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This print has "Sep 55" stamped on the front, but it was taken during a Colorado camping trip, on the way back from Utah in the summer of 1955. I'm guessing it was about the third week in August.
(I have no idea why I have a bandage on my lower face. A cut? I was too young for acne at that point :) )
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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.
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“If your Majesty would condescend to state your case,” he remarked, “I should be better able to advise you.” The man sprang from his chair and paced up and down the room in uncontrollable agitation. Then, with a gesture of desperation, he tore the mask from his face and hurled it upon the ground. “You are right,” he cried; “I am the King. Why should I attempt to conceal it?” “Why, indeed?” murmured Holmes. “Your Majesty had not spoken before I was aware that I was addressing Wilhelm Gottsreich Sigismond von Ormstein, Grand Duke of Cassel-Felstein, and hereditary King of Bohemia.”
- A Scandal in Bohemia
This is a collaboration between saabfan and me
© 2015 - saabfan2013 - Gabriele Zannotti
1800-1900
In September 1835, JH Vivian, the local MP, liased with the Institution for the provision of a lifeboat in Mumbles. This lifeboat was controlled and funded by Swansea Harbour Trustees. It was taken over and funded by the Institution in 1863. Lifeboats have always been stationed at Mumbles but the station was known as Swansea until 1904. The branch continued to be called Swansea, Mumbles and Port Eynon until 1910.
S. S. SAMTAMPA
In the early days the lifeboat was kept close to the cliffs in Mumbles and was launched and re-housed along a stone slipway, which still exists today.
After the First World War, a boathouse with slipway was erected alongside Mumbles pier to make the launching of the lifeboat a more simple process. For 4 years 1814 – 1818 the wooden slipway (which is used today) had no boathouse, merely the lifeboat retained at the top of the slip ready for launch.
On 27 January 1883 four of her crew lost their lives when the lifeboat whilst on service got thrown violently against the side of the German barque Admiral Prinz Adalbert. The coxswain Jenkin Jenkins lost two of his sons who were on board that day.
It was 1866 before The Mumbles had a permanent lifeboat station although moves to found one began in 1832 when Silvanus Padley, son of the clerk of the Swansea Harbour Trustees, led a rescue of the crew of the Ilfracombe Packet which went aground near the harbour entrance. The trustees decided to obtain plans and costs for a lifeboat which could be used in similar circumstances.
It wasn't until 1835 when the MP for Swansea, John H. Vivian, approached the Lifeboat Institution to supply a lifeboat which would be maintained by the Harbour Trust, but placed at The Mumbles. On the 17th of October a 26 foot, six oared lifeboat was ordered from Taylor of Blackwall and would have been delivered soon after its completion in December 1835.
The boat was initially kept at The Mumbles but saw no service, then in the summer of 1841 she was repaired and moved to Swansea and then converted to pull 12 oars in 1850. In 1855 she was deemed to be unserviceable "she has never been thought a good boat for which reason the Trustees have refused to spend much money on her". At this time the Trustees ordered a new boat to be built by Forrestt & Co of Limehouse, she carried a crew of thirteen pulling ten oars. This boat made only one known service to the brig Success which had stranded in gales on Neath Bar.
Although the lifeboats had made only one rescue, local pilots and others had performed rescues on their own initiative and had been rewarded by the Lifeboat Institution.
In March 1863 a group of men formed the Swansea Branch of the R.N.L.I. and the Harbour Trust boat was replaced with and identical pattern which was named Martha and Anne after the daughters of Michael Steel of Oxford who's legacy had paid for her.
Because of the lack of service at Swansea where a story in the town was that a large glass case was to be built "to stow away the lifeboat in front of the Town Hall". The editor of the local paper, "The Cambrian" commented that "Not Swansea but The Mumbles should be the lifeboat's station, and not the pilots, but the coastguard or the hardy fishermen of the village should be her crew".
In 1866 the Martha & Anne was moved to The Mumbles where she was housed on the shore under the shadow of Mumbles Hill and was launched and re-housed along a stone slipway by means of block and tackle.
Noteworthy Dates
1835 Silver medal awarded to William Evans for rescuing two of the three crew from the sloop John which went aground at Neath on 26th October 1835.
1838 Silver medal awarded to John Reeve, master of schooner Wave, for rescuing the three crew from the sloop Feronia which was wrecked on the Mixon on 24th July 1838.
1839 Silver medals awarded to Captain Thomas Jones, Captain John Howell, Captain Charles Sutton, Captain Joseph Foley, Arthur Rees and Lewis Jenkins for rescuing five men from the brig Thomas Piele which was wrecked near Port Talbot on 20th January 1839.
1840 Second service clasp to silver medal awarded to Captain Joseph Foley for rescuing two of the three men from the Mary bound from Cork to Portsmouth, which was wrecked near Port Talbot on 20th January 1840.
1874 On 12th August The Board of Trade forwarded binoculars which had been received by them through the Foreign Office from H.M. The Emperor of Germany for presentation to the coxswain of the lifeboat in recognition of the services rendered by the boat when the German ship Triton of Eckernford was wrecked on the Mixon Sands on the 29th August 1987. The German Consul General was also instructed to pay £4 to the crew of the lifeboat.
1883 On the 27th of January, when trying to rescue the crew of the German barque "Admiral Prinz Adalbert" from the windward side, the lifeboat was thrown violently against her and swept over successive ridges of rocks by heavy seas. Four of the crew, John and William Jenkins, William Mack and William Rogers lost their lives, and the remainder were seriously injured, Coxswain Jenkin Jenkins lost two out of the four of his sons and his son-in-law (William Mack) who were in the boat and a third son received a broken leg. The Institution granted £800 towards the fund raised for the widows and orphans. The Silver Medal was awarded to the coxswain. The carpenter of the German barque also lost his life.
1884 New lifeboat house constructed at a cost of £350.
1888 Slipway constructed at a cost of £110.
1896 Compensation paid for the damage to oyster beds over which the lifeboat had to be taken for a low water launch on 27th July.
1897 Mumbles Railway and Pier Company constructed a mooring slipway free of charge to the Institution.
1900 – 2000
On 1 February 1903 the lifeboat was capsized on service to SS Christina of Waterford at the entrance to Port Talbot harbour. This capsize resulted in a loss of 6 out 14 of her crew. In 1941, a Bronze Medal was awarded to Coxswain William J Gammon and to Mechanic Robert T Williams for the rescue of 10 crew of the steamer Cornish Rose of Liverpool.
1944 saw the presentation of a Gold medal to Coxswain Gammon, Mechanic W G Davies and Bowman Thomas J Ace for the rescue of 42 crew from the Canadian frigate Chebouque.
Yet again, tragedy struck the station when on April 23, 1947; the Edward Prince of Wales was capsized and wrecked in heavy seas with total loss of her eight crew. She had gone to help the SS Samtampa with a crew of 39 off Sker Point. The death toll that night was no less than 47. As a mark of respect following the loss during the Samtampa disaster the new lifeboat was named after the Coxswain; the William Gammon serviced the coast until 1974 and was then donated to Swansea Museum.
In 1964 a Silver medal was awarded to Coxswain Lionel Derek Scott and the Thanks of the Institution inscribed on Vellum to eight other crew for the rescue of the crew from the Dutch vessel Kilo. 1965 saw the introduction of an inshore, D-class lifeboat at the station. Operational in summer months only with the cost defrayed by the Rotary Club of Swansea. In 1968 coxswain Lionel Derek Scott was awarded Bronze medal with an addition monetary award to him and his crew for the rescue of seven crew from the sand dredger Steepholm which grounded on the Tuskar Rock, Porthcawl.
1971 brought about more awards for the station when Helmsman Alan Richards Jones and crewmembers Peter Allan Algie and Anthony David Lewis for the rescue of three men from a cabin cruiser on 3 October 1971.
In 1981 the Thanks of the Institution inscribed on Vellum was awarded to coxswain Lionel Derek Scott BEM when he put out his rowing boat to the aid of two men who had capsized in dinghy approximately three-quarters of a mile out to sea in choppy seas and freezing conditions on 22 December.
1902 Additional rocket distress signal post erected near the coastguard look-out on Mumbles Head.
1903 On the 1st of February the lifeboat, which had put out with the intention of helping the SS Christina of Waterford, which had grounded at Port Talbot on the previous evening, found that her help was not wanted, and made for Port Talbot harbour. The lifeboat capsized off the entrance with the loss of six out of fourteen of her crew. The Institution granted £1,200 towards the fund raised locally for the dependants. One of the rescued, Tom Michael, was a survivor of the 1883 accident. Those lost were Coxswain Thomas Rogers, Second Coxswain Daniel Claypit, D.J.Morgan, George Michael, James Gammon and Robert Smith. The lifeboat was damaged beyond repair.
1916 New slipway and approach gangway constructed.
1922 Alterations and extension of slipway carried out at a cost of £1,800.
1935 Centenary Vellum presented.
1941 Bronze Medal awarded to Coxswain William Gammon and to Mechanic Robert T Williams for the rescue of the crew of ten of the steam ship Cornish Rose of Liverpool which was dragging her anchors in Swansea Bay on the 20th January 1941. It was pitch dark, which was exacerbated by mist and rain squalls. A whole south gale was blowing and there was a heavy breaking sea. The vessel was very close to the shore and rolling heavily and the ordinary perils of the sea were greatly increased by the coastal defences consisting of iron rails driven into the foreshore and sticking out of it. It was a bold and skilful rescue.
1944 Gold medal awarded to Coxswain William Gammon and a Bronze Medals to Mechanic WG Davies and Bowman Thomas J Ace for the rescue of the crew of 42 of a Canadian frigate Cherboque smothered in heavy seas on Port Talbot bar on the 11th of October 1944. Twelve times in the darkness and in heavy squalls of hail, the coxswain circled round though the surf and brought the lifeboat along side the frigate for her men to jump. The rescued Canadians spoke afterwards of the work of their rescuers as "magnificent" and "almost miraculous". Two of the lifeboat men were over seventy years old while another two were in their sixties, the average age of the crew was 55. The Maud Smith award for the bravest act of life-saving in 1944 was awarded to Coxswain WJ Gammon for his service.
1947 On the 23rd of April the Edward Prince of Wales was capsized and wrecked with the loss of her crew of eight after she had gone to the aid of the SS Samtamper with a crew of 39 off Sker Point. The Institution made a grant of £500 to the local fund and pays service scale pensions to the dependants. The death toll that night was 47. The names of those lifeboat men lost were Coxswain William J Gammon, Second Coxswain William Noel, Mechanics William G Davies and E Griffin, WRS Thomas, WL Howell, WR Thomas and R Smith.
1948 The Royal Humane Society awarded a Bronze Medal and thanks certificate to Mechanic RJ Gammon for his efforts on the 18th of November when a frogman engaged on renovation work lost his life.
1964 Silver Medal awarded to Coxswain Lionel Derek Scott and the Yhanks of the Institution inscribed on Vellum to eight other members of the crew of the lifeboat:- Second Coxswain W Davies, Mechanic J Gammon, Assistant Mechanic W Tucker, Signalman J Bailey, K Kostroman, G Parsons, H Randall and J Witford, for the rescue of the crew of the Dutch motor vessel Kilo from their burning ship in a violent storm on the night of 17th of November 1963.
1965 Inshore lifeboat station established in May with a D class lifeboat. Operational summer months only. The cost defrayed by the Rotary Club of Swansea.
1968 Bronze Medal to Coxswain Lionel Derek Scott and an additional monetary award to him and each of the lifeboat crew for the rescue of seven crew members of the sand dredger Steepholm which grounded on Tusker Rock in a fresh west-south-westerly wind with a moderate to rough sea. Six of the Steepholm crew were rescued from life-rafts after which the lifeboat returned to the casualty for the master. As he jumped aboard the lifeboat , the vessel was caught by heavy sea and he fell between the Steepholm and the lifeboat. Fortunately the Second Coxswain and another member of the crew were able to grab him before he fell into the water and he was pulled aboard unhurt.
1971 Silver Second Service Clasp awarded to Coxswain Lionel Derek Scott BEM, in recognition of his courage when he put out in a small outboard motor dinghy and rescued a man after his canoe capsized in a fresh easterly wind and a very confused sea off Mumbles Head on 12th April 1971.
1971 The Thanks of the Institution inscribed on Vellum awarded to helmsman Alan "Tudy" Jones, crew members Peter Algie and Anthony Lewis for the rescue of three men from a cabin cruiser on 3rd October.
1972 A framed letter of Appreciation signed by the Chairman of the Institution Commander FRH Swann, was presented to crew member W "Ginger" Clements in recognition of his action when he leapt aboard the yacht Karfinn to secure a tow-line. During the service by the lifeboat on 19th December in an east-south-easterly gale and rough sea with skill and determination managed to prevent the yacht from sheering uncontrollably during the tow back to Swansea.
1980 Coxswain Lionel Derek Scott was presented with an engraved statuette of a lifeboatman by Mr. Raymond Baxter, Chairman of the RNLI Public Relations Committee at the International Boat Show, Earls Court, on 9th January, in recognition of his radio and television broadcasts and numerous public talks.
1981 The Thanks of the Institution inscribed on Vellum accorded to Coxswain Lionel Derek Scott BEM in recognition of his skill and determination when he put out in his rowing boat, and with great physical effort rescued the crew of two of a dinghy which had capsized approximately tree quarters of a mile off Southend beach in a gentle breeze and a choppy sea with freezing temperature on 22nd December.
1982 The Thanks of the Institution inscribed on Vellum accorded to Helmsman Anthony David Lewis in recognition of the calmness and determination he displayed when on the 21st August he swam from the lifeboat to an unoccupied cabin cruiser which was burning fiercely and drifting towards a crowded Mumbles Pier. Having secured a line to the craft he returned to the lifeboat and towed her to deeper water where sank.
1985 150th Anniversary Vellum Presented to the Station.1985 saw the new Tyne class lifeboat ‘Ethel Anne Measures’ into service at Mumbles. The Tyne class boat, powered by two Detroit Tank Engines could reach speeds of 18 Knots and revolutionised fast slipway boats.
1994 New inshore boathouse constructed on the existing site of the old D class boathouse. As well as housing the inshore lifeboat it includes an inflatable boarding boat, changing/drying room, toilet, crew room, kitchen and office.
1994 New D class lifeboat placed on service. A new D-class boathouse was erected in place of the existing house, soon after, new D-class D463 ‘Nellie Grace Hughes’ was placed on service. The old inshore boathouse is still used by Mumbles Rowing Club and Mumbles Pier and can be seen opposite the new Station.
2004 New D class lifeboat (IL1), 'Peterborough Beer Festival II' is placed on service.
2006 ALB 'Ethel Anne Measures' leaves the station and is replaced by 'Babs and Agnes Robertson'.
The Present
The Mumbles Lifeboat Station continues to serve the area with an All Weather Lifeboat (ALB) and an Inshore Lifeboat (ILB).
In 2004 Peterborough Beer Festival II was placed on service at the Station. Produced by Avon Inflatables of Llanelli this new generation D-Class Inshore Lifeboat (designated IB1) embraces modern technology and new materials to improve response times as well as crew comfort and safety. (For more information about IB1 click here ). The ILB continues to be the workhorse of the Station and accounts for some two thirds of our calls.
Peterborough Beer Festival II was donated to the RNLI by CAMRA (The Campaign for Real Ale) through donations received at the Peterborough Beer Festival. This was CAMRA’s second donation of a Lifeboat to the RNLI; their first, Peterborough Beer Festival 1 is serving the North East of England at Redcar.
On Raft race day in July 2006, after 21 years service, our ALB, Ethel Anne Measures left the Station and was replaced by another Tyne Class Lifeboat Babs and Agnes Robertson. Babs and Agnes came to us from Peterhead and will see us through to 2011 when we expect to receive a new Tamar Class ALB – see The Future below.
In 2006 and 2007 we were the third busiest Station in Wales. In both years we helped the most number of people for an individual Station in Wales.
The Future at Mumbles Station
In 2002 a Coastal Review conducted by senior RNLI officials determined that The Mumbles Lifeboat Station be earmarked for a new Tamar Class Fast Slipway Boat (FSB2). The recommendations of the delegation, which included the building of a new boathouse and slipway, were endorsed by the Trustees of the RNLI.
The RNLI are absolutely committed to ensuring the charities money is spent wisely. The specific conditions of the sea bed at Mumbles risked increasing the cost of the project and so delays resulted whilst further studies were commissioned. Armed with new and clarifying information a further Coastal Review was conducted in 2007 and the same conclusions were made. The Trustees of the RNLI have committed funds to build a new slipway and boathouse to receive a Tamar Class Lifeboat in 2011.
The Tamar is bigger and faster than the Tyne and includes the computerised Systems and Information Management System (SIMS) that enables crew to control many of the lifeboat's functions remotely from the safety of their seats. Other features include advanced seats that reduce the impact on the crew as the lifeboat crashes through waves, and a powered Y boat stored behind a transom door to allow immediate deployment.
Information taken from www.mumbleslifeboat.org.uk/history.html
she says as she hops on Shadow's back.
Models --> ObsidianShadow & RainaNoelle
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ObsidianShadow
Hair - Entwined Kelly
Outfit - Uncontrollably - [UNC] Samara Outfit - Monsters Black
Boots - N-core AUBRY "Black"
Nails - Get Nailed - Punk
RainaNoelle
Hair - Exile :: Couldn't Believe
Shirt - Bishes Inc - Laced Jumper Fatpack
Sneakers - Bishes Inc - Sneakers Fatpack
Nails - Get Nailed - Rainbow Cutouts
[ Important Announcement ]
The 2025 exhibition has been postponed.
Right now, I’m fully immersed in writing—and I’ve been uploading fragments of that work here.
Among the countless artists around the world, my work may be no more than a mere pebble.
And yet, I still feel compelled to create.
America.
Europe.
And now, Japan—faced with the results of this latest election.
The world is already broken.
I don’t believe for a moment that my novel could fix such a world.
But as I’ve always said, I believe that changing the inner world of a single person can change tomorrow.
That belief remains unchanged.
I have confidence in this novel.
To hurt someone.
To love someone.
Is there a wall that separates us from loving one another?
Is money the most important thing of all?
Is art truly meaningless?
I’ve entrusted everything to this story.
That’s why I’ve made the decision to step away from exhibitions for a year.
If things go well, I may begin publishing the novel between January and February of next year.
If not, it will be around late July 2026.
Right now, I’m consumed with breaking through my own limits.
As entertainment, I believe this novel will bring you joy again and again.
Please look forward to it.
July 19, 2025
Mitsushiro
Images
ELLEGARDEN - Lonesome
youtu.be/m1rgXlLkKDc?si=99vILpcJBIeEOrsP
Shot on iPhone 11 Pro.
Motosuka Beach, Sanmu City, Chiba Prefecture, Japan.
(Today’s photo. It has not been released yet.)
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Exhibition 2026
Theme
The Nightfly
Inspired by my upcoming novel:
B♭ (B Flat)
Images
Taylor Swift – This Love (Japanese Subtitles)
youtu.be/PfJzQuqWSSE?si=Y2g0HzhoVjnR46zS
Mitsushiro Nakagawa
Presented by
Design Festa
Venue
Tokyo Big Sight
Schedule
Fall 2026
exhibition.mitsushiro.nakagawa@gmail.com
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【 重要なお知らせ 】
２０２５年の展示は、延期します。
僕は現在、執筆に集中していて、その断片をここへアップロードしています。
世界中に溢れるアーティストのなかで、僕の作品は石ころのような存在です。
けれども、僕はどうしても描きたいのです。
アメリカやヨーロッパ。そして、今回の選挙結果を突きつけられた日本。
世界はすでに壊れています。
壊れた世界を僕の小説が修復できるなどとは決して思っていません。
僕はこれまでにも書いてきたように、たったひとりの個人の内面を塗り替えることで明日を変えられると信じてきました。
それは、いまでも変わっていません。
僕は今回の小説に自信を持っています。
誰かを傷つけること。
誰かを愛すること。
誰かを愛することに壁はあるのか。
お金がもっとも大切なのか。
アートは無意味なのか。
僕はこの小説にすべてを託しました。
ですので、僕は一年間、展示を見送る決断をしました。
小説の発表は、早くて来年の１月から２月ごろにできるかもしれません。
遅くて、来年の７月下旬です。
僕は今、自分の壁を越えることに夢中になっています。
僕の小説は、エンターテイメントとして、あなたを何度も楽しませるはずです。
楽しみに、待っていてください。
19.7,2025.
Mitsushiro.
Images.
ELLEGARDEN - Lonesome
youtu.be/m1rgXlLkKDc?si=99vILpcJBIeEOrsP
iPhone 11 Pro shot .
本須賀海岸。山武市。千葉県。日本。
(. 今日の写真。それは未発表です。 )
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２０２6年の展示
テーマ
The Nightfly
僕の次の小説。B♭（ビーフラット）
そのイメージになります。
Images.
Taylor Swift … This Love 【和訳】
youtu.be/PfJzQuqWSSE?si=Y2g0HzhoVjnR46zS
Mitsushiro - Nakagawa
主催
デザインフェスタ
場所
東京ビッグサイト
日程
2026年 秋。
exhibition.mitsushiro.nakagawa@gmail.com
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My new novel:
B♭ (B-flat)
There’s still more to come. 😃
(This is not the final draft.)
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Scene: Garden 3‑4
Jack slumped deeply in the commander’s chair, his gaze sweeping across the pale glow of the monitor wall.
Camera feeds A17, A18, A19—all fixed on the arena’s center. Yet the security guard on the west side of the stands wasn’t watching there. His eyes were glued to the emergency exit at Section 212. Its sensor blinked once—a flash of red warning across the screen.
“A suspicious movement… the door sensor just lit up,” Jack's low voice vibrated through Ben’s earpiece.
Ben glanced upward at the monitors and whispered,
“Shall I go?”
“No,” Jack replied, his voice dropping. “Don’t leave your post. I’ll handle it.”
He paused, stern. “It’s probably nothing. But—stay alert. Keep your eyes peeled.”
Silence fell over each earpiece, the tension thickening. On the monitor, the door remained motionless—neither opening nor closing—frozen in stillness.
Jack burst from the briefing room, sprinted up from underground into the arena, his view sweeping the western stand. He looked up at the broad, flat ceiling of Madison Square Garden, sensed it swelling with the heat of the crowd. Cheers greeting the presidential candidate blended with jeers—clearly, anti‑Republicans had infiltrated.
Jack narrowed his gaze on the west stand, then lowered his eyes to his iPhone. Multiple social feeds scrolled with frenetic energy, and one post caught his attention: a murder threat, flashing in angry red text.
He dashed down the crowded corridor and reached the west stand, addressing a nearby guard:
“Evening. Everything clear on your end?”
The guard, clad in plain black suit with no tie—just a discreet earpiece—nodded, calm. He lifted his jacket slightly, revealing the outline of a Glock 19 at his waist. No hostility—just a tacit acknowledgment. Jack responded with a silent nod, their training speaking volumes.
“Door sensor tripped once. I’ll check visually.” Jack seized the cold metal handle and cast a glance down the corridor beyond. Darkness swallowed the path; silence reigned.
He spoke into his earpiece:
“All clear in the west stands. Security is solid.”
He patted the guard’s shoulder. “Stay alert.” The man returned a brief smile—and then lights died across the arena.
In the dark, red lasers lanced from ceiling to floor as a menacing bass drum rolled in from below. A crisp hi‑hat scythed in sixteenth‑notes; a heavy kick drum struck four‑on‑the‑floor. A low, rumbling bass synth layered in—and the very air of the arena began to pulse.
The crowd's heartbeat synchronized with the beat. Swirling smoke and laser cuts, the floor trembling. From deep within the sound, a processed male voice intoned again and again:
“Strength. Order. America.”
As smoke thickened the light, colossal center-hung screens flickered to life:
J U S T I N B R A D F O R D
One spotlight pierced the gloom—red, then blue, finally white—tracing the American tricolor. Within its glow appeared a man: Justin. Clad in a dark‑navy tailored suit, a bold crimson tie signifying the Republican Party, a single white rose pinned to his lapel.
Moments later, another spotlight revealed Eleanor Blake, dressed in an elegant black gown, standing behind him. Hand in hand, they strode center stage, each step purposeful. The audience looked on, awestruck, shouting cheers:
—“Take back America!”—
Red, blue, and white lights danced across their feet. Eleanor paused; Justin stepped forward to the microphone as the music faded and lights dimmed again. Silence engulfed the arena.
He made no sound—only a slight, assured smile. That smile was a declaration of war. Saying everything without uttering a word. That posture—that was the bearing of a man who would become the most powerful leader in the world: President of the United States.
Justin scanned the crowd for a moment, then spoke in calm tones. His golden hair, blue eyes—mirroring Eleanor’s—lent gravity to his words:
“Good evening, New York. How’s your night going so far?”
He smiled at a woman in the front row. Following his father’s advice, he spoke as if addressing just one person, not an entire audience—
—“When I arrived in the parking lot tonight, I felt weighed down by the humidity. Eleanor whispered to me: ‘We chose the best course to protect you. Our team would risk their lives for you.’”
His voice rang clear. Thunderous applause erupted from tens of thousands. A wave of anticipation rolled toward the stage. The spotlight seemed to center itself in his eyes—and likewise in Eleanor’s.
“Tonight, we gather to put our will once again at the heart of this nation. To reclaim the ‘light’ America is forgetting. Over the past four years, our party restored the economy, brought back security, rebuilt national order. Now, it’s time to shine that light brighter—not as mere hope, but as our responsibility. If America shines again, the world will follow. We must seize that stronger, purer light. It will illuminate the world.”
Justin’s voice reverberated through the arena—until… a dry gunshot cracked the air from center stage.
Jack dove instinctively. His eyes darted upward to the giant screens: time froze. He saw Justin’s body convulse backwards, his jacket tail flipping off his left shoulder. The first bullet struck his left arm, the second to his left abdomen. Justin crumpled slowly, falling face‑first.
“Justin!” Eleanor’s scream cut across the stage. Her wide eyes fixed on him, trembling. A haze of tears blurred her vision. Secret Service agents shielded her, pulling her back.
“Hit the deck!” Guards and crowd shouted in chorus. Pandemonium erupted. Women's screams overlapped. The reverberation of gunfire lingered ominously in the cavernous space.
Unbeknownst to most, Jack’s ears had discerned two shots. He closed his eyes and re‑ran the sound—each fired from above—each from perilously close.
“Ben—where are you?” Jack pushed through collapsing spectators, heading to the stage.
“By Justin’s side. Missed his heart—just grazed left arm and abdomen. Not arterial, but bleeding heavily.”
“Medical team’s on the motorcade. Justin has Bombay blood—two bags ready on the ambulance. Start transfusion.”
“If that’s not enough, what about Elijah?”
“Either way, he’s en route. Bellevue Hospital stores Bombay bags—confirmed three days ago.”
Bombay blood: a rare type first found in Bombay (now Mumbai) in 1952—not A, B, or O—afflicting about 1 in 10,000 in India, 1 in 2.5 million worldwide. It can only be transfused to someone of the same type.
Ben replied calmly.
They rushed Justin to Bellevue Hospital—the closest to the Garden. Jack called Elijah. Before the first ring ended, Elijah answered, breathless:
“Jack... this is bad. We’ve no blood—no Bombay stock.”
Jack couldn’t believe it.
“I saw the bags in person three days ago!”
Silence, then Elijah replied:
“The blood keeper was killed in a car crash yesterday.”
As Jack absorbed the news, his voice boomed over the arena’s PA, shaking the trembling building. The crowd froze and then shattered. Thousands surged toward exits—only to find them locked.
“There’s explosives in this building. Please, stay calm and head for the exits. I repeat—I am….”
Panic rippled. Eight exits in total—most had been sealed for VIP and motorcade security. The crowd funnelled into the remaining three.
Low moans grew to shrieks. People trampled the fallen. A little girl's white blouse had turned grey, her teddy flattened. During flight, no one looked back. At one exit, dozens collapsed, graves to the trampling. The weight buckled railings, jammed the door.
“Doors won’t open!” “There’s children—!” Screams scattered. Security couldn’t reach the scene. Orders were drowned in noise. Control evaporated.
“The crowd is uncontrollable, Jack,” came Zakaria’s voice through the PA, along with a simultaneous link to staff smartphones.
“You got my email? Open the link. No virus, I promise.”
Hurriedly, Jack checked his phone. The site loaded:
“Good evening, New York—and Los Angeles. My name is Zakaria Haddad. My real name. Five years ago, I lived in Gaza. Now I sit in a room many of you recognize.”
On the screen, a brown-skinned man with a trimmed beard—Zakaria—seated in a chair eerily like the Oval Office. Three green-curtained windows behind him—the color favored by Prophet Muhammad. A portrait of Ibn Sina hung on the wall, his gaze deep, delicate—reaching from time’s past to the present.
Zakaria glanced at his watch, then back at camera—an unreadable dark joy flickering in his eyes.
“Breaking news—watch your phone alerts.” Instantly:
Former Democratic President Owen Reed shot at Los Angeles Convention Center
Zakaria hid a wry smile.
“A sad update, America. But don’t mourn. In Gaza, we suffered 55,000 times this. We lost over 55,000 dear souls—and we wept.”
He averted his gaze, clasped both hands, slammed his fist onto the desk. The air thickened. Yet in his eyes brimmed silent tears—quiet sorrow.
“We do not seek money or glory in death. We seek tears equal to the 55,000. Only tears can heal us.”
He rested his elbows, folded his hands, chin supported. A long pause. His eyes twitched with small sorrowful motions.
Zakaria rotated a framed photo toward the camera.
“My family. More precious than my life. Gone in an instant.”
There was no hatred in his voice—only respect and gentle grief. He began again.
“I was one among those 55,000. Even if I perish, their wills persist. I stand here to voice our will.”
He quietly reached into his right drawer, withdrew a Glock 17, chambered a round, and placed the barrel against his temple. His eyes were merciful—gentle, embracing his lost family.
As a Sunni, he stared straight at the camera:
“God bless America.”
Backlit by three blazing windows, he closed his eyes and pulled the trigger. The dry crack snapped through the room. The camera jerked—then the screen went black.
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Previous notes
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www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/54639396885/in/dateposted...
2
www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/54628511025/in/dateposted...
1
www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/54599616429/in/dateposted...
Note: I gave a brief explanation of this novel in the following video:
youtu.be/3w65lqUF-YI?si=yG7qy6TPeCL9xRJV
iTunes Playlist Link::
music.apple.com/jp/playlist/b/pl.u-47DJGhopxMD
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Notes
1. "Bombay Blood Type (hh type)"
•Characteristics: A rare blood type that lacks the usual ABO antigens — cannot be classified as A, B, or O.
•Discovery: First identified in 1952 in Mumbai, India (formerly Bombay).
•Prevalence: Roughly 1 in 10,000 people in India; globally, about 1 in 2.5 million.
•Transfusion Compatibility: Only compatible with blood from other Bombay type donors.
2. 2024 Harvard University Valedictorian Speech – The Power of Not Knowing
youtu.be/SOUH8iVqSOI?si=Ju-Y728irtcWR71K
3. Shots Fired at Trump Rally
youtu.be/1ejfAkzjEhk?si=ASqJwEmkY-2rW_hT
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Aeon parking lot. Yachimata City. Chiba Prefecture. Japan. Shot on iPhone 13 Pro … 1 / 1
イオンの駐車場。 八街市。千葉県。日本。iPhone 13 Pro shot … 1 / 1
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僕の新しい小説。
B♭ （ビーフラット）
まだまだ投下します。😃
(最終稿ではありません。)
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場面 ガーデン３−４
指揮官席に深く腰を落としていたジャックは、青白いモニター群をくまなく睨んでいた。
カメラ番号A17、A18、A19──いずれもアリーナ中央を捉えている。だが、スタンド席西側の警備員の視線が集中していたのは、そこではなかった。彼が見つめていたのはセクション212の非常扉だった。その扉のセンサーが、わずか一度だけ、反応を示し、ディスプレイに赤い警告が走った。
「不審な動きだな。ドアのセンサーが一瞬、点いた」
ジャックの低い声が、ベンのイヤピースを震わせた。
ベンは即座に 頭上のモニターを見上げ、囁くように言った。
「行くか？」
「…いや。持ち場は離れるな。俺が行く」
ジャックの声がわずかに低くなった。
「たぶん、気のせいだ。ただし──全員、警戒は解くな。そのまま、周囲に意識を集中しておけ」
それぞれのイヤピースに静寂が落ち、張り詰めた空気で満ちた。
モニターに今映っている扉は、開くことも、閉じることもなく、ただ沈黙している。
ジャックはブリーフィングルームを飛び出し、スタンド席、西側が見渡せるアリーナまで、地下から駆け上がった。
マジソンスクエアガーデンの平坦な天井は、吐き出された人の熱気でいつもより膨らんでいるように、ジャックには見えた。大統領候補を歓迎する声とそれを罵倒する叫び声が錯綜し、鼓膜の奥を揺らした。どうやら反共和党も紛れ込んでいるようだ。
ジャックは、スタンド席西側へしばらく目を凝らしてから、手元のアイフォンに目を落とした。画面には、いくつかのSNSが同時に広がっており、それぞれが激しい書き込みによって文字が流れてゆく。右下の、メタの書き込みに、ジャックは目を留めた。殺害予告のメッセージが走り、赤く灯っている。ジャックは喧騒に満ちた通路を駆け抜け、スタンド席西側へ着くと、警備員へ声を掛けた。
「おつかれ。異常はないか？」
ジャックはさりげなく背筋を伸ばした。ジャケットの背中越しに、腰の中央──背骨の下に沿ってぴたりと固定されたグロック19の存在を確かめた。
「どうも。こちらは異常ありませんよ。何かありましたか？」
黒のスーツで、胸元にネクタイはない、プレーン・クロースの私設セキュリティだ。視線は沈着で、イヤピースから伸びるコードが耳の下に覗いている。男は一瞬、ジャックを睨むように見たが、ジャケットの裾を軽く持ち上げ、ホルスターの形をわずかに見せた。男に敵意はなかった。それが合図だった。ジャックも同じように、背筋を伸ばしながら無言で頷いた。この沈黙こそが、互いの訓練と経験を示していた。
「ドアのセンサーが一度反応した。目視で確認する」
ジャックは、冷たい金属の取っ手を掴み、扉の奥を一瞥した。辺りは暗闇に沈み、静まり返っていた。
ジャックはその場からすぐにイヤピースで伝えた。
「スタンド席西側に異常はなかった。セキュリティーにも問題はない」
ジャックは、男の肩を軽く叩いて、いった。
「引き続き、頼む」
男が笑顔でジャックに挨拶すると、アリーナの照明が一気に落ちた。
闇の中、赤いレーザーがガーデンの天井から床まで、縦横に切り裂き、重く低く唸るような打ち込みの硬質なバスドラがアリーナの底から噴き上がった。ハイハットが16分音符で刻まれ、深く沈むキックドラムが四拍を正確に打つ。そこに、低くうねるベース・シンセが重なり、会場全体の空気そのものが脈打つように震え始めた。
観客の鼓動が、低く分厚い音にシンクロし始めた。スモークが舞い、赤いレーザーが切り裂く中、床の震えが増していった。低いベース音に重なった奥から、加工された男性の声が繰り返し聞こえてくる。
“Strength.（強さ） Order.（秩序） America.”
場内のスモークが、光を濁らせるようにさらに舞うと、巨大なセンター・ハング・スクリーンに文字が浮かび上がった。
J U S T I N・B R A D F O R D
その瞬間、中央のスポットライトが、ひとつだけ点いた。赤から青へ──そして白へと、アメリカの三色をなぞるように変化する演出だ。
その光の中、男が姿を現した。
ジャスティンだ。ダークネイビーのテーラードスーツに、共和党を示す真紅のネクタイを巻いている。胸元には一輪の白いバラのピンバッジが添えられていた。
数秒遅れて、彼の背後にもうひとつ光が射した。漆黒のドレスを纏ったエリノア・ブレイクがスポットライトを浴びている。
ふたりは笑顔で手を取り合うと、ゆっくりステージ中央へ歩み始めた。彼らの歩みに迷いはなかった。強さと秩序の意志を現した姿に、観客の誰もがその姿を見上げ、歓声を上げている。
ー アメリカを取り戻せ！ ー
マイクスタンドへ近づくにつれ、アリーナの熱はさらに帯び、波のようにうねった。
赤、青、白の光がジャスティンらの足元を錯綜した。
エリノアを残し、ジャスティンは、一歩前に出て、マイクの前に立った。
音楽が静かにフェードアウトし、照明が再び落ちていく。
── その瞬間、全アリーナが沈黙に包まれた。
彼は、何も言わず、ただ口元に微笑みを浮かべた。その微笑みが、宣戦布告に等しかった。
語らずに、何かを語っている。
それが、世界でもっとも権力を持つ、アメリカ大統領の姿勢なのだ。
ジャスティンは、しばらく観衆を見渡してから、穏やかな口調でいった。エリノアと同じ金色に煌めく髪とブルーの瞳が、彼の言葉をさらに支えるようだ。
「こんばんは。ニューヨーク。今日は、いいことがあったかい？」
ジャスティンは、微笑みながら、最前列の女性に問いかけた。彼は、父のルールを守っていた。多くの聴衆に語るのではなく、たったひとりの身近な人へ言葉を伝えるのだ ーー
「僕は今日、駐車場に着いた時、気が滅入ったよ。ひどい湿気に陰鬱になった。でも、ここにいるエリノアが僕に言ったんだ。あなたを守るために、スタッフは最善の手段を選んだ、とね。そして、スタッフはみな、僕のために命を賭けてくれると」
歯切れよく言い切ったジャスティンの言葉に、再び観衆は沸いた。数万人の熱波がステージへ押し寄せた。
ジャスティンの目には、ステージにあった光を収束させたような輝きがあった。もちろん、エリノアの青い瞳にもだ。
「今夜、僕らがここに集まったのは、それぞれの意志を、再びこの国の中心に叩き込むためだ。アメリカが忘れかけている“光”を、もう一度我々の手に取り戻すためだ。この4年間、我が党は経済を立て直し、治安を取り戻し、国家の秩序を再構築した。今、私たちはその“光”をもっと強く照らす時に来ている。それは、ただの希望ではない。責任だ。アメリカが再び輝けば、世界はそれに倣う。そして、もっと強い、鮮明な光を私たちは手にしなければならない。アメリカが強い光を取り戻すことで、世界をくまなく照らすことができるのだ。私たちには、もっとそれができるはずだ」
ジャスティンの声が、再び会場を震わせた瞬間、乾いた銃声が響いた。ステージ中央あたりからだ。ジャックは音と同時に身を屈め、アリーナの頭上に展開した巨大なセンター・ハング・スクリーンに目をやった。ジャックには映る全ての時間が止まっていた。ジャスティンの身体が弾けたように背後へ揺れた。ジャケットの裾がゆっくり翻り、左肩から崩れてゆく。たぶん、最初の弾は左肩に着弾した。その後、再びジャスティンは前屈みになった。二発目は左腹部だ。ジャスティンの身体は、床へスローモーションのように崩れ落ち、うつぶした。
「ジャスティン！」
エリノアの矯正がステージに響いた。大きく見開いた瞳が、一点を見つめまま、細かく揺れている。一瞬にして透明な薄い膜が幾重にも重なって滲み、零れた。
ジャスティンへ近づこうとするエリノアの体を前面から覆うようにしてSPが抑え込み、引き離している。
「伏せろ！」というSPと観客からの声が同時に周囲を支配した途端、観客席は混乱に包まれた。
女性らの悲鳴が錯綜し、誰か、とやはり別の女性の声がかぶさった。すでに消えている銃声の余韻が、巨大な会場に重く残って覆っている。
ステージにいた者以外は、一聴しただけでは気づかなかったがジャックの耳は聴き分けていた。弾は間違いなく２発だった。騒然とした場内をよそに、ジャックは静かに目を閉じた。発射音から着弾までを想像した。一発目の弾は、ジャスティンのほぼ頭上からだった。そして、もう一発もだ。発射音から着弾までの様子からしておそらくかなりの近距離だ。
「ベン、どこだ」
ジャックは、出口へ卒倒してゆく観客らを抗うようにしてステージへ近づいていく。ベンの冷静な声がすぐに聞こえてきた。
「ジャスティンのそばだ。心臓ははずれているが、左肩と左腹部をかすめているようだ。動脈には達していないが出血がひどい」
「車列にあった救護班がすぐにいく。ジャスティンはボンベイブラッドだ。救急車にブラッドバッグが二つ備えてある。とりあえず輸血するはずだ」
「足らなかった場合は、イライジャのところか？」
「いずれにしても搬入だ。ベルビュー病院にブラッドバッグが保管されている。予備の輸血だ。三日前に確認した」
ボンベイブラッドとは、１９５２年にインドのムンバイ、旧ボンベイで初めて確認された、通常のA、B、Oには分類されない特殊な血液型だ。インドでは１万人にひとり程度だが、世界的には２５０万人に１人ともいわれているもので、同じボンベイ型からボンベイ型への輸血しかできない。
ベンは、冷静にわかったといった。
マジソンスクエアガーデンに最も近いベルビュー病院にジャスティンを運び込む。ジャックは、病院で控えているイライジャに直接電話した。ワンコールが切れる前にすぐイライジャは反応した。
「ジャック、大変だ。血液がない。ボンベイブラッドがないんだ」
ジャックは、耳を疑った。
「三日前に、俺は直接担当の、名前は忘れたな。とにかく目の前でブラッドバッグを確認したぞ」
イライジャは、数秒の沈黙の後、応えた。
「その血液の管理者は、きのう、交通事故で亡くなったんだ」
ジャックがその言葉に沈黙していると、場内にジャックの声でアナウンスが流れた。すでに震えているガーデンをさらにその声が震わせた。ジャックは、再びスクリーンに目をやったが、音声だけがジャックの声だった。
「みなさん、落ち着いてください。私はシークレットサービスのジャック・バンスです。この建物には爆薬が仕掛けられていますが、みなさん、落ち着いて、出口へ向かってください。繰り返します。私は….」
場内の空気が一瞬にして、硬直した。同時に、崩壊した。パニックはすぐに伝染した。数千の観客は、波紋のように大きく揺れ、一斉に出口へ傾れ込んだ。しかし、ジャスティンへの発砲と同時に出口は封鎖されていた。
メインアリーナの出入口は合計8つ――だがその多くは、来賓警備や車列誘導のためにすでに封鎖されていた。群衆の大半が、残された3つの出入口に集中した。
低い声から高い叫び声。倒れた人間を踏みつける足。転倒した白いブラウスの少女はすでに黒ずんでいる。小さな熊のぬいぐるみの顔が真っ平らになっている。
人は、逃げるときに後ろを見ない。出入口の一つでは、すでに数人が折り重なるように倒れ、その上をさらに何十人もの足が越えていった。荷重により手すりが歪み、出口の一部が完全に塞がれる。
「ドアが開かない！」
「子どもが――！」
叫び声が乱れ飛び、場内警備は現場への到達すら困難な状態だった。あらゆる指示が雑音にかき消され、もはや群衆は誰の言葉も聞いていなかった。
制御不能の肉の波――それが、人間の集団というものだった。
「この程度の混乱ではなかったぞ、ジャック」
ザカリアの声が切ったはずのPAから場内へ響いた。同時に、ジャックら警備スタッフへのスマートフォンへリンク先の案内がいっせいに届いた。
「メールが届いただろう？ リンク先を開け。安心しろ、ウィルスは除去済みだ」
ザカリアが笑いを抑え、皮肉混じりにいった。
ジャックは後ろポケットから慌てて、アイフォンを開いた。１件のメール着信を開くと、サイトが現れた。
「こんばんは、ニューヨーク。そしてロサンゼルス。私の名前はザカリア・ハッダード。本名だ。５年前、ガザに住んでいた。今は、みなさんがよく目にする部屋を真似た部屋に私はいる」
褐色の、顎髭をたくわえたザカリアは、アメリカ大統領執務室とほとんど同じ部屋の椅子に座っていた。背後に見える三つの大きな窓には、グリーンのカーテンが掛けられている。預言者ムハンマドが好んだ色だ。
壁面には、剣ではなく詩と理性で世界を導こうとした男、イブン・シーナーの肖像画が掛けられていた。その眼差しは、ワシントンよりも深く、リンカーンよりも繊細なもので、遥か遠く、消え去った時間の底からこちらを見据えているようだった。
ザカリアは腕時計に目を落としてから、再び、カメラに視線を向けた。目には言葉にできない喜びのような暗い影が落ちている。
「そろそろブレイキングニュースだ。スマートフォンの速報に注目して欲しい」
ザカリアがそういった途端、速報が流れた。
【民主党前大統領のオーウェン・リードがロサンゼルス・コンベンション・センターで銃撃された模様です】
ザカリアは、一瞬俯いて笑いを堪えながらいった。
「悲しい速報じゃないか。アメリカのみなさん。でもどうか悲しまないで欲しい。私が経験したガザではこの55,000倍だ。55,000人以上の大切な人を失い、そして、涙を流した」
ザカリアはカメラから目を逸らし、俯いた。そして両手を固く握りしめ、力強く机を叩きつけた。部屋の空気が硬直した。重く固まった空気が画像からも伝わってくる。しかし、顔を上げたザカリアの目にはうっすらと涙が溢れていた。静かな涙だった。
「私たちは、お金を求めない。また、死による名誉も求めない。私たちが欲しいのは、55,000人が流した涙と同じだけの涙だ。流された涙と同じだけの涙だけが、私たちを癒す」
両肘を机につき、両手を組むと、ザカリアは静かに顎を乗せた。目を閉じて、しばらく沈黙が続いた。目尻が細かく震えているようだった。
ザカリアはデスクにあったフォトフレームをカメラへ向け、反転させた。
「私の家族だ。私の命よりも大切な家族だ。すべて一瞬で奪われたよ」
彼の言葉に憎しみはなかった。語尾には、亡くなったものへの敬意とたくさんの優しさを詰め込んだ静けさが含まれている。続けて、ザカリアはゆっくり口を開いた。
「55,000人のうちの私はひとりに過ぎない。私が消えても55,000人もの意思は決して消えず、引き継がれる。私は、私たちの意思をここに表明するためにいる」
ザカリアは、向かって右手の机の引き出しにそっと手を伸ばした。引き出しから、グロック１７を取り出すと、スライドしてチャンバーに弾を流した。そして、銃口を自分のこめかみに当てた。ザカリアの目からは憎悪は消えていた。穏やかで、亡くなった家族を包み込むようなやさしい眼差しだった。
スンニ派である彼は、まっすぐにカメラを見つめ、いった。
「神のご加護を。アメリカ」
執務室の三つの窓から差し込んだ眩い逆光の中、ザカリアは、静かに目を閉じると、トリガーを真っ直ぐに引いた。乾いた銃声が部屋に響いた。一瞬、カメラが横へぶれたが、映像は瞬時に黒へ切り替わった。
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これまでのメモ
3
www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/54639396885/in/dateposted...
2
www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/54628511025/in/dateposted...
1
www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/54599616429/in/dateposted...
追記 この小説を多少説明しました。
youtu.be/3w65lqUF-YI?si=yG7qy6TPeCL9xRJV
iTunes Playlist Link::
music.apple.com/jp/playlist/b/pl.u-47DJGhopxMD
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メモ
1
「Bombay型（ボンベイ型、hh型）」
•特徴：通常のABO血液型を持たない（A、B、Oに分類されない）特殊な型。
•発見地：1952年、インド・ムンバイ（旧ボンベイ）で初めて確認。
•発生頻度：インドでは1万人に1人程度だが、世界的には約250万人に1人とも。
•輸血制限：同じBombay型しか輸血できない。
2
2024年ハーバード大学首席の卒業式スピーチ『知らないことの力』
youtu.be/SOUH8iVqSOI?si=Ju-Y728irtcWR71K
3
Shots fired at Trump rally
youtu.be/1ejfAkzjEhk?si=ASqJwEmkY-2rW_hT
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#Exhibition #デザインフェスタ #デザフェス #designfesta #tokyobigsight #東京ビッグサイト #iPhone #アイフォン #アップル #イオン #駐車場 #やちまた #八街 #八街市 #yachimata #yachimatacity #cityofyachimata #saipan #サイパン #アメリカ #USA #Japan #Manhattan #Newyork #日本 #千葉 #小説 #Chiba #novel #B♭ #ビーフラット #テイラースウィフト #TaylorSwift #本須賀海岸 #山武市 #千葉県 #日本 #Motosuka #Beach #Sanmu #City #Chiba #Prefecture #Japan
-Walk gently over the leaves of life,
Take each step with ease,
Run impatiently, forcefully over the path,
Creating your very own breeze.
-Take the path less traveled,
Or follow the common road,
All signs point to somewhere,
All can handle your load.
-In the end the choice is now,
Not for left or right,
But for something true to you,
That gets you through the night.
-Just don’t break the flowers,
Or swelter in the heat,
There are no excuses,
Only you control your feet.
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(a bit cliche, i know)
Random Thought! Anyone interested in starting a 52 week project?! lemme know. We need a few more people!
Well today of all days was the beginning of my online high school career! It was interesting but very busy. So once I was done I decided that I wanted to take some photos. There is an awesome gutter across the street with some cool things in it. We decided to rake up some leaves and throw em into the gutter and make something fun out of it and this is what we came out with. I don’t really like the way they turned out but I don’t really mind it was just to go explore!!
P.S. This is NOT supposed to look "Morbid" .
"I told you not to go out tonight, didn't I ? Every time you go out, this kind of thing happens."
('Frank Zito' by RK - made out of a slightly modified and blood painted action figure by ToyBiz / 'Knife' by NECA / 'Scalp' by ToyBiz as well)
NOTE: I always hoped that one day there'd be a figure of one of my favourite horror movie characters: Frank Zito, outstandingly performed by the late Joe Spinell. Then again, what toy company wants to get their hands dirty by sculpting this grim, deranged and yet sad and lonely serial killer from 'MANIAC' (1980)? A movie so controversially discussed and reviewed - and often incomprehensibly ignored when it comes to the list of 80s horror movies.
So I took this matter into my own hands and tried to recreate the now infamous movie poster. To me it's still one of the best horror movies ever made - with Joe Spinell's great and disturbing performance and some of the best make-up effects at that time by Tom Savini.
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 restlessness and lack of adaptation.
Dora Woda
Vaudeville Games
A villainous study in 2 Actes.
Acte 1
When I first saw the two of them, I knew that they were up to something no good.
It had been a pleasant afternoon spent amusing myself by mixing in during a black-tied occasion haunted by a group of the ultra-rich.
The place was an elegantly large, leased Ballroom, where a wedding reception with what seemed like a thousand gaily attired attendees had been in progress most of the afternoon. I had been amazed, dazzled may be a better word, when I had first walked in as the guests had already begun to gather. I had never seen a such a beautifully sparkling display of lovely jewels being worn by the ladies and lassies in attendance to a mere wedding reception before. I thought I was at some sort of convention for a Tiffanies or DeBeers, with models in long flowing gowns of satin, silk, and taffeta, all loaded to the gills with enticing jewels.
Later I learned, to my benefit, that a good number of them would be attending a local catholic charities ball held at the Cathedral’s large main hall later that evenin. Which explains the total overkillin with the fancy dress, and baubles.
Now, with the females in attendance wearing ample jewels expensive enough that any piece would have been profitable, there would be a temptation even the most unskilled of thieves could not resist. This is precisely one of the reasons why I was there. And I was determined to make the most out of the situation in all ways possible!
I soon found meself shadowing an unsuspecting, rather dipsy, female partier, whose steady drinking habit had first piqued my interest. She was wearing too many jewels than was good for her ( in my opinion), totally taking away notice from the rather fetching long taffeta gown she was poshly wearing over her delightfully young figure. I caught up to her just as she was making yet another quick swirling turn , letting her brush up against me. Almost on que ( and with the help of a foot on her dress’s hem) she lost her balance and I held her gloved arm to help steady her up. In the process I snagged one of her vulgarly large diamond bracelets from her satin clad wrist, secreting it to my vest pocket in the commotion.
I walked away, realizing yet once again, that the thrill I used to receive when lifting a piece of jewelry from a lady had noticeably been diminishing over the course of the last couple of years. Like any profession that has been worked at for a while, it had almost become too routinely easy anymore; my almost ghostlike hovering over receptions, ballroom dances and the ilk. Admiring the rich gowns and dresses, and savoring their sparkling jewels were becoming almost mundane. Even the snagging of a flashy bauble or two along the way was losing its appeal. Even though it was my primary source for putting the bread on the table , I felt sometimes that I needed a break. Sure, I held a second, loosely related, profession to seem respectable to the outside world, but it did not pay nearly as much. I sighed deeply to myself, wallowing in my rather dubious self-pity as I made my way through the thickly congregated crowd of guests at the reception. I also was finding meself pining for my place of birth, Merry old England( or wales to be specific) and a sweet ginger haired lass who I had once known, and still kept in touch with for the 7 long years since I had left my homeland.
With those thoughts whirling about in me head, I made my way to the bar, deciding to now settled back to have a few free drinks and try to enjoy the show. Soon I found myself cheered up, even lazily toying with the idea of making a second score later that evening. And then, well now, given what valuables were being displayed, it was not surprising that soon I spotted a second source of amusement. For it was at that point that I saw the two of them making their way in.
There appeared to be only two of them, together; An older woman, grandmotherly in appearance, with long silver hair, and a foxy expression. Along with the “Grandmother” was what appeared to be her 16 year old granddaughter. “Granddaughter” was a slender sprite with a long sheet of freely hanging long silky blonde hair and deep enchantingly blue eyes, and a rather charming smile, with was noticeably pasted upon her impish face as she took it in all the splendor.
The grandmother wore a blue silk skirt and white silky top, ¾ sleeved. The granddaughter was wearing a tea length black satin skirt and a gold satin long sleeved blouse with ruffles and frills, which was uncharacteristic when compared to the dresses and long gowns of the other girls around her age in attendance. The “Grandmother” was adorned with silver chains, and earrings. The “Granddaughter” wore ruby earrings and matching necklace, like the kind of imitation jewelry one receives as a promotion when buying overpriced perfume. Both newcomers out of place with some of the fancier costumes and gems on display, worn by the older rich ladies as well as quite a number of their younger female issue’s as well.
The granddaughter also wore gold plated rings and bracelets, so pick pocketing was probably not her game; she was probably the “ferret” or the lure. But the grandmother on the other hand, had clean fingers, nimble and long and with nothing around her bare wrists, and decidedly was dressed for quick movements; she was probably the dip, or lift. They also did not appear to be known personally by any of the other guests in attendance, but in a gathering that large, with so many snobs ignoring everything that was going on outside their immediate area, this was not surprising. After all, I was there not really knowing anyone either, except for the ones who had hired me.
The pair split off on their own separate courses. The granddaughter soon began mingling with girls in her own age bracket, whom, as was typical of the very rich, were totally unsupervised by any adult. I noticed she was mingling with only those who displayed the most expensive clothing, then zeroing in upon those wearing the largest quantity of expensive jewelry. The Grandmother soon fell into step with a group of older ladies, whose blazing jewels had attracted her notice.
The playing field was getting too crowded I thought, and so I made myself content by watching the (pair) work the room. I wasn’t shocked: Hunting grounds this fertile were bound to attract multiple predators. The appetite of my curiosity was wetted and I drifted to a corner table with my refilled drink ( an old fashion) , where I could watch over them without notice.
The grandmother was ever watchful, as she chatted up her new, satin gowned, acquaintances, but did not appear to be posed to strike. Her eyes were relentlessly on the move, I figured she was on the look for something special, and was ready to pounce when the situation arose.
Meanwhile the granddaughter seemed to have hooked one. A shy fifteen-year-old clad in a eye-catching sky blue long satin sheath gown, with a matching cape that hung from her shoulders to her elbows. The cut of her gown, and her heavy makeup, made the 15 year old look far too much like an adult. Her dangling earrings were at least a full caret, a long thin gold chain dangling from her gowns neckline held diamond studded heart with a sapphire center that swished expensively against her soft gown. A matching ring and bracelet to the pendent rounded out her jewels. But her cape also had a sapphire pin that swayed, shooting out flames of fiery brilliance, whenever the lights caught it.
I looked for the grandmother, she was now chatting to a young be speckled twenty something, diamonds glittered from the thin necklace that hung shimmering down the front of her satin turtleneck like blouse, an ideal setup. A long, midnight black, tiered skirt fell flowing to her feet, with a diamond brooch centered on the satin sash that encircled her waist. Rings glittered from the fingers that nervously twirled a locket of long , hanging hair as she talked to the “Grandmother”, who had her hand (seemingly nonchalantly) upon the girl’s silken covered shoulder as she made conversation.
I turned my attention back to the “Granddaughter” locating her by the stage, whispering conspiratorially into her newly made friends ear, the girl’s dangling earring shining ever so richly. I watched as the pair left and started to wander towards the dance floor, where they started to watch the dancing couples assembling for the bands next piece. As they stood there the “grandmother” walked up to the pair, and the “granddaughter” introduced her to her new found friend in the shiny blue sheath gown.
As they did so, I looked around for the be speckled 20 something the “grandmother” had been chatting up, she couldn’t have gotten far. I soon spotted her on the dance floor, in the arms of a young man in a monkey suite. I quickly noticed that her necklace was noticeably no longer adorning the neckline of her pretty blouse. I had a good idea where it was, but how had it been accomplished, removed from around her neck without notice, ahh, that was the rub. I was sorry I had missed the performance of the disappearing necklace trick!
My analysis of the pairs game had been spot on, and it was obvious that they were not armatures by any means. It appeared that the “Grandmother was the expert, The younger looking “Granddaughter “ probably her protégé. I quickly looked back at the small group of three hovering on the edge of the dance floor not wanting to miss a trick.
The three were chitchatting on, the “grandmother” admiring the young ladies gown flowing liquidly down over her perky figure. As she then admired blue gowns glimmering necklace, the “granddaughter” had moved and positioned herself behind the unwary young lady. As the necklace was raised I saw her look about and reach up, pulling up and back the chain, efficiently unhooking it. The grandmother held onto the pendant with one hand as she lifted the unsuspecting girls satin gloved hand with her other , all the while chatting her up. Then ever so slowly the “Grandmother” pulled the necklace down freeing it from around the unsuspecting lass’s neck, letting it drop to the carpeted floor at her feet. The “granddaughter” scrunched down behind their cute victim, ( totally unaware that she was being robbed), and reaching around, scarfed the necklace up, stood and moved off. The “grandmother gave the unwilling girl a hug, and when they broke off I noticed the sapphire pin had been lifted, adding unwary insult to undiscovered injury. I saw the girl in the blue sheath look around for her new friend, but the “Granddaughter” had disappeared, moving off to greener pastures.
I soon spotted the “granddaughter” as she resurfaced, obviously she was on the move again, which was surprising, I would have not risked any further attempts so soon if I had been in her dainty heels. I watched, trying to spot her next victim. She headed over towards a table that she had passed earlier, on one of the chairs was a mink jacket, and another was a feathery boa that I had seen her admiring, fingering on the then deserted table.
But the chair that the mink was hanging from now had an occupant. A girl of about 15, wearing a soft velvet dress with long sleeves, had picked up the boa and was sitting on the chair wearing it. She was happily playing with the long feather boa, not a concern in the world. I looked her over, on one side of her dress was a diamond sunburst pin, and on her chubby fingers, were two diamond rings, small but real, and from her ears dangled a pair of long pear shaped diamonds suspended from diamond solitaries clasped to her earlobes.... I was amazed that she would have been trusted to wear such valuable trinkets, but I was not surprised that she was in all probability about to lose them!
The “granddaughter” came upon the girl and asked if she could try on the boa. The unsuspecting girl helped her happily on with it , then the “granddaughter picked up one end, tickling the richly clad lass with the fluffy feathers, then allowed the girl to do the same, eyeing her victims shimmering rings in the process.
The grandmother soon approached to join in the fun. She put on the boa next and tickled both girls with its ends, getting them to giggle uncontrollably. The two devious ladies’s routine had been well honed, as their chosen victim became caught up in the middle of the pair’s rapid fire bantering, and teasing. But it was not all play for two of the three! The 15 year olds diamond starburst pin was the first item to disappear! As the giggling girl, her eyes closed, was doubled over trying to catch a breath, the “Grandmother” took rude advantage of the situation by smoothly reaching under and unsnapping the shimmering pin from the bent over girl’s shiny dress as it had fallen loosely away from her chest for a few seconds. Soon the purloined pin was followed by her sparkling rings, slipped off her fingers when it was her turn to have her hands held behind her by the “Grandmother” and be tickled with the boa by the “Granddaughter” during the course of their horsing around. I thought the pair were finished at that point, but no, they were going for the full Tribeca!
The “Grandmother” held the young ladies attention by kneeling in front of the 15 year old, and helping her on with the boa, wrapping it around the girls neck. As this was being done, the “granddaughter busied herself with coolly slipping off each of the girls old fashioned dangling clasp earrings ! I watched in wonder as the laughing girls expensive earrings were each effortlessly plucked away. The giggling 15 year old clad in the velvet dress had been stripped (tickled) of all her jewels with surgical precision, as the boa was being wily used to its full feathery advantage, and she had never noticed a thing!
The “Grandmother” then stood and moved off to one side, as the girls continued to giggle and play. Unnoticed, she gingerly lifting the mink from the chair behind the now less shimmering 15-year-old, as said child was still being entertained by the “granddaughter”, who I saw had now her hand inside a purse laying on the table behind their cheerful victim. The “grandmother”, carrying the expensive mink over her arm, slipped around and out of sight down the hidden entrance to a side corridor that I knew led down to the building’s work area. The show was probably ending. The pair had acted swiftly, and I knew they would be fished out soon. But I waited; the “granddaughter” was still there, apparently in no hurry to follow the “Grandmother” and disappear down the corridor with her. So there may possibly be another act to their scoundrel like play I surmised, although it was risking it in my professional opinion.
End Acte 1
Mamiya Press. Mamiya-Sekor 150mm F5.6, Five minutes at F22 on Portra 160. Scanning: Epson V600.
Pretty sure this was after the one to the right. The pretty sunset colors vanished, but we had neat clouds.
The MP lenses - at least the chrome ones I have - are single-coated, so bright light sources within or just outside the frame are the kiss of death because of uncontrollable lens flare.
Absent that, they give a very soft-contrast reading, which gives one a blank slate on which to build a print.
This is a picture from the top of the hill, looking down the road known at the time as "Child's Crossing" where we lived in Omaha. Our house if the visible one on the left.
It's now known simply as "Childs Road," and technically it's in the suburb of Bellevue, which is in South Omaha. (I've geotagged this photo, so you can see exactly where it's located.)
Note that the road was unpaved at this point; I didn't remember it as such. In one of the later photographs in this album, you'll see that by 1992, the road was paved.
The area to the right of our house was simply an open field; I'm sure there's a house there now. At the time, my neighborhood friends and I played baseball in the field ... but the weeds were so high that we often lost our baseball ...
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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. 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.
The inspiration for this Wasteland Scavenger came directly from the DC comics universe. The character "Bane", enemy of Batman, to be exact.
The tanks on his back are filled with a potent Mutagen that is pumped through hoses throughout his body. This Mutagen has increased the subjects strength, agility, and intelligence. Not to mention made him extremely ugly. The Mutagen also causes uncontrollable rage.
A Curious Vigilance
Part One of Two
A Watchman Cometh
“If you can’t take the heat, don’t be tickling dragons !”
Acte 1
Ginny and I had, several weeks ago, received invitations to a fellow student's upscale, formal evening wedding.
Since we both love to get dressed up, it was a no-brainer to accept. Even though we really weren’t players in her circle.
Probably just wanted the gifts. The git.
So I borrowed my twin brothers antique roadster, drove up the road a short way, and picked up Ginny.
We both were dressed for the kill.
I had on my smart purple silk dress with the long pleated slinky knee-length skirt and spaghetti straps. The dress came with a cuffed long-sleeved, waist-length, black satin jacket with rhinestone buttons.
I had put in a diamond pin on one side of the jacket. It was in the shape of a bursting star, giving off a pleasing shimmer.
My other jewels consisted of my silver necklace set with hanging diamonds and sapphires, along with the matching semi-long earrings. Also worn was my diamond tennis bracelet, on my left wrist and a wide rhinestone bracelet on my left. Two rings, one set with sapphires, the other with diamonds surrounding a gold rose(my best ring) gracing two fingers on my left hand, completed the look.
Ginny?
Well, our Ginny girl was smashing.
She had poured her lithe figure into the sleek satin high shoulder sleeve sheath dress she had bought to wear in a play she acted in last spring. It was midnight black with a brite lime green inner lining and tight lime green Lycra pants. The only decoration on the elegant dress was a glittery silver rhinestone Dragon, with green slanted eyes and a red fiery tongue. It was embroidered crawling up one side of the dress, grasping claws reaching around up towards her bosom.
“Naughty Dragon.”
Ginny had green mascara above her eyes, around which she drew lines of black mascara to give them a slanted look. The whole effect looked a lot like Shirley Jackson did in the Michael Caine movie Gambit. Right up to the solid gold headpiece in Gunny’s reddish hair.
Ginny also had in her emerald drop earrings, along with her twin emerald bracelets gracing each bare wrist, and a fancy emerald cocktail ring flashing from a finger on her left hand.
But it was her necklace that stole the show.
The opulently handsome necklace was the estate auction won, a long pendant that had neatly set her back a month's wages. We both had opened bids on it at the same time, with me immediately backing off so she would win it.
It was a very shimmery piece of jewellery, with its long rhinestone encrusted chain hanging past her breasts, ending with a dangling pendant which held a birds egg size synthetic oval-shaped emerald, surrounded by long rhinestone fringes that resembled the silver beard of the dragon on her dress.
It was a very striking effect, especially when it stopped swaying and hung straight down, appearing just out of reach from the grasping front rhinestone claw of the gem greedy dragon.
^^^^^^^^
The church and reception hall was only about a 60-minute drive away.
We arrived in the city early and stopped at a pub for a glass of wine, which we drank outside at a garden table.
We then left, arriving at the church with plenty of time to walk around and soak in the surroundings.
Acte 2
The wedding Proper was pretty normal, with the usual pomp, circumstance, and rigid schedule only the upper class seem to achieve with nothing atoll coming close to being original and new.
The reception was more of the same. Ginny, per normal, snagged more time on the dance floor than me. Though I was
by no means being ignored. The bar was free, so we made good use of that.
By around 7:30 we were a pair of happily well-fed, well-partied, and well-liquored-up young ladies.
The reception for the most part was the usual fun and the usual routine flow that goes on at such affairs.
There was only one incident of note, well actually I guess, two, that have a bearing on my story.
The first was this:
A young girl was wearing what must have been a previously worn, hideously yellow, satin bridesmaid gown. She also was wearing a nice set of real diamonds. Ginny was really impressed with the jewelry she was wearing. As the party went, and the more we drank, the more Ginny prattled on over different ways someone could try lifting some of those diamonds from the lady.
Sensing there may be trouble soon brewing, I was getting tired of holding Ginny back from her obsession, that I suggested we should be heading out.
Then I was asked to dance, and lost track of her. When I found her, she was chatting up the lady in yellow satin and diamonds. The lady was holding up Ginny’s shimmery pendant, and I saw that Ginny had a hand placed lightly on the lady’s wrist, next to her diamond bracelet
Telling myself:
“Enough of that missy!”
I went up and pried Ginny away.
“Don’t be tickling that Dragon, even if you were thinking of doing it as a prank.”
I scolded.
My twin brother is always saying “If you are not prepared to take the heat, don’t tickle a dragon!” In other words, don’t invite trouble if you are not sure you would welcome the outcome.
I started telling her we might be heading home.
“Stop at our pub(The Poet & Peasant),” I suggested.
Ginny said we should do one better…
We could stop at the old cemetery where we liked to role-play various games of both pickpockets, and jewel thievery. Sometimes combining the two. There she could nick my jewels to her heart’s content.
I admitted that sounded promising.
Then came the second incident on the heels of her suggestion.
Ginny said pleasantly, if we’re not doing the pub, then we should take something to drink with us. That way we don’t need a pub.
Suspiciously, I asked my grinning childhood friend.
“What’s you on about? “
“I mean Cade, nick a bottle while I distract the bartender. He’s working over there alone for a few minutes.”
I sighed, but it may be fun, so game on….
We pulled it off. It was far easier than it should have been.
As Ginny flirted with the young man tending the open bar, so I kept moving till his back was to me, and I ended up sitting on the far end.
I took a deep breath, scurried around and grabbed a bottle from the supply bin on the floor, and walked straight out the nearest exit.
I circled around the building to the lot and found Ginny at the roadster waiting.
She had placed her black beaded purse, opened, on the bonnet of the car and was bending over to put lipstick on using the car's outside mirror.
“What did you snag luv?”
Breathless, I looked at the bottle for the first time. It was a bottle of Penderyn.
Slightly disappointed, I would have preferred wine over a single malt. But it would do.
Meanwhile, I was standing between Ginny and the roadsters’ bonnet.
I handed the bottle to her, and as she looked I reached out behind me and dipping my fingers into her purse pulled out her wallet.
Holding it behind, suppressing a desire to laugh, I circled around to the right side and got into the driver's seat.
Ginny put her lipstick inside her purse and snapped it close with one hand still holding the bottle. Then picking up the purse and got inside the passenger’s seat.
She never noticed her wallet was gone, and by then I had it inside my own purse.
Still totally clueless, Ginny asked as we drove away :
“Do you think we should include your brother in with us?”
I said he was practicing darts with Brian(my boyfriend) and their friend, teammate, and one of our players, Derrick.
Ginny giggled, hoisting up the bottle. More for us then.
Acte 3
We arrived at the cemetery with plenty of light left in the evening. Parking in the main lot, we made our way past the open wrought iron gates.
The almost 40 Hectares square-shaped cemetery is no longer in use, its main gates are permanently opened to the public, but besides us, only very few ever visit it. Judging by the dates on the gravestones, the last burial was not too long after the Victorian age officially ended. No way of truly establishing when its first burial was.
It lays along a lane called Abbots Chase.
Where a highwayman by the name of Craig Abbot used to roam several hundred years ago. It is said he is buried here in this very cemetery. Though most of the old stones are so blackened the names are not legible.
My dad is a direct descendant of Craig Abbot, and much to the chagrin of my mum’s Irish catholic family, my twin brother was named after him. Destiny?
The other end off Abbots Chase lane, west of the cemetery goes past the large old manor house some 5 kilometers away from the cemetery. The manor is now a private men’s seminary college.
^^^^^^^^^^^
We hung out at the cemetery and its interior, and surrounding woods, as kids, walking the 2 Kilometers along from the east end of the lane, where the local village was.
Both Ginny and I grew up in houses located on the opposite side of the village.
We use this private cemetery for our role-playing game adventures. We had the run of the area. Not only because of its solitude, and lack of visitors, but also because there were no roads in it. Only narrow overgrown horse-drawn cart paths. And a few cobblestone footpaths. Both of which are blocked by fallen gravestones.
The games have evolved. But they mostly are based on pickpocketing and other forms of thievery. Mainly related to lifting or the nicking of jewels that the one portraying the victim is wearing. We take turns being one or the other.
Originally there were just the 3 of us, Ginny, my twin brother, and myself. We would bring various costumes, play jewelry, and other various items. Backpacking them in from our homes.
We have since added four more “players” to our group, though only a few times have we all met here in force.
There are also times as we grew older that we have stopped to play after being somewhere dressed up. The motivation can be anything from too much to drink, or something that evening triggered the idea.
Like tonight, with Ginny taking a fancy to a young lady’s diamonds.
Acte 4
Ginny and I entered through the main gate and walked the 75 meters up to the marble pagoda sitting on a small hill.
In years long past, this pagoda would have served as the last service area for the deceased being buried here.
There is a set of steps leading up to the platform which is eye level. On the ground, flanking the steps are a pair of long marble benches. With old wrought iron ones scattered about surrounding the octagonal platform.
As per normal, no sign that anyone had been here in a while. Though we did have a bit of a jump when a fox ran out from underneath the pagoda, giving us the evil eye before slipping off into some tall grass.
I had brought a blanket which we laid on the stairs. We put down our purses on one of the marble benches.
Sitting on the stairs, Ginny opened the bottle and took a small sip. Followed by a bigger one.
“Whew, that burns going down.”
She exclaimed passing it to me.
It smelled strong.
“Should have brought some water to cut it.”
I said taking a hit, feeling it burn warmly.
We each took several more sips before getting down to business.
I place a hand on Ginny’s arm, looking her in the eyes.
She starts to giggle. As do I, both of us falling into each other’s arms, hugging as our figures are being racked by our uncontrollable laughter.
Meanwhile, I was busy. My hand running down her arm, I reached one of her emerald bracelets and nimbly opened the clasp, easily pulling it off and cuffing it in my fist, moving that hand to her backside, using it to hold her quivering figure close.
Finally, we broke away, settling down. I slipped her bracelet inside my jacket’s side pocket, as I stroked her sleek backside with my free hand, speaking:
“Ok lass, are you ready to lift some diamonds?”
Taking a belt from the bottle ( it was not a sip, nor a gulp, somewhere in between)
Ginny nodded her head, earrings sparkling, like the look in her eyes just before she said:
“Let’s dance.”
Acte 5
I went over and pulled the cell from my purse, seeing a text from my brother asking if “Us girls were having fun?”
I sent one back:
“Smashing fun, wish you could be here, now I have to go and see a lady about doing a lift on some jewels she is wearing…”
That should make him stop in his tracks and ponder. I would imagine his game now being off all of a sudden.
Giggling mischievously, I laid the cell in front of my purse on the marble seat, I selected “And we danced” by the Hooters.
Ginny was already on the platform, strutting her stuff. I went to the stairs, grabbed the bottle, took a swig, and ran up to join her.
She bumped into me with her hip, then went behind me, her hands running along my figure, then pulling me against her she ran her hands down along the satin sleeve of my jacket. I only felt it because I knew it was coming. After all, as her hand slipped along my wrist, she expertly whisked off my diamond bracelet.
I pushed her away using my hinney, then turned and began dancing close to her, wriggling up against and away from her figure. Her eyes had been opened quite wide, from the thrill of the bracelet lift, but she closed them as I rubbed my figure up along hers.
I had been eyeing her dazzling dripping jeweled pendant. My arms went up behind her back. Pulling down the clasp I unhooked it and reaching my hands up, pulled it away from her gown’s rhinestone dragon’s clutches
I had it pocketed before she reopened her eyes.
The music ended, and arm in arm we went back to the stairs, passing the bottle to each other.
We were becoming quite happily intoxicated by now, giggling at everything.
Acte 6
Ginny sets down the bottle, then stares at her bare wrist.
“I don’t suppose this bracelet fell off on its own?”
I chuckled, looking at where her necklace should have been dangling, picking up the bottle.
“No, it had a bit of help…Another round?”
We both took several swigs before I decided it was time to have a bit more role play.
I place a hand on Ginny’s chest...
“Give me a lead luv…”
Ginny thinks a minute, long enough for us to take another swig each from the fast becoming half full bottle.
Looking me over, she tells me.
“Take a walk..”
I stand (maybe a little wobbly), and manage to do so, taking the path around the pagoda.
She comes up behind me, putting her hands over my eyes.
“Guess who Abigail?”
I answered...
I’m not Abigail?”
The voice behind me, as the hands are lifted from my eyes and reach down to my chest..”
“I’m so sorry, of course, your not, my bad.”
I turn around to face Ginny…
Placing a hand on my chest( lifting off my broach from the lapel of the jacket) Ginny says:
“I’m so sorry, I can’t believe I made a mistake like that. “
I feel her placing the broach in my pocket, as I say:
“That’s ok luv, we all make mistakes.’
Quite pleased with herself Ginny went back to the steps.
She thought I was following as she talked to me.
I did not, rather I hid in the bushes and watched her.
Ginny picked up the now 3/4 empty bottle and took a swig, handing it to me…
It was then she realized I wasn’t there.
“Where are you, you silly ninny?”
She called out, then began to walk back the way she had come.
I jump out of the bushes behind her my hand in the satin jacket's pocket( I can feel the cold necklace inside. I point my fingers In the pocket like I am ‘ packing heat
Prodding my finger in her back I say
“Stick 'em up, pretty lady!”
Ginny giggles,
“Speaking of sticks. Is that one or are you just happy to see me?
“Funny lady, now turn around. “
She did and gave a fake gasp, hand to her mouth, ring sparkly.
“There you go, now be a good Lass and hand over those jewels around your wrist. ”
She lifted her wrist and undid the bracelet, here thief take this also, and she takes out her gold hairpiece.
“ The thing was starting to pull on my hair and bothering me anyways.”
I stuffed them inside my now weighty jacket pocket
“Thanks, lady !”
Ginny looked at me, then over my shoulder, her, heavily mascara’d eyes suddenly bugging out…
It was then that Ginny, placing a hand to her mouth, really Gasped.
To be Continued…
FINALLY something new. Just wanted to use some of Grievous' new tan parts, came up with this semi-birdlike thing. Talons at the end of each limb - that's 200% more claw per extremity of the average thing or whatever.
I guess the blue arm is either an extension of uncontrollable power emanating from within the creature itself, or a parasitic worm which acts as a limb for its host.
Ok...I know I just posted one of these guys...I just could not help myself!
I am sure you all will understand the uncontrollable urge I cannot shake?
SOOC except slight crop.....
Thanks for stopping by and all comment and good wishes are appreciated...oh...faves too. lol
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.
On the back of this print, I had written (apparently as part of a letter to my parents in New York), "This was taken on Easter morning. I had a haircut the day before, so I really looked different."
According to Google, Easter fell on April 1st 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.
Sporting the livery of the New Hashima Police Department, the Kaizen drone is a massable field unit for damage control - when riots are deemed uncontrollable and casualties are unavoidable.
I had a blast building this - its my fastest build to date, taking a little under 5 hours (including edits) and also probably the most solid (excluding the arms). Some of Simon's drones provided inspiration for the shaping around the "eye," and the general concept came from Oscar Molin's Syntax drone.
Hope you like it!
Processed in Lightroom 4 with Whipped Cream Lightroom Preset / King Pack
www.oliviabellphotography.com/LR-about…
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Part of the Tarot Garden by Niki de Saint Phalle, Tuscany, Italy
The Tarot Garden (Giardino Dei Tarocchi) is an exploration of the human condition whose medium is mosaic on a monumental scale. These almost impossibly brightly coloured combinations of buildings and sculpture reflect the metaphysical qualities represented by the 22 main tarot cards (the major arcana). They're not concerned with the fortune-telling uses of the cards, rather the elements of life's experience, personality and self-knowledge they refer to. Work on the garden began in 1979 and the main part of the work was carried out in the 1980s; it was officially opened to the public in May 1998. During construction Niki de Saint Phalle lived in the sphinx-like Empress, a mirror-glassed cavern with kitchen, bedroom and bathroom leading off.
The tree of life is a universal symbol of life found in Christian, Egyptian, and Chinese cultures. It symbolises the power of life and its origins, the importance of roots and cosmic evolution, and is sometimes associated with guardian characters and animals.Symbolising the centre of the cosmos in the four great religions, the tree plunges its roots into the kingdom of the underworld, ruled by uncontrollable;e forces and spreads its branches towards the bright world iof consciousness. The tree of life is the central part of the garden, the starting point of the path towards the knowledge of Good and Evil.
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the last photo i will post from Montana. this might look familiar, since it's taken in practically the same spot as (and mere minutes after) this.
i generally pride myself for being pretty fearless. i like to think i enjoy taking risks and live for living life to the full. but for some reason (i don't know if it was the several hundred-foot drop in front of me, or the crumbly, slanted rocks i was sitting on), the universe chose this moment to introduce me to acrophobia. i kept running through all the worst possible scenarios in my head--what if i fell and caught onto that bush only to uproot it and drag it off the cliff with me...? my legs were shaking uncontrollably, which didn't really help me feel confident about climbing around.
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February 5, 2011.
Hair idea inspired by this.
Why is it that, as a culture, we are more comfortable seeing two men holding guns than holding hands? ~Ernest Gaines
Transgender symbol; a combination of the male and female sign with a third, combined arm representing transgender people.
Rainbow: different colors symbolize diversity in the gay community
I messed it up a little because I didn't realize it would be so complicated!
I am straight, but I believe everybody should have equal rights.
How can you define emotions in categorised genders?
No one gets to control who they fall in love with.
And since it is uncontrollable then no one has the right to determine that what they are doing is wrong.
What you may consider 'unnatural' is your own personal opinion.
And anyway, since when did you decide to be straight?
You didn't. It was just the way it is.
Of course, this is my own opinion as well which I am not going to force upon anyone.
But it doesn't mean that the discrimination should continue.
No one deserves to be discriminated against because of their sexual preferences.
You see people, afraid to come out because of one thing only.
Prejudice against them and a fear of being shunned and rejected by society.
You see people, especially teenagers, committing suicide due to continuous relentless bullying just because of their sexuality.
Don't you find it disappointing that the world you live in even has this kind of ugly treatment?
Why is it so hard to just accept people for who they are?
Powered by a gigantic 28.5 liter 4-cylinder engine, the Fiat S76 was designed for land speed record racing. Deemed "uncontrollable", both examples were thought lost until 2014-2015 when Duncan Pittaway debuted a restored/recreated model at the Goodwood Festival of Speed. Some very exciting videos of this car can be seen on Youtube.
Gunnamatta Beach, Mornington Peninsula VIC. I got some really nice light for a couple of minutes. I was trying to shoot the sunset but gave up due to uncontrollable flare caused by the sun on the filters. I ditched the filters and turned away from the sun.
.
Yes it is true, I have risen from the nearly dead.
Without getting to dramatic the 2nd covid shot
took me down a road I don't wish to follow ;-0-
Raging fever, uncontrollable tremors taking
me near delirium and unimageable confusion.
My teeth were chattering so hard I stuffed the
blanket into my mouth to prevent broken teeth.
Now I've had worse days but this one has wasted
Christmas eve, Christmas Day and nearly two days
after. During bouts of emotional disruption I started
planning a thank you letter to be sent up to china !
Something along these lines ---
"May The Blue Bird of Paradise
S#=T all over your fondest wishes !"
Well it sounded good when I was
putting it all together in my little
monkey brain, what say you ?
Now lets take a look at the positive
side of this mind boggling quandary.
In my possession is a brand new covid vaccine passport.
This allows me to enter most anywhere here in Thailand.
No# 1 has been taken out to the nuns place.
They have called her everyday with great
concerns for Uncle Jon. Today they have
a bunch of local fruit they are sending
to me for a fast and speedy recovery.
Speaking of food ---
I know this is happening all around the world
but no# 1 came back from the morning market
with only a tiny bag of vegetables. What in the
past cost 50 or 60 cents [USD} now cost $2.50!
Looks like I need to start on a new
"thank you mr blue bird letter"
Who would I send it to ?
With all that being said we are still
the same same people looking
after the same same dogs ;-)
And ya know what ?
Get ready for the ride cuz a New Year
is coming and it's just around the corner.
Thank You.
Jon&Crew.
Please help with your donations here.
www.gofundme.com/saving-thai-temple-dogs.
Please No Awards, Gyrating Graphics,
Invites or Large Group Logos, Thank You.
'
OMG I had such a great day this past Wednesday, perhaps one of my best days as a girl! Sorry for the long post and hope you can take the time to read it. I chronicle outings like this so I can remember them and like sharing them with my friends here!
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I was up early and a spur of the moment decision to get dressed up and go out shopping hit me like a freight train (BTW I love when that feeling happens). I knew the stores opened an extra hour earlier at 9AM rather than the usual 10AM so I hurried up and cleaned up, did my makeup, got dresses, and did my nail all in record time! I was planning to get there as soon as it opened because even though I do out shopping dressed a lot I tend to shy away from the really busy shopping times when it is really crowded. I wanted to go to Nordstrom (had a small coupon!) and you can park upstairs in the garage and enter on their second level which is exclusively all women's and girl's departments. So setting this scenario I will tell you that I didn't get back home until 7PM and had a blast of a day unexpectedly! Details are as follows.;
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1st pic- I wanted to wear this new outfit out but know the cute skater skirt is really short and I thought the whole ensemble is kind of over the top girlie girl but figured I was only going to be out for not more than an hour so I wore it. I have had the killer blue 5" heels for a bit longer but had only wore them out to a night spot twice, not for shopping as it makes me pretty tall. (9:05 AM)
2nd & 3rd pic- First stop was their new TOPSHOP department which features trendy junior fashions, I think it's only been there about 3 months. I tried on many outfits and dresses and was helped by a lovely young sales girl who is actually an aspiring photography which I found out when I asked her if she would mind taking a few photos of me. We exchanged contact info after asking if she would be interested in doing a photo shoot for me out on location somewhere someday. I didn't get either of these 2 outfits but did buy a cool multi colored mini skirt!! (9:05-10:45 AM)
4th pic- The next department was Better Dresses and a sales girl I had met before, Cindy, was working and we said hello and wished happy holidays. Cindy is always dressed to perfection and this day was no exception, so I complimented on her look and told she always looks fantastic which she really appreciated! I tried on this gorgeous long blue dress and the same one in maroon. First I tried the one in maroon in a size 14 and Cindy said it looked a bit big and went to get another size but came back with the blue in a size 12 ( yes, very happy here!!) as their were none in the maroon. As soon as I came out in this dress she was raving about how good I looked in it! Cindy has been working there as long as I have been shopping there and has seen my figure improvements over time and always compliments me on my work in that department! I decided to hold off in getting this even though the sale price was pretty good. I tried on 2 more dresses there and then moved on. (10:45- 11:30 AM)
5th pic- This was in the regular dress department which had some really pretty holiday dresses on display. I tried on 2 dresses here including this one pictured, a pewter color cocktail/ party dress with a poufy crinkle skirt. I decided that it looked better on the hanger (but it was another size 12!! Yay!).This dress department was recently renovated and had an outstanding and very feminine dressing room are that you will see in some future postings. (11:30- 11:55AM)
6th & 7th pics- I left Nordstrom feeling great and walked back to my car in the delicious crystal clear sunshine with my new skirt in a holiday shopping bag and smiled to everyone I passed getting warm smiles in return! I decided to drive over to the Bloomingdale's entrance and look around. Very expensive in here but I love looking!! As soon as I go in I see another sales girl friend, Marissa, dressed in a black skirt, tights, and boots with a pretty green peplum jacket, a big furry hat and collar wrap! Quite an unusually sight at any time of year here in the tropics!! She saw me and laughed out loud when I said "What on earth are you dressed for?" Another sale associate was with her ready to take pictures of Marissa and they explained their corporate offices were encouraging them to dress up a sales associate in their best winter holiday fashions and send it in for some kind of prizes, so they thought it would be a funny pic from their warm weather sales team! I asked Marissa if I could take a pic of her, which I did, and then got one with us together that I already posted 2 pics ago. She looked amazing! I walked around about half of the sales woman's wear sales floor feeling almost giddy by now and ended up back in Marissa's department ( BCGC ) and tried on a dress and 2 skirts. I didn't get the leather skirt in pic #6 but I did get the skirt in pic #7. It's kind of a hounds tooth print of red and black with 2 large pleats on each side and a black leather accent waistband. I very proud you tell you it was a size 10 as with most of us we go down a size in bottoms from our dress sizes ( thrilled!!)! Best thing is that the skirt I chose was on sale already and the store was giving an extra 15% off so I think I got a good deal at $3o for a pretty skirt especially in Bloomies!! I paid for it and said good bye to Marissa and left Bloomingdales. (12:15- 1 PM)
NO PICS - By now I was figuring I have been out so long today that I might as well make it all day thing so I parked by one of the mall entrances and walked one wing of the mall and stopped in the Steve Madden shoe store ( I wish my feet were smaller!). They always have gorgeous shoes. I visited the Marciano dress store and although the 3 sales girls I know from there didn't happen to be working, I talked with one as I was looking at the new dress arrivals. I told her who I knew that worked there and showed her pics of the 3 different Marciano dresses I have gotten already. She was impressed about how good I looked in them! I asked if there was a place I could leave a hello note to the girls I missed and she came back with some paper and pen but also brought a holiday card that was being signed by sales associates and some better customers and asked if I wanted to sign it and they were going to put it on the wall from Christmas to New Years. I thought that was very sweet and signed it "Thanks for all your help and fun shopping - Lisa"! I walked back into the mall and like my last visit, it had gotten pretty crowded but I didn't rush and wasn't aware of any weird looks so I window shopped back towards where I came in. (1:10 - 2:15 PM)
8th & 9th pics- After returning from the mall to my car being rather ecstatic over the shopping experiences, I decided to drive over to one of the nicer restaurants adjacent to the mall that also has a excellent bar area. I figured the lunch crowd had dwindled down and I would go in for a cocktail even though it was officially too early for happy hour that starts 4PM!! I went in an there was only 1 other person at the bar just finishing up a solo lunch and perhaps 3 or 4 booths in this area that were occupied by people. A booth near and facing me were 2 attractive women that had finished lunch but were having a drink and laughing and having a good time. I know that they were talking about shopping and makeup and were taking pics of each other and selfies holding something up to their faces that I thought were eye shadow color swatches or something. When they were getting ready to leave one of the women walked over to me and said hello and introduced herself. She said that I shouldn't think they were crazy but they were in Macy's and bought a new mascara and were just laughing over it because of the name of the mascara. I looked at her lashes and asked if she was wearing it and she said yes and they sure did look good. Then as she was giggling uncontrollably she shows me the mascara package and it's name was "Better Than Sex"! I laughed with her and asked her was the name right? She said better than some she has had!!! It was a good laugh and I told her a bit about myself and she did likewise. I was honest with her and whispered that she better be more careful with her leg positioning in a dress under a booth as she was giving me quite an up skirt view! She laughed again and said she doesn't wear dresses too much and is a bit of a jock and agreed she needs to handle wearing a dress a bit better. She called over her tennis partner she was eating with and told her what I said which made the other woman bust out laughing! Obviously they had more than just one drink but told me they do a lunch every year and the one who has lost the most matches together throughout the year has to pay the bill. We chatted for a few moments and I told them I went shopping since the mall opened and needed a rest. They asked where I was and I told them and that I got 2 new awesome skirts and they told me what they bought. We wished each happiness and they went to their merry way! By this time 2 other people sat down at the bar. One woman and then a young business man. I was occasionally chatting with the female bartender that I had met there before and they woman that sat down even though she was a few seats away from me. Then 2 other women came in at sat at the opposite end of the bar and a group of 4 women came in and sat on the other side of me. The young business guy was stealing glances at the woman at the bar I was occasionally chatting with and it didn't go unnoticed by her because she was turning my way and making funny faces showing she was interested or amused by him. After he finished his beer he was either feeling out numbered by women of was just plain stupid and got up and left! I picked up my stuff and moved over to the woman I was talking to and she said yes please sit with me. It's just a girl thing that you feel when the time is right! We chatted and got to know each other. She is married and originally from Colombia but living here now. She wanted to buy me another Cosmopolitan (yum!) and I agreed but said I better order some food as I hadn't had a thing to eat all day. We looked over the menu and decided to split a grilled artichoke appetizer and a kobe beef sliders plate. While waiting I walked over to the 4 women that had come in because one of them had a big black suitcase full of jewelry she makes. I looked at the jewelry and they were very nice. She said that Macy's will be letting her do a 2 day trunk sale in their store after the holidays are over. They do that to highlight local designers and she gets an invite to show her stuff to their corporate buyer. I wished her luck and she gave me her card and said look on her website as to when she will be in Macy's and come visit her there. I went back and munched out with my new friend who was very entertaining and the place was starting to fill up with people pretty good. Megen, the bartender came over and told us we get a free drink because the last one was bought after 4PM during happy hour. We ordered and I told my new friend I had to use the ladies room before I exploded and she said she has to also so off we went. Now this has happened to me a few times before and not surprising because its another of those things women do together. I love it as it is a really feminine feeling being thought of as one of them! Inside she had me cracking up and almost falling over in my cubicle telling me to hurry up!! I told her it takes me a bit longer to get all square but she kept on giving me royal ribbing and teasing and then busted my chops as I took longer than her in the mirror primping! Loved that! We went back to the bar and had our new drinks awaiting us and talked with some other people and before I knew it, it was 6:30PM and we both said it was time to go. One guy who had just come in sitting on other side of her attempted to buy us both new drinks but we declined saying we had been there too long already! I walked out with her and exchanged numbers and hugged and got in our cars. I was on cloud 9 driving home as you can imagine! ( 2:25- 7 PM)
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In summery it was one of the greatest girl days I had ever had just because of the length of it, the unique things that happened, and that it wasn't planed, I just went with the flow! My apprehension in such a flirty outfit paid dividends for me as I did ask some of the girls I knew if it was too short and none them said it was too short and just perfect for me! Marissa even said " I would expect nothing else from Lisa !" and one new sales girl I met in Nordstrom confided to me she thought I was someone famous when she saw me far away across the store and that I had legs that most women would love to have and that I should continued to wear short skirts and show them off!
I got home and put my 2 new skirts away, undressed, took my make up off, and took a warm bubble bath reflecting on the fun of the day. Then I slipped on some lovely silky lingerie and sat down to catch up on work emails and things to do that I neglected in lieu of having a fun filled girls day out! Needless to say I slept like a baby that night feeling totally feminine and extremely happy! I wish for fun days for all of you, whatever you like to do!!
Basanta Utsav literally means the 'celebration of spring'. ...
Annually celebrated in March, the festival is an occassion to invite the colourful spring season with utmost warmth. What is appreciated is the grace and diginified manner in which Vasant Utsav is celebrated in Bengal as compared to uncontrollable Holi witnessed in most parts of India.
The beautiful tradition of celebrating spring festival in Bengal was first started by Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore at Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan.
AI Future Worlds Oracle Series - Yellow Blue Goddesses - Zhea - Xanthea Azure by Daniel Arrhakis (2023)
Since the time when Artificial Intelligence emerged, fears have grown among humanity about whether it could supplant man himself and radically transform society.
Despite all governmental and planetary regulations, its development became uncontrollable from the moment large multinational companies became omnipotent.
One of the series that became the most controversial, Oracle, was developed by one of the most influential and powerful Tycoons and consisted of the integration of hybrid quantum computing systems with the power of artificial intelligence associated with bionic robotic models.
If the use of these technologies in War was already controversial, the Oracle series proved to be even more dangerous, as these supposed Intelligent Artificial Goddesses could predict future events, the possibilities of revolutions or even political transformations within society itself.
But if this seemed like it could be an added value, over time it was realized that they ended up dictating their own future events, which led to suspicions that after all, it was the big companies that were directing the future of governments and their own people, as in fact always they had done so.
But worse, the direction seemed to be heading in the direction in which the majority of human society would truly be expendable in the hands of a powerful and untouchable elite.
After major protests and regulations worldwide, the Oracle series was discontinued, until it was eventually terminated.
Some of those models produced in that era became the object of great demand by museums and private collectors and they are the subject of these series that I present to you now.
As for the Oracle series, it continued to be produced in secret by large multinationals and secret government programs, but that's another story...
____________________________________________________
A new Series "Ai - Future Worlds" created by Daniel Arrhakis with a Futuristic Surrealistic Sci-Fi intriguing mood based in the role of Artificial Intelligence in our future society.
Stories imagined by Daniel Arrhakis with images created with the help of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Art techniques.
My Higher Power often comes to me in the form of four legs.
Hannah is over 13 years of age. Barkley recently celebrated 6 months. My old Gal, always faithful and full of proper manners, continues to teach the little one on all things etiquette. Barkley has learned, for the most part, to leave Hannah alone, follow her cues, and only play with her if she initiates it. And his reward, about every three days or four days (3 if she gets Aspirin), is Hannah starting to chase him outside. This lasts for about 20 minutes. Hannah’s old German Sheppard hips sometimes seem to fail her; but nothing makes her spirit radiate more than just plain barking and chasing that Puppy (well, maybe roast beef does).
I take them to an open field with the tall grass and plenty of room where they can be off their leashes, and they have a blast. People who know Hannah always talk about her manners (I have taken her to festivals with 1000s of people with no leash) and many say they could take her to church. And now Barkley, with Hannah’s help, is really turning into a fine gentleman. Only possessed and full of the uncontrollable “Dickens” on occasion.
Every single day has been a gift to us from Hannah. And while she is in the twilight of her time here, she still leads the way and gives us all gifts that will remain long after she moves on.
Methinks this photo will be on our wall for many years to come.
The school that I attended in Omaha, 1955-56.
In those days, there were no Toyotas. But I do remember my mother driving me to school in the family Jeep one cold winter's morning, and the downhill stretch of road was so icy that the Jeep spun around in two complete circles before it came to a stop beside the school.
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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. 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.
11. 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.
I had a roll of Retrochrome 320 in the camera to finish while at the at the Hardin County Fair. This was about the last shot I could take with this film and camera combination as the light was leaving fast. Although the shadow was really uncontrollable I still liked the framing black trees and the bit of spark left in the sky. As mentioned it was getting late and this really saturated the color. The slide is slightly underexposed which again saturated the color and also accounts for the increased grain.
Film: Retrochrome 320 exposed at 400.
Retrochrome is available only at www.filmphotographyproject.com/store
Processed at www.theDarkroom.com
Camera: Olympus XA4 Macro
Imagine by: Leslie Lazenby
Kenton Ohio, Hardin County Fair. September 2105
PHOTOSHOP COMPOSITION: The Unforgetable Fire
This my early March submission. Lately I have have been having a very strong feeling of longing for my past. I is both a sad and joyful feeling. This picture of Key West,
Florida is one of the first places I visited in Florida in 1980.
Fun fact # 1. This picture was taken in Mallory Square in Key West,
Florida. It was wild in the 80"s!
Fun fact # 2. I am not a big U2 fan, but this song, in my opinion is their best song.
I have decided to give myself a monthly challange with photography and CS5. The lesson is very simple, I have listed twelve of my favorite songs and each month I will take one of the song titles and compose a picture around it. My criteria is that the picture must be an original picture I have taken and that I use my CS5 skills to enhance the picture to meet the theme of the song title. Some will be direct some obscure. Listed below are the songs I will be using in the next twelve months. Here is my September compostion. This is a prototype. I have a better idea in mind but it will take a few days to take the picutres.
The Flesh Failures-Hair Original Cast Recording [February]*
The Uncontrollable Fire-U2*[March 2013]
Wild Horses-Rolling Stones [June]*
Wonderwall-Ryan Adams [July]*
L'Estasi Dell'Oro-Ennio Morricone [November]*
Sorcerer-Tangerine Dream [September]*
Taxi to Heaven-Pray for Rain [December]*
White Room-Cream [October]*
Redemption Song-Bob Marley [August]*
Cruel Summer-Bananarama
The Celestials-Smashing Pumpkins
Every Step of the Way-Santana [December]*
Zaya offers comfort to her sister who is weeping uncontrollably over the attack on Ukraine. Most people in the world want peace, but we are all victims at times of evil, greedy leaders in our governments.
retro-vintage-photography.blogspot.com/
Maurice Tillet (1903 – August 4, 1954) was a French professional wrestler known as The French Angel who was a leading box office draw in the early 1940s and was recognized as world heavyweight champion by the American Wrestling Association run by Paul Bowser in Boston.
Born in France, he could speak 14 languages and was also a poet and actor. In his twenties, he developed acromegaly, a rare disease that causes bones to grow wildly and uncontrollably. Soon his whole body was disfigured as a result. Seeking a new identity to fit his disfigurement, Tillet moved to the United States where he made a living on his appearance by becoming a professional wrestler, and was dubbed as the "freak ogre of the ring". His villain persona ("the French Angel") was an instant success with the crowds, becoming one of the largest draws in professional wrestling and spawning a series of "Angel" imitators.
On August 1, 1944, The French Angel defeated Steve "Crusher" Casey for the Boston-based world championship. He became a recluse, although a few people did manage to befriend Tillet, including the businessman Patrick Kelly, whose home in Braintree, Massachusetts Tillet would often visit.
Tillet died in 1954 from heart disease at age 51.
ENGLISH:
Here I am on my way to a conservation meeting with my tame wild boar Willy.
God created the world wonderfully, which is why I am committed to ensuring that we humans honor God and protect his creation. Unfortunately, we are in the process of destroying the world. Humanity is using up more and more resources and is throwing the world out of balance. That is why we must reduce our footprint. That can only work if we stop reproducing so uncontrollably. The number of people equals the number of problems.
Representation in scale 1/87 (H0).
ESPAÑOL:
Ángela, conservacionista
Aquí estoy de camino a una reunión de conservación con mi jabalí domesticado Willy.
Dios creó el mundo maravillosamente, por eso me comprometo a garantizar que los humanos honremos a Dios y protejamos su creación. Desafortunadamente, estamos en el proceso de destruir el mundo. La humanidad está consumiendo cada vez más recursos y está desequilibrando el mundo. Por eso debemos reducir nuestra huella. Eso sólo puede funcionar si dejamos de reproducirnos de manera tan incontrolable. El número de personas es igual al número de problemas.
Representación a escala 1:87 (H0).
DEUTSCH:
Angela, Naturschützerin
Hier bin ich mit meinem zahmen Wildschweineber Willy unterwegs zu einer Naturschutzversammlung.
Gott hat die Welt wunderbar geschaffen, darum setze ich mich dafür ein, dass wir Menschen Gott ehren und seine Schöpfung bewahren. Leider sind wir aber daran die Welt zu zerstören. Die Menschheit verbraucht immer mehr Resourcen und bringt die Welt aus dem Gleichgewicht. Darum müssen wir unseren Fussabdruck verringern. Das kann nur funktionieren, wenn wir uns nicht mehr so unkontrolliert vermehren. Anzahl Mensch ist gleich Anzahl Probleme.
Darstellung im Maßstab 1:87 (H0).
[Español abajo :)] - Matryoshka doll (Russian doll).
For a while I was a marketing manager for the North Europe region in a multinational technology company. It was a job I enjoyed because of working with people from other countries and for the occasional opportunities to travel.
This Russian stacking doll was bought on one of the trips to Finland. The Finns are interesting folk. Just like their language, they are a totally different people group to any other European one, and definitely not Russian! They can appear dour and grim as befits their climate, but I always found them friendly and hospitable.
Finns have a strange, virtually incomprehensible sense of humour. The best way I can describe it is to say that it is drier than arid, and for a dry-witted Englishman that is saying something!
Ah... In this world of unintended consequences, I can tell my viewer would now like to hear a Finnish joke. Well first gather your group of Finns, and then tell them this story:
‘Once a man was fishing in the centre of a remote lake sitting by a hole in the ice. There was then a very rare occurrence. Another man came in sight.
Seeing the fisherman the visitor walked over and sat down beside him in silence. Three hours later they were still sitting there and not a word had been spoken.
Eventually the visitor spoke, “Why are you fishing here?” he asked. The fisherman paused and then replied, “To catch fish.”’
At which point your Finnish audience will fall about laughing uncontrollably…
The really worrying thing is, now that many years have passed I actually appreciate why it’s funny. By you have to understand the Finnish mindset :)
The trip started at Helsinki but mainly consisted of an overnight boat trip to Tallinn, the capital of Estonia on the other, southern side of the Baltic. Ostensibly it was for a product update from me and others but everyone knew the real agenda: to get into International waters so the draconian Finnish alcohol taxes could be ignored and for the clients to get wildly drunk.
And drunk they did get. My, how they did!
I have been in drinking groups before but never have I seen a group of people drink so much and then walk on two legs the day after. We congregated for dinner and folk had had three double shots of vodka before the starters were served… and then it went on like that for eight hours…
Well, a pint and a half of beer and 37 Cokes later I arrived in Tallinn.
Tallinn is a lovely city. The old town is a very typical North European walled city (not Russian) built on a hill. But it is surrounded by grim grey Soviet-era tenement blocks that fill the suburbs.
On one of the cobbled streets as I walked up to the top I found a lovely little shop that specialised in these Russian nested dolls. There were dozens of different types all in different designs. Most of them stack three to seven deep with each doll twisting apart to reveal the smaller one within.
I bought this one as a memento of the visit, and for the joy of seeing the smile of delight on my young daughter’s face when she saw it taken apart on my return. This one appealed because it wasn’t in the bright glossy colours that characterised most of the tourist ones. Instead it was fashioned in matt wood, carved then marked with a hot iron and finally gilded. It seemed more authentic.
This is the smallest and largest of the 5 doll set. Taken for the 2DWF group’s Two Together theme.
Thank you for taking the time to look. I hope you enjoy the image! Happy 2DWF :)
[Set on wooden pastry board with green card background. Sidelit in daylight. Tripod mount; manual focus in Live Mode; remote trigger.
Processed in Capture One for colour.
Unsharp Mask and dark vignette in Affinity Photo and that’s about it :)]
---
Muñeca matryoshka (muñeca rusa).
Durante un tiempo fui gerente de marketing para la región del norte de Europa en una empresa multinacional de tecnología. Fue un trabajo que disfruté por trabajar con personas de otros países y por las oportunidades ocasionales de viajar.
Esta muñeca rusa de apilamiento fue comprada en uno de los viajes a Finlandia. Los finlandeses son gente interesante. Al igual que su idioma, son un grupo de personas totalmente diferente a cualquier otro europeo, ¡y definitivamente no son rusos! Pueden parecer severos y sombríos como corresponde a su clima, pero siempre los encontré amigables y hospitalarios.
Los finlandeses tienen un extraño y virtualmente incomprensible sentido del humor. ¡La mejor manera de describirlo es decir que es más seco que árido, y para un inglés ingenuo que está diciendo algo!
Ah ... En este mundo de consecuencias no deseadas, puedo decirle a mi espectador que le gustaría escuchar una broma finlandesa. Bueno, primero reúna a su grupo de finlandeses y luego cuénteles esta historia:
"Una vez un hombre estaba pescando en el centro de un lago remoto sentado junto a un agujero en el hielo. Hubo entonces una ocurrencia muy rara. Otro hombre apareció a la vista.
Al ver al pescador, el visitante se acercó y se sentó a su lado en silencio. Tres horas más tarde todavía estaban sentados allí y no se había dicho una sola palabra.
Finalmente, el visitante habló: "¿Por qué estás pescando aquí?", Preguntó. El pescador hizo una pausa y luego respondió: "Para atrapar peces".
En qué punto su audiencia finlandesa caerá sobre la risa incontrolable ...
Lo realmente preocupante es que, ahora que han pasado muchos años, realmente aprecio por qué es gracioso. Por que tienes que entender la mentalidad finlandesa :)
El viaje comenzó en Helsinki, pero consistió principalmente en un viaje nocturno en barco a Tallin, la capital de Estonia en el otro lado sur del Báltico. Aparentemente fue para una actualización del producto de mi parte y de otros, pero todos sabían la verdadera agenda: entrar en aguas internacionales para que los impuestos draconianos del alcohol finlandés pudieran ser ignorados y para que los clientes se emborrachen violentamente.
Y borrachos se pusieron. ¡Mí, cómo lo hicieron!
He estado en grupos de bebedores antes, pero nunca he visto a un grupo de personas beber tanto y luego caminar con las dos piernas al día siguiente. Nos reunimos para la cena y la gente había tenido tres tragos dobles de vodka antes de que se sirvieran los entrantes ... y luego siguió así durante ocho horas ...
Bueno, una pinta y media de cerveza y 37 Coca Colas más tarde llegué a Tallin.
Tallin es una ciudad encantadora. El casco antiguo es una ciudad amurallada muy típica del norte de Europa (no rusa) construida sobre una colina. Pero está rodeado de sombríos bloques de viviendas de la era soviética que llenan los suburbios.
En una de las calles empedradas, mientras caminaba hacia la cima, encontré una pequeña tienda encantadora que se especializaba en estas muñecas rusas anidadas. Había docenas de diferentes tipos, todos en diferentes diseños. La mayoría de ellos apilan de tres a siete de profundidad con cada muñeca separándose para revelar la más pequeña dentro.
Compré este como un recuerdo de la visita, y por la alegría de ver la sonrisa de alegría en el rostro de mi hija cuando la vi destrozada a mi regreso. Este apeló porque no estaba en los brillantes colores brillantes que caracterizaban a la mayoría de los turistas. En su lugar, fue fabricado en madera mate, tallado, luego marcado con un hierro caliente y finalmente dorado. Parecía más auténtico.
Este es el más pequeño y el más grande de los 5 juegos de muñecas. Tomado para el equipo Two Together del grupo 2DWF.
Gracias por tomarse el tiempo para mirar. Espero que disfrutes la imagen! Feliz 2DWF :)
[Establecer en el tablero de pastelería de madera con fondo de tarjeta verde. Sidelit a la luz del día. Montura trípode; enfoque manual en el modo en vivo; disparador remoto.
Procesado en Capture One para color.
Unsharp Mask y una viñeta oscura en Affinity Photo y eso es todo :)]
Hotel Tontine. Greenock Scotland
The Tontine Hotel was built around 1805 when Greenock was expanding rapidly to the west of Nelson Street. Since being ‘settled’ around 1680 Greenock had grown rapidly but uncontrollably so the town planners decided that the planning control should be much stricte
The town council decided that Greenock should grow to the west but in a planned manner in pleasant ‘tree lined avenues’.The Tontine was one of the buildings in this area (albeit at a later date).
Argowan Square had many architectural features typical of the time: buildings which although were originally built as grand houses but later were used for other purposes such as:The Mansion House originally a town house for the Shaw Stewarts – an influential Greenock family. Now a series of offices.
The Greenock Club:
Now a private school.
Other houses:
Now offices for solicitors.
Interestingly the Statistical Account of Greenock published in 1840 did not list the Tontine in a summary of ‘modern buildings requiringto be noted under the head of Civil History’.By comparison it does mention the adjacent Mansion House, the new Town Hall in Cathcart Square, the Jail and the Sheriff court in Nelson Street. Amazingly it did list the Tontine in another list with the qualification ‘it does not appear to be necessary to mention particularly the erection of the Exchange Buildings, and Assembly Rooms; of the Tontine; the News-room in Cathcart Square and other public buildings of minor importance.
The ground floor is linked in plain ashlar quadrants to single storey pavilion wings.The upper floors of the main block have architraived windows pedimented over a minimally designed three bay centre with a Greek fret frieze.
In 1892 the proprietor of the original Tontine Hotel in Cathcart Street moved to Ardgowan Square maintaining the original name started trading from Robertson House (presumably with Robertson’s permission!). Some years later a glazed square porch was added which concealed the original door piece.
Subsequent developments over the years included a large multi storey expansion at the rear but which had minimal effect on the original attractive facade.
“Life is short, Break the Rules.
Forgive quickly, Kiss SLOWLY.
Love truly. Laugh uncontrollably
And never regret ANYTHING
That makes you smile.”
― Mark Twain
And I'm up too early with a head full of scattered thoughts... and life is short, and time passes too quickly... it's been a month since I took this photo... how can that be possible?
And you can never have too many pairs of reading glasses (or lens caps, for that matter) because no matter how many pairs of reading glasses I have, I can never find a pair.... time to stock up, because the title here on this photo, before reading glasses, was "Lide Ahort" ...whatever THAT means.... and yes, I guess it means that Torrie never took typing and never learned the keys.... that was an earlier post... way back!
And more thoughts before I move on with my day....
I need to start writing lists, I need to START something.... I need to FINISH something, I need to have a plan, there's been way too much crying going on lately, and not enough laughing, and not enough adventures, too many doubts (cosmic cleaning, karmic boomerang, if people act crazy during the full moon.... it's because they ARE crazy), I need to bring ice cream to work tomorrow because apparently work can't afford a half gallon of ice cream, and I want ice cream with my cake, and I'm probably not the only one, and I think I enjoy a challenge when I'm prepared for it, and why does the dog always want to go out at 5 am when Dayna is not home?, and I guess I can't go back to bed now, I wish I could go to work at 6 am (but I was told that my name is NOT on the front of the building... who knew) .....
Yes, this is what is going on in my head, aren't you glad you don't have to work with ME today .... and it's Sunday and we have a special name for Sunday at Kohls ( I won't share it) and it's a scratch off sale and a one day sale... and most likely, there will be crying (it won't be me), and "no, don't let go" hugs. I'm glad you're still here. Don't disappear.
I wonder what my horoscope says....
Have a good one! I hope you laugh uncontrollably! I hope I do, too!!
View Large on Black at www.thewindypixel.com!
A favorite spot of mine in the early morning glory. I love the moments when there is a clear horizon and a radiant twilight - it makes one feel alive, awake and ready for the next adventure.
I picked up a copy of "Galen Rowell: A Retrospective" a few weeks ago and I love the book. Those unfamiliar with Rowell's work need only type his name into a search engine to find out that he made many of the wild and rugged images that appeared in National Geographic over the years. After reading the text and gazing at the images, I have an uncontrollable urge to shoot film. I know digital is better, it is a pure medium compared to film - allowing one to make virtually any kind of image, i.e. film-like, HDR, black and white, etc, but that is the point - seeing such incredible images all made on emulsion, all made by playing by the hard and fast rules of silver halide chemistry is inspiring. The book reminded me that film is elegant and difficult, digital is practical and easy. Time to dust off the Hasselblad perhaps ...
This was taken during the summer of 1955, when Mom and Dad went off prospecting for uranium in the hills of eastern Utah, while we three kids stayed behind with Grandpa and Grandma Yourdon.
On the back of the print is some scribbly handwriting that looks like Grandma Mabel Yourdon's, indicating that the little tyke standing on the front is our cousin Douglas, son of Dad's brother, Marvin Yourdon.
*********************************
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.
In the image, 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 part of a demonstration, showing the large array of spectators aboard HMS Nottingham (and similar numbers aboard us - HMS Boxer) how to transfer personnel quickly between ships whilst remaining underway.
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. On Nottingham's main deck (below and to the right of the man's feet) can be seen a row of seamen hauling hard on the outhaul to pull the individual across the gap between the ships. They are the entire motive power in this evolution.
A key skill in this activity is ensuring the gap between the ships remains as steady as possible during the transfer. 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 can result in them 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. Nottingham appears to have taken advantage of the commitment to also have a families day (note the children on the 02 deck at the far right of the image above the three containers for liferafts).
Every year the Nixon Foundation holds “Hometown Heroes Christmas Tree Dedication.” Families are invited to the event which honors Southern Californian service men & women who lost their lives in recent wars & 9/11. Ornaments bearing the names of lost loved ones are placed on the tree by family members & later mailed to the families. We are there for a cousin, killed in Iraq in 2007.
The ceremony is very respectful (& is neither Democratic nor Republican [like us] although it is held in the Nixon Library). The Library, in Nixon's hometown of Yorba Linda, hosts this event; it has a beautiful garden, & in my opinion, a very balanced view of Nixon. There is an engaging gallery that goes through his entire life, the incredible highs & lows. It highlights his admirable intentions & qualities, as well as his shortcomings, including a large section on Watergate.
The other thing I always think about when I attend this event, is the men & women whose lives ended in their late teens or early 20’s. Especially when there was a draft, imagine arriving at a beach just when a tsunami hits - you are just getting started in life & are swept up by a massive uncontrollable event (war) that ends your life. This thought is universal, it applies to all young people who die anywhere in the world, in any conflict, that had precipitating origins before they became adults.
Thanks for viewing & reading my reflections. Isn’t contemplation one of the purposes of Memorial Day, a day to remember those who gave the ultimate sacrifice?
Another image for memorial day:
Dusksmoke: “Am I wrong then?”
Harry: “No. Apparently not. You seem similar to how I would intimidate someone. I am a bit fascinated by your speech.”
Dusksmoke: “I appreciate the compliment, but this is not entertainment show talk. The truth is the agent he captured was obviously corrupt. I’ve seen him working with the others. Not bad nor too dumb entirely. The last time in Tokyo, he unleashed his powers hell bent on some bus full of Yakuza. Shockwave.”
Gary: “How did he meet his downfall?”
Dusksmoke: “A bit of a wasted end, even if he had potential. We all know the story, but he gave up for his ambitions. For greed. By the time he was there on that mission, he wasn’t himself anymore. Yet when he was captured. he still managed to retain some sense of humanity himself—even if he risked exposing your secrets but not his team.”
Gardner: “And the bastard killed him because he thought he was staring at the mirror. The goddamn mirror because it looked like him. A reflection of corruption like his younger self.”
Edens: “I don’t see how we can exploit him more but with this little info of weakness, it’s a good start. I’m reviewing the files already.”
Jesse: “Where to next after this discussion for the last three hours?”
Edens: “Find his niece. Take her down.”
***
(London Underground, 1:15 A.M:)
Sabine Rackham was leading her team, with Knifeknight by her side and dozens of ES agents. They were clad in grey, which was basically the common colour of North's clan. Detecting movement scans, she mustered to herself, thinking she had the right spot.
Sabine: “They are close. In London. If you won’t take them down then I will.”
Knifenight: “Knifenight wants money….Knifenight wants more…..”
Sabine: “The full payments can be saved for later. You’re a good asset. You're one of us now.”
Knifenight: “But will he know? Knifenight does not fear anything….no one but him….”
Sabine: “No, trust me, not my uncle. You’re on my team already. He’d be too busy to bother with you. I'm sure you'll be handsomely paid later.”
Knifenight: “Gooooooddd……”
Sabine: “Here it is men. Make a clear shot. Fire.”
ES Agent: “Yes ma’am.”
Rackham smiled, as she activated the bombs to detonate. Bullets rained down from the other side. Nightedge and the opposite team were surprised by the attack above. They didn’t anticipate it fully but were aware of the ES’s concurrent activites. An agent jumped below on the ground, attempting to burst into flames. As he combusted, Lyra and Kurt managed to get a quick snap through their implanted lens., but had to intercept the fire agent's attacks. Luckily, the analysis was transferred to Exosage’s head, who hacked it just in time. Erin’s mind fiddled with the thought of how she envisioned the enemy—they all looked like ghosts. No....as she thought....they looked different.
Erin: “Guys, intercam. I did the dig through. It supports my theory.”
Kieran: “What is?”
Erin: “These soldiers—they’re a reflection of us! It’s supposed to be some taunt North is trying to humiliate us with. And they’re all upgraded with this new armour and tech that is literally unrecognisable from the previous models!”
Ty: “Ok? Then what do you do with it?”
Kurt: “I’m gonna have to call it quits now. My jet pack is damaged. They tore off one of the wings quickly. Sh*t.”
Lyra: “Efficient. I cannot disable them nor absorb them...”
Ty: “There’s gotta be something you can’t not do!”
Erin: “Actually, I still have one more trick up my sleeve. Kieran?”
Kieran: “Good call. We’ll try the blinding thing, I hope it works, just once. This tech of ours should be good enough to stall for a bit. And yes, their back. Any damage to the spine--is sufficient to kill one. Double confirmed. Thanks Erin.”
Ty: “And you’re saying the spines are the weak spot? Man you should have said it a while ago. We gotta stealth now?”
Kurt: “Ok kiddos. You heard the shadow lady. Distract em! Also shoot and kill!”
Despite under heavy fire, Kurt was the first to rush through everything. He threw his broken jet pack in the air, causing a minor chain reaction that he nearly tripped on, which killed 5 agents. Albeit his slight disappointment of having to rebuild one later, he knew he it worked. To the amazement of the team, he was already pulling punches and kicks against the ES agents. “Bet,” he said. And Kieran was the first to laugh uncontrollably under his mask. He began manipulating the matter after being done with close quarters combat.
Lyra nodded at Ty as she absorbed the steel walls, as he began projecting his energy powers that deflected off her body—-a quick way that incapacitated the opponents. His aim managed to bounce off, with a radiating glow that seemingly hit their spines. With a matter of minutes, the agents were down and started retreating, until....Rackham appeared, crashing down from above with her giant axe.
Kieran: “Okay this isn’t give me good vibes because the last villain I ever saw looked like a clear cut old school PlayStation character....”
Ty: “Which probably sucked.”
Erin: “And you’re right boyos.”
Sabine: “Finally. We are here. I would be more than glad to take you in to my uncle.”
Ty: “So I’ve heard....from our buddy Ghostforge huh. You brought more party people along?”
Sabine: “Not big enough? Did you expect a cruise party? I’d like to see how my fun can last for you losers....”
Knifenight: “Oh yes mistress....tis’ I, Knifenight. He is back again. Now gladly joining her ranks in her team.”
Lyra: “Huh, I thought the bastard went off. Third person talking is sooooo weird.”
Sabine: “No, no, no, that’s what I call it re-employment.”
Kurt: “Bit of a gimmick lady...you here to kill us or are you done talking? I’m still waiting for your payback.”
Sabine: “Maybe both. My axe does not like cooling down....you wanna see how it'll burn you to pieces while it can last?”
Sabine then charged at the Paladin team, with her giant axe swinging back and fourth. The clashing of sounds grew. Bullets were useless as Rackham sliced each one of them like child’s play, then the team would have to use their powers against their formidable foes....
***
(Somewhere in Italy, 2:50 A.M:)
Riley: “Oh gosh how long is this gonna fookin last? My bae leaves me with you after your friend took off with him...”
Sam: “Damn. I don’t know. Least to say we’ve been runnin’ and gunnin’...”
Riley: “Ya think those lads made it? Aboot time ainit?”
Sam: “I’m sure they did. Now if you’ll excuse me I gotta reload my rifle.”
Riley: “Pfft. Way to go. I’d rather be steamin...”
Sam: “Something’s not right again....my inner senses are tingling?”
Riley: “Good day to die hard again. What a f**king miserable day. Please do not tell me I have to eat sh*t for dinner twice, I miss my boyfriend enough already."
And in that moment more than 200 ES agents cornered and swarmed in on them. None other than a sudden reappearance of the White Ninja, with the army in his command.
White Ninja: “I told you we would meet again. Now you have seconds to spare—-“
Riley: “F**king cut the crap already ye bampot! You like being a rocket don’t ya?”
White Ninja: “Surrender or die. It is simple. I keep my word and I will do what I must. And yes, your scent is admirable. If I could trace it again, it seems easy.”
Riley: "You arse. Don't f*cking try to lay a hand on me or I'll cut your head to pieces."
White Ninja: "Boldness and stupidity. Very well. Let's see how you can fare well against so many."
Sam: “If you're planning to kill us, it's not gonna happen today. Not on my watch.”
Ala has returned to the School to see Capt. Roberts is indeed here and looking for her. She stands back and feels so week in the nee's as her heart rushes uncontrollable, and she can feel her body getting hotter with each passing moment. But she can not go to him no matter what for if they wore caught by the gods it would mean the end or worse for the both of them.
Capt. Roberts is not going to give up he can feel Ala in his heart and he knows she is close and he knows she needs him as he needs her. And he has promised that if he wore to be with her once more that he would give all with out question and never ask for any thing in return for the only thing he truly wishes is to see her smiling face once more. ^_^
Unknowing to both of them that Suigintou is building her power to take over the school, Capture the Goddess Sword and end the gods and the world they made.