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Ford hoped to replicate the run-away success of the American Mustang by using a similar formula for the European market.
Using proven and well developed underpinnings based on those of the Cortina, Ford clothed the new Capri in a sexy coupe body designed with a great deal of input from the Mustang’s styling team. The car was made ready for launch at the January 1969 Belgian Motor Show, although production had started two months earlier at the Halewood plant to ensure that every Ford dealer had at least one example on their forecourts.
With its aggressively long bonnet and swooping rear it looked like it was doing 100mph even when standing still. Mechanically straightforward, a traditional live axle with leaf springs was deemed sufficient at the rear, while Ford's excellent Macpherson struts at the front and well weighted rack-and-pinion steering gave the car a sufficiently sporting feel to justify its sports car looks. Available in a wide range of engine sizes from a basic 1.3-litre four to a tarmac-ripping 3-litre V6 it was marketed as ‘The car you always promised yourself’.
Handsome to look at and decently quick, the Capri proved to be a huge success for Ford, remaining in production until 1986 with many upgrades along the way, almost 1.9 million being sold worldwide. Survivors are now increasingly sought after and values have risen sharply in recent times.
Concrete pillboxes built to replicate Nazi bunkers rest on an old cattle farm now an area of critical environmental concern managed by the BLM in southwest Oregon, Sept. 26, 2018. BLM video: Stephen Haney and Matt Bonsi
A quiet oak savanna in southwest Oregon has a World War II story to tell.
It was the summer of 1942 when thousands of young American troops started arriving in Oregon to prepare for battle.
Only months prior, immediately after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor and America’s entry into WWII, the U.S. Army broke ground on Camp White, a massively ambitious training ground for troops north of Medford.
The national war effort was ramping up, and from the rationing at home to the drill sergeants yelling at new draftees, the task at hand was unified: Get America prepared for war as fast as possible.
At Camp White, in the heart of the Rogue River Valley, it got loud very quick.
Construction crews worked 24 hours a day until the base, consisting of 1,300 structures, was complete. Barracks, mess halls, a railroad, full electrical grid and sewer system were all built in six months.
And then the troops arrived.
The newly reinstated 91st Division went on 91-mile-long hikes.
They fired bazookas, mortars and tanks.
And they attacked concrete pillboxes built to replicate Nazi bunkers.
Despite creating what was then Oregon’s second most populous city at 40,000 people, there are now only a few lasting structures proving Camp White ever existed. Sadly, there are even fewer first-hand memories.
The pillboxes are still standing, though. They simultaneously represent a mostly forgotten military legacy and since 2013, an opportunity for historic preservation.
After decades of private cattle farming, Camp White’s pillboxes now rest on public land.
Read the full story about the Camp White pillboxes that rest on the northeast side of Upper Table Rock, an area of critical environmental concern for the BLM: www.facebook.com/notes/blm-oregon-washington/the-wwii-leg...
Take a virtual tour of the pillboxes via this 360-degree video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgHu5y-TtAw
The original picture from year 1975 by Eeva Rista that I was trying to replicate: www.helsinkikuvia.fi/record/hkm.HKMS000005:km0000lskn/
Rough translation of text on the banderol on the original picture:
---
THIS HOUSE MUST NOT BE DEMOLISHED
COMMUNITY CENTER AND A LIBRARY FOR THE RESIDENTS OF KRUUNUHAKA
---
So... I quess it worked!
The light was all wrong for this shot. A lot earlier on the day when the sun is behind the building or if it was overcast it would have been better. A little earlier when I first arrived here it would have been better too as the sunlight came straight from the side and lit the pavement too... It wouldn't have replicated the conditions of the original, but it would have looked better. However at the time some event in the building ended, and whole lot of people came out and some of them stayed in front of the house chatting and waiting for their transportation etc.
So... I had to resort to exposure bracketing and HDR / tone mapping to get the dynamic range at least somewhat in control.
One lucky thing happened though... There was another car parked in front of the house. It left while I was setting up the camera. If it hadn't I would have only been partially visible in the picture.
Anyway... There was a reason why I wanted to do this today. It says in the description of the original photo that it was taken 12.06.1975 (european date order dd.mm.yyyy). I had already thought of replicating that photo some day, but I only noticed that date on it today while browsing the pictures. If I checked it out correctly, next time 12.6. is tuesday is year 2029.
I did two tries on this... On the first one someone came out of the door and asked if I was OK. :)
Safety note: I had to cross the street from the camera to my spot. I wouldn't have done this if that street was any busier. Luckily the traffic there is slow. I checked very carefully that there were no cars coming before pressing the shutter release and crossing the street. After hearing the shutter go off I got up and checked again that there are no cars coming as anyone crossing the street should. If you do anything like this, stay safe.
This is an attempt to replicate a pic I took in 2006. Done from memory and with a different camera, so among other things the aspect ratio is a bit odd. Lots of changes - one of the subtle ones is that the core of the Shard just popping up on the skyline. The final product will be a pretty dominating sight...
Looking at this again, I think the road markings at the junction would make a composition of their own, together with the bridge. Must trundle up here on a sunny day some time...
RepRap is a self-replicating 3D printer. It builds its own gears and components. (detail photos)
The coiled polymer feed looks like an IV bag bobbing over the working tip. The dual print head is affectionately called Zaphod.
Scattered about are sci foo camp tents… and the ubiquitous “foo bar” beckons in the background, serving variable drafts.
Replicate the web link for a possibility to win the reward: giveaway.amazon.com/p/53fbc84770742142 Premium quality plastic container to make use of with traveling toiletries, cosmetics or various other usages. Product: PP Weight: 96g Bundle: 1 x 50ml pump container (12.5 * 3.2 centimeters) 2 x 80ml flip-cap container (11 * 3.5 centimeters) 1 x 50ml
Concrete pillboxes built to replicate Nazi bunkers rest on an old cattle farm now an area of critical environmental concern managed by the BLM in southwest Oregon, Sept. 25, 2018. BLM photo: Matt Christenson
A quiet oak savanna in southwest Oregon has a World War II story to tell.
It was the summer of 1942 when thousands of young American troops started arriving in Oregon to prepare for battle.
Only months prior, immediately after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor and America’s entry into WWII, the U.S. Army broke ground on Camp White, a massively ambitious training ground for troops north of Medford.
The national war effort was ramping up, and from the rationing at home to the drill sergeants yelling at new draftees, the task at hand was unified: Get America prepared for war as fast as possible.
At Camp White, in the heart of the Rogue River Valley, it got loud very quick.
Construction crews worked 24 hours a day until the base, consisting of 1,300 structures, was complete. Barracks, mess halls, a railroad, full electrical grid and sewer system were all built in six months.
And then the troops arrived.
The newly reinstated 91st Division went on 91-mile-long hikes.
They fired bazookas, mortars and tanks.
And they attacked concrete pillboxes built to replicate Nazi bunkers.
Despite creating what was then Oregon’s second most populous city at 40,000 people, there are now only a few lasting structures proving Camp White ever existed. Sadly, there are even fewer first-hand memories.
The pillboxes are still standing, though. They simultaneously represent a mostly forgotten military legacy and since 2013, an opportunity for historic preservation.
After decades of private cattle farming, Camp White’s pillboxes now rest on public land.
Read the full story about the Camp White pillboxes that rest on the northeast side of Upper Table Rock, an area of critical environmental concern for the BLM: www.facebook.com/notes/blm-oregon-washington/the-wwii-leg...
My 1926 Lister 'N' stationary engine photographed at Abergavenny steam rally on a very damp and rainy day in May 1981. This engine was just one of very many Lister engines I owned at that period. I sold it in the early 1990s to an enthusiast from Swindon.
My teenage assistant from London was staying with me at the time; he visited Wales frequently during the early 1980s and was a legacy from my London years. www.flickr.com/photos/opobs/sets/72157603782887177/
This image is the copyright of © Michael John Stokes; Any users, found to replicate, reproduce, circulate, distribute, download, manipulate or otherwise use my images without my written consent will be in breach of copyright laws. Please contact me at mjs@opobs.co.uk for permission to use any of my photographs.
PLEASE NOTE: Before adding any of my photographs to your 'Favorites", please check out my policy on this issue on my profile.
I have passed St Mary a number of times since travelling to see the orchids at a nearby reserve. So with some time to kill a couple of weeks ago, I decide to call in.
The church is nearer to the village of Metfield than the one it is parish church for, and parking was problematic, as the church is off the main road, and the small houses and farms that make this part of Withersdale all had rather unwelcoming do not park here signs, and nearer the church, do not park on the grass signs. So where doe the visitor who arrives by car actually park? I ended up on the verge of the B road that passes close by, but the unwelcoming nature of the area had put me in a bad mood.
St mary is a small and simple church, a small bellcote at the west end, a fine ancient font on a new pedestal, some small but old pews and a fine roof.
------------------------------------------
(Introduction: Back in 2002, Withersdale was the 500th church on the Suffolk Churches site. You might say that the end of the journey was in view. I had recently had a conversation with some friends about writing parodies, using the style of other authors for those things we would have written anyway. One friend, a teacher, claimed to have written an entire school report in the style of Raymond Chandler. Some writers are easy to replicate - TS Eliot and Hemingway, for example - but it is harder to sustain a parody when the parodied writer is best known for going on at length. I said I'd have a go at Proust, which I did here, and James Joyce for church 501, Bungay St Mary. It's not for me to say how successful the parodies are, although the Joyce one has been complimented kindly by some of the man's fans. Nobody has ever said anything about the Withersdale parody - perhaps more people read Joyce than Proust, I don't know. In 2007, when I began revisiting Suffolk churches to replace the old photographs I had taken with brand spanking new digital ones, I came back to Withersdale. Unfortunately, I got here at the dullest hour on a dull day, and so the exteriors are not what I had hoped for. Still, that's a good excuse to go back again. As for the text, I have not seen any reason to change it, other than to add one hyperlink to a page on the Norfolk Churches site. I realise that this will be an annoyance for anyone wanting to find out more about Withersdale and its church. For this, I apologise.)
2002: For a long time, I used to read French novels in bed. And then, mid-morning, I'd get up and wander through an industrial wasteland.
I was living in Sheffield, in South Yorkshire, in the years when the coal and steel industries were finally coming to an end, and I'd walk through the battlefields of Brightside and Attercliffe, wondering at the abandoned factories and mills, and the wasted infrastructure, the boarded-up pubs and shops, the graffiti, the row upon row of derelict terraces. One day, I even found an old railway station, the door onto the platform hanging open, the wind howling through the gap into the tunnel, the line going nowhere.
Often, I would imagine what these places had once been like, when they were still alive, for I was not born to this, coming as I did from the flat fields of East Anglia. The first time I saw it all, it was already over. I loved the litany of names: Attercliffe and Brightside I have already mentioned, and there was Eccleshall and Carbrook, Intake and Millhouses. I don't know now if I knew them from visiting them, or only knew them from their names, bold on the fronts of buses.
I would wander alone through the broken streets, gazing up at the brick-faced shells, and imagine them full of activity, and try to decide what this winch had been for, or the platform where the lorries came, or the booth by the gate. This was all the evidence, and this was all I had to go on, as I reconstructed a world I had never seen. And what really interested me was not the places at all, but the people who had once inhabited them; those people who had now gone, but these buildings were once the focus of their lives, and they had known them very differently to the way I was knowing them now.
Using material evidence to reconstruct their activities, I could perhaps begin to understand their lives.
I was thinking about this as I cycled along the Waveney valley - but then something else happened. I had come to Withersdale from Weybread, up on the Norfolk border. In fact, I had reached Weybread from the northern side of the Waveney, since the most direct route from Mendham to Weybread had been across the river into Norfolk, and through the lanes that lead into Harleston. About fifteen years before all this happened, when I was living on the south coast of England, I had had a brief but passionate affair with a girl who came from Alburgh, a Norfolk village on the other side of the border to Mendham. I hadn't thought of this for years, but suddenly seeing the name of the village, which I had never visited, on a road sign, startled me. And then something extraordinary happened. As I sat on my bike, savouring this shock of recognition, an agricultural lorry passed me, and I noticed that the name of the town painted on the side of the lorry was the same south coast town where this occured.
I was still wondering at this as I threaded through the back lanes between Weybread and Withersdale, a world away from the post-industrial ruins of South Yorkshire, or the misery of the south coast, for I had not often been happy there, and never wish to be so poor or so far from home again. When I moved to the south, I had not many months since finished an increasingly pointless relationship that should have stopped after six months, and unfortunately went on for another two years. My habit of reading Proust in bed had come towards the end of this; that, and wandering around east Sheffield, were, I think, displacement activities of a kind, not only to avoid spending too much time with her, but also to avoid doing anything about it. It also had much to do with me leaving Sheffield shortly afterwards. It was a year later that I moved to the south coast, and I was already seeing the girl who would become my wife. And then I met this woman from a Norfolk village shortly after I arrived in the unfamiliar coastal town, in the warmest October of the century. The leaves were only just beginning to colour and fall, and I remembered the way the woods rode the Downs, and the way the fog hid all day in the valleys.
And then I thought, well, it must have been more than fifteen years ago, because I could remember leaving her bed in the early hours of one Friday morning, the paleness just beginning to appear in the east, and being stopped on a roadblock on the bypass, where it joined the Lewes road. It was the night that the IRA had bombed the Tory party conference at the Grand Hotel, and everyone leaving town was being stopped and questioned. I had no idea what had happened, and the policeman didn't tell me. As I explained where I had been, I watched the police coaches hurtling back westwards out of Kent, away from the miners' strike.
When I had made my life less complicated, I used to cycle around the Sussex lanes, finding lonely churches and sitting in them. When I'd lived in Sheffield, I liked to wander up on to the moors, perhaps to Bradfield, where the church looks out on an empty sky. Standing in its doorway took me out of the world altogether, and was the first time I experienced that sense of communion with the past. St Mary Magdalene, Withersdale, reminded me a bit of Bradfield, although busy Suffolk is much noisier than the peace around Sheffield. Here was an ancient space, plainly Norman in origin, that had stood here stubbornly while the world changed around it. Wars had come and gone, times of great prosperity had warmed it and depressions had made it cold again. Disease and famine had emptied it, until the irrepressible energy of human activity had restored it to life. And it was still here, so unlike our own transitory existences. But perhaps there is a resilience in stone that reflects the human spirit.
What would I have found most extraordinary back then, on the south coast? That we would now have known ten years of relative peace in Ireland? That the time of the Tories would finally come to an end, and it would be hard to imagine them ever regaining power? That I would be married with children in East Anglia? I think I would have found the Tories being out of power least believable.
I had been looking forward to reaching Withersdale for several years, and it had increasingly become the sole quest of the day, like people who set out on a journey to see with their own eyes some city they have always longed to visit, and imagine that they can taste in reality what has charmed their fancy.
Everybody who writes about it seems to like it, Mortlock calling it a dear little church, Simon Jenkins thought it unusually atmospheric, and Arthur Mee writes as though he actually visited the place for a change, and curiously mentions half a dozen pathetic old benches... which once held an honoured place in God's house and are now a shelter from the sun for a few of God's sheep, which is typical of barmy Arthur.
The church sits right beside the busy Halesworth to Harleston road, which you wouldn't expect from its reputation for being remote and peaceful. Incidentally, this is a road I always find difficult when I'm cycling, since it bends and twists through high Suffolk, and you can never be entirely clear about which way it is heading, and several times I have made the mistake of absent-mindedly turning for Harleston when I wanted Halesworth, and so on. Withersdale was the last piece of the jigsaw in north east Suffolk for me; I had visited every single other medieval church beyond the curve that connects Diss in Norfolk to Halesworth, and then the sea.
It was a crisp, bright afternoon towards the end of February, and my next stop after Withersdale would be the railway station at Halesworth, where I planned to catch the train that left at 4.30pm, en route from Lowestoft to Ipswich. Before Halesworth, the train would pass through Beccles, where I had stepped off of it earlier that morning, and cycled off to visit the churches of Worlingham, Mettingham and Shipmeadow workhouse. It was after this that I had made the somewhat convoluted journey through the Saints to reach Mendham in the early afternoon. Each of the Saints is an event, as if a counterpoint to the time it takes to travel through them, creating a history, a tradition of the distance, each one connected to and yet significantly different from the others, and sometimes events can overtake history and change its course, as I had discovered.
Now, I was nine miles from Halesworth, with less than an hour to go before the train left, which would give me time to visit Withersdale, but would concentrate my mind, since the 4.30pm train was the last that I could reasonably catch, having no lights, and needing to cycle a further two miles from the station when I arrived in Ipswich.
So, if I was to decide that the setting or interior of St Mary Magdalene were in any way timeless, this would have to be set against a pressing urgency - or, if not quite an urgency, a sense that an urgency would be created if I did not remain aware of the passing of time.
I stepped through the gate into the sloping churchyard, passing 18th and 19th century headstones as I walked to the east of the building. Here, I discovered that the church was not entirely rendered rubble, for the east wall had been partly rebuilt in red brick, and the window frame above was made of wood, which would be a memory of times past, and a hint of things to come.
The south side of the building was dappled in winter sunlight, and I remembered how Arthur Mee had found this church surrounded by elm trees, and how their leaves must have sent shadows scurrying along this wall, and how the sunlight had been washing it for generations. I wondered if there could be some kind of photographic effect, perhaps caused by chemicals in the rendering responding to the photons in the sunlight, and I remembered how Proust had watched from his curtained apartment the streets below, imagining scenes into stillness. I thought of my own small world, my transitory journey, and how this would be a blink of an eye, a relative stillness in comparison to the long centuries the wall had stood, and how everything I cared about, my passions, hopes and fears, signified nothing beside it.
I looked up at the pretty weather-boarded turret, and the little porch below. Although the church is visibly Norman in construction, the turret and porch have a later historical resonance, because they were the gift of William Sancroft, later to be Archbishop of Canterbury, who in the long years of the 17th century Commonwealth lived at nearby Fressingfield, during the time that the episcopal government of the Church of England was supressed.
Fressingfield was his native village, but Fressingfield church is a medieval wonder, and it is not too fanciful to imagine that Sancroft made St Mary Magdalene his quiet project, although of course it cannot be the work of one man, or even one generation or epoch, but his touch must have fallen firmly here.
I stepped inside to a cool light suffusing the nave and chancel, and I climbed up to the tiny gallery at the west end to look down on the space below. St Mary Magdalene is a relatively unspoiled prayerbook church, almost entirely of the 17th century, with some sympathetic Victorian additions. The pulpit is against the north wall as at All Saints South Elmham, to take full advantage of the theatrical sunlight from the windows in the south wall. The pulpit is tiny, barely two feet across, and the benches face it, and so do the box pews to south and east.
The woodwork is mellow, breathing a calmness into the silence, while the chancel beyond is gorgeous, a tiny altar surrounded by three-sided rails sitting beneath the elegant window, two brass vases of pussywillow sweet upon its cloth. I stood for some time looking down, and then descended, finding a superb font carved with a tree of life and a grinning face. It may be Norman, it may be older. It is set upon a modern brick base, but even this is fitting, as are the benches with strange ends, with a hole for the candlepricks, and I ran my hand over the golden curve, an eroticism stirring in the memory as the scent of flowers in a window splay touched my senses, an echo of a spring evening some twenty years before, when I had first ever thought myself in love, and this came to me now.
There was a crisp confidence to this building; it was expressed in the curious elegance of the 17th century English Church which had furnished it that, despite so many traumas, had finally come to represent the simplicity of the Puritans, the seemliness of the Anglicans, and that was the Elizabethan Settlement of the previous century fulfilled. Here Sancroft waited, while the world turned upside down around him, and then Cromwell died, and so too did the Puritan project; Sancroft became Dean of St Paul's Cathedral in London, witnessing its destruction by fire in 1666, and overseeing its complete rebuilding in the classical style, and such a contrast with St Mary Magdalene it must have made that perhaps he sometimes wished he was back here. A High Anglican, he crowned the Catholic James II with some misgivings, but then refused to recognise the Protestant coup of William III in 1688, returning once more to Suffolk, where he died.
I sat in the shadowed pew and felt the distant beat, the quiet trick of history turned and played. I thought of the certainty that this interior represented, the triumph of the will, of belief over mystery, and how the rationalist, superstitious 18th century worshippers here could not have conceived of the great sacramental fire that would one day flame out of Oxford and lick them clean.
I sat there, long enough to forget that I must of necessity move on, and the place began to cast a spell which I thought mostly due to the light, which was becoming pale as the sun faded beyond the distant trees, or perhaps the silence, but I knew in fact it was because of the matter on my mind.
You see, there's another thing. A few days before my visit to Withersdale I had spent a weekend abroad with three female friends, one of whom I felt increasingly drawn to, to the extent that I wondered if anything might come of it. This was also on my mind as I sat in the neat coolness of St Mary Magdalene, looking at the pussy willows in the altar vases, and talking to someone, possibly God.
How to understand flowers on altars, I wonder. How the 18th century puritans who furnished this place would be appalled! And yet they were perfect, as if the entire building had been constructed and furnished for them to be placed here, on this day, at this time, with the late afternoon light glancing down the hillside and leading my gaze to the brass vases. What did they mean to me, in comparison with their meaning for the people who placed them there? I ought to mention that the friends I went away with were all younger then me, at least twelve years, and it is to my great delight how younger people reinvent the world I think I understand, just as I must have done, and still do for people that much older than me. This constant process of reinterpretation must be immensely annoying for those who think they have grown old and wise, but I rejoice in it; it is a beautiful chaos, and keeps the world fresh and new, and history could not exist without it. By history, I mean of course the gradual process of constant change, which was also Newman's definition of the word tradition, rather than anything about dates and famous people.
So I sat there, and wondered if I should try and make something happen with the woman I mentioned, if I should tell her how I felt, and discover if what seemed to be the case was actually so, and so as I sit here now, writing this, I know the full story, and how it finally ended some weeks later, and this makes complete the circle from the moment I crossed the Waveney at Mendham, putting in chain an irrevokable sequence that would lead me here now to this computer keyboard, on this sunny spring evening in Ipswich. In A L'ombre des Jeunes Filles en Fleurs, Proust remembers crossing France by train at night, and the dislocation and alienation of being hurtled through an invisible, unfamiliar landscape. He cannot sleep, and in the middle of the night the train stops in a secret valley, far from the nearest town, perhaps because there is a station, or because the track is blocked, I don't remember. He opens the carriage window; it is a hot, sultry night.
Suddenly, a woman appears from the nearest cottage, with a jug of coffee, and he watches her give the coffee to a group of passengers, or perhaps they were the men removing the blockage, which I think was a tree, but may have been an animal of some kind, or perhaps it was to do with a swollen river. Proust thinks of her life in this lost valley ...from which its congregated summits hid the rest of the world, she could never see anyone save those in the trains which stopped for a moment only.
She moves back down the track, and gives the narrator some coffee. Wordlessly, he drinks it, returns the bowl, and the train starts to move, and he watches her silently as she recedes into the blackness, not knowing where he is, and only being certain that he will never see her again.
Instantly, the day is magnified, signified: Il faisait grand jour maintenant, says the narrator, je m'eloignais de l'aurore... This is history, thousands of these events, infuriatingly disparate and yet somehow connected. And this is so for everyone, for millions of us. I think now of Withersdale, and see connections ramifying, spiralling outwards, always becoming endless.
I have passed St Mary a number of times since travelling to see the orchids at a nearby reserve. So with some time to kill a couple of weeks ago, I decide to call in.
The church is nearer to the village of Metfield than the one it is parish church for, and parking was problematic, as the church is off the main road, and the small houses and farms that make this part of Withersdale all had rather unwelcoming do not park here signs, and nearer the church, do not park on the grass signs. So where doe the visitor who arrives by car actually park? I ended up on the verge of the B road that passes close by, but the unwelcoming nature of the area had put me in a bad mood.
St mary is a small and simple church, a small bellcote at the west end, a fine ancient font on a new pedestal, some small but old pews and a fine roof.
------------------------------------------
(Introduction: Back in 2002, Withersdale was the 500th church on the Suffolk Churches site. You might say that the end of the journey was in view. I had recently had a conversation with some friends about writing parodies, using the style of other authors for those things we would have written anyway. One friend, a teacher, claimed to have written an entire school report in the style of Raymond Chandler. Some writers are easy to replicate - TS Eliot and Hemingway, for example - but it is harder to sustain a parody when the parodied writer is best known for going on at length. I said I'd have a go at Proust, which I did here, and James Joyce for church 501, Bungay St Mary. It's not for me to say how successful the parodies are, although the Joyce one has been complimented kindly by some of the man's fans. Nobody has ever said anything about the Withersdale parody - perhaps more people read Joyce than Proust, I don't know. In 2007, when I began revisiting Suffolk churches to replace the old photographs I had taken with brand spanking new digital ones, I came back to Withersdale. Unfortunately, I got here at the dullest hour on a dull day, and so the exteriors are not what I had hoped for. Still, that's a good excuse to go back again. As for the text, I have not seen any reason to change it, other than to add one hyperlink to a page on the Norfolk Churches site. I realise that this will be an annoyance for anyone wanting to find out more about Withersdale and its church. For this, I apologise.)
2002: For a long time, I used to read French novels in bed. And then, mid-morning, I'd get up and wander through an industrial wasteland.
I was living in Sheffield, in South Yorkshire, in the years when the coal and steel industries were finally coming to an end, and I'd walk through the battlefields of Brightside and Attercliffe, wondering at the abandoned factories and mills, and the wasted infrastructure, the boarded-up pubs and shops, the graffiti, the row upon row of derelict terraces. One day, I even found an old railway station, the door onto the platform hanging open, the wind howling through the gap into the tunnel, the line going nowhere.
Often, I would imagine what these places had once been like, when they were still alive, for I was not born to this, coming as I did from the flat fields of East Anglia. The first time I saw it all, it was already over. I loved the litany of names: Attercliffe and Brightside I have already mentioned, and there was Eccleshall and Carbrook, Intake and Millhouses. I don't know now if I knew them from visiting them, or only knew them from their names, bold on the fronts of buses.
I would wander alone through the broken streets, gazing up at the brick-faced shells, and imagine them full of activity, and try to decide what this winch had been for, or the platform where the lorries came, or the booth by the gate. This was all the evidence, and this was all I had to go on, as I reconstructed a world I had never seen. And what really interested me was not the places at all, but the people who had once inhabited them; those people who had now gone, but these buildings were once the focus of their lives, and they had known them very differently to the way I was knowing them now.
Using material evidence to reconstruct their activities, I could perhaps begin to understand their lives.
I was thinking about this as I cycled along the Waveney valley - but then something else happened. I had come to Withersdale from Weybread, up on the Norfolk border. In fact, I had reached Weybread from the northern side of the Waveney, since the most direct route from Mendham to Weybread had been across the river into Norfolk, and through the lanes that lead into Harleston. About fifteen years before all this happened, when I was living on the south coast of England, I had had a brief but passionate affair with a girl who came from Alburgh, a Norfolk village on the other side of the border to Mendham. I hadn't thought of this for years, but suddenly seeing the name of the village, which I had never visited, on a road sign, startled me. And then something extraordinary happened. As I sat on my bike, savouring this shock of recognition, an agricultural lorry passed me, and I noticed that the name of the town painted on the side of the lorry was the same south coast town where this occured.
I was still wondering at this as I threaded through the back lanes between Weybread and Withersdale, a world away from the post-industrial ruins of South Yorkshire, or the misery of the south coast, for I had not often been happy there, and never wish to be so poor or so far from home again. When I moved to the south, I had not many months since finished an increasingly pointless relationship that should have stopped after six months, and unfortunately went on for another two years. My habit of reading Proust in bed had come towards the end of this; that, and wandering around east Sheffield, were, I think, displacement activities of a kind, not only to avoid spending too much time with her, but also to avoid doing anything about it. It also had much to do with me leaving Sheffield shortly afterwards. It was a year later that I moved to the south coast, and I was already seeing the girl who would become my wife. And then I met this woman from a Norfolk village shortly after I arrived in the unfamiliar coastal town, in the warmest October of the century. The leaves were only just beginning to colour and fall, and I remembered the way the woods rode the Downs, and the way the fog hid all day in the valleys.
And then I thought, well, it must have been more than fifteen years ago, because I could remember leaving her bed in the early hours of one Friday morning, the paleness just beginning to appear in the east, and being stopped on a roadblock on the bypass, where it joined the Lewes road. It was the night that the IRA had bombed the Tory party conference at the Grand Hotel, and everyone leaving town was being stopped and questioned. I had no idea what had happened, and the policeman didn't tell me. As I explained where I had been, I watched the police coaches hurtling back westwards out of Kent, away from the miners' strike.
When I had made my life less complicated, I used to cycle around the Sussex lanes, finding lonely churches and sitting in them. When I'd lived in Sheffield, I liked to wander up on to the moors, perhaps to Bradfield, where the church looks out on an empty sky. Standing in its doorway took me out of the world altogether, and was the first time I experienced that sense of communion with the past. St Mary Magdalene, Withersdale, reminded me a bit of Bradfield, although busy Suffolk is much noisier than the peace around Sheffield. Here was an ancient space, plainly Norman in origin, that had stood here stubbornly while the world changed around it. Wars had come and gone, times of great prosperity had warmed it and depressions had made it cold again. Disease and famine had emptied it, until the irrepressible energy of human activity had restored it to life. And it was still here, so unlike our own transitory existences. But perhaps there is a resilience in stone that reflects the human spirit.
What would I have found most extraordinary back then, on the south coast? That we would now have known ten years of relative peace in Ireland? That the time of the Tories would finally come to an end, and it would be hard to imagine them ever regaining power? That I would be married with children in East Anglia? I think I would have found the Tories being out of power least believable.
I had been looking forward to reaching Withersdale for several years, and it had increasingly become the sole quest of the day, like people who set out on a journey to see with their own eyes some city they have always longed to visit, and imagine that they can taste in reality what has charmed their fancy.
Everybody who writes about it seems to like it, Mortlock calling it a dear little church, Simon Jenkins thought it unusually atmospheric, and Arthur Mee writes as though he actually visited the place for a change, and curiously mentions half a dozen pathetic old benches... which once held an honoured place in God's house and are now a shelter from the sun for a few of God's sheep, which is typical of barmy Arthur.
The church sits right beside the busy Halesworth to Harleston road, which you wouldn't expect from its reputation for being remote and peaceful. Incidentally, this is a road I always find difficult when I'm cycling, since it bends and twists through high Suffolk, and you can never be entirely clear about which way it is heading, and several times I have made the mistake of absent-mindedly turning for Harleston when I wanted Halesworth, and so on. Withersdale was the last piece of the jigsaw in north east Suffolk for me; I had visited every single other medieval church beyond the curve that connects Diss in Norfolk to Halesworth, and then the sea.
It was a crisp, bright afternoon towards the end of February, and my next stop after Withersdale would be the railway station at Halesworth, where I planned to catch the train that left at 4.30pm, en route from Lowestoft to Ipswich. Before Halesworth, the train would pass through Beccles, where I had stepped off of it earlier that morning, and cycled off to visit the churches of Worlingham, Mettingham and Shipmeadow workhouse. It was after this that I had made the somewhat convoluted journey through the Saints to reach Mendham in the early afternoon. Each of the Saints is an event, as if a counterpoint to the time it takes to travel through them, creating a history, a tradition of the distance, each one connected to and yet significantly different from the others, and sometimes events can overtake history and change its course, as I had discovered.
Now, I was nine miles from Halesworth, with less than an hour to go before the train left, which would give me time to visit Withersdale, but would concentrate my mind, since the 4.30pm train was the last that I could reasonably catch, having no lights, and needing to cycle a further two miles from the station when I arrived in Ipswich.
So, if I was to decide that the setting or interior of St Mary Magdalene were in any way timeless, this would have to be set against a pressing urgency - or, if not quite an urgency, a sense that an urgency would be created if I did not remain aware of the passing of time.
I stepped through the gate into the sloping churchyard, passing 18th and 19th century headstones as I walked to the east of the building. Here, I discovered that the church was not entirely rendered rubble, for the east wall had been partly rebuilt in red brick, and the window frame above was made of wood, which would be a memory of times past, and a hint of things to come.
The south side of the building was dappled in winter sunlight, and I remembered how Arthur Mee had found this church surrounded by elm trees, and how their leaves must have sent shadows scurrying along this wall, and how the sunlight had been washing it for generations. I wondered if there could be some kind of photographic effect, perhaps caused by chemicals in the rendering responding to the photons in the sunlight, and I remembered how Proust had watched from his curtained apartment the streets below, imagining scenes into stillness. I thought of my own small world, my transitory journey, and how this would be a blink of an eye, a relative stillness in comparison to the long centuries the wall had stood, and how everything I cared about, my passions, hopes and fears, signified nothing beside it.
I looked up at the pretty weather-boarded turret, and the little porch below. Although the church is visibly Norman in construction, the turret and porch have a later historical resonance, because they were the gift of William Sancroft, later to be Archbishop of Canterbury, who in the long years of the 17th century Commonwealth lived at nearby Fressingfield, during the time that the episcopal government of the Church of England was supressed.
Fressingfield was his native village, but Fressingfield church is a medieval wonder, and it is not too fanciful to imagine that Sancroft made St Mary Magdalene his quiet project, although of course it cannot be the work of one man, or even one generation or epoch, but his touch must have fallen firmly here.
I stepped inside to a cool light suffusing the nave and chancel, and I climbed up to the tiny gallery at the west end to look down on the space below. St Mary Magdalene is a relatively unspoiled prayerbook church, almost entirely of the 17th century, with some sympathetic Victorian additions. The pulpit is against the north wall as at All Saints South Elmham, to take full advantage of the theatrical sunlight from the windows in the south wall. The pulpit is tiny, barely two feet across, and the benches face it, and so do the box pews to south and east.
The woodwork is mellow, breathing a calmness into the silence, while the chancel beyond is gorgeous, a tiny altar surrounded by three-sided rails sitting beneath the elegant window, two brass vases of pussywillow sweet upon its cloth. I stood for some time looking down, and then descended, finding a superb font carved with a tree of life and a grinning face. It may be Norman, it may be older. It is set upon a modern brick base, but even this is fitting, as are the benches with strange ends, with a hole for the candlepricks, and I ran my hand over the golden curve, an eroticism stirring in the memory as the scent of flowers in a window splay touched my senses, an echo of a spring evening some twenty years before, when I had first ever thought myself in love, and this came to me now.
There was a crisp confidence to this building; it was expressed in the curious elegance of the 17th century English Church which had furnished it that, despite so many traumas, had finally come to represent the simplicity of the Puritans, the seemliness of the Anglicans, and that was the Elizabethan Settlement of the previous century fulfilled. Here Sancroft waited, while the world turned upside down around him, and then Cromwell died, and so too did the Puritan project; Sancroft became Dean of St Paul's Cathedral in London, witnessing its destruction by fire in 1666, and overseeing its complete rebuilding in the classical style, and such a contrast with St Mary Magdalene it must have made that perhaps he sometimes wished he was back here. A High Anglican, he crowned the Catholic James II with some misgivings, but then refused to recognise the Protestant coup of William III in 1688, returning once more to Suffolk, where he died.
I sat in the shadowed pew and felt the distant beat, the quiet trick of history turned and played. I thought of the certainty that this interior represented, the triumph of the will, of belief over mystery, and how the rationalist, superstitious 18th century worshippers here could not have conceived of the great sacramental fire that would one day flame out of Oxford and lick them clean.
I sat there, long enough to forget that I must of necessity move on, and the place began to cast a spell which I thought mostly due to the light, which was becoming pale as the sun faded beyond the distant trees, or perhaps the silence, but I knew in fact it was because of the matter on my mind.
You see, there's another thing. A few days before my visit to Withersdale I had spent a weekend abroad with three female friends, one of whom I felt increasingly drawn to, to the extent that I wondered if anything might come of it. This was also on my mind as I sat in the neat coolness of St Mary Magdalene, looking at the pussy willows in the altar vases, and talking to someone, possibly God.
How to understand flowers on altars, I wonder. How the 18th century puritans who furnished this place would be appalled! And yet they were perfect, as if the entire building had been constructed and furnished for them to be placed here, on this day, at this time, with the late afternoon light glancing down the hillside and leading my gaze to the brass vases. What did they mean to me, in comparison with their meaning for the people who placed them there? I ought to mention that the friends I went away with were all younger then me, at least twelve years, and it is to my great delight how younger people reinvent the world I think I understand, just as I must have done, and still do for people that much older than me. This constant process of reinterpretation must be immensely annoying for those who think they have grown old and wise, but I rejoice in it; it is a beautiful chaos, and keeps the world fresh and new, and history could not exist without it. By history, I mean of course the gradual process of constant change, which was also Newman's definition of the word tradition, rather than anything about dates and famous people.
So I sat there, and wondered if I should try and make something happen with the woman I mentioned, if I should tell her how I felt, and discover if what seemed to be the case was actually so, and so as I sit here now, writing this, I know the full story, and how it finally ended some weeks later, and this makes complete the circle from the moment I crossed the Waveney at Mendham, putting in chain an irrevokable sequence that would lead me here now to this computer keyboard, on this sunny spring evening in Ipswich. In A L'ombre des Jeunes Filles en Fleurs, Proust remembers crossing France by train at night, and the dislocation and alienation of being hurtled through an invisible, unfamiliar landscape. He cannot sleep, and in the middle of the night the train stops in a secret valley, far from the nearest town, perhaps because there is a station, or because the track is blocked, I don't remember. He opens the carriage window; it is a hot, sultry night.
Suddenly, a woman appears from the nearest cottage, with a jug of coffee, and he watches her give the coffee to a group of passengers, or perhaps they were the men removing the blockage, which I think was a tree, but may have been an animal of some kind, or perhaps it was to do with a swollen river. Proust thinks of her life in this lost valley ...from which its congregated summits hid the rest of the world, she could never see anyone save those in the trains which stopped for a moment only.
She moves back down the track, and gives the narrator some coffee. Wordlessly, he drinks it, returns the bowl, and the train starts to move, and he watches her silently as she recedes into the blackness, not knowing where he is, and only being certain that he will never see her again.
Instantly, the day is magnified, signified: Il faisait grand jour maintenant, says the narrator, je m'eloignais de l'aurore... This is history, thousands of these events, infuriatingly disparate and yet somehow connected. And this is so for everyone, for millions of us. I think now of Withersdale, and see connections ramifying, spiralling outwards, always becoming endless.
This animation is the first 2D Animation I created. As an artist response my role was to experiment, develop and complete an original artwork taking inspiration from certain aspects of an artists work. From my previous work within the same project, I knew my result from this artist was going to be some form of animation.
With research I managed to discover Puuung’s (Park Dami) animating process, combining the traditional ideas of hand-drawn cel, with the contemporary use of Adobe Photoshop’s layering and digital painting features to construct her pieces. This is what I eventually used to create my own looping GIF animation, only with the characters and background image entirely hand drawn and painted.
At first I began completing a series studies of Dami’s original characters, wanting to familiarise myself with her style and artistic visual language. Elements such as her use of a warm-toned palette, a composition that contained both negative space and intricate detail and her interesting use of linework particularly caught my eye. I loved the artists attention to the architectural space that surrounded her figures, so decided to recreate my own environment, while still in the restrictions of the national lockdown.
When it came to creating my own original characters I used the same conceptual element as the artist in deciding to replicate myself and my ideal partner. To do so I had to complete my first character design without any source of reference other than the male anatomy. With myself, I took a short while drawing and sketching my own body to try and capture a sense of the true me within my piece.
From my designs I then deconstructed an existing looping GIF into five key “frames” tracing and transferring before transforming them into my pre-designed characters, this I then created as a loop within Adobe Photoshop.
The 3D model: www.thingiverse.com/thing:69491
The 3D printer: makerbot.creativetools.se
For more information creative-tools.com
Concrete pillboxes built to replicate Nazi bunkers rest on an old cattle farm now an area of critical environmental concern managed by the BLM in southwest Oregon, Sept. 26, 2018. BLM photo: Matt Christenson
A quiet oak savanna in southwest Oregon has a World War II story to tell.
It was the summer of 1942 when thousands of young American troops started arriving in Oregon to prepare for battle.
Only months prior, immediately after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor and America’s entry into WWII, the U.S. Army broke ground on Camp White, a massively ambitious training ground for troops north of Medford.
The national war effort was ramping up, and from the rationing at home to the drill sergeants yelling at new draftees, the task at hand was unified: Get America prepared for war as fast as possible.
At Camp White, in the heart of the Rogue River Valley, it got loud very quick.
Construction crews worked 24 hours a day until the base, consisting of 1,300 structures, was complete. Barracks, mess halls, a railroad, full electrical grid and sewer system were all built in six months.
And then the troops arrived.
The newly reinstated 91st Division went on 91-mile-long hikes.
They fired bazookas, mortars and tanks.
And they attacked concrete pillboxes built to replicate Nazi bunkers.
Despite creating what was then Oregon’s second most populous city at 40,000 people, there are now only a few lasting structures proving Camp White ever existed. Sadly, there are even fewer first-hand memories.
The pillboxes are still standing, though. They simultaneously represent a mostly forgotten military legacy and since 2013, an opportunity for historic preservation.
After decades of private cattle farming, Camp White’s pillboxes now rest on public land.
Read the full story about the Camp White pillboxes that rest on the northeast side of Upper Table Rock, an area of critical environmental concern for the BLM: www.facebook.com/notes/blm-oregon-washington/the-wwii-leg...
Concrete pillboxes built to replicate Nazi bunkers rest on an old cattle farm now an area of critical environmental concern managed by the BLM in southwest Oregon, Sept. 26, 2018. BLM video: Toshio Suzuki
A quiet oak savanna in southwest Oregon has a World War II story to tell.
It was the summer of 1942 when thousands of young American troops started arriving in Oregon to prepare for battle.
Only months prior, immediately after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor and America’s entry into WWII, the U.S. Army broke ground on Camp White, a massively ambitious training ground for troops north of Medford.
The national war effort was ramping up, and from the rationing at home to the drill sergeants yelling at new draftees, the task at hand was unified: Get America prepared for war as fast as possible.
At Camp White, in the heart of the Rogue River Valley, it got loud very quick.
Construction crews worked 24 hours a day until the base, consisting of 1,300 structures, was complete. Barracks, mess halls, a railroad, full electrical grid and sewer system were all built in six months.
And then the troops arrived.
The newly reinstated 91st Division went on 91-mile-long hikes.
They fired bazookas, mortars and tanks.
And they attacked concrete pillboxes built to replicate Nazi bunkers.
Despite creating what was then Oregon’s second most populous city at 40,000 people, there are now only a few lasting structures proving Camp White ever existed. Sadly, there are even fewer first-hand memories.
The pillboxes are still standing, though. They simultaneously represent a mostly forgotten military legacy and since 2013, an opportunity for historic preservation.
After decades of private cattle farming, Camp White’s pillboxes now rest on public land.
Read the full story about the Camp White pillboxes that rest on the northeast side of Upper Table Rock, an area of critical environmental concern for the BLM: www.facebook.com/notes/blm-oregon-washington/the-wwii-leg...
Take a virtual tour of the pillboxes via this 360-degree video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgHu5y-TtAw
Replicating the scene taken the previous evening with a PCC, but this time with a Milano. June 8, 2017. © 2017 Peter Ehrlich
Sometimes a painting needs to be replicated using photography. This painting was one of those. And upon arriving I could see immediate challenges.
I didnt have the opportunity to scope where the painting was hanging prior to the day. Arriving and seeing that there was good distance in front of the painting was a relief. There is a large window on the right which gave good natural light, but the light was uneven, which meant extra lighting was needed.
Angles are all important here. Reflections are caused by light reflecting at the wrong angle, straight back at the camera. As you can see here there is a rather substantial stairwell which made locating the second light a little tricky to achieve the right angle. In the end I had someone holding the light by hand hard to the right to give balance. This ensured the angle of both lights was similar giving a more even light spread.
You may see that the painting is VERY dark. I really wanted to get some texture, and also replicate the small amount of tonal variation between the cloak he is wearing and the black background, so the balance in exposure was critical. When I went slightly over the texture in paint was blowing out. I ended up using soft boxes to reduce the harshness. I got a nice balance for the final shots. The frame was very shiny, being gold, which was also helped by the soft boxes.
I used the 70-200 at about 135mm to reduce distortion as much as possible. In the end the was very little adjustment required.
I am really happy with how the final images ended up. Oh, and I got to see some pretty stunning paintings whilst there. This is a private residence with a beautiful collection.
Peace, Denis
I've had 3 printing at once, but never all four. Yet.
From left to right:
- RepRap Kossel
- RepRap Prusa i3
- Ultimaker 2
- MakerBot Replicator 1 XL
Sometimes I find it very frustrating to try to replicate what the eye is seeing. A wildflower meadow in our local Nature reserve was brimming with flowers and grasses festooned with a myriad dew drops early this morning. It was a truly magical sight and looking at the images now, non of them do the scene justice. You just have to be there.
After successfully replicating a LUT that I liked from another image processing program, I realized it might work well on some photos I took last May around the Perigord Noir region of France.
From a message shared with a friend here on Flickr -
RawTherapee is free - rawtherapee.com/
You'll need to add Pat David's HaldCLUT film emulation collection - rawpedia.rawtherapee.com/Film_Simulation
Relatedly, if you already use the Gimp (see: www.gimp.org/ ) their most recent versions include 32bit floating-point color-space precision settings. I've been waiting 18 years for this (which is why I went with RawTherapee some years back as it was built to have a large color space to work in).
To get film emulation and some other interesting LUTs into the Gimp, check out G'Mic - patdavid.net/2013/08/film-emulation-presets-in-gmic-gimp/
G'Mic site - gmic.eu/
Replication of festoon lighting columns and oriental dragon lanterns at Peasholm Park completed by JW UK on behalf of Scarborough Borough Council
Starting in 2000 I began to model the Milwaukee Road’s former Chicago & Evanston Line that operated on Chicago’s North Side in N-scale. After several years I finished the section that replicated the prototype with street trackage on Lakewood Avenue between Belmont and Wellington. I was inspired by Bill Denton’s famous “Kingsbury” N-scale layout that also modeled the same Milwaukee Road C&E Line but farther south, in downtown Chicago. Bill was an encouragement to me and we displayed our layouts together at two shows.
As I put this diorama into storage as I move onto other projects I wanted to document it. There were no guides or manuals on creating street trackage in N-scale-everything was HO oriented-so I had to sort of had to use trial and error. I hope what I detail below helps future N-scale modelers of urban scenes.
The scene depicted here combines the best of the 1960s and into the early 1980s when the Milwaukee Road abandoned the tracks north of Diversey in 1984. It shows double tracks down the street though by the early 1970s it was consolidated down to one track. Some compression was used. Best Brewing was a customer of the Milwaukee Road before it shut down in the early 1960s while Reed Candy was served by the Milwaukee Road through 1982. Today this scene is unrecognizable except for the Best Brewing complex which is now apartments. Reed Candy was knocked down in the 1990s and replaced by the “Sweeterville” townhomes.
The coal cars shown depict the interchange traffic the Milwaukee Road had with the Chicago Transit Authority at the Buena Yard in the Uptown neighborhood. The Milwaukee Road would hand off coal hoppers, tank cars, boxcars destined for coal yards, fuel oil dealers, and the lumberyard at Howard Avenue. The CTA used electric locomotives to handle the freight cars until it ended in April of 1973. No more would freight trains pass in front of Wrigley Field.
All buildings on this diorama were scratchbuilt from historic photos using a combination of Design Preservation Modules, various components from Walthers kits, Plastruct sheets of molded styrene, Grant Line windows, doors, and frames, and more. And India ink wash over the brick surfaces gave them an aged look. Floquil enamel paints were used.
The track is Atlas Code 80 chosen for its high rail profile which made it easier to model street trackage around it. The roadbed was built up with cork and the pavement made from sheets of card stock and carefully cut styrene in between the rails and at the switch points. Stained, balsa wood strips were used to simulate timber grade crossing protection. The operating signals are from NJ International. To simulate the period specific use of asphalt siding in its various colors on the houses I took pictures of actual siding, scanned the prints, the printed them using an inkjet printer onto paper. The paper was then cut into the right sizes and glued onto the sides of the houses, cutting out the spaces for windows and doors with a knife.
To see my other diorama showing this same line passing Wrigley Field circa 1973 go to www.flickr.com/photos/39092860@N06/albums/72157676195056596
Below is a photo from 1979 showing this same area and buildings.
I want to replicate a memory, but all I see is a blur. I get on a bus… the next thing I remember is the North Beach region… next memory is City Lights Bookstore, then a few books. And then I close my eyes, and it’s no longer 2001, and I’m not almost 18… I’m almost 40.
A comparison of four different common 3D-print layer heights.
• 0.34 mm/layer - Low (340 microns)
• 0.27 mm/layer - Medium (270 microns)
• 0.1 mm/layer - High (100 microns)
• 0.05 mm/layer - Super fine (50 microns)
These models where 3D printed with blue 1.75 mm PLA plastic filament on a MakerBot Replicator 2 3D printer.
The sample 3D model for this print is MorenaP's popular tree frog: www.thingiverse.com/derivative:34468
3D-printer: makerbot.creativetools.se
Laser-cut plate: www.thingiverse.com/thing:69351
Neuroscience Prof. Anil Seth argues that conscious human intelligence is tightly coupled to our living, biological substrate, not replicable or simulatable in silicon. Here are some of my reactions to his thought-provoking piece:
If human intelligence and consciousness is substrate dependent, as asserted, even down to individual neurons being irreplaceable by silicon substrates, then some precise and strong claims emerge: uploading human consciousness to a new substrate (as referenced in the article) would not be possible, and the BCI companies should not be able to augment the core of human intelligence. This would have profound implications on the possibility of “humanity” going along for the ride of exponential progress in AI.
(As an aside, it’s far more likely that our biology is left behind, and building an AI that exceeds human intelligence will likely happen before we fully understand the brains we have. It’s easier to build a new one than reverse engineer the complex product of an iterative algorithm like evolution, cortical pruning, or neural net development. The locus of learning shifts to the process, not the product of development.)
Let me lend further evidence to the article’s claim that neural complexity vastly exceeds the neural net abstractions of current AI, and that human intelligence may be substrate dependent. At the high level of the connectome, the average adult has 1000 input synapses to each neuron, and a newborn baby has 10,000. Silicon chips do not have enough metal layers to implement this level of fan-in per gate. And these connections are dynamic; 90% are pruned in childhood development, and neurons that fire together wire together in a dynamic and ongoing remapping over time. Pure, detailed biomimicry of the brain in mainstream CMOS silicon may be impossible, for now and the foreseeable future. Dynamic interconnect is the issue, and it may require a fully 3D, fluid, low power substrate. Like the brain. And it might take some of the special chemical properties of carbon to capture the richness (I wondered about this in 2005)
On the other end of the spectrum, the complexity of the neuron vastly exceeds a simple sigmoid voting circuit or digital gate abstraction. Ion channels activate like a bucket brigade down each synapse. HIV-like particles and endogenous cannabinoids may play a role in nearest neighbor interactions outside the synapse. The extra-cellular matrix, like the potting soil outside the neuron, relaxes in a long series of critical periods of childhood development, and under the influence of psychedelics, changing the neuroplasticity for interconnect changes. And the neuron types may be vastly more varied that the observable phenotypic buckets (pyramidal, mirror neurons, etc.). MIT’s Ed Boyden believes that the gene expression of each neuron is unique — literally billions of different neuron types.
But, even if human intelligence and consciousness are fully substrate dependent, it does not follow that human-level intelligence is impossible with a different substrate. We may have only one existence proof from biological evolution, but that does not imply exclusivity in the space of possibilities. The substrate of our brains is not very different from less intelligent animals; our unique advancement came from layering on more self-similar cortex — not a better substrate but more of it.
There is much of our substrate that is unique from its evolutionary origins and as a way to make the most of it – it’s quite a miracle that meat can think at all… and do math and compute, even if we choose not to. We can imagine a certain percentage of our substrate is for basic metabolic support and garbage collection and not fundamentally essential for the thinking at hand, when abstracted at the right level. It’s like the power supply implementation of a computer not being essential to the computation architecture itself. Some portion of the genetic code in each neuron is a vestigial passenger from viral transposons of the past.
It’s safe to say that some fraction of our substrate is critical to the architecture of intelligence, and the critical exercise of biomimicry is to figure out the right level of abstraction, the right level of detail, if we wish to follow a similar path in a different substrate.
The critique of current AI approaches as falling short with an over-simplistic simplification may be correct, but not insurmountable. Or the shortcomings could be a vestige of the architecture and process of training the LLMs of today. A number of the AI advances of the past decade were focused on Reinforcement Learning. It was Deep Mind’s initial focus. There has been a revival of late, with some like Yann LeCun arguing that LLMs will never get us there… but RL will. We have believed for many years that the future of AI compute will be analog in-memory compute, as implemented in Mythic chips, and the brain. Some believe it will require an embodied intelligence interacting with the world of physical AI. Jeff Hawkins is working on a memory prediction architecture arguing that the brain is not a computer at all (and perhaps the qualia of consciousness is the merely the retrospective sensemaking of predictions occurring continuously at all layers of the cortex). Perhaps we will need a coincidence detector for asynchronous circuits to mimic the fire-together/wire-together paradigm (perhaps with reversible-computing resonators). Perhaps a neurosymbolic hybrid will bear fruit in mimicking different brain regions distinctly. Perhaps we will need a series of critical periods, like human children, with a path dependence on the sequencing of neural net training. There are many possibilities and exciting work to come, a Cambrian explosion of sorts, exploring different abstractions of architecture and processes of training.
While we humans want to feel special, unique, and central to the future, it does not make it so. One day, we will have a more advanced non-human intelligence that is conscious. That will happen quite simply by considering the next million years of continued biological evolution, with a selection function that rewards intelligence. To argue otherwise is to argue that homo sapiens are somehow the endpoint of evolution. Evolution does not suddenly end, even if we wish it to. The biological substrate of our successor species will likely be similar to ours, as the primary vector of evolutionary progress operates most rapidly at the highest level of abstraction. The open question is whether non-biological evolutionary algorithms will usher in non-biological intelligence that is superhuman and conscious in a handful of years if we are pursuing the right level of abstraction for conscious intelligence or maybe decades if we need to explore radically different analogs to our analog meat minds.
— Anil Seth is the director of the Centre for Consciousness Science at the University of Sussex. Here is his article in Noema
Trump National Doral Miami
-- The Kaskel Years --
Immigrating from Poland in the 1920's, Alfred L. Kaskel (1901–1968) used his skills to open in the Coney Island neighborhood a small building supplies store which led to early opportunities as a building contractor. Kaskel saved his money and was able to build his first apartment building on Parkside Avenue in Brooklyn. By the age of 30 he was a millionaire. He reinvested the profits and rose to prominence in New York City real estate in the postwar period - as did Donald Trump's father, Fred Trump and Sam Lefrak - by securing low cost government loans to build housing for returning GIs. Kaskel realized the potential for affordable housing in New York City and developed apartments in Forest Hills-Kew Gardens-Rego Park, Queens. In 1945 Kaskel bought the Belmont Plaza Hotel on Lexington and 49th Street - which marked his beginning of a rapid acceleration into the hotel real estate. Kaskel (Carol Management named after his daughter Carole) bought Coney Island's famed Half Moon Hotel for $900,000 in 1947. Kaskel sold the hotel in 1949 for $1,000,000 to the Harbor Hospital of Brooklyn.
By 1958 Kaskel was a part time resident of Miami and built the Carillon, a 620 room palace designed by Norman Giller, the celebrated “father” of Miami Modern (MiMo) architecture at Collins and 68th. The Carillon epitomized resort culture in Miami Beach. In 1959, it was voted Miami Beach’s “Hotel of the Year.” A glamorous night spot, the Carillon became known during the 1960s for its famous guests, lavish parties, cabaret shows, and big-name entertainment. Kaskel enjoyed golf - it led him to the swampland west of the Miami Airport and the Doral Country Club. Alfred and Doris Kaskel purchased 2,400 acres of swampland between NW 36 Street and NW 74 Street and from NW 79 Avenue to NW 117 Avenue for about $49,000 with the intention of building a golf course and hotel. At that time there was no paved road to the property. Kaskel's wife and daughter thought he was crazy to purchase the property and called it "Kaskel's folly". In 1962, the Kaskel's dream came true when they opened a hotel and country club that featured the Blue, Red and Par 3 golf courses. They named it Doral - a combination of Alfred and Doris. The Doral was the most luxurious resort constructed in South Florida since the Miami Biltmore in Coral Gables opened in the 1920's. The Doral Country Club was built for $10 million by Kaskel's family owned real estate firm, Carol Management. The Doral golf concept was to build multiple golf courses with a central country club, dining, meeting facilities and lodge rooms and reserve the fairway views for future house, condo and apartment buildings. In 1963 Kaskel also opened the 420- room Doral-on-Ocean - as the sister hotel to the Doral Country Club. The Doral Beach Hotel was long considered the most elegant and luxurious hotel in the area. It won several Mobil Five Star awards. It was said Kaskel did not have a mortgage on the Carillon Hotel, Doral Beach of the Doral Country Club - all funded by the thousands of apartment houses he owned in New York City.
Kaskel hired Louis Sibbett "Dick" Wilson and his assistants Joe Lee and Bob Hagge (Robert von Hagge) to design Doral's two regulation length golf courses plus a par-3 course. Wilson was the architect for Bay Hill in Orlando and La Costa in Carlsbad, CA. Since much of the land was swamp Mr. Hagge excavated enough land to route fairways through the water infested terrain just as Kaskel had requested. The intention was to use existing water as an ever-present hazard compensating for the very flat landscape. In May, 1963 construction began on the White Course, for the Doral complex, but it needed dirt, and so the lakes were dredged and enlarged on the Blue course from 60 acres to 75 acres. Kaskel hired Bob Hagge to design the White course. As a result of the building of the new White course, the par-3 course was redesigned since they were both located on the same parcel of land. On January 20, 1966 the Doral Country Club White Course opened and in December 1966 the redesigned Par 3 course reopened. Since the Blue Course had been renamed the Blue Monster, the other courses were renamed as well. The Red Course was renamed the Red Tiger, as Jackie Gleason once called the course. The White Course became known as the White Wonder, and the Par-3 Course became known as the Green Course or the Green Hornet. In 1968, Robert von Hagge and Bruce Devlin were hired to build the fifth course at the Doral Country Club - the Gold Course. In January, 1970 the Gold Course opened for business and received the moniker of Bachelor's Gold.
Kaskel put up a large purse to attract a PGA event at Doral in 1962. The tournament was held on the Blue Course and was named the Doral Country Club Open Invitational. Billy Casper was the inaugural winner of the Doral tournament. For that triumph, Casper earned $9,000 of the $50,000 purse. After watching the professionals struggle on the Blue Course, the tournament director Frank Strafaci gave the Blue Course the nickname 'The Blue Monster' which stuck. Doral's Touring Golf Pro for many years was Seve Ballesteros.
By 1978 the Kaskel family had grown the Doral brand to 8 hotels including in NYC: Doral Tuscany (now the St Giles Tuscany), Doral Park Avenue (now the Iberostar), Doral Court (now the St. Giles The Court) and the Doral Inn (originally the Belmont Plaza and the former W Flagship hotel now the Maxwell). In 1987, a spa wing was added to the Doral Country Club's hotel and the facility was renamed as the Doral Golf Resort and Spa. Prior to its renovation, the 800 acre complex was reported to feature "four golf courses; 700 hotel rooms across 10 lodges; more than 86,000-square-foot of meeting space, including a 25,000-square-foot ballroom; a 50,000-square-foot spa with 33 treatment rooms; six food and beverage outlets; extensive retail; and a private members' clubhouse.
--- The next five owners - KSL, CNL, Morgan Stanley, Paulson & Co. and Donald J. Trump ---
In 1994, the Kaskel family (Carol Management) sold the resort to KSL Recreation, a Kohlberg Kravis Roberts affiliate focused on premier golf facilities, for approximately $100 million. KSL Recreation was formed in 1992 (Henry Kravis, Michael Shannon and Larry Lichliter) as a portfolio company of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. KSL investors include public and private pensions and high net worth individuals. KSL appointed Hans Turnovszky as the new general manager. KSL planned a $30 million renovation. Starwood Capital was another interested buyer. The renovation included the remodel of ground floor restaurants (Terraza and Champions Sports Bar and Grill), all rooms and the 4 golf courses.
By 1995 the 4 courses (Blue Monster, Gold, White and Red) at Doral were frayed around the edges after some years of neglect. The Blue Monster was dropped off Golf Digest's list of the best 100 courses in 1993. In an effort to update the Blue Monster's difficulty in relation to changes in golf technology and skill, KSL contracted Ray Floyd to renovate the course in 1995. Floyd added and enlarged the already numerous bunkers narrowing many landing areas from the tee. The course was challenging under ideal conditions, but in normal tradewinds the alterations proved too penal and very unpopular. In 1999 Jim McLean, the Doral golf instructor, was asked to take the edges off Floyd's modifications.
In 1999 KSL sold 36 acres next to the Doral's golf courses to Marriott Vacation Club International for 240 timeshare villas. The sale marks the first time the Doral's owner, KSL Hotel Corp., relinquished a part of its property, said Joel Paige, KSL president and general manager of the Doral Golf Resort & Spa. KSL has agreed to let Marriott feed off the Doral's amenities by granting timeshare owners the same 40 percent discount and preferred access as guests at KSL's 700-room hotel. That includes the spa, golf courses, tennis courts.
In 2004 CNL acquired KSL for $1.366 billion and debt of $794 million for total acquisition cost of $2.16 billion. The resort portfolio of six included: 692-room Doral Golf Resort & Spa in Miami, Florida, 780-room Grand Wailea Resort & Spa on Maui, Hawaii, 796-room La Quinta Resort & Club and PGA West in La Quinta, California, 738-room Arizona Biltmore Resort & Spa in Phoenix, Arizona, 279-room Claremont Resort & Spa in Berkeley, California, 246-room Lake Lanier Islands Resort near Atlanta, Georgia. CNL placed the Doral resort under the management of Marriott International and renamed the property the Doral Golf Resort and Spa, a Marriott Resort. CNL said it would spend $40 million over the next three years on capital improvements at the Doral.
In 2007, CNL Hotels was acquired by the real estate arm of Morgan Stanley. The Doral was included in the portfolio of 8 resorts acquired by Morgan Stanley Real Estate for a total transaction cost of $6.6 billion. Michael Franco, the managing director of Morgan Stanley Real Estate said the resorts are extremely hard to replicate and will show excellent future growth from increased corporate group travel and leisure traveler markets.
In 2009, Doral's Silver Course was redesigned by Jim McLean and the course was renamed as the Doral Golf Resort & Spa - Jim McLean Signature Course.
In 2011, a group of creditors led by hedge fund giant Paulson & Co. seized control of the Doral and seven other properties from Morgan Stanley real estate funds. Morgan Stanley could not handle a $1 billion bond payment coming due. They quickly placed the Doral under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, and began seeking a buyer for the Doral. By selling Doral now the Paulson-led owners can use the cash to pay down debts and avoid making overdue capital expenditures of updating the property.
Donald Trump announced in October 2011 that he would buy Doral for $150 million and invest more than the purchase price to restore the property and make Doral great again. When asked what the renovation budget would be Trump has said "unlimited" which publicly became $250 million. The renovations were financed with $125 million in loans from Deutsche Bank. The Trump Organization's hotel management unit, Trump Hotel Collection, took over Doral's management in June 2012. Donald Trrump's daughter Ivanka took charge of the 700 guest rooms' redesign featuring Ivanka's "stylish palette of elegant neutrals, including ivory, champagne and caramel - accentuated with mahogany veneers and gold leaf Spanish revival details". Ivanka introduced her own brand synonymous with quality, elegance, and sophistication into every aspect; from the imported Austrian crystal chandeliers to the handmade Italian bed linens. The rooms were made over in to luxury suites that include massive marble baths with European styled whirlpools. All existing restaurants were gutted and a classic five-star "gourmet stunner" opened - BLT Prime.
Doral Golf Resort & Spa was renamed Trump National Doral Miami. The Blue Monster course was renovated by Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner and reopened in December 2013. After a Hanse/Wagner renovation, the Silver Fox course reopened in December 2014. The White Course was closed in January, 2015. The Red Tiger course reopened on January 12, 2015 and the Golden Palm course reopened in September 2015 after the Hanse/Wagner renovations.
The Blue Monster played host to the Doral Open on the PGA Tour from 1962 to 2006, and from 2007 to 2016 the WGC-Cadillac Championship made its home there. In 2016, it was announced that the tournament would be moved to Mexico City. In 2017 Rick Smith, best known as Phil Mickelson's former swing coach, replaced Jim McLean as the lead instructor at Trump National Doral Miami. McLean, a fixture at Doral through five owners and 26 years, moved his golf school to the nearby Biltmore Miami Hotel, where ownership has promised significant upgrades to its existing practice facilities. McLean called the move to Coral Gables "bittersweet."
Trump has been the target of dozens of liens from contractors who worked on the renovation project. On May 20, 2016, a Miami-Dade County Circuit Court judge ordered Trump National Doral Miami to be foreclosed and sold on June 28 unless the Trump Organization paid $32,800 to a Miami paint supply company. A 6-foot high portrait of Donald Trump hanging in the Champions Bar became controversial when it was reported to be purchased for $10,000 with funds from the non-profit Trump Foundation. The resort has challenged the local property tax assessments every year. In May 2019 it was reported the resort was in "steep decline" financially, in which its net operating income had fallen by 69 percent – from $13.8 million in 2015 to $4.3 million two years later.
David Feder has served as Vice President and Managing Director of Trump National Doral from 2014 to present. He previously presided over the Boca Resort and Club, Fairmont Turnberry Isle and the Arizona Biltmore. Paige Koerbel managed Doral in 2010 when it was operated by Marriott International and was there during the Trump acquisition. Joel Paige served as KSL's General Manager at Doral from 1995 to 2001. Paige is now the Chief Operating Officer at Kingsmill Resort in Williamsburg, Va.
Photos and text compiled by Dick Johnson
richardlloydjohnson@hotmail.com
The MakerBot Digitizer 3D-scanned Laser Cat model was used in this test of different layer thicknesses. The cat was scaled down to 50 mm in height and then 3D printed at the following layer heights:
- 0.40 mm (400 microns)
- 0.30 mm (300 microns)
- 0.20 mm (200 microns)
- 0.10 mm (100 microns) - Average width of a strand of human hair
- 0.05 mm (50 microns)
- 0.02 mm (20 microns)
All six cats where 3D printed on a MakerBot Replicator 2 with TRUE BLUE PLA plastic at 230 degrees C.
All layers where 3D printed with MakerWare's standard values as follows:
(400 microns) - 15% infill - perimeters 2 - speed 90 mm/s
(300 microns) - 15% infill - perimeters 2 - speed 90 mm/s
(200 microns) - 15% infill - perimeters 2 - speed 90 mm/s
(100 microns) - 15% infill - perimeters 2 - speed 90 mm/s
(50 microns) - 15% infill - perimeters 2 - speed 60 mm/s
(20 microns) - 15% infill - perimeters 2 - speed 40 mm/s
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The 3D scanner: bit.ly/1a7y8hG
The 3D printer: makerbot.creativetools.se
The 3D model: www.thingiverse.com/thing:146265
Dress inspired by the shed skin of a snake. I used lace, Bondaweb and heat manipulated fabrics to replicate the scaled, deteriorating skin.
#3DBenchy printed on a MakerBot Replicator Desktop 5th Generation 3D printer.
The 3D-model: 3dbenchy.com/download
The 3D-printer: www.creativetools.se/index.php?route=product/search&f...
#3DBenchy printed on a MakerBot Replicator Desktop 5th Generation 3D printer.
The 3D-model: 3dbenchy.com/download
The 3D-printer: www.creativetools.se/index.php?route=product/search&f...
#3DBenchy printed on a MakerBot Replicator Desktop 5th Generation 3D printer.
The 3D-model: 3dbenchy.com/download
The 3D-printer: www.creativetools.se/index.php?route=product/search&f...
The entire roof, ceiling and plasterwork were replicated in their entirety to replace that lost in the fire. The new roof is an all-timber construction based on traditional mortise and tenon joints using queen post-trusses for its basic structure and finished with Blue-Bangor slates each measuring 600mm x 900mm. Below that, a barrel vault ceiling was also installed, constructed of timber and overlaid with riven chestnut lathes to which the base plaster was applied. Plastering was carried out by George O’Malley Plastering Ltd and the work supervised by master-plasterer George O’Malley, who has many years expertise in restoring and creating decorative plasterwork. Traditional methods using lime plaster mixed with goat-hair/horsehair to reproduce as far as possible the original designs as well as new moulds. There were also the 28 plaster angels originally produced by local plasterer Terence Farrell (1787-1876) for the sum of £150. All were damaged in the fire and 26 angels were recoverable which were restored by George O’Malley, the remaining two were reproduced. These were hung back in their original positions above the free-standing limestone columns.
This photo shows the northern part of the nave and above are semicircular Diocletian windows containing leaded stained glass by James Scanlon. Those opposite on the southern side have art-glass windows by Kim en Joong, a Dominican priest based in Paris.
St Mel’s of Longford town is the cathedral church for the diocese of Ardagh and Clonmacnoise. Ambitious plans for a fine church building in Longford began to take form after the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829 and became a reality when sufficient funds had been collected. Construction began in 1840 with the laying of the foundation stone which was taken from the original cathedral of St. Mel at Ardagh, only a few miles from Longford. The main body of the new cathedral was completed in 1856 to a neo-classical design by the architect Joseph Benjamin Keane, work having been delayed during the period of the Great Famine (1846 and recommenced 1853). After Joseph’s death in 1849, work was continued after by his assistant John Bourke (d.1871) who was also responsible for the belfry tower completed in 1860, but with major alterations to its original design. The neo-classical portico was designed by George Coppinger Ashlin (1837-1921) and completed in 1889 with its pediment and sculpted tympanum depicting the enthronement of St. Mel as Bishop of Ardagh along with three statues above the pediment. By this time, the cathedral building has taken on its definitive form with no further major alterations until its refurbishment after the devastating fire of 2009.
On 25th December 2009, the entire building was gutted by a fire which accidently started within the boiler chimney flue at the rear and quickly spread. The alarm was raised just after 5am but fire-fighting attempts were hampered by frozen pipes as the country was in the grip of one of its worst and prolonged periods of freezing temperatures for decades. By daylight, the entire building had been reduced to a burnt-out shell with the loss of all its furnishing, fittings and diocesan museum. The museum contained many priceless artefacts that included the Crozier of Saint Mel and the book-shrine of St. Caillin (1536), the latter damaged beyond restoration but it may be possible to conserve some of the remnants. The 28 supporting columns were also damaged beyond repair and had to replaced anew. Very little was recoverable that survived the worst of the 1,000 deg.C fire and even these suffered some degree of fire damage such as The Bell of Fenagh which is undergoing conservation treatment at the National Museum of Ireland and the original baptismal font with its brass fittings and surrounding mosaic floor. But the most puzzling of all and described by many as nothing short of a miracle was the survival of the Holy Family painting in the northern transept and the undamaged Eucharistic Host still inside the fire damaged tabernacle. The Holy Family oil painting on a cotton-based canvas should have readily gone up in flames due to its highly combustible materials but somehow survived relatively unscathed despite the intense fire around it. This painting was of Italian origins by an unknown artist and is now back on display requiring little more than a cleaning!
After five years of work by many expert disciplines using traditional methods, the cathedral building has been totally refurbished and which included quarried blue-limestone for 28 columns with hand-carved capitals that support the roof. Both Harry Clarke Studio windows were salvaged from the transepts and restored to their former glory by Abbey Stained Glass Ltd of Dublin, a company with much experience in the restoration of stained glass windows. Other replacements such as the wooden pews, alter, stained glass, Stations of the Cross tablets, pipe-organ, fixtures and fitting were all made in a modern style to the best materials and craftsmanship available. It is also planned to open a diocesan museum in the cathedral’s new crypts. The total cost of refurbishment and fitting out came to around €30 million, funded mostly from the insurance cover and after five years of hard work the cathedral was reopened for services at Christmas 2014.
Photos taken Thursday 22nd January 2015.
References:
www.facebook.com/StMelsRestoration (St Mel’s Cathedral restoration – Facebook page).
www.rte.ie/news/special-reports/2014/1215/667007-longford... (RTE News article about TV program The Longford Phoenix).
www.longfordtourism.ie/event/st-mels-cathedral-rise-from-...
irishcatholic.ie/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/... (Sculptor Ken Thompson working on one of his Stations of the Cross panels).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Mel%27s_cathedral,_Longford
l7.alamy.com/zooms/5e9904767cdb4317b39e15ee189488c3/shrin... (Image of St. Caillin book shrine created in 1536 before it was damaged beyond repair in the 2009 fire at St. Mel’s cathedral).
www.alamy.com/stock-photo-st-mels-crozier-longford-cathed... (Image of the 10th century St. Mel’s Crozier and sadly, completely destroyed in the cathedral fire of 2009).
www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVb7TQy4QAM (Engineers Ireland presentation titled Recreating the Historical Roof of St. Mel's Cathedral).
LUGNuts' founder Lino Martins has graciously given me permission to replicate his series of automotive illustrations based on various mixed alcoholic drinks.
The next in this series is a Lego -model replication of Moscow Mule' - Zil-130 Truck.
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In Lino's own words:
"I’m aware that designing vehicles based on mixed drinks is a fairly irresponsible thing to be doing. I have friends who are in recovery or simply choose not to drink and for them I have something cool in mind that will finish out this series. My friend Buell Richardson had a couple of suggestions that I felt rather uneasy about drawing in these rather sensitive times so instead I have rendered the Moscow Mule in hopes that he can still appreciate my design choices in doing so. I went with a custom Soviet ZIL-130 pickup truck in olive green. The Moscow Mule drink itself is not that visually interesting but it is usually served in a copper mug. This got me thinking to adorn the truck with hammered copper gas tanks, rims and other accessories. Buell enjoys painting gaming miniatures and does it quite well so I incorporated a base for the truck that makes it look like it could be one of his painted miniatures. The background is a faded sunburst in colors reminiscent of old Soviet propaganda art. I couldn’t resist finishing off the piece with a red star and hammer and sickle design on the side of the truck. The end result is something I like quite a bit and I hope that you all do too. Stay tuned as I draw more of your suggestions and remember always drink responsibly and never drink and drive."
This pipe’s design is replicated on both halves of the bowl and features a Maid of Erin harp beneath a Royal Crown along with sprays of shamrock. Both nationalist emblems of harp and shamrock were usually associated together within Ireland from the 18th to the early 20th centuries. The Maid of Erin on this pipe is not winged and shown subordinated to the Crown.
The use of shamrock in Ireland associated with St. Patrick (Ireland’s patron saint) originated in the 17th century and by the end of the 18th century it began to be adopted as a nationalist emblem. The use of the shamrock as a national emblem to show one’s patriotism became widely popular in the latter half of the 19th century along with the Maid of Erin harp.
The Maid of Erin harp is depicted with an allegorical female figure of Erin affixed to the outer body of the harp. The Maid of Erin is usually depicted as winged but sometimes without the wings. The earliest appearance of the Maid of Erin harp was on the Royal Standard of King James I of England (c.1603) and its first appearance on the Irish coinage was on the St. Patrick’s halfpenny (c.1674). Thereafter, the Maid of Erin was commonly used as an emblem of Ireland into the 20th century.
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References:
niarchive.org/CulturalFusions/portals/a1b3a25b-b7fe-4bef-...(WEB).pdf (Emblems of Ireland – covers both the shamrock and the Maid of Erin harp).
www.coinweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/st_pat_thumb.jpg (Image of a St. Patrick’s halfpenny (1670’s) which was the first Irish coin to depict the Maid of Erin harp).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamrock (The shamrock as an Irish emblem).
Coins & Tokens of Ireland by Seaby’s Numismatic Publishing Ltd, 1970.
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Height: 2 1/8” (54mm)
Widest width: 1 1/8” (28mm)
Length: 1 7/8” including stem (47mm)
Inside diameter: ¾” (19mm)
Find location: Mullingar, County Westmeath.