Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Today's count

photo by Ron Oriti 2007
Hot, but not too hot.  Blue, with clouds accenting the sky.  A cool wind which is most pleasing.  And I walked among the blue and orange dragonflies in the crabapple grove.  The blue dragons have a wing span of about five inches and are a joy to watch hovering and turning, and once flipping over backwards as they eat the dreaded mosquito.  The orange dragons are smaller and spend more time close to the grass.  The apples on the trees are just starting to turn.  But sadly the ones on the yummy tree have some kind of blight, so there will be no crabapple pie again this year. Sigh.

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Here be the dragon



I promised to show you where the den of the dwarf dragon is.  And what it is. It is the dumb waiter in the law library, by which we transport trucks of books, and once, according legend, a person, from floor to floor.  We have five levels at the law library which house books.  Three exits to the dumb waiter face north, and two south (give or take a fee degrees due to the winding nature of the river and its effect on the placement of buildings).

The buttons give up, from top to bottom, come (the all purpose button), 1st floor, upper ground, ground, lower ground, basement (which is not shown on this set) and up and down.  These last two are necessary when the carriage stops too far up or down making disembarking the truck difficult or even impossible.  The legendary human occupant had to trust absolutely a compatriot because once inside, there is no getting out without help from the outside.

I was told about dumb waiters from an early age.  My mother, raised by her grandmother, played in one as a child in the house of one of her grandmother's bridge partners.  So I knew that the dumb of the waiter meant mute, not stupid.  I have found most people don't know that any more.  The waiter who serves, but is silent.  Now apparently they are called micro elevators.  I find modern language so sterile.  I prefer the image of a silent waiter in tails, standing ready to serve, like one of the footman at Downton Abbey