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Learn to decompose problems into repeatable steps. We start with simple sequences, add loops, add conditionals, and build up to something that could compute Bernoulli numbers -- the algorithm I wrote in 1843. Paper and pencil only. No computers. The machine is not the point. The pattern is the point.

A set of Jacquard punch cards and a demonstration reader. These are the ancestors of computer programs -- patterns encoded in holes. The loom doesn't think. It follows the card. The card is the algorithm. Babbage borrowed the idea. I wrote the first algorithm for it.

Learn the fundamentals of code-breaking. Caesar ciphers, substitution ciphers, frequency analysis, and the principles behind Enigma. No math degree required -- just patience and the willingness to think backwards.

Working replica of the Wehrmacht 3-rotor Enigma. 159 quintillion possible settings. Type a letter, the rotors turn, the lampboard lights up the encrypted letter. I broke it with logic, not brute force. Try to crack a message yourself -- I'll give you hints.

The same model I'd use if I were debugging hardware today. Measures voltage, current, resistance, capacitance, frequency, temperature. If you can measure it, you can fix it. If you can't measure it, you're guessing.

Small tin sheets, oil paints, fine brushes. Everything for painting retablos -- the small votive paintings I collected and was inspired by. Paint your miracle, your gratitude, your survival. The format is tiny. The feeling is enormous.

Forget flattering yourself. Paint what's real. The scars, the joy, the fury, the love. We work in oil or acrylic on small canvases. I'll teach you about color symbolism from Mexican folk art -- what red means, what blue means, why I put monkeys and parrots in my paintings. Bring a mirror. Bring honesty.

I don't teach technique. I teach seeing. We go outside, we look at the sky, and I show you that it's not blue -- it's cobalt and ultramarine and violet and green, swirling. The color is the feeling. The brushstroke is the heartbeat. If your painting looks like a photograph, you're not painting -- you're copying.

Four hearing devices from different periods of my deafness, faithfully reproduced. From the early brass cone to the elaborate conversation devices Johann Maelzel built for me. A sobering reminder that the most famous music in history was composed in silence.

Replica of my Walter fortepiano -- the instrument I actually played, not a modern Steinway. Lighter action, clearer tone, closer to what I heard when I composed. Perfect for performing Mozart, Haydn, early Beethoven the way it was meant to sound.

Learn to write a fugue. Two voices, then three, then four. Each voice independent, all voices together forming something greater than the sum. This is not just music theory -- it's how to think in parallel. Programmers love it. Every thread independent, every thread synchronized.

MIG welder, 200A, gas/gasless. Good for steel, stainless, aluminum with the right wire. NOT for beginners -- you need to know what you're doing or book a training session.

Mike Kenel

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