0dds & Ends for Sunday June 24, 2012

1
There is a unique aspect to Northern architecture that is especially attractive in summertime.

Southern writers go on at length, for good reason, regarding dripping, cloistered, Southern gardens, and homes and graves and other products of human activity that decay quickly if not tended to.

The North is different, but has its charm as well. Homes are generally squatter, smaller, tighter. They're more challenging to open and air out because they're meant to be tightly closed in winter. Odors linger, and that is why (my speculation) Northerners have settled on recipes that are delightful to prepare and eat but don't hang in the air very long - like ham, turkey, pot roast, baked potatoes, boiled green beans, and so on.

Flags fly outside, and bunting sometimes hangs from window sills. Older homes have large front yards, jutting eves, lots of trees and shade. The angle of the sun can be harsh and low in late summer, so you find many homes with awnings that can be rolled up, removed and stored in winter.

There are many more differences of course, too trivial for this post. You get a feeling for them just by observing from the outside, and an understanding by being on the inside, especially in winter, with the cold shut out, snow and wind prying at window pains and puffing on the chimney as though it were a pipe stem, and only thick blankets and pajamas and each other to keep you warm; for in the dead of winter at night in small homes, the heat is turned down, and the floor cold as ice, not to warm until the sun and house rise to coffee and breakfast and a newspaper in the door.

I don't know anything about the house at the top of this post, but it's from a slideshow here. It's typical of a northern home that's near the water.


2
Being a nominal Christian is like getting a prescription from the doctor and just looking at the bottle.

("Nominal" is subjective, but by that I mean believing without communing. I happen to be in that place myself as I write this; I have been for years; it's a disenfranchised and lonely place to be; I am considering ways to become de-nominalized; some are more compelling to me than they are to others around me.)

3
Sometimes when someone looks unmoved despite their world collapsing around them, they are trying to look unmoved despite their world collapsing around them.

(I have no one in particular in mind. We all find ourselves thinking this way from time to time.)

Started: Sometime in May, 2012