Uncles elephants and persistence.

Ah well, today is the International day of  Translators.  They seem to have international days for all sorts of things now. But this is a good one for me, because I had my book translated into Chinese and have just heard today, after months of translating and negotiating, that my book will finally be bi-lingually published in China.

  Its been a long road, and in my opinion the writing of the book is not the worst part, it is the constant hassle trying to get it out there. Persistence is the name of the game I reckon.

I was sent a fabulous link for  a set of pictures about Africa.  There are some terrific pictures there. You might enjoy them too.

One of the pictures is of an elephant family. This reminded me of a picture I have. You might not really call it a picture, it is made from wood using a technique called intarsia.  If you have never seen this kind of work, check out the link here.

I have an uncle. Well most of us have uncles, but my one is a really clever guy. He was a builder in his working days, now at 80 years of age he spends his spare time in his workshop making everything imaginable from wood. He has all the machinery to make the most intricate stuff from wood. He has made all sort of machines, boats, trains etc, from tiny bits of wood all put together like a jigsaw. He has even made a tractor with these kinds of tracks that tanks run on. I can’t remember how many pieces are in the tracks, I think maybe he said about 600 pieces.

I tried to upload a picture of the tracks but it didn’t want to cooperate, but you know the kinds of caterpillar tracks that tanks and big machinery moves on.

Wikipedia says......Caterpillar tracks work on the same principle as a conveyer belt. The tank engine rotates one or more steel sprockets, which move a track made up of hundreds of metal links. The tank's wheels ride along the moving track, just like the wheels in a car run along the road. Earlier tracked vehicles weren't practical in battle because their steam engines were too cumbersome and unreliable. The internal combustion engine made tracked military vehicles feasible.

Tracked vehicles can move easily over rough terrain because the track makes contact with a wide area of the ground. A car grips the ground with only the bottom portion of four tires, but a tank grips it with dozens of feet of track. Additionally, the track has heavy tread that digs into muddy surfaces, and it never goes flat like a tire.

 

Anyway back to my elephant.  My uncle belongs to a woodworking club in his city, and has won practically every championship at the local woodworking shows for years. He has also done lots of animals using this intarsia work and when we visited him a couple of months ago, he gave me this elephant. Pretty good eh?