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A previous existence as a military parachutist helped Patrick Baty on this project. The 185ft bridge had to be scaled at night, when the trains had stopped running, in order for paint samples to be taken.
See the BBC clip here.
He was able to establish that this famous bridge by Isambard Kingdom Brunel had originally been painted with a white “anti-corrosive” paint containing ground glass. The bridge had been painted twenty times and with a combination of physical and documentary analysis Patrick was able to work out how it looked since it was built in 1859.
A day out in London of a Saturday morning requires planning. Jools arranged for shopping to be dropped on Thursday afternoon, meaning we did not have to go on Saturday morning.
Then setting alarms so that we got to Priory station at half seven ready for the quarter to eight train.
Jools went to get tickets, and I went to the corner greasy spoon to get sausage and bacon sticks and brews. So that when the train rolled at twenty to, we climbed on board, sitting at a table and starting on our breakfast.
Leaving at that time meant it was already light, so we could see the countryside rolling by until we got to Ashford, then flash by once we got on the high speed line, zooming up to Ebbsfleet and then under the Thames into Essex and on to Stratford.
We got out at Stratford, caught the DLR to the regional station, then changing DLR lines for the trains heading for Lewisham.
At Pudding Mill Lane, where we used to watch steam tours on the Great Eastern Main Line, a new station has been built to allow for the entrances to the Elizabeth Line tunnels, and next door is the Abba theatre.
We have been talking about going, so Jools checks prices for the show, and amazed that some are nearly £200! Prices next June are £99, but still for seeing a video recreation rather than the band themselves.
The train rattled on, turning south where the old Bryant and May match factory used to be. The building is still there but seems to be business units or flats now.
Passing the old factory used to be the cue for my Granddad to get us standing up and gathering our coats and bags as we were five minutes from Liverpool Street.
Instead, we took the line south through Bow and towards the crystal towers of Docklands and Canary and other Wharves.
I texted Graham to say we were on our way, and he replied to say he was 5 minutes from Canary Wharf. I said we would be there in a few minutes, maybe we would meet there?
Through Poplar and into the 21st century hellscape that is Docklands, we get off on platform 1, and our next train is waiting on platform 2. Jools walks over, I lag behind, scouring the platform for Graham.
Then as I reach the doors, and the electronic bleeps announcing departure, Graham reaches us and comes on board.
Doors close and the train departs, taking tight turns around the skyscrapers before heading to the river, and after Mudschute, dives under the river for Greenwich.
We get off at Cutty Sark, so named after a tea clipper, and find the way out signed to a flight of 125 steps to street level.
I sigh and follow Jools and Graham up, regretting my life choices.
But I made it to the top, and a short walk we called in at a coffee shop for a refill and wait for the Cutty Sark itself to open.
Although the story of the Cutty Sark and the other tea clippers is very interesting, I wanted to come for purely photographic reasons, to snap the prow and the glazed roof that protects the old dry dock.
We pay to go on, and enter the ship, going up two flights of steps onto the deck, where the masts and rigging tower high above. Remember, sailors used to have to climb up these and gather in sails, and all weathers and on all seas, no matter their state.
Hardy buggers.
Cabins were small and on deck, as all space down below was for cases of tea only, to keep them dry and in perfect condition.
Then down through the visitor centre to the bottom of the dry dock, and the copper bottom of the ship, suspended so that shots looking along and up the prow could be taken.
Which I took plenty of.
Above the roofs of the shops and pubs,the tower of the parish church, St Alphage, Greenwich, which is an usual dedication, but turns out this was the site where the titular Saint was martyred in the 11th century.
Graham had never found it open, but I had checked online and it was due to open at eleven, ten minutes ago. So we walked towards the church, dodging through the traffic and arrived at the church gate.
The south doors were closed, as were the north, so I began to doubt myself. But a nearby sight indicated that the main entrance was on the south side, so we went back round.
And one of the doors was indeed ajar.
Bingo.
Bango.
Bongo.
We climbed the steps and went in, and were met my quiet the most friendly and informative volunteer I think I have ever met.
Interesting details were pointed out, and those hidden were shown, including the location of the font where King Henry XIII was christened, and the last surviving part of the second church's wall.
The church, which is after Hawksmoor, is a delight, though gutted during the blitz, so most glass is now lost, though the Victorian is of good quality.
We were here for the Mars display in the Painted Hall at the Greenwich Naval College.
We have been here before, but some 15 years back at least, so a return was overdue, though the sumptuous painting would be partly hidden by the 7m model of the planet Mars.
We have seen the artist's Moon work at the Maritime Museum nearby, but also in Denver back in 2017. But seemed to have missed his "Earth", I'm sure it'll come round again.
We walked through the college grounds, into the painted hall, exchanged vouchers for tickets and climbed the two sets of stairs into the hall itself.
The view opened out, and the first impression was amazing, Mars at the far end, suspended and slowly turning, with the painted hall as a background. And a helmeted Mar looking down at the planet named after him, a great juxtaposition.
We took and hour to take it all in, then talked about going to the Chapel, which we were not sure was open.
At the base of the stairs, we found the entrance to a passageway, with sign pointing to the Chapel, could this lead all the way under the formal gardens?
Yes. Yes it could. And did.
Up spiral staircases to the lobby, then up a formal stairway flanked by statues of Faith, Hope, Charity and Meekness, into the church, a delight, without much in the way of painting to match the hall opposite, but stunning all the same, and few folks had made it over, so we soaked up the building and details, and fittings.
Time was getting on, and thoughts turned to food. So, we left and headed out to the narrow path beside the river, where high tide meant water was lapping at our feet, but we powered back towards the High Road, and the cluster of pubs and other eateries.
Beside the Cutty Sark was the Gipsy Moth pub, but that was full, so we walked on and found a table beside the fire in the Spanish Galleon, a Shepherd Neame's pub, but they had tables and a great looking menu.
We got pints of Whitstable Bay, and ordered burgers each, all in a great end to the trip where we did all we set out to do, and now rounded it off with a pub lunch.
We ate the burgers with pints of Bishop's Finger, now a timid 5.2% rather than the 7% in days of yore, but still full of flavour.
Time to go home. Back to Cutty Sark DLR station, down in the lift this time, and straight on a train heading north. Change at Canary Wharf, where our train to Stratford was also waiting.
We said goodbye to Graham, hopped on, and the doors closed, so we moved off north.
Back at Stratford, down the steps to the concourse, and straight onto a train going to the International Station, we got on, and so were on the platforms for Kent a full ten minutes before the train was due.
When it came, there were a few seats, so I got to sit and rest by back after the 11,000 steps done, so while darkness fell outside, I kept up to date with the football, Norwich 2-2 with Luton at half time, but scoring twice in the second half to win 4-2, and make it 12 goals scored in three games over seven days.
By the time final whistle went, we were back home, and supping fresh brews as we rested, taking our shoes off.
A brilliant day out.
The West Ham fans we had seen on the DLR were going to their home game against Arsenal, which was on TV at half five. Not the game they were hoping for, as Arsenal were 5-2 by halftime, though no more goals scored in the second half, but worthy of that first half to have watched.
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The beautiful Chapel of St Peter & St Paul was part Sir Christopher Wren’s original design for the Royal Hospital for Seamen at Greenwich. After a devastating fire, the Chapel was rebuilt in 1779 by James ‘Athenian’ Stuart. With its richly decorated ceiling, naval themes, and exceptional altarpiece painted by ‘the Raphael of America’, Benjamin West, it is evident why the Chapel is now regarded as one of the finest neo-classical interiors in existence.
This wonderful piece of craftsmanship is almost certainly responsible for the superb acoustics of the space.
It was designed by the master plasterer John Papworth in a neo-classical design of squares and octagons. The intricate central ornaments were carved, rather than cast in moulds. It is plastered in light blue and cream following a Wedgewood-inspired colour scheme.
The organ at the west end of the Chapel is a fine example of the work of Samuel Green (1740-96), the leading organ builder of his day.
It was completed at a cost of £1,000 in 1798 and is probably the largest instrument built by Green still in its original position. It has three manuals and the pipework, which is noted for its purity of tone and rich mixture stops, is still in use.
The handsome and delicately carved Spanish mahogany case, designed by William Newton, cost a further £500.
The influence of the artist, Benjamin West, can be seen all over the Chapel, particularly in the huge altarpiece. Its story is taken from an account in the Acts of the Apostles.
We see St Paul shipwrecked on the island of Malta. The islanders have helpfully lit a fire to dry out any survivors, and a snake, driven from the woodpile by the heat, has fastened itself onto Paul’s hand.
Miraculously he is able to cast it into the flames. The worshipping Pensioners would have understood this image. Not only is West painting about the rescue and protection of seafaring men but also about divine intervention and the threat of Satan.
This is one of West’s most ambitious paintings. It is also the only one of his large canvases to remain in the place for which it was intended, sitting in a carved and gilded frame by Richard Lawrence.
ABOUT THE CONFERENCE
"The very existence of national groupsâtheir history, their memory and their futureârests on their members right to life, but scholars sometimes pay too little attention to assaults on the cultural identities of such groups which often precede physical attacks.
âPlundered Cultures, Stolen Heritageââ Concordia Universityâs contribution to Canadaâs year of Holocaust Remembrance leadershipâ begins the task of filling that gap and integrating our knowledge. Leading experts on the experiences of cultural destruction and mass atrocities suffered by the First Nations, Armenian and Jewish peoples are assembling to discuss the motives of the perpetrators of these assaults, their impact,
and the significance these attacks pose for restitution and reconciliation today.
âPlundered Cultures, Stolen Heritageâ opens a key chapter in multidisciplinary human rights studies integrating research on history, cultural studies and the memory of atrocity. Rather than a competition of suffering between groups, it signifies the determination of scholars to learn from the shared experiences of First Nations, Armenian and Jewish groups for the sake of
all groups confronting crimes against humanity and genocides intended to destroy their national existence."
No part of this image may be used without written permission of Free Our People. All Rights Reserved. ©2006 Free Our People
Former UN weapon inspector Scott Ritter on Judging Freedom - NATO peace conference, Putin's peace proposal and visit to North Korea
www.youtube.com/live/Pqp7DdoiryI
Funny this Wall Street Journal article below doesn't mention a word about the various U.S. ceasefire veto at the UN nor the veto on the Palestinians' UN full membership application. Neither does it mention Netanyahu's insistence to destroy the Hamas, something even the Israeli Defense Force has publicly announced it's not achievable as the Hamas is an ideology.
The best way to end the war and the genocide is for the U.S. to stop supplying any weapons to Israel, period.
www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/america-is-running-out-of-op...
America Is Running Out of Options in the Gaza War
WASHINGTON (WSJ)—When war erupted in Gaza last year, the Biden administration hoped to keep the conflict short, stay closely aligned with Israel and stem the war’s spread to Lebanon and other parts of the Middle East.
Eight months later, achieving those goals is proving increasingly difficult for the White House, highlighting a political vulnerability for President Biden ahead of his face-to-face debate against the presumed Republican nominee, Donald Trump, on Thursday.
U.S.-led talks on a cease-fire to halt the war and free hostages held by Hamas have all but collapsed. Attacks by Hezbollah across Israel’s northern border have intensified, raising the Biden administration’s fears of a full-fledged conflict. And the White House and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have traded accusations over whether the U.S. has slowed arms deliveries.
The strains underscore Biden’s challenge of achieving a foreign-policy win ahead of the November U.S. presidential election, a win that would require agreement from warring parties operating under a very different timeline.
The Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar has shown little interest in concluding a swift cease-fire, and Netanyahu’s opposition to a Palestinian state has sidelined the Biden administration’s broader strategy for the region, including stabilizing a postwar Gaza.
Eventually the leaders will tire of war and favor a deal, but not as quickly as Biden hopes. “Their clocks are not synchronized with Biden’s,” said Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “They are much more in line with one another, and they are ticking much more slowly.”
Biden has tried to strike a balance between supplying Israel with arms while criticizing a military operation that has killed, according to local health authorities, roughly 38,000 Palestinians in Gaza, many of them women and children. That figure doesn’t distinguish between civilians and militants.
U.S. officials have touted the deliveries of food aid to the Gaza Strip, and its pressure on Israel to scale back a planned assault on the Hamas stronghold of Rafah so that it used fewer troops and is employing smaller munitions.
But acrimony with the Israeli leader recently spilled into the public, when Netanyahu aired a video message in English claiming the U.S. was withholding weapons from Israel. The Israeli prime minister doubled down on the complaints in an interview published Friday by the online publication Punchbowl News.
“There has been a great slowdown in the provision of the important ammunition and weapons,” Netanyahu said.
U.S. officials said Friday that they were mystified by Netanyahu’s comments. “There are no bottlenecks,” Matthew Miller, the State Department spokesperson, said Thursday.
Current and former U.S. officials said Netanyahu’s comments appeared to be driven by Israeli political calculations and insisted that the administration hasn’t delayed any weapons, except for a shipment of 2,000-pound bombs the White House has said is under review because of concerns over civilian casualties in Gaza.
Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli diplomat, said that the prime minister’s behavior is part of a pattern of instigating spats and confrontations with the administration to show he is standing up to the U.S. “This is 100% manufactured,” Pinkas said.
The shipment of 2,000-pound bombs was held up in May in the hope of forcing Israel to rethink its plans for attacking Hamas fighters in Rafah. Since then, Israel has retooled its plan for a two-division sweep through Rafah and has instead concentrated on sealing the border between Egypt and Gaza, conducting smaller-scale ground operations in the city and using smaller munitions in its airstrikes.
The White House fears that sustained fighting in Gaza could lead to a spread of the war to Lebanon. Israel and Iranian-backed Hezbollah fighters have been exchanging tit-for-tat fire over the Lebanese borders since Oct. 7, when Hamas-led militants launched an attack from Gaza on Israel that killed 1,200 people, most of them Israeli civilians.
Biden’s proposed cease-fire plan in Gaza is the best way to head off a wider confrontation, according to U.S. officials. The plan would start with a temporary cease-fire and an exchange of Hamas’s hostages for prisoners held by Israel, followed by a permanent end of hostilities and an influx of aid and reconstruction money to Gaza.
While Netanyahu has said he favors the initial cease-fire plan put forward by Biden, the Israeli prime minister has yet to outline a workable blueprint for the long-term governance of Gaza, focusing instead on the military destruction of Hamas.
The Biden administration has called for revitalizing the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority in hopes that it can also administer the Gaza Strip once the Israel-Hamas war ends, should Israel be persuaded to accept a Palestinian state. But the Ramallah-based government is on the verge of financial collapse, in part because of a suspension of Israeli tax revenue after the Oct. 7 attacks.
Khaled Elgindy, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, said that both Netanyahu and Sinwar are paying lip service to favoring a cease-fire, but that both in fact gain a political advantage from the war.
Sinwar, he said, has seen Hamas’s popularity rise dramatically throughout the Arab world, despite the high level of Palestinian civilian casualties brought about by the war. Netanyahu’s ratings have been buffeted in Israel, and he is danger of being ousted after any peace deal, Elgindy said.
“Netanyahu would love nothing more than to have cease-fire talks drag out forever so that he can stay in power,” Elgindy said. “Because the moment that this war ends, the clock starts ticking to the end of his term.”
In public, the U.S. has blamed Hamas roundly for blocking the cease-fire and causing more loss of life in Gaza. But neither Biden nor his Arab partners have been able to exert any meaningful pressure on Hamas.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said that Netanyahu is committed to the Gaza cease-fire plan, and that if it doesn’t progress Hamas will be to blame. The onus, Blinken said after meeting with the Israeli prime minister, was on “one guy” hiding “10 stories underground in Gaza” to cast the deciding vote, referring to Sinwar.
David Satterfield, who until April served as U.S. special envoy to the Middle East for humanitarian issues, told a recent online event hosted by the Carnegie endowment that obstacles to a peace deal are the worst he has seen in 45 years. One difficulty, he said, is that the respective parties to the conflict, Israel and Hamas, aren’t worried so much about scoring political tangible gains in negotiations as about their own existence.
“This is a fundamental clash of interests, where any kind of calculus that works for all the parties involved—and one of those parties is a vicious terrorist organization—is very, very difficult to contemplate,” he said.
Write to Alan Cullison at alan.cullison@wsj.com, Michael R. Gordon at michael.gordon@wsj.com and Anat Peled at anat.peled@wsj.com
time.com/6991146/netanyahu-rejects-permanent-ceasefire-is...
Netanyahu Rejects Permanent Gaza Ceasefire, in Blow to U.S. Backed Proposal
JUNE 24, 2024 7:29 AM EDT
TEL AVIV, Israel — The viability of a U.S.-backed proposal to wind down the 8-month-long war in Gaza was cast into doubt on Monday after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would only be willing to agree to a “partial” cease-fire deal that would not end the war, comments that sparked an uproar from families of hostages held by Hamas.
In an interview broadcast late Sunday on Israeli Channel 14, a conservative, pro-Netanyahu station, the Israeli leader said he was “prepared to make a partial deal -- this is no secret — that will return to us some of the people,” referring to the roughly 120 hostages still held in the Gaza Strip. “But we are committed to continuing the war after a pause, in order to complete the goal of eliminating Hamas. I’m not willing to give up on that.”
This is an old shot from January. These geese are, I think, Brent geese. Black and white, although the details aren't really visible here. The castle on the hill is Dryslwyn castle, which can be seen elsewhere in my stream.
Myoe was a monk whom ate some mushrooms picked by a novice monk. The novice monk did not realize that the mushrooms he’d picked were psychotropic poisonous. Myoe was then assaulted by a mirage of illusion. Myoe, in search of the root to the illusion he experienced, found only deeper illusion in that the mushrooms were in themselves unreal and without finite existence.
Relatedly, Zhuangzhi awoke from a dream where there was no Zhuangzhi, but that he was rather a butterfly. Upon awakening he couldn’t be sure whether he was a man whom dreamed he was a butterfly or now a butterfly dreaming himself to be a man. Through the chrysalis of dream he could not be sure whether he was this or that or what was ”reality”.
Language is also not as simple as this or that. A word can mean many different things to many different people. The mushrooms Myoe ingested were similar to language, and Buddhism in the sense that these fabrications are intoxicating, provisionary and yet illusory. They point to the truth but are not truth itself. They act as a door, both a barrier and the opening to truth.
In this meditation, Myoe dreams himself to be Zhuangzhi, having a dream within a dream. When Zhuangzhi awakens and cannot be sure whether he was a butterfly or man, he was actually neither, but a dream within a dream, simply Sunyata.