Musings

Turns out that this kind of safety glass is, terminologically, really toughened glass, which I know as tempered glass. Sounds like the toughening process resembles the quenching/tempering of metal.

Following a WikiPee rabbit hole I discovered lead me to Prince Rupert’s Drops. Strange thing: drip droplets of molten glass into cold water; recover when cool. They will have an elongated teardrop shape. Try to crush the bulb; it will be hugely resistant. Snap, break, or crush the skinny tail, and the whole thing will fragment into dust. So I have read. Apparently the tail and the outside of the drop cool faster than the inside, which stays molten a bit longer, yielding a tensile stress pattern that makes the tail weak and the bulb strong. Or something like that.

Anyway, I think this is auto window-glass, fragmented into cuboidal shards.

My other research adventure today had to do with the royal sites of Ireland…medieval period…there are four of them. Five. Six. Depends on the definition.

Wait. One more research adventure: KW taught me what a zarf is. I told JCB, and he said nooooooo…then looked it up. From a Turkish term, he says.

I am now more learn ed, that is learned pronounced with two syllables.

Posted at 11:07 PM | Comments Off on Research adventure(s)

I’m being barraged by Henry VIII of England. First Wolf Hall. Tonight it’s Lucy Worsley’s version….

Yeah, I know Henry’s symbol was the rose not the pansy. My wee joke. Plus, pansies are blooming now and roses aren’t.

Posted at 11:47 PM | Comments Off on Haunted maybe?

We headed down by the river, the Missouri—that seems like it should be the Mississippi to me when you look at the size of the catchment…. That’s it off to the right. Look at that broad floodplain past the channel….

And next to the river, in an unusual bluff, a cave—or a kinda-cave—carved by nature in soft stone, perfect for carving by humans, too. The few petroglyphs the native peoples left are eclipsed by dozens of carvings added in the recent past—including this summer, I daresay. [Apologies for the grotty color; I tried to correct it, no luck—not my specialty.]

We wound up in Grand Island’s downtown (the real, old downtown, and not the highway strips and mall area), where everyone was gearing up for Main Street Xmas (or something like that). Love the fingernail-moon witnessing.

Posted at 7:34 PM | 1 Comment »

Look at that ringfort density! That line is 2 miles long. These people were pretty close neighbors (dispersed homesteads); you could go next door for a cuppa…something, not sugar or coffee. Some of the greater distances are across creeks/marshier areas. Crannogs are artificial islands—very defensible housing locales. See how small many fields are today?…a legacy of thousands of years of chopping up control of the landscape.

Posted at 10:22 PM | 2 Comments »

These are two outbuildings in Blaney Park. This alley is mostly ghost town, but some of the buildings on the main road remain in use. Blakey was quite the resort in its day, with a landing strip and swimming lake, golf course and dance hall. Now, the dance hall is mostly closed, almost no one swims in the lake, and the others are…archaeological.

Then I went industrial, and saw this hanger, larger than its denizens.

We ended the day at a loverly restaurant, all very yummy—beet salad! whitefish salad!—and more…. Even better was the company, of course.

Posted at 9:58 PM | 1 Comment »

We gambled with the weather and headed out to Fayette, an industrial ghost town. These two furnaces (rebuilt, I’m pretty sure) produced over 230K tons of charcoal-iron over 23 years, ending in 1890. This mean the surrounding area was dotted with charcoal kilns to provided fuel for the furnaces (over 80 within 10 miles). In a generation, the forests were gone and so was the operation.

This was the town’s hotel, later called Shelton House. Most of the rooms are on the second floor and the back of the structure has a two-story outhouse, so that roomers did not have to descend or use a chamber pot.

A new industry has come to the Garden Peninsula, just a few miles north of the ghost town—we counted about fifteen wind turbines, all generating on this windy day.

We detoured to the Big Spring on the way back, aka Kitch-iti-kipi. No fishing allowed so there are giant trout. One is that vertical black line at the bottom center of the photo.

Posted at 6:58 PM | Comments Off on Blustery day

We crossed this long flat stretch, marred by puddles crossing the road, knowing that the dribbles and currents they carried were waters of the Tahquamenon that evaded the culverts. We drove north, and it almost looks like it’s swamp all the way to Lake Superior; however, if you look closely, you can see the ground does ridge to the north. The swamp will end after maybe a dozen more big puddles.

Eagle’s Nest has changed a little over the years—and almost not at all, simultaneously. The bridge and cabins, yes, they come and go and are modified. The river—this is the Tahquamenon again—looks very much the same as in my oldest memories of this place.

On up in Grand Marais (perhaps a corruption of maré, meaning sea, and transformed into marais, meaning swamp—which there isn’t here on Lake Superior’s shore, at least not a huge one), we once again beheld the Pickle Barrel House (on the National Register, BTW). This was a two-story home with a kitchen in an extension behind, built for Chicago cartoonist William Donahey, who drew The Teenie Weenies. He and his wife used it for a decade at its original location on Sable Lake, then it was moved to town.

Of all things to find in Grand Marais, a food truck! With “burgers” and “taco’s,” I kid you not.

Turning homeward, we looped through the wildlife drive at the Refuge, and found this swan sleeping on one foot. We saw many swans feeding, often with a few ducks? (grebes? coots?) futzing around them. The latter didn’t seem to also be feeding, and we couldn’t figure out what the advantage was of hanging with the swans, close enough to sometimes annoy them.

Posted at 6:54 PM | Comments Off on To the north

Square steel lighthouse…built in 1915, automated in 1968 (if I remember correctly). Seagulls love it.

And on the dunes on the way back, we saw these bladder campion blooms, incongruous on their skinny stems.

Posted at 11:08 PM | Comments Off on Mouth of the Manistique

We’re finishing up the run of pale pink azaleas out front.

And…another “residual”…of a detail shot…from the Cluny, of a 1467 Mullenheim family arms stained glass piece. Love the shading, 3-D effects, color choices, whole ball of…not-wax.

Posted at 10:22 PM | Comments Off on There goes April

We collected by far the most images at the Cluny. Or, many call it the Cluny, but the name is actually Musée National du Moyen Âge—Thermes et hôtel de Cluny. Cluny was a Benedictine abbey 225mi SSE of Paris, near Mâcon, and this was their “townhouse” in Paris (begun in the 1300s and rebuilt around 1500). It was built atop Roman baths, hence the second part of of the name…. The first part refers to the Middle Ages, which is the temporal focus of the collection. The nearest subway station honors the arts with tile versions of artists signatures on the ceiling.

Euros are being spent on revamping parts of the complex, and the entrance currently is through a narrow portal into a non-symmetrical quadrilateral courtyard (with a security tent…open your handbag, ma’am, please (only in French)).

Many stone walls of the abbey are…very clean, no stucco, no paint. Stairwells and so on have been added to make the buildings into a museum.

We didn’t make it into the Sainte-Chapelle (near Notre-Dame), but we did get to see about two dozen small window panels from it…very close up. Love the detail on this bull and man’s face.

Also on this murderous knight and his non-plussed horse.

This is detail from a capital from the church in the abbey complex of Saint-Germain-des-Prés (Paris), showing Daniel tangling with the lion. This abbey was founded in the 500s, and this stonework dates to 1030–1040. Through the Middle Ages, the abbey owned quite a chunk of land on the West Bank.

The Cluny collection may be best known for the La Dame à la licorne/the lady and the unicorn tapestries. There are six, with five obviously pertaining to the senses—smell, touch, taste, hearing, and sight. The sixth has the words À mon seul désir…what the soul desires, so is a bit enigmatic—maybe love, joie de vivre, something along those lines. This is a detail from the sight one, with the lady holding a mirror for the unicorn to see its reflection. The tapestries are huge.

Stained glass detail (I/we did not record the source).

1490–1493 Book of Hours devotional by Antoine Vérard, who was first to combine printed black text with hand-drafted colored “capital” letters, thereby combining the best of the new printing process with the artistic elegance of the old by-hand-only methods.

This is a detail of a reliquary of St Anne, and she is holding a mini-reliquary. That does make the point, doesn’t it?

The chapel of the Cluny monastery complex is stripped of its decorations and has only a few museum pieces in it. The emptiness and bare walls are striking. Footsteps echo loudly.

From an upper level I could see into the garden. We were only able to enter a small portion that did not include this part.

From the street, here is Cluny ruins atop thermae ruins (I think).

Somehow we made it into another church, the Église Saint-Séverin. Séverin apparently was a hermit in Paris’s early Christian times. Behind the altar (and behind me for this photo) are six large stained glass windows dating to 1970, with modernist (not realist) color panels that we both liked.

And one more church…near where we’re staying…the Église Saint-Louis-d’Antin. It began as a Capuchin establishment about 1775. Most of the rest of the complex became a lycée in 1883.

What a Sunday.

Posted at 3:22 PM | Comments Off on Sunday best