nrKist's Profile

It may be true that the TV is just an appliance and we don't bother to hide any of the others. However if my alarm clock, which I use once per day (far more often than my TV), was 36 or more inches in size then YES I would hide it too.

As far as pretending disdain for the television goes... when I was just 31 I found myself waiting to undergo surgery for a heart condition. A surgery that there was a sufficient chance I could die from. So as I was waiting I thought over my admittedly short life thus far. What I found was that nearly all of my memories were of things that not only hadn't happened to me, they hadn't happened to anyone except to be staged in front of a camera. I feel I was lucky to have realized it then. I suspect there is going to be a sea of people who are not going to have cause to reflect on their lives until very near the end and then they are going to find that the entirety of their life was working, and staring at a television screen. And while some may find that a life well lived, I can't help but think that most will not.

As a respite family for the foster system I understand that sometimes the TV can be a useful source of entertainment for the kids. That said, our TV picks up no broadcast signal and we don't have paid television either. What we have is a large selection of movies. Movies from the pre-movie-as-marketing-device-for-children era. We choose what will be watched, and more importantly what won't, rather than letting what someone else has chosen wash over them.

Seeing the wooden trunk has given me an idea. I've had my great grandfathers wooden toolbox in the basement for quite a while now. I think it may be time to bring it up and use it as decor.

Now is probably a great time to get into collecting books. As someone who works for a university library I can tell you that they are rushing to remove books as quickly as possible and in many cases those books are going directly into the dumpster. At the rate things are going books are destined to join vinyl records and 8-tracks as things still utilized by a small dedicated core but mostly just collected for the fact that they are quaint and represent old ways of doing things.

Denim pine, huh? Glad I got hold of mine when it was still just discolored pine.

Love the post and love MCM.
That said, $10k to spend the night in the Eames case study house? The Eames' would be spinning in their graves. Their main motivation was to create quality, well designed products from inexpensive and/or readily available materials. The high dollar, "intellectual property," cult of personality that has grown up around their designs could not be farther from their original intent.

Actual brass would not be moved with this method. Fortunately very little brass colored furniture is real. It is simply a gold-ish colored clear coating. Good idea for those types of furniture though.

Design is very important when it comes to hand tools. But it is how it is designed to do its job that matters. Not how it looks in a photo shoot. Manufacturers like Lie-Nielsen and Medallions Toolworks make high quality tools that may look to the untrained eye just like their big box store counterparts, but the performance is as different as night and day.

I'd love to have white floors. But with 2 big black dogs that isn't going to happen anytime soon.

Since virtually all of the iconography of this holiday season is Pagan and predates Christianity, do with your tree as you see fit. What you are celebrating is actually Yule. Any actual evidence for the birth of Jesus Christ puts the date some time in the summer. Since there is no proof of exactly when he was born, the celebration of his birth was originally a floating holiday like Easter. In their zeal to convert the pagans, the Catholic church adopted the dates and customs of many pagan holidays, including Yule.

To those who would scoff, this is all well documented. Do a little research.

So enjoy the season and the tree in any way you wish.

Sorry but the version of "Baby it's Cold Outside" by Louis Armstrong and Velma Middleton beats all of the rest including Dean Martin.