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The stacks of a Valero oil refinery tower over Aruba's Baby Beach, a pristine location where many islanders swim. The refinery dates back to the Standard Oil days beginning in 1929.
Parallel existence of different historical eras in a fictional city on the Eastern Adriatic as an unexpected result of confusing instructions to Gemini AI
I laid me down upon the shore
And dreamed a little space;
I heard the great waves break and roar;
The sun was on my face.
My idle hands and fingers brown
Played with the pebbles grey;
The waves came up, the waves went down,
Most thundering and gay.
The pebbles, they were smooth and round
And warm upon my hands,
Like little people I had found
Sitting among the sands.
The grains of sands so shining-small
Soft through my fingers ran;
The sun shone down upon it all,
And so my dream began:
How all of this had been before;
How ages far away
I lay on some forgotten shore
As here I lie to-day.
The waves came shining up the sands,
As here to-day they shine;
And in my pre-pelasgian hands
The sand was warm and fine.
I have forgotten whence I came,
Or what my home might be,
Or by what strange and savage name
I called that thundering sea.
I only know the sun shone down
As still it shines to-day,
And in my fingers long and brown
The little pebbles lay.
The Painted Stork is taking a sip and just behind the bird, you can see the tail of a crocodile, its head resting on a stone.
Cordoba. What's in a name? Human settlement here seems to have always had a variation of this name.
The first recorded existence of a settlement here (though Neanderthal existence was confirmed in the area between 42,000-35,000 B.C. and preurban settlements dating from the 8th century B.C.)...was with the Carthaginians.
General Hamilcar Barca (Hannibal's dad) renamed it Kartuba (previously called Kart-Juba, which meant "City of Juba.").
The Romans, after winning the Punic Wars, took over Iberia (in 206 B.C.) and dramatically changed the name of this town to...Corduba. With the Romans, you can start to find plenty of things in town. The Roman Bridge still stands. The Roman city wall still stands (base is Roman and changes with subsequent civilizations as you go up...Moorish, Christian.) If you tour the Alcazar, you'll see a handful of nice Roman mosaics on display. Then there's the Roman temple and ruins there.
Well, those Romans didn't last forever. After about 5-6 centuries of glory, they faded into history books, being overtaken in bits and pieces by northern European groups. For Cordoba's purposes...the Visigoths. The Visigoths were Christians, not some backwoods group. They built a church (St. Vincent Church) on the site of what is now the Mezquita-Cathedral in the heart of Cordoba. The Visigoths, though, weren't as strong as the Romans and squabbled a bit. Civil wars made their presence here fairly short-lived (just over 100 years) until the next dominant folks came calling.
The Moors decided to pay the town a visit in 711. They liked it so much that they took it over by force and stayed...for about 500 years.
At first, it was a subordinate town to the Damascus Caliphate. And the Moors, too, changed the name of the city to something really different: Qurtuba.
Apparently tiring of reporting to Damascus, the locals decided they'd just run things themselves beginning in 766 A.D. by naming this the Umayyad Emirate (eventually Caliphate).
Things went well for the Moors in Spain (which is why they ran the Good Ship Iberia for 7 centuries or so.) While Christian Europe tends to call these the Dark Ages, they were anything but here in Iberia.
By global standards of those times, Cordoba was massive. Its population ~800 A.D. was about 200,000. That was 0.1% of the global population. (That would put it on par with a city of 7 million today, which is...Hong Kong or Ho Chi Minh City/Saigon. Basically...massive.) At the height of the Caliphate (~1,000 A.D.), the population had doubled to about 400,000.
And why did so many folks live in good ol' Cordoba? Well, during the 10th-11th centuries, Cordoba was one of the greatest cultural, political, financial, and economic centers of the world.
Christians and Jews coexisted fairly well with the Moors (well...it's all relative, I suppose). Take the Jewish quarter, for example.
The Jews all lived on three fairly small narrow streets near the Great Mosque (which was built on the ruins of St. Vincent Church during this time). They were allowed to go out and work in town by day, but they had a curfew and were all locked in the neighborhood by night. Not sure how I'd like that.
One of the most important Jewish scholars, Maimonides, was born here in Cordoba (in the 1130s; 1135, or 1138). This was the end of what folks would call the Golden Age of Judaism on the peninsula. (Bad things -- or worse things -- were in store for the Sefarad.)
Maimonides bolted at a fairly young age and spent the majority of his life in northern Africa (Morocco, Egypt.) He was a rabbinical scholar, astronomer, physician, and philosopher. He was basically a Renaissance Man...before the Renaissance.
Like the end of the Golden Age of Jewish culture in the Iberian Peninsula, the Moors reign was slowly being chipped away by Christian Spain. (Almost immediately upon taking over 90% of the Iberian Peninsula in 711, the Christians fought back, little by little, to reconquer their land.)
With the death of al-Mansur, after an expedition up north to La Rioja, in 1002, the caliphate slowly started to disintegrate. It had everything except a strong ruler. Even with that, it took the Christians quite some time to reconquer Cordoba.
King Fernando III of Spain took the city after a few months' siege in 1236. Cordoba lost its position as the most important city -- Sevilla was the new capital of Andalusia -- and Cordoba's position in the world faded during the Renaissance. (I guess you could say Cordoba had an anti-Renaissance?) The population dwindled to 20,000 in the 17th century.
What you have in town now are the remains of history, surrounded by generic modernity. (Directly across the way from the Door of Forgiveness to the Great Mosque? Burger King. How's that for progress?)
I'll write specific pieces on the Mezquita (which demands its own space) and also on the flowered patios for which modern Cordoba is famous in other posts.
Existence de edward bond au théâtre des argonautes à marseille
mise en scène francine eymery, collaboration artistique et scénographique jean-pierre girard
avec lionel barathieu et frédéric josse
The Bell AH-1 Cobra (also called HueyCobra) owes its existence to the Vietnam War. While the proof of the air cavalry concept was being proven every day, the US Army was also losing huge amounts of helicopters to ground fire. Equipping the troop-carrying “slicks” with door guns helped, and arming the UH-1 Iroquois/Huey with weapons was another interim solution. Clearly, however, the solution lay with a dedicated attack helicopter that could defend the troop carriers.
Bell, the manufacturer of the UH-1, had been also experimenting with a concept of a heavily armed, turreted, and thin fuselaged helicopter. The US Army awarded a proof-of-concept contract to Bell, which replied in a heavily modified Model 47 called the Sioux Scout. It failed to win any orders, but Bell kept at it. This resulted in the Model 209, based on components of the UH-1 and the original conceptual design. With the Vietnam War intensifying, the Army issued a requirement for an interim solution, which the Model 209—built and tested in only eight months—won easily. The Army ordered 110 AH-1Gs in April 1966 and the type was in action in Vietnam a year later.
With the success of the AH-1 in Vietnam, the USMC requested a version as well, but with twin engines (for more safety over water) and bigger armament. This resulted in the AH-1J: besides twin engines, it also carried a 20mm gatling cannon in the turret. Though the AH-1J only saw brief action in the Vietnam War before American involvement ended, the Marines loved it. AH-1Js were also supplied to Iran before the Islamic Revolution of 1979, and these were used against Iraq in the Iran-Iraq War. Marine AH-1s, alongside upgraded Army AH-1S Cobras, have seen action in every American conflict since Vietnam, with considerable success. Though the US Army withdrew their Cobras by 1995 in favor of the AH-64 Apache, the Marines continually upgraded their Cobras, culminating in the current AH-1Z Viper, which is practically a new helicopter. While not as potent as the Apache or the Mi-24 Hind, the Cobra represents the first and classic attack helicopter.
This AH-1W is Bureau Number 165395; this helicopter was probably delivered to the USMC in the late 1980s. It served with HMLA-269 ("Gunrunners"), where 165395 saw combat over Iraq. After returning home, 165395 was transferred to VMX-1 at MCAS Yuma, Arizona as a testbed, and was retired in late 2022. It was then placed on display in the MCAS Yuma airpark.
As the newest arrival in the Yuma airpark, 165395 is in excellent condition, and retains the blue/gray camouflage used by Marine helicopter units. The VMX-1 emblem is carried on the engine covers. I got this picture in June 2023.
The parish came into existence following the decision of the Diocesan Council, in the fall of 1998, following the repeated insistence of the faithful from the Drumul Taberei neighborhood, who were disappointed by the lack of places of worship in this neighborhood.
Thus, at the initiative of the priest Nicolae Burlan, a disassembled wooden church was brought from the Vicovul de Jos commune in Suceava county and reassembled on a plot of land belonging to the Ministry of National Defense located in Brașov Street, no. 21C, sector 6.
Later, interventions were made at the City Hall of the Capital, which ceded a 3000 square meter plot of land for the purpose of building a church and which was given in exchange to the Ministry of National Defense for the equivalent area on which the wooden church is already located.
The wooden church was consecrated by His Holiness Teodosie Snagoveanul, Vicar Bishop of the Archdiocese of Bucharest at that time, on July 26, 1998.
The shrine of the church is Saint Pious Parascheva, (in Greek "paraschevi" means "Friday") whom Orthodox Christianity celebrates on October 14 and whose Holy Relics are in the Metropolitan Cathedral of Iași.
Since the wooden church proved inadequate for the more than 1,000 believers from various neighborhoods who regularly participate in the Holy services, the decision was made to build a brick church, of larger dimensions absolutely necessary for a neighborhood like Drumul Taberei.
The plan of the new church belonging to the architect Florin Bucur Crăciun is in the form of an inscribed Greek cross.
From an architectural point of view, it fits into the style prefigured by the churches "Sfânta Sofia" in Constantinople and "Sfântul Nicolae Domnesc" in Curtea de Argeș.
A large central hemispherical dome dominates the spatial composition of the edifice.
A wide porch with six free and two engaged columns precedes the entrance.
Access to the church is through a portal with an arched frame, made of finely carved stone.
The vault is made up of 25 semi-arches, resting at the ends on two metal caisson rings, with other intermediate rings unfolding between them.
The covering of the altar, similar to the apses of the proscomidiary and the diaconicon, is made by a cone connected to a semi-cylinder.
On the opposite side, on the first floor, there is the cage which is accessed by stairs placed inside, in the northwest and southwest corners of the building, which also lead to the two balconies.
(further pictures you can see by clicking on the link at the end of page!)
John's Church (Hanau)
Southern Facade .
The John's Church (today also Old John's Church) was established in 1658 as the Church of the Lutheran community in Hanau.
North side
Historical context
It owes its existence to the biconfessionality of the German Reformation, particularly in the county of Hanau-Münzenberg. The county was reformed since the reign of Count Philipp Ludwig II of Hanau-Münzenberg. When the Counts of Hanau-Münzenberg became extinct in 1642, their heritage fell to the Lutheran Count Frederick Casimir of Hanau-Lichtenberg.
The city of residence of the county of Hanau-Münzenberg, Hanau, consisted at that time of two legally independent cities: Old and New Hanau. The latter was at the turn of the 16th to 17th Century inhabited by reformed religious refugees from France and the Spanish Netherlands. Their ruling class consisted of wealthy citizens, merchants and tradesmen who took within the county a dominant economic position, which faced a weak position of the new count at taking office. Some lords of the county of Hanau-Münzenberg tried the from the far away Hanau-Lichtenberg arrived to deny his heritage. In addition, the county was due to the Thirty Year's War heavily in debt and on the credit of the citizens. The citizens presented for the accession conditions, and Frederick Casimir had no choice but to grant the demands to ever being able to accede to his heritage. This included especially the guarantee of the future free exercise of religion of the Reformed. The Lutheran religious service for the Count and his court should be limited to the castle chapel.
Johann Georg II, presentation of a Krönungsdiarium (coronation diarie) from 1658 - name giver of the in the same year initiated John's Church
Model of the church before destruction
Construction
On 4 June 1658 the foundation stone for the Lutheran Church of John in the presence of the elector and name giver Johann Georg II of Saxony was placed. This had come from the coronation of Emperor Leopold I from the neighboring Frankfurt am Main across. This was preceded by appeals in the Lutheran abroad, as the reformed subjects, of course, refused to support such a project and the Count himself was constantly in financial trouble. The inauguration took place on 17th Januar 1664. Then the organ was built in by Abraham Fischer from Marktbreit.
The foundation stone to the tower was on 8 August 1679 laid, the works on 10th July in 1691 completed.
The building
The church was built in the old town of Hanau in relative proximity to the castle. It includes in its west wall the medieval city walls of the old one. Stylistically, it is noticeable that it is - in the middle of Baroque - serving of gothic style elements, for example, as lancet windows and a Gothicising - but north-facing - choir. The latter is due to the cutting of the available land. The main entrance was so in the south and is crowned by the on the narrow side centrally arranged 47 meters high tower. The backward-looking style choice could be due to the fact that the adjacent Reformed Mary's Church a gothic embossed building from the Middle Ages is, which architecturally should be couterbalanced or it should architecturally historicity of the Lutheran confession in Hanau be faked, that did not exist.
The interior of the church looked quite different from what the external form of architecture seemed to appear: At least after renovation and expansion in 1727 was the Interior - pulpit and altar - facing west, perhaps because such a "horizontal format" in terms of visibility from the galleries was cheaper to design.
The building further on contained the burial place for the Lutheran branch of the House of Hanau and was - even after 1736 of the Hessian heirs - to the 19th Century used but destroyed in the Second World War.
During the Second World War, the church was badly damaged. The community built as a replacement the New John's Church on other location. The remaining perimeter walls of John's Church on three sides were used in creating a community center for the neighboring community of Mary's Church. The church interior was divided horizontally by a false ceiling. Even after a renovation in the seventies of the last century this concept and this utilization have been preserved, so that in the interior not much of the historic building can be seen anymore.
In November 2012, the church with a simplified but closely based on the historical model steel structure got back its top.
Name
Originally the church was called "Lutheran Church". It was only after the beginning of the 19th Century as it came in the Hanauer Union to a unification of the Reformed and the Lutheran Church in Hanau and the previous name "Lutheran Church" was inoperable, it was given the name "John Church". It was named after the Elector Johann Georg II of Saxony, who was present as its foundation stone was laid.
Pima Air & Space Museum
Lockheed SR-71A
When Lyndon Johnson announced the existence of the SR-71 Blackbird on July 24, 1964, he provided fuel for many pilot's fondest aviation fantasy: to fly the fastest and to fly the highest. Having a top speed in excess of mach 3, and the ability to cruise at over 80,000 feet, the Blackbird would become the pinnacle of many pilots' aviation careers.
The road to the forward cockpit of the SR-71 started with a college education and entry into the commissioned ranks of the Air Force. Then would follow Undergraduate Pilot Training and one or more flying assignments in which the new pilot would gain experience. Only after proving themselves as a military aviator could a pilot begin to consider a transition to the Blackbird.
It was not unusual to have doubts regarding the choice to apply for the SR-71 program, and for good reason. The selection process was grueling. The reconnaissance mission required significant flight discipline and was highly classified, requiring security clearance above Top Secret. SR-71 pilots spent many months of the year away from their home base, and the resulting family sacrifices were significant.
The selection process for the aircrew of a rather unique aircraft was itself unusual. The prospective candidates would prepare a highly detailed application and have to pass both intensive flying and physical examinations. Then the interviews began. This process not only included the expected visits to SR-71 unit commander's and operations officer's offices, the prospect would also meet many of the active SR-71 pilots, all of whom would be informally interviewing, analyzing and probing the character of the officer.
After the interviews, a board would be formed from the cadre of experiences SR pilots. They would frankly and fairly discuss all of the applicants. Naturally, it was important that flying skills be given precedence along with the ability to handle difficult situations suitably.
SR-71 aircrews were selected and trained as a team consisting of a pilot and a Reconnaissance Systems Officer or "RSO." The team approach provided the opportunity for a pilot and his backseater to bond together as a cohesive unit, acting as though they were one individual. Training for SR-71 aircrews lasted about 10 months, and was accomplished at the primary SR-71 unit at Beale AFB, California.
The initial hurdle was to pass the first 12 simulator flights. Then the new pilot would fly five missions with an instructor pilot in one of the SR-71B's - the Blackbird variant with the second pilot's cockpit above and behind the main cockpit. Even these first training missions included flight at Mach 3, under the theory "Subsonic time is a waste of time!" Afterwards the pilot was cleared to solo in the SR-71A with an experienced RSO in the back seat for one mission, and thereafter with their permanent RSO partner.
Pilots needed to go through 150 hours of simulator training and to fly 100 hours in the aircraft before they would be considered "Combat Ready" to fly operational missions.
While no doubt an enjoyable challenge, training to fly the fastest and highest flying aircraft in the world was demanding in the extreme. But at some point during his training, when the new SR-71 pilot woke up one morning to find the traditional silhouette of the Blackbird painted on his driveway, he knew he had arrived as a member of a very special, unique community.
SR-71A SN: 61-7951
July 28, 1976: World absolute speed record; 2,393 mph
July 28, 1976: World absolute speed record for sustained height; 85,969 feet
September 1, 1974: New York to London; 1 hr 55 min 42 sec
March 6, 1999: Los Angeles to Washington, DC; 1 hr 4 min 29 sec
The SR-71 on display is the second one built and the oldest survivor. It was rolled off the assembly line October 20, 1964 and first flew March 5, 1965. Used as a systems test bed it flew primarily from Palmdale, CA. In 1971, this plane was loaned to NASA to replace a YF-12 that had been lost in an accident. In order to disguise the fact that NASA was flying one of the still highly classified SR-71s the plane was redesignated as a YF-12C and given the serial number 60-6937. Ironically this is actually the serial number of one of the CIA's still top-secret A-12s. In October 1978, the Blackbird was returned to the Air Force and given its original number back. Only two months later it was retired to storage at Palmdale. With the retirement of the SR-71 from Air Force service in 1990, Blackbirds became available for museum displays and the US Air Force Museum. The serial number 64-17951 has often been erroneously attributed to this aircraft. This confusion is likely due to the USAF often changing serial numbers on the Blackbirds to obscure the actual number of SR-71s in their inventory.
Letter written by Yogiraj Shyama Charan Lahiree Mahashaya
Author of the book 'Purana Purusha' - Yogacharya Dr. Ashoke Kumar Chatterjee was born in 1933 in West Bengal. The sudden demise of his mother when he was away in service intensely agonized him. He grew averse to material pursuits and became spirituality inclined. He received initiation in Kriyayoga in April 1961.
Yogacharya ji is the disciple of Shri Satya Charana Lahiree Mahashaya, grandson of Yogiraj Lahiree Mahashaya.
Yogacharya Dr. Ashoke Kumar Chatterjee authored various books on Kriya Yoga, 'Purana Purusha' being one of them. 'Purana Purusha' logically depicts the most subtle Kriya Realizations of Lahiree Mahashaya. The book is directly based on the 26 personal diaries written by yogiraj lahiree Mahashaya Himself.
Yogacharya ji's teachings are based on mainly three very basic questions -
"Where have we come from?"
"Where do we have to go?"
"How to reach the destination and attain stillness?"
He teaches kriyayoga adhering to the standards set by Yogiraj Lahiree Mahashaya without any modification in the practice itself, with an experience spanning over more than five decades.
People irrespective of caste, creed, color, nation, language, gender are all eligible for Kriya Yoga. He has large following throughout India and abroad like USA, England, France, Spain, Canada, Australia, South Korea, Bangladesh etc.
He expounds that all-pervasive Prana is dharma and God. The total creation of man, insects, animals, trees, water, earth, air, fire, sky all have the same dharma and belong to one Master. God is Still State of Prana. If Prana who inheres in the body-temple is nursed Universal Love will prevail and eternal peace be reinstated.
He has adhered to the ideals of Yogiraj by juxtaposing total domestic existence with yogic discipline as shown by Yogiraj Lahiree Mahashaya himelf.
Existence and Her Counterparts, 35mm colored experimental film and sculpture. at Existential Energy
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