It’s Friday (the 13th)!*
Friday, 13 June 2008
When I find the world upside down on top of the pantry cupboard under a huge mixing bowl, I just know it must be Friday.
* Alternate title from JCB: “World hides until Friday the 13th is over.”
Musings
Stomping grounds…
Tuesday, 10 June 2008
Lots going on today, but instead of recounting it (or part of it), here’s a picture from deep in the digital archives, from the first weeks I had my first digital camera (image number 00128, to be exact). Indeed, I think this was the first of what has become a (somewhat) long line of insect photos (many by accident).
Okay, I’m pretty fried; look at all those parens!
Party time!
Saturday, 31 May 2008
Using the infamous JCB graphics logic, you’d expect we would have bought a bottle of this, but for unknown reasons, we gave it a pass….
My grandmother used to drive a red pickup from this era (approximately). I loved it when we were allowed to ride in the back to town. The rule was you sat down and held on with both hands. Wheeeeeeee!
Butt rot
Monday, 19 May 2008
I wonder how they got this bicolor, fancy rose.
My brother says the tree that fell was afflicted with butt rot. I think that might have been true of the first one, too.
JCB says that’s not something you’d wish on either man or beast (I’m paraphrasing).
JCB has also put together a photo album of scenes from the immediate post-fall through the tree removal to tarp installation.
Past and present
Saturday, 17 May 2008
Is this what they mean by negative space?
We imported a friend to distract us this weekend, and distract us he has!
Late this morning, he and I went to the Southeast Region office of the National Archives and looked at some of the TVA records. When the government ousted all those folks so they could flood their land, they did social work/outreach as part of the resettlement. I looked at case records for some of the 800-odd families who had to move for one reservoir in Alabama, and geeze those folks were poor. For some perspective, a chicken was valued at 50¢ and I saw one mason’s helper made 25¢ per hour; this was in the 1930s.
The photos were all mixed up, and haven’t been indexed, so we couldn’t know where the Alabama ones were in the acid-free archive boxes. Out of the thousands of negatives, we pulled only a few, and as luck would have it, none were from Alabama.
This farm in this lovely valley is in Tennessee, however; the photo was from 1942. It is labeled as the Mack Swann Farm, Jefferson County. Here’s a wee bit about Mack Swann’s wife and her family….
And that excursion was over by 1:30 pm!
Old photos
Sunday, 24 February 2008
Mostly I avoid pondering where our elected representatives choose to allocate our federal tax dollars, but then I poke around in the Smithsonian web site and I feel a bit less cynical.
John White made a watercolor of this Roanoke leader in 1585, and this is an old photograph of it. Love the curled-up toes!
After checking a few more images, maybe this is just how White drew feet…. Perhaps he trained in shoe-drawing and not foot-drawing…. On the other hand (har), his fingers look a bit floppy, too….
Tree-ness
Wednesday, 16 January 2008
If the tree is just a tree…
…then the predawn sky highlights the asymmetry of this aged sentinel, perhaps spurring a desire to compose a haiku….
[FYI, some time ago my BIL, James Burns, posted a fun haiku widget….]
If the tree is a metaphor…
…then look how much tree-ness survives even when the main trunk is decimated…and, similarly, arthritis may slow me down, but I’m still me.
[Aw, heck, I had an idea for this when I started, but somehow I ended up with a lame finish here, no pun intended!]
And, by the way, beam B-day wishes toward Planet A-Squared!
Menu ideas
Friday, 30 November 2007
Friday snuck up on me this week. I often try to do some sort of special dinner on Friday, and this time I have been tempted to make fresh Georgia shrimp the menu’s centerpiece. Not sure what else, maybe mushroom cream/white sauce and pasta. With a side of Brussels sprouts (not as interesting as they might be at the store, as they’d already been stripped from the stalk they grow on; but still…). Tossed salad. Maybe a lemon vinaigrette for that….
So, I’d better get out of this darned chair and get cooking!
Glass micromosaic
Monday, 19 November 2007
Close up of central design in 5×7 foot micromosaic of Venice’s Piazza San Marco, by E. Cerato, dated 1907. Detail is achieved by the shapes and arrangement of tiny pieces of glass called tesserae, which are cut from thin, opaque rods of glass.
It’s amazing what you can do if you devote the time it takes to get the job done. So, quit procrastinating!
Wide-ranging. Verbose?
Thursday, 15 November 2007
Melancholia by Narcissus Quagliata, made in 1981–1982. The backlight is terribly uneven both in this photo and when I viewed it, yet I still found this image compelling, although I can’t quite put my finger on the reason why. To me, the man seems disingenuous and somewhat arrogant, rather than reflective and thoughtful, as the Corning Museum’s guide to the collections suggests.
Released from the patterns imposed by travel, I have cast about for a topic for today’s entry. The photo part was easy; I have a huge backlog from our travels over the last month; a plethora of photos is one characteristic of our travel patterns….
Meanwhile, let me note that overnight we got a good rain, although it’s been and continues to be so windy that the air must be sucking the moisture right back up out of the soil and vegetation. Still, rain is rain, right? I’ve yet to encounter the news story alleging that last weekend’s prayers at the statehouse and elsewhere have paid off, but I’m sure it’s being written or edited or posted right now…. Oops, I spoke too soon.
Into the mix, I’ve got to note that one Cobb County residence managed to waste use a whopping, and actually I mean mega-whopping 14,700 gallons per day on average in September, for a staggering 440,000 for the whole month. BTW, the average Atlanta residential client uses a mere (and still reducible) 183 gallons per day.
Today’s entry
Okay, I have to report I still haven’t ordered the XO laptop, with the second one for charity. Have you? It’s still on my to-do list….
The other day John Hawks posted a blog entry with a link to this amazing graphic display of data by the notable Hans Rosling, and called the Trendalyzer project. The graphics program isn’t yet released, but I’ll wait around for it….
You also might want to check out this web page (thank you, KW), and generate a donation of rice to the United Nations World Food Programme with a vocabulary self-test. The WFP page says they’ve received over one billion grains of rice from freerice.com—enough to feed 50K people for one day. (I suspect the vocabulary is drawn more from British English than American.)
So, let’s get the rice statistic higher and the water use statistic lower, okay?
PS
Does this entry have too many links? Maybe I got carried away….