family – Rambles Blog at Star Chamber

Back from a week-long vacation and a long web hiatus. The vacation was at the beach in North Carolina, and since it was an extended family gathering I got to play some music with my cousins and my brother.

That’s my cousin Billy on the mandolin and my cousin Missy on the fiddle. My brother Larry has the concertina, and I’m playing the tin whistle. You can just see my brother John playing the single-malt Scotch on the deck in the background. He has a Scotch solo in this picture (he’s good!), but we all played the Scotch at one time or another. We had a great time making music and drinking Scotch of varying quality most of the nights we were there.

I was talking to John later on about music, and I strongly recommended that he visit my friend Greg Bacon’s excellent site. You should too. Even better, follow this link to all of his posts that have been tagged (by Greg) tunes I like. Every one of the posts has a free, high-quality, entertaining, self-playing MP3. Lovely tunes all. Greg is as generous as he is talented.

You’ve heard of landscape architecture. Now get ready for the architected landscape. My brother-in-law Craig Pleasants is an artist who has worked on sculptures at an architectural scale. With years of experience to draw on, he’s now turning the idea of architectural sculpture into a business opportunity with a site called sculptorhouse.com. The picture shown here is actually one of Craig’s first architectural projects: the house he lived in for many years. Eight sided, eccentric, and endearing, it became known in our family as the OLU, for Octagonal Living Unit. Now with Craig’s help you can have an OLU of your very own. Contact him at the sculptorhouse.com site and he will create something beautiful on your property.

Incidentally, Craig has also done some writing and illustration. One of my favorite stories of his is the ethnohistoriographical deconstruction of the Three Little Pigs story. I won’t give away the surprising conclusion, but I will say that the first little pig deconstructs a straw house, and the second little pig deconstructs a… well, just be sure and read all the sidenotes.