Better Living Through Literature
Words + Projects + Stuff I Like
A friend sent me this, knowing it was exactly up my alley (words and gains)–the origins of the word dumbbell as it related to bell ringers:
View this post on Instagram
And that got me looking up videos of bell ringers to see the physical action, and before I knew it I was on the Wikipedia page for change ringing, dusting off my music theory.
It’s a fun rabbit hole if you want to go down it, too–so many tidbits, like “full circle ringing” and “quarter peals” and even a Dorothy Sayers novel!
I saw an old World of Interiors article about Japanese bathhouse design and immediately clicked through. I wish it had even more pictures, but I did learn a new fact:
Though bathhouse styles vary from region to region, sentō can nevertheless be divided into two broad categories: Tokyo and Osaka style. The former are almost without exception extravagant places, always arranged with a washing area in front and baths behind. The relative uniformity of sentō design around the capital is a consequence of the catastrophic Great Kantō earthquake of 1923. In the aftermath, it was shrine carpenters who turned their talents to restoring the sentō: their architectural approach, complete with meditative murals of Mount Fuji and similar motifs, became the established regional style.
Well all the parties are over now, we got snow, it’s a long gray January…don’t forget to take your Vitamin D and find something green. We went to Red Butte on my birthday and the conservatory was as green as I expected–but there was also a brave magnolia outside trying to bud. Hold on, little guy! But thanks for being there.
The first of the week was loaded with baking and the rest of it was all sewing–a fantastic mix.
Our gift to each other this year was an estate planning lawyer so we got matching fireproof document boxes to keep everything in–maybe not what you first think when you think of romantic gifts, but what is more loving and attractive than getting your shit together? Nothing, I say.
My recovery last week was similar to the progress of early humans: Not leaving the warm cave, deciding to try some cave paintings, venturing briefly into the surrounding area, and finally going on a real journey away from the cave.
The ablation itself didn’t cause me a lot of trouble or pain, but the anesthesia hangover made Tuesday and even some of Wednesday a wash. My energy levels aren’t quite 100% (I think I had a nap after every trip out of the save) but we’re getting there.
I don’t know how I came across the “Chinese traditional life” genre of videos but I watch every time. Nothing like just a hint of hard physical labor in a beautiful setting and a lot of time lapse to make you want to live like that!
This one covers harvesting and fermenting indigo to make a huge vat and then using wax resist to indigo dye fabric for a lovely cape.
View this post on Instagram
I wrote yesterday’s post having just learned the news and as the day went on and it really sank in, my feelings of dread and doom intensified. I don’t think we’re going to unionize our way out of this one.
But I made myself get off the internet and go on a little hike and you know what? Mountains don’t have any idea what a government is. Neither do orange kitties you can hug in the night if you can’t sleep. “There’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo. And it’s worth fighting for.”
We mixed things up Sunday and went over to the Indigenous Art Market at the Natural History Museum. No pictures, because it felt weird to treat people like entertainment, but we saw some dancing and lots of lovely jewelry.
Speaking of feeling weird about how we treat indigenous people:
I switched up the blog’s template yesterday after thinking about it for literal years and putting it off as too hard.
It took me about half an hour. (I will learn nothing from this.)
But it was past time to get something that filled the screen more and looked better on a phone. I’m still playing with some stuff–fonts, header image, getting an RSS feed to work–but it’s nice and fresh.
I found an archive post from Kottke talking about how loud the Krakatoa volcano was–apparently loud enough to burst the eardrums of people 40 miles away. From the article linked in that post:
The human threshold for pain is near 130 decibels, and if you had the misfortune of standing next to a jet engine, you’d experience a 150 decibel sound. (A 10 decibel increase is perceived by people as sounding roughly twice as loud.) The Krakatoa explosion registered 172 decibels at 100 miles from the source. This is so astonishingly loud, that it’s inching up against the limits of what we mean by “sound.”
The Kottke post also talks about how loud a Saturn V rocket is–“At very close range, the sound from the Saturn V measures an incredible 220 db, loud enough to melt concrete just from the sound“–and then finishes with an incredible fact that sperm whale calls reach 174 decibels?!