June 11, 2016 -- World Gin Day ... And Fish Buffet

Here's another reason why I love to blog. Through a bit of serendipity I "discovered" Stickley furniture a few months ago. It was love at first sight for many reasons, many of them purely emotional. Mark, over at Stacey Furniture, here in Grapevine, mentioned the "Onondaga" finish, which, of course, meant nothing to me. I thought it a peculiar word but failed to explore its origin or meaning. The word stuck in the back of my mind.

Fast forward to yesterday. While updating an earlier post for "Top Stories" of the week, I happened to come across the Onondaga formation in northeast United States. It was this Ohio Oil & Gas Journal link, on a graphic of the stratigraphy of Pennsylvania and West Virginia: think Burket/Geneseo, Marcellus, and Utica.

Here's the graphic:

Now, back to the "Onondaga" Stickley furniture finish (say that quickly five times).  From that webite: Gustav Stickley is credited with creating Mission Furniture as a unified style, but he and his four brothers were all active in producing Arts & Crafts and Mission furniture under various trade names and different partnerships over the years. The five Stickley bros were all born in Wisconsin but they settled in upstate New York and Grand Rapids.

Leopold Stickley, according to the linked site, helped his brother Gustav as foreman in the first years, but in 1902 he formed the Onondaga Shops in Fayetteville, NY, with brother John George. At the link, there are dots connecting Stickley with Frank Lloyd Wright (1867 - 1959) in Chicago.

Leopold and John George were the most successful of the brothers in marketing; the Onondaga shops eventually became "Stickley." Their operation endures; they are still located in Manlius, NY, about four miles from Fayetteville, where they make a reissued line of original Stickley Mission Furniture.

Albert Stickley formed the Stickley Brothers in Grand Rapids in 1891 with John George (he left the business in 1902). Stickley Brothers in Grand Rapids introduced a line of inlaid Arts & Crafts furniture in 1900.

This "non-Stickley" site discusses the "Onondaga" Finish.

Wow, what a digression. So, what is the origin of Onondaga? From wiki:

The Onondaga (Onöñda’gega’ or "Hill Place") people are one of the original five constituent nations of the Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) Confederacy in northeast North America.

Their traditional homeland is in and around present-day Onondaga County, New York, south of Lake Ontario. They are known as Gana’dagwëni:io’geh to the other Iroquois tribes.

Being centrally located, they are considered the "Keepers of the Fire" (Kayečisnakwe’nì·yu’in Tuscarora) in the figurative longhouse that shelters the Five Nations.

The Cayuga and Seneca have territory to their west and the Oneida and Mohawk to their east. For this reason, the League of the Iroquois historically at the Iroquois government's capital at Onondaga, as the traditional chiefs do today.

So, there you have it. For what it's worth.

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Another Weather Website Useful For Bicyclists

Don sent me this link. I've been looking for a better weather channel -- for bicyclists in north Texas such sites are very very important.

This looks pretty good: http://zoomradar.com/.

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Fish Buffet

Link here to The [London] Telegraph (if the link is broken: World Gin Day). And to think I almost missed it.

For my dinner tonight, I had a "fish" buffet: rainbow trout, tilapia, and scallop. Three vegetables: artichoke, asparagus, and broccoli. Rice.

I only made one "mistake" but it was an esthetic mistake and did not affect the dinner itself. The esthetic mistake: before baking the trout, I forgot to brown it stove-top. The recipe did not call for stove-top browning but my wife always makes perfect trout and she stove-top browns it first.

The trout was relatively small, and it was in the oven for a few minutes longer than the recipe called for, but it still turned out perfectly, which tells me that trout is fairly "flexible."

I almost forgot the tilapia; I noted it when I went to the refrigerator something else. A four-ounce slice of tilapia was quickly added to the buffet; almost no effort. Amazing how much can be written in recipes about tilapia, for something so simple.

The little "sprigs" on the trout: thyme. 

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Birdman

I'm back in my Birdman phase. The first scene in which Mike (Ed Norton) appears "makes the movie." I could watch it over and over.