Me, Online
After a mild complaint from another Justin Katz, with whom I’ve been communicating since I discovered his band online in 1999, that I was only using justinkatz.com as a forwarding site to Dust in the Light, which at this point is essentially a manual summary feed of what I write here and elsewhere, I felt I should put something more useful at the coveted URL. (To be fair, Justin’s complaint followed my mild jibe about his sparse use of his Twitter account in our name.) I’ve also been concerned that job and other prospects who found their way to any one of my sites would be led primarily to my controversial-in-this-region political opinions.
So, I came up with a concept and have been putting the new site together as I’ve been able. So far, I’ve gotten up a bunch of carpentry pictures, op-ed-style commentary that I’d written up to the middle of 2005, and PDFs of my books. I’m trying to make sure that I flesh out one “exhibit” per day. (The ones that I’ve done will shade in blue when you mouse over them on the timeline.)
Even though it’s a work in progress, I welcome any feedback that might occur to anybody to offer.
Justin,
Just visited your new site. Glad to see you are also from Virginia. I still have a few relatives in the Richmond area, most have moved out of the city because of what they call “crime”. With the name Justin, I expected you to be younger.
I was interested in the carpentry photos, particularly the covered staircase. I have one of those in my barn, it leads to a basement room with no other access. I have always wondered about that.
In this case, the staircase leads to a servant’s apartment, with the bedroom on one side of the stairs and the bathroom on the other, making for precarious nighttime relief. The floor that the apartment is on, though, has elevator access, so imagine the stairs typically remain covered, although I did put quite a bit of thought into making the hatch as easy to use as possible.
No idea of the purpose of mine. It leads to a room which takes up about a fifth of the basement, or about 20 X 20. It has windows, but is separated from the rest of the basement by stone walls. If I look closely at one of the walls, and let my imagination run free, I think I can make out a door opening which has been filled with stone. The mortar is real old and may date from construction around 1770.
We begin pulling the sills tomorrow.
“After a mild complaint from another Justin Katz, with whom I’ve been communicating since I discovered his band online in 1999”
… potentially subtle stuff like this is sometimes over my head.
You’re also a musician, Justin. Is there actually another, separate, corporeal Justin Katz or is this an alter ego situation and a way to keep your writing separate from your music?
Oddly enough, musicianship appears to be a pretty common trait among Justin Katzes. This is an actual other person (much more advanced… and successful… musically than I, especially now that I’m years out of practice).
A note of limited interest. A friend stopped by this evening to offer opinions on the barn. He tells me that trap doors and hidden rooms are common in barns. He doesn’t know why either.
The house has a hidden room in the center of the chimney (6 flue). That may be happenstance. The “room” saved a lot of bricks.