Double Barn Portrait Selfie

During his recent impromptu visit my brother took a whimsical double-barn-portrait selfie.  I was amused.  Some folks think we resemble each other (our wives say we even walk exactly the same) but we don’t see it. ;-)

A Walk in the Woods

We’ve been blessed with a couple of days’ semi-impromptu visit from my brother and his wife, who taught school with Mrs. Barn about fifty(!) years ago.  Since it was sorta last minute I didn’t have much of an activity agenda.  We trimmed up the walnut trees in the yard, toured the garden and greenhouse, confirmed that the late frost had left all the apple trees fruit-less except for one small crabapple, then hiked up the hill to assess the microhydro water line in preparation for replacing it when they return in August.  Goodness, the old Schedule 40 PVC line was trashed by the brutal ice storm last winter.

We walked along with me running the traveler along the ground to get a reasonable measurement of how much of the black poly pipe to order.  Were two rolls of 2″ x 500′ going to be enough?  Well, the rough measurement was 1,007 feet, so I will have to either use a little of the Schedule 40 at one end or the other or order another hundred feet of the black poly.

Meanwhile, just above the weir we could see a large tree had fallen across the original logging road so we walked another 150 yards to it.  And what a tree it was!  The amount of firewood we can harvest will be impressive.

The tree was struck by lightning and felled very recently (the leaves were withered but still green on the branches) and it was a big ‘un.  At four feet off the ground the girth was eleven feet.  Another very large tree had fallen right next to it, probably in the same storm.

So come August we will be hard at work.  Sugar maple ain’t the best firewood but it’s better than nothing.  Especially if you have tons of it.

We Hold These Truths … (2026)

This reminder is presented annually, revised a bit from time to time.  Despite dozens of recitations, I can never read the last line of The Declaration out loud because I am overcome with emotion. – DCW

Tomorrow my fellow Patriots and I, however many of us there are, will commemorate and celebrate the 250th anniversary of the most profound statement of human aspiration ever known.  We have already endured two violent wars of secession, the first from 1775-1783 and the second from 1861-1865, and I pray that our third one can be avoided by a peaceful segregation of a populace that no longer shares a common vision.  Again this year I am especially drawn to the passage “mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”  This sentiment was later expressed by John F. Kennedy, as “When peaceful rebellion is made impossible, violent rebellion becomes inevitable.”

As our nation is seemingly rife with incurious, gullible and servile inhabitants, we would be well-served to reflect seriously on the document encapsulating the mission statement for the greatest nation ever known to man, the only nation ever founded on a creed and geography or lineage.   It was and is of course imperfect, no institution created by fallen and sinful men and women can be anything else.

I am an unabashed partisan in the cause of Life, Liberty, and Property (the original draft wording) and find The Declaration of Independence to be the most noble civil document ever created by mankind.  I pray you will read and reflect on the ideas expressed by men who pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to pursue the path of liberty.  Reading it is much like reading the Minor Prophets of the Old Testament; more up-to-date regarding the human condition than tomorrow’s headlines.

God Bless America, and may righteousness flourish and wickedness be overcome.

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IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

Button Gwinnett
Lyman Hall
George Walton

William Hooper
Joseph Hewes
John Penn

Edward Rutledge
Thomas Heyward, Jr.
Thomas Lynch, Jr.
Arthur Middleton

John Hancock

Samuel Chase
William Paca
Thomas Stone
Charles Carroll of Carrollton

George Wythe
Richard Henry Lee
Thomas Jefferson
Benjamin Harrison
Thomas Nelson, Jr.
Francis Lightfoot Lee
Carter Braxton

Robert Morris
Benjamin Rush
Benjamin Franklin
John Morton
George Clymer
James Smith
George Taylor
James Wilson
George Ross

Caesar Rodney
George Read
Thomas McKean

William Floyd
Philip Livingston
Francis Lewis
Lewis Morris

Richard Stockton
John Witherspoon
Francis Hopkinson
John Hart
Abraham Clark

Josiah Bartlett
William Whipple

Samuel Adams
John Adams
Robert Treat Paine
Elbridge Gerry

Stephen Hopkins
William Ellery

Roger Sherman
Samuel Huntington
William Williams
Oliver Wolcott

Matthew Thornton

Paperwork

More than thirty years ago I made a built-in cabinet in the living room to hold all manner of contents you would expect for a living room wall unit.  Included in the design and construction was a set of shoji sliding doors using Japanese mulberry bark paper for the screens.  I learned right quick that having paper panels on cabinet doors is not optimal for a home occupied by little ones.  I soon replaced the original papers with new ones and backed them with plexiglass to minimize the puncturing and tearing of the lovely paper.

Recently I took another look at the shoji and saw another dozen or so tears that had occurred of the intervening decades.  One by one I took them down to the basement shop to repair them.  Unfortunately all I had was scraps from the original construction and installation or I would have simply replaced complete sections of the paper en toto.

My first effort to follow that trail was to order some new mulberry bark paper that turned out to be beautiful but not a good match to the originals.  So all I could do was use my scraps of the original paper and make the necessary repairs.

Here’s an example of one repair, a protocol I followed successfully on the nearly dozen tears.

This tear is adjacent to one of the shoji frame elements, The dark area near the upper center of the image is a previous repair, still wet from the repair. As the repair dries it will resume the color of the original paper and thus become invisible to the standard viewer.

Here’s the scrap of the original paper left over from the construction 30 years ago. One edge is straight to match the shoji frame, the other is torn, or “deckled” to provide a feathered edge allowing the perfect blending with the underlying sheet being repaired.

After mixing up the adhesive, in this case dilute wallpaper past methycellulose, the repair ws laid in place and the adhesive brushed onto the margin and wicked in, binding the repair.

Next time I return to Mordo I will try to remember to take a picture of the finished project.  The repairs really do look nearly invisible, complying with the “Six-foo-six-inch rule” that governed our work in the museum.  In other words, from a standard viewing distance of six feet the repair is invisible, but close-up (“six inch”) it is discernable.