We have some wonderful sunsets. This one was taken from the upstairs bedroom as well.
A Place for Various Ruminations
Thursday, January 13, 2011
About the Yard
This is a view from the upstairs bedroom. As you can see the back yard is a bit of green in a lot of natural ares.
We have some wonderful sunsets. This one was taken from the upstairs bedroom as well.
We have some wonderful sunsets. This one was taken from the upstairs bedroom as well.
Day of Clouds
This was shot on a summer day with a Nikon 5400 using a HarborTronics invalometer. Doing time lapse photography is something I really enjoy.
This one is too long (five minutes) but it shows a storm passing thru. If you watch the whole thing you can see the tide go out in the afternoon. Also it was shot using a low resolution NTSC camera. I did not want to leave good equipment out in the rain.
This one is too long (five minutes) but it shows a storm passing thru. If you watch the whole thing you can see the tide go out in the afternoon. Also it was shot using a low resolution NTSC camera. I did not want to leave good equipment out in the rain.
Feeding Squirrels
First let me tell you about a new 'project' I played with this summer -- feeding squirrels. I started by feeding the squirrels corn on the bench seen in the pictures. They loved it so as soon as they were coming every morning to get their hand out I made a long pole that has a hook to hang an ear of corn from. No big deal about that. But, to make life a bit more interesting, I started hanging the corn from a very springy spring. So it works this way. I put the corn just high enough to make it a real stretch to reach the corn. Then when they were accustomed to a long stretch to get the corn I put the corn up high enough so that they could only reach it by jumping up and grabbing it and pulling it down to get a kernel of corn. They really had to work for the corn!
Well, now to the main observation — When the corn was lying on the bench (no work to get it) the little darlings would eat only the germ part of the kernel! The germ is the yummy part in the center of the kernel. When they were getting the corn with no work they would eat the germ portion and drop the rest down to the deck. When I supported the corn where they had to do a little work to get it, they wasted a lot less. And yesterday when they had to do a lot of work to get the corn they dropped almost NONE! At the end of the day the deck was totally devoid of any dropped corn.
Today I have the corn lower and they are dropping more.
Moral of the squirrels? When they have to work for food they don’t waste it. When they are given food that is just there for the taking they waste all but the best portions.
Is there anything in this story that would make you try to draw an analogy to human behavior?
Take care, feed the squirrels and pay your taxes.
Now I really feel as though I am doing them a favor. Note how he has to exercise his abs to get back up on the support.
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Bayou View
June and I live on a bayou -- Davis Bayou to be exact. Here is a view of the bayou from our house
We have a yard that is divided in two major parts. One is rather cultivated and the other is kept in an almost wild state. Here are a couple of photos of flowers on the more formal side.
I'll try to find some shots of the trail on the other side of the yard.
Bill
We have a yard that is divided in two major parts. One is rather cultivated and the other is kept in an almost wild state. Here are a couple of photos of flowers on the more formal side.
I'll try to find some shots of the trail on the other side of the yard.
Bill
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Storage, Storage
The average Maker never has enough storage. I have spent way too much on the plastic drawer storage cabinets and now they are too expensive for me and too small for many of my parts. Here is how I have solved some of my storage needs. The underlying theme is 'use what is available.'
This is my ordinary small parts cabinet area. The cabinet to the right is a 1920's vintage letter storage cabinet that I will get around to restoring someday.
This is one of my first alternate storage cabinets. Yep, those are five liter wine boxes cut in half. If you have a bandsaw this is a simple task. If you use a box knife it will be a bit of a chore. They are just great for medium size parts and even better is that they fit almost exactly on the military surplus storage cabinet shelves that I got for $10 a unit.
Here is a view of the cabinet with all the boxes. These were not accumulated over night!
My latest is using the A1 shipping boxes from Amazon. The are the perfect size for putting on a double shelf over my work bench. (Amazon, if you run into this link send me a few more boxes. I spending too much money getting them with merchandise in them.)
This is my ordinary small parts cabinet area. The cabinet to the right is a 1920's vintage letter storage cabinet that I will get around to restoring someday.
This is one of my first alternate storage cabinets. Yep, those are five liter wine boxes cut in half. If you have a bandsaw this is a simple task. If you use a box knife it will be a bit of a chore. They are just great for medium size parts and even better is that they fit almost exactly on the military surplus storage cabinet shelves that I got for $10 a unit.
Here is a view of the cabinet with all the boxes. These were not accumulated over night!
My latest is using the A1 shipping boxes from Amazon. The are the perfect size for putting on a double shelf over my work bench. (Amazon, if you run into this link send me a few more boxes. I spending too much money getting them with merchandise in them.)
More Storage
These are some boxes that I found in a house under construction. They held the can lights that went in the ceiling.
Another good score was this storage cabinet that was found in an autoparts company that was going out of business.
Now that I have the storage methods under control I just need a bigger shop to put them all in.
Another good score was this storage cabinet that was found in an autoparts company that was going out of business.
Now that I have the storage methods under control I just need a bigger shop to put them all in.
Sunday, September 27, 2009
History of a small part of the Coast
The following is from Robert Stevens. He and I have been corresponding about the history of the Mississippi Gulf Coast during the late 1940's and early 1950's.
This is a work in progress.
The Friendship House was located at the corner of Debuys Road and Hwy 90. The Grove Club was across the street on the Gulfport or Mississippi City side. Adjoining the Grove Club was Colonial Cottages and the Colonial Sea Wall Café. The cafe' later moved across the highway when it was eaten by the hurricane of 1947. West of us was the Worth Motel (John and ______ Worth) who had purchased the homestead from a retired MD.
More trivia - John Worth was a chemist who put the stink in natural gas which was marketed under the name of Captane – don’t hold me to the spelling – but that’s where their funds came from. He designed the machinery to mix the stink and the gas. And to the west of the Worth Motel was the Alamo Plaza motel. Before it was the Alamo Plaza it was a large large home belonging to the family of Jackie Glass family (a missing classmate of ours) and the story has it that Ernest Hemmingway lived there for quite awhile during the 1930’s. The Alamo was built in several stages and the Glass home survived for awhile.
The Friendship house owned by Jim and Mary Myers was the 2nd friendship house. If one went to Paradise Point in Mississippi City circa 1950 the Paradise Point Restaurant and Fairchild's Restaurant near Teagarten Road only employed Jim and Mary. They apparently purchased what was then Dinty Moore's Restaurant sometime after the construction of Confederate Inn and renamed it the Friendship House. Which implies that they had already purchased the original Friendship House in “downtown Mississippi City” i.e. name continuity.
Jim and Mary later built themselves a home about 200 yards from the restaurant. They later constructed the Deer Ranch to the north of their home. Their daughter Peggy Parrish was in a class behind ours. She also graduated from Mississippi City Grammar School now the Lynn Meadows Discovery Center I am told.
My family, Jim (1909) and Ethel Stevens (1908) with Robert 1938) and Jimmy (1934), moved from Gabel Lodges i.e. Maple Wood Louisiana near Sulfur Louisiana a year or two after the 1947 hurricane. We were the Dam Yankees from New Jersey that moved to the south during World War II when Beneficial Finance purchased the Trailways Bus Company and staffed the management at Shreveport Louisiana. Everybody owned Trailways at one time or another it seems but my dad didn’t want to return North after the War and talked the Harrisons (Furrier business with $ from suing the Oil Companies for transgressing on the Muskrat stock in the swamps – my opinion but I was just a little brat) and the Hennicans (old time law family) of New Orleans to purchase the Colonial Cottage complex with the Stevens family (I suspect they also financed Gable Lodges of Lake Charles Louisiana/Maplewood area).
The Grove Club was built on an old homestead of the famous author Sinclair Lewis but it burned down. The oak trees on Grove Club land and Confederate Inn property still bore scars of that fire for many years. Well that is according to my memories of stories heard . . . my brother doesn’t remember this one.
More trivia, my brother tells me that when the cottage we called home was moved back from the Confederate Inn restaurant he fell into an old septic tank made from bricks stamped 1861. Fortunately the contents had long ago turned to powder. No one knows where from i.e. what that structure might have been. That was actually on the land straddling Colonial Cottages and the Worth Motel.
More trivia; the best manager at the Confederate Inn was a practicing alcoholic with the last name of Henderson. They came from Alabama and their family had lost everything in the Civil War. I was always amused hearing husband and wife argue over whose family had the highest rank in the Confederacy.
Trying to check a few facts my brother tells me that before we left New Jersey we lived in Montclair (a year or two before I was born) next to the real life family from which the novel and movie “cheaper by the dozen” comes from. Who knows? It’s a small world. And redaction of memory is a real human endeavor. But just claim it was Jesus who paid you the visit and everyone tends to honor you - - - that was my Wife’s claim to fame: a really effective marketing technique. Reality is a social game not an objective situation.
This is a work in progress.
The Friendship House was located at the corner of Debuys Road and Hwy 90. The Grove Club was across the street on the Gulfport or Mississippi City side. Adjoining the Grove Club was Colonial Cottages and the Colonial Sea Wall Café. The cafe' later moved across the highway when it was eaten by the hurricane of 1947. West of us was the Worth Motel (John and ______ Worth) who had purchased the homestead from a retired MD.
More trivia - John Worth was a chemist who put the stink in natural gas which was marketed under the name of Captane – don’t hold me to the spelling – but that’s where their funds came from. He designed the machinery to mix the stink and the gas. And to the west of the Worth Motel was the Alamo Plaza motel. Before it was the Alamo Plaza it was a large large home belonging to the family of Jackie Glass family (a missing classmate of ours) and the story has it that Ernest Hemmingway lived there for quite awhile during the 1930’s. The Alamo was built in several stages and the Glass home survived for awhile.
The Friendship house owned by Jim and Mary Myers was the 2nd friendship house. If one went to Paradise Point in Mississippi City circa 1950 the Paradise Point Restaurant and Fairchild's Restaurant near Teagarten Road only employed Jim and Mary. They apparently purchased what was then Dinty Moore's Restaurant sometime after the construction of Confederate Inn and renamed it the Friendship House. Which implies that they had already purchased the original Friendship House in “downtown Mississippi City” i.e. name continuity.
Jim and Mary later built themselves a home about 200 yards from the restaurant. They later constructed the Deer Ranch to the north of their home. Their daughter Peggy Parrish was in a class behind ours. She also graduated from Mississippi City Grammar School now the Lynn Meadows Discovery Center I am told.
My family, Jim (1909) and Ethel Stevens (1908) with Robert 1938) and Jimmy (1934), moved from Gabel Lodges i.e. Maple Wood Louisiana near Sulfur Louisiana a year or two after the 1947 hurricane. We were the Dam Yankees from New Jersey that moved to the south during World War II when Beneficial Finance purchased the Trailways Bus Company and staffed the management at Shreveport Louisiana. Everybody owned Trailways at one time or another it seems but my dad didn’t want to return North after the War and talked the Harrisons (Furrier business with $ from suing the Oil Companies for transgressing on the Muskrat stock in the swamps – my opinion but I was just a little brat) and the Hennicans (old time law family) of New Orleans to purchase the Colonial Cottage complex with the Stevens family (I suspect they also financed Gable Lodges of Lake Charles Louisiana/Maplewood area).
The Grove Club was built on an old homestead of the famous author Sinclair Lewis but it burned down. The oak trees on Grove Club land and Confederate Inn property still bore scars of that fire for many years. Well that is according to my memories of stories heard . . . my brother doesn’t remember this one.
More trivia, my brother tells me that when the cottage we called home was moved back from the Confederate Inn restaurant he fell into an old septic tank made from bricks stamped 1861. Fortunately the contents had long ago turned to powder. No one knows where from i.e. what that structure might have been. That was actually on the land straddling Colonial Cottages and the Worth Motel.
More trivia; the best manager at the Confederate Inn was a practicing alcoholic with the last name of Henderson. They came from Alabama and their family had lost everything in the Civil War. I was always amused hearing husband and wife argue over whose family had the highest rank in the Confederacy.
Trying to check a few facts my brother tells me that before we left New Jersey we lived in Montclair (a year or two before I was born) next to the real life family from which the novel and movie “cheaper by the dozen” comes from. Who knows? It’s a small world. And redaction of memory is a real human endeavor. But just claim it was Jesus who paid you the visit and everyone tends to honor you - - - that was my Wife’s claim to fame: a really effective marketing technique. Reality is a social game not an objective situation.
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