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We have had a months worth of rain in the past two days and figured we would take advantage of this beautiful sunny day. Well it appears Mother Nature was still in the healing phase and we though we could get through. At least my wife is a trooper and we had a good laugh over hot chocolate when we got home.
A Igreja São Francisco de Assis da Pampulha, em Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, foi inaugurada em 1943. O projeto arquitetônico da igreja é de Oscar Niemeyer, e o cálculo estrutural do engenheiro Joaquim Cardoso.
The Church of São Francisco de Assis da Pampulha, in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, was inaugurated in 1943. The architectural design of the church is by Oscar Niemeyer, and the structural calculation of the engineer Joaquim Cardoso .
Information From: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooklyn_bridge
Brooklyn Bridge
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For other uses, see Brooklyn Bridge (disambiguation).
Brooklyn Bridge
Carries Motor vehicles (cars only)
Elevated trains (until 1944)
Streetcars (until 1950)
Pedestrians, and bicycles
Crosses East River
Locale New York City (Manhattan–Brooklyn)
Maintained by New York City Department of Transportation
Designer John Augustus Roebling
Design Suspension/Cable-stay Hybrid
Total length 5,989 feet (1825 m)[1]
Width 85 feet (26 m)
Longest span 1,595 feet 6 inches (486.3 m)
Clearance below 135 feet (41 m) at mid-span
Opened May 24, 1883
Toll Free both ways
Daily traffic 123,781 (2008)[2]
Coordinates 40°42′20″N 73°59′47″W / 40.70569°N 73.99639°W / 40.70569; -73.99639 (Brooklyn Bridge)Coordinates: 40°42′20″N 73°59′47″W / 40.70569°N 73.99639°W / 40.70569; -73.99639 (Brooklyn Bridge)
Brooklyn Bridge
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
U.S. National Historic Landmark
NYC Landmark
Built/Founded: 1883
Architectural style(s): Gothic
Added to NRHP: 1966[3]
Designated NHL: January 29, 1964[4]
NRHP Reference#: 75001237
The Brooklyn Bridge is one of the oldest suspension bridges in the United States. Completed in 1883, it connects the New York City boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn by spanning the East River. With a main span of 1,595.5 feet (486.3 m), it was the longest suspension bridge in the world from its opening until 1903, and the first steel-wire suspension bridge.
Originally referred to as the New York and Brooklyn Bridge, it was dubbed the Brooklyn Bridge in a January 25, 1867 letter to the editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle,[5] and formally so named by the city government in 1915. Since its opening, it has become an iconic part of the New York skyline. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1964[4][6][7] and a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark in 1972.[8]
Contents [hide]
1 Construction
2 Pedestrian and vehicular access
2.1 Notable events
2.2 100th anniversary celebrations
2.3 125th anniversary celebrations
3 Cultural significance
4 References
5 Further reading
6 External links
[edit] Construction
The Brooklyn Bridge was initially designed by German immigrant John Augustus Roebling, who had previously designed and constructed shorter suspension bridges, such as Roebling's Delaware Aqueduct in Lackawaxen, Pennsylvania, and the John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge in Cincinnati, Ohio.
While conducting surveys for the bridge project, Roebling sustained a crush injury to his foot when a ferry pinned it against a piling. After amputation of his crushed toes he developed a tetanus infection which left him incapacitated and soon resulted in his death, not long after he had placed his 32 year-old son Washington Roebling in charge of the project.[9]
Washington Roebling also suffered a paralyzing injury as a result of decompression sickness shortly after the beginning of construction on January 3, 1870.[10] This condition, first called "caisson disease" by the project physician Dr. Andrew Smith, afflicted many of the workers working within the caissons.[11][12] After Roebling's debilitating condition left him unable to physically supervise the construction firsthand, his wife Emily Warren Roebling stepped in and provided the critical written link between her husband and the engineers on-site.[13] Under her husband's guidance, Emily had studied higher mathematics, the calculations of catenary curves, the strengths of materials, bridge specifications, and the intricacies of cable construction.[14][15][16] She spent the next 11 years assisting Washington Roebling helping to supervise the bridge's construction.
When iron probes underneath the caisson found the bedrock to be even deeper than expected, Roebling halted construction due to the increased risk of decompression sickness. He deemed the aggregate overlying the bedrock 30 feet (9 m) below it to be firm enough to support the tower base.[17]
The Brooklyn Bridge was completed thirteen years later and was opened for use on May 24, 1883. The opening ceremony was attended by several thousand people and many ships were present in the East Bay for the occasion. President Chester A. Arthur and New York Mayor Franklin Edson crossed the bridge to celebratory cannon fire and were greeted by Brooklyn Mayor Seth Low when they reached the Brooklyn-side tower. Arthur shook hands with Washington Roebling at the latter's home, after the ceremony. Roebling was unable to attend the ceremony (and in fact rarely visited the site again), but held a celebratory banquet at his house on the day of the bridge opening. Further festivity included the performance of a band, gunfire from ships, and a fireworks display.[18]
On that first day, a total of 1,800 vehicles and 150,300 people crossed what was then the only land passage between Manhattan and Brooklyn. Emily Warren Roebling was the first to cross the bridge. The bridge's main span over the East River is 1,595 feet 6 inches (486.3 m). The bridge cost $15.5 million to build and approximately 27 people died during its construction.[19]
One week after the opening, on May 30, 1883, a rumor that the Bridge was going to collapse caused a stampede, which crushed and killed at least twelve people.[20] On May 17, 1884, P. T. Barnum helped to squelch doubts about the bridge's stability—while publicizing his famous circus—when one of his most famous attractions, Jumbo, led a parade of 21 elephants over the Brooklyn Bridge.[21][22][23][24]
Plan of one tower for the Brooklyn Bridge, 1867At the time it opened, and for several years, it was the longest suspension bridge in the world—50% longer than any previously built — and it has become a treasured landmark. Since the 1980s, it has been floodlit at night to highlight its architectural features. The towers are built of limestone, granite, and Rosendale cement. Their architectural style is neo-Gothic, with characteristic pointed arches above the passageways through the stone towers. The paint scheme of the bridge is "Brooklyn Bridge Tan", although is has been argued that the original paint was "Rawlins Red".[25]
At the time the bridge was built, the aerodynamics of bridge building had not been worked out. Bridges were not tested in wind tunnels until the 1950s—well after the collapse of the original Tacoma Narrows Bridge (Galloping Gertie) in 1940. It is therefore fortunate that the open truss structure supporting the deck is by its nature less subject to aerodynamic problems. Roebling designed a bridge and truss system that was six times as strong as he thought it needed to be. Because of this, the Brooklyn Bridge is still standing when many of the bridges built around the same time have vanished into history and been replaced. This is also in spite of the substitution of inferior quality wire in the cabling supplied by the contractor J. Lloyd Haigh—by the time it was discovered, it was too late to replace the cabling that had already been constructed. Roebling determined that the poorer wire would leave the bridge four rather than six times as strong as necessary, so it was eventually allowed to stand, with the addition of 250 cables. Diagonal cables were installed from the towers to the deck, intended to stiffen the bridge. They turned out to be unnecessary, but were kept for their distinctive beauty.
After the collapse in 2007 of the I-35W highway bridge in the city of Minneapolis, increased public attention has been brought to bear on the condition of bridges across the US, and it has been reported that the Brooklyn Bridge approach ramps received a rating of "poor" at its last inspection.[26] According to a NYC Department of Transportation spokesman, "The poor rating it received does not mean it is unsafe. Poor means there are some components that have to be rehabilitated." A $725 million project to replace the approaches and repaint the bridge was scheduled to begin in 2009.[27]
The construction of the Brooklyn Bridge is detailed in the 1978 book The Great Bridge by David McCullough[13] and Brooklyn Bridge (1981), the first PBS documentary film ever made by Ken Burns.[28] Burns drew heavily on McCullough's book for the film and used him as narrator.[29] It is also described in Seven Wonders of the Industrial World, a BBC docudrama series with accompanying book.
[edit] Pedestrian and vehicular access
Cross section diagramAt various times, the bridge has carried horse-drawn and trolley traffic; at present, it has six lanes for motor vehicles, with a separate walkway along the centerline for pedestrians and bicycles. Due to the roadway's height (11 ft (3.4 m) posted) and weight (6,000 lb (2,700 kg) posted) restrictions, commercial vehicles and buses are prohibited from using this bridge. The two inside traffic lanes once carried elevated trains of the BMT from Brooklyn points to a terminal at Park Row via Sands Street. Streetcars ran on what are now the two center lanes (shared with other traffic) until the elevated lines stopped using the bridge in 1944, when they moved to the protected center tracks. In 1950 the streetcars also stopped running, and the bridge was rebuilt to carry six lanes of automobile traffic.
The Brooklyn Bridge is accessible from the Brooklyn entrances of Tillary/Adams Streets, Sands/Pearl Streets, and Exit 28B of the eastbound Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. In Manhattan, motor cars can enter from either direction of the FDR Drive, Park Row, Chambers/Centre Streets, and Pearl/Frankfort Streets. Pedestrian access to the bridge from the Brooklyn side is from either Tillary/Adams Streets (in between the auto entrance/exit), or a staircase on Prospect St between Cadman Plaza East and West. In Manhattan, the pedestrian walkway is accessible from the end of Centre Street, or through the unpaid south staircase of Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall IRT subway station.
View from the pedestrian walkway. The bridge's cable arrangement forms a distinct weblike pattern.The Brooklyn Bridge has a wide pedestrian walkway open to walkers and cyclists, in the center of the bridge and higher than the automobile lanes. While the bridge has always permitted the passage of pedestrians across its span, its role in allowing thousands to cross takes on a special importance in times of difficulty when usual means of crossing the East River have become unavailable.
During transit strikes by the Transport Workers Union in 1980 and 2005, the bridge was used by people commuting to work, with Mayors Koch and Bloomberg crossing the bridge as a gesture to the affected public.[30][31]
Following the 1965, 1977 and 2003 Blackouts and most famously after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center, the bridge was used by people in Manhattan to leave the city after subway service was suspended. The massive numbers of people on the bridge could not have been anticipated by the original designer, yet John Roebling designed it with three separate systems managing even unanticipated structural stresses. The bridge has a suspension system, a diagonal stay system, and a stiffening truss. "Roebling himself famously said if anything happens to one of [his] systems, 'The bridge may sag, but it will not fall.'"[32] The movement of large numbers of people on a bridge creates pedestrian oscillations or "sway" as the crowd lifts one foot after another, some falling inevitably in synchronized cadences. The natural sway motion of people walking causes small sideways oscillations in a bridge, which in turn cause people on the bridge to sway in step, increasing the amplitude of the bridge oscillations and continually reinforcing the effect. High-density traffic of this nature causes a bridge to appear to move erratically or "to wobble" as happened at opening of the London Millennium Footbridge in 2000.[33]
Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper c.1883[edit] Notable events
First jumper
The first person to jump from the bridge was Robert E. Odlum on May 19, 1885. He struck the water at an angle and died shortly thereafter from internal injuries.[34] Steve Brodie was the most famous jumper, or self-proclaimed jumper (in 1886).
Bungee jump
On June 1993, following 13 reconnoiters inside the metal structure, and with the help of a mountain guide, Thierry Devaux performed (illegally) eight acrobatic bungee jumps above the East River close to the Brooklyn pier, in the early morning. He used an electric winch between each acrobatic figure.[35]
1994 Brooklyn Bridge shooting
Main article: Brooklyn Bridge Shooting
On March 1, 1994, Lebanese-born Rashid Baz opened fire on a van carrying members of the Chabad-Lubavitch Orthodox Jewish Movement, striking sixteen-year-old student Ari Halberstam and three others traveling on the bridge.[36] Halberstam died five days later from his wounds. Baz was apparently acting out of revenge for the Hebron massacre of 29 Muslims by Baruch Goldstein that had taken place days earlier on February 25, 1994. Baz was convicted of murder and sentenced to a 141-year prison term. After initially classifying the murder as one committed out of road rage, the Justice Department reclassified the case in 2000 as a terrorist attack. The entrance ramp to the bridge on the Manhattan side was named the Ari Halberstam Memorial Ramp in memory of the victim.[37]
The 2003 plot
In 2003, truck driver Iyman Faris was sentenced to about 20 years in prison for providing material support to Al-Qaeda, after an earlier plot to destroy the bridge by cutting through its support wires with blowtorches was thwarted through information the National Security Agency uncovered through wiretapped phone conversations and interrogation of Al-Qaeda militants.[38]
2006 bunker discovery
In 2006, a Cold War era bunker was found by city workers near the East River shoreline of Manhattan's Lower East Side. The bunker, hidden within the masonry anchorage, still contained the emergency supplies that were being stored for a potential nuclear attack by the Soviet Union.[39]
[edit] 100th anniversary celebrations
The centennary celebrations on May 24, 1983, saw a cavalcade of cars crossing the bridge, led by President Ronald Reagan. A flotilla of ships visited the harbor, parades were held, and in the evening the sky over the bridge was illuminated by Grucci fireworks.[40] The Brooklyn Museum exhibited a selection of the original drawings made for the bridge's construction, some by Washington Roebling himself.
[edit] 125th anniversary celebrations
Beginning on May 22, 2008, festivities were held over a five-day period to celebrate the 125th anniversary of the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge. The events kicked off with a live performance of the Brooklyn Philharmonic in Empire–Fulton Ferry State Park, followed by special lighting of the bridge's towers and a fireworks display.[41] Other events held during the 125th anniversary celebrations, which coincided with the Memorial Day weekend, included a film series, historical walking tours, information tents, a series of lectures and readings, a bicycle tour of Brooklyn, a miniature golf course featuring Brooklyn icons, and other musical and dance performances.[42]
Just before the anniversary celebrations, the Telectroscope, which created a video link between New York and London, was installed on the Brooklyn side of the bridge. The installation lasted for a few weeks and permitted viewers in New York to see people looking into a matching telectroscope in front of London's Tower Bridge.[43] A newly renovated pedestrian connection to DUMBO was also unveiled before the anniversary celebrations.[44]
[edit] Cultural significance
Contemporaries marveled at what technology was capable of and the bridge became a symbol of the optimism of the time. John Perry Barlow wrote in the late 20th century of the "literal and genuinely religious leap of faith" embodied in the Brooklyn Bridge ... "the Brooklyn Bridge required of its builders faith in their ability to control technology."[45]
References to "selling the Brooklyn Bridge" abound in American culture, sometimes as examples of rural gullibility but more often in connection with an idea that strains credulity. For example, "If you believe that, I've got a bridge to sell you."[citation needed] References are often nowadays more oblique, such as "I could sell you some lovely riverside property in Brooklyn ...".[citation needed] George C. Parker and William McCloundy are two early 20th-century con-men who had (allegedly) successfully perpetrated this scam on unwitting tourists.[46] The 1949 Bugs Bunny cartoon Bowery Bugs is a joking reference to Bugs "selling" a story of the Brooklyn Bridge to a naive tourist.
In his second book The Bridge, Hart Crane begins with a poem entitled "Proem: To Brooklyn Bridge." The bridge was a source of inspiration for Crane and he owned different apartments specifically to have different views of the bridge.
[edit] References
^ "NYCDOT Bridges Information". New York City Department of Transportation. www.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/bridges/bridges.shtml#brooklyn. Retrieved 2008-08-23.
^ "New York City Bridge Traffic Volumes 2008" (PDF). New York City Department of Transportation. March 2010. p. 63. www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/bridgetrafrpt08.pdf. Retrieved 2010-07-10.
^ "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. 2007-01-23. www.nr.nps.gov/.
^ a b "Brooklyn Bridge". National Historic Landmark summary listing. National Park Service. tps.cr.nps.gov/nhl/detail.cfm?ResourceId=376&Resource....
^ E.P.D. (January 25, 1867). "Bridging the East River – Another Project". The Brooklyn Daily Eagle: p. 2. www.brooklynpubliclibrary.org/eagle/. Retrieved 2007-11-26.
^ "The Brooklyn Bridge", February 24, 1975, by James B. Armstrong and S. Sydney Bradford "National Register of Historic Places Inventory-Nomination"]. National Park Service. 1975-02-24. pdfhost.focus.nps.gov/docs/NHLS/Text/66000523.pdf "The Brooklyn Bridge", February 24, 1975, by James B. Armstrong and S. Sydney Bradford].
^ The Brooklyn Bridge—Accompanying three photos, from 1975. "National Register of Historic Places Inventory-Nomination"]. National Park Service. 1975-02-24. pdfhost.focus.nps.gov/docs/NHLS/Photos/66000523.pdf The Brooklyn Bridge—Accompanying three photos, from 1975.].
^ "Brooklyn Bridge". ASCE Metropolitan Section. www.ascemetsection.org/content/view/339/872/. Retrieved 2010-06-30.
^ "THE BUILDING OF THE BRIDGE.; ITS COST AND THE DIFFICULTIES MET WITH-- DETAILS OF THE HISTORY OF A GREAT ENGINEERING TRIUMPH.". The New York Times. May 24, 1883. query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9F01E5DC1431E433A.... Retrieved 2009-10-27.
^ Butler WP (2004). "Caisson disease during the construction of the Eads and Brooklyn Bridges: A review". Undersea Hyperb Med 31 (4): 445–59. PMID 15686275. archive.rubicon-foundation.org/4028. Retrieved 2008-06-19.
^ Smith, Andrew Heermance (1886). The Physiological, Pathological and Therapeutical Effects of Compressed Air. Detroit: George S. Davis. books.google.com/?id=hLq981_A5bMC&printsec=frontcover.... Retrieved 2009-04-17.
^ Acott, Chris (1999). "A brief history of diving and decompression illness.". South Pacific Underwater Medicine Society journal 29 (2). ISSN 0813-1988. OCLC 16986801. archive.rubicon-foundation.org/6004. Retrieved 2009-04-17.
^ a b Amazon.com: The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge: J'aime Drisdelle: Books
^ Weigold, Marilyn (1984). Silent Builder: Emily Warren Roebling and the Brooklyn Bridge. Associated Faculty Press.
^ McCullough, David (1983). The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge. New York: Simon & Schuster. p. 421.
^ "Emily Warren Roebling". American Society of Civil Engineers. www.asce.org/PPLContent.aspx?id=2147487328. Retrieved 2010-06-30.
^ "GlassSteelandStone: Brooklyn Bridge-tower rests on sand". www.glasssteelandstone.com/BuildingDetail/435.php. Retrieved 2007-02-20.
^ Reeves, Thomas C. (1975). Gentleman Boss. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. pp. 359–360. ISBN 0-394-46095-2.
^ "Brooklyn Daily Eagle 1841–1902 Online". Archived from the original on 2007-11-14. web.archive.org/web/20071114135249/http://eagle.brooklynp.... Retrieved 2007-11-23.
^ "Dead on the New Bridge; Fatal Crush at the Western Approach". The New York Times. May 31, 1883. query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=980DE3DA1431E433A.... Retrieved 2010-02-20.
^ Bildner, Phil (2004). Twenty-One Elephants. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0689870116.
^ Prince, April Jones (2005). Twenty-One Elephants and Still Standing. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 061844887X.
^ "P.T. Barnum – MSN Encarta". Archived from the original on 2009-10-31. www.webcitation.org/5kwQPajtQ.
^ Strausbaugh, John (November 9, 2007). "When Barnum Took Manhattan". The New York Times. www.nytimes.com/2007/11/09/arts/09expl.html. Retrieved 2008-09-21.
^ Gary Buiso, New York Post (May 25, 2010). "A True Cover Up. Brooklyn Bridge Paint Job Glosses over History". www.nypost.com/p/news/local/brooklyn/true_cover_up_brookl.... Retrieved October 23, 2010.
^ Chan, Sewell (August 2, 2007). "Brooklyn Bridge Is One of 3 With Poor Rating". The New York Times. cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/08/02/brooklyn-bridge-is-.... Retrieved 2007-09-10.
^ "Brooklyn Bridge called 'safe' – DOT says span is okay despite getting a 'poor' rating". Courier-Life Publications. www.baynewsbrooklyn.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=18685076&.... Retrieved 2007-08-12.
^ Burns, Ken. "Why I Decided to Make Brooklyn Bridge". Public Broadcasting Service. www.pbs.org/kenburns/brooklynbridge/about/. Retrieved 2010-02-20.
^ "Burns, Ken – U.S. Documentary Film Maker". The Museum of Broadcast Communications. www.museum.tv/eotvsection.php?entrycode=burnsken. Retrieved 2010-02-20.
^ Quindlen, Anna (April 2, 1980). "Koch Faces Day Ebulliently; He Looks Well Rested". The New York Times. select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F3061EFB395C1272.... Retrieved 2010-06-30.
^ Rutenberg, Jim (December 21, 2005). "On Foot, on Bridge and at City Hall, Bloomberg Is Irate". The New York Times. www.nytimes.com/2005/12/21/nyregion/nyregionspecial3/21ma.... Retrieved 2010-06-30.
^ Julavits, Robert (August 26, 2003). "Point of Collapse". The Village Voice. www.villagevoice.com/2003-08-26/news/point-of-collapse/. Retrieved 2010-02-20.
^ Steven Henry, Strogatz (2003). Sync: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order. New York: Hyperion. pp. 174–175, 312, 320. ISBN 0786868449.
^ "Odlum's Leap to Death". The New York Times: p. 1. May 20, 1885. query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=990DE4D91739E533A.... Retrieved 2008-04-15.
^ "Brooklyn Bridge". SunnyDream. www.sunnydream.info/index.php?page=brooklyn. Retrieved 2010-06-25.
^ Sexton, Joe (March 2, 1994). "4 Hasidic Youths Hurt in Brooklyn Bridge Shooting". The New York Times. www.nytimes.com/1994/03/02/nyregion/4-hasidic-youths-hurt.... Retrieved 2010-06-30.
^ "In Memoriam". Ari Halberstam Memorial Site. www.arihalberstam.com/in-memoriam/. Retrieved 2010-06-30.
^ "Iyman Faris". GlobalSecurity.org. www.globalsecurity.org/security/profiles/iyman_faris.htm. Retrieved 2010-06-30.
^ Lovgren, Stefan (March 24, 2006). "Cold War "Time Capsule" Found in Brooklyn Bridge". National Geographic. news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/03/0324_060324_broo.... Retrieved 2010-02-20.
^ NYC Roads. "The Brooklyn Bridge". www.nycroads.com/crossings/brooklyn/. Retrieved October 23, 2010.
^ Burke, Kerry; Hutchinson, Bill (May 23, 2008). "Brooklyn Bridge turns 125 with a bang". Daily News (New York). www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/brooklyn/2008/05/22/2008-05-.... Retrieved 2009-08-01.
^ "Brooklyn Bridge 125th Anniversary Celebration". ASCE Metropolitan Section. www.ascemetsection.org/content/view/121/830/. Retrieved 2009-08-01.
^ Ryzik, Melena (May 21, 2008). "Telescope Takes a Long View, to London". The New York Times. www.nytimes.com/2008/05/21/arts/design/21tele.html. Retrieved 2009-08-01.
^ Farmer, Ann (May 21, 2008). "This Way to Brooklyn, This Way". The New York Times. cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/21/welcome-to-dumbo-it.... Retrieved 2009-08-01.
^ Cultural Significance
^ Cohen, Gabriel (November 27, 2005). "For You, Half Price". The New York Times. www.nytimes.com/2005/11/27/nyregion/thecity/27brid.htm. Retrieved 2010-02-20.
[edit] Further reading
Cadbury, Deborah. (2004), Dreams of Iron and Steel. New York: HarperCollins. ISBN 0-00-716307-X
Haw, Richard. (2005). The Brooklyn Bridge: A Cultural History. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. ISBN 0-8135-3587-5
Haw, Richard. (2008). Art of the Brooklyn Bridge: A Visual History. New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-95386-3
McCullough, David. (1972). The Great Bridge. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-671-21213-3
Strogatz, Steven. (2003). Sync: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order. New York: Hyperion books. 10-ISBN 0-7868-6844-9; 13-ISBN 978-0-7868-6844-5 (cloth) [2nd ed., Hyperion, 2004. 10-ISBN 0-7868-8721-4; 13-ISBN 978-0-7868-8721-7 (paper)]
Strogartz, Steven, Daniel M. Abrams, Allan McRobie, Bruno Eckhardt, and Edward Ott. et al. (2005). "Theoretical mechanics: Crowd synchrony on the Millennium Bridge," Nature, Vol. 438, pp, 43–44.link to Nature articleMillennium Bridge opening day video illustrating "crowd synchrony" oscillations
Trachtenberg, Alan. (1965). Brooklyn Bridge: Fact and Symbol. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0226811158 [2nd ed., 1979, ISBN 0-226-81115-8 (paper)]
[edit] External links
New York City portal
Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Brooklyn Bridge
360° Interactive panorama from the top of the Brooklyn Bridge
The Brooklyn Bridge: A Study in Greatness
NYCroads.com – Brooklyn Bridge
Transportation Alternatives Fiboro Bridges – Brooklyn Bridge
The story of Brooklyn Bridge – by CBS Forum
Panorama of Brooklyn Bridge 1899 – Extreme Photo Constructions
Structurae: Brooklyn Bridge
Great Buildings entry for the Brooklyn Bridge
American Society of Civil Engineers
Railroad Extra – Brooklyn Bridge and its Railway
Images of the Brooklyn Bridge from the Brooklyn Museum
Brooklyn Bridge Photo Gallery with a Flash VR 360 of the Brooklyn Bridge Pedestrian Walkway
Opening Ceremonies of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge, May 24, 1883 at Project Gutenberg
Brooklyn Bridge at Historical Marker Database
fourth calculation today feb 14th for the big bang at Luzern feb 16th 5 am
#draw365 #artjournal #pencil by @peter_seelig
Countdown bis Urknall
1 Tag 6 Stunden 22 Minuten 55 Sekunden #draw365 #luzern #schweiz
It is out of this understanding of rebellion as salvation for all that the most courageous acts of solidarity are born. One is reminded of Simone Weil, whom Camus lauded as “the only great spirit of our times” and who, as she lay dying of tuberculosis, defied her doctors’ orders by refusing to eat more than the rations her compatriots in Nazi-occupied France were given. Invoking such heroes, Camus writes:
This insane generosity is the generosity of rebellion, which unhesitatingly gives the strength of its love and without a moment’s delay refuses injustice. Its merit lies in making no calculations, distributing everything it possesses to life and to living men. It is thus that it is prodigal in its gifts to men to come. Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present. […] Rebellion proves in this way that it is the very movement of life and that it cannot be denied without renouncing life. Its purest outburst, on each occasion, gives birth to existence. Thus it is love and fecundity or it is nothing at all. At the end of this tunnel of darkness, however, there is inevitably a light, which we already divine and for which we only have to fight to ensure its coming. All of us, among the ruins, are preparing a renaissance beyond the limits of nihilism. But few of us know it. In a sentiment of especial poignancy today, as Europe struggles to welcome the world’s refugees and displaced families so ungenerously referred to as a “crisis,” Camus adds:
In the light, the earth remains our first and our last love. Our brothers are breathing under the same sky as we; justice is a living thing. Now is born that strange joy which helps one live and die… With this joy, through long struggle, we shall remake the soul of our time, and a Europe which will exclude nothing.
The Rebel is a magnificent and acutely timely read in its totality. Complement it with Susan Sontag on courage and resistance and Nietzsche on what it really means to be a free spirit, then revisit Camus on strength of character, happiness, unhappiness, and our self-imposed prisons, the art of awareness, and the touching letter of gratitude he sent to his childhood teacher shortly after winning the Nobel Prize.
Building on Nietzsche’s ideas about the fine line between constructive and destructive rebellion — ideas Camus sees as “born of abundance and fullness of spirit” — he summarizes this orientation of mind: One must accept the unacceptable and hold to the untenable… From absolute despair will spring infinite joy, from blind servitude, unbounded freedom. To be free is, precisely, to abolish ends. The innocence of the ceaseless change of things, as soon as one consents to it, represents the maximum liberty. The free mind willingly accepts what is necessary. Nietzsche’s most profound concept is that the necessity of phenomena, if it is absolute, without rifts, does not imply any kind of restraint. Total acceptance of total necessity is his paradoxical definition of freedom. The question “free of what?” is thus replaced by “free for what?” Liberty coincides with heroism. It is the asceticism of the great man, “the bow bent to the breaking-point.” In a passage of remarkable resonance today, when we are confronting a wave of violence so strangely divorced from everything the past has taught us — those countless bloody lessons in the perennial fact that violence is always without victors — Camus considers the only adequate role of history:
History … is only an opportunity that must be rendered fruitful by a vigilant rebellion. “Obsession with the harvest and indifference to history,” writes René Char admirably, “are the two extremities of my bow.” If the duration of history is not synonymous with the duration of the harvest, then history, in effect, is no more than a fleeting and cruel shadow in which man has no more part. He who dedicates himself to this history dedicates himself to nothing and, in his turn, is nothing. But he who dedicates himself to the duration of his life, to the house he builds, to the dignity of mankind, dedicates himself to the earth and reaps from it the harvest that sows its seed and sustains the world again and again. More than half a century before Rebecca Solnit’s electrifying case for the vital difference between blind optimism and hope as an act of rebellion, Camus writes: The words that reverberate for us at the confines of this long adventure of rebellion are not formulas for optimism, for which we have no possible use in the extremities of our unhappiness, but words of courage and intelligence which, on the shores of the eternal seas, even have the qualities of virtue. No possible form of wisdom today can claim to give more. Rebellion indefatigably confronts evil, from which it can only derive a new impetus. Man can master in himself everything that should be mastered. He should rectify in creation everything that can be rectified. And after he has done so, children will still die unjustly even in a perfect society. Even by his greatest effort man can only propose to diminish arithmetically the sufferings of the world. But the injustice and the suffering of the world will remain and, no matter how limited they are, they will not cease to be an outrage. Dimitri Karamazov’s cry of “Why?” will continue to resound; art and rebellion will die only with the last man.
[…]
Then we understand that rebellion cannot exist without a strange form of love. Those who find no rest in God or in history are condemned to live for those who, like themselves, cannot live: in fact, for the humiliated. The most pure form of the movement of rebellion is thus crowned with the heart-rending cry of Karamazov: if all are not saved, what good is the salvation of one only?
Why rebel if there is nothing permanent in oneself worth preserving? And yet true rebellion, Camus argues, is an act motivated by concerned with the common good rather than by self-interest: The affirmation implicit in every act of rebellion is extended to something that transcends the individual in so far as it withdraws him from his supposed solitude and provides him with a reason to act. […] An act of rebellion is not, essentially, an egoistic act. Of course, it can have egoistic motives… The rebel … demands respect for himself, of course, but only in so far as he identifies himself with a natural community. […] When he rebels, a man identifies himself with other men and so surpasses himself, and from this point of view human solidarity is metaphysical. With an eye to the osmotic relationship between construction and destruction, Camus adds: Rebellion, though apparently negative, since it creates nothing, is profoundly positive in that it reveals the part of man which must always be defended. While this essay is a particularly spirited expression of his lifelong mission to defeat nihilism, Camus uses the writings of Nietzsche — who proclaimed himself “the first perfect nihilist of Europe” — as a springboard for exploring the constructive potentiality of rebellion. He writes: Because his mind was free, Nietzsche knew that freedom of the mind is not a comfort, but an achievement to which one aspires and at long last obtains after an exhausting struggle. He knew that in wanting to consider oneself above the law, there is a great risk of finding oneself beneath the law. That is why he understood that only the mind found its real emancipation in the acceptance of new obligations. The essence of his discovery consists in saying that if the eternal law is not freedom, the absence of law is still less so.
[…]
The sum total of every possibility does not amount to liberty… Chaos is also a form of servitude. Freedom exists only in a world where what is possible is defined at the same time as what is not possible. Without law there is no freedom.
Despair, like the absurd, has opinions and desires about everything in general and nothing in particular. Silence expresses this attitude very well. But from the moment that the rebel finds his voice — even though he says nothing but “no” — he begins to desire and to judge… Not every value entails rebellion, but every act of rebellion tacitly invokes a value… Awareness, no matter how confused it may be, develops from every act of rebellion: the sudden, dazzling perception that there is something in man with which he can identify himself, even if only for a moment.
“You say you want a revolution,” the Beatles sang in 1968 as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was erecting the pillars of nonviolence on the other side of the Atlantic, “Well, you know / We all want to change the world… But when you talk about destruction / Don’t you know that you can count me out… If you want money for people with minds that hate / All I can tell you is brother you have to wait.”
Perhaps such is the curse of our species: Only in violent times do we remember, in our bones and our sinews, that hate is not a weapon of rebellion but of cowardice; that no true revolution is achieved through destruction and nihilism; that the only way to change the world is through constructive and life-affirming action. No one has made this point more persuasively and elegantly than Albert Camus (November 7, 1913–January 4, 1960) in his sublime and sublimely timely 1951 book The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt (public library).The Rebel (French: L'Homme révolté) is a 1951 book-length essay by Albert Camus, which treats both the metaphysical and the historical development of rebellion and revolution in societies, especially Western Europe. Camus relates writers and artists as diverse as Epicurus and Lucretius, Marquis de Sade, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Friedrich Nietzsche, Max Stirner, André Breton, and others in an integrated, historical portrait of man in revolt. Examining both rebellion and revolt, which may be seen as the same phenomenon in personal and social frames, Camus examines several 'countercultural' figures and movements from the history of Western thought and art, noting the importance of each in the overall development of revolutionary thought and philosophy. This work has received ongoing interest, influencing modern philosophers and authors such as Paul Berman and others.
Fred Rosen has examined the influence of ideas of Simone Weil on Camus' thinking in The Rebel. George F Selfer has analysed parallels between Camus and Friedrich Nietzsche in philosophical aesthestics
One of Camus' primary arguments in The Rebel concerns the motivation for rebellion and revolution. While the two acts - which can be interpreted from Camus' writing as states of being - are radically different in most respects, they both stem from a basic human rejection of normative justice. If human beings become disenchanted with contemporary applications of justice, Camus suggests that they rebel. This rebellion, then, is the product of a basic contradiction between the human mind's unceasing quest for clarification and the apparently meaningless nature of the world. Described by Camus as "absurd," this latter perception must be examined with what Camus terms "lucidity." Camus concludes that the absurd sensibility contradicts itself because when it claims to believe in nothing, it believes in its own protest and the value of the protester's life. Therefore, this sensibility is logically a "point of departure" that irresistibly "exceeds itself." In the inborn impulse to rebel, on the other hand, we can deduce values that enable us to determine that murder and oppression are illegitimate and conclude with "hope for a new creation."
Another prominent theme in The Rebel, which is tied to the notion of incipient rebellion, is the inevitable failure of attempts at human perfection. Through an examination of various titular revolutions, and in particular the French Revolution, Camus argues that most revolutions involved a fundamental denial of both history and transcendental values. Such revolutionaries aimed to kill God. In the French Revolution, for instance, this was achieved through the execution of Louis XVI and subsequent eradication of the divine right of kings. The subsequent rise of utopian and materialist idealism sought "the end of history." Because this end is unattainable, according to Camus, terror ensued as the revolutionaries attempted to coerce results. This culminated in the "temporary" enslaving of people in the name of their future liberation. Notably, Camus' reliance on non-secular sentiment does not involve a defense of religion; indeed, the replacement of divinely-justified morality with pragmatism simply represents Camus' apotheosis of transcendental, moral values.
A third is that of crime, as Camus discusses how rebels who get carried away lose touch with the original basis of their rebellion and offer various defenses of crime through various historical epochs.
At the end of the book, Camus espouses the possible moral superiority of the ethics and political plan of syndicalism. He grounds this politics in a wider "midday thought" which opposes love of this life, and an unrelativisable normative commitment to fellow human beings, against ideological promises of the other world, end of history, or triumph of an alleged master race.
Originally posted on Ipernity: Multiplication Table of Simple Numbers from 1 to 12, 1891.
"Multiplication Table from 1 to 12 of Simple Numbers. H. C. Barnhart, bookseller & stationer, 27 West Market St., York, Pa. Multiplication Table from 1 to 12. Designed and copy-righted 1891 by Richard Raby."
Handwritten note on the back: "Got from teacher H. D. Rebert. Jennie May Case."
A Victorian-era vovelle or wheel chart that rotates to provide students and others with a line-by-line version of a multiplication table for numbers from 1 to 12 (with calculations from 1 x 1 = 1 up to 12 x 12 = 144).
Henry C. Barnhart advertised his bookstore in York, Pa., by stamping his name and address on this wheel chart.
I'm finding the centers of the circle (8th grade geometry… I still remember it somehow!) And then I've made a table that tells me how 16's of an inch on the scale grid over this design relate to actual inches on the wall. What I really need is a ruler that has inches divided into 12ths. So on the far right you can see the conversions for actual inches.
According the first calculations before 2007 the building should cost about 77 million €. By 2013 the cost for the taxpayer amounted to 789 million €. The project should have been finshed years ago, but it still is under construction.
Description The women of the Computer Department at NACA High-Speed Flight Research Station are shown busy with test flight calculations. The "computers" under the direction of Roxanah Yancey were responsible for accurate calculations on the research test flights made at the Station. There were no mechanical computers at the station in 1949, but data was reduced by human computers. Shown in this photograph starting at the left are: Geraldine Mayer and Mary (Tut) Hedgepeth with Friden calculators on the their desks; Emily Stephens conferring with engineer John Mayer; Gertrude (Trudy) Valentine is working on an oscillograph recording reducing the data from a flight. Across the desk is Dorothy Clift Hughes using a slide rule to complete data calculations. Roxanah Yancey completes the picture as she fills out engineering requests for further data.
Credit: NASA
Image Number: E49-0053
Date: November 1949
Today the Hereios of the We're Here group are shooting rulers. I use a scale ruler to identify the true size of things shown on a plan, and occasionally to produce a drawing of a building (though I prefer to leave that to a specialist).
Dices macro, b&w. Calculate n do home works, don't take chances. In viewing this shot, try focusing on different dices, different facets, turning head...
Manuscript title: Evronot ("Rules for Calculation of the Calendar")
Manuscript summary: This manuscript contains an Evronot ("Rules for Calculation of the Calendar"). Many so-called Sifre evoronot ("Books of calculation") emerged in the 17th and 18th centuries. They can be taken as a reaction to the Gregorian calendar, introduced in 1582. Such manuscripts often depict the biblical Issachar, one of Jacob’s sons, on or near a ladder; as an attribute, he holds an hourglass in his hand. This manuscript has two such miniatures; above the first of which there is also an illustration of a waning and a waxing moon with a human face and stars. The title page depicts an ornamental architectural arch. At the end of the book, there is the familiar motif of Moses seated at a table holding the Tablets of the Law.
Origin: Germany
Period: 17th century
Image source: Zürich, Braginsky Collection, B247: Evronot ("Rules for Calculation of the Calendar") (www.e-codices.unifr.ch/en/list/one/bc/b-0247)
Here is a direct scan, un-retouched, of a spread, complete with fingerprints, and calculations for your creative use.
Enjoy and use it, just don't redistribute or sell the original as your own!
In one or two countries the date is written eccentrically, with month coming before day. Thus today's date would be 3.14.23 rather than 14.3.23. In such countries today is Pi Day.
Here the lovely Ama Pipi, a British athlete, is helping us to mark said Pi day. (I took her photo ten years ago, so she looks rather older now.)
2nd attempt with home-made camera mount... Shot on State Street, Chicago IL
(disclaimer: i wasnt really going 88)
25ml or .9 FL OZ? *Hic!* Who'sh s'cares...
We're exactly Here, by my calculations.
Hand-held & wobbled (yay!) & remote triggered strobe. Inverted & triptyched in Photoshop which I've installed on the backup as a replacement for the WhizzBang is not on the horizon.
Bottoms Up at Pelcomb Portraits.
The Dreiländereck (tri-border area) monument, also known as the Pylon (Plastik), was constructed by Wilhelm Münger and erected at the meeting point of France, Germany, and Switzerland in 1957. The calculations as well as the elevation and floor plans were provided by the mathematician Istvan Csontos, who fled from Hungary to Basel in 1956. The sculpture has the shape of a stele or pylon. It stands on a man-made spit in the River Rhine that was approved and funded by the Grand Council of Basel.
Information from: de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pylon_(Plastik)
Basel, also known as Bâle in French and Basilea in Italian, is a city in northwestern Switzerland on the Rhine. Basel is Switzerland's third-most-populous city (after Zürich and Geneva), with roughly 178,000 inhabitants within the city municipality limits in the 2020s. The official language of Basel is (the Swiss variety of Standard) German, and the main spoken language is the local Basel German dialect.
Basel is commonly considered to be the cultural capital of Switzerland and the city is famous for its many museums, including the first collection of art accessible to the public in the world (1661) and the largest museum of art in Switzerland. The University of Basel, Switzerland's oldest university (founded in 1460), and the city's centuries-long commitment to humanism, have made Basel a safe haven at times of political unrest in other parts of Europe for refugees and dissidents.
Information from: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basel
Amex - my first day June 1969 - Age 23
My first day at Amex was the day I thought would be my last day on earth. My arrival into the world of Amex came strangely thru the concept of nepotism. The previous summer I had worked for the City of Kamloops in the water works department. Actually a very interesting job laying water pipe in the new subdivisions, repairing broken water lines and contending and pretending that sewer lines were jolly good fun to fix and an anatomical look at the under belly of Kamloops, so to say.
One must also mention... at that time getting a job "in" Kamloops was a highly prized nugget. One could maintain one's normal weekend routines as opposed to being a way out there...somewhere...where telephones, television, the theatre, flushing toilets, hot water, springy mattresses, beer and that essential whiff of femininity hadn't quite made their mark yet.
So I went back to school in the fall and hoped to find at the end of the term summer work back with the City of Kamloops.
My brother Bud had just got a job there and when I applied they said…,” Sorry”. It was sort of like…"we don't hire members of the same family due to the potential, possibility of collaborative, nefariousness. I was just hoping for a summer job not to hijack…with my brother in tow...a shipment of sewer lids....and turning up at the local junkyard… hoping to turn some revenue. I was laid low! My summer plans in tatters!
Returning home with these sad tidings…. Pete Kirby… who boarded at Mum's place...said. ”Oh, I know someone in the survey business. He might be looking for someone. Here's his phone number." So I called and much to my surprise...I talked to Ab right off. He said ..."Can you be ready Monday morning at 5:00 A.M? I'll pick you up." So brief! In my excitement I didn't even ask him one important question… like: What should I take? How long is the job? Where are we going? How much is the pay? Any pain involved?
I wasn't too worried about my initial lack of curiosity though. A couple of years before, I had spent a wonderful summer up in Valemount working for the Department of Highways on one of the many survey crews creating the new Yellowhead Highway. I had some idea about the basics of surveying. In our case there were three of us. The transit man, with a vest full of pens and pencils all used in order to deal with many a triangulation. Red…he did have red hair…the rod man and me… the ever so steady holder... of one end of the steel chain and carrier of armfuls of short-sharpened pickets.
We strolled along…I don’t remember ever running…measuring the initial gouged out route and indicating on the pickets how much fill and how much cut was needed for any particular section. Lots of pauses due to the transit man doing the necessary calculations…in that time... we’d do the chats…watch blasters drill, load and blow rock to smithereens, occasionally, an exception here, having to run like hell as falling rock started landing all around us,…marvel at earth movers and bull dozers…till it was time to move on. Indeed, a very interesting, pain free way in which to earn money and pass the summer surrounded by all that majestic scenery.
Basically, I thought I was pretty well prepared for this, as yet, unknown job. Intact clothing in spades, the ever too thin sleeping bag….and a major purchase…the new work boots with a tin of leather grease…Dubbing, I think. But ,none the less, I felt I was ready for this adventure... I was ready to fly.
So up with the birds on that sunny Monday and sure enough at 5:00, Ab was outside the house in a pickup truck with canopy. I nimbly dashed out with my Dad’s old duffel bag in tow, stowed it in the back, hopped in the passenger side and realized there was another passenger sitting beside Ab.
Holy shit!!! It was Gordy Siemans!
In Kamloops, even in 1969, you didn’t have to know people personally to see or hear about their do-daring deeds, their bravado and generally their crazy times. Reputations…like the smell of the pulp mill…. could invade even the tiniest, mental crannies, creating, sometimes, catastrophic pictures of vast destruction. Gordy, in his teens already carried somewhat of a dare devil, difficult-fisticuffs sort of lad. I wondered what could have attracted Gordy to this rather passive job of surveying. Did he do some kind of survey course? Or?
I think mentally I went… “Whoa! Whoa!” Alas, many seconds too late as we were now racing up Columbia and shooting out Savona way. A strange silence filled the cab. Ab wasn’t saying anything. Gordy wasn’t saying anything. I thought it best to remain nonchalant. At least we all smoked…and that, at least, was a vague puff of communal sharing.
Right at the Savona Bridge… before the whirr, whirr, whirr part… Ab finally spoke. He said…”Is this where it happened?” Gordy said…”Yes.” The silence continued till we stopped at Cache Creek to tank up. Ab got out of the truck to pay and Gordy turned and looked at me with that irrepressible grin of his and said…”Ab’s really pissed off at me. I rolled his truck coming off the Savona Bridge on Saturday.”
Before I could utter anything intelligible…Ab was back in the truck and we zipped through Ashcroft and headed up to Logan Lake.
This was all new country for me so I was content to check the scenery out while the frosty silence was maintained until we bumped our way into the Logan Lake Lodge.
I think I remember a sprinkling of rustic cabins with a larger cabin which seemed to be the Amex nerve centre. Milling about were various people in various states of, what I would learn later was, bush dress.
Bush dress was once new but has been roundly savaged by whatever hell lurks out there in the bush. You just sensed that waving a needle and thread around would seem a futile gesture. I gathered breakfast had just been finished and work prep was underway. I was told to grab my bag and find a bed inside the large cabin.
Probably many a soul has not experienced the smell that can stick to a place inhabited by a community of humans who toil and sweat all day and live in those clothes for what smells like a really long time. Those have really missed one of live’s infinite slices.
Upon entering “The Lodge,” I immediately felt some gravitational force trying to draw me back outside. It’s hard to find a word to describe a place where so many different bad smells can coalesce into one major, nasal-hair burning, unforgettably, mind boggling stench. I was to learn later that when you add your own stink to all those other difficult to describe odours…you could feel almost right at home.
“The Lodge,” was one big open space. Filled with beds along the sides. A large wood stove in the middle and kitchen with a large table for the meals. On first sight this dwelling might be deemed chaotic. There was such a spread of “things” covering and filling the whole space. The area where the wood stove was located was surrounded by every item of clothing known to man. That was only the stove. Rank clothing hung everywhere!
Trying to avoid socks hung in artful ways…socks that you knew could walk on air…..sweat-stiffened T shirts draped on anything that you could hang something on…in fact… you could have used them as kites. Not so white-in-rags, fart-stained Stanfield’s underwear badly in need of some, as yet, un-invented, heavy-duty detergent. Truly overly mature underwear seriously hoping that someone would take mercy on their beggarly state and build a pyre and cremate them. You just had to be visually impressed at all of this! Trying to find a new way to breath, I located a bed and quickly eased my way outside.
Up to now, there had not been a formal introduction made to anyone. A friendly…” How do you do?” would have, somehow, seemed excessive. Except for Gordy… I knew no one. But slowly, I realized that there were two other new guys standing about wondering what was in store for them, and, as I remember, they were from Ontario hitching to Vancouver. Some Amexer had picked them up and offered them a job.
Obviously, the customary job interview with the padded resume was not considered a necessary appendage for Amex workers.
We chatted a bit until I heard Ab say…”give the new guys an axe and file.” Some person brought them to us and said for us to sharpen them. I had never sharpened an axe before and holding the axe in one hand and the file in the other, was real foreign territory for me. Scrape, scrape, scrape was not really doing it. Before I could even peak on that learning curve we were forming into work groups.
When this was happening, a car pulled up and out popped 3 guys… Bill Metcalfe, Gary Lyall and Bruce Bried. I think they were returning from doing a recon on a property near Kelowna. There was a very animated discussion with Ab over the horrors that they had encountered there. In reality they might have been communicating in Japanese for all that I understood.
There was a lot of new vocabulary in this biz to assimilate. What I did understand was that some evil force dwelled there and that overwhelmingly large widow makers with flexible-steel limbs and bad-tempered, massive, piles of windfall would render any person who entered their realm into garden mulch.
So back to work groups. I found myself with 8 other guys crammed into Bruce’s car. A wonderfully, fading late 50s something or other. In about 20 minutes Bruce dropped 6 of us off and left to some other unnamed destination. So there we were… 6 of us…three rookies and three compass men and not a transit between us.
Still no real explanation as to what we were expected to do. We lit up our cigs and looked across a flat expanse of what my eyes could see was a very damp marsh. It looked like a very damp, 400 meter marsh. I could definitely see an infinite array of water-like blue specks held in place by little grassy hillocks. The water was being tenderly rippled by a light breeze.
Gordy and the two compass men (names unknown) were actually discussing if there was another way to reach our work area. It seems there wasn’t. I think Gordy said…”Well fuck it! Let’s go!” Before you can say…”Excuse me guys! What about my new boots?” There they were and us heading out into that marsh. We were very reluctantly following… but following we did. First there was a vain attempt to hop from hillock to hillock but they were too wet and wobbly so you just slipped off them into the water anyway. It was a long, wallowing haul to reach the other side… every step a little water-logged heavier.
The other side was where something called a base line was. As water seeped out of me boots, I gazed at my first hand-made picket. There was B/L 0+00 something on it. If you really looked you could see that there was a cut out, blazed and flagged line running up this big hill which you could not see the end of. We had to climb this big hill. For a guy like me… at this time in space…exercise was a short walk to the corner store for cigs and changing gears and stepping on the gas in my car. Without a thought about a massive coronary… up we went.
Wet, new boots are like wearing massive, saturated sponges, taped onto old automobile transmissions. Weighty, very weighty! Feet in wet work socks are like fine sandpaper on soles and… you know…you never thought about bringing an extra pair, did you? At this point, you realize you didn’t think about very much. But how were you to know?
So, with baptized boots, the ascent began, squishing ever upwards. Soon…legs screaming! Lungs gasping! Upwards! Ever upwards! God! Please make it end soon! I was ahead of the other two rookies and I occasionally looked back to see how they were coping and I thought… if I looked like them… it was very scary…their faces were twisted and contorted into some orgasmic form of the grotesque.
Eventually, up ahead, I could see the three compass men sitting having a smoke. As I slowly came closer to them…I was quickly composing myself…tiding up the pain and trying to get my breathing and throbbing-beating heart under control. That is, I sure and hell didn’t want them to know that I had just gone through a near death experience and I was really trying to exude some semblance that all was well. This was my everyday! Splashing around in swamps and dashing up mountains was all quite the norm to me. In fact lads, a real lark. The other two rookies were pretty good actors too.
Yes! The pause that refreshes and I didn’t know if I ever could get up again. Cigs out and Gordy says I’m going with him. Now I find out what my job is. The other four headed further up the line. Adding to my vocabulary, I find out that I’m a “tail chainer” and would be “tailing the chain.” We were working on a “grid.” I find out that we are standing at a “station.” There is a handmade picket that proudly proclaims this… B/L 0 S+28 W. “From this point we will head south so many hard feet. You have a few things to do. First you must follow me. I have here a chain. It hooks on to my belt here.” He shows me a nylon cord a 100 feet long. “When I’m out a hundred feet and the end is even with this B/L picket… you must tug the line and yell out…”CHAIN!”
“Then follow me to the next station. In between throw some blazes and tie some flagging. You must as well make the pickets. First cut something this high, shows me…he expertly cleans both sides off the top of this young spruce and tells me to write…for example…L 28 W 1 S then, L 28 W 2 S etc.”
Gordy, quickly made three pickets for me and presents me with some rolls of blue and yellow flagging and a black Pental pen. “When we get to the end of the line we will turn around...clean out the line…limb the branches axe high… back to the base line and then we will go out the opposite direction and repeat the process.”
Did I get it all? There was no formal question period as I was trying to stick flagging in my jeans pockets, balancing three pickets, wondering how to hold my axe, while Gordy took a compass shot and disappeared into the bush. I intently watched the chain. It was moving quite rapidly. In fact, I almost missed grabbing the end. Catching and holding it up to the B/L picket…I hollered my first…”CHAIN!”
Starting off from that cut out base line, I plunged into my first real bush. On that first day, I didn’t really notice the infinite variety of vegetative forms that abound there in. It was simply, ”the bush.” By the end of that first day I was to find out how malevolent it could be. There are so many different ways in which the bush can inflict painful reminders of just how weak and sensitive our human vessel is.
On that first line, or was it the first 100 feet… I was slapped, poked, jabbed, tripped up, slipped off a knee high deadfall landing on my shin, received quite a few whacks, mostly facials from sneaky, spring-loaded spruce boughs . You bet they all hurt. Worse, a bough gently waltzed across my eye ball, temporarily blinding me. Fuck! Did that smart! By the way…where is that chain? GOOOOORD!!!!
While Gordy is waiting for me to find the end of the chain…I must digress and add this interesting psychological observation. When you are being Amexed out there, flailing about in all that greenary, ”The Bush” is different.
For example, when you are in your car driving by it, normally, you consider it to be a beautiful, inanimate force of nature. All art forms have praised its visual majesty… but you don’t normally talk to it... do you?
For example, I didn’t walk the streets of Kamloops having the chats with various trees. Nor did I see others so occupied. Indeed, exceptions do exist…shamans, wizards, magi and others so gifted who can connect with vegetation on other wonderful levels… but… the norm excludes somebody coming up to you and saying…”Jesus! I just had an interesting chat with that maple tree over there”.
On my first day, when I was really in the bush, getting quite intimate, much to my surprise, I found out that trees and shrubs or anything trying to impede me…did really take on personalities of their own. I slowly, became aware of an intelligence that I had never met before.
Later, I always thought of “the bush” as an experienced, well armed gladiator that I had to outwit and everyday, on the job, you were back in the coliseum. I even thought, more so, that they really communicated in the spirit of The Old Testament. Acting out scriptures full of smite, smoke, sulphur and sacrifice. They spoke and acted in such a way that you clearly knew that you were not of the chosen.
No poop here. They could communicate in their way, and, I, in turn, was actually now talking to them. In fact, as I experienced the wonders of Amex in more detail, I overheard conversations that others had had with the bush that were truly masterpieces of base eloquence. The bush induced truly awe-filled, vocal pagan calls for respite, mercy and down on your knees, seeking forgiveness for vile acts nobody ever did.
These oral outpourings were, unfortunately, never recorded to my knowledge. In my imagination, I see a Canadian library filled with inventive words of cuss with a dash of fear. Shelves bending!
I think the norm was chatting to them in the way one talks to somebody who wishes you grave ill. In fact, my emotional-vocal range covered begging and pleading to rage. I’ve begged and pleaded with the bush in a situation like finding yourself entangled in the embrace of a large, dark spruce that is trying to eat you… frantically looking for that fucking chain.
I have politely said… ” Please! Please! Let me through!” I might, on occasion, have even offered to pay a toll. In fact, I would have given anything to have been allowed to keep up to that chain.
On the other hand, I have also found myself turning into a psychopathic, raging lunatic. In a situation like… a big Spruce branch that your dull axe can’t quite cut. You smash it and it swings way out and comes flying right back into your face. You smash it again and it comes swinging back once again… right into your face.
You get really pissed off… drop your axe and attack it with your bare, fucking hands. Yes, you give it a sound drubbing! You rip that limb off that tree…throw it to the ground! You repeatedly jump on it! You pick up your axe… and lay into that poor booger and do your best to reduce it to sawdust.
All the while…during this give and take with the bough… you are talking to it all the time as if it’s human. Mostly… it is a fairly coarse conservation…but a conversation, none the less. Screaming, the most basic of Anglo-Saxon cuss words like a religious, manically-incantation. You are doing your damnable best to put a hex on it and you know it’s getting the message. It knows that you want to lay it low. It’s fighting back and “he” knows what you are all about.
He knows a lot of under bush tricks that he, in turn, is going to lay on you. That is why you soon find out that there is not a bush type out there called… Bobby, Dick, Jane or Sally… but many a bush type so named… that if your mother heard you using such a name… not only would she drop her drawers... but she would vigorously wash your mouth out with soap.
Back to that first line and I quickly realized that the chain was moving quite faster than I was. My trot was moving into a gallop in order to grab the end of the chain at the next station. My attempts at tying some flagging and blazing a few trees was indeed rather paltry. The most crushing anxiety came after I had used up my first three pickets that Gordy had made for me, and now, I had to start making my own.
Sometimes, within the station area, there was not to be found suitable picket material and you had to go further a field to find one slender tree that was useable… and that really ate up valuable nano seconds. That chain simply wasn’t waiting for you. Even trying to stick that bloody picket in the ground could create some time consuming but very deep and involved conversations with the earth.
I was now in full flight chasing that chain. Smashing and crashing through the bush changing quite rapidly from a genial human being into some other animal form. I know I wasn’t multi-tasking but it sure felt like it. Frantically, tying flagging, blazing, looking for and making pickets, pounding after that cursed chain… I was certain that it was really happening all at once.
Why were my eyes the size of saucers? Why was I so recklessly running through this shit? Why wasn’t Gordy walking normally? Me! Who collapsed after one lap at Kamloops High and got a C minus in gym. Was I participating in some sadistic, Olympic event, sans medals, lost in the wilderness without a grain of blessed humour?
I really noticed quite quickly that Gordy wasn’t politely waiting for me at every station. Making an occasional picket or two for hapless me. All I could occasionally see was his back disappearing into another dark, green maze as I dashed desperately towards the next station.
Eventually, we got to the end of that first line. It was to me 1500 feet of the most punishing work experience I had ever fallen into and, by golly, we had to go back up it. As I walked up to Gordy, it was really hard to suppress the shock waves thundering through my body. I just could not imagine what kind of wicked, wicked force could have formed all of this unpleasantness? If there wasn’t that element called pride… I would have fallen down on my knees and begged Gordy to get me out of here. Trying my best to prevent my shaking legs from collapsing under me I did manage to ask him for a smoke.
Gordy rolled up the chain and we proceeded back up the line cleaning it out. It does take more than a few days to become conversant with the power of an axe. It’s historically a mighty work and war tool and deserves a lot of respect because you can create lasting scars on your body even when it is really dull. Probably, your first days swinging an axe are your safest because you are a little frightened of it and haven’t developed, as yet, that carefree, disdain for its deadly powers.
The formula for heading back to the baseline was that I ran up a hundred feet cutting and blazing to upgrade our initial pass. Gordy would catch up to me… then I would run up ahead until he got up to me again. I was hacking and trotting, hacking and trotting cause Gordy was pretty fast at limbing, dismembering and disembowelling anything that offended him. As he got closer to me I could hear his axe going…Whack! Whack! I was getting…chip, chip, out of mine. Soon Gordy was breathing fire down my neck and off I ran.
Back at the base line we had a quick smoke before we headed off in the next direction.
Believe me it was the same theme. I’m trying to keep up to that ever elusive chain, blazing, tying flagging, making pickets, jousting with the bush, and trying to keep the pain level low. Somehow, it seemed like a long, long, punishing marathon before we finally ended up back at the base line for lunch.
I think we completed 3 or 4 lines. We actually met up with another duo and settled in for some chats. I pulled out my sandwich, but it didn’t look like the sandwich I had made this morning. Someone had played road hockey with it. I tried to find out how the other rookie had found the job so far. I can’t really remember what he said… but I like to think that when I looked into his eyes…I saw the same horror that he saw in mine.
I found out another interesting aspect about the job when Gordy’s first question to the other compass man was. “How many feet have you done?” He said something like 3000 feet and Gordy said…jokingly… but not really…if you know what I mean…”Is that all! We have done 4,500 feet so far.”
In spite of my fatigue I really perked up at that. You mean the other rookie had not been dragged through as much bush as I had! That Gordy is much more, fleet of foot than the other compass man! That the other rookie perhaps didn’t have to run! That the other compass man might have been a compassionate sort! That… in the big axe throwing contest in the sky… I won a trip with an apparent over achiever and, perhaps someone, doing his best to atone for a rolled, pickup truck!
That underneath all of this shared pain, comrades-in-axes fellowship, I was involved in a very deadly, serious competition based on, “footage!!!” A competition… I was quickly finding out…that so far surpassed the rigours of a decathlon or the labours of Heracles.
The “footage” competition was totally unfair! It was not played on flat ground or placid waters! It was not a level playing field! The game’s grounds were determined by massive geological forces that had bent and twisted this playing field into infinite arrays of extraordinarily, confounding patterns of contour lines that made every foot earned a conquest of appalling magnitude! Add the vegetative aspect and you are now facing a natural force so omnipotent that it demands unconditionally not only, your clothing and new boots, but, as well, your body and your soul!
Man! That was a short lunch! Before I could shake the kinks out that had settled within my body…I was again up and running. Was it me or had the pace picked up? Or was I experiencing that famous last blast? Had I broken through that barrier and was gliding on pure energy? In hind sight, I think, my body sensory capabilities had just shut down… no doubt due to excessive jolts of pain. Survival instinct turned up really high. I was literally running on auto pilot. Blaze, flag, chain! Cut, cut, cut! Blaze, flag, chain! Cut, cut, cut!
We finished the last line around 5:00, I believe. I can tell you now what it feels like getting a reprieve from the hang man after spending most of your life in jail and being finally set free. Forget about fornication because this feeling is so much deeper. It’s that feeling where you just might pause one day in front of your local Salvation Army band-choir and hum along a bit…tapping your foot ,build a few roadside shrines, or, perhaps, become better acquainted with Psalm 23 and contemplate all the good deeds you could do for your fellow man. For lack of a better word…it is a very “holy” feeling.
Time wise, on any other job, it was a reasonable day. But in that day I had blown out about as much energy that I would normally use in a year and now all we had to do was get off this fucking hill and Bob’s your uncle.
Walking down that hill proved worse than walking up. Stabbing pains ran up and down my legs as I tried to brake myself going downward. My legs were all rubbery with nil shock absorber effect. I did my best to stifle the moans. If other people weren’t around I would have probably cried, wailing at my fate and rolled down or slid down on my ass just to see the end of that hill.
At the bottom was that swamp. This time I didn’t give a shit! I plunged in like an eager beaver. I could see that road off in the distance and Bruce’s car waiting to pick us up and I focused directly on that spot and who knows I may have even walk on top of that water. Bruce’s car…Bruce himself… what a beautiful sight! A really, really, truly, heavenly vision! I thought I saw halos over that car and you don’t get that too often.
We again crammed into his car and the game of footage was a hot topic. I wasn’t really listening. I was fascinated by the strange seizures that my body was going through. I couldn’t feel certain things. I had trouble unfurling my pitch-sticky hands. They looked like claws. When I tried to straighten them they would spring back into claws. My feet seem to be missing. In all that dampness they had floated off somewhere.
So it made it quite fun when we arrived back at the lodge to discover that sitting up and getting out of Bruce’s car was quite a physical event for me. Muscles and joints were seizing up fast and it was easiest to crawl out on my hands and knees, pretending I was looking for something. Slowly, carefully, standing up…while still acting the jocular…mind… was excruciatingly painful.
I walked like Frankenstein into the lodge hoping that the more intense footage conversations were so involving that no one would notice that I had become a physical oddity. I heard Ab ask Gordy how much footage he had got and when he off handily said,” 9000.” Ab, really didn’t say anything… but you sensed that Gordy had made a small but substantial down payment on that rolled, pickup truck.
I was so happy to be out of that bushy horror that the lodge reek that had scared the shit out of my nose in the morning had taken on a more subtle tang and was actually quite comforting. I really stank myself and could hardly wait to don some fresh clothing and dry socks. My new boots had been reduced to boots that had walked around the world a 100 times and I felt I would be lucky if they could hold together for another two days.
No need to tell what a job it was to get undressed and dressed again. Finally, getting those wet socks off and having a look at my feet really scared me. They were all soft, red and wrinkly, rather outer worldly, as if they belonged to some other alien life form. They seem to have aged tremendously, all in one fell swoop a swamp.
All my clothing was now hanging just like everybody else’s and I felt big time bagged and definitely not firing on all cylinders. Post traumatic stress, the 1000 yard stare, battle fatigue all wars rolled into one.
Some lads were making supper. Can’t remember what it was but do remember helping out with the dishes in some sort of daze… then walking over to my bed… laying on it… then it was morning again! Truly a sleep of such deepness that when my eyes flashed open for a couple of minutes I really didn’t know where I was. When I did realize where I was... a very dark, depressing cloud of horror settled in. I was still in hell.
A loud tapping was coming from the roof area and after some thought I realized it was really raining outside. I tried to move and realized I couldn’t! Yes…I could move… but every atom of my body was in extreme pain. Wrinkle your toes and spasms of pain rolled upward. Wink, and die the death of a thousand cuts. My body said don’t move! It said it very loud and clear! Totally immobile… and realizing this, I began to feel a growing sense of panic creeping through every suffering, molecule of my body.
I couldn’t imagine how I was supposed to cross swamps, ascend mountains, swing that axe, tie that flagging while running after that chain in my present condition. I might as well have been in an iron lung.
People were starting to roll out of their beds, someone making coffee, belching and farting away while I am trying to deal with my rather serious, anxiety attack. I believe I began to think of desperately, viable excuses to explain my present inability to rise and shine. Take my axe to myself! “Oh! Look guys what my axe did to me!” Jesus! I couldn’t think of one way that wouldn’t have had me melting into a deep pool of shame. What could I say to my mother? Again, pride does have its kill side.
I tried ever so slowly to ease myself into something that looked like a sitting position and to this day I can remember the agony. I can’t remember how many minutes it took. During this slow motion process…I tried to muffle many a long drawn out moan… which I foolishly tried to disguise as a long drawn out smoker’s, cough attack.
Lifting my arms to put on that T shirt. Sanding to pull my pants up, are what legends are made of. The ultimate pinnacle of dealing with this pain was putting on my still damp boots. They seemed to have shrunk. That was the total Spanish inquisition all in one go. Jesus on the cross stuff.
But now breakfast was ready and grand smells of bacon and coffee had me ever so slowly inching my way over to that table and ever so slowly easing myself into a chair. My hands curiously, were still doing claw-like things and made... picking the fork and knife up and dealing with my coffee cup… a little challenging. Even crunching on bacon and toast was causing pain, but, at least, with eggs, a less painful option, if you carefully let them slide down on their own.
With breakfast over, I gingerly helped out with the dishes. The rain continued to tap dramatically on the roof and I could see out the window that the rain was really coming down. Big puddles were turning into ever growing mini Amazons. I really tried not to think about the possible transformations that were taking place out in the bush. I felt and sensed that more evil things could even be multiplying out there.
An ominous fear of getting close to that bush was now added to all my other fears. With my body….the all over…really, stiff-painful body that I now inhabited… it was sure going to make it more than difficult to put on a chipper face and fake the cheerful…this is, “ really a lark lads, ” thing.
Over on the cleaned off dinner table a major conference was taking place. Ab, Frosty, Gordy, Jack, Bill, and others were peering down at a map and discussing strategy. I didn’t really hear what it was they were talking about but I did hear this, and this is the point in your life where you learn that miracles are not only confined to biblical scripture. That, just perhaps, there are really angels perched on your shoulders lending, in times of extreme duress, a much needed hand and flap of wing.
Ab raised his head and the golden chords of his voice filled every nook and cranny of that lodge. Ab said…”Hey you guys were going to knock off work for few days and let this rain clear up.” For a sec you couldn’t hear a pin drop. Nobody said much…. but if overwhelming relief was measured in water we would have flooded the total landmass of British Columbia.
In a pain free world…I would have fell on my knees …first thanking every God and Goddess out there… and then leapt up off of my knees… hopped, skipped and jumped into Ab’s arms and kissed him all over. My cup was truly running over with pure, blessed thankfulness.
Unable to express my true physical feelings in my current state …I remained frozen at the wash sink...gazing out the window as the river built upon the mini Amazons. So relieved as ecstatic waves of love sponged away my fears. Oh! Blessed rain! Giver of life! I wasn’t going to die out there today.
Getting back to Kamloops was made really easy because Bruce was heading there himself and offered to take me and a few other lads as well. I think the other two rookies who were hitching to Vancouver were also in the car and were placed back on the road outside of Ashcroft.
I just knew that after we headed off, that they both got down on that pavement, and kissed it many, many times. Never in the annals of history has a road ever looked so good in the pissing rain.
When I got home the first thing I did was take a very hot shower and took my trashed body off to bed. I actually slept that day and night away and knew in my heart of hearts… even then… that I would never-ever forget what I had experienced on that first day for Amex. It added a whole, unforgettable dimension to the world of surveying and a lasting blaze on my heart.
Fortunately, the gamble paid off. The EMP gun was able to immobilize his suit bringing his body to a complete stop just in front of me. Originally I should of chosen to disable the exo-suit by using my EMP gun just after I had used it on the halls lights. This mistake almost cost me my life. Though I could argue that not neutralizing the mini-gun immediately after I had tipped my hand may well of developed in to a far more fatal mis-calculation. I should just be fortunate that I have, seemingly, managed to walk away with no broken bones though I shall need to make improvements to the suit as a whole.
All of the training I had undertaken to be able to immobilize foes that are far more powerful than myself meant I should have been able to take the fool out with relative ease. The suit’s padding against hard impacts, though potentially having spared me from horrendous injuries, greatly reduced my maneuverability a key asset when dealing with such dangerous foes, not to mention the breaking of my cowl exposing my head to impacts.
Despite all the trouble it had given me though I had to admit, the exo-suit was a rather impressive work of engineering. Both from a design aspect and an application aspect it was near flawless and would have been unstoppable were it not for it’s power source being electric thus allowing me to cripple it. I shall have to study it when I get back to the cave, but first I had a pig that I needed to make squeal.
Le Blanc lay on the ground, he was rolling on the floor clenching his legs from the force they had experienced when I had used him to knock out all of Sionis’ men. Such an impact required a lot of force and it was no surprise that Le Blanc was in a great deal of pain, but that was nothing compared to what I have inflicted on him previously. It’s now merely a case of how much more pain he’s willing to endure before he gives me what I need to access Penguins communications network.
I take a moment to compose myself. The near death situation had unnerved me and the last thing you want is for the person you’re about to interrogate see you without your composure. My right hand that still held the EMP gun was shaking clearly from the large amount of adrenaline that must been pumping through it as the thug had charged me. I quickly reattached the gun to the belt and steadied the hand. Before I turned my full attention to Le Blanc though, I wanted to get him worrying already and nothing said that more than what followed next.
With as great a force as I could deliver I smacked the exo-suit wielding thug in his face sending him crashing down the ground and instantly knocking him out. The loud thud made as he hit the ground was some what gratifying after how much trouble he had put me through, and I know Le Blanc saw.
After I had smashed the exo-suit thug down to the ground I turned to look at Le Blanc and slowly began to approach him. He was already terrified.
“Oh no. No. Please! Not again!”
He attempted to get up off his feet, but the pain he experienced upon doing so had him instantly fall back to the floor. Clearly I have become one of this mans greatest fears as he tries as hard as he can to crawl away from me. Surely he is more than aware that I am far more faster than he can ever be in his current state? Regardless, I kick him in his chest and flip him over before grabbing hold of his jacket and raising him up to my eye level.
“Cobblepot’s new communications network. What is it?”
“How should I know?”
“Well last I checked one of Penguins ‘finest’ as you call yourself should easily know a good chunk about his operations and his infrastructure. Now talk.”
“Shit you were listening to that? It was a lie! I swear I don’t know anything! Honest!”
I’ve dealt with this worm multiple times and he still believes he can fool me. Big mistake.
“AHHHHH WHAT THE FUCK?!?!?”
“Talk. Now. I’m running out of patience, and you’re running out of fingers.”
This Dragon kite was made by Master Vietnamese kite maker Nguyen Van Be from Hue, vietnam. He is considered to be the most renowned Vietnamese kite maker, based among other reasons on the number of overseas festivals he has attended (nine in France alone). The tale of this kite is 100 meter long.
Tết is celebrated on the same day as Chinese New Year, though exceptions arise due to the one-hour time difference between Hanoi and Beijing resulting in the alternate calculation of the new moon. It takes place from the first day of the first month of the Lunar calendar (around late January or early February) until at least the third day. Many Vietnamese prepare for Tết by cooking special holiday foods and cleaning the house. There are a lot of customs practiced during Tết, such as visiting a person's house on the first day of the new year (xông nhà), ancestral worshipping, wishing New Year's greetings, giving lucky money to children and elderly people, and opening a shop.
Tết is also an occasion for pilgrims and family reunions. During Tết, Vietnamese visit their relatives and temples, forgetting about the troubles of the past year and hoping for a better upcoming year. They consider Tết to be the first day of spring and the festival is often called Hội xuân (spring festival).
From wikipedia
HAPPY LUNAR NEW YEAR : The year of the Dragon 2012
AFRIKAANS gelukkige nuwejaar ALBANIAN Gëzuar vitin e ri ALSATIAN e glëckliches ëies / güets nëies johr ARABIC aam saiid / sana saiida ARMENIAN shnorhavor nor tari
AZERI yeni iliniz mubarek BAMBARA bonne année BASQUE urte berri on BELARUSIAN З новым годам (Z novym hodam) BENGALI subho nababarsho BERBER asgwas amegas BETI mbembe mbu BOBO bonne année BOSNIAN sretna nova godina BRETON bloavez mad BULGARIAN честита нова година BIRMAN hnit thit ku mingalar pa CANTONESE kung hé fat tsoi CATALAN feliç any nou CHINESE xin nièn kuai le / xin nièn hao CORSICAN pace e salute CROAT sretna nova godina CZECH šťastný nový rok
DANISH godt nytår DUTCH gelukkig Nieuwjaar ESPERANTO felicxan novan jaron eliæan novan jaron ESTONIAN head uut aastat FAROESE gott nýggjár FINNISH onnellista uutta vuotta FLEMISH gelukkig Nieuwjaar FRENCH bonne année FRIULAN bon an GALICIAN feliz aninovo GEORGIAN gilotsavt aral tsels GERMAN ein gutes neues Jahr / prost Neujahr GREEK kali chronia / kali xronia eutichismenos o kainourgios chronos GUARANÍ rogüerohory año nuévo-re HAITIAN CREOLE bònn ané HMONG Jawn Sha No Cha HAWAIIAN hauoli makahiki hou HEBREW shana tova HINDI nav varsh ki subhkamna HUNGARIAN boldog új évet ICELANDIC farsælt komandi ár INDONESIAN selamat tahun baru IRISH GAELIC ath bhliain faoi mhaise ITALIAN felice anno nuovo, buon anno JAPANESE akemashite omedetô KABYLIAN asseguèsse-ameguèsse
KANNADA hosa varshada shubhaashayagalu KHMER sur sdei chhnam thmei KIRUNDI umwaka mwiza KOREAN seh heh bok mani bat uh seyo KURDE sala we ya nû pîroz be
LAO sabai di pi mai LATIN felix sit annus novus LATVIAN laimīgo Jauno gadu LINGALA bonana / mbula ya sika elamu na tonbeli yo LITHUANIAN laimingų Naujųjų Metų LOW SAXON gelükkig nyjaar LUXEMBOURGEOIS e gudd neit Joër MACEDONIAN srekna nova godina MALAGASY arahaba tratry ny taona MALAY selamat tahun baru MALTESE sena gdida mimlija risq MAORI kia hari te tau hou MONGOLIAN shine jiliin bayariin end hurgeye (Шинэ жилийн баярын мэнд хvргэе) MORÉ wênd na kô-d yuum-songo NORWEGIAN godt nytt år OCCITAN bon annada PERSIAN sâle no mobârak POLISH szczęśliwego nowego roku PORTUGUESE feliz ano novo ROMANI bangi vasilica baxt
ROMANIAN un an nou fericit / la mulţi ani RUSSIAN С Новым Годом (S novim godom)
SAMOAN ia manuia le tausaga fou SANGO nzoni fini ngou SARDINIAN bonu annu nou
SCOTTISH GAELIC bliadhna mhath ur SERBIAN srecna nova godina SHONA goredzwa rakanaka \SINDHI nain saal joon wadhayoon SLOVAK stastlivy novy rok SLOVENIAN srečno novo leto SOBOTA dobir leto SPANISH feliz año nuevo SWAHILI mwaka mzuri
SWEDISH gott nytt år SWISS-GERMAN äs guets Nöis TAGALOG manigong bagong taon TAHITIAN ia ora te matahiti api TAMIL iniya puthandu nalVazhthukkal TATAR yana yel belen TELUGU nuthana samvathsara subhakankshalu THAI (sawatdii pimaï) TIBETAN tashi délek TURKISH yeni yiliniz kutlu olsun UDMURT Vyľ Aren UKRAINIAN Z novym rokom URDU naya saal mubarik VIETNAMESE Chúc Mừng Nam Mới / Cung Chúc Tân Niên / Cung Chúc Tân Xuân WALOON ("betchfessîs" spelling) bone annéye / bone annéye èt bone santéye WELSH blwyddyn newydd dda WEST INDIAN CREOLE bon lanné YIDDISH a gut yohr
Seven equally-spaced brightnesses using a like-Photoshop brightness-level calculation, orange and green.
Done with my Opacity Ranger with paras:
Background: any
Brightness level 1 : 14% of image
limit: 60 RGB: 52, 66, 0, 100%
Brightness level 2 : 15% of image
limit: 100 RGB: 119, 119, 57, 100%
Brightness level 3 : 14% of image
limit: 132 RGB: 202, 84, 0, 100%
Brightness level 4 : 15% of image
limit: 166 RGB: 217, 149, 43, 100%
Brightness level 5 : 14% of image
limit: 183 RGB: 171, 183, 110, 100%
Brightness level 6 : 15% of image
limit: 195 RGB: 186, 199, 149, 100%
Brightness level 7 : 14% of image
limit: 255 RGB: 209, 224, 225, 100%
Calculation formula: like PS
The home to the datum-line for the calculation of Longitude. We will soon be learning about Harrison's Chronograph's, the calculation of Longitude and how this revolutionised global travel and trade.....
Weehawken/Edgewater, NJ.
This photo was almost lost forever.
I remember the day well. I was working at my desk on the day's engineering work when the mailroom called. I had just received via messenger a mysterious box from an advertising agency. This could mean only one thing--IT had arrived. I sprang up from my seat, leaving my calculations half finished. I near sprinted to pick up the package, not waiting for it for to be delivered to my desk. I returned to my seat and checked to see if anyone was watching. The coast was clear. I opened the box like a kid on Christmas morning. Inside, there was a brand spanking new, top-secret Nikon camera, code name Q340 (aka the D80) and a kit lens. It still had that new camera smell, ahhhh.
The camera was the same exact one I had used for a day shoot a few weeks beforehand, minus the electrical tape which had covered the model designation from prying eyes as I shot on the streets of the city. What a great day that was, roaming wherever I pleased with two unmarked white vans, video crew, photo techs, Nikon expert, and agency reps in tow.
Today was different. It would be weeks before the camera hit the street. My assignment was simple, or so I thought: use the camera to shoot on my own for a few weeks and upload the best of the best to Nikon Central. Having this camera at my desk made the clock slow to a near standstill. Still a few hours to log before I could get out and shoot away. This mysterious box and its contents were burning a hole in my patience.
The appointed hour arrived and I flew home at the speed of light, scarfed down some dinner, gathered my equipment, and quietly slipped out into the night. Oh what a night it would be, on the shores of the Hudson, shooting the city skyline with the Q340 under the cloak of darkness. I found a deserted patch of shoreline, stashed the car, and trekked to an abandoned pier, a hulking mess of crumbling concrete on top of the swirling black water. I could hear the current gurgle just a few feet away as I set up the tripod under the light of a full moon and the glow of the city just a mile across the murky depths. I attached the camera and shot a few frames, desperately trying to adjust the settings to get my shot. Suddenly the tripod lurched and one of the legs gave way under the weight of this humid summer night. It all seemed to be happening in slow motion as the tripod fell like a giant and the camera, which had been at eye level, crashed down to the unforgiving concrete with a crunching sound. The camera and tripod, still hanging on to each other, teetered on the very edge of the concrete pier like a seesaw, threatening to disappear forever into the jaws of the running river. I leapt without thinking and even though I could barely make out the near-catastrophic scene, I managed to snag the very foot of the tripod as it attempted to drown itself and the camera. I lay on that warm night with my back on the cold concrete, slowly reeling in the camera like a cop talking a jumper off a bridge. I had saved the camera from the drink but what damage was done by the fall? I turned the camera on and to my great astonishment it worked perfectly, mocking me for thinking it was a goner. The lens, well, that was another story. I made my way back to the car, still buzzing with adrenaline.
The next day I made the call back to Nikon Central and relayed to them the events of the previous evening. Was the mission that was to last a few weeks over after only a night? Later that day a messenger delivered another mysterious package. I was back in business!
Four years ago I was down in Gloucestershire, when my guide mentioned that the Large Blue butterflies would be soon on the wing, pointing at anthills down the steep slope of the down.
I'll have to come back and see those, I said. Not realising it would be four years.
It was a promise I made to Fran, a butterfly expert that one day I would take her to see the Large Blues.
This weekend was that time.
Not sure why it was this weekend, but the Blues had been seen, not in great numbers, but enough.
I mean, one's enough, really.
Apt words.
As temperatures were supposed to top thirty degrees, we knew we had to get there early. A cock up in my calculations meant that instead of arriving in Gloucestershire at half nine, it was half eight.
It meant getting up at quarter to four, getting ready, then leaving at quarter past to get to Fran's for twenty past five.
It was the summer solstice, Fran had gone down the beach to watch the sunrise, while we saw it as we drove through the Sandwich marshes on the bypass.
At least traffic was light, so we arrived just after five, and ten minutes later with the car loaded, we set off along Thanet Way.
The sun was rising in a clear blue sky, but it was cool. Well, fifteen degrees.
We turned down the A249, also empty, so we could join the M20 at Maidstone before driving towards London and then along the M26 to the road to hell, M25.
There was traffic, but no jams. So we made good time, around the southern suburbs, past Heathrow and up the motorway to Oxford.
Made such good time we stopped off at High Wycombe for a break and to get a coffee.
Back on the road for the last hour or so, and the sat nav took is round the Oxford suburbs, which was OK before eight in the morning, then along the long straight road towards Cheltenham and butterfly county.
Research had sown we might have the best luck at the Daneway Reserve, so we made our way there, over downs and then down and up deep valleys with picturesque villages built of creamy Cotswold stone.
Lanes through ancient woodlands, the road sunk into a cutting, and massive beech trees towered overhead. Then once on hight ground, the vista opened out to show a fine and rolling countryside.
Its good visitors know little of this area, or they'd never leave.
We grabbed the only parking space at the reserve, we grab camera and me a walking pole too, and set off to search high and low for the Large Blue.
By the now weather was cloudy, and we had driven through two unexpected showers, and rain was in the air the three hours we were at the reserve.
Even walking on the flat was hot and taxing, we moved deeper into the reserve, and the path climbed upwards, until we came to a hollow which had less vegetation.
It felt right.
So, while Jools and Fran went on, I stayed, found a place to sit and wait.
Half an hour or more went past, and I went to explore, which is when I saw what I assumed had to have been a toffee wrapper in the short grass, because no butterfly could be that obvious to see from 10m.
I went closer, and it was a male Large Blue, sunning himself in the weak sunshine. Were it sunny as expected, he would be on the wing, but here he was.
I took shots as I moved closer, then he was gone, I lost sight as the blue flash flittered behind some tall grass.
I tried to call Jools and sent a message. They did not get it.
And hour later, with me waiting, they came back, and we searched some more. An elderly couple came to speak, I told them where I had seen the male, promising to call them if we refound him.
It was, however, them who refound the male, basking in the long grass nearby.
We took turns in getting more shots, easy when he stayed in the same place for ten minutes or more.
But he flew off in the end, and we let him go.
We ambled back to the car, it was now gone noon, and thoughts turned to lunch and a drink. The pub at the bottom of the hill was full with cars, so the next alternative seemed to be the Green Dragon in Cockleford.
Situated in the valley of a small river, the pub is picture box perfect, with attached shop and deli. We have drinks and a sandwich, and afterwards Jools buys a selection of cheeses from the shop.
All that was left was to go home.
The sat nav took us to Birdlip, then along the high road to Swindon, and once there we joined the M4 to head west.
Traffic was thick, but moved freely. We took a diversion to miss the worse of the jams on the M25, but found some at the A3 junction anyway.
A quick stop at Cobham for relief. I went to M&S to buy something for dinner, and when we rejoined the motorway, it was moving freely, and was until we reached Kent and turned back along the M26 towards Dover and home.
We dropped Fran home, then drove back to Thanet Way, down to Sandwich, where the poor thirsty car was refuelled, and to home, getting back at half six.
So we fed the cats.
I skinned the sausages, browned the meat, added sauce and simmered for twenty minutes, cooked the pasta, and baked the garlic bread.
Not home made, but good enough after a long day. We ate well and drank wine or cider.
The day ended with England knocking favourites Spain out of the U21 Euros.
I celebrated with another beer.
Cheers, and good night.
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This butterfly was first recorded as a British species in 1795 and, even then, was considered a rare insect. Due to the loss of suitable habitat, the endemic subspecies of Large Blue became extinct in the British Isles in 1979, the last site being on Dartmoor in Devon.
This magnificent insect has since been "brought back from the dead" through the dedication of several conservation organisations and many individuals. After its extinction in the British Isles in 1979, the Large Blue became the subject of a highly-organised reintroduction programme, using stock from Sweden. The estimated number of adults flying in 2006 was 10,000 on 11 sites, which is the largest number seen in the British Isles for over 60 years. This is a magnificent example of conservation in action.
The successful reintroduction of the Large Blue is made even more remarkable when one considers its elaborate lifecycle. The larva is parasitic in that it feeds on the grubs of a red ant, Myrmica sabuleti, on whom its existence depends. Although the dependence on ants had been known for many years, the dependence on a single species of ant, in order to maintain a viable population, was unknown to conservationists for many years until Jeremy Thomas discovered the association in the late 1970s. Unfortunately, the discovery came too late to save the native population. Today's reintroduction efforts focus as much on the population of ants present, as they do on the Large Blue itself.
Anyone wanting to see this species in the British Isles should visit the open access site at Collard Hill in Somerset. A "Large Blue Hotline" is usually set up each year that provides an up-to-date status of the emergence at this site. Details are available on the Butterfly Conservation website. In addition, Butterfly Conservation members and Somerset Wildlife Trust members have the opportunity to visit a private site, Green Down, each year, although places are limited. The majority of reintroduction sites are in the south-west of England, notable colonies being in the Polden Hills in Somerset, Dartmoor and Gloucestershire.
This is a warmth and sun-loving butterfly. In bright sunlight the adults rarely bask with their wings open, and this is one of the few butterflies where photographers welcome intermittent sunshine or overcast conditions, when the adults will bask with their wings held open, revealing the characteristic pattern on the forewings.
After emerging, females typically fly to the bottom of the slope, where they are intercepted by males in search of a mate. The couple mate without any discernable courtship and remain together for an hour or so, after which the female rests and takes nectar. After another hour or so, the female will commence her search for plants on which to lay. Females are often seen probing the unopened flower heads of Wild Thyme with their abdomen, only to find that no egg has been laid, presumably because the flower head is deemed unsuitable. However, if a suitable plant is found, then the female typically lays a single egg, although 2 or 3 eggs may be found on the same flower head on occasion. This is presumably from different females since the larvae are cannibalistic while in the first instar.
8 Long years of wait: 2018/ 2025 sciomancy was a great game!
The 16th century French Seer has been widely known as the one who predicted the TRUTH. All his calculations for the world events, have until now came true. Nostradamus initially worked as a physician and dealt with healing drugs, before moving towards the occult (Knowledge of the hidden).
It seemed legitimate to us to revive the esoteric and medicinal spirit (alternative medicine) that the illustrious character Nostradamus had installed in Salon de Provence, since he lived there during the last 19 years of his life. It was during this period that Michel de Nostredame wrote all his "Centuries" in the form of quatrains. Having become extremely famous for his prophecies and his knowledge in Renaissance medicine, the whole world came to Salon-de-Provence to consult him. This is how the most illustrious figures of the Renaissance visited him, notably the great Catherine de Medicis who designated him as "doctor and king astrologer".
Scyomancy is derived from the Greek skia ('shadow, outline') and manteia ('divination'), it is the art and practice of divining the future by shadows, or by the shades or shadows of the dead, in this case a form of Necromancy. A common method was to observe the size, shapes, and changing appearance of shadows, thus drawing a prophetic conclusion. It was considered a very bad omen to project a headless shadow (or no shadow at all). According to legend, such a person will lose their life within the course of the current year. Paracelsus, in his Nine Books Of the Nature of Things (1674), states:
"The ancient Chaldeans and Grecians, if in times of War fearing to be driven away, or banished, they would hide their Treasure, would mark the place no otherwise than propose to themselves a certain day, hour and minute of the year, and did observe in what place the Sun or Moon should cast their shadow, and there did bury and hide their Treasure. This Art they call Sciomancy, i.e. the Art of Shadowing. By these Shadowings many Arts have had their ground, and many hid things have been revealed, and all Spirits and Astral bodies are known." Paracelsus call that avestrum.
Henry Cockeram in The English Dictionarie (1623), also remarks that Sciomancy is "divination by shadowes", as Randle Cotgrave also mentions it in Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues: Creating the Life You Want with Self Hypnosis: Enroll Today!
"Sciomance, divination by conference with the shadows of dead men."
François Rabelais, in his La vie de Gargantua et de Pantagruel (a connected series of five novels written in the 16th century), also writes "if you be afraid of the Dead, as commonly all Cuckolds are, I will make use of the Faculty of Sciomancy." Sciomancy is, like most divination techniques, quite ancient, and it has been practiced since time immemorial.”
www.occultopedia.com/s/sciomancy.htm
And, one cannot simply ignore the fact that his prophecy about the 45th President of the world’s most powerful country i.e. The United States of America, which was “The great shameless, udacious bawler, He will be elected governor of the army: The boldness of his contention, The bridge broken, the city faint from fear”, might have come true in face of Donald Trump.. While some people are sceptical of these prophecies and call it a fraud act, a few others accept as true that these prophecies have all come true, if someone really takes a good look at them. For example, Nostradamu’s famous predictions about Diana’s death, Adolf Hitler’s rise, Atomic bombings, Second World War, 9/11- are few of the many predictions that have come true. At first, people didn’t believe him and thwarted his interpretations of his newfound knowledge. But, after his almanac, Les Propheties, gained success, it saw Catherine de Médicis, wife of King Henry II of France, turning into one of his greatest admirers, and after this did people started following and believing in him. Going by what he foresees for 2018, the picture doesn’t look that great ahead… The following slides carry a compilation of few of these prophecies. Nostradamus foresees that the world would go through a major paradigm change that would change the face of world, from what it is at present. He warns of some natural disasters hitting hard. He also foresees that this time the world would witness a war not between two or more countries, but two directions. We already know of the strain relations between the West and the East. It would begin with men massacring men, then nations massacring each other and only a few would be left to enjoy the peace that will prevail after the war ends. He predicts that fireballs would come down from the sky and the victim would be only the helpless and the innocent. Haven't we heard of Kim Jong Un testing his nuclear missiles? Nostradmus predicts that the East would suffer through the worst of shaking and turbulences caused by earthquake and flooding, while the West would endure the terrible results of extreme weather. He says the world would finally face the wrath of nature that it has been taking for granted. The world has no choice but to bear the brunt of global warming. There’ll be no forests to take shelter, no ice mountains to escape and no layer to protect them from sun. Don’t know how the last one would come true, but it doesn’t sound good. The fire deep within Earth would begin to come out of surface. The world would have to wait for eight long years before finally living in peace. Towards the year 2025, of whatever is left would be led to an illuminating world, which would be filled with peace and serenity. This peace would be like the phoenix, which is born from its own ashes.
www.speakingtree.in/allslides/nostradamus-predictions-for...
My calculations calculated that this service would be operated by a Harrogate Connect bus, as it was the 3rd to Scarborough of the day, the other day the 6th to Scarborough was operated by a Harrogate Connect. Sadly, it turned out to be 419.
This handdrawn image and the next one shows the calculation for my OcTrainber project. The original traincar has three sections, two car ends, a middle section and doors separating this section. The width of doors will be between 4,5 and 5 studs scaled down using 1:45 ratio, the car lenght is given as 72 studs (as my all UIC-X cars are), so I was in need to split up the remaining 62-63 studs to make sure, that the ratio of car end length and car middle length is 0,75. These lenghts also must be good to SNOT the row of windows, defined by the following sizes:
w1 - large window width
w2 - toilette window width
s1 - door-window separation width
s2 - window-window separation width
s3 - window-car end separation width.
The image above shows two possible solution, giving not satisfying results.
"There will be little rubs and disappointments everywhere, and we are all apt to expect too much; but then, if one scheme of happiness fails, human nature turns to another; if the first calculation is wrong, we make a second better: we find comfort somewhere."
~Jane Austen
Explored! #403 January 6, 2010
Title: Transparency
Name: Maddie
Personality: She more-or-less has the personality (and attitude) of a 15-year-old girl.
Powers: Becoming intangible (Intangibility?), invisibility, flight, computer-quick calculation
Weakness: She doesn't like to listen to anybody but Pip.
Origin:
When Pip first became a superhero he decided that, naturally, he should have his own artificial intelligence. That was easier said then done. He was able to complete her, but she was... Imperfect. She worked correctly, but she had an attitude and would always argue with Maddie when she joined the team. But Pip wouldn't have it any other way though did see to it that she improved.
(Edit: I forgot, but she used to just be an AI then he built the body for her, uh... I'll elaborate later.)
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Fourth wall commentary:
Here is the last bit of Flyboy lore for you guys. I always liked this character, she was really fun to write in Captain Assembly and Flyboy. :P I also like how her, Sondra and Pip are like one weird family. xP
Thanks for clickin' and keep on brickin'!
The League of LEGO heroes: "Suit up, sign up."