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The Firehydrant..chapter one..Busted..an excerpt from a story set in 1973/74
After that first court appearance in the Windsor courthouse I was sitting in the back of the paddy wagon being transported along with a few other criminals to the county bucket a five minute or so ride from the courthouse. I was still pretty high, if you look at it from a different perspective, I’d been high for about four or five years. Once, years earlier at the Don Gaol in Toronto, I was serving a four day weekend when these two cool hip looking Yankee dudes asked me what the prices were on the streets for weed and hash, shit like that. They had all the hippie trappings, long hair, hawk like features from looking over their shoulders too often. Briefly I thought maybe they were cops, plants, but they were Americans and had just left the O.R. in Guelph where they knew my buddy Coop de Grasser who was the head of the inmate committee at that time. I knew the difference in body language and voices from that of common pigs, they gave me that term, “we’ve been high for seven years, then we got busted” they had a Cheech and Chong quality about them especially in the eyes, they were crazies too, coming from California I could grasp their earlier introduction to the Herb.
Sitting in that wagon, (nic nac paddy whack, paddy wagon gonna take ya back, lock ya up and thro away the keys) handcuffed to some murderer or child molester, it just didn’t feel right, or seem right. I was not in the same criminal category as “those” criminals. They were bad, I just sold recreational drugs, which made people happy. I looked out the unmarked vans wired windows at some familiar sights. There was the Ambassador Bridge the Hippies at school had marched on the year before protesting for an end to the war in Vietnam while the Simon and Garfunkel song A Bridge Over Troubled Water played over loudspeakers. It was the same bridge Pete Kalci and self used to score the Hookers, buy the case of Ripple Wine, cross over to attend the Ravi Shankar and Traffic concerts. The very same bridge that took you to Ann Arbour and all the hip people living near those Michigan campuses. I was feeling greasy, very dirty, sweat was stinking up my armpits, my new blue leisure jacket was all wrinkled from being used as a pillow in the police station cell the night before where I once again carved the initials CTuna into the institutional paint.
Prison is a very sobering experience. That morning in the courtroom a man in his thirties, a violent robber, he threatened the people he robbed, gave them a smack with a gun to get their attention, you’d think this guy was rock solid, wouldn’t crack, no matter what. He started to ball when they gave him eight years in Federal Penitentiary, His lawyer had pleaded for leniency as he had a wife and a new baby on the way. You could tell the judge wasn’t swayed by this plea bargaining, he had to protect society from this monster repeat offender. Downstairs in the dungeon like remand cells I stayed away from him he was so emotionally distraught he might of lashed out at me.
You don’t get to pick your company in jail. At the county prison where I would be held for six weeks waiting for my trial and sentencing I was put through the usual routines, fingerprinted, again as I had already been fingerprinted at the police station the night before when I was arrested. At the county jail your clothes are taken from you and put in a bag with your name on them. The intake officer instructs you to have a shower in this big stall that was doorless. Afterwards you are instructed to stand there while a another officer sprays you for lice with a pressure mister that resembles a brass plant and weed sprayer similar to one you would use in your garden to kill bugs. All loose things like lighters, smokes, pills, cough candies, change, had been put into a manila envelope with your name on it at the police station downtown. This included my teacher/friends Don and Carol’s car keys to their car which I had parked on one of the upper floors at the Toronto Airport before taking the flight to Windsor. The paddy wagon driver another pink faced anglo saxon refugee handed that manila envelope over to the guard on duty when we arrived through the heavy steel gates and through a small brick lined tunnel into the courtyard of the very old county jail, the steel gates clanked shut automatically.
The desk guard had each of us answer some rudimentary questions, sex, race, age, education, religion, he looked startled and upset when he heard I was Taoist (pronounced Daoist). This was my spiritual flavour of the month, a Chinese faith based on the worship of Nature.
My bed for the next six weeks was located on the second tier of the three tiered old thick stone building built I would think in the last century. On this tier there were three other wards each ward holding a dozen cages/cells/cribs, each cell comprised of a steel bed a dull once stainless steel washbasin and a similar steel toilet without a seat, a piece of four inch square stainless steel was mounted above the sink, the mirror. The tier was designed to allow a single guard to patrol all four wards on the floor from the command centre located in the centre of the unit. There were always two guards on each floor one in the booth, the other always roaming. A roll of toilet paper had been issued to me as well as a cheap toothbrush and some tooth powder a threadbare facecloth and a towel big enough to dry your face and hands. A twenty five watt bulb glowed in the ceiling above, it would be on from six in the morning, till lights out at ten.
Home Sweet Home. My roommates were of various criminal backgrounds, there was a tall skinny biker with greasy yellow hair like the kind a worker at a wrecking yard might have, he was in for rape, his partner slept in the next set of cells, a portly unshaven fellow possibly related to a black bear or Kentucky mountain person, he was also in for rape, the two of them belonged to the Loners M.C, the local biker club. Next to me in the adjoining cell was a guy named Bill Hoskins who was quiet, had a scared look on his face, hadn’t shaved in a while, slightly receding, looked a bit like Garth Hudson of the Band, he was in on a smuggling marijuana charge and was not pleased with his circumstances. Little Mikey was the ward comic, shit disturber, go between, who was the one who bridged social classes and intermingled with all types, a chatterbox. There were a few quiet chaps and there was a young likeable guy all tattooed with crudely tattooed LOVE and HATE on his knuckles who it seemed had spent most of his young life in jail. He was just hoping to get sent to a prison in the area The Burtch Institution, he spoke of Burtch the way we would usually talk about home. Besides this motley crew there was one guy who everyone liked, I don’t recall his name, it might have been Jim he was coming down from using junk, he was dark haired and sort of reminded me of the Veteres from my youth, my neighbourhood Mt.Dennis, this Jim, he was street wise, quick to talk, he’d been around for his young twenty something age.
In very quick fashion a new person is sized up by the powers on the ward of any prison in any country, and it isn’t very long before the new prisoners place in the prison pack is established. For some reason my popularity irritated the power and after a few days I was asked to give the bad guys smokes while we were out in the small yard strolling around getting fresh air, I gave this some thought and passed out a few TMs as tailor made cigarettes were called but not without some resistance, the bikers weren’t very pleased to have a smart ass comparatively wealthy guy like myself around who might wrestle the minds of the weaker members of the pack from them.
As usual I became quite popular, my ability to tell stories and write stories about the fabled life in Toronto, the apartment building full of drugs (Rochdale) had every ones eyes bulging out. By this time two black brothers from Detroit were in the same ward with a minor infraction, they passed themselves off as bona fide black 'gangstas', I bought their story, they needed a connection to some crystal meth in TO and I turned them on to a pair of bikers who were living in the west end and whom I thought might appreciate the referral. As it was I had a list of phone numbers hidden in my shoes under the lining which along with some of my street clothes I was allowed to wear after they had been fumigated and cleaned since I was on remand and not yet officially a ward of the government. The black guys got bail fast, I never saw them again. Later in life the guys I referred them to paid me a visit as I worked the day shift at the Queensbury Arms, they weren’t pleased with my introduction. It could have been curtains for me, had I not been able to think on my feet. They thought the black guys may have been cops..
There was a crooked screw (guard) on the floor who for a price would smuggle in drugs and other contraband for those who had money and cravings. His name was Sidney and he was very tight with the diverse criminal element. In every prison man ever created there have been bent guards. Up to this time in life I had only known the soft side of Windsor, the niceties of the University scene, this was a much different perspective as the other folk I was now incarcerated with thought this situation as one of their schools of higher learning, a step in the ladder of criminality.
To help make time pass we played cards at the larger than picnic table sized metal tables that were bolted to the floor along with metal benches that were also bolted I suppose so no one would use them to hit each other with. A box shaped colour TV set sat in one corner of the ward. It was hung on one of those hospital style adjustable mounts and it was only put on at certain times, in the evenings from 7 to 10 or a bit later if something that was important was being shown. On weekends that TV might be on all day, starting with cartoons in the morning, which I recall quite a few of the people enjoying, then sports, and then hockey at night. There wasn’t much to do on weekends everybody’s routines ground to a halt.
The news story of the day was Richard Nixon’s impeachment from office. The previous year it seemed as if I had lost touch with events in the world. On reflection it may have been a lack of interest in the news that television and other media fed you. Lacking very many options at this time I began to join the herd and watched and laughed at All in The Family. The dreaded hockey games were on Saturday nights. Hockey is a Canadian staple and there were fierce conversations about various teams. Being so close to Detroit made for a lively rivalry, there weren’t as many teams in the league, it was an easier sport to appreciate.
Besides these time fillers I wrote pages and pages of short stories, some lyrical, like poems or songs. One in particular was a rhyming story about a “Gypsy Caravan” that parked under the full moon and where my lost love wept for me as I’d been sent to war. There were numerous verses and choruses, it was in my eyes a grand work. Several of the inmates would gather around the table as I would recite these stories, I recall Jim the Junkie giving the story his blessing and that was quite important for me as his sense of beauty and appreciation was different than the others. The other prisoners on remand held him in awe for some reason, he was like a Robin Hood type, a criminal All Star born and raised in Windsor. He got out on bail and a short while later word filtered back that he had died of an overdose of heroin and I always felt good that I had painted this nice scene for him of gypsies and love along a riverbank in golden days, like a Van Morrison lyric and his praise still ranks with the praise of others given me over the years.
Perhaps that is where my new nickname came from, that story about the gypsies. Around then someone tagged me with the title ‘Gypsy’ and it stuck right through my prison life. It took a while at first to get used to the new title, after all, nicknames were nothing new to me, as a kid I had been called Brooks by Bud Walford after Brooks Robinson the ballplayer with the Baltimore Orioles, Barb Sue Kevin and Shane often called me Weaver “Hey Weave” when we were younger playing cards on Victoria Blvd, then early on I used to carve my initials into the poured concrete sidewalks all over our area called Mount Dinky. C Tuna I would carve, using a stick or a piece of rock. Around this time there was a cartoon character called Charlie Tuna who was seen in tv advertisements for the Starkist Tuna company, there was a jingle with the ads and the ads were based on the premise that only the finest Tunas were good enough for Starkist customers and old Charlie a suave, Jackie Gleason type of Tuna with slicked back hair was always thrown back in to the sea. C Tuna was scraped also in the odd prison cell of Toronto’s #12, #31 and #52 Divisions as well as the gritty Don Gaol and now Windsor. One time, in Toronto I woke up from a drunken stupor and a police man at the #52 Divison asked me, “are you Charles Gregory aka C Tuna?” I replied I was, and was curtly charged with being drunk in a public place. I went back to sleep and was released in the morning, I couldn’t have been much more than sixteen.
My long relationship with the drink started around fifteen or so. While hanging out at Nick’s Pool Hall on Weston Road near Eglinton I met guys who were a bit older and liked to drink, especially on the weekends. An older guy named Bud a good pool player would go to the beer store and buy us a box of beer, I had developed a taste for it. Today, when I reflect on this behavior I have difficulty in recalling why I drank so much to the point often of blacking out as the consumption of beer became mixed with that of hard alcohol, whiskey, scotch etcetera. A common Saturday night would find me drinking a dozen beers with a mickey of Johnny Walker red as a chaser. At one time, I had been arrested six weekends in a row for drinking under age, drinking in a public place, drunk and disorderly…My mom was fed up bailing me out on Sunday mornings at the local police holding cells, located in the police stations, 31 division and 12 division. The fine for such behavior was usually $25 or $35 dollars or three days in jail. Not once do I recall anyone saying, this boy needs counseling. I may have been such a ‘tough nut’ that they felt it would have been a waste of time.
My friend George Holmes loved shouting out “here comes Tuna Fish” up at the corner of Keele and Eglinton during my greaseball period. This period took place between frat days and hippy days. Around town in my greaseball days that name C Tuna was recognizable up in the Junction, over on St Clair at Blackthorn and as well at Lansdowne and St Clair, also farther west towards Jane and Wilson and in Weston proper. I suppose the greasers up at Dufferin and Eglinton like Kenny Tanaka and Danny MacDonald had also known my AKA. It wasn’t that I was a prize fighter or anything a moniker was more a Title like that of a knight or a duke, sort of a right of passing, like a coming of age. Lots of guys had nick names just like the TV gangsters of the day, or the good guy bad guys in cowboy films. Names that quickly come to mind are, Hook, Coop de Grassser, Gooch, Scarecrow, Mars, Jake the Snake, Crazy Ivan, Fat Jack Hamilton, Mod, Vern the Tern, Dump, Butler, The Kid, Toot, Count, one guy, my friend Dave Wellwood had several nick names, The Goat, News, The General, Pee Wee and on and on.
Chassly Gangbusters was a favourite of the Hook and Coop years, Herbie used to like calling me Storch it was his invention he’d say it ‘Storch’ then back off a few steps in case I’d give him a smack, I always gave him a nasty sneer when he called me that. Charlie, Chuck, Chas, but almost never Charles. My name comes from a friend of my dads, Charles Bishop who died in the second war. Lately Schmiddy has been calling me the Kaliph of Keene which I really like. In the tradition of moms father Leon Yamel, actually Noel Lemay I’ve often tagged myself as Selrahc Yrogerg, this dates back to my saying words backwards while I waited to get on the field at the Smythe Park baseball league.
After a few days in the ward I could almost feel the drugs leaving my system and after two or three weeks I’d never been so clean, voluntarily. Even when I had the Hepatitis at Rochdale earlier that winter I was toking the finest hash and bud available. I must admit there was a new clarity to my mental comprehension, I could not adjust myself with other substances, alcohol included.
The food was awful, repetitive, I smoked like a chimney, there was a few hundred dollars in my pocket when I was picked up, I don’t recall the figure exactly. These funds in prison buy a lot of tobacco! To keep the peace I gave out as many smokes as required to avoid the bad guys wanting to shank me. We played cards night and day to pass the time, if anything I can remember that in particular, the time passing real slowly. That’s what more seasoned guys were saying that once you got where you were going, once you were sentenced you would find that your days took on structure and time was easier to do. This kind of time, waiting to be sentenced is called Dead Time and rightly so.
Michael Snyder the lawyer supplied free via the government legal aid program was a little lame in court during my first appearance. I took him aside and chewed him out. I wrote a letter to the court system, maybe the judge or the Attorney Generals Office, I’m not sure. The crooked screw Sidney read the letter and informed the lawyer of my dissatisfaction this got his attention and he did a fine job afterwards. I wonder if that letter ever made it out of that place.
Bill Hoskins as it turns out was in for a serious smuggling rap that he was not telling any of us about. He was on a sailing boat that had come up from the Bahamas area loaded with marijuana. The pot was hidden in false walls built into the customized ship, tons and tons of gange. As advisory counsel for my defense he nixed my hand written ten page dialogue about my historical accounting of the events leading up to my arrest, from the dysfunctional family situation with big Al at home which I used as my starting point in the dialogue, nixed the U.I.C. appeals process where I was cut off pogey for quitting my position without proper reason, nixed it all. He said to get a bunch of people to write letters who could speak for your good side, which in point of fact wasn’t so long ago, just the previous year I was bringing the teachers apples and cleaning the chalk off of the blackboards.
Turns out Sidney the crooked guard did me a favour by reading the mail that I had addressed to the law society and others regarding my lawyers lameness. When the lawyer caught wind of this he rushed in to appease me. Three weeks in the bucket passed and I was anxious to get on with things, when asked how I wished to plead it was a no brainer, I pled guilty. In court the judge found me guilty of all the charges, trafficking in narcotics, marijuana, hashish, peyote, acid, there was no blow left and I guess they didn’t bother to analyze the salt like crystal meth, there wasn’t much of it. I sat in the dock, again resolved, resolved not to break down and cry when sentenced like that other guy had done. I had to wait three more weeks for sentencing as the judge had asked for a pre-sentence report, which is like a record of your life, the details of your life, your failures and your successes if any. I recall finding this worrisome, although in my mind, having recently attended university under trying (at home) circumstances as a mature student, I felt I was on the right track, just jumped off the track momentarily.
That morning back in the court holding cells this big young Coloured man, I repeat, this was a big, strong athletic mean and angry twenty year old who wore those thick soled, tan coloured boots that motorcycle riders wore in the day, Fry Boots was their name. A diddler, a full grown twenty something farm kid from the sticks had just been returned to the holding cells in the basement of the court house, he walked with his head down, ashamed and afraid at the same time. As if in a movie the cell area was dimly lit an invitation for terror.
The farm kid went into a cell at the back of the block, none of the cell doors were locked. In court it came out that a couple of young girls had been molested the day before, quite young, under ten or so. You know how they say the jail system has its own way of getting folk, well this kid was in the wrong place at the wrong time. That big negro boy took his hatred out on that boy, he went into that cell and put the boots to the farm kids face, his gut, his balls, his legs, you name it, he got hit real hard. Nobody, no prisoner, no guard interfered I just watched stunned, I didn’t try to break it up, I just watched in my own kind of terror, that’s the way it can be in prison for diddlers they get no mercy, they are garbage. The guards very slowly came and broke it up, put the diddler in a solitary area, by this time his assailant had left the cell, he just brushed pass us all, me the other prisoners, the guards and took a seat in a cell holding his head in his hands, the screws never even bothered to ask what had happened, then we all went to the jailhouse in the paddy wagon, the diddler got separate transportation. Funny, I never saw that black guy again, he may have gone up to court and been given bail.
At the county bucket they put the diddler in a cell on my ward. That night we got him there as well but in a different way. Myself and others made a mixture of shit and piss, cold tea, spit and saliva, toilet water any vile substance we could find and poured it all over him as he lay in a back corner of the ward, not saying a word, afraid for his life, afraid to say anything, I mean we really humiliated him, I was a big part of this humiliation, this hazing, it was worse than a military blackballing. I’d been involved as a recipient in a mild fraternity hazing, I suppose that is where I got the idea. Over the years I’ve had a lot of remorse about this event but I still hold that this punishment, this prison tar and feathering was better than him losing his life, his balls or an eye or an ear.
They moved the big scared blonde haired blue eyed farm boy diddler from the ward that night put him into solitary confinement. In the visiting room the next day Frankie Herbert’s dad Frank Sr. came to visit, my first visit in nearly a month. Mr. Herbert worked as a travelling salesman for a big novelty company, he toured Ontario selling kitschy stuff like bingo markers, and roulette wheels and all sorts of things fundraising organizations use in their work and that large corporate stores stocked. At the same time Frank Sr. was visiting the diddler was visiting his dad, telling his dad through his pulverized face that I was one of his enemies, one of the perpetrators of his black eyes and bruises. That diddler, he don’t know how close he come to dying in that cell downtown. Frank Sr. he just looked at this farm kid with the shiners, looked at me, Frank Sr. he knew what the score was, he just shook his head, my father figure, surrogate dad visiting his son in gaol. Years earlier, Mr. Herbert had put up bail for me when the RCMP had placed a bag of pot in our groups car (actually a stretch Cadillac limo) as we tried to enter the Rockwood Festival. We had heard via the radio that everyone was getting busted that heading to the concert so we had stopped and stashed our goods in the woods, a ways from the entrance. The other five people were given bail but I was refused because of a previous minor offence. The charges were all thrown out in court later. I told the RCMP, this guy last name of Ryan, that if I saw him on the streets, I would kick the shit of him!
A couple of university school chums paid a visit one day after I had been sentenced, Tim, a bright musician type from the university showed up with my old baked and breaded sardine dinner girlfriend, Mary Lewis. That was kind of them to show up at that depressing place, it was the last time I ever saw or heard from them except when I contacted Mary Lewis and she sent me a year book from the university. A book I looked at maybe twice then mysteriously wrapped in several windings of masking tape for thirty years and hid in a milk crate with several old photo albums on top, securing its hiding place, was that my soul in that book? Who was that guy?
Bill the Smuggler had a birthday card sent in from someone on the outside, in the card, on the nose of the clown they had poured some liquid LSD and Bill did some, offered me a taste, I declined, felt the surroundings not conducive to a good trip. Bill laid some on the bikers to secure their loyalty. Now here you have these three or four biker types running around all looney, higher than kites, grooving to the little AM radio playing in the corner, digging the tunes, staring at hallucinations only they could see. In a way it was like the lawyer in Easy Rider getting turned on, except these were bad guys, getting all soft and mushy, I stayed in my crib that night until the party settled down. I think I was scared the bikers might be able (through the power of acid) be able to see my true feelings for them. Like many a night I read to sleep. Dostoyevsky offered imaginable experiences to escape to.
Next day in the yard the bikers were hovering together, conspiring, they were good at that, at joining forces, intimidation by numbers. At some point this middle aged black inmate took an epileptic fit, started shaking all over, fell to the ground, I thought he had been shot, the guards blew their stupid whistles they thought someone had beaten the guy up. We all had to stand at attention while the screws came and took the fellow away on a stretcher. It was a cool forty five degree F morning, the sun was shining. The heavy grey cloth winter coats we’d been issued had to be turned in when we went back inside, it felt so good being out in the yard, the fresh air, the bit of Spring green showing on the small lawn. Another inmate pointed out where they used to do the hangings, there remained a shuttered doorway a few levels up I was also shown where they used to bury the bodies they had hung, this was becoming a real adult experience.
By far my favorite video game character up there w/ Lara Croft, and Chris and Jill (from the original Resident Evil).
The superbly geometric basaltic rocks from the Giant's Causeway - Co. Antrim, Northern Ireland.
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Mission 141
Meet the guys who put the Hair in Hair Band.
Our Daily Challenge - Mar 8 2015 - "The 1980's"
Daily Dog Challenge 1226. "Escape from the Everyday"
Today's Post (Solid Gold) : www.bzdogs.com/2015/03/solid-gold.html
Stop on by Zachary and Henry's blog: bzdogs.com
This image showcases the iconic Ferry Building Clock Tower in San Francisco, a timeless landmark symbolizing the city’s rich history and maritime heritage. The architectural style of the tower is inspired by the 12th-century Giralda in Seville, Spain, yet it possesses a distinctly San Francisco character. The structure features classic lines, a muted beige facade, and four prominent clock faces that are a defining feature of the waterfront skyline.
At the very top, the American flag flutters gently, adding a sense of pride and identity to the scene. Below, a white flag bearing a logo and the California state flag flank the base of the tower, further grounding the image in its locale. The overcast sky provides a soft, diffused light that highlights the textures and details of the tower's design, while the faint hints of blue in the clouds contrast subtly with the building’s warm tones.
The clock faces are elegantly designed with Roman numerals and ornate black hands, giving them a classic yet functional aesthetic. The open colonnade near the top of the tower adds depth and a sense of lightness to the otherwise solid structure, creating a balance that draws the eye upward.
Date Taken: November 22, 2024
Basic Details:
Operator: Solid Star Transport
Fleet Number: 888-88
Classification: Air-Conditioned City Operation Bus
Seating Configuration: 2x2 Seats
Seating Capacity: 40 Passengers
Body:
Coachbuilder: SKSBUS Malaysia Sdn. Bhd.
Body Model: SKS LRC City Bus
Chassis:
Chassis Model: Scania K310UB 4x2
VIN / WMI Code: 9BSK4X200G3
Layout: Rear-Longitudinally-Mounted Engine Rear-Wheel Drive
Suspension: Air-Suspension
Engine:
Engine Model: Scania DC09 101
Cylinder Displacement: 9.3 Liters
Cylinder Configuration: Straight-5
Engine Aspiration: Turbo-Intercooler
Max. Power Output: 310 hp @ 1,800 rpm
Peak Torque Output: 1,550 N.m @ 1,400 - 1,600 rpm
Emission Standard: Euro 4
Transmission:
Transmission Model: ZF Ecomat 4 6HP604C
Type: Automatic Transmission
Gears: 6-Speed Forward, 1-Speed Reverse
* Some parts of the specifications may be subjected for verification and may be changed without prior notice...
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Like Totally Awesomely Fun Baby Shower for my old friend, Kacie.
See, Kacie and I became friends in the 7th grade. Apparently she was too cool for me when she transferred into our 6th grade class. We were full-on children of the 80s and have the bad hair photos to prove it.
Kacie LOVED the movie "Pretty in Pink." When I say "love" I mean L-O-V-E-D. As in, saw it at the theater every day for solid week and then about 957 times after that.
So, naturally, when I found out she was having a girl and several other old Jr. High friends could attend the shower, it was a no-brainer to me to try and combine all those things into one sophisticated yet fun 80s baby shower. I know. 80s? Sophisticated? You're thinking oxymoron, too, eh?
Get your oversized glasses with the gold initial stickers in the corner on and take a gander at these. Just make sure you take that huge comb out of your back pocket before you sit on it.
Situated on Sandbanks in Poole in a residential, two-story apartment, this solid oak staircase with cut strings and half landing is an example of one of our smaller projects.
Distinctive 40mm solid oak cut strings on both sides of the staircase support the oak treads and stainless steel rod risers, whilst toughened and laminated glass panelling with a stainless steel handrail create the balustrade.
Kevala Stairs also installed a glass gallery on the top landing, with glass panels attached to the strings and landing with stainless steel fixings.
This cute little stripey guy is a caterpillar of the beautiful zebra swallowtail, Eurytides marcellus. The caterpillars start out solid black, then as they get larger develop colorful yellow and white stripes on a black background. Some retain black as their base body color, while others turn pale green, like this one.
The zebra swallowtail is the state butterfly of Tennessee. (I found this little guy in west Tennessee, nibbling on a pawpaw leaf.) They are becoming rarely seen in urban areas as development destroys stands of their only host plant, the pawpaw (Asimina triloba). Pawpaws are native to (and grow quite happily in) the entire eastern half of the United States, west to Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. The range for the zebra swallowtail is exactly the same - as long as their host plant is available! So if you live in this area but hardly ever see these beauties, plant a pawpaw, and the butterflies may come to you.
(Pawpaws can be hard to find, but they ARE available! I've found them online at TyTy nusery, or you can bug one of your local nurseries to get some in...)
How standards slipped drastically when MTL took over London Northern following the company's sale from London Buses Limited from late 1994 as by this time in the spring of 1996 MTL London Northern's RM and RML fleet based at Holloway (HT) bus garage were treated to this depressing all-over red livery as well as receiving the hideous MTL London fleetnames. Although the RM fleet at Holloway were repainted externally, internally they still retained their dowdy appearance with careworn seat moquettes and the odd interior lightbulbs going missing. As if this wasn't bad enough, many of the members of MTL London Northern's RM fleet received incomplete fleetnumbers as was the case here with RM 1804 incorrectly displaying the number '804' on its offside. Thankfully since this photo was taken RM 1804 has survived into private preservation owned by RM enthusiast Peter Figg with the vehicle being painted in the 1970s LT red livery style with a white relief band and solid white roundels.
HDR sunset shot from Jæren, Norway. Thousands of years with wave power has shaped the rocks along the shoreline.
I think it's really amazing that something as solid as a statue can give the impression of being light and soft. Another tomb at Engesohde Cemetery.
Comment pictures as always clickable.
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Ich finde es so beindruckend, wenn eine Statue den Eindruck erweckt, sie wäre leicht und fluffig :o)
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Kona Cotton Solids from Robert Kaufman. I'm so sorry I don't know who made this. It is such a gorgeous quilt. I am pretty sure it is in the new book We Love Color compiled by Susanne Woods.
A change of pace
A few years ago I talked myself into an invitation to get a special tour of an old hydro power plant that is only a few miles from my house. It happens to be one of the first hydroelectric power stations built in the world, and as you can see by the date of the wall was turned on in 1898.
This is the first of several images I took there, but its also probably one of the best I got. It turned out to be a very challenging shoot. First of all the entire facility is two hundred feet down an open elevator shaft that was dug into the solid rock by the waterfall where this was built. I had to have an engineer with me at all moments and could only go in very specific places. (If you look closely you can see that this is spinning and actually generating electricity at the time I took this) Generators like this actually cast out fields of energy and if me or my tripod were to get to close the electricity could leap out and kill me. So I had to be a good boy and not climb all over the equipment like I wanted to. It was very hard to get the lens into good positions with these limitations. I also was not allowed to bring any lights down, So had to work with the very dark ambient light that was there, mostly open bulbs hanging from the ceiling. And since I'm in a deep dark cave, no windows of course, not any fill at all really. It was also *very loud* so I could not communicate very well with my minder. Given all those restrictions, I am happy with this result.
*****
If you want to geek out a bit about hydro power, read on: As I write these words, this particular power plant is being retrofitted with modern generators, so this old beast is now gone. This in fact was the oldest generator in the plant and even though it was constructed around 1898 was still functioning and putting out power that people in our region use. (Apparently the magnetos were rewound sometime in the 70's and they had to hire experts who could come in and rebuild this in the old school ways. There were I think 6 generators in the cave, but only two I think in the beginning. The man who built the power station had the foresight to use AC power (Westinghouse) rather than Edison's DC power. Edison built a plant at Niagara falls that made DC power but moving the DC power to the customers was very expensive and difficult, and it did not last long. The world chose AC power of course and DC power went away like sony's betamax. After building this power plant, the other challenge was that the power had to be carried by one of the first transmission lines ever built back to Tacoma. (some 45 miles I think) a massive task in its own for the times as they had to clear there way through wild forest. (Some of the key technology in this AC generator was made possible by the inventions of Nikolai Tesla who claimed to get his inventions completely realized in dreams or simultaneous flashes of insight. )
At this power plant they've added more generators about 4 times so they can capture more of the hydroelectric potential. Each time they added new versions the efficiency and capacity just about doubled. So if the first one made x power from x flow of water, the next generation drew 2x (twice as much) water and was twice as efficient. so each generation of new equipment meant quadrupling of energy efficiancy. And that has held true until this day. The most recent generators, are very powerful and effiecient relative to this old equipment. But until this last retro fit that started in 2009, they never replaced any of the old ones. So for the last hundred years are so they have been getting less than half of what could have been gotten from this precious clean resource. Why you wonder? Cheap petrochemicals made it more efficient to just burn more gas or coal rather than spend money to replace the old equipment. That era is coming to an end obviously and hence they are doing this major improvement. One of the reasons this is all of interest to me is that its revealing of how human societies make decisions. Choosing dirty fuels and not facing the hidden costs to health and the environment that when added up probably cost us more than just refitting the hydro power plant earlier. (It should also be noted that hydro power alone could not have given us all our energy needs so we probably would have been burning dirty fuels all along. But not facing real costs never gives us a chance to think about it in the first place. Maybe we would have developed other alternatives.)
So.... just across the mountains from this waterfall, on the eastern side of the Cascade range, is Grand Coulee Damn which still is one of the largest hydro electric power plants in the world. It was built during the depression with federal development money, (so sometimes government does get it right) and even though its only about 40 years later than this place, Grand Coulee generates electricity on a massive scale. (compare the generator above to this: scienceservice.si.edu/pages/010041.htm ) So much electricity, that when the aircraft industry started needing lots of aluminum for all the airplanes they were building because of world war II, They eventually turned to The Pacific Northwest because the amounts of electricity you need to smelt aluminum are vast. And that is why, my friends, Boeing is in the Seattle region today. Cheap electricity. Also of interest, they have since put a whole series of damns on the Columbia river and make lots and lots of power. Guess what the The 'Aluminum Plant' hog of electricity is today? Server Farms. Google, Microsoft and yes Yahoo/flickr all need massive amounts of power to store data, these very words and photos actually. And that is why they are building their server farms up here in the Pacific North West. Lots of relatively cheap electricity for spinning drives and the air conditioning to keep them cool. Server Farms take up more power than the largest Steel foundries. That always blows my mind a bit. So you see, in a strange ways you could never have imagined, this image here in my stream has many hidden meanings. Who could have predicted way back in 1898, that this machine would one day create the energy to preserve the image of itself and help spread those pixels across the world
Let's go...!!! A little bit of healthy wilting... Solid Ground Soul.
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Solids are so much fun to play with!!! I used Kona Stone, Kona White, and 14 colors from my Kona Starter Pack.
Still trying to decide how I want to quilt the center. It will likely be squares within squares, but I can't decide how densely I want to quilt it.
Suggestions?
This is some of the work I rescued from the failed water droplet setup. I am amazed how well "post it notes" wrk as light modifiers, by moving the note and allowing white light to be cast from the side of the strobe I was abble to create this dual tone effect. I have not used any post to create this, just a little sharpening in Aperture.
Strobist: SB600 with Post it Note Gel 1/32pwr fired into white board background CTR301 triggered. 35-70mm lens