I finally have definitive proof the humongous spiky plants we moved in the back yard are actually pineapples!
Posts authored by leems
Chromolithography and the mystery of Henri and Anita LeRoy
It all started with a print called “Spirited Horses” 
on my dining room wall. I had inherited it from my grandmother. I remember sleeplessly looking up at it on the wall of her den during ‘nap time.’ A notation on the bottom says it was copyright in 1900 by Jos. Hoover & Sons. The signature reads ‘LeRoy’ with a circular flourish around it.
Then I saw the same picture in a magazine spread of an interior designer’s home and I was so captured by coincidence that I found out all I could on the artist and wrote a short post on my blog: Vintage Prints and Small Worlds.
At that point in time, I found that the print was attributed to a Henri LeRoy (1851-), still life painter in France. I have since found that the true artistry of Spirited Horses is much more convoluted.
A dealer on an auction site had a 1904 edition of Spirited Horses that lists it as a no. 2 in a series of images. While researching his find, he found from a discussion list (no longer active) that Spirited Horses no. 2 was part of 4 companion images. No. 4 in this series apparently shows the horses dead. These images were attributed to Anita LeRoy, signing simply as LeRoy. On yet another auction site, a dealer with a 1908 edition of Spirited Horses #2, spots it in the movie A Christmas Story in the scene where the leg lamp breaks.
I hate to say it, but all my researching didn’t turn up any definitive answer on whether Henri or Anita was the author Spirited Horses, or the many other prints that came out of Jos. Hoover & Sons printing with signatures like:
Continue reading Chromolithography and the mystery of Henri and Anita LeRoy
Mark Twain stories, 150 years old, uncovered by Berkeley scholars | Books | The Guardian
Mark Twain stories, 150 years old, uncovered by Berkeley scholars | Books | The Guardian published on Read more posts by the author of Mark Twain stories, 150 years old, uncovered by Berkeley scholars | Books | The Guardian, leemsNo Comments on Mark Twain stories, 150 years old, uncovered by Berkeley scholars | Books | The Guardian
Cache shows Twain working as a newspaper man in San Francisco. As a young man at the Berkeley archivists describe, the stash is ‘like opening up a big box of candy.’
Source: Mark Twain stories, 150 years old, uncovered by Berkeley scholars | Books | The Guardian
Are you excited? Mark Twain’s short stories, essays, and satirical pieces are what I love about him, and now…there are more!
Patterns
I made a couple of new patterns with my tattoo designs. And, while reorganizing my files, I found a pattern I had never posted or used. I really love how this one turns out when on repeat. After some refining, they will be available at my shop on Spoonflower.
Clement Skitt’s word of the day
“He’s real blowed-in-the-glass, you’d never smoke he’d go caterwauling and end up in monkey and parrot time.”
Let’s dissect:
Blowed-in-the-glass: a genuine, trustworthy individual (Wikipedia: Hobo Expressions used through 1940s)
Monkey and parrot time: a lady left her favorite bird in company with a monkey and during her absence the two animals had a fight. When she returned the monkey was wiping his scratched face and the almost featherless parrot called out, ‘we’ve been having a hell of a time.’ a general row or free fight is a ‘monkey and parrot time.’ (1891 American Slang Dictionary by James Maitland)
CATERWAULING: Going out in the night in search of intrigues, like a cat in the gutters. (1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue by Francis Grose)
TO SMOKE: To observe, to suspect. (1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue by Francis Grose)
To sum up “He’s real blowed-in-the-glass, you’d never smoke he’d go caterwauling and end up in monkey and parrot time” means “he’s a really genuine and trustworthy, you’d never suspect that he’d go out on the town all night and get into to fights.”
a visit to Neptune
So hey, I went once again to the International ILLiad Conference in Virginia Beach. I think I have at least two pictures of the giant Neptune statue from every year that I’ve gone. That equals a lot of pictures. This is one of the best though.
Ishbuku is looking at you
Profile of a weed
My garden nemesis: Spanish needle, AKA Bidens alba, Shepherd’s needles, beggarticks, or butterfly needles. It can grow 5 feet tall, and spreads wide along the ground where it can. This makes it especially hard to get to the root of the things when you are pulling weeds from around and under other plants.
Why do I wage war against this plant when I have given a flower bed over to the wild vinca? When I have nodded my head at the, now huge, milkweed in my side yard? Spanish needle is supposedly edible, feeds bees and butterflies and has medicinal values. Surely that would compare to the simple, pretty, and easy to control nature of the vinca, or the fact that the milkweed is the only food of the monarch butterfly caterpillar. Yet I cannot make peace with the Spanish needle.
Mostly it’s because of the seeds: 1/2 inch little black needles that thread themselves through my clothes and scratch my skin. Each plant can produce 1200 seeds. After that, it’s the virulent way it spreads, sucking nutrients and choking every other plant in the yard.
But I must admit, it’s defense mechanisms and sneakiness are impressive. I often find it growing as close to the base of another plant as possible – long established plants, so I know it is not simply my hapless sowing of weed seeds as I am planting. It also sacrifices limbs like a lizard will sacrifice it’s tail. Though relatively sturdy and thick, the stems of Spanish needle will break away easily, leaving the tap root and other spreading roots to recover and re-sprout.
And, I swear that the new leaves of a Spanish needle can often look like those of the plants next to it. I’m getting better at spotting them, so maybe this was a learning curve for me. Maybe it’s all in my head, but it still throws me for a loop some times.
Happy Birthday Brad
Totally not Brad’s birthday, but when it was his birthday Richard (of doomedmoviethon) said, “you should draw a picture of Brad with Michael Myers.” So I did.
And then it sat around in my sketchbook until I filled the rest of the pages up and scanned it.
And then I gave it a little background.
Then I posted it on this here blog on a day that is totally not Brad’s birthday.
Happy birthday Brad!
The plan
My last mention of the Internet Archive’s Building Technology Heritage Library collection didn’t highlight my obsession with house/floor plans, and I though you should know. I have a whole notebook full of houses that I have dreamed up over the years and before any move, I would obtain the floor-plan of the apartment so I could plan the furnishings.
Lucky then that the Building Technology Heritage Library collection included home plan catalogs for prospective 40s and 50s home owners to dream and plan, right? Or, no. I was really hoping that I would stumble upon the original plan for our house, but I have not, yet. That’s the house as it is above. There are a few thick walls round the outside, making up planters and defining the patio space.
With what I have seen of common house plans and houses in the area, combined with examination of walls and doorways, I think the house was originally laid out like this:
The ‘dining room’ was a 60s addition that used the existing roof over the breezeway and added a doorway from it to the utility room hallway. A bathroom/bedroom area was made out of, what I think would have been, a workroom beside the utility room. Finally, perhaps in a 90s kitchen remodel, the wall separating the kitchen and living room was opened up and replaced with a counter peninsula. Even with two remodels, the house footprint hasn’t been changed from it’s original 1949 slab and footings.
I can find some plans with an original bedroom layout like mine, and some with a breezeway to utility/workroom area like mine, but none with all of it combined in one plan. It could just mean that my house wasn’t bought out of a catalog, and that’s just fine too. I just wish one day I will stumble onto some blueprints shoved in a rafter or something!
Oh hey, site updates
I almost forgot, a couple of weeks ago I gave theLeEMSmachine a bit of a facelift. A new, click-able, front page directs to some new landing pages for my biggest projects of the moment. Levi Levi and No Evil both have character galleries that I will continue to fill out.
Clement Skitt’s word of the day
“I wanted to have a butcher’s so I took a Dublin packet and slapdash, a bracket-faced seven sided animal gave me a dub o’ th’ hick.”
Let’s dissect:
butchers: Cockney slang meaning look. Cockney slang, or rhyming slang, was most prevalent in the East End of London. It consists of replacing a word with the beginning portion of a rhyming phrase. For example: substituting ‘look’ with ‘butcher’s hook’ but dropping the ‘hook.’ It may have risen to wide use as a way to keep outsiders from a close community (Wikipedia).
Dublin packet: turn a corner; to ‘take the dublin packet” viz run around the corner – probably a pun on doubling a corner (A dictionary of modern slang, cant, and vulgar words by John Camden Hotten)
Slapdash: Immediately, instantly, suddenly. (1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue by Francis Grose)
Bracket-faced: Ugly, hard-featured (1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue by Francis Grose)
Seven sided animal: you know this one 😉
dub o’th’hick: A lick on the head (1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue by Francis Grose)
So, to sum up “I wanted to have a butcher’s so I took a Dublin packet and slapdash, a bracket-faced seven sided animal gave me a dub o’ th’ hick” means “I wanted to take a look so I turned a corner and suddenly an ugly one eyed man gave me a lick on the head.”
I am loving the UK 1940s Radio Station
Nostalgia has a strange way of making everything look prettier. For instance the music played on the UK 1940s Radio Station music and vintage radio shows from the 1920s 1930s 1940s seems to me to be more good than bad. However, the music played on current pop rock stations seems to me to be more bad than good. I wonder if, 50 years and four generations from now, the music of today will also have the same type of soothing, safe, perfect in the background appeal to future listeners.
stuck in my head
do you know the muffin man
the muffin man
the muffin man
do you know the muffin man
who lives on Drury lane?
hey, Wikipedia/Project Gutenberg has an illustration of said muffin man.
matryoshka plan
I have a blank wooden matryshka in my craft cupboard. This is the plan I came up with long ago…