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This is a spectral irradiance measurement of the Sun and sky made on a very clear morning with little haze. The solar altitude was +27.3°.
The plot shows a broad spectrum view of the solar energy distribution. With other spectrometers, I can in principle, measure out to 2,500nm and also into the ultraviolet down to the atmospheric cut-off close to 300nm, but I still have some work to do on the radiometric calibration.
The pale grey line is the solar flux outside the atmosphere (from the Hubble calibration database). Although the legend says 'scaled', the scaling factor is unity.
The orange and red lines show the visible spectrum of the sun/sky measured in the plane perpendicular to the Sun with the Sekonic C-7000 colour meter. The orange is the spectral irradiance which is the power incident on the plane and coming from the whole of the hemisphere (2Pi sr): this adds some of the blue sky back into the measured solar power. If I restrict the solid angle with a tube attached to the device (a toilet roll), I measure the solar spectral irradiance after extinction by 2.17 airmass of atmosphere with only a very small contamination by sky - the red line.
In this case, the orange line does not represent the Sun + the entire blue sky visible to the cosine corrector on the radiometer since parts of the sky were obscured by neighbouring buildings.
The inset photo shows the Sekonic with the adapted toilet roll. This restricts the field of view to a radius of 5.4°, tapering to zero by 10.6° from the Sun.
The underlying spectrum in blue is the solar irradiance after passing through my extinction model for this airmass. The model includes Rayleigh and aerosol scattering and ozone absorption in the ultraviolet and the visible (Chappuis) bands. The only parameters I can vary are the concentration of aerosols (very low in this case) and the ozone column density which is slightly more complicated to choose due to the variation of ozone density with height (my simple model is for a uniform atmosphere).
In this case the Chappuis band only has a small effect around 600nm since the Sun was quite high. The goodness of fit gives confidence in the absolute calibration of the the Sekonic device!
The dashed black line is the Planck function at the correlated colour temperature measured by the C-7000 for the red-line spectrum.
What can we learn from this kind of measurement? Apart from giving a general understanding the effects of atmospheric extinction on the incident sunlight, the model gives a good indication of the aerosol concentration in the atmosphere. This has a big effect on the twilight phenomenon. In this measurement, the best fit model indicates that the aerosols were only about 20% of what is considered a 'normal' atmosphere. Presumably they were washed away by the wettest winter on record!
Dashed back up to this monument to try with my 50mm during "golden hour" Didn't turn out too bad, could've done with more interesting sky but it is the best for now :)
Based on an Ulrich Upietz photo from the 911 GT1 1997 book, this tracing shows the majority of pipes, hoses, wires and cables on a ready-to-run early series "M96" engine. But not the shadows created by the camera flash. And I've sketched in (dashed lines) the two biggest engine oil hoses: the supply line, (lower left) from the bottom of the oil tank (aluminum cylinder, orange cap) to the oil pump intake; and the return, (center) from the exit fitting at the top, rear, of the engine (orange with a red cap) to the big, external, oil tank,
This mare's nest of cables, wires and connectors is in the exit path below the air-to-air intercooler. The intake pressure accumulators on the inside of intake plenums are the most egregious, feature//bug, and will soon be moved to the outside of the plenums! That's how I know this is an early motor. Did the factory's Le Mans entries look like this in 1996? Did the Kremer Brothers prototype that came in first overall look like this?
Hoses, most A/N fittings, cables, wires and electrical connectors are shown in
brown - power steering fluid
blue-gray - electrical
orange - oil
pink - fuel
light blue - intake pressure below the throttles (aka vacuum or deck pressure?)
yellow-green - coolant
A few of the A/Ns are red or blue anodized finish, for visual interest, a few of the plastic dust caps are plain red and yellow. The top pair on the big oil tank are white. I think my picks for "electrical" wires and cables are pretty clear. Where a hose or cable could not be identified, I've left it it dark gray with white outline. Some mystery hoses / cables are left in shiny black, an oversight which will be corrected.
A fair number of hoses and cables are marked with yellow identity labels, a few with white labels. I've enhanced the colors and left them yellow or white when they could be recognized.
Notably invisible are the 6 primary wires to the coil/spark plug assemblies, the 6 spritzer wires for the fuel injection, throttle angle sensors on the butterfly valve axles and TDC/crankshaft angle sensor. They're in there, along with the knock sensors on each bank of cylinders, but covered by everything else. I will guess the pink marking on the flywheel is the TDC location.
My favorite mystery here was the intake pressure hose that connects to the fuel pressure regulator. The fuel pressure is regulated with regard to intake manifold pressure. Because the injection system uses variable timing and constant, relative, fuel pressure to measure the right mass of fuel into the measured mass of intake air.
Intake manifold pressure is below 1 atmosphere when the throttle butterfly valves are near closed. Open the butterflies wide and you'll get much closer to one atmosphere. Let the turbos spool up, throttles wide open, and the intake manifold pressure is GREATER than 1 atmosphere.
The two fuel hoses from the injector rails are unmistakable, as is the return line that collects from the regulator.
Its a shame there isn't a factory Bentley manual, or at least a Haynes if it can't be factory sourced....
1996_fwd_of_engine_fuel_air_oil_wiring_16
She dashed by me in painted on jeans
And all the heads turned because she was the queen
In the blink of an eye I knew her number and her name yeah
And she said I was the tiger she wanted to tame
Caribbean Queen
Now we're sharing the same dream
And our hearts they beat as one
No more love on the run
I lose my cool when she steps in the room
And I get so excited just from her perfume
Electric eyes that you can't ignore
And passion burns you like never before
I was in search of a good time
Just running my game
Love was the furthest
Furthest from my mind
Caribbean Queen
Now we're sharing the same dream
And our hearts they beat as one
No more love on the run
this is another tl;dr, but for those that don't like to read, i implore you to skip
down until you see the dashed line and then spend the two minutes it takes
to read the few paragraphs below it. it might just change your life.
the universe is a funny creature. a few days ago i wrote a diatribe about art and artists, strapped it to a gurney, shoved it in the back of a waaah!mbulance and drove it headfirst onto flickr. it's not often that i get that out of sorts, but when it does happen my thoughts can careen all over the place. a sense of hopelessness pervaded over me for the good portion of a week. y'all ever get that gnawing sense that there's absolutely nothing to look forward to? it can be an absolute killer, in the most absolute sense. it can suck every last bleeding drop of creativity out of your body and soul with a sadistically ravenous appetite that won't stop consuming you until it can dance victoriously over your self loathing corpse. it's stupid and dramatic, but when you're spinning in it, to put it bluntly:
everything sucks.
but like i said, the universe is a funny creature what which managed to align the fates in such a way this past weekend to make me take a long hard look at myself in many regards - not only with my attitude towards art, but towards people in general, especially those that i am closest to...i realized i can be unecessarily cruel and blunt as a result of my own stupid selfishness.
this is one of the harshest realizations i've ever had. often times i think i'm open minded, free spirited, progressive when in reality i'm the polar opposite.
i won't go into details of what happened, but it was good. all of it. even the most painful parts that cut deep to the core of who i perceived myself to be. and it changed me. for the better. the above photo is just one part of the reason.
sometimes we take away our own power without realizing what we've done.
(ah! there's that moment where the title of the movie comes up in the dialouge in the movie!)
i also had the chance to have a conversation with one of my oldest friends regarding the subject in my ealier diatribe. i explained to him how i went from complete sourpuss, to as Oprah would say, an "a-ha! moment". mid conversation, i fell asleep and ended up having a dream where the conversation continued but only the "goodbye" portion that had me swinging my legs over the side of my bed and placing my phone on my nightstand next to the stack of books i've yet to finish reading. the actual call ended at 3:54 in the morning according to my phone which ended up under my pillow. how's that for a universal exlamation point?
citing our conversation as the inspiration, my friend posted an amazing piece on facebook.
he's a more brilliant wordsmith than i, who has stated everything i lack the poetry to convey in my meagre words. if you've read this far, i implore you to take just one more minute to
read these beautiful words and take them to heart.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"To all of the artists, actors and actresses, singers, dancers, writers, musicians, performers, poets, chefs, revolutionaries, creative types, and dreamers out there who have been told to sacrifice your vision or your passion for the sake of practicality, logic, realism, security, or any other cause stirred by a potential nay-sayer, I say this in response:
Listen to what is inside you.
It only takes one sperm to fertilize an egg. Wars have begun and have ended as the result of a single individual. In the Olympics, there is typically one gold medalist in the world for any given athletic event.
That could be you.
But more importantly, it might not be, and that’s still ok.
Without the thousands or perhaps millions of others like you who have tried and failed, there would be no victory by the ‘one’ who made it.
Reframe your perspective.
It is not about whether you win in the end. It’s about doing what you know is right in your heart and doing what you believe in, despite how it turns out for you, because you are absolutely compelled to create, not to become ‘marketable’.
When you give an example of someone who has succeeded in your field and someone else responds with “but how many other people have failed or even died trying?” you can respond with this: “Most of the brave ones. Most of the ones who had integrity. Most of the ones who would not dare let slip away that which binds them to this mortal coil, despite the challenges and difficulties or inconveniences that may have resulted from their actions.”
Never give up.
Even utter failure is success. Even if you are not able to help pave the way for another, or inspire anyone in anyway at all ever, at the very least, you are not just another cog in the money making machine, and therefore, you are undoubtedly an unsung hero in the ongoing battle between humanity and slavery.
What could possibly be more noble or successful than that?"
SULLIVAN, ROBERT BALDWIN, lawyer, office holder, politician, and judge; b. 24 May 1802 in Bandon (Republic of Ireland), son of Daniel Sullivan and Barbara Baldwin; m. first 20 Jan. 1829 Cecilia Eliza Matthews, and they had a daughter; m. secondly 26 Dec. 1833 Emily Louisa Delatre, and they had four sons and seven daughters; d. 14 April 1853 in Toronto.
Robert Baldwin Sullivan’s father was an Irish merchant, and his mother was a sister of William Warren Baldwin*. The first member of Robert’s family to come to York (Toronto), Upper Canada, was Daniel, his eldest brother, who became a law student under Baldwin and lived with another uncle, John Spread Baldwin. The rest of the family immigrated in 1819 and the ambitious Daniel Sr established himself as a merchant in York, dealing in soap and tobacco. After a promising beginning, the Sullivans’ aspirations were dashed. In 1821 Daniel Jr died; the following year his father’s death left Robert as the head of the family. Once again the extended family lent its support; in 1823 William Warren Baldwin placed his nephew on the books of the Law Society of Upper Canada and secured for him a position as librarian to the House of Assembly. Having received a solid education in private schools in Ireland, Robert excelled in his law studies and was called to the bar in Michaelmas term 1828.
Sullivan first took an active role in politics during the exciting provincial election of 1828, as a campaigner for his uncle. Symptomatic of the increasing organization of the reform movement, John Rolph* had arranged W. W. Baldwin’s candidacy in his home riding of Norfolk, though Baldwin remained in York to aid in the campaign of Thomas David Morrison. Sullivan went to Vittoria to represent his uncle, who was elected, he noted, largely because of Rolph’s influence. Sullivan subsequently returned to the capital and took part with Baldwin and his son Robert in Morrison’s challenge to the return in York of their arch-foe, tory John Beverley Robinson*. He then gave counsel and support to Rolph in his legal defence of Francis Collins*, a supporter of his cousin Robert. Despite the fact that Morrison was defeated and Collins found guilty of libel, Sullivan’s considerable legal talents did not go unnoticed.
His future looked bright indeed, but not in the provincial capital. He returned to Vittoria, apparently determined to settle there and take over the law practice vacated by Rolph as a result of his move to Dundas. Shortly afterwards, in early 1829, he married a daughter of John Matthews*, a reform colleague of Rolph’s. But once again, after a promising beginning, successive tragedies unravelled Sullivan’s personal life: on 20 Dec. 1830, six months after the birth of their daughter, Sullivan’s wife died; three months later the baby died. Sullivan quit Vittoria and returned to York to seek the support of his family once more.
Upon his return, he again entered the law offices of W. W. Baldwin and Son, and later, in 1831, he established a partnership with Robert, who had married his sister. The firm, with such talented young lawyers, was soon prospering. On his birthday in 1833, the obviously bright and sensitive Sullivan reported to his brother Henry, then studying medicine in Ireland, that things were going well: “Augustus [another brother] . . . is now a Student of the Learned Society of Osgoode Hall – we have six clerks with plenty to do.” The partners were preparing “to go into parliament with the honorable body of Colonial Whigs. next election.” Sullivan and Baldwin had advanced their careers enough to consider themselves eligible to replace the recently dismissed attorney general, Henry John Boulton*, and solicitor general, Christopher Alexander Hagerman*. But, Sullivan said, because of’ their rumoured replacement by law officers from England, neither he nor Baldwin stood a good chance of getting “a silk gown.” By the end of 1833 Sullivan was once again thriving and on Boxing Day, in Stamford (Niagara Falls), Upper Canada, he married Emily Louisa, daughter of Lieutenant-Colonel Philip Chesneau Delatre.
His contemplations aside, Sullivan did not seek a seat in the election of 1834. The following year, however, he stood successfully as an alderman for St David’s Ward, Toronto, no doubt with the mayoralty in mind. A gentleman of Sullivan’s social standing and proven ability would have had little interest in aldermanic duties on a council just one year old. The mayoralty was another matter, however, as John Rolph’s actions the previous year had indicated. At the first meeting of council in 1835, Sullivan was confirmed mayor by tory and radical alike. As Toronto’s second mayor, he proved himself a competent administrator, approaching the problems of council from a practical rather than partisan perspective. Contested ward elections were the first problem; under Sullivan’s guidance, council adopted a set of regulations for hearing these grievances before proceeding with individual cases. Plagued with the same financial problems that had faced the first council [see William Lyon Mackenzie*], Sullivan turned his attention to amending the assessment laws. He was, as well, able to arrange financing for the city’s first major works project, a trunk sewer.
Public interest in municipal affairs was, however, sporadic at best. During 1835 council frequently could not convene for want of a quorum and there was discussion about compelling aldermen to attend. Sullivan’s last council meeting, lacking a quorum, was adjourned the following year and he declined to run again. There was, however, no lack of public interest in provincial politics, especially with the arrival of the new lieutenant governor, Sir Francis Bond Head*, in January 1836. And it was Sullivan, the erudite lawyer, who, as mayor of the provincial capital, delivered an address of welcome from the outgoing council.
The resignation on 12 March 1836 of Head’s Executive Council, of which Robert Baldwin had been a member, plunged the colony into its greatest political and constitutional crisis up to that point. With a haste that was indecent if nothing else, Sullivan accepted appointment to council and on the 14th was sworn in along with Augustus Warren Baldwin* (another uncle), John Elmsley*, and William Allan. Upper Canadian history provides other possible examples of political turncoats: Henry John Boulton deserved the epithet, John Willson probably did not. But Sullivan’s volte-face is without parallel. At the time of the reform brouhaha in 1828 over the dismissal of Judge John Walpole Willis*, Sullivan had declared, “It was against my principles to shew any respect to the present judges,” and, like his cousin, refused to plead before the “Pretended” Court of King’s Bench. A few years later he professed his eagerness to join the “Colonial Whigs” in the House of Assembly, without warning, he bedded down in 1836 with a group denounced by William Warren Baldwin as the “Tory junto.”
Sullivan has, unfortunately, left no explanation, or even rationalization, of his flip-flop. Reward was not long in coming: on 13 July he accepted the commissionership of crown lands, a plum worth £1,000 per annum. The patriarch of the Baldwin–Sullivan family was scathing. “R.S.,” W. W. Baldwin wrote to his son Robert, “is in the midst of enemies but he has thrown himself into their arms, & when they shake him over the precepice, he will not have a friend to console him.” A pariah among acquaintances and an object of rebuke by the whig press, Sullivan was isolated, almost. Robert Baldwin reminded his irate father that “family love” was “heavens best gift . . . let us not let political differences interfere with the cultivation of it – but on the contrary where such unhappily exist always forget the politician in the relation.” Despite Baldwin’s support for Sullivan, their legal partnership appears to have ended some time between 1836 and 1838.
Lord Durham [Lambton*] later derided Head’s appointments as ciphers. Sullivan proved an administration man, but he was no one’s tool. And what cannot be questioned is his ability. Head defended his choice, describing Sullivan as well-educated, a leading lawyer, and “a man of very superior talents . . . and of irreproachable character.” He quickly became the dominant figure in an increasingly active council. In a memorandum on the councillors prepared by Head, probably for his successor, Sir George Arthur, Sullivan was lauded as possessing “great legal talent [and] sound judgement particularly on financial questions,” whereas Allan, although honest and honourable, had “not much talent or education” and Elmsley was a “wrong headed man but brave.” Arthur relied heavily on forceful men with incisive analytical minds, such as Chief Justice John Beverley Robinson, John Macaulay, and Sullivan. In June 1838 Sullivan assumed the additional office of surveyor general. During Robinson’s long absence in England from 1838 to 1840, Arthur tended to ignore his law officers and other councillors in preference to Sullivan, who “takes a more enlarged view of the subjects, or, at all events, his sentiments fall more in with my motives of dealing with political questions in the present day; and, therefore, I have generally conferred with him in his office as presiding member of the Executive Council.” In February 1839 Sullivan was appointed to the Legislative Council. So crucial was he to the business of council and to the lieutenant governor as a policy adviser, that Arthur appointed Kenneth Cameron to serve as surveyor general pro tem, between October 1840 and February 1841, so that more important business need not be neglected by Sullivan.
In 1838, in the aftermath of the rebellion, Arthur had relied on him increasingly. That year Sullivan prepared, for instance, a mammoth report on the state of the province. The degree to which his analysis fell in line with that of his old enemies can be measured by Robinson’s enthusiastic approval. The report was “natural & forcible” and its tone “liberally conservative.” Sullivan took for granted that without natural or cultural barriers separating Upper Canada from the United States, the colony “must be materially affected by the state of Politics and of the popular mind in the neighbouring republic.” He uttered, albeit eloquently, the usual bromides that depicted American political culture in terms of “tyranny of a majority” and mob rule. He repeated, in short, current tory denunciations of responsible government and an elective legislative council as mere half-way houses to full-blown democratic institutions and chaos. In a manner worthy of Robinson at his best, he defended the Constitutional Act of 1791, the integrity of office holders, and the absolute need, if not the right, of an executive claim to revenues independent of control by the assembly.
Sullivan’s foray, in the same report, into policies on immigration, finance, and land matters marked his point of departure from tory nostrums. To his mind, tranquillity was a corollary of prosperity, which could only be achieved through large-scale immigration, a rise in the value of land, and productive public works. These measures would make people much happier “than any abstract political measures” could, and would have the effect of restoring public confidence and the colony’s trade. An enormous public debt sucked up available revenues and was responsible for leaving the province a largely inaccessible wilderness. The lack of superintendence of crown land produced a decline in revenue and immigration. Upper Canada, Sullivan maintained, must gain control of its major source of revenue, customs duties raised at Montreal and Quebec. To this end he gave full voice to a favourite tory war cry – annex Montreal, Trois-Rivières, and the Eastern Townships to Upper Canada, thus leaving the French Canadians to enjoy their own “bad laws, bad roads bad sleighs, bad food . . . in peace and quietness injuring no others and not being interfered with themselves.” The resurrection of union as a panacea for the Upper Canadian crisis would therefore be dangerous, since it would bring together and make supreme the democratic elements in Upper and Lower Canada. Over a year later, in 1839, Sullivan reiterated his hostility to union and his attachment to British institutions in a memorandum sent under Arthur’s name to the Colonial Office. He was at pains to distinguish two elements among the “conservatives”: those “who are so from principle, or attachment from sentiment to British institutions,” and the “Commercial party” which supported “prosperity, public credit and public improvements” but was conservative out of self-interest and only in prosperous times.
Sullivan’s lucid analysis of the province’s problems was matched by his equally deft set of practical prescriptions. He favoured the centralization of power, having urged Arthur in April 1838 to retain the power of patronage over the militia and not relinquish it to local colonels. That same year he recommended suspending work on the St Lawrence canals, lest the work become a “perpetual monument of Legislative folly & extravagance,” and he cautioned Arthur to rein in the commissioners responsible for the work. Although he supported the legitimacy of the constitutional privileges of the Church of England, the clergy reserves issue had to be settled in the interests of internal harmony. To this end he favoured dividing the reserves among the Anglicans, Presbyterians, and Wesleyan Methodists, with the proceeds from the reserves used “to secure religious instruction according to the protestant faith.”
In 1839 Arthur directed the Executive Council to prepare a report on how best to adapt land policy to the anticipated increase in immigration. The council split. Minority reports were submitted in 1840 by Sullivan and Augustus Warren Baldwin on one side, and William Allan and Richard Alexander Tucker* on the other. In fact, the reports were the efforts of Sullivan and Allan. Sullivan’s represents an eloquent and closely reasoned defence of an agrarian society, composed largely of independent farmers, as the basis for social and political stability and economic prosperity. Allan argued that the province’s economic backwardness could only be overcome by capitalist undertakings. Possessed of a shrewd, intuitive grasp of Upper Canada’s situation and its potential, Allan urged seizing the opportunity to establish “what we have been taught to consider a great desideratum, viz, a class of labourers, separate and distinct from Land owners.” Although Governor Charles Edward Poulett Thomson* (later Lord Sydenham) noted agreement with Allan’s position “as applied to a country under ordinary circumstances,” he saw the province’s present situation as different and he dismissed Allan’s opinion as biased and his arguments as “trashy in the extreme.”
Thomson, the architect of union, soon realized how useful Sullivan could be. He abandoned his previous hostility to union, a position which, as Attorney General Hagerman found out, Thomson would not tolerate. Sullivan was prominent in shepherding the measure through the Legislative Council, and appeared a solid “Governor’s man” at its inception. He was one of the four executive councillors, along with William Henry Draper*, Charles Richard Ogden*, and Charles Dewey Day*, in whom Robert Baldwin expressed want of confidence in February 1841. Sullivan retained the commissionership of crown lands until June of that year, in which month he was appointed to the new Legislative Council.
John Charles Dent*’s description of Sullivan, as a brilliant orator who charmed with his “Irish provincial accent” but who lacked conviction and steadiness of purpose, is accurate. He seems to have dozed through his duties as president of the Executive Council in 1841–42. He performed another wonderful turnaround in September 1842. When the new governor, Sir Charles Bagot*, was struggling to avoid a reform-dominated ministry, Sullivan supported him in the Legislative Council, asking, “Are we to carry on the government fairly and upon liberal principles or by dint of miserable majorities?” Yet he happily remained as president of council when the miserable majority prevailed, holding that position until November 1843 .
Indeed, he rapidly became a partisan of the new order, presumably an indication of his love of intrigue, his respect for power, and his weakness for flamboyant oratory. In October 1842 he was involved in the obdurate politics of the newly formed ministry of Baldwin and Louis-Hippolyte La Fontaine*, chairing the committee of the Executive Council which recommended withdrawing government advertising from newspapers “found to join in active opposition to the Government.” Sir Charles Theophilus Metcalfe*, Bagot’s successor in March 1843, was relatively complimentary to Sullivan as a minister, given that Metcalfe thought most of the executive councillors were fanatics, villains, or incompetents. According to his biographer, John William Kaye, the governor saw Sullivan as talented but dismissed him as inconsistent and lacking the “weight of personal character.” If a lightweight, Sullivan was prominent enough to be a target of the Orange order. After passage of the Party Processions and Secret Societies bills, there was a huge, furious Orange demonstration in Toronto on 8 Nov. 1843. Sullivan’s name was joined with those of the “traitors Baldwin and [Francis Hincks*]” on the mob’s banners.
During the ten-month crisis which followed the resignation of the Baldwin–La Fontaine ministry in November, Sullivan was in his element. His talents as an orator and pamphleteer gave him a prominent role in the reform campaign to justify the actions of the late ministry and win the election of 1844. His excessive zeal, however, at times injured the reform cause. He took part in the early meetings of the party’s new provincial organization, the Reform Association of Canada. At its first public meeting, in Toronto on 25 March 1844, Sullivan – ironically, given his “miserable majorities” speech – moved the resolution insisting that provincial ministries required the support of parliamentary majorities. He campaigned in 4th York with Baldwin and advised him on tactics. In September Baldwin reported consulting with Sullivan, James Edward Small*, and John Henry Dunn about whether to resign his militia commission and relinquish his appointment as queen’s counsel, in protest against Metcalfe’s autocracy. On their advice Baldwin retained his militia commission.
Sullivan’s most important role continued to be that of public controversialist. In May 1844 Egerton Ryerson* had begun a series of newspaper articles which supported the governor, and later published them as a pamphlet. He claimed to have been sympathetic to the councillors until their “real motives” were revealed by Sullivan and Francis Hincks, when he came to see Metcalfe as “a misrepresented and injured man.” Under the transparent nom de plume of Legion, Sullivan answered in 13 letters in the Examiner and the Globe. The letters, which also appeared as a pamphlet, contained no new insights but were an effective summary of the Baldwinite arguments for responsible government and provided a puncturing lampoon of Ryerson’s pomposity. They show, at places, Sullivan’s tendency to get carried away with his rhetoric. Later in the year the tories made good use of his indiscretion at an election meeting in Sharon, where, in ridiculing the governor as “Charles the Simple,” he seriously overstepped even the limits of that day. His excesses, however, were only one small factor in the reform defeat in the election of 1844. Sullivan ascribed it in large measure to the influence of the Orange order. “Ireland in its worst time,” he told Baldwin in January 1845, “was not more completely under the feet of an orange ascendancy than is Canada at present.”
With the party in opposition, Sullivan was not very active in the Legislative Council. He continued to be a close adviser to Baldwin on political matters, presumably more because of Baldwin’s stout family loyalty than because of his chequered record as a political tactician. He had a good deal to say about the worst crisis facing the party between 1845 and 1847: the tories’ wooing of French Canadians disenchanted with the reformers after the 1844 defeat. William Henry Draper came close to forging an alliance with René-Édouard Caron* and others in 1845–46. To Sullivan, writing to Baldwin in August 1846, Caron was “a false sneaking knave”; Hincks, who toadied to the French to maintain support, was nearly as bad. This outburst suggested that Sullivan had a conveniently short memory. La Fontaine did not. During the Draper–Caron flirtation, La Fontaine reminded Baldwin that Sullivan had made a similar attempt, in July 1842, to split the French from the reform party. He had approached both La Fontaine and Caron to enter the Bagot-Draper ministry and leave Baldwin behind.
There were issues on which the cousins differed. During the winter of 1844–45 Sullivan, who joined William Hume Blake* in a campaign to reform the Upper Canadian judicial system, expressed his deep disappointment that Baldwin would not give leadership on that effort in the assembly. More significant was their disagreement over tariff policy. After Britain’s adoption of free trade, Baldwin urged Canada, in a speech in November 1846, to follow that lead. Sullivan, however, was an early advocate of a different approach. Speaking to the Hamilton Mechanics’ Institute on 17 Nov. 1847, he championed the emerging capitalist interests of Canada, in sharp contrast to his position in 1840. Rapid industrial development was the solution to Canada’s economic problems, and he suggested the adoption of protective duties as a means to foster the needed industry. Published the following year, Sullivan’s Hamilton appeal was frequently cited when the protectionist movement began to gain strength after 1849.
Despite his political success in the 1840s Sullivan’s heavy drinking and fecklessness in business matters nearly destroyed his career. In 1843 he lamented his difficulty in collecting accounts, suggesting that his hand was all too often limp. In this he stood in marked contrast to his cousin. Baldwin was especially fierce in pursuing payment from the wealthy, who, he believed, had a moral duty to meet their debts. In 1844, however, things looked up. Oliver Mowat*, then a gossipy young lawyer, reported that Sullivan had joined the “total abstinence society.” It was a necessary step, in Mowat’s view, for no one in Toronto’s legal community had confidence in the drunken Sullivan. The reformation did not last. In the spring of 1848 Baldwin’s property manager, Lawrence Heyden, told Baldwin that Sullivan was in serious difficulty: “It is very generally reported here that he is broken out again.”
Dry or wet, Sullivan remained an intimate adviser to the party chief. His views were sought on delicate matters, such as the manœuvres in 1847 to find a seat for the recent convert from high toryism, Henry John Boulton, who remained anathema to many local reformers. When the party swept the election of January 1848, Baldwin suggested to La Fontaine 24 names, including Sullivan’s, as possibilities for the 11 cabinet positions. According to Baldwin, Sullivan preferred a judgeship, but his experience would be useful in cabinet. Presumably La Fontaine was not as generous about the missteps of Baldwin’s errant cousin, for Sullivan’s name did not appear on the cabinet list presented to Governor Lord Elgin [Bruce*] on 7 March 1848. La Fontaine and Baldwin told him they needed the seat to conciliate a faction in the party. On Elgin’s urging, however, they reconsidered and the next day Sullivan was included as provincial secretary, becoming the most senior of the ministers in terms of service. The governor was delighted for he considered Sullivan both able and “more British” than any other Canadian politician. In July he described Sullivan to Colonial Secretary Lord Grey as the member of council “who has the strongest feeling in favor of settling the lands of the Province and has most influence with his colleagues on questions of this nature.” Sullivan, for example, favoured free land grants and the construction of colonization roads – programs for these would be initiated in the 1850s.
Sullivan nevertheless played no major role in the “Great Ministry” and on 15 Sept. 1848, after resigning from council, he received his desired reward, a puisne justiceship on the Court of Queen’s Bench. He did not, however, entirely give up a political interest. While in cabinet, in April 1848, he had dismissed the medical superintendent of the Provincial Lunatic Asylum, Walter Telfer, and replaced him with the apparently more politically sound George Hamilton Park. Park proceeded to feud with the staff and to fire employees without authorization. Sullivan followed the case closely and gave his assessment of it to Baldwin in January 1849; Park was dismissed that month and the radical newspaper, the Examiner, took his side against the “tyrannous” government. Sullivan guessed correctly that Park’s brother-in-law, John Rolph, was behind the crisis and warned Baldwin that the case was being used by such dissident reformers to embarrass the ministry.
Sullivan held his seat on the Legislative Council until May 1851. In January 1850 he had moved from Queen’s Bench to the newly formed Court of Common Pleas, where he sat until his death three years later. A superb orator and incisive analyst when sober, Sullivan nevertheless remained known as a flawed figure, devoid, in the opinion of Dent and others, of “genuine earnestness of purpose” and “strong political convictions.”
SULLIVAN, ROBERT BALDWIN, lawyer, office holder, politician, and judge; b. 24 May 1802 in Bandon (Republic of Ireland), son of Daniel Sullivan and Barbara Baldwin; m. first 20 Jan. 1829 Cecilia Eliza Matthews, and they had a daughter; m. secondly 26 Dec. 1833 Emily Louisa Delatre, and they had four sons and seven daughters; d. 14 April 1853 in Toronto.
Robert Baldwin Sullivan’s father was an Irish merchant, and his mother was a sister of William Warren Baldwin*. The first member of Robert’s family to come to York (Toronto), Upper Canada, was Daniel, his eldest brother, who became a law student under Baldwin and lived with another uncle, John Spread Baldwin. The rest of the family immigrated in 1819 and the ambitious Daniel Sr established himself as a merchant in York, dealing in soap and tobacco. After a promising beginning, the Sullivans’ aspirations were dashed. In 1821 Daniel Jr died; the following year his father’s death left Robert as the head of the family. Once again the extended family lent its support; in 1823 William Warren Baldwin placed his nephew on the books of the Law Society of Upper Canada and secured for him a position as librarian to the House of Assembly. Having received a solid education in private schools in Ireland, Robert excelled in his law studies and was called to the bar in Michaelmas term 1828.
Sullivan first took an active role in politics during the exciting provincial election of 1828, as a campaigner for his uncle. Symptomatic of the increasing organization of the reform movement, John Rolph* had arranged W. W. Baldwin’s candidacy in his home riding of Norfolk, though Baldwin remained in York to aid in the campaign of Thomas David Morrison. Sullivan went to Vittoria to represent his uncle, who was elected, he noted, largely because of Rolph’s influence. Sullivan subsequently returned to the capital and took part with Baldwin and his son Robert in Morrison’s challenge to the return in York of their arch-foe, tory John Beverley Robinson*. He then gave counsel and support to Rolph in his legal defence of Francis Collins*, a supporter of his cousin Robert. Despite the fact that Morrison was defeated and Collins found guilty of libel, Sullivan’s considerable legal talents did not go unnoticed.
His future looked bright indeed, but not in the provincial capital. He returned to Vittoria, apparently determined to settle there and take over the law practice vacated by Rolph as a result of his move to Dundas. Shortly afterwards, in early 1829, he married a daughter of John Matthews*, a reform colleague of Rolph’s. But once again, after a promising beginning, successive tragedies unravelled Sullivan’s personal life: on 20 Dec. 1830, six months after the birth of their daughter, Sullivan’s wife died; three months later the baby died. Sullivan quit Vittoria and returned to York to seek the support of his family once more.
Upon his return, he again entered the law offices of W. W. Baldwin and Son, and later, in 1831, he established a partnership with Robert, who had married his sister. The firm, with such talented young lawyers, was soon prospering. On his birthday in 1833, the obviously bright and sensitive Sullivan reported to his brother Henry, then studying medicine in Ireland, that things were going well: “Augustus [another brother] . . . is now a Student of the Learned Society of Osgoode Hall – we have six clerks with plenty to do.” The partners were preparing “to go into parliament with the honorable body of Colonial Whigs. next election.” Sullivan and Baldwin had advanced their careers enough to consider themselves eligible to replace the recently dismissed attorney general, Henry John Boulton*, and solicitor general, Christopher Alexander Hagerman*. But, Sullivan said, because of’ their rumoured replacement by law officers from England, neither he nor Baldwin stood a good chance of getting “a silk gown.” By the end of 1833 Sullivan was once again thriving and on Boxing Day, in Stamford (Niagara Falls), Upper Canada, he married Emily Louisa, daughter of Lieutenant-Colonel Philip Chesneau Delatre.
His contemplations aside, Sullivan did not seek a seat in the election of 1834. The following year, however, he stood successfully as an alderman for St David’s Ward, Toronto, no doubt with the mayoralty in mind. A gentleman of Sullivan’s social standing and proven ability would have had little interest in aldermanic duties on a council just one year old. The mayoralty was another matter, however, as John Rolph’s actions the previous year had indicated. At the first meeting of council in 1835, Sullivan was confirmed mayor by tory and radical alike. As Toronto’s second mayor, he proved himself a competent administrator, approaching the problems of council from a practical rather than partisan perspective. Contested ward elections were the first problem; under Sullivan’s guidance, council adopted a set of regulations for hearing these grievances before proceeding with individual cases. Plagued with the same financial problems that had faced the first council [see William Lyon Mackenzie*], Sullivan turned his attention to amending the assessment laws. He was, as well, able to arrange financing for the city’s first major works project, a trunk sewer.
Public interest in municipal affairs was, however, sporadic at best. During 1835 council frequently could not convene for want of a quorum and there was discussion about compelling aldermen to attend. Sullivan’s last council meeting, lacking a quorum, was adjourned the following year and he declined to run again. There was, however, no lack of public interest in provincial politics, especially with the arrival of the new lieutenant governor, Sir Francis Bond Head*, in January 1836. And it was Sullivan, the erudite lawyer, who, as mayor of the provincial capital, delivered an address of welcome from the outgoing council.
The resignation on 12 March 1836 of Head’s Executive Council, of which Robert Baldwin had been a member, plunged the colony into its greatest political and constitutional crisis up to that point. With a haste that was indecent if nothing else, Sullivan accepted appointment to council and on the 14th was sworn in along with Augustus Warren Baldwin* (another uncle), John Elmsley*, and William Allan. Upper Canadian history provides other possible examples of political turncoats: Henry John Boulton deserved the epithet, John Willson probably did not. But Sullivan’s volte-face is without parallel. At the time of the reform brouhaha in 1828 over the dismissal of Judge John Walpole Willis*, Sullivan had declared, “It was against my principles to shew any respect to the present judges,” and, like his cousin, refused to plead before the “Pretended” Court of King’s Bench. A few years later he professed his eagerness to join the “Colonial Whigs” in the House of Assembly, without warning, he bedded down in 1836 with a group denounced by William Warren Baldwin as the “Tory junto.”
Sullivan has, unfortunately, left no explanation, or even rationalization, of his flip-flop. Reward was not long in coming: on 13 July he accepted the commissionership of crown lands, a plum worth £1,000 per annum. The patriarch of the Baldwin–Sullivan family was scathing. “R.S.,” W. W. Baldwin wrote to his son Robert, “is in the midst of enemies but he has thrown himself into their arms, & when they shake him over the precepice, he will not have a friend to console him.” A pariah among acquaintances and an object of rebuke by the whig press, Sullivan was isolated, almost. Robert Baldwin reminded his irate father that “family love” was “heavens best gift . . . let us not let political differences interfere with the cultivation of it – but on the contrary where such unhappily exist always forget the politician in the relation.” Despite Baldwin’s support for Sullivan, their legal partnership appears to have ended some time between 1836 and 1838.
Lord Durham [Lambton*] later derided Head’s appointments as ciphers. Sullivan proved an administration man, but he was no one’s tool. And what cannot be questioned is his ability. Head defended his choice, describing Sullivan as well-educated, a leading lawyer, and “a man of very superior talents . . . and of irreproachable character.” He quickly became the dominant figure in an increasingly active council. In a memorandum on the councillors prepared by Head, probably for his successor, Sir George Arthur, Sullivan was lauded as possessing “great legal talent [and] sound judgement particularly on financial questions,” whereas Allan, although honest and honourable, had “not much talent or education” and Elmsley was a “wrong headed man but brave.” Arthur relied heavily on forceful men with incisive analytical minds, such as Chief Justice John Beverley Robinson, John Macaulay, and Sullivan. In June 1838 Sullivan assumed the additional office of surveyor general. During Robinson’s long absence in England from 1838 to 1840, Arthur tended to ignore his law officers and other councillors in preference to Sullivan, who “takes a more enlarged view of the subjects, or, at all events, his sentiments fall more in with my motives of dealing with political questions in the present day; and, therefore, I have generally conferred with him in his office as presiding member of the Executive Council.” In February 1839 Sullivan was appointed to the Legislative Council. So crucial was he to the business of council and to the lieutenant governor as a policy adviser, that Arthur appointed Kenneth Cameron to serve as surveyor general pro tem, between October 1840 and February 1841, so that more important business need not be neglected by Sullivan.
In 1838, in the aftermath of the rebellion, Arthur had relied on him increasingly. That year Sullivan prepared, for instance, a mammoth report on the state of the province. The degree to which his analysis fell in line with that of his old enemies can be measured by Robinson’s enthusiastic approval. The report was “natural & forcible” and its tone “liberally conservative.” Sullivan took for granted that without natural or cultural barriers separating Upper Canada from the United States, the colony “must be materially affected by the state of Politics and of the popular mind in the neighbouring republic.” He uttered, albeit eloquently, the usual bromides that depicted American political culture in terms of “tyranny of a majority” and mob rule. He repeated, in short, current tory denunciations of responsible government and an elective legislative council as mere half-way houses to full-blown democratic institutions and chaos. In a manner worthy of Robinson at his best, he defended the Constitutional Act of 1791, the integrity of office holders, and the absolute need, if not the right, of an executive claim to revenues independent of control by the assembly.
Sullivan’s foray, in the same report, into policies on immigration, finance, and land matters marked his point of departure from tory nostrums. To his mind, tranquillity was a corollary of prosperity, which could only be achieved through large-scale immigration, a rise in the value of land, and productive public works. These measures would make people much happier “than any abstract political measures” could, and would have the effect of restoring public confidence and the colony’s trade. An enormous public debt sucked up available revenues and was responsible for leaving the province a largely inaccessible wilderness. The lack of superintendence of crown land produced a decline in revenue and immigration. Upper Canada, Sullivan maintained, must gain control of its major source of revenue, customs duties raised at Montreal and Quebec. To this end he gave full voice to a favourite tory war cry – annex Montreal, Trois-Rivières, and the Eastern Townships to Upper Canada, thus leaving the French Canadians to enjoy their own “bad laws, bad roads bad sleighs, bad food . . . in peace and quietness injuring no others and not being interfered with themselves.” The resurrection of union as a panacea for the Upper Canadian crisis would therefore be dangerous, since it would bring together and make supreme the democratic elements in Upper and Lower Canada. Over a year later, in 1839, Sullivan reiterated his hostility to union and his attachment to British institutions in a memorandum sent under Arthur’s name to the Colonial Office. He was at pains to distinguish two elements among the “conservatives”: those “who are so from principle, or attachment from sentiment to British institutions,” and the “Commercial party” which supported “prosperity, public credit and public improvements” but was conservative out of self-interest and only in prosperous times.
Sullivan’s lucid analysis of the province’s problems was matched by his equally deft set of practical prescriptions. He favoured the centralization of power, having urged Arthur in April 1838 to retain the power of patronage over the militia and not relinquish it to local colonels. That same year he recommended suspending work on the St Lawrence canals, lest the work become a “perpetual monument of Legislative folly & extravagance,” and he cautioned Arthur to rein in the commissioners responsible for the work. Although he supported the legitimacy of the constitutional privileges of the Church of England, the clergy reserves issue had to be settled in the interests of internal harmony. To this end he favoured dividing the reserves among the Anglicans, Presbyterians, and Wesleyan Methodists, with the proceeds from the reserves used “to secure religious instruction according to the protestant faith.”
In 1839 Arthur directed the Executive Council to prepare a report on how best to adapt land policy to the anticipated increase in immigration. The council split. Minority reports were submitted in 1840 by Sullivan and Augustus Warren Baldwin on one side, and William Allan and Richard Alexander Tucker* on the other. In fact, the reports were the efforts of Sullivan and Allan. Sullivan’s represents an eloquent and closely reasoned defence of an agrarian society, composed largely of independent farmers, as the basis for social and political stability and economic prosperity. Allan argued that the province’s economic backwardness could only be overcome by capitalist undertakings. Possessed of a shrewd, intuitive grasp of Upper Canada’s situation and its potential, Allan urged seizing the opportunity to establish “what we have been taught to consider a great desideratum, viz, a class of labourers, separate and distinct from Land owners.” Although Governor Charles Edward Poulett Thomson* (later Lord Sydenham) noted agreement with Allan’s position “as applied to a country under ordinary circumstances,” he saw the province’s present situation as different and he dismissed Allan’s opinion as biased and his arguments as “trashy in the extreme.”
Thomson, the architect of union, soon realized how useful Sullivan could be. He abandoned his previous hostility to union, a position which, as Attorney General Hagerman found out, Thomson would not tolerate. Sullivan was prominent in shepherding the measure through the Legislative Council, and appeared a solid “Governor’s man” at its inception. He was one of the four executive councillors, along with William Henry Draper*, Charles Richard Ogden*, and Charles Dewey Day*, in whom Robert Baldwin expressed want of confidence in February 1841. Sullivan retained the commissionership of crown lands until June of that year, in which month he was appointed to the new Legislative Council.
John Charles Dent*’s description of Sullivan, as a brilliant orator who charmed with his “Irish provincial accent” but who lacked conviction and steadiness of purpose, is accurate. He seems to have dozed through his duties as president of the Executive Council in 1841–42. He performed another wonderful turnaround in September 1842. When the new governor, Sir Charles Bagot*, was struggling to avoid a reform-dominated ministry, Sullivan supported him in the Legislative Council, asking, “Are we to carry on the government fairly and upon liberal principles or by dint of miserable majorities?” Yet he happily remained as president of council when the miserable majority prevailed, holding that position until November 1843 .
Indeed, he rapidly became a partisan of the new order, presumably an indication of his love of intrigue, his respect for power, and his weakness for flamboyant oratory. In October 1842 he was involved in the obdurate politics of the newly formed ministry of Baldwin and Louis-Hippolyte La Fontaine*, chairing the committee of the Executive Council which recommended withdrawing government advertising from newspapers “found to join in active opposition to the Government.” Sir Charles Theophilus Metcalfe*, Bagot’s successor in March 1843, was relatively complimentary to Sullivan as a minister, given that Metcalfe thought most of the executive councillors were fanatics, villains, or incompetents. According to his biographer, John William Kaye, the governor saw Sullivan as talented but dismissed him as inconsistent and lacking the “weight of personal character.” If a lightweight, Sullivan was prominent enough to be a target of the Orange order. After passage of the Party Processions and Secret Societies bills, there was a huge, furious Orange demonstration in Toronto on 8 Nov. 1843. Sullivan’s name was joined with those of the “traitors Baldwin and [Francis Hincks*]” on the mob’s banners.
During the ten-month crisis which followed the resignation of the Baldwin–La Fontaine ministry in November, Sullivan was in his element. His talents as an orator and pamphleteer gave him a prominent role in the reform campaign to justify the actions of the late ministry and win the election of 1844. His excessive zeal, however, at times injured the reform cause. He took part in the early meetings of the party’s new provincial organization, the Reform Association of Canada. At its first public meeting, in Toronto on 25 March 1844, Sullivan – ironically, given his “miserable majorities” speech – moved the resolution insisting that provincial ministries required the support of parliamentary majorities. He campaigned in 4th York with Baldwin and advised him on tactics. In September Baldwin reported consulting with Sullivan, James Edward Small*, and John Henry Dunn about whether to resign his militia commission and relinquish his appointment as queen’s counsel, in protest against Metcalfe’s autocracy. On their advice Baldwin retained his militia commission.
Sullivan’s most important role continued to be that of public controversialist. In May 1844 Egerton Ryerson* had begun a series of newspaper articles which supported the governor, and later published them as a pamphlet. He claimed to have been sympathetic to the councillors until their “real motives” were revealed by Sullivan and Francis Hincks, when he came to see Metcalfe as “a misrepresented and injured man.” Under the transparent nom de plume of Legion, Sullivan answered in 13 letters in the Examiner and the Globe. The letters, which also appeared as a pamphlet, contained no new insights but were an effective summary of the Baldwinite arguments for responsible government and provided a puncturing lampoon of Ryerson’s pomposity. They show, at places, Sullivan’s tendency to get carried away with his rhetoric. Later in the year the tories made good use of his indiscretion at an election meeting in Sharon, where, in ridiculing the governor as “Charles the Simple,” he seriously overstepped even the limits of that day. His excesses, however, were only one small factor in the reform defeat in the election of 1844. Sullivan ascribed it in large measure to the influence of the Orange order. “Ireland in its worst time,” he told Baldwin in January 1845, “was not more completely under the feet of an orange ascendancy than is Canada at present.”
With the party in opposition, Sullivan was not very active in the Legislative Council. He continued to be a close adviser to Baldwin on political matters, presumably more because of Baldwin’s stout family loyalty than because of his chequered record as a political tactician. He had a good deal to say about the worst crisis facing the party between 1845 and 1847: the tories’ wooing of French Canadians disenchanted with the reformers after the 1844 defeat. William Henry Draper came close to forging an alliance with René-Édouard Caron* and others in 1845–46. To Sullivan, writing to Baldwin in August 1846, Caron was “a false sneaking knave”; Hincks, who toadied to the French to maintain support, was nearly as bad. This outburst suggested that Sullivan had a conveniently short memory. La Fontaine did not. During the Draper–Caron flirtation, La Fontaine reminded Baldwin that Sullivan had made a similar attempt, in July 1842, to split the French from the reform party. He had approached both La Fontaine and Caron to enter the Bagot-Draper ministry and leave Baldwin behind.
There were issues on which the cousins differed. During the winter of 1844–45 Sullivan, who joined William Hume Blake* in a campaign to reform the Upper Canadian judicial system, expressed his deep disappointment that Baldwin would not give leadership on that effort in the assembly. More significant was their disagreement over tariff policy. After Britain’s adoption of free trade, Baldwin urged Canada, in a speech in November 1846, to follow that lead. Sullivan, however, was an early advocate of a different approach. Speaking to the Hamilton Mechanics’ Institute on 17 Nov. 1847, he championed the emerging capitalist interests of Canada, in sharp contrast to his position in 1840. Rapid industrial development was the solution to Canada’s economic problems, and he suggested the adoption of protective duties as a means to foster the needed industry. Published the following year, Sullivan’s Hamilton appeal was frequently cited when the protectionist movement began to gain strength after 1849.
Despite his political success in the 1840s Sullivan’s heavy drinking and fecklessness in business matters nearly destroyed his career. In 1843 he lamented his difficulty in collecting accounts, suggesting that his hand was all too often limp. In this he stood in marked contrast to his cousin. Baldwin was especially fierce in pursuing payment from the wealthy, who, he believed, had a moral duty to meet their debts. In 1844, however, things looked up. Oliver Mowat*, then a gossipy young lawyer, reported that Sullivan had joined the “total abstinence society.” It was a necessary step, in Mowat’s view, for no one in Toronto’s legal community had confidence in the drunken Sullivan. The reformation did not last. In the spring of 1848 Baldwin’s property manager, Lawrence Heyden, told Baldwin that Sullivan was in serious difficulty: “It is very generally reported here that he is broken out again.”
Dry or wet, Sullivan remained an intimate adviser to the party chief. His views were sought on delicate matters, such as the manœuvres in 1847 to find a seat for the recent convert from high toryism, Henry John Boulton, who remained anathema to many local reformers. When the party swept the election of January 1848, Baldwin suggested to La Fontaine 24 names, including Sullivan’s, as possibilities for the 11 cabinet positions. According to Baldwin, Sullivan preferred a judgeship, but his experience would be useful in cabinet. Presumably La Fontaine was not as generous about the missteps of Baldwin’s errant cousin, for Sullivan’s name did not appear on the cabinet list presented to Governor Lord Elgin [Bruce*] on 7 March 1848. La Fontaine and Baldwin told him they needed the seat to conciliate a faction in the party. On Elgin’s urging, however, they reconsidered and the next day Sullivan was included as provincial secretary, becoming the most senior of the ministers in terms of service. The governor was delighted for he considered Sullivan both able and “more British” than any other Canadian politician. In July he described Sullivan to Colonial Secretary Lord Grey as the member of council “who has the strongest feeling in favor of settling the lands of the Province and has most influence with his colleagues on questions of this nature.” Sullivan, for example, favoured free land grants and the construction of colonization roads – programs for these would be initiated in the 1850s.
Sullivan nevertheless played no major role in the “Great Ministry” and on 15 Sept. 1848, after resigning from council, he received his desired reward, a puisne justiceship on the Court of Queen’s Bench. He did not, however, entirely give up a political interest. While in cabinet, in April 1848, he had dismissed the medical superintendent of the Provincial Lunatic Asylum, Walter Telfer, and replaced him with the apparently more politically sound George Hamilton Park. Park proceeded to feud with the staff and to fire employees without authorization. Sullivan followed the case closely and gave his assessment of it to Baldwin in January 1849; Park was dismissed that month and the radical newspaper, the Examiner, took his side against the “tyrannous” government. Sullivan guessed correctly that Park’s brother-in-law, John Rolph, was behind the crisis and warned Baldwin that the case was being used by such dissident reformers to embarrass the ministry.
Sullivan held his seat on the Legislative Council until May 1851. In January 1850 he had moved from Queen’s Bench to the newly formed Court of Common Pleas, where he sat until his death three years later. A superb orator and incisive analyst when sober, Sullivan nevertheless remained known as a flawed figure, devoid, in the opinion of Dent and others, of “genuine earnestness of purpose” and “strong political convictions.”
A dragonfly is an insect belonging to the order Odonata, infraorder Anisoptera (from Greek ἄνισος anisos, "unequal" and πτερόν pteron, "wing", because the hindwing is broader than the forewing). Adult dragonflies are characterized by large, multifaceted eyes, two pairs of strong, transparent wings, sometimes with coloured patches, and an elongated body. Dragonflies can be mistaken for the related group, damselflies (Zygoptera), which are similar in structure, though usually lighter in build; however, the wings of most dragonflies are held flat and away from the body, while damselflies hold their wings folded at rest, along or above the abdomen. Dragonflies are agile fliers, while damselflies have a weaker, fluttery flight. Many dragonflies have brilliant iridescent or metallic colours produced by structural colouration, making them conspicuous in flight. An adult dragonfly's compound eyes have nearly 24,000 ommatidia each.
Fossils of very large dragonfly-like insects, sometimes called griffinflies, are found from 325 million years ago (Mya) in Upper Carboniferous rocks; these had wingspans up to about 750 mm (30 in), but were only distant ancestors, not true dragonflies. About 3,000 extant species of true dragonfly are known. Most are tropical, with fewer species in temperate regions. Loss of wetland habitat threatens dragonfly populations around the world.
Dragonflies are predators, both in their aquatic nymphs stage (also known as naiads) and as adults. In some species, the nymphal stage lasts for up to five years, and the adult stage may be as long as ten weeks, but most species have an adult lifespan in the order of five weeks or less, and some survive for only a few days. They are fast, agile fliers, sometimes migrating across oceans, and often live near water. They have a uniquely complex mode of reproduction involving indirect insemination, delayed fertilization, and sperm competition. During mating, the male grasps the female at the back of the head, and the female curls her abdomen under her body to pick up sperm from the male's secondary genitalia at the front of his abdomen, forming the "heart" or "wheel" posture.
Dragonflies are represented in human culture on artefacts such as pottery, rock paintings, statues and Art Nouveau jewellery. They are used in traditional medicine in Japan and China, and caught for food in Indonesia. They are symbols of courage, strength, and happiness in Japan, but seen as sinister in European folklore. Their bright colours and agile flight are admired in the poetry of Lord Tennyson and the prose of H. E. Bates.
Evolution
Dragonflies and their relatives are similar in structure to an ancient group, meganisoptera, from the 325 Mya Upper Carboniferous of Europe, a group that included the largest insect that ever lived, Meganeuropsis permiana from the Early Permian, with a wingspan around 750 mm (30 in);. Known informally as "griffinflies", their fossil record ends with the Permian–Triassic extinction event (about 247 Mya). The Protanisoptera, another ancestral group that lacks certain wing vein characters found in modern Odonata, lived from the Early to Late Permian age until the end Permian event, and are known from fossil wings from current-day United States, Russia, and Australia, suggesting they might have been cosmopolitan in distribution. While both of those groups are sometimes referred to as "giant dragonflies", in fact true dragonflies/odonata are more modern insects that had not evolved yet.
Modern dragonflies do retain some traits of their distant predecessors, and are in a group known as palaeoptera, ancient-winged. They, like the gigantic pre-dinosaur griffinflies, lack the ability to fold their wings up against their bodies in the way modern insects do, although some evolved their own different way to do so. The forerunners of modern Odonata are included in a clade called the Panodonata, which include the basal Zygoptera (damselflies) and the Anisoptera (true dragonflies). Today, some 3,000 species are extant around the world.
The relationships of anisopteran families are not fully resolved as of 2013, but all the families are monophyletic except the Corduliidae; the Gomphidae are a sister taxon to all other Anisoptera, the Austropetaliidae are sister to the Aeshnoidea, and the Chlorogomphidae are sister to a clade that includes the Synthemistidae and Libellulidae. On the cladogram, dashed lines indicate unresolved relationships; English names are given (in parentheses)
Distribution and diversity
About 3,012 species of dragonflies were known in 2010; these are classified into 348 genera in 11 families. The distribution of diversity within the biogeographical regions are summarized below (the world numbers are not ordinary totals, as overlaps in species occur).
Dragonflies live on every continent except Antarctica. In contrast to the damselflies (Zygoptera), which tend to have restricted distributions, some genera and species are spread across continents. For example, the blue-eyed darner Rhionaeschna multicolor lives all across North America, and in Central America; emperors Anax live throughout the Americas from as far north as Newfoundland to as far south as Bahia Blanca in Argentina, across Europe to central Asia, North Africa, and the Middle East. The globe skimmer Pantala flavescens is probably the most widespread dragonfly species in the world; it is cosmopolitan, occurring on all continents in the warmer regions. Most Anisoptera species are tropical, with far fewer species in temperate regions.
Some dragonflies, including libellulids and aeshnids, live in desert pools, for example in the Mojave Desert, where they are active in shade temperatures between 18 and 45 °C (64.4 to 113 °F); these insects were able to survive body temperatures above the thermal death point of insects of the same species in cooler places.
Dragonflies live from sea level up to the mountains, decreasing in species diversity with altitude. Their altitudinal limit is about 3700 m, represented by a species of Aeshna in the Pamirs.
Dragonflies become scarce at higher latitudes. They are not native to Iceland, but individuals are occasionally swept in by strong winds, including a Hemianax ephippiger native to North Africa, and an unidentified darter species. In Kamchatka, only a few species of dragonfly including the treeline emerald Somatochlora arctica and some aeshnids such as Aeshna subarctica are found, possibly because of the low temperature of the lakes there. The treeline emerald also lives in northern Alaska, within the Arctic Circle, making it the most northerly of all dragonflies.
General description
Dragonflies (suborder Anisoptera) are heavy-bodied, strong-flying insects that hold their wings horizontally both in flight and at rest. By contrast, damselflies (suborder Zygoptera) have slender bodies and fly more weakly; most species fold their wings over the abdomen when stationary, and the eyes are well separated on the sides of the head.
An adult dragonfly has three distinct segments, the head, thorax, and abdomen, as in all insects. It has a chitinous exoskeleton of hard plates held together with flexible membranes. The head is large with very short antennae. It is dominated by the two compound eyes, which cover most of its surface. The compound eyes are made up of ommatidia, the numbers being greater in the larger species. Aeshna interrupta has 22650 ommatidia of two varying sizes, 4500 being large. The facets facing downward tend to be smaller. Petalura gigantea has 23890 ommatidia of just one size. These facets provide complete vision in the frontal hemisphere of the dragonfly. The compound eyes meet at the top of the head (except in the Petaluridae and Gomphidae, as also in the genus Epiophlebia). Also, they have three simple eyes or ocelli. The mouthparts are adapted for biting with a toothed jaw; the flap-like labrum, at the front of the mouth, can be shot rapidly forward to catch prey. The head has a system for locking it in place that consists of muscles and small hairs on the back of the head that grip structures on the front of the first thoracic segment. This arrester system is unique to the Odonata, and is activated when feeding and during tandem flight.
The thorax consists of three segments as in all insects. The prothorax is small and is flattened dorsally into a shield-like disc, which has two transverse ridges. The mesothorax and metathorax are fused into a rigid, box-like structure with internal bracing, and provide a robust attachment for the powerful wing muscles inside. The thorax bears two pairs of wings and three pairs of legs. The wings are long, veined, and membranous, narrower at the tip and wider at the base. The hindwings are broader than the forewings and the venation is different at the base. The veins carry haemolymph, which is analogous to blood in vertebrates, and carries out many similar functions, but which also serves a hydraulic function to expand the body between nymphal stages (instars) and to expand and stiffen the wings after the adult emerges from the final nymphal stage. The leading edge of each wing has a node where other veins join the marginal vein, and the wing is able to flex at this point. In most large species of dragonflies, the wings of females are shorter and broader than those of males. The legs are rarely used for walking, but are used to catch and hold prey, for perching, and for climbing on plants. Each has two short basal joints, two long joints, and a three-jointed foot, armed with a pair of claws. The long leg joints bear rows of spines, and in males, one row of spines on each front leg is modified to form an "eyebrush", for cleaning the surface of the compound eye.
The abdomen is long and slender and consists of 10 segments. Three terminal appendages are on segment 10; a pair of superiors (claspers) and an inferior. The second and third segments are enlarged, and in males, on the underside of the second segment has a cleft, forming the secondary genitalia consisting of the lamina, hamule, genital lobe, and penis. There are remarkable variations in the presence and the form of the penis and the related structures, the flagellum, cornua, and genital lobes. Sperm is produced at the 9th segment, and is transferred to the secondary genitalia prior to mating. The male holds the female behind the head using a pair of claspers on the terminal segment. In females, the genital opening is on the underside of the eighth segment, and is covered by a simple flap (vulvar lamina) or an ovipositor, depending on species and the method of egg-laying. Dragonflies having simple flaps shed the eggs in water, mostly in flight. Dragonflies having ovipositors use them to puncture soft tissues of plants and place the eggs singly in each puncture they make.
Dragonfly nymphs vary in form with species, and are loosely classed into claspers, sprawlers, hiders, and burrowers. The first instar is known as a prolarva, a relatively inactive stage from which it quickly moults into the more active nymphal form. The general body plan is similar to that of an adult, but the nymph lacks wings and reproductive organs. The lower jaw has a huge, extensible labium, armed with hooks and spines, which is used for catching prey. This labium is folded under the body at rest and struck out at great speed by hydraulic pressure created by the abdominal muscles. Whereas damselfly nymphs have three feathery external gills, dragonfly nymphs have internal gills, located around the fourth and fifth abdominal segments. Water is pumped in and out of the abdomen through an opening at the tip. The naiads of some clubtails (Gomphidae) that burrow into the sediment, have a snorkel-like tube at the end of the abdomen enabling them to draw in clean water while they are buried in mud. Naiads can forcefully expel a jet of water to propel themselves with great rapidity.
Colouration
Many adult dragonflies have brilliant iridescent or metallic colours produced by structural colouration, making them conspicuous in flight. Their overall colouration is often a combination of yellow, red, brown, and black pigments, with structural colours. Blues are typically created by microstructures in the cuticle that reflect blue light. Greens often combine a structural blue with a yellow pigment. Freshly emerged adults, known as tenerals, are often pale-coloured and obtain their typical colours after a few days, some have their bodies covered with a pale blue, waxy powderiness called pruinosity; it wears off when scraped during mating, leaving darker areas.
Some dragonflies, such as the green darner, Anax junius, have a noniridescent blue that is produced structurally by scatter from arrays of tiny spheres in the endoplasmic reticulum of epidermal cells underneath the cuticle.
The wings of dragonflies are generally clear, apart from the dark veins and pterostigmata. In the chasers (Libellulidae), however, many genera have areas of colour on the wings: for example, groundlings (Brachythemis) have brown bands on all four wings, while some scarlets (Crocothemis) and dropwings (Trithemis) have bright orange patches at the wing bases. Some aeshnids such as the brown hawker (Aeshna grandis) have translucent, pale yellow wings.
Dragonfly nymphs are usually a well-camouflaged blend of dull brown, green, and grey.
Biology
Ecology
Dragonflies and damselflies are predatory both in the aquatic nymphal and adult stages. Nymphs feed on a range of freshwater invertebrates and larger ones can prey on tadpoles and small fish. Adults capture insect prey in the air, making use of their acute vision and highly controlled flight. The mating system of dragonflies is complex, and they are among the few insect groups that have a system of indirect sperm transfer along with sperm storage, delayed fertilization, and sperm competition.
Adult males vigorously defend territories near water; these areas provide suitable habitat for the nymphs to develop, and for females to lay their eggs. Swarms of feeding adults aggregate to prey on swarming prey such as emerging flying ants or termites.
Dragonflies as a group occupy a considerable variety of habitats, but many species, and some families, have their own specific environmental requirements. Some species prefer flowing waters, while others prefer standing water. For example, the Gomphidae (clubtails) live in running water, and the Libellulidae (skimmers) live in still water. Some species live in temporary water pools and are capable of tolerating changes in water level, desiccation, and the resulting variations in temperature, but some genera such as Sympetrum (darters) have eggs and nymphs that can resist drought and are stimulated to grow rapidly in warm, shallow pools, also often benefiting from the absence of predators there. Vegetation and its characteristics including submerged, floating, emergent, or waterside are also important. Adults may require emergent or waterside plants to use as perches; others may need specific submerged or floating plants on which to lay eggs. Requirements may be highly specific, as in Aeshna viridis (green hawker), which lives in swamps with the water-soldier, Stratiotes aloides. The chemistry of the water, including its trophic status (degree of enrichment with nutrients) and pH can also affect its use by dragonflies. Most species need moderate conditions, not too eutrophic, not too acidic; a few species such as Sympetrum danae (black darter) and Libellula quadrimaculata (four-spotted chaser) prefer acidic waters such as peat bogs, while others such as Libellula fulva (scarce chaser) need slow-moving, eutrophic waters with reeds or similar waterside plants.
Behaviour
Many dragonflies, particularly males, are territorial. Some defend a territory against others of their own species, some against other species of dragonfly and a few against insects in unrelated groups. A particular perch may give a dragonfly a good view over an insect-rich feeding ground; males of many species such as the Pachydiplax longipennis (blue dasher) jostle other dragonflies to maintain the right to alight there. Defending a breeding territory is common among male dragonflies, especially in species that congregate around ponds. The territory contains desirable features such as a sunlit stretch of shallow water, a special plant species, or the preferred substrate for egg-laying. The territory may be small or large, depending on its quality, the time of day, and the number of competitors, and may be held for a few minutes or several hours. Dragonflies including Tramea lacerata (black saddlebags) may notice landmarks that assist in defining the boundaries of the territory. Landmarks may reduce the costs of territory establishment, or might serve as a spatial reference. Some dragonflies signal ownership with striking colours on the face, abdomen, legs, or wings. The Plathemis lydia (common whitetail) dashes towards an intruder holding its white abdomen aloft like a flag. Other dragonflies engage in aerial dogfights or high-speed chases. A female must mate with the territory holder before laying her eggs. There is also conflict between the males and females. Females may sometimes be harassed by males to the extent that it affects their normal activities including foraging and in some dimorphic species females have evolved multiple forms with some forms appearing deceptively like males. In some species females have evolved behavioural responses such as feigning death to escape the attention of males. Similarly, selection of habitat by adult dragonflies is not random, and terrestrial habitat patches may be held for up to 3 months. A species tightly linked to its birth site utilises a foraging area that is several orders of magnitude larger than the birth site.
Reproduction
Mating in dragonflies is a complex, precisely choreographed process. First, the male has to attract a female to his territory, continually driving off rival males. When he is ready to mate, he transfers a packet of sperm from his primary genital opening on segment 9, near the end of his abdomen, to his secondary genitalia on segments 2–3, near the base of his abdomen. The male then grasps the female by the head with the claspers at the end of his abdomen; the structure of the claspers varies between species, and may help to prevent interspecific mating. The pair flies in tandem with the male in front, typically perching on a twig or plant stem. The female then curls her abdomen downwards and forwards under her body to pick up the sperm from the male's secondary genitalia, while the male uses his "tail" claspers to grip the female behind the head: this distinctive posture is called the "heart" or "wheel"; the pair may also be described as being "in cop".
Egg-laying (ovipositing) involves not only the female darting over floating or waterside vegetation to deposit eggs on a suitable substrate, but also the male hovering above her or continuing to clasp her and flying in tandem. The male attempts to prevent rivals from removing his sperm and inserting their own, something made possible by delayed fertilisation and driven by sexual selection. If successful, a rival male uses his penis to compress or scrape out the sperm inserted previously; this activity takes up much of the time that a copulating pair remains in the heart posture. Flying in tandem has the advantage that less effort is needed by the female for flight and more can be expended on egg-laying, and when the female submerges to deposit eggs, the male may help to pull her out of the water.
Egg-laying takes two different forms depending on the species. The female in some families has a sharp-edged ovipositor with which she slits open a stem or leaf of a plant on or near the water, so she can push her eggs inside. In other families such as clubtails (Gomphidae), cruisers (Macromiidae), emeralds (Corduliidae), and skimmers (Libellulidae), the female lays eggs by tapping the surface of the water repeatedly with her abdomen, by shaking the eggs out of her abdomen as she flies along, or by placing the eggs on vegetation. In a few species, the eggs are laid on emergent plants above the water, and development is delayed until these have withered and become immersed.
Life cycle
Dragonflies are hemimetabolous insects; they do not have a pupal stage and undergo an incomplete metamorphosis with a series of nymphal stages from which the adult emerges. Eggs laid inside plant tissues are usually shaped like grains of rice, while other eggs are the size of a pinhead, ellipsoidal, or nearly spherical. A clutch may have as many as 1500 eggs, and they take about a week to hatch into aquatic nymphs or naiads which moult between six and 15 times (depending on species) as they grow. Most of a dragonfly's life is spent as a nymph, beneath the water's surface. The nymph extends its hinged labium (a toothed mouthpart similar to a lower mandible, which is sometimes termed as a "mask" as it is normally folded and held before the face) that can extend forward and retract rapidly to capture prey such as mosquito larvae, tadpoles, and small fish. They breathe through gills in their rectum, and can rapidly propel themselves by suddenly expelling water through the anus. Some naiads, such as the later stages of Antipodophlebia asthenes, hunt on land.
The nymph stage of dragonflies lasts up to five years in large species, and between two months and three years in smaller species. When the naiad is ready to metamorphose into an adult, it stops feeding and makes its way to the surface, generally at night. It remains stationary with its head out of the water, while its respiration system adapts to breathing air, then climbs up a reed or other emergent plant, and moults (ecdysis). Anchoring itself firmly in a vertical position with its claws, its skin begins to split at a weak spot behind the head. The adult dragonfly crawls out of its nymph skin, the exuvia, arching backwards when all but the tip of its abdomen is free, to allow its exoskeleton to harden. Curling back upwards, it completes its emergence, swallowing air, which plumps out its body, and pumping haemolymph into its wings, which causes them to expand to their full extent.
Dragonflies in temperate areas can be categorized into two groups, an early group and a later one. In any one area, individuals of a particular "spring species" emerge within a few days of each other. The springtime darner (Basiaeschna janata), for example, is suddenly very common in the spring, but disappears a few weeks later and is not seen again until the following year. By contrast, a "summer species" emerges over a period of weeks or months, later in the year. They may be seen on the wing for several months, but this may represent a whole series of individuals, with new adults hatching out as earlier ones complete their lifespans.
Sex ratios
The sex ratio of male to female dragonflies varies both temporally and spatially. Adult dragonflies have a high male-biased ratio at breeding habitats. The male-bias ratio has contributed partially to the females using different habitats to avoid male harassment. As seen in Hine's emerald dragonfly (Somatochlora hineana), male populations use wetland habitats, while females use dry meadows and marginal breeding habitats, only migrating to the wetlands to lay their eggs or to find mating partners. Unwanted mating is energetically costly for females because it affects the amount of time that they are able to spend foraging.
Flight
Dragonflies are powerful and agile fliers, capable of migrating across the sea, moving in any direction, and changing direction suddenly. In flight, the adult dragonfly can propel itself in six directions: upward, downward, forward, backward, to left and to right. They have four different styles of flight: A number of flying modes are used that include counter-stroking, with forewings beating 180° out of phase with the hindwings, is used for hovering and slow flight. This style is efficient and generates a large amount of lift; phased-stroking, with the hindwings beating 90° ahead of the forewings, is used for fast flight. This style creates more thrust, but less lift than counter-stroking; synchronised-stroking, with forewings and hindwings beating together, is used when changing direction rapidly, as it maximises thrust; and gliding, with the wings held out, is used in three situations: free gliding, for a few seconds in between bursts of powered flight; gliding in the updraft at the crest of a hill, effectively hovering by falling at the same speed as the updraft; and in certain dragonflies such as darters, when "in cop" with a male, the female sometimes simply glides while the male pulls the pair along by beating his wings.
The wings are powered directly, unlike most families of insects, with the flight muscles attached to the wing bases. Dragonflies have a high power/weight ratio, and have been documented accelerating at 4 G linearly and 9 G in sharp turns while pursuing prey.
Dragonflies generate lift in at least four ways at different times, including classical lift like an aircraft wing; supercritical lift with the wing above the critical angle, generating high lift and using very short strokes to avoid stalling; and creating and shedding vortices. Some families appear to use special mechanisms, as for example the Libellulidae which take off rapidly, their wings beginning pointed far forward and twisted almost vertically. Dragonfly wings behave highly dynamically during flight, flexing and twisting during each beat. Among the variables are wing curvature, length and speed of stroke, angle of attack, forward/back position of wing, and phase relative to the other wings.
Flight speed
Old and unreliable claims are made that dragonflies such as the southern giant darner can fly up to 97 km/h (60 mph). However, the greatest reliable flight speed records are for other types of insects. In general, large dragonflies like the hawkers have a maximum speed of 36–54 km/h (22–34 mph) with average cruising speed of about 16 km/h (9.9 mph). Dragonflies can travel at 100 body-lengths per second in forward flight, and three lengths per second backwards.
Motion camouflage
n high-speed territorial battles between male Australian emperors (Hemianax papuensis), the fighting dragonflies adjust their flight paths to appear stationary to their rivals, minimizing the chance of being detected as they approach.[a] To achieve the effect, the attacking dragonfly flies towards his rival, choosing his path to remain on a line between the rival and the start of his attack path. The attacker thus looms larger as he closes on the rival, but does not otherwise appear to move. Researchers found that six of 15 encounters involved motion camouflage.
Temperature control
The flight muscles need to be kept at a suitable temperature for the dragonfly to be able to fly. Being cold-blooded, they can raise their temperature by basking in the sun. Early in the morning, they may choose to perch in a vertical position with the wings outstretched, while in the middle of the day, a horizontal stance may be chosen. Another method of warming up used by some larger dragonflies is wing-whirring, a rapid vibration of the wings that causes heat to be generated in the flight muscles. The green darner (Anax junius) is known for its long-distance migrations, and often resorts to wing-whirring before dawn to enable it to make an early start.
Becoming too hot is another hazard, and a sunny or shady position for perching can be selected according to the ambient temperature. Some species have dark patches on the wings which can provide shade for the body, and a few use the obelisk posture to avoid overheating. This behaviour involves doing a "handstand", perching with the body raised and the abdomen pointing towards the sun, thus minimising the amount of solar radiation received. On a hot day, dragonflies sometimes adjust their body temperature by skimming over a water surface and briefly touching it, often three times in quick succession. This may also help to avoid desiccation.
Feeding
Adult dragonflies hunt on the wing using their exceptionally acute eyesight and strong, agile flight. They are almost exclusively carnivorous, eating a wide variety of insects ranging from small midges and mosquitoes to butterflies, moths, damselflies, and smaller dragonflies. A large prey item is subdued by being bitten on the head and is carried by the legs to a perch. Here, the wings are discarded and the prey usually ingested head first. A dragonfly may consume as much as a fifth of its body weight in prey per day. Dragonflies are also some of the insect world's most efficient hunters, catching up to 95% of the prey they pursue.
The nymphs are voracious predators, eating most living things that are smaller than they are. Their staple diet is mostly bloodworms and other insect larvae, but they also feed on tadpoles and small fish. A few species, especially those that live in temporary waters, are likely to leave the water to feed. Nymphs of Cordulegaster bidentata sometimes hunt small arthropods on the ground at night, while some species in the Anax genus have even been observed leaping out of the water to attack and kill full-grown tree frogs.
Eyesight
Dragonfly vision is thought to be like slow motion for humans. Dragonflies see faster than we do; they see around 200 images per second. A dragonfly can see in 360 degrees, and nearly 80 percent of the insect's brain is dedicated to its sight.
Predators
Although dragonflies are swift and agile fliers, some predators are fast enough to catch them. These include falcons such as the American kestrel, the merlin, and the hobby; nighthawks, swifts, flycatchers and swallows also take some adults; some species of wasps, too, prey on dragonflies, using them to provision their nests, laying an egg on each captured insect. In the water, various species of ducks and herons eat dragonfly nymphs and they are also preyed on by newts, frogs, fish, and water spiders. Amur falcons, which migrate over the Indian Ocean at a period that coincides with the migration of the globe skimmer dragonfly, Pantala flavescens, may actually be feeding on them while on the wing.
Parasites
Dragonflies are affected by three major groups of parasites: water mites, gregarine protozoa, and trematode flatworms (flukes). Water mites, Hydracarina, can kill smaller dragonfly nymphs, and may also be seen on adults. Gregarines infect the gut and may cause blockage and secondary infection. Trematodes are parasites of vertebrates such as frogs, with complex life cycles often involving a period as a stage called a cercaria in a secondary host, a snail. Dragonfly nymphs may swallow cercariae, or these may tunnel through a nymph's body wall; they then enter the gut and form a cyst or metacercaria, which remains in the nymph for the whole of its development. If the nymph is eaten by a frog, the amphibian becomes infected by the adult or fluke stage of the trematode.
Dragonflies and humans
Conservation
Most odonatologists live in temperate areas and the dragonflies of North America and Europe have been the subject of much research. However, the majority of species live in tropical areas and have been little studied. With the destruction of rainforest habitats, many of these species are in danger of becoming extinct before they have even been named. The greatest cause of decline is forest clearance with the consequent drying up of streams and pools which become clogged with silt. The damming of rivers for hydroelectric schemes and the drainage of low-lying land has reduced suitable habitat, as has pollution and the introduction of alien species.
In 1997, the International Union for Conservation of Nature set up a status survey and conservation action plan for dragonflies. This proposes the establishment of protected areas around the world and the management of these areas to provide suitable habitat for dragonflies. Outside these areas, encouragement should be given to modify forestry, agricultural, and industrial practices to enhance conservation. At the same time, more research into dragonflies needs to be done, consideration should be given to pollution control and the public should be educated about the importance of biodiversity.
Habitat degradation has reduced dragonfly populations across the world, for example in Japan. Over 60% of Japan's wetlands were lost in the 20th century, so its dragonflies now depend largely on rice fields, ponds, and creeks. Dragonflies feed on pest insects in rice, acting as a natural pest control. Dragonflies are steadily declining in Africa, and represent a conservation priority.
The dragonfly's long lifespan and low population density makes it vulnerable to disturbance, such as from collisions with vehicles on roads built near wetlands. Species that fly low and slow may be most at risk.
Dragonflies are attracted to shiny surfaces that produce polarization which they can mistake for water, and they have been known to aggregate close to polished gravestones, solar panels, automobiles, and other such structures on which they attempt to lay eggs. These can have a local impact on dragonfly populations; methods of reducing the attractiveness of structures such as solar panels are under experimentation.
In culture
A blue-glazed faience dragonfly amulet was found by Flinders Petrie at Lahun, from the Late Middle Kingdom of ancient Egypt.
Many Native American tribes consider dragonflies to be medicine animals that had special powers. For example, the southwestern tribes, including the Pueblo, Hopi, and Zuni, associated dragonflies with transformation. They referred to dragonflies as "snake doctors" because they believed dragonflies followed snakes into the ground and healed them if they were injured. For the Navajo, dragonflies symbolize pure water. Often stylized in a double-barred cross design, dragonflies are a common motif in Zuni pottery, as well as Hopi rock art and Pueblo necklaces.: 20–26
As a seasonal symbol in Japan, the dragonflies are associated with season of autumn. In Japan, they are symbols of rebirth, courage, strength, and happiness. They are also depicted frequently in Japanese art and literature, especially haiku poetry. Japanese children catch large dragonflies as a game, using a hair with a small pebble tied to each end, which they throw into the air. The dragonfly mistakes the pebbles for prey, gets tangled in the hair, and is dragged to the ground by the weight.: 38
In Chinese culture, dragonflies symbolize both change and instability. They are also symbols in the Chinese practices of Feng Shui, where placements of dragonfly statues and artwork in parts of a home or office are believed to bring new insights and positive changes.
In both China and Japan, dragonflies have been used in traditional medicine. In Indonesia, adult dragonflies are caught on poles made sticky with birdlime, then fried in oil as a delicacy.
Images of dragonflies are common in Art Nouveau, especially in jewellery designs. They have also been used as a decorative motif on fabrics and home furnishings. Douglas, a British motorcycle manufacturer based in Bristol, named its innovatively designed postwar 350-cc flat-twin model the Dragonfly.
Among the classical names of Japan are Akitsukuni (秋津国), Akitsushima (秋津島), Toyo-akitsushima (豊秋津島). Akitsu is an old word for dragonfly, so one interpretation of Akitsushima is "Dragonfly Island". This is attributed to a legend in which Japan's mythical founder, Emperor Jimmu, was bitten by a mosquito, which was then eaten by a dragonfly.
In Europe, dragonflies have often been seen as sinister. Some English vernacular names, such as "horse-stinger", "devil's darning needle", and "ear cutter", link them with evil or injury. Swedish folklore holds that the devil uses dragonflies to weigh people's souls.: 25–27 The Norwegian name for dragonflies is Øyenstikker ("eye-poker"), and in Portugal, they are sometimes called tira-olhos ("eyes-snatcher"). They are often associated with snakes, as in the Welsh name gwas-y-neidr, "adder's servant". The Southern United States terms "snake doctor" and "snake feeder" refer to a folk belief that dragonflies catch insects for snakes or follow snakes around and stitch them back together if they are injured. Interestingly, the Hungarian name for dragonfly is szitakötő ("sieve-knitter").
The watercolourist Moses Harris (1731–1785), known for his The Aurelian or natural history of English insects (1766), published in 1780, the first scientific descriptions of several Odonata including the banded demoiselle, Calopteryx splendens. He was the first English artist to make illustrations of dragonflies accurate enough to be identified to species (Aeshna grandis at top left of plate illustrated), though his rough drawing of a nymph (at lower left) with the mask extended appears to be plagiarised.[b]
More recently, dragonfly watching has become popular in America as some birdwatchers seek new groups to observe.
In heraldry, like other winged insects, the dragonfly is typically depicted tergiant (with its back facing the viewer), with its head to chief.
In poetry and literature
Lafcadio Hearn wrote in his 1901 book A Japanese Miscellany that Japanese poets had created dragonfly haiku "almost as numerous as are the dragonflies themselves in the early autumn." The poet Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694) wrote haiku such as "Crimson pepper pod / add two pairs of wings, and look / darting dragonfly", relating the autumn season to the dragonfly. Hori Bakusui (1718–1783) similarly wrote "Dyed he is with the / Colour of autumnal days, / O red dragonfly."
The poet Lord Tennyson, described a dragonfly splitting its old skin and emerging shining metallic blue like "sapphire mail" in his 1842 poem "The Two Voices", with the lines "An inner impulse rent the veil / Of his old husk: from head to tail / Came out clear plates of sapphire mail."
The novelist H. E. Bates described the rapid, agile flight of dragonflies in his 1937 nonfiction book Down the River:
I saw, once, an endless procession, just over an area of water-lilies, of small sapphire dragonflies, a continuous play of blue gauze over the snowy flowers above the sun-glassy water. It was all confined, in true dragonfly fashion, to one small space. It was a continuous turning and returning, an endless darting, poising, striking and hovering, so swift that it was often lost in sunlight.
In technology
A dragonfly has been genetically modified with light-sensitive "steering neurons" in its nerve cord to create a cyborg-like "DragonflEye". The neurons contain genes like those in the eye to make them sensitive to light. Miniature sensors, a computer chip and a solar panel were fitted in a "backpack" over the insect's thorax in front of its wings. Light is sent down flexible light-pipes named optrodes[c] from the backpack into the nerve cord to give steering commands to the insect. The result is a "micro-aerial vehicle that's smaller, lighter and stealthier than anything else that's manmade".
[Credit: en.wikipedia.org/]
MILS MultiRoad module as can be found on:
l-gauge.org/wiki/index.php/Reference_Instructions
Reference 330
The parking entry sign is custom printed, and mounted on Tile 2 x 2 Roadsign base (30256 ) with the use of 2 tiles 1x1 with clips (any version will do) and 2 Technic Half pin that i cutted and glued on the backside of the tile with clips. Alternative is cutting the 2 rings from 4081. I wouldn't recomment the use of the thick ring, distance between the sign (tile 2x4) and the pole becomes too bulky.
This is the mansion at Bletchley Park. Also known as Bletchley Park Mansion.
It is Grade II listed.
Large house, now offices. 1860 altered and extended 1883-6 and c1906
for HS Leon. Red brick in Flemish bond with ashlar dressings; principal
gables half-timbered with pebble-dashed infill, some others tile-hung;
Welsh slate roof with red tile ridge; brick stacks, with clustered
flues, ribs and bands. Transomed wooden windows, principal windows with
leaded upper lights. Decorative wooden barge boards and finials to
gables. Large rambling house, of 2 storeys with partial attic.
Entrance elevation: 6 bays. Lavish ashlar detailing including
architraves. Entrance in bay 2 has internal, vaulted, porch protecting
panelled half-glazed double-door with side lights, traceried upper part
and fanlight the latter leaded and with coloured glass. Flanking porch
are hexagonal brick columns surmounted by panelled stone tops which
flank base of 4-light oriel window with decorative base. Projecting
from porch, and attached to it are 2 seated griffins on bracketed
plinths. Shaped pediment with elaborate finial. Gabled bay 1 has
projecting 2-storey canted bay with pretted eaves band and cornice below
swept, domed, metal roof. On its left is single-storey wooden
conservatory with traceried bays, formerly an open-sided loggia.
Paired, gabled, bays 2 and 3 have ashlar framed triple window to ground
floor with gableted butresses,and two canted bay windows over. Across
bay 4 is 3 bay embattled ashlar loggia fronting elaborate - panelled
double-door with canted bay window to right; inserted 1st floor window.
Bay 6 has polygonal 2-storey bay window with shaped pediments screening
finialed polygonal roof. Right return: 3 left-hand bays in same style
as front, the rest plainer; but attached to right end is dovecote-like
structure: octagonal, of 2 stages, having plinth; inserted ground-floor
windows; ashlar upper stage with 2-light windows below string; and plain
tile roof with gablets and finial. Rear: plainer having tradesmen's
entrance; complex roofline, one roof having louvre with finialed lead
cupola; and embattled tower with blue-brick decorative work and date
(former steep hipped roof removed). Left return: in style of front,
with ashlar canted and curved bay windows; paired, gabled, bays 2 and 3
decorative half-timbered 1st floor; shaped pediment to bay 4; and former
loggia (much altered) across right-hand bays. Interior: high quality,
elaborate, interiors survive, with panelling, panelled doors, decorative
fireplaces, and decorative plaster ceilings. Entrance vestibule: stone
columns and vaults. Entrance Hall: arcaded polished-stone screen wall
and panelled area beyond with elaborate 2-stage, columned, ashlar
fireplace surround and traceried panelling and painted glass to roof.
Room at right end: Jacobethan fireplace; coffered ceiling with floral-
decorated plaster panels. Stairhall: panelled; ground-floor arcade and
deep floral frieze; decorative coved, coffered, ceiling over stair;
fretted balustrade with carved surround and carved octagonal newels to
stair panelled stair well. Library : elaborate wooden jacobethan
inglenook with overmirror; fitted book cases and shelves; fluted frieze;
compartmental ceiling with decorative plaster panels. Ballroom :
linenfold panelling; wall recess flanked by clustered wooden columns
from which spring traceried arches; elaborate plaster work to frieze and
to coved, ribbed, ceiling which has pendant finials. Billiard room:
brattished panelling and cornice; columns support ceiling ribs; wooden
trusses. Additional fireplaces, panelling, and decorative doors,
plasterwork and cornices to 1st floor.
Bletchley Park House was the headquarters building of World War II
operational centre, in the grounds of which was the hut in which the
vital cracking of the Nazis' Enigma Code occurred. Churchill was one of
the important visitors to the house.
A dragonfly is an insect belonging to the order Odonata, infraorder Anisoptera (from Greek ἄνισος anisos, "unequal" and πτερόν pteron, "wing", because the hindwing is broader than the forewing). Adult dragonflies are characterized by large, multifaceted eyes, two pairs of strong, transparent wings, sometimes with coloured patches, and an elongated body. Dragonflies can be mistaken for the related group, damselflies (Zygoptera), which are similar in structure, though usually lighter in build; however, the wings of most dragonflies are held flat and away from the body, while damselflies hold their wings folded at rest, along or above the abdomen. Dragonflies are agile fliers, while damselflies have a weaker, fluttery flight. Many dragonflies have brilliant iridescent or metallic colours produced by structural colouration, making them conspicuous in flight. An adult dragonfly's compound eyes have nearly 24,000 ommatidia each.
Fossils of very large dragonfly-like insects, sometimes called griffinflies, are found from 325 million years ago (Mya) in Upper Carboniferous rocks; these had wingspans up to about 750 mm (30 in), but were only distant ancestors, not true dragonflies. About 3,000 extant species of true dragonfly are known. Most are tropical, with fewer species in temperate regions. Loss of wetland habitat threatens dragonfly populations around the world.
Dragonflies are predators, both in their aquatic nymphs stage (also known as naiads) and as adults. In some species, the nymphal stage lasts for up to five years, and the adult stage may be as long as ten weeks, but most species have an adult lifespan in the order of five weeks or less, and some survive for only a few days. They are fast, agile fliers, sometimes migrating across oceans, and often live near water. They have a uniquely complex mode of reproduction involving indirect insemination, delayed fertilization, and sperm competition. During mating, the male grasps the female at the back of the head, and the female curls her abdomen under her body to pick up sperm from the male's secondary genitalia at the front of his abdomen, forming the "heart" or "wheel" posture.
Dragonflies are represented in human culture on artefacts such as pottery, rock paintings, statues and Art Nouveau jewellery. They are used in traditional medicine in Japan and China, and caught for food in Indonesia. They are symbols of courage, strength, and happiness in Japan, but seen as sinister in European folklore. Their bright colours and agile flight are admired in the poetry of Lord Tennyson and the prose of H. E. Bates.
Evolution
Dragonflies and their relatives are similar in structure to an ancient group, meganisoptera, from the 325 Mya Upper Carboniferous of Europe, a group that included the largest insect that ever lived, Meganeuropsis permiana from the Early Permian, with a wingspan around 750 mm (30 in);. Known informally as "griffinflies", their fossil record ends with the Permian–Triassic extinction event (about 247 Mya). The Protanisoptera, another ancestral group that lacks certain wing vein characters found in modern Odonata, lived from the Early to Late Permian age until the end Permian event, and are known from fossil wings from current-day United States, Russia, and Australia, suggesting they might have been cosmopolitan in distribution. While both of those groups are sometimes referred to as "giant dragonflies", in fact true dragonflies/odonata are more modern insects that had not evolved yet.
Modern dragonflies do retain some traits of their distant predecessors, and are in a group known as palaeoptera, ancient-winged. They, like the gigantic pre-dinosaur griffinflies, lack the ability to fold their wings up against their bodies in the way modern insects do, although some evolved their own different way to do so. The forerunners of modern Odonata are included in a clade called the Panodonata, which include the basal Zygoptera (damselflies) and the Anisoptera (true dragonflies). Today, some 3,000 species are extant around the world.
The relationships of anisopteran families are not fully resolved as of 2013, but all the families are monophyletic except the Corduliidae; the Gomphidae are a sister taxon to all other Anisoptera, the Austropetaliidae are sister to the Aeshnoidea, and the Chlorogomphidae are sister to a clade that includes the Synthemistidae and Libellulidae. On the cladogram, dashed lines indicate unresolved relationships; English names are given (in parentheses)
Distribution and diversity
About 3,012 species of dragonflies were known in 2010; these are classified into 348 genera in 11 families. The distribution of diversity within the biogeographical regions are summarized below (the world numbers are not ordinary totals, as overlaps in species occur).
Dragonflies live on every continent except Antarctica. In contrast to the damselflies (Zygoptera), which tend to have restricted distributions, some genera and species are spread across continents. For example, the blue-eyed darner Rhionaeschna multicolor lives all across North America, and in Central America; emperors Anax live throughout the Americas from as far north as Newfoundland to as far south as Bahia Blanca in Argentina, across Europe to central Asia, North Africa, and the Middle East. The globe skimmer Pantala flavescens is probably the most widespread dragonfly species in the world; it is cosmopolitan, occurring on all continents in the warmer regions. Most Anisoptera species are tropical, with far fewer species in temperate regions.
Some dragonflies, including libellulids and aeshnids, live in desert pools, for example in the Mojave Desert, where they are active in shade temperatures between 18 and 45 °C (64.4 to 113 °F); these insects were able to survive body temperatures above the thermal death point of insects of the same species in cooler places.
Dragonflies live from sea level up to the mountains, decreasing in species diversity with altitude. Their altitudinal limit is about 3700 m, represented by a species of Aeshna in the Pamirs.
Dragonflies become scarce at higher latitudes. They are not native to Iceland, but individuals are occasionally swept in by strong winds, including a Hemianax ephippiger native to North Africa, and an unidentified darter species. In Kamchatka, only a few species of dragonfly including the treeline emerald Somatochlora arctica and some aeshnids such as Aeshna subarctica are found, possibly because of the low temperature of the lakes there. The treeline emerald also lives in northern Alaska, within the Arctic Circle, making it the most northerly of all dragonflies.
General description
Dragonflies (suborder Anisoptera) are heavy-bodied, strong-flying insects that hold their wings horizontally both in flight and at rest. By contrast, damselflies (suborder Zygoptera) have slender bodies and fly more weakly; most species fold their wings over the abdomen when stationary, and the eyes are well separated on the sides of the head.
An adult dragonfly has three distinct segments, the head, thorax, and abdomen, as in all insects. It has a chitinous exoskeleton of hard plates held together with flexible membranes. The head is large with very short antennae. It is dominated by the two compound eyes, which cover most of its surface. The compound eyes are made up of ommatidia, the numbers being greater in the larger species. Aeshna interrupta has 22650 ommatidia of two varying sizes, 4500 being large. The facets facing downward tend to be smaller. Petalura gigantea has 23890 ommatidia of just one size. These facets provide complete vision in the frontal hemisphere of the dragonfly. The compound eyes meet at the top of the head (except in the Petaluridae and Gomphidae, as also in the genus Epiophlebia). Also, they have three simple eyes or ocelli. The mouthparts are adapted for biting with a toothed jaw; the flap-like labrum, at the front of the mouth, can be shot rapidly forward to catch prey. The head has a system for locking it in place that consists of muscles and small hairs on the back of the head that grip structures on the front of the first thoracic segment. This arrester system is unique to the Odonata, and is activated when feeding and during tandem flight.
The thorax consists of three segments as in all insects. The prothorax is small and is flattened dorsally into a shield-like disc, which has two transverse ridges. The mesothorax and metathorax are fused into a rigid, box-like structure with internal bracing, and provide a robust attachment for the powerful wing muscles inside. The thorax bears two pairs of wings and three pairs of legs. The wings are long, veined, and membranous, narrower at the tip and wider at the base. The hindwings are broader than the forewings and the venation is different at the base. The veins carry haemolymph, which is analogous to blood in vertebrates, and carries out many similar functions, but which also serves a hydraulic function to expand the body between nymphal stages (instars) and to expand and stiffen the wings after the adult emerges from the final nymphal stage. The leading edge of each wing has a node where other veins join the marginal vein, and the wing is able to flex at this point. In most large species of dragonflies, the wings of females are shorter and broader than those of males. The legs are rarely used for walking, but are used to catch and hold prey, for perching, and for climbing on plants. Each has two short basal joints, two long joints, and a three-jointed foot, armed with a pair of claws. The long leg joints bear rows of spines, and in males, one row of spines on each front leg is modified to form an "eyebrush", for cleaning the surface of the compound eye.
The abdomen is long and slender and consists of 10 segments. Three terminal appendages are on segment 10; a pair of superiors (claspers) and an inferior. The second and third segments are enlarged, and in males, on the underside of the second segment has a cleft, forming the secondary genitalia consisting of the lamina, hamule, genital lobe, and penis. There are remarkable variations in the presence and the form of the penis and the related structures, the flagellum, cornua, and genital lobes. Sperm is produced at the 9th segment, and is transferred to the secondary genitalia prior to mating. The male holds the female behind the head using a pair of claspers on the terminal segment. In females, the genital opening is on the underside of the eighth segment, and is covered by a simple flap (vulvar lamina) or an ovipositor, depending on species and the method of egg-laying. Dragonflies having simple flaps shed the eggs in water, mostly in flight. Dragonflies having ovipositors use them to puncture soft tissues of plants and place the eggs singly in each puncture they make.
Dragonfly nymphs vary in form with species, and are loosely classed into claspers, sprawlers, hiders, and burrowers. The first instar is known as a prolarva, a relatively inactive stage from which it quickly moults into the more active nymphal form. The general body plan is similar to that of an adult, but the nymph lacks wings and reproductive organs. The lower jaw has a huge, extensible labium, armed with hooks and spines, which is used for catching prey. This labium is folded under the body at rest and struck out at great speed by hydraulic pressure created by the abdominal muscles. Whereas damselfly nymphs have three feathery external gills, dragonfly nymphs have internal gills, located around the fourth and fifth abdominal segments. Water is pumped in and out of the abdomen through an opening at the tip. The naiads of some clubtails (Gomphidae) that burrow into the sediment, have a snorkel-like tube at the end of the abdomen enabling them to draw in clean water while they are buried in mud. Naiads can forcefully expel a jet of water to propel themselves with great rapidity.
Colouration
Many adult dragonflies have brilliant iridescent or metallic colours produced by structural colouration, making them conspicuous in flight. Their overall colouration is often a combination of yellow, red, brown, and black pigments, with structural colours. Blues are typically created by microstructures in the cuticle that reflect blue light. Greens often combine a structural blue with a yellow pigment. Freshly emerged adults, known as tenerals, are often pale-coloured and obtain their typical colours after a few days, some have their bodies covered with a pale blue, waxy powderiness called pruinosity; it wears off when scraped during mating, leaving darker areas.
Some dragonflies, such as the green darner, Anax junius, have a noniridescent blue that is produced structurally by scatter from arrays of tiny spheres in the endoplasmic reticulum of epidermal cells underneath the cuticle.
The wings of dragonflies are generally clear, apart from the dark veins and pterostigmata. In the chasers (Libellulidae), however, many genera have areas of colour on the wings: for example, groundlings (Brachythemis) have brown bands on all four wings, while some scarlets (Crocothemis) and dropwings (Trithemis) have bright orange patches at the wing bases. Some aeshnids such as the brown hawker (Aeshna grandis) have translucent, pale yellow wings.
Dragonfly nymphs are usually a well-camouflaged blend of dull brown, green, and grey.
Biology
Ecology
Dragonflies and damselflies are predatory both in the aquatic nymphal and adult stages. Nymphs feed on a range of freshwater invertebrates and larger ones can prey on tadpoles and small fish. Adults capture insect prey in the air, making use of their acute vision and highly controlled flight. The mating system of dragonflies is complex, and they are among the few insect groups that have a system of indirect sperm transfer along with sperm storage, delayed fertilization, and sperm competition.
Adult males vigorously defend territories near water; these areas provide suitable habitat for the nymphs to develop, and for females to lay their eggs. Swarms of feeding adults aggregate to prey on swarming prey such as emerging flying ants or termites.
Dragonflies as a group occupy a considerable variety of habitats, but many species, and some families, have their own specific environmental requirements. Some species prefer flowing waters, while others prefer standing water. For example, the Gomphidae (clubtails) live in running water, and the Libellulidae (skimmers) live in still water. Some species live in temporary water pools and are capable of tolerating changes in water level, desiccation, and the resulting variations in temperature, but some genera such as Sympetrum (darters) have eggs and nymphs that can resist drought and are stimulated to grow rapidly in warm, shallow pools, also often benefiting from the absence of predators there. Vegetation and its characteristics including submerged, floating, emergent, or waterside are also important. Adults may require emergent or waterside plants to use as perches; others may need specific submerged or floating plants on which to lay eggs. Requirements may be highly specific, as in Aeshna viridis (green hawker), which lives in swamps with the water-soldier, Stratiotes aloides. The chemistry of the water, including its trophic status (degree of enrichment with nutrients) and pH can also affect its use by dragonflies. Most species need moderate conditions, not too eutrophic, not too acidic; a few species such as Sympetrum danae (black darter) and Libellula quadrimaculata (four-spotted chaser) prefer acidic waters such as peat bogs, while others such as Libellula fulva (scarce chaser) need slow-moving, eutrophic waters with reeds or similar waterside plants.
Behaviour
Many dragonflies, particularly males, are territorial. Some defend a territory against others of their own species, some against other species of dragonfly and a few against insects in unrelated groups. A particular perch may give a dragonfly a good view over an insect-rich feeding ground; males of many species such as the Pachydiplax longipennis (blue dasher) jostle other dragonflies to maintain the right to alight there. Defending a breeding territory is common among male dragonflies, especially in species that congregate around ponds. The territory contains desirable features such as a sunlit stretch of shallow water, a special plant species, or the preferred substrate for egg-laying. The territory may be small or large, depending on its quality, the time of day, and the number of competitors, and may be held for a few minutes or several hours. Dragonflies including Tramea lacerata (black saddlebags) may notice landmarks that assist in defining the boundaries of the territory. Landmarks may reduce the costs of territory establishment, or might serve as a spatial reference. Some dragonflies signal ownership with striking colours on the face, abdomen, legs, or wings. The Plathemis lydia (common whitetail) dashes towards an intruder holding its white abdomen aloft like a flag. Other dragonflies engage in aerial dogfights or high-speed chases. A female must mate with the territory holder before laying her eggs. There is also conflict between the males and females. Females may sometimes be harassed by males to the extent that it affects their normal activities including foraging and in some dimorphic species females have evolved multiple forms with some forms appearing deceptively like males. In some species females have evolved behavioural responses such as feigning death to escape the attention of males. Similarly, selection of habitat by adult dragonflies is not random, and terrestrial habitat patches may be held for up to 3 months. A species tightly linked to its birth site utilises a foraging area that is several orders of magnitude larger than the birth site.
Reproduction
Mating in dragonflies is a complex, precisely choreographed process. First, the male has to attract a female to his territory, continually driving off rival males. When he is ready to mate, he transfers a packet of sperm from his primary genital opening on segment 9, near the end of his abdomen, to his secondary genitalia on segments 2–3, near the base of his abdomen. The male then grasps the female by the head with the claspers at the end of his abdomen; the structure of the claspers varies between species, and may help to prevent interspecific mating. The pair flies in tandem with the male in front, typically perching on a twig or plant stem. The female then curls her abdomen downwards and forwards under her body to pick up the sperm from the male's secondary genitalia, while the male uses his "tail" claspers to grip the female behind the head: this distinctive posture is called the "heart" or "wheel"; the pair may also be described as being "in cop".
Egg-laying (ovipositing) involves not only the female darting over floating or waterside vegetation to deposit eggs on a suitable substrate, but also the male hovering above her or continuing to clasp her and flying in tandem. The male attempts to prevent rivals from removing his sperm and inserting their own, something made possible by delayed fertilisation and driven by sexual selection. If successful, a rival male uses his penis to compress or scrape out the sperm inserted previously; this activity takes up much of the time that a copulating pair remains in the heart posture. Flying in tandem has the advantage that less effort is needed by the female for flight and more can be expended on egg-laying, and when the female submerges to deposit eggs, the male may help to pull her out of the water.
Egg-laying takes two different forms depending on the species. The female in some families has a sharp-edged ovipositor with which she slits open a stem or leaf of a plant on or near the water, so she can push her eggs inside. In other families such as clubtails (Gomphidae), cruisers (Macromiidae), emeralds (Corduliidae), and skimmers (Libellulidae), the female lays eggs by tapping the surface of the water repeatedly with her abdomen, by shaking the eggs out of her abdomen as she flies along, or by placing the eggs on vegetation. In a few species, the eggs are laid on emergent plants above the water, and development is delayed until these have withered and become immersed.
Life cycle
Dragonflies are hemimetabolous insects; they do not have a pupal stage and undergo an incomplete metamorphosis with a series of nymphal stages from which the adult emerges. Eggs laid inside plant tissues are usually shaped like grains of rice, while other eggs are the size of a pinhead, ellipsoidal, or nearly spherical. A clutch may have as many as 1500 eggs, and they take about a week to hatch into aquatic nymphs or naiads which moult between six and 15 times (depending on species) as they grow. Most of a dragonfly's life is spent as a nymph, beneath the water's surface. The nymph extends its hinged labium (a toothed mouthpart similar to a lower mandible, which is sometimes termed as a "mask" as it is normally folded and held before the face) that can extend forward and retract rapidly to capture prey such as mosquito larvae, tadpoles, and small fish. They breathe through gills in their rectum, and can rapidly propel themselves by suddenly expelling water through the anus. Some naiads, such as the later stages of Antipodophlebia asthenes, hunt on land.
The nymph stage of dragonflies lasts up to five years in large species, and between two months and three years in smaller species. When the naiad is ready to metamorphose into an adult, it stops feeding and makes its way to the surface, generally at night. It remains stationary with its head out of the water, while its respiration system adapts to breathing air, then climbs up a reed or other emergent plant, and moults (ecdysis). Anchoring itself firmly in a vertical position with its claws, its skin begins to split at a weak spot behind the head. The adult dragonfly crawls out of its nymph skin, the exuvia, arching backwards when all but the tip of its abdomen is free, to allow its exoskeleton to harden. Curling back upwards, it completes its emergence, swallowing air, which plumps out its body, and pumping haemolymph into its wings, which causes them to expand to their full extent.
Dragonflies in temperate areas can be categorized into two groups, an early group and a later one. In any one area, individuals of a particular "spring species" emerge within a few days of each other. The springtime darner (Basiaeschna janata), for example, is suddenly very common in the spring, but disappears a few weeks later and is not seen again until the following year. By contrast, a "summer species" emerges over a period of weeks or months, later in the year. They may be seen on the wing for several months, but this may represent a whole series of individuals, with new adults hatching out as earlier ones complete their lifespans.
Sex ratios
The sex ratio of male to female dragonflies varies both temporally and spatially. Adult dragonflies have a high male-biased ratio at breeding habitats. The male-bias ratio has contributed partially to the females using different habitats to avoid male harassment. As seen in Hine's emerald dragonfly (Somatochlora hineana), male populations use wetland habitats, while females use dry meadows and marginal breeding habitats, only migrating to the wetlands to lay their eggs or to find mating partners. Unwanted mating is energetically costly for females because it affects the amount of time that they are able to spend foraging.
Flight
Dragonflies are powerful and agile fliers, capable of migrating across the sea, moving in any direction, and changing direction suddenly. In flight, the adult dragonfly can propel itself in six directions: upward, downward, forward, backward, to left and to right. They have four different styles of flight: A number of flying modes are used that include counter-stroking, with forewings beating 180° out of phase with the hindwings, is used for hovering and slow flight. This style is efficient and generates a large amount of lift; phased-stroking, with the hindwings beating 90° ahead of the forewings, is used for fast flight. This style creates more thrust, but less lift than counter-stroking; synchronised-stroking, with forewings and hindwings beating together, is used when changing direction rapidly, as it maximises thrust; and gliding, with the wings held out, is used in three situations: free gliding, for a few seconds in between bursts of powered flight; gliding in the updraft at the crest of a hill, effectively hovering by falling at the same speed as the updraft; and in certain dragonflies such as darters, when "in cop" with a male, the female sometimes simply glides while the male pulls the pair along by beating his wings.
The wings are powered directly, unlike most families of insects, with the flight muscles attached to the wing bases. Dragonflies have a high power/weight ratio, and have been documented accelerating at 4 G linearly and 9 G in sharp turns while pursuing prey.
Dragonflies generate lift in at least four ways at different times, including classical lift like an aircraft wing; supercritical lift with the wing above the critical angle, generating high lift and using very short strokes to avoid stalling; and creating and shedding vortices. Some families appear to use special mechanisms, as for example the Libellulidae which take off rapidly, their wings beginning pointed far forward and twisted almost vertically. Dragonfly wings behave highly dynamically during flight, flexing and twisting during each beat. Among the variables are wing curvature, length and speed of stroke, angle of attack, forward/back position of wing, and phase relative to the other wings.
Flight speed
Old and unreliable claims are made that dragonflies such as the southern giant darner can fly up to 97 km/h (60 mph). However, the greatest reliable flight speed records are for other types of insects. In general, large dragonflies like the hawkers have a maximum speed of 36–54 km/h (22–34 mph) with average cruising speed of about 16 km/h (9.9 mph). Dragonflies can travel at 100 body-lengths per second in forward flight, and three lengths per second backwards.
Motion camouflage
n high-speed territorial battles between male Australian emperors (Hemianax papuensis), the fighting dragonflies adjust their flight paths to appear stationary to their rivals, minimizing the chance of being detected as they approach.[a] To achieve the effect, the attacking dragonfly flies towards his rival, choosing his path to remain on a line between the rival and the start of his attack path. The attacker thus looms larger as he closes on the rival, but does not otherwise appear to move. Researchers found that six of 15 encounters involved motion camouflage.
Temperature control
The flight muscles need to be kept at a suitable temperature for the dragonfly to be able to fly. Being cold-blooded, they can raise their temperature by basking in the sun. Early in the morning, they may choose to perch in a vertical position with the wings outstretched, while in the middle of the day, a horizontal stance may be chosen. Another method of warming up used by some larger dragonflies is wing-whirring, a rapid vibration of the wings that causes heat to be generated in the flight muscles. The green darner (Anax junius) is known for its long-distance migrations, and often resorts to wing-whirring before dawn to enable it to make an early start.
Becoming too hot is another hazard, and a sunny or shady position for perching can be selected according to the ambient temperature. Some species have dark patches on the wings which can provide shade for the body, and a few use the obelisk posture to avoid overheating. This behaviour involves doing a "handstand", perching with the body raised and the abdomen pointing towards the sun, thus minimising the amount of solar radiation received. On a hot day, dragonflies sometimes adjust their body temperature by skimming over a water surface and briefly touching it, often three times in quick succession. This may also help to avoid desiccation.
Feeding
Adult dragonflies hunt on the wing using their exceptionally acute eyesight and strong, agile flight. They are almost exclusively carnivorous, eating a wide variety of insects ranging from small midges and mosquitoes to butterflies, moths, damselflies, and smaller dragonflies. A large prey item is subdued by being bitten on the head and is carried by the legs to a perch. Here, the wings are discarded and the prey usually ingested head first. A dragonfly may consume as much as a fifth of its body weight in prey per day. Dragonflies are also some of the insect world's most efficient hunters, catching up to 95% of the prey they pursue.
The nymphs are voracious predators, eating most living things that are smaller than they are. Their staple diet is mostly bloodworms and other insect larvae, but they also feed on tadpoles and small fish. A few species, especially those that live in temporary waters, are likely to leave the water to feed. Nymphs of Cordulegaster bidentata sometimes hunt small arthropods on the ground at night, while some species in the Anax genus have even been observed leaping out of the water to attack and kill full-grown tree frogs.
Eyesight
Dragonfly vision is thought to be like slow motion for humans. Dragonflies see faster than we do; they see around 200 images per second. A dragonfly can see in 360 degrees, and nearly 80 percent of the insect's brain is dedicated to its sight.
Predators
Although dragonflies are swift and agile fliers, some predators are fast enough to catch them. These include falcons such as the American kestrel, the merlin, and the hobby; nighthawks, swifts, flycatchers and swallows also take some adults; some species of wasps, too, prey on dragonflies, using them to provision their nests, laying an egg on each captured insect. In the water, various species of ducks and herons eat dragonfly nymphs and they are also preyed on by newts, frogs, fish, and water spiders. Amur falcons, which migrate over the Indian Ocean at a period that coincides with the migration of the globe skimmer dragonfly, Pantala flavescens, may actually be feeding on them while on the wing.
Parasites
Dragonflies are affected by three major groups of parasites: water mites, gregarine protozoa, and trematode flatworms (flukes). Water mites, Hydracarina, can kill smaller dragonfly nymphs, and may also be seen on adults. Gregarines infect the gut and may cause blockage and secondary infection. Trematodes are parasites of vertebrates such as frogs, with complex life cycles often involving a period as a stage called a cercaria in a secondary host, a snail. Dragonfly nymphs may swallow cercariae, or these may tunnel through a nymph's body wall; they then enter the gut and form a cyst or metacercaria, which remains in the nymph for the whole of its development. If the nymph is eaten by a frog, the amphibian becomes infected by the adult or fluke stage of the trematode.
Dragonflies and humans
Conservation
Most odonatologists live in temperate areas and the dragonflies of North America and Europe have been the subject of much research. However, the majority of species live in tropical areas and have been little studied. With the destruction of rainforest habitats, many of these species are in danger of becoming extinct before they have even been named. The greatest cause of decline is forest clearance with the consequent drying up of streams and pools which become clogged with silt. The damming of rivers for hydroelectric schemes and the drainage of low-lying land has reduced suitable habitat, as has pollution and the introduction of alien species.
In 1997, the International Union for Conservation of Nature set up a status survey and conservation action plan for dragonflies. This proposes the establishment of protected areas around the world and the management of these areas to provide suitable habitat for dragonflies. Outside these areas, encouragement should be given to modify forestry, agricultural, and industrial practices to enhance conservation. At the same time, more research into dragonflies needs to be done, consideration should be given to pollution control and the public should be educated about the importance of biodiversity.
Habitat degradation has reduced dragonfly populations across the world, for example in Japan. Over 60% of Japan's wetlands were lost in the 20th century, so its dragonflies now depend largely on rice fields, ponds, and creeks. Dragonflies feed on pest insects in rice, acting as a natural pest control. Dragonflies are steadily declining in Africa, and represent a conservation priority.
The dragonfly's long lifespan and low population density makes it vulnerable to disturbance, such as from collisions with vehicles on roads built near wetlands. Species that fly low and slow may be most at risk.
Dragonflies are attracted to shiny surfaces that produce polarization which they can mistake for water, and they have been known to aggregate close to polished gravestones, solar panels, automobiles, and other such structures on which they attempt to lay eggs. These can have a local impact on dragonfly populations; methods of reducing the attractiveness of structures such as solar panels are under experimentation.
In culture
A blue-glazed faience dragonfly amulet was found by Flinders Petrie at Lahun, from the Late Middle Kingdom of ancient Egypt.
Many Native American tribes consider dragonflies to be medicine animals that had special powers. For example, the southwestern tribes, including the Pueblo, Hopi, and Zuni, associated dragonflies with transformation. They referred to dragonflies as "snake doctors" because they believed dragonflies followed snakes into the ground and healed them if they were injured. For the Navajo, dragonflies symbolize pure water. Often stylized in a double-barred cross design, dragonflies are a common motif in Zuni pottery, as well as Hopi rock art and Pueblo necklaces.: 20–26
As a seasonal symbol in Japan, the dragonflies are associated with season of autumn. In Japan, they are symbols of rebirth, courage, strength, and happiness. They are also depicted frequently in Japanese art and literature, especially haiku poetry. Japanese children catch large dragonflies as a game, using a hair with a small pebble tied to each end, which they throw into the air. The dragonfly mistakes the pebbles for prey, gets tangled in the hair, and is dragged to the ground by the weight.: 38
In Chinese culture, dragonflies symbolize both change and instability. They are also symbols in the Chinese practices of Feng Shui, where placements of dragonfly statues and artwork in parts of a home or office are believed to bring new insights and positive changes.
In both China and Japan, dragonflies have been used in traditional medicine. In Indonesia, adult dragonflies are caught on poles made sticky with birdlime, then fried in oil as a delicacy.
Images of dragonflies are common in Art Nouveau, especially in jewellery designs. They have also been used as a decorative motif on fabrics and home furnishings. Douglas, a British motorcycle manufacturer based in Bristol, named its innovatively designed postwar 350-cc flat-twin model the Dragonfly.
Among the classical names of Japan are Akitsukuni (秋津国), Akitsushima (秋津島), Toyo-akitsushima (豊秋津島). Akitsu is an old word for dragonfly, so one interpretation of Akitsushima is "Dragonfly Island". This is attributed to a legend in which Japan's mythical founder, Emperor Jimmu, was bitten by a mosquito, which was then eaten by a dragonfly.
In Europe, dragonflies have often been seen as sinister. Some English vernacular names, such as "horse-stinger", "devil's darning needle", and "ear cutter", link them with evil or injury. Swedish folklore holds that the devil uses dragonflies to weigh people's souls.: 25–27 The Norwegian name for dragonflies is Øyenstikker ("eye-poker"), and in Portugal, they are sometimes called tira-olhos ("eyes-snatcher"). They are often associated with snakes, as in the Welsh name gwas-y-neidr, "adder's servant". The Southern United States terms "snake doctor" and "snake feeder" refer to a folk belief that dragonflies catch insects for snakes or follow snakes around and stitch them back together if they are injured. Interestingly, the Hungarian name for dragonfly is szitakötő ("sieve-knitter").
The watercolourist Moses Harris (1731–1785), known for his The Aurelian or natural history of English insects (1766), published in 1780, the first scientific descriptions of several Odonata including the banded demoiselle, Calopteryx splendens. He was the first English artist to make illustrations of dragonflies accurate enough to be identified to species (Aeshna grandis at top left of plate illustrated), though his rough drawing of a nymph (at lower left) with the mask extended appears to be plagiarised.[b]
More recently, dragonfly watching has become popular in America as some birdwatchers seek new groups to observe.
In heraldry, like other winged insects, the dragonfly is typically depicted tergiant (with its back facing the viewer), with its head to chief.
In poetry and literature
Lafcadio Hearn wrote in his 1901 book A Japanese Miscellany that Japanese poets had created dragonfly haiku "almost as numerous as are the dragonflies themselves in the early autumn." The poet Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694) wrote haiku such as "Crimson pepper pod / add two pairs of wings, and look / darting dragonfly", relating the autumn season to the dragonfly. Hori Bakusui (1718–1783) similarly wrote "Dyed he is with the / Colour of autumnal days, / O red dragonfly."
The poet Lord Tennyson, described a dragonfly splitting its old skin and emerging shining metallic blue like "sapphire mail" in his 1842 poem "The Two Voices", with the lines "An inner impulse rent the veil / Of his old husk: from head to tail / Came out clear plates of sapphire mail."
The novelist H. E. Bates described the rapid, agile flight of dragonflies in his 1937 nonfiction book Down the River:
I saw, once, an endless procession, just over an area of water-lilies, of small sapphire dragonflies, a continuous play of blue gauze over the snowy flowers above the sun-glassy water. It was all confined, in true dragonfly fashion, to one small space. It was a continuous turning and returning, an endless darting, poising, striking and hovering, so swift that it was often lost in sunlight.
In technology
A dragonfly has been genetically modified with light-sensitive "steering neurons" in its nerve cord to create a cyborg-like "DragonflEye". The neurons contain genes like those in the eye to make them sensitive to light. Miniature sensors, a computer chip and a solar panel were fitted in a "backpack" over the insect's thorax in front of its wings. Light is sent down flexible light-pipes named optrodes[c] from the backpack into the nerve cord to give steering commands to the insect. The result is a "micro-aerial vehicle that's smaller, lighter and stealthier than anything else that's manmade".
[Credit: en.wikipedia.org/]
Went to a meet up in Gastown, it started to rain so I dashed under the dome of the Price Waterhouse building and poked around and got a few interesting shots, sometimes you have to look way up.
Good Monday Morning,
After a couple of months of work, I'm baaaaaaaaaack.
In this, your pre-Christmas, edition, I bring you a retrospective of my favorites from October, November & December.
El Nino be damned; we hit the trails despite rain and wind.
Through puddles we splashed, past trees we dashed, a hummingbird encounter occurred.
Flying monkeys, their witch, a lion costume that itched, redwood trees so big they're absurd.
Will threw the ball, Thanks-given for all, I fixed the furnace to warm the cold nights.
We watched a parade, had fun making mazes, and twinkled with Boston's tree lights.
This poem is done, I'm all out of fun, it's time to get back to my desk.
Peace and love to you peeps, good eats and good sleeps, may the holidays get you some rest.
Mike
On Friday, February 7, 2014, high school and middle school students dashed into the icy Atlantic as part of Special Olympics Virginia’s largest fundraiser: The Polar Plunge and the Cool School Challenge.
“Raising one million dollars for the fourth year in a row is incredible,” said Rick Jeffrey, Special Olympics Virginia president. “More importantly, though, these funds will help us to build bigger, better, more inclusive communities across the state of Virginia.”
In addition to the money raised, they got to take the icy dip into the Atlantic, all while earning a Friday “pass” from school, earn community service credit, Costume contests – prizes for best dressed male and female, prizes for teacher or team sponsor, and freezing photos.
Photography - Craig McClure
14185
© 2014
ALL Rights reserved by City of Virginia Beach.
Contact photo[at]vbgov.com for permission to use. Commercial use not allowed.
With promise of a wet and snowy winter out in California, my previously dashed hopes of seeing a white winter had been renewed again. And I once again started hoping for a white-out like the one a few years ago when I made my way to Yosemite National Park on Christmas day. I had been hoping to catch some pristine snow and white-out conditions in the park, but instead I was met with week-old snow and icy roads. Not quite what I had expected.
But conditions quickly turned for the worse (or the better). A developing storm started dumping fresh, albeit wet snow out onto the sparsely crowded valley floor. And after a few minutes of shooting, I too headed for the warmth of the cozy Ahwahnee.
Once inside, I looked eagerly at the falling snow, covering everything with a thick layer of white. So tempted was I with the falling snow that I decided to insulate my camera gear and get up from cozy sofa into the freezing weather to capture the falling snow.
A few years outside the stone walls of the hotel, I came across a tree whose arched branch gracefully framed the grey and brown facade of the hotel.
Yosemite National Park
CA USA
photo not yet edited, but dashed outside between fog and rain to get a photo...
My submission for the BAMM exhibition
Moby Dick is my favorite American novel, and Melville inspires my landscape and seascape photography! “But as in landlessness alone resides the highest truth, shoreless, indefinite as God - so better is it to perish in that howling infinite, than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that were safety! For worm-like, then, oh! who would craven crawl to land!” ― Herman Melville, Moby Dick
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Portrait, Swimsuit, Lingerie, Boudoir, Fine Art, & Fashion Photography Exalting the Venus Goddess Archetype: How to Shoot Epic ... Epic! Beautiful Surf Fine Art Portrait Swimsuit Bikini Models!
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Golden Ratio Compositions & Secret Sacred Geometry for Photography, Fine Art, & Landscape Photographers: How to Exalt Art with Leonardo da Vinci's, Michelangelo's!
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Ralph Waldo Emerson. The happiest man is he who learns from nature the lesson of worship.
Henry David Thoreau, Walden: Or, Life in the Woods: We need the tonic of wildness...At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature.
Back to grabbing a few more photos from my archives. If I wrote a description under a previously posted image taken on the same trip/outing, I will add it under today's photos.
"On 25 October 2018, I dashed down to a place that I had been curious about for the last few years. Every time I drove the highway, I would pass a sign that said Kayben Farms. My daughter had posted photos from a visit there with friends a while ago and there were a few things that I wanted to see sometime. A spur-of-the-moment visit gave me the chance to do so. Actually, I suspect it may also have been a delaying tactic for all the endless things that I knew I should be seeing to.
There were a few sheds/barns scattered around the grounds. Most were a pretty basic, simple shape and not old. However, I loved one little barn and absolutely loved the wonderfully bright and colourful door of two other buildings. The one barn had an assortment of ducks, chickens, pigs - and a rabbit that I only noticed when I was editing the image. There were several different kinds of domestic duck and two in particular caught my eye. A female domestic Turkey had two babies, one black and the other was a tan colour, and what a good mother she was.
Wandering near the corn maze - now closed till next year - I came across a dead Sunflower hanging its head. One of my favourite things to photograph, at any stage of their life. As for a corn maze, nothing would make me enter .... nothing, unless the corn plants were no higher than my waist and if I was with someone who has an excellent sense of direction!
Various pieces of old farm equipment dotted the area. I always enjoy coming across such things on any of my travels.
In a nearby area, there was a variety of farm animals, including a very cute pig that was fast asleep and snoring loudly, and horses, sheep and goats were entertaining. All made for a very pleasant visit, just in time before the farm closed to the public for the winter season."
It was a lovely sunny day here yesterday. Walking back from the village shop I noticed this beautiful camellia in a garden close to where I live, so I dashed home and picked up my camera. Such a pretty flower.
=================
EXPLORE #274, 14 March 2012.
Not the shot I was planning, and no he doesn't wear doggles, these are actually from a stuffed animals, but the shoot we were planning (I'm gonna try it again so I'm keeping it to myself) was dashed by this little co-pilot.... You can see his smug little look from destroying my hopes....
This is the mansion at Bletchley Park. Also known as Bletchley Park Mansion.
It is Grade II listed.
Large house, now offices. 1860 altered and extended 1883-6 and c1906
for HS Leon. Red brick in Flemish bond with ashlar dressings; principal
gables half-timbered with pebble-dashed infill, some others tile-hung;
Welsh slate roof with red tile ridge; brick stacks, with clustered
flues, ribs and bands. Transomed wooden windows, principal windows with
leaded upper lights. Decorative wooden barge boards and finials to
gables. Large rambling house, of 2 storeys with partial attic.
Entrance elevation: 6 bays. Lavish ashlar detailing including
architraves. Entrance in bay 2 has internal, vaulted, porch protecting
panelled half-glazed double-door with side lights, traceried upper part
and fanlight the latter leaded and with coloured glass. Flanking porch
are hexagonal brick columns surmounted by panelled stone tops which
flank base of 4-light oriel window with decorative base. Projecting
from porch, and attached to it are 2 seated griffins on bracketed
plinths. Shaped pediment with elaborate finial. Gabled bay 1 has
projecting 2-storey canted bay with pretted eaves band and cornice below
swept, domed, metal roof. On its left is single-storey wooden
conservatory with traceried bays, formerly an open-sided loggia.
Paired, gabled, bays 2 and 3 have ashlar framed triple window to ground
floor with gableted butresses,and two canted bay windows over. Across
bay 4 is 3 bay embattled ashlar loggia fronting elaborate - panelled
double-door with canted bay window to right; inserted 1st floor window.
Bay 6 has polygonal 2-storey bay window with shaped pediments screening
finialed polygonal roof. Right return: 3 left-hand bays in same style
as front, the rest plainer; but attached to right end is dovecote-like
structure: octagonal, of 2 stages, having plinth; inserted ground-floor
windows; ashlar upper stage with 2-light windows below string; and plain
tile roof with gablets and finial. Rear: plainer having tradesmen's
entrance; complex roofline, one roof having louvre with finialed lead
cupola; and embattled tower with blue-brick decorative work and date
(former steep hipped roof removed). Left return: in style of front,
with ashlar canted and curved bay windows; paired, gabled, bays 2 and 3
decorative half-timbered 1st floor; shaped pediment to bay 4; and former
loggia (much altered) across right-hand bays. Interior: high quality,
elaborate, interiors survive, with panelling, panelled doors, decorative
fireplaces, and decorative plaster ceilings. Entrance vestibule: stone
columns and vaults. Entrance Hall: arcaded polished-stone screen wall
and panelled area beyond with elaborate 2-stage, columned, ashlar
fireplace surround and traceried panelling and painted glass to roof.
Room at right end: Jacobethan fireplace; coffered ceiling with floral-
decorated plaster panels. Stairhall: panelled; ground-floor arcade and
deep floral frieze; decorative coved, coffered, ceiling over stair;
fretted balustrade with carved surround and carved octagonal newels to
stair panelled stair well. Library : elaborate wooden jacobethan
inglenook with overmirror; fitted book cases and shelves; fluted frieze;
compartmental ceiling with decorative plaster panels. Ballroom :
linenfold panelling; wall recess flanked by clustered wooden columns
from which spring traceried arches; elaborate plaster work to frieze and
to coved, ribbed, ceiling which has pendant finials. Billiard room:
brattished panelling and cornice; columns support ceiling ribs; wooden
trusses. Additional fireplaces, panelling, and decorative doors,
plasterwork and cornices to 1st floor.
Bletchley Park House was the headquarters building of World War II
operational centre, in the grounds of which was the hut in which the
vital cracking of the Nazis' Enigma Code occurred. Churchill was one of
the important visitors to the house.
Dashed back to Henderson when this filed for arrival. Seen at Luton recently but couldn't get a shot.
This module is build after the building instructions on L-Gauge. It's a great site with a lot of information.
L-Gauge main page: l-gauge.org/wiki/index.php/Welcome_to_L-Gauge
MILS building instructions can be found here:
This is the mansion at Bletchley Park. Also known as Bletchley Park Mansion.
It is Grade II listed.
Large house, now offices. 1860 altered and extended 1883-6 and c1906
for HS Leon. Red brick in Flemish bond with ashlar dressings; principal
gables half-timbered with pebble-dashed infill, some others tile-hung;
Welsh slate roof with red tile ridge; brick stacks, with clustered
flues, ribs and bands. Transomed wooden windows, principal windows with
leaded upper lights. Decorative wooden barge boards and finials to
gables. Large rambling house, of 2 storeys with partial attic.
Entrance elevation: 6 bays. Lavish ashlar detailing including
architraves. Entrance in bay 2 has internal, vaulted, porch protecting
panelled half-glazed double-door with side lights, traceried upper part
and fanlight the latter leaded and with coloured glass. Flanking porch
are hexagonal brick columns surmounted by panelled stone tops which
flank base of 4-light oriel window with decorative base. Projecting
from porch, and attached to it are 2 seated griffins on bracketed
plinths. Shaped pediment with elaborate finial. Gabled bay 1 has
projecting 2-storey canted bay with pretted eaves band and cornice below
swept, domed, metal roof. On its left is single-storey wooden
conservatory with traceried bays, formerly an open-sided loggia.
Paired, gabled, bays 2 and 3 have ashlar framed triple window to ground
floor with gableted butresses,and two canted bay windows over. Across
bay 4 is 3 bay embattled ashlar loggia fronting elaborate - panelled
double-door with canted bay window to right; inserted 1st floor window.
Bay 6 has polygonal 2-storey bay window with shaped pediments screening
finialed polygonal roof. Right return: 3 left-hand bays in same style
as front, the rest plainer; but attached to right end is dovecote-like
structure: octagonal, of 2 stages, having plinth; inserted ground-floor
windows; ashlar upper stage with 2-light windows below string; and plain
tile roof with gablets and finial. Rear: plainer having tradesmen's
entrance; complex roofline, one roof having louvre with finialed lead
cupola; and embattled tower with blue-brick decorative work and date
(former steep hipped roof removed). Left return: in style of front,
with ashlar canted and curved bay windows; paired, gabled, bays 2 and 3
decorative half-timbered 1st floor; shaped pediment to bay 4; and former
loggia (much altered) across right-hand bays. Interior: high quality,
elaborate, interiors survive, with panelling, panelled doors, decorative
fireplaces, and decorative plaster ceilings. Entrance vestibule: stone
columns and vaults. Entrance Hall: arcaded polished-stone screen wall
and panelled area beyond with elaborate 2-stage, columned, ashlar
fireplace surround and traceried panelling and painted glass to roof.
Room at right end: Jacobethan fireplace; coffered ceiling with floral-
decorated plaster panels. Stairhall: panelled; ground-floor arcade and
deep floral frieze; decorative coved, coffered, ceiling over stair;
fretted balustrade with carved surround and carved octagonal newels to
stair panelled stair well. Library : elaborate wooden jacobethan
inglenook with overmirror; fitted book cases and shelves; fluted frieze;
compartmental ceiling with decorative plaster panels. Ballroom :
linenfold panelling; wall recess flanked by clustered wooden columns
from which spring traceried arches; elaborate plaster work to frieze and
to coved, ribbed, ceiling which has pendant finials. Billiard room:
brattished panelling and cornice; columns support ceiling ribs; wooden
trusses. Additional fireplaces, panelling, and decorative doors,
plasterwork and cornices to 1st floor.
Bletchley Park House was the headquarters building of World War II
operational centre, in the grounds of which was the hut in which the
vital cracking of the Nazis' Enigma Code occurred. Churchill was one of
the important visitors to the house.
According to this newspaper article events in Spence Street were likely to need the services of the QATB:
Cairns Morning Post
Tuesday 24 Dec 1907
Hooting the Police
A disgraceful scene, the like of which happily is seldom witnessed in Cairns, occurred yesterday afternoon in Spence-street. Constable Page went to arrest a man, who was staggering about the footpath for drunkeness. The latter resisted and was handcuffed by the constable. When this was accomplished, the prisoner began to kick the officer and refused to go in a cab. A large crowd had meanwhile gathered and amongst which were some fo the hoodlum element who hooted the constable loudly. Page called upon a bystander to assist in placing his prisoner in a cab but when the man attempted to respond to the constable's request, he was kept back by the crowd.
Then the hooting became louder than ever and matters began to look serious for Constable Page, when suddenly Sergeant Thompson and Constable Wright arrived upon the scene, dashed in among the yelling crowd and the prisoner was soon marched off to the lockup. A similar scene of rowdyism occurred in a suburb of Brisbane last week, best fortunately the police were successful in apprehending one of the hooters in the act, and marched him off to gaol. Upon being brought before the justices next morning he received a penalty that will prove a severe lesson, for some time to come.
The police have a difficult and at times an unpleasant duty to perform, and deserve every assistance and encouragement, instead of having to suffer abuse and worse from ruffianly hoodlums of the type that was so much in evidence at yesterday's disgraceful scenes of unparalleled rowdyism.
“Sir! She’s sprung a leak!” The first mate dashed into the pirate Captain’s cabin, flushed and out of breath.
The Captain raised a scowling face. “Man the pumps then! You know what to do!”
“This is no ordinary leak, sir. She’s going fast!”
“Whad’ya mean, she’s goin’?” The Captain followed the words with a string of curses and then nearly bowled his mate over as he rushed topside. “All hands on deck! Man the pumps! Full force!” The next instant he was down in the hull with the mate beside him, pointing out the leak. The Captain’s face twisted in rage. “Who did that? That’s no leak. We’ve been scuttled! Who had the last watch?”
The mate shifted uneasily. Water poured in, soaking both men’s boots, but neither seemed to notice. At last he muttered, “Billy was at the tiller.”
“Billy?! That good for nothin’… Lazy – I’ll make him pay! Probably did it a purpose – wants us all ta drown!”
The mate was about to reply, but instead he ejaculated, “Good heavens! We’re sinking!” The words ended in a kind of scream. For the water was now rushing furiously in, threatening to sweep both off their feet.
“Shut your mouth!” the Captain spat, climbing topside again and ignoring his dripping garments.
At that moment the ship tilted violently, sending both men along with several other pirates into the scuttles. Billy fell too, slamming into the Captain.
“You! – You did this!” The Captain grabbed the unfortunate cabin boy by the neck.
Billy shuddered, turning terrified eyes to the Captain’s ferocious look.
“Well?! Answer me!”
With sudden boldness the boy spoke up. “I did do it.”
“Treason! Mutiny! You’ll pay for this!”
“Of course he will,” the mate grumbled. “We’re all goin’ to the bottom!”
“I’ll make sure Billy gets there first!” the Captain exclaimed, uttering a fearful oath.
Another lurch of the ship freed Billy from the Captain’s grasp for a second and he scrambled to his feet, desperately climbing toward the prow which was now pointing to the sky.
Cries and shouts resounded through the ship, which had now begun to sink in earnest. And yet for all their desperate plight, the pirates only quarreled and fought with each other, all eager to prolong their miserable lives by as many minutes as they could, even if it meant sending another to his death. The more reckless dove into the rum supply, determined to drown in drink for the last few minutes before they really drowned. Slowly the ship sank lower and lower, and now many of the pirates, forced to realize their plight, screamed in terror. Those who had sent so many to their deaths were unwilling to go themselves.
Above deck the Captain pulled himself aft by main force, practically tearing the boards, almost foaming at the mouth in his impotent rage. Billy clung to the bowsprit, unsure whether to face the Captain’s fury or spring overboard at once. He shuddered as he looked down into the water, and, opening his clasp knife, resolved to defend himself.
Ropes and bits of iron slid down the decks along with other miscellany. The Captain lost his hold – caught it again – and in desperation, pulled out his pistol.
Billy shuddered and tried to shrink into as small a target as possible.
The next instant a heavy sack smashed into the Captain’s legs and with a terrible cry he crashed headlong into the churning water.
And now the ship had almost completely sunk, and Billy was left alone. A sudden silence – an eerie silence – succeeded the fearful shouts. Billy climbed farther up the bowsprit until he was perched as high atop it as possible.
He had done it, and he thought his own life was a small price to pay for the blessing of ridding the sea of such a scourge. But other thoughts came to him in those moments that seemed like a life time as he straddled the rough timber, knife still in hand. After all, the quick, almost painless death to which he had sent his comrades seemed a poor repayment for their actions. They would have died, eventually, anyways – he had only hastened it by a year or two – and was that all? For all their villainy, for all their injustice, for having taken him, still a little child, and made him virtually their slave, dragging him through unspeakable horror? …hate surged through him, and he half cursed himself for taking such a poor and flavorless vengeance.
Then he thought of the deeds he himself had taken pleasure in doing, and loathed himself as heartily as any of his companions.
Was this all life had? Was there no real justice? The thought was intolerable to him. Far better to stand condemned, as he knew he would be, then to think that in the end, wrong would win.
But perhaps… perhaps… could mercy be found? Even for him?
The still, silent waters closed over the pirate ship, leaving no trace.
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.
The three notched discs and a drafting pen mounted on the spring-loaded base created different dash-line patterns for boundary, road, river, and other linear map symbols.
The three notched discs and a drafting pen mounted on the spring-loaded base created different dash-line patterns for boundary, road, river, and other linear map symbols.
The three notched discs and a drafting pen mounted on the spring-loaded base created different dash-line patterns for boundary, road, river, and other linear map symbols.
The three notched discs and a drafting pen mounted on the spring-loaded base created different dash-line patterns for boundary, road, river, and other linear map symbols.
The three notched discs and a drafting pen mounted on the spring-loaded base created different dash-line patterns for boundary, road, river, and other linear map symbols.
Jax was SO happy to hear it was going to snow. Sadly it is so deep that he can't run out in to the yard. I had to edge the shovel out the door and slowly clear enough snow to open the door wide enough to finally edge out myself and shovel a small potty area.
Jax had different ideas and promptly dashed back in the house. We thought he was just being smart and getting back in where it was warmer, but no - he just went in to get a toy in the hopes that I would throw it in to the snow. He tried to convince me that it would be ok by tossing it about on his own, but there is well over two feet out there and it is STILL SNOWING.
First snow of the season is pretty impressive, gotta say.
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Some of my epic books, prints, & more!
Epic Poetry inspires all my photography: geni.us/9K0Ki Epic Poetry for Epic Landscape Photography: Exalt Fine Art Nature Photography with the Poetic Wisdom of John Muir, Emerson, Thoreau, Homer's Iliad, Milton's Paradise Lost & Dante's Inferno Odyssey
Exalt your photography with Golden Ratio Compositions!
Golden Ratio Compositions & Secret Sacred Geometry for Photography, Fine Art, & Landscape Photographers: How to Exalt Art with Leonardo da Vinci's, Michelangelo's!
Epic Landscape Photography:
A Simple Guide to the Principles of Fine Art Nature Photography: Master Composition, Lenses, Camera Settings, Aperture, ISO, ... Hero's Odyssey Mythology Photography)
All my photography celebrates the physics of light! dx4/dt=ic! Light Time Dimension Theory: The Foundational Physics Unifying Einstein's Relativity and Quantum Mechanics: A Simple, Illustrated Introduction to the Physical: geni.us/Fa1Q
Ralph Waldo Emerson. The happiest man is he who learns from nature the lesson of worship.
Henry David Thoreau, Walden: Or, Life in the Woods: We need the tonic of wildness...At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature.
in the New Orleans series the text reads:
I dashed for the Trolley as I wanted to meet the other artists this morning for some sketching--I haven't met them before but we'll have fun I know. Oh dear, I don't have my trolley pass or the right change--now why am I not surprised about that ? !
There's so many places to see in the Big Easy and I guess today I see them alone....
We've all done it, haven't we? Dashed home from a photoshoot and processed the obvious pictures for an immediate upload to our favourite photo-sharing web-site. Months later we discover some interesting photos that we have forgotten about; this is one that was lurking in my archives just waiting quietly to be discovered and shown to the world.
OK, I'm probably a little too well oiled this evening, a glass of red and my tongue has become rather loose, hence the pre-amble drivel written above, but we really should perhaps occasionally shoot less but consider more what we are photographing. I missed this one because I was more excited by others in the batch at the time.
Let us look at the composition here, what is in the photo? well, nothing much really! Do we have a lead-in? Sort of, I suppose, with that ribbon of white rock! Where does your eye go? Well, straight to the sea and then on to that highlight in the cloud; and then where? Well, wandering round and round not actually settling anywhere!
But I don't care, I like it, I took this for MY satisfaction, if one or two others like it as well then that really is a bonus!
15.5.09
We're driving towards the orphanage. The highway is lonely, save for a few languid trucks ambling along. It is damp too, and a thick fog covers the countryside: a single light here or there provides the only hint of civilization amidst the interminable verdure. Inside the van, the smoke of cigarettes past wafts in the air, lingering like a lost soul. I inhale, and quickly cough. I subsequently open the window to the enveloping darkness outside, so slightly as to not disturb my companions in the back. The roar of the road echoes in my ears.
An unexpected wrench was thrown into our travel plans today. The trip began expediently enough as the bus on which Candy and I rode reached the Shenzhen airport with hours to spare; however, the unscheduled hiccups soon followed. We received an announcement over the public address system notifying us of a flight delay, due to a mysterious military maneuver, we deduced, high in the Shenzhen skies. Several more sonorous reminders came in punctual succession over the next six hours. It seemed as though we would be stuck, stranded really, at the airport forever, or for the day at least. Thankfully, after the police arrested some of the more aggrieved passengers, we finally boarded the plane and took off for central China. We were blessed to be on our way at last, none of us having blown a gasket during the afternoon tedium.
One more pitch black road awaited, down a single lonely lane lined with swarthy trees, standing as though sentries, and at length we arrived at the orphanage. The car stopped in a clearing, and we stepped out, onto a cement lot with soft puddles spread silently beneath our feet. We squinted into the twilight, our eyes trying to make sense of the surroundings. Our bags were unloaded, we made our way to the rooms, and soon enough fell asleep. I think we all enjoyed the repose, rendered especially comfortable by the new guest rooms in which we were staying.
16.5.09
We have only been here for barely 24 hours, yet it feels as though we have been here for much longer, as if time at some point in our journey decided to slow itself to a crawl. Maybe it was because of the litany of activities that we packed into the span of several hours, or perhaps it was the lack of worldly distractions, allowing us to focus solely on our mission, that caused us to suspend the hands of that imaginary clock in our mind. Whatever the case, we've enjoyed every minute at the orphanage; it is time definitely well spent in service!
Morning call was at 6:20; and after a prayer meeting we went down to finally visit the kids. They were playing on the vast driveway of the orphanage, savoring their moment of freedom before breakfast. To see so many friendly faces, in spite of their precarious physical and filial circumstance was definitely encouraging. I made a multitude of new friends; and did my best throughout the day to impact those kids with joy, honesty and patience. It is a powerful cocktail which brings love immediately to many.
The food at the orphanage is without processing, as natural as victuals can be in these days of impersonal industrial production. Large chunks of mantou, steaming bowls of soupy congee, and salty vegetables with slivers of meat have characterized our meals. It is the kind of humble stuff that lengthens life spans, and disciplines the palate.
We presented a wide range of activities - structured and unstructured; whole class and small group - to the kids, in the hope that we would manage them as much as amuse. In the morning, as though breaking the ice once were not enough, we ran through a series of dizzying, if not at times totally incoherent, activities designed to familiarize our dispositions to each other. Later, we established a makeshift fun fair, at which we ushered the children to rooms filled with (board) games, and puzzles, and other, more colorful activities such as face painting and balloon making. The kids couldn't at length contain their enthusiasm, busting into and out of rooms with impunity, soaking in the rapturous atmosphere. In the afternoon, our team attempted to tire them out: running topped the agenda, and by leaps and bounds, the activities, whether straightforward relays or schoolyard classics like duck duck goose and red light, green light, indeed began to tucker our charges out. We, too, were pretty beat by the time night began to creep over the horizon!
17.5.09
Yesterday evening, we surprised the students with a musical performance, followed by forty minutes of bubble-blowing madness; to be sure, the students could not appreciate our somewhat accurate rendition of Amazing Grace so much as the innocent madness of dipping one's hands in a solution of dish detergent and corn syrup and then whispering a bubble to life; and indeed, the moment the Disney branded bubble-making machines churned the first batch of bubbles into the air, with much rapidity weaving their frenetic pattern of fun, chaos erupted in the room. The students stormed the soap basin, and almost overwhelmed my teammates who valiantly held the Snitch and Pooh high above the heads of the clamoring kids.
During the evening's festivities, I grew progressively ill, until at last I dashed out of the room to sneeze. Outside, in the cool of the night, under a cloud of stars beaming so far away in the deep of space, I exploded in a rancor of sneezing. The fit lasted for five minutes, an inexorable depression in my system which sent both my body and my esteem tumbling down. I felt bad, not only for my exceedingly rickety health, but for my teammates and the children who may have been exposed to my sickness as it incubated within me; furthermore, everyone in the classroom was saying goodbye and all I could do was rid myself of a sniffle here and there, in between rounds of bursting from nostrils and sinuses. I was impotent, as though one of my insignificant droplets on the floor!
18.5.09
We are in a car heading towards a famous historical site in Henan. The driver's drawl slips slowly from his mouth, and what he says resonates intelligibly in our ears. Candy, Tanya and the driver are discussing Chinese mythology, and history, which, for better or for worse seem to be inextricably intertwined. We narrowly just now missed hitting an idle biker in the middle of the road; in dodging our human obstacle, the car swerved into the oncoming traffic, sending us flying inside the cabin. Reciting a verse from a worship song calmed our frazzled nerves.
How to describe the children? Many of them smiled freely, and were so polite when greeted that undoubtedly they had been trained well at some point in the tumult of their life education. Precociousness was also a common characteristic shared by the kids, whose stunted bodies belied the mature, perspicacious thoughts hiding just underneath the skin. Of course, in our time together we were more merry than serious, that quality being best left for the adults working silently in their rooms; and to that effect, the kids brought out their funny bones and jangled them in the air to stir up the excitement and to destroy by a jocular clamor any hint of a dull moment – we really laughed a lot. At last, although not all of them seemed interested in our staged activities – rather than feign enthusiasm and eagerness, some skipped our events altogether – those who did participate, most of them in fact, enjoyed themselves with abandon, helping to create that delightful atmosphere where the many sounds of elation reign.
Of the students whom I had the opportunity to know personally, several still stick out in my mind, not the least for my having christened a few of them with English names! David was bold, and courageous, willing to soothe crying babes as much as reprimand them when their capricious actions led them astray; he had a caring heart not unlike a shepherd who tends to his young charges. Edward, who at 13 was the same age as David, definitely grew emotionally, not to mention physically attached to me. He was by my side for much of the weekend, grabbing onto my hand and not letting go, to the point where I in my arrogance would detach my fingers within his, ever so slightly, as if to suggest that a second more would lead to a clean break - I know now that with the cruel hands of time motoring away during the mission, I shouldn't have lapsed into such an independent, selfish state; he should have been my son. Another child who became so attached to the team as to intimate annoyance was the boy we deemed John's son, because the boy, it seemed, had handcuffed himself to our teammate, and would only free himself to cause insidious mischief, which would invariably result in an explosion of hysterics, his eyes bursting with tears and his mouth, as wide as canyon, unleashing a sonorous wail when something went wrong. On the other hand, Alice remained in the distance, content to smile and shyly wave her hand at our team while hiding behind her sisters. And last but not least, of our precious goonies, Sunny undoubtedly was the photographer extraordinaire, always in charge of the school's camera, snapping away liberally, never allowing any passing moment to escape his shot.
That I learned on this trip so much about my teammates verily surprised me, as I thought the relationships that we had established were already mature, not hiding any new bump, any sharp edge to surprise us from our friendly stupor. So, consider myself delightfully amazed at how a few slight changes in the personality mix can bring out the best, the most creative and the strangest in the group dynamic: admittedly, Candy and Tanya were the ideal foils for John, they eliciting the most humorous observations and reactions from my house church leader, they expertly constructing a depth of character that even last week, in the wake of the Guangdong biking trip, I never knew existed! Most of all, I'm glad to have been a part of such a harmonious fellowship, for the fact that we could prayer together as one, and encourage each other too, and all the more as we saw the day approaching.
Moby Dick is my favorite American novel, and Melville inspires my landscape and seascape photography! “But as in landlessness alone resides the highest truth, shoreless, indefinite as God - so better is it to perish in that howling infinite, than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that were safety! For worm-like, then, oh! who would craven crawl to land!” ― Herman Melville, Moby Dick
Malibu Sunset Landscape Seascape Photography! California Pacific Ocean Breaking Storm Colorful Clouds Sunset! Sony A7R II Mirrorless & Vario-Tessar T* FE 16-35mm f/4 ZA OSS Lens SEL1635Z! Scenic Sunset California Seascape Landscape Vista! Carl Zeiss Glass Fine Art Photography!
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Some of my epic books, prints, & more!
Epic Poetry inspires all my photography: geni.us/9K0Ki Epic Poetry for Epic Landscape Photography: Exalt Fine Art Nature Photography with the Poetic Wisdom of John Muir, Emerson, Thoreau, Homer's Iliad, Milton's Paradise Lost & Dante's Inferno Odyssey
Exalt your photography with Golden Ratio Compositions!
Golden Ratio Compositions & Secret Sacred Geometry for Photography, Fine Art, & Landscape Photographers: How to Exalt Art with Leonardo da Vinci's, Michelangelo's!
Epic Landscape Photography:
A Simple Guide to the Principles of Fine Art Nature Photography: Master Composition, Lenses, Camera Settings, Aperture, ISO, ... Hero's Odyssey Mythology Photography)
All my photography celebrates the physics of light! dx4/dt=ic! Light Time Dimension Theory: The Foundational Physics Unifying Einstein's Relativity and Quantum Mechanics: A Simple, Illustrated Introduction to the Physical: geni.us/Fa1Q
Ralph Waldo Emerson. The happiest man is he who learns from nature the lesson of worship.
Henry David Thoreau, Walden: Or, Life in the Woods: We need the tonic of wildness...At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature.
365: The 2015 edition (278/365)
It's been a while since Shyla and I have dashed outside early enough to catch the first sun rays of the morning. It was a joy to do it again!
There was a wee bit of light yesterday so I dashed outside.
I love the coloring of the female cardinal.
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