Sista' Jammin, the undisputed queen of Sun City Rock & Roll.Sorry about no post last night. I left the house a little before six and didn’t get back until almost ten. Two good meetings but no time to write the kind of quality post you’ve become accustomed to here. (right) So I’ll try to make up for it tonight.
Let’s start highbrow, shall we?
Tour the Sistine Chapel.
Wow! I had no idea.
Today is the Ides of March and Brutus is practicing his etudes. This one is in the key of B#.
I worked on Sunday’s music this morning. We’re going to open the service with “A Mighty Fortress” and later sing “Amazing Grace.” Two excellent versions of those two classic hymns. As I was making the slides I realized you can sing the words of the latter to the tune of the former. OK, the voice line isn’t the best, but it works. The reverse, not so much.
Did a speed ride today, 19 miles at what turned out to be an 18.6 mph pace, including red lights. Ouch.
The new cement floor for the lily pond is poured, and as of earlier this afternoon it has two coats of DryLock. I’ll let it cure for three or four days and refill the pond. If it leaks this time I don’t know what comes next. A really BIG barbeque pit?
I’m in two March Madness brackets this year and filled them both out during a commercial break while watching the news at noon. I varied my picks a little in the later rounds and have Kansas winning in one and Ohio State in the other. Duke is my sentimental choice and I have them in the final four but I don’t think they can pull off the big win. The good news: my investment in this endeavor is limited to the time I put in making my choices. So bombing out of both brackets early will bruise only my ego and not my wallet.
While driving Gerta into my meetings last night (the first with Todd about his Foundations lesson and then an elder meeting) I stopped at a light next to a guy driving a Dodge Charger that had seen better days. He apparently just bought it because it had a temporary certificate where the plate should be. But what caught my eye was the stick-on fake vents on the front fenders. You know the three holes on the fenders of Buicks? That’s what these were, except not. They weren’t even individual fake holes, but attached to each other, obviously molded out of the same piece of plastic. Peel off the backing and stick them (crooked) to the fender.
It made me think about the human tendency to dress things up, even when everybody knows it’s fake and gratuitous. Buick’s holes date back decades. You could tell which model it was by whether it had three (Buick Special) or four (Buick Roadmaster) holes. But even those were goo-gaw, serving no real function. Fake plastic holes stuck to the side of a Charger - with the center painted black so it looks (?) like a real hole??
This tendency hit a peak in the architectural field with the Victorian-styled house. All manner of brick-a-brack was tacked on. The “painted ladies” of San Fransisco exemplify this trend, which affected the furniture inside the house, too. A chair got elaborately turned spindles, knobs and carvings, with a fancy brocade upholstery.
You can undoubtedly think of other areas besides houses and cars where the “more is more” and “dress it to the hilt” tendency ruled - or rule - the day.
In architecture the welcomed response was the Arts and Crafts movement. Those homes (“Craftsman”) are defined by simple lines and no ornamentation. Stickley, one of the fathers of the movement, wrote an article in which he said the beauty of a thing should arise from its function. So Arts and Crafts furniture (AKA Mission style) is simple, with the joinery showing. Leather seats, not fancy upholstery. In a Craftsman home the door hinges aren’t hidden inside the gap of the closed door; they lay flat on the surface of door and jamb. But they’re brass and beautiful in their simplicity. It’s about obvious quality of construction, whether it’s mortice and tenon joinery or the materials themselves - quarter sawn oak and curly maple, stained not painted.
OK, so what? What’s the point and who cares?
We loved the two houses we restored, in large part because they were both Craftsman-style homes. The first was the classic bungalow and the second a rare and remarkable sub-set of the Craftsman home called the Foursquare. They were the kind of houses where people would walk in, look around and say, “good bones!”
But you know what I thought about when I saw those fake holes stuck to the side of a Dodge Charger (a poseur car)?
Pam’s gray hair.
I like that she has gray hair.
Let’s start highbrow, shall we?
Tour the Sistine Chapel.
Wow! I had no idea.
Today is the Ides of March and Brutus is practicing his etudes. This one is in the key of B#.
I worked on Sunday’s music this morning. We’re going to open the service with “A Mighty Fortress” and later sing “Amazing Grace.” Two excellent versions of those two classic hymns. As I was making the slides I realized you can sing the words of the latter to the tune of the former. OK, the voice line isn’t the best, but it works. The reverse, not so much.
Did a speed ride today, 19 miles at what turned out to be an 18.6 mph pace, including red lights. Ouch.
The new cement floor for the lily pond is poured, and as of earlier this afternoon it has two coats of DryLock. I’ll let it cure for three or four days and refill the pond. If it leaks this time I don’t know what comes next. A really BIG barbeque pit?
I’m in two March Madness brackets this year and filled them both out during a commercial break while watching the news at noon. I varied my picks a little in the later rounds and have Kansas winning in one and Ohio State in the other. Duke is my sentimental choice and I have them in the final four but I don’t think they can pull off the big win. The good news: my investment in this endeavor is limited to the time I put in making my choices. So bombing out of both brackets early will bruise only my ego and not my wallet.
While driving Gerta into my meetings last night (the first with Todd about his Foundations lesson and then an elder meeting) I stopped at a light next to a guy driving a Dodge Charger that had seen better days. He apparently just bought it because it had a temporary certificate where the plate should be. But what caught my eye was the stick-on fake vents on the front fenders. You know the three holes on the fenders of Buicks? That’s what these were, except not. They weren’t even individual fake holes, but attached to each other, obviously molded out of the same piece of plastic. Peel off the backing and stick them (crooked) to the fender.
It made me think about the human tendency to dress things up, even when everybody knows it’s fake and gratuitous. Buick’s holes date back decades. You could tell which model it was by whether it had three (Buick Special) or four (Buick Roadmaster) holes. But even those were goo-gaw, serving no real function. Fake plastic holes stuck to the side of a Charger - with the center painted black so it looks (?) like a real hole??
This tendency hit a peak in the architectural field with the Victorian-styled house. All manner of brick-a-brack was tacked on. The “painted ladies” of San Fransisco exemplify this trend, which affected the furniture inside the house, too. A chair got elaborately turned spindles, knobs and carvings, with a fancy brocade upholstery.
You can undoubtedly think of other areas besides houses and cars where the “more is more” and “dress it to the hilt” tendency ruled - or rule - the day.
In architecture the welcomed response was the Arts and Crafts movement. Those homes (“Craftsman”) are defined by simple lines and no ornamentation. Stickley, one of the fathers of the movement, wrote an article in which he said the beauty of a thing should arise from its function. So Arts and Crafts furniture (AKA Mission style) is simple, with the joinery showing. Leather seats, not fancy upholstery. In a Craftsman home the door hinges aren’t hidden inside the gap of the closed door; they lay flat on the surface of door and jamb. But they’re brass and beautiful in their simplicity. It’s about obvious quality of construction, whether it’s mortice and tenon joinery or the materials themselves - quarter sawn oak and curly maple, stained not painted.
OK, so what? What’s the point and who cares?
We loved the two houses we restored, in large part because they were both Craftsman-style homes. The first was the classic bungalow and the second a rare and remarkable sub-set of the Craftsman home called the Foursquare. They were the kind of houses where people would walk in, look around and say, “good bones!”
But you know what I thought about when I saw those fake holes stuck to the side of a Dodge Charger (a poseur car)?
Pam’s gray hair.
I like that she has gray hair.
3 comments:
I just put you in my RSS. You're on trail for a week and we'll reassess after that. :)
Cheers.
Yeesh. What does it mean when you misspell trial. I'm sure it's some sort of Freudian slip...
I'm not sure I can deal with the pressure!
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