The F-101 Voodoo was originally built as an escort fighter for USAF strategic bombers. Unfortunately for the Voodoo, the jet bombers coming on the line for the USAF--the B-47, B-52, and B-58--didn't require escorts. The F-101 was a good aircraft without a mission. The USAF began building the F-101A as a low-level strike fighter, because if there was one thing the Voodoo had, it was high speed at all altitudes. This led the USAF to consider: would the F-101 make a good tactical reconnaissance aircraft?

 

In response, McDonnell rebuilt two of the YF-101A prototypes as RF-101A testbeds. This replaced the fighter nose with a more "chisel" design that contained six cameras instead of radar and cannon. The RF-101A turned out to be a superb reconnaissance aircraft, and entered production on a limited basis. Further variants were developed from later Voodoo versions, namely the purpose-built RF-101C, which entered service in 1958.

 

The RF-101 gave the USAF its first supersonic reconnaissance aircraft, and largely replaced the RF-84F Thunderflash and RT-33A Shooting Star. Pilots liked its speed and responsiveness; it was capable of genuine aerobatics in the hands of a good pilot. RF-101s would first be used by the Republic of China Air Force (Taiwan), either flown by ROCAF or CIA pilots, over the Chinese mainland; the USAF's first combat usage would be the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. The RF-101's dash speed was such that it was tough to intercept, though not impossible.

 

This was found to be true over Vietnam as well, where the RF-101 was the backbone of USAF tactical reconnaissance until the later years of the war. The Voodoo's speed at altitude made it impervious to flak, and even the MiG-21 could not keep up with it. However, the RF-101s often had to get down low to "get the pictures," and that meant that barrage flak could bring down Voodoos. SAMs were also a threat at higher altitudes. After losses began to mount, the RF-101s were camouflaged, which helped some, but also slightly lowered their top speed. 39 RF-101s were lost over Vietnam.

 

With the age of the aircraft beginning to tell, the Voodoo was gradually relegated to second-line units, replaced by the RF-4C Phantom II. Some soldiered on in Air National Guard units, but all the RF-101s were gone by 1979. A handful remain in museums.

 

56-0214 joined the USAF in 1958, and was assigned to the 66th Tactical Reconnaissance Wing at Laon, France; the 66th later moved to RAF Upper Heyford, UK in 1966 when France withdrew from NATO. It returned stateside in 1969 to serve with the 363rd TRW at Shaw AFB, South Carolina, but was only with the 363rd a short time before going to the Air National Guard, first with the 189th TRG (Arkansas ANG) at Little Rock AFB, and then with the 186th TRG (Mississippi ANG) at Key Field. It was retired in 1979 and was donated to the Pima Air and Space Museum in 1982.

 

56-0214 is looking a bit worn: the Southeast Asia camouflage has faded, and her tail numbers are nonexistent. Most of the aircraft around it have been recently restored, so 56-0214 probably won't have much longer to wait.

 

Astute followers of my page may notice that the career history for 56-0214 is virtually identical to the other RF-101C I photographed in 2019--56-0229, on display at the Museum of Aviation at Robins AFB, Georgia.

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.

www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/11/what-americas-...

 

America Has Lost the Plot on COVID

 

We’re avoiding the hardest questions about living with the coronavirus long term.

 

We know how this ends: The coronavirus becomes endemic, and we live with it forever. But what we don’t know—and what the U.S. seems to have no coherent plan for—is how we are supposed to get there. We’ve avoided the hard questions whose answers will determine what life looks like in the next weeks, months, and years: How do we manage the transition to endemicity? When are restrictions lifted? And what long-term measures do we keep, if any, when we reach endemicity?

 

The answers were simpler when we thought we could vaccinate our way to herd immunity. But vaccinations in the U.S. have plateaued. The Delta variant and waning immunity against transmission mean herd immunity may well be impossible even if every single American gets a shot. So when COVID-related restrictions came back with the Delta wave, we no longer had an obvious off-ramp to return to normal—are we still trying to get a certain percentage of people vaccinated? Or are we waiting until all kids are eligible? Or for hospitalizations to fall and stay steady? The path ahead is not just unclear; it’s nonexistent. We are meandering around the woods because we don’t know where to go.

 

What is clear, however, is that case numbers, the metric that has guided much of our pandemic thinking and still underlies CDC’s indoor-masking recommendation for vaccinated people, are becoming less and less useful. Even when we reach endemicity—when nearly everyone has baseline immunity from either infection or vaccination—the U.S. could be facing tens of millions of infections from the coronavirus every year, thanks to waning immunity and viral evolution. (For context, the flu, which is also endemic, sickens roughly 10 to 40 million Americans a year.) But with vaccines available, not every case of COVID-19 is created equal. Breakthrough cases are largely mild; 10,000 of them will cause only a fraction of the hospitalizations and deaths of 10,000 COVID cases in the unvaccinated. The more highly vaccinated a community is, the less tethered case numbers are to the reality of the virus’s impact.

 

So if not cases, then what? “We need to come to some sort of agreement as to what it is we're trying to prevent,” says Céline Gounder, an infectious-disease expert at New York University. “Are we trying to prevent hospitalization? Are we trying to prevent death? Are we trying to prevent transmission?” Different goals would require prioritizing different strategies. The booster-shot rollout has been roiled with confusion for this precise reason: The goal kept shifting. First, the Biden administration floated boosters for everyone to combat breakthroughs, then a CDC advisory panel restricted them to the elderly and immunocompromised most at risk for hospitalizations, then the CDC director overruled the panel to include people with jobs that put them at risk of infection.

 

On the ground, the U.S. is now running an uncontrolled experiment with every strategy all at once. COVID-19 policies differ wildly by state, county, university, workplace, and school district. And because of polarization, they have also settled into the most illogical pattern possible: The least vaccinated communities have some of the laxest restrictions, while highly vaccinated communities—which is to say those most protected from COVID-19—tend to have some of the most aggressive measures aimed at driving down cases. “We’re sleepwalking into policy because we’re not setting goals,” says Joseph Allen, a Harvard professor of public health. We will never get the risk of COVID-19 down to absolute zero, and we need to define a level of risk we can live with.

 

Scientific experts have been reluctant to make that call themselves. For one, there is real scientific uncertainty ahead. We don’t know how much immunity may continue to wane, how long the effects of a booster last, the exact incidence of long COVID in the vaccinated, or if a new variant will upend even the best-laid plans.

 

But the level of COVID-19 risk we can live with is also not an entirely scientific question. It is a social and political one that involves balancing both the costs and benefits of restrictions and grappling with genuine pandemic fatigue among the public. China, for example, has been brutally effective at suppressing COVID cases with strict lockdowns: Residents are barred from leaving locked-down neighborhoods; planes, trains, buses, and taxis in and to locked-down cities are being suspended; even vaccinated travelers are subject to mandatory quarantine. But are we willing to go that far? Currently, no. “This is the point at which we then have to start looking at ourselves and asking the hard question: Exactly how hard do we want to work to help how many people?” says Bill Hanage, an epidemiologist at Harvard. By we, he means all of us and, in particular, the public officials who represent us. “I can give you a policy, and I can tell you, okay, if you do that, I think you will have that outcome,” he says, but public officials need to first define what that policy is supposed to achieve.

 

One plausible goal is to focus on minimizing COVID-19’s impact on hospitals. A collapsed health-care system means more people will die, not just of COVID-19 but from other treatable diseases and injuries. Elsewhere in the world, like in the U.K. and Germany, leaders have explicitly tied their policies to containing hospitalizations rather than all cases. But in addition to hospitalizations, Gounder suggests we should also consider the risk of long COVID. “I think for people that is the big question. We just don’t know enough,” she says. Preliminary data suggest vaccines do reduce the risk of long COVID, but exactly how much is unclear given the uncertainties in diagnosing it.

 

Once we’ve defined what we are trying to prevent, we can define thresholds for lifting and, if necessary, reinstating COVID-19 measures. This can actually be quite tricky if the goal is minimizing hospitalizations, a lagging indicator that gives you a picture of the past rather than the present. By the time hospitalizations start to rise, a bigger increase may already be baked in with people already infected but not yet sick enough to see a doctor. What to track instead?

 

Here are some answers I got from scientific experts: hospitalizations and deaths, but stratified by age and vaccination status; a combination of vaccination rate and local transmission; a combination of vaccination rate and hospitalizations; a combination of long-COVID cases, hospitalizations, and deaths; a combination of case growth rate, testing uptake, vaccination rate, and hospitalizations. If this seems confusing, why not consider a real-life example? San Francisco and seven other Bay Area counties recently set three-pronged criteria for lifting indoor mask mandates: (1) Community transmission is moderate, as defined by the CDC, for at least three weeks, (2) hospitalization numbers are low and stable, and (3) 80 percent of the total population is fully vaccinated or eight weeks have passed since COVID-19 vaccines have been available for kids age 5 to 11.

 

If we are in fact going to try keeping hospitalizations stable, one reason to define this goal now is to untangle this mess of what data to track. Then, we can get to outlining specific tactics in the weeks and months ahead.

 

In the absence of a coherent strategy, our attention has focused on a policy change we know is coming: vaccines for kids under 12. COVID shots for kids 5 to 11 were authorized last week, and data for those ages 2 to 4 are expected before the end of the year. For some families, this will bring real relief and soon. Vaccinated parents, living with vaccinated children, who have vaccinated grandparents, can worry that much less about the virus’s worst impacts, and start behaving less cautiously.

 

But on a population level, as policy makers should be thinking, tying pediatric vaccinations to the end of restrictions doesn’t necessarily make sense, if we are trying to keep hospitalizations down. Vaccinating kids will protect them individually and help dampen transmission from and among them—but this policy lever simply has limited impact on hospitalizations.

 

To prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed, the key group we need to vaccinate is really the elderly. The risk of hospitalization for an unvaccinated person over 80 is 25 times that for an unvaccinated person under 18. A Financial Times analysis of data from the U.K. found vaccinating 25,000 children had the same effect on hospitalizations as vaccinating just 800 adults over age 60. Unvaccinated elderly adults are just that much more likely to become severely ill with COVID-19. You can’t compensate for a low vaccination rate among older adults by vaccinating more people in younger groups, says Müge Çevik, a virologist at the University of St. Andrews.

 

The U.S. still has too many unvaccinated elderly people—or rather, parts of the U.S. do. States such as Vermont and Hawaii have done well, given almost 100 percent of people over 65 immunized at least one dose. But in Idaho, Arkansas, and Mississippi, the percentage is languishing in the 80s. Even small differences in this percentage can have an outsize impact on hospitalization outcomes. For example, two communities with 90 versus 99 percent of the elderly vaccinated actually have a tenfold difference in the number of people at risk for hospitalization. “You don’t need a lot of infections in the unvaccinated over 65 to give you a problem,” Hanage says. During the summer wave in the U.S., the community vaccination rate in people over 65 correlated with hospitalization trends. The trend, he says, is “extremely clear.”

 

One country that has excelled at vaccinating its elderly population is Denmark. Ninety-five percent of those over 50 have taken a COVID-19 vaccine, on top of a 90 percent overall vaccination rate in those eligible. (Children under 12 are still not eligible.) On September 10, Denmark lifted all restrictions. No face masks. No restrictions on bars or nightclubs. Life feels completely back to normal, says Lone Simonsen, an epidemiologist at Roskilde University, who was among the scientists advising the Danish government. In deciding when the country would be ready to reopen, she told me, “I was looking at, simply, vaccination coverage in people over 50.” COVID-19 cases in Denmark have since risen—under CDC mask guidelines, the country would even qualify as an area of “high” transmission where vaccinated people should still mask indoors. But hospitalizations are at a fraction of their January peak, relatively few people are in intensive care, and deaths in particular have remained low.

 

Crucially, Simonsen said, decisions about COVID measures are made on a short-term basis. If the situation changes, these restrictions can come back—and indeed, the health minister is now talking about that possibility. Simonsen continues to scrutinize new hospitalizations everyday. Depending on how the country’s transition to endemicity goes, it could be a model for the rest of the world.

 

Even when the coronavirus is endemic, it will still make people sick and it will still cause deaths and hospitalizations. That means our fight against COVID-19 is not over, and we might consider strategies sustainable over the long term. Better ventilation, for example, can make indoor spaces safer against all respiratory viruses, not just COVID-19. And even without mask mandates, people who feel at risk can still voluntarily mask up. In the longer term, Çevik says, we also need less focus on policies that work by “reducing small risks among many” and more on policies targeted at the people most affected by COVID-19. During the pandemic, the virus has disproportionately sickened people who are poor, who are less likely to be able to work from home, and who are less likely to have space to isolate from their family at home. When COVID-19 becomes endemic, it will likely, as many diseases are, continue to be correlated with poverty.

 

“Pay much more attention to who and why people are at risk,” says Stefan Baral, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University. Baral says public health needs to go back to its traditional roots, where tackling disease also means reforming the living and working conditions that make people more susceptible. For example, universal paid sick leave and free voluntary isolation spaces can help minimize the impact of COVID-19, as well as many other diseases.

 

Hard questions lie ahead, and the answers require political will. But first, we have to stop avoiding them. We need a goal.

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.

Ed Coates writes:

This photograph has puzzled me ever since I received it from Sir W.G. Armstrong Whitworth Aircraft Ltd. in the 1940s. It looks like an optical illusion. Evidently the gunner's position was an extension of the engine nacelle (presumably one on each side). That being the case, how come the roundel appears to be on the side of the nacelle also? The gunner's pod looks like it's an extension, or grafted onto, the fuselage itself. Below is a close up of the offending design peculiarity. It doesn't make sense. And yet the photograph appears not to have been tampered with. Anyway, this prototype was produced at the end of 1918 as a D.H.10 competitor. The signing of the Peace Treaty killed any desire on the part of the RAF to consider it, notwithstanding the fact that, at that time, funding for new types was virtually nonexistent.

  

Doubtful Sound is a very large and naturally imposing fjord (despite its name) in Fiordland, in the far south west of New Zealand. It is located in the same region as the smaller but more famous and accessible Milford Sound.

Doubtful Sound was named 'Doubtful Harbour' in 1770 by Captain Cook, who did not enter the inlet as he was uncertain whether it was navigable under sail. It was later renamed Doubtful Sound by whalers and sealers.

A Spanish scientific expedition commanded by Alessandro Malaspina visited Doubtful Sound in February 1793 to conduct experiments measuring the force of gravity using a pendulum, a part of the effort to establish a new metric system. The officers of the expedition, which included Felipe Bauzá y Cañas, a cartographer, also made the first chart of the entrance and lower parts of the Sound, naming features of it. Today these form a unique cluster of the only Spanish names on the map of New Zealand: Febrero Point, Bauza Island and the Nee Islets, Pendulo Reach and Malaspina Reach.

There are three distinct arms to the sound, which is the site of several large waterfalls, notably Helena Falls at Deep Cove, and the Browne Falls which have a fall of over 600 metres. The steep hills are known for their hundreds of waterfalls during the rainy season.

Access to the sound is either by sea, or by the Wilmot Pass road from the Manapouri Power Station. Most areas of the sound itself are only accessible by sea however, as the road network in this area of New Zealand is sparse or nonexistent, as is the human population.

Charles John Lyttelton, 10th Viscount Cobham, Governor-General of New Zealand (1957-1962) wrote about this part of Fiordland:

"There are just a few areas left in the world where no human has ever set foot. That one of them should be in a country so civilized and so advanced as New Zealand may seem incredible, unless one has visited the south-west corner of the South Island. Jagged razor backed mountains rear their heads into the sky. More than 200 days of rain a year ensure not a tree branch is left bare and brown, moss and epiphytes drape every nook. The forest is intensely green. This is big country... one day peaceful, a study in green and blue, the next melancholy and misty, with low cloud veiling the tops... an awesome place, with its granite precipices, its hanging valleys, its earthquake faults and its thundering cascades."

Doubtful Sound is unusual in that it contains two distinct layers of water that scarcely mix. The top few meters is fresh water, fed from the high inflows from the surrounding mountains, and stained brown with tannins from the forest. Below this is a layer of cold, heavy, saline water from the sea. The dark tannins in the fresh water layer makes it difficult for light to penetrate. Thus, many deep-sea species will grow in the comparatively shallow depths of the Sound.

This fiord is home to one of the southernmost population of bottlenose dolphins. The Doubtful Sound bottlenoses have formed a very insular sub-group of only about 70 individuals, with none having been observed to leave or enter the Sound during a multi-year monitoring regime. Their social grouping is thus extremely close, which is also partly attributed to the difficult and unusual features of their habitat, which is much colder than for other bottlenose groups and is also overlaid by the freshwater layer.

Other wildlife to be found in Doubtful Sound includes fur seals and penguins (Fiordland crested and blue), or even rare large whales (Southern Right Whale, Humpback Whale, Minke Whale, Sperm Whale and some Giant Beaked Whales. Orca, the Killer Whales and Long-Finned Pilot Whales can be found also. The waters of Doubtful Sound are also home to an abundance of sea creatures, including many species of fish, starfish, sea anemones and corals. It is perhaps best known for its black coral trees which occur in unusually shallow water for what is normally a deep water species.

The catchment basin of Doubtful Sound is generally steep terrain that is heavily forested except for locations where surface rock exposures are extensive. Nothofagus trees are dominant in many locations. In the understory there are a wide variety of shrubs and ferns.

A sculpture of a swan that I made from LEGO bricks. This is actually a combination of two different species of swans. I grabbed various characteristics from the two of them, making a probably nonexistent species. It took maybe 40 hours to design and build.

 

The head and feet are recycled parts from my old bird old bird, made a 1.5 years before this one. The old one fell off of a shelf, and I didn't want to repair it, so I made a better version.

 

The wings of this sculpture ended up being too heavy to sustain their own weight (although they are pretty durable), but the cross support holds them firmly in place.

Bora Bora (French: Bora-Bora, Tahitian: Pora Pora) is a 30.55 km2 island group in the Leeward group in the western part of the Society Islands of French Polynesia, an overseas collectivity of France in the Pacific Ocean. The main island, located about 230 kilometres northwest of Papeete, is surrounded by a lagoon and a barrier reef. In the center of the island are the remnants of an extinct volcano rising to two peaks, Mount Pahia and Mount Otemanu, the highest point at 727 metres.

 

Bora Bora is a major international tourist destination, famous for its aqua-centric luxury resorts. The major settlement, Vaitape, is on the western side of the main island, opposite the main channel into the lagoon. Produce of the island is mostly limited to what can be obtained from the sea and the plentiful coconut trees, which were historically of economic importance for copra.

 

DEMOGRAPHICS

As of 2017, the Bora Bora group has a permanent population of 10,605.

 

NAME

In ancient times the island was called "Pora pora mai te pora", meaning "created by the gods" in the local Tahitian dialect. This was often abbreviated Pora Pora meaning simply "first born". Because of ambiguities in the phonemes of the Tahitian language, this could also be pronounced Bola Bola or Bora Bora. When explorer Jacob Roggeveen first landed on the island, he and his crew adopted the name Bora Bora which has stood ever since.

 

HISTORY

The island was inhabited by Polynesian settlers around the 4th century C.E.[citation needed] The first European sighting was made by Jakob Roggeveen in 1722.

 

James Cook sighted the island on 29 July 1769, using a Tahitian navigator, Tupaia. The London Missionary Society arrived in 1820 and founded a Protestant church in 1890. Bora Bora was an independent kingdom until 1888 when its last queen Teriimaevarua III was forced to abdicate by the French who annexed the island as a colony.

 

WORLD WAR II

In World War II the United States chose Bora Bora as a South Pacific military supply base, and an oil depot, airstrip, seaplane base, and defensive fortifications were constructed. Known as "Operation Bobcat", it maintained a supply force of nine ships, 20,000 tons of equipment and nearly 7,000 men.

 

At least eight 7"/44 caliber guns, operated by elements of the 13th Coast Artillery Regiment (later the 276th Coast Artillery Battalion), were set up at strategic points around the island to protect it against potential military attack. Eight of these guns remain in the area.

 

However, the island saw no combat as the American presence on Bora Bora went uncontested over the course of the war. The base was officially closed on 2 June 1946. The World War II airstrip was never able to accommodate large aircraft, but it nonetheless was French Polynesia's only international airport until Faa'a International Airport opened next to Papeete, Tahiti, in 1960.

 

ADMINISTRATION

The commune of Bora-Bora is made up of the island of Bora Bora proper with its surrounding islets emerging from the coral reef, 29.3 km2 in total. The surrounding islets include Motu Tapu, Motu Ahuna, Tevairoa, Motu Tane, Motu Mute, Motu Tufari, Motu Tehotu, Motu Pitiaau, Sofitel Motu, Motu Toopua, and Toopuaiti. The commune also includes the Tūpai atoll. (11 km2), located 20 kilometres north of Bora Bora. The atoll of Tūpai has no permanent population apart from about 50 workers in the coconut plantations.

 

The commune is an administrative subdivision of the Leeward Islands and consists of three associated communes: Anau, Faanui and Vaitape. The administrative centre of the commune is the settlement of Vaitape, on the island of Bora Bora proper. Gaston Tong Sang is the Mayor of the commune of Bora-Bora, serving since 1989.

 

TOURISM

The island's economy is driven almost solely by tourism. Several resorts have been built on motu (small islands, from Tahitian) surrounding the lagoon. Hotel Bora Bora opened in 1961, and nine years later built the first over-the-water bungalows on stilts over the lagoon. Today, over-water bungalows are a standard feature of most Bora Bora resorts. The quality of those bungalows ranges from comparably cheap, basic accommodations to very luxurious and expensive places to stay.

 

Most of the tourist destinations are aqua-centric; however it is possible to visit attractions on land such as WWII cannons. Air Tahiti has five or six flights daily to the Bora Bora Airport on Motu Mute from Tahiti (as well as from other islands). Public transport on the island is nonexistent so rental cars and bicycles are the recommended methods of transport. There are also small, two-seater buggies for hire in Vaitape. It is possible to rent a motorboat to explore the lagoon.

 

Snorkeling and scuba diving in and around the lagoon of Bora Bora are popular activities. Many species of sharks and rays inhabit the surrounding body of water. There are a few dive operators on the island offering manta ray dives and also shark-feeding dives. Sharks living in the island's lagoon are not considered to be dangerous to people.[citation needed]

 

In addition to the existing islands of Bora Bora, the new manmade motu of Motu Marfo has been added in the northeastern corner of the lagoon on the property of the St. Regis Resort.

 

WIKIPEDIA

1. working 71/365, 2. Freedom08-2, 3. Cover 41/365, 4. 155/365 waiting for things to pass, 5. but.. you`re a girl.! 56/365, 6. The man in my life 47/365, 7. blenda 77/365, 8. hung out to dry 21/365,

 

9. Surely I can now fit my bum into my nice dress..? 2/365, 10. scarred breast in blue, 11. 39/365, 12. sunshine 91/365, 13. window 118/365, 14. Evil Twin? 92/365, 15. tiptoe on cold bathroom floor 38/365, 16. new years day 65/365,

 

17. knees 102\365, 18. Balloons, 19. black shoes, white stockings 90/365, 20. in need of care 129/365, 21. Spare parts on grubby table 107/365, 22. legs 10/365, 23. 151/365 Copycat, 24. Glass cage for Clem and Trial 67/365,

 

25. No matter how long, I will be waiting 7/365, 26. 91/365 outtake, 27. curve 69/365, 28. growth 22/365, 29. stripes 123/365, 30. Contourless, 31. blue 117/365, 32. Pumpkinheads,

 

33. No gherkins, please!! 27/365, 34. Individually wrapped, 35. fat people are hard to kidnap 106/365, 36. Fear the walken! 85/365, 37. Woodwork, 38. bw 115/365, 39. Message to B. 44/365, 40. dancing 125/365,

 

41. face 9/365, 42. socks 5/365, 43. breathe 80/365, 44. Kampsportgalla 2008, 45. freedom 08 -1, 46. Free 98/35, 47. on dusty table 83/365, 48. finger 23/365,

 

49. Self through wineglass, 50. nerd 89/365, 51. Not a good day 76/365, 52. my hometown, 53. Hiding 75/365, 54. Can`t wait for spring 36/365, 55. 137/365 you did it wrong!, 56. Hands behind your back 104/365,

 

57. apple 8/365, 58. fight like a girl! 101/365, 59. silly pink nonexistent underwear on head, 60. side by side, 61. freedom08-4, 62. big balls 113/365, 63. finished 14/365, 64. bits and pieces 82/365,

 

65. shadows 60/365, 66. Gift 54/365, 67. lunch 26/365, 68. water, 69. individually wrapped2, 70. stuck 119/365, 71. mag 84/365, 72. xmas day 58/365

 

Created with fd's Flickr Toys.

(traffic lights reconstructed)

Human Enkeli (Pink hair)

Euri Enkeli (White hair)

 

I'm so excited!! Today my dream colored wig arrived. Leeke's Sakura was sure the perfect for Enkeli's human shape.

 

Hoy llegó la peluquita de Enkeli en mi soñado color sakura. De hecho ya había tirado la toalla con ese color... incluso ordené la peluca en misty rose, color que no me llenaba del todo.... hasta que unos días después en el mercado de DoA ... ahi estaba esperandome una peluca en este hermoso color!! [luego la alisaré]

 

y eso sólo significa una cosa....

www.flickr.com/photos/nonexistent/6053735371/in/photostream

 

They're the same doll!!! I put 2 pictures together here x3

Capitol Reef National Park is an American national park in south-central Utah. The park is approximately 60 miles (97 km) long on its north–south axis and just 6 miles (9.7 km) wide on average. The park was established in 1971 to preserve 241,904 acres (377.98 sq mi; 97,895.08 ha; 978.95 km2) of desert landscape and is open all year, with May through September being the highest visitation months.

 

Partially in Wayne County, Utah, the area was originally named "Wayne Wonderland" in the 1920s by local boosters Ephraim P. Pectol and Joseph S. Hickman. Capitol Reef National Park was designated a national monument on August 2, 1937, by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to protect the area's colorful canyons, ridges, buttes, and monoliths; however, it was not until 1950 that the area officially opened to the public. Road access was improved in 1962 with the construction of State Route 24 through the Fremont River Canyon.

 

The majority of the nearly 100 mi (160 km) long up-thrust formation called the Waterpocket Fold—a rocky spine extending from Thousand Lake Mountain to Lake Powell—is preserved within the park. Capitol Reef is an especially rugged and spectacular segment of the Waterpocket Fold by the Fremont River. The park was named for its whitish Navajo Sandstone cliffs with dome formations—similar to the white domes often placed on capitol buildings—that run from the Fremont River to Pleasant Creek on the Waterpocket Fold. Locally, reef refers to any rocky barrier to land travel, just as ocean reefs are barriers to sea travel.

 

Capitol Reef encompasses the Waterpocket Fold, a warp in the earth's crust that is 65 million years old. It is the largest exposed monocline in North America. In this fold, newer and older layers of earth folded over each other in an S-shape. This warp, probably caused by the same colliding continental plates that created the Rocky Mountains, has weathered and eroded over millennia to expose layers of rock and fossils. The park is filled with brilliantly colored sandstone cliffs, gleaming white domes, and contrasting layers of stone and earth.

 

The area was named for a line of white domes and cliffs of Navajo Sandstone, each of which looks somewhat like the United States Capitol building, that run from the Fremont River to Pleasant Creek on the Waterpocket Fold.

 

The fold forms a north-to-south barrier that has barely been breached by roads. Early settlers referred to parallel impassable ridges as "reefs", from which the park gets the second half of its name. The first paved road was constructed through the area in 1962. State Route 24 cuts through the park traveling east and west between Canyonlands National Park and Bryce Canyon National Park, but few other paved roads invade the rugged landscape.

 

The park is filled with canyons, cliffs, towers, domes, and arches. The Fremont River has cut canyons through parts of the Waterpocket Fold, but most of the park is arid desert. A scenic drive shows park visitors some highlights, but it runs only a few miles from the main highway. Hundreds of miles of trails and unpaved roads lead into the equally scenic backcountry.

 

Fremont-culture Native Americans lived near the perennial Fremont River in the northern part of the Capitol Reef Waterpocket Fold around the year 1000. They irrigated crops of maize and squash and stored their grain in stone granaries (in part made from the numerous black basalt boulders that litter the area). In the 13th century, all of the Native American cultures in this area underwent sudden change, likely due to a long drought. The Fremont settlements and fields were abandoned.

 

Many years after the Fremont left, Paiutes moved into the area. These Numic-speaking people named the Fremont granaries moki huts and thought they were the homes of a race of tiny people or moki.

 

In 1872 Almon H. Thompson, a geographer attached to United States Army Major John Wesley Powell's expedition, crossed the Waterpocket Fold while exploring the area. Geologist Clarence Dutton later spent several summers studying the area's geology. None of these expeditions explored the Waterpocket Fold to any great extent.

 

Following the American Civil War, officials of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City sought to establish missions in the remotest niches of the Intermountain West. In 1866, a quasi-military expedition of Mormons in pursuit of natives penetrated the high valleys to the west. In the 1870s, settlers moved into these valleys, eventually establishing Loa, Fremont, Lyman, Bicknell, and Torrey.

 

Mormons settled the Fremont River valley in the 1880s and established Junction (later renamed Fruita), Caineville, and Aldridge. Fruita prospered, Caineville barely survived, and Aldridge died. In addition to farming, lime was extracted from local limestone, and uranium was extracted early in the 20th century. In 1904 the first claim to a uranium mine in the area was staked. The resulting Oyler Mine in Grand Wash produced uranium ore.

 

By 1920 no more than ten families at one time were sustained by the fertile flood plain of the Fremont River and the land changed ownership over the years. The area remained isolated. The community was later abandoned and later still some buildings were restored by the National Park Service. Kilns once used to produce lime are still in Sulphur Creek and near the campgrounds on Scenic Drive.

 

Local Ephraim Portman Pectol organized a "booster club" in Torrey in 1921. Pectol pressed a promotional campaign, furnishing stories to be sent to periodicals and newspapers. In his efforts, he was increasingly aided by his brother-in-law, Joseph S. Hickman, who was the Wayne County High School principal. In 1924, Hickman extended community involvement in the promotional effort by organizing a Wayne County-wide Wayne Wonderland Club. That same year, Hickman was elected to the Utah State Legislature.

 

In 1933, Pectol was elected to the presidency of the Associated Civics Club of Southern Utah, successor to the Wayne Wonderland Club. The club raised U.S. $150 (equivalent to $3,391 in 2022) to interest a Salt Lake City photographer in taking a series of promotional photographs. For several years, the photographer, J. E. Broaddus, traveled and lectured on "Wayne Wonderland".

 

In 1933, Pectol was elected to the legislature and almost immediately contacted President Franklin D. Roosevelt and asked for the creation of "Wayne Wonderland National Monument" out of the federal lands comprising the bulk of the Capitol Reef area. Federal agencies began a feasibility study and boundary assessment. Meanwhile, Pectol guided the government investigators on numerous trips and escorted an increasing number of visitors. The lectures of Broaddus were having an effect.

 

Roosevelt signed a proclamation creating Capitol Reef National Monument on August 2, 1937. In Proclamation 2246, President Roosevelt set aside 37,711 acres (15,261 ha) of the Capitol Reef area. This comprised an area extending about two miles (3 km) north of present State Route 24 and about 10 mi (16 km) south, just past Capitol Gorge. The Great Depression years were lean ones for the National Park Service (NPS), the new administering agency. Funds for the administration of Capitol Reef were nonexistent; it would be a long time before the first rangers would arrive.

 

Administration of the new monument was placed under the control of Zion National Park. A stone ranger cabin and the Sulphur Creek bridge were built and some road work was performed by the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Works Progress Administration. Historian and printer Charles Kelly came to know NPS officials at Zion well and volunteered to watchdog the park for the NPS. Kelly was officially appointed custodian-without-pay in 1943. He worked as a volunteer until 1950, when the NPS offered him a civil-service appointment as the first superintendent.

 

During the 1950s Kelly was deeply troubled by NPS management acceding to demands of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission that Capitol Reef National Monument be opened to uranium prospecting. He felt that the decision had been a mistake and destructive of the long-term national interest. It turned out that there was not enough ore in the monument to be worth mining.

 

In 1958 Kelly got additional permanent help in protecting the monument and enforcing regulations; Park Ranger Grant Clark transferred from Zion. The year Clark arrived, fifty-six thousand visitors came to the park, and Charlie Kelly retired for the last time.

 

During the 1960s (under the program name Mission 66), NPS areas nationwide received new facilities to meet the demand of mushrooming park visitation. At Capitol Reef, a 53-site campground at Fruita, staff rental housing, and a new visitor center were built, the latter opening in 1966.

 

Visitation climbed dramatically after the paved, all-weather State Route 24 was built in 1962 through the Fremont River canyon near Fruita. State Route 24 replaced the narrow Capitol Gorge wagon road about 10 mi (16 km) to the south that frequently washed out. The old road has since been open only to foot traffic. In 1967, 146,598 persons visited the park. The staff was also growing.

 

During the 1960s, the NPS purchased private land parcels at Fruita and Pleasant Creek. Almost all private property passed into public ownership on a "willing buyer-willing seller" basis.

 

Preservationists convinced President Lyndon B. Johnson to set aside an enormous area of public lands in 1968, just before he left office. In Presidential Proclamation 3888 an additional 215,056 acres (87,030 ha) were placed under NPS control. By 1970, Capitol Reef National Monument comprised 254,251 acres (102,892 ha) and sprawled southeast from Thousand Lake Mountain almost to the Colorado River. The action was controversial locally, and NPS staffing at the monument was inadequate to properly manage the additional land.

 

The vast enlargement of the monument and diversification of the scenic resources soon raised another issue: whether Capitol Reef should be a national park, rather than a monument. Two bills were introduced into the United States Congress.

 

A House bill (H.R. 17152) introduced by Utah Congressman Laurence J. Burton called for a 180,000-acre (72,800 ha) national park and an adjunct 48,000-acre (19,400 ha) national recreation area where multiple use (including grazing) could continue indefinitely. In the United States Senate, meanwhile, Senate bill S. 531 had already passed on July 1, 1970, and provided for a 230,000-acre (93,100 ha) national park alone. The bill called for a 25-year phase-out of grazing.

 

In September 1970, United States Department of Interior officials told a house subcommittee session that they preferred about 254,000 acres (103,000 ha) be set aside as a national park. They also recommended that the grazing phase-out period be 10 years, rather than 25. They did not favor the adjunct recreation area.

 

It was not until late 1971 that Congressional action was completed. By then, the 92nd United States Congress was in session and S. 531 had languished. A new bill, S. 29, was introduced in the Senate by Senator Frank E. Moss of Utah and was essentially the same as the defunct S. 531 except that it called for an additional 10,834 acres (4,384 ha) of public lands for a Capitol Reef National Park. In the House, Utah Representative K. Gunn McKay (with Representative Lloyd) had introduced H.R. 9053 to replace the dead H.R. 17152. This time, the House bill dropped the concept of an adjunct Capitol Reef National Recreation Area and adopted the Senate concept of a 25-year limit on continued grazing. The Department of Interior was still recommending a national park of 254,368 acres (102,939 ha) and a 10-year limit for grazing phase-out.

 

S. 29 passed the Senate in June and was sent to the House, which dropped its own bill and passed the Senate version with an amendment. Because the Senate was not in agreement with the House amendment, differences were worked out in Conference Committee. The Conference Committee issued its report on November 30, 1971, and the bill passed both houses of Congress. The legislation—'An Act to Establish The Capitol Reef National Park in the State of Utah'—became Public Law 92-207 when it was signed by President Richard Nixon on December 18, 1971.

 

The area including the park was once the edge of a shallow sea that invaded the land in the Permian, creating the Cutler Formation. Only the sandstone of the youngest member of the Cutler Formation, the White Rim, is exposed in the park. The deepening sea left carbonate deposits, forming the limestone of the Kaibab Limestone, the same formation that rims the Grand Canyon to the southwest.

 

During the Triassic, streams deposited reddish-brown silt that later became the siltstone of the Moenkopi Formation. Uplift and erosion followed. Conglomerate, followed by logs, sand, mud, and wind-transported volcanic ash, then formed the uranium-containing Chinle Formation.

 

The members of the Glen Canyon Group were all laid down in the middle- to late-Triassic during a time of increasing aridity. They include:

 

Wingate Sandstone: sand dunes on the shore of an ancient sea

Kayenta Formation: thin-bedded layers of sand deposited by slow-moving streams in channels and across low plains

Navajo Sandstone: huge fossilized sand dunes from a massive Sahara-like desert.

 

The Golden Throne. Though Capitol Reef is famous for white domes of Navajo Sandstone, this dome's color is a result of a lingering section of yellow Carmel Formation carbonate, which has stained the underlying rock.

The San Rafael Group consists of four Jurassic-period formations, from oldest to youngest:

 

Carmel Formation: gypsum, sand, and limey silt laid down in what may have been a graben that was periodically flooded by sea water

Entrada Sandstone: sandstone from barrier islands/sand bars in a near-shore environment

Curtis Formation: made from conglomerate, sandstone, and shale

Summerville Formation: reddish-brown mud and white sand deposited in tidal flats.

Streams once again laid down mud and sand in their channels, on lakebeds, and in swampy plains, creating the Morrison Formation. Early in the Cretaceous, similar nonmarine sediments were laid down and became the Dakota Sandstone. Eventually, the Cretaceous Seaway covered the Dakota, depositing the Mancos Shale.

 

Only small remnants of the Mesaverde Group are found, capping a few mesas in the park's eastern section.

 

Near the end of the Cretaceous period, a mountain-building event called the Laramide orogeny started to compact and uplift the region, forming the Rocky Mountains and creating monoclines such as the Waterpocket Fold in the park. Ten to fifteen million years ago, the entire region was uplifted much further by the creation of the Colorado Plateau. This uplift was very even. Igneous activity in the form of volcanism and dike and sill intrusion also occurred during this time.

 

The drainage system in the area was rearranged and steepened, causing streams to downcut faster and sometimes change course. Wetter times during the ice ages of the Pleistocene increased the rate of erosion.

 

There are more than 840 species of plants that are found in the park and over 40 of those species are classified as rare and endemic.

 

The closest town to Capitol Reef is Torrey, about 11 mi (18 km) west of the visitor center on Highway 24, slightly west of its intersection with Highway 12. Its 2020 population is less than 300. Torrey has a few motels and restaurants and functions as a gateway town to Capitol Reef National Park. Highway 12, as well as a partially unpaved scenic backway named the Burr Trail, provide access from the west through the Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument and the town of Boulder.

 

A variety of activities are available to tourists, both ranger-led and self-guided, including auto touring, hiking, backpacking, camping, bicycling (on paved and unpaved roads only; no trails), horseback riding, canyoneering, and rock climbing. The orchards planted by Mormon pioneers are maintained by the National Park Service. From early March to mid-October, various fruit—cherries, apricots, peaches, pears, or apples—can be harvested by visitors for a fee.

 

A hiking trail guide is available at the visitor center for both day hikes and backcountry hiking. Backcountry access requires a free permit.

 

Numerous trails are available for hiking and backpacking in the park, with fifteen in the Fruita District alone. The following trails are some of the most popular in the park:

 

Cassidy Arch Trail: a very steep, strenuous 3.5 mi (5.6 km) round trip that leads into the Grand Wash to an overlook of the Cassidy Arch.

Hickman Bridge Trail: a 2 mi (3.2 km) round trip leading to the natural bridge.

Frying Pan Trail: an 8.8 mi (14.2 km) round trip that passes the Cassidy Arch, Grand Wash, and Cohab Canyon.

Brimhall Natural Bridge: a popular, though strenuous, 4.5 mi (7.2 km) round trip with views of Brimhall Canyon, the Waterpocket Fold, and Brimhall Natural Bridge.

Halls Creek Narrows: 22 mi (35 km) long and considered strenuous, with many side canyons and creeks; typically hiked as a 2-3 day camping trip.

 

Visitors may explore several of the main areas of the park by private vehicle:

 

Scenic Drive: winds through the middle of the park, passing the major points of interest; the road is accessible from the visitor center to approximately 2 mi (3.2 km) into the Capitol Gorge.

Notom-Bullfrog Road: traverses the eastern side of the Waterpocket Fold, along 10 mi (16 km) of paved road, with the remainder unpaved.

Cathedral Road: an unpaved road through the northern areas of the park, that traverses Cathedral Valley, passing the Temples of the Sun and Moon.

 

The primary camping location is the Fruita campground, with 71 campsites (no water, electrical, or sewer hookups), and restrooms without bathing facilities. The campground also has group sites with picnic areas and restrooms. Two primitive free camping areas are also available.

 

Canyoneering is growing in popularity in the park. It is a recreational sport that takes one through slot canyons. It involves rappelling and may require swimming and other technical rope work. Day-pass permits are required for canyoneering in the park, and can be obtained for free from the visitor's center or through email. It's key to know that each route requires its own permit. If one is planning on canyoneering for multiple days, passes are required for each day. Overnight camping as part of the canyoneering trip is permitted, but one must request a free backcountry pass from the visitor center.

 

It is imperative to plan canyoneering trips around the weather. The Colorado Plateau is susceptible to flash flooding during prime rainy months. Because canyoneering takes place through slot canyons, getting caught in a flash flood could be lethal. Take care to consult reliable weather sources. The Weather Atlas shows charts with the monthly average rainfall in inches.

 

Another risk to be aware of during the summer months is extreme heat. Visitors can find weather warnings on the National Weather Service website. The heat levels are detailed by a color and numerical scale (0-4).

 

One of the most popular canyoneering routes in Capitol Reef National Park is Cassidy Arch Canyon. A paper by George Huddart, details the park's commitment to working with citizens to maintain the route as well as the vegetation and rocks. The canyon route is approximately 2.3 miles long (0.4 miles of technical work), consisting of 8 different rappels, and takes between 2.5 and 4.5 hours to complete. The first rappel is 140 ft and descends below the famous Cassidy Arch.

 

Utah is a landlocked state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It borders Colorado to its east, Wyoming to its northeast, Idaho to its north, Arizona to its south, and Nevada to its west. Utah also touches a corner of New Mexico in the southeast. Of the fifty U.S. states, Utah is the 13th-largest by area; with a population over three million, it is the 30th-most-populous and 11th-least-densely populated. Urban development is mostly concentrated in two areas: the Wasatch Front in the north-central part of the state, which is home to roughly two-thirds of the population and includes the capital city, Salt Lake City; and Washington County in the southwest, with more than 180,000 residents. Most of the western half of Utah lies in the Great Basin.

 

Utah has been inhabited for thousands of years by various indigenous groups such as the ancient Puebloans, Navajo, and Ute. The Spanish were the first Europeans to arrive in the mid-16th century, though the region's difficult geography and harsh climate made it a peripheral part of New Spain and later Mexico. Even while it was Mexican territory, many of Utah's earliest settlers were American, particularly Mormons fleeing marginalization and persecution from the United States via the Mormon Trail. Following the Mexican–American War in 1848, the region was annexed by the U.S., becoming part of the Utah Territory, which included what is now Colorado and Nevada. Disputes between the dominant Mormon community and the federal government delayed Utah's admission as a state; only after the outlawing of polygamy was it admitted in 1896 as the 45th.

 

People from Utah are known as Utahns. Slightly over half of all Utahns are Mormons, the vast majority of whom are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), which has its world headquarters in Salt Lake City; Utah is the only state where a majority of the population belongs to a single church. A 2023 paper challenged this perception (claiming only 42% of Utahns are Mormons) however most statistics still show a majority of Utah residents belong to the LDS church; estimates from the LDS church suggests 60.68% of Utah's population belongs to the church whilst some sources put the number as high as 68%. The paper replied that membership count done by the LDS Church is too high for several reasons. The LDS Church greatly influences Utahn culture, politics, and daily life, though since the 1990s the state has become more religiously diverse as well as secular.

 

Utah has a highly diversified economy, with major sectors including transportation, education, information technology and research, government services, mining, multi-level marketing, and tourism. Utah has been one of the fastest growing states since 2000, with the 2020 U.S. census confirming the fastest population growth in the nation since 2010. St. George was the fastest-growing metropolitan area in the United States from 2000 to 2005. Utah ranks among the overall best states in metrics such as healthcare, governance, education, and infrastructure. It has the 12th-highest median average income and the least income inequality of any U.S. state. Over time and influenced by climate change, droughts in Utah have been increasing in frequency and severity, putting a further strain on Utah's water security and impacting the state's economy.

 

The History of Utah is an examination of the human history and social activity within the state of Utah located in the western United States.

 

Archaeological evidence dates the earliest habitation of humans in Utah to about 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. Paleolithic people lived near the Great Basin's swamps and marshes, which had an abundance of fish, birds, and small game animals. Big game, including bison, mammoths and ground sloths, also were attracted to these water sources. Over the centuries, the mega-fauna died, this population was replaced by the Desert Archaic people, who sheltered in caves near the Great Salt Lake. Relying more on gathering than the previous Utah residents, their diet was mainly composed of cattails and other salt tolerant plants such as pickleweed, burro weed and sedge. Red meat appears to have been more of a luxury, although these people used nets and the atlatl to hunt water fowl, ducks, small animals and antelope. Artifacts include nets woven with plant fibers and rabbit skin, woven sandals, gaming sticks, and animal figures made from split-twigs. About 3,500 years ago, lake levels rose and the population of Desert Archaic people appears to have dramatically decreased. The Great Basin may have been almost unoccupied for 1,000 years.

 

The Fremont culture, named from sites near the Fremont River in Utah, lived in what is now north and western Utah and parts of Nevada, Idaho and Colorado from approximately 600 to 1300 AD. These people lived in areas close to water sources that had been previously occupied by the Desert Archaic people, and may have had some relationship with them. However, their use of new technologies define them as a distinct people. Fremont technologies include:

 

use of the bow and arrow while hunting,

building pithouse shelters,

growing maize and probably beans and squash,

building above ground granaries of adobe or stone,

creating and decorating low-fired pottery ware,

producing art, including jewelry and rock art such as petroglyphs and pictographs.

 

The ancient Puebloan culture, also known as the Anasazi, occupied territory adjacent to the Fremont. The ancestral Puebloan culture centered on the present-day Four Corners area of the Southwest United States, including the San Juan River region of Utah. Archaeologists debate when this distinct culture emerged, but cultural development seems to date from about the common era, about 500 years before the Fremont appeared. It is generally accepted that the cultural peak of these people was around the 1200 CE. Ancient Puebloan culture is known for well constructed pithouses and more elaborate adobe and masonry dwellings. They were excellent craftsmen, producing turquoise jewelry and fine pottery. The Puebloan culture was based on agriculture, and the people created and cultivated fields of maize, beans, and squash and domesticated turkeys. They designed and produced elaborate field terracing and irrigation systems. They also built structures, some known as kivas, apparently designed solely for cultural and religious rituals.

 

These two later cultures were roughly contemporaneous, and appear to have established trading relationships. They also shared enough cultural traits that archaeologists believe the cultures may have common roots in the early American Southwest. However, each remained culturally distinct throughout most of their existence. These two well established cultures appear to have been severely impacted by climatic change and perhaps by the incursion of new people in about 1200 CE. Over the next two centuries, the Fremont and ancient Pueblo people may have moved into the American southwest, finding new homes and farmlands in the river drainages of Arizona, New Mexico and northern Mexico.

 

In about 1200, Shoshonean speaking peoples entered Utah territory from the west. They may have originated in southern California and moved into the desert environment due to population pressure along the coast. They were an upland people with a hunting and gathering lifestyle utilizing roots and seeds, including the pinyon nut. They were also skillful fishermen, created pottery and raised some crops. When they first arrived in Utah, they lived as small family groups with little tribal organization. Four main Shoshonean peoples inhabited Utah country. The Shoshone in the north and northeast, the Gosiutes in the northwest, the Utes in the central and eastern parts of the region and the Southern Paiutes in the southwest. Initially, there seems to have been very little conflict between these groups.

 

In the early 16th century, the San Juan River basin in Utah's southeast also saw a new people, the Díne or Navajo, part of a greater group of plains Athabaskan speakers moved into the Southwest from the Great Plains. In addition to the Navajo, this language group contained people that were later known as Apaches, including the Lipan, Jicarilla, and Mescalero Apaches.

 

Athabaskans were a hunting people who initially followed the bison, and were identified in 16th-century Spanish accounts as "dog nomads". The Athabaskans expanded their range throughout the 17th century, occupying areas the Pueblo peoples had abandoned during prior centuries. The Spanish first specifically mention the "Apachu de Nabajo" (Navaho) in the 1620s, referring to the people in the Chama valley region east of the San Juan River, and north west of Santa Fe. By the 1640s, the term Navaho was applied to these same people. Although the Navajo newcomers established a generally peaceful trading and cultural exchange with the some modern Pueblo peoples to the south, they experienced intermittent warfare with the Shoshonean peoples, particularly the Utes in eastern Utah and western Colorado.

 

At the time of European expansion, beginning with Spanish explorers traveling from Mexico, five distinct native peoples occupied territory within the Utah area: the Northern Shoshone, the Goshute, the Ute, the Paiute and the Navajo.

 

The Spanish explorer Francisco Vázquez de Coronado may have crossed into what is now southern Utah in 1540, when he was seeking the legendary Cíbola.

 

A group led by two Spanish Catholic priests—sometimes called the Domínguez–Escalante expedition—left Santa Fe in 1776, hoping to find a route to the California coast. The expedition traveled as far north as Utah Lake and encountered the native residents. All of what is now Utah was claimed by the Spanish Empire from the 1500s to 1821 as part of New Spain (later as the province Alta California); and subsequently claimed by Mexico from 1821 to 1848. However, Spain and Mexico had little permanent presence in, or control of, the region.

 

Fur trappers (also known as mountain men) including Jim Bridger, explored some regions of Utah in the early 19th century. The city of Provo was named for one such man, Étienne Provost, who visited the area in 1825. The city of Ogden, Utah is named for a brigade leader of the Hudson's Bay Company, Peter Skene Ogden who trapped in the Weber Valley. In 1846, a year before the arrival of members from the Church of Jesus Christ of latter-day Saints, the ill-fated Donner Party crossed through the Salt Lake valley late in the season, deciding not to stay the winter there but to continue forward to California, and beyond.

 

Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly known as Mormon pioneers, first came to the Salt Lake Valley on July 24, 1847. At the time, the U.S. had already captured the Mexican territories of Alta California and New Mexico in the Mexican–American War and planned to keep them, but those territories, including the future state of Utah, officially became United States territory upon the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, February 2, 1848. The treaty was ratified by the United States Senate on March 10, 1848.

 

Upon arrival in the Salt Lake Valley, the Mormon pioneers found no permanent settlement of Indians. Other areas along the Wasatch Range were occupied at the time of settlement by the Northwestern Shoshone and adjacent areas by other bands of Shoshone such as the Gosiute. The Northwestern Shoshone lived in the valleys on the eastern shore of Great Salt Lake and in adjacent mountain valleys. Some years after arriving in the Salt Lake Valley Mormons, who went on to colonize many other areas of what is now Utah, were petitioned by Indians for recompense for land taken. The response of Heber C. Kimball, first counselor to Brigham Young, was that the land belonged to "our Father in Heaven and we expect to plow and plant it." A 1945 Supreme Court decision found that the land had been treated by the United States as public domain; no aboriginal title by the Northwestern Shoshone had been recognized by the United States or extinguished by treaty with the United States.

 

Upon arriving in the Salt Lake Valley, the Mormons had to make a place to live. They created irrigation systems, laid out farms, built houses, churches, and schools. Access to water was crucially important. Almost immediately, Brigham Young set out to identify and claim additional community sites. While it was difficult to find large areas in the Great Basin where water sources were dependable and growing seasons long enough to raise vitally important subsistence crops, satellite communities began to be formed.

 

Shortly after the first company arrived in the Salt Lake Valley in 1847, the community of Bountiful was settled to the north. In 1848, settlers moved into lands purchased from trapper Miles Goodyear in present-day Ogden. In 1849, Tooele and Provo were founded. Also that year, at the invitation of Ute chief Wakara, settlers moved into the Sanpete Valley in central Utah to establish the community of Manti. Fillmore, Utah, intended to be the capital of the new territory, was established in 1851. In 1855, missionary efforts aimed at western native cultures led to outposts in Fort Lemhi, Idaho, Las Vegas, Nevada and Elk Mountain in east-central Utah.

 

The experiences of returning members of the Mormon Battalion were also important in establishing new communities. On their journey west, the Mormon soldiers had identified dependable rivers and fertile river valleys in Colorado, Arizona and southern California. In addition, as the men traveled to rejoin their families in the Salt Lake Valley, they moved through southern Nevada and the eastern segments of southern Utah. Jefferson Hunt, a senior Mormon officer of the Battalion, actively searched for settlement sites, minerals, and other resources. His report encouraged 1851 settlement efforts in Iron County, near present-day Cedar City. These southern explorations eventually led to Mormon settlements in St. George, Utah, Las Vegas and San Bernardino, California, as well as communities in southern Arizona.

 

Prior to establishment of the Oregon and California trails and Mormon settlement, Indians native to the Salt Lake Valley and adjacent areas lived by hunting buffalo and other game, but also gathered grass seed from the bountiful grass of the area as well as roots such as those of the Indian Camas. By the time of settlement, indeed before 1840, the buffalo were gone from the valley, but hunting by settlers and grazing of cattle severely impacted the Indians in the area, and as settlement expanded into nearby river valleys and oases, indigenous tribes experienced increasing difficulty in gathering sufficient food. Brigham Young's counsel was to feed the hungry tribes, and that was done, but it was often not enough. These tensions formed the background to the Bear River massacre committed by California Militia stationed in Salt Lake City during the Civil War. The site of the massacre is just inside Preston, Idaho, but was generally thought to be within Utah at the time.

 

Statehood was petitioned for in 1849-50 using the name Deseret. The proposed State of Deseret would have been quite large, encompassing all of what is now Utah, and portions of Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, Wyoming, Arizona, Oregon, New Mexico and California. The name of Deseret was favored by the LDS leader Brigham Young as a symbol of industry and was derived from a reference in the Book of Mormon. The petition was rejected by Congress and Utah did not become a state until 1896, following the Utah Constitutional Convention of 1895.

 

In 1850, the Utah Territory was created with the Compromise of 1850, and Fillmore (named after President Fillmore) was designated the capital. In 1856, Salt Lake City replaced Fillmore as the territorial capital.

 

The first group of pioneers brought African slaves with them, making Utah the only place in the western United States to have African slavery. Three slaves, Green Flake, Hark Lay, and Oscar Crosby, came west with this first group in 1847. The settlers also began to purchase Indian slaves in the well-established Indian slave trade, as well as enslaving Indian prisoners of war. In 1850, 26 slaves were counted in Salt Lake County. Slavery didn't become officially recognized until 1852, when the Act in Relation to Service and the Act for the relief of Indian Slaves and Prisoners were passed. Slavery was repealed on June 19, 1862, when Congress prohibited slavery in all US territories.

 

Disputes between the Mormon inhabitants and the federal government intensified after the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' practice of polygamy became known. The polygamous practices of the Mormons, which were made public in 1854, would be one of the major reasons Utah was denied statehood until almost 50 years after the Mormons had entered the area.

 

After news of their polygamous practices spread, the members of the LDS Church were quickly viewed by some as un-American and rebellious. In 1857, after news of a possible rebellion spread, President James Buchanan sent troops on the Utah expedition to quell the growing unrest and to replace Brigham Young as territorial governor with Alfred Cumming. The expedition was also known as the Utah War.

 

As fear of invasion grew, Mormon settlers had convinced some Paiute Indians to aid in a Mormon-led attack on 120 immigrants from Arkansas under the guise of Indian aggression. The murder of these settlers became known as the Mountain Meadows massacre. The Mormon leadership had adopted a defensive posture that led to a ban on the selling of grain to outsiders in preparation for an impending war. This chafed pioneers traveling through the region, who were unable to purchase badly needed supplies. A disagreement between some of the Arkansas pioneers and the Mormons in Cedar City led to the secret planning of the massacre by a few Mormon leaders in the area. Some scholars debate the involvement of Brigham Young. Only one man, John D. Lee, was ever convicted of the murders, and he was executed at the massacre site.

 

Express riders had brought the news 1,000 miles from the Missouri River settlements to Salt Lake City within about two weeks of the army's beginning to march west. Fearing the worst as 2,500 troops (roughly 1/3rd of the army then) led by General Albert Sidney Johnston started west, Brigham Young ordered all residents of Salt Lake City and neighboring communities to prepare their homes for burning and evacuate southward to Utah Valley and southern Utah. Young also sent out a few units of the Nauvoo Legion (numbering roughly 8,000–10,000), to delay the army's advance. The majority he sent into the mountains to prepare defenses or south to prepare for a scorched earth retreat. Although some army wagon supply trains were captured and burned and herds of army horses and cattle run off no serious fighting occurred. Starting late and short on supplies, the United States Army camped during the bitter winter of 1857–58 near a burned out Fort Bridger in Wyoming. Through the negotiations between emissary Thomas L. Kane, Young, Cumming and Johnston, control of Utah territory was peacefully transferred to Cumming, who entered an eerily vacant Salt Lake City in the spring of 1858. By agreement with Young, Johnston established the army at Fort Floyd 40 miles away from Salt Lake City, to the southwest.

 

Salt Lake City was the last link of the First Transcontinental Telegraph, between Carson City, Nevada and Omaha, Nebraska completed in October 1861. Brigham Young, who had helped expedite construction, was among the first to send a message, along with Abraham Lincoln and other officials. Soon after the telegraph line was completed, the Deseret Telegraph Company built the Deseret line connecting the settlements in the territory with Salt Lake City and, by extension, the rest of the United States.

 

Because of the American Civil War, federal troops were pulled out of Utah Territory (and their fort auctioned off), leaving the territorial government in federal hands without army backing until General Patrick E. Connor arrived with the 3rd Regiment of California Volunteers in 1862. While in Utah, Connor and his troops soon became discontent with this assignment wanting to head to Virginia where the "real" fighting and glory was occurring. Connor established Fort Douglas just three miles (5 km) east of Salt Lake City and encouraged his bored and often idle soldiers to go out and explore for mineral deposits to bring more non-Mormons into the state. Minerals were discovered in Tooele County, and some miners began to come to the territory. Conner also solved the Shoshone Indian problem in Cache Valley Utah by luring the Shoshone into a midwinter confrontation on January 29, 1863. The armed conflict quickly turned into a rout, discipline among the soldiers broke down, and the Battle of Bear River is today usually referred to by historians as the Bear River Massacre. Between 200 and 400 Shoshone men, women and children were killed, as were 27 soldiers, with over 50 more soldiers wounded or suffering from frostbite.

 

Beginning in 1865, Utah's Black Hawk War developed into the deadliest conflict in the territory's history. Chief Antonga Black Hawk died in 1870, but fights continued to break out until additional federal troops were sent in to suppress the Ghost Dance of 1872. The war is unique among Indian Wars because it was a three-way conflict, with mounted Timpanogos Utes led by Antonga Black Hawk fighting federal and Utah local militia.

 

On May 10, 1869, the First transcontinental railroad was completed at Promontory Summit, north of the Great Salt Lake. The railroad brought increasing numbers of people into the state, and several influential businessmen made fortunes in the territory.

 

Main article: Latter Day Saint polygamy in the late-19th century

During the 1870s and 1880s, federal laws were passed and federal marshals assigned to enforce the laws against polygamy. In the 1890 Manifesto, the LDS Church leadership dropped its approval of polygamy citing divine revelation. When Utah applied for statehood again in 1895, it was accepted. Statehood was officially granted on January 4, 1896.

 

The Mormon issue made the situation for women the topic of nationwide controversy. In 1870 the Utah Territory, controlled by Mormons, gave women the right to vote. However, in 1887, Congress disenfranchised Utah women with the Edmunds–Tucker Act. In 1867–96, eastern activists promoted women's suffrage in Utah as an experiment, and as a way to eliminate polygamy. They were Presbyterians and other Protestants convinced that Mormonism was a non-Christian cult that grossly mistreated women. The Mormons promoted woman suffrage to counter the negative image of downtrodden Mormon women. With the 1890 Manifesto clearing the way for statehood, in 1895 Utah adopted a constitution restoring the right of women's suffrage. Congress admitted Utah as a state with that constitution in 1896.

 

Though less numerous than other intermountain states at the time, several lynching murders for alleged misdeeds occurred in Utah territory at the hand of vigilantes. Those documented include the following, with their ethnicity or national origin noted in parentheses if it was provided in the source:

 

William Torrington in Carson City (then a part of Utah territory), 1859

Thomas Coleman (Black man) in Salt Lake City, 1866

3 unidentified men at Wahsatch, winter of 1868

A Black man in Uintah, 1869

Charles A. Benson in Logan, 1873

Ah Sing (Chinese man) in Corinne, 1874

Thomas Forrest in St. George, 1880

William Harvey (Black man) in Salt Lake City, 1883

John Murphy in Park City, 1883

George Segal (Japanese man) in Ogden, 1884

Joseph Fisher in Eureka, 1886

Robert Marshall (Black man) in Castle Gate, 1925

Other lynchings in Utah territory include multiple instances of mass murder of Native American children, women, and men by White settlers including the Battle Creek massacre (1849), Provo River Massacre (1850), Nephi massacre (1853), and Circleville Massacre (1866).

 

Beginning in the early 20th century, with the establishment of such national parks as Bryce Canyon National Park and Zion National Park, Utah began to become known for its natural beauty. Southern Utah became a popular filming spot for arid, rugged scenes, and such natural landmarks as Delicate Arch and "the Mittens" of Monument Valley are instantly recognizable to most national residents. During the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, with the construction of the Interstate highway system, accessibility to the southern scenic areas was made easier.

 

Beginning in 1939, with the establishment of Alta Ski Area, Utah has become world-renowned for its skiing. The dry, powdery snow of the Wasatch Range is considered some of the best skiing in the world. Salt Lake City won the bid for the 2002 Winter Olympics in 1995, and this has served as a great boost to the economy. The ski resorts have increased in popularity, and many of the Olympic venues scattered across the Wasatch Front continue to be used for sporting events. This also spurred the development of the light-rail system in the Salt Lake Valley, known as TRAX, and the re-construction of the freeway system around the city.

 

During the late 20th century, the state grew quickly. In the 1970s, growth was phenomenal in the suburbs. Sandy was one of the fastest-growing cities in the country at that time, and West Valley City is the state's 2nd most populous city. Today, many areas of Utah are seeing phenomenal growth. Northern Davis, southern and western Salt Lake, Summit, eastern Tooele, Utah, Wasatch, and Washington counties are all growing very quickly. Transportation and urbanization are major issues in politics as development consumes agricultural land and wilderness areas.

 

In 2012, the State of Utah passed the Utah Transfer of Public Lands Act in an attempt to gain control over a substantial portion of federal land in the state from the federal government, based on language in the Utah Enabling Act of 1894. The State does not intend to use force or assert control by limiting access in an attempt to control the disputed lands, but does intend to use a multi-step process of education, negotiation, legislation, and if necessary, litigation as part of its multi-year effort to gain state or private control over the lands after 2014.

 

Utah families, like most Americans everywhere, did their utmost to assist in the war effort. Tires, meat, butter, sugar, fats, oils, coffee, shoes, boots, gasoline, canned fruits, vegetables, and soups were rationed on a national basis. The school day was shortened and bus routes were reduced to limit the number of resources used stateside and increase what could be sent to soldiers.

 

Geneva Steel was built to increase the steel production for America during World War II. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had proposed opening a steel mill in Utah in 1936, but the idea was shelved after a couple of months. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States entered the war and the steel plant was put into progress. In April 1944, Geneva shipped its first order, which consisted of over 600 tons of steel plate. Geneva Steel also brought thousands of job opportunities to Utah. The positions were hard to fill as many of Utah's men were overseas fighting. Women began working, filling 25 percent of the jobs.

 

As a result of Utah's and Geneva Steels contribution during the war, several Liberty Ships were named in honor of Utah including the USS Joseph Smith, USS Brigham Young, USS Provo, and the USS Peter Skene Ogden.

 

One of the sectors of the beachhead of Normandy Landings was codenamed Utah Beach, and the amphibious landings at the beach were undertaken by United States Army troops.

 

It is estimated that 1,450 soldiers from Utah were killed in the war.

Here's a relic from the nonexistent casino, the Tangiers. This was a prop for the 1995 movie "Casino". A friend of mine gave it to me. The interior shots were filmed at the Riviera and the exterior shots were taken at the Landmark.

Wedding is one of the most popular tags on Flickr. Here I've taken over 40,000 wedding photos from the past year, and placed them on a graph according to the date and time they were taken.

 

Unlike some of the other graphs in this series, wedding is not strongly time-correlated (compare it to brunch, full moon or sunset).

 

It is hard to say whether the previous graph, accident is more or less strongly time correlated. The accidents seem to be tightly clustered in the daylight hours, but I think we are seeing a slight weekend trend on the weddings. The weekend trend is far more obvious in the brunch graph, brunches on weekdays being nearly nonexistent.

 

I imagine the wedding photos taken at 3am are probably more entertaining than 3pm.

--

More stuff by jbum:

Sudoku Puzzles by Krazydad

Wheel of Lunch

Whitney Music Box

The Joy of Processing

 

We decided that hiking would be one of the methods for my wife and I to get healthier. Luckily there is a state park near us with some great trails. After working up to a five mile route we met a hiker who told us about the trails off the main trail, or ridge trails. They were a bit hard to find but once we got the hang of it locating the ridge trails was easy. They were more challenging and much more fun.

 

After reading many books on hiking the Appalachian Trail and Pacific Crest Trail, the last book I read was from a Michigander who hiked the AP Trail, tried it as a through-hike but life got in the way and he had to go home a few times. I knew this was beyond our interest but we really enjoy the day hikes. The wife won’t go for the backpacking just yet; I keep working on her though.

 

In looking to try something new, I came across information on the North Country Trail on the internet and read about the Hike 100 Challenge. We thought it was a good idea and made it our goal. We also decided to attend the 2016 Celebration in Fargo, ND.

 

We started in April at the Birch River Schoolhouse Loop in MI. We picked the hottest and most humid day in May to hike the NCT in Shawnee State Forest, OH. Met a nice local family who camped out on the trail because they got a late start the night before. Ohio pushed me to the limit physically with the weather, it was either up or down and the trail markings were nonexistent. After that we decided we were cool weather hikers.

 

So we took a break until mid-September when we went to the Celebration in Fargo. I was a bit worried we would not achieve the challenge since we were only about a third of the way in mileage. However, Fargo got us back on track, we really enjoyed the prairie hiking which is much different than that of MI. We made a vacation out of the trip and took our time coming home by way of the Upper Peninsula. But first we had to stop and walk across the Montreal River that borders Wisconsin and Michigan. You see, after hiking in MI, OH, ND, MN, it only seemed logical to hike in WI since we were already there. Then we could make a vacation out of going to the PA/NY border, that way we would have hiked in all the states of the NCT. Oh yes, we had decided to hike all seven states when we were at the Celebration in Fargo!

 

We camped and hiked in the Porcupine Mountains, the “Grand Canyon” of Michigan, and Hemingway country in the Upper Peninsula. We found the NCT crossing the highway near Lowell on our frequent drives to see the kids at the University of Michigan and got more mileage in that way. It is also a nice stop to get out of the car and stretch the legs. We then traveled to Bradford, PA and hiked the Allegheny National Forest in Pennsylvania and the Allegany State Park in New York. Oh, it’s not a typo, PA likes the “heny” and NY likes the “any”, I have the photos to prove it.

 

We took two days off then headed back to our now favorite place, Bitely MI. We camped and did our final twenty miles on the trail over three days. As a present we had just purchased backpacks for both of us at REI in Ann Arbor (shout out), they worked out great.

A shout out to the Outpost in Holland, MI where we purchase most of our stuff. Thanks to all the folks volunteering and working for the NCT, what a wonderful concept. It is a great way to get out and rejuvenate.

 

Greg & Cathy Brock, Members at Large

Doubtful Sound is a very large and naturally imposing fjord (despite its name) in Fiordland, in the far south west of New Zealand. It is located in the same region as the smaller but more famous and accessible Milford Sound.

Doubtful Sound was named 'Doubtful Harbour' in 1770 by Captain Cook, who did not enter the inlet as he was uncertain whether it was navigable under sail. It was later renamed Doubtful Sound by whalers and sealers.

A Spanish scientific expedition commanded by Alessandro Malaspina visited Doubtful Sound in February 1793 to conduct experiments measuring the force of gravity using a pendulum, a part of the effort to establish a new metric system. The officers of the expedition, which included Felipe Bauzá y Cañas, a cartographer, also made the first chart of the entrance and lower parts of the Sound, naming features of it. Today these form a unique cluster of the only Spanish names on the map of New Zealand: Febrero Point, Bauza Island and the Nee Islets, Pendulo Reach and Malaspina Reach.

There are three distinct arms to the sound, which is the site of several large waterfalls, notably Helena Falls at Deep Cove, and the Browne Falls which have a fall of over 600 metres. The steep hills are known for their hundreds of waterfalls during the rainy season.

Access to the sound is either by sea, or by the Wilmot Pass road from the Manapouri Power Station. Most areas of the sound itself are only accessible by sea however, as the road network in this area of New Zealand is sparse or nonexistent, as is the human population.

Charles John Lyttelton, 10th Viscount Cobham, Governor-General of New Zealand (1957-1962) wrote about this part of Fiordland:

"There are just a few areas left in the world where no human has ever set foot. That one of them should be in a country so civilized and so advanced as New Zealand may seem incredible, unless one has visited the south-west corner of the South Island. Jagged razor backed mountains rear their heads into the sky. More than 200 days of rain a year ensure not a tree branch is left bare and brown, moss and epiphytes drape every nook. The forest is intensely green. This is big country... one day peaceful, a study in green and blue, the next melancholy and misty, with low cloud veiling the tops... an awesome place, with its granite precipices, its hanging valleys, its earthquake faults and its thundering cascades."

Doubtful Sound is unusual in that it contains two distinct layers of water that scarcely mix. The top few meters is fresh water, fed from the high inflows from the surrounding mountains, and stained brown with tannins from the forest. Below this is a layer of cold, heavy, saline water from the sea. The dark tannins in the fresh water layer makes it difficult for light to penetrate. Thus, many deep-sea species will grow in the comparatively shallow depths of the Sound.

This fiord is home to one of the southernmost population of bottlenose dolphins. The Doubtful Sound bottlenoses have formed a very insular sub-group of only about 70 individuals, with none having been observed to leave or enter the Sound during a multi-year monitoring regime. Their social grouping is thus extremely close, which is also partly attributed to the difficult and unusual features of their habitat, which is much colder than for other bottlenose groups and is also overlaid by the freshwater layer.

Other wildlife to be found in Doubtful Sound includes fur seals and penguins (Fiordland crested and blue), or even rare large whales (Southern Right Whale, Humpback Whale, Minke Whale, Sperm Whale and some Giant Beaked Whales. Orca, the Killer Whales and Long-Finned Pilot Whales can be found also. The waters of Doubtful Sound are also home to an abundance of sea creatures, including many species of fish, starfish, sea anemones and corals. It is perhaps best known for its black coral trees which occur in unusually shallow water for what is normally a deep water species.

The catchment basin of Doubtful Sound is generally steep terrain that is heavily forested except for locations where surface rock exposures are extensive. Nothofagus trees are dominant in many locations. In the understory there are a wide variety of shrubs and ferns.

left this sucker pretty unedited.

decided to snap some quick pics after dinner.

 

Thoughts

1. For Today's new cd Portraits is awesome.

2. Mexican food doesn't settle well but taste good.

3. Science channel is awesome.

4. I want Lightroom 2.

5. Jami Wilson is a zipperhead.

6. Alien Bees needs to release Cyber Commander already.

7. I'm interested to see what the new beauty dish looks like.

8. iPhone 3.0 firmware needs to be released NOW.

9. I need to wash/vacuum my car.

10. Zio's spicy chicken alfredo sounds good right now.

 

I managed to smash my index finger in a door today.

So the skin/flesh above the nail is nonexistent for now.

Thanks to Jami i have a cool spiderman band aid on it. haha

 

Strobist Info

Setup Shot

  

A sculpture of a swan that I made from LEGO bricks. This is actually a combination of two different species of swans. I grabbed various characteristics from the two of them, making a probably nonexistent species. It took maybe 40 hours to design and build.

 

The head and feet are recycled parts from my old bird old bird, made a 1.5 years before this one. The old one fell off of a shelf, and I didn't want to repair it, so I made a better version.

 

The wings of this sculpture ended up being too heavy to sustain their own weight (although they are pretty durable), but the cross support holds them firmly in place.

Constructed in 1928, the Waukegan Hotel is a 12-story highrise on the corner of Sheridan and Washington. It rivaled the Karcher, just down the street, as Waukegan's grandest hotel, and both share a very similar history.

 

The building earned a shady reputation at the start of downtown Waukegan's decline in the 1960s; preventing restoration efforts that were already in-talks back then from ever happening. Towards the end of its original life, the Waukegan had been converted to a nursing home before closing in 1980, and left abandoned for nearly 15 years. By the time a successful renovation finally took place in 1995, it had become infested with pigeons -- a Tribune article claims that over 20,000 lbs. of pigeon shit was removed from the building.

 

Resurrected originally as the Chateau Apartments - senior housing - the building later became low-income housing known as the Harborview Apartments; and from the sounds of it, everything spiraled downhill fast. It has universally-poor reviews on ApartmentRatings.com, listing complaints ranging from nonexistent management to unsanitary conditions and shady tenants left and right. Fortunately, new management picked the building up only a couple of years ago and renovated it into luxury condos. The building is now known as the 102 Washington Apartments.

 

The building has seen only a couple of major changes to its architecture over the years; the biggest being an extension grafted to the west facade. What it houses I am unsure of, but I am under the impression of stairs and/or elevators seeing-as, like the Karcher, the exterior fire escape was removed. The balconies are also a fairly-recent addition.

Doubtful Sound is a very large and naturally imposing fjord (despite its name) in Fiordland, in the far south west of New Zealand. It is located in the same region as the smaller but more famous and accessible Milford Sound.

Doubtful Sound was named 'Doubtful Harbour' in 1770 by Captain Cook, who did not enter the inlet as he was uncertain whether it was navigable under sail. It was later renamed Doubtful Sound by whalers and sealers.

A Spanish scientific expedition commanded by Alessandro Malaspina visited Doubtful Sound in February 1793 to conduct experiments measuring the force of gravity using a pendulum, a part of the effort to establish a new metric system. The officers of the expedition, which included Felipe Bauzá y Cañas, a cartographer, also made the first chart of the entrance and lower parts of the Sound, naming features of it. Today these form a unique cluster of the only Spanish names on the map of New Zealand: Febrero Point, Bauza Island and the Nee Islets, Pendulo Reach and Malaspina Reach.

There are three distinct arms to the sound, which is the site of several large waterfalls, notably Helena Falls at Deep Cove, and the Browne Falls which have a fall of over 600 metres. The steep hills are known for their hundreds of waterfalls during the rainy season.

Access to the sound is either by sea, or by the Wilmot Pass road from the Manapouri Power Station. Most areas of the sound itself are only accessible by sea however, as the road network in this area of New Zealand is sparse or nonexistent, as is the human population.

Charles John Lyttelton, 10th Viscount Cobham, Governor-General of New Zealand (1957-1962) wrote about this part of Fiordland:

"There are just a few areas left in the world where no human has ever set foot. That one of them should be in a country so civilized and so advanced as New Zealand may seem incredible, unless one has visited the south-west corner of the South Island. Jagged razor backed mountains rear their heads into the sky. More than 200 days of rain a year ensure not a tree branch is left bare and brown, moss and epiphytes drape every nook. The forest is intensely green. This is big country... one day peaceful, a study in green and blue, the next melancholy and misty, with low cloud veiling the tops... an awesome place, with its granite precipices, its hanging valleys, its earthquake faults and its thundering cascades."

Doubtful Sound is unusual in that it contains two distinct layers of water that scarcely mix. The top few meters is fresh water, fed from the high inflows from the surrounding mountains, and stained brown with tannins from the forest. Below this is a layer of cold, heavy, saline water from the sea. The dark tannins in the fresh water layer makes it difficult for light to penetrate. Thus, many deep-sea species will grow in the comparatively shallow depths of the Sound.

This fiord is home to one of the southernmost population of bottlenose dolphins. The Doubtful Sound bottlenoses have formed a very insular sub-group of only about 70 individuals, with none having been observed to leave or enter the Sound during a multi-year monitoring regime. Their social grouping is thus extremely close, which is also partly attributed to the difficult and unusual features of their habitat, which is much colder than for other bottlenose groups and is also overlaid by the freshwater layer.

Other wildlife to be found in Doubtful Sound includes fur seals and penguins (Fiordland crested and blue), or even rare large whales (Southern Right Whale, Humpback Whale, Minke Whale, Sperm Whale and some Giant Beaked Whales. Orca, the Killer Whales and Long-Finned Pilot Whales can be found also. The waters of Doubtful Sound are also home to an abundance of sea creatures, including many species of fish, starfish, sea anemones and corals. It is perhaps best known for its black coral trees which occur in unusually shallow water for what is normally a deep water species.

The catchment basin of Doubtful Sound is generally steep terrain that is heavily forested except for locations where surface rock exposures are extensive. Nothofagus trees are dominant in many locations. In the understory there are a wide variety of shrubs and ferns.

Doubtful Sound is a very large and naturally imposing fjord (despite its name) in Fiordland, in the far south west of New Zealand. It is located in the same region as the smaller but more famous and accessible Milford Sound.

Doubtful Sound was named 'Doubtful Harbour' in 1770 by Captain Cook, who did not enter the inlet as he was uncertain whether it was navigable under sail. It was later renamed Doubtful Sound by whalers and sealers.

A Spanish scientific expedition commanded by Alessandro Malaspina visited Doubtful Sound in February 1793 to conduct experiments measuring the force of gravity using a pendulum, a part of the effort to establish a new metric system. The officers of the expedition, which included Felipe Bauzá y Cañas, a cartographer, also made the first chart of the entrance and lower parts of the Sound, naming features of it. Today these form a unique cluster of the only Spanish names on the map of New Zealand: Febrero Point, Bauza Island and the Nee Islets, Pendulo Reach and Malaspina Reach.

There are three distinct arms to the sound, which is the site of several large waterfalls, notably Helena Falls at Deep Cove, and the Browne Falls which have a fall of over 600 metres. The steep hills are known for their hundreds of waterfalls during the rainy season.

Access to the sound is either by sea, or by the Wilmot Pass road from the Manapouri Power Station. Most areas of the sound itself are only accessible by sea however, as the road network in this area of New Zealand is sparse or nonexistent, as is the human population.

Charles John Lyttelton, 10th Viscount Cobham, Governor-General of New Zealand (1957-1962) wrote about this part of Fiordland:

"There are just a few areas left in the world where no human has ever set foot. That one of them should be in a country so civilized and so advanced as New Zealand may seem incredible, unless one has visited the south-west corner of the South Island. Jagged razor backed mountains rear their heads into the sky. More than 200 days of rain a year ensure not a tree branch is left bare and brown, moss and epiphytes drape every nook. The forest is intensely green. This is big country... one day peaceful, a study in green and blue, the next melancholy and misty, with low cloud veiling the tops... an awesome place, with its granite precipices, its hanging valleys, its earthquake faults and its thundering cascades."

Doubtful Sound is unusual in that it contains two distinct layers of water that scarcely mix. The top few meters is fresh water, fed from the high inflows from the surrounding mountains, and stained brown with tannins from the forest. Below this is a layer of cold, heavy, saline water from the sea. The dark tannins in the fresh water layer makes it difficult for light to penetrate. Thus, many deep-sea species will grow in the comparatively shallow depths of the Sound.

This fiord is home to one of the southernmost population of bottlenose dolphins. The Doubtful Sound bottlenoses have formed a very insular sub-group of only about 70 individuals, with none having been observed to leave or enter the Sound during a multi-year monitoring regime. Their social grouping is thus extremely close, which is also partly attributed to the difficult and unusual features of their habitat, which is much colder than for other bottlenose groups and is also overlaid by the freshwater layer.

Other wildlife to be found in Doubtful Sound includes fur seals and penguins (Fiordland crested and blue), or even rare large whales (Southern Right Whale, Humpback Whale, Minke Whale, Sperm Whale and some Giant Beaked Whales. Orca, the Killer Whales and Long-Finned Pilot Whales can be found also. The waters of Doubtful Sound are also home to an abundance of sea creatures, including many species of fish, starfish, sea anemones and corals. It is perhaps best known for its black coral trees which occur in unusually shallow water for what is normally a deep water species.

The catchment basin of Doubtful Sound is generally steep terrain that is heavily forested except for locations where surface rock exposures are extensive. Nothofagus trees are dominant in many locations. In the understory there are a wide variety of shrubs and ferns.

I just got the hankering to do some night shooting. I set up in my backyard and shot this 22 minute exposure at ISO 200. Even though the exposure is 22 minutes, the noise is nonexistent.

Looking west from the top of Colonial Reserve Apartments in downtown Richmond. I missed sunset by about 10 minutes because parking is nonexistent in Richmond. VCU can be seen in the distance, with the Jefferson Hotel's clock tower in the foreground.

www.factcheck.org/2022/09/scicheck-qa-on-omicron-updated-...

 

Q&A on Omicron-Updated COVID-19 Boosters

 

Earlier this month, the U.S. began administering the first COVID-19 booster vaccines that have been updated to better match the latest circulating coronavirus strains.

 

Many scientists expect the revised boosters will be more effective than their predecessors, but whether that’s the case and to what degree remains unknown.

 

The new vaccines, from mRNA vaccine makers Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna, are bivalent, meaning that along with the original version of the coronavirus, or SARS-CoV-2, they also specifically target the BA.4 and BA.5 omicron subvariants. At the end of August, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that together the two subvariants accounted for more than 90% of new COVID-19 cases in the U.S.

 

The Food and Drug Administration authorized the retooled boosters on Aug. 31, and the CDC signed off on the shots the following day, after the agency’s vaccine advisory committee voted 13 to 1 to recommend both boosters.

 

The authorizations mark a shift in American COVID-19 vaccination policy. In what’s being called a “fall booster ‘reset,’” people will no longer count the number of vaccine doses they’ve received. Instead, the guidelines are simple: If you’ve had your primary series (one dose of J&J or two doses Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna or Novavax) and it’s been at least two months since your last dose, then you’re eligible for one omicron-updated booster.

 

We’ll explain how the new vaccines are different and what experts are saying about them.

 

How are the updated shots different from the original ones?

 

The revised boosters are essentially identical to the original ones, except for a tweak to some of the mRNA included in the shots.

 

For both Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna, half of the mRNA in the vaccine includes the instructions used in the earlier vaccines for cells to make the spike protein of the original coronavirus strain. The other half includes the instructions for making the spike protein of the BA.4 and BA.5 strains, which is the same in the two subvariants. The spike proteins trigger a protective immune response in the body.

 

The dual components are why the boosters are referred to as “bivalent.” For the same reason, you may hear the original vaccines being called “monovalent.”

 

As before, the new Pfizer/BioNTech booster contains a total of 30 micrograms of mRNA, matching the dosage of the primary series shots, while the revamped Moderna booster contains a total of 50 micrograms, or half of the dosage of the primary series.

 

Who is eligible to get an updated booster?

 

People 12 years of age and older are eligible to receive Pfizer/BioNTech’s updated booster and adults 18 years or older are eligible to receive Moderna’s updated booster, two or more months after a previous COVID-19 vaccination.

 

It doesn’t matter if you’ve never been boosted or if you’ve received multiple boosters already — everyone who meets the age requirements and has had their primary vaccinations can get the updated booster as long as they are two months or more out from their last COVID-19 dose. (If you’re still not sure if you’re eligible, you can take an online quiz from the CDC to find out.)

 

The updated boosters are only authorized as booster shots, so they can’t be given to people as primary vaccinations. For the specified populations, the updated boosters are also replacing the earlier versions of the boosters, which are no longer authorized. As a result, all booster doses will be the bivalent ones — except for kids 5 to 11 years old, who are currently only eligible to receive Pfizer/BioNTech’s original booster dose for their age group.

 

What evidence supports the use of these omicron-updated boosters?

 

To authorize the updated boosters, the FDA borrowed its approach for influenza vaccines, which each year are modified to match the flu strains that are expected to circulate that season. Because the changes are only tweaks — and because it would be impractical if not impossible to test the vaccines in people prior to the flu season — flu vaccines are approved without doing clinical studies each year.

 

The omicron-updated boosters are similar in that they have not yet been evaluated in people, although there is other supporting evidence to suggest that they will work. For one, there is clinical data on a slightly different omicron-specific bivalent booster that targets the BA.1 subvariant that was dominant earlier this year.

 

Moderna tested this booster in about 600 adults who had received two primary doses and one original booster, and at least three months later were given a second original booster or a BA.1 bivalent booster. In blood tests, there was a stronger antibody response a month out in those who had received the BA.1 booster against both BA.1, BA.4/5 and the original virus, as well as against a variety of other variants.

 

The Pfizer/BioNTech BA.1 bivalent booster was tested in a similar way, in about 600 people over the age of 55, with a median of about six months in between the booster doses. At one month, the antibody responses to BA.1 were better in those who had received the BA.1 booster than the original, and the antibody responses to the original virus were similar in the two groups.

 

Although similar studies are being done in people for the BA.4/5 bivalent booster now, those results aren’t in yet. However, experiments from both companies show that mice previously vaccinated and then boosted with the bivalent BA.4/5 vaccines have higher BA.5 neutralizing antibody responses than those boosted with the original vaccine.

 

immune responses.

 

Still, some experts have been wary of moving forward with a new COVID-19 booster without human data on these specific vaccines. Dr. Pablo Sanchez, a professor of pediatrics at the Ohio State University and a member of the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee, ultimately voted against recommending the new boosters because of that concern.

 

“I voted no because I really feel that we need the human data,” he said during the meeting. “There’s a lot of vaccine hesitancy already. We need the human data.” Nonetheless, Sanchez said that, given his age, he was “almost sure” that he would take it.

 

The rest of the committee, though, felt comfortable enough, given the precedent with flu, to recommend the boosters.

 

Numerous other countries have opted to go with updated BA.1 bivalent vaccines, which do have clinical data (although the European Medicines Agency, which recommended BA.1-adapted boosters in early September, also recommended the BA.4/5 boosters on Sept. 12). The FDA, however, decided that the best strategy would be to target BA.4/5, since BA.1 is already no longer circulating.

 

The agency could have waited for the clinical data on BA.4/5, but thought that doing so would sacrifice too many lives. Estimates from the COVID-19 Scenario Modeling Hub suggest that delaying the booster campaign by a month would result in 137,000 more hospitalizations and 9,700 more deaths.

 

“We have to be a step ahead, or at least we have to try,” FDA chief Dr. Robert Califf explained in a press conference following the authorization of the new boosters. “Because if we waited for all the proof to come in, the wave will have already passed us by and the damage will have been done.”

 

E. John Wherry, an immunologist at the University of Pennsylvania, said the difference between BA.1- versus BA.4/5-targeted boosters was likely to be small, but given the choice, he would also opt for BA.5.

 

“This will not be the last version of the vaccine that we see,” he said. “Going with what’s here currently makes a lot of sense to me.”

 

As for when the human data on the bivalent BA.4/5 booster will be available, Dr. Peter Marks, the head of vaccines at the FDA, said on Aug. 31 that it would probably be at least until the end of September or October, “because of the time it takes to actually dose and then do the assays.”

 

How effective are the new boosters?

 

Scientists don’t know how well the redesigned shots will work. In theory, the omicron-updated boosters should be better than the original boosters in protecting against disease because they will more specifically target the coronavirus strains currently circulating — and some data suggest that will be the case.

 

It’s also possible the updated boosters will prevent more infections, although that protection will be short-lived.

 

But as the World Health Organization has said, “The full public health benefit of variant-updated vaccines and their value proposition over current vaccines can only be quantified once vaccine effectiveness data have been obtained.”

 

The real question is not whether the booster will increase protection — they will, scientists told us — but whether and to what degree the updated booster will be better than the original boosters.

 

Wherry said he thought the new boosters would be better, but the difference would likely be modest.

 

“I think it’s important to not give the false sense of hope that this new bivalent vaccine is going to be a magic bullet that stops all omicron viruses,” he said. “We should be expecting that they keep the most vulnerable people out of the hospital, but we should not be expecting them to completely protect from, say, mild disease.”

 

Dr. Paul A. Offit, a vaccine expert and pediatrician at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, is not convinced that the updated boosters will be an improvement.

 

“I think they’re all going to be of value, I don’t think they’re necessarily going to be of any greater value than just boosting with the ancestral strain,” he said. “What worries me in all this is … that it’s sort of being oversold, being overpromised,” Offit added. “I just fear that people might be disappointed.”

 

How safe are the new boosters?

 

The exact formulation found in the new boosters has not yet been tested in people, but the revised vaccines are very similar to the original vaccines that have now been given hundreds of millions of times in the U.S. alone and have been shown to only very rarely result in serious side effects.

 

In addition, both companies tested the slightly different BA.1 omicron-specific bivalent booster in people, and found no new safety concerns. Vaccine recipients reported experiencing the same expected and temporary side effects as the original shots, including pain, redness and swelling at the injection site; fatigue; headache; muscle pain; and fever.

 

Given the similarity in design and manufacturing process as the original vaccines, the FDA felt very confident authorizing the boosters. Other experts also told us there is no reason to think that the revamped boosters will pose any new safety hazards. Offit, for example, said it was “extremely unlikely” that the new boosters would be any different in terms of safety.

 

Notably, Sanchez, the sole dissenter on the CDC’s advisory committee, explained after his “no” vote that while he felt there needed to be clinical data to be able to recommend the boosters, he was not that worried about safety.

 

“I am comfortable that the vaccine will likely be safe like the others,” he said, adding that he would almost certainly get the new booster himself.

 

Like the original vaccines, scientists do expect the updated shots will carry a small increased risk of myocarditis and pericarditis, or inflammation of the heart muscle and its surrounding tissue, particularly in young males. Most people who are affected by the rare side effect and are treated, the CDC says, feel better quickly.

 

Another issue being monitored by scientists is whether boosting could hurt a person’s ability to respond to a future variant, as we have written. But Wherry, who has been following this topic, said there is no indication that is a current risk. “From the data that exists, I see no concern about that whatsoever,” he said. Some animal studies suggest that giving an omicron-only vaccine as a first vaccine dose in animals could be detrimental, he added, but that’s not what is being given to people.

 

What do experts say about who should get the updated shots, and when?

 

There is broad agreement that older people and those at higher risk of developing severe COVID-19 should get the new boosters. But experts differ on whether young, healthy people should get another dose.

 

“I don’t think that a healthy young person who has already received three doses frankly needs another dose, because I think they are protected against serious illness,” Offit said. “After about six months after their last dose, they’re not going to be as protected against mild illness, but that’s true of all infections like this one, meaning short incubation period, mucosal infections.”

 

Offit still recommends that people over 75 years old, those with significant underlying health problems and those who are immunocompromised seek out the shots. Those are the groups, he said, that have benefited from the previous boosters.

 

But others think it’s reasonable to give the shots more widely, and that younger people should at least consider them.

 

“Most young, healthy people are protected from severe disease even after three doses and that protection is pretty durable,” Wherry said. The updated booster, he said, is primarily meant to protect the most vulnerable and to perhaps offer a little bit better protection from mild or moderate disease.

 

“If you’re over 65, everyone should get boosted,” he said. “If you have comorbidities or are immunosuppressed, absolutely get boosted.”

 

For younger people, Wherry said boosters are still a good idea, but there can be more individual choice — and that people shouldn’t think that the booster will make them impervious to infection.

 

“I would encourage people to think about their own behavior and when the right timing for the boost would be,” he said. “If you last got a dose of vaccine or were last infected three months ago and you’re a middle-aged, otherwise healthy individual, you may consider waiting a month or two and time your next dose closer to the holidays or closer to when there’s going to be more indoor activities so that peak level of antibodies coincides with when you’re going to be attending family gatherings or be inside more.”

 

Although two months is the minimum amount of time to wait since the last COVID-19 dose before getting the updated booster, many experts, including Offit and Wherry, suggest that people wait longer than that since last being vaccinated or being infected with SARS-CoV-2.

 

“The science really says for a young, healthy individual, you’re going to get the best boosting if you wait four to six months,” Wherry explained. “That allows for your memory B cells and memory T cells to mature a little bit, antibody levels to come down from their sort of max peak level after infection or vaccination.”

 

But for people who are older or have health problems, Wherry suggested consulting a doctor, because those individuals might need to get their doses sooner.

 

Is this the start of a shift to an annual COVID-19 vaccine?

 

Maybe. The Biden administration has presented this fall’s booster as the first of a once-a-year shot for COVID-19, similar to an annual seasonal flu vaccine. But while that could be a reasonable approach, it’s too early to truly know.

 

Some federal health officials have said as much, noting that new variants might disrupt those plans and that older or high-risk people might need more than one vaccine a year. Some experts, including Offit, are critical of the administration for getting ahead of itself on this question. Offit told us it was reasonable to target high-risk groups, but that young, healthy people may not need an annual boost.

 

Others are more comfortable with the concept. Wherry, for instance, said that given data that protection against severe disease begins to wane a little around nine months, the one-year time frame makes sense as “a benchmark for the average person” — and also is practical.

 

“A bit of aligning to traditional health care is an important part of this because it’s actually going to help with vaccine compliance, keeping up with what’s new,” he said, adding that there would remain flexibility for higher-risk people, who likely already interact more with the health care system, to get additional doses if needed.

 

Where can I get an updated booster?

 

You can find where the new boosters are available in your area by visiting Vaccines.gov. As with other COVID-19 vaccines, the reformulated boosters will be available at pharmacies, community health centers, and some clinics and doctor’s offices. But a lack of funding means they are less likely than the earlier shots to be available in various public health outreach efforts.

 

In some places, the boosters may be difficult to find at first. Certain locales have reported shortages of the Moderna vaccine in particular in the first weeks of the rollout, in part due to the delayed release of 10 million doses from a packaging plant in Indiana.

 

Again, the only booster available to people 12 years and older will be the updated one, so even if it’s not advertised as being new or bivalent, that’s what you will receive.

 

Are the shots still free?

 

Yes. The U.S. government has purchased more than 170 million doses of the updated boosters, and at this time, all COVID-19 vaccinations remain available to the public free of charge, regardless of immigration or insurance status.

 

The administration, however, has warned that without additional funding, it expects it will need to transition COVID-19 vaccine costs “to the commercial market” as early as January. When that occurs, the vaccines will likely be covered for most people with health insurance, similar to flu and other vaccines. People without insurance, however, would need to pay out of pocket.

 

Can I get my updated booster along with my flu shot?

 

Yes. Health officials are suggesting this pairing be offered to you this fall, since they know that getting both in one go is more convenient and increases the likelihood that you’ll get both vaccinations.

 

After one nearly nonexistent and one mild flu season — likely thanks to COVID-19 mitigation measures — some experts are concerned this flu season might be worse than normal. The relative lack of flu for two years running likely means there is less immunity in the population and more people will be susceptible. Clues from the Southern Hemisphere, which often presage flu severity in the North, have been mixed. Australia has had a bad flu season in terms of the number of cases, raising concerns — but other countries have not had particularly active seasons.

 

Regardless of how severe the flu season turns out to be, vaccination is still recommended. Several studies, along with surveillance data, indicate that getting a COVID-19 shot at the same time as a flu shot is safe and doesn’t reduce your immune response to either virus. The temporary, expected side effects of vaccination are usually on par with or only slightly worse in people getting both shots compared with those just getting a COVID-19 dose.

 

For some individuals, getting the shots together may make sense, but for others, the timing might not be ideal. The CDC recommends getting the flu shot in September or October, but many experts recommend October or later because vaccine protection against flu wanes and may not last the entire season if given too early. Still, getting the flu vaccine a bit early is better than not getting it at all.

 

If you opt for dual vaccination, you should get the two shots in different arms or in the same arm with the injections at least an inch apart.

 

This year, for the first time, the CDC is preferentially recommending that people over 65 years of age get a high dose or adjuvanted flu vaccine instead of a standard flu vaccine, given evidence that those shots may work better for this group.

 

When will kids be able to get updated shots?

 

Teens 12 and older are eligible for Pfizer/BioNTech’s omicron-updated booster, but the wait is likely to be at least a few more weeks for younger kids.

 

On Sept. 21, the head of vaccines at the FDA said that the agency was “only a matter of weeks away” from authorizing updated boosters for kids 5 to 11 years old and “a few months away” for children under 5. The day before, the CDC released a planning document saying it expected Pfizer/BioNTech’s booster for 5- through 11-year-olds and Moderna’s booster for 6- to 17-year-olds in “early to mid-October.”

 

Pfizer and BioNTech had previously said that they expect to submit their EUA application for updated boosters for children 5 through 11 years of age in early October and that they were pursuing an application for the youngest children down to 6 months.

 

As with the new boosters for those 12 and up, there may not be clinical data in children for the specific vaccine prior to authorization.

 

At the CDC’s advisory committee meeting, a Moderna representative said that the company would be completing its EUA submission for its original booster vaccine in kids 6 through 17 by mid-September. The company, she said, is currently conducting a study of primary series BA.1 bivalent vaccines and original and BA.1 bivalent boosters in children 6 months to 5 years old, which is expected to be finished by the end of 2022. She added that Moderna was “exploring” ways of testing BA.4/5 bivalent vaccines in children for use as primary vaccinations and boosters.

A slightly early Independence Day (Fourth of July) fireworks show over Lake Monona in the heart of the Wisconsin capital.

 

* Fireworks pictures in a sense are double exposures, at least multiple exposures.

* My ISO was set at 100. Nothing higher is needed or even desirable.

* White balance set to auto because in raw capture it does not matter.

* The technique used (and it's an old one) was to hold the shutter open for 10, 20, or 30 seconds at a time.

* The aperture is adjusted in the opposite direction to keep the exposure uniform. In this case I found that 10 seconds at f/8 worked well. 30 seconds at f/16 captured more bursts, but if the action was very heavy then too many bursts made for a busy, messy picture. I had to keep changing the settings.

* The camera was in full manual mode (otherwise it would change the exposure and focus).

* Because the display was 2 miles away the camera only needed to be focused at infinity.

* Solidly mounted on a sturdy tripod and tripped with an electronic cable release to insure there is no camera movement.

* Vibration reduction turned off (otherwise the VR would "hunt" for nonexistent movement and smear the shot). I nearly forgot this but I made a couple of test exposures early on and realized immediately that they were smeared due to the VR.

* I also turned off the Long Exposure Noise Reduction when I realized that it was doubling the time for the picture to load, and I knew I could minimize any noise in Lightroom. As it turned out little noise reduction was necessary beyond the standard.

* I worked in live view and kept the auto review on for two seconds for each shot to insure that I was getting what I thought I was getting. It’s enormously reassuring!

* With the shutter open for longer periods, more individual bursts are recorded on each frame. You have to shoot a lot of frames and hope to luck out. There is no way to plan it. You open the shutter, the stuff goes up, at the end of the time the shutter closes and you've got what you've got. I think I made about 75 exposures to get 19 that were good. The rest were trashed.

* Despite some 75 extended exposures, live view, and constant instant reviews, the battery at the end of 45 minutes of fireworks still had 60% charge. Turning off the noise reduction undoubtedly helped, plus made the shoot more efficient; no waiting.

 

Doubtful Sound is a very large and naturally imposing fjord (despite its name) in Fiordland, in the far south west of New Zealand. It is located in the same region as the smaller but more famous and accessible Milford Sound.

Doubtful Sound was named 'Doubtful Harbour' in 1770 by Captain Cook, who did not enter the inlet as he was uncertain whether it was navigable under sail. It was later renamed Doubtful Sound by whalers and sealers.

A Spanish scientific expedition commanded by Alessandro Malaspina visited Doubtful Sound in February 1793 to conduct experiments measuring the force of gravity using a pendulum, a part of the effort to establish a new metric system. The officers of the expedition, which included Felipe Bauzá y Cañas, a cartographer, also made the first chart of the entrance and lower parts of the Sound, naming features of it. Today these form a unique cluster of the only Spanish names on the map of New Zealand: Febrero Point, Bauza Island and the Nee Islets, Pendulo Reach and Malaspina Reach.

There are three distinct arms to the sound, which is the site of several large waterfalls, notably Helena Falls at Deep Cove, and the Browne Falls which have a fall of over 600 metres. The steep hills are known for their hundreds of waterfalls during the rainy season.

Access to the sound is either by sea, or by the Wilmot Pass road from the Manapouri Power Station. Most areas of the sound itself are only accessible by sea however, as the road network in this area of New Zealand is sparse or nonexistent, as is the human population.

Charles John Lyttelton, 10th Viscount Cobham, Governor-General of New Zealand (1957-1962) wrote about this part of Fiordland:

"There are just a few areas left in the world where no human has ever set foot. That one of them should be in a country so civilized and so advanced as New Zealand may seem incredible, unless one has visited the south-west corner of the South Island. Jagged razor backed mountains rear their heads into the sky. More than 200 days of rain a year ensure not a tree branch is left bare and brown, moss and epiphytes drape every nook. The forest is intensely green. This is big country... one day peaceful, a study in green and blue, the next melancholy and misty, with low cloud veiling the tops... an awesome place, with its granite precipices, its hanging valleys, its earthquake faults and its thundering cascades."

Doubtful Sound is unusual in that it contains two distinct layers of water that scarcely mix. The top few meters is fresh water, fed from the high inflows from the surrounding mountains, and stained brown with tannins from the forest. Below this is a layer of cold, heavy, saline water from the sea. The dark tannins in the fresh water layer makes it difficult for light to penetrate. Thus, many deep-sea species will grow in the comparatively shallow depths of the Sound.

This fiord is home to one of the southernmost population of bottlenose dolphins. The Doubtful Sound bottlenoses have formed a very insular sub-group of only about 70 individuals, with none having been observed to leave or enter the Sound during a multi-year monitoring regime. Their social grouping is thus extremely close, which is also partly attributed to the difficult and unusual features of their habitat, which is much colder than for other bottlenose groups and is also overlaid by the freshwater layer.

Other wildlife to be found in Doubtful Sound includes fur seals and penguins (Fiordland crested and blue), or even rare large whales (Southern Right Whale, Humpback Whale, Minke Whale, Sperm Whale and some Giant Beaked Whales. Orca, the Killer Whales and Long-Finned Pilot Whales can be found also. The waters of Doubtful Sound are also home to an abundance of sea creatures, including many species of fish, starfish, sea anemones and corals. It is perhaps best known for its black coral trees which occur in unusually shallow water for what is normally a deep water species.

The catchment basin of Doubtful Sound is generally steep terrain that is heavily forested except for locations where surface rock exposures are extensive. Nothofagus trees are dominant in many locations. In the understory there are a wide variety of shrubs and ferns.

Spaceship Earth, the iconic and symbolic structure of Epcot, opened with the park in Future World in 1982. The 18-story, 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.

Vernon, FL

Holmes Creek begins near the Alabama–Florida line, northeast of the town of Bonifay. It is a tiny, unnavigable stream until 2 miles above Vernon, where the input from Beckton and Cypress springs enlarges it into a canoeable waterway. Except in periods of heavy rainfall, Holmes Creek tends to be clear and green. There is a wide variety of trees and the colorful reflections of many different hues of leaves and foliage in the clear water makes this a photogenic stream. Beginning and ending in areas of high banks, the middle part of the Holmes Creek Canoe Trail runs through swamps characterized by many sloughs and bayous. Paddling into these can also provide an interesting experience. There are several small springs and creeks that feed Holmes Creek. Trees along the banks and in the swamps include pine, a variety of oaks, magnolia, cypress, maple, sweet and black gums, and a number of others indigenous to north Florida. Alligators can be observed as well as turtles, raccoons, otters, and skunks. This stream is well known for good fishing in all seasons. Holmes Creek has a low gradient and a lazy to almost nonexistent current. There are a few scattered houses on the higher banks, but overall the atmosphere is one of remoteness. It is a very pretty creek, easy to paddle, and offers good access. It makes an excellent one-day trip and would be pleasant for a leisurely overnight trip, even though campsites are somewhat scarce.

 

HDR and Orton

 

A modern computer hovers between the obsolescent and the nonexistent

Sidney Brenner

  

I found this broken down truck buried in the show near the entrance to

Joshin-Etsu Kogen National Park, Nagano Prefecture, Japan.

Why it Works: The diagonal border of the snow on the truck divides the frame in two. Then there’s the rust signifying the battle between things manmade and nature. Reference number: JA_110219_1252

Spaceship Earth, the iconic and symbolic structure of Epcot, opened with the park in Future World in 1982. The 18-story, 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.

2013-JUN-04; Mark Bauer had an op-ed article published in the Star Telegram: Stories about redemption are both memorable and educational. The authors of the Bible knew this long ago. King David had his top general Uriah killed so he could marry Uriah?s wife. Jacob stole his brother?s inheritance. The Apostle Peter publicly denied knowing Jesus three times to save his own life..

The Bible is more than 2,000 years old, and it has been painstakingly studied and debated for generations. The rabbis, monks, popes, copyists and typesetters had plenty of opportunities to clean up these narratives and remove these bothersome storylines..

But they didn?t clean it up, and we are fortunate to have the full narrative because King David went on to lead Israel into its Golden Era; Jacob and Esau reconciled; and Peter went on to shepherd the early Christian church..

Those are great stories. And what better learning method is there than to hear about good people or a great nation making bad choices then picking themselves up to go on to do great things?.

But Texas legislators? actions that essentially brought an end to the public school curriculum called CSCOPE make it look like they don?t want real history taught..

CSCOPE is an educational curriculum plan created by the non-profit Texas Education Service Center Curriculum Collaborative. CSCOPE was created in Texas by Texas educators for our Texas schools..

It is optional, and not all school districts use it. Seventy percent of Texas? 1,265 districts, plus some charter schools, have been using CSCOPE, though Crowley is the only large district in Tarrant County..

But many school systems, especially smaller districts (including Castleberry, Cleburne, Lake Worth and White Settlement, plus Weatherford), chose to use CSCOPE because it had good lesson plans that tracked the state?s standardized tests and curriculum standards..

It allowed our teachers to teach without worrying if they were also covering the mandated material..

But then politicians got involved. Some of them found out that CSCOPE covered real history, warts and all. Among the topics that drew complaints: the Boston Tea Party was a morally legitimate but illegal act..

Another example often mentioned by critics: Students were asked to design a flag for a socialist country. Apparently learning about socialist countries was too much..

What?s next? Many of our history textbooks also cover difficult topics about America, including slavery in North America, the My Lai massacre in Vietnam and the invasion of Iraq for nonexistent weapons of mass destruction..

James W. Loewen?s book Lies My Teacher Told Me details how our textbooks are dumbed down to avoid arguments of exactly this type. Publishers want to sell books ? not create the best history books possible and face the controversy that goes with it..

Loewen points out that few textbooks today will mention that Christopher Columbus initiated slavery in the Americas; our first six presidents owned slaves; and liberal President Woodrow Wilson sent troops into Russia, Mexico and the Caribbean without congressional authority..

In the classroom, do we hide our mistakes and hope the next generation doesn?t repeat them? Or do we teach our children that our leaders have not always done the right thing but we learn from our mistakes and are a better country for it?.

As a bill requiring the State Board of Education to give textbook-style review to curriculum plans developed by education service centers moved through the Legislature in May, the centers agreed to stop offering CSCOPE..

But how will districts pay for a replacement curriculum? When your legislator starts crowing about eliminating CSCOPE to preserve ?Texas values,? be sure to point out that we thought a Texas value was learning from our mistakes..

Mark Bauer of Colleyville has taught adult Sunday School for 20 years and has served as a substitute teacher for various North Texas school districts..

www.star-telegram.com/2013/06/03/4905939/texas-end-to-csc...

Oedipoda careulescens is a medium-sized grasshopper, between 15 and 21 mm for males and between 22 to 28 mm for females. The body coloration varies greatly depending on the substrate on which the animals have developed: reddish brown, gray, yellowish, or even completely dark or bright. The forewings are crossed most often by two or three pale bands, but the most striking characteristic, very visible when the insect flies away, is the bright coloration of the hind wings, a beautiful turquoise highlighted with a black marginal stripe. Furthermore, the posterior femora have a notch on their upper surface. At rest, confusion is possible with other Oedipoda species such as O. germanica.

 

Oedipoda caerulescens frequents dry areas with low and open vegetation: dunes, heathlands, grasslands on sand and sunlit limestone rocks. Many stations correspond to land recently used for human activities, such as coal spoil heaps, quarries and pits, the ballast of railway tracks, etc. It is exclusively a terrestrial insect, and its cryptic coloration often matches its substrate. The female lays her eggs in bare, dry soil. In this species, acoustic emissions are virtually nonexistent. The diet consists mainly of grasses.*

  

*Source: Wikipedia

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.

Pacific Western Airlines started off as Central British Columbia Airlines by two bush pilots in 1946 with a Beech 17 Staggerwing as its only equipment, and its sole purpose to fly forest fire patrol missions across the vast forests of British Columbia. Despite this, CBCA was founded at just the right time: after World War II, Canada was interested in tapping the barely-touched natural resources of Canada’s tundra, and CBCA was uniquely positioned to take advantage of the explosion of mining interests in northern British Columbia.

 

The little airline expanded rapidly to include a bewildering array of aircraft serving the remote mining camps and eventual towns that sprung up around them. By 1955, CBCA was profitable enough to buy out nine other airlines in the region, consolidating them into Pacific Western Airlines; Pacific Western again got lucky in 1959, when Canadian Pacific turned over most of its western Canadian routes to Pacific Western, as CP Air wanted to concentrate on its international routes.

 

Pacific Western was always looking for more ways to innovate. In 1963, it started a Douglas DC-4 shuttle between Calgary and Edmonton, Alberta: 30 years before low-cost operators like Easyjet started a similar program, Pacific Western was selling tickets onboard its own aircraft shortly before takeoff, with seats offered as first-come, first-served. It also was one of the first Canadian airlines to offer all-inclusive holiday charters to the Caribbean, Las Vegas, and the United Kingdom. Jets arrived with Boeing 707s in 1967, the same year Pacific Western became the first airline to adopt the Lockheed L-100 Hercules, the civilian version of the C-130; these supplied mining camps along the Arctic Sea, where runways were nonexistent. Even as brand-new Boeing 737s arrived, Pacific Western was still flying ancient Douglas DC-4s in the Northwest Territories. Besides its scheduled services, Pacific Western was flying worldwide ad hoc cargo charter services.

 

In 1974, with fuel prices rising and maintenance costs mounting for Pacific Western’s different aircraft, the province of Alberta assumed ownership of Pacific Western to ensure that the airline continued operations; it was that important to western Canada. Equipment was standardized on the Boeing 737, with its Northwest Territories cargo operations sold off. Four years later, the airline bought out Transair, giving it routes east of Alberta for the first time. By 1983, when Alberta privatized the airline again, Pacific Western was the largest airline in western Canada and one of the most profitable. It was doing so well that in 1987 it submitted an offer to buy its old rival, CP Air. When this was approved by the Canadian government, Pacific Western then bought out troubled carrier Wardair Canada, absorbing Canada’s third and second largest airlines in the space of two years. All three airlines were then merged into and renamed Canadian Airlines, retiring the Canadian Pacific, Wardair, and Pacific Western brands.

 

This 727 shows off Pacific Western's rather attractive livery, used throughout most of the airline's existence. The real CF-PWW did fly with Pacific Western, but it was either a 707 or 737. Note the cargo door on the forward fuselage: this is a mixed passenger/cargo Combi version.

 

Here he is demonstrating what's "normal" for human sexuality with extension cords. Given his choice in metaphors, I bet you money his sex life is nonexistent.

 

In fact that's what he was preaching. No sex before marriage, no masturbation for guys. After marriage only missionary sex, no blow jobs, no masturbation... etc.

 

I waited for him to get through to the gay side of the matters and preach how homosexuality is sin etc. The crowd listened on making comments every now and then. Now I am no activist but when he reached a stopping point, I raised my voice and I said:

 

"for one moment let's assume that all homosexuals in the world gave up homosexuality and we are done with homosexuality, so we're able to put that subject aside -- what else are you preaching exactly here? I mean do you have message for compassion, community, support, charity, feeding the poor, solving the hatred in the world, empowering the poor nations, increasing literacy... do you have any of these as action items? He had nothing to say. So I continued:

 

"Anyone can get up on a high ground and preach hatred, it comes naturally to most humans. If you say you're truly religious and that you have seen the light, you have to show me that you have risen above all that with your compassion and love for humanity whatever shape form or orientation they are. All you're doing here is making an ass of yourself showing us your intolerance and your inability to show compassion to others. Your said heaven as you describe it is the empty parking lot of the Mall of America, and you can keep it."

 

After stumbling for words, his operating system must have rebooted because Mr. Religious Hatret Bot was back in action within seconds of my statement. I let him speak a bit more until he came to a story from the bible where doing justice involved scorching out a relative's eyes.

 

At that point I bowed out. There is simply no hope.

 

Being a literal follower of any of the main religions with books is the equivalent of treating Alice in Wonderland as a literal book on historical events that actually took place. And please, dont even go there....

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.

Picture taken 1987 during my 5-month-trip around the world - digitally captured from paper print. Sorry for the bad quality.

 

I have uploaded a lot of my digitally captured photos, which I took since 2004. But the most interesting journeys I did between 1979 and 2004! Those photos are on slide.

__________________________________________

 

Bora Bora (French: Bora-Bora, Tahitian: Pora Pora) is a 30.55 km2 island group in the Leeward group in the western part of the Society Islands of French Polynesia, an overseas collectivity of France in the Pacific Ocean. The main island, located about 230 kilometres northwest of Papeete, is surrounded by a lagoon and a barrier reef. In the center of the island are the remnants of an extinct volcano rising to two peaks, Mount Pahia and Mount Otemanu, the highest point at 727 metres.

 

Bora Bora is a major international tourist destination, famous for its aqua-centric luxury resorts. The major settlement, Vaitape, is on the western side of the main island, opposite the main channel into the lagoon. Produce of the island is mostly limited to what can be obtained from the sea and the plentiful coconut trees, which were historically of economic importance for copra.

 

DEMOGRAPHICS

As of 2017, the Bora Bora group has a permanent population of 10,605.

 

NAME

In ancient times the island was called "Pora pora mai te pora", meaning "created by the gods" in the local Tahitian dialect. This was often abbreviated Pora Pora meaning simply "first born". Because of ambiguities in the phonemes of the Tahitian language, this could also be pronounced Bola Bola or Bora Bora. When explorer Jacob Roggeveen first landed on the island, he and his crew adopted the name Bora Bora which has stood ever since.

 

HISTORY

The island was inhabited by Polynesian settlers around the 4th century C.E.[citation needed] The first European sighting was made by Jakob Roggeveen in 1722.

 

James Cook sighted the island on 29 July 1769, using a Tahitian navigator, Tupaia. The London Missionary Society arrived in 1820 and founded a Protestant church in 1890. Bora Bora was an independent kingdom until 1888 when its last queen Teriimaevarua III was forced to abdicate by the French who annexed the island as a colony.

 

WORLD WAR II

In World War II the United States chose Bora Bora as a South Pacific military supply base, and an oil depot, airstrip, seaplane base, and defensive fortifications were constructed. Known as "Operation Bobcat", it maintained a supply force of nine ships, 20,000 tons of equipment and nearly 7,000 men.

 

At least eight 7"/44 caliber guns, operated by elements of the 13th Coast Artillery Regiment (later the 276th Coast Artillery Battalion), were set up at strategic points around the island to protect it against potential military attack. Eight of these guns remain in the area.

 

However, the island saw no combat as the American presence on Bora Bora went uncontested over the course of the war. The base was officially closed on 2 June 1946. The World War II airstrip was never able to accommodate large aircraft, but it nonetheless was French Polynesia's only international airport until Faa'a International Airport opened next to Papeete, Tahiti, in 1960.

 

ADMINISTRATION

The commune of Bora-Bora is made up of the island of Bora Bora proper with its surrounding islets emerging from the coral reef, 29.3 km2 in total. The surrounding islets include Motu Tapu, Motu Ahuna, Tevairoa, Motu Tane, Motu Mute, Motu Tufari, Motu Tehotu, Motu Pitiaau, Sofitel Motu, Motu Toopua, and Toopuaiti. The commune also includes the Tūpai atoll. (11 km2), located 20 kilometres north of Bora Bora. The atoll of Tūpai has no permanent population apart from about 50 workers in the coconut plantations.

 

The commune is an administrative subdivision of the Leeward Islands and consists of three associated communes: Anau, Faanui and Vaitape. The administrative centre of the commune is the settlement of Vaitape, on the island of Bora Bora proper. Gaston Tong Sang is the Mayor of the commune of Bora-Bora, serving since 1989.

 

TOURISM

The island's economy is driven almost solely by tourism. Several resorts have been built on motu (small islands, from Tahitian) surrounding the lagoon. Hotel Bora Bora opened in 1961, and nine years later built the first over-the-water bungalows on stilts over the lagoon. Today, over-water bungalows are a standard feature of most Bora Bora resorts. The quality of those bungalows ranges from comparably cheap, basic accommodations to very luxurious and expensive places to stay.

 

Most of the tourist destinations are aqua-centric; however it is possible to visit attractions on land such as WWII cannons. Air Tahiti has five or six flights daily to the Bora Bora Airport on Motu Mute from Tahiti (as well as from other islands). Public transport on the island is nonexistent so rental cars and bicycles are the recommended methods of transport. There are also small, two-seater buggies for hire in Vaitape. It is possible to rent a motorboat to explore the lagoon.

 

Snorkeling and scuba diving in and around the lagoon of Bora Bora are popular activities. Many species of sharks and rays inhabit the surrounding body of water. There are a few dive operators on the island offering manta ray dives and also shark-feeding dives. Sharks living in the island's lagoon are not considered to be dangerous to people.[citation needed]

 

In addition to the existing islands of Bora Bora, the new manmade motu of Motu Marfo has been added in the northeastern corner of the lagoon on the property of the St. Regis Resort.

 

WIKIPEDIA

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

Rome, Italy 1972

 

The Column of Marcus Aurelius was built between 180 AD and 193 AD as a gift by the Senate and the people of Rome to Emperor Marcus Aurelius. The column was erected near the emperor's own temple, the Temple of the Deified Marcus, nonexistent today. The monument - also known as the Aurelian Column commemorates Emperor Marcus Aurelius's military campaigns against Germanic tribes and the Sarmatians, nomadic tribes who lived near the Black Sea.

 

Miranda Sensorex

Auto Miranda 50mm f1.4

Kodak Ektachrome ASA100

Developed & Processed by Caribe Color Lab (1972)

Scanned on Canon 9000F Mark II

Edited in Photoshop CC

 

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.

Minutes after leaving Wolfville, heading east towards Halifax on the Evangeline Trail, I spotted the skeleton of a completely demolished house. It sat dejectedly amongst its own innards which lay strewn about the yard. A quick U-turn in the middle of the empty Thursday afternoon highway brought me back to the rutted, overgrown road which led to the house. Without a fence, "no trespassing" sign, or person in sight I approached the house, carefully avoiding the minefield of bared, rusted nails jutting out of the shingles and boards about the yard. The house, beaten and broken, appeared to be giving itself up to the land, an offering readily accepted by the weeds and wildflowers that had already gently consumed a window frame or two as well as the foundations. Initially I enjoyed the starkness of the remaining stairs which lead up to the nonexistent second floor, yet upon a full circulation of the house I came across the bathroom. This remarkably preserved room was situated snugly under the stairs facing a vast stretch of land that was marked only by a perfectly red house in the distance. The raw, impersonal beauty of the house's skeleton was suddenly ripped away for me as I now saw the broken interior with its hauntingly personal touches. The bathroom, the last remaining sign of the house's original gentle nature, was now exposed since the wall had been ruthlessly torn down. The identifiable appliances so brutally smashed were startlingly provoking and the peeling pink paint seemed to be a subtle surrender. Most notably disheartening was the tiny heart-shaped wreath hanging from the wall. It had pink roses attached which happily matched the shower tiles and the pink paint. This heart, a final testament of the house's domestication, now open to the elements, was now a bared symbol of resignation.

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.

Barn is located in Mendon Ponds Park, at the intersection of Clover St and Pond Rd, Mendon, NY (near Rochester)... next to the Nature Center. MC Sheriff Mounted Division was started in 1938.

 

Mendon Ponds Park is owned and very poorly maintained by the County of Monroe, NY.

 

Unfortunately, this extraordinary property is rapidly deteriorating due to an egregious lack of care. Trails are not cleared of debris... signs are useless. Park maintenance is essentially nonexistent. They do have a marketing department. Seriously, the taxpayers are paying the salaries of a county parks marketing department.

 

Email Mendon Ponds Park complaints to: countyexecutive@monroecounty.gov

We decided that hiking would be one of the methods for my wife and I to get healthier. Luckily there is a state park near us with some great trails. After working up to a five mile route we met a hiker who told us about the trails off the main trail, or ridge trails. They were a bit hard to find but once we got the hang of it locating the ridge trails was easy. They were more challenging and much more fun.

 

After reading many books on hiking the Appalachian Trail and Pacific Crest Trail, the last book I read was from a Michigander who hiked the AP Trail, tried it as a through-hike but life got in the way and he had to go home a few times. I knew this was beyond our interest but we really enjoy the day hikes. The wife won’t go for the backpacking just yet; I keep working on her though.

 

In looking to try something new, I came across information on the North Country Trail on the internet and read about the Hike 100 Challenge. We thought it was a good idea and made it our goal. We also decided to attend the 2016 Celebration in Fargo, ND.

 

We started in April at the Birch River Schoolhouse Loop in MI. We picked the hottest and most humid day in May to hike the NCT in Shawnee State Forest, OH. Met a nice local family who camped out on the trail because they got a late start the night before. Ohio pushed me to the limit physically with the weather, it was either up or down and the trail markings were nonexistent. After that we decided we were cool weather hikers.

 

So we took a break until mid-September when we went to the Celebration in Fargo. I was a bit worried we would not achieve the challenge since we were only about a third of the way in mileage. However, Fargo got us back on track, we really enjoyed the prairie hiking which is much different than that of MI. We made a vacation out of the trip and took our time coming home by way of the Upper Peninsula. But first we had to stop and walk across the Montreal River that borders Wisconsin and Michigan. You see, after hiking in MI, OH, ND, MN, it only seemed logical to hike in WI since we were already there. Then we could make a vacation out of going to the PA/NY border, that way we would have hiked in all the states of the NCT. Oh yes, we had decided to hike all seven states when we were at the Celebration in Fargo!

 

We camped and hiked in the Porcupine Mountains, the “Grand Canyon” of Michigan, and Hemingway country in the Upper Peninsula. We found the NCT crossing the highway near Lowell on our frequent drives to see the kids at the University of Michigan and got more mileage in that way. It is also a nice stop to get out of the car and stretch the legs. We then traveled to Bradford, PA and hiked the Allegheny National Forest in Pennsylvania and the Allegany State Park in New York. Oh, it’s not a typo, PA likes the “heny” and NY likes the “any”, I have the photos to prove it.

 

We took two days off then headed back to our now favorite place, Bitely MI. We camped and did our final twenty miles on the trail over three days. As a present we had just purchased backpacks for both of us at REI in Ann Arbor (shout out), they worked out great.

A shout out to the Outpost in Holland, MI where we purchase most of our stuff. Thanks to all the folks volunteering and working for the NCT, what a wonderful concept. It is a great way to get out and rejuvenate.

 

Greg & Cathy Brock, Members at Large

Former line between Riera Blanca junction and Barcelona Port Station, closed on June 21, 1985. The photo shows the entrance to the Barcelona Port station, with a branch to the left to CAMPSA facilities, nonexistent today. On the right, wide roads of RENFE. (Image scanned from an original paper).

 

Antigua línea entre la bifurcación Riera Blanca y la estación de Barcelona Port, clausurada el 21 de junio de 1985. En la foto vemos la entrada a la estación de Barcelona Port, con una derivación a la izquierda hacia las instalaciones de CAMPSA, hoy inexistente. A la derecha, las vías anchas de RENFE. (Foto escaneada de un original de papel).

Carlos Fresquez

A Fairy Tale, 2007

Screen print / Serigraph / Silkscreen

Edition of 50 (Serie XIV / 14)

 

Visit the artist's page on our website to purchase this print. For more information about other artists in the series, visit serieproject.org/shop.

 

The print A Fairy Tale, represents Denver native Carlos Fresquez’s vision of the future, a place where borders of all kinds will be nonexistent and a time where world peace will prevail. The subjects in this print, The Jetson’s, or "Los Supersonicos" as they are called in Spanish, represent a future in which humans will get along with one another regardless of language or cultural identity.

 

Indeed, just as all cartoons are dubbed to fit the language in the country they are aired in, George Jetson speaks to the audience in Spanish while he his wife marvels at the perfection of their world in English. However, as the title reveals, this idealic vision of humanity will never come into fruition; like Los Supersonicos speaking to us from the future, this vision will remain a mere fantasy as there are too many factors that will prevent this world from taking shape.

 

Fresquez’s use of Aztec and Chicano-related imagery in the background make his print resemble an Aztec codex except that this one, with its cartoon imagery, is a modern day codex which takes notice of the past while keeping a keen focus of the future. A future which Fresquez hopes will most closely resemble the fantasy world Los Supersonicos reside in.

 

Fresquez earned his Bachelor of Arts from the Metropolitan State College in Denver and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Currently, he teaches art at Metropolitan State College.

The kids were great - and I think they really understand the importance of the movement.

 

The children understand because it's their future that had been hocked by the greedy elite power structure between bankers, traders, agents, politicians and others who created the economic crisis then jumped out with millions of dollars in golden parachutes.

 

Check out this OccupyAugusta video by Jane Pietkivitch

 

She shot and edited video from the Occupy Augusta march on downtown on Saturday (10-15-11).

 

The OccupyAugusta movement is doing a fantastic job coordinating and the enthusiasm is no less that in New York

www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=302389719777944

 

OccupyAugusta did an impressive job on Sat., Oct. 15, 2011 as they marched on downtown Augusta protesting the evil greed that created the current economic crisis.

 

The bankers, Wall Street traders, insurance industry, politicians proved they cannot be trusted when left to their own devices when the Bush administration made oversight almost nonexistent.

 

And sure enough when the foxes were in charge of the hen-house it was a slaughter of American jobs, the evaporation of retirement funds, a flood of home foreclosures, sending the world economy into crisis.

 

See the photos at these links!

 

occupyaugusta.org/occupy/wp-content/lg-gallery/October%20...

 

occupyaugusta.org/occupy/gallery?file=October%2015%202011/

 

Occupy Augusta, GA: Occupy Wall Street Pages:

 

Occupy Augusta, GA on Facebook:

www.facebook.com/pages/OCCUPY-AUGUSTA/178325418914632

 

Occupy Augusta, GA on Twitter:

twitter.com/#!/OWSaugustaGA

 

Occupy Augusta, GA on WordPress.org:

occupyaugusta.org/occupy

 

Occupy Augusta, GA on discussion page of WordPress.org (#OccupyAugusta ) in Solidarity with #OWS and #OccupyTogether:

occupyaugusta.org/discuss/index.php

 

Occupy Augusta, GA on MeetUp:

www.meetup.com/occupytogether/Augusta-GA/382952

 

Occupy Augusta, GA on Tumblr:

occupyaugustaga.tumblr.com

 

Occupy Wall Street Movement in other Georgia cities:

www.facebook.com/northganow

 

Inside a cloud. The views were nonexistent.

 

Looking toward Perkins Peak, which I wanted to climb. Turned back here though, because of low visibility and annoying sideways snow.