The American Essay in the American Century

Brickwall in Family tree research

Recently I saw a request for a family tree search. That made me browse through this Advanced genealogy research techniques book.

I didnt realise that the professionals need to go through Icapgen accreditation specific for a region. This book uses the brickwall as a metaphor for dead end in research. The book seems so confident about success in getting the genealogy right. It includes examples of how they went about some brickwall cases. It is fascinating how even if the census officials get one of the details wrong, with the ties of spouse details, occupation and other documents you can recalibrate. Since the tree is linked, it can support and detect corruption of data in one link. Quite an architecture.

On a side note, a book with an interesting concept of Genealogy in American Literature.

You know Literature has its own life when there are books on parties in fiction

These books make me think of time travel in fiction and make a guide like The Time Traveler's guide to Elizabethan England.

Competitive kid capital

page 99 test

Bargain Fever by Mark Ellwood

Goldilocks pricing

The world of corsets

I had to title this in 80 characters. I think that would be too long a title to be effective and my mind changed the character limit to word limit.

A simple corset made ornate with its pattern of black flowers on royal purple silk polyester. A faux purple lace through casing runs along the top of the corset and down. The lace stitch in the front invokes the behind the scene connections of the eyelets and the black ribbon that holds up the corset. The channels of acrylic bones with a vertical flow enhance the wasp waist appearance. Find your waistline without a tug-of-war.

While working on this, I realised that faux bones are needed to make corsets. 

A good book on the history of corsets.

Step by step on how to make a corset

Posters

 For an assignment I had to describe a Cuban poster and many others like these around.

A Cuban Naïve art piece with the starting point of any villa in the country. A cathedral with its four side openings of radial top door shape, ascending in size as you go down from the top. Iglesia de Nuestra senora de la soledad in Camaguey, Cuba. Vivid colours of hibiscus along with banana plants and palm trees lend a paradisical island touch balancing the somber blue skies in the background.

At first I just looked at them as paintings. Down the line I realised they were Posters. For the little that is there in a poster, still a reader can glean a lot from a poster.

The golden Grand Casino is lost in the shimmer of the red Italian car racing on the streets of Monaco. Behind is a blue car. The palm trees and the seaside are frozen in blue. Strangely spectators are missing. But you can imagine what it is to be there on 2 April 1934.

This painting is of one of the trouble spots in the Montecarlo circuit. The tunnel with its darkness. The cars are shown with the tunnel at their heels.

On a flight, I had seen a documentary about restoring posters. 

Two books about history of posters.

 After reading the initial chapter of this first poster book by Charles, I understood some elements of a poster. Main concept, scale.

Things you need to survive

How a key and lock work?

Visualise the innards of your home

How your birthday trick candle works?

How to make ceramic beads?

Rhyme in daily life

Earn miles or burn miles - hard on NPR regarding the American airlines and US Airways merger

Lens mug

Saw this mug today on a table in the meeting. Later at his desk, I connected the mug and his photography interest to the lens mug. Wow hobby into an everyday item.

What would your fan mug be like?

Materials

Adaptive reuse - Felsenreitschule is a theatrical arena carved out of a former quarry

Coconut tiles
Steiner tunnel test
Translucent concrete

Have you seen the fabric stretched ceilings that some institutions have? They look like sails, modern art. But like other materials used in construction they have to go through tests and standards before they can be used.
This book 'Materials for Interior Environments' broadens your view of the life cycle of materials used in your construction from not just the source of where they are from but also what other resources have been spent in making it all happen. You are also encouraged to find reuse and reduce landfill with proper maintenance.
Of the materials we find everyday, we can learn a bit more, say your carpet - is it cut pile or loop? Looking at some examples you can place certain materials in a special environment like glass block wall in restaurants.
I liked the float glass process illustration in the manner of giving you a peek into each of the stages by ripping off a piece of the blackbox. The book has a lot and different kind of pictures to illustrate the concepts. Gypsum at a level invisible to the eye looks like fries.

An artist and her swatches