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Looking toward the Minster from Lendal in York, Yorkshire, England. 2015
surely there has been a time when you felt you needed an extra hand.
Mercer Gardens
No. Harris County Texas
SOOC
GBRf Class 66 No. 66746 ‘Royal Scotsman’ heads the 20:45 (1M16) Inverness – Euston Scotrail Caledonian Sleeper service with Class 73 No. 73966 behind it, seen crossing thr sunlit arches Culloden Viaduct at around 20:55 (also known also as the Nairn Viaduct) on the Highland Main Line, east of Inverness.
Maryland Midland GP38-3 2060 was inching up to the last car of outbound train UBHF in Union Bridge.
Soon, the Pride of the MMID would be helping push the heavy train out of town and uphill to Highfield.
It was a glorious sight and sound.
Here is the story that has prompted me to post this photo, though any of you guys who know me know I don’t do this kind of shot, as a rule, but this time . . . yeah, I’m doing it. This is going to be a diatribe for justice, so skip right over this if you want. It’s probably boring to anyone who’d never had to deal with this kind of thing.
This photo was taken back in December of 2002, in Decatur, AL, with a little Sony Mavika, so it's pretty poor quality. This particular branch actually had key lights out on their sign, which prompted us to drive back by for a second disbelieving look and a shot!
Many of you know that Ken & I have been working day and night with our home remodel, trying to get a refinance for the last year – roll some loans together, do a payoff and have money to finish work on the house, since I have not worked since Jamie passed away, and things are tight. We’ve done almost ALL of the work ourselves- like tiling. (HA! in spite of a broken arm AND sitting in grout!) We have persevered; we have worked hard. We finally finished work on the kitchen and on the small bathroom that we totally gutted. FINALLY met the details demanded by the appraiser and the bank. (3rd time’s a charm, right?)
SO! Here’s the deal- almost a year later and we closed on our refinance loan last week. We expected we would be taking a check with us at closing, or at least a deposit slip - instead, we were told No, the bank (“ass Bank”- aka “Compass Bank”) would not release the funds for several days- yes, AFTER Christmas – well how nice . . . SO . . . We requested a direct deposit. Ken checked our account online again yesterday- a deposit had been made but the amount was short by almost $4000!! WTF??!
They have held up our money already, and now the amount is wrong?! Our funds and loans are insignificant to them; they are monumental to us.
Ken emailed and called our bank representative to tell her that the payoff amount was incorrect, which made the deposit to us incorrect. She agreed that it seemed like a large difference and we should check with the closing attorney’s office. Yes, we DID! The closing attorney said the amount deposited was what the bank had sent through them due to a change in one of the figures- that our loan payoffs were more than what was shown, so the deposit amount to us was less. HUH? Our loan payoff amount had NOT changed!!
Are you sensing further scuffling? We were advised to call another lady in another part of the bank. She said she had no idea where the lawyer’s office had gotten the figure. Hmmmm- they got it from the bank! Of course! (Read “ass bank” here!)
Ken checked our account again- checked what the payoff for our loan consolidations showed there- yet a different number appeared as the payoff amount! NO JOKE!
Making a further call to the payoff departmen, Ken was advised that yes, that appeared to be some error “somewhere,” and probably with the attorney’s office . . . Are you getting this? and then this guy gave Ken a 4th and different amount!!
We try to be careful with our money, try to be aware of what goes where and how much it was. Aren’t banks PAID for that sort of thing? Numbers, amounts?
Now, I don’t know about you guys, but if I shorted the bank by $4000, you can bet they would have their money back, collect interest AND double interest in the quickest manner possible! If you were a teller or window clerk at the bank and made a mistake of that size, your job would be in jeopardy. But if they short you, you will have to battle for money that was already YOURS! You will NOT pass GO- you will NOT Collect $100 (or $4000) until the “ass Bank” says you will!
OH! And yes, a correction “of some sort” will be made by the “ass Bank.” Yes, they will cut a check this time and mail it- no direct deposit for errors- even of $4000 worth. And Oh Yeah- it should get to us within three weeks, or please let us know . . . !! You have got to be kidding me! I am sure there will be no "I'm really sorry we don't have our act together" message. No shame in doing a shoddy crappy job at what they are paid to do! Just amazing!
Do you know how much money financial institutions must be making in interest from money they withhold from costumers EVERY day, for a day, a week, 3 weeks? If they are doing it to us, they are doing it to many more people, and though we’re a drop in the bucket, drops add up to streams and rivers and FLOODS, and that adds up to millions of dollars they are stealing from us all!
Know the figures in your accounts, know what documents you sign, what you owe, what you pay, because the “ass Banks” of the world will not hesitate to make the mistake in their favor EVERY time! Be aware, be wary, and be SURE.
I mean, I’m just saying . . .
A dreary and dismal day yielded a bright unit lending a hand. When the original leader of Q149 suffered a mechanical failure just west of Schoolcraft, MI, BNSF 9728 was sent to fill in as a new lead unit. Here, the monster train is cruising west thru the town of Kingsbury, IN on the South Bend Sub.
8/52
I missed a week! Well... just forgot to upload. This will be one of two uploads, now till Saturday. I will revisit this concept at a later date.. it didn't turn out like I imagined but I still like it. Still experimenting and trying to develop a style of my own. Started watching a new tv show on HBO called "The Leftovers". Anybody else check that out?? I'm excited to see where the story is going.
xo B
Appearing at first like abstract forms, reminiscent perhaps of the classic work of Brancusi or Hepworth, Fiona Banner’s five sculptures are scattered around the big public plaza on the riverfront by Tower Bridge. Mysteriously titled Slipstream, Optical, Courier, Klang and Nuptial, the precarious balance and glistening black of these leaning ellipses, imposing spheres and strange cross shapes intrigue and invite closer inspection.
Each form is an accurate three-dimensional albeit vastly enlarged version of a full stop from a variety of commonly used typefaces which lend their names as titles for the sculptures. Though each is proportionate to the others, their expanded scale reveals anomalies latent within an apparently universal and uniform symbol. Like the complexity and beauty of form which unfold only when observed through a microscope, what appears as a miniscule black dot on paper here reveals its intricate and unexpected shape.
If these sculptures are full stops, then we, walking amongst them and the buildings that frame them, become like the missing letters and words of a sentence. Banner gives us in solid form the pause, the silence, the moment we draw breath and reflect. The full stop is both a beginning as well as an end.
Banner’s fascination with the full stop as sign and symbol started in 1997 with a small blue neon work. The following year she created a series of ephemeral white polystyrene full stops (which were shown at the Tate) before she experimented with monumental sizes in bronze for the More London site. The entire body of work is a logical expansion of Banner’s enduring preoccupation with notions of language and text, whether in sound works, drawings or sculptures: ‘…a lot of my earlier work is about how things are expressed or can become manifest through words – how you can visualise passages of time through language.’
Banner first came to national and international attention with her ‘wordscapes’, vast wall-mounted accounts, handwritten, typeset or stencilled on canvas or sheets of paper pasted directly onto a wall?, of iconic films retold obsessively, scene by scene in Banner’s own words. Using a panoramic format that seems to mimic the cinema screen Banner translates actions into words, attempting to find an equivalent in language for the absent image. Deliberately hindering easy legibility her relentlessly long lines, unbroken by paragraphs or chapters, turn into an almost impenetrably solid abstract block. Taking classic films like Lawrence of Arabia, French Connection or Apocalypse Now, as well as, more recently, porno-movies as her source material, Banner’s transcriptions are always dead-pan and seemingly objective. In each case, whether action movie or porno flick, the language she deploys is of the kind spoken in the film, avoiding any personal viewpoint or commentary. Banner described her approach: ‘It’s an attempt at a very fair account of exceedingly biased subject matter. The whole notion of how things purport to be objective, or how one chooses to interpret fictive things as fact, was a starting point for that project.’2 At the same time, the wordscapes seem to be an experiment about the limits of language, about what is beyond the text and ultimately cannot be said.
Perhaps it was on the basis of this understanding that following the wordscapes, Banner started to make large-scale graphite drawings of full stops, which in turn led to her three-dimensional sculptures. In the drawings, the densely drawn punctuation marks function as both abstract image and black hole.
For the plaza by City Hall, Fiona Banner chose five different type-fonts from her large repertoire that seemed to work particularly well with the surrounding architecture and landscaping. Varying in scale from ….m (Courier) to 3m (Optical) they shift from the intimate to the monumental. The final placing of the Full Stops was only decided after much deliberation, and following a test installation on site with full scale polystyrene models.
All five Full Stops share a particularly tactile surface texture which reveals the process by which they were made. The artist first shaped their form in plaster before they were cast in bronze. Each displays the uneven marks of plaster worked by the artist’s hand. After casting the forms were coated in shiny black paint (the same appropriately, as that of London taxis), giving a highly reflective surface to mirror surrounding buildings and reflect light and water.
Whether nestling amongst trees, by a bench, or fountains, these apparently random works are instantly recognisable as part of the same series. Like a sentence from which the words have been removed, the Full Stops are playful in character, and yet full of pathos. When long shadows double their form on sunny days, their monolithic and almost totemic quality is even further enhanced.