View allAll Photos Tagged uncontrollable
Lion basking in the early morning sun, with a herd of zebra warily grazing behind him... Mana Pools, ZM.
This chap sunning himself on the Zambezi flood plain at Mana Pools is a big brute…. note that his face has been rearranged by an opponent’s claw / fang…his left nostril has a huge split and the cheek below the left eye is heavily scarred. Life in the wild is tough and unforgiving…
I was spread eagled on the ground about 20 yards from him for this shot….I think it’s a reasonable image, notwithstanding the uncontrollable twitching of my extremities!
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Mirit Ben-Nun’s art exists within and beyond reality. She moves away from reality with aggressive and dense colorfulness which reveals an inner testimony of a threatened existence of women. The lines, points and shapes do not reproduce facts but emphasize the special charge of emotional coping.
Mirit Ben-Nun shows a rebellious spirit and tries to reach out to things not through wholeness but via searching for their expression and manifestation.
She explores personal identity and through it tries to define a complementary art, thereby illustrating the world and the nature of human culture. She focuses on the expressive dimension because of the exposure afforded by the uncontrollable moment that so much affects life in a rapidly changing global world.
The discourse between the inner world and the emerging reality is hyperactive and generates in Ben - Nun an endless sequence of works.
From the depths of feelings, dreams, anxieties and expressions arise rigid and exciting meanings of existence whose essence expresses adaptation difficulties and restlessness.
Dora Woda
Standing next to her was one of a very few occasions I remember myself in the last 20 years sobbing so uncontrollably, I had a couple of those this year I wouldn’t lie, definitely wasn’t the best year of my life.
At some point she started waking up so I took my camera and started taking pictures, it’s an interesting feeling, that one that can create a wall around you that only allowing you to focus on the task at hand, which was documenting or capturing the moment, if it’s a sad or happy moment it doesn’t matter.
I was just looking for an angle for the shot, thinking about my depth of field, shutter speed and all the technical aspects...My wife woke up and just saw me playing with the camera, that was the best I could do at that moment while crying in front of her wouldn’t do any good.
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"You must die to be born again.
I've been killed by the people I helped, I cared about, I loved too. And they burnt me.
They burnt me because I was different, because I wasn't the woman I was supposed to be in their minds. A sweet, tender, lovely woman, who never complains, who never shows disappointment, whose mood does not swing often and of course not an obscure creature who loves isolation and speaks about magic.
So they preferred to forget me assuming that their thoughts about me would have disappeared into ashes like my body and soul would have dissolved into dust.
I never gave birth but I guess the feeling should be the same: the unbearable pain ceases at once turning into an uncontrollable flow of pleasure. So I was longing for this moment, for the pain to fade, as I saw it in my visions and I knew this moment would have to come. And so it is, the pain is gone and I survived.
I'm born again and I thank my murderers for giving me the opportunity to discover this new, stronger me and all the things that this death brought to the surface.
You must die to be born again."
This is Child's Road, looking up the hill to Bellevue Avenue, which runs perpendicular to it == photographed from in front of my old house. When I lived here in 1955-56, the street was unpaved.
The driveway and lawn that you see on the right was an empty lot when I lived there, filled with grass and weeds almost as tall as I was.
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Some of the photos in this album are “originals” from the year that my family spent in Omaha in 1955-56. But the final 10 color photos were taken nearly 40 years later, as part of some research that I was doing for a novel called Do-Overs, the beginning of which can be found here on my website
www.yourdon.com/personal/fiction/doovers/index.html
and the relevant chapter (concerning Omaha) can be found here:
www.yourdon.com/personal/fiction/doovers/chapters/ch9.html
Before I get into the details, let me make a strong request — if you’re looking at these photos, and if you are getting any enjoyment at all of this brief look at some mundane Americana from 60+ years ago: find a similar episode in your own life, and write it down. Gather the pictures, clean them up, and upload them somewhere on the Internet where they can be found. Trust me: there will come a day when the only person on the planet who actually experienced those events is you. Your own memories may be fuzzy and incomplete; but they will be invaluable to your friends and family members, and to many generations of your descendants.
So, what do I remember about the year that I spent in Omaha? Not much at the moment, though I’m sure more details will occur to me in the days to come — and I’ll add them to these notes, along with additional photos that I’m tweaking and editing now.
For now, here is a random list of things I remember:
1. I attended the last couple months of 6th grade, and all of 7th grade, in one school. My parents moved from Omaha to Long Island, NY in the spring of my 7th grade school year; but unlike previous years, they made arrangements for me to stay with a neighbor’s family, so that I could finish the school year before joining them in New York.
2. Our dog, Blackie, traveled with us from our previous home in Riverside, and was with us until my parents left Omaha for New York; at that point, they gave him to some other family. For some reason, this had almost no impact on me. It was a case of “out of sight, out of mind” — when Blackie was gone, I spent my final three months in Omaha without ever thinking about him again.
3. Most days, I rode my bike to school; but Omaha was the place where one of my sisters first started attending first grade — in the same school where I was attending 6th grade. I remember walking her to school along Bellevue Avenue on the first morning, which seemed to take forever: it was about a mile away.
4. As noted in a previous Flickr album about my year in Riverside, I was a year younger than my classmates; but I was tall for my age, and thus looked “normal” at a quick glance. But because I was a year younger, I was incredibly shy and awkward in the presence of girls. Omaha was certainly not “sin city,” but by 6th grade and 7th grade, puberty was beginning to hit, and the girls had grown to the point where they were occasionally interested in boys. The school tried to accommodate this social development by teaching us the square dance (and forbidding the playing of songs by Elvis Presley, whose music was just beginning to be heard on the radio). I was an awful dancer, and even more of a shy misfit than my classmates; I continue to be an awful dancer today.
5. My bike ride to school was uneventful most days; but the final part of the ride was a steep downhill stretch on Avery Road, lasting three or four blocks. My friends and I usually raced downhill as fast as we could; but one day, my front bicycle wheel began to wobble on the downhill run, and my bike drifted uncontrollably to the side of the road and then off into a ditch. I got banged up pretty badly.
6. But this accident was nothing compared to my worst mishap: a neighborhood friend and I enjoyed playing “cowboys and Indians” in the woods near his home (and his younger brother usually tagged along). I had a bow and a few arrows for our adventure, and we often shot at trees a hundred feet away. Unfortunately, the arrows often disappeared into the underbrush (because we were lousy shots) and were difficult to find. Consequently, one of us came up with the clever idea of standing behind the “target” tree, so that we could see where the randomly-shot arrows landed. Through a series of miscommunications, I poked my head out from behind the tree just as my friend shot one of the arrows … and it skipped off the side of the tree and into my face, impaling itself into my cheek bone about an inch below my eye. An inch higher, and I would not be typing these words … (meanwhile, my friend's younger brother grew up to be an officer in the U.S. Air Force, and he tracked me down on the Internet, decades later).
7. In the summer of 1956, my parents decided to spend their summer vacation prospecting for uranium (seriously!) in the remote hills of eastern Utah, where my dad had grown up on the Utah-Colorado border. This entailed a long, long drive from Omaha; and it involved leaving me and my two sisters with my grandparents near Vernal, UT. My grandparents lived in a very small mining village outside of Vernal; and while they had electricity and various other modern conveniences, they also had an outhouse in the back yard. Trips to the “bathroom” in the middle of the night were quite an adventure. On the way back to Omaha at the end of this vacation trip (with no uranium ore having been found), we stopped for a couple of days of camping somewhere in the mountains of Colorado; you’ll see a couple of photos from that camping trip in this album.
8. There were no lizards in Omaha, and thus no opportunity for lizard-hunting with my slingshot—which had been a significant hobby in my previous homes in Riverside and Roswell. Indeed, there was almost nothing to shoot at … and I couldn’t find anyone with whom I could play (and hopefully win) marbles, to use as slingshot ammunition. But for reasons I never questioned or investigated (but about which I’m very curious now), there was a small vineyard in the field behind our house, and I was able to climb over the fence and retrieve dozens of small, hard, green grapes. They turned out to be excellent ammunition … but I never did find any lizards.
9. A few months before my parents left for New York, I told them about the latest craze sweeping the neighborhood: “English bikes,” with three speeds, thin tires, and hand-brakes. I desperately wanted one, but Dad said it was far too expensive for him to buy as a frivolous gift for me: at the time, English bikes had an outrageous price tag of $25. I was told that I would have to earn the money myself if I wanted one … and the going rate for young, scrawny kids who shoveled sidewalks, pulled weeds from gardens, and did babysitting chores, was 25 cents per hour. That works out to 100 hours of work … but I did it, over the course of the next few months, and when I got to New York, the first thing I did was buy my English bike.
10. Toward the end of my 7th-grade school year, everyone in my class was subjected to a vision test: we were lined up in alphabetical order, and one-by-one read off a series of letters that we could barely see on a large placard taped onto the classroom blackboard. Because my surname starts with a “Y,” I was usually near the end of the line … and by the time I got to the front, I had usually memorized the letters (because they never bothered to change them, from one student to the next) without even realizing it consciously. But on this particular occasion in 7th grade, for some reason, they decided to line us up in reverse alphabetical order … and I was the first in line. For the first time in my life, I realized that I could not see anything of the letters, and that I was woefully near-sighted.
11. When I got to New York, my parents took me to an optometrist to get my first set of glasses (and, yes, all of the neighborhood kids did begin taunting me immediately: “Four eyes! Four eyes!”) … and I’ve worn glasses ever since.
Three years after I arrived in New York, the glasses saved my vision when a home-brewed mix of gunpowder and powdered aluminum blew up in my face in the school chemistry lab (where I had an after-school volunteer job as a “lab assistant”). I suffered 2nd-degree burns on my face from the explosion, but the glasses protected my eyes. That, however, is a different story for a different time.
Thanks everyone for humoring me with your guesses. ;-)
This is Curly. He came from the Charlotte County SPCA in St. Stephen NB, Canada. He was originally there when he was 4 months old in January and was adopted out to a family in St. John. His name was George at that time. Two months ago he was returned as he got a bit large and accidently knocked one of the kids over. the shelter renamed him Amos. Because he is only a year old he was quite exuberant to get out of the kennel and people assumed he was pretty wild an uncontrollable. He's actually pretty mellow and just needs a lot of exercise.
We adopted him yesterday and renamed him Curly. Curly is a St. Bernard mix ......they say but we are still wondering what the mix part is ;-) He's a keeper!
I don't understand it, I always have nice things to say about them ..... but I guess this one has a point.
Firefighters are amazingly heroic people.
As i get older, I am now age 60, I still regret the years I wasted in fear of my desire to dress up as a woman and the way I went into complete denial and continually attempted to suppress my desire to appear as a female. I was brought up in an era when boys were told to be boys and to man up. All I recall is as teenager I was desperate to become a girl. At the time I was confused as I was far from certain if I simply wanted to dress up as a girl or I actually wanted to be a girl.
Being older I think I now have some understanding as to how I was back then. I think part of me is transsexual but it’s not dominant enough to make we want to transition into a full time woman. I also was painfully shy and harboured a dream of performance. I was especially taken with female impersonators who had established theatrical acts. These were not over the top drag queens, these were men whose performance was based upon looking completely convincing as women with no hint of the man being present yet the audience knew they were male. This is an art form in my mind, what I like to call female illusion.
This performance of the audience seeing you appear as a woman right down your physical attributes, clothing, shoes, make-up and hair and confidently performing as a female in front of them genuinely thrilled me and I wanted to be such a performer. To be able to carry off a convincing transformation and have the confidence and nerve as a man to step out on stage such a portrayal would have been quite amazing to experience. Knowing there were men out there that had made careers of doing this type of performance really caught my imagination.
I can still vividly recall the first time as a teenager I shaved my legs, dared to pluck my eyebrows, wore make-up for the first time, styled my hair into a girls style (no ned for a wig back then!), wore a bra and put on my first dress, then slipped on a pair of high heels…my head was spinning and I nearly passed out!
I experienced pure elation, yet there was also fear at that was doing yet every fibre of my being was embracing what I had just done. At last I was a girl! A girl! Oh joy! I loved how I felt in that precious and intense private moment. I also recall I got the shakes, it was uncontrollable for awhile but eventually settled enough for me to stand in front of a mirror. Seeing myself as a girl was quite a moment full of mixed emotions. I was euphoric and the emotions overwhelmed me. This was what I dreamed of doing! I was a boy but I also wanted to be a girl and seeing myself in a dress and make-up made me cry. I was frustrated and elated at the same time. I was a boy, not a girl but I was trying to be a girl and I knew I wanted that, oh yes, I really wanted it!
I began to imagine how it must feel to be a professional female impersonator. How would it be to make a living out of appearing on stage as a woman and entertaining people. Would I ever have the nerve and self confidence to step out in front of an audience completely in the guise of a woman? I wanted to do it but I had self doubt about my abilities. The prospect of a career of dressing up as a woman was alluring but my inner doubt held me back.
Now am 60, I never stepped on stage dressed up as a woman so that dream is unlikely to ever happen now. I still feel a desire to attempt some form of performance as a female impersonator and to some extent, my videos I’ve posted pander to this yearning. Increasingly, I am finding I feel more confident about stepping in front of a video camera dressed as a woman and I enjoy talking to camera in my guise as a female.
However, I’ll admit, my videos to date are rather aimless, rambling and highly self indulgent. I now find I would like to record more videos but have some point to them. I did try a series of videos in the past called ’T-chat’ in which I interviewed other cross-dressers and transsexuals. Unfortunately, this idea proved a failure and never gained much interest within the trans community. In fact sometimes it generated very negative and hostile responses! I eventually gave up on this idea after realising it was pointless doing anymore interviews due to the notable lack of enthusiasm. I think I was rather naive in my plans for such a series of videos.
Despite that not working out I find I am still keen to record videos as my female alter-ego. There are lots of things about my transvestism I have a need to talk about. When I talk to the camera about them I am expressing my own personal feelings and thoughts on being a man that cross-dresses asa woman. I do often wonder how others feel about their own motivations and aspirations with their own cross-dressing.
I would like to improve my videos and take on more interesting subject matter that is related to cross-dressing. I did enjoy the two way conversation in the T-chat interviews and have been thinking of an alternative. What I would love is to hear from other cross-dressers about transgender subjects they have a view on. Appearing on camera as a woman gives me an opportunity to perform as the female impersonator I always wished I had dared to become. I’ve had ideas where i could maybe host a series of videos that includes videos made by other cross-dressers in which they speak on camera on a cross-dressing subject they want open up about or start debate upon. Hopefully this would lead to further responses that can be included in future episodes.
I accept some people have no wish to talk on camera when they are appearing as a woman and I wondered if they too felt as I did that they have questions in regard to their cross-dressing. I the past I used to receive e-mails asking me questions about my own cross-dressing. I am willing to talk openly about them so I wondered if perhaps I could record videos in which I answered their questions.
I also wondered if perhaps questions could be posed on a cross-dressing topic and several cross-dressers could contribute by recording a video of their own answers to such questions. I could then compile these answers in to a video programme.
I’m not trying to be arrogant or ‘me, me, me’, it is a case of I enjoy being a woman on camera and I want to do something that is helpful and interesting for the trans community and i do seek more focus and substance for future videos rather than my stream of consciousness ramblings such as I’ve been doing so far.
I suppose I am aware I enjoy being a an on screen presenter when I dress up as a woman. It’s great fun and a chance tower lots of dresses, experiment with make-up and wear different wigs. In a way it’s me finally being a female impersonator but in a more interactive way than I do at the moment.
I would love torah from anyone who would consider posing a question or recording something on video for inclusion in a future video. It may just be this idea goes the same way as my ill fated ’T-chat’ interview series< i only managed four of them in the end and one person asked for their interview to be taken off-line. I’m not really expecting this to pan out based only experiences but I feel if I don’t mention it then I will never know. If you should feel a willingness to ask a question or record a video about cross-dressing, expressing your own thoughts and views on camera then I’m keen to embark on a series of videos the can include these.
I can be contacted by direct e-mail on: helene_barclay@yahho.co.uk
Twin knights with opposite elements, but the same goal. Ahkuva is brutal and almost uncontrollably aggressive. He destroys whatever he feels is in his way. Unlike his brother, he eviscerates his enemies. When he kills, his target is a fraction of their former self. HIs favorite moments are when his brother says "have at it" at which point he goes to decimate villages.
4th Wall: These took a long time to make. Ahkuva, the shadow knight has been done for a while, but I wanted to make sure they got done right and photographed together. Ahkuva was easier to build because I had the parts ready. He uses a measure of old gunmetal, new gunmetal, and the new flat silver color, and they mesh together well because of how they're spaced out. I like the way he turned out. Comments are of course welcome.
If you are interested in my works, they are available on Getty Images.
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I think all art is about control - the encounter between control and the uncontrollable.
- Richard Avedon
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● Non-HDR-processed / Non-GND/ND-filtered
● Black Card Technique 黑卡作品
Even heroes will get mad sometimes...
This is Laxus' alternate form when he gets serious in battle. He discards his lightning powers for plasma and becomes an even greater force to be reckon with! However, his uncontrollable temper during this form may lead regretful decisions and unthinkable consequences later on when he reverts back to normal.
I've found myself some free time and decided to moc a bit. I have this idea of an alt form for Laxus for quite some time and wanted to try it out. Turns out, it's pretty good. I'm grateful that I bought breakout Nex now :P
As always, thanks for stopping by and C&C is always appreciated! :D
July 12 Marsha hopped a taxi from her Vancouver West abode and rode to the weekly flea market on Terminal Avenue east of Main Street. She was so excited and happy with her chapeau and shawl purchases she decided to walk home along the seawall on the south shore of False Creek to show them off. She made it as far as Leg & Boot Square and not one person had said a word. One dog did bark at her heels though. So she decided to call hubby Harry and share her excitment. She sat herself down on the seawall ledge, hauled out her cellphone and called Harrys' cell.
The conversation:
Harry:
Hello Marsha, what's up? Whenever you call me on my cell its typically because you over spent and are looking for me to bail you out. What have you done this time?
Marsha:
Oh stop it Harry, I have been shopping but you will be very proud of the frugality and beautiful items I found.
Harry:
Let me guess. A holiday trailer to tow behind the Bentley.
Marsha:
Oh, honey I would not do that without consulting my designer first and you know he is out of town.
Harry:
How lucky is that! So what did you get, its my turn to buy a round at the club so hurry up and tell me the big news.
Marsha:
Look on your cell, I just forwarded you a selfie with the buys.
Harry:
Jeezus Marsha, what the hell are you wearing! You get that dam lampshade off your head and rag off your shoulders before you reach home. What will the neighbours think! You look like some kind of middle aged harlot.
Damm, I am going to order doubles.
Marsha:
Sobbing uncontrollably, hangs up with out another word.
Permission to use photo.
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05 October 2020.
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You tell a lovely tale with your photos--visually, and in words. Thanks for sharing both. I used this photo in a montage in my language learning video that mentions cell phones, not in the context of the interchange between Harry and Marsha, but in a manner that probably won’t cause any further dickering between the two.
The photo shows up around 5:52 minutes into the video at:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=PH3VJ3SFTWI&t=935s
Your credit info is given at the end of the video and in the informational area on the webpage.
Catch the trade winds in your sails.
Explore. Dream. Discover.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0rxydSolwU
Life is short, break the rules.
Forgive quickly, kiss slowly. Love truly.
Laugh uncontrollably.
And never regret anything that makes you smile.
Mark Twain
© All rights reserved Anna Kwa. Please do not use this image on websites, blogs or any other media without my explicit written permission
Mirit Ben-Nun’s art exists within and beyond reality. She moves away from reality with aggressive and dense colorfulness which reveals an inner testimony of a threatened existence of women. The lines, points and shapes do not reproduce facts but emphasize the special charge of emotional coping.
Mirit Ben-Nun shows a rebellious spirit and tries to reach out to things not through wholeness but via searching for their expression and manifestation.
She explores personal identity and through it tries to define a complementary art, thereby illustrating the world and the nature of human culture. She focuses on the expressive dimension because of the exposure afforded by the uncontrollable moment that so much affects life in a rapidly changing global world.
The discourse between the inner world and the emerging reality is hyperactive and generates in Ben - Nun an endless sequence of works.
From the depths of feelings, dreams, anxieties and expressions arise rigid and exciting meanings of existence whose essence expresses adaptation difficulties and restlessness.
Dora Woda
These girls live close to our home and are about the same age as the Wildbunch and they love them!
Their names are Tinka and Noushka and they are so adorable...sometimes we meet on a hike,
and this time we arranged a walk together...
It's hard to take pictures from all of them together, I'll try harder next time!
Walking with these five explosive and uncontrollable mad dogs was a real challenge! (smile)
--x--
Greer Grant was a native of Chicago, Illinois. She was a sophomore at the University of Chicago when she met her future husband, policeman Bill Nelson. She left college to marry him. The marriage was a strong one, flawed only by Bill's overprotective nature. Bill was killed in an off-duty shooting, and Greer had to find a job of her own. After weeks of searching, she ran into her old physics professor, Dr. Joanne Tumulo, and signed on as her research assistant.
Dr. Tumulo was working on human enhancement methods effective for women. For several reasons, including distrust for the haphephobic Malcolm Donalbain (Tumulo's financial backer), distaste for Shirlee Bryant (his chosen subject), and Greer's own enthusiasm, Tumolo decided to let her friend undergo the treatment as well.
Greer emerged from the regimen with greatly enhanced physical and mental capabilities, including the peculiar tendency to feel others' pain. Shirlee emerged with similar physical capacity but considerably less mental empowerment, a result they blamed on her lack of adherence to the preparatory regimen.
Tumolo then investigated further, and discovered that Donalbain had created a mind-control device and a set of cat-themed gadgets, with which he intended to make Shirlee his mindless superhuman enforcer. However, she fell to her death while testing the grapple-claw.
Stealing away, Dr. Tumulo presented the story to Greer, along with a spare Cat costume and gadget-set as evidence. However, her intention to call the police was thwarted by a bombing at her lab, which claimed her life. Greer then donned the suit, and set out to put an end to his scheme. With her powers, she adapted quickly to the strange garb and attacked Donalbain's headquarters, before convincing him to commit suicide rather than let himself be touched. A fire set off by the earlier fight then destroyed Donalbain's headquarters, including his copy of the enhancement machine.
Greer then embarked on a brief crimefighting career as the Cat.
Years later, another of Donalbain's Cat costumes surfaced when Patsy Walker discovered it while accompanying the Avengers. Donning it, she began calling herself the Hellcat.
"The Tigra" is the historical defender/champion of the Cat People, a humanoid race created by sorcery during the Dark Ages. Concerned about the Cat People's uncontrollable population growth and savagery, a community of sorcerers eventually banished the entire original Cat People population to a demonic netherworldly realm.
The two very first Cat People, who were themselves very capable scientists and sorcerers, were able to evade banishment through their magic. They continued to live among humanity in secret and worked to refine the Cat People's biology to make a peaceful integration into the human population possible. They were constantly attacked and required a protector. Discovering that the original spell for transforming cats into Cat People like themselves had been rendered inoperative, they created a process combining science, sorcery, and focused mental power that could transform a human female into a "Tigra", a humanoid tiger-like being with abilities that far surpassed those of either race.
This unnamed first Tigra defended the Cat People with great effectiveness, and allowed a new community to establish themselves on Earth, separate from the group that had been banished. This new population continued to live amongst humanity in secrecy through the present day, relying on enchantments that cast the illusion of a human appearance.
Nothing is known about the other Tigras who may have existed, or even if there have been more than two. At the time when Greer was transformed into Tigra, "the Tigra" was only remembered by the Cat People as a distant, but powerful, legend. It has been strongly implied that only one Tigra can exist at any given time.
Dr. Tumulo was revealed to be one of these modern Cat People. When members of HYDRA tracked Tumolo down to obtain "the Final Secret" (the Black Death plague, which was another creation of the first two Cat People), Greer once again donned the Cat costume and drove them off. However, she was mortally injured by a blast from one of their alpha radiation pistols.
Greer regained consciousness in a Baja California cave, surrounded by a gathering of Cat People summoned by Tumolo. Rapidly dying from the radiation's effects, Greer was offered one last hope of survival: a combination of ancient science, sorcery, and mental power that would transform her into Tigra, the Cat People's legendary half-human, half-cat warrior. She readily consented, began wearing only her black bikini from this time on, and arose from the ceremony as a superhumanly-powered human-animal hybrid. Striped fur covered her entire body, her hands and feet bore razor-sharp claws, her teeth became long and pointed, and her eyes were now cat's eyes. In addition to superhuman strength and senses, she also gained many of the drives and instincts of a cat. Soon after, she encountered the Werewolf.
Though initially unable to change back to her human self, Tigra received from the Cat People a mystical cat-headed amulet that allowed her to first create the illusion of her human form and later to change at will. She seldom made use of it, preferring her feline superpowered form and mostly abandoning her life as Greer Grant Nelson.
Greer resumed her superhero career, with most of the world unaware that the woman who briefly fought crime as the Cat was now the feline Tigra. She fought alongside most of Marvel's heavy-hitters in wide-ranging adventures. She first battled Kraven the Hunter, and then teamed with Spider-Man against Kraven. She also became a friend and associate of the Fantastic Four.
When the Avengers found themselves shorthanded, Moondragon used her mental powers to compel a dozen unaffiliated heroes (apparently selected at random) to travel to Avengers Mansion and audition for the vacant position. Though he disapproved of Moondragon's methods, Captain America offered Tigra a spot on the team.
Although Tigra's first tenure with the Avengers was brief, she served well. She also aided the X-Men against Deathbird. Her time with the Avengers was highlighted by her saving the world from destruction by the Molecule Man single-handed, who intended to consume the planet's energy, like Galactus. Alone among the Avengers, she was able to get close enough to him to talk him out of his plan. She convinced him to seek help from a therapist and the Molecule Man has ceased to be a threat to this day.
The Avengers fought the Ghost Rider, who blasted the team with his terror-inducing hellfire. The nature of Tigra's powers caused her to be affected by the exposure on a far deeper level than her teammates. She was left with great self-doubts about her qualifications as a member of Earth's premier superhero team, particularly alongside such heavy-hitters as Thor and Iron Man. Ultimately she resigned her membership, leaving the team on good terms.
She resumed her modeling career, moving to San Francisco when employers on the East Coast proved unreceptive to the idea of a cat person model. There she befriended private investigator Jessica Drew, and aided her on several cases, but had no better luck with modeling work there than on the East Coast and accepted an offer from the Vision to become a founding member of the Avengers' new West Coast-based team. Alongside the new West Coast Avengers, she fought Graviton, and became a close friend of Wonder Man. She also began a flirtation with Henry Pym.
While with the West Coast Avengers, she seemed to have shed the remainders of her hellfire-induced self-doubt. However, the cat-like aspects of her personality (such as a penchant for savagery and a need for affection) had begun to dominate her human intellect, causing her increasing distress. She sought help from her Avengers teammates in overcoming the "cat" side of her personality, which had caused her to become the lover of both Wonder Man and Henry Pym. She also encountered and fought the Werewolf. She was transported with the West Coast Avengers by Balkatar to the realm of the Cat People. Ultimately, she came into contact with the banished colony of Cat People, whose king agreed to resolve her crisis in exchange for carrying out her historical function by murdering the Cat People's longtime foe, Master Pandemonium.
Though she initially accepted their terms, when the critical moment came at an arena in the Cat People's realm, Tigra refused to violate the Avengers' code against killing, and failed to kill Master Pandemonium. The Cat People stripped her of her "Tigra soul" (the peculiar articulation of her Tigra powers in this demonic realm). She was reduced to her normal, pre-transformation human state.
The Hellcat, who had accompanied Greer and the West Coast Avengers, lent Greer the super-suit that she used to wear as the Cat, and a battle ensued. As the tide began to turn against the Cat People, their leader released the "Tigra soul" as a means of confusing Greer. The tactic backfired: the cat-suit had been designed by a Cat Person (Tumolo) specifically to amplify Greer's human capabilities, so instead of Greer being dominated by the "Tigra soul" as before, the suit caused her human and feline personalities to successfully integrate together.
This time, Greer's transformation into the legendary cat-warrior was much more complete than before. Her strength and abilities were far greater than they were originally. Her appearance became more feline, and she grew a tail like the rest of the Cat People. She also lost the ability to shift back to a human form, though as before she showed no sense of loss for her human identity.
Her transformation was so complete and the Tigra legend was so strong among the Cat People that they immediately ceased hostilities. Tigra continues to hold a position of significant reverence among the Cat People.
The transformation also resolved the conflicts between the human and feline aspects of her personality. Tigra could now exploit the full range and ferocity of her abilities without fear of going so far that she would lose control of her actions, and she could also indulge her natural feline inclinations (such as hunting and chasing prey for enjoyment) without feeling guilty or self-conscious. This integration was confirmed in concrete ways immediately upon the team's return to Earth. Tigra performed a sport dive off the highest span of the Golden Gate Bridge, exhibiting no signs of any injury or fear of the water. She also terminated her ongoing relationship with Hank Pym, explaining that although she no longer felt a cat-like need to seek affection at every opportunity, she had no conventional human desire to be tied down to one mate, either.
She was captured by Graviton at one point, but freed the Avengers from him. Around this time, the Arthurian Lady of the Lake summoned the West Coast Avengers to England to aid the superhero team Excalibur. With the others, Tigra ventured into the realm of limbo to help stop Doctor Doom's mad plans to gain power at the cost of killing everyone in Britain.
Tigra briefly left the West Coast Avengers in a dispute over the Avengers' policy against killing. Tigra stated that she believed by her very nature that killing prey was sometimes necessary.[volume & issue needed] She joined Mockingbird and the Moon Knight in forming an independent group.
After returning to the team, Tigra inexplicably underwent another "inversion" and transformed into a more animal-like feline form, losing her human intellect completely and becoming a danger to her fellow Avengers. This was possibly due to the reality-warping machinations of Immortus, who at the time sought to distract the team so as to have unimpeded access to the Scarlet Witch. Tigra was forcibly shrunken down to sub-house cat size by Hank Pym and kept in a cage in his lab while the team tended to other urgent matters. She escaped and traveled into suburbia, where she lived as a wild animal.
She was ultimately rescued and restored to her former appearance and stability by noted witch Agatha Harkness, who was an associate of the West Coast Avengers at the time.
Tigra resumed her membership in the West Coast Avengers. On an intelligence-gathering mission in Japan, she and Iron Man battled a team of Asian supervillains known as the Pacific Overlords. During the fight, Iron Man was incapacitated and Tigra suffered a deep, critical stab wound to the abdomen before dispatching her attackers and making her escape. She flew away in the Avengers' Quinjet, intending to report back to headquarters on the Overlords' plans, but severe loss of blood caused her to lose consciousness and crash land in Arnhem Land, an Aboriginal territory in northern Australia. Rescued by Aborigines, she decided to stay put while she recovered from her wounds, naming Spider-Woman (Julia Carpenter) as her replacement. She briefly made Arnhem Land her home, enjoying the company of the Aborigines and the pleasures of living wild.
After the West Coast Avengers disbanded, Tigra resumed her wide-ranging adventures. Though no longer an active Avenger, she continued to participate in Avengers operations when needed as a member of the team's extended family.
With the aid of a new transformation device to disguise her true identity from her fellow officers, Tigra spent some time on the New York City police force. She focused much of her time on a personal case and in combating a force of vigilante police officers.
Later, mystical forces which attacked all Avengers brought her to the Avengers Mansion. There, she and all the other Avengers were entrapped by Morgan le Fay, to live out in an alternate universe where le Fay ruled, fighting alongside the others as one of the "queen"'s guards under the name "Grimalkin". After the defeat of Morgan, Tigra went off into space with Starfox to enjoy the pleasures found there. She appeared off and on, having a series of adventures as part of the ad hoc space-faring Avengers Infinity team in which she helps in preventing an extra-universal race from destroying all life in our universe.
Tigra returned to Earth with the Avengers Infinity team during the Maximum Security storyline, during which she helped to save the Earth from becoming a penal colony for alien criminals.[volume & issue needed] She played a particularly crucial role in events when the Infinity team were captured after discovering the Kree's role in recent events, with the Kree intending to lobotomize the team and make it appear as though they had destroyed another planet; due to the attention the Kree had paid to keeping the more powerful team members contained, they were unprepared for Tigra, the weakest member, to escape her bonds by returning to her smaller human form, allowing her to escape her shackles and free her teammates in time to reveal the truth.
⚡ Happy 🎯 Heroclix 💫 Friday! 👽
_____________________________
A year of the shows and performers of the Bijou Planks Theater.
Secret Identity: Greer Grant Nelson
Publisher: Marvel
First appearance: Giant-Size Creatures 1 (July 1974)
Created by: Tony Isabella (Writer)
Don Perlin (Artist)
This West Bound CSX Train had stopped in the Richmond Viaduct on 1.2.2016. It appeared to have some problems when the Horn on the trailing Loco went off uncontrollably. That's when the Engineer came out and attended to it. Here, he goes back to the Engine after everything is okay.
HOME.
Home again.
I like to be here, when I can.
And not when it’s some other version of it.
This time I’m really here.
My Batcave.
My Gotham.
My Universe.
But not for long… Just long enough to pick up a few things.
I walk over to the Batcomputer, and look around. The cave is already lit. Carrie must've been in recently.
It’s so much cleaner here, than the last one I visited.
Sir, now we’ve temporarily stopped at home, I suggest we make some minor repairs to the-
“Yeah yeah, A.L.F.R.E.D, I’m on it.”
That fight with the OMAC was taxing on the suit, I haven’t been able to activate the nanotech since the fight. Luckily the Batcomputer has managed to synthesise a new batch, which I immediately apply to the suit. Within seconds it’s repaired and I’m able to activate it and switch into my street clothes.
It never fails to amaze me.
“Schway”
The next stop is to replace the grenade. I’m not quite sure if I trust Tim’s past tech. But nonetheless, I’ll still carry it with me. The gamble might be able to pay off someday. I pop off the strip of metal, with the carving on it, and put the grenade in it’s place.
Hmmm.
Maybe I should get it checked out.
A enclosure in the Batcomputer opens up, and I slot the strip in. Hopefully this analysis will yield some results, and I’ll actually be able to figure out what this thing is.
A lone voice cuts through the silence, and my concentration.
“I had a feeling you’d stop off here.”
Immediately turn. I’d know that voice from anywhere.
“Oh my god, Dana”
“Hey, Ter”
She steps out of the shadows, beautiful as ever. I haven’t seen her in so long. And by the expression on her face, she hasn’t seen me in a while either.
...
The cave is not exactly the place you want to have stage a reunion with your fiancée.
So we exited the cave, and the manor altogether.
And instead down to the beach that resides near the opening for the Batboat.
No one ever comes down here. I guess that’s why it makes it romantic.
It’s silent too. Dana slips her shoes off and taps her toes at the edge of the water. She instantly retracts them, and lets out a soft yelp. Looks at me and giggles. But it quickly fades.
I look away from her, and my eyes move across the horizon.
There’s an abandoned pier in the distance. It’s now a Jokerz hideout. Strangely dangerous letting it be so close to the cave. But it makes sense to keep my friends close, and my enemies cl-
“What are you thinking about?”
“I- What?”
“You heard me Ter, why aren’t you talking to me. You’ve been back 5 minutes, and you won’t even look at me.”
“I’m sorry. It’s just-”
“You’ve been gone for three months, Ter… what have you been doing?
“Looking.”
“Not at me, clearly… It feels like you don’t even want me anymore.”
This shocks me into reality. And immediately I’m listening to what she’s saying.
“Dana… I’ve had a lot to do. So much searching…”
“For what? For answers? You’re never going to find them.
Bruce is gone. Accept it.
Please. Just stay here. Don’t leave me again. Don’t leave your family. Don’t leave Matt.”
We start to walk up the rocky path that runs along the beach. She puts her shoes back on, and looks to me for a response, before we continue walking again.
“Matt knows I’ll be away for a while. He knows how important being Batman is.
You know how important it is. But I’m not saying that you’re not important. I’m just-”
“Doesn’t matter. I can deal with it. I’m your fianceé.
But he’s your brother. He’s just a kid, that misses the only father figure he has left in his life. You should at least visit him. Or call him. He misses you so much.”
“I know, but I just can’t. None of you are supposed to know I’m back.”
“I get that, but I’m not cool with this, Terry. I miss you more than anyone. I need you back. And if you won’t stay for me, or for your brother. Stay for this city. Things haven’t gotten better since you’ve left.
Sure, Carrie is keeping a firm hold on the city. But for how long?
Jokerz have been too much for her to handle.
Your absence is killing this city.
It’s killing me.
And you know what the worst part is? Even though you’re back, I can’t even talk to my Terry anymore. Instead, standing in front of me, is Batman.”
These words sting. Slag, do they sting. Have I been gone too long?
“Terry, you need to stop and think about what’s more important. This quest of yours or-“
A voice comes out from in front of us, interrupting Dana:
“Ooooh ho hoooo. What’s this? A romantic stroll along the beach?”
The man dressed in purple and wearing shitty makeup, who approaches us out of the shadows, needs no introduction. Nor does his gang.
“Jokerz.” I scowl under my breath.
It’s the usual suspects again. J-man, the Joker wanabe, and his gang. Come to think of it, most of them are wanabes. Ghoul? Scarecrow wanabe. Terminal? Two Face.
I haven’t seen Terminal in a while. He’s not part of this group.
They begin to surround us, one of the Dee twins is already at our backs, and ready to strike.
Dana grips my arm. Then releases it.
She looks up at me and grins.
“Go get ‘em Ter”
As if in response to her words, the suit materialises around my hand, up my arm, and across my chest.
Before they know it, The Batman is standing in front of them.
Immediately Woof, Scab, Ghoul, and Deidre bail out of fear. What twips. I was expecting a small fight. I guess I’ve been absent for so long, these guys have only just remembered again what it feels like to get their ass beaten.
J-man is the last one left standing. He starts to back away as I approach him.
“Was that some sort of an attempt at a joke? Or a threat?”
“Uhhh… no. NO! I was genuinely concerned for your safety. Wow. Look at how edgy these rocks are… pleasedontkillmemisterbatmansir”
I lean in and growl at him:
“The only edgy thing here is you, emo droog.”
This confuses him. Exactly as intended.
“Uh… was that some sort of attempt at a joke? Or a threat?”
I take the opportunity to get in a quick punch, and he goes down easily.
Jokerz are nothing compared to the big bads like Superman or OMACs. At least Superman gives me a run for my money. Even when I have Kryptonite. These guys are complete schwarbage, and can’t eve-
He propels himself up from the ground, and tackles me down.
Damnit. I need to pay more attention to Tim’s advice to wise up.
Once down I look up and see that he’s stumbling away from me and towards-
Oh no.
Dana.
J-man approaches her, with his knife in his hand, giggling uncontrollably.
He raises it to her.
I’m too far away… I won’t be able to get to her in time.
I bring a batarang to my hand, and raise it as well.
He starts to bring it down, and I throw it at his knee.
Unexpectedly, Dana charges forward and kicks him in between the legs.
How did I get so lucky with this girl? Only she’d have the balls to do something like that.
He goes down, and as he does the batarang that was meant for his knee goes to his head and he face plants.
Dana starts to laugh. And she’s right to, that was hilarious.
I join her, and J-man gets up. And stares at us in bewilderment, as we laugh at him.
He starts to hobble away; wounded, intimidated, and ultimately defeated.
He throws back a threat, to make himself seem manly again:
“I know who you are, Batman! I know your girl! I will find you!”
Dana scoffs at this: “Let them try.”
He continues to hobble away for a few metres, then stops, clutches at his groin, moans, then tries to run towards the pier, where the rest of his gang is hiding.
I go over to her and hug her from behind, and we watch him, giggling away.
Moments like these are what I live for. And I can forget all about my troubles. I can forget that the Jokerz are a serious gang. Or that Gotham is ridden with crime and corruption. And more importantly that Bruce is gone, and every single version of him in the multiverse is dead.
...
After a quick visit to my family, and even dinner with Dana. We’re back inside the cave, and she waits as I prepare to leave.
It was nice. Seeing my mother again, and having my little twip of a brother be annoying, yet adorable. And just being with Dana, made this whole thing worth it. This little stop over was nice, while it lasted.
But it’s not what I need to do.
I go to the Batcomputer again, to check the results.
Nothing.
I eject the strip and return it to my belt. Fat lot of good that did. Passing by Bruce's desk, I pick up the only thing that catches my eye. A small box of inter dimensional communicators.
It’s time to go.
The suit covers my body again, fully repaired. And I go to leave.
But I can’t. Not yet.
I feel Dana’s gaze on my back, watching my every move.
So I turn to address her. She has those big puppy dog eyes, that everyone has when they want something. But it’s her mouth that lets me know what she wants:
“I wish you could stay longer…”
“Dana… I need to do this”
“Then go Terry… just go. Don’t expect me to be here waiting.”
She then begins to leave in a huff. But I can’t let things end on a note like this. So I call her back.
“Dana. Don’t be like that, you know that I’d do anything to be here with you.
But some things are more important”
“Yeah. Like some creepy old guy”
“Like the disappearance of my father from the face of all existence”
She stops in her tracks, turns around, and hugs me apologetically.
“Terry. You know I didn’t mean it like that. I’m just… scared I’m going to lose you. Every day I worry whether you’ll come back or not. Or how long I have to wait until I see you again. Will it be another day? A week? A month? Or will you just not be back at all?
We stop everything. My suit drops away. All arguments and fears are deflated.
And we just embrace.
All this jumping from world to world, and ultimately I’m holding my true world in my arms.
Everything stops for a second. And we quietly enjoy being in this moment. Just her and I.
I don’t know for how long. It felt like an eternity. And in that eternity, nothing mattered. All my problems went away. It was just me and her… My Dana.
But before I get lost in the emotion, I look into her eyes, plant a soft kiss on her lips. and pull away.
She looks at me, with the most pained expression on her face.
She knows this is the moment I have to leave, and pulls me back for another quick kiss.
Tell her you love her Terry.
Just tell her.
“You know… I really needed this. To be here, and see you.. But-“
“I know Terry. Just go. I’ll… I’ll be waiting for you”
I place one of the inter dimensional communicators in her hand.
"If you ever need me back. Just call."
She doesn't reply, as she knows I have a much bigger mission on hand.
I go again to tell her that I love her, but can’t find myself to utter the words. So I simply turn, suit up again, and leave her. Hopefully I’ll see her again.
I glance back, and she blows me a kiss, and smiles.
“God I love her”
She giggles.
“I love you too, Terry”
Wait… did I say that out lou- The vortex appears with its palette of bright colours, and sucks me in. Once again, I’m propelled towards an unknown destination. Unsure what I will find.
But I hope one day, I’ll be able to come back here.
When all of this is over.
And see Dana again.
If Mr. Brown Pelican can give us all a succinct and infallible argument proving that the Universe belongs to him by right, I will personally deliver his Nobel Prize for Uncontrollable Rhetoric. In the meantime, you won't find many of Mr. Pelican's encomiasts who will openly admit that they favor Mr. Pelican's schemes to blacklist his enemies as terrorist sympathizers or traitors. In fact, their put-downs are characterized by a plethora of rhetoric to the contrary. If you listen closely, though, you'll hear how carefully they cover up the fact that Mr. Pelican plans to promote vigilantism's traits as normative values to be embraced. He has instructed his zealots not to discuss this or even admit to his plan's existence. Obviously, Mr. Pelican knows he has something to hide.
Just to clarify, nothing to do with the Reign of the Supermen storyline. Just needed a good title, and, well, it fit. So, judging as the Superman of the Overlords-verse has been around over a century, I thought it wasn't unreasonable for others to have tried to create Super-beings for their own nefarious purposes *cough* Lex Luthor *cough*. So, I came up with this lot, and improved Project Kr a bit too while I was at it. I'm also gonna put some dates before the stories, just for e, so I can keep track of what's happening when. So, onto their stories (L to R):
Cyborg Superman (1993) - The first successful attempt by Lex-corp at a Superman Luthor could control. Hank Henshaw was just one of many test subjects. A former astronaut, his shuttle had been hit by a solar flare, which had caused the untimely deaths of his fellow crewmates. Henshaw, by some miracle, had survived the initial flare, but was now suffering the after-effects. His body was changing, poisoned against him, and he knew he didn't have long. And so, he volunteered himself to be experimented upon, and hopefully be reborn as a cyborg. The process was long and painful, countless surgeries were performed, and with every one, Hank lost a little bit of himself.
After nearly two years, he was ready. He awoke standing in front of a small group of scientists. Their mouths were agape, and sheer horror was spread across their faces. Though his hearing wasn't quite working yet, he caught the odd word. "freak" "mistake" "abomination". He stumbled his way through the lab, pushing and shoving his way to the doors. They were locked. He flew into a mad fury, destroying everything he could reach, his newly found heat vision setting the lab ablaze. As the sprinklers settled the fire, Hank looked down, and saw himself reflected in a piece of polished steel. He was a freak. Those scientists and doctors had turned him into a nightmarish, twisted version of himself. Hell, he wasn't even himself, just a distorted image of Superman. Launching himself into the air, he flew through the night sky, straight up, away from it all. He needed...time away, to reflect. to try to come to terms with what had been done to him. as he drifted through space, he focussed his mind, tried to home in on something, anything to stop himself going mad. His hatred for Superman, the man he resembled so much, but was nothing like. That alien was a hero, loved by billions. He was just an astronaut who'd run out of luck, forgotten. All he was now, was a bad imitation of the man of steel.
Kr 1.0 (Bizarro) (2004) - Kr 1.0 was the first 'successful' clone of Superman that Lexcorp was able to produce. It had been years in the making, cost billions of dollars, but finally, it was ready. After the initial failure of the cyborg Superman, this was to be a success, a good investment. However, it was not meant to be. The tank was drained, and the clone was let out. It took a few steps, before falling to the floor, It was weak, barely able to move. No wonder, having spent all of its life in a tank. It was taken away to be clothed, and most importantly, assessed. Luthor and his scientists were eager to see what their investment could do. After many weeks, the scientists were able to confirm that though the clone had all the powers of Superman, it was a bit behind in cognitive ability. It often got lost in thought, which meant it struggled to control its powers. Luthor spent a small fortune in funerals for those it had incinerated while it wasn't paying attention.
It had been almost two months, when Luthor was awoken to an urgent phone call. The clone had broken free of its bonds, and had escaped. Though free, it seemed the clone didn't know what to do with itself. It just hovered, hundreds of feet from the ground, staring absent mindedly at the rising sun. It was transfixed, nothing could get its attention. Before Luthors men could recapture it, it was gone, flying towards the sunrise. It was here it met what it was supposed to be. Superman. It was still transfixed by the sun, just staring at it. 'The light's pretty, isn't it' It said to him. Superman was taken aback. This man, hovering in mid-air. It looked like him, but....something was wrong. The clones eyes glowed, burning with the heat vision it couldn't control. Before Superman could react, the clones eyes erupted with fire, the flames hitting a passing passenger plane, thousands of miles away. Superman shot off to save the plane, but he was too late. though he was able to catch it, the plane broke apart in mid-air, and crashed into a field. After calling in the League to help search the wreckage, he went back to find the man responsible. He had landed now, his head in his hands, weeping uncontrollably. He looked up when Superman landed in front of him. He looked angry. "Where did you come from?" Superman asked the clone. It looked down to the ground, not answering. It was clear it wasn't in its right mind, that something was missing. Then, it spoke, in barely a whisper "Kill me". Superman was taken aback. On one hand, he knew it had to be done, there was no way this man could be allowed to live, especially if he couldn't control his own powers. Before the war, Superman would have taken him to the fortress of solitude, tried to teach him to control his powers. But with everything going on in the world, the state of the world, and with his newly found cousin taken into account, he knew that for once, just this once, he would have to make the tough decision, and choose the easy way. Despite all this, he still tried to reach out to the man, to try to help him. "You don't understand, this was my fault. I killed those people. They're all dead, because of me. If you don't kill me, it'll happen again, and again, I can't control these powers" With this, Superman knew he had to make the choice. He told the man to turn away from him, to look at the flowers, shooting up from the grass. Once the deed was done, he buried the man, in a grave he dug with his own two hands. Having nothing to wrap him in, he took his own cape from his shoulders, and wrapped the body in it. He then laid him to rest, said a prayer, and buried the grave. He then flew off to help the rest of the league in their attempt to save whoever he could from the wreckage.
Project Kr - Won't bother with their story, as I've covered it so many times before. Same as before, can't breathe our air, weakened powers, full powers yadda yadda yadda.
The Eradicator (2001/2) - When Superman found his cousin hidden away in the ruins of a CADMUS research facility, he discovered many other Kryptonian artefacts. Amongst them was a sentient computer system. When he touched it, it sprung to life, growing a body. Once complete, it rose from the ground, hovering in the air. "Recognised, El bloodline. Kal-El son of Jor-El and Lara-El recognised". All good so far. "Criminal element detected, Crime: high treason, Verdict: Guilty. Punishment: death. Kal-El, son of Jor-El, prepare to be eradicated". Shocked Superman stumbled back, preparing himself for a fight. Though weak, exposed wires and servo units, the eradicator floated towards him, arm outstretched, burning with Yellow light. Using his heat vision, Superman was able to repel the Eradicator, sending it flying into a wall. Though it got up, the ceiling collapsed, an the Already weak eradicator was destroyed. Pulling it's body from the rubble, Superman returned it to the Fortress of solitude, where he could safely study it, as well as find out what it meant when it talked of his recently discovered father, and what it was he had done back on Krypton.
So, those are the other Supermen of the Overlords-verse. Quite enjoyed coming up with these, and I'm glad I was able to find a goodish way to tell Bizarro's story. So, as always, please lemme know what you think, and if you'd like to see even more of the Overlords-verse :D
Barbie and her friends are off to the Midnight Festival at the old ruined Azrak Abbey...
"So, who's playing?"
"Let's see... according to this it opens with Black Mass... then Skyclad Dance..."
"Oooo... aren't there a couple of former members of Lynyrd Skynyrd in that?"
"... then Blood Sacrifice followed by Tantric Demon Orgy..."
"Oh dear, I've got a bad feeling about this... it all sounds a little Heavy Metally?"
"But these tickets do promise that we're the extra-special guests of honour! Wasn't it so nice of the Fashion Royalty dolls to give us these tickets!"
"And judging by their uncontrollable laughter they were soooo happy to give them to us too!"
One of the most iconic fighters to come out of World War II, the P-51 Mustang, came about as a result of the desperate need of the British for fighters in 1939, as the war began. British industries were already at capacity producing the Hurricane and Spitfire, and of the American fighters being made or planned, the RAF only saw the P-40 Warhawk as being able to fight the German Bf 109s. With Curtiss at maximum output building P-40s, the British approached North American, who had been trying to sell the RAF the B-25 Mitchell, with an offer to license-build P-40s. North American’s president, James Kindleberger, had a better idea: design and build an entirely new fighter based around the P-40’s Allison V-1710 engine. The RAF was willing to fund a prototype if it cost less than $40,000 and could be delivered by January 1941; the contract was signed in April of 1940. North American flew the first NA-73 prototype in October, only 178 days later.
Given the short time North American had gone from a blank sheet of paper to a flyable aircraft, one might expect that the NA-73 fell short of the requirements. It improved upon it. The RAF had only desired four .30 caliber machine guns; the NA-73 had that, plus an additional four .50 caliber machine guns (two in the wings with the .30s and two in the cowl). Despite its thin, highly aerodynamic fuselage, it had a large fuel capacity that could make it an escort fighter and an interceptor. Moreover, it incorporated two radical design features: one was mounting the radiator below the fuselage; besides saving space, it also allowed the pilot to force hot air out of the radiator to boost speed. The most radical was the use of a laminar-flow wing. Compressibility, where air going over a wing would reach supersonic speeds and cause the aircraft to accelerate out of control in a dive, was a minor problem in the P-40 and notorious on the P-38 Lightnings. With a laminar-flow wing, airspeed over the wings never reached supersonic speeds, preventing compressibility without sacrificing maneuverability. The RAF eagerly accepted the design as the Mustang Mk. I and it entered production in mid-1941.
When the RAF began operating the Mustangs in combat, however, they found that the fighter, while able to maneuver with even the Focke-Wulf 190 and having plenty of range, was sluggish and slow above 15,000 feet. This was due to the V-1710 engine, which had never been designed for high-altitude performance. North American had experienced misgivings about the V-1710, but it had been part of the specification—the Mustang Mk. I was useful in low-level roles, especially reconnaissance, and the USAAF took an interest in it as a ground-attack aircraft, ordering 500 as the A-36A Apache.
In April of 1942, a Rolls-Royce technician got to fly a Mustang Mk. I and he was suitably impressed by its maneuverability. He was interested in whether or not a bigger engine could be used on the aircraft, and five Mustangs were turned over to Rolls-Royce to be equipped with a Merlin engine and a propeller adapted from the Spitfire Mk. IX. The test pilots were stunned by the increase in performance: above 15,000 feet, the Merlin-engined Mustang not only retained its agility and range but its speed was increased to 433 mph and the ceiling to 40,000 feet. North American learned of these tests and embarked on a redesign process, culminating in the P-51B: this had a strengthened fuselage and wider radiator for the more powerful Merlin; the armament was reduced to save weight to four (later six) .50 caliber machine guns in the wings. With drop tanks fitted under the wings, the P-51Bs could fly virtually anywhere in Europe. The Mustang had finally realized its full potential, and the USAAF, which had been taking catastrophic losses to bombers over Germany due to the lack of long-range fighters, now had one.
The P-51Bs began reaching Europe by August of 1943, and when they reached the 8th Air Force in numbers by late 1943, the situation in the air over Europe started to change. While P-51 pilots loved the responsiveness and speed of the Mustang, a few problems did crop up: the gunsight was challenging to use, the guns tended to jam, the glycol cooling system for the engine was easy to hit and would doom the P-51 instantly, and the P-51B lacked vision to the rear. The type also showed a propensity to go into uncontrollable snap rolls at high angles of attack. In response, North American designed the P-51D, which solved most of the problems: it had a cut-down rear fuselage and incorporated a bubble canopy, giving the P-51D the best visibility of any fighter of the war; the adoption of the K-14 gunsight was much easier to use and more accurate; the machine guns were set upright and spaced along the dihedral of the wing rather than along the path of flight, making them more accurate as well and mostly curing the jamming problem (high-G turns could still jam the guns); the snap-roll problem was fixed by adding a fin fillet to the tail. Nothing could be done about the glycol system, and more P-51s would be lost to ground fire hitting the glycol tanks than any other reason. (This was the primary reason the P-47 Thunderbolt, with its radial engine, took on the bulk of ground attack missions, leaving the P-51s as the primary escort fighters).
The P-51s would bear much responsibility for swatting the Luftwaffe from the air. It could outperform the Bf 109 in all respects, and even with an Fw 190 below 15,000 feet—above 20,000 feet, the Mustang had the advantage. Nearly 5,000 German aircraft would be shot down by P-51s, the highest total claimed by any Allied fighter during WWII. Almost 1,000 more Japanese aircraft could be added to that total as P-51Ds began reaching the Pacific in 1944, acting as escorts for the B-29 bombers. Many aviation historians generally consider the P-51 Mustang as one of the finest fighters of World War II and, by some, the most pure fighter of all time.
After WWII ended, North American began the production of “lightweight” P-51Hs, which used lighter construction materials, lengthened the fuselage for better performance, and raised the tail for better aerodynamics. The Merlin engine was modified with a new water-injected supercharger. While not as aesthetically attractive as the P-51D, the P-51H was among the fastest piston-engined aircraft ever built, with a top speed of only 120 mph below the speed of sound. Redesignated as the F-51 by the newly independent USAF in 1948, the Mustang’s combat duties weren’t finished yet. Though not suited for the role, the availability of aircraft meant that the F-51s would be used as ground-attack fighters throughout the Korean War. The P-51 had been exported to 55 nations during and after the war, and it would see service in the Arab-Israeli conflicts, various brushfire wars in Central and South America, and in the Philippines. The last F-51 in U.S. service (ironically, U.S. Army service) did not leave until 1968, while the Dominican Republic operated P-51s as frontline fighters until 1984. Out of over 16,700 P-51s produced, over 250 survive today, with nearly 140 flyable examples, making the P-51s among the best-preserved World War II-era aircraft types ever.
Meet the fastest piston-engined aircraft in the world! "Voodoo" started life as BuNo 44-73415, a P-51D delivered to the USAAF at the tail end of WWII. In 1951, it was supplied to the RCAF and flew with an unknown Canadian unit until 1959. When 44-73415 was retired, it was bought by a warbird collector and would go through the hands of several owners between 1959 and 1994, suffering two accidents in the meantime. In 1994, it was modified with a new, far more streamlined fuselage and smaller canopy and entered the racing circuit at Reno as "Pegasus." In 1998, "Pegasus" was bought by another famous racer, Bob Button, and renamed "Voodoo."
"Voodoo" would fly at several Reno Air Race events in the Unlimited Class, but it wasn’t until 2013 that it won, with Steve Hinton at the controls. It won again in 2014 and 2016. In 2017, however, Button and Hinton set their sights on another trophy: the title of fastest piston-engine aircraft. In September of that year in Challis, Idaho, Hinton set the record at 554 mph, with an average speed of 531 mph. With no more worlds to conquer, it was decided to retire "Voodoo," and the aircraft was donated to Planes of Fame in 2018. "Voodoo"/44-73415 is still flyable, and even though her racing days are numbered, she continues to wow the crowds at numerous airshows throughout the state.
Pic By Pammy
Black n White
Reflecting upon history, things of the past that cannot change.
Self-inflicted torture, the everlasting pain of revisited experiences of yesterday.
Walking backwards through life ever dwelling on the uncontrollable.
Perception of hope withers to bitter disillusionment.
Ahead lies an unbeaten path, a road yet un-traveled, free from the wreckage of the trail behind.
A choice at hand, freedom or chains?
Embrace the hope of a new day.
Cast off the shackles of haunted memories.
Embrace the Beauty of healing love and redemption.
Embrace a new beginning.
Leave behind all fear and trembling.
Embrace the glory that overshadows remembrance-borne misery.
Memories that once tore the soul apart, sealed away in a whitewashed history.
No longer strangled by a hopeless outlook.
Embrace the beauty of a new beginning.
Embrace the gift of grace and mercy.
Teresa, Sassy, Melrose and Adam
[Continuation of New Kid On The Block, Pt. 2 & Rolling In The Deep, Pt. 2]
[Adam bursts into the office and wrestles Melrose off of Sassy]
A. --- I got her! ...Are you alright?
M. --- Let go of me!
S. --- [catching her breath she says...] Ohmygosh...
[Teresa makes her way inside the office]
T. ---- Sassy! Are you okay? What happened?
S. --- She attacked me.
M. --- [trying to break free from Adam, kicking and screaming she yells out...] No! No! No!...
S. ---- She just snapped. She was trying to take my blouse. It was crazy, it just...
M. --- No! No! No!.... [she continues to scream]
A. --- Calm down!
S. --- Thank you ...so much! I don't know what I would have done if you weren't here. I don't know what's wrong with her ...She needs help.
M. --- No! No! No!.....
T. --- Melrose, calm down.
M. --- No! [she begins to weep and sob uncontrollably] That's mine! It's all mine!
A. --- You've gotta calm down, okay?
T. --- No... [she says in a soft voice] this is Sassy's.
[Melrose goes silent. She stands there as still as a statue. Then slowly, her eyes turn to Teresa]
M. --- [she yells directly in her face...] I AM SASSY!
_____
It's almost over! Only two scenes to go... the F2K, Vol. 7 finale is this Friday (March 29th)
In the image above, the individual in the vivid orange survival suit, with fully-inflated lifejacket, dangles from a strop between two warships travelling on a parallel course about 100 feet apart. He is about to be collected by one of Nottingham's crew. He is part of a demonstration, showing a large array of spectators aboard HMS Nottingham (some of whom can be seen on the bridge wing and lounging aft of the missile system) how to transfer personnel quickly between ships whilst remaining underway (and without the expense of firing up the petrol pigeon [helicopter] on the stern!).
The light jackstay is the rope upon which he and everything around him is suspended. This is normally a four-inch manila rope, which has been passed across from us to Nottingham and tensioned before he is suspended from the traveller block, which is the metal feature that is running along the manila rope.
Of the two lower ropes attached to the traveller, the one on the left is the inhaul, which is used by us to pull the traveller back to us after the transfer is completed, either to stow the rig or to commence another transfer. The lower rope on the right is the outhaul. It is the means by which the individual is being pulled across to Nottingham. Manpower is the entire motive power in this evolution.
A key skill in this evolution is ensuring the gap between the ships remains as steady as possible during the evolution. If they get too close, the jackstay sags and the individual may get his feet (or more!) wet. There is also the risk of the ships being affected by fluid dynamics which effectively results in them being affected by the flow of water between them and being sucked together, resulting in their sides colliding.
If one of the ships loses power or steering during an evolution like this, both ships have practiced emergency procedures for cutting away the ropes and the one still with power/steering turning away to avoid the uncontrollable vessel. This might result in the individual being transferred ending up in the water on his own, leading to a man-overboard situation...
This demonstration was conducted during the 1986 Staff College Sea Days in the English Channel, where the students at the Army, Navy and Air Force Staff Colleges got a day at sea to see all sorts of evolutions and activities aboard warships.
The missile system on Nottingham's focsle is, of course, the Hawker Siddeley Dynamics GWS30 Sea Dart medium-range SAM, probably a Mod 1 variant, which (according to Wikipedia) had an operational range of some 74 km, theoretical ceiling of 10,000m and a top speed of Mach 2+. The blue booster is clearly visible.
Scanned from a negative.
My friend Jin just translated what the sign on the light says, it is amazing.
Jin says,
"translation of the lighted advertisement in the photo: NEW! First on the earth! Professor Beef Tripe. Toilet bowl to be destroyed! Skin to glow! Body to recharge! The collaboration between octopus and beef tripe. Whole Octopus & Assorted Beef Tripe. Caution: Add to it the leeks & Raspberry Wine, for uncontrollable impacts!"
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One of the most obnoxious, invasive, uncontrollable aquatic pests in fresh water bodies all over the tropical and semi-tropical regions of the world.
Remains in the Top 100 list of the Global Invasive Species Database;
www.issg.org/database/species/List.asp
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Water Hyacinth Flower
Eichhornia crassipes
Family Pontederiaceae
The Ghosh Grove, Rockledge, Florida, USA.
=====================================================
If you are interested in my works, they are available on Getty Images.
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I think all art is about control - the encounter between control and the uncontrollable.
- Richard Avedon
〰〰〰〰〰〰〰〰〰〰〰〰〰〰〰〰〰〰〰〰〰〰〰〰〰〰〰
● Non-HDR-processed / Non-GND/ND-filtered
● Black Card Technique 黑卡作品
This is Dad's father Ike, and the two girls are obviously Patrice and Aleda. I think the little kid in the middle is Douglas, son of Dad's brother Marvin. We were in Jensen, Utah, nor far from Vernal -- staying with the grandparents while Ray and Marion went off uranium prospecting in the hills of the Utah/Colorado border.
*********************************
Some of the photos in this album are “originals” from the year that my family spent in Omaha in 1955-56. But the final 10 color photos were taken nearly 40 years later, as part of some research that I was doing for a novel called Do-Overs, the beginning of which can be found here on my website
www.yourdon.com/personal/fiction/doovers/index.html
and the relevant chapter (concerning Omaha) can be found here:
www.yourdon.com/personal/fiction/doovers/chapters/ch9.html
Before I get into the details, let me make a strong request — if you’re looking at these photos, and if you are getting any enjoyment at all of this brief look at some mundane Americana from 60+ years ago: find a similar episode in your own life, and write it down. Gather the pictures, clean them up, and upload them somewhere on the Internet where they can be found. Trust me: there will come a day when the only person on the planet who actually experienced those events is you. Your own memories may be fuzzy and incomplete; but they will be invaluable to your friends and family members, and to many generations of your descendants.
So, what do I remember about the year that I spent in Omaha? Not much at the moment, though I’m sure more details will occur to me in the days to come — and I’ll add them to these notes, along with additional photos that I’m tweaking and editing now.
For now, here is a random list of things I remember:
1. I attended the last couple months of 6th grade, and all of 7th grade, in one school. My parents moved from Omaha to Long Island, NY in the spring of my 7th grade school year; but unlike previous years, they made arrangements for me to stay with a neighbor’s family, so that I could finish the school year before joining them in New York.
2. Our dog, Blackie, traveled with us from our previous home in Riverside, and was with us until my parents left Omaha for New York; at that point, they gave him to some other family. For some reason, this had almost no impact on me. It was a case of “out of sight, out of mind” — when Blackie was gone, I spent my final three months in Omaha without ever thinking about him again.
3. Most days, I rode my bike to school; but Omaha was the place where one of my sisters first started attending first grade — in the same school where I was attending 6th grade. I remember walking her to school along Bellevue Avenue on the first morning, which seemed to take forever: it was about a mile away.
4. As noted in a previous Flickr album about my year in Riverside, I was a year younger than my classmates; but I was tall for my age, and thus looked “normal” at a quick glance. But because I was a year younger, I was incredibly shy and awkward in the presence of girls. Omaha was certainly not “sin city,” but by 6th grade and 7th grade, puberty was beginning to hit, and the girls had grown to the point where they were occasionally interested in boys. The school tried to accommodate this social development by teaching us the square dance (and forbidding the playing of songs by Elvis Presley, whose music was just beginning to be heard on the radio). I was an awful dancer, and even more of a shy misfit than my classmates; I continue to be an awful dancer today.
5. My bike ride to school was uneventful most days; but the final part of the ride was a steep downhill stretch on Avery Road, lasting three or four blocks. My friends and I usually raced downhill as fast as we could; but one day, my front bicycle wheel began to wobble on the downhill run, and my bike drifted uncontrollably to the side of the road and then off into a ditch. I got banged up pretty badly.
6. But this accident was nothing compared to my worst mishap: a neighborhood friend and I enjoyed playing “cowboys and Indians” in the woods near his home (and his younger brother usually tagged along). I had a bow and a few arrows for our adventure, and we often shot at trees a hundred feet away. Unfortunately, the arrows often disappeared into the underbrush (because we were lousy shots) and were difficult to find. Consequently, one of us came up with the clever idea of standing behind the “target” tree, so that we could see where the randomly-shot arrows landed. Through a series of miscommunications, I poked my head out from behind the tree just as my friend shot one of the arrows … and it skipped off the side of the tree and into my face, impaling itself into my cheek bone about an inch below my eye. An inch higher, and I would not be typing these words … (meanwhile, my friend's younger brother grew up to be an officer in the U.S. Air Force, and he tracked me down on the Internet, decades later).
7. In the summer of 1956, my parents decided to spend their summer vacation prospecting for uranium (seriously!) in the remote hills of eastern Utah, where my dad had grown up on the Utah-Colorado border. This entailed a long, long drive from Omaha; and it involved leaving me and my two sisters with my grandparents near Vernal, UT. My grandparents lived in a very small mining village outside of Vernal; and while they had electricity and various other modern conveniences, they also had an outhouse in the back yard. Trips to the “bathroom” in the middle of the night were quite an adventure. On the way back to Omaha at the end of this vacation trip (with no uranium ore having been found), we stopped for a couple of days of camping somewhere in the mountains of Colorado; you’ll see a couple of photos from that camping trip in this album.
8. There were no lizards in Omaha, and thus no opportunity for lizard-hunting with my slingshot—which had been a significant hobby in my previous homes in Riverside and Roswell. Indeed, there was almost nothing to shoot at … and I couldn’t find anyone with whom I could play (and hopefully win) marbles, to use as slingshot ammunition. But for reasons I never questioned or investigated (but about which I’m very curious now), there was a small vineyard in the field behind our house, and I was able to climb over the fence and retrieve dozens of small, hard, green grapes. They turned out to be excellent ammunition … but I never did find any lizards.
9. A few months before my parents left for New York, I told them about the latest craze sweeping the neighborhood: “English bikes,” with three speeds, thin tires, and hand-brakes. I desperately wanted one, but Dad said it was far too expensive for him to buy as a frivolous gift for me: at the time, English bikes had an outrageous price tag of $25. I was told that I would have to earn the money myself if I wanted one … and the going rate for young, scrawny kids who shoveled sidewalks, pulled weeds from gardens, and did babysitting chores, was 25 cents per hour. That works out to 100 hours of work … but I did it, over the course of the next few months, and when I got to New York, the first thing I did was buy my English bike.
10. Toward the end of my 7th-grade school year, everyone in my class was subjected to a vision test: we were lined up in alphabetical order, and one-by-one read off a series of letters that we could barely see on a large placard taped onto the classroom blackboard. Because my surname starts with a “Y,” I was usually near the end of the line … and by the time I got to the front, I had usually memorized the letters (because they never bothered to change them, from one student to the next) without even realizing it consciously. But on this particular occasion in 7th grade, for some reason, they decided to line us up in reverse alphabetical order … and I was the first in line. For the first time in my life, I realized that I could not see anything of the letters, and that I was woefully near-sighted. When I got to New York, my parents took me to an optometrist to get my first set of glasses (and, yes, all of the neighborhood kids did begin taunting me immediately: “Four eyes! Four eyes!”) … and I’ve worn glasses ever since.
Three years after I arrived in New York, the glasses saved my vision when a home-brewed mix of gunpowder and powdered aluminum blew up in my face in the school chemistry lab (where I had an after-school volunteer job as a “lab assistant”). I suffered 2nd-degree burns on my face from the explosion, but the glasses protected my eyes. That, however, is a different story for a different time.
Click here to read my first post about her and see the photos of us getting her from her horrible previous "home": www.flickr.com/photos/dogislove/1795544836/
And here's the MOST RECENT UPDATED THREAD!!!: www.flickr.com/photos/dogislove/2250902536/
An update regarding donations being made directly to the veterinarian have been added below!
We have met our minimum target of $3000, which is wonderful!!! That is the low end quote of Amelia's expected treatment, so we're realistically expecting to need much more than that. And if spinal surgery is deemed necessary in the end, this number could go WAYYY up. We're hoping that does not happen, but we'll have to cross that bridge IF we get there. Thank you all who have donated so far. Every penny is appreciated!!!
************************************************************************************
CONDENSED VERSION (this page was & still is getting LONG!!! - lol)
Amelia left NCARES in November to go to Great Dane rescue to be subsequently placed in the home waiting for her. Amelia's GI problems worsened again, and we felt it best to wait until she was healthy before her adoption. This just hasn't happened, unfortunately.
Amelia goes from extreme diarrhea where she has uncontrollable leakage, to being impacted...and she is currently having he bladder & bowels expressed several times per day, and every few days she returns to the vet to have it done more completely. Since battling a horrible UTI, and finding blood & yeast in her stool, a herniation was found in her colon, which may explain the reason she is not able to strain to have a bowel movement, and may also be putting pressure on her urethra, preventing her from urinating normally. Another possible factor in her not being able to relieve herself normally could be the severe fractures from physical abuse that were seen on her radiographs, which have resulted in severe spondylosis & degenerative joint disease in her spine as they have healed. Despite such abuse and neglect, she still remains sweet and loving and trusting of humans. Truly amazing and inspirational.
Gloria, the rescuer who has been taking such wonderful care of Amelia, called me in tears last week, sobbing as Amelia licked her face. We had discussed that if Amelia required very expensive vet care to fix her problem, we just wouldn't be able to help her financially and we would have to have her euthanized. Our worst fears were actually facing us as she sat there with Amelia at the vet's office and she was told of the various tests & surgeries that lay in Amelia's future to diagnose & treat her.
Here's a breakdown of the complex coordination of events that will be coming together over the course of Amelia's treatment so everyone can sort of know "the game plan".
**Amelia's regular vet, Westbury Veterinary Clinic (WVC), is still waiting for some pancreatic test results to come back (in about a week).
**There are two separate offices in the same clinic...Veterinary Surgical Care (VSC) for surgeries and Veterinary Medical Care (VMC) for internal medicine. These two offices are run as two separate business in the same office. They do not overlap their billing at all.
**VMC (Dr. Nicastro & Dr. Jameson) will be responsible for doing Amelia's MRI, Echocardiogram if needed, CAT Scan if needed, and any other skilled diagnostic tests that may be necessary. Amelia has been referred here for her MRI which will be scheduled on 1/30/08 with Dr. Nicastro. This is the soonest open appointment. (Amelia was taken to WVC on 1/21, for another thorough bowel & bladder expression - this will be done probably several times by WVC to keep her comfortable until her surgery can be scheduled.)
**VSC (Dr. Bianucci) will be responsible for repairing Amelia's herniated colon, and at the same time any biopsies if necessary based on the pancreatic bloodwork which will be back to VSC by then. This surgery will happen hopefully the day after her referral appt on 1/30 to VSC-Internal Medicine.
**Once she recovers from the hernia repair, since it is the most urgent, we'll get her referred again to VSC-Surgery, who will do Amelia's myelogram to evaluate the damage to her spine to see if spinal surgery is necessary to improve the spondylosis & degenerative joint disease. If so, they would also do the actual spinal surgery if deemed necessary once those tests are in.
Phew!!! Amelia could have her own planning committee!!! lol For now we have the vet listed as VSC-Surgical for donations b/c we KNOW she will be having her hernia repaired and that's where the most expensive procedures will be done. Luckily, a lot of donations have been sent via Fundable.com and PayPal and checks mailed to NCARES in her name, so those funds can be sent directly where they are needed when they are needed.
Amelia is only about 2 years old, so she has lots of life left to live, and she's spent all of it except a few months being beaten and starved. She deserves this chance that all of you are making possible.
So, send this to anyone & everyone you know...if everyone who heard about this donated $1, it would be a miracle.
Donations can be made in several ways:
1. Donate via PayPal on Amelia's "Fundables" page at:
www.fundable.com/groupactions/groupaction.2008-01-20.5964....
We set the goal lower than we really need b/c if the goal is not met, all pledges are lost. But the goal has been met, so we're good to go there!
2. Donate via PayPal to North Carolina Animal Resource Education Services by using the email address MATTNELIZABETH@aol.com (the invoice will tell you it is going to the NCARES organization), or mail to NCARES, 741 Old Marshall Hwy, Asheville, NC 28804. Just put "Amelia" in the subject line/message somewhere.
3. THE VET'S OFFICE WILL NOT ACCEPT CREDIT CARD PAYMENTS BY PHONE. TO DONATE DIRECTLY TO THE VET'S OFFICE, YOU MAY SEND A CHECK MADE OUT TO THEM (SEE BELOW)...BE SURE IT HAS YOUR PHONE NUMBER, ADDRESS, AND DRIVERS LICENSE # PRINTED/WRITTEN ON IT OR THEY WILL NOT ACCEPT IT.
MAIL THE CHECK TO NCARES AT 741 OLD MARSHALL HWY, ASHEVILLE, NC 28804. WE WILL TAKE ALL THE CHECKS WE RECIEVE WITH US TO PAY THE BILL ONCE THE ACCOUNT IS CLOSED OUT.
If any extra is recieved by check, we will either return your check to you, or you may give us permission to make it out to either NCARES or to one of the other two vets who will be treating Amelia. Remember, checks made out to NCARES are tax-deductible, while those made out to the vet are not.
Vet's info:
veterinarymedicalcare.com/Home.html
Veterinary Surgical Care
Dr. Henri Bianucci, DVM
Mt. Pleasant, SC
843-884-2441
Gosh, I soooo hate asking for money, but it is not for me, it is for this sweet girl, so I have to do it. Thank you in advance to anyone and everyone who can give any amount at all! And if you can't donate, send prayers, well-wishes, & healing thoughts :)
The back of this print is stamped "week ending Sep 10, 1955" -- but I think it was taken a week or two earlier than that, probably when cousins Sherry and Ricky were visiting Omaha before the beginning of their school year back in the Washington, DC area...
**********************************
Some of the photos in this album are “originals” from the year that my family spent in Omaha in 1955-56. But the final 10 color photos were taken nearly 40 years later, as part of some research that I was doing for a novel called Do-Overs, the beginning of which can be found here on my website
www.yourdon.com/personal/fiction/doovers/index.html
and the relevant chapter (concerning Omaha) can be found here:
www.yourdon.com/personal/fiction/doovers/chapters/ch9.html
Before I get into the details, let me make a strong request — if you’re looking at these photos, and if you are getting any enjoyment at all of this brief look at some mundane Americana from 60+ years ago: find a similar episode in your own life, and write it down. Gather the pictures, clean them up, and upload them somewhere on the Internet where they can be found. Trust me: there will come a day when the only person on the planet who actually experienced those events is you. Your own memories may be fuzzy and incomplete; but they will be invaluable to your friends and family members, and to many generations of your descendants.
So, what do I remember about the year that I spent in Omaha? Not much at the moment, though I’m sure more details will occur to me in the days to come — and I’ll add them to these notes, along with additional photos that I’m tweaking and editing now.
For now, here is a random list of things I remember:
1. I attended the last couple months of 6th grade, and all of 7th grade, in one school. My parents moved from Omaha to Long Island, NY in the spring of my 7th grade school year; but unlike previous years, they made arrangements for me to stay with a neighbor’s family, so that I could finish the school year before joining them in New York.
2. Our dog, Blackie, traveled with us from our previous home in Riverside, and was with us until my parents left Omaha for New York; at that point, they gave him to some other family. For some reason, this had almost no impact on me. It was a case of “out of sight, out of mind” — when Blackie was gone, I spent my final three months in Omaha without ever thinking about him again.
3. Most days, I rode my bike to school; but Omaha was the place where one of my sisters first started attending first grade — in the same school where I was attending 6th grade. I remember walking her to school along Bellevue Avenue on the first morning, which seemed to take forever: it was about a mile away.
4. As noted in a previous Flickr album about my year in Riverside, I was a year younger than my classmates; but I was tall for my age, and thus looked “normal” at a quick glance. But because I was a year younger, I was incredibly shy and awkward in the presence of girls. Omaha was certainly not “sin city,” but by 6th grade and 7th grade, puberty was beginning to hit, and the girls had grown to the point where they were occasionally interested in boys. The school tried to accommodate this social development by teaching us the square dance (and forbidding the playing of songs by Elvis Presley, whose music was just beginning to be heard on the radio). I was an awful dancer, and even more of a shy misfit than my classmates; I continue to be an awful dancer today.
5. My bike ride to school was uneventful most days; but the final part of the ride was a steep downhill stretch on Avery Road, lasting three or four blocks. My friends and I usually raced downhill as fast as we could; but one day, my front bicycle wheel began to wobble on the downhill run, and my bike drifted uncontrollably to the side of the road and then off into a ditch. I got banged up pretty badly.
6. But this accident was nothing compared to my worst mishap: a neighborhood friend and I enjoyed playing “cowboys and Indians” in the woods near his home (and his younger brother usually tagged along). I had a bow and a few arrows for our adventure, and we often shot at trees a hundred feet away. Unfortunately, the arrows often disappeared into the underbrush (because we were lousy shots) and were difficult to find. Consequently, one of us came up with the clever idea of standing behind the “target” tree, so that we could see where the randomly-shot arrows landed. Through a series of miscommunications, I poked my head out from behind the tree just as my friend shot one of the arrows … and it skipped off the side of the tree and into my face, impaling itself into my cheek bone about an inch below my eye. An inch higher, and I would not be typing these words … (meanwhile, my friend's younger brother grew up to be an officer in the U.S. Air Force, and he tracked me down on the Internet, decades later).
7. In the summer of 1956, my parents decided to spend their summer vacation prospecting for uranium (seriously!) in the remote hills of eastern Utah, where my dad had grown up on the Utah-Colorado border. This entailed a long, long drive from Omaha; and it involved leaving me and my two sisters with my grandparents near Vernal, UT. My grandparents lived in a very small mining village outside of Vernal; and while they had electricity and various other modern conveniences, they also had an outhouse in the back yard. Trips to the “bathroom” in the middle of the night were quite an adventure. On the way back to Omaha at the end of this vacation trip (with no uranium ore having been found), we stopped for a couple of days of camping somewhere in the mountains of Colorado; you’ll see a couple of photos from that camping trip in this album.
8. There were no lizards in Omaha, and thus no opportunity for lizard-hunting with my slingshot—which had been a significant hobby in my previous homes in Riverside and Roswell. Indeed, there was almost nothing to shoot at … and I couldn’t find anyone with whom I could play (and hopefully win) marbles, to use as slingshot ammunition. But for reasons I never questioned or investigated (but about which I’m very curious now), there was a small vineyard in the field behind our house, and I was able to climb over the fence and retrieve dozens of small, hard, green grapes. They turned out to be excellent ammunition … but I never did find any lizards.
9. A few months before my parents left for New York, I told them about the latest craze sweeping the neighborhood: “English bikes,” with three speeds, thin tires, and hand-brakes. I desperately wanted one, but Dad said it was far too expensive for him to buy as a frivolous gift for me: at the time, English bikes had an outrageous price tag of $25. I was told that I would have to earn the money myself if I wanted one … and the going rate for young, scrawny kids who shoveled sidewalks, pulled weeds from gardens, and did babysitting chores, was 25 cents per hour. That works out to 100 hours of work … but I did it, over the course of the next few months, and when I got to New York, the first thing I did was buy my English bike.
10. Toward the end of my 7th-grade school year, everyone in my class was subjected to a vision test: we were lined up in alphabetical order, and one-by-one read off a series of letters that we could barely see on a large placard taped onto the classroom blackboard. Because my surname starts with a “Y,” I was usually near the end of the line … and by the time I got to the front, I had usually memorized the letters (because they never bothered to change them, from one student to the next) without even realizing it consciously. But on this particular occasion in 7th grade, for some reason, they decided to line us up in reverse alphabetical order … and I was the first in line. For the first time in my life, I realized that I could not see anything of the letters, and that I was woefully near-sighted.
11. When I got to New York, my parents took me to an optometrist to get my first set of glasses (and, yes, all of the neighborhood kids did begin taunting me immediately: “Four eyes! Four eyes!”) … and I’ve worn glasses ever since.
Three years after I arrived in New York, the glasses saved my vision when a home-brewed mix of gunpowder and powdered aluminum blew up in my face in the school chemistry lab (where I had an after-school volunteer job as a “lab assistant”). I suffered 2nd-degree burns on my face from the explosion, but the glasses protected my eyes. That, however, is a different story for a different time.
From 'Our Experts', at the 'Silverfish Safari Park & Petting Zoo'.
Madge ('They' and 'Their') is also a fine painter, specialising in large oil paintings of 'The Ham Fisted' (see below). It should be noted that Madge is 'height diverse' and can change their vertical measurement at will, on a whim, or sometimes even uncontrollably, when they really let it rip.
All our scientific instruments are calibrated to accommodate their shifting height fluctuations.
We pride ourselves on our size tolerance policy, and "no size considered to be too large or too small" is our fledgling conglomerate's resounding leitmotif.
Sitting on my deck today I watched this thunderhead grow with uncontrollable speed. An impressive power of what a mix of water, heat and wind can do.
I remember, when in my 20s, then an avid rock climber, when such a cloud buildup caused serious anxiety. Being in the process of scaling a mountain face and seeing a thunderstorm coming was not a good sign. More than once I was stuck on a cliff face while lightning, thunder and rain made my life miserable and occasionally dangerous.
See the younger me: www.flickr.com/photos/dragonflyhunter/2799820544/in/album...
Those days are long past. I watched this thunderhead rise skyward as if Thor himself was coming. Its belly eventually flattened and grew dark forming an anvil shaped cloud that started pushing lightning and rain groundward. The storm cloud passed south of my house. All I got was a couple drops of rain from it. I took a few steps to safely take shelter in the house before I got wet.
Boulder, Colorado, VERY Cold and windy, shaking uncontrollably so used high shutter speed, sky kept getting better.
A large man clad in a military outfit stands in an empty room, accompanied by an armed soldier. He taps his foot impatiently and pulls back his sleeve, revealing a watch.
"That freak was supposed to be here 6 minutes ago."
The General hears a sudden ZZZzzZZT noise behind him, and a cool gust of air from behind gives him goose bumps.
"I find it fascinating what people say in ones absence. I can't blame them for thinking it, but words hurt, y'know."
The voice makes the general nervous, but he keeps his posture.
"Ahh, the man himself, Clockwork: The King of Time...is late."
He mocks.
"I think of myself as more of a /master/ of time. I have controlled the uncontrollable man-made illusion known as time. We invented the id---
"Fine, Clockwork: Master of Time. I've heard of your constant lectures, and I'm going to tell you right now, cut the crap, and cut to the chase."
The General cuts in. He is intimated, possibly even frightened, but can show no sign of it.
"Ohoho, your reputation serves you right General. Down to business then, shall we?"
"Yes, let's get on with it then."
Clockwork opens his hand to show a small mechanical device. The General's eyes widen, and his mouth began to gape in awe.
"The Incelifier: it speeds the cells of the user to a vibrate, allowing them to move at speeds previously unheard of! So it appears as though they move so fast the naked eye sees nothing but a blur."
The General could hold his smile in no more. Like a child on Christmas, his face lit up with excitement.
"I don't even want to know how you managed to get your hands on this."
"Well, I'll tell you anyways, I made it! It was my life's work, and there is only two in existence. I plan on keeping the other one, the Decelifier. It slows the particles of all things in the general area, other than the user of course." CW explained as he handed it to the General.
"Magnificent."
The General hardly got the word out. He motioned his guard forward, who he'd almost forgot existed. The soldier stepped forward and handed the dealer a map.
"I'll have my men drop a brief case here at exactly 0200 hours tomorrow night, you'll find every penny and nothing less. It's been a pleasure doing business with you."
"Oh no no no, the pleasure was all mine."
Clockwork fondled his favored crowbar behind his back excitedly.
The General extended his hand to the deranged genius. Clockwork smiled wide under his mask and grabbed it. He gave him a quick, limp, shake. The General's smile turned to a disgusted look at the surprisingly weak farewell, as he is met by a gush of wind. With Clockwork leaving the same way he had came; mysterious and disturbing.
-----------------------------------------------------
The General sighed, and spun around. He pulled out a pistol and shot the guard, turning his head at an angle as the body slumped to the floor. He pulled out a To-Do-List and wrote down "Clean up mess" under all of the other unfathomable deeds and acts. He began to whistle a cryptic toon as he folded the paper and put it in his pocket. He then walked down the stairs, and ducked under the boarded door. Hopping in his Jeep the General drove off, his figure eventually disappearing into the night.
I had intended to photograph the stars tonight but when the temp dropped to minus 5 for some reason i had this uncontrollable urge to get fish and chips so off i went. people say i should take photography more seriously i cant think what they mean
I shot this on Saturday evening, after Scotch came home from his Friday morning throat surgery on his almost completely paralyzed larynx. He's going to have to tolerate his portrait being taken a bit longer now, though I'm fairly certain he won't have any objections.
He's had health issues since arriving in Los Angeles at the very end of December and while some were just symptoms of aging, the most prominent issue was Laryngeal Paralysis which ultimately seemed to be what would cut his long life short. It was manageable last Fall when it first came up and the cool weather suppressed a lot of the associated problems. The move here began in mid december and was in part a chance photograph my way across the country but also to take a seasoned canine roadtripper on the ultimate 4,000+ mile late in life car ride and eventually his first chance to see the ocean.
Out here, the condition began to worsen pretty quickly, even with the cooler, breezy winter conditions and once the temperatures began to rise again, I started to worry he wouldn't survive the summer. He stayed in most of the spring and summer in the air conditioning and his activities became very limited, despite his best efforts to continue doing the things he loved. Trip after trip to the vet for things including getting a urinary tract infection, contracting ecoli, and losing his hearing caused him to be terrified of the car since that seemed to be the only time he was forced to go anywhere. When he finally hit 13 at the end of October, I was extremely relieved because I thought maybe he'd be able to stick around through the fall and winter, however his conditions worsened dramatically after, with his terribly labored breathing switching to silent, very strained gasps for air. Even 5 minutes out and back in for the bathroom would cause either 45 minutes of uncontrollable panting or this fish out of water type gasping until he'd wear himself out enough to fall asleep.
About a week ago, I realized that he was dying and even though he was happy, his body wouldn't allow him to function properly. I tried everything I could to keep him calm and comfortable, while figuring out how to deal with all this myself. When it finally seemed like he may only have a few days left, I began to panic and decided the only chance he had would be to see if the surgery was still an option. When I called Thursday morning, they asked if a visit on Monday would work and I told them I didn't think he'd survive until then so he went in first thing Friday. If he was still a candidate for the surgery, he would have it later that morning and sure enough, I got the call around noon that the surgery was a success and "textbook" and that he'd be ready to come home with a new lease on life after this last minute reprieve of sorts.
I've never had to deal with a senior dog before Scotch entered that phase of life and for the first 3 years of his life, thinking he'd make it to old age seemed entirely unlikely as he dealt with numerous issues including seizures, extreme nervousness and anxiety and the inability to productively socialize with other dogs as a result. As he got older and healthier, I still sort of expected those seizures to return or some byproduct of those conditions to affect his health but overall he stayed very healthy. However, this past week, I finally realized I would have to make a decision very soon on whether or not his suffering was too much for him to endure.
I'm sure if you've read my descriptions about him over the last year or so, it may seem like I'm obsessed with him or too emotional about his outlook and to some degree that's true but really, he's more than just a dog to me. He represents a time period in my life that I've tried to hold onto for a long time. After my baseball career ended and I struggled to figure out my purpose, Scotch entered my life during a time when life was starting to look up. Over the last 13 years, nearly every aspect from that segment of my life have slowly disappeared: friendships ended, relationships came and went, all my belongings and reminders got lost or simply fell apart from age and he somehow became the very last link I had to all that. Through all the good times and bad, the one constant has been Scotch and I appreciate that more each day.
So anyway, extremely relieved Scotch is still around and I imagine as a result, the descriptions with his portraits will slowly become much more positive and optimistic. It sort of started to feel like I was writing an obituary with each posted portrait and sometimes I'd end up deleting the shot since what I wrote up was so depressing to read. I don't know how much time he will ultimately have but hopefully he can live out the rest of his life without much pain and discomfort and enjoy each day to the fullest :)
SCOTCH
Age 13
Hollywood, California
November 5th, 2016
SETTINGS
Canon T4i
EF40mm f/2.8 STM
ISO 200
f/2.8
1/13th second
I can't leave. If this gem has some importance, this could be my key back home.
What will I come back as? I have no idea, but I can't fear the future when my present is in dire need of help.
How does the gem work though? I can't just swing it at Ron and hope it does something.
Ron: "So, you've found the gem."
I quickly turn to where I assume his voice came from, the gem pointed ahead of myself.
Ron: "And you don't know how to use it."
Ron points his gun at me but I begin to scramble away. He's right, I have absolutely no idea how to use this and he has the upper hand unless I find something to defend myself.
Ron: "Running is smart, but your mind is failing with everyone else in here dead. Wasting more time gives me more power you see?"
I trip and fall to the floor; I try to get up but cannot. It's almost like I've gone numb.
Ron quickly gets to me while I'm on the floor, motionless.
Ron: "I've really played with your mind here, Victor. This is your body and you've let your own fear and disgust take control?"
I try moving my arm but it is of no use.
Victor "Do it. Kill me."
Ron: "And waste the perfect time to make you suffer?"
I begin to shake uncontrollably, my mind is almost rebooted, all of my fears and mistakes flash before me. I begin to sweat as I try and take my mind off of them but I can't.
Ron: "Afraid of Orr? That old man? He's as useless as you."
He's right. I'm afraid of a lot of things. What am I to do? I can't simply deny what is blatantly obvious to myself.
Ron: "Afraid of not being smart? To impress who? Your father who you also hate for no reason? Do you hate him because you know you're inferior, or is it because you think he hates you? Oh wait, I am you, I know it's both. It must hurt having no confidence in yourself. Luckily, I feed off of it."
A tear rolls down my cheek and onto the floor.
Ron: "Now you're crying? This really was easy. You were just made into a cyborg, y'know. I don't know why Silas kept your brain in here but I thank him. You're unfortunately not going to see me ruin your life, but maybe you will. There are ways around death in here, not that you'll be smart enough to find them."
Ron's right. I am afraid, I'm also afraid of myself. I begin to remember, I begin to remember something profound; an accomplishment. I suddenly stop shaking, I stop remembering, and my arms feel free.
I begin to think about more; I need to overpower whatever is holding me down. I begin to remember touchdowns, parties with my friends, pre-game rituals with my friends, until I reach a soft spot in my mind. My family. Though our situation was never the best, I found comfort in what little I remember of us all being together.
I find the strength. I quickly turn to Ron and extend my arm ahead of me, pointing the gem as precisely as I can. Nothing happens as Ron bursts out in laughter.
Ron: "I could plant one insignificant thing in your mind and make it significant to give you some sort of hope."
Ron grabs me as I go numb again.
Ron: "You want a view? Your dad had a view when I killed him. Maybe I can land you two near one another."
Ron pulls me towards the bridge in the middle of STAR Labs laughing.
Ron: "I hate making an event of this but your humiliation makes my day. Or in this case, my whole life."
He places me on the side of the railing. I look to the ground to see bodies strewn throughout the grounds.
Ron: "Want to play a game of 'I Spy'?"
Victor: "Just... kill me."
Ron grabs the back of my skull and tilts it down to the ground again.
Ron: "I said, we're playing a game! I spy, someone in a blue suit, dark brown pants and red blood all over."
Victor: "Stop."
Ron: "You see your father? You see what you will look like in a few seconds?"
Ron releases his grip from my head and begins to laugh again.
Ron: "I am so close but I just can't kill you. So. Close."
My sadness turns into rage; He's taunted me more than enough. That's when I remember, in the story with the Re-Gou Ruby. This is the Re-Gou Ruby. The pharaoh got power from it due to being vengeful.
I clench my fist as the Re-Gou begins to glow. My right arm turns silver, as I raise it, a blue bolt blasts into the bridge. I look to see Ron hold onto the bridge as his arm begins to vanish. He screams in pain as his eye begins to glow too.
Ron: "Oh god please no, I don't want to die, I don't want to die! Help me!"
I consider helping him, as he is myself, though the worst version of myself.
Ron: "Help me, Victor! Everything hurts! Please oh god!"
I fall to my knees as I begin to cry again. I wanted out but Ron's in pain, but who knows the consequences if I save him this time?
Ron: "I'm not ready to go. Please... Please!"
Ron begins to cry as I get to my feet. I inch forward trying to steady my arm.
Victor: "Ron, I'm sorry bu-"
Ron chokes as he pleas for his life.
Ron: "Don't kill me-please..."
He begins to sob as I inch forward.
Ron: "D-do it. I understand. Just tell mom one thing for me."
I can't handle it. This isn't real. He would've killed me with no hesitation. But he didn't. In the midst of my thoughts, the cannon fires right through Ron's head and a side of the bridge.
His decapitated body falls; its slow descent makes me fall to my knees again. I didn't kill him. I didn't. I begin to shake uncontrollably as I look over the edge. There, Ron is on the ground residing right next to my father. I look away as I feel nothing but pain, I look to the moon as I curl up in a ball. The light emitted from the moon grows stronger until I am almost blinded by it.
==================================================
*beep*
*beep-beep*
*beep-beep-beep*
Silas: "Victor? Victor! I have a pulse!"
So this is victory, or maybe even natural selection? This world is where just surviving means taking the hardest hits, what sacrifices must we make to just survive? A thought lingers in the back of my mind that maybe I shouldn't have been so lucky to be alive now, or maybe I didn't want to be...
Today's story and sketch "by me", you may recall the story awhile back of the uninhabited hard water Planet Z-D20 discovered by Rescue Randy, he discovered it when it broke his fall, while traveling at four thousand miles per hour, just after almost being sucked into a black hole when his experimental (DJNS), Dimension Jumper Navigation System, sent his Galaxy Glider somewhere midway through the Tachyon Two, faster than light wormhole, hurling through the Cosmos into the direction of a very large nasty black hole, how nasty no one knows, and lucky for Rescue Randy the most interesting living tissue crash test dummy in the Cosmos. He avoided the black hole only because of his lighting fast reflexes, he slammed the gliders controls into full (PMS), Plasma Matter Splatter, reversing the gliders trajectory away from the gaping black hole, known as the really big sucker near the Octane Star Cluster. But unfortunately without power and hurling uncontrollably until it could strike something solid like the Planet Z-D20, which it did, but if you have been following this Blog, you know he was saved by a school of intelligent sharks that live on Z-D20. Today I have traveled through the mancave Stargate in the 56 F-100, to search for Randy, he left the mancave a week ago to visit his shark friends on Z-D20, he took the Galaxy Skiff you see on the beach he loaded with twelve cases of Anchovy Moon Pies, and has been missing eversense. Above you see JB with two of his gal pals who are helping in the search for Randy, until next time taa ta the Rod Blog.
chaie time on my studio's roof top !
sorry folks for not being able to drop by your streams, I'm stuck with uncontrollable amount of work which pretty much seems to have become part of me till June !
thank you Allah jii for the weekends ....... my recharging source !
E X P L O R E D
The house where we all lived in Omaha, from 1955 until the spring of 1956
**********************************
Some of the photos in this album are “originals” from the year that my family spent in Omaha in 1955-56. But the final 10 color photos were taken nearly 40 years later, as part of some research that I was doing for a novel called Do-Overs, the beginning of which can be found here on my website
www.yourdon.com/personal/fiction/doovers/index.html
and the relevant chapter (concerning Omaha) can be found here:
www.yourdon.com/personal/fiction/doovers/chapters/ch9.html
Before I get into the details, let me make a strong request — if you’re looking at these photos, and if you are getting any enjoyment at all of this brief look at some mundane Americana from 60+ years ago: find a similar episode in your own life, and write it down. Gather the pictures, clean them up, and upload them somewhere on the Internet where they can be found. Trust me: there will come a day when the only person on the planet who actually experienced those events is you. Your own memories may be fuzzy and incomplete; but they will be invaluable to your friends and family members, and to many generations of your descendants.
So, what do I remember about the year that I spent in Omaha? Not much at the moment, though I’m sure more details will occur to me in the days to come — and I’ll add them to these notes, along with additional photos that I’m tweaking and editing now.
For now, here is a random list of things I remember:
1. I attended the last couple months of 6th grade, and all of 7th grade, in one school. My parents moved from Omaha to Long Island, NY in the spring of my 7th grade school year; but unlike previous years, they made arrangements for me to stay with a neighbor’s family, so that I could finish the school year before joining them in New York.
2. Our dog, Blackie, traveled with us from our previous home in Riverside, and was with us until my parents left Omaha for New York; at that point, they gave him to some other family. For some reason, this had almost no impact on me. It was a case of “out of sight, out of mind” — when Blackie was gone, I spent my final three months in Omaha without ever thinking about him again.
3. Most days, I rode my bike to school; but Omaha was the place where one of my sisters first started attending first grade — in the same school where I was attending 6th grade. I remember walking her to school along Bellevue Avenue on the first morning, which seemed to take forever: it was about a mile away.
4. As noted in a previous Flickr album about my year in Riverside, I was a year younger than my classmates; but I was tall for my age, and thus looked “normal” at a quick glance. But because I was a year younger, I was incredibly shy and awkward in the presence of girls. Omaha was certainly not “sin city,” but by 6th grade and 7th grade, puberty was beginning to hit, and the girls had grown to the point where they were occasionally interested in boys. The school tried to accommodate this social development by teaching us the square dance (and forbidding the playing of songs by Elvis Presley, whose music was just beginning to be heard on the radio). I was an awful dancer, and even more of a shy misfit than my classmates; I continue to be an awful dancer today.
5. My bike ride to school was uneventful most days; but the final part of the ride was a steep downhill stretch on Avery Road, lasting three or four blocks. My friends and I usually raced downhill as fast as we could; but one day, my front bicycle wheel began to wobble on the downhill run, and my bike drifted uncontrollably to the side of the road and then off into a ditch. I got banged up pretty badly.
6. But this accident was nothing compared to my worst mishap: a neighborhood friend and I enjoyed playing “cowboys and Indians” in the woods near his home (and his younger brother usually tagged along). I had a bow and a few arrows for our adventure, and we often shot at trees a hundred feet away. Unfortunately, the arrows often disappeared into the underbrush (because we were lousy shots) and were difficult to find. Consequently, one of us came up with the clever idea of standing behind the “target” tree, so that we could see where the randomly-shot arrows landed. Through a series of miscommunications, I poked my head out from behind the tree just as my friend shot one of the arrows … and it skipped off the side of the tree and into my face, impaling itself into my cheek bone about an inch below my eye. An inch higher, and I would not be typing these words … (meanwhile, my friend's younger brother grew up to be an officer in the U.S. Air Force, and he tracked me down on the Internet, decades later).
7. In the summer of 1956, my parents decided to spend their summer vacation prospecting for uranium (seriously!) in the remote hills of eastern Utah, where my dad had grown up on the Utah-Colorado border. This entailed a long, long drive from Omaha; and it involved leaving me and my two sisters with my grandparents near Vernal, UT. My grandparents lived in a very small mining village outside of Vernal; and while they had electricity and various other modern conveniences, they also had an outhouse in the back yard. Trips to the “bathroom” in the middle of the night were quite an adventure. On the way back to Omaha at the end of this vacation trip (with no uranium ore having been found), we stopped for a couple of days of camping somewhere in the mountains of Colorado; you’ll see a couple of photos from that camping trip in this album.
8. There were no lizards in Omaha, and thus no opportunity for lizard-hunting with my slingshot—which had been a significant hobby in my previous homes in Riverside and Roswell. Indeed, there was almost nothing to shoot at … and I couldn’t find anyone with whom I could play (and hopefully win) marbles, to use as slingshot ammunition. But for reasons I never questioned or investigated (but about which I’m very curious now), there was a small vineyard in the field behind our house, and I was able to climb over the fence and retrieve dozens of small, hard, green grapes. They turned out to be excellent ammunition … but I never did find any lizards.
9. A few months before my parents left for New York, I told them about the latest craze sweeping the neighborhood: “English bikes,” with three speeds, thin tires, and hand-brakes. I desperately wanted one, but Dad said it was far too expensive for him to buy as a frivolous gift for me: at the time, English bikes had an outrageous price tag of $25. I was told that I would have to earn the money myself if I wanted one … and the going rate for young, scrawny kids who shoveled sidewalks, pulled weeds from gardens, and did babysitting chores, was 25 cents per hour. That works out to 100 hours of work … but I did it, over the course of the next few months, and when I got to New York, the first thing I did was buy my English bike.
10. Toward the end of my 7th-grade school year, everyone in my class was subjected to a vision test: we were lined up in alphabetical order, and one-by-one read off a series of letters that we could barely see on a large placard taped onto the classroom blackboard. Because my surname starts with a “Y,” I was usually near the end of the line … and by the time I got to the front, I had usually memorized the letters (because they never bothered to change them, from one student to the next) without even realizing it consciously. But on this particular occasion in 7th grade, for some reason, they decided to line us up in reverse alphabetical order … and I was the first in line. For the first time in my life, I realized that I could not see anything of the letters, and that I was woefully near-sighted.
11. When I got to New York, my parents took me to an optometrist to get my first set of glasses (and, yes, all of the neighborhood kids did begin taunting me immediately: “Four eyes! Four eyes!”) … and I’ve worn glasses ever since.
Three years after I arrived in New York, the glasses saved my vision when a home-brewed mix of gunpowder and powdered aluminum blew up in my face in the school chemistry lab (where I had an after-school volunteer job as a “lab assistant”). I suffered 2nd-degree burns on my face from the explosion, but the glasses protected my eyes. That, however, is a different story for a different time.
This was taken in the spring of 1956, after my parents had moved back to New York, and left me behind in Omaha to finish the school year. I stayed with a family down the street from us; this kid (Rudy Duda) was a classmate of mine in school.
**********************************
Some of the photos in this album are “originals” from the year that my family spent in Omaha in 1955-56. But the final 10 color photos were taken nearly 40 years later, as part of some research that I was doing for a novel called Do-Overs, the beginning of which can be found here on my website
www.yourdon.com/personal/fiction/doovers/index.html
and the relevant chapter (concerning Omaha) can be found here:
www.yourdon.com/personal/fiction/doovers/chapters/ch9.html
Before I get into the details, let me make a strong request — if you’re looking at these photos, and if you are getting any enjoyment at all of this brief look at some mundane Americana from 60+ years ago: find a similar episode in your own life, and write it down. Gather the pictures, clean them up, and upload them somewhere on the Internet where they can be found. Trust me: there will come a day when the only person on the planet who actually experienced those events is you. Your own memories may be fuzzy and incomplete; but they will be invaluable to your friends and family members, and to many generations of your descendants.
So, what do I remember about the year that I spent in Omaha? Not much at the moment, though I’m sure more details will occur to me in the days to come — and I’ll add them to these notes, along with additional photos that I’m tweaking and editing now.
For now, here is a random list of things I remember:
1. I attended the last couple months of 6th grade, and all of 7th grade, in one school. My parents moved from Omaha to Long Island, NY in the spring of my 7th grade school year; but unlike previous years, they made arrangements for me to stay with a neighbor’s family, so that I could finish the school year before joining them in New York.
2. Our dog, Blackie, traveled with us from our previous home in Riverside, and was with us until my parents left Omaha for New York; at that point, they gave him to some other family. For some reason, this had almost no impact on me. It was a case of “out of sight, out of mind” — when Blackie was gone, I spent my final three months in Omaha without ever thinking about him again.
3. Most days, I rode my bike to school; but Omaha was the place where one of my sisters first started attending first grade — in the same school where I was attending 6th grade. I remember walking her to school along Bellevue Avenue on the first morning, which seemed to take forever: it was about a mile away.
4. As noted in a previous Flickr album about my year in Riverside, I was a year younger than my classmates; but I was tall for my age, and thus looked “normal” at a quick glance. But because I was a year younger, I was incredibly shy and awkward in the presence of girls. Omaha was certainly not “sin city,” but by 6th grade and 7th grade, puberty was beginning to hit, and the girls had grown to the point where they were occasionally interested in boys. The school tried to accommodate this social development by teaching us the square dance (and forbidding the playing of songs by Elvis Presley, whose music was just beginning to be heard on the radio). I was an awful dancer, and even more of a shy misfit than my classmates; I continue to be an awful dancer today.
5. My bike ride to school was uneventful most days; but the final part of the ride was a steep downhill stretch on Avery Road, lasting three or four blocks. My friends and I usually raced downhill as fast as we could; but one day, my front bicycle wheel began to wobble on the downhill run, and my bike drifted uncontrollably to the side of the road and then off into a ditch. I got banged up pretty badly.
6. But this accident was nothing compared to my worst mishap: a neighborhood friend and I enjoyed playing “cowboys and Indians” in the woods near his home (and his younger brother usually tagged along). I had a bow and a few arrows for our adventure, and we often shot at trees a hundred feet away. Unfortunately, the arrows often disappeared into the underbrush (because we were lousy shots) and were difficult to find. Consequently, one of us came up with the clever idea of standing behind the “target” tree, so that we could see where the randomly-shot arrows landed. Through a series of miscommunications, I poked my head out from behind the tree just as my friend shot one of the arrows … and it skipped off the side of the tree and into my face, impaling itself into my cheek bone about an inch below my eye. An inch higher, and I would not be typing these words … (meanwhile, my friend's younger brother grew up to be an officer in the U.S. Air Force, and he tracked me down on the Internet, decades later).
7. In the summer of 1956, my parents decided to spend their summer vacation prospecting for uranium (seriously!) in the remote hills of eastern Utah, where my dad had grown up on the Utah-Colorado border. This entailed a long, long drive from Omaha; and it involved leaving me and my two sisters with my grandparents near Vernal, UT. My grandparents lived in a very small mining village outside of Vernal; and while they had electricity and various other modern conveniences, they also had an outhouse in the back yard. Trips to the “bathroom” in the middle of the night were quite an adventure. On the way back to Omaha at the end of this vacation trip (with no uranium ore having been found), we stopped for a couple of days of camping somewhere in the mountains of Colorado; you’ll see a couple of photos from that camping trip in this album.
8. There were no lizards in Omaha, and thus no opportunity for lizard-hunting with my slingshot—which had been a significant hobby in my previous homes in Riverside and Roswell. Indeed, there was almost nothing to shoot at … and I couldn’t find anyone with whom I could play (and hopefully win) marbles, to use as slingshot ammunition. But for reasons I never questioned or investigated (but about which I’m very curious now), there was a small vineyard in the field behind our house, and I was able to climb over the fence and retrieve dozens of small, hard, green grapes. They turned out to be excellent ammunition … but I never did find any lizards.
9. A few months before my parents left for New York, I told them about the latest craze sweeping the neighborhood: “English bikes,” with three speeds, thin tires, and hand-brakes. I desperately wanted one, but Dad said it was far too expensive for him to buy as a frivolous gift for me: at the time, English bikes had an outrageous price tag of $25. I was told that I would have to earn the money myself if I wanted one … and the going rate for young, scrawny kids who shoveled sidewalks, pulled weeds from gardens, and did babysitting chores, was 25 cents per hour. That works out to 100 hours of work … but I did it, over the course of the next few months, and when I got to New York, the first thing I did was buy my English bike.
10. Toward the end of my 7th-grade school year, everyone in my class was subjected to a vision test: we were lined up in alphabetical order, and one-by-one read off a series of letters that we could barely see on a large placard taped onto the classroom blackboard. Because my surname starts with a “Y,” I was usually near the end of the line … and by the time I got to the front, I had usually memorized the letters (because they never bothered to change them, from one student to the next) without even realizing it consciously. But on this particular occasion in 7th grade, for some reason, they decided to line us up in reverse alphabetical order … and I was the first in line. For the first time in my life, I realized that I could not see anything of the letters, and that I was woefully near-sighted.
11. When I got to New York, my parents took me to an optometrist to get my first set of glasses (and, yes, all of the neighborhood kids did begin taunting me immediately: “Four eyes! Four eyes!”) … and I’ve worn glasses ever since.
Three years after I arrived in New York, the glasses saved my vision when a home-brewed mix of gunpowder and powdered aluminum blew up in my face in the school chemistry lab (where I had an after-school volunteer job as a “lab assistant”). I suffered 2nd-degree burns on my face from the explosion, but the glasses protected my eyes. That, however, is a different story for a different time.
Mirit Ben-Nun’s art exists within and beyond reality. She moves away from reality with aggressive and dense colorfulness which reveals an inner testimony of a threatened existence of women. The lines, points and shapes do not reproduce facts but emphasize the special charge of emotional coping.
Mirit Ben-Nun shows a rebellious spirit and tries to reach out to things not through wholeness but via searching for their expression and manifestation.
She explores personal identity and through it tries to define a complementary art, thereby illustrating the world and the nature of human culture. She focuses on the expressive dimension because of the exposure afforded by the uncontrollable moment that so much affects life in a rapidly changing global world.
The discourse between the inner world and the emerging reality is hyperactive and generates in Ben - Nun an endless sequence of works.
From the depths of feelings, dreams, anxieties and expressions arise rigid and exciting meanings of existence whose essence expresses adaptation difficulties and restlessness.
Dora Woda
What wouldn't I give to have a Moroccon in his 'jilaba', looking like one of those Carthusian monks in the mountains of Chartreuse France, trundling up that street, an old woman in her head scarf coming up her walking stick firmly clenched . . . what wouldn't I give to have a mother walking there, on the left, with a couple of almost uncontrollable young children and her shopping . . .
That would have been a picture with a story. This is merely a chronicle of my travels . . .
. . . and that is the tragedy of my 28 day trip to Morocco
. . . I am distraught :(
_35A0974
Mirit Ben-Nun’s art exists within and beyond reality. She moves away from reality with aggressive and dense colorfulness which reveals an inner testimony of a threatened existence of women. The lines, points and shapes do not reproduce facts but emphasize the special charge of emotional coping.
Mirit Ben-Nun shows a rebellious spirit and tries to reach out to things not through wholeness but via searching for their expression and manifestation.
She explores personal identity and through it tries to define a complementary art, thereby illustrating the world and the nature of human culture. She focuses on the expressive dimension because of the exposure afforded by the uncontrollable moment that so much affects life in a rapidly changing global world.
The discourse between the inner world and the emerging reality is hyperactive and generates in Ben - Nun an endless sequence of works.
From the depths of feelings, dreams, anxieties and expressions arise rigid and exciting meanings of existence whose essence expresses adaptation difficulties and restlessness.
Dora Woda