The turn in weather started with a hint.

I glanced across the yard toward the horizon, and the sky appeared glaucous — a lusterless bluish-gray — the perfect word to characterize the mood.

Glaucous?

Really?

Why not use the word blue?

The word Glaucous has both Latin and Greek roots.

In Latin, glaucus means gray or bluish-green, but also bright, sparkling, and gleaming.

From Greek, glaukos is an adjective of uncertain origin, but etymological accounts have Homer using forms of the word for Athena’s bright eyes and for a gleaming, silvery sea.

The great Greek thinkers often described colors by involving the senses; they described the light, the luminosity, the movement, the experience — i.e. gleaming.

The entry for the word glaucous in The Century Dictionary: An Encyclopedic Lexicon of the English Language includes all the following contradictory words: gray, light, pale, luminous, and dull.

Really?

Both luminous and dull?

Modern dictionaries define glaucous by describing shades of yellows, greens, and bluish-grays.

And, a second dictionary meaning for glaucous defines a botanical use — a powdery white coating on a leaf or fruit that gives a frosted appearance and rubs off easily.

At the grocery store, you might find this white film on blueberries or grapes.

At the Lost Madrone Ranch, I find the thin veil of white on an agave,

or a succulent,

or the ashe juniper berries.

A computer monitor uses a hexadecimal code to specify a color and the hex color code for glaucous, #6082b6, is closer to the color of my glaucous sky.

At the Lost Madrone Ranch, it’s the color of the Blue-gray Gnatcatcher, the waxy-blue found in flint, the steely look of fossilized oysters, and the shade of limestone that surrendered its chalky white hue to time in the weather.

Was the glaucous of Thoreau (“I cannot but see still in my mind’s eye those little striped breams poised in Walden’s glaucous water.”) or of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (“Erewhile I slept under the glaucous caverns of old Ocean.”) the same color as the milky, blue-gray feathers of a Glaucous gull?

The contrasting meanings of the word glaucous as it traveled through time — from gleaming to gray, pale to luminous, dull to silvery, and yellow to green to blue — matched the juxtaposition of my emotions as the weather turned.

Hours earlier, in San Antonio, I entered my car (parked outside in temperatures nearing 100) and the air reaching my lungs burned, as if breathing in a sauna.

Now, in Comfort, the air blew cool, and the sky was both blue-gray and white-filmed; eerie and lovely; still, yet changing.

My senses, like the ancients, were at play with my glaucous sky — a pale, rich, leaden, quiet, brilliant, gleaming sky.

Blue was not enough.

Jim hurried over in the Ranger and asked if I wanted to ride with him to the lake. The generator for the well was running, and he wanted to cover and protect it from the eminent rain.

As we raced along the hilltops, the sky darkened. Winds strengthened. Clouds cruised across the horizon.

I noticed a singular white cloud floating mightier than the others.

Outside the lane of the pearly street of stratus, this cumulus cloud distinguished itself — not too prominent to rise too proud, but without question larger, stronger, and more beautiful… a special one.

Towering above was a mass of threatening darkness.

Now, the special cloud appeared little, vulnerable, yet surrounded by a light that seemed enough to hold up.

It reminded me of the past few weeks of holding up — not the burden of a house flood but a flood of family and friends in need, all of them mighty but facing a heavy threat.

And then, the special white cloud under the darkness reminded me of my favorite lamp.

A lamp?

Really?

Not what you expected?

Yes, a lamp came to mind.

My favorite lamp at the ranch was several years in the making — no surprise to my friends who know how deliberate and slow I am when pursuing a design idea.

While browsing at a favorite antique store in San Antonio, I spotted an unusual pendant light. The shop owner suspected it was re-purposed from old farm equipment.

My attraction to it was instant.

Its scale is balanced, like the shell of a snare drum.

And, while I am not drawn to busy patterns, somehow ten different sizes and shapes of cutouts in the metal are arranged with such precise organization that the overall appearance is not chaotic but structured and pleasing to my eye.

(Look closer and find all ten.)

The pattern seemed to have a specific purpose.

The patina of the metal evokes elements throughout the ranch house — metal roofs,

punched metal sconce lights,

galvanized wrapped doors,

and feed pails used for planters, to name a few.

Most appealing is the construction, too imperfect for machine made.

I appreciate good craftsmanship — a recognition that beauty and quality comes from artistry and skill, practiced with passion and careful attention to durability, detail, and function.

Take as an example the metal chairs around the ranch dining table.

Metal chairs?

Really?

Yes, the craftsmanship of metal chairs came to mind.

Designed in 1934, by Xavier Pauchard, the classic “A Chair” or also called “Marais A” is an icon of industrial furniture design with a rich history behind its hand-built quality.

No doubt you’ve seen one or many.

Born in 1880, in the Burgundy region of France, Pauchard was a zinc roofer, like his father and grandfather before him. He had a talent for welding and shaping sheetmetal, and in 1907 he introduced France to galvanization, the process of dipping metal in molten zinc to protect it from rusting.

Later, Pauchard opened a factory to create household items from steel, and registered the trademark symbol, Tolix, which remains the name of the company today.

The first Tolix chair was the Marais A.

With holes in the seat for rain to drain, the chair is designed to weather the outdoors, originally intended for use on battleships, embarking on the SS Normandie in 1935.

A popular cafe chair, after cafe owners complained they did not stack well, Pauchard tweaked the design so they could stack to a height of 25 chairs.

Since 1956, the design has remained the same, and the chair is found in factories, offices, hospitals, parks, and homes around the world — a testimony to their durability and functionality.

Despite being protected by copyright, copies of this chair flood the market using the descriptors reproduction, replica, or inspired by in front of the word Tolix.

Tolix makes chairs in one location, Autun France, the Burgundy town where the company started. Limited US businesses have authorization to sell them.

While their construction may appear simple, an authentic Tolix chair requires careful attention to detail.

It takes 100 manual operations to produce each chair.

Unique welds and joins show through the soft gloss of the varnished steel, and scuffs and abrasions stamp each chair with their own personality.

Tolix is stamped on each one.

These signatures I recognize as the mark of a careful hand, practiced in paying attention to the detail.

The detail reminds me of our ranch house metal roofs.

Roofs?

Really?

Yes, metal roofs came to mind.

I remember the day the ranch house roofs were being installed, and I was schooled on the craftsmanship that goes into double lock standing seam metal roof details — at least when following the historic methods of installation used for hundreds of years before caulk and pre-formed panels.

As the work began, I watched the skill used to form each panel on site and hand fold each seam.

But, a few hours into the job when I glanced closer at the roof ridge, I balked at the crimped looking line.

I admit, I knew nothing about metal roof construction.

How was I to know that the skilled craftsmen on my job would take offense when I asked if there would be a perfect, straight, pre-formed ridge cap as a finishing detail across the roof peaks?

That was the “look” I was familiar with from the metal roofs I had seen.

Now, I was getting “looks” from the crew on my roof.

A call from the builder started with, “we can put a ridge cap on if you want, but…”

Apparently, limited tradesmen have the skill to execute a “rolled double munch ridge seam” and the best at it in the Texas hill country were standing on my roof… looking.

The builder reminded me that the homesteads of the German immigrants who settled in Comfort in the 1850s inspired the ranch house design.

The Germans constructed tightly grouped buildings around a small farmyard, and the compound would grow as the family grew.

We adopted this concept by constructing three separate buildings

— along with embracing chopped white limestone with German smear mortar joints, hand hewn vintage beams, and porches facing all directions to catch the breezes.

We reserved our love of clean, modern design for the interiors.

How could I ignore this historic ridge detail that traveled across time through German artisans to the artisans now looking?

I embraced the munch, not the munch of food, but the crunching together of sheetmetal to achieve a rolled double munch ridge seam.

Today, I appreciate the simple, crisp roof-line, skillfully rolled and munched by hand, and I can’t imagine a pre-formed, raised ridge cap covering the craftsmanship.

I smile that the founder of Tolix descended from a lineage of metal roofers.

Did the cutouts in the metal pendant light have a similar craftsmanship story?

Like the staccato snap of a snare drum in the percussion section, I envisioned this pendant light as a sharp pop among the metal design elements at the ranch house.

I purchased the fixture.

But, there was a problem; there was no obvious place for a pendant light to hang.

For months, I hoisted this light up by the cord to test every place I could think of placing it, but not a single spot seemed right.

I left it in a closet for over a year until I had the idea to make it a lamp shade instead of a hanging pendant.

Another year passed as I viewed hundreds of lamps on the internet and explored materials to make a custom base that could support the weight.

Wood? Stone? Metal?

And then, I thought of the solution.

Glass.

The visual and literal weight of the shade would be the dominant design element, but glass was the perfect material to not compete with the patina or detailed cutouts of the metal.

I imagined the juxtaposition of the lightness of the glass holding up the heaviness of the metal.

Symbolism was swimming in my head.

I sought the contrast.

I’ll spare the detailed accounting of how I selected the perfect glass base, but once I found and purchased it, I headed to Billy, a local lamp repair expert.

Billy did not support my plan.

He questioned, “Really?”

He asked, “Why would you put a heavy piece of metal over fragile glass?”

He argued, “It won’t hold up.”

He threatened, “I won’t assemble it for you.”

And then, he wavered, “If I do this for you, I won’t be responsible if it breaks.”

“If…”

I heard a crack in his resolve to get me to abandon the project.

After convincing him it would work and that I would not hold him at fault if it didn’t, we argued through a design plan to retrofit the pendant into a shade.

Against his advice, I persuaded him to balance the shade using the least noticeable mechanics so it appeared as if the metal drum was floating over the thin, hand-blown glass.

Perfect.

It’s my favorite lamp.

I never look at it without feeling the contrast.

I always see optimism of holding up under a heavy weight.

I know it is strong enough.

 

This stream of writing that flows from a color of contrasts, to a contrast in the weather, to observing a special cloud in juxtaposition to a dark threat, to reflecting on friends and family in need, to my enthusiasm for design, to appreciating craftsmanship, to the history of a chair, to constructing a roof, to the concept plan for the ranch house, and to making a favorite lamp — one that expresses contrasts and evokes emotion like a looming dark cloud or the word glaucous — is by design.

It’s a story in life.

It’s rambling. It’s detailed. It’s a mix. It’s jumbled.

And, it’s beauty. It’s interesting. It’s things I see and feel and learn and like and think all chewed up as one, a munch — rolled, doubled, and crunched together.

I question how it all fits?

How do things I like and think about meld with how I should live?

Those same great Greek thinkers who expressed color with their senses shared their ideas about careful examination.

According to Plato, Socrates claimed, “the unexamined life is not worth living.”

Question what you value.

Plato believed one gained a well lived life through the pursuit of knowledge and a commitment to the common good.

As a christian my life pursuit is to live according to christ. No question, I work to walk in his light.

Still, I walked the past month with a long list of contrasting obligations, concerns, and interests.

How do I care about selecting tile to repair a shower from a flood event when life events of greater importance are facing family and friends?

I want the answer to be blue but I feel the range of glaucous.

Isn’t life gleaming?

To my dear special ones, like my glass lamp base, know you are strong to keep the darkness hoisted, and along with all my munched pieces of life, I will work to be part of your surrounding light I know to be enough.