Saturday, February 11, 2012.Recap: No. 15 C'Town 87, No. 19 WC 69.By Brendan Hall..CHARLESTOWN, Mass. -- At this time last year, Charlestown made the trek West, down Route 146, to deliver a haymaker to a Whitinsville Christian squad considered the state's tallest lineup. ..This afternoon, the Crusaders came East to Bunker Hill, with a different look for the Townies -- smaller, quicker, more surgical -- and the result was very nearly a different outcome. The Crusaders hung with Charlestown through three quarters, before the Townies pulled away in the fourth, outscoring Whitinsville 31-14 in the final frame en route to an 87-69 victory. .."That team's very good, I thought that was the best shooting team we saw," Charlestown head coach Edson Cardoso said. "They're very well balanced, with a real good point guard, big man, two-guard, so I knew coming into this game it was going to be a battle. I told the guys, 'You're going to see a team like this in the state tournament, eventually down the line." ..The Townies (14-3), played just seven due to health (Jawhari Dawan-Abdullah, stomach bug) and off the court issues (Gary Braham, suspension). But they saw all five of their regular starters reach double-figures, with senior point guard Rony Fernandez (26 points, four assists) leading the way. Senior forward Tyrik Jackson (12 points, 13 rebounds) came up big on the glass again, while Tyrese Hoxter (16 points, seven assists), Omar Orriols (13 points) and Iser Barnes (12) contributed some big shots from the perimeter to keep the defense stretched out. ..But early on, the Crusaders (12-2) gave them fits with the methodical way they broke through the Townie's 2-3 zone with some of the most disciplined and precise ball movement they'd seen in a while. Junior point guard Colin Richey (23 points) funneled the offense down to the baseline, finding a player planted right in the heart of the zone and kicking to either the baseline or either wing. ..Whitinsville shot nearly 40 percent from the field, getting good looks from the short side from Tyler VandenAkker (12 points, eight rebounds) and Jesse Dykstra. Grant Brown (10 points) came up with some big shots from the perimeter as well. .."We decided to extend a little bit more on the short corner, because they hit about four shots in a row from the short corner," Cardoso said. "We also decided to have the opposite guard extend even more on shooter No. 2 (Tim Dufficey). So we made some extensions in the second half, did a little better job -- not a great job, but it helped us get the victory." ..To start the fourth quarter, Barnes completed a 6-0 run by ripping the ball out of his defender's hands at midcourt and landing a breakaway layup. A few possessions later, Hoxter found Jackson underneath the rim for an easy tip-in and 68-59 advantage. ..Then with 1:37 to go, sophomore Taris Wilson hit the first of two monster breakaway slams, this one making it 76-63 to essentially put the game in hand. ..Hot from the field: The Townies outrebounded the Crusaders 16-7 in the final frame, giving way to many key transition points that helped ice the lead and the win. From the glass, WC still held a slim 35-33 advantage. ..But down at the other end, the Townies had a terrific night from the field, shooting nearly 58 percent overall. That was aided by a 7-for-17 effort from three-point range, including three 3's each from Fernandez and Orriols. ..Praise for Richey: Last season, New Mission head coach Cory McCarthy was throwing around high praise for the then-sophomore Richey, calling him "a suburban kid that plays urban". ..Consider Cardoso another Boston City League coach that's a fan. .."He's tough," Cardoso said. "He's one of the toughest guards coming out of his league, and I think he's going give a lot of teams problems in the state tournament, because how do you stop a kid like that?" ..Turning point? Following last season's loss to Charlestown in its home gym, WC coach Jeff Bajema greeted his players in the locker room and told them, "Guys, we can win states." ..Sure enough, the Crusaders never lost another game the rest of the way, picking up their first Division 3 state title since 2005 at the DCU Center in Worcester. After that game, Bajema spoke to reporters about how much the whitewashing by Charlestown seasoned them for what to expect in the state tournament. ..Given how much more competitive the Crusaders were this time around, could this be seen as another momentum shift? .."Hopefully, a game like this will lead us to better things," Bajema said. "But we've got a tough one Tuesday (against Holy Name), so we'll see."

 

Shot at ISO 1600, Aperture of 3.5, Shutter speed of 1/320 and Focal Length of 24.0 mm

Taken with a 24-70mm F2.8 ZA SSM lens and processed by Aperture 3.2.2 on Saturday February-11-2012 16:43 EST PM

Saturday, February 11, 2012.Recap: No. 15 C'Town 87, No. 19 WC 69.By Brendan Hall..CHARLESTOWN, Mass. -- At this time last year, Charlestown made the trek West, down Route 146, to deliver a haymaker to a Whitinsville Christian squad considered the state's tallest lineup. ..This afternoon, the Crusaders came East to Bunker Hill, with a different look for the Townies -- smaller, quicker, more surgical -- and the result was very nearly a different outcome. The Crusaders hung with Charlestown through three quarters, before the Townies pulled away in the fourth, outscoring Whitinsville 31-14 in the final frame en route to an 87-69 victory. .."That team's very good, I thought that was the best shooting team we saw," Charlestown head coach Edson Cardoso said. "They're very well balanced, with a real good point guard, big man, two-guard, so I knew coming into this game it was going to be a battle. I told the guys, 'You're going to see a team like this in the state tournament, eventually down the line." ..The Townies (14-3), played just seven due to health (Jawhari Dawan-Abdullah, stomach bug) and off the court issues (Gary Braham, suspension). But they saw all five of their regular starters reach double-figures, with senior point guard Rony Fernandez (26 points, four assists) leading the way. Senior forward Tyrik Jackson (12 points, 13 rebounds) came up big on the glass again, while Tyrese Hoxter (16 points, seven assists), Omar Orriols (13 points) and Iser Barnes (12) contributed some big shots from the perimeter to keep the defense stretched out. ..But early on, the Crusaders (12-2) gave them fits with the methodical way they broke through the Townie's 2-3 zone with some of the most disciplined and precise ball movement they'd seen in a while. Junior point guard Colin Richey (23 points) funneled the offense down to the baseline, finding a player planted right in the heart of the zone and kicking to either the baseline or either wing. ..Whitinsville shot nearly 40 percent from the field, getting good looks from the short side from Tyler VandenAkker (12 points, eight rebounds) and Jesse Dykstra. Grant Brown (10 points) came up with some big shots from the perimeter as well. .."We decided to extend a little bit more on the short corner, because they hit about four shots in a row from the short corner," Cardoso said. "We also decided to have the opposite guard extend even more on shooter No. 2 (Tim Dufficey). So we made some extensions in the second half, did a little better job -- not a great job, but it helped us get the victory." ..To start the fourth quarter, Barnes completed a 6-0 run by ripping the ball out of his defender's hands at midcourt and landing a breakaway layup. A few possessions later, Hoxter found Jackson underneath the rim for an easy tip-in and 68-59 advantage. ..Then with 1:37 to go, sophomore Taris Wilson hit the first of two monster breakaway slams, this one making it 76-63 to essentially put the game in hand. ..Hot from the field: The Townies outrebounded the Crusaders 16-7 in the final frame, giving way to many key transition points that helped ice the lead and the win. From the glass, WC still held a slim 35-33 advantage. ..But down at the other end, the Townies had a terrific night from the field, shooting nearly 58 percent overall. That was aided by a 7-for-17 effort from three-point range, including three 3's each from Fernandez and Orriols. ..Praise for Richey: Last season, New Mission head coach Cory McCarthy was throwing around high praise for the then-sophomore Richey, calling him "a suburban kid that plays urban". ..Consider Cardoso another Boston City League coach that's a fan. .."He's tough," Cardoso said. "He's one of the toughest guards coming out of his league, and I think he's going give a lot of teams problems in the state tournament, because how do you stop a kid like that?" ..Turning point? Following last season's loss to Charlestown in its home gym, WC coach Jeff Bajema greeted his players in the locker room and told them, "Guys, we can win states." ..Sure enough, the Crusaders never lost another game the rest of the way, picking up their first Division 3 state title since 2005 at the DCU Center in Worcester. After that game, Bajema spoke to reporters about how much the whitewashing by Charlestown seasoned them for what to expect in the state tournament. ..Given how much more competitive the Crusaders were this time around, could this be seen as another momentum shift? .."Hopefully, a game like this will lead us to better things," Bajema said. "But we've got a tough one Tuesday (against Holy Name), so we'll see."

 

Shot at ISO 1600, Aperture of 3.5, Shutter speed of 1/500 and Focal Length of 24.0 mm

Taken with a 24-70mm F2.8 ZA SSM lens and processed by Aperture 3.2.2 on Saturday February-11-2012 16:39 EST PM

Upper East Side, Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States

 

Fire Engine Company 39 and Ladder Company 16 Station House is an outstanding example of late nineteenth century civic architecture. Built in 1884-86, the six-story Romanesque Revival structure was designed by N. LeBrun & Son for the headquarters of the New York Fire Department and to provide fire protection in a neighborhood that was experiencing considerable growth and change. Between 1879 and 1894 LeBrun was closely associated with the department, designing more than 40 buildings. Unlike many modest mid-block firehouses, the East 67th Street building served multiple functions, providing space for two fire companies, the offices of the Commissioners, and various departmental bureaux. Restored in 1992, the East 67th Street building provides a superb centerpiece in one of New York's best-preserved rows of nineteenth century public architecture.'

 

The Fire Department of the City of New York

 

From its first days as a Dutch colony to the end of the Civil War, New York City relied on unpaid volunteers to help extinguish fires. While under Dutch rule all men were expected to participate, under the British, a force of thirty volunteers was organized by the General Assembly of the Colony in 1737 to operate two Newsham hand pumpers that had been recently imported from London. After the Revolution, a few tentative steps were taken to give fire- fighting a more professional character. Authorized by the New York State Legislature in 1798, the Volunteer Fire Department of the City of New York was placed under the supervision of a paid engineer and six subordinates.

 

Over the next half century, the city grew and so did the number of volunteer firemen, which increased from 600 in 1800 to more than 4,000 by I860. Despite growing numbers, the department was frequently criticized for its poor performance. Disapproval was especially strong during the Civil War, a period when many members of the force resigned to serve in the Union Army, leaving the department without sufficient personnel. Under such circumstances, interest grew in creating a paid, stable, professional force - like that of the Metropolitan Police District. Advocates maintained, based on recent experience in Albany, Boston, Buffalo, Cincinnati, New Orleans, and London, a paid force would be better equipped to protect the city from fires.

 

On May 30, 1865, the New York State Legislature established the Metropolitan Fire District, comprising the cities of New York and Brooklyn. The act abolished the old volunteer system and created the Metropolitan Fire Department, under the jurisdiction of the state government. This action had two goals: first, to improve fire protection, and second, to limit the influence of the long-dominant Tammany political machine, whose members frequently used service in the department to advance their private careers. Results were immediate; by the end of 1865, thousands of volunteers had retired and numerous companies were disbanded, to be replaced by thirty-three engine companies and twelve ladder companies operated by a force of five hundred men. Furthermore, in an effort to filter out any lingering Tammany influence, the Commissioners banned firehouse construction for five years.

 

Under Genera! Alexander T. Shaler, who served as President of the Board of Fire Commissioners between 1867 and 1870, many important changes were initiated. A former volunteer fireman and decorated Civil War general who served in the prestigious Seventh Regiment, he reorganized the department "according to a military model in which specialization, discipline, and merit were encouraged by a system of daily advisory orders, trials for disobedience, and ranks.'"* Despite the Metropolitan Fire Department's generally excellent record, with a steady decline in annual property losses, the City sought and regained permanent control of the department under the Charter of 1870 .

 

During the 1860s and 1870s there was increasing pressure to expand and improve service. Not only did the city nearly double in size with the annexation of the western portion of the Bronx in 1874, but the growing number of tall buildings placed new demands on the practice of fire-fighting. In response, funds were spent to upgrade the department's equipment and training. An improved fire alarm telegraph was purchased, as well as gas floodlights, taller ladders, and steam engines with increased pumping pressure for all companies. Classes in the use of this equipment and life-saving techniques were organized, as well as a School of Instruction for Foremen and Engineers of steamers in 1878 and a school for uniformed men in 1883.^ Support for the paid department remained strong which resulted in increased public funding and growing pride among members of the force.

 

History of the Site

 

Since the late seventeenth century much of East 67th Street has been publicly owned. Despite discussion by the Common Council to lease the so-called "Dove Lots" for private development in April 1806/ by 1813 the blocks between Third and Fifth Avenue and from East 66th to East 68th Street had been set aside as a fifteen-acre square named after the former Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton. Following the Civil War, however, the park was closed. Streets were soon extended through the site and lots in the western half were sold to developers.

 

During the 1870s the Upper East Side underwent considerable development. While much of the area did become residential, the blocks east of Park Avenue between 66th Street and 68th Street retained their public and institutional character. Describing the site of the future headquarters, the New reported: "The neighborhood is a constant wonder to visitors to New-York because of the great group of public institutions — medical, charitable, and educational — that are built within a stone's throw of one another. These included Presbyterian, Mount Sinai and German Hospitals, the Normal College, Grammar School No. 76, and the Asylum for the Improved Instruction of Deaf-mutes, as well as the Lenox Library and the Seventh Regiment Armory .

 

Engine Company No. 39 was organized in a small building on the site in March 1875. Although the Upper East Side would become one of Manhattan's most prestigious neighborhoods by the turn of the century, at this time it was a district marked by strong contrasts. On the blocks immediately to the west of the firehouse were mostly private residences, and to the east, tenements, cigar factories, and "streets infested with gangs of the worst ruffians in the city."^

 

These differences may have been viewed as an obstacle to future residential development. East 67th street, consequently, became a logical location for the new department headquarters. Not only would such a public project serve to stabilize the neighborhood, but in terms of geography and access the area had other advantages as well. Set midway between the more-established districts and fire companies to the south and the new suburban companies in upper Manhattan and the Bronx, the slightly elevated site on Lenox Hill afforded extensive views in all directions. Furthermore, it was well- served by public transportation. With a station of the Third Avenue elevated train at the comer of East 67th Street, the site was convenient for both staff and visitors.

 

The Fire Department Headquarters

 

The East 67th Street structure was the first and only headquarters building constructed by the New York City Fire Department.^ It replaced the former Firemen's Hall, a three-story Italianate structure designed by the architects Field & Correjaat 155-157 Mercer Street .'" Built by the City of New York for the use of New York Hose Company No. 5 and Lafayette Hook and Ladder Company No. 6, it served primarily as gathering place for various groups associated with the volunteer department. The upper stories, which were known for their opulent interiors, contained a library, meeting hall, and committee rooms."

 

The Metropolitan Fire Department converted Firemen's Hall into its headquarters in 1865, replacing an earlier facility at 21 Elizabeth Street. This relocation symbolized a new era. No longer associated with the excesses of past political administrations, the building became an administrative center, with departmental offices, a library for the firemen, and a room for the fire alarm telegraph which had been repaired and moved from City Hall in 1867.

 

From Mercer Street the department directed an extremely ambitious building campaign. Although the Metropolitan Fire Department's ban on the construction of new firehouses ended in 1870, it took nearly a decade until building actually resumed. In 1884, approximately midway in the campaign, a design for the East 67th Street site was approved. The need for a much larger facility had been evident for more than a decade, but not until 1879 when a series of fires in the dry goods district came dangerously close to destroying the headquarters, was such a move justified.'^ Advocates were particularly concerned about the fate of the telegraph, a communications system that linked ail engine houses, watch towers, and fireboxes to the central headquarters.

 

Mayor Franklin Edson, who strongly supported relocation, addressed the problem in 1883 noting "the rather anomalous and startling fact that the Headquarters of the Fire Department is itself in danger of destruction at any time, the consequences of which might be disastrous beyond measure . . . the first step should be to provide a triplicate set of communicating apparatus and place it in a secure spot, and the next should be to erect a suitable fire-proof building, with proper provision in it for the important and growing Bureau of Inspection of Buildings, which is now crowded into a single room of this admirably arranged and methodically conducted Department."'^

 

Napoleon LeBrun & Sons, Architect

 

Napoleon Eugene Charles LeBrun was chosen to design the new headquarters, an architect known for both his ecclesiastical commissions and pioneering fireproof designs. Bom to French immigrant parents in Philadelphia, as a teenager he apprenticed with Thomas Ustick Walter , the Philadelphia architect responsible for numerous public commissions in the neo-classical style, including Girard College of Orphans , the United States Capitol Extension and dome . In 1841 LeBrun established his own firm, designing numerous churches and public buildings in the Philadelphia area, including the Roman Catholic Cathedral of SS. Peter and Paul and the Academy of Music . After 1864 LeBrun relocated his firm to New York City where he received a number of high-profile commissions, including Masonic Hall , at the southeast comer of 23rd Street and Sixth Avenue.

 

Chosen by public competition, the French Second Empire design did much to establish the firm's reputation.'^

 

Over the next three decades, LeBrun designed a great variety of structures, including churches, tenements, and several office towers.'^ Among his clients, the New York City Fire Department proved to be the most significant. Contact began in 1879 when LeBrun served as the AIA representative on the Board of Examiners of the Building Bureau of the Fire Department. Between 1879 and 1894, he received more than forty commissions from the department, including numerous engine houses in Manhattan and the Bronx, a warehouse, and fire pier. It was during these productive years that both of his sons, Pierre LeBrun and Michel LeBrun joined the firm and its name was subsequently altered to N. LeBrun & Son to acknowledge their increasing roles.

 

The Building

 

Among the four public buildings that presently stand on East 67th Street between

 

Lexington and Third Avenues, the Fire Department's headquarters was the first to be completed. Construction commenced in 1884 and lasted nearly two years. Engine Company No. 39, newly organized Ladder Company 16,'^ and various departmental agencies were consolidated in the new "practically fire-proof building. As completed, the building and its furnishings cost more than $175,000.^ Most of the interior was devoted to administrative offices, which for several years had leased additional space on Mercer Street, and training facilities, that had been "kindly permitted the use of an unoccupied building at the foot of West One Hundred and Fifty-eighth street."'^

 

LeBrun, who is credited with standardizing firehouse design in New York, organized the building's plan as follows: the ground floor was used primarily to store fire-fighting apparatus for the engine companies and the second floor provided rooms for the uniformed men, including their dormitory, offices, and kitchen. Though most of the ground floor was set aside for the two companies, to the right at the base of the tower was the entrance to the fire headquarters. An hydraulic elevator and stairs led up to the third floor to the offices of the Commissioners and the Chief of the Department and staffs. On the fourth floor was the Department Attorney and the Bureau of Inspection of Buildings; the fifth was assigned to the Bureau of Combustibles, the School of Instruction and the Medical Officers; and the sixth provided space for the Fire Alarm Telegraph and the Bureau of the Fire Marshall.^

 

From the eastern side of the top floor, one ascended to the belfry by stairs, and then to the observatory, where a "fireman detailed as watchman constantly scanned the horizon for evidences of fire."*' Based more on fire-fighting tradition than actual use, the decision to erect a 150 foot-tall tower had much to do with civic imagery, symbolizing the department and its important public function. Within two decades of the building's construction, nearby apartment towers would start to obscure the observatory's once-panoramic views.

 

During his long career, LeBrun worked in a number of popular styles. As in many of his department commissions, he employed Romanesque Revival details — round-arched windows, drip molds, and organic ornament — juxtaposed against smooth red brick. Although the decoration owed a clear debt to H. H. Richardson and his much-praised public work of the late 1870s and after, Engine Company No. 39 also incorporated French Second Empire motifs such as the mansard roof and the pyramidally-capped tower. As one of LeBrun's earliest office buildings, the elevation has a somewhat tentative quality, reflecting the much- discussed Tribune Building designed by Richard Morris Hunt. Although LeBrun did not use neo-Grec detailing as Hunt did in his design, he did model its composition after the Renaissance palazzo formula the noted architect helped develop, placing a brick tower on a two-story brownstone base capped by a mansard roof pierced by dormers. In addition, both projects featured a tower with look-out balcony.

 

A reception was held to celebrate the building's completion in April 1887. Guests were invited to inspect the oak interiors, climb the tower, and watch a display in the rear yard of the latest fire-fighting techniques. 77te Record and GMidf commented: "The Fire Department headquarters would be worthy of praise whoever had built it. but it deserves special praise as having been done under the direction of a municipal department and giving the taxpayers something worth tooking at for their money.""

 

Subsequent History

 

By 1914 the headquarters had outgrown the upper floors of the East 67th Street building, retocating its offices to the eleventh floor of the recently completed Municipal Building at 1 Centre Street. The fire telegraph, however, remained until it was moved to Central Park in 1922. For much of the twentieth century the building served as the department's training center. With the introduction of motorized vehicles in 1907^ the stables at the rear were eliminated and replaced by a small brick extension. In 1913 several structures were constructed in the yard facing East 68th Street, including a sprinkler and ventilating test house. In 1949 the former headquarters' most prominent feature, the lookout tower, was removed from the top of the eastern bay.

 

During the early 1970s the city proposed to demolish the firehouse and adjacent police precinct station house and incorporate.them into the planned expansion of Hunter College designed by the architect Ulrich Franzen. In January 1980 the Landmarks Commission designated four buildings on the block as New York City Landmarks. Although the Board of Estimate overturned the designation of the firehouse and police precinct in June 1980, the various agencies involved did agree to meet to discuss alternative strategies. In 1982, a new scheme, designed by the Stein Partnership, was approved that preserved the facades of both structures while constructing a new combined facility behind them?* As completed in 1992, the building's facade was completely restored, including cast-stone replacements for its greatly deteriorated brownstone.

 

Although the building still serves its original function as an Engine and Ladder Company, the floors once occupied by the Commissioners and their staff are now connected to, and used by, the 19th Police Precinct, linked by a five-story granite structure set back thirty feet from the sidewalk. Originally used as a narrow passage to the rear yard on 68th Street, this recessed addition incorporates a new, third, apparatus bay for Fire Department vehicles.

 

Building Description

 

Fire Engine Company 39 and Ladder Company 16 Station house is a six-story Romanesque Revival structure with a red brick, gray granite, and brownstone facade. The first two floors, covered with rusticated brownstone, house the companies. The first floor has two equal-sized apparatus bays surfaced in cast iron that have been painted a bright red. Each garage door incorporates a pair of single-pane windows. The pier between the doors is also clad in cast iron and includes five narrow vertical panels with three leaf-like decorative motifs near the top. Above each entrance is an I-beam decorated with a string of five raised rosettes framed by a pair of salamander heads facing inward, a common symbol for fire fighters.^ Installed above these beams are two signs of nearly identical size with gold capital lettering on a black background that identify each company.

 

On the right side of the first floor is the former entrance to the fire department headquarters marked by an elaborate stone portico supported by a pair of pink polished granite columns set on engaged granite pedestals. The upper portion, which underwent extensive restoration, features an inset segmental arch crowned by checkerboard patterning. The swirling engaged basket capitals that spring from the freestanding columns are particularly elaborate, as are the wave flame motifs just above the capitals. Between the columns an office and firehouse entry has been inserted, consisting of a single door on the left and an iron bay window with visible rivets supported by a small girder set at an angle. Above this addition is an I-beam which creates a transom over which an open grille covers an air-conditioner. All of these 1992 additions have been painted dark green to match the window moldings on each of the five floors above.

 

The second floor, which is also used by the companies, has two sets of three double-hung windows aligned above the vehicular entrances. Between each set a flagpole has been installed. In the right-hand bay, above the original entrance to the headquarters, is a single window framed by a pair of recessed tablets, each surrounded by billet moldings arranged in the shape of an octagon with floral designs at each comer. The right inscription reads:

 

FIRE/ DEPARTMENT/ HEADQUARTERS/ LIFE-SAVING CORPS/ & SCHOOL OF/ PROBATION/ ORGANIZED/ 1882

 

The left:

 

A.D. 1886/ COMMISSIONERS/ HENRY D. PURROY/ PRESIDENT/ RICHARD CROKER/ ELWARD SMITH/ N.LEBRUN & SON/ ARCHITECTS

 

A continuous dentil molding divides the second and third stories, marking a clear division between the facilities for the companies and the former headquarters. As in the floor below, there are three groups of windows, all with brownstone surrounds and a continuous zigzag molding which ends in blocks carved with organic ornament at the impost level. The right- hand bay has a single round-arch window with a stone transom through which the zigzag molding intersects. Twisted columns frame this double- hung window, and its spandrel is decorated with a checkerboard panel. The much larger arched tripartite windows that align with the firehouse entries, have floral moldings on the surrounds and generously sized oval balconies which rest on piers that divide the second story windows below. Each balustrade, which was restored in 1992, has polished granite colonnettes with elaborate brownstone capitals and bases.

 

The fourth story has five double-hung windows of identical size. A single round-arch window is positioned at right, while two sets of paired round-arch windows are aligned above the apparatus bays. Each of these windows has brownstone sills terminating in bosses and identical lintels with raised billet work.

 

On the fifth floor are seven double-hung windows with brownstone arches. There is a single window in the right-hand bay, while the rest are arranged in groups of three, divided by four gray polished granite columns with brownstone capitals and bases. A continuous brownstone sill, terminating in bosses, extends beneath the six windows.

 

The top story is divided into two parts: the base that remains from the demolished tower, and a heavily ornamented cornice above which a dark slate roof rises. The mansard roof incorporates two brownstone dormers, each lighted by a pair of round-arch windows set beneath a triangular pediment carved with a diagonal grid of ornament and topped by circular medallions. Along the left edge of the slate roof, supported by the cornice, is a brownstone chimney. The tower bay at right has double- arched windows with a brownstone sill. Just above these windows is the building's highest point, marked by an unomamented brownstone cornice and a row of four small brownstone corbels.

 

The building's east and west elevations are almost entirely new brick construction. The east elevation, which is not visible, except from a narrow passage between the firehouse and synagogue, has two pairs of flat-arched tripartite windows with projecting gray granite sills that are located close to the front of the building on the fifth and sixth floors, as well as four windows set in row between the second and third floors.

 

To the west, set back approximately thirty feet from the street is a gray granite addition, linking the firehouse and police station. The ground level serves as a third apparatus bay for the firehouse, while the floors above, each with a set of two windows, are used by the police precinct. AH of these windows are set behind fiat-arched screens with transoms, except for the fifth floor which are shaped like rectangles. Here the west elevation of the firehouse is clearly visible, clad entirely in red brick. There is a single window at the second, third, and fourth levels, each with projecting granite sills. On the fourth floor is a second, smaller window in which a security camera has been installed.

 

- From the 1998 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report

from my tumblr blog

Catacombs, Montparnasse, Paris

 

I decided that today was a day for going underground, and I set off to Montparnasse to visit the catacombs. These are a vast maze of tunnels under Paris originally used for quarrying the stone out of which the city's main buildings are constructed. In the late 18th Century, the state of the city's churchyards had become so disgusting that the city removed the bones from all of them. They were brought here at night, the carts coming from the centre of the city accompanied by torch-bearing acolytes and priests chanting the requiem Mass. A skull count showed that almost six million corpses were removed in this way. They were buried deep underground, but these people being Parisians the skulls and bones were arranged in a neat and methodical way, a meaningful chaos. Layers of tibia and femurs are crowned by a layer of pelvises and skulls, and so on. Each churchyard was grouped together, and a plaque shows which parish provided the skeletons.

 

The work was interrupted by the French Revolution,which provided plenty more corpses for when the work was resumed. Altogether about a kilometre and a half of tunnels were filled with the remains of dead Parisians, and you can walk through them on a winding route under the streets around Montparnasse station. In fact, this is just a tiny fraction of the tunnels. The catacombs extend for hundreds of kilometres under the city, many of them rarely explored and difficult of access. Because of this, they are regularly broken into by intrepid adventurers, and many legends have grown up about parts of the network. However, my favourite story is one which is true.

 

In 2004, a group of police cadets on a training exercise were given the task of tracking an imaginary criminal in a part of the network which was little known. They got into the system through a manhole, and when they were about a hundred feet underground something rather odd happened. They triggered a motion sensor which set off the sound of barking dogs. Thinking that it was part of the exercise, they headed onwards only to come out into a vast cavern which had been fully equipped as a cinema. An anteroom had been equipped and fully stocked as a bar, and there was also a film storage room. When the cadets reported what they had seen, the electricity board were sent in to work out where the invaders were getting their electricity from. Instead, they found the wires all cut, the equipment removed, and a sign saying 'Don't try to follow us. You'll never find us.'

 

Perhaps the cineastes had got fed up with waiting to get into the system officially, because this was the only place all week that I encountered a serious queue. Worse, I was just in front of a small group of people who talked constantly in very loud voices. She was an American who obviously lived in Paris, and they appeared to be young relatives who'd come to stay. She was taking them down the catacombs, and the price to be paid for this by the poor kids was to suffer her pretentious nonsense. She went on about spirituality, and homeopathy, and psychoanalysis, and the inner energy, and so on. Fair play to the kids, they responded enthusiastically enough.

 

And then she got out some of her stream of consciousness poetry, and started reading it in a loud voice. Well, goodness me. I was put in mind of something the graphic artist Alan Moore said when he was in Hollywood helping turn his 'V for Vendetta' into a film, and he was asked at a director's lunch why he lived in Northampton, England. "Because it keeps me grounded", he replied, and I thought that this was exactly right. It was like the opposite of this pompous woman, although to be fair to her I expect that if I went to live in Paris I would also disappear up my own backside.

 

The catacombs are brilliant, worth every minute of the queuing time, worth every insufferable stream of consciousness adjective. And then I went and did some shopping.

 

You can read my account of my travels at pariswander.blogspot.co.uk.

Catacombs, Montparnasse, Paris

 

I decided that today was a day for going underground, and I set off to Montparnasse to visit the catacombs. These are a vast maze of tunnels under Paris originally used for quarrying the stone out of which the city's main buildings are constructed. In the late 18th Century, the state of the city's churchyards had become so disgusting that the city removed the bones from all of them. They were brought here at night, the carts coming from the centre of the city accompanied by torch-bearing acolytes and priests chanting the requiem Mass. A skull count showed that almost six million corpses were removed in this way. They were buried deep underground, but these people being Parisians the skulls and bones were arranged in a neat and methodical way, a meaningful chaos. Layers of tibia and femurs are crowned by a layer of pelvises and skulls, and so on. Each churchyard was grouped together, and a plaque shows which parish provided the skeletons.

 

The work was interrupted by the French Revolution,which provided plenty more corpses for when the work was resumed. Altogether about a kilometre and a half of tunnels were filled with the remains of dead Parisians, and you can walk through them on a winding route under the streets around Montparnasse station. In fact, this is just a tiny fraction of the tunnels. The catacombs extend for hundreds of kilometres under the city, many of them rarely explored and difficult of access. Because of this, they are regularly broken into by intrepid adventurers, and many legends have grown up about parts of the network. However, my favourite story is one which is true.

 

In 2004, a group of police cadets on a training exercise were given the task of tracking an imaginary criminal in a part of the network which was little known. They got into the system through a manhole, and when they were about a hundred feet underground something rather odd happened. They triggered a motion sensor which set off the sound of barking dogs. Thinking that it was part of the exercise, they headed onwards only to come out into a vast cavern which had been fully equipped as a cinema. An anteroom had been equipped and fully stocked as a bar, and there was also a film storage room. When the cadets reported what they had seen, the electricity board were sent in to work out where the invaders were getting their electricity from. Instead, they found the wires all cut, the equipment removed, and a sign saying 'Don't try to follow us. You'll never find us.'

 

Perhaps the cineastes had got fed up with waiting to get into the system officially, because this was the only place all week that I encountered a serious queue. Worse, I was just in front of a small group of people who talked constantly in very loud voices. She was an American who obviously lived in Paris, and they appeared to be young relatives who'd come to stay. She was taking them down the catacombs, and the price to be paid for this by the poor kids was to suffer her pretentious nonsense. She went on about spirituality, and homeopathy, and psychoanalysis, and the inner energy, and so on. Fair play to the kids, they responded enthusiastically enough.

 

And then she got out some of her stream of consciousness poetry, and started reading it in a loud voice. Well, goodness me. I was put in mind of something the graphic artist Alan Moore said when he was in Hollywood helping turn his 'V for Vendetta' into a film, and he was asked at a director's lunch why he lived in Northampton, England. "Because it keeps me grounded", he replied, and I thought that this was exactly right. It was like the opposite of this pompous woman, although to be fair to her I expect that if I went to live in Paris I would also disappear up my own backside.

 

The catacombs are brilliant, worth every minute of the queuing time, worth every insufferable stream of consciousness adjective. And then I went and did some shopping.

 

You can read my account of my travels at pariswander.blogspot.co.uk.

A thangka, also known as tangka, thanka or tanka (Nepali pronunciation: [ˈt̪ʰaŋka]; Tibetan: ཐང་ཀ་; Nepal Bhasa: पौभा) is a painting on cotton, or silk appliqué, usually depicting a Buddhist deity, scene, or mandala of some sort. The thangka is not a flat creation like an oil painting or acrylic painting but consists of a picture panel which is painted or embroidered over which a textile is mounted and then over which is laid a cover, usually silk. Generally, thangkas last a very long time and retain much of their lustre, but because of their delicate nature, they have to be kept in dry places where moisture won't affect the quality of the silk. It is sometimes called a scroll-painting.

 

These thangka served as important teaching tools depicting the life of the Buddha, various influential lamas and other deities and bodhisattvas. One subject is The Wheel of Life, which is a visual representation of the Abhidharma teachings (Art of Enlightenment).

 

Thangka, when created properly, perform several different functions. Images of deities can be used as teaching tools when depicting the life (or lives) of the Buddha, describing historical events concerning important Lamas, or retelling myths associated with other deities. Devotional images act as the centerpiece during a ritual or ceremony and are often used as mediums through which one can offer prayers or make requests. Overall, and perhaps most importantly, religious art is used as a meditation tool to help bring one further down the path to enlightenment. The Buddhist Vajrayana practitioner uses a thanga image of their yidam, or meditation deity, as a guide, by visualizing “themselves as being that deity, thereby internalizing the Buddha qualities (Lipton, Ragnubs).”

 

Historians note that Chinese painting had a profound influence on Tibetan painting in general. Starting from the 14th and 15th century, Tibetan painting had incorporated many elements from the Chinese, and during the 18th century, Chinese painting had a deep and far-stretched impact on Tibetan visual art. According to Giuseppe Tucci, by the time of the Qing Dynasty, "a new Tibetan art was then developed, which in a certain sense was a provincial echo of the Chinese 18th century's smooth ornate preciosity."

 

HISTORY

Thangka is a Nepalese art form exported to Tibet after Princess Bhrikuti of Nepal, daughter of King Lichchavi, married Songtsän Gampo, the ruler of Tibet imported the images of Aryawalokirteshwar and other Nepalese deities to Tibet. History of thangka Paintings in Nepal began in the 11th century A.D. when Buddhists and Hindus began to make illustration of the deities and natural scenes. Historically, Tibetan and Chinese influence in Nepalese paintings is quite evident in Paubhas (Thangkas). Paubhas are of two types, the Palas which are illustrative paintings of the deities and the Mandala, which are mystic diagrams paintings of complex test prescribed patterns of circles an square each having specific significance. It was through Nepal that Mahayana Buddhism was introduced into Tibet during reign of Angshuvarma in the seventh century A.D. There was therefore a great demand for religious icons and Buddhist manuscripts for newly built monasteries throughout Tibet. A number of Buddhist manuscripts, including Prajnaparamita, were copied in Kathmandu Valley for these monasteries. Astasahas rika Prajnaparamita for example, was copied in Patan in the year 999 A.D., during the reign of Narendra Dev and Udaya Deva, for the Sa-Shakya monastery in Tibet. For the Nor monastery in Tibet, two copies were made in Nepal-one of Astasahasrika Prajnaparamita in 1069 A.D. and the other of Kavyadarsha in 1111 A.D. The influence of Nepalese art extended till Tibet and even beyond in China in regular order during the thirteenth century. Nepalese artisans were dispatched to the courts of Chinese emperors at their request to perform their workmanship and impart expert knowledge. The exemplary contribution made by the artisans of Nepal, specially by the Nepalese innovator and architect Balbahu, known by his popular name Araniko bear testimony to this fact even today. After the introduction of paper, palm leaf became less popular, however, it continued to be used until the eighteenth century. Paper manuscripts imitated the oblong shape but were wider than the palm leaves.

 

From the fifteenth century onwards, brighter colours gradually began to appear in Nepalese.Thanka / Thangka. Because of the growing importance of the Tantric cult, various aspects of Shiva and Shakti were painted in conventional poses. Mahakala, Manjushri, Lokeshwara and other deities were equally popular and so were also frequently represented in Thanka / Thangka paintings of later dates. As Tantrism embodies the ideas of esoteric power, magic forces, and a great variety of symbols, strong emphasis is laid on the female element and sexuality in the paintings of that period.

 

Religious paintings worshipped as icons are known as Paubha in Newari and Thanka / Thangka in Tibetan. The origin of Paubha or Thanka / Thangka paintings may be attributed to the Nepalese artists responsible for creating a number of special metal works and wall- paintings as well as illuminated manuscripts in Tibet. Realizing the great demand for religious icons in Tibet, these artists, along with monks and traders, took with them from Nepal not only metal sculptures but also a number of Buddhist manuscripts. To better fulfil the ever - increasing demand Nepalese artists initiated a new type of religious painting on cloth that could be easily rolled up and carried along with them. This type of painting became very popular both in Nepal and Tibet and so a new school of Thanka / Thangka painting evolved as early as the ninth or tenth century and has remained popular to this day. One of the earliest specimens of Nepalese Thanka / Thangka painting dates from the thirteenth /fourteenth century and shows Amitabha surrounded by Bodhisattva. Another Nepalese Thanka / Thangka with three dates in the inscription (the last one corresponding to 1369 A.D.), is one of the earliest known Thanka / Thangka with inscriptions. The "Mandalaof Vishnu " dated 1420 A.D., is another fine example of the painting of this period. Early Nepalese Thangkas are simple in design and composition. The main deity, a large figure, occupies the central position while surrounded by smaller figures of lesser divinities.

 

Thanka / Thangka painting is one of the major science out the five major and five minor fields of knowledge. Its origin can be traced all the way back to the time of Lord Buddha. The main themes of Thanka / Thangka paintings are religious. During the reign of Tibetan Dharma King Trisong Duetsen the Tibetan masters refined their already well-developed arts through research and studies of different country's tradition. Thanka painting's lining and measurement, costumes, implementations and ornaments are mostly based on Indian styles. The drawing of figures is based on Nepalese style and the background sceneries are based on Chinese style. Thus, the Thanka / Thangka paintings became a unique and distinctive art. Although the practice of thanka painting was originally done as a way of gaining merit it has nowadays only evolved into a money making business and the noble intentions it once carried has been diluted. Tibetans do not sell Thangkas on a large scale as the selling of religious artifacts such as thangkas and idols is frowned upon in the Tibetan community and thus non Tibetan groups have been able to monopolize on its (thangka's) popularity among Buddhist and art enthusiasts from the west.

 

Thanka / Thangka have developed in the northern Himalayan regions among the Lamas. Besides Lamas, Gurung and Tamang communities are also producing Tankas, which provide substantial employment opportunities for many people in the hills. Newari Thankas (Also known as Paubha) has been the hidden art work in Kathmandu valley from the 13th century. We have preserved this art and are exclusively creating this with some particular painter family who have inherited their art from their forefathers. Some of the artistic religious and historical paintings are also done by the Newars of Kathmandu Valley.

 

TYPES

Based on technique and material, thangkas can be grouped by types. Generally, they are divided into two broad categories: those that are painted (Tib.) bris-tan—and those made of silk, either by appliqué or embroidery.

 

Thangkas are further divided into these more specific categories:

 

- Painted in colors (Tib.) tson-tang - the most common type

- Appliqué (Tib.) go-tang

- Black Background - meaning gold line on a black background (Tib.) nagtang

- Blockprints - paper or cloth outlined renderings, by woodcut/woodblock printing

- Embroidery (Tib.) tsem-thang

- Gold Background - an auspicious treatment, used judiciously for peaceful, long-life deities and fully enlightened buddhas

- Red Background - literally gold line, but referring to gold line on a vermillion (Tib.) mar-tang

 

Whereas typical thangkas are fairly small, between about 18 and 30 inches tall or wide, there are also giant festival thangkas, usually Appliqué, and designed to be unrolled against a wall in a monastery for particular religious occasions. These are likely to be wider than they are tall, and may be sixty or more feet across and perhaps twenty or more high.

 

Somewhat related are Tibetan tsakli, which look like miniature thangkas, but are usually used as initiation cards or offerings.

 

Because Thangkas can be quite expensive, people nowadays use posters of Thangkas as an alternative to the real thangkas for religious purposes.

 

PROCESS

Thangkas are painted on cotton or silk. The most common is a loosely woven cotton produced in widths from 40 to 58 centimeters. While some variations do exist, thangkas wider than 45 centimeters frequently have seams in the support. The paint consists of pigments in a water soluble medium. Both mineral and organic pigments are used, tempered with a herb and glue solution. In Western terminology, this is a distemper technique.

 

The composition of a thangka, as with the majority of Buddhist art, is highly geometric. Arms, legs, eyes, nostrils, ears, and various ritual implements are all laid out on a systematic grid of angles and intersecting lines. A skilled thangka artist will generally select from a variety of predesigned items to include in the composition, ranging from alms bowls and animals, to the shape, size, and angle of a figure's eyes, nose, and lips. The process seems very methodical, but often requires deep understanding of the symbolism involved to capture the spirit of it.

 

Thangka often overflow with symbolism and allusion. Because the art is explicitly religious, all symbols and allusions must be in accordance with strict guidelines laid out in Buddhist scripture. The artist must be properly trained and have sufficient religious understanding, knowledge, and background to create an accurate and appropriate thangka. Lipton and Ragnubs clarify this in Treasures of Tibetan Art:

 

“Tibetan art exemplifies the nirmanakaya, the physical body of Buddha, and also the qualities of the Buddha, perhaps in the form of a deity. Art objects, therefore, must follow rules specified in the Buddhist scriptures regarding proportions, shape, color, stance, hand positions, and attributes in order to personify correctly the Buddha or Deities.”

“Morning’s Glow”

Berry College, Rome, Georgia

 

My day started super early. I was meeting a fellow photographer before sunrise at Berry College to photograph the deer. Berry boasts 27,000 acres of land that are abundant in wildlife, especially deer.

 

We wanted to capture the deer in the early morning light, so I left my house before four o’clock. When I arrived, I noticed they were everywhere—even very close to the road.

 

We drove around the campus for several hours trying to find and photograph them. A small group of deer meandered into a freshly cut field, and we stopped and began photographing.

 

I photograph wildlife very methodically. First, I make sure I get the shot and shoot right away. Then as I am in a low crouched position, I slowly take a few more steps toward the animal and shoot again. This is repeated over and over until I have framed my subject perfectly.

 

The fawn in front of me was very relaxed and enjoying the morning sun. It was not bothered by my presence, nor was its mother watching in the distance.

 

This is my favorite shot from the day. Thanks to Berry College for generously allowing photographers to enjoy their beautiful campus and abundant wildlife there.

  

To purchase wildlife and nature fine art prints, please visit my website: www.judyroyalglennphotography.com

 

#fawn #babydeer #deer #wildlife #wildlifephotographer #nature #naturephotographer #JudyRoyalGlenn #JudyRoyalGlennPhotography #BerryCollege #RomeGA #RomeGeorgia #morninglight #morningsun #dawn #animal #animals #mammal #whitetailedfawn #whitetaileddeer

SUN VALLEY - The Los Angeles Fire Department successfully

rescued a trapped construction worker and provided medical care to he and two of his injured colleagues, when a large volume of concrete and soil toppled into a four foot deep trench with makeshift shoring the men were working in or near on the morning of February 5, 2022.

 

The first call to 9-1-1 at 10:13 AM, brought scores of LAFD rescuers to 9031 El Dorado Avenue, including firefighters uniquely trained and equipped to handle specialized Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) tasks.

 

The two men initially trapped were working on an unspecified purpose trenching project alongside the one story home, , when the poorly shored trench wall and portions of a concrete walkway on the property suddenly gave way, causing them both to sustain serious leg injuries. Though both men were initially trapped, one was able to free himself prior to LAFD arrival.

 

As rescuers focused on the still-trapped man, care and ambulance transportation to a local hospital was provided to the worker who escaped, as well as another man who came forward with unspecified back pain.

 

The LAFD USAR trained personnel worked methodically with specialty tools and the support of fellow firefighters for nearly 80 minutes to skillfully free the man, who was taken to a regional trauma center in serious but stable condition.

 

© Photo by Shane Salzman

 

LAFD Incident 020522-0575

 

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Saturday, February 11, 2012.Recap: No. 15 C'Town 87, No. 19 WC 69.By Brendan Hall..CHARLESTOWN, Mass. -- At this time last year, Charlestown made the trek West, down Route 146, to deliver a haymaker to a Whitinsville Christian squad considered the state's tallest lineup. ..This afternoon, the Crusaders came East to Bunker Hill, with a different look for the Townies -- smaller, quicker, more surgical -- and the result was very nearly a different outcome. The Crusaders hung with Charlestown through three quarters, before the Townies pulled away in the fourth, outscoring Whitinsville 31-14 in the final frame en route to an 87-69 victory. .."That team's very good, I thought that was the best shooting team we saw," Charlestown head coach Edson Cardoso said. "They're very well balanced, with a real good point guard, big man, two-guard, so I knew coming into this game it was going to be a battle. I told the guys, 'You're going to see a team like this in the state tournament, eventually down the line." ..The Townies (14-3), played just seven due to health (Jawhari Dawan-Abdullah, stomach bug) and off the court issues (Gary Braham, suspension). But they saw all five of their regular starters reach double-figures, with senior point guard Rony Fernandez (26 points, four assists) leading the way. Senior forward Tyrik Jackson (12 points, 13 rebounds) came up big on the glass again, while Tyrese Hoxter (16 points, seven assists), Omar Orriols (13 points) and Iser Barnes (12) contributed some big shots from the perimeter to keep the defense stretched out. ..But early on, the Crusaders (12-2) gave them fits with the methodical way they broke through the Townie's 2-3 zone with some of the most disciplined and precise ball movement they'd seen in a while. Junior point guard Colin Richey (23 points) funneled the offense down to the baseline, finding a player planted right in the heart of the zone and kicking to either the baseline or either wing. ..Whitinsville shot nearly 40 percent from the field, getting good looks from the short side from Tyler VandenAkker (12 points, eight rebounds) and Jesse Dykstra. Grant Brown (10 points) came up with some big shots from the perimeter as well. .."We decided to extend a little bit more on the short corner, because they hit about four shots in a row from the short corner," Cardoso said. "We also decided to have the opposite guard extend even more on shooter No. 2 (Tim Dufficey). So we made some extensions in the second half, did a little better job -- not a great job, but it helped us get the victory." ..To start the fourth quarter, Barnes completed a 6-0 run by ripping the ball out of his defender's hands at midcourt and landing a breakaway layup. A few possessions later, Hoxter found Jackson underneath the rim for an easy tip-in and 68-59 advantage. ..Then with 1:37 to go, sophomore Taris Wilson hit the first of two monster breakaway slams, this one making it 76-63 to essentially put the game in hand. ..Hot from the field: The Townies outrebounded the Crusaders 16-7 in the final frame, giving way to many key transition points that helped ice the lead and the win. From the glass, WC still held a slim 35-33 advantage. ..But down at the other end, the Townies had a terrific night from the field, shooting nearly 58 percent overall. That was aided by a 7-for-17 effort from three-point range, including three 3's each from Fernandez and Orriols. ..Praise for Richey: Last season, New Mission head coach Cory McCarthy was throwing around high praise for the then-sophomore Richey, calling him "a suburban kid that plays urban". ..Consider Cardoso another Boston City League coach that's a fan. .."He's tough," Cardoso said. "He's one of the toughest guards coming out of his league, and I think he's going give a lot of teams problems in the state tournament, because how do you stop a kid like that?" ..Turning point? Following last season's loss to Charlestown in its home gym, WC coach Jeff Bajema greeted his players in the locker room and told them, "Guys, we can win states." ..Sure enough, the Crusaders never lost another game the rest of the way, picking up their first Division 3 state title since 2005 at the DCU Center in Worcester. After that game, Bajema spoke to reporters about how much the whitewashing by Charlestown seasoned them for what to expect in the state tournament. ..Given how much more competitive the Crusaders were this time around, could this be seen as another momentum shift? .."Hopefully, a game like this will lead us to better things," Bajema said. "But we've got a tough one Tuesday (against Holy Name), so we'll see."

 

Shot at ISO 1600, Aperture of 3.2, Shutter speed of 1/400 and Focal Length of 50.0 mm

Taken with a 24-70mm F2.8 ZA SSM lens and processed by Aperture 3.2.2 on Saturday February-11-2012 16:26 EST PM

Saturday, February 11, 2012.Recap: No. 15 C'Town 87, No. 19 WC 69.By Brendan Hall..CHARLESTOWN, Mass. -- At this time last year, Charlestown made the trek West, down Route 146, to deliver a haymaker to a Whitinsville Christian squad considered the state's tallest lineup. ..This afternoon, the Crusaders came East to Bunker Hill, with a different look for the Townies -- smaller, quicker, more surgical -- and the result was very nearly a different outcome. The Crusaders hung with Charlestown through three quarters, before the Townies pulled away in the fourth, outscoring Whitinsville 31-14 in the final frame en route to an 87-69 victory. .."That team's very good, I thought that was the best shooting team we saw," Charlestown head coach Edson Cardoso said. "They're very well balanced, with a real good point guard, big man, two-guard, so I knew coming into this game it was going to be a battle. I told the guys, 'You're going to see a team like this in the state tournament, eventually down the line." ..The Townies (14-3), played just seven due to health (Jawhari Dawan-Abdullah, stomach bug) and off the court issues (Gary Braham, suspension). But they saw all five of their regular starters reach double-figures, with senior point guard Rony Fernandez (26 points, four assists) leading the way. Senior forward Tyrik Jackson (12 points, 13 rebounds) came up big on the glass again, while Tyrese Hoxter (16 points, seven assists), Omar Orriols (13 points) and Iser Barnes (12) contributed some big shots from the perimeter to keep the defense stretched out. ..But early on, the Crusaders (12-2) gave them fits with the methodical way they broke through the Townie's 2-3 zone with some of the most disciplined and precise ball movement they'd seen in a while. Junior point guard Colin Richey (23 points) funneled the offense down to the baseline, finding a player planted right in the heart of the zone and kicking to either the baseline or either wing. ..Whitinsville shot nearly 40 percent from the field, getting good looks from the short side from Tyler VandenAkker (12 points, eight rebounds) and Jesse Dykstra. Grant Brown (10 points) came up with some big shots from the perimeter as well. .."We decided to extend a little bit more on the short corner, because they hit about four shots in a row from the short corner," Cardoso said. "We also decided to have the opposite guard extend even more on shooter No. 2 (Tim Dufficey). So we made some extensions in the second half, did a little better job -- not a great job, but it helped us get the victory." ..To start the fourth quarter, Barnes completed a 6-0 run by ripping the ball out of his defender's hands at midcourt and landing a breakaway layup. A few possessions later, Hoxter found Jackson underneath the rim for an easy tip-in and 68-59 advantage. ..Then with 1:37 to go, sophomore Taris Wilson hit the first of two monster breakaway slams, this one making it 76-63 to essentially put the game in hand. ..Hot from the field: The Townies outrebounded the Crusaders 16-7 in the final frame, giving way to many key transition points that helped ice the lead and the win. From the glass, WC still held a slim 35-33 advantage. ..But down at the other end, the Townies had a terrific night from the field, shooting nearly 58 percent overall. That was aided by a 7-for-17 effort from three-point range, including three 3's each from Fernandez and Orriols. ..Praise for Richey: Last season, New Mission head coach Cory McCarthy was throwing around high praise for the then-sophomore Richey, calling him "a suburban kid that plays urban". ..Consider Cardoso another Boston City League coach that's a fan. .."He's tough," Cardoso said. "He's one of the toughest guards coming out of his league, and I think he's going give a lot of teams problems in the state tournament, because how do you stop a kid like that?" ..Turning point? Following last season's loss to Charlestown in its home gym, WC coach Jeff Bajema greeted his players in the locker room and told them, "Guys, we can win states." ..Sure enough, the Crusaders never lost another game the rest of the way, picking up their first Division 3 state title since 2005 at the DCU Center in Worcester. After that game, Bajema spoke to reporters about how much the whitewashing by Charlestown seasoned them for what to expect in the state tournament. ..Given how much more competitive the Crusaders were this time around, could this be seen as another momentum shift? .."Hopefully, a game like this will lead us to better things," Bajema said. "But we've got a tough one Tuesday (against Holy Name), so we'll see."

 

Shot at ISO 1600, Aperture of 3.2, Shutter speed of 1/400 and Focal Length of 70.0 mm

Taken with a 24-70mm F2.8 ZA SSM lens and processed by Aperture 3.2.2 on Saturday February-11-2012 16:25 EST PM

Joseph Pitton de Tournefort (1656-1708) was a French botanist. He was born to a well-to-do family in Aix-en-Provence. Tournefort initially took up studies in theology. However, as he had a marked inclination towards natural sciences, he turned to medicine. He completed his studies at the University of Montpellier. In 1681, he was in Barcelona doing research in botany. In 1694 Tournefort published his first three-volume work, in which he classified 8846 plants. In 1698 he became Doctor in Medicine of the University of Paris. At that time his treatise was also translated into Latin. Tournefort became a famous physician and naturalist. He travelled extensively in Western Europe (Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, England). He had published a number of works on botany, and had acquired a fabulous collection of nearly 50.000 books, as well as costumes, arms, minerals, shells and various curiosities. Thus, he already had a very important career behind him when Louis XIV entrusted him with the mission to bring new plants to the Royal Botanical Garden.

 

Tournefort started out on his voyage to the Near East in the spring of 1700, at the age of 44, accompanied by a painter and a doctor. He visited thirty-eight islands of the Greek archipelago, as well as Northern Anatolia, Pontus and Armenia, and reached Tiflis in Georgia. Tournefort returned to Marseilles in June 1702.

 

His manuscript, composed of his letters to the Minister of the Exterior Count de Pontchartain, was published posthumously in 1717. A number of re-editions followed, while his work was also translated into English, German and Flemish. There is also a Greek translation of the first part. The fact that Tournefort had discovered new plants in his journey led him to publish a supplement to his main work of botanical classification in 1703. He taught Botany in the Académie, while continuing to practice medicine; at the same time, he was in charge of the Royal Gardens, where many plants he brought from his travels were cultivated with success. Having survived a multitude of adventures, Tournefort died of an accident in 1708. He did not live to see the publication of his travel chronicle, which in the following three centuries became the basic manual to all travellers to these regions. Until today, researchers from numerous fields turn to Tournefort’s text, as it remains an invaluable source of information. He describes the places he visited in a particular systematic manner.

 

The systematic way he organizes his information on topography, economy, administration, ethnic composition, customs and habits of everyday life shows how one can arrive at truth and knowledge through research, methodical study, classification and generalisation. To document his research, Tournefort cites a hundred and thirty-five texts by Greek and Latin authors as well as Byzantine writers, Humanists, and earlier travel accounts.

 

He methodically narrates his visit to each island, and describes the locations as well as events that he witnessed and encounters with locals. He then continues with the island’s history from ancient times to the current age, citing the corresponding myths, and comparing with the information provided by ancient coins. Subsequently, he writes on the island’s administration and taxes, commerce, products and prices thereof. An entire chapter is dedicated to the Greek church. Tournefort also writes on monasteries and churches, house architecture and caves. He also describes the customs, the dress and the occupations of the inhabitants. He concludes his chapters with geographical observations from the highest point of each main region.

 

Naturally, his work includes engravings of city views, locations and monuments as well as plants, instruments and costumes. The text becomes alive with vivid descriptions of his encounters with islanders, be it Turks, Franks, Greeks or privateers. Of special interest are his descriptions of fortresses, ports, safe havens and his information on map drawing.

 

The second volume is a publication of his thoroughly documented manuscripts. It was not edited by Tournefort himself as had happened with the first. On numerous occasions he refers to the politics, administration and ethnic composition of the Ottoman Empire. He continues with his journey on the southern coast of the Black Sea to Armenia. The work closes with a short description of Smyrna and Ephesus.

 

Tournefort is considered the first to have shown the islands of the Archipelago to be “travel material”, as he offered information which inspired the interest for further research, and also highlighed each location’s wealth and uniqueness.

 

Written by Ioli Vingopoulou

  

Fransız botanikçi Joseph Pitton de Tournefort (1656-1708) Aix-en-Provence'da varlıklı bir aile içinde doğar, ilk önce tanrıbilim (teoloji) dersleri izler ancak genç yaştan beri doğa bilimlerine eğilim gösterir. Bu yüzden Montpellier'de tıp öğrenimi görüp 1681'de botanik araştırmaları yapmak üzere Barcelona'ya gelir. 1694 yılında üç ciltlik ve 8.846 bitkinin sınıflandırmasına ilişkin ilk eserini yayınlar; 1698'de Paris Tıp Fakültesinden doktor unvanını alır ve bu kazanımı yapıtının latince çevirisi izler. Doktor ve doğa bilimcisi olarak ün salmış, Batı Avrupa'da (İspanya, Portekiz, Hollanda, İngiltere'ye) seyahat etmiş, botanoloji ile ilgili kitaplar yayınlamış, 50.000'e yakın kitaptan meydana gelen bir kitaplık oluşturmuş, ayrıca yerel kıyafet, silah, mineral, deniz kabuğu ve daha başka ilginç şeylerden oluşan hayranlık uyandıran koleksiyonlar sahibi olmuşken, kral 14. Louis ona Kraliyet Botanik Bahçesine yeni bitkiler getirme görevini verir. Tournefort 1700 yılının ilkbaharında, 44 yaşındayken, yanına yoldaş olarak bir ressam ve bir doktor alarak Yakın Doğu'ya doğru yola çıkar.

 

Ege adalarından 38 tanesini ziyaret eder, Kuzey Anadolu'nun her tarafını gezip Karadeniz ve Ermenistan yörelerine gelir, Tiflis'e varır. Tournefort, 1702 yılının Haziran ayında Marsilya'da karaya ayak basar.

 

Kaleme aldığı metin (Dışişleri bakanı Kont de Pontchartain'e yolladığı mektuplar biçiminde) ilk olarak 1717'de yayınlanır, bu ilk yayını bir çok yeni baskı izler ve eser ingilizce, almanca ve flamanca gibi dillere- ilk kısmı yunancaya da - çevrilir. Yeni keşfettiği bitkilerin daha önce belirlemiş olduğu sınıflandırma sistemine eklenmesi sonucu olarak 1703'te yeni bir cilt yayınlar. Tournefort botanik profesörü sıfatıyla Akademide dersler verir, doktorluk mesleğini ve bunlara koşut olarak Kraliyet Bahçesinin sorumluluğu görevini sürdürür. Gezilerinden getirmiş olduğu birçok yeni bitki bu bahçede başarılı bir şekilde yetiştirilir. Tournefort geçirdiği birçok maceradan kefeni yırtmışken, üç asır boyunca her gezginin bu bölge için başucu kitabı olacak seyahatnamesinin yayınlanmasını göremeden 1708'de bir kaza sonucu ölür. Bugün hâlâ çeşitli dallardan araştırmacılar Tournefort'un metnine başvurup son derece değerli bilgilerinden faydalanmak durumundalar. Eseri anında ingilizce, hollandaca ve almancaya çevrilmişti.

 

Gezdiği yerleri betimlerken belirli bir yöntem izleyerek topoğrafya, ekonomi, yönetim, milletler sentezi ve günlük yaşamdaki örf ve adetlere ilişkin bilgiler verirken, Tournefort, bilginin gerçeğe uyup uymadığı konusuna araştırma, düzenli okuma, sınıflandırma ve genelleştirme yoluyla yanaşılabileceğini kanıtlıyor. Kanıtlayıcı belgeleri arasında antik Yunan ve Latin yazarlarından, ayrıca Bizans yazarlarından ve daha eski hümanist bilgin ve gezginlerden 135 tane metin bulunmakta.

 

Ziyaret ettiği her ada için düzenli olarak ziyaretini anlatıp birçok yeri ve olayı hatta yerlilerle olan görüşmelerini de betimler. Bunlara ek olarak, adanın eski çağlardan gününe dek tarihi ve bununla ilintili efsaneler, sikkeler hakkında, yönetim, vergilendirme usulleri, ticaret, ürünler ve fiyatları hakkında bilgiler verir. Ayrıca Yunanistan'ın dinî (kilise) yaşamına başlıbaşına bir bölüm ayırır. Manastırlar, kiliseler, evlerin mimarisi, mağaralar hakkında yazar, adetler ve kıyafetleri betimleyip halkın uğraşlarından sözeder ve önemli yörelerin her birinin en yüksek irtifasından yaptığı coğrafya gözlemleri ile anlatımını bitirir.

 

Doğal olarak eserinde şehir, yer, anıt, bitki, alet, ve kıyafet görünümleri ile ilgili gravürler de yer almakta. Ayrıca metni ada halkıyla (Türkler, Latinler, Yunanlılar, korsanlarla) ilişkilerinden çarpıcı betimlemelerle de çeşitlenir. Kitabında hisarlar, gemi barınakları, güvenli limanlar hakkında yaptığı betimlemeler ve harita çizimi ile ilgili verdiği bilgiler özel ilgi uyandıran kısımlar arasındadır.

 

Eserinin birinci cildinin yayına hazırlığını kendisi denetlemişken ikinci cilt kendi ayrıntılı yazılarına sadık kalınarak basılır. Bu cildin başındaki birçok bölüm Osmanlıların siyasal, yönetimsel ve etnografik durumuna ayrılmıştır. Bunun devamında Karadeniz'in güney kıyılarında yaptığı Ermenistan'a kadar varan yolculuğunu anlatıp kitabı İzmir ve Efes'in kısa bir betimlemesi ile bitirir.

 

Böylece Tournefort, başkalarında arayış isteğini besleyecek nitelikte malzeme sağlamanın yanısıra, gördüğü her yerin sonsuz zengiliğini ve kendine özgü niteliklerini yüzeye çıkarması açısından Ege adalarına bir "yolculuk uknumu" veren ilk şahıs olarak bilinir.

 

Yazan: İoli Vingopoulou

 

With the skys along the north slope of the pass having cleared, a B.N. Santa Fe junker methodically negotiates the many curves that comprises the Allard horse shoe; all the while, keeping her speed at or below 23 mph.

 

The foothills, angled slopes, and imposing mountains still hold an emerald green color as an overnight rain has given the grass liquid life.

   

SUN VALLEY - The Los Angeles Fire Department successfully

rescued a trapped construction worker and provided medical care to he and two of his injured colleagues, when a large volume of concrete and soil toppled into a four foot deep trench with makeshift shoring the men were working in or near on the morning of February 5, 2022.

 

The first call to 9-1-1 at 10:13 AM, brought scores of LAFD rescuers to 9031 El Dorado Avenue, including firefighters uniquely trained and equipped to handle specialized Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) tasks.

 

The two men initially trapped were working on an unspecified purpose trenching project alongside the one story home, , when the poorly shored trench wall and portions of a concrete walkway on the property suddenly gave way, causing them both to sustain serious leg injuries. Though both men were initially trapped, one was able to free himself prior to LAFD arrival.

 

As rescuers focused on the still-trapped man, care and ambulance transportation to a local hospital was provided to the worker who escaped, as well as another man who came forward with unspecified back pain.

 

The LAFD USAR trained personnel worked methodically with specialty tools and the support of fellow firefighters for nearly 80 minutes to skillfully free the man, who was taken to a regional trauma center in serious but stable condition.

 

© Photo by Shane Salzman

 

LAFD Incident 020522-0575

 

Connect with us: LAFD.ORG | News | Facebook | Instagram | Reddit | Twitter: @LAFD @LAFDtalk

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"A TEST OF ENDURANCE"

 

Wave after wave of swimmers raced across the sand and dove headfirst into the sea. Arms churned as bodies sliced through the waves in a long line that went as far as my eyes could see. Then, they turned around and began to make their way back to the beach. Heads bobbed to the side as they took in fresh breaths of air. Finally, great splashes of water sprayed everywhere as the swimmers reached the shore, a mixture of grim determination and cheerful smiles etched across their faces. A series of cheers erupted from the crowd waiting for them on the beach as they raced across the sand once again to their bikes for the next leg of the competition.

 

This was the scene at Hwasun Beach where nearly 1100 men and women took part in the 2011 Iron Man Korea Jeju Triathlon. Participants swam 3.8 km, bicycled 180.2 km, and ran 42.2 km for a total of 226.195 km on a difficult course that wound its way over rolling hills between Daejeong-Eup and the World Cup stadium in Seogwipo.

 

Cyclists worked their way methodically up a steep incline just outside of Jungmun and then coasted down a hill, thumbs up as they passed me, clearly relieved to finish that part of the race. But, the hardest part was yet to come: a full marathon that would test the will and endurance of these athletes.

 

Five grueling hours later, the end in sight, Balazs Csoke from Hungary, using all his remaining strength, dragged his exhausted body across the finish line, completing the race in 8 hours, 48 minutes, and 18 seconds. Korean hopeful Yeun Sik Ham finished strong, clocking in at 9:36:02 while Kate Bevilaqua of Australia was the top woman, finishing the race in 9 hours, 39 minutes, and 42 seconds.

 

www.jejuweekly.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=1730

 

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More images from the race www.flickr.com/photos/dmacs_photos/sets/72157627105746342/

 

Slideshow www.flickr.com/photos/dmacs_photos/sets/72157627105746342...

 

Please view my stream LARGE on black:

 

DMac 5D Mark II's photos on Flickriver

 

Follow me on Twitter @ twitter.com/#!/dmac5dmark2

 

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Saturday, February 11, 2012.Recap: No. 15 C'Town 87, No. 19 WC 69.By Brendan Hall..CHARLESTOWN, Mass. -- At this time last year, Charlestown made the trek West, down Route 146, to deliver a haymaker to a Whitinsville Christian squad considered the state's tallest lineup. ..This afternoon, the Crusaders came East to Bunker Hill, with a different look for the Townies -- smaller, quicker, more surgical -- and the result was very nearly a different outcome. The Crusaders hung with Charlestown through three quarters, before the Townies pulled away in the fourth, outscoring Whitinsville 31-14 in the final frame en route to an 87-69 victory. .."That team's very good, I thought that was the best shooting team we saw," Charlestown head coach Edson Cardoso said. "They're very well balanced, with a real good point guard, big man, two-guard, so I knew coming into this game it was going to be a battle. I told the guys, 'You're going to see a team like this in the state tournament, eventually down the line." ..The Townies (14-3), played just seven due to health (Jawhari Dawan-Abdullah, stomach bug) and off the court issues (Gary Braham, suspension). But they saw all five of their regular starters reach double-figures, with senior point guard Rony Fernandez (26 points, four assists) leading the way. Senior forward Tyrik Jackson (12 points, 13 rebounds) came up big on the glass again, while Tyrese Hoxter (16 points, seven assists), Omar Orriols (13 points) and Iser Barnes (12) contributed some big shots from the perimeter to keep the defense stretched out. ..But early on, the Crusaders (12-2) gave them fits with the methodical way they broke through the Townie's 2-3 zone with some of the most disciplined and precise ball movement they'd seen in a while. Junior point guard Colin Richey (23 points) funneled the offense down to the baseline, finding a player planted right in the heart of the zone and kicking to either the baseline or either wing. ..Whitinsville shot nearly 40 percent from the field, getting good looks from the short side from Tyler VandenAkker (12 points, eight rebounds) and Jesse Dykstra. Grant Brown (10 points) came up with some big shots from the perimeter as well. .."We decided to extend a little bit more on the short corner, because they hit about four shots in a row from the short corner," Cardoso said. "We also decided to have the opposite guard extend even more on shooter No. 2 (Tim Dufficey). So we made some extensions in the second half, did a little better job -- not a great job, but it helped us get the victory." ..To start the fourth quarter, Barnes completed a 6-0 run by ripping the ball out of his defender's hands at midcourt and landing a breakaway layup. A few possessions later, Hoxter found Jackson underneath the rim for an easy tip-in and 68-59 advantage. ..Then with 1:37 to go, sophomore Taris Wilson hit the first of two monster breakaway slams, this one making it 76-63 to essentially put the game in hand. ..Hot from the field: The Townies outrebounded the Crusaders 16-7 in the final frame, giving way to many key transition points that helped ice the lead and the win. From the glass, WC still held a slim 35-33 advantage. ..But down at the other end, the Townies had a terrific night from the field, shooting nearly 58 percent overall. That was aided by a 7-for-17 effort from three-point range, including three 3's each from Fernandez and Orriols. ..Praise for Richey: Last season, New Mission head coach Cory McCarthy was throwing around high praise for the then-sophomore Richey, calling him "a suburban kid that plays urban". ..Consider Cardoso another Boston City League coach that's a fan. .."He's tough," Cardoso said. "He's one of the toughest guards coming out of his league, and I think he's going give a lot of teams problems in the state tournament, because how do you stop a kid like that?" ..Turning point? Following last season's loss to Charlestown in its home gym, WC coach Jeff Bajema greeted his players in the locker room and told them, "Guys, we can win states." ..Sure enough, the Crusaders never lost another game the rest of the way, picking up their first Division 3 state title since 2005 at the DCU Center in Worcester. After that game, Bajema spoke to reporters about how much the whitewashing by Charlestown seasoned them for what to expect in the state tournament. ..Given how much more competitive the Crusaders were this time around, could this be seen as another momentum shift? .."Hopefully, a game like this will lead us to better things," Bajema said. "But we've got a tough one Tuesday (against Holy Name), so we'll see."

 

Shot at ISO 1600, Aperture of 3.2, Shutter speed of 1/320 and Focal Length of 70.0 mm

Taken with a 24-70mm F2.8 ZA SSM lens and processed by Aperture 3.2.2 on Saturday February-11-2012 17:12 EST PM

Originally written September 17th. 2006

  

Last night as I was finishing up on the latest polishing project I’d lined up, I struck on a thought, or rather I’d recounted a particular event, that had taken place sometime ago. The event had actually happened last summer, and I hadn’t thought much on it since. They say the body has a way of forgetting pain, and perhaps that’s why I don’t dwell on the particular memory much. I think I can laugh about it now, but at the time, dry giggles, and hick up like chuckles were far from the state my mind was lingering on.

 

Now, I do quite frequently make mistakes, life is full of trial and error. The way I see it, if you aren’t making mistakes from time to time, you are not taking the necessary risks that you need to further evolve, and as such, by making though’s mistakes, one is equally capable of learning from though’s mistakes and applying the new found knowledge in future life adventures. Admittedly however, there are more then a few mistakes I make on a regular near frequent basis that I would seem unable to learn from. But we’re not going to talk about them today. No, today is all about exploration, mistake making, and "learning".

 

The story in mention, takes place one fine sunny day...at work, of course, and the boys in blue (no, the other blue guys, the shop hands) had dropped off a headache rack for polishing... Headache rack, bang board, bulk head, whatever it is they call them in your neck of the woods. Ah ha, there in point made. When I’d started all though’s years ago, one of the first questions I’d asked was "why do they call them headache racks?" After standing up underneath one a few times, I "discovered" by my own part as to why such a piece of equipment might have garnered such a title. Whether that was the original reasoning behind the title makes little difference to me, I just knew I didn’t want to hit my head on one anymore. But now I’m getting off subject.

 

Some of these headache racks have cases for one to hang his or her’s tire chains off of, and most of these cases have hinged doors, so that one might pad lock the chains down in order to detour would be chain thieves. The particular headache rack they’d dropped off, had such hinged doors. The particular grinder I was using that day for my polishing was a Porter Cable that turned about 5,500 rpm, for some reason that little tid bit it slightly important to the story, as these days I prefer to cut at much lower rpm’s unless such circumstances arise that I have to break out the red wheel, and get dirty. The Porter Cable was a fine piece of equipment as far as I was concerned at the time, but I never really liked the way it felt in my hands. It was a little hard to hang on to, and felt bulky. At times I think it had actually conspired against me with particular polishing projects in an attempt to oust me as head of operations. Take for example...This headache rack.

 

Thinking back to the hinged doors, as I was getting round about where I’d opened them to get around the edges, and for some reason that would equally be important to the story, because as I was working my way around the edge, I’d already begun to eye ball the opened doors, and think to myself, "I should really try to find something to bolt those down with, before the buffing wheel grabs hold of one, and swings it into my – – BANG!!!

 

Everything went black, and I recall an out right obnoxious ringing had appeared in my ears. The ringing crescendoed in pitch, and the strange and rather sudden black veil that had for one reason or another over taken me began to fade, and I was no longer in the detail bay. I’d somehow teleported myself into...a...Cracker commercial. Yes I’m quite certain of it, I was suddenly hovering over an endless buffet of crackers. Snake wells, Wheat Thin’s and Ritz as far as the eye could see, garnished with spreads of all countless tasty sorts, while Frank Sinatra serenaded me in the far off distance with something that resembled "New York, New York." Clearly this could not be right, but at the time, it seemed to make perfect sense. That is until, the Sinatra distorted back into an ear splitting ring, and the crackers formed themselves into the rather depressing shape of unpolished aluminum diamond plate. Clearly something had gone terribly wrong, but for the life of me I could not recount what it was. Well to be completely honest at that moment I wasn't even entirely sure why I was staring at unpolished aluminum diamond plate, that had only moments ago been tasty snake crackers adorned with countless mouth watering spreads. One of the first thoughts I recall having though, was that for reasons very unknown to me, my head was throbbing, which in most cases meant that someone or something was trying to hurt me, and by the level of pain emanating from inside my skull, they were doing a pretty damn good job of it.

 

Then another thought hit me. Yes. The diamond plate. I was suppose to be polishing the diamond plate. It was part of a headache rack that I’d been commissioned to polish. That is what I was suppose to be doing. But why was I not polishing it, and more importantly, why would someone or something suddenly decide to hurt me while I was trying to polish a headache rack? Thought’s began to rush through my mind, some more gradual then others, but after what had seemed like a good ten minutes, I’d finally settled on the very possible fact that the hinged door I’d been thinking about bolting down before the polishing wheel was able to grab hold of it and slam it into my face, had in fact done that very thing right as I was thinking it...Well lets be honest, I was the one running the grinder, I done it to myself.

 

So there was no one trying to hurt me. No evil plot outside of my rebellious Porter Cable. No one hurting me, besides myself...And there were no crackers either, I think that was quite possibly the most disappointing part of all my split second discoveries. There was one final thought that had finally worked it’s way to the surface, that by all accounts I could not find an answer too. Based off of all the knowledge I had gained on polishing over the years, and I realize though sources are some what limited, but for the time, they would simply have to do. Based off of that knowledge, if I was in fact suppose to be polishing this particular diamond plated headache rack, why didn’t I have a grinder in my hands?

 

Now you have to keep one very important fact in mind. While all of this seems to have taken me near a life time to assemble in my brain, out in the real world, there had only been the passing of perhaps one maybe two seconds at best.

 

I’m still trying to collect myself, and work out why I would be trying to polish a diamond plate headache rack, without the aid of a grinder, when beyond the insane ringing in my ears I hear yet another sound. It’s the sound of a grinder running at near 5,500 rpm’s. Fallowing the sound to it’s source I cock my head up, and find my mighty Porter Cable some what near three feet above my head. After the grinder had caught the edge of the door, slamming it shut in my face, it had rather than staying firmly secured in the grip of my hands, continued on climbing up the headache rack, and was now headed up and over my shoulder, in an attempt to what I can only assume was, escape. My first thought to that was some what benign. I figured as soon as it hit the concrete floor of the detail bay, it would most likely be a powerful enough jolt to disengage the trigger lock...Apparently they build them suckers mighty strong, or that grinder was just hell bent on escaping, because it was off and runnin’ the moment it hit the ground, making a strait as an arrow bee line for the front door.

 

I’m not sure if it was the proper thing to do, being I’d just had by ass kicked by and electrical tool, but then again my mind was still a bit cloudy, and the thought of chasing after it simply didn’t make any sense at all. So I chose instead to simply stand there and watch it bee line for the front door, and laugh, while shouting "Go, go, go, you little som’bitch." You see. Determined as that little grinder might have been...the extension cord it’s life blood coursed through was only fifteen feet long. It sucked in it’s last free breath eight feet from the door.

 

So you see I am capable of learning things, though be it more commonly from uncomfortable if not usually painful experiences. I acquire such knowledge, and from that day hence am able to apply it there after, and as such I’ve never had my ass kicked by another headache rack since (though I think that grinder still tried to kill me a couple of more times)...It would seem this little grinder revolution is getting more and more methodical every passing day.

 

Experience, learn, apply knowledge. Create a perpetual loop.

 

Static

The ANA C-IED Task Force Badge.

 

Members of the UK's Explosive Ordnance Disposal & Search Task Force (EOD&S TF) are stepping back from their frontline role to develop the Afghan National Army's counter IED capability.

 

British advisors have been deployed to train, mentor and 'authorise-for-action' Afghan National Army Explosive Hazard Reduction Teams (EHRTs). The Afghan National Army (ANA) soldiers complete an initial four week course provided by US forces before graduating onto the advanced training given by British specialists.

 

They are put through their paces by an experienced instructor pairing from EOD & Search to ensure they are confident, methodical, professional and aware of current threats. To complete the course the ANA team have to pass three assessed tasks either in camp or 'live' on patrol before they can be utilised as a team.

  

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You never know what you're going to see in the windows of Baker City's storefronts. Here are some of the entries in the 2009 "Great Salt Lick" contest. It may seem quirky, and it is, but the proceeds go to worthy charitable causes.

 

For you city slickers, in rural areas landowners put out large blocks of salt for livestock and game animals. Evidently, these species, unlike humans, don't get enough fast food or chips, so they need licks to make up for a salt deficiency in their diet.

 

Based on these partially-consumed salt blocks, I'd say the cattle and other animals who use the blocks are surprisingly methodical in their approach to licking the salt. It's also interesting there isn't a tooth mark in sight. I guess herbivores don't bite into rock-hard objects, and ain't that a large surprise.

 

From an artistic point of view, this year's contestants are displaying the sort of herd mentality we so deplore in artists, uniformly favoring that Mid-Century-Modern style that hip city dwellers can't seem to get enough of. That red block on the left would make a killer lamp base; just don't spill any drinks near it.

 

To learn more about the Great Salt Lick contest, go to www.whitdeschner.com/salt-lick-exp.html

 

Here's an excerpt from that site:

 

"The Great Salt Lick/Salt Lick City Contest started as a joke. There may have been a beer or two involved...

 

I was sitting on the porch of a friend’s cabin admiring the shape of a salt lick the deer had worked on and I began thinking that it sure beat some of the sculptures in parks and in front of buildings. You know the ones—the boulders with a chip knocked out of them masquerading as art that some artist has been paid a six-figure sum for.

 

Not only were the animals creating these blocks not getting paid, but they were being eaten. In any case the idea of a contest formed and one thing led to another..."

 

I have a suggestion I hope will be met with support and great enthusiasm. Do we really want to see all these non-human artists labor in anonymity only to have their careers cut short by - well, I don't need to paint the rest of the picture, do I? Of course not.

 

So I propose forming a Bovine Artists Collective Alliance (BACA) and devoting part of each year's contest proceeds to emancipating one of the cows whose work was entered into the show. That way, Bessie could live out her days in the pasture with full tenure, free to realize her full creative potential, mentor up-and-coming salt-block workers, and take sabbaticals at other farms as livestock artist-in-residence.

  

Saturday, February 11, 2012.Recap: No. 15 C'Town 87, No. 19 WC 69.By Brendan Hall..CHARLESTOWN, Mass. -- At this time last year, Charlestown made the trek West, down Route 146, to deliver a haymaker to a Whitinsville Christian squad considered the state's tallest lineup. ..This afternoon, the Crusaders came East to Bunker Hill, with a different look for the Townies -- smaller, quicker, more surgical -- and the result was very nearly a different outcome. The Crusaders hung with Charlestown through three quarters, before the Townies pulled away in the fourth, outscoring Whitinsville 31-14 in the final frame en route to an 87-69 victory. .."That team's very good, I thought that was the best shooting team we saw," Charlestown head coach Edson Cardoso said. "They're very well balanced, with a real good point guard, big man, two-guard, so I knew coming into this game it was going to be a battle. I told the guys, 'You're going to see a team like this in the state tournament, eventually down the line." ..The Townies (14-3), played just seven due to health (Jawhari Dawan-Abdullah, stomach bug) and off the court issues (Gary Braham, suspension). But they saw all five of their regular starters reach double-figures, with senior point guard Rony Fernandez (26 points, four assists) leading the way. Senior forward Tyrik Jackson (12 points, 13 rebounds) came up big on the glass again, while Tyrese Hoxter (16 points, seven assists), Omar Orriols (13 points) and Iser Barnes (12) contributed some big shots from the perimeter to keep the defense stretched out. ..But early on, the Crusaders (12-2) gave them fits with the methodical way they broke through the Townie's 2-3 zone with some of the most disciplined and precise ball movement they'd seen in a while. Junior point guard Colin Richey (23 points) funneled the offense down to the baseline, finding a player planted right in the heart of the zone and kicking to either the baseline or either wing. ..Whitinsville shot nearly 40 percent from the field, getting good looks from the short side from Tyler VandenAkker (12 points, eight rebounds) and Jesse Dykstra. Grant Brown (10 points) came up with some big shots from the perimeter as well. .."We decided to extend a little bit more on the short corner, because they hit about four shots in a row from the short corner," Cardoso said. "We also decided to have the opposite guard extend even more on shooter No. 2 (Tim Dufficey). So we made some extensions in the second half, did a little better job -- not a great job, but it helped us get the victory." ..To start the fourth quarter, Barnes completed a 6-0 run by ripping the ball out of his defender's hands at midcourt and landing a breakaway layup. A few possessions later, Hoxter found Jackson underneath the rim for an easy tip-in and 68-59 advantage. ..Then with 1:37 to go, sophomore Taris Wilson hit the first of two monster breakaway slams, this one making it 76-63 to essentially put the game in hand. ..Hot from the field: The Townies outrebounded the Crusaders 16-7 in the final frame, giving way to many key transition points that helped ice the lead and the win. From the glass, WC still held a slim 35-33 advantage. ..But down at the other end, the Townies had a terrific night from the field, shooting nearly 58 percent overall. That was aided by a 7-for-17 effort from three-point range, including three 3's each from Fernandez and Orriols. ..Praise for Richey: Last season, New Mission head coach Cory McCarthy was throwing around high praise for the then-sophomore Richey, calling him "a suburban kid that plays urban". ..Consider Cardoso another Boston City League coach that's a fan. .."He's tough," Cardoso said. "He's one of the toughest guards coming out of his league, and I think he's going give a lot of teams problems in the state tournament, because how do you stop a kid like that?" ..Turning point? Following last season's loss to Charlestown in its home gym, WC coach Jeff Bajema greeted his players in the locker room and told them, "Guys, we can win states." ..Sure enough, the Crusaders never lost another game the rest of the way, picking up their first Division 3 state title since 2005 at the DCU Center in Worcester. After that game, Bajema spoke to reporters about how much the whitewashing by Charlestown seasoned them for what to expect in the state tournament. ..Given how much more competitive the Crusaders were this time around, could this be seen as another momentum shift? .."Hopefully, a game like this will lead us to better things," Bajema said. "But we've got a tough one Tuesday (against Holy Name), so we'll see."

 

Shot at ISO 1600, Aperture of 3.2, Shutter speed of 1/400 and Focal Length of 24.0 mm

Taken with a 24-70mm F2.8 ZA SSM lens and processed by Aperture 3.2.2 on Saturday February-11-2012 17:12 EST PM

Saturday, February 11, 2012.Recap: No. 15 C'Town 87, No. 19 WC 69.By Brendan Hall..CHARLESTOWN, Mass. -- At this time last year, Charlestown made the trek West, down Route 146, to deliver a haymaker to a Whitinsville Christian squad considered the state's tallest lineup. ..This afternoon, the Crusaders came East to Bunker Hill, with a different look for the Townies -- smaller, quicker, more surgical -- and the result was very nearly a different outcome. The Crusaders hung with Charlestown through three quarters, before the Townies pulled away in the fourth, outscoring Whitinsville 31-14 in the final frame en route to an 87-69 victory. .."That team's very good, I thought that was the best shooting team we saw," Charlestown head coach Edson Cardoso said. "They're very well balanced, with a real good point guard, big man, two-guard, so I knew coming into this game it was going to be a battle. I told the guys, 'You're going to see a team like this in the state tournament, eventually down the line." ..The Townies (14-3), played just seven due to health (Jawhari Dawan-Abdullah, stomach bug) and off the court issues (Gary Braham, suspension). But they saw all five of their regular starters reach double-figures, with senior point guard Rony Fernandez (26 points, four assists) leading the way. Senior forward Tyrik Jackson (12 points, 13 rebounds) came up big on the glass again, while Tyrese Hoxter (16 points, seven assists), Omar Orriols (13 points) and Iser Barnes (12) contributed some big shots from the perimeter to keep the defense stretched out. ..But early on, the Crusaders (12-2) gave them fits with the methodical way they broke through the Townie's 2-3 zone with some of the most disciplined and precise ball movement they'd seen in a while. Junior point guard Colin Richey (23 points) funneled the offense down to the baseline, finding a player planted right in the heart of the zone and kicking to either the baseline or either wing. ..Whitinsville shot nearly 40 percent from the field, getting good looks from the short side from Tyler VandenAkker (12 points, eight rebounds) and Jesse Dykstra. Grant Brown (10 points) came up with some big shots from the perimeter as well. .."We decided to extend a little bit more on the short corner, because they hit about four shots in a row from the short corner," Cardoso said. "We also decided to have the opposite guard extend even more on shooter No. 2 (Tim Dufficey). So we made some extensions in the second half, did a little better job -- not a great job, but it helped us get the victory." ..To start the fourth quarter, Barnes completed a 6-0 run by ripping the ball out of his defender's hands at midcourt and landing a breakaway layup. A few possessions later, Hoxter found Jackson underneath the rim for an easy tip-in and 68-59 advantage. ..Then with 1:37 to go, sophomore Taris Wilson hit the first of two monster breakaway slams, this one making it 76-63 to essentially put the game in hand. ..Hot from the field: The Townies outrebounded the Crusaders 16-7 in the final frame, giving way to many key transition points that helped ice the lead and the win. From the glass, WC still held a slim 35-33 advantage. ..But down at the other end, the Townies had a terrific night from the field, shooting nearly 58 percent overall. That was aided by a 7-for-17 effort from three-point range, including three 3's each from Fernandez and Orriols. ..Praise for Richey: Last season, New Mission head coach Cory McCarthy was throwing around high praise for the then-sophomore Richey, calling him "a suburban kid that plays urban". ..Consider Cardoso another Boston City League coach that's a fan. .."He's tough," Cardoso said. "He's one of the toughest guards coming out of his league, and I think he's going give a lot of teams problems in the state tournament, because how do you stop a kid like that?" ..Turning point? Following last season's loss to Charlestown in its home gym, WC coach Jeff Bajema greeted his players in the locker room and told them, "Guys, we can win states." ..Sure enough, the Crusaders never lost another game the rest of the way, picking up their first Division 3 state title since 2005 at the DCU Center in Worcester. After that game, Bajema spoke to reporters about how much the whitewashing by Charlestown seasoned them for what to expect in the state tournament. ..Given how much more competitive the Crusaders were this time around, could this be seen as another momentum shift? .."Hopefully, a game like this will lead us to better things," Bajema said. "But we've got a tough one Tuesday (against Holy Name), so we'll see."

 

Shot at ISO 1600, Aperture of 3.2, Shutter speed of 1/320 and Focal Length of 55.0 mm

Taken with a 24-70mm F2.8 ZA SSM lens and processed by Aperture 3.2.2 on Saturday February-11-2012 17:09 EST PM

Saturday, February 11, 2012.Recap: No. 15 C'Town 87, No. 19 WC 69.By Brendan Hall..CHARLESTOWN, Mass. -- At this time last year, Charlestown made the trek West, down Route 146, to deliver a haymaker to a Whitinsville Christian squad considered the state's tallest lineup. ..This afternoon, the Crusaders came East to Bunker Hill, with a different look for the Townies -- smaller, quicker, more surgical -- and the result was very nearly a different outcome. The Crusaders hung with Charlestown through three quarters, before the Townies pulled away in the fourth, outscoring Whitinsville 31-14 in the final frame en route to an 87-69 victory. .."That team's very good, I thought that was the best shooting team we saw," Charlestown head coach Edson Cardoso said. "They're very well balanced, with a real good point guard, big man, two-guard, so I knew coming into this game it was going to be a battle. I told the guys, 'You're going to see a team like this in the state tournament, eventually down the line." ..The Townies (14-3), played just seven due to health (Jawhari Dawan-Abdullah, stomach bug) and off the court issues (Gary Braham, suspension). But they saw all five of their regular starters reach double-figures, with senior point guard Rony Fernandez (26 points, four assists) leading the way. Senior forward Tyrik Jackson (12 points, 13 rebounds) came up big on the glass again, while Tyrese Hoxter (16 points, seven assists), Omar Orriols (13 points) and Iser Barnes (12) contributed some big shots from the perimeter to keep the defense stretched out. ..But early on, the Crusaders (12-2) gave them fits with the methodical way they broke through the Townie's 2-3 zone with some of the most disciplined and precise ball movement they'd seen in a while. Junior point guard Colin Richey (23 points) funneled the offense down to the baseline, finding a player planted right in the heart of the zone and kicking to either the baseline or either wing. ..Whitinsville shot nearly 40 percent from the field, getting good looks from the short side from Tyler VandenAkker (12 points, eight rebounds) and Jesse Dykstra. Grant Brown (10 points) came up with some big shots from the perimeter as well. .."We decided to extend a little bit more on the short corner, because they hit about four shots in a row from the short corner," Cardoso said. "We also decided to have the opposite guard extend even more on shooter No. 2 (Tim Dufficey). So we made some extensions in the second half, did a little better job -- not a great job, but it helped us get the victory." ..To start the fourth quarter, Barnes completed a 6-0 run by ripping the ball out of his defender's hands at midcourt and landing a breakaway layup. A few possessions later, Hoxter found Jackson underneath the rim for an easy tip-in and 68-59 advantage. ..Then with 1:37 to go, sophomore Taris Wilson hit the first of two monster breakaway slams, this one making it 76-63 to essentially put the game in hand. ..Hot from the field: The Townies outrebounded the Crusaders 16-7 in the final frame, giving way to many key transition points that helped ice the lead and the win. From the glass, WC still held a slim 35-33 advantage. ..But down at the other end, the Townies had a terrific night from the field, shooting nearly 58 percent overall. That was aided by a 7-for-17 effort from three-point range, including three 3's each from Fernandez and Orriols. ..Praise for Richey: Last season, New Mission head coach Cory McCarthy was throwing around high praise for the then-sophomore Richey, calling him "a suburban kid that plays urban". ..Consider Cardoso another Boston City League coach that's a fan. .."He's tough," Cardoso said. "He's one of the toughest guards coming out of his league, and I think he's going give a lot of teams problems in the state tournament, because how do you stop a kid like that?" ..Turning point? Following last season's loss to Charlestown in its home gym, WC coach Jeff Bajema greeted his players in the locker room and told them, "Guys, we can win states." ..Sure enough, the Crusaders never lost another game the rest of the way, picking up their first Division 3 state title since 2005 at the DCU Center in Worcester. After that game, Bajema spoke to reporters about how much the whitewashing by Charlestown seasoned them for what to expect in the state tournament. ..Given how much more competitive the Crusaders were this time around, could this be seen as another momentum shift? .."Hopefully, a game like this will lead us to better things," Bajema said. "But we've got a tough one Tuesday (against Holy Name), so we'll see."

 

Shot at ISO 1600, Aperture of 3.2, Shutter speed of 1/320 and Focal Length of 60.0 mm

Taken with a 24-70mm F2.8 ZA SSM lens and processed by Aperture 3.2.2 on Saturday February-11-2012 17:08 EST PM

Company C, 2nd W. VA. Cavalry

The Star and Kansan, August 31, 1894:

   

AT REST

  

Just before midnight last Tuesday Ebenezer E. Wilson passed away. He had been in poor health for some time, but continued to attend to his duties as postmaster with a slight intermission for a visit to his daughter in St. Louis, until he turned over the office to Mr. Hill, on the first of May. Then he went to Denver, to visit his brother Jerre, and recuperate in the bracing air of the mountains; but instead steadily grew worse, and after his return was confined to his home, while paralysis day by day made slow but incessant advances toward the vital organs. He knew that recovery was impossible, and weakened and almost worn but in the battle of life, he felt as if it was hardly worth while to make the effort to recover. Indeed he asked his brother, after one of his sinking spells in July, whether it was worth while for him to try to get well, and seemed relieved when told that he need not. He simply faded out of life, bearing his sufferings with uncomplaining fortitude and Christian resignation.

 

As will be seen by the biographical sketch appended, Mr. Wilson has been identified with the history of this city and county from the first, settling here twenty-five years ago in September, being chosen the first mayor of Independence, and having been prominent in the politics and public life of the county ever since. Although opposed to him politically, he having always been an earnest and conscientious advocate of the principles of the Republican party, it gives me pleasure to say that I always found him a courteous and manly opponent. Indeed he was never a bitter partisan, but was always willing to allow others the same freedom of opinion he asked for himself. His nature was genial and kindly, and in the various official positions he held he was always accommodating and pleasant in the discharge of his duties. Methodical and accurate in his mental characteristics, while he was not especially rapid in his work his rugged integrity combined with the other qualities noted, made him almost an ideal official. Everybody was his friend; he never made enemies, and a whole people mourn his untimely death, at an age when it seemed that there ought to be many years of usefulness yet before him.

 

In his intercourse with those who knew him well, a vein of quiet humor was always cropping out to brighten the passing moments; and this was also apparent in his most ambitious literary production, the “History of Montgomery County,” written for Edward’s Atlas. This work, by one of the principal participants in the scenes described, will always be considered the most authentic and reliable narrative of the pioneer days; and the facts it contains will doubtless be the foundation upon which some ambitious “Historical Society” will build in the future.

 

The funeral services at the Congregational Church at 10 o’clock yesterday morning were attended by McPherson Post, G. A. R., in a body. The church was crowded, so that not another person could have found a seat. The banks were closed and the district court was adjourned by Judge McCue, as a token of respect to his memory, and to allow those connected with it an opportunity to attend the services. A choir composed of Mrs. A. C. Stich, Mrs. J. E. Pershing, W. E. Ziegler, and A. C. Stich, sang, “Beyond the Smiling and the Weeping,” Rev. G. W. Bean read the 103d Psalm, and Rev. E. Pershing preached the funeral discourse from II Timothy 4:7-8, “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith; Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness which the Lord, the righteous judge shall give me at that day; and not to me only, but unto all them that love his appearing.” After the choir had sung “Asleep in Jesus,” the procession formed for the last sad journey out to Mount Hope cemetery, headed by the veterans of the Post and including a very large number of citizens in carriages. The pall bearers were W. T. Yoe, W. Kincaid, J. S. Way, H. W. Conrad, E. T. Mears, and A. C. Stich.

 

E. E. Wilson was born at Elizabeth Allegheny county, Pennsylvania, Nov. 21st 1838, and would have been fifty-six years old if he had lived two months longer. He enlisted as a soldier April 23d 1861, but on account of a maimed hand caused by falling into the fire when he was a child, was rejected. On Sept. 25th of the same year he was, however, accepted and became a member of Co. C, 2d West Virginia volunteer cavalry. He served through the war, rising from the ranks to the position of Captain, to which he was promoted January 7th 1865, and was mustered out June 30th as captain of the company in which he originally enlisted. It testifies to his modest retiring disposition, that while so many men with no right to the title are daily dubbed “Captain”, I never remember to have heard him addressed by the military title he so well earned. In March 1867 he emigrated from Pennsylvania to Kansas, settling at Fontana in Miami county. He removed from there to Independence in September 1869, when it cost $2.25 a hundred pounds to move his goods across the country by wagon; and put up the first business building in Independence, a rough board structure which cost $500 and could probably be built now for $75. In partnership with F. D. Irwin, who became the first postmaster of the city, he opened this store October 1st. He became president of the town company; but subsequently removed to Elk City where he continued in business for a few months. He returned to this city early in 1870 and was a member of the Board of Trustees who incorporated the town July 23d 1870, and in 1871 became the first mayor of the city. In 1874 he was appointed Deputy County Treasurer, and he continued to perform the duties of that office with universal satisfaction, under both democratic and republican treasurers, for the next eight years. So well were the people pleased with his conduct of the office, that when he himself became a candidate for treasurer in 1881, he was elected by 1,1615 majority, probably the largest ever given for a candidate in this county. He was re-elected in 1883 and served until October 1886. During the next three years he was connected for a short time with the South Kansas Tribune and then took a position in the Commercial Bank, which he held until his appointment as postmaster by President Harrison, an office to which he succeeded on December 1st of that year, holding for five months over his four years’ term, and discharging the difficult and exacting duties of the office to the entire satisfaction of all its patrons.

 

Mr. Wilson was married February 23d, 1870, to Miss Rebecca Braden, of Washington, Pa., who died on the 21st of April following at Grandview, Ills., here they were on their way to Kansas. He was again married in this city on January 30th, 1872, to Miss Morna Moore, a native of Knox county, Illinois, who died in the spring of 1889, succumbing to la grippe. Six children survive them, the eldest daughter, Zell, being married to Arthur Stewart, and residing in St. Louis. The other five Albert E., Floyd M., Sallie R., Jennie M., and George are all still at home.

 

Contributed by Mrs. Maryann Johnson a Civil war researcher and a volunteer in the Kansas Room of the Independence Public Library, Independence, Kansas

    

Midtown Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States

  

The CBS Building was built in 1961-64 as the headquarters for one of America's three historic radio and television networks. The last completed work designed by architect Eero Saarinen, it is one of New York's premier post-World-War-II-era skyscrapers and one of the country's great works of modern architecture. Saarinen's goal was to build what he called "the simplest skyscraper in New York." At the height of the popularity of the steel-cage office building, Saarinen designed the CBS Building as New York's first postwar reinforced concrete skyscraper. The 38-story tower is sheathed in dark gray granite, with gray-tinted vision glass - earning the building the sobriquet "Black Rock." When seen directly, the tower's bays appear open, with relatively narrow granite piers alternating with relatively narrow window bays of single sheets of plate glass, but when viewed from afar and necessarily at an angle, the V-shape of the piers effectively eclipses the view of the glass, creating the effect of a gray granite slab.

 

The austerity of the tower derives in part from its dark gray color and the almost complete absence of interruptions in the facades. Saarinen placed the main entrances on West 52nd and West 53rd Streets, rather than on Sixth Avenue, creating the effect of an absolutely pure granite slab on Sixth Avenue. Ground floor commercial uses are set behind the gray glass, making them barely visible from outside. Eero Saarinen died suddenly in 1961, leaving to his office the task of supervising the construction of the CBS

 

Building. Kevin Roche and John Dinkeioo, among others, oversaw the completion of the project from 1961 to 1964. The building remains the corporate headquarters of CBS.

 

DESCRIPTION AND ANALYSIS

 

William S. Paley and the Columbia Broadcasting System2

 

CBS traces its origins to the United Independent Broadcasters, a fledgling radio station network that was an early rival to NBC (the National Broadcasting Company), the network created by RCA's David Sarnoff. UIB incorporated in 1927, and, following its purchase later that year by the Columbia Phonograph Company, changed its name to the Columbia Phonograph Broadcasting System, making its radio debut on September 18. When Columbia, unenthusiastic about future prospects, sold back the broadcasting rights to UIB's owners a few months later, the sale included permission to use the "Columbia" name — hence the "Columbia Broadcasting System.7' In 1928, William S. Paley, connected by marriage to one of the company's owners, used half a million dollars from his portion of the proceeds from the sale of his family's Congress Cigar business to buy a 51 percent interest in the network. He took the title of president, and proceeded over the next half century to build CBS into one of the nation's major media conglomerates.

 

CBS's chief rival for its first several decades of existence remained the much larger NBC.3 RCA's Sarnoff initially saw NBC as a free service intended to encourage the purchase of RCA-manufactured radios. Paley, with only radio programming to sell, focused on the promotion of radio advertising and the creation of saleable programs. By the end of 1928, CBS had 47 affiliates. Highlights of CBS's growth over the following years, from tiny upstart to major network, include the creation of CBS's news department; experiments in television broadcasting as early as 1931 (the first regularly scheduled in the nation, even though almost no one could watch); putting the young Bing Crosby on the radio in 1932, opposite NBC's Amos 'n Andy; broadcasting the School of the Air to some six million children starting in 1934; initiating the Lux Radio Theater in 1935, with Helen Hayes in its first offering; in 1936 bringing the popular Major Bowes' amateur hour to the radio, as well as comedians Bums and Allen, Eddie Cantor, and Ed Wynn, while at the same time inaugurating the Columbia Workshop for serious drama, including the works of W.H. Auden, Stephen Vincent Benet, Maxwell Anderson and Edna St. Vincent Millay; and the infamous 1938 broadcast of Orson Welles' production, "War of the Worlds." During World War II, CBS emerged as a major news broadcaster, led by foreign correspondents William L. Shirer and

 

Edward R. Murrow, with Charles Collingwood reporting on D-day from the Normandy beaches.

 

After the war ended, William S. Paley became chairman of the board, while his protege Frank Stanton became president. CBS moved into television, broadcasting Arthur Godfrey, Ed Sullivan, I Love Lucy, and Walter Cronkite's series You Are There. In 1951, the CBS "eye" was developed as the network's television trademark. By the late 1950s, three decades after its founding, CBS had become firmly ensconced as a national institution. In 1966, the year following CBS's move into the new tower at 51 West 52nd Street, the corporation had over 17,000 employees, earned $64.1 million, and had net sales of over $800 million.

 

As early as 1929, while still in UIB's old offices in the Paramount Building, CBS had acquired Steinway Hall on West 57th Street for concert broadcasts.

 

Later that year, Paley arranged the move to offices at 485 Madison Avenue. As early as 1935, CBS planned a new headquarters to designs by prominent modem architect William Lescaze, but it was never built. ^By the late 1950s, however, a diversifying CBS had grown enormously, acquiring interests in record manufacturing, television sets, musical instruments, publishing and a talent agency. The network invested in theatrical productions, and for a time owned the New York Yankees baseball team. CBS operations occupied space in a number of buildings scattered around Manhattan. Paley decided that the company's rented space on Madison Avenue was neither adequate to the network's needs nor helpful to its image, and determined to build a new headquarters that could compete in architectural prestige with NBC's headquarters at Rockefeller Center. In his words: "I think we were . . . determined that if we went ahead on our own building for CBS, it would have to be of the highest aesthetic quality obtainable."4

 

Paley thought Park Avenue had "too cold a feeling," and considered Madison Avenue "too narrow to display good architecture." Nothing was available on Fifth Avenue. He found a site on the east side of Sixth Avenue between West 52nd and West 53rd Streets, just two blocks west of the network's old Madison Avenue headquarters, and a few blocks north of NBC, in an area Paley characterized as "emerging as the newest important business area in midtown."5 CBS bought the site in 1960, and hired Eero Saarinen, one of the most prestigious and best-known modem architects of the

 

day, to design the building. To PaJey, "not only was he one of this country's outstanding architects, he was also a creative artist in the deepest sense, and he won us over by the force of his personality, imagination and practicality."6

 

Eero Saarinen Associates

 

The American saga of the remarkable Saarinen family is framed by two skyscrapers, the Chicago Tribune Tower and the CBS Building. Eliel Saarinen's second-prize entry in the Chicago Tribune Tower competition of 1922 had enormous influence on subsequent skyscraper design; its critical American success helped convince the Finnish architect to bring his family, including his son Eero, to the United States. Eero Saarinen's CBS Building, the only skyscraper by either man to have been built, was completed only after its designer's untimely death, and has become recognized as one of the country's major monuments of modern skyscraper design.

 

A master architect of the mid-twentieth century, Eero Saarinen (1910-1961) was groomed from childhood to be a successful designer by his parents, textile artist Loja Gesellius Saarinen, and highly regarded international architect (Gottlieb) Eliel Saarinen (1873-1950). Eliel's early career is best remembered for his Helsinki Railroad Station (1904-c.1913, with Herman Gesellius) which successfully demonstrates his sympathies with the Arts and Crafts movement. The Saarinen family immigrated to the United States in 1923, but visited Finland annually. Eliel contributed significantly to the creation of the Cranbrook School and Academy of Art, a complex of children's schools and an advanced-level art academy, located at Bloomfield Hills, north of Detroit. Cranbrook was devoted to every field of design — textiles, metal work, architecture, and city planning. Eliel designed several buildings there, including the Cranbrook School for Boys (1924-30) and the Kingswood School for Girls (1929-30).

 

The latter project exemplifies the Arts and Crafts ideal of collaboration between the fine and applied arts: while Eliel oversaw all aspects of design, Loja designed and wove fabrics (in association with the Cranbrook Looms), Eero designed furniture, and his sister, Eva-Lisa, assisted with selecting wall and ceiling treatments.

 

During the early 1930s, Eero studied sculpture at the Parisian Academie de la Grand Chaumiere, completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts in the Beaux-A rts-oriented architecture program at Yale University, and toured Europe and Egypt on a travel fellowship, during which time he was influenced by the architecture of Erich Mendelsohn and Alvar Aalto — before joining his father's firm in 1936. Together, the Saarinens produced the much-praised Crow Island School (1939-40, with Perkins, Wheeler & Will) in Winnetka, Illinois. Eero entered many design competitions, and won several prizes. He collaborated with designer Charles O. Eames on the scheme for a molded plywood chair which won the Organic Design in Home Furnishings competition (1940-41), sponsored by the Museum of Modern Art. Recognized from that point on as an important furniture designer, Saarinen produced many designs for the Knoll furniture company, best represented by his Womb chair (1946-48) and Nos. 71 and 72 chair series (c.1956).

 

Eero Saarinen has been credited with developing the innovative "systems approach" to design; he carefully analyzed each problem, and usually relied on modern technology to find a unique form and structure to express a concept architecturally. As a result, each of his designs has a certain wholeness about it; he claimed to be concerned with the "esthetics of the whole organism" and sought an "expressive architecture, an antiassembly-Iine architecture," stating "each building should be as distinctive as each person should."8 The commission which firmly established his architectural career was the General Motors Technical Center (1945-56, with Smith, Hinchman & Grylls) in Warren, Michigan. Though the initial designs for the Center were begun in association with his father, the final scheme was largely Eero's.

 

The complex is ruled by its strictly modular design (structure, partitions, and mechanical systems are fully integrated) and features such technological innovations as neoprene window gaskets and walls of thin insulated panels sheathed in porcelainized sheet metal; the architect also added brightly colored brick surfaces and his signature element, a reflecting pool. During the GM project, the elder Saarinen died and Eero formed a successor firm', Eero Saarinen & Associates. An intensely devoted and methodical worker — he worked 365 days a year, according to his chief of design, Kevin Roche — Eero produced a number of buildings which have become American landmarks.

 

These include his Jefferson National Expansion Memorial (designed 1948, completed 1964), the famous parabolic arch in St. Louis, Missouri; the Kresge Auditorium and Chapel (1953-56, with Anderson & Beckwith), geometrically-derived enclosures highlighting different materials, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge; the David S. Ingalls Hockey Rink (1956-59), the undulating concrete roof of which expresses the exhilaration of a hockey game, at Yale University in New Haven; and two soaring reinforced concrete masterpieces associated with flight: the Trans World Airlines Flight Center9 (1956-62) at New York (now J.F.K.) International Airport — probably his most renowned design — and Dulles Airport (1958-62, with Ammann & Whitney) in Chantilly, Virginia. The last three commissions were completed after Saarinen's death in 1961, as was his other prominent New York project, the somber, granite-clad Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) Headquarters (1961-64) on Sixth Avenue between West 52nd and 53rd Streets.

 

Saarinen's buildings received extensive publicity in the press, and he was given several prestigious awards. Though many architects and architectural writers sympathetic to the International Style criticized Saarinen's work as lacking consistency, his oeuvre has withstood the test of time: by 1993, six of his designs had received the American Institute of Architects' 25-Year Award for "exemplifying] design of enduring significance." These include the Crow Island School, GM Technical Center, and Dulles Airport.10 Saarinen's successor firm, Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo Associates, founded by his colleagues, has been a significant force in American architecture during the second half of this century.

 

The CBS Building

 

Both Saarinen and Paley wanted a skyscraper that would differ from the established International Style of the 1950s represented by such New York towers as Skidmore, Owings & Merrill's Lever House and Mies van der Rohe's Seagram Building." "After all," said Saarinen's widow Aline, "that's why they came to Eero and not to Skidmore."'

 

Saarinen experimented with models showing various possible shapes for the tower, ranging from the wedding-cake profile encouraged by then existing zoning laws to various square and rectangular towers rising from a plaza.13 Saarinen eventually settled on a rectangular tower, as he wrote to Paley in March of 1961:

 

I think I now have a really good scheme for C.B.S. The design is the simplest conceivable rectangular free-standing sheer tower. The vertically of the tower is emphasized by the relief made by the triangular piers between the windows. These piers start at the pavement and soar up 424 feet. Its beauty will be, I believe, that it will be the simplest skyscraper statement in New York.14 Paley later went out to Saarinen's office in Detroit to see a model, which he at first didn't like. On a second visit, however, Paley changed his mind: "I saw what I had first thought of as austerity really came through as strong, exquisite, ageless beauty. In July, 1961 I decided to go ahead with Saarinen."15

 

John Dinkeloo later said that Saarinen had been "especially excited about this design."16 In Saarinen's words: "I wanted a building that would be a soaring thing. I think Louis Sullivan was right to want the skyscraper to be a soaring thing. I wanted a building that would stand firmly on the ground and would grow straight up. Your eyes should be led up to comprehend a building as a whole thing."17

 

After Saarinen's sudden death, Paley met with chief designer Kevin Roche, and decided to continue with the firm. Paley was an actively involved client. In the words of a contemporary critic, Eric Larrabee: "Where CBS left off and Saarinen began is now difficult to determine, especially since he was the kind of architect . . . who . . . cared less who got credit for an idea than whether his own ideas prevailed."18 Of the building's completion, Paley wrote; "Participating in the creation of Black Rock was one of the great sources of satisfaction of my life."19

 

The premise of Saarinen's design, a freestanding tower in a plaza, was bound up in changes then being proposed to New York City's zoning laws. The 1916 zoning ordinance, in effect until 1961, had encouraged progressively set-back towers. The new ordinance encouraged tall towers set back in plazas. Saarinen met with the architects and planners working out the new zoning proposal, including Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, and James Felt of the New York City Planning Commission, to explain the economics of his tower. CBS wasn't just one of the first towers to be built under the new zoning; Saarinen's designs and calculations for the tower actually helped shape the new regulations.20 In the words of New York Times architectural critic Ada Louise Huxtable, the CBS Building "set the shape and standard for New York building today."21

 

Saarinen designed the CBS Building as New York's first postwar skyscraper built of reinforced concrete.22 Instead of an internal cage, from which to hang a seemingly weightless glass curtain wall, he designed exterior walls of triangular, weight-bearing concrete piers, which together with the interior service and elevator core support the building. By using the piers, he emphasized its verticality. Instead of a flat facade, Saarinen made the concrete piers in a three-dimensional projecting triangular V-shape, with the glass recessed behind them. And instead of creating a transparent glass, shiny steel, or aluminum facade, he sheathed the concrete piers in dark gray granite, and filled in the intervening window bays with gray-tinted vision glass. Instead of the illusion of a glass box, he created the illusion of a slab of dark granite — earning the building the sobriquet "Black Rock."

 

The five-foot widths of piers and window bays tied into the modular design of the entire structure. Each entrance on West 52nd and 53rd Street fit into one bay, and was planned with revolving doors, which required a minimum of five feet. Five-foot modules also met the needs of then standard office furniture arrangements.23 The precise dimensions of pier and window were carefully adjusted. Roche did a series of mock-ups of the proposed building in New Rochelle, New York, and Paley wrote he "must have gone out to New Rochelle at least thirty times to study the various mock-ups . . . when Roche, Stanton and I went out to look at [the mock-up], we realized that the difference between the window area and the column area was not right. Your eye could tell you that. We started then to change it. We got down to talking about a quarter of an inch or a sixteenth of an inch. We must have put up five or six different-sized mock-ups before we finally got it right."24

 

The use of dark gray granite was proposed by Saarinen, but the final selection was made by his successors. His widow suggested that Saarinen was thinking of executives in dark gray suits.25 Dinkeioo believed that dark stone projected strength better than glass.26 Saarinen himself wrote: "A dark building seemed more quiet and dignified and appropriate to this site."27 Paley recalls deciding in favor of true granite after rejecting a synthetic version, because "in the long run it would be worth it. The building would be built to last a hundred years. Granite would retain its beauty as long as the building stood." After examining granite from Africa, Japan, Norway, Sweden, Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, and the United States, they settled on Canadian Black granite from the Robitaille family quarry in Alma, Quebec.28

 

Saarinen's triangular piers and modular design created a three-dimensional study in architectural illusion. From directly across Sixth Avenue, for example, the tower's bays appear open, with five- foot-wide granite piers alternating with five-foot-wide window bays of single sheets of plate glass. When viewed from afar and necessarily at an angle, the V-shape of the piers effectively eclipses the view of the glass, creating the effect of a gray granite slab. The bays of any of the building's four sides thus appear to open directly in front of a viewer but appear to close up like a vertical Venetian blind to the right or left. As the viewer walks along the sidewalk, the bays appear to open and close in succession, rather like an accordion (as contemporary critics remarked). This optical effect was described by one contemporary writer as "trompe l'oeil,"29 and by another as "op-arch."30 Saarinen, describing the effect in motion, wrote: "We had learned the way a changing relief gives life to a facade."31

 

The austerity of the CBS Building derives in part from the almost complete absence of interruptions in the facades. There are no setbacks. The main entrances on the side streets are through doors set discreetly within bays and integrated into the facade's design. Saarinen created the effect of a pure glass and granite slab on Sixth Avenue. The commercial spaces at the ground floor, set behind gray glass, are rendered practically invisible from outside, with very discreet signage.32

 

Though he put the CBS Building in a sunken plaza, Saarinen tried in some measure to respect the street wall of Sixth Avenue, keeping the plaza small and siting the tower a little off-center. In the architect's words:

 

We tried to place the building on the site so that we could have a plaza and still not destroy the street line. A tower should not be tied in with lower street buildings. It should stand alone with air and light around it. A plaza is a very necessary thing in a city. It lets people sit in the sun and look at the sky. A plaza allows a building to be seen. Our buildings should be seen, because they are monuments of our time. But ... we have to remember the street line and we have to remember the space between is as important as the towers. These arrangements should be orderly and beautiful.33

 

Critical Reaction

 

CBS staff started moving into the new building at the end of 1964.34 That same year, the Architectural League of New York cited the building as one of eight recent CBS projects across the country built to high architectural standards, and

 

awarded a medal to CBS president Frank Stanton for "significant contributions and effective encouragement of the role of the arts in business and industry."35 Reporting on the award, the New York Times wrote: "Seeking to promote its corporate image, Columbia insisted on high architectural standards and employed some of the country's leading architects to achieve them."36

 

The following year, CBS won a Bronze Plaque from New York's Municipal Art Society for "an outstanding example of architecture befitting the city of New York." Stanton, accepting the award, explained: "The things we build should be beautiful for no better reason than man has created them as part of his work and places them beside the creation of nature as part of his life. The only goal for men who build should be to make nothing that is less than beautiful. In planning for the building, the one controlling idea from the outset was that we wanted a building actively, insistently, inexorably on the cutting edge in the evolution of the skyscraper."37

 

Critical reaction has varied somewhat, but the CBS Building has been generally accepted as one of New York's premier post-World-War-II-era skyscrapers and one of the country's great works of modern architecture. Even before its completion, the Times wrote that, "if buildings were rated like television programs, the Columbia Broadcasting System would have a new hit."38

 

The CBS Building represented a departure from the International Style, and some critics didn't understand that. Some thought that the building's piers did not explicitly express their function — an important concept in International Style design — because they didn't narrow towards the top (where they supported less weight than at the bottom).39 Yet others praised the piers as "directly expressed from plaza to sky, rather than concealed behind curtain walls as in neighboring office buildings."40 Similarly, Saarinen's biographer, Allan Temko, writing in 1962, faulted the tower for not growing "visually more open and light as it rises," and commented that though it had a plaza, the plaza was "scarcely more than a protective border for the freestanding tower, and is in no sense a real civic space."41 Temko opined that if Saarinen had had the opportunity to design additional skyscrapers, they would have overcome such weaknesses, making his untimely death "one of the cultural disasters of modern times."

 

Critic Bethami Probst, unhappy that the tower didn't "soar," compared it unfavorably with the Seagram Building ("If Seagram is the Rolls Royce of recent skyscrapers, CBS must be content with

 

being in the Bentley class (which is by no means bad)"). Nevertheless, in the critic's final judgment, "CBS is a building to be reckoned with, a powerful, brooding presence."43

 

David Jacobs described the impact of the opening-closing facades on a "fascinated" public: "They stroll back and forth, walk slowly then quickly, back and forth again, playing peek-a-boo." Though he found the CBS Building "impersonal and forbidding, and from close by, downright overwhelming," he noted that European cathedrals were overwhelming too, and he judged the building "a marvelous contribution to the city of New York, a splendid monument to the business of communications and the art of architecture."43

 

Ada Louise Huxtable, writing in 1966, thought the public was less favorable to the building than the critics: "The dark dignity that appeals to architectural sophisticates puts off the public, which tends to reject it as funereal," ascribing this fault to the corruption of "the public eye" which "takes bright and shiny as synonymous with new and good." Huxtable herself judged CBS "a building, in the true, classic sense: a complete design in which technology, function and esthetics are conceived and executed integrally for its purpose." She faulted the building's interior for being out of character with the exterior (it was not designed by Saarinen or his successor firm), but ultimately found the CBS Building a "first-rate work of architecture" and "an extraordinarily impressive structure."44

 

Description

 

The CBS Building is a freestanding, 38-story reinforced-concrete tower, sheathed in dark gray granite and gray-tinted vision glass, rising straight up 490 feet without setbacks. The tower, with a 135-foot by 160-foot footprint, is placed within a sunken plaza that occupies the entire western end of the block bounded by Fifth and Sixth Avenues and West 52nd and 53rd Streets on a site that is 200 feet-10 inches by 216 feet-10 inches. The tower occupies approximately 60 percent of the plaza's area and is set slightly towards the east. The plaza is set five steps (approximately three and a half feet) below the sidewalk level at Sixth Avenue, six steps below on West 52nd Street, seven steps below on West 53rd Street, and slopes downward to the east.

 

The building is rectangular in plan, with twelve bays on the eastern and western facades and fifteen bays on the wider northern and southern facades. Each facade is composed of five-foot-wide piers faced in "Canadian Black" granite flanking large, five-foot-wide panes of glass framed in bronze-

 

finished aluminum. The windows are 19 feet-10 inches high on the ground floor above bronze-finished aluminum sills, and nine feet high on the upper floors. At the first level above the ground floor, instead of glass the bays contain grilles.

 

The profile of each pier is a projecting triangular or V-shape; at each of the building's four corners the "V"s meet to form double-width piers, creating the effect of chamfered corners. Ground floor commercial uses behind gray glass are rendered practically invisible from outside.

 

There is no entrance to the CBS Building on Sixth Avenue. The building has fourteen ground floor entrances, seven on both West 52nd and West 53rd Streets. The entrances, containing three door types, are fitted unobtrusively into the narrow bays.

 

The entrances in the seven central bays on the West 52nd Street side are arranged as follows from west to east: 1) A single-door entry, flanked by sidelights, providing entrance to the commercial space; above it is a simple, modestly projecting light box. 2) A double-door entry with a simple, modestly projecting light box above. 3, 4, 5) Each has a revolving door with a simple, modestly projecting light box above with the raised letters "CBS." 6) A double-door entry with a simple, modestly projecting light box above. 7) A double-door entry with a simple, modestly projecting light box above, serving as entrance to a restaurant; there is a second simple, modestly projecting light box above, at the top of the bay. Discreet lettering on several windows identifies the restaurant. The single doors, double doors, revolving doors and their housings, and projecting light boxes are all of the same bronze-finished aluminum.

 

There are seven entrances and one window bay in the central bays on the West 53rd Street side, arranged as follows from west to east: 1) A double-door entry to the commercial space, with a simple, modestly projecting light box. 2) A double-door entry with a simple, modestly projecting light box above. 3, 4, 5) Revolving-door entrances with simple, modestly projecting light boxes above with the raised letters "CBS." 6) A double-door entry with a simple, modestly projecting light box above. 7) A window of the restaurant, with a simple, modestly projecting light box above it and

 

an additional simple, modestly projecting light box at the top of the bay. 8) A double-door entrance to the restaurant, with an angled projecting marquee with backlit letters indicating the restaurant's name, "China Grill."

 

The material of the doors and light boxes is the same as that used on West 52nd Street.

 

At the east elevation, the ground floor bays are as follows from south to north: 1, 2, 3) Glass windows. 4, 5, 6) Bronze-finished aluminum with a double door. 7) Bronze-finished aluminum with a grille. 8) Bronze-finished aluminum. 9) A glass double door, with bronze-finished aluminum above. 10,11,12) Glass windows for the restaurant. There are simple, modestly projecting light boxes in the 2nd, 5th, 8th and 11th bays.

 

The plaza is paved in a gray granite slightly lighter than that on the building's piers. The plaza is sunken below street level, forming a gray granite retaining wall with parapets and vertical slits on the inside faces. Wide steps lead down to the plaza from each street side; a narrower staircase with eight steps leads down to the plaza from the east.

 

Each set of steps has two freestanding bronze-finished aluminum railings. A ramp (not original) with a dark bronze-finished aluminum handrail has been added to the steps from West 52nd Street. The ends of the parapets above the retaining walls have polished bronze letters and numerals (replacements of the original) flanking the steps: "CBS" on Sixth Avenue, "51" for the address on West 52nd Street, and "52" for the address on West 53rd Street.

 

Planters with trees have been placed in the plaza, planters with bushes have been placed on the parapets of the retaining wall. At the eastern end of the plaza, the retaining wall has been enlarged, and includes a wheelchair-access ramp (a later addition), and a staircase leading down to a "messenger entrance." A portion of the tax lot has been excluded from the Landmark Site and has been re-landscaped as part of the plaza for the adjacent building to the east.

 

- From the 1997 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report

from my tumblr blog

As seen at Bay to Breakers 2017, San Francisco, California.

Full set here Previously: [2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012 | 2011]

Map of 1930s Cleveland, Ohio, showing the locations where the first, second, fifth, and seventh victims of the Cleveland Torso Murderer were found.

 

Each red dot indicates the number in which the victim was killed (not the order in which they were found). Sometimes, victims were found in more than one spot, so "A", "B", and "C" are used to indicate the order.

 

* * * * * * *

 

The Third Victim

 

On January 26, 1936, an intoxicated homelss man named Tawa Yosaf walked through the back yard of the Hart Manufacturing Building at 2315 E. 20th Street at about 6 AM. He saw two bushel baskets against the wall of the building, and inspected them. Inside, he found what he thought were hams wrapped in burlap. He moved on. At 11 AM, an African American woman told Charles Page, owner of the White Front Meat Market, that two hams had been left behind the Hart building. Thinking his shop had been burglarized, Page rushed to the scene and discovered the lower half of a human torso, two thighs, and a right arm and hand.

 

The skin of the body was impregnated with cinders and coal dust, and the torso bore marks of having lain on pieces of coal when it froze. Each body part was wrapped neatly in copies of "The Plain Dealer" newspaper, and her clean cotton underwear was found wrapped in newspaper nearby.

 

Fingerprints identified the woman as 41-year-old Florence Pollilo, a local prostitute and barmaid. She had last been seen leaving her rooming house in the early evening of January 24.

 

At 5:30 PM on February 7, 1936, trucking company employee John Gaembeline walked across the back yard of a vacant house at 1419 Orange Avenue on his way to run an errand. In a shallow depression in the earth, he discovered the upper half of Pollilo's torso, covered in charcoal, chicken feathers, and hay. At the fence at the rear of the property were her lower legs and left arm and hand. The head was not found.

 

Decapitated after death, police believed Pollilo's body had been hung up by its feet to allow blood to drain from the neck. While the killer had methodically dismembered the lower torso, he had barely begun cutting off the arms before he wrenched them from the sockets and tore them loose from the body.

 

She was the third victim, and the third body found.

‎WESTLAKE - It took nearly 150 ‪Los Angeles‬ ‪Firefighters‬ nearly two and a half hours to extinguish a major emergency fire in a vacant 2 story office building west of downtown Los Angeles Monday evening.

 

The Los Angeles Fire Department was summoned at 7:01 PM on June 13, 2016 to a structure fire at 2411 West 8th Street in the Westlake neighborhood not far from MacArthur Park. LAFD responders arrived quickly to find intense fire on the upper floor of a long vacant 14,351 square-foot two story office building, the site of previous blazes.

 

Firefighters used ground ladders to assist several imperiled persons at windows of the burning structure, with LAFD responders entering the building to performing the rescue of three others.

 

While extending hoselines to aggressively battle the flames within, LAFD crews sadly discovered and retrieved a dead man from the inferno, before the failing structure forced then to switch to defensive exterior operations twenty minutes into the firefight.

 

A total of 147 LAFD personnel under the command of Battalion Chief Jaime Moore, confined the blaze to the heavily damaged building of fire origin - which had no functional fire sprinklers, extinguishing the bulk of flame in just 2 hours and 22 minutes.

 

As a result of witnesses statements, Los Angeles Police Department Officers later detained and arrested an adult male suspected of starting the fire. He and one of the persons earlier rescued by firefighters, were taken to an area hospital by ambulance for evaluation of non-life threatening injuries.

 

With the flames extinguished well past darkness, firefighters remained at the structurally unsound premises to douse hotspots, prevent public harm and prepare for a further search at daybreak.

 

Early Tuesday, investigation teams from the LAFD Arson/Counter-Terrorism Section methodically processed the large and still-smoldering site to determine the fire's cause and origin, as highly-trained Human Remains Detection Dog and Handler teams performed a relentless search of the collapsed structure for deceased victims.

 

With the canines' help, firefighters discovered the remains of four adult victims, two men and two women, amid the rubble on the second floor of the building. Their discovery, combined with the male victim found deceased by firefighters battling the blaze, brought the death tally to five, all of whom appeared to be transients.

 

No firefighters sustained injury in the firefight, investigation or recovery operations.

 

A positive identification of the dead persons, to include the cause, time and manner of their death will be determined by the Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner-Coroner.

 

© Photo by Mike Meadows

 

LAFD Incident: 061316-1267

 

Connect with us: LAFD.ORG | News | Facebook | Instagram | Reddit | Twitter: @LAFD @LAFDtalk

www.phaselis.org/en/about/about-project

Phaselis Research

 

Phaselis

 

When compared with the previous period of research on the history of the city over the past quarter century it has undergone radical changes. While modern scientists follow the path of their predecessors in collecting data through systematic processes and methodically analysing them, they change the route whereby they approach the city as a context- and a process-oriented structure, having economic, social, cultural, political and environmental dimensions which come together at different levels.

 

This considerably more inclusive definition expands the discipline concerning the city’s historical research, which consists of archaeology, epigraphy, ancient history and the other ancillary sciences and it encourages scientists from the natural and health sciences to participate within these studies. This is because in the course of the exploration of an ancient settlement the study of both the environment and the ecological setting which make human life possible; together with health issues, such as diet and epidemics, form the context within which human beings live, and which are thereby as important as the human actors.

 

Within the context of the planned Phaselis Research, even certain knowledge such as the settlement’s appearing on the stage of history as a favorite break-point with its three natural harbours, it being famous for its roses, the frequent seismic upheavals at sea and on its shores and its citizens leaving their homes because of a devastating malaria epidemic suggest the necessity of the application of this multi-dimensional research methodology in order to understand more fully the historical adventure of this city.

 

By presenting this research project, we aim to implement and realize this multi-dimensional research method, which as yet lacks widespread application in the field in our country, however conceptually and practically with a multi-disciplinary research team consisting of both national and international scientists, we intend to register systematically every kind of data/information regarding all contexts of the city employing modern methods and to present the results to the scientific world in the form of regular reports and monographic studies, thus forming a strong tie between past and future research.

 

Phaselis Territorium

 

The boundaries of the ancient city of Phaselis’ territorium are today within the administrative borders of the township of Tekirova, in Kemer District, determined from the archaeological, epigraphic and historical-geographical evidence, reaching the Gökdere valley to the north, continue on a line drawn from Üç Adalar to Mount Tahtalı to the south and extend along the Çandır valley to the west.

 

Phaselis was discovered in 1811-1812 by Captain F. Beaufort during his work of charting the southern coastline of Asia Minor for the British Royal Navy. Beaufort drew Phaselis’ plan and in the course of conducting his cartographic studies, he saw the word Φασηλίτης ethnikon on the inscriptions and consequently identified these ruins with Phaselis. C. R. Cockerell, the English architect, archaeologist and author came to Phaselis by ship and met Beaufort there. Then in 1838 C. Fellows, the English archaeologist visited the city. He found the fragments of the dedicatory inscription over the monumental gate built in honour of the Emperor Hadrianus and mistakenly thought the Imperial Period main street was the stadion due to the seats-steps on either side of the street. In 1842 Lt. T. A. B. Spratt, the English hydrographer and geographer, and the Rev. E. Forbes, the naturalist came to Phaselis via the Olympos and Khimaira routes. Due to the fact that they all came by sea and they only stayed for a short time, their descriptions of the topography inland are without detailed and there are serious errors in orientation.

 

PhaselisThose researchers who visited Phaselis between the late 19th and the early 20th centuries concentrated primarily upon the discovery of inscriptions. In 1881-1882 while the Austrian archaeologist and the epigraphist O. Benndorf, the founder of the Austrian Archaeological Institute, and his team were conducting research in southwestern Asia Minor, they examined Phaselis. In the winter of 1883 and 1884 F. von Luschan from the Austrian team took the first photographs which provide information concerning the regional features of Phaselis’ shoreline. In the same year the French scientist V. Bérard also visited Phaselis. In 1892 the members of the Austrian research team, O. Benndorf, E. Kalinka and their colleagues continued their architectural, archaeological and epigraphical studies in Phaselis. In 1904 they were followed by D. G. Hogarth, R. Norton and A. W. van Buren from the British research team. In 1908 the Austrian classical philologist E. Kalinka visited the settlement again, collected epigraphic documents and conducted research on the history of city (published in TAM II in 1944). The Italian researchers R. Paribeni and P. Romanelli visited Phaselis in1913 and C. Anti in 1921. Anti returned to Antalya overland and in consequence discovered several epigraphs and the ruins of structures within the territorium of Phaselis.

 

Further archaeological, epigraphical and historical-geographical studies of Phaselis were conducted by the English researchers F. M. Stark and G. Bean, who came to the region after World War II. In 1968 H. Schläger, the German architect and underwater archaeologist began exploring the topographical and architectural structures of Phaselis’s harbours. After Schläger’s death in 1969, the research was conducted under the leadership of the archaeologist J. Schäfer in 1970. H. Schläger, J. Schäfer and their colleagues obtained important data concerning the architecture and history of Phaselis through the surface exploration of the city and its periphery. Following the excavations conducted along the main axial street of the city, in 1980 under the direction of Kayhan Dörtlük, the then Director of the Antalya Museum and between 1981-1985 under the leadership of the archaeologist Cevdet Bayburtluoğlu; underwater exploration was carried out in the South Harbour under the direction of Metin Pehlivaner, the then Director of the Antalya Museum.

  

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phaselis

 

Chinatown, Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States

 

Completed in 1902, the Bowery Bank of New York is the earliest surviving building by the architectural firm of York & Sawyer in New York City. Located at the northwest corner of the Bowery and Grand Street, it is flanked on both sides by the former Bowery Savings Bank, a designated Landmark that was constructed during the years when both York and Sawyer were employed by the building’s architect, McKim Mead & White. While the neighboring facades are distinguished by massive pediments and Corinthian columns that suggest an ancient Roman temple, the straightforward monumentality of the Bowery Bank expressed its function as a modern place of work. The New York Daily Tribune praised the building when it opened,

 

saying it “ranks with the best of our modern New York banks.” Edward P. York and Philip Sawyer formed their partnership in 1898 and the light-colored, marble street elevations display features associated with the City Beautiful movement and the Beaux Arts style, including a rusticated base, segmental-arched windows, and a substantial fourth-story cornice embellished with copper cresting that lines up with its neighbor. Such sturdy classical elements would have been visible to passengers traveling on the elevated railway, which served the Bowery from 1878 to 1955.

 

A second entrance, at the west end of the Grand Street facade, serves the upper floor offices that were leased by the bank to outside tenants. During the first decades of the 20th century, York & Sawyer enjoyed great professional success, designing approximately 50 bank buildings, many of which are designated Landmarks.

 

The Bowery National Bank was founded by flour merchant William R. Foster and Richard Hamilton in 1865. It was renamed the Bowery Bank of New York in 1889. After three-and-a-half decades at the corner of Canal Street, the bank moved to this location in 1902 and welcomed depositors until 1925, when it merged with the East River National Bank. As part of a subsequent merger it became part of the National City Bank of New York, a precursor to Citibank. In 1992, the building was sold and the lowest floors were converted to retail space. The first-story windows were enlarged, creating street level entrances and storefronts.

 

Despite alterations and the installation of multiple canopies, most of the original classical detail survives, especially at the upper cornices and around the windows. An early commission by one of the New York City’s leading architectural firms, this simple yet monumental structure is a major example of early 20th-century bank architecture.

 

Site

 

The Bowery is one of Manhattan’s oldest streets, dating to the early 17th century. Under Dutch rule, this former Native American trail became known as the Bouwrij road because it provided access to various farms (called bouweries) and country estates north of New Amsterdam. Later known as the Post Road, following the War of Independence the Bowery developed rapidly, with rows of brick-fronted Federal style houses, such as the Edward Mooney House at 18 Bowery (1785-89, a designated Landmark) stretching from today’s Chinatown to Cooper Square in the East Village.

 

As wealthier residents moved farther uptown in the mid-19th century, the Bowery became an increasingly commercial thoroughfare, attracting a mixture of specialty shops, dry goods stores and hardware businesses, such as John P. Jube & Company at 97 Bowery (1869, a designated Landmark). After the Civil War, however, the street was known for cheap and tawdry amusements, with new buildings and older structures functioning as music halls, theaters, bars and beer halls. In 1878, the Third Avenue elevated railway began to serve the Bowery, connecting South Ferry in Lower Manhattan with East Harlem. A single track ran above each side of the street, close to the sidewalk, casting shadows across neighboring buildings and, until the trains were electrified in 1903, occasional cinders onto pedestrians.

 

The Bowery Bank of New York stands at the northwest corner of Grand Street, where stairs on the street’s north side provided access to railway platforms until 1955. Grand Street was originally known as the “Road to Crown Point,” which would later be called Corlears Point or Corlears Hook. Connecting the Bowery to the East River, this route was extended west by order of the Common Council in 1819, establishing one of Manhattan’s earliest, uninterrupted east- west links. Grand Street would become a much-traveled cross-town route, served by the Williamsburg and Hoboken ferries.

 

Many banks were active along the Bowery during the 19th century. At this corner, the earliest was the Butchers and Drovers Bank, founded in 1830 by members of the cattle trade. In 1834, they erected a “dignified old-fashioned granite bank and office” at 124 Bowery. That same year, the Bowery Savings Bank was established at 128 Bowery. A former two-story residence, it was loaned to the new bank by the Butchers and Drovers Bank and was later replaced by a three-story Italianate structure at 128-30 Bowery in 1853, and by the current L- shaped structure in 1893-95 (a designated Landmark and Interior Landmark). At the southwest corner of Grand Street was the Oriental Bank. Founded on East Broadway in c. 1853, it moved to this location in the 1860s and was active until bankruptcy in 1908. It was replaced by a new building erected for the Chatham & Phenix Bank (later the Manufacturers Trust Company) in 1922.

 

The Bowery Bank of New York

 

The Bowery Bank of New York was founded by William R. Foster and Richard Hamilton in 1865. Numerous small commercial banks opened in New York City following passage of the National Banking Acts in 1863 and 1864. The main goal of this legislation was to generate cash to finance the Civil War and to create uniform bank notes backed with bonds issued through the U.S. Treasury. In addition, a 10% tax was levied on notes issued by state banks, encouraging both new and existing banks to join the national system.

 

For six decades, the bank was active at three successive locations on the Bowery. Initially, the Bowery National Bank was located at 60 Bowery, at the south corner of Canal Street. The following year, it settled at 62 Bowery, where it remained for three-and-a-half decades. Foster was known as a successful flour merchant, who was associated with several New York City insurance companies. He was described as a “methodical, precise calculating man of unquestioned integrity.” In January 1889, the Bowery National Bank closed and joined the state banking system as the Bowery Bank of New York. Investors included C.W. Field, A.C. Benedict, R.W. Hendrickson, George E. Mott, B.A. Trowbridge and A.R. Nostrand. Following Foster’s death in 1890, John S. Foster, his son, joined the board of directors and served as the bank’s president from 1898 until his death in 1914.

 

The Bowery Bank of New York Building occupies a 50 by 100 parcel. In 1901, property values in this area of the Bowery were described as “low” and the decision to invest here was viewed as a “bright” sign. By October 1899, rumors were circulating that negotiations had begun to acquire the corner lot. A Bowery Bank publication later reported:

 

Indeed came the opportunity, almost at once and far sooner than expected or hoped for, of purchasing the very parcel of ground which had been for some time decided upon as the one best suited for the erection of a permanent building; one which should be adequate to the needs of the bank and its patrons, long since demanded.

 

York & Sawyer submitted its plans (NB 1020-1900) for a 24 by 100 foot marble and granite fireproof structure to the Buildings Department in October 1900. With the purchase of the adjoining store-and-dwelling building at 126 Bowery in June 1901, the scheme was substantially enlarged, doubling the width of the Bowery facade to approximately 50 feet.

 

The bank opened in April 1902 and the Buildings Department described construction as completed by August 1902. Marc Eidlitz & Son acted as general contractor. Otto M. Eidlitz (1860-1928) had joined his father’s firm in 1881 and was probably responsible for overseeing construction of the Bowery Bank, as well as other notable turn of the 20th century buildings, such as the St. Regis Hotel (1901-04), the B. Altman Department Store (1905-13) and the American Telephone and Telegraph Building (1912-16), all designated Landmarks.

 

York & Sawyer

 

York & Sawyer was a leading architectural firm in New York City in the early decades of the 20th century. Among the many buildings the firm designed in Manhattan and Brooklyn, the Bowery Bank of New York is the earliest to survive. At the time of this building’s construction, the firm’s office was located at 156 Fifth Avenue (part of Ladies’ Mile Historic District), at the northwest corner of 20th Street. Specializing in neo-classical design, they produced a wide variety of buildings inspired by French, Italian, English and early American sources.

 

Edward P. York (1865-1928) was the son of a banker. He studied architecture at Cornell University from 1887 to 1889 and spent the next eight years in the office of McKim Mead & White, as personal assistant to Stanford White, chief designer of the neighboring Bowery Savings Bank. His partner, Philip Sawyer (1869-1949), was trained as an engineer. After a brief stint with McKim Mead & White in 1891, he left to study at the Ecole de Beaux Arts in Paris during 1892, where he worked in the Symbolist painter Odilon Redon’s atelier. Sawyer traveled extensively throughout Europe and his drawings were said to demonstrate a strong interest in the monuments of classical antiquity. He rejoined McKim Mead & White’s office in 1894.

 

York & Sawyer formed their partnership in mid-1898. They shared a strong interest in the architecture of the Italian Renaissance and four of the firm’s five partners, including Lindley Murray Franklin (1875-1960) and Lewis Ayres (1874-1947), had previously worked together with McKim Mead & White. York reportedly managed the office and helped secure clients, while Sawyer worked closely with staff members to shape individual projects. Rockefeller Hall (1898) at Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York, was the firm’s first independent project, awarded while York and Sawyer were still employed by McKim Mead & White. Royal Cortissoz, an art critic, described impact of their first building: “They won it and from that time on commissions flowed in an unbroken stream. Fortune always smiled. Work was a happiness.”

 

The Bowery Bank of New York was their second or third bank commission, following the Franklin Bank for Savings, which stood at the southeast corner of Eighth Avenue and 42nd Street until 1974. Completed in 1901, the Franklin Bank’s facade displayed bold decorative elements, including rusticated stonework and soaring round-arched windows. During this period, York & Sawyer also designed Riggs National Bank (1899-1902) in Washington, D.C., the North American Trust (1901) in Havana, Cuba, and the National Commercial Bank (1903-5) in Albany, New York. Though banks were a specialty, they also built significant institutional structures, including numerous hospitals, municipal bath houses and private clubs. In addition to such New York City Landmarks as the New-York Historical Society (1903-08), the Brooklyn Trust Company (1913-16), the Federal Reserve Bank (1919-24), the Bowery Savings Bank (1923), the Greenwich Savings Bank (1922-24), and the Central Savings Bank (1926-28); York & Sawyer also designed the Republican Club of New York (1904) on West 40th Street, the Pershing Square Building (1922) at Park Avenue and 42nd Street, the Royal Bank of Canada in Montreal (1928), the First National Bank of Boston (1928), the New York Athletic Club (1929) on Central Park South, and the Department of Commerce (1932) in Washington D.C.

 

Design

 

For York & Sawyer, the site posed a unique challenge. As former employees of McKim Mead & White, they wanted to show respect for the Bowery Savings Bank, which adjoins the corner site on both sides, as well as satisfying their client’s need for a handsome and practical banking and office structure. A sophisticated work of classical design, the Bowery Bank of New York simultaneously dominates the intersection and complements the impressive facades of its neighbor. While the 1895 building has massive pediments and Corinthian columns that suggest an ancient Roman temple, the straightforward monumentality of the Bowery Bank expresses its function as a modern workplace. Furthermore, by using similar materials and neo-classical forms, York & Sawyer hoped to give this busy downtown intersection a more dignified character.

 

The Bowery Bank’s design was influenced by the City Beautiful movement and the Beaux Arts style. These convergent classical modes dominated American architecture at the start of the 20th century. The City Beautiful movement emerged in the 1890s, following the World’s Columbian Exposition (1893) in Chicago, which had pavilions by major New York City architects, such as McKim Mead & White and Richard Morris Hunt. The group of white stucco structures in the Court of Honor attracted considerable attention, influencing the style and palette of many subsequent American buildings, especially in urban centers. Numerous architects, such as Warren & Wetmore and Ernest Flagg, studied at the Ecole de Beaux Arts during this period, bringing home a Modern French sensibility that emphasized the use of abstracted classical forms. Sawyer briefly attended the legendary Paris school, and its influence is felt in the building’s squat roof, arcaded windows, oversized corbels and large cornices.

 

By the start of the 20th century, New York City had solidified its position as the center of American finance. Many banks were concentrated in the vicinity of Wall Street but there were

also offices on major thoroughfares and in commercial districts. Bank design and imagery had gradually evolved through a succession of architectural styles during the second half of the 19th century, from Italianate and French Second Empire to Classical Revival, which was especially popular in the years leading up to the First World War. The earliest examples that survive in New York City are the Italianate style Hanover Bank (1852-53) in Lower Manhattan, the Second Empire style Metropolitan Savings Bank (1867) at 9 East 7th Street, and the Kings County Savings Bank (1868) in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. In the vicinity of the Bowery Bank, such designated Landmarks include the Italianate style Bond Street Savings Bank (1873) and the Germania Savings Bank (1898-99), a Classical Revival building at the northwest corner of Spring Street.

 

Five stories tall, the Bowery Bank is a neo-classical structure of monumental proportions. Faced with white South Dover marble, the rusticated base (with a pink Milford granite water table) has large segmental arched window openings trimmed with elaborate keyed surrounds. Many earlier banks, especially ones built during the Renaissance era in Italy and the Bank of England (John Soane, built 1788-1833), incorporated rusticated stonework on the lower floors but the Bowery Bank incorporates stone bands of alternating length that are part of the window and door surrounds. There is relatively little carved stone detail, except above the original entrance on the Bowery and the second-story windows, as well as embellishing the fourth-story cornice. The relative absence of ornament was a deliberate choice: it gave the bank a strong presence on a crowded and slightly chaotic commercial thoroughfare and its details were positioned to increase visibility from the sidewalks and the elevated railway.

 

Whereas both entrances to McKim Mead & White’s former Bowery Savings Bank are massive and somewhat cavernous, the Bowery Bank has mostly unornamented expanses of pinkish white marble walls that were composed to suggest pilasters. Little shadow is cast by these elements, allowing the elevations to glow softly on a sunny day. Because the first story originally sat in the shadow of the elevated railway, most of the ornament was concentrated around the bank entrance or near the top of the facade. At the base, each window was set high on the wall, probably above the average person’s line of sight, with bronze grilles (removed by the 1930s) to create a sense of privacy. Centered below each window was a shallow rectangular element with a vertical slit. Sometimes called a rifle slit, it recalls an architectural element that was found in medieval forts and some Renaissance palaces. The bank entrance, located in the right (south) bay of the Bowery facade, was treated similarly to the window openings and was crowned by a shallow second-story balcony. This architectural feature was supported at either end by pairs of oversized corbels encrusted with hanging garlands.

 

The upper windows align with those on the first story. While the deep second story windows are framed with marble and have small pediments - a possible reference to the Bowery Savings Bank - the third and fourth story windows are set into wide double height bays with metal ornamentation (now painted) that include rosettes, Greek key meanders, and the bank’s initials, set inside a ring of acanthus leaves. At the top of the fourth story, facing the Bowery, is a large cartouche. Set between the windows, this architectural feature identified the original owner with mirror image letter Bs and a single “NY.” A plaque, later replaced by metal lettering, was installed between the windows on the second floor.

 

To draw attention to the upper stories, York & Sawyer employed a pair of cornices. The lower cornice is aligned with the cresting at the top of the Bowery Savings Bank. This impressive decorative element also gives emphasis to the Bowery Bank’s fifth story which stands a full floor higher than its neighbor. Each design is distinct; while the lower cornice is supported by corbels of different size, including some that extend down and serve a dual function as keystones, the upper cornice has dentil moldings that crown the multi-story piers. The most conspicuous feature they share is copper cresting, with upright acanthus leaves at the top of the fourth story and small circular finials on the fifth. The Grand Street facade is divided into five bays. Similar to the Bowery facade, the last (west) bay contains the entrance to the office floors. When the building first opened, to the right of the steps was a “tiny bronze door” that could be opened by watchmen to inspect the basement vaults, which were kept lighted throughout the night.

 

At the time of completion, many decorative features were bronze. These elements were manufactured by the J.B. & J.M. Cornell Co. at Eleventh Avenue and 26th Street. At the entrance to the bank were originally two 12-foot-tall lighting fixtures set between a single wide step on stone pedestals. Each fixture was illuminated by a cluster of glass globes. There was also a pair of bronze doors surmounted by a horizontal panel with the bank’s name in metal capital letters and vertical grilles that were similar to the screens installed on some or all of the first-story windows. A similar metal was also used on a railing that enclosed the steps that led to the engine rooms in the basement. Probably located on Grand Street, it reportedly cost $1,000 and was “so placed that hundreds of passersby will brush against it every day.”

 

History of the Bowery Bank of New York Building

 

When the Bowery Bank opened in April 1902, the $500,000 structure was praised. The New York Times reported:

 

In the new building, which is designed by York & Sawyer, is seen an outlay of elegant fittings and mural decorations, such as no other bank in the city can boast, and it is claimed by officials that this is the finest banking building in the United States.

 

The New York Daily Tribune similarly observed that it “ranks with the best of our modern New York banks.” The interior, not part of the designation and most probably destroyed, had walls faced with Norwegian marble. Elmer E. Garnsey, a painter who provided murals for many early 20th century public interiors, decorated the ceiling. At the rear of the banking hall was the Director’s Office, paneled with mahogany. Above the banking floor were four stories of business offices. The entrance was located at 230 Grand Street. From a small marble lobby, tenants could reach these offices using stairs or a single elevator. Lighting was “either gas or electricity” and floors could be “divided to suit tenants,” who would include various architects, builders, insurance agents and, during the 1910s, the Federation of American Zionists, publisher of the Maccabean, a monthly magazine.

 

In 1925, Amadeo Giannini, the American founder of the Bank of America, and the Bancaitaly Corporation, allied with the Bank d’Italia, purchased the Bowery Bank of New York. At the time of the merger, the Bowery Bank had more than $6 million in assets and was described as “one of the smaller institutions operating under the state charter,” while the East River National Bank, a subsidiary of Bancaitaly, had multiple branches in Brooklyn. The bank prospered during the late 1920s, opening additional offices in the Bronx and Brooklyn. As part of a subsequent merger, it became a branch of the National City Bank of New York in November 1931. The bank was renamed First National City Bank of New York in 1955, First National City Bank in 1962, and Citibank in March 1976.

 

The elevated railway was demolished in 1955. A photograph taken in the late 1920s shows a flagpole had been installed on the second floor balcony and that by this decade the first- story grilles had been removed from the window facing the Bowery. In 1964, the building was described in the Historic American Buildings Survey as being “built to the highest specifications” and in “excellent” condition, with grilles and “elaborate light standards.” By 1969, both lighting fixtures had been removed but the stone pedestals remained. The first story windows were significantly altered in c. 1992 to create retail storefronts with access from the sidewalk. The Grand Street entrance was also probably altered, and in subsequent years canopies and awnings were installed above the storefronts, disguising many of the original architectural features.

 

Description

 

The Bowery Bank Building is located at the northwest corner of the Bowery and Grand Street in Manhattan. Five stories tall, the elevations are primarily a pinkish white marble, except for the water table which is pink granite.

 

Historic Features: Granite water table, marble-faced neo-classical elevations, segmental-arched window openings, keystones, corbels, cornices, copper cresting on cornice between fourth and fifth stories, copper cresting at top of fifth story, low mansard roof, metalwork in double-height window bays on the Bowery and Grand Street, granite step to original bank entrance on Bowery, granite steps to Grand Street entrance.

 

Alterations: Grand Street, first-story windows converted to storefronts, awnings, letters attached to corner; Grand Street entrance, metal and glass door enframements, signage above historic and subsequent doors, address number, signage to left of entrance; corner, awnings wrap around corner at two levels; Bowery, metal and glass entrance at 126 Bowery, first-story awnings, letters attached to stone balcony, air-conditioning units in various windows; roof, bulkhead at west end; railings around stairs to basement. Most elements that were attached to the facade have been removed, including metal lettering, the twin lighting fixtures that were installed on pedestals that flanked the entrance, the first-story window grilles, and probably the original bank doors.

 

- From the 2012 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report

"A TEST OF ENDURANCE"

 

Wave after wave of swimmers raced across the sand and dove headfirst into the sea. Arms churned as bodies sliced through the waves in a long line that went as far as my eyes could see. Then, they turned around and began to make their way back to the beach. Heads bobbed to the side as they took in fresh breaths of air. Finally, great splashes of water sprayed everywhere as the swimmers reached the shore, a mixture of grim determination and cheerful smiles etched across their faces. A series of cheers erupted from the crowd waiting for them on the beach as they raced across the sand once again to their bikes for the next leg of the competition.

 

This was the scene at Hwasun Beach where nearly 1100 men and women took part in the 2011 Iron Man Korea Jeju Triathlon. Participants swam 3.8 km, bicycled 180.2 km, and ran 42.2 km for a total of 226.195 km on a difficult course that wound its way over rolling hills between Daejeong-Eup and the World Cup stadium in Seogwipo.

 

Cyclists worked their way methodically up a steep incline just outside of Jungmun and then coasted down a hill, thumbs up as they passed me, clearly relieved to finish that part of the race. But, the hardest part was yet to come: a full marathon that would test the will and endurance of these athletes.

 

Five grueling hours later, the end in sight, Balazs Csoke from Hungary, using all his remaining strength, dragged his exhausted body across the finish line, completing the race in 8 hours, 48 minutes, and 18 seconds. Korean hopeful Yeun Sik Ham finished strong, clocking in at 9:36:02 while Kate Bevilaqua of Australia was the top woman, finishing the race in 9 hours, 39 minutes, and 42 seconds.

 

www.jejuweekly.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=1730

 

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More images from the race www.flickr.com/photos/dmacs_photos/sets/72157627105746342/

 

Slideshow www.flickr.com/photos/dmacs_photos/sets/72157627105746342...

 

Please view my stream LARGE on black:

 

DMac 5D Mark II's photos on Flickriver

 

Follow me on Twitter @ twitter.com/#!/dmac5dmark2

 

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Catacombs, Montparnasse, Paris

 

I decided that today was a day for going underground, and I set off to Montparnasse to visit the catacombs. These are a vast maze of tunnels under Paris originally used for quarrying the stone out of which the city's main buildings are constructed. In the late 18th Century, the state of the city's churchyards had become so disgusting that the city removed the bones from all of them. They were brought here at night, the carts coming from the centre of the city accompanied by torch-bearing acolytes and priests chanting the requiem Mass. A skull count showed that almost six million corpses were removed in this way. They were buried deep underground, but these people being Parisians the skulls and bones were arranged in a neat and methodical way, a meaningful chaos. Layers of tibia and femurs are crowned by a layer of pelvises and skulls, and so on. Each churchyard was grouped together, and a plaque shows which parish provided the skeletons.

 

The work was interrupted by the French Revolution,which provided plenty more corpses for when the work was resumed. Altogether about a kilometre and a half of tunnels were filled with the remains of dead Parisians, and you can walk through them on a winding route under the streets around Montparnasse station. In fact, this is just a tiny fraction of the tunnels. The catacombs extend for hundreds of kilometres under the city, many of them rarely explored and difficult of access. Because of this, they are regularly broken into by intrepid adventurers, and many legends have grown up about parts of the network. However, my favourite story is one which is true.

 

In 2004, a group of police cadets on a training exercise were given the task of tracking an imaginary criminal in a part of the network which was little known. They got into the system through a manhole, and when they were about a hundred feet underground something rather odd happened. They triggered a motion sensor which set off the sound of barking dogs. Thinking that it was part of the exercise, they headed onwards only to come out into a vast cavern which had been fully equipped as a cinema. An anteroom had been equipped and fully stocked as a bar, and there was also a film storage room. When the cadets reported what they had seen, the electricity board were sent in to work out where the invaders were getting their electricity from. Instead, they found the wires all cut, the equipment removed, and a sign saying 'Don't try to follow us. You'll never find us.'

 

Perhaps the cineastes had got fed up with waiting to get into the system officially, because this was the only place all week that I encountered a serious queue. Worse, I was just in front of a small group of people who talked constantly in very loud voices. She was an American who obviously lived in Paris, and they appeared to be young relatives who'd come to stay. She was taking them down the catacombs, and the price to be paid for this by the poor kids was to suffer her pretentious nonsense. She went on about spirituality, and homeopathy, and psychoanalysis, and the inner energy, and so on. Fair play to the kids, they responded enthusiastically enough.

 

And then she got out some of her stream of consciousness poetry, and started reading it in a loud voice. Well, goodness me. I was put in mind of something the graphic artist Alan Moore said when he was in Hollywood helping turn his 'V for Vendetta' into a film, and he was asked at a director's lunch why he lived in Northampton, England. "Because it keeps me grounded", he replied, and I thought that this was exactly right. It was like the opposite of this pompous woman, although to be fair to her I expect that if I went to live in Paris I would also disappear up my own backside.

 

The catacombs are brilliant, worth every minute of the queuing time, worth every insufferable stream of consciousness adjective. And then I went and did some shopping.

 

You can read my account of my travels at pariswander.blogspot.co.uk.

Saturday, February 11, 2012.Recap: No. 15 C'Town 87, No. 19 WC 69.By Brendan Hall..CHARLESTOWN, Mass. -- At this time last year, Charlestown made the trek West, down Route 146, to deliver a haymaker to a Whitinsville Christian squad considered the state's tallest lineup. ..This afternoon, the Crusaders came East to Bunker Hill, with a different look for the Townies -- smaller, quicker, more surgical -- and the result was very nearly a different outcome. The Crusaders hung with Charlestown through three quarters, before the Townies pulled away in the fourth, outscoring Whitinsville 31-14 in the final frame en route to an 87-69 victory. .."That team's very good, I thought that was the best shooting team we saw," Charlestown head coach Edson Cardoso said. "They're very well balanced, with a real good point guard, big man, two-guard, so I knew coming into this game it was going to be a battle. I told the guys, 'You're going to see a team like this in the state tournament, eventually down the line." ..The Townies (14-3), played just seven due to health (Jawhari Dawan-Abdullah, stomach bug) and off the court issues (Gary Braham, suspension). But they saw all five of their regular starters reach double-figures, with senior point guard Rony Fernandez (26 points, four assists) leading the way. Senior forward Tyrik Jackson (12 points, 13 rebounds) came up big on the glass again, while Tyrese Hoxter (16 points, seven assists), Omar Orriols (13 points) and Iser Barnes (12) contributed some big shots from the perimeter to keep the defense stretched out. ..But early on, the Crusaders (12-2) gave them fits with the methodical way they broke through the Townie's 2-3 zone with some of the most disciplined and precise ball movement they'd seen in a while. Junior point guard Colin Richey (23 points) funneled the offense down to the baseline, finding a player planted right in the heart of the zone and kicking to either the baseline or either wing. ..Whitinsville shot nearly 40 percent from the field, getting good looks from the short side from Tyler VandenAkker (12 points, eight rebounds) and Jesse Dykstra. Grant Brown (10 points) came up with some big shots from the perimeter as well. .."We decided to extend a little bit more on the short corner, because they hit about four shots in a row from the short corner," Cardoso said. "We also decided to have the opposite guard extend even more on shooter No. 2 (Tim Dufficey). So we made some extensions in the second half, did a little better job -- not a great job, but it helped us get the victory." ..To start the fourth quarter, Barnes completed a 6-0 run by ripping the ball out of his defender's hands at midcourt and landing a breakaway layup. A few possessions later, Hoxter found Jackson underneath the rim for an easy tip-in and 68-59 advantage. ..Then with 1:37 to go, sophomore Taris Wilson hit the first of two monster breakaway slams, this one making it 76-63 to essentially put the game in hand. ..Hot from the field: The Townies outrebounded the Crusaders 16-7 in the final frame, giving way to many key transition points that helped ice the lead and the win. From the glass, WC still held a slim 35-33 advantage. ..But down at the other end, the Townies had a terrific night from the field, shooting nearly 58 percent overall. That was aided by a 7-for-17 effort from three-point range, including three 3's each from Fernandez and Orriols. ..Praise for Richey: Last season, New Mission head coach Cory McCarthy was throwing around high praise for the then-sophomore Richey, calling him "a suburban kid that plays urban". ..Consider Cardoso another Boston City League coach that's a fan. .."He's tough," Cardoso said. "He's one of the toughest guards coming out of his league, and I think he's going give a lot of teams problems in the state tournament, because how do you stop a kid like that?" ..Turning point? Following last season's loss to Charlestown in its home gym, WC coach Jeff Bajema greeted his players in the locker room and told them, "Guys, we can win states." ..Sure enough, the Crusaders never lost another game the rest of the way, picking up their first Division 3 state title since 2005 at the DCU Center in Worcester. After that game, Bajema spoke to reporters about how much the whitewashing by Charlestown seasoned them for what to expect in the state tournament. ..Given how much more competitive the Crusaders were this time around, could this be seen as another momentum shift? .."Hopefully, a game like this will lead us to better things," Bajema said. "But we've got a tough one Tuesday (against Holy Name), so we'll see."

 

Shot at ISO 1600, Aperture of 3.5, Shutter speed of 1/320 and Focal Length of 35.0 mm

Taken with a 24-70mm F2.8 ZA SSM lens and processed by Aperture 3.2.2 on Saturday February-11-2012 17:26 EST PM

Saturday, February 11, 2012.Recap: No. 15 C'Town 87, No. 19 WC 69.By Brendan Hall..CHARLESTOWN, Mass. -- At this time last year, Charlestown made the trek West, down Route 146, to deliver a haymaker to a Whitinsville Christian squad considered the state's tallest lineup. ..This afternoon, the Crusaders came East to Bunker Hill, with a different look for the Townies -- smaller, quicker, more surgical -- and the result was very nearly a different outcome. The Crusaders hung with Charlestown through three quarters, before the Townies pulled away in the fourth, outscoring Whitinsville 31-14 in the final frame en route to an 87-69 victory. .."That team's very good, I thought that was the best shooting team we saw," Charlestown head coach Edson Cardoso said. "They're very well balanced, with a real good point guard, big man, two-guard, so I knew coming into this game it was going to be a battle. I told the guys, 'You're going to see a team like this in the state tournament, eventually down the line." ..The Townies (14-3), played just seven due to health (Jawhari Dawan-Abdullah, stomach bug) and off the court issues (Gary Braham, suspension). But they saw all five of their regular starters reach double-figures, with senior point guard Rony Fernandez (26 points, four assists) leading the way. Senior forward Tyrik Jackson (12 points, 13 rebounds) came up big on the glass again, while Tyrese Hoxter (16 points, seven assists), Omar Orriols (13 points) and Iser Barnes (12) contributed some big shots from the perimeter to keep the defense stretched out. ..But early on, the Crusaders (12-2) gave them fits with the methodical way they broke through the Townie's 2-3 zone with some of the most disciplined and precise ball movement they'd seen in a while. Junior point guard Colin Richey (23 points) funneled the offense down to the baseline, finding a player planted right in the heart of the zone and kicking to either the baseline or either wing. ..Whitinsville shot nearly 40 percent from the field, getting good looks from the short side from Tyler VandenAkker (12 points, eight rebounds) and Jesse Dykstra. Grant Brown (10 points) came up with some big shots from the perimeter as well. .."We decided to extend a little bit more on the short corner, because they hit about four shots in a row from the short corner," Cardoso said. "We also decided to have the opposite guard extend even more on shooter No. 2 (Tim Dufficey). So we made some extensions in the second half, did a little better job -- not a great job, but it helped us get the victory." ..To start the fourth quarter, Barnes completed a 6-0 run by ripping the ball out of his defender's hands at midcourt and landing a breakaway layup. A few possessions later, Hoxter found Jackson underneath the rim for an easy tip-in and 68-59 advantage. ..Then with 1:37 to go, sophomore Taris Wilson hit the first of two monster breakaway slams, this one making it 76-63 to essentially put the game in hand. ..Hot from the field: The Townies outrebounded the Crusaders 16-7 in the final frame, giving way to many key transition points that helped ice the lead and the win. From the glass, WC still held a slim 35-33 advantage. ..But down at the other end, the Townies had a terrific night from the field, shooting nearly 58 percent overall. That was aided by a 7-for-17 effort from three-point range, including three 3's each from Fernandez and Orriols. ..Praise for Richey: Last season, New Mission head coach Cory McCarthy was throwing around high praise for the then-sophomore Richey, calling him "a suburban kid that plays urban". ..Consider Cardoso another Boston City League coach that's a fan. .."He's tough," Cardoso said. "He's one of the toughest guards coming out of his league, and I think he's going give a lot of teams problems in the state tournament, because how do you stop a kid like that?" ..Turning point? Following last season's loss to Charlestown in its home gym, WC coach Jeff Bajema greeted his players in the locker room and told them, "Guys, we can win states." ..Sure enough, the Crusaders never lost another game the rest of the way, picking up their first Division 3 state title since 2005 at the DCU Center in Worcester. After that game, Bajema spoke to reporters about how much the whitewashing by Charlestown seasoned them for what to expect in the state tournament. ..Given how much more competitive the Crusaders were this time around, could this be seen as another momentum shift? .."Hopefully, a game like this will lead us to better things," Bajema said. "But we've got a tough one Tuesday (against Holy Name), so we'll see."

 

Shot at ISO 1600, Aperture of 3.5, Shutter speed of 1/320 and Focal Length of 70.0 mm

Taken with a 24-70mm F2.8 ZA SSM lens and processed by Aperture 3.2.2 on Saturday February-11-2012 16:47 EST PM

A mature maple tree needed to be removed from next to a neighbor's house. This crew, using a crane, a "cherry picker" and a ground crew methodically took the tree apart. Professional, efficient job.

Sparrow has been working his way through putting Danbo together. Quietly and methodically he works away with interbursts of Lentil clapping her hands with excitement.

 

Only those arms left to sort now, then watch out Lentil I bet that Danbo will be chasing you !

SUN VALLEY - The Los Angeles Fire Department successfully

rescued a trapped construction worker and provided medical care to he and two of his injured colleagues, when a large volume of concrete and soil toppled into a four foot deep trench with makeshift shoring the men were working in or near on the morning of February 5, 2022.

 

The first call to 9-1-1 at 10:13 AM, brought scores of LAFD rescuers to 9031 El Dorado Avenue, including firefighters uniquely trained and equipped to handle specialized Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) tasks.

 

The two men initially trapped were working on an unspecified purpose trenching project alongside the one story home, , when the poorly shored trench wall and portions of a concrete walkway on the property suddenly gave way, causing them both to sustain serious leg injuries. Though both men were initially trapped, one was able to free himself prior to LAFD arrival.

 

As rescuers focused on the still-trapped man, care and ambulance transportation to a local hospital was provided to the worker who escaped, as well as another man who came forward with unspecified back pain.

 

The LAFD USAR trained personnel worked methodically with specialty tools and the support of fellow firefighters for nearly 80 minutes to skillfully free the man, who was taken to a regional trauma center in serious but stable condition.

 

© Photo by Shane Salzman

 

LAFD Incident 020522-0575

 

Connect with us: LAFD.ORG | News | Facebook | Instagram | Reddit | Twitter: @LAFD @LAFDtalk

Saturday, February 11, 2012.Recap: No. 15 C'Town 87, No. 19 WC 69.By Brendan Hall..CHARLESTOWN, Mass. -- At this time last year, Charlestown made the trek West, down Route 146, to deliver a haymaker to a Whitinsville Christian squad considered the state's tallest lineup. ..This afternoon, the Crusaders came East to Bunker Hill, with a different look for the Townies -- smaller, quicker, more surgical -- and the result was very nearly a different outcome. The Crusaders hung with Charlestown through three quarters, before the Townies pulled away in the fourth, outscoring Whitinsville 31-14 in the final frame en route to an 87-69 victory. .."That team's very good, I thought that was the best shooting team we saw," Charlestown head coach Edson Cardoso said. "They're very well balanced, with a real good point guard, big man, two-guard, so I knew coming into this game it was going to be a battle. I told the guys, 'You're going to see a team like this in the state tournament, eventually down the line." ..The Townies (14-3), played just seven due to health (Jawhari Dawan-Abdullah, stomach bug) and off the court issues (Gary Braham, suspension). But they saw all five of their regular starters reach double-figures, with senior point guard Rony Fernandez (26 points, four assists) leading the way. Senior forward Tyrik Jackson (12 points, 13 rebounds) came up big on the glass again, while Tyrese Hoxter (16 points, seven assists), Omar Orriols (13 points) and Iser Barnes (12) contributed some big shots from the perimeter to keep the defense stretched out. ..But early on, the Crusaders (12-2) gave them fits with the methodical way they broke through the Townie's 2-3 zone with some of the most disciplined and precise ball movement they'd seen in a while. Junior point guard Colin Richey (23 points) funneled the offense down to the baseline, finding a player planted right in the heart of the zone and kicking to either the baseline or either wing. ..Whitinsville shot nearly 40 percent from the field, getting good looks from the short side from Tyler VandenAkker (12 points, eight rebounds) and Jesse Dykstra. Grant Brown (10 points) came up with some big shots from the perimeter as well. .."We decided to extend a little bit more on the short corner, because they hit about four shots in a row from the short corner," Cardoso said. "We also decided to have the opposite guard extend even more on shooter No. 2 (Tim Dufficey). So we made some extensions in the second half, did a little better job -- not a great job, but it helped us get the victory." ..To start the fourth quarter, Barnes completed a 6-0 run by ripping the ball out of his defender's hands at midcourt and landing a breakaway layup. A few possessions later, Hoxter found Jackson underneath the rim for an easy tip-in and 68-59 advantage. ..Then with 1:37 to go, sophomore Taris Wilson hit the first of two monster breakaway slams, this one making it 76-63 to essentially put the game in hand. ..Hot from the field: The Townies outrebounded the Crusaders 16-7 in the final frame, giving way to many key transition points that helped ice the lead and the win. From the glass, WC still held a slim 35-33 advantage. ..But down at the other end, the Townies had a terrific night from the field, shooting nearly 58 percent overall. That was aided by a 7-for-17 effort from three-point range, including three 3's each from Fernandez and Orriols. ..Praise for Richey: Last season, New Mission head coach Cory McCarthy was throwing around high praise for the then-sophomore Richey, calling him "a suburban kid that plays urban". ..Consider Cardoso another Boston City League coach that's a fan. .."He's tough," Cardoso said. "He's one of the toughest guards coming out of his league, and I think he's going give a lot of teams problems in the state tournament, because how do you stop a kid like that?" ..Turning point? Following last season's loss to Charlestown in its home gym, WC coach Jeff Bajema greeted his players in the locker room and told them, "Guys, we can win states." ..Sure enough, the Crusaders never lost another game the rest of the way, picking up their first Division 3 state title since 2005 at the DCU Center in Worcester. After that game, Bajema spoke to reporters about how much the whitewashing by Charlestown seasoned them for what to expect in the state tournament. ..Given how much more competitive the Crusaders were this time around, could this be seen as another momentum shift? .."Hopefully, a game like this will lead us to better things," Bajema said. "But we've got a tough one Tuesday (against Holy Name), so we'll see."

 

Shot at ISO 1600, Aperture of 3.5, Shutter speed of 1/500 and Focal Length of 45.0 mm

Taken with a 24-70mm F2.8 ZA SSM lens and processed by Aperture 3.2.2 on Saturday February-11-2012 16:37 EST PM

Slater came out and methodically dominated his heat. No hesitation. Surf was small and inconsistent. That didn't slow Kelly one bit. He caught a wave seconds into the heat, took the lead and never lost it.

Saturday, February 11, 2012.Recap: No. 15 C'Town 87, No. 19 WC 69.By Brendan Hall..CHARLESTOWN, Mass. -- At this time last year, Charlestown made the trek West, down Route 146, to deliver a haymaker to a Whitinsville Christian squad considered the state's tallest lineup. ..This afternoon, the Crusaders came East to Bunker Hill, with a different look for the Townies -- smaller, quicker, more surgical -- and the result was very nearly a different outcome. The Crusaders hung with Charlestown through three quarters, before the Townies pulled away in the fourth, outscoring Whitinsville 31-14 in the final frame en route to an 87-69 victory. .."That team's very good, I thought that was the best shooting team we saw," Charlestown head coach Edson Cardoso said. "They're very well balanced, with a real good point guard, big man, two-guard, so I knew coming into this game it was going to be a battle. I told the guys, 'You're going to see a team like this in the state tournament, eventually down the line." ..The Townies (14-3), played just seven due to health (Jawhari Dawan-Abdullah, stomach bug) and off the court issues (Gary Braham, suspension). But they saw all five of their regular starters reach double-figures, with senior point guard Rony Fernandez (26 points, four assists) leading the way. Senior forward Tyrik Jackson (12 points, 13 rebounds) came up big on the glass again, while Tyrese Hoxter (16 points, seven assists), Omar Orriols (13 points) and Iser Barnes (12) contributed some big shots from the perimeter to keep the defense stretched out. ..But early on, the Crusaders (12-2) gave them fits with the methodical way they broke through the Townie's 2-3 zone with some of the most disciplined and precise ball movement they'd seen in a while. Junior point guard Colin Richey (23 points) funneled the offense down to the baseline, finding a player planted right in the heart of the zone and kicking to either the baseline or either wing. ..Whitinsville shot nearly 40 percent from the field, getting good looks from the short side from Tyler VandenAkker (12 points, eight rebounds) and Jesse Dykstra. Grant Brown (10 points) came up with some big shots from the perimeter as well. .."We decided to extend a little bit more on the short corner, because they hit about four shots in a row from the short corner," Cardoso said. "We also decided to have the opposite guard extend even more on shooter No. 2 (Tim Dufficey). So we made some extensions in the second half, did a little better job -- not a great job, but it helped us get the victory." ..To start the fourth quarter, Barnes completed a 6-0 run by ripping the ball out of his defender's hands at midcourt and landing a breakaway layup. A few possessions later, Hoxter found Jackson underneath the rim for an easy tip-in and 68-59 advantage. ..Then with 1:37 to go, sophomore Taris Wilson hit the first of two monster breakaway slams, this one making it 76-63 to essentially put the game in hand. ..Hot from the field: The Townies outrebounded the Crusaders 16-7 in the final frame, giving way to many key transition points that helped ice the lead and the win. From the glass, WC still held a slim 35-33 advantage. ..But down at the other end, the Townies had a terrific night from the field, shooting nearly 58 percent overall. That was aided by a 7-for-17 effort from three-point range, including three 3's each from Fernandez and Orriols. ..Praise for Richey: Last season, New Mission head coach Cory McCarthy was throwing around high praise for the then-sophomore Richey, calling him "a suburban kid that plays urban". ..Consider Cardoso another Boston City League coach that's a fan. .."He's tough," Cardoso said. "He's one of the toughest guards coming out of his league, and I think he's going give a lot of teams problems in the state tournament, because how do you stop a kid like that?" ..Turning point? Following last season's loss to Charlestown in its home gym, WC coach Jeff Bajema greeted his players in the locker room and told them, "Guys, we can win states." ..Sure enough, the Crusaders never lost another game the rest of the way, picking up their first Division 3 state title since 2005 at the DCU Center in Worcester. After that game, Bajema spoke to reporters about how much the whitewashing by Charlestown seasoned them for what to expect in the state tournament. ..Given how much more competitive the Crusaders were this time around, could this be seen as another momentum shift? .."Hopefully, a game like this will lead us to better things," Bajema said. "But we've got a tough one Tuesday (against Holy Name), so we'll see."

 

Shot at ISO 1600, Aperture of 3.2, Shutter speed of 1/640 and Focal Length of 35.0 mm

Taken with a 24-70mm F2.8 ZA SSM lens and processed by Aperture 3.2.2 on Saturday February-11-2012 16:52 EST PM

Posthof

Object ID: 32970 Schrannenplatz 3

1879 built three-storey late historicist residential and commercial building

de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_der_denkmalgesch%C3%BCtzten_O...

 

(further information you can get by clicking on the link at the end of page!)

History

 

Plaque to the founder of the Hyrtl'schen orphanage Joseph Hyrtl and Joseph Schöffel

© IMAREAL / E. Vavra

The Biedermeier-influenced city on the edge of the Vienna Woods is the capital of the district Mödling in the south of Vienna. The town has experienced in its 1100-year history since the first mention very different phases: in the Middle Ages briefly Babenberg residence, for centuries an economically potent wine market, from the 19th Century summer resort and industrial center, since 1875 town, in the 20th Century for almost two decades XXIVth district of Vienna, since 1954 again an independent municipality of Lower Austria and as a school and garden city popular residential area in the vicinity of Vienna.

Mödling has partnerships with cities in France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Hungary, Czech Republic, Serbia, Bulgaria and Italy.

The historical tradition of Mödling goes back far beyond the first written mention, how settlement finds from the Neolithic Age, Hallstatt period (eg calendar mountain) and Roman times as well as the great Avar burial ground "at the Golden Staircase" from the 7/8th Century BCE prove. In the year 903 Mödling is first mentioned (Medilihha). The later settlement was probably made in the 11th Century beneath an early castle building on the church mountain (Kirchenberg), where later a Romanesque predecessor of Othmar church was built.

In the late 12th century Mödling was for a few decades the residence of a Babenberg branch line. Henry the Elder, a brother of Duke Leopold V., had since the 1170 century belongings in and around Mödling. He and his son Henry the Younger, calling himself "Duke of Mödling", resided on the castle probably built around 1150 in the Klausen, among whose most famous visitors was Walther von der Vogelweide. With the death of Henry the Younger in 1236 extinguished the Mödlinger line of the Babenberg and the reign became princely domain. The time of the Babenberg commemorates the in late 12th Century built Romanesque ossuary at Othmar church - a circular building with an apse - as well as the denomination "Babenberg".

In the late Middle Ages, Medlich developed into a major wine market (1343 mention of market town) which in the 15th Century as one of the four princely spell markets was also represented in the Parliament - in addition to Gumpoldskirchen, Langenlois and Perchtoldsdorf. For centuries shaped the wine-growing the economy and social structure. The Mödlinger wine was good and helped the market particularly in the 15th and 16th Century to its prosperity. The settlement reached at the end of the Middle Ages that extent, which until the 19th Century should remain essentially unchanged. The center formed ​​the area around the Schrannenplatz with a dense stand of late medieval and early modern town houses that bear evidence of the wealth and self-confidence of the citizens of the market town. From the late medieval Schrannen building, the official residence of the market judge, was created in 1548 the representative Renaissance town hall with loggia.

The elevated lying Othmar church became in the 15th Century by transferring the rights of the church of St. Martin parish church of Mödling. The massive late Gothic church was built in a nearly 70-year construction period from 1454 to 1523 on the walls of six predecessors and able to resist fortified. As Mödling was destroyed in 1529 by the Ottomans, the just completed church lost its roof and remained for over a century till the restoration in 1660/70 a ruin. On the Merian engraving from 1649 the uncovered Othmar church on the left side is clearly visible. As a temporary parish church served the about 1450 built late-Gothic hospital church.

The internal conditions at this time were mainly marked of the clashes of the market with the princely rule Burg Mödling - since 1558 combined with the rule of Liechtenstein - which reached its climax in 1600 under the energetic administrator Georg Wiesing (1593-1611). During the Reformation, the market largely became Protestant. In the course of recatholicization a Capuchin monastery was founded in 1631, which served as a factory after the repeal under Joseph II and was then bought by the Thonet family (so-called Thonet Schlössel, today Bezirksmuseum).

In Türkenjahr 1683 (besiegement of the Turks) took place in the Othmar church a horrific bloodbath, in which hundreds of people who had sought refuge there were killed. The church was destroyed again, but this time built up rapidly with the market judge Wolfgang Ignaz Viechtl in a few years.

End of the 18th Century occurred in Mödling the settlement of industrial enterprises, especially textile mills that took advantage of the cheaper production possibilities and also its proximity to Vienna. Was decisively shaped the character of the place but by the rise to a summer resort, initiated by Prince Johann I of Liechtenstein beginning of the 19th Century, which acquired in 1807 the rule of Liechtenstein-Mödling with the former family ancestral home. He had the area under enormous cost reforested (Schirmföhren/pinus mugo, acacia, etc.) and transformed to a public park in Romantic style with promenade paths, steep paths and artificial constructions (Black tower, amphitheater, Husarentempel). The ruined castles Mödling and Liechtenstein were restored. The former Liechtenstein'sche landscape park is considered a remarkable example of the garden culture in 1800 and is now a popular tourist destination (1974 Natural Preserve Föhrenberge).

Since the Biedermeier Mödling in the summer was an extremely popular artist hangout. Among the most famous artists of the 19th Century who were inspired by the romantic nature here, were Franz Schubert, Franz Grillparzer, Ferdinand Waldmüller, Ferdinand Raimund and Ludwig van Beethoven, who here worked on one of his major works, the "Missa Solemnis". In the 20th Century settled inter alia Arnold Schönberg, Anton von Webern, Anton Wildgans, Franz Theodor Csokor and Albert Drach temporarily or permanently down. To Beethoven, Schönberg and Wildgans memorials have been established (Beethoven House, Schönberg House, Wildgans archive).

In the second half of the 19th Century Mödling became administrative center (District Court, District administration) and an industrial site and educational location with high schools and colleges (eg educational establishment Francisco-Josephinum). The good traffic situation at the southern railway, the progressive industrialization and the expansion of health facilities (park, Kursalon) led to a rapid expansion of the hitherto for centuries unchanged market. Under mayor Joseph Schöffel (1873-1882), who became famous because of his successful engagement against the deforestation of the Vienna Woods as the "savior of the Vienna Woods", followed the methodical installation of the so-called Schoeffel(before) city - Schöffelvorstadt (New Mödling) east of the Southern Railway and the establishment of workers' settlements. Later followed the exclusive residential areas of the turn of the century with their representative residential buildings. Probably the most important building of the late 19th Century is the Hyrtl'sche orphanage (1886-1889), founded by the Viennese anatomist, Joseph Hyrtl and Joseph Schöffel. The Orphanage church St. Joseph was built on the in 1787 demolished Martin Church.

On 18th November 1875 the emerging market town was raised to the status of a city, two years later the incorporation of Klausen and Vorderbrühl took place. Through the establishment of Great-Vienna under the Nazi regime on 15th October 1938 the young city for 16 years lost its municipal autonomy; 1954 it became again a part of Lower Austria.

Symbol for the characteristic environment of Mödling was the "width pine" on the Anninger whose age goes back to the 16th Century (around 1550). It was a well-known natural landmark and has become the symbol of the city. 1988 died the tree and it had to be removed in 1997 for safety reasons. The remains are now in the Lower Austrian Provincial Museum.

geschichte.landesmuseum.net/index.asp?contenturl=http://g...

Slater came out and methodically dominated his heat. No hesitation. Surf was small and inconsistent. That didn't slow Kelly one bit. He caught a wave seconds into the heat, took the lead and never lost it.

140428-M-XK110-683

CENTRAL TRAINING AREA, OKINAWA, Japan – Marines stealthily emerge from still water during combatant diver and beach reconnaissance training April 24 in the Central Training Area. After surfacing, the Marines used slow, methodical movements to ensure noise discipline was maintained. The Marines are reconnaissance men with 3rd Reconnaissance Battalion, 3rd Marine Division, III Marine Expeditionary Force. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Matthew Manning/Released)

 

"A heron stood in the creek, perfectly still, and as I watched the heron took one very methodical step, its long stick leg lifting slowly up out of the water and then... slowly... it slipped gently back in. For a finale it stood motionless again as leaves floated past on the water like flower petals."

 

- Barry Macleod, The Tugwell Years

www.harlandpress.ca/

 

Don't use this image on websites, blogs or other media without explicit permission.

© All rights reserved

  

Migratory big white beautiful bird! They remain at White Rock Lake's Sunset Bay (Dallas, TX) until March or April. Click on image for best view.

 

One of the largest North American birds, the American White Pelican is majestic in the air. The birds soar with incredible steadiness on broad, white-and-black wings. Their large heads and huge, heavy bills give them a prehistoric look. On the water they dip their pouched bills to scoop up fish, or tip-up like an oversized dabbling duck. Sometimes, groups of pelicans work together to herd fish into the shallows for easy feeding. Look for them on inland lakes in summer and near coastlines in winter.

 

Size & Shape

 

A huge waterbird with very broad wings, a long neck, and a massive bill that gives the head a unique, long shape. They have thick bodies, short legs, and short, square tails. During the breeding season, adults grow an unusual projection or horn on the upper mandible near the tip of the bill.

 

Color Pattern

 

Adult American White Pelicans are snowy white with black flight feathers visible only when the wings are spread. A small patch of ornamental feathers on the chest can become yellow in spring. The bill and legs are yellow-orange. Immatures are mostly white as well, but the head, neck, and back are variably dusky.

 

Behavior

 

American White Pelicans feed from the water’s surface, dipping their beaks into the water to catch fish and other aquatic organisms. They often upend, like a very large dabbling duck, in this process. They do not plunge-dive the way Brown Pelicans do. They are superb soarers (they are among the heaviest flying birds in the world) and often travel long distances in large flocks by soaring. When flapping, their wingbeats are slow and methodical.

 

Habitat

 

American White Pelicans typically breed on islands in shallow wetlands in the interior of the continent. They spend winters mainly on coastal waters, bays, and estuaries, or a little distance inland.

 

www.allaboutbirds.org

 

Saturday, February 11, 2012.Recap: No. 15 C'Town 87, No. 19 WC 69.By Brendan Hall..CHARLESTOWN, Mass. -- At this time last year, Charlestown made the trek West, down Route 146, to deliver a haymaker to a Whitinsville Christian squad considered the state's tallest lineup. ..This afternoon, the Crusaders came East to Bunker Hill, with a different look for the Townies -- smaller, quicker, more surgical -- and the result was very nearly a different outcome. The Crusaders hung with Charlestown through three quarters, before the Townies pulled away in the fourth, outscoring Whitinsville 31-14 in the final frame en route to an 87-69 victory. .."That team's very good, I thought that was the best shooting team we saw," Charlestown head coach Edson Cardoso said. "They're very well balanced, with a real good point guard, big man, two-guard, so I knew coming into this game it was going to be a battle. I told the guys, 'You're going to see a team like this in the state tournament, eventually down the line." ..The Townies (14-3), played just seven due to health (Jawhari Dawan-Abdullah, stomach bug) and off the court issues (Gary Braham, suspension). But they saw all five of their regular starters reach double-figures, with senior point guard Rony Fernandez (26 points, four assists) leading the way. Senior forward Tyrik Jackson (12 points, 13 rebounds) came up big on the glass again, while Tyrese Hoxter (16 points, seven assists), Omar Orriols (13 points) and Iser Barnes (12) contributed some big shots from the perimeter to keep the defense stretched out. ..But early on, the Crusaders (12-2) gave them fits with the methodical way they broke through the Townie's 2-3 zone with some of the most disciplined and precise ball movement they'd seen in a while. Junior point guard Colin Richey (23 points) funneled the offense down to the baseline, finding a player planted right in the heart of the zone and kicking to either the baseline or either wing. ..Whitinsville shot nearly 40 percent from the field, getting good looks from the short side from Tyler VandenAkker (12 points, eight rebounds) and Jesse Dykstra. Grant Brown (10 points) came up with some big shots from the perimeter as well. .."We decided to extend a little bit more on the short corner, because they hit about four shots in a row from the short corner," Cardoso said. "We also decided to have the opposite guard extend even more on shooter No. 2 (Tim Dufficey). So we made some extensions in the second half, did a little better job -- not a great job, but it helped us get the victory." ..To start the fourth quarter, Barnes completed a 6-0 run by ripping the ball out of his defender's hands at midcourt and landing a breakaway layup. A few possessions later, Hoxter found Jackson underneath the rim for an easy tip-in and 68-59 advantage. ..Then with 1:37 to go, sophomore Taris Wilson hit the first of two monster breakaway slams, this one making it 76-63 to essentially put the game in hand. ..Hot from the field: The Townies outrebounded the Crusaders 16-7 in the final frame, giving way to many key transition points that helped ice the lead and the win. From the glass, WC still held a slim 35-33 advantage. ..But down at the other end, the Townies had a terrific night from the field, shooting nearly 58 percent overall. That was aided by a 7-for-17 effort from three-point range, including three 3's each from Fernandez and Orriols. ..Praise for Richey: Last season, New Mission head coach Cory McCarthy was throwing around high praise for the then-sophomore Richey, calling him "a suburban kid that plays urban". ..Consider Cardoso another Boston City League coach that's a fan. .."He's tough," Cardoso said. "He's one of the toughest guards coming out of his league, and I think he's going give a lot of teams problems in the state tournament, because how do you stop a kid like that?" ..Turning point? Following last season's loss to Charlestown in its home gym, WC coach Jeff Bajema greeted his players in the locker room and told them, "Guys, we can win states." ..Sure enough, the Crusaders never lost another game the rest of the way, picking up their first Division 3 state title since 2005 at the DCU Center in Worcester. After that game, Bajema spoke to reporters about how much the whitewashing by Charlestown seasoned them for what to expect in the state tournament. ..Given how much more competitive the Crusaders were this time around, could this be seen as another momentum shift? .."Hopefully, a game like this will lead us to better things," Bajema said. "But we've got a tough one Tuesday (against Holy Name), so we'll see."

 

Shot at ISO 1600, Aperture of 3.5, Shutter speed of 1/250 and Focal Length of 70.0 mm

Taken with a 24-70mm F2.8 ZA SSM lens and processed by Aperture 3.2.2 on Saturday February-11-2012 16:39 EST PM

(Continued from previous photo) The Keith feud was still going on merrily in April 1597, when the magistrates of Aberdeen thought it judicious to send the Bishop of the diocese to the castles of Gight and Inverugie near Perterhead, in an effort to secure peace between the families. The Bishop’s efforts seem to have been in vain, because in December of that year, George Keith the Earl Marischal and James Hogg of Ballyedrie complained to the Scottish Privy Council that one Alexander Keith and accomplices had stolen a gray horse belonging to the earl’s wife, and two mares belonging to Hog. Horse theft was an extremely serious crime in those days, often punished more severely than murder, and frequently by hanging. Perhaps because the culprit was a Keith, or more likely because the horses had still not been recovered, Alexander was not immediately hung, but was locked up in Inverugie Castle, however before a suitable punishment could be devised, he managed to escape.

 

Thereafter, the “complainants” carried out a diligent and methodical search, both for the escaped Alexander Keith, and also for the missing horse flesh, which latter they eventually found – “in the possession of Gordon of Gight and certain of his tenants”! The complainants claimed their horses and also demanded suitable restitution. William Gordon however (who was by now laird of Gight, his father having died earlier that year) not only refused but “most maliciously and cruelly” and accompanied by his brothers and “divers other men, all armed with hagbuts, pistolets, jacks, steelbonnets, swords, gauntlets and other weapons”, pursued the said Hogg, and others with him, and “wounded them in divers parts of their bodies”!

 

The Privy Council also heard, that ever since his escape, the thief, Alexander Keith had been “resettled and maintained” by Gordon of Gight. The court found that Gordon of Gight, for failing to appear, was “to be denounced rebel”.

 

During the years that the Keith feud dragged on, William Gordon was involved in other unsavory affairs. In 1591, he took part in one of the more celebrated murders in Scottish history, that of James, the “Bonny” Earl of Murray.

 

As so often, the cause of the problem lay in a feud involving property, that grew in size until the protagonists had no doubt forgotten the original cause, and the original protagonists had been replaced by their feudal superiors.

 

When the Grant laird of Ballindalloch died, his son was “tutored” by John Grant, and the “Tutor of Ballindalloch” started to take more from his young charge’s estate than the boy’s mother considered he should. It was the normal arrangement in those days for a Tutor to be appointed to educate the under-age heirs of landed estates if their fathers had died prematurely, and it was not uncommon for these Tutors to severely run down the estates that they had charge of, to their own benefit, before the son and heir was old enough to take charge of his own affairs. The ‘Widow of Ballindalloch’ however, was a Gordon, and in 1590 she sought the assistance of her own family, to protect her son’s inheritance. Legally, Grant was entitled, as Tutor, to do as he liked at Ballindalloch, so to strengthen their cause, the Gordons proposed that the widow of Ballindalloch should marry John Gordon, the brother of Sir Thomas Gordon of Cluny.

 

John Grant resented the idea that “anyone of the name of Gordon should reside at Ballindalloch” and as the situation deteriorated, an incident occurred in which he shot and killed one of John Gordon’s servants. To the Gordons of course, this was exactly the excuse they were looking for, and they had Grant declared “outlaw”, which in turn gave them the right, particularly by virtue of the fact that George, 6th Earl of Huntly was Sheriff of the county, to “pursue him”. Huntly himself arrived in force and besieged Ballindalloch castle, but John Grant escaped. The dispute now widened, as the Earls of Moray (Huntly’s hereditary enemy) and of Athole, together with Mackintosh of Mackintosh, the Captain of Clan Chattan, joined in on the side of the Grants.

 

Believing that Moray and Athole were forming a faction against him, Huntly pursued them, besieging Murray in his castle of Darnaway. Huntly sent the recently married John Gordon to take a closer look at the castle, and he, “approaching the house more hardily than warily, was shot and slain from the house by one of the Earl of Murray’s servants”.

 

The earl of Huntly then hastened to court, and obtained a “commission” against the Earl of Moray from Chancellor Maitland (who disliked both Huntly and Moray, and cared little about what became of either of them!), which effectively gave him the right to pursue and arrest Moray.

 

The year of 1591 saw various punitive raids against Clan Chattan and the Grants. According to the records: “Huntly sent Allan Macdonuill-Duibh into Badenoch against the Clan Chattan, where after a sharp skirmish, the Clan Chattan were chased off, and above fifty of them slain. Then Huntly sent MacRonald against the Grants, whom MacRonald invaded in Strathspey, killing eighteen of them, and wasting all Ballindalloch's lands”.

 

Then in February 1592, Huntly received news in Edinburgh, that Moray had recently arrived at his castle of Donnibristle in Fife. Huntly at once set out “with forty gentlemen”, among whom were William Gordon of Gight, his brother Captain John Gordon and Thomas Gordon of Cluny, whose brother had been slain at Darnaway. (Continued next photo)

Set against the back wall of the castle is the stair well for the main turnpike stair leading from the ground floor to the first floor. All has long since collapsed, with just the stumps of the stair-tread stones left sticking from the walls. On with the story:

 

(Continued from previous photo)

 

. . . . . In the late summer of 1594, Argyll with an army of over 10,000 infantry, moved towards the North-East, with the intention of meeting up with the Lord Forbes and his men. The army consisted of Campbells and their supporters, and anyone else that either hated the Gordons or hoped to profit from their downfall and the inevitable pillaging.

 

The Gordons and the Hays ‘assembled all such as would follow them and their fortune in this extremity’, but in all they had only raised around 1500 mounted men when they rode out to meet Argyll’s 10,000 on October 3rd. Riding out from Auchindoun, they by chance intercepted some of Argyll’s scouts, whom they killed, all except for one, whom they “saved and examined”, thus discovering much of what Argyll intended. The Gordons were apparently much encouraged by this event, considering that it “presaged victory”.

 

The Gordons found Argyll’s infantry drawn up in a strong position on a hillside in Glenlivet, above ground that was difficult for horses. Wasting no time, Huntly discharged three small field cannon he had brought with him (field artillery was still most unusual in Scotland at that time), ‘which bred a confused tumult among them’, and then charged his vanguard, consisting of 300 horsemen under the Earl of Erroll and William Gordon of Gight, into the resultant confusion. (None of your fancy tactics here, just 'hey diddle diddle, straight up the middle!')

 

The Battle of Glenlivet lasted more than two hours. Huntly’s uncle, Gordon of Auchindoun was killed leading a charge. At one point William Gordon of Gight and the rest of the vanguard looked as if they would be surrounded and cut-off, and were only saved by a charge made by Huntly, whose horse was killed under him. But in the end it was Argyll’s army that began to waver. His men started to flee in increasing numbers, running for the shelter of the hills, pursued by the mounted Gordons until they reached country inaccessible to horsemen.

 

In all, Argyll lost 700 men in the engagement, including two of his cousins, Campbell of Lochnell and his brother, and also MacNeill of Barra (who was killed by the artillery discharge at the beginning of the battle). On the Gordons side, the losses were much lighter, but included William Gordon of Gight among the wounded.

 

Huntly’s victory was short-lived however, the king with a much larger army invaded from the south, methodically burning the houses and castles of the Gordons and Hays as he came, including the Earl of Erroll’s castle of Old Slains, and Huntly’s castle of Strathbogie (Huntly Castle), both of which remain in ruins to this day. Huntly and Erroll were pursued north to Caithness from where they had to flee abroad, although a year and a half later they were recalled by the king, and their honours and dignities restored to them!

 

(Continued next photo)

   

There is no escaping

there’s no place to hide

You scream "someone save me"

but they don’t pay no mind

goodbye

 

You’re walkin down the horror corridor

it’s almost 4 in the morning and your in a

nightmare its horrible, right there’s the coroner

waiting for ya to turn the corner so he can corner ya

 

You’re a goner he’s onto ya

out the corner of his cornia he just saw ya run

all you want is to rest cuz can’t run anymore ur done

all he wants is to kill u in front of an audience

while everybody is watching in the party applauding it

 

Here I sit while i’m caught up in deep thought again

contemplating my next plog again

swallowin a colonopin while I’m noddin in and out on the autumen

and If the ramada inn holdin onto the pill bottle then

 

lick my finger and swirl it round the bottom

and make sure I got all of it

wake up naked at McDonalds with blood all over me

dead bodies behind the counter shit

 

guess I musta just blacked out again

NOT AGAIN

 

It’s 3 am in the morning put my key in the door

bodies laying all over the floor and

I don’t remember how they got there but I guess I musta

killed em, killed em

 

It’s 3 am in the morning put my key in the door

bodies laying all over the floor and

I don’t remember how they got there but I guess I musta

killed em, killed em

 

Sitting nude in my living room its almost noon

I wonder whats on the tube maybe they’ll show some boobs

flipping every channel until I find Hanna Montana

then i reach for the aloe and and lanalin

 

Bust all over the wall panel and

dismantlin every candle on top of the fireplace mantle

grab my flannel and my bandana then

Kiss the naked manequin man again

 

you can see him standin in my front window if you look in

I’m just a hooligan who’s used to usin haleucenogens

causin illusions again, brain contusions again

cutting and bruising the skin

razors scissors and pins

jesus when does it end?

phases that i go through

dazed and I’m so confused

days that I don’t know who

gave these molecules to

me what am i gon do?

pay the prodigal son

the diabolical one

very methodical when I slaughter them

 

She puts the lotion in the basket

she puts the lotion on the skin

or else it gets the hose again

she puts the lotion in the basket

she puts the lotion on the skin

or else it gets the hose again

 

I and I slash slice and gash again

last night was a blast i can’t quite

remember when i had that much fun on the half pint of the jack

my last vic and a half, a flashlight of kim kardashians ass

 

I remember the first time I dismembered a family member

december I think it was i was havin drinks with my cousin

i wrapped him in xmas lights pushed him in the stinkin tub

cut him up into pieces and just when i went to drink his blood

 

I thought I outta drink his bathwater

that outta be fun

thats when my days of serial murder

manslaughter begun

 

the sight of blood excites me

that might be an artery son

your blood curlin and screams

just don’t seem to bother me none

 

It’s 3 am and here I come

so you should probably run

a secret passageway around here

man there’s got to be one

 

or no there’s probably none

he can scream all that he wants

at the top of his lungs

it ain’t gon stop me from choppin him up up