Tag Archives: buildings

Places

The historic Seneca Schoolhouse in Maryland

If you should drive into the Maryland countryside, along River Road, the Potomac River and the C&O Canal, past farms and mansions, you’ll find a lone building made of red sandstone, standing in a meadow. This sign will be next to it.

The building is the one-room Seneca Schoolhouse, the only school in the area during the later part of the 19th century, after the Civil War. The schoolhouse was established by a local farmer and miller by the name of Upton Darby, who generously provided the land, stone and wood for the building. Local families contributed money or skills for its construction.

I love the cozy little building. It’s wonderful architecture. I love the door knob especially, though I doubt it’s the original one, as it says “City of New York” on it…

There’s more information at the schoolhouse museum’s website, including visiting and contact info. When we stopped to see it, the light may have been perfect but nobody was around to show us inside, so all we could do was to walk around.

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Video Log

The need for true craftsmen

I filmed a short vlog today about the need for true craftsmen, which is becoming more apparent in developed countries pretty much everywhere. The more emphasis is placed on white collar jobs, IT and college degrees, the less people you have going to vocational schools in order to learn how to become craftsmen. Countries don’t run on computers alone. We need people doing real, physical work, building the infrastructure and taking pride in their jobs, building with the best methods and to the highest quality available to them, otherwise fields like construction are going to get worse, not better. (Have you looked at the build quality of the sheds we call “homes” these days?)

I hope you take a few minutes to watch the entire video and do your part to encourage your children or your students in schools to become real craftsmen. They can make a good living, even a great living, doing craftwork, and they can do it without going into debt by the tens of thousands of dollars, getting college and post-graduate education which isn’t going to be useful to them. If you’d like a list of good, honest trades and crafts, this article which lists 19th century occupations alphabetically should help.

I’m not alone in my views. You can also watch Mike Rowe, host of “Dirty Jobs”, give a testimony before Congress where he urges the US government to encourage our children to choose to go to vocational and tech schools, because there’s a real need for these kinds of people in the US economy.

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Places

A snowy evening walk in Medias

Ligia and I went on a refreshing evening walk with friends last night, during a wonderful snowfall which lasted through the night and covered everything in about a foot of snow by morning. We enjoyed ourselves thoroughly and of course I took photos, lots of them.

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Reviews

POLLI-BRICKS reduce plastic bottle pollution

Plastic pollution is a huge problem. Most everyone has heard of the floating plastic islands in our oceans (the biggest is in the Pacific Ocean, but there are several others), all of which are made up of plastic bottles, wrappers, bags and other plastic waste that can float. They don’t break down. They only break into smaller pieces, which are still plastic and continue to pollute over time. For a wonderful primer on the subject, check out Dianna Cohen‘s talk at TED about it.

MINIWIZ, a Taipei company, has come up with an innovative “brick” design they call POLLI-BRICKS. They’re made from 100% recycled PET polymer (plastic bottles) collected from plastic waste reservoirs. This means that instead of ending up in the floating plastic islands, plastic waste can be re-purposed into bricks that can be used as building materials. Because they’re hollow and translucent (but not transparent, for those concerned about privacy), they have inherent thermal insulation, offer natural lighting during the day, and can be embedded with LED lights and solar panels for night lighting. They’re also durable, fire-resistant, interlock readily, and can be manufactured on-site. Check out the two videos embedded below, one recorded at CES by InfoWorld, and another showing how sturdy a small bridge built out of these bricks can be.

There are more videos posted on the MINIWIZ channel at YouTube.

[via Greenopolis]

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Places

Clasically overdone

I was wondering around Rome in the spring of ’99, it was getting late, and I came across this big intersection with a huge, classically-styled building dominating the view. I’m pretty bad with names, but I think it was Piazza Vittoria. It looks like the building is still in use.

Classically overdone

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