To view this photo essay in order, please start here.

 

Ten years ago I dreamed a dream about two people. I remember every sense in the dream: the dust in the carpet they sat on, holding one another; the staticky, sticky feel and smell in the air from the sick one’s breath, the blueness of open irises; the silence filling their ears. The humidity. The weight of the air on their skin, close like water. Every color in the dream was tinged with sadness, with the knowledge of looming loss. The healthy one cried. The sick one was not just sick. He was dying.

 

When I woke up I wrote their story out endlessly, for years, in variations and settings and time frames, until I could nearly touch both of them when I reached my hands out in my sleep, until they were more like flesh than figments of my mind. I wrote them until I knew what they’d see in inkblots, what they bought at the grocery store, how they handled running late, which kinds of liquor each liked. The absoluteness of loneliness I’d felt for eighteen years before I had the dream left me, because after the dream, they were always with me.

 

But the sick one, in particular, has leapt from between the two-dimensional lines of his life spelled out in ink on paper and words on a screen and become something different. In some ways, we have become one person. Which may seem odd, because from outside, I’ve always been one person. But within me, there is me, and there is this other human who showed up ten years ago, who climbed out of my subconscious and got so entangled and intertwined in my psyche that I’ve lost entire personality traits and blocks of memory to him—and gained his. Sometimes I try to remind myself that memories I thought were mine are aspects of an imagined character, no more than words on paper. But even in my most rational moments I can’t make myself believe he isn’t real. I forget which things I’ve lived, which things this dreamed-up, living-inside-me other soul has lived.

 

We share the same body, but I get to control it.

 

Mostly.

 

There are days when he takes over. And nights.

 

It's funny when the world validates my insecurities. Funny in a way that makes my stomach tilttwistturn. Funny in a way that sets my nerves on end. And everything is too close and everything is too loud. I feel rubbed raw. And unanswered messages are made of the most pointed, staticky silence. You (being the You I mean most) will not tell me when you are angry. You will sit in another country and give me the cold shoulder until I'm forced to ask why. You (being many other you's) will not speak and expect me to know you're busy when you've dropped off in the middle of a sentence. (We'll say I'm paranoid later. We'll laugh.)

 

In the middle of asking me how I am.

 

And I try to answer anyway, even though I know that what you want to hear is a simple, concise, "fine" and what I want to say is miles and oceans away from that.

 

I am not fine.

 

And you are not listening.

 

And I care more than I wish I did.

V březnu 2004 dokončila Výtopna Zlíchov generální opravu úzkorozchodné parní lokomotivy typu BS 80. Ta se poté ve dvou termínech - v březnu a červnu téhož roku - vydala do svého původního působiště, kterým byly železárny v Králově Dvoře u Berouna. Byť zde vykonané jízdní zkoušky neodhalily žádné nedostatky, staly se zároveň na dlouhou dobu poslední příležitostí ke spatření stroje v provozu. Následným domovem lokomotivy se totiž stala Výtopna Jaroměř, kde sloužila jako statický exponát až do konce srpna 2018. V současné době čeká lokomotiva na opětovné zprovoznění u svého současného majitele, kterým je Muzeum průmyslových železnic ve Zbýšově.

Navečer 16. září 2016 se ve vozovně libereckého dopravního podniku podařilo zachytit zajímavé setkání - "místní" tramvaj T2R # 19 s turnovským Brejlovcem 750 308-9. Brejlovec přijel po vlečce, která je do vozovny vedena z libereckého dolního nádraží (u teplárny). Fotka byla pořízena den předtím, než proběhl Den otevřených dveří DPMLJ, kterého se Brejlovec zúčastnil jako statický exponát. To "devatenáctka" ho strávila pracovně, celý den jezdila i se starší sestrou # 18 na lince 11.

Oslav 130 let trati 280 Hranice na Moravě – Horní Lideč se ve Vsetíně staticky představil i motorový vůz 850.001-9. Toho času nově dislokován pod muzejním depem Olomouc.

Her hair was so staticky after being stored in a plastic tote (I guess??). I had to wet it down a bit to control it. Still one pesky strand.

 

Curvy Barbie Fashionistas 2016

This was a crazy storm last night. No wonder I feel so tired today. Some of the strikes were SOOO close that we could hear the sizzle and our hair went staticky!!

we're all just interpreting dim, shaky, weak, staticky little signals that only hint at the complexity of a universe that we cannot begin to comprehend

 

-Bones

I never should have tried to fly a big plane like this without proper training and experience. I thought at first that my flight simulator would be enough, I mean, that and the fact that I've been on a lot of airplanes, and have seen movies that show the inside of the cockpit. Should have been a piece of cake.

 

So, it all started when I went out on the tarmac, and found that the pilots leave the planes running. Cool. Now I don't have to feel around under the seats and check the glove box for the keys. The big seat at the front of the plane is pretty comfy, so I settle in and start inspecting the dials, switches, levers, etc, etc. I push one of the level things forward and the plane lurches forward. So now I am moving. Yippeee!

 

Steering is pretty simple, and as I push the lever forward, the plane speeds up. While this is all going on, a staticky voice is shouting at me from the headphones draped over the headrest. I can't figure out how to change it to music, so I'm not putting those on.

 

I managed to get some pretty good speed going, weave in and around the other planes in the area - I actually could see one of the pilots flipping me off, and he looked like he was yelling, too. I waved, smiled, and mooned him with one cheek.

 

Onto the main runway, speed increasing, start hitting switches and stuff, and the front end lifts up. More speed. MORE SPEED! OK, so it wasn't a perfect take-off, I managed to tear off the front wheels on a tree just over the end of the runway. What kind of landscaper plants a tree at the end of a runway?

 

Now I'm airborne. Too steep at first, so I pull back a little. After a little roller-coastering, I got to a somewhat level path. Every once in a while I would give the plane a good banking so I could see stuff better. I would put a glass bottom in it if it was my plane, then I could take pictures through the floor.

 

Well, I didn't get too far. I guess they hadn't fueled up my bird yet. Hmm. As the engines sputter, I eased down on the stick, and lowered my altitude. I saw the frozen lake surface ahead, so aimed for it, stalling my speed... nose up, but not too much... it's going to be rough.

 

A little bumping and lurching, and I came to a stop. Thought I was going to wipe out the lighthouse, but managed to stop short (blind luck). I went back to the kitchen area, grabbed a dozen .5 ounce bags of pretzels, a pocketful of little booze bottles, and opened the emergency door.

 

I think I had better get out of here. The people from Delta are probably not too happy with me. I wonder if there's a phone in the lighthouse. I forgot to charge my cell phone.

 

See ya!

 

Day 340

Prague

...it gets chilly in the desert in the winter, especially when you live in a house that was built before insulation was fashionable. Fortunately, I like layering...

 

::

 

My Hopi hairdo; perfect solution for staticky hair.

 

Vintage copper & jade green bakelite earrings -- clip-ons, but I find I don't mind clip-ons as my lobes stretch through the years...

 

Vintage copper and glass bead necklace from India, identical to one my Mom had that I destroyed when I was a toddler...

 

Red turtleneck sweater that is much too short for my long torso, but it's the perfect red for me...had it forever; can't remember where it's from and I cut out the label...

 

Black bamboo undershirt.

 

Ralph Lauren garment that I wear alternately as a skirt or a poncho; I found it years ago at a Ross in Saint Louis -- deeply discounted and stashed in the sweater section.

 

Black tights cut into leggings.

 

Kermit green, super comfy pumps by Born.

 

(Yellow chair I paid $25 for; I brought it home in the front seat of my old blue two seater convertible -- most of it popping out of the roof...)

 

(My favourite Botello print on the wall behind me.)

 

::

 

52 weeks of Molly, week 5. SOOC. Wardbrobe Remix.

 

Too lazy (and the weather was too stormy) for me to be bothered going to yoga. Got the kitchen cleaned up and spent an hour on hold with support trying to fix my GameCentre issue... which they couldn't do. So I read my book instead.

285/365.

she has great hair - but it can get staticky, so the clip is essential!

Somewhere in a far away land in the 1940’s....

 

“Rat-a-tat-tat” came the sound as a hand laid a rap on the screen door as it reverberated and rattled against its framing. Steps could be heard making their way for the door shortly afterwards. “Just a minute.” The unique knock could be that of only one but yet familiar person.

 

Of the stops on his route as a railroad messenger boy, this was one the few stops around town he enjoyed if not looked forward to. The Mister of this house was never one he had to chase down. Young Frank just out of school would often have to wade along riverbanks calling out the name of some brakeman trying his luck at the local fishing hole or stick his head in the doors of local stores, barbershops, car shops, pool halls or eateries to see if a conductor or engineer on his call list could be found. If an employee on this list couldn’t be found, it meant starting back over at square one with another exhaustive search for the next pulse holder. It could be a troublesome puzzle to put together but it was a matter of first come first serve with no predictability. “Why wasn’t I called?” The counter question was “Why couldn’t you be found?” Luck of the draw for better or worse.

 

Frank got along well with most of the flock under his steed. The job was an eye-opening experience for him. One minute he seemed shy and too immature for his job yet other moments he could out foul tongue many of the local tavern patrons and charge into places that they, let alone angels, would fear to tread.

 

Interrupting a family picnic could either be pleasantly cordial or could end with a volcano of cursing if not the occasional fist throwing by the recipient and dodging by the deliverer. He was just a mere delivery boy but because he was the first representation of the ball and chain they signed up for, he caught more than his share of flak. Though sympathetic, his face represented an intrusion. It was deciding whatever face he had to wear at any given moment that could be taxing more so than the long walks around town out on the hunt for another name but he was slowly adapting to the terrain in which he found himself deployed. He wasn’t bipolar. His job just had a bipolar atmosphere and outsiders were clueless. Maybe they had no idea just how lucky they were.

 

The worst for Frank, however, was the search for none other than one Walter Baum, a man who cared little for a rigid organized lifestyle of living by the clock. This was a man who lived by his own conceptions and if there were misconceptions in between then playing the victim was his preferred escape route no matter what side of the fence he was on at any given moment. He wreaked of stale cigarette smoke, flat beer and any other odorous trademark of the places where he called home in the concrete and neon jungles. To Walt paying rent meant spending money on bills which he saw as an encroachment into his frivolous lifestyle. He said fun was all that concerned him most. It appeared instead that he wanted to forget something.

 

The smell of repulsive body odor was just a small glimpse to his self-indulgence. Some of the local homeless would feel a bit better off than to be victims of the circumstances that this guy needlessly put himself through. The career he held was as unpredictable as he was. Walt was a well known drunk around town and to locate him for a call meant going to shady parts of town searching the local bars. If not in one of the local sipping troughs, his claim to fame as a ladies man could be waining. This then meant a trip to the obscure whore house in search of him nursing his self inflicted wounds at cost. The hollowed out walls Walt called home seemed to host the finest recent graduates of the nearby Pine Acres Correctional facility or at best their future clientele. One could be certain that many graduates would go back for further enlightenment.

 

Walt somehow intermingled with them and yet was never caught up in his cohorts lawless shenanigans and sent away to share bunks with them. Some claimed he was a mediator amongst them yet given his exploits many would beg to differ. Walt played the devils advocate for his own interest. He always seemed to have a ready supply of greenbacks or the name of some local eye candy on hand to dissuade a messenger boy of “having found his presence” so he could continue living it up. Many others in the town had kept their noses clean and their hopes aspired to hold down a lofty job at the railroad but found themselves toiling along in less glamorous jobs as they couldn’t fit through the eye of the needle. So many wanted that chance but the tidal wave of applications trying to get in watered down their efforts. Yet Walt had it made and seemed to have cared less. His grace was he stumbled in on the right day at right time. Whether he was sober or bored that day when he inked his name on the dotted line we’ll never know.

 

Sometimes his drunken incoherence upon being encountered made putting him on duty a bad proposition. This could go on for several days on end. Walt wasn’t a particularly bad person but he had different ways than the other railroaders of coping with the effects of the job but his methods caused his reputation to extend beyond himself him a bit. Back at Felix’s place with a home he and friends had built board by board and brick by brick things were different.

 

“Well hi there. Won’t you come in?”

 

“Mrs. Loretta, good afternoon to you. Smells like a nice dinner you have cooking. As much as I’d love to hang around until dinner is served I’m quite busy today.” Loretta glances down at Franks small satchel at his side bristling with envelopes awaiting delivery.

 

“Oh heavens, I would say so yes!”

 

Frank double checked the writing on the envelope that read...

 

“F. T. Strawbridge

217 Sycamore Street”

 

He handed it to Loretta saying “It’s the Beltmoore. He should be home in time for festival Sunday. Could you sign here please?”

 

Once a signature was received on the company crew call roster sheet, Franks job had been done. He couldn’t ring the doorbell and run leaving an envelope at a door step no matter how much he’d love to do so in most cases. Passing the buck to another blindly would have been better than Christmas or at best rivaling a sinners prayer. The employees signature was required as this showed they were alive, functioning and breathing enough to sign their name thus signifying their acceptance and acknowledgment that they would report for work. In the 27 years of the Strawbridge calls, there was never an issue. Loretta’s signature was as good as gold in place of her husbands.

 

“If you happen to have any leftovers I’d gladly accept them at the festival. Hope to see you and Felix and the family there.”

 

Mrs. Strawbridge waved a farewell to Frank who left for his scaling of the town for another name on the roster and closed the door behind herself. She ambled back up to the bedroom to find Felix sitting at the edge of the bed groggily rubbing his eyes and yawning as he said “Well let me see the prize winnings today. Only Frank has a knock that sounds like a fat kid tiptoeing through a field of crunchy dried out daisies. Loretta, I do believe if you could learn his knock you could awaken my dead carcass to attend church with you some mornings. By the second day of his knocking, I knew it couldn’t be anyone else aside from him. Any other knock would have bored me into a deeper sleep.”

 

“Well, they are putting in the new telephone wires just a few blocks away. The storms last week took a lot of the phone lines out. Hopefully, ours will be back in service next week. Seems weird seeing railroads using crew call boys again. I’m sure as they make more and more headway poor Frank will have to find a new line of work. Maybe he will enlist in the Navy. He said he had been thinking about it and their motto ‘Join The Navy And See The World’ had appealed to him.”

 

“Dear. Doing what he’s doing right now....he’s seeing things he wouldn’t see no matter how many times he sailed around the earth. Especially if he gets out looking for Walt.”

 

Felix reached for his glasses as Loretta handed him the envelope oblivious to the plight of the one who delivered it. He asks how her day has been as he opens the envelope and pulled out the paper. Atop it was the company logo of a 5 pointed star representing the 5 states served by his employer's rails. He giggled softly as he wondered what a Jewish Star of David for a logo would look like being the “Starlight Route” recently bought a connecting shortline in an adjacent state bringing them up to 6. His great grandfather would approve.

 

“The 136....” Felix said to himself in puzzlement.

 

“Felix he said the Bigbee Turn.”

 

Felix glanced up at the ceiling then to the floor as he struggled to put two and two together from his just awakened slumber. The railroad gave their trains numbers but the locals and railroaders gave them names to better understand their whereabouts and “where’a’to’s.” Rarely did the numbers mean anything to the outsiders so the namesakes helped things along.

 

“Well, that won’t be a bad nights worth of work. Just hope the rain holds off until the morning. Those crossties and roadbed were already beyond sponge stage from soaking up the previous week's rain.”

 

A distant train whistle blew and from the sounds of it, it was not the one Felix would take the helm of. Another shouldn’t be heard for another few hours giving Felix no sense of urgency. A look at his orders on the paper confirmed his thoughts. Frank wouldn’t knock too soon and yet even though his on duty time was a few hours away the tempting thought of another hours rest would do little but result in useless tossing and turning.

 

“Well come on down and I’ll put some coffee on for you. Madeleine and the kids are here. Little John has been raving all afternoon how he wants to see his pa paw. He wants to hear some of your ‘tales from the rails’ “ Loretta says laughingly.

 

“Glad I didn’t want another nap,” Felix thought to himself in light of the circumstances but was glad of the news of company before work.

 

After a few moments, Felix came downstairs into the kitchen as his wife and daughter sat at the table with plates already in place. The grandfather passed a tall grandfather clock, an assortment of pictures of his honeymoon, vacations, family and of fellow Marine Corps buddies continuing past well-crafted hand made in America furniture from a shop just down the road a piece. His grandson and granddaughter giggled as they played with Felix’s cocker spaniel, Wendy. Felix poured a cup of coffee and sat at the head of the table as a light Indian summers breeze flowed through curtains in an opened window.

 

“Kids, come on, s....”

 

He hushed Madeline’s command bringing a puzzled look to her face. There was no need to rush right into the early dinner. Time was available for talk and catching up.

 

“Shhhhh, let 'em play a little longer.”

 

She smiled and rested her chin in the palm of her hand, fingers resting along her cheek while looking at her father as her black hair rested lazily on her shoulders.

 

“So, how've ya been dad?”

 

A glance over his glasses as he sipped down his coffee and crossed his eyes caused the two women to burst into laughter.

 

“Ahhh come on pa. Surely it hasn’t been that crazy!”

 

He placed the coffee cup down and let out a giggle.

 

“Nah, all is well. Just been busy lately. There’s always something to do around this place. Always something needing tending too. Just trying to do my part to keep your mother from being run ragged.”

 

Loretta smiled as she got up and walked to the stove and began bringing dinner to the table.

 

Felix glanced in his wife’s direction and back over to Madeleine. “So how’s life on your end?”

 

“Fine...fine...” said half-heartedly.

 

“Audrey and John have been doing well in school and the new job is going well. Mr. Wallace gave me a raise and says I can work all the hours I want if need be. With the holidays coming up there’ll be no shortage there. He and his wife have been most generous. They’ve been understanding and working around my night classes. I only have one more semester.”

 

Glancing over at the two youngest, Madeline continued. “They have seemed to accept it a little. While they were in school last week, I....”

 

Her soft red lips began to quiver as she began to fight back a sudden unexpected tear. She told Felix in a barely controlled sob, “I miss Donnie so much.”

 

Loretta eased to her daughter's side to lightly console her and to shield the glances of the two littlest ones in the room away from their mother's condition. Their laughter continued as Wendy ran back and forth across the living room unwittingly diverting their attention from their grief-stricken remaining parent caught in the snares of a seemingly empty questionable future. For the moment Wendy was welcomed comedy relief.

 

“I lay in the bed at night reaching for someone who isn’t there and stare at the ceiling or out the window at the stars at night. It seems no matter how deep I bury my head into the pillow the kids still hear my sobs. They come in asking me what is wrong and I don’t know what to tell them. Its been almost a year now and no matter how much I pace the floors praying for an answer or seeking hope I just come up empty handed. Why the hell did...”

 

Madeleine drifted off into even deeper tears.

 

Felix extended his hand across the table to Madeleine, taking her grip in his, he softly kissed and softly squeezed her hand rubbing his thumb slowly back and forth over the top of it.

 

Regaining her composure yet looking into the table as if into an abyss she softly said “Mom...dad...your help the past year has meant so much to me. Thank you.” She was afraid to look up and make eye contact for fear of another rush of sudden emotions.

 

Felix leaned back and took another sip of coffee. “Maggie....that help will continue to be there as long as your mother and I have breath in our bodies. We can’t begin to imagine what it must be like with Donald gone. But rest assured our help for you will never cease.”

 

After a pause, Felix opted to Maggie, “If you need to there are two empty rooms right up those stairs there behind you. I seem to recall one once being yours and the other one belonging to that knuckleheaded brother of yours. If you need to, you, John and Audrey are welcome to stay with us. Your mother and I have already discussed this. If it’s to help shoulder the burden of your loss or if it just feels right....you can stay as long as you want or need to. With your brother gone, my erratic long hours and days away from home...and well...now with Donald being gone...I’m sure you could both use one another’s company...”

 

Madeleine slowly raised her head looking up at her mother and over to her father. “Thank you. Things are ok but we’ll see. Thank you for a safe harbor.”

 

Assured Madeleine was ok, Loretta went back to prepping the dinner table as Felix got up to let Wendy outside. The children filed to the table as Felix came back to have a seat. The time ticked on.

 

After dinner was finished little John walked over to his grandfather gathering all of his work gear. He said nothing but watched intensely as Felix slipped on his work shoes and grabbed his shiny leather satchel containing rule books, time tables, forms, pens, pencils, one days worth of clothes and several outdated but interesting copies of National Geographic. About that time Madeleine came to gather John. John looked up at his mom. “But pa paw was going to tell me a story.” Felix winked at his daughter and nodded.

 

“John, I tell you what little buddy, I have to get down to the station and be ready to take a train out. So sadly I won’t have the time to do that but...”

 

Felix dug into his satchel and pulled out a new cellophane wrapped copy of The Little Golden Books “The Little Engine That Could” and handed it to John who shrieked with joy jumping up and down. He had bought it some time ago and was keeping it ready for just such an occasion.

 

“When pa paw can’t be here to tell you any stories perhaps mom or grandma will see fit to read you a few pages from this. That sound like a pretty good deal little fella?”

 

Madeleine held her arm out as John ran to his mother's side while Audrey was already on the other side. Felix wrapped them all in a hug as he excused himself to grab the last of his things. Loretta escorted them out as Felix fills his thermos with coffee. He glances out the window looking out at the ensemble of his family huddled together at Madeleine's car. Looking on as his family went about their business while work kept him frustratingly away at arm's length was nothing new. This was a scene he had repeated time and time again in his career. Yet Felix had just as well learned long ago to accept it. Luckily the family did too. Others weren’t as fortunate or conscientious. He turns his focus to gathering lunch from the suppers leftovers. Madeleine looks into the window seeing her fathers silhouette. She kisses her mother’s cheek and drives away.

 

“My word! You ate enough to sink a battleship earlier.” exclaimed Loretta as she closed the door looking on at Felix placing one piece of fried chicken after another in his lunchbox.

 

“What has gotten into you lately? Have you gotten a tapeworm?”

 

“Dear I would think at 49 my tapeworm days are quite well behind me.”

 

The couple looks at one another across the length of the kitchen and laugh as they walk towards one another. Loretta takes her man in her arms in a deep embrace.

 

“Do you think you’ll be back in time for the festival this weekend?

 

“Oh, I should be. If all goes well I should be back home tomorrow night around 10 or 11. When does that thing start again? I can’t remember.”

 

“10 Sunday morning.”

 

“Ok. I should be able to.”

 

After a deep sigh and kiss on his wife’s cheek Felix puts on his hat and grabs his thermos, lunchbox, and satchel then heads out the door in an exchange of I love you’s.

 

Felix starts down the sidewalk with this work and personal belongings for other means along with extra baggage in his hands as he walks to the depot a couple of miles away in town.

 

DuPlois is home to about 17,500 and its largest employer outside of the railroad is the old Westinghouse lightbulb and fixture facility. Both run 365/24/7 except holidays and both equally kept the town afloat as they dueled in noise making through out the little towns concert and brick blocked walls. Most of DuPlois offerings lie along the stretch of Highway 25 called “Main Street” that runs east/west before swinging back north at the edge of town near the river. Either side of it more or less could be shoppers galore. Jewelry, clothing, home redecoration and sportsman stores and the like along with book, musical instrument and record stores held things down a bit. The pleasant stream is rippled a bit by the mortgage and loan offices. Even after most of the businesses have closed for the day potential prospectors can be found window shopping. Felix would usually allow himself an extra few minutes time in his walk to work to gaze into the displays in the shop windows and loved doing so after many had closed as to not have to deal with a pushy salesman or eager loan officers preying upon ones hardships only to bury them further. Commission has to be made somewhere somehow. Sometimes he deliberately contemplated using a fly swatter to keep the pushy at bay. The parking meter maid plying the sidewalks felt the same vibe only glancing at his reflection in the shop widows to break his monotony to see if his foot bouncing kept things slim and trim. While most of the goings on around town could be heard at local bait shops, the bus stop, the depot, some hair salon or any given church steps, this was the financial epicenter. To Felix it felt like a cesspool.

 

The bell to the courthouse clock makes its announcement that it is 1:00 pm. Felix stops and pulls out his railroad issued pocket watch seeing its 12:57 pm.

 

He grumbles to himself “Next week it will be off by 4 minutes. Maybe by this time next year, it will be 24 hours off and I can claim an unearned payday or send a replica of myself in.” Tucking his watch in his pocket he walks into the local diner across the street.

 

“Bob lemme have two sandwiches. One ham and one turkey. Both all the way.”

 

Tommy Dorsey’s “I’m Getting Sentimental Over You“ plays on the radio as Bob ask “Felix how are things down there on the R and R?”

 

Felix giggles at Bob’s sarcastic monicker. “Anything but rest and relaxation that’s for sure. Since we acquired the Noxapater & Northern back last fall it’s been hectic. Hopefully, things will even out soon. And they are starting to. Not complaining much. The extra money has been nice indeed. Just glad we aren’t stretched as thin as we were.”

 

“Yes indeed...” Bob slowly says as he finishes wrapping the last sandwich in wax paper putting it in a brown bag.

 

“That’ll be 3 and 2 5 there Feely.”

 

—————————————————————

 

Felix slides a chair up to the large round gray wooden table located in the break area after placing all his belongings off to the side. If you were joked about and laughed about while being able to take the heat, you were in and welcomed to the table. If you weren’t you were either an unknown, an isolationist or a woeful man who had been excommunicated from their circle. Getting kicked out was easy. Getting back in was almost impossible. At the round table there was no score keeping for the card games but in stature and loyalty which earned you a seat there.

 

Having a loose tongue, having assed up on the job over and over, not heeding and utilizing the advice of old hand railroaders, showing less than stellar work ethics, betraying a fellow rail brother, trampling over others to become a company man without earning approval and respect beforehand...these were grounds for expulsion. It sometimes took years to get a seat at the table but a moment of stupidity could result in your seat being little more than a mere season ticket. To sit there was a privilege not lightly given. You better be a trustworthy soul that could be counted upon in ethics, ability and mentality. Passing the company pre hire exams was one thing but this was another beast entirely. Proving yourself in the field was harder. A seat would be waiting for you if you got it right. A satanic caricature of Mickey Mouse laid painted in the center of the table. Mickey held a pitch fork in one hand and an unfurled reversed facing scroll in the other that said “Before you sits the highest order of the lowest of the low. Where the crossroads of aptitude and attitude meet.” Impaled on his forked tail was a caricature of some smug man who could have well been a company official. Maybe it helped keep them honest by way of becoming a source of one another’s entertainment or enjoying each others comradeship.

 

The air was thick with smoke from Lucky Strikes and Chesterfields, the pungent smell of King Edward cigars and Prince Edward pipe tobacco. The sound of click and clacks not of the rails but of balls on the two pool tables just behind them could be heard along with opening and closing Zippo’s. Never mind the playing of dominoes and dice rattling in between. Any gaps in sound were filled in with the shuffling and dealing of cards. The clacking of cue balls were usually made by the outsiders with no place to go. Their table was the pool table. This area was located next to the wash and locker rooms, the constant sounds of shuffling feet from those coming and going from them rounded things out even further.

 

One could have been forgiven if they mistook the scene for a shady dance hall or watering hole. However this was inside the regional railroad's main depot that rested on a central division point of several rail lines converging upon it. A sign with the company logo had a statement that said all was fine and well with the arrangements so long as money never changed hands in the act of gambling or affected company operations. On the bottom edge of the sign were some rather tactful statements written countering other corporate points of view. The masses would have revolted if management had tampered in kind with dear old Mickey.

 

“You gonna draw sometime today? By the time you get around to it, I’ll be drawing my retirement.”

 

George shrugged off the comment and continued looking around the table at others conquest deciding methodically what move to make next.

 

“George...honestly...why don’t you go over there to Herb The Turd and take him up on a game of chess. That may be more up to par with your slow speed taking all day to get something done.”

 

“Bill, do you mean just here at the card table or at on the job as well?”

 

The table erupted into laughter but that quickly ended when George laid out a straight flush.

 

George smiled widely with a toothpick on one side of his mouth and a cigarette hanging out of the other. George could be a bit aggravating to work with because he seemed to assess everything about the job. But when it all fell together he could build up or break down a train rather well.

 

“Well, guys that’s it for me.”

 

Around the table sat railroaders of various crafts and capacities. It wasn’t uncommon for a few retirees to drift in and hang around as if the depot were a VFW post. This evening was no exception. As George walked out looking to see if his train had arrived the eyes around the table gazed over to one of retired hanger on’s who’d occasionally stop in to hang out with their former brethren.

 

“Ellis you sure spend a lot of time around here for someone who said they wanted no part of this mess when they started drawing their pennies.”

 

“Pennies are right!” Ellis challenges in a gruff bark.

 

“You pay in a dollar and by the time you retire it may as well be a few pennies that you get back.”

 

“Awww hush Ellis! No one at home wanna hear you bitching anymore? You’ll run off the new hires with that tone. If you haven’t heard we’re short-handed as it stands. If you run them away I’m gonna make your retired ass mark back up on the board!”

 

“Yeah, Elly. Why aren’t you at home anyway?”

 

“What for? All I’ve got is that naggy baggy wife of mine and 6 kids....well it was 6 when I last counted.”

 

“And you wonder how she got that way?!”

 

“Ok boys. Here here. I know just the thing for him. We need to take up some money for poor old down in his luck Elly. What Elly needs is a television. He needs some entertainment. By gosh, if you put a TV in that house maybe poor 'ol Margret could get a break from childbearing.”

 

The room exploded with yet another round of laughter. Felix took off his glasses to wipe away the tears from the result of a hysterical direct hit to his senses. Even Ellis couldn’t help but chuckle at the proposition.

 

Dale who launched into the comical tirade looked over at Felix exclaiming “Man down!”

 

The atmosphere around the depot and roundhouse could have an almost prison feel to it. Not in the sense of being locked up. But in the sense of the large concrete and cinder block walls, easy on the eyes green paint though dimly lit, the heavy smell of oil and warm electrical cabinets humming providing power to the adjacent mechanical building.

 

There were however the foremen, yard masters, train masters, division and district superintendents who may as well been wardens. Understandably a screw up from someone underneath their wings would result in stress. They couldn’t be an everyone everywhere at once person. They had to have faith in their troops in the field. But the troops in the field had to have faith in them. So long as things were an equal measure there was no argument. Gilding the lily.

 

But it seemed some among the upper echelons were either power hungry and loved to smear their positions in the faces of the ones they guided or tried to brow beat them to their benefit losing touch with reality along the way. A fantasy land pedestal. The higher up you were the more weight your voice had. A broken olive branch meant little. There were plenty among the ‘foremanintendents’ who were all too happy to convey their sentences upon others. Some were fair, some seemed to have been spawned from Satan himself. Others amongst their rank claimed God was showing off when he created them. Resentment and hatred ran rampant on both sides of the wielding swords.

 

“Anyone here want to clue me in as to what that means?”

 

Oliver Pope took a draw off his pipe then pointed it to the door leading to the yard office. Felix glanced over and looked above the door to see written in blue chalk..

 

“ARBEIT MACHT FREI!”

 

“Well Mr. Pope, I have to say I’m at a loss on this diatribe.”

 

Pope walked closer and pulled out a note pad and jotted the phrase down.

 

“You guys can write all the sinister comical messages you want. Have your laughs. But when I find out what this says in Latin you had better hope for the sake of the pen weasel that this isn’t an anti-company statement. ”

 

“I’m sorry you can’t pat Dale on top of the head like a loyal follower but he gyrates like a fish out of water when playing that tune” retorts an on looker.

 

Yet another round of united laughter filled the entire room in opinion as the door closed behind a fuming Pope. Their disdain ejected him. His persona was shot down again.

 

“You’d think being that’s in the same vein seemingly of his managements role model. Surely he ought to know what it is” Felix quips.

  

Dale ends playing “Ride Of The Valkyries” on his harmonica as Pope removes his presence. Felix shakes his head cutting his eyes away from Dale.

 

“I really don’t get that guy” Felix says looking at the floor.

 

“He’s like one of those people who won’t take a bite off of their plate unless the T.V. or some radio show is on. They’ll even stop eating until some commercial break is over then go back to putting some steak or greasy cheeseburger away.”

 

Dale looks at Felix as if watching a leaf floating down a river.

 

“Some people just don’t want to do anything unless they have some sense of entertainment for their entitled ego.”

 

After trying to come to terms with Pope’s latest flared ulcers or at least flared ego the duo of Felix and Dale leave from the table and walk over to the bulletin and train order boards. Above it is the company clock with the official railroad time displayed which is in use across the railroads of the nation and beyond.

 

Felix looks down at his pocket watch and over at Dale as he checks his wristwatch then up to the company clock.

 

“Yep. The county courthouse is off a bit.”

 

“You too eh?” prods Dale.

 

“I noticed that earlier on the way in..”

 

Dale nods in agreement as they both turn for the yard office. They hang around waiting on the clerk to return. Frank is back for a short break in his evening searches. He assures the duo that the other 3 who’ll make up his train crew were notified. Of them, one’s pending presence is still questionable.

 

“Hey guys, what can I do for ya?”

 

“Yeah just here to grab the work and train orders for 136. Any idea where she’s at at the moment?”

 

The clerk walks over asking the dispatcher the last logged position. “Yessir at Cogswell.”

 

They turn and head back for the roundhouse and walk outside

 

Two of 136’s new crew, Desmond and Stan walk up to Dale and Felix as they get out of Stan’s car.

 

“Anyone around here seen Walt? 136 is about 10 miles out.”

 

Felix pokes his head in the break area as Stan gives Walt’s last known whereabouts.

 

“When we passed the Red Rooster he was standing outside with some fellas. Looked like he was having quite the time too. He seemed in no hurry but heck you can’t ever tell with that guy if he’s gonna show or not. How in the world ol’ scumbag gets away with what he does is beyond me!”

 

Desmond offers his take. “He had to done seen some executive or boss doing something they ain’t sposed to be doin’. Good lawd, maybe quite a few of skeletons in the closet he be done seen. I notice though each time he be act up, they like they be scared of him or something. Ain’t no way anyone else would gedda way with that sort’o stuff. Ain’t no way. There ain’t no way.”

 

Just as Desmond brings his insight to a halt, Walt’s distinctive laugh and cackling could be heard behind them as he came up joking wildly and loudly with a couple of the baggage handlers.

 

The three men turn to look as Walt carries on with his cajoling with the guy trying to get the bags in the baggage car but being hindered.

 

Almost having arisen from the ground at the trio's feet, Pope seemed to turn every shade of red possible. He looks Walt up and down who’s far from dressed for duty holding up others going about their work. It seemed as if Pope would self incinerate into ashes and blow away at any second with wind that carried carried away the smoke from Dale’s pipe who’s eyes were widened like watching an approaching tornado with no where to flee.

 

“Walt! Get the hell over here boy and leave those men alone. Stop holding up my trains. You’re holding up those men and your scraggly butt is far from ready for work!”

 

Walt snaps his head around with a confused look on his face as he walks up stopping arms length away in front of Pope.

 

“From the smell of things I can’t decipher between your stench between from an unwashed ass or the alcohol on your breath escaping from your pores that you’re ready to get at it.”

 

Pope glares intently searching for further reasons to humiliate Walt deeper for his own enjoyment.

 

“Mornin’ the Pappy Pope. Do you see a kid out here? I don’t. Who ya think ya yellin’ at like that?”

 

“You got a problem with authority? You looking for work?”

 

“Well...I got a problem with those with a silver spoon up their butt. I have a problem with brown nosed, backstabbing cutthroats who played others like a fiddle to get where they are. Authority. No. No problem with authority here. Authority figures? Anything is plausible.”

 

Felix shouted as he sprinted up “Walt! Knock it off!”

 

“Pope if you wanna chop things, why don’t ya take your butt over in those woods there. I’m sure there’s an axe ‘round here somewhere. See if you can figure out what wood to chop out there instead of here! You might even make some friends with the local wildlife. I’m sure some of your forked tongued relatives are slithering around in there.! You sorry m...” The words only ceased so Walt could land a plop of tobacco browned spit at Popes feet.

 

Pope looked down in an embarrassing horror to see if his white polished shoes were browned then gazed slowly up to Walt.

 

“If they chew spearmint they are catholic. If they chew wintergreen they are Methodist. If they chew peppermint they are Baptist’s. If they chew cinnamon they are Pentecostal. True fire warriors. The lazy they just chew fruit flavored. A mindless wild card . If they chewed any of it while they were in school they were backsliders. So Pope? Do ya think you’re a real man chewing gum or do ya wanna dive headlong into hell with some Beechnut chewer? You don’t have a soul ya sack of shit. A cockroach chewing on shit is more noble than you are! Show us who ya really are Pope!”

 

Felix slid between the two just at the first millisecond of the pause before the duo’s riled minds could send signals to ball up let alone swing a fist.

 

“Walt! I said knock it off. That’s enough!”

 

Pope folded his arms together angrily glaring back and forth into Felix and Walt’s eyes looking as if a bloodthirsty wolf, the very semblance of what Pope was.

 

“Lemme tell ya what stank ass. I’m tired of your flippant ass attitude and flippant ass work ethic! You’re like a cockroach. Unpleasant and unwanted, you pop up out of nowhere! I dunno if squashing you would put you out of your misery. It damn sure would put me out of mine! So help me if you delay another one of my trains you’ll be kicked beneath pan handling breadline hell. From the looks of things a monkey could do your job.”

 

The whistle of 136 blowing for the crossing just north of the depot calmly quieted the dispute.

 

Felix grabbed Walt by the arm leading him away to the depot's platform.

 

The others watch as Pope walks away fuming. Desmond with his slow heavy Mississippi drawl testifies to the others, “See there. Say I ain’t toldja. Ain’t no way. Ain’t no way.”

 

As they and others look on in shock and disbelief, others adored the episode that exploded before them. For whatever it was Walt could get away with and why was of no concern to them. They relished that Pope was getting his position made fun of, was being called out to light and more so not behind his back but directly to his face. Pope was known for throwing a fist to assert his alpha status and getting away with it but compared to Walt, it was no contest. The Pope’s best would have been nursery rhyme compared to anything Walt would have done just for mere starters. Walt wasn’t going to be shamed like some kid who had to explain to his parents why he chose shit himself to avoid the gym class he disdained.

 

Most of the train service crews equally despised both of them but to choose sides meant leaning towards Walt who was the wildest amongst them who’s tirades were true and honest. Pope unleashed his upon the undeserving or to weed out the ones who cared little to placate his inflated persona. This event didn’t need the judge, bailiff, and jury. Both were labeled as being lower than whale shit the deepest depth of the ocean. Seeing the Pope hunkered down was better than a cold beer on a hot summers evening to the on lookers.

 

Dale walks over to the duo to get things underway as the thunder subsided. Playing cards with apathy had to be done by someone. Differences aside there was a job to be done.

 

“Walt, go on and get ready and we’ll go over the 136 while you do that.”

 

As Walt heads inside Dale cuts his eyes to Felix and mutters quietly himself, “Take a bath while you’re at it.”

 

“If his mouth doesn’t get him thrown outta here then his hygiene certainly could.”

 

“For all my late night soul searching and daily misunderstandings I still could always come up with an answer for my short comings if I stared them down enough. To me that man is a damn enigma at its finest.” Felix ponders aloud to himself as he watches Walt slide back inside a doorway hoping privately that the man is too naive to the self imposed torture he creates for himself.

 

“Maybe he’s just hiding or running from something” Dale sighs.

 

“Yeah no point in blaming myself if he won’t face his demons. Hell at least he’s here. Guess that’s good enough.”

 

Dale slowly takes a draw from his pipe as he looks over the paperwork and train orders as Stan, Desmond and Felix head over to the previous crew of 136 still holding down their post. They go over what work is left and what the evenings trip will lay out before them. Felix talks to Harold the fellow departing engineer and head end crew. Walt should be present but as so typical he’s busy with other matters.

 

After a few moments their huddle breaks as one group heads for the train and the other heads inside for home. As soon Harold opens the door leading into the break area there’s the sound of loud upset voices and the like.

 

“What in the....?”

 

“Harold, what is it?”

 

“Feely, you ain’t gonna believe this.”

 

Felix sticks his head around the door and looking across the break area into the washroom stands a butt naked Walt scrubbing himself with a bar of soap from a waist high sink with wet soapy hair and no proper way to rinse. Felix drops his head and sighs deeply.

 

It begins to dawn upon Walt that he’s the center of attention.

 

“Walt! What in the Sam Hill are you doing?”

 

“Dale said for me to take a bath or I could lose my job. All the showers in here are full. Just doing my part.”

 

Walt looks around at the passerby’s.

 

“Any you got any lizard green? Lustereen?”

 

“Listerine Walt!”

 

“Yeah. That stuff. Uncle Dale said my mouth was a problem too.”

 

———————————————————————————

Once all were aboard Felix knocked off the brakes after the signal to proceed was given.

 

From both sides of the locomotive cab, Walt and Felix in unison call “Green board” after having gazed at the tricolored lights for several minutes anticipating their next move.

 

The sound of hissing air fills the cab only for its last remnants of protest to be drowned out by the sudden guttural roar as the engine digs in to move its burden. Felix doesn’t rush things on as a patient hand beats an eager hand any time. Even if it holds together it will scarcely move any meaningful inch. The engine bucks and slips momentarily. Felix is as careful and understanding with the throttle as he is with his own Loretta. Finessing is key. Overdoing things will just break the train apart causing delay and extra work.

 

A steady stream of smoke and sparks quickly exit the exhaust stacks as things get more vocal yet still slowly responsive. Walt leans out the window looking backwards for any signs of trouble. The two locomotives give their all as they dig in and claw forward. The gut hitting throb sang deeply as the organized chaos began to put on its show. The slack between cars tightened as wheel after wheel began to move. The snap of draft gear, couplers snapping together, clacks of wheels hitting joints and hollow booms from empty cars in the train began to fill the air. The parade had begun. The metal snake is coming to life.

 

Felix kept an eye on the ammeter only adding further fuel to the caged beast as the needle dropped comfortably away from the red. The snake was writhing.

 

Stan’s voice comes over the radio, “Rolling on the tail end” as Desmond can be heard mumbling in the background. The ace in the hole had been found. Old Sure Hand had done it again. In all of his years of getting a train out and over the road, Felix never busted a train in half no matter the territory, standing still or with an ill handling train. No one train was the same but Felix knew better than to be over eager or just plain stupid with his hand at the throttle. He never felt he had an image to upkeep nor did he ever dabble in competition with others among his rank. He was just that good at what he did.

 

With knowledge in hand that his train is in one piece Felix notches out the throttle a little more. His eyes dart from ammeter, the track ahead and speedometer while slapping the bell ringer in and blowing for the crossing just south of the roundhouse. He tips his hat at a few lookers on standing in a trackside parking lot. Any kids who weren’t watching were aspiring of other careers. To the kids who looking on in awe, these guys were their heroes. All the comic book heroes other kids emulated were nothing compared the rulers of the steel beast. They were their masters of the universe. Somewhere inside they couldn’t wait to grow up and shine the rails themselves.

 

As the train reaches 10 miles per hour Felix notches back on the throttle and holds at 10 as they waddle out of the yard, engine swaying side to side along with the occupants of its seats.

 

Felix notices a stick of blue chalk.

 

“Who’s is that?” as he glares at it rolling around on the floor.

 

“Beats me!”

 

He looks over at Walt frantically feeling around outside of his pockets to see if his blue saber was still there.

 

“Walt? You got some kind of an itch or something? I told you about picking those bad apples hanging around Eden.”

 

“Feely....just put your hands back on the steering wheel and drive.”

 

“Pope said you’re handy work was written in Latin. We didn’t tell him any different.”

 

They both smirk as the train rolls out of the yard.

 

\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

 

Once the tail end of 136 clears the confines of the yard at DuPlois, Stan’s voice comes over the radio giving confirmation. Once that staticky crackle goes silent Felix leans into the throttle gaining momentum for an eventual climb down the rails. Despite pulling only a 51 car train, any momentum would help as Felix would have to battle an ascending S curve a few miles out of DuPlois which began a gradual dive at the other end tapering off into a long straight flat run for most of the way.

 

Behind the 136 is the pride of the company, their passenger train The Bluebird but known as the “BB” for short to many. More than one celebrity and a handful of Presidents had ridden the BB as the train was renowned for its class, luxury and service and none of the companies other passenger trains held the prestige of this torch bearer.

 

Any other time the lowly 136 would have waited for the BB to depart DuPlois and slither out behind it. However a delay a few towns back had it running far enough behind that the 136 was told to make Elmstadt siding and hold there some 40 miles away as the BB should be catching up by that point. It was all up to Felix.

 

Felix pulls one more notch into the growling beast as his train enters into first leg of the S curve. As the snake threads itself through the steel ribbons Walt again leans out the window looking back to the rolling wheels behind him for any signs of trouble. Just as the train curves into the other direction he tells Felix all was well. Felix begins toying with the air and throttle, manipulation of both as needed as his train starts it’s decent downgrade.

 

Felix looks back at his train anxious to see the caboose come out onto the straight away onto the flat straight away. When he turns back around there will be more throttle and no air brakes for the rest of the way until Elmstadt siding.

 

“Stan? Y’all hunkered down back there?”

 

“Yessiree we are.”

 

Felix throws the throttle wide open. With the BB breathing down their back this is the stretch that will give the 136 the rare opportunity to run at speeds reserved purely for company varnish.

 

Before their target siding lies the town of Elmstadt proper. As a coincidence 136 just happens to be polishing the rails at the exact same time the tardy Bluebird otherwise would be.

 

Before the station lies a curve with where a highway crossing runs interference.

 

Being a Friday evening the station platform is jammed with eager passengers ready to leave the confines of small town life and head for the concrete and neon jungles or just simply getting away or even further to put something behind them hoping to find another something somewhere beyond. The Bluebird was their savior for better or worse.

 

Almost on cue the grade crossing lights at the highway began to flash their message as the bell began to testify its warning. The passengers rushed to the edge of the platform to ready to board their savior.

 

Instead of the BB that would be slowing as it rounded the corner they were greeted with a speeding freight.

 

Felix laid into the horn blaring against the onrushing wind as the train roared around the curve drawing a bead on the station and platform. Before anyone had any scant chance of rushing back, the 136 descended upon them as if a beast sprung loose from the depths of hell. So much for their savior.

 

Walt looked back as they sped past in concern for the masses safety but laughed hysterically.

 

“Walt? What’s so funny?!”

 

Struggling to regain his composure he replied to Felix’s inquiry...

 

“In a swirl of newspapers and hats blown off heads I do believe I saw every shade of underskirts there could be from all those dresses flying up! It looked like the paper boy exploded in a clothing store!”

 

////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

 

After having allowed the Blue Bird to stampede past them, the 136 ambles on into the low evening light as it arrives at Phoenix Creek to make pick up and set outs for a nearby industry. Stan and Desmond climb down from their perches into the thick oppressive humid summer evening to begin their first part of work as fireflies dance aimlessly casting their lights into the nearing darkness. After a few minutes a man, woman and their daughter come out from a tent in the woods and up to the tracks looking up to the cab of the locomotive.

 

Walt steps down from the engine and turns looking up as Felix hands down a bag full of food taken from home by himself and others among the crew. As Felix follows Walt, the small family walks closer. Walt passes off the bag and a $20 bill from his own pocket.

 

“Guys we really appreciate it. How we’d made it without you we don’t know. We hate to ask anymore of you considering all you’ve done.”

 

“Don’t worry about it. That’s what we do.”

 

Ben’s wife and daughter carry the care packages back to their tent as he and the others look on. Its a half lit area thick with trees and heavy kudzu and on days like today with heavy clouds, one could never know if it were just after sunrise or just before sunset unless they had a watch. For those among the woods here, telling time was set only by campfires set to cook the 3 daily meals and at best just once was a moment too few and far between. That was only when time meant the most to them. Smelling only fresh blooming honey suckles instead of sizzling bacon or boiling stew let the crew of 136 know that their offerings had arrived at a needed moment. The fireflies floating in the light breeze were about the only clock available letting one know nightfall was just around the corner.

 

Ben had been a fellow rail brother who lost his job with the railroad. With 7 years of service on the rails, he was never late, performed his duties with excellence and without grumble. For two years in a row right up to his termination he was deemed best employee on his district. One day as he reported to work he was fired and no reason was given. The matter was a mystery to everyone. Having lost his job and fallen on hard times during an economic downturn, he was unable to find work of any meaningful kind and looking further abroad was impossible. One by one the dominos fell until he and his family became squatters roaming the land. Eventually they ended up living along the tracks with a few others in search of work.

 

During a late night switching move, Ben creeped up out of the darkness upon Desmond and Stan. Looking for food and seeking employment he was desperate but his approach scared the two workers so bad they stuck him down beating him until he questioned aloud with a voice familiar to them if this is how they treated all rail brothers. Realizing their mistake and shining their lanterns upon him, they stood him up and brushed him off amongst a flurry of apologies. Shoot first and ask questions later had became the law of the land in the area riddled with economic woes and shady dwellers. They knew of Ben from another local railroad but in the inky darkness he could just as well been another over eager panhandler ready to make off with their wallets.

 

From that night on the crew of that nights 136 made a vow to look after him and the others as best they could. They were a source to Felix’s sudden tapeworms and gained his unopened army tent stollen on a dare during his stint in the Marines for their homestead. Ben would help them with work secretly along their route in order to meet what he felt were their charitable contributions. They never asked or welcomed him to do so but his persistence prevailed. Worried some railroad officers would notice an extra man on the playing field, they had a reason for their reservations. Ben however knew when to become a phantom. That along with his skill built their trust.

 

“Ben, why don’t you come down to DuPlois and talk to Murray about a job?”

 

“I don’t feel like that life again.”

 

“Do what?! You do pretty good at it.”

 

“I’m only trying repay your kindness.”

 

“We’ve told you that you don’t have to. Kindness is doing something without expecting a pay back.”

 

“Well still...”

 

“Still what? You wanna keep living like this? Why don’t you go try.”

 

“Because of Pope! That’s good and damn well why. I couldn’t put up with what y’all do.”

 

“His time is coming. That’s for sure.”

 

“Oh bull crap! You know how long that’s been said? I’d rather count nails in a burlap sack for 50 years than to have a step on step off job on his railroad for one night. He’s a snake and has blood on his fangs. If you want to call them hands then I’ll leave that up to you. One day y’all are gonna see it”

 

“We can’t support you and the others forever.”

 

“I’m not asking you to. There’s just no way I’m coming out there. A man has got to know his limitations and I know mine. Pope has smeared my name and no other railroad will touch me. If I got a gig with y’all I’d kill him the second my eyes saw him. I’d be a boundary he wouldn’t want to reckon with. Maybe hiding in his shadow is best for me.”

  

(Continuation & Editing Pause. This reading is posted here merely for the benefit of personal friends and family and if you’ve stumbled across it out of boredom please overlook my meanderings. It’s just a simple writing exercise and nothing more and written totally on the fly as the whim to do so strikes me. It’s not presented in it’s final form nor is it meant to be a professional writing by any means. If you enjoy it so though far I’d love to hear your comments even if I end up mortified by them ; )

Sitting Alone....in this cold freezing in this abandon trailer park home as I wait for being rescue, so I begin to relax by reading a book I found on the coffee table as I hear the whistling sounds of the wind blowing through trees. Then after few hours, no one came and started to watch tv, but the tv is staticky, so I shut that off then keep on exploring to see if there any food in this fridge and so far I found something in the freezer, nothing but frozen dinners inside, so I took that pop that in the microwave and stood until the food is ready to eat. After food was done, I started check if there anything to drink, and I found some box of coco mix. "Wow" I said thinking to myself it is my lucky day finding coco in a cupboard. So, I fixed that along with my frozen dinner that I cooked in the microwave. After while, I ate everything and so satisfied that there was something eat and drink in this cold freezing trailer park home. I notice my iPhone6 rang, so I answered it and the other end of the my phone I heard my friend Paolo who is a Swedish American who served in the USA Army for 10 years and still on active duty. He said to me "He is on his way to me just stay where I am", so I gave him the coordinates and my location. I am so thrilled that I don't have to be in this abandon trailer and this creepy town any longer. After an hour rolled by, he came to my location and busted through the door and calling my name, so I told him I am here sitting on this couch. He closed the door and came to me as he hugged. He asked me "What is this place?, because it is not on the map and luckily I found it on my high tech GPS tracking system. I said to him, " When I walked through town the sign said, " Welcome To Ironwood Hills." Then he said," Ah, well this town is creepy and eerie, but lets get out of here". I nodded my head into agreed when into his warm 4 door 2015 Black Jeep Wrangler. As he came inside the Jeep, all of the sudden the radio came on without me and my friend Paolo touching it, so we looked at each other and heard a voice through it saying, "You Two Are Going To Die Here" ~hearing a eerie embodied voice~. I said to Paolo, "Umm lets get out of here now!". He still looked at me then said, "You don't have to tell me twice." Then he started up his Jeep Wrangler, but it was stalling and I started to worry. He said to himself "Got Damn It! I had no trouble with this vehicle until now. Then I said, "Well you still have a full tank of gas, so I don't know why it's stalling. He kept restarting the Jeep over and over again until I see someone or something looking at us throw a window, which is like 5 feet or more away from us. I asked my friend Paolo to see what I am seeing, but noticing he is still trying to started up the Jeep. He looked at me and told me "No". Then, all of the sudden his Jeep Wangler started finally for almost an hour. He checked his glove apartment and told me to used his double Desert Eagle Magnum .500s just in case anything happen. I nodded my head and took both weapons, because he told me he has his Smith And Wesson .45 Caliber Pistol with laser, scope, and flash light built into it. As we get ready to set off as he reverse his Jeep Wrangler, I noticed that door to the house flung open and there was the undead started to run towards us, so I rolled not that window and started to fire one of the Desert Eagle Magnum .500 couple of times until the bullet hit the head of the undead person, which blew his brains out and Paolo told me," Nice Shot!", then we speed off to exit out of Ironwood Hills until we saw something blocking us in front of the tunnel.........Be continued.......What's blocking their away? A horrified monster? or Horde of zombies? or A huge debris from the mountain side? We won't find out until the next story..until then Beware of an abandon town of Ironwood Hills muahahahaha......

 

My avi in this photo wearing the beautiful well made fall collection called:

[Cynful] Ultschfit - Brown 2 [Add me] with the stunning jewelry set from Purple Moon's Jewelry Line called: ::PM:: - Cubics dans la Chocolaterie Jewelry Set and with the stylish ankle boots by MODA called: [MODA] ZARIA PUNK ANKLE BOOTS & HUD DELUXE. The overall outfit is well made and designed with nice warm colors. I am very well pleased of how I put this cute outfit together to add my twist to it. I highly recommend the whole outfit to my friends and other shoppers, if you wanted to dress warm for the winter in SL and I also recommend this nice eerie place called Ironwood Hills for anyone who wanted to take photos and blog their pictures in his or her own blog page or Ironwood Hills Group here on Flicker: www.flickr.com/groups/2826847@N20/

 

Here is my LM or MP Links of where I got each of outfit is from:

 

[Cynful] Mainstore: [Cynful] Ultschfit - Brown 2 [Add me]

 

maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/COCO%20DESIGNS/107/209/22

 

Purple Mainstore: :: PM :: Cubics dans la Chocolaterie Jewelry Set

 

maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Etherea/168/73/22

 

Moda Mainstore: [MODA] ZARIA PUNK ANKLE BOOTS & HUD DELUXE

 

maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/MODA/119/128/22

 

Thanks Purplemoon, Cynful, and MODA for putting out well made and well crafted clothes to accessories for us customers. We appreciate the hard work and artistry behind them, so keep it coming!

 

Sincerely,

 

Asia Antoinette xoxoxoxoxoxo <3

 

P.S. If you like to view my photo on my blog for google here it is: asiaantoinette.blogspot.com

The Jack of Diamonds

 

“As a jewel thief, you go for the challenge. It's dangerous, it's glamorous, there's an adrenalin rush."

MK

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

 

It was an early morning in mid-October when my twin sister woke up in her bed, only to discover that someone had burgled her room, taking away the jewels she had been wearing out the night before.

 

The burglary wasn’t a straightforward occurrence, but rather a culmination of several diverging paths crossing

 

Allow me to explain…

 

^^^^^^^^

That October my 15-year-old twin sister was invited to attend a very formal evening affair with a classmate (Kimber) and her wealthy parents.

 

My sister got herself all dolled up, slipping into her really beautiful ultra-soft high-necked silk gown of deep violet: A sheer bodice with long cuffed sleeves, ending in sweeping fashion with a pleated skirt.

 

She had winningly worn out the gown only a fortnight ago at our aunt's black tie-only wedding held at the fashionable Ischoyd Park House and Grounds.

 

As she had at the wedding, with her silk gown, my sister added on her favorite rhinestones: wildly sparkly long wide rhinestone filled ‘Y’ shaped necklace, matching long rhinestone earrings, her 7-strand diamond bracelet, and 4 rings from her large collection.

 

Her hair was held by a pair of our mum’s fancy clips which contained real chips from man-made diamonds, they looked very pretty, allowing her long natural ginger hair to fall curling down behind her back.

 

Though Mum had allowed her to wear the pricy clips to the wedding, there was some argument over her wearing them at a function where she would be out alone. My sister won that argument.

 

To complete the elegant ensemble she was wearing silver satin pumps and carried a black satin clutch purse.

 

She looked smashing and I told her so as she was heading out, and as hoped, receiving a warm bear hug for my words, her gown chinchilla soft in my arms.

 

Our parents were also out for one of their long weekends, so I spent that first evening alone watching movies on the Telly.

 

^^^^^^^^^^^

 

As it happened that evening a movie was on about a jewel thief who calls himself the “Ace of Diamonds.”

 

As the thief went about his business, it didn’t escape me that my twin sister, who was out in public wearing her fetching silk gown and loaded down with dripping rhinestones, (not to mention mom’s glimmering clips) looked like she would have fit right in as a potential target of the thief.

 

I actually was beginning to be a bit on edge that my cute sister would possibly be in danger of suffering a similar fate while gallivanting out and about, all dressed up like those girls being robbed in the movie.

 

I uneasily shifted my position on the couch as I pictured in my mind the perils she could encounter if an inept thief thought all my Twin’s jewels were the real thing.

 

Which, real life is not a stretch of imagination that a thief wouldn’t know the difference, right?

 

Not that she was that gullible, but I know she got rather heady by all the young males giving her pawing attention at the Ischoyd Park wedding.

 

The place had a lot of outdoor gardens containing a multitude of dark nooks and crannies.

 

So I could, and did, imagine her losing guard by swooning over a handsome young con man, whose intentions centered on her jewels, who managed to lure her off outside alone into those gardens.

 

As I fantasized, I could picture my twin sister in her beautiful gown, her rhinestones flickering, diamond chip hair clips shimmering, suddenly cringing when she realized he had led her into a trap and into the clutches of her “admirer’s” waiting ruffian friends.

 

Rough grasping Lads who looked with bug-eyed amazement over what had just been caught in their net, demanding more than the lovely lass just be handing over her satin purse.

 

As she balked, they would then pounce and strip down their slippery squirmy victim, head to toe, of all her valuables, leaving her shivering, hair in her face, wearing nothing more than her long thin white silk slip, if even that!

 

Having those those overactive, imaginative, concerns on my mind made me happy to finally hear the key turn the lock around ten

 

Sis came swishing(and glittering) into the room to say hello and tell me about the party.

 

Sounded to me like it had been a brilliant night for her. I wished I had been invited along also. Better than sitting alone at home.

 

As she was prattling on, I saw her eyes kept drifting towards the Telly, finally, she broke off her recount as something the thief was doing really caught her eye.

 

She quizzically asked whatever was I watching?

 

Her eyes lit up with interest as I explained what the movie was about, and teased her that she appeared to be a prime target for the movie’s antagonist. Then I teased by wondering out loud if that thought had ever occurred to her this evening.

 

She flicked her earrings, teasing me back, then said…

“No idea what you're in about me lad..no one was thieven tonight!”

 

She then just smiled, chirping, while her eyes were on the screen.

“0ui’ does sound like a fun movie then. Let me just get out of this and I’ll join you”

 

I secretly was happy she was now home safe and secure, but as I watched her gown swishing with fetching provocation along her figure while she went upstairs, I still had my lingering thoughts over her fate if a jewel thief indeed would ever target her.

 

^^^^^^^^^^

 

Not long after she went upstairs I heard her come quickly back down and felt her plop down beside me on the couch.

 

She was comfortably wearing her long-sleeved chocolate satin PJs.

 

I did a double take, she still had on her ultra glittery necklace. And her finger still had on one of her pretty rhinestone rings.

 

I was curious at the time why she had changed into her satin pjs, and left the necklace on, was she still teasing me? Was she expecting me to say something?

 

We watched on, my sister had her eyes glued to the screen, absentmindedly playing with her sparkling necklace.

 

At one point the movie thief was himself admiring a diamond necklace worn by a well-dressed-up lady.

 

I looked down at my sister, now cuddled in beside me.

 

I was feeling a bit piqued, thinking how pretty the necklace looked on her, when suddenly my sister blurted out…

“You know at the party tonight there was this smarmy bloke who took a great deal of interest in me, then as we talked, he suddenly appeared to have lost all interest. Weird huh?”

 

“Yes. Weird he took an interest in you atoll luv…”

I teased, receiving a poking for my witty efforts, after tussling a bit, we both went back to watching the movie.

 

My mind drifted back over to why had the bloke approached my sister only to abruptly leave her. Was it an innocent act, or a sinister one?

 

The movie ended and, on a rather silly note I thought. Yawning, I was thinking of calling it a night and heading up to bed.

 

But there was a second movie of a similar vein as the previous was playing next. As the preview was shown. I felt my sister snuggling in even closer.

 

“Looks interesting, let’s watch it and see if it is any good?”

 

The movie was Italian. With English subtitles.

 

Titled “Perras Callejetas” it concerned a group of lady thieves.

 

It was a fun watch.

 

The gang at one point in the movie infiltrated an upper-class restaurant and began robbing the patrons of their wallets and some rather pretty jewels.

 

My sister, who had been half asleep, jumped and held onto me. As I placed a hand around her shoulder she mumbled.

“That startled me, if that lot had been

to the party I was at tonight, they would have made a bloody killing.”

 

I lifted her necklace…

“If that had happened. It’s a good thing you were only wearing rhinestones…”

 

She looked up at me, her heavily mascara-lined eyes blinking sleepily, taking her necklace from my hand,

“Oh no, you bet they would make me hand mine over …. And mum’s clips, that would never do. Of course, you’d protect me if that happened wouldn’t you?”

 

I chuckled as I assuredly stroked her arm.

“Yes If I was there. I would twit!”

 

She looked up into my face, holding her necklace.

“That reminds me. I was having issues with the clasp. Here be a luv and help me.

 

She turned around and lifted her hair, the ring on her finger flashing.

 

I located the clasp and pried the stubborn bugger open, then handed it back to her.

 

She took it in her hand and pecked me on the cheek, then yawned, and started to speak before it was done.

“T-Thanks, I m getting tired. Good movie, fun watching those thieves at work. Thinking I’ll be heading off to bed now.”

 

She rose,

“Sweet dreams.”

 

“Sweet dreams luv…”

 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

 

She went upstairs, and I turned back to the movie, hoping for another jewellery heist like the one at the restaurant.

 

But I found it hard to focus as my eyes began drooping.

 

^^^^^^

 

My sister and I were at our kitchen table. I was wearing my bathrobe, my sister her satin pajamas, and her rhinestones.

 

Female thieves dressed as jesters came in and started to rob the people sitting at the other tables that suddenly were in our dining room, I recognized them as being the same guests from my Aunt’s summer black tie wedding.

 

The thieves got to our table and my Aunt, wearing an A-line white satin gown with rhinestone trimmings, started to hand over her pearls. An argument broke out as the thieves told her they wanted diamonds and not pearls and my Aunt said she had to go to my sister’s room to change into them…

 

My Aunt got up and I saw my sister sitting on the couch.

 

She is again wearing her alluring violet gown, she is also wearing diamonds all along her figure.

 

As I watch, helpless to help her, hands begin reaching out, locating and removing her diamonds, and placing them into a basket that is being held out from the Telly screen, all except for the diamond clips.

 

Then the cat was made to hand over her pearled collar.

 

At this point, I knew I was dreaming and told myself to wake up. We don’t even have a cat.

 

^^^^^^

When I woke from my dream at 2:00 am it was to a staticky Telly screen.

 

I shook my head, rose, and went up to bed.

 

Reaching the top stair I saw my sister had left her bedroom door ajar.

 

Still half asleep, the dream lingering, I just had the compelling urge to look inside her room to make sure she was indeed ok and not being tied up and robbed of her jewels ( a stark image of which was imprinted on my mind)

 

I peered in, and suddenly I was wide awake, of course, she was ok, but in the moonlight streaming through her window I could see my sister’s richly clad figure, half covered by the satin sheets, laying deeply asleep on her bed. Her shiny back was facing her vanity.

 

The vanity had her jewel case sitting off on one side, where jewelry was just sparkling.

 

Uncannily this looked like the scene in the earlier movie when the jewel thief entered his vulnerable sleeping victim’s room.

 

I saw that her glamorous necklace was curled up on top of the jewel case lid, the the wide end of the necklace was hanging out over the edge, glittering itself up a storm.

 

I remembered my sister commenting on how fun it was watching the movie Thieves at work.

 

I was thinking it may be fun to see her reaction after a burglar did his…

 

A warm tingling rush of adrenaline swept over me at the thought of doing a burgle. The idea of stealing the rhinestones from m my sister’s room was like the feeling I had had when I watched it happening in the movie, but tenfold better seeing the opportunity unfold now in real life.

 

It was indeed an arousing feeling that one would assume any cat burglar worth his salt had when seeing a sleeping lady’s diamonds, invitingly laid out in the open.

 

Unwilling to suppress my urge, I quickly went to my room and grabbed a few things.

 

Then thinking as I thought a jewel thief would, I snuck back and crept ever so softly as I stole into my sister’s room.

 

Looking around like it was my first time there. I had brought a small torch but decided I didn’t need to use it. The moon was providing enough light to see by.

 

She looked so very vulnerable, fast asleep, wearing her shiny satin pjs, I saw her equally shiny gown reflected in her vanity mirror as it hung from the back of her bedroom door.

 

I saw diamonds glittering from her antique vanity. I observed her jewellery case sitting upon it.

 

Her back was still facing the vanity. This should not be difficult atoll.

 

I went to her vanity, one eye on her, the other on her jewelry case, my heart thumping with increasing force as I got closer, hoping she did not wake and catch me in the acte before I had had my fun.

 

I lifted her black satin clutch purse and opened it, carefully laying it back down on the satin sheets of my victim’s bed, it sat there daringly close to her back.

 

I then eyed the jewel case containing the sleeping girl’s jewels.

 

I carefully scooped up her necklace, which blazed into a stormy fire, dangling it over my sister’s sleeping form as I was admiring the total allure, and then I slipped it into her purse.

 

I slowly opened the wooden top lid of the 2 drawer case. Here lay the rest of the glittering rhinestones my sister had been wearing out, now fully exposed, crying out to be taken.

 

Slowly, carefully I silently extracted each glimmering piece as I thought how pretty each had looked when she wore them out.

 

I then opened both drawers and removed the glittering trinkets they contained.

 

In my mind I imagined the jewellery was real, worth a mind-blowing amount.

 

I took everything, not just what she had been wearing out that evening.

 

What proper thief wouldn’t?

 

She stirred in her sleep, and I froze. She flipped over and I snatched up the purse just in time, her nose came so very close to hitting it.

 

Still, in her sleep, she rubbed that nose with a satin sleeve, But her eyes did not even flutter open.

 

When she settled back down(and my heart came back down from up my throat) I continued on with my work. Setting the now weighty purse next to her jewel case.

 

When I had finished looting her rings from the bottom drawer I closed the case, I took out of my pocket a playing card, the Jack of Diamonds. And placed it inside where her rhinestones had been.

 

Then I did a quick Look around for any stragglers. I spied only the one…

 

Emboldened, I knelt next to her bed.

 

As she was rubbing her nose I saw she was still wearing her real diamond-looking rhinestone ring.

 

In for a penny….

 

And that hand, half covered by her satin pj sleeve, was mere centimeters away.

 

I touched her soft sleeve, but she did not budge. I peeled it back and then lifted her warm finger with as delicate a touch as my trembling excited fingers could muster.

 

Still nothing from my happily slumbering victim.

 

Slowly I worked off the conveniently loose ring with a subtle dexterity, holding my breath.

 

It finally came off and I exhaled while

plopping the stolen jewel on top of the sparkling stash already inside the purse.

 

I felt that if she had still been wearing her necklace I would have welcomed the challenge, my victim was that much out of it.

 

I rose, Then picked up the now much heavier purse and backed out of my victim's room, looking around.

 

I saw her white A-line satin gown with rhinestone trimmings hanging in the corner. My sister’s debutante gown. Then I realized I had not found her pearls.

 

I sighed, having mixed emotions about trying vs not trying to locate her too real pearls.

 

Truth be told, I had no idea where she kept them.

 

I suppose a real thief would have seen the white gown, read the clue realizing its significance, and been able to find where she kept her pearls based on experience in such matters as to where females like to hide jewellery in their room.

 

But this burglar was not that well-practiced, getting sleepy and needed a bed. Her “diamonds” would be it for me.

 

I did stop at her door, watching my victim sleep as I contemplated my deeds while fingering the far too-soft gown hanging there.

 

I pictured my sister as she had been prettily dressed up in silk and flashy jewels that evening, how people must have eyed, even briefly, her richly decorated figure.

 

I found myself wondering if that was how real Cat Burglars sought out their prey beforehand, by looking for ladies and girls provocatively dressed up like my twin had been, except wearing real diamonds, then followed a jeweled-up girl home, creeping in and out of the shadows like a cat.

 

It was both an enticing, as well as stimulating, idea to ponder over.

 

Was it possible that is what the weird bloke who had approached my sister was thinking?

 

Maybe he spotted the diamond chip hair clips and got in closer to see if the rest of the jewels my sister was wearing were the real thing? Then he got a closer look and realized not. Was he a thief, or just some gigolo looking for wealthy girls to meet their Mums?

 

An unlikely scenario, but an intriguing titillating pondering nonetheless.

 

I closed her door, and stealing back downstairs to the study, hid her now weighty clutch purse behind some books.

 

Then stole back upstairs to my room, where falling into sleep, figured I would be wakened in the morning by my sister angrily demanding I return her jewels.

 

Instead, I was roughly shaken awake a few hours later by a frantic, albeit cutely satin pj clad, sister telling me she had been robbed last night!

 

Woken from a deep sleep I had actually forgotten my exploits.

 

I told her she was only having a bad dream from watching those movies.

 

She squealed ..,

“It’s not a dream. Come I’ll show you!”

 

By then I had remembered what I had been up to in her room earlier, and that she was telling the truth.

 

Playing dumb I got up and had her show me what she was on about.

 

Taking me to her room she showed me her empty jewel case.

 

Quivering she looked up at me…

“I never heard a thing, took everything they did!”

 

In my head, I had a vision which made me say…

“So that smarmy bloke was up to something.”

 

She looked at me very wide-eyed as she recalled the incident at the party.

“O my Lord, do you really think he had something to do with this? Mum will kill me, he nicked her clips!”

 

That realization, had her coming into my arms. I soothingly patted her back.

“At least they didn’t nick your pearls. “

 

With worried eyes, she looked up at me and moved to her wardrobe, opening it she pulled a case from a drawer.

 

She opened the case and looked inside, seeing her pearls were still there. Then she looked up at me with an interrogating suspicion in her eyes ….

“Lad, just how did you know that?!”

 

^^^^^^^^^^

 

Thus the first time I did a role play as a jewel-hunting Cat Burglar was achieved.

 

Fini

^^^^^^^^^

 

Perras Callejetas clip

 

youtu.be/vaz9Nn90UIg?si=6xxpQcddmC9l4NoF

 

Burglary Clip

 

youtu.be/oCNKF54adM4?si=BYj7KGctQVToxdmQ

 

Poor girl has staticky alpaca :P

I během poledne proti slunci se může podařit pěkná fotka.

 

Na ní je jediný dochovaný trolejbus Škoda 6Tr na světě. Bylo vyrobeno celkem 16 kusů - 15 pro Brno a 1 pro Plzeň. Paradoxně ten v majetku @technickemuzeum_brno je právě ten jediný plzeňský. Byl opraven pomocí dílů z vyřazených brněnských 6Tr. Po předání do Brna 25 let sloužil jako statický exponát a byl v tzv. názorném řezu (některé díly karoserie byly sejmuty nebo nahrazeny plexisklem). Až od roku 2003 je znovu pojízdný.

——————————-

 

Even during noon against the sun, a nice photo can be achieved.

 

On the photo there is only surviving Škoda 6Tr trolleybus in the world. A total of 16 pieces were produced - 15 for Brno and 1 for Pilsen. Paradoxically, the one owned by @technickemuzeum_brno is the Pilsen one. It was repaired with parts from discarded Brno 6Tr. After being handed over to Brno, it served for 25 years as a static exhibit and was in the so-called illustrative section (some parts of the body were removed or replaced with plexiglass). It has only been mobile again since 2003.

 

📍🇨🇿 Brno, Purkyňova

🚎 Škoda 6Tr @skodatransportation

🏠Technické muzeum v Brně @technickemuzeum_brno

Dopravní podnik města Brna @dpmbofficial

28.8.2021

 

#trolejbus #obus #oberleitungsbus #троллейбус #trolibusz #trolibuszfotok #skoda #škoda #6tr #brno #dpmb #tmbrno #60letTMB #technickemuzeumbrno #🚎 #capturetransit #brnomycity #picoftheday #oldtimer #retro #morava #dpmb #brnolife #brnocity #brnocitylife

A Huge Thank You and Hug to Kimber for agreeing to let me use her Cat Burglar in Our Stories

Check it out here>…..

Kimber Snowfirld

 

flic.kr/p/2krTLNa

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

The Jack of Diamonds

 

“As a jewel thief, you go for the challenge. It's dangerous, it's glamorous, there's an adrenalin rush."

MK

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

 

It was an early morning in mid-October when my twin sister woke up in her bed, only to discover that someone had burgled her room, taking away the jewels she had been wearing out the night before.

 

The burglary wasn’t a straightforward occurrence, but rather a culmination of several diverging paths crossing

 

Allow me to explain…

 

^^^^^^^^

That October my 15-year-old twin sister was invited to attend a very formal evening affair with a classmate (Kimber) and her wealthy parents.

 

My sister got herself all dolled up, slipping into her really beautiful ultra-soft high-necked silk gown of deep violet: A sheer bodice with long cuffed sleeves, ending in sweeping fashion with a pleated skirt.

 

She had winningly worn out the gown only a fortnight ago at our aunt's black tie-only wedding held at the fashionable Ischoyd Park House and Grounds.

 

As she had at the wedding, with her silk gown, my sister added on her favorite rhinestones: wildly sparkly long wide rhinestone filled ‘Y’ shaped necklace, matching long rhinestone earrings, her 7-strand diamond bracelet, and 4 rings from her large collection.

 

Her hair was held by a pair of our mum’s fancy clips which contained real chips from man-made diamonds, they looked very pretty, allowing her long natural ginger hair to fall curling down behind her back.

 

Though Mum had allowed her to wear the pricy clips to the wedding, there was some argument over her wearing them at a function where she would be out alone. My sister won that argument.

 

To complete the elegant ensemble she was wearing silver satin pumps and carried a black satin clutch purse.

 

She looked smashing and I told her so as she was heading out, and as hoped, receiving a warm bear hug for my words, her gown chinchilla soft in my arms.

 

Our parents were also out for one of their long weekends, so I spent that first evening alone watching movies on the Telly.

 

^^^^^^^^^^^

 

As it happened that evening a movie was on about a jewel thief who calls himself the “Ace of Diamonds.”

 

As the thief went about his business, it didn’t escape me that my twin sister, who was out in public wearing her fetching silk gown and loaded down with dripping rhinestones, (not to mention mom’s glimmering clips) looked like she would have fit right in as a potential target of the thief.

 

I actually was beginning to be a bit on edge that my cute sister would possibly be in danger of suffering a similar fate while gallivanting out and about, all dressed up like those girls being robbed in the movie.

 

I uneasily shifted my position on the couch as I pictured in my mind the perils she could encounter if an inept thief thought all my Twin’s jewels were the real thing.

 

Which, real life is not a stretch of imagination that a thief wouldn’t know the difference, right?

 

Not that she was that gullible, but I know she got rather heady by all the young males giving her pawing attention at the Ischoyd Park wedding.

 

The place had a lot of outdoor gardens containing a multitude of dark nooks and crannies.

 

So I could, and did, imagine her losing guard by swooning over a handsome young con man, whose intentions centered on her jewels, who managed to lure her off outside alone into those gardens.

 

As I fantasized, I could picture my twin sister in her beautiful gown, her rhinestones flickering, diamond chip hair clips shimmering, suddenly cringing when she realized he had led her into a trap and into the clutches of her “admirer’s” waiting ruffian friends.

 

Rough grasping Lads who looked with bug-eyed amazement over what had just been caught in their net, demanding more than the lovely lass just be handing over her satin purse.

 

As she balked, they would then pounce and strip down their slippery squirmy victim, head to toe, of all her valuables, leaving her shivering, hair in her face, wearing nothing more than her long thin white silk slip, if even that!

 

Having those those overactive, imaginative, concerns on my mind made me happy to finally hear the key turn the lock around ten

 

Sis came swishing(and glittering) into the room to say hello and tell me about the party.

 

Sounded to me like it had been a brilliant night for her. I wished I had been invited along also. Better than sitting alone at home.

 

As she was prattling on, I saw her eyes kept drifting towards the Telly, finally, she broke off her recount as something the thief was doing really caught her eye.

 

She quizzically asked whatever was I watching?

 

Her eyes lit up with interest as I explained what the movie was about, and teased her that she appeared to be a prime target for the movie’s antagonist. Then I teased by wondering out loud if that thought had ever occurred to her this evening.

 

She flicked her earrings, teasing me back, then said…

“No idea what you're in about me lad..no one was thieven tonight!”

 

She then just smiled, chirping, while her eyes were on the screen.

“0ui’ does sound like a fun movie then. Let me just get out of this and I’ll join you”

 

I secretly was happy she was now home safe and secure, but as I watched her gown swishing with fetching provocation along her figure while she went upstairs, I still had my lingering thoughts over her fate if a jewel thief indeed would ever target her.

 

^^^^^^^^^^

 

Not long after she went upstairs I heard her come quickly back down and felt her plop down beside me on the couch.

 

She was comfortably wearing her long-sleeved chocolate satin PJs.

 

I did a double take, she still had on her ultra glittery necklace. And her finger still had on one of her pretty rhinestone rings.

 

I was curious at the time why she had changed into her satin pjs, and left the necklace on, was she still teasing me? Was she expecting me to say something?

 

We watched on, my sister had her eyes glued to the screen, absentmindedly playing with her sparkling necklace.

 

At one point the movie thief was himself admiring a diamond necklace worn by a well-dressed-up lady.

 

I looked down at my sister, now cuddled in beside me.

 

I was feeling a bit piqued, thinking how pretty the necklace looked on her, when suddenly my sister blurted out…

“You know at the party tonight there was this smarmy bloke who took a great deal of interest in me, then as we talked, he suddenly appeared to have lost all interest. Weird huh?”

 

“Yes. Weird he took an interest in you atoll luv…”

I teased, receiving a poking for my witty efforts, after tussling a bit, we both went back to watching the movie.

 

My mind drifted back over to why had the bloke approached my sister only to abruptly leave her. Was it an innocent act, or a sinister one?

 

The movie ended and, on a rather silly note I thought. Yawning, I was thinking of calling it a night and heading up to bed.

 

But there was a second movie of a similar vein as the previous was playing next. As the preview was shown. I felt my sister snuggling in even closer.

 

“Looks interesting, let’s watch it and see if it is any good?”

 

The movie was Italian. With English subtitles.

 

Titled “Perras Callejetas” it concerned a group of lady thieves.

 

It was a fun watch.

 

The gang at one point in the movie infiltrated an upper-class restaurant and began robbing the patrons of their wallets and some rather pretty jewels.

 

My sister, who had been half asleep, jumped and held onto me. As I placed a hand around her shoulder she mumbled.

“That startled me, if that lot had been

to the party I was at tonight, they would have made a bloody killing.”

 

I lifted her necklace…

“If that had happened. It’s a good thing you were only wearing rhinestones…”

 

She looked up at me, her heavily mascara-lined eyes blinking sleepily, taking her necklace from my hand,

“Oh no, you bet they would make me hand mine over …. And mum’s clips, that would never do. Of course, you’d protect me if that happened wouldn’t you?”

 

I chuckled as I assuredly stroked her arm.

“Yes If I was there. I would twit!”

 

She looked up into my face, holding her necklace.

“That reminds me. I was having issues with the clasp. Here be a luv and help me.

 

She turned around and lifted her hair, the ring on her finger flashing.

 

I located the clasp and pried the stubborn bugger open, then handed it back to her.

 

She took it in her hand and pecked me on the cheek, then yawned, and started to speak before it was done.

“T-Thanks, I m getting tired. Good movie, fun watching those thieves at work. Thinking I’ll be heading off to bed now.”

 

She rose,

“Sweet dreams.”

 

“Sweet dreams luv…”

 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

 

She went upstairs, and I turned back to the movie, hoping for another jewellery heist like the one at the restaurant.

 

But I found it hard to focus as my eyes began drooping.

 

^^^^^^

 

My sister and I were at our kitchen table. I was wearing my bathrobe, my sister her satin pajamas, and her rhinestones.

 

Female thieves dressed as jesters came in and started to rob the people sitting at the other tables that suddenly were in our dining room, I recognized them as being the same guests from my Aunt’s summer black tie wedding.

 

The thieves got to our table and my Aunt, wearing an A-line white satin gown with rhinestone trimmings, started to hand over her pearls. An argument broke out as the thieves told her they wanted diamonds and not pearls and my Aunt said she had to go to my sister’s room to change into them…

 

My Aunt got up and I saw my sister sitting on the couch.

 

She is again wearing her alluring violet gown, she is also wearing diamonds all along her figure.

 

As I watch, helpless to help her, hands begin reaching out, locating and removing her diamonds, and placing them into a basket that is being held out from the Telly screen, all except for the diamond clips.

 

Then the cat was made to hand over her pearled collar.

 

At this point, I knew I was dreaming and told myself to wake up. We don’t even have a cat.

 

^^^^^^

When I woke from my dream at 2:00 am it was to a staticky Telly screen.

 

I shook my head, rose, and went up to bed.

 

Reaching the top stair I saw my sister had left her bedroom door ajar.

 

Still half asleep, the dream lingering, I just had the compelling urge to look inside her room to make sure she was indeed ok and not being tied up and robbed of her jewels ( a stark image of which was imprinted on my mind)

 

I peered in, and suddenly I was wide awake, of course, she was ok, but in the moonlight streaming through her window I could see my sister’s richly clad figure, half covered by the satin sheets, laying deeply asleep on her bed. Her shiny back was facing her vanity.

 

The vanity had her jewel case sitting off on one side, where jewelry was just sparkling.

 

Uncannily this looked like the scene in the earlier movie when the jewel thief entered his vulnerable sleeping victim’s room.

 

I saw that her glamorous necklace was curled up on top of the jewel case lid, the the wide end of the necklace was hanging out over the edge, glittering itself up a storm.

 

I remembered my sister commenting on how fun it was watching the movie Thieves at work.

 

I was thinking it may be fun to see her reaction after a burglar did his…

 

A warm tingling rush of adrenaline swept over me at the thought of doing a burgle. The idea of stealing the rhinestones from m my sister’s room was like the feeling I had had when I watched it happening in the movie, but tenfold better seeing the opportunity unfold now in real life.

 

It was indeed an arousing feeling that one would assume any cat burglar worth his salt had when seeing a sleeping lady’s diamonds, invitingly laid out in the open.

 

Unwilling to suppress my urge, I quickly went to my room and grabbed a few things.

 

Then thinking as I thought a jewel thief would, I snuck back and crept ever so softly as I stole into my sister’s room.

 

Looking around like it was my first time there. I had brought a small torch but decided I didn’t need to use it. The moon was providing enough light to see by.

 

She looked so very vulnerable, fast asleep, wearing her shiny satin pjs, I saw her equally shiny gown reflected in her vanity mirror as it hung from the back of her bedroom door.

 

I saw diamonds glittering from her antique vanity. I observed her jewellery case sitting upon it.

 

Her back was still facing the vanity. This should not be difficult atoll.

 

I went to her vanity, one eye on her, the other on her jewelry case, my heart thumping with increasing force as I got closer, hoping she did not wake and catch me in the acte before I had had my fun.

 

I lifted her black satin clutch purse and opened it, carefully laying it back down on the satin sheets of my victim’s bed, it sat there daringly close to her back.

 

I then eyed the jewel case containing the sleeping girl’s jewels.

 

I carefully scooped up her necklace, which blazed into a stormy fire, dangling it over my sister’s sleeping form as I was admiring the total allure, and then I slipped it into her purse.

 

I slowly opened the wooden top lid of the 2 drawer case. Here lay the rest of the glittering rhinestones my sister had been wearing out, now fully exposed, crying out to be taken.

 

Slowly, carefully I silently extracted each glimmering piece as I thought how pretty each had looked when she wore them out.

 

I then opened both drawers and removed the glittering trinkets they contained.

 

In my mind I imagined the jewellery was real, worth a mind-blowing amount.

 

I took everything, not just what she had been wearing out that evening.

 

What proper thief wouldn’t?

 

She stirred in her sleep, and I froze. She flipped over and I snatched up the purse just in time, her nose came so very close to hitting it.

 

Still, in her sleep, she rubbed that nose with a satin sleeve, But her eyes did not even flutter open.

 

When she settled back down(and my heart came back down from up my throat) I continued on with my work. Setting the now weighty purse next to her jewel case.

 

When I had finished looting her rings from the bottom drawer I closed the case, I took out of my pocket a playing card, the Jack of Diamonds. And placed it inside where her rhinestones had been.

 

Then I did a quick Look around for any stragglers. I spied only the one…

 

Emboldened, I knelt next to her bed.

 

As she was rubbing her nose I saw she was still wearing her real diamond-looking rhinestone ring.

 

In for a penny….

 

And that hand, half covered by her satin pj sleeve, was mere centimeters away.

 

I touched her soft sleeve, but she did not budge. I peeled it back and then lifted her warm finger with as delicate a touch as my trembling excited fingers could muster.

 

Still nothing from my happily slumbering victim.

 

Slowly I worked off the conveniently loose ring with a subtle dexterity, holding my breath.

 

It finally came off and I exhaled while

plopping the stolen jewel on top of the sparkling stash already inside the purse.

 

I felt that if she had still been wearing her necklace I would have welcomed the challenge, my victim was that much out of it.

 

I rose, Then picked up the now much heavier purse and backed out of my victim's room, looking around.

 

I saw her white A-line satin gown with rhinestone trimmings hanging in the corner. My sister’s debutante gown. Then I realized I had not found her pearls.

 

I sighed, having mixed emotions about trying vs not trying to locate her too real pearls.

 

Truth be told, I had no idea where she kept them.

 

I suppose a real thief would have seen the white gown, read the clue realizing its significance, and been able to find where she kept her pearls based on experience in such matters as to where females like to hide jewellery in their room.

 

But this burglar was not that well-practiced, getting sleepy and needed a bed. Her “diamonds” would be it for me.

 

I did stop at her door, watching my victim sleep as I contemplated my deeds while fingering the far too-soft gown hanging there.

 

I pictured my sister as she had been prettily dressed up in silk and flashy jewels that evening, how people must have eyed, even briefly, her richly decorated figure.

 

I found myself wondering if that was how real Cat Burglars sought out their prey beforehand, by looking for ladies and girls provocatively dressed up like my twin had been, except wearing real diamonds, then followed a jeweled-up girl home, creeping in and out of the shadows like a cat.

 

It was both an enticing, as well as stimulating, idea to ponder over.

 

Was it possible that is what the weird bloke who had approached my sister was thinking?

 

Maybe he spotted the diamond chip hair clips and got in closer to see if the rest of the jewels my sister was wearing were the real thing? Then he got a closer look and realized not. Was he a thief, or just some gigolo looking for wealthy girls to meet their Mums?

 

An unlikely scenario, but an intriguing titillating pondering nonetheless.

 

I closed her door, and stealing back downstairs to the study, hid her now weighty clutch purse behind some books.

 

Then stole back upstairs to my room, where falling into sleep, figured I would be wakened in the morning by my sister angrily demanding I return her jewels.

 

Instead, I was roughly shaken awake a few hours later by a frantic, albeit cutely satin pj clad, sister telling me she had been robbed last night!

 

Woken from a deep sleep I had actually forgotten my exploits.

 

I told her she was only having a bad dream from watching those movies.

 

She squealed ..,

“It’s not a dream. Come I’ll show you!”

 

By then I had remembered what I had been up to in her room earlier, and that she was telling the truth.

 

Playing dumb I got up and had her show me what she was on about.

 

Taking me to her room she showed me her empty jewel case.

 

Quivering she looked up at me…

“I never heard a thing, took everything they did!”

 

In my head, I had a vision which made me say…

“So that smarmy bloke was up to something.”

 

She looked at me very wide-eyed as she recalled the incident at the party.

“O my Lord, do you really think he had something to do with this? Mum will kill me, he nicked her clips!”

 

That realization, had her coming into my arms. I soothingly patted her back.

“At least they didn’t nick your pearls. “

 

With worried eyes, she looked up at me and moved to her wardrobe, opening it she pulled a case from a drawer.

 

She opened the case and looked inside, seeing her pearls were still there. Then she looked up at me with an interrogating suspicion in her eyes ….

“Lad, just how did you know that?!”

 

^^^^^^^^^^

 

Thus the first time I did a role play as a jewel-hunting Cat Burglar was achieved.

 

Fini

^^^^^^^^^

 

Perras Callejetas clip

 

youtu.be/vaz9Nn90UIg?si=6xxpQcddmC9l4NoF

 

Burglary Clip

 

youtu.be/oCNKF54adM4?si=BYj7KGctQVToxdmQ

  

Larkin is hoping Mr Wishbone will be able to get rid of her staticky hair problems. So far her spells aren't working!!!!

I post edited this image of Bryana a spirited young lady I met while on a business trip who worked at the front desk of the hotel I stayed at. I wanted to bring out her eyes and front of her face with some sharpness while, texturing her hair and creating a grainy or staticky feel on the ambience surrounding her. It gives a feeling of being near a fireplace and just chatting with someone interesting and special. It's about realness, interaction that can only happen when we're willing to share a moment. Millington Tennessee, 15 August 2017.

I watched

the river run

with my pet pine

growing from a boulder

on the shoulders of the woods

where you could be forgiven

for forgetting God is good

I might be what stars are seeing

twinkling object

spotted from space

or the last staticky trace

from when the radio folks

recorded my name

we don't have the same sane

some of us all in it

and others miles away

I stood naked

no stitch in time

to mask my mind

looking back on a past

that left me behind (and I thought)

"it's sure a pretty precarious life"

a short but handsome existence

you glance in the mirror

till you like what looks back

furtive forgiveness, faltering faith

for what your loving lacks

you are your most

human

contact

 

October 11, 2021

South Tremont, Nova Scotia

 

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Here is a great old Milton Bradley from 1983 that I made when I was 13 years old, sometime during the winter of 1987-88. It was the first large (2000+) puzzle I had made on my own, and I remember being really excited when I finally got it done.

 

As a kid I used to dream about large puzzles. I somehow talked my mother into buying me a 2000 piece puzzle when I was 6, which I didn't get very far with, due to lots of trees in the picture. I spotted a 2500 piece at my aunt's house a year or two later, and I also remember being at a family gathering, at a summer camp somewhere on a lake, probably in 1985 or '86. My grandfather, who was a big puzzle fan and partial to Milton Bradley, showed me a box he had bought from the then brand-new, 3000 piece Magnum series. 3000 pieces! I was beside myself.

 

But it took a while before I could say I actually finished one myself. In the winter of '87-88, I vaguely remember being in trouble for something - maybe fighting with my sister - and for a week or two I had to spend the rest of the evening in my bedroom, after dinner, missing crucial television programs. But left to my own devices, I ended up having a great time serving my sentence working on this wonderful Alpine scene.

 

As a big music fan and collector even then, the winter of '87-'88 was something of a transition period for me. I had, just after Christmas of 1983, bought a stereo system with my own money that had a turntable, a single cassette deck which could record, and a radio. I amassed a lot of LPs during the next few years, especially after I spotted an advertisement in the Sunday paper for the Columbia House music club. It had a catalog of record albums listed, and you could get around a dozen for a penny - but then had to buy 5 or 6 more in the next 3 years, at slightly higher-than-retail prices and plus shipping costs. And you also got a catalog each month, that featured one "selection of the month," which would be sent to you if you didn't return a reply postcard in time. Back in those days, Columbia House didn't seem to care if their new subscriber was a 10 year old.

 

When I got a Sony Walkman for Christmas in 1985, it changed the way I listened to music. Now I could bring my albums along with me, to listen to in the car when we took long drives, or if I was outside mowing the lawn. I would buy blank cassettes and make copies from my LPs, but I never got into buying many cassettes at the store, because by late 1988, I had bought a completely new stereo system with a CD player, and entered the digital age.

 

But in the winter of '87-'88, bored perhaps with my albums, I was doing a lot of recording off the radio, and that is what I remember the most about doing this puzzle. I was working on the floor right next to the stereo; I'd have a cassette tape in the player, cued with the "record/play/pause" buttons down, and if a song came on that I wanted to record, I'd rush over and press the pause button. The recordings were often staticky and sometimes I didn't get there in time before the obnoxious deejay interrupted the music, but they were my first "mixtapes." I remember songs like "What I Am" by Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians, "Fast Car" by Tracy Chapman, Peter Gabriel's "Big Time," among others.

 

And the most vivid memory of puzzling and listening to radio that winter was definitely a song by MARRS called "Pump up the Volume." Some evenings the radio station would do a "sound-off," where they would play two tracks that were brand new, and there was a number you could call in and vote for your preference. I forget what the other track was, but when the MARRS song came on, it was different than anything I had heard before - making liberal use of samples and other sound effects, it sounded very "advanced." It was one of the first mainstream songs that combined elements of hip-hop and house music, and it won that evening's sound-off overwhelmingly.

 

I remember building this puzzle on the floor in my bedroom, and that it took me quite a long time. I had some issue with the sky, where I had to shift a large assembled section across the puzzle, which I assumed was due to a repeat pattern, but as far as I can see, this puzzle doesn't have a repeat pattern and I didn't encounter any issues with the sky this time.

 

But I did have struggles getting through all of the black pieces on each side, and while I've now completed many puzzles that are much more difficult than this one, I'm impressed with my 13-year-old self for sticking it out and getting through all of those areas, especially the upper right. Back then, I would often abandon a puzzle when it became difficult.

 

My original copy is long gone, and this one came from the collection of Frank F. Farrar, Jr., who was a big collector of MB puzzles and who also contributed a lot of photos and information to one of the first online databases of American cardboard puzzles, puzzlehistory.com. Frank enclosed a photo of the completed puzzle, and some notes, in the box. His summary of this puzzle is spot-on:

 

Milton Bradley 2500 piece Grand series puzzle, "Alpine Village," 1983, No. 4870-2.

 

The Milton Bradley Grand series puzzles were in production from 1978 to 1998. This puzzle, now almost 30 years old, is certainly one of the most challenging of the series. The puzzle photo was probably taken in the early part of winter, or early spring. There is a photo of snow removal equipment visible on the far side of the creek. The puzzle colors are muted and dark, about one-third of the puzzle is the brilliant blue sky. The sky area itself is not too difficult, as the blue color ranges from a deep indigo in the upper left, to a pale blue near the mountain ridges. The dark areas on the right and on the left are a much more difficult area, and will keep you busy for a while.

 

This puzzle has a "loose" cut, this is something that occurs when the puzzle making dies are worn, resulting in a slightly larger gap between the pieces. This does not detract from the finished puzzle, but it does make it more difficult to move around, such as to a display board.

 

Frank F. Farrar Jr., November 29, 2010.

 

Also worth noting is that the 1983 series marked a change in the packaging of MB puzzles - they replaced the "white ribbon" label that was used from 1975-1982 with a red-and-blue MB logo that they had already been using on their European puzzles. More significantly, this same year they updated their printing process. Instead of having a wax layer on the surface, the print is done on a more modern paper that has more water-repellent properties. It isn't overly glossy, but probably has some slight lamination using plastic. The ink used changed as well to the modern CMYK system, which results in much bluer blues, such as the indigo color mentioned above for the sky. MBs from the '70s and before used a different printing process and the blues always had a hint of green to them. Also, the pieces are slightly thinner than before.

 

Milton Bradley "Grand" series puzzles are the exact same dimensions as their 2000 piece Magnum/Super Big Ben puzzles, so Grand pieces are smaller than normal MB pieces.

 

I would love to know from the Google Maps experts, exactly where this photo was taken.

 

This puzzle is my selection for the November 2021 BCD meeting theme, "Puzzles I've Revisited During the Pandemic."

 

Completed in 18 hr., 4 mins. with no box reference. 2501 pieces (61 x 41): 26.0 secs./piece; 138.4 pcs./hr. Difficulty rating: 2.6/10.

   

I’ve been meaning to try using a degreaser ever since @dolldirt posted his findings about the citrus stuff he used, though I mostly avoided glue heads by either rerooting or with cornstarch.

 

However I knew I had to find a way of directly treating the glue when I thrifted this Dorothy doll and half her hair was greasy with glue. Cornstarch shows up too much on darker hair and there’s no way I’m rerooting her so I decided to go shopping for a degreaser.

 

There wasn’t many choices, but I ended up going with Ajax’s Kitchen Degreaser mostly because I use regular Ajax to help get ingrained dirt off from thrifted dolls for almost 10 years now and while it’s strong it doesn’t harm factory paint.

 

I tested soaking thrifted Fashionista glue heads first and I got two distinct results.

 

The first result after soaking the head overnight was that the clear liquid became SUPER cloudy and the glue inside the head hardened, and it smells like the chemical for about a week. However this only took one soaking and all the leaky glue disappeared, and it set the waxy glue inside the head.

 

The second result is that after one night of soaking, chunks of glue will fall out the neck hole, the liquid remains clear, and the hair is still greasy, though the hair is definitely less chunky and sticky.

 

But both results didn’t harm the vinyl or the factory paint so I tossed my Dorothy head into a cup of the degreaser, and decided to chuck in my Katniss head too cuz I found out that the glue leaked onto her head and made it stiff.

 

Dorothy’s glue got the first result, where the glue inside her head hardened, the liquid turned milky and she stank like Ajax for about a week. Her hair is actually so glue free it’s kind of staticky. She doesn’t smell as much unless you sniff her head but I don’t.

 

Katniss on the other hand got the second result. I decided to try soaking her for multiple days since chunks of glue were gradually coming out of her head. I changed the liquid every night, since I tend to leave my dolls to dry overnight. Before I rinsed her though, I did squeeze her head repeatedly in hopes to irritate more chunks of glue to fall out.

 

Katniss took about 5 or so days of repeated soaking and squeezing, but by the 5th day, the glue inside her head turned from a waxy yellow to a hardened white colour and no more chunks of glue fell out.

 

If I were to redo Katniss I probably would pour salt into her head hole then squeeze it repeatedly to help get rid of any extraneous glue.

 

Of course when I rinsed the hair I washed the hair with dish soap to get rid of the excess chemical then conditioned the hair so it doesn’t dry out.

 

Anyway, it seems like Ajax Kitchen Degreaser can at least help get rid of the greasy feeling in glue heads and help set the glue better, even if it’s a lot of work. I’m pegging this as a sort of success cuz it doesn’t completely get rid of glue but it makes it feel a lot better.

   

Viciousness in the kitchen!

The potatoes hiss.

It is all Hollywood, windowless,

The fluorescent light wincing on and off like a terrible migraine,

Coy paper strips for doors --

Stage curtains, a widow’s frizz.

And I, love, am a pathological liar,

And my child -- look at her, face down on the floor,

Little unstrung puppet, kicking to disappear --

Why she is schizophrenic,

Her face is red and white, a panic,

You have stuck her kittens outside your window

In a sort of cement well

Where they crap and puke and cry and she can’t hear.

You say you can’t stand her,

The bastard’s a girl.

You who have blown your tubes like a bad radio

Clear of voices and history, the staticky

Noise of the new.

You say I should drown the kittens. Their smell!

You say I should drown my girl.

She’ll cut her throat at ten if she’s mad at two.

The baby smiles, fat snail,

From the polished lozenges of orange linoleum.

You could eat him. He’s a boy.

You say your husband is just no good to you.

His Jew-Mama guards his sweet sex like a pearl.

You have one baby, I have two.

I should sit on a rock off Cornwall and comb my hair.

I should wear tiger pants, I should have an affair.

We should meet in another life, we should meet in air,

Me and you.

 

Meanwhile there’s a stink of fat and baby crap.

I’m doped and thick from my last sleeping pill.

The smog of cooking, the smog of hell

Floats our heads, two venemous opposites,

Our bones, our hair.

I call you Orphan, orphan. You are ill.

The sun gives you ulcers, the wind gives you T.B.

Once you were beautiful.

In New York, in Hollywood, the men said: 'Through?

Gee baby, you are rare.'

You acted, acted for the thrill.

The impotent husband slumps out for a coffee.

I try to keep him in,

An old pole for the lightning,

The acid baths, the skyfuls off of you.

He lumps it down the plastic cobbled hill,

Flogged trolley. The sparks are blue.

The blue sparks spill,

Splitting like quartz into a million bits.

 

O jewel! O valuable!

That night the moon

Dragged its blood bag, sick

Animal

Up over the harbor lights.

And then grew normal,

Hard and apart and white.

The scale-sheen on the sand scared me to death.

We kept picking up handfuls, loving it,

Working it like dough, a mulatto body,

The silk grits.

A dog picked up your doggy husband. He went on.

 

Now I am silent, hate

Up to my neck,

Thick, thick.

I do not speak.

I am packing the hard potatoes like good clothes,

I am packing the babies,

I am packing the sick cats.

O vase of acid,

It is love you are full of. You know who you hate.

He is hugging his ball and chain down by the gate

That opens to the sea

Where it drives in, white and black,

Then spews it back.

Every day you fill him with soul-stuff, like a pitcher.

You are so exhausted.

Your voice my ear-ring,

Flapping and sucking, blood-loving bat.

That is that. That is that.

You peer from the door,

Sad hag. 'Every woman’s a whore.

I can’t communicate.'

 

I see your cute décor

Close on you like the fist of a baby

Or an anemone, that sea

Sweetheart, that kleptomaniac.

I am still raw.

I say I may be back.

You know what lies are for.

 

Even in your Zen heaven we shan’t meet.

 

Lesbos / Sylvia Plath

 

David Begbie

 

 

And damned staticky hair!!

 

Also, I am never taking this sweater off her.

Just changed it.

 

The only thing I've really learned off POF is that as your expectations change, you change the profile. And keep changing it regularly, like a resume. Otherwise, you will just get what you've got before: someone who's interested (or not) in something that's back-dated. So this profile will change again, but it's a current snapshot.

 

For the record (and because you can't see it), here's the description:

I am eclectic. I am shy. I am sarcastic. I love sunsets. I love walking in the rain. I love clammy weather. I love things that are off-key, wonky, and just plain weird.

 

I always root for the underdog. I always play devil's advocate. I am a natural-born contrarian.

 

I just got my first tat, and am looking for more. Tattoos should always mean something about you personally.

 

I can look you in the eye, but can't sustain it due to my intense shyness. I can carry a conversation, but only if you're digging the vibe. I can talk like I just walked out of a 70's kung-fu flick, but only if we're discussing existential philosophy and how that relates to current U.S. foreign policy. I also have extensive experience referring to myself in the third person, but can only do it in the past tense.

 

Coke over coffee. Pepsi over Coke. Coffee and cigarettes go well together, but only if mixed with bluesy jazz. Whiskey is the best alcohol because you don't have to chill or mix it. Depending on who you drink with, you may not even need a glass.

 

Coffee should be coffee-flavoured. Blue jeans should be blue. Period. Hats always make men look funny, even when they shouldn't. Converse are cool, but expensive. Ties should be thin.

 

Talks funny, Yoda does.

 

Autumn is cool. Summer is really cool. Winter is too cold. Spring is too happy.

 

CD's don't sound better than vinyl because they don't have that staticky, crackily sh*t ground into the grooves between songs, but I prefer MP3's cuz I can shuffle between any genre of music I want.

 

Foreign and art-house movies make my eyes bleed, even though I can't stop watching them. I counter-act this with a good dollop of action and sci-fi flicks.

 

I am very spiritual, not religious. I don't really want kids, but am open to negotiation on this point. I eat meat. I smoke a lot. Sometimes I litter. I like it when girls bite my ears. I have a potty mouth. If any of this bugs you, no hard feelings but pls move on.

 

I like to dream. I can't think logically to save my life. I let intuition guide my path, even when it's clear it's sooooo the wrong thing to do. Can't be helped.

 

I like to write. I like to take pictures. I'm learning to play the guitar. I sing in the shower. I have two left feet, but sometimes dance anyway. I like to create, even if what I create is not that great. Art matters.

 

Reading and listening to music are my life. I can't live without these activities, and have very strong opinions and taste. Let's talk.

 

And my ideal date:

I am super-shy. Let's have coffee or a beer first, talk, and see if there's a spark.

 

For a second date, let's go on a romantic adventure filled with light-hearted slapstick comedy, tons of sarcasm, and a mysterious stranger that keeps dropping clues that lead us to the legendary Ark of the Covenant, where we defeat a Nazi horde with your shoelaces, my pocketknife, some duct tape, and whatever we've managed to pick up along the way.

 

You want a third date already?! Can we at least have the first?

Enthusiastic crowds gathered last week for an election rally for the opposition Kulmiye Party in Burao, Somaliland. The presidential election is set for Saturday. More Photos »

By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN

Published: June 25, 2010

  

BURAO, Somalia — The rallies usually start early in the morning, before the sunshine hurts.

  

By 8 a.m. on a recent day, thousands of people were packed into Burao’s sandy town square, with little boys climbing high into the trees to get a peek at the politicians.

 

“We’re going to end corruption!” one of the politicians boomed, holding several microphones at once. “We’re going to bring dignity back to the people!”

 

The boys cheered wildly. Wispy militiamen punched bony fists in the air. The politicians’ messages were hardly original. But in this corner of Africa, a free and open political rally — led, no less, by opposition leaders who could actually win — is an anomaly apparently worthy of celebration.

 

The crowd that day helped tell a strange truth: that one of the most democratic countries in the Horn of Africa is not really a country at all. It is Somaliland, the northwestern corner of Somalia, which, since the disintegration of the Somali state in 1991, has been on a quixotic mission for recognition as its own separate nation.

 

While so much of Somalia is plagued by relentless violence, this little-known piece of the Somali puzzle is peaceful and organized enough to hold national elections this week, with more than one million registered voters. The campaigns are passionate but fair, say the few Western observers here. The roads are full of battered old Toyotas blasting out slogans from staticky megaphones lashed to the roofs.

 

Somalilanders have pulled off peaceful national elections three times. The last presidential election in 2003 was decided by a wafer-thin margin, around 80 votes at the time of counting, yet there was no violence. Each successful election feeds the hope here that one day the world will reward Somaliland with recognition for carving a functioning, democratic space out of one of the most chaotic countries in the world.

 

But this presidential election, scheduled for Saturday, will be one of the biggest tests yet for Somaliland’s budding democracy.

 

The government seems unpopular, partly because Somaliland is still desperately poor, a place where even in the biggest towns, like Burao or the capital, Hargeisa, countless people dwell in bubble-shaped huts made out of cardboard scraps and flattened oil drums. Most independent observers predict the leading opposition party, Kulmiye, which means something akin to “the one who brings people together,” will get the most votes.

 

But that does not mean the opposition will necessarily win.

 

In many cases in Africa — Ethiopia in 2005, Kenya in 2007, Zimbabwe in 2008 — right when the opposition appeared poised to win elections, the government seemed to fiddle with the results, forcibly holding on to power and sometimes provoking widespread unrest in the process.

 

“There’s probably not going to be many problems with the voting itself, but the day after,” said Roble Mohamed, the former editor in chief of one of Somaliland’s top Web sites. “That is the question.”

 

Many people here worry that if Somaliland’s governing party, UDUB, tries to hold on to power illegitimately, the well-armed populace (this is still part of Somalia, after all) will rise up and Somaliland’s nearly two decades of peace could disappear in a cloud of gun smoke.

 

“I know this happens in Africa, but it won’t happen in Somaliland,” promised Said Adani Moge, a spokesman for Somaliland’s government. “If we lose, we’ll give up power. The most important thing is peace.”

 

Easily said, infrequently done. Peaceful transfers of power are a rarity in this neighborhood. In April, Sudan held its first national elections in more than 20 years (the last change of power was a coup), but the voting was widely considered superficial because of widespread intimidation beforehand and the withdrawal of several leading opposition parties from the presidential race.

 

Last month’s vote in Ethiopia, in which the governing party and its allies won more than 99 percent of the parliamentary seats, was also tainted by what human rights groups called a campaign of government repression, including the manipulation of American food aid to starve out the opposition.

 

Then there is little Eritrea, along the Red Sea, which has not held a presidential election since the early 1990s, when it won independence. And Djibouti, home to a large American military base, where the president recently pushed to have the Constitution changed so he could run again.

 

South-central Somalia, where a very weak transitional government is struggling to fend off radical Islamist insurgents, is so dangerous that residents must risk insurgents’ wrath even to watch the World Cup, never mind holding a vote.

 

So in this volatile region, Somaliland has become a demonstration of the possible, sustaining a one-person one-vote democracy in a poor, conflict-torn place that gets very little help. While the government in south-central Somalia, which barely controls any territory, receives millions of dollars in direct support from the United Nations and the United States, the Somaliland government “doesn’t get a penny,” Mr. Said said.

 

Because Somaliland is not recognized as an independent country, it is very difficult for the government here to secure international loans, even though it has become a regional model for conflict resolution and democratic-institution building — buzzwords among Western donors.

 

In many respects, Somaliland is already its own country, with its own currency, its own army and navy, its own borders and its own national identity, as evidenced by the countless Somaliland T-shirts and flags everywhere you look. Part of this stems from its distinct colonial history, having been ruled, relatively indirectly, by the British, while the rest of Somalia was colonized by the Italians, who set up a European administration.

 

Italian colonization supplanted local elders, which might have been one reason that much of Somalia plunged into clan-driven chaos after 1991, while Somaliland succeeded in reconciling its clans.

 

Clan is not the prevailing issue in this election. The three presidential candidates (Somaliland’s election code says only three political parties can compete, and they take turns campaigning from day to day) are from different clans or subclans. Yet, many voters do not seem to care.

 

In the middle of miles and miles of thorn bush stand two huts about 100 feet apart, one with a green and yellow Kulmiye flag flapping from a stick flagpole, the other with a solid green UDUB flag.

 

Haboon Roble, a shy 20-year-old, explained that she liked UDUB: “They’re good. They hold up the house.”

 

But about 100 feet away, her uncle, Abdi Rahman Roble, shook his head. “This government hasn’t done anything for farmers,” he complained. “We can’t even get plastic sheets to catch the rain.”

 

He said he was voting for Kulmiye. “But I don’t tell anyone how to vote,” Mr. Abdi Rahman said. “That’s their choice.”

 

And like the other adults in the family, he proudly showed off his new plastic voter card, which he usually keeps hidden in a special place in his hut, along with other valuables.

Yeah, my room still is a mess, but it's slightly less of a mess than before. I've dug out a path to the "entertainment center", which has somet stuff in boxes parked in front of it.

 

There's a 1996-era standard definition Sharp TV that still works (Replaced a TV set that damn near blew up during the Summer Games back then.), my stack of late 1980s Pioneer stereo components. (Receiver's crap and staticky, needs to be replaced by decent modern equipment eventually, hopefully the dual tape deck is workable enough to archive hours of audiio cassettes of a friend's radio show from the early 1990, and I'm sure the AudioSource graphic EQ is still good to go.

 

There's also a vintage 1999 Toshiba DVD player that is way to old to play anything that's on a CD-R or DVD-R, there's my mid/late 1990s JVC Super VHS that's still active for dumping VHS to digital format, an ancient Pioneer 6-CD magazine-based player, and the crown jewel of the stack - a Sony Laserdisc player. (Should have held out for a Pioneer player... :P)

 

Oh, yeah, there's my second PlayStation (5000 series, last one with a serial port), and my DreamCast. ^_^;

 

Squint and you'll see my Dish receiver on top of the Pioneer receiver.

Jiráskovo náměstí, autor pomníku prof. Karel Pokorný, spolupráce Jaroslav Fragner. Bronzový pomník představuje spisovatele v nadživotní velikosti, sedícího a píšícího na vysokém žulovém soklu. Pomník vznikl v r. 1954, osazen byl v r. 1960. V pozadí pomníku je dům, v němž v letech 1903 - 1930 Jirásek bydlel.

 

V místech, kde v letech 1992 - 1996 vyrostla budova Tančícího domu, stával dům, který byl zničen při americkém leteckém náletu na Prahu 14. února 1945. K téměř úplnému odstranění trosek došlo v roce 1946, definitivně až v roce 1960, a to demolicí zbývajících kleneb a zbytků zdiva.

Přestože o zástavbě proluky bylo rozhodnuto již v roce 1963, k zásadnímu kroku došlo až v roce 1992, kdy pozemek zakoupila nizozemská pojišťovna Nationale Nederlanden. Ke stavební realizaci byl vybrán projekt architekta Vlada Miluniče (nar. 1941 v chorvatském Záhřebu). Milunič si ke spolupráci přizval světově uznávaného architekta a designéra Franka O. Gehryho (nar. 1929 v Torontu).

Základní kámen byl položen 3. 9. 1994 a hrubá stavba byla dokončena v únoru 1996. Slavnostní otevření se uskutečnilo 20. 6. 1996.

V jádru administrativní budova má sedm nadzemních podlaží a dvě podlaží podzemní. Konstrukce objektu je železobetonová a bylo zde použito devadesát devět originálních fasádních panelů. Stavba byla v úrovni ustálené vodní hladiny spodní vody založena na železobetonové desce podporované soustavou vrtaných pilot. Staticky byly podchyceny i oba sousední objekty.

Budova je též nazývána metaforicky "Tančící dům". Toto pojmenování získala díky svým věžím, které připomínají postavy tanečníků Ginger Rogersové a Freda Astaira. Tanečníka představuje věž kamenná a jeho partnerku věž skleněná. Na vrcholu věže symbolizující postavu ženy je kopule s konstrukcí z kovových trubek potažená nerez síťovinou s oky o rozměrech 10 x 10 mm, zahalená do pomyslných vlasů. Představuje hlavu medúzy. Autorem této kopule je Frank O. Gehry.

Interiéry byly z části navrženy britskou architektou českého původu Evou Jiřičnou.

Budova získala prestižní ocenění amerického časopisu Time - zvítězila v kategorii design roku 1996.

 

Alois Jirásek

český romanopisec a dramatik

narozen 23. 8. 1851 v Hronově u Náchoda

zemřel 12. 3. 1930 v Praze, urna je na hřbitově v Hronově

 

Životopis

Jirásek se narodil jako syn tkalce, který se později vyučil pekařem. Jako chlapec strávil rok ve Velké Vsi u Broumova, aby se naučil německy a mohl pak v letech 1863 - 1867 studovat na německém gymnáziu v Broumově. Pak pokračoval na českém gymnáziu v Hradci Králové, maturoval roku 1871. Kromě literárního měl i značné malířské nadání, ale z existenčních důvodů zvolil studia historie na filozofické fakultě Karlovy univerzity v Praze. Od roku 1874 působil jako středoškolský profesor dějepisu na gymnáziu a později na reálce v Litomyšli, od roku 1888 v Praze. Od studentských let se přátelil s Mikolášem Alšem a v Praze se sblížil s dalšími umělci, zejména s lidmi z okruhu časopisů Ruch a Lumír, jako např. Josef Václav Sládek, Karel Václav Rais, Zikmund Winter i s mladšími, např. Josef Machar a Josef Kvapil, Zdeněk Nejedlý aj. Pracoval také v redakci časopisu Zvon a v roce 1917 byl jedním z organizátorů a signatářů Manifestu českých spisovatelů, který proklamoval požadavek národní samostatnosti pro český a slovenský národ. 28. října 1918 přečetl Alois Jirásek před Myslbekovým pomníkem sv. Václava na Václavském náměstí listinu, která vyhlašovala československou státní samostatnost. Ač byl v roce 1920 zvolen do senátu za Československou národně demokratickou stranu, žil v ústraní v Hronově a do politiky se nezapojil. Jirásek zemřel tři roky po smrti své ženy. Jeho rakev byla vystavena v Pantheonu Národního muzea a další den se na Václavském náměstí konala mohutná panychida. Průvod aut, který vezl Jiráskovu urnu z pražského krematoria na padolský hřbitov v Hronově, byl pozdravován a uctíván mnoha lidmi ve všech místech, kterými projížděl.

 

Jiráskova rodina

Manželka Marie Podhajská (1859 - 1927), svatba 1879.

Děti: manželé Jiráskovi měli šest dcer - Boženu, Mařenku (zemřela čtyřletá 1885), Ludmilu, Miloslavu, Zdeňku a Magdalenu. Poslední byla dvojčetem s jediným chlapcem Jaromírem. Vnukem Aloise Jiráska je doc. Václav Jirásek, významný gastroenterolog.

 

Jirásek a Praha

Na gymnáziu v Žitné ulici v Novém Městě působil v letech 1888 - 1909.

Bydlel v Hálkově ulici 6 na Novém Městě.

Bydlel v Rumunské ulici 8 na Vinohradech.

V Reslově ul. 1 na Novém Městě bydlel od roku 1909 až do své smrti.

Bylo po něm pojmenováno Jiráskovo náměstí v sousedství jeho posledního bydliště a nedaleký Jiráskův most; na náměstí stojí Jiráskova socha od Karla Pokorného.

 

Dílo

Jeho literární dílo je neobvykle obsáhlé. Zprvu psal vlastenecké verše, ale brzy přesedlal na prózu, často z venkovského prostředí. Své práce tiskl zprvu také v časopisech Světozor, Lumír, Osvěta, Květy, Zlatá Praha a Zvon. Psal drobnější novely s různými historickými, romantickými, idylickými i psychologickými náměty i monumentální skladby, odrážející nejvýznamnější historické epochy našeho národa. Jirásek byl i významným dramatikem. Některé z jeho her i románů byly zfilmovány.

 

Z období husitství:

V cizích službách (1883, osudy potomků husitů za Vladislava Jagelonského)

Mezi proudy (románová trilogie: Dvojí dvůr, 1887, Syn ohnivcův, 1888 a Do tří hlasů, 1890; obraz společnosti, z níž vyrůstá husitské hnutí, postava Václava IV., arcibiskupa Jana z Jenštejna, Jana Husa a Jana Žižky)

Maryla (1887)

Proti všem (1893, román z období vrcholné fáze husitství s bitvou na Vítkově)

Bratrstvo (románová trilogie: Bitva u Lučence, 1899, Mária, 1904 a Žebráci, 1908; období doznívajícího husitství a osudy "bratříků", zbytků poražených táborských vojsk na Slovensku)

Husitský král (1919; poslední román o osudech a vládě Jiřího z Poděbrad zůstal nedokončen.)

Z období protireformace, doba pobělohorská:

Skaláci (1875, jeho první významnější dílo, v němž vylíčil lidovou vzpouru na Náchodsku proti cizím pánům Piccolominiům.)

Sousedé (1882, problematika pobělohorské emigrace)

Psohlavci (1884, román o statečném zápasu Chodů o udržení zděděných práv a tragickém osudu Jana Sladkého - Koziny)

Skály (1886, román o revolučním knězi Ulickém, který chce roznítit lidovou vzpouru proti feudálním pánům, je však popraven)

Zahořanský hon (1888, povídka se odehrává na zámku Jemčina, který je zde zván Zahořanský)

Temno (1913, román z období vlády jezuitů ve 20. letech 18. st.)

Z období národního obrození

Na dvoře vévodském (1877, konec 18. st. na náchodském zámku a snahy vlastenců o zrušení roboty)

Filosofská historie (1878, humorný studentský příběh z Litomyšle na pozadí bojů z pražských barikád roku 1848)

Ráj světa (1880, prostředí Vídně po skončení napoleonských válek)

Poklad (1881, první buditelské snahy ve východních Čechách na hradě Potštejně)

F. L. Věk (1888, pětidílný román líčí příběh lidového buditele Věka, inspirovaného postavou skutečného dobrušského kupce Františka Heka. Zachycuje počátky a rozvoj našeho obrození v Dobrušce i v Praze)

U Rytířů a Na staré poště jsou dvě povídky z obrozenské Litomyšle, které vydal spolu s Filosofskou historií pod názvem Maloměstské historie (1890)

U nás (čtyřdílná kronika: Úhor, 1896, Novina 1898, Osetek, 1902 a Zeměžluč, 1903; zde autor zobrazil obrození v náchodského kraji)

Pro mládež:

Z Čech až na konec světa (1888, na základě cestopisu pana Šaška z Bířkova líčí pouť českého poselstva Jiřího z Poděbrad do západoevropských zemí)

Staré pověsti české (1894; převyprávěné pověsti z kroniky Kosmovy, Dalimilovy aj. s vlasteneckým nábojem)

Prózy ze své současnosti psal Jirásek jen okrajově:

Druhý květ, Na ostrově, Petr Kmínek, Z malých cest

Memoáry:

Z mých pamětí (pohled na vlastní životní epochu)

Dramata:

Vojnarka (1890, první hra byla z venkovského prostředí)

Kolébka (1891)

Otec (1894)

Emigrant (1898)

Jan Žižka (1903)

Lucerna (1905, neoblíbenější a stále hraná)

Samota (1908)

Pan Johannes (1909)

Jan Hus (1911)

Jan Roháč (1918)

Magdaléna Dobromila Rettigová (působení v Litomyšli)

 

Filmové adaptace

Lucerna, 1925, 1938

Filosofská historie, 1937

Psohlavci, 1931

Vojnarka, 1936

Jan Roháč z Dubé, 1947

Temno, 1950

Psohlavci, 1955

Proti všem, 1956

Ztracenci, 1956

Magdalena Dobromila Rettigová, 1964

F. L. Věk (TV), 1971

   

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4384 R Kutná Hora Sedlec Kostnice kupljena 2015 MVT

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Kutná Hora medieval Czech: Hory Kutné; German: Kuttenberg) is a city situated in the Central Bohemian Region of Bohemia, which is now part of the Czech Republic.

 

The town began in 1142 with the settlement of the first Cistercian monastery in Bohemia, Sedlec Monastery, brought from the Imperial immediate Cistercian Waldsassen Abbey. By 1260 German miners began to mine for silver in the mountain region, which they named Kuttenberg, and which was part of the monastery property. The name of the mountain is said to have derived from the monks' cowls (the Kutten) or from the word mining (kutání in old Czech). Under Abbot Heidenreich the territory greatly advanced due to the silver mines which gained importance during the economic boom of the 13th century.

 

The earliest traces of silver have been found dating back to the 10th century, when Bohemia already had been in the crossroads of long-distance trade for many centuries. Silver dinars have been discovered belonging to the period between 982–995 in the settlement of Malín, which is now a part of Kutná Hora.

  

Silver mining and processing in Kutná Hora, 1490s

From the 13th to 16th centuries the city competed with Prague economically, culturally and politically. Since 1995 the city center has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

 

In 1300 King Wenceslaus II of Bohemia issued the new royal mining code Ius regale montanorum (also known as Constitutiones Iuris Metallici Wenceslai II). This was a legal document that specified all administrative as well as technical terms and conditions necessary for the operation of mines.[3] The city developed with great rapidity, and at the outbreak of the Hussite Wars in 1419 was the second most important city in Bohemia, after Prague, having become the favourite residence of several Bohemian kings. It was here that, on January 18, 1409, Wenceslaus IV signed the famous Decree of Kutná Hora, by which the Czech university nation was given three votes in the elections to the faculty of Prague University as against one for the three other nations.

 

In 1420 Emperor Sigismund made the city the base for his unsuccessful attack on the Taborites during the Hussite Wars, leading to the Battle of Kutná Hora. Kuttenberg (Kutná Hora) was taken by Jan Žižka, and after a temporary reconciliation of the warring parties was burned by the imperial troops in 1422, to prevent its falling again into the hands of the Taborites. Žižka nonetheless took the place, and under Bohemian auspices it awoke to a new period of prosperity.

 

Along with the rest of Bohemia, Kuttenberg (Kutná Hora) passed to the Habsburg Monarchy of Austria in 1526. In 1546 the richest mine was hopelessly flooded; in the insurrection of Bohemia against Ferdinand I the city lost all its privileges; repeated visitations of the plague and the horrors of the Thirty Years' War completed its ruin. Half-hearted attempts after the peace to repair the ruined mines failed; the town became impoverished, and in 1770 was devastated by fire. The mines were abandoned at the end of the 18th century.

 

In this town Prague groschen were minted between 1300–1547/48.

 

Chandelier made out of human bones inside Sedlec Ossuary

Bohemia was a crownland of the Austrian Empire in 1806, in the Austrian monarchy (Austria side) after the compromise of 1867). Until 1918, Kuttenberg was head of the district with the same name, one of the 94 Bezirkshauptmannschaften in Bohemia.

 

The city became part of Czechoslovakia after World War I and the collapse of Austria-Hungary. Kutná Hora was incorporated into the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia by Nazi Germany in the period 1939–1945, but was restored to Czechoslovakia after World War II. The city became part of the Czech Republic in 1993 during the dissolution of Czechoslovakia.

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The oldest part of Kutná Hora - Sedlec - is a place, where the history of Royal Silver town Kutná Hora has begun. The landlord Miroslav from Markvartice ask the Cistercian order to establish the monastery here in 1142. The Miroslav´s fundation for the new monastery was really estated - a lot of lands and woods around Sedlec and even some villages belonged to it. And a few years later, when the silver ore was found mainly there, the profits from renting the lands for mining earned a huge richness to Cistercian monastery in Sedlec. There is no monk in monastery in these days and Kutná Hora is not a Royal silver town any more, but we can still admire great cathedrals, churches, gloriously buildings and monuments, which were built and erected thanks to the unimaginable welth...

 

There are two very coveted churches in Sedlec - The Cemetery church of All Saints with the Ossuary and Unesco Herritage listed Cathedral of Assumption of Our Lady and Saint John the Baptist. Administration of these sights attaches to the Roman Catholic Parish in Sedlec.

 

And because a large amount of visitors all over the year requires an appropriate services, the Parish also administrates an Infocentre near by - visitors of Sedlec can find all important information about the town and the surroundings there, and also all arranging of guide service, concerts, experience program or the permits for filming in the churches are accomplished there.

  

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Hřbitovní kostel Všech svatých s kostnicí

 

01Dnes již i díky médiím světoznámá Kostnice v Sedlci u Kutné Hory patří s více než 250 tisíci návštěvníky ročně mezi nejnavštěvovanější památky Středočeského kraje.

 

Kostnice je podzemní kaplí Hřbitovního kostela Všech Svatých, který byl původně součástí cisterciáckého opatství v Sedlci, založeného v roce 1142 panem Miroslavem z Markvartic. Kostelík byl vystavěn ve 14. století jako karner - skládá se ze dvou kaplí postavených nad sebou - a podle nejnovějších průzkumů se spolu s dalšími stavebními součástmi opatství snažil přiblížit svým jeruzalémským vzorům.

 

Podzemní kaple sedleckého kostelíka je mimořádně podobná podzemní kapli na jeruzalémském poli Hakeldama, kam byli pohřbíváni zemřelí poutníci. Těla zemřelých se v hakeldamské půdě údajně rozložila během pouhých 24 hodin.

 

Poté, co podle pověsti jeden ze sedleckých opatů, který do Jeruzaléma cestoval s diplomatickým poselstvím, přivezl z hakeldamského pole hrst hlíny a rozprášil ji na klášterním hřbitově, stal se tento hřbitov takzvaným Svatým polem, nejstarším ve střední Evropě. To vyvolalo zájem o pohřeb v Sedlci a tak se sedlecký hřbitov začal rozrůstat.06

 

Po morové ráně roku 1318 zde bylo pochováno na 30 tisíc zesnulých, dalších 10 tisíc mrtvých pojal hřbitov během husitských válek. V roce 1421 byly objekty sedleckého kláštera zasaženy požárem založeným husity, požár částečně zasáhl také stavbu hřbitovního kostelíka.

 

Po zrušení hřbitova na konci 15. století byly exhumované kosti uloženy vně i uvnitř podzemní kaple, kde je poloslepý sedlecký mnich v roce 1511 seskládal do velkých pyramid.

 

Na začátku 18. století byl kostelík upraven v souvislosti s celkovou obnovou kláštera podle koncepce opata Snopka a architekta Jana Blažeje SANTINIHO - Aichla (*1677 +1723). Stavbu bylo nutné staticky zajistit, proto Santini vestavěl štít mezi věže západního průčelí a stavbu vzepřel přístavbou západní předsíně. Ve stylu svého specifického architektonického projevu (tzv. barokní gotika) upravil i interiér, včetně návrhu výzdoby z kostí i dalších doplňků jako např. řezaných korun nad pyramidami, svícnů (fiál) aj.

 

Barokní štít mezi věžemi nese sochu Panny Marie - Neposkvrněné početí (Immaculata) od Matěje Václava Jäckela z roku 1709. Od téhož autora je socha sv. Jana Nepomuckého, stojící před kostnicí. Monument je doplněn plastikami dalších čtyř světců: Václava, Vojtěcha, Prokopa a Floriána.

 

11Když v roce 1784 císař Josef II. rušil kláštery, zanikl i sedlecký klášter a hřbitovní kostelík se dostal do držení rodu Schwarzenberků z Orlíka. Jejich stavební mistr František Rint z České skalice provedl v roce 1870 mimořádně nápaditě výzdobu podzemní kaple pomocí kostí a lebek ze zmíněných pyramid. Kosti, které použil k výzdobě, dezinfikoval a vybělil chlorovým vápnem. Doplnil výzdobu Schwarzenberským erbem a do výzdoby zakomponoval i své jméno. Proto bývá považován za původního autora tohoto vyjímečného uspořádání lidských ostatků.

 

Sedlecká kostnice – MEMENTO MORI – jedinečně pojaté místo spočinutí téměř 40 tisíců těch, kteří zde byli před námi…

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I’ve been meaning to try using a degreaser ever since @dolldirt posted his findings about the citrus stuff he used, though I mostly avoided glue heads by either rerooting or with cornstarch.

 

However I knew I had to find a way of directly treating the glue when I thrifted this Dorothy doll and half her hair was greasy with glue. Cornstarch shows up too much on darker hair and there’s no way I’m rerooting her so I decided to go shopping for a degreaser.

 

There wasn’t many choices, but I ended up going with Ajax’s Kitchen Degreaser mostly because I use regular Ajax to help get ingrained dirt off from thrifted dolls for almost 10 years now and while it’s strong it doesn’t harm factory paint.

 

I tested soaking thrifted Fashionista glue heads first and I got two distinct results.

 

The first result after soaking the head overnight was that the clear liquid became SUPER cloudy and the glue inside the head hardened, and it smells like the chemical for about a week. However this only took one soaking and all the leaky glue disappeared, and it set the waxy glue inside the head.

 

The second result is that after one night of soaking, chunks of glue will fall out the neck hole, the liquid remains clear, and the hair is still greasy, though the hair is definitely less chunky and sticky.

 

But both results didn’t harm the vinyl or the factory paint so I tossed my Dorothy head into a cup of the degreaser, and decided to chuck in my Katniss head too cuz I found out that the glue leaked onto her head and made it stiff.

 

Dorothy’s glue got the first result, where the glue inside her head hardened, the liquid turned milky and she stank like Ajax for about a week. Her hair is actually so glue free it’s kind of staticky. She doesn’t smell as much unless you sniff her head but I don’t.

 

Katniss on the other hand got the second result. I decided to try soaking her for multiple days since chunks of glue were gradually coming out of her head. I changed the liquid every night, since I tend to leave my dolls to dry overnight. Before I rinsed her though, I did squeeze her head repeatedly in hopes to irritate more chunks of glue to fall out.

 

Katniss took about 5 or so days of repeated soaking and squeezing, but by the 5th day, the glue inside her head turned from a waxy yellow to a hardened white colour and no more chunks of glue fell out.

 

If I were to redo Katniss I probably would pour salt into her head hole then squeeze it repeatedly to help get rid of any extraneous glue.

 

Of course when I rinsed the hair I washed the hair with dish soap to get rid of the excess chemical then conditioned the hair so it doesn’t dry out.

 

Anyway, it seems like Ajax Kitchen Degreaser can at least help get rid of the greasy feeling in glue heads and help set the glue better, even if it’s a lot of work. I’m pegging this as a sort of success cuz it doesn’t completely get rid of glue but it makes it feel a lot better.

Crown Bar and Grill, 1005 E Street, NW (Henry J. Blauvelt, 1906, demolished 1996 w/facade preserved) ca. 1988.

 

The crew gutting this building solved a 30 year old mystery in 1996:

 

Washington Post - January 5, 1997

 

DISCOVERY MAY END A 30-YEAR MYSTERY - BONES BELIEVED TO BE THOSE OF VANISHED SOLDIER

 

Ruben Castaneda, Washington Post Staff Writer

 

American cities were exploding in race riots. Lyndon B. Johnson was president, and the Vietnam War was escalating. The District's budget was so healthy that it was growing annually by millions of dollars. The date was Aug. 1, 1967. At Fort Myer, in Arlington, Pfc. Allen Lee Adams failed to report for duty. The Army declared Adams, 20, absent without leave, and he was never heard from again.

 

Nearly 30 years later, the question of Adams's whereabouts apparently was answered the week before Christmas. A work crew demolishing a vacant downtown building at 1005 E St . NW found a human leg bone and pelvis in a pair of jeans. Inside the pants pockets, police found dog tags and other Army identification belonging to Adams.

 

Homicide detectives and Adams's parents are all but certain that the young private was slain and that his body was placed in the now-demolished building. DNA testing will tell for sure whether the body is Adams's, authorities say.

 

One mystery solved, another opened: How did Adams die? If he was killed, who did it, and why?

 

The discovery brought a measure of closure to Adams's parents, Elizabeth and Darrel, who live in Hickory, N.C., but it also brought another layer of grief, piled on nearly 30 years of longing and heartache.

 

"It's been absolutely one nightmare that's never-ending," Elizabeth Adams said. "You go to bed each night and you think, Maybe I'm just dreaming.' And you wake up the next morning, and it's the same thing." For all those years, Elizabeth and Darrel Adams clung to the dwindling hope that Allen Lee, one of four children and their oldest son, would reenter their lives. To no avail, they tried to get the Army to look for their son, or, later to get the TV show "Unsolved Mysteries" to do a segment on him.

 

The building where the bones were found had been vacant since the late 1980s. Demolition workers were tearing it down to make way for an office building when they discovered the bones just after noon Dec. 18. At the time Adams disappeared, the building had the Crown Bar and Grill on the first floor and the Apex Billiard Parlor on the second. The third floor was vacant, and there was an attic above that, said homicide Lt. James Boteler, who is leading the investigation.

 

It is likely the body was on the third floor or in the attic until the demolition brought it down amid rubble, Boteler said. Police investigators summoned forensic anthropologists from the Smithsonian Institution to comb the rubble for more remains. The anthropologists were unable to find other evidence, and some of the rubble had been hauled off by the time they got to it. Although the cause of death has not been determined -- and may never be, forensically, given the dearth of physical evidence -- police are required to investigate all unexplained deaths.

 

Adams was last seen by family members in late July 1967, when he visited his parents in West Palm Beach, Fla., and other relatives in Indiana. Boteler theorized that Adams may have gone to the billiard parlor to shoot pool and gotten into a dispute there. Elizabeth and Darrel Adams said their son enjoyed playing pool.

 

People who owned and ran businesses in the neighborhood during the 1960s said that the Crown Bar and Grill was a popular lunch spot for federal workers and that patrons of the nearby National Theater went there for evening meals. "It was a neighborhood place. It wasn't a rough crowd," said Richard Danker, who owned a restaurant near the site where the remains were found. "It was like Cheers.' Everybody knew everybody."

 

It is that kind of neighborhood coziness that police hope will help them discover what happened to Adams. "We'd like to talk to anyone who owned, worked in or frequented the two businesses that were in the building" when Adams disappeared, Boteler said. Detectives also are awaiting Army records that may help them find people who were soldiers in Adams's engineering company.

 

Meanwhile, the Adams family is doing its best to cope. At Christmas, Allen Lee Adams's siblings -- Beverly Adams Peterson, 56, David Adams, 48, and Pamela Adams Rockwell, 36 -- gathered at their parents' home. They remembered their brother, how he doted on Pamela, then held each other and cried. He would have been 49.

 

At the time Adams was reported AWOL, the Vietnam War was wrenching the country apart, and many soldiers were deserting. A month after declaring Adams AWOL, the Army discharged him dishonorably. Through the decades, Elizabeth and Darrel Adams never wavered in their belief that their son was not a deserter. After all, he had reenlisted a couple of months before.

 

"I asked him once, What if you have to go to Vietnam?' " Darrel Adams said. "He said, That's part of the deal: If I have to go, I'll go.' He said he'd do his duty." Soon, they should find out whether the body in the building is their son's.

 

On Monday, a nurse will draw a blood sample from Elizabeth Adams. The Armed Forces Institute of Pathology will conduct DNA tests, comparing the genetic material in the bones with that in Elizabeth Adams's blood. Results are expected within the month.

 

Elizabeth Adams has shifted from hoping her son returns to hoping the story of his death is revealed. She said she will petition the Army to clear his name if there is evidence he did not desert. "I hope and pray that somebody will remember something and help the police," she said. "I haven't known for 30 years, and I might never know."

 

Washington Post - May 22, 1999

 

BURIED IN THE PAST - After 30 Years, Elizabeth Adams Finally Knows Her Son's Fate. But His Life Remains A Mystery.

 

Frank Ahrens, Washington Post Staff Writer

 

It was Elizabeth Adams's 64th birthday, and Christmas was coming. On the cool afternoon of Dec. 18, 1996, she hung holiday decorations inside her red brick home in Hickory, N.C., and waited for her older daughter to swing by. They were going shopping, to buy Mom a birthday present.

 

Just as her daughter came in the front door, the phone rang. Adams picked up. Birthday wishes from a friend, she figured. No. It was the police calling, from Washington, D.C.

 

Mrs. Adams, they said. We found your son Allen's billfold and dog tags here, in the pockets of some bluejeans. We found them in the rubble of a building that's being torn down. And we found some bones. We're 99 percent sure they're your son's . . .

 

The policeman's words stopped making sense to Adams. She handed the phone to her daughter. Sat down. Began to cry. All she could think was: Thirty years. My son has been missing 30 years. Now they've found him. And they're telling me he's dead.

 

"I liked to went crazy," says Adams, now 66 and retired to South Florida with her husband, Darrel, 71. "I mostly remember crying for an awful long time. People asked me, 'Why are you crying so much? At least now you know.' I told them, 'Now I don't have any hope. As long as I didn't find him, I had hope.'"

 

On Aug. 1, 1967, Pfc. Allen Lee Adams, 20, went missing from Fort Myer in Arlington. A month later, the Army gave him a less-than-honorable discharge. For three decades, his mother had written hundreds of letters--including ones to each president--trying to find her son, the oldest of four children. Now, a bulldozer had given her the terrible answer.

 

Even after Allen Adams's remains were found--and received a military burial with honors--his mother kept up the fusillade of letters, now to police and prosecutors. One caught the attention of local prosecutors. A homicide detective is on the case. A grand jury has convened. Suspects have been identified. The case will be profiled on national TV tonight.

 

In the course of the investigation, Elizabeth Adams has learned some disturbing facts about her son. Things she didn't know--or didn't want to know. Maybe soon, she can find out the truth about her son. Wherever it may have been hidden.

 

The Scene of the Crime?

 

Detective Clarence Muse, a D.C. homicide investigator, is discussing what kind of man Allen Adams was. Typical 20-year-old, he says. Liked cars, interested in girls. Is there anything else?

 

"Just he had a bad temper when he got to drinking. He got into a couple of scraps [in the Army]. He happened to be drinking when got into problems a couple of times," Muse says.

 

In 1967, the nation was in turmoil over the Vietnam War. But Adams, a supply specialist, demonstrated no internal conflict about the war. He had left high school early to join the Army and had recently reenlisted. He'd already had a 16-month tour in Korea and told his father--a Navy man in World War II--that if he were ordered to Vietnam, he would go. Adams didn't seem like the deserting type.

 

On July 31, 1967, Adams left Fort Myer for downtown Washington. He ended up, police think, at the Apex Billiard Parlor at 1005 E St. NW, one floor above the popular Crown Bar and Grill. The building's third floor was empty.

 

That area of downtown had been a destination for soldiers and sailors since World War II. A Marine barracks was a few blocks away. There were restaurants, shops and peep shows. The Apex had its share of scuffles, police say, but it wasn't a rough joint. The Crown Bar and Grill catered mostly to a lunch crowd. There was a rotisserie in the front window.

 

Muse believes the soldier was playing pool and got into a fight that turned fatal. The killer, or killers, dragged him out of the pool hall and up the stairs to the vacant third floor, where they shoved his body into the ceiling or a wall. The Army declared Adams AWOL when he didn't return to the base that night. On Aug. 30, it "dropped him from the rolls . . . as a deserter," reads a letter to his mother.

 

In December 1996, a demolition crew was razing 1005 E St., which had been vacant since the late '80s. The work halted when someone spotted a grayed, flaking femur, wrapped in shredded jeans in the shovel of a bulldozer. Nearby was a pelvis. The other bones may have been lost among the chunks of concrete and plaster.

 

The pants were full of documentation--Adams's wallet, dog tags, a watch, money, papers--a promising guide for investigators, says Ken Kohl, the assistant U.S. attorney assigned to the case. "There are clues from the paperwork of the people he came in contact with and the things he was doing on the day he disappeared."

 

'The Smell of Rats'

 

But the contents of Allen Adams's pockets didn't answer a lot of questions. The cause of death, for instance, is tough to determine, given the lack of physical evidence. Equally perplexing is why no one noticed the body upstairs. After all, it was summer in Washington--what about the stench from a decomposing corpse?

 

"I don't have an explanation for that," says Muse, a 30-year police veteran, "knowing what I know about dead bodies." There were never any rumors about a body upstairs, report tenants of the time. But one did tell Kohl: Sometimes the building had "the smell of rats."

 

There's another key question: What about witnesses? That's where Kohl pins his hopes of ending this mystery. "Over the years, people make admissions," he says. "Friendships that may have kept witnesses silent no longer exist."

 

The grand jury has started to hear evidence. Kohl's office has subpoenaed Army records, and Muse has a list of about 35 people who knew or worked with Adams whom he hopes to interview. He has a couple of suspects. Both Kohl and Muse are confident it was a homicide.

 

"People don't die of natural causes and hide themselves in the walls of a building," Kohl says.

 

Not the Son She Knew

 

Perhaps more disturbing to Elizabeth Adams than the unanswered questions are the unanticipated answers. It revealed to the grieving mother that there was much about her son she did not know. She didn't know about his drinking. She didn't know about the fights. And she didn't know about the consequences of the two.

 

In a photograph of Allen Adams that his mother has, he is kneeling beside a row of tents in a khaki uniform. He is trim and confident-looking. On his left sleeve are two chevrons, designating the rank of corporal. But the Allen Adams that died in 1967 was a private first class.

 

"I think he had hit an officer or some such thing," says his mother. "I asked Detective Muse about it and that's what he told me he had found out. It wasn't too serious; they always take your stripes." So. Cpl. Adams was busted down to Pfc. Adams. For striking an officer. And his mother only found out three decades after his death.

 

"The kids are not going to come to me and say, 'I'm in trouble,' " Elizabeth Adams says. "But we didn't ever have any serious problems with the kids." But this seems unlike her son, Elizabeth Adams says. When he was a boy growing up in West Palm Beach, Fla., where the family lived at the time, Allen was into fishing, not fighting. Sure, he and his brother, David, tussled a bit, but no different from any other brothers. As a young man, he was good to his two younger sisters. He got good grades and never was sent to the principal's office.

 

"I was very, very, very strict with the kids," says Elizabeth Adams. "They knew that if they got in trouble in school, they'd be in more trouble when they got home."

 

One Burden Too Many

 

Every morning after Adams rises, she reads her Bible for consolation. It's not hard to see why. As the oldest of 12 children growing up in the hills of Kentucky, she "learned to cook as soon as she could see over the cookstove," says her younger daughter, Pamela Rockwell, who lives in Indiana. Adams had her first child when she was 14. As a wife in Florida, she helped her husband build their new house.

 

"I was hanging drywall when I was 13," laughs Rockwell. "She taught us how to do this. I could hang drywall and paint and lay carpet. I thought all mothers knew how to do this." But her oldest son's disappearance was one burden too many.

 

"The possibility that Allen was dead--that was never acceptable conversation in our house," says Beverly Peterson, Elizabeth Adams's older daughter. "It caused her such pain that she really could not speak about it. "You could see a gaping hole there. Just a pain," Peterson continues. Rockwell describes another scene of her mother failing to cope.

 

"She would get a long-distance call and it would be staticky and she couldn't tell who it was, but she knew it was him," Rockwell says. "She made it up in her mind that he was alive and either had amnesia or was somewhere where he couldn't get home." Maybe Allen had a parachuting accident that resulted in a broken leg; maybe he'd hit his head, too, the mother rationalized.

 

Kohl would like to solve this case, mostly for the sake of the mother. "We owe it to Mrs. Adams," Kohl says. "The Army said their son was a deserter and they experienced the shame of that, of being treated as the family of a deserter."

 

He began working on the case a couple of months ago, thanks in part to the efforts of WTOP radio reporter Paul Wagner. Wagner covered the discovery of Allen's remains, befriended Elizabeth Adams and, when she asked him for advice, suggested she write to the U.S. attorney's office. Why not, she figured. She'd written to everyone else.

 

The case landed on Kohl's desk. He contacted Wagner and told him: We need some national publicity because the homicide is 30 years old and the people who knew Adams are probably spread out all over the country.

 

So Wagner called "America's Most Wanted," the Fox TV show that seeks to hunt down criminals by telling the stories of their crimes, sometimes with re-creations. The show is popular with law enforcement officials, who see it as a way to cast a nationwide dragnet. The show bit on the Adams mystery. The episode is scheduled for 9 tonight.

 

In an April 1967 letter to his mother--three months before his disappearance--Adams writes of the beauty of Washington's cherry blossoms, a couple of civilian girls he was interested in and so on. Then, toward the end of the letter, he says:

 

"I haven't been in to [sic] much trouble lately. I decided to try and make something here because I've only got 18 months left in the Army before I'll be trying to make a living as a civilian and I've been in enough trouble to make it difficult without getting into any more. I should have stopped to think a few years ago I know but it's not to [sic] late I hope."

 

What did this mean? "We've been through that many times and I wonder what it means," Elizabeth Adams says, starting to cry again. "I thought it just meant he was ready to settle down and start getting serious. It never dawned on me that it might mean anything." She stops to cry some more. "I wish now I had asked him."

 

Photographer unidentified - Historic American Buildings Survey. 1988 color shot of this block.

 

New York Times - February 5, 1997

 

Long Missing and Misjudged, A Soldier is Buried

 

For 30 years Pfc. Allen L. Adams was branded a deserter, thought by the Army to be yet another soldier who had fled to avoid being sent to Vietnam. But six weeks ago, when workers in Washington, D.C., found human bones in the rubble of a building they were demolishing, that easy assumption was undone: the remains were those of Private Adams, and the authorities now believe that he disappeared in the summer of 1967 not because he had deserted, but because he had been killed.

 

This weekend, Private Adams was buried here with full military honors beneath a leafless willow in a section of a country cemetery known as the Garden of Peace. His parents, Darrel and Elizabeth Adams, who retired to Hickory five years ago, wept softly as seven soldiers raised M-16's in a salute and a bugler played taps.

 

''It was a 30-year nightmare that just never ended,'' said Mrs. Adams, 64. ''I always had kind of a hope in my heart, but I knew something terrible had happened to him. He was a good kid, and I miss him.''

 

Though the uncertainty is over, friends and family say many questions remain: Why was the body not discovered in all this time? Why did the Army not fully investigate Private Adams's disappearance? Why did the Army assume that he had deserted, especially since he had just re-enlisted?

 

The police in Washington, meanwhile, face their own puzzles as they investigate a homicide three decades old. The task is particularly daunting because records have been lost and investigators recovered only Private Adams's pelvic bone and one femur, encased in a pair of blue jeans. His dog tags and a wallet containing money were found in a pocket.

 

Private Adams was stationed at Fort Myer, in the Washington suburb of Arlington, Va., when he disappeared on July 31, 1967. His remains were found on Dec. 18 in the rubble of a long-abandoned pool hall that was being torn down to make way for a new sports arena. Investigators believe that he died shortly after disappearing from the base.

 

Positive identification was made in January by comparing DNA from the remains with blood taken from Mrs. Adams.

 

The case is like a trip back in time, to a decade dominated by an unpopular war.

 

Allen Lee Adams was the eldest of four children. He enlisted in 1965, nine months after dropping out of high school in Palm Beach, Fla.

 

He served at Fort Knox, Ky., and in Korea before being assigned to Fort Myer, where he was learning to work in a field that was just emerging: data processing. Three months before he disappeared, he wrote a letter to his family and told them about the amazing new computers he was working on.

 

''He enjoyed life, and he enjoyed challenge,'' said his sister Beverly Peterson, who was 9 when he disappeared.

 

His family assumes that Private Adams had been in the building where his remains were found to enjoy one of his pastimes, playing pool. The building, vacant since the 1980's, housed a pool hall and restaurant in 1967.

 

Investigators surmise that Private Adams's body was hidden in the attic. They are looking for leads in property tax records and have interviewed the property's owner at the time, but a fire has destroyed Army personnel records that would have helped them find soldiers who served with Mr. Adams.

 

The Adamses learned in August 1967 that their son, then 20 years old, was missing. Over the years, Army officials, still trying to track down a man they thought had deserted, visited the Adamses' West Palm Beach home to see if their son had shown up. Once, a soldier waited in line at the dress shop where Mrs. Adams worked. When his turn at the cash register came, he said: ''Where's Allen? I know you know where he is.''

 

The Adamses never believed that their son had shirked his duty, yet they wished that he would surprise them by coming home unannounced, just as he had done many times before when he had leave. The Army discharged him in 1983.

 

''What we did at the time was based on the best information available and the guidelines and rules we have,'' said Lieut. Col. Anda Strauss, of the Army Personnel Command in Northern Virginia. At that time, the country was absorbed in a passionate debate over the United States' increasing involvement in Vietnam. Many soldiers went absent without leave to avoid assignment there.

 

But Private Adams had not received orders to go overseas, and his father said his son had told him that he would go if he had to.

 

''He was a jolly sort who was connected to his family,'' Mrs. Peterson said. ''He even called my mother from Korea on Mother's Day. He didn't miss sending cards. He came home every Thanksgiving and Christmas. They thought he must be dead.''

 

Nevertheless, Mrs. Adams spent 30 years searching for her son's face in crowds and scouring letters received at her church from missionaries overseas for her son's handwriting. When she heard once that someone had picked up a confused soldier, she wondered: Could it be Allen?

 

When word came that Private Adams was in fact dead, Mrs. Adams cried for hours.

 

''There was no hope left,'' she said in an interview after the burial, crying again.

 

Sgt. 1st Class Andra Powell, who was part of the 14-member military honor guard here for Private Adams's funeral, said of the 30-year military mystery, ''I wish it hadn't started like it did.''

 

Sergeant Powell's unit from Fort Bragg was here to make sure that the chapter ended with dignity. The family will get the back pay owed to Private Adams -- the amount is not yet known -- and $10,000 from a life insurance policy, all with interest.

 

Sergeant Powell, 33, handed the American flag to Mr. and Mrs. Adams, who shuddered with silent sobs. He told them that it was presented on behalf of a grateful nation.

 

As the family turned to leave the grave, David Adams, born two years after Allen Adams and now gray-haired and retired from a job as a firefighter, stopped and tucked a piece of paper inside his brother's steel-gray coffin.

 

It was a letter he had scratched out in the solitude of his pickup truck in the days before the funeral. He wrote about the times he had shared with his brother, the times he had tagged along. He, too, served in the Army, he told his brother. Now he wished he had tagged along one last time, on that night in the pool hall.

 

David Adams concluded his letter by saying, ''The Army might have given up on you, but your family never did.''

Damn these dry, staticky upstate NY winters!

Oslav 130 let trati 280 Hranice na Moravě – Horní Lideč se ve Vsetíně staticky představil i motorový vůz 850.001-9. Toho času nově dislokován pod muzejním depem Olomouc.

Me in my spot on the couch, slippers on, feet up, giant cup of tea in hand. Of course, I took this in the afternoon because I'm going into work late today, but this is what life is like. Although most of the time I also have the giant blanket on, too. I've been planning this shot for quite some time, because the Scavenger Hunt has two items for which my answer is the same - your most comfortable place to sit, and where you eat most of your meals. Since I inherited my grandmother's orange couch in May, I planned it this way, so that I could document both of the couches she's given me. The orange one is, needless to say, WAY MORE comfortable than that old one. And it's a little thing that reminds me of her very often, which I really like. Also, because it's in the last shot - just to the right of this picture sits the crochet project I'm working on now.

 

A shot for Scavenger Hunt 101, #75, your most comfortable place to sit.

The fake grass at the playground was throwing off a ton of static electricity that day.

O počátcích kláštera rajhradského, nejstaršího a jediného benediktinského řádu na Moravě, se soudobé prameny nezachovaly. Ze dvou pozdějších listin (tzv. břevnovská falsa) pouze víme, že roku 1045 dne 18. října měl český vévoda Břetislav věnovat klášteru břevnovskému mezi jinými jakousi cellu, kterou kolem roku 1028 založil ke cti sv. apoštolů Petra a Pavla na opuštěném hradě, "jenž slove Rajhrad". O tři léta později byla tato cella přeměněna na skutečný klášter, který podle vůle zakladatelovy měl být jak v hmotném, tak v duchovním ohledu závislý na klášteře břevnovském. Tato závislost trvala až do roku 1813, kdy proboštství rajhradské bylo povýšeno na samostatné opatství. Nutno podotknout, že založení celly (snad poustevna, možná i kostelík) navazovalo na již dřívější existenci velkomoravského kostelíku, který podle tradice (ne stále ještě plně doložené) navštívili při své misi Konstantin a Metoděj. Z této celly byl zřízen 26. listopadu 1048 (viz tzv. zakládací listina Břetislavova, druhé falsum ze 13. století) podle stávajícího řádu církevního i zeměpanského skutečný klášter řehole sv. Benedikta. Kníže Břetislav předává existující slovanský klášteřík latinským mnichům snad na přímluvu poustevníka Günthera (Vintíře), původem Němce z Duryňska, který byl čilým diplomatem a dovedl obratně zasáhnout ve prospěch německé politiky. Bylo to totiž v době vzmáhajícího se vlivu latinského obřadu u nás nad obřadem slovanským a ani Břetislav se nemohl z tohoto vlivu vymanit, i když sám byl slovanskému obřadu nakloněn. Břetislavovo rozhodnutí se dá vysvětlit důvody politickými; založením kláštera chtěl usmířit papeže Benedikta IX., který ho pohnal k soudu pro porušení posvátných míst v Polsku.

 

Podle výslovné vůle Břetislavovy měl být nový klášter v úplné závislosti hmotné i duchovní na mateřinci břevnovském. Pro nedostatek listinných zpráv nelze bezpečně stanovit počet a posloupnost rajhradských proboštů ve starší době. Z těchto důvodů nelze zjistit ani počty řeholníků v nejstarších dobách. Těžko se zjišťuje jméno prvního představeného rajhradského kláštera. Podle začátečního písmene "M", které je uvedeno na "svědectví" z r. 1062, poslaném biskupu pražskému, že brněnský chrám na Petrově posvěcen byl r. 884 od sv. Metoděje, soudí někteří badatelé, že první představený rajhradského kláštera se jmenoval Matheus - Matouš. Roku 1740 tvrdil moravský stavovský menší písař rytíř Hoffer, že první rajhradský probošt se nazýval Maurus. Tento názor je pravdě bližší, protože jméno Maurus bývá v klášterech sv. Benedikta velmi časté. I přes závislost na mateřinci břevnovském bylo postavení představených rajhradského kláštera na určité úrovni a požívalo jisté vážnosti. Představení kláštera byli často bráni za svědky nebo za rozhodčí při různých záležitostech.

 

Růstu kláštera napomáhalo udělování různých privilegií a výsad ze strany zeměpanské. Markrabí Přemysl udělil r. 1234 Rajhradu svobody, jaké měl na Moravě klášter velehradský, Jan Lucemburský propůjčil r. 1327 klášteru hrdelní právo, které při něm zůstalo plných 400 let. Karel IV. potvrdil všechna privilegia udělená Břetislavem.

 

Během svého trvání byl klášter ničen různými vpády. Velmi těžce trpěl r. 1241 (tatarské vpády) a r. 1253 (uhersko-kumánské vpády na jižní Moravu). V tomto bouřlivém 13. století jenom kostel, vždy těžce upravovaný, musel být třikrát znovu vysvěcen.

 

Až do konce 17. století měl rajhradský klášter v podstatě románskou tvář. Špatný stav klášterních budov v této době způsobil, že se rajhradští mniši rozhodovali přemístit klášter na návrší u Rebešovic nebo na návrší před dnešním rajhradským nádražím. Tehdejší probošt Placid Novotný se nakonec rozhodl pro přestavbu klášterního areálu stojícího na původním místě. Vystavěl dvě věže a chystal se bourat starý kostel. Proboštova smrt však tyto záměry přerušila. To se psal rok 1690. Ale teprve r. 1721 začalo se s bouráním a s přestavbou kláštera do dnešní podoby. Probošt Pirmus začal po zbourání klášterního chrámu budovat areál podle návrhu pražského architekta Giovanni Santiniho-Aichla. Santiniho projekt byl realizován brněnským stavitelem Františkem Klíčníkem v hrubé stavbě za čtyři roky. Na vnitřní výzdobě se pracovalo další čtyři roky. Fresky v chrámové lodi a objektech kláštera maloval brněnský malíř Jan Jiří Etgens. V presbytáři, který byl přestavěn po zemětřesení v r. 1763, byla namalována nová freska Josefem Winterhalterem v r. 1770. Sochy jsou dílem Ignáce Lengelachera (bavorský mistr pracující v Mikulově), Ondřeje Schweigela, Josefa Břenka, Benedikta Edeleho a rajhradského řezbáře Ignáce Bergmana. Obrazy v chrámu postupně malovali Jan Jiří Etgens, Josef Führich, František Preis, Matěj Šťastný, J. L. Šichan.

 

Stavba chrámu byla hotova r. 1730 a o devět let později vysvěcena. Věže z roku 1691 byly ponechány, ale v roce 1728 musely být zajištěny opěrnými pilíři. Současně s chrámem byla stavěna po částech klášterní budova. Zhruba byla hotova za 50 let, úplně však až roku 1840, tedy přibližně za 120 let. Škoda jen, že při zpevňování základů nového kostela dřevěnou pilotáží bylo bezohledně obětováno vše z dřívější románské baziliky, která tak dlouho, třebaže po četných změnách, byla svědkem umění dřívějších generací. Dnešní klášterní areál nebyl však postaven přesně podle plánu. Chybí především trakt uzavírající na severní straně vnitřní nádvoří před vchodem do kostela. Vybudování rajhradského kláštera přispělo monumentální církevní stavbou k lesku protireformace v 18. století v našich zemích.

 

Od roku 1540 zasedali rajhradští probošti v moravském zemském sněmu. Dne 1. října 1687 nabyli rajhradští probošti od papeže Inocence IX. právo pontifikálií, tj. právo nosit mitru, kříž, prsten a berlu. Rajhradští benediktini se rovněž zasloužili o budování nemocnic, chudobinců, sirotčinců a škol. Roku 1623 zakládá probošt Jiří Vojtěch Kotelík v Rajhradě školu. Nad školou měl rajhradský klášter do 19. ledna 1914 patronát. Po celou dobu patronátu se klášter o školu staral, a jak praví Dr. Dudík ve svých Dějinách Moravy, škola získala věhlas, "který daleko přesahoval hranice Moravy". V prosinci 1903 povolil zemský sněm moravský na návrh zástupce zemského hejtmana, rajhradského opata Benedikta Korčiana, zřízení tří zemských sirotčinců na Moravě - německého v Moravském Krumlově a dvou českých v Rajhradě a ve Vsetíně. Rajhradský sirotčinec byl postaven v roce 1904. Benediktini ve prospěch sirotčince poskytli pozemek.

 

Zásluhou břevnovského opata Havla a rajhradského probošta Jindřicha jsou v Rajhradě roku 1465 zakládány vinice. Symbol vinařství v Rajhradě se roku 1554 dostává i do rajhradského znaku a pečeti. Břevnovská opatská ostrev (kus osekaného kmene stromu se třemi suky) je zkřížena s klíčem, který je symbolem horenského práva: zavírání a otevírání hory (vinice). S rozvojem klášterního viničního hospodářství souvisí postupné zvětšování vinic a budování vinného sklepa s "presshausem a lusthausem" (lisovnou) v barokním slohu. Tato stavba kopírovala Santiniho pavilony na klášterní prelatuře (1774). Stavba během času velmi zchátrala, v roce 1934 byla snesena její střední část a v roce 1960 byla nahrazena nynějším novým areálem.

 

V polovině 14. století se v klášteře začíná vařit pivo, což bylo v této době hlavně výsadou měst. Po určitou dobu vařily pivo v Rajhradě pivovary dva: klášterní a pivovar městečka. Díky tomu se začínalo v Rajhradě rozvíjet i chmelařství. Koncem 16. století se vařilo pivo pouze v klášteře. 14. století můžeme chápat jako století hospodářského rozvoje kláštera a celého klášterního panství.

  

Po internaci benediktinů v roce 1950 byla tato památka státem tak nezodpovědně zanedbávána, že nyní musí být na rekonstrukci vynakládány značné prostředky. Dosud nejnákladnějšími opravami byly práce na statickém zajišťování základů a horní stavby objektu.

 

Klášter je nemovitou kulturní památkou zapsanou v úsnkp pod r. č. 0918. V tomto objektu se nachází další kulturní památka - mobiliář knihovny a knihovní fond, který představuje 64.000 historických svazků.

 

Většina tohoto knihovního fondu byla do poloviny roku 2004 uložena v západním křídle kvadratury kláštera. Knihy byly umístěny v nevyhovujícím provizorním prostředí, ve staticky narušené části, která již měla být vyklizena. V současné době je již obnova knihovny dokončena a knihy jsou vráceny zpět na svá místa. V západní části je dnes již provedeno statické zajištění budovy. Severní, východní a jižní křídla kvadratury jsou v současné době již zrekonstruována a slouží především pro Památník písemnictví na Moravě.

 

V roce 2012 proběhla rekonstrukce jižního křídla prelatury, které dnes slouží jako výstavní prostory. Západní křídla prelatury a kvadratury dosud čekají na rekonstrukci.

 

Opatský chrám sv. Petra a Pavla je trvale využíván k bohoslužbám. Přilehlá fara je sídlem řádu. Hospodářské objekty kláštera jsou k různým účelům využívány jen z části. Zbytek těchto budov nebylo možné z důvodu havarijního stavu používat. I ty se postupně opravují.

 

off to school! sorry i look so glum, i had a double english period and my teacher is actually hopeless =p

 

*black kookai cardigan

*thrifted dress

*grey socks

*vintage tan brogues from eBay

 

i'm absolutely in love with this frock, the knife-pleat detail on the collar is impeccable! so much so that i'm willing to overlook that the dress is made from polyester and sticks to everything staticky lol

Power went out at 4 a.m. We learned about it when the emergency radio started a staticky blaring.

 

I got up at 5:30 and made breakfast on the gas stove by candlelight. Without electricity I couldn't grind or brew the coffee. I left Jim's breakfast in the dining room and went to the Y for the longest workout I've had in years. So-o-o, doesn't that deserve a donut?

 

Strobist Info: One FL-50R speed light TTL at 11 o'clock 5 feet above the table, bounced off a silver umbrella. triggered by popup. Shadows softened by a 40-inch silver reflector at 4 o'clock.

LARGE View On Black

 

[ Canon EF 135mm f/2 L USM ]

Trying to catch up on ADAD. The girls love their megipupu sets but wish their hair wasn't so darn staticky!

remember this anyone? I did remember that familiar bottle but we didn't have dandruff so my sisters and I couldn't remember why it was used so frequently in our house. Mom stepped in to mention that we used it to keep our hair from being staticky and I notice that it does stay Hair Groom Conditioner on the bottle. Huh!

3 OCT 13

 

October hath landed, and is the month of Halloween and scary movies and such. I'm trying to think of the last movie that legit gave me the heeby jeebies, and I'd have to give that honor to The Ring (The original version). I saw this forever and a go before the American version came out. I was watching it at home, alone, and when it finished...I cannot make this up, the tv went all staticky when I pulled the DVD out and at the exact moment, the phone rang. I was like, Ohhhhhhhhhh heeeeeeeeellllllllllllllll nooooooooooooooo! I didn't answer the phone. I was like F-that. I have since seen the American version which I felt wasn't scary at all because the original didn't have any jump cuts so you couldn't escape the horror of the girl oozing from the tv, but the American one did, and I was like, womp womp, lame.

 

Thinking back to when I was a kid, there were three movies that gave me nightmares. The first was the aptly named, Nightmare on Elm Street. My dad was like, no way, my kids are going to see this movie, and we snuck and saw it anyway, and the next thing I knew I was on the couch and couldn't sleep. My dad woke me up b/c of course I'd eventually fallen asleep and he was like, what are you doing up little one, to bed with you, and he scooped me up and carried me to my room and then I was like dad, don't leave, LOL!!!!

 

The second was most definitely Poltergeist. The thing that most terrified me about this one was my bed in our old house, faced my walk in closet, and instead of a nightlight, my mom would sometimes leave the light on in there...holy mother...after seeing that, she had the light on in there as usual, but it looked just like the movie and I swear all my stuffed animals were alive in there talking about trying to steal my soul. That movie F'd me up for reals. I don't think I've ever seen the movie since. P.S. they are doing a re-make 2014.

 

The last movie is really just comical because it's not a scary movie at all. In fact, its quite a nerdy movie, Short Circuit which featured a former U.S. military robot built originally for the Cold War, who winds up being struck by lighting and gaining sentience. Basically the movie is a bunch of comical scenes of the robot discovering what humanity is like...but for some reason, after seeing this movie, I became really scared of door knobs. I can't even explain in. I would freak out about the door knob at the end of the hall. I really did not like that robot. It's probably one of the funniest things that ever happened to me in retrospect. Oh boy. Speaking of irrational fears, it reminds me of this girl once at work. We were having a festival for the kids, and they had these clowns at the end of the hall. Well, after attending a friends birthday party, she stepped out and LOST HER SH*T. She started screaming...not just like quiet screams, like loud everybody is turning around and wondering what's happening screams. Her mom looks up and is like, oh my god, get them out of there now. I told her, I can't, they are basically entertaining those other children down there. The girl was just flipping out. It was almost like the equivalent of a 2 year old tantrum except she was 12. I walked down the hall, and kindly asked if the clowns could step behind the wall while the girl and her mother left, and they did, but the girl could I guess sense them there because she was crying hysterically and hitting at her mom and trying to run. I'm not going to lie...it was one of the best laughs I've had. I was telling my co-workers, guess that white elephant DVD of "IT" was a bad choice.

 

Says the kid once scared of door knobs....