Notre Dame on Good Friday

...od, seen in the photo above. It would have made for a much more interesting building had they kept that old wall rather than removing it as soon as the inspectors left. Part of Morris’ philosophy is keeping earlier modifications intact so as to show the passage of time. Paradoxically that would mean leaving the surviving 19th century modifications to Notre Dame that he, no doubt, hated. Notre Dame has been altered and wrecked so many times that Sh...

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A Not So Close Shave

...or making an old legend a painful force-multiplied reality. And yet, every time I look at social media it causes me to ask how am I also complicit in the curation of an idealized alternate self via this blog and our books? How many times have I presented some neatly tied up homemaking/gardening tip when the actual results were more ambiguous? Or, to go deeper with this, how often have I presented a “failure” as a kind of false modesty? At the risk...

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Embroidering the World

...its. Both Kelly and I have done some embroidery before but now we have the time to go a little deeper. Beyond being a useful skill, embroidery has something to teach us about life. What if we took back the time that we spend on our devices to make the world a more beautiful place, to “embroiderer” our cities and suburbs? Let’s extend that metaphor beyond a physical sort of embroidery and imagine embroidering this world with a little more love and...

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Make Your Own Molding With a Table Saw

...e you raise the blade just 1/16th of in inch at a time, it can take a long time to spit out 100 feet of molding, as I discovered. And you’ll need to sand away the blade marks. I also took some Home Depot door casing molding and cut a groove on the back with a dado stack on the table saw to make an improvised picture rail. I’m not sure why picture rail fell out of favor (though you can still find it if you hunt around online). Who wants to make hol...

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Putting Your Civic House in Order: How the Young Members of the Family Help

...and so, on, should be encouraged and that exhibits should be arranged from time to time at the stores of local merchants, in the parks, or suitable places; that all possible aid should be secured from parent and teacher associations, civic and improvement associations; that children should be credited at school for supervised home activities: that more attention should be given the teaching of agriculture in the intermediate schools for the purpos...

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