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This site isn’t so much for travel narrative as it is for looking at pictures, so I’ll cut out a full day’s narrative, save for this:
Thursday was close to an eleven hour day of travel to get from Yangshuo to Detian. I spent less than 90 minutes shooting at the falls. From Detian (western part of the province on the Vietnamese border), I had to make my way to Beihai (southern, coastal city on the Gulf of Tonkin). It was, in distance, much shorter than Yangshuo-Detian. However, it turned into a reasonably miserable travel day and took about twelve hours (with about five of those hours spent in a bus station waiting room in Nanning). I got to my hotel in Beihai around 9:30 p.m. on Friday night. (I would stay in the same hotel Sunday night as well.)
The only positive to come from Friday’s travel was on the bus from Detian to Daxin (and on to Nanning). There was a very nice girl traveling with her parents who wanted to practice her English who happened to have visited Beihai. I think she said she was from Guangdong, too. Anyway, what I wanted to do most in Beihai was go to Weizhou Island (Weizhou Dao). She suggested (almost implied it was required) that I needed to book tickets on the ferry to Weizhou Dao in advance, so she helped me and called someone she knew in Beihai to reserve a ticket for me at 8:30 on Saturday morning.
I really didn’t know too much about Weizhou Dao, except that it was listed in Lonely Planet as a place to go. I did try to research it online, too, but couldn’t find too many pictures of the island. I found a few, though, and it was enough to convince me that it was worth going. Besides, Beihai honestly didn’t have too many places I was interested in seeing for two days.
So, I decided before the trip that I would come out and spend the night here on Weizhou Island. That turned out to be about the best decision I made for this trip, as it was much better than I was expecting from the lack of information I could find about the place.
I fell in love with this island. The ride across the Gulf of Tonkin takes a little over an hour on a high-speed boat. The cost is 150 RMB, which also includes admission to the island. The island is the remnants of a volcano, I believe, and is a reasonably circular island with a total area of 25-30 square kilometers. So…it’s small.
The port at Weizhou Dao is on the northwest corner of the island. The main city (that is to say the one place where there’s a main street running along the water for about 1 km) is called Nanwan (South Bay). To get around the island, you can either walk, rent a bike, or take a san lun che (tuk tuk). San lun che is the easiest. Depending on where you want to go on the island, it costs between 20 and 40 RMB to go from place to place. There are cars on the island, and people (though not many) do live here year-round, but for public transportation, those are your options, and they’re more than enough.
I think I paid 30 RMB to a guy to get me down to Nanwan. I hadn’t booked anything in advance (though I tried), so went to the first place that Lonely Planet mentioned: Piggybar. This was a very cheap place and as close to a dive as any place I’ve stayed in China.
This was the tropics in June, so the weather was sweltering. It turns out that I wouldn’t be alone in my room. I stopped counting how many cockroaches I killed somewhere after five or so. Big-sized suckers, too. But, that would be later in the day. At night, the electricity constantly cut out. This was only a slight annoyance because it would turn the air conditioner off. Sleeping wasn’t nearly as uncomfortable as I thought it would be. I also stopped counting how many times the power would go off. (It was never for more than 5 minutes, though.) I certainly don’t fault the Piggybar for this. The power apparently just goes out around Nanwan like that.
I did enjoy the main drag in Nanwan. There are a lot of neat little bars and restaurants (and what seemed like a much nicer hotel about midway along the road). I don’t remember the name of the place, but if I make it back there, I’d definitely stay at that place instead.
After I checked into my room in the morning, I took stock of things, thought the view in the south bay was pretty nice, and headed out for a walk towards the rest of the main drag. As this is an island, almost all restaurants have fresh seafood (which, for anyone who knows me, isn’t appealing…but seafood lovers would be in heaven here). I stopped at a restaurant and grabbed an early lunch of generic non-seafood Chinese food. It was so generic that it was forgettable. Maybe it was huntun, which is like a small dumpling soup. I really don’t remember.
While sitting there in the open-air shade enjoying the view of the sea, three college girls came along on bikes they rented and joined me. They, too, were from Guangdong if I remember correctly. I was beginning to think everyone was from Guangdong, but I know better than that. At any rate, they were friendly and we were talking about what to do around the island.
For me, the most interesting place to photograph was going to be the Catholic church. There are two churches on the island – one Catholic (founded by the French), one protestant (founded by Germans, I believe), both around 100 years old, if not a little older. Of the two, the Catholic church is the much more photogenic of the two, so that was what I was most looking forward to shooting, and that was the first place I was going to head via san lun che. It cost 40 RMB to get there. The girls had bikes, so I told them to try to get there – it was on the opposite side of the island…somewhere in the northeast part, but not on the water. They didn’t quite make it, but no worries. I saw them later, and they told me they did eventually get to it.
I wandered around the church and church grounds, and also the streets in front of it for an hour or so in the early afternoon. The church itself was quiet and peaceful and the street in front of it was lively with lots of vendors.
Besides the church, there are a lot of places with natural beauty on this island. As it’s created from a volcano, there are a lot of fascinating rock formations, but those tend to shoot best in lower light closer to sunrise or sunset. There’s even another small island nearby that you can apparently get boat rides to. While near the church, I was enjoying a map of the island with its scenic spots and their flowery names. I decided to go to one that they called Drippy Red Screen. (After all, who doesn’t want to see a screen that drips like blood?)
Really, it’s called that because it’s a dark-colored rock that, close to sunset, apparently turns a vibrant red. I figured, if this is a good place to see a sunset over the sea, I’m there. I left the church around 3:00, and paid a guy another 40 RMB to wheel me back across to the southwest corner of the island.
Though it was far from sunset, I was all too happy to go rent an umbrella and wooden beach chair for 30 RMB with a “front row view” of the sunset. This was vacation, after all, and what better way to spend it than relaxing next to a beach, people watching. At first, there weren’t too many people around. Just a few groups of entrepreneurs like these who took a little area of the beach and rented the umbrellas/chairs. There were also people who you could pay to take you around on jet skis and things like that. Other than that, just sit back, enjoy a drink, and watch boats drift by in seemingly slow motion. This was a good afternoon.
After a few hours, as it got closer to sunset, the tide started to roll out, though, and my front row view began to take more and more of a back seat. Not to umbrellas, but just to people crowding the view. During the 4 or so hours that I was at the beach here, I did manage to take a walk down the way to the Drippy (Not So) Red Screen closer to sunset to see that it wasn’t quite what they hyped it up to be. (That’s a shock…) I didn’t wander more because, as a lone traveler, I was worried they might sell my spot to someone else, even though I said I’d be back. They didn’t, though, and I returned to my umbrella for a few minutes more. There came a tipping point, though – before sunset – when I made the decision that the sunset wasn’t shaping up to be so spectacular that it would warrant being in this crowded an area, so I eventually abandoned hopes of getting jaw-dropping sunset pictures and made my way back to Nanwan before the rest of the crowd did the same. At least this san lun che would only cost 20 RMB, since Nanwan was barely a 10-15 minute ride away.
Back on Nanwan’s main drag, I had the driver drop me in front of the hotel, but I wasn’t ready to go in. I just wanted to walk along the main road there, and eventually discovered all of these unique indoor-outdoor bars. I stopped and had dinner (fried rice, if I remember) and a mango smoothie that was so good that I had a second one in this neat little restaurant where tourists write their memories on the walls.
After that, I continued down the road – all this as the sunset was turning the sky to a deep blue (and I was, after all, quite pleased with what I was able to see here) – and stopped at another bar for a drink. I had a mojito that was honestly forgettable. It tasted more like carbonated soda water than anything. Not seeing much to do besides drink myself into oblivion (which I don’t care to do), I went back out and enjoyed the last of the day’s light before walking back towards the Piggybar. On the way back, I bumped into my college friends from earlier, who told me they’d enjoyed the island, and they did get to the church after all. On the way back is when the first of the power “flickers” happened with electricity dropping on the island.
Without much to do in my hotel room, I tried to stay as comfortable as possible with the air conditioning that continued to go off. It wasn’t as hard to fall asleep as I imagined, and I fell asleep early, which also gave me an early start the next morning for sunrise over the bay.
After checking out of the hotel, still very early (around 8:00), I set off with my backpack and bag and started the walk uphill. My only goal for Sunday morning on the island was to go to the protestant church and photograph there before heading to the dock and making my way back to Beihai.
It was a nice little walk as the road away from Nanwan does a zigzag straight uphill to give a nice view of the town and bay. Also, like western Guangxi, Weizhou Dao’s “countryside” is nothing but banana farms, which was quite nice to see. I shot there a little bit and, when I tired of walking after an hour or so, flagged down a san lun che and paid 30 RMB for him to take me to the protestant church, then to the dock.
The protestant church, unlike the Catholic one, had a 10 RMB admission, and wasn’t nearly as interesting (for me, at least) as the more famous Catholic church. It was nice, however, and I was glad to see it as my “farewell” to the island. From there, I went to the dock and got a ticket for the first available boat back to Beihai.
I really enjoyed my day and night here on Weizhou Dao and was looking forward to one last, relaxing evening in Beihai before getting back to the daily tedium of Chengdu. But first, one more night to go…
"Who strive - you don't know how the others strive
To paint a little thing like that you smeared
Carelessly passing with your robes afloat,-
Yet do much less, so much less, Someone says,
(I know his name, no matter) - so much less!
Well, less is more, Lucrezia."
Andrea del Sarto - 1855
Soo continues to hack it's way thru former Milwaukee Road territory in Oconomowoc in May of 1994. The city now has a single track line after 92 years of double track operations here. To me, the ROW looks like it is literally sick.....missing rails, ties 'thrown up' from the westbound main.....
Up next, the crossing guard shack will come down, the line side poles will be chopped, and all crossing gates replaced.
Today it's all cookie-cutter rubber stamped photocopied repetition here. Most of our world is turning into this 'duplication' for reasons many of us already know.
We all need to remember that in this world of conformity and loss of uniqueness in what we aim our lens at, that >>we<< still posses character and individuality on the other side of the camera that no corporation can ever take away....
A less usual use of pantechnicon vans was for baggage transportation by tour operators. Two such London-based companies were Grey-Green and Wallace Arnold’s Evan Evans subsidiary. This fictional Bedford TK carries branding for the latter. Wallace Arnold acquired Evan Evans Tours in 1969. The Evan Evans name has outlived Wallace Arnold, although I’m uncertain whether this is the same or a related business (15-Dec-24).
This image is protected by copyright and it would be an offence punishable by law to publish it elsewhere without prior written permission. Follow the link below for additional information about my Flickr images, including an explanation of the terms 'fiction', 'digital representation' and 'digitally-coloured':
A less-than-perfect photo of the staged collision of two locomotives at Warner Park in 1913. The spectacular event was part of the Grand Army of the Union Encampment held in Chattanooga in 1913. From the Charles Rountree Evans manuscript collection, Acc 13.
engaging in less frivolity than usual--this is one of the only ones I have found without my mother in law in the photo
Fish, any of approximately 34,000 species of vertebrate animals (phylum Chordata) found in the fresh and salt waters of the world. Living species range from the primitive jawless lampreys and hagfishes through the cartilaginous sharks, skates, and rays to the abundant and diverse bony fishes. Most fish species are cold-blooded; however, one species, the opah (Lampris guttatus), is warm-blooded.
The term fish is applied to a variety of vertebrates of several evolutionary lines. It describes a life-form rather than a taxonomic group. As members of the phylum Chordata, fish share certain features with other vertebrates. These features are gill slits at some point in the life cycle, a notochord, or skeletal supporting rod, a dorsal hollow nerve cord, and a tail. Living fishes represent some five classes, which are as distinct from one another as are the four classes of familiar air-breathing animals—amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals. For example, the jawless fishes (Agnatha) have gills in pouches and lack limb girdles. Extant agnathans are the lampreys and the hagfishes. As the name implies, the skeletons of fishes of the class Chondrichthyes (from chondr, “cartilage,” and ichthyes, “fish”) are made entirely of cartilage. Modern fish of this class lack a swim bladder, and their scales and teeth are made up of the same placoid material. Sharks, skates, and rays are examples of cartilaginous fishes. The bony fishes are by far the largest class. Examples range from the tiny seahorse to the 450-kg (1,000-pound) blue marlin, from the flattened soles and flounders to the boxy puffers and ocean sunfishes. Unlike the scales of the cartilaginous fishes, those of bony fishes, when present, grow throughout life and are made up of thin overlapping plates of bone. Bony fishes also have an operculum that covers the gill slits.
The study of fishes, the science of ichthyology, is of broad importance. Fishes are of interest to humans for many reasons, the most important being their relationship with and dependence on the environment. A more obvious reason for interest in fishes is their role as a moderate but important part of the world’s food supply. This resource, once thought unlimited, is now realized to be finite and in delicate balance with the biological, chemical, and physical factors of the aquatic environment. Overfishing, pollution, and alteration of the environment are the chief enemies of proper fisheries management, both in fresh waters and in the ocean. (For a detailed discussion of the technology and economics of fisheries, see commercial fishing.) Another practical reason for studying fishes is their use in disease control. As predators on mosquito larvae, they help curb malaria and other mosquito-borne diseases.
Fishes are valuable laboratory animals in many aspects of medical and biological research. For example, the readiness of many fishes to acclimate to captivity has allowed biologists to study behaviour, physiology, and even ecology under relatively natural conditions. Fishes have been especially important in the study of animal behaviour, where research on fishes has provided a broad base for the understanding of the more flexible behaviour of the higher vertebrates. The zebra fish is used as a model in studies of gene expression.
There are aesthetic and recreational reasons for an interest in fishes. Millions of people keep live fishes in home aquariums for the simple pleasure of observing the beauty and behaviour of animals otherwise unfamiliar to them. Aquarium fishes provide a personal challenge to many aquarists, allowing them to test their ability to keep a small section of the natural environment in their homes. Sportfishing is another way of enjoying the natural environment, also indulged in by millions of people every year. Interest in aquarium fishes and sportfishing supports multimillion-dollar industries throughout the world.
Fishes have been in existence for more than 450 million years, during which time they have evolved repeatedly to fit into almost every conceivable type of aquatic habitat. In a sense, land vertebrates are simply highly modified fishes: when fishes colonized the land habitat, they became tetrapod (four-legged) land vertebrates. The popular conception of a fish as a slippery, streamlined aquatic animal that possesses fins and breathes by gills applies to many fishes, but far more fishes deviate from that conception than conform to it. For example, the body is elongate in many forms and greatly shortened in others; the body is flattened in some (principally in bottom-dwelling fishes) and laterally compressed in many others; the fins may be elaborately extended, forming intricate shapes, or they may be reduced or even lost; and the positions of the mouth, eyes, nostrils, and gill openings vary widely. Air breathers have appeared in several evolutionary lines.
Many fishes are cryptically coloured and shaped, closely matching their respective environments; others are among the most brilliantly coloured of all organisms, with a wide range of hues, often of striking intensity, on a single individual. The brilliance of pigments may be enhanced by the surface structure of the fish, so that it almost seems to glow. A number of unrelated fishes have actual light-producing organs. Many fishes are able to alter their coloration—some for the purpose of camouflage, others for the enhancement of behavioral signals.
Fishes range in adult length from less than 10 mm (0.4 inch) to more than 20 metres (60 feet) and in weight from about 1.5 grams (less than 0.06 ounce) to many thousands of kilograms. Some live in shallow thermal springs at temperatures slightly above 42 °C (100 °F), others in cold Arctic seas a few degrees below 0 °C (32 °F) or in cold deep waters more than 4,000 metres (13,100 feet) beneath the ocean surface. The structural and, especially, the physiological adaptations for life at such extremes are relatively poorly known and provide the scientifically curious with great incentive for study.
Almost all natural bodies of water bear fish life, the exceptions being very hot thermal ponds and extremely salt-alkaline lakes, such as the Dead Sea in Asia and the Great Salt Lake in North America. The present distribution of fishes is a result of the geological history and development of Earth as well as the ability of fishes to undergo evolutionary change and to adapt to the available habitats. Fishes may be seen to be distributed according to habitat and according to geographical area. Major habitat differences are marine and freshwater. For the most part, the fishes in a marine habitat differ from those in a freshwater habitat, even in adjacent areas, but some, such as the salmon, migrate from one to the other. The freshwater habitats may be seen to be of many kinds. Fishes found in mountain torrents, Arctic lakes, tropical lakes, temperate streams, and tropical rivers will all differ from each other, both in obvious gross structure and in physiological attributes. Even in closely adjacent habitats where, for example, a tropical mountain torrent enters a lowland stream, the fish fauna will differ. The marine habitats can be divided into deep ocean floors (benthic), mid-water oceanic (bathypelagic), surface oceanic (pelagic), rocky coast, sandy coast, muddy shores, bays, estuaries, and others. Also, for example, rocky coastal shores in tropical and temperate regions will have different fish faunas, even when such habitats occur along the same coastline.
Although much is known about the present geographical distribution of fishes, far less is known about how that distribution came about. Many parts of the fish fauna of the fresh waters of North America and Eurasia are related and undoubtedly have a common origin. The faunas of Africa and South America are related, extremely old, and probably an expression of the drifting apart of the two continents. The fauna of southern Asia is related to that of Central Asia, and some of it appears to have entered Africa. The extremely large shore-fish faunas of the Indian and tropical Pacific oceans comprise a related complex, but the tropical shore fauna of the Atlantic, although containing Indo-Pacific components, is relatively limited and probably younger. The Arctic and Antarctic marine faunas are quite different from each other. The shore fauna of the North Pacific is quite distinct, and that of the North Atlantic more limited and probably younger. Pelagic oceanic fishes, especially those in deep waters, are similar the world over, showing little geographical isolation in terms of family groups. The deep oceanic habitat is very much the same throughout the world, but species differences do exist, showing geographical areas determined by oceanic currents and water masses.
All aspects of the life of a fish are closely correlated with adaptation to the total environment, physical, chemical, and biological. In studies, all the interdependent aspects of fish, such as behaviour, locomotion, reproduction, and physical and physiological characteristics, must be taken into account.
Correlated with their adaptation to an extremely wide variety of habitats is the extremely wide variety of life cycles that fishes display. The great majority hatch from relatively small eggs a few days to several weeks or more after the eggs are scattered in the water. Newly hatched young are still partially undeveloped and are called larvae until body structures such as fins, skeleton, and some organs are fully formed. Larval life is often very short, usually less than a few weeks, but it can be very long, some lampreys continuing as larvae for at least five years. Young and larval fishes, before reaching sexual maturity, must grow considerably, and their small size and other factors often dictate that they live in a habitat different than that of the adults. For example, most tropical marine shore fishes have pelagic larvae. Larval food also is different, and larval fishes often live in shallow waters, where they may be less exposed to predators.
After a fish reaches adult size, the length of its life is subject to many factors, such as innate rates of aging, predation pressure, and the nature of the local climate. The longevity of a species in the protected environment of an aquarium may have nothing to do with how long members of that species live in the wild. Many small fishes live only one to three years at the most. In some species, however, individuals may live as long as 10 or 20 or even 100 years.
Fish behaviour is a complicated and varied subject. As in almost all animals with a central nervous system, the nature of a response of an individual fish to stimuli from its environment depends upon the inherited characteristics of its nervous system, on what it has learned from past experience, and on the nature of the stimuli. Compared with the variety of human responses, however, that of a fish is stereotyped, not subject to much modification by “thought” or learning, and investigators must guard against anthropomorphic interpretations of fish behaviour.
Fishes perceive the world around them by the usual senses of sight, smell, hearing, touch, and taste and by special lateral line water-current detectors. In the few fishes that generate electric fields, a process that might best be called electrolocation aids in perception. One or another of these senses often is emphasized at the expense of others, depending upon the fish’s other adaptations. In fishes with large eyes, the sense of smell may be reduced; others, with small eyes, hunt and feed primarily by smell (such as some eels).
Specialized behaviour is primarily concerned with the three most important activities in the fish’s life: feeding, reproduction, and escape from enemies. Schooling behaviour of sardines on the high seas, for instance, is largely a protective device to avoid enemies, but it is also associated with and modified by their breeding and feeding requirements. Predatory fishes are often solitary, lying in wait to dart suddenly after their prey, a kind of locomotion impossible for beaked parrot fishes, which feed on coral, swimming in small groups from one coral head to the next. In addition, some predatory fishes that inhabit pelagic environments, such as tunas, often school.
Sleep in fishes, all of which lack true eyelids, consists of a seemingly listless state in which the fish maintains its balance but moves slowly. If attacked or disturbed, most can dart away. A few kinds of fishes lie on the bottom to sleep. Most catfishes, some loaches, and some eels and electric fishes are strictly nocturnal, being active and hunting for food during the night and retiring during the day to holes, thick vegetation, or other protective parts of the environment.
Communication between members of a species or between members of two or more species often is extremely important, especially in breeding behaviour (see below Reproduction). The mode of communication may be visual, as between the small so-called cleaner fish and a large fish of a very different species. The larger fish often allows the cleaner to enter its mouth to remove gill parasites. The cleaner is recognized by its distinctive colour and actions and therefore is not eaten, even if the larger fish is normally a predator. Communication is often chemical, signals being sent by specific chemicals called pheromones.
Many fishes have a streamlined body and swim freely in open water. Fish locomotion is closely correlated with habitat and ecological niche (the general position of the animal to its environment).
Many fishes in both marine and fresh waters swim at the surface and have mouths adapted to feed best (and sometimes only) at the surface. Often such fishes are long and slender, able to dart at surface insects or at other surface fishes and in turn to dart away from predators; needlefishes, halfbeaks, and topminnows (such as killifish and mosquito fish) are good examples. Oceanic flying fishes escape their predators by gathering speed above the water surface, with the lower lobe of the tail providing thrust in the water. They then glide hundreds of yards on enlarged, winglike pectoral and pelvic fins. South American freshwater flying fishes escape their enemies by jumping and propelling their strongly keeled bodies out of the water.
So-called mid-water swimmers, the most common type of fish, are of many kinds and live in many habitats. The powerful fusiform tunas and the trouts, for example, are adapted for strong, fast swimming, the tunas to capture prey speedily in the open ocean and the trouts to cope with the swift currents of streams and rivers. The trout body form is well adapted to many habitats. Fishes that live in relatively quiet waters such as bays or lake shores or slow rivers usually are not strong, fast swimmers but are capable of short, quick bursts of speed to escape a predator. Many of these fishes have their sides flattened, examples being the sunfish and the freshwater angelfish of aquarists. Fish associated with the bottom or substrate usually are slow swimmers. Open-water plankton-feeding fishes almost always remain fusiform and are capable of rapid, strong movement (for example, sardines and herrings of the open ocean and also many small minnows of streams and lakes).
Bottom-living fishes are of many kinds and have undergone many types of modification of their body shape and swimming habits. Rays, which evolved from strong-swimming mid-water sharks, usually stay close to the bottom and move by undulating their large pectoral fins. Flounders live in a similar habitat and move over the bottom by undulating the entire body. Many bottom fishes dart from place to place, resting on the bottom between movements, a motion common in gobies. One goby relative, the mudskipper, has taken to living at the edge of pools along the shore of muddy mangrove swamps. It escapes its enemies by flipping rapidly over the mud, out of the water. Some catfishes, synbranchid eels, the so-called climbing perch, and a few other fishes venture out over damp ground to find more promising waters than those that they left. They move by wriggling their bodies, sometimes using strong pectoral fins; most have accessory air-breathing organs. Many bottom-dwelling fishes live in mud holes or rocky crevices. Marine eels and gobies commonly are found in such habitats and for the most part venture far beyond their cavelike homes. Some bottom dwellers, such as the clingfishes (Gobiesocidae), have developed powerful adhesive disks that enable them to remain in place on the substrate in areas such as rocky coasts, where the action of the waves is great.
The methods of reproduction in fishes are varied, but most fishes lay a large number of small eggs, fertilized and scattered outside of the body. The eggs of pelagic fishes usually remain suspended in the open water. Many shore and freshwater fishes lay eggs on the bottom or among plants. Some have adhesive eggs. The mortality of the young and especially of the eggs is very high, and often only a few individuals grow to maturity out of hundreds, thousands, and in some cases millions of eggs laid.
Males produce sperm, usually as a milky white substance called milt, in two (sometimes one) testes within the body cavity. In bony fishes a sperm duct leads from each testis to a urogenital opening behind the vent or anus. In sharks and rays and in cyclostomes the duct leads to a cloaca. Sometimes the pelvic fins are modified to help transmit the milt to the eggs at the female’s vent or on the substrate where the female has placed them. Sometimes accessory organs are used to fertilize females internally—for example, the claspers of many sharks and rays.
In the females the eggs are formed in two ovaries (sometimes only one) and pass through the ovaries to the urogenital opening and to the outside. In some fishes the eggs are fertilized internally but are shed before development takes place. Members of about a dozen families each of bony fishes (teleosts) and sharks bear live young. Many skates and rays also bear live young. In some bony fishes the eggs simply develop within the female, the young emerging when the eggs hatch (ovoviviparous). Others develop within the ovary and are nourished by ovarian tissues after hatching (viviparous). There are also other methods utilized by fishes to nourish young within the female. In all live-bearers the young are born at a relatively large size and are few in number. In one family of primarily marine fishes, the surfperches from the Pacific coast of North America, Japan, and Korea, the males of at least one species are born sexually mature, although they are not fully grown.
Some fishes are hermaphroditic—an individual producing both sperm and eggs, usually at different stages of its life. Self-fertilization, however, is probably rare.
Successful reproduction and, in many cases, defense of the eggs and the young are assured by rather stereotypical but often elaborate courtship and parental behaviour, either by the male or the female or both. Some fishes prepare nests by hollowing out depressions in the sand bottom (cichlids, for example), build nests with plant materials and sticky threads excreted by the kidneys (sticklebacks), or blow a cluster of mucus-covered bubbles at the water surface (gouramis). The eggs are laid in these structures. Some varieties of cichlids and catfishes incubate eggs in their mouths.
Some fishes, such as salmon, undergo long migrations from the ocean and up large rivers to spawn in the gravel beds where they themselves hatched (anadromous fishes). Some, such as the freshwater eels (family Anguillidae), live and grow to maturity in fresh water and migrate to the sea to spawn (catadromous fishes). Other fishes undertake shorter migrations from lakes into streams, within the ocean, or enter spawning habitats that they do not ordinarily occupy in other ways.
The basic structure and function of the fish body are similar to those of all other vertebrates. The usual four types of tissues are present: surface or epithelial, connective (bone, cartilage, and fibrous tissues, as well as their derivative, blood), nerve, and muscle tissues. In addition, the fish’s organs and organ systems parallel those of other vertebrates.
The typical fish body is streamlined and spindle-shaped, with an anterior head, a gill apparatus, and a heart, the latter lying in the midline just below the gill chamber. The body cavity, containing the vital organs, is situated behind the head in the lower anterior part of the body. The anus usually marks the posterior termination of the body cavity and most often occurs just in front of the base of the anal fin. The spinal cord and vertebral column continue from the posterior part of the head to the base of the tail fin, passing dorsal to the body cavity and through the caudal (tail) region behind the body cavity. Most of the body is of muscular tissue, a high proportion of which is necessitated by swimming. In the course of evolution this basic body plan has been modified repeatedly into the many varieties of fish shapes that exist today.
The skeleton forms an integral part of the fish’s locomotion system, as well as serving to protect vital parts. The internal skeleton consists of the skull bones (except for the roofing bones of the head, which are really part of the external skeleton), the vertebral column, and the fin supports (fin rays). The fin supports are derived from the external skeleton but will be treated here because of their close functional relationship to the internal skeleton. The internal skeleton of cyclostomes, sharks, and rays is of cartilage; that of many fossil groups and some primitive living fishes is mostly of cartilage but may include some bone. In place of the vertebral column, the earliest vertebrates had a fully developed notochord, a flexible stiff rod of viscous cells surrounded by a strong fibrous sheath. During the evolution of modern fishes the rod was replaced in part by cartilage and then by ossified cartilage. Sharks and rays retain a cartilaginous vertebral column; bony fishes have spool-shaped vertebrae that in the more primitive living forms only partially replace the notochord. The skull, including the gill arches and jaws of bony fishes, is fully, or at least partially, ossified. That of sharks and rays remains cartilaginous, at times partially replaced by calcium deposits but never by true bone.
The supportive elements of the fins (basal or radial bones or both) have changed greatly during fish evolution. Some of these changes are described in the section below (Evolution and paleontology). Most fishes possess a single dorsal fin on the midline of the back. Many have two and a few have three dorsal fins. The other fins are the single tail and anal fins and paired pelvic and pectoral fins. A small fin, the adipose fin, with hairlike fin rays, occurs in many of the relatively primitive teleosts (such as trout) on the back near the base of the caudal fin.
The skin of a fish must serve many functions. It aids in maintaining the osmotic balance, provides physical protection for the body, is the site of coloration, contains sensory receptors, and, in some fishes, functions in respiration. Mucous glands, which aid in maintaining the water balance and offer protection from bacteria, are extremely numerous in fish skin, especially in cyclostomes and teleosts. Since mucous glands are present in the modern lampreys, it is reasonable to assume that they were present in primitive fishes, such as the ancient Silurian and Devonian agnathans. Protection from abrasion and predation is another function of the fish skin, and dermal (skin) bone arose early in fish evolution in response to this need. It is thought that bone first evolved in skin and only later invaded the cartilaginous areas of the fish’s body, to provide additional support and protection. There is some argument as to which came first, cartilage or bone, and fossil evidence does not settle the question. In any event, dermal bone has played an important part in fish evolution and has different characteristics in different groups of fishes. Several groups are characterized at least in part by the kind of bony scales they possess.
Scales have played an important part in the evolution of fishes. Primitive fishes usually had thick bony plates or thick scales in several layers of bone, enamel, and related substances. Modern teleost fishes have scales of bone, which, while still protective, allow much more freedom of motion in the body. A few modern teleosts (some catfishes, sticklebacks, and others) have secondarily acquired bony plates in the skin. Modern and early sharks possessed placoid scales, a relatively primitive type of scale with a toothlike structure, consisting of an outside layer of enamel-like substance (vitrodentine), an inner layer of dentine, and a pulp cavity containing nerves and blood vessels. Primitive bony fishes had thick scales of either the ganoid or the cosmoid type. Cosmoid scales have a hard, enamel-like outer layer, an inner layer of cosmine (a form of dentine), and then a layer of vascular bone (isopedine). In ganoid scales the hard outer layer is different chemically and is called ganoin. Under this is a cosminelike layer and then a vascular bony layer. The thin, translucent bony scales of modern fishes, called cycloid and ctenoid (the latter distinguished by serrations at the edges), lack enameloid and dentine layers.
Skin has several other functions in fishes. It is well supplied with nerve endings and presumably receives tactile, thermal, and pain stimuli. Skin is also well supplied with blood vessels. Some fishes breathe in part through the skin, by the exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide between the surrounding water and numerous small blood vessels near the skin surface.
Skin serves as protection through the control of coloration. Fishes exhibit an almost limitless range of colours. The colours often blend closely with the surroundings, effectively hiding the animal. Many fishes use bright colours for territorial advertisement or as recognition marks for other members of their own species, or sometimes for members of other species. Many fishes can change their colour to a greater or lesser degree, by movement of pigment within the pigment cells (chromatophores). Black pigment cells (melanophores), of almost universal occurrence in fishes, are often juxtaposed with other pigment cells. When placed beneath iridocytes or leucophores (bearing the silvery or white pigment guanine), melanophores produce structural colours of blue and green. These colours are often extremely intense, because they are formed by refraction of light through the needlelike crystals of guanine. The blue and green refracted colours are often relatively pure, lacking the red and yellow rays, which have been absorbed by the black pigment (melanin) of the melanophores. Yellow, orange, and red colours are produced by erythrophores, cells containing the appropriate carotenoid pigments. Other colours are produced by combinations of melanophores, erythrophores, and iridocytes.
The major portion of the body of most fishes consists of muscles. Most of the mass is trunk musculature, the fin muscles usually being relatively small. The caudal fin is usually the most powerful fin, being moved by the trunk musculature. The body musculature is usually arranged in rows of chevron-shaped segments on each side. Contractions of these segments, each attached to adjacent vertebrae and vertebral processes, bends the body on the vertebral joint, producing successive undulations of the body, passing from the head to the tail, and producing driving strokes of the tail. It is the latter that provides the strong forward movement for most fishes.
The digestive system, in a functional sense, starts at the mouth, with the teeth used to capture prey or collect plant foods. Mouth shape and tooth structure vary greatly in fishes, depending on the kind of food normally eaten. Most fishes are predacious, feeding on small invertebrates or other fishes and have simple conical teeth on the jaws, on at least some of the bones of the roof of the mouth, and on special gill arch structures just in front of the esophagus. The latter are throat teeth. Most predacious fishes swallow their prey whole, and the teeth are used for grasping and holding prey, for orienting prey to be swallowed (head first) and for working the prey toward the esophagus. There are a variety of tooth types in fishes. Some fishes, such as sharks and piranhas, have cutting teeth for biting chunks out of their victims. A shark’s tooth, although superficially like that of a piranha, appears in many respects to be a modified scale, while that of the piranha is like that of other bony fishes, consisting of dentine and enamel. Parrot fishes have beaklike mouths with short incisor-like teeth for breaking off coral and have heavy pavementlike throat teeth for crushing the coral. Some catfishes have small brushlike teeth, arranged in rows on the jaws, for scraping plant and animal growth from rocks. Many fishes (such as the Cyprinidae or minnows) have no jaw teeth at all but have very strong throat teeth.
Some fishes gather planktonic food by straining it from their gill cavities with numerous elongate stiff rods (gill rakers) anchored by one end to the gill bars. The food collected on these rods is passed to the throat, where it is swallowed. Most fishes have only short gill rakers that help keep food particles from escaping out the mouth cavity into the gill chamber.
Once reaching the throat, food enters a short, often greatly distensible esophagus, a simple tube with a muscular wall leading into a stomach. The stomach varies greatly in fishes, depending upon the diet. In most predacious fishes it is a simple straight or curved tube or pouch with a muscular wall and a glandular lining. Food is largely digested there and leaves the stomach in liquid form.
Between the stomach and the intestine, ducts enter the digestive tube from the liver and pancreas. The liver is a large, clearly defined organ. The pancreas may be embedded in it, diffused through it, or broken into small parts spread along some of the intestine. The junction between the stomach and the intestine is marked by a muscular valve. Pyloric ceca (blind sacs) occur in some fishes at this junction and have a digestive or absorptive function or both.
The intestine itself is quite variable in length, depending upon the fish’s diet. It is short in predacious forms, sometimes no longer than the body cavity, but long in herbivorous forms, being coiled and several times longer than the entire length of the fish in some species of South American catfishes. The intestine is primarily an organ for absorbing nutrients into the bloodstream. The larger its internal surface, the greater its absorptive efficiency, and a spiral valve is one method of increasing its absorption surface.
Sharks, rays, chimaeras, lungfishes, surviving chondrosteans, holosteans, and even a few of the more primitive teleosts have a spiral valve or at least traces of it in the intestine. Most modern teleosts have increased the area of the intestinal walls by having numerous folds and villi (fingerlike projections) somewhat like those in humans. Undigested substances are passed to the exterior through the anus in most teleost fishes. In lungfishes, sharks, and rays, it is first passed through the cloaca, a common cavity receiving the intestinal opening and the ducts from the urogenital system.
Oxygen and carbon dioxide dissolve in water, and most fishes exchange dissolved oxygen and carbon dioxide in water by means of the gills. The gills lie behind and to the side of the mouth cavity and consist of fleshy filaments supported by the gill arches and filled with blood vessels, which give gills a bright red colour. Water taken in continuously through the mouth passes backward between the gill bars and over the gill filaments, where the exchange of gases takes place. The gills are protected by a gill cover in teleosts and many other fishes but by flaps of skin in sharks, rays, and some of the older fossil fish groups. The blood capillaries in the gill filaments are close to the gill surface to take up oxygen from the water and to give up excess carbon dioxide to the water.
Most modern fishes have a hydrostatic (ballast) organ, called the swim bladder, that lies in the body cavity just below the kidney and above the stomach and intestine. It originated as a diverticulum of the digestive canal. In advanced teleosts, especially the acanthopterygians, the bladder has lost its connection with the digestive tract, a condition called physoclistic. The connection has been retained (physostomous) by many relatively primitive teleosts. In several unrelated lines of fishes, the bladder has become specialized as a lung or, at least, as a highly vascularized accessory breathing organ. Some fishes with such accessory organs are obligate air breathers and will drown if denied access to the surface, even in well-oxygenated water. Fishes with a hydrostatic form of swim bladder can control their depth by regulating the amount of gas in the bladder. The gas, mostly oxygen, is secreted into the bladder by special glands, rendering the fish more buoyant; the gas is absorbed into the bloodstream by another special organ, reducing the overall buoyancy and allowing the fish to sink. Some deep-sea fishes may have oils, rather than gas, in the bladder. Other deep-sea and some bottom-living forms have much-reduced swim bladders or have lost the organ entirely.
The swim bladder of fishes follows the same developmental pattern as the lungs of land vertebrates. There is no doubt that the two structures have the same historical origin in primitive fishes. More or less intermediate forms still survive among the more primitive types of fishes, such as the lungfishes Lepidosiren and Protopterus.
The circulatory, or blood vascular, system consists of the heart, the arteries, the capillaries, and the veins. It is in the capillaries that the interchange of oxygen, carbon dioxide, nutrients, and other substances such as hormones and waste products takes place. The capillaries lead to the veins, which return the venous blood with its waste products to the heart, kidneys, and gills. There are two kinds of capillary beds: those in the gills and those in the rest of the body. The heart, a folded continuous muscular tube with three or four saclike enlargements, undergoes rhythmic contractions and receives venous blood in a sinus venosus. It passes the blood to an auricle and then into a thick muscular pump, the ventricle. From the ventricle the blood goes to a bulbous structure at the base of a ventral aorta just below the gills. The blood passes to the afferent (receiving) arteries of the gill arches and then to the gill capillaries. There waste gases are given off to the environment, and oxygen is absorbed. The oxygenated blood enters efferent (exuant) arteries of the gill arches and then flows into the dorsal aorta. From there blood is distributed to the tissues and organs of the body. One-way valves prevent backflow. The circulation of fishes thus differs from that of the reptiles, birds, and mammals in that oxygenated blood is not returned to the heart prior to distribution to the other parts of the body.
The primary excretory organ in fishes, as in other vertebrates, is the kidney. In fishes some excretion also takes place in the digestive tract, skin, and especially the gills (where ammonia is given off). Compared with land vertebrates, fishes have a special problem in maintaining their internal environment at a constant concentration of water and dissolved substances, such as salts. Proper balance of the internal environment (homeostasis) of a fish is in a great part maintained by the excretory system, especially the kidney.
The kidney, gills, and skin play an important role in maintaining a fish’s internal environment and checking the effects of osmosis. Marine fishes live in an environment in which the water around them has a greater concentration of salts than they can have inside their body and still maintain life. Freshwater fishes, on the other hand, live in water with a much lower concentration of salts than they require inside their bodies. Osmosis tends to promote the loss of water from the body of a marine fish and absorption of water by that of a freshwater fish. Mucus in the skin tends to slow the process but is not a sufficient barrier to prevent the movement of fluids through the permeable skin. When solutions on two sides of a permeable membrane have different concentrations of dissolved substances, water will pass through the membrane into the more concentrated solution, while the dissolved chemicals move into the area of lower concentration (diffusion).
The kidney of freshwater fishes is often larger in relation to body weight than that of marine fishes. In both groups the kidney excretes wastes from the body, but the kidney of freshwater fishes also excretes large amounts of water, counteracting the water absorbed through the skin. Freshwater fishes tend to lose salt to the environment and must replace it. They get some salt from their food, but the gills and skin inside the mouth actively absorb salt from water passed through the mouth. This absorption is performed by special cells capable of moving salts against the diffusion gradient. Freshwater fishes drink very little water and take in little water with their food.
Marine fishes must conserve water, and therefore their kidneys excrete little water. To maintain their water balance, marine fishes drink large quantities of seawater, retaining most of the water and excreting the salt. Most nitrogenous waste in marine fishes appears to be secreted by the gills as ammonia. Marine fishes can excrete salt by clusters of special cells (chloride cells) in the gills.
There are several teleosts—for example, the salmon—that travel between fresh water and seawater and must adjust to the reversal of osmotic gradients. They adjust their physiological processes by spending time (often surprisingly little time) in the intermediate brackish environment.
Marine hagfishes, sharks, and rays have osmotic concentrations in their blood about equal to that of seawater and so do not have to drink water nor perform much physiological work to maintain their osmotic balance. In sharks and rays the osmotic concentration is kept high by retention of urea in the blood. Freshwater sharks have a lowered concentration of urea in the blood.
Endocrine glands secrete their products into the bloodstream and body tissues and, along with the central nervous system, control and regulate many kinds of body functions. Cyclostomes have a well-developed endocrine system, and presumably it was well developed in the early Agnatha, ancestral to modern fishes. Although the endocrine system in fishes is similar to that of higher vertebrates, there are numerous differences in detail. The pituitary, the thyroid, the suprarenals, the adrenals, the pancreatic islets, the sex glands (ovaries and testes), the inner wall of the intestine, and the bodies of the ultimobranchial gland make up the endocrine system in fishes. There are some others whose function is not well understood. These organs regulate sexual activity and reproduction, growth, osmotic pressure, general metabolic activities such as the storage of fat and the utilization of foodstuffs, blood pressure, and certain aspects of skin colour. Many of these activities are also controlled in part by the central nervous system, which works with the endocrine system in maintaining the life of a fish. Some parts of the endocrine system are developmentally, and undoubtedly evolutionarily, derived from the nervous system.
As in all vertebrates, the nervous system of fishes is the primary mechanism coordinating body activities, as well as integrating these activities in the appropriate manner with stimuli from the environment. The central nervous system, consisting of the brain and spinal cord, is the primary integrating mechanism. The peripheral nervous system, consisting of nerves that connect the brain and spinal cord to various body organs, carries sensory information from special receptor organs such as the eyes, internal ears, nares (sense of smell), taste glands, and others to the integrating centres of the brain and spinal cord. The peripheral nervous system also carries information via different nerve cells from the integrating centres of the brain and spinal cord. This coded information is carried to the various organs and body systems, such as the skeletal muscular system, for appropriate action in response to the original external or internal stimulus. Another branch of the nervous system, the autonomic nervous system, helps to coordinate the activities of many glands and organs and is itself closely connected to the integrating centres of the brain.
The brain of the fish is divided into several anatomical and functional parts, all closely interconnected but each serving as the primary centre of integrating particular kinds of responses and activities. Several of these centres or parts are primarily associated with one type of sensory perception, such as sight, hearing, or smell (olfaction).
The sense of smell is important in almost all fishes. Certain eels with tiny eyes depend mostly on smell for location of food. The olfactory, or nasal, organ of fishes is located on the dorsal surface of the snout. The lining of the nasal organ has special sensory cells that perceive chemicals dissolved in the water, such as substances from food material, and send sensory information to the brain by way of the first cranial nerve. Odour also serves as an alarm system. Many fishes, especially various species of freshwater minnows, react with alarm to a chemical released from the skin of an injured member of their own species.
Many fishes have a well-developed sense of taste, and tiny pitlike taste buds or organs are located not only within their mouth cavities but also over their heads and parts of their body. Catfishes, which often have poor vision, have barbels (“whiskers”) that serve as supplementary taste organs, those around the mouth being actively used to search out food on the bottom. Some species of naturally blind cave fishes are especially well supplied with taste buds, which often cover most of their body surface.
Sight is extremely important in most fishes. The eye of a fish is basically like that of all other vertebrates, but the eyes of fishes are extremely varied in structure and adaptation. In general, fishes living in dark and dim water habitats have large eyes, unless they have specialized in some compensatory way so that another sense (such as smell) is dominant, in which case the eyes will often be reduced. Fishes living in brightly lighted shallow waters often will have relatively small but efficient eyes. Cyclostomes have somewhat less elaborate eyes than other fishes, with skin stretched over the eyeball perhaps making their vision somewhat less effective. Most fishes have a spherical lens and accommodate their vision to far or near subjects by moving the lens within the eyeball. A few sharks accommodate by changing the shape of the lens, as in land vertebrates. Those fishes that are heavily dependent upon the eyes have especially strong muscles for accommodation. Most fishes see well, despite the restrictions imposed by frequent turbidity of the water and by light refraction.
Fossil evidence suggests that colour vision evolved in fishes more than 300 million years ago, but not all living fishes have retained this ability. Experimental evidence indicates that many shallow-water fishes, if not all, have colour vision and see some colours especially well, but some bottom-dwelling shore fishes live in areas where the water is sufficiently deep to filter out most if not all colours, and these fishes apparently never see colours. When tested in shallow water, they apparently are unable to respond to colour differences.
Sound perception and balance are intimately associated senses in a fish. The organs of hearing are entirely internal, located within the skull, on each side of the brain and somewhat behind the eyes. Sound waves, especially those of low frequencies, travel readily through water and impinge directly upon the bones and fluids of the head and body, to be transmitted to the hearing organs. Fishes readily respond to sound; for example, a trout conditioned to escape by the approach of fishermen will take flight upon perceiving footsteps on a stream bank even if it cannot see a fisherman. Compared with humans, however, the range of sound frequencies heard by fishes is greatly restricted. Many fishes communicate with each other by producing sounds in their swim bladders, in their throats by rasping their teeth, and in other ways.
A fish or other vertebrate seldom has to rely on a single type of sensory information to determine the nature of the environment around it. A catfish uses taste and touch when examining a food object with its oral barbels. Like most other animals, fishes have many touch receptors over their body surface. Pain and temperature receptors also are present in fishes and presumably produce the same kind of information to a fish as to humans. Fishes react in a negative fashion to stimuli that would be painful to human beings, suggesting that they feel a sensation of pain.
An important sensory system in fishes that is absent in other vertebrates (except some amphibians) is the lateral line system. This consists of a series of heavily innervated small canals located in the skin and bone around the eyes, along the lower jaw, over the head, and down the mid-side of the body, where it is associated with the scales. Intermittently along these canals are located tiny sensory organs (pit organs) that apparently detect changes in pressure. The system allows a fish to sense changes in water currents and pressure, thereby helping the fish to orient itself to the various changes that occur in the physical environment.
Walking around my neighborhood, I saw this truck with stickered letters urging for the taxation of church income. I've seen this truck before at local markets when I'm shopping, but I didn't know it was the person who lives in one of the most horticulturally outstanding craftsman bungalows in my neighborhood.
Colonial Heights
Sacramento, CA
"NEED MONEY?
TAX THE CHURCHES
FOR CHRISSAKE
AMEN"
If you replace the California plates (and maybe replace the Chevy Tahoe with an old International Travel-All or VW Van), this scene might fit just as well in Portland out near 82nd Ave below Rocky Butte or out in the Foster-Powell area. That's true of a lot of scenes here in Colonial Heights. I can almost imagine I'm alerady where I'd rather be.
Der Theodor-Lessing-Preis für aufklärerisches Handeln wird seit 2004 von der Deutsch-Israelischen Gesellschaft, Hannover, verliehen. In diesem Jahr 2015 wurde der Preis Frau Honorargeneralkonsulin Regine Sixt für ihr überdurchschnittliches soziales, gesellschaftliches und unternehmerisches Engagement verliehen. Die Veranstaltung fand am 7. Oktober 2015 in Hannover statt.Laudatorin Charlotte Knobloch (82): „Sie ist eine der besten Freundinnen des Staates Israels, die man sich vorstellen kann.“
Behavior
The Iceland horse is less skittish than other breeds of horse. Considering that they have had no natural predators for 1200 years (save for man — the Icelanders eat horsemeat on occasion), many generations have selected for an animal that looks before it bolts, a curious animal willing to check out something new; a horse that thinks before it acts.
Less than three months after the conversion of Bristol Joint Services service 83 to one person operation using Bristol RELLs from the country fleet, country services Bristol MW5G 2955, 975DAE, unusually operates a service 83 journey. 2955 was at that time based at Lawrence Hill depot (note the destination display brackets, indicating that it was a City Centre Circle bus) and had probably been substituted on the breakdown of an RE, especially as service 83 operated very close to the company's Lawrence Hill depot. 2955 had started out as a 41-seat dual purpose vehicle and later that year would be painted into the brighter one man livery. April 3rd. 1969.
Less Autre
De Klinker club
27/02/2019
Peter Fias Lead guitar & Vocals
Charles Guillaume bass
MRRay Keys, guitar & Backing Vocals
Mattia Swinnen - Drums
Special Guest - Jente Pironet
Photo's © Patrick Van Vlerken 2019
This is simply a reversed image with less noise and without Gray Morrow's signature, for use in profiles and icons.
In less than two weeks this darling man will be my husband. He shared with me tonight the brilliant idea of doing a 365 of some kind starting the day before we get married. Capturing the first year of our marriage.
Tonight he drew me a bath, set out lots of candles, put a towel on the edge of the tub for my book, and even a glass of water. I have never been so wholly cherished. I am so lucky. I have never been more sure of anything in my life. He is the one I want to do life with.
These photos are from our day on City Island.
So this is basically the first male sim I have made for contests...and actually edited. It was somewhat difficult editing him...although there's a bit less things you have to worry about when it comes to males...they're more simple. So I hope you like my rocker turned pornstar! (:
Some info:
Full Name: Caleb Fuchs
Age: 18
Hometown: The Bronx, New York
Height: 6'4''
Weight: 157lb
Nationality: American
Ethnicity: British/Scottish
Describe Yourself in 3 Words: Erotic, Fearless, Powerful
Biography: Born in the bronx, Caleb learned to develop a tough skin. His father's constant alcohol abuse and his mother's frequent "nightly errands" were prominent events in his life. He basically survived the worst of times with such a family. Caleb was able to cope with everything through the love of music: his music. However, the constant discouragement from record labels caused him to leave the rock world for the meantime; that is until money grew in his pocket. Thus, he embarked in a job that he was extremely talented in...sex. Earning his way as Massive Fuchs in adult films...he see's POISE as an opportunity to get his face out there...especially for his rock dream.
Kodak Ektachrome Professional Infrared EIR ISO 200; 28mm Pentax ME Super SE No. 25 Red Filter; Arista Rapid E-6 Process. Scanned from transparency.
Lychgate at Saint James the Less Episcopal Church.
Ross Dress for Less (29,797 square feet)
4107 Portsmouth Boulevard, Suite 200, The Crossroads at Chesapeake Square, Chesapeake, VA
This location opened in the mid 2000s; it was originally part of Wal-Mart #1682, which opened on July 31st, 1991 and relocated here on July 17th, 2002.
A Hall of Fame Lifetime Singing
Dolly Parton once noted, famously, that there were just three real female singers around—Barbra Streisand, Linda Ronstadt, and Connie Smith. "The rest of us," she said, "are only pretending." It's less-well known that when Ms. Smith was introduced to Keith Richards, he grabbed fellow Connie Smith fan (and Rolling Stone) Ron Wood and brought him up to meet her, too, exclaiming "She's the real deal!"
What the singers she's been influencing for decades spot in Connie Smith's performances—besides her genius for phrasing, perfect diction and a vocal range which have all long been envied—is her fervent joy in singing itself, her love for the emotional and physical act of letting loose a song, which is as evident on her recordings as it is in front of audiences at the Grand Ole Opry, on RFD TV's weekly Marty Stuart Show, or on the road.
In 2012, Connie’s singular contributions to country music were recognized conclusively when she received the field’s highest honor, induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame. As the Hall’s inductee portrait says of her, “Smith's greatness extends beyond vocal brilliance. It encompasses her song selection, her connection to great musicians (especially steel guitarists), her classy demeanor, and a spiritual bearing that serves as her foundation. Connie Smith is one of country music's most admired artists not because of one of her talents, but because of how they form such a distinct whole.”
Merle Haggard said, as he conducted her induction her into the, “I can’t remember any of Connie’s records that I didn’t like. I admire her sincerity and her spirit and her commitment to traditional country music. If you’re talking about a country singer, there just isn’t any better.”
Merle singled out “Long Line of Heartaches,” Connie’s most recent recording, as a special favorite. In recent decades, the appearance of a new Connie Smith record has been a rare, much-anticipated event; Long Line of Heartaches on Sugar Hill, is her first since 1996 and only her second since 1978, and her 53rd album to date. Still the urge to sing and share the joy she finds in doing it has never waned.
"I may have put off making a new record for quite a while," Connie says, "but I still love to sing just as much as I ever did. I really feel that it's my destiny; I heard the saying, one time, 'Do what God tells you 'til he tells you something else,' and He hasn't told me anything else yet. So I think I'll still be singing till I hear different!"
What she sings on this return to disc is the same broad range of traditional country moods, themes, rhythms and sounds that marked her remarkable run of hit records and classic country albums in the 1960s and '70s. Keeping that music alive, well and in the public ear was an important motivation in breaking this most recent recording hiatus:
"I feel so fortunate to have been introduced to Nashville in the early sixties. It was a magical time in country music; country artists were encouraged to bring their individuality and culture to the microphone, not to back away from them, and the songwriters of the era were just the best. But I feel that the music as it was has been slipping away—and much, much faster than I'm ready for. The only thing I know to do about it now is to keep singing what I've always loved."
Connie has always been the sort of singer who, much as Frank Sinatra did in saloon singer pop, emphasizes crediting the writers who created the emotionally direct songs she chooses to sing. Songs by songwriters she's long favored, including icons Bill Anderson, Harlan Howard, Johnny Russell, Kostas, and Dallas Frazier (whose "A Heart Like You" on this record was one of the first he'd written in 30 years, and the 69th Frazier song Connie's had on record) are featured on this new release. Her own songwriting, which had been something she'd found little time for early in her career, came more to the foreground when she began co-writing with Marty Stuart; five of their collaborations appear on Long Line of Heartaches, including the title track.
"I had written a few of the songs I and others had recorded over the years, but I'd never even begun to think I could write enough to do a whole album. Marty believed I could. We found other good songs, too; it can be a bad idea to only do your own songs. I don't cut a song because Bill, Harlan, Dallas or I wrote it, I cut it because I think it's the best song that I can find at the time."
"If I hadn't had Marty as producer and Mick Conley, as outr engineer, working with me, this record couldn't have happened like it did. When we got 5 of the songs Marty and I wrote coupled with the 7 great songs from other writers, we got serious and knew it was time to record. The songs had to come first. Then the work was just a joy.
A first-time occurrence on this album is the appearance of Connie's daughters Julie, Jeanne and Jodi with her, adding striking family harmonies to the contemporary hymn "Take My Hand." "My five kids all know every word to every one of my songs," Connie notes, "and we always sang at home. You'll hear that my daughters are really good; they just never had the desire to be professionals. Neither did my two sons, Darren and Kerry, who also sing well."
That Connie Smith always prioritized family life over career (and with no conflict about that, she notes) is one reason she may be better known in the households of long-time traditional country music lovers than some others. She'd taken a break from appearances and recording to raise those kids, and, as she puts it "never went back into business in full force," though she has been a much-loved mainstay at the Grand Ole Opry.
It is a Nashville legend that Connie's first record, the aching and unforgettable "Once a Day," written by Bill Anderson and recorded on July 16, 1964 when she was just 23, became one of the most celebrated singles in country music history—the first debut single by a female country singer to go to Number One, a position it held for eight weeks. Forty-seven years later it is still the only first single ever to have done that. When Connie sang "Once A Day" in the all-star B-movie musical Second Fiddle to a Steel Guitar the following year, she was introduced on-screen as "The Cinderella of Country Music." "Once A Day," and her stunning rendition of "How Great Thou Art" remain the two most requested songs by her fans to this day. Connie's memorable string of hits would include "You and Your Sweet Love" "If It Ain't Love" "Where Is My Castle?" "Run Away Little Tears" "Just One Time" and "I Never Once Stopped Loving You."
The passion for singing and for the songs, and the singular vocal precision in delivering them that marked those standards-to-be are fully on display in this return to recording. "If you add up all the songs on this album," Ms. Smith says, "it would add up to my personality. It's me talking again, after so many years, with a message no different than I've always had. It's just that I love you, and I want that love to come back."
It's bound to.
- Barry Mazor, Nashville, 2013
Ohnward Fine Arts Center
Maquoketa, Iowa
6/10/17
Holy Trinity would have been the star attraction in any other town or city, it is a majestic cruciform 15th century Perpendicular church with a tapering central tower and spire, the second of Coventry's famous 'Three Spires'. However it has always been overshadowed by larger neighbours, having been encircled by no less than three separate cathedrals through it's history, a unique distinction! Holy Trinity was founded by the monks of the adjoining priory to act as a parish church for it's lay tenants, thus it is ironic that it has long outlived the parent building.
The earliest part is the north porch, which dates from the 13th century, but the majority of the building dates from a more ambitious phase in 15th century Perpendicular style. The 15th century rebuilding has given us the present cruciform arrangement with small transepts and extra chapels on the north side giving an overall roughly rectangular footprint. These chapels were some of many in the church that served the city's separate guilds in medieval times.
The church has gone through much restoration, most notably the rebuilding of it's spire after it was blown down in a storm in 1665. The east end of the chancel was extended in 1786 (in sympathetic style) and much of the exterior was refaced in the early 19th century in then fashionable Bath stone (which clashes with the original red sandstone).
The church luckily escaped major damage during the Coventry Blitz in 1940, largely thanks to the vigilance of Canon Clitheroe and his team of firewatchers who spent a perilous night on the roof tackling incendaries. The main loss was the Victorian stained glass in the east and west windows, which were replaced with much more fetching glass in the postwar restoration.
The most recent restoration involved the uncovering of the 15th century Doom painting over the chancel arch in 2004. Hidden under blackened varnish since it's rediscovery in the early Victorian period, it has now been revealed to be one of the most complete and important medieval Last Judgement murals in the country. There is further painting contemporary with this on the exquisite nave ceiling, painted a beautiful dusty blue with large kneeling angels flanking coats of arms on every rafter.
There are only a handful of monuments and most of the furnishings date from G.G.Scott's 1850s restoration (as does the magnificent vaulted ceiling high above the crossing) but there are some notable medieval survivals in the rare stone pulpit and the brass eagle lectern, both 15th century, along with a fine set of misericords originating from the former Whitefriars monastery church. Just a few fragments of medieval glass survive in the north west chapel.
The church is happily normally open and welcoming to visitors every day.
For more detail on this church see it's entry on the Warwickshire Churches website below:-
warwickshirechurches.weebly.com/coventry---holy-trinity.html
end of Relay Creek FSR, up Gravel mountain, a road that will test any man's fear of heights and uncommon sense
This site isn’t so much for travel narrative as it is for looking at pictures, so I’ll cut out a full day’s narrative, save for this:
Thursday was close to an eleven hour day of travel to get from Yangshuo to Detian. I spent less than 90 minutes shooting at the falls. From Detian (western part of the province on the Vietnamese border), I had to make my way to Beihai (southern, coastal city on the Gulf of Tonkin). It was, in distance, much shorter than Yangshuo-Detian. However, it turned into a reasonably miserable travel day and took about twelve hours (with about five of those hours spent in a bus station waiting room in Nanning). I got to my hotel in Beihai around 9:30 p.m. on Friday night. (I would stay in the same hotel Sunday night as well.)
The only positive to come from Friday’s travel was on the bus from Detian to Daxin (and on to Nanning). There was a very nice girl traveling with her parents who wanted to practice her English who happened to have visited Beihai. I think she said she was from Guangdong, too. Anyway, what I wanted to do most in Beihai was go to Weizhou Island (Weizhou Dao). She suggested (almost implied it was required) that I needed to book tickets on the ferry to Weizhou Dao in advance, so she helped me and called someone she knew in Beihai to reserve a ticket for me at 8:30 on Saturday morning.
I really didn’t know too much about Weizhou Dao, except that it was listed in Lonely Planet as a place to go. I did try to research it online, too, but couldn’t find too many pictures of the island. I found a few, though, and it was enough to convince me that it was worth going. Besides, Beihai honestly didn’t have too many places I was interested in seeing for two days.
So, I decided before the trip that I would come out and spend the night here on Weizhou Island. That turned out to be about the best decision I made for this trip, as it was much better than I was expecting from the lack of information I could find about the place.
I fell in love with this island. The ride across the Gulf of Tonkin takes a little over an hour on a high-speed boat. The cost is 150 RMB, which also includes admission to the island. The island is the remnants of a volcano, I believe, and is a reasonably circular island with a total area of 25-30 square kilometers. So…it’s small.
The port at Weizhou Dao is on the northwest corner of the island. The main city (that is to say the one place where there’s a main street running along the water for about 1 km) is called Nanwan (South Bay). To get around the island, you can either walk, rent a bike, or take a san lun che (tuk tuk). San lun che is the easiest. Depending on where you want to go on the island, it costs between 20 and 40 RMB to go from place to place. There are cars on the island, and people (though not many) do live here year-round, but for public transportation, those are your options, and they’re more than enough.
I think I paid 30 RMB to a guy to get me down to Nanwan. I hadn’t booked anything in advance (though I tried), so went to the first place that Lonely Planet mentioned: Piggybar. This was a very cheap place and as close to a dive as any place I’ve stayed in China.
This was the tropics in June, so the weather was sweltering. It turns out that I wouldn’t be alone in my room. I stopped counting how many cockroaches I killed somewhere after five or so. Big-sized suckers, too. But, that would be later in the day. At night, the electricity constantly cut out. This was only a slight annoyance because it would turn the air conditioner off. Sleeping wasn’t nearly as uncomfortable as I thought it would be. I also stopped counting how many times the power would go off. (It was never for more than 5 minutes, though.) I certainly don’t fault the Piggybar for this. The power apparently just goes out around Nanwan like that.
I did enjoy the main drag in Nanwan. There are a lot of neat little bars and restaurants (and what seemed like a much nicer hotel about midway along the road). I don’t remember the name of the place, but if I make it back there, I’d definitely stay at that place instead.
After I checked into my room in the morning, I took stock of things, thought the view in the south bay was pretty nice, and headed out for a walk towards the rest of the main drag. As this is an island, almost all restaurants have fresh seafood (which, for anyone who knows me, isn’t appealing…but seafood lovers would be in heaven here). I stopped at a restaurant and grabbed an early lunch of generic non-seafood Chinese food. It was so generic that it was forgettable. Maybe it was huntun, which is like a small dumpling soup. I really don’t remember.
While sitting there in the open-air shade enjoying the view of the sea, three college girls came along on bikes they rented and joined me. They, too, were from Guangdong if I remember correctly. I was beginning to think everyone was from Guangdong, but I know better than that. At any rate, they were friendly and we were talking about what to do around the island.
For me, the most interesting place to photograph was going to be the Catholic church. There are two churches on the island – one Catholic (founded by the French), one protestant (founded by Germans, I believe), both around 100 years old, if not a little older. Of the two, the Catholic church is the much more photogenic of the two, so that was what I was most looking forward to shooting, and that was the first place I was going to head via san lun che. It cost 40 RMB to get there. The girls had bikes, so I told them to try to get there – it was on the opposite side of the island…somewhere in the northeast part, but not on the water. They didn’t quite make it, but no worries. I saw them later, and they told me they did eventually get to it.
I wandered around the church and church grounds, and also the streets in front of it for an hour or so in the early afternoon. The church itself was quiet and peaceful and the street in front of it was lively with lots of vendors.
Besides the church, there are a lot of places with natural beauty on this island. As it’s created from a volcano, there are a lot of fascinating rock formations, but those tend to shoot best in lower light closer to sunrise or sunset. There’s even another small island nearby that you can apparently get boat rides to. While near the church, I was enjoying a map of the island with its scenic spots and their flowery names. I decided to go to one that they called Drippy Red Screen. (After all, who doesn’t want to see a screen that drips like blood?)
Really, it’s called that because it’s a dark-colored rock that, close to sunset, apparently turns a vibrant red. I figured, if this is a good place to see a sunset over the sea, I’m there. I left the church around 3:00, and paid a guy another 40 RMB to wheel me back across to the southwest corner of the island.
Though it was far from sunset, I was all too happy to go rent an umbrella and wooden beach chair for 30 RMB with a “front row view” of the sunset. This was vacation, after all, and what better way to spend it than relaxing next to a beach, people watching. At first, there weren’t too many people around. Just a few groups of entrepreneurs like these who took a little area of the beach and rented the umbrellas/chairs. There were also people who you could pay to take you around on jet skis and things like that. Other than that, just sit back, enjoy a drink, and watch boats drift by in seemingly slow motion. This was a good afternoon.
After a few hours, as it got closer to sunset, the tide started to roll out, though, and my front row view began to take more and more of a back seat. Not to umbrellas, but just to people crowding the view. During the 4 or so hours that I was at the beach here, I did manage to take a walk down the way to the Drippy (Not So) Red Screen closer to sunset to see that it wasn’t quite what they hyped it up to be. (That’s a shock…) I didn’t wander more because, as a lone traveler, I was worried they might sell my spot to someone else, even though I said I’d be back. They didn’t, though, and I returned to my umbrella for a few minutes more. There came a tipping point, though – before sunset – when I made the decision that the sunset wasn’t shaping up to be so spectacular that it would warrant being in this crowded an area, so I eventually abandoned hopes of getting jaw-dropping sunset pictures and made my way back to Nanwan before the rest of the crowd did the same. At least this san lun che would only cost 20 RMB, since Nanwan was barely a 10-15 minute ride away.
Back on Nanwan’s main drag, I had the driver drop me in front of the hotel, but I wasn’t ready to go in. I just wanted to walk along the main road there, and eventually discovered all of these unique indoor-outdoor bars. I stopped and had dinner (fried rice, if I remember) and a mango smoothie that was so good that I had a second one in this neat little restaurant where tourists write their memories on the walls.
After that, I continued down the road – all this as the sunset was turning the sky to a deep blue (and I was, after all, quite pleased with what I was able to see here) – and stopped at another bar for a drink. I had a mojito that was honestly forgettable. It tasted more like carbonated soda water than anything. Not seeing much to do besides drink myself into oblivion (which I don’t care to do), I went back out and enjoyed the last of the day’s light before walking back towards the Piggybar. On the way back, I bumped into my college friends from earlier, who told me they’d enjoyed the island, and they did get to the church after all. On the way back is when the first of the power “flickers” happened with electricity dropping on the island.
Without much to do in my hotel room, I tried to stay as comfortable as possible with the air conditioning that continued to go off. It wasn’t as hard to fall asleep as I imagined, and I fell asleep early, which also gave me an early start the next morning for sunrise over the bay.
After checking out of the hotel, still very early (around 8:00), I set off with my backpack and bag and started the walk uphill. My only goal for Sunday morning on the island was to go to the protestant church and photograph there before heading to the dock and making my way back to Beihai.
It was a nice little walk as the road away from Nanwan does a zigzag straight uphill to give a nice view of the town and bay. Also, like western Guangxi, Weizhou Dao’s “countryside” is nothing but banana farms, which was quite nice to see. I shot there a little bit and, when I tired of walking after an hour or so, flagged down a san lun che and paid 30 RMB for him to take me to the protestant church, then to the dock.
The protestant church, unlike the Catholic one, had a 10 RMB admission, and wasn’t nearly as interesting (for me, at least) as the more famous Catholic church. It was nice, however, and I was glad to see it as my “farewell” to the island. From there, I went to the dock and got a ticket for the first available boat back to Beihai.
I really enjoyed my day and night here on Weizhou Dao and was looking forward to one last, relaxing evening in Beihai before getting back to the daily tedium of Chengdu. But first, one more night to go…