On historical importance Thursday, Oct 6 2011 

Historical Events and Projects acairfearann 10:27

One of the peculiar aspects of this house’s history is its disconnectedness.  If you go down to the local historical society or even farther afield, you will not find anything of real substance.  There are a few copies of Lucy’s book floating about, a few newspaper clippings related to the National Register Nomination…and nothing else.  That, of course, is much much more than most houses have, but in relation to the length of time it as existed as an entity and the amount of history in the house it is jarring.  Or perhaps usefully humbling, or reminder that one’s center of the universe isn’t, in fact, any one else’s.  (and how awful, in the old sense of the word, to be at the centre!)  History is often said to be written by the victors, perhaps more correctly it is written by those who write it.  Rather a tautology that.  But the thing is that ‘famous’ is really a synonym for ‘well known’ when it comes to history and the general public; there is a critical mass aspect: a person is written about or leaves a coherent body of work behind them, so they are easier to study, so they are written about some more, so they are…and pretty soon the individual becomes an important figure in that time period…or more correctly, an important figure in our preception of that time period.  One of the jobs of the historian is to explore the lesser known areas to find the unknown but historically significant people or events that explain history. 

In an example of the above, I have volunteered myself to give a short presentation on Julie sometime this winter, as part of a lecture series on the famous women of New Hartford.  Is Julie famous? No, she wasn’t on the original list drawn up by the society; but is she historically important as an example of women’s history and history in general? Yes, if you happen to have chanced across the information.

 

Tiger’s Eye Sunday, Oct 2 2011 

Esperanza acairfearann 19:10

This house is designed to watch the sunset: nearly a solar calendar, today the sun was just a few degrees from its swing up the south hedgerow.  The summer solstice is nearly one quarter of the way up the north hedgerow.  Needless to say, I often try to watch the sunset.  It is, for me, a devotional exercise, a few minutes devoted to respectful admiration of the beauty of the world before me.  When I manage to take these few minutes, I feel that it is, an atavistic ‘backwards’ instinct I am sure, disrespectful to turn away before the sun has set, which of course leads to a mild fidget and then really observing where I am at that time. 

Today, I was in the dining room, and the sunset was a great swell of gold and then a perfect sun in the gap below grey clouds.  And I watched as the sun travelled through this gap.  The dining room has a large western window and a mirror exactly opposite, both are old glass.  Now, glass is one of the telltales when you look at an old building.  Modern windows, even those built in old patterns, have no waves and so they have correct reflections, but old glass creates distorted reflections.  The house has new storm windows, and when they are shut, as they are now, from the outside the house appears to have new windows: flat, harshly correct reflections.  But inside the light comes through the old glass, and so, as with the reflections, the light bends and twists, every wave in the glass creates a shadow or refraction.  The sun today had a double above it, and the light was banded on the walls, both east and west.  For but a minute what was Lancaster white trim became tiger’s eye gold before fading into twilight.  A gift of place and time.

 

Falling ahead Sunday, Oct 2 2011 

gardening acairfearann 17:12

We often see fall as an ending, a death.  In a very real sense this is the case, many plants and animals will die in the winter.  Yet, it is also a time of opportunity.  Fall is a great time for planting certain things.  Spring bulbs (daffodils, tulips, etc) are all planted at this time, if possible after the squirrels and other rodents have stockpiled their food for the winter but before the ground has frost in it, anytime between early October and December depending on the zone.  After deciduous trees have gone dormant (October to Novermber) they can also be planted.  This allows them to establish their roots without having to support leaves, excellent for those of us carrying water buckets as it reduces our work. 

Fall clean up of gardens reduces next spring’s work, it sets the stage.  Cleaning the garden reduces overwintering pests, reduces the potential for rot and is an excellent time to weed, ensuring that only the plants you want are there.  Of all the seasons fall looks farthest into the future.

 

Trace Sign Friday, Sep 30 2011 

Historical Events and Yellow Mountain acairfearann 11:18

I don’t know if anyone else has ever encountered those TV shows on ‘if humans suddenly vanished’; they always assume that everything made by man would vanish very quickly, cities engulfed in a few decades by lurid CGI jungles.  Anyone who has studied any archaeology knows that couldn’t be farther from the truth.  If neolithic fish traps can still be seen on Google Earth (if you know what to look for), it is rather unlikely that a modern city would vanish in a century.  Chernobyl has given us a fascinating case study on just how a modern city that is totally abandoned by man does or does not decay. 

Hard structures take millenia, some will probably take a timescale closer to geological time to vanish.  Yet even minor disturbances leave their traces.  Old abandoned roads in New England are legion, New Hartford alone has four major ones and an entire settlement.  These are easy to find, the stone walls, the parallel form of the depression, often enhanced by becoming a water course, the different types of vegetation willing to grow on compacted soil, old cellar holes, unusually massive trees or tree stumps, and so forth.  But even single use logging roads can be found decades later: unusually straight, wide paths in the forest, distinctive scars on trees. 

Sometimes, inadvertently, a single event remains recorded. Up on Yellow Mountain the other day with a state forester, we came across a beech tree that had a distinctive ’14’ cut into it.  Judging by the age of the beech tree and the style of the mark, that ’14’ was made by a CCC crew back in the 1930’s when they came through clearing gypsy moth infestations and removing gooseberry bushes (an attempt to stop the life cycle of a blister rust that damages white pine).  The ’14’ would have been a mark by the crew, presumably no. 14, that they had finished that quadrant to which they were assigned.   Nearly eighty years ago some one, probably a young man who is now elderly if not dead, made a quick mark on the tree. Eventually, that beech will fall; but for the time you can almost see the crew working what increasingly feels like a truly different century (it is, technically, I know!), and yet that tree is a physical connection across decades.

 

Headwaters Tuesday, Sep 27 2011 

Yellow Mountain acairfearann 13:17

Technically, the headwater is the end of the tributary stream farthest from the river’s end…the direction of the crow’s tail, on the tallest pine in the forest somewhere in Minnesota determines whether the water runs to the St Laurence or the Mississippi, as begins the story of Minn of the Mississippi.   Headwaters have a certain innate mythic weight, similar to that of a spring. 

Headwaters are also the furthest extant of a watershed’s boundary line.  Watersheds are almost fractal in nature and at their boundaries the matter of a few inches can shift the water’s path, by a mile or by a continent.  Yellow Mountain has a river watershed boundary running through it,  interwoven, like a series of fingers.  The east and west sides of the property drain south into the Nepaug river; the center drains north into the Farmington river.  At what exact point on the ridges does the water switch from one to the other?  Does the way the crow sit in the pine tree matter?  It can actually, and that such a small action can make such a difference is somewhat strange and wonderful to contemplate.

 

Hobbies or a half baked ramble Saturday, Sep 24 2011 

Uncategorized acairfearann 19:16

(a not wholly unrelated topic for this house)Everyone has them, it has taken me much longer than it ought to figure out what I really like: old tools. Specifically, pre-1950 metal or wood tools. Some people collect baseball cards or shoes, others collect cars or guns (the latter are really cool but out of my budget). I get innate pleasure out of finding a pair of ‘vintage’ forged steel tin snips, or wrenches built in that elegant curve which was the answer to confined working spaces before weird ratchets came along. I can’t tell you the names and I certainly can’t, to my shame, use many of those old tools; but their relationship of form and function hit a highpoint around 1900 that we have since fallen away from, to our detriment. A carpenter’s square could just be a square edge, the level and handle doesn’t need to have an added curved fillip, it doesn’t do anything functionally, but why not make it beautiful? When a culture decrees that even the utilitarian should be elegant, there is something going right. When it decrees that the utilitarian ought to look utilitarian, and we ought to be proud of that….well….

 

Equinox Friday, Sep 23 2011 

Uncategorized acairfearann 19:15

The equinox has passed, neglected behind the rain clouds.  The house marks the time, as if a giant sundial, for the kitchen is strangely shadowed by the maple and apple trees, whose leaves are still green and for now, for a few weeks longer, block the sun.

 

Climate Control Tuesday, Sep 20 2011 

Esperanza acairfearann 10:28

Without modern climate control systems.  Air conditioning is a rather recent invention, but the problem of how to remain comfortable in the summer is hardly new.  The obvious, major steps which the lucky few could manage all helped to create Esperanza: buy a summer house outside of the city, ideally on a hill.  (one has to wonder if the cooling benefits of being on a hill were of equal importance to the view when so many of these summer estates were selected, we assume it was  the view only…but we have the option of a/c)

Esperanza then takes the next step: add large porches, if possible all the way around, this creates shade for both those sitting outside and for the house itself.  Not only is the first story shaded, but so is the ground surrounding the basement.  The last step is the most extreme at Esperanza: orientation for sun and wind.  In a house designed for winter survival, as seen in your earliest farmhouses, the largest face faced south if at all possible.  This house disobeys that rule.  At 30 feet wide on its south/north faces and 100 feet on its east/west, the difference is unusually large.  But this configuration is ideal for the summer.  The long axis is located along the ridge of the hill, only a few degrees off true north.  What this means is the prevailing winds are almost always hitting the long west side.  It also means that with only four exceptions all the rooms on the first two floors have full cross ventilation, in some cases the rooms are the full width of the house, in others the arrangement of rooms permits the cross ventilation.

All of which is ideal for a pleasant summer time experience without the need for any sort of climate control.  It also means that on a damp, windy day such as this…I am acutely aware that we missed closing a storm window on the other side of the house.

 

On investments Saturday, Sep 17 2011 

Landscapes and Trees and Uncategorized acairfearann 12:44

One might argue that an excellent training seminar for investment bankers would be studying trees.  I am currently, and have been for more than a decade, working on a sugar maple grove above Julie’s Pond.  When I started thinning saplings, they were so dense you could not have ridden a horse through the area and all were about an inch in diameter and fifteen to twenty feet in height.  Today, one section is almost thinned as far as I dare (considering the young trees stand beneath 100 foot giants that periodically fall in an uncontrolled fashion).  Those left measure 4-6 inches in diameter and are heading to forty and more feet.  No whippy saplings, but solid trees. 

This has been an exercise in close observation, which tree is growing well and why.  Sometimes, there are hard choices: two quality trees that are simply too close together, you flip a coin and hope.  It has also been a lesson on time and patience.  Had the thinning started twenty years earlier, they would be that much larger; had it not started, they would still be scrawny poles.  What takes a decade in nature, will take a decade.  To try to force the growth would result in poor quality, to have not done the work would also result in poor quality.  In a century, God willing, those skinny saplings will be the giants.

 

Asters Friday, Sep 16 2011 

gardening and Modern Photos acairfearann 14:10

Asters (a huge and confusing family, that according to the molecular botanists should be split apart) are one of the stars of fall.  The blues, pinks, wine-reds, and whites are all dusky.  They are antique colors, not the saturated hues of summer.  And even the modern hybrid crosses stubbornly refuse to be excessively extravagant and exotic looking. 

The ones in this picture are descendants of the novi-belgii and novae-angliae group, the New York and New England native asters.  Some of the other modern garden types are descedants of the Michaelmas Daisy (A. amellus), the European aster family.  The North American group  includes the prolific white wood aster, blue wood aster, heath aster, stiff aster and a myriad of others.   All plants that go from dull green foliage to a profusion of white or blue flowers in September, usually without any care or feeding.  Indeed, the white wood aster is more than capable of taking over any area.  The New York and New England asters will grow in nearly any soil, from boggy to dry, though they don’t tolerate salt.  They need some sun; ideally full sun, but are more than happy to grow on forest edge.

The aster is one of the plants where the North American species has as much, if not more, to recommend it when compared to its European cousin.  It is a whole set of posts to ponder why the long preference for European or Asian flowers in North American gardens, and why in recent years that has changed. 

The aster family is an excellent example of how modern science continues to debate and refine our understanding of the natural world: what was one genus has now been split into many, thanks to genetic studies.  It is also a flower whose name evokes history.  Aster is, of course, from the Greek.  Michealmas recalls the old English calendars and hooks to whole symbology, from the naming of school terms to astronomy to Christianity, that lies behind that single word.  Novi-belgii and novae-angliae serve as reminders of the complexity of the European settlement in North America, for the New York aster’s Latin name stakes the flag of Belgium.

 

« Previous Page — Next Page »