Wednesday, 10 July 2013
We ventured forth into a foreign land in search of FIL’s fave Tanq—the 80-proof version you can’t get in the good ol’ US of A.
The usually harsh US of A customs/immigration person kept it brief in the question department, and even, when told we had six bottles of gin to declare, did not require us to get in line to pay duty!
Tuesday, 2 July 2013
I confess I am (almost) convinced that Michigan means land of people who mow lots of grass. We may match that pattern this evening.
UPDATE: Kindly, kindly neighbor knocked back the worst of it around the door (and more) prior to our arrival; so sweet.
Sunday, 23 June 2013
The image is oilcloth, or what passes for oilcloth. Funny stuff, oilcloth. The oil in oilcloth traditionally was linseed, that is oil from flax (Linum usitatissimum) seeds. Flax has a long history, and has been used for both fiber and seed-oil. Linseed oil has an usual property: over time, it sets up. So, for example, to make window glazing, it was mixed with chalk dust (hence the white glazing in old photos and paintings).
In “the old days,” oilcloth, although heavy and stiff, was a good choice for waterproofed applications. Waxed fabrics were another option. The later rubberized fabrics were a huge breakthrough.
No connection I can come up with between oilcloth and an unexpected thing I learned about today: the Vasari corridor. It’s a hobbit-trail/enclosed passageway dating to post-Medieval Florence…uhem…Firenze.
It connects the Palazzo Pitti with the Uffizi and Palazzo Vecchio. It crosses the Arno above the shops along the Ponte Vecchio, and passes through the upper reaches of a church, and above many homes. This is how the wealthy in pre-limo days commuted from home to office. In this case, the commuter was Grand Duke of Tuscany, Cosimo I de’ Medici (1519–1574). He lived on the south side of the Arno, in the gigantic Palazzo Pitti, and worked, or at least presided over, events in the Uffizi (offices), on the north side of the river. The corridor…just made his work-day easier.
The corridor was designed by Giorgio Vasari and built in five months in 1564. Today, access is nearly always closed, although along the walls of the almost 1 km long enclosed hallway are over 1000 paintings/works of art—the Uffizi’s self-portrait collection, which continues to receive new additions. There’s a second corridor off the north side of the Uffizi, with access to the Palazzo Vecchio. Thus, if you had the chops, you could move easily between the decision-making centers of Florence, and the stinky populace would have no idea you were strolling above.
The High Line is about a mile long, is in NYC, and the earliest section opened in 2009. It’s public, not private, and open to the skies, and thus quite different from the Medici pathway. They both have art, though.
Friday, 21 June 2013
Time is a difficult concept to grasp, frame, and master. But, as humans, we try mightily to do so.
The simplest time concept, I think, is the continuum—it’s all the same thing, going on and on.
Then you can get fancy, and introduce starting and ending points. Events, you might say.
Sometimes you can employ/deploy the idea of hinge points, or pivots, when something happens and things change going forward.
I keep thinking that overall it’s a matter of perspective, that reality is subjective, that we’re just fleas on Mother Earth’s back, belly, or neck.
Wednesday, 12 June 2013
I especially like the crane just to the right of the sun-ball.
Enough of that bucolic life, we are in the CITY.
Monday, 10 June 2013
Sometimes, this is what happens on a rainday—the sun comes out and mocks you as you do indoor work. Still, in this case, the indoor work was backlogged and now it isn’t.
To be fair, the rain didn’t totally stop until shortly after lunch.
Monday, 3 June 2013
From the other day….
The Guru says the Texaco font is wrong. I never wouldda figured that out…. My faves are the triangular stacks of oil cans in the windows.
Sunday, 26 May 2013
Best part of this for me: the barber pole. Well, and the building’s painted accents.
Several glancing blows, spatially, with our pasts and futures….
Finally, home!
Sunday, 19 May 2013
I’ve been reading about a huge range of life cycles and species relationships in David George Haskell’s wonderful The Forest Unseen: A Year’s Watch in Nature (2012). More than I’ve ever realized before, I now understand how animals can be viewed as the way plants and micro-beasts get things done that they couldn’t do alone. And all sorts of patterns are incorporated into a complex whole. And how that whole might be is likely to be misunderstood if you view it from the perspective of the mammalian world. Consider this (p. 134):
Without exception, reproduction in animals and plants involves sex cells that come in two distinct forms: large and well-provisioned cells—eggs—or small and mobile cells, sperm. But fungi show us that this duality is not the only possible arrangement. Fungal mating types can number in the thousands.
Yikes.
I dealt with another wee system today. Yesterday afternoon I made a small fire in the wood stove, just to get the house temp higher in the 60s, and, despite having good dry fuel, it just wouldn’t draw. Highly probable problems: blockage in the chimney (hope not), poor incoming air flow. Decided to explore the latter today, hoping for a solution there. Indeed.
Second bit of evidence: ash bucket in outhouse, aka the little house in the lilacs, is almost empty.
Yup. Emptied ash from the stove this morning, filling the bucket and opening the airflow through the bottom of the stove. All systems ready for the next fire and next, um, personal outdoor meditation in the wee special activity area structure.
NOTE: special thanks to Soliel the alpaca for commenting yesterday on “her” post…. Read more about Soliel and her barnyard buddies here.
Saturday, 11 May 2013
See the dome of the tower at the Hyatt Regency Atlanta tucked in there? Never been, but I often find my eye is drawn to it….
Mostly, it seems to me, we get rain that’s a blanket across the region. Sometimes a broad strip of rain moves through. What we had today is rarer, just a few tiny storm cells. We drove from a not-rain area, across a not-rain area, and arrived at a just-rained area, on our trek to a small, fun get-together. We heard the hard rain stayed for just a minute, and was followed/preceeded by just a few minutes of sprinkles. No precip while we socialized, but a few sprinkles—enough to get the pollen off the windshield—as we headed back. Then, no-rain all the rest of the way.
Or maybe it’s that the broader rain areas are more winter and the small cells are more summer? Meaning we’re in the rain version of the transitional season?
Anyway, the skies cleared incompletely, and the sun after-glow gave us a gorgeous skyline view.