Appear at Midnight

Pollepel Island, 1950

2011-08-22T10:27:00.000-07:00

Resting in the Hudson River, on Pollepel Island, is a crumbling hulk of intricate concrete and brickwork that was once Bannerman's Arsenal. In 1900, Francis Bannerman VI bought the island to store ammunition for his prosperous military surplus business; more specifically, when he bought 90% of the US army surplus after the Spanish-American War ended and needed a place outside of New York City to store it all. The arsenal (sometimes referred to as "Bannerman's Castle") was constructed from 1901 to 1908, and was modeled similar to the architecture of an old Scottish castle. A storm in 1950 sunk the ferryboat that served the island, Pollepel, and the arsenal was left more or less abandoned since then.

http://www.opacity.us/site54_bannermans_arsenal.htm

near Milwaukee, 1923

2011-08-04T23:38:00.000-07:00

At a time in history when the Milwaukee River was a commercial corridor, fireboats were an important part of fighting urban fires. Originally named the August F. Janssen, #23 was built in Sturgeon Bay in 1896 and entered service with the Milwaukee Fire Department in 1897. Named for MFD’s Engine Company 23, which operated the vessel, the 1,000-foot-long boat served Milwaukee well, using her 4,500-gallon-per-minute water pump to extinguish fires at buildings, grain elevators, and commercial vessels along the waterfront. Historical records show that #23’s machinery and pumps were sold for junk in 1922. On July 27, 1923, she was scuttled—deliberately sunk—in Lake Michigan, a few miles from Milwaukee.

http://www.wisconsintrails.com/content/67.php

off Robin Hood's Bay, 1917

2010-05-20T04:08:00.000-07:00

On 5 May 1917 the Filey built and owned herring coble Edith Cavell SH 216, was captured by a German U-Boat whilst fishing off Robin Hoods Bay. The crew were taken aboard the submarine and Edith Cavell was sunk by a bomb, for no other reason than the U-Boat commander found her name offensive; Edith Cavell had been a nurse in Belgium and had helped British prisoners of war to escape.

http://www.scarboroughsmaritimeheritage.org.uk/auboatsarthurgodfrey.php

61'30N 01'50E, 1952

2010-03-17T10:00:00.000-07:00

D/S Edna

Built in Sunderland 1905. Previous names: Chr. Gylstorff until 1913, Anund until 1921, Kjell until 1922. Pre war history: Delivered in May-1905 from Sunderland Shipbuilding Co. Ltd., Sunderland, UK (229) as cargo vessel Chr. Gylstorff to D/S A/S Progress (Holm & Wonsild), Copenhagen, Denmark. Steel hull, 194.8’ x 32’ x 13.8’, 915 gt, 1275 tdwt, Tripple Expansion (NE Mar. Eng. Co. Ltd., Sunderland, UK) 123nhp, 9 knots. Sold in Apr.-1913 to Ångfartygs-AB Svithiod (H. Metcalfe), Gothenburg, Sweden, renamed Anund. Owned in 1920 by Rederi-AB Svenska Lloyd (same managers). Sold in 1921 to D/S A/S Kjell (H. H. Gjertsen), Oslo, renamed Kjell. Sold in June-1922 to D/S A/S Ryvarden (K. I. Bredsdorff & N. Chr. Sørensen), Kragerø. Sold in July that same year to Det Bergenske Dampskibsselskab, Bergen, renamed Edna and used in the company's cargo service between the south and north of Norway.
WW II: Edna sailed in Convoy HN 9A from Norway to the U.K. in Jan.-1940. She returned to Norway the following month with Convoy ON 12, which left Methil on Febr. 13, and later that month she joined Convoy HN 15, cargo of fresh fish for Newcastle (she had initially been in the previous convoy, HN 14, but returned to port). Early in March she joined Convoy ON 18, returning to the U.K. with Convoy HN 20, again with fresh fish for Newcastle. She subsequently went back to Norway at the very end of March with Convoy ON 24 and was still there when the Germans invaded on Apr. 9 - follow links for more info, several Norwegian ships took part in all these convoys.
In 1941 she was in cargo service between western Norway, northern Norway and eastern Finnmark, together with the company's Canis and Kora (other companies that had vessels in coastal service to eastern Finnmark found the risk of Russian aircraft attacks too great and cancelled all their sailings to this area). The Germans demanded that these sailings should take place in German convoys, so there was a lot of waiting involved, causing delays. Edna arrived Kirkenes on her first voyage in this run on Nov. 24-1941. In 1942 Edna and Canis made 2 voyages each, while Kora made 3, in 1943 Edna and Kora made 3 voyages each, Canis 1, and in 1944 all three vessels made 1 voyage each. These sailings were extremely important to the people living in this area.
NOTE: According to R. W. Jordan's records Edna was voyaging to and from Sweden in June-1944(?).
POST WAR: Sold in Aug.-1946 to Rederi-AB Hera (Albert Jansson Saltvik), Mariehamn, Finland. On March 7-1952, when on a voyage Thamshavn-Preston with wood pulp, she reported from position 61 30N 01 50E that the ship had to be abandoned. Edna and her crew subsequently disappeared.

http://www.warsailors.com/homefleet/shipse.html

Cincinatti, 1874-1943

2010-02-26T05:24:00.000-08:00

Price Hill Inclined Plane
1874-1943
length 800 feet, 350 feet high
Went to Price Hill House (No. 525 Price Ave.)

This one was unique among Cincinnati's inclines because it was really two inclines. In fact, some people count this as two making a total of six. Also, it remained private and never hauled streetcars. William Price, after whose, father, General Rees E. Price name was given to the hill top location, built it.
It was actually two planes built side by side starting at West Eight Street and Glenway Avenue and going up to West Eighth Street and Matson Avenue. The first side was built in 1874 and had two cars for passengers. The freight was finished in 1876 and could carry three or four heavily loaded wagons and their teams on open platforms. In its heyday the resort at the top caused horses and wagons to stand to line for blocks waiting their turn to get up the hill.
In 1928 the steam engines were replaced by electric motors -- the only incline to do so. In 1927 the then owner proposed that the Cincinnati Street Railway buy the incline and run the freight side only for buses. Nothing came of it, so in December 1929 the freight plane was finally shut down due to the falling-off of the number of teams being hauled. The motor truck and the improvement of the streets brought this about. However, before it shut down it carried buses.
By 1943 the passenger side was in need of so many repairs that the Incline Company decided to shut down, and so ended the second to last of the inclines. Now only Mt. Adams remained to operate five more years, and then they would all pass into history.

http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~ohhamilt/picsinclines.html

Sydney, 1885

2009-12-18T17:01:00.000-08:00

March 3: The Soudan contingent set sail from Sydney. "The contingent, an infantry battalion of 522 men and 24 officers and an artillery battery of 212 men, was ready to sail on 3 March 1885. It left Sydney amid much public fanfare, generated in part by the holiday declared to farewell the troops; the send-off was described as the most festive occasion in the colony's history. Support was not, however, universal, and many viewed the proceedings with indifference or even hostility. The nationalist Bulletin ridiculed the contingent both before and after its return. Meetings intended to launch a patriotic fund and endorse the government's action were poorly attended in many working-class suburbs, and many of those who turned up voted against the fund. In some country centres there was a significant anti-war response, while miners in rural districts were said to be in 'fierce opposition'."

http://www.wilsonsalmanac.com/lawsons/lawson_chronology.html

Stefurov, 1883 // Connellsville, 1897

2009-11-10T16:31:00.000-08:00

John Picus "Jack" Quinn, born Joannes (Jan) Pajkos (July 1, 1883 - April 17, 1946), was a pitcher in Major League Baseball.
Born in Stefurov, Slovakia (then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire), Quinn emigrated to America as an infant with his parents Michael Pajkos and Maria Dzjiacsko, arriving in New York on June 18, 1884. His mother died near Hazleton, Pennsylvania shortly after the family's arrival in the US, and Quinn's father moved the family to Buck Mountain, near Mahanoy City, Pennsylvania. In 1887 Quinn's father remarried, to Anastasia ("Noska") Tzar, who is frequently, and mistakenly, listed in baseball encyclopedias as Quinn's birth mother.
Quinn spent his early years working as a coal miner and blacksmith, while playing recreational ball for mining teams. He got his start as a professional in an unusual way: While watching a semi-pro game in Connellsville, the 14-year-old Quinn threw a foul ball back from the stands to the catcher, hitting his mitt right in the middle. The visiting manager, from the nearby town of Dunbar, was impressed by the throw, and he offered Quinn a contract. Quinn went on to spend 23 seasons in the major leagues with eight different teams. He won 247 games and lost 218 games, also collecting 57 saves. Quinn debuted on April 15, 1909 and he played until he was 50 years old; his final game was on July 7, 1933.
Quinn's professional longevity enabled him to achieve several age-related milestones. He is the oldest ML player to win a game, to lead his league in a major category (saves, in 1932), and to start games in the World Series (with the Philadelphia Athletics, in 1929) and on Opening Day (with the Brooklyn Dodgers, in 1931). He was the oldest to hit a home run in the majors, at age 46, until 47-year-old Julio Franco did so in 2006. He was the oldest person to ever play for the Cincinnati Reds, and at the time of his retirement, the eight teams for which he had played also constituted a record, which has since been broken. He was also the last major leaguer who had played in the 1900s decade to formally retire (not counting Charley O'Leary, who in 1934 made a comeback stint). Finally, he remains the oldest player to play regularly, having pitched 87 1/3 innings in 1932 at age 48 and 49, and 15 innings in 1933 at age 49 and 50. (Franco and Phil Niekro were also regular players at age 48, but were one and five months younger respectively during their seasons at that age.)
During his career, Quinn played alongside 31 different members of the Baseball Hall of Fame and collected two World Series rings in three tries. He was also one of the last pitchers in baseball permitted to throw the spitball, grandfathered in along with sixteen others reliant on the pitch when it was banned in 1920. He frequently used his spitball after he was grandfathered in, in addition to his fastball, curve, and changeup.
Quinn died in Pottsville, Pennsylvania, at the age of 62.

http://www.modis.ispras.ru/wikipedia/List_of_Major_League_Baseball_players_with_100_triples.html

Bremen, 1838!

2009-08-20T17:22:00.000-07:00

Nosferatu's scriptwriter Henrik Galeen, had previously gained a reputation for his horror/fantasy and Expressionistic work through his co-direction and scripting of the 1914 version of Der Golem and Der Student von Prague (1920) and his script for the 1920 version of Der Golem. Later he was to script Waxworks (1924) and write and direct Alraune (1927), cementing his position as the major collaborator on all of the best German fantasy films. His technique for maintaining the multiple perspectives and the fragmentary nature of Stoker's novel was to frame the story as the chronicle of an unidentified narrator, inserting texts, letters, newspaper clippings, diary and log book entries and documentary footage similar in style to the arachnid footage later used by Buñuel in L'Age d'Or (1930). Murnau further added to this fragmentation with an extensive and complex use of cross-cutting between scenes. Whereas Stoker's novel is contemporaneous (1897), Galeen's script is set at the time of "The Great Death in Wisborg in the year 1843 A.D." In the English language version, the intertitles have altered the location and era to Bremen, 1838, with the historian's name given as Johann Cavallius. The English language version alters several other plot details and sadly, loses the lyrical, Expressionistic character of Galeen's original intertitles. The original has, as Eisner notes, "oddly-broken lines. prolific use of exclamation marks, words in capitals, and letter-spaced lower-case matter. [a] staccato rhythm. with its incomplete sentences, clauses, phrases and idiosyncratic punctuation." For simplicity's sake the remainder of the article will refer to the film's location as Bremen.

http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/contents/cteq/00/8/nosferatu.html

Barbegal, 1940

2009-07-18T00:41:00.000-07:00

- The concept was simple, but the application is impressive. Barbegal was an immense flour mill, dating from the 4th century A.D. The power to drive the millstones came from 16 waterwheels, arranged in two parallel rows of eight. Each row ran downhill so that the water dropped from one wheel to the next, driving all eight in turn before running into a drain at the foot of the hill.
- Near the top of the ridge is a sign dedicated to the man who first investigated the site in 1940, Fernand Benoit: "Thanks to his efforts we have a better understanding of the technological innovation of the Roman Empire." Contemporary evidence of multiple mills during the Roman era is rare.
- While looking over the site, several other groups of intrepid travelers arrived at the site. Most struggled to make sense of the rubble dotting the hillside. I lent my Scientific American illustration to two of the groups. While one travel book alleges that the site is "well preserved," a healthy imagination is still important.

http://www.waterhistory.org/histories/barbegal/

Ponteland, 1956

2009-05-12T06:09:00.000-07:00

In due course, the Darras Hall branch extended westwards by about 10 miles to a colliery at Kirkheaton, which closed in 1926. The post Great War motor bus services killed off the passenger trains to Ponteland and Darras Hall, which were withdrawn in 1929. The Darras Hall line was used for wagon storage until the 1950s but the branch was a busy one.
My First acquaintance with Ponteland was in April 1954 when, in my very first job as a Relief Station Master, I went to Ponteland to cover the vacancy on the retirement of Tom Scott who had been the Station Master for over 30 years. Tom had built up a huge coal sale business, which he retained, he drove a brand new Ford Zephyr and moved out of the Station House to a property in Darras Hall. Obviosly, he was not a typical pensioned railwayman. The business of the station was mainly agricultural, with two large 'cattle cake' distributors operating from the station. Apart from the Station Master, staff consisted of a porter signalman, goods porter, lorry driver (a 5ton Bedford) and a railhead lorry from Newcastle. In those days the Cattle Mart gave rise to regular business for the daily goods train.
My first visit to Ponteland lasted some time until Mr Ridley became Station Master but although under 50 he died suddenly in 1956 and I went back again. In that spell. I had a unique experiance. A farmer called Gilbert Evans came to see me to ask if I could organise a special train to remove him to Seamer in Yorkshire where he had bought a new farm. In due course, animals, machinery.stores and furniture were all loaded up and the special train took the Evans family to their new life.

http://railways-of-britain.com/branchingout.html

Bookshelf : best of, 2005-2009

2009-03-24T10:57:00.000-07:00

10/10
-------------
The Catcher in the Rye (J D Salinger) 2005
Eastern Approaches (Fitzroy MacLean) 2007
Ripley's Game (Patricia Highsmith) 2009

9/10
-------------
Blue Highways (William Least Heat-Moon) 2005
Cities of the Red Night (William S Burroughs) 2006
Deliverance (James Dickey) 2008
The Devil in the White City (Erik Larson) 2005
A Fan's Notes (Frederick Exley) 2007
5 on the Outside (Vern) 2006
The Great Port (Jan Morris) 2005
Hollywood (Charles Bukowski) 2007
Junky (William S Burroughs) 2007
A Kiss Before Dying (Ira Levin) 2005 and 2007
The Lathe of Heaven (Ursula K Leguin) 2005
North Dallas Forty (Pete Gent) 2005
Roadside Picnic (Arkady and Boris Strugatsky) 2007
The Road to Oxiana (Robert Byron) 2008
The Shadow of the Sun (Ryszard Kapuscinski) 2007
Tender is the Night (F Scott Fitzgerald) 2006
This Bloody Mary is the Last Thing I Own (Jonathan Rendall) 2007
Ubik (Philip K Dick) 2008

------------------------------------------------------------------------

pre-2005

American Psycho (Brett Easton Ellis) 10/10
AWopBopaLooBopALopBamBoom (Nik Cohn) 9/10
The Bogey Man (George Plimpton) 9/10
The Boys on the Bus (Timothy Crouse) 9/10
The Chain of Chance (Stanislaw Lem) 9/10
Child of God (Cormac McCarthy) 9/10
The Cry of the Owl (Patricia Highsmith) 9/10
Deep Water (Patricia Highsmith) 9/10
The Demon (Hubert Selby Jr) 9/10
Dispatches (Michael Herr) 9/10
Factotum (Charles Bukowski) 9/10
Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 1972 (Hunter S Thompson) 10/10
Fiasco (Stanislaw Lem) 9/10
The Great Gatsby (F Scott Fitzgerald) 9/10
The Great Shark Hunt (Hunter S Thompson) 9/10
Guide for the Film Fanatic (Danny Peary) 10/10
The Informers (Brett Easton Ellis) 9/10
Heart of Darkness (Joseph Conrad) 9/10
Lights Out for the Territory (Iain Sinclair) 9/10
The Press (A J Liebling) 9/10
Shadow Box (George Plimpton) 9/10
Time Out of Joint (Philip K Dick) 9/10
The Weight of the World (Peter Handke) 10/10
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (Haruki Murakami) 10/10
Wise Blood (Flannery O'Connor) 9/10

Dogger Bank, 1931

2009-02-17T17:12:00.000-08:00

The tremor began at around 1:30am on June 7, 1931 with its epicentre located on the Dogger Bank, 60 miles (100 km) off the Yorkshire coast in the North Sea. The effects were felt throughout Great Britain and in Belgium and France. The earthquake resulted in damage at locations throughout eastern England. The town of Filey in Yorkshire was worst hit with the spire of a church being twisted by the tremor. Chimneys collapsed in Hull, Beverley and Bridlington, and Flamborough Head suffered crumbling of parts of its cliffs. Rather less seriously, in London the head of the waxwork of Dr Crippen at Madame Tussauds fell off.

http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/1931-Dogger-Bank-earthquake

Wichita, 1952

2009-01-19T16:43:00.000-08:00

February, 1952, firemen became sandbaggers again, as the Little Arkansas River flooded out of its banks.
Another old timer bit the dust, a 1914 Seagrave which had been turned into a Wichita Fire Department wrecker, overturned while pulling in an engine that had just rammed a telephone pole. The old machine was retired, as was the mechanic who was injured in the mishap.
An ordinance, banning the sale or use of fireworks inside the City limits was passed.
Fire Prevention Week that year opened with the Kroger Company Warehouse fire, $500,000 loss.

http://www.wichitagov.org/CityOffices/Fire/History/10/1952.htm

Bookshelf 2008

2008-12-28T12:51:00.000-08:00

Allan Dwan - The Last Pioneer [8?] Peter Bogdanovich
Born Yesterday [6+] Gordon Burn
Crisis [8] Hamilton Jordan
=Deliverance [9] James Dickey
The Edge of Running Water [7] William M Sloane
Francis Bacon in the 1950s [6+] Michael Peppiatt
Frenzy* [5] Arthur LaBern
Getting to Know the General [8] Grahame Greene
The Great God Pan [6+] Arthur Machen
Hegemony or Survival [8] Noam Chomsky
I Am the Cheese [7] Robert Cormier
In Siberia [8] Colin Thubron
Jack London - A Life [7] Alex Kershaw
James Benning [8] Barbara Pichler & Claudia Slanar (eds.)
=The Kraken Wakes [8] John Wyndham
Late Victorian Holocausts [7] Mike Davis
Lincoln - A Foreigner's Quest [7] Jan Morris
Miracles of Life [7+] J G Ballard
Monsieur Hire's Engagement [6] Georges Simenon
Negative Space [8+] Manny Farber
=On the Road [8] Jack Kerouac
Planet of Slums [8] Mike Davis
The Postman Always Rings Twice [7] James M Cain
=Red Harvest [7] Dashiell Hammett
Renegade [8] Mark E Smith
The Road to Oxiana [9] Robert Byron
Robinson In Space [8] Patrick Keiller
=The Tremor of Forgery [8] Patricia Highsmith
=Ubik [9] Philip K Dick
=Vanity of Duluoz [5] Jack Kerouac

* aka Goodbye Piccadilly, Farewell Leicester Square
= re-reading

9/10 : Deliverance; The Road to Oxiana and Ubik
8+/10 : Negative Space
8/10 : Crisis; Getting to Know the General; Hegemony or Survival; In Siberia; James Benning; The Kraken Wakes; On the Road; Planet of Slums; Renegade; Robinson In Space and The Tremor of Forgery

Meyers Legde Alt, 1986

2008-12-27T08:59:00.000-08:00

1887. Inactive since 1945. 26 m (85 ft) square cast iron tower incorporating 3-story keeper's quarters, mounted on a square skeletal foundation. Like the Eversand Range Lights, the Meyers Legde lighthouses guided ships on a secondary entrance to the Weser from the north. Also like Eversand Range Front, the interior of the lighthouse was gutted by fire at some time after deactivation. In 1986, ledges were added to the tower as nesting sites for cormorants, and this lighthouse is also now white with bird droppings. Located about 3 km (2 mi) east of Eversand Range Front Light. Accessible only by boat. Site open, tower closed.

http://www.unc.edu/~rowlett/lighthouse/deu1b.htm

Hamsteels, 1910

2008-11-28T07:06:00.001-08:00

Flynn, Peter, 07 Oct 1910, aged 49, Hewer, He was hewing in a bord 9 yards wide, the seam being 7 feet high including a band 2 feet 9 inches thick in the middle. The band stone projected about a foot beyond the bottom coal, and under this space a pair of gears had been set close up to the coal. While he was kirving in the bottom coal the front side of the band fell on to him leaving the gears standing. An inclined sprag set higher up the band would have prevented the accident.

http://www.dmm.org.uk/colliery/h024.htm

Chequamegon Point, 1896

2008-11-22T11:28:00.000-08:00

Four concrete anchoring pads were cast in place at Chequamegon Point, and the skeleton iron tower was erected to the point at which it was ready to receive the light. However, with the appropriated funds exhausted, work was discontinued on both towers on October 3, 1896 to await additional funding. Congress appropriated the additional $1,500 on July 14, 1897, and the AMARANTH returned to Long Island with a work crew soon thereafter, with work assuming a feverish pace throughout the 1897 season of navigation.

http://www.terrypepper.com/lights/superior/chequamegon/index.htm

Creston Flats, 1894

2008-10-13T15:42:00.000-07:00

1894 : June : B.C. : Heavy snowfall and quick melt in late spring. Floods swamp much low lying land. At Nelson, a record high water mark of 30 feet above average was established on the West Arm.
1894 : June : I.R. 148A, N-WT. : Four chiefs of the Kainai “Fish Eater” band swap 50 horses for 50 head of cattle, beginning the Kainai cattle industry.
1894 : June 3 : B.C. : the “Cyclone” on Kootenay Lake wrecked Kaslo and mauled Boswell’s new wharf. Much of Alberta and B.C. Exploration dyking on what is now “Creston Flats” was destroyed at around 4:00 in the afternoon.

http://www.crowsnest-highway.ca/timeline.pl?page=8

Sumner, 1882

2008-08-05T16:53:00.000-07:00

Charles Henry Gordon was born in 1843 in Lawrence Co, IL, died in 1926. He served in Co E of the 5th Illinois Infantry during the Civil War for the Union Army. Married Ellen E Baird (b. 1845 in Wabash Co, IL, d. 1938). I have information naming 5 of 6 children. Edna, Frances, Charles, Della(Dell), Jane(Neena) and Henry Owen. Charle Henry was employed as a stone keeper according to HOO. birth certificate.Henry Owen Gordon, youngest son of Charles and Ellen was born 22 Jan 1882 on farm outside Sumner, IL. He died 10 Aug 1966 while staying in Sarasota, FL at his daughter Jeannette. She is still living. He is buried in Sumner, IL. Married Viola(Vida) Fiscus (b. 9 Nov 1886 Sumner, IL, d. 22 Oct 1951, Lawrenceville, IL) There children were Charles Henry and Jeanette (b. 18 Aug 1910)Charles Henry their son was born 6 Mar 1909 in sumner, IL. He died 4 Dec 1982 in Kansas City, MO, burial in White Chapel Cemetary. He attended school at Hanover (near the Ohio River) and Purdue to study Chemical Engineering. married 7 May 1936 to Catherine Elizabeth Maduska.

http://boards.ancestry.com/localities.northam.usa.states.illinois.counties.lawrence/459.2/mb.ashx

Windsor, 1892

2008-07-10T04:37:00.000-07:00

SAGINAW
Other names : none
Official no. : C69524
Type at loss : propeller, wood, carferry, 4 car
Build info : 1873, Port Huron Dry Dock [A. Stewart], Port Huron
Specs : 142x26x10, 365 t.
Date of loss : 1892, Mar 6
Place of loss : Windsor, Ont.
Lake : Detroit R.
Type of loss : fire
Loss of life : ?
Carrying : ?
Detail : She burned at her layup dock. She had been laid up since 1884.The hull was later recovered and converted to an odd-looking tug, a well-known wrecker in the Detroit River area until broken up about 1940.

http://www.boatnerd.com/swayze/shipwreck/s.htm

New York, 1854

2008-06-23T09:06:00.000-07:00

Hamburg bark ELBE, Schwensen, arrived at New York on Sunday, 8 January 1854 (passenger manifest dated 9 January 1854), 43 days from Hamburg, with merchandise and 201 passengers, to Beck & Kunhardt. "Has seen large quantities of wrecked stuff: Dec. 27, lat 40, lon 67, passed a number of planks and some hogsheads with the heads painted red. Has experienced heavy westerly gales."

http://www.geocities.com/mppraetorius/com-el.htm

off Bremerhaven, 1881

2008-06-10T04:09:00.001-07:00

Roter Sand
1885. Inactive since 1986. 28 m (92 ft) round cast iron, brick lined tower with primary and secondary lanterns and a triangular gallery, built on a steel caisson. Keeper's quarters incorporated in the tower. Lighthouse painted with red and white horizontal bands; the base of the tower and roofs of the lanterns are black. Werning has a page with a great photo, and Tim Boettger also has a good photo. One of the world's great waveswept lighthouses. Construction of the tower posed enormous difficulties; the first attempt failed when a storm overturned the incomplete caisson on October 13, 1881. The light was downgraded in 1964, when Alte Weser took over its function as the landfall light for Bremerhaven.

http://www.unc.edu/~rowlett/lighthouse/deu1b.htm

Whickham, 1870

2008-06-02T03:11:00.000-07:00

(17/07/1870) Funeral of Harry Clasper at St. Mary's church in Whickham. An estimated 100,000 to 130,000 people lined route of the funeral from the Tunnel Inn, at the mouth of the River Ouseburn to the church. The funeral cortege could not make its way through Sandhill due to the huge numbers of mourners, and so the coffin had to be placed aboard a barge at the High Level Bridge, and rowed up the Tyne.

http://www.nerowing.com/rowhist/clasper.html

San Francisco, 1906

2008-03-10T16:30:00.000-07:00

Agassiz in the Concrete
The Agassiz statue is the most famous of all images related to Stanford’s earthquake history (Figure 4). During the 1906 temblor, the stone shelf supporting a marble statue of Swiss naturalist and geologist Louis Agassiz on the second story of the north wall of the Zoology building (now Building 420) failed, causing the statue to plunge into the ground below. There are several accounts of the outcome. One student wrote, “A big marble statue of Agassiz was toppled off his perch on the outside of the quad and fell foremost into the ground (right through a cement walk) up to his shoulders, and still sticks there, legs in the air and his hand held out gracefully. People came running from the quad with such sober faces, but when they saw him they couldn’t help laughing, and one fellow went up and shook hands with him.”
“Agassiz in the concrete” remained a legend associated with the earthquake period. According to one account, “Many stories were told about Agassiz’s natural instinct that when the earthquake came he decided to stick his head underground to find out what was going on in the earth below and with his finger pointing saying, ‘Hark! Listen!’ […] Out of the four statues only Agassiz evidently aroused his searching curiosity.” (The other statues honored Johann Gutenberg, Benjamin Franklin, and Alexander von Humboldt. Von Humboldt, Agassiz’s mentor, still stands next to him today, but the others were removed when the building became the Law School (Figure 5).) President David Starr Jordan wrote, “Somebody—Dr. Angell, perhaps—remarked that ‘Agassiz was great in the abstract but not in the concrete.’” What was most extraordinary about the incident was that the statue was imbedded into the ground below nearly to the hips but only broke at the nose. The nose was refastened and the statue was returned to its original place, this time better secured.

http://quake06.stanford.edu/centennial/tour/stop3.html

South Shields, 1857

2008-03-08T09:24:00.000-08:00

February 20. An alarming explosion of gas occurred this morning, in the ship Prince Phillippe, of Ostend, then lying in the river at South Shields. The vessel had received a cargo of coals on the 18th, when the hatches had been incautiously fastened down; but in what manner the gas had been ignited was not ascertained. The vessel was reduced to a mere wreck; a sailor, named Mars, was blown to a great distance and drowned in the river, and several of the crew received very serious injuries.

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=TxcHAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA392&lpg=PA392&dq=%22shipping+in+the+wear%22&source=web&ots=T4UsyzN8rx&sig=7YT1dHCVe1h6Nag27aUDnGhgchM&hl=en#PPA393,M1

Liverpool/Manchester, 1857

2008-02-20T15:26:00.000-08:00

Easily the most stunning picture in the show is Rockets and Blue Lights to Warn Steamboats of Shoal Water (1840). It has taken almost 150 years to get from Liverpool to Manchester, having failed to make its scheduled appearance in the latter city's 1857 Art Treasures of Great Britain exhibition. Its owner refused to allow it to be transported by rail, insisting that it go by road. Fate intervened, and the horse-drawn cart carrying it was struck by a train at a level crossing, causing the owner to take fright and have the picture returned to him immediately.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_20031106/ai_n12732011

BOOKSHELF 07

2007-12-22T16:43:00.000-08:00

An American Dream [N.Mailer RIP] 5/10
Bambi vs Godzilla [D.Mamet] 6/10
Blackpool Vanishes [R.Francis] 6/10
A Bloody Good Winner [D.Nevison/D.Ashforth] 7/10
The Damned Utd [D.Peace] 7/10
Eastern Approaches [F.Maclean] 10/10
A Fan's Notes [F.Exley] 9/10
Hollywood [C.Bukowski] 9/10
Junky [W.S.Burroughs] 9/10
Kingdom Come [J.G.Ballard] 8/10
A Kiss Before Dying [I.Levin RIP] 9/10
The Last Words of Dutch Schultz [W.S.Burroughs] 6/10
Murder in Samarkand [C.Murray] 8/10
Pages From a Cold Island [F.Exley] 8/10
Ripley Under Ground [P.Highsmith] 8/10
Roadside Picnic [A.Strugatsky and B.Strugatsky] 9/10
Seagalogy ['Vern'] 8/10
The Shadow of the Sun [R.Kapuscinski] 9/10
The Shah's Last Ride [W.Shawcross] 8/10
This Bloody Mary is the Last Thing I Own [J.Rendall] 9/10
Tsukiji : The Fish Market at the Center of the World [T.Bestor] 7/10

Iquique, 1884

2007-11-10T16:00:00.000-08:00

Polynesia : An iron full-rigged ship built in 1874 by Reiherstieg Werft, Hamburg.
Dimensions 61,85×10,22×6,41 meters [202'8"×33'5"×21'_"] and 492 CL, 1070 GRT and 985 NRT. Rigged with double topsails and single topgallant sails.
1874 Launched at the shipyard of Reiherstieg Werft, Hamburg, for F. Laeisz, Hamburg. Assigned the German signal RHDG.
1878-1879 In command of Captain J.H.C. Schwaner.
1877 Sailed from Hongkong to Anjer in 70 [?] days. [Meyer]
1878 Sailed from Scilly to Acapulco in 116 days.
1878 Sailed from Acapulco to San Francisco in 25 days.
1879 Sailed San Francisco to Queenstown for orders in 140 days.
1880 Sailed from Singapore to the Channel in 129 days.
1880-1882 In command of Captain J.P.M. Thedens.
1883-1886 In command of Captain C.F.E.J. Bahlcke.
1882/1883 Sailed from Lizard Point to Rangoon in 116 days.
1883 Sailed from Rangoon to the Channel in 117 days.
1883 Sailed from Lizard Point to Valparaiso in 92 days.
1884 Sailed from Valparaiso to Iquique in 12 days.
1884 Sailed from Iquique to the Channel in 118 days.
1884 Sailed from Lizard Point to Valparaiso in 89 days.
1884/1885 Sailed from Caleta Buena to the Channel in 123 days.
1887-1890 In command of Captain A. Reitmann.
1890 January 12 Sailed from Iquique with a cargo of 11239 sacks of nitrate. Under command of Captain Reitmann and with a crew of 17 men.
1890 April 22 Passed Lizard Point.
1890 April Grounded at Beachy Head and was later sold to be broken up.

http://www.bruzelius.info/Nautica/Ships/Merchant/Sail/P/Polynesia(1874).html

Helsinki, 1996

2007-11-04T16:30:00.000-08:00

It was the spring of 1998 when we went to a local library, wondering how we could find more places. After having tried some quite senseless and random searches in the library database, we came across a strange title: "Satakunta Sahaa Suomessa" (some hundred sawmills in Finland). It sounded like something that had to be checked.
The yellow book was available in the shelf, so we took a look at what it had to offer. First impressions were stunning: the book really introduced nearly a hundred (okay, about 80 but anyway) Finnish sawmills, complete with photos, detailed descriptions of history and even approximate location information. The book was only two years old and most of the included targets had complete buildings remaining, not just "memories" except a few places. Truly a dream book! That's why we soon named it the yellow bible.
After having loaned the book and inspected it thoroughly we did a couple of test trips in nearby to find some of the places. Then we did a whole 4 day trip following a route based on locations introduced in this book. These first attempts were not too uplifting, since the places had either been demolished (Piikkiö, Iloniemi, Koskenkorva), they had new use (Pyhäjärvi, Nokki, Mainiemi, Tuiskula) or we just couldn't find them (Holm, Saikonkoski). But later, the book has been really useful and it has to be considered the most important single information source for our adventuring activities. I don't believe there are many targets in the book that would still be around that we haven't already visited, or tried to visit.
It's a fact that the material for yellow bible was gathered in 1994. It's already ten years ago now, and since old and unused buildings are really endangered it's natural that as a target reference the yellow bible is slowly becoming obsolete. But the book itself is still highly recommended for anybody interested in industrial history, architecture or anything related to sawmilling. Quite many public libraries have this book, and it's quite seldom loaned. Also, the book store Granum sells it nowadays for a ridiculous (cheap) price.
Although we may not always fully support what the bureaus and all kinds of official departments do, this time all credit must be given for the Finnish National Board of Antiquities for publishing the yellow bible. And of course above all to Mr's Timo Kantonen and Erkki Härö who did the actual job. This must be the best book ever written of the subject.

The yellow bible:
Satakunta Sahaa Suomessa
Kulttuurihistoriallisesti merkittäviä saharakennuksia ja -ympäristöjä
Timo Kantonen
Museoviraston rakennushistorian osaston julkaisuja 18
Helsinki 1996

http://www.dm-exp.org/gallery/raamattu.html

New York, 1916

2007-09-10T14:49:00.000-07:00

With Hidden Noise
or A Bruit Secret

Original Version: Easter 1916, New York
Philadelphia Museum of Art
The Louise and Walter Arensberg Collection
ball of twine pressed between two brass plates
joined by four long screws
assisted readymade11.4 x 12.9 x 13 cm

This Readymade was a collaborative exercise that Duchamp completed with the help of his
friend Walter Arensberg. Duchamp instructed Arensberg to loosen the long screws holding the construction together, place a small object inside the ball of twine, and not inform him or anyone else what it was. What rattles inside when With Hidden Noise is shaken remains a mystery to this day. Duchamp explained in a 1956 interview,

"Before I finished it Arensberg put something inside the ball of twine, and never told me what it was, and I didn't want to know. It was a sort of secret between us, and it makes noise, so we called this a Ready-made with a hidden noise. Listen to it. I don't know; I will never know whether it is a diamond or a coin" (Sanouillet & Peterson 135).

As a result, this piece is designed for action and not just to be looked at.

http://arthist.binghamton.edu/duchamp/Hidden%20Noise.html

Wilshire Boulevard, 1969

2007-09-08T09:49:00.000-07:00

Lanton Mills is a Western. Sort of.
The sparse plot recounts the story of two cowboys (Terrence Malick as “Tilman” and Harry Dean Stanton as “Lanton Mills”) who set off on horseback to rob a bank. On the way, they stop to see their boss, the “Old Man”, only to discover he has been murdered by another cowboy, John Sparks (Warren Oates). After Oates announces his claim to fame as the “slowest gun in the West” Stanton cursorily shoots him (an easy feat given cowboy Sparks' leisurely draw time!). It seems to take forever for Oates to die, and his dying is punctuated by lots of nonsensical banter and funny business. At last the two protagonists ride off again through the scrubbrush. There is a fade-to-black and in the next shot reveals our two heroes riding their horses in the middle of traffic on Wilshire Boulevard. A muscle car follows slowly behind them, and there is no hint to whether or not the cowboys are surprised by their new surroundings. They enter the bank, a glass-doored, orange-carpeted behemoth, and suddenly they seem to notice they're out of place. Gun cocked, Stanton falteringly declares “Nobody get upset now!” in a voice so soft no one hears him. Meanwhile, Malick delightedly grabs publicity brochures and office equipment off the desks, apparently thinking that they are some form of money. With the help of their antiquated guns, the two finally succeed in robbing a teller of two sacks of “petty cash,” but not before he pushes the emergency button.
What makes this sudden time shift intriguing is its uncertain parameters. Have the cowboys actually time-traveled, falling out in a world completely foreign to them? A comment the Malick character makes when he hears the police sirens belies this idea. He mutters wryly: “Well, it all goes to show, you can't hear radar.”

http://www.rohstoff-filmmagazin.org/contributions/Terence_Malick_Schwartzman.html

Pernambuco, 1890

2007-08-27T13:19:00.000-07:00

Torrens (1875). A 'composite' clipper - iron frames and wooden decks. Fast and popular with its passengers. Built for Elder & Co. Captain H. R. Angel was 1st Master - thru 1890, (and was Master again from 1896). It would seem that the Captain was, in fact, the majority owner. Sailed 64 days Plymouth to Adelaide, Australia, 1880, one day faster than the record set by City of Adelaide. Oct. 25, 1898 (date may be the commencement of the voyage rather than the date it hit the iceberg), vessel hit a large iceberg while en route from London to Adelaide, was partially dismasted, but was able to make Port Adelaide in 103 days. In 1890, in the first voyage under Captain W. H. Cope, lost her foremast and main topmast in a squall; put into Pernambuco, Brazil, under jury rig for repairs. In 1903, while Torrens was being towed in the River Thames carrying explosives, a vessel (name?) cut across the bows of Torrens and was sunk in the collision. No blame to the Torrens captain (Angel). Sold to Italian interests in 1903. Link 4 states that vessel was later twice run aground. Broken up 1910 at Genoa, Italy. Józef Korzeniowski (later writer Joseph Conrad) served as Chief Officer or Mate on two voyages, maybe in 1891/2 but dates confusing.

http://ca.geocities.com/ventures0@rogers.com/sunderland11.html#torrens

Cambridgeshire, 1754

2007-08-07T03:55:00.001-07:00

Veronica spicata L. subsp. spicata
Conservation status: VU
First record: Ray,1660
Veronica spicata
This Spike grew in the center of the plant erect & the other without flowers round it in a procumbent manner. n.l., Gathered May 28,1754. Joseph Andrews, BM. [probably Cambs record]
Veronica spicata recta minor J.B. Cat.Cant. Hist.846. Martyn,1727,68. --------------------------This rare Breckland species still grows on Newmarket Heath where Ray knew it 'in great plenty ... near the Beacon'. The Beacon was a raised fire–basket and is shown on Bleau's (1648) map perched upon the largest tumulus near Four Mile Hill. This prominent landmark gave its name to the Beacon Course, whose old Starting Post still stands opposite Four Mile Farm.
A little to the south were the enclosures on the heath, (still there according to Chapman's 1768 map), which Ogilby,1729 had described as 'Furzie ground called Hare Park'. This area was laid out as a Warren for James I, and the 'closes' Ray knew were perhaps associated with the management of the warren for hares.
Newmarket Heath is made up from the dry pasture land of a number of adjoining parishes, and was grazed mainly by sheep, or by sheep and rabbits, and latterly it has been kept to a uniform height of 3–4" by regular mowing. The soils appear to be a mosaic of chalky sands and loams over chalk, with patches of heather on the heath, and gorse nearby.
The grazing – mowing regime allowed V. spicata to flower, and after grazing or mowing to put out new short flowering shoots which often set seed; it can also increase in area vegetatively, but then it is easily overlooked, as Evans,1911 observed. For instance, Babington,1860 thought it had become extinct since 1829, West,1898 could not find it in the 1890s, and Walters and others thought it had been lost through ploughing in 1954.
The present site near the Beacon Course is about 1.5 km to the NW from the old Beacon, where it flourished until 1990. A large new area was found lying between the Beacon (July) Course and the Rowley Mile in 1986, and a small patch was discovered between the Devils Ditch and the secondary ditch in 1994.
The records from Horseheath and Littlington, were perhaps garden escapes, (though there was heathland in both parishes before Enclosure) and Evans,1911 stated Smart's record from near the Fleam Dyke had never been confirmed. The only records from the Gogs and the Devils Ditch were those sent to Lightfoot by TG Cullum of Bury St Edmunds; they may well have been errors for another genus. G Crompton.?34 'Littlington. Mrs Tate, 8.1877.' WG Clarke, TSNNS, 11:541. 'Mr Arthur Bennett states, moreover, that he possesses an old specimen from Littlington, near Royston'. Evans (1911)213.?45
'I am well informed also by Mr Cullum Surgeon of Bury, that the Veronica spicata grows also ... upon Gog Magog Hills 3 Miles from Cambridge – .' Lightfoot, c.1790, Ray Syn. ann. OXF. ...and Gogmagog Hills, Smith, Fl.Brit.1800,1:15.On the Wall of St. John's College. Relhan,1802;1820.
'On the wall of St John's College. Relhan.' Bot Guide, (1805). Gogs loc. not in Smith, Engl.Fl.1824,17.Veron spi On the Wall of St. John's College. Henslow ann. l:7.On the Wall of St. John's College. Babington, ann.Relhan.
55 DUNGATE FARM
Growing plentifully among furze bushes on a grassy slope at the 'Valley Farm' near Fleam Dyke adjoining Dungate, Cambs. RB Smart, 1 Aug. 1877, CGE. Amongst Furze bushes on a grassy slope at the Valley Farm nr Fleam Dyke adjoining Dungate, 1877, RB Smart, Bab.ann.
Fulbourne, F Norgate 1890, with a letter to Geldart: 'Yesterday while catching Corydon near Fulbourne Cambs, I saw a small patch of Veronica spicata unmistakeably wild. I enclose 3 spikes for your acceptance and identification. The exact locality must be kept a secret or the plant may be exterminated in 5 minutes with a pocket knife. Campanula glomerata, Anthyllis vulneraria, Filipendula vulgaris, Asperula cynanchica etc. were abundant there.' NWH.
http://www.mnlg.com/gc/species1/v/ver_spi_sub_spi.html

Jaktorów, 1627

2007-07-30T07:00:00.000-07:00

The last specimen died in the royal forests of Jaktorów in Masovia at the beginning of the XVIIth century. The sources of the present study are as follows: documents proclaimed by kings, old chronicles, descriptions found in literature, old illustrations, etc. Among the reasons why that species of the relic fauna of the Pleistocene epoch survived so long are those the author draws attention to: i) the special natural conditions, i.e. abundance of forests and climate, offered in Poland, especially in early times, ii) some cultural elements, the latter being of special interest to him. The legal protection extended to the aurochs by the State found its expression in the regale or the king's order concerning hunting of these animals; this was strictly observed, as is pronouncedly recorded in the historical sources which say that in the XIIIth century the aurochs were to be found only in the province of Masovia. The local princes of the Piast dynasty, and later on the kings of Poland, made no concessions of their exclusive right to hunt that animal, not even to the greatest magnates, both ecclesiastical and secular. They themselves never abused the hunting law as far as the aurochs was concerned. Considering the situation of the aurochs in the light of that regale and of the hunting law, the conclusion is offered that the fact of excluding the aurochs from the hunting law and extending to it "a sacred privilege of immunity" which, according to an old custom, only the king was not obliged to obey, was the major factor which contributed to such a long period of survival of that species. This exceptional and almost personal care of the Polish sovereigns for these animals and their intentional will to save them for posterity caused the prolongation of the period of survival of that magnificent species up to the year 1627, in which the last auroch cow died a natural death in her haunts, as is stated in the report of the royal inspection performed in the year 1630.

http://users.aristotle.net/~swarmack/aurohist.html

Sageburg, 1865

2007-07-29T09:59:00.000-07:00

There was an old tradition, or rather a prophecy, among the Indians that roamed about the Susquehanna, that great floods in this river occurred at regular intervals of fourteen years. The first great flood of which we have any account was in 1744; the second in 1758; the third in 1772, and that which is known as the great 'pumpkin flood' was in 1786--there being just fourteen years between each of these floods. The 'pumpkin flood' was in the month of October, and was so designated on account of the immense number of pumpkins that floated down the stream from the fields above. It began to rain on the 5th of October, 1786, and rained incessantly for several days. The water rose rapidly and swept all before it. Several persons were drowned near the place now called Rupert, and at Sunbury houses were overflowed and many people were lost. Northumberland was also flooded and much damage was done. This flood was long remembered and known among the old settlers as 'the great pumpkin flood.' In the spring of 1800, just fourteen years after the 'pumpkin floor,' another great freshet occurred. It rained three days and three nights, carrying off a deep snow and doing much damage. In 1814 there was another destructive flood that caused much loss of life and property. Here the old Indian tradition that floods occurred every fourteen years failed; for the next was in 1817, after an interval of only three years. The next flood of not was in 1847. If there were any from 1817 to 1847 we have no record of them. Many will remember that of 1859, which also raised the water in the North Branch over eight feet above high water mark. Still more vividly do they remember the extraordinary flood of March, 1865. The exciting scenes in Danville on the 17th and 18th of that month will never be forgotten. The river began to rise on Friday, and on Saturday the water rose to four feet above the highest flood on record. A great portion of Danville was overflowed and many families were compelled to leave their homes in haste. Women and children were taken from their houses in boats. The whole district from Sageburg to Mill Street was covered with water reaching up Mulberry Street and to the scales in front of the Montgomery building. The low lands along the Mahoning were also under water. On Mulberry as well as on Mill Street boats and rafts were moving among the houses and gliding high over the gardens. The river bridge was much injured but withstood the onset. Many stables and other buildings floated about and found new and strange foundations as the water receded without any regard to the side that was up or down. Only one man, Peter GREEN, was drowned at this place. He fell into the Mahoning from a small raft while attempting to supply his family with coal. His body was recovered and properly cared for. Another great flood in the North Branch in 1875 took the river bridge that had so long withstood the assaults of the angry torrent, but when the Catawissa bridge came down and struck it broadside it had to yield. It has since been rebuilt more substantially than before. There was another great freshet on the 12th of February, 1881.

http://freepages.books.rootsweb.com/~jowest/Research/HistoryOfDanville.htm

Los Angeles, 1999

2007-07-23T13:34:00.001-07:00

DA: It seems like there is a very specific relationship between the landscape or the topography in your painting Highland, Franklin, Yucca (1999), which has mountains in the background with the street names superimposed on top at a right-angle. You're forced to view of the mountain with the grid-like layout of a place like Los Angeles.
ER: I am trying to hammer down my feelings about those particular city intersections and the idea of the city grid. You might say 'How about Lincoln and Pico?' Your mind can drift and call up all kinds of past experiences that happened on that corner. You can go through your whole evaluation of society by sizing up a strip mall that you see there as totally valueless or decadent. But it still has some truth to it that makes you want to do something with it.
DA: I always wanted to have a way to understand this city better. This city is so non-linear, so broken apart. I wanted a timeline to follow - one thread - but instead I found many divergent paths. So recently I took a really interesting trip in Los Angeles. I went to San Pedro and tried to go up the Los Angeles River in a small military-type boat to see how far we could go.
ER: That is a good challenge. You might just reach a dead end!
DA: It was a two-day trip. The first day I went as far as I could go by boat. Then the second day we drove the continuation of the river. I felt like if I could just follow it 'til it ends, even though it's a joke of a river, I would understand the narrative of the land a little bit better. This concrete runway, viaduct that leads from the Pacific Ocean into this dense metascape. Then it literally disappears into a trickle of water the size of a knife.
ER: That should be J.G. Ballard's next book - a story about the LA River. He could do it. And have all these great descriptions of the concrete viaducts, embankments and all that.
DA: He's the master of concrete.

http://www.frieze.com/feature_single.asp?f=999

Nuremburg, 1561

2007-07-12T14:29:00.000-07:00

On April 4, 1561, an eerie battle raged in the skies above Nuremberg, Germany. It began at dawn, as dozens, if not hundreds, of crosses, globes and tubes fought each other above the city. It ended an hour later, when "the globes in the small and large rods flew into the sun," and several of the other objects crashed to earth and vanished in a thick cloud of smoke.
According to the Nuremberg Gazette, the "dreadful apparition" filled the morning sky with "cylindrical shapes from which emerged black, red, orange and blue-white spheres that darted about." Between the spheres, there were "crosses with the color of blood." This "frightful spectacle" was witnessed by "numerous men and women." Afterwards, a "black, spear-like object" appeared.

http://www.newsoftheodd.com/content/view/218/

Leipzig, 1750

2007-06-16T18:28:00.000-07:00

“The operation, disregarding that it had to be repeated, passed off badly. Not only was he unable to see: but his otherwise healthy body was cast over the pile with additional damaging medicines, and other treatments: so that for half a year he was sickly almost all the time…”Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach‘s evaluation of his father condition after the interventions performed by John Taylor.
-------------------------------
Bach’s life was very much free of disease. There is no record of any serious illness. With his first wife Maria Barbara, he had 7 children and 13 with Anna Magdalena, his second wife. Following his footsteps, 4 of his children became well known composers.
He was nearsighted from birth, which didn’t bother him very much until the age of 64. How close he was to total blindness at this point is not known. His creative ability however was retained, it has been said that during this last period of his life he had to dictate his compositions.
The reason for his blindness was senile cataract, which developed at the expected age. John Taylor* twice performed unsuccessful operations. Four months later he suffered a stroke, likely due to the obstruction of a brain vessel or a massive brain hemorrhage. Bach went into a coma and died. A direct causal relationship to Taylor’s operation is less likely than an indirect one; due to manipulation in both eyes an infection developed and on top of it application of damaging medicines weakened the patient. These affected negatively a generally asymptomatic preexisting condition.

http://www.ahsl.arizona.edu/about/ahslexhibits/diseasesofcomposers/bach.cfm

Ashland, 1973

2007-05-28T15:45:00.000-07:00

In 1972, Shore drove from New York City to Amarillo, Texas making photographs that documented everything he did in a style that mirrored your average snapshot. It was an attempt to make art in the world that would reflect his own existence, yet maintain a discernable conceptual content. He was taking pictures Warhol might have made if he was riding shotgun with Robert Frank. The images covered a wide swath of all parts of America and its broad culture: while remaining art objects that intentionally looked like a snapshots even if they contained things no discerning tourist would bother to remember: toilets, TV dinners, unremarkable intersections, and random strangers. The work served its purposes well: it created a very detailed diary with no central character. The pictures become the diary of an invisible man: you know his whereabouts from the spaces he inhabits, the food he eats and the people who notice his existence, but he is never seen or heard. What makes the pictures sing is Shore’s breathtaking ability to create a world that seems so every day, but contains elements of transcendent beauty that obliterating anything undertaken by nature photographers like Ansel Adams or Elliot Porter. Shore creates a seamless image that makes the viewers feel they are the ones who noticed the light streaming through a telephone booth, the dance of telephone wires over a dusty street, the color of a turquoise pipe, the sky reflected in the hoods of parked cars, and generally how great our world can look if one takes some time...
The lack of a personal visual style might have been the result of the working through of visual problems, but in the end it allows those who like looking to feel that if given the chance they might be able to see the world as wondrously as Shore did. At the close of the Uncommon Places work, Shore returned to more conceptual territories, making images that de-constructed scale, perspective, and sequencing: he returned to making pictures about how the camera sees. At times these are interesting, but they are not nearly as fulfilling as the world we were lucky enough to see through his rather generous eye.
Image Credit: Stephen Shore : Second Street, Ashland, Wisconsin, July 9, 1973

http://www.skuawk.com/photography/959/the-landscape-of-stephen-shore-at-the-icp

Washington, 1849

2007-05-19T16:16:00.001-07:00

David Rice Atchison
Birth: Aug. 11, 1807
Death: Jan. 26, 1886
US Senator. Twice elected as a Senator from Missouri to the United States Senate, serving first from 1843 to 1848, then from 1849 to 1855. Served as President Pro Tempore of the Senate in 1849. The term of President James K Polk ended on Sunday March 4 1849, and President-Elect Zachary Taylor refused to take the oath of office on a Sunday, so Senator Atchison is said to have been President of The United States for one day. In reality President Polk's term was extended for one day, and David Atchison spent the entire day he was supposed to have been President in bed.

http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=4972

Sheffield, 2007

2007-05-17T03:07:00.000-07:00

Does anyone round here know where i can get some savaloy sausage from.I really fancy some,and the pikelet/crumpet thread got me thinking.In my home town of chatham kent the local chip shop sells savaloy.But when we moved to sheffield and i walked in chip shop asking for some they looked at me gone out.Then again in kent they don't sell mushy peas.I think it is weird how to places can seem like there two diffrent worlds.Anyway if anyone could help i would be grateful.

http://www.sheffieldforum.co.uk/archive/index.php/t-174758.html

Portsea, 1967

2007-05-06T08:13:00.000-07:00

Harold Holt disappeared while swimming at Cheviot Beach near Portsea, Victoria on 17 December, 1967. His body was never recovered. Without determining the cause of Holt's death, a joint report by Commonwealth and Victoria Police, submitted in January 1968, concluded that, '… there has been no indication that the disappearance of the late Mr Holt was anything other than accidental'. The report (see copy on file A1209, 1968/8063) found that his last movements followed a routine domestic pattern, his demeanour had been normal and despite his knowledge of the beach, the turbulent conditions (high winds, rough seas and rip tides) overcame him. The explanations put forward for a failure to find the body included an attack by marine life, the body being carried out to sea by tides or becoming wedged in rock crevices.

http://www.naa.gov.au/publications/fact_sheets/FS144.html

Durham, 664

2007-03-27T17:27:00.000-07:00

Although the Irish monk Tuda was a staunch adherent of the Roman practices, including the computation of the date for Easter, he succeeded Saint Colman as abbot-bishop of Lindisfarne, where the contrary view was held. In this position he governed the entirety of Northumbria. Most of the Celtic usage monks departed with Colman in 664, leaving Tuda to heal the wounds of discord. Tuda signed the deed of dedication of the new Saint Peter's Monastery in Mercia of which the Celtic-born Jaruman was bishop. Even though Tuda, who died of the plague within the first year of his appointment, does not seem to have enjoyed a public cultus, he is listed in some martyrologies.

http://www.saintpatrickdc.org/ss/1021.htm

Arazi, 1992

2007-03-12T15:08:00.000-07:00

Brian Ready, a pilot, has found Arazi by going out to one of the Beechcraft Bonanzas his company sells and punching Arazi into the computer. He and the guys sitting around the office with him had figured Arazi was an aviation intersection because it has five letters, which all aviation intersections do. Ready shows us the intersection on the map. Although the actual Arazi intersection is some distance up in the air, where pilots like Ready prefer to keep their airplanes, directly beneath it on the ground is what qualifies as the middle of nowhere.
Arazi is a spot about six miles northwest of Yuma, north of Interstate 8, north of some railroad tracks, just next to what looks like an irrigation canal. Ready has also photocopied for us the page from U.S. Terminal Procedures, Southwest that shows pilots how to land at the Yuma airport using RNAV navigational systems. After they pass through the Arazi intersection, they proceed to ones called Copaw and Mugin, much less romantic as names for horses.

http://search.phoenixnewtimes.com/1992-05-06/news/where-is-arazi/

Hell Gate, 1885

2007-03-06T06:25:00.000-08:00

It is estimated that the wrecks of over 1,000 ships lie in the Hell Gate. Starting in the 1840s, and continuing for the next 80 years, the Federal government tried various means to remove the rocks and reefs that made the Hell Gate dangerous to shipping. In October 1885, over 300,000 pounds of explosives were detonated, obliterating the once treacherous nine-acre Flood Rock. Nearly 100,000 people gathered on the Manhattan banks of the East River to watch what is said to have been the world’s largest explosion prior to the atomic bomb. Windows rattled as far away as Princeton, New Jersey.

http://www.nycgovparks.org/sub_your_park/historical_signs/hs_historical_sign.php?id=12219

Boston, 1986

2007-01-04T13:15:00.000-08:00

i was the supervisor on duty on the day of the fire.it did not start with oil in the popcorn machine.this was a first impression that was never corrected in the media.it was an electrical fire that was first noticed in the area above the popcorn machine.i went for a fire extinguisher but the fire was spreading too fast across the ceiling so i dropped the extinguisher, called the fire departmentment and projectionista, and evacuated the theatre.because of a clause in the lease, the owners of the building were unable to sue the hoaglands, who were leasees, but they were allowed to sue employees of the hoaglands. for five years, i fought in court to vindicate myself from accusations of negligence and was finally successful.the orson welles fire was only one of several fires on that stretch of mass ave that began mysteriously and were never seriously investigated. that area was immediately redeveloped.

http://cinematreasures.org/theater/6492/

Bookshelf 2006

2006-12-23T09:23:00.000-08:00

Alan Bennett : Untold Stories : 8/10
Bertrand Blier : Making It : 6/10
Peter Bogdanovich : Picture Shows : 7/10
Paul Bowles : Their Heads Are Green : 8/10
William S Burroughs : Cities of the Red Night : 9/10
Bret Easton Ellis : Lunar Park : 6/10
John Fante : Ask the Dust : 5/10
F Scott Fitzgerald : Tender is the Night : 9/10
Graham Greene : A Burnt-Out Case : 8/10
Patricia Highsmith : The Boy Who Followed Ripley : 7/10
Patricia Highsmith : Edith's Diary : 8/10
Michel Houellebecq : H.P. Lovecraft - Against the World, Against Life : 5/10
Geoffrey Household : Rogue Male : 8/10
Cormac McCarthy : No Country For Old Men : 5/10
Stephen McLaughlin : Squaddie : 7/10
Jan Morris : Europe : 8/10
Thomas Pynchon : The Crying of Lot 49 : 7/10
Muriel Spark : The Ballad of Peckham Rye : 6/10
'Vern' : 5 on the Outside : 9/10
Sean Wilsey : Oh the Glory of It All : 7/10

http://www.lulu.com/content/78605

Rocksavage, 1725

2006-12-10T14:54:00.000-08:00

DISUSE AND DECAY
With its absorption into the Cholmondeley Estate, Rocksavage fell into disuse and finally into the decay we can see today. When the farm known as Rocksavage Grange (now the home of Mr. C. H. Johnson) was built a little over 150 years ago, sandstone from the old mansion was used in the construction of the farm buildings. Other pieces of the old fabric are to be found in various walls about the farm. The gateway to the old mansion still stands and I have often had the privilege of walking on the foundations and tracing the approximate whereabouts of the mansion's main door. From there ***************** to examine a tunnel which had been disclosed by a subsidence in the farmyard. The first reaction was, that after all, perhaps there was something in the old fable about an underground passage. But -- . Although the "tunnel" was tall enough to give standing room, it was constructed of brick. Iron footholds, something the shape of horseshoes, had their open end embedded at intervals down the wall at the place where the subsidence had occurred. These gave a cat ladder means of access to and from the cavity.
The bricks and condition of the ironwork decided the issue. Certainly they were not ancient. They were in a better state than one would expect after the passing of 200 years, even supposing that the "tunnel" - which was only about two feet below the level of the farmyard - was a passageway to the cellars of the last mansion on that site.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT~
More interesting still was a "find" in the neighbourhood of that well known tall fragment of the old mansion wall. A hole was being dug by Mr. Johnson's farm workers when they uncovered a sandstone wall. Although it had been completely buried with earth for how long no one knows, it still bore very clear evidence of whitewash! Probably this was a cellar wall. In great measure it is due to the researches of that grand historian of Runcorn, the late William Handley, who lectured on this subject, that it has been possible to retell the story of old Rocksavage. From it we can learn that, although Runcorn is a seeming prosaic town, and Clifton not now a picturesque village, the locality is as rich in historical association as many places more widely known for their past glories.
Indebtedness is also acknowledged to Miss M. Knight, Runcorn Librarian, and to Mr. James Hill for permission to reproduce the picture of Rocksavage Grange at the time of its glory - the only such picture the writer has seen.
(note - the newspaper cutting contains a photograph of "the last remnant of the ruined wall" and also a "drawing of Rocksavage as it appeared about the year 1725". The photocopy reproduction of the photograph and drawing are too indistinct to be able to copy. The author and date of publication are also not known).

http://www.runcornhistsoc.org.uk/rockandclifton.html

Chadderton, 1975

2006-11-26T17:14:00.000-08:00

Rumour has it that, that famous Red Barn was, in 1975, dismantled brick-by brick, timber by timber, scrupulously numbered and reassembled at it’s present location, and is now used as the restaurant that is known as the Red Barn Carvery and Pub. It is possible that you can sit in the place where that mischievous maiden Maria Marten met her death.

http://www.theredbarnltd.co.uk/id3.html

Bowery, 1862

2006-10-18T16:44:00.000-07:00

In the best tradition of old-timey songs, the history of 315 Bowery is mostly about fixin' to die: "Melancholy Suicide In the Bowery" reads one typical headline from 1881. (Mr. David Bell, age 34, with a bottle of poison.) In 1887, a carpet worker named Alexander Dolle left his home there and threw himself in front of an El train: He got hit so hard that his heart popped out and fell onto the sidewalk below, where it was surrounded by "a morbidly curious crowd." One of the Triangle Shirtwaist victims, 16-year-old Jennie Stellino, slept her last night in 315; so did Bill Rogers, who expired in the front doorway in 1926, only to have his pockets posthumously picked. In 1946 a stranger strode into the building's ground-floor bar, fatally shot a Massachusetts tourist with a single bullet, and without a word melted back into the Bowery.
For a while in the 1890s, the building housed the Old Methusalem Whiskey company, so the address's eventual evolution into an boozy SRO hotel was just as fitting as its drumbeat of melancholia was unsurprising. Just about the only happy news to ever emerge from the address is a Bird Fancier's Annual Exhibition held there in 1862: "First prize, yellow cock, Wm. Mason."

http://www.slate.com/id/2151389

Manhattan, 1983

2006-09-09T06:14:00.000-07:00

Questions of camera distance in Too Soon, Too Late, like those in Playtime, are ultimately moral questions, as well as practical ones: how does one see what one needs to see without exploiting either the spectator or the person being filmed? (Many related questions of tact are broached by the landscape paintings of Patricia Patterson.) Serge Daney has some relevant things to say about this in his lovely newspaper review of the film for Liberation (20-21, February, 1982), entitled "Cinemeteorology", which I translated for the Straub-Huillet catalog:
... [In overpopulated Egypt], the fields are no longer empty, fellahs work there, one can no longer go anywhere and film anyone any which way. The terrain of performance again becomes the territory of others. The Straubs (whoever knows their films realizes that they're intransigent on this matter) accord much importance to the fact that a filmmaker should not disturb those whom he films. One therefore has to see the second part of Too Soon, Too Late as an odd performance, made up of approaches and retreats, where the filmmakers, less meteorologists than acupuncturists, search for the spot - the only spot, the right spot - where their camera can catch people without bothering them. Two dangers immediately present themselves: exotic tourism and the invisible camera. Too close, too far. In a lengthy "scene", the camera is planted in front of a factory gate and allows one to see Egyptian workers who pass, enter and leave. Too close for them not to see the camera, too far away for them to be tempted to go towards it. To find this point, this moral point, is at this moment the entire act of the Straubs. With perhaps the hope that the "extras" thus filmed, the camera and the fragile crew "hidden" right in the middle of a field or a vacant lot would only be an accident of the landscape, a gentle scarecrow, another mirage carried by the wind. These scruples are astonishing. They are not fashionable. To shoot a film, especially in the country, means generally to devastate everything, disrupt the lives of people while manufacturing country snapshots, local color, rancid back-to-nature museum pieces. Because the cinema belongs to the city and no one knows exactly what a "peasant cinema" would be, anchored in the lived experience, the space-time of peasants. It is necessary therefore to see the Straubs, city inhabitants, mainland navigators, as lost. It is necessary to see them in the middle of the field, moistened fingers raised to catch the wind and ears pricked up to hear what it's saying. So the most naked sensations serve as a compass. Everything else, ethics and aesthetics, content and form, derives from this.
To Daney's second paragraph, two personal footnotes should be added. Danièle Huillet, who sent me a copy of Daney's review, added one small caveat: "Jean-Marie is a 'Stadtkind' [city-child] but I grew up in the country, though born in Paris ..." And Sara Driver has suggested to me that Too Soon, Too Late may indeed be more Huillet's film than Straub's, reflecting her country background - just as En Rachâchant (1982), again according to Driver, may be more Straub's.
(e) As I suggested earlier in this book, Too Soon, Too Late inverts the usual relationship in a Straub-Huillet film between landscape and text - the landscape becoming the film's central text, the verbal text becoming the film's "setting". Practically speaking, this reduces the relative importance of the verbal texts in the films - although when I mentioned this notion to Straub, he countered that nevertheless the film could never have been made without those texts. And the documentary side of this - which is of course the major element apart from comedy separating Straub-Huillet's use of long shots from Tati's in Playtime - has specifically musical implications. The uncontrolled movements of people, animals and weather function on this terrain like improvisations that play against the "composed" framings and camera movements, somewhat in the manner of jazz. When I proposed this parallel to Straub, he replied that a principal reference point for him and Huillet while shooting the second part of Too Soon, Too Late was the late quartets of Beethoven - particularly the use of suspensions and slow tempos. The very slow pans, according to Dave Kehr, always move in the same direction as the wind, and it is largely the sense one has of the film's profound attentiveness to the material world that makes the film so singular a documentary - calling to mind the three living quotations cited by Straub before the screening of the film at the Collective for Living Cinema on April 30, 1983:
D. W. Griffith at the end of his life: "What modern movies lack is the wind in the trees."
Rosa Luxembourg: "The fate of insects is not less important than the revolution."
Cézanne, who painted Mont Saint-Victoire again and again: "Look at this mountain, once it was fire."

http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/00/6/soon.html

Tokyo/Furano, 2005

2006-09-05T16:01:00.000-07:00

This is one of the best ski hills in Japan. I agree with the comments that you have to come to this place to expereince it and make sure you come willing to learn a little of the culture and language. You can have the most amazing experience as I did but you can't come and hooter and holler down the hill as you cut ropes. Respect the locals as though they are your grandparents and you will probably end up at some locals house drinking tea and eating rice cakes.
The powder was ridiculous, deep and so much steeper than the other hills around Hokkaido. The locals restaurants and bars are nice and cool. Very relaxed atmosphere as it isn't a real ski resort but more of a small town and hence was so affordable to stay there. Restaurants and bars had a good atmosphere like Bar Wonder downtown or Yama ga Dokson near the hill.
Get there to believe it.

http://www.goski.com/resorts/jpfurano/resort_welcome.html?cntry_or_state=find&rorc=japan&from=state&bc=RIR

Durham, 1866

2006-06-26T18:11:00.000-07:00

LAFCADIO HEARN (1850 - 1904)
The great interpreter of Japan was born in Greece of Irish-Greek parentage. From 1863 he spent four years at Ushaw College. Such were his home circumstances that he spent his holidays at the College too. His walks in the surrounding countryside had a formative effect on his rather unstable character.
Ushaw had a number of games peculiar to the college and it was during one of them 'Giant's Strides', that Hearn sustained an eye injury from a knotted rope. This resulted in a loss of sight and a permanent disfigurement which was to have a profound effect on his life. He became convinced that he was unattractive to women, and contrived to have photographs taken of him only in profile.

http://online.northumbria.ac.uk/faculties/art/humanities/cns/m-hearn.html

Bangkok, 1983

2006-06-23T15:49:00.000-07:00

Meet Mrs. Mudd

“Mr. Mudd was a gentleman who was John’s driver during the shooting of The Killing Fields,” said Francesco Rulli, referring to his business partner, the actor John Malkovich. “He was apparently a murder convict and had just come out of prison. And one day they were driving very fast down this dirt road—almost hitting women and monks—and teetering about. John asked if it was true if he had just come out of prison for killing someone. Mr. Mudd looked at him and said, ‘Sometimes Mr. Mudd kills. Sometimes Mr. Mudd not kill.’ John really liked that.”

Mr. Malkovich’s film-production company is named Mr. Mudd in honor of that driver. His fashion business, which he co-owns with the handsome and Italian-born Mr. Rulli, is named Mrs. Mudd. Mrs. Mudd produces a line of clothing named Uncle Kimono. Their offices are on Fifth Avenue, in the Flatiron district.

The name Uncle Kimono also came courtesy of a friend of Mr. Malkovich, one who had seen a box of photographs that had been sent to the Malkovich home. They contained negatives of a Japanese gentleman in California.

“John thought they were attracting,” said Mr. Rulli. “He showed it to his friend, who was gay and died of AIDS a few years ago, and who said, ‘Oh, those people are Uncle Kimono.’ When you have a lover, a gay lover, in the 40’s, you wouldn’t go around and tell everyone that he’s your boyfriend. You might call him your uncle. This guy, this guy was like … his posture was interesting. And he was wearing a kimono. So our line is called Uncle Kimono.”

Mr. Malkovich has other business concerns as well. For instance, he co-owns a disco in Portugal.

The hot-pink business card for Mrs. Mudd has a few quotes imprinted on them in Mr. Malkovich’s elegant hand, including the hopefully rhetorical Aren’t track-suits illegal? and At an airport I once took by accident the suitcase of a Russian woman. When I opened it I thought, ‘these dresses aren’t mine.’

http://www.observer.com/20060213/20060213___thecity_thetransom.asp

Brighton, 2004

2006-06-22T01:27:00.000-07:00

After finishing The Proposition, Nick Cave got a phone call from Russell Crowe, an old acquaintance, to see if he was interested in writing a Gladiator sequel. ''I said, 'Look, mate, you died in the first one, how are you going to do that?''' Director Ridley Scott suggested Cave watch Ingmar Bergman films for inspiration. But Cave may have been too inspired by the cryptic Swedish director. Here's what he came up with: ''Maximus becomes a warrior who can never die — an eternal warrior. At the end is this 20-minute war sequence where he rubs his hands in the earth and each time he stands up he's in another war. It goes on and on through history, [including] Vietnam.'' Needless to say, Cave's Gladiator 2 won't be coming to a theater near you. ''Russell didn't like it, basically because the Gladiator walks around in a complete daze for the whole film.''

http://www.ew.com/ew/report/0,6115,1193531-4-4_4%7C67179%7C322351%7C1_0_,00.html

East Village, 1970

2006-06-17T08:14:00.000-07:00

Simply put, there are no "Legitimate" copies of Journey Through The Past. When it was released in 1973 (at the US Film Festival), the response by the public was so negative that Shakey had a slight problem finding a full time distributor (ie no one would touch the film with a ten foot pole). The only copies floating around that I know of are taped from USA network and are copies of copies of copies. True story: I paid $25cdn for one of these bootlegs off of eBay. The visual quality was below average and the sound quality ranks slightly beyond wretched, but I was so obsessed with learning exactly what the hell was going on on the soundtrack (ever hear the album? it's pretty weird...Make's Queen's Flash Gordon soundtrack sound like The Beatles at their peak), that I was prepared to shell out a bit of cash to find out. If you're a diehard Shakey fan, then you might consider this an investment. There's some really cool behind the scenes work on Harvest, plus a sequence of CSNY at the filmore east on 5 June 1970 (Stills and Young's guitar duel on 'Southern Man' is a wow!), but mostly it's just weird stuff like Neil roaming through a garbage dump, Crosby criticizing Richard Nixon's policies while smoking a joint, and four black-clad Klansman riding around on a beach. There's also a sequence where a guy is talking to his truck (the vehicle in question actually answers back, but the sound quality on the tape is so bad that the replies can't be made out).

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068776/board/nest/16421264

Wold Newton, 1795

2006-06-17T06:33:00.000-07:00

Remarks concerning Stones said to have fallen from the Clouds, Both in these Days and in ancient Times. By Edward King, Esq. F.R.S. and F.A.S
"Several persons at Wold Cottage, in Yorkshire, Dec. 13, 1795, heard various noises in the air, like pistols, or distant guns at sea, felt two distinct concussions of the earth, and heard a hissing noise passing through the air; and a labouring man plainly saw (as we are told) that something was so passing, and beheld a stone, as it seemed at last, (about 10 yards, or 30 feet, distant from the ground), descending, and striking into the ground, which flew up all about him, and, in falling, sparks of fire seemed to fly from it. Afterwards he went to the place, in common with others who had witnessed part of the phaenomenon, and dug the stone up from the place where it was buried about 21 inches deep. it smelled, as is said, very strongly of sulphur when it was dug up, and was even warm, and smoked. It was said to be 30 inches in length, and 28 ½ in breadth, and it weighed 56lb. Such is the account*. I affirm nothing; neither do I pretend either absolutely to believe or to disbelieve. I have not an opportunity to examine the whole of the evidence. But it may be examined; so I leave it to be"

http://atschool.eduweb.co.uk/bookman/meteorites/C18.HTM#wold1

Dallas, 1975

2006-06-16T01:24:00.000-07:00

Jaws sneak-previewed right here in Dallas on March 26, 1975 at the Medallion Theater. Steven Spielberg was so nervous that he stood in the back instead of taking his seat. So he's standing back there, and when the boy on the raft gets eaten by the shark, this guy in the audience gets up and RUNS for the door. So Spielberg thinks his career is over, that people are RUNNING out of the theater. But instead of leaving, the guy THROWS UP in the lobby, goes to the bathroom, and goes back to his seat.

http://www.dallashistory.org/cgi-bin/webbbs_config.pl?noframes;read=30539

Guam, 1993

2006-06-12T11:41:00.000-07:00

As recently as 1993, the Poacher acquired a far eastern sister, this time using another English folk song, “Cherry Ripe”, as its callsign. Cherry Ripe’s transmitters have not been accurately located, but appear to be in Hong Kong, Taiwan, or Guam. Its target may be China and its new province, Hong Kong.
“The sudden appearance of Cherry Ripe was really surprising for me,” says Mike Gauffman, a Kent-based short wave listener and one of the two founders of Enigma — the European Numbers Information Gathering and Monitoring Association (http://www.pcug.co.uk/~irdial/enigma.htm). The group, which began in 1993, has 200 to 300 worldwide supporters who are on the Net and on the air every day, logging schedules but never understanding a single word of the messages they monitor.

http://duncan.gn.apc.org/882451334-numbers.html

Oxford, 1681

2006-06-11T14:08:00.000-07:00

On the 1st March 1681 John Locke, the philosopher, made the following entry in his journal in his chamber at Christ Church, Oxford:

This day I saw one Alice George, a woman as she said of 108 years old at Alhallontide last [1 November 1680]. She lived in St Giles parish in Oxford and hath lived in and about Oxford since she was a young woman. She was born at Saltwyche in Worcestershire, her maiden name was Alice Guise. Her father lived to 83, her mother to 96 and her mother's mother to 111. When she was young she was fair-haired and neither fat nor lean, but very slender in the waist, for her size she was to be reckoned rather amongst the tall than short women. Her condition was but mean, and her maintenance her labour, and she said she was able to have reaped as much in a day as any man, and had as much wages. She was married at 30, and had 15 children, viz. 10 sons and 5 daughters baptized, besides 3 miscarriages. She has 3 sons still alive, her eldest John living the next door to her, 77 years old the 25th of this month. She goes upright though with a staff in one hand, but yet I saw her stoop twice without resting upon anything, taking up once a pot and another time her glove from the ground.

http://www.demogr.mpg.de/books/odense/6/02.htm

Macclesfield / London 1980

2006-05-23T11:50:00.000-07:00

There's an interesting coincidence regarding your great film Stroszek. Reading about the suicide of Joy Division singer Ian Curtis in the book Touching from a Distance we learn that he watched Stroszek before killing himself. While reading Faber's Lynch on Lynch, David Lynch talks about being in the UK filming The Elephant Man and seeing Stroszek on TV. Curtis and Lynch appear to have been watching the transmission of the same film at the same time. Although it's a huge simplification, the reactions of the two viewers appear to swing between a complete enchantment of life and self-destruction. Do you find this reveals something about your work?

Werner Herzog It is a very heavy question. There is no frivolity in answering this. I cannot really argue. It is as it is. I wish this singer was still alive and hadn't seen Stroszek at that moment. But deep at the bottom of my heart I do believe that Stroszek was not the reason that he killed himself. I do believe that he must have had some very, very serious deeper other reasons and he may have, and I'm very cautious, he may have used the film as a ritual step into what he was doing. Regarding David Lynch when he was doing Elephant Man, which is a wonderful film, I do not know. I actually know David Lynch personally and I should speak to him and ask him. There's no real answer to that question, only regret that a young man committed suicide. That's a fact that is sad which is very, very serious and is very disquieting.

BBC Four This is a more light-hearted question.

Piers What became of all the grey rats you used in Nosferatu?

Werner Herzog We sold them and even made some profit!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentaries/storyville/ask-herzog.shtml

Atascadero, 1985

2006-05-23T10:26:00.000-07:00

REPORTER: Dan Rather (Atascadero, California) Champion race horse Boitron's severe injury and Washington State Univ. veterinarians' efforts to cure him examined; films shown, background to report explained. [Dr. Barrie GRANT - notes medical problems facing him.] Boitron's role on stud farm now, with artificial leg, described. [Rancher Barbara WILLIAMS - praises horse.]

http://openweb.tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/1985-3/1985-03-28-CBS-21.html

Innsbruck, 1490

2006-05-23T02:58:00.000-07:00

In 1490, Kaiser Maximilian I awarded Franz von Taxis the contract to deliver mail between the Kaiser’s residences in Innsbruck and Brussels. He did such a good job, that postal services in the country continue to be connected with the name Thurn and Taxis. With the introduction of postal carriages in the middle of the 17th century, members of the family were raised to Count status and given the hereditary title of Postmaster General. The game begins at this point in history.
Can you emulate the achievements of this family and build a successful postal network? Do you have the talent to connect the right cities to create an effective network and not lose sight of the need to acquire new carriages when they are needed? Plan your moves carefully and watch your opponents’ moves carefully, so you are prepared to respond to them.
The game takes you back in time and gives you challenges that will bring you back to the game over and over.

http://www.funagain.com/control/product/~product_id=015680

Watertown, 1968

2006-05-12T16:53:00.000-07:00

Of course, when it comes to one-book authors, none resonates for me as deeply as Frederick Exley, whose "fictional memoir" A Fan’s Notes came out in 1968. As for why this is … well, Exley was a particularly unlikely literary hero, the most implausible writer in the bunch. Born on March 28, 1929 in Watertown, New York, he was an alcoholic who spent much of his life as an unregenerate freeloader, writing sporadically when at all. His relationships, including two brief marriages, were disastrous, and for many years he didn’t even have an apartment, but rotated among friends and relations as a semi-permanent guest.Exley’s inability to function as an adult extended to his inner self, which relied on several external figures—including his father, Earl, and the critic Edmund Wilson—to provide some semblance of definition, as if through their successes, his own lack of accomplishment might be redeemed. Of these personalities, none was more significant than Frank Gifford, whom Exley first encountered at the University of Southern California in the early 1950s, and became obsessed with after moving to Manhattan, where Gifford was a star football player for the New York Giants. As Exley explains in A Fan’s Notes, "I cheered for him with such inordinate enthusiasm … that after a time he became my alter ego, that part of me which had its being in the competitive world of men … Each time I heard the roar of the crowd, it roared in my ears as much for me as for him."In many ways, A Fan’s Notes represents Exley’s one great moment of triumph, a rigorously reflective piece of autobiographical writing that eclipses the distinction between fiction and nonfiction, using the author’s imagined relationship with Gifford as a fulcrum from which to examine "that long malaise, my life." The book received the William Faulkner Award for best first novel, and was a finalist for the National Book Award. That A Fan’s Notes exists at all is nothing short of astonishing, for while Exley spent years fantasizing about being a writer, he had done little of substance before it came out.Yet equally remarkable is the depth to which Exley reveals himself, baring his inadequacies until, beneath the refining filter of revelation, they are transformed. It’s ironic that a book about failure would represent, for its author, the pinnacle of success, as it is that in his explication of fanhood, Exley would turn the spotlight, finally, towards himself. Perhaps the greatest irony, though, is that, ultimately, A Fan’s Notes did little to alter Exley’s life. In the years after its appearance, he taught briefly at the Iowa Writers Workshop, and wrote two additional "novels," Pages from a Cold Island and Last Notes from Home, that complete the trilogy A Fan’s Notes begins. Still, he remained a drunk and a layabout, and even before he died of a stroke on June 17, 1992, he had been largely forgotten, along with his work.

http://www.swinkmag.com/ulin.html

Chiswick Eyot, 1895

2006-04-16T07:29:00.000-07:00

There are those who believe that with the increased purification of the Thames, the next generation may perhaps throw a salmon-fly from Chiswick Eyot. In the early summer of 1895 a fine porpoise appeared above the island. At half-past eight it followed the ebb down the river, having "proved" the stream for forty miles from its mouth, and being apparently well pleased with its condition. At Putney it lingered, as might be expected of a Thames porpoise, opposite a public-house. Two sportsmen went out in a boat to shoot it; instead, they hit some spectators on the bank. Flowers abound on the eyot.

http://explorion.net/c.j.cornish-naturalist-thames/page-68.html

South Hamilton, 1901

2006-04-10T16:13:00.000-07:00

The players' tempers flared in the first round -- played Thursday morning in a swirling wind -- as even well-struck balls found trouble. Anderson, misreading three short putts, was quietly seething by the end of his round, an 84. As he and the other professionals gathered for lunch outside the stately clubhouse, a Myopia member informed them that they must eat in the kitchen. Anderson, muttering in his North Berwick burr, began swinging his mashie faster and faster near the member until he sent a sizable patch of turf flying. The member fled into the clubhouse, then returned to say that a lunch tent would be raised for the players.

http://www.golfonline.com/golfonline/features/history/article/0,17742,467841,00.html

Waterbury, 1976

2006-03-30T02:34:00.000-08:00

Who is Klaatu?
Is Crazy Ray really crazy?

If you had your radio tuned to WDRC on the evening of Tuesday, March 1, then you probably know the story behind Klaatu. For those of you who don't, Klaatu is believed to be the Beatles under a new name. According to "Crazy Ray," a spokesman for a Waterbury radio station, "Everybody knows that Klaatu, formerly Neutrino, is a five-man Canadian progressive rock group. The album was released early last summer. Klaatu is not the Beatles but was co-produced by John Lennon. The five guys are Goose Grahm - lead vocals and guitar (I heard he's Lennon's cousin, but I'm not sure), Andy Mills - lead guitar, John Spear - bass, vocals, John Tatum - keyboard, vocals, and Edward Satriano - drums. John Lennon plays guitar and sings background vocals on three songs, but none of the other Beatles are involved in any way whatsoever." When WDRC talked with Frank Davies, the official spokesman for Klaatu, he claimed that, "Crazy Ray is crazy."
The album was published by Capitol Records Inc., the same company the Beatles used previously. Capitol Records is believed to have offered the Beatles a $150,000,000 contract to do another album. No one knows if this is the case.
WDRC investigated the origin of the group. The name Klaatu derives from a 1951 science-fiction movie entitled, The Day The Earth Stood Still, and could mean "been here before." The film was also a theme of a previous Ringo Starr album, Good Night Vienna (sic). At a Paul McCartney concert last summer (now being viewed by Hall students on dial select) his final statement was, "I will see you when the earth stands still."
There are many peculiarities about the album. For instance, there is a song entitled, Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Crafts (sic). This song mentions every planet in the solar system but Venus and Mars, which is the title of a previous best-selling Paul McCartney album. Another song on the album, Sir Bodsworth Rugglesby the Third is misspelled on the jacket as Rubblesby. If you were to define Bods, Worth, Rubbles and By, it would mean "persons of importance born of quarry". The Beatles were first known as "The Quarrymen." Subroads of Subways (sic) is a song that has a Morse code message intertwined with the lyrics. Capitol Records claims that when the code is deciphered it will reveal who the group is. When an official for DRC did that, it read, "The bugs are back." Two questions remain, is Crazy Ray really crazy - and if Klaatu is not the Beatles, then who is Klaatu?

http://www.klaatu.org/klaatu1.html

Ushgul, 2006

2006-03-28T15:57:00.000-08:00

The highest village in Svaneti is Ushgul, higher than any village in the Alps inhabited year-round. From Ushgul, sometime long ago, all the young men set out on a raid through the mountains against a village of Muslim Balkarians on the north slopes of the Caucasus. Only one man returned.

http://www.argosoft.org/kavkasia/album2/songs2.htm

Svaneti, 1930

2006-03-12T03:45:00.000-08:00

Released the following year (though virtually unseen in the U.S. until this Kino on Video release), Salt for Svanetia (original title Jim Shvante) is an ethnographic treasure that ducuments with visual bravado the harsh conditions of life in the isolated mountain village of Ushkul. Often compared to Buñuel's Land Without Bread, Salt begins as a starkly rendered homage to the resourcefulness and determination of the Svan. But as the focus shifts to the tribe's barbaric religious customs (more haunting and otherworldly than any surrealist could have envisioned), Mikhial Kalatozov's film transforms itself into a work of remarkably powerful Communist propaganda, holding up these grotesque, near-pagan ceremonies (which many Svanetians later denied the authenticity of) as an example of religion's corruptive influence.

http://www.kino.com/video/item.php?film_id=266

Tashkent, 1977

2006-02-26T16:51:00.000-08:00

International Scientific Conference on the Energetics of the Tropical Atmosphere, 14-21 September 1977, Tashkent.

Kuusk, A., Mullamaa, Yu.-A., Niilisk, H., Nilson, T., and Sulev, M. The structure of the cloud cover in the trade-wind region on the basis of ship measurements, GARP Atlantic Tropical Experiment. Proc. of the Int. Scientif. Conf. on the Energetics of the Tropical Atmosphere, (Tashkent, 14-21 September 1977), Geneva, WMO, 1978, 155-160.

http://www.aai.ee/~andres/meetings.html

Richmond, 1540

2006-01-02T16:15:00.000-08:00

The king's servants wrote that she was 'content always with your Majesty', thus accepting Henry's judgment, and in her letter of submission she signed herself 'daughter of Cleves', not 'queen of England'. She agreed the marriage had never been consummated and signed all necessary documents. For his part, Henry was now prepared to be generous. Anne was to enjoy precedence over all the ladies in England, except the Queen and the king's daughters. She was to be known as the king's 'good sister' and received a very nice settlement of manors and estates, some of which belonged to Cromwell. This guaranteed her an income of 3000 pds a year, making her one of the wealthiest women in England. All this depended upon her remaining in England, and this Anne was more than willing to do. 'The King's highness whom I cannot have as a husband is nevertheless a most kind, loving and friendly father and brother,' she wrote to her brother. Why should she return home in ignominy, dependent upon her brother's generosity, when she could remain in England and live a comfortable, independent life?
Anne was perhaps as content with the arrangement as Henry. She grew to enjoy English ale and gambling; she spent large sums on gowns; she visited with the king's children and occasionally the king himself. She was heard to remark that she was more attractive than Katharine Parr, to whom the king's attention turned in 1543. In fact, upon Catherine Howard's execution in 1542, rumors circulated that perhaps the king would take back his former bride. The French ambassador was suitably impressed with Anne's handling of a delicate situation, observing that 'all her affairs could never make her utter a word by which one might suppose that she was discontented.'
These rumors were understandable enough; Anne occupied a nebulous place in English society, unmarried but wealthy and independent. She was not an heiress but still honored as a royal. She answered to no male authority but that of the king, and he did not choose to trouble her.

http://englishhistory.net/tudor/monarchs/cleves.html

Ballantine, 1962

2005-12-29T05:43:00.000-08:00

"Automated 'wordmills' produce the popular fiction (or 'wordwooze') of the future, in this satire on the writing, publishing and consumption of hack literature.

http://www.lankhmar.demon.co.uk/images/silv.jpg

Leningrad, 1973

2005-12-19T15:16:00.000-08:00

Nikolay Valuev will become the tallest and heaviest champion in boxing history if he beats WBA heavyweight holder John Ruiz in Berlin on Saturday. The Russian, dubbed the "Beast from the East" for his 7ft and 330lb frame, is unbeaten in 43 professional contests. "I use my height - I see no reason it should be different," said Valuev, 32. But Ruiz, who plans to use his opponent's size against him, said: "He's got a head the size of a Volkswagen - I can't miss hitting him."

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/10467839/

http://boxrec.com/media/index.php/Boxer:Nicolay_Valuev:019904

[Bookshelf 2005]

2005-12-18T10:25:00.000-08:00

Beating the Devil : The Making of Night of the Demon [6/10]
non-fiction by Tony Earnshaw (2005)

Better Betting with a Decent Feller : A Social History of Bookmaking [6/10]
non-fiction by Carl Chinn (2004)

Between Meals : An Appetite for Paris [7/10]
non-fiction by A.J.Liebling (first published 1962; edition of 1986; reprint of 2001)

Blue Highways : A Journey into America [9/10]
non-fiction by William Least Heat Moon (1983)

Buried Alive : The Terrifying History of Our Most Primal Fear [7/10]
non-fiction by Jan Bondeson (2001)

The Catcher in the Rye [10/10]
fiction by J D Salinger (1951; edition of 1978)*

The Chain of Chance [8/10]
fiction by Stanislaw Lew (1975; translation of 1978; edition of 2000)*

Dead Lagoon [6/10]
fiction by Michael Dibdin (1994; edition of 1995; reprint of 1999)*

D.C. Confidential [7/10]
non-fiction by Christopher Meyer (2005)

Delay [6/10]
fiction by Tim Krabbe (1994; edition of 2005)

Destinations [8/10]
non-fiction by Jan Morris (1980)

The Devil in the White City : Murder, Magic, and Madness
at the Fair That Changed America [9/10]
non-ficton by Erik Larson (2003)

Ghost Stories of an Antiquary [7/10]
fiction by M R James (first published 1904/1911/1974; edition of 1974)

The Great Port : A Passage Through New York [9/10]
non-fiction by Jan Morris (first published 1969; edition of 1985)

Hollywood's New Radicalism : War, Globalisation and the
Movies from Reagan to George W Bush [4/10]
non-fiction by Ben Dickenson (2005; publication-date 2006)

The Honorary Consul [7/10]
fiction by Graham Greene (first published 1973; edition of 1999; reprint of 2004)

Humboldt and the Cosmos [7/10]
non-fiction by Douglas Botting (1973)

I Am Legend [8/10]
fiction by Richard Matheson (1956)

In Cold Blood [6/10]
non-fiction by Truman Capote (1965; edition of ?2003?)

In the Miso Soup [8/10]
fiction by MURAKAMI Ryu (first published 1997; translation of 2003; edition of 2005)

Jimmy Connors Saved My Life [6/10]
non-fiction by Joel Drucker (2004)

A Kiss Before Dying [9/10]
fiction by Ira Levin (1954; edition of 1960; reprint of 1961)*

The Lathe of Heaven [9/10]
fiction by Ursula K. Le Guin (1971; edition of 2003)

The Left-Handed Woman [5/10]
fiction by Peter Handke (first published 1976; translation of 1977; edition of 1982)

Marcel Duchamp : The Bachelor Stripped Bare [8/10]
non-fiction by Alice Goldfarb Marquis (2002)

Midnight In Sicily [8/10]
non-fiction by Peter Robb (1996, edition of 1999)

North Dallas Forty [9/10]
fiction by Peter Gent (1973)*

Open Net [7/10]
non-fiction by George Plimpton (2003)

The Rise of Benedict XVI [6/10]
non-fiction by John L Allen (2005)

Speak, Memory [7/10]
non-fiction by Vladimir Nabokov (1951)

Ways of Escape [7/10]
non-fiction by Graham Greene (1980)

------------------------------------------------------------------
* = re-reading

Honshu, 2004

2005-12-16T16:56:00.000-08:00

WHEN SOMETHING SNAPS

Troubled youth on a road to nowhere

By MARK SCHILLING

17-Sai no Fukei (Scenes of 17)

Rating: * * * * (out of 5)

Director: Koji Wakamatsu
Running time: 90 minutes
Language: Japanese
Currently showing

We're all familiar with the figure of the old director, a power in his time, who has fallen into a rut or slump, but longs to recapture former glories, while lamenting the sad state of movies and the world in general.
Tasuku Emoto in "17-Sai no Fukei"
Then there is Koji Wakamatsu, an enfant terrible of the 1960s, who made experimental/political/erotic films that scandalized guardians of public morals, and who associated with notorious radicals, including scriptwriter and Japanese Red Army soldier Masao Adachi.
In the 1970s Wakamatsu became "king of the pinks," churning out soft porn flicks on the cheap and by the dozen, until the video revolution of the 1980s marginalized pink-film production. He also took on more mainstream assignments, but with patchy success, and in recent years, plagued by health problems, has struggled to keep working.
Instead of descending into embittered codgerdom, however, Wakamatsu has made a film, "17-Sai no Fukei -- Shonen wa Nani o Mita no ka (Scenery of Seventeen -- What Did the Boy See?)," that expresses the sort of personal passion and formal boldness I seldom see in the work of directors half his age.
At the same time, it is the film of a veteran who, after decades of flouting conventions and pushing boundaries, now has the confidence and daring to be simple, basic and direct.
"All you need for a movie is a girl and gun," Wakamatsu idol Jean-Luc Godard famously declared. For "17-Sai no Fukei" Wakamatsu has substituted the girl with a teenage boy and the gun with a bicycle, while inserting a sharp-edged (if familiar) critique of Japanese society and making his audience see the world through his troubled hero's eyes. A film that at first seems little more than spinning wheels and labored breathing develops a hypnotic power, poetic resonance and even narrative momentum, despite a lack of standard movie incident.
It is based on the true story of a 17-year-old boy in Okayama Prefecture who, in the winter of 2000, killed his mother with a baseball bat and fled to the north country on his mountain bike, pedaling for 17 days until the police ran him to ground.
What intrigued Wakamatsu about this story was not just the rare and atrocious nature of the boy's crime, but his form of escape. Why north in the dead of winter? Rejecting easy explanations, from pop psychology or elsewhere, Wakamatsu retraced the boy's steps, trying to see what he had seen. In the wild, rugged mountains and sea coasts of Tohoku, he found intimations of the boy's state of mind. He also found the makings of a film.
On January 6, 2004, Wakamatsu and a tiny crew started a 17-day shoot that approximated the boy's route, though their starting and ending points (Ikebukuro and the northern tip of Honshu) were different. They filmed on the fly, without a script, though Wakamatsu and three collaborators wrote one later.
Playing the boy, newcomer Tasuku Emoto spends much screen time climbing hills and battling winds, while saying little or nothing to the various people he encounters on the way.
This may sound like the very definition of boredom -- a two-wheeled trip to nowhere, with a sullen teenager as a reluctant guide. And yet the sight of the boy's whirling legs and mask of a face, as he slogs though a winter landscape of desolate beauty, compels attention and invites speculation. Is he trying to obliterate feelings of guilt and regret -- to literally sweat and freeze them out? Or is his journey a form of atonement through self-inflicted suffering?
Instead of giving us clear-cut answers, the film supplies the boy's unfiltered thoughts, in captions and narration. As he passes though a Shinjuku crowd, at the start of his journey, captions flash on the screen: "Why are you gathered here? You have nothing to do with me. You are just scenery."
But he listens attentively to an old man in a station waiting room and an old Korean woman in a mountain hut, as they tell stories of being teenagers in wartime Japan. Unlike him, they want their memories to endure -- and are articulate and passionate in relating them.
Though he never drops his mask, the boy connects with them in a way he never could with his own parents: They have no need or desire to judge him, while also having experienced deadly violence, if in extremely different circumstances.
Finally, he arrives at a rocky coast, with no other human beings in sight. His bike chain is broken and his memories -- of his neat room, his smiling mother, his bat descending in a vicious arc -- are still with him. Is he trapped in a hell of his own making? Or can he be saved -- or save himself?
The climax, like much of the rest of the film, is open to interpretation. The boy is not a protagonist in a morality play, but an empty vessel that will accept anything poured into it -- from rote education to parental expectations -- until it cracks and shatters. His journey is also ours, to make of what we will, as we pedal with him into the night.

The Japan Times: Aug. 10, 2005(C) All rights reserved

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?ff20050810a1.htm

Washington, 1989

2005-12-16T04:40:00.000-08:00

The North Rift -- This generally refers to the section of the Rift that lies north of its intersection with the main entrance corridor at survey station C-61. The name is also used to refer to the entire area that branches off the North Rift which is approximately two miles of passage (1997). The North Rift area is generally low crawling passage with few places to stand upright. Because of this, the North Rift has the reputation of being a difficult area to explore, and generally undesirable. A sarcastic caver has placed flagging tape at C-61 with an arrow and the words “To the plush, luxurious, and swank North Rift.”

Fawn Hall -- Fawn Hall was the secretary to Oliver North during the Iran-Contra scandal. She testified before congress that she had been ordered to shred hundreds of documents before the FBI could arrive to confiscate them. The room Fawn Hall is a pun on her name. Cavers also found it hilariously funny that this room is located in the “North” Rift.

http://www.diskdrive.com/deepsecrets/html/etymology_-_those_wierd_room_n.html

http://www.nndb.com/people/241/000085983/

San Francisco, 1982

2005-12-07T01:04:00.000-08:00

VALE : Ever had a desire to go to the Cooper School Gunsite [a progressive arms training school in Arizona]?
BURROUGHS : Well... Yeah, you'll get some tips there, I think. By and large it's just getting out on the range and doing a little practicing. What I do is, I start as close as I need to get, in order to get 'em all in the black, then start moving back.

Burroughs Live : The Collected Interviews of William S Burroughs 1960 - 1997. Edited by Sylvere Lotringer (Semiotext[e], Los Angeles and New York, 2001) p553

http://www.popmatters.com/books/reviews/b/burroughs-live.shtml

Copenhagen, 2005

2005-11-22T17:45:00.000-08:00

»Link Wray brændte igennem i aftes med al den trods, latter, kærlighed og power, han har i sig. En legende, lige så sikkert som Crazy Horse, en naturkraft som en tornado, en profet, der blindt hyler gennem støvet op mod solen om de fejringer og triumfer, der skal komme. Jeg så Link Wray, jeg så Amerika«

http://easydreamer.blogspot.com/

Brazil, 1992

2005-11-22T17:41:00.000-08:00

TEREU (BRZ) C, 1992 DP = 6-2-6-4-0 (18) DI = 1.57 CD = 0.56
Breeder: HARAS SÃO JOSÉ & EXPEDICTUS
(CLOSE)
OCEAN FALLS (IRE)b. 1986
WASSL (GB)b. 1980
MILL REEF (USA)b. 1968 [CS]
NEVER BEND (USA)b. 1960 [BI]
NASRULLAH (GB)
b. 1940 [B]
LALUN (USA)
b. 1952 *
MILAN MILL (USA)*b. 1962
PRINCEQUILLO (GB)
b. 1940 [IS]
VIRGINIA WATER (USA)
gr. 1953
HAYLOFT (FR)b. 1973
TUDOR MELODY (GB)br. 1956
TUDOR MINSTREL (GB)
br. 1944 [B]
MATELDA (GB)
br. 1947
HAYMAKING (GB)b. 1963
GALIVANTER (GB)
br. 1956
HAYTIME (GB)
b. 1958
HOMING PIGEON (IRE)ch. 1975
HABITAT (USA)b. 1966 [B]
SIR GAYLORD (USA)dkb/br. 1959 [IC]
TURN-TO (IRE)
b. 1951 [BI]
SOMETHINGROYAL (USA)
b. 1952 *
LITTLE HUT (USA)*b. 1952
OCCUPY (USA)
b. 1941
SAVAGE BEAUTY (USA)
b. 1934 *
COME BACK (USA)ch. 1969
BOLD LAD (USA)ch. 1962
BOLD RULER (USA)
dkb/br. 1954 [BI]
MISTY MORN (USA)
b. 1952 *
LONG LOOK (USA)b. 1962
RIBOT (GB)
b. 1952 [CP]
SANTORIN (USA)
ch. 1956
SO NICE (BRZ)b. 1972
VASCO DE GAMA (FR)b. 1963
BEL BARAKA (FR)ch. 1955
WORDEN (FR)ch. 1949 [S]
WILD RISK (FR)
b. 1940 [P]
SANS TARES (GB)
ch. 1939
FLEUR DES NEIGES (FR)ch. 1947
NORSEMAN (FR)
b. 1940
AVILA (FR)
b. 1941
PRINCESSE BALA (FR)b. 1957
PRINCE BIO (FR)b. 1941 [C]
PRINCE ROSE (GB)
b. 1928 [C]
BIOLOGIE (FR)
ch. 1935
BALA (FR)b. 1952
THE COBBLER (GB)
b. 1945
MRS CIDYNS (GB)
b. 1945
LOVE SONG (BRZ)b. 1966
FASTENER (FR)b. 1952
NEARCO (ITY)br. 1935 [BC]
PHAROS (GB)
b. 1920 [I]
NOGARA (ITY)
b. 1928 *
FASTEN (FR)b. 1945
FASTNET (FR)
b. 1933
FRAGMENT (FR)
b. 1938
ANAPOLIS (BRZ)b. 1957
FORT NAPOLEON (FR)ch. 1947
TOURBILLON (FR)
b. 1928 [CP]
ROQUEBRUNE (FR)
ch. 1938
OPS (BRZ)b. 1949
HIGH SHERIFF (GB)
b. 1942
ELLIPSE (BRZ)
b. 1940

http://www.pedigreequery.com/tereu

Bremen, 1803

2005-11-22T16:50:00.000-08:00

At first the commercial war continued on both sides, in the main, under its old forms; and to certain details of it we shall have occasion to return later on. Immediately after the outbreak of the war (May 17, 1803) England seized all French and Dutch vessels lying in British ports. A month later (June 24) the neutral trade with enemy colonies was regulated on lines half-way between those of 1794 and 1798; and shortly afterwards (June 28 and July 26) there was taken what was at least for the moment the most effective of all the British measures, namely, the declaration that the mouths of the Elbe and the Weser were in state of blockade, whereby the entire trade of Hamburg and Bremen was cut off.

http://www.econlib.org/library/YPDBooks/Heckscher/hksrCS6.html

Cottbus, 2005

2005-11-10T14:26:00.000-08:00

Life has always seemed to me like a plant that lives on its rhizome. Its true life is invisible, hidden in the rhizome. The part that appears above the ground lasts only a single summer. Then it withers away—an ephemeral apparition. When we think of the unending growth and decay of life and civilizations, we cannot escape the impression of absolute nullity. Yet I have never lost the sense of something that lives and endures beneath the eternal flux. What we see is blossom, which passes. The rhizome remains.

Carl Jung

http://www.gastronomicmeditations.com/remarkablepalate/ruminations-on-roots-1005.html

Cadaques, 1975

2005-11-08T16:39:00.000-08:00

“I first heard about ‘Dune’ through Bob Venosa, an American painter of fantastic realism who lived in Cadaqu鳠with his family and was a frequent visitor at Salvador Dali’s house. It was a project for a three hour 70 mm science fiction film, in which Dali was to play a leading role for a fee of $100,000 an hour (he was later invited to leave the film because of his pro-Franco statements). Bob Venosa telephoned me to say that the director Alejandro Jodorowsky, to whom Dali had shown my catalogue, was interested in my work. So I went to Spain, but unfortunately Jodorowsky had already left.
“Dali, however, showed a polite interest in my work and introduced his wife Gala, describing her as a specialist in monsters and nightmares whose external appearance completely belied her inner world, Gala then expressed the opinion that I would only need to wear a mask in order to completely match the world of my pictures, and this lead her into an hour-long diatribe against the evils of the world, of which she had years of experience. She was really one of the most impressive ladies I have ever met.
“I returned of Switzerland, stupidly leaving my current girlfriend in Cadaqu鳬 where Dali used her as a model and tried to couple her with a young hippie. Dali wanted to celebrate the ceremony himself and supervise the accompanying rituals, in his own special way. I was secretly amused by the whole affair, as I had just read John Fowles’ ‘The Magnus’ and quite understood what the old fox was up to.
“In December 1975 I went to Paris for the private view of an exhibition about the devil, for which I had designed a coloured poster. While I was there I went to Jodorowsky’s studio and left my Paris address. Jodorowsky called me over and showed me the preliminary studies for ‘Dune’. Four science fiction artists were busy designing spaceships, satellites and whole planets. As a gesture to me, a couple of photocopies of vaguely suitable pictures from my catalogue had been left lying around. Jodorowsky said that he would like me to try some designs - I could create a whole planet, and I would have a completely free hand. Three-dimensional models would be made from my sketches and actors superimposed on them. I could also design costumes and masks, etc. according to my own ideas.
“My planet was ruled by evil, a place where black magic was practiced, aggressions were let loose, and intemperance and perversion were the order of the day. Just the place for me, in fact. Only sex couldn’t be shown, and I had to work as if the film was being made for children. Jodorowsky was fed up with having his films censored. A team of thirty specialists would transform my ideas into film. I was thrilled by the idea.“When we came to talking about money, he said: “You may be a genius, but we can’t pay you as a genius”.

http://www.arthurmag.com/magpie/?m=2005&w=34

Sunderland, 2005

2005-11-08T13:49:00.000-08:00

The dentist's term for a knocked out tooth is "avulsed."

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000058.htm

Pinzolo, 1877

2005-11-03T17:07:00.000-08:00

Victor Mature was a petty officer in the Coast Guard during World War II. He served on the troop transport ship Admiral Mayo. His service carried him to the North Atlantic, including Normandy, and the Mediterranean, Caribbean, and many islands in the South Pacific. He was on Okinawa when the A-bomb was dropped on Japan.

In "Zarak" (1956) he played perhaps the only title character in the movies to be flogged to death

Victor's father Marcello Gelindo Maturi, a knife sharpener, was born in 1877 in the town of Pinzolo, in the Italian region of Trentino which was then under the rule of Austria-Hungary, and returned under Italian sovereignty in 1918 after WW I. He emigrated to the US with his brothers in 1912, and settled in Louisville, Ky.

Applying for membership in the swank Los Angeles Country Club at the heighth of his fame, Mature was turned down and told that the golfing facility did not accept actors as members. His response: "I'm not an actor - and I've got 67 films to prove it!"

He attributed his success in Biblical spectacles to his ability to "make with the holy look."

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001514/bio

Maidstone, 2002

2005-10-31T17:01:00.000-08:00

Q) Your Black Adder has been repeated again! Have you worked with any of the regular cast since?

A) I don’t think I’ve ever worked with anyone twice. I have never been invited to anyone’s house twice.

http://www.tombaker.tv/forum/index.php?&act=ST&f=14&t=649

Wold Newton, 1775

2005-10-19T16:52:00.000-07:00

Q. What is Philip Jose Farmer's Wold Newton Family?

A. Farmer's idea of the Wold Newton Family was put forth in "Tarzan Alive" and "Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life," his two "biographies" of those characters. Basically the idea is that in the 1700s a radioactive meteor landed near Wold Newton, England. The radiation affected the occupants of two nearby coaches.
The descendants of these people became the real-life heroes and villains that are the basis for almost all the major and minor literary heroes of the last couple of centuries, including such diverse characters as Fu Manchu, James Bond, Travis McGee, most of the pulp heroes, the Scarlet Pimpernel and others. Of course the stories we have read about them are exaggerated fiction, so that most people think them wholly fictitious.
Some people like this concept, many do not. Farmer has written several works linking these people together (like the "The Adventure of the Peerless Peer" and "The Other Log of Phileas Fogg") and there was a short-lived fanzine, "Wold Atlas, devoted to the idea.
There is a western author named J.T. Edson who has incorporated Farmer's Wold Newton ideas. In his series of books, several of the characters are part of that "family," including Captain Dusty Fog. If anyone has more info on them, please let us know.

http://thepulp.net/PulpFAQ/farmer.html

New York, 1898

2005-10-17T16:44:00.000-07:00

Excerpt from the New York World - Telegram, July 11, 1935 -- Nikola Tesla revealed that an earthquake which drew police and ambulances to the region of his laboratory at 48 E. Houston St., New York, in 1898, was the result of a little machine he was experimenting with at the time which "you could put in your overcoat pocket." The bewildered newspapermen pounced upon this as at least one thing they could understand and "the father of modern electricity" told what had happened as follows: "I was experimenting with vibrations. I had one of my machines going and I wanted to see if I could get it in tune with the vibration of the building. I put it up notch after notch. There was a peculiar cracking sound. "I asked my assistants where did the sound come from. They did not know. I put the machine up a few more notches. There was a louder cracking sound. I knew I was approaching the vibration of the steel building. I pushed the machine a little higher. "Suddenly all the heavy machinery in the place was flying around. I grabbed a hammer and broke the machine. The building would have been about our ears in another few minutes. Outside in the street there was pandemonium. "The police and ambulances arrived. I told my assistants to say nothing. We told the police it must have been an earthquake. That's all they ever knew about it."
Some shrewd reporter asked Dr. Tesla at this point what he would need to destroy the Empire State Building and the doctor replied: "Vibration will do anything. It would only be necessary to step up the vibrations of the machine to fit the natural vibration of the building and the building would come crashing down. That's why soldiers break step crossing a bridge."

http://www.seekerbooks.com/prod/157282008x/

Paris, 1991

2005-10-12T01:57:00.000-07:00

It's a beautiful day for the Wuzzles to have a picnic until a swarm of flants (part fly, part ant) flies in to spoil it. While trying to save Hoppo's applemellon, Eleroo manages to crash into a banana pine tree and knocks an egg right into his pouch. They decide to hatch the egg and Crock gets word that it's a Brahma Bullfinch.

http://matthewledgerwood.tripod.com/wuzzles/episodes.html

http://www.scanhorse.no/db/hest.php?hestid=2763

Baker Field, 1999

2005-10-10T11:02:00.000-07:00

by James Renner
Date: May 1999
One of northern Manhattan’s most interesting landmarks is a strip of land bounded by 218th Street, the Spuyten Duyvil Creek, Broadway and Inwood Hill Park — a sports complex owned by Columbia University known as Baker Field. This site is Columbia’s principal outdoor athletic facility, which boasts the fact that it it is the only major complex used for amateur and collegiate sports in New York City.
This 26-acre multisport site was purchased in 1921 with funds donated to Columbia by banking executive George Fisher Baker, Jr. (1840-1931), who was longtime head of First National City Bank, which was the forerunner of today’s Citibank. He started as a teller in 1863 and rose to the rank of President by 1877. In 1909 Baker retired as President to become Chairman of the bank, a title he retained until the end of his life.
Over the years Baker, who was a quiet man, never spoke to the press and was typified as a Nineteenth Century banker. In his later years, Baker gave large gifts to educational, cultural and medical institutions of New York City. The George Fisher Baker, Jr. Trust was named for him and the philanthropic causes he gave to.
Baker’s last years (1927-1931) were spent residing at 75 East 93rd Street on the corner of Park Avenue. During this period Baker purchased the adjoining buildings (#’s 67, 69, 71 and 73). The complex, designed by Delano and Aldrich in 1917, is the finest example of English and American 18th century architectural forms. The main house (#75) and the ballroom wing (#71 and 73) is now used by the Synod of Bishops, Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, which has been at the site since 1958.
The property that Baker Field is located on was once owned in part by the Dyckman family, who lived in the area since the 1600s. The Chrystie Field House is located on the site of the home of Isaac Michael Dyckman (1813-1899) on 218th Street and Park Terrace East. The three-storied Victorian mansion where that branch of the Dyckman family lived was razed to make way for the present facility.
Columbia’s baseball and football teams originally played on the main campus at 116th Street between 1907 and the 1920s, known as South Field, located between Low Library and Butler Hall, and was only a couple of acres in size. It accomodated both baseball and football teams during their respective playing seasons. The baseball diamond was initially laid out with the right-field line heading south to Butler Hall and the left-field line running east to Amsterdam Avenue. In time the baseball field lines were reversed.
One of Columbia’s athletic wonders of both teams was to become famous for playing baseball in the 1921-1922 and 1922-1923 seasons. This legendary player was future Hall of Fame star Lou Gehrig, who went to play for the New York Yankees. Gehrig was known to hit long home runs. One hit wound up on the steps of Low Library, another rolled out onto Broadway and 116th Street over 500 feet away from the campus playing field. In 1923 Gehrig went to the New York Yankees to play professional baseball. There is a little-known fact about Gehrig: He was a student at P.S. 132 at Wadsworth Avenue and 183rd Street when his family moved from East 94th Street to Washington Heights in 1908.
Intercollegiate football moved to Baker Field in 1923, and varsity baseball two years later. On May 17, 1939, the first televised baseball game was held at Baker Field. Princeton University defeated Columbia 2-1 as the game was viewed as far away as Radio City Music Hall on 50th Street and Sixth Avenue and at the World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows, Queens.
The following day, The New York Times reported that the players appeared like “white flies running across the screen,” according to observers watching the game. These same observers mentioned that the baseball appeared like a comet-like pinpoint as it flashed across the grass on the television screen.
Louis Little was the dominant sports coach for Columbia University. He was head football coach from 1930 to 1956. Twice during Coach Little’s tenure, Columbia won games. First on January 1, 1934, Columbia beat Stanford 7-0 at the Rose Bowl. The second time was on October 25, 1947, when Columbia upset Army 21-20 at Baker Field. It was Army’s first loss in 33 games because in the previous two games Columbia was trounced by Yale and Penn State.
In both instances, the other teams were considered favorites, and Columbia was the underdog team. In each case the victories were remarkable and unexpected. One of the plays used by the football team was call KF-79 in which quarterback Clifford Montgomery made a series of handoffs and fake handoffs to the halfbacks of the Columbia Lions.
The Lawrence A. Wein Stadium constructed in 1984 boasts 16,500 seats and is the centerpiece of Columbia’s athletic facility. It replaced the 32,000 wooden stands that had been at the site since 1928, when the original stadium of 15,000 needed enlarging. In 1987, a 400-meter, eight-lane running track was added within the boundaries of Wein Stadium. AstroTurf was added to the stadium in 1995. Baseball and Soccer are still played on grass.
Baker Field has facilities for rowing teams, tennis courts, soccer field, and other major sports events that are scheduled year-round. The rowing teams can be seen practicing on the Hudson and Harlem Rivers in the early morning to prepare for major events with other Ivy League rowing teams.
One of the most imposing sites in the area is the Columbia “C” on the opposite (or Bronx) shore of the Harlem River Ship Canal. Originally conceived by Robert Prendergast, a medical student of Columbia University and coxswain on the heavyweight rowing crew team. Prendergast approached the New York Central Railroad for permisson (which was given) to have this sign painted on the 100-foot-high wall of Fordham Gneiss, which was completed in the fall of 1952 by the rowers of the crew team.
In an interview, Dr. Prendergast had taken time out from his busy schedule to provide information about the Columbia “C”. Two colors were used for the letter: traffic white and ultramarine blue. The original size was and still is 60 feet by 60 feet. The stroke was 12 feet wide. This was done with the use of a boatswain’s chair built by Pops Johnson that was held by ropes attached to drill holes at the top of the rock.
The “C” has become a fixture for resident and tourist alike. The Circle Line Tour Boats make note of it when they pass through the area. The “C” was last painted and touched up in 1987 by the boat crews who have kept the tradition going for the past 47 years. Dr. Prendergast is presently an Associate Professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine for Opthalmology and Pathology.
After decades of declining crowds, Baker Field has made a comeback with many sports. In spite of the complex’s updating, it hasn’t changed from its original design made in the 1920s. It remains one of the finest collegiate sports facilities in the United States. The Columbia song for the football team at Baker Field is “Roar, Lions, Roar.” Within the complex is a statue of the Columbia Lion which has become the mascot of the football team.
Baker Field can be reached by Mass Transit. The #1 and #9 trains stop at 215th Street and Broadway. Bus service to Baker Field is attainable by the M100, Bx20 and the Bx7 at 218th Street and Broadway.
For more information on the Baker Field Sports Complex, call Diane Gossett, who is operations manager of Baker Field, at (212) 567-0404, and William Steinman who offers sports information about Columbia University at (212) 854-7144. For additional information, visit the following Web sites: Columbia University, Columbia University Crew Team, Columbia Lions. The Synod of Bishops, Russian Othodox Church Outside of Russia can be reached at (212) 534-1601.
(Originally published in the Washington heights and Inwood Report in May 1999.)

http://www.washington-heights.us/history/archives/baker_field_12.html

Spuyten Duyvil, 1917

2005-10-09T14:45:00.000-07:00

Spuyten Duyvil Creek and the Harlem River Ship Canal
James Renner
Date: August 2005
The history of the Spuyten Duyvil Creek and the Harlem River Ship Canal dates back to the pre-colonial period of New York City. It has a rich history that encompasses the immediate area it serves.
Inwood Hill Park was known as “shorakapkok,” which is translated as “the sitting down place. The Mohican “showaukuppock” translated as “cove.” The Delaware Indians called it “w’shakuppek” which was “smooth still water” when interpreted from their language. According to Reginald Pelham Bolton, the noted historian and archaeologist of the area, another term used by local Native Americans was “saperewack,” which meant “the glistening place.” One of the tribal groups that lived in the area, the Rechgawawanc, had made their homes here in the sheltering hillsides and close proximity to the fishing and hunting spots.
At the point where the Spuyten Duyvil Creek and the Hudson River meet is an area known as Papparimamim. It was an island that the Rechgawawanc Indians used as a landing spot to trade. There are several meanings to “Papparimamim.” Some of its meanings are “to parcel out,” “divide and divert,” and “turning aside.” The site had become known as Berrian’s Neck and was used as a fortification during the American Revolution.
The Dutch settlers have various spellings for Spuyten Duyvil. One version was “spegkindiple,” another was “Spitton Devil.” According to “Father Knickerbocker’s History of New York” by Washington Irving, two other terms are shown: “spijt den duyvil” and “spiking devil.” Another expression that was used in 1693 was “spiten devil.” During the American Revolution, another version of the site had appeared: this was “speight-den-duyvil” and it was used by Johan Karl Philip von Krafft, a 2nd Lieutenant in the Hessian army under the command of General Knyphausen. The present-day term is a variation that is still used today.
During the colonial period, the Dutch and the English had different uses for the Spuyten Duyvil Creek. In 1667, a resolution in favor of building a road from Harlem to New York was proposed. Two years later the resolution was rescinded in favor of a route to the north which finally came about on December 7, 1676. On December 9th a lane was opened and was called the King’s Way which in time became the Kingsbridge Road. In 1769, milestones were erected on the western side of the roadway from lower Manhattan.
Johannes Verveelen, a Dutch landowner in the town of New Harlem, had a ferry at 125th Street and the East River that took passengers and cargo to the Bronx. After a period of time, Verveelen realized that people were going to the northern end of Manhattan and wading across the Spuyten Duyvil, thus avoiding the fare. He petitioned the authorities for an additional ferry charter for the new location and was granted one on February 27, 1669.
Frederick Phillipse was issued a royal grant confirming manorial rights from the crown and enlarging them to the manor of Phillipsburg in 1693. As part of the grant, the ferry was replaced by Phillipse and was named the King’s Bridge to honor King William III. Phillipse was allowed to collect tolls from a patent signed by Governor Richard Nicholls. This toll applied to people, cattle or anything else that crossed it.
In 1702 the property was willed to Phillipse’s grandson of the same name By act of the General Assembly of the Colony of New York on July 1, 1713, Phillipse was allowed to dismantle the bridge and rebuild it as a draw bridge. The present location of the bridge, if it were in operation today would be on Broadway near 231st Street.
On New Years Day of 1759 Jacobus Dyckman erected a toll-free bridge with the help of his fellow farmers to avoid paying the toll and allow for access over the river. This bridge, known as the Free Bridge, was located on 225th Street between Broadway and the intersection of Bailey Avenue and West Kingsbridge Road. It connected Manhattan with the Fordham section of the Bronx. A tavern was established by the Dyckmans on the Manhattan side of the bridge and was sold in 1772 to Caleb Hyatt.
During the American Revolution Hyatt’s Tavern became a guard house used by the Hessians after the fall of Fort Washington in November 1776. They had taken over the eight forts that paralleled the Harlem River.
In December 1777, troops under the command of General Heath attacked the Kingsbridge area with the objective of ensuring that the Farmer’s Bridge and the King’s Bridge were rendered practically useless, thus diverting traffic to a pontoon bridge which connected the Bronx with the northern end of Seaman Avenue. At the end of the war, the Free Bridge was reconstructed to continue normal traffic of goods and services.
In 1807 Jacob Hyatt leased the tavern to James DeVoe. The tavern’s more recent successor had become the Kingsbridge Hotel which had become a favorite for anglers and sportsman. The hotel was noted for its turtle soup. The premises was located on Muscoota (now 225th) Street.
In 1904, under authorization of the New York State legislature, the part of the creek that was filled in from dredging at what is now 225th street was filled in at 230th and lots were sold for housing. Broadway was widened in 1917 and the Kingsbridge Hotel, which was in disrepair, was razed.
One of the older and more colorful tales to come out of the area was that of Anthony van Corlear’s crossing of the Spuyten Duyvil. Van Corlear was a messenger of Peter Stuyvesant who sent him to warn the Dutch settlers and the Indians in what is now Westchester and the Bronx of the pending takeover of Nieuw Amsterdam by the British. According to a story revived by Washington Irving, van Corlear had jumped into the creek from a high promonotory in Manhattan in “spite of the devil” into high tide, and heavy winds subsequently drowned him trying to cross the creek.
In reality van Corlear waded across the creek. This story had been told and possibly exaggerated in a soldier’s journal in 1776. The journal was discovered by W. H. Shelton, curator of the Morris-Jumel Mansion.
The Johnson Ironworks foundry was a familiar sight on the peninsula of the canal from 1853 until 1923. While in operation the foundry manufactured everything from iron bars to automobile engines. In 1924 the buildings were razed, and the peninsula was empty until the end of the Second World War, when it was dredged and the channel was straightened. Part of the peninsula that was separated had been incorporated into Inwood Hill Park.
Chapter 586 of the New York Legislature was enacted on May 12, 1919, to create a Board of Conference to discuss how to straighten, widen and dredge the Spuyten Duyvil Creek. This legislation sounded the death knell of the Johnson Foundry. Work on the creek was started in 1898 and had to be completed.
Marble Hill was the name of the community at the northernmost tip of Manhattan, which was severed by the construction and rerouting of the Harlem River Ship Canal. In 1895, Marble Hill was separated from Manhattan and for a time was an island until the landfill from the dredging had connected this bucolic part of Manhattan to the Bronx.
After World War II, students from Columbia University established a boat club and other facilities at Baker Field in Inwood Hill Park. The group became interested in a rocky outcropping that needed some livening up. A large white “C” was painted on the on the wall facing the creek. Since then, the “C” has become a fixture for the area as well as a tourist attraction for the Circle Line Boat Tours.
The Spuyten Duyvil Creek has bridges crossing its banks. The railroad trestle has served the trains going to Albany from New York City since the 1840s. The Henry Hudson Bridge, built by Robert Moses in 1938, has offered a view of the canal and the Hudson River since its opening. The Broadway Bridge has been rebuilt three times to meet the needs of automotive and subway traffic.
Reginald Pelham Bolton, the noted civil engineer and historian for northern Manhattan, had a fondness for the Spuyten Duyvil. In his book, “Washington Heights, Manhattan, Its Eventful Past,” he describes it thus: “The crooked course of the Spuyten Duyvil Creek wound around the north side of Inwood Hill and bent sharply south around a marshy promonotory which seems to have been known to the native as Gowahasuasing. Through this point, the ship canal has been cut, leaving only its tip end as a small marshy islet, which serves to preserve the contour of part of the old creek.”

http://www.washington-heights.us/history/archives/spuyten_duyvil_creek_and_the_harlem_river_ship_canal_125.html

Lourenco Marques, 1975

2005-10-06T09:42:00.000-07:00

Independence in Mozambique:The Changes Are Not Just Political
by Robin Wright: May 12, 1975

Filipe looked like a walking advertisement for the new government, t-shirt with the new flag stretched tightly across his chest, plastic pinkie ring also with the new flag, tiny metal chest pin engraved with the face of the national liberation movement's founder, and second-hand battle fatigue trousers once worn by the liberation army.
"Can you imagine," he asked rhetorically, almost in disbelief, "I can walk down the street like this and all I get is smiles or nods from people who share my happiness, my pride."
"Five years ago my brother was arrested and put in prison for carrying a letter, one little piece of paper, with the name of Frelimo (Front for the Liberation of Mozambique) across the top of it. It was not even official. It was just a letter from a friend, although the Portuguese did not believe."
"He spent four years in prison because of that little piece of paper. And today, look," the young teenager pointed to his chest, "I can say Frelimo all I want and no one will do anything to me." He was beaming.
Filipe's attire is not an unusual sight on the streets of Lourenco Marques. There are many adults as well as youths who sport the new "Frelimo fashion," from the variety of chest pin, to clothing splashed with slogans or pictures of the Frelimo president Samora Machel and the army green caps, jackets or satchels used by the Frelimo army.
As the curtain goes up on independence in Mozambique there are some dramatic changes in the sets and props on the stage of this southeast African country. Although Portuguese colonialists had penetrated this territory for 500 years, it took but a few short months for Mozambicans to shed many of the trademarks of the colonial era.
The nine-month interim period between Portuguese rule and the complete take over by Frelimo, on June 25, has clearly served as a transition for more than government. Every aspect of life in Mozambique reflects the political change — from fashion to school curricula to the media.
Walking down the streets of Lourenco Marques Filipe pointed to some of the changes. "Look, I can now buy a book on Marx or Lenin," he said as he peered into a bookstore window. "And there's something on the pan-African movement, even a dictionary of the geographic names of Mozambique, the proper names, the ones we gave the streets and cities and plazas before the Portuguese renamed everything after their own discoverers, leaders and military personnel."
In front of the bookstore there was a billboard, one of the many that have sprouted from the city pavements since an agreement was signed last September 7 granting independence to Mozambique on June 25.
"At least half the businesses in the city have these," the black youth explained. "Each provides a little news, pictures and some stories on how that business relates to Mozambique culture or maybe things about what workers hope to do within their companies."
"Newspapers, they are the same way. We no longer read just news about Portugal but about the victories of our brothers in the liberation movements in Vietnam and Cambodia, about developments in Tanzania or Zambia and other African countries."
"We can hear news now on the radio about Zimbabwe and Namibia. They are no longer referred to as Rhodesia or South West Africa, you know," he almost smirked. "Fantastic," he shook his head, smiling.
Next to the bookstore was one of the many sidewalk cafes that are scattered throughout the city. "See, women," he pointed to some of the cafe's customers sipping coffee and watching passers-by.
"One of the basic goals of Frelimo is equality of women, a real change from the chauvinistic Portuguese way of life. There are not that many of them yet, but it's a beginning. You used never to see women asserting themselves, black or white. Only men used to sit here. Really," he said with emphasis.
A friend named Marcus approached and interrupted the conversation with some "startling," news. "Do you know what docked today?" he asked, referring to the Lourenco Marques harbor, the second busiest port in Africa.
Before allowing time for an answer he said, "A Russian ship. A huge Soviet ship. That's a first. They say the port isn't as busy as it was under the Portuguese, but you just wait until after independence. They will all be here, all of our friends."
The conversation turned to school, about which both youths expressed some unexpected enthusiasm. "It’s much more interesting now. We don't just learn about Portugal or when the Portuguese came, like how Vaso da Gama 'discovered’ Mozambique in 1498 or about Lourenco Marques' arrival in 1544," Marcus said.
When asked about specifics he elaborated: "History is about Frelimo, about Mozambique. The dates we learn are June 25, 1962 (Frelimo’s founding), September 25, 1964 (launching Of Frelimo military operation), February 3, 1969 (assassination of Frelimo founder Eduardo Mondlane by a mail bomb), April 25, 1974 (Portugal's coup), September 7, 1974 (signing of Lusaka agreement on Mozambique independence) and September 20, 1974 (investiture of transition government)," he rattled off with pride.
"I can care about something that means something to me, when it's about my country, not someplace 10,000 miles away," Marcus added.
"Everyone is learning these days, it seems," Filipe interjected. "My school is even busier at nights now than it is in the days with adults who didn't go to school or young people who work during the day getting instruction under the alphabetization program. The electricity bill must be huge," he laughed.
Asked if there were any changes that had taken place during the transition that displeased them, Marcus offered: "Sure there are plenty of things that are affected because of the problems we face."
"My mother is complaining all the time about the things she can't get at the store, like soup or mayonnaise or brown sugar. And my father can’t get foreign cigarettes. I have a friend who wanted to buy a bottle of foreign brandy for a special occasion. He ended up buying it by the glass at a hotel. Cost him $22."
Mozambique's imports have recently been twice the amount it is able to export and the current shortage of foreign exchange led the new government to put a "graded" ban on imports, depending on necessity.
"Transportation is tough too," Filipe said. "The buses are jammed since half the taxis, owned mainly by Portuguese, have left. You even see whites on the buses these days. They get tired of waiting an hour or more for a ride."
"And if you want to go outside the city it takes twice as long because of all the roadblocks. You have to check with Frelimo soldiers every few miles, it seems. I understand why of course. But it is time-consuming and annoying to even those of us who want Frelimo to take over."
"I'd hate to get really sick now," Marcus added. "There are no doctors anywhere. And I can't afford to go to Swaziland or South Africa, like the whites can, to get medical attention." As a result of the mass exodus by 103,000 Portuguese, officials now claim there are only about 50 certified doctors left to serve a population of nine million.
"But things will work out," Filipe said optimistically. "The people in this country are so happy to be free of Portuguese restrictions, not to have to worry about the DGS or PIDE (secret police) spies watching our every move, that we can endure it. The spirit of freedom will carry us through these first rough moments."
The boys got ready to leave. "We have to get to the May Day celebration," Filipe explained. "It's the first we've had here in Mozambique. The first of many."

Received in New York on May 12, 1975
May 12, 1975
©1975 Robin Wright

Robin Wright is an Alicia Patterson Foundation award winner on leave from The Christian Science Monitor. This article may be published with credit to Robin Wright, The Christian Science Monitor, and the Alicia Patterson Foundation.

http://www.aliciapatterson.org/APF001975/Wright/Wright04/Wright04.html

Chicago, 1920

2005-10-03T15:30:00.000-07:00

The original smokefilled room was in Chicago's Blackstone Hotel, where, according to an enduring legend, a small group of powerful United States senators gathered to arrange the nomination of Warren G. Harding as Republican candidate for president in 1920.
Meeting at the Coliseum, the convention deadlocked on Friday, June 11. At a suite in the Blackstone, Republican leaders held a series of discussions late into the night. Though leaning toward Harding at that point, participants did not control the convention. But when the Associated Press reported that Harding had been chosen “in a smoke-filled room,” the phrase entered the American political lexicon. Ever since, “smoke-filled room” has meant a place, behind the scenes, where cigar-smoking party bosses intrigue to choose candidates.

Warren G. Harding in Chicago, 1920

Republican candidate for President, Warren G. Harding, stands with Ohio Governor Frank Bartlett and an unidentified man at the Republican Convention in Chicago, where the "smoke-filled room" meeting took place, 1920.
Photographer: Chicago Daily NewsSource: Chicago Historical Society (DN-0071961)

http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/3217.html

calling gladys knight...

2005-09-29T04:49:00.000-07:00

In Hitchcock's version of The Thirty-Nine Steps , there is a music-hall scene in which 'Mr Memory' answers questions from the audience. One man persistently asks 'What causes pip in poultry?' but his question is ignored. Can anyone else tell me the answer?

HAD he known the answer, Mr Memory would have told his persistent inquirer that pip in poultry was caused by the fowl breathing through its mouth (beak) as a result of a respiratory disease, such as catarrh, roup or diphtheria. In over 40 years as a poultry keeper I have never had a case or heard of anyone else coming across it. Indeed, although having a fairly extensive library of books on poultry, ancient and modern, in only two could I find a description of pip. The best was in the oldest of my collection, W. B. Tegetmeier's Poultry Book , second edition, 1872. The author trained as a doctor but gave up practice to become a naturalist. He assisted Darwin in his researches into the variations of animals, and became nature editor of The Field. According to him pip caused the tongue to become hard and horny and in some parts of the country the remedy was to snip off the end of the tongue, a practice he described as useless and barbarous. An American book published in 1933 is only other one I have that describes pip and concurs with Tegetmeier that it is a symptom of respiratory diseases.

R. Ricketts, Swindon, Wilts.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/notesandqueries/query/0,,-1146,00.html

fast/furious/five

2005-09-26T10:22:00.000-07:00

Event:
Tangerine Lounge & Nightclub at Treasure Island
Where:
Las Vegas,NV USA
Date(s):
09/28/2005 - 09/29/2005
Time:
TBD - TBD
Details:
Nothing can beat a Tangerine party on a Wednesday night when you add Grandmaster Flash to the mix. You might as well just call the fire department to put out the smoke. Its gonna be crazy! IMPORTANT: You have the right to remain on the dancefloor. Anything you do or say stays in Vegas. Have fun and more fun!

http://www.grandmasterflash.com/html.html

maybe i'm here, maybe i'm there

2005-09-26T02:26:00.000-07:00

http://www.bremen-tourism.de/english/bremen.cfm

Weserpromenade Schlachte along River Weser is less than 500 metres from Market Square and the statue of Bremen's Town Musicians. The waterfront setting provides departure points for many exciting boat trips and cruises.

saw STEALTH today...

2005-08-02T00:32:00.000-07:00

New Home Off Broadway
By WILLIAM NEUMAN (The New York Times) May 29, 2005
The actress Jessica Lange and the actor and playwright Sam Shepard are settling into an apartment they bought last month in a co-op building on lower Fifth Avenue, near Washington Square Park. The couple, who closed on the deal on April 7, got a corner apartment that was combined from two original units, a one-bedroom and a two-bedroom, with a total of three bathrooms. It was on the market for $3.495 million.
Ms. Lange and Mr. Shepard, who have had homes together in New Mexico, Minnesota and Virginia, moved to New York last summer and had been living in a smaller apartment in the Village, according to Ms. Lange's publicist, Leslee Dart.
http://home.hiwaay.net/~oliver/jlnews.htm

Going, going, gone …
Actress Jessica Lange sells items at auction
BY MOLLY MILLETTPioneer Press
Movie star Jessica Lange might be moving to New York, but at least we'll still have her 18th century commode stand to remember her by.
The Stillwater actress put about 40 of her antiques and paintings on the auction block at a Roseville auction house. Watching them sell Wednesday evening — for about $27,000 — was the hottest ticket in town.
About 300 people attended the sold-out, standing-room-only event at Rose Galleries, and still more put in bids over the telephone. Lange's items were interspersed throughout the general arts auction and generated a buzz when they were offered.
"She has really beautiful things — not that I can afford them," said Gina Munter, an auction regular. "I'm waiting to bid on some paperweights."
Lange's collection included hand-colored French lithographs, a metal birdcage, Oriental rugs, that 18th century English mahogany commode stand (which sold for $1,000), and several paintings. "Cows and sheep are a big theme for her," Sonia Vacinek, one of the auction house owners, said of Lange's Victorian-era paintings. The most expensive piece sold was a Daum Nancy cameo glass lamp for $9,500; the least, a pair of matching Oriental vases mounted as lamps, for $90 each.
The crowd consisted of antiques and art dealers, looky-loos and lots of gray-haired types with reading glasses. No one started fierce bidding wars over Lange's items. Then again, sniffed some of the regulars, it's not exactly like Lange is Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, who's estate auction was held at Sotheby's.
"Now, I can see if it was Charlie Chaplin's hat or something … ," said Bob Hewblein of Arden Hills before the auction began. "But just because it belonged to Jessica Lange — I think celebrities are overrated. But you know what I'd like? That soccer ball that Tom Hanks talked to in the movie 'Cast Away.' "
Yet, Pat Arscott of Minneapolis said she understood the appeal of celebrity. "You know, when they auctioned off Marilyn Monroe's things, I read they even sold her old, chipped dishes from her kitchen for lots of money," Arscott said. "I mean, forever after you could say, 'I'm serving these cheese and crackers on Marilyn Monroe's dishes.' It's the cachet."
Auctioneer Jerry Kaufhold told the crowd he was sure Lange's items were authentic. She only purchased from reputable dealers, he noted. He also joked around, saying that Lange had dropped her Waterbury walnut clock onto her ankle when she brought it to the auction house. "There's probably some Jessica Lange DNA on it," he said. It sold for $225.
However, no one who purchased anything of Lange's will receive any paperwork stating that it really, truly, honestly belonged to the Oscar-winning actress. "We're not offering any certificates of authenticity," Vacinek said.
That didn't matter to Don Wahlberg of Arden Hills, who purchased one of Lange's Oriental rugs for $199. He blushed when admitting he showed up because he's a fan of the actress. The rug, he said, "will make a nice addition to my home."
But Wahlberg wasn't as giddy as Stacy Schuna of St. Paul, who bid $160 on Lange's mahogany chair with needlepoint upholstery. "This is going in my bedroom, where I can admire it. No one will be allowed to sit on it but me," Schuna said.
For those who missed out on this auction, you can still buy Lange's house (providing you win the lottery first). The Stillwater estate includes a library, a pool and some lovely gardens. Asking price: $3.3 million.
Lange, 55, a Minnesota native, told More magazine last year that she and her partner, actor and playwright Sam Shepard, moved their family to Minnesota in the 1990s to be closer to her mother, who died in 1997. The couple's 18-year-old daughter recently graduated from Stillwater Area High School; their 17-year-old son reportedly will finish high school in New York. The actress told the magazine: "I'm ready to move back to New York. This is a nice place to raise children. But there's no reason for me to be here anymore."
At least the movie star's art nouveau newel post lamp, which sold for $850, will still be among us (it was a prop in one of her movies).
*****************************************************************
Jessica Lange, Sam Shepard to sell Victorian mansion
THE CANADIAN PRESSJune 26, 2004
STILLWATER, Minn. (AP) - Oscar winner Jessica Lange and her companion, the playwright Sam Shepard, are selling the estate where they have lived for nine years. The 12-room Victorian mansion, which sits on a one-hectare site overlooking the St. Croix River, has been on the market since mid-May with an asking price of $3.3 million US.
"It's a remarkable property in every respect," said real estate agent Sharon O'Flannigan, who is handling the sale.
In 1995, Lange and Shepard paid $415,000 for the house - a former bed-and-breakfast built in 1892 atop one of Stillwater's highest points - and $125,000 for adjoining property.
Shepard also has land across the St. Croix near River Falls, Wis. Lange was born and grew up in northern Minnesota.

Brave New World

2005-07-30T09:49:00.000-07:00

Der Felsen (2002)

To emphasise the arbitrariness and artificiality of what we’re watching, omniscient male and female voices occasionally interject with dispassionate commentary on the characters and the choices they face. The presence of a Senegalais beach-trader, meanwhile, provides an excuse for the script’s deficiencies: we’re told of traditional African narrative techniques in which storytellers had to weave tales around a series of random items, with dire consequences should their tale run out of steam.

http://www.jigsawlounge.co.uk/film/felsen.html

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Crossword clues (The Independent, today, p79)

13 Across Disaffected by a story Dante translated

24 Across Sailor seen round stern of boat, hunting for vermin

25 Across Strangely endures singular display of bad manners

5 Down Hyde Park character not giving his or her private address?

7 Down Potato dish I finally left, having swallowed a portion of meat

8 Down Poet representative of the consumer society?

19 Down Judge's point of view that has an unpleasant ring

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From yesterday's UEFA Cup qualifying draw

Banants Yerevan (Armenia) will play Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk (Ukraine)

Groclin Grodzisk (Poland) will play Dukla Banska Bystrica (Slovakia)

Krylya Sovietov Samara (Russia) will play BATE Borisov (Belarus)

Lokomotiv Plovdiv (Bulgaria) will play OFK Belgrade (Serbia-Montenegro)

Wisla Plock (Poland) will play Grasshoppers (Switzerland)

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tonight at Walthamstow (London E17)
http://www.wsgreyhound.co.uk/

8.39 (£110 A7 race) Semi Retired
dark brindle dog, born August 2002, by Rathroon Ranger out of Mind The Heifer

8.53 (£110 A6 race) Modest Proposal
black dog, born May 2003, by Droopys Vieri out of Mall Twink

10.03 (£135 A2 race) Small Bites
black dog, born June 2003, by Sonic Flight out of Spruce Juice

yesterday : Boromir won 6/1. Profit for £1 level stake so far = +4.00

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Rip tide, Flash Flood, Appaloosa

2005-07-29T08:59:00.000-07:00

Keywall Spectre

"Greyhound racing is great because you can breed your own dog, raise it, take it to the track, and race it... I had a dog that people at Hackney Wick will remember - a big, black, spotted dog called Keywall Spectre, the son of a great Irish dog called Spectre. Sprinting three hundred yards on the sand at Hackney, he'd win all the time."
Sam Shepard, quoted in Sam Shepard by Don Shewey (1985) p94

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Crossword clues (The Independent, today, p79)

10 Across : Reptile destroyed eastern island almost.

14 Across : One would be out of place in ancient Rome.

22 Across : Easily offended? His masque is nasty.

6 Down : Bay's food source, just below head.

20 Down : Fruit beer's head? Mark the depth.

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Came on for Kashima Antlers (v Manchester United, Tokyo Thursday)

75th minute : Abe for Uchida

79th minute : Ishikawa for Motoyama

81st minute : Masuda for Fernando

85th minute : Kaneko for Suzuki

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tonight at Belle Vue (Gorton, Manchester)
http://www.bellevuestadium.co.uk/Stadium/Default.htm

8.50 (£77 A3 race) Radiant Mystery
black bitch, born May 2002, by Honcho Classic out of Adamstown Breeze

9.20 (£112 A1 race) North Sky
black dog, born July 2002, by Droopys Honcho out of Black Jazz II

9.35 (£77 A3 race) Boromir
black dog, born November 2002, by Plasterscene Gem out of Russanda Blue

.

.

.

J-L Godard, CinemaScope, Sep 01

2005-01-02T14:48:00.000-08:00

"I don't like travelling much. It's heavy going to arrive at the hotel and be obliged to sign the famous visitors' guest book, to be given official receptions ... There would need to be a clear objective."