Dreams, Demons, and Feeling Adrift

If you have been following this blog for a while, you may know I have ongoing (lifelong) problems with my younger (by 9 years) half-sister, who co-owns this house, and was recently fired from her job. She has almost zero possibilities for another one between her age, and the local economy which is even worse than the national average. My concern is the effect this will have on the rest of my life.

My half-sister has problems that span most of her adult life and several marriages, but I thought she had finally grown up. We interacted very infrequently over the last 40+ years and we certainly are not friends, so choosing 5-6 years ago to pool our scant resources and share a house may have been a big mistake.

Another thought is that I finally realize I do not like it here very much, even though I share half the responsibility for the choice. Oh, don't get me wrong, I absolutely love these mountains... but I find myself living on the outside of a tight-knit (closed) community (just my local county, the town 30 miles away is quite different) with whom I seem to have very little in common. The other thing I dislike is any adequate shopping is 100+ miles away... including shopping for organic foods (beyond what my farmer's market has available during the season, which is no different than what I grow in my own garden).

Does that mean a move elsewhere? Frankly, m'dears... I haven't a clue, and I certainly have no money to do so! The demons are the "imagined" responsibilities for my sister and this house, my long-range plans / progression for the garden including my efforts over the last 5 years, and how I feel about the unwelcoming area where I live.

I long to be in a community where there are at least a few others who can the see the possibilities of what we can do towards sustainability... and healing our lovely blue planet.

Segue:
Several years ago during a meditation, I had a "vision" of a house for me. Not at all what I would have imagined, either. I have designed many houses for myself over the years, and actually built a few of them. THIS house was extraordinary... lots of curb appeal although funky, very organic, with a small ecological footprint, passive solar and other energy efficiencies, and based on the Fibonacci Spiral found in Nature.

Over years since then, I have relegated this house design to "only a dream" without knowing exactly why I did that. However, I DID buy some balsa modeling components 2 years ago, intending to build a scale model. Those pieces were still behind the seat in my truck last week. I really don't know why I haven't followed through (until now) with this project, but it was more than just an "I can't afford it" attitude. Must have been some lessons I still needed to learn. (Do the Lessons ever stop?)

At any rate, I have now cleared a space on my coffee table to finally start building a scale model... and wondering about what area would be a great location for building it. I'm thinking probably the NC mountains. My plan is an interdisciplinary plan that involves eye-candy, sustainable development, alternative energy (passive solar, green-building, solar cooling, solar chimneys, radiant floor heating), small, affordable houses, yada, yada... and on the outside, food forest farming (polyculture perennials) with the vegetation integral to how the house functions.

When this dream house first came to me, I contacted the Colorado engineer, Steve Kornher, who started Flying Concrete in Mexico, thinking that would be a perfect medium for this house. I was certain I could put together a summer project for engineering and architectural students, and get a grant to build it. Then Steve assured me that not only was he too busy, but his "flying concrete" would never pass US building codes. Sigh.

In my current frame of mind, I don't see myself living where I am now for more than another year or two, because I am excited about the possibilities of this dream house (even though I see no way to accomplish it). Of course, nothing is etched in stone, either.  I hate feeling adrift, like a ship without a rudder...

But finally, I am really excited that despite all the obstacles, there WILL be a way to build this house... I just have to believe!

Where's the Sun on YOUR Garden?

Wow, what a cool app! With this Google Maps hack, you can find the path of the sun across your own garden for any day of the year. Just plug in your address in the search bar.

According to the description on the site:

    SunCalc is a little app that shows sun movement and sunlight phases during any given day at the given location.

    You can see sun positions at sunrise (yellow), specified time (orange) and sunset (red). The thin orange curve is the current sun trajectory, and the yellow area around is the variation of sun trajectories during the year. The closer a point is to the center, the higher is the sun above the horizon. The colors on the time slider show sunlight coverage during the day.

 

The default is set for the current day, but I was able to change the dates and get the trajectory for both the shortest day of the year in winter, and the longest (summer) day. Knowing the winter trajectory makes a big difference in where I should locate cold frames and a future, wished-for greenhouse. I had a good idea of the summer sun's path although I was a little bit 'off', but I was woefully off on the winter sun. Probably because I grow nothing in winter so I don't pay as much attention.

Since I have hopes of eventually doing some winter gardening a la Eliot Coleman's Winter Harvest, this little app is a treasure for planning. It gives me a great location for a possible greenhouse when I win the Lottery! Sure wish I'd had something like this when we first looked at this property... the gardener in me might have passed on buying it.

I will also use this online calculator in planning the placement of a solar collector for heating water when I can get to it as a project.

Update, just after Thanksgiving: I plugged in the shortest day and the longest day again for my house today, and took a "Grab" screen shot of them. There is a choice in the app on the upper right for a road map type image, or a satellite image, and by looking at both images on those 2 dates, I now know exactly where to plant 4-5 deciduous shade trees for optimum shading of this house in summertime. Cool, huh?

For less trouble, there is a little gadget available (photo above) that you can place in a container or garden bed for 24 hours and it will give you total sunlight hours (categorized as full sun, partial sun, part-shade, shade), although it will not tell you whether it is hot midday sun, early morning sunlight, or late afternoon sunlight. It would be handy in the garden, esp. if taller plants tend to shade another, lower plant.

Where My Readers Come From

Visitor Locations, Sept. 21, 2010

I have an invisible counter that tells me how many visitors, and what search engine/query (if they used one). It also shows me a map of visitor locations. Pretty cool, huh?

Pencil Carvings

My cousin sent me this link and I am suitably impressed! Much as I hate to send anyone away from my site, his art is worth it.

Pencil Carving Art by Dalton Getty

August 'Creamsicle' Smoothies

A fragrant and tasty pick-me-up for these hot August days... It makes me think of the creamsicles on the old ice cream trucks that prowled our neighborhoods many years ago.

5 orange spice tea bags

1 peppermint tea bag

1 cup boiling water

1½ cups orange juice

2 tablespoons honey

1 cup vanilla ice cream (or vanilla frozen yogurt)

1 cup ice

Put the tea bags in the boiling water, remove from heat; steep 4-5 minutes. Let cool.

Pour tea in a blender, add OJ, honey, ice cream and ice. Mix until fully blended. Garnish with a sprig of fresh mint, and for fun... use one of those old glass swizzle sticks you have in a drawer somewhere!

More Mardi Gras History

Photo from Toast to Life's Photostream

Mardi Gras is music, parades, picnics, floats, excitement ... and one big holiday in New Orleans! Everyone is wearing purple, green, and gold, the traditional Mardi Gras colors. I'll post in a few Mardi Gras photos here and there all the way up to Fat Tuesday.

New Orleans has celebrated this carnival for a very long time but it was not until 1872, the year that a group of businessmen invented a King of Carnival - 'Rex' - to parade in the first daytime parade, that the celebrations started to become traditions. The businessmen introduced the Mardi Gras colors of purple, green and gold. There is also a Mardi Gras song, and a Mardi Gras flag.

We can trace the origins of Mardi Gras to Medival Europe, but the origins of the Mardi Gras we celebrate today are strictly New Orleans!

I love Copper!

Native Copper photo by “Jonathan Zander (Digon3)"

Out of all the many different materials I have used in arts & craft work over the years, I think copper is in the top 2 or 3. I particularly like it for Yard Art. It's quite malleable, and it takes on a wonderful verdigris patina over time outdoors. Copper is one of the few metals to occur naturally as an un-compounded metal, and it has a history of use at least 10,000 years old.

Years ago I rented an office in the Historic District of Annapolis, and the window by my desk looked out over a wonderful old copper roof. Some of the older boats in the harbor even had copper plate on the lower parts of their hulls to repel barnacles. Few can afford copper roofing today, and even copper gutters and downspouts now cost a small fortune. Plus I suppose boat hulls today are probably painted with something to kill barnacles.

Meanwhile in doing my genealogy research, I came across this wonderful copper statue dedicated to the copper miners in Arizona.




I love this plaque on the statue base:

More Music...

The Golden Years... makes me think of old lucky married couples.

If you are about 44 or older, this might give you a jolt: The BeeGees are celebrating their 50th anniversary. Well, not all 3 of the Brothers Gibb, because Maurice died in 2003.

The BeeGee's were among the many groups I saw in person in the early 1970's when I lived in the area around Baltimore and Washington, DC. Of course I was familiar with most of their popular songs, and danced to all of them. But it was a huge surprise when I saw them in person... the stage was first occupied by a medium-size orchestra before the brothers came out. I never would have imagined their rock music had background music made by an orchestra... string bass, violins, the whole kaboodle. But what a sound!

If you want to fool yourself into thinking that they (and thus you) are not really that old, you can ignore the early Bee Gees and just start counting from the year that “Saturday Night Fever” hit, sending the disco craze over the moon and producing six consecutive American No. 1 singles and the top-selling movie soundtrack ever.

Still, that would be 31. And how can you stop the rain from falling down? How can you stop the sun from shining? What makes the world go round?

Ah, ah, ah, ah, stayin’ alive. We’ll rely on each other, uh-huh. You should be dancin’, yeah. Kinda dumb words to live your life by, but can you think of better ones?

Ella!

One of my all-time favorite vocalists is Ella Fitzgerald, and today I read that Verve has just released 4 CD's of newly rediscovered recordings done by Ella in a small jazz club in Hollywood in the early 1960's. The master tapes had languished in the vault all this time.

I saw Ella in person about 1960, not long before these recordings were made. The young man I dated worked at the Fontainbleu (hotel) on Miami Beach and over the course of a year or so, he took me to see some great performers at the hotel's dinner club. Ella was one of them, perhaps the best. (Of course, Nat 'King' Cole wasn't bad either!)

When Ella sang, it was like the world shrank to just Ella, and me listening. She was totally captivating, and sang out joy with every note.

With the exception of “Ella in Hollywood” and “Live at Mr. Kelly’s,” a 1958 Chicago date (which wasn’t released until 2007), there are no Fitzgerald albums recorded live in a small club.

I'm sure putting these recordings on my Wish List!

What's the 'Right' Thing To Do?

Would you steal a drug that your child needs to survive? Is it sometimes wrong to tell the truth? Is torture ever justified?

There’s now a free (and for years an extraordinarily popular class) Harvard University course being offered online about looking at, and challenging, the reasoning behind the how’s and why’s of the moral decisions we make every day.

Over the years, more than 14,000 students have taken popular course “Justice” with Michael J. Sandel. Interest has run high outside the classroom and recently enough money was raised to produce it like a big HD multimedia event and not some boring online class.

After I watched the intro (above) and took a peek at some of the classes, I intend to watch as many of the 12 episodes as I can; if I really like the class I’ll watch them all. They will all be available on YouTube, or linked together here.

In today’s world, the scandals all over the news appear to stem from lack of moral fiber. Our moral compass is broken. In my grandfather’s time, a man was judged by his ethical fiber, and a man’s word (and or handshake) was his bond.

I think it’s time we re-examine what it means to have ‘moral fiber’ and perhaps this course can give us some insights about how we (and others) got here, and whether we can change it.

Just Some Ducky Fun: The Peabody Ducks

I first heard of the Peabody Ducks about 25 years ago when I visited Memphis on business. Unfortunately my schedule did not permit a visit to the Peabody Hotel to see the famous Duck Walk, which has been a Memphis attraction for more than 75 years.

Twice a day, at 11 AM and 5 PM, the lobby becomes crowded with guests waiting to see the ducks. Promptly on schedule, the uniformed Duckmaster brings the 5 ducks from their $100,000 penthouse down to the lobby in the hotel’s glass elevator. The ducks then march to a Sousa tune along the carpeted walkway and up the steps to the large marble fountain in the center of the lobby where they immediately plunge in for a swim.



The ducks are mallards, one drake (male) and four hens. Every three months the ducks are replaced by a new set and the older ones are returned to the Memphis farm where they were raised.

The ducks are never named (since the original 3), and duck is never on the menu in the hotel’s French restaurant.

In 1986 a Peabody Hotel opened in Orlando, Florida, where the Duck March tradition continues.