DA old timers  

Saw this today. And ....hi. I wore pink and green. Hi.
Aunt Mark
ps. fastfwd knows his angles. Yes.
http://www.palmbeachdailynews.com/news/news/local/cunninghams-period-pho...

Thanks, fast fwd -- complete and informative. I've been wondering about these matters for a long time.
A catenary is the form produced by a chain hung from its ends -- as I understand it. Is a catenary similar to any of the figures you describe ? It would be too much to expect that it would be identical, under any circumstances, to them, as the origins of the forms are completely different.
That 1860 "Gothic Bridge" in Central Park does an excellent job of prefiguring the Art Nouveau, wouldn't you say ? I recall coverage of Mr Cunningham's habits from a few years ago, perhaps in the Times . . . ?

Hello SDR.
ok This was my favorite sentence that I read today in the local newspaper about a twisted step mother.
yup, and blazed,
Aunt Mark
"It’s a fun-filled flippers-and-whiskers learning experience for the entire family!"
my god. perverts. Waxing is very affordable.
(edit) I missed this today because. I don't like monkeys.
http://www.palmbeachdailynews.com/news/lifestyles/mizner-put-final-stamp...

Oh God, yes, you're in Addison Mizner country, aren't you . . .
Me too. Sunday, with the sun going down.
Last night I watched the Mike Nichols interview on PBS. What a delight. At one point he describes a stage piece he and Elaine did on Broadway: He's a professional of some sort with a cash flow problem, and she's his wife. He says, " It's bad -- we may even have to burn the Noguchi." She reacts as if he had proposed throwing a pet monkey into the fireplace; she didn't happen to know what a noguchi was, and assumed it was -- a monkey. Ah, the heady days of big-time improv !

SDR, do you have Netflix? If so, check out "Bill Cunningham New York"---GREAT documentary. The trailer is heavy on celebrity talking heads; the actual documentary is mostly Bill and he is as wonderfully down to earth, nice, TALENTED, and unusual a person as you could ever meet. I've seen it twice and recommend it to everyone.

SDR: You're right, the catenary curve isn't one of the family of conic sections. It's indirectly related to the parabola, though, in the following way: If you roll a parabola along a straight line, the curve traced by the parabola's focus is a catenary, as shown in the animated GIF below (blue parabola, red catenary).
And the video shows an interesting relationship between the catenary and the square.

Ha ! Sweet. Wish my dad, the P.E., was (were) here for me to discuss this with him. To me, it is a miracle of the universe that all of the aspects of plane and solid geometry can be described mathematically, and that (in this case) a figure created by the force of gravity acting on a physical object can have a clone in the world of numerical manipulation.
The lovely animation illustrates what I consider a weird coincidence. Clearly it is no such thing ?
While I have you on the phone (as it were), what is your construct of a universe which can contain all of these apparent coincidences ? How do you see these concordances ? Perhaps I wouldn't be asking those questions if I could grok the particulars for myself . . .!

Alex, I'll take "Things That Resemble Other Things" for $200.
SDR:
I like to think that it's because Nature (or God, or The Universe or whatever) created everything with just a very few ingredients: a big ball of energy, a couple of equations like 0 + 1 = 1 and the Pythagorean Theorem, a few rules like E = mc^2 and F = ma, something about entropy, something about waves, some probability and information theory, some formulas for things like population growth with limited resources, a handful of constants, and not much else.
So since all things are derived from the same small set of building blocks, maybe it's not a surprise that patterns or qualities or relations are repeated across them:
The wake behind a duck propagates at the same 19.47-degree included angle as the wake behind a battleship.
Nearly every animal has bilateral symmetry.
Most flowers have radial symmetry (often fivefold radial symmetry).
20% of the people have 80% of the wealth. Of the rich 20%, 20% of THEM have 80% of THEIR wealth. And of that very rich 4%, 20% have 80% of THEIR wealth, etc. Similarly, 20% of criminals commit 80% of the crimes, 20% of a business's customers produce 80% of its revenue, 20% of your designs are responsible for 80% of your fame, the last 20% of a project takes 80% of the time, etc.
A bouncing ball follows a parabolic curve. The best shape for an arch bridge's arch -- or a suspension bridge's suspension -- is a parabola. If you hold the ends of a Slinky and let the middle hang between them, it'll form a parabola. U-shaped dunes pushed across a desert by the wind are parabolic.
Etc.

Yes.
I have the perfect outfit(s) to peacock/pimp on this boat. I do.
Yes.
Aunt Mark
http://www.palmbeachdailynews.com/news/lifestyles/palm-beachers-cruise-i...

cliff may or may not
be the first true pre-fab home
three and one-half weeks
.
five-foot wall sections
pack crates became garage walls
just space, light and flow
.
.
.
much lighter design
than eichler. but less cache
and they burn slower

SDR, did you leave some posts about Cliff May homes in Novato CA on a site called "Lotta Livin" about TEN YEARS AGO? (2006)
The photos posted are no longer active, but it has to be you. (Besides, who else signs as "SDR" ? )
I was raised in one of those Cliff May homes you were doing research on. On Grove Lane.
Small world.

Was that a community in Novato, maybe ? I recall driving around and taking many photos. I deleted those a few years ago, but they should still be in my web host, and thus viewable. Wonder what happened . . .
This ad image I found then has an anomaly: the low-level horizontal window mullion wanders upward as it travels left to right. This detail is unique to the May pre-fabs. The best photos of those houses present a really simple wood-clad post-and-beam "bungalow" with a low-pitched roof and real indoor-outdoor feel. Ah for the days when people were happy with single-pane glass, little or nor insulation, and exposed structure of humble material. Reality, in other words . . .?

Thanks SDR.
Yes, Novato California. A little valley town that only had about 5,000 people then…. It has 50,000 + now. Highway 101 was only two lanes in each direction, and had a stop light right IN the highway!
The overpass went in in 1971, the year I graduated high school.
Re the anomaly… Isn't that just due to the loosely (sloppily) illustrated perspective thing happening in the brochure that cause the change in shape to the lower windows? But I do understand that you are saying it changes the RELATIVE shapes of the rectangles. I think… (unless you are saying it happened in the houses themselves, but I don't think so)
Believe it or not, I have one or two of those same original brochures floating around here somewhere it even has my mother's math scribblings on it (she was trying to figure out the various prices and commissions for each floor plan, etc.) The home prices in the late 50's were something in the low to mid- teens!
We never ever changed the single pane windows. That is nothing though… my wife was raised in an Alliance home in Terra Linda (seven miles south) that had NO HEATER. They actually were sold with only a fireplace for heat. I know California is supposed to have good weather and everything, but jesus… it gets below freezing quite often in the winter in the valleys around here..

Yes it does. I think there's a long history, certainly in Southern California, of denial about the climate. Many homes there were built with open-air sleeping porches -- perhaps in part because of a "fresh air is healthy" movement ? Schindler built "sleeping baskets" on the roof of his Kings Road house.
Even today many San Francisco apartments have no heat. Of course our climate is more temperate than most places in Northern California, apparently.
The anomaly in the brochure illustration is strictly an artist's error. I think the correct height is shown at the center/left of the drawing.
Love your May haikus . . .

Hi.
I read this in a newspaper today, and I liked it.
Best,
Aunt Mark
Should she go to the dentist, or take a guided tour of buildings designed by her favorite architect, Frank Lloyd Wright? Each cost $100.
She picked Frank Lloyd Wright. Her teeth could wait.