Saturday Tweets: Don’t Fear the Green Reaper

...the light relentlessly pierced through even the tiny slits in the shades, making it difficult to fall asleep. Thanks goodness I moved from that area. pic.twitter.com/ECmbRPxz4h — Robert Kwolek (@RobertKwolek) January 31, 2019 “The internet’s emphasis on metrics and quantity over depth and quality has engendered a society that values celebrity, sensationalism, and numeric measures of success.” – #TeamHuman, #39 Get the manifestohttps://t.co/QCJ0Ng...

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The #700 Bookshelf

...s, though there is some controversy about this. Having spent so many hours building it, there are some details that make me think an architect had something to do with the design, particularly the odd little pilasters that hide the face frame seam on the front of the bookcase. Stickley’s furniture can, occasionally, be a bit crude and boxy. The details of this bookcase set it apart. The arches at the bottom, reminiscent of a bridge, give the desig...

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More on How to Make Clear Ice

...amper English has done my work for me and carefully tested every clear ice making method and documented the results in painstaking detail on his entertaining and enlightening blog Alcademics. The winning method he suggests is the one I wrote about: freezing ice in a cooler (also known as “directional freezing”). The distilled water and hot water methods don’t work, according to English. I also learned that the enigmatic David Rees (author of a boo...

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Our new front yard: history

.... The slope looked alive, but it did not look loved. It’s hard to admit to making a mistake, particularly when its a costly mistake, or a mistake that you’ve made publicly, or a mistake that you’ve been making for a long time. This is why people keep climbing Everest even when they see a storm is rolling in. This is why we ended up with an ugly yards full of struggling trees. The cactus, however, grew exponentially. Its position was front and cent...

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How to be a Tudor by Ruth Goodman

...ld set kids to fiddly work so they can end up stooped and half blind by age 15! I’m just thinking about the idea of mastery, and the kind of work and time that takes. As well as just raw hours spent at the task, there is the advantage of asking a body, muscle, nerve, bone and brain, to grow into the craft, to develop into that specialty. We’ve kept up the practice of early apprenticeship in just a few areas, like music, dance and sport–but in the...

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