Thursday, October 31, 2024

Happy Samhain

Happy Samhain, or Halloween!

Witches tea party!

Black Mountain citizens gathered Oct. 29 for a candle light vigil to remember all that has been lost from the storm damage.

Rain didn't faze these folks!

Yes that's a chicken between pieces of bread! It's name is Soup.

Sarah Vekasi welcomes everyone to her pottery store.

Aleah Chapin - Artist, a painting of friends

Yes I snuck in some of my dear loved ones in their own costumes! Thanks again to the internet postings for many of these shots.

Today's quote;

In a world so torn apart by rivalry, anger, and hatred, we have the privileged vocation to be living signs of a love that can bridge all divisions and heal all wounds.

HENRI NOUWEN

Wednesday, October 30, 2024

From Mexico to Australia and back again

Day of the Dead (Dia de los Muertos) by Diego Rivera, 1924

Now this is how to build close to water! The Sydney Opera House. This may be entirely fictional, but isn't it neat?

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Asheville Flood 24 photo by Victoria A. Ifatusin

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All my images were available on the internet, except these from my TV.

I'd say some good water management is needed here! Not just the way the engineers built dams and dykes along rivers, but some use of the newer knowledge of how to make communities more healthy for the need for water and incorporate trees and smart use of buildings. My friend Robertson Work has some good ideas. He's worked with many communities all over the world, and is now retired and I met him at Swannanoa Watershed Action Network (SWAN) a couple of years ago. He has wise words in his many publications.

It's time for a new model, as Bucky Fuller would say. Work with the needs of our people, and stay aware and attentive of the needs of nature, to avoid this kind of catastrophe happening in the future. SWAN has a good start in helping groups of people make these decisions, where climate change is included from the start of the process.

My favorite coffee shop hasn't reopened yet. Soon, they say. Probably when potable water is easily available.

Today's quote:

Walt Whitman said, “The English language is the accretion and growth of every dialect, race, and range of time, and is both the free and compacted composition of all.”

Tuesday, October 29, 2024

Two homes for Tuesday's Treasures

Ropes Mansion (late 1720s), also called Ropes Memorial, is a Georgian Colonial mansion located at 318 Essex in Salem, Massachusetts photo by @kjp

"This house was first constructed in the late 1720s for merchant Samuel Barnard from Deerfield. As built, the house was sheathed in wood clapboards, consisted of 2.5 stories with 5 × 2-bay windows, and was capped by a slate-shingled, gambrel roof. Barnard was a survivor of an Indian raid which occurred in Deerfield on February 29, 1704 and lived there until 1720. With his wife and infant son since deceased, he moved to Salem and married his second wife Rachel, who was the widow of his cousin Thomas Barnard. Samuel Barnard prospered as a merchant in Salem and was a wealthy individual when the "Ropes mansion" was built for him. Barnard wound up outliving 3 of his 4 wives when he died in 1762, and the house eventually fell out of the family when it was sold by his nephew to Judge Nathaniel Ropes in 1768.

Ropes graduated Harvard University in 1745 with a degree in law and started out as a lawyer. He was a representative of Salem in the colonial legislature in 1760 and 1761, and served on the Governor’s Council , was also a judge on the Inferior Court of Common Pleas and a judge of probate until 1772, when he was appointed as a justice on the Superior Court of Judicature. Ropes was soon brought into controversy over how judges were paid at the time. Although he was acquainted with patriots such as John Adams, an issue remained where he still held loyalist views. Just before or during the Revolutionary War a mob is said to have raged outside of the house to protest his loyalist ties. In one of the traditional narratives, this event takes place in March 1774 when Ropes was on his deathbed with smallpox. The mob was supposedly a contributing factor as he died the following day.

As the house subsequently passed through generations of the Ropes family the interior of the structure was extensively renovated in 1807. The central entrance with "fluted Ionic columns" also dates to sometime around 1830 when five interior rooms and the central hall were remodeled.

The Ropes family inhabited the house until 1907 with the death of the last of 3 sisters. At present, the Ropes Mansion is now a museum owned by the Peabody Essex Museum which gives seasonal self-guided house tours. These are capped by only allowing a certain number of people in the mansion at a given time.

The Ropes Mansion was featured in the 1993 Disney film Hocus Pocus where one of the main characters named Allison lives. It has since been nicknamed "Alison's House" by fans of the film as a reference.

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Frank Lloyd Wright

- Tirranna House - 1955

New Canaan -Connecticut

The New Canaan, Conn., property was built in 1955, for Joyce and John Rayward, who were close friends of the architect at the time.

According to the release, Wright worked and lived at Tirranna while designing the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. The coolest part is that the residence’s greenhouse was built using the same scalloped glass he had left over from the project.

Tirranna, which gets its name from the Australian Aboriginal word for “running waters,” is positioned along the Norton River and overlooks a large pond and waterfall.

The stone-clad house is laid out in a semi-circle, a shape that frequently appears throughout Wright’s work. Altogether, the 7,000-square-foot property features seven bedrooms and eight and a half bathrooms.

One of the biggest private homes in Frank Lloyd Wright’s portfolio just traded hands for $6 million. The lush 14-acre spread was initially listed back in May 2023 for $8 million.

Tirranna House

This is one of the FLW homes that I could live in!

Sharing with Tom's Tuesday's Treasures

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Today is Cat Day!

Today's quote:

Every time you express gratitude or compassion for any aspect of yourself or someone else, you breathe life in.

MARIAH FENTON GLADIS

And our reality check, this is still where I have to live and drive around when going to places which provide water or laundry or free meals.

Monday, October 28, 2024

If it's on a wall, it's a mural

by Bozik in Kazan, Russia (or is it AI?)

by Peter Day and Jo-Anne Fuller - tribute to William and Henry Mashman, Victoria Pottery of terracotta and stoneware. chimney pots, urns, chicken feeders, bread crocks, storage jars. Mashman Park, Australia

Sharing with Monday Murals

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Today's quote:

The essence of real beauty may be gathered from the commonplace, from what lies close around us in life. By learning to appreciate this truth, our lives will doubtless be enriched and ennobled.
- Jiro Harada, A Glimpse of Japanese Ideals

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The Pet Parade from 2023.I didn't make it to the parade this year. I became quite ill with a fever, and was in bed for 2 days. But I'm better now!

And a reminder that just a month ago our lives were changed forever!

This may look like a simple washed out road. But the water was high enough to knock out the windows of the stores on the other side of it. This little trickle of water is called the Swannanoa River...well, maybe as much as calf high with maybe as much as 8 -10 feet wide usually. But the combination of two storms turned it into a raging torrent which reached the eves of houses in the unincorporated town of Swannanoa.. So I am glad I have another route to take to get to the grocery store. Whenever this bridge is rebuilt, I can use the Blue Ridge Rd. route again.

Sunday, October 27, 2024

Some things to think about (or not)

10.16.24 by wildwoodblessing - Grandfather mountain, North Carolina, first but slight snowfall.

Oct 21, 2024 at noon. NOA view of my area, with North Carolina totally cloudless. (I wonder who drew the lines of the states and even counties, against the photo of the land!)

This is day 31 since Hurricane Helene devastated western North Carolina. I'm sort of wanting to understand this continued dry spell following the storm which carried so much water. Is it all used up and we now will feel drought conditions? we actually were experiencing almost a drought before the 2 storms hit us, with Helene following a two day steady rain.

"It's curious that when WaPo, WSJ and NYT do articles on the relationship between recent hurricanes, such as Helene and Milton, and global warming, they cite and quote media personalities and politicians... but very rarely talk to or quote actual climate scientists who are specialized and published in this area. Just more evidence of the inability of most news editors to grapple with actual science scholarship. It's pathetic." Facebook post 10.24.24 by Robert Scott Horton

Comment by Elisha Lee: NOAA NWS Weather Prediction Center is a great resource as is U.S. National Weather Service (NWS)

I find these words wise, but haven't figured out how to apply them to my confusion.

Art by Akira Kusaka

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Quote for the day:

Love intentionally, extravagantly, unconditionally. The broken world waits in darkness for the light that is you.

L.R. KNOST

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Skipping a photo of the devastation today...but there are so many more.

Saturday, October 26, 2024

It's a bird!

Look closely toward the bottom right, he's looking down.

Here he's sitting looking up on the left center of the photo. I spied this lovely woodpecker on a tree this week, though the window, and with the iPhone enlarged to 5x, then cut and enlarged in edit...and still am not sure who he was. Grey front of head with a bright red patch from back of head, and on cheek and under eye. Grey on back, white underbelly.

So I hope my birding friends will name the one in the maple tree for me.