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(Left to right) Ball-Chatham School District driver Kim Sablotny explains the controls for using the anti-idling heater system on a school bus to IEPA Director Doug Scott and Jim Lovelace, the district's Director of Transportation, during an Illinois Clean School Bus Program event on April 27, 2007.
Rabbit And Carrot is an Explainer Video Company based in UAE and USA We create Marketing Videos in different styles 2D Cartoon, Whiteboard Infographic
Erika Jansen, Computer Science BSE Student, explains her group's application,Maize Maze, to Robert Ziff, ChE Professor, on the final presentation date for projects of an EECS 481 course in the Bob and Betty Beyster Building atrium on December 11, 2013.
The program is a fun education-focused game for Grace.
EECS 481 Students in EECS Professor David Chesney's course have been designing systems to make it easier for Grace Simon to communicate, play, or be more independent at school or home.
Simon was diagnosed with cerebal palsy at six months old. While Grace doesn't have the muscle control to speak, extensively sign, or walk, she has a very capable mind that can read and communicate by signaling 'yes' or 'no.'
Photo: Joseph Xu, Michigan Engineering Communications & Marketing
A view from my room at the Conrad Centennial Hotel, Singapore.
The brown object is a fountain, the core part of which is supposed to bring good luck to those who touch it. Allegedly.
The roundabout is currently having work done, hence the red and white barrier,.
Posted via Instagram at November 08, 2012 at 01:51PM
Can somebody explain this "camera on a stick" thing to me? Is this a navigation aid?
To me, it looked like they were simply filming themselves everywhere they went (kind of a photographer equivalent of public masturbation).
L'opera is a family business that was started in the French embassy first. This popular bakery and patisserie quickly moved to Khan Market too and now they have 9 outlets all around Delhi NCR. L'Opera Salon de Thé which literally translated means L'Opera Tea Room is the only tea room L'Opera has.
They source their flour from France and have only one production facility in Noida. They try to empower their bakers and staff and as far as possible keep their system hierarchy free. This whole idea behind this is to have a happier working atmosphere for their chefs and staff to create desserts that can go on to become unforgettable for the restaurant's patrons.
The "Quiche" and "Croque Monsieur" were the savoury items we had which was followed by some lovely tea (rose and lemon). They have an interesting collection of tea from Shahpur Jat, which i really liked. The tea went very well with the Croque Monsieur. The combination of salty and mildly sweet was just right.
Then we had the petit four which means small confectionery or savoury appetiser. There were some awesome truffle and passion fruit sponge cake, apple cinnamon cake and the famous opera pastry. The sponge was perfectly soft and the presentation was impeccable. The opera pastry was rich and decadent.
The petits fours were followed by freshly baked macaroons. I once had macaroons L'Opera, Vasant Kunj a while ago and did not like them very much but these were truly magnificent. They had been baked to perfection, there was a delicate crunch outside and a slight gooey moistness inside. The flavours we had were "Hazelnut Chocolate" and "Passion Fruit" and we truly loved them both. If you ask me to pick a favourite, I will not be able to.
I met Mr. Masood at L'Opera Salon de Thé who explained us the importance of the different textures in French desserts. It was nice that there was someone available to educate us on French baking.
L'Opera Salon de Thé have a large collection of breads, everything freshly baked. The "Sour Dough Bread" was delicious. I took some away with me for later. The "Multi-grain Baguette" with flak seeds and sunflower seeds can be had on its own because it has added salt. I ordered another cup of tea so I could enjoy this bread. The combination of sweet and salty can never go wrong!
I got some looks setting up this shot.Single flash at 1/16, hidden behind/inside kiosk that describes differences in animal furs.
Learn how to light at Strobist
Housewife Lisa explains how telemetics pay-as-you-drive car insurance works and saves her money while being able to keep an eye on her husband…
“I have three kids, two school runs, a part-time job - and no time.
“The most I ever drive is to school or to the shops and sometimes to work which adds up to about 10 miles a day.
“Now I threw a hissy fit when I found that I get charged the same for my insurance as my friend Sarah across the road who drives about 500 miles a week for work and stuff like that.
“But then I found out from my neighbour that there’s something called pay-how-you-drive. You’re insured all the time, but you’re only charged when you drive your car, and if you drive carefully then you get charged less.
“It’s all down to something called telematics, which is a little box hidden in the car which tells the insurance company when and how you’re driving. It’s the same idea as sending information from a mobile phone, but what it does is monitor if you go round corners too fast, or brake too hard, drive like a hooligan – you know what I mean. Doesn’t apply to me of course.
“I don’t have the foggiest idea how it all works, but the really good thing is that I can go online and log in to a website and see how my teenage son is driving if he takes my car. And as I have the reins on the household budget I can also see how much we’re wasting on pointless journeys like when my husband got his new car and was behaving more like a teenager than my teenagers…”
Coverbox is both a pay-as-you-drive and pay-how-you-drive car insurer, providing insurance through names such as The co-operative, Groupama, Allianz, Sabre and Markerstudy to suit a range of drivers’ requirements. Premiums are based on the distance and time of day of travel – varying rates being charged per mile depending upon peak or off-peak driving – and how drivers drive, with sensible drivers being rewarded with lower insurance costs for careful, considerate and reasonable driving. Drivers who avoid accident black-spots or high-risk locations such as roads past schools or busy rush-hour junctions are rewarded with reduced renewal premiums, and are charged according to their driving habits and approach rather than being charged according to how other drivers living in the same postcode behave behind the wheel: why should two drivers of similar cars, of similar status and similar age – one a well-behaved driver, the other a dangerously-driving neighbour - be charged the same insurance rate when one is many more times likely to be involved in an accident than the other? Coverbox uses telematics – an exchange of information between technology in the car to the insurer – to keep up with, and reward, drivers’ habits; Coverbox customers also benefit from free GPS theft tracking, and can monitor their vehicle usage through their very own personalised online “dashboard” which keeps them updated on vehicle usage and cost, and, potentially, substantial savings on their car insurance. www.coverbox.co.uk/
Scan of a slide taken in 1994: I'll try and explain this as briefly as possible. The original Rother Valley Railway, which was the forerunner of the Kent and East Sussex Railway, opened in 1900, the name change occurring in 1904, followed by the 'northern extension' from Tenterden to Headcorn in 1905. The line remained independent following the 1923 Grouping but was nationalised in 1948. Closure was a gradual process between 1954 and 1961, although the line remained open as far as Hodsons Mill until 1969.
A preservation group was active from as early as 1961, but the reality for 'amateurs' operating the K&ESR was the number of level crossings. In particular the level crossing across the busy A21 in Robertsbridge meant the preservation society was forced to concentrate on the Tenterden to Bodiam section, progressively reopening westwards from Tenterden. However, in 1991 an independent group was formed based at Robertsbridge with a view to reopening the Robertsbridge to Bodiam section and thereby meeting up with the preserved K&ESR.
2011 - Amber's 1st grade teacher, Mrs. Horn, explaining what the kids can use to decorate their pumpkins.
One of the band members explained how the band got their name. He said it was either in honour of a beer of the same name or because they might have been inspired by a stay on the Devil's Chair rock on the Stiperstones as the mist came down. I'd have thought such an experience would have put anyone off!
I recognise two of the band members who play with the Gracechurch Historical Dancers. I also thought I recognised one of the other members as playing with Whalebone, another local band, but I was mistaken. Funny that, as that band play a song or tune entitled 'Devil's Chair'.
St. Peter’s Church at Melverley, Shropshire is situated on the English / Welsh border on the banks of the River Vyrnwy close to the confluence of the River Severn. The timber frame building was made with local Melverley oak and pinned together, not with metal nails, but with wooden pegs throughout and is the only example of this type of building technique in Shropshire. The walls were made with wattle and daub. The building we see today was rebuilt in 1406 to replace an original wooden church burnt to the ground by the Welsh chieftain Owain Glyndŵr during the Welsh uprisings in 1401. The site itself has been a place of Christian worship for about 1000 years. In 1141 English chronicler and Benedictine monk Ordericus Vitalis mentions a ‘wooden chapel on the banks of the river above Shrewsbury’.
Services are on the first Sunday of every month at 6pm
Photo citation: Ted Auch, FracTracker Alliance, 2021.
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Mrs. John Bigelow was born Jane Tunis Poultney in Baltimore, Maryland in January, 1829. The Poultneys were a prominent and wealthy Quaker family, and Jane's father had amassed a fortune in banking, but in 1837 he was charged and convicted of manipulations which had closed The Bank of Maryland and led to a financial panic wherein thousands of people lost their life savings. The angry citizens of Baltimore rioted for seven straight nights, burning and looting the homes of those who were felt by the crowds to be responsible. Evan Poultney had published a pamphlet denying any guilt and explaining his side of the story, which was twice contradicted by his banking partners, but his story was evidently believed to some extent by the people of Baltimore, and later examinations of the evidence have suggested he may well have been completely innocent of wrongdoing, a pawn of his manipulative partners. Unlike his partners, Poultney did not flee the city when the riots started, and when the angry mob showed up at his family home, he spoke honestly and was able to convince them not to destroy the place. Still, as one of the the bank's officers, Evan Poultney was found guilty and sentenced to pay back enormous amounts of money, leaving his family somewhat disgraced and their fortunes significantly diminished. Poultney died a short time later. His widow and daughter soon moved to New York to live with a relative.
At a dancing party on Long Island the young and already popular Miss Poultney, a favorite of the wife of the city's then mayor, was introduced to 30 year old John Bigelow, a tall, intellectual and handsome attorney and writer who was easily rising in New York at the time. Not prone to being overly romantic, Bigelow first wooed his new love interest with the gift of two gallons of turtle soup left over from a cruise he had taken. Apparently the gift was well received. The couple was married within a matter of four months. John Bigelow wrote of his bride, "She was a woman of notable beauty and social charm. Her family deemed our courtship rather brief, but there seemed to be no occasion, on my part at least, for prolonging it." And later, years after her death (obviously still not relying on oversentimentality),
"What I owed to her, besides the children who have been the principal joy and comfort of my life, I could not, nor would I if I could, express in words. It is due to her memory, however, if I say anything, to express my conviction that without her my career in the world would not only have been very different from what it was, but far less satisfactory to myself and to others."
By all accounts, Jane Poultney Bigelow (always known to friends and family as "Jenny") was greatly devoted to her husband and children and they to her, yet she always remained quite independent. She was highly intelligent, known as a talented raconteuse, and had a unique, eccentric personality. One newspaper described her as "a force in Parisian life, who enjoyed the attention and esteem of a woman, vivacious, witty, and intellectually vigorous". When her husband was posted to Berlin, it was reported that Mrs. Bigelow’s staunch insistence on the superior quality of American pork (which was banned in Germany), led Bismarck to describe her as one of the brightest women he had ever met, and forced eight Royal auditors to admit that American pork was ‘good enough for anybody’. Oscar Browning, the author and educator who befriended the couple in Berlin, called Mrs. Bigelow an unconventional, warm hearted, delightful woman whose kindness he would never forget, and he noted that she was regarded as "quite the leader of foreign society" who was courted by the most distinguished people in Berlin. To Mrs. Henry Adams, she was "our erratic friend," to Julia Ward Howe, she was "the great woman," and her husband once described her behavior at a dinner with Charles Dickens as "audacious," but most people generally seemed to find her charming, brilliant and funny, if occasionally trying. Society writers noted that despite her independent nature and unusual habits, Mrs. Bigelow was not only tolerated but actively courted by Society and was welcomed into the oldest homes of both America and Europe. In New York, Paris and Berlin, Mrs. Bigelow was always considered a favorite hostess, particularly among folks from the literary or artistic worlds. She occasionally wrote some prose of her own and published a few works under the name Jenny P. Bigelow. When Oscar Wilde visited New York, Mrs. Bigelow was one of the chosen few to host a dinner party in his honor, and the New York times later reported that Wilde was seen riding in a carriage with Mrs. Bigelow at West Point. Wilde later dedicated a poem "to my friend Mrs. John Bigelow. Walt Whitman, Wilkie Collins, and William Thackeray were all entertained and charmed by her. A brief article from 1877 described her thus, "Mrs. John Bigelow, who would have been a leading lady at the White House if Tllden had come in, entertained the Grand Duke in her private box. She is a most gifted woman, speaks fluently in several languages, and has that gracious empressement of manner so peculiarly the characteristic of foreigners. Her dress of pale green satin was cut decollete with short sleeves, relieved by point lace; her Jewels were numerous and of great size and luster. Among other guests of note in her box, in addition to the royal party, were Aritarclile Bey, the Turkish minister; Baron Blanc, Mr. Borges, M. Bodisco, the Russian consul general;
Count and Countess Pollom, and Dr. Charles Young of England."
The following descriptions are taken from the book "Time and Travel" by H.R. Haweis, an English clergyman and writer who had socialized with the Bigelows in New York as well as Europe. Reverend Haweis was criticized by some New York newspapers for what he wrote about the late Mrs. Bigelow. Some of his stories are not terribly flattering and some feel a bit exaggerated to me, but it seems he actually admired the lady and probably never intended any insult.
"No one who ever met Mrs. John Bigelow of New York was likely to forget her. Even as she aged, she always retained the marks of that brilliant beauty that dazzled the court circles at Paris and Berlin during her early visits, where her unconventional sincerities alternately alarmed and amused the old world aristocracies, her wit and her personal fascination always saving her so as by fire, though it was said the Emperor never forgave her for sending her servants to the Imperial box at the opera, which he had placed at her disposal. And no one in any corner of the globe ever got the better of Mrs. John Bigelow; she remained to the day of her death a sort of social enigma and wonder. She delighted in extricating herself from almost impossible situations; and often when she had duped everyone into supposing her a negligible quantity, she would suddenly turn the tables on the company and then laugh in the most genial and forgiving manner at their discomfiture.
She first came over to England on the Duke of Sutherland's yacht. She went to Court and nearly slapped the Prince of Wales on the back. She chaffed the Prince Imperial, afterwards the Emperor Frederick, and rallied him on the old Berlin days when her beauty and singular bonhomie and unconventionality had made the solemn Germans sit up and stare with bewildered amusement at her ways and her wit. One day she would dress quite shabbily, the next in heavy velvet or satin, and always carried about a large carpetbag, opening it everywhere; string, pomatum, slippers, curios, handkerchiefs and I don't know not what besides fell out and were bundled back in again. Mrs. Bigelow was always late; she had no sense of time and forgot half her engagements, or pretended to. Mrs. Bigelow was a person not to be analyzed. She got the entree wherever she meant to; from the court to the kitchen, and was quite as much at home with a queen as with a cook. There was no one to whom she could not tell something about their own business which they did not know before; no one she could not advise pithily and often wisely. She read off people, took their measure, and giggled or cried with them. A mixed, stilted, prejudiced company were like a pack of children in her hands in a quarter of an hour. She did not wait to be chosen - she just chose which of the company she wanted to talk to, and it seemed at last as if everyone was just waiting for his or her turn to walk and talk with Mrs. John Bigelow. Genius, of course, is interesting, but it is (diplomatically) embarrassing; and it has been rumored that the American Embassy in London would have been open to John Bigelow had it not been for the eccentricities of this most fascinating but somewhat embarrassing lady."
The Reverend no doubt meant to slyly apply a slight tinge of scandal by mentioning Mrs. Bigelow's escort to London, the Duke of Sutherland. In fact the Bigelows had met the duke already, but during his first trip to New York in 1882, the duke arrived on his gorgeous yacht with a group of friends including Mrs. Blair, the duke's oft-discussed mistress. Society was in a quandary as to whether it was appropriate to have a dinner or party for a high ranking English nobleman who openly travelled with his mistress. Mrs. Bigelow not only entertained the Duke and his mistress, she became a good friend of Mrs. Blair. During some ensuing summer Mr. Bigelow planned to go to London to join his wife, who was already staying there in the home of the notorious Mrs. Blair. He wrote to his wife, pointing out that he could not possibly be seen visiting that house, as it just wouldn't be proper. I don't know how that turned out, but Mrs Bigelow didn't always do proper. She was evidently drawn to intelligent and artistic people, and she prized individuality. Mrs Bigelow seems to have gotten along with the somewhat cantankerous socialite Mrs Paran Stevens, who was said to be either loved of hated by New Yorkers. Another friend was the slightly notorious Mrs. Hicks-Lord, a.k.a. "the Duchess of Washington Square," the thrice widowed socialite who lived in a sort of treasure house and owned what was said to be the most valuable jewelry collection in the city. Mrs. Hicks-Lord's party guests were always diverse. She managed her own businesses and was unusually generous. The lifetime salary bequeathed to her maid reportedly made the former servant "the wealthiest colored woman in New York". Mrs. Bigelow was also friendly with another somewhat notorious woman, Mrs. Fortescue. The name was a pseudonym. Actually named Minnie O'Shea, Mrs. Fortescue was the mistress of Robert B. Roosevelt, an uncle of Teddy Roosevelt, a politician, businessman, writer, conservationist and sometime poet. Roosevelt had audaciously set up Mrs. Fortescue in a townhouse on the same block where his wife and family lived, and everyone in New York knew it. After his wife's death, Roosevelt did marry her and legally adopt their children. Another good friend of Mrs. Bigelow's was a great character by the name of Mrs. Ayer, the very wealthy widow of a patent medicine manufacturer from Chicago who moved to New York to establish herself, but was more or less rejected by Society. Mrs. Ayer was known "for her splendid toilets" and wore different colored wigs each day, depending on her mood. She was often covered in ostentatious jewels as well. Some New Yorkers mocked her, but Mrs. Bigelow found her fun and clever. The Bigelows took her to Washington and then to Europe to introduce her around. She was briefly engaged to a cousin of the Russian Tzar. Although she didn't marry, she found a new home in France, where she was more accepted, and she spent the rest of her life in a castle outside Paris. Of course this gave Mrs. Bigelow a place to stay when she was in France too. I found an article about the two friends attending church in Vichy one summer. The judgmental headline read "Two Conspicuous Women" and solely consisted of a critique of their allegedly "too-colorful" outfits.
I'm not really sure why Reverend Haweis saw Mrs. Bigelow as "embarassing". She did not always suffer fools gladly, but I never found any hint of a feud between her and anyone in Europe. She seems to have been very well liked there. There were a few American women who didn't exactly love her though. One was Julia Kean Fish, the wealthy wife of Governor Hamilton Fish. John Bigelow and his political ally William Seward came out publicly against Fish when he was first suggested for the role of US Secretary of State, although they later admitted he did his job well. Mrs. Fish was described as irreproachable and dignified. One night the Fishes and Bigelows were leaving some event at the same time, and another guest offered to drive them all home in his carriage, so they all piled in. Apparently Mrs. Fish was very unhappy that she had to share a carriage with these other people, and she would not stop loudly complaining about her dress getting wrinkled because there were too many people in the carriage. Eventually Mrs. Bigelow had had enough and told Mrs. Fish she should just be grateful that they had a ride. She almost immediately apologized for her tone, though, so apparently she had really snapped at Mrs. Fish. On another similar occasion the two couples were leaving some event late at night and Mr. Bigelow called for a carriage. When the carriage arrived, the Fishes immediately jumped in. Mr. Bigelow explained that he had called for that carriage, but the Fishes would not exit. Mr. Bigelow held the horse's reins and wouldn't let go until a policeman showed up. The cop asked the Fishes to get out and the Bigelows went home. There doesn't appear to have been much shared social activity between the couples after that, but in Germany Mrs Bigelow became very friendly with the wife of Nicholas Fish, the couple's oldest son, who held a diplomatic post in Berlin at the same time Bigelow did. Unfortunately Nicholas Fish was a hopeless alcoholic who ended up dying violently in some dive bar in Manhattan, and there was bad blood between the various Fish family members afterward. Another American woman who seems to have been sort of an "enemy" to Mrs. Bigelow was Annie Adams Fields, the Boston wife of James Fields, the American publisher for Charles Dickens. Annie Fields seems to have hated Mrs. Bigelow from the moment they met in London. Mrs. Fields clearly adored Dickens, spent time at his home in England, and seemed to feel he could do no wrong. The Bigelows and the Fields both attended a small dinner party in the home of William Thackery in 1860, and Mrs. Dickens was a guest too. In her diary Mrs. Fields called Mrs. Bigelow "loud" and said she was the type that gave Americans a bad name. In her own diary Mrs Bigelow wrote of her new friendship with Thackeray's daughter. Eight years later when the Bigelows visited the Fields and Charles Dickens in Boston, it became obvious that Mrs Fields' feelings had not softened. On that night, in her diary, she expressed the opinion that "poor Mr. Bigelow" was unfitly married, and she refered to Mrs. Bigelow as "such an incubus". She and Dickens seem to have had fun trashing Mrs. Bigelow when she wasn't around. I'm not really sure why. If Mrs. Bigelow knew how much Mrs. Fields disliked her, which I suspect she did, she didn't mention it.
Another popular story about Mrs. Bigelow involved her meeting with "Ouida" the pseudonym used by the English novelist Maria Louise de la Ramée who presided over an elaborate villa outside Florence, Italy. The following is from an 1887 newspaper article.
"When Mrs. John Bigelow was in Florence she desired to see Ouida. With Mrs. Bigelow to desire to do a thing is but one step from doing it. She therefore drove to Ouida's villa, and presented herself in her usual emphatic way at the door. She was shown into a reception room, and in a loud voice said to the valet - "Will you tell Mddle. de la Ramee that Mrs. John Bigelow of New York would like to speak with her? Hardly had the message been given when a voice from the next room was heard in tones especially loud in reply - "Tell Mrs. John Bigelow of New York that I don't want to see her or any other American; I don't like them." Mrs. Bigelow rose and answered the invisible lady of the house with "You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Americans are the only fools that read your nasty books anyway." In another moment the two well-matched women were face to face, and within half an hour the novelist was urging her American caller to become a guest. "Do come and stay a month with me," she urged, "I should so enjoy studying your character." "It would do you good," was Mrs. Bigelow's quick response, "you don't seem to have known any decent women."
Mrs. Bigelow suffered a slow, painful death from Brights Disease, finally passing away in February of 1889. The New York Times reported her illness, but she sent a letter to the editor denying that there was anything wrong with her, perhaps unsurprisingly. The New York papers reporting on her funeral noted that it was thronged with people from all walks of life, including the Vice President, the Mayor, businessmen, artists, actors, socialites, military, professors, clergymen, animal rights activists and servants. Her social circle must have been enormous.
Mrs. Bigelow was buried in the Bigelow family plot in Peacedale Cemetery.
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I thought I'd add this. It's from a Rochester, NY newspaper and was written long after Mrs. Bigelow's death, but the writer clearly knew his subject and had an interesting take on her unusual personality.
"Once more going the rounds of the press, the Chronicler finds the old story about how "the mother of Poultney Bigelow "the schoolmate of the German Emporer" once sent her servants to occupy the French Imperial box, which had been placed at her disposal for the evening by Napoleon III at the Opera in Paris. The story is old and hardly worth retelling, for everybody who is at all familiar of the current gossip of New York Society twenty odd years ago knows a dozen better stories about the unconventional and independent doings of "the mother of Poultney Bigelow, the schoolmate of the German Emporer.". The Chronicler is moved to refer to the old story solely to the astoundingly banal description selected by the story's latest narrator whose evident total incapability of the crime of "lese majesty" should make him an ideal German subject as best fitted to particularize one of the most conspicuous, celebrated and memorable social figures of her time as if the fact that one of her sons, in his boyhood, happened to be the playmate of a Hohenzollern youngster, who has succeeded to the German throne, was her principal, if not her sole distinction. The dominant trait of that brilliant, audacious and independent woman, at once social queen and social rebel, Mrs. John Bigelow, as Society knew her, was her utter contempt for snobbery, or anything that struck her as the savoring of snobbery. She ranked herself and those she met, in Europe and America, solely by virtue of their individuality, and she justly rated her own individuality high. She cared less than nothing for the rank, wealth, fashion, ceremonies and etiquette that the world over which she queened held venerable. She claimed and held pre-eminence over it solely by virtue of her own personality. She was a woman of blameless life and not a fool. Therefore she was entitled to meet any woman in the world on terms of at least equality, and therefore she was, by divine right, entitled to the respect and chivalric deference and the service of every man, be he emperor, statesman, warrior, her son or husband, acquaintance or passing stranger, whom chance brought near her throne of womanhood. There was something admirable in her theory, but there are not many women so circumstanced and personally qualified that they could practically live up to it as consistently, as comfortably, as absolutely immune from snubs, as did brilliant, forceful and dominating Mrs. John Bigelow.
Herein lies the probable explanation of those eccentric doings of hers that form the basis for those thousand and one tales, true and false, of which she was the heroine, that used to furnish New York Society with an unfailing fount of small talk. When the Emporer of France placed his opera box at the disposal of the wife of the American minister to France, he was merely honoring himself as a gentleman by a polite attention to a lady. He could not, of course, be accused of such a "gaucherie" as imagining that, by so doing, he was placing her under any obligation as to the use of the box, or otherwise. If, despite herself, she felt especially gratified by this attention by an emperor, all the more reason she should vindicate her theory to herself and the world, by sending her servants to occupy the box. In her later years she carried this theory very far. She seemed to be lying in wait for opportunities to practically protest against anything that appeared to her an assumption of artificial superiority - to turn and tend the most harmless "convenance". There were indications that her scorn of affectation may eventually have become something of an affectation of her own later in life. The social function at which a fresh toilet and the best gloves were especially in order was the social function at which Mrs. John Bigelow was most apt to appear at her dowdiest with no gloves at all or with gloves long past their prime. The more distinguished her hostess and the more brilliant and crowded the reception over which that hostess was presiding, the more likely was Mrs. John Bigelow to adopt some extraordinary means, such as insisting upon disarranging and rearranging that hostess's coiffure in the face of the assembled multitude, for reminding the hostess and the company that this "grand dame" was only a woman after all. The more distinguished the company she might invite to dine with her at her country house at Highland Falls, the more certain she was to "forget all about it" and regale her guests on cold boiled mutton. The time her friend, a distinguished General, Commandant of West Point, issued forth from his quarters with unusual pomp and circumstance, to preside over some notably important military ceremony of graduation week "on the plain" was the time that Mrs. John Bigelow would ask the officer to hold her horse for her while she stepped out of her phaeton to chat with some distinguished member of the Board of Visitors. What time her son, then a tactical officer at "The Point" was receiving the report of the cadet adjutant at evening parade, in all the bravery of full cavalry uniform and all the inflexibility of dignity required, according to the regulations and traditions of the army, by that occasion, was the time he had most to dread public proclamations by his mother that, in her view, this imposing military statue in army blue and cavalry yellow, was merely a quite unimpressive boy of hers and that she wanted him to drive home with her to supper or something of that kind.
The Chronicler has in mind how completely the "whirligig of time" has brought "in his revenge's" on this independent lady, who all her life was persistently and determinedly blind to reflected luster from any source and would have none of it for herself, but is now, it appears, deemed indescernible except by the doubly reflected luster of a very cheap, feeble and snobbish glory. Mrs. Bigelow was undoubtedly proud of her husband's ability and reputation, of his achievements in journalism, in literature, in diplomacy, in the high esteem in which he was held by all men. But she set them altogether aside from herself. She would not be thought of, and never was thought of as "the wife of the Honorable John Bigelow". Indeed it was rather the other way around. She was fond of her children and proud of their legitimate claims to distinction. But she would never submit to be distinguished by any distinction of theirs. The Chronicler shudders endeavoring to adequately imagine what would have happened to one who might have been so superfluous as to have referred to her in her presence as "the mother of the well-known writer Poultney Bigelow," or "the mother of that clever Miss Grace Bigelow, who translated Count Moltke's , "Letters from Russia," or even as "the mother of that gallant cavalry officer, Captain John Bigelow U.S.A. who, falling on the slope of San Juan Hill with four Mauser bullets in him, waved away his faithful colored troopers who paused to help him, crying to them "Never mind me! Go on. You're needed up there!"
And now, helpless and silent, she must leave unrebuked the poor snob who, dazzled by cheap glitter "made in Germany" past perception of her real claims, personal and family, to "memorableness" thinks to honor her to the world as "the mother of the man who used to know the German Emperor". In truth the force of snobbery could scarcely further go. It is enough to make Mrs. Bigelow turn in her grave."
How I explained this picture to a friend:
"How I feel today? I feel like I wasted a half f*cking hour of my life with a strong light aimed at my f*cking eye while I was trying to aim the camera with the other eye through a goddamn mirror."
Blue days
All of them gone
Nothing but blue skies
From now on
-- Irving Berlin
It's working. The war is working. The surge is working. They will still be working a year from now. Big Brother explained it all.
OK, it was a bit hard to follow all the arrows. For example, Anbar Province was the big example of how it's all working so well. But the sheik he just visited with in Anbar was assassinated just before his presidential address:
Iraqi and American officials were caught off guard by the assassination, which came just hours before Mr. Bush addressed the American people about his plans for Iraq. But they said it would not derail the collaboration of the alliance of Sunni clans, known as the Anbar Awakening Council, and groups in other provinces.
In his speech, Mr. Bush acknowledged the killing. “Earlier today, one of the brave tribal sheiks who helped lead the revolt against Al Qaeda was murdered,” he said. “In response, a fellow Sunni leader declared: ‘We are determined to strike back and continue our work.’ And as they do, they can count on the continued support of the United States.”
If you're confused, just follow the arrows. Soon it will all make sense.
Project 365: Day 36/365, September 13, 2007
T TOP SAYS HE BEAT MATH HOFFA 3-0 & EXPLAINS HOW
battledomination.com/t-top-says-he-beat-math-hoffa-3-0-ex...