Forty-five years ago I bought a ‘portable’ table loom. I was living in Seattle and the local Rasmussen looms were a Thing in certain circles. It was an outrageous purchase even at the time but I didn’t care. I was entranced by the idea of making cloth. I also had the idea at the time [...]
Did Augustin-Jean Fresnel really invent the Fresnel lens?
Augustin-Jean Fresnel (1788 — 1827)was a Catholic scientist in France in the early 1800’s. He made incredible contributions to the understanding of light, being one of the earliest and best champions of the idea that light is a waveform. He entered the French school for engineers around 1804 and then served in the engineering corps [...]
Eye candy of a very simple kind…
Project Gutenberg is a wondrous place to visit if you are the kind of person who needs words to flow across eyes, sometimes without much regard for the actual topic, so to speak. You know, the people who read the milk carton and cereal box at the breakfast table and learn to spell homogenized and [...]
Saint Scholastica, Feast on February 10
Long ago when I visited New Hampshire and climbed the mountain known as South Pack Monadnock I watched chipmunks run around on the rocks there. Chipmunks often run in a straight line, and then suddenly turn 90º and dart in the new direction for a bit. Rinse and repeat. That’s my brain this morning. For example, [...]
Kandinsky Blew My Mind
The Shy Museum Goer, Diane Tucker, has a new post about the Russian artist, Wassily Kandinsky, a pioneer in abstract painting. The included pictures are all quite different and surprising. I fell in love with the painting Riding Couple which is very different from the pictures that Kandinsky is best known for. I fell in [...]