support, beauty

words du jour, alert readers, are "dendrite" and "purlin". purlin being derived from 15th century english and having to do with the horizontal support structures in home design & construction (see also "riverhouse" by sarahlee lawrence). and "the clouds that may night looked like dendrites--a word and image that floated to the surface of my mind from the glossy page of a long-neglected textbook" (houghteling, p. 176). i discovered that i had seen this too, looking out the winter window last night, a pale glow of moon and stars on the vineyards and bare branches. dendrite refers to a crystal which has a tree-like form that creates fractal patterns. support and beauty on a macro and micro scale.