Today’s task in the 31 Days of Magic project from the strategic sorcery community around Jason Miller was to make a mojo hand.

Now, a mojo hand is usually understood to be a bag, stuffed with herbs, minerals, and sometimes petition papers that ask for success in some magical undertaking or particular effort.  Sometimes the ‘hand’ actually looks like a hand, and sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes it’s just a bag. And it has powers according to where and when and how it’s carried.

I’m going to save this project for the weekend.  Right now, I need a bath, and a chance to wash off some psychic grime from earlier in the week.  And so, right now, the water is pouring into the freshly cleaned tub.  And I plan to soak for about fifteen minutes, and then let the water drain away.

Today I’ve been fussing with electronics.  I offered to teach an after-school program on electricity and electronics.  It’s the first class I’ve ever had after school with ten kids in it, and they’re nearly all second and third graders.

I had big plans for this class.  We were going to build an electromagnet and a homopolar motor and a battery today, and then next week we were going to build a Faraday train, and learn how to measure electricity in volts and amps, and… and… and…

We spent most of today coiling wire. Again and again and again and again and again.  As I said to the kids, Electricity does not reward the dummy.  It rewards the patient, the persistent, the detail-oriented, and the careful.  And, after a few months fussing around with this stuff, I’m slightly less of a dummy than I used to be.  You might be lucky enough to be a non-dummy in a few months.

Some of them got that.  And in the long run, I am sure that I am doing the right thing — in another four years, these kids will be designing electrically-powered projects as middle schoolers for my lower school, and our program will really take off.  But I had a lot of impatience today.  And I need to wash it off.

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