Tag Archives for John Shaw-Rimmington

Coinhenge: The Role of Change

photo by John Shaw-Rimmington

Just sent in yesterday by friend of the blog John Shaw-Rimmington, the thinking stone man, dry stone walling genius, and blogger at Thinking With My Hands. You see, in the US and Canada banks hand out these variously-sized paper tubes to people who have large amounts of loose coin. The coin owner then fills the tubes with the correct sized coins. A roll of nickels, for example, is $2.00. A roll of pennies is 50 cents, and so on.

Mr. Shaw-Rimmington (you may remember his name from a strawhenge we posted some time ago) says on his blog (since none of you ever clicks links):

“My daughter has been collecting lots of her ( and ours, that we lent her ) change over the last few years and yesterday she wrapped it all. She thinks it’s hers now.

 The brown paper tubes when they’re neatly packed are remarkably heavy and feel like they want to be stacked somehow.

 So I made a little free-standing coin circle. Or would that be a high priced one?

 I will call it Coinhenge perhaps? I think that I had the Clonehenge site in mind when I made it.” See how he added that bit about us in order to avoid being castigated for his terrible puns?

He goes on: “It’s not in mint condition I know but it still might be worth depositing inside a bank (a kind of monetary earthworks site?) I wonder if the early builders of any kind of similar coinhenge ever ‘with-druid’ when ancient times got tough?”

Aargh! *strangled groan* The bun is the lowest form of wheat, if you get our drift. However this is the perfect henge for these times of change. Hurhur. We award it 6 druids, one whole druid of which is due strictly to John’s longstanding friendship with this blog. Please, if anyone is considering hiring him to do drystone work, we assure you that his expertise and art in that field are far superior to his pun-making and henging! He does beautiful work.

Strawhenge: When You’re Ready to Bale!

photos from the website of the Dry Stone Wall Association of Canada, with permission

“Strawhenge is a conceptual installation of large straw bales constructed to celebrate the relationship between the momentary and the monumental.” So begins the text on the website for this straw Stonehenge replica. Strawhenges are among the most common large henges, and we haven’t been posting each one we find. But after reading this website we suspect we have stumbled upon some kindred spirits, and since we haven’t posted a straw or hay henge for a while, here it is! (Others: Strawhenge in Essex and Straw Echo Henge, and a great one we never got photo permissions for *sigh*, Strohhenge.)

It is tempting to quote large swaths of text and, well, we’ll indulge a little. John Shaw Rimington is quoted, “when looking over a field of large bales in a field. ‘It is compelling,’ he says ‘to imagine that these large objects, dotted all over the landscape, are not just dropped haphazardly behind baler machines, but rather, they have been carefully moved into position to conform to some greater planetary design.’ ”

The text continues: “He goes on to point out that, a universal and intriguing sense of purpose and meaning lies in each one of us, and is needing to be awakened. Strawhenge is a whimsical structure that allows the onlooker to yield to this tendency to see a field of large bales as something of a phenomena. The common is allowed to seem unusual. The familiar rural landscape becomes infused with newness and significance again. The relationship of the temporary, as represented by the straw, and the permanent, as implied by the ‘stone-likeness’ of the large standing bales, creates a powerful contrast.”

Oh, people, this is our kind of talk! It’s so fun to talk about the nonsensical in serious cosmic ways, because it’s laughable at first, but upon further cogitation has glimmers of truth. When you see a Stonehenge replica, you know someone was reaching for something, one of those deep-inside things we don’t believe in, let alone understand. And at the same time, let’s face it, they’re being very silly. People at play.

It is pleasant to note that someone did indeed look at pictures of Stonehenge and attempt to reproduce some aspects of its present condition here. The inner trilithon horse shoe does face the uprights supporting the three remaining adjacent lintels. And the north-south orientation matches Stonehenge’s, we’re told. We give points for that.

Score: 8 druids! They earned that last half druid when they wrote the site text. Nicely done! Thank you, Mr. Shaw Rimington, for getting in touch with us. We approve whole-heartedly of your conceptual art installation and find it outstanding in its field.

Har har.

P.S.: Hey, Brits, send in your snowhenges. We know they’re out there! Other citizens are welcome, too.

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