Thursday, June 30, 2011

Poetry

Home Improvement

An army of lawn tractors
standing at attention
under garish parking lot lights
silently plot their escape.

The Empty Pool

The water sits heavy in the pool
The thick air pressing its weight downward
The liquid glass pushing back to meet it.
Soon, all the ripples are gone.
Any trace lost
Of the nymphs and dragons that once played here.

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Demo Day at Madison Avenue

We've begun work on our new house- which means making a bigger mess before things get better!

We started with the kitchen, which will be expanded by moving the basement stairs and eliminating the back stairs. The wall you see in the first picture will be going away forever along with the extra exterior door. A lazy-susan and cabinets will be there instead!


The lathe strips were actually mounting strips for imitation brick paneling. Yuck.










Here's where the basement stairs will now be (thanks Philista!). While we are sad to lose this lovely dining room closet, we will be really grateful for the additional square feet in the kitchen.













We took up nasty 1970s carpet in the basement bedrooms and found wonderful concrete flooring. Very happy to see their excellent condition.

A bunch of us worked on sprucing up the exterior, edging and trimming (thanks Emily!):


BUT that's not all... More to come, including a very creep "scream" basement shower.

Saturday, June 25, 2011

How to Survive the Age of Distraction

Couldn't help being intrigued by the title of this article in the London Independent.

Particularly quotable:

"TS Eliot called books 'the still point of the turning world.' He was right. It turns out, in the age of super-speed broadband, we need dead trees to have fully living minds."

Enjoy!

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-how-to-survive-the-age-of-distraction-2301851.html