City Life Is Millions Of People Being Lonesome Together
February 22, 2012
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The world should have room for more than one kind of person. That does not seem to be well understood these days, if it ever was.
The Continental Climate
February 21, 2012
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What is it today? What will wash over us like a tsunami? The ebb and flow of empires is a messy thing. Mongols. Turks. Cossacks. Nazis. Communists.
You can stay and long for a country gone, or go and it’s the same. But all invaders can be outlasted, if you pass down the memory of the time before they came.
Whistling Past
February 20, 2012
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Fine version of an old dirge, Oh Death.
What is this that I can’t see
An icy hand taking hold of me
I am Death, none can excel
I open the door to heaven or hellO Death, O Death
Won’t you spare me over ’til another yearO Death, someone will pray
Please wait to call me another day
The children pray and the preacher preach
But time and mercy are out of your reachO Death, O Death
Won’t you spare me over ’til another yearI’ll fix your feet ’til you can’t walk
Lock your jaw ’til you can’t talk
Close your eyes so you can’t see
This very air, come and go with meO Death, O Death
Won’t you spare me over ’til another yearO Death, please consider my age
Please don’t take me at this stage
My wealth is all at your command
If you would move your icy handO Death, O Death
Won’t you spare me over ’til another year
(Thanks to KCJay for sending that one along)
Luigi, Play That Minuet Again
February 19, 2012
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Luigi Boccherini‘s Minuet from the String Quintet in E played by the slightly outnumbered Zilina Guitar Quartet, who ain’t from around these parts, I gather.
Honey Bodger Doesn’t Give A Shite
February 18, 2012
4 Comments
A bodger is a woodworker that makes chairs out in the woods. The term is being debased or resurrected, depending on your outlook, by the Internet, where many use it instead of the term “jerry-rigged.” It refers to a perfectly serviceable ad-hoc apparatus.
These men work the wood “green.” Then they air dry it. They are making Windsor chairs. The British invented the Windsor chair, and the Americans perfected it. Here’s a British one, with the wagon wheel back splat like of the sort being fashioned in the video:
Here’s a reproduction of an American colonial chair. Wallace Nutting was a collector of American furniture, and was more or less a founder of the Society For The Preservation of New England Antiquities. He had a falling out with them because he wanted to make money, so he went his own way. Now the SPNEA are money-grubbing like everyone else in this world. Nutting died in 1941, and his businesses are just a memory, and he’s ever so much more influential than the SPNEA will ever be.
He had a fairly large business hand-tinting photographs in a factory in Framingham, Massachusetts. (According to this, he sold close to 10,000,000 of them) He wrote lots of books, mostly about furniture and furnishings. After a while, he started making reproductions of the furniture he had collected and cataloged over the years. It’s hard to make money in the furniture business, and Nutting was no exception, but he made nice chairs. His reproductions are worth a small fortune at auctions now.
Here’s his description of the #301 shown here:
“Unadorned in its simple, rugged beauty this true Windsor Chair is indicative of early Colonial sincerity. Honesty of purpose and a determination to excel are apparent in this chair as in all Wallace Nutting craftsmanship. Exact throughout in construction and design this Early Bow-back Braced Windsor is reproduced in the same chosen woods as the original – a combination of selected pine and birch or maple; it weighs but nine pounds.”
Honesty of purpose and a determination to excel. Hmm. If you ever find that, better take a picture of it. It’s as rare as a bodger these days.
Month: February 2012
sippicancottage
A Man Who Has Nothing In Particular To Recommend Him Discusses All Sorts of Subjects at Random as Though He Knew Everything.
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