Are you telling me . . .
Ah, never a good start to a conversation. On either side.
. . . that you can change
the amount of bread crust
by how you cut the bread?
Well, yes.
Now, in theory, I understand that there is a fixed amount of crust on any given loaf of bread. Cutting technique can’t change that fixed amount and to suggest otherwise would be silly.
But, in practice, when I want more crust on a slice of baguette–and when *don’t* I?–I don’t cut those narrow rounds that just have a pathetic little bit of crust around the edge. Instead, I cut the baguette lengthwise horizontally, separating the top from the bottom, and then cut wide slices that have crust that is fully half of the piece of bread.
Similarly, when I want more sky, I head West. Not west: West.
Now, in theory, I understand that there is a fixed amount of sky. Changing location can’t change that fixed amount and to suggest otherwise would be silly.
But, in practice, when I want more sky–and when *don’t* I?–I don’t fool around with landscapes encumbered by trees or mountains. Instead, I go to the Great Plains, where the sky is fully half of the world.
The Great Plains (French: Grandes Plaines), sometimes simply “the Plains“, is a broad expanse of flatland in North America. It is located west of the Mississippi River and east of the Rocky Mountains, much of it covered in prairie, steppe, and grassland. – Wikipedia
QED. More crust.
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I disagree. Yin and Yang need opposites. Prairie land and prairie sky are clones of each other — flat and forever. I need, at the very least, a grain elevator to provide a vertical element of contrast. Or better, a mountain or three.
Jim T
Jim T – It’s a good thing everyone doesn’t agree on this at least. Think how crowded we’d be!
A flat plain almost anywhere will condition one to expect “sky” to mean all possible sky. I remember how cloistered I felt when I moved from Niagara Falls NY to Toronto at 17. And how thoroughly I had adapted until I returned to the suddenly liberating place of uninterrupted sky. Recently, I have been looking at Dutch impressionist paintings, where the winter scenes in particular are principally skyscapes with an occasional windmill or church spire to break that flat horizon. I still find such compositions exhilarating.
Laurna – I wonder whether people who grow up in the downtowns of large cities feel agoraphobic when/if they encounter the wide-open spaces. It wouldn’t be surprising. My grandmother grew up in Iowa where the trees along the side of country roads actually touched overhead. She found little beauty in the virtually tree-less part of the Canadian prairies where she made her married home. Our early conditioning can last.
Yes, indeed. A couple from the Far North who spend the warm half of the year in our community and “go home” when it’s good and cold, said that trees were the most terrifying feature of “the South.” They were afraid that they might unexpectedly fall on them. I might have laughed a little, but in fact a tree on a property at the end of our road fell unexpectedly on a little girl, who did not survive the accident. Even growing up in an environment is not fail-safe.
Laurna – Indeed. The derecho that ripped through Ottawa last summer uprooted and broke-off many trees. Being in the wrong place at the wrong time could easily have been fatal.
I could not live on the ground level again (claustrophobic feeling) after 50 years in a high-rise tower — now at 220 feet up. The sky (east & south) is certainly a character in my daily life. To watch a storm front move in on us, or down the Ottawa River is a wonder. Or to wake up to fog and only the tops of buildings above 200 feet are showing — it’s like a Chinese silk painting. Or watch the windows of eastern buildings turn gold from a setting sun… but those are bonuses living where the sky fills a balcony window.
Barbara – Lovely. And we do come to take new perspectives/views for granted — and then to require them?
The first time I walked onto a balcony (my first apartment on my own in 1972) — 7th floor overlooking the Rideau Canal on 2nd Ave — I turned around to the lessor and said, “I’ll take it.” I hadn’t even looked at the apartment & didn’t even have a job at the time, just had to have it. (It worked out fine.)
Barbara – 🙂 That’s a great story. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-O8_Ja05Gs