Basement walls, part I

Notable Quotables

"If you want a golden rule that will fit everybody, this is it: Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."
William Morris, from his lecture "The Beauty of Life"

"‘Never look at an ugly thing twice. It is fatally easy to get accustomed to corrupting influences."
English architect CFA Voysey (1857-1941)

"The world of books is the most remarkable creation of man. Nothing else that he builds ever lasts. Monuments fall, nations perish, civilizations grow old and die out; and, after an era of darkness, new races build others. But in the world of books are volumes that have seen this happen again and again, and yet live on, still young, still as fresh as the day they were written, still telling men’s hearts of the hearts of men centuries dead."
Clarence Day

"Anyone who has a library and a garden wants for nothing."
Cicero

"Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtile; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend."
Sir Francis Bacon, "Essays"

"The chief aim of education is to show you, after you make a livelihood, how to enjoy living; and you can live longest and best and most rewardingly by attaining and preserving the happiness of learning."
Gilbert Highet, "The Immortal Profession: The Joys of Teaching and Learning"

"Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment."
Walter Wriston

"I'd like to give you a piece of my mind."
"Oh, I couldn't take the last piece."
Ginger Rogers to Frances Mercer in "Vivacious Lady" (1938)

"No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem."
Booker T. Washington

"Please accept my resignation. I don’t care to belong to any club that will have me as a member."
Attributed to Groucho Marx in "The Groucho Letters" by Arthur Sheekman

"If you can't say something good about someone, sit right here by me."
Alice Roosevelt Longworth

"If we bring a little joy into your humdrum lives, we feel all our hard work ain't been in vain for nothin'."
Jean Hagen as "Lina Lamont" in "Singin' in the Rain" (1952)

Basement walls, part I

Posted on November 26, 2013 by Becky

We postponed pouring concrete until yesterday — last week’s highs were in the -20s C but they started to warm up on the weekend, with daily highs just under freezing. Much easier on the people, not to mention the concrete. It was an all-day project, from about 10 to 5, and then checking on the heaters and tarps.

All photos by Davy with his new camera (the old one had spots on the lens from within somehow), which explains why he’s not in any of them.

One of the concrete trucks arriving Monday morning. All together, three trucks came with a total of six loads,