family history observations pragmatic historian preservation

The Quirks of Our House

As I sift through and pack things in our home for our eventual move, I’m trying to look at the house from the perspective of new owners. We’ve made a great many improvements to the place since we moved in roughly 29 years ago. We gutted, insulated, rewired, and sheetrocked most of the old part of the house, which was built in 1894. We also removed the rotted front porch (trust me when I tell…

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family observations reading thought fodder

When Does a Book Become “Literature” or a “Classic”?

Hubby and I stopped at Savers yesterday. We like to pop in now and again, a habit that has carried over from our business, when we were looking for mid-century modern housewares and décor to clean up for resale. My favorite part of the store, no surprise here, is the book section. I typically wind up finding (relatively) current fiction to purchase. Yesterday’s find was “Cloud Atlas” by David Mitchell, a book that was recommended…

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ideas observations

Resume on Wheels

Hubby and I were out and about yesterday, running some errands. At one point, we were stopped at a traffic light, waiting for it to turn green, sitting behind a pickup truck. The tailgate of the black pickup was filled with text. Quite a lot of text. In columns even. It appeared to be a documentation of the owner’s entire time in military service, where they served and what years, along with the training they…

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action challenge ideas observations

Whatever Happened to Anger Management?

Recently, my husband and I were watching an old episode of The New Detectives, a crime show that investigated actual cases, on Netflix. During a particular episode in which a guy was found to have killed an ex-girlfriend, it was revealed that he had been referred for anger management classes. Upon hearing that term, I realized that it seems to have faded away from public consciousness. It was a term that was used a lot…

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design family ideas observations

Designing Buildings with Space for the Practical & Messy

Erik and I spent the last few days helping our son Ian, his fiancé, and their roommate move to a new townhouse apartment. They had lived in their old apartment for about 10 years, so there was quite an accumulation of stuff to move. When you’ve got furniture, loads of boxes of heavy books, and other household paraphernalia to move in a short period of time, finding efficient ways to move it without killing everyone’s…

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