(no subject)

Wow. A lot to drink tonight. Last time I stopped to count it was 5 Bacardi's on the rocks and that was... well, one bar and quite a while. Oh, and I had food at noon. Yeah, thoroughly I'm fucked. millkgonebad didn't remember meeting me at all but that isn't surprising considering her state and my relative obscurity.

It was fun to see lemondropgirl even though she accused me of being a drunk. Hey, don't be stating the obvious. I hope she found me a cuddly drunk at least.

I feel kind of silly to have been so drunk around the girl named after the month. I hope she didn't mind too much. Ah, well, time to go have sex fall down.

reading (Shaker Architecture)

I finished reading Herbert Schiffer's "Shaker Architecture" earlier this week. Well, honestly there wasn't much reading too it. Most of the text is in the introduction and then little bits describing the history of each settlement. But aside from the reading I went through studying the pictures and drawings three times in all.

I am awed and amazed by the ingenuity and industry shown in these small communities. They began in 1775 and spread over the next 100 years to span from Maine to Ohio and Kentucky. At the peak they counted some 6,000 members, an amazing feat considering that they required celibacy therefore couldn't increase their number through the standard Catholic method.

The average community consisted of 300 members spread over 3 or 4 "families" and owned 3000 acres. The community size varied, but this ratio of 10 acres per member seems to hold through them all. I'm not sure if they actually farmed that much land or used much of it as a buffer against outside intrusion since they were sometimes persecuted for their beliefs and lifestyle. Each community had it's own industries that it specialized in, depending on the land they had and probably the abilities of the founding members.

This book is a great survey of the buildings and methods. It gives only a brief glance at the culture and almost no detail of the belief system of the Shakers, but its coverage of its subject matter is a delight.


43. Herbert Schiffer "Shaker Architecture"

reading (A Watcher in the Woods)

No, this isn't a book about a voyeur lurking around trying to see in people's windows. This book was originally published in 1901 and used as reading material in public schools for 8th grade classes. As such it's a slim volume, just over 100 pages.

The language and pacing are not at all like a modern textbook. It's written in unashamed first person, the storytelling laced heavily with naturalist information. In a wandering way you're introduced to many of the common small animals seen in the Northeast US, their habits, and homes. In my schooling schoolbooks were always fiction or fact. The fiction being stories about people, the fact being dry as baked clay. This book is a collection of facts sugared with enough narrative to make them palatable and to expand the young readers vocabulary. Some of it is dated, not often you see telegraph poles anymore or an electric trolley in the Northeast US, but most of it would be readable for children today, though a bit more alien to them.

44. Dallas Lore Sharp "A Watcher in the Woods"