I Ate 100 Power Bars

March 12, 2018

...make the Stasi blush, one company I met promised to provide me with, “real-time shopper behavior intelligence” with a database that goes back, “35+ years of every UPC scanned in store.” (1) When I asked if this information is tied to me personally, the rep said that it’s all connected to my credit card information before abruptly cutting off the conversation when, I think, he noticed that I was wearing a media badge. Speaking of that media badge m...

Read…

Stickley’s #603 Taboret

Mr. Homegrown

March 14, 2018

Design

17 Comments

...’s #603 Tabouret is not really complex, it has occupied way too much of my time in the past two weeks and I haven’t even gotten to all the possible confusing finishing options. By way of excuse let me suggest that with screen time averaging 10 hours a day for the average American, perhaps 2018 is the year we all might consider taking up a few arcane, overly complex and silly projects. It could be sewing, gardening or any other activity that takes...

Read…

What You Can Do to Make Our Streets Safer

Mr. Homegrown

April 13, 2018

Transportation

13 Comments

...isis seriously enough. Rather than make our streets safer they spend their time pondering presidential runs and virtue signaling on issues they have no legislative authority over. When my own councilman Mitch O’Farrell’s hypocrisy was pointed out to him (he halted a road diet on Temple street where 5 people have died and 34 have been seriously injured between 2009 and 2017), he responded with this terse and arrogant Tweet: Between Frazier’s death...

Read…

Do I Need Books?

Mr. Homegrown

May 30, 2018

Domesticus, Tidying up

24 Comments

...as well as some new ebooks that the library makes available for free. Sometimes one’s personal library can devolve into a kind of virtue signaling, a way to seem smart when visitors drop by. In my case it’s definitely time for a book winnowing and, yes, I will still have a bookshelf populated with books I use for reference. Kelly has her own books and shelf. Of course books have a tendency to accumulate and I have no doubt that I will have to go...

Read…

Random Acts of Beauty

Mr. Homegrown

July 16, 2018

Design

9 Comments

...’s Central Library have been a big part of my effort to cut down on screen time in the evening (during the day my workshop and home restoration duties force me away from that infernal iPhone). Librarians have a real talent for suggesting books I’d never find on my own such as Wiener Werkstätte Jewelry. Behold, the striking pendant above designed by Koloman Moser in 1905. William Burges Cardiff Castle. Another serendipitous find, Gothic Revival by...

Read…