Hole in the Clouds


Tag: roof

Smoke break

Mar 27, 2011

In 1917, guy by the name of Jug Reynolds was trying to make a living doing this sort of thing–standing on his hands on top of a chair on top of two tables on top of the cornice at the edge of the roof of Lansburgh's furniture store at 9th Street and F Street NW in Washington, D.C.

Note that Jug's helper out there on the roof had a cigarette in his mouth. All in a day's work.

The domed building in the background is the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History.

Washington   cityscape   Jug Reynold's   acrobatics   daredevil   roof   handstand   Lansburgh's   D.C.   (Image credit: Harris & Ewing)  

Gargoyle

Nov 9, 2012

Looked out of my upstairs window a month or so ago, and there at the edge of the roof across the street was Samantha, a gargoyling sort of cat who'd followed her mistress up a ladder onto the roof and then, of course, refused to climb back down. Cats apparently missed the memo about going down ladders tail-first.

My neighbor eventually tossed Samantha down onto a second-story deck; she landed feet first and none the worse for wear–and by all accounts eager to get back up on the roof again.

streetscape   Philadelphia   cat   Kater Street   roof  

Indian Summer

Nov 12, 2012

When you get a day in November that's t-shirt warm, it just seems right to get up on the roof. There were drainspouts to clear and trees to trim, debris to sweep up and . . . pictures to take.

Today's rooftop picture features our neighbors Carolyn and Frank; Carolyn works the pole trimmer while Frank hooks a finger in her beltloop to keep her safe.

Looking into the treetops, it became obvious that this year's fall weather has mostly been so mild that the leaves are only just now beginning to behave fallishly. But we trimmed the trees back so far that almost all the remaining leaves will eventually drop on the street or the sidewalk, not on top of the houses.

streetscape   Philadelphia   Kater Street   work   roof   neighborhood   trees   Frank   Carolyn  

Ripples in Spacetime

Feb 13, 2016

Gravitational waves–the warping of spacetime predicted by Einstein and confirmed the other day by a bunch of astrophysicists–may account for this awesome icicle hanging from a porch roof near Winthrop, Washington.

The way we understand it, which is undoubtedly not correct, the physicists measured data regarding a collision between two black holes and detected gravitational waves propagating outward from the event, kinda like sound waves rippling out from the ringing of the cosmic spacetime bell.

So. Obviously, this here icicle got caught up in some serious gravitational ripples. That, or the snow on the roof was seriously sliding and slumping and refreezing as the icicle was drippily trying to grow (see below). Hope the astrophysicists have ruled out that possible source of noise in their data.

winter   physics   snow   roof   icicles   heat   Winthrop, WA   (Image credits: h/t cliffmass.blogspot.com