Musings

We spent most of the day at a 170-acre living history village-and-rural-area that is paired with an indoor museum of transportation. We began in the rural area. At least a half-dozen stone cottages in different styles and dates offer the opportunity to think about heating/cooking with coal or peat turves and living in close proximity to farm animals. One cottage (no photo) even had a byre at one end and family space at the other—with no wall in between; maybe it was only used seasonally, however.

We enjoyed a long chat with a spade-smith; he makes spades, not shovels (shovels are for loose materials). This is his water-powered trip hammer. 3K pounds of pressure per smack. No water flowing to make it trip today….

And this is a shot from a 1940 news-reel/documentary about spade and shovel making in the town of Monard, County Cork. With water power and coal-fired forges. Laborers worked six days a week. On the seventh they went to church, played gambling games, and played music and danced. Ireland had a great diversity of spade and shovel types. Over a hundred, and then many different sizes of each. Diversity.

John tried a bullfighter move with these geese. No horns involved, thankfully, just hissing.

Me, I had a chat with this horse (we think in a field next to the museum property).

And we both had a moment with this donkey. One lady looked around for grass-not-nettles and fed her a small handful. Happy day for the donkey.

This wall is cut-away and labeled to highlight the crucks—those curving beams that go up from the ground and support the roof beams. I think folks used ropes to bend trees to make the needed shapes. Crucks were also used in ship-building.

Here’s the fireplace in one apartment in a row of village/urban row-homes with this small room downstairs, two teensy bedrooms upstairs, and a tiny yard out back with a water closet and coal bin, and a bit more room for washing laundry, etc. I thought this is the kind of place where TB would have spread quickly.

Look at the rows of tools etc. in this carpenter’s shop.

Next we went across the highway to the Transport Museum. Of course, we started with trains. This is the shamrock detail on the County Donegal Railways seal.

Here’s the third-class area on a train carriage. They had to pass a law in Ireland to make the railways put roofs and sidewalls on third-class spaces. They used to be like riding in a cart—just relatively low side walls, with riders fully exposed to the weather.

Loved this stylized image of Giant’s Causeway and the cliffs that frame it even today. I think I read that this began to be a travelers’ destination in the 1700s. !!

Cars, too! An MGB Roadster, 1975 model.

Droney made two short runs, and the Guru captured the lovely shadow from this long railroad bridge during the first one.

Posted at 4:48 PM | Comments Off on Tired of ruins?

The buds and petals are long gone…and we now have this cascade of glossy dogwood leaves.

We also caught the sunset light (sunset above the trees, anyway) from The Heights. Here’s the almost-landed moment, when Droney and its shadow look like a grey crab.

Posted at 9:48 PM | 1 Comment »

Today’s techno-rumblings were situated in the past. You can tell by how spaced out the solderings are on the mother-board. If in fact this is a mother-board.

Posted at 10:39 PM | Comments Off on Dated greenspace

The Guru took Droney out for a sunset run, and we’ll have to start a bit earlier next time. The camera makes it darker that it seemed to me, but. This was the return leg. No, Droney was not chased home by a vee of geese….

Posted at 8:20 PM | 2 Comments »

Sometimes I find a photo subject, maybe backlit like this hyacinth. I kneel, I try several angles, and I feel that I do okay, but maybe could do more….

And then, with the macro-lens, I get very close, and the same subject becomes totally different. Or mostly different.

Posted at 11:34 PM | 1 Comment »

A ride-through car wash is a rather unsettling experience. However, I don’t yearn for the economy of Oaxaca when we lived there years ago, and (incredibly cheap—to me—and off-street) downtown parking included a car wash as enticement for your business—totally done by hand by men/boys with buckets of scarce water and rags.

I know garbanzos are beans and beans have pods, but garbanzos in pods still catch my eye as a curiosity.

Posted at 7:46 PM | Comments Off on Cleansing-ride; commonest Cicereae

We had alternate coffee this morning, not the regular drip but instead moka-pot-style espresso. The process results in a coffee-puck after the water passes through the grounds. And the top of the puck has little dots or holes from the passage of the steam-hot water.

Extra caffeine, I think….

Posted at 9:49 PM | Comments Off on Dot patterns

Wonder how much we taxpayers have spent on this Muslim travel ban contretemps.

Carpet fibers. I thought it a wool Persian carpet, but is this wool? My ignorance is vast.

Posted at 8:39 PM | Comments Off on Edification comma lack

I think we’re another step closer to having GooFiber functional on our street. We are ready; I noticed our existing ComCast line is strung through the bushes.(!!)

On the winter-fading(?) front, the fennel is sprouting! Is this the fourth year for the mother-plant? This is the second year (I think) for this volunteer.

Posted at 7:43 PM | Comments Off on GooFiber looms

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)