READIN

Monday, July 11th, 2005

🦋 Summer projects

A status update on my still-outstanding home improvement tasks for the summer.

Woodworking

• Ellen painted Sylvia's playhouse to match the garage which it is next to, and it looks very nice. It's gotten a good deal of use from Sylvia and various friends this summer, as I was hoping it would.
• The garbage-can enclosure is up. I finished installing it last weekend, and had the inspiration (born of laziness) to make a raised garden with the dirt I had excavated, instead of carting it away. I finished that this weekend, using some rocks from Eva's property (where we visited Saturday) to complete the retaining wall. Under the dirt where I excavated is an old slate patio in very bad condition; Ellen had the inspired idea to use the fragments of slate to create a walkway leading to the front garden.
• However, I still have to build the gates for the enclosure. Once I build and hang these, Ellen will be able to paint the structure.
• We cleaned up the garage and actually have a decent work area there now. Janis had given me some old trestles for a work table, which I nailed together with maple planks, and built a shelf above it.
• I have an idea that I may actually get to building the small tool shed sometime in August.

Patio

• The slate walkway along the driveway is level and drains well, which has made me realize that the driveway itself is not level, and drains poorly. Aargh...
• I ended up underlaying the garbage can enclosure with limestone instead of bluestone, because it was available in a more convenient shape. Damned expensive though!
• I'm planning to do the extension of the back patio next Friday, when i am taking the day off. If this goes according to plan, then I will start drawing up plans for the tool shed next weekend.

posted afternoon of July 11th, 2005: Respond
➳ More posts about Sylvia's room

Friday, July 8th, 2005

🦋 Wish and desire

I've been reading Chris Pye's Woodcarving: Tools, Materials & Equipment and getting a fair bit out of it -- a lot of the content is stuff I had heard before in various places but his way of phrasing it seems quite apt and like it might stay with me longer -- like it get the meaning of it better than when it is batted around at WoodCentral.

So today I went to his web site to see what is going on over there. Turns out he is making available for free (at least for now) download, a series of woodcarving manuals. I downloaded and started reading Learning to Carve and was struck by this observation on the third page:

Many beginners have a head fantasy of learning to carve but really have no idea of hard work it might take to realise this simple wish.

So yeah, I like this guy and he speaks to me. I am going to continue reading his stuff and hopefully pick up some carving skills.

posted evening of July 8th, 2005: Respond

Friday, July first, 2005

🦋 Old Furniture

So tonight I finally got to see the Townsend retrospective after thinking about it for a month or more. Can't recommend it highly enough -- obviously the furniture is breathtaking in design and execution, and the wood -- but the great thing is the selection of pieces, and the way they're arranged to let you compare them. They have at a rough guess 30 or 40 pieces, mostly tables, chests of drawers, desks, and cabinets, and a few chairs, and some miscellany -- so you can go from one (say) desk to the next, to the next, seeing how they are basically the same and what differences are introduced from piece to piece. Also there is some comparison of pieces by John Townsend with cheaper copies done by other Newport shops, which I found interesting.

In one of the rooms, pieces are displayed upside-down -- so you can examine a lot of the joinery pretty closely. (And even in the other rooms, the way the furniture is layed out it is fairly easy to look behind and under stuff without attracting much adverse attention from the guards.)

I went in to this show knowing that Newport furniture is not really my bag -- and came out pretty well confirmed in that opinion. I mean, a cabriole leg with a talon on the end of it is really beautiful and admirable; but I don't feel any real impetus to duplicate it. What surprised me about the show was how interesting I found the drop-leaf tables -- a piece of furniture that has never really been high on my list of things to make -- some of the ones I saw there had me thinking Yeah, I could build something like that and have it come out pretty nice! So, I'm going to keep that in mind as a possible project for later on.

posted evening of July first, 2005: Respond

Wednesday, June 29th, 2005

🦋 Pageturners

I have started creating a web site for Ellen's business, Pageturners, Ink. (Temporarily housed on READIN.) Check it out!

posted afternoon of June 29th, 2005: Respond

Tuesday, June 28th, 2005

🦋 Next Tuesday Evening

If anyone is around midtown next Tuesday evening (the 5th) and feels like meeting up for a drink, I'm going to be listening to the Ed Russell Group at Kavehaz. The club is at 37 W. 26th, music at 8. I'll be the guy looking unsure of himself. (No really, drop me a line if you're going to swing by.)

Ed was my guitar teacher for several years when I was living in Queens, a genuinely nice guy and a very accomplished jazz guitarist. His combo is groovy too.

posted afternoon of June 28th, 2005: Respond

Monday, June 13th, 2005

🦋 Wow, look at this!

I was googling around today and thought I would look for the sentence "I got a girl long and tall, sweet as she could be", which I believe is the first line of a Big Bill Broonzy song I was listening to last night and enjoying. No results... but!!! "long and tall" + "sweet as she could be" brings up only one result, and it is Michael Taft's Pre-War Blues Lyrics Concordance!!! This is huge! I haven't even begun looking at it yet but I'm completely psyched that such a thing should exist and be online.

Update: And here is a link to the front page of the concordance.

posted morning of June 13th, 2005: Respond
➳ More posts about Guitar

Friday, June 10th, 2005

With regards to my most recent post -- The idea of writing poetry directed at a listener (who let's say for the sake of argument is me), asking him to consider a situation where he is talking to or watching somebody else and to try to imagine how he would react, or to suggest a possible reaction, seems pretty interesting to me, and like it might be a useful format to spend some time working on. Are there any good poets that use this format, that I could read up on?

posted afternoon of June 10th, 2005: Respond
➳ More posts about Poetry

Wednesday, June 8th, 2005

🦋 Poetry blogging

Here is something I have never done: I am posting a poem which I wrote this afternoon.

Facets

So what about Jason,
Who throws up his hands in disgust
And cries, "I've been living a lie!"
As he flounces out of the room
To reclaim his truer self --
What are you his interlocutor
To make of this behavior?
Sit puzzled in his wake, pulling at your beard, mulling,
Muse: "Hmm, 'living a lie', I like the sound of that..."
Find a facet of your being in Bad Faith,
Some distorting mirror,
Imagine it cracked.

posted evening of June 8th, 2005: Respond
➳ More posts about Writing Projects

Tuesday, May 31st, 2005

🦋 Lotsa Pictures

A bunch of new images for the READIN Family Album:

• A moment from Sylvia's dance class
• From the Families with Children from China Chinese Culture Day in Jersey City:
  • Me and Sylvia walkin' down the line
  • Sylvia riding on the dragon boat and meeting the monkey king
  • Looking for Shanghai
  • Sylvia dancing in her seat and again.
• Sylvia is learning to ride a bike! Although in these two pictures she is just using it as a platform to model her new hat.
• The clubhouse I built for Sylvia:
  • The plan I worked from;
  • A long view;
  • She begins her ascent;
  • At the top of the ladder;
  • comfortably ensconced.

posted evening of May 31st, 2005: Respond
➳ More posts about Sylvia

Sunday, May 29th, 2005

🦋 They abide and they endure

"Night of the Hunter" is the movie that I have had in mind ever since I saw it 6 or 7 years ago at the American Museum of the Moving Image, as the archtypal confidence-man movie -- I could never remember the name of the movie though, just that it had Robert Mitchum going down the Mississippi [incorrect -- the river is actually the Ohio] conning widows. Tonight we watched the movie on video tape and it took about 5 minutes for it all to come flooding back. What a fantastic film.

posted evening of May 29th, 2005: Respond
➳ More posts about Night of the Hunter

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