At an crumbling frame church building in Olmos Park, San Antonio…
Architecture
London Architecture
London has some great architecture. I particularly like their habit of giving buildings funny nicknames. This one under construction with the bulge out the side is named the “Walkie Talkie” and the adjacent (smaller) building is famously called “The Gherkin“.
The River Thames cuts London into the North and South banks and it is lovely to walk alongside the river when the weather is nice. Here is a view from the North side and you can see “The Razor” off in the distance, with the three windmills at the top looking a bit like an electric razor. Not shown – “The Shard“.
History Friday – Log Cabin Days
Among the tall stack of books which I read in the matter of research for writing my adventures set on the Texas frontier was one titled Texas Log Buildings; A Folk Architecture which has actually proved to be a bit more interesting and informative than it looked at first glance. I am a sucker for knowing how things are constructed or put together- which is good, especially when I needed to write a description of building such a thing as a log house; details like how many days it would take so many men to build one, what size it would generally be, and the layout these little details add convincing detail. Until I read that book, the only description of the process that I could bring readily to mind was in Little House on the Prairie and it turns out that Pa Ingalls was not building that cabin to much of a standard. He may not even have been all that skilled as a carpenter, but since he was working on it mostly by himself, and in a place where the swiftness of getting a roof of some sort over his family counted for everything allowances were made.
Happy 500th Anniversary
…to the Sistine Chapel Ceiling. More about the ceiling here.
When asked to undertake the project, Michelangelo at first demurred, saying that “painting is not my art.”
The Vatican Library has put up a nice panoramic zoomable view of the entire chapel, here. Just click on the image and move around with the arrow keys; zoom in with the Shift key and out with Control.
Also see Sgt Mom’s post on her visit to the Basilica of St Peter.
History Friday: Byzantine
We bumptious Americans are always being reminded by everyone from Henry James on, that things in Europe are old, historic, and ancient. We are told that some places are piled thick in layers of events, famous people and great art, like some sort of historical sachertorte – and to a student of history, certain places in Europe are exactly that sort of treat. What they hardly ever mention is that most usually, the most ancient bits of it are pretty sadly battered by the time we come trotting around with our Blue Guide, and what there is left is just the merest small remnant of what there once was. The sanctuary at Delphi once was adorned with statues of gold, silver, bronze – and they were the first to be looted and melted down (all but one, the great bronze Charioteer) leaving us with the least and cheapest stone, sadly chipped, battered and scarred. (My daughter at the age of three and a bit, looking at a pair of archaic nudes in the Delphi museum asked loudly, “Mommy, why are their wieners all broken off?”) The great Athenian Akropolis itself was half-ruined, many of the blocks of which it was constructed scattered across the hillside like gargantuan marble Lego blocks. In Rome, most of the ancient buildings had been stripped long ago of the marble and stone facings, leaving only the battered concrete and tile core to hint at what splendor had once been – and again, only the smallest portion left to us to admire, the smallest, cheapest portion, or that hidden away by chance.