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Dear flickr friends,

 

I've come to the realization that I am SO BUSY! School-work is piling up, my internship is keeping me busy, and holiday season is coming up fast , and as a result of all of these combined, you may (or may not) have noticed a conspicuous lack of self-portraits for the 365 group from me. If you have, you're right. I haven't had time to take any SP's lately, much less any pictures! I decided that I'm going to stop the 365 challenge. I'm actually surprised that I've gotten as far as I have! I was thinking about it the other day and I have 168 pictures left to do. Woah. That number completely overwhelmed me! Hence my decision.

 

One thing I noticed in a lot of my SP's is that I don't genuinely smile. Here's the deal. I have yellow and stained teeth. They don't look so bad in this picture because the sun was so blaringly bright (yest that's a word), but the reason my teeth are yellow and stained is because a lot of it is genetic. Thanks dad. :) I actually take really good care of my teeth, have tried bleaching, etc. but nothing really seems to work. I've given up at this point on ever having the star-white teeth and I don't even notice anymore. People tell me I have a nice smile, but then I become self-conscious because I know it's then that they've seen my teeth. This is why i don't fully smile in a lot of my SP's and why make such silly faces, so I can distract you! :)

 

All that said, I'm done with 365, for now. When things start to calm down (like after I graduate!) I might start over. I want to have that feeling of accomplishment of doing this for a year, I don't think I've ever done anything consecutively for a year (well, besides brush my teeth, but we've already talked about that).

 

I'll still take some SP's every once in a while, but just not every day now. I'm done being stressed out, and it feels kind of nice not have to check another thing off of my list everyday. And I'll definitely take pictures of life that happens around me!

 

Thanks for all of you, I feel like I have become ten-times better at my pictures because of your comments and suggestions. 365 truly has helped me become a better photographer and I look forward to doing this project again in the future.

 

*cheers!*

+++ DISCLAIMER +++

Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based on historical facts. BEWARE!

  

Some background:

Due to the restrictions of the Versailles treaties, the Reichswehr was already dealing with the increasing mobilization and motorization of the army after the end of the First World War. The realization that the speed of the troop units required appropriate equipment was available early on. However, the Reichswehr suffered from financial constraints and during the Weimar Republic the industry only had limited capacity for series production of larger, armored vehicles.

 

Nevertheless, at that time the Sd.Kfz. 3 (unarmored half-track transport vehicle/1927), the ARW (eight-wheel car/1928) and the ZRW (ten-wheel car/1928) provided fundamental experience. The findings of these tests and the troop testing with the Sd.Kfz. 3 enabled a more precise specification of the new vehicles to be developed. The "heavy" armored cars were primarily intended for the reconnaissance units of the new armored forces.

 

The incipient rearmament could only start with a "cheap" solution, though. A three-part armored structure for the chassis of commercially available off-road trucks was developed by the Army Weapons Office, Dept. WaTest 6, in cooperation with the company Deutsche Eisenwerke AG. The typical truck chassis featured front-wheel steering and a driven bogie at the rear (4x6 layout). In June 1929, the companies Magirus, Daimler-Benz and Büssing-NAG were commissioned to develop the desired armored car from it. If you consider that this truck class was developed for a payload of 1.5t, you can already conclude from this that the vehicles, which are now equipped with a significantly heavy armored structure, had little off-road mobility. Even if the appearance of the vehicles supplied by the different manufacturers was similar, there were external distinguishing features by which the manufacturer could be identified. The vehicles were tested in the Reichswehr from 1932 and introduced later.

 

One of the four crew members (driver, commander, gunner, radio-operator) was used as a reverse driver: with the narrow streets of the time and a turning circle of between 13 and 16m, this function was essential for a truck-sized heavy reconnaissance vehicle. The chassis had the excellent ladder-type configuration, able to withstand the stress of rough rides at high speed. The scout car was 5570 mm long, 1820 mm wide, 2250 mm high and weighed 5.35, 5.7 or 6 tons, depending on the manufacturer. The hull was made of welded steel armor, 5 to 14.5 mm (0.2-0.57 in) thick depending on the angle (bottom to front) with well-sloped plates. The armament consisted of a 2 cm KwK 30 with 200 rounds and a MG 13 with 1300 rounds in a manually operated turret. The fuel supply was 90, 105 or 110 liters, but with a consumption of about 35 or 40 liters per 100 km, this resulted in a completely inadequate range for a scout car.

 

Having no true alternatives at hand, the armored 4x6 car was accepted and became known as the Sd.Kfz. 231 (6-wheel), and it was subsequently developed into two more vehicles. Up until 1937, 123 vehicles were built as Sd.Kfz. 231 reconnaissance cars and Sd.Kfz. 232 radio trucks. A further 28 were manufactured as Sd.Kfz. 263 (Panzerfunkwagen) command vehicles.

As early as 1932, after testing the pilot series, it was clear that the interim solution of "cheap" 6-wheel vehicles would not meet the future requirements of the armored divisions now planned. It was planned that from 1935/36 at least 18 vehicles of a new type that would meet the requirements for off-road mobility and high road speeds should be produced annually. Büssing-NAG had obviously made a good impression with the ARW and was now commissioned to make the revised vehicle ready for series production, which would become the SdKfz. 231 (8-Rad). The overall concept was completed between 1934 and 1935 and already showed all the features of the future type: all 8 wheels driven and steered, the same speed forwards and backwards, ability to change direction in less than 10 seconds, and a turning circle of "only" 10.5m. The vehicle layout was changed, too: the engine bay was relocated to the rear, the crew compartment was placed at the front end. This improved weight distribution, handling, and the field of view for the main forward driver.

The purpose of the new vehicles was identical to that of the earlier heavy 6-wheel vehicles, they were used on the same sites and so the same ordnance inventory designation was adopted, despite the vehicle’s many modifications. The so-called Sd.Kfz. 231 (8-Rad) was armed, corresponding to its 6-Rad counterpart, with a 2cm KwK 30 and the MG 13 (later MG 34) in a rotating turret. Likewise, the Sd.Kfz. 232 (8-Rad) carried a large, curved bow antenna, and there was a Sd.Kfz. 263 (8-Rad) command vehicle, too.

 

Nevertheless, the Army Weapons Office demanded a short-term solution for a vehicle based on the 4x6 chassis that offered better off-road performance and armament, namely a 37 mm anti-tank gun, with at least comparable range and armor protection. This interim vehicle was supposed to be ready for service in early 1934. Magirus accepted the challenge and proposed the Sd.Kfz. 241, a 4x8 vehicle. It retained the old overall 6-Rad layout with the front engine under a long bonnet, but it had a fourth steered axle added to lower ground pressure and improve the vehicle’s trench bridging capabilities. The powered two rear axles retained the 6-Rad’s twin wheels, so that the vehicle stood on a total of twelve tires with a relatively large footprint. The armored hull was very similar to the Sd.Kfz. 231 6-Rad, but carried a new, bigger turret with a 3.7 cm KwK 30 L/45 gun and an axis-parallel 7.92 mm MG 34 light machine gun.

 

The box-shaped turret exploited the hull’s width to the maximum and had a maximum armor of 15 mm, no base and the seat of the commander was attached to the tower wall. The commander sat elevated under a raised cupola in the rear section of the turret, just behind the main gun. He had five viewing slits protected by glass blocks and steel slides for all-round visibility. The gunner/loader, standing to the left of the main gun, had to constantly follow the movement of the turret, which was done by hand. In order to support the gunner when slewing the turret, the commander had an additional handle on the right side. The two crew members also had a turret position indicator.

The cannon was fired electrically via a trigger, the machine gun was operated mechanically with a pedal. To aim and view the outside, the gunner had a gun sight to the left of the gun with an opening in the gun mantlet. Standard access to the vehicle was through low double-doors in the vehicle’ flank, but side exit openings in the turret with two flaps each were also frequently used to board it. Another entry was through the commander cupola’s lid.

With all this extra hardware, the Sd.Kfz. 241’s overall weight rose considerably from the late Sd.Kfz. 231 (6-Rad) nearly 6 tons to 7.5 tons. As a consequence, the chassis had to be reinforced and a more powerful engine was used, a 6-cylinder Maybach HL 42 TRKM w carburetor gasoline engine with 4170 cc capacity and 100 hp (74 kW) output at 3000 rpm.

 

As expected, the Sd.Kfz. 241 was not a success. Even though the first vehicles were delivered in time in mid-1934, its operational value was rather limited. Off-road capability was, due to the extra weight, the raised center of gravity and the lack of all-wheel drive, just as bad as the 6-Rad vehicles, and the more powerful engine’s higher fuel consumption allowed neither higher range, despite bigger fuel tanks, nor a better street performance. The only real progress was the new 3.7 cm KwK 30’s firepower, which was appreciated by the crews, even though the weapon was only effective against armored targets at close range. At 100 m, 64 mm of vertical armor could be penetrated, but at 500 m this already dropped to 31 mm, any angle in the armor weakened its hitting power even further. The weapon’s maximum range was 5.000m, though, and with HE rounds the Sd.Kfz. 241 could provide indirect fire support. Another factor that limited the vehicle’s effectiveness was that the gun had to be operated by a single crew member who had to load and aim at the same time – there was simply not enough space for a separate loader who would also have increased the gun’s rate of fire from six to maybe twelve rounds per minute. The vehicle’s armor was also inadequate and only gave protection against light firearms, but not against machine guns or heavier weapons. On the other side, the cupola on top of the turret offered the commander in his elevated position a very good all-round field of view, even when under full protection – but this progressive detail was not adopted for the following armored reconnaissance vehicles and remained exclusive to German battle tanks.

 

Only a total of fifty-five Sd.Kfz. 241s were completed by Magirus in Cologne until 1936, when production of the Sd.Kfz. 231 (8-Rad) vehicle family started and soon replaced the Sd.Kfz. 241, which was primarily operated at the Eastern Front in Poland and Czechoslovakia. By 1940, no Sd.Kfz. 241 was left in any frontline army unit, but a few survivors were grouped together and handed over to police units. Their main gun was either completely deleted or sometimes replaced with a second machine gun, and they were used for urban patrols and riot control duties. However, by 1942, no Sd.Kfz. 241 was left over.

  

Specifications:

Crew: Four (commander, gunner, driver, radio operator/rear driver)

Weight: 7.5 tons (11.450 lb)

Length: 5,85 metres (19 ft 2 in)

Width: 2,20 metres (7 ft 2 ½ in)

Height: 2,78 metres (9 ft 1 in)

Ground clearance: 28.5 cm (10 in)

Suspension: Torsion bar and leaf springs

Fuel capacity: 150 litres (33 imp gal; 40 US gal)

 

Armor:

8–15 mm (0.31 – 0.6 in)

 

Performance:

Maximum road speed: 70 km/h (43.5 mph)

52 km/h (32.3 mph) backwards

Operational range: 250 km (155 miles)

Power/weight: 13 PS/ton

 

Engine:

Maybach HL42 TRKM water-cooled straight 6-cylinder petrol engine with 100 hp (74 kW),

driving the rear pair of axles

 

Transmission:

Maybach gearbox with 5-speed forward and 4-speed reverse

 

Armament:

1× 37 mm KwK 30 L/45 cannon with 70 rounds

1× 7.92 mm MG 34 machine gun mounted co-axially with 1.300 rounds

  

The kit and its assembly:

This fictional armored car was inspired by a leftover rear axles from an Italeri Sd.Kfz. 231 (6-Rad) model that I converted into a fictional half-track variant some time ago. I wondered if the set could be transplanted under an 8-Rad chassis, to create a kind of missing link to the 8x8 successors of the Sd.Kfz. 231 (6-Rad) with a total of twelve tires on four axles.

 

The basis became a First to Fight 1:72 Sd.Kfz. 231 (8-Rad) kit – a rather simple and robust affair, apparently primarily intended for tabletop purposes. But the overall impression is good, and it would be modified, anyway, even though the plastic turned out to be rather soft/waxy and the parts’ sprue attachment points a bit wacky.

 

The hull was “turned around” to drive backwards, so that its rear engine ended up in the front. I eventually only used the rear twin wheels from the Sd.Kfz. 231 (6-Rad), but not its single axles and laminated springs. Instead, I first cut the OOB mudguards in two halves, removed their side skirts and glued them onto the lower hull in reversed order, so that the exhausts and their muffler boxes would end up at the rear of the front fenders. With these in place I checked the axles’ position from the OOB ladder chassis, which is a single, integral part, and found that the rear axles’ position had to be moved by 2mm backwards. Cutting the original piece and re-arranging it was easier to scratch a new rear suspension, and the rocker bars had to be shortened to accept the wider twin wheels.

 

The original small turret with the 20 mm autocannon was deleted and replaced with core elements from a Panzer III turret, left over from previous conversion projects. Wider than any original turret of the Sd.Kfz. 231/232 family, it had to be narrowed by roughly 5mm – I had to cut a respective plug from the turret’s and the mantlet’s middle section, the deformed hatch was covered under a Panzer III commander cupola. To mate the re-arranged turret with the OOB adapter plate to mount it onto the hull, and to add overall stability to the construction, I filled the interior with 2C putty.

The typical storage bin at the turret’s rear was omitted, though, it would have made it too large for the compact truck chassis. The shape was a perfect stylistic match, even though, with the longer gun barrel, the vehicle reminds a lot of the Soviet BA-10 heavy armored car?

 

Most small details like the bumpers and the headlights were taken OOB, I added a whip antenna base at the rear and mounted two spare wheels at the back, one of them covered with a tarpaulin (made from paper tissue drenched with white glue, this was also used to create the gun mantlet seals).

  

Painting and markings:

Typical for German vehicles from the early WWII stages the Sd.Kfz. 241 was painted Panzergrau (RAL 7021; I used Humbrol 67, which is authentic, but mixed it with some 125 to create a slightly lighter shade of grey) overall - quite dull, but realistic. To make the vehicle look more interesting, though, I added authentic contemporary camouflage in the form of low-contrast blotches with RAL 8017, a very dark reddish brown, mixed from Humbrol 160 and some 98. Better, but IMHO still not enough.

 

After the model received a washing with highly thinned red-brown acrylic artist paint I applied the few decals and gave the parts an overall dry-brushing treatment with grey and dark earth. Everything was sealed with matt acrylic varnish. For even more “excitement”, I decided to add a coat of snow.

For the simulated “frosting” I used white tile grout – which has the benefits of being water-soluble, quite sturdy to touch and the material does not yellow over time like gypsum.

 

First, the wheels, the chassis and the inside of the wheel arches received a separate treatment with relatively dryly mixed tile grout, simulating snow and dirt clusters. Once thoroughly dried, the wheels were mounted. Then the model was sprayed with low surface tension water and loose tile grout was drizzled over hull and turret, creating a flaky coat of fake snow. Once dry again, everything received another coat of matt acrylic varnish to protect and fixate everything further.

  

A relatively quick build, done in a few days. The First to Fight kit is very simple and went together well, but I’d use something else the next time due to the odd material it was molded with. The outcome of an 4x8 scout car looks quite plausible, though, like the missing link between the Sd.Kfz. 231 and 232 – the unintended similarity with the Soviet BA-10 heavy armored car was a bit surprising, though. And the snow on the model eventually makes it look a bit more interesting, the stunt was worth the effort.

Maletto is on the western side of the Etna to 960 M of altitude. Human settlings, around the actual Maletto, they were had until from the first millennium before Christ. There lived the Siculs, then arrived Greeks, Romans, Byzantines and Arabs, Normans and Swabians. To one of these last, the Manfredi Maletta count, is owed the origin of Maletto. In the 1263, this one did raise on the fortress a strengthened tower, said Castle, about which s picked up a first nucleus of inhabitants. The construction of the actual historical centre was started at the end of XV century, when the districts that are today around the Castle were built. The construction then continued in the first years of the following century with the realization of the baronial palace of the Spatafora and the attached Saint Michael Archangel church, l et alone of stores and of an open gallery, of an inn and of a warehouse. It was however starting from the 1619, when Maletto the king of Spain recognized the title of principality, that the area is developed mostly, assuming the definitive aspect kept to our days. Maletto is the most elevated town of the Etna and of the province of Catania and it reverts nearly for whole in the park of the Etna.The production of the strawberries has made famous Maletto in the world.

 

Maletto è un comune italiano di 4.029 abitanti della provincia di Catania in Sicilia.Le origini del piccolo comune etneo risalgono al 1263. Esso nacque per interesse di Manfredi di Maletta, parente dell'imperatore Federico I, che edificò su uno sperone roccioso un castello, di cui ancora si conservano i ruderi. Il piccolo borgo fu abbandonato e decadde. L'attuale agglomerato urbano, è frutto della ricostruzione avviata nel 1440, ad opera del principe Spadafora.Ogni anno, nel mese di giugno, Maletto diventa la città delle fragole, richiamando centinaia di turisti e di visitatori. Nel corso della Sagra, le maestranze locali realizzano una gigantesca torta alla fragola di oltre mille chili, che viene offerta a tutti i partecipanti. Durante la manifestazione vengono esposti in appositi stand le fragole in piantine e in cassette e sono offerte come assaggio gratuito ai visitatori. Il frutto matura tra i primi di maggio e la fine di giugno e nell'ambito della sagra sono esposti diversi tipi di fragole: la fragolina di pasticceria, la fragola "rifiorente", che matura da gennaio a dicembre, e la fragola tradizionale, dal sapore più dolce e dall'odore più profumato. La sagra dura tre giorni e si svolge di solito dal venerdì alla domenica.

 

Mount Etna (Aetna in Latin, also known as Muncibeddu in Sicilian and Mongibello in Italian, a combination of Latin mons and Arabic gibel, both meaning mountain) is an active stratovolcano on the east coast of Sicily, close to Messina and Catania. Its Arabic name was Jebel Utlamat (the Mountain of Fire).Volcanic activity at Etna began about half a million years ago, with eruptions occurring beneath the sea off the coastline of Sicily. 300,000 years ago, volcanism began occurring to the southwest of the present-day summit, before activity moved towards the present centre 170,000 years ago. Eruptions at this time built up the first major volcanic edifice, forming a strato-volcano in alternating explosive and effusive eruptions. The growth of the mountain was occasionally interrupted by major eruptions leading to the collapse of the summit to form calderas.From about 35,000 to 15,000 years ago, Etna experienced some highly explosive eruptions, generating large pyroclastic flows which left extensive ignimbrite deposits. Ash from these eruptions has been found as far away as Rome, 800 km to the north.Sicily's greatest natural attraction is also its highest mountain: Mount Etna, at 10,924 feet, is the most active volcano in Europe and the oldest recorded active volcano in the world.Mount Etna is an active volcano on the east coast of Sicily, close to Messina and Catania. It is the largest active volcano in Europe, currently standing about 3329.6 m (10,924 feet)high, though it should be noted that this varies with summit eruptions; the mountain is 21.6 m (71 ft) lower now than it was in 1865. It is the highest mountain in Italy south of the Alps. Etna covers an area of 1,190 km² (460 square miles) with a basal circumference of 140 km.The fertile volcanic soils support extensive agriculture, with vineyards and orchards spread across the lower slopes of the mountain and the broad Plain of Catania to the south. Due to its history of recent activity and nearby population, Mount Etna has been designated a Decade Volcano by the United Nations.Etna lava stone is a material with unique characteristics: durable, indestructible, resistant to changes in the temperature (it’s a heat conductor), it offers infinite possibilities of uses: flooring, urban furniture, interior design.After the glazing process the product doesn’t get stained, resists to acids and doesn’t require particular maintenance: that’s why lava stone is the ideal material even to make kitchens and bathrooms countertops. The natural stone tends to grey, with the glazing process we can obtain any desired colour. Shapes, sizes and decorations can be customized . The lava stone it is formed by the solidification of cooled magma on the surface of the Etna volcano, in Sicily

 

L'Etna è un vulcano attivo che si trova sulla costa orientale della Sicilia (Italia), tra Catania e Messina. È il vulcano attivo più alto del continente europeo e uno dei maggiori al mondo. La sua altezza varia nel tempo a causa delle sue eruzioni, ma si aggira attualmente sui 3329.6 m (10,924 feet) s.l.m. Il suo diametro è di circa 45 chilometri.Un tempo era noto anche come Mongibello.In genere le eruzioni dell'Etna pur fortemente distruttive delle cose, non lo sono per le persone se si eccettuano i casi fortuiti o di palese imprudenza come quello dell'improvvisa esplosione di massi del 1979 che uccise nove turisti e ne ferì una decina di altri avventuratisi fino al cratere appena spento. L'Etna è un tipico strato-vulcano che iniziò la sua attività, tra 500 e 700 mila anni fa. La sua lava di tipo basaltico è povera in silice, è molto calda, densa e fluida. Per queste ragioni le eruzioni sono tranquille ed il percorso delle lave prevedibile. La velocità di scorrimento è superiore a quella delle lave acide, più ricche in silice e più viscose e leggere.La lavorazione della pietra lavica, derivante dall’industria estrattiva delle vicine cave dell'Etna, per scopi ornamentali o per materiali da costruzione, diede da vivere a molte famiglie siciliane.I "pirriaturi", anticamente, estraevano lungo i costoni dell'Etna solo strati superficiali di lava perché più porosi e più facilmente lavorabili con arnesi quali la subbia, lo scalpello, la mazzola e il martello. Sul materiale estratto interveniva lo spaccapietre che ricavava lastre di pietra, infine lo scalpellino rifiniva il materiale. Uno degli usi prevalenti cui era destinata la pietra lavica era la pavimentazione delle strade urbane

 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAT2XppUwxg

 

Série limitée et numérotée, avec certificat joint, pour chaque modèle de cadre.

PHOTO & TIRAGE en VENTE directe. DEVIS personnalisé SUR DEMANDE relevez la référence sous la photo

Me contacter : comlaphoto@gmail.com

 

Les photos, pour une lecture plus rapide, sont ici en basse résolution.

Tous ces clichés sont disponibles en haute résolution pour des tirages de qualité supérieure sur tous types de supports.

Tirages et impression sur tous supports : tirage classique, d’art, supports rigides (dibond, plexi, bois et pvc), toile, bâche etc.…

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A l’exception des œuvres d’artistes bénéficiant de la protection propriété intellectuelle (sculpteurs, architectes, peintres, marques, tags, graffitis, dessinateurs etc.)

  

Series limited and numbered, with certificate attached, for each model framework.

PHOTO & drawing in direct sales. Custom application specifications take the reference under the photo

Contact me: comlaphoto@gmail.com

 

The photos, for a faster reading, are here in low resolution.

All these clichés are available in high resolution for prints of superior quality on all types of media.

Prints and print in all formats: Classic, fine art print, rigid supports (dibond, selection, wood and pvc), canvas, tarpaulin etc....

Realization of proboscis eye.

Except the works of artists protected intellectual property (sculptors, architects, painters, designers etc.)

Towards the end of the Korean War, the USAF came to the realization that their transport fleet was becoming obsolete. The C-46 Commandos and C-47 Skytrains in service were no longer adequate, while the C-119 Flying Boxcar was having difficulties. In 1951, the USAF issued a requirement for a new tactical transport, an aircraft that would need to carry at least 72 passengers, be capable of dropping paratroopers, and have a ramp for loading vehicles directly into the cargo compartment. Moreover, it must be a “clean sheet” design, not a conversion from an existing airliner, and the USAF preferred it be a turboprop design. Five companies submitted designs, and six months later the USAF chose Lockheed’s L-402 design—over the misgivings of Lockheed’s chief designer, Clarence “Kelly” Johnson, who warned that the L-402 would destroy the company. Little was Johnson to know that, fifty years later, the L-402—designated C-130 Hercules by the USAF—would still be in production, and one out of only five aircraft to have over 50 years of service with the original purchaser.

 

The C-130 was designed to give mostly unfettered access to a large cargo compartment—the ramp forms an integral part of the rear fuselage, the wing is mounted above the fuselage, and the landing gear is carried in sponsons attached to the fuselage itself, while the fuselage has a circular design to maximize loading potential. The high wing also gives the C-130 good lift, especially in “high and hot” situations. The Allison T56 turboprop was designed specifically for the Hercules, and has gone on to become one of the most successful turboprop designs in history.

 

After two YC-130 prototypes, the Hercules went into production as the C-130A in 1956, to be superseded by the improved C-130B in 1959. The latter became the baseline Hercules variant: C-130As had three-blade propellers and a rounded “Roman” nose, while the B introduced the more familiar, longer radar nose and four-blade propellers. In the 50 years hence, the basic C-130 design has not changed much: the C-130E introduced underwing external fuel tanks, while the C-130H has a slightly different wing. Even the new C-130J variant only introduced new engines with more fuel efficient six-bladed propellers: the basic design remains the same. Lockheed also offers stretched versions of the Hercules, initially as a civilian-only option (the L-100-30); the British Royal Air Force bought this version as the C-130K and it was later adopted by other nations, including the United States.

 

The basic C-130 is strictly a transport aircraft, but the versatility of the aircraft has meant it has been modified into a dizzying number of variants. These include the AC-130 Spectre gunship, the HC-130 rescue aircraft and WC-130 weather reconnaissance version. Other versions include several dozen EC-130 electronic warfare/Elint variants, KC-130 tankers, and DC-130 drone aircraft controllers. The USAF, the US Navy, and the US Marine Corps are all C-130 operators as well. Besides the United States, there are 67 other operators of C-130s, making it one of the world’s most prolific aircraft. C-130s are also used extensively by civilian operators as well as the L-100 series.

 

The “Herky Bird,” as it is often nicknamed, has participated in every military campaign fought by the United States since 1960 in one variation or the other. During Vietnam, it was used in almost every role imaginable, from standard transport to emergency bomber. It was also instrumental in resupplying the Khe Sanh garrison during its three-month siege. Hercules crews paid the price as well: nearly 70 C-130s were lost during the Vietnam War. In foreign service, C-130s have also been used heavily, the most famous instance of which was likely the Israeli Entebbe Raid of 1976, one of the longest-ranged C-130 missions in history. C-130s are often in the forefront of humanitarian missions to trouble spots around the world.

 

As of this writing, over 2300 C-130s have been built, and most are still in service. It remains the backbone of the USAF’s tactical transport service; attempts to replace it with the Advanced Tactical Transport Program (ATTP) in the 1980s and to supplement it with the C-27J Spartan in the 2000s both failed, as the USAF realized that the only real replacement for a C-130 is another C-130.

 

This CC-130H, 130329 of 435 Transport Squadron, stopped in for a visit to Malmstrom AFB in spring 1977, where Dad got this picture. It carries the old Canadian Forces transport scheme of antiglare white over bare metal, with the CAF's "lightning bolt" on the fuselage. At the time, 435 Squadron operated from CFB Edmonton, Alberta, though today they are based at Winnipeg. Sadly, this aircraft crashed in November 1982 with the loss of the entire crew.

At their Mt. Washington HQ.

“I want everything back, the way it was. But there is no point to it, this wanting.”

― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale

Towards the end of the Korean War, the USAF came to the realization that their transport fleet was becoming obsolete. The C-46 Commandos and C-47 Skytrains in service were no longer adequate, while the C-119 Flying Boxcar was having difficulties. In 1951, the USAF issued a requirement for a new tactical transport, an aircraft that would need to carry at least 72 passengers, be capable of dropping paratroopers, and have a ramp for loading vehicles directly into the cargo compartment. Moreover, it must be a “clean sheet” design, not a conversion from an existing airliner, and the USAF preferred it be a turboprop design. Five companies submitted designs, and six months later the USAF chose Lockheed’s L-402 design—over the misgivings of Lockheed’s chief designer, Clarence “Kelly” Johnson, who warned that the L-402 would destroy the company. Little was Johnson to know that, fifty years later, the L-402—designated C-130 Hercules by the USAF—would still be in production, and one out of only five aircraft to have over 50 years of service with the original purchaser.

 

The C-130 was designed to give mostly unfettered access to a large cargo compartment—the ramp forms an integral part of the rear fuselage, the wing is mounted above the fuselage, and the landing gear is carried in sponsons attached to the fuselage itself, while the fuselage has a circular design to maximize loading potential. The high wing also gives the C-130 good lift, especially in “high and hot” situations. The Allison T56 turboprop was designed specifically for the Hercules, and has gone on to become one of the most successful turboprop designs in history.

 

After two YC-130 prototypes, the Hercules went into production as the C-130A in 1956, to be superseded by the improved C-130B in 1959. The latter became the baseline Hercules variant: C-130As had three-blade propellers and a rounded "Roman" nose, while the B introduced the more familiar, longer radar nose and four-blade propellers. (Virtually all A models were later retrofitted to the long nose, though they kept the three-blade propellers.) In the 50 years hence, the basic C-130 design has not changed much: the C-130E introduced underwing external fuel tanks, while the C-130H has a slightly different wing. Even the new C-130J variant only introduced new engines with more fuel efficient six-bladed propellers: the basic design remains the same. Lockheed also offers stretched versions of the Hercules, initially as a civilian-only option (the L-100-30); the British Royal Air Force bought this version as the C-130K and it was later adopted by other nations, including the United States.

 

The basic C-130 is strictly a transport aircraft, but the versatility of the aircraft has meant it has been modified into a dizzying number of variants. These include the AC-130 Spectre gunship, the HC-130 rescue aircraft and WC-130 weather reconnaissance version. Other versions include several dozen EC-130 electronic warfare/Elint variants, KC-130 tankers, and DC-130 drone aircraft controllers. The USAF, the US Navy, and the US Marine Corps are all C-130 operators as well. Besides the United States, there are 67 other operators of C-130s, making it one of the world’s most prolific aircraft, with its only rivals the Bell UH-1 Iroquois family and the Antonov An-2 Colt biplane transport. C-130s are also used extensively by civilian operators as well as the L-100 series.

 

The “Herky Bird,” as it is often nicknamed, has participated in every military campaign fought by the United States since 1960 in one variation or the other. During Vietnam, it was used in almost every role imaginable, from standard transport to emergency bomber: as the latter, it dropped M121 10,000 pound mass-focus bombs to clear jungle away for helicopter landing zones, and it was even attempted to use C-130s with these bombs against the infamous Thanh Hoa Bridge in North Vietnam. (Later this capability was added as standard to MC-130 Combat Talon special forces support aircraft; the MC-130 is the only aircraft cleared to carry the GBU-43 MOAB.) It was also instrumental in resupplying the Khe Sanh garrison during its three-month siege. Hercules crews paid the price as well: nearly 70 C-130s were lost during the Vietnam War. In foreign service, C-130s have also been used heavily, the most famous instance of which was likely the Israeli Entebbe Raid of 1976, one of the longest-ranged C-130 missions in history. C-130s are often in the forefront of humanitarian missions to trouble spots around the world.

 

As of this writing, over 2300 C-130s have been built, and most are still in service. It remains the backbone of the USAF’s tactical transport service; attempts to replace it with the Advanced Tactical Transport Program (ATTP) in the 1980s and to supplement it with the C-27J Spartan in the 2000s both failed, as the USAF realized that the only real replacement for a C-130 is another C-130.

 

This rather plain looking C-130E is actually one of the most decorated Hercules in USAF service. Delievered around 1963 to the USAF as 62-1787, it was assigned to the 374th Tactical Airlift Wing based at Ching Chuan Kang AB, Taiwan, with detachments deployed throughout South Vietnam. On 15 April 1972, using the callsign Spare 617, the crew was sent out to airdrop ammunition to South Vietnamese forces during the Siege of An Loc. As the crew approached the drop zone, Spare 617 was raked by antiaircraft fire that killed the flight engineer, badly wounded loadmaster TSgt. Charles Shaub and the copilot, knocked out two engines, and set the cargo on fire. Despite his wounds, Shaub was able to jettison the ammunition pallets, which exploded just after leaving the aircraft. The pilot, Captain William Caldwell, got the aircraft back to Tan Son Nhut airport on one engine (a third one quit on approach) and with Shaub manually cranking down one of the landing gear. For their actions, Caldwell and Shaub were awarded the Air Force Cross, the second-highest award for gallantry in the USAF.

 

62-1787 was repaired and returned to service, and continued to serve in the USAF until 2011, when it was finally retired after 48 years of flying; its last unit was the 187th Airlift Wing (Arkansas ANG) at Little Rock AFB. It was donated to the National Museum of the USAF, where it remains today. 62-1787 carries its final color scheme of overall AMC Gray, and retains the 187th AW's "The Rock" tail stripe. Just goes to prove that even the most plain of aircraft has a story to tell.

Name: Kraanspoor

City: Amsterdam

Architect(s): OTH (Ontwerpgroep Trude Hooykaas bv)

realization: 2007

 

Kraanspoor (translated as craneway) is a light-weight transparent office building of three floors built on top of a concrete craneway on the grounds of the former NDSM (Nederlandsche Dok en Scheepsbouw Maatschappij) shipyard, a relic of Amsterdam’s shipping industry. This industrial monument, built in 1952, has a length of 270 meters, a height of 13,5 meters and a width of 8,7 meters. A street length and width. The new construction on top is the same 270 meters long, with a width of 13,8 meters, accentuates the length of Kraanspoor and the phenomenal expansive view of the river IJ. Fully respecting its foundation, the building is lifted by slender steel columns 3 meters above the crane way, appearing to float above the impressive concrete colossus.

 

The challenge of the design for OTH was to utilize the maximum allowable load of the existing craneway. The concrete craneway functions as a foundation, and carries the maximum possible weight of a three storey building, with an asymmetrical overhang on the water-side; this is due to the heavier load barring function for the former revolving cranes that cantilevered to this side. The light-weight building of steel construction made the light-weight floors necessary. By using a hollow Infra+ floor system, the piping and wiring are tucked away in the floor allowing for a maximum clear height.

 

The glass building is clear and simple in plan. The newly built construction is characterized by its transparent double-skin climate façade of glass: the outer layer of moveable motor-driven glass louvers appear as lace-work around the building, the inner façade is of hinged timber windows with a full height from office floor to ceiling. This climate façade allows natural ventilation of the offices and acts as a buffer against heat in the summer and cold in the winter. The concrete Infra+ underfloor of only 70mm allows for concrete core activity. The water from the IJ river is pumped up and used for heating as well as cooling via a water pump.

 

The pre-existing facilities have been utilised in the building’s new function. The former four old stairwells still remain as entrance to the building and are foreseen with panorama lifts and new stairs. The two gangways/catwalks alongside the concrete craneway function as fire-escape routes. In the heart of the original concrete structure, underneath the new structure, is extensive archive/storage space.

 

"A seamless combination of old and new – industrial heritage and modern architecture in which the waterways are restored and the slipway determines the orientation. The entire place with its shipping industrial past has an intense energy. The object is to intertwine the old with the new, to preserve history, and not loose this energy.

 

The wharf is dead? – Long live the wharf."

 

text: www.archdaily.com

Meet me the woods tonight # Lord Huron . Sometimes it's painful to find out the truth - dreaming of something that never existed.

 

Day 24... Follow your bliss

 

Follow your bliss

and the universe will open doors for you where

there were only walls. - Joseph Campbell

 

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Image created today on the bluff within The Self Realization Fellowship Center Encinitas. The surf break was larger with a strong off shore breeze holding the waves up while producing this beautiful spray...

After Self-Realization, I thought i understood all the five principles, but i actually had understood only the 4th Principle the most. Before Gnan, I have faced difficult times during conversation with my sticky file which is my ex-wife, but after Gnan when i happened to speak to her i had immense peace within unlike earlier which is very impressive for me.

 

Read here more about Self Realization:

 

In English: www.dadabhagwan.org/self-realization/

 

In Hindi: hindi.dadabhagwan.org/self-realization/

 

In Gujarati: www.dadabhagwan.in/self-realization/

---- thinking of Lady Florence .... ----

 

............. "The Beehives" ..............

 

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Lady Florence, with her husband, Professor Cacciola, bought 87 lots of land to build the Public Garden, the Lady had on its payroll master builders, cabinet makers, farmers to whom he had taught the art of the English garden, she planted flowers, rare and exotic plants, the inevitable cypresses; she built the characteristic oriental style-Burmese buildings, (Florence, before coming and stop forever in Taormina, had traveled a lot, certainly drawing inspiration from his travels, in this case by his visitations in the Far East). Florence built large aviaries, with parrots and birds of various species coming from all parts of world . Even the features oriental buildings, served to welcome and accommodate the birds to get them to nest, as well as to serve as a shelter during the rain, when the Lady went in the garden to painting. Among the most challenging is what she herself called "The Beehives" as it reminded her a hive for the realization of many chambers, ". (In the years before the kids there were playing hide and seek, going up and down like an endless maze, while the couples of lovers there were hidden from prying eyes, but now you can no longer access the inside).

 

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Lady Florence, assieme a suo marito, il professor Cacciola, acquistò 87 lotti di terreno per realizzare il Giardino Pubblico, la Lady aveva nel suo libro paga capimastri, ebanisti, contadini ai quali aveva insegnato l'arte del giardino all'Inglese, vi fece fece crescere fiori, piante rare ed esotiche, gli immancabili cipressi; vi costruì le caratteristiche costruzioni, su sua proggettazione, in stile orientale - Birmano (Florence, prima di giungere e fermarsi per sempre a Taormina, aveva viaggiato tantissimo, traendo certamente ispirazione dai suoi viaggi, in questo caso dalle sue visitazioni in estremo oriente). Florence fece costruire grandi uccelliere, facendo giungere da ogni parte del mondo pappagalli ed uccelli di varie specie. Anche le caratteristiche costruzioni orientaleggianti, servivano ad accogliere e ad ospitare gli uccelli affinchè vi nidificassero all'interno, nonchè a fungere da riparo durante la pioggia, quando la Lady si recava nel giardino ad esempio per dipingere. Tra le realizzazioni più impegnative c'è quella che ella stessa chiamò "The Beehives" poichè le rammentava un alveare per la realizzazione di numerose concamerazioni". (negli anni addietro i bimbi vi giocavano a rimpiattino, salendo e scendendo come in un interminabile dedalo, mentre le coppiette di innamorati vi trovavano riparo da sguardi indiscreti; ora non si può più accedere all'interno).

  

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the slideshow

 

Qi Bo's photos on Fluidr

  

Qi Bo's photos on Flickriver

  

Qi Bo's photos on FlickeFlu

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This is a short and long collection of photographs, almost all made in Taormina (Sicily), and is divided into two parts: the first part I have included a few pictures, I put a few moments I catched in the alleys of the small Sicilian town, in the second part (the first to appear on Flickr) in which I tried to rebuild and at the same time to remember the singular feminine figure of Lady Florence Trevelyan, an English noblewoman, lover of art, botany, ornithology, travels, the arts magical and esoteric; she loved animals, but actively helped a lot of people; Taormina is to her that owes much of its luck; this Lady, hosting famous people of the time, contributed not a little to make known the beauty of this village Siculo to the whole world (and she improved and embellished much Taormina).

Lady Florence was born in Hallington On February 7, 1852, but soon became an orphan at the age of two years (his father committed suicide in 1854); his mother Catherine Anne was the maid of honor of Queen Victoria: the Queen which became attached enormously to Florence, and the Queen loved her like a true daughter. Florence at age 27, in 1879 was forced to leave everything to face a long journey lasting more than two years (Lady Florence fell prey to the notorius charms of the future Edward VII, who was already married; this sort of thing never went over well with Victoria, so Florence was asked to leave England). Lady Florence returned to his homeland for a short period, to be again driven out for an exiled perennial: She never returned to England (though, a generous monthly annuity was given hers on the orders of the Queen Victoria). Florence traveled widely, reached India, went to Burma, arrived in Australia she performed as a singer, and then finally arrive in February 1884 in Taormina: here you will stay until the end of his life (she died October 4, 1907 ). At Taormina she met the then mayor, the rich prof. Salvatore Cacciola, doctor, passionate student and Grand Master of Freemasonry: it is said that Lady Florence fell in love when she sought his help to cure "Sun", one of his dogs; from here to their wedding was a short step.

Lady florence bought several lots of land, created the current Public Garden of Taormina, planted olive trees, cypresses, exotic trees, and built those features buildings in oriental style; She bought by the former mayor the "Isola Bella" (She built an house and She planted trees and exotic plants, Mediterranean pines, as well as the inevitable cypress); She bought many arid and barren lands around Taormina (Mount Venus, Monte Croce, Monte Porretta) and they become rich in vegetation, with many farmers she had taught the art of the English garden. Many people went knocking to her door, in financial difficulties, usually farmers and fishermen (also Oscar Wilde, disgraced by charges of homosexuality, received financial aid from Lady Florence), She made a major sewing school for young girls of Taormina, and instituted for their 87 wedding dowries. Fate was once again mocking her: the only child she had named Edward, died in childbirth. It was in use at the time, bathing in bathtubs filled with cold water of the sea (even the photographer Von Gloeden was addicted to this habit), but this proved fatal, Lady Florence died of pneumonia at the age of 55. For her express wish, She was buried in a district of Castelmola (accompanied by large numbers of Sicilian people, it tells of an endless line, to the sound of "ciaramelle", which reminded her bagpipes of her distant Scotland), district called "Francisi" in her memory (this term according to a medieval custom). In her will, Lady Florence forced heirs not to hunt in his vast possessions, not to build, and to accept and to help dogs and birds. Lady Florence was the first woman (not only in Sicily) to be allowed to be part of Freemasonry.

The writer Guido Gozzano, was inspired by Lady Florence, when he wrote the novel "Alcina".

 

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Questa è una raccolta di fotografie breve e lunga, quasi tutte realizzate a Taormina (Sicilia), raccolta che ho diviso in due parti: nella prima parte ho inserito alcuni ritratti, ho messo alcuni momenti colti nei vicoli del piccolo paese Siciliano, nella seconda parte (la prima ad apparire su Flickr) ho tentato di ricostruire, ed al contempo ricordare, la singolarissima figura di Lady Florence Trevelyan, una nobildonna Inglese amante dell'arte, della botanica, della ornitologia, dei viaggi, delle arti magiche ed esoteriche; lei, che fu una convinta animalista ante litteram, non si limitò ad amare solo gli animali, ma aiutò fattivamente persone di ogni ceto sociale, ebbe ricchezze ma al tempo stesso pagò prezzi altissimi in sofferenza e dolore: Taormina deve a lei molta della sua fortuna, poichè questa Lady, ospitando nei suoi possedimenti illustri e famosi personaggi dell'epoca, contribuì non poco a far conoscere al mondo intero le bellezze di questo paesino Siculo (ella stessa migliorò ed abbellì ancor più Taormina).

Lady Florence nacque in quel di Hallington il 7 febbraio del 1852, divenne ben presto orfana all'età di due anni ( il padre morì suicida nel 1854); sua mamma Catherine Anne era la dama di compagnia della regina Vittoria, la quale regina si affezionò enormemente a Florence, sì da amarla come una vera figlia. All'età di 27 anni, nel 1879 venne imposto a Florence di lasciare l'Inghilterra per affrontare un lungo viaggio, che sarà della durata di più di due anni (si ipotizza per farle dimenticare una relazione che non sarebbe mai dovuta accadere, col figlio della regina Vittoria, il futuro re Edoardo VII, che a quel tempo era già sposato; sembra che non sia stata affatto la gelosia della moglie di Edoardo, bensì la rigidità della madre Vittoria a decretarne l'esilio). Lady Florence dopo questo primo viaggio ritornò nella sua Inghilterra, ma vi restò ben poco, infatti dopo un brevissimo periodo Lady Florence venne nuovamente allontanata in esilio, e questa volta lo sarà per sempre: Florence non ritornerà mai più nella sua Inghilterra (un generoso vitalizio mensile le fu dato comunque su ordine della stessa Regina Vittoria, ovvio che ciò le fu indispensabile, essendo così lontana da casa). Florence viaggiò molto, raggiunse l'India, andò in Birmania, giunta in Australia si esibì come cantante, per poi infine giungere nel febbraio del 1884 a Taormina: qui vi resterà fino all'ultimo dei suoi giorni (lei morirà il 4 ottobre 1907). A Taormina ebbe modo di conoscere l'allora sindaco, il ricco prof. Salvatore Cacciola, medico, appassionato studioso e Gran Maestro della Massoneria: si racconta che Lady Florence se ne innamorò quando lei cercò l'aiuto del medico per curare "Sole", uno dei suoi cani; da qui al loro matrimonio, il passo fu breve.

Lady florence acquistò numerosi lotti di terreno, realizzò l'attuale Giardino Pubblico, vi piantò ulivi, cipressi, alberi esotici, costruì quelle caratteristiche costruzioni in stile birmano-orientale; acquistò dall'ex sindaco L'Isola Bella (vi costruì una casetta, e l'Isola, che altro non era che un ammasso brullo di scogli, divenne rigogliosa come la vediamo oggi, vi piantò alberi e piante esotiche, pini mediterranei, nonchè gli immancabili cipressi, così presenti in quasi tutta la cittadina); acquistò numerosi terreni intorno a Taormina (Monte Venere, Monte Croce, Monte Porretta) sicchè da aridi e brulli che erano, li fece diventare ricchi di vegetazione (infatti aveva al soldo numerosi contadini ai quali aveva insegnato l'arte del giardino all'Inglese). Alla sua porta andarono a bussare numerose persone in difficoltà economiche, in genere contadini e pescatori, mai fu chiusa loro la porta... (anche Oscar Wilde, caduto in disgrazia per l'accusa di omosessualità, ricevette un aiuto finanziario dalla Lady); realizzò una importante scuola di cucito per le giovanette di Taormina, dando loro la possibilità di potersi mantenere da sole; istituì 87 doti di matrimonio per le ragazze Taorminesi (all'epoca una ragazza senza dote non aveva molte possibilità di formarsi una famiglia). Il destino infine fu ancora una volta beffardo con lei: l'unico figlio che lei ebbe, di nome Edoardo, morì durante il parto, il padre era un medico, tentò di rianimarlo, ma non ci fu nulla da fare. Era in uso all'epoca, fare bagni nelle vasche da bagno ricolme di acqua gelata di mare (anche il fotografo Von Gloeden era dedito a tale usanza, ma lui usava immergersi in acqua di mare calda, riuscendo a trovare in questa forma di talassoterapia una cura per la tisi, della quale era affetto): questa usanza fu fatale a Lady Florence, che morì di broncopolmonite a 55 anni di età. Per suo esplicito desiderio, la Trevelyan fu seppellita in una contrada di Castelmola (accompagnata da tantissima gente del luogo, si racconta di una fila interminabile di persone, al suono delle zampogne, che le ricordavano le cornamuse della sua lontana Scozia); la contrada dove fu seppellita (in quella la Lady aveva un'altra dimora), fu chiamata "Francisi" in sua memoria (tale termine indicava, secondo una usanza medioevale, una generica provenienza straniera, qualinque essa fosse). Nel suo testamento Lady Florence obbligò gli eredi a non cacciare nei suoi vasti possedimenti, a non costruire, ad accogliere e curare cani ed uccellini. Lady Florence fu la prima donna ad essere ammessa a fare parte della massoneria. Importò in Sicilia les tableaux vivants (i quadri viventi) e anche le sfilate dei carri in fiori a Palermo. Lo scrittore Guido Gozzano scrisse il romanzo "Alcina" ispirandosi a Lei.

I had the sad and sudden realization that I hadn't made any pictures lately. Actually it had a been a few weeks since I had even picked up the camera. So I was determined to head out last night after work, and try to get a few pictures of something. I decided to pay a return visit to the old Springfield Bridge, which isn't that far of a drive from home.

 

I drove to Conway and met up with Zack, and we then drove north. The bridge is located near the small community of Bono, which just really consists of a church and a few homes. But it would have been the perfect opportunity to play some U2, but sadly I didn't have the Ipod, or even my Achtung Baby cd, so the opportunity was wasted. What was I thinking? Clearly, it was a lack of planning. At least the camera battery had a decent charge in it.

 

As we got to the bridge, I realized why I hadn't been out to take any pictures lately. It's because it's summer in Arkansas. It was about 94 degrees, with high humidity. So that meant that after a few minutes of being outside, I was already drenched in sweat. Actually saying "drenched" is putting it lightly. It was more like someone took a bucket of sweat and dumped it over my head.

 

And with that lovely mental image, I present instead this shot of the bridge. It is really a neat place to go and get pictures of, even in the summer heat of Arkansas. The bridge is old - actually it's the oldest vehicular bridge in the state. It was built way back in 1874. It served traffic for over a hundred years, before being replaced by a new bridge just upstream in 1994. After that the old Springfield bridge was abandoned, and left to rust and decay.

 

To visit it now, you have to very carefully make your way onto the bridge. Several of the wooden planks on the deck are gone, leaving deep holes. Most of the remaining pieces of wood on the bridge deck are severely rotten, which makes trying to cross the bridge very nerve-wracking. I could easily imagine the boards I was walking over suddenly and without warning breaking apart. Which would probably send me straight down into the muddy waters of Cadron Creek below. Luckily everything held up, and we were able to explore the bridge. But it is in pretty bad shape - no telling how much longer it will last. It would be a shame if the bridge became too unstable to cross.

“Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue, a wonderful living side by side can grow, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole against the sky.”

- Rainer Maria Rilke

 

(third in a series...)

 

PLEASE NOTE: i apologize for the large copyright stamp placed on this photo...while i understand it is distracting and takes away from the image, this and many other photographs of mine have been stolen and are being used for profit. This is the only way I can protect my work...thank you for understanding!!!

80's hero

Our first good glimpse of an Indo-Pacific Bottlenose Dolphin. When I was a child, I saw a documentary about the friendly dolphins of Western Australia and was captivated. I had seen dolphins from the coast of South Africa, where I grew up, but had not ever come very close to a wild one. It became a “bucket list” dream of mine to see the WA dolphins. 30 years later, I finally got to do it! The dolphins were as gregarious as described. We were fortunate to have the area to ourselves for about 10 minutes, during which time the dolphins curiously swam around and under our kayak, playfully popping up right beside us only to disappear. They “charged” toward us then dove under, showed off their amazing tails and otherwise delighted us. (When motorized boats later appeared, they swam off. Kayaking was definitely the best way to see them.). It was a very emotional moment for me, as dolphins were my favourite animal as a child, and I had longed to be this close to wild ones; the experience was just a dream come true. Special thank you to Jean Hort for recommending Mandurah! It was so worth the visit.

““Heaven can be entered only through the narrow gate. The highway to hell is broad and its gate is wide enough for all the multitudes who choose the easy way. But the gateway to divine life is small and narrow. The road is narrow and only a few ever find it.”—Jesus

What does this mean? What’s heaven? Every time Christ talks about heaven he’s talking about divine consciousness, consciousness of God, the state of samadhi (direct experience of your own True Nature). So he’s saying it’s very narrow. That means you’ve got to get your mind down to one point, not even one thought other than God and then you can go through the gate to heaven to the consciousness of God. It’s very narrow, only a few people find it. Where is it? You don’t have to get into the plane. It’s right in you, not even your body. It’s in your mind, the gate to heaven. Heaven itself, God Himself, is right there in your mind but the gate is so narrow because you have to gather all your dissipated thoughts and then the door will open and you will see the blazing light. You’ll go inside and you’ll bathe in that light and you’ll become one with that bliss. But that’s for few people, most are not even concerned about it. So for the multitudes, they are on the broad highway going in the other direction. Not that everybody’s going to go to hell. That’s not the idea. But anything less than that bliss is hell in comparison. Everything else is nothing compared to that overwhelming bliss of God-Realization.”—Swami Paramatmananda, “Talks by Swami Paramatmananda, Vol. 2”, pp. 198-199

[MAP]

 

Movie Realization Ronin Boba Fett action figure knockoff

It's been a while since I last uploaded here so... Today, I decided to try out the point and shoot I got from Sony.

 

The DSC-WX7 model has an awesome mode which mimics the bokeh effect!!!

 

Figure: Steamboy Movie Realization

Maker: Bandai

Note: One of the best dioramas I've seen (and owned) so far... :D

Museu Blau, Museu de Ciències Naturals de Barcelona, Spain

Architects: Herzog & de Meuron, project 2009-2010, realization 2010-2012

Relocating the Museum of Natural Sciences into the Forum Barcelona building signals the beginning of a new life cycle for both institutions: one where each mutually benefits from the space, program and potential of the other. With its large exterior and interior spaces and its reference to natural processes and shapes, the architecture of the Forum is a particularly appropriate new home for the relocated Museum. And the Museum of Natural Science promises to energetically revitalise the existing building, replacing vacant space with intense new public activities.

The open public space that marks the approach from the Diagonal and extends under the triangular body of the building is now diversified and activated, engaging with the life of the city. The corner addressing the city centre retains its function as the main public approach. This is enhanced by the three existing pavilions which are reconfigured to provide meeting places for groups and general information along the approach to the museum entrance. The second corner, further along the Diagonal is enlivened with lush external planting and the basin under the water patio. And finally, the corner addressing the sea is activated by a new exterior dining area for students and groups, adjacent to a bar which opens onto the plaza. The interior of the elevated triangular building, which is like a vast interior landscape, structured by patios, creates a specific space well suited to an exhibition of Natural science and to the Museum’s demand for growth and need to display more of its outstanding collection.

 

Architecture and Museography

The core of the Museum is its permanent exhibition. This consists of an outstanding collection of rocks and minerals, taxidermy, microbes, plants and herbariums, meteorites, scientific drawings, diagrams, fossils and skeletons, sounds and dioramas, gathered together over centuries in Barcelona. The exhibition consists of elements from the permanent collection structured around the concept of Gaia – the idea of a living planet which forms and is, in turn, transformed by life.

This exhibition arrangement follows the logic of the existing space and at the same time radically transforms it. It frees the visitor to explore any number of individual routes while still ensuring an overall logical sequence. It also extends into the museum lobby, where the main stair and the dramatically hung whale skeleton forms the central arrival and departure point for all public programs, including shop, restaurant, media library, classrooms, event spaces and temporary exhibition, as well as administration and support areas. The lobby extends down to the plaza connecting to the large covered public space of the Museu Blau, allowing for the visitor to invigorate the rapidly developing area where the Diagonal reaches the sea.

"The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today. Let us move forward with strong and active faith."

 

Looking south-southwest at an inscription in the fourth "room" of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial in Washington, D.C., on March 15, 2012. This quotation is from Roosevelt's undelivered Jefferson Day Address, scheduled for a nationwide radio address on April 14, 1945. Roosevelt wrote the speech on the night of April 11. He he died from a cerebral hemorrhage the following day.

 

The memorial was designed landscape architect Lawrence Halprin and dedicated on on May 2, 1997, by President Bill Clinton. It's spread over 7.5 acres (3.0 hectares) of West Potomac Park. (Roosevelt was an avid conservationist. Fittingly, West Potomac Park is made up of silt dredged from the bottom of the Potomac River from 1880 to 1911.) The main entrance is at the north end, although just as many people enter from the south end (walking along the Tidal Basin from the Jefferson Memorial).

 

The memorial consists of four roofless, outdoor "rooms" created by gigantic blocks of rough red South Dakota granite. Each "room" represents one of Roosevelt's terms in office, and each room has a waterfall, inscriptions, and sculpture. The first room's walls are more smoothed and the blocks of stone aligned, and the waterfall is small, smooth, and quiet. The subsequent rooms express the increasing complexity of Roosevelt's presidency as depression and war intruded. The stone becomes less smooth, some blocks of stone are misaligned or jut from the walls; in the third room, massive stones actually lie in the center of the space, tumbled on top of one another. The waterfalls become larger, more complex, more chaotic.

 

Interestingly, the waterfalls were designed to be played in. But the National Park Service, deeply worried that someone would slip and fall on the algae-covered rocks, quickly banned people from doing so.

 

Out of respect for Roosevelt's own disability, the entire memorial is wheelchair accessible. All the sculptures are meant to be touched, and the second "room" contains a huge wall "quilt" of images -- an artwork known as "Social Programs" -- that depicts the people Roosevelt helped (with Braille inscriptions describing each one next to the panels).

 

Stonecarver John Benson did the granite inscriptions seen throughout the memorial. Here's a list of the sculptures in the memorial, along with their creators:

 

* "Prologue" - By Robert Graham, this is the life-size sculpture of Roosevelt in his wheelchair which stands in front of the main entrance to the memorial.

 

* "Presidential Seal, 1932" - By Tom Hardy, this is in the "first room" and depicts the Great Seal of the President of the United States as it existed in 1932 at the time of Roosevelt's first inauguration.

 

* "First Inaugural" - By Robert Graham, this bas-relief panel in the "first room" depicts an image inspired by film footage taken during the first inaugural parade.

 

* "The Fireside Chat" - By George C. Segal, this sculpture in the "first room" depicts a man seated in a chair, listening to one of Roosevelt's radio addresses (the "fireside chats").

 

* "Farm Couple" - By George C. Segal, this life-size sculpture in the "second room" depicts a farmer standing next to his wife (seated in a chair) in front of a barn door (with the upper half of the door open). It symbolizes Roosevelt's commitment to saving American agriculture.

 

* "Depression Bread Line" - By George C. Segal, this sculpture in the "second room" depicts six life-size male figures stand in a line to get free bread. The men face west, and it is just a few feet west of "Farm Couple."

 

* "Social Programs" - By Robert Graham, these 54 bronze panels on a wall and four pillars in the "second room" depict the social programs Roosevelt enacted.

 

* "Funeral Cortege" - By Leonard Baskin, this bas-relief bronze panel in the "fourth room" depicts the funeral of Roosevelt in 1945.

 

* "Eleanor Roosevelt" - By Neil Estern, this life-size statue of the First Lady stands between the "third" and "fourth" rooms. Placed in a niche, it depicts her later in life in a cloth coat, the Seal of the United Nations behind her and to her left. It is the only depiction of a First Lady at a national memorial.

 

* "Fala and Franklin D. Roosevelt" - By Neil Estern, this slightly larger-than-life statue in the "fourth room" is based on depictions of an aging, sick Roosevelt at the Yalta Conference. His cloak masks the chair in which he sits. (If you look closely at the back of the statue, you can see that the chair has wheels, although it is not a wheelchair.) Roosevelt's faithful Scottish Terrier dog, Fala, stands beside him.

 

In the "third room" -- the room dedicated to the war years -- is a massive tumble of granite blocks. Inscribed on a block tilted against another are the words "I Hate"; the block on which this is tilted contains the word "War." This sculpture (for that is what it is) is the "I Hate War" piece. Its placement and design was by Halprin, and Benson carved the words. It was inspired by Roosevelt's 1936 "I Hate War" speech, given in Chautauqua, New York. A longer inscription from the speech is on the stone wall next to the waterfall.

 

It should be noted that the Estern sculpture, as originally planned, more prominently featured Roosevelt in a wheelchair. But this was changed because various project overseers said Roosevelt had not been depicted in a wheelchair in public.

 

Disability advocates strongly criticized this decision when the memorial opened and there was no image of Roosevelt in a wheelchair. The National Park Service permitted disability advocates to add a sculpture near the memorial's entrance, which is the "Prologue" statue by Robert Graham.

 

Memorial designer Lawrence Halprin applauded the move. He said that Roosevelt loved debate and discussion, and rarely made decisions himself but rather ordered his subordinates to "hash it out" and come to a decision. Halprin said adding the sculpture is a true memorial to Roosevelt, for it exemplified people of good will coming together in disagreement but forging a compromise that will allow everyone to move ahead.

Padmasambhava (lit. "Lotus-Born"), also known as Guru Rinpoche, was an 8th century Indian Buddhist master. Although there was a historical Padmasambhava, nothing is known of him apart from helping the construction of the first Buddhist monastery in Tibet at Samye, at the behest of Trisong Detsen, and shortly thereafter leaving Tibet due to court intrigues.

 

A number of legends have grown around Padmasambhava's life and deeds, and he is widely venerated as a 'second Buddha' across Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan, and the Himalayan states of India.

 

In Tibetan Buddhism, he is a character of a genera of literature called terma, an emanation of Amitābha that is said to appear to tertöns in visionary encounters and a focus of guru yoga practice, particularly in the Rimé schools. The Nyingma school considers Padmasambhava to be a founder of their tradition.

 

MYTHOS

SOURCES

Nyangrel Nyima Özer (1136-1204) was the principal architect of the Padmasambhava mythos according to Janet Gyatso. Guru Chöwang (1212–1270) was the next major contributor to the mythos. Padmasambhava's Namtar (biography) is Zanglingma (Jeweled Rosary) revealed by Nyang Ral Nyima Özer and is in the Rinchen Terdzö terma collection.

 

In the eleventh and twelfth centuries there were several competing terma traditions surrounding Padmasambhava, but also for example Vimalamitra, Songtsän Gampo, and Vairotsana. At the end of the 12th century, there was the "victory of the Padmasambhava cult," in which a much greater role is assigned to the role of Padmasambhava in the introduction of Buddhism to Tibet.

 

EARLY YEARS

BIRTH

According to tradition, Padmasambhava was incarnated as an eight-year-old child appearing in a lotus blossom floating in Lake Dhanakosha, in the kingdom of Oḍḍiyāna in Ancient India and in modern times identified with the Swat Valley of South Asia present-day Pakistan. His special nature was recognized by the childless local king of Oḍḍiyāna and was chosen to take over the kingdom, but he left Oḍḍiyāna for northern parts of India.

 

TANTRA

In Rewalsar, known as Tso Pema in Tibetan, he secretly taught tantric teachings to princess Mandarava, the local king's daughter. The king found out and tried to burn him, but it is believed that when the smoke cleared he just sat there, still alive and in meditation. Greatly astonished by this miracle, the king offered Padmasambhava both his kingdom and Mandarava.

 

Padmasambhava left with Mandarava, and took to Maratika Cave in Nepal to practice secret tantric consort rituals. They had a vision of buddha Amitāyus and achieved what is called the "phowa rainbow body," a very rare type of spiritual realization. Both Padmasambhava and one of his consorts, Mandarava, are still believed to be alive and active in this rainbow body form by their followers. She and Padmasambhava's other main consort, Yeshe Tsogyal, who reputedly hid his numerous termas in Tibet for later discovery, reached Buddhahood. Many thangkas and paintings show Padmasambhava in between them.

 

TIBET

SUBJECTION OF LOCAL RELIGIONS

According to Sam van Schaik, from the 12th century on a greater role was assigned to Padmasambhava in the introduction of tantric Buddhism into Tibet:According to earlier histories, Padmasambhava had given some tantric teachings to Tibetans before being forced to leave due to the suspicions of the Tibetan court. But from the twelfth century an alternative story, itself a terma discovery, gave Padmasambhava a much greater role in the introduction of Buddhism to Tibet, and in particular credited him with travelling all over the country to convert the local spirits to Buddhism.According to this enlarged story, King Trisong Detsen, the 38th king of the Yarlung dynasty and the first Emperor of Tibet (742–797), invited the Nalanda University abbot Śāntarakṣita (Tibetan Shiwatso) to Tibet. Śāntarakṣita started the building of Samye. Demonical forces hindered the introduction of the Buddhist dharma, and Padmasambhava was invited to Tibet to subdue the demonic forces. The demons were not annihilated, but were obliged to submit to the dharma. This was in accordance with the tantric principle of not eliminating negative forces but redirecting them to fuel the journey toward spiritual awakening. According to tradition, Padmasambhava received the Emperor's wife, identified with the dakini Yeshe Tsogyal, as a consort.

 

TRANSLATIONS

King Trisong Detsen ordered the translation of all Buddhist Dharma Texts into Tibetan. Padmasambhava, Shantarakṣita, 108 translators, and 25 of Padmasambhava's nearest disciples worked for many years in a gigantic translation-project. The translations from this period formed the base for the large scriptural transmission of Dharma teachings into Tibet. Padmasambhava supervised mainly the translation of Tantra; Shantarakshita concentrated on the Sutra-teachings.

 

NYINGMA

Padmasambhava introduced the people of Tibet to the practice of Tantric Buddhism.

 

He is regarded as the founder of the Nyingma tradition. The Nyingma tradition is the oldest of the four major schools of Tibetan Buddhism. The Nyingma tradition actually comprises several distinct lineages that all trace their origins to Padmasambhava.

 

"Nyingma" literally means "ancient," and is often referred to as "Nga'gyur" " or the "early translation school" because it is founded on the first translations of Buddhist scriptures from Sanskrit into Tibetan, in the eighth century.

 

Nyingma maintains the earliest tantric teachings. The Nyingmapa incorporates mysticism and local deities shared by the pre-Buddhist Bon religion, which has shamanic elements. The group particularly believes in hidden terma treasures. Traditionally, Nyingmapa practice was advanced orally among a loose network of lay practitioners. Monasteries with celibate monks and nuns, along with the practice of reincarnated spiritual leaders are later adaptations, though Padmasambhava is regarded as the founder of Samye Gompa, the first monastery in the country. In modern times the Nyingma lineage has been centered in Kham in eastern Tibet.

 

BHUTAN

In Bhutan he is associated with the famous Paro Taktsang or "Tiger's Nest" monastery built on a sheer cliff wall about 500m above the floor of Paro valley. It was built around the Taktsang Senge Samdup (stag tshang seng ge bsam grub) cave where he is said to have meditated in the 8th Century. He flew there from Tibet on the back of Yeshe Tsogyal, whom he transformed into a flying tigress for the purpose of the trip. Later he travelled to Bumthang district to subdue a powerful deity offended by a local king. Padmasambhava's body imprint can be found in the wall of a cave at nearby Kurje Lhakhang temple.

 

ICONOGRAPHY, MANIFESTATIONS AND ATTRIBUTES

 

ICONOGRAPHY

GENERAL

- He has one face and two hands.

- He is wrathful and smiling.

- He blazes magnificently with the splendour of the major and minor marks.

 

HEAD

- On his head he wears a five-petalled lotus hat, which has

- Three points symbolizing the three kayas,

- Five colours symbolizing the five kayas,

- A sun and moon symbolizing skilful means and wisdom,

- A vajra top to symbolize unshakable samadhi,

- A vulture's feather to represent the realization of the highest view.

- His two eyes are wide open in a piercing gaze.

- He has the youthful appearance of an eight-year old child.

 

SKIN

- His complexion is white with a tinge of red.

 

DRESS

- On his body he wears a white vajra undergarment. On top of this, in layers, a red robe, a dark blue mantrayana tunic, a red monastic shawl decorated with a golden flower pattern, and a maroon cloak of silk brocade.

- On his body he wears a silk cloak, Dharma robes and gown.

- He is wearing the dark blue gown of a mantra practitioner, the red and yellow shawl of a monk, the maroon cloak of a king, and the red robe and secret white garments of a bodhisattva.

 

HANDS

- In his right hand, he holds a five-pronged vajra at his heart.

- His left hand rests in the gesture of equanimity,

- In his left hand he holds a skull-cup brimming with nectar, containing the vase of longevity that is also filled with the nectar of deathless wisdom and ornamented on top by a wish-fulfilling tree.

 

KHATVANGA

The khaṭvāńga is a particular divine attribute of Padmasambhava and intrinsic to his iconographic representation. It is a danda with three severed heads denoting the three kayas (the three bodies of a Buddha, the dharmakaya, sambhogakaya, and nirmanakaya), crowned by a trishula, and dressed with a sash of the Himalayan Rainbow or Five Pure Lights of the Mahabhuta. The iconography is utilized in various Tantric cycles by yogis as symbols to hidden meanings in transmitted practices.

 

- Cradled in his left arm he holds the three-pointed khatvanga (trident) symbolizing the Princess consort (Mandarava). who arouses the wisdom of bliss and emptiness, concealed as the three-pointed khatvanga trident.

- Its three points represent the essence, nature and compassionate energy (ngowo, rangshyin and tukjé).

- Below these three prongs are three severed heads, dry, fresh and rotten, symbolizing the dharmakaya, sambhogakaya and nirmanakaya.

- Nine iron rings adorning the prongs represent the nine yanas.

- Five-coloured strips of silk symbolize the five wisdoms

- The khatvanga is also adorned with locks of hair from dead and living mamos and dakinis, as a sign that the Master subjugated them all when he practised austerities in the Eight Great Charnel Grounds.

 

SEAT

- He is seated with his two feet in the royal posture.

 

SURROUNDING

- All around him, within a lattice of five-coloured light, appear the eight vidyadharas of India, the twenty-five disciples of Tibet, the deities of the three roots, and an ocean of oath-bound protectors

 

There are further iconographies and meanings in more advanced and secret stages.

 

EIGHT MANIFESTATIONS

Padmasambhava is said to have taken eight forms or manifestations (Tib. Guru Tsen Gye) representing different aspects of his being, such as wrath or pacification for example. According to Rigpa Shedra the eight principal forms were assumed by Guru Rinpoche at different points in his life. The Eight Manifestations of Padmasambhava belong to the tradition of the Revealed Treasures (Tib.: ter ma).

 

- Guru Orgyen Dorje Chang (Wylie: gu ru U-rgyan rDo-rje ‘chang, Sanskrit: Guru Uddiyana Vajradhara) The vajra-holder (Skt. Vajradhara), shown dark blue in color in the attire of the Sambhogakaya. Depicted in union with consort.

- Guru Shakya Senge (Wylie: shAkya seng-ge, Skrt: Guru Śākyasimha) of Bodh Gaya, Lion of the Sakyas, who learns the Tantric practices of the eight Vidyadharas. He is shown as a fully ordained Buddhist monk.

- Guru Pema Gyalpo (Wylie: gu ru pad ma rgyal-po, Skrt: Guru Padmarāja) of Uddiyana, the Lotus Prince, king of the Tripitaka (the Three Collections of Scripture). He is shown looking like a young crowned prince or king.

- Guru Pema Jungne (Wylie: pad ma ‘byung-gnas, Skrt: Guru Padmakara) Lotus-arisen, the Saviour who teaches the Dharma to the people. He is shown sitting on a lotus, dressed in the three robes of a monk, under which he wears a blue shirt, pants and heavy Tibetan boots, as protection against the cold. He holds the diamond-scepter of compassionate love in his right hand and the yogi's skull-bowl of clear wisdom in his left. He has a special trident called khatvanga of a wandering Yogi, and wears on his head a Nepalese cloth crown, stylistically designed to remind one of the shape of a lotus flower. Thus he is represented as he must have appeared in Tibet.

- Guru Loden Chokse (Wylie: gu ru blo ldan mchog sred; Skrt: Guru Mativat Vararuci) of Kashmir, the Intelligent Youth, the one who gathers the knowledge of all worlds. He is shown in princely clothes, beating a hand-drum and holding a skull-bowl.

- Guru Nyima Ozer (Wylie: gu ru nyi-ma ‘od-zer, Skrt: Guru Suryabhasa or Sūryaraśmi), the Sunray Yogi, who illuminates the darkness of the mind through the insight of Dzogchen. He is shown as a naked yogi dressed only in a loin-cloth and holding a Khatvanga which points towards the sun.

- Guru Dorje Drolo, (Wylie: gu ru rDo-rje gro-lod, Skrt: Guru Vajra ?) the fierce manifestation of Vajrakilaya (wrathful Vajrasattva) known as "Diamond Guts", the comforter of all, imprinting the elements with Wisdom-Treasure.

- Guru Senge Dradog (Wylie: gu ru seng-ge sgra-sgrogs, Skrt: Guru Simhanāda) of Nalanda University, the Lion of Debate, promulgator of the Dharma throughout the six realms of sentient beings. He is shown in a very fierce form, dark blue and imitative of the powerful Bodhisattva Vajrapani, holding a thunderbolt scepter in one hand and a scorpion in the other.

 

Padmasambhava's various Sanskrit names are preserved in mantras such as those found in the Yang gsang rig 'dzin youngs rdzogs kyi blama guru mtshan brgyad bye brag du sgrub pa ye shes bdud rtsi'i sbrang char zhe bya ba

 

ATTRIBUTES

PURE-LAND PARADISE

His Pureland Paradise is Zangdok Palri (the Copper-Coloured Mountain).

 

SAMANTABHADRA AND SAMANTABHADRI

Padmasambhava said:

My father is the intrinsic awareness, Samantabhadra (Sanskrit; Tib. ཀུན་ཏུ་བཟང་པོ). My mother is the ultimate sphere of reality, Samantabhadri (Sanskrit; Tib. ཀུན་ཏུ་བཟང་མོ). I belong to the caste of non-duality of the sphere of awareness. My name is the Glorious Lotus-Born. I am from the unborn sphere of all phenomena. I act in the way of the Buddhas of the three times.

 

FIVE WISDOM DAKINS

Padmasambhava had five major female tantric companions, the so-called 'Five Wisdom Dakinis' (Wylie: Ye-shes mKha-'gro lnga) or 'Five Consorts.' In Padmasambhava's biography, they are described as the five women "who had access to the master's heart", and practiced tantric rites which are considered to have exorcised the previous demons of Tibet and converted them into protectors of the country.' They were:

 

- Mandarava of Zahor, the emanation of Vajravarahi's Body;

- Belwong Kalasiddhi of (north-west) India, the emanation of Vajravarahi's Quality, Belmo Sakya Devi of Nepal;

- the emanation of Vajravarahi's Mind, Yeshe Tsogyal of Tibet;

- the emanation of Vajravarahi's Speech

- and Mangala or Tashi Kyedren of "the Himalayas", the emanation of Vajravarahi's Activity.

 

PRINCESS SAKYA DEVI FROM NEPAL

On Padmasambhava's consort practice with Princess Sakya Devi from Nepal it is said:

- In a state of intense bliss, Padmasambhava and Sakyadevi realized the infinite reality of the Primordial Buddha Mind, the All-Beneficent Lord (Samantabhadra), whose absolute love is the unimpeded dynamo of existence. Experiencing the succession of the four stages of ecstasy, their mutual state of consciousness increased from height to height. And thus, meditating on Supreme Vajrasattva Heruka as the translucent image of compassionate wrathful (energized) activity, they together acquired the mahamudra of Divinity and attained complete Great Enlightenment.

 

TEACHINGS AND PRACTICES ASCRIBED TO PADMASAMBHAVA

 

THE VAJRA GURU MANTRA

The Vajra Guru (Padmasambhava) mantra Om Ah Hum Vajra Guru Padma Siddhi Hum is favoured and held in esteem by sadhakas. Like most Sanskritic mantras in Tibet, the Tibetan pronunciation demonstrates dialectic variation and is generally Om Ah Hung Benza Guru Pema Siddhi Hung. In the Vajrayana traditions, particularly of the Nyingmapa, it is held to be a powerful mantra engendering communion with the Three Vajras of Padmasambhava's mindstream and by his grace, all enlightened beings. In response to Yeshe Tsogyal's request, the Great Master himself explained the meaning of the mantra although there are larger secret meanings too. The 14th century tertön Karma Lingpa has a famous commentary on the mantra.

 

THE SEVEN LINE PRAYER TO PADMASAMBHAVA

The Seven Line Prayer to Padmasambhava (Guru Rinpoche) is a famous prayer that is recited by many Tibetans daily and is said to contain the most sacred and important teachings of Dzogchen.

 

Jamgon Ju Mipham Gyatso composed a famous commentary to the Seven Line Prayer called White Lotus. It explains the meanings, which are embedded in many levels and intended to catalyze a process of realization. These hidden teachings are described as ripening and deepening, in time, with study and with contemplation. Tulku Thondup says:

- Enshrining the most sacred prayer to Guru Padmasambhava, White Lotus elucidates its five layers of meaning as revealed by the eminent scholar Ju Mipham. This commentary now makes this treasure, which has been kept secret among the great masters of Tibet for generations, available as a source of blessings and learning for all.

 

There is also a shorter commentary, freely available, by Tulku Thondup himself. There are many other teachings and Termas and widely practiced tantric cycles incorporating the text as well as brief ones such as Terma Revelation of Guru Chöwang.

 

TERMAS

Padmasambhava also hid a number of religious treasures (termas) in lakes, caves, fields and forests of the Himalayan region to be found and interpreted by future tertöns or spiritual treasure-finders. According to Tibetan tradition, the Bardo Thodol (commonly referred to as the Tibetan Book of the Dead) was among these hidden treasures, subsequently discovered by a Tibetan terton, Karma Lingpa.

 

TANTRIC CYCLES

Tantric cycles related to Padmasambhava are not just practiced by the Nyingma, they even gave rise to a new offshoot of Bon which emerged in the 14th century called the New Bön. Prominent figures of the Sarma (new translation) schools such as the Karmapas and Sakya lineage heads have practiced these cycles and taught them. Some of the greatest tertons revealing teachings related to Padmasambhava have been from the Kagyu or Sakya lineages. The hidden lake temple of the Dalai Lamas behind the Potala called Lukhang is dedicated to Dzogchen teachings and has murals depicting the eight manifestations of Padmasambhava. Padmasambhava established Vajrayana Buddhism and the highest forms of Dzogchen (Mengagde) in Tibet and transformed the entire nation.

 

TWENTY-FIVE MAIN DISCIPLES

Twenty-five Main Disciples of Padmasambhava (Tibetan: རྗེ་འབངས་ཉེར་ལྔ, Wylie: rje 'bangs nyer lnga) -also called the disciples of Chimphu - in various lists these include:

 

- King Trisong Detsen (Tibetan: ཁྲི་སྲོང་ལྡེའུ་བཏཟན, Wylie: khri srong lde'u btzan)

- Denma Tsémang (Tibetan: ལྡན་མ་རྩེ་མང, Wylie: ldan ma rtse mang)

- Dorje Dudjom of Nanam (Tibetan: རྡོ་རྗེ་བདུད་འཇོམ, Wylie: rdo rje bdud 'joms)

- Khyechung Lotsawa (Tibetan: ཁྱེའུ་ཆུང་ལོ་ཙཱ་བ, Wylie: khye'u chung lo tsā ba)

- Gyalwa Changchub of Lasum (Tibetan: ལ་སུམ་རྒྱལ་བ་བྱང་ཆུབ, Wylie: la sum rgyal ba byang chub)

- Gyalwa Choyang (Tibetan: རྒྱལ་བ་མཆོག་དབྱངས, Wylie: rgyal ba mchog dbyangs)

- Gyalwe Lodro of Dré (Tibetan: རྒྱལ་བའི་བློ་གྲོས, Wylie: rgyal ba'i blo gros)

- Jnanakumara of Nyak (Tibetan: གཉགས་ཛཉའ་ན་ཀུ་མ་ར, Wylie: gnyags dzny' na ku ma ra)

- Kawa Paltsek (Tibetan: སྐ་བ་དཔལ་བརྩེགས, Wylie: ska ba dpal brtsegs)

- Khandro Yeshe Tsogyal, the princess of Karchen (Tibetan: མཁར་ཆེན་བཟའ་མཚོ་རྒྱལ, Wylie: mkhar chen bza' mtsho rgyal)

- Konchog Jungné of Langdro (Tibetan: ལང་གྲོ་དཀོན་མཆོག་འབྱུང་གནས, Wylie: lang gro dkon mchog 'byung gnas)

- Lhapal the Sokpo (Tibetan: སོག་པོ་ལྷ་དཔལ, Wylie: sog po lha dpal)

- Namkhai Nyingpo (Tibetan: ནམ་མཁའི་སྙིང་པོ, Wylie: nam mkha'i snying po)

- Zhang Yeshe De (Tibetan: ཞང་ཡེ་ཤེས་སྡེ, Wylie: zhang ye shes sde)

- Lhalung Pelgyi Dorje (Tibetan: ལྷ་ལུང་དཔལ་གྱི་རྡོ་རྗེ, Wylie: lha lung dpal gyi rdo rje)

- Palgyi Senge (Tibetan: དཔལ་གྱི་སེང་གེ, Wylie: dpal gyi seng ge)

- Palgyi Wangchuk (Tibetan: དཔལ་གྱི་དབང་ཕྱུག, Wylie: dpal gyi dbang phyug)

- Palgyi Wangchuk of Odren (Tibetan: འོ་དྲན་དཔལ་གྱི་དབང་ཕྱུག, Wylie: 'o dran dpal gyi dbang phyug)

- Palgyi Yeshe (Tibetan: དཔལ་གྱི་ཡེ་ཤེས, Wylie: dpal gyi ye shes)

- Rinchen Chok of Ma (Tibetan: རྨ་རིན་ཆེན་མཆོག, Wylie: rma rin chen mchog)

- Sangye Yeshe (Tibetan: སངས་རྒྱས་ཡེ་ཤེས, Wylie: sangs rgyas ye shes)

- Shubu Palgyi Senge (Tibetan: ཤུད་བུ་དཔལ་གྱི་སེང་གེ, Wylie: shud bu dpal gyi seng ge)

- Vairotsana, the great translator (Tibetan: བཻ་རོ་ཙ་ན, Wylie: bai ro tsa na)

- Yeshe Yang (Tibetan: ཡེ་ཤེས་དབྱངས, Wylie: ye shes dbyangs)

- Yudra Nyingpo of Gyalmo (Tibetan: ག་ཡུ་སྒྲ་སྙིང་པོ, Wylie: g.yu sgra snying po)

 

Also:

- Vimalamitra (Tibetan: དྲུ་མེད་བཤེས་གཉེན, Wylie: dru med bshes gnyen)

- Tingdzin Zangpo (Tibetan: ཏིང་འཛིན་བཟང་པོ, Wylie: ting 'dzin bzang po)

  

WIKIPEDIA

#pain #love #reflection

12 JULY 12

 

Today my journey into the world of rain photography led to a couple of realizations. Come along with me on my journey of discovery. Shall we?

 

It was guaranteed rain all day today, at 70%. Yesterday I was kind of mad because it was positively storming all the way into town, but the moment I parked, it let up to a steady drizzle and as I said, everyone was in the tunnels, so the streets were bare. Today, go fig, it's pouring and everyone is out on the streets rushing about. I parked in my usual spot half a click from the dome, made sure I put mad time on my parking decal, and off I went. I was...key word being...was...in good spirits at the start of the trip but no sooner had I started off on the 16 block trek then my bag...my purse actually...containing my camera b/c I didn't want to haul the waterproof backpack around (I know, that totally made sense in my head too) was getting soaked. Like a momma bear to her cubs, I tucked it under my arm as far as I could to protect it, but it still continued to slither down the back. Realization number one: they make camera bags weather proof for days like these and one should probably use the bag they bought for just such occurrences, please and thank you.

 

The rain was relentless which was in truth, what I wanted, but I started not to like it as much having to walk with it pelting my back because of the slanted winds. I retreated into a local shopping center but even there, I was getting wet. Took a few photos with my PAS camera and tried to get artsy but it was too much of a juggling act to hold my large umbrella, juggle my purse, aim, shoot, worry about the lack of light, the constant rain threatening both my cameras, so I stuffed my PAS into my dry pocket...oh, yeah, by this point, my entire right side was soaked from me favoring my left with my wet purse and my DSLR into my bag.

 

I went from the center into the parking garage adjacent and noticed that from this vantage point I could see the lovely cathedral next door. Unfortunately for me, the rain was coming in in droves on that side, so I went to the other where I found a good shot for my tilt shift work. I was going to then attempt some street photography next. This was one of my rain goals, but I massively chickened out in this regard. Every time I saw someone interesting running through the rain or smoking billowing from behind some wall as they attempted to key their cigs dry, I wanted to whip out my camera, but for two reasons, the wimpiness and the issue of water everywhere I just didn't do it. Then came the point at which my day took a massive downturn. Crossing the street we have street signs that count you down...you have 10 seconds to cross the street before the light turns green and cars start rambling through. I was on 2 seconds shy of the curb when there was this lake sized puddle. I didn't think ti was that deep until my foot went in about 7 inches as I tried to hop through it with the heel of my right foot. How did I know it was deep...because the guy and girl in front of me, who were figuring out themselves how they planned to cross lake puddle, both screamed out, Oh Hell NO, and my foot went deep sea diving, and then they ran to the next corner. Realization Number 2: I'm about 8 blocks from my car, and there are no changes of clothes in there, so I'm now going to have to walk the rest of the 8 blocks with a wet sock, a wet shoe, a wet purse, an an entire wet right side of my body. Thanks rain. REally, thanks.

 

Ugh, it was so gross sloshing around in my shoe. It made this sucking sound with each step. I made my way to the bayou again to see the progress of the water and HOLY MOLY! The bayou had definitely begun to jump its banks. I walked down my usual path and then smack, my left foot landed in a puddle of water. In the greatest homage to Thundercats possibly ever, I yelled out: SNARF!!!!! Really...really?!? Now I had two wet gross soggy feet. I took to the ledge to find my way through without stepping in any more water and made it to the underpass. I set my umbrella down and jumped back b/c I saw this awesome grasshopper just hanging out, but as soon as I started taking pictures, the bayou started to flood the area I was standing in. The water became parallel with the walkway and then as I looked up, I saw it licking at my feet, so up the stairs I went to the surface level where I could really see the massive body of water just swallowing everything in its path. Whole trees were floating by and debris from everywhere. One of the funniest things I saw was the ducks. Normally they are about 20 feet down in the water, but since the water was so high, they just paddled right from the water and onto the walkway. REalizaton number 3: this was epic but this was getting dangerous and I had to go now.

 

I went across the bridge to the other side and noticed some lady filming the whole thing next to her dog. I waled down the curvature to the bottom to see first hand the massive water. I rattled off a few shots and then the water began to overtake the banks again and there I was smack dab in the middle of it as the water began to flow around my feet. I took the before and after photos right before I left.

 

Just as I left the area just in time, I heard the Irish Jig. The warning alarm that I had about 40 minutes to get back to my car before the meter maids would or could give me a ticket. From this area to the car is about a 30 minute walk, so I took just a few more pictures and then started on my way.

 

Slosh, slosh, slosh, I hit another puddle. At this point, I was just like F-it. To add insult to injury, my entire backside, but more specifically, my jeans were soaked through and it was reaching critical mass because not having dry underwear is not fun at all. I picked up the pace and began to walk faster which was nearly impossible with my squishy feet. On and on and on I walked...9 blocks....13 blocks...19 blocks...wait, no, what, SNARF!!!! Somehow in my hysteria to get back to the car, I'd missed the turn off street and was now 3 blocks past where I needed to turn off. I was beyond pissed at this point.

 

Got back to the car finally, and 4 minutes late. Thankfully b/c of the rain, I'm assuming the maids would rather stay inside instead of hassle people. Ugh...everything was wet and I only had paper towels to dry off with. I took off my left shoe and sock and my normally brown foot was a wrinkly pale whitish color. I wanted to take off my right, but I can't drive well in bare feet (and yes, I've done it before).

 

Got home finally. Discovered my entire purse was dripping wet on the inside as well. I rushed in and sent my camera to the ER with a blow dryer in lower to make sure the electronics were okay, then toweled 'er off, and sent 'er to bed with a warm blanket, then did the same for myself.

 

I'm over it, for now anyway. Next time I do rain photography, 1...wearing rain gear...as in coat...boots...the works. 2...getting the proper cover for the camera b/c its not worth jacking up your camera...3...having a change of socks and shoes, at least, at the ready in case of sheer rain melt down...and 4...SNARF!!!

Daytime Moon

Reflections...

 

"One moon shows in every pool; in every pool, the one moon." -Zen quote

 

***

The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider's web. -Pablo Picasso

 

***

Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue, a wonderful living side by side can grow, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole against the sky. -Rainer Maria Rilke

 

***

Excuse me while I kiss the sky. -Jimi Hendrix

 

***

“We all shine on...like the moon and the stars and the sun...we all shine on...come on and on and on...” ― John Lennon

 

***

“We are going to the moon that is not very far. Man has so much farther to go within himself.” ― Anaïs Nin

_____________

 

YouTube –High Spirits Native American Flutes

(Cedar flute in G and the B double flute)

SONG FOR WAKIYA

www.youtube.com/watch?v=LViBPfPrR90

 

Uli Geissendoerfer

www.ulimusic.com/home.html

Premik Russell Tubbs

www.premik.com/

 

***

From album Passport To HappYness

HappYness

Composed by Premik Russell Tubbs

Performed by Premik Russell Tubbs and Uli Geissendoerfer

 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUlvj2_2AQw

 

____________

 

Most recent recordings and projects:

 

In 2012 Premik recorded with 2011 Grammy nominee vocalist and composer Chandrika Krishnamurthy Tandon. 'Over 75 musicians came together to record the album in the US and India combining ancient traditional instruments like the rhumba, calypso, ektara, dugdugi and esraj with saxophone, banjo and piano to transcend musical boundaries.'

 

Sound Samples: www.cdbaby.com/cd/chandrikakrishnamurthyta2 Check out "JOG"

 

****

 

Recording projects in 2010-2012 with Grammy award-winning producer and founder of Windham Hill Records Will Ackerman include albums by Fiona Jay Hawkins, Shambhu, Dean Boland, Rebecca Harrold, Ronnda Cadle and Masako.

 

Will Ackerman: ...‘The criteria for who works here go way past simple talent. Imaginary Road is my home and I’m only letting wonderful people into my home. I don’t care how talented you are; if you’re not able to wear your heart on your sleeve don’t bother to turn up. We use Keith Carlock (Sting and Steeley Dan) as a drummer too along with Arron Sterling (John Mayer and Sheryl Crow). Only last year I met Premik Russel Tubbs who plays sax and wind synths for us.

 

‘Premik has become part of the family...'

www.newagemusicworld.com/will-ackerman-interview-new-in-2...

imaginaryroadstudios.com/

 

****

 

Premik recorded with Heidi Breyer and accompanied her at the ZMR Awards 2013, staged in New Orleans.

www.zonemusicreporter.com/admin/performers.asp

ZMR Awards 2013 -Best Instrumental Album – Piano - “Beyond the Turning” - Heidi Breyer - Winterhall Records, produced at Synchrosonic Productions by Grammy winner Corin Nelsen. www.heidibreyer.com/

 

****

New Age / Ambient / World Top 100 Radio Chart

ZoneMusicReporter.com

Top 100 Radio Play - #1 Top Recordings for January 2014

Title: Call of the Mountains - Artist: Masako

www.zonemusicreporter.com/charts/top100.asp

Premik plays wind synth on tracks 4 "Watching the Clouds", & 9 "Purple Indulgence".

 

****

Premik, in conjunction with jazz pianist Uli Geissendoerfer heads Bangalore Breakdown, an exciting, world music ensemble. They released their first CD, titled Diary, in 2008. In the words of noted Jazz author Bill Milkowski: Is it world music? Is it jazz? Is it some kind of new uncategorizable fusion that hasn’t yet been labeled?

Sound samples here: www.bangalorebreakdown.com/music.html

 

****

 

Premik and Uli Geissendoerfer released in 2014 their own collaborative duo CD titled Passport to 'Happyness' (yes, happiness with a 'y'') www.ulimusic.com

 

www.flickr.com/photos/42514297@N04/15543396956/

 

****

 

Premik will soon be featured in Carman Moore's Cd “Concerto for Ornette” in which Premik will play the orchestral solo saxophone part. Premik is also the featured saxophonist with SKYBAND on its recording of Carman Moore’s “DON AND BEA IN LOVE,” a fantasy concept album roughly about the intense Renaissance love between Dante and Beatrice which, in part, takes place in outer space! Carman Moore is a 2013 Guggenheim Fellowship winner. www.carmanmoore.com

 

****

 

Premik’s ‘Journey To Light Ensemble’

Sound is East/West, jazz., a journey....

With Premik Russell Tubbs (saxpohones, flutes, lap steel, wind synth),

www.premik.com

Dave Phelps (guitar),

www.davidphelpsguitar.com/

Leigh Stuart (cello),

leighstuart.com/about/

Nathan Peck (upright & electric bass),

www.alexskolnick.com/biography-nathan-peck/

Todd Isler (drums, percussion)

toddisler.com/

Naren Budakar (tabla)

www.sooryadance.com/html/Milan/naren.htm

Watch for a Journey To Light Ensemble album to be released in 2014

 

****

 

TriBeCaStan

Premik (saxophones, flutes, lap steel, wind synth)

tribecastan.tv/

 

TriBeCaStan's "Coal Again"- Cd Release 2014

www.flickr.com/photos/42514297@N04/15447303643/in/photost...

 

***

 

Performing in:

25th Anniversary of the Rainforest Fund Benefit Concert

Thursday, April 17, 2014

Carnegie Hall

Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage

7 PM

www.carnegiehall.org/Calendar/2014/4/17/0700/PM/25th-Anni...

 

***

 

Premik solo in SINGING THE OCEANS ALIVE CONCERT with the ROYAL PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA

Fairfield Hall concert LONDON, ENGLAND APRIL 25, 2014

 

Watch/Listen

YouTubes

 

Premik solo with the London Royal Philharmonic performing "Apla Kathar."

The main melody was composed by Sri Chinmoy & orchestrated by Vapushtara Matthijs Jongepier.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbhReDbyIOY

 

High praise from Craig Pruess:

"The piece was excellent, thrilling even, very well orchestrated, and your playing was note perfect. An honor to work with you, my man." –Craig Pruess Composer, Musician, Arranger, and a Gold & Platinum Record Producer

www.heaven-on-earth-music.co.uk/

 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=4euUuBNUzco

Song of the Ocean by Kristin Hoffmann

All performers of the evening take the stage with the London Royal Philharmonic Orchestra

 

****

 

Premik Russell Tubbs | The Music of Karl Jenkins | Carnegie Hall

MARTIN LUTHER KING DAY

Monday, January 19, 2015

Premik Russell Tubbs played "bansuri & ethnic flutes" in this concert. (Bansuri is an Indian bamboo flute).

 

nyconcertreview.com/reviews/distinguished-concerts-intern...

Distinguished Concerts International New York (DCINY) presents The Music of Karl Jenkins in Review

 

www.karljenkins.com/

 

__________________

 

Contact/Listen

 

www.premik.com

www.facebook.com/premik.tubbs

www.reverbnation.com/premik

www.broadjam.com/premik

www.myspace.com/premik

www.emusic.com/album/premik/mission-transcendence/10884302/

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premik_Russell_Tubbs

New music coming soon!

__________________

 

Short Bio

 

World / Jazz / Experimental / Improv / East-West / Ambient / Pop

PREMIK RUSSELL TUBBS

 

Premik, a composer, arranger, producer and an accomplished multi-instrumentalist performs on various flutes, soprano, alto and tenor saxophones, wind synthesizers, and lap steel guitar.

 

Premik has worked with everyone from Carlos Santana, Whitney Houston, Herbie Hancock, John McLaughlin, Ravi Shankar, Narada Michael Walden, Clarence Clemons, Ornette Coleman, Jackson Browne, Jean-Luc Ponty, Lonnie Liston-Smith, Scarlet Riveria, James Taylor, Sting and Lady Gaga, just to name a few. He is equally adept in pop, R&B, jazz, world and experimental genres.

 

Sax solos on #1 Hits -: “How Will I Know” (Whitney Houston) and “Baby, Come To Me” (Regina Belle).

 

Premik's first major recording breakthrough was with John McLaughlin and the Mahavishnu Orchestra on the album“Visions of the Emerald Beyond.” Premik was a major part of the landmark Carlos Santana album "The Swing of Delight" which featured Herbie Hancock as co-arranger and co-musical director. Also featured were Wayne Shorter, Tony Williams, Ron Carter and several members of the Santana band.

 

www.premik.com/recordings/discography/

 

In 1978 Premik joined Carlos Santana on a six-week European tour as part of an opening act for the Santana Band called Devadip Oneness.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=beD58ordH08

"Gardenia" - DEVADIP European tour w/ Carlos Santana, Dec.'78 in Paris

 

www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=juVuh...

!978 Devidip Orchestra Live In Sweden

_________

 

YouTube -DEVADIP CARLOS SANTANA ~~ HANNIBAL ~~ 1980

Russel Tubbs, saxo

Devadip Santana, guitar

www.youtube.com/watch?v=lv_jsp_43h0

_____________________

_____________________

 

Looking for music for your film or project?

Let’s talk...

www.premik.com

 

To view as slideshows click links below (non-animated).

For Flickr animated slideshow click double box icon at the top right of the album.

www.flickr.com/photos/42514297@N04/sets/72157632988389457...

View “A Life Of Music - to be cont.'d ...(with GRATITUDE!)” slideshow

 

View as non-animated slideshows

For animated slideshows click double box at right corner of the album

www.flickr.com/photos/42514297@N04/sets/72157635185040413...

View “Photos for Media” slideshow

 

I fell in love at 17 and married that man at 25. We were the ideal couple and admired by many. He could build anything, fix anything, was handsome, loving and so very kind. I was the somewhat pretty girl, in my view, but never quite good enough. I grew up with a constant questioning of my looks, my worth, my intelligence. I had a boyfriend for two seconds in 7th grade, and then not again until late in my senior year. And guess what? I married him. Never had I felt more at home and safe, and truly in love. The problem was, I had never stopped questioning my worth. And I continued to look for validation and nods of approval from other people. It became “not enough” to have my husband’s love, I was looking for more. Though I was not aware I was doing this, I also started to measure and question my husband’s love as true or not. This would look like me flirting with people even in front of my husband (if he seemed jealous, maybe he really loved me) or leading people on just enough to have to tell them I was in a relationship. This was a pattern for me, one I didn’t see clearly at the time. (I also didn’t see, couldn’t see that every flirt, glance, or lead-on was me looking for me). And, I loved him. When he would leave for work, I would feel a loss, I loved being with him. I even think he knew about me and my insecurities, and loved me still.

 

We decided to have kids once he turned 30, and that was when things got really strained.

Jonas came in to this world with an extremely rare genetic disorder that ultrasound and genetic testing at the time did not detect. The dream of starting a family the way I had imagined was thrown into a washing machine, dryer and then a wood chipper. He struggled with life from the start, and ended up in the hospital a lot. That started the dynamic of once my husband came home, I would hand him our son and go hide in housework or a book or some other escape. There was a lot of love, pain, struggling, more hospitalizations, sleepless nights and generalized anxiety. I was not grounded in who I was, I was surviving. Jonas wasn’t even typical for an atypical child. In the handicapped and special needs world, he was the most complex. That wasn’t even the most difficult part. That was the crying. He seemed to never stop. He mostly cried, with little moments of calm (the opposite from other children)...something that didn’t improve much till he was 5 or so. Then I had this great idea to have another baby. At least I could have something ‘normal’ to deal with. Wesley came about 18 months later, and was as I imagined. Perfectly typical. Keeping myself busy, distracted, “important”, having so many reasons to not deal with who I was and what I needed led me to eventually come to the realization that our marriage wasn’t working. He didn’t love me. I had been collecting evidence like “see he didn’t even kiss me goodnight” “he never called to check in from work” or “why does he call me from work, he doesn’t think I know how to take care of the kids?” I had convinced myself he wasn’t the ‘one’ for me after all. That the love must not be real, and it must be somewhere else. So, I started to wait for my true love. And thoughts like “wait, He was my true love so what happened??” came but for some reason I avoided working it out. I had my answer, true love was coming from somewhere else. And then guess what? It did.

 

I started down the divorce path, and it got real. There were so many moments I knew I had messed everything up, and I should just go back and try to repair things. That was paired with a justification because evidence still showed he didn’t love me. I mean, he was letting me divorce him.

Our divorce took years. I couldn’t do it. Then I could. Then I couldn’t. I stalled, he stalled. I avoided. He avoided. But all the while, I was in a new relationship...the one I called the ‘true love’. The stalling and avoiding was impacting my new relationship. It felt like I was taking off my own arm so that I could feel more complete. And it made as much sense as that. The pain got so overwhelming at one point, I broke up my new relationship thinking it would all get easier. I had been dealing with extreme anger and hatred from my ex-husband’s family. A family I once loved, and who supposedly loved me. There was so much anxiety and fear and pain, at one point I contracted mono, paired with hepatitis and spent months on the couch. Alone. That was when I realized my now ex husband found the love of his life. How could I feel jealous and angry? Well, I did. She was younger. And pretty. Great body. And she had my kids with her half the time. What.the.fuck.

It got ugly. I had finally found moments of peace and workability with my ex husband where he wasn’t angry all the time, and now she’s here? Well, that brought a new level of tension and drama. I remember a soccer game where he brought his brother and parents, and I brought my sister so I’d have backup. His girlfriend was sitting on the ground with Jonas and I couldn’t even get near him. How freaking awkward. What were people thinking. What does it mean about me that I cant just go over there and tell her that I would like to hold my own son. In times like those, I wanted the earth to swallow me up. It went on like that for a while. I had moments of extending the olive branch, and trying to be nice and sharing movie recommendations. Something inside of me knew it could be different. I even saw things I liked about her. And deep down, I still loved my ex. I could see that I didn’t love him romantically per se, but that I was not complete with the way things were. It was like a nagging constant voice of why? why? why? why? In my head. Meaning, why was it like this? Why are we pretending to be enemies? Didn’t it make sense what I did? Aren’t you happier now? Why are you still mad? Voices in my head would confuse me and have me wonder why I’m still wanting him to prove his love to me. After all I did? But it was like that: “You should hate me. Why do you hate me? You should thank me. I am so sorry. You should be sorry. “

 

Years go by in a mostly polite, kind-of peaceful manner and then I had a great idea. I would invite them to this enormous party I was having for Jonas. He had lived for 10 years by then, and every time he was sick I would try to prepare myself for his death. So when he was about to turn 10, I thought we should throw him a ‘life party’. I rented a place, and catered the event with food and drinks, music, games, and a movie I had made about Jonas (which included his dad and now girlfriend). Well, they came, and it was fine. They managed to find people to talk to without it being awkward for them, and I was so happy to be having a party of love that I didn’t even worry about them. I also didn’t worry if I was hugging my new husband too much. I guess I was starting to feel overall more comfortable inside with the choices we all made. Well then the first of many small miracles happened. When the party was over, she sent me a text. She shared that it was amazing for her to get a glimpse of the mother that I really am, instead of through the lens of my ex family (who still hated my guts I was sure). She saw the love, and what I had created for Jonas, and she started to wonder at the person I really was. It was the first moment perhaps, that she actually saw me. For me, that was validating and gave me the energy to keep going, to keep moving in the direction of healing and peace. Man, all it took was saying something nice to one another. We make it so complicated.

 

The next monumental moment was after I took a course through Landmark Education and invited her to my ‘graduation night’. She came, and she brought me a gift. I thought that was adorable. Maybe I was starting to actually like this girl? That very night, she signed up for the same course, and signed her husband (my ex husband) up too. Once we all took that course, our healing and forgiving and connecting took off. All we needed was a common language so that no one feels blamed, or wronged. We all learned about how dynamics are created, and how we keep patterns alive in our thinking -and now we had tools to actually share when we got hurt or upset. This is also around the time that I finally started to understand what happened in my marriage. I learned that when I was younger and in a certain moment with my parents, I convinced myself that they didn’t love me. It was not conscious. I also in that moment, learned to shut my love off in response. I then got to see how that had created patterns of hurt and pain, and shutting off my love for people- all without me knowing it was a decision I made from childhood. I actually felt justified and it all felt real. To constantly question people’s love became normal. I collect evidence to support my ‘truth’, and then I usually distance myself from that person. Divorce.

 

Yes, I do think it could have been avoided had I learned this about myself sooner. But would I go back now? No. I’d even go through the yuckiest, sickest, deepest sadness of my life to be where we are today. After Landmark, we were no longer afraid to share time together. We started hanging out a little bit more. We eventually shared Christmas Eve together. We really enjoyed our time together. We hit a few bumps in the road, but they didn’t stop us, and Megan and I started calling each other if we sensed something was up. We realized we had a common commitment to the kids being happy, and now we were both living from that. In the past three years, my husband and I hosted their first baby shower at our home, we have gone on vacation together, we have had countless dinners, brunches and lunches together. Last Christmas Jonas ended up in the hospital for about 3 weeks. His heart stopped. For 25 minutes. My ex husband Kieran, his wife Megan and I stood at the head of Jonas’s bed and watched while they tirelessly tried to revive him. They surrounded me in love beyond what I could have ever expected. What we shared in that moment, really got me present to that THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT IT IS LIKE TO SHARE A CHILD. Before the drama. Blaming. Comparing. When we are able to forget about our own complaints, judgements, etc...we were just there because we love someone. Our son. Stepson. Whatever. It’s all love. When we let love BE there, it all makes sense. Those few weeks with the four of us in the same hospital room provided a slowing down of life, and a presence with each other that is difficult to achieve in every day life. We talked about what each of us wants for Jonas. What kind of life we want to have for him, for us as a family and as individuals. COVID didn’t stop us, and only kept us in the conversation of how we really want to live. We have had dinners or lunches every weekend when we ‘trade’ the kids. We are talking about that together, anything is possible. We could even live abroad. What can I say? Life works when we clean up our complaints and take responsibility for our happiness. Imagine if I hadn’t invited them to Jonas’s party? It just took an act of kindness.

 

This is a story about true love. And how I know it exists. No, I didn’t marry my high school sweetheart, travel the world, have 3 kids who are now doctors and lawyers and now we’re sitting on the front porch swing holding hands.

No, no, it’s much more than that. Love, Grief, and Gut Wrenching Pain. Dreams and expectations thwarted. Lies of the worst kind. Near death experiences. Divorce. Is the true love about my current husband? No. And yes. It is the true love that existed all along that allowed for healing and an ultimately stable environment for our kids. True love, isn’t the marriage that lasts for 40 years only. It is there in the mess, in the hurt, in the pain, in the lies. It’s just covered up by our opinions and thoughts about it all. I am so profoundly happy that I listened to the voice (that was almost silenced) that I could still love my first husband, and that it didn’t have to be romantic to still be love. And trust it to build what we built. Kieran held the other end of this. I am so grateful to his wife Megan for being so strong and badass to allow space for that to happen. And my husband, who tirelessly fought for us to all heal.

 

And lastly, perhaps the greatest love affair was me falling in love with me. I never knew how to do that. Everyone says ‘love yourself so that you can love others’. But no one ever tells us what that actually looks like in real life. It might look like saying “No”. Maybe not having the third glass of wine because you don’t need it to feel ‘comfortable’. Maybe it looks like exercising not to get into a size ‘6’ but because you want to nurture your well being. Telling the truth. Not needing so much validation. It might look different altogether for others. But its not a course, we do not get a certificate in this. It becomes a declaration. For me, I declare myself worthy of love exactly as I am, with my awful mistakes and loving intentions all the same. I hope this inspires all to do the same. No matter what.

I promise my photos aren't always this depressing.

There just happens to be a lot going on right now.

 

There's a lot more to everybody then everybody knows, and it's ok if people think im crazy, because everyone is a little bit crazy

  

The realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own. Narrated, written, directed, edited and coined by John Koen

Week 4 - Quotes

 

Almost there, and it's hardly even started.

 

image © alyssa jiosa

 

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www.pinterest.com/pin/199354720978671348/

I asked for Strength...God gave me Difficulties to make me strong.

I asked for Wisdom...God gave me Problems to solve.

I asked for Prosperity...God gave me Brain and Brawn to work.

I asked for Courage...God gave me Danger to overcome.

I asked for Love...God gave me Troubled people to help.

I asked for Favors...God gave me Opportunities.

I received nothing I wanted...I received everything I needed!

 

I found the above on a website...no author was noted.......but I thought it was the most profound thing I have read in a while. It shows the difference between our mentality and God's Mentality.

 

I hope to read that everyday....and know that nothing I go through....the good and the bad.....that it is not in vain.

 

Random note: I saw the most awesome Sun Halo (Sun Dog) today........it was amazing. The one day I decided to leave my camera at home and not bring it to work......is when I had the opportunity to get an amazing photo. BLEHHHHHHHH PLLLLLLLLL!

 

Looks great if you: View On Black

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

 

Prior to the construction of Grand Central Terminal and the electrification and submergence of its tracks (1903-1913) Park Avenue between 42nd and 52nd Streets blighted New York as an exposed rail yard. Noisy, grimy and dangerous, its locomotives tirelessly belched their waste into the air as crosstown traffic was stranded on either side of the maze-like rails. By 1929, however, in a spectacular application of skyscraper technology both above and below ground, revenue producing structures were erected on steel stilts over the yard, transforming the area into Terminal City, a prestigious mixed-use, multi-level enclave, integrated in its architectural expression and modes of transportation

- the finest realization of the City Beautiful Movement in New York.

 

The New York Central Building provided the Terminal City complex with a dramatic linchpin as well as a bridge to the rest of Manhattan. Through special negotiations with city officials it was constructed in 1927-29 astride Park Avenue, allowing for a continuation of the boulevard's sidewalk- and street traffic via pedestrian corridors and vehicular tunnels burrowed through the building's base.

 

The New York Central Building is the skyscraping counterpart of Grand Central Terminal. It was designed by the same architects in the same materials and Beaux-Arts style, simultaneously developing some of the depot's most - innovative circulation systems- Swallowing Park Avenue traffic and thereby, relieving congestion around the terminal the building functions as an open gate to the "Gateway to a Continent."

 

With a distinction all but unique in grid- patterned Manhattan, it has a double focus, as powerful by day as it is dramatic , by night. Unobstructed by surrounding buildings, the New York Central's" honeycombed base and slender tower dominate the street corridor while its glowing and wonderfully ornate roof, visible for miles, enriches New York's constellation of illuminated peaks.

 

For its superb engineering, innovative, circulation systems and the consequent relief of traffic, the structure is exceptional. As a conspicuous and experiential urban monument it is unsurpassed. Identified by railroad officials as the "crowning achievement" of their urban redevelopment program, the New York Central Building, now the Helmsley Building, ranks easily among the finest and best known office towers in New York.

In 1863-67 Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt acquired control of the New York & Harlem, the Hudson River and the New York Centra 1 Railroads (consolidated in 1869 as the New York Central & Hudson River Railroad), Rerouting the trains along a single line (the Harlem) for five miles south from the Bronx, Vanderbilt determined to build a new terminal at 42nd Street- He acquired most of the property between 42nd and 48th Streets (subsequently extended to 52nd Street), Madison and Lexington Avenues, and commissioned John B. Snook to design the depot (1871), with an impressive glass and metal shed by R. G. Hatfield immediately behind.

 

The land north of the new facility was used as a train yard: an exposed, noisy, cinder- and smoke-belching sprawl which made neighboring real estate uninhabitable to all but squatters. The paddle-shaped track network interrupted crosstown streets', leaving then dead ends on either side of the yard.

 

Subsequent improvements lowered the rails several feet below grade and opened crosstown traffic with periodic elevated bridges. But by the turn of the century increased suburban and commuter traffic proved these palliative measures inadequate: the polluting locomotives thwarted seminal attempts at urban renewal while the still only — partially submerged tracks created an intolerable obstacle to the street traffic which the terminal inevitably generated.

 

Solutions to these and a panoply of related-problems came in 1903 when William J. Wilgus, the visionary chief engineer of the New-York Central, presented the railroad with a grand scheme — ultimately proved epochal — for the replacement of the existing Grand Central Terminal with a new, more technologically advanced facility. Key to the project was the electrification of rail lines.

 

Unlike steam locomotives, which required open air or ventilated tunnels for release of their combusted waste, electrified trains could be submerged below ground. The acreage thus reclaimed at ground level and above could be used, Wilgus foresaw, for revenue-producing structures. High profit buildings were erected on skeletal steel supports over the tracks: "And thus from the air [was] taken wealth." The alchemous plan repaid the enormous cost of the new terminal and the electrification many times over.

 

Realization of Wilgus' scheme involved a design competition to which four firms were invited. Per requirements, each submitted a proposal for a skyscraping terminal in the center of Park Avenue but so arranged as to connect both north and south segments of the boulevard. The contest was won by Reed & Stem who had worked with Wilgus on previous railroad commissions (and to whom Reed was related by marriage). Their proposal called for a neo-Renaissance terminal surmounted by a 22-story hotel or office tower. Preceded on the north by a grand "Court of Honor," the depot was, in a stroke of genius, to be girdled by an "exterior circumferential elevated driveway" along which Park Avenue "would flow in divided north- and southbound streams. Architects Warren & Wetmore subsequently transformed the design into the current low, monumental mass, but many of its essential features survived.

 

Indeed, Reed & Stem's tower proposal (together with that of unsuccessful competitors McKim, Mead & White) may be seen as the germ of the New York Central Building which Warren & Wetmore constructed to the north of the terminal some two decades later.

 

In 1903 plans were submitted to the Board of Estimate for the new train station as well as for the revenue-producers that Wilgus had imagined. In addition to the head house, the proposal included mail and express terminals, a post office, and hotels. Several of the structures were undertaken concurrently with the new terminal, but not until the 1920s (after the post-World War I depression) did the precinct assume the distinctive character of the planned enclave known as "Terminal City."

 

Building efforts initially focused on the construction of new hotels whose development, like most luxury buildings, had been stemmed by the war, and whose need near the depot was critical. Between the completion of the terminal in 1913 and the New York Central Building in 1927-29, more than a score of hotels and apartment buildings were added to the precinct, all of roughly the same height and classicizing style.

 

These were followed, after 1922, by the erection of new office buildings, which, although taller than the hotels, were nonetheless related in style, and frequently designed by -the same architects. In each case the new buildings marched north, perched on steel stilts over the rail yard. They transformed Park Avenue into a grand and cohesive urban corridor with a ribbon of spinal plantings. In the process they earned for this boulevard the Park Avenue name which, although official since 1888, had previously been little deserved.

 

The 34-story New York Central Building was the final addition to Terminal—City. Taller, more dramatic and conspicuously sited than any other unit in the complex, it became the riveting linchpin of "one of the most urbane groups, of commercial buildings in the world."

 

The creation of Terminal City was a direct outgrowth of the ,"City Beautiful Movement." Fostered by the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, this movement sought to transform the haphazard development of American metropolises into clean, symmetrical urban centers, beautified by parks, public monuments and axial roadways, and guided in their future growth by a comprehensive plan for transportation and architectural integration.

 

Like other cities (most notably Washington, D.C. with its MacMillan Plan of 1902-03), New York attempted implementation. In a little-known effort beginning in 1902 and culminating five years later, the New York Public Improvement Commission submitted a comprehensive scheme for the city's development "so designed that all its parts shall be consistent, the one with the other, and form a homogeneous whole."

 

This was the first time since the establishment of Manhattan's street grid in 1811 that a general urban plan had been proposed for New York; it met with unmitigated failure. Calling for parkways, subsidiary streets, pedestrian arcades and imposing vistas (all aspects of Terminal City), the municipal scheme was undermined by an over-emphasis of aesthetic concerns. It suffered from an unrealistic exclusion of economic and social forces and, perhaps most damagingly, from the inability of democratic government to consolidate its widely-diffused powers for urban renewal on such an imperial scale.

 

The degree to which city bureaucracy was incapable of action' contrasted starkly with the position of the railroad at the turn of the century: a multi-million dollar private enterprise whose capital, organization and vast real estate holdings permitted — indeed, encouraged — a coordinated development policy. Moreover, the railroad's massive physical needs, and its cultivated civic and philanthropic self-image found appropriate architectural models in the ancient. Renaissance and Beaux-Arts

 

public buildings which so inspired the City Beautiful Movement. Wilgus, Reed & Stem, and Warren & Wetmore, among others, were nurtured on Utopian urban visions. Their creation of the mixed-use, multi-level Terminal City, integrated in its architectural expression and modes of transportation, is one of the best, if not the greatest, legacy of the City Beautiful Movement in New York- The achievement was challenged — arguably equalled — only by Rockefeller Center which, built in the 1930s, followed the Terminal City prototype.

 

Architects of the New York Central Building

 

Charles Delevan Wetmore (1866-1941) received an A.B. degree from Harvard in 1889 and three years later, in 1892, graduated from its Law , School. He had also studied architecture, and before joining the legal firm of Carter, Ledyard & Milburn, designed for his alma mater the Claverly, Westmorly and Apley Court dormitories.

 

It was during a consultation about the design of his own house that Wetmore met his future partner, Whitney Warren (1864-1943), a graduate of Columbia College (1886), of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris (1887-94) and subsequently, a member of the New York office of McKim, Mead & White. Warren, impressed by his client's architectural ability,, suggested that Wetmore leave the practice of law. The two men formed a partnership in 1898. Wetmore specialized in the firm's legal and financial Affairs; Warren emerged as the principal designer.

 

Warren & Wetmore's first major commission came just one year later when they prevailed in a contest for the design of the New York Yacht Club (1899). An enormously auspicious beginning, this celebrated project was nonetheless succeeded only "by lesser residential works and modest office buildings. Not until 1903 did the firm emerge on the forefront of New York architecture and then under suspect terms: despite the victory of Reed & Stem in the competition for Grand Central Terminal, and indeed, without the knowledge of that premier firm.

 

Warren & Wetmore submitted another scheme for the depot to William K. Vanderbilt, then chairman of the board of the New York Central (and a cousin and close friend of Whitney Warren). The strength of nepotism was proven, as were Wetmore's skills as an attorney. In a (doubtlessly strained) compromise, Warren & Wetmore became associated with Reed & Stem on the terminal, but later assumed total control of design.

 

Over the course of a decade they combined their low-lying Beaux-Arts proposal with essential elements from Reed & Stem's more innovative scheme. - _ * •

 

In the end, the eminently gifted, if opportunistic, Warren & Wetmore achieved the greater fame, and it was they who became the preferred architects of the New York Central. Engaged by the railroad almost continuously for a quarter-century, the firm was responsible for much of the development of Terminal City. Beginning with the Biltmore Hotel in 1911-13 (designed in association with Reed & Stem; demolished). Warren & Wetmore executed sere ox the most prestigious hotels in the zone, including the Belmont {1905; demolished), the Ritz-Carlton (1910; demolished), the Vanderbilt 1912), Commodore (1916), Linnard (1919; demolished), and the Ambassador (1921), as will as the post office adjacent to Grand Central, several service : • • , for the railroad, nearly a dozen Park Avenue apartment buildings, office buildings and numerous shops. Together with such notable (non-railroad sponsored) commissions as the Heckscher Building of 1920, the award-winning Aeolian Building of five years later, and the former Bonwit Teller department store of 1928 (all on Fifth Avenue), as well as Steinway Hall on West 57th Street (1925), Warren & Wetmore executed at least 92 buildings and building additions in New York, with more than a score of additional commissions elsewhere in the continent.

 

The New York Central Building was their final undertaking for the railroad and the last major project executed by the firm in New York. Completed in 1929, it preceded Warren's retirement by only two years. The office closed a decade later upon Wetmore's death in 1941.

 

The, New York Central Building

 

Between the completion of Grand Central Terminal in 1913 and the 100th anniversary of the New York Central Railroad in 1926, the number of passengers annually served by the depot nearly doubled, rising prodigiously from 23 million to 43 million in just over a dozen years.

 

During the same short period, in a historically unparalleled feat, the most formidable engineering problems had been solved, and Terminal City had risen triumphantly above the tireless rail yard. By 1926 the only open cuts in the precinct lay oh either side of Park Avenue between 45th and 46th Streets. Work on the combined sites began later in the same centennial year and in March 1929 — just seven months before the stock market crashed — New York Central's executives relocated from their corporate offices in 466 Lexington Avenue into the top three floors of their new namesake building across the street.

 

Towering above its neighbors, the 34-story structure literally provided "the crowning achievement" to the railroad's urban development plan. * So skilled were its design and execution and so magnificent its siting, that the railroad's trade journal confidently predicted that the New York Central Building was "destined to become one of New York City's landmarks."

 

Traffic

 

Hardly less spectacular — and to the mind of city officials, Relief far more important — was the solution to a major source of New York traffic congestion. Although elevated drives around Grand, Central had been proposed by Reed & Stem and subsequently incorporated into the design of Warren & Wetmore, their construction did not begin until 1917, four years after the terminal's completion. Not until 1919 (by which time negotiations for the New York Central Building had already commenced) did the road system open to the public, and then with only short-term and partial resolve.

 

Ascending/descending the Pershing Square Viaduct at 40th Street, both north- and southbound traffic continued along the west side of the terminal atop an elevated drive, superimposed like a second story over Vanderbilt Avenue. .(Depew Place, flanking the terminal on the east, also had an elevated level but this was a private way, reserved for baggage and freight deliveries). The western viaduct allowed vehicles to travel along busy 42nd Street without interruption by a north-south artery." Within a few short years, however, increased traffic created the most vexatious bottleneck three blocks north, at 45th Street, where the ramp descended to grade: 13 lanes of bi-directional traffic converged - from Park and Vanderbilt Avenues, 45th Street and the elevated drive, spilling into adjacent streets and Strangling the essentia I flow of this midtown commercial hub. Construction permits for the New York Central Building were withheld until a scheme to relieve this insufferable congestion had been submitted.

 

Roadways

 

An agreement was reached in 1924 after five years of & Tunnels negotiation, during which time the railroad totally revised its plans. Instead of following through with its original intention to erect "one building on the west side of Park Avenue, the same size as the Postum Building [21 stories] and another on the east side of Park Avenue similar to the Park Lexington Building [also 21 stories]," the New York Central proposed to construct one large building astride the boulevard. - In exchange for the required variances, city officials requested, and received from the railroad, the extension of Vanderbilt Avenue two blocks north of its former terminus at 45th Street.

 

The New York Central also agreed to improve the elevated drive along the west side of the terminal and to construct a companion drive on its east (a transformation of the private delivery platform atop Depew Place) so that public traffic could flow around the depot as originally planned, in bifurcated one-way lanes (southbound on the west; northbound on the east). Instead of descending to grade amid the confusion of 45th Street, the elevated drives were to span that street on bridges and, through specially granted easements, continue north on ramps through the base of the proposed' New York Central Building.

 

Cars emerging from its vehicular tunnels at 46th Street would proceed uptown along Park Avenue's newly widened traffic lanes. A corollary of the same agreement provided for "a permanent and perpetual easement of passage on foot," namely the continuation of Park Avenue's sidewalks through two open (shop-lined) corridors on either side of the tunnels.

 

Manhattan Borough President Julius Miller hailed the ingenious circulation system as "the biggest thing in traffic relief in twenty years." The masterminds behind the project were George A. Harwood, Ira A. Place and Amos Schaeffer, all of whom are memorialized by bronze plaques on the New York Central Building's main facade. Execution of the tunnels required reinforcement by special girders and trusses for superstructure support, and, as a protect ion against vibration, their ' erection independent of the building's frame. In addition, the two road-ways — both curved and banked — had to be supported on stanchions installed at a slope so that cars could climb to the elevated 45th Street bridges.

 

The innovative design allowed Park Avenue traffic to continue unimpeded between 46th and 40th Streets — a flow which, to this day, is still an exhilarating experience: one burrows through the New York Central Building negotiating its sharp turns, only to emerge above the city and descend, in roller coaster fashion, down the Pershing Square Viaduct (and, if one chooses, further south, through the subterranean Belmont tunnel — originally a locomotive cut — all the way to 33rd Street).

 

There was, in all of it, a comforting urban justice: the railroad supplied the brilliant remedy to the traffic jams which for so many years it had created. No less germane was the solution's reliance on tunnels, particularly as the New York Central had achieved its mighty prowess by blasting and tunneling through so much craggy terrain, both along Park Avenue, and beyond.

 

Design Inspiration for the design drew obviously from the four Influences competitive proposals submitted for Grand Central Terminal in 1903. Excluding Reed & Stem's preferred scheme with its circumferential viaducts, both Samuel Huckel and McKim, Mead & White provided for the continuation of Park Avenue via tunnels through the depot (as presumably did Daniel Burnham in his now lost entry).

 

McKim's firm executed a version of its unsuccessful terminal proposal for the 26—story Municipal Building at the head of Chambers Street. Designed in 1908. and completed in 1916., this City Beautiful skyscraper, like the New York Central Building of a decade later, includes a monumental arcade through which vehicular traffic originally flowed. Also similar are the projecting side wings which give the Municipal Building (and the more graceful 46th Street facade of the New York Central Building) a depressed U-shaped plan.

 

One can also perceive correspondences between Warren & Wetmore's tower and the chaste classicism of Reed & Stem's 22-story terminal proposal, but most conspicuous is Warren & Wetmore's effort to complement their own earlier work on Grand Central. Like the terminal, the New York Central Building was constructed of. limestone with bronze grilles, ornamented by symbols of industrial progress, and crowned by a heroic clock. Bridging Park Avenue with imposing Beaux-Arts arches, both structures are enlivened at ground level by carefully integrated shops.

 

The correspondences are as binding and intentional as they were clearly stated in the New York. Central Building's specifications. Similarly, and despite the almost exclusive priority of Art Deco design for contemporaneous skyscrapers, the New York. Central was articulated "along strictly classical lines."

 

The decision - to so thoroughly incorporate it with the depot and, by extension, with the rest of Terminal City reinforced the urbane cohesiveness of this "first planned precinct in New York."

 

Construction History

 

Contrary to the normal (and usually ineffective) course of development whereby the railroad erected its buildings and the city, in an independent effort, the surrounding streets, the New York Central assumed physical responsibility for every aspect of construction.

 

The arrangement proved particularly judicious because the entire campaign took place over double-level live trackage. In turn, city officials made every effort to aid and expedite the undertaking.

 

So successfully did the two parties interact that the enterprise was publicly hailed as a model of private and municipal cooperation.

 

Foundation preparations began in December 1926. Final plans for the structure were submitted on February 11, 1927, and three months later, on May 19th, 350 men from the James Stewart Construction Company anchored the last of the New York Central Building's steel piers 50 feet into the ground.

 

The task of providing adequate support for the superstructure had been particularly demanding: the entire campaign took place amid double level tracks which serviced more than 700 trains daily (a locomotive passed through operations approximately every 1-1/2 minutes of each working day).

 

The problem was further compounded because the rails (now electrified) prevented any possibility of continuous foundation walls and even more perplexing, because the frequent non-alignment of upper and lower tracks prohibited the use of through-columns.

 

A solution was achieved through a cleverly staggered skeletal steel frame in which upper level supports were carried on girders spanning the lower tracks. The lower piers, in turn, were irregularly spaced and anchored into the ground as the maze of rails would allow. The building was insulated against vibrations from the rumbling trains with lead and asbestos mats, and further protected by the 4-inch compressed cork tubes which encased those piers adjacent to rails.

 

More than 9,000 tons of steel were used in the foundations and ground floor alone. The entire structure required some 26,000-tons, a "good deal of which went into construction of the vehicular roadways.

 

Work continued at a rapid pace and on April 5, 1928 — just hours after the death of Chauncey Depew, chairman of New York Central's board of directors — the last rivet was driven into the 34-story steel frame. A temporary certificate of occupancy (# 11979) was issued in late December, and on September 25, 1929, building operations were brought to a close. Three years later the New York Central Building was acclaimed "the most remarkable office building in the world...even the wonderful Hudson Bridge [George Washington, 1931] required no greater engineering skill to construct.

 

Urban However brilliant, the New York Central Building's engineering did Impact not fully account for its singular popularity. Even before completion, and continuing unstemmed until the present day, this "absolutely glorious structure has captivated New York like few others. Regarded by many as "the most beautiful and imposing tower" in midtown, it enjoys a distinction all but unique in grid-patterned Manhattan: the building has a double focus.

 

Unlike most New York skyscrapers whose ground floors are visible only at close range and which consequently depend upon distinctive crowns for recognition, the New York Central Building plays a commanding role at both street level and on the skyline. Spanning Park Avenue, its great triumphal arches not only complement and give passage to Grand Central, but echo one of the finest aspects of its original City Beautiful design.

 

Projecting from either side of the apse-like recess in the center of the 46th Street facade, the building's 15—story wings embrace the Park Avenue corridor and realize — in however vestigial terms — the "Court of Honor" which Reed & Stem had intended to locate at the north of the terminal.

 

The impression was particularly imposing in the 1930s and 1940s when the nearly uniform base-, cornice- and roof lines of Park Avenue's midrise buildings acted like powerful orthogonals, leading irresistibly to the focal New York Central Building.

 

Although the streetscape was radically altered in the 1950s and 1960s, convincing elements of this once truly imperial vista survive in the wealth of scrolls, fasces, flags and military insignia which decorate the New York Central Building's (recently illuminated) triumphal arch in (now gilded) bas-relief.

 

Most compelling is the heroic clock which Edward McCartan framed with reposing gods four times life size. The sculptural composition provides the dramatic focus of the 46th Street facade, just as the entire building does for all of Park Avenue.

 

The Tower

 

In erecting the tower, a conspicuous symbol of the railroad's might, New York Central officials made proud comparisons with the Washington Monument, noting with considerable pleasure that their building was 5-6 feet taller.

 

They might also have compared it to the obelisks of baroque Rome which, planted in open piazzas and visible from afar, served as exclamatory urban focuses.

 

At 567 feet the New York Central Building was tall enough to control Park Avenue's 140 foot width, but sufficiently slender to allow the sky to slide by on either side of its shaft — just as it permitted the boulevard's street traffic to flow through its base.

 

The building functioned as a bridge, not a barrier. And while this wonderfully urbane spatial flow was fatally smothered in 1963 when the much taller and wider Pan Am Building stole the sky the New York Central maintains a dignity and monumentality independent of size. For this, a good deal of credit belongs to its exuberant cupola-crowned roof, glistening by day with gold leaf, and illuminated like a fiery constellation by night.

 

The New York Central first appeared on the evening skyline on January 21, 1929. Batteries of flood lights illuminated all four sides of its tower "from base to top." Most of the building's 100,000 candlepower lights, however, accentuated the intricately detailed roof, maximizing the reflective glow of its gold and copper sheathing (nearly 300,000 pounds of which were applied).

 

The building's crowning feature, a marvellously ornate cupola, was literally designed as a beacon. Blazing with "32-marine-type fixtures," it housed a great glass ball (a 6,000 watt lantern) which, "amplified and "projected by a special system of reflectors," had the force of a coastal lighthouse.

 

Eight supplementary projectors threw flame-tinted light through the cupola's oval openings, additional "flaming torches" burning on each corner of the tower's octagonal roof. To the distinct pleasure of New York Central's officials, their building had made a conspicuous mark on the land, visible "for miles up Park Avenue, and also from lower Manhattan, New Jersey and Brooklyn.

 

Recent Like other-skyscrapers in New York, "the New York Central Building History was blacked-out during the war, only to suffer a dark future with the failing finances, and finally the bankruptcy, of the New York Central Railroad. The structure was sold in the late 1950s / at which point it was rechristened the "New York General Building" — an economic change of name which required only two letters to be re-cut on the cornice.

 

Real estate magnate Harry Helmsley purchased the building in 1977 and conferred on it his name. In the following year, an extensive renovation program was undertaken, restoring and refurbishing the building from top to bottom, interior and out.

 

And if the gilding program was somewhat too ambitiously executed, it is to the great credit of the new owner that the New. York Central Building, now the Helmsley Building, has once again become' a vibrant component of New York's street and skyline.

 

- From the 1987 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report

By the beginning of the 1970s, the nations of Western Europe had come to the realization that a dedicated strike aircraft was desperately needed. Most of NATO was depending on the F-104G Starfighter as their primary interdiction and strike aircraft, while France had only aging Mysteres and modified Mirage IIIs. The United Kingdom did not even have that: the promising TSR.2 had been cancelled, as had a British version of the F-111 Aardvark. Moreover, the UK also lacked an interceptor, relying on the outdated Lightning F.6. Finally, as the emerging European Common Market (the forerunner of the European Union) sought to distance itself from the United States, Western Europe desired an aircraft designed by Europeans for Europeans, rather than depending on American designs.

 

All parties agreed that the new Multi-Role Combat Aircraft (MRCA) should be a twin-engined dedicated strike aircraft, with variable-sweep wings that would allow it high dash speed at low-level to the target, yet allow it to operate from short runways or semi-improved fields. Political infighting over who would lead the MRCA project led France to withdraw from the program, followed by Canada, Belgium, and the Netherlands, leaving just West Germany, Britain, and Italy by 1971. Production of the MRCA would be divided between Messerschmitt-Bolkow-Bohm (MBB) of Germany, the British Aircraft Company (BAC) of the UK, and Fiat of Italy, under the umbrella of Panavia; the engines would similarly be produced by all three nations, with Britain’s Rolls-Royce in the lead, as Turbo-Union. Though Germany preferred a single-seat aircraft and the UK wanted an interceptor, the nations agreed to a two-seat aircraft to lessen the pressure on the pilot, while the MRCA would also be developed as an interceptor to satisfy the British requirement. The emphasis, however, was on the immediate development of a strike aircraft.

 

With the finalization of the aircraft design, what became the Panavia Tornado came together relatively quickly, with the first prototype flight in August 1974. Testing also went smoothly: the loss of two prototypes to crashes was traced to problems with the variable-flow intakes and the thrust reverser, which had been added to the design to improve its short-field landing performance. The strike version, designated Tornado IDS (Interdiction/Strike) for Germany and Italy, and Tornado GR.1 for Britain, entered service in 1979. Despite the hopes of the Panavia partners, the Tornado was never an export success, with only Saudi Arabia purchasing the aircraft: the F-16 and Mirage F.1 were cheaper alternatives, with more weapons options and less mechanically complex.

 

The Tornado IDS nonetheless proved to be a superb aircraft, with excellent handling in all flight profiles, and open to continual improvement. After the success of the American Wild Weasel program, Germany and Italy opted for a further development of the Tornado IDS to a dedicated anti-SAM aircraft, the Tornado ECR (Electronic Countermeasures/Reconnaissance).

 

The Tornado would never be called on to fight a war in Central Europe against the Soviet Union, which it had been designed to do. Instead, its first combat would come in the deserts of Iraq in the First Gulf War. RAF Tornados were tasked specifically with runway interdiction of Iraqi airfields—tactics that had been practiced often in anticipation of a Third World War. The result was near-disastrous: Iraqi antiaircraft fire accounted for three Tornados in as many days, as RAF pilots had trained to use terrain avoidance in Europe to mask them from ground fire; in Iraq, there was no terrain to hide behind. This forced the Tornado force to medium altitudes and freefall bombs only, as the Tornado IDS/GR.1 lacked the ability to launch precision-guided munitions.

 

The Tornado has since done better. Continually improved to carry a wide variety of weaponry, including the ALARM antiradar missile, Brimstone antitank missile, Kormoran and Sea Eagle antiship missiles, and American-built JDAMs, Tornados from Germany, Italy, and the UK have participated in wars in Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya. In Afghanistan, German Tornado ECRs have been invaluable using their onboard sensors to detect improvised explosive devices, while Italian Tornado IDS and RAF Tornado GR.4s essentially grounded the Libyan Air Force in the first days of the conflict by hitting runways and hangars; RAF Tornados flew from bases in the UK to Libya in the longest missions since the 1982 Falklands conflict. RAF, Luftwaffe, and AMI Tornado IDS/GR.4s will remain in service until at least 2025, to be replaced by either more Typhoons or the F-35 Lightning II. With 992 Tornados produced, the aircraft has easily been the most successful European aircraft built since World War II.

 

This aircraft represents an early Tornado GR.1 of the Royal Air Force’s famous 617 Squadron (“Dambusters”). This aircraft carries an overall camouflage pattern of two shades of dark gray, which RAF Tornados carried until the mid-1990s, when they switched to an overall medium gray scheme. The high-profile squadron markings were carried on the tail early in 617’s association with the Tornado, before being painted out, though recently they have made a comeback. It is equipped for the anti-airfield mission, with a single centerline JP.233 runway bomblet dispenser and two British general purpose bombs, along with external fuel tanks, ECM pod, and self-defense AIM-9J Sidewinder.

 

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

 

The Free Church of Saint Mary-the-Virgin complex, including the church, Clergy House, Mission House, Rectory and Lady Chapel, was designed by Pierre L. LeBrun of Napoleon LeBrun & Sons in 1894. The church, long a center of Anglo-Catholic worship, is a physical realization of the tenets of the Oxford Movement which sought to better the lives of the urban poor through nursing care, inspirational activity and the ritual of the Pre-Reformation Church in England. Built in 1895 to make full use of an irregular site, St. Mary's was designed both to realize the programmatic goals of its trustees and to evoke, in the church and Lady Chapel, the 13th- century French Gothic Style. The Clergy and Mission Houses, and the Rectory were cast in the 14th-century French Gothic style.

 

The result is one of the finest Gothic-inspired designs of New York's late 19th century. The steel frame construction of the church can be said to have made the building the first of its kind and size in the world, thus redefining the conventional methods of church construction. Among the building's several specific Anglo-Catholic characteristics are the subjects selected for the sculptures of J. Massey Rhind whose academic naturalism complements

 

LeBrun's architecture.

 

The Society of the Free Church of Saint Mary-the-Virgin

 

The Society of the Free Church of Saint Mary-the-Virgin has its origins in the growth of Anglo-Catholicism within the Church of England and the Protestant Episcopal Church of North America. In the third decade of the 19th century, a group of theologians - dons of Oxford's College House of Saint Mary-the-Virgin (Oriel College) - initiated a religious movement to enhance the lives of the disaffected of the Industrial Revolution.

 

Reasserting an identity with the Pre-Re format ion Church of England, the founders of the Oxford Movement emphasized the importance of the sacraments, stressing the ideal of the priesthood and the authority of bishops but still rejecting the autocracy of the Pope.

 

This Anglo-Catholicism was characterized by a reintroduction of ritual and its accompanying furnishings, a dedication to mission work, a revival of religious orders, and a development of church architecture and art. Conceived in academe, Anglo-Catholicism, garbed in the mystery, color and richness of ceremonial worship, also manifested itself in the construction of new church buildings in slum neighborhoods.

 

This reassertion of ancient ritual found a sympathetic audience within the Camden Society (1839), subsequently the Ecclesiological Society, which, through its publications, The Ecclesioloqist and a variety of architectural tracts, advocated the restoration of ancient churches and the building of new ones strictly according to the principles which they believed guided the medieval English builders.

 

In the 1860s the Ecclesiologists also had begun to accept certain French architectural elements — apses, in place of the traditional English flat ended chancels, for example.

 

By the 1860s Anglo-Catholicism had found a sympathetic audience among adherents of the American Episcopal Church. St. Mary's early history is inseparable from the life of the founder of the parish, the Reverend Thomas McKee Brown (1841-1898). Born in Philadelphia, the son of James Brown, he attended the Episcopal Academy (Philadelphia) for seven years and then matriculated at Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut, with the class of 1863.

 

The Civil War interrupted his academic career and he went to work. But soon after he resumed his studies - by arrangement with Trinity College - at the General Theological Seminary in New York. He received his Bachelor's degree from Trinity in 1864 and his Masters from the General Theological Seminary the following year. Before his ordination by Horatio Potter, Bishop of New York, on February 25, 1866, he served as curate at the Church of the Annunciation (then on 14th Street, Manhattan) and at St. John's, in Brooklyn.

 

Following his ordination he was Rector of Trinity Church, East New York, for a year before returning to Manhattan to became curate for the Reverend Ferdinand C. Ewer of Christ Church, New York.6 At both the Church of the Annunciation and Christ Church the exalted ritual characteristic of Anglo-Catholicism was practiced.

 

Concurrently, Brown and a group of interested lay people combined to establish a new parish on a thoroughly Anglo-Catholic foundation. Although at this time such ritual was contrary to canon law, Bishop Potter not only suggested how the group might incorporate, he pointed out t±ie working class neighborhood where their church would be most effective.

 

The Society of the Free Church of Saint Mary-the-Virgin was incorporated on December 5, 1868, under a provision of a New York State law. John Jacob Astor III, learning of the group's objective, gave the Society three lots on West 45th

 

Street (the site of the present Booth Theater).8 Within the month the corner stone of a new church building was laid by Bishop Potter. It is likely that the dedication of the church to Saint Mary-the-Virgin was inspired by the home church of the Oxford Movement.

 

The new church, built to the designs of William T. Hallett (1829-1908) was opened by the Rev. Ferdinand Ewer on December 8, 1870 — the Feast of the Conception (one of the most significant days in the calendar of a church dedicated to the Virgin). From the b^inning the liturgy was highly ritualistic; indeed, it was noted in the Parish Register of a sister church that the first High Mass with incense was celebrated at St. Mary's on Christmas Day, 1877.

 

The building records reflect the dedication of St. Mary's clergy and sisters to the spiritual and physical well-being of this working class neighborhood: a new clergy and choir house to accommodate the men's guilds (the St. Alban's and the St. Joseph's Guilds) and the boys club, as well as the single clergymen, was finished in 1885; and within the next two years a house at 248 West 45th Street to shelter the women's guilds (the Guild of St. Mary of the Cross and the Guild of the Annunciation) and the dispensary run by the new female order founded by Father Brown — the Sisters of the Order of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary — was given to serve as a Mission House.

 

The Society's trustees, burdened with mortgages, were continually faced with a lack of funds. The congregation included many of limited income, but several individuals were generous, among them, Miss Sara Louie Cooke.

 

On July 21, 1892, Miss Cooke died, leaving St. Mary's nearly $500,000. At the November trustees' meeting there was a lengthy discussion about whether to enlarge the present church or to purchase property for a new church. Subsequently, at a special meeting of the trustees it was resolved that the Treasurer should receive all moneys and property of Miss Cooke's estate.

 

The treasurer of the Society was Haley Fiske (1852-1929), who had been elected to the board of trustees on March 23, 1892 and on motion elected treasurer. Fiske was vice-president (and in 1919 became the fourth president) of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. He was the assistant to both his predecessors at Metropolitan Life, Joseph Fairchild Knapp and John Rogers Hegeman, both great builders. It was Knapp who brought Metropolitan Life uptown to Madison Square and for whom Napoleon LeBrun & Sons designed the eleven-story office block at 1 Madison Avenue, (1890-91).

 

It was Hegeman who expanded to the rest of the block and part of the block to the north (1894-1909, a campaign completed by Fiske), and it was Hegeman who commissioned the Metropolitan Life tower (a designated New York City Landmark, 1906-07), all of these built from plans prepared by the LeBrun firm. There can be little doubt that Fiske was involved in all these projects.

 

Fiske took the initiative immediately. One month later an executive committee, consisting of the rector, the secretary and the treasurer, was created. The trustees had had a year to consider the alternatives: enlarging their existing edifice on West 45th Street or moving to a new site.

 

Two months later it was reported that 143 feet along the north side of West 46th Street and possibly one adjacent lot on West 47th Street could be purchased. Accumulating lots for the new church site — seven on West 46th Street (No. 133-No. 145) — continued from January, 1894, until the following August when title was taken to the last of the five lots on West 47th Street (No. 136-No. 144). Both these streets were lined with the narrow rcwhouses of working class people and stables.

 

Concurrently, the Society's property on West 45th Street was sold and an architectural competition was announced. Father Brown had visited Europe in the summer of 1888; certainly he would have seen the great cathedrals as yell as the new English churches built for Anglo-Catholic congregations. The trustees stipulated a program with the following: a church in the French Gothic style of the 13th century; able to seat 800 exclusive of the chancel; the chancel to be apsidal and at least fifty feet in depth with an ambulatory; the building to extend north from West 46th Street with the chancel at the north end; the interior to be lofty; the elaboration of ornamental detail to be confined to the front and to the interior; no towers or spires; at least two chapels and a baptistry; the Rectory and the Sacristy to be on West 47th Street; and the Mission House for the Sisters and the Clergy House to be on West 46th Street — the Mission House on the east side of the site and the Clergy House on the West.

 

Because of the unfavorable reception to the announced competition, 17, the trustees withdrew it, and the commission was given to the LeBrun firm. Pierre LeBrun's plans were accepted on October 11, 1894. It should not be overlooked that Haley Fiske knew the firm well. Indeed, the LeBrun office was located in the new Home Office building they designed for the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company at 1 Madison Avenue.

 

The Architect

 

Pierre La jus LeBrun (1846-1924) has not received the attention that he is due. Because of the name of the firm, Napoleon LeBrun & Sons, both Pierre and his brother Michel have been all but anonymous. That it was Pierre LeBrun who designed St. Mary's is indicated in the Society's minutes. His father, Napoleon LeBrun, represented the firm at the initial stages of the project. Napoleon Eugene Charles LeBrun (1821-1901), was born to French emigrant parents in Riiladelphia. At fifteen years of age he was placed in the office of Thomas Ustick Walter (1804-1887), where he remained for six years. LeBrun began his own practice in 1841 in Philadelphia but moved to New York in 1864 where the choice in 1870 of his Second Empire style Masonic Temple competition submission did much to establish his reputation. In the same year his son Pierre joined him and the firm became Napoleon LeBrun & Son. Father and sons were active members of the new American Institute of Architects.

 

The firm's work can be divided into two periods, an early one spanning the 1870s into the mid-80s and a later one from the later 1880s until the firm's dissolution in 1909. The earlier is robust — the Church of Saint John-the-Baptist, 1872, West 30th Street and the Fire Department Headquarters, 1886, East 67th Street. Ihe later work was significantly different. Building elevations became more planar; ornament, based on historic prototypes, was used more judiciously. The first Metropolitan Life building was an example of a new building type given stylistic character through the application of ornament, as is LeBrun's still-extant Home Insurance Company (1893-94) facade on Broadway above Murray Street.

 

If little is known of Pierre LeBrun's formal architectural education, his three trips abroad in the service of the Willard Architectural Commission are documented. Levi Hale Willard, a wealthy businessman, died in 1883 leaving to the newly founded Metropolitan Museum of Art $100,000 toward the creation of a collection of models and casts illustrative of the art and science of architecture, to be made under the direction of a commission chosen by the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architects. In his will Willard nominated Napoleon LeBrun as president of this commission; Willard, a friend, had often discussed with LeBrun the need to cultivate a popular taste for architecture. Pierre LeBrun was appointed the commission's purchasing agent. The younger LeBrun visited the significant sites and met with the suppliers of casts in Paris, Munich and Rome.

 

The historical accuracy characterizing the ornament of the Church of Saint-Mary-the-Virgin appears to have been informed by the 13th century French Gothic examples in the Willard Collection. This is true of the firm's other later buildings; regardless of whether they are fire stations or skyscrapers, style is determined by the integrity of the ornament.

 

The Sculptor

 

John Massey Rhind (1860-1936) was born in Edinburgh where both his father and grandfather were architectural sculptors, a profession that his brothers followed as well. He studied in London - with Jules-Aime Dalou -and in Paris. His style can be associated with the academic naturalism of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Rhind came to this country in 1889. Credited for his ability to make his sculpture an integral part of a larger design, Rhind's earliest work in this country was for ecclesiastical buildings.

 

His first commission in this country was the bronze tympanum (1891) over the entrance to the Chapel of the Good Shepherd at the General Theological Seminary (for which institution he further worked in bronze and marble). His bronze panel, "Flight to a City of Refuge," won the commission for one of the three pairs of doors (1892) given to Trinity Church in memory of John Jacob Astor III. In a letter to the Society's trustees, dated April 15, 1895, he offered to carve a statue of the virgin and Child for the trumeau (Plate 1), the post between the doors within the main entrance. Two months later he was invited to submit a sketch for the tympanum, the design now over the door (Plate 2).

 

In addition to the trumeau and the tympanum, the following are from the hand of J. Massey Rhind: the two freestanding statues flanking the main entrance, Saints George and Michael (Plate 3); the three freestanding statues that make up the Calvary over the main entrance (Plate 4); the freestanding statue of a seated St. Cecilia in the niche above the Clergy House entrance (Plate 5) ; the tympanum (Plate 6) above the lady Chapel entrance on West 47th Street and the impost heads supporting the drip molding over this entrance.

 

Design of the Saint Mary-the-Virgin Complex

 

As with the other buildings in the LeBrun firm's later period, the clue to historic style of St. Mary's is in the ornament concentrated around doorways and windows (Plate 3). The Willard casts included details from ecclesiastical and domestic Gothic buildings — Chartres, Paris, and Rouen. Thirteenth-century French Gothic ornament defines the major features of the tall limestone facade of the church (Plate 7), the central of the three buildings on West 46th Street. The keyed limestone door and window surrounds, the drip moldings and the tracery of the pierced terra cotta parapets of the flanking, orange brick Clergy and Mission Houses are characteristic of the 14th-century French Gothic style. The contemporary architectural critic, Montgomery Schuyler, found the historically appropriate ornament and the long thin, orange Tiffany bricks pleasing but thought that the treatment of the 46th Street facades lacked "bite."

 

However, to the 20th century observer the functional economy of the flatness of this range and the irregular disposition of the fenestration are also pleasing. All of these elements, as well as the elegant naturalism of Rhind's sculpture are expressive of the late 19th century. The ornament of the Rectory on West 47th Street, confined to the keyed door and windcw surrounds and drip moldings (Plate 8), is characteristic of the 14th-century French Gothic style also. But the ornament of the Lady Chapel and its entrance reverts to the 13th-century French Gothic of the church facade. Although there is more depth to the range of St. Mary's buildings along West 47th Street, their planar aspect — especially the tall apsidal end of the church itself, unccampramised by sham buttresses — reveals their late 19th-century origin.

 

The cornerstone was laid on December 8, 1894. All of the newspaper accounts of the building, shortly before its opening exactly one year later, expressed amazement at the speed with which the church, "one of the purest examples of French Gothic of the 13th century in this country," was erected. But a reporter for the Evening Post explained that an elaborate structure like St. Mary's could not have been built in such a short time with conventional methods; the steel skeleton made St. Mary's "the first of its kind and size to be built in this or any other country." It is this use of a steel frame, a technique then associated only with the construction of tall buildings particularly in Chicago, that gave St. Mary's the nickname "the Chicago Church."22

 

In plan (Plate 9) it is the central, block-through body of the church that dominates St. Mary's irregular site. This arrangement, with the Clergy House (lcwer left) and the Mission House (lower right) flanking the church's main entrance on West 46th Street and the Rectory (upper left) and the Lady Chapel (upper right) girdling the church's apsidal end on West 47th Street, was dictated by the trustees' program. The programmatic goals of spatial flexibility and a lofty interior with a vaulted ceiling would appear to be contradictory aims within such a confined area. LeBrun took advantage of the most advanced construction technique, calling in Purdy & Henderson, the construction engineers, to fabricate a steel frame to support his design (Plate 10). The foundation walls and the steel footings were carried dcwn to rock (Plate 11). large, diagonal compression braces at basement level anchor the bases of the vertical columns.

 

To support the vaults steel transverse and diagonal ribs spring from the eighteen steel columns, nine on each side of the nave (plus the four in the apse), which support the braced saddle-back roof frame above. The upper members of this skeletal imitation of Gothic structure are progressively thinner. The side walls are of brick; the arches of the nave arcade, springing from steel corbels riveted to the columns, are of brick also, as are the the walls above them.

 

St. Mary's had become famous all over the country for the extremely ritualistic character of its services. The requirements of this liturgy were foremost iri the planning of St. Mary's: a long nave and lofty interior, side aisles and ambulatory, a deep chancel and ancillary chapels. But the building's Anglo-Catholic specificity was proclaimed in more subtle ways. The sculptural subjects Rhind was commissioned to carve, the trumeau figure and the tympanum program especially, are specific references to pre-Reformation Catholicism. Ihe contrast between the limestone and the brick of the West 46th Street facade defines the ceremonial entrance. Ihe 13th-century ornament identifies St. Mary's with the new Anglo-Catholic churches being built in England in the 1860s and later. (The 14th-century Gothic detail distinguishes the dependent buildings from the church.) The inspiration for St. Mary's architecture can be found in the tradition of the Oxford Movement itself — the emphasis upon ritual requiring side aisles, deep chancels, ambulatories and lofty ceilings. It can be said that St. Mary's redefined the manner in which churches could be constructed.

 

Description

 

The Church of Saint Mary-the-Virgin is a complex of five interconnected buildings (Plate 9): the church itself which runs north and south through this block between West 46th and 47th Streets; the Clergy House to the left (west) of the church and the Mission House to the right (east) of the church, both on West 46th Street; the Rectory to the right (west) of the church's apsidal end and the Lady Chapel to the left (east), both on West 47th Street. All of these buildings, except the church which is faced with limestone, are of an orange (Schuyler called the color ,,gamboge,l), Tiffany brick. All have granite bases.

 

Church

 

The tall, planar limestone facade (Plate 7), forty-six feet wide and 130 feet high from the curb to the cross on the gable, is framed by thin, faceted buttresses and articulated in three horizontal sections: the lowest containing the main entrance; the middle section with the rose window; and the top, a gable containing a smaller round window flanked by the buttress pinnacles.

 

A great deal of 13th-century Gothic ornament is concentrated within the pointed arch entrance (Plate 4) which contains paired doorways separated by the trumeau and Rhind's canopied statue of the Virgin Mary and Child. Two heavy oak doors with decorative foliated iron work (Plate 12) slide away from the trumeau into the walls to reveal paired, glazed-panel swinging doors with brass fittings below leaded stained-glass transoms. Pendant lamps of iron and glass are fixed to the doorways' lintel and outer posts. The subjects of Rhind's three-tiered tympanum above are familiar Anglo-Catholic subjects.(Plate 2). In niches across the lowest tier are ten worthies flanking a central niche containing a closed door, the five on the left appear to be Old Testament personifications and the five on the right may represent the fathers of the early Christian church. On the middle tier are a seated Virgin and Child attended by adoring shepherds and wise men.

 

At the top the Virgin in an aura ascends between angels disposed upon clouds into the tympanum's foliate border.24 Ihe drip molding of the arch rests on imposts articulated as faces, the one on the left blindfolded to represent Heresy, the one on the right clear-eyed and crowned representing Faith. Flanking the entrance arch, two canopied niches, capped with crocketed and finialed pinnacles, shelter Rhind's statues of

 

Saint George on the left and Saint Michael on the right. Faces, representing differing physiognomies, project from the canopies' pendant tracery.

 

In the middle section a tall, blind pointed arch frames the slightly recessed rose window and Calvary with figures by Phind below it. Gargoyle-adorned pinnacles mark the base of the blind arch; aedicular elements facing the corner buttresses have crockets and finials, reliefs of rosettes and leaves, and gargoyles projecting from above their dosserets.

 

The rose window reverses the conventional direction of the arches and balusters within (except for the inner douzefoil); at Notre-Dame, Paris, and at Chartres the arches radiate out, not in as they do here. The window is filled with leaded stained glass in geometric patterns manufactured by Arnold and Locke. The middle section is capped by a foliated cornice frcan which two gargoyles project (just inside the bases of the corner buttress pinnacles).

 

The gable is flanked by the pinnacles terminating the facade's corner buttresses. A round window containing a qua trefoil is in the center of the gable. The gable coping is crocketed. The cross surmounting the gable is of gilded, pressed copper.

 

Above the church's side aisles and ambulatory the exterior walls of the clerestory, partially visible from both West 46th and 47th Streets, are faced with limestone.

 

On both sides of the clerestory (east and west) eight out of nine panelled bays, separated by minimal and token buttressing, contain the tall, two-light windows of plate tracery with drip moldings. The windows are filled with leaded glass in geometric patterns, manufactured by Arnold & Locke. The steep saddleback roof is slate-covered. A fleche of pressed copper rises from the ridge line between bays eight and nine (containing the bell brought from West 45th Street).

 

Though visible from West 46th Street, the fleche is seen best from West 47th Street where it is the terminal feature above the church's five apse windows and steep roof. Only the center three of these five windows contain the glass specifically projected for them and manufactured by C. F. Kempe & Co., Ltd., London.

 

The Clergy House

 

The Clergy House is four stories with a penthouse which is invisible from West 46th Street. Constructed of orange Tiffany brick with a granite base and limestone water table up to the first story sills, the keyed and ornamental door and window surrounds, string courses, sills, drip moldings, and lintels are of limestone and the cornice and pierced balustrade above are of terra cotta. Ihe window and door grilles are iron; (the interior posts and beams are cast iron).

 

There appear to be two entrances, but the more ornamented one on the right with the cross as its terminal feature is the entrance to the left side aisle of the church. One enters the Clergy House itself through the doorway on the left.

 

The paneled-wood doors with wrought-iron grilles are set below transoms of leaded glass which are in a geometric pattern. Individual iron lanterns are suspended on short chains from the lintels of these two doorways. Above the Clergy house entrance is a canopied niche sheltering Rhind's statue of St. Cecilia , a memorial to an admired church organist, Dr. William Prentice.

 

Windows are capped by drip moldings with foliated

 

stops. Three second story window heads carry blind cinquefoil arches. The windows have one-over-one wood sash. The cornice is of richly molded terra cotta in a foliated pattern . Twenty alternating panels of flamboyant tracery make up the pierced terra-cotta parapet. The present coping is of sections of poured concrete slab.

 

The Mission House

 

Except for its width —it is narrower — and certain details, the Mission House is identical to the Clergy House. The hanging lantern at the Mission House entrance has been replaced with a more modern fixture .

 

Because the Mission House is narrower than the Clergy House there are fewer windows and only thirteen alternating terra cotta panels make up the parapet.

 

The Rectory

 

Like the Clergy and Mission Houses on West 46th Street, the Rectory at 144 West 47th Street is of orange Tiffany brick on a granite base with a limestone water table. The keyed and ornamental door and window surrounds, sills, stringcourses, and drip moldings are limestone.

 

The Rectory entrance has its original bluestone stoop and basement areaway. The double doors with their brass fittings are of paneled oak, two over two, with a transom of plate glass above. The Rectory shelters the sacristy and vestry rooms, as well as the living quarters of the rector and his family.

 

Windows containing one-over-one wood sash some with leaded glass in a geometric pattern, are capped by drip moldings with foliate stops. Of special interest is the bow window at the second story set within splayed reveals.

 

The lintel is an iron "I" beam decorated with five iron rosettes, while the casing is of wood as are the two narrow shafts at the angles of the bcw, and the drip molding carries an ornamental finial. The gable coping, chimney and chimney pots are terra cotta. The eastern end of the slate covered roof is broached, its hip adorned with a pressed copper finial.

 

The Lady Chapel

 

In a letter to his fellow trustees dated Dec. 15, 1894, Haley Fiske offered to build the Lady Chapel. He indicated that he would like to move the west windows from the West 45th Street church to this chapel. Like the Rectory, the Clergy and the Mission Houses, the chapel is built of the orange Tiffany brick; the water table, the chapel's elaborately carved entrance, the keyed window surrounds, string courses, drip moldings, imbricated pinnacles, keyed and crocketed gable coping and crowning cross are all of limestone.

 

The entrance screens the recessed area between the chapel and the Rectory. Rhind's tympanum, above the oak entrance doors, depicts the Annunciation and is framed by an archivolt, intricately carved as a rose vine, supported on colonnettes.

 

The crocketed drip molding springs from two imposts, given the form of portrait heads carved by Rhind of Fiske's son and daughter, which resolves into an ogee that breaks through the top of the screening spandrel course to support a cross, now missing. Three lancets, the taller in the center, light the chapel; the drip moldings spring from foliated imposts.

 

The round window in the gable contains a quatrefoil filled with leaded stained glass.

 

Exterior Changes

 

In the ninety-five years since the opening of St. Mary's on West 46th Street, little of the church's exterior aspect has changed. Drawings indicate that there was once a balustrade fronting the Calvary above the main entrance, and another across the facade at the foot of the gable.

 

The Rectory gable is missing its crowning finial and the cross atop the Lady Chapel entrance is missing. Drawings indicate — and coping fragments corroborate — that there were basement areaways in front of the Clergy and Mission Houses. Only one basement areaway exists today, that of the Rectory. An unsympathetic composite material has been clumsily used to repair tracery and foliated ornament. In 1962 repair and repointing the church's stone facade was carried out.

 

- From the 1989 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report