Musings

Apparently this model 101 coal chute from the Majestic company was a standard in its day (and its shipping weight was 45–50 lbs). This one is on an apartment building, but it was also used for homes.

The company was based in Huntington, Indiana, about twenty-five miles southwest of Fort Wayne, in the northeast quadrant of the state. The factory was east of downtown, on Erie Street between the railroad and the river. Where Erie ends at the river is an abandoned Erie Lackawanna Railway (as I understand it) bridge that’s in ruin.

Notables linked to Huntington: Dan Quayle lived there for thirty-five years; Mötley Crüe guitarist Mick Mars lived there for a while as a child. (Whatta pair, eh?)

Posted at 6:36 PM | Comments Off on Residential heating

Such a lovely day to get out and enjoy the beautiful sunshine…. We were working up a plan when the phone rang and we went in another direction, quite happily.

Clue: the Beltline was PACKed!

Posted at 10:20 PM | Comments Off on “Top”

Here’s my first knitting project of this century. Colors seem a bit…off, but close.

Posted at 10:22 PM | 5 Comments »

Atlanta’s streetcars began to operate today! Ride free for three months!

The one we rode was as packed as the trams in Rome, happily with quite a cross-section of Atlanta’s urban population.

Posted at 9:40 PM | Comments Off on Day One

Back before 3D printers and digital technologies, if a museum wanted a plant for a diorama, someone had to make it, as the real thing wouldn’t survive the hot lights unattended for decades. This is a model of a pineapple at the blooming stage, not a bit the real thing. Not sure what year it was made, whether plastic is heavily used or not at all, but it looks just like a flowering pineapple, before the pineapple has formed.

Posted at 11:03 PM | Comments Off on Real or imitation?

This trestle went on and on across the opposite floodplain. This was earlier; there was still blue in the sky when I took this….

This afternoon/evening was one of those odd times when the transition in light was from ever-so-light grey through shades of grey to dark grey, lacking any stage that seemed like sunset.

Posted at 10:01 PM | Comments Off on Roads and rivers

I’m used to willing the wood stove that bears this to kick out the heat. When it’s cool in the house (like today), I am usually surprised how long it takes the heat to really radiate into the room, and not just to hover below the ceiling. We’ve reached the point where the floor is still chilly, but the room is tolerable, if you still have your fleece jacket on. The trend is great!

We’re going to have to reorganize the firewood. We’re inundated with pine, most of it too fresh, and what we need is “keepers,” larger chunks of slower burning wood.

On the other hand, once this place gets warm, I just need to keep the fire going and we’ll be fine, and some of that fresh pine may be fine then. Of course, keeping the fire going through the night is pretty difficult without a reload in the dark hours (the firebox is not very large) and some very large chunks of super-slow wood.

Posted at 6:04 PM | 2 Comments »

Coins we didn’t spend in Italy….

Let’s see: 8.2 megapixel camera on new iPad Air2 plus Waterlogue software equals opportunity to experiment….

Love the rogue green blob-ette….

Posted at 2:19 PM | Comments Off on Newer! Faster!

I once took an economic anthro course that was undergrad/grad, and in this case rather simplistic (IMHO) in the discussions and readings (gotta get the curve to work for the underclass-folk), and the class-members concluded that our society was a society of consumers.

Right or wrong…, well, today, this household, we fit the consumer profile.

Loving this fast, wee, thin, delightful machine, excuse me, tool the JCB says, which should be much easier to read nodding off in bed, ahem.

Posted at 8:31 PM | Comments Off on Contributing to stats

That’s the Theater of Marcellus* off to the left, with ruin fragments scattered about this area, framed by later buildings to the right, still in use.

As to wifi, we’re on the TIM team (both words pronounced the same)—with an Italian SIM in our hotspot, so we have data even when walking around (until the battery discharges). Anyway, kudos to the Guru for making technology serve us….

We hear a lot about how much cheaper phone and data packages are in Europe vs the USA, but it seems to me that they pay considerably more for devices and peripherals. SIM card was something like 15€ (that’s high)…, and, geeze, the unlocked phone prices, whew.

* Julius Caesar set aside space for the building and construction began, then he died, and it was five years before the building was formally dedicated, by Augustus. Like other monumental architecture in this city, it was repurposed as a fortress in the Middle Ages. Now apartments are jammed in the upper stories, with the lower sections being…ruins stabilized sufficiently to be foundations. We only walked around the back of the theater this evening; we’ll see what the other side looks like another time.

Posted at 2:27 PM | Comments Off on Old, newer, and new