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

Summary

This elegant, Beaux-Arts style, twenty- story office building was constructed in 1911- 12 for the United States Rubber Company at a time when the automobile was beginning to exert a powerful influence on American society. Located on Broadway, along the section known as "Automobile Row," the U.S. Rubber Company Building was one of the most prominent and important of the many automobile-related structures concentrated here. The two lowest floors originally provided retail space for the company's subsidiary, the United States Tire Company, while U. S . Rubber occupied eight of the office stories. Designed by the prominent architectural firm of Carrere & Hastings, this office building features delicately-carved marble facades crowned by a broad copper cornice. The design, which continues around both the Broadway and 58th Street facades, features a distinctive rounded corner and vertically-grouped windows with metal spandrels and thin, continuous piers.

In this building, as in their other works, Carrere and Hastings used their training at the French Ecole des Beaux Arts to create an impressive design for a tall building where the skeleton construction is expressed by the thin stone veneei lowest floors of this building were remodeled in which is obviously non-weight-bearing. The two 1959 for a bank.

Automobile Row

At the end of the nineteenth century automobiles, or more precisely horseless carriages, were in the earliest stage of development. At first there were many different types and variations, often growing out of their creator's previous experience in bicycle or carriage manufacture. The new vehicles were looked upon as experimental, purchased only by the very rich and adventurous, since roads, which had been created for horse-drawn vehicles, had uneven, often treacherous surfaces. Between 1886 and 1899 there were approximately 300 individually-built automobiles in the United States. During the first decade of the twentieth century, due to considerable experimentation and advancement of the products including mass- production, discussion in the press, and organization of interested owners and manufacturers, the automobile industry became a strong presence and an economically viable force in the United States. By 1910, The New York Times reported that American automobile manufacturers would produce approximately 200,000 vehicles in that year.

In New York City the influence of the new automobile culture was seen along "Automobile Row," a section of Broadway which eventually stretched between Times Square and 72nd Street. Before 1905, this part of Broadway was home to horses and harness makers, and was characterized as "thoroughly lifeless." In 1907, The New York Times described the same area as "almost a solid line of motor vehicle signs all the way from Times Square to Sherman Square." The 1910 book, Both Sides of Broadway, shows fourteen different automobile and automobile-related stores located between 46th and 50th Streets. The proximity of similar businesses in "Automobile Row" made it easier for customers to view and compare the products of different manufactures. These businesses, which consisted of automobile sales showrooms, stores for parts and accessories, and garages for both storage and repair services, were primarily located in small, remodeled, older buildings.

Within the next few years, larger firms started to buy bigger lots and erect new buildings. The New York Times reported in 1909 on the plans of the B. F. Goodrich Company to build their own showroom and office structure on Broadway and 57th Street (1780- 1782 Broadway, designed by Howard Van Doren Shaw and Waid & Willauer), as well as those of the Peerless and A.T. Demerest Companies to build a block to the south, and the purchase of a building at Broadway and 63rd Street for use as a garage. The construction of the tallest building north of Times Square for the United States Rubber Company, on the large plot at Broadway and 58th Street just to the north of the B. F. Goodrich Company Building, was an importantpartof this trend.

The United States Rubber Company

DESCRIPTION AND ANALYSIS

The company was founded by Charles R. Flint who was a self-described "international merchant, financier and negotiator" and also an original partner in the W.R. Grace Company. In 1878, Flint started dealing in rubber produced in the Amazon River basin. In 1892, Flint convinced nine companies involved in the manufacture of rubber footwear (including Charles Goodyear's company which held the first license for the vulcanization process) to merge, and thereby formed the United States Rubber Company. Over the next few years, the company expanded to control about 70 percent of the rubber footwear business in the country, the principal rubber product at that time. Under the leadership of Samuel P. Colt, who began his tenure as president in 1901, the company expanded into related endeavors.

Charles Flint began another company in 1898 called the Rubber Goods Manufacturing Company, makers of tires and other rubber industrial products. U.S. Rubber acquired this business in 1899, bringing together four leading brands of tires. After ten years, all these tires were sold under the name "United States Tires," then becoming "U. S. Royal" in 1917. In the same year, the company adopted the "KEDS" name for its many varieties of rubber footwear. During the early years of the twentieth century, the U. S. Rubber Company expanded into the chemical business, manufacturing certain chemicals used in the production of new rubber products and the reclamation of scrap rubber. In 1910, the company also acquired its first rubber plantation in Sumatra to ensure the availability of raw materials. Further expansion into related textiles was achieved in 1917 with the acquisition of the Winnsboro Mills in South Carolina which made tire cord and rubber textile fabrics.

Throughout the twentieth century the company continued to grow and diversify, eventually producing foam rubber, synthetic rubber, and TNT used during World War II, among many other products. During the 1950s the company began to acquire related manufacturers in Europe, while continuing to increase its product range and capacity in this country. In order to unify the corporate identity which was so broadly based, in 1967 all the brands were brought together under the name "UNIROYAL."

The United States Rubber Company was first incorporated in New Jersey and maintained its headquarters in New Brunswick for many years. In 1911, the company leased the land on the corner of 58th Street and Broadway in New York City to build a large, more visible corporate headquarters, and a sales outlet for United States Tires. In their 1913 Annual Report, the company declared that the building was completed in the summer of 1912 and that U.S. Rubber occupied ten floors, as well as the two basements, and that most of the other space had been rented "to good tenants." The organization remained in this building until 1951 when its main offices were moved to Rockefeller Center.

Carrere & Hastings

John Merven Carrere (1858-1911)

Thomas Hastings (1860-1929)

The firm of Carrere and Hastings, active during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, was the leading American exponent of the design philosophy of the French Ecole des Beaux Arts. John Merven Carrere was born in Rio de Janeiro to American parents of French descent, and educated in Switzerland. He entered the Ecole des Beaux Arts in 1877, studying in several prominent ateliers, including that of Leon Ginain, a proponent of the neo-Grec style of architecture. Thomas Hastings, born in New York, spent a short time at Columbia University before entering the Ecole des Beaux Arts and serving an apprenticeship in the atelier of Jules Andre. After earning their diplomas - Carrere in 1882 and Hastings in 1884 - both men joined the staff of McKim, Mead & White in New York. After establishing their own partnership in 1885, their first major client was Florida real estate developer Henry Flagler, a partner in Standard Oil.

Carrere & Hastings designed the Ponce de Leon and Alcazar Hotels, and several churches in St. Augustine, as well as the "Whitehall," Flagler's estate in Palm Beach, all in the Spanish Renaissance style, using innovative concrete construction. In 1891 the firm of Carrere & Hastings gained prominence for their Renaissance-inspired, second-place-winning design for the competition for the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. They were more successful in 1897, winning the competition for the New York Public Library (constructed 1898-1911, adesignated New York City Landmark). This design established Carrere & Hastings as one the country's leading architectural firms.

In addition to monumental public buildings, the firm of Carrere & Hastings was very active in residential design, and also created the designs for fourteen Carnegie-funded Libraries in New York. The approaches and arch of the Manhattan Bridge (1905, a designated New York City Landmark) and Grand Army Plaza (1913, a designated New York City Scenic Landmark) reveal the architects' interest in city planning. The First Church of Christ, Scientist (1899- 1903, a designated New York City Landmark) at 96th Street and Central Park West was designed by the firm and is in the finest tradition of Beaux-Arts classicism. Woolsey and Memorial Halls at Yale University (1906) and the New (Century) Theater (demolished), the Vanderbilt Estate, Long Island, the Frick Mansion (1913-15, a designated New York City Landmark), the Staten Island Borough Hall (1903-06, a designated New York City Landmark), and the Richmond County Courthouse (1913-1919, a designated New York City Landmark) were all designed by the firm.

Carrere and Hastings were both members of the Architectural League of New York and Fellows of the American Institute of Architects. After Carrere's death in 1911, Hastings continued to work under the firm's name, designing large office buildings such as the Standard Oil Building (1926, a designated New York City Landmark), the Macmillan Building (1924), and theCunardBuilding (1919-21, a designated New York City Landmark).

The United States Rubber Company Building

Most of the work of Carrere and Hastings was in the French Renaissance tradition. Thomas Hastings, the primary designer of the firm, believed that architects needed to be educated in one style that would reflect their own time. Rather than imitate past architecture, he believed they should adapt past styles to contemporary needs. Hastings maintained that even after the turn of the twentieth century, American life was still motivated by the same forces that had brought about the Renaissance. Therefore, Hastings chose to adapt French Renaissance precedents because he felt that only in France was architecture "consistently modem."

Hastings also had ideas about skyscraper design and the increasing height of contemporary buildings. Architects of the early skyscrapers held extensive debates about an appropriate design vocabulary for this completely new building type. They questioned whether the building should somehow express its vertical nature, or whether it should illustrate the idea whether the building should somehow express its vertical nature, or whether it should illustrate the idea that it was really just a tall collection of horizontal floors. They also discussed whether there should be any indication of the supporting steel skeleton frame on the exterior, rather than trying to make the building appear as if it were constructed of heavy, solid masonry.

As president of the Architectural League, Hastings and many of his contemporaries advocated height limitations for skyscrapers, and later demonstrated (in the Fisk Building, 1920-22, and the Liggett Building, 1919-20) what could be accomplished under the restrictions of New York's Building Zone Law of 1916. Through his understanding of Beaux-Arts principles, Hastings was one of the first to conceive that the skeleton frame which actually supported the building and the exterior sheathing material were separate entities because of their separate functions. By 1894, he was using the term "curtain wall" for the exterior, non-bearing walls of a building as we know it today, and he began to design his buildings to reflect this dichotomy.

Carrere & Hastings' Blair Building (1902, demolished, located on Broad Street, south of the Stock Exchange) was one of their first and most successful efforts at the design of tall buildings. It was constructed when most architects were still debating the proper visual expression of tall buildings and using a tripartite division on their tall building facades, implying the heaviness of the structure through ground-story rustication and deep window reveals. The Blair Building was recognized immediately as something different, its marble facades clearly expressed the fact that they were veneers, and not weight-bearing.

The United States Rubber Company Building, although built as part of "Automobile Row" with a large showroom on its ground floor, was primarily an early office tower and as such it expresses the office building sensibility in its design. Like the Blair Building, it is faced in marble and there is little sense of depth on either elevation of the structure. Narrow, continuous stone piers extending from the fourth through seventh stories and from the ninth through nineteenth stories help give the impression that the walls are a thin skin stretched over the steel cage. Although the ornament of the window pediments, elaborate iron balcony railings, and carved stonework around some of the windows is derived from the French Renaissance style, this decoration is clearly subordinate to the main organizing system of recessed windows and continuous piers. The two main facades of the U.S. Rubber building are treated similarly to each other, although the building is somewhat wider on 58th Street.

The strongly-articulated, rounded comer connecting the two sides of Broadway and 58th Street helps reinforce the idea that both facades are part of a well-conceived whole and creates an unusual architectural dynamic along the street. The entire composition is crowned emphatically by its broad, copper, bracketed cornice which continues around both main facades. For many years a large neon sign above the cornice declared the building's ownership to the rest of New York.

The twenty-story building originally had large arched window openings in the lower two stories, that housed retail stores of the United States Tire Company. Ten of the upper floors were used by the U. S. Rubber Company for their offices, while the rest were rented to other businesses.

Subsequent History

In 1911, the U.S. Rubber Company took a twenty- one year lease on this land from Mary Fitzgerald, who had started purchasing numerous lots on this block in 1876. The company was able to purchase the land in 1932. They sold it to a holding company in 1940, remaining in this building until 1951 when they moved to a newer headquarters in Rockefeller Center.

At this time die building was sold to the West Side Federal Savings Bank which wanted a more modem look. They hired architect Herbert Tannenbaum who added an awning over the Broadway entrance to the banking offices. In 1959, at the bank's request, Mr. Tannenbaum completely reconfigured the first two stories of the building, cladding them with a glass and polished gray marble facade. Early in 2000, additional windows were installed at the second story level. The building is still used for offices with a bank in the ground floor.

Description

The United States Rubber Company Building is a twenty-story, Beaux-arts style structure located on the southeast comer of Broadway and 58th Street, with main facades facing both streets. A rounded comer faced in rusticated stone connects the two facades, and the entire structure is capped by a broad copper cornice. Above the two lowest stories, the building is clad in marble, with original metal-sash windows. The two lowest stories are faced with polished gray marble with large modem display windows at the ground floor. The second story has newly-installed, metal casement windows.

Broadway Facade

Floors 1-2: The main entrance to the lobby and elevators which serve the upper stories of this building is in the southernmost bay on the Broadway facade. This entrance and the connecting lobby (which is not part of this designation) were renovated in 1988. The entrance consists of an exterior and interior set of double bronze-and-glass doors (installed during the renovation) topped by a plain glass transom. Outside the doorway, to the south, a small vertical sign is, attached to the comer of the building, with the numbers "1790." The rest of the ground story has double-height, plate-glass display windows. The entrance to the bank, which occupies the ground floor commercial space, is located near the corner lot line. It consists of revolving doors recessed slightly behind two comer columns clad in metal. The second story is clad in polished gray marble panels, with seven bays along Broadway. The windows in the two end bays have two sections while all the others have three.

Floors 3-7: Stone bandcourses above the second and seventh stories distinguish this section from those above and below it. Horizontally, the facade is divided into five bays in the center section with one bay on each side. The side bays are faced with rusticated stone, and each has a single, smaller window with original two-over-two metal sash. Each of these side windows is topped by stone voussoirs which merge with the curved spandrel of the floor above. The seventh story is an exception. Here the two windows of the side bays are topped by elaborate carvings including lions' heads, shields, and feathers, which support the small balconies fronting the side windows on the eighth story.

The third story is transitional, with elaborate stone surrounds on each window of the central section. Rounded and triangular pediments alternate above these windows, with flat stone pilasters between each bay. The windows have three-over-three metal sash.

The five center bays of floors four through seven have one-over-one, metal sash windows with metal spandrels, and ornate balcony railings. Continuous, flat stone piers edged with moldings rise between each of the center windows, joining together in segmental arches above the seventh story windows. 8th Floor. This is another transitional story, set off by wide bandcourses above and below it. Each window has three-over-three, metal-framed sash, with engaged pilasters between each bay. The windows in each side bay are capped by rounded pediments which form part of the upper bandcourse.

Floors 9-19: Above the bandcourse is a continuous stone balustrade which extends across the entire facade. On these floors the two end bays are distinct from the five bays in the center. They have smaller, square-headed windows with two-over-two metal sash. In the side bays the windows of each two stories are joined vertically by metal spandrel panels and omate metal balcony railings. Within the center section, all the windows have one-over-one metal sash. Continuous, flat stone piers with moldings rise between each bay and join together above the windows of the nineteenth story. Floors nine and ten are joined vertically, as are floors 11 through 16 and floors 17 through 19, by metal spandrel panels and omate iron balcony railings in front of the windows. The windows of the tenth and sixteenth stories have segmentally-arched tops.

Floor 20: The twentieth story is set off by another prominent bandcourse. Twelve windows are evenly spaced across the facade at this level, each with two- over-two metal sash. Each end bay has elaborately carved window surrounds comprised of carved panels with classical ornament.

Cornice: A very broad, projecting copper cornice featuring moldings and brackets tops the building. Roof: A modern penthouse and a chimney are visible from Broadway and Central Park South. 58th Street Facade

The design of this facade is the same as that on Broadway with the following minor exceptions. On the ground story, there are a freight entrance and a vehicular entrance in the two eastern bays. This facade is slightly wider than that on Broadway, and there are eight rather than seven bays on the second story, while the floors above have six bays in the center section. Along the entire height of the building, the easternmost corner has been refaced with shallow indications of rustication.

The eastern facade of the building is visible over the low building to the east. It is faced in unarticulated brick, with one, square-headed window on each floor, containing three-over-three metal sash.

The southern facade is also visible above the neighboring building to the south. It is also faced with unarticulated brick, pierced by numerous unadorned, square-headed windows.

- From the 2000 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report

Precisely short after saying 'I have this tool since I'm 14 and I love it'. Well, if there is a tool retirement this one really earned it. How easy is to find a replacement?

Photograph taken at an altitude of One hundred and nineteen metres, in the Golden Hour around Sunset (Sunset was at precisely 19:38pm, at 19:09pm on Saturday 14th September 2013 Just before Aberfeldy On the shoreline of Loch Tay, nestled in the Tay Forest Park near Kenmore off the A827.

Kenmore (Cheannmhor) is a small village in Perthshire in the Highlands of Scotland where Loch Tay drains into the River Tay. My last evening in Scotland, lying in the Hotel room when I felt the need to try and capture one last sunset, one last look at the beauty all around me. So for this series of shots I was standing in the Loch in my rather fetching Green Wellies.......

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Nikon D800 26mm 1/125s f/5.6 iso200 Handheld. AF-S single point focus. Manual exposure. Matrix metering. Auto white balance.

Nikkor AF-S 24-70mm f/2.8G ED IF. Jessops 77mm UV filter. Nikon MB-D12 battery grip. Two Nikon EN-EL15 batteries. Sandisc 32GB Ultra Class 10 30MB/s SDHC. Nikon DK-17a magnifying eyepiece. Hoodman HGEC soft eyepiece cup. Nikon MC-DC2 remote shutter release. Nikon GP-1 GPS unit.

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LATITUDE: N 56d 34m 52.68s

LONGITUDE: W 4d 1m 15.68s

ALTITUDE: 119.0m

RAW (FINE) FILE: 103.00MB

PROCESSED FILE: 16.13MB

Processing power:

HP Pavillion P6-2388EA Desktop with AMD A10-5700 APU processor. AMD Radeon HD 7570 graphics. 2TB with 8GB RAM. 64-bit Windows 8.1. Verbatim USB 2.0 1TB desktop hard drive. Nikon VIEWNX2 Version 2.10.0 64bit. Adobe photoshop Elements 8 Version 8.0 64bit

@ Internationale Tanzmesse nrw, Düsseldorf

www.thor.be/

In To the Ones I Love, Thierry Smits places nine dancers of African descent on the stage. More precisely, for this choice is a vital one, he uses nine dancers whose complexions hark back to Africa. In short, they are dark – either black or of mixed race. These dancers have different nationalities but belong to the world, and the fact that they are scattered over several continents proves that the world belongs to them despite the discriminatory reflexes that are incarnated in today’s immigration policies and talk about national identity. The mixing of races and cultures mocks these retreats behind the walls of identity, defies all categorisation, and transmits a troubling, implacable message of change, for tomorrow humankind will be mixed or it will not be.

Thierry Smits’s message is not political, however. It deliberately sets out to be aesthetic and refuses all concessions to exoticism. The principle is to set bodies used to “Western” choreographic techniques but nevertheless shaped by other traditions and dances in motion. They dance in a white decor and are literally transported by Johan Sebastian Bach’s music, by its overflowing generosity and immense virtuosity. The challenge is obviously to manage the unexpected outcomes of the meeting of different cultural references.

In putting nine bodies sculpted and sublimated by dance and music on the stage, Thierry Smits issues a message of love by giving a metaphorical dimension to the difference of the loved one, for the other one whom one loves is, by definition, different from the one of oneself. To celebrate twenty years of choreographic creation, Thierry Smits is treating himself to a moment of immense pleasure whilst offering his audience, family, friends, and lovers this visual gift, proof of a constantly renewed energy and an endless hunger to love passionately.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGrJz7AirC8

St Margaret, Reydon, Suffolk

Reydon is a suburb of Southwold. In terms of population, they are about the same size. But which one of the two have you heard of? Precisely. Reydon is agri-industrial, and when you cross over the river from one parish to the other, the houses double in price. Not so long ago, a beach hut changed hands in Southwold for £100,000.

St Margaret sits away from the houses, on the road towards Wangford, anonymously pretty in an overgrown graveyard. It is an older church than Southwold's late-medieval parvenu, although it underwent a serious tarting-up in the 15th century. In the churchyard wall there is a surviving mounting block, so that the gentry could climb straight onto their horses from the churchyard without descending to the muddy road.

On the north side there is a very good late 1980s extension. The architect was Andrew Anderson. The graveyard is wide and spacious, but there are many more modern graves than 19th century ones, a mark of how the town has grown. You can't fail to miss the extraordinary bronze angel to the south of the chancel. To the west of the church are the older memorials. One of them is a cute little child's grave, to Percy Hunt, son of Henry and Harriet, who had died at the age of just ten months in August 1888. Grieve not with helpless sorrow, it reads, Jesus hath felt your pain. He did thy lamb but borrow, he'll bring him back again, the theology of which seems curious, to say the least. The tiny tombstone is covered in a century or more of moss. It was very moving. His parents' larger graves are beside it. His father had died in 1910 at the age of 60, his mother surviving into the 1930s, when she died at 86. There were no other Hunt graves nearby, and I wondered if little Percy had been their only child. Counting backwards, I worked out that she must have had her baby in her mid-forties - was this an unexpected late fruit after barren decades? And were their hopes dashed? It was all very sad.

You step into a clean, bright, neatly-kept interior, perhaps a bit smaller than might be expected from the outside. When I'd last visited in 2002, the church still bore all the hallmarks of enthusiastic Victorians re-ritualising it in the 1870s, the organ up in the chancel blocking a view of the east end. But that has now gone, and the church has a feeling of simplicity and space. There is an image niche in the eastern splay of each window, one with a lovely Blessed Virgin and Child statue in it. The best of the glass is a window by A L Moore of Christ meeting the woman at the well. You can tell at a glance that she's probably had six husbands, and she's not married to the one she's with at the minute. Less good is the east window, Ward & Hughes 'trampolining Jesus' Ascension scene rejigged by the King Workshop in the modern era.

We had a complete change this Christmas – we cancelled it! - we went walking in The Lakes, or Wasdale more precisely. We were staying at Irton Hall B & B, they had over 70 in for Christmas dinner but we ate jam bread on the slopes of Sca Fell Pike. Fantastic. We had a front wheel puncture on a run flat tyre on the new car with a 100 mile still to drive on the afternoon of Christmas eve on our way there. I drove straight to the nearest ATS – where I have an account – they shook their heads and directed me to Westhoughton Tyres, the lads there were fantastic and got us on our way in good time. BMW dealer advice was run on the flat tyre and then throw it away - £250! Where I would have got a tyre on the western side of the Lakes over Christmas I don’t know, ATS didn’t have one to sell me.

The weather was forecast good for Christmas day but after a fine start it was raining before we even left the car park in Wasdale. We headed up Lingmell and ran into snow on the summit. The path onto Sca Fell Pike was very icy, snow covered and visibility was low, the snow kept falling. We didn’t linger long, it was too cold to have dinner up there so we dropped down onto the Corridor Route, where we had our dinner. We went that way to stretch the walk out, having originally intended to cross to Great End. The tops were so icy, glazed, with not enough snow to get a grip on that we decide to leave it for another day. From Styhead we headed back to Wasdale and a dull but fine finish to the day. A drink in the bar at Irton Hall was on the radar.

Every morning we headed into Wasdale early, it got colder, icier and sunnier as the days went by. We went up Yewbarrow, it was an icy scramble up and I decided it was too dangerous to go down Stirrup Crag to Dore Head so went back the same way. It turned out to be the right decision as we lingered on the top, going to view points that we wouldn’t have and getting some decent photos. One morning we walked over the Screes tops, Illgill Head and Whin Rigg, dropping down the steep slope to The southern end of Wast Water. Having said that I would never walk the Screes path alongside Wast Water again the memory of how awful it is in the rain had faded. There is only really a quarter of a mile out of three miles that is really bad, every rock was like glass with the potential to break a leg every step. It seemed a long way and I was getting killer looks from Herself.

We made our way onto Sca Fell on a beautiful morning, clear blue sky. The snow line had got lower most nights but we never had the low level snow that caused problems in the rest of the country. I chose a, sometimes, pathless way to the summit, partly because I’d never been that way but also to stay in the sun, to keep the view and to avoid the ways that would be a touch dangerous, it was -4 and seared with ice for the last 600 feet. After 15 minutes on the summit wispy thin cloud came racing in, crossing the Lake District in minutes, the photos show it heading towards us and I was glad to have got the clear photos first. Looking out to sea a great mattress of cloud was heading straight for us. It was calm and sunny one minute and the next we were engulfed in thick cloud with 30 yards visibility at the most. I have never had a clear sky turn to cloud so fast – ever! We were going down to Slightside next which was OK, about a mile following the ridge down, the problem was getting back to Wasdale from there. We needed to get to Great Howe which meant a pathless trek a mile SW across Quagrigg Moss – a bog full of tarnlets, it would be a nightmare in low visibility. After getting some accurate compass bearings and heading down off Slightside we suddenly dropped out of the cloud and could see our target, brilliant, we legged it across the semi frozen bog and finally felt able to rest and grab a sandwich and cup of tea. We had to find our way down Raven Crags, which was interesting – and steep! We needed to get to the footbridge to get onto the Burnmoor Tarn path back to Wasdale. As we got closer to Burnmoor Tarn the light that I had been cursing gave us a gorgeous sunset. I had one eye on a gap in the cloud low down in the sky out at sea and I was hoping the sun would break through, it did. Burnmoor Tarn was like a mirror, reflecting the surrounding mountains, including Yewbarrow and parts of the Mosedale Horseshoe in the far distance. There was just the two of us, we had barely seen a soul all day, it was a fantastic end to a tough day. As we dropped into Wasdale I caught the deep pink and orange of the last of the sun, I was shooting into it but I had nothing to lose. There would have been quite a few tripods at the opposite end of the lake but I think I was in the better place – for a change.

On our final walking day we decided to head up Great Gable. It was clear of cloud for a change but ominously the surrounding tops, including the Sca Fells were cloud covered. Another beautiful but very cold morning, it was going to be very icy up there so we elected to go via Styhead and the tourist track. We would choose a way off once we were up there. Long before we got to the top, although we couldn’t see it, we knew the cloud was swirling in and out on the summit so it was going to be hit and miss for the photos. The cloud was down for the last 500 feet but once on the frozen top it kept clearing briefly – very briefly. There were more people up there than we had seen the entire trip previously. People were getting out after Christmas, many had parked at the top of Honister for the fairly easy walk in across Green Gable, some were not dressed for winter walking it has to be said. We left for an icy scramble down to Aaron Slack, up onto Green Gable them we galloped down Aaron Slack to Styhead and back to Wasdale.

Exhibition Jean Tinguely - Machine Spectacle 1 Oct 2016 - 5 Mar 2017 in the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam

Jean Tinguely is famous for his playful, boldly kinetic machines and explosive performances. Everything had to be different, everything had to move. Precisely twenty-five years after his death, the Stedelijk Museum opens a Tinguely retrospective: the largest-ever exhibition of the artist to be mounted in a Dutch museum.

The Swiss artist Jean Tinguely (1925–1991) played a key role in the rise of kinetic art in the fifties. With over a hundred machine sculptures, most of which are in working order, paired with films, photos, drawings, and archive materials, the presentation takes the public on a chronological and thematic journey of Tinguely’s artistic development and ideas, from his love of absurd play to his fascination for destruction and ephemerality.

The presentation features his early wire sculptures and reliefs, in which Tinguely imitated and animated the abstract paintings of artists such as Malevich, Miró, and Klee; the interactive drawing machines and wild dancing installations constructed from salvaged metal, waste materials, and discarded clothing; and his streamlined, military-looking black sculptures.

Tinguely’s self-destructive performances are a special feature of the Stedelijk presentation. The enormous installations Tinguely created between 1960–1970 (Homage to New York, Étude pour une fin du monde No. 1, Study for an End of the World No. 2, and La Vittoria) were designed to spectacularly disintegrate in a barrage of sound. The presentation also spotlights the exhibitions Tinguely organized at the Stedelijk, Bewogen Beweging (1961) and Dylaby (1962), and the gigantic sculptures he later produced: HON – en katedral (“SHE – a cathedral,” 1966), Crocrodrome (1977) and the extraordinary Le Cyclop (1969–1994), which is still on display outside Paris. The survey ends with a dramatic grand finale, the remarkable, room-filling installation, Mengele-Totentanz (1986), a disturbing display of light and shadow never previously shown in the Netherlands. Tinguely realized the work after witnessing a devastating fire, reclaiming objects from the ashes to piece together his installation: scorched beams, agricultural machinery (made by the Mengele company), and animal skeletons. The final piece is a gigantic memento mori, yet also an invocation of the Nazi concentration camps. Its juddering movements and piercing sounds evoke a haunting, grisly mood.

Jean Tinguely created his work as a rejection of the static, conventional art world; he sought to emphasize play and experiment. For Tinguely, art was not about standing in a sterile white space, distantly gazing at a silent painting. He produced kinetic sculptures to set art and art history in motion, in works that animated the boundary between art and life. With his do-it-yourself drawing machines, Tinguely critiqued the role of the artist and the elitist position of art in society. He renounced the unicity of “the artist’s hand” by encouraging visitors to produce work themselves. Collaboration was integral to Tinguely’s career. He worked extensively with artists like Daniel Spoerri, Niki de Saint Phalle (also his wife), Yves Klein, and others from the ZERO network, as well as museum directors such as Pontus Hultén, Willem Sandberg, and Paul Wember. Thanks to his charismatic, vibrant personality and the dazzling success with which he presented his work (and himself) in the public sphere, Tinguely was a vital figure within these networks, acting as leader, inspirator, and connector.

Amsterdam has enjoyed a dynamic history with Tinguely. The exhibitions Bewogen Beweging (1961) and Dylaby (1962), for which Tinguely was (co)curator, particularly underline the extraordinarily close relationship that sprang up between the museum and the artist. Not only did he bring his kinetic Méta machines to the Netherlands, he also brought his international, avant-garde network, leaving an enduring impression on museum goers who flocked to see these experimental exhibitions. Close relationships with Willem Sandberg, then director of the Stedelijk Museum, and curator Ad Petersen prompted various retrospectives and acquisitions for the collection: thirteen sculptures, including his famous drawing machine, Méta-Matic No. 10 (1959), Gismo (1960), and the enormous Méta

At 10:30 in the morning on a summer's day in 1911, W.A. Haines, who traveled around the U.S.A. taking panoramic pictures, set his heavy Cirkut Panoramic Camera on the roof of the building where “Vibes” is now. When he was sure that he had precisely framed the picture, he wound a spring, turned a knob, and let the camera slowly turn as it moved a 10-by-36-inch negative in front of the lens and took this picture. Later he printed the picture in his Conneaut, Ohio studio and sold copies back to Ravenna.

The caption below starts on the left of the picture and continues to the right.

The man wearing the Panama hat is inspecting the fenced-in construction site of Riddle Block 9. The below-ground vaults that extend under the public sidewalk will be used to store goods and coal for the building’s boiler.

When the building was finished in 1912, visitors to the upper floors were impressed with the large atrium and open balconies that brought light inside and down three of the building’s four floors.

The building with the Harper's sign is Reed’s Opera House. Opened in 1872, it hosted many popular entertainers including W.C. Fields.

The interurban streetcar in the distance is heading back towards Brady Lake, Kent, and Akron after making its loop around the block at Chestnut, Spruce, and Prospect Streets. It should arrive in Kent in 30 minutes.

The streetcar line would continue operation until 1932.

The 1893 Ravenna flagpole, at 150 feet, is just one foot shorter than the Statue of Liberty and was once one of the tallest structures in Ohio. The flagpole and the Eiffel Tower, which were built at about the same time, used the same cutting-edge “steel lattice” technology.

The flagpole was moved 15 feet to the right in 1923.

Architecturally the flagpole is Ravenna’s most striking and famous structure.

A thirsty horse is drinking from a water fountain strategically located in the street so that a few horses could drink from it at the same time. A smaller fountain for pedestrians is located closer to the steps leading into the Courthouse.

Most public fountains for horses disappeared when it was discovered that they might carry disease and, at the same time, cars became more popular.

When Riddle Block I was opened in 1889, with 22 offices, it was the largest business structure in Portage County. It also contained nine apartments and the Knights of Pythias Lodge whose symbols of a pyramid and three arched windows can be seen in the left top corner of the building. Under the peaked roof on the right of the building was a dance hall complete with a stage.

When the building opened, a review the local paper noted that in the building were both cold and hot water and that the toilets were well ventilated, “rendering foul odors impossible.”

The elaborate front section of the Portage County Courthouse, which was completed in 1882, is an addition to the 1830 Courthouse which can be seen directly behind it. Both the clock, which is still ticking, and the statue at the top are now at the Portage County Historical Society.

The Courthouse is built on a ridge that marks a geographical divide. A publication from the era noted, “the water from the north roof of the Courthouse went to the Gulf of St Lawrence and [that] from the south roof to the Gulf of Mexico.”

To the right of the Courthouse is the sheriff’s house with the jail behind it and a park behind that. The sheriff’s wife cooked food for the prisoners. The last hanging in Ravenna took place in the jail on April 27, 1866.

Both structures were demolished in 1961 in what is now considered to be a thoughtless rush to modernity.

The Etna House dates from 1868, and in its long history it has been a hotel, restaurant, pool hall, movie theatre, and drug store.

On October 15, 1873, the Etna House hosted the official beginning of the gaslight era in Ravenna and the beginning of the end of candles and carbon oil. The first electric light in Ravenna would not turn on until 1889.

When silent movies started showing at the Etna House in 1911, general seating was 15 cents with the best seats going for 35.

Caption by Jack Schafer, Tom Riddle, and Kevin Gray.

MISS SL ♛ France was inspired by the rooster. It is the symbol of France or more precisely that of Vigilance and Work, the song of the rooster waking the peasants for their day of work or warning of a night incursion. He is often depicted wearing a Phrygian cap, a symbol of freedom and citizenship,

but it disappeared during the First Empire, Napoleon I preferring the imperial eagle because "the rooster has no strength, it cannot be the image of an empire like France". It was during the July monarchy (1830-1848) that the rooster made a strong comeback in popular imagery. King Louis-Philippe even signs an ordinance placing the rooster on the flags and buttons of the National Guard's clothing, and the tricolor flags of the army are summoned.

MISS SL ♛ France is wearing a feather corset and pants from her own store, Belle Mode, and adds shoes by Mogul, shoulder pieces by Zibska, Merry Rooster Harpy by Bare Rose and fishnet pantyhose. She completes her ensemble with jewelry by RealEvil Industries

This sample fotomo model is very easy. I think it took about an hour and a half. Most of the time was cutting elements as precisely as I could. Most of the difficultly was determining how to put it together. I have provided a front, right-side, left-side and top view to help in the construction.

I have uploaded the template in case it disappears. You can find it here.

When attaching the model to the paper I started with the back small section that is parallel to the paper's back edge. Once that was glued in place I glued the 2 sides in front of it so the tabs came together. That left the left most side. I looked at the photos on the web and took my best guess.

When positioning the 'product stand' layer in front of the building I viewed the model at street level and made sure the stand lined up with original on the side behind it.

Photograph taken in the magic of The Golden Hour around Sunrise (Sunrise was at precisely 07:46am), at an altitude of Seven metres, at 07:01am on Tuesday December 9th 2014 off Botany Road and Marine Drive, on the sandy shoreline of Botany Bay in Broadstairs, Kent, England.

A very chilly morning on the beach, around One degree, and a bracing wind that pounded flesh and bones, but well worth the one and a half hour journey there to enjoy a lovely sunrise. The seven bays in Broadstairs consist of: (From south to north) Dumpton Gap, Louisa Bay, Viking Bay, Stone Bay, Joss Bay, Kingsgate Bay and Botany Bay.

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Nikon D800 27mm 1/1.6s f/2.8 iso200 RAW (14Bit) AF-S single point focus. Manual exposure. Matrix metering. Auto white balance.

Nikkor AF-S 24-70mm f/2.8G ED IF. Jessops 77mm UV filter. Nikon MB-D12 battery grip. Two Nikon EN-EL batteries. Nikon DK-17M Magnifying Eyepiece. Nikon DK-19 soft rubber eyecup. Manfrotto MT057C3 057 Carbon Fiber Tripod 3 Sections (Payload 18kgs). Manfrotto MH057M0-RC4 057 Magnesium Ball Head with RC4 Quick Release (Payload 15kgs). Manfrotto quick release plate 410PL-14.Jessops Tripod bag. Optech Tripod Strap.Digi-Chip 64GB Class 10 UHS-1 SDXC. Lowepro Transporter camera strap. Lowepro Vertex 200 AW camera bag. Nikon MC-DC2 remote shutter release. Nikon GP-1 GPS unit.

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LATITUDE: N 51d 23m 16.96s

LONGITUDE: E 1d 26m 26.47s

ALTITUDE: 7.0m

RAW (TIFF) FILE SIZE: 103.00MB

PROCESSED (JPeg) SIZE: 16.96MB

Processing power:

HP Pavillion P6-2388EA Desktop with AMD A10-5700 APU processor. AMD Radeon HD 7570 graphics. 2TB with 8GB RAM. 64-bit Windows 8.1. Verbatim USB 2.0 1TB desktop hard drive. Nikon VIEWNX2 Version 2.10.0 64bit. Adobe photoshop Elements 8 Version 8.0 64bit

St Mary Magdalene, Bermondsey, London

NOTICE on Wednesdays and Fridays baptisms and churchings are solemnized at 12 o'clock precisely and attendance given in the vestry [at half past 11 o'clock] for searching and granting certificates and signing such papers as require the minister's signature. MARRIAGE LICENSES may be obtained on application at the rectory adjoing the church or at the parish clerk's.

Surviving notice set in stone from the late 1860s.

Sir,—A visit to this church will well repay a stranger, if only to see what can be done with an old building to render it in conformity with modern times. The church, we are told, was built in 1690 — that is, the body of the church. The tower is much older, and from the Norman arches supporting the second storey, seems to date from the period when "that grasping rasping race" held rule. These arches can at present only be seen by entering the belfry and opening the case of the organ, which occupies nearly the whole of the recess. There is, however, a drawing extant by Turner, R.A., which shows the vestibule of the church previous to the introduction of the belfry floor in 1722. The arches there delineated exhibit all the beauty seen in Norman structure, whilst the light emitted from the Gothic window (restored by G. Porter, Esq., in 1830) sheds a delightful chiara oscuro over the picture. The roof of the nave of the original church was supported, no doubt, upon a series of similar columns and arches, of which these only remain. While I am on the subject of the tower, I may mention that in 1733 the image of Mary Magdalen over the clock was ordered to be taken down, and iron bars put up in the belfry windows to prevent the boys from going on the leads; so even at that time the Bermondsey youths had to be restricted in their amusements.

In the beginning of the year 1676, the parish church being much decayed, and in great danger of falling, we find the vestry meeting, and agreeing that it shall be well and sufficiently repaired from the foundations upwards, at the charge of the parishioners. It was further ordered that a tabernacle be set up for the purpose of divine service, and that Dr. Parr, the rector, be requested to procure the bishop's licence for preaching therein. The cost of these reparations was about £1,799, and the necessary sum was raised by a three years' tax, together with subscriptions collected by a committee of gentlemen, formed to assist Dr. Parr in petitioning the Earl of Salisbury, and other persons of quality who were living out of the parish for their free gratuity towards the repairs of the church. William Castel, a Justice of the Peace, whose monument is at the south east-end of the church, seems to have taken a very active part in this re-building.

In the same year, we have the parish getting into litigation with the Quakers, who refused to pay the tax for the church, and which resulted in the imprisonment of some of that body; for in 1681 William Schoomger, a Quaker and pin-maker, attended before the vestry, and obtained the release of his friends upon their promising to do something for the parish in some other way, because, as they said, their consciences would not allow them to pay any tax for the repairs of a church which they neither do nor can worship in, and this spirit moving sect again contended with the parish in 1807.

In 1705 the north gallery was erected (at this time the hangings of the pulpit were of green velvet with gold fringe). Aubrey, writing in 1718, thus describes the chancel: "The altar piece is adorned with cornish and large compass pediment; under the latter are Queen Anne's arms, carved in relievo, and under the former the decalogue in two tablets placed between the portraits of Moses and Aaron." This carving has long since disappeared, and your correspondent was very much struck at seeing only a few years ago in the window of a public-house, called the King's Arms and Hand Inn, opposite the church, a shield of oak wainscoat of a like character to that in the church.

I went in and saw the landlord, who told me that he had found it among other lumber when the house was transferred to him, and that he had separated the lion and unicorn from it. He stated that as the house was the sign of the King's Arms, the carving represented the arms of the monarch who had quaffed a glass of foaming ale at the house. This was very fine, but scarcely agreed with the quartering on the shield which was such as Queen Anne alone bore, the arms of Scotland on its union being quartered for the first time with the royal arms during this reign, and no succeeding monarch ever bore the same arms. But to pass on. In 1795 the gallery on the south side was erected, the carvings of cherubims and oak leaves being of like description with the north gallery. The pulpit and desks were then removed from where they stood, and set up on the north side of the middle aisle.

In 1843, the old double pews were made single, and extensive alterations effected. The chancel window of stained glass was put in, with the dove holding an olive branch; this was the gift of the then contractor, James Hunt, Esq., of Idol-lane. The pillars supporting the church, which, till then, had been plain white, were painted imitation Sienna marble; the flags of the Bermondsey Volunteers were taken down, and the whole of the repairs cost about £500.

The present alterations consist in lowering the pews about a foot throughout the church; the backs have been also inclined. The carved pulpit, which dates from 1609, has been moved some seven feet farther east from its former position, enabling a better view of the preacher to be had, as also of affording more pew accommodation. The old reading-desk has disappeared, and a neat oak one, divided by Gothic panels, in admirable keeping with the early portion of the church, has been substituted. This has been erected upon a raised platform on the south side of the chancel.

Two new coronas, each with eighteen burners, for lighting the church, have been introduced, and does credit to the taste of the churchwarden, G. Redgrave, Esq., who has personally superintended the whole of the recent improvements. The Tuscan columns supporting the roof have been cleaned and revarnished, the bases painted imitation red granite, the corbels white. The columns of the composite order supporting the galleries are red. The carvings of the cherubims, fruit, and festoons in the communion have been painted white, enriched with gold; the paterers adorning the ceiling have been likewise gilt, with cobalt ground, and harmonizes nicely with the stained glass window.

The manner in which the alterations have been viewed by the parishioners is evinced by the crowded state of the church during the two last Sundays, and betokens that they admire both sound gospel preaching and comfortable seats. The services at this church, commencing at 11 am, and 6.30 p.m., are conducted by the Rev. Lewen Tugwell, the rector; there is also afternoon service at 3 o'clock for the benefit of persons unable to attend at the other services. This is under the able ministration of the Rev. R. S. Keitch, the senior curate. I may mention as a sign of the times that the alterations have been effected by voluntary means.

[Newspaper cutting , 1870s]

It's precisely the cliché. Stunningly beautiful.

This North Korean movie poster on exhibit at the Korea Film Archive (KOFA) in Seoul is the real deal - but it was designed for display in the former Czechoslovakia. Ergo, it's abstract-looking enough not to be a threat in Seoul (heh heh)....

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

St. Stephen's Cathedral

Seat of the Archbishop (Cardinal) of Vienna, one of the most important buildings of the Central European High and Late Gothic, monumental example of the South-German-Austrian multi-naved church, landmark of Vienna. Characteristic is the independent lateral position of the towers, the inclusion of the romanesque western facade, the high Gothic hall choir and the mighty steep roof with colorful brick patterning.

History

1147

The first Romanesque church - from Passau founded (hence patron saint: saint Stephen Protomartyr) - is consecrated. It is located in a quarter of new settlements of merchants, which in the second half of the 12th Century was included in the city's fortifications (which is the part between Singerstraße and wool line (Wollzeile), the road to Hungary). It is located outside, to the southeast, of the oldest city area of the Roman fort, Vindobona. This building was in its dimensions already a large basilical complex, at its completion already including the floor plan of the Heath towers in the West.

1263

Re-consecration after the fire. The impacts on the Romanesque church are not precisely known. The huge gate was already previously rebuilt, when Vienna was for a short time residence of the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. In succession, the reconstruction of the west gallery and the expansion of the western towers (Heath towers) took place. From this period stem also most of the sculptures of the giant gate, the vaults, capitals and rose windows at the west gallery.

Stephansdom64.jpg (35605 bytes)

1304 -1340

Construction of the Gothic hall choir, Albertinian choir, named after the Habsburg Albert II (1330-1358).

The citizenship of Vienna initially purchased the required properties and "as the owner of the Gothic choir in the Zwettler (city in Lower Austria) documents of 1303 and 1304 Viennese citizens are testified".

This civic foundation was then converted by a princely.

The following indulgence certificate - in the original written on parchment and provided with a hanging seal - is in a sense the main historical document of the choir consecration and thus also to the architectural history of St. Stephen of great importance.

1340

Bishop Peter of Marchapolis gives, at the request of the parishioners, all who attend at the anniversary of the consecration of the choir of St. Stephen's Church, which was accomplished on the above day in his presence by Bishop Albert of Passau, or at the feasts of the altar patrons of the church, an indulgence of 40 days.

1359

Laying of the foundation stone for further Gothic reconstruction of the nave (south and north wall), the Singertor and the Bischofstor (gate) and the two double chapels laterally to the Romanesque western building. Furthermore, the construction of overall four towers was planned. In fact, only the southern transept tower (the "saint Stephen's Tower") was first started.

1365

Those conversion measures are associated with the efforts of Duke Rudolf IV to raise Vienna to the status of a diocese, and with the founding of the University of Vienna.

1395

Consecration of the chapel of Saint Catherine ("baptistery") on the east side of the south tower.

1404

Peter of Prachatitz is Dombaumeister (cathedral builder). The citizenship by providing financial support pushes ahead the expansion of the tower.

1417 - 1430

Establishment of the lower sacristy

1433

Completion of the south tower under Hans von Prachatitz

1440 - 1459

Completion of the High Gothic nave

1450

Planning and construction of the North Tower by Hans Puchsbaum

1459

At Hüttentag of Regensburg the mason's lodge of St. Stephen's in Vienna is designated the leading main lodge in Central Europe.

1466

Extension of the upper sacristy

1469

Under Frederick III. the Diocese of Vienna is built.

1474

The Chapel of St. Barbara in the north tower is completed according to the plans of Puchsbaum. Formerly this building extension in the North Tower was called: Urbanuskapelle (chapel).

1511

Suspension of the building at the north tower. It is higher than the nave walls, but lower than the ridge height of the choir roof. As a crowning feature of the tower stump an octagonal structure was set up, which was closed with a so-called "Welsh hood" of Kaspar and Hans Saphoy 1578. The Welsh hood is a into the Gothic transmitted dome shape".

The back of the St. Stephen's Cathedral with the North Tower

1514/1519

1514/1519 at the top of saint Stephen's tower an eight-rayed sun ("Star") was fitted with a crescent moon as a symbol of spiritual and temporal power. When the Viennese in the Turkish siege (1529) throughout in the camp of their enemies saw similar symbols, they raised first objections against the "haidnisch Zaichen (heathen signs)", yet remained the "Moonlight" on the tower. Only on the occasion of the second siege (1683 ) vowed Leopold I to replace the "ungodly and unworthy Turks coat of arms" by the sign of the cross, when the city was liberated by God's assistance.

The from saint Stephen removed moon. Book illustration, 18th century

The new, of copper wrought double cross ("Spanish Cross") was made by coppersmith Hans Adam Bosch. It was one and a half meters high and had a weight of 45.5 kg. On September 14th, the Kreuzerhöhungstag (day of the elevation of the Cross) (in the same time the anniversary of the moving in of Leopold into the liberated city), it was placed under great spectacle. However, it was not flexible enough and already on 14th December it fell down due to a violent storm. On 31st October 1687 followed the setting up of a new crowning. To the Spanish Cross now the imperial double-headed eagle and the initials of Leopold I had been added. Cross and eagle had a height of 2.45 m and a weight of 67 kg.

St. Stephen's Cathedral around 1530

1640

Bishop Friedrich Count Breuner the Baroquisation of the equipment of the St. Stephen's Cathedral as a manifestation of the Counter-Reformation had started. He commissioned the brothers Jacob and Tobias Pock from Konstanz with the construction of a new high altar.

1683

Damages caused by numerous cannonballs at the second Turkish siege.

1700

Second wave of Baroquisation: Gothic winged altars and also their early Baroque successors are replaced by baroque marble altars.

1711

July 21st, 1711. In front of a large audience the k.k. Stückgießer (specialized iron caster) Johann Achamer carries out the casting of the great bell of saint Stephen. The for this purpose required metal comes from stocks of the Imperial arsenal of captured Turkish cannons. After Pölzung (supporting) of the underground vaults under the streets that touches the train, the bell weighing more than 17 tons on a special car or a loop of 100 people is brought from the Leopoldstadt on 29th October to the cathedral. On December 15th, Bishop Rummel undertakes the consecration of the bell, then it is pulled up to the south tower. There it rests on two oak beams, which for ringing can be screwed off. When Charles VI. solemnly moved into Vienna after his imperial coronation on 26th January 1712, the Pummerin was rung for the first time, in the process only the 813 kg in weight clapper was moved.

1720

The so-called catacombs are set up as a burial site.

1735

The cemetery around the church is closed down and in 1783 completely removed

Stock-im-Eisen-Platz and St. Stephen's Square before the demolition of the houses

Coloured engraving of V.C. Schütz. 1779

1803

The Steffl gets air: Demolition of houses on Stephansplatz

October. The strong increase in population leads to an increased volume of traffic. As part of "traffic-appropriate" measures streets are widened, squares enlarged, arcades created and traffic regulations introduced such as, e.g., the first one-way at the Carinthian gates (1802). With the demolition of the last still in front of the cathedral facade standing houses yet another basic expansion and redesign of the Stephansplatz can be completed.

1809

Also in the French wars the Cathedral is damaged by artillery fire.

1810

Repair work on the South Tower

1831

Renovation of the roof at the Albertinian choir

1842

On the occasion of the two renewals of the tower helmet in the 19th century respectively in 1842 and 1864, again a new double-headed eagle with a double cross was set on the spire. This last crowning of 1864 still today adorns the top of saint Stephen's tower.

1853 - 1854

Expansion of the remaining Wimperge (gables) in the roof area of which Puchsbaum under Frederick III. only one had realized.

1863 - 1864

Cathedral architect Friedrich Schmidt heads the restoration of the tower helmet.

1945

St. Stephen's Cathedral, April 1945 © Press Agency Votava St. Stephen's Cathedral, April 1945

The roof of St Stephen's Cathedral

is on fire 8th April 1945

Friday 13 April: Dombrand (cathedral's fire) in the last days of World War II. The roof burns down, the vaults of the middle choir and the southern side choir collapse. The Pummerin plunges down and breaks. The cathedral is badly damaged.

1945 - 1952

Reconstruction of the roof and choir

Triumphant entry of the new Pummerin in Vienna. The in St. Florian/Oberösterreich (Upper Austria) cast bell to Vienna had a true triumphal procession behind herself.

From the ruins of the Pummerin 1952 in St. Florian, Upper Austria, a new bell was cast and consecrated on 26th April 1952 in Vienna. The other bells of St. Stephen's Cathedral also consistently bore names as Halbpummerin, Viertelpummerin, Councillor Bell, Mentioned bell (Genanntenglocke), Zwölferin, beer bell (Bierglocke) etc. Very few of them survived the year 1945.

1953

Construction of the Bishop tomb in the catacombs under the Apostle Choir

1954 - 1965

Restoration of the South Tower

1956

Renovation of the Ducal Crypt, construction of the lower church and the lapidary (collection of stone monuments)

Completion of the tower helmet at the north tower (Saphoy'sche hood) with housing of the Pummerin

1961

In 1961 the cathedral received a new peal of eleven bells.

1973

Consecration of the People's altar (makeshift solution)

1977 - 1998

Restoration of the North Tower

1989

Remodeling of the sanctuary and the consecration of the new People's altar (September 14)

1991

Consecration of the new cathedral organ (Servants - Madonna gets here her new stand)

Overall length: 107.2 m outside inside 91.8 m

Width of the nave: 38.9 m

Height of the South tower: (High Tower) 136.7 m

Height of the North tower: 60.6 m

Height of the Heathen towers 65.6 m

www.wien-vienna.at/blickpunkte.php?ID=679

The so-called 'Euston Arch', more precisely a propylaeum of the Doric order.

The only difference between this and the same image posted earlier is that this image has not been edited in any way. The image posted earlier had been marginally adjusted (+0.35) for exposure.

This image should be interpreted with caution and this caption should also be understood as an inevitably subjective interpretation.

The photograph, which I took during the protest on 6 September 2025 against the proscription of Palestine Action, appears to show two caring and courageous individuals. It seems to show on the one hand a woman, protectively holding, comforting and assisting an injured photographer who is in considerable pain, while a single police officer, without the immediate protection of his colleagues, bravely attends the scene in an attempt to help.

From my position, albeit nearby, I did not hear the words exchanged nor observe all the events that led to this moment. It therefore remains unclear precisely how the photographer came to fall, though it may have occurred amid a period when several officers were moving rapidly through the crowd - see the following linked video in which it seems he might have either been pushed or tripped as a group of police officers forced their way through.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZQGFrqCf5U&t=1283s

Whether that was out of necessity or to some degree reckless is a matter of interpretation, but it is easily understandable and entirely natural if at that moment, that both protesters and police officers may have felt some degree of concern and unease when in close proximity with "the other side."

However, I have no evidence to suggest that the officer pictured was in any way responsible for the man's fall, and he appears to be seeking to help.

Reports from the day, including video footage shared by Novara Media’s Michael Walker, appear to criticise the conduct of some police officers during the protest as overly forceful, though these remarks were not directed at the specific officer shown here. Specifically in the above linked video, Walker claims the footage was "some evidence" of police officers "losing their cool."

Conversely, there were also accounts of officers facing hostility and violence from some protesters. My own observations were limited: beyond hearing chants such as “shame on you,” I did not personally witness acts of violence against the police.

I should emphasise that this description reflects only my impressions at the time, supplemented by limited subsequent reporting. I am not aware of nor can I find definitive evidence of all the circumstances, and this caption should therefore be understood as a partial and subjective interpretation.

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Protest and the Price of Dissent: Palestine Action and the Criminalisation of Conscience

Parliament Square on Saturday, 6 September 2025 was a scene of quiet, almost solemn defiance. The air, usually thick with the noise of London traffic and crowds of tourists, was instead filled with a palpable tension, a shared gravity that emanated from the quiet determination of hundreds of protesters, many of them over 60 years old, some sitting on steps or stools and others lying on the grass.

They held not professionally printed banners, but handwritten cardboard signs, their messages stark against the historic grandeur of their surroundings. This was not a march of chants and slogans, but a silent vigil of civil disobedience, a deliberate and calculated act of defiance against the state.

On that day, my task was to photograph the protest against the proscription of the direct-action group Palestine Action. While not always agreeing entirely with the group’s methods, I could not help but be struck by the profound dedication etched on the faces of the individual protesters.

As they sat in silence, contemplating both the horrific gravity of the situation in Gaza and the enormity of the personal risk they were taking — courting arrest under terror laws for holding a simple placard — their expressions took on a quality not dissimilar to what war photographers once called the “thousand-yard stare.” It was a look of weary but deep and determined resolve, a silent testament to their readiness to face life-changing prosecution in the name of a principle.

This scene poses a profound and unsettling question for modern Britain. How did the United Kingdom, a nation that prides itself on its democratic traditions and the right to protest, arrive at a point where hundreds of its citizens — clergy, doctors, veterans, and the elderly — could be arrested under counter-terrorism legislation for an act of silent, peaceful protest?

The events of that September afternoon were the culmination of a complex and contentious series of developments, but their significance extends far beyond a single organisation or demonstration. The proscription of Palestine Action has become a critical juncture in the nation’s relationship with dissent, a test of the elasticity of free expression, and a stark examination of its obligations under international law in the face of Israel deliberately engineering a catastrophic humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

To understand what is at stake, one must unravel the threads that led to that moment: the identity of the movement, the state’s legal machinery of proscription, the confrontation in Parliament Square, and the political context that compelled so many to risk their liberty.

Direct Action and the State’s Response

Palestine Action, established in 2020, has never hidden its approach. Unlike traditional lobbying groups, it rejected appeals to political elites in favour of disrupting the physical infrastructure of complicity: factories producing parts for Israeli weapons systems, offices of arms manufacturers, and — eventually — military installations themselves.

Its tactics, while non-violent, were disruptive and confrontational. Red paint sprayed across buildings to symbolise blood, occupations that halted production, chains and locks on factory gates. For supporters, these were acts of conscience against a system enabling atrocities in Gaza. For the state, they were criminal disruptions of commerce.

That clash escalated steadily. In Oldham, a persistent campaign against Elbit Systems, a key manufacturer in the Israeli arms supply chain, culminated in the company abandoning its Ferranti site. Later actions targeted suppliers for F-35 fighter jets and other arms manufacturers. These were no random acts of mindless vandalism but part of a deliberate strategy: to impose costs high enough that complicity in Israel’s war effort would become unsustainable.

The decisive rupture came in June 2025, when activists infiltrated RAF Brize Norton, Britain’s largest airbase, and sprayed red paint into the engines of refuelling aircraft linked to operations over Gaza. For the activists, it was a desperate attempt to interrupt a supply chain of surveillance and logistical support to a state commiting genocide. For the government, it crossed a line: military assets had been attacked. Within days, the Home Secretary announced Palestine Action would be proscribed as a terrorist organisation.

Proscription and the Expansion of “Terrorism”

Here lies the heart of the controversy. The Terrorism Act 2000 defines terrorism with unusual breadth, encompassing not only threats to life but also “serious damage to property” carried out for political or ideological aims. In this capacious definition, breaking a factory window or disabling a machine can be legally assimilated to mass murder.

By invoking this law, the government placed Palestine Action on the same legal footing as al-Qaeda or ISIS. Supporting it — even symbolically — became a serious offence.

Since July 2025, merely expressing support for the organization can carry a maximum prison sentence of 14 years.

This is based on Section 12 of the Terrorism Act 2000. The specific offense is "recklessly expressing support for a proscribed organisation". However, according to Section 13 of the Act, a lower-level offence for actions like displaying hand held placards in support of a proscribed group carries a maximum sentence of six months imprisonment or a fine of five thousand pounds or both.

Civil liberties groups and human rights bodies have denounced the proscription move as disproportionate. Their concern was not primarily whether Palestine Action’s tactics might violate existing criminal law. One might reasonably argue that they did unless they might sometimes be justified in the name of preventing a greater crime.

But reframing those actions as “terrorism” represented a dangerous category error. As many pointed out, terrorism has historically referred to violence against civilians. Expanding it to cover property damage risks draining the term of meaning. Worse, it arms the state with a stigma so powerful that it can delegitimise entire political positions without debate.

The implications go further. Proscription does not simply criminalise acts. It criminalises expressions of allegiance, conscience and even speech. To say “I support Palestine Action” is no longer an opinion but technically a serious crime. The state has moved from punishing deeds to punishing expressions of solidarity — a move with chilling consequences for democratic life.

Parliament Square: Civil Disobedience on Trial

It was this transformation that brought nearly 1,500 people into Parliament Square on 6 September. They knew what awaited them. Organisers announced in advance that protesters would hold signs reading: “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.” In doing so, they openly declared their intent to break the law.

The crowd was strikingly diverse. Retired doctors, clergy, war veterans, even an 83-year-old Anglican priest. Disabled activists came in wheelchairs; descendants of Holocaust survivors stood beside young students. This was not a hardened cadre of militants but a cross-section of society, many of whom had never before faced arrest.

At precisely 1 pm, the protesters all sat or lay down silently, cardboard signs raised. There was no chanting, no aggression — only a quiet insistence that they would not accept the criminalisation of conscience.

The police response was equally predictable. Hundreds of officers moved systematically through the crowd, arresting anyone displaying a sign. By the end of the day, nearly 900 people were detained under counter-terrorism law. It was one of the largest mass arrests in modern British history.

Official statements later alleged police were met with violence — officers punched, spat on, objects thrown. Yet independent observers, including Amnesty International, contradicted this. They reported a peaceful assembly disrupted by aggressive policing: batons drawn, protesters shoved, some bloodied.

www.amnesty.org/zh-hans/documents/eur45/0273/2025/en/

Video footage supported at least some of Amnesty's report.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZQGFrqCf5U&t=1283s

The two narratives were irreconcilable, but only one carried the weight and authority of the state.

The entire event unfolded as political theatre. The government proscribed a group, thereby creating a new crime. Protesters, convinced the law was unjust, announced their intent to commit that crime peacefully. The police, forewarned, staged a vast operation. Each side acted out its script. The spectacle allowed the state to present itself as defending order against extremism — while in reality silencing dissent.

The Humanitarian Context: Why Protesters Risked All

To see the Parliament Square protest as a parochial dispute over free speech is to miss its driving force. The demonstrators were not there merely to defend abstract principles. They were responding to what they, and a growing body of international experts, describe as a genocide in Gaza.

By September 2025, Gaza had descended into almost total collapse. Over 63,000 Palestinians had been killed, the majority of them women and children. More than 150,000 had been injured, many maimed for life. Entire neighbourhoods had been flattened. Famine was confirmed in August, with Israel continuing to impose and even tighten deliberate restrictions on food, water, and fuel, a strategy condemned by human rights groups as a major war crime. Hospitals lay in ruins. Ninety percent of the population had been displaced.

It is in this context that the term genocide has been applied. Legal scholars point not only to mass killings but also to the deliberate infliction of life-destroying conditions, accompanied by rhetoric from Israeli officials dehumanising Palestinians as “human animals.” In September 2025, the International Association of Genocide Scholars declared that Israel’s actions met the legal definition of genocide.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cde3eyzdr63o

Major NGOs, UN experts, and even Israeli human rights groups such as B’Tselem echoed that conclusion.

For the protesters, then, the question was not abstract but immediate: faced with what they saw as a genocide, could they in good conscience remain silent while their own government criminalised resistance to it? Their answer was to risk arrest, their placards making the moral connection explicit: opposing genocide meant supporting those who sought to stop it.

The Price of Dissent

The mass arrests in Parliament Square were not an isolated incident of law enforcement. They were the product of a broader trajectory: escalating tactics by a direct-action movement, a humanitarian catastrophe abroad, and a government determined to suppress dissent at home through the bluntest of instruments.

The official line insists that Palestine Action’s campaign constituted terrorism and thus warranted proscription. On this view, the arrests were simple enforcement of the law. Yet this account obscures the deeper reality: a precedent in which the state redefined non-lethal protest as terrorism, shifting from punishing actions to criminalising expressions of solidarity.

The cost is profound. Once speech and conscience themselves become suspect, dissent is no longer tolerated but pathologised. The chilling effect is already evident: individuals weigh not just whether to join a protest, but whether uttering support might expose them to years in prison. Terror laws, originally justified as a shield against mass violence, are recast as tools of political management.

The protesters understood this. That “thousand-yard stare” captured in their faces was not only the weight of potential arrest, but the knowledge of Gaza’s devastation, the famine and rubble, the deaths mounting daily. It was also the recognition that their own government had chosen to silence them rather than address its complicity.

In a functioning democracy, the question is not why citizens risk arrest for holding a handwritten cardboard sign. It is why a state finds it necessary to treat that act as a terror offence. The answer reveals a narrowing of democratic space, where conscience itself is deemed subversive. And that narrowing, history teaches, carries consequences not just for those arrested, but for the society that allows it.

This animation from individual images shows precisely half an hour's movement of this fast-moving comet seen through the field of view of my 14inch f/10 SCT with an Atik 460EX mono CCD. It is 120 frames at 15 seconds played back at 3 frames per second.

In the middle some passing cloud virtually blots out the stars but this bright comet still shows through. The star in the lower middle of the image is magnitude 9.3 HDS 1470 - also known as star HIP 50000 in the Hipparchus catalogue.

Peter

I have no idea where this was precisely - but it just might have been this place here on the A3 near Wandsworth - this is a very unusual BP garage, very small and for some reason it just strikes me as having a similar feel to it. www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.4613273,-0.1571448,3a,75y,328.4... Update:- London Railway Stations has suggested this as a possible location and it does look more convincing by quite a distance! www.google.com/maps/@51.4579091,-0.1978101,3a,90y,104.18h...

Photograph taken at an altitude of Seven metres, in the magic of the Golden hour around sunrise at 05:38am, (sunrise was at precisely 06.15am) on Saturday 6th September 2014 off the Patricia Bay Highway 17, on Lochside Drive close to Frost Avenue and the Lochside Waterfront Park, in beautiful Sidney by the sea on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada.

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Nikon D800 112mm 1/400s f/2.8 iso100 RAW (14 bit) Manual focus. Manual exposure. Matrix metering. Auto white balance.

Nikkor AF-S 70-200mm f/2.8G ED IF VRII. Jessops 77mm UV filter. Nikon MB-D12 battery grip. Two Nikon EN-EL batteries. Nikon DK-17M Magnifying Eyepiece. Nikon DK-19 soft rubber eyecup. Manfrotto MT057C3 057 Carbon Fiber Tripod 3 Sections (Payload 18kgs). Manfrotto MH057M0-RC4 057 Magnesium Ball Head with RC4 Quick Release (Payload 15kgs). Manfrotto quick release plate 410PL-14.Jessops Tripod bag. Optech Tripod Strap.Digi-Chip 64GB Class 10 UHS-1 SDXC. Lowepro Transporter camera strap. Lowepro Vertex 200 AW camera bag. Nikon MC-DC2 remote shutter release. Nikon GP-1 GPS unit.

LATITUDE: N 48d 38m 15.70s

LONGITUDE: W 123d 24m 12.67s

ALTITUDE: 7.0m

RAW (TIFF) FILE SIZE: 103.00MB

PROCESSED (JPeg) SIZE: 11.29MB

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Processing power:

HP Pavillion P6-2388EA Desktop with AMD A10-5700 APU processor. AMD Radeon HD 7570 graphics. 2TB with 8GB RAM. 64-bit Windows 8.1. Verbatim USB 2.0 1TB desktop hard drive. Nikon VIEWNX2 Version 2.10.0 64bit. Adobe photoshop Elements 8 Version 8.0 64bit

Photograph taken at an altitude of Zero metres, prior to the magic of the Golden Hour at 05:49am (Sunrise was at precisely 06:15am) on Friday 5th September 2014 off 1st Street and Bevan Avenue looking towards the Bevan Avenue Fishing Pier in beautiful Sidney by the sea on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada.

The Bevan Avenue fishing pier is one of the main focal points in this small but beautiful town where some of my family are so lucky to reside. I am never happier than when walking around and capturing the beauty and charm of this most special of locations. Work commenced on the pier in 1993 withn Phase one, a 90 metre straight section being completed in 1996. A year later the 110 metre Phase two section was completed.

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Nikon D800 24mm 1/80s f/8.0 iso100 RAW (14 bit) Handheld AF-S Single point focus. Manual exposure. Matrix metering. Auto white balance.

Nikkor AF-S 24-70mm f/2.8G ED IF. Jessops 77mm UV filter. Nikon MB-D12 battery grip. Two Nikon EN-EL batteries. Nikon DK-17M Magnifying Eyepiece. Nikon DK-19 soft rubber eyecup.Manfrotto MT057C3 057 Carbon Fiber Tripod 3 Sections (Payload 18kgs). Manfrotto MH057M0-RC4 057 Magnesium Ball Head with RC4 Quick Release (Payload 15kgs). Manfrotto quick release plate 410PL-14.Jessops Tripod bag. Optech Tripod Strap. Digi-Chip 64GB Class 10 UHS-1 SDXC. Lowepro Transporter camera strap. Lowepro Vertex 200 AW camera bag. Nikon MC-DC2 remote shutter release. Nikon GP-1 GPS unit.

LATITUDE: N 48d 38m 53.30s

LONGITUDE: W 123d 23m 35.84s

ALTITUDE: 0.0m

RAW (TIFF) FILE SIZE: 103.00MB

PROCESSED (JPeg) SIZE: 16.89MB

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Processing power:

HP Pavillion P6-2388EA Desktop with AMD A10-5700 APU processor. AMD Radeon HD 7570 graphics. 2TB with 8GB RAM. 64-bit Windows 8.1. Verbatim USB 2.0 1TB desktop hard drive. Nikon VIEWNX2 Version 2.10.0 64bit. Adobe photoshop Elements 8 Version 8.0 64bit

Precisely a year ago my father in law, Jan, died, aged 80.

At this photo you see him with his wife, to which he stayed married all his life (not so common as it used to be), celebrating their honeymoon at Wijk aan Zee.

Jan was very much his own man. When he left the army, in his twenties, the release note stated that Jan was, " a troublesome and impertinent soldier." Jan took orders from no one, and that didn't change fundamentally after leaving the army.

His most favourite expression was: "Bullshit" . There was not much that he didn't consider to be absolutely ridiculous. To a great extent I could relate to his anarchistic and somewhat cynical view of the world, especially since he spiced it up with a lot of humour.

If there is some kind of heaven I'm sure that Jan will be greatly un-impressed.

Here's to you Jan!

Photograph taken at an altitude of Sixty nine metres, during the first vestiges of dawn light prior to the magic of the Golden Hour around sunrise (Sunrise was at precisely 04:38am), at 03:47am on Thursday 12th June 2014 off Lullingstone Lane and Eagle Heights in the poppy field beside the Eynsford Viaduct in the village of Eynsford, Kent, England.

Lurking in the darknes to the extreme right of the frame, this impressive nine-arched red-brick viaduct is a prominent feature on the line to the 'Bat & Ball' station. The structure was built by the independent ''Sevenoaks Railway'', incorporated in 1859 to link the ''Chatham'' main line with the market town of Sevenoaks. And first services began on 2nd June 1862. The viaduct has nine arches of 30-foot span, and rises to a height of 75-feet above the valley and the River Darent.

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Nikon D800 29mm 1/250s f/2.8 iso100 RAW (14 bit) Nikon RC-DC2 remote shutter release. Manual focus. Manual exposure. Matrix metering.

Nikkor AF-S 24-70mm f/2.8G ED IF. Jessops 77mm UV filter. Nikon MB-D12 battery grip. Two Nikon EN-EL batteries. Nikon DK-17M Magnifying Eyepiece. Nikon DK-19 soft rubber eyecup. Manfrotto MT057C3 057 Carbon Fiber Tripod 3 Sections (Payload 18kgs). Manfrotto MH057M0-RC4 057 Magnesium Ball Head with RC4 Quick Release (Payload 15kgs). Manfrotto quick release plate 410PL-14.Jessops Tripod bag. Optech Tripod Strap.Digi-Chip 64GB Class 10 UHS-1 SDXC. Lowepro Transporter camera strap. Lowepro Vertex 200 AW camera bag. Nikon MC-DC2 remote shutter release. Nikon GP-1 GPS unit.

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LATITUDE: N 51d 22m 4.12s

LONGITUDE: E 0d 11m 52.61s

ALTITUDE: 69.0m

RAW (TIFF) FILE: 103.00MB

PROCESSED FILE: 14.66MB

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Processing power:

HP Pavillion Desktop with AMD A10-5700 APU processor. HD graphics. 2TB with 8GB RAM. 64-bit Windows 8.1. Verbatim USB 2.0 1TB desktop hard drive. Nikon VIEWNX2 Version 2.90 64bit. Adobe photoshop Elements 8 Version 8.0 64bit

We had a complete change this Christmas – we cancelled it! - we went walking in The Lakes, or Wasdale more precisely. We were staying at Irton Hall B & B, they had over 70 in for Christmas dinner but we ate jam bread on the slopes of Sca Fell Pike. Fantastic. We had a front wheel puncture on a run flat tyre on the new car with a 100 mile still to drive on the afternoon of Christmas eve on our way there. I drove straight to the nearest ATS – where I have an account – they shook their heads and directed me to Westhoughton Tyres, the lads there were fantastic and got us on our way in good time. BMW dealer advice was run on the flat tyre and then throw it away - £250! Where I would have got a tyre on the western side of the Lakes over Christmas I don’t know, ATS didn’t have one to sell me.

The weather was forecast good for Christmas day but after a fine start it was raining before we even left the car park in Wasdale. We headed up Lingmell and ran into snow on the summit. The path onto Sca Fell Pike was very icy, snow covered and visibility was low, the snow kept falling. We didn’t linger long, it was too cold to have dinner up there so we dropped down onto the Corridor Route, where we had our dinner. We went that way to stretch the walk out, having originally intended to cross to Great End. The tops were so icy, glazed, with not enough snow to get a grip on that we decide to leave it for another day. From Styhead we headed back to Wasdale and a dull but fine finish to the day. A drink in the bar at Irton Hall was on the radar.

Every morning we headed into Wasdale early, it got colder, icier and sunnier as the days went by. We went up Yewbarrow, it was an icy scramble up and I decided it was too dangerous to go down Stirrup Crag to Dore Head so went back the same way. It turned out to be the right decision as we lingered on the top, going to view points that we wouldn’t have and getting some decent photos. One morning we walked over the Screes tops, Illgill Head and Whin Rigg, dropping down the steep slope to The southern end of Wast Water. Having said that I would never walk the Screes path alongside Wast Water again the memory of how awful it is in the rain had faded. There is only really a quarter of a mile out of three miles that is really bad, every rock was like glass with the potential to break a leg every step. It seemed a long way and I was getting killer looks from Herself.

We made our way onto Sca Fell on a beautiful morning, clear blue sky. The snow line had got lower most nights but we never had the low level snow that caused problems in the rest of the country. I chose a, sometimes, pathless way to the summit, partly because I’d never been that way but also to stay in the sun, to keep the view and to avoid the ways that would be a touch dangerous, it was -4 and seared with ice for the last 600 feet. After 15 minutes on the summit wispy thin cloud came racing in, crossing the Lake District in minutes, the photos show it heading towards us and I was glad to have got the clear photos first. Looking out to sea a great mattress of cloud was heading straight for us. It was calm and sunny one minute and the next we were engulfed in thick cloud with 30 yards visibility at the most. I have never had a clear sky turn to cloud so fast – ever! We were going down to Slightside next which was OK, about a mile following the ridge down, the problem was getting back to Wasdale from there. We needed to get to Great Howe which meant a pathless trek a mile SW across Quagrigg Moss – a bog full of tarnlets, it would be a nightmare in low visibility. After getting some accurate compass bearings and heading down off Slightside we suddenly dropped out of the cloud and could see our target, brilliant, we legged it across the semi frozen bog and finally felt able to rest and grab a sandwich and cup of tea. We had to find our way down Raven Crags, which was interesting – and steep! We needed to get to the footbridge to get onto the Burnmoor Tarn path back to Wasdale. As we got closer to Burnmoor Tarn the light that I had been cursing gave us a gorgeous sunset. I had one eye on a gap in the cloud low down in the sky out at sea and I was hoping the sun would break through, it did. Burnmoor Tarn was like a mirror, reflecting the surrounding mountains, including Yewbarrow and parts of the Mosedale Horseshoe in the far distance. There was just the two of us, we had barely seen a soul all day, it was a fantastic end to a tough day. As we dropped into Wasdale I caught the deep pink and orange of the last of the sun, I was shooting into it but I had nothing to lose. There would have been quite a few tripods at the opposite end of the lake but I think I was in the better place – for a change.

On our final walking day we decided to head up Great Gable. It was clear of cloud for a change but ominously the surrounding tops, including the Sca Fells were cloud covered. Another beautiful but very cold morning, it was going to be very icy up there so we elected to go via Styhead and the tourist track. We would choose a way off once we were up there. Long before we got to the top, although we couldn’t see it, we knew the cloud was swirling in and out on the summit so it was going to be hit and miss for the photos. The cloud was down for the last 500 feet but once on the frozen top it kept clearing briefly – very briefly. There were more people up there than we had seen the entire trip previously. People were getting out after Christmas, many had parked at the top of Honister for the fairly easy walk in across Green Gable, some were not dressed for winter walking it has to be said. We left for an icy scramble down to Aaron Slack, up onto Green Gable them we galloped down Aaron Slack to Styhead and back to Wasdale.

When we precisely look onto the advancements that Artificial Intelligence has made in the industry, there has been quite a debate that has been going on lately about the impact that Artificial Intelligence training in Bangalore would bring out in the future and the human workforce. On whether this would bring out opportunities and open door to many other areas or would it be a threat to the present job market.

We had a complete change this Christmas – we cancelled it! - we went walking in The Lakes, or Wasdale more precisely. We were staying at Irton Hall B & B, they had over 70 in for Christmas dinner but we ate jam bread on the slopes of Sca Fell Pike. Fantastic. We had a front wheel puncture on a run flat tyre on the new car with a 100 mile still to drive on the afternoon of Christmas eve on our way there. I drove straight to the nearest ATS – where I have an account – they shook their heads and directed me to Westhoughton Tyres, the lads there were fantastic and got us on our way in good time. BMW dealer advice was run on the flat tyre and then throw it away - £250! Where I would have got a tyre on the western side of the Lakes over Christmas I don’t know, ATS didn’t have one to sell me.

The weather was forecast good for Christmas day but after a fine start it was raining before we even left the car park in Wasdale. We headed up Lingmell and ran into snow on the summit. The path onto Sca Fell Pike was very icy, snow covered and visibility was low, the snow kept falling. We didn’t linger long, it was too cold to have dinner up there so we dropped down onto the Corridor Route, where we had our dinner. We went that way to stretch the walk out, having originally intended to cross to Great End. The tops were so icy, glazed, with not enough snow to get a grip on that we decide to leave it for another day. From Styhead we headed back to Wasdale and a dull but fine finish to the day. A drink in the bar at Irton Hall was on the radar.

Every morning we headed into Wasdale early, it got colder, icier and sunnier as the days went by. We went up Yewbarrow, it was an icy scramble up and I decided it was too dangerous to go down Stirrup Crag to Dore Head so went back the same way. It turned out to be the right decision as we lingered on the top, going to view points that we wouldn’t have and getting some decent photos. One morning we walked over the Screes tops, Illgill Head and Whin Rigg, dropping down the steep slope to The southern end of Wast Water. Having said that I would never walk the Screes path alongside Wast Water again the memory of how awful it is in the rain had faded. There is only really a quarter of a mile out of three miles that is really bad, every rock was like glass with the potential to break a leg every step. It seemed a long way and I was getting killer looks from Herself.

We made our way onto Sca Fell on a beautiful morning, clear blue sky. The snow line had got lower most nights but we never had the low level snow that caused problems in the rest of the country. I chose a, sometimes, pathless way to the summit, partly because I’d never been that way but also to stay in the sun, to keep the view and to avoid the ways that would be a touch dangerous, it was -4 and seared with ice for the last 600 feet. After 15 minutes on the summit wispy thin cloud came racing in, crossing the Lake District in minutes, the photos show it heading towards us and I was glad to have got the clear photos first. Looking out to sea a great mattress of cloud was heading straight for us. It was calm and sunny one minute and the next we were engulfed in thick cloud with 30 yards visibility at the most. I have never had a clear sky turn to cloud so fast – ever! We were going down to Slightside next which was OK, about a mile following the ridge down, the problem was getting back to Wasdale from there. We needed to get to Great Howe which meant a pathless trek a mile SW across Quagrigg Moss – a bog full of tarnlets, it would be a nightmare in low visibility. After getting some accurate compass bearings and heading down off Slightside we suddenly dropped out of the cloud and could see our target, brilliant, we legged it across the semi frozen bog and finally felt able to rest and grab a sandwich and cup of tea. We had to find our way down Raven Crags, which was interesting – and steep! We needed to get to the footbridge to get onto the Burnmoor Tarn path back to Wasdale. As we got closer to Burnmoor Tarn the light that I had been cursing gave us a gorgeous sunset. I had one eye on a gap in the cloud low down in the sky out at sea and I was hoping the sun would break through, it did. Burnmoor Tarn was like a mirror, reflecting the surrounding mountains, including Yewbarrow and parts of the Mosedale Horseshoe in the far distance. There was just the two of us, we had barely seen a soul all day, it was a fantastic end to a tough day. As we dropped into Wasdale I caught the deep pink and orange of the last of the sun, I was shooting into it but I had nothing to lose. There would have been quite a few tripods at the opposite end of the lake but I think I was in the better place – for a change.

On our final walking day we decided to head up Great Gable. It was clear of cloud for a change but ominously the surrounding tops, including the Sca Fells were cloud covered. Another beautiful but very cold morning, it was going to be very icy up there so we elected to go via Styhead and the tourist track. We would choose a way off once we were up there. Long before we got to the top, although we couldn’t see it, we knew the cloud was swirling in and out on the summit so it was going to be hit and miss for the photos. The cloud was down for the last 500 feet but once on the frozen top it kept clearing briefly – very briefly. There were more people up there than we had seen the entire trip previously. People were getting out after Christmas, many had parked at the top of Honister for the fairly easy walk in across Green Gable, some were not dressed for winter walking it has to be said. We left for an icy scramble down to Aaron Slack, up onto Green Gable them we galloped down Aaron Slack to Styhead and back to Wasdale.

A HENDERSON MYSTERY.

DISCOVERY OF A SKELETON

SHOT THROUGH THE HEAD.

It is rather gruesome, when wandering through scrub on a fine Sunday afternoon, to suddenly discover the skeleton of a man with a little round hole in the forehead to silently announce a violent death. This is precisely what occurred to two settlers in the Henderson district. Mr Moffat and his mate were on what is known as the "Brickworks Track," when they found the skeleton in some scrub. They at once started to the telephone at Waikomiti cemetery, in order to forward the information to the police. On the, way they encountered another settler on horseback, who at once saved them a, further walk by galloping off with the message. Sergeant Gamble, promptly despatched Mounted Trooped Ready to inquire into the affair, That officer reached the place just about dusk, Constable Ready, on examining the remains, found a bullet hole in the centre of the forehead. The bullet had gone through the skull, and was protruding at the back of the head; the hands of the deceased were extended at full length by the side of the body, and the revolver lay on the left side between the body and the left arm. Deceased was dressed in blue trousers very much torn and faded by the weather, had on a striped shirt, and a cricketing belt was round the waist. He had on new lace up boots, and had worn, a black felt soft hat, which was lying alongside. The coat had been rolled up and placed under his headas a pillow. No papers of any kind were found to give a clue to the identity of the man, who appears to be about 40 years of age. The man must have been dead for months as most of, the flesh had disappeared. Apparently the man had deliberately folded up his coat and placed it beneath his head in order to rest himself. The revolver was lying on the ground a little distance from the left hand of the skeleton, as if it had fallen or been thrown there after the fatal shot was fired. The deceased's beard was long and of a dark brown colour, as was also his hair. Evidently the man was not hard up, as Constable Ready found in his pockets six £5 notes, six sovereigns, one shilling, four threepenny pieces, four fourpenny pieces, a pipe and knife. The revolver was a small one with five chambers ; One had been discharged and the remainder were loaded, besides which nine other cartridges were found in the pockets of the deceased. Although indications point to the wound being self inflicted, still it does not necessarily follow that deceaeed deliberately committed suicide. In the first place he was not in want, and usually a man does not carry nine loose cartridges in his pocket when he intends to blow out his brains by holding a revolver so close that he could not miss the mark. Then, again, folding up a coat and placing it beneath his head looks more like lying down to rest, as past experience shows that persons generally stand up to shoot themselves. It is just likely that the man had done a long tramp and laid down to rest, then while idly toying with his revolver had accidentally inflicted the fatal wound. The spot where the body was discovered is just about a mile and a-half alone the Great North Road, past the turning to Waikomiti Cemetery. Just on the hill above Henderson a track strikes through the scrub towards the brickworks by the sea. About 500 yards down this track, and about 50 yards in the scrub to the left hand, there is growing a large acacia tree. It was at the foot of this tree that the skeleton was discovered. The strangest feature of the whole business is that the disappearance of a man has not been reported to the police, and so far the remains have not been identified. The body was removed to the Henderson Hotel pending the inquest, which will take place to-morrow. The reason the holding of the inquest was delayed is that Mr Bollard thought if the matter were made public, identification of the remains might be obtained.

The coroner (Mr Bollard) has definitely fixed the inquest for one o'clock to-morrow.

paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/AS18940122.2.11

Continued from Paperspast:

At the inquest held on the body, Mr C. Little, undertaker, stated that when placing the remains in the coffin he found in the inside pocket of deceased's clothing a deposit receipt. Some words were undicipherable, but it read as follows : — "Copy of your ledger account with –, folio 455. Dec. 1893. New Australia Co-operative Settlement Association, Head Office, 111, Elizabeth-street, Sydney, N.S.W. (1318). Neil Jensen, of (word seems to be Queensland), £61. W. Head, per J. A., Secretary." The outside of the document is endorsed, "Certificate of membership" — but the remainder cannot be read. Then follows the words, "The Secretary Australian Co-operative Settlement Association, 111, Elizabeth - street, Sydney." The jury returned a verdict that the deceased, name unknown, met his death from a bullet wound in the head, apparently fired from a revolver lying at his side, and that there is no evidence to show whether the said wound was inflicted accidentally or otherwise. The police have kept portions of the clothing with a view to identification. It is reasonable to suppose that the deceased was the Neil Jensen named in the document. As the date is December, 1893, the remains may have been where they were discovered for the past two months. As no person of the name of Neil Jensen has been reported missing, it is most likely that the man had only recently arrived here from Australia when he set off to tramp the country in search of work.

paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/AS18940125.2.21.17

The police authorities have at last ascertained pretty conclusively that the man whose decayed remains were found lying in the scrub near Henderson, in February last, were, as was surmised at the time, those of a foreigner named Neil Jensen,who had been missing from Sydney last year, it seems that Jensen was a member of the "New Australia" party, and intended leaving Sydney for Paraguay last year. He lefts Brisbane for Sydney last year, and then left Sydney with the avowed intention of coming to New Zealand to look for his sick brother. Since he left Sydney nothing had ever been heard of him, and it is believed by the Auckland police, as the result of the enquiries made in Australia, that the remains found in the scrub near Henderson were none other than those of Neil Jensen.

paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/AS18940313.2.20

Plot 22: Neil Jensen buried 23/1/1894 –

Thomas Gerrans (66 or 77) 22/1/1894 – Labourer – at Hospital (Ang.)

John Henry Prior (55) 23/1/1893 – at Costley Home (Ang.)*

Stillborn Child 31/1/1894

Anglican divisions M and N are what is known as ‘Potters Fields’, they were used to bury some of the people whose families were unable to afford funeral costs, were institutionalised or unidentified at the time of burial. These plots were common graves with many having several individuals interred in each. They were narrower and closer together and, because they were not paid for, permanent grave markers were not permitted to be erected.

It is now no longer known where either Anglican Division M or N starts let alone the rows or individual plots which have now been protected by ghost gums, native trees & flax.

*plot details sourced through N.Z.G.S. N.Z. Cemetery Records & Family Search.

Costley Home for the Aged Poor

nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-Cyc02Cycl-t1-body1-...

Image of Costley Home

manawatuheritage.pncc.govt.nz/item/88c78623-cd79-4dcd-a22...

If you are worried about your or someone else's mental health, the best place to get help is your GP or local mental health provider. However, if you or someone else is in danger or endangering others, call police immediately on 111.

Or if you need to talk to someone else:

• LIFELINE: 0800 543 354 (available 24/7)

• SUICIDE CRISIS HELPLINE: 0508 828 865 (0508 TAUTOKO) (available 24/7)

• YOUTHLINE: 0800 376 633

• NEED TO TALK? Free call or text 1737 (available 24/7)

• KIDSLINE: 0800 543 754 (available 24/7)

• WHATSUP: 0800 942 8787 (1pm to 11pm)

• DEPRESSION HELPLINE: 0800 111 757

Extract from precisely dated image: www.flickr.com/photos/athens_greece/44813403501

In this photo, although the building looks quite similar to the earlier photo of 1890, there is a skylight on the right and also the chimney appears to have been moved to the right -- although the latter may be a matter of awkward perspective.

Public Domain

It is precisely the function of dread to break down this glass house of false interiority and to deliver man from it. It is dread, and dread alone, that drives a man out of this private sanctuary in which his solitude becomes horrible to himself without God. But without dread, without the disquieting capacity to see and to repudiate the idolatry of devout ideas and imaginings, man would remain content with himself and with his “inner life” in meditation, in liturgy or in both. Without dread, the Christian cannot be delivered from the smug self-assurance of the devout ones who know all the answers in advance, who possess all the clichés of the inner life and can defend themselves with infallible ritual forms against every risk and every demand of dialogue with human need and human desperation.

Contemplative Prayer

by Thomas Merton

Click & Listen

"Some years ago - never mind how long precisely - having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off - then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me."

- Herman Melville, Moby Dick

_____________________________________________________________

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Then check out Family of the Year.

Give them your love and a donation if you download the EP - I can't stop listening it.

.

We had a complete change this Christmas – we cancelled it! - we went walking in The Lakes, or Wasdale more precisely. We were staying at Irton Hall B & B, they had over 70 in for Christmas dinner but we ate jam bread on the slopes of Sca Fell Pike. Fantastic. We had a front wheel puncture on a run flat tyre on the new car with a 100 mile still to drive on the afternoon of Christmas eve on our way there. I drove straight to the nearest ATS – where I have an account – they shook their heads and directed me to Westhoughton Tyres, the lads there were fantastic and got us on our way in good time. BMW dealer advice was run on the flat tyre and then throw it away - £250! Where I would have got a tyre on the western side of the Lakes over Christmas I don’t know, ATS didn’t have one to sell me.

The weather was forecast good for Christmas day but after a fine start it was raining before we even left the car park in Wasdale. We headed up Lingmell and ran into snow on the summit. The path onto Sca Fell Pike was very icy, snow covered and visibility was low, the snow kept falling. We didn’t linger long, it was too cold to have dinner up there so we dropped down onto the Corridor Route, where we had our dinner. We went that way to stretch the walk out, having originally intended to cross to Great End. The tops were so icy, glazed, with not enough snow to get a grip on that we decide to leave it for another day. From Styhead we headed back to Wasdale and a dull but fine finish to the day. A drink in the bar at Irton Hall was on the radar.

Every morning we headed into Wasdale early, it got colder, icier and sunnier as the days went by. We went up Yewbarrow, it was an icy scramble up and I decided it was too dangerous to go down Stirrup Crag to Dore Head so went back the same way. It turned out to be the right decision as we lingered on the top, going to view points that we wouldn’t have and getting some decent photos. One morning we walked over the Screes tops, Illgill Head and Whin Rigg, dropping down the steep slope to The southern end of Wast Water. Having said that I would never walk the Screes path alongside Wast Water again the memory of how awful it is in the rain had faded. There is only really a quarter of a mile out of three miles that is really bad, every rock was like glass with the potential to break a leg every step. It seemed a long way and I was getting killer looks from Herself.

We made our way onto Sca Fell on a beautiful morning, clear blue sky. The snow line had got lower most nights but we never had the low level snow that caused problems in the rest of the country. I chose a, sometimes, pathless way to the summit, partly because I’d never been that way but also to stay in the sun, to keep the view and to avoid the ways that would be a touch dangerous, it was -4 and seared with ice for the last 600 feet. After 15 minutes on the summit wispy thin cloud came racing in, crossing the Lake District in minutes, the photos show it heading towards us and I was glad to have got the clear photos first. Looking out to sea a great mattress of cloud was heading straight for us. It was calm and sunny one minute and the next we were engulfed in thick cloud with 30 yards visibility at the most. I have never had a clear sky turn to cloud so fast – ever! We were going down to Slightside next which was OK, about a mile following the ridge down, the problem was getting back to Wasdale from there. We needed to get to Great Howe which meant a pathless trek a mile SW across Quagrigg Moss – a bog full of tarnlets, it would be a nightmare in low visibility. After getting some accurate compass bearings and heading down off Slightside we suddenly dropped out of the cloud and could see our target, brilliant, we legged it across the semi frozen bog and finally felt able to rest and grab a sandwich and cup of tea. We had to find our way down Raven Crags, which was interesting – and steep! We needed to get to the footbridge to get onto the Burnmoor Tarn path back to Wasdale. As we got closer to Burnmoor Tarn the light that I had been cursing gave us a gorgeous sunset. I had one eye on a gap in the cloud low down in the sky out at sea and I was hoping the sun would break through, it did. Burnmoor Tarn was like a mirror, reflecting the surrounding mountains, including Yewbarrow and parts of the Mosedale Horseshoe in the far distance. There was just the two of us, we had barely seen a soul all day, it was a fantastic end to a tough day. As we dropped into Wasdale I caught the deep pink and orange of the last of the sun, I was shooting into it but I had nothing to lose. There would have been quite a few tripods at the opposite end of the lake but I think I was in the better place – for a change.

On our final walking day we decided to head up Great Gable. It was clear of cloud for a change but ominously the surrounding tops, including the Sca Fells were cloud covered. Another beautiful but very cold morning, it was going to be very icy up there so we elected to go via Styhead and the tourist track. We would choose a way off once we were up there. Long before we got to the top, although we couldn’t see it, we knew the cloud was swirling in and out on the summit so it was going to be hit and miss for the photos. The cloud was down for the last 500 feet but once on the frozen top it kept clearing briefly – very briefly. There were more people up there than we had seen the entire trip previously. People were getting out after Christmas, many had parked at the top of Honister for the fairly easy walk in across Green Gable, some were not dressed for winter walking it has to be said. We left for an icy scramble down to Aaron Slack, up onto Green Gable them we galloped down Aaron Slack to Styhead and back to Wasdale.

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

St. Stephen's Cathedral

Seat of the Archbishop (Cardinal) of Vienna, one of the most important buildings of the Central European High and Late Gothic, monumental example of the South-German-Austrian multi-naved church, landmark of Vienna. Characteristic is the independent lateral position of the towers, the inclusion of the romanesque western facade, the high Gothic hall choir and the mighty steep roof with colorful brick patterning.

History

1147

The first Romanesque church - from Passau founded (hence patron saint: saint Stephen Protomartyr) - is consecrated. It is located in a quarter of new settlements of merchants, which in the second half of the 12th Century was included in the city's fortifications (which is the part between Singerstraße and wool line (Wollzeile), the road to Hungary). It is located outside, to the southeast, of the oldest city area of the Roman fort, Vindobona. This building was in its dimensions already a large basilical complex, at its completion already including the floor plan of the Heath towers in the West.

1263

Re-consecration after the fire. The impacts on the Romanesque church are not precisely known. The huge gate was already previously rebuilt, when Vienna was for a short time residence of the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. In succession, the reconstruction of the west gallery and the expansion of the western towers (Heath towers) took place. From this period stem also most of the sculptures of the giant gate, the vaults, capitals and rose windows at the west gallery.

Stephansdom64.jpg (35605 bytes)

1304 -1340

Construction of the Gothic hall choir, Albertinian choir, named after the Habsburg Albert II (1330-1358).

The citizenship of Vienna initially purchased the required properties and "as the owner of the Gothic choir in the Zwettler (city in Lower Austria) documents of 1303 and 1304 Viennese citizens are testified".

This civic foundation was then converted by a princely.

The following indulgence certificate - in the original written on parchment and provided with a hanging seal - is in a sense the main historical document of the choir consecration and thus also to the architectural history of St. Stephen of great importance.

1340

Bishop Peter of Marchapolis gives, at the request of the parishioners, all who attend at the anniversary of the consecration of the choir of St. Stephen's Church, which was accomplished on the above day in his presence by Bishop Albert of Passau, or at the feasts of the altar patrons of the church, an indulgence of 40 days.

1359

Laying of the foundation stone for further Gothic reconstruction of the nave (south and north wall), the Singertor and the Bischofstor (gate) and the two double chapels laterally to the Romanesque western building. Furthermore, the construction of overall four towers was planned. In fact, only the southern transept tower (the "saint Stephen's Tower") was first started.

1365

Those conversion measures are associated with the efforts of Duke Rudolf IV to raise Vienna to the status of a diocese, and with the founding of the University of Vienna.

1395

Consecration of the chapel of Saint Catherine ("baptistery") on the east side of the south tower.

1404

Peter of Prachatitz is Dombaumeister (cathedral builder). The citizenship by providing financial support pushes ahead the expansion of the tower.

1417 - 1430

Establishment of the lower sacristy

1433

Completion of the south tower under Hans von Prachatitz

1440 - 1459

Completion of the High Gothic nave

1450

Planning and construction of the North Tower by Hans Puchsbaum

1459

At Hüttentag of Regensburg the mason's lodge of St. Stephen's in Vienna is designated the leading main lodge in Central Europe.

1466

Extension of the upper sacristy

1469

Under Frederick III. the Diocese of Vienna is built.

1474

The Chapel of St. Barbara in the north tower is completed according to the plans of Puchsbaum. Formerly this building extension in the North Tower was called: Urbanuskapelle (chapel).

1511

Suspension of the building at the north tower. It is higher than the nave walls, but lower than the ridge height of the choir roof. As a crowning feature of the tower stump an octagonal structure was set up, which was closed with a so-called "Welsh hood" of Kaspar and Hans Saphoy 1578. The Welsh hood is a into the Gothic transmitted dome shape".

The back of the St. Stephen's Cathedral with the North Tower

1514/1519

1514/1519 at the top of saint Stephen's tower an eight-rayed sun ("Star") was fitted with a crescent moon as a symbol of spiritual and temporal power. When the Viennese in the Turkish siege (1529) throughout in the camp of their enemies saw similar symbols, they raised first objections against the "haidnisch Zaichen (heathen signs)", yet remained the "Moonlight" on the tower. Only on the occasion of the second siege (1683 ) vowed Leopold I to replace the "ungodly and unworthy Turks coat of arms" by the sign of the cross, when the city was liberated by God's assistance.

The from saint Stephen removed moon. Book illustration, 18th century

The new, of copper wrought double cross ("Spanish Cross") was made by coppersmith Hans Adam Bosch. It was one and a half meters high and had a weight of 45.5 kg. On September 14th, the Kreuzerhöhungstag (day of the elevation of the Cross) (in the same time the anniversary of the moving in of Leopold into the liberated city), it was placed under great spectacle. However, it was not flexible enough and already on 14th December it fell down due to a violent storm. On 31st October 1687 followed the setting up of a new crowning. To the Spanish Cross now the imperial double-headed eagle and the initials of Leopold I had been added. Cross and eagle had a height of 2.45 m and a weight of 67 kg.

St. Stephen's Cathedral around 1530

1640

Bishop Friedrich Count Breuner the Baroquisation of the equipment of the St. Stephen's Cathedral as a manifestation of the Counter-Reformation had started. He commissioned the brothers Jacob and Tobias Pock from Konstanz with the construction of a new high altar.

1683

Damages caused by numerous cannonballs at the second Turkish siege.

1700

Second wave of Baroquisation: Gothic winged altars and also their early Baroque successors are replaced by baroque marble altars.

1711

July 21st, 1711. In front of a large audience the k.k. Stückgießer (specialized iron caster) Johann Achamer carries out the casting of the great bell of saint Stephen. The for this purpose required metal comes from stocks of the Imperial arsenal of captured Turkish cannons. After Pölzung (supporting) of the underground vaults under the streets that touches the train, the bell weighing more than 17 tons on a special car or a loop of 100 people is brought from the Leopoldstadt on 29th October to the cathedral. On December 15th, Bishop Rummel undertakes the consecration of the bell, then it is pulled up to the south tower. There it rests on two oak beams, which for ringing can be screwed off. When Charles VI. solemnly moved into Vienna after his imperial coronation on 26th January 1712, the Pummerin was rung for the first time, in the process only the 813 kg in weight clapper was moved.

1720

The so-called catacombs are set up as a burial site.

1735

The cemetery around the church is closed down and in 1783 completely removed

Stock-im-Eisen-Platz and St. Stephen's Square before the demolition of the houses

Coloured engraving of V.C. Schütz. 1779

1803

The Steffl gets air: Demolition of houses on Stephansplatz

October. The strong increase in population leads to an increased volume of traffic. As part of "traffic-appropriate" measures streets are widened, squares enlarged, arcades created and traffic regulations introduced such as, e.g., the first one-way at the Carinthian gates (1802). With the demolition of the last still in front of the cathedral facade standing houses yet another basic expansion and redesign of the Stephansplatz can be completed.

1809

Also in the French wars the Cathedral is damaged by artillery fire.

1810

Repair work on the South Tower

1831

Renovation of the roof at the Albertinian choir

1842

On the occasion of the two renewals of the tower helmet in the 19th century respectively in 1842 and 1864, again a new double-headed eagle with a double cross was set on the spire. This last crowning of 1864 still today adorns the top of saint Stephen's tower.

1853 - 1854

Expansion of the remaining Wimperge (gables) in the roof area of which Puchsbaum under Frederick III. only one had realized.

1863 - 1864

Cathedral architect Friedrich Schmidt heads the restoration of the tower helmet.

1945

St. Stephen's Cathedral, April 1945 © Press Agency Votava St. Stephen's Cathedral, April 1945

The roof of St Stephen's Cathedral

is on fire 8th April 1945

Friday 13 April: Dombrand (cathedral's fire) in the last days of World War II. The roof burns down, the vaults of the middle choir and the southern side choir collapse. The Pummerin plunges down and breaks. The cathedral is badly damaged.

1945 - 1952

Reconstruction of the roof and choir

Triumphant entry of the new Pummerin in Vienna. The in St. Florian/Oberösterreich (Upper Austria) cast bell to Vienna had a true triumphal procession behind herself.

From the ruins of the Pummerin 1952 in St. Florian, Upper Austria, a new bell was cast and consecrated on 26th April 1952 in Vienna. The other bells of St. Stephen's Cathedral also consistently bore names as Halbpummerin, Viertelpummerin, Councillor Bell, Mentioned bell (Genanntenglocke), Zwölferin, beer bell (Bierglocke) etc. Very few of them survived the year 1945.

1953

Construction of the Bishop tomb in the catacombs under the Apostle Choir

1954 - 1965

Restoration of the South Tower

1956

Renovation of the Ducal Crypt, construction of the lower church and the lapidary (collection of stone monuments)

Completion of the tower helmet at the north tower (Saphoy'sche hood) with housing of the Pummerin

1961

In 1961 the cathedral received a new peal of eleven bells.

1973

Consecration of the People's altar (makeshift solution)

1977 - 1998

Restoration of the North Tower

1989

Remodeling of the sanctuary and the consecration of the new People's altar (September 14)

1991

Consecration of the new cathedral organ (Servants - Madonna gets here her new stand)

Overall length: 107.2 m outside inside 91.8 m

Width of the nave: 38.9 m

Height of the South tower: (High Tower) 136.7 m

Height of the North tower: 60.6 m

Height of the Heathen towers 65.6 m

Turtle Bay, Manhattan

Designed by Philip C. Johnson in 1948 and built in 1949-50, the former Rockefeller Guest House is one of the earliest buildings in New York City to reflect the influence of the modem movement in architecture and the celebrated German-American architect Mies van der Rohe. The house, which was described by the noted architectural critic Ada Louise Huxtable as "sophisticated . . . handsome, unconventional," is remarkably intact.

Johnson's subtle and elegant design incorporates features borrowed from two earlier projects by Mies: his unbuilt "court houses" of the 1930s, and the elevations he designed for various buildings at the Illinois Institute of Technology (hereafter, IIT). Built without the use of traditional ornament, the striking two-story street facade is articulated with precisely arranged structural elements, including a symmetrical first story consisting of a handsome wood door and flanking polished reddish brown ironspot brick walls laid in Flemish bond, surmounted by a grid of six fixed translucent windows faced with four steel H-sections.

The house was commissioned by Blanchette Rockefeller, the wife of John D. Rockefeller 3rd and a major patron of the Museum of Modem Art (hereafter, MoMA), to display her collection of modem painting and sculpture and to entertain guests. The Rockefellers donated the house to the museum in 1955, and in the years that followed it had a succession of owners, many of whom were associated with the international art community, including Johnson who lived in the house from 1971 -79. A significant early work by one of the country's leading architects and his only private residential building in New York City, in May 1989 the Rockefeller Guest House became the first work of architecture in the city to be sold by a leading art auction house.

Design and Construction

In June 1948, the Empire Mortgage Company, acting on behalf of the Rockefeller family acquired a 25 by 100 foot lot on East 52nd Street, west of Second Avenue. It was an ideal location - midway between her home in Turtle Bay on Beekman Place and the museum. On the site were two vacant structures, both dating from circa 1870. Johnson later described them as "completely nondescript, [a] small house, wedged between brick walls, a gap and a weed patch, with a dumpy coach house."17 This sequence of spaces -closed, open, and closed-would shape Johnson's plan. Whereas most urban townhouses have gardens at the rear of the lot, the "gap" and "weed patch" would become an internal courtyard, filled with water and partly open to the sky.

An associate in Johnson's office, Frederick C. Genz, filed plans for the guest house in late 1948.18 Since the existing brick walls were retained, it was classified as an alteration, consisting of mainly plastering, plumbing, carpentry, and masonry work. The project's estimated cost was $64,000.19 Construction began in 1949, and the house was ready for use in 1950.

The Rockefeller Guest House was one the first buildings in New York City to reflect the influence of the modem movement in architecture and the celebrated German-American architect Mies van der Rohe. It would also be Johnson's first and only private residential building in the city. Located on the south side of 52nd Street, the simple two-story brick and glass facade stood in sharp contrast to the late nineteenth century buildings adjoining it, a tenement and schoolhouse.

Johnson's spartan design reflects two projects by Mies: the unbuilt "court houses" of the 1930s, where he explored the "flow of space . . . confined within a single rectangle formed by the outside walls of court and house conjoined," and the architect's elevations for the various buildings at HT which were notable for their "subtleties of detailing."20 In describing these facades, Johnson wrote in 1947:

Structural elements are revealed as are those of a Gothic cathedral . . . And whereas the medieval architect relied on the collaboration of the sculptor and painter for his ultimate effect, Mies, so to speak, had to perform the functions of all three professions. He joins steel to steel or steel to glass or brick, with the taste and skill that formerly went into the chiseling of a stone capital or the painting of a fresco.

Johnson followed Mies's example; rather than embellishing the guest house facade with traditional ornament, he articulated the street facade with precisely arranged structural elements. He divided the two-story facade into two visually-distinct sections. The lower portion of the first floor facade, which projects slightly in front of the windows, consists of a wood door at center flanked by polished reddish brown brick walls laid in Flemish bond. The brick, which resembled that used on the cylinder that enclosed the bathroom in Johnson's New Canaan residence of the previous year, was chosen to compliment the facade of the adjacent schoolhouse.

Above the solid base of the first story is a grid of six "unpolished plate glass" windows.22 The mullions that divide the fixed translucent windows are faced with two decorative steel H-sections that rest atop the brick sill. Whereas the second story has vertical floor-to-ceiling windows, the lower horizontal panes act as clerestories, enclosing the upper portion of the first floor facade. These two sets of windows have been traditionally hung with identical white draperies, giving the impression of a single floor above the brick base.

The first floor interior (not part of this designation) was designed as a single flowing space. In front was a large living area with a fireplace and a compact kitchen hidden by folding doors, and in the rear, a bedroom with bath and dressing area. Between the rooms was an interior court with a pool that extends the full width of the building. A grid of floor-to-ceiling windows face the courtyard, similar in effect to the courtyard Mies designed for the Chemical Engineering and Metallurgy Building (1945-46) at 13T. Uninterrupted brick walls painted white extended from the living area through the courtyard, providing a neutral backdrop for the owner's art collection; which included pieces by Alberto Giacometti, Hans Arp, Robert Motherwell, Elie Nadelman, Jacques Lipchitz, Jackson Pollock, and Mark Rothko.

Above the living area on the second floor (not part of this designation) were two unheated bedrooms and a bathroom. These rooms served two purposes; providing additional space for guests, but also giving the guest house a stronger presence on the street. Johnson later claimed that he designed the second story mainly to "give the facade height" and because a one-story house "would look all wrong."24 These second-floor bedrooms face the interior courtyard.

Critical Reception

The Rockefeller Guest House received considerable attention, with articles and photographic spreads in The New York Times, Interiors, and the Architectural Review. House & Home admired the simplicity of the living areas, suggesting that such "restraint" could "help make a cheap house look more expensive."25 In a 1961 guide to modem architecture in New York City, published by MoMA and the Municipal Art Society, the noted critic Ada Louise Huxtable described the house as "sophisticated . . . handsome, unconventional."

While many writers noted Johnson's long-standing debt to Mies and the intricate detailing on the facade, his friend and ally, the critic Henry-Russell Hitchcock, Jr., highlighted the building's "classical leanings" and how the arrangement with a central courtyard resembled "Pompeiian domestic planning."

Several critics detected a subtle Asian influence in Johnson's design.28 In August 1950, a writer for Architectural Forum described the "inward-directed plan" and the emphasis on the "restful" courtyard:

The idea of a quietly serene and empty space at the very core of the house and its busy life is one that might have appealed to Lao Tse the philosopher.

Modern architecture's minimalist character is also likely to have appealed to the owners who made frequent trips to Asia and were avid collectors of Asian and particularly Japanese art. White and black predominated throughout the sparsely-furnished interiors, and the pool in the courtyard was traversed by three raised travertine stepping stones that MoMA historian Russell Lynes later speculated were a "concession" to the Rockefeller's fondness toward "things Japanese." Furthermore, round wood pegs, set flush into the outer section of the dooijamb, suggest the hand-crafted quality of traditional Japanese woodwork.

Subsequent History

During the early 1950s, the Rockefeller Guest House became "an informal arm" of MoMA.

It was presided over by a butler named Charles, who could and frequently did run up luncheons for a small number of trustees and donors to the Museum, for Important Persons and those being wooed. There, too, were cocktail parties and small dinners and the ever present hazard of someone accidently backing into the shallow pool...

In 1954 the house was the site of an exhibition to benefit the activities of the Junior Council. Curated by Barr, Dorothy C. Miller and William Lieberman, it displayed paintings, sculptures and prints owned by various council members. Although The New York Times critic Aline Saarinen was disappointed by the cautious character of the artworks displayed, the exhibition offered the public a rare opportunity to view the elegantly minimal interiors.

Despite his antipathy to modern art, John 3rd attended functions at the house and on one occasion he and their children stayed overnight. He regretted the amount of time his wife devoted to running the guest house and eventually convinced her to donate the building to MoMA in the summer of 1955.32 Until the museum's East Wing (designed by Philip Johnson) was completed in 1964, the near-by guest house was used for a various museum events and functions, including receptions, conferences, and special exhibitions.

The guest house was purchased by Robert C. Leonhardt, a Manhattan business consultant, in 1964 for $100,000.

At the time of the sale, The New York Times described the house as "one of Mr. Johnson's most striking designs."33 With the death of Mr. Leonhardt in 1971, his widow, Lee Sherrod, sought a suitable tenant, inviting Johnson and his partner, the former art dealer and exhibition designer, David C. Whitney, to lease the house. Johnson, who described their previous residence as a "ratty old two-room walk-up," made few changes, repainting the interiors white and hanging paintings by such celebrated contemporary artists as Roy Lichtenstein, John Chamberlain and Frank Stella. Andy Warhol, who occasionally visited Johnson, admired the openness of the plan, calling it "a prototype of loft living in New York."

Robin Symes, a London antiquities dealer, acquired the house in 1979. Ten years later, in May 1989, he consigned it to the Sotheby's auction house. Sold to Ronald S. Lauder, a MoMA trustee since 1973, the building was described by The New York Times as "the first ever offered at a New York art auction — and the first piece of real estate auctioned anywhere in the world by Sotheby's." Anthony d'Offay, a London gallery owner specializing in modem art, purchased the guest house in the mid-1990s. In May 2000, Christie's auctioned the Rockefeller Guest House. Six bidders competed, and the final price was $11.16 million.

Description

The Rockefeller Guest House is located on the south side of East 52nd Street, between Second and Third Avenues. The street facade is symmetrical and two stories high. The lower section of the first story projects forward and is faced with reddish-brown Flemish bond brick with tan mortar, similar to that used on the adjoining school building.36 To the east, the brick facade recedes to metal extending the full height of the building, to brick that extends south and is visible from both the front and the side until it intersects with west wall of the adjoining school building. To the west, the brick facade recedes to metal extending the full height of the building, to brick that extends south to the adjoining tenement building.

The entrance is at the center of the first story, marked by a wood door that is divided by vertical lines into seven sections. The historic door, which rises as high as the brick walls, is opened with a brass handle located to the east. At approximately eye level is a peephole, and centered below, a brass mail slot.

The historic doorframe is made of identical wood. Round wood pegs, set flush into the outer frame, are visible. The east side of the door jamb incorporates (from top to bottom) a non-historic brass security camera, a brass speaker/microphone, and brass lock. The historic brass saddle, screwed to the threshold, is scored with incised lines. The door head incorporates a flush rectangular lighting fixture. To the west of the door is the building's address "2 4 2" in historic raised brass letters. Below these numbers, close to the ground, is a circular black metal vent. To the far right, near the west edge of the facade, aligned with the vent, is a small non-historic plastic apparatus. To the west of the door, set into the sidewalk, is a non-historic metal grate.

Six fixed historic translucent windows rise above the brick facade. Four projecting steel H-sections are welded to the columns that divide and frame the windows. The two outer beams extend the full height of the building, from the roof to the ground, framing the east and west edges of the brick facade and windows. The two center beams rest on the brick facade. A continuous horizontal metal panel, set behind the H-sections, divides the upper and lower windows, creating horizontal clerestory windows that illuminate the first story, and the larger, vertical, floor-to-ceiling, second-story windows.

An unadorned metal fence, set back several feet from the front of the building, extends across the roof from east to west. Behind the fence, pipes are visible to the west and east, as well as an irregularly shaped ventilation unit. All of these elements are painted black. At the rear of the building, adjoining the tenement, rises a black chimney.

- From the 2000 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report

Did anyone else do it?!?

Don't look too closely at the reflections, otherwise you will see what a tip my office is!!

Despite what the Exif Data may say, the shutter clicked at bang-on 10 seconds past 10.

We had a complete change this Christmas – we cancelled it! - we went walking in The Lakes, or Wasdale more precisely. We were staying at Irton Hall B & B, they had over 70 in for Christmas dinner but we ate jam bread on the slopes of Sca Fell Pike. Fantastic. We had a front wheel puncture on a run flat tyre on the new car with a 100 mile still to drive on the afternoon of Christmas eve on our way there. I drove straight to the nearest ATS – where I have an account – they shook their heads and directed me to Westhoughton Tyres, the lads there were fantastic and got us on our way in good time. BMW dealer advice was run on the flat tyre and then throw it away - £250! Where I would have got a tyre on the western side of the Lakes over Christmas I don’t know, ATS didn’t have one to sell me.

The weather was forecast good for Christmas day but after a fine start it was raining before we even left the car park in Wasdale. We headed up Lingmell and ran into snow on the summit. The path onto Sca Fell Pike was very icy, snow covered and visibility was low, the snow kept falling. We didn’t linger long, it was too cold to have dinner up there so we dropped down onto the Corridor Route, where we had our dinner. We went that way to stretch the walk out, having originally intended to cross to Great End. The tops were so icy, glazed, with not enough snow to get a grip on that we decide to leave it for another day. From Styhead we headed back to Wasdale and a dull but fine finish to the day. A drink in the bar at Irton Hall was on the radar.

Every morning we headed into Wasdale early, it got colder, icier and sunnier as the days went by. We went up Yewbarrow, it was an icy scramble up and I decided it was too dangerous to go down Stirrup Crag to Dore Head so went back the same way. It turned out to be the right decision as we lingered on the top, going to view points that we wouldn’t have and getting some decent photos. One morning we walked over the Screes tops, Illgill Head and Whin Rigg, dropping down the steep slope to The southern end of Wast Water. Having said that I would never walk the Screes path alongside Wast Water again the memory of how awful it is in the rain had faded. There is only really a quarter of a mile out of three miles that is really bad, every rock was like glass with the potential to break a leg every step. It seemed a long way and I was getting killer looks from Herself.

We made our way onto Sca Fell on a beautiful morning, clear blue sky. The snow line had got lower most nights but we never had the low level snow that caused problems in the rest of the country. I chose a, sometimes, pathless way to the summit, partly because I’d never been that way but also to stay in the sun, to keep the view and to avoid the ways that would be a touch dangerous, it was -4 and seared with ice for the last 600 feet. After 15 minutes on the summit wispy thin cloud came racing in, crossing the Lake District in minutes, the photos show it heading towards us and I was glad to have got the clear photos first. Looking out to sea a great mattress of cloud was heading straight for us. It was calm and sunny one minute and the next we were engulfed in thick cloud with 30 yards visibility at the most. I have never had a clear sky turn to cloud so fast – ever! We were going down to Slightside next which was OK, about a mile following the ridge down, the problem was getting back to Wasdale from there. We needed to get to Great Howe which meant a pathless trek a mile SW across Quagrigg Moss – a bog full of tarnlets, it would be a nightmare in low visibility. After getting some accurate compass bearings and heading down off Slightside we suddenly dropped out of the cloud and could see our target, brilliant, we legged it across the semi frozen bog and finally felt able to rest and grab a sandwich and cup of tea. We had to find our way down Raven Crags, which was interesting – and steep! We needed to get to the footbridge to get onto the Burnmoor Tarn path back to Wasdale. As we got closer to Burnmoor Tarn the light that I had been cursing gave us a gorgeous sunset. I had one eye on a gap in the cloud low down in the sky out at sea and I was hoping the sun would break through, it did. Burnmoor Tarn was like a mirror, reflecting the surrounding mountains, including Yewbarrow and parts of the Mosedale Horseshoe in the far distance. There was just the two of us, we had barely seen a soul all day, it was a fantastic end to a tough day. As we dropped into Wasdale I caught the deep pink and orange of the last of the sun, I was shooting into it but I had nothing to lose. There would have been quite a few tripods at the opposite end of the lake but I think I was in the better place – for a change.

On our final walking day we decided to head up Great Gable. It was clear of cloud for a change but ominously the surrounding tops, including the Sca Fells were cloud covered. Another beautiful but very cold morning, it was going to be very icy up there so we elected to go via Styhead and the tourist track. We would choose a way off once we were up there. Long before we got to the top, although we couldn’t see it, we knew the cloud was swirling in and out on the summit so it was going to be hit and miss for the photos. The cloud was down for the last 500 feet but once on the frozen top it kept clearing briefly – very briefly. There were more people up there than we had seen the entire trip previously. People were getting out after Christmas, many had parked at the top of Honister for the fairly easy walk in across Green Gable, some were not dressed for winter walking it has to be said. We left for an icy scramble down to Aaron Slack, up onto Green Gable them we galloped down Aaron Slack to Styhead and back to Wasdale.

We had a complete change this Christmas – we cancelled it! - we went walking in The Lakes, or Wasdale more precisely. We were staying at Irton Hall B & B, they had over 70 in for Christmas dinner but we ate jam bread on the slopes of Sca Fell Pike. Fantastic. We had a front wheel puncture on a run flat tyre on the new car with a 100 mile still to drive on the afternoon of Christmas eve on our way there. I drove straight to the nearest ATS – where I have an account – they shook their heads and directed me to Westhoughton Tyres, the lads there were fantastic and got us on our way in good time. BMW dealer advice was run on the flat tyre and then throw it away - £250! Where I would have got a tyre on the western side of the Lakes over Christmas I don’t know, ATS didn’t have one to sell me.

The weather was forecast good for Christmas day but after a fine start it was raining before we even left the car park in Wasdale. We headed up Lingmell and ran into snow on the summit. The path onto Sca Fell Pike was very icy, snow covered and visibility was low, the snow kept falling. We didn’t linger long, it was too cold to have dinner up there so we dropped down onto the Corridor Route, where we had our dinner. We went that way to stretch the walk out, having originally intended to cross to Great End. The tops were so icy, glazed, with not enough snow to get a grip on that we decide to leave it for another day. From Styhead we headed back to Wasdale and a dull but fine finish to the day. A drink in the bar at Irton Hall was on the radar.

Every morning we headed into Wasdale early, it got colder, icier and sunnier as the days went by. We went up Yewbarrow, it was an icy scramble up and I decided it was too dangerous to go down Stirrup Crag to Dore Head so went back the same way. It turned out to be the right decision as we lingered on the top, going to view points that we wouldn’t have and getting some decent photos. One morning we walked over the Screes tops, Illgill Head and Whin Rigg, dropping down the steep slope to The southern end of Wast Water. Having said that I would never walk the Screes path alongside Wast Water again the memory of how awful it is in the rain had faded. There is only really a quarter of a mile out of three miles that is really bad, every rock was like glass with the potential to break a leg every step. It seemed a long way and I was getting killer looks from Herself.

We made our way onto Sca Fell on a beautiful morning, clear blue sky. The snow line had got lower most nights but we never had the low level snow that caused problems in the rest of the country. I chose a, sometimes, pathless way to the summit, partly because I’d never been that way but also to stay in the sun, to keep the view and to avoid the ways that would be a touch dangerous, it was -4 and seared with ice for the last 600 feet. After 15 minutes on the summit wispy thin cloud came racing in, crossing the Lake District in minutes, the photos show it heading towards us and I was glad to have got the clear photos first. Looking out to sea a great mattress of cloud was heading straight for us. It was calm and sunny one minute and the next we were engulfed in thick cloud with 30 yards visibility at the most. I have never had a clear sky turn to cloud so fast – ever! We were going down to Slightside next which was OK, about a mile following the ridge down, the problem was getting back to Wasdale from there. We needed to get to Great Howe which meant a pathless trek a mile SW across Quagrigg Moss – a bog full of tarnlets, it would be a nightmare in low visibility. After getting some accurate compass bearings and heading down off Slightside we suddenly dropped out of the cloud and could see our target, brilliant, we legged it across the semi frozen bog and finally felt able to rest and grab a sandwich and cup of tea. We had to find our way down Raven Crags, which was interesting – and steep! We needed to get to the footbridge to get onto the Burnmoor Tarn path back to Wasdale. As we got closer to Burnmoor Tarn the light that I had been cursing gave us a gorgeous sunset. I had one eye on a gap in the cloud low down in the sky out at sea and I was hoping the sun would break through, it did. Burnmoor Tarn was like a mirror, reflecting the surrounding mountains, including Yewbarrow and parts of the Mosedale Horseshoe in the far distance. There was just the two of us, we had barely seen a soul all day, it was a fantastic end to a tough day. As we dropped into Wasdale I caught the deep pink and orange of the last of the sun, I was shooting into it but I had nothing to lose. There would have been quite a few tripods at the opposite end of the lake but I think I was in the better place – for a change.

On our final walking day we decided to head up Great Gable. It was clear of cloud for a change but ominously the surrounding tops, including the Sca Fells were cloud covered. Another beautiful but very cold morning, it was going to be very icy up there so we elected to go via Styhead and the tourist track. We would choose a way off once we were up there. Long before we got to the top, although we couldn’t see it, we knew the cloud was swirling in and out on the summit so it was going to be hit and miss for the photos. The cloud was down for the last 500 feet but once on the frozen top it kept clearing briefly – very briefly. There were more people up there than we had seen the entire trip previously. People were getting out after Christmas, many had parked at the top of Honister for the fairly easy walk in across Green Gable, some were not dressed for winter walking it has to be said. We left for an icy scramble down to Aaron Slack, up onto Green Gable them we galloped down Aaron Slack to Styhead and back to Wasdale.

This photograph was taken in the magic of The Golden Hour around Sunrise, (Sunrise was at precisely 07:39am), at an altitude of Six metres, at 07:40am on Thursday January 28th 2016 off Botany Road and Marine Drive, on the sandy shoreline of Botany Bay in Broadstairs, Kent, England.

I set off at 05:00am on a clear morning, the moon and the stars out to dazzle in temperatures around five degrees, on a plesant hour and half long journey to enjoy a lovely sunrise. The seven bays in Broadstairs consist of: (From south to north) Dumpton Gap, Louisa Bay, Viking Bay, Stone Bay, Joss Bay, Kingsgate Bay and Botany Bay.

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Nikon D800 270mm 1/3200s f/6.3 iso1600 RAW (14Bit) Nikon back focus button enabled. AF-C Continuous point focus with 3-D tracking. Manual exposure. Matrix metering. Auto white balance. Nikon AF Fine tune set to +6.

Nikkor AF-S 200-500mm f/5.6E ED VR. Power UP 95mm HD UV filter. Nikon MB-D12 battery grip. Two Nikon EN-EL batteries. Nikon DK-17M Magnifying Eyepiece. Nikon DK-19 soft rubber eyecup. Manfrotto MT057C3 057 Carbon Fiber Tripod 3 Sections (Payload 18kgs). Manfrotto MH057M0-RC4 057 Magnesium Ball Head with RC4 Quick Release (Payload 15kgs). Manfrotto quick release plate 410PL-14.Jessops Tripod bag. Optech Tripod Strap.Digi-Chip 64GB Class 10 UHS-1 SDXC. Lowepro Transporter camera strap. Lowepro Vertex 200 AW camera bag. Nikon MC-DC2 remote shutter release. Nikon GP-1 GPS unit.

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LATITUDE: N 51d 23m 18.56s

LONGITUDE: E 1d 26m 19.22s

ALTITUDE: 6.0m

RAW (TIFF) FILE SIZE: 103.00MB

PROCESSED (JPeg) SIZE: 15.86MB

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PROCESSING POWER:

Nikon D800 Firmware versions A 1.10 B 1.10 L 2.009 (Lens distortion control version 2)

HP 110-352na Desktop PC with AMD Quad-Core A6-5200 APU processor. AMD Radeon HD8400 graphics. 8 GB DDR3 Memory with 1TB SATA storage. 64-bit Windows 10. Verbatim USB 2.0 1TB desktop hard drive. WD My Passport Ultra 1tb USB3 Portable hard drive. Nikon ViewNX2 Version 2.10.3 64bit. Adobe photoshop Elements 8 Version 8.0 64bit

Blackrock covers a large but not precisely defined area, rising from sea level on the coast to 90 metres (300 ft) at White's Cross on the N11 national primary road. Blackrock is bordered by Booterstown, Mount Merrion, Stillorgan, Foxrock, Deansgrange and Monkstown.

Blackrock is a large commercial centre with cafes, restaurants, boutiques, hairdressers and barbers, a tattoo and piercing studio, pharmacies, supermarkets, art galleries, antiques and home improvements outlets as well as bars such as The Breffni, Jack O'Rourkes, O'Donohues, Flash Harrys, Conways, The Wicked Wolf and the Ten Tun Tavern.

The Blackrock Shopping Centre was built in 1984 by Superquinn who managed the development and are the anchor store. Superquinn has now become Supervalu.

There are many high street finance branches for AIB, Bank of Ireland, EBS, National Irish Bank, Ulster Bank and the Blackrock Credit Union. Permanent TSB closed their Blackrock branch in March 2010 but retain their administrative offices on Carysfort Avenue.

There are many office buildings that house large corporations such as Zurich Financial Services and AIG, and car dealers such as Carroll & Kinsella Motors, Maxwell Motors (generally BMW) and Eco Aer (eco electric vehicles).

Exhibition Jean Tinguely - Machine Spectacle 1 Oct 2016 - 5 Mar 2017 in the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam

Jean Tinguely is famous for his playful, boldly kinetic machines and explosive performances. Everything had to be different, everything had to move. Precisely twenty-five years after his death, the Stedelijk Museum opens a Tinguely retrospective: the largest-ever exhibition of the artist to be mounted in a Dutch museum.

The Swiss artist Jean Tinguely (1925–1991) played a key role in the rise of kinetic art in the fifties. With over a hundred machine sculptures, most of which are in working order, paired with films, photos, drawings, and archive materials, the presentation takes the public on a chronological and thematic journey of Tinguely’s artistic development and ideas, from his love of absurd play to his fascination for destruction and ephemerality.

The presentation features his early wire sculptures and reliefs, in which Tinguely imitated and animated the abstract paintings of artists such as Malevich, Miró, and Klee; the interactive drawing machines and wild dancing installations constructed from salvaged metal, waste materials, and discarded clothing; and his streamlined, military-looking black sculptures.

Tinguely’s self-destructive performances are a special feature of the Stedelijk presentation. The enormous installations Tinguely created between 1960–1970 (Homage to New York, Étude pour une fin du monde No. 1, Study for an End of the World No. 2, and La Vittoria) were designed to spectacularly disintegrate in a barrage of sound. The presentation also spotlights the exhibitions Tinguely organized at the Stedelijk, Bewogen Beweging (1961) and Dylaby (1962), and the gigantic sculptures he later produced: HON – en katedral (“SHE – a cathedral,” 1966), Crocrodrome (1977) and the extraordinary Le Cyclop (1969–1994), which is still on display outside Paris. The survey ends with a dramatic grand finale, the remarkable, room-filling installation, Mengele-Totentanz (1986), a disturbing display of light and shadow never previously shown in the Netherlands. Tinguely realized the work after witnessing a devastating fire, reclaiming objects from the ashes to piece together his installation: scorched beams, agricultural machinery (made by the Mengele company), and animal skeletons. The final piece is a gigantic memento mori, yet also an invocation of the Nazi concentration camps. Its juddering movements and piercing sounds evoke a haunting, grisly mood.

Jean Tinguely created his work as a rejection of the static, conventional art world; he sought to emphasize play and experiment. For Tinguely, art was not about standing in a sterile white space, distantly gazing at a silent painting. He produced kinetic sculptures to set art and art history in motion, in works that animated the boundary between art and life. With his do-it-yourself drawing machines, Tinguely critiqued the role of the artist and the elitist position of art in society. He renounced the unicity of “the artist’s hand” by encouraging visitors to produce work themselves. Collaboration was integral to Tinguely’s career. He worked extensively with artists like Daniel Spoerri, Niki de Saint Phalle (also his wife), Yves Klein, and others from the ZERO network, as well as museum directors such as Pontus Hultén, Willem Sandberg, and Paul Wember. Thanks to his charismatic, vibrant personality and the dazzling success with which he presented his work (and himself) in the public sphere, Tinguely was a vital figure within these networks, acting as leader, inspirator, and connector.

Amsterdam has enjoyed a dynamic history with Tinguely. The exhibitions Bewogen Beweging (1961) and Dylaby (1962), for which Tinguely was (co)curator, particularly underline the extraordinarily close relationship that sprang up between the museum and the artist. Not only did he bring his kinetic Méta machines to the Netherlands, he also brought his international, avant-garde network, leaving an enduring impression on museum goers who flocked to see these experimental exhibitions. Close relationships with Willem Sandberg, then director of the Stedelijk Museum, and curator Ad Petersen prompted various retrospectives and acquisitions for the collection: thirteen sculptures, including his famous drawing machine, Méta-Matic No. 10 (1959), Gismo (1960), and the enormous Méta

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

Summary

This elegant, Beaux-Arts style, twenty- story office building was constructed in 1911- 12 for the United States Rubber Company at a time when the automobile was beginning to exert a powerful influence on American society. Located on Broadway, along the section known as "Automobile Row," the U.S. Rubber Company Building was one of the most prominent and important of the many automobile-related structures concentrated here. The two lowest floors originally provided retail space for the company's subsidiary, the United States Tire Company, while U. S . Rubber occupied eight of the office stories. Designed by the prominent architectural firm of Carrere & Hastings, this office building features delicately-carved marble facades crowned by a broad copper cornice. The design, which continues around both the Broadway and 58th Street facades, features a distinctive rounded corner and vertically-grouped windows with metal spandrels and thin, continuous piers.

In this building, as in their other works, Carrere and Hastings used their training at the French Ecole des Beaux Arts to create an impressive design for a tall building where the skeleton construction is expressed by the thin stone veneei lowest floors of this building were remodeled in which is obviously non-weight-bearing. The two 1959 for a bank.

Automobile Row

At the end of the nineteenth century automobiles, or more precisely horseless carriages, were in the earliest stage of development. At first there were many different types and variations, often growing out of their creator's previous experience in bicycle or carriage manufacture. The new vehicles were looked upon as experimental, purchased only by the very rich and adventurous, since roads, which had been created for horse-drawn vehicles, had uneven, often treacherous surfaces. Between 1886 and 1899 there were approximately 300 individually-built automobiles in the United States. During the first decade of the twentieth century, due to considerable experimentation and advancement of the products including mass- production, discussion in the press, and organization of interested owners and manufacturers, the automobile industry became a strong presence and an economically viable force in the United States. By 1910, The New York Times reported that American automobile manufacturers would produce approximately 200,000 vehicles in that year.

In New York City the influence of the new automobile culture was seen along "Automobile Row," a section of Broadway which eventually stretched between Times Square and 72nd Street. Before 1905, this part of Broadway was home to horses and harness makers, and was characterized as "thoroughly lifeless." In 1907, The New York Times described the same area as "almost a solid line of motor vehicle signs all the way from Times Square to Sherman Square." The 1910 book, Both Sides of Broadway, shows fourteen different automobile and automobile-related stores located between 46th and 50th Streets. The proximity of similar businesses in "Automobile Row" made it easier for customers to view and compare the products of different manufactures. These businesses, which consisted of automobile sales showrooms, stores for parts and accessories, and garages for both storage and repair services, were primarily located in small, remodeled, older buildings.

Within the next few years, larger firms started to buy bigger lots and erect new buildings. The New York Times reported in 1909 on the plans of the B. F. Goodrich Company to build their own showroom and office structure on Broadway and 57th Street (1780- 1782 Broadway, designed by Howard Van Doren Shaw and Waid & Willauer), as well as those of the Peerless and A.T. Demerest Companies to build a block to the south, and the purchase of a building at Broadway and 63rd Street for use as a garage. The construction of the tallest building north of Times Square for the United States Rubber Company, on the large plot at Broadway and 58th Street just to the north of the B. F. Goodrich Company Building, was an importantpartof this trend.

The United States Rubber Company

DESCRIPTION AND ANALYSIS

The company was founded by Charles R. Flint who was a self-described "international merchant, financier and negotiator" and also an original partner in the W.R. Grace Company. In 1878, Flint started dealing in rubber produced in the Amazon River basin. In 1892, Flint convinced nine companies involved in the manufacture of rubber footwear (including Charles Goodyear's company which held the first license for the vulcanization process) to merge, and thereby formed the United States Rubber Company. Over the next few years, the company expanded to control about 70 percent of the rubber footwear business in the country, the principal rubber product at that time. Under the leadership of Samuel P. Colt, who began his tenure as president in 1901, the company expanded into related endeavors.

Charles Flint began another company in 1898 called the Rubber Goods Manufacturing Company, makers of tires and other rubber industrial products. U.S. Rubber acquired this business in 1899, bringing together four leading brands of tires. After ten years, all these tires were sold under the name "United States Tires," then becoming "U. S. Royal" in 1917. In the same year, the company adopted the "KEDS" name for its many varieties of rubber footwear. During the early years of the twentieth century, the U. S. Rubber Company expanded into the chemical business, manufacturing certain chemicals used in the production of new rubber products and the reclamation of scrap rubber. In 1910, the company also acquired its first rubber plantation in Sumatra to ensure the availability of raw materials. Further expansion into related textiles was achieved in 1917 with the acquisition of the Winnsboro Mills in South Carolina which made tire cord and rubber textile fabrics.

Throughout the twentieth century the company continued to grow and diversify, eventually producing foam rubber, synthetic rubber, and TNT used during World War II, among many other products. During the 1950s the company began to acquire related manufacturers in Europe, while continuing to increase its product range and capacity in this country. In order to unify the corporate identity which was so broadly based, in 1967 all the brands were brought together under the name "UNIROYAL."

The United States Rubber Company was first incorporated in New Jersey and maintained its headquarters in New Brunswick for many years. In 1911, the company leased the land on the corner of 58th Street and Broadway in New York City to build a large, more visible corporate headquarters, and a sales outlet for United States Tires. In their 1913 Annual Report, the company declared that the building was completed in the summer of 1912 and that U.S. Rubber occupied ten floors, as well as the two basements, and that most of the other space had been rented "to good tenants." The organization remained in this building until 1951 when its main offices were moved to Rockefeller Center.

Carrere & Hastings

John Merven Carrere (1858-1911)

Thomas Hastings (1860-1929)

The firm of Carrere and Hastings, active during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, was the leading American exponent of the design philosophy of the French Ecole des Beaux Arts. John Merven Carrere was born in Rio de Janeiro to American parents of French descent, and educated in Switzerland. He entered the Ecole des Beaux Arts in 1877, studying in several prominent ateliers, including that of Leon Ginain, a proponent of the neo-Grec style of architecture. Thomas Hastings, born in New York, spent a short time at Columbia University before entering the Ecole des Beaux Arts and serving an apprenticeship in the atelier of Jules Andre. After earning their diplomas - Carrere in 1882 and Hastings in 1884 - both men joined the staff of McKim, Mead & White in New York. After establishing their own partnership in 1885, their first major client was Florida real estate developer Henry Flagler, a partner in Standard Oil.

Carrere & Hastings designed the Ponce de Leon and Alcazar Hotels, and several churches in St. Augustine, as well as the "Whitehall," Flagler's estate in Palm Beach, all in the Spanish Renaissance style, using innovative concrete construction. In 1891 the firm of Carrere & Hastings gained prominence for their Renaissance-inspired, second-place-winning design for the competition for the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. They were more successful in 1897, winning the competition for the New York Public Library (constructed 1898-1911, adesignated New York City Landmark). This design established Carrere & Hastings as one the country's leading architectural firms.

In addition to monumental public buildings, the firm of Carrere & Hastings was very active in residential design, and also created the designs for fourteen Carnegie-funded Libraries in New York. The approaches and arch of the Manhattan Bridge (1905, a designated New York City Landmark) and Grand Army Plaza (1913, a designated New York City Scenic Landmark) reveal the architects' interest in city planning. The First Church of Christ, Scientist (1899- 1903, a designated New York City Landmark) at 96th Street and Central Park West was designed by the firm and is in the finest tradition of Beaux-Arts classicism. Woolsey and Memorial Halls at Yale University (1906) and the New (Century) Theater (demolished), the Vanderbilt Estate, Long Island, the Frick Mansion (1913-15, a designated New York City Landmark), the Staten Island Borough Hall (1903-06, a designated New York City Landmark), and the Richmond County Courthouse (1913-1919, a designated New York City Landmark) were all designed by the firm.

Carrere and Hastings were both members of the Architectural League of New York and Fellows of the American Institute of Architects. After Carrere's death in 1911, Hastings continued to work under the firm's name, designing large office buildings such as the Standard Oil Building (1926, a designated New York City Landmark), the Macmillan Building (1924), and theCunardBuilding (1919-21, a designated New York City Landmark).

The United States Rubber Company Building

Most of the work of Carrere and Hastings was in the French Renaissance tradition. Thomas Hastings, the primary designer of the firm, believed that architects needed to be educated in one style that would reflect their own time. Rather than imitate past architecture, he believed they should adapt past styles to contemporary needs. Hastings maintained that even after the turn of the twentieth century, American life was still motivated by the same forces that had brought about the Renaissance. Therefore, Hastings chose to adapt French Renaissance precedents because he felt that only in France was architecture "consistently modem."

Hastings also had ideas about skyscraper design and the increasing height of contemporary buildings. Architects of the early skyscrapers held extensive debates about an appropriate design vocabulary for this completely new building type. They questioned whether the building should somehow express its vertical nature, or whether it should illustrate the idea whether the building should somehow express its vertical nature, or whether it should illustrate the idea that it was really just a tall collection of horizontal floors. They also discussed whether there should be any indication of the supporting steel skeleton frame on the exterior, rather than trying to make the building appear as if it were constructed of heavy, solid masonry.

As president of the Architectural League, Hastings and many of his contemporaries advocated height limitations for skyscrapers, and later demonstrated (in the Fisk Building, 1920-22, and the Liggett Building, 1919-20) what could be accomplished under the restrictions of New York's Building Zone Law of 1916. Through his understanding of Beaux-Arts principles, Hastings was one of the first to conceive that the skeleton frame which actually supported the building and the exterior sheathing material were separate entities because of their separate functions. By 1894, he was using the term "curtain wall" for the exterior, non-bearing walls of a building as we know it today, and he began to design his buildings to reflect this dichotomy.

Carrere & Hastings' Blair Building (1902, demolished, located on Broad Street, south of the Stock Exchange) was one of their first and most successful efforts at the design of tall buildings. It was constructed when most architects were still debating the proper visual expression of tall buildings and using a tripartite division on their tall building facades, implying the heaviness of the structure through ground-story rustication and deep window reveals. The Blair Building was recognized immediately as something different, its marble facades clearly expressed the fact that they were veneers, and not weight-bearing.

The United States Rubber Company Building, although built as part of "Automobile Row" with a large showroom on its ground floor, was primarily an early office tower and as such it expresses the office building sensibility in its design. Like the Blair Building, it is faced in marble and there is little sense of depth on either elevation of the structure. Narrow, continuous stone piers extending from the fourth through seventh stories and from the ninth through nineteenth stories help give the impression that the walls are a thin skin stretched over the steel cage. Although the ornament of the window pediments, elaborate iron balcony railings, and carved stonework around some of the windows is derived from the French Renaissance style, this decoration is clearly subordinate to the main organizing system of recessed windows and continuous piers. The two main facades of the U.S. Rubber building are treated similarly to each other, although the building is somewhat wider on 58th Street.

The strongly-articulated, rounded comer connecting the two sides of Broadway and 58th Street helps reinforce the idea that both facades are part of a well-conceived whole and creates an unusual architectural dynamic along the street. The entire composition is crowned emphatically by its broad, copper, bracketed cornice which continues around both main facades. For many years a large neon sign above the cornice declared the building's ownership to the rest of New York.

The twenty-story building originally had large arched window openings in the lower two stories, that housed retail stores of the United States Tire Company. Ten of the upper floors were used by the U. S. Rubber Company for their offices, while the rest were rented to other businesses.

Subsequent History

In 1911, the U.S. Rubber Company took a twenty- one year lease on this land from Mary Fitzgerald, who had started purchasing numerous lots on this block in 1876. The company was able to purchase the land in 1932. They sold it to a holding company in 1940, remaining in this building until 1951 when they moved to a newer headquarters in Rockefeller Center.

At this time die building was sold to the West Side Federal Savings Bank which wanted a more modem look. They hired architect Herbert Tannenbaum who added an awning over the Broadway entrance to the banking offices. In 1959, at the bank's request, Mr. Tannenbaum completely reconfigured the first two stories of the building, cladding them with a glass and polished gray marble facade. Early in 2000, additional windows were installed at the second story level. The building is still used for offices with a bank in the ground floor.

Description

The United States Rubber Company Building is a twenty-story, Beaux-arts style structure located on the southeast comer of Broadway and 58th Street, with main facades facing both streets. A rounded comer faced in rusticated stone connects the two facades, and the entire structure is capped by a broad copper cornice. Above the two lowest stories, the building is clad in marble, with original metal-sash windows. The two lowest stories are faced with polished gray marble with large modem display windows at the ground floor. The second story has newly-installed, metal casement windows.

Broadway Facade

Floors 1-2: The main entrance to the lobby and elevators which serve the upper stories of this building is in the southernmost bay on the Broadway facade. This entrance and the connecting lobby (which is not part of this designation) were renovated in 1988. The entrance consists of an exterior and interior set of double bronze-and-glass doors (installed during the renovation) topped by a plain glass transom. Outside the doorway, to the south, a small vertical sign is, attached to the comer of the building, with the numbers "1790." The rest of the ground story has double-height, plate-glass display windows. The entrance to the bank, which occupies the ground floor commercial space, is located near the corner lot line. It consists of revolving doors recessed slightly behind two comer columns clad in metal. The second story is clad in polished gray marble panels, with seven bays along Broadway. The windows in the two end bays have two sections while all the others have three.

Floors 3-7: Stone bandcourses above the second and seventh stories distinguish this section from those above and below it. Horizontally, the facade is divided into five bays in the center section with one bay on each side. The side bays are faced with rusticated stone, and each has a single, smaller window with original two-over-two metal sash. Each of these side windows is topped by stone voussoirs which merge with the curved spandrel of the floor above. The seventh story is an exception. Here the two windows of the side bays are topped by elaborate carvings including lions' heads, shields, and feathers, which support the small balconies fronting the side windows on the eighth story.

The third story is transitional, with elaborate stone surrounds on each window of the central section. Rounded and triangular pediments alternate above these windows, with flat stone pilasters between each bay. The windows have three-over-three metal sash.

The five center bays of floors four through seven have one-over-one, metal sash windows with metal spandrels, and ornate balcony railings. Continuous, flat stone piers edged with moldings rise between each of the center windows, joining together in segmental arches above the seventh story windows. 8th Floor. This is another transitional story, set off by wide bandcourses above and below it. Each window has three-over-three, metal-framed sash, with engaged pilasters between each bay. The windows in each side bay are capped by rounded pediments which form part of the upper bandcourse.

Floors 9-19: Above the bandcourse is a continuous stone balustrade which extends across the entire facade. On these floors the two end bays are distinct from the five bays in the center. They have smaller, square-headed windows with two-over-two metal sash. In the side bays the windows of each two stories are joined vertically by metal spandrel panels and omate metal balcony railings. Within the center section, all the windows have one-over-one metal sash. Continuous, flat stone piers with moldings rise between each bay and join together above the windows of the nineteenth story. Floors nine and ten are joined vertically, as are floors 11 through 16 and floors 17 through 19, by metal spandrel panels and omate iron balcony railings in front of the windows. The windows of the tenth and sixteenth stories have segmentally-arched tops.

Floor 20: The twentieth story is set off by another prominent bandcourse. Twelve windows are evenly spaced across the facade at this level, each with two- over-two metal sash. Each end bay has elaborately carved window surrounds comprised of carved panels with classical ornament.

Cornice: A very broad, projecting copper cornice featuring moldings and brackets tops the building. Roof: A modern penthouse and a chimney are visible from Broadway and Central Park South. 58th Street Facade

The design of this facade is the same as that on Broadway with the following minor exceptions. On the ground story, there are a freight entrance and a vehicular entrance in the two eastern bays. This facade is slightly wider than that on Broadway, and there are eight rather than seven bays on the second story, while the floors above have six bays in the center section. Along the entire height of the building, the easternmost corner has been refaced with shallow indications of rustication.

The eastern facade of the building is visible over the low building to the east. It is faced in unarticulated brick, with one, square-headed window on each floor, containing three-over-three metal sash.

The southern facade is also visible above the neighboring building to the south. It is also faced with unarticulated brick, pierced by numerous unadorned, square-headed windows.

- From the 2000 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report

Fireworks over the Verrazzano Bridge

One of the most annoying things anyone can do to me is interrupt my lunch. Yet this is precisely what I did to attain this portrait. Four lovely young girls were happily chomping on their sandwiches and chinwagging for England when along came a photographer and sat down beside them. In typical youthful nonchalance all the girls agreed to being photographed. Having developed a slight obsession with different coloured hair I focused more on Bella and Alex (to follow). Bella had strawberry coloured tresses which I thought really suited her.

I assumed the girls were University students as they were sitting on a bench outside the Student Union but it turned out they were sixth formers about to take their A Levels this year. Bella told me they were taking a break from studying in library. I was really impressed to learn this because my view of young people these days is that they avoid libraries like the plague - unless their lives (degrees) depend on it they won't stray anywhere near one. Certainly A Level does not necessitate library visits so all credit to these bright young people who were taking their education and futures so seriously. (Can you tell I was teacher once?).

This picture is #29 in my 100 strangers project. Find out more about the project and see pictures taken by other photographers at the 100 Strangers Flickr Group page

We walked over the two tops that form the Screes, it rained low, snowed high, visibility on top was poor and then I decided to use the Screes path back to the car park at Wasdale. A big mistake in the wet, every boulder was deadly slippy. I only used the little G1X MK2, I carried the 5D but it stayed in my backpack for a change, there wasn't much to get excited about

We had a complete change this Christmas – we cancelled it! - we went walking in The Lakes, or Wasdale more precisely. We were staying at Irton Hall B & B, they had over 70 in for Christmas dinner but we ate jam bread on the slopes of Sca Fell Pike. Fantastic. We had a front wheel puncture on a run flat tyre on the new car with a 100 mile still to drive on the afternoon of Christmas eve on our way there. I drove straight to the nearest ATS – where I have an account – they shook their heads and directed me to Westhoughton Tyres, the lads there were fantastic and got us on our way in good time. BMW dealer advice was run on the flat tyre and then throw it away - £250! Where I would have got a tyre on the western side of the Lakes over Christmas I don’t know, ATS didn’t have one to sell me.

The weather was forecast good for Christmas day but after a fine start it was raining before we even left the car park in Wasdale. We headed up Lingmell and ran into snow on the summit. The path onto Sca Fell Pike was very icy, snow covered and visibility was low, the snow kept falling. We didn’t linger long, it was too cold to have dinner up there so we dropped down onto the Corridor Route, where we had our dinner. We went that way to stretch the walk out, having originally intended to cross to Great End. The tops were so icy, glazed, with not enough snow to get a grip on that we decide to leave it for another day. From Styhead we headed back to Wasdale and a dull but fine finish to the day. A drink in the bar at Irton Hall was on the radar.

Every morning we headed into Wasdale early, it got colder, icier and sunnier as the days went by. We went up Yewbarrow, it was an icy scramble up and I decided it was too dangerous to go down Stirrup Crag to Dore Head so went back the same way. It turned out to be the right decision as we lingered on the top, going to view points that we wouldn’t have and getting some decent photos. One morning we walked over the Screes tops, Illgill Head and Whin Rigg, dropping down the steep slope to The southern end of Wast Water. Having said that I would never walk the Screes path alongside Wast Water again the memory of how awful it is in the rain had faded. There is only really a quarter of a mile out of three miles that is really bad, every rock was like glass with the potential to break a leg every step. It seemed a long way and I was getting killer looks from Herself.

We made our way onto Sca Fell on a beautiful morning, clear blue sky. The snow line had got lower most nights but we never had the low level snow that caused problems in the rest of the country. I chose a, sometimes, pathless way to the summit, partly because I’d never been that way but also to stay in the sun, to keep the view and to avoid the ways that would be a touch dangerous, it was -4 and seared with ice for the last 600 feet. After 15 minutes on the summit wispy thin cloud came racing in, crossing the Lake District in minutes, the photos show it heading towards us and I was glad to have got the clear photos first. Looking out to sea a great mattress of cloud was heading straight for us. It was calm and sunny one minute and the next we were engulfed in thick cloud with 30 yards visibility at the most. I have never had a clear sky turn to cloud so fast – ever! We were going down to Slightside next which was OK, about a mile following the ridge down, the problem was getting back to Wasdale from there. We needed to get to Great Howe which meant a pathless trek a mile SW across Quagrigg Moss – a bog full of tarnlets, it would be a nightmare in low visibility. After getting some accurate compass bearings and heading down off Slightside we suddenly dropped out of the cloud and could see our target, brilliant, we legged it across the semi frozen bog and finally felt able to rest and grab a sandwich and cup of tea. We had to find our way down Raven Crags, which was interesting – and steep! We needed to get to the footbridge to get onto the Burnmoor Tarn path back to Wasdale. As we got closer to Burnmoor Tarn the light that I had been cursing gave us a gorgeous sunset. I had one eye on a gap in the cloud low down in the sky out at sea and I was hoping the sun would break through, it did. Burnmoor Tarn was like a mirror, reflecting the surrounding mountains, including Yewbarrow and parts of the Mosedale Horseshoe in the far distance. There was just the two of us, we had barely seen a soul all day, it was a fantastic end to a tough day. As we dropped into Wasdale I caught the deep pink and orange of the last of the sun, I was shooting into it but I had nothing to lose. There would have been quite a few tripods at the opposite end of the lake but I think I was in the better place – for a change.

On our final walking day we decided to head up Great Gable. It was clear of cloud for a change but ominously the surrounding tops, including the Sca Fells were cloud covered. Another beautiful but very cold morning, it was going to be very icy up there so we elected to go via Styhead and the tourist track. We would choose a way off once we were up there. Long before we got to the top, although we couldn’t see it, we knew the cloud was swirling in and out on the summit so it was going to be hit and miss for the photos. The cloud was down for the last 500 feet but once on the frozen top it kept clearing briefly – very briefly. There were more people up there than we had seen the entire trip previously. People were getting out after Christmas, many had parked at the top of Honister for the fairly easy walk in across Green Gable, some were not dressed for winter walking it has to be said. We left for an icy scramble down to Arron Slack, up onto Green Gable them we galloped down Arron Slack to Styhead and back to Wasdale.

EuroNight «Roma», or more precisely the Basel branch of it - the EN Roma had three branches: one from Basel, one from Zürich, and one from Geneva, converging in Brig - is calling at Spiez station. Behind loco Re 484 017 is the domestic part of this train, with seater coaches Basel - Brig. Unfortunately, the international coaches to Rome are barely visible on this picture. Spiez, 06-06-2007.

Photograph taken at an altitude of Ninety metres, during the first vestiges of dawn light prior to the magic of the Golden Hour around sunrise (Sunrise was at precisely 04:38am), at 03:15am on Thursday 12th June 2014 off Lullingstone Lane and Eagle Heights overlooking the field opposite to Eynsford Viaduct in the village of Eynsford, Kent, England.

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Nikon D800 70mm 1/8s f/2.8 iso100 RAW (14 bit) Nikon RC-DC2 remote shutter release. Manual focus. Manual exposure. Matrix metering.

Nikkor AF-S 70-200mm f/2.8G ED IF VRII. Jessops 77mm UV filter. Nikon MB-D12 battery grip. Two Nikon EN-EL batteries. Nikon DK-17M Magnifying Eyepiece. Nikon DK-19 soft rubber eyecup. Manfrotto MT057C3 057 Carbon Fiber Tripod 3 Sections (Payload 18kgs). Manfrotto MH057M0-RC4 057 Magnesium Ball Head with RC4 Quick Release (Payload 15kgs). Manfrotto quick release plate 410PL-14.Jessops Tripod bag. Optech Tripod Strap.Digi-Chip 64GB Class 10 UHS-1 SDXC. Lowepro Transporter camera strap. Lowepro Vertex 200 AW camera bag. Nikon MC-DC2 remote shutter release. Nikon GP-1 GPS unit.

LATITUDE: N 51d 22m 7.97s

LONGITUDE: E 0d 11m 45.70s

ALTITUDE: 90.0m

RAW (TIFF) FILE: 103.00MB

PROCESSED FILE: 33.10MB

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Processing power:

HP Pavillion Desktop with AMD A10-5700 APU processor. HD graphics. 2TB with 8GB RAM. 64-bit Windows 8.1. Verbatim USB 2.0 1TB desktop hard drive. Nikon VIEWNX2 Version 2.90 64bit. Adobe photoshop Elements 8 Version 8.0 64bit

We had a complete change this Christmas – we cancelled it! - we went walking in The Lakes, or Wasdale more precisely. We were staying at Irton Hall B & B, they had over 70 in for Christmas dinner but we ate jam bread on the slopes of Sca Fell Pike. Fantastic. We had a front wheel puncture on a run flat tyre on the new car with a 100 mile still to drive on the afternoon of Christmas eve on our way there. I drove straight to the nearest ATS – where I have an account – they shook their heads and directed me to Westhoughton Tyres, the lads there were fantastic and got us on our way in good time. BMW dealer advice was run on the flat tyre and then throw it away - £250! Where I would have got a tyre on the western side of the Lakes over Christmas I don’t know, ATS didn’t have one to sell me.

The weather was forecast good for Christmas day but after a fine start it was raining before we even left the car park in Wasdale. We headed up Lingmell and ran into snow on the summit. The path onto Sca Fell Pike was very icy, snow covered and visibility was low, the snow kept falling. We didn’t linger long, it was too cold to have dinner up there so we dropped down onto the Corridor Route, where we had our dinner. We went that way to stretch the walk out, having originally intended to cross to Great End. The tops were so icy, glazed, with not enough snow to get a grip on that we decide to leave it for another day. From Styhead we headed back to Wasdale and a dull but fine finish to the day. A drink in the bar at Irton Hall was on the radar.

Every morning we headed into Wasdale early, it got colder, icier and sunnier as the days went by. We went up Yewbarrow, it was an icy scramble up and I decided it was too dangerous to go down Stirrup Crag to Dore Head so went back the same way. It turned out to be the right decision as we lingered on the top, going to view points that we wouldn’t have and getting some decent photos. One morning we walked over the Screes tops, Illgill Head and Whin Rigg, dropping down the steep slope to The southern end of Wast Water. Having said that I would never walk the Screes path alongside Wast Water again the memory of how awful it is in the rain had faded. There is only really a quarter of a mile out of three miles that is really bad, every rock was like glass with the potential to break a leg every step. It seemed a long way and I was getting killer looks from Herself.

We made our way onto Sca Fell on a beautiful morning, clear blue sky. The snow line had got lower most nights but we never had the low level snow that caused problems in the rest of the country. I chose a, sometimes, pathless way to the summit, partly because I’d never been that way but also to stay in the sun, to keep the view and to avoid the ways that would be a touch dangerous, it was -4 and seared with ice for the last 600 feet. After 15 minutes on the summit wispy thin cloud came racing in, crossing the Lake District in minutes, the photos show it heading towards us and I was glad to have got the clear photos first. Looking out to sea a great mattress of cloud was heading straight for us. It was calm and sunny one minute and the next we were engulfed in thick cloud with 30 yards visibility at the most. I have never had a clear sky turn to cloud so fast – ever! We were going down to Slightside next which was OK, about a mile following the ridge down, the problem was getting back to Wasdale from there. We needed to get to Great Howe which meant a pathless trek a mile SW across Quagrigg Moss – a bog full of tarnlets, it would be a nightmare in low visibility. After getting some accurate compass bearings and heading down off Slightside we suddenly dropped out of the cloud and could see our target, brilliant, we legged it across the semi frozen bog and finally felt able to rest and grab a sandwich and cup of tea. We had to find our way down Raven Crags, which was interesting – and steep! We needed to get to the footbridge to get onto the Burnmoor Tarn path back to Wasdale. As we got closer to Burnmoor Tarn the light that I had been cursing gave us a gorgeous sunset. I had one eye on a gap in the cloud low down in the sky out at sea and I was hoping the sun would break through, it did. Burnmoor Tarn was like a mirror, reflecting the surrounding mountains, including Yewbarrow and parts of the Mosedale Horseshoe in the far distance. There was just the two of us, we had barely seen a soul all day, it was a fantastic end to a tough day. As we dropped into Wasdale I caught the deep pink and orange of the last of the sun, I was shooting into it but I had nothing to lose. There would have been quite a few tripods at the opposite end of the lake but I think I was in the better place – for a change.

On our final walking day we decided to head up Great Gable. It was clear of cloud for a change but ominously the surrounding tops, including the Sca Fells were cloud covered. Another beautiful but very cold morning, it was going to be very icy up there so we elected to go via Styhead and the tourist track. We would choose a way off once we were up there. Long before we got to the top, although we couldn’t see it, we knew the cloud was swirling in and out on the summit so it was going to be hit and miss for the photos. The cloud was down for the last 500 feet but once on the frozen top it kept clearing briefly – very briefly. There were more people up there than we had seen the entire trip previously. People were getting out after Christmas, many had parked at the top of Honister for the fairly easy walk in across Green Gable, some were not dressed for winter walking it has to be said. We left for an icy scramble down to Aaron Slack, up onto Green Gable them we galloped down Aaron Slack to Styhead and back to Wasdale.

This is the stitch made using a thicker thread, so that you can see precisely how it’s made.

This is Jack. He is a dog. More precisely, a Danish Swedish Farmdog. The two cute girls behind him are Elin and Amanda. They live in Tungelsta, and I met them near the Nödesta farm today. Promenades are actually one of their hobbies, but if I heard them right they have yet to walk up to the old tree which was a bit of a surprise. They tried a few excuses not to appear in a photo. Like no makeup, bad hair-day and a few more, but none of them took. Both girls are secondary school students. I asked if they had anything fun planned, and they sure did. It won't be long now before the girls fly down to Crete for a week of fun. And I'm guessing it will be a memorable vacation, as it's the first one they will do without any parents around. My only advice to them was to try some Ouzo 12 with crushed ice and 7Up. And to fly down to Santorini next time and do some island hopping in the Cyclades.