Peinuse, Fire, and Bees
The folks over at Lamplighter heard about some fascinating hobbies which members of The Derryfield School explore in their free time. Here are a few that we thought were just awesome:
Above: Reese Collins '18 and his bees.
Haskel Pim ’19 : Peinuse
A few weeks ago, you all got an email from Haskal Pim ’19 about his language called “Peinuse.” Yes, that’s right, Pim wrote his own language. Here’s what he had to say:
Max: Describe your hobby in 30 seconds.
Haskal: Pondering vocab and grammar, as I feel like it. This is a language I invented. The grammar ended up being something similar to Japanese, but the vocab is my own.
M: How many words does your language currently have?
H: I’m gonna need a calculator here. 74 words, and some of the words are roots themselves. I just redid the root system and now it will be much easier to make words.
M: What was the inspiration for your hobby?
H: There was another kid at a camp [I attended], who had made his own language and I thought, “Hey, I could do that!” When I got home I started typing and, after 24 hours, I had 90 words and a complete grammar system. By the time two months had passed, I had 406 words before I redid the word system.
If you want to help out, add a new word, or simply talk with Pim about his language, you can reach him at 19hpim@derryfield.org. I’m sure he’d love some collaboration on his project. (Pim and I are also working on making a word processor for the language as well, if anyone is interested.)
Sander Van Duren ’19 : Blacksmithing
Yes, Van Duren gets to play with a lot of fire. Here is Van Duren talking about what he does after school:
Max: Describe your hobby in 30 seconds.
Sander: I take a piece of steel and heat it up, making it into anything from a knife to a coat hook by hitting it with a hammer. I use a 2,300 degree furnace, with a hundred-pound anvil, basically a chunk of steel, a smaller hammer with a one kilogram head, and a big one with a two kilogram head. Fire!
M: What was the inspiration for your hobby?
S: I thought it would be cool to use the fireplace and to stick into it a piece of steel using a pair of pliers from Lowes. I then would hit it with a small sledge hammer against a piece of railroad track. I eventually graduated to a forge at eleven years old and got the anvil off of Craigslist. The anvil is cast iron for the base but tool-steel for the face, and made about one-hundred years ago by Vulcan.
M: What type of products do you make?
S: Knives, bottle openers, coat hooks, rings, bracelets, basically anything I can make out of forged iron. The coolest thing I ever made was a bowie knife that I spent $40 and fifteen hours of work on, and then I sold it for a $60 profit.
If you ever want to put in a request for something such as a ring or keychain, Sander is all ears. You can reach him at 19lvanduren@derryfield.org.
Reese Collins ’18: Beekeeping
And last but not least, we have Reese Collins '18, beekeeper extraordinaire.
Max: What got you into beekeeping?
Reese: I had thought about beekeeping for a while but I really got into after taking a beekeeping class in Merrimack. The local beekeeping society hosted a Bee School and I went to that and learned all about beekeeping.
M: What interests you about it?
R: Beekeeping is more than just keeping bees. It is about the way in which the bees live. Beekeeping is not an exact science either. A wise beekeeper once said, "ask four beekeepers about something, they’ll give you four answers.” So beekeeping is more of a learning process. What I most enjoy is watching the bees and how complex their behavior is.
M: Where do you see yourself taking this in the future?
R: I see my apiary (a place where bees are kept) expanding to another hive because I only have one right now. Next year I’ll be able to harvest honey because the hive this year hasn’t expanded to that point yet. It takes ten pounds of honey to make one pound of beeswax so all that honey is consumed to build comb in the hive. I am interested in seeing Derryfield getting a beehive in the future to continue increasing environmental awareness.
M: Any other interesting facts or insights?
R: For honey bees to produce a pound of honey, over 55,000 miles must be flown and over two million flowers visited.
Besides learning about some awesome hobbies of fellow Derryfield students, one takeaway from these interviews is that a hobby should not be based upon popular interest. Instead, your true hobby will present itself naturally and be entirely unique in nature. There are many other hobbies to pursue besides social media, or Netflix, and one needs to look no further than the hobbies above to find inspiration. Don’t worry though, it doesn’t have to include fire or bees - that’s optional.
Max Karpawich is a Derryfield Sophomore and a Staff Writer at Lamplighter.