Wolftown Mercantile ~ Wolftown, Virginia
I live and work in a rural area. The views are awesome.
Lunch can be an adventure all its own.
Capsize No. 1
Bill watching the clouds build
I alluded to this story back in the summer, but was so busy then I couldn’t take time to tell it. Roger Rodibaugh recently reminded me that he and a few other folks have been waiting quite patiently to hear it. Actually, several adventures from last summer slipped by unaccounted for that I should revisit. Now, with it cold and snowy outside, seems a good time to get back to them.
Annotated Bibliography
We wake, if we ever wake at all, to mystery, rumors of death, beauty, violence . . .
— Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
This is the hard time. Days grow longer, true, but the light is frail.
Puddles, skinned in ice, press last year’s leaves under glass, and mud.
In the field, I mistake a deer hide, jumbled in the grass, for a dirty wet flannel shirt. It still looks fresh, the blood still red, from a November kill.
Shadows of things are white with frost, instead of black, inverted. They shy from the sun, scooting around shrubs and cedars, like Winter’s children behind their mother’s skirt.
Steam burns off the fence rails when the sun comes up. Everything is on fire. By afternoon, though, the flame sputters and goes out. Months yet to go before spring.
First Snow
Snowfall on Cedars
Thursday, they predicted up to 7 inches of snow for the whole region. Instead, we got three solid days of cold rain, then finally about an inch of snow here, and nowhere else. Enough to make things look nice.
A south wind warmed things up again, and everything’s been dripping all day. Shirtsleeves and snow.
This is Random
But it’s not just TVs. Who really likes the “software” in their car, microwave, or blu-ray player?
All of this software is terrible in the same handful of ways. It’s buggy, unresponsive, and difficult to use. I actually think the second sin is the worst one, especially when it comes to appliances and consumer electronics. Dials and knobs respond to your touch right now. Anything that wants to replace them had better also do so.
Amen.
via: Daring Fireball
I’ve made my living by hanging around the leading edge of technology for over 40 years. What I have learned is this: When software sucks, it sucks on a whole nuther level that analog stuff just can’t. And software is showing up in more previously simple things every day.
It’s probably why I like 19th century technology so much.
Duly noted.
Gannet
Gannet takes it’s spot in the shed.
The Gannet is too big to fit through the door to the basement, I knew that already, and Terri is using some of that space as her studio now, anyway (she has a show coming up in March, yay!).
So for now, the Melonseeds have given up their place of privilege in the shed, and are parked on the trailer under a tarp arrangement, enough to provide some reasonable protection I hope, and the Gannet has moved inside.
Moon Walking
I love what creative people do with technology.
Moonwalk from Bryan Smith on Vimeo.
The ultimate full moon shot. Dean Potter walks a highline at Cathedral Peak as the sun sets and the moon rises. Shot from over 1 mile away with a Canon 800mm and 2X.