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February 2011

Posts from January 2011

3:17 AM; One of nature's greatest poems

Threeseventeenam Snowstorm turns night into day and formerly upright tree branches into draped fronds / Jan. 2011

“Snowstorms arriving on a high wind last only a few hours.

Snowstorms that are long in gathering and increase to considerable intensity continue a long while.

Those that follow a sudden clouding up are of no importance.

... And the progress of these storms is one of Nature's greatest poems if you take a minute to think of them sweeping on in majesty, the one thing that man cannot control.”

~ from Reading the Weather by Thomas Morris Longstreth, 1915


The dog hero

RescuedogAfter another snowfall / Jan. 2011

This was the morning of the rescue dog, strong and noble and alert, who, after spending the night in the storm in search of someone or something to rescue, now had warm brandy and biscuits on his mind.


The simplest treatment

Paolopaints Carpet comes up, paint goes down / Jan. 2011

"The primary trouble with floors is that people walk on them. If they did not, there would be no trouble at all. Four coats of varnish, or even paint, having an aggregate thickness of less than one one-hundreth of an inch, will not last indefinitely under the wear of nail-shod shoes."

~ Cyclopedia of Architecture, Carpentry, and Building: A General Reference Work in Ten Volumes prepared by a Staff of Architects, Builders, Engineers, and Experts of the Highest Professional Standing, 1913


The bane or the blessing

Yellowhouse Imagine a yellow house ... / Washington, DC / May 2007 

“IMAGINATION, according as it is regulated, proves the bane or the blessing of life. Without it, all is "weary, flat, stale and unprofitable;" but with it, unless it is regulated by numberless auxiliary endowments and strenuous exertion, the spectre forms of dread reality are aggravated instead of being concealed, and the victim of genius perishes under the restless workings of his own phantasy.”

~ Sir Egerton Brydges from an essay "On the Government of Imagination" published in The Ruminator: containing a series of moral, critical, and sentimental essays, 1813


The artist's studio, art of living

Doingboth Work and play; play and work; V's shoes and my pillows / Nov. 2010

“A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both.”

~ Lawrence Pearsall Jacks