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

A quick pic of this snow white wig (almost) full body shot.

Spaceship Earth, the iconic and symbolic structure of Epcot, opened with the park in Future World in 1982. The 18-storym 180-foot tall geosphere, whose design was conceived by Wallace Floyd Design Group and completed by Simpson Gumpertz & Heger Inc., is derived from the Class 2 geodesic polyhedron. Each face of the polyhedron is divided into three isosceles triangles to form each point—with, in theory, 11,520 triangles forming 3,840 points (some are nonexistent due to supports and doors). The 15,520,000 pound sphere, with a circumference of 518.1 feet and a diameter of 165 feet, is raised 18-feet off the ground by three pylons sunk more than 120-feet into the ground.

 

Inside the sphere, guests take a 15-minute dark Omnimover ride in a "time machine" to learn how advancements in communication have helped create the future. Narrators have included Lawrence Dobkin, Walter Cronkite, Jeremy Irons and now Dame Judi Dench.

My husband call this harp my nemesis. It lives in a library in a nearby college, and once I got a nice shot of it with the sunlight hitting the strings, causing them to glow. I almost used it for my 365 project, but didn't, convinced I could return and get a better focused picture another day. What I didn't realize is that the window is next to a courtyard and the sun has to be above a building to get into the window. So the time the light is perfect, how it was the first time, is brief and actually nonexistent a few days before and after the solstice. I must have returned six times to try to get the lighting right without any luck. I had a good feeling about it today, the sun was bright, the time of day was correct but when I got to the library the harp had been physically moved a few feet. The planets were aligned in my favor but the librarians were not. So after a halfhearted attempt to nudge it back into place I accepted that there would be no light on these strings. I wanted to post the a shot anyway, to try to get it out of my system.

 

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

Snipe Hunting:

Pumpkin Spice and Mint Julep thought it was so funny they told the little ones all about snipe hunting and took them out then came back to the fire pit and laughed and laughed at leaving them in the dark!!!

When I was little this was a right of passage that my dad and grandfather thought was super funny to take us kids out in the desert to look for the mysterious nonexistent Snipes and we all fell for it hook line and sinker - It's actually funny hearing the stories repeated over and over at some of the funny things the kids did - Have you ever been Snipe hunting??? You need to go :D

The One Room Log School House

The structure before you depict a one room log schoolhouse of 1834. If you were between the ages of 5 & 21 in rural Indiana in the 1830s you would have attended a one room school very much like this one. Yes, you would have sat on a split log bench or puncheon through the entire school day.

Schools of this period were referred to as "Subscription School". The cost of attendance was approximately $1.50 to $3.00 per student for a period of three months. The fee was generally paid to the Schoolmarm or Schoolmaster in kind. Since actual money was scarce quite often the payment was made in the form of farm produce, animal skins or hand-crafted items. After the Canal was completed to Delphi in 1840, markets opened as far away as the East coast & the Gulf of Mexico, thus generating higher incomes in this region. This new mode of transportation also brought the newsiest in fashion as well as books, paper, & educational supplies.

Conventional school supplies were scarce or nonexistent. Books for recitation were whatever was available at a student's homestead. It was not until 1835 that McGuffey's 1st Eclectic reader was published. This afforded reader, designed specifically for children, was produced in progressive editions from the alphabet to the classics. As the students progressed through the readers, they were called upon to help teach the younger students.

 

Selecting a Teacher

Schoolmasters were chosen locally from the most learned members of the community. Sometimes lawyers were chosen. It was not unusual to choose soldiers because of their ability to keep discipline among the rough pioneer boys. A problem boy got five strokes with a hickory stick, a girl got three. It wasn't until the 1850 that trained teachers from the East, mostly women, became available.

In addition to the daily lesson, students were expected to help cut wood, pump water, & clean the room. Paper was scarce so most students used a slate & chalk to complete their daily lessons. Later, as paper mills began operating, lessons were carried out using a quill pen made from a buzzard or goose feather & ink made from wild berries or the husks of walnuts.

 

*"In the early 1900s, one half of all American children attended the 212,000 one-room schools scattered across the land"

Raymond Bial

One Room School

 

This ship is my favorite out of my physical collection. Its just the rights size for play while still having enough detail for display and has an interior. Said interior is based of the cross section book for the force awakens. There is a single bed and nothing else. I wish that the bed could be moved over though, as it is taking up quite a bit a space.

 

Problems:

the rear door is invisible

the rear wings are not all the way at the end of the ship

there are no front wings

the cockpit is nonexistent

a la "philippe halsman"

 

colinhuggins.bandcamp.com/track/brahms-hungarian-dance-4

 

NY Times, Dec. 4 2011

Colin Huggins was there with his baby grand, the one he wheels into Washington Square Park for his al fresco concerts. So were Tic and Tac, a street-performing duo, who held court in the fountain — dry for the winter. And Joe Mangrum was pouring his elaborate sand paintings on the ground near the Washington Arch.

 

Follow @NYTMetro

Connect with @NYTMetro on Twitter for New York breaking news and headlines.

Enlarge This Image

 

Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times

Kareem Barnes of Tic and Tac collected donations on Sunday.

Enlarge This Image

 

Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times

Joe Mangrum showed his sand paintings on Sunday.

In other words, it was a typical Sunday afternoon in the Greenwich Village park, where generations of visitors have mingled with musicians, artists, activists, poets and buskers.

 

Yet this fall, that urban harmony has grown dissonant as the city’s parks department has slapped summonses on the four men and other performers who put out hats or buckets, for vending in an unauthorized location — specifically, within 50 feet of a monument.

 

The department’s rule, one of many put in place a year ago, was intended to control commerce in the busiest parks. Under the city’s definition, vending covers not only those peddling photographs and ankle bracelets, but also performers who solicit donations.

 

The rule attracted little notice at first. But the enforcement in Washington Square Park in the past two months has generated summonses ranging from $250 to $1,000. And it has started a debate about the rights of parkgoers seeking refuge from the bustle of the streets versus those looking for entertainment.

 

At a news conference in the park on Sunday organized by NYC Park Advocates, the artists waved fistfuls of pink summonses while their advocates, including civil rights lawyers, called on the city to stop what they called harassment of the performers.

 

“This is a heavy-handed solution to a nonexistent problem,” said Ronald L. Kuby, one of the lawyers.

 

The rule is especially problematic in Washington Square Park, performers say, because there are few locations across its 10 acres that are beyond 50 feet from a memorial or fountain — whether the bust of Alexander Lyman Holley, who introduced the Bessemer steel process to this country, or the statue of the Italian liberator Giuseppe Garibaldi.

 

Then there is the park’s international reputation as a gathering place for folk music pioneers and the Beats.

 

“Washington Square is the live-music park of New York City, and it would be close to impossible for any one of us to follow these regulations,” said Mr. Huggins, who has received nine summonses with fines totaling $2,250.

 

But Adrian Benepe, the parks commissioner, argues that there is ample room for performers away from the monuments. And, he added, a musician who is not putting out a tin cup is welcome to sit on the edge of the fountain or under a monument.

 

“It’s the whole issue of the ‘tragedy of the commons,’ ” he said. “If you allow all the performers and all the vendors to do whatever they want to do, pretty soon there’s no park left for people who want to use them for quiet enjoyment. This is a way of having some control and not 18 hours of carnival-like atmosphere.”

 

Gary Behrens, an amateur photographer visiting from New Jersey, applauded the city’s efforts to rein in the performers. “I’m O.K. with the guitar, but the loud instruments have taken over the park,” he said.

 

The lawyers and advocates, however, challenged the idea that street performers were selling a product as a vendor does. And threatening a lawsuit, they faulted the city for creating what they called “First Amendment zones” through the rules.

 

“Is this place zany?” asked Norman Siegel, the former director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. “You bet. Public parks are quintessential public forums. Zaniness is something we should cherish and protect.”

 

Park visitation has soared along with the rise of tourism in the last 15 years, and with it vendors and artists interested in a lucrative market.

 

Mr. Benepe insisted that the rules would not scare off future music legends.

 

“If Bob Dylan wanted to come play there tomorrow, he could,” he said, “although he might have to move away from the fountain.”

 

Oddly, the dispute coincided with the 50th anniversary of the so-called Folk Riot in Washington Square Park, when the parks commissioner tried to squelch Sunday folk performances. Hundreds of musicians gathered in protest, the police were called in and a melee ensued.

 

In April, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg wrote a letter commemorating the Folk Riot, saying he applauded “the folk performers who changed music, our city and our world beginning half a century ago.”

Kingda Ka is a roller coaster located at Six Flags Great Adventure in Jackson, New Jersey, USA. It is the world's tallest roller coaster, and was the world's fastest until Formula Rossa opened in November 2010. The train is launched by a hydraulic launch mechanism to 128 miles per hour (206 km/h) in 3.5 seconds. At the end of the launch track, the train climbs the main top hat tower, reaching a height of 456 feet (139 m). Kingda Ka is 3,118 feet (950 m) long.

 

History

 

Kingda Ka was officially introduced on September 29, 2004, at an event held for the media and enthusiasts. It was revealed that the ride would become "the tallest and fastest roller coaster on earth", reaching 640 feet (200 m) and accelerating up to 128 miles per hour (206 km/h) in 3.5 seconds. Upon completion, Kingda Ka took both the "tallest" and "fastest" world records from the two-year-old Top Thrill Dragster at Cedar Point in Sandusky, OH. Since Intamin designed both Top Thrill Dragster and Kingda Ka, both rides share a nearly identical design and layout, differing only in theme and Kingda Ka's post-tower "camel hump" hill. On January 13, 2005, Kingda Ka was topped off at its 456-foot (139 m) height, finishing construction. Kingda Ka opened to the public on May 21, 2005, with a media day two days before.

 

During a test run with no passengers on June 6, 2005, a bolt failure caused damage to the launch cable, resulting in closure of the ride until August 2005, and the reconfiguration of the line area. The ride was also struck by lightning in early May 2009; the strike caused the ride to be unreliable and necessitated complicated repairs. The ride was operational from May 31, 2009, to June 24, 2009, but remained closed for maintenance until August 21, 2009.

 

Season 2, episode 28 of the documentary series MegaStructures follows the construction of the roller coaster in detail.

 

Major malfunctions

 

2005: Problems with launch cable, engine, and brake fins

On June 6, 2005, less than a month after its grand opening, a bolt failure caused the liner inside the trough through which the launch cable travels to come loose and create friction against the cable. The friction caused the train not to accelerate to the correct speed. The rubbing of the cable against the inside of the metal trough caused sparks and shards of metal to fly out from the bottom of the train. The engine, as it is designed, attempted to compensate by applying more force to the cable to attain the 128 miles per hour (206 km/h) launch speed.

 

The magnetic brake fins located within the launch section of the track, designed to slow the train on its return to the launch area should it not have enough speed to make it over the top hat element, rise up into the braking position in a sequential pattern after the train passes over them in the lowered position. The fins are mounted in steel supports that are connected to actuators that raise and lower the fins into the desired position.

  

Kingda Ka's tower

The fins actually caught up to the launching train as the timing pattern of the rising fins was faster than the accelerating train. The magnetic brakes began to slow the train in the launch area, and the engine tried to compensate even more and dragged the train through the brake zones. The catch car released, but the train was still in the brake zone and came to a complete stop at the bottom of the hill.

 

This malfunction occurred when no passengers were aboard during a test run. Damage occurred to the launch cable (frayed and needed to be replaced), engine (minor routine damage to seals), and brake fins (many needed to be replaced). The brake fins in the launch section are mounted in such a way to keep fast-moving trains from moving backward into the station, but a fast-moving train being pulled forward caused an unexpected stress on a number of fins that bent them forward. Not all of the fins needed to be replaced, but there were more damaged brake fins than Six Flags had replacements for, and extra brake fins had to be specially ordered from Intamin. In addition, Kingda Ka had to be re-inspected. Kingda Ka resumed testing on May 21, 2005. It reopened on August 4, 2005, with the line modified so that it no longer ran under the launch track. It had been the dark blue train that was launched when the malfunction occurred. It was used for the rest of the season, but major problems requiring replacement parts were discovered when the train was inspected during the off-season. Consequently, this train remained disassembled throughout the 2006 season.

 

Before 2005's major malfunction, Kingda Ka's queue area was much larger. It started at the main entrance arch, went under the launch track, traveled through two large switchback areas, and split into separate lines for each side of the station. Most of the entire line used to be set in the ride's infield. The current main entrance to the station was previously the "Flash pass" entrance.

 

2009: Late spring lightning strike

 

On the overnight of May 6–7, Kingda Ka was struck by lightning and suffered serious damage and downtime following the strike. The ride operated on May 9 and May 10 off and on with downtime more often than operating time. The park attempted to open the ride on May 16 but was unable to get it running properly. The park then announced that Kingda Ka was temporarily closed for maintenance. By May 20, it was announced that the ride would be down for an extended period of time. Six Flags Great Adventure ordered new parts for the ride from Intamin, but the damage required complicated repairs to Kingda Ka. A Screamscape post mentioned that, due to the nature of the needed repairs, Kingda Ka's launch would require a full test and adjust period, causing the ride to be closed to riders until late spring/early summer. It was up and running as of May 31, 2009, but with more frequent breakdowns than usual.

 

As of late June 2009 the ride was shut down for an extended period, stemming from complications from the year's issues, along with claims of a blown fuse and serious engine troubles as they waited for replacement parts once again.

 

It was up and running as of August 21, 2009. It had been announced that Kingda Ka would be fully operational and running smoothly again for the 2010 season, which occurred on the same day as Six Flags, Inc.'s announcement of its Chapter 11 bankruptcy restructuring plan.

 

However, on July 21, 2010, problems arose with the launch cable. The train was getting ready to launch when the launch cable failed, and the train stayed near the station for over 10 minutes.

 

Ride experience

 

Theme

 

Kingda Ka is themed as a mythical tiger, and is named after the 500 lb (230 kg) Golden Tabby Bengal tiger that lives in a pen next to the ride. The ride's sign and station all have mythical Indian-style theming. The ride's queue line is surrounded by bamboo, which adds on to the jungle theming. Jungle music is played during the wait, as well as throughout the entire Golden Kingdom section of the park, which was built for the ride. As of summer 2010, one of the park's male tigers is named after the ride.

 

Main Ride

 

After the train has been locked and checked, it slowly advances out of the station to the launch area. The train goes through a switch track which allows 4 trains on two tracks to load simultaneously. Once the train is in position, the hydraulic launch mechanism accelerates the train from 0 to 128 miles per hour (0 to 206 km/h) in 3.5 seconds, pulling about 1.67 G. At the end of the launch track, the train climbs the main tower, or top hat, twisting 90 degrees to the left before reaching a height of 456 feet (139 m). The train then descends 418 feet (127 m) straight down through a 270-degree right-hand spiral. Finally, the train climbs the second hill of 129 feet (39 m), producing a moment of weightlessness before being smoothly brought to a stop by the magnetic brakes. The train then makes a U-turn and enters the station. The ride lasts 28 seconds from the start of the launch to the end of the brake run, but has an official ride time of 59 seconds.

 

The hydraulic launch motor is capable of producing 20,800 horsepower (15.5 MW) peak. Because of the high speed and open nature of the trains, the ride will not operate in light rain, as rider contact with rain drops can cause discomfort.

 

Layout

 

Kingda Ka's layout is almost completely identical to Top Thrill Dragster at Cedar Point, but while Top Thrill Dragster hits the brakes after coming down from the top hat and leveling out, Kingda Ka goes over a 129-foot (39 m)-tall camelback hill into the brake run.

 

Rollbacks, Short-Shots, Stalls, and launch

 

Sometimes, it is possible for a train to roll back—to fail to go over the top of the tower and descend on the other side. The train instead reaches as high on the tower as it can go (in most cases to the very top) and rolls back. Kingda Ka includes retractable magnetic brakes on its launch track that will bring to a stop a train rolling backward down the tower. Rollbacks are more common in breezy weather or just after wet weather. Many riders look forward to a rollback, as they are treated to another launch. Rollbacks are frequent during safety tests to ensure all brakes on the runway are in working condition. One other issue that is even more rare than a rollback is for the train to "stall" or stop at the top of the lift. This is extremely rare because the train must be perfectly balanced for this to happen. In the event this happens, there is an elevator so workers can get up the support tower and push the train (usually down the descent side).

 

It is hard to know exactly when Kingda Ka's launch will occur. When the signal to launch is given, the train rolls back slightly to engage the catch car, then the brakes on the launch track retract. Occasionally there will be a voice that says "arms down, head back, and hold on." The launch will occur five seconds after the hissing sound of the brake fins retracting or the warning voice. Previously, Kingda Ka's horn sounded before every launch, but it has been turned off because of noise complaints from nearby residents. The horn now sounds only when Kingda Ka first launches after being idle for a certain period of time. Kingda Ka's launch mechanism is capable of launching a train every 45 seconds, resulting in a capacity of 1400 guests per hour.

 

Station

 

Kingda Ka's station has two parallel tracks with switch tracks at the entrance and exit. Each of the station's tracks accommodates two trains, so that each of the four trains has its own station. Each train only loads and unloads at its own station; it does not go to any others. During operation, the trains on one side are loaded while the trains on the other side are launched. This system works extremely efficiently as long as all four trains are running and there are no significant delays in loading and checking the trains. This system was not used at all in 2006 because only two trains were working that year. It also results in a very fast-moving line before the station, but a long wait inside the station, especially if waiting for the front row. An employee directs riders in line to go to a particular side of the station, but riders will then be able to choose the front or rear of the train. Two operators load, check and dispatch each train, and one launches the trains. Kingda Ka's music is by Safri Duo; almost their entire Episode II album is played in the queue and station. The other is the remix version of "Eye of the Tiger" by Survivor. Both of these music can be heard during the queue and station.

 

Trains

 

Kingda Ka's four trains are color-coded for easy identification: green, dark blue, teal, and orange. These four colors are also used on the seats and restraints. Kingda Ka's trains seat 18 people, with two per row. The rear car has one row, while the rest have two. The rear row of each car is positioned higher than its front row for better visibility. The trains do not have official names, only numbers.

 

The dark blue train was being launched when 2005's major malfunction (see above) occurred, and problems stemming from this malfunction were discovered in the train's off-season rehab, putting this train out of service throughout the 2006 season. As a result, Kingda Ka only ran two trains for the whole year. The teal and green trains ran from the start of the season until late July, and the teal and orange trains ran for the rest of the season, with the teal train being the only train used for the whole season. Kingda Ka opened for the 2007 season with all four trains running.

 

Each of Kingda Ka's trains has a panel behind the last row of seats that covers an extra row of seat mounts. These panels could be removed for the installation of additional seats at some future time. This modification would increase the capacity of each train from 18 to 20 guests and the hourly capacity of the coaster from 1400 to 1600 guests per hour. Kingda Ka's station is already set up for this modification; it has the entrance gates for the currently nonexistent row of seats.

 

While this modification has not yet been done, the trains were slightly modified for the 2006 season - the nose of each train got a new coat of paint, after which the large "Kingda Ka" logo and the train number decals were not put back on the trains. The non-padded portions of the restraints are now bare metal rather than painted orange.

 

Seat restraints

 

Kingda Ka's seats with the restraints down

Kingda Ka's over-the-shoulder restraint system consists of a thick, rigid lap bar and two thin, flexible over-the-shoulder restraints. Because the over-the-shoulder portions of the restraint are not rigid, the hand grips are mounted to the lap bar. But later on the flexible over-the-shoulder restraints were replaced by non-flexible shoulder restraints.

 

These restraints use a locking system (rather than a ratchet) which allows them to be pulled down to any position; when locked, they can move down to any position but not up. In contrast, a ratchet-based restraint only locks at each notch, and will often be too loose or uncomfortably tight. Kingda Ka's restraints are also held down by a belt in case the main locking system fails. In order to speed up loading, riders are asked to secure their own restraints if they are able to.

 

Ride Experience

 

The rollercoaster has a very simple layout. First the two trains at the station advance forward. The first train then waits about 30–40 seconds as a catch car rolls down the launch track and attaches to the train. After the brake fins lining the launch train lower a train is then launched at up to 128 miles per hour (206 km/h) towards the 456 ft (139 m) tower. The train then gradually raises up the ride tower 90 degrees up and then twists to the left 90 degress. Once the train reaches the tower summit of 456 feet (139 m) the train then drops at a 90 degree right angle down the tower. The train pulls out of the spiral and down the tower at a near 120 miles per hour (190 km/h) into a hill 129 ft (39 m) high. At the peak of the 129 ft (39 m) hill the train begins to hit the brakes. After a final brake stop the train then turns left back into the station. The average time of the ride experience is only 28 seconds. The official ride time is 56 seconds.

 

Family trip to Six Flags Great Adventure 6-19-11

This was my first time actually plane watching at Miami International Airport (MIA). I checked some spotter websites to find some good locations. They recommended The Holes as being an "official" site so we checked it out. I was pretty disappointed; there was a lot of construction going on and parking was nonexistent. My wife dropped me off. The area is totally exposed. Even though it was December it was pretty hot - no shade, no place to sit, no other people around. The holes are actually pretty small so it's hard to get a lens through the hole. Arrivals were almost impossible to shoot but you could see planes taxiing by for takeoff. After an hour I was cooking so we bagged it. We then went to the area close to the El Dorado furniture store. Much better. There were a bunch of spotters from around the world there. It was a great atmosphere. Nicely shaded, safe, close to some stores and a lot of good traffic to watch. I saw a bunch of planes from airlines I had not seen before, including some airlines I had not heard of. Some of the planes didn't show up on Flight Radar 24 so they were very pleasant surprises. All in all a very good day and I'd love to go back there!

 

I took these photos in December 2019.

Welcome to Newham. Even if you miss the sign, you can tell you're here because half the streetlamps are at crooked angles.

 

On the face of things the majority of London's urban sprawl, be it composed of older inner-city areas cobbled together or suburban developments that run into one another, is fairly subtle in it's contiguousness. Boroughs run into one another on the turn of a street corner or the crossing of a railway bridge, but little really changes from one to the another by simply crossing a border - the street lighting may look different, the bins a different colour, victorian houses may gradually give way to semis and 1930s council estates may give way to 1960s examples, a welcome sign may give it away on a main road, but it is rarely abrupt. Most of London's boroughs contain the contrasts within themselves - compare the Brent of Queens Park and Harlesden to that of North Wembley and Sudbury, and the proximate pockets of wealth and deprivation in each.

 

Newham, in this respect as well as many others, is of a different order to most other areas of London - it is more or less it's own island, and a relatively consistent one, cut off from surrounding areas by the Thames to the south, the lower Lea valley to the west, the River Roding and elevated North Circular to the east and the bottom reaches of Epping Forest to the north. Cross-border passages over many of these are scarce (four road crossings towards Central London to the west, three to the east) to nonexistent (no road crossings at all over the Thames, save for the Woolwich Ferry). Most approaches to Newham, either by rail or road, mean crossing some sort of uninhabited industrial landscape, green expanse or tunnel before hitting the dense mass of estates and terraces that make up the borough, invariably with a bit of a bump - if ducking under the North Circular from Ilford to Manor Park is to make a jump from suburbia to scruffy pseudo-outer-inner London purgatory, the approach from Poplar to Canning Town is at best a marginal improvement, but somehow a bleaker introduction. Here, where Leytonstone Road crosses the border with Waltham Forest, is one of the few upholders of the general rule in the Newham exception, as part of the 3/4-mile wide strip of Victorian terraces that link up southern Leyton and South Leytonstone to Stratford and Forest Gate. They're quite similar environments.

 

Historically, Newham has proven uniformly and stubbornly resistant to gentrification. In the 1990s, on old-money measures it leapfrogged with Hackney as the most deprived borough in the country - now, out of 354 it is 6th from the bottom, beaten in London only by Hackney and Tower Hamlets. The speculation around Stratford in the run up to 2012 is one issue to be considered, but the regeneration getting under way in Canning Town and Custom House is, even though less discussed, almost as substantial in itself and constitutes a lot more residential demolition and rebuilding than the infill and industrial site clearances around Stratford - huge swathes of the area are disappearing already. The changes to the social fabric that will result there are less predictable, but ones that I'll watch with interest.

Novoslobodskaya (Russian: Новослобо́дская) is a Moscow Metro station in the Tverskoy District of the Central Administrative Okrug, Moscow. It is on the Koltsevaya Line, between Belorusskaya and Prospekt Mira stations. Novoslobodskaya was opened on 30 January 1952. From 21 November 2020 to 4 March 2022, the entrance of the station was closed for reconstruction.

 

Architecture and art

Alexey Dushkin, the station's architect, has long wished to utilise stained glass in decoration of a metro station, and the first drawings date to pre–World War II times. In 1948, with the aid of a young architect Alexander Strelkov, Dushkin came across the artist Pavel Korin, who agreed to compose the artworks for the panels. The rest of the station was designed around the glass panels.

 

It is best known for its 32 stained glass panels, which are the work of Latvian artists E. Veylandan, E. Krests, and M. Ryskin. Each panel, surrounded by an elaborate brass border, is set into one of the station's pylons and illuminated from within. Both the pylons and the pointed arches between them are faced with pinkish Ural marble and edged with brass molding. At the end of the platform is a mosaic by Pavel Korin entitled "Peace Throughout the World."

 

Transfers

From this station it is possible to transfer to Mendeleyevskaya station on the Serpukhovsko-Timiryazevskaya Line.

 

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.

An Italian Czech, a Belgian American, and an American Italian.....

 

At the top is a Tanfoglio BTA-90, a copy of the Czech CZ-75 that was made in Italy during the Cold War days when we weren't buying a lot of Czech stuff over here; at left is a Browning 1910, designed by the American John M. Browning and manufactured by Fabrique Nationale in Belgium; and at the bottom is a Beretta 950, made in Maryland after a US law made it illegal to import little pistols like this but they were OK as long as they were made in the USA (go figure).

Outside of Price and Helper there is a very small seasonal waterfall; sometimes it is a trickle, other times totally nonexistent. On the way by it in November 2017 we noticed it was not a pretty decent frozen waterfall. We made an immediate stop and pulled over to check it out - very nice. Unfortunately the lighting never seems to be in our favor. One day we will luck out!

This ship is from fallen order though it has a custom paint job. It has a semi-full interior as the rear engine-room has been combined with the room in front of it.

 

This was done because I don't have the pieces to make it both strong and have that rear room. I still was able to get the two decks in the back and the couch though. it is a pretty strong build till you get to the round rotating section. That needs tightened every time it is moved. The wing and lower thruster can be rotated a full 360 degrees around which was a pain to take pictures of.

 

The wing itself I think is illegal as I'm using Technic half beams to make it double sided (plus it was the only way I could think of attaching the wing securely). The landing gear telescopes into itself in the game which is pretty much impossible at this scale. I originally had the gear fold up inside the body, but it looked ugly when it was down due to the holes needed for retraction.

 

They also had to have the landing pads removed anyway, so i just made the whole rear gear removable. It looks better and is stronger.

 

problems:

unable to build full interior.

rear gear is not retractable.

cockpit is nonexistent.

rotating parts need tightening after every movement.

 

more pics here: bricksafe.com/pages/TheRealBeef1213/star-wars/stinger-mantis

The Prison Ship Martyrs Monument, sometimes referred to as the Soldiers and Sailors Monument, was erected in Fort Greene Park in 1908. Designed by Stanford White, the monument consists of a 100-foot-wide-granite staircase and a 149-foot high central Doric column. The monument, actually the third on the site, marks the site of the crypt for more than 11,500 men, women and children, known as the prison ship martyrs.

 

During the American Revolutionary War, the British imprisoned scores of soldiers, sailors, and private citizens--many simply because they would not swear allegiance to the Crown of England. When they ran out of jail space, they began using decommissioned ships anchored in Wallabout Bay as floating prisons. Life was unbearable on the prison ships. Disease was rampant, food and water were scarce or nonexistent, and the living conditions were overcrowded and wretched. Their bodies were thrown overboard or buried in shallow graves in the sandy marshes along the shore. In 1808 the remains of the prison ship martyrs were buried in a tomb on Jackson Street (now Hudson Avenue), near the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

 

In 1776, the construction of Fort Putnam on the high ground that now makes up Fort Greene Park was supervised by American Major General Nathanael Greene. During the Battle of Long Island, the Continental Army surrendered the fort and retreated to Manhattan. The fort was renamed for General Greene and rebuilt for the War of 1812. In 1845, the City of Brooklyn designated the site as a public park behind the support of Walt Whitman, then editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. In 1867, landscape architects Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux were engaged to redesign the park, and incorporate a new crypt for the remains of the prison ship martyrs.

 

The remains were moved to the park in 1873 into the newly created 25 by 11 foot brick vault. Twenty-two boxes, containing a mere fraction of total volume of remains, were interred. Towards the end of the 19th century, a diverse group of interests including the federal government, municipal and state governments, private societies, and donors, began a campaign for a permanent monument to the prison ship martyrs. In 1905 the renowned architectural firm of McKim, Mead and White was hired to design a new entrance to the crypt and a wide granite stairway leading to a plaza on top of the hill. From its center rose a freestanding Doric column crowned by a bronze lantern. President-elect William Howard Taft attended the monument’s dedication in 1908.

 

Sculptor Adolph Alexander Weinman (1870–1952) created the monument’s bronze pieces -- the large urn or decorative lantern (never functioning) as well as four eagles that were once mounted to the corner granite posts. The eagles were removed to storage after being repeatedly vandalized; two of them are on public display at the Arsenal, the Parks administrative headquarters on Fifth Avenue at 64th Street in Manhattan. A tablet over the entrance to tomb, also in storage now, was donated by the Tammany Society, and was originally the cornerstone of the Navy Yard vault. An elevator and stairs for the interior were installed in 1937; both were removed in 1948 after the monument was renovated by Parks. In 1970 the elevator pit was filled in.

 

Presently plans are being considered for the renovation of the monument, landscaping of the apex of the park and the re-installation of the conserved eagles and plaque.

 

The Fort Green Historic District was designated by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1978.

 

Fort Greene Historic District National Register #83001691

The Prison Ship Martyrs Monument, sometimes referred to as the Soldiers and Sailors Monument, was erected in Fort Greene Park in 1908. Designed by Stanford White, the monument consists of a 100-foot-wide-granite staircase and a 149-foot high central Doric column. The monument, actually the third on the site, marks the site of the crypt for more than 11,500 men, women and children, known as the prison ship martyrs.

 

During the American Revolutionary War, the British imprisoned scores of soldiers, sailors, and private citizens--many simply because they would not swear allegiance to the Crown of England. When they ran out of jail space, they began using decommissioned ships anchored in Wallabout Bay as floating prisons. Life was unbearable on the prison ships. Disease was rampant, food and water were scarce or nonexistent, and the living conditions were overcrowded and wretched. Their bodies were thrown overboard or buried in shallow graves in the sandy marshes along the shore. In 1808 the remains of the prison ship martyrs were buried in a tomb on Jackson Street (now Hudson Avenue), near the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

 

In 1776, the construction of Fort Putnam on the high ground that now makes up Fort Greene Park was supervised by American Major General Nathanael Greene. During the Battle of Long Island, the Continental Army surrendered the fort and retreated to Manhattan. The fort was renamed for General Greene and rebuilt for the War of 1812. In 1845, the City of Brooklyn designated the site as a public park behind the support of Walt Whitman, then editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. In 1867, landscape architects Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux were engaged to redesign the park, and incorporate a new crypt for the remains of the prison ship martyrs.

 

The remains were moved to the park in 1873 into the newly created 25 by 11 foot brick vault. Twenty-two boxes, containing a mere fraction of total volume of remains, were interred. Towards the end of the 19th century, a diverse group of interests including the federal government, municipal and state governments, private societies, and donors, began a campaign for a permanent monument to the prison ship martyrs. In 1905 the renowned architectural firm of McKim, Mead and White was hired to design a new entrance to the crypt and a wide granite stairway leading to a plaza on top of the hill. From its center rose a freestanding Doric column crowned by a bronze lantern. President-elect William Howard Taft attended the monument’s dedication in 1908.

 

Sculptor Adolph Alexander Weinman (1870–1952) created the monument’s bronze pieces -- the large urn or decorative lantern (never functioning) as well as four eagles that were once mounted to the corner granite posts. The eagles were removed to storage after being repeatedly vandalized; two of them are on public display at the Arsenal, the Parks administrative headquarters on Fifth Avenue at 64th Street in Manhattan. A tablet over the entrance to tomb, also in storage now, was donated by the Tammany Society, and was originally the cornerstone of the Navy Yard vault. An elevator and stairs for the interior were installed in 1937; both were removed in 1948 after the monument was renovated by Parks. In 1970 the elevator pit was filled in.

 

Presently plans are being considered for the renovation of the monument, landscaping of the apex of the park and the re-installation of the conserved eagles and plaque.

 

The Fort Green Historic District was designated by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1978.

 

Fort Greene Historic District National Register #83001691

The Prison Ship Martyrs Monument, sometimes referred to as the Soldiers and Sailors Monument, was erected in Fort Greene Park in 1908. Designed by Stanford White, the monument consists of a 100-foot-wide-granite staircase and a 149-foot high central Doric column. The monument, actually the third on the site, marks the site of the crypt for more than 11,500 men, women and children, known as the prison ship martyrs.

 

During the American Revolutionary War, the British imprisoned scores of soldiers, sailors, and private citizens--many simply because they would not swear allegiance to the Crown of England. When they ran out of jail space, they began using decommissioned ships anchored in Wallabout Bay as floating prisons. Life was unbearable on the prison ships. Disease was rampant, food and water were scarce or nonexistent, and the living conditions were overcrowded and wretched. Their bodies were thrown overboard or buried in shallow graves in the sandy marshes along the shore. In 1808 the remains of the prison ship martyrs were buried in a tomb on Jackson Street (now Hudson Avenue), near the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

 

In 1776, the construction of Fort Putnam on the high ground that now makes up Fort Greene Park was supervised by American Major General Nathanael Greene. During the Battle of Long Island, the Continental Army surrendered the fort and retreated to Manhattan. The fort was renamed for General Greene and rebuilt for the War of 1812. In 1845, the City of Brooklyn designated the site as a public park behind the support of Walt Whitman, then editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. In 1867, landscape architects Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux were engaged to redesign the park, and incorporate a new crypt for the remains of the prison ship martyrs.

 

The remains were moved to the park in 1873 into the newly created 25 by 11 foot brick vault. Twenty-two boxes, containing a mere fraction of total volume of remains, were interred. Towards the end of the 19th century, a diverse group of interests including the federal government, municipal and state governments, private societies, and donors, began a campaign for a permanent monument to the prison ship martyrs. In 1905 the renowned architectural firm of McKim, Mead and White was hired to design a new entrance to the crypt and a wide granite stairway leading to a plaza on top of the hill. From its center rose a freestanding Doric column crowned by a bronze lantern. President-elect William Howard Taft attended the monument’s dedication in 1908.

 

Sculptor Adolph Alexander Weinman (1870–1952) created the monument’s bronze pieces -- the large urn or decorative lantern (never functioning) as well as four eagles that were once mounted to the corner granite posts. The eagles were removed to storage after being repeatedly vandalized; two of them are on public display at the Arsenal, the Parks administrative headquarters on Fifth Avenue at 64th Street in Manhattan. A tablet over the entrance to tomb, also in storage now, was donated by the Tammany Society, and was originally the cornerstone of the Navy Yard vault. An elevator and stairs for the interior were installed in 1937; both were removed in 1948 after the monument was renovated by Parks. In 1970 the elevator pit was filled in.

 

Presently plans are being considered for the renovation of the monument, landscaping of the apex of the park and the re-installation of the conserved eagles and plaque.

 

The Fort Green Historic District was designated by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1978.

 

Fort Greene Historic District National Register #83001691

The Prison Ship Martyrs Monument, sometimes referred to as the Soldiers and Sailors Monument, was erected in Fort Greene Park in 1908. Designed by Stanford White, the monument consists of a 100-foot-wide-granite staircase and a 149-foot high central Doric column. The monument, actually the third on the site, marks the site of the crypt for more than 11,500 men, women and children, known as the prison ship martyrs.

 

During the American Revolutionary War, the British imprisoned scores of soldiers, sailors, and private citizens--many simply because they would not swear allegiance to the Crown of England. When they ran out of jail space, they began using decommissioned ships anchored in Wallabout Bay as floating prisons. Life was unbearable on the prison ships. Disease was rampant, food and water were scarce or nonexistent, and the living conditions were overcrowded and wretched. Their bodies were thrown overboard or buried in shallow graves in the sandy marshes along the shore. In 1808 the remains of the prison ship martyrs were buried in a tomb on Jackson Street (now Hudson Avenue), near the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

 

In 1776, the construction of Fort Putnam on the high ground that now makes up Fort Greene Park was supervised by American Major General Nathanael Greene. During the Battle of Long Island, the Continental Army surrendered the fort and retreated to Manhattan. The fort was renamed for General Greene and rebuilt for the War of 1812. In 1845, the City of Brooklyn designated the site as a public park behind the support of Walt Whitman, then editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. In 1867, landscape architects Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux were engaged to redesign the park, and incorporate a new crypt for the remains of the prison ship martyrs.

 

The remains were moved to the park in 1873 into the newly created 25 by 11 foot brick vault. Twenty-two boxes, containing a mere fraction of total volume of remains, were interred. Towards the end of the 19th century, a diverse group of interests including the federal government, municipal and state governments, private societies, and donors, began a campaign for a permanent monument to the prison ship martyrs. In 1905 the renowned architectural firm of McKim, Mead and White was hired to design a new entrance to the crypt and a wide granite stairway leading to a plaza on top of the hill. From its center rose a freestanding Doric column crowned by a bronze lantern. President-elect William Howard Taft attended the monument’s dedication in 1908.

 

Sculptor Adolph Alexander Weinman (1870–1952) created the monument’s bronze pieces -- the large urn or decorative lantern (never functioning) as well as four eagles that were once mounted to the corner granite posts. The eagles were removed to storage after being repeatedly vandalized; two of them are on public display at the Arsenal, the Parks administrative headquarters on Fifth Avenue at 64th Street in Manhattan. A tablet over the entrance to tomb, also in storage now, was donated by the Tammany Society, and was originally the cornerstone of the Navy Yard vault. An elevator and stairs for the interior were installed in 1937; both were removed in 1948 after the monument was renovated by Parks. In 1970 the elevator pit was filled in.

 

Presently plans are being considered for the renovation of the monument, landscaping of the apex of the park and the re-installation of the conserved eagles and plaque.

 

The Fort Green Historic District was designated by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1978.

 

Fort Greene Historic District National Register #83001691

  

The view from inside a rickshaw on my way to Old Delhi Railway Station.

 

Another constant in my travel writing are apologetic pleas for readers to accept the fact that I am not a miserable traveler nor do I hate everyone. I just wish so fiercely to experience other people who have a genuine interest in open discourse without a constant attempt to appear superior to me or riddling me with politically minded questions about why my country is so strange to them. The US is awesome and I am always reminded of this when I inevitably hit a point, usually two weeks into my travels, where I just want some Little Caesars. I’m sure Nepalis traveling abroad throw their hands up after a couple of weeks and just want some dal bhat. We aren’t that different. While reading a book on the train the next morning I was reminded that travel is a constant yin and yang. I’m really not a huge dick, but traveling can be stressful sometimes.

 

American tendencies would block an urge to openly introducing myself to another tourist who is quietly reading. Indian travelers are not equipped with this same tendency. From around the pages of my book I noticed the body of an older Indian man sheepishly lingering within my comfort bubble. After the previous evenings one-sided conversation I was in no mood to start another discussion, but I had a feeling that this gentleman was interested in a very different style of communication. I lowered my book, moved my feet, and offered the man a seat next to me. He quickly introduced himself before asking where I had originated. He was very excited to find out that I was from the States and the conversation was on a roll. He was a pathologist specializing in agriculture and his primary concern was in commercially cultivated spices. He shared many stories of the Americans who helped to found the school where he worked, the buildings that they built, the funds that they gave, and the continuing partnership between the US and his school. He was a very interesting man but his excitement to share his stories with me was blocked by his English. Although we talked for quite a while I am sure that I only ended up with about thirty to forty percent of what he was trying to get across and he left very little space in the conversation for me in the way of probing questions.

 

Despite our conversational short fall he was very helpful in making sure that I got off at the correct station and went to the staff several times to check and recheck that my stop was coming up. Getting myself lost in India was not on my to-do list that day and what he lacked in English he more than made up for in reading body language. The train had begun to stop more frequently and he noticed my anxiety building. He assured me that I would not miss my stop and he delivered on that promise. A conversation that I had thought would result in me banging my head against the window until I fell through and onto the tracks ended in a friendly handshake and smiles. “Enjoy your time in India and good luck in Gorakhpur,” were his parting words

 

A man stands for a portrait in Jaipur, India. He was very excited to see himself and would move as soon as the shutter snapped.

 

Gorakhpur, India is like a smaller, dumpier version of Old Delhi. This is the wild west and I am was very lost and slightly terrified newcomer. Pollution and filth stick to you the moment immediately after disembarking from the station. The only difference between Gorakhpur and Delhi is that there are almost no tourists who come through this Gorakhpur so some of the English guideposts and conveniences are nonexistent. To say that my travel plans are at times chaotic does no service to the feelings that was over me when I arrive at a destination realizing that I had left myself with little in the way of a path to follow. I had prepared nothing to help me get from the station to a bus that would usher me to the promised land of Nepal. I was waiting for a Marty McFly -Back to the Future III one of the greatest movies of all time- moment to befall me, but I somehow managed to walk in the relatively correct direction and by way of hand signals, stick figure drawings and the always trusted dollar I managed to get within striking range of a bus to the border.

 

My bus was started and ready to go. I had arrived as if delivered by some grand design, but in fact it was my continual good luck that had dropped me at the door of the bus that would take me to the border. I was not on time. The bus was running late. The very new and very nice bag that was the safe keeping travel vessel of my new camera gear was stowed away in the bowels of a dirty, rusty and barely attached boot compartment at the rear of the bus with, what I could only assume were lead bricks, stacked on top. The seat that I had so graciously been given to me was at the back of the bus. India is not built for people my size. It is built for the 1.2 billion small people that live there. The standard seats on a local bus are not very comfortable. The back of the bus is reserved for the smallest, most petite of the subcontinent. Anyone approaching a standard sized human in the US would be incredibly uncomfortable back there. I got a ticket for the bench in the back. Fucking fuck.

 

This would not have been so bad if not for the woman who had purchased the seat directly in front of me and was determined to take up as much space as she could manage. She placed a wooden plank between the last two bench seats, thus closing off the bench in the back from the front of the bus. My knees became her back rest while the seats on her sides became her cup holders and it appeared to be nap time. This bitch took up every inch of space that her small body could possibly occupy. When a person is so rude that the people on a local Indian bus want to murder you have truly reached the peak of Mount Dickbag. I was in a clown bus on the way to a three ringer circus that was a grueling four hours away.

 

A holy man in Jaipur, India

 

via WordPress ift.tt/1iJVRMl

Operation “Salt City" resulted in the arrest of 248 individuals from May through September 2015. Of those arrested, 124 were active gang members. During the operation 22 firearms, more than $237,000 in U.S. currency, 70 grams of heroin, 266 grams of cocaine, and 723 grams of marijuana with a total estimated street value of almost $44,000 was taken off Syracuse streets by participating agencies.

Operation Salt City is part of the U.S. Marshals nation-wide “Triple Beam” gang reduction initiative. Triple Beam partners federal, state, and local law enforcement to reduce violent crime and take dangerous offenders off the streets. The goal of the U.S. Marshals Gang Enforcement Program is to seek out and disrupt illegal gang activity in areas of the country with smaller or nonexistent gang enforcement units by providing manpower, funding and the Marshals’ renowned fugitive tracking abilities.

 

Photo by Shane T. McCoy / US Marshals

www.child-adolescent-adult-development.info/playtime-for-...

 

Playtime for Grown Ups

 

By Calvin A. Colarusso, M.D.

Clinical Professor of Psychiatry,

University of California at San Diego

(12/07/2011)

 

Parents always tell kids to go out and play. But did you ever think that an adult, an adult and child psychiatrist no less, would tell YOU, the adult, to go out and play?

 

Well, Dr. Colarusso is doing just that. In this book he explains both the nature of play and the dynamics which make play such an essential part of human experience throughout the life cycle.

 

The message is get off that coach, get out of that rocking chair, and go and play. Adults need to play, maybe not as much as children do, but for the same reasons. Play is a way of mastering stress and trauma. It serves the same purpose for children and adults. The stresses of adulthood are in their own way more daunting than those of childhood. And we all have a need to master the traumatic overstimulation that characterizes our busy lives, to say nothing of the internal pressures that continually force us to deal with issues, relationships and experiences from the past and present.

 

Go and hit that great golf shot, watch an action movie, or see a good romance film and relive a youthful love affair. Join the Monday night football crowd. Reread Portnoy's Complaint. Take in your son's, daughter's or grandchild's soccer game. Buy some new sexual toys. They're all examples of how adults can and should play. Whatever you do, remember that play should be fun. But it's also a marvelous way to master the stresses of life. Just do it!

Playtime for Adults gives a clear understanding of the various forms of play available to adults and the reasons why play is important to mental and physical health, throughout adulthood.

 

This book includes:

An understanding of what motivates play

The role of thought and action in play

The different levels of play in childhood and adulthood

The relationships between creativity and play

The organizers of play in adulthood.

Sexual play

 

Understanding the nature of play and doing more of it will lead to a happier life.

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Calvin A. Colarusso, M.D. is a board-certified Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California at San Diego, where he served for two decades as Director of the Child Psychiatry Residency Training Program.

 

He is also a Training and Supervising Analyst in child and adult psychoanalysis at the San Diego Psychoanalytic Institute and an internationally known lecturer to students, professionals, and the general public on many aspects of normal and pathologic development.

 

His books have been published in English, Korean, and Spanish. See amzn.to/calcolarusso.

 

Amazon Review

5.0 out of 5 stars hepful and practical, great info!, December 11, 2011

By Angela Johnson - See all my reviewsThis review is from: Playtime for Grown Ups (Kindle Edition)

 

"As a mother a of three active children, this was a book that I desperately needed to read. My life has been about them and only them since my oldest was born and although I don't regret anything for even a second, I have neglected myself for quite some time. This has led to me and the hubby not really connecting and enjoying each other like we had in the past. Of course if you ask him he won't admit it, but "play-time" for us has been nonexistent in our lives."

 

"The advice in this book has been wonderful and just by reading it, I've already started to feel better and more care-free. The author has a very friendly and uplifting style of writing, and his insights and ideas on adding creativity and play-time into the adults life are both practical and realistic. His intelligent thoughts on sexual play were probably my favorite part of the book, great ideas for keeping Mom emotionally and physically balanced ; )"

 

"Great book, I can't begin to recommend it enough. My husband has already agreed to read it too, I got him very interested with some of the ideas I told him about."

"Auto Museum Volkswagen - Germany - Wolfsburg"

_______________________________________

 

The Ford Model T (colloquially known as the Tin Lizzie, T‑Model Ford, Model T, T, Leaping Lena, or flivver) is an automobile that was produced by Ford Motor Company from October 1, 1908, to May 26, 1927. It is generally regarded as the first affordable automobile, the car that opened travel to the common middle-class American; some of this was because of Ford's efficient fabrication, including assembly line production instead of individual hand crafting.

 

The Ford Model T was named the most influential car of the 20th century in the 1999 Car of the Century competition, ahead of the BMC Mini, Citroën DS, and Volkswagen Type 1. With 16.5 million sold it stands eighth on the top ten list of most sold cars of all time as of 2012.

 

Although automobiles had already existed for decades, they were still mostly scarce and expensive at the Model T's introduction in 1908. Positioned as reliable, easily maintained mass market transportation, it was a runaway success. In a matter of days after the release, 15,000 orders were placed. The first production Model T was produced on August 12, 1908 and left the factory on September 27, 1908, at the Ford Piquette Avenue Plant in Detroit, Michigan. On May 26, 1927, Henry Ford watched the 15 millionth Model T Ford roll off the assembly line at his factory in Highland Park, Michigan.

 

There were several cars produced or prototyped by Henry Ford from the founding of the company in 1903 until the Model T was introduced. Although he started with the Model A, there were not 19 production models (A through T); some were only prototypes. The production model immediately before the Model T was the Model S, an upgraded version of the company's largest success to that point, the Model N. The follow-up was the Ford Model A (rather than any Model U). The company publicity said this was because the new car was such a departure from the old that Henry wanted to start all over again with the letter A.

 

The Model T was Ford's first automobile mass-produced on moving assembly lines with completely interchangeable parts, marketed to the middle class. Henry Ford said of the vehicle:

 

I will build a car for the great multitude. It will be large enough for the family, but small enough for the individual to run and care for. It will be constructed of the best materials, by the best men to be hired, after the simplest designs that modern engineering can devise. But it will be so low in price that no man making a good salary will be unable to own one – and enjoy with his family the blessing of hours of pleasure in God's great open spaces.

 

Although credit for the development of the assembly line belongs to Ransom E. Olds with the first mass-produced automobile, the Oldsmobile Curved Dash, beginning in 1901, the tremendous advancements in the efficiency of the system over the life of the Model T can be credited almost entirely to the vision of Ford and his engineers.

 

CHARACTERISTICS

The Model T was designed by Childe Harold Wills, and Hungarian immigrants Joseph A. Galamb and Eugene Farkas. Henry Love, C. J. Smith, Gus Degner and Peter E. Martin were also part of the team. Production of the Model T began in the third quarter of 1908. Collectors today sometimes classify Model Ts by build years and refer to these as "model years", thus labeling the first Model Ts as 1909 models. This is a retroactive classification scheme; the concept of model years as we conceive it today did not exist at the time. The nominal model designation was "Model T", although design revisions did occur during the car's two decades of production.

 

ENGINE

The Model T had a front-mounted 2.9 L inline four-cylinder engine, producing 20 hp (15 kW), for a top speed of 64–72 km/h. According to Ford Motor Company, the Model T had fuel economy on the order of 13–21 mpg-US (16–25 mpg-imp; 18–11 L/100 km). The engine was capable of running on gasoline, kerosene, or ethanol, although the decreasing cost of gasoline and the later introduction of Prohibition made ethanol an impractical fuel for most users.

 

The ignition system used an unusual trembler coil system to drive the spark plugs, as used for stationary gas engines, rather than the expensive magnetos that were used on other cars. This ignition also made the Model T more flexible as to the quality or type of fuel it used. The need for a starting battery and also Ford's use of an unusual AC alternator located inside the flywheel housing encouraged the adoption of electric lighting (standard fitment as of 1915), rather than oil or acetylene lamps, but it also delayed the adoption of electric starting, which was not offered until 1919.

 

TRANSMISSION AND DRIVE TRAIN

The Model T was a rear-wheel drive vehicle. Its transmission was a planetary gear type billed as "three speed". In today's terms it would be considered a two-speed, because one of the three speeds was reverse.

 

The Model T's transmission was controlled with three foot pedals and a lever that was mounted to the road side of the driver's seat. The throttle was controlled with a lever on the steering wheel. The left pedal was used to engage the gear. With the floor lever in either the mid position or fully forward and the pedal pressed and held forward the car entered low gear. When held in an intermediate position the car was in neutral. If the left pedal was released, the Model T entered high gear, but only when the lever was fully forward – in any other position the pedal would only move up as far as the central neutral position. This allowed the car to be held in neutral while the driver cranked the engine by hand. The car could thus cruise without the driver having to press any of the pedals. There was no separate clutch pedal.

 

When the car was in neutral, the middle pedal was used to engage reverse gear, and the right pedal operated the transmission brake – there were no separate brakes on the wheels. The floor lever also controlled the parking brake, which was activated by pulling the lever all the way back. This doubled as an emergency brake.

 

Although it was uncommon, the drive bands could fall out of adjustment, allowing the car to creep, particularly when cold, adding another hazard to attempting to start the car: a person cranking the engine could be forced backward while still holding the crank as the car crept forward, although it was nominally in neutral. As the car utilized a wet clutch, this condition could also occur in cold weather, when the thickened oil prevents the clutch discs from slipping freely. Power reached the differential through a single universal joint attached to a torque tube which drove the rear axle; some models (typically trucks, but available for cars as well) could be equipped with an optional two-speed Ruckstell rear axle shifted by a floor-mounted lever which provided an underdrive gear for easier hill climbing. All gears were vanadium steel running in an oil bath.

Transmission bands and linings

 

Two main types of band lining material were used:

 

Cotton – Cotton woven linings were the original type fitted and specified by Ford. Generally, the cotton lining is "kinder" to the drum surface, with damage to the drum caused only by the retaining rivets scoring the drum surface. Although this in itself did not pose a problem, a dragging band resulting from improper adjustment caused overheating transmission and engine, diminished power, and – in the case of cotton linings – rapid destruction of the band lining.

Wood – Wooden linings were originally offered as a "longer life" accessory part during the life of the Model T. They were a single piece of steam bent cottonwood[citation needed] fitted to the normal Model T transmission band. These bands give a very different feel to the pedals, with much more of a "bite" feel. The sensation is of a definite "grip" of the drum and seemed to noticeably increase the feel, in particular of the brake drum.

 

SUSPENSION AND WHEELS

Model T suspension employed a transversely mounted semi-elliptical spring for each of the front and rear beam axles which allowed a great deal of wheel movement to cope with the dirt roads of the time.

 

The front axle was drop forged as a single piece of vanadium steel. Ford twisted many axles through eight full rotations (2880 degrees) and sent them to dealers to be put on display to demonstrate its superiority. The Model T did not have a modern service brake. The right foot pedal applied a band around a drum in the transmission, thus stopping the rear wheels from turning. The previously mentioned parking brake lever operated band brakes acting on the inside of the rear brake drums, which were an integral part of the rear wheel hubs. Optional brakes that acted on the outside of the brake drums were available from aftermarket suppliers.

 

Wheels were wooden artillery wheels, with steel welded-spoke wheels available in 1926 and 1927.

 

Tires were pneumatic clincher type, 76 cm in diameter, 8.9 cm wide in the rear, 7.5 cm wide in the front. Clinchers needed much higher pressure than today's tires, typically 60 psi (410 kPa), to prevent them from leaving the rim at speed. Horseshoe nails on the roads, together with the high pressure, made flat tires a common problem.

 

Balloon tires became available in 1925. They were 53 cm × 11 cm all around. Balloon tires were closer in design to today's tires, with steel wires reinforcing the tire bead, making lower pressure possible – typically 35 psi (240 kPa) – giving a softer ride. The old nomenclature for tire size changed from measuring the outer diameter to measuring the rim diameter so 530 mm (rim diameter) × 110 mm (tire width) wheels has about the same outer diameter as 76 cm clincher tires. All tires in this time period used an inner tube to hold the pressurized air; "tubeless" tires were not generally in use until much later.

 

Wheelbase was 254 cm and standard tread width was 142 cm; 152 cm tread could be obtained on special order, "for Southern roads", identical to the pre-Civil War track gauge for many railroads in the former Confederacy.

 

COLORS

By 1918, half of all the cars in the US were Model Ts. However, it was a monolithic bloc; Ford wrote in his autobiography that in 1909 he told his management team that in the future “Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black”.

 

However, in the first years of production from 1908 to 1913, the Model T was not available in black but rather only gray, green, blue, and red. Green was available for the touring cars, town cars, coupes, and Landaulets. Gray was only available for the town cars, and red only for the touring cars. By 1912, all cars were being painted midnight blue with black fenders. It was only in 1914 that the "any color so long as it is black" policy was finally implemented. It is often stated that Ford suggested the use of black from 1914 to 1926 due to the cheap cost and durability of black paint. During the lifetime production of the Model T, over 30 types of black paint were used on various parts of the car. These were formulated to satisfy the different means of applying the paint to the various parts, and had distinct drying times, depending on the part, paint, and method of drying.

 

BODY

Although Ford classified the Model T with a single letter designation throughout its entire life and made no distinction by model years, there were enough significant changes to the body over the production life that the car can be classified into five distinct generations. Among the most immediately visible and identifiable changes were in the hood and cowl areas, although many other modifications were made to the vehicle.

 

1909–1914 – T1 – Characterized by a nearly straight, five-sided hood, with a flat top containing a center hinge and two side sloping sections containing the folding hinges. The firewall was flat from the windshield down with no distinct cowl.

1915–1916 – T2 – The hood design was nearly the same five sided design with the only obvious change being the addition of louvers to the vertical sides. There was a significant change to the cowl area with the windshield relocated significantly behind the firewall and joined with a compound contoured cowl panel.

1917–1923 – T3 – The hood design was changed to a tapered design with a curved top. the folding hinges were now located at the joint between the flat sides and the curved top. This is sometime referred to as the low hood to distinguish if from the later hoods. The back edge of the hood now met the front edge of the cowl panel so that no part of the flat firewall was visible outside of the hood. This design was used the longest and during the highest production years accounting for about half of the total number of Model T's built.

1923–1925 – T4 – This change was made during the 1923 calendar year so models built earlier in the year have the older design while later vehicles have the newer design. The taper of the hood was increased and the rear section at the firewall is about an inch taller and several inches wider than the previous design. While this is a relatively minor change, the parts between the third and fourth generation are not interchangeable.

1926–1927 – T5 – This design change made the greatest difference in the appearance of the car. The hood was again enlarged with the cowl panel no longer a compound curve and blended much more with the line of the hood. The distance between the firewall and the windshield was also increased significantly. This style is sometimes referred to as the high hood.

 

The styling on the fifth generation was a preview for the following Model A but the two models are visually quite different as the body on the A was much wider and had curved doors as opposed to the flat doors on the T.

 

DIVERSE APPLICATIONS

When the Model T was designed and introduced, the infrastructure of the world was quite different from today's. Pavement was a rarity except for sidewalks and a few big-city streets. (The sense of the term "pavement" as equivalent with "sidewalk" comes from that era, when streets and roads were generally dirt and sidewalks were a paved way to walk along them.) Agriculture was the occupation of many people. Power tools were scarce outside factories, as were power sources for them; electrification, like pavement, was found usually only in larger towns. Rural electrification and motorized mechanization were embryonic in some regions and nonexistent in most. Henry Ford oversaw the requirements and design of the Model T based on contemporary realities. Consequently, the Model T was (intentionally) almost as much a tractor and portable engine as it was an automobile. It has always been well regarded for its all-terrain abilities and ruggedness. It could travel a rocky, muddy farm lane, cross a shallow stream, climb a steep hill, and be parked on the other side to have one of its wheels removed and a pulley fastened to the hub for a flat belt to drive a bucksaw, thresher, silo blower, conveyor for filling corn cribs or haylofts, baler, water pump, electrical generator, and many other applications. One unique application of the Model T was shown in the October 1922 issue of Fordson Farmer magazine. It showed a minister who had transformed his Model T into a mobile church, complete with small organ.

 

During this era, entire automobiles (including thousands of Model Ts) were even hacked apart by their owners and reconfigured into custom machinery permanently dedicated to a purpose, such as homemade tractors and ice saws,. Dozens of aftermarket companies sold prefab kits to facilitate the T's conversion from car to tractor. The Model T had been around for a decade before the Fordson tractor became available (1917–18), and many Ts had been converted for field use. (For example, Harry Ferguson, later famous for his hitches and tractors, worked on Eros Model T tractor conversions before he worked with Fordsons and others.) During the next decade, Model T tractor conversion kits were harder to sell, as the Fordson and then the Farmall (1924), as well as other light and affordable tractors, served the farm market. But during the Depression (1930s), Model T tractor conversion kits had a resurgence, because by then used Model Ts and junkyard parts for them were plentiful and cheap.

 

Like many popular car engines of the era, the Model T engine was also used on home-built aircraft (such as the Pietenpol Sky Scout) and motorboats.

 

An armored car variant (called the FT-B) was developed in Poland in 1920.

 

Many Model Ts were converted into vehicles which could travel across heavy snows with kits on the rear wheels (sometimes with an extra pair of rear-mounted wheels and two sets of continuous track to mount on the now-tandemed rear wheels, essentially making it a half-track) and skis replacing the front wheels. They were popular for rural mail delivery for a time. The common name for these conversions of cars and small trucks was "snowflyers". These vehicles were extremely popular in the northern reaches of Canada where factories were set up to produce them.

 

A number of companies built Model T–based railcars. In The Great Railway Bazaar, Paul Theroux mentions a rail journey in India on such a railcar. The New Zealand Railways Department's RM class included a few.

 

PRODUCTION

MASS PRODUCTION

The knowledge and skills needed by a factory worker were reduced to 84 areas. When introduced, the T used the building methods typical at the time, assembly by hand, and production was small. The Ford Piquette Avenue Plant could not keep up with demand for the Model T, and only 11 cars were built there during the first full month of production. More and more machines were used to reduce the complexity within the 84 defined areas. In 1910, after assembling nearly 12,000 Model Ts, Henry Ford moved the company to the new Highland Park complex.

 

As a result, Ford's cars came off the line in three-minute intervals, much faster than previous methods, reducing production time by a factor of eight (requiring 12.5 hours before, 93 minutes afterwards), while using less manpower. By 1914, the assembly process for the Model T had been so streamlined it took only 93 minutes to assemble a car. That year Ford produced more cars than all other automakers combined. The Model T was a great commercial success, and by the time Henry made his 10 millionth car, 50 percent of all cars in the world were Fords. It was so successful that Ford did not purchase any advertising between 1917 and 1923, instead it became so famous that people now considered it a norm; more than 15 million Model Ts were manufactured, reaching a rate of 9,000 to 10,000 cars a day in 1925, or 2 million annually, more than any other model of its day, at a price of just $260 (or about $3,240 in 2016 dollars). Model T production was finally surpassed by the Volkswagen Beetle on February 17, 1972.

 

Henry Ford's ideological approach to Model T design was one of getting it right and then keeping it the same; he believed the Model T was all the car a person would, or could, ever need. As other companies offered comfort and styling advantages, at competitive prices, the Model T lost market share. Design changes were not as few as the public perceived, but the idea of an unchanging model was kept intact. Eventually, on May 26, 1927, Ford Motor Company ceased US production and began the changeovers required to produce the Model A. Some of the other Model T factories in the world continued a short while.

 

Model T engines continued to be produced until August 4, 1941. Almost 170,000 were built after car production stopped, as replacement engines were required to service already produced vehicles. Racers and enthusiasts, forerunners of modern hot rodders, used the Model T's block to build popular and cheap racing engines, including Cragar, Navarro, and famously the Frontenacs ("Fronty Fords") of the Chevrolet brothers, among many others.

 

The Model T employed some advanced technology, for example, its use of vanadium steel alloy. Its durability was phenomenal, and many Model Ts and their parts remain in running order nearly a century later. Although Henry Ford resisted some kinds of change, he always championed the advancement of materials engineering, and often mechanical engineering and industrial engineering.

 

In 2002, Ford built a final batch of six Model Ts as part of their 2003 centenary celebrations. These cars were assembled from remaining new components and other parts produced from the original drawings. The last of the six was used for publicity purposes in the UK.

 

Although Ford no longer manufactures parts for the Model T, many parts are still manufactured through private companies as replicas to service the thousands of Model Ts still in operation today. On May 26, 1927 Henry Ford and his son Edsel, drove the 15 millionth Model T out of the factory. This marked the famous automobile's official last day of production at the main factory.

 

PRICE AND PRODUCTION

The assembly line system allowed Ford to sell his cars at a price lower than his competitors due to the efficiency of the system. As he continued to fine-tune the system, he was able to keep reducing his costs. As his volume increased, he was able to also lower the prices due to fixed costs being spread over a larger number of vehicles. Other factors affected the price such as material costs and design changes.

 

The figures below are US production numbers compiled by R.E. Houston, Ford Production Department, August 3, 1927. The figures between 1909 and 1920 are for Ford's fiscal year. From 1909 to 1913, the fiscal year was from October 1 to September 30 the following calendar year with the year number being the year it ended in. For the 1914 fiscal year, the year was October 1, 1913 through July 31, 1914. Starting in August 1914, and through the end of the Model T era, the fiscal year was August 1 through July 31. Beginning with January 1920 the figures are for the calendar year.

 

RECYCLING

Henry Ford used wood scraps from the production of Model Ts to make charcoal. Originally named Ford Charcoal, the name was changed to Kingsford Charcoal after Ford's brother-in-law E. G. Kingsford brokered the selection of the new charcoal plant site. Lumber for production of the Model T came from the same location, built in 1920 called the Ford Iron Mountain Plant, which incorporated a sawmill where lumber from Ford purchased land in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan was sent to the River Rouge Plant; scrap wood was then returned for charcoal production.

 

FIRST GLOBAL CAR

The Ford Model T was the first automobile built by various countries simultaneously since they were being produced in Walkerville, Canada and in Trafford Park, Greater Manchester, England starting in 1911 and were later assembled in Germany, Argentina, France, Spain, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Brazil, Mexico, and Japan, as well as several locations throughout the US. Ford made use of the knock-down kit concept almost from the beginning of the company as freight and production costs from Detroit had Ford assembling vehicles in major metropolitan centers of the US.

 

The Aeroford was an English automobile manufactured in Bayswater, London, from 1920 to 1925. It was a Model T with distinct hood and grille to make it appear to be a totally different design, what later would have been called badge engineering. The Aeroford sold from £288 in 1920, dropping to £168-214 by 1925. It was available as a two-seater, four-seater, or coupé.

 

ADVERTISING AND MARKETING

Ford created a massive publicity machine in Detroit to ensure every newspaper carried stories and advertisements about the new product. Ford's network of local dealers made the car ubiquitous in virtually every city in North America. As independent dealers, the franchises grew rich and publicized not just the Ford but the very concept of automobiling; local motor clubs sprang up to help new drivers and to explore the countryside. Ford was always eager to sell to farmers, who looked on the vehicle as a commercial device to help their business. Sales skyrocketed – several years posted around 100 percent gains on the previous year.

 

CAR CLUBS

Cars built before 1919 are classed as veteran cars and later models as vintage cars. Today, four main clubs exist to support the preservation and restoration of these cars: the Model T Ford Club International, the Model T Ford Club of America[51] and the combined clubs of Australia. With many chapters of clubs around the world, the Model T Ford Club of Victoria[52] has a membership with a considerable number of uniquely Australian cars. (Australia produced its own car bodies, and therefore many differences occurred between the Australian bodied tourers and the US/Canadian cars.) In the UK, the Model T Ford Register of Great Britain celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2010. Many steel Model T parts are still manufactured today, and even fiberglass replicas of their distinctive bodies are produced, which are popular for T-bucket style hot rods (as immortalized in the Jan and Dean surf music song "Bucket T", which was later recorded by The Who). In 1949, more than twenty years after the end of production, 200,000 Model Ts were registered in the United States. In 2008, it was estimated that about 50,000 to 60,000 Ford Model Ts remain roadworthy.

 

WIKIPEDIA

Created with Leonardo AI

 

16:9 image of a silent alien plateau where massive flower-like structures grow directly out of empty space rather than ground. Each bloom anchors to nothing, connected by faint spatial distortions. Foreground blooms show petal-like geometry made of matte-black material edged with faint gold light. Midground structures overlap at impossible angles. Background dissolves into pure void with no stars. Lighting is minimal, coming only from the bloom edges, sculpting form through absence. Atmosphere is nonexistent. Mood: sacred emptiness.

 

[Please Note : There are 5 images in this set so if seeing this in some group please go to my Flickr page to see the other 4 images, thanks.]

 

Pic and Prompt by Adrian

Public domain image from United States Dept. of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service.

 

A bowl of berries is a treat for the eye as well as a delight for the palate. But these tasty little morsels happen to be quite tricky to grow, harvest, and handle. These crops tend to have brief growing seasons and are vulnerable to insects, disease, and even birds, so ARS scientists have given them lots of attention.

 

Take strawberries. In the 1950's, ARS actually saved the strawberry industry in the Great Lakes region when we released the first varieties that could survive red stele, a root-rotting fungus. We're also old hands at strawberry breeding. ARS came up with such June-bearing favorites as Earliglow, a sweet and juicy berry with a wonderful flavor. We've also bred berries that bear fruit from spring until well into the fall like Tribute and Tristar, which have brought new market opportunities to Northwest strawberry growers.

 

Fifteen years ago, blueberries were practically nonexistent in the Gulf States. But our early-ripening varieties have extended highbush blueberry culture to the Deep South. Today, over 10,000 acres are grown in Dixie, with more than 4,000 acres thriving throughout Texas, Louisiana, and Alabama.

 

In the Pacific Northwest, where most of our red raspberries are grown, Willamette, a 1943 release, still accounts for 40 percent of the red raspberry acreage.

 

And, when USDA blackberry breeders introduced the first truly genetic thornless blackberries, Thornfree and Smoothstem, they caused a small roadside revolution. The new varieties were just what some growers needed to establish pick-your-own operations.

 

Photo by Scott Bauer.

The work of slaves in the fields of the huge Manaca-Iznaga sugar plantation was surveilled from this famous 44 m. high watchtower, and a bell that hung at the top would summon them. Built in the 1830s, it's now a symbol of class and racial oppression, and the gift shop in the estate house beside it (this taken from the patio) sells wooden figurines of slaves with a machete in one hand, shirtless & shoeless, ball and chain tied to one ankle, looking up wide-eyed (at the tower) with fearful or woeful expressions on their faces.

- "On the vast sugar estates, the kind of personal relationships /b/ master and slaves found in the towns, cities, and the more intimate tobacco and coffee plantations were nonexistent. Where before, in the 17th and 18th cent.s, slaves had lived in collections of small huts and had been allowed to work their own small plots, now they were crowded into barrack bldg.s and all available land was turned over to sugar cane. Floggings, beatings, and the use of stocks were common as punishment for minor insubordinations and as incentive to work harder. In the harvest season slaves could be made to work for 18 hr.s of every day for months at a time." (Rough Guide)

- This tower also represented the power of the estate owner Alejo (or Pedro) Iznaga (who made a great fortune in the slave trade) both over his slaves and within the sugar producing industry; at one time the tower was the tallest structure in Cuba. (Wikipedia) Founded in 1750, the estate was purchased by Iznaga in 1795.

- A mansion in the town of Trinidad, now a museum, was owned by "a German planter named Kanter or Cantero. Reputedly Dr. Justo Cantero acquired vast sugar estates by poisoning an old slave trader, Pedro Iznaga, and marrying his widow (who also suffered an untimely death)." (LP) What goes around comes around.

colinhuggins.bandcamp.com/track/philip-glass-im-going-to-...

 

© branko

www.a2b1.com

youtube channel: www.youtube.com/a2b1

 

NY Times, Dec. 4 2011

Colin Huggins was there with his baby grand, the one he wheels into Washington Square Park for his al fresco concerts. So were Tic and Tac, a street-performing duo, who held court in the fountain — dry for the winter. And Joe Mangrum was pouring his elaborate sand paintings on the ground near the Washington Arch.

 

Follow @NYTMetro

Connect with @NYTMetro on Twitter for New York breaking news and headlines.

Enlarge This Image

 

Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times

Kareem Barnes of Tic and Tac collected donations on Sunday.

Enlarge This Image

 

Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times

Joe Mangrum showed his sand paintings on Sunday.

In other words, it was a typical Sunday afternoon in the Greenwich Village park, where generations of visitors have mingled with musicians, artists, activists, poets and buskers.

 

Yet this fall, that urban harmony has grown dissonant as the city’s parks department has slapped summonses on the four men and other performers who put out hats or buckets, for vending in an unauthorized location — specifically, within 50 feet of a monument.

 

The department’s rule, one of many put in place a year ago, was intended to control commerce in the busiest parks. Under the city’s definition, vending covers not only those peddling photographs and ankle bracelets, but also performers who solicit donations.

 

The rule attracted little notice at first. But the enforcement in Washington Square Park in the past two months has generated summonses ranging from $250 to $1,000. And it has started a debate about the rights of parkgoers seeking refuge from the bustle of the streets versus those looking for entertainment.

 

At a news conference in the park on Sunday organized by NYC Park Advocates, the artists waved fistfuls of pink summonses while their advocates, including civil rights lawyers, called on the city to stop what they called harassment of the performers.

 

“This is a heavy-handed solution to a nonexistent problem,” said Ronald L. Kuby, one of the lawyers.

 

The rule is especially problematic in Washington Square Park, performers say, because there are few locations across its 10 acres that are beyond 50 feet from a memorial or fountain — whether the bust of Alexander Lyman Holley, who introduced the Bessemer steel process to this country, or the statue of the Italian liberator Giuseppe Garibaldi.

 

Then there is the park’s international reputation as a gathering place for folk music pioneers and the Beats.

 

“Washington Square is the live-music park of New York City, and it would be close to impossible for any one of us to follow these regulations,” said Mr. Huggins, who has received nine summonses with fines totaling $2,250.

 

But Adrian Benepe, the parks commissioner, argues that there is ample room for performers away from the monuments. And, he added, a musician who is not putting out a tin cup is welcome to sit on the edge of the fountain or under a monument.

 

“It’s the whole issue of the ‘tragedy of the commons,’ ” he said. “If you allow all the performers and all the vendors to do whatever they want to do, pretty soon there’s no park left for people who want to use them for quiet enjoyment. This is a way of having some control and not 18 hours of carnival-like atmosphere.”

 

Gary Behrens, an amateur photographer visiting from New Jersey, applauded the city’s efforts to rein in the performers. “I’m O.K. with the guitar, but the loud instruments have taken over the park,” he said.

 

The lawyers and advocates, however, challenged the idea that street performers were selling a product as a vendor does. And threatening a lawsuit, they faulted the city for creating what they called “First Amendment zones” through the rules.

 

“Is this place zany?” asked Norman Siegel, the former director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. “You bet. Public parks are quintessential public forums. Zaniness is something we should cherish and protect.”

 

Park visitation has soared along with the rise of tourism in the last 15 years, and with it vendors and artists interested in a lucrative market.

 

Mr. Benepe insisted that the rules would not scare off future music legends.

 

“If Bob Dylan wanted to come play there tomorrow, he could,” he said, “although he might have to move away from the fountain.”

 

Oddly, the dispute coincided with the 50th anniversary of the so-called Folk Riot in Washington Square Park, when the parks commissioner tried to squelch Sunday folk performances. Hundreds of musicians gathered in protest, the police were called in and a melee ensued.

 

In April, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg wrote a letter commemorating the Folk Riot, saying he applauded “the folk performers who changed music, our city and our world beginning half a century ago.”

For the end result, see www.flickr.com/photos/31322479@N04/17492077660/in/datepos...

Snakes are elongated, limbless, carnivorous reptiles of the suborder Serpentes Like all other squamates, snakes are ectothermic, amniote vertebrates covered in overlapping scales. Many species of snakes have skulls with several more joints than their lizard ancestors, enabling them to swallow prey much larger than their heads (cranial kinesis). To accommodate their narrow bodies, snakes' paired organs (such as kidneys) appear one in front of the other instead of side by side, and most have only one functional lung. Some species retain a pelvic girdle with a pair of vestigial claws on either side of the cloaca. Lizards have independently evolved elongate bodies without limbs or with greatly reduced limbs at least twenty-five times via convergent evolution, leading to many lineages of legless lizards. These resemble snakes, but several common groups of legless lizards have eyelids and external ears, which snakes lack, although this rule is not universal (see Amphisbaenia, Dibamidae, and Pygopodidae).

 

Living snakes are found on every continent except Antarctica, and on most smaller land masses; exceptions include some large islands, such as Ireland, Iceland, Greenland, the Hawaiian archipelago, and the islands of New Zealand, as well as many small islands of the Atlantic and central Pacific oceans. Additionally, sea snakes are widespread throughout the Indian and Pacific oceans. Around thirty families are currently recognized, comprising about 520 genera and about 3,900 species. They range in size from the tiny, 10.4 cm-long (4.1 in) Barbados threadsnake to the reticulated python of 6.95 meters (22.8 ft) in length. The fossil species Titanoboa cerrejonensis was 12.8 meters (42 ft) long. Snakes are thought to have evolved from either burrowing or aquatic lizards, perhaps during the Jurassic period, with the earliest known fossils dating to between 143 and 167 Ma ago. The diversity of modern snakes appeared during the Paleocene epoch (c. 66 to 56 Ma ago, after the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event). The oldest preserved descriptions of snakes can be found in the Brooklyn Papyrus.

 

Most species of snake are nonvenomous and those that have venom use it primarily to kill and subdue prey rather than for self-defense. Some possess venom that is potent enough to cause painful injury or death to humans. Nonvenomous snakes either swallow prey alive or kill by constriction.

 

Etymology

The English word snake comes from Old English snaca, itself from Proto-Germanic *snak-an- (cf. Germanic Schnake 'ring snake', Swedish snok 'grass snake'), from Proto-Indo-European root *(s)nēg-o- 'to crawl to creep', which also gave sneak as well as Sanskrit nāgá 'snake'. The word ousted adder, as adder went on to narrow in meaning, though in Old English næddre was the general word for snake. The other term, serpent, is from French, ultimately from Indo-European *serp- 'to creep', which also gave Ancient Greek ἕρπω (hérpō) 'I crawl' and Sanskrit sarpá ‘snake’.

 

The fossil record of snakes is relatively poor because snake skeletons are typically small and fragile making fossilization uncommon. Fossils readily identifiable as snakes (though often retaining hind limbs) first appear in the fossil record during the Cretaceous period. The earliest known true snake fossils (members of the crown group Serpentes) come from the marine simoliophiids, the oldest of which is the Late Cretaceous (Cenomanian age) Haasiophis terrasanctus from the West Bank, dated to between 112 and 94 million years old.

 

Based on comparative anatomy, there is consensus that snakes descended from lizards. Pythons and boas—primitive groups among modern snakes—have vestigial hind limbs: tiny, clawed digits known as anal spurs, which are used to grasp during mating The families Leptotyphlopidae and Typhlopidae also possess remnants of the pelvic girdle, appearing as horny projections when visible.

 

Front limbs are nonexistent in all known snakes. This is caused by the evolution of their Hox genes, controlling limb morphogenesis. The axial skeleton of the snakes' common ancestor, like most other tetrapods, had regional specializations consisting of cervical (neck), thoracic (chest), lumbar (lower back), sacral (pelvic), and caudal (tail) vertebrae. Early in snake evolution, the Hox gene expression in the axial skeleton responsible for the development of the thorax became dominant. As a result, the vertebrae anterior to the hindlimb buds (when present) all have the same thoracic-like identity (except from the atlas, axis, and 1–3 neck vertebrae). In other words, most of a snake's skeleton is an extremely extended thorax. Ribs are found exclusively on the thoracic vertebrae. Neck, lumbar and pelvic vertebrae are very reduced in number (only 2–10 lumbar and pelvic vertebrae are present), while only a short tail remains of the caudal vertebrae. However, the tail is still long enough to be of important use in many species, and is modified in some aquatic and tree-dwelling species.

 

Many modern snake groups originated during the Paleocene, alongside the adaptive radiation of mammals following the extinction of (non-avian) dinosaurs. The expansion of grasslands in North America also led to an explosive radiation among snakes. Previously, snakes were a minor component of the North American fauna, but during the Miocene, the number of species and their prevalence increased dramatically with the first appearances of vipers and elapids in North America and the significant diversification of Colubridae (including the origin of many modern genera such as Nerodia, Lampropeltis, Pituophis, and Pantherophis).

 

Fossils

There is fossil evidence to suggest that snakes may have evolved from burrowing lizards, during the Cretaceous Period. An early fossil snake relative, Najash rionegrina, was a two-legged burrowing animal with a sacrum, and was fully terrestrial. One extant analog of these putative ancestors is the earless monitor Lanthanotus of Borneo (though it also is semiaquatic). Subterranean species evolved bodies streamlined for burrowing, and eventually lost their limbs. According to this hypothesis, features such as the transparent, fused eyelids (brille) and loss of external ears evolved to cope with fossorial difficulties, such as scratched corneas and dirt in the ears. Some primitive snakes are known to have possessed hindlimbs, but their pelvic bones lacked a direct connection to the vertebrae. These include fossil species like Haasiophis, Pachyrhachis and Eupodophis, which are slightly older than Najash.

 

This hypothesis was strengthened in 2015 by the discovery of a 113-million-year-old fossil of a four-legged snake in Brazil that has been named Tetrapodophis amplectus. It has many snake-like features, is adapted for burrowing and its stomach indicates that it was preying on other animals. It is currently uncertain if Tetrapodophis is a snake or another species, in the squamate order, as a snake-like body has independently evolved at least 26 times. Tetrapodophis does not have distinctive snake features in its spine and skull. A study in 2021 places the animal in a group of extinct marine lizards from the Cretaceous period known as dolichosaurs and not directly related to snakes.

 

An alternative hypothesis, based on morphology, suggests the ancestors of snakes were related to mosasaurs—extinct aquatic reptiles from the Cretaceous—forming the clade Pythonomorpha. According to this hypothesis, the fused, transparent eyelids of snakes are thought to have evolved to combat marine conditions (corneal water loss through osmosis), and the external ears were lost through disuse in an aquatic environment. This ultimately led to an animal similar to today's sea snakes. In the Late Cretaceous, snakes recolonized land, and continued to diversify into today's snakes. Fossilized snake remains are known from early Late Cretaceous marine sediments, which is consistent with this hypothesis; particularly so, as they are older than the terrestrial Najash rionegrina. Similar skull structure, reduced or absent limbs, and other anatomical features found in both mosasaurs and snakes lead to a positive cladistical correlation, although some of these features are shared with varanids.

 

Genetic studies in recent years have indicated snakes are not as closely related to monitor lizards as was once believed—and therefore not to mosasaurs, the proposed ancestor in the aquatic scenario of their evolution. However, more evidence links mosasaurs to snakes than to varanids. Fragmented remains found from the Jurassic and Early Cretaceous indicate deeper fossil records for these groups, which may potentially refute either hypothesis.

 

Genetic basis of snake evolution

Main article: Limb development

Both fossils and phylogenetic studies demonstrate that snakes evolved from lizards, hence the question became which genetic changes led to limb loss in the snake ancestor. Limb loss is actually very common in extant reptiles and has happened dozens of times within skinks, anguids, and other lizards.

 

In 2016, two studies reported that limb loss in snakes is associated with DNA mutations in the Zone of Polarizing Activity Regulatory Sequence (ZRS), a regulatory region of the sonic hedgehog gene which is critically required for limb development. More advanced snakes have no remnants of limbs, but basal snakes such as pythons and boas do have traces of highly reduced, vestigial hind limbs. Python embryos even have fully developed hind limb buds, but their later development is stopped by the DNA mutations in the ZRS.

 

Distribution

There are about 3,900 species of snakes, ranging as far northward as the Arctic Circle in Scandinavia and southward through Australia. Snakes can be found on every continent except Antarctica, as well as in the sea, and as high as 16,000 feet (4,900 m) in the Himalayan Mountains of Asia. There are numerous islands from which snakes are absent, such as Ireland, Iceland, and New Zealand (although New Zealand's northern waters are infrequently visited by the yellow-bellied sea snake and the banded sea krait).

 

Taxonomy

All modern snakes are grouped within the suborder Serpentes in Linnean taxonomy, part of the order Squamata, though their precise placement within squamates remains controversial.

 

The two infraorders of Serpentes are Alethinophidia and Scolecophidia. This separation is based on morphological characteristics and mitochondrial DNA sequence similarity. Alethinophidia is sometimes split into Henophidia and Caenophidia, with the latter consisting of "colubroid" snakes (colubrids, vipers, elapids, hydrophiids, and atractaspids) and acrochordids, while the other alethinophidian families comprise Henophidia. While not extant today, the Madtsoiidae, a family of giant, primitive, python-like snakes, was around until 50,000 years ago in Australia, represented by genera such as Wonambi.

 

There are numerous debates in the systematics within the group. For instance, many sources classify Boidae and Pythonidae as one family, while some keep the Elapidae and Hydrophiidae (sea snakes) separate for practical reasons despite their extremely close relation.

 

Recent molecular studies support the monophyly of the clades of modern snakes, scolecophidians, typhlopids + anomalepidids, alethinophidians, core alethinophidians, uropeltids (Cylindrophis, Anomochilus, uropeltines), macrostomatans, booids, boids, pythonids and caenophidians.

 

Legless lizards

Main article: Legless lizard

While snakes are limbless reptiles, evolved from (and grouped with) lizards, there are many other species of lizards that have lost their limbs independently but which superficially look similar to snakes. These include the slowworm and glass snake.

 

Other serpentine tetrapods that are unrelated to snakes include caecilians (amphibians), amphisbaenians (near-lizard squamates), and the extinct aistopods (amphibians).

 

Biology

The now extinct Titanoboa cerrejonensis was 12.8 m (42 ft) in length. By comparison, the largest extant snakes are the reticulated python, measuring about 6.95 m (22.8 ft) long, and the green anaconda, which measures about 5.21 m (17.1 ft) long and is considered the heaviest snake on Earth at 97.5 kg (215 lb).

 

At the other end of the scale, the smallest extant snake is Leptotyphlops carlae, with a length of about 10.4 cm (4.1 in). Most snakes are fairly small animals, approximately 1 m (3.3 ft) in length.

 

Perception

Pit vipers, pythons, and some boas have infrared-sensitive receptors in deep grooves on the snout, allowing them to "see" the radiated heat of warm-blooded prey. In pit vipers, the grooves are located between the nostril and the eye in a large "pit" on each side of the head. Other infrared-sensitive snakes have multiple, smaller labial pits lining the upper lip, just below the nostrils.

 

A snake tracks its prey using smell, collecting airborne particles with its forked tongue, then passing them to the vomeronasal organ or Jacobson's organ in the mouth for examination. The fork in the tongue provides a sort of directional sense of smell and taste simultaneously. The snake's tongue is constantly in motion, sampling particles from the air, ground, and water, analyzing the chemicals found, and determining the presence of prey or predators in the local environment. In water-dwelling snakes, such as the anaconda, the tongue functions efficiently underwater.

 

The underside of a snake is very sensitive to vibration, allowing the snake to detect approaching animals by sensing faint vibrations in the ground. Despite the lack of outer ears, they are also able to detect airborne sounds.

 

Snake vision varies greatly between species. Some have keen eyesight and others are only able to distinguish light from dark, but the important trend is that a snake's visual perception is adequate enough to track movements. Generally, vision is best in tree-dwelling snakes and weakest in burrowing snakes. Some have binocular vision, where both eyes are capable of focusing on the same point, an example of this being the Asian vine snake. Most snakes focus by moving the lens back and forth in relation to the retina. Diurnal snakes have round pupils and many nocturnal snakes have slit pupils. Most species possess three visual pigments and are probably able to see two primary colors in daylight. The annulated sea snake and the genus Helicops appears to have regained much of their color vision as an adaption to the marine environment they live in. It has been concluded that the last common ancestors of all snakes had UV-sensitive vision, but most snakes that depend on their eyesight to hunt in daylight have evolved lenses that act like sunglasses for filtering out the UV-light, which probably also sharpens their vision by improving the contrast.

 

Skin

The skin of a snake is covered in scales. Contrary to the popular notion of snakes being slimy (because of possible confusion of snakes with worms), snakeskin has a smooth, dry texture. Most snakes use specialized belly scales to travel, allowing them to grip surfaces. The body scales may be smooth, keeled, or granular. The eyelids of a snake are transparent "spectacle" scales, also known as brille, which remain permanently closed.

 

The shedding of scales is called ecdysis (or in normal usage, molting or sloughing). Snakes shed the complete outer layer of skin in one piece. Snake scales are not discrete, but extensions of the epidermis—hence they are not shed separately but as a complete outer layer during each molt, akin to a sock being turned inside out.

 

Snakes have a wide diversity of skin coloration patterns which are often related to behavior, such as the tendency to have to flee from predators. Snakes that are at a high risk of predation tend to be plain, or have longitudinal stripes, providing few reference points to predators, thus allowing the snake to escape without being noticed. Plain snakes usually adopt active hunting strategies, as their pattern allows them to send little information to prey about motion. Blotched snakes usually use ambush-based strategies, likely because it helps them blend into an environment with irregularly shaped objects, like sticks or rocks. Spotted patterning can similarly help snakes to blend into their environment.

 

The shape and number of scales on the head, back, and belly are often characteristic and used for taxonomic purposes. Scales are named mainly according to their positions on the body. In "advanced" (Caenophidian) snakes, the broad belly scales and rows of dorsal scales correspond to the vertebrae, allowing these to be counted without the need for dissection.

 

Molting

Molting (or "ecdysis") serves a number of purposes. It allows old, worn skin to be replaced and it can remove parasites such as mites and ticks that live in the skin. It has also been observed in snakes that molting can be synced to mating cycles. Shedding skin can release pheromones and revitalize color and patterns of the skin to increase attraction of mates. Renewal of the skin by molting supposedly allows growth in some animals such as insects, but this has been disputed in the case of snakes.

 

Molting occurs periodically throughout the life of a snake. Before each molt, the snake stops eating and often hides or moves to a safe place. Just before shedding, the skin becomes dull and dry looking and the snake's eyes turn cloudy or blue-colored. The inner surface of the old skin liquefies, causing it to separate from the new skin beneath it. After a few days, the eyes become clear and the snake "crawls" out of its old skin, which splits close to the snake's mouth. The snake rubs its body against rough surfaces to aid in the shedding of its old skin. In many cases, the cast skin peels backward over the body from head to tail in one piece, like pulling a sock off inside-out, revealing a new, larger, brighter layer of skin which has formed underneath.

 

A young snake that is still growing may shed its skin up to four times a year, but an older snake may shed only once or twice a year. The discarded skin carries a perfect imprint of the scale pattern, so it is usually possible to identify the snake from the cast skin if it is reasonably intact. This periodic renewal has led to the snake being a symbol of healing and medicine, as pictured in the Rod of Asclepius.

 

Scale counts can sometimes be used to identify the sex of a snake when the species is not distinctly sexually dimorphic. A probe is fully inserted into the cloaca, marked at the point where it stops, then removed and measured against the subcaudal scales. The scalation count determines whether the snake is a male or female, as the hemipenes of a male will probe to a different depth (usually longer) than the cloaca of a female.

 

Skeleton

The skeletons of snakes are radically different from those of most other reptiles (as compared with the turtle here, for example), consisting almost entirely of an extended ribcage.

The skeleton of most snakes consists solely of the skull, hyoid, vertebral column, and ribs, though henophidian snakes retain vestiges of the pelvis and rear limbs.

 

The skull consists of a solid and complete neurocranium, to which many of the other bones are only loosely attached, particularly the highly mobile jaw bones, which facilitate manipulation and ingestion of large prey items. The left and right sides of the lower jaw are joined only by a flexible ligament at the anterior tips, allowing them to separate widely, and the posterior end of the lower jaw bones articulate with a quadrate bone, allowing further mobility. The mandible and quadrate bones can pick up ground-borne vibrations; because the sides of the lower jaw can move independently of one another, a snake resting its jaw on a surface has sensitive stereo auditory perception, used for detecting the position of prey. The jaw–quadrate–stapes pathway is capable of detecting vibrations on the angstrom scale, despite the absence of an outer ear and the lack of an impedance matching mechanism—provided by the ossicles in other vertebrates—for receiving vibrations from the air.

 

The hyoid is a small bone located posterior and ventral to the skull, in the 'neck' region, which serves as an attachment for the muscles of the snake's tongue, as it does in all other tetrapods.

 

The vertebral column consists of between 200 and 400 vertebrae, or sometimes more. The body vertebrae each have two ribs articulating with them. The tail vertebrae are comparatively few in number (often less than 20% of the total) and lack ribs. The vertebrae have projections that allow for strong muscle attachment, enabling locomotion without limbs.

 

Caudal autotomy (self-amputation of the tail), a feature found in some lizards, is absent in most snakes. In the rare cases where it does exist in snakes, caudal autotomy is intervertebral (meaning the separation of adjacent vertebrae), unlike that in lizards, which is intravertebral, i.e. the break happens along a predefined fracture plane present on a vertebra.

 

In some snakes, most notably boas and pythons, there are vestiges of the hindlimbs in the form of a pair of pelvic spurs. These small, claw-like protrusions on each side of the cloaca are the external portion of the vestigial hindlimb skeleton, which includes the remains of an ilium and femur.

 

Snakes are polyphyodonts with teeth that are continuously replaced

 

Snakes and other non-archosaur (crocodilians, dinosaurs + birds and allies) reptiles have a three-chambered heart that controls the circulatory system via the left and right atrium, and one ventricle. Internally, the ventricle is divided into three interconnected cavities: the cavum arteriosum, the cavum pulmonale, and the cavum venosum. The cavum venosum receives deoxygenated blood from the right atrium and the cavum arteriosum receives oxygenated blood from the left atrium. Located beneath the cavum venosum is the cavum pulmonale, which pumps blood to the pulmonary trunk.

 

The snake's heart is encased in a sac, called the pericardium, located at the bifurcation of the bronchi. The heart is able to move around, owing to the lack of a diaphragm; this adjustment protects the heart from potential damage when large ingested prey is passed through the esophagus. The spleen is attached to the gall bladder and pancreas and filters the blood. The thymus, located in fatty tissue above the heart, is responsible for the generation of immune cells in the blood. The cardiovascular system of snakes is unique for the presence of a renal portal system in which the blood from the snake's tail passes through the kidneys before returning to the heart.

 

The vestigial left lung is often small or sometimes even absent, as snakes' tubular bodies require all of their organs to be long and thin.[71] In the majority of species, only one lung is functional. This lung contains a vascularized anterior portion and a posterior portion that does not function in gas exchange. This 'saccular lung' is used for hydrostatic purposes to adjust buoyancy in some aquatic snakes and its function remains unknown in terrestrial species. Many organs that are paired, such as kidneys or reproductive organs, are staggered within the body, one located ahead of the other.

 

Snakes have no lymph nodes.

 

Venom

Cobras, vipers, and closely related species use venom to immobilize, injure, or kill their prey. The venom is modified saliva, delivered through fangs. The fangs of 'advanced' venomous snakes like viperids and elapids are hollow, allowing venom to be injected more effectively, and the fangs of rear-fanged snakes such as the boomslang simply have a groove on the posterior edge to channel venom into the wound. Snake venoms are often prey-specific, and their role in self-defense is secondary.

 

Venom, like all salivary secretions, is a predigestant that initiates the breakdown of food into soluble compounds, facilitating proper digestion. Even nonvenomous snakebites (like any animal bite) cause tissue damage.

 

Certain birds, mammals, and other snakes (such as kingsnakes) that prey on venomous snakes have developed resistance and even immunity to certain venoms.Venomous snakes include three families of snakes, and do not constitute a formal taxonomic classification group.

 

The colloquial term "poisonous snake" is generally an incorrect label for snakes. A poison is inhaled or ingested, whereas venom produced by snakes is injected into its victim via fangs. There are, however, two exceptions: Rhabdophis sequesters toxins from the toads it eats, then secretes them from nuchal glands to ward off predators; and a small unusual population of garter snakes in the US state of Oregon retains enough toxins in their livers from ingested newts to be effectively poisonous to small local predators (such as crows and foxes).

 

Snake venoms are complex mixtures of proteins, and are stored in venom glands at the back of the head. In all venomous snakes, these glands open through ducts into grooved or hollow teeth in the upper jaw. The proteins can potentially be a mix of neurotoxins (which attack the nervous system), hemotoxins (which attack the circulatory system), cytotoxins (which attack the cells directly), bungarotoxins (related to neurotoxins, but also directly affect muscle tissue), and many other toxins that affect the body in different ways. Almost all snake venom contains hyaluronidase, an enzyme that ensures rapid diffusion of the venom.

 

Venomous snakes that use hemotoxins usually have fangs in the front of their mouths, making it easier for them to inject the venom into their victims. Some snakes that use neurotoxins (such as the mangrove snake) have fangs in the back of their mouths, with the fangs curled backwards. This makes it difficult both for the snake to use its venom and for scientists to milk them. Elapids, however, such as cobras and kraits are proteroglyphous—they possess hollow fangs that cannot be erected toward the front of their mouths, and cannot "stab" like a viper. They must actually bite the victim.

 

It has been suggested that all snakes may be venomous to a certain degree, with harmless snakes having weak venom and no fangs. According to this theory, most snakes that are labelled "nonvenomous" would be considered harmless because they either lack a venom delivery method or are incapable of delivering enough to endanger a human. The theory postulates that snakes may have evolved from a common lizard ancestor that was venomous, and also that venomous lizards like the gila monster, beaded lizard, monitor lizards, and the now-extinct mosasaurs, may have derived from this same common ancestor. They share this "venom clade" with various other saurian species.

 

Venomous snakes are classified in two taxonomic families:

Elapids – cobras including king cobras, kraits, mambas, Australian copperheads, sea snakes, and coral snakes.

Viperids – vipers, rattlesnakes, copperheads/cottonmouths, and bushmasters.

There is a third family containing the opistoglyphous (rear-fanged) snakes (as well as the majority of other snake species):

 

Colubrids – boomslangs, tree snakes, vine snakes, cat snakes, although not all colubrids are venomous.

 

Reproduction

Although a wide range of reproductive modes are used by snakes, all employ internal fertilization. This is accomplished by means of paired, forked hemipenes, which are stored, inverted, in the male's tail. The hemipenes are often grooved, hooked, or spined—designed to grip the walls of the female's cloaca. The clitoris of the female snake consists of two structures located between the cloaca and the scent glands.

 

Most species of snakes lay eggs which they abandon shortly after laying. However, a few species (such as the king cobra) construct nests and stay in the vicinity of the hatchlings after incubation. Most pythons coil around their egg-clutches and remain with them until they hatch. A female python will not leave the eggs, except to occasionally bask in the sun or drink water. She will even "shiver" to generate heat to incubate the eggs.

 

Some species of snake are ovoviviparous and retain the eggs within their bodies until they are almost ready to hatch. Several species of snake, such as the boa constrictor and green anaconda, are fully viviparous, nourishing their young through a placenta as well as a yolk sac; this is highly unusual among reptiles, and normally found in requiem sharks or placental mammals. Retention of eggs and live birth are most often associated with colder environments.

 

Sexual selection in snakes is demonstrated by the 3,000 species that each use different tactics in acquiring mates. Ritual combat between males for the females they want to mate with includes topping, a behavior exhibited by most viperids in which one male will twist around the vertically elevated fore body of its opponent and force it downward. It is common for neck-biting to occur while the snakes are entwined.

 

Facultative parthenogenesis

Parthenogenesis is a natural form of reproduction in which growth and development of embryos occur without fertilization. Agkistrodon contortrix (copperhead) and Agkistrodon piscivorus (cottonmouth) can reproduce by facultative parthenogenesis, meaning that they are capable of switching from a sexual mode of reproduction to an asexual mode. The most likely type of parthenogenesis to occur is automixis with terminal fusion, a process in which two terminal products from the same meiosis fuse to form a diploid zygote. This process leads to genome-wide homozygosity, expression of deleterious recessive alleles, and often to developmental abnormalities. Both captive-born and wild-born copperheads and cottonmouths appear to be capable of this form of parthenogenesis.

 

Reproduction in squamate reptiles is almost exclusively sexual. Males ordinarily have a ZZ pair of sex-determining chromosomes, and females a ZW pair. However, the Colombian Rainbow boa (Epicrates maurus) can also reproduce by facultative parthenogenesis, resulting in production of WW female progeny. The WW females are likely produced by terminal automixis.

 

Embryonic Development

Snake embryonic development initially follows similar steps as any vertebrate embryo. The snake embryo begins as a zygote, undergoes rapid cell division, forms a germinal disc, also called a blastodisc, then undergoes gastrulation, neurulation, and organogenesis. Cell division and proliferation continues until an early snake embryo develops and the typical body shape of a snake can be observed. Multiple features differentiate the embryologic development of snakes from other vertebrates, two significant factors being the elongation of the body and the lack of limb development.

 

The elongation in snake body is accompanied by a significant increase in vertebra count (mice have 60 vertebrae, whereas snakes may have over 300). This increase in vertebrae is due to an increase in somites during embryogenesis, leading to an increased number of vertebrae which develop. Somites are formed at the presomitic mesoderm due to a set of oscillatory genes that direct the somitogenesis clock. The snake somitogenesis clock operates at a frequency 4 times that of a mouse (after correction for developmental time), creating more somites, and therefore creating more vertebrae. This difference in clock speed is believed to be caused by differences in Lunatic fringe gene expression, a gene involved in the somitogenesis clock.

 

There is ample literature focusing on the limb development/lack of development in snake embryos and the gene expression associated with the different stages. In basal snakes, such as the python, embryos in early development exhibit a hind limb bud that develops with some cartilage and a cartilaginous pelvic element, however this degenerates before hatching. This presence of vestigial development suggests that some snakes are still undergoing hind limb reduction before they are eliminated. There is no evidence in basal snakes of forelimb rudiments and no examples of snake forelimb bud initiation in embryo, so little is known regarding the loss of this trait. Recent studies suggests that hind limb reduction could be due to mutations in enhancers for the SSH gene, however other studies suggested that mutations within the Hox Genes or their enhancers could contribute to snake limblessness. Since multiple studies have found evidence suggesting different genes played a role in the loss of limbs in snakes, it is likely that multiple gene mutations had an additive effect leading to limb loss in snakes.

 

Behavior

Snake coiled on a stick in Oklahoma. It was brumating in a large pile of wood chips, found by this landscaper after he bulldozed the pile in late autumn 2018.

In regions where winters are too cold for snakes to tolerate while remaining active, local species will enter a period of brumation. Unlike hibernation, in which the dormant mammals are actually asleep, brumating reptiles are awake but inactive. Individual snakes may brumate in burrows, under rock piles, or inside fallen trees, or large numbers of snakes may clump together in hibernacula.

 

Feeding and diet

All snakes are strictly carnivorous, preying on small animals including lizards, frogs, other snakes, small mammals, birds, eggs, fish, snails, worms, and insects. Snakes cannot bite or tear their food to pieces so must swallow their prey whole. The eating habits of a snake are largely influenced by body size; smaller snakes eat smaller prey. Juvenile pythons might start out feeding on lizards or mice and graduate to small deer or antelope as an adult, for example.

 

The snake's jaw is a complex structure. Contrary to the popular belief that snakes can dislocate their jaws, they have an extremely flexible lower jaw, the two halves of which are not rigidly attached, and numerous other joints in the skull, which allow the snake to open its mouth wide enough to swallow prey whole, even if it is larger in diameter than the snake itself. For example, the African egg-eating snake has flexible jaws adapted for eating eggs much larger than the diameter of its head.  This snake has no teeth, but does have bony protrusions on the inside edge of its spine, which it uses to break the shell when eating eggs.

 

The majority of snakes eat a variety of prey animals, but there is some specialization in certain species. King cobras and the Australian bandy-bandy consume other snakes. Species of the family Pareidae have more teeth on the right side of their mouths than on the left, as they mostly prey on snails and the shells usually spiral clockwise.

 

Some snakes have a venomous bite, which they use to kill their prey before eating it. Other snakes kill their prey by constriction, while some swallow their prey when it is still alive.

 

After eating, snakes become dormant to allow the process of digestion to take place; this is an intense activity, especially after consumption of large prey. In species that feed only sporadically, the entire intestine enters a reduced state between meals to conserve energy. The digestive system is then 'up-regulated' to full capacity within 48 hours of prey consumption. Being ectothermic ("cold-blooded"), the surrounding temperature plays an important role in the digestion process. The ideal temperature for snakes to digest food is 30 °C (86 °F). There is a huge amount of metabolic energy involved in a snake's digestion, for example the surface body temperature of the South American rattlesnake (Crotalus durissus) increases by as much as 1.2 °C (2.2 °F) during the digestive process. If a snake is disturbed after having eaten recently, it will often regurgitate its prey to be able to escape the perceived threat. When undisturbed, the digestive process is highly efficient; the snake's digestive enzymes dissolve and absorb everything but the prey's hair (or feathers) and claws, which are excreted along with waste.

 

Hooding and spitting

Hooding (expansion of the neck area) is a visual deterrent, mostly seen in cobras (elapids), and is primarily controlled by rib muscles.[98] Hooding can be accompanied by spitting venom towards the threatening object,[99] and producing a specialized sound; hissing. Studies on captive cobras showed that 13 to 22% of the body length is raised during hooding.

 

Locomotion

The lack of limbs does not impede the movement of snakes. They have developed several different modes of locomotion to deal with particular environments. Unlike the gaits of limbed animals, which form a continuum, each mode of snake locomotion is discrete and distinct from the others; transitions between modes are abrupt.

 

Lateral undulation

Lateral undulation is the sole mode of aquatic locomotion, and the most common mode of terrestrial locomotion In this mode, the body of the snake alternately flexes to the left and right, resulting in a series of rearward-moving "waves". While this movement appears rapid, snakes have rarely been documented moving faster than two body-lengths per second, often much less. This mode of movement has the same net cost of transport (calories burned per meter moved) as running in lizards of the same mass.

 

Terrestrial lateral undulation is the most common mode of terrestrial locomotion for most snake species. In this mode, the posteriorly moving waves push against contact points in the environment, such as rocks, twigs, irregularities in the soil, etc. Each of these environmental objects, in turn, generates a reaction force directed forward and towards the midline of the snake, resulting in forward thrust while the lateral components cancel out. The speed of this movement depends upon the density of push-points in the environment, with a medium density of about 8[clarification needed] along the snake's length being ideal. The wave speed is precisely the same as the snake speed, and as a result, every point on the snake's body follows the path of the point ahead of it, allowing snakes to move through very dense vegetation and small openings.

 

When swimming, the waves become larger as they move down the snake's body, and the wave travels backwards faster than the snake moves forwards. Thrust is generated by pushing their body against the water, resulting in the observed slip. In spite of overall similarities, studies show that the pattern of muscle activation is different in aquatic versus terrestrial lateral undulation, which justifies calling them separate modes. All snakes can laterally undulate forward (with backward-moving waves), but only sea snakes have been observed reversing the motion (moving backwards with forward-moving waves).

 

Sidewinding

Most often employed by colubroid snakes (colubrids, elapids, and vipers) when the snake must move in an environment that lacks irregularities to push against (rendering lateral undulation impossible), such as a slick mud flat, or a sand dune, sidewinding is a modified form of lateral undulation in which all of the body segments oriented in one direction remain in contact with the ground, while the other segments are lifted up, resulting in a peculiar "rolling" motion. This mode of locomotion overcomes the slippery nature of sand or mud by pushing off with only static portions on the body, thereby minimizing slipping. The static nature of the contact points can be shown from the tracks of a sidewinding snake, which show each belly scale imprint, without any smearing. This mode of locomotion has very low caloric cost, less than 1⁄3 of the cost for a lizard to move the same distance. Contrary to popular belief, there is no evidence that sidewinding is associated with the sand being hot.

 

Concertina

When push-points are absent, but there is not enough space to use sidewinding because of lateral constraints, such as in tunnels, snakes rely on concertina locomotion. In this mode, the snake braces the posterior portion of its body against the tunnel wall while the front of the snake extends and straightens. The front portion then flexes and forms an anchor point, and the posterior is straightened and pulled forwards. This mode of locomotion is slow and very demanding, up to seven times the cost of laterally undulating over the same distance. This high cost is due to the repeated stops and starts of portions of the body as well as the necessity of using active muscular effort to brace against the tunnel walls.

 

Arboreal

The movement of snakes in arboreal habitats has only recently been studied. While on tree branches, snakes use several modes of locomotion depending on species and bark texture. In general, snakes will use a modified form of concertina locomotion on smooth branches, but will laterally undulate if contact points are available. Snakes move faster on small branches and when contact points are present, in contrast to limbed animals, which do better on large branches with little 'clutter'.

 

Gliding snakes (Chrysopelea) of Southeast Asia launch themselves from branch tips, spreading their ribs and laterally undulating as they glide between trees. These snakes can perform a controlled glide for hundreds of feet depending upon launch altitude and can even turn in midair.

 

Rectilinear

The slowest mode of snake locomotion is rectilinear locomotion, which is also the only one where the snake does not need to bend its body laterally, though it may do so when turning. In this mode, the belly scales are lifted and pulled forward before being placed down and the body pulled over them. Waves of movement and stasis pass posteriorly, resulting in a series of ripples in the skin. The ribs of the snake do not move in this mode of locomotion and this method is most often used by large pythons, boas, and vipers when stalking prey across open ground as the snake's movements are subtle and harder to detect by their prey in this manner.

 

Interactions with humans

Snakes do not ordinarily prey on humans. Unless startled or injured, most snakes prefer to avoid contact and will not attack humans. With the exception of large constrictors, nonvenomous snakes are not a threat to humans. The bite of a nonvenomous snake is usually harmless; their teeth are not adapted for tearing or inflicting a deep puncture wound, but rather grabbing and holding. Although the possibility of infection and tissue damage is present in the bite of a nonvenomous snake, venomous snakes present far greater hazard to humans.  The World Health Organization (WHO) lists snakebite under the "other neglected conditions" category.

 

Documented deaths resulting from snake bites are uncommon. Nonfatal bites from venomous snakes may result in the need for amputation of a limb or part thereof. Of the roughly 725 species of venomous snakes worldwide, only 250 are able to kill a human with one bite. Australia averages only one fatal snake bite per year. In India, 250,000 snakebites are recorded in a single year, with as many as 50,000 recorded initial deaths. The WHO estimates that on the order of 100,000 people die each year as a result of snake bites, and around three times as many amputations and other permanent disabilities are caused by snakebites annually.

 

The treatment for a snakebite is as variable as the bite itself. The most common and effective method is through antivenom (or antivenin), a serum made from the venom of the snake. Some antivenom is species-specific (monovalent) while some is made for use with multiple species in mind (polyvalent). In the United States for example, all species of venomous snakes are pit vipers, with the exception of the coral snake. To produce antivenom, a mixture of the venoms of the different species of rattlesnakes, copperheads, and cottonmouths is injected into the body of a horse in ever-increasing dosages until the horse is immunized. Blood is then extracted from the immunized horse. The serum is separated and further purified and freeze-dried. It is reconstituted with sterile water and becomes antivenom. For this reason, people who are allergic to horses are more likely to have an allergic reaction to antivenom. Antivenom for the more dangerous species (such as mambas, taipans, and cobras) is made in a similar manner in South Africa, Australia , and India, although these antivenoms are species-specific.

 

Snake charmers

In some parts of the world, especially in India, snake charming is a roadside show performed by a charmer. In such a show, the snake charmer carries a basket containing a snake that he seemingly charms by playing tunes with his flutelike musical instrument, to which the snake responds. The snake is in fact responding to the movement of the flute, not the sound it makes, as snakes lack external ears (though they do have internal ears).

 

The Wildlife Protection Act of 1972 in India technically prohibits snake charming on the grounds of reducing animal cruelty. Other types of snake charmers use a snake and mongoose show, where the two animals have a mock fight; however, this is not very common, as the animals may be seriously injured or killed. Snake charming as a profession is dying out in India because of competition from modern forms of entertainment and environment laws proscribing the practice. Many Indians have never seen snake charming and it is becoming a folktale of the past.

 

Trapping

The Irulas tribe of Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu in India have been hunter-gatherers in the hot, dry plains forests, and have practiced the art of snake catching for generations. They have a vast knowledge of snakes in the field. They generally catch the snakes with the help of a simple stick. Earlier, the Irulas caught thousands of snakes for the snake-skin industry. After the complete ban of the snake-skin industry in India and protection of all snakes under the Indian Wildlife (Protection) Act 1972, they formed the Irula Snake Catcher's Cooperative and switched to catching snakes for removal of venom, releasing them in the wild after four extractions. The venom so collected is used for producing life-saving antivenom, biomedical research and for other medicinal products. The Irulas are also known to eat some of the snakes they catch and are very useful in rat extermination in the villages.

 

Despite the existence of snake charmers, there have also been professional snake catchers or wranglers. Modern-day snake trapping involves a herpetologist using a long stick with a V-shaped end. Some television show hosts, like Bill Haast, Austin Stevens, Steve Irwin, and Jeff Corwin, prefer to catch them using bare hands.

 

Consumption

Although snakes are not commonly thought of as food, their consumption is acceptable in some cultures and may even be considered a delicacy. Snake soup is popular in Cantonese cuisine, consumed by locals in the autumn to warm their bodies. Western cultures document the consumption of snakes only under extreme circumstances of hunger, with the exception of cooked rattlesnake meat, which is commonly consumed in Texas and parts of the Midwestern United States.

 

In Asian countries such as China, Taiwan, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Cambodia, drinking the blood of a snake—particularly the cobra—is believed to increase sexual virility. When possible, the blood is drained while the cobra is still alive, and it is usually mixed with some form of liquor to improve the taste.

 

The use of snakes in alcohol is accepted in some Asian countries. In such cases, one or more snakes are left to steep in a jar or container of liquor, as this is claimed to make the liquor stronger (as well as more expensive). One example of this is the Habu snake, which is sometimes placed in the Okinawan liqueur Habushu (ハブ酒), also known as "Habu Sake".

 

Snake wine (蛇酒) is an alcoholic beverage produced by infusing whole snakes in rice wine or grain alcohol. First recorded as being consumed in China during the Western Zhou dynasty, this drink is considered an important curative and is believed to reinvigorate a person according to traditional Chinese medicine

 

Pets

In the Western world, some snakes are kept as pets, especially docile species such as the ball python and corn snake. To meet the demand, a captive breeding industry has developed. Snakes bred in captivity are considered preferable to specimens caught in the wild and tend to make better pets. Compared with more traditional types of companion animal, snakes can be very low-maintenance pets; they require minimal space, as most common species do not exceed 5 feet (1.5 m) in length, and can be fed relatively infrequently—usually once every five to 14 days. Certain snakes have a lifespan of more than 40 years if given proper care.

 

Symbolism

In ancient Mesopotamia, Nirah, the messenger god of Ištaran, was represented as a serpent on kudurrus, or boundary stones. Representations of two intertwined serpents are common in Sumerian art and Neo-Sumerian artwork and still appear sporadically on cylinder seals and amulets until as late as the thirteenth century BC. The horned viper (Cerastes cerastes) appears in Kassite and Neo-Assyrian kudurrus and is invoked in Assyrian texts as a magical protective entity. A dragon-like creature with horns, the body and neck of a snake, the forelegs of a lion, and the hind-legs of a bird appears in Mesopotamian art from the Akkadian Period until the Hellenistic Period (323 BC–31 BC). This creature, known in Akkadian as the mušḫuššu, meaning "furious serpent", was used as a symbol for particular deities and also as a general protective emblem. It seems to have originally been the attendant of the Underworld god Ninazu, but later became the attendant to the Hurrian storm-god Tishpak, as well as, later, Ninazu's son Ningishzida, the Babylonian national god Marduk, the scribal god Nabu, and the Assyrian national god Ashur.

 

In Egyptian history, the snake occupies a primary role with the Nile cobra adorning the crown of the pharaoh in ancient times. It was worshipped as one of the gods and was also used for sinister purposes: murder of an adversary and ritual suicide (Cleopatra). The ouroboros was a well-known ancient Egyptian symbol of a serpent swallowing its own tail. The precursor to the ouroboros was the "Many-Faced", a serpent with five heads, who, according to the Amduat, the oldest surviving Book of the Afterlife, was said to coil around the corpse of the sun god Ra protectively. The earliest surviving depiction of a "true" ouroboros comes from the gilded shrines in the tomb of Tutankhamun. In the early centuries AD, the ouroboros was adopted as a symbol by Gnostic Christians and chapter 136 of the Pistis Sophia, an early Gnostic text, describes "a great dragon whose tail is in its mouth". In medieval alchemy, the ouroboros became a typical western dragon with wings, legs, and a tail.

 

In the Bible, King Nahash of Ammon, whose name means "Snake", is depicted very negatively, as a particularly cruel and despicable enemy of the ancient Hebrews.

 

The ancient Greeks used the Gorgoneion, a depiction of a hideous face with serpents for hair, as an apotropaic symbol to ward off evil. In a Greek myth described by Pseudo-Apollodorus in his Bibliotheca, Medusa was a Gorgon with serpents for hair whose gaze turned all those who looked at her to stone and was slain by the hero Perseus. In the Roman poet Ovid's Metamorphoses, Medusa is said to have once been a beautiful priestess of Athena, whom Athena turned into a serpent-haired monster after she was raped by the god Poseidon in Athena's temple. In another myth referenced by the Boeotian poet Hesiod and described in detail by Pseudo-Apollodorus, the hero Heracles is said to have slain the Lernaean Hydra, a multiple-headed serpent which dwelt in the swamps of Lerna.

 

The legendary account of the foundation of Thebes mentioned a monster snake guarding the spring from which the new settlement was to draw its water. In fighting and killing the snake, the companions of the founder Cadmus all perished – leading to the term "Cadmean victory" (i.e. a victory involving one's own ruin).

 

Three medical symbols involving snakes that are still used today are Bowl of Hygieia, symbolizing pharmacy, and the Caduceus and Rod of Asclepius, which are symbols denoting medicine in general.

 

One of the etymologies proposed for the common female first name Linda is that it might derive from Old German Lindi or Linda, meaning a serpent.

 

India is often called the land of snakes and is steeped in tradition regarding snakes. Snakes are worshipped as gods even today with many women pouring milk on snake pits (despite snakes' aversion for milk). The cobra is seen on the neck of Shiva and Vishnu is depicted often as sleeping on a seven-headed snake or within the coils of a serpent. There are also several temples in India solely for cobras sometimes called Nagraj (King of Snakes) and it is believed that snakes are symbols of fertility. There is a Hindu festival called Nag Panchami each year on which day snakes are venerated and prayed to. See also Nāga.

 

In India there is another mythology about snakes. Commonly known in Hindi as "Ichchhadhari" snakes. Such snakes can take the form of any living creature, but prefer human form. These mythical snakes possess a valuable gem called "Mani", which is more brilliant than diamond. There are many stories in India about greedy people trying to possess this gem and ending up getting killed.

 

The snake is one of the 12 celestial animals of Chinese zodiac, in the Chinese calendar.

 

Many ancient Peruvian cultures worshipped nature. They emphasized animals and often depicted snakes in their art.

 

Religion

Snakes are used in Hinduism as a part of ritual worship. In the annual Nag Panchami festival, participants worship either live cobras or images of Nāgas. Lord Shiva is depicted in most images with a snake coiled around his neck. Puranic literature includes various stories associated with snakes, for example Shesha is said to hold all the planets of the Universe on his hoods and to constantly sing the glories of Vishnu from all his mouths. Other notable snakes in Hinduism are Vasuki, Takshaka, Karkotaka, and Pingala. The term Nāga is used to refer to entities that take the form of large snakes in Hinduism and Buddhism.

 

Snakes have been widely revered in many cultures, such as in ancient Greece where the serpent was seen as a healer.[148] Asclepius carried a serpent wound around his wand, a symbol seen today on many ambulances. In Judaism, the snake of brass is also a symbol of healing, of one's life being saved from imminent death.

 

In religious terms, the snake and jaguar were arguably the most important animals in ancient Mesoamerica. "In states of ecstasy, lords dance a serpent dance; great descending snakes adorn and support buildings from Chichen Itza to Tenochtitlan, and the Nahuatl word coatl meaning serpent or twin, forms part of primary deities such as Mixcoatl, Quetzalcoatl, and Coatlicue." In the Maya and Aztec calendars, the fifth day of the week was known as Snake Day.

 

In some parts of Christianity, the redemptive work of Jesus Christ is compared to saving one's life through beholding the Nehushtan (serpent of brass). Snake handlers use snakes as an integral part of church worship, to demonstrate their faith in divine protection. However, more commonly in Christianity, the serpent has been depicted as a representative of evil and sly plotting, as seen in the description in Genesis of a snake tempting Eve in the Garden of Eden. Saint Patrick is purported to have expelled all snakes from Ireland while converting the country to Christianity in the 5th century, thus explaining the absence of snakes there.

 

In Christianity and Judaism, the snake makes its infamous appearance in the first book of the Bible when a serpent appears before Adam and Eve and tempts them with the forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. The snake returns in the Book of Exodus when Moses turns his staff into a snake as a sign of God's power, and later when he makes the Nehushtan, a bronze snake on a pole that when looked at cured the people of bites from the snakes that plagued them in the desert. The serpent makes its final appearance symbolizing Satan in the Book of Revelation: "And he laid hold on the dragon the old serpent, which is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years."

 

In Neo-Paganism and Wicca, the snake is seen as a symbol of wisdom and knowledge. Additionally, snakes are sometimes associated with Hecate, the Greek goddess of witchcraft.

 

Medicine

Several compounds from snake venoms are being researched as potential treatments or preventatives for pain, cancers, arthritis, stroke, heart disease, hemophilia, and hypertension, and to control bleeding (e.g. during surgery).

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.

Thumb Sucking is a behavior found in humans, chimpanzees, and other primates.[1] It usually involves placing the thumb into the mouth and rhythmically repeating sucking contact for a prolonged duration. It can also be accomplished with any piece of skin within reach (such as the big toe) and is considered to be soothing and therapeutic for the person.

 

At birth, babies will reflexively suck any object placed in its mouth; this is the sucking reflex responsible for breastfeeding. This reflex disappears at about four months of age; thumb sucking is not purely an instinctive behavior and therefore can last much longer. Moreover, ultrasound scans have revealed that thumb sucking can start before birth, as early as 15 weeks from conception; whether this behavior is voluntary or due to random movements of the fetus in the womb is not conclusively known.

Children suck on objects (including pacifiers) to soothe themselves; sucking is one of a baby’s natural reflexes and completely typical for babies and young children.[2] As a child develops the habit, they will usually develop a "favorite" finger to suck on, in much the same way they develop a favorite hand to write with. It is not known if the preference for a hand to suck on affects handedness in any way, or vice versa.

 

Thumb sucking can start as early as 15 weeks of growth in the uterus or within months of being born. Prior to 12 weeks, the fetus has webbed digits. Most thumb-suckers stop gradually by the time they are five years old. Nevertheless, many older children will retain the habit, some into adulthood. Thumb sucking in adults may be due to stereotypic movement disorder another psychiatric disorder, or simply habit continuation where the adult thumbsucker can avoid the social implications by indulging stealthfully or by ignoring any outside reaction. For many who have continued to adulthood occlusal affects were either minimal or nonexistent.

 

wikipedia.org

 

View On Large Format

www.child-adolescent-adult-development.info/playtime-for-...

 

Playtime for Grown Ups

 

By Calvin A. Colarusso, M.D.

Clinical Professor of Psychiatry,

University of California at San Diego

(12/07/2011)

 

Parents always tell kids to go out and play. But did you ever think that an adult, an adult and child psychiatrist no less, would tell YOU, the adult, to go out and play?

 

Well, Dr. Colarusso is doing just that. In this book he explains both the nature of play and the dynamics which make play such an essential part of human experience throughout the life cycle.

 

The message is get off that coach, get out of that rocking chair, and go and play. Adults need to play, maybe not as much as children do, but for the same reasons. Play is a way of mastering stress and trauma. It serves the same purpose for children and adults. The stresses of adulthood are in their own way more daunting than those of childhood. And we all have a need to master the traumatic overstimulation that characterizes our busy lives, to say nothing of the internal pressures that continually force us to deal with issues, relationships and experiences from the past and present.

 

Go and hit that great golf shot, watch an action movie, or see a good romance film and relive a youthful love affair. Join the Monday night football crowd. Reread Portnoy's Complaint. Take in your son's, daughter's or grandchild's soccer game. Buy some new sexual toys. They're all examples of how adults can and should play. Whatever you do, remember that play should be fun. But it's also a marvelous way to master the stresses of life. Just do it!

Playtime for Adults gives a clear understanding of the various forms of play available to adults and the reasons why play is important to mental and physical health, throughout adulthood.

 

This book includes:

An understanding of what motivates play

The role of thought and action in play

The different levels of play in childhood and adulthood

The relationships between creativity and play

The organizers of play in adulthood.

Sexual play

 

Understanding the nature of play and doing more of it will lead to a happier life.

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Calvin A. Colarusso, M.D. is a board-certified Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California at San Diego, where he served for two decades as Director of the Child Psychiatry Residency Training Program.

 

He is also a Training and Supervising Analyst in child and adult psychoanalysis at the San Diego Psychoanalytic Institute and an internationally known lecturer to students, professionals, and the general public on many aspects of normal and pathologic development.

 

His books have been published in English, Korean, and Spanish. See amzn.to/calcolarusso.

 

Amazon Review

5.0 out of 5 stars hepful and practical, great info!, December 11, 2011

By Angela Johnson - See all my reviewsThis review is from: Playtime for Grown Ups (Kindle Edition)

 

"As a mother a of three active children, this was a book that I desperately needed to read. My life has been about them and only them since my oldest was born and although I don't regret anything for even a second, I have neglected myself for quite some time. This has led to me and the hubby not really connecting and enjoying each other like we had in the past. Of course if you ask him he won't admit it, but "play-time" for us has been nonexistent in our lives."

 

"The advice in this book has been wonderful and just by reading it, I've already started to feel better and more care-free. The author has a very friendly and uplifting style of writing, and his insights and ideas on adding creativity and play-time into the adults life are both practical and realistic. His intelligent thoughts on sexual play were probably my favorite part of the book, great ideas for keeping Mom emotionally and physically balanced ; )"

 

"Great book, I can't begin to recommend it enough. My husband has already agreed to read it too, I got him very interested with some of the ideas I told him about."

Leaving Chicagland, as the locals referred to it, was a relatively simple undertaking in daylight, but in the dark hours it got a little challenging, especially if you wanted to avoid tolls on freeways. The first part of the trip was, south on I-94, was going smoothly, even if the scenery was drab or nonexistent where the roadway was in a sort of concrete-walled ditch. If our cash resreves had been more substantial, the logical way to go would have been to take the Chicago Skyway, which was the shortest, quickest route to Michigan City, but we were still thinking about stopping to eat and possibly needed another fuel stop, thus were loathe to toss our meager funds into little metal baskets at toll booths every few miles. So we passed on the Skyway exit and kept heading south, planning to take US- 12, the old road east, starting in Gary, Indiana, home to U.S. Steel and the largest steel plant in the universe. Gary was a blue collar, hard-edge town where racial tension was always just below the surface. "I don't remember there being any riots here," said Ashley when i mentioned this. "Makes sense," i said, "wer'e used to

thinking of the 1968 riots in Detroit, but the Chicago South Side/ Gary Race Riot was in 1919. "Glad I missed it," said Ashley. "Me too. The story behind it was that many working class jobs were filled by Eurpean immigrants, especially the Irish. During World War One. when many local men left their jobs for military service in Europe, poor black people from the South went north to fill those jobs. After the working class white laborers returned they blamed both the steelworks and the black community and rioted, burning the homes of black families and attacking innocent members of that community. In all, about a thousand families were left homeless and 40 people died." "That's quite a story," Ash remarked, "let's skip Gary."

 

Wat Ong Teu Mahawihan (Temple of the Heavy Buddha) is one of many Buddhist Monasteries that are present in the city of Vientiane in Laos. This name is given to the temple due to the large, bronze Phra Ong Teu Buddha image that is present within the temple: the largest Buddha in Vientiane. This temple was initially constructed by King Settathirat I in the 16th century (known as the golden age of Buddhism in Laos) when Laos was being bombarded by the Burmese, but was later demolished during a foreign invasion. Thus, it may have gone through many reconstructions during the 19th or 20th century to attain the appearance it has today.

 

Though this temple is created in Vientiane, it has the basic shape for what is known as the ‘Luang Prabang I style’ with its scare use of brickwork and rectangular-like body.

 

Wat Ong Teu is said to have been placed along a cardinal point in accordance with three other temples, but that may just be coincidental.

 

ORIGIN

After commanding for the relocation of the capital of Laos from the city of Luang Prabang to Vientiane, King Setthathirat I produced many monasteries such as Wat That Luang and Wat Phra Kaew. The reason this particular wat (Lao for temple) was built was because Setthathirat I desired to create the Phra Ong Teu image that would be placed within it, and to have it as his person living quarters. There would be six other sculptures of this image present in other monasteries, but Wat Ong Teu Mahawihan contains the first of them. Since this time period is known as the golden age, the wat would evolve into a complex with a sim (ordination hall), a ho rackhang (bell tower), a ho kong (drum tower), a that (stupa), and a kuti (monks’ living quarters). Each of these parts of the complex all share the similar artistic motif of the architecture of the central wat, which is discussed later.

 

The original use of this wat was for ceremonies of allegiance to the king. However, in the 17th century, Souligna Vongsa as king transformed this temple into a Buddhist learning center in order to ‘teach, enlighten and inspire worshippers.’ In other words, it has become a school for monks coming from around Southeast Asia to study the dhamma. This becomes apparent because surrounding countries of Laos sent their monks to Vientiane to study this religion. Such a function is more understandable of Wat Ong Teu since there are many details that give the suggestion of a learning center.

 

RECONSTRUCTION

When Siam sacked Laos in 1827-28 as a punishment for almost all of the monasteries in Laos, including Wat Ong Teu, were destroyed. This was only made worse afterwards when the Ho bandits tried sack Vientiane again to take gold from Wat Ong Teu and others. In 1900, following the establishment of the Franco-Siamese treaty in 1843, the French chose Vientiane as their capital and started the reconstruction of its monasteries including Wat Ong Teu. As an addition, the French may have also created a school, in the same format and appearance as the rest of the complex to further exemplify the function of Wat Ong Teu as a place of study. The Lao Buddhist Institute was made in 1929 and still functions today as a school for the Theravada Buddhist religion.

 

ARCHITECTURE

In retrospect, the influence on the style of the original temple can be traced predominantly to India, though not directly. Indochina was part of the sphere of influence of India, known by George Coedès as the ‘Indianization of Southeast Asia.’ The religion and customs of Indian civilization came ‘thoroughly yet peacefully’ to the people of this region, especially due to marriage between Indian men and local women. Laos however, was a nonexistent country during this time. The kingdom of Lan Xang (‘Land of a million elephants’) wasn’t established until the mid-13th century of the common era just years after all direct contact with India was completely diminished. Instead, the original Wat Ong Teu took its traits from other mixed ideas of architecture from surrounding countries that were established earlier than the 13th century. In essence, the variant notions of these Southeastern Asian countries on the Theravada Buddhist architecture of India, such as Cambodia and Siam (present day Thailand), influenced the ideas of how Wat Ong Teu would be depicted. However, even though Laos borrowed traditions from these other cultures, the 16th century turned a new leaf for the Lao people in the form of a golden age. Thus, Wat Ong Teu has most of its own Lao Buddhist features and only minor details of surrounding influences.

 

After the temple’s destruction, some of the techniques used to create it were lost, but much of it wasn’t forgotten. Instead, modern techniques were blended in with the old during the temple’s reconstruction, especially in what was used to fortify the walls and roof. The result became a rich new style that is exclusive to Lao architecture. This primarily is because the modern reconstruction completed by the French kept sincere adherence to these Lao notions already established on temple aesthetics, with some artistic liberties since Laos at this time was only a protectorate of France.

 

ENTRY GATE

This multi-tiered archway serves as the entrance into the complex where the temple is located. It is miniature compared to that of Pha That Luang. The functionality of this seemingly simple archway is similar to that of the torana, or gateway, of Indian culture. The torana served as the passageway from secular ground to sacred ground. The only difference is that this archway does not have any images for which a person can meditate and it doesn’t involve circumambulating a stupa. This characteristic may be present in all the temples and stupas that exist in Laos, especially at King Setthathirat’s more famous architectural creation, Pha That Luang.

 

MAIN ENTRANCE

The entrance to Wat Ong Teu is known to have a good amount of eccentricities that are indigenous only to Laos and no other Buddhist temple in Asia. Just before going up the stairs at the front of the temple, one can find the frieze that is exceedingly baroque in detail, highlighting this Lao style. The green backdrop shimmers as many carved and gilded vine leaves curve in no apparent order or pattern. This motif is repeated throughout the whole front part of the temple, even surrounding the six small Buddhas that are just below the frieze. This foliage may be an allusion to the lotus flower which is an aniconic symbol of the Buddha. Another Lao characteristic of monasteries is the pointed double archway that flanks the six Buddhas. There are many variations of this characteristic, but the archway of Wat Ong Teu is the most simplistic aesthetically.

 

One of the most native features to Laos is the Naga, or mythical water serpent, that serves as the guardian of the entrance. The Naga was widely known in Southeast Asia before Buddhism arrived. They would symbolize the Hindu god Shiva in which they represented destruction and renewal. How they relate to the Buddha lies in the story of Siddhartha under the Bodhi tree.

 

This could also be the second area for which one would pass from less secular ground to completely sacred ground. Though Nagas are usually seen with multiple heads, Wat Ong Teu’s version of the Naga has a single head with a its bright green body stretched out. There are three sets of these Nagas that all give access to the same patio-type area in front the temple. This aspect is interesting because there is only one door that gives an entrance into the temple. It may be a reference to the original function of this wat as the king’s temple, with the front stairs only being walk on by the king while the others were reserved for normal patrons. The posts perpendicular to these Naga resemble the sort of pagoda or tower one would see in Laos.

 

The doors and windows are made of wood and are also decorated with many leaves and stems that spiral sporadically. These images are all carved, painted red and gilded to make the door and windows look as if they were made of metal. Each of the windows and the door have different images of the Buddha either directly or by aniconic representation. Some of them may evidently portray a Jataka, or story given of one of the Buddha’s past incarnations.

 

ROOF

Seemingly the most intricate part of the exterior of Wat Ong Teu is its roof. It illustrates a myriad of different styles from around Asia that blend in an extraordinarily harmonious way.

 

A commonly used feature in Asia for the roof is the utilization of a curved roof. This non-linear approach was originated by the Chinese. In China, architects thought that evil spirits despised curved lines, therefore giving an apotropaic effect to the temple. Lao ideas of the curved roof should have been similar to China’s as well. This aspect is especially important when the principal function of this temple is to teach the Buddhist religion. Students learning the Buddhist religion should especially be protected from the evils of the outside world.

 

What is particularly interesting is the feature of multiple roofs that descend past the boundaries of the wall at a slope. This aspect is exclusive to Laos. Specifically, there are three or four superimposed roofs, with the two bottom roofs being supported by columns from within the temple. It is unknown as to the reason for this intricate design, but it may be another aspect of protection because multiple roofs could cause confusion among evil spirits.

 

The stone spire decoration with stacked superimposed, decreasingly sized disks in the center of the keel is definitively a Buddhist element. It is known that before the Buddha went through enlightenment, he was always covered by parasols to indicate his royalty as a prince. Therefore, it is not unusual to see a parasol-like spire atop this temple. The other flame-like decorations, called chaw faa (sky clusters), lining the edges and vertices of the roof are frequently used in Laos. This may also be another quality that emphasizes the apotropaic effect of the roof.

 

The exterior may have a lot detail that is used for protection and attraction, but the interior does not mirror the same intricacy. Within the temple, the floors are glossed and the walls and ceiling are painted with the same colors as the exterior. There is a red mat that is lined perfectly from the middle to the back of the sim where the Phra Ong Teu image resides. The most intricate objects within the temple are the columns that hold up the roof. They may have been made to look like oversized lotus flowers that have grown from the ground to support the roof of the temple. This may illustrate the natural world for which the Buddha himself would have liked to teach his followers.

 

MODERN TECHNIQUES

Once Laos became a French protectorate and reconstruction began, there may have been many liberties made to some of the minute details of the temple, but most of the essential attributes of the temple remain similar to the original construction. A very important change is in the stone and well-kept wood that fortifies the structure of the temple. The brackets are included in this use of preserved timber. Not only are there brackets on the outside, but in the inside as well. However, the columns are the objects that provide the most support for the 3 or 4 tiered roofs, so they are treated with more care than the brackets. Therefore, in essence, the modern approach is more of a post and lintel technique rather than the use of brackets. The lack of non-perishable material before French rule over Laos is indicative of their weak government.

 

Some details that are usually seen in developed countries in Europe and North America include small, hanging chandeliers as well as fans placed on each column that lines the sim. These simple touches do seem to emit a sort of waning of sacredness for which the temple was originally created, but it may not be complete departure from belief.

 

Most of the modern techniques may have been meant for the surrounding complex rather than the monastery itself, but the central theme of all these buildings and towers remain faithful to that of Wat Ong Teu.

 

ART

´HEAVY BUDDHA`

ACCOMPANIED BY TWO STANDING BUDDHAS

These original sculptures reside within the sim of the temple towards the furthest wall from the entrance. The Phra Ong Teu is made of a mix of metals, predominately bronze, and is seated atop a golden pedestal that was cast separate from the Buddha. The head may have been cast separately as well from the body and put together by the ‘tonged and grooved joint techniques’ showing the skill of Lao craftsmanship. The two standing Buddhas are connected to their own respective platforms. These sculptures are raised on top of a platform with a color scheme similar to the rest of the temple. More recently, these sculptures are draped in linen or silk cloth, depicting the saffron clothing monks usually wear in Laos, with neon-colored halos place on the wall behind them. This may just add an artistic effect to the Buddhas so that a more prestigious role could be emphasized of them. However, Lao artists of this time never thought of these or other Buddha images as art, only as a means to ‘educate and enlighten.’ Therefore, later use of this temple as a place for further learning of the Hinayana Buddhist religion would be the exact purpose for which the artists intended.

 

It is usual to see the Enlightened One alone or accompanied by bodhisattvas in a triad, but here all three of these sculptures depict the Phra Ong Teu Buddha. A strong indication that these sculptures are Buddhas is the parasols that are suspended over them. Each of the smaller Buddhas have a parasol above them that is attached to a post protruding out from behind them, but the main Buddha has a distinctively rectangular parasol that is fastened to the ceiling. These parasols act in the same way as the parasol located on the keel of the wat, but the parasols that hang over the Buddhas are more decorative. What is interesting is that the rectangular parasol hanging over the Phra Ong Teu is more of a Japanese trait than anything Laos. The only record of any Japanese interaction with Laos would be during a five-year period in WWII. The only action caused by them was the nationalistic passion that the Lao people had in opposition to them. Not enough time was put into having any influence on their art of this Buddha or the temple that it is in.

 

There are many other features of Phra Ong Teu Buddha that are common in relation to the codified Buddha, but it still has its Lao differences. The earliest image of the Buddha in Laos was influenced by the ‘Pha Bang Khmer style,’ but started to become more distinctive in the 16th century along with the golden age. For example, the tightly curled hair that is displayed on the main Buddha is strongly reminiscent of the Gandhara Style of India during the Gupta period, which is mirrored by the Pha Bang. However, the pointed swelling coming out of the top of the image’s head, signifying ‘transcendent knowledge,’ expresses an exclusively Lao idea. This type of swell may even be a facet solely of the Phra Ong Teu image that King Setthathirat created. Some other modified aspects of the image are the sharp ear rims with long lobes, the equal, extended length of the fingers and toes, and the sharp wide nose.

 

There are a few different mudras, or hand gestures, that these Buddhas portray. These gestures illustrate the Indian influence that is present in Laos. Both of the smaller standing Buddhas have their hands up with palms facing outward, meaning fearlessness. Their mudra differs from the main Phra Ong Teu Buddha. He instead adopts two different mudras that allude to the moments just before Siddhartha’s Enlightenment. Specifically, the left hand is placed in the lap with the palm facing up towards the face which represents the idea of meditation. The greater gesture that captures the Enlightenment within this image comes from his right hand. His hand is rested over his knee with fingers extended toward the earth. This symbolizes the calling of the Earth to protect the Buddha from Mara, India’s interpretation of the devil. This can then be connected to the Naga that was conjured up to help Siddhartha in his path for Enlightenment. In creating this image, King Setthathirat I proved his adherence to the Theravada Buddhism that has always been present in Laos since Lan Xang.

 

CONCLUSION

Of the many temples that are present in Vientiane, Laos today, Wat Ong Teu Mahawihan is one of the more undervalued temples. Every detail that makes up this composition of this monastery has some sort of allusion to the teachings or image of the Buddha. From the Nagas guarding the entrance of the temple to the fastidiously heavy Buddha at the back of the sim within the temple, from the carved windows and doors to the lotus columns supporting the roof, Wat Ong Teu is a complete illustration of the story of Siddhartha meditating under the Bodhi tree. No area of the temple is left untouched which results in a sense of sacred ground.

 

Though it may not be an international symbol, Wat Ong Teu is more widely known as an educational institute that provides widespread teaching of the Theravada Buddhism that originated in India. That belief hasn’t meandered to this day. As a center for learning, Wat Ong Teu still continues to house the teachings of the beginning of Buddhism straight from the Buddha, though the two parties live centuries apart. With respect to Laos, education of this religion is what allowed France to be interesting in them even though France’s main focus was Vietnam. From to the French came Lao nationalism in opposition to the Japanese. All of this sparked from monasteries in Laos, Wat Ong Teu included.

 

WIKIPEDIA

If you look closely you will see a flower in her mouth :)

I want to thank my flickr friends again who have continued visiting me here this summer. And apologize again for my slow internet ( sometimes nonexistent) connection. I will catch up with you this winter :)

Laying on my back in the cool grass

A sudden breeze lifts my hair above my face

It is conducting the symphony of stars overhead

A constellation keeps forming itself through my imagination

of the words I so badly want to say to you

There are so many ways to say it

Too many words, too little time

No matter how many times i rework it in my head

It ends up with the same meaning

You are infinitely beautiful

unlike the stars which shine with nonexistent light

The light which appears to us,

but in reality holds no life

Your beauty lies deep within your soul

When your physical body dies much like the stars

Your beauty will transcend your body

In your soul

Your heartbeat is the countdown to your life

While I look up at the night sky

I know we'll live on

I just know we'll keep on living

  

Boxes of berries sit on stand at a market on May 8, 2007. Berries are difficult to grow, harvest, and handle with brief growing seasons and the berries are vulnerable to insects, disease, and even birds. In the 1950's, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Agricultural Research Service (ARS) actually saved the strawberry industry in the Great Lakes region when the agency released the first varieties that could survive red stele, a root-rotting fungus. Fifteen years ago, blueberries were practically nonexistent in the Gulf States. But USDAS’s ARS early-ripening varieties have extended highbush blueberry culture to the Deep South. Today, over 10,000 acres are grown in Dixie, with more than 4,000 acres thriving throughout Texas, Louisiana, and Alabama. In the Pacific Northwest, where most of America’s red raspberries are grown, Willamette, a 1943 release, still accounts for 40 percent of the red raspberry acreage. USDA ARS scientists introduced the first truly genetic thornless blackberries, Thornfree and Smoothstem, which caused a small roadside revolution. The new varieties were just what some growers needed to establish pick-your-own operations. USDA photo by Scott Bauer.

www.child-adolescent-adult-development.info/playtime-for-...

 

Playtime for Grown Ups

 

By Calvin A. Colarusso, M.D.

Clinical Professor of Psychiatry,

University of California at San Diego

(12/07/2011)

 

Parents always tell kids to go out and play. But did you ever think that an adult, an adult and child psychiatrist no less, would tell YOU, the adult, to go out and play?

 

Well, Dr. Colarusso is doing just that. In this book he explains both the nature of play and the dynamics which make play such an essential part of human experience throughout the life cycle.

 

The message is get off that coach, get out of that rocking chair, and go and play. Adults need to play, maybe not as much as children do, but for the same reasons. Play is a way of mastering stress and trauma. It serves the same purpose for children and adults. The stresses of adulthood are in their own way more daunting than those of childhood. And we all have a need to master the traumatic overstimulation that characterizes our busy lives, to say nothing of the internal pressures that continually force us to deal with issues, relationships and experiences from the past and present.

 

Go and hit that great golf shot, watch an action movie, or see a good romance film and relive a youthful love affair. Join the Monday night football crowd. Reread Portnoy's Complaint. Take in your son's, daughter's or grandchild's soccer game. Buy some new sexual toys. They're all examples of how adults can and should play. Whatever you do, remember that play should be fun. But it's also a marvelous way to master the stresses of life. Just do it!

Playtime for Adults gives a clear understanding of the various forms of play available to adults and the reasons why play is important to mental and physical health, throughout adulthood.

 

This book includes:

An understanding of what motivates play

The role of thought and action in play

The different levels of play in childhood and adulthood

The relationships between creativity and play

The organizers of play in adulthood.

Sexual play

 

Understanding the nature of play and doing more of it will lead to a happier life.

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Calvin A. Colarusso, M.D. is a board-certified Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California at San Diego, where he served for two decades as Director of the Child Psychiatry Residency Training Program.

 

He is also a Training and Supervising Analyst in child and adult psychoanalysis at the San Diego Psychoanalytic Institute and an internationally known lecturer to students, professionals, and the general public on many aspects of normal and pathologic development.

 

His books have been published in English, Korean, and Spanish. See amzn.to/calcolarusso.

 

Amazon Review

5.0 out of 5 stars hepful and practical, great info!, December 11, 2011

By Angela Johnson - See all my reviewsThis review is from: Playtime for Grown Ups (Kindle Edition)

 

"As a mother a of three active children, this was a book that I desperately needed to read. My life has been about them and only them since my oldest was born and although I don't regret anything for even a second, I have neglected myself for quite some time. This has led to me and the hubby not really connecting and enjoying each other like we had in the past. Of course if you ask him he won't admit it, but "play-time" for us has been nonexistent in our lives."

 

"The advice in this book has been wonderful and just by reading it, I've already started to feel better and more care-free. The author has a very friendly and uplifting style of writing, and his insights and ideas on adding creativity and play-time into the adults life are both practical and realistic. His intelligent thoughts on sexual play were probably my favorite part of the book, great ideas for keeping Mom emotionally and physically balanced ; )"

 

"Great book, I can't begin to recommend it enough. My husband has already agreed to read it too, I got him very interested with some of the ideas I told him about."

I haven't been out and about with my camera very much lately so I thought it would be interesting to explain my Flickr absence with an alternative sort of image. I've recently had two wisdom teeth removed in seperate operations on the bottom jaw. The last one got yanked today so now I'm free of them! This is an X-ray of my head which was taken shortly before the first tooth extraction. You don't need to be a dentist to see that the teeth at both ends of the lower jaw shouldn't be impacted at right-angles to the rest of the mouth, so I was eager to get the surgery out of the way.

 

Anthropologists believe wisdom teeth, the third set of molars, were the evolutionary answer to our ancestor’s early diet of coarse, rough food – like leaves, roots, nuts and meats – which required more chewing power and resulted in excessive wear of the teeth. The modern diet with its softer foods, along with marvels of modern technologies such as forks, spoons and knives, has made the need for wisdom teeth nonexistent. As a result, evolutionary biologists now classify wisdom teeth as vestigial organs, or body parts that have become functionless due to evolution. Indeed, many people are lucky enough to be born with the fortunate genetic mutation of having no wisdom teeth at all - apparently you have a 25% chance of being born with at least one or more of them missing.

www.child-adolescent-adult-development.info/playtime-for-...

 

Playtime for Grown Ups

 

By Calvin A. Colarusso, M.D.

Clinical Professor of Psychiatry,

University of California at San Diego

(12/07/2011)

 

Parents always tell kids to go out and play. But did you ever think that an adult, an adult and child psychiatrist no less, would tell YOU, the adult, to go out and play?

 

Well, Dr. Colarusso is doing just that. In this book he explains both the nature of play and the dynamics which make play such an essential part of human experience throughout the life cycle.

 

The message is get off that coach, get out of that rocking chair, and go and play. Adults need to play, maybe not as much as children do, but for the same reasons. Play is a way of mastering stress and trauma. It serves the same purpose for children and adults. The stresses of adulthood are in their own way more daunting than those of childhood. And we all have a need to master the traumatic overstimulation that characterizes our busy lives, to say nothing of the internal pressures that continually force us to deal with issues, relationships and experiences from the past and present.

 

Go and hit that great golf shot, watch an action movie, or see a good romance film and relive a youthful love affair. Join the Monday night football crowd. Reread Portnoy's Complaint. Take in your son's, daughter's or grandchild's soccer game. Buy some new sexual toys. They're all examples of how adults can and should play. Whatever you do, remember that play should be fun. But it's also a marvelous way to master the stresses of life. Just do it!

Playtime for Adults gives a clear understanding of the various forms of play available to adults and the reasons why play is important to mental and physical health, throughout adulthood.

 

This book includes:

An understanding of what motivates play

The role of thought and action in play

The different levels of play in childhood and adulthood

The relationships between creativity and play

The organizers of play in adulthood.

Sexual play

 

Understanding the nature of play and doing more of it will lead to a happier life.

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Calvin A. Colarusso, M.D. is a board-certified Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California at San Diego, where he served for two decades as Director of the Child Psychiatry Residency Training Program.

 

He is also a Training and Supervising Analyst in child and adult psychoanalysis at the San Diego Psychoanalytic Institute and an internationally known lecturer to students, professionals, and the general public on many aspects of normal and pathologic development.

 

His books have been published in English, Korean, and Spanish. See amzn.to/calcolarusso.

 

Amazon Review

5.0 out of 5 stars hepful and practical, great info!, December 11, 2011

By Angela Johnson - See all my reviewsThis review is from: Playtime for Grown Ups (Kindle Edition)

 

"As a mother a of three active children, this was a book that I desperately needed to read. My life has been about them and only them since my oldest was born and although I don't regret anything for even a second, I have neglected myself for quite some time. This has led to me and the hubby not really connecting and enjoying each other like we had in the past. Of course if you ask him he won't admit it, but "play-time" for us has been nonexistent in our lives."

 

"The advice in this book has been wonderful and just by reading it, I've already started to feel better and more care-free. The author has a very friendly and uplifting style of writing, and his insights and ideas on adding creativity and play-time into the adults life are both practical and realistic. His intelligent thoughts on sexual play were probably my favorite part of the book, great ideas for keeping Mom emotionally and physically balanced ; )"

 

"Great book, I can't begin to recommend it enough. My husband has already agreed to read it too, I got him very interested with some of the ideas I told him about."

Though personalized art appeared during World War I, and occasionally grew to incorporate the entire aircraft, most pilots carried a saying or a slogan, or a family crest, or squadron symbol. Some were named, but nose art was not common. During World War II, nose art not only saw its true beginnings, but its heyday.

 

No one knows exactly who started nose art first--it appeared with both the British and the Germans around the first time, with RAF pilots painting Hitler being kicked or skulls and crossbones on their aircraft, while German nose art was usually a personal symbol, named for a girlfriend or adopting a mascot (such as Adolf Galland using Mickey Mouse, something Walt Disney likely didn't approve of). It would be with the Americans, and a lesser extent the Canadians, that nose art truly became common--and started including its most famous forms, which was usually half-naked or completely naked women. This was not always true, but it often was.

 

The quality of nose art depended on the squadron or wing artist. Some of it was rather crude, while others were equal to the finest pinup artists in the United States, such as Alberto Vargas. For men thousands of miles away from home and lonely, a curvaceous blonde on a B-17 or a P-51 made that loneliness a bit easier. Others thought naked women were a little crude, and just limited themselves to names, or depicted animals, cartoon characters, or patriotic emblems, or caricatures of the Axis dictators they were fighting.

 

Generally speaking, there was little censorship, with squadron and group commanders rarely intervening on names or pictures; the pilots themselves practiced self-censorship, with profanity almost unknown, and full-frontal nudity nearly nonexistent. After the loss of a B-17 named "Murder Inc.," which the Germans captured and used to make propaganda, the 8th Air Force, at least, set up a nose art committee that reviewed the nose art of aircraft--but even it rarely wielded its veto. For the most part, nose art was limited only by the crew's imagination and the artist's ability. The British tended to stay away from the lurid nudes of the Americans, though the Canadians adopted them as well. (The Axis also did not use nose art in this fashion, and neither did the Soviets, who usually confined themselves to patriotic slogans on their aircraft, such as "For Stalin!" or "In the Spirit of the Motherland!")

 

When World War II ended, so did nose art, for the most part. In the peacetime, postwar armed forces, the idea of having naked women were wives and children could see it was not something the postwar USAF or Navy wanted, and when it wasn't scrapped, it was painted over. A few units (especially those away from home and family) still allowed it, but it would take Korea to begin a renaissance of nose art.

 

One of two P-51Ds on display at the War Eagles Air Museum in Santa Teresa, New Mexico, "The Friendly Ghost" is 44-84658, painted in the postwar colors of the 136th Fighter Group (Texas ANG) at Love Field, Texas. As was common for any stateside USAF units, any nose art was very tame compared to wartime overseas aircraft: "The Friendly Ghost" carries a rather family-friendly Casper as its nose art. The use of "Friendly Ghost" rather than Casper was that, when the character first came out in 1945, he was not known as Casper. The "Friendly Ghost" is part of the War Eagles Air Museum in Santa Teresa, New Mexico.

Heinde and Verre. City in flatland landscape. 2010.

Närke Stormaktsporter

Dark brown with a hint of red in color and a pale brown head that was practically nonexistent.

Had a slight burn with apparent campfire smoke and tobacco aromas.

Smoke and molasses prevail with a cherry flavor creeping in the back.

Mouth feel was somewhat thin.

Good beer overall. As I came to the end of my pour, each sip smelled more and more like a blunt wrap—huge tobacco, and I enjoyed that. But not worth the price and effort to obtain it in my opinion.

 

Närke Kaggen! Stormaktsporter

Dark Brown with a thin tan head coating the top.

Smells of tobacco, wood, bitter chocolate, campfire smoke, and alcohol.

It tasted similarly to the Närke Stormaktsporter (for obvious reasons), however everything was a bit subdued. A slight tobacco flavor with bitter chocolate, dark fruit, and alcohol.

Still a thin mouthfeel, a slight oily slickness.

Again, a good beer, but I preferred the non barrel aged version.

 

The Funky Buddha Floridian Hefeweizen

not pictured

Poured from a growler. No notes, but I remember the nose being a little off-putting, but tasted excellent. Very tart, slight citrus fruit flavors followed by big vanilla and a little bit of clove. I'd like to get more of this, or something similar.

 

The Lost Abbey Veritas 009

Dark reddish brown with tan bubbles. No head—this beer really isn't carbonated, but it was expected.

I could smell a bit of bourbon barrel, big dark fruit, slight funk, a bit of apple, tobacco, and chocolate.

Big cherry flavor followed by a sweet caramel/butterscotch maltiness, followed by tart cherry. Big sour, slight bourbon and chocolate also mix into the experience.

Oily in texture, thin to medium mouth feel.

AWESOME BEER. It was incredibly complex. I personally don't need carbonation with this beer. It drank more like a wine, and I'm fine with that. The mix of cherry, caramels, chocolates and bourbon in this sour beer put me in an extremely happy place. I would drink this often if enough actually existed. Sadly, I doubt I experience it ever again.

 

The Bruery Chocolate Rain

Dark brownish black in color with a dark tan head that receded rather quickly.

Smells of walnuts, big chocolate, a bit of caramel and vanilla take over. I could smell it as soon as Matt was pouring the first glass.

Again, huge chocolate immediately on my first sip. Pretty much tasted like a piece of moist chocolate cake with hints of caramel and vanilla. Dark fruits and barrel spice.

A medium to thick mouth feel, slightly oily, with what I felt was the perfect amount of carbonation.

Another winner here. At this point, I've just experienced some big hitters in both complexity and flavor. This is a true dessert beer. About 6 ounces of this was plenty. I could've drank more, but unneccesary.

 

The Lost Abbey Isabelle Proximus

Bright yellow in color with a little bit of head that receded soon after being poured.

Lemon zest on the nose. Accompanied with some funk and unripened strawberry's.

Sour lemon on the palette.

Dry, crisp mouth feel.

A delicious, refreshing, sour beer. Matt brought some cheeses as well. The funky cheeses were pairiing really well with this beer.

 

Mikkeller black (黑)

After the first half of this tasting, some 15 year old Pappy Van Winkle, and some veggies, I stopped writing notes.

I bought this beer in early 2009. I loved this beer. That is all.

 

Jolly Pumpkin Biere de Mars (2010 & 2011) & Biere de Mars Grand Reserve

What I remember from this specifically, the 2011 was my least favorite. Big difference between the 2010 and 2011. The Grand Reserve reigned supreme. All were sour and fruity. Dark red in color. A little funk. Overall, delicious beers.

 

Dogfish Head 120 Minute IPA

(bottled November 2008)

You can still smell the alcohol, but not really surprised. Tasted excellent. A great balance between the sweet maltiness and super hop profile.

 

Three Floyds Amon Amarth Ragnarok

At this point, my palette's pretty much wrecked. What I remember was how hoppy it was. Way hoppier than I expected. I had this at the brewpub earlier this year. It didn't taste like I'd remembered it. I enjoyed the bottled version more.

Wat Ong Teu Mahawihan (Temple of the Heavy Buddha) is one of many Buddhist Monasteries that are present in the city of Vientiane in Laos. This name is given to the temple due to the large, bronze Phra Ong Teu Buddha image that is present within the temple: the largest Buddha in Vientiane. This temple was initially constructed by King Settathirat I in the 16th century (known as the golden age of Buddhism in Laos) when Laos was being bombarded by the Burmese, but was later demolished during a foreign invasion. Thus, it may have gone through many reconstructions during the 19th or 20th century to attain the appearance it has today.

 

Though this temple is created in Vientiane, it has the basic shape for what is known as the ‘Luang Prabang I style’ with its scare use of brickwork and rectangular-like body.

 

Wat Ong Teu is said to have been placed along a cardinal point in accordance with three other temples, but that may just be coincidental.

 

ORIGIN

After commanding for the relocation of the capital of Laos from the city of Luang Prabang to Vientiane, King Setthathirat I produced many monasteries such as Wat That Luang and Wat Phra Kaew. The reason this particular wat (Lao for temple) was built was because Setthathirat I desired to create the Phra Ong Teu image that would be placed within it, and to have it as his person living quarters. There would be six other sculptures of this image present in other monasteries, but Wat Ong Teu Mahawihan contains the first of them. Since this time period is known as the golden age, the wat would evolve into a complex with a sim (ordination hall), a ho rackhang (bell tower), a ho kong (drum tower), a that (stupa), and a kuti (monks’ living quarters). Each of these parts of the complex all share the similar artistic motif of the architecture of the central wat, which is discussed later.

 

The original use of this wat was for ceremonies of allegiance to the king. However, in the 17th century, Souligna Vongsa as king transformed this temple into a Buddhist learning center in order to ‘teach, enlighten and inspire worshippers.’ In other words, it has become a school for monks coming from around Southeast Asia to study the dhamma. This becomes apparent because surrounding countries of Laos sent their monks to Vientiane to study this religion. Such a function is more understandable of Wat Ong Teu since there are many details that give the suggestion of a learning center.

 

RECONSTRUCTION

When Siam sacked Laos in 1827-28 as a punishment for almost all of the monasteries in Laos, including Wat Ong Teu, were destroyed. This was only made worse afterwards when the Ho bandits tried sack Vientiane again to take gold from Wat Ong Teu and others. In 1900, following the establishment of the Franco-Siamese treaty in 1843, the French chose Vientiane as their capital and started the reconstruction of its monasteries including Wat Ong Teu. As an addition, the French may have also created a school, in the same format and appearance as the rest of the complex to further exemplify the function of Wat Ong Teu as a place of study. The Lao Buddhist Institute was made in 1929 and still functions today as a school for the Theravada Buddhist religion.

 

ARCHITECTURE

In retrospect, the influence on the style of the original temple can be traced predominantly to India, though not directly. Indochina was part of the sphere of influence of India, known by George Coedès as the ‘Indianization of Southeast Asia.’ The religion and customs of Indian civilization came ‘thoroughly yet peacefully’ to the people of this region, especially due to marriage between Indian men and local women. Laos however, was a nonexistent country during this time. The kingdom of Lan Xang (‘Land of a million elephants’) wasn’t established until the mid-13th century of the common era just years after all direct contact with India was completely diminished. Instead, the original Wat Ong Teu took its traits from other mixed ideas of architecture from surrounding countries that were established earlier than the 13th century. In essence, the variant notions of these Southeastern Asian countries on the Theravada Buddhist architecture of India, such as Cambodia and Siam (present day Thailand), influenced the ideas of how Wat Ong Teu would be depicted. However, even though Laos borrowed traditions from these other cultures, the 16th century turned a new leaf for the Lao people in the form of a golden age. Thus, Wat Ong Teu has most of its own Lao Buddhist features and only minor details of surrounding influences.

 

After the temple’s destruction, some of the techniques used to create it were lost, but much of it wasn’t forgotten. Instead, modern techniques were blended in with the old during the temple’s reconstruction, especially in what was used to fortify the walls and roof. The result became a rich new style that is exclusive to Lao architecture. This primarily is because the modern reconstruction completed by the French kept sincere adherence to these Lao notions already established on temple aesthetics, with some artistic liberties since Laos at this time was only a protectorate of France.

 

ENTRY GATE

This multi-tiered archway serves as the entrance into the complex where the temple is located. It is miniature compared to that of Pha That Luang. The functionality of this seemingly simple archway is similar to that of the torana, or gateway, of Indian culture. The torana served as the passageway from secular ground to sacred ground. The only difference is that this archway does not have any images for which a person can meditate and it doesn’t involve circumambulating a stupa. This characteristic may be present in all the temples and stupas that exist in Laos, especially at King Setthathirat’s more famous architectural creation, Pha That Luang.

 

MAIN ENTRANCE

The entrance to Wat Ong Teu is known to have a good amount of eccentricities that are indigenous only to Laos and no other Buddhist temple in Asia. Just before going up the stairs at the front of the temple, one can find the frieze that is exceedingly baroque in detail, highlighting this Lao style. The green backdrop shimmers as many carved and gilded vine leaves curve in no apparent order or pattern. This motif is repeated throughout the whole front part of the temple, even surrounding the six small Buddhas that are just below the frieze. This foliage may be an allusion to the lotus flower which is an aniconic symbol of the Buddha. Another Lao characteristic of monasteries is the pointed double archway that flanks the six Buddhas. There are many variations of this characteristic, but the archway of Wat Ong Teu is the most simplistic aesthetically.

 

One of the most native features to Laos is the Naga, or mythical water serpent, that serves as the guardian of the entrance. The Naga was widely known in Southeast Asia before Buddhism arrived. They would symbolize the Hindu god Shiva in which they represented destruction and renewal. How they relate to the Buddha lies in the story of Siddhartha under the Bodhi tree.

 

This could also be the second area for which one would pass from less secular ground to completely sacred ground. Though Nagas are usually seen with multiple heads, Wat Ong Teu’s version of the Naga has a single head with a its bright green body stretched out. There are three sets of these Nagas that all give access to the same patio-type area in front the temple. This aspect is interesting because there is only one door that gives an entrance into the temple. It may be a reference to the original function of this wat as the king’s temple, with the front stairs only being walk on by the king while the others were reserved for normal patrons. The posts perpendicular to these Naga resemble the sort of pagoda or tower one would see in Laos.

 

The doors and windows are made of wood and are also decorated with many leaves and stems that spiral sporadically. These images are all carved, painted red and gilded to make the door and windows look as if they were made of metal. Each of the windows and the door have different images of the Buddha either directly or by aniconic representation. Some of them may evidently portray a Jataka, or story given of one of the Buddha’s past incarnations.

 

ROOF

Seemingly the most intricate part of the exterior of Wat Ong Teu is its roof. It illustrates a myriad of different styles from around Asia that blend in an extraordinarily harmonious way.

 

A commonly used feature in Asia for the roof is the utilization of a curved roof. This non-linear approach was originated by the Chinese. In China, architects thought that evil spirits despised curved lines, therefore giving an apotropaic effect to the temple. Lao ideas of the curved roof should have been similar to China’s as well. This aspect is especially important when the principal function of this temple is to teach the Buddhist religion. Students learning the Buddhist religion should especially be protected from the evils of the outside world.

 

What is particularly interesting is the feature of multiple roofs that descend past the boundaries of the wall at a slope. This aspect is exclusive to Laos. Specifically, there are three or four superimposed roofs, with the two bottom roofs being supported by columns from within the temple. It is unknown as to the reason for this intricate design, but it may be another aspect of protection because multiple roofs could cause confusion among evil spirits.

 

The stone spire decoration with stacked superimposed, decreasingly sized disks in the center of the keel is definitively a Buddhist element. It is known that before the Buddha went through enlightenment, he was always covered by parasols to indicate his royalty as a prince. Therefore, it is not unusual to see a parasol-like spire atop this temple. The other flame-like decorations, called chaw faa (sky clusters), lining the edges and vertices of the roof are frequently used in Laos. This may also be another quality that emphasizes the apotropaic effect of the roof.

 

The exterior may have a lot detail that is used for protection and attraction, but the interior does not mirror the same intricacy. Within the temple, the floors are glossed and the walls and ceiling are painted with the same colors as the exterior. There is a red mat that is lined perfectly from the middle to the back of the sim where the Phra Ong Teu image resides. The most intricate objects within the temple are the columns that hold up the roof. They may have been made to look like oversized lotus flowers that have grown from the ground to support the roof of the temple. This may illustrate the natural world for which the Buddha himself would have liked to teach his followers.

 

MODERN TECHNIQUES

Once Laos became a French protectorate and reconstruction began, there may have been many liberties made to some of the minute details of the temple, but most of the essential attributes of the temple remain similar to the original construction. A very important change is in the stone and well-kept wood that fortifies the structure of the temple. The brackets are included in this use of preserved timber. Not only are there brackets on the outside, but in the inside as well. However, the columns are the objects that provide the most support for the 3 or 4 tiered roofs, so they are treated with more care than the brackets. Therefore, in essence, the modern approach is more of a post and lintel technique rather than the use of brackets. The lack of non-perishable material before French rule over Laos is indicative of their weak government.

 

Some details that are usually seen in developed countries in Europe and North America include small, hanging chandeliers as well as fans placed on each column that lines the sim. These simple touches do seem to emit a sort of waning of sacredness for which the temple was originally created, but it may not be complete departure from belief.

 

Most of the modern techniques may have been meant for the surrounding complex rather than the monastery itself, but the central theme of all these buildings and towers remain faithful to that of Wat Ong Teu.

 

ART

´HEAVY BUDDHA`

ACCOMPANIED BY TWO STANDING BUDDHAS

These original sculptures reside within the sim of the temple towards the furthest wall from the entrance. The Phra Ong Teu is made of a mix of metals, predominately bronze, and is seated atop a golden pedestal that was cast separate from the Buddha. The head may have been cast separately as well from the body and put together by the ‘tonged and grooved joint techniques’ showing the skill of Lao craftsmanship. The two standing Buddhas are connected to their own respective platforms. These sculptures are raised on top of a platform with a color scheme similar to the rest of the temple. More recently, these sculptures are draped in linen or silk cloth, depicting the saffron clothing monks usually wear in Laos, with neon-colored halos place on the wall behind them. This may just add an artistic effect to the Buddhas so that a more prestigious role could be emphasized of them. However, Lao artists of this time never thought of these or other Buddha images as art, only as a means to ‘educate and enlighten.’ Therefore, later use of this temple as a place for further learning of the Hinayana Buddhist religion would be the exact purpose for which the artists intended.

 

It is usual to see the Enlightened One alone or accompanied by bodhisattvas in a triad, but here all three of these sculptures depict the Phra Ong Teu Buddha. A strong indication that these sculptures are Buddhas is the parasols that are suspended over them. Each of the smaller Buddhas have a parasol above them that is attached to a post protruding out from behind them, but the main Buddha has a distinctively rectangular parasol that is fastened to the ceiling. These parasols act in the same way as the parasol located on the keel of the wat, but the parasols that hang over the Buddhas are more decorative. What is interesting is that the rectangular parasol hanging over the Phra Ong Teu is more of a Japanese trait than anything Laos. The only record of any Japanese interaction with Laos would be during a five-year period in WWII. The only action caused by them was the nationalistic passion that the Lao people had in opposition to them. Not enough time was put into having any influence on their art of this Buddha or the temple that it is in.

 

There are many other features of Phra Ong Teu Buddha that are common in relation to the codified Buddha, but it still has its Lao differences. The earliest image of the Buddha in Laos was influenced by the ‘Pha Bang Khmer style,’ but started to become more distinctive in the 16th century along with the golden age. For example, the tightly curled hair that is displayed on the main Buddha is strongly reminiscent of the Gandhara Style of India during the Gupta period, which is mirrored by the Pha Bang. However, the pointed swelling coming out of the top of the image’s head, signifying ‘transcendent knowledge,’ expresses an exclusively Lao idea. This type of swell may even be a facet solely of the Phra Ong Teu image that King Setthathirat created. Some other modified aspects of the image are the sharp ear rims with long lobes, the equal, extended length of the fingers and toes, and the sharp wide nose.

 

There are a few different mudras, or hand gestures, that these Buddhas portray. These gestures illustrate the Indian influence that is present in Laos. Both of the smaller standing Buddhas have their hands up with palms facing outward, meaning fearlessness. Their mudra differs from the main Phra Ong Teu Buddha. He instead adopts two different mudras that allude to the moments just before Siddhartha’s Enlightenment. Specifically, the left hand is placed in the lap with the palm facing up towards the face which represents the idea of meditation. The greater gesture that captures the Enlightenment within this image comes from his right hand. His hand is rested over his knee with fingers extended toward the earth. This symbolizes the calling of the Earth to protect the Buddha from Mara, India’s interpretation of the devil. This can then be connected to the Naga that was conjured up to help Siddhartha in his path for Enlightenment. In creating this image, King Setthathirat I proved his adherence to the Theravada Buddhism that has always been present in Laos since Lan Xang.

 

CONCLUSION

Of the many temples that are present in Vientiane, Laos today, Wat Ong Teu Mahawihan is one of the more undervalued temples. Every detail that makes up this composition of this monastery has some sort of allusion to the teachings or image of the Buddha. From the Nagas guarding the entrance of the temple to the fastidiously heavy Buddha at the back of the sim within the temple, from the carved windows and doors to the lotus columns supporting the roof, Wat Ong Teu is a complete illustration of the story of Siddhartha meditating under the Bodhi tree. No area of the temple is left untouched which results in a sense of sacred ground.

 

Though it may not be an international symbol, Wat Ong Teu is more widely known as an educational institute that provides widespread teaching of the Theravada Buddhism that originated in India. That belief hasn’t meandered to this day. As a center for learning, Wat Ong Teu still continues to house the teachings of the beginning of Buddhism straight from the Buddha, though the two parties live centuries apart. With respect to Laos, education of this religion is what allowed France to be interesting in them even though France’s main focus was Vietnam. From to the French came Lao nationalism in opposition to the Japanese. All of this sparked from monasteries in Laos, Wat Ong Teu included.

 

WIKIPEDIA

. . . is low to nonexistent

 

Wednesday morning I walked up Mount Tolmie via Horner Park and Mayfair Drive to Glastonbury.

The overnight snowfall added more to what we had to a depth of approximately 30cm (1ft.).

It was enervating walking in the deep snow so I stuck to the roads where the few vehicles who ventured out had pounded down ruts.

My GoPro was mounted on my chestcam holder so there are a few pix taken from those videos.

Looking eastward at the northern two-thirds of the inscription-bearing entablature. To place this section in its overall context, see Part 19 of this series.

 

In this last look at the Kimball Monument, let's take a moment to review what we've discussed before.

 

It's made, from head to toe, of Vermont's Ordovician-period Shelburne Marble, in this case quarried in West Rutland. In this fine-grained, pure-white premium grade it's a magnificent statuary stone, on par with its world-famous Italian competitor, the Carrara. But like the latter, it really should not be used outdoors in Temperate-zone, continental-climate cities. Here temperature extremes (too damned hot to too damned cold), ample precipitation (rain, freezing rain, sleet, fog, snow, snizzle, hail, and every cussed combination thereof) conspire with urban-atmosphere pollutants to degrade its calcite matrix.

 

Having previously looked at the worst corrosion of the marble on the monument's angel figure (Part 20 and Part 21), we can be thankful that there are other portions where the damage is much less pronounced to practically nonexistent. The ways of weathering, in both architecture and the natural landscape, can seem awfully capricious. But there's always some reason, however obscure, that one place survives better than another.

 

Every time I look at this shot I laugh a bit, because it is so quintessentially McKim, Mead & White (the prominent Beaux-Artsy New York firm that designed this). There are so many stock classical ornamental motifs trotted out from ancient models. All those palmettes and rosettes and and eggs-and-darts make my head swim.

 

The meander fret on top of the cornice looks somewhat sugared, and the sections directly below it have a lot of black crusting that may signal that calcite-gypsum conversion and soot buildup is well underway in spots sheltered from dripping water.

 

But the garland- and inscription-bearing frieze farther down looks almost immaculate, with the letters of the family name still cleanly etched in the stone.

 

To learn more about this site and 200 others in the Windy City, make it your top personal priority to get a copy of my book Chicago in Stone and Clay, described at www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501765063/chicago-i...

 

And to peruse the other photos and descriptions in this series, pay a visit to my Graveyard Geology of Chicago album.

Hey guys, it's my birthdayyy! I know I'm essentially nonexistent, and my 365 has completely fallen apart, and I've basically given up on photography and myself, but WHO CARES 'CAUSE I'M EIGHTEEEEENNNNN

 

This is Rachel, you all know her(: I spent the day getting ready for prom and hanging out with some friends and things :D I hope you all are well, I'll try to motivate myself to take photos soon! I love all of you a lot, even if I'm bad at showing it <3

As my University timetable clamps on down in my final days of term, with assignments due in over the next few weeks, the gap between new photos appears to be growing larger as the weeks pass. So, to bump up the numbers, let's go back to my first ever spotter's trip to Leeds back in January 2018, where the concept of framing, back then, was completely nonexistent to me. See this photo, for example. This bus carries some light significance, I feel, as though it is not chronologically the first B7RLE First has operated, when it was new to York in early 2005, it would be the first bus (ha!) to kick off the long-standing 69xxx series of B7RLEs, which funnily enough, ended in Yorkshire in 2013, if the Bustimes mass-list is correct. Yes, this is just another bog-standard B7RLE, but this is the one that started off possibly the most easily-rememberable number combination in the fleet.

 

Seen here in January 2018 when it still had all its original Leeds 'Olympia' logos, First Leeds' 69000, a 2005 Volvo B7RLE Wright Eclipse Urban new to First York, is seen taking passengerse on Duncan Street on a 75 to Middleton.