Musings

Our first notable sight, however, was a covered bridge made of blackened, tarred (?), timbers. Private. Keep your vehicle off.

Today’s headline has to be about the long views, however. Especially long from the top of Mount Mitchell. Highest peak east of the Mississippi, if you can read the fine print.

And up in that rarified atmosphere, the acid rain is killing the most susceptible species (hemlock?), and the tree skeletons are being colonized by mosses and lichens. Life goes on.

At a lower elevation, another tree skeleton, very artful.

Posted at 7:03 PM | 1 Comment »

Just saw footage from Tintern Abbey on a British show about moving to the country, and I remembered our visit there in April 2016. Waaaaaay pre-COVID.

BTW, the name is Welsh is Abaty Tyndryn.

Posted at 7:00 PM | Comments Off on Memories

Even in the gloominess that was today, some trees are showing fine colors.

BTW, at least intermittently, I’m still monitoring the multi-unit housing structure under construction next to the BeltLine. So many support pillars—underground parking? [Notice the clouds obscuring the tops of the tallest buildings.]

Posted at 7:16 PM | Comments Off on Monitoring

I think I’ve noticed this before. Still, in this light and with all the bright green growth from this season, the corner 2-and-3 frames look fantastic.

Made a run to Little A-Town to see the Gray Sisters and their people. Lots of laughs and good times. En route home, we heard the first half hour of Game 1 of the World Series. Braves did darned well in the first inning.

Posted at 9:18 PM | 2 Comments »

I’ve been keeping an eye on this project. At first, I just saw guys and heard sawing. Then, poof, walls and siding, but no roof. I thought it was a camp cabin, but now I think it’s a garage. There’s already a structure in the woods behind it, but it doesn’t look cabin-y either. Outside the frame to the right is another garage, pretty large. So: all garages, no domiciles? I await developments….

Posted at 8:32 PM | Comments Off on Building complex mysteries

From afar, I have been seeing construction vehicles on this stretch of the BeltLine for weeks, and today there were very few pedestrians around, so I went down to take a quick peek. That strange narrow addition to the wide sidewalk? That’s where many runners trod (although not this guy), to avoid the hard concrete…and it looks like they’re adding a strip of a bouncier surface…which is a bit late, but darned appropriate. The space to the left of the sign is allocated for the planned parallel streetcar line…which is coming no time soon, as near as I can tell.

We’re almost half-way through September, and the light is changing…and so’s the vegetation. Jessayin.

Posted at 9:34 PM | Comments Off on I’m perfunctory

In Joshua Rothman’s “Thinking it Through” (New Yorker, Aug 23rd), I came across the term motivated reasoning. He writes that it’s when your gut tells you what to think and your mind then figures out how to think it (paraphrasing).

Earlier on the Gail/Anthony/Tony show, I had seen a clip of a woman at the mic at a school board meeting on mask-wearing by attending children, who declared, “Science is not facts.”

Sounds like motivated reasoning.

Posted at 5:53 PM | Comments Off on Light shining

When I see this design on the chimney, I think microscope. On a table. Or looming above one.

See it? See something else?

And now for something completely different…

Posted at 9:11 PM | Comments Off on ANFSCD…

Long before the present owners bought the place, this was the driveway to Hope’s cottage. It was white inside and out, with a long south-facing porch, and there was a closet in the back that had many puzzles we were allowed to select from on rainy days. The living room had a shelf with all the Wizard of Oz books in hardback, each with a different color cover; I was quite surprised later to find out that most people didn’t know there was more than one Oz book—the one I liked best was pale lilac…yes, I liked it for the special color rather than the contents. Anyway, much of the interior had beadboard for paneling, and it was the first building I remember noticing it. Hope taught me to make potato salad in the kitchen. One potato and one hard boiled egg per person, and one of each “for the pot.” Still a good ratio. Hope’s husband was in a wheelchair from mid-life (polio? dunno), and she needed to support the family, so she began a diaper cleaning service called what sounded to me like Di-Dee Wash that catered to households in the wealthier suburbs of Detroit. She did very well. Hope was a friend of my grandmother’s from college days, and that’s why she had the cottage on the hill and across the road from my grandparents’ property. I recall hearing that part of the original building had been a chicken house, thoroughly cleaned and moved and painted to become part of the meandering layout of the cottage.

Posted at 8:45 PM | 1 Comment »

Almost ripe is not ripe enough. That lower berry is getting there. A bird may well nab it before it’s fully ripened. Greedy buggers. [Black raspberries.]

I’m working on late-day sun protection for the “sun” porch, since we’ve lost so much of our vegetative protection to MaNachur. Seems pretty uptown for this cottage.

Posted at 7:00 PM | Comments Off on Timing