Ramblings & ephemera
photo credit: State Library of New South Wales collection
From Peter Stark’s “As Freezing Persons Recollect the Snow–First Chill–Then Stupor–Then the Letting Go” (Outside: January 1997):
There is no precise core temperature at which the human body perishes from cold. At Dachau’s cold-water immersion baths, Nazi doctors calculated death to arrive at around 77 degrees Fahrenheit. [...]
Posted on June 30th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: education, science | No Comments »
photo credit: 917press
From Christopher Fahey’s “Who Watches the Watchman?” (GraphPaper: 2 May 2009):
The Detex Newman watchclock was first introduced in 1927 and is still in wide use today.
&hellip What could you possibly do in 1900 to be absolutely sure a night watchman was making his full patrol?
An elegant solution, designed and patented in 1901 [...]
Posted on May 19th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: business, security | No Comments »
From Roger Ebert’s “Go gentle into that good night” (Roger Ebert’s Journal: 2 May 2009):
Van Gogh in Arles wrote this about death:
Looking at the stars always makes me dream, as simply as I dream over the black dots representing towns and villages on a map. Why? I ask myself, shouldn’t the shining dots of the [...]
Posted on May 5th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: art, commonplace book, history, language & literature, religion | No Comments »
From Roger Ebert’s “Go gentle into that good night” (Roger Ebert’s Journal: 2 May 2009):
What I expect will most probably happen [when I die] is that my body will fail, my mind will cease to function, and that will be that. My genes will not live on, because I have had no children. Perhaps I [...]
Posted on May 5th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: art, commonplace book, language & literature, religion, science | No Comments »
From Roger Ebert’s “Go gentle into that good night” (Roger Ebert’s Journal: 2 May 2009):
And there is Shakespeare, who came as close as any man to immortality. In my plans for life after death, I say, again with Whitman:
I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again [...]
Posted on May 5th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: art, history, language & literature | No Comments »
From Philip Larkin’s “Aubade“:
I work all day, and get half drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain edges will grow light.
Till then I see what’s really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the [...]
Posted on April 18th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: commonplace book, language & literature | No Comments »
From Wade Davis’ “Wade Davis: an Inuit elder and his shit knife” (Boing Boing: 26 September 2008):
The Inuit didn’t fear the cold; they took advantage of it. During the 1950s the Canadian government forced the Inuit into settlements. A family from Arctic Bay told me this fantastic story of their grandfather who refused to go. [...]
Posted on October 6th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: history | No Comments »
From Holland Cotter’s “‘Unknown Weegee,’ on Photographer Who Made the Night Noir” (The New York Times: 9 June 2006):
A freelancer by temperament, he had long-term gigs with The Daily News, The Daily Mirror and the left-leaning daily PM. His beat was the inner city, and everything was raw material: the good and the bad, [...]
Posted on June 11th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: history | Comments Off
From “Operations of the Western Flotilla” by Henry A. Walke, Commander of the Carondelet, describing the Battle of Island Number Ten:
Having received written orders from the flag-officer, under date of March 30th, I at once began to prepare the Carondelet for the ordeal. All the loose material at hand was collected, and on the 4th [...]
Posted on April 23rd, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: history | Comments Off
Another image that enters my mind unbidden:
My brother and I are spending the night at Grandma & Grandpa Scott’s house. We’re pretty young … I might be 8 and my brother 6 or 7. It’s the mid-70s. At our grandparents, we go to bed pretty early … say by 10 p.m. This night, Gus and [...]
Posted on November 27th, 2005 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: commonplace book, history, true stories | Comments Off
From Jon Henley’s “In a secret Paris cavern, the real underground cinema” (The Guardian: 8 September 2004):
Police in Paris have discovered a fully equipped cinema-cum-restaurant in a large and previously uncharted cavern underneath the capital’s chic 16th arrondissement. Officers admit they are at a loss to know who built or used [...]
Posted on May 16th, 2005 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: art, cool stuff, weird | Comments Off
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