Grateful and Gratifying

New Orleans is big, beautiful, lively, friendly, and tasty. I'm talking about NOLA people and their culture, geography counts for something. Seems right to talk about the Big Easy.
Up river, down river, West Side, canals, bayous its easy to find an energizing nudge in the perspective, and a good meal at the same time.
Lots of good conversation available, and when you don't need to talk you can dance your butt off to music that flows in the ears and around the whole body.
In the greater New Orleans area you can experience some of the most well matured parts of the good old U. S. of A.
I flew out of New Orleans a couple of years younger than I was when I got there. My emotional energy was cranked up a notch or two and I had a calm smile on my face that might have been broad enough to suggest just a tiny bit of naughtiness.
It's high culture laid back
The people have had some hellish weather and have handled it in a heavenly way.

Radio English.

On the two PBS stations available locally I now regularly hear "large" pronounced the same as "larch" and "news" pronounced the same as "noose."

I hope I don't get a large noose when I'm expecting news about the larch.

Philosophical Relatives

Well bro, you don't have to be my age to understand this, but it might help.

When I was quite young I was pretty sure that I understood "I love you." better than I understood "A bushel and a peck." Then, for a time, I was sure that I understood "A bushel and a peck." better than I understood "I love you." Now, I think that I would benefit from knowing a whole lot more about both.

I may come to consider that "nothing matters very much and most things don't matter at all.

You think about things. You think about change. If everything is changing, what is a thing?
Everything is changing.
Thing is change.
Thing equals change.
Change is thing.
How are things, anyway?
Nice to have a little change.
What is the nature of change? Of thing?
Do questions like this keep you awake? Do the put you to sleep? They may be good for that.

Magic Table

Imagine a beautiful table.
Large and low
Easily bearing gifts

Pedigree, My Foot!

Cranes Foot is more like it. Some centuries ago someone looked at the lines of a genealogical chart and thought it looked like the mark left by a cranes foot.

Genealogy and pedigree are not exactly the same. Going back to its Greek roots genealogy would seem to mean family studies. Like a pedigree a genealogy is a record of familial decent, but it may also refer to race study.

Looking at the genealogy of 'genealogy I find it belongs to one of the biggest most important word families. It goes back to pre-historic Indo-European bases like gen-, gon-, gn-, all denoting 'produce.' German offshoots include kin, kind, and king. Its Latin descendants seem to go on forever. I won't quote the Latin words here. I will mention a few of the related phrases and words in English: race, people, beget, be born, nature, nurture, gender, general, generate, generic, gentile, indigenous, genesis, genetic, gene, and a lot more!

Code

How do I enter code on this blog?

What Makes a Good Representative?

Senator Jesse Helms may well have well represented a bigger portion of his potential constituents then the overwhelming majority of Representatives or Senators we have elected.

Battered Adobe

I am still sometimes attracted by what might be called called construction curiosities.

Building with adobe requires a great deal of hard physical work. It takes perhaps two to three thousand man hours to build a home, more if you are unpracticed with adobe.
Still, if you are digging a basement or pond and have that pile of sand and clay soil and some water, you have your raw material at hand.

A development in the adobe industry is a hydraulic pressing machine which makes about ten bricks a minute. The advantage of the bricks so produced is more time saving than may be evident at first. The great thing is that the bricks are ready to use without further curing.

During most of my life using steal reinforced concrete has been the only way to build a good foundation. No longer. For example field stone foundations have be found to last many, many decades through flood and quake. Still best to chat with your building inspector.

A clear title well registered is best well assured before building starts. A land surrey is good too.

Don't let using adobe keep you from from a complete set of building plans. Or, from carefully planning your order of tasks.

We know that earth building has been around for a very long time, probably much more than the evidence reveals so far. Excavations at the site of the smelters for King Solomon's mines at Aquaba in North Africa reveled the use of adobe bricks in construction. Mud wall construction was done at Casa Grande in Arizona. Rammed earth or pise has been used all over the Americas, including Washington, D.C.

Location, location, location. A swamp may not be the best place for an adobe building.
Seek a neighborhood with pleasant features. Don't expect many changes for the better. Conditions, like prevailing wins and a hot afternoon sun, may make the west side unsuitable for living rooms and patios.

It seems good to let the design be at home with its surroundings. A structure is more at peace with its surroundings with a a careful selection of materials, textures, and colors., Using earth color has been the most economical way to key a structure to its surroundings. Local plant colors my be echoed in trim colors.

A battered wall in adobe construction is a term describing a wall that is wider at the bottom than it is at the top.