishioners (and friends) for yet another wonderful International Dinner hosted by St. Marks.  This tradition has been going on for almost 20 years, and celebrates the numerous different nationalities and regions represented by our church.  Pictured below is one of the most vibrant and active groups--the Monticello area has a substantial Filipino community, many of whom work in health care.  Below is a portion of this community, who always put on quite a show with the room dedicated to Filipino food and culture--and karaoke!

In addition to competing in robotics, Stephen also competed in the local Pinewood Derby, taking first place in his group of Scouts (Webelos) and first place overall:

Super Bowl Sunday also highlights a Bragg Family South tradition--our Super Bowl party!  Beth is pictured below getting ready to dig into a slice of her rainbow cake, which she baked and decorated (and came out quite well):

We usually get several dozen people (I think we hosted 30-35 this year), and with this year's game being competitive, most stuck around to the very end:

Beth has also been busy with school and other activities, including getting her hair cut really short:

She's going to donate her locks to a charity that turns them into wigs for cancer patients.  In the picture below, short-haired Beth joined her long-haired daddy at a family bingo night:

I was spending the afternoon with the family before heading out that evening to begin a week-long field tour of experimental forests for my job.  My first stop on this tour was in southern Mississippi to visit an experimental forest just outside of Biloxi (which is on the Gulf Coast).  We had three other experimental forests to visit and hundreds of miles to cover, so we didn't linger in Biloxi, but I did have a chance to photograph some of the cool old live oaks in a cemetery near our hotel:

An artist carved one of these live oaks nearby that died into a very interesting sculpture:

We saw lots of pine, especially the species pictured below:

This pine, longleaf pine, was once very common--dominant, really--along the Lower Coastal Plain, but after being over harvested and otherwise abused, longleaf pine forests are now much less abundant.  My agency, the Southern Research Station of the USDA Forest Service, is heavily invested in researching how to restore and improve upon longleaf pine ecosystems, which have high ecological and commercial value.  One of the reasons this species has declined is it is fire-adapted, and does well when burned (and struggles when it is not).  So, the stand pictured below may look mostly dead after receiving a prescribed fire, but almost all of the scorched trees below (even the little ones) will recover just fine:

Timber has long been a major part of life in the South, as you can see in the mural painted on the side of this building in Lake City, Florida:

The wood adorning the walls of the brew pub that we visited was "reclaimed" longleaf pine:

These boards were sawn from larger timbers and boards removed from old buildings.  This beautiful "heartwood" (so named because it comes from the darker, more resinous inner part of the log) can fetch quite a bit of money.  Not all of the historical value of longleaf pine came from the wood--the high resin (also called pitch) content of this species was exploited for a group of products called "naval stores" (such as turpentine) which were processed from this pitch.  To extract the resin, the longleaf pine bark was carved into, causing the pitch to run into collecting cans or cups (somewhat similar to getting maple syrup).  In the early 20th Century, a new type of cup design, called "Herty cups" after their inventor Charles Herty (following this link for more info and some other pictures:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Herty) were widely deployed.  In one of the experimental forests we visited in northern Florida, broken sherds of these Herty cups lie scattered on the ground surface:

The part in my hand is the base of one of these thick, red clay pots.  Pretty cool!

Oh, and just so you don't think I forgot about Kenny, below he is pictured with his trophy from taking third place in his age division in a local chess tournament:

Now, if we can only stay healthy, we'll keep up with the adventures!