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Unfortunately, communication was difficult (my Turkish is more than limited and their English was nonexistent), but I assume they are working for the TCDD. Nevertheless, they had been very friendly...and saw my appearance as a nice break of routine. I had brought with me copies of historical photographs which aroused their interest very easily...they had never ever before seen photographs of Pozanti dating back to WW1....while having a look and starting to talk in Turkish with each other about their hometown, they almost got slightly out of their extremely relaxed attitude ;-)
The second stop on the way home from my college visit was in Richmond!
The Richmond Kmart appears to be a former Grants (and thus reminded me of the Erie Kmart that I visited last summer). It is very noticeably bigger than Anderson; it is also very nice; it has a Kmart Express gas station and it has a former Kmart Cafe (that still has the counter/displays, the full menu board and even the register! Looks like a more recent KCafe closure from what I've seen; if anybody else here has any more information I would like to know more about it!). This store appears to be doing fairly well for one of the last remaining stores in/near the Miami Valley.
Of course, I had to check out the Kmart Express after my main store rounds were complete, so I headed over there and looked around. This is the second Kmart Express I've seen, but the first one I have actually visited, as the other one (at the now nonexistent Brooklyn Super Kmart) had already closed. I didn't buy anything at this KExpress though, as I had spent my money in the main store. Hopefully next time I can buy some coffee or donuts from Kmart Express while going to/from Anderson (if I plan another college visit to Anderson U, which is likely)!
Hopefully the Richmond Kmart will still be able to remain "normal" for a good time longer...I like this store! :D
Kmart #7246 - 3150 National Road West - Richmond, Indiana
VIDEO: www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HPIWGRrR50
••• SCRIPT/LYRICS: •••
MOLEMAN'S EPIC RAP BATTLES!!
BIG BIRD…
…VS…
…WINNIE THE POOH!!!
BEGIN!
Winnie the Pooh:
It's a tale of two kids icons, from the 'hood to the Hundred Acre Wood,
and Imma beat the living birdseed out you, understood?
I'm the childhood pal of millions; just ask Christopher Robin.
I'll make you cry, and I'm not talking 'bout that song by Kenny Loggins!
My rhymes will buzz around, over, under and through you like Grover!
I've every trick in the book, plus some not in the book, like Gopher.
I'm gonna rustle all your feathers, not to mention your jimmies.
I know you inside and out, almost as much as Caroll Spinney!
When I'm done with you, pinhead, you're gonna be feeling real blue.
Count von Count on my victory going down in the Book of Pooh!
I've made Disney more money than the worth of Donald Trump,
Earning me more honey than can be taken by any Heffalump!
I'm a big black rain cloud, pouring on your Macy's Parade.
Call me Mitt Romney, 'cause I'm giving you a major downgrade!
I'm laying down the smackdown here in the Ashdown Forest.
I've been to Skull and back, son. When'd you last walk two miles from your nest?
Big Bird:
This battle's being brought to you by the letter "B",
As in "B.B.", like Big Bird, which would be me!
And like in "Follow That Bird", I'm out on a mission:
Breaking you like I broke into public television!
You may be older and even more classic than me, Pooh Bear,
But I'll make your rhymes fall flat and drop dead like Mr. Hooper!
Mine will fly under your Radar, and knock you down like Eeyore's house.
I'm normally nice, but now I'm going full–out Oscar the Grouch!
Nonstop since 1969, I've been entertaining kids.
I spit sick words like "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz"!
Don't need help to beat your stuffing out, so Snuffy, begone.
My jibes are simple, but they'll haunt you your whole life long!
I've got a star on the Walk of Fame; you're a bear of very little brain.
Beating me will be more impossible than your Home Run Derby game!
If you weren't just a fluff–filled doll, I'd say I'd make you bleed.
I teach children literacy, but you can barely even read!
Leave this to me, Pooh!
Piglet:
I may sound like a little girl and be the size of a mouse,
But I'm still bringing some mad pig power in this house!
Helping defeat this feathered fiend will be my pleasure.
Next to my blustery rhymes, yours are a mild Spring zephyr!
You'll find this itty–bitty package to be carrying big things.
You don't scare me, and that says a lot. You don't even have wings!
What are you even supposed to be, a canary or a lark?
Either way, I'm conquering you like my fear of the dark.
Yes, you're eight times my size, but I'm not overwhelmed.
I'll have you know: just like you, I have my very own film!
In terms of size–to–coolness ratio, I'm ten times more fly!
My only worthy match on your street is Teeny Little Super Guy.
People write books about my smallness being a virtue.
To beat you, I just need a few good friends and a sti–
(*THUD*)
Uh–oh! He he, who wants to die?
Elmo:
If you can call for backup, then by Henson, so can we,
And of the people in our neighborhood, the best is me.
'Til now, everyone watching has been waiting for Elmo.
Did you really think they'd make this thing without me? Hell, no!
Ever since I came along, half the show's been about me.
I've got living furniture and the drawer from Bruce Almighty!
I'm cuddling backstage with hot, cold chicks like Katy Perry,
While you two are more obviously gay than Bert and Ernie!
Kids, can you guess what Elmo is thinking about today?
Congrats if you said "ways he can make these losers go away"!
I'll vandalize the felt you call your flesh with my crayons,
Then dump you in the trash and leave you stranded in Grouchland!
Or, I could call up some of my monster friends, so furry and happy,
Beat youup, then have you turned to frogs by Abby!
And here's a threat scarier than any Heffalump or Woozle:
I'll tie you up and leave you both alone with Mr. Noodle!
In any case, suffice to say: I'll do more than just tickle you.
I'll let my likeness here finish:
Talking Elmo Doll:
KILL… POOH!
(Crashingly loud "BOING!")
Tigger:
You've made a big mistake by making me show up, Fuzzy-Boy.
When it comes to rapping kids' icons, Tiggers are the real McCoy!
A match between you and me? How terribly uneven!
I'll derail your whole career, even worse than Sheldon Stephens!
I'm rivaled only by Hobbes for "most adorable tiger".
Compared to me, you look like something out of H. R. Giger!
I'm truly one–of–a–kind, unlike you, little "buddy".
You're really just a random extra that happened to get lucky!
You're a creator's pet, so swallow your pride and surrender,
Before you make me bring back the Masked Offender!
And Big Bird, while I can't exactly call you a bully,
Your skills are as nonexistent as my biological family!
Back to you, Elmo: Mike Mozart tells me you love balls.
You're weak, while I can't even be held back by the fourth wall!
So go T.T.F.E. and leave our wood for good, you Hellspawn,
Before my springy tail and I bounce you to death like Leprechaun!
Oooooooooohhh…
Cookie Monster:
…"C" is for "cookie", and it also is for "crap",
Which is best word me can use to describe your crummy raps!
Me rounding out the quintessential Sesame Street trio,
For me am, in fact, the monster at the end of this video!
Obesity and grammar concerns cause me to get slammed,
But me no change for them! Like Popeye, me am what me am.
You may have one advantage: Me no have me own movie,
But that's it, 'cause me best rapper any Muppet could be!
See, me classically–trained: just watch "Monsterpiece Theater",
And though me known for eating cookies, me not really picky eater.
Me have been here all along, from start of this song,
And now show meself to eat your honey like "OM NOM NOM NOM!"
Me not going to eat you, though, 'cause you taste no good!
As me friend Hoots would say, poo–poo is a never food!
Me shooting your words down like stupid "Veggie Monster" rumors,
And F.Y.I., Tigger, that not spring in your tail; it tumor!
Guy Smiley: OH. MY. HENSON! THAT MAY VERY WELL HAVE BEEN THE MOST EPIC RAP BATTLE OF ALL TIME! AND TO THINK SUCH A MASTERPIECE WOULD BE PERFORMED BY CHARACTERS INTENDED FOR FOUR–YEAR–OLDS!
WHO WON?
WHO'S NEXT?
I DECIDE!
MOLEMAN'S EPIC RAP BATTLES!!!
A sculpture of a swan that I made from LEGO bricks. This is actually a combination of two different species of swans. I grabbed various characteristics from the two of them, making a probably nonexistent species. It took maybe 40 hours to design and build.
The head and feet are recycled parts from my old bird old bird, made a 1.5 years before this one. The old one fell off of a shelf, and I didn't want to repair it, so I made a better version.
The wings of this sculpture ended up being too heavy to sustain their own weight (although they are pretty durable), but the cross support holds them firmly in place.
neon-pink
Subj.: RE: Gleitzeit (Oil painting by Jaisini) Jaisini,
Date: 4/17/00 1:15:46 AM Eastern Daylight Time
If one examines the pre dialectic paradigm of discourse, one is faced with a choice: either accepts post textual dialectic theory or conclude that discourse comes from the collective unconscious. The characteristic theme of Sargeant’s model of the predialectic paradigm of discourse is the role of the observer as poet. Abian holds that the works of Fellini are not postmodern. However, Marx promotes the use of the predialectic paradigm of discourse to modify and analyze class. When you state, ”Paintings with a capacity to change visually by the artistic magic changing your subconscious mind" I’m sure you will agree that the paradigm, and some would say the collapse, of patriarchialist situationism depicted in Fellini’s 8 1/2 is also evident in La Dolce Vita. It could be said that several patriarchialisms concerning the common ground between narrativity and sexual identity may be revealed. The premise of subcultural modernism suggests that truth is intrinsically elitist. In a sense, Lyotard suggests the use of subcultural modernism to attack the status quo. The primary theme of the works of Fellini is the role of the observer as participant. Marx uses the term ‘patriarchialist situationism’ to denote the economy, and subsequent stasis, of presemiotic class. It could be said that in Satyricon, Fellini deconstructs cultural theory; in 8 1/2 he denies the predialectic paradigm of discourse. “Truth is part of the dialectic of consciousness,” says Lyotard; however, according to Pickett, it is not so much truth that is part of the dialectic of consciousness, but rather the Rubicon, and eventually the economy, of truth. Lacan’s essay on posttextual socialism suggests that the significance of the observer is significant form. However, if Derrida uses the term ‘the predialectic paradigm of discourse’ to denote a subsemiotic whole, which it seems you hint at when you state, ”a disorganized absolute harmony of everything expected from a “nonexistent” picture. It depends upon the pattern of line as a primal creator of whatever associated or disassociated from the theme.” But an abundance of appropriations concerning subcultural capitalist theory exists. The characteristic theme of the critique of the predialectic paradigm of discourse is not desublimation, but postdesublimation. Dahmus holds that the works of Fellini are reminiscent of Eco. The subject is contextualised into a subcultural discourse that includes consciousness as a paradox, as I’m sure you agree. Marx uses the term ‘the predialectic paradigm of discourse’ to denote a self-justifying totality. The subject is interpolated into a preconstructe deappropriation that includes consciousness as a paradox. It could be said that the premise of subcultural capitalist theory states that the purpose of the poet is social comment. Subcultural capitalist theory holds that society has intrinsic meaning. Much materialism concerning the role of the artist as poet may be found. In a sense, Bataille uses the term 'patriarchialist situationism' to denote the bridge between sexual identity and class. Any number of theories concerning the predialectic paradigm of discourse exists. However, Sartre promotes the use of subcultural capitalist theory to deconstruct sexual identity. Do you agree?
(via paul-jaisini-gleitzeit)
Lake Ronkonkoma Long Island New York 11779 USA August 2020
Lake Ronkonkoma, Long Island's largest freshwater lake, is in Suffolk County, New York, United States, and has a circumference of about 2 miles (3.2 km), and is 0.65 miles (1.05 km) across on average. A kettle lake formed by retreating glaciers, it is owned by the Town of Islip under the terms of the Nichols Patent. The land around it is controlled by three town governments - Smithtown, Islip and Brookhaven. The name Ronkonkoma comes from an Algonquian expression meaning "boundary fishing-lake", also earlier written as Raconkumake and Raconkamuck
Lake Ronkonkoma served as a boundary between lands occupied by four Native American communities: Nissequogues Setaukets Secatogues and Unkechaugs
The lake was created by a retreating glacier.
The primary gamefish is bass
The most prevalent legend is about Princess Ronkonkoma, an Indian princess who died at the lake in the mid-1600s. One version of the story is that she was walking across the ice one winter when she met and fell in love with an English woodcutter named Hugh Birdsall, who lived across the lake. However, her father—chief of the Setauket tribe—forbade their relationship. So every day for 7 years, she would write letters on pieces of bark, row to the middle of the lake, and float the letters across the lake to Hugh. Then, after all those years of being kept apart from her love, she rowed to the middle of the lake and stabbed herself to death.
There are variations on this particular story, such as that the princess drowned herself after learning about her lover's death, and that her body washed up in Connecticut (which ties into the idea that the lake is bottomless, and that there are underground channels to other lakes). While there's no proof the princess ever existed, Hugh Birdsall was a real person who eventually moved back to England and got married there.
In any case, the story goes that she claims a boy's life every year either to avenge her lover's death, or to try to find herself a soulmate in death. And the statistics back up this "curse": of all the recorded drownings on this lake, the vast majority have been young males.
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Dr. David S. Igneri was the head lifeguard at Lake Ronkonkoma for 32 summers, and says there were at least 30 deaths during that time, all males. On the program Weird U.S., which aired on the History Channel in 2005, Igneri explains that one of the biggest challenges was that visibility in the lake is nonexistent after about the first 10 feet; if anyone submerges lower than that, no one will be able to rescue the person because the lake becomes enveloped in total blackness.
In 1965, Igneri had a recurring nightmare about trying to complete a rescue. He dove deep into the lake and panicked because he lost his orientation. When he got to the surface, he heard fireworks. Although Igneri was not previously interested in the paranormal, he believed this dream was a warning that someone was going to drown on the Fourth of July. He warned his staff of 11 lifeguards—and sure enough, late that afternoon, an epileptic 15-year-old boy had a seizure and went down in the water. The lifeguards dove for 45 minutes and did everything they could, but could not find the boy. As Igneri swam back to the surface after his last dive, fireworks went off.
Author Michael R. Ebert, who must be the foremost authority on the legends of Lake Ronkonkoma. He published the spiral-bound book "The Curse of Lake Ronkonkoma" in 2002, and it is available at the Sachem, Connetquot and Smithtown libraries.
The first time he remembers hearing about the lake's "curse" was when he attended Ronkonkoma Junior High School in the early 1990s and one of his classmates drowned in the lake.
"If I remember correctly, he and some friends were supposedly drinking beer on a rowboat and were horsing around when he fell in and was unable to swim to shore due to his bulky winter clothes."
After Ebert's college graduation, he searched for more information about the lake's legends in local history books, but found little—which convinced him to write his own book. He spent about six months visiting libraries and the Lake Ronkonkoma Historical Society to research articles, maps and geographical studies dating back to the early 1900s.
In addition to the stories about Princess Ronkonkoma and the bottomless lake, Ebert also found several other mysteries, such as the way the lake rises and falls with no relation to local rainfall. "The Indians believed it to be the work of Manitos, the great spirit of the lake," he says. "One study showed that over 7 years in the early 1900s, the rainfall on Long Island was below the usual average by about 52 inches, yet the lake rose 7 feet."
Then there were the rumors of "healing properties" of the lake, supposedly started by a Brooklyn businessman who wanted to capitalize on the lake's appeal as a local tourist attraction in the 1900s. "The guy even reportedly sold 'lake juice' in small vials, and I found an old ad promoting the lake as a health resort that cured diseases," says Ebert.
So whether you believe the lake will heal what ails you, or that a vengeful princess spirit is out there waiting to drown you, there's no denying that Lake Ronkonkoma is one of Long Island's most whispered-about points of interest.
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Leamington is a municipality in Essex County, Ontario, Canada. With a population of 28,403, it is the second largest municipality in the Windsor-Essex County area (after the separated municipality of Windsor, Ontario). It includes Point Pelee, the southernmost point of mainland Canada.
Known as the "Tomato Capital of Canada", it is the location of a tomato processing factory owned by Highbury-Canco, previously owned until 2014 by the Heinz Company. Due to its location in the southernmost part of Canada, Leamington uses the motto "Sun Parlour of Canada". In 2006, MoneySense Magazine ranked Leamington as the No. 1 best place to live in Canada.
Leamington enjoys the second warmest climate in Canada, after the Lower Mainland of British Columbia.
Leamington has been known for its tourism and attractions and is known as the tomato capital of Canada. Leamington's attractions include cycle paths and nearby Point Pelee National Park. Leamington also has a large and modern marina. The town's water tower, visible for miles in the flat southern Ontario landscape, is also in the shape and colour of a giant tomato. Celebrating its position as an agricultural powerhouse and its heritage as the H. J. Heinz Company's centre for processing "red goods," the city hosts a "Tomato Festival" each August, as a kickoff of the tomato-harvesting season. Car shows, beauty pageants, parades, and a fair are featured at the festival.
Leamington's position on the north shore of Lake Erie makes it an important recreational centre. The tourist information booth in the centre of town is a large fiberglass tomato.
Leamington is also home to Point Pelee National Park, which contains the southernmost point on mainland Canada and draws thousands of visitors annually and is also home to one of the largest migrations of Monarch butterflies annually.
Known as the tomato capital of Canada, Leamington became the home of the H. J. Heinz factory in 1908. The Heinz products are shipped from Leamington, with English and French labels, mostly to the United States. Ketchup and baby food are the main products. In November 2013 Heinz announced that it would close the Leamington plant in 2014, meaning job losses for 740 employees at the plant and hundreds more support workers.
Due to a 54-year-old law in Canada, which bans the use of tomato paste in tomato juice, Highbury Canco still produces tomato juice and other products for Heinzs. Around 250 workers still process canned products at the over 100 year old factory.
Leamington has also been known for its greenhouses, and now has the largest concentration of commercial greenhouses in all of North America, with 1,969 acres (797 ha) of greenhouse vegetable production in the general area. Major products of the greenhouse industry, in addition to tomatoes, are peppers, cucumbers, roses, and other flowers. Hydroponic farming has been very successfully adopted by many greenhouse operators in Leamington. Historically, tobacco was an important crop in the area, but tobacco production declined in the 1960s and today is virtually nonexistent.
Migrant workers, mostly Mexican and Caribbean seasonal labourers, annually arrive in the region to work in Leamington's greenhouses and farms. Several Mexican and Jamaican shops and a Mexican consulate have opened to service the migrants.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leamington,_Ontario
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_Creative_Commons_...
The second stop on the way home from my college visit was in Richmond!
The Richmond Kmart appears to be a former Grants (and thus reminded me of the Erie Kmart that I visited last summer). It is very noticeably bigger than Anderson; it is also very nice; it has a Kmart Express gas station and it has a former Kmart Cafe (that still has the counter/displays, the full menu board and even the register! Looks like a more recent KCafe closure from what I've seen; if anybody else here has any more information I would like to know more about it!). This store appears to be doing fairly well for one of the last remaining stores in/near the Miami Valley.
Of course, I had to check out the Kmart Express after my main store rounds were complete, so I headed over there and looked around. This is the second Kmart Express I've seen, but the first one I have actually visited, as the other one (at the now nonexistent Brooklyn Super Kmart) had already closed. I didn't buy anything at this KExpress though, as I had spent my money in the main store. Hopefully next time I can buy some coffee or donuts from Kmart Express while going to/from Anderson (if I plan another college visit to Anderson U, which is likely)!
Hopefully the Richmond Kmart will still be able to remain "normal" for a good time longer...I like this store! :D
Kmart #7246 - 3150 National Road West - Richmond, Indiana
I've had spy pen toys with ultraviolet blacklight bulbs smaller than even this.
Mainly, I want to see a whole line based around a brick like this (the brick should be black though...).
There are many blacklight-reactive Lego colors out there, so it'd seem very natural to introduce a brick like this to do just that.
I fully allow Lego the rights to use this idea, with absolutely NO compensation or credit considered, despite whatever the idea's level of success may be.
Leamington is a municipality in Essex County, Ontario, Canada. With a population of 28,403, it is the second largest municipality in the Windsor-Essex County area (after the separated municipality of Windsor, Ontario). It includes Point Pelee, the southernmost point of mainland Canada.
Known as the "Tomato Capital of Canada", it is the location of a tomato processing factory owned by Highbury-Canco, previously owned until 2014 by the Heinz Company. Due to its location in the southernmost part of Canada, Leamington uses the motto "Sun Parlour of Canada". In 2006, MoneySense Magazine ranked Leamington as the No. 1 best place to live in Canada.
Leamington enjoys the second warmest climate in Canada, after the Lower Mainland of British Columbia.
Leamington has been known for its tourism and attractions and is known as the tomato capital of Canada. Leamington's attractions include cycle paths and nearby Point Pelee National Park. Leamington also has a large and modern marina. The town's water tower, visible for miles in the flat southern Ontario landscape, is also in the shape and colour of a giant tomato. Celebrating its position as an agricultural powerhouse and its heritage as the H. J. Heinz Company's centre for processing "red goods," the city hosts a "Tomato Festival" each August, as a kickoff of the tomato-harvesting season. Car shows, beauty pageants, parades, and a fair are featured at the festival.
Leamington's position on the north shore of Lake Erie makes it an important recreational centre. The tourist information booth in the centre of town is a large fiberglass tomato.
Leamington is also home to Point Pelee National Park, which contains the southernmost point on mainland Canada and draws thousands of visitors annually and is also home to one of the largest migrations of Monarch butterflies annually.
Known as the tomato capital of Canada, Leamington became the home of the H. J. Heinz factory in 1908. The Heinz products are shipped from Leamington, with English and French labels, mostly to the United States. Ketchup and baby food are the main products. In November 2013 Heinz announced that it would close the Leamington plant in 2014, meaning job losses for 740 employees at the plant and hundreds more support workers.
Due to a 54-year-old law in Canada, which bans the use of tomato paste in tomato juice, Highbury Canco still produces tomato juice and other products for Heinzs. Around 250 workers still process canned products at the over 100 year old factory.
Leamington has also been known for its greenhouses, and now has the largest concentration of commercial greenhouses in all of North America, with 1,969 acres (797 ha) of greenhouse vegetable production in the general area. Major products of the greenhouse industry, in addition to tomatoes, are peppers, cucumbers, roses, and other flowers. Hydroponic farming has been very successfully adopted by many greenhouse operators in Leamington. Historically, tobacco was an important crop in the area, but tobacco production declined in the 1960s and today is virtually nonexistent.
Migrant workers, mostly Mexican and Caribbean seasonal labourers, annually arrive in the region to work in Leamington's greenhouses and farms. Several Mexican and Jamaican shops and a Mexican consulate have opened to service the migrants.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leamington,_Ontario
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_Creative_Commons_...
The second stop on the way home from my college visit was in Richmond!
The Richmond Kmart appears to be a former Grants (and thus reminded me of the Erie Kmart that I visited last summer). It is very noticeably bigger than Anderson; it is also very nice; it has a Kmart Express gas station and it has a former Kmart Cafe (that still has the counter/displays, the full menu board and even the register! Looks like a more recent KCafe closure from what I've seen; if anybody else here has any more information I would like to know more about it!). This store appears to be doing fairly well for one of the last remaining stores in/near the Miami Valley.
Of course, I had to check out the Kmart Express after my main store rounds were complete, so I headed over there and looked around. This is the second Kmart Express I've seen, but the first one I have actually visited, as the other one (at the now nonexistent Brooklyn Super Kmart) had already closed. I didn't buy anything at this KExpress though, as I had spent my money in the main store. Hopefully next time I can buy some coffee or donuts from Kmart Express while going to/from Anderson (if I plan another college visit to Anderson U, which is likely)!
Hopefully the Richmond Kmart will still be able to remain "normal" for a good time longer...I like this store! :D
Kmart #7246 - 3150 National Road West - Richmond, Indiana
Leamington is a municipality in Essex County, Ontario, Canada. With a population of 28,403, it is the second largest municipality in the Windsor-Essex County area (after the separated municipality of Windsor, Ontario). It includes Point Pelee, the southernmost point of mainland Canada.
Known as the "Tomato Capital of Canada", it is the location of a tomato processing factory owned by Highbury-Canco, previously owned until 2014 by the Heinz Company. Due to its location in the southernmost part of Canada, Leamington uses the motto "Sun Parlour of Canada". In 2006, MoneySense Magazine ranked Leamington as the No. 1 best place to live in Canada.
Leamington enjoys the second warmest climate in Canada, after the Lower Mainland of British Columbia.
Leamington has been known for its tourism and attractions and is known as the tomato capital of Canada. Leamington's attractions include cycle paths and nearby Point Pelee National Park. Leamington also has a large and modern marina. The town's water tower, visible for miles in the flat southern Ontario landscape, is also in the shape and colour of a giant tomato. Celebrating its position as an agricultural powerhouse and its heritage as the H. J. Heinz Company's centre for processing "red goods," the city hosts a "Tomato Festival" each August, as a kickoff of the tomato-harvesting season. Car shows, beauty pageants, parades, and a fair are featured at the festival.
Leamington's position on the north shore of Lake Erie makes it an important recreational centre. The tourist information booth in the centre of town is a large fiberglass tomato.
Leamington is also home to Point Pelee National Park, which contains the southernmost point on mainland Canada and draws thousands of visitors annually and is also home to one of the largest migrations of Monarch butterflies annually.
Known as the tomato capital of Canada, Leamington became the home of the H. J. Heinz factory in 1908. The Heinz products are shipped from Leamington, with English and French labels, mostly to the United States. Ketchup and baby food are the main products. In November 2013 Heinz announced that it would close the Leamington plant in 2014, meaning job losses for 740 employees at the plant and hundreds more support workers.
Due to a 54-year-old law in Canada, which bans the use of tomato paste in tomato juice, Highbury Canco still produces tomato juice and other products for Heinzs. Around 250 workers still process canned products at the over 100 year old factory.
Leamington has also been known for its greenhouses, and now has the largest concentration of commercial greenhouses in all of North America, with 1,969 acres (797 ha) of greenhouse vegetable production in the general area. Major products of the greenhouse industry, in addition to tomatoes, are peppers, cucumbers, roses, and other flowers. Hydroponic farming has been very successfully adopted by many greenhouse operators in Leamington. Historically, tobacco was an important crop in the area, but tobacco production declined in the 1960s and today is virtually nonexistent.
Migrant workers, mostly Mexican and Caribbean seasonal labourers, annually arrive in the region to work in Leamington's greenhouses and farms. Several Mexican and Jamaican shops and a Mexican consulate have opened to service the migrants.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leamington,_Ontario
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_Creative_Commons_...
[this will probably be a long description, I can feel it. No need to read the whole thing unless you care about my life lolz. Feel free to skip to the end if you're curious about the photo.]
So, it's been a while. My attempts to keep my photostream updated have mostly been devoted to attempting to catch up on uploading senior sessions...ha. I've definitely taken six more sessions, oops. As much as I love taking my senior pictures, my efforts to document my own life this year have...been relatively nonexistent.
Which is kind of a sad thing, considering I've finished my first year of college, no?
It's been quite the year. I go to school at the University of Texas at Austin, and I can't say I don't love it. Austin's quite possibly the greatest city in the world, and I still don't think I've experienced it to its fullest--we'll see where next year takes me.
I've met some pretty awesome people--I'm lucky enough to be in this honors program that connects me to a great group of intellectuals. Good grief, that sounds pretentious. It kind of is, I won't lie--but I've truly met some amazing people, and can't wait to spend more time with them next year.
Typical freshmanness aside, let's see. I take pictures for the Daily Texan as of January of this year, which kind of fills the hole in my heart that came from leaving The Roar. I'm seriously so honored to work alongside these photographers, everyone's so incredibly talented. You can check out the work I've done this semester here, if you so wish.
I did some design work for my honors program's literary journal as well, which was quite liberating. I think the production of it went on some kind of hiatus at some point, but I'm hoping it'll get published at some point, it was pretty awesome stuff.
Did some work with Lions Club, remembering how good community service felt was a nice feeling. I'm definitely planning to be more active next year, those people are pretty great as well.
It'd be weird if I didn't mention that I've found myself with this wonderful boy, I suppose, who was/is quite the companion to take on college with. Words can't really do him justice, but who would've thought senior prom would take us so far? Hahah.
Not to avoid academics, but...maybe later. Because it's currently summer, and I'm currently across the world in China, and being serious is not something I want to be right now.
Point of all this: I feel like I've had a lot to say this year that needed to be captured through photography, but thanks to incredible stints of laziness/a major lack of inspiration, I've kind of let photography drift into the purely business realm...which is a scary place. I love shooting senior photos and shooting for the Texan, but both have definitely reminded me of how much I love photography for how it can tell a story, all that jazz. So, this summer, I'm definitely going to pick up photoing for myself again--China's quite the place to do so, after all. Hopefully, I'll have some time to get my portfolio/website up and running, we'll see what happens.
This is my cousin's son, who was quite the model for me in Kunshan, my dad's hometown. Lighting was awful, ISO was cranked up pretty high...but I kind of liked how this one came out. The place is incredible, more photos hopefully to come. But have a peek for now, because fingers crossed, I'm back, whooo. <3
orginal pattern is 9"h x 10 1/2"w. Transfer is from unknown company. It's on tissue paper with dark blue dots. I fixed some of the lines because they were almost nonexistent.
The second stop on the way home from my college visit was in Richmond!
The Richmond Kmart appears to be a former Grants (and thus reminded me of the Erie Kmart that I visited last summer). It is very noticeably bigger than Anderson; it is also very nice; it has a Kmart Express gas station and it has a former Kmart Cafe (that still has the counter/displays, the full menu board and even the register! Looks like a more recent KCafe closure from what I've seen; if anybody else here has any more information I would like to know more about it!). This store appears to be doing fairly well for one of the last remaining stores in/near the Miami Valley.
Of course, I had to check out the Kmart Express after my main store rounds were complete, so I headed over there and looked around. This is the second Kmart Express I've seen, but the first one I have actually visited, as the other one (at the now nonexistent Brooklyn Super Kmart) had already closed. I didn't buy anything at this KExpress though, as I had spent my money in the main store. Hopefully next time I can buy some coffee or donuts from Kmart Express while going to/from Anderson (if I plan another college visit to Anderson U, which is likely)!
Hopefully the Richmond Kmart will still be able to remain "normal" for a good time longer...I like this store! :D
Kmart #7246 - 3150 National Road West - Richmond, Indiana
In 1936, about 128 Siamese (Thai) naval officers were sent to japan for training by the Japanese Navy, and to bring back 4 new submarines with them to Siam. -- However, there were 32 officers, sent earlier that year for a secret training, in a separate mission - they were a crew of a nonexistent Submarine Number 5.
No record / document about 32 officers and their submarine can be found in Thailand today. No one can really be sure what their secret mission was - only rumor that Submarine No.5 vanished without a trace by the end of 1945 - if they really existed..that is.
Not until 2006 that some photographs, by laws, were uncovered / declassified by the US. government, and quickly disappeared again. But before then, there was an article in a small / local magazine in Portland, Oregon, related some unrelated events mixed up all together,from Tunguska event in Russia (1908) to strange little things around the world in the past century. The article would have been regarded as bullshit by a pot head writer until the guy is dead from a simple fall from his fixed gear bike.
and the story continues ..
about photographs :
classified documents ..hmmm..
Actually it's a totally fake document.. a little bit here and there.
We put some real photograph of Siamese submarine in 1938 with her crew,
and twisted around with our way of manipulation. Then, we made up story
that you just read..
We think this is a fun story that we can do something with, except that
we're too lazy to do anything right now. But i think we should something
with it -- a fiction or comics ?? hmmm..
History : this is what really happened.
Before and during the first half of World War II, with close relation
with japan and Germany, the Siamese government (Thailand) commissioned
4 small / diesel submarines to be used as coastal protection and war
with the French in Indochina.
The submarines were designed and built at the Mitsubishi Naval Dockyards
in Kobe. All four submarines were delivered to Siam on July 19, 1938.
However, submarines never engaged in a real war, and used from time to
time as emergency electricity generators during the allied bombing of Bangkok.
The power house in the city was frequently bombed to pieces by the
American bombers. And at that time, Japan had some anti aircraft guns but none of
fighter planes stationed in Siam (Thailand).
info from axis forum
The second stop on the way home from my college visit was in Richmond!
The Richmond Kmart appears to be a former Grants (and thus reminded me of the Erie Kmart that I visited last summer). It is very noticeably bigger than Anderson; it is also very nice; it has a Kmart Express gas station and it has a former Kmart Cafe (that still has the counter/displays, the full menu board and even the register! Looks like a more recent KCafe closure from what I've seen; if anybody else here has any more information I would like to know more about it!). This store appears to be doing fairly well for one of the last remaining stores in/near the Miami Valley.
Of course, I had to check out the Kmart Express after my main store rounds were complete, so I headed over there and looked around. This is the second Kmart Express I've seen, but the first one I have actually visited, as the other one (at the now nonexistent Brooklyn Super Kmart) had already closed. I didn't buy anything at this KExpress though, as I had spent my money in the main store. Hopefully next time I can buy some coffee or donuts from Kmart Express while going to/from Anderson (if I plan another college visit to Anderson U, which is likely)!
Hopefully the Richmond Kmart will still be able to remain "normal" for a good time longer...I like this store! :D
Kmart #7246 - 3150 National Road West - Richmond, Indiana
(Previous KOM League Flash Reports are available on request)
Comment regarding SPAM. The vocabulary gets changed with each generation. You all know what I talking about without my having to illustrate how the meaning of words change. One of the greatest stories for which I don't recall all the details occurred during the opening of a large supermarket in Columbia, Mo. in the 1970's. One of the items they featured on sale was SPAM. A young reporter for either one of the two newspapers or television station covered the opening and was impressed with the large display of SPAM.
Being a good and inquisitive reporter he inquired as to the composition of the product. The store had a young assistant manager with a quick and inventive mind so he explained to the reporter that SPAM was the product of a very small animal found only in Nebraska. He went on to explain that like any other product it had years when it was abundant and other years when the little animal was scarce and the product was hard to buy. Since the product was obviously abundant that year he told the reporter that people should stock up on it.
Understand this was long before the internet and the reporter bought the story hook, line and sinker. The story was published or aired in Columbia and it was so popular with the mass audience that the reporter asked the assistant store manager for a follow-up interview. The next time around he even asked for a picture of a SPAM. The assistant manager went into great detail about the animal being nocturnal and that no one had ever photographed one.
In the foregoing paragraphs I just made a huge blunder. I've told a story about which all the details aren't known. However, like most of everything else I write someone out there will probably recall it or can find the story on an old newspaper site. If no one can embellish on this story it still remains my favorite on the subject of SPAM.
A question: Does any reader recall a song from the heyday of Harry Caray, in St. Louis, entitled "The Harry Caray Polka?" If you know of a recording of it or know where the complete lyrics might be found I'd appreciate knowing about it. I will share it with one other person, the one who inquired about it.
The
KOM Flash Report
for
August 23, 2013
Store this URL somewhere to stay informed of KOM updates and photos. www.flickr.com/photos/60428361@N07/
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This is the first attempt since the Google Internet Gestapo (GIG) arrested me, a few weeks ago, for sending Flash Reports that they determined to be SPAM. Everyone from my era knows what that product was/is. It used to be eaten because we were poor and now people eat it to be chic.
Moving right ahead. For the last 18 days an attempt has been made to keep those with any interest in the KOM league news updated through this site. Flicker: KOM League Photostream
www.flickr.com/photos/60428361@N07/ Some readers, like Bill Clark, right here in Columbia, Missouri, can’t get that feature. So, Bill, this report is for you and I’m including the updates that appear on that site to kick off this report.
August 23, 2013
I'm not sure how many people even bother to check this site for updates. If you do and would like to see a brand new Flash Report with all the excitement those stories generate let me know. In fact, it will take about 25 people asking to see a new report for me to shake myself from the summer doldrums in order to do it. I've heard from a few folks with some pretty interesting tales and I'd put forth a little, not much, energy to do something that a few of you enjoy. Let me know. Otherwise, I'll keep picking tomatoes and placing them at the free tomato stand in my front yard. Just dial me up at j03.john@gmail.com if you want another thrill packed edition of the Flash Report.
August 22, 2013
Yesterday I was going through a list of former KOM leaguers with whom contact had been established over the years. For a number of years communication with Russ and Dody Oxford was conducted by e-mail.. Russ was the third baseman on the same team as the four fellows shown in the photo above. (That is the Flickr site photo)
Russ was born Russell Charles Oxford on October 20, 1931 in Sioux City, Iowa and I learned through some searching of obituaries recently that he passed away April 24, 2013 in Redmond, Washington.
Russ and Dorothy McInnes were married on June 21, 1951 at the Grace Episcopal Church in Carthage, MO. After the wedding many of his teammates formed an archway using baseball bats under which the newlyweds exited the church. The bridesmaid and best man at that wedding were Mr. and Mrs. Walter Koehler. Just one month later Walter was drafted and just over a year later he died while serving his country as a medical corpsman in Korea.
One thing Oxford accomplished that very few former Carthage players pulled off was getting away with a team uniform at the end of the season. He wore #7 which was a hand me down from the 1949 Chicago Cubs. Another thing Russ had was a birthday that was the same as a former KOM league shortstop. That former KOM league shortstop didn't wear #7 until he made it to the major leagues and it was later retired when the fellow retired from the New York Yankees.
One of the great trivia questions in the early days of the KOM league was to ask "Who played on the left side of a KOM league infield, wore #7 and was born October 20, 1931. Never once did anyone ever say the name "Russ Oxford." The only name that anyone knew who fit that description was "Mickey Mantle."
From whence did they come to play in the KOM league?
Many people assume, who weren't around 60 years ago, that Class D teams were heavily populated with players from the area in which the team was located. That was true if the team wasn't affiliated with a major league organization or a higher classification team. In a quick perusal of the database of KOM rosters there were 19 players each from Springfield, MO and Topeka, Kansas. Most of the Topeka lads wound up in the league by virtue of being signed by the Topeka, Kansas Owls. The Springfield boys were primarily signed by Tom Greenwade and shipped off to Independence, Kansas to "sink or swim."
Players from all over the country wound up in the KOM with 105 coming from the State of California and 27 of them from the City of Los Angeles. The Windy City, Chicago, sent 85 of their young men to the league basically because of the Cubs sponsoring teams at Iola in 1946-47, Carthage 1949-51 and Blackwell, OK in 1952. The City of St. Louis contributed 87 players to the league and that doesn't include the other cities in the metro area. Even the "Big Apple" had 16 of their youngsters go west to receive their version of culture shock. Omaha, Nebraska had 40 of their young men in KOM league uniforms and most of those played at Ponca City, OK in the Dodger organization. Bert Wells, of Larned, Kansas, the Dodger scout, was primarily responsible for that.
Should you have an interest in a certain city or town and wonder how many of their residents played in the KOM league send in that inquiry. Small towns such as Alba, MO sent a half dozen players to the KOM league and not all of them were named Boyer. And, as I've stated numerous times neither Cloyd Boyer nor his little brother, Cletis, were born in Alba. But, the "baseball chronicles" will always claim they did. Cloyd told me he long ago gave up on trying getting the record books changed on that matter. It's too late for Cletis who was born at Cossville and every baseball publication on earth will show his birth place as Cassville. One of those towns is in Barry County and the other in Jasper County, MO. It’s not too late to get Cloyd’s birthplace corrected while he is still around to know it. He was born in Duval Township located just north of Alba near what is Baseline Road. Look it up on any good Internet site or bad one for that matter.
August 19, 2013
No Flash Report updates have transpired in the last four days. I'm not planning any Flash Reports for the foreseeable future. No one is corresponding with me about what is on their mind and fortunately I don't have any deaths to report. I do know a couple of guys have had a rough time lately do to surgery and other age related problems but they don't come under the heading of "Urgent Messages." When those arrive I'll report on them. The two people I'm tracking right now, due to health problems, are; Don Keeter and Leonard Van de Hey. Keeter is in a Kansas City rehabilitation facility and Van de Hey is in a Wisconsin hospital following surgery. Word received today was that there will be more of the same for the former Carthage Cub from 1950-51.
August 12, 2013.
There won't be another Flash Report for a few days. If you have anything to submit for the next report feel free to do so by contacting me at j03.john@gmail.com Thanks for checking out this site. The traffic on this site has picked up significantly since the Flash Reports have become a feature.
For the latest interview with former KOM Leaguer, Bill Virdon, go to this site: Celebrate West Plains: Bill Virdon reflects on his career - KY3 News
m.ky3.com/display/6497/story/458e4da0908d50238e442ec6fee3...
The next report will have an update on what happened with regard to the guy offering to give me a Mickey Mantle baseball card and also more information on the late Roger Vander Weide's baseball career. His older brother Robert was "top dog" in the operation of the Orlando Magic when they entered the National Basketball Association.
August 15, 2013. The photos are viewed by a number of former KOM league ballplayers and their families. I learned, by posting these photos that Leonard Van de Hey, a member of the 1950-51 Carthage Cubs had surgery yesterday in Wisconsin. Also, a nice note was received from the daughter of the late Johnny LaPorta, Carthage Cubs 1949-50 that she enjoys the photos. Her mother, Angie, the greatest scorekeeper in the history of Carthage baseball, is residing in a nursing home in the Chicago area and still retains the memories of many of the KOM era.
In the next Flash Report an article will address the subject of radio stations that broadcast KOM League games. If you heard a game or games over KGLC in Miami, OK, KSEK Pittsburg, KS, KDMO Carthage, MO, KIND Independence, KS, KWON Bartlesville, OK or WBBZ in Ponca City and wish to share a memory I'd love to include it in the article. There were no games aired of Iola, Blackwell or Chanute home games since those towns didn't have a radio station until nearly a decade after the KOM League folded.
The voice of Miami baseball was Russ Martin. He was the pastor of the First Christian Church in Miami and was well known for the dramatic phrases and embellishment of games when they became a bit drab. For a while, Joe Pollock, former KOM speedster, with three different clubs, was his play by play color man.
Pittsburg Browns games were carried on KSEK radio. That station was on the Liberty network and carried a game of the day with Gordon McClendon and Lindsey Nelson doing most of the games. If you got bored you went to the top of the radio dial and got the Mutual Broadcasting Company game with Al Helfer doing the announcing on radio station WMBH in Joplin. In the evening that station carried the Joplin Miner games with Bill Grigsby doing the play by play. As a point of trivia the last KOM game broadcast was in 1998 with Grigsby doing most of the play by play and not so ably assisted by Yours truly. That was about as much fun as I ever had. By the way one of the announcers for Pittsburg was Thad Sandstrom who later headed up the WIBW radio and TV empire. If you want to know the fate of Mr. Sandstrom check that out on the Internet. The story is too long and gory to place here.
Bill Platt, James DeStefano (aka Jim King), Fred Pralle and Keith Upson broadcast for Ponca City, Carthage, Bartlesville and Independence, respectively. The story of Upson is contained under the last photo on this Flickr site. He is shown with the 1948 Independence Yankees. There are some great tales about the last four guys mentioned but I'll hold off writing anything about them to see if anyone has read the material to this point.
I'm under pressure to keep this site moving along since g-mail loves me at about the same level socialism admires free enterprise and vice versa.
Okay, the foregoing is all that you missed if you don’t have access to Flickr or can access it and don’t.
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Here are a few other things that have transpired recently: And a few reasons why I still attempt to piece these reports into some type of order.
From a lady in Topeka, Kansas: “I enjoy reading these reports whether I know the person or not...............it’s in my blood, I guess and I appreciate all the work you do in writing these reports
From a lady in St. Louis, Missouri. “Dad was reading over my shoulder again! He has been gone so long but baseball was everything to him and (I) know he would really enjoy the reports.”
From a lady in Indianapolis, Indiana:
JOHN, THANKS AGAIN FOR ALL THE BEAUTIFUL PHOTOGRAPHY~~ESPECIALLY THE BIRDS, FLOWERS, AND CHARLIE.
CAN"T BELIEVE IT'S BEEN FIVE MONTHS SINCE KENNY PASSED ON. A VERY KIND AND CARING HUSBAND, EXCEPT WHEN ONE OF HIS PLAYERS MISSES AN EASY CATCH FOR THE WIN!”
Ed note: Kenny’s last name was Cox and played for the 1948 Carthage Cardinals and other teams in the Brooklyn Dodger organization later on.
From a gentleman in Shreveport, Louisiana:
You think you have troubles with Google. I've been out of internet for several days. My battle with A. T. & T. started 3 years ago and continues. Won't bore you with details. Dave wants you to know that Thursday he finished the batch of Flash Reports you sent. Said to tell you he read every word. And he'll be going back to them often over the years! Without the net, have accumulated a # of your photos. We'll set aside a time and
both go over together.
Ed note:
The reports the gentleman mentioned were actually every issue of the KOM League Remembered newsletter that was published between 1994 and 2010. Those arrived in Louisiana thanks to the kindness of Bob Mallon who had kept every copy sent him over the years.
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Baseball trivia--The youngest pitcher to win a Major League game in the 20th Century
Hi John--Here is a little interesting baseball trivia I know you'll enjoy reading. This is an old teammate of mine from 58 years ago. I just met him again for the first time at the Legion World Series last Friday in his hometown of Shelby, NC. This was the game my great-nephew Joe O'Donnell pitched. (Photo to follow in my next e-mail).
When we were teammates, I never knew about his accomplishments. He was just a class-act career minor-leaguer, and good teammate. We had a great time talking and remembering those good old days when the grass was real and batting helmets nonexistent! -Bill--Durham, NC
philadelphia.phillies.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=201211...
Ed note:
Not many baseball fans would know the name of the youngest pitcher to have won a game in the big leagues. The one previous to that was in 1890. Without looking how many of you can name the youngest pitcher to post a win? Here’s a hint if you immediately think of Joe Nuxhall you aren’t even in the running.
Note from a friend since my youth:
Upon finding the information on the death of Russell Oxford I sent a note to my long time friend, in Arizona, Corky Simpson. Cork is an award winning and Arizona Hall of Fame sportswriter. So, when I get a note from him I listen.
Johnny: I remember him well and I always thought he had a great baseball name: Russ Oxford. -- Didn't we shag balls in the outfield during batting practice one time? Or am I dreaming? I think we did. Boy, today the liability insurance on something like that would be more catastrophic than getting beaned on the head. Come to think of it, I believe a Carthage Cub, perhaps Rogers Hornsby's son, did get beaned on the head one time in lieu of catching the !#@%!! ball during an actual game. -- Corky
Ed reply:
They never let me shag balls during batting practice. Hornsby was in CF in the second game of a DH against Independence on or near August 20 of 1949. The Carthage pitcher was working on a 21 straight scoreless inning streak. With one out and a runner on first the Independence shortstop hit a fly ball to medium left center. The ball got above the light standards and Hornsby couldn't locate it and it landed on the side of his head. The hitter, Mickey Mantle, got an inside the park homer and Dr. Tom McNew came on the field to check out Hornsby. That same Carthage pitcher, George Erath, who had his scoreless hit streak snapped by the freak homer later ran a minor league club in North Carolina and gave Curt Flood his first chance in baseball. True story.
By the way Carthage teams have come up a lot in recent days. Len Van de Hey is having some health issues and his family has been in touch. I have even talked to one member of the family about his girlfriend when he was with Carthage. He went with Shirley S. She had four sisters. They were B., S., B., and another B. You probably remember some of those girls. There were three other Carthage girls who dated John Mudd, Walt Babcock and Don Biebel and followed them up to Sioux Falls, SD, the next year, and discovered the ball players had already found other girlfriends by the time they got there. (Only one player from the 1951 Carthage team married a girl from the area and she was from Avilla.)
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A new book about Carthage, MO
There is a new book in the Arcadia series coming out late this month and there will be a special event to honor that on August 30. The kick-off for that book will be August 30 at the Powers Museum which is located directly across the street from the old ballpark where the Carthage Pirates, Browns, Cardinals and Cubs played their games on and off from 1938-1951.
All of those who contributed to the book that chronicles the history of Carthage from 1950-1990 have been invited to attend a special evening together and since I did identify some old photos of former Carthage players an invitation was extended. The following was my reply. “Congratulations on the new book. Those 50 years of Carthage history was special to me, especially the first 20 years of it.
Only yesterday I was exchanging notes with a member of the 1951 Carthage Cub baseball team and I was doing some research on the young lady he dated that year. That young lady is now 81, if she's still living. She had four sisters and I'm about 99.999% sure I could find her or her descendants if I put any effort into the matter. The young lady who dated the ballplayer in 1951 married a young man in 1953 who had just come back from the Korean War. He had attained the rank of Sergeant in the Marine Corps. I noticed in checking the ancestry files yesterday that he died in 1972 at the young age of 40. That was the same age my dad was when he died in 1947 at McCune Brooks Hospital in Carthage.
My mind often wanders back to the days of my youth, in Carthage, and I relish the memories. Since the 1940 Federal Census has come out I sometimes go through the difference sections of the city and look for names I recognize from the past. It’s interesting to see where the parents of my classmates worked and even how old they were when their children were born. The people I looked upon as old were relatively young as I peruse the census data.
I would love to be in Carthage on the 30th but it is impossible these days to leave home. I still put out my baseball reports to a few hundred people and many of the recipients are former Carthaginians or former players loved the town. I'll mention the new book and hopefully some of the readers will order one.
Note from Powers Museum’s director:
Thanks for responding back. I will send you a list of the baseball photos we used. I will also see if another book by another author using some of our baseball photos got published as he thought. Those would be pre-KOM
Ed reply:
What you have are Carthage Pirate and Browns photos. However, there were a couple of 1946 Carthage Cardinals that somehow were in that lot. I imagine the other guy you are talking about is Jerry Hogan of Fayetteville, Ark. who has been trying to get his book about the Arkansas State and Arkansas-Missouri league published for some time. I hear from him nearly every day of my life. (Jerry get in touch with the museum if I have misrepresented anything.)
Reply from Powers Museum’s director:
Yes, so the book is NOT out yet I take it. I won't go looking for it then!
Here is who is in the book:
Pirates Joe Narieka
Browns trio of Roy Meyer, Joe Szuch & Frank Mancuso
Browns bat boy Raymond Baird
Cardinals William Buck
Cardinals LaVerne Etting
...and of course an image of the stadium.
The whole idea of the book was to feature selections from the many archival/artifact donations made to the museum since opening of the museum.
MICHELE HANSFORD
Director
Powers Museum, Carthage MO
Ed note:
Since many of the recipients of this report have Carthage connections you might wish to check out the book about Carthage. It is in the same format as all Arcadia publications. It will be around 128 pages with a lot of great photos and minimal verbiage. If any of you purchased “The KOM League Remembered” by that non-award winning author you’ll know what to expect regarding the 40 year history of Carthage from its glory years.
And, while I’m on the subject, if you wish to have the best pictorial book ever published about the KOM League I’m sure Arcadia would sell you one or more if you begged them. You can purchase them off the Internet and if you purchase them from Amazon.com I suspect that some where down the line it would result in eighty cents in royalties to Yours truly. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a royalty check.
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Okay, I’m done:
I’ve dropped so many names and places in this report I’m bound to hear from someone for whom those references will spark some type of memory. If I don’t then this report has NO reason for existing.
It's been a busy afternoon since I got home from work. Seems like they all are short and full. I just downloaded the new Silver Efex Pro 2. SSSwwweeeeet! Love it. It has a selective color feature that I used on the eyes in this image.
This is a shot of one of our rescues, Rufus. He's a Chartreuse, a real sweet heart and a mama's boy. He seems to think the world revolves around Sassy and really could care less about anyone else in the house. As soon as Sassy walks through the front door he's just meowing and dancing around at her feet. During the work week, I get home about an hour or two before Sassy does and while she's not here, he is nonexistent. We have plenty other fur kids excited and demanding of my attention when I get home, so I'm not put off at all by his exclusion of me as a person of interest.
Yay!! We got through Monday. Hope to find some flicker time tomorrow.
God Bless!
this one depicts Bonnie & Clyde the notorious Bank Robbers....had to look more glamorous than they really were
In fact they spent most of their time living in motorcars that they'd stolen.....after a Bank job Clyde thought nothing of driving 1000 miles in a day & usually drove 500 miles a day the rest of the time...for a number of months
Just think....that was on the old dirt tracks of the day too
It was the Depression & not many people had jobs or even homes....that was one of the reasons Bonnie & Clyde were so popular with a lot of folks...especially the ones kicked out of their homes by the Ruthless Banks of the the time
Clyde had been caught robbing a shop as a young man & was sent to a pretty dreadful Prison Farm....it was so bad prisoners cut their own toes & fingers off just to get in the hospital wing away from their sadistic guards for a while....
Anyway on release ( he served his full term ) vowed never to return...he'd rather die than return to that Prison..it had been his elder brother that took him to the robbery as a look out
The reason he & the gang lasted so long as Bank Robbers & fugitives was his choice of getaway vehicle...it was always a Ford V6 or V8 at a time when most cars were much slower & local Police Officers were expected to use their own...so all manner of old bangers were being used
The same criteria was in force when it came to firearms too...each officer had to use his own gun...ones they used for shooting vermin mainly
On the other hand the gang had robbed an Army Reservist Camp when it was closed & stolen Military weapons including Machine Guns Side Arms & Grenades along with enough live ammunition to fight an army
Communications were also nonexistent in many places & information wasn't shared so by Clyde driving hundreds of miles a day the gang were far away before news spread
It was with the onset of Prohibition & a vast increase in armed gangs ( Prohibition was of course the cause of the crime wave ) that the FBI had taken shape but Federal Laws were still more about Tax Evasion than Gangsters...unless they weren't paying their Taxes or were Smuggling Booze across State Lines
After a while the FBI had set up offices in Towns & Cities close to the most high risk Criminal areas but met a lot of resistance....they were asked why catching one dangerous Gangster cost a lot more than they'd ever made from crime
Hoover was seen as an inexperienced administrator who'd never arrested anybody in his life so his new "G" men didn't get the equipment they needed till a while later
Anyway Bonnie & Clyde along with Clyde's elder brother Buck....yep the one that got Clyde into crime to begin with & his wife Blanche Barrow were the notaries Barrow Gang....2 couples that took every Lawman in the area & the FBI over 3 years to catch/Kill & they'd been robbing Banks Petrol Stations & Stores on a weekly basis...funny old world....
thanks for looking in......appreciated......best bigger....hope you have a Great Weekend
LT. Michael P. Murphy Memorial Park Lake Ronkonkoma Long Island New York 11779 USA August 2020
Lake Ronkonkoma, Long Island's largest freshwater lake, is in Suffolk County, New York, United States, and has a circumference of about 2 miles (3.2 km), and is 0.65 miles (1.05 km) across on average. A kettle lake formed by retreating glaciers, it is owned by the Town of Islip under the terms of the Nichols Patent. The land around it is controlled by three town governments - Smithtown, Islip and Brookhaven. The name Ronkonkoma comes from an Algonquian expression meaning "boundary fishing-lake", also earlier written as Raconkumake and Raconkamuck
Lake Ronkonkoma served as a boundary between lands occupied by four Native American communities: Nissequogues Setaukets Secatogues and Unkechaugs
The lake was created by a retreating glacier.
The primary gamefish is bass
The most prevalent legend is about Princess Ronkonkoma, an Indian princess who died at the lake in the mid-1600s. One version of the story is that she was walking across the ice one winter when she met and fell in love with an English woodcutter named Hugh Birdsall, who lived across the lake. However, her father—chief of the Setauket tribe—forbade their relationship. So every day for 7 years, she would write letters on pieces of bark, row to the middle of the lake, and float the letters across the lake to Hugh. Then, after all those years of being kept apart from her love, she rowed to the middle of the lake and stabbed herself to death.
There are variations on this particular story, such as that the princess drowned herself after learning about her lover's death, and that her body washed up in Connecticut (which ties into the idea that the lake is bottomless, and that there are underground channels to other lakes). While there's no proof the princess ever existed, Hugh Birdsall was a real person who eventually moved back to England and got married there.
In any case, the story goes that she claims a boy's life every year either to avenge her lover's death, or to try to find herself a soulmate in death. And the statistics back up this "curse": of all the recorded drownings on this lake, the vast majority have been young males.
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Dr. David S. Igneri was the head lifeguard at Lake Ronkonkoma for 32 summers, and says there were at least 30 deaths during that time, all males. On the program Weird U.S., which aired on the History Channel in 2005, Igneri explains that one of the biggest challenges was that visibility in the lake is nonexistent after about the first 10 feet; if anyone submerges lower than that, no one will be able to rescue the person because the lake becomes enveloped in total blackness.
In 1965, Igneri had a recurring nightmare about trying to complete a rescue. He dove deep into the lake and panicked because he lost his orientation. When he got to the surface, he heard fireworks. Although Igneri was not previously interested in the paranormal, he believed this dream was a warning that someone was going to drown on the Fourth of July. He warned his staff of 11 lifeguards—and sure enough, late that afternoon, an epileptic 15-year-old boy had a seizure and went down in the water. The lifeguards dove for 45 minutes and did everything they could, but could not find the boy. As Igneri swam back to the surface after his last dive, fireworks went off.
Author Michael R. Ebert, who must be the foremost authority on the legends of Lake Ronkonkoma. He published the spiral-bound book "The Curse of Lake Ronkonkoma" in 2002, and it is available at the Sachem, Connetquot and Smithtown libraries.
The first time he remembers hearing about the lake's "curse" was when he attended Ronkonkoma Junior High School in the early 1990s and one of his classmates drowned in the lake.
"If I remember correctly, he and some friends were supposedly drinking beer on a rowboat and were horsing around when he fell in and was unable to swim to shore due to his bulky winter clothes."
After Ebert's college graduation, he searched for more information about the lake's legends in local history books, but found little—which convinced him to write his own book. He spent about six months visiting libraries and the Lake Ronkonkoma Historical Society to research articles, maps and geographical studies dating back to the early 1900s.
In addition to the stories about Princess Ronkonkoma and the bottomless lake, Ebert also found several other mysteries, such as the way the lake rises and falls with no relation to local rainfall. "The Indians believed it to be the work of Manitos, the great spirit of the lake," he says. "One study showed that over 7 years in the early 1900s, the rainfall on Long Island was below the usual average by about 52 inches, yet the lake rose 7 feet."
Then there were the rumors of "healing properties" of the lake, supposedly started by a Brooklyn businessman who wanted to capitalize on the lake's appeal as a local tourist attraction in the 1900s. "The guy even reportedly sold 'lake juice' in small vials, and I found an old ad promoting the lake as a health resort that cured diseases," says Ebert.
So whether you believe the lake will heal what ails you, or that a vengeful princess spirit is out there waiting to drown you, there's no denying that Lake Ronkonkoma is one of Long Island's most whispered-about points of interest.
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The Moscow Metro is a metro system serving the Russian capital of Moscow as well as the neighbouring cities of Krasnogorsk, Reutov, Lyubertsy and Kotelniki in Moscow Oblast. Opened in 1935 with one 11-kilometre (6.8 mi) line and 13 stations, it was the first underground railway system in the Soviet Union.
As of 2023, the Moscow Metro, excluding the Moscow Central Circle, the Moscow Central Diameters and the Moscow Monorail, had 294 stations and 514.5 km (319.7 mi) of route length, excluding light rail Monorail, making it the 8th-longest in the world and the longest outside China. It is the third metro system in the world (after Madrid and Beijing), which has two ring lines. The system is mostly underground, with the deepest section 84 metres (276 ft) underground at the Park Pobedy station, one of the world's deepest underground stations. It is the busiest metro system in Europe, the busiest in the world outside Asia, and is considered a tourist attraction in itself.
The Moscow Metro is a world leader in the frequency of train traffic—intervals during peak hours do not exceed 90 seconds. In February 2023, Moscow was the first in the world to reduce the intervals of metro trains to 80 seconds.
Name
The full legal name of the metro has been "Moscow Order of Lenin and Order of the Red Banner of Labor V.I. Lenin Metro" (Московский ордена Ленина и ордена Трудового Красного Знамени метрополитен имени В.И. Ленина) since 1955. This is usually shortened to V.I. Lenin Metro (Метрополитен им. В.И. Ленина). This shorter official name appears on many stations. Although there were proposals to remove Lenin from the official name, it still stands. During the 1990s and 2000s, Lenin's name was excluded from the signage on newly built and reconstructed stations. In 2016, the authorities promised to return the official name of the metro to all the stations' signage.
The first official name of the metro was L. M. Kaganovich Metro (Метрополитен им. Л.М. Кагановича) after Lazar Kaganovich. (see History section). However, when the Metro was awarded the Order of Lenin, it was officially renamed "Moscow Order of Lenin L. M. Kaganovich Metro" (Московский ордена Ленина Метрополитен им. Л. М. Кагановича) in 1947. And when the metro was renamed in 1955, Kaganovich was "given a consolation prize" by renaming the Okhotny Ryad station to "Imeni Kaganovicha". Yet in a matter of only two years, the original Okhotny Ryad name of the station was reinstated.
Logo
The first line of the Moscow Metro was launched in 1935, complete with the first logo, the capital M paired with the text "МЕТРО". There is no accurate information about the author of the logo, so it is often attributed to the architects of the first stations – Samuil Kravets, Ivan Taranov and Nadezhda Bykova. At the opening in 1935, the M letter on the logo had no definite shape.
Today, with at least ten different variations of the shape in use, Moscow Metro still does not have clear brand or logo guidelines. An attempt was made in October 2013 to launch a nationwide brand image competition, only to be closed several hours after its announcement. A similar contest, held independently later that year by the design crowdsourcing company DesignContest, yielded better results, though none were officially accepted by the Metro officials.
Operations
The Moscow Metro, a state-owned enterprise, is 449 km (279 mi) long and consists of 15 lines and 263 stations organized in a spoke-hub distribution paradigm, with the majority of rail lines running radially from the centre of Moscow to the outlying areas. The Koltsevaya Line (line 5) forms a 20-kilometre (12 mi) long circle which enables passenger travel between these diameters, and the new Moscow Central Circle (line 14) and even newer Bolshaya Koltsevaya line (line 11) form a 54-kilometre (34 mi) and 57-kilometre (35 mi) long circles respectively that serve a similar purpose on middle periphery. Most stations and lines are underground, but some lines have at-grade and elevated sections; the Filyovskaya Line, Butovskaya Line and the Central Circle Line are the three lines that are at grade or mostly at grade.
The Moscow Metro uses 1,520 mm (4 ft 11+27⁄32 in) Russian gauge, like other Russian railways, and an underrunning third rail with a supply of 825 Volts DC, except lines 13 and 14, the former being a monorail, and the latter being directly connected to the mainlines with 3000V DC overhead lines, as is typical. The average distance between stations is 1.7 kilometres (1.1 mi); the shortest (502 metres (1,647 ft) long) section is between Vystavochnaya and Mezhdunarodnaya, and the longest (6.62 kilometres (4.11 mi) long) is between Krylatskoye and Strogino. Long distances between stations have the positive effect of a high cruising speed of 41.7 kilometres per hour (25.9 mph).
The Moscow Metro opens at 05:25 and closes at 01:00. The exact opening time varies at different stations according to the arrival of the first train, but all stations simultaneously close their entrances at 01:00 for maintenance, and so do transfer corridors. The minimum interval between trains is 90 seconds during the morning and evening rush hours.
As of 2017, the system had an average daily ridership of 6.99 million passengers. Peak daily ridership of 9.71 million was recorded on 26 December 2014.
Free Wi-Fi has been available on all lines of the Moscow Metro since 2 December 2014.
Lines
A Moscow Metro train passes through Sokolnicheskaya and Koltsevaya lines. View from the driver's cabin
Each line is identified by a name, an alphanumeric index (usually consisting of just a number, and sometimes a letter suffix), and a colour. The colour assigned to each line for display on maps and signs is its colloquial identifier, except for the nondescript greens and blues assigned to the Bolshaya Koltsevaya, the Zamoskvoretskaya, the Lyublinsko-Dmitrovskaya, and Butovskaya lines (lines, 11, 2, 10, and 12, respectively).[citation needed] The upcoming station is announced by a male voice on inbound trains to the city center (on the Circle line, the clockwise trains), and by a female voice on outbound trains (anti-clockwise trains on the Circle line).
The metro has a connection to the Moscow Monorail, a 4.7-kilometre (2.9 mi), six-station monorail line between Timiryazevskaya and VDNKh which opened in January 2008. Prior to the official opening, the monorail had operated in "excursion mode" since 2004.
Also, from 11 August 1969 to 26 October 2019, the Moscow Metro included Kakhovskaya line 3.3 km long with 3 stations, which closed for a long reconstruction. On 7 December 2021, Kakhovskaya is reopened after reconstruction as part of the Bolshaya Koltsevaya line. The renewed Varshavskaya and Kashirskaya stations reopened as part of the Bolshaya Koltsevaya line, which became fully functional on 1 March 2023. Its new stations included Pechatniki, Nagatinsky Zaton and Klenovy Bulvar.
Renamed lines
Sokolnicheskaya line was previously named Kirovsko-Fruzenskaya
Zamoskvoretskaya line was previously named Gorkovsko-Zamoskvoretskaya.
Filyovskaya line was previously named Arbatsko-Filyovskaya.
Tagansko-Krasnopresnenskaya line was previously named Zhdanovsko-Krasnopresnenskaya
History
The first plans for a metro system in Moscow date back to the Russian Empire but were postponed by World War I, the October Revolution and the Russian Civil War. In 1923, the Moscow City Council formed the Underground Railway Design Office at the Moscow Board of Urban Railways. It carried out preliminary studies, and by 1928 had developed a project for the first route from Sokolniki to the city centre. At the same time, an offer was made to the German company Siemens Bauunion to submit its own project for the same route. In June 1931, the decision to begin construction of the Moscow Metro was made by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In January 1932 the plan for the first lines was approved, and on 21 March 1933 the Soviet government approved a plan for 10 lines with a total route length of 80 km (50 mi).
The first lines were built using the Moscow general plan designed by Lazar Kaganovich, along with his project managers (notably Ivan M. Kuznetsov and, later, Isaac Y. Segal) in the 1930s–1950s, and the Metro was named after him until 1955 (Metropoliten im. L.M. Kaganovicha). The Moscow Metro construction engineers consulted with their counterparts from the London Underground, the world's oldest metro system, in 1936: British architect Charles Holden and administrator Frank Pick had been working on the station developments of the Piccadilly Line extension, and Soviet delegates to London were impressed by Holden's thoroughly modern redeployment of classical elements and use of high-quality materials for the circular ticket hall of Piccadilly Circus, and so engaged Pick and Holden as advisors to Moscow's metro system. Partly because of this connection, the design of Gants Hill tube station, which was completed in 1947, is reminiscent of a Moscow Metro station. Indeed, Holden's homage to Moscow has been described as a gesture of gratitude for the USSR's helpful role in The Second World War.
Soviet workers did the labour and the art work, but the main engineering designs, routes, and construction plans were handled by specialists recruited from London Underground. The British called for tunnelling instead of the "cut-and-cover" technique, the use of escalators instead of lifts, the routes and the design of the rolling stock. The paranoia of the NKVD was evident when the secret police arrested numerous British engineers for espionage because they gained an in-depth knowledge of the city's physical layout. Engineers for the Metropolitan-Vickers Electrical Company (Metrovick) were given a show trial and deported in 1933, ending the role of British business in the USSR.
First four stages of construction
The first line was opened to the public on 15 May 1935 at 07:00 am. It was 11 kilometres (6.8 mi) long and included 13 stations. The day was celebrated as a technological and ideological victory for socialism (and, by extension, Stalinism). An estimated 285,000 people rode the Metro at its debut, and its design was greeted with pride; street celebrations included parades, plays and concerts. The Bolshoi Theatre presented a choral performance by 2,200 Metro workers; 55,000 colored posters (lauding the Metro as the busiest and fastest in the world) and 25,000 copies of "Songs of the Joyous Metro Conquerors" were distributed. The Moscow Metro averaged 47 km/h (29 mph) and had a top speed of 80 km/h (50 mph). In comparison, New York City Subway trains averaged a slower 25 miles per hour (40 km/h) and had a top speed of 45 miles per hour (72 km/h). While the celebration was an expression of popular joy it was also an effective propaganda display, legitimizing the Metro and declaring it a success.
The initial line connected Sokolniki to Okhotny Ryad then branching to Park Kultury and Smolenskaya. The latter branch was extended westwards to a new station (Kiyevskaya) in March 1937, the first Metro line crossing the Moskva River over the Smolensky Metro Bridge.
The second stage was completed before the war. In March 1938, the Arbatskaya branch was split and extended to the Kurskaya station (now the dark-blue Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya Line). In September 1938, the Gorkovskaya Line opened between Sokol and Teatralnaya. Here the architecture was based on that of the most popular stations in existence (Krasniye Vorota, Okhotnyi Ryad and Kropotkinskaya); while following the popular art-deco style, it was merged with socialist themes. The first deep-level column station Mayakovskaya was built at the same time.
Building work on the third stage was delayed (but not interrupted) during World War II, and two Metro sections were put into service; Teatralnaya–Avtozavodskaya (three stations, crossing the Moskva River through a deep tunnel) and Kurskaya–Partizanskaya (four stations) were inaugurated in 1943 and 1944 respectively. War motifs replaced socialist visions in the architectural design of these stations. During the Siege of Moscow in the fall and winter of 1941, Metro stations were used as air-raid shelters; the Council of Ministers moved its offices to the Mayakovskaya platforms, where Stalin made public speeches on several occasions. The Chistiye Prudy station was also walled off, and the headquarters of the Air Defence established there.
After the war ended in 1945, construction began on the fourth stage of the Metro, which included the Koltsevaya Line, a deep part of the Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya line from Ploshchad Revolyutsii to Kievskaya and a surface extension to Pervomaiskaya during the early 1950s. The decoration and design characteristic of the Moscow Metro is considered to have reached its zenith in these stations. The Koltsevaya Line was first planned as a line running under the Garden Ring, a wide avenue encircling the borders of Moscow's city centre. The first part of the line – from Park Kultury to Kurskaya (1950) – follows this avenue. Plans were later changed and the northern part of the ring line runs 1–1.5 kilometres (0.62–0.93 mi) outside the Sadovoye Koltso, thus providing service for seven (out of nine) rail terminals. The next part of the Koltsevaya Line opened in 1952 (Kurskaya–Belorusskaya), and in 1954 the ring line was completed.
Stalinist ideals in Metro's history
When the Metro opened in 1935, it immediately became the centrepiece of the transportation system (as opposed to horse-carried barrows still widely used in 1930s Moscow). It also became the prototype, the vision for future Soviet large-scale technologies. The artwork of the 13 original stations became nationally and internationally famous. For example, the Sverdlov Square subway station featured porcelain bas-reliefs depicting the daily life of the Soviet peoples, and the bas-reliefs at the Dynamo Stadium sports complex glorified sports and physical prowess on the powerful new "Homo Sovieticus" (Soviet man). The metro was touted as the symbol of the new social order – a sort of Communist cathedral of engineering modernity.
The Metro was also iconic for showcasing Socialist Realism in public art. The method was influenced by Nikolay Chernyshevsky, Lenin's favorite 19th-century nihilist, who stated that "art is no useful unless it serves politics". This maxim sums up the reasons why the stations combined aesthetics, technology and ideology: any plan which did not incorporate all three areas cohesively was rejected.
Kaganovich was in charge; he designed the subway so that citizens would absorb the values and ethos of Stalinist civilization as they rode. Without this cohesion, the Metro would not reflect Socialist Realism. If the Metro did not utilize Socialist Realism, it would fail to illustrate Stalinist values and transform Soviet citizens into socialists. Anything less than Socialist Realism's grand artistic complexity would fail to inspire a long-lasting, nationalistic attachment to Stalin's new society.
Socialist Realism was in fact a method, not exactly a style.[31]
Bright future and literal brightness in the Metro of Moscow
The Moscow Metro was one of the USSR's most ambitious architectural projects. The metro's artists and architects worked to design a structure that embodied svet (literally "light", figuratively "radiance" or "brilliance") and svetloe budushchee (a well-lit/radiant/bright future). With their reflective marble walls, high ceilings and grand chandeliers, many Moscow Metro stations have been likened to an "artificial underground sun".
This palatial underground environment reminded Metro users their taxes were spent on materializing bright future; also, the design was useful for demonstrating the extra structural strength of the underground works (as in Metro doubling as bunkers, bomb shelters).
The chief lighting engineer was Abram Damsky, a graduate of the Higher State Art-Technical Institute in Moscow. By 1930 he was a chief designer in Moscow's Elektrosvet Factory, and during World War II was sent to the Metrostroi (Metro Construction) Factory as head of the lighting shop.[33] Damsky recognized the importance of efficiency, as well as the potential for light as an expressive form. His team experimented with different materials (most often cast bronze, aluminum, sheet brass, steel, and milk glass) and methods to optimize the technology. Damsky's discourse on "Lamps and Architecture 1930–1950" describes in detail the epic chandeliers installed in the Taganskaya Station and the Kaluzhskaia station (Oktyabrskaya nowadays, not to be confused with contemporary "Kaluzhskaya" station on line 6). The work of Abram Damsky further publicized these ideas hoping people would associate the party with the idea of bright future.
The Kaluzhskaya Station was designed by the architect [Leonid] Poliakov. Poliakov's decision to base his design on a reinterpretation of Russian classical architecture clearly influenced the concept of the lamps, some of which I planned in collaboration with the architect himself. The shape of the lamps was a torch – the torch of victory, as Polyakov put it... The artistic quality and stylistic unity of all the lamps throughout the station's interior made them perhaps the most successful element of the architectural composition. All were made of cast aluminum decorated in a black and gold anodized coating, a technique which the Metrostroi factory had only just mastered.
The Taganskaia Metro Station on the Ring Line was designed in...quite another style by the architects K.S. Ryzhkov and A. Medvedev... Their subject matter dealt with images of war and victory...The overall effect was one of ceremony ... In the platform halls the blue ceramic bodies of the chandeliers played a more modest role, but still emphasised the overall expressiveness of the lamp.
— Abram Damsky, Lamps and Architecture 1930–1950
Industrialization
Stalin's first five-year plan (1928–1932) facilitated rapid industrialization to build a socialist motherland. The plan was ambitious, seeking to reorient an agrarian society towards industrialism. It was Stalin's fanatical energy, large-scale planning, and resource distribution that kept up the pace of industrialization. The first five-year plan was instrumental in the completion of the Moscow Metro; without industrialization, the Soviet Union would not have had the raw materials necessary for the project. For example, steel was a main component of many subway stations. Before industrialization, it would have been impossible for the Soviet Union to produce enough steel to incorporate it into the metro's design; in addition, a steel shortage would have limited the size of the subway system and its technological advancement.
The Moscow Metro furthered the construction of a socialist Soviet Union because the project accorded with Stalin's second five-year plan. The Second Plan focused on urbanization and the development of social services. The Moscow Metro was necessary to cope with the influx of peasants who migrated to the city during the 1930s; Moscow's population had grown from 2.16 million in 1928 to 3.6 million in 1933. The Metro also bolstered Moscow's shaky infrastructure and its communal services, which hitherto were nearly nonexistent.
Mobilization
The Communist Party had the power to mobilize; because the party was a single source of control, it could focus its resources. The most notable example of mobilization in the Soviet Union occurred during World War II. The country also mobilized in order to complete the Moscow Metro with unprecedented speed. One of the main motivation factors of the mobilization was to overtake the West and prove that a socialist metro could surpass capitalist designs. It was especially important to the Soviet Union that socialism succeed industrially, technologically, and artistically in the 1930s, since capitalism was at a low ebb during the Great Depression.
The person in charge of Metro mobilization was Lazar Kaganovich. A prominent Party member, he assumed control of the project as chief overseer. Kaganovich was nicknamed the "Iron Commissar"; he shared Stalin's fanatical energy, dramatic oratory flare, and ability to keep workers building quickly with threats and punishment. He was determined to realise the Moscow Metro, regardless of cost. Without Kaganovich's managerial ability, the Moscow Metro might have met the same fate as the Palace of the Soviets: failure.
This was a comprehensive mobilization; the project drew resources and workers from the entire Soviet Union. In his article, archeologist Mike O'Mahoney describes the scope of the Metro mobilization:
A specialist workforce had been drawn from many different regions, including miners from the Ukrainian and Siberian coalfields and construction workers from the iron and steel mills of Magnitogorsk, the Dniepr hydroelectric power station, and the Turkestan-Siberian railway... materials used in the construction of the metro included iron from Siberian Kuznetsk, timber from northern Russia, cement from the Volga region and the northern Caucasus, bitumen from Baku, and marble and granite from quarries in Karelia, the Crimea, the Caucasus, the Urals, and the Soviet Far East
— Mike O'Mahoney, Archeological Fantasies: Constructing History on the Moscow Metro
Skilled engineers were scarce, and unskilled workers were instrumental to the realization of the metro. The Metrostroi (the organization responsible for the Metro's construction) conducted massive recruitment campaigns. It printed 15,000 copies of Udarnik metrostroia (Metrostroi Shock Worker, its daily newspaper) and 700 other newsletters (some in different languages) to attract unskilled laborers. Kaganovich was closely involved in the recruitment campaign, targeting the Komsomol generation because of its strength and youth.
Later Soviet stations
"Fifth stage" set of stations
The beginning of the Cold War led to the construction of a deep section of the Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya Line. The stations on this line were planned as shelters in the event of nuclear war. After finishing the line in 1953 the upper tracks between Ploshchad Revolyutsii and Kiyevskaya were closed, and later reopened in 1958 as a part of the Filyovskaya Line. The stations, too, were supplied with tight gates and life-sustenance systems to function as proper nuclear shelters.
In the further development of the Metro the term "stages" was not used any more, although sometimes the stations opened in 1957–1959 are referred to as the "fifth stage".
During the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s, the architectural extravagance of new Metro stations was decisively rejected on the orders of Nikita Khrushchev. He had a preference for a utilitarian "minimalism"-like approach to design, similar to Brutalism style. The idea behind the rejection was similar to one used to create Khrushchyovkas: cheap yet easily mass-produced buildings. Stations of his era, as well as most 1970s stations, were simple in design and style, with walls covered with identical square ceramic tiles. Even decorations at the Metro stations almost finished at the time of the ban (such as VDNKh and Alexeyevskaya) got their final decors simplified: VDNKh's arcs/portals, for example, got plain green paint to contrast with well-detailed decorations and pannos around them.
A typical layout of the cheap shallow-dug metro station (which quickly became known as Sorokonozhka – "centipede", from early designs with 40 concrete columns in two rows) was developed for all new stations, and the stations were built to look almost identical, differing from each other only in colours of the marble and ceramic tiles. Most stations were built with simpler, cheap technology; this resulted in utilitarian design being flawed in some ways. Some stations such as adjacent Rechnoi Vokzal and Vodny Stadion or sequiential Leninsky Prospect, Akadmicheskaya, Profsoyuznaya and Novye Cheryomushki would have a similar look due to the extensive use of same-sized white or off-white ceramic tiles with hard-to-feel differences.
Walls with cheap ceramic tiles were susceptible to train-related vibration: some tiles would eventually fall off and break. It was not always possible to replace the missing tiles with the ones of the exact color and tone, which eventually led to variegated parts of the walls.
Metro stations of late USSR
The contrasting style gap between the powerfully decorated stations of Moscow's center and the spartan-looking stations of the 1960s was eventually filled. In the mid-1970s the architectural extravagance was partially restored. However, the newer design of shallow "centipede" stations (now with 26 columns, more widely spaced) continued to dominate. For example, Kaluzhskaya "centipede" station from 1974 (adjacent to Novye Cheryomushki station) features non-flat tiles (with 3D effect utilized), and Medvedkovo from 1978 features complex decorations.
1971 station Kitay-Gorod ("Ploshchad Nogina" at the time) features cross-platform interchange (Line 6 and line 7). Although built without "centipede" design or cheap ceramic tiles, the station utilizes near-grayscale selection of colors. It is to note the "southbound" and "northbound" halls of the station have identical look.
Babushkinskaya station from 1978 is a no-column station (similar to Biblioteka Imeni Lenina from 1935). 1983 Chertanovskaya station has resemblance to Kropotkinskaya (from 1935). Some stations, such as the deep-dug Shabolovskaya (1980), have the near-tunnel walls decorated with metal sheets, not tiles. Tyoply Stan features a theme related to the name and the location of the station ("Tyoply Stan" used to literally mean warm area): its walls are covered in brick-colored ribbed panes, which look like radiators).
Downtown area got such stations as Borovitskaya (1986), with uncovered red bricks and gray, concrete-like colors accompanying a single gold-plated decorative pane known as "Tree of peoples' of USSR" or additional station hall for Tretyakovskaya to house cross-platform interchange system between line 6 and line 8. To this day, Tretyakovskaya metro station consists of two contrasting halls: brutalism-like 1971 hall and custom design hall reminiscent of Tretyakovskaya Galereya from 1986.
Post-USSR stations of the modern Russian Federation
Metro stations of the 1990s and 2000s vary in style, but some of the stations seem to have their own themes:
Ulitsa Akademika Yangelya station used to feature thick orange neon lamp-like sodium lights instead of regular white lights.
Park Pobedy, the deepest station of the Moscow Metro, was built in 2003; it features extensive use of dark orange polished granite.
Slavyansky Bulvar station utilizes a plant-inspired theme (similar to "bionic style").
The sleek variant of aforementioned bionic style is somewhat represented in various Line 10 stations.
Sretensky Bulvar station of line 10 is decorated with paintings of nearby memorials and locations.
Strogino station has a theme of huge eye-shaped boundaries for lights; with "eyes" occupying the station's ceiling.
Troparyovo (2014) features trees made of polished metal. The trees hold the station's diamond-shaped lights. The station, however, is noticeably dim-lit.
Delovoy Tsentr (2016, MCC, overground station) has green tint.
Lomonosovsky Prospekt (Line 8A) is decorated with various equations.
Olkhovaya (2019) uses other plant-inspired themes (ольха noun means alder) with autumn/winter inspired colours.
Kosino (2019) uses high-tech style with the addition of thin LED lights.
Some bleak, bland-looking "centipedes" like Akademicheskaya and Yugo-Zapadnaya have undergone renovations in the 21st century (new blue-striped white walls on Akademicheskaya, aqualine glassy, shiny walls on Yugo-Zapadnaya).
Moscow Central Circle urban railway (Line 14)
A new circle metro line in Moscow was relatively quickly made in the 2010s. The Moscow Central Circle line (Line 14) was opened for use in September 2016 by re-purposing and upgrading the Maloe ZheleznoDorozhnoe Kol'tso. A proposal to convert that freight line into a metropolitan railway with frequent passenger service was announced in 2012. The original tracks had been built in pre-revolutionary Moscow decades before the creation of Moscow Metro; the tracks remained in place in one piece as a non-electrified line until the 21st century. Yet the circle route was never abandoned or cut. New track (along the existing one) was laid and all-new stations were built between 2014 and 2016. MCC's stations got such amenities as vending machines and free water closets.
Line 14 is operated by Russian Railways and uses full-sized trains (an idea, somewhat similar to S-Train). The extra resemblance to an S-Train line is, the 1908 line now connects modern northern residential districts to western and southern downtown area, with a station adjacent to Moscow International Business Center.
There is a noticeable relief of congestion, decrease in usage of formerly overcrowded Koltsevaya line since the introduction of MCC. To make line 14 attractive to frequent Koltsevaya line interchanges users, upgrades over regular comfort of Moscow Metro were made. Use of small laptops/portable video playing devices and food consumption from tupperwares and tubs was also improved for Line 14: the trains have small folding tables in the back of nearly every seat, while the seats are facing one direction like in planes or intercity buses - unlike side-against-side sofas typical for Metro.
Unlike MCD lines (D1, D2 etc.) MCC line accepts "unified" tickets and "Troika" cards just like Moscow Metro and buses of Moscow do. Free transfers are permitted between the MCC and the Moscow Metro if the trip before the transfer is less than 90 minutes. It's made possible by using same "Ediny", literally "unified" tickets instead of printing "paper tickets" used at railroads.
To interchange to line 14 for free, passenger must keep their freshly used ticket after entering Moscow Metro to apply it upon entering any line 14 station (and vice versa, keep their "fresh" ticket to enter underground Metro line after leaving Line 14 for an interchange).
MCD (D lines)
In 2019, new lines of Russian Railways got included in the map of Metro as "line D1" and "line D2". Unlike Line 14, the MCD lines actually form S-Train lines, bypassing the "vokzals", terminus stations of respective intercity railways. Line D3 is planned to be launched in August 2023, while D4 will be launched in September of that year. The schedule for the development of the infrastructure of the Central Transport Hub in 2023 was signed by the Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin and the head of Russian Railways Oleg Belozerov in December 2022.
As for the fees, MCD accepts Moscow's "Troika" cards. Also, every MCD station has printers which print "station X – station Y" tickets on paper. Users of the D lines must keep their tickets until exiting their destination stations: their exit terminals require a valid "... to station Y" ticket's barcode.
Big Circle Line (line 11)
After upgrading the railway from 1908 to a proper Metro line, the development of another circle route was re-launched, now adjusted for the pear-shaped circle route of line #14.
Throughout the late 2010s, Line 11 was extended from short, tiny Kakhovskaya line to a half-circle (from Kakhovskaya to Savyolovskaya). In early 2023, the circle was finished.
Similarly made Shelepikha, Khoroshovskaya, CSKA and Petrovsky Park stations have lots of polished granite and shiny surfaces, in contrast to Soviet "centipedes". Throughout 2018–2021, these stations were connected to line 8A.
Narodnoye Opolcheniye (2021) features lots of straight edges and linear decorations (such as uninterrupted "three stripes" style of the ceiling lights and rectangular columns).
As for the spring of 2023, the whole circle route line is up and running, forming a circle stretching to the southern near-MKAD residential parts of the city (Prospekt Vernadskogo, Tekstilshchiki) as opposed to the MCC's stretching towards the northern districts of Moscow. In other words, it "mirrors" Line 14 rather than forming a perfect circle around the city centre. While being 70 km long, the line is now the longest subway line in the world, 13 kilometres ahead of the previous record holder - the line 10 of Beijing Subway.
Expansions
GIF-animated scheme of Moscow Metro growth (1935-2019)
Since the turn of the 2nd millennium several projects have been completed, and more are underway. The first was the Annino-Butovo extension, which extended the Serpukhovsko-Timiryazevskaya Line from Prazhskaya to Ulitsa Akademika Yangelya in 2000, Annino in 2001 and Bulvar Dmitriya Donskogo in 2002. Its continuation, an elevated Butovskaya Line, was inaugurated in 2003. Vorobyovy Gory station, which initially opened in 1959 and was forced to close in 1983 after the concrete used to build the bridge was found to be defective, was rebuilt and reopened after many years in 2002. Another recent project included building a branch off the Filyovskaya Line to the Moscow International Business Center. This included Vystavochnaya (opened in 2005) and Mezhdunarodnaya (opened in 2006).
The Strogino–Mitino extension began with Park Pobedy in 2003. Its first stations (an expanded Kuntsevskaya and Strogino) opened in January 2008, and Slavyansky Bulvar followed in September. Myakinino, Volokolamskaya and Mitino opened in December 2009. Myakinino station was built by a state-private financial partnership, unique in Moscow Metro history. A new terminus, Pyatnitskoye Shosse, was completed in December 2012.
After many years of construction, the long-awaited Lyublinskaya Line extension was inaugurated with Trubnaya in August 2007 and Sretensky Bulvar in December of that year. In June 2010, it was extended northwards with the Dostoyevskaya and Maryina Roscha stations. In December 2011, the Lyublinskaya Line was expanded southwards by three stations and connected to the Zamoskvoretskaya Line, with the Alma-Atinskaya station opening on the latter in December 2012. The Kalininskaya Line was extended past the Moscow Ring Road in August 2012 with Novokosino station.
In 2011, works began on the Third Interchange Contour that is set to take the pressure off the Koltsevaya Line. Eventually the new line will attain a shape of the second ring with connections to all lines (except Koltsevaya and Butovskaya).
In 2013, the Tagansko-Krasnopresnenskaya Line was extended after several delays to the south-eastern districts of Moscow outside the Ring Road with the opening of Zhulebino and Lermontovsky Prospekt stations. Originally scheduled for 2013, a new segment of the Kalininskaya Line between Park Pobedy and Delovoy Tsentr (separate from the main part) was opened in January 2014, while the underground extension of Butovskaya Line northwards to offer a transfer to the Kaluzhsko-Rizhskaya Line was completed in February. Spartak, a station on the Tagansko-Krasnopresnenskaya Line that remained unfinished for forty years, was finally opened in August 2014. The first stage of the southern extension of the Sokolnicheskaya Line, the Troparyovo station, opened in December 2014.
Current plans
In addition to major metro expansion the Moscow Government and Russian Railways plans to upgrade more commuter railways to a metro-style service, similar to the MCC. New tracks and stations are planned to be built in order to achieve this.
Stations
The deep stations comprise 55 triple-vaulted pylon stations, 19 triple-vaulted column stations, and one single-vault station. The shallow stations comprise 79 spanned column stations (a large portion of them following the "centipede" design), 33 single-vaulted stations (Kharkov technology), and four single-spanned stations. In addition, there are 12 ground-level stations, four elevated stations, and one station (Vorobyovy Gory) on a bridge. Two stations have three tracks, and one has double halls. Seven of the stations have side platforms (only one of which is subterranean). In addition, there were two temporary stations within rail yards.
The stations being constructed under Stalin's regime, in the style of socialist classicism, were meant as underground "palaces of the people". Stations such as Komsomolskaya, Kiyevskaya or Mayakovskaya and others built after 1935 in the second phase of the evolution of the network are tourist landmarks: their photogenic architecture, large chandeliers and detailed decoration are unusual for an urban transport system of the twentieth century.
The stations opened in the 21st century are influenced by an international and more neutral style with improved technical quality.
Rolling stock
Since the beginning, platforms have been at least 155 metres (509 ft) long to accommodate eight-car trains. The only exceptions are on the Filyovskaya Line: Vystavochnaya, Mezhdunarodnaya, Studencheskaya, Kutuzovskaya, Fili, Bagrationovskaya, Filyovsky Park and Pionerskaya, which only allows six-car trains (note that this list includes all ground-level stations on the line, except Kuntsevskaya, which allows normal length trains).
Trains on the Zamoskvoretskaya, Kaluzhsko-Rizhskaya, Tagansko-Krasnopresnenskaya, Kalininskaya, Solntsevskaya, Bolshaya Koltsevaya, Serpukhovsko-Timiryazevskaya, Lyublinsko-Dmitrovskaya and Nekrasovskaya lines have eight cars, on the Sokolnicheskaya line seven or eight cars, on the original Koltsevaya line seven cars, and on the Filyovskaya line six cars. The Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya line also once ran seven-car 81-717 size trains, but now use five-car trains of another type. Butovskaya line uses three-car trains of another type.
Dimensions have varied subtly, but for the most cars fit into the ranges of 19–20 metres (62 ft 4 in – 65 ft 7 in) long and 2.65–2.7 metres (8 ft 8+3⁄8 in – 8 ft 10+1⁄4 in) wide with 4 doors per side. The 81-740/741 Rusich deviates greatly from this, with a 3-car Rusich being roughly 4 normal cars and a 5-car Rusich being 7 normal cars.
Trains in operation
Currently, the Metro only operates 81-style trains.
Rolling stock on several lines was replaced with articulated 81-740/741 Rusich trains, which were originally designed for light rail subway lines. The Butovskaya Line was designed by different standards, and has shorter (96-metre (315 ft) long) platforms. It employs articulated 81-740/741 trains, which consist of three cars (although the line can also use traditional four-car trains).
On the Moscow Monorail, Intamin P30 trains are used, consisting of six short cars. On the Moscow Central Circle, which is a route on the conventional railway line, ES2G Lastochka trains are used, consisting of five cars.
Ticketing
Moscow Metro underground has neither "point A – point B" tariffs nor "zone" tariffs. Instead, it has a fee for a "ride", e.g. for a single-time entry without time or range limit. The exceptions "only confirm the rule": the "diameters" (Dx lines) and the Moscow Central Circle (Line 14) are Russian Railways' lines hence the shared yet not unified tariff system.
As for October 2021, one ride costs 60 rubles (approx. 1 US dollar). Discounts (up to 33%) for individual rides are available upon buying rides "in bulk" (buying multiple-trip tickets (such as twenty-trip or sixty-trip ones)), and children under age seven can travel free (with their parents). Troika "wallet" (a card, similar to Japanese Suica card) also offers some discounts for using the card instead of queueing a line for a ticket. "Rides" on the tickets available for a fixed number of trips, regardless of distance traveled or number of transfers.
An exception in case of MCC e.g. Line 14: for a free interchange, one should interchange to it/from it within 90 minutes after entering the Metro. However, one can ride it for hours and use its amenities without leaving it.
There are tickets without "rides" as well: – a 24-hour "unified" ticket (265 rub in 2022), a 72-hour ticket, a month-long ticket, and a year-long ticket.
Fare enforcement takes place at the points of entry. Once a passenger has entered the Metro system, there are no further ticket checks – one can ride to any number of stations and make transfers within the system freely. Transfers to other public-transport systems (such as bus, tram, trolleybus/"electrobus") are not covered by the very ride used to enter Metro. Transfer to monorail and MCC is a free addition to the ride (available up to 90 minutes after entering a metro station).
In modern Metro, turnstiles accept designated plastic cards ("Troika", "social cards") or disposable-in-design RFID chip cardboard cards. Unlimited cards are also available for students at reduced price (as of 2017, 415 rubles—or about $US6—for a calendar month of unlimited usage) for a one-time cost of 70 rubles. Transport Cards impose a delay for each consecutive use; i.e. the card can not be used for 7 minutes after the user has passed a turnstile.
History of smart ticketing
Soviet era turnstiles simply accepted N kopeck coins.
In the early years of Russian Federation (and with the start of a hyperinflation) plastic tokens were used. Disposable magnetic stripe cards were introduced in 1993 on a trial basis, and used as unlimited monthly tickets between 1996 and 1998. The sale of tokens ended on 1 January 1999, and they stopped being accepted in February 1999; from that time, magnetic cards were used as tickets with a fixed number of rides.
On 1 September 1998, the Moscow Metro became the first metro system in Europe to fully implement "contactless" smart cards, known as Transport Cards. Transport Cards were the card to have unlimited amount of trips for 30, 90 or 365 days, its active lifetime was projected as 3½ years. Defective cards were to be exchanged at no extra cost.
In August 2004, the city government launched the Muscovite's Social Card program. Social Cards are free smart cards issued for the elderly and other groups of citizens officially registered as residents of Moscow or the Moscow region; they offer discounts in shops and pharmacies, and double as credit cards issued by the Bank of Moscow. Social Cards can be used for unlimited free access to the city's public-transport system, including the Moscow Metro; while they do not feature the time delay, they include a photograph and are non-transferable.
Since 2006, several banks have issued credit cards which double as Ultralight cards and are accepted at turnstiles. The fare is passed to the bank and the payment is withdrawn from the owner's bank account at the end of the calendar month, using a discount rate based on the number of trips that month (for up to 70 trips, the cost of each trip is prorated from current Ultralight rates; each additional trip costs 24.14 rubles). Partner banks include the Bank of Moscow, CitiBank, Rosbank, Alfa-Bank and Avangard Bank.
In January 2007, Moscow Metro began replacing limited magnetic cards with contactless disposable tickets based on NXP's MIFARE Ultralight technology. Ultralight tickets are available for a fixed number of trips in 1, 2, 5, 10, 20 and 60-trip denominations (valid for 5 or 90 days from the day of purchase) and as a monthly ticket, only valid for a selected calendar month and limited to 70 trips. The sale of magnetic cards ended on 16 January 2008 and magnetic cards ceased to be accepted in late 2008, making the Moscow metro the world's first major public-transport system to run exclusively on a contactless automatic fare-collection system.
On 2 April 2013, Moscow Transport Department introduced a smartcard-based transport electronic wallet, named Troika. Three more smart cards have been launched:
Ediniy's RFID-chip card, a "disposable"-design cardboard card for all city-owned public transport operated by Mosgortrans and Moscow Metro;
90 minutes card, an unlimited "90-minute" card
and TAT card for surface public transport operated by Mosgortrans.
One can "record" N-ride Ediniy ticket on Troika card as well in order to avoid carrying the easily frayed cardboard card of Ediniy for weeks (e.g. to use Troika's advanced chip). The turnstiles of Moscow Metro have monochrome screens which show such data as "money left" (if Troika is used as a "wallet"), "valid till DD.MM.YYYY" (if a social card is used) or "rides left" (if Ediniy tariff ticket is used).
Along with the tickets, new vending machines were built to sell tickets (1 or 2 rides) and put payments on Troika cards. At that time, the machines were not accepting contactless pay. The same machines now have tiny terminals with keypads for contactless payments (allowing quick payment for Troika card).
In 2013, as a way to promote both the "Olympic Games in Sochi and active lifestyles, Moscow Metro installed a vending machine that gives commuters a free ticket in exchange for doing 30 squats."
Since the first quarter of 2015, all ticket windows (not turnstiles) at stations accept bank cards for fare payment. Passengers are also able to pay for tickets via contactless payment systems, such as PayPass technology. Since 2015, fare gates at stations accept mobile ticketing via a system which the Metro calls Mobilny Bilet (Мобильный билет) which requires NFC-handling smartphone (and a proper SIM-card). The pricing is the same as Troika's. Customers are able to use Mobile Ticket on Moscow's surface transport. The Moscow Metro originally announced plans to launch the mobile ticketing service with Mobile TeleSystems (MTS) in 2010.
In October 2021, the Moscow Metro became the first metro system in the world to offer Face-Pay to their customers. In order to use this system, passengers will need to connect their photo, bank card and metro card to the service through the metro’s mobile app. For this purpose, the metro authorities plan to equip over 900 turnstiles in over 240 stations with biometric scanners. This enables passengers to pay for their ride without taking out their phone, metro or bank card and therefore increasing passenger flow at the station entrances. In 2022, Face-Pay was used over 32 million times over the course of the year.
Notable incidents
1977 bombing
On 8 January 1977, a bomb was reported to have killed 7 and seriously injured 33. It went off in a crowded train between Izmaylovskaya and Pervomayskaya stations. Three Armenians were later arrested, charged and executed in connection with the incident.
1981 station fires
In June 1981, seven bodies were seen being removed from the Oktyabrskaya station during a fire there. A fire was also reported at Prospekt Mira station about that time.
1982 escalator accident
Escalator accident in 1982
A fatal accident occurred on 17 February 1982 due to an escalator collapse at the Aviamotornaya station on the Kalininskaya Line. Eight people were killed and 30 injured due to a pileup caused by faulty emergency brakes.
1996 murder
In 1996, an American-Russian businessman Paul Tatum was murdered at the Kiyevskaya Metro station. He was shot dead by a man carrying a concealed Kalashnikov gun.
2000 bombings
On 8 August 2000, a strong blast in a Metro underpass at Pushkinskaya metro station in the center of Moscow claimed the lives of 12, with 150 injured. A homemade bomb equivalent to 800 grams of TNT had been left in a bag near a kiosk.
2004 bombings
August 2004 Moscow Metro bombing
On 6 February 2004, an explosion wrecked a train between the Avtozavodskaya and Paveletskaya stations on the Zamoskvoretskaya Line, killing 41 and wounding over 100. Chechen terrorists were blamed. A later investigation concluded that a Karachay-Cherkessian resident had carried out a suicide bombing. The same group organized another attack on 31 August 2004, killing 10 and injuring more than 50 others.
2005 Moscow blackout
On 25 May 2005, a citywide blackout halted operation on some lines. The following lines, however, continued operations: Sokolnicheskaya, Zamoskvoretskaya from Avtozavodskaya to Rechnoy Vokzal, Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya, Filyovskaya, Koltsevaya, Kaluzhsko-Rizhskaya from Bitsevskiy Park to Oktyabrskaya-Radialnaya and from Prospekt Mira-Radialnaya to Medvedkovo, Tagansko-Krasnopresnenskaya, Kalininskaya, Serpukhovsko-Timiryazevskaya from Serpukhovskaya to Altufyevo and Lyublinskaya from Chkalovskaya to Dubrovka. There was no service on the Kakhovskaya and Butovskaya lines. The blackout severely affected the Zamoskvoretskaya and Serpukhovsko-Timiryazevskaya lines, where initially all service was disrupted because of trains halted in tunnels in the southern part of city (most affected by the blackout). Later, limited service resumed and passengers stranded in tunnels were evacuated. Some lines were only slightly impacted by the blackout, which mainly affected southern Moscow; the north, east and western parts of the city experienced little or no disruption.
2006 billboard incident
On 19 March 2006, a construction pile from an unauthorized billboard installation was driven through a tunnel roof, hitting a train between the Sokol and Voikovskaya stations on the Zamoskvoretskaya Line. No injuries were reported.
2010 bombing
On 29 March 2010, two bombs exploded on the Sokolnicheskaya Line, killing 40 and injuring 102 others. The first bomb went off at the Lubyanka station on the Sokolnicheskaya Line at 7:56, during the morning rush hour. At least 26 were killed in the first explosion, of which 14 were in the rail car where it took place. A second explosion occurred at the Park Kultury station at 8:38, roughly forty minutes after the first one. Fourteen people were killed in that blast. The Caucasus Emirate later claimed responsibility for the bombings.
2014 pile incident
On 25 January 2014, at 15:37 a construction pile from a Moscow Central Circle construction site was driven through a tunnel roof between Avtozavodskaya and Kolomenskaya stations on the Zamoskvoretskaya Line. The train operator applied emergency brakes, and the train did not crash into the pile. Passengers were evacuated from the tunnel, with no injures reported. The normal line operation resumed the same day at 19:50.
2014 derailment
On 15 July 2014, a train derailed between Park Pobedy and Slavyansky Bulvar on the Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya Line, killing 24 people and injuring dozens more.
Metro-2
Main article: Metro-2
Conspiracy theorists have claimed that a second and deeper metro system code-named "D-6", designed for emergency evacuation of key city personnel in case of nuclear attack during the Cold War, exists under military jurisdiction. It is believed that it consists of a single track connecting the Kremlin, chief HQ (General Staff –Genshtab), Lubyanka (FSB Headquarters), the Ministry of Defense and several other secret installations. There are alleged to be entrances to the system from several civilian buildings, such as the Russian State Library, Moscow State University (MSU) and at least two stations of the regular Metro. It is speculated that these would allow for the evacuation of a small number of randomly chosen civilians, in addition to most of the elite military personnel. A suspected junction between the secret system and the regular Metro is supposedly behind the Sportivnaya station on the Sokolnicheskaya Line. The final section of this system was supposedly completed in 1997.
In popular culture
The Moscow Metro is the central location and namesake for the Metro series, where during a nuclear war, Moscow's inhabitants are driven down into the Moscow Metro, which has been designed as a fallout shelter, with the various stations being turned into makeshift settlements.
In 2012, an art film was released about a catastrophe in the Moscow underground.
Theme: "Illustrate a Song"
The wind told me the future lies in my hands
Just ready go, you're ever free
Taking on the nonexistent, hateful, dark, incomprehensible boundary line
The difference between the confusing past and today isn't pleasant?
Nothing can be seen in the abyss, goodnight, the glorious future is coming
Let's cross that imposing wall
When you're on despair, smile and fly
Flying over everything
The wind told me the future lies in my hands
The answer I found while I was lost transformed into wings
Just ready go, you're ever free
Do you feel the dismay and hate it? Destroy it before it destroys you
Ride a lion, the world isn't invincible
Slowly, the future changes, waves good-bye and a new world comes by
Let's fly toward this wonderful sky
Lightning speed, higher than anyone
With lightning speed, run past everything
The days in which we follow our endless dreams create our tomorrow
Transform even the sadness into shiny wings
Just ready go, you're ever free
One day, your future will turn the page
Your story will continue shining forever
But the last page lies in your hands
------------------------------------------------
I really love this song. Its lyrics are so inspiring and encouraging. And it pictures perfectly the phase I'm going through now! I do feel free, lightweight! Everything is going very well and I'm very optimistic. The confusing past is now behind me and a new glorious future is now here.
Loved doing this shot, although I'm not very good at physical movements, as you can see in my clumsy and awkward jumping pose. But well, I still liked it!
52weeks project in partnership with my friends Jenny, Grazi and Mari. Check them out!
Lake Ronkonkoma Long Island New York 11779 USA August 2020
Lake Ronkonkoma, Long Island's largest freshwater lake, is in Suffolk County, New York, United States, and has a circumference of about 2 miles (3.2 km), and is 0.65 miles (1.05 km) across on average. A kettle lake formed by retreating glaciers, it is owned by the Town of Islip under the terms of the Nichols Patent. The land around it is controlled by three town governments - Smithtown, Islip and Brookhaven. The name Ronkonkoma comes from an Algonquian expression meaning "boundary fishing-lake", also earlier written as Raconkumake and Raconkamuck
Lake Ronkonkoma served as a boundary between lands occupied by four Native American communities: Nissequogues Setaukets Secatogues and Unkechaugs
The lake was created by a retreating glacier.
The primary gamefish is bass
The most prevalent legend is about Princess Ronkonkoma, an Indian princess who died at the lake in the mid-1600s. One version of the story is that she was walking across the ice one winter when she met and fell in love with an English woodcutter named Hugh Birdsall, who lived across the lake. However, her father—chief of the Setauket tribe—forbade their relationship. So every day for 7 years, she would write letters on pieces of bark, row to the middle of the lake, and float the letters across the lake to Hugh. Then, after all those years of being kept apart from her love, she rowed to the middle of the lake and stabbed herself to death.
There are variations on this particular story, such as that the princess drowned herself after learning about her lover's death, and that her body washed up in Connecticut (which ties into the idea that the lake is bottomless, and that there are underground channels to other lakes). While there's no proof the princess ever existed, Hugh Birdsall was a real person who eventually moved back to England and got married there.
In any case, the story goes that she claims a boy's life every year either to avenge her lover's death, or to try to find herself a soulmate in death. And the statistics back up this "curse": of all the recorded drownings on this lake, the vast majority have been young males.
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Dr. David S. Igneri was the head lifeguard at Lake Ronkonkoma for 32 summers, and says there were at least 30 deaths during that time, all males. On the program Weird U.S., which aired on the History Channel in 2005, Igneri explains that one of the biggest challenges was that visibility in the lake is nonexistent after about the first 10 feet; if anyone submerges lower than that, no one will be able to rescue the person because the lake becomes enveloped in total blackness.
In 1965, Igneri had a recurring nightmare about trying to complete a rescue. He dove deep into the lake and panicked because he lost his orientation. When he got to the surface, he heard fireworks. Although Igneri was not previously interested in the paranormal, he believed this dream was a warning that someone was going to drown on the Fourth of July. He warned his staff of 11 lifeguards—and sure enough, late that afternoon, an epileptic 15-year-old boy had a seizure and went down in the water. The lifeguards dove for 45 minutes and did everything they could, but could not find the boy. As Igneri swam back to the surface after his last dive, fireworks went off.
Author Michael R. Ebert, who must be the foremost authority on the legends of Lake Ronkonkoma. He published the spiral-bound book "The Curse of Lake Ronkonkoma" in 2002, and it is available at the Sachem, Connetquot and Smithtown libraries.
The first time he remembers hearing about the lake's "curse" was when he attended Ronkonkoma Junior High School in the early 1990s and one of his classmates drowned in the lake.
"If I remember correctly, he and some friends were supposedly drinking beer on a rowboat and were horsing around when he fell in and was unable to swim to shore due to his bulky winter clothes."
After Ebert's college graduation, he searched for more information about the lake's legends in local history books, but found little—which convinced him to write his own book. He spent about six months visiting libraries and the Lake Ronkonkoma Historical Society to research articles, maps and geographical studies dating back to the early 1900s.
In addition to the stories about Princess Ronkonkoma and the bottomless lake, Ebert also found several other mysteries, such as the way the lake rises and falls with no relation to local rainfall. "The Indians believed it to be the work of Manitos, the great spirit of the lake," he says. "One study showed that over 7 years in the early 1900s, the rainfall on Long Island was below the usual average by about 52 inches, yet the lake rose 7 feet."
Then there were the rumors of "healing properties" of the lake, supposedly started by a Brooklyn businessman who wanted to capitalize on the lake's appeal as a local tourist attraction in the 1900s. "The guy even reportedly sold 'lake juice' in small vials, and I found an old ad promoting the lake as a health resort that cured diseases," says Ebert.
So whether you believe the lake will heal what ails you, or that a vengeful princess spirit is out there waiting to drown you, there's no denying that Lake Ronkonkoma is one of Long Island's most whispered-about points of interest.
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Map drawn as a cover for a ring binder I gave my mother's for her 50st birthday. I made the map entirely by hand and with a brand pan - normal pencils won't stick on the plastic of the ring binder.
However, the varnish reacted somehow with the ink, so down under is blurred a bit (and a bit too much). Moreover, the ring binder isn't exactly water proof anymore, so the varnish actually counteracts the purpose of itself.
2011.
The silhouette is a shadow, a shadow is nonexistent, shadow is the absence of light. The shadow is our part most primitive, that can walk to the light or to the darkness.
Alzira Maia da Costa(www.facebook.com/AlziraMaiaCosta?group_id=0):
"The shadow is the witness of the light over ..."
A silhueta é uma sombra, uma sombra é algo inexistente, sombra é ausência de luz. A sombra é a nossa parte mais primitiva, que pode caminhar para a luz ou para a escuridão.
Alzira Maia da Costa(www.facebook.com/AlziraMaiaCosta?group_id=0): " A sombra é a testemunha do excesso da luz..."
VIDEO: www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5d9xtMdobk
••• SCRIPT/LYRICS: •••
MOLEMAN'S EPIC RAP BATTLES!!!!!
PORKY MINCH…
…VS…
…ERIC CARTMAN!!!
BEGIN!
Eric Cartman:
Listen up, you worthless sack of protoplasm; here's the deal:
I've utter faith that I'll one-up you, and go platinum for real!
You're an evasive little pussy; I'm a doer, dropping bombs:
I'll whoop your ass a hundred times worse than that bitch you call your mom!
The Triple-K Grand Wizard's here to stick a thousand truths to y'all;
Imagining won't be required to make you suck my salty balls!
Just ask Saddam Hussein: my shocking words are verbal PK Thunder!
Come on down to South Park? You're gonna have a bad time, Mother-fucker!
Porky Minch:
Here's an eight-part melody of hate, you cardboard-cutout brat:
Abort your efforts like the spawn of your Satanic Rankin/Bass,
For I ain't cynical in saying that all I hear from you is crap;
If thunder's what you're spitting, you can call these raps my Franklin Badge!
A bigger pain inside your ass than a visit from aliens,
So shut your mouth before I open it like a Canadian's!
Make Minchmeat out of me? You're Andonuts if you think you could manage,
So buzz off, lest you be bitch-smacked with a "SMAAAASH!!" for mortal damage!
Eric Cartman:
That verse stunk worse than Eagleland's advertisements for your game;
Methinks the lines lost something in translation, kind of like your name!
This ain't your sanctuary, Pokey, and you'd best start running home,
'Cause pissing me off's poorly-thought-out as the schemes of undie-gnomes!
Porky Minch:
You're full of Poo, and no prince, either; more akin to Mr. Hankey.
Wrecking you rivals your mother, it's so easy; spanky-spanky!
I've rolled with blue-power groups, but they at least didn't worship Hitler!
You resent being labelled "fat", yet truly, your bone couldn't be littler.
Eric Cartman:
I HAVE FUCKING HAD IT WITH YOUR SHIT! Cartman means business, buddy:
I'll make you crap in your pants, and not as fear's byproduct, either,
Grind and cook your body up, á la Shakespeare at his most bloody,
And feed you to your own brother; I hear he's no Picky eater.
EarthBound? Trust me: you'd be HellBound, even if you were a Mormon;
You'll be finished by the count of Onett, Twoson, Threed, you whoreson!
I'm school's bottom-one-percent, but first in lyric-busting class,
So take your disses, make like Mr. Slave, and shove them up your ass!
Porky Minch:
Well, let's be honest: we're both corpulent, cruel creeps. Indeed, this match
Is like the Special Olympics: in either race, you finish last,
And you owe more to status quo than any boy band's debts, you freak;
Got the Ass-Burgers beaten out you by a girl, you're so damn weak!
Moonside's the only place I'd answer your dictations with a "yes";
I'm flowing with mach-speed delivery: Escargo Express-esque,
And that two-hundredth episode got screwed by Islamistic pressure,
But your fat face is the blasphemy they really ought to censor!
Eric Cartman:
I take back that "whoreson" line; I really meant: Streisand-begotten!
Man, I'll make a jackass of you swiftly as I did Bin Laden.
You seem pretty rich; your neighbors owe your folks a pretty penny,
But as rhyming skills go, your worth's pretty much on par with Kenny's!
Kenny: Hey man, leave me out of this, yo- (*Explodes for no reason*)
Cartman: Rats; that was inexplicable.
Your death, though, will be no shock; they'll say:
Kyle: Meh; that was predictable…
Cartman: You'll stop right in your tracks, but not to pose saying "fuzzy pickles",
Once my insults blow up in your face like bottle rocket missiles!
Porky Minch:
You put on a less appealing act than Butters' wack tap dancing;
Only half-ginger, yet of a soul, you haven't any fraction!
That'll make it all the easier to leave naught of you remaining,
When I send your mind and body into Mu, and not as training!
Eric Cartman:
Well, I'll tear into you 'til you can't stop crying bloody murder,
Then get drunk upon your tears as if my name was Mason Verger.
Go pig out on some fly honey, barf-head, 'cause it's plain to see
That I could beat you with one hand behind my back; J. Lo agrees!
Porky Minch:
You lived through getting thrown beneath the bus, but listen here, M'kay:
You'll be gone sooner than a hundred bucks in the investment fray!
You wanna Brawl with Porky? Better be prepared for consequences,
For I need no Mr. Saturn to break right through your defenses…
Mr. Saturn: ZOOM, BOING!
Porky: …Behold: I'm sporting heavy arms to heavy metal,
With an evil power on my side, though not your faggot devil.
Welcome to the womb of woe, wherein awaits your final fight;
You can consider yourself dead, and it's too late to make it right!
Mysterion: The evil in Minch's heart can be allowed to run rampant no longer, lest the great darkness he has awakened consume all of us. I, Mysterion, must intervene and- GAH! (*Pushed off rooftop to his death*)
The Coon:
What are you, some future-wetback, trying to take my job away?
Well, I'm the only Chosen One who'll whack this pasty snob today!
Yes, it is I, the Coon, and I'll be giving you my autograph,
In claw-marks on your face through this barrage of my full-throttle wrath!
Porky Minch:
Boy, I'll drop you as hard as your own lame league! Props, though, on those garments:
The costume's spot-on; looks just as if you found it in the garbage.
Not-so-devious raccoon-ass; you should take a page from Sly,
Because I mean business for realsies, and I'm not your buddy, guy!
The Coon:
Here's some enlightenment, you rotten apple: you're as good as toast!
I'll go BP on you: drill through your brains, and that'll be all, folks;
Don't need my so-called "Friends" to burst your ego and your cockpit bubble!
Crossing me was where you fucked up; there, Hindsight: saved you some trouble.
Porky Minch:
What a waste of bars that was; still think you'll pull through all of this?
It's hard believing you believe that; you're like Scientologists!
You long-since butchered Clyde and pals, but playtime's really over now;
When I switch off this clunker's power, watch another surge, and how…
Giygas:
Eric, Eric, Eric… wanna war against Giygas on mics?
Bitch, please; I outdo both Mewtwo and the Empire at counter-strikes!
A psychic psycho mama's boy who puts ol' Norman Bates to shame,
This otherworldly foe who'll cancel you for good ain't turning tame!
Chaos incarnate, I'm one far-off cry from that "Professor" whelp;
Send out a prayer? I'd like to see you try; they'll say:
Kyle: Go fuck yourself!
Giygas: The truth is crystal-clear, and unlike these backgrounds, I won't distort it:
If you fought my fetus, even then, I'd see your life aborted!
From one moviegoing misstep, to Itoi's nightmares, to yours,
To hippies, trees and traffic signs, my darkness spreads 'til all's absorbed,
And though my mind is shattered, you remain the bigger idiot:
Forget the form of my attack; you can't grasp how to flow for shit!
The Coon:
Come on; your bluffing's just like rape, 'cause none of it is getting past me!
…That being said, Minch, I'll admit that your new friend is rather ghastly,
But if "happy"'s how he's feeling, I won't let that stay for long…
Hey, C-Man, that red swirly guy's been talking shit about your mom!
Cthulhu:
WHAT; who dares blaspheme against the Blasphemy from which I spawned?!
I'm waking up to Call this fool out; screw it if the stars are wrong!
You puny Geek; didn't my cultists lay out what'll happen to you,
When straight outta R'lyeh, comes the eldritch mind-fucker, Cthulhu?
H. P. made me, but the rhymes I craft for you comprise pure hate:
You'll wish that I had simply eaten you, so grim will be your fate!
You're but a flower to me, and like that weird tale, I'll put you under;
Wouldn't dream of losing in a vigintillion years of slumber!
Watch me wreck your base to sounds of Starmen's screams and toppled stones;
I'm laying down more maddening words than any A. A.-authored tome!
Your grave's been dug, and it's a Deep One, like my pals in Dagon's Order;
I'll smash you between my palms, and label you The Sandwiched Horror.
Giygas:
Oh, get real, you overrated, mythos-title-hogging hack;
My unreal skills will burst your brains so bad, this time they won't grow back!
Derleth need not be at the helm for your defeat to be achievable:
You're just a big ol' squid; my cosmic terror is unspeakable!
Cthulhu:
Cthulhu fm'latgh hlirgh! You really have destroyed your mind;
Even against my Grim Adventures version, still you'd Trail behind!
We both know well that one immortal's life ends only by another,
And between us, there can be but one, so come and get me, sucker!
(*The two monsters clash; vision is engulfed by a massive, blinding burst of energetic light*)
Porky Minch:
…Dang! It seems that either beast has dealt the other fatal wounds;
Convenient, really… Now, although I'd love to stay and seal your doom,
I've even bigger fish to fry than any Great Old One, and thus,
I leave you in the present, heading off to cause far-future-fuss…
Eric Cartman:
Oh, don't you try to exit-stage-left on me, coward; I've got more to say:
This battle won't be done 'til all respect my rap-authority!
My win can't wait, and so into deep-freezing I retire,
Chilling out for now, but come my waking, I'll be spitting fire…
…
……
………
……
…
…And, like Buck Rogers, the Time Child emerges from his frigid capsule
To engage his rival once more; now, where is that little rascal?
…Ah, you're right in front of me; get ready for round 2.0,
Because I'm back to- …holy David Blaine, have you let yourself go!
Porky Minch:
So, you've come here through space and time pursuing unfounded revenge, kid?
Oh my God; you're killing me with your sheer arrogance, you bastard!
Though you deemed your trip to Casa B. as worth its consequences,
I'll see to it you regret this; welcome to your final chapter!
I'm a king, with a utopian empire in my name;
The dopest Pig-Mask master since Jigsaw, I play the conquest game!
Just ask Fassad: my forces trump foes! Know your heart will break and rend,
But don't you dare start tearing up just yet; no crying until the end.
Eric Cartman:
How can you call this a utopia?! There's too many damn minorities;
You're King of Nowhere: how's that for a title of authority?
There'll be no safety from the PK Hate I'm launching at you:
Bomb-ass lyrics sick enough to topple even your wack statue!
Get up out of bed and fight me; you look like you're from Akira,
But I needn't follow suit and be a blob to fuck your rear up!
With or without godless otters, I bust triple-A-grade verses;
Your delivery's as mechanical as your robot-selves: nerveless!
Porky Minch:
Man, I'm pulling all the stops out; time to get apocalyptic:
In contrast to Mother 3's end, your demise will be explicit!
No chimera'll be required to see you instantly defeated,
So naturally, take after my Killer Cyborg's theme, and Beat It!
Eric Cartman:
I'll strike you in combos to these beats; unravel master plans!
You won't get far with me; your game couldn't even travel past Japan,
And I'll downsize you like its move from 64 to GBA
With words so Negative, they'll leave self-pitying ones all you can say!
Porky Minch:
Al Gore warned you of Manbearpig, and he was two-thirds-way correct:
I'll roast you like a lil' marshmallow; snap your nonexistent neck,
You dumb, malformed Ape! Saying you'd bring me down, you couldn't have been more wrong:
King P'll drop you from a hundred-story building; call you Kong!
My brittle, bed-bound body's broken after countless trips through time,
Yet I remain a towering force in terms of loosing thunderous rhymes!
Your fatty blood's unfit for spilling on my spider-legs, you schmuck;
I thusly let the Parka Man end this…
Kenny: Wait, Cartman?! What the fu- (*Multiple gunshots*)
Porky: Gah! My hit points fall toward zero, and I'm slowly losing breath,
But I've still one last trick, so don't get your hopes up on seeing my death,
For if you'd take sick joy in doing so, I'll keep you from that pleasure,
Even if it means my being deprived of this world's light forever…
(*Absolutely Safe Capsule activates*)
Eric Cartman:
Ha; Guess I didn't need Cthulhu to leave you in dark oblivion!
Hell, I'd take Ensenada over what you'll now be living in,
And hence, our duel concludes: I stand victorious; you're boned,
'Cause you just screwed yourself for good, and on that note, I'm going home…
…
…Wait a minute, my home doesn't exist anymore, and everyone I've ever known has been dead for centuries…
…
…AW, MOTHERFUCKING GODDAMN COC-
WHO WON?
WHO'S NEXT?
I DECIDE!!!!
MOLEMAN'S EPIC RAP BATTLES!!!!!!
Cronan Ranch Trails Park:
www.coloma.com/recreation/riverside-parks/cronan-ranch-tr...
It's December and the American River water level should be way above these rocks. We haven't had a significant rainfall since last spring and the snow level in the higher elevations of the California Sierra Nevada Mountains is practically nonexistent. It's beginning to look like it could very well be a disastrous summer for us here. The wildfires have already started in southern California. Pray for us, folks, PLEASE…we need rain, NOW!!!
All images are the property of ARDATH'S ARTISTIC ENTERPRISES© and ARDATH WINTEROWD PHOTOGRAPHS©
Using these images without permission is in violation of international copyright laws (633/41 DPR19/78-Disg 154/97-L.248/2000)
All of my photographs are Copyrighted and All Rights Reserved. They may not be used or reproduced publicly or privately in any way without my written permission.
I took the rare opportunity to go ice skating in the Yosemite high country right before Christmas last year. Essentially nonexistent snowfall and cold temperatures allowed the lakes to freeze solid while also keeping the Tioga Road open.
A slightly early Independence Day (Fourth of July) fireworks show over Lake Monona in the heart of the Wisconsin capital.
* Fireworks pictures in a sense are double exposures, at least multiple exposures.
* My ISO was set at 100. Nothing higher is needed or even desirable.
* White balance set to auto because in raw capture it does not matter.
* The technique used (and it's an old one) was to hold the shutter open for 10, 20, or 30 seconds at a time.
* The aperture is adjusted in the opposite direction to keep the exposure uniform. In this case I found that 10 seconds at f/8 worked well. 30 seconds at f/16 captured more bursts, but if the action was very heavy then too many bursts made for a busy, messy picture. I had to keep changing the settings.
* The camera was in full manual mode (otherwise it would change the exposure and focus).
* Because the display was 2 miles away the camera only needed to be focused at infinity.
* Solidly mounted on a sturdy tripod and tripped with an electronic cable release to insure there is no camera movement.
* Vibration reduction turned off (otherwise the VR would "hunt" for nonexistent movement and smear the shot). I nearly forgot this but I made a couple of test exposures early on and realized immediately that they were smeared due to the VR.
* I also turned off the Long Exposure Noise Reduction when I realized that it was doubling the time for the picture to load, and I knew I could minimize any noise in Lightroom. As it turned out little noise reduction was necessary beyond the standard.
* I worked in live view and kept the auto review on for two seconds for each shot to insure that I was getting what I thought I was getting. It’s enormously reassuring!
* With the shutter open for longer periods, more individual bursts are recorded on each frame. You have to shoot a lot of frames and hope to luck out. There is no way to plan it. You open the shutter, the stuff goes up, at the end of the time the shutter closes and you've got what you've got. I think I made about 75 exposures to get 19 that were good. The rest were trashed.
* Despite some 75 extended exposures, live view, and constant instant reviews, the battery at the end of 45 minutes of fireworks still had 60% charge. Turning off the noise reduction undoubtedly helped, plus made the shoot more efficient; no waiting.
Oolick is a rambunctious little guy that never shuts up! He is the worst gossip in Hollywood. Racing around on those little wheels of his, he can spread news like a wildfire. The only trouble is that his memory is shot and his attention span is nonexistent. So, he gets all his stories mixed up. How did you think Tabloids get all their crazy stories?
Robot sculpture assembled from found objects by Brian Marshall - Wilmington, DE. Items included in my sculptures vary from vintage household kitchen items to recycled industrial scrap. Some of my favorite items to use are old oil cans, aluminum measuring spoons, electrical meters, retro blenders, anodized cups, and pencil sharpeners.
Exploring Venice at night is a magical experience.
As the last of the day-trippers board the final out-going train, the city falls elegantly to sleep. With practiced rhythm the quaint boutiques close their doors while street hawkers disperse and pigeons roost. The dimly lit streets seem to grow tighter, allowing only for hushed voices and soft footsteps.
It is the absence of sound that is perhaps most alluring. The anticipated moan of the automobile is strangely nonexistent here, replaced only by the occasional murmur of a passing water taxi. Shadowy palaces whisper majestic stories of times past while the subtle lap of water reminds instead of forthcoming peril.
.
.
A fortunate error in navigation led us down a vacant side alley where a sudden flood of light was capturing the visage of a forgotten facade.
One of the main sites visited by almost every tour to Egypt is what is billed as Philae, but Philae is actually a nonexistent island now buried beneath Lake Nasser. The island was sometimes visible and sometimes not after the Old Aswan Dam was built, but was permanently submerged by the High Dam.
Philae is an approximate Greek rendering of the local name "Pilak" known from hieroglyphic texts and which may be Nubian in origin. The ancient Egyptians saw in their name for Philae an etymology with the meaning "island of the time [of Ra]", i.e. creation, but the islands history is later than that.
What we refer to today as Philae is the main temple complex relocated from that island, after the High Dam was built, to the island of Agilika. It was the center of the cult of the goddess Isis and her connection with Osiris, Horus, and the Kingship, during the Ptolemaic period of Egyptian History.
The second stop on the way home from my college visit was in Richmond!
The Richmond Kmart appears to be a former Grants (and thus reminded me of the Erie Kmart that I visited last summer). It is very noticeably bigger than Anderson; it is also very nice; it has a Kmart Express gas station and it has a former Kmart Cafe (that still has the counter/displays, the full menu board and even the register! Looks like a more recent KCafe closure from what I've seen; if anybody else here has any more information I would like to know more about it!). This store appears to be doing fairly well for one of the last remaining stores in/near the Miami Valley.
Of course, I had to check out the Kmart Express after my main store rounds were complete, so I headed over there and looked around. This is the second Kmart Express I've seen, but the first one I have actually visited, as the other one (at the now nonexistent Brooklyn Super Kmart) had already closed. I didn't buy anything at this KExpress though, as I had spent my money in the main store. Hopefully next time I can buy some coffee or donuts from Kmart Express while going to/from Anderson (if I plan another college visit to Anderson U, which is likely)!
Hopefully the Richmond Kmart will still be able to remain "normal" for a good time longer...I like this store! :D
Kmart #7246 - 3150 National Road West - Richmond, Indiana
Nature morte à la tête de mouton
"We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves.
The martyrs go hand in hand into the arena; they are crucified alone. Embraced, the lovers desperately try to fuse their insulated ecstasies into a single self-transcendence; in vain. By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude. Sensations, feelings, insights, fancies - all these are private and, except through symbols and at second hand, incommunicable. We can pool information about experiences, but never the experiences themselves. From family to nation, every human group is a society of island universes.
Most island universes are sufficiently like one another to Permit of inferential understanding or even of mutual empathy or "feeling into." Thus, remembering our own bereavements and humiliations, we can condole with others in analogous circumstances, can put ourselves (always, of course, in a slightly Pickwickian sense) in their places. But in certain cases communication between universes is incomplete or even nonexistent. The mind is its own place, and the Places inhabited by the insane and the exceptionally gifted are so different from the places where ordinary men and women live, that there is little or no common ground of memory to serve as a basis for understanding or fellow feeling. Words are uttered, but fail to enlighten. The things and events to which the symbols refer belong to mutually exclusive realms of experience." A.H.
O mañana de domingo, tarde de jueves.
Louvre, 2010
27 Feb 2015: Between Swains Lock and Pennyfield Lock, ice in the canal was thick where there wasn't much current. Where the current was strong, ice was thin or nonexistent.
The description of this work is "Similarly impossible to see are the laces of the nonexistent shoe that the figure in "Shoe Tie", 2012 is trying to do up n a bent posture that recalls the Hellenistic Spinario.
IMG_7562 copy
Sorry I haven't been online last few days, but I had no access on the internet & also everything has been a bit busy lately. But now we got our half-year results so school is a bit more relaxed at the moment, and- even better- the trouble with my exboyfriend's parents has become almost nonexistent. (: We (him, his father, my parents & me) met two weeks ago to talk about the situation but didn't get any result. So the two of us decided to go on the way it was before that conversation, being just friends and all... Very disappointing because I had actually thought that this talk would eventually get us a result, but oh well.
I was like, well, I'll wait for him if I have to; and so I didn't really expect us to get back together soon. But then, there was this Big Band concert at our school, and after that all of the Big Band members went to a restaurant and so did the two of us (even though we're not really members of the Big Band but he did the technic stuff at the concert and I... well, I just was there :D) We sat next to each other and well... suddenly he leaned over and kissed me. We just can't handle being only friends, so we didn't even try anymore. And suddenly his parents started accepting or at least tolerating our relationship. Don't ask me what made them change their minds- i don't know. But I'm happy about it, so I don't really care why their opinions changed so drastically- wether it was the conversation we had, or the fact that both of us were really depressed after the break-up, or whatever. The important thing is that they changed their mind, not why they did.
Oh, and I have been tagged by *sweet. dreamers. (thanks for the tag ♥), so here we go :D
Name: Mirjam
Gender: Female
Age: 14
Where You're From: Germany (:
Eye Color: A very green-ish brown (or a very brown-ish green, depends on how you want to call it), nothing spectacular really.
Hair Color: Actually a dark ash blonde, but I've been tinting it brown since August. I started with a middle brown, but since last week I'm wearing a really really dark brown and i love it (:
Favorite Sport: Jogging :D I also like handball and volleyball.
Favorite Color: Depends. Everything that's light and colourful. Pink, violet, spring green, sky blue, light red...
Favorite Band: Mhm... Linkin Park ♥
Siblings: One older sister & one older brother.
Tattoos: None.
Piercings: None yet because my parents won't allow me to get one, but I want a lip piercing one day. Maybe even snake bites *-*
Hobbies: Painting. Drawing. Taking pictures. Writing stories. Anything creative. Reading. Surfing the internet (I've got to admit, I'm obsessed with facebook.). Being with friends. All that kinda stuff.
Third thing is, I'm thinking about doing a 365. What do you think, should I?
♥
Capitol Reef National Park is an American national park in south-central Utah. The park is approximately 60 miles (97 km) long on its north–south axis and just 6 miles (9.7 km) wide on average. The park was established in 1971 to preserve 241,904 acres (377.98 sq mi; 97,895.08 ha; 978.95 km2) of desert landscape and is open all year, with May through September being the highest visitation months.
Partially in Wayne County, Utah, the area was originally named "Wayne Wonderland" in the 1920s by local boosters Ephraim P. Pectol and Joseph S. Hickman. Capitol Reef National Park was designated a national monument on August 2, 1937, by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to protect the area's colorful canyons, ridges, buttes, and monoliths; however, it was not until 1950 that the area officially opened to the public. Road access was improved in 1962 with the construction of State Route 24 through the Fremont River Canyon.
The majority of the nearly 100 mi (160 km) long up-thrust formation called the Waterpocket Fold—a rocky spine extending from Thousand Lake Mountain to Lake Powell—is preserved within the park. Capitol Reef is an especially rugged and spectacular segment of the Waterpocket Fold by the Fremont River. The park was named for its whitish Navajo Sandstone cliffs with dome formations—similar to the white domes often placed on capitol buildings—that run from the Fremont River to Pleasant Creek on the Waterpocket Fold. Locally, reef refers to any rocky barrier to land travel, just as ocean reefs are barriers to sea travel.
Capitol Reef encompasses the Waterpocket Fold, a warp in the earth's crust that is 65 million years old. It is the largest exposed monocline in North America. In this fold, newer and older layers of earth folded over each other in an S-shape. This warp, probably caused by the same colliding continental plates that created the Rocky Mountains, has weathered and eroded over millennia to expose layers of rock and fossils. The park is filled with brilliantly colored sandstone cliffs, gleaming white domes, and contrasting layers of stone and earth.
The area was named for a line of white domes and cliffs of Navajo Sandstone, each of which looks somewhat like the United States Capitol building, that run from the Fremont River to Pleasant Creek on the Waterpocket Fold.
The fold forms a north-to-south barrier that has barely been breached by roads. Early settlers referred to parallel impassable ridges as "reefs", from which the park gets the second half of its name. The first paved road was constructed through the area in 1962. State Route 24 cuts through the park traveling east and west between Canyonlands National Park and Bryce Canyon National Park, but few other paved roads invade the rugged landscape.
The park is filled with canyons, cliffs, towers, domes, and arches. The Fremont River has cut canyons through parts of the Waterpocket Fold, but most of the park is arid desert. A scenic drive shows park visitors some highlights, but it runs only a few miles from the main highway. Hundreds of miles of trails and unpaved roads lead into the equally scenic backcountry.
Fremont-culture Native Americans lived near the perennial Fremont River in the northern part of the Capitol Reef Waterpocket Fold around the year 1000. They irrigated crops of maize and squash and stored their grain in stone granaries (in part made from the numerous black basalt boulders that litter the area). In the 13th century, all of the Native American cultures in this area underwent sudden change, likely due to a long drought. The Fremont settlements and fields were abandoned.
Many years after the Fremont left, Paiutes moved into the area. These Numic-speaking people named the Fremont granaries moki huts and thought they were the homes of a race of tiny people or moki.
In 1872 Almon H. Thompson, a geographer attached to United States Army Major John Wesley Powell's expedition, crossed the Waterpocket Fold while exploring the area. Geologist Clarence Dutton later spent several summers studying the area's geology. None of these expeditions explored the Waterpocket Fold to any great extent.
Following the American Civil War, officials of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City sought to establish missions in the remotest niches of the Intermountain West. In 1866, a quasi-military expedition of Mormons in pursuit of natives penetrated the high valleys to the west. In the 1870s, settlers moved into these valleys, eventually establishing Loa, Fremont, Lyman, Bicknell, and Torrey.
Mormons settled the Fremont River valley in the 1880s and established Junction (later renamed Fruita), Caineville, and Aldridge. Fruita prospered, Caineville barely survived, and Aldridge died. In addition to farming, lime was extracted from local limestone, and uranium was extracted early in the 20th century. In 1904 the first claim to a uranium mine in the area was staked. The resulting Oyler Mine in Grand Wash produced uranium ore.
By 1920 no more than ten families at one time were sustained by the fertile flood plain of the Fremont River and the land changed ownership over the years. The area remained isolated. The community was later abandoned and later still some buildings were restored by the National Park Service. Kilns once used to produce lime are still in Sulphur Creek and near the campgrounds on Scenic Drive.
Local Ephraim Portman Pectol organized a "booster club" in Torrey in 1921. Pectol pressed a promotional campaign, furnishing stories to be sent to periodicals and newspapers. In his efforts, he was increasingly aided by his brother-in-law, Joseph S. Hickman, who was the Wayne County High School principal. In 1924, Hickman extended community involvement in the promotional effort by organizing a Wayne County-wide Wayne Wonderland Club. That same year, Hickman was elected to the Utah State Legislature.
In 1933, Pectol was elected to the presidency of the Associated Civics Club of Southern Utah, successor to the Wayne Wonderland Club. The club raised U.S. $150 (equivalent to $3,391 in 2022) to interest a Salt Lake City photographer in taking a series of promotional photographs. For several years, the photographer, J. E. Broaddus, traveled and lectured on "Wayne Wonderland".
In 1933, Pectol was elected to the legislature and almost immediately contacted President Franklin D. Roosevelt and asked for the creation of "Wayne Wonderland National Monument" out of the federal lands comprising the bulk of the Capitol Reef area. Federal agencies began a feasibility study and boundary assessment. Meanwhile, Pectol guided the government investigators on numerous trips and escorted an increasing number of visitors. The lectures of Broaddus were having an effect.
Roosevelt signed a proclamation creating Capitol Reef National Monument on August 2, 1937. In Proclamation 2246, President Roosevelt set aside 37,711 acres (15,261 ha) of the Capitol Reef area. This comprised an area extending about two miles (3 km) north of present State Route 24 and about 10 mi (16 km) south, just past Capitol Gorge. The Great Depression years were lean ones for the National Park Service (NPS), the new administering agency. Funds for the administration of Capitol Reef were nonexistent; it would be a long time before the first rangers would arrive.
Administration of the new monument was placed under the control of Zion National Park. A stone ranger cabin and the Sulphur Creek bridge were built and some road work was performed by the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Works Progress Administration. Historian and printer Charles Kelly came to know NPS officials at Zion well and volunteered to watchdog the park for the NPS. Kelly was officially appointed custodian-without-pay in 1943. He worked as a volunteer until 1950, when the NPS offered him a civil-service appointment as the first superintendent.
During the 1950s Kelly was deeply troubled by NPS management acceding to demands of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission that Capitol Reef National Monument be opened to uranium prospecting. He felt that the decision had been a mistake and destructive of the long-term national interest. It turned out that there was not enough ore in the monument to be worth mining.
In 1958 Kelly got additional permanent help in protecting the monument and enforcing regulations; Park Ranger Grant Clark transferred from Zion. The year Clark arrived, fifty-six thousand visitors came to the park, and Charlie Kelly retired for the last time.
During the 1960s (under the program name Mission 66), NPS areas nationwide received new facilities to meet the demand of mushrooming park visitation. At Capitol Reef, a 53-site campground at Fruita, staff rental housing, and a new visitor center were built, the latter opening in 1966.
Visitation climbed dramatically after the paved, all-weather State Route 24 was built in 1962 through the Fremont River canyon near Fruita. State Route 24 replaced the narrow Capitol Gorge wagon road about 10 mi (16 km) to the south that frequently washed out. The old road has since been open only to foot traffic. In 1967, 146,598 persons visited the park. The staff was also growing.
During the 1960s, the NPS purchased private land parcels at Fruita and Pleasant Creek. Almost all private property passed into public ownership on a "willing buyer-willing seller" basis.
Preservationists convinced President Lyndon B. Johnson to set aside an enormous area of public lands in 1968, just before he left office. In Presidential Proclamation 3888 an additional 215,056 acres (87,030 ha) were placed under NPS control. By 1970, Capitol Reef National Monument comprised 254,251 acres (102,892 ha) and sprawled southeast from Thousand Lake Mountain almost to the Colorado River. The action was controversial locally, and NPS staffing at the monument was inadequate to properly manage the additional land.
The vast enlargement of the monument and diversification of the scenic resources soon raised another issue: whether Capitol Reef should be a national park, rather than a monument. Two bills were introduced into the United States Congress.
A House bill (H.R. 17152) introduced by Utah Congressman Laurence J. Burton called for a 180,000-acre (72,800 ha) national park and an adjunct 48,000-acre (19,400 ha) national recreation area where multiple use (including grazing) could continue indefinitely. In the United States Senate, meanwhile, Senate bill S. 531 had already passed on July 1, 1970, and provided for a 230,000-acre (93,100 ha) national park alone. The bill called for a 25-year phase-out of grazing.
In September 1970, United States Department of Interior officials told a house subcommittee session that they preferred about 254,000 acres (103,000 ha) be set aside as a national park. They also recommended that the grazing phase-out period be 10 years, rather than 25. They did not favor the adjunct recreation area.
It was not until late 1971 that Congressional action was completed. By then, the 92nd United States Congress was in session and S. 531 had languished. A new bill, S. 29, was introduced in the Senate by Senator Frank E. Moss of Utah and was essentially the same as the defunct S. 531 except that it called for an additional 10,834 acres (4,384 ha) of public lands for a Capitol Reef National Park. In the House, Utah Representative K. Gunn McKay (with Representative Lloyd) had introduced H.R. 9053 to replace the dead H.R. 17152. This time, the House bill dropped the concept of an adjunct Capitol Reef National Recreation Area and adopted the Senate concept of a 25-year limit on continued grazing. The Department of Interior was still recommending a national park of 254,368 acres (102,939 ha) and a 10-year limit for grazing phase-out.
S. 29 passed the Senate in June and was sent to the House, which dropped its own bill and passed the Senate version with an amendment. Because the Senate was not in agreement with the House amendment, differences were worked out in Conference Committee. The Conference Committee issued its report on November 30, 1971, and the bill passed both houses of Congress. The legislation—'An Act to Establish The Capitol Reef National Park in the State of Utah'—became Public Law 92-207 when it was signed by President Richard Nixon on December 18, 1971.
The area including the park was once the edge of a shallow sea that invaded the land in the Permian, creating the Cutler Formation. Only the sandstone of the youngest member of the Cutler Formation, the White Rim, is exposed in the park. The deepening sea left carbonate deposits, forming the limestone of the Kaibab Limestone, the same formation that rims the Grand Canyon to the southwest.
During the Triassic, streams deposited reddish-brown silt that later became the siltstone of the Moenkopi Formation. Uplift and erosion followed. Conglomerate, followed by logs, sand, mud, and wind-transported volcanic ash, then formed the uranium-containing Chinle Formation.
The members of the Glen Canyon Group were all laid down in the middle- to late-Triassic during a time of increasing aridity. They include:
Wingate Sandstone: sand dunes on the shore of an ancient sea
Kayenta Formation: thin-bedded layers of sand deposited by slow-moving streams in channels and across low plains
Navajo Sandstone: huge fossilized sand dunes from a massive Sahara-like desert.
The Golden Throne. Though Capitol Reef is famous for white domes of Navajo Sandstone, this dome's color is a result of a lingering section of yellow Carmel Formation carbonate, which has stained the underlying rock.
The San Rafael Group consists of four Jurassic-period formations, from oldest to youngest:
Carmel Formation: gypsum, sand, and limey silt laid down in what may have been a graben that was periodically flooded by sea water
Entrada Sandstone: sandstone from barrier islands/sand bars in a near-shore environment
Curtis Formation: made from conglomerate, sandstone, and shale
Summerville Formation: reddish-brown mud and white sand deposited in tidal flats.
Streams once again laid down mud and sand in their channels, on lakebeds, and in swampy plains, creating the Morrison Formation. Early in the Cretaceous, similar nonmarine sediments were laid down and became the Dakota Sandstone. Eventually, the Cretaceous Seaway covered the Dakota, depositing the Mancos Shale.
Only small remnants of the Mesaverde Group are found, capping a few mesas in the park's eastern section.
Near the end of the Cretaceous period, a mountain-building event called the Laramide orogeny started to compact and uplift the region, forming the Rocky Mountains and creating monoclines such as the Waterpocket Fold in the park. Ten to fifteen million years ago, the entire region was uplifted much further by the creation of the Colorado Plateau. This uplift was very even. Igneous activity in the form of volcanism and dike and sill intrusion also occurred during this time.
The drainage system in the area was rearranged and steepened, causing streams to downcut faster and sometimes change course. Wetter times during the ice ages of the Pleistocene increased the rate of erosion.
There are more than 840 species of plants that are found in the park and over 40 of those species are classified as rare and endemic.
The closest town to Capitol Reef is Torrey, about 11 mi (18 km) west of the visitor center on Highway 24, slightly west of its intersection with Highway 12. Its 2020 population is less than 300. Torrey has a few motels and restaurants and functions as a gateway town to Capitol Reef National Park. Highway 12, as well as a partially unpaved scenic backway named the Burr Trail, provide access from the west through the Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument and the town of Boulder.
A variety of activities are available to tourists, both ranger-led and self-guided, including auto touring, hiking, backpacking, camping, bicycling (on paved and unpaved roads only; no trails), horseback riding, canyoneering, and rock climbing. The orchards planted by Mormon pioneers are maintained by the National Park Service. From early March to mid-October, various fruit—cherries, apricots, peaches, pears, or apples—can be harvested by visitors for a fee.
A hiking trail guide is available at the visitor center for both day hikes and backcountry hiking. Backcountry access requires a free permit.
Numerous trails are available for hiking and backpacking in the park, with fifteen in the Fruita District alone. The following trails are some of the most popular in the park:
Cassidy Arch Trail: a very steep, strenuous 3.5 mi (5.6 km) round trip that leads into the Grand Wash to an overlook of the Cassidy Arch.
Hickman Bridge Trail: a 2 mi (3.2 km) round trip leading to the natural bridge.
Frying Pan Trail: an 8.8 mi (14.2 km) round trip that passes the Cassidy Arch, Grand Wash, and Cohab Canyon.
Brimhall Natural Bridge: a popular, though strenuous, 4.5 mi (7.2 km) round trip with views of Brimhall Canyon, the Waterpocket Fold, and Brimhall Natural Bridge.
Halls Creek Narrows: 22 mi (35 km) long and considered strenuous, with many side canyons and creeks; typically hiked as a 2-3 day camping trip.
Visitors may explore several of the main areas of the park by private vehicle:
Scenic Drive: winds through the middle of the park, passing the major points of interest; the road is accessible from the visitor center to approximately 2 mi (3.2 km) into the Capitol Gorge.
Notom-Bullfrog Road: traverses the eastern side of the Waterpocket Fold, along 10 mi (16 km) of paved road, with the remainder unpaved.
Cathedral Road: an unpaved road through the northern areas of the park, that traverses Cathedral Valley, passing the Temples of the Sun and Moon.
The primary camping location is the Fruita campground, with 71 campsites (no water, electrical, or sewer hookups), and restrooms without bathing facilities. The campground also has group sites with picnic areas and restrooms. Two primitive free camping areas are also available.
Canyoneering is growing in popularity in the park. It is a recreational sport that takes one through slot canyons. It involves rappelling and may require swimming and other technical rope work. Day-pass permits are required for canyoneering in the park, and can be obtained for free from the visitor's center or through email. It's key to know that each route requires its own permit. If one is planning on canyoneering for multiple days, passes are required for each day. Overnight camping as part of the canyoneering trip is permitted, but one must request a free backcountry pass from the visitor center.
It is imperative to plan canyoneering trips around the weather. The Colorado Plateau is susceptible to flash flooding during prime rainy months. Because canyoneering takes place through slot canyons, getting caught in a flash flood could be lethal. Take care to consult reliable weather sources. The Weather Atlas shows charts with the monthly average rainfall in inches.
Another risk to be aware of during the summer months is extreme heat. Visitors can find weather warnings on the National Weather Service website. The heat levels are detailed by a color and numerical scale (0-4).
One of the most popular canyoneering routes in Capitol Reef National Park is Cassidy Arch Canyon. A paper by George Huddart, details the park's commitment to working with citizens to maintain the route as well as the vegetation and rocks. The canyon route is approximately 2.3 miles long (0.4 miles of technical work), consisting of 8 different rappels, and takes between 2.5 and 4.5 hours to complete. The first rappel is 140 ft and descends below the famous Cassidy Arch.
Utah is a landlocked state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It borders Colorado to its east, Wyoming to its northeast, Idaho to its north, Arizona to its south, and Nevada to its west. Utah also touches a corner of New Mexico in the southeast. Of the fifty U.S. states, Utah is the 13th-largest by area; with a population over three million, it is the 30th-most-populous and 11th-least-densely populated. Urban development is mostly concentrated in two areas: the Wasatch Front in the north-central part of the state, which is home to roughly two-thirds of the population and includes the capital city, Salt Lake City; and Washington County in the southwest, with more than 180,000 residents. Most of the western half of Utah lies in the Great Basin.
Utah has been inhabited for thousands of years by various indigenous groups such as the ancient Puebloans, Navajo, and Ute. The Spanish were the first Europeans to arrive in the mid-16th century, though the region's difficult geography and harsh climate made it a peripheral part of New Spain and later Mexico. Even while it was Mexican territory, many of Utah's earliest settlers were American, particularly Mormons fleeing marginalization and persecution from the United States via the Mormon Trail. Following the Mexican–American War in 1848, the region was annexed by the U.S., becoming part of the Utah Territory, which included what is now Colorado and Nevada. Disputes between the dominant Mormon community and the federal government delayed Utah's admission as a state; only after the outlawing of polygamy was it admitted in 1896 as the 45th.
People from Utah are known as Utahns. Slightly over half of all Utahns are Mormons, the vast majority of whom are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), which has its world headquarters in Salt Lake City; Utah is the only state where a majority of the population belongs to a single church. A 2023 paper challenged this perception (claiming only 42% of Utahns are Mormons) however most statistics still show a majority of Utah residents belong to the LDS church; estimates from the LDS church suggests 60.68% of Utah's population belongs to the church whilst some sources put the number as high as 68%. The paper replied that membership count done by the LDS Church is too high for several reasons. The LDS Church greatly influences Utahn culture, politics, and daily life, though since the 1990s the state has become more religiously diverse as well as secular.
Utah has a highly diversified economy, with major sectors including transportation, education, information technology and research, government services, mining, multi-level marketing, and tourism. Utah has been one of the fastest growing states since 2000, with the 2020 U.S. census confirming the fastest population growth in the nation since 2010. St. George was the fastest-growing metropolitan area in the United States from 2000 to 2005. Utah ranks among the overall best states in metrics such as healthcare, governance, education, and infrastructure. It has the 12th-highest median average income and the least income inequality of any U.S. state. Over time and influenced by climate change, droughts in Utah have been increasing in frequency and severity, putting a further strain on Utah's water security and impacting the state's economy.
The History of Utah is an examination of the human history and social activity within the state of Utah located in the western United States.
Archaeological evidence dates the earliest habitation of humans in Utah to about 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. Paleolithic people lived near the Great Basin's swamps and marshes, which had an abundance of fish, birds, and small game animals. Big game, including bison, mammoths and ground sloths, also were attracted to these water sources. Over the centuries, the mega-fauna died, this population was replaced by the Desert Archaic people, who sheltered in caves near the Great Salt Lake. Relying more on gathering than the previous Utah residents, their diet was mainly composed of cattails and other salt tolerant plants such as pickleweed, burro weed and sedge. Red meat appears to have been more of a luxury, although these people used nets and the atlatl to hunt water fowl, ducks, small animals and antelope. Artifacts include nets woven with plant fibers and rabbit skin, woven sandals, gaming sticks, and animal figures made from split-twigs. About 3,500 years ago, lake levels rose and the population of Desert Archaic people appears to have dramatically decreased. The Great Basin may have been almost unoccupied for 1,000 years.
The Fremont culture, named from sites near the Fremont River in Utah, lived in what is now north and western Utah and parts of Nevada, Idaho and Colorado from approximately 600 to 1300 AD. These people lived in areas close to water sources that had been previously occupied by the Desert Archaic people, and may have had some relationship with them. However, their use of new technologies define them as a distinct people. Fremont technologies include:
use of the bow and arrow while hunting,
building pithouse shelters,
growing maize and probably beans and squash,
building above ground granaries of adobe or stone,
creating and decorating low-fired pottery ware,
producing art, including jewelry and rock art such as petroglyphs and pictographs.
The ancient Puebloan culture, also known as the Anasazi, occupied territory adjacent to the Fremont. The ancestral Puebloan culture centered on the present-day Four Corners area of the Southwest United States, including the San Juan River region of Utah. Archaeologists debate when this distinct culture emerged, but cultural development seems to date from about the common era, about 500 years before the Fremont appeared. It is generally accepted that the cultural peak of these people was around the 1200 CE. Ancient Puebloan culture is known for well constructed pithouses and more elaborate adobe and masonry dwellings. They were excellent craftsmen, producing turquoise jewelry and fine pottery. The Puebloan culture was based on agriculture, and the people created and cultivated fields of maize, beans, and squash and domesticated turkeys. They designed and produced elaborate field terracing and irrigation systems. They also built structures, some known as kivas, apparently designed solely for cultural and religious rituals.
These two later cultures were roughly contemporaneous, and appear to have established trading relationships. They also shared enough cultural traits that archaeologists believe the cultures may have common roots in the early American Southwest. However, each remained culturally distinct throughout most of their existence. These two well established cultures appear to have been severely impacted by climatic change and perhaps by the incursion of new people in about 1200 CE. Over the next two centuries, the Fremont and ancient Pueblo people may have moved into the American southwest, finding new homes and farmlands in the river drainages of Arizona, New Mexico and northern Mexico.
In about 1200, Shoshonean speaking peoples entered Utah territory from the west. They may have originated in southern California and moved into the desert environment due to population pressure along the coast. They were an upland people with a hunting and gathering lifestyle utilizing roots and seeds, including the pinyon nut. They were also skillful fishermen, created pottery and raised some crops. When they first arrived in Utah, they lived as small family groups with little tribal organization. Four main Shoshonean peoples inhabited Utah country. The Shoshone in the north and northeast, the Gosiutes in the northwest, the Utes in the central and eastern parts of the region and the Southern Paiutes in the southwest. Initially, there seems to have been very little conflict between these groups.
In the early 16th century, the San Juan River basin in Utah's southeast also saw a new people, the Díne or Navajo, part of a greater group of plains Athabaskan speakers moved into the Southwest from the Great Plains. In addition to the Navajo, this language group contained people that were later known as Apaches, including the Lipan, Jicarilla, and Mescalero Apaches.
Athabaskans were a hunting people who initially followed the bison, and were identified in 16th-century Spanish accounts as "dog nomads". The Athabaskans expanded their range throughout the 17th century, occupying areas the Pueblo peoples had abandoned during prior centuries. The Spanish first specifically mention the "Apachu de Nabajo" (Navaho) in the 1620s, referring to the people in the Chama valley region east of the San Juan River, and north west of Santa Fe. By the 1640s, the term Navaho was applied to these same people. Although the Navajo newcomers established a generally peaceful trading and cultural exchange with the some modern Pueblo peoples to the south, they experienced intermittent warfare with the Shoshonean peoples, particularly the Utes in eastern Utah and western Colorado.
At the time of European expansion, beginning with Spanish explorers traveling from Mexico, five distinct native peoples occupied territory within the Utah area: the Northern Shoshone, the Goshute, the Ute, the Paiute and the Navajo.
The Spanish explorer Francisco Vázquez de Coronado may have crossed into what is now southern Utah in 1540, when he was seeking the legendary Cíbola.
A group led by two Spanish Catholic priests—sometimes called the Domínguez–Escalante expedition—left Santa Fe in 1776, hoping to find a route to the California coast. The expedition traveled as far north as Utah Lake and encountered the native residents. All of what is now Utah was claimed by the Spanish Empire from the 1500s to 1821 as part of New Spain (later as the province Alta California); and subsequently claimed by Mexico from 1821 to 1848. However, Spain and Mexico had little permanent presence in, or control of, the region.
Fur trappers (also known as mountain men) including Jim Bridger, explored some regions of Utah in the early 19th century. The city of Provo was named for one such man, Étienne Provost, who visited the area in 1825. The city of Ogden, Utah is named for a brigade leader of the Hudson's Bay Company, Peter Skene Ogden who trapped in the Weber Valley. In 1846, a year before the arrival of members from the Church of Jesus Christ of latter-day Saints, the ill-fated Donner Party crossed through the Salt Lake valley late in the season, deciding not to stay the winter there but to continue forward to California, and beyond.
Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly known as Mormon pioneers, first came to the Salt Lake Valley on July 24, 1847. At the time, the U.S. had already captured the Mexican territories of Alta California and New Mexico in the Mexican–American War and planned to keep them, but those territories, including the future state of Utah, officially became United States territory upon the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, February 2, 1848. The treaty was ratified by the United States Senate on March 10, 1848.
Upon arrival in the Salt Lake Valley, the Mormon pioneers found no permanent settlement of Indians. Other areas along the Wasatch Range were occupied at the time of settlement by the Northwestern Shoshone and adjacent areas by other bands of Shoshone such as the Gosiute. The Northwestern Shoshone lived in the valleys on the eastern shore of Great Salt Lake and in adjacent mountain valleys. Some years after arriving in the Salt Lake Valley Mormons, who went on to colonize many other areas of what is now Utah, were petitioned by Indians for recompense for land taken. The response of Heber C. Kimball, first counselor to Brigham Young, was that the land belonged to "our Father in Heaven and we expect to plow and plant it." A 1945 Supreme Court decision found that the land had been treated by the United States as public domain; no aboriginal title by the Northwestern Shoshone had been recognized by the United States or extinguished by treaty with the United States.
Upon arriving in the Salt Lake Valley, the Mormons had to make a place to live. They created irrigation systems, laid out farms, built houses, churches, and schools. Access to water was crucially important. Almost immediately, Brigham Young set out to identify and claim additional community sites. While it was difficult to find large areas in the Great Basin where water sources were dependable and growing seasons long enough to raise vitally important subsistence crops, satellite communities began to be formed.
Shortly after the first company arrived in the Salt Lake Valley in 1847, the community of Bountiful was settled to the north. In 1848, settlers moved into lands purchased from trapper Miles Goodyear in present-day Ogden. In 1849, Tooele and Provo were founded. Also that year, at the invitation of Ute chief Wakara, settlers moved into the Sanpete Valley in central Utah to establish the community of Manti. Fillmore, Utah, intended to be the capital of the new territory, was established in 1851. In 1855, missionary efforts aimed at western native cultures led to outposts in Fort Lemhi, Idaho, Las Vegas, Nevada and Elk Mountain in east-central Utah.
The experiences of returning members of the Mormon Battalion were also important in establishing new communities. On their journey west, the Mormon soldiers had identified dependable rivers and fertile river valleys in Colorado, Arizona and southern California. In addition, as the men traveled to rejoin their families in the Salt Lake Valley, they moved through southern Nevada and the eastern segments of southern Utah. Jefferson Hunt, a senior Mormon officer of the Battalion, actively searched for settlement sites, minerals, and other resources. His report encouraged 1851 settlement efforts in Iron County, near present-day Cedar City. These southern explorations eventually led to Mormon settlements in St. George, Utah, Las Vegas and San Bernardino, California, as well as communities in southern Arizona.
Prior to establishment of the Oregon and California trails and Mormon settlement, Indians native to the Salt Lake Valley and adjacent areas lived by hunting buffalo and other game, but also gathered grass seed from the bountiful grass of the area as well as roots such as those of the Indian Camas. By the time of settlement, indeed before 1840, the buffalo were gone from the valley, but hunting by settlers and grazing of cattle severely impacted the Indians in the area, and as settlement expanded into nearby river valleys and oases, indigenous tribes experienced increasing difficulty in gathering sufficient food. Brigham Young's counsel was to feed the hungry tribes, and that was done, but it was often not enough. These tensions formed the background to the Bear River massacre committed by California Militia stationed in Salt Lake City during the Civil War. The site of the massacre is just inside Preston, Idaho, but was generally thought to be within Utah at the time.
Statehood was petitioned for in 1849-50 using the name Deseret. The proposed State of Deseret would have been quite large, encompassing all of what is now Utah, and portions of Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, Wyoming, Arizona, Oregon, New Mexico and California. The name of Deseret was favored by the LDS leader Brigham Young as a symbol of industry and was derived from a reference in the Book of Mormon. The petition was rejected by Congress and Utah did not become a state until 1896, following the Utah Constitutional Convention of 1895.
In 1850, the Utah Territory was created with the Compromise of 1850, and Fillmore (named after President Fillmore) was designated the capital. In 1856, Salt Lake City replaced Fillmore as the territorial capital.
The first group of pioneers brought African slaves with them, making Utah the only place in the western United States to have African slavery. Three slaves, Green Flake, Hark Lay, and Oscar Crosby, came west with this first group in 1847. The settlers also began to purchase Indian slaves in the well-established Indian slave trade, as well as enslaving Indian prisoners of war. In 1850, 26 slaves were counted in Salt Lake County. Slavery didn't become officially recognized until 1852, when the Act in Relation to Service and the Act for the relief of Indian Slaves and Prisoners were passed. Slavery was repealed on June 19, 1862, when Congress prohibited slavery in all US territories.
Disputes between the Mormon inhabitants and the federal government intensified after the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' practice of polygamy became known. The polygamous practices of the Mormons, which were made public in 1854, would be one of the major reasons Utah was denied statehood until almost 50 years after the Mormons had entered the area.
After news of their polygamous practices spread, the members of the LDS Church were quickly viewed by some as un-American and rebellious. In 1857, after news of a possible rebellion spread, President James Buchanan sent troops on the Utah expedition to quell the growing unrest and to replace Brigham Young as territorial governor with Alfred Cumming. The expedition was also known as the Utah War.
As fear of invasion grew, Mormon settlers had convinced some Paiute Indians to aid in a Mormon-led attack on 120 immigrants from Arkansas under the guise of Indian aggression. The murder of these settlers became known as the Mountain Meadows massacre. The Mormon leadership had adopted a defensive posture that led to a ban on the selling of grain to outsiders in preparation for an impending war. This chafed pioneers traveling through the region, who were unable to purchase badly needed supplies. A disagreement between some of the Arkansas pioneers and the Mormons in Cedar City led to the secret planning of the massacre by a few Mormon leaders in the area. Some scholars debate the involvement of Brigham Young. Only one man, John D. Lee, was ever convicted of the murders, and he was executed at the massacre site.
Express riders had brought the news 1,000 miles from the Missouri River settlements to Salt Lake City within about two weeks of the army's beginning to march west. Fearing the worst as 2,500 troops (roughly 1/3rd of the army then) led by General Albert Sidney Johnston started west, Brigham Young ordered all residents of Salt Lake City and neighboring communities to prepare their homes for burning and evacuate southward to Utah Valley and southern Utah. Young also sent out a few units of the Nauvoo Legion (numbering roughly 8,000–10,000), to delay the army's advance. The majority he sent into the mountains to prepare defenses or south to prepare for a scorched earth retreat. Although some army wagon supply trains were captured and burned and herds of army horses and cattle run off no serious fighting occurred. Starting late and short on supplies, the United States Army camped during the bitter winter of 1857–58 near a burned out Fort Bridger in Wyoming. Through the negotiations between emissary Thomas L. Kane, Young, Cumming and Johnston, control of Utah territory was peacefully transferred to Cumming, who entered an eerily vacant Salt Lake City in the spring of 1858. By agreement with Young, Johnston established the army at Fort Floyd 40 miles away from Salt Lake City, to the southwest.
Salt Lake City was the last link of the First Transcontinental Telegraph, between Carson City, Nevada and Omaha, Nebraska completed in October 1861. Brigham Young, who had helped expedite construction, was among the first to send a message, along with Abraham Lincoln and other officials. Soon after the telegraph line was completed, the Deseret Telegraph Company built the Deseret line connecting the settlements in the territory with Salt Lake City and, by extension, the rest of the United States.
Because of the American Civil War, federal troops were pulled out of Utah Territory (and their fort auctioned off), leaving the territorial government in federal hands without army backing until General Patrick E. Connor arrived with the 3rd Regiment of California Volunteers in 1862. While in Utah, Connor and his troops soon became discontent with this assignment wanting to head to Virginia where the "real" fighting and glory was occurring. Connor established Fort Douglas just three miles (5 km) east of Salt Lake City and encouraged his bored and often idle soldiers to go out and explore for mineral deposits to bring more non-Mormons into the state. Minerals were discovered in Tooele County, and some miners began to come to the territory. Conner also solved the Shoshone Indian problem in Cache Valley Utah by luring the Shoshone into a midwinter confrontation on January 29, 1863. The armed conflict quickly turned into a rout, discipline among the soldiers broke down, and the Battle of Bear River is today usually referred to by historians as the Bear River Massacre. Between 200 and 400 Shoshone men, women and children were killed, as were 27 soldiers, with over 50 more soldiers wounded or suffering from frostbite.
Beginning in 1865, Utah's Black Hawk War developed into the deadliest conflict in the territory's history. Chief Antonga Black Hawk died in 1870, but fights continued to break out until additional federal troops were sent in to suppress the Ghost Dance of 1872. The war is unique among Indian Wars because it was a three-way conflict, with mounted Timpanogos Utes led by Antonga Black Hawk fighting federal and Utah local militia.
On May 10, 1869, the First transcontinental railroad was completed at Promontory Summit, north of the Great Salt Lake. The railroad brought increasing numbers of people into the state, and several influential businessmen made fortunes in the territory.
Main article: Latter Day Saint polygamy in the late-19th century
During the 1870s and 1880s, federal laws were passed and federal marshals assigned to enforce the laws against polygamy. In the 1890 Manifesto, the LDS Church leadership dropped its approval of polygamy citing divine revelation. When Utah applied for statehood again in 1895, it was accepted. Statehood was officially granted on January 4, 1896.
The Mormon issue made the situation for women the topic of nationwide controversy. In 1870 the Utah Territory, controlled by Mormons, gave women the right to vote. However, in 1887, Congress disenfranchised Utah women with the Edmunds–Tucker Act. In 1867–96, eastern activists promoted women's suffrage in Utah as an experiment, and as a way to eliminate polygamy. They were Presbyterians and other Protestants convinced that Mormonism was a non-Christian cult that grossly mistreated women. The Mormons promoted woman suffrage to counter the negative image of downtrodden Mormon women. With the 1890 Manifesto clearing the way for statehood, in 1895 Utah adopted a constitution restoring the right of women's suffrage. Congress admitted Utah as a state with that constitution in 1896.
Though less numerous than other intermountain states at the time, several lynching murders for alleged misdeeds occurred in Utah territory at the hand of vigilantes. Those documented include the following, with their ethnicity or national origin noted in parentheses if it was provided in the source:
William Torrington in Carson City (then a part of Utah territory), 1859
Thomas Coleman (Black man) in Salt Lake City, 1866
3 unidentified men at Wahsatch, winter of 1868
A Black man in Uintah, 1869
Charles A. Benson in Logan, 1873
Ah Sing (Chinese man) in Corinne, 1874
Thomas Forrest in St. George, 1880
William Harvey (Black man) in Salt Lake City, 1883
John Murphy in Park City, 1883
George Segal (Japanese man) in Ogden, 1884
Joseph Fisher in Eureka, 1886
Robert Marshall (Black man) in Castle Gate, 1925
Other lynchings in Utah territory include multiple instances of mass murder of Native American children, women, and men by White settlers including the Battle Creek massacre (1849), Provo River Massacre (1850), Nephi massacre (1853), and Circleville Massacre (1866).
Beginning in the early 20th century, with the establishment of such national parks as Bryce Canyon National Park and Zion National Park, Utah began to become known for its natural beauty. Southern Utah became a popular filming spot for arid, rugged scenes, and such natural landmarks as Delicate Arch and "the Mittens" of Monument Valley are instantly recognizable to most national residents. During the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, with the construction of the Interstate highway system, accessibility to the southern scenic areas was made easier.
Beginning in 1939, with the establishment of Alta Ski Area, Utah has become world-renowned for its skiing. The dry, powdery snow of the Wasatch Range is considered some of the best skiing in the world. Salt Lake City won the bid for the 2002 Winter Olympics in 1995, and this has served as a great boost to the economy. The ski resorts have increased in popularity, and many of the Olympic venues scattered across the Wasatch Front continue to be used for sporting events. This also spurred the development of the light-rail system in the Salt Lake Valley, known as TRAX, and the re-construction of the freeway system around the city.
During the late 20th century, the state grew quickly. In the 1970s, growth was phenomenal in the suburbs. Sandy was one of the fastest-growing cities in the country at that time, and West Valley City is the state's 2nd most populous city. Today, many areas of Utah are seeing phenomenal growth. Northern Davis, southern and western Salt Lake, Summit, eastern Tooele, Utah, Wasatch, and Washington counties are all growing very quickly. Transportation and urbanization are major issues in politics as development consumes agricultural land and wilderness areas.
In 2012, the State of Utah passed the Utah Transfer of Public Lands Act in an attempt to gain control over a substantial portion of federal land in the state from the federal government, based on language in the Utah Enabling Act of 1894. The State does not intend to use force or assert control by limiting access in an attempt to control the disputed lands, but does intend to use a multi-step process of education, negotiation, legislation, and if necessary, litigation as part of its multi-year effort to gain state or private control over the lands after 2014.
Utah families, like most Americans everywhere, did their utmost to assist in the war effort. Tires, meat, butter, sugar, fats, oils, coffee, shoes, boots, gasoline, canned fruits, vegetables, and soups were rationed on a national basis. The school day was shortened and bus routes were reduced to limit the number of resources used stateside and increase what could be sent to soldiers.
Geneva Steel was built to increase the steel production for America during World War II. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had proposed opening a steel mill in Utah in 1936, but the idea was shelved after a couple of months. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States entered the war and the steel plant was put into progress. In April 1944, Geneva shipped its first order, which consisted of over 600 tons of steel plate. Geneva Steel also brought thousands of job opportunities to Utah. The positions were hard to fill as many of Utah's men were overseas fighting. Women began working, filling 25 percent of the jobs.
As a result of Utah's and Geneva Steels contribution during the war, several Liberty Ships were named in honor of Utah including the USS Joseph Smith, USS Brigham Young, USS Provo, and the USS Peter Skene Ogden.
One of the sectors of the beachhead of Normandy Landings was codenamed Utah Beach, and the amphibious landings at the beach were undertaken by United States Army troops.
It is estimated that 1,450 soldiers from Utah were killed in the war.
Many conventional diabetes diets rely on meat or grains as the major source of calories. This strategy has serious drawbacks. This type of diet is rich in macro nutrients, but lacking in micro nutrients, especially those derived from green vegetables. Micro nutrients are necessary for the body’s cells to function properly. Even modest micro nutrient insufficiency can lead to DNA damage, mitochondrial decay and telomere deterioration, promoting premature cellular aging.
A high-nutrient, low glycemic diet is the most effective method of preventing and reversing type 2 diabetes. In a recent study of type 2 diabetics following this type of diet, 90 percent of the participants were able to come off all diabetic medications and their mean HbA1c after one year was 5.8 percent, which is within the non-diabetic (normal) range. A diet rich in vegetables, nuts, seeds, beans, and fresh fruits can prevent and reverse disease, while fostering long-term health. These five types of foods are optimal for diabetics, and can even help prevent the disease from occurring in the first place.
Green Vegetables
These nutrient-dense vegetables are the most important foods to focus on for diabetes prevention and reversal. Higher green vegetable consumption is associated with a lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes, and among those who have the disease, a higher intake is associated with lower HbA1c levels, which measures average blood glucose over a three-month period. A recent meta-analysis found that greater leafy green vegetable consumption was associated with a 14 percent decrease in the risk of type 2 diabetes. One study reported that each serving of leafy greens produces a 9 percent decrease in risk. This category of vegetable includes lettuces, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, kale, spinach, broccoli and cauliflower. I always advise eating at least one large salad each day to be sure of getting a good supply of these important vegetables.
Non-starchy Vegetables
Non-green, non-starchy veggies like mushrooms, onions, garlic, eggplant, and peppers are essential. These foods have almost nonexistent effects on blood sugar and are packed with fiber and phytochemicals.
Beans
Eating beans daily will help to stabilize your blood sugar, reduce your appetite, and protect against colon cancer. An ideal carbohydrate source, beans are low in glycemic load due to their abundant soluble fiber and resistant starch, making them an ideal weight-loss food because they are digested slowly. The fiber in beans promotes satiety and helps prevent food cravings and the resistant starch is fermented by bacteria in the colon, forming products that protect against colon cancer.
Nuts and Seeds
The Nurses’ Health Study found a 27 percent reduced risk of diabetes in nurses who ate five or more servings of nuts per week. Among nurses who had diabetes, this same quantity reduced the risk of heart disease by 47 percent. Nuts are low in glycemic load, promote weight loss, and have anti-inflammatory effects that may prevent insulin resistance.
Fresh Fruit
To satisfy sweet cravings, fresh fruit is an excellent choice. Rich in fiber, antioxidants, and nutrient-dense, eating three servings of fresh fruit a day is associated with an 18 percent decrease in the risk of developing diabetes. If you are already diabetic, I recommend selecting only the low-sugar fruits like berries, kiwi, oranges, and melon to minimize glycemic effects.
If you are committed to improving your health and reducing your risk of disease or reversing your disease so that your medications can be reduced or eliminated, a nutritional approach works. Source BY JOEL FUHRMAN. To know more visit www.yogagurusuneelsingh.com
A cast of the memorial by Hubertus von Pilgrim to remember the evacuation marches the Dachau concentration camp prisoners were forced to embark on. The sculpture is complemented by a map showing the routes of the death marches and the locations of memorials along the way.
Most of the men spent the last months of the war in forced labor camps on the outskirts of Dachau. They lived in primitive semicircular arching shelters resembling Quonset huts. Food and other necessities of life were almost nonexistent. They suffered terribly throughout their imprisonment, but some of their strongest memories center on the final hours before liberation.
During the last days of the war these men were among the 8,000 prisoners forced from Dachau and its outer camps and marched toward the Bavarian Alps. Some believed they were to be part of a prisoner exchange arranged by the Red Cross. Other prisoners thought the plan was to kill them out of sight of the rapidly advancing U.S. military. It is possible the Nazis planned to use the prisoners to build fortifications in the mountains of Tyrol for a last-ditch defence. Whatever the reasons, German guards forced a brutal pace, and thousands of marchers died in just a few short days. Fortunately, the march never reached its final destination.
In the last days of April 1945, the American army swept through southern Germany. General Patton's troops were credited with liberating the main camp of Dachau, but there were other forces in the area. Elements of the Japanese American 522nd Field Artillery Battalion were heading toward Hitler's headquarters in Berchtesgarden. In the early morning, forward observers came upon strangely shaped mounds in the snow near the resort town of Bad Toelz. When the soldiers looked closer, they discovered thinly dressed creatures under the thin layer of snow. Some had been shot, some had frozen to death. Those who were alive looked like starved and beaten skeletons. The men of the Association of Survivors remember this scene vividly even after 50 years. They were among those found in the snow.
The Death March passed directly through many towns near Dachau, including Allach, Pasing, Graefelfing, Planegg, Krailling, Gauting, Berg, Icking, Wolfratshausen, Geretsried, Bad Toelz, Waakirchen, Fuerstenfeldbruck, and Gruenwald. Many marchers literally died at the front doors of townspeople. There might have been a temptation to forget this awful part of local history, but after numerous discussions and a good deal of soul searching, citizens chose another course.
The towns, lead by the mayor and citizens of Gauting, decided to mark the march route so that people passing by will know what once happened there. A competition was held, and Professor Hubertus von Pilgrim was selected to create the monuments to the victims of Nazism. The bronze statues were in place by the spring of 1995, in time for the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Dachau. Although the final chapter on Germany's Nazi past hasn't been written, it appears we are moving nearer to closure. and Solly Ganor joined in their pledge to the future: Never Again. Genocide is still very much with us today, for example the recent slaughters in Africa and the Balkans. But hopefully in Germany, lessons have been learned.
Leamington is a municipality in Essex County, Ontario, Canada. With a population of 28,403, it is the second largest municipality in the Windsor-Essex County area (after the separated municipality of Windsor, Ontario). It includes Point Pelee, the southernmost point of mainland Canada.
Known as the "Tomato Capital of Canada", it is the location of a tomato processing factory owned by Highbury-Canco, previously owned until 2014 by the Heinz Company. Due to its location in the southernmost part of Canada, Leamington uses the motto "Sun Parlour of Canada". In 2006, MoneySense Magazine ranked Leamington as the No. 1 best place to live in Canada.
Leamington enjoys the second warmest climate in Canada, after the Lower Mainland of British Columbia.
Leamington has been known for its tourism and attractions and is known as the tomato capital of Canada. Leamington's attractions include cycle paths and nearby Point Pelee National Park. Leamington also has a large and modern marina. The town's water tower, visible for miles in the flat southern Ontario landscape, is also in the shape and colour of a giant tomato. Celebrating its position as an agricultural powerhouse and its heritage as the H. J. Heinz Company's centre for processing "red goods," the city hosts a "Tomato Festival" each August, as a kickoff of the tomato-harvesting season. Car shows, beauty pageants, parades, and a fair are featured at the festival.
Leamington's position on the north shore of Lake Erie makes it an important recreational centre. The tourist information booth in the centre of town is a large fiberglass tomato.
Leamington is also home to Point Pelee National Park, which contains the southernmost point on mainland Canada and draws thousands of visitors annually and is also home to one of the largest migrations of Monarch butterflies annually.
Known as the tomato capital of Canada, Leamington became the home of the H. J. Heinz factory in 1908. The Heinz products are shipped from Leamington, with English and French labels, mostly to the United States. Ketchup and baby food are the main products. In November 2013 Heinz announced that it would close the Leamington plant in 2014, meaning job losses for 740 employees at the plant and hundreds more support workers.
Due to a 54-year-old law in Canada, which bans the use of tomato paste in tomato juice, Highbury Canco still produces tomato juice and other products for Heinzs. Around 250 workers still process canned products at the over 100 year old factory.
Leamington has also been known for its greenhouses, and now has the largest concentration of commercial greenhouses in all of North America, with 1,969 acres (797 ha) of greenhouse vegetable production in the general area. Major products of the greenhouse industry, in addition to tomatoes, are peppers, cucumbers, roses, and other flowers. Hydroponic farming has been very successfully adopted by many greenhouse operators in Leamington. Historically, tobacco was an important crop in the area, but tobacco production declined in the 1960s and today is virtually nonexistent.
Migrant workers, mostly Mexican and Caribbean seasonal labourers, annually arrive in the region to work in Leamington's greenhouses and farms. Several Mexican and Jamaican shops and a Mexican consulate have opened to service the migrants.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leamington,_Ontario
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_Creative_Commons_...
I'm gobsmacked by several things here. First, the light was nonexistent. Yet the Sony A7RII performed extremely well at incredibly high ISO. Second, using knowledge developed around a digital Zone System, I knew precisely where I wanted the tonal values and was able to place them accordingly. Third, I am happy to confirm the dynamic range of the sensor extends usefully to below Zone 0 (Zone -2!), even at such high ISO settings. Fourth, 1950s German optics can do the trick. These images were made using a triplet wide angle. Who would design such a thing and make it work? Micro-contrast is something to be seen, otherwise you wouldn't believe it.
The Moscow Metro is a metro system serving the Russian capital of Moscow as well as the neighbouring cities of Krasnogorsk, Reutov, Lyubertsy and Kotelniki in Moscow Oblast. Opened in 1935 with one 11-kilometre (6.8 mi) line and 13 stations, it was the first underground railway system in the Soviet Union.
As of 2023, the Moscow Metro, excluding the Moscow Central Circle, the Moscow Central Diameters and the Moscow Monorail, had 294 stations and 514.5 km (319.7 mi) of route length, excluding light rail Monorail, making it the 8th-longest in the world and the longest outside China. It is the third metro system in the world (after Madrid and Beijing), which has two ring lines. The system is mostly underground, with the deepest section 84 metres (276 ft) underground at the Park Pobedy station, one of the world's deepest underground stations. It is the busiest metro system in Europe, the busiest in the world outside Asia, and is considered a tourist attraction in itself.
The Moscow Metro is a world leader in the frequency of train traffic—intervals during peak hours do not exceed 90 seconds. In February 2023, Moscow was the first in the world to reduce the intervals of metro trains to 80 seconds.
Name
The full legal name of the metro has been "Moscow Order of Lenin and Order of the Red Banner of Labor V.I. Lenin Metro" (Московский ордена Ленина и ордена Трудового Красного Знамени метрополитен имени В.И. Ленина) since 1955. This is usually shortened to V.I. Lenin Metro (Метрополитен им. В.И. Ленина). This shorter official name appears on many stations. Although there were proposals to remove Lenin from the official name, it still stands. During the 1990s and 2000s, Lenin's name was excluded from the signage on newly built and reconstructed stations. In 2016, the authorities promised to return the official name of the metro to all the stations' signage.
The first official name of the metro was L. M. Kaganovich Metro (Метрополитен им. Л.М. Кагановича) after Lazar Kaganovich. (see History section). However, when the Metro was awarded the Order of Lenin, it was officially renamed "Moscow Order of Lenin L. M. Kaganovich Metro" (Московский ордена Ленина Метрополитен им. Л. М. Кагановича) in 1947. And when the metro was renamed in 1955, Kaganovich was "given a consolation prize" by renaming the Okhotny Ryad station to "Imeni Kaganovicha". Yet in a matter of only two years, the original Okhotny Ryad name of the station was reinstated.
Logo
The first line of the Moscow Metro was launched in 1935, complete with the first logo, the capital M paired with the text "МЕТРО". There is no accurate information about the author of the logo, so it is often attributed to the architects of the first stations – Samuil Kravets, Ivan Taranov and Nadezhda Bykova. At the opening in 1935, the M letter on the logo had no definite shape.
Today, with at least ten different variations of the shape in use, Moscow Metro still does not have clear brand or logo guidelines. An attempt was made in October 2013 to launch a nationwide brand image competition, only to be closed several hours after its announcement. A similar contest, held independently later that year by the design crowdsourcing company DesignContest, yielded better results, though none were officially accepted by the Metro officials.
Operations
The Moscow Metro, a state-owned enterprise, is 449 km (279 mi) long and consists of 15 lines and 263 stations organized in a spoke-hub distribution paradigm, with the majority of rail lines running radially from the centre of Moscow to the outlying areas. The Koltsevaya Line (line 5) forms a 20-kilometre (12 mi) long circle which enables passenger travel between these diameters, and the new Moscow Central Circle (line 14) and even newer Bolshaya Koltsevaya line (line 11) form a 54-kilometre (34 mi) and 57-kilometre (35 mi) long circles respectively that serve a similar purpose on middle periphery. Most stations and lines are underground, but some lines have at-grade and elevated sections; the Filyovskaya Line, Butovskaya Line and the Central Circle Line are the three lines that are at grade or mostly at grade.
The Moscow Metro uses 1,520 mm (4 ft 11+27⁄32 in) Russian gauge, like other Russian railways, and an underrunning third rail with a supply of 825 Volts DC, except lines 13 and 14, the former being a monorail, and the latter being directly connected to the mainlines with 3000V DC overhead lines, as is typical. The average distance between stations is 1.7 kilometres (1.1 mi); the shortest (502 metres (1,647 ft) long) section is between Vystavochnaya and Mezhdunarodnaya, and the longest (6.62 kilometres (4.11 mi) long) is between Krylatskoye and Strogino. Long distances between stations have the positive effect of a high cruising speed of 41.7 kilometres per hour (25.9 mph).
The Moscow Metro opens at 05:25 and closes at 01:00. The exact opening time varies at different stations according to the arrival of the first train, but all stations simultaneously close their entrances at 01:00 for maintenance, and so do transfer corridors. The minimum interval between trains is 90 seconds during the morning and evening rush hours.
As of 2017, the system had an average daily ridership of 6.99 million passengers. Peak daily ridership of 9.71 million was recorded on 26 December 2014.
Free Wi-Fi has been available on all lines of the Moscow Metro since 2 December 2014.
Lines
A Moscow Metro train passes through Sokolnicheskaya and Koltsevaya lines. View from the driver's cabin
Each line is identified by a name, an alphanumeric index (usually consisting of just a number, and sometimes a letter suffix), and a colour. The colour assigned to each line for display on maps and signs is its colloquial identifier, except for the nondescript greens and blues assigned to the Bolshaya Koltsevaya, the Zamoskvoretskaya, the Lyublinsko-Dmitrovskaya, and Butovskaya lines (lines, 11, 2, 10, and 12, respectively).[citation needed] The upcoming station is announced by a male voice on inbound trains to the city center (on the Circle line, the clockwise trains), and by a female voice on outbound trains (anti-clockwise trains on the Circle line).
The metro has a connection to the Moscow Monorail, a 4.7-kilometre (2.9 mi), six-station monorail line between Timiryazevskaya and VDNKh which opened in January 2008. Prior to the official opening, the monorail had operated in "excursion mode" since 2004.
Also, from 11 August 1969 to 26 October 2019, the Moscow Metro included Kakhovskaya line 3.3 km long with 3 stations, which closed for a long reconstruction. On 7 December 2021, Kakhovskaya is reopened after reconstruction as part of the Bolshaya Koltsevaya line. The renewed Varshavskaya and Kashirskaya stations reopened as part of the Bolshaya Koltsevaya line, which became fully functional on 1 March 2023. Its new stations included Pechatniki, Nagatinsky Zaton and Klenovy Bulvar.
Renamed lines
Sokolnicheskaya line was previously named Kirovsko-Fruzenskaya
Zamoskvoretskaya line was previously named Gorkovsko-Zamoskvoretskaya.
Filyovskaya line was previously named Arbatsko-Filyovskaya.
Tagansko-Krasnopresnenskaya line was previously named Zhdanovsko-Krasnopresnenskaya
History
The first plans for a metro system in Moscow date back to the Russian Empire but were postponed by World War I, the October Revolution and the Russian Civil War. In 1923, the Moscow City Council formed the Underground Railway Design Office at the Moscow Board of Urban Railways. It carried out preliminary studies, and by 1928 had developed a project for the first route from Sokolniki to the city centre. At the same time, an offer was made to the German company Siemens Bauunion to submit its own project for the same route. In June 1931, the decision to begin construction of the Moscow Metro was made by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In January 1932 the plan for the first lines was approved, and on 21 March 1933 the Soviet government approved a plan for 10 lines with a total route length of 80 km (50 mi).
The first lines were built using the Moscow general plan designed by Lazar Kaganovich, along with his project managers (notably Ivan M. Kuznetsov and, later, Isaac Y. Segal) in the 1930s–1950s, and the Metro was named after him until 1955 (Metropoliten im. L.M. Kaganovicha). The Moscow Metro construction engineers consulted with their counterparts from the London Underground, the world's oldest metro system, in 1936: British architect Charles Holden and administrator Frank Pick had been working on the station developments of the Piccadilly Line extension, and Soviet delegates to London were impressed by Holden's thoroughly modern redeployment of classical elements and use of high-quality materials for the circular ticket hall of Piccadilly Circus, and so engaged Pick and Holden as advisors to Moscow's metro system. Partly because of this connection, the design of Gants Hill tube station, which was completed in 1947, is reminiscent of a Moscow Metro station. Indeed, Holden's homage to Moscow has been described as a gesture of gratitude for the USSR's helpful role in The Second World War.
Soviet workers did the labour and the art work, but the main engineering designs, routes, and construction plans were handled by specialists recruited from London Underground. The British called for tunnelling instead of the "cut-and-cover" technique, the use of escalators instead of lifts, the routes and the design of the rolling stock. The paranoia of the NKVD was evident when the secret police arrested numerous British engineers for espionage because they gained an in-depth knowledge of the city's physical layout. Engineers for the Metropolitan-Vickers Electrical Company (Metrovick) were given a show trial and deported in 1933, ending the role of British business in the USSR.
First four stages of construction
The first line was opened to the public on 15 May 1935 at 07:00 am. It was 11 kilometres (6.8 mi) long and included 13 stations. The day was celebrated as a technological and ideological victory for socialism (and, by extension, Stalinism). An estimated 285,000 people rode the Metro at its debut, and its design was greeted with pride; street celebrations included parades, plays and concerts. The Bolshoi Theatre presented a choral performance by 2,200 Metro workers; 55,000 colored posters (lauding the Metro as the busiest and fastest in the world) and 25,000 copies of "Songs of the Joyous Metro Conquerors" were distributed. The Moscow Metro averaged 47 km/h (29 mph) and had a top speed of 80 km/h (50 mph). In comparison, New York City Subway trains averaged a slower 25 miles per hour (40 km/h) and had a top speed of 45 miles per hour (72 km/h). While the celebration was an expression of popular joy it was also an effective propaganda display, legitimizing the Metro and declaring it a success.
The initial line connected Sokolniki to Okhotny Ryad then branching to Park Kultury and Smolenskaya. The latter branch was extended westwards to a new station (Kiyevskaya) in March 1937, the first Metro line crossing the Moskva River over the Smolensky Metro Bridge.
The second stage was completed before the war. In March 1938, the Arbatskaya branch was split and extended to the Kurskaya station (now the dark-blue Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya Line). In September 1938, the Gorkovskaya Line opened between Sokol and Teatralnaya. Here the architecture was based on that of the most popular stations in existence (Krasniye Vorota, Okhotnyi Ryad and Kropotkinskaya); while following the popular art-deco style, it was merged with socialist themes. The first deep-level column station Mayakovskaya was built at the same time.
Building work on the third stage was delayed (but not interrupted) during World War II, and two Metro sections were put into service; Teatralnaya–Avtozavodskaya (three stations, crossing the Moskva River through a deep tunnel) and Kurskaya–Partizanskaya (four stations) were inaugurated in 1943 and 1944 respectively. War motifs replaced socialist visions in the architectural design of these stations. During the Siege of Moscow in the fall and winter of 1941, Metro stations were used as air-raid shelters; the Council of Ministers moved its offices to the Mayakovskaya platforms, where Stalin made public speeches on several occasions. The Chistiye Prudy station was also walled off, and the headquarters of the Air Defence established there.
After the war ended in 1945, construction began on the fourth stage of the Metro, which included the Koltsevaya Line, a deep part of the Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya line from Ploshchad Revolyutsii to Kievskaya and a surface extension to Pervomaiskaya during the early 1950s. The decoration and design characteristic of the Moscow Metro is considered to have reached its zenith in these stations. The Koltsevaya Line was first planned as a line running under the Garden Ring, a wide avenue encircling the borders of Moscow's city centre. The first part of the line – from Park Kultury to Kurskaya (1950) – follows this avenue. Plans were later changed and the northern part of the ring line runs 1–1.5 kilometres (0.62–0.93 mi) outside the Sadovoye Koltso, thus providing service for seven (out of nine) rail terminals. The next part of the Koltsevaya Line opened in 1952 (Kurskaya–Belorusskaya), and in 1954 the ring line was completed.
Stalinist ideals in Metro's history
When the Metro opened in 1935, it immediately became the centrepiece of the transportation system (as opposed to horse-carried barrows still widely used in 1930s Moscow). It also became the prototype, the vision for future Soviet large-scale technologies. The artwork of the 13 original stations became nationally and internationally famous. For example, the Sverdlov Square subway station featured porcelain bas-reliefs depicting the daily life of the Soviet peoples, and the bas-reliefs at the Dynamo Stadium sports complex glorified sports and physical prowess on the powerful new "Homo Sovieticus" (Soviet man). The metro was touted as the symbol of the new social order – a sort of Communist cathedral of engineering modernity.
The Metro was also iconic for showcasing Socialist Realism in public art. The method was influenced by Nikolay Chernyshevsky, Lenin's favorite 19th-century nihilist, who stated that "art is no useful unless it serves politics". This maxim sums up the reasons why the stations combined aesthetics, technology and ideology: any plan which did not incorporate all three areas cohesively was rejected.
Kaganovich was in charge; he designed the subway so that citizens would absorb the values and ethos of Stalinist civilization as they rode. Without this cohesion, the Metro would not reflect Socialist Realism. If the Metro did not utilize Socialist Realism, it would fail to illustrate Stalinist values and transform Soviet citizens into socialists. Anything less than Socialist Realism's grand artistic complexity would fail to inspire a long-lasting, nationalistic attachment to Stalin's new society.
Socialist Realism was in fact a method, not exactly a style.[31]
Bright future and literal brightness in the Metro of Moscow
The Moscow Metro was one of the USSR's most ambitious architectural projects. The metro's artists and architects worked to design a structure that embodied svet (literally "light", figuratively "radiance" or "brilliance") and svetloe budushchee (a well-lit/radiant/bright future). With their reflective marble walls, high ceilings and grand chandeliers, many Moscow Metro stations have been likened to an "artificial underground sun".
This palatial underground environment reminded Metro users their taxes were spent on materializing bright future; also, the design was useful for demonstrating the extra structural strength of the underground works (as in Metro doubling as bunkers, bomb shelters).
The chief lighting engineer was Abram Damsky, a graduate of the Higher State Art-Technical Institute in Moscow. By 1930 he was a chief designer in Moscow's Elektrosvet Factory, and during World War II was sent to the Metrostroi (Metro Construction) Factory as head of the lighting shop.[33] Damsky recognized the importance of efficiency, as well as the potential for light as an expressive form. His team experimented with different materials (most often cast bronze, aluminum, sheet brass, steel, and milk glass) and methods to optimize the technology. Damsky's discourse on "Lamps and Architecture 1930–1950" describes in detail the epic chandeliers installed in the Taganskaya Station and the Kaluzhskaia station (Oktyabrskaya nowadays, not to be confused with contemporary "Kaluzhskaya" station on line 6). The work of Abram Damsky further publicized these ideas hoping people would associate the party with the idea of bright future.
The Kaluzhskaya Station was designed by the architect [Leonid] Poliakov. Poliakov's decision to base his design on a reinterpretation of Russian classical architecture clearly influenced the concept of the lamps, some of which I planned in collaboration with the architect himself. The shape of the lamps was a torch – the torch of victory, as Polyakov put it... The artistic quality and stylistic unity of all the lamps throughout the station's interior made them perhaps the most successful element of the architectural composition. All were made of cast aluminum decorated in a black and gold anodized coating, a technique which the Metrostroi factory had only just mastered.
The Taganskaia Metro Station on the Ring Line was designed in...quite another style by the architects K.S. Ryzhkov and A. Medvedev... Their subject matter dealt with images of war and victory...The overall effect was one of ceremony ... In the platform halls the blue ceramic bodies of the chandeliers played a more modest role, but still emphasised the overall expressiveness of the lamp.
— Abram Damsky, Lamps and Architecture 1930–1950
Industrialization
Stalin's first five-year plan (1928–1932) facilitated rapid industrialization to build a socialist motherland. The plan was ambitious, seeking to reorient an agrarian society towards industrialism. It was Stalin's fanatical energy, large-scale planning, and resource distribution that kept up the pace of industrialization. The first five-year plan was instrumental in the completion of the Moscow Metro; without industrialization, the Soviet Union would not have had the raw materials necessary for the project. For example, steel was a main component of many subway stations. Before industrialization, it would have been impossible for the Soviet Union to produce enough steel to incorporate it into the metro's design; in addition, a steel shortage would have limited the size of the subway system and its technological advancement.
The Moscow Metro furthered the construction of a socialist Soviet Union because the project accorded with Stalin's second five-year plan. The Second Plan focused on urbanization and the development of social services. The Moscow Metro was necessary to cope with the influx of peasants who migrated to the city during the 1930s; Moscow's population had grown from 2.16 million in 1928 to 3.6 million in 1933. The Metro also bolstered Moscow's shaky infrastructure and its communal services, which hitherto were nearly nonexistent.
Mobilization
The Communist Party had the power to mobilize; because the party was a single source of control, it could focus its resources. The most notable example of mobilization in the Soviet Union occurred during World War II. The country also mobilized in order to complete the Moscow Metro with unprecedented speed. One of the main motivation factors of the mobilization was to overtake the West and prove that a socialist metro could surpass capitalist designs. It was especially important to the Soviet Union that socialism succeed industrially, technologically, and artistically in the 1930s, since capitalism was at a low ebb during the Great Depression.
The person in charge of Metro mobilization was Lazar Kaganovich. A prominent Party member, he assumed control of the project as chief overseer. Kaganovich was nicknamed the "Iron Commissar"; he shared Stalin's fanatical energy, dramatic oratory flare, and ability to keep workers building quickly with threats and punishment. He was determined to realise the Moscow Metro, regardless of cost. Without Kaganovich's managerial ability, the Moscow Metro might have met the same fate as the Palace of the Soviets: failure.
This was a comprehensive mobilization; the project drew resources and workers from the entire Soviet Union. In his article, archeologist Mike O'Mahoney describes the scope of the Metro mobilization:
A specialist workforce had been drawn from many different regions, including miners from the Ukrainian and Siberian coalfields and construction workers from the iron and steel mills of Magnitogorsk, the Dniepr hydroelectric power station, and the Turkestan-Siberian railway... materials used in the construction of the metro included iron from Siberian Kuznetsk, timber from northern Russia, cement from the Volga region and the northern Caucasus, bitumen from Baku, and marble and granite from quarries in Karelia, the Crimea, the Caucasus, the Urals, and the Soviet Far East
— Mike O'Mahoney, Archeological Fantasies: Constructing History on the Moscow Metro
Skilled engineers were scarce, and unskilled workers were instrumental to the realization of the metro. The Metrostroi (the organization responsible for the Metro's construction) conducted massive recruitment campaigns. It printed 15,000 copies of Udarnik metrostroia (Metrostroi Shock Worker, its daily newspaper) and 700 other newsletters (some in different languages) to attract unskilled laborers. Kaganovich was closely involved in the recruitment campaign, targeting the Komsomol generation because of its strength and youth.
Later Soviet stations
"Fifth stage" set of stations
The beginning of the Cold War led to the construction of a deep section of the Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya Line. The stations on this line were planned as shelters in the event of nuclear war. After finishing the line in 1953 the upper tracks between Ploshchad Revolyutsii and Kiyevskaya were closed, and later reopened in 1958 as a part of the Filyovskaya Line. The stations, too, were supplied with tight gates and life-sustenance systems to function as proper nuclear shelters.
In the further development of the Metro the term "stages" was not used any more, although sometimes the stations opened in 1957–1959 are referred to as the "fifth stage".
During the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s, the architectural extravagance of new Metro stations was decisively rejected on the orders of Nikita Khrushchev. He had a preference for a utilitarian "minimalism"-like approach to design, similar to Brutalism style. The idea behind the rejection was similar to one used to create Khrushchyovkas: cheap yet easily mass-produced buildings. Stations of his era, as well as most 1970s stations, were simple in design and style, with walls covered with identical square ceramic tiles. Even decorations at the Metro stations almost finished at the time of the ban (such as VDNKh and Alexeyevskaya) got their final decors simplified: VDNKh's arcs/portals, for example, got plain green paint to contrast with well-detailed decorations and pannos around them.
A typical layout of the cheap shallow-dug metro station (which quickly became known as Sorokonozhka – "centipede", from early designs with 40 concrete columns in two rows) was developed for all new stations, and the stations were built to look almost identical, differing from each other only in colours of the marble and ceramic tiles. Most stations were built with simpler, cheap technology; this resulted in utilitarian design being flawed in some ways. Some stations such as adjacent Rechnoi Vokzal and Vodny Stadion or sequiential Leninsky Prospect, Akadmicheskaya, Profsoyuznaya and Novye Cheryomushki would have a similar look due to the extensive use of same-sized white or off-white ceramic tiles with hard-to-feel differences.
Walls with cheap ceramic tiles were susceptible to train-related vibration: some tiles would eventually fall off and break. It was not always possible to replace the missing tiles with the ones of the exact color and tone, which eventually led to variegated parts of the walls.
Metro stations of late USSR
The contrasting style gap between the powerfully decorated stations of Moscow's center and the spartan-looking stations of the 1960s was eventually filled. In the mid-1970s the architectural extravagance was partially restored. However, the newer design of shallow "centipede" stations (now with 26 columns, more widely spaced) continued to dominate. For example, Kaluzhskaya "centipede" station from 1974 (adjacent to Novye Cheryomushki station) features non-flat tiles (with 3D effect utilized), and Medvedkovo from 1978 features complex decorations.
1971 station Kitay-Gorod ("Ploshchad Nogina" at the time) features cross-platform interchange (Line 6 and line 7). Although built without "centipede" design or cheap ceramic tiles, the station utilizes near-grayscale selection of colors. It is to note the "southbound" and "northbound" halls of the station have identical look.
Babushkinskaya station from 1978 is a no-column station (similar to Biblioteka Imeni Lenina from 1935). 1983 Chertanovskaya station has resemblance to Kropotkinskaya (from 1935). Some stations, such as the deep-dug Shabolovskaya (1980), have the near-tunnel walls decorated with metal sheets, not tiles. Tyoply Stan features a theme related to the name and the location of the station ("Tyoply Stan" used to literally mean warm area): its walls are covered in brick-colored ribbed panes, which look like radiators).
Downtown area got such stations as Borovitskaya (1986), with uncovered red bricks and gray, concrete-like colors accompanying a single gold-plated decorative pane known as "Tree of peoples' of USSR" or additional station hall for Tretyakovskaya to house cross-platform interchange system between line 6 and line 8. To this day, Tretyakovskaya metro station consists of two contrasting halls: brutalism-like 1971 hall and custom design hall reminiscent of Tretyakovskaya Galereya from 1986.
Post-USSR stations of the modern Russian Federation
Metro stations of the 1990s and 2000s vary in style, but some of the stations seem to have their own themes:
Ulitsa Akademika Yangelya station used to feature thick orange neon lamp-like sodium lights instead of regular white lights.
Park Pobedy, the deepest station of the Moscow Metro, was built in 2003; it features extensive use of dark orange polished granite.
Slavyansky Bulvar station utilizes a plant-inspired theme (similar to "bionic style").
The sleek variant of aforementioned bionic style is somewhat represented in various Line 10 stations.
Sretensky Bulvar station of line 10 is decorated with paintings of nearby memorials and locations.
Strogino station has a theme of huge eye-shaped boundaries for lights; with "eyes" occupying the station's ceiling.
Troparyovo (2014) features trees made of polished metal. The trees hold the station's diamond-shaped lights. The station, however, is noticeably dim-lit.
Delovoy Tsentr (2016, MCC, overground station) has green tint.
Lomonosovsky Prospekt (Line 8A) is decorated with various equations.
Olkhovaya (2019) uses other plant-inspired themes (ольха noun means alder) with autumn/winter inspired colours.
Kosino (2019) uses high-tech style with the addition of thin LED lights.
Some bleak, bland-looking "centipedes" like Akademicheskaya and Yugo-Zapadnaya have undergone renovations in the 21st century (new blue-striped white walls on Akademicheskaya, aqualine glassy, shiny walls on Yugo-Zapadnaya).
Moscow Central Circle urban railway (Line 14)
A new circle metro line in Moscow was relatively quickly made in the 2010s. The Moscow Central Circle line (Line 14) was opened for use in September 2016 by re-purposing and upgrading the Maloe ZheleznoDorozhnoe Kol'tso. A proposal to convert that freight line into a metropolitan railway with frequent passenger service was announced in 2012. The original tracks had been built in pre-revolutionary Moscow decades before the creation of Moscow Metro; the tracks remained in place in one piece as a non-electrified line until the 21st century. Yet the circle route was never abandoned or cut. New track (along the existing one) was laid and all-new stations were built between 2014 and 2016. MCC's stations got such amenities as vending machines and free water closets.
Line 14 is operated by Russian Railways and uses full-sized trains (an idea, somewhat similar to S-Train). The extra resemblance to an S-Train line is, the 1908 line now connects modern northern residential districts to western and southern downtown area, with a station adjacent to Moscow International Business Center.
There is a noticeable relief of congestion, decrease in usage of formerly overcrowded Koltsevaya line since the introduction of MCC. To make line 14 attractive to frequent Koltsevaya line interchanges users, upgrades over regular comfort of Moscow Metro were made. Use of small laptops/portable video playing devices and food consumption from tupperwares and tubs was also improved for Line 14: the trains have small folding tables in the back of nearly every seat, while the seats are facing one direction like in planes or intercity buses - unlike side-against-side sofas typical for Metro.
Unlike MCD lines (D1, D2 etc.) MCC line accepts "unified" tickets and "Troika" cards just like Moscow Metro and buses of Moscow do. Free transfers are permitted between the MCC and the Moscow Metro if the trip before the transfer is less than 90 minutes. It's made possible by using same "Ediny", literally "unified" tickets instead of printing "paper tickets" used at railroads.
To interchange to line 14 for free, passenger must keep their freshly used ticket after entering Moscow Metro to apply it upon entering any line 14 station (and vice versa, keep their "fresh" ticket to enter underground Metro line after leaving Line 14 for an interchange).
MCD (D lines)
In 2019, new lines of Russian Railways got included in the map of Metro as "line D1" and "line D2". Unlike Line 14, the MCD lines actually form S-Train lines, bypassing the "vokzals", terminus stations of respective intercity railways. Line D3 is planned to be launched in August 2023, while D4 will be launched in September of that year. The schedule for the development of the infrastructure of the Central Transport Hub in 2023 was signed by the Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin and the head of Russian Railways Oleg Belozerov in December 2022.
As for the fees, MCD accepts Moscow's "Troika" cards. Also, every MCD station has printers which print "station X – station Y" tickets on paper. Users of the D lines must keep their tickets until exiting their destination stations: their exit terminals require a valid "... to station Y" ticket's barcode.
Big Circle Line (line 11)
After upgrading the railway from 1908 to a proper Metro line, the development of another circle route was re-launched, now adjusted for the pear-shaped circle route of line #14.
Throughout the late 2010s, Line 11 was extended from short, tiny Kakhovskaya line to a half-circle (from Kakhovskaya to Savyolovskaya). In early 2023, the circle was finished.
Similarly made Shelepikha, Khoroshovskaya, CSKA and Petrovsky Park stations have lots of polished granite and shiny surfaces, in contrast to Soviet "centipedes". Throughout 2018–2021, these stations were connected to line 8A.
Narodnoye Opolcheniye (2021) features lots of straight edges and linear decorations (such as uninterrupted "three stripes" style of the ceiling lights and rectangular columns).
As for the spring of 2023, the whole circle route line is up and running, forming a circle stretching to the southern near-MKAD residential parts of the city (Prospekt Vernadskogo, Tekstilshchiki) as opposed to the MCC's stretching towards the northern districts of Moscow. In other words, it "mirrors" Line 14 rather than forming a perfect circle around the city centre. While being 70 km long, the line is now the longest subway line in the world, 13 kilometres ahead of the previous record holder - the line 10 of Beijing Subway.
Expansions
GIF-animated scheme of Moscow Metro growth (1935-2019)
Since the turn of the 2nd millennium several projects have been completed, and more are underway. The first was the Annino-Butovo extension, which extended the Serpukhovsko-Timiryazevskaya Line from Prazhskaya to Ulitsa Akademika Yangelya in 2000, Annino in 2001 and Bulvar Dmitriya Donskogo in 2002. Its continuation, an elevated Butovskaya Line, was inaugurated in 2003. Vorobyovy Gory station, which initially opened in 1959 and was forced to close in 1983 after the concrete used to build the bridge was found to be defective, was rebuilt and reopened after many years in 2002. Another recent project included building a branch off the Filyovskaya Line to the Moscow International Business Center. This included Vystavochnaya (opened in 2005) and Mezhdunarodnaya (opened in 2006).
The Strogino–Mitino extension began with Park Pobedy in 2003. Its first stations (an expanded Kuntsevskaya and Strogino) opened in January 2008, and Slavyansky Bulvar followed in September. Myakinino, Volokolamskaya and Mitino opened in December 2009. Myakinino station was built by a state-private financial partnership, unique in Moscow Metro history. A new terminus, Pyatnitskoye Shosse, was completed in December 2012.
After many years of construction, the long-awaited Lyublinskaya Line extension was inaugurated with Trubnaya in August 2007 and Sretensky Bulvar in December of that year. In June 2010, it was extended northwards with the Dostoyevskaya and Maryina Roscha stations. In December 2011, the Lyublinskaya Line was expanded southwards by three stations and connected to the Zamoskvoretskaya Line, with the Alma-Atinskaya station opening on the latter in December 2012. The Kalininskaya Line was extended past the Moscow Ring Road in August 2012 with Novokosino station.
In 2011, works began on the Third Interchange Contour that is set to take the pressure off the Koltsevaya Line. Eventually the new line will attain a shape of the second ring with connections to all lines (except Koltsevaya and Butovskaya).
In 2013, the Tagansko-Krasnopresnenskaya Line was extended after several delays to the south-eastern districts of Moscow outside the Ring Road with the opening of Zhulebino and Lermontovsky Prospekt stations. Originally scheduled for 2013, a new segment of the Kalininskaya Line between Park Pobedy and Delovoy Tsentr (separate from the main part) was opened in January 2014, while the underground extension of Butovskaya Line northwards to offer a transfer to the Kaluzhsko-Rizhskaya Line was completed in February. Spartak, a station on the Tagansko-Krasnopresnenskaya Line that remained unfinished for forty years, was finally opened in August 2014. The first stage of the southern extension of the Sokolnicheskaya Line, the Troparyovo station, opened in December 2014.
Current plans
In addition to major metro expansion the Moscow Government and Russian Railways plans to upgrade more commuter railways to a metro-style service, similar to the MCC. New tracks and stations are planned to be built in order to achieve this.
Stations
The deep stations comprise 55 triple-vaulted pylon stations, 19 triple-vaulted column stations, and one single-vault station. The shallow stations comprise 79 spanned column stations (a large portion of them following the "centipede" design), 33 single-vaulted stations (Kharkov technology), and four single-spanned stations. In addition, there are 12 ground-level stations, four elevated stations, and one station (Vorobyovy Gory) on a bridge. Two stations have three tracks, and one has double halls. Seven of the stations have side platforms (only one of which is subterranean). In addition, there were two temporary stations within rail yards.
The stations being constructed under Stalin's regime, in the style of socialist classicism, were meant as underground "palaces of the people". Stations such as Komsomolskaya, Kiyevskaya or Mayakovskaya and others built after 1935 in the second phase of the evolution of the network are tourist landmarks: their photogenic architecture, large chandeliers and detailed decoration are unusual for an urban transport system of the twentieth century.
The stations opened in the 21st century are influenced by an international and more neutral style with improved technical quality.
Rolling stock
Since the beginning, platforms have been at least 155 metres (509 ft) long to accommodate eight-car trains. The only exceptions are on the Filyovskaya Line: Vystavochnaya, Mezhdunarodnaya, Studencheskaya, Kutuzovskaya, Fili, Bagrationovskaya, Filyovsky Park and Pionerskaya, which only allows six-car trains (note that this list includes all ground-level stations on the line, except Kuntsevskaya, which allows normal length trains).
Trains on the Zamoskvoretskaya, Kaluzhsko-Rizhskaya, Tagansko-Krasnopresnenskaya, Kalininskaya, Solntsevskaya, Bolshaya Koltsevaya, Serpukhovsko-Timiryazevskaya, Lyublinsko-Dmitrovskaya and Nekrasovskaya lines have eight cars, on the Sokolnicheskaya line seven or eight cars, on the original Koltsevaya line seven cars, and on the Filyovskaya line six cars. The Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya line also once ran seven-car 81-717 size trains, but now use five-car trains of another type. Butovskaya line uses three-car trains of another type.
Dimensions have varied subtly, but for the most cars fit into the ranges of 19–20 metres (62 ft 4 in – 65 ft 7 in) long and 2.65–2.7 metres (8 ft 8+3⁄8 in – 8 ft 10+1⁄4 in) wide with 4 doors per side. The 81-740/741 Rusich deviates greatly from this, with a 3-car Rusich being roughly 4 normal cars and a 5-car Rusich being 7 normal cars.
Trains in operation
Currently, the Metro only operates 81-style trains.
Rolling stock on several lines was replaced with articulated 81-740/741 Rusich trains, which were originally designed for light rail subway lines. The Butovskaya Line was designed by different standards, and has shorter (96-metre (315 ft) long) platforms. It employs articulated 81-740/741 trains, which consist of three cars (although the line can also use traditional four-car trains).
On the Moscow Monorail, Intamin P30 trains are used, consisting of six short cars. On the Moscow Central Circle, which is a route on the conventional railway line, ES2G Lastochka trains are used, consisting of five cars.
Ticketing
Moscow Metro underground has neither "point A – point B" tariffs nor "zone" tariffs. Instead, it has a fee for a "ride", e.g. for a single-time entry without time or range limit. The exceptions "only confirm the rule": the "diameters" (Dx lines) and the Moscow Central Circle (Line 14) are Russian Railways' lines hence the shared yet not unified tariff system.
As for October 2021, one ride costs 60 rubles (approx. 1 US dollar). Discounts (up to 33%) for individual rides are available upon buying rides "in bulk" (buying multiple-trip tickets (such as twenty-trip or sixty-trip ones)), and children under age seven can travel free (with their parents). Troika "wallet" (a card, similar to Japanese Suica card) also offers some discounts for using the card instead of queueing a line for a ticket. "Rides" on the tickets available for a fixed number of trips, regardless of distance traveled or number of transfers.
An exception in case of MCC e.g. Line 14: for a free interchange, one should interchange to it/from it within 90 minutes after entering the Metro. However, one can ride it for hours and use its amenities without leaving it.
There are tickets without "rides" as well: – a 24-hour "unified" ticket (265 rub in 2022), a 72-hour ticket, a month-long ticket, and a year-long ticket.
Fare enforcement takes place at the points of entry. Once a passenger has entered the Metro system, there are no further ticket checks – one can ride to any number of stations and make transfers within the system freely. Transfers to other public-transport systems (such as bus, tram, trolleybus/"electrobus") are not covered by the very ride used to enter Metro. Transfer to monorail and MCC is a free addition to the ride (available up to 90 minutes after entering a metro station).
In modern Metro, turnstiles accept designated plastic cards ("Troika", "social cards") or disposable-in-design RFID chip cardboard cards. Unlimited cards are also available for students at reduced price (as of 2017, 415 rubles—or about $US6—for a calendar month of unlimited usage) for a one-time cost of 70 rubles. Transport Cards impose a delay for each consecutive use; i.e. the card can not be used for 7 minutes after the user has passed a turnstile.
History of smart ticketing
Soviet era turnstiles simply accepted N kopeck coins.
In the early years of Russian Federation (and with the start of a hyperinflation) plastic tokens were used. Disposable magnetic stripe cards were introduced in 1993 on a trial basis, and used as unlimited monthly tickets between 1996 and 1998. The sale of tokens ended on 1 January 1999, and they stopped being accepted in February 1999; from that time, magnetic cards were used as tickets with a fixed number of rides.
On 1 September 1998, the Moscow Metro became the first metro system in Europe to fully implement "contactless" smart cards, known as Transport Cards. Transport Cards were the card to have unlimited amount of trips for 30, 90 or 365 days, its active lifetime was projected as 3½ years. Defective cards were to be exchanged at no extra cost.
In August 2004, the city government launched the Muscovite's Social Card program. Social Cards are free smart cards issued for the elderly and other groups of citizens officially registered as residents of Moscow or the Moscow region; they offer discounts in shops and pharmacies, and double as credit cards issued by the Bank of Moscow. Social Cards can be used for unlimited free access to the city's public-transport system, including the Moscow Metro; while they do not feature the time delay, they include a photograph and are non-transferable.
Since 2006, several banks have issued credit cards which double as Ultralight cards and are accepted at turnstiles. The fare is passed to the bank and the payment is withdrawn from the owner's bank account at the end of the calendar month, using a discount rate based on the number of trips that month (for up to 70 trips, the cost of each trip is prorated from current Ultralight rates; each additional trip costs 24.14 rubles). Partner banks include the Bank of Moscow, CitiBank, Rosbank, Alfa-Bank and Avangard Bank.
In January 2007, Moscow Metro began replacing limited magnetic cards with contactless disposable tickets based on NXP's MIFARE Ultralight technology. Ultralight tickets are available for a fixed number of trips in 1, 2, 5, 10, 20 and 60-trip denominations (valid for 5 or 90 days from the day of purchase) and as a monthly ticket, only valid for a selected calendar month and limited to 70 trips. The sale of magnetic cards ended on 16 January 2008 and magnetic cards ceased to be accepted in late 2008, making the Moscow metro the world's first major public-transport system to run exclusively on a contactless automatic fare-collection system.
On 2 April 2013, Moscow Transport Department introduced a smartcard-based transport electronic wallet, named Troika. Three more smart cards have been launched:
Ediniy's RFID-chip card, a "disposable"-design cardboard card for all city-owned public transport operated by Mosgortrans and Moscow Metro;
90 minutes card, an unlimited "90-minute" card
and TAT card for surface public transport operated by Mosgortrans.
One can "record" N-ride Ediniy ticket on Troika card as well in order to avoid carrying the easily frayed cardboard card of Ediniy for weeks (e.g. to use Troika's advanced chip). The turnstiles of Moscow Metro have monochrome screens which show such data as "money left" (if Troika is used as a "wallet"), "valid till DD.MM.YYYY" (if a social card is used) or "rides left" (if Ediniy tariff ticket is used).
Along with the tickets, new vending machines were built to sell tickets (1 or 2 rides) and put payments on Troika cards. At that time, the machines were not accepting contactless pay. The same machines now have tiny terminals with keypads for contactless payments (allowing quick payment for Troika card).
In 2013, as a way to promote both the "Olympic Games in Sochi and active lifestyles, Moscow Metro installed a vending machine that gives commuters a free ticket in exchange for doing 30 squats."
Since the first quarter of 2015, all ticket windows (not turnstiles) at stations accept bank cards for fare payment. Passengers are also able to pay for tickets via contactless payment systems, such as PayPass technology. Since 2015, fare gates at stations accept mobile ticketing via a system which the Metro calls Mobilny Bilet (Мобильный билет) which requires NFC-handling smartphone (and a proper SIM-card). The pricing is the same as Troika's. Customers are able to use Mobile Ticket on Moscow's surface transport. The Moscow Metro originally announced plans to launch the mobile ticketing service with Mobile TeleSystems (MTS) in 2010.
In October 2021, the Moscow Metro became the first metro system in the world to offer Face-Pay to their customers. In order to use this system, passengers will need to connect their photo, bank card and metro card to the service through the metro’s mobile app. For this purpose, the metro authorities plan to equip over 900 turnstiles in over 240 stations with biometric scanners. This enables passengers to pay for their ride without taking out their phone, metro or bank card and therefore increasing passenger flow at the station entrances. In 2022, Face-Pay was used over 32 million times over the course of the year.
Notable incidents
1977 bombing
On 8 January 1977, a bomb was reported to have killed 7 and seriously injured 33. It went off in a crowded train between Izmaylovskaya and Pervomayskaya stations. Three Armenians were later arrested, charged and executed in connection with the incident.
1981 station fires
In June 1981, seven bodies were seen being removed from the Oktyabrskaya station during a fire there. A fire was also reported at Prospekt Mira station about that time.
1982 escalator accident
Escalator accident in 1982
A fatal accident occurred on 17 February 1982 due to an escalator collapse at the Aviamotornaya station on the Kalininskaya Line. Eight people were killed and 30 injured due to a pileup caused by faulty emergency brakes.
1996 murder
In 1996, an American-Russian businessman Paul Tatum was murdered at the Kiyevskaya Metro station. He was shot dead by a man carrying a concealed Kalashnikov gun.
2000 bombings
On 8 August 2000, a strong blast in a Metro underpass at Pushkinskaya metro station in the center of Moscow claimed the lives of 12, with 150 injured. A homemade bomb equivalent to 800 grams of TNT had been left in a bag near a kiosk.
2004 bombings
August 2004 Moscow Metro bombing
On 6 February 2004, an explosion wrecked a train between the Avtozavodskaya and Paveletskaya stations on the Zamoskvoretskaya Line, killing 41 and wounding over 100. Chechen terrorists were blamed. A later investigation concluded that a Karachay-Cherkessian resident had carried out a suicide bombing. The same group organized another attack on 31 August 2004, killing 10 and injuring more than 50 others.
2005 Moscow blackout
On 25 May 2005, a citywide blackout halted operation on some lines. The following lines, however, continued operations: Sokolnicheskaya, Zamoskvoretskaya from Avtozavodskaya to Rechnoy Vokzal, Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya, Filyovskaya, Koltsevaya, Kaluzhsko-Rizhskaya from Bitsevskiy Park to Oktyabrskaya-Radialnaya and from Prospekt Mira-Radialnaya to Medvedkovo, Tagansko-Krasnopresnenskaya, Kalininskaya, Serpukhovsko-Timiryazevskaya from Serpukhovskaya to Altufyevo and Lyublinskaya from Chkalovskaya to Dubrovka. There was no service on the Kakhovskaya and Butovskaya lines. The blackout severely affected the Zamoskvoretskaya and Serpukhovsko-Timiryazevskaya lines, where initially all service was disrupted because of trains halted in tunnels in the southern part of city (most affected by the blackout). Later, limited service resumed and passengers stranded in tunnels were evacuated. Some lines were only slightly impacted by the blackout, which mainly affected southern Moscow; the north, east and western parts of the city experienced little or no disruption.
2006 billboard incident
On 19 March 2006, a construction pile from an unauthorized billboard installation was driven through a tunnel roof, hitting a train between the Sokol and Voikovskaya stations on the Zamoskvoretskaya Line. No injuries were reported.
2010 bombing
On 29 March 2010, two bombs exploded on the Sokolnicheskaya Line, killing 40 and injuring 102 others. The first bomb went off at the Lubyanka station on the Sokolnicheskaya Line at 7:56, during the morning rush hour. At least 26 were killed in the first explosion, of which 14 were in the rail car where it took place. A second explosion occurred at the Park Kultury station at 8:38, roughly forty minutes after the first one. Fourteen people were killed in that blast. The Caucasus Emirate later claimed responsibility for the bombings.
2014 pile incident
On 25 January 2014, at 15:37 a construction pile from a Moscow Central Circle construction site was driven through a tunnel roof between Avtozavodskaya and Kolomenskaya stations on the Zamoskvoretskaya Line. The train operator applied emergency brakes, and the train did not crash into the pile. Passengers were evacuated from the tunnel, with no injures reported. The normal line operation resumed the same day at 19:50.
2014 derailment
On 15 July 2014, a train derailed between Park Pobedy and Slavyansky Bulvar on the Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya Line, killing 24 people and injuring dozens more.
Metro-2
Main article: Metro-2
Conspiracy theorists have claimed that a second and deeper metro system code-named "D-6", designed for emergency evacuation of key city personnel in case of nuclear attack during the Cold War, exists under military jurisdiction. It is believed that it consists of a single track connecting the Kremlin, chief HQ (General Staff –Genshtab), Lubyanka (FSB Headquarters), the Ministry of Defense and several other secret installations. There are alleged to be entrances to the system from several civilian buildings, such as the Russian State Library, Moscow State University (MSU) and at least two stations of the regular Metro. It is speculated that these would allow for the evacuation of a small number of randomly chosen civilians, in addition to most of the elite military personnel. A suspected junction between the secret system and the regular Metro is supposedly behind the Sportivnaya station on the Sokolnicheskaya Line. The final section of this system was supposedly completed in 1997.
In popular culture
The Moscow Metro is the central location and namesake for the Metro series, where during a nuclear war, Moscow's inhabitants are driven down into the Moscow Metro, which has been designed as a fallout shelter, with the various stations being turned into makeshift settlements.
In 2012, an art film was released about a catastrophe in the Moscow underground.
Many of the tropical butterflies have distinctive seasonal forms. This phenomenon is termed seasonal polyphenism and the seasonal forms of the butterflies are called the dry-season and wet-season forms. How the season affects the genetic expression of patterns is still a subject of research.
The dry-season forms are usually more cryptic and it has been suggested that the protection offered may be an adaptation. Some also show greater dark colours in the wet-season form which may have thermoregulatory advantages by increasing ability to absorb solar radiation.
The wet-season form has large, very apparent multiple eyespots whereas the dry-season forms have very reduced, oftentimes nonexistent, eyespots. Larvae that develop in hot, wet conditions develop into wet-season adults whereas those growing in the transition from the wet to the dry season, when the temperature is declining, develop into dry-season adults. This polyphenism probably has an adaptive role. In the dry-season it is disadvantageous to have conspicuous eyespots because they blend in with the brown vegetation better without eyespots. By not developing eyespots in the dry-season they can more easily camouflage themselves in the brown brush. This minimizes the risk of visually mediated predation. In the wet-season, these brown butterflies cannot as easily rely on cryptic coloration for protection because the background vegetation is green. Thus, eyespots, which may function to decrease predation, are beneficial for Satyrine butterflies like the Bushbrown to express.
This individual is transitional between dry and wet season forms. See comments for additional images of the seasonal extremes…..
Pu'er, Yunnan, China
AMONG DEVELOPING COUNTRIES,THE INDIAN FOREIGN SERVICE IS ONE Of THE OLDER AND BETTER-ORGANIZED DIPLOMATIC SERVICES. AN INSIDER DISCUSSES THE IFS’S ORIGINS AND CURRENT CONTOURS. (2002)
BY KISHAN S. RANA
Among the countries of the developing world, India has one of the older and better-organized diplomatic services. Part heir to the ‘Political Service’ of the renowned colonial Indian Civil Service, the Indian Foreign Service was established in 1948, a year after independence. From the outset the IFS was imbued with a sense of uniqueness and relative isolation from the rest of the central government, due primarily to the circumstances of its cre- ation as virtually a personal project of India’s first prime minister, the urbane and worldly national movement leader Jawaharlal Nehru.
In 1946, on the eve of independence, Jawaharlal Nehru articulated India’s commitment to approach the world with “clear and friendly eyes” and spoke of the newly liberated country’s right to choose an external pol- icy that reflected its independence and was not a pawn in the hands of others — the basic policy of nonalignment. Nehru functioned as his own foreign minister for his entire prime ministership, from 1947 until his death in 1964. It was Nehru who set up the Indian Foreign Service and, with his towering personality and penchant for micro-management, stamped it indelibly with his style as well as his worldview. For nearly two decades, both the IFS and the Ministry of External Affairs basked in Nehru’s reflected glory.
It is not our purpose to discuss the Nehruvian foreign policy legacy, but some instances of his passion for detail help shed light on facets of the Indian Foreign Service. It was not unusual, for example, for Nehru to write replies to incoming cipher telegrams from ambassadors, which were then sent out in the name of heads of territorial divi- sions, or even their deputies. In the very readable mem- oirs written by Badr-ud-din Tyabji, former ambassador and secretary in the MEA, Memoirs of an Egoist (Roli Books, 1988), this has been described as the syndrome of the time: “leave it to Panditji” — pushing up all decisions to Nehru, however minor.
Working on the staff of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1981-82, I came upon a set of long notes exchanged in the mid-1950s between Nehru and the Civil Service head of MEA, called the Foreign Secretary in Indian termi- nology. Nehru sent him a four-page note describing the criteria that should be applied to the selection of ambas- sadors. The Foreign Secretary sent a two-page rejoinder the same day, gently pointing to the practical difficulties in finding ideal choices, to which Nehru sent a further long response the next day. No decision was taken, the more so as selection of envoys was principally the prime minister’s prerogative, with the Foreign Secretary acting as his adviser. The exchange reflected Nehru’s passion for philosophical debate and his speed of thought, but also a certain disinclination for hard decisions.
The fact that for the first 30 years new entrants had to rank among the top 20 to 40 individuals in the Union Public Service Commission annual combined Civil Services examination merit list, out of the 20,000 to 40,000 who sat for the exam (which was the only entry route into the high civil services, including the sister ser- vice, the Indian Administrative Service), reinforced the sense of elitism.
In recent years career opportunities in India have greatly expanded. Yet the civil service, and the IFS in particular, continue to attract top talent. What are the contours of this diplomatic service today? What are its strengths and weaknesses?
The IFS Today
Structure.
The first thing to note about the Indian Foreign Service is that it is exceptionally small in size, by comparison with not just India’s needs but also the func- tions performed. To operate some 115 embassies and permanent missions and 40-odd consulates abroad, plus man the MEA, there are only some 750 officials of the rank of desk-officers and above (i.e., third secretaries and higher). By comparison the “tail” is much longer, consist- ing of about 2,800 non-diplomatic support personnel, according to the MEA Annual Report published each March.
MEA simply does not have the personnel it needs for vital tasks, and the number of missions abroad is too large. Ideally, looking to the experience of other major services, the ratio of officers at headquarters to missions should be around 1-to-1.5 or -2: in India it is 1-to-4. The IFS cadre needs urgent expansion to at least 1,000, and with it a pruning of support staff, via upgrading many to function as junior desk officials. With this must come also a reduction in the number of missions and posts. But as long as assignments abroad are seen as an essential “right,” vested interests block these cutbacks.
The results are plain to see. Public diplomacy, for example, is in its infancy in India, not because its meth- ods are not understood, but because the structure for handling this work does not exist. Today, the official head- ing the external publicity division is the MEA spokesper- son; this same person heads the entire publicity and information apparatus, and handles some aspects of public diplomacy as well, as there is no dedicated unit for this purpose.
Further, although all but one of the foreign ministries of the 19 countries of the E.U. and the G-8 have carried out structural changes since 1990 to cope with changes in the post-Cold War world (according to a comparative study by the Italian
Foreign Ministry), MEA has so far limited itself to adding a new territorial division to handle relations with the strategically important Central Asian countries. Deeper structural change has yet to materialize, though some reforms are under consideration.
There has always been an abundance of ideas — the problem is with action! The initiative of External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh to re-examine the Service’s struc- tures, set into motion at the end of 2000, was moving slowly toward concrete action until he and Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha swapped jobs in July, and it is now unclear if the planned actions will be implemented. These included creation of a Foreign Service inspec- torate (vital to undertake periodic inspection of all mis- sions, ensure uniformity of standards, and help to enhance their performance) and placement of IFS offi- cials within the administration of some states to help in their international contacts. There are also plans to expand the strength of the cadre, though not to the level needed; that would require a major decision of the gov- ernment, especially to link the expansion with cuts in the support staff.
Still, there is some expectation that the Jaswant Singh initiative may yet lead to some real improvements; the new minister has not revealed his thinking as yet. The recent reform proposals echo suggestions contained in the Pillai Committee Report of 1966, the only public doc- ument on the IFS and its reform. But the exercise that Jaswant Singh launched was different in one important respect — it was the first effort that originated at the min- isterial level, and from within MEA.
Training. Training for new entrants has improved dramatically in the past 15 years, with the establishment of the Foreign Service Institute in 1986 in New Delhi (set to move to its new campus in a year or so), and with a continuous improvement in training content. New entrants spend three months attending a common foundation course with all other entrants to the civil services for that year at the National Academy of Adminis- tration, located in the Himalayan hill-resort town of Mussourie, and then come to the Institute for a year. Their program encompasses lec- tures, workshops and visits to many partner agencies, including forma-tions of the army, navy and air force. It also calls for about five months of travel to different locations in the country to see the challenges of economic and social develop- ment, as well as two separate tours to neighboring coun- tries. Concerning languages, new recruits undergo train- ing in the assigned foreign language at the first station of assignment, and are confirmed in service after passing the language test.
What the IFS misses, however, is mid-career training — the Institute does nothing at all at this level, nor for senior officials. MEA is simply not able to spare anyone.
Recruitment and personnel management. The examination system for selection of civil servants, admin- istered by the Union Public Service Commission, now has some 300,000 applicants annually competing for about 300 to 400 jobs in all the “central services” — the other services are the Administrative Service, the Customs, Audit and Accounts, and the Police Service. The written exam is at two levels, with only about 20,000 who qualify at the first stage (the serious candidates) appearing for the second exam. Within a couple of months after the results announcement, all Civil Service entrants join the “foundation course” at Mussourie men- tioned earlier, and thereafter separate to attend training at their own services.
The IFS takes an average of around 10 new entrants each year, though in 2001 the number was stepped up to 18. A notable feature of recent years is the progressive widening of the intake — in terms of the regions and groups represented, the educational background and the presence of rural candidates. Around 20 percent of new recruits are women.
British colonial administrators borrowed the con- cept of a single open examination for the Civil Services from China. It has provided India with a stable, unified administrative structure, which has its faults — princi-pally that it has become a vehicle for corruption, and a victim of political pressures, and the two are inter- twined — but no one has come up with a remotely comparable or viable method of selection for new entrants into the Service.
Human resource management is the key issue for all organizations, the more so for diplomatic services that mainly deal in intangibles. Throughout the Indian admin- istration promotion by seniority is the norm; the only obstacle to promotion is outstanding incompetence. Since 1950 the constitutionally-mandated affirmative action pol- icy of reserving 22.5 percent of government service jobs for individuals from Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes has been in effect. Now some even demand that this policy ought to apply also to promotions.
Against this background, maintaining the traditional systems of rotation among “hard” and “soft” posts and motivating individuals to perform their best are chal- lenges. Many of us lament that the system does not work optimally, but we should be thankful that it works at all.
A Learning Curve
Like many other diplomatic services, the MEA is still on a learning curve when it comes to coping with the new domestic players in diplomacy. Today as it shifts from the classic gatekeeper role in external affairs to that of the privileged coordinator, every foreign ministry has to han- dle three broad clusters of players — the official agencies beyond the foreign ministry, the non-state agents (cham- bers of commerce, academic institutions, think tanks, NGOs and the like), and the ordinary citizens who too are involved players in virtually every country. (The best definition of these new roles is provided in the opening essay by Brian Hocking in the book he has edited,
All government agencies are autonomous actors in the foreign arena. They will accept the foreign ministry as a coordinator only if they perceive this brings value to their interests and concerns. It is entirely possible for the Indian foreign ministry to do this, but to win credibility it needs to cultivate an inclusive attitude, and modify the past mindset of exclusivity and the corresponding turf- warfare reflex. There are exceptional senior MEA offi- cials who are able to get other ministries on board on spe- cific issues, but this is not the general practice as yet. Cooperation with non-state players is good in some areas, such as with the apex bodies of business and some branches of non-official international organizations, but almost nonexistent with high-profile NGOs and human rights activists.
Though performance enhancement methods, many of them borrowed from business management, have crept into the diplomatic work arena, the infrastructure to max- imize productivity is not uniformly in place. Methods to improve performance encompass annual action plans, benchmarking and service optimization (for example, in consular work, public affairs, and commercial promo- tion). MEA uses annual plans, but has not got around to tying resources into these, or carrying out a real delega- tion of financial powers. (This is a general weakness of the Indian system: even the budgeted funds of ministries, duly approved by parliament, can be spent only with the approval of the Finance Ministry, either directly for big- ticket items, or through the “financial advisers” it appoints and supervises in each ministry.) A ministry- wide computer network does not exist, though most ter- ritorial divisions have their own local area networks; they do not talk to one another, or to the higher officials. An intranet or virtual private network linking MEA and the missions remains on the drawing board.
Strengths and Weaknesses
What are the accomplishments of the IFS, and its points of strength? What might one expect from this set of professionals? My comments are necessarily subjec- tive, because within a “brotherhood” one may not find the distance for dispassionate scrutiny, and also because there exist no real tools for comparing foreign ministries and diplomats. With these caveats I offer the following.
Indians are individualists for the most part, and this
The IFS is exceptionally small in size, by comparison with India’s needs and the functions performed. shows in a huge variation between the best and the worst among diplomats. Major missions are natural concentra- tion points for talent, not just at the level of the head of mission. Anyone who has dealt with Indian counterparts in Washington, D.C., New York or Paris will bear witness that the best can hold their own against anyone. But if the true measure of a good system is that it evens out the peaks and troughs by ele- vating the performance of the lower half, then the IFS has a way to go.
In multilateral diplomacy during the 1970s and 1980s, in what we might call the heyday of declaratory diploma- cy, Indians seized the high ground at conferences, U.N. assemblies and committees — alas, not all of it very pro- ductively. In bilateral diplomacy, which is necessarily practiced on a much broader canvas, there are the bright stars, and the rest. And it is often noted that the discrep- ancy between the peaks and troughs of ability and perfor- mance among different persons is glaring. Management and business culture specialists observe the same trait of individualism, and a relative weakness at teamwork, when they look at the Indian corporate world.
One of the strong features of the IFS was an early shift to economic diplomacy. The first oil shock of 1973 deliv- ered a body blow to the Indian economy at a time when it had barely recovered from the disastrous droughts of the late 1960s (when P.L. 480 provided succor, before the Green Revolution became a reality), and from the Bangladesh War of 1971. Economic diplomacy became a matter of survival for India, and the IFS adapted rapidly, quickly learning to blend political and economic objec- tives, and practice integrated diplomacy.
The service produced role models like Bimal Sanyal and Vishnu Ahuja, both senior heads of MEA’s Economics Division, who demonstrated that being proactive involved a vast amount of internal diplomacy with the other min- istries and agencies, but reliably produced results. The two mobilized public-private partnerships at home, at a time when even this concept was in its infancy, to push for project and consultancy contracts in the Gulf region, and to win placement for Indian technicians. Simultaneously, they motivated Indian missions to blend political and eco- nomic diplomacy, a craft I, too, learnt in my first ambas- sadorship in Algeria (1975-79). Today there is hardly a diplomat or a mission that fails to treat economics as virtually the first priority at the majority of posts, on the premise that good political relations are a given condition in most countries but it is economics that explores the full enve- lope of action, and valorizes the politi- cal relationship as well. Is there an Indian negotiating style? Stephen Cohen, one of the gurus of South Asia scholarship in the U.S., has a brilliant chapter in his book,
India: Emerging Power (Brookings Institution, 2001), titled “The India That Can’t Say Yes.” Cohen’s thesis is, first, that Indians are intent on establishing the moral and political equality of the two sides and are especially touchy over “status”; second, they are patient and will wait till the terms improve; third, they negotiate for information; and fourth, they tend to have a good institutional memory, better than that of the Americans. Cohen also speaks of “a defensive arrogance and acute sensitivity to real and perceived slights,” and concludes that India seems to relish “getting to no.” He adds that MEA has tight control over foreign negotiations and is difficult to bypass.
Behind the “Indian Negotiating Style”
Some of the above criticism comes from experience with India-U.S. relations of the pre-1991 era, when India’s South-centered diplomacy (including leadership of the Nonaligned Movement, G-77 and the like) produced inevitable confrontation with much of the West. However, Strobe Talbott, whose 10-odd rounds of discussion with Jaswant Singh between 1998 and 2000 are the most inten- sive dialogue carried out by India with the U.S. or any other partner, may not agree with all of Cohen’s character- ization.
Indian negotiators are often hemmed in by an impos- sible brief, which is relatively rigid, to the point that no fallback positions are provided or flexibility given to the negotiators. The result is “positional bargaining” and an impression of negativism. For example, this was the case in the past with WTO meetings and other multilateral economic fora. By contrast, at Doha in November 2001, a strong Cabinet minister leading the Indian delegation, with the personal clout to obtain flexible instructions, managed to produce a good result, overcoming the rigidi-ties of the brief and past policy. Many individual negotiators are bril-liant, adept at winning trust and work- ing to achieve results. And generally, in multilateral settings Indians are often a popular consensus choice as rappor- teurs and committee chairmen. But in regional diplomacy, being adept at tac-tics is not enough when policy has been unimaginative or defensive. This has been the case, for example, in India’s past stance vis-à-vis ASEAN, when opportunities for close association were passed up in the 1980s. Defensiveness has crippled India’s approach to the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, where a fear of all the smaller neighbors ganging up blocked innovative ideas to overcome the impasse created by Pakistan’s obduracy.
India’s economic reforms, launched in 1991, coincided with the end of the Cold War. Both have affected the way India looks at the world, and the goals it pursues external- ly, in bilateral, regional and multilateral settings. India
remains nonaligned in the original sense of the term, but real Indian involvement with NAM and G-77 has waned. Instead, there is a clearer per- ception of self-interest, and a willing- ness to say so. This translates into hard-headed pragmatism, where ideo- logical rhetoric of the past is absent, and does not cloud actions. This is especially visible in pursuit of eco-political objectives. In the Sept. 11 attacks, India finds vindication of the battle it has long waged against terrorism, plus the opportunity to pursue new relationships in Central Asia and elsewhere that move beyond a fixation with Pakistan.
As a service, the IFS has no political bias and it is well harnessed in the pursuit of national goals. Yet it has the latent capacity to perform far better, provided that real reform can be implemented in the MEA and its process- es incrementally — for that is the only “Indian way” that produces results. ■
(Kishan S. Rana joined the Indian Foreign Service in 1960 and served in Hong Kong, Beijing (twice) and Geneva. He specialized in Chinese affairs and, later, economic diplomacy. He was ambassador to Algeria, Czechoslovakia, Kenya, Mauritius and Germany, retir- ing in 1995. He is Professor Emeritus at the Foreign Service Institute in New Delhi, and the author of Inside Diplomacy (Manas Publications, 2000) and Bilateral Diplomacy ( F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / O C T O B E R 2 0 0 2)
This month’s challenge called I Smell A (Modern) Rat asks us what would rat rodding be like if we applied the same principles to modern cars. For this I chose a Dodge Magnum with a V-8 Hemi. Instead of a more predictable post-apoc Mad Max look, I went with a beach combing car with rugged tires, wood paneling, and a nonexistent roof and tailgate. Just enough rust and patina adds a bit of well loved character while a wooden deck and benches gives this “Magnum Opus” a boat-like appearance that’s suitable for fishing, surfing, or just soaking up some rays. Its the perfect modern rat rod for a hot summer day!
Yesterday morning I was out in the park early to see what animals might want to pose for me. Notice that almost all the recent snow has melted; once again the brown look is back. This whitetail buck gave me about two seconds to frame a shot, then took off running. Whitetails are a little rarer in these parts than mule deer, and nonexistent on the West Coast where I've done much of my photography in years past, so I'm always happy with a close encounter... Grasslands National Park, Saskatchewan.
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