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A seemingly random page from Car Mechanics magazine June 1980, looks like an event at Brands Hatch? But what else is in the paddock? That orange estate looks interesting - see next scan along...
Just as the Sun had seemingly disappeared over the horizon, I climbed the summit's observation tower and caught its descent a second time. Cheating, I know.
On a seemingly quiet Saturday afternoon, two Foxton visitors wait for the March 2007 Scania K94IB6 with Kiwi Bus Builders C53D bodywork to pass on the IC service from New Plymouth to Wellington before crossing Foxton's Main St.
The coach is also about to pass under the trolleybus overhead running from the depot of the Foxton trolleybus museum (now in mothball status), across Main St. to the Wharf, Harbour and Main Sts.trolleybus loop.
The now seemingly abandoned David Rettiger Building, Strong City, Kansas. This building dates from 1886. David Rettiger, a prominent business man and an influential citizen of Strong City, was born in Germany on Nov. 9, 1849, the son of Nicholas Rettiger, who brought his family to America in 1853, and to Kansas in 1873. Nicholas Rettiger died in 1886. David Rettiger acquired large tracts of land in Chase County, Kansas, on which were found valuable deposits of building stone. He invented a stone cutting machine and engaged in stone contracting on a large scale. He built many of the stone buildings in Cottonwood Falls, Strong City, and numerous other Kansas towns, and among his largest contracts were those for furnishing building stone for the Santa Fe Railway Company. In 1886 David Rettiger and Rose L. Harvey were united in marriage. Rose was born in Scotland in 1869, and came to America early in her life, with her parents—Hugh Harvey and his wife—wo eventually came to Strong City, where Mr. Harvey was a successful druggist and businessman. The Rettingers had four children: Hubert E., Charles D., Ervin J., and Esther Mary. Upon the death of Mr. Rettiger on Sept. 22, 1899, Mrs. Rettiger assumed the management of his large estate..
There are several people in my life who are seemingly never lacking in motivation. DJ Quick is one of them.
My parents always seemed like this as well -- a nearly infinite well of motivation and self-control, managing to keep a house and raise a family while both holding down jobs, exercising regularly, and entertaining varying degrees of hobby-like activity.
I hope that I can maintain that level of motivation when we have children. Right now it often feels like I would rather sit on the couch after a long day than work on photos, go to the gym, or whatever. That's fine when the most attention anything really requires is taking Abbot out and throwing together some kind of dinner. A child, of course, will be far more Responsibility.
We are fortunate, thanks to our parents' sacrifices, that Cori will be able to do the stay-at-home mom thing. My opinions about the "stay at home parent" thing have changed dramatically in the last few years. It turns out that just keeping a home is a giant amount of work, most of which never gets done. When do people find time and energy to wash windows, clean driveways, wipe out window rails, restain patio furniture?
The contempt I once felt for stay-at-home parents has been replaced by a contempt merely for those that don't do anything with that time. I'm thinking "Housewives of Orange County" here. And of course, as Cori pointed out, that's really the whole point of the show -- that we feel contempt for these characters.
Cori isn't someone who will be satisfied -- long-term -- without some kind of structure, so it will be interesting to see what her experience is like. But if we can provide a home for the child, if she can keep herself busy enough to stay sane, and if the payoff is that I can spend more time with the kid(s?) and less time with laundry, that seems like an amazing opportunity.
And it's an opportunity provided us because of the bedrock that our parents built on -- that seemingly die-hard motivation. Hopefully some of it rubbed off unknowingly on me.
A seemingly different, more dramatic and adventurous take on the classic fable. Kristen Stewart plays Snow White, Charlize Theron the Evil Queen, Chris Hemsworth the Hunstman, and Sam Claflin as Prince Charmant.
Came across this while out for a drive, it's a striking structure with an intriguing story:
"The Folly stands on a hill in Ballyscally townland, south of Clogher. It is a mausoleum built by George Brackenridge, a much maligned 19th Century Clogher Valley landlord, a self made man of his day. He is reputed to have said that, ‘If the people would not accept him in his own lifetime, at least they would be forced to look up to him when he died’. Thus he set about building his tower – a three story, telescope style building topped by a railed parapet – built over a fault. The construction of the tower and the road leading up to it gave some employment during the last years of the Famine.
Brackenridge was buried in the vault in July 1879, supposedly upside down – believing that when the world ended the Poles would be reversed and therefore he would be facing the right way up for resurrection. His body was placed in the innermost of three coffins. These were broken into nearly fifty years later by the Black and Tans who took his rings and watch chain as souvenirs."
After seemingly being a one off we now see two successive new recolours of the Matchbox 2018 Nissan Leaf, the first being a nine vehicle set exclusive and now this for the not yet widely available MBX Electric Drivers five vehicle set. Its thick black plastic upper half does apparently still have an interior though i've shone a light through and still cant see it. Mint and boxed.
Seemingly about 85% of Rail Replacement operations around Cambridge today comprised of white coaches of various operators, however one of the other vehicles was this Enviro 400 from Central Connect. A few of these were acquired earlier in the year for their school services, previously having operated with Arriva London. This one was T108, which apart from a single door conversion and fitting of Hanover LED destination boards remains in mostly London condition.
It is seen having a pause after operating a Rail Replacement service from Royston.
Central Connect
LJ59 LYG (587)
Alexander Dennis Enviro 400
Cambridge Railway Station
14:47 - Saturday 16th November 2024
Sure am happy I seemingly - you tell me - nailed a panning picture of a 2016 Ford Mustang making the charge up the road to Heritage Flight Museum for HFM Props & Ponies 2016. Gives me a sense of accomplishment to capture a pin-sharp automobile in motion.
For more uploads, please visit www.flickr.com/photos/avgeekjoe/albums/72157671783999322 as I can develop & release. Also I did a write-up with photos exclusive to Warbirds News for more details about the event: goo.gl/RtRoY9 . Thanks!
PHOTO CREDIT: Joe A. Kunzler Photo, AvgeekJoe Productions, growlernoise-AT-gmail-DOT-com
Seemingly a long time ago - this vantage point is now closed to the public, the station too, DBR all out of service and wires and EMUs for the passenger services. A visit to a nighttime Westfield was one of the pleasures of an Auckland trip
Seemingly owned by someone who has a caravan sited here long term and showed up briefly to sort out their awning which had collapsed during some high winds.
This seemingly out of date sign is at the rear of National Express Coventry's Garage at the Cox Street - White Street - Swanswell Street junction. I'm sure there's no complaints among the Bus Enthusiasts that the logo on this sign is getting on 20 years out of date! Some of the many relics of the company's history at the various garages across the West Midlands!
Hopefully there's no plans to plaster this with the very plain corporate 'National Express Coventry' logo which looks as if it's fresh from an Infant School child's Microsoft Word document!
Stelis lateralis - A nest parasite of Osmia...often seemingly associated with O. pumila. This one was found in the New York City area in Gateway National Recreation Area. Photographed by Kamren Jefferson and photo shopped by Elizabeth Garcia.
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All photographs are public domain, feel free to download and use as you wish.
Photography Information: Canon Mark II 5D, Zerene Stacker, Stackshot Sled, 65mm Canon MP-E 1-5X macro lens, Twin Macro Flash in Styrofoam Cooler, F5.0, ISO 100, Shutter Speed 200
Beauty is truth, truth beauty - that is all
Ye know on earth and all ye need to know
" Ode on a Grecian Urn"
John Keats
You can also follow us on Instagram account USGSBIML Want some Useful Links to the Techniques We Use? Well now here you go Citizen:
Art Photo Book: Bees: An Up-Close Look at Pollinators Around the World
www.qbookshop.com/products/216627/9780760347386/Bees.html...
Basic USGSBIML set up:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-_yvIsucOY
USGSBIML Photoshopping Technique: Note that we now have added using the burn tool at 50% opacity set to shadows to clean up the halos that bleed into the black background from "hot" color sections of the picture.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bdmx_8zqvN4
PDF of Basic USGSBIML Photography Set Up:
ftp://ftpext.usgs.gov/pub/er/md/laurel/Droege/How%20to%20Take%20MacroPhotographs%20of%20Insects%20BIML%20Lab2.pdf
Google Hangout Demonstration of Techniques:
plus.google.com/events/c5569losvskrv2nu606ltof8odo
or
www.youtube.com/watch?v=4c15neFttoU
Excellent Technical Form on Stacking:
Contact information:
Sam Droege
sdroege@usgs.gov
301 497 5840
Cody is seemingly always hungry. He has these cluster feedings (that sometimes last 5 hours) where he wants to pretty much constantly feed. It gets so bad at times that he will just get done eating 2.5 ounces and still wants more (keep in mind he's still less than 2 weeks old). These are probably our most difficult times as new parents because he cries so much and the only way to get him to stop is to give him even more food.
Used Topaz Detail for most of the heavy lifting on this to help enhance details and subject isolation (through tonal tweaks). Needed a bit of Topaz DeNoise to clean the "enhanced" noise from Detail, And finally Aperture to do some contrast and local color adjustments.
On Sunday 7th November 2021 a special vintage bus running day was held in the affluent North London district of Muswell Hill to commemorate the 30th anniversary since the closure of the former Muswell Hill (MH) bus garage in 1990. This event was originally supposed to take place in November 2020 but due to the COVID-19 restrictions and lockdowns that were in place during 2020 this running day event had to be put on hold. In this view which resembles a scene from a typical Sunday morning the early 1980s in this view of Adam Conner's privately preserved Routemaster RM 2208 in a seemingly deserted Ballards Lane close to Finchley Central Underground station on the fine early morning of Sunday 7th November 2021 with the vehicle arriving from its base in Reading with Adam Conner behind the wheel in order to pick me up as its allocated conductor in readiness for RM 2208 operating on route 43 between Friern Barnet and Archway. In the distance at the traffic lights is the turning which leads towards Finchley Central Underground station.
A seemingly different, more dramatic and adventurous take on the classic fable. Kristen Stewart plays Snow White, Charlize Theron the Evil Queen, Chris Hemsworth the Hunstman, and Sam Claflin as Prince Charmant.
Cast B 1973
These seemingly ordinary looking teenagers went to big cities like this and made a very big noise.
They created a storm of positive emotions that swept over audiences, kind of like like when mom opens the oven door on a cold rainy day baking those Tollhouse cookies.
The warm glow of our show is the very reason Up With People! will soon CELEBRATE 50 YEARS!
This was taken the year after I left UWP. I don't know who the girls are, but I definitely recognize Larry Rodeck who I traveled with in Cast B 72.
As I recall, Larry is from a smallish town in Canada...how FABULOUS to help a heroic mission such as this on a global scale!
But then...even MORE fabulous...later on to CONTINUE promoting the UP WITH PEOPLE MISSION - EVERY DAY, EVERY WAY YOU CAN.
Soldier on, my brothers and sisters of Up With People!
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-
SPECIAL THANKS TO DAN GREGG FOR SUPPLYING THIS ORIGINAL IMAGE.
Digitized and processed by Tom Simpson.
Now seemingly a permanent resident in Moses Lake is the 2nd Boeing 737-10 test airframe. Having not flown since January 2023 it was towed back out for static display same as last year. Although they used quite a few concrete blocks to keep it firmly "grounded"...
This seemingly shy lady is Yue Yue, born in Wolong National Nature Reserve in 1993 and mother of two cubs (some time since 1993, I mean – not at the time of the photo).
The Dujiangyan Panda Base and Center for Disease Control, operated by the Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Pandas (CCRCGP), occupies a semi-natural hillside location near Shiqiao Village, Qingchengshan in Dujiangyan county, near the Taoist holy mountain of Qīngchéngshān and 18 km from central Dujiangyan city.
A more visitor-friendly name is 'Dujiangyan Giant Panda Base'; it also seems to be known as 'Dujiangyan Panda Ark'.
The 51 ha centre (or is that just the visitor-accessible part?) has a specific focus on panda disease control, prevention and research. As such, the 'nursing home' works with sick or injured wild pandas and elderly or disabled captive pandas.
It also acts as quarantine for pandas leaving or entering China; if you've seen giant pandas anywhere else in the world, they either visited or will visit Dujiangyan Panda Base at some point, as the foreign-born cubs of Chinese-loaned pandas (i.e. all of them!) contractually must be returned to China and the breeding programme.
This doesn't mean that all the residents are ill or otherwise disabled – I wasn't aware of seeing any in such a condition. Many are entirely healthy, as the CCRCGP's disease-prevention initiative involves separating captive populations, containing any outbreaks to individual bases, and veterinary research also needs to study healthy individuals.
The world-famous Chengdu Panda Base (Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, CRBGPB) also has a Field Research Center in Dujiangyan county, seemingly known as Dujiangyan Panda Valley, where pandas are gradually reintroduced to the wild. To avoid misunderstanding: this isn't it.
The seemingly blue colour of the hills reminded me of a poem from "The Shropshire Lad"
A. E. Housman (1859–1936). A Shropshire Lad. 1896.
Into my heart on air that kills.
INTO my heart on air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?
That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.
Photo:
© Phillip Skitt. All Rights Reserved. No usage allowed including copying or sharing without written permission.
These extraordinary, seemingly prehistoric insects belong to the same order of insects as lacewings and owlflies. They get their name from their mantis-like appearance, as their spiny "raptorial" front legs are modified to catch small insect prey and are very similar to the front legs of mantids. The adults are predatory insects that are often nocturnal.
The larvae of the subfamily Mantispinae (to which this individual belongs) seek out female spiders or their egg sacs which they then enter; the scarabaeiform larvae then feed on the spider eggs, draining egg contents through a piercing/sucking tube formed by modified mandibles and maxillae, pupating in the egg sac.
First-instar mantispids use two strategies to locate spider eggs: larvae may burrow directly through the silk of egg sacs they find, or they may board and be carried by female spiders prior to sac production, entering the sac as it is being constructed.
(attracted to MV night light)
Pu'er, Yunnan, China
This took seemingly f o r e v e r to stitch up. The face details are so tiny! I think I started this one a couple of days ago very late at night. The girl on the right has "chunkier" limbs because I didn't split the floss, but it kinda lends to her pose. All in all not my best stitching but my sister can bite me if she doesn't like it. Just kidding Ash :)
Made with Sublime Stitching Roller Derby transfer pattern.
Seemingly in a blink of an eye Autumn is well and truly here and I am looking at a Spring image.
Sorry for my awful play on English words.
A seemingly different, more dramatic and adventurous take on the classic fable. Kristen Stewart plays Snow White, Charlize Theron the Evil Queen, Chris Hemsworth the Hunstman, and Sam Claflin as Prince Charmant.
These seemingly ordinary looking teenagers went to big cities like this and made a very big noise.
They created a storm of positive emotions that swept over audiences, kind of like like when mom opens the oven door on a cold rainy day baking those Tollhouse cookies.
The warm glow of our show is the very reason Up With People! will soon CELEBRATE 50 YEARS!
This was taken the year after I left UWP. I don't know who the girls are, but I definitely recognize Larry Rodeck who I traveled with in Cast B 72.
As I recall, Larry is from a smallish town in Canada...how FABULOUS to help a heroic mission such as this on a global scale!
But then...even MORE fabulous...later on to CONTINUE promoting the UP WITH PEOPLE MISSION - EVERY DAY, EVERY WAY YOU CAN.
Soldier on, my brothers and sisters of Up With People!
-
-
SPECIAL THANKS TO DAN GREGG FOR SUPPLYING THIS ORIGINAL IMAGE.
Digitized and processed by Tom Simpson.
After seemingly weeks of storms we had sunshine this afternoon - it was good to get out and see the little streams burbling and rushing and leaping to get down to the reservoirs. Here's one on its way to Watergrove reservoir.
Vectare / Central Connect , Essex . CE21GAL .
New to Central Connect / Galleon Travel . Essex during May-2021.
Alexander Dennis E20D - ADL Enviro 200 MMC B34F
I have not seen a Red livered vehicle from this fleet for a good few months . I was therefore pleasantly surprised to see CE21GAL climbing Hockerill Hill , Bishops Stortford , Hertfordshire , this morning .
Working to Stansted Airport via Hatfield Broad Oak , Hatfield Forrest and Takeley , on Essex County contracted Route 305 .
Friday morning 25th-October-2024.
The Platform of the Eagles and Jaguars is one of the structures in Toltec Chichén Itzá seemingly dedicated to the military, and their role in capturing sacrificial victims.
Chichén Itzá -
One of the world's foremost archeological sites, the enormous Chichén Itzá is mind-boggling in a million ways.
It was a city built to intimidate, influence, inspire, and empower- and as such, is not at all unlike the cities we know and live in today. Who knows who it benefited or how each individual related to it, but there is a great deal of civic pride here. The practices carried out here are so alien to what most of us know today, but we can still understand what it is like to exist in a certain time and place, and to define where we are as home, for all better or worse.
It's thinking about the day-to-day that is most poignant. Countless people walked these streets, entered these buildings, each with their own hopes, dreams, and intrigues. Each trying to make sense of the world around them within the society they were brought up in. Each with pleasures, vices, gripes, and shortcomings. Some with imagination that could vault the stars. Some who devoted themselves wholly to the city and society around them, and others who dissented, perhaps quietly, living entire lives under the radar. But all around, surely there were many mornings in which these people may have just simply walked out of their homes and casually gazed at the huge pyramid and surrounding grandeur and just marvelled that humans could be capable of such things.
And what other people shrank back in horror- disgusted by the brutality of humanity?
and how many countless others were simply mortally terrified at the spiritual bloodshed?
We have no real way of knowing whether or not our most cherished modern monuments will someday be ruins themselves, drawing from strangers a similar sense of wonder and mystery, a thousand or two thousand years hence.
The name Chichén Itzá means "at the the well of the Itzá", a reference to the Cenote Sagrado (a huge sinkhole) which provided the water to make this city flourish in the riverless Yucatán.
The city was regionally significant as far back as AD600, during the Classic Period of Mayan history. At that time, however, this was something of a far-off backwater outpost, while the major Classic Period city-states further south, such as Tikal and Palenque, enjoyed being at the very heart of civilization.
The oldest visible remaining architecture here represents the Puuc ("hill" in Mayan) style and was probably built around 900AD. Sometime soon after that time, Chichén Itzá underwent a huge upheaval. This was the end of the Classic Period, when the great civilization of the south was collapsing (for reasons unknown, but probably tied, at least in some way, to overexploitation of the environment).
Chichén Itzá at this chaotic time came under great Toltec influence- the Toltecs had their capital at Tula, in the west, near Mexico City, and were the precursors to the Aztecs. Whether the Toltec influence was via direct invasion or via the Itzá Mayans is still debated. Either way, the city became deeply connected to the ideology of Central Mexico- an ideology which was strongly convinced that the perpetuation of earthly life was only guaranteed by sacrifice to the gods- a bloody, bellicose tradition that is exemplified throughout the newer portions of the city. The very same spectacular architecture that captivates visitors today seems, in some ways, to be desperate expression of a culture in decline....
In short, the older portions of the city demonstrate a deep connection to its Classic Mayan predecessors, via the Puuc tradition; and the newer portions (ca. AD 1000) demonstrate a fractured, and more desperately extreme time, highly swayed by outside forces. I have read that anywhere from 35,000 to 90,000 people lived here at its peak- no matter the figure, a huge number for ancient times.
Turmoil continued into the 1200's, after which point the city finally declined totally, being absorbed by the Spanish in the second half of the 1500's.
August 4, 2010
If you really want to truly appreciate this astounding place, find a way to come early in the morning- i.e. stay in a local town. We arrived at around 9am and had the place to ourselves- in the midday, just as the sun is becoming unbearable, (which is amazingly taxing on the brain, as we dizzily found out) hoards upon hoards of day-trippers arrive on buses, and what is so tranquil in the morning becomes a cattle run. We thankfully managed to stay a few steps ahead of the crowds. Definitely bring a ton of water, and be prepared to bake like you've never baked before in the extreme sun
Sean D. Tucker seemingly slides across Lake Michigan in his Team Oracle aircraft.
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Set Description: Another Chicago Air & Water Show has come and gone. Over the course of three days, 2,900 frames, and a pretty wicked v-neck farmers tan, I've assembled a set of shots covering all acts of the show. So if you missed any of the action - i've got you covered.
On Friday and Saturday I shot the performances from show center at Castaway's. On Sunday, I had the opportunity to shoot from a much higher angle - the John Hancock Center. Hope you enjoy!
____
+ Follow me on Twitter: @ChiPhotoGuy
+ Like me on Facebook
Blue Cross/Blue Shield Building (Paul Rudolph) 1960. This seemingly mild-mannered office building masks some tensions in postwar modernism, illuminated in the recent scholarship of Timothy Rohan. As we can see here, only two out of every three pilasters correspond to lines of structure, and these in turn merge into "Y"-shaped pillars at the retail level, with only a single line going to ground.
There are further, unseen differences: the front few inches of the structural pilasters contain the air-supply ducts in front of the concrete columns, while the front few inches of the non-structural ones contain return-air ducts, in front of nothing at all. So on the one hand the building might appear to belong to the trend of plastic expression of mechanical systems (see: the British Brutalists, Richards Medical, etc.). But to critics at the time, its apparent forthrightness was itself obfuscatory, since the same outward forms corresponded to different functions; one imagines strict rational Modernists walking up to play Guess-The-Ductwork and becoming rapidly frustrated by an apparent shell-game.
Arguably, however, Rudolph was simply returning to an earlier Modernist approach - that of Sullivan in the Guaranty and Wainwright buildings, where nonstructural pilasters do not contradict the "form follows function" ethos, but are necessary in order to serve other, non-structural functions. Sullivan wanted to express a deeper truth about the building (its tallness); Rudolph, here, seems interested in rhythm, relief, and scale. What they share is a clear desire to mark the ground, middle, and attic with visible differences reflecting their real differences in programmatic function. Sullivan's attics are far more completely differentiated than Rudolph's, though clearly the extra pilasters here support a quasi-Gothic finial effect, à la Yamasaki). But still, I'd rather read this as a moderately successful attempt at one thing rather than a failed attempt at something else.
See: Rohan, Timothy. "Challenging the Curtain Wall: Paul Rudolph's Blue Cross and Blue Shield Building." Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, vol. 66, no. 1 (March 2007): 84-109; and his later volume The Architecture of Paul Rudolph (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014).
Several parts of Bethesda’s E3 event (tonight, 9pm Pacific) appear to be leaking early, including The Evil Within 2.
www.pcinvasion.com/evil-within-2-seemingly-confirmed-prom...
Beautiful and seemingly delicate, this dyed stone donut pendant on gold chain is sure to gather compliments every time you wear it.
Everything is wrapped in nearly 3 yards of brass 30g wire, even the bail. Antique seed beads, gold plated spacers and filigree beads, Phillippine horn beads, Chinese cats eye and Czech glass rondelles complement the colors in the pendant. The donut itself is a rounded square, measuring 1.5 inches (38 mm) in diameter. With the bail and the dangles, the pendant’s entire length is just over 3 inches (76 mm). It is strung on 17.5 inches (444.5 mm) of gold plated chain. The two extenders are also decorated with wrapped beads, and each are 3 inches long. The clasp is handmade, a wrapped and beaten hook. A spiral wrapped into the center of the donut makes it a bit more special than usual.
Note that the frame that has been wrapped with brass wire is made of NTB gold (nickel tin brass). This necklace is not for someone with nickel allergies.
Having seemingly been "Dug Out" from the many stored at Crewe Electric 92024 "J.S.Bach" finds itself working on this new flow. Having taken over from D.R.S. , D.B.Schenker now handle container traffic for W.H.Malcolm with this new 4Z48 Daventry-Mossend flow seen here passing Preston
Ford seemingly never made any 15x7 steelies with a 4.5" bolt pattern.
But these 15x7 mopar wheels can be fitted with nice 10.75" baby moon hubcaps, the best-looking baby moon size IMHO.
The Platform of the Eagles and Jaguars is one of the structures in Toltec Chichén Itzá seemingly dedicated to the military, and their role in capturing sacrificial victims.
The figure in front is a chac mool, a common feature in this part of the Mayan world dedicated to the rain god Chac.
Chichén Itzá -
One of the world's foremost archeological sites, the enormous Chichén Itzá is mind-boggling in a million ways.
It was a city built to intimidate, influence, inspire, and empower- and as such, is not at all unlike the cities we know and live in today. Who knows who it benefited or how each individual related to it, but there is a great deal of civic pride here. The practices carried out here are so alien to what most of us know today, but we can still understand what it is like to exist in a certain time and place, and to define where we are as home, for all better or worse.
It's thinking about the day-to-day that is most poignant. Countless people walked these streets, entered these buildings, each with their own hopes, dreams, and intrigues. Each trying to make sense of the world around them within the society they were brought up in. Each with pleasures, vices, gripes, and shortcomings. Some with imagination that could vault the stars. Some who devoted themselves wholly to the city and society around them, and others who dissented, perhaps quietly, living entire lives under the radar. But all around, surely there were many mornings in which these people may have just simply walked out of their homes and casually gazed at the huge pyramid and surrounding grandeur and just marvelled that humans could be capable of such things.
And what other people shrank back in horror- disgusted by the brutality of humanity?
and how many countless others were simply mortally terrified at the spiritual bloodshed?
We have no real way of knowing whether or not our most cherished modern monuments will someday be ruins themselves, drawing from strangers a similar sense of wonder and mystery, a thousand or two thousand years hence.
The name Chichén Itzá means "at the the well of the Itzá", a reference to the Cenote Sagrado (a huge sinkhole) which provided the water to make this city flourish in the riverless Yucatán.
The city was regionally significant as far back as AD600, during the Classic Period of Mayan history. At that time, however, this was something of a far-off backwater outpost, while the major Classic Period city-states further south, such as Tikal and Palenque, enjoyed being at the very heart of civilization.
The oldest visible remaining architecture here represents the Puuc ("hill" in Mayan) style and was probably built around 900AD. Sometime soon after that time, Chichén Itzá underwent a huge upheaval. This was the end of the Classic Period, when the great civilization of the south was collapsing (for reasons unknown, but probably tied, at least in some way, to overexploitation of the environment).
Chichén Itzá at this chaotic time came under great Toltec influence- the Toltecs had their capital at Tula, in the west, near Mexico City, and were the precursors to the Aztecs. Whether the Toltec influence was via direct invasion or via the Itzá Mayans is still debated. Either way, the city became deeply connected to the ideology of Central Mexico- an ideology which was strongly convinced that the perpetuation of earthly life was only guaranteed by sacrifice to the gods- a bloody, bellicose tradition that is exemplified throughout the newer portions of the city. The very same spectacular architecture that captivates visitors today seems, in some ways, to be desperate expression of a culture in decline....
In short, the older portions of the city demonstrate a deep connection to its Classic Mayan predecessors, via the Puuc tradition; and the newer portions (ca. AD 1000) demonstrate a fractured, and more desperately extreme time, highly swayed by outside forces. I have read that anywhere from 35,000 to 90,000 people lived here at its peak- no matter the figure, a huge number for ancient times.
Turmoil continued into the 1200's, after which point the city finally declined totally, being absorbed by the Spanish in the second half of the 1500's.
August 4, 2010
If you really want to truly appreciate this astounding place, find a way to come early in the morning- i.e. stay in a local town. We arrived at around 9am and had the place to ourselves- in the midday, just as the sun is becoming unbearable, (which is amazingly taxing on the brain, as we dizzily found out) hoards upon hoards of day-trippers arrive on buses, and what is so tranquil in the morning becomes a cattle run. We thankfully managed to stay a few steps ahead of the crowds. Definitely bring a ton of water, and be prepared to bake like you've never baked before in the extreme sun
A seemingly random guy (as in not the shop owner or the artist) placing sheets of perspex over the C215 on Brick Lane. Just this one....none of the others? Bemused restaurant owners look on in bewilderment.
These seemingly ordinary looking teenagers went to big cities like this and made a very big noise.
They created a storm of positive emotions that swept over audiences, kind of like like when mom opens the oven door on a cold rainy day baking those Tollhouse cookies.
The warm glow of our show is the very reason Up With People! will soon CELEBRATE 50 YEARS!
This was taken the year after I left UWP. I don't know who the girls are, but I definitely recognize Larry Rodeck who I traveled with in Cast B 72.
As I recall, Larry is from a smallish town in Canada...how FABULOUS to help a heroic mission such as this on a global scale!
But then...even MORE fabulous...later on to CONTINUE promoting the UP WITH PEOPLE MISSION - EVERY DAY, EVERY WAY YOU CAN.
Soldier on, my brothers and sisters of Up With People!
-
-
SPECIAL THANKS TO DAN GREGG FOR SUPPLYING THIS ORIGINAL IMAGE.
Digitized and processed by Tom Simpson.