Thursday, November 6, 2014

The Problem of Biding Time and Waiting for "the Eruption"














The Waiting Place, from "Oh the Places You'll Go"
-Dr. Seuss

Das Problem der Wartenden
Es geschieht durchschnittlich nicht, und in allen Winkeln der Erde sitzen Wartende, die es kaum wissen, in wiefern sie warten, noch weniger aber, dass sie umsonst warten.

'The Problem of the Waiters'
as for a sudden waking up or eruption to action ---
"It does not happen ordinarily, and in all the corners of the Earth sit waiters, who hardly know, to what extent they are waiting, but know even less that they are waiting in vain."

Friedrich Nietzche, "Beyond Good and Evil" Aphorism 274

Monday, November 3, 2014

1826 Round Stone Barn



















The Round Barn at the Hancock Shaker Village, Pittsfield, MA, September, 2014

The Round Stone Barn is the only circular barn ever built by the Shakers. Widely recognized as an architectural icon and agricultural wonder, this unique dairy barn originally stabled 52 milk cows. It’s been attracting visitors – most notably Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville, who staged a footrace in the structure – since its construction.
The Round Stone Barn offers ground-level access on all three levels. Wagons entered on the upper level to deposit hay into the central haymow on the main floor below. The Brethren would drive the empty wagons around the circular barn floor and exit the same door they came in, eliminating the potentially dangerous activity of backing wagons out of a barn. The cows stabled on the main floor faced inward toward the haymow for ease of feeding. Manure shoveled through trapdoors to the cellar was stored until needed as fertilizer in the gardens. The Shakers maintained a working dairy farm at Hancock into the 1950s.
(hancockshakervillage.org)