Filed under: Religion, Science, Science Fiction, Travel, Wales, Writing stuff | Tags: augmented reality, Brecon Beacons, Cader Idris, CADW, Carreg Cennen, Craig Rhosyfelin, false memory, jim downey, Kidwelly, memory, National Botanic Garden of Wales, Pentre Ifan, science, Science Fiction, St. Cybi's Well, Stonehenge, travel, Wales, Wikipedia, writing
After a very nice breakfast at our B&B in Kidwelly, we decided to hit a couple of our favorite places as we worked our way north to Dolgellau, where we had a cottage for the next week.
First was the National Botanic Garden of Wales, home of the Great Glasshouse, where you can find the most amazing collection of Mediterranean plants from around the world:
We also checked out the butterfly house, the walled gardens, and the broadwalk water feature. We even visited with the guardian dragon:
From the Garden, we decided to backtrack a bit east, to one of my favorite Welsh castles, on the edge of the Brecon Beacons: Carreg Cennen.
I love the views of the surrounding countryside from the castle:
And of course, the interior of the castle ruins is also about as atmospheric as you could ask for:
From there we headed to Pembrokeshire, and one of the most iconic neolithic sites in Wales: Pentre Ifan. Here’s a brief passage from St Cybi’s Well describing the roads leading to this amazing site:
This was widely considered the most important megalithic site in the entire country, yet all it got was this simple sign on a country road smaller than just about any subdivision road in the US. It was frustrating, yet somehow also endearing, because it showed just how much the Welsh assumed that locals would know about the area … and how little interest outsiders would take.
And here’s the passage describing what the protagonist sees when he arrives there:
Darnell came to the ‘parking area’: an extra strip of asphalt, with room to park perhaps half a dozen cars along the road. There was a simple gravel path, a wooden gate, and a very small metal sign from CADW that said “Pentre Ifan.” Darnell pulled over and parked. His was the only vehicle there.
He got out of the car, slung his bag over his shoulder, plopped his hat on his head. The slight mist wasn’t heavy enough to require digging out either umbrella or rain gear.
Stepping onto the path at the gate, he realized that it wasn’t a gravel path, but was instead made of crushed stone. Crushed … bluestone, from the looks of it, when he squatted down to get a better look.
He continued on. Alongside the path was a tumble-down wall separating fields, partially overgrown with hedge and briar. He went past cattle in the field, grazing and occasionally lowing to one another, who took little interest in him as he walked along. Through another kissing gate, and almost suddenly he was standing there before the structure, bare to the sky. One great slab of stone several meters long and a couple wide, supported by three menhir, high enough that he would have to stretch a bit to touch the underside of the capstone. There were a couple of additional uprights at the south end, and several largish stones which had tumbled over. He just stood there for a moment, taking it all in.
Standing there, it is easy to imagine yourself looking over the landscape at any point in the last thousand … two thousand … five thousand years. Because Pentre Ifan is estimated to date back to approximately 3,500 — 3,000 B.C.
Which is the same time period for the initial construction of Stonehenge.
And speaking of Stonehenge … another brief excerpt from SCW, between the protagonist Darnell and Eleazar, a somewhat mysterious old wanderer he has crossed paths with several times, and who he meets at Pentre Ifan:
Eleazar considered Darnell, then stepped around to the side of the dolmen, gesturing for Darnell to follow him. He pointed off to the southwest. “About a mile that way.”
“That’s where the portal leads?”
“No, that’s not where the portal leads. But it is where it came from. It’s where the first circle of stones at Stonehenge came from, as well.” He nodded at the phone still in Darnell’s hand, which was now by his side. “Does that have a map on it? Of this area?”
“Yes.” Darnell raised the phone, tapped the screen a couple of times, then cursed. “Damn. Sorry, no signal.”Eleazar smiled slightly. “Not to worry. When you get away from here, just look up Craig Rhosyfelin, right in the bend of the Afon Brynberian. It’s easy enough to find.”
“Huw at Pistyll Rhaeadr mentioned that place. What is it?”
“In some ways, it is the source. Just as there is a source for a stream which becomes a great river. The source cannot do the things that the river can do, and it cannot be used for good or ill in the same way that a river may be used for good or ill. But it is worthwhile – critical, in fact – to know the source, to know where to begin.”
Craig Rhosyfelin is indeed now known to be the actual source of at least some of the inner bluestones at Stonehenge, something which has only recently been scientifically established. Here’s the description of Darnell driving to the site, and then examining it:
The small back roads from Pentre Ifan to Craig Rhosyfelin were, though it was difficult to believe, even worse than what had brought him to the dolmen. They were little more than cart paths in a slight depression between hedge rows. But it was a pleasant, pretty area, and as he came out of the trees from the west, heading down the long gentle hillside, everything seemed to open up. He was just to the north of the main Preseli Hills. The light mist which had been coming down earlier threatened to turn into real rain, and the local radar had shown heavier storms moving in.
Eleazar had been correct; Craig Rhosyfelin was easy to find on the map, and wasn’t at all far. Furthermore, the site had recently been in the news as having been identified as a source of the inner Stonehenge stones, the oldest part of the structure. He followed the directions Andi gave, and after making a sharp right bend he saw it there in front of him: a lump of rock poking up above the narrow little valley floor. Thirty meters ahead there was a hairpin turn of a switchback, and just at the point of the turn was a small area where he could pull off and park the car. He did so. There was no signage, no formal public access path down to the exposed crag. But he pulled off the road, and got out of the car. He walked over to the fence. It was simple cattle mesh with a strand of barbed wire on top, supported by rough wooden posts. Allowing access over the fence was a small, new-ish ladder that went up one side and then down the other. The sort of thing you’d see countless examples of in the Welsh countryside.
He went back to the car, grabbed his shoulder bag. Then glancing up at the sky, decided that taking an umbrella would suffice for the current amount of rain. Opening it, he went to the fence, then over the ladder to the other side. The way down to the little valley floor was clear. He descended.
Standing there, before the lump of rock, it was easy to see why others might have picked this as a possible source for the Stonehenge bluestones. The whole base of the outcrop was exposed stone, in fractured slabs two to three meters in height. Above that was more such rock partially obscured by gorse and other vegetation. Here and there were suitable stones already about the size and shape of the bluestones of the inner circle of Stonehenge, ready to be split off and carted away.
Though there was still evidence of recent archeological digs, there was nothing fresh, and no one in sight. Darnell went down the length of the outcrop to the left, figuring that he would just walk around the whole 60 or 70 meters of the crag to take the entire thing in. He got down to the point of the outcrop and turned back up the valley on the other side.
Compare that to the images we took on this trip:
I think I did a pretty good job describing the site. Especially considering that I’d never actually been there previously.
OK, this is a weird thing. Prior to this trip, I would have sworn that I had actually been to the site before. When we got there, I knew where to park, where to go, what to expect. There were some changes from my memory, with a new gate entrance, etc, but you might expect that with a few years between visits.
But my wife swears that we’ve never been there before. And had I gone, I would have done so with her. In checking back over my previous travelogs, there’s no mention of Craig Rhosyfelin. My memories are nonetheless vivid of seeing the place.
The only conclusion I can draw is that I spent so much time going over the site on Google Streetview and Google Earth, in looking at images of it online, that I manufactured false memories of having visited it in person. It is a very strange feeling to have both the memories and the knowledge that they are not real. Very strange.
After visiting this magical place, we went north, to the cottage where we’d stay for the next week, in the hills above Dolgellau, just behind Cader Idris. Here it is:
More later.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Religion, Science Fiction, Travel, Wales, Writing stuff | Tags: blogging, CADW, Caerphilly Castle, Castell Coch, jim downey, Kidwelly, Science Fiction, St Anne's Well, St. Cybi's Well, technology, Tintern Abbey, travel, Wales, Wikipedia
Part 1 can be found here.
We drove over from Avebury and crossed into Wales, headed up the Wye River valley north of Chepstow. You get your first glimpse of the abbey as you come around a bend in the road, something like this:
Yeah, Tintern Abbey, another World Heritage Site. One of those places where you can feel almost a thousand years of history surround you, wrap you up, hold you close. To walk in that space is to somehow find a part of yourself you never knew was missing. There are a number of places in Wales which make me feel that way. Probably why I keep going back there.
Others in our party experienced the same thing:
After a time we left the Abbey, and I begged an indulgence of the group to visit a small site nearby: St Anne’s Well, Trellech. Everyone was game, even though it wasn’t someplace we had discussed previously. But my wife (who is an excellent navigator, and had done extensive research & preparation for our trip), looked at her maps and said “I don’t know how to get there.”
“That’s OK,” I said. “I do.”
See, I had been there multiple times before … through the technological miracle of Google Streetview. I was fairly sure that I could get us there without reference to a map.
And I did:
St Anne’s Well, also know as the “Virtuous Well”.
I wanted to visit the site because there’s a small but fairly important scene which takes place at the well in St Cybi’s Well. Here’s a bit of it:
Darnell looked from her, back at the well. Here and there on the short wall surrounding it were small objects. And hanging from the limbs of the tree above it were dozens of different strips of cloth in varying hues and conditions, some worn to just loose fibers. He nodded towards those, asked, “What’s with the rags?”
“Hanging from the whitethorn? They’re called clouties. It’s an old tradition for those suffering an illness: dip a length of cloth in the water of the well, then tie it to the tree. As the cloth slowly wears away, so will the illness.” She sipped at her own mug. “The believing makes it so.”
You might be able to see some of the clouties in the image above. In this one, you can at least easily see the white strip I hung in the tree after immersing it in the well water:
We drove on to our B&B accommodation in Cardiff.
The next morning we decided on a pair of nearby castles for the day’s enjoyment: Caerphilly and Coch. As a bonus, Caerphilly was playing host to a couple of dragons …
Dewi and Dwynwen, and their eggs (since hatched).
We’ve been to Caerphilly previously, but it is always a great place to visit. And this was the first real castle for my sister and her family, who were impressed with the size and scope of the fortress, even though it had been slighted during the English Civil War.
Out for a stroll along the top of one of the towers.
The unusual companion castle to Cearphilly is Castell Coch. Unusual, because while the two share some history (having both been built by Baron Gilbert de Clare, lord of Glamorgan, in the late 13th century), in many ways Coch is the antithesis of Caerphilly. Where Caerphilly was a massive fortress designed to use the latest military architecture of the time (concentric layers of defense and extensive water bodies), Coch is a small private castle, barely sufficient as a defensive residence. And where Caerphilly still stands largely intact with its 13th century design, Coch was rebuilt extensively in the 19th century to be a delightful (if somewhat bizarre) Victorian fantasy of what a medieval castle would be like:
But still, a nice place for a stroll …
… or a few moments rest. 
We left SE Wales, and headed west, to our B&B in Kidwelly.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Religion, Science, Science Fiction, Travel, Wales, Writing stuff | Tags: Avebury, blogging, Bruce Nauman, jim downey, Kingly Vale, London, Magna Carta, Millennium Bridge, Salisbury Cathedral, Science Fiction, St. Cybi's Well, Stonehenge, Susumu Koshimizu, Sutton Hoo, Tate Modern, technology, UK, Wales, Wikipedia, writing
From May 13th through June 5th, my wife and I enjoyed a great vacation in the UK, mostly spent in Wales. For the first couple of weeks of the trip my sister and her family joined us.
It was a good chance to get away from things a bit. Spending time enjoying Wales always seems to help me clear my head and get some perspective, even when I don’t necessarily feel like I have pressing matters to ponder. In the coming couple of weeks I’m going to share some of my thoughts and experiences, and probably a fair number of images, from that trip. It’s not going to be like previous travelogues I’ve done, but I hope it will nonetheless be enjoyable. And for those who have been patiently waiting for me to finish St Cybi’s Well, there will be some particular treats in visiting locations in that book.
So, take a little trip with me …
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
London is one of the world’s great cities. And even though as a general rule I don’t like cities, I can usually spend up to a week at a time in London without starting to go stir-crazy.
Here are some quick random images to explain why:
From a recent mosaic near the Millennium Bridge. Not exactly a celebration of peasant revolts, but also not really a criticism of them, either.
Take a walk on the wild side.
Dr Hoo?
The Tate Modern also had a completely magical audio sculpture in the Turbine Hall by Bruce Nauman which I and my brother-in-law Steven thoroughly enjoyed.
And of course, to have a full London experience, you have to have at least one good evening in a traditional pub …
Steven, my sister Celeste, and their daughter Haley.
The next morning we drove to the south coast to Kingly Vale, where we enjoyed the 400 acres of ancient uncut forest in the rain:
Yew know what I mean?
That evening we made it to Salisbury, and did some sight-seeing in the area the next day:
Yeah, one of the four copies known to exist. I was happy to see that they had upgraded both their security and their presentation from the last time I saw this copy.
And of course, a bit north of there is this old place:
Yeah, Stonehenge.
Crows don’t care about the rules.
Slip inside …
That last image is the same one I envisioned as the approach Darnell takes in this excerpt from St Cybi’s Well:
As he crossed the earthen ditch which surrounded the stones some 20 meters out, following the usual paved walking path, he noticed that the shaping of the sound somehow changed. Perhaps it was the mass of bodies crowding in around the stones. But it seemed less to be coming from one particular place, and more like it was just coming up from the ground all around him. Then he stepped off the path, and onto the grass, and he could feel the sound more than hear it. It strummed through his heels, up his legs, vibrations caressing his entire body. It was the springiness, the resonance, which he had felt at St David’s, but infinitely stronger.
Stronger, and shared. Shared, he knew, by every person who walked this ground. By every person who had ever walked this ground. It was as though the earth itself were a drum, and this the taut, shimmering skin which they skittered across.
Slowly he made his way into the circle, almost in a daze. Others moved past and around him, making contact, sharing a smile, a laugh, tears. He had never before been this close to the stones, had never come on those rare occasions when the site was open this way. They seemed impossibly tall, impossibly old. He stepped past the first great upright before him, then paused, and gingerly reached out to touch it. Cold stone, rough weathered, aged lichens. A woman standing next to him had her eyes closed, the palms of her hands also on the stone, and for a moment he felt her mind there, the contact of lovers sharing a glimpse of the eternal. It caught his breath, he stepped back, turned in slight embarrassment and stepped further into the circle. Further into the crowd.
Now the press of people was greater. There were people everywhere, holding hands, praying, chanting, caressing. They were on the fallen stones, pressed up against the standing sarsens, moving. He felt himself drawn further in, pulled in by the sound vibrations filling the space, which became deeper and stronger with every step. He passed the inner sarsen, stood there in the inner circle, the sanctum sanctorum, the Garbha griha, the sacred center of everything.
Around one of the fallen stones there in the center was a space, an opening in the crowd. Everyone peered in, watching a woman in white robes. She was kneeling beside the stone, but not in prayer. Kneeling so that she was at the proper height to reach out and strike the great stone. To strike it with stone-headed mallets. And with each strike, the stone gave a deep, resounding gonging which echoed from the earth, then spread out from the center to touch everything and everyone in a growing, encompassing spiral.
For the third time that day he felt himself grow woozy, felt the world spin. He reached out a hand to steady himself, looking for another person, or another stone, for stability. And he touched one of the blue stones, one of the much smaller uprights which had come from Wales. From Craig Rhosyfelin. It was warm to the touch. Warm, and welcoming.
As if that experience wasn’t enough for one day, we also went to Avebury, *another* World Heritage Site:
Yeah, they really are that big.
Yeah, really.
I’m not kidding.
Seriously.
And in addition to the old stones, they have a somewhat newer church there:
Though it’s still old by our standards:
And while that wasn’t yet the end of the day, it was the end of our trip outside of Wales.
Next: the third World Heritage Site in one day. Can you guess what it will be?
Jim Downey
Filed under: Brave New World, Connections, Emergency, General Musings, Health, New Horizons, Science, Survival, tech | Tags: atherosclerosis, birthday, blogging, echocardiography, electrocardiography, health, heart attack, jim downey, luck, masculinity, miracles, myocardial infarction, science, Science Fiction, stent, technology, Wikipedia
A year ago yesterday, I met my cardiologist for the first time. After looking over the results of my stress echo-cardiogram and discussing what it possibly meant with me, he said that I needed to have a cardiac cath procedure sooner rather than later. Since he’s one of the premier heart surgeons in the mid-west, and always in demand, I expected that this meant I’d get put on a waiting list and have it done sometime in the next month or so when there was an opening in his schedule.
I nodded. “OK, when?”
He looked down at my chart, then back at me. “What are you doing tomorrow?”
Good thing I don’t panic easily.
* * *
Well, as I recounted a few days later, the procedure went smoothly, though longer than usual, with the end result that I had a couple of stents placed to correct a congenital heart defect. It took a while for all the ramifications of what I had lived with, and what it meant to have it corrected, to really sink in. Part of that was coming to full understanding of just how close to death I had come, because even the slightest amount of atherosclerosis, even the tiniest little blood clot, would have triggered a massive heart attack.
But now it’s been a year. I saw the cardiologist several times over that year, most recently a few weeks ago. And, basically, I’m now past it all. I’m no longer taking any blood thinners, I don’t need to take any real precautions, I only need to check in with the cardiologist once a year or if I notice a problem. If I’m smart, I’ll continue to get regular exercise (I now walk three miles each morning, and get in plenty of additional exercise doing yard work and such) and be a little careful about my diet, but those are things which any man my age should probably do.
So, basically, today’s the first anniversary of my rebirth.
And it feels good.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Book Conservation, General Musings, Humor | Tags: blogging, book conservation, bookbinding, cannabis, humor, jim downey, Legacy Bookbindery, Wikipedia
I find all kinds of things in family bibles and similar heirloom books & albums. Photographs. Locks of hair. Newspaper clippings. Flowers. It’s all stuff someone wanted to keep safe, so when I come across it, I set it aside and give it to the client, recommend that if they want to keep it, to do so somewhere other than stuck in the book (because it causes problems for both the binding and the paper).
I’ve seen all kinds of stuff over the years. But this was a new one today:
I checked with the client, who was quite surprised to hear that it was in there. They decided that they didn’t need to keep it as part of the family history.
Does make you wonder, though, what the story is behind it. Hmm.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Architecture, Art, Humor, Mark Twain | Tags: architecture, art, cats, Greystoke, humor, jim downey, Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson, Wikipedia
“A home without a cat — and a well-fed, well-petted and properly revered cat — may be a perfect home, perhaps, but how can it prove title?”
― Mark Twain, Pudd’nhead Wilson
So, a couple weeks ago I had an idea … which, if you know me or have followed this blog for a while, can sometimes get me, well, not exactly into trouble, but can lead to things not entirely intended. Anyway, the idea was to build a climbing tree for our cats, which might take advantage of the 12′ ceilings we have in our historic home (ours is the next-to-last in that article).
Here’s the (probably) final result:
Now, for those who may be curious about the process of making this cat tree, there’s more below.
We have a huge slump of an ancient catalpa out in front of the house, near the road. Here it is:
It’s been a favorite of photographers and children for generations, and overall is doing pretty well. But one large part of it died a couple of years ago, and we’ve delayed removing it. That part is the pair of major mostly horizontal limbs which come out from the tree towards the viewer in that image.
After some discussion, my wife and I decided that the lower limb could serve as the basic structure for our cat tree. So I cut it off, and then trimmed it and started removing the bark, as seen here:
It’s a little hard to tell scale in that pic, but that limb is about 12′ from base to either tip, and about 12′ from tip to tip.
After removing most of the bark, we somehow managed to get the thing in through the front door and then into our living room. Without breaking any windows. Or bones. This was trickier than it might sound. And did require a bit of additional editing with a chainsaw on some of the various extensions. Of the tree, I mean.
So, we got it into approximate position, then braced it with a couple of chairs. Here it is, with Greystoke (our younger cat — he’s not quite two) investigating:
Next, we got it mounted to the wall securely. This required some stacked-lumber spacers in order to make sure that the branches cleared the windows and curtains safely. The way I mounted it was to mount the lumber to the wall, then I added heavy hook brackets to the lumber, and cinched the tree down with rope. That way, if it was ever necessary, we could detach the tree fairly easily. Here it is mounted, with a 12″ cardboard concrete tube I intended to use for part of the ‘furniture’:
Almost as soon as it was secured, Greystoke was wanting to explore:
That’s an 8′ ladder, by the way. Both of our cats love climbing on it anytime we get the thing out.
Hello, there!
I started adding elements to the tree: a couple of simple platforms, and a horizontal bridge which would support a carpeted tube. These (and all the subsequent elements) were mounted using a combination of metal shelf brackets and rope.
At this point I also started wrapping cotton rope around the branches, to make them more cat-claw friendly/safe:
The branch on the left was at enough of an angle to let the cats climb it easily. On the right, I decided to put in steps similar to a ladder, but spiraling as they went up to make it easier for the cats to climb:
Next I settled on a final design for the tube:
Then it was time to carpet it, as well as add carpet to the ladder steps and the platforms:
Covering the steps and platforms just required a rectangle of carpet the correct size and some double-sided carpet tape. To do the tube was a PITA using a combination of carpet tape, construction adhesive, and hot glue. I recommend checking YouTube for instructions. And gloves. Definitely you want gloves.
Here’s the semi-finished tree, before I added a final platform on the upper right, or some ‘interactive’ toys/elements:
The (probably) finished final result again:
Complete with a suspended ‘bird’, a dangling rope, and a couple of simple wood spinners. Note that Greystoke, instead of being on the tree, is snoozing in his favorite chair below. Typical.
But he has already started climbing on it, playing with things, looking out the windows, climbing *into* the windows …
Silly cat. But that’s why we built it.
So, all of the wood and most of the hardware used in making the tree was stuff which I already had leftover/recovered from other projects. The tree as shown in the final version (which may get tweaked a bit over time as we see how the cats use it) has about 800′ of rope on it, and that was the biggest expense. All together, had I had to buy both rope and all the wood & hardware, the out of pocket costs would have been about $200 (I actually spent about half that). And it took me a total of about 30 hours labor, in 2-3 hour sessions over the last couple of weeks.
Fun project. I was a little concerned that wrapping it with so much rope would detract from it feeling like a ‘tree’, but it has maintained that organic feeling, even with the other elements I added. I’m pretty happy with the final product.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Art, Book Conservation, Publishing, tech, University of Missouri | Tags: 1493, art, blogging, book conservation, bookbinding, Germany, jim downey, Kozo, leather, Legacy Bookbindery, Liber chronicarum, marbled paper, Nuremberg Chronicle, technology, University of Missouri, Wikipedia
I’ve had the pleasure to work on a number of very significant items from public and private collections. Here’s the most recent one:
That’s the Liber chronicarum, also known as the Nuremberg Chronicle, one of the most significant books in the history of printing. There’s a good basic description of why the book is important in the Wikipedia article, but suffice it to say that it was one of the first really successful integrations of both illustrations and type, and so a big step in printing technology. Here’s a good idea of what the illustrations look like:
This copy of the Liber chronicarum belongs to the University of Missouri system, and needed a little help, as you can see in these images:
Basically, the current binding, as nice as it is, was breaking along the hinge of the front cover. The rear cover was also showing signs of similar aging. This is a very common problem, particularly in large & heavy books. And my estimate is that the binding was probably 100+ years old, so showing a bit of age is understandable.
Typically, there are two basic repair options for dealing with such a problem. The first is to reinforce the hinge inside and out with Kozo dyed to match the leather. This is minimally invasive to the original binding. It’s a good repair for smaller books, but it doesn’t have a great deal of strength, and if a book is very heavy or is going to get a lot of use, doesn’t hold up as well as you would like. And to do it properly on this binding, it would have covered over a significant amount of the nice gold tooling.
The second common repair strategy is to “reback” the book in new leather. This includes removing the original spine, completely rebuilding the liners & hinges, putting new leather on the spine and then remounting the original spine onto the new structure. It’s a strong repair and works well, but tends to be much more time consuming and apparent than the Kozo repair, changing the visual character of the book more.
After discussing the matter with the folks at MU Special Collections, we decided that I would attempt to do a Kozo repair, but one which had elements of the how the leather rebacking is normally done. This was something of an experiment, as is often the case in doing conservation work; you almost always have to blend techniques to meet the specific problems and needs of the item being treated.
I selected a very heavy Kozo paper and dyed it to match the leather. Then I carefully lifted up the leather along the spine, just enough to insert about a half inch of Kozo. Here’s how that looked:
Note that the pieces of Kozo are only between the heavy bands — those bands are part of the sewing structure, and I didn’t want to impinge on how it worked mechanically.
Then I lifted up the leather along the edge of the front cover, pasted out the length of the exposed interior, and brought the two together, inserting the Kozo tabs under the leather. Once that was all positioned, I wrapped it in wide elastic bands and added weight all along the joint:
Then I left it alone overnight to allow the adhesive to set properly. Leaving it alone is always the hardest part of this process, but you have to trust that you did it right, because if you try and look before the adhesive sets, it’s probable that you’ll cause the joint to be out of position.
Here’s what I found the next day:
That’s a nearly perfect joint. I was very pleased.
But I wasn’t finished yet. Now that the cover was properly aligned and partially attached, I needed to strengthen the joint from the inside of the cover.
I opened the book and removed the detached marbled endpaper:
Previously I had carefully used lifting knives to get under the cloth joint cover and lift up the marbled paste-down:
Now I peeled further back the marbled paste-down on the front cover, and applied a wide band of heavy undyed Kozo to function as an internal hinge:
Then I put fresh adhesive on the exposed paste-down marbled paper and put it back into position, thereby securing the joint:
Then I remounted the marbled endpaper with a narrow strip of Kozo on the back:
Lastly, I put down a narrow strip of dyed Kozo on the outside of the cover to mask the broken joint and protect it. This was largely cosmetic, but helped to give the book a finished appearance. After an application of leather preservative and a bit of buffing, the book was finished:
It’s a good repair. Eventually, the book will need to be rebacked in leather properly, but for now we’ve been able to stabilize the book and again make it available for classes and researchers at the University of Missouri.
What a fun project. I really do love doing what I do for a living, and I realize just how lucky I am to be able to say that.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Alzheimer's, Book Conservation, Civil Rights, Connections, Constitution, Emergency, General Musings, George Orwell, Government, Heinlein, Paleo-Future, Politics, Predictions, Preparedness, Robert A. Heinlein, Science Fiction, Society, Survival, Violence, Writing stuff | Tags: 1984, Alzheimer's, America, blogging, care-giving, civil liberties, Civil War, civilization, Communion of Dreams, Crazy Years, dementia, Donald Trump, election, Heinlein, Her Final Year, Hilary Clinton, jim downey, luck, Nazi, NPR, politics, predictions, Robert A. Heinlein, Science Fiction, St. Cybi's Well, survival, technology, theocracy, Wikipedia, writing
The eighty-something man fumbled with the pocket knife he had carried his whole life. His hands trembled with age, rage, and fear, but if the hulking stranger refused to leave his house, well, then by God he’d force the man to leave!
The stranger easily took away the knife, and told the man to go back upstairs. Then he sat down on the mechanic’s stool next to his motorcycle and began to weep.
I was about 14, and had just witnessed age-related dementia for the first time.
The hulking stranger was my uncle, whom I had come to live with. The elderly man was his grandfather. We were at his grandparent’s home, using the garage under the house as a warm place to get a little work done on his bike. He and his grandparents were close, always had been. He had lived with them for a while when he was young.
* * *
President Trump is certain that he was cheated out of a popular election mandate due to voter fraud. Almost no one else agrees, and even members of his own party who are responsible for elections at the state and local level have said that there is virtually no evidence of actual fraud.
The President has also claimed that his inauguration had more people in attendance and watching around the world than any previous. The best evidence and estimates available from multiple sources do not support this claim.
I could go on.
* * *
I remember Martha Sr getting fixated on things which were weird, unpredictable. Fixated in such a way that no matter what we tried to say or do, she was certain that we were wrong. Or just lying to her. Or something.
It was almost always some strange idea or memory or object which would catch her attention seemingly out of the blue and often at the most inconvenient times. The idea that the strawberry seeds in her yogurt were necessary for completing a crossword puzzle, so she had to pick them out and keep them. Or that she was going on a train trip, and had to make sure to go get her tickets right now. It drove us completely nuts, and was one of the more difficult challenges of being care-givers. We’d try to distract her with other things, or explain that we already had her tickets and she didn’t need to worry. Sometimes that worked. Sometimes she’d go on and on and on about whatever it was which had captured her attention, returning to it for days on end.
* * *
In the aftermath of the presidential election, many people who had supported Secretary Clinton were shocked, stunned, at the outcome.
Some started looking for ways to challenge the results. First there was an effort to get the Electoral College to not affirm Donald Trump as the winner, on the basis that Russia had influenced the election. Then there was a hope that the House of Representatives would not confirm the results of the Electoral College vote. Then there were challenges made to whether President Trump could hold the office, since he was in violation of the Constitution.
I could go on.
* * *
It seems like the long-respected norms of civic behavior are finally starting to break down. They’ve been stressed for a very long time, like a marriage which has gone badly wrong, but is held together out of fear for what would actually happen if one partner were to confront the other over perceived slights or suspected betrayal.
But now someone has had enough, and said words which cannot be taken back.
The shouting, the screaming, the breaking of china in anger and frustration has begun.
Young children stand in the doorway to the kitchen, tears streaming down their face, unsure what this means or what will happen next.
* * *
Someone punched a neo-Nazi. Plenty of people cheered. It’s hard not to cheer when Nazis get punched.
The day after the inauguration, millions of people marched in protest of the new president and his administration. Plenty of people cheered. It’s hard not to cheer the affirmation of civil rights and political empowerment.
The day after that, a top-level presidential advisor ill-advisedly used the term “alternative facts” when disagreeing about the turnout at the inauguration. Plenty of people jeered at her for doing so. It’s hard not to mock something straight out of 1984.
The day after that saw the start of a number of Executive Orders and memoranda signed by President Trump, putting into motion the changes which he and other members of his party had promised. Plenty of people cheered to see the change they wanted starting. Plenty of people jeered both the spirit and the letter of the changes.
* * *
I’m not saying that President Trump has age-related dementia. Not even the first signs of it. I’m a bookbinder, not a doctor, and am in no way qualified to make such an assessment.
And I’m not saying that the rhetoric and actions from those who oppose the new administration are equivalent to the rhetoric and actions of those who have supported it.
I am saying that things have changed. I think that we are on the precipice of something akin to Heinlein’s “The Crazy Years”. Things have changed so much, and so quickly, that I have had to go back and make substantial revisions to St Cybi’s Well. Because what before was a challenge to the reader’s ‘suspension of disbelief’ has been completely superseded by our reality. It’s not the president who is showing signs of dementia — it’s our society.
And I am saying that when you accept and embrace the use of violence against a political opponent, you open yourself up to the use of violence against you by your political opponents. Because there are always justifications and rationalizations for such use, and human history is filled with the resultant wars civil and decidedly uncivil. Be very careful what you wish for.
Jim Downey
Filed under: ACLU, Amazon, Brave New World, Civil Rights, Connections, Fireworks, George Orwell, Government, Humor, movies, NPR, Paleo-Future, Politics, Predictions, Preparedness, Science Fiction, Society, Violence | Tags: 1984, ACLU, George Orwell, Guy Fawkes, humor, investments, jim downey, literature, money, movies, NPR, police, politics, predictions, protest, Science Fiction, Wikipedia, women's march
Hmm. Perhaps it’s time to invest in companies which make those Guy Fawkes masks …
Even better, we can set up an investment fund which holds stock in companies which make yarn, knitting needles, Maalox, poster board, magic markers, etc. Just to hedge our bets, it should also look at firms which deal in security consultation, drones, police & military equipment, private prisons, and so forth. Pity there’s no way to own stock in the ACLU.
Oh, and I wish I held the copyright on 1984 …
Who’s in?
Jim Downey
Filed under: Bipolar, Brave New World, Connections, Depression, General Musings, Health, Predictions, Survival | Tags: atherosclerosis, bipolar, blogging, brick walk, cardiac stent, construction, creative process, darkness, depression, exercise, genetics, health, jim downey, luck, medicine, mental health, predictions, privilege, society, stent, technology, Wikipedia, writing
As I’ve noted previously, I’m mildly bipolar, with my ‘natural’ bipolar cycle running about 18 months. I had noticed the start of a psychological downturn three or four months ago, following the intense boost that came with the discovery and correction of my cardiac artery blockage and subsequent recovery. Since I don’t usually realize that I have taken a downturn until it has gone on for a while, I’m guessing that I’m approaching the bottom of the cycle.
* * * * * * *
Some 50 years ago, my father-in-law (who I never met — he passed away before my wife and I knew each other) put in a simple brick walkway around two sides of his garden. OK, that doesn’t sound like too big a deal. But his garden was almost a full acre in size, and the walkway more than 100 yards in length. Yeah, it really is that long.
After his death, the garden was reverted back to lawn. And slowly the brick walkway was reclaimed by that lawn.
But since the house remained in the family, memory of the walkway wasn’t lost. Some time back the walk was uncovered, and for the last decade or so we did a pretty good job of keeping it clear and used. Here’s a pic of some of it:
Note the box turtle in the patch of sunlight in the upper part of the pic.
* * * * * * *
I sent this in a message to a friend this morning who had asked if I was feeling more healthy these days:
Maybe?
I do feel a lot stronger and more … vital. But I really don’t want to be one of those ’50-something year old guys who discover the power of exercise!’ At best, it’s annoying to most people. At worst, it’s obnoxious able-ism. My situation, both my peculiar genetic problem and my lifestyle permitting me to get a LOT of exercise time in, is extremely unusual, and not something I can claim as being due to my own effort.
Yeah, I think a lot about this.
* * * * * * *
For a couple of years we’ve talked about rebuilding the brick walkway, because while we’ve been able to keep it uncovered, it is nonetheless ‘sunk’ relative to the surrounding lawn. Meaning that it collected grass clippings and mud, tended to puddle, and retained ice and snow for a prolonged period. Plus there were sections which had been damaged by construction and heavy trucks which came into the yard to do utility and tree work.
But redoing a 300’+ length of brick walkway is no small task. To do it correctly would require a lot of work and a fair amount of expense for proper landscape edging, landscape fabric, gravel/chat, and sand. And if we were going to go to the trouble of redoing it, we wanted to do it correctly and expand it a bit.
About two weeks ago we ordered the first four cubic yards of chat, got some of the other materials, and got started. Since the edging material we’re using comes in 60′ lengths, we decided to use that as the operative size of each ‘section’ of the walkway. The first step was to remove the old brick walk:
Then expand the bed, take it down, and level it out:
Then put down the base layer of chat on top of the landscape fabric:
(That’s about 10,000 pounds of chat, by the way.)
And then start putting down brick. Here’s how far we’ve gotten as of yesterday afternoon:
With luck, we’ll finish getting the rest of the bricks laid in this ‘section’ today or tomorrow. Then we’ll be about one-fifth through the whole project.
* * * * * * *
As I’ve noted previously, I’m mildly bipolar, with my ‘natural’ bipolar cycle running about 18 months. I had noted the start of a psychological downturn three or four months ago, following the intense boost that came with the discovery and correction of my cardiac artery blockage and subsequent recovery. Since I don’t usually realize that I have taken a downturn until it has gone on for a while, I’m guessing that I’m approaching the bottom of the cycle.
One of the things I learned long ago is that doing something constructive helps me cope with the depressive part of my bipolar cycle. By focusing on something in discrete chunks, I can slowly ‘walk’ out of my depression, since I can see tangible progress happening on something.
We probably won’t be able to finish the full 300’+ of the brick walkway before winter sets in. But that’s OK. Being able to spend a couple of hours working on the walk each day (when the weather permits) helps. It’s good exercise for my body. And it helps to keep my mind from falling too far into the darkness.
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 
