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One of my mods of 4434 Dump Truck, this truck features a hydraulic arm and snow clearing attachments.
The accessories for the truck include the arrowboard trailer, plow and sander, three barricades, two traffic cones, six attenuation barrels, a roll of temporary fencing, and a tool stand.
4/12/15: Replaced photo with one of better quality.
Swiss-German-British postcard by News Productions, Baulmes / Filmwelt Berlin, Bakede / News Productions, Stroud, no. 56484 Photo: Collection Cinémathèque Suisse, Lausanne. Conrad Veidt in Das Indische Grabmal/The Indian Tomb (Joe May, 1921), produced by May Film, Berlin.
Conrad Veidt (1893–1943) was the most highly strung and romantically handsome of the German expressionist actors. From 1916 until his death, he appeared in well over 100 films, including such classics as Das Kabinett des Dr. Caligari/Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (Robert Wiene, 1920) and Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942).
Hans Walter Conrad Veidt was born in 1893, in Potsdam, Germany. He attended the Sophiengymnasium (a secondary school) in the Schoeneberg district of Berlin and graduated without a diploma in 1912. Veidt received his basic acting training and stage experience from Max Reinhardt, and appeared at the age of 20 — just before World War I — at Reinhardt's Deutsches Theater in Berlin. In 1914, he met actress Lucie Mannheim, with whom he began a relationship. Later in the year, he was drafted into the German Army during World War I. In 1915, Veidt was sent to the Eastern Front as a noncommissioned officer and took part in the Battle of Warsaw. He contracted jaundice and pneumonia and had to be evacuated to a hospital on the Baltic Sea. While recuperating, he received a letter from Lucie Mannheim informing him that she had found work at a front theatre. Intrigued, Veidt applied for the theatre as well. As his condition had not improved, the army allowed him to join the theatre so that he could entertain the troops. It was also during this time that his relationship with Mannheim ended. In late 1916, he was reexamined by the Army and deemed unfit for service; he was given a full discharge in January 1917. Veidt then returned to Berlin to pursue his acting career. Director Richard Oswald encouraged him to go into films. He was seen in such silent films as Der Weg des Todes/The Road of Death (Robert Reinert, 1917) with Maria Carmi, Furcht/Fear (Robert Wiene, 1917), Das Tagebuch einer Verlorenen/The Diary of a Lost Woman (Richard Oswald, 1918) with Erna Morena, Opium (Robert Reinert, 1919) with Werner Krauss, and as Lucifer in Satanas/Satan (F.W. Murnau, 1920) starring Fritz Kortner. The anonymous biographer at Lenin Imports writes: "Veidt was the most highly strung and romantically handsome of German expressionist actors. He was a creature from Poe's nightmares - tall, gaunt, glowing with a mixture of illness and ecstatic anxiety. Amid so many overweight actors, Veidt was an attenuated, hypersensitive figure, the aesthete or artist tormented by dark forces and driven to violence. His movements were deliberately slowed and prolonged".
With his impressive height, handsomely gaunt face, high cheekbones, and wide, thin-lipped mouth, Conrad Veidt seemed a natural to play sinister, tortured roles. To many silent film fans, he is primarily known for his Cesare, the sleep-walking killer in Das Kabinett des Doktor Caligari/The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Robert Wiene, 1920). His first close-up of Cesare was riveting: a pale face and harrowed eyes, awakened from sleep. Unforgettable was also the rhythmic, boldly diagonal way he crept along a wall to kidnap Lil Dagover. Cesare became one of the most influential performances in the history of the fantasy and horror film. Veidt did a brave appearance in Magnus Hirschfeld's pioneering homosexual rights film Anders als die Andern/Different from the Others (Richard Oswald, 1919). It is credited as being the first gay film: it argued for reform of the harsh German laws regarding homosexuality. The film had a very short run in Germany before being pulled, and people who attended it were, according to the reviewer on IMDb, harassed. Veidt then worked in the full range of the German cinema: the Jekyll and Hyde film Der Januskopf/The Two-Faced Man (F. W. Murnau, 1920) with Béla Lugosi, the exotic adventure epic Das Indische Grabmal/The Indian Tomb (Joe May, 1921) starring Olaf Fønss and Mia May, the melodrama Der Gang in die Nacht/Journey Into the Night (F.W. Murnau, 1921), the historic film Danton (Dmitri Buchowetzki, 1922) starring Emil Jannings, and the drama Die Brüder Schellenberg/The Brothers Schellenberg (Karl Grune, 1926). He starred in three classic horror films, in Das Wachsfigurenkabinett/The Three Wax Works (Paul Leni, Leo Birinsky, 1924) as Ivan the Terrible, in Orlacs Hände/The Hands of Orlac (Robert Wiene, 1924) as Orlac, and in Der Student von Prag/The Student of Prague (Henrik Galeen, 1926) as the student and his doppelganger. In addition, he directed also films himself, including Wahnsinn/Madness (1919) with Reinhold Schünzel, and Die Nacht auf Goldenhall/The Night at Goldenhall (1920) with his then-wife Gussy Holl.
Conrad Veidt worked briefly in Sweden – Ingmarsarvet/The Ingmar Inheritance (Gustaf Molander, 1925) with Lars Hanson, and in Italy - the Luigi Pirandello adaptation Enrico I/The Flight in the Night (Amleto Palermi, 1926). Then he took up an offer to play Louis XI to John Barrymore's Francois Villon in The Beloved Rogue (Alan Crosland, 1927). Veidt stayed in Hollywood for A Man's Past (George Melford, 1927), and The Last Performance (Paul Fejos, 1927). In The Man Who Laughs (Paul Leni, 1928) he played a disfigured circus performer, one of his most sublime performances. His grotesque grin was achieved with a prosthesis. Comic book artist and Batman creator Bob Kane, writer Bill Finger and artist Jerry Robinson used stills of Veidt in The Man Who Laughs as inspiration for the iconic supervillain The Joker. Back in Germany, Veidt made Germany's first talking picture Das Land ohne Frauen/The Land Without Women (Carmine Gallone, 1929) about Australia in the days when the search for gold fused together men of all nations. His beautiful speaking voice consolidated his star position. He was cast as Count Metternich in the immensely popular operetta Der Kongress Tanzt (Erik Charell, 1931) with Lilian Harvey, both in the original and in the English-language version, The Congress Dances (Erik Charell, 1931). He also appeared opposite Elza Temary in Rasputin (Adolph Trotz, 1932) as the legendary mystic who ruled the czarist court in its last years, as the czarina hoped he could heal her son's hemophilia. In 1916 Rasputin was murdered by a number of aristocrats, but not before predicting the downfall of the regime.
Conrad Veidt then moved to England for the thriller Express Rome (Walter Forde, 1932) and The Wandering Jew (Maurice Elvey, 1933), the fantasy of the Jew who cursed Christ and found himself stuck on earth till the Second Coming. Back in Germany, he was in F.P.I. Antwortet Nicht/F. P. 1 Doesn't Answer (Karl Hartl, 1933). Veidt sang the title song Where the Lighthouse Shines Across the Bay. It was a flop at the time but became a hit in the United Kingdom in 1980. BBC presenter Terry Wogan had played it as a request on his breakfast show and was flooded afterwards with letters asking for a repeat. Veidt fervently opposed the Nazi regime. His activities came under the scrutiny of the Gestapo, and a decision was made to assassinate him. Veidt found out about the plot and managed to escape Germany in 1933 a week after marrying a half-Jewish woman, Illona Prager. He was married twice before, and reportedly he was bisexual. He was first married to actress Gussy Holl (1919-1922) and in 1923 he married Felicitas Radke, a woman from an aristocratic German family. They divorced in 1932. Their daughter, Viola Veidt, was born in 1925. Her father settled in the United Kingdom and continued making films. In England, Veidt played in Jew Suss (Lothar Mendes, 1934), a satire of Nazi anti-Semitism, based on the novel by Lion Feuchtwanger. Although it was not a success with audiences, it did succeed in angering Nazi propaganda minister Josef Goebbels who banned all of Veidt's films from Germany. Veidt became a British citizen in 1938. His most interesting British pictures were two films directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, The Spy in Black (1939) and Contraband (1940). When the war started, producer Alexander Korda shipped Veidt to the United States to play the Vizier in The Thief of Baghdad (Michael Powell, Tim Whelan, Ludwig Berger, 1940). TCM notes that Veidt added "immeasurably to his role as the demonic magician and grand vizier Jaffar. He spent his last years playing Germans in such Hollywood films as Escape (Mervyn Le Roy, 1940) - in which he and Norma Shearer made a dynamic pair as a German general and his American mistress, A Woman's Face (George Cukor, 1941) as the lover and onetime partner in crime of Joan Crawford, and Nazi Agent (Jules Dassin, 1942) - in which he had a dual role as a Nazi and as the Nazi's twin brother. But he is best known for playing the Nazi Major Heinrich Strasser in Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942) opposite Humphrey Bogart. When Britain went to war, Veidt gave most of his estate to the war effort. He also donated a large portion of the salary from each of his films to the British war relief, as well - he was the highest-paid actor in Casablanca. His last film was Above Suspicion (Richard Thorpe, 1943), in which he played an Austrian undercover agent. In 1943, Conrad Veidt suddenly died of a heart attack during a game of golf in Los Angeles. He was playing with Arthur Field of MGM and his personal physician, Dr. Bergman, who pronounced him dead at the scene. His death at just 50 was possibly a result of his heavy smoking. Because he had been blacklisted in Nazi Germany, there was no official announcement there of his death. His ex-wife, Felicitas, and daughter Viola, in Switzerland, heard about it on the radio.
Sources: Peter Jacobs (Gay For Today), Roger Manvell (Film Reference), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Doug Sederberg (IMDb), Lenin Imports, Filmportal.de (German), Wikipedia, and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
The cleopatra is the southern correspondent of the common brimstone and in fact, besides overlapping on vast areas of contact, it takes the upper hand in the southern part of the range.
It is also a butterfly announcing the spring being one of the first lepidopterans to appear with the approaching of the mild season. This is facilitated by the fact that the cleopatra hibernates as imago and therefore is immediately ready to fly as soon as the first spring warmth do begin.
The etymology of the scientific names rightly takes this particular. Gonepteryx from the Greek “gonia” = angle and “pterux” = wing, literal description of the particular angled shape of the wings. The etymology of cleopatra has, on the contrary, an unpredictable interpretation. Even if the reference to the Queen of Egypt, well known by all because of her love and historical vicissitudes as well as for her beauty and loveliness, would seem to immediately satisfy this question, we must keep well in mind that Linnaeus has always chosen to connect the scientific names he selected to mythological and not historical references. Cleopatra is history, not mythology! Therefore, the Cleopatra he referred to, is the wife of Meleager, he who was able to kill the monstrous and giant boar sent as punishment by Artemis in the country of Calydon. Other references and as confirmation of the names given by Linnaeus to various butterflies relevant to this story are: atalanta the young huntress desired by Meleager, plexippus, piritoo, idas, anceo his companions in the boar hunting and the same meleager.
It lives in the southern part of Europe, western North Africa and up to the continental Turkey. Is little diffused and quite rare in the Middle East.
It is totally absent in the areas north to a hypothetical longitudinal line going from the Pyrenees up to Caucasus.
It is frequently met in the Mediterranean thicket which appears to be the most suitable habitat for this butterfly. It lives in preferably sparse woods and with open spaces and loves sunny and quite dry locations. It is found up to 1.600/1.700 meters but, being an incessant and strong flyer, it may be accidentally met also at much higher altitudes. Sightings are reported even up to 3.000 m.
Cleopatra is a medium-sized butterfly and may reach the 65 mm of wingspan. The male has the upper face of the wings of a nice sulfur yellow color with an ample bright orange spot covering almost completely the fore face whilst on the rear one it has a small round and limpid spot of the same tonality. On the back of the fore wing, the orange color is not visible but in backlight whilst presents on both wings, in the central part, two spots always orange. The female is on the contrary on the recto of the wings, of a whitish yellow color with a very light and suffused orange striation in the basal area of the lower wing and appears again in the central part of both, an attenuated dot always of orange color.
Formore information, please visit www.monaconatureencyclopedia.com/gonepteryx-cleopatra/?la...
Found south of Marysville, Kansas--this old limestone farmhouse with the date of its construction partially emblazoned with "MA 187?"--no doubt indicating May in the decade of the 1870's. Clearly, the roof has been long gone, and there wasn't much left inside, other than the collapsed remains of that roof and second floor . . . and the kitchen utensils seen in the accompanying photo.
Grrr. Every once in awhile, an upload of mine hardly resembles the finished product after processing in Lightroom and (sometimes) Photoshop. Something happens in the upload process that greatly modifies what I'd envisioned. In this case, the contrast was greatly diminished with the highlights suffering in particular. The vibrancy was also attenuated. I didn't notice until 12 hours later. I then spent the next three hours adjusting and uploading, readjusting and uploading, re-readjusting and uploading . . . over and over, trying to get the flickr representation to match my finished product. Three hours later, and I still haven't managed it. It's closer, but it still isn't there. But for now, it'll just have to do. Very frustrating.
And now, something new! I took another look at this photo and found that the colors seem to have gone haywire. The house looks like someone scribbled randomly on the limestone with a giant yellow crayon! It didn't look that way an hour ago. Either my computer has become an inconstant arbitar of color, or Flickr has. Uber frustrating. Guess I'll wait several hours and take another look. Anyone else EVER have similar problems?
2 juvenile cuttlefish together on the sand. They were about 7cm long and the closer one was showing chromatic communication (1 of 4 types of communication). You can compare against the more mottled skin colour of the other one. They are sometimes referred to as the "chameleons of the sea" because of their ability to rapidly alter their skin color – this can occur within one second. Cuttlefish change color and pattern (including the polarization of the reflected light waves), and the shape of the skin to communicate to other cuttlefish, to camouflage themselves, and as a deimatic display to warn off potential predators. Under some circumstances, cuttlefish can be trained to change color in response to stimuli, thereby indicating their color changing is not completely innate.
Cuttlefish can also affect the light's polarization, which can be used to signal to other marine animals, many of which can also sense polarization, as well as being able to influence the color of light as it reflects off their skin.[34] Although cuttlefish (and most other cephalopods) lack color vision, high-resolution polarisation vision may provide an alternative mode of receiving contrast information that is just as defined.[35] The cuttlefish's wide pupil attenuates chromatic aberration, allowing it to perceive color by focusing specific wavelengths onto the retina.[36]
The three broad categories of color patterns are uniform, mottle, and disruptive.[37] Cuttlefish can display as many as 12 to 14 patterns,[31] 13 of which have been categorized as seven "acute" (relatively brief) and six "chronic" (long-lasting) patterns
Magnificent pair of agave attenuate arching racemes in full yellow flower color.
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NEW GROUP!
Fitzroy Gardens - Melbourne AU
www.flickr.com/groups/2921385@N23/
Attn: Melbourne photogs - I know you have hundreds of great photos of this garden. Please join!
Fitzroy Gardens is visited by over 2 million people annually.
The goal is 1 million stunning shots of this urban masterpeice. We can make it happen!
Let's celebrate the vision of those who created it, garden and manage these 64 acres of nature-joy.
Engine: International DT-466 six cylinder diesel
Transmission: Allison automatic
Excellent example of an early S-series International still in active service is this 1854 model belonging to Conti Construction. The company runs an extremely well kept fleet with all their trucks looking this good and nice paint scheme to match. This wasn't the safest place to take a truck picture and I wouldn't recommend it. But, what we do for our hobby as vintage truck enthusiasts!
In this panoramic image taken by Babak Tafreshi — a member of the ESO Ultra HD Expedition team — the ALMA Observatory’s antennas appear to take in the sight of the Milky Way, arching like a galactic rainbow of dust and stars over the Chajnantor Plateau in the Chilean Andes.
Located 5000 metres above sea level, the Chajnantor Plateau serves as an ideal hunting ground for ALMA. The array uses observations at the millimetre and submillimetre wavelengths to explore the coldest parts of the Universe. The superb aridness of the plateau means that far less submillimetre radiation is absorbed and attenuated by water vapour than would be the case closer to sea level.
As ALMA seeks to capture the secrets of the Universe, Babak Tafreshi and his fellow team members seek to capture the beauty and grandeur of ESO’s observatories and their unusual surroundings. Comprising four celebrated astrophotographers and ESO Photo Ambassadors, the ESO Ultra HD expedition aimed to raise public awareness of the ongoing work in Chile through astonishing Ultra HD photos and videos.
More information: www.eso.org/public/images/potw1533a/
Credit:
ESO/B. Tafreshi (twanight.org)
Clouds of Sulphur
Description: Phoebis philea philea is a subspecies of butterfly in the order Lepidoptera, subdivision Bombycina, superfamily Papilionoidea, family Pieridae, subfamily Coliadinae and tribe Coliadini.
The subject portrayed is a male. The criteria used to differentiate a male from a female of Phoebis philea philea just by observation is through the wing spots. The outer margins of the females' wings' dorsal surface are sprinkled with brown spots, with a larger brown spot on the apex, continuing through the costal margins in smaller spots. The spots on the ventral surface of the wings of the females are more boldly marked than those of males. The dorsal surface of the wings of the males are almost entirely yellow and orange. The ventral surface of the wings of the males are covered in spots which are much more attenuated than those of females. You can visualize the difference here:
www.dallasbutterflies.com/Butterflies/html/philea.html
Their larvae feed on a gigantic amount of plants, including Senna sp. (Mill.), such as Senna corymbosa ((Lam.) H.S.Irwin & Barneby) ("Argentine senna"), Senna alata ((L.) Roxb.) ("candle-stick tree"), Senna lindheimeriana ((Scheele) Irwin & Barneby) ("Lindheimer's senna"), and Cassia sp. (L.) such as Cassia fistula (L.) ("golden rain tree" / "canafistula" / and many more) and many more. All of those within: Fabaceae: Caesalpinioideae: Cassieae: Cassiinae.
Three subspecies of Phoebis philea are known:
Phoebis philea philea (Linnaeus, 1763) (US to Brazil)
Phoebis philea huebneri (Fruhstorfer, 1907) (Cuba)
Phoebis philea thalestris (Illiger, 1801) (Hispaniola)
They are highly migratory and can be found in a great variety of habitats, including tropical scrub forests, gardens, fields, primary and secondary forest edges, deciduous woodlands, scrubby grasslands and farmlands. These can be found at an altitude between sea level and about 1500m. They can be commonly found in large groups of mixed species, such as Aphrissa statira (Pieridae: Coliadinae: Coliadini), Phoebis argante (Pieridae: Coliadinae: Coliadini) and Rhabdodryas trite (Pieridae: Coliadinae: Coliadini).
Adults have a preference for red-colored flowers as can be seen in the picture, on which it is feeding on the nectar of an Impatiens sp. (L., 1753) (Balsaminaceae) ("jewelweed" / "touch-me-not" / "snapweed" / "patience" / "impatiens" / "busy lizzie").
Further feeding habits of the adults include the nectar of:
Pentas sp. (Benth.) (Rubiaceae: Rubioideae: Knoxieae) ("starcluster")
Hibiscus sp. (L.) (Malvaceae: Malvoideae: Hibisceae) ("rose mallow")
Ixora sp. (L.) (Rubiaceae: Ixoroideae: Ixoreae) ("West Indian Jasmine" / many others...)
Duranta sp. (L.) (Verbenaceae) ("adenis" - Colombia)
Bougainvillea sp. (Comm. ex Juss.) (Nyctaginaceae: Bougainvilleeae) (list of common names here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bougainvillea)
Lantana sp. (L.) (Verbenaceae) ("lantana" / "shrub verbenas")
Another feeding habit of the adult Phoebis philea philea is through the absorption of minerals and moisture from muddy soils. There are probably many more host plants.
As can be noted, all of the plants mentioned above display red variations. It's hard to tell what is the reason that attracts the Phoebis philea philea to red flowers with accuracy; however, bees prefer, what for us, seems like the yellow, white or blue colors. They can also perceive the ultraviolet region of the spectrum that is invisible to us. They are very sensitive to the flavones and flavonols, substances that are absorbed in the ultraviolet and are present in almost all white flowers. The bees are insensitive to the red color, but may visit red flowers guided by the presence of flavones that absorb the ultraviolet light. Hummingbirds, on the other hand, are sensitive to red and prefer bright red flowers such as Hibiscus. Some species may visit other colors of flowers, such as white. Butterflies seem to be attracted to bright-colored flowers, which may explain the preference of Phoebis philea philea for red flowers, as red is a strong color. Moths prefer the colors red, purple, white or light-pink, factor that may also vary among species, while wasps prefer monotonous, dark and brown colors, depending on the species. Flies are attracted to dark and light colors, depending on the species, such as black, brown, purple, green or white. Beetles and bats do not seem to have an attraction to the color of the flowers, but to other signals. This last factor might also depend on species. Carotenoids are more present in yellow-colored flowers, while flavones, such as luteolin, and flavonols, such as quercetin, are present in the majority of the white flowers and cream-colored flowers. Bright red flowers possess pelargonidin and cyanidin + carotenoids. Brown flowers possess cyanidin overlapping carotenoids. Pink-colored flowers possess peonidin while violet flowers possess delphinidin. Purple flowers have a high concentration of delphinidin. Green-colored ones possess chlorophylls.
Egg of Phoebis philea: www.dallasbutterflies.com/Butterflies/OVA/phileaegg.htm
Larva of Phoebis philea: www.dallasbutterflies.com/Butterflies/LARVA/philealarva.htm
Chrysalis of Phoebis philea: www.dallasbutterflies.com/Butterflies/PUPA/phileapupa.htm
Their wingspan can range from around 68mm to 80mm, with a source claiming up to 90mm; this requires confirmation. They can fly high or low, usually next to the margins of rivers. On the hottest hours of the day, the males will absorb moisture and minerals from muddy soils. Females prefer absorbing nectar from flowers; on days which the temperature is attenuated, males will follow the females' habits of absorbing nectar from flowers, especially red ones.
Eggs are laid individually on the leaves or buds of the host plants (such as Cassia sp.). The larvae will feed on the leaves of the plant and, when fully grown, will pupate.
Their most common natural predators are birds, but there are more.
Sources:
www.learnaboutbutterflies.com/Amazon%20-%20Phoebis%20phil... - Ignore the sexual dimorphism part as it is wrong.
www.butterfliesofamerica.com/phoebis_p_philea.htm
www.butterfliesofamerica.com/L/phoebis_p_philea_aberratio... - Different "variations" of P. philea philea.
www.klimanaturali.org/2011/06/borboleta-gema-phoebis-phil...
pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borboleta-amarela
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebis_philea
www.oocities.org/~esabio/interacao/bioquimica.htm
eol.org/pages/4096306/overview
PROJECT NOAH (Português:
Yesterday was spent exploring acidic fens and bogs near the eastern edge of Patuxent Research Refuge (Central Tract) for Elfin Skimmers. Sam Droege (of bee fame) was with me. No Elfin Skimmers were found, but 21 species of dragonflies and damselflies were located, including an early emergence record (Refuge) for the Attenuated Bluet damselfly.
Patuxent Research Refuge, Prince Georges County, Maryland. Photo of Richard Orr taken by Sam Droege at Sundew Pond.
At the request of the Galactic Alliance, the Hullbull Remote Space Telescope was given new mission parameters via subspace communication to abandon scientific imaging in Abell 2029 and return to the Milky Way to investigate an unusual phenomenon at the edge of the galaxy. The feature was discovered and photographed by the intrepid light architect and space photographer, Alan Jaras.
This image captured by the Hullbull RST and processed by the IDIOTs at Hullbull Command shows the core of the feature previously photographed by Jaras shown in combined infrared, visible, and ultraviolet light. An explanation for this phenomenon has not yet been developed. Below and right of image center, there appears to be an object suggestive of a black hole consuming ionized matter and giving off jets of high energy rays and heated dust. The unusual honeycomb shaped features evident in the Jaras photograph are seen in this image, as are the long filaments of heated matter giving off various colors of light that are being pulled into the core of the feature.
Hullbull Command requests the spaceChaser be mobilized to the site to assist with imaging and data collection. This image has been released to the scientific community for evaluation and explanation. The Galactic Alliance has issued a request for proposals for additional investigation to characterize this phenomenon. Data obtained thus far have not provided sufficient information to determine if this is a form of intelligence or a natural occurrence.
Not a real space image. Light art...obviously.
Composite of two unaltered images. One image using Waterworld technique/100mm lens to create nebula patterns (source light is red laser, white, blue and green LEDs). Second long exposure designed and implemented based on Waterworld image geometry, 100mm lens (base layer/EXIF data) to create stars; two "burns" to create segregated star color patterns using water droplet technique and white and yellow colored LEDs; cover/recompose, create larger stars using blue and yellow LEDs with cross screen filter. Took a few attempts to get the star patterns right...tedious dabbing of water droplets to give the appearance of depth and red-shift due to light attenuation through "dust".
In this artist’s conception, with its crew section in cutout, is the Big or Big GEMINI spacecraft under study by McDonnell Douglas for NASA-Houston. S-IVB Orbital WORKSHOP is seen in the background. Holding a nominal crew of nine plus cargo, the Big G would be used as space shuttle to orbiting space stations in the mid-1970’s. It is a top contender in the dual Houston-Marshall space shuttle study.
8.5” x 11”.
The above is paraphrased from the December 5, 1968 issue of “SPACE Daily”, page 149, thanks to the always excellent Aerospace Projects Review website, at:
www.aerospaceprojectsreview.com/blog/?p=1140
Wow…see/read also:
www.astronautix.com/b/biggemini.html
Credit: Astronautix website
Finally, per the August 21, 1969 entry:
“McDonnell Douglas Corporation, under contract to MSC, submitted an eight-volume final report on a "Big G" study.
The study was performed to generate a preliminary definition of a logistic spacecraft derived from Gemini that would be used to resupply an orbiting space station. Land-landing at a preselected site and refurbishment and reuse were design requirements. Two baseline spacecraft were defined: a nine-man minimum modification version of the Gemini B called Min-Mod Big G and a 12-man advanced concept, having the same exterior geometry but with new, state-of-the-art subsystems, called Advanced Big G. Three launch vehicles-Saturn IB, Titan IIIM, and S-IC/S- IVB-were investigated for use with the spacecraft. The Saturn IB was discarded late in the study.
The spacecraft consisted of a crew module designed by extending the Gemini B exterior cone to a 419-cm-diameter heat shield and a cargo propulsion module. Recovery of the crew module would be effected by means of a gliding parachute (parawing). The parametric analyses and point design of the parawing were accomplished by Northrop- Ventura Company under a subcontract, and the contents of their final report were incorporated into the document. The landing attenuation of the spacecraft would be accomplished by a skid landing gear extended from the bottom of the crew module, allowing the crew to land in an upright position. The propulsion functions of transfer, rendezvous, attitude control, and retrograde would be performed by a single liquid-propellant system, and launch escape would be provided by a large Apollo-type escape tower.
In addition to the design analyses, operational support analyses and a program development plan were prepared…”
The above contained within the “McDonnell Douglas Corp. Report H321, Big G Final Report, Logistic Spacecraft System Evolving from Gemini, Volume I-Condensed Summary, 21 August 1969.”
Additionally:
forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=37347.60
Credit: NASA Spaceflight Forum website
Who KNEW?!? Did YOU!?! I DIDN’T!!!
No signature unfortunately.
It's probably just me, but I'm picturing the four guys secured to the aft bulkhead spinning around - about the central hatch - all yelling "WHEEEH!!!" & "FASTER!!!", kicking their legs up & down. No? I bet Pete Conrad would've done so. And…if each seat were to rotate, voila…an orbital Tea-Cup ride! Yay! Fun, artificial-gravity-inducing & data-producing...a three-fer.
Going back to the Big Easy, specifically the St. Louis Cathedral... A sprinkle of HDR and Lightroom. I liked how the stained glass became more attenuated. The palms look a little dried out, but I like the color contrast to the cathedral.
About the St. Louis Cathedral: The Cathedral-Basilica of St. Louis King of France is the oldest Catholic cathedral in continual use in the United States. As the caretakers of the Historic place of worship, we constantly battle the elements and the aging of the Cathedral with ongoing conservation and restoration.
To check out more photos from the Big Easy, check out my French Quarter set.
Check out my stream on Fluidr.
Popcorn Beach, Pyramid Lake, Washoe Co., Nevada (June 24th, 2017). 77. Large desert lake.
Adult, approaching its nest with raised crest.
The nest is part of a big, noisy mixed Clark's/Western Grebe breeding colony in the emergent vegetation along the edge of the lake south of Popcorn Rock. On the day of our visit, most of the nests were occupied by incubating adults with the eggs sometimes showing when the birds stood up to turn them.
Numbers hard to estimate, but perhaps as many as 400 active nests extending a mile or so along the shore. At the N end, the nests formed a thick band 4-5 nests deep attenuating southwards to a single discontinuous line. The Clark's nests tended to be clumped in groups of 3 or 4 among the much more numerous Western nests, constituting probably less than 5% of the total.
More shots of these nests--
www.flickr.com/photos/fugl/albums/72157665257335634
More Aechmophorus grebe photos—
www.flickr.com/photos/fugl/albums/72157665257335634/with/...
Driven by the Spirit far from Humanity's caravan routes, you dared to venture into the untouched wilderness; grown weary of abstractions, of attenuations, of the wordiness of social life, you wanted to pit yourself against Reality entire and untamed. You had need of me in order to grow; and I was waiting for you in order to be made holy.
—Teilhard de Chardin, The Heart of Matter, trans. René Hague (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978), 68.
But for Teilhard struggling with Matter meant something more profound—to stretch beyond the limits of the science of his day and to encounter the Divine Energy that is propelling its evolutionary movement. Although Teilhard's work as a scientist involved much physical struggle, his ultimate focus was on the mystical—the struggle to see Matter's inner face.
-Teilhard's Struggle Embracing the Work of Evolution, Kathleen Duffy, SSJ
Location: on the road to the Toquerville Falls:
Stratum: Virgin Limestone, lower Triassic
As part of the Sevier orogeny much thrust folding occurred in this area. Here we see the initial stage of such a thrust fault. The limestone layer starts to buckle up under the pressure exerted from the left (west). In this case the fold is being pushed under the existing layer at right, and the two layers are separated by a thrust fault ramp, with some attenuated limestone squeezed out as the thrust continues along the ramp. Some of the thrust faults can extend over 100 miles, this is just a baby one, but shows the principle of thrust faulting. Before I saw this fault, I did not realize that thrust faulting also can be pushed under an existing layer, but here its is. The faulting here is caused by ductile deformation with out (much) breaking of the limestone. This type of deformation usually happens at greater depth. Over roughly one half mile, this rock layer showed over seven small thrust faults, some were caused by brittle deformation as a result of earth quakes. Some were underthrusted faults, some were overthrusted.
With its 1.8 m wing-span, the Australasian gannet is a conspicuous, predominantly white seabird that is common in New Zealand coastal waters. They can be observed feeding solitarily or in large congregations, especially near the larger colonies. Australasian gannets breed in dense colonies on coastal islands and on cliffs and beaches of some headlands of the New Zealand mainland; the breeding distribution also encompasses south-east Australia and Tasmania. The Australasian gannet is a large, mostly coastal seabird with predominantly white plumage, long, pointed wings, a long neck and slender body shape. The trailing edges of its wings and a varying proportion of its central tail feathers are black. The wedge-shaped bill is bluish-grey, with a lining of black; the skin surrounding the eye is intensely blue. The head plumage is buff-yellow, which extends down the neck. The sexes cannot be reliably distinguished in the field. Juveniles have mottled dark brown and white plumage, and are separable from immatures, which gradually acquire more white over several moults, before acquiring full adult plumage when about 3 years old.
Voice: a distinctive ‘urrah urrah’ to announce landing, during territorial indication at the nest site, and during mutual bill fencing and bowing with the mate. Also an attenuated ‘oo-ah’ to indicate take-off. Both sexes’ calls are identical, with some locational and marked individual variation.
Similar species: the closely related Cape gannet is similar in size and appearance, and has occurred in New Zealand as a vagrant. It differs in having a longer black gular stripe extending from the chin down the throat, all its tail feathers are dark, and it has a slower, lower frequency landing call. The masked booby (which breeds on the Kermadec Islands, and occasionally strays to water off the northern North Island) is smaller, and has a yellow bill and white head.
IL FIUME CHE BAGNA DUE NAZIONI
Isonzo (in friulano Lusinç; in sloveno Soča; in bisiaco Isons; in tedesco Sontig, desueto) è un fiume lungo 136 chilometri con un bacino ampio 3400 km², di cui 1150 km² in territorio italiano. Caratteristico il colore smeraldino delle acque, che si mantiene con qualche attenuazione fino nella parte finale del suo corso.
Note tratte dal sito:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
THE RIVER THAT BATHES TWO NATIONS
The Isonzo River (in Friulian Lusinç; in Slovenian Soča; in Bisiac Isons; in German Sontig, obsolete) is a 136 km long river with a basin of 3400 km², of which 1150 km² are in Italian territory. The emerald color of the water is characteristic, which remains with some attenuation until the final part of its course.
CANON EOS 600D con ob. SIGMA 70-300 f./4-5,6 DG
Engine: Ford 6.6L six cylinder diesel
Transmission: 5 speed with 2 speed rear axle
Conti runs at least two of these Ford single axle dumps, now used for work site crash attenuators. Like all of the Conti fleet, even the 25 year old equipment looks good.
NGC 4725 Coma Berenices, A One-Armed Spiral Galaxy and 7 Quasars
NGC 4725 is a large intermediate spiral galaxy in the constellation of Coma Berenices, first documented by W. Herschel in 1785. It is the brightest, but relatively isolated, member of the Coma I Galaxy Group, that is itself a part of the Virgo Galaxy Supercluster which includes our own Milky Way.
Its morphological classification is SAB (r)ab pec, indicating a weakly barred, tightly wound spiral galaxy with a complete ring. The galaxy was assigned the "peculiar" descriptor for several reasons. The ring structure is not concentric with the galactic nucleus, and displays elliptical motion. Unlike most spiral galaxies, NGC 4725 displays only a single spiral arm. And, its galactic disk is warped relative to the galactic plane. These anomalies are almost certainly due to strong gravitational interaction with the neighboring NGC 4747 (ARP 159), which is even more highly deformed. Further evidence of interaction, and probable mergers with smaller satellites, comes from the densities in the faint outer parts of the galactic disk suggestive of "stellar streams". These are marked with "S" on the annotated image. Bright blue OB Associations within the ring and along the spiral arm indicate a high star formation rate (SFR), also triggered by tidal interaction. The reddish color along the inner NE edge of the ring is due to Ha fluorescence of hydrogen clouds partially ionized by the ultraviolet radiation emanating from the swarm of very hot and massive young stars. These "stellar nurseries" are especially prominent on infrared images taken by the Spitzer Space Telescope. Spectroscopic studies of the central region indicate the presence of an active galactic nucleus (AGN) of the Seyfert 2 type, caused by a central suppermassive black hole. SIMBAD extragalactic database lists several radio sources without optical counterparts that may be due to compact clouds of neutal hydrogen. It also lists two ultra-luminous X-ray sources (ULX) which are thought to be associated with moderately accreting intermediate-mass black holes (IMBH).
Based on measurable data, NGC 4725 lies at a light travel distance (lookback time) of 41.1 Mly. This is based on the median value of 48 redshift-independent distance estimates which span an unusually wide range of nearly 3. From the distance, angular size, and apparent magnitude we can derive the actual diameter of 114,000 ly and an absolute magnitude of -21.06, approximately 1.25 times brighter than the Milky Way. From the redshift, which is due to the expansion of space and the galaxy's "peculiar velocity" through space, we calculate a recession velocity of 1,209 km/s. (See the note at the bottom of the chart).
The other prominent object in the field is NGC 4712, an emission line barred spiral galaxy with a curiously attenuated central region, possibly obscured by dust and gas. It lies in the faraway background at a distance of 203 Mly, and is about 122,000 ly in diameter - approximately the size of the Milky Way, but only half as bright.
The field is strewn with numerous remote galaxies, most of which have no identifier or observation data listed. A number of these peer through the translucent envelope of NGC 4725, and are marked with letter "G" on the annotated image.
The field also includes seven very distant quasars (QSOs) listed in the attached chart. At this time, some are substantially brighter and some fainter than their photometric data indicate. Letter "X" on the annotated image indicates the locations of two fairly bright quasars which have apparently faded beyond the limiting magnitude of approximately 20.5. The last six quasars on the list have superluminal "proper recession velocities" in the present epoch. They have receded beyond the "cosmic event horizon", and the light they are now emitting can never reach us. The last two on the list are "hyperluminous quasars", more than 2,000 times brighter than the entire Milky Way galaxy. SDSS J125125.57+252026.2 is the most distant. The photons we are presently recording have travelled 11.7 billion years (lookback = light travel time). In the present epoch, its "comoving = proper distance" is nearly 22 Bly. Over the next few billion years, its redshift will gradually increase until the quasar becomes forever invisible. From the photons' perspective, travelling at the speed of light time does not pass, and their journey was instantaneous.
See the link for more information on ULX, IMBH and quasars:
www.cloudynights.com/articles/cat/articles/basic-extragal...
-Remote Takahashi TOA 150 x 1105mm
-OSC 36 x 300 sec, 2x drizzle, 50% linear crop
-Software:
DSS, XnView, StarNet++ v2, StarTools
Extragalactic Cosmological Calculator v2
www.cloudynights.com/gallery/image/123530-extragalactic-c...
An inflorescence of pink grevillea flowers in a “toothbrush” arrangement. The pink stigmas emerge from the purple/black calyx tubes.
This example was found on a medium-sized shrub with serrated leaves. There are so many species of grevillea, I won’t try to guess which species this is.
-———
Links for background information ...
www.anbg.gov.au/PLANTFAM/AUST1B.HTM
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grevillea
———
[ Location - Barton, Australian Capital Territory, Australia ]
Photography notes ...
The photograph was taken using the following hardware configuration ...
- Hasselblad 501CM Body (Chrome) - S/N 10SH26953 (2002).
- Hasselblad CFV-50c Digital Back for Hasselblad V mount camera.
- Hasselblad Focusing Screen for the CFV-50c digital back, with focussing prism and crop markings.
- Hasselblad 45 Degree Viewfinder PME-45 42297 (2001).
- Hasselblad Carl Zeiss lens - Planar T* 80mm f2.8 CFE lens (2000).
- FotodioX B60 Lens Hood for Select Hasselblad Standard Length CF Lenses.
- Hasselblad Extension Tube 56E (56mm) for 200 and 500 Series - MFR # 30 40656.
(Year of manufacture indicated in braces where known.)
I acquired the photograph (8272 x 6200 pixels) with an ISO of 400. I did not record the exposure time nor the aperture.
Post-processing ...
Finder - Removed the CF card from the camera digital back and placed it in a Lexar 25-in-1 USB card reader. Then used Finder on my MacBook Air to download the raw image file (3FR extension) from the card.
Lightroom - Imported the 3FR image. Applied a standard metadata preset (20161110 Import 001) during the import process.
Lightroom - Used the Map module to add the location details to the EXIF header.
Lightroom - Used the Spot Removal tool (Clone and Heal modes) to attenuate a number of sensor dust spots.
Lightroom - Made various lighting and color adjustments to the image.
Lightroom - Applied a square crop (1:1 aspect ratio) to the image.
Lightroom - Saved the Develop module settings as a preset.
Lightroom - Output the image as a JPEG image using the “Maximum” quality option (5394 x 5394 pixels).
PhotoSync - Copied the JPEG file to my iPad Mini for any final processing, review, enjoyment, and posting to social media.
@MomentsForZen #MomentsForZen #MFZ #Hasselblad #501CM #CFV50c #Lightroom #Macro #Closeup #ExtensionTube #Flower #Grevillea #ToothbrushFlower #Pink #Purple #Style #Calyx #Inflorescence
Star formation is very interesting to me because I think they are incredibly beautiful. Something about witnessing a moment of stellar genesis...it makes me feel calm. Sometimes I sit around and try to imagine the dust coalescing from all angles to form a hot disk that eventually ignites the stellar crucible while these fantastic jets blow off the poles... it's all said and done in a cosmic instant.
Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) has been doing a good bit of spectroscopy for this one as astronomers have tried to characterize its jets. I'm content to just look at it and daydream while the astrophysicists do the astrophysics.
Hubble data are presented in grayscale while Chandra are indigo and magenta. The jets are both visible in x-rays, but the rear jet seems to be completely unseen in visible light. I presume that either the x-rays are not greatly attenuated or scattered by the gas and dust, but the visible light is. Still, it would have been nice to see both the jets, but the rear jets for these and other objects get obscured all the time. There is an article at the Chandra website about this object: chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2008/dgtau/
It is also fun to take a look at various datasets from over the years and watch the jets evolve, because they are moving so fast that we can also see it in just a few years. I thought of creating a color image using some older WFPC2 data, but it didn't seem all that helpful.
Hubble data were from the following proposal:
STIS Pure Parallel Imaging Program: Cycle 12
Chandra data are a summation of the following seven observation IDs:
4487, 6409, 7246, 7247, 11009, 11010, 11011
Not knowing much about x-ray astronomy yet myself, I used the same energy range as illustrated in this paper to try to isolate the jets from the noise and the star: www.aanda.org/articles/aa/abs/2008/06/aa8141-07/aa8141-07...
Grayscale: Hubble STIS MIRVIS
Violet/Magenta: Chandra ACIS .6-1.7 keV
North is NOT up. It is 42.94° counter-clockwise from up.
The D&F Clocktower and the moon look on as a city vehicle enters warp drive in downtown Denver...
____________________
Commander William T. Riker: Mr. Barclay! Everyone's still trying to figure out exactly how you did it.
Barclay: Well, it... it just occurred to me that I could set up a frequency harmonic between the deflector and the shield grid, using the warp field generator as a power flow anti-attenuator, and that, of course, naturally created an amplification of the inherent energy output.
Riker: U-huh... I see that...
--"Star Trek: The Next Generation" (Syndicated)
Visual Artist, Alberto Giacometti UK: 10 October 1901 – 11 January 1966) was a Swiss sculptor, painter, draftsman and printmaker. Beginning in 1922, he lived and worked mainly in Paris but regularly visited his hometown Borgonovo to see his family and work on his art.
Giacometti was one of the most important sculptors of the 20th century. His work was particularly influenced by artistic styles such as Cubism and Surrealism. Philosophical questions about the human condition, as well as existential and phenomenological debates played a significant role in his work. Around 1935 he gave up on his Surrealist influences in order to pursue a more deepened analysis of figurative compositions. Giacometti wrote texts for periodicals and exhibition catalogues and recorded his thoughts and memories in notebooks and diaries. His critical nature led to self-doubt about his own work and his self-perceived inability to do justice to his own artistic vision. His insecurities nevertheless remained a powerful motivating artistic force throughout his entire life.
Between 1938 and 1944 Giacometti's sculptures had a maximum height of seven centimeters (2.75 inches). Their small size reflected the actual distance between the artist's position and his model. In this context he self-critically stated: "But wanting to create from memory what I had seen, to my terror the sculptures became smaller and smaller". After World War II, Giacometti created his most famous sculptures: his extremely tall and slender figurines. These sculptures were subject to his individual viewing experience—between an imaginary yet real, a tangible yet inaccessible space.
In Giacometti's whole body of work, his painting constitutes only a small part. After 1957, however, his figurative paintings were equally as present as his sculptures. His almost monochromatic paintings of his late work do not refer to any other artistic styles of modernity
Giacometti was born in Borgonovo, Switzerland, the eldest of four children of Giovanni Giacometti, a well-known post-Impressionist painter, and Annetta Giacometti-Stampa. He was a descendant of Protestant refugees escaping the inquisition. Coming from an artistic background, he was interested in art from an early age. Alberto attended the Geneva School of Fine Arts. His brothers Diego (1902–1985) and Bruno (1907–2012) would go on to become artists and architects as well. Additionally, his cousin Zaccaria Giacometti, later professor of constitutional law and chancellor of the University of Zurich, grew up together with them, having been orphaned at the age of 12 in 1905.
In 1922, he moved to Paris to study under the sculptor Antoine Bourdelle, an associate of Rodin. It was there that Giacometti experimented with Cubism and Surrealism and came to be regarded as one of the leading Surrealist sculptors. Among his associates were Miró, Max Ernst, Picasso, Bror Hjorth, and Balthus.
Between 1936 and 1940, Giacometti concentrated his sculpting on the human head, focusing on the sitter's gaze. He preferred models he was close to—his sister and the artist Isabel Rawsthorne (then known as Isabel Delmer). This was followed by a phase in which his statues of Isabel became stretched out; her limbs elongated. Obsessed with creating his sculptures exactly as he envisioned through his unique view of reality, he often carved until they were as thin as nails and reduced to the size of a pack of cigarettes, much to his consternation. A friend of his once said that if Giacometti decided to sculpt you, "he would make your head look like the blade of a knife".
During World War II, Giacometti took refuge in Switzerland. There, in 1946, he met Annette Arm, a secretary for the Red Cross. They married in 1949.
After his marriage his tiny sculptures became larger, but the larger they grew, the thinner they became. For the remainder of Giacometti's life, Annette was his main female model. His paintings underwent a parallel procedure. The figures appear isolated and severely attenuated, as the result of continuous reworking.
He frequently revisited his subjects: one of his favourite models was his younger brother Diego
In 1958 Giacometti was asked to create a monumental sculpture for the Chase Manhattan Bank building in New York, which was beginning construction. Although he had for many years "harbored an ambition to create work for a public square",[16] he "had never set foot in New York, and knew nothing about life in a rapidly evolving metropolis. Nor had he ever laid eyes on an actual skyscraper", according to his biographer James Lord.[17] Giacometti's work on the project resulted in the four figures of standing women—his largest sculptures—entitled Grande femme debout I through IV (1960). The commission was never completed, however, because Giacometti was unsatisfied by the relationship between the sculpture and the site, and abandoned the project.
In 1962, Giacometti was awarded the grand prize for sculpture at the Venice Biennale, and the award brought with it worldwide fame. Even when he had achieved popularity and his work was in demand, he still reworked models, often destroying them or setting them aside to be returned to years later. The prints produced by Giacometti are often overlooked but the catalogue raisonné, Giacometti – The Complete Graphics and 15 Drawings by Herbert Lust (Tudor 1970), comments on their impact and gives details of the number of copies of each print. Some of his most important images were in editions of only 30 and many were described as rare in 1970.
In his later years Giacometti's works were shown in a number of large exhibitions throughout Europe. Riding a wave of international popularity, and despite his declining health, he traveled to the United States in 1965 for an exhibition of his works at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. As his last work he prepared the text for the book Paris sans fin, a sequence of 150 lithographs containing memories of all the places where he had lived.
Giacometti died in 1966 of heart disease (pericarditis) and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease at the Kantonsspital in Chur, Switzerland. His body was returned to his birthplace in Borgonovo, where he was interred close to his parents.
With no children, Annette Giacometti became the sole holder of his property rights. She worked to collect a full listing of authenticated works by her late husband, gathering documentation on the location and manufacture of his works and working to fight the rising number of counterfeited works. When she died in 1993, the Fondation Giacometti was set up by the French state.
In May 2007 the executor of his widow's estate, former French foreign minister Roland Dumas, was convicted of illegally selling Giacometti's works to a top auctioneer, Jacques Tajan, who was also convicted. Both were ordered to pay €850,000 to the Alberto and Annette Giacometti Foundation.
Born: 10 October 1901
Borgonovo, Stampa,Graubünden, Switzerland
Died: 11 January 1966 (aged 64) Chur, Graubünden, Switzerland
Orginal photo: Photograph by Ernst Scheidegger
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberto_Giacometti
Artwork by TudioJepegii
for iron photographer 246 which requires:
1 - something plaid
2 - something tied with string
3 - weird post-processing
Here is the full text of Pablo Neruda's Ode to Tomatoes which inspired me for some of the titles of this series.
The street
filled with tomatoes
midday,
summer,
light is
halved
like
a
tomato,
its juice
runs
through the streets.
In December,
unabated,
the tomato
invades
the kitchen,
it enters at lunchtime,
takes
its ease
on countertops,
among glasses,
butter dishes,
blue saltcellars.
It sheds
its own light,
benign majesty.
Unfortunately, we must
murder it:
the knife
sinks
into living flesh,
red
viscera,
a cool
sun,
profound,
inexhausible,
populates the salads
of Chile,
happily, it is wed
to the clear onion,
and to celebrate the union
we
pour
oil,
essential
child of the olive,
onto its halved hemispheres,
pepper
adds
its fragrance,
salt, its magnetism;
it is the wedding
of the day,
parsley
hoists
its flag,
potatoes
bubble vigorously,
the aroma
of the roast
knocks
at the door,
it's time!
come on!
and, on
the table, at the midpoint
of summer,
the tomato,
star of earth,
recurrent
and fertile
star,
displays
its convolutions,
its canals,
its remarkable amplitude
and abundance,
no pit,
no husk,
no leaves or thorns,
the tomato offers
its gift
of fiery color
and cool completeness.
Architects: César Manrique and Jesús Soto, 1968 onwards
The Casa Museo del Campesino was realized from 1968 onwards, after an idea by César Manrique to create a monument and exhibition to celebrate the traditional Lanzarotean way of life. The result is a group of buildings forming a mock-village, which brings together visual arts and architecture to pay tribute to the emblematic figure of the local farmer (the “campesino”) and the cultural heritage of Lanzarote.
On the surface, the small village appears to emulate the vernacular buildings of Lanzarote, with attenuated features such as balconies, fireplaces, porches, and green-painted doors and windows. These buildings mainly house exhibits and workshops, and a small café. But the apparent historicism masks a much more dramatic gesture, which was only fully completed after Manrique’s death: A vast domed underground performance and party space, which blends several of the themes already present in the earlier work.
Located in the void of a former quarry, this space is not a natural phenomenon such as the “jameos” or lava bubbles Manrique used elsewhere, but that has not impeded him from designing it in much the same manner, including planted beds, stages and dancefloors, and even an artificial lava-clad waterfall and tunnel, which leads to a sweeping circular stair alighting dramatically and unexpectedly in the middle of a courtyard in the “traditional” part of the museum.
The concrete dome of the underground hall is level with the surrounding terrain, so from the outside little can be perceived of the space below, which is only revealed via stairs and ramp-sequences either from inside the café, or from the open courtyards of the “village”.
To create a widely visible landmark for the museum, practically located in the centre of the island, Manrique as the first part of the complex designed a tall sculptural piece titled Fecundidad (“Fertility”), made of recycled old tanks from fishing boats painted pure white.
Brand: Matchbox
Series: 2020 Working Rigs 6/8
Livery: MB, matchbox, Freeway Services
Scale: N/A
Base: Black plastic - ©2018 Mattel
Collector/casting number: RW048
Country of manufacture: Thailand
Place/date of purchase: Super Store, 2020
Condition: Minty fresh 10/10
Remarks/comments:
This precious find belongs to the so-called "Treasure of Marengo", a vast collection of precious objects worked in silver, accidentally discovered in 1928 during agricultural work carried out in the town of Marengo (Alessandria). This bust corresponds to the portrait type known as Haupttypus-type, dating from the years of co-regency with Marcus Aurelius. This portrait type was created at the time of his accession to the throne (161 AD), or slightly earlier, and remained substantially unchanged until his premature death in 169 AD.
Compared to the marble portraits, that of Marengo does not attenuate the irregularities of his face: the asymmetrical eyes, with the protruding bulb and the cross-eyed gaze turned upwards, or the aquiline nose which thickens at the end exclude any hypothesis of idealization, to the advantage of an expressiveness of a more realistic taste.
Such realism suggests that the portrait was manufactured before his early death (A.D. 169).
The bust was recovered crushed, but the restoration (1936) reestablished the flawed and irregular features of his face.
The cuirass covered with the aegis (goat skin) with Medusa's head (gorgoneion), is a sign of assimilation to Jupiter and therefore exclusive to emperors. The bust, which was fixed to a wooden core through nails, might have been exhibited in a shrine dedicated to the imperial cult, or have had a celebratory or military function (perhaps hoisted on banners by the imperial legions).
Source: Museo di Antichità di Torino, “Tesoro di Marengo”
Embossed silver foil
Overall eight 55.3 cm; height of the head (from the top of the hair to the tip of the beard), 27.8 cm; width max 50.2 cm;
weight 2850 g, thickness. foil 1.5-2 mm.
A.D. 160 – 169
Torino, Museo delle antichità
People with psychosis may have one or more of the following: hallucinations, delusions, catatonia, or a thought disorder, as described below. Impairments in social cognition also occur.
A hallucination is defined as sensory perception in the absence of external stimuli. Hallucinations are different from illusions, or perceptual distortions, which are the misperception of external stimuli. Hallucinations may occur in any of the five senses and take on almost any form, which may include simple sensations (such as lights, colors, tastes, and smells) to experiences such as seeing and interacting with fully formed animals and people, hearing voices, and having complex tactile sensation,
Psychosis may involve delusional beliefs, some of which are paranoid in nature. Put simply, delusions are false beliefs that a person holds on to, without adequate evidence. It may be difficult to change the belief even with evidence to the contrary. Common themes of delusions are persecutory (person believes that others are out to harm him/her), grandiose (person believing that he or she has special powers or skills) etc. Depressed persons may have delusions consistent with their low mood e.g., delusions that they have sinned, or have contracted serious illness etc. Karl Jaspers has classified psychotic delusions into primary and secondary types. Primary delusions are defined as arising suddenly and not being comprehensible in terms of normal mental processes, whereas secondary delusions may be understood as being influenced by the person's background or current situation (e.g., ethnicity; religious, superstitious, or political beliefs).
Catatonia describes a profoundly agitated state in which the experience of reality is generally considered impaired. There are two primary manifestations of catatonic behavior. The classic presentation is a person who does not move or interact with the world in any way while awake. This type of catatonia presents with waxy flexibility. Waxy flexibility is when someone physically moves part of a catatonic person's body and the person stays in the position even if it is bizarre and otherwise nonfunctional (such as moving a person's arm straight up in the air and the arm stays there).
Thought disorder describes an underlying disturbance to conscious thought and is classified largely by its effects on speech and writing. Affected persons show loosening of associations, that is, a disconnection and disorganization of the semantic content of speech and writing. In the severe form speech becomes incomprehensible and it is known as "word salad".
Psychiatric disorder
From a diagnostic standpoint, organic disorders were those believed caused by physical illness affecting the brain (that is, psychiatric disorders secondary to other conditions), while functional disorders were considered disorders of the functioning of the mind in the absence of physical disorders (that is, primary psychological or psychiatric disorders). The materialistic view of the mind–body problem holds that mental disorders arise from physical processes; in this view, the distinction between brain and mind, and therefore between organic and functional disease, is an artificial one. Subtle physical abnormalities have been found in illnesses traditionally considered functional, such as schizophrenia. The DSM-IV-TR avoids the functional/organic distinction, and instead lists traditional psychotic illnesses, psychosis due to general medical conditions, and substance-induced psychosis.
Primary psychiatric causes of psychosis include the following:
schizophrenia and schizophreniform disorder
affective (mood) disorders, including severe depression, and severe depression or mania in bipolar disorder (manic depression). People experiencing a psychotic episode in the context of depression may experience persecutory or self-blaming delusions or hallucinations, while people experiencing a psychotic episode in the context of mania may form grandiose delusions.
schizoaffective disorder, involving symptoms of both schizophrenia and mood disorders
brief psychotic disorder, or acute/transient psychotic disorder
delusional disorder (persistent delusional disorder)
chronic hallucinatory psychosis
Psychotic symptoms may also be seen in
schizotypal disorder
certain personality disorders at times of stress (including paranoid personality disorder, schizoid personality disorder, and borderline personality disorder)
major depressive disorder in its severe form although it is possible and more likely to have severe depression without psychosis
bipolar disorder in severe mania and/or severe depression although it is possible to have severe mania and/or severe depression without psychosis as well, in fact that is more commonly the case
post-traumatic stress disorder
induced delusional disorder
Sometimes in obsessive-compulsive disorder
Stress is known to contribute to and trigger psychotic states. A history of psychologically traumatic events, and the recent experience of a stressful event, can both contribute to the development of psychosis. Short-lived psychosis triggered by stress is known as brief reactive psychosis, and patients may spontaneously recover normal functioning within two weeks. In some rare cases, individuals may remain in a state of full-blown psychosis for many years, or perhaps have attenuated psychotic symptoms (such as low intensity hallucinations) present at most times.
I was woken in the early hours of the morning by a thunderstorm, complete with lightning, thunder and torrential rain. I figured that I might as well set up my camera on the balcony and take some photographs now that I was awake. I was rewarded with this photograph.
Lightning occurred every minute or so for around 30 minutes. This cloud-to-ground and cloud-to-air strike unfolded perfectly positioned in the center of the frame. I also captured a few lesser cloud-to-air strikes and some sheet lightning, but this was the the clear pick of the lot.
-———
Links for background information ...
www.nssl.noaa.gov/education/svrwx101/lightning/types/
-———
[ Location - Barton, Australian Capital Territory, Australia ]
Photography notes ...
The photograph was taken using the following hardware configuration ...
(Year of manufacture indicated in braces where known.)
- Hasselblad 501CM Body (Chrome) - S/N 10SH26953 (2002).
- Hasselblad CFV-50c Digital Back for Hasselblad V mount camera.
- Hasselblad Focusing Screen for the CFV-50c digital back, with focussing prism and crop markings.
- Hasselblad 45 Degree Viewfinder PME-45 42297 (2001).
- Hasselblad Carl Zeiss lens - Distagon 50mm f/4 CF FLE T* (1991).
- FotodioX B60 Lens Hood for Select Hasselblad Wide-Angle CF Lenses - MFR # HASSY-HD-6050.
-
- Really Right Stuff (RRS) TFC-14 Series 1 Carbon Fiber Tripod - MFR # 13996.
- Really Right Stuff (RRS) BH-30 Ball Head with Mini Screw-Knob Clamp - MFR # BH-30 PRO.
- Hasselblad HATQCH (3043326) Tripod Quick Coupling.
- Arca-Swiss ARUCP38 Universal Camera Plate 3/8”.
- Nikon AR-3 Shutter Release Cable.
- Artisan & Artist ACAM-302 Silk Cord for Hassleblad Cameras (Black).
I acquired the photograph (8272 x 6200 pixels) with an ISO of 100, an exposure time of from 32 seconds, and an aperture of f/11.0.
Post-processing ...
Finder - Removed the CF card from the camera digital back and placed it in a Lexar 25-in-1 USB card reader. Then used Finder on my MacBook Air to download the raw image file (3FR extension) from the card.
Lightroom - Imported the images. Applied a standard metadata preset (20161110 Import 001) during the import process.
Lightroom - Used the Map module to add the location details to the EXIF header.
Lightroom - Used the Spot Removal tool to attenuate a number of sensor dust artifacts.
Lightroom - Made various lighting and color adjustments to the image.
Lightroom - Saved the Develop module settings as a preset.
Lightroom - Output the image as a JPEG image using the “Maximum” quality option (8272 x 6200 pixels).
PhotoSync - Copied the JPEG file to my iPad Mini for any final processing, review, enjoyment, and posting to social media.
@MomentsForZen #MomentsForZen #MFZ #Hasselblad #501CM #CFV50c #Lightroom #Lightning #Sky #Clouds #LightningBolt #Trees #Thunderstorm #LightningStorm
Like some huge maggot this attenuation tank awaits its burial; when I was a kid this was the bus station in Stockport, there were no buildings or shelters, just stands with poles displaying the bus numbers and puddles with rainbows of oil on their surface. In the centre, behind the scaffolding, can be seen one of Stockport's several underground streams, briefly escaping from its brick culvert; is this the Tin Brook- I don't know.
The magnificently restored Plaza Theatre looks disdainfully down on whatever horrors will emerge. To the right the remains of the multi-story pub (was it once the Wellington Inn?) continues to moulder away, just as it has for 30 years or more; at one time it was "imaginatively" re-named "Ups and Downs" and played
disco music so loud that potential customers with any sense left, before they even tasted the watered-down weasel-piss beer.
Photos from a model shoot with Inka.
This portrait was shot in the National Library of Finland. The dark tones look much nicer on black
Lighting info: Main light is an SB-800 high at camera left on a light stand, bounced from a silver umbrella with translucent pearly white lining. Kicker is an SB-24 at camera right, sitting on a table. Both flashes had a CTO gel and were triggered by wireless radio triggers. See also setup shot.
Post processing: cropping, curves, a soft light layer, some dodging and burning to attenuate the boots, very minor skin retouching, cloning out a sign from the wooden frame at top left.
sUbfolerAntennaCubism{"macroEnabled":false,"qualityMode":3,"deviceTilt":-0.04109584167599678,"customExposureMode":1,"extendedExposure":false,"whiteBalanceProgram":0,"focusMode":1}
“APOLLO 16 SUBSATELLITE----An artist’s concept depicting the lunar Particles and Fields subsatellite, built by TRW Inc., as it might appear to the Apollo 16 astronauts shortly after its ejection into orbit around the Moon from the Apollo spacecraft. The 30-inch-high, 80-pound satellite is mounted in the SIM bay of the Apollo 16 Service Module. The small satellite will orbit the Moon to study magnetic and gravitational fields and sample the charged particle composition of space near the Moon. This satellite is nearly identical to the one carried to the Moon by Apollo 15. These launches illustrate the feasibility of launching unmanned spacecraft from NASA’s proposed orbiting Space Shuttle. The figures of the three men represent Astronauts John W. Young, Thomas K. Mattingly, and Charles M. Duke Jr. This is TRW Inc. artwork.”
If the listing of the crew is from foreground-to-background, that does vaguely look a little like Young and the astronaut in the background does also look a little like Duke; however, the marginalized gent squeezed up between the crew couches does not at all look like Mattingly. I don’t actually think they’d be in these positions, especially during the deployment of the subsatellite. Also, looks like 'Charlie' is about to punch something into an inaccurately depicted DSKY panel...possibly from a Block I CM configuration? Wonderful, nonetheless.
The TRW artist is the immensely talented John Desatoff. Not surprisingly, Mr. Desatoff's works were featured in a 1968 Smithsonian Institute traveling museum/exhibition entitled “Exploring Space: Paintings by John Desatoff,” which now reside in the Institution's archives.
TMI, but very informative:
www.collectspace.com/ubb/Forum29/HTML/001128.html
Credit: collectSPACE website
Also:
heroicrelics.org/info/csm/apollo-subsatellite.html
Credit: Mike Jetzer/heroicrelics.org
Most importantly, Rest In Peace Mr. Desatoff, and THANK YOU:
www.legacy.com/obituaries/latimes/obituary.aspx?n=john-j-...
Credit: Legacy website
During the Civil War and for many years after, this bottonland was farmed and served as range for cattle. After the expansion of the Washington, DC metro area put pressure on landowners of farmland in eastern VA to sell to developers, property such as this was allowed to recover naturally due to it's value for wildlife refugia, storm water flood attenuation, and suburban recreation space. On this day, I rode my mountain bike through the area at sunset to see what there was to see; a quiet place away from the mega-shopping malls and freeways of northern Virginia where squirrels, deer, owls, fox, an occasional coyote, and of course, racoons and skunks survive amidst an ever growing mass of urban sprawl.
Popcorn Beach, Pyramid Lake, Washoe Co., Nevada (June 24th, 2017). 10. Large desert lake.
Male approaching the female (note the very thin bill, a female characteristic) to relieve her on the nest.
The nest is part of a big, noisy mixed Clark's/Western Grebe breeding colony in the emergent vegetation along the edge of the lake south of Popcorn Rock. On the day of our visit, most of the nests were occupied by incubating adults with the eggs sometimes showing when the birds stood up to turn them.
Numbers hard to estimate, but perhaps as many as 400 active nests extending a mile or so along the shore. At the N end, the nests formed a thick band 4-5 nests deep attenuating southwards to a single discontinuous line. The Clark's nests tended to be clumped in groups of 3 or 4 among the much more numerous Western nests, constituting probably less than 5% of the total.
More shots of these nests--
www.flickr.com/photos/fugl/albums/72157665257335634
More Aechmophorus grebe photos—
www.flickr.com/photos/fugl/albums/72157665257335634/with/...
Visited as early as 1893 and fitted out to be accessible for most people, the Devil's Bridge Gorges offer the visitor a gripping picture of the power of erosion. The jagged profile of the sides and their shaded colors give the whole site a weird appearance attenuated by the magnificent surrounding forests.
Photo taken from beneath the bridge
Gorges du Pont du Diable een diepe 'Duivelskloof' ontstaan door eeuwenlange riviererosie. De grillige wanden zijn hier en daar wel 60 meter hoog en laten weinig licht in de spelonk toe.
SOUTH CHINA SEA (Oct. 9, 2019) A Sikorsky CH-53E "Super Stallion" with Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron (VMM) 163 (Reinforced), 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU), takes off of the flight deck of the amphibious assault ship USS Boxer (LHD 4) during a vertical replenishment-at-sea. The Marines and Sailors of the 11th MEU are deployed to the 7th Fleet area of operations to support regional stability, reassure partners, and allies, and maintain a presence postured to respond to any crisis ranging from humanitarian assistance to contingency operations.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Sikorsky CH-53E "Super Stallion" is a heavy-lift helicopter operated by the United States military. As the Sikorsky S-80 it was developed from the CH-53 "Sea Stallion", mainly by adding a third engine, adding a seventh blade to the main rotor and canting the tail rotor 20 degrees. It was built by Sikorsky Aircraft for the United States Marine Corps. The less common MH-53E "Sea Dragon" fills the United States Navy's need for long range minesweeping or Airborne Mine Countermeasures (AMCM) missions, and perform heavy-lift duties for the Navy. Under development is the Sikorsky CH-53K "King Stallion", which has new engines, new composite material rotor blades, and a wider aircraft cabin; this is to replace the CH-53E.
Background
The CH-53 was the product of the U.S. Marines' "Heavy Helicopter Experimental" (HH(X)) competition begun in 1962. Sikorsky's S-65 was selected over Boeing Vertol's modified CH-47 "Chinook" version. The prototype YCH-53A first flew on 14 October 1964. The helicopter was designated CH-53A "Sea Stallion" and delivery of production helicopters began in 1966. The first CH-53As were powered by two General Electric T64-GE-6 turboshaft engines with 2,850 shp (2,125 kW) and had a maximum gross weight of 46,000 lb (20,865 kg) including 20,000 lb (9,072 kg) in payload.
Variants of the original CH-53A "Sea Stallion" include the RH-53A/D, HH-53B/C, CH-53D, CH-53G, and MH-53H/J/M. The RH-53A and RH-53D were used by the US Navy for mine sweeping. The CH-53D included a more powerful version of the General Electric T64 engine, used in all H-53 variants, and external fuel tanks. The CH-53G was a version of the CH-53D produced in West Germany for the German Army.
The US Air Force's HH-53B/C "Super Jolly Green Giant" were for special operations and combat rescue and were first deployed during the Vietnam War. The Air Force's MH-53H/J/M "Pave Low" helicopters were the last of the twin engined H-53s and were equipped with extensive avionics upgrades for all weather operation.
H-53E
In October 1967, the US Marine Corps issued a requirement for a helicopter with a lifting capacity 1.8 times that of the CH-53D that would fit on amphibious warfare ships. The US Navy and US Army were also seeking similar helicopters at the time. Before issue of the requirement Sikorsky had been working on an enhancement to the CH-53D, under the company designation "S-80", featuring a third turboshaft engine and a more powerful rotor system. Sikorsky proposed the S-80 design to the Marines in 1968. The Marines liked the idea since it promised to deliver a good solution quickly, and funded development of a testbed helicopter for evaluation.
In 1970, against pressure by the US Defense Secretary to take the Boeing Vertol XCH-62 being developed for the Army, the Navy and Marines were able to show the Army's helicopter was too large to operate on landing ships and were allowed to pursue their helicopter. Prototype testing investigated the addition of a third engine and a larger rotor system with a seventh blade in the early 1970s. In 1974, the initial YCH-53E first flew.
Changes on the CH-53E also include a stronger transmission and a fuselage stretched 6 feet 2 inches (1.88 m). The main rotor blades were changed to a titanium-fiberglass composite. The tail configuration was also changed. The low-mounted symmetrical horizontal tail was replaced by a larger vertical tail and the tail rotor tilted from the vertical to provide some lift in hover while counteracting the main rotor torque. Also added was a new automatic flight control system. The digital flight control system prevented the pilot from overstressing the aircraft.
YCH-53E testing showed that it could lift 17.8 tons (to a 50-foot (15 m) wheel height), and without an external load, could reach 170 knots (310 km/h) at a 56,000 pound gross weight. This led to two preproduction aircraft and a static test article being ordered. At this time the tail was redesigned to include a high-mounted, horizontal surface opposite the rotor with an inboard section perpendicular to the tail rotor then at the strut connection cants 20 degrees to horizontal.
The initial production contract was awarded in 1978, and service introduction followed in February 1981. The first production CH-53E flew in December 1980. The US Navy acquired the CH-53E in small numbers for shipboard resupply. The Marines and Navy acquired a total of 177.
The Navy requested a version of the CH-53E for the airborne mine countermeasures role, designated "MH-53E "Sea Dragon". It has enlarged sponsons to provide substantially greater fuel storage and endurance. It also retained the in-flight refueling probe, and could be fitted with up to seven 300 US gallon (1,136 liter) ferry tanks internally. The MH-53E digital flight-control system includes features specifically designed to help tow minesweeping gear. The prototype MH-53E made its first flight on 23 December 1981. MH-53E was used by the Navy beginning in 1986. The MH-53E is capable of in-flight refueling and can be refueled at hover.
Additionally, a number of MH-53E helicopters were exported to Japan as the S-80-M-1 for the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF).
The base model CH-53E serves both the US Navy and Marines in the heavy lift transport role. It is capable of lifting heavy equipment including the eight-wheeled LAV-25 Light Armored Vehicle, the M198 155 mm Howitzer with ammunition and crew. The Super Stallion can recover aircraft up to its size, which includes all Marine Corps aircraft except for the KC-130.
The 53E needs 40 maintenance hours per flight hour due to aging parts, lack of available new replacement parts and the extension of the overall airframe lifetime.
CH-53K
Main article: Sikorsky CH-53K "King Stallion"
The US Marine Corps had been planning to upgrade most of their CH-53Es to keep them in service, but this plan stalled. Sikorsky then proposed a new version, originally the CH-53X, and in April 2006, the USMC signed a contract for 156 aircraft as the CH-53K. The Marines are planning to start retiring CH-53Es in 2009 and need new helicopters very quickly.
In August 2007, the USMC increased its order of CH-53Ks to 227. First flight was planned for November 2011 with initial operating capability by 2015.
Although dimensionally similar, the three engine CH-53E "Super Stallion" or Sikorsky S-80 is a much more powerful aircraft than the original Sikorsky S-65 twin engined CH-53A "Sea Stallion". The CH-53E also added a larger main rotor system with a seventh blade.
Design
The CH-53E as designed to transport up to 55 troops or 30,000 lb (13,610 kg) of cargo and can carry external slung loads up to 36,000 lb (16,330 kg). The CH-53E has incorporated the same crash attenuating seats as the MV-22B to increase survivability of passengers but at a cost of reducing its original troop transport capacity.[citation needed] The "Super Stallion" has a cruise speed of 173 mph (278 km/h) and a range of 621 miles (1,000 km). The helicopter is fitted with a forward extendable in-flight refueling probe and it can also hoist hose refuel from a surface ship while in hover mode. It can carry three machine guns: one at the starboard side crew door; one at the port window, just behind the copilot; and one at the tail ramp. The CH-53E also has chaff-flare dispensers.
The MH-53E features enlarged side mounted fuel sponsons and is rigged for towing various minesweeping and hunting gear from above the dangerous naval mines. The "Sea Dragon" can be equipped for minesweeping, cargo and passenger transportation, and troop insertion. Its digital flight-control system includes features specifically designed to help towing mine sweeping gear.
Upgrades to the CH-53E have included the Helicopter Night Vision System (HNVS), improved .50 BMG (12.7 mm) GAU-21/A and M3P machine guns, and AAQ-29A forward looking infrared (FLIR) imager.
The CH-53E and the MH-53E are the largest helicopters in the Western world, while the CH-53K now being developed will be even larger. They are fourth in the world to the Russian Mil Mi-26 "Halo" single-rotor helicopter and the enormous, twin transverse rotored Mil V-12 "Homer", which can lift more than 22 tons (20 tonnes) and 44 tons (40 tonnes), respectively and the Mi-26's single-rotor predecessor Mil Mi-6, which has less payload (12 tonnes) but is bigger and has a higher MTOW at 42 tonnes.
IC 1318 is a giant Ha region and one of the brightest among all the emission clouds in the Cygnus complex. The visible Ha region spans over 100 light years. There is considerable obscuration of the region due to intervening dust within the great rift of the Milky Way which attenuates the light of many of the bright stars spread through the region. The great rift represents a series of overlapping dark clouds that create a division in the Milky Way between the Cygnus and Sagittarius star clouds.
The entire nebula complex referred to as IC 1318 has three distinct visible components, IC1318 a, b, and c. IC 1318 b and c constitute a single giant HII cloud bisected by a thick obscuring dust lane known as LDN 889. The two components (b and c) of the HII region straddle the thick dust lane along its northern and southern borders. The symmetry of the complex has been compared to a butterfly which has led to its popular name as the "Butterfly Nebula". The bisecting dust lane is 20 light years thick and is physically bound to the emission nebula and its parent molecular cloud complex.
Telescope: William optics star 71 f/4.9
Mount: Avalon linear fast reverse
Camera: CCD Atik One 6.0
Filter: Astrodon Ha 5nm
Guide:ZWO ASI290MM Mini (mono) + Skywatcher ed80
Process:CCD stack - Pixinsight - Photoshop CS6
Exposure: Ha 46x480sec,
Total: 6 hours
Museum de Fundatie Zwolle NL presents an exhibition entitled Giacometti-Chadwick, Facing Fear, to run from 22 September 2018 to 6 January 2019. The sculptures of Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966) and Lynn Chadwick (1914-2003) are manifestations of the sense of fear and disillusionment that pervaded Europe during the Cold War period. Their work bids a final farewell to pre-war romanticism and aestheticism, and lands with both feet in the raw reality of the post-war world. While Giacometti reduced the human form to its bare essentials, Chadwick created powerful archetypal images of both people and animals. The exhibition includes more than 150 works. Never before has the work of Giacometti and Chadwick been so explicitly brought together.
Their paths first crossed in 1956, when Chadwick became the youngest person ever to win the Grand Prix for Sculpture at the Venice Biennale. With only six years’ experience as a sculptor, the British artist snatched the prize from Giacometti, the hot favourite, who was thirteen years older and already a major name in Paris. Giacometti would go on to win the prize in 1962, but which of the two men was awarded it in 1956 is less significant than the fact that these two particular sculptors were the front-runners at that time. Each of them was expressing, in his own individual way, the sense of deep-seated angst that overshadowed day-to-day life in Europe in the fifties and sixties: the fear of a global nuclear disaster that would wipe out human civilisation.
Alberto Giacometti is among the most significant figures in the whole field of modern European sculpture. A member of a notable family of Swiss artists, he moved to Paris in 1922 and would remain there for the rest of his life, working as a sculptor, painter and graphic artist. After training with Émile-Antoine Bourdelle, he discovered modernism and so-called ‘primitive’ ethnographic art of Africa and Oceania. In response to these influences, his work became more abstract. In the early thirties, his Surrealist sculptures expressing subconscious emotions created a furore. From 1935, however, personal psychological tensions triggered a crisis in his life and work that led to a return to the human figure. Initially, his portraits and figures became both increasingly tiny and more and more attenuated. This thinness was to remain the most distinctive feature of Giacometti’s art. After the Second World War, he began to create the elongated, emaciated figures that would bring him worldwide fame. In all their attenuation, they reduce humanity to its very essence and appear both vulnerable and enigmatic.
In the early fifties, up-and-coming artist Lynn Chadwick managed to dislodge Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth from their dominant position in the field of British sculpture. Born in London, Chadwick had started his career as a technical draughtsman and exhibition stand designer. He took an equally constructional approach to his sculpture: rather than model his human and animal figures in clay or wax, he constructed them by welding steel rods together to create an armature and then filling in the gaps with a kind of cement. The angularity of the work being produced by him and other young British artists was described in 1952 as ‘the geometry of fear’, a reference to the constant dread of nuclear annihilation. Chadwick’s apocalyptic Dancers and stoical Watchers gave powerful expression to this sense of angst. From the early seventies, he broadened his repertoire to include subjects that seem to restore the sovereignty of the human spirit. Sculptures like Cloaked Figure and Sitting Couple no longer look threatening, but emanate a sense of composure and invulnerability.
Giacometti’s pre-war work influenced Chadwick’s development and the two men were keenly aware of each other’s presence. In addition to the vast differences, there are also many similarities between their oeuvres. Giacometti-Chadwick, Facing Fear is the product of close cooperation with the Fondation Marguerite et Aimé Maeght in Saint-Paul-de-Vence and the Chadwick Estate and Blain|Southern gallery in London.
Plagues happen only to people. Animals can suffer from mass infections, of course, but they experience them as one more bad blow from an unpredictable and predatory natural environment. Only people put mental brackets around a phenomenon like the coronavirus pandemic and attempt to give it a name and some historical perspective, some sense of precedence and possibility. The coronavirus, indifferent to individuals, has no creed or moral purpose, but it becomes human when it hits us—neither microscopic nor historic, just the size we are as we experience its effects. As Albert Camus wrote in “The Plague,” the 1947 novel that’s becoming to this disruption what W. H. Auden’s “September 1, 1939” was to the aftermath of 9/11, the microbe has no meaning; we seek to create one in the chaos it brings. The coronavirus has ravaged all of New York City, closing schools, emptying streets and turning stadiums into makeshift hospitals. And data made public by city health officials on Wednesday suggests it is hitting low-income neighborhoods the hardest. The spike glycoproteins give the coronavirus its name. The molecules protrude from the viral envelope like the spikes of a crown. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Biophysics in Frankfurt are now analysing the structure of this protein. They hope to identify potential targets for antibodies and inhibitors – an important prerequisite for developing new vaccines and drugs against the SARS CoV-2 virus.The coronavirus needs the spike protein to infect a cell. The protein binds primarily to a receptor called ACE2 on the surface of human cells. The virus can then fuse with the cell membrane and release its genetic material into the cell. The spike protein is not only the sharpest weapon of the virus but also its Achilles’ heel; its exposed position makes it the preferred point of attack for the immune system. Antibodies can recognize the virus by its spike protein, bind to it, and thus mark it as a target for immune cells. However, the virus has another trick up its sleeve. A sugar coat hides the conserved parts of its spike proteins from the immune cells.The Max Planck researchers are therefore analysing the protective sugar shield and the membrane envelope of the virus in addition to the spike protein. They want to go beyond the existing static structures to calculate how the spike proteins move on the surface of the virus and how they change their shape – with a precision down to the size of an atom. During the first month of the outbreak in the city — the epicenter of America’s coronavirus crisis — many of the neighborhoods with the most confirmed virus cases were in areas with the lowest median incomes, the data shows. The biggest hot spots included communities in the South Bronx and western Queens. The data, collected by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, offers the first snapshot of an outbreak that infected more than 40,000 and killed more than 1,000 in the city in its first month. The increases in flu-related emergency room visits varied widely by neighborhood, with many of the surges occurring among residents of neighborhoods where the typical household income is less than the city median of about $60,000, the data shows.
In Corona, Queens, for example, the median household income is about $48,000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That neighborhood is near the Elmhurst Hospital Center, which Mayor Bill de Blasio has cited as the hardest-hit hospital in the city. Doctors in the overwhelmed emergency room there have described the conditions as “apocalyptic.” The coronavirus has spread into virtually every corner of the city, and some wealthier neighborhoods have been overrun with cases, including some parts of Manhattan and Staten Island. But that may be because of the availability of testing in those areas. Nineteen of the 20 neighborhoods with the lowest percentage of positive tests have been in wealthy ZIP codes. The patterns are even more striking when analyzing the data on people who visited the city’s 53 emergency rooms with the “flulike symptoms” that are a hallmark of the coronavirus. Over all, nearly three times as many people with “flulike symptoms” like fever, cough or sore throat visited city emergency rooms this March when compared with the same month in previous years. In the last four years, there were on average 9,250 flu-related visits to emergency rooms in March; this March, the number tripled to about 30,000. These calculations will reveal the tiniest details of the protein structure. But they are extremely complex. “We need the massive computing power of the supercomputers of the Max Planck Society”, explains Gerhard Hummer, Director at the Max Planck Institute of Biophysics. With their dynamic model of the spike protein, the researchers hope to identify binding domains to which antibodies can reliably bind. Hummer and his team also hope to discover binding sites for inhibitors. They plan to compare these with the binding properties of existing drugs with the help of computers and thus identify active ingredients that can block the spike protein. “Of course, repurposing drugs that are already on the market is much faster than finding new active ingredients and testing them in lengthy clinical trials”, says Hummer.
www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/01/nyregion/nyc-coron...
The final weekend of semi-ordinary life in New York arrived on Friday the 13th. In the week that followed, New York became a ghost town in a ghost nation on a ghost planet. The gravity and scale of what is happening can overwhelm the details of daily life, in which human beings seek a plateau of normalcy in abnormal times, just as they always have in blitzes and battles. Nobody has any confidence at all about whether we are seeing the first phases of a new normal, the brief calm before a worse storm, or a wise reaction that may allow, not so horribly long from now, for a renewal of common life. Here are some notes on things seen by one walker in the city, and some voices heard among New Yorkers bearing witness, on and off the streets.
It happened slowly and then suddenly. On Monday, March 9th, the spectre of a pandemic in New York was still off on the puzzling horizon. By Friday, it was the dominant fact of life. New Yorkers began to adopt a grim new dance of “social distancing.” On a sparsely peopled 5 train, heading down to Grand Central Terminal on Saturday morning, passengers warily tried to achieve an even, strategic spacing, like chess pieces during an endgame: the rook all the way down here, but threatening the king from the back row. Then, when the doors opened, they got off the train one by one, in single, hesitant file, unlearning in a minute New York habits ingrained over lifetimes, the elbowed rush for the door.In the relatively empty subway cars, one can focus on the human details of the riders. A. J. Liebling, in a piece published in these pages some sixty years ago, recounted the tale of a once famous New York murder, in which the headless torso of a man was found wrapped in oilcloth, floating in the East River. The hero of the tale, as Liebling chose to tell it, was a young reporter for the great New York World, who identified the body by type before anyone else did: he saw that the corpse’s fingertips were wrinkled in a way that characterized “rubbers”—masseurs—in Turkish baths. Only someone whose hands were wet that often would have those fingertips. On the subway, in the street, nearly everyone has rubbers’ hands now, with skin shrivelled from excessive washing.
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At the other end of the day, in Central Park late at night, the only people out were the ones walking their dogs. Dogs are still allowed to have proximity, if only to other dogs. They can’t be kept from it. The negotiations of proximity—the dogs demanding it, the owners trying to resist it without being actively rude—are newly arrived in the city. Walking home down the almost empty avenues, you could see the same silhouette, repeated: dogs straining toward dogs on long-stretched leashes, held by watchful owners keeping their distance, a nightly choreography of animal need and human caution.
At J.F.K., in Queens, during that strange weekend, people huddled and waited anxiously for the homecoming of family members who had been stranded abroad, with the understanding that homecoming now comes at a cost: arriving passengers have been asked to self-quarantine for two weeks. J.F.K. had been spared some of the nightmarish lines and confusion seen at Dulles, in Washington, and O’Hare, in Chicago, following Donald Trump’s abrupt decision the previous Wednesday (relayed in a garbled announcement) to suspend most travel from Europe. But no one is spared the emotional ambivalence of the moment: every feeling pulled out hard, like an attenuated nerve. Parents are keenly aware that, in bringing their children home to what is meant to be safety, they are bringing them to an increasingly unsafe place.“Barren” was the word that Lisa Cleveland, who lives in New Jersey, used for the normally bustling airport. She spent part of Saturday morning waiting for her teen-age children Zoë and Xander, who had been staying in the Netherlands. Their father is a Dutch citizen. “I’m still trying to understand the risks, but he’s been tracking this for more than two months,” Cleveland said. “He’s that guy.” Getting the kids back to the U.S. before further barriers went up wasn’t easy. “Xander and Zoë—she likes the double dot over her name, otherwise it becomes a Dutch word that rhymes with ‘cow’—were in Amsterdam. We struggled and struggled to find them tickets home. Someone told us that one of the airlines was going to go bankrupt.”
When she saw Zoë and Xander at last, Cleveland said, “it was just such an enormous relief. And more emotion than you can easily imagine. This is the first day I’ve been able to smile in weeks. But now they have to do a mandatory self-quarantine for two weeks.”
Zoë said, “Not that I’m not glad to be home, but I’ll miss school. The mood on the plane was weird—half the plane was wearing masks.” Because safety masks were sold out in Amsterdam, she and her brother decided to wear masks that their parents had bought them out of an abundance of caution. They were 3M respirators, the kind an industrial worker might wear in the presence of toxic aerosols. “I felt people were judging us,” Zoë said. “It’s a crazy mask. No one else on the plane had on such a serious mask.”
Crises take an X-ray of a city’s class structure. After 9/11, it was the Middle Eastern and South Asian taxi-drivers who suddenly became visible, lining their cabs with American flags for fear of being taken for jihadis. Now particular visibility falls on bicycle deliverymen, Mexicans and Indians, the emissaries of Seamless, who modestly shoulder the burden of feeding the middle class. On the East Side, outside a Thai restaurant at 7 p.m. on Saturday, a single deliveryman balanced five bags of food hanging from his handlebars. His livelihood hinges on his getting meals to people who are self-isolating, a luxury he doesn’t have. Although he was grateful for the work, he said, he was a little frightened about his own exposure. Asked how many more sacks he ferries during his shift these days, he shrugged and said at least ten times the usual load.Just as the medical system depends on the lowest paid of the health workers—the orderlies and custodians—the food system, now that restaurants have been limited to takeout and delivery, depends on a whole cadre of men pedalling bicycles. They are literally overburdened, and, that night, this one got off to an unsteady start, like a plane in wartime trying to take off with too large a load of refugees. He glanced up at a high-rise condominium being built on Madison Avenue and Eighty-ninth Street. Construction work continues right through the closures—no letup in the noise and activity, even on the weekend. The workmen, in their puffy vests and hard hats, were side by side, though they didn’t seem particularly worried, or constrained. The exigencies of Manhattan real estate and development are evidently undeterred by the crisis.What’s strange about this energetic construction of more luxury housing is that, in the existing apartment buildings nearby, on the impossibly wealthy blocks of Fifth Avenue, scarcely a light can be seen. Nobody’s home. Most of the truly wealthy have gone, by helicopter or private jet, to the Hamptons or to an island somewhere. There can be something vexing about the thought that those whose wealth relies on the intense, close-ordered entanglement of the city abandon it in its hour of need, or dread, but they do. Still, who would not decamp to a remote island if she had one? “Boccaccio-ing,” someone calls this business of fleeing the city, in honor of the Italian author, who wrote of fleeing Florence during the Black Death, and telling stories with his companions for ten days up in the hillside villas of Fiesole.
In West Harlem, Sam Rivera certainly can’t leave. At a residential facility run by the Fortune Society and known as the Castle, his job is to oversee the rooms and the souls of about eighty-five men and women, almost all released from prison not long ago, some as recently as this month. They come in and out of his office all day, seeking help and solace. “It’s crazy, but the system is still churning,” Rivera said. He is a huge man, with a beaming, steady smile. “They’re still discharging people from Rikers and elsewhere, even as we go through all this. So we have a steady inflow of people coming home, even while we’re trying to lock down the people we already have.”This is Rivera’s second plague. Incarcerated himself when H.I.V./aids hit New York’s state prisons, in the nineteen-eighties, he still remembers the shock of working in the isolated wards where those who fell ill with the disease were sequestered: “Everyone was so frightened that they pretty much put on a hazmat suit to go into those places. Except me.” His experience led him, once he was out of prison, to join the aids-care movement, where he met and worked with Anthony Fauci, the current director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Now that Rivera is responsible for the residents of the Castle, he thinks hard about what to do. His memories of the aids epidemic are strong, and they give an oddly positive cast to his take on today’s crisis.
“We’ve stockpiled three weeks’ worth of food, and we’re sending staff to screen visitors at Rikers,” he said. (City jails have since suspended in-person visits.) “But it’s not a deadly virus for most people—it’s not as deadly as aids. I think we’ll get to the point where the next announcement will have to be, What are we doing for people who have to manage the elders and those with compromised immune systems? I’m coping two ways. I’m not overthinking it. I expect to get it one day. I’ll feel sick, and I’ll manage it, I’ll come through it, and my body will build immunities to it. And that will be a blessing.”
Despite his brio in the face of the virus, Rivera worries about the vulnerable residents in his charge. “We have a number of people in the Castle who are living with H.I.V., and we’re really monitoring where and how they are,” he said. “The problem is that they don’t like following up. Most of them have had bad experiences with the medical system, or sometimes no experience with it. But, if anyone has flu-like symptoms, then we are able to get a test, right now, at Columbia Presbyterian, which is great. All we can do is watch and move forward, day by day.”
Panic-buying has been in evidence all over town, if unevenly executed. Many chain supermarkets and food stores are stripped bare of groceries, in a way that calls to mind the days just after 9/11. Back then, people gathered “Armageddon baskets,” filled with expensive things—steak and Perrier. Now they assemble survival kits. Toilet paper and canned beans are treasured. (There is no chance, the grocers assure the city, of running out of either.) Still, there’s a pattern to the emptying of the supermarkets. Every potato, every carrot, every onion in a West Side Citarella is gone, as is every package of pasta and every jar of tomatoes in an uptown Whole Foods. Yet many of the less tony supermarkets, the nearby Key Foods and Gristedes, have remained well stocked and serene throughout the rush.
“You realize what this means?” a college student who grew up in New York said, about the depredations of upscale shoppers. “It means they believe that it’s every man for himself. They don’t really believe in community or that people will or can share. Their instinct, despite living in one of the more affluent spots in the world, is that they’re on their own.” The plague, as Camus insisted, exposes existing fractures in societies, in class structure and individual character; under stress, we see who we really are. The secession of the very rich, the isolation of the well-off, the degradation of social capital by inequality: these truths become sharply self-evident now.
The current crisis is, in some respects, the mirror image of the post-9/11 moment. That turned out to be a time of retrospective anxiety about a tragedy unforeseen. The anticipatory jitters weren’t entirely unfounded—anthrax killed a hospital worker in Manhattan—but they arose from something that had already happened and wouldn’t be repeated. By contrast, the covid-19 crisis involves worries about something we’ve been warned is on the way. The social remedy is the opposite of the sort of coming together that made the days and weeks after 9/11 endurable for so many, as they shared dinners and embraced friends. That basic human huddling is now forbidden, with the recommendations for “distancing” bearing down ever tighter: no more than five hundred people together, then two hundred and fifty, then fifty, then ten.
At the same time, the emphasis on social distancing and even isolation is part of an epidemiological study in statistical probability. If we delay the communication of the virus from patient to patient, the curve of new cases may flatten, so that fewer people at any time will need hospitalization, reducing the stress on the system and keeping health services available for all the other countless ailments that strike a city of eight million. In a way, the self-seclusions are exhibits not of personal panic but of public-minded prudence: we are trying to save the lives, above all, of the most vulnerable. But, of course, the plague-in-progress may progress despite it all.“Love in the Time of Cholera” is Gabriel García Márquez’s great novel of another plague time—with cholera, we’re told, referring to both the name of the terrible disease and the condition of being colérico, angry and impassioned. Love in the time of coronavirus was bound to happen—in crisis and despair is born desire—and it already has. Kids forced to leave college and return home to the city talked about long-sought last-minute assignations on the night before the general expulsion.
Sometimes desire in anxiety can be more delicate. In Grand Central Terminal, what some call “the tile telephone”—the whispering gallery in front of the Oyster Bar, under the beautiful basket weave of arches—has never been so clear. The noise of the station is usually so intense that the tiled ceiling turns mute. Now, for the first time in forever, the abatement in the roar and press of people allows couples’ murmured endearments, spoken into one corner, to race up through the solid Guastavino tile and carry all the way over to the diagonally facing corner.A pair of young friends encountered there that Friday weren’t out-of-towners; this was Kyle and Leah, and they’re New Yorkers through and through, who decided that this was the moment, finally, to really see Grand Central. The appetite for the joys of structured sightseeing is indomitable. Another young woman, Amaya—visiting from Durham, North Carolina, and crushed to find the city so inhospitable—stood in the corner, smiling and singing to a friend on the other side.But it was on Saturday, when the sky was blue and the temperature hovered in the fifties, that the irresistible urge to find pleasure brought out flocks of young people to various outdoor spaces. “I’ve noticed that a lot of people my age are headed to Prospect Park and are taking advantage of a beautiful day, a large space where they can mingle,” a thirty-one-year-old woman said, early on Saturday afternoon. “They sort of keep social distance, but also connect.” Many photographs, shared widely on social media, seemed to show the millennials lounging thoughtlessly close, prompting a Twitter uproar.
The uproar did seem to reflect a determination on the part of young people in New York to go on living like young people in New York. “Last night I went out to a restaurant,” the same woman said. “And the wait was half an hour. So we went to a different restaurant, and at that one, when the waitress was bringing out drinks, she got confused about where to go, since they had just changed their seating—I think to have more space between tables. ”Like life-hardened Sam Rivera, these younger New Yorkers have touching if perhaps worrying faith in their own invulnerability. “I don’t think people in my cohort are that terrified,” the woman went on. “Most people seem to believe that they will get the virus and they will survive having it. The vibe is pretty much one of acceptance, even a little bit of excitement. I hate to say this, but it’s become a distraction from the election. Also, a lot of my friends are cooking. Like ambitious stockpot recipes—soups and stews—and a lot of baking, too. Pies and cookies. I myself am currently deep-cleaning my apartment, knowing that I’ll be stuck in it.” Meanwhile, she said, “my family is from New York, and my father has been fearlessly going to the gym. I think there’s a bit of yolo fear to it—he wants to make the most of his life. But I have pleaded with him to stop.”
That same Saturday, Maggie McGlinchy, a bartender, worked all evening at Bernie’s Restaurant, on the border of Greenpoint and Williamsburg. “It was full,” she said on Sunday. “But it doesn’t take much to fill the restaurant. The actual volume was low, and it seemed as though no one wanted to be seen to be fully enjoying themselves. I sold a lot of Martinis that night—mostly Martinis, or Old-Fashioneds or Manhattans. No wine or artisanal ale. Everyone was trending the spirits.
“At Bernie’s, I’m on a first-name basis with possibly a third of the customers—it’s definitely a home base. In the past two nights, a lot of my customers are people who wanted to come in and support us. Most of my tips were over twenty per cent. That’s the other thing about social distancing—so much of what it means to be comforted is to be . . . not distant. Stay positive, I’d say—we’re feeling well right now and let’s hope it stays positive and do you want another drink?” But by Sunday night all the bars and restaurants in the city had been ordered to stop table service in the next few days, an unimaginable act a week earlier, as strange as if the island of Manhattan had floated out to sea.
McGlinchy said that she is looking for a new job, but there are no new jobs for bartenders, because there are no bars.“What do I have going forward? I have a month’s rent and a warm e-mail from my former employer,” she said dryly on Tuesday morning. “I’ve had some regulars send me twenty bucks over Venmo. Last tips.”
The full weight of the shutdown will fall most heavily on the Maggies of the world, who have little or no financial cushion. (Later, Bernie’s set up a GoFundMe campaign for the staff.) Hundreds of thousands of people in the service and entertainment industries—from bartenders to the “swing” theatre actors who pride themselves on leaping into whatever role has been left open by an unwell lead—are out of work, for a time that has no known limit.There are, as well, the small, crushing disappointments that, though reasonably lost in the larger life-and-death clamor, are very real to the people they have happened to. The actress Ilana Levine had just opened in a new play, “The Perplexed,” by Richard Greenberg—a comeback of sorts for her—when all theatres, concert venues, and night clubs were closed. “You know, I had been on Broadway a lot when I was younger,” she said. “But then came L.A. and children. . . . And out of the blue I got this call to do this play of Richard’s, with the idea that, after all this time, I’d be back on the stage in New York, which I missed desperately. So all of these things I’d been dreaming of happened, and with it came so much fear and anxiety: ‘Can I make it work?’ ” She laughed at the idea of what fear and anxiety meant a few days earlier—having too much to memorize.
“The play is about family and struggle and old hurts and people having to be, in this sort of Sartre way, perpetually closed off in the space of one room with each other,” she continued. “So now the play and the reality are one, in ways I could never have imagined. Except I don’t get to do it in this world, with an audience.” The evocative set, designed by Santo Loquasto, of a New York town house, has not yet been struck from the Manhattan Theatre Club stage, she said. “So all of us keep thinking of that set, and how we want to get to it, be on it—the company, even without an audience, just to work together on it. Actors are not people who know how to isolate. We are suddenly physically frozen at this moment.”
The young musical-theatre actress Abena Mensah-Bonsu, cast in a significant role in a new show, “Nollywood Dreams,” had been commuting in from New Jersey, feeling all the ancient excitement of a big break. Now she sits at home and is eager to get back to the theatre. “Acting is the opposite of social distancing,” she said, echoing Levine. “Even if you’re introverted, as I am. So, when we sit in place, we long to be engaged with someone.” On Broadway, the theatres are empty, but the lights have still been on, as though the theatres were willing the shows to continue.
One irony of this pandemic is that, while it exposes the gaps in our social and medical safety nets, it also punishes people for behaving well. Communities with the healthiest intergenerational relationships seem to be at greater risk than those that sequester older people in nursing homes. Italy, one study shows, has been so hard hit by the coronavirus because there the young and the old have the beautiful habit of mingling together. Grandparents are accustomed to being with their grandchildren.In the days before the shutdown, the Lubavitcher community in Crown Heights became a virus hot spot, perhaps because the Hasidic sects, too, have kept at bay the alienation of generations that is so much part of American life. “Do you want to know how things appear, or how they are?” Mica Soffer, the editor of a Jewish news Web site, said that Sunday. “It’s been extremely hectic. As far as the community itself, I guess we weren’t so much prepared. It’s in China, it’s in Europe—we didn’t realize how quickly it would get here. Our community is so connected. We live in an urban area—you’re always around people. It’s Brooklyn, after all! Late last week, I had a shiva call, a wedding, and an engagement party. Everyone has a million things they need to go to—families are large.”She went on, “Most families here have elderly parents and grandparents—it’s a big part of life. Purim was last weekend—you’re talking about people being exposed. We didn’t realize at first. We didn’t know. There was a lot of contact. Very much part of our day-to-day life—especially with the men going to shul three times a day, and Torah classes every single day. One of the things that’s so amazing is that everybody kicked into high gear to put up yeshivas online within two days.
“In Crown Heights, davening still goes on, it always has to be there, within the realm of whatever number the health department says. No more than ten people in Israel. A rabbi told me, ‘Faith is not the absence of reason.’ We don’t give up on the interventions. God blessed us with doctors, not as something apart from us but as something there to help us. My father told me this: God is in charge, and God watches over us. Every time I get really panicky, there’s that sense that God is taking care of us. I’m an anxious person and it’s not easy. But I have to access that. Rabbi Nachum said, ‘Gam zu l’tovah’—‘This, too, shall be for the good.’ ” On Tuesday, rabbis closed the Crown Heights synagogues. “Now,” Soffer said, “many people are praying outdoors, six feet away from each other.”
The self-exile of the very wealthy from the city that made them rich is hardly uniform. A feeling of social responsibility, of solidarity, is embodied by Elizabeth Smith, who is the head of the Central Park Conservancy. She and her husband, Rick Cotton, the head of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, became among the first public officials in New York known to have covid-19. Now all she wants is to get back to the Park.
“I’ve never been in the tabloids before,” Smith, who is in her late sixties, said from her Manhattan apartment, where she was convalescing, and in her second week of seclusion. “In my family, you’re in the paper when you’re born and again when you marry. And the fact of the matter is that the virus gets . . . very virulent. I wasn’t feeling well on Saturday—all the typical flu symptoms, like a fever, but a relatively mild case of the flu for me. I stayed in bed, had my moments of panic, but I was fortunate to be paired with Rick, who was positive but asymptomatic. And I was well enough to stay in touch with the Conservancy and find out how everyone was faring—the morale and the health of the staff—and the Park itself, too. It has the tremendous power of offering peace and respite to people. The amazing people are the city workers. They keep showing up. They show up at work and they do the right thing. There are lots of selfless people, lots of people who take public service seriously.”
Even if she hadn’t fallen ill, Smith said, she would have wanted to stay in the city. “We have a big responsibility to the public,” she said. “You know, when Frederick Law Olmsted made the Park, it was just with that in mind: most people don’t even have a chance of leaving New York. It’s for all those people who couldn’t leave the city, to get to the Adirondacks.” Smith is the chair of the Library of America, which published a collection of Olmsted’s essays, letters, and other reflections in 2015. “Believe it or not, I never quite got through Olmsted’s writings,” she admitted. “He was a genius and a beautiful writer.” She is now immersed in the volume: “I’m not in the Park but I can stay in the Park.”
Emptiness and absence contradict the very concept of the city. The point of a city is social proximity; to see people deliberately spaced out, like the walking but never intersecting figures in a Giacometti, is to see what cities aren’t. In a historical sense, cities are always organisms of a kind, like coral reefs, where a lot of people come together to barter spices and exchange ideas and find mates, and endure the recurrent damage of infectious disease.The question is whether the current upheavals could somehow alter New York forever. Some beloved places may stay closed. Some new practices may be perpetuated. The digital trends toward disaggregation of experience may get a boost, at a cost to everything we love about the city. There’s an eerie gap between the raucous and argumentative world of the Internet and the silence of the streets. Outside, new patterns of wider spacing and greater caution assert themselves: Is that masked man contagious and to be avoided by crossing the street? Did we forget to sanitize after touching the gate to the park? And, with them, the terrible self-monitoring of plague times: Do I feel normal? Is my temperature high? Feel my forehead.Until last week, no one ever thought that Camus’s “The Plague” was about the plague. It was the text through which generations of high schoolers were taught how not to read literally. It was always taken as a fable or an allegory, specifically of the German occupation of France. The people in Camus’s plague town of Oran did not in any way deserve to suffer from the disease, but the crisis revealed all the various human responses of cowardice, denial, and courage. The point was not that actual plagues tell us much, but that the pressure of extreme and unexpected events forces the flaws in our common character to the surface.
This plague has proved an equal-opportunity evil, striking theocratic states like Iran and authoritarian ones like China, and more open ones like our own and those in Europe. Some hard balance of authority and openness is obviously essential to going on at all, but this is not news. We have always known that having the confidence to act, and the clarity to see if the way we act is good, is vital to our continued existence. Our continued existence! It used to be a kind of metaphor, really meaning “the easy perpetuation of our familiar way of life.” No more.
By midweek, even the dance of wariness was muted: New Yorkers, largely sheltering in place, still allowed themselves to walk their dogs, but walked them alone on each street, with the next dog and owner at least a stoplight away. The dogs, puzzled not to have the greetings of others of their animal kind, sniffed doggedly in the dark, though now only at the scent of their solitary owners.
www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/03/30/the-coronavirus-cri...
Note: Michell Revalski, an astronomer who studies these objects, has left comments on some of my images to add further details about what we're looking at! See here, or just scroll down.
Another view detailing the structures present near the center of a galaxy with an active galactic nucleus (AGN). Again a spiral galaxy, although the arms seem to have blended together to form some nesting ring structures. This Hubble imagery only shows the center ring.
I have to say that I am enjoying this focus on AGN even though they are smaller, fainter, noisier images. Though I am having some difficulty understanding them, I am beginning to see their profundity. I imagine the light propagating out from them over many thousands of years, similarly to local light echoes, but on a much larger scale. There are many images of quasar ionization echoes out there, like Hanny's Voorwerp, and those should represent something like this object, but at a time much later when the nuclear accretion has ceased and the AGN has remained quiet for some time. I think, however, any echo from a galaxy like this one might not make it far out, and instead be attenuated by whatever gas and dust it runs into. Point the poles of the accretion disk another way, and the light might not interact much with the disk of the galaxy at all, right? The Universe might operate simply, but supplies us with so many variations on a theme, that sometimes it seems very confusing.
That said, if these are similar to quasar ionization echoes like Hanny's Voorwerp, I wonder if I ought to be making these green. I find it hard to say. Maybe they aren't as green when they are up close to the AGN. I keep ending up with blue tendrils, but that probably has a lot to do with the limited set of filters I have to work with. They do however seem to be very bright in near-ultraviolet light, and are also fairly bright in x-rays, as well. This makes me suspect that blue might more appropriately represent them. Hmm. Who could I even bother to ask such a question of?
A version featuring x-ray data from Chandra is here: flic.kr/p/24vJJUc
Data from the following proposals were used to create this image:
Near Ultraviolet Imaging of Seyfert Galaxies: Understanding the Starburst-AGN Connection
High-Spatial Resolution Imaging and Polarization of AGN
Red: WFPC2 / PC F675W
Green: WFPC2 / PC F569W
Blue: ACS / HRC F330W
North is up.