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One of the most important considerations if you’re building a house is materials. In the past you’d almost always build out of local materials. It’s just too costly, to haul stones or logs or whatever very far. So if … Continue reading
Tag Archives: Travel
Fans of Robert Heinlein will recall that in his short story ” –And He Built a Crooked House” one of the characters remarks that the main job of a house is to keep the rain off. Yes, shelter is a … Continue reading
Purely for variety’s sake we have removed to Sarlat-la-Canéda, a town in the Dordogne inland from Bordeaux. The buildings in the medieval town center date back to the 14th century. It is relentlessly beautiful, astonishingly picturesque, the kind of town … Continue reading
Every old building in the world is either used, or not. If it’s not in use it tends to fall into ruin, its uses and history forgotten. If it’s in use, well, somebody is fixing it up. Not only to … Continue reading
Sara Stamey’s journeys include treasure hunting and teaching scuba in the Caribbean and Honduras; backpacking Greece and New Zealand; operating a nuclear reactor; and owning a farm in Southern Chile. Sara Stamey’s novel Islands, now in ebook from Book View Cafe, is set in the Caribbean and packed with both adventure and intricate characters and plot. It’s also romantic suspense with a drop of psychic wonder. “An archeologist investigating petroglyphs ends up diving for sunken treasure and investigating a cult murder.”
Continue readingYou will have noticed that I’m interested in how old stuff gets reused. In a region crammed full of old stuff, this is continually happening. Upcycling old houses so they have flush toilets, repaving the Roman roads so that the … Continue reading
If you want to think about medieval defense, this is a great area of the world for it. And here we come at last to the biggest and best example of them all, the citadel at Carcassonne. What’s fascinating about … Continue reading
These are the citadels at Lastours, in the mountains of southern France. The 13th century was a time when inaccessible might be a feature and not a bug.They were built by the Cathars. The Pope declared a crusade against them, … Continue reading
Before we leave the subject of buildings (so dear to the writer’s heart! Knowing how buildings are made makes explosions more convincing.) I have here a fine example of how it is done today. … Continue reading
Robert Heinlein wrote a story, “And He Built A Crooked House,” about SFnal architects. In it one of the laymen says that, broadly speaking, a house is a device to keep the rain off. And this is true. If the … Continue reading