Musings

We spent the day out on the western side of Sapelo Island. A big part of the story is the catamaran* ferry that we took out and back. The only other time I visited Sapelo, over a decade ago, we took a much slower boat, which meant we spent a long time crouching behind the pilot area out of the wind as much as possible, but still with a view. After all, it’s not every day you get to ride through the salt marshes behind a barrier island.

This is the ferry coming in to pick us up in the morning, when it was overcast. By the time we began our island tour (thank you, Ray!), almost an hour later, the sun was out, and by mid-afternoon, all the clouds departed.

Some of this will be detailed elsewhere over the next few months.

* I had no idea “catamaran” is from the Tamil word kaṭṭumaram. The Tamil are native to Sri Lanka and southeast India. That’s a long ways away!

This round window is high on the center section of the back side of the Ashantilly plantation house. The back side looks inland. The main entrance faces the marsh to the east.

Although I sat in a meeting all day, our hosts treated us like royalty and our setting was stunning—both of which took some of the pain away (plus, we had a productive meeting). We met in the library at Ashantilly, a plantation house north of Darien. It’s now operated by a enthusiastic team of volunteers, who have their work cut out for them—take their next big project: fixing the roof. Follow this link to get some of idea of how much roof there is, and of how many sections it has….

BTW, below the framing here is what is called tabby, which is made from a mixture of oyster shell, lime (made from roasting oyster shell), sand, and water, which is poured into forms and cured, much like concrete.

I cannot let this day pass into history without mentioning that the fine people who operate Ashantilly fed us three meals this day—all super-yummy!—including an evening oyster roast and shrimp boil. Convivial. Tasty. The best!

Yeah, this was a rainy day. Meteorologists say this storm is headed north, and will dump the white stuff in the northeast. Here, though, it’s coming down in buckets.

And, yes, those are live oaks (Quercus virginiana) festooned with Spanish moss (Tillandsia usneoides).

No native Spanish moss decorations in Atlanta, so you know we drove to the coast. In said storm. We saw the front three times. This photo is from the last time, when we were on the driving tour at Harris Neck. In spite of the waves of fierce precip, we saw a flock of turkeys, and, later, after dark, a small herd of deer (we were going slowly, so no worries about a deer-Prius accident).

This morning I visited a mandir.

If you’re not up on your Hindi, mandir is from man and dir, meaning mind and still. Hence, a mandir is a place to still your mind, to become at peace. Among other things.

As I understand it, this is the largest Hindu temple outside of India—right in Atlanta’s ’burbs! (It even made the NYTimes when construction was just about finished in 2007….)

The buildings are somewhat color-coded. The place of reverence (above) is off-white. The community building next door (think large hotel ballroom, with shoe storage rooms off the exterior hallways near the bathrooms) is brownish-pink. The stones were carved elsewhere, brought here, and assembled.

The highest room in the temple has a fascinating ornate carved ceiling, with careful lighting. The support pillars are similarly carved. The exterior walls have niches for swami statues and Hindu deities (devas). Overall, I found it rather sterile and cold. Emotionally cool and chilly underfoot, too!

The formal name of this place is BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir Atlanta, or something like that. I’m not sure exactly what the BAPS part stands for, but I think it’s Bochasanwasi Shri Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha. Their founding swami treked about India barefoot, starting when he was eleven (if I have it right). I think they’re on about the fourth successor swami, and he’s pretty elderly at this point.

We were almost the only visitors on this rainy morning.

And here’s the restaurant where we lunched afterward. Mmm!

That is plenty of links….

Evidence around the neighborhood suggests that February is infrastructure maintenence month.

(Around here. Not in the Midwest!)

We’ve been seeing landscaping trucks, carpet cleaning vans, remodeling crews, and even one set of roofers.

This team was among the noisiest…. (beep-beep rrrrrrrr)

I admit it. This photo’s from yesterday, over at the library. I didn’t see a potential hat owner—hate to think someone lost this fine head-cover.

Today I walked by the middle school instead of the library, and the buses were in motion (still seems strange that in the city, we need school buses). I don’t know if they exhaust less nastiness then aeons ago when I rode them, but they seem to be just about as noisy.

I was tickled to see that the bulbs were doing okay (can’t really say thriving) when we got back. This one is even starting to open.

The Botanist told me that since I used yard soil that’s pretty heavy, I should underwater it. I’ll follow that philosophy, and maybe the rest will come along quicker….

With our own eyeballs, we could check the aftermath of the snowstorm that came through Kentucky and Tennessee the other day/night. I guess the deepest snow was along this stretch. Thankfully (and as we’d hoped), the Interstate was clean, clear, and dry, although sometimes the side streets were white with compacted snow.

We left Richmond (Kentucky) at 8am, eyeing the snow-crystals glinting on the trees and shrubs. Of course, as the sun brightened and the temps rose, that decoration melted/evaporated.

This was the pretty kind of winter, which we especially enjoyed through our somewhat smeared windows at seventy-ish miles per, without cold penetrating hands, feet, or noses.

Two things we did en route: 1) listened to July Flame, Laura Veirs’s new album, and 2) JCB tutored me in why the TD (JCB says the initials I propose stand for “tablet device” not “that device”) is a breakthrough—it is more multipurpose than prior machines that kept the machine from being between you the user and accomplishing what you wanted (you don’t need to know crap about printer drivers any more, I’m lead to believe).* We both decided, however, that we really want to hold/use it, before making final judgment.

* Kirk says it better than I…. Even Nobelist Paul Krugman is thinking about how the TD fits into his personal techological pantheon….

Technology blipped in and out of our consciousness today.

This was the earliest appearance, what The Botanist calls the Optimistic Thermometer, because The Guru installed it in a south window, and it would return figures far exceeding the actual air temps because it was basking in a wee bit of solar gain. Now, however, the instrument is installed in a shady east window, so its optimism is entirely muted.

As to the title, RDC is explained here…. I’m sure there are plenty of other remote data concentrators out there, but I am referring to the one that was in Ann Arbor (or nearby) some time back, in a location commonly referred to as the snake pit. (Which should be enough to get you to click on the link if you haven’t already!)

And, GNDN, you may ask? Click here if you don’t know…then muck around in your basement or somewhere and find an appropriate place to label thusly….

Usually, the Dusty Past I think about is not my own, unless we’re talking deep ancestry, many, many generations ago.

Today, I overheard JCB & Mom discussing this artifact, and had to fess up that I had made it aeons ago…. If you can’t tell, it’s a pincushion, but mostly it’s festooned instead with needles, including sewing-machine needles….