Thursday, March 26, 2009

To each sex its own door hammer!

I originally wrote this entry on August 25, 2004, and published it on blogs.sun.com.


Proper greetings require prior identification of the person one greets before one opens the door for the purpose of greeting that person.


Electronics has solved this problem for apartment buildings. Curtains and little spying eye pieces on doors have done the same for detached homes. In some cases, when the detached home has a fence or a wall surrounding it, people may resort to electronics instead.


Matters stood differently when people lived quieter, more meditative lives.




























To the left, you can see a picture of the Boroujerdis' Mansion.


It was built about 200 years ago by a famous merchant of Kashan, Iran, named Haj Seyed Jaefar Boroujerdi and bears great importance in view of its architectural style and paintings. The frescoes of this mansion were painted by Sani-ol-Molk Ghaffari Kashani (founder of a painting school in Iran) and the great Kamal-ol-Molk, the miniaturist.


There are scores of these mansions in Kashan, many of them under repair and maintenance work.





Women knocked on this door as they entered the Boroujerdis' mansion.





. . . and men on this one . . .


The two different door hammers make different sounds to inform the residents of the house so that appropriate welcome could be given and received.


I distinctly remember our ancestral home in Ardabil, where I visited during the summers until I was 12 or 13. It had exactly the same two-hammer door panels, one for the ladies and one for the gentlemen. That ancestral home was sold when I came to the U.S. I visited it last summer. On the land, where the old house once stood, a monsterous (to me, not the builder) modern building had been erected. It was the 3rd house on the same land since its sale 25 years ago.





One of the surviving side doors of the Boroujerdis' mansion has the same two-door, ladies' and gentlemen's sides.





Negin, my daughter, hammers on the ladies' side of yet another door in Kashan.


Sunday, March 22, 2009

Wheelchair Robots in Love


I originally wrote this entry on August 16, 2004 and published it on blogs.sun.com.








Mari Velonaki--Embracement 2003 Light reactive installation [still image] in collaboration with Steve Scheding and David Rye image courtesy of the artist and Novamedia

Reuters television has posted a video report of some Wheelchair Robots in Love. The wheelchairs are designed by artist Mari Velonaki and developed by scientists from the Australian Centre of Field Robotics. (By the time you read this, the video may not be on the top of Reuters' video stack but you may be able to search and find it. If the links here don't get you to the video clips, look under the Life video series at Reuters Television.)





To each sex its own door hammer!


I originally wrote this entry on August 10, 2004 and published it on blogs.sun.com.


Proper greetings require prior identification of the person one greets before one opens the door for the purpose of greeting that person.


Electronics has solved this problem for apartment buildings. Curtains and little spying eye pieces on doors have done the same for detached homes. In some cases, when the detached home has a fence or a wall surrounding it, people may resort to electronics instead.


Matters stood differently when people lived quieter, more meditative lives.




























To the left, you can see a picture of the Boroujerdis' Mansion.


It was built about 200 years ago by a famous merchant of Kashan, Iran, named Haj Seyed Jaefar Boroujerdi and bears great importance in view of its architectural style and paintings. The frescoes of this mansion were painted by Sani-ol-Molk Ghaffari Kashani (founder of a painting school in Iran) and the great Kamal-ol-Molk, the miniaturist.


There are scores of these mansions in Kashan, many of them under repair and maintenance work.





Women knocked on this door as they entered the Boroujerdis' mansion.





. . . and men on this one . . .


The two different door hammers make different sounds to inform the residents of the house so that appropriate welcome could be given and received.


I distinctly remember our ancestral home in Ardabil, where I visited during the summers until I was 12 or 13. It had exactly the same two-hammer door panels, one for the ladies and one for the gentlemen. That ancestral home was sold when I came to the U.S. I visited it last summer. On the land, where the old house once stood, a monsterous (to me, not the builder) modern building had been erected. It was the 3rd house on the same land since its sale 25 years ago.





One of the surviving side doors of the Boroujerdis' mansion has the same two-door, ladies' and gentlemen's sides.





Negin, my daughter, hammers on the ladies' side of yet another door in Kashan.


Henna Arts


I originally wrote this entry on August 6, 2004 and published it on blogs.sun.com.


Catherine Cartwright-Jones of Kent State University has put together a brief but interesting history of henna. Her website also includes an encyclopedia of henna. Henna has now become part of the Americana with followers from New England to Hollywood.


Here's a picture of my daughter Yasmine on her 10th birthday. (Sunday 04-04-04, April 4, 2004. How uncommon is that?) The henna design on her hand is a rather simple pattern.





Here's a picture of both my daughters (Negin is the 6-year-old) on the same day. On the top left corner, a friend of Yasmine's is drying her hennaed hand.