slate
not hard to find
where: garden stepping stone pathways, math departments in the 1970s, old roofs (maybe definetly more of a european thing)
today was the day that i first attempted making cob and when I started thinking more on city geology. I don’t know if it was because I was telling my grandpa (a long retired calculus professor) about each mineral formation I would put on the list or if it was because I was admiring the slate slab on his coffee table but,
this got my grandpa talking about slate
“have you ever used a real slate blackboard? We had them in the mathematics building, their just so smooth, but takes the chalk *chefs kiss
are you more picky about chalk or a blackboard?
well you can tell a cheap blackboard, real ugly to write on
how it looks? how it sounds? (from the perspective of a student)
how it feels
I still think about how it feels—
yeah you’ve talked about that [throughout the years]
do you think much about chalk?
I’ve only been disappointed by chalk once, when they bought the building chalk with actual rocks in it. you’d be writing and it’d just get a rock and scratch the whole board... i didn’t care
they probably got rid of the slate boards those fools”