Newsletter - No. 5
A new furniture video, shockingly beautiful flood maps, and lots of navy + cream.
Hello everybody! Just finished a hot bath and cold shower. I feel fantastic. I was inspired by a study hinting that heat therapy helps fibromyalgia symptoms. We've been wanting to visit this Nordic spa with a wood-burning sauna and cold plunge in the woods. It's funny a treatment so uncomfortable can make you feel brand new.
Enjoy this month's edition. I'm bringing back the audio commentary you can listen to here or in the new podcast feed. I run through the stories and chat a bit more.
New Video: Our '50s-Era Sideboard with a Hidden Feature
In my books video from last autumn, I mentioned I was in the market for a bookshelf—something waist-high with distinctive character. After volleying dozens of links, my wife and I managed to acquire this beautiful vintage sideboard from Heritage Henredon. Only after bringing it home did we discover its hidden feature...
New Domain + Website Design
I'm very pleased to share I've acquired casimiro.com. My last name. 😄 This will be the new long-term home of the blog! Your login and everything will work the same. I've also updated the site's design to a much slicker interface that makes it easier to browse subjects and types of media.
Would this pair with a red?
While in Chicago recently I attended my first pen show. We were in town visiting my in-laws, minutes away from a mecca of one of my top hobbies, just by happenstance. The stationery world is absolutely buzzing. These events are dedicated to fine writing, with pens, inks, and many accessories on offer. Fountain pens are particularly customizable, with "nibmeisters" available to modify writing implements to your taste. My favorite exhibit was the ink sampling, where attendees could swatch hundreds of colors. Pairing a pen with ink is a creative exercise, and this combination has earned a spot on my desk.
Pen: Kaweco Sport - Navy
Ink: Monteverde Jungle Ink Collection™ - Zebra
Paper: MD Paper Pad - A5 - Grid
Map: Missoula Floods
At the end of the last ice age, the catastrophic Missoula Floods carved the Columbia River Gorge and helped shape the Willamette Valley surrounding Portland. This map uses lidar data to visualize the extent of the inundation.
When Lake Missoula waters breached an ice dam, some of the largest floods known on earth discharged nearly 350 million cubic feet per second—over 1,000 times the average discharge of the current Columbia River... The dam-and-breach process was repeated at least 40 times over 3,000 years as the ice sheet advanced and retreated... As the floods rushed out of the constricted Columbia River Gorge and entered the Portland Basin, the water gushing across the landscape created much of the large-scale geomorphology that exists today.
In 2007-2011, airborne light detection and ranging (lidar) data were collected throughout the Portland Basin. Lidar-derived imagery allows us to map the shape of the surface of the earth in resolution never before seen, especially in places that are densely vegetated, such as the Portland Basin.
-Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries
This map was created by Daniel Coe and won the Best Cartographic Design Award at the 2013 Washington GIS Conference. I was researching Miss. Flo. (never say that again) and was struck by the artistic value of this government-published map. It's no surprise when you see Daniel's other work.
His website is an incredible resource for cartography nerds. Dozens of beautiful maps along with tutorials and presentations. (I already had one of his tutorials on QGIS saved.) For further reading try his presentation, "Mapping the Glacial Legacy of the PNW."
A Beautiful Family Artifact
My wife recently unearthed some old records her grandmother recorded as a singer. They're made of shellac, a natural resin secreted by an insect. It's rad that it's a non-toxic plastic-like material still used in applications like finishing wood. The record required a special needle to match its wider grooves. Unfortunately those analog peaks and valleys of sound are weathering away, and time has etched heavy distortion into the recordings. In other words they sound like shit. But Shirley's beautiful voice is still there, 75 years later.
Photos
-Jackson
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