CurlyShavings

On my way somewhere else in late August 2006, I found this amazing building at the top of a hill in East Cleveland Ohio. From a functional perspective, it was easily identified: an observatory. As a recent immigrant to the area, it wasn't as easy to figure out what, exactly, I'd stumbled into.

After some on-site snooping and with Google as my friend, I began to put together the story.

There is very little original research I can add to the conversation and so I will be content to simply post some pictures and some links.

Here are some other sites that have more to share on this incredible building:

• Case Western Reserve University has collected some facts about this site.


• Some local designers started this site while students at the Cleveland Institute of Art (CIA). At the time (2002-2005), they were interested seeing the property restored. There's a short and well-done DVD for sale with some great images and information.


• Some more images can be found here along with some information about the buyer from 2005 and what he was doing from 2007 until recently.


• There are many facilities with the Warner & Swasey Observatory name and/or that have Warner & Swasey equipment.

Can you imagine attending lectures in this auditorium?

Or how about using this entrance?

It's just a beautiful old building.

Many thanks to Bridget Callahan and her recent Warner & Swasey post (about the building where the telescopes were made) for reminding me of this trip to the Observatory.

The Hunting of the Snark (an Agony, in Eight Fits) is quite often classified as a nonsense poem.

Utter nonsense, I say. Just because we don't understand each line (or even each word) of Lewis Carroll's poem doesn't mean that it's nonsense.

Besides, much of the poem is quite lucid.

Take, for example, the following lines from The Bellman's Speech (Fit the Second):

Then the bowsprit got mixed with the rudder sometimes :
   A thing, as the Bellman
   remarked,
That frequently happens in tropical climes,
   When a vessel is, so to
   speak, "snarked."

The author indicates in his preface that the first line in this stanza could be used as perhaps the best evidence of his having written nonsense. And since he is "incapable of such a deed", he goes on to spend the next paragraph "simply explaining how it happened."

Now the bowsprit is clearly depicted in the upper left corner of the nearby image by Henry Holiday taken from the book's frontispiece. It's a spar extending past the bow of the ship, in this case, above the figurehead.

The situation was really quite simple:

The Bellman . . . used to have the bowsprit unshipped once or twice a week to be revarnished, and it more than once happened, when the time came for replacing it, that no one on board could remember which end of the ship it belonged to.

Makes perfect sense to me.* Undoubtedly the stern of their ship is just as plumb as their bow and shaped just as lovely. Our new Box II (a Bolger Tortoise) has (according to the plans) two transoms—the bow differs from the stern only by a few degrees and an inch or so.

So despite the fact that our little boat has never had its non-existent bowsprit mixed up with its homemade rudder, it would be very easy to have happen.

And so I join my voice with the author's in protesting the "nonsense" label. "Uffish" aside, the bowsprit incident alone very clearly shows the serious nature of the poem.

*Except the part about varnishing it once or twice a week: no one is that "morbidly sensitive about appearances"! Especially on my boats.

As both my readers know, we're homeschooling parents and as such, we have incredible flexibility on what counts as "school". So when the teacher plans out a study of James Garfield with photos and video to submit to the CLE+ folks as part of their "Be the Plus" contest, well, what's the principal to do?

Well, one day I was chauffeur and another, video editor.

What follows is the result.

They've been studying with the aid of "From Canal Boy to President" and you can get your free copy here.