Gargoyle and an airplane

June 29, 2011, I put this on facebook. So it will be a race between whether this blog platform will last longer than facebook's photos do.




Water spout—not a fancy gargoyle. Look up above in the sky, though. This I caught on purpose, but I've had some accidental catches nearly as cool as this. This is the roof parapet at Henbury Parish Church, in Bristol, where I also got to play the pipe organ. The caretaker pressed me to do that. I played it as though it were a piano,because my feet don't play organ and I couldn't figure out how to turn on the lower keyboard, but I did it! I played something I didn't know, in 6/8, with only two harmony lines at any one time. Coool.

Same place, same day, Alison's boys showed me the "King of the Castle" song/game, which I have on video somewhere and should add here.

Throw-away views

This photo isn't new. Summer, 2013. I was looking for a photo of a chain of office for a discussion about the word "Whiffler," and ended up looking through photos I took in Chichester when I was there with Joyce Fetteroll, Julie Daniel and Adam Daniel. It's always hard for me to say what I love about England, but this is an example of it. This was the view from the window of the women's room in a restaurant, in Chichester.



The roof lines, the building materials, things added, clues to things having been chopped off, or repaired, or modernized, different kinds of roof tiles and panels and treatments... Candid, "back stage," not spruced up for tourists. :-)

Inside the room:

Nice description of the David Bowie letter

A Sean Kelley in London sweetly informed me about a post today at BBC.co.uk that describes the letter David Bowie sent me very nicely:

Great tales of David Bowie's good nature flooded out after his death too, but we've known about his letter to his first American fan since 2009, after it appeared on the excellent Letters of Note site.

It's a wonderful thing - a measured, charming, excited and poignant response, written in 1967, to a 14-year-old called Sandra Dodd from New Mexico, whose uncle had given her a promotional copy of Bowie's first album (he worked at a radio station).

"When I called in this, my manager's office, a few moments ago I was handed my very first American fan letter - and it was from you. I was so pleased that I had to sit down and type an immediate reply," Bowie begins, before answering questions Sandra had asked about his real name, birthday, height, and whether he'll ever visit America.

"Thank you for being so kind as to write to me and do please write again and let me know some more about yourself," the letter ends.

I love this: "measured, charming, excited and poignant."
It's the second item here, but I will point out again that he was not yet a famous musician when the letter was written.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/articles/ec553f4f-cf1b-4912-b9b5-a98ddfe8d6c6#

The letter and notes on my site: http://sandradodd.com/bowieletter/

Out the window

Joyce Fetteroll was doing a words game in April and May 2016 (for a project she and Danny were doing), and the word was "defenestration." It means to throw something or someone out of a window.

I recorded this for that group, but I don't think those posts will be around forever, so here it is for me to find later.



May 4, 2016

Egyptian Onions, 2016

I took these photos in May 2016 of onions I still have from some my sister gave me fifteen years or more ago. We use some, and they keep reproducing and planting themselves. They're beautiful when their new sets are popping out the top from what look like paper lanterns, at first.

Tiny houses (rejection of)

I'm saving some things from facebook, from a discussion of a funny, well-written article on tiny houses. In case facebook is archived forever, here: blah blah Tiny Houses


It's my writing below:

I think what makes tiny living possible is MacBooks and iPads (or their equivalents). And cellphones and internet.

The reason our kids didn't fit better into the house we had before (where Marty is now) with its 1200+slightly more sq ft is because before they were born, Keith and I already had lots of music, books, projects.

Picture a 1990's computer and printer and telephone in a tiny house. And a VCR and some tapes and a 1990's TV. Where y'gonna sleep?

Camera, photos, albums, negative storage?

But these days my projects are on my website and blogs. Photos don't take space. Music is on the phone and the computer. Even letters from relatives aren't taking space.

So a tiny house can work beause people can read, watch movies, take photos, do research, communicate with relatives without owning books, magazines, videos or DVDs, photo-storage boxes/books/binders, dictionaries or other reference books, stationery, pens and stamps.

But what about sewing and woodworking? Keith and I still need a big house.

---

I keep my computer's back-up drive in an old VCR rental box, wrapped in a green linen napkin. There's some artsy/practical mixing of eras. smile emoticon I stick it on the shelf like a book, in my office, and it's safe to throw into a suitcase.

I've had a computer broken and one stolen when I was out of the country, so I keep the backup current, and never keep it in the same bag as the computer.

Oh, and when I visited India, in the Phoenix airport on the way home, the computer started dying. The next day it was gone. I did lose some notes, names and addresses, but I had been backing up the photos. So back up your computer whether your house is tiny or huge.

With a hot knife, I took out the post that held the video tape in place.

We live near where there was a large video rental store, and used to find boxes in the dumpster. I've used them to ship Thinking Sticks and other small things in the mail, and am nearly out of them now. I should have picked up hundreds of them; they're so strong and solid.

Where, in a tiny house, would one store valuable dumpster-diving finds?

Hearthstone Magnet Frame

This isn't news, but for the record, to keep this in a cool place.... Once upon a time Kirby lived in Austin and had a photo of his parents, and a magnet that made a frame. So for a while, we were (on Kirby's fridge only) a Hearthstone card. He, Destiny and Devyn moved to Albuquerque in early 2015, and things were rearranged.