-¦ July 2019 ¦-

WHAT HE SAID

Ray Manzarek

BIRTH OF THE CABLE CAR

Cable Car

THE FINISHED PROTOTYPE, w/ a driver’s cab at either end, appeared on the California Street Line in 1899.

How San Francisco’s cable car came to be built will require more than one stop on its telling, wending this way and that, and passing landmarks of wealth and waste.

Before the advent of the cable car, the task for getting to Nob Hill was relegated to paying for a ride in a horse-drawn cab. On October 11 1869, this necessary yet wanton civic cruelty of using animals as beasts of burden changed for the good. The San Francisco Chronicle had on its front page an article on the death of a wretch. The incident took place when a horse finally lost it on California Street and, throttled by the harness, dragged to its death, expiring in front of Old St Marys Church.

Cable Car When Andrew Hallidie read this, he paused and paced his inner office, reflecting on what if anything he could learn from this. Hallidie was already prosperous, although not yet famous. He had inherited a company from his father. The senior Hallidie had invented and then patented a steel cable: strands of wire lined up and braided into a rope that was super strong, a product that was indispensable to those working the Comstock Lode. Cable Car

Cable Car Hallidie then took a gamble on a failed enterprise, to build a conveyance capable of conquering the city‘s hills,one that had relied on his cable. He bought the Clay Street Hill Railway Company, and by May 1873 had built tracks, w/ cable assembly, up Clay Street from Kearny to Leavenworth, a punishing climb of seven blocks.
Cable Car
Early on August 2 1873, a prototype tram was wheeled into place and, guided by lanterns, Hallidie stepped on board. Activating a grip lever attached to a moving cable, he drove up to Nob Hill on that peril-prone maiden voyage. Few were awake to witness this milestone, yet by its opening day on September 1, the Clay Street Line was already in demand. In 1880 alone more than one million tickets were sold.

The original cable cars were tiny trams powered by a patented grip that alternately holds, and releases, a continuously moving steel cable running under the street. Power is supplied by huge drums housed at nearby power stations along the route.

Cable Car The tram operator is stationed forward of the tram. When he employs the grip to grab and hold on to the moving cable, the tram also moves. When the grip is released, the tram stops moving, even on a hill, using an invention of gear technology preventing slippage. Each car is manned by two operators: the tram operator or gripman, and the conductor.

Cable Car

Andrew Smith Hallidie was born on March 17, 1837 in London, to Andrew Smith (b.1798 Dumfrieshire, Scotland) and Julia Johnstone (Lockerbie). He died April 24 1900, in San Francisco. Six years later his cable car system would survive the 1906 Earthquake.

Cable cars then sprouted worldwide, from New York to Hong Kong. Naples crowned the its opening by commissioning a song, “Funiculi, Funicula.”

In 1917, Andrew Smith Hallidie had an innovative building named for him. The Hallidie Building (by Willis Polk) has a facade rising eight stories and sheathed in glass. Cable Car

When news of the discovery of gold in California traveled back east, the brawn and brains of a young nation came westward, where notions of Freedom waltzed hand-in-glove w/ greatness as well as greed.

Cable Car Accordingly, access from the gold mines to San Francisco were surveyed. Roads, bridges and tracks were built wherever gold was found, w/ waystations established for respite and recreation. The mining methods these men brought w/ them quickly evolved to meet the challenges posed by the Comstock Lode and its tributaries.
Cable Car

Cable Car The Industrial Revolution created tools used in scientific precisioning, allowing innovated models to be tested and profitably manufactured. Among these ideas was the ingenuous “square set” created by German engineer Philipp Deidesheimer. Grey Brechin picks up the umbilical cord:
Cable Car The square set introduced methods of construction. Deidesheimer's gift went from constructing safety zones to conduct the backbreaking business of mining into other uses, including the ability of a grid of steel beams and columns to allow support for more height.

Cable Car The term skyscraper came into usage in the 1880s, when enough tall buildings were built in the United States (15), to warrant a designation. These new structures usually came w/ modern plumbing, electrical outlets in every room, a telephone line in every unit, central heating, and elevator(s). Cable Car “ …In the 1990s, NASA took a fresh look at the steel cable in light of a super material, carbon nanotube. This new field of nanotechnology promises a material that is uber-strong, light and flexible. Space Elevators: An Advanced Earth-Space Infrastructure for the New Millenium is the feasibility paper of this new science,to erect a track running on cables, from here to the Moon, a journey of some 62,000 miles.”

Philipp Deidesheimer — Philipp and Mrs Deidesheimer Making mining feasible, also skyscrapers.

CABLE CAR FOOTNOTES
| Based on San Francisco’s Golden Era by Lucius Beebe and Charles Clego (1060); Cable Car Days in San Francisco by Edgar Myron Kahn (1940); The Headlight, March 1947, published by the Western Pacific Club; Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin by Gray Brechin (1999); and on online articles by Mary Bellis (“The History of Skyscrapers”), Karen Barss (“Manhattan’s Golden Age of Skyscrapers”), and Meghan Neal (“Space Elevators Are Totally Possible”) | NASA ART - A space cable to the moon. | BONANZA — There is a 1959 episode of the TV series featuring a Philipp Deidesheimer storyline. | THANKS — Taryn Edwards, MLIS, Mechanics’ Institute. | THANKS — Penelope Houston, SF Public Library.

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UNIVERSITY TOWN RECIPIENT

⇞ CITY OF STUDENTS

Coimbra, a city in northern Portugal, is the see of a bishop, the capital of a province, and a center of learning. In 2013, UNESCO designated the University of Comibra as a University Town Recipient for its World Heritage Sites, “… an integrated university city, w/ a specific urban typology, as well as its own ceremonial and cultural traditions.”

The property consists of two areas: a hilltop complex of buildings, University Hill , and a series of scattered structures which all played a part in the university’s history. There is a 12th century Augustinian monastery which was the first school, and the original library.

The Inquisition swept into Portugal in 1567, and Coimbra was one of the three local centers tasked to conduct it. Outlasting these strictures, the university bounced back, w/ strengthened statutes, a reorganized syllabus of studies, greater emphasis on education in the vernacular, and the re-establishment of freedom of research. The old castle on the hilltop was finally pulled down to make way for new buildings.

A seal was then struck, a praxe, consisting of a spoon (symbol of punishment), scissors (symbol of unruliness), and a stick (symbol of self-defense).

University of Coimbra

Founded in 1290, the University of Coimbra is the second oldest continuous institution of higher learning in Europe (the University of Paris is older), and the first university town in the world. In this northern Portuguese city, a world treasure become sited inside a national treasure, the school moved into a former royal palace on the summit of the hill, and grew to become a gathering spot for academics, writers, artists, who nicknamed this the Lusitanian Athens, ‘Lusa Atenas’.

⇞ CAMPUS

An early champion of the new science of circumnavigation, an observatory was built to make spatial sense of the stars.

Investitures and major events take place in the ‘Sala Grande dos Actos,‘ below portraits of kings and queens. A cathedral, already there when the university arrived, was gifted by Jesuits. The throne room is now used for PhD candidate examinations, and nothing else.

The four rooms of the ‘Museu de Arte Sacra’ contain, among holy habits and chalices, books of early sacred music. There is a museum of natural history. A colonnaded walkway by the grand patio was added in the 18th century, the ‘Via Latina.’ The campus chapel, ‘Capela de Sao Miguel’, means that no student need run downhill to another one.

A Botanical Garden blossomed in 1772, that delightful Victorian experiment of Eden on earth, sprouting wherever colonialism circled.

There are five faculties (‘theologia’, ‘direito’, ‘medicina’, ‘mathematica’, ‘philosophia’) w/ disciplines in judicial and European court systems, interdisciplinary nuclear science, and the arts. (The university had begun by teaching law, rhetoric, mathematics, theology, medicine, grammar and Greek.) The teaching staff consisits of some 70 professors and lecturers. Semester is from autumn to the start of summer, when two months of exams take place. The ordinary degree resulting in the title ‘licenciado’ lasts five years. The degree of ‘doutor’ takes another year and another examination. Medical students study eight years.

The university has a digital repositorium inside a tech park involved in research and incubation. There is a repository for the project April 25, documenting the toppling of a dictatorship. Auxiliaries of the city-wide university system take on citizen practices such as sports, theater, and botany and preservation; there are several kindergartens and nurseries under its wing.

⇞ LIBRARY

When the university outgrew the original city library, a second one was built in the 18th century, on University Hill, the ‘Biblioteca Joanina’, the oldest university library in continuous use in the world, and housed in three large and resplendent Baroque rooms w/ painted ceilings.

The first room has a light green palette, the second a darker green, and the third room has a “… shade like that of orange Niger leather”; rich in gilt and exotic wood, lined w/ 300,000 volumes in galleries runing around the walls, incl. arguably the most valuable collection of Bibles in the world.

There are unpublished manuscripts of Domenico Scarlatti, thought lost but rediscovered in the 20th century, because they were incorrectly catalogued. By the front door, a passageway can take one down to the river, the ‘Palacios Confusos’, by a series of steps posing as alleys, past houses of different styles and years.

⇞ STUDENT BODY

The student body numbers about 25,000, and the dress code is a black Prince Albert coat, worn w/ black trousers, black cape batina, black dress tie; generally students go bareheaded. A military hospital happens to be located nearby, because.

Freshmen may not be on the street after the bell has rung at 6pm, on penalty of being shaved bald, if caught. Another form of punishment is to measure the long bridge over the Modego w/ a match, and it must be done w/ meticulous accuracy. Even a good and sinless freshman must be prepared to run errands whenever required to do so by a sophomore or junior, but he may be “protected,” and the errand countermanded, by a friendly senior (‘quartanista’). In turn a sophomore and a junior are known as a semi-harlot (‘mejo prostituo / prostituta’) and a total harlot (‘total prostituo / prostituta’) respectively.

These ‘estudantes’ make up about a third of the town’s inhabitants. Their graduation ceremonies take place in May. It’s then that a localized form of ‘fado’ is sung, by male students only, and only on the steps of the old cathedral when 10pm comes around, w/ lyrics more intellectual and romantic than the genre asks for, love songs tuned to the passions and sentiments of the students, who perfume the air w/ their lamentations until dawn.

Fado ‘Ali, o lirio do scelestes vales, tendosen fim, terão a seu começo, para não mais findar, nossos amores.’ (Yonder, lily of celestial valleys, your end shall be their beginning, our loves ne’er more to perish.) — Antero de Quental

⇞ STUDENT REPUBLICS

In the mid-1950s there were eleven “republics” or student organizations, active in the university.

One of them is ‘Pra-kys-tao‘ (Here We Are), a fraternity of ten students for the mutual benefit of themselves and their always-slender budgets, and to satisfy wants such as traditional evenings of wine and shrimps in town. Membership was open, upon unanimous favorable vote, to students of any race, color, religion or political creed except, during that period, communism. In the most pratical way, the student who had been a member longest is automatically president. Using a rotation system, two students, followed by two more then two more, serve as executive officers for fifteen days. They run the republic and must explain and justify all outlays of money, and a debate on this topic may be opened at any time, all decisions being made by majority vote, and to be taken at the dinner table. Freshmen may not vote on money matters but on anything else. This particular republic had only 13 electric light bulbs for 15 rooms, incl. the dining room, kitchen and hallway. Pin-up girls papered over every wallspace, the harem of the eye (‘Harem do Olho’). One wall had graffiti: “Artillery Exported to Pra-kys-tao for the Protection of the Marshall Plan.”

Certain campus traditions take place to mark the academic seasons, involving parades through the city, each rife w/ its own occult rituals. The noisy Latada - Festa das Latas (celebration of end of class), and the older Queima das Fitas (burning of the ribbons), which goes on for eight days, involving light blue ribbons for the Sciences, dark blue for Letters, yellow for Medicine and purple for Pharmacy.

⇞ CITY OF CULTURE

The original footprint of Coimbra has spilled downhil, and locals distinguish between the older Upper Town and the Lower Town.

The area hugging the Modego river is Cicade Baixa, downtown, where commerce happens amid Romanesque, early Baroque, Rococco, and Gothic structures, sporting a Moorish patina and sucumbing to the nautical notions of the Manueline style.

A Portuguese queen is buried downtown, in a silver tomb housed in the convent of ‘Santa Ciara-a-Nova’. The Fountain of Life, waiting for you since the 14th century, is behind the church.

Unto the 1920s Coimbra was all but inaccessible by road to travellers, not to mention damp beds and dangerous foods. Sacheverell Sitwell visited in the 1950s: “… At Coimbra not only has there been wanton and appalling destruction of what was old and beautiful, but new University buildings have been erected which are really shaming in their blatant ugliness. The sculptures, particularly, are of an insulting hideousness. It is a dreadful thought that they are dedicated to the youth of Portugal, and that they will be a memorial to the government of so wise and great a European as Dr Salazar. … Not that there is anything in the least Portuguese about these abominable buildings of Coimbra. But it is sad, too, because, Coimbra being the university town of Portugal, so many Portuguese retain memories of Coimbra and an affection for it all through their lives, and those memories will now forever more be tinged and coloured by the ugly buildings. There is no possible excuse for hideousness upon this scale; but it might, at least, be practised elsewhere and not in Coimbra.”

Luis de Camões

⇞ The Lusiads

Arguably the most famous student of the University of Coimbra is Luis de Camões, who (might have been) born in Coimbra in 1524 but known to have passed age 56 in Lisbon. His fame is partly based on supreme mastery of the Portuguese language and is its lyric poet, and his most famous work is a tour de force recounting the tragedy of Indes de Castro of Spain and her love Prince Pedro of Portugal, and her murder by jealous courtiers. She was killed by a fountain in the Garden of Tears (‘Quinta das Lagrimas’) in the convent of Santa Clara; where pond lilies are have been known to flower red.

A stone slab by the fountain bears the following verse by Luís Vaz de Camões (Lusiads, Ill, 135), here in a translation by Lord Byron:

Lusiads of Cameos — Tomb of Luis de Camões in Lisbon.

Mondego’s Daughter-Nymphs the death obscure Wept many a year, with wails of woe exceeding; And for long memory changed to fountain pure, The floods of grief their eyes were ever feeding; The name they gave it, which doth still endure, Revived Ignez, whose murdered love lies bleeding. See yon fresh fountain flowing ‘mid the flowers, Tears are its water, and its name ‘Amores.’

Manueline Style

⇞ Maritime Motif

Flush w/ wealth from the Spice Trade, Portugal experienced a brief period where money became as abundant as sea water, and lavished it on an indigenous artform.

The discoveries brought back by the sea voyages Pedro Alvares Cabral and Vasco da Gama aroused the already composite Portuguese style, toying w/ Flemish, Italian and Late Gothic elements. The newly rich gathered the bounties of the sea trade and repurposed them an architectural vocabulary in churches, monasteries, palaces and castles, and a maritime motif applied to furniture, sculpture and painting. The style was given a name in 1842 by the Viscount Francisco Adolfo de Varnhagen, in his description of the Jeronimos Monastery. The characteristics of this Manueline style, named for King Manuel I (1495-1521), resulted in ornate portals, bevelled crenellations, conical pinnacles, and eight-sided capitals.

There were semicircular arches on doors and windows, columns of carved rope, and a wanton disregard for symmetry. There were symbols of Christianity and latter-day Templars, botanical flourishes, artifacts found on ships, all garlanded by Islamic filigree work and Moorish traceries.

Manueline Style — Davy Jones’s locker Detail of the Triton Gate, standing guard in Sintra. Nautical wonders like seaweed and barnacles added to the dense ornamentation. More.

Aeminium

⇞ Roman Footprint

Machado de Castro Museum — The most important remains in Coimbra is the an underground gallery of arches that once supported the Roman forum, and brimming w/ Visigothic artifacts, the **Cryptoporticus da Anemium**. For protection a tower, the Montemor, was built closer to the sea, allowing guarded access to estuary of the oxbow shape of the Mondego river, as well as nearby vineyards.

Sources

[ 1 ] [1] California and the Portuguese by Celestino Soares, SPN Books Lisbon 1939. [2] Eyewitness Travel Guides: Portugal w/ Madeira & the Azores, DK Publishing Inc London 1997. [3] The Finest Castles in Portugal, text Julio Gil, photographs Augusto Cabrita, Verbo 1996. [4] A History of Spain and Portugal in two volumes, by Stanley G. Payne, The University of Wisconsin Press 1973. [5] The Nagel Travel Guide Series : Portugal, Nagel Publishers Geneva 1956. [6] A New History of Portugal 2nd Edition by H.V. Livermore, Cambridge University Press London 1976. [7] Portugal and Madeira by Sacheverell Sitwell, William Clowes and Sons London 1954. [8] Portugal the Pathfinder: Journeys from the Medieval toward the Modern World 1300-ca.1600, edited by George D. Winius, The Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies Ltd, The University of Wisconsin Press 1995. [9] Port and the Douro by Richard Mayson, Faber and Faber London 1999. [10] Portuguese Concise Dictionary 2nd edition, Harper Collins 2001. [11] Spain and Protugal, Handbook for Travellers by Karl Bedacker, fourth edition. Leipsic: Karl Baedeker, publisher. London: George Allen & Unwini Ltd., New York: Chas. Scribner’s Sons. 1913. [12] A Traveller's History of Portugal by Ian C. Robertson, line drawings by John Hoste, Interlink Books New York 2002. [13] World Food by Lynelle Scott-Aitken and Clara Vitorino, Lonely Planet 2002. CREDITS Culled from reporting by Tim Pozzi,the University of Coimbra website, the Internet, and guide books. Photographers incl., among others, Francisco Antunes.

Street names

[ 2 ] Some Coimbra street names include: Rua Anthero de Quental, Alameda do Jardin Bot, Estrada da Beira, Rua do Loureira, Couraca dos Apostolos, Rua das Padeiras, Rua das Solas, Rua da Moeda, Rua da Louca, Rua do Corvo, Rua do Joao Cabreira, Rua da Sophia, Rua de Mont’arroio, Rua do Corpo de Deus, Rua do Borralho, Rua dos Estudos, Rua Lourenco d’Almcida, Rua Venancio Rodriguez, Rua Garrett, Rua do Thomar, Rua de Alex Herculano, Rua Ferreira Borges, Rua do Visconde da Luz, Rua da Sophia, Rua de Castro Mattoso, Rua de Oliveira Mattos.

Street names

[ 3 ] Complete list of 2013 UNESCO World Heritage Sites’ New Inscribed Properties.

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WHAT HE SAID

Gary Hurstwit

Invisible Typeface

A documentary by filmmaker Gary Hurstwit, Helvetica the Documentary (2007) posits this “unseen” naming-convention as the most user-friendly of fonts.

HISTORIC CENTER RECIPIENT

Agadez, Niger

Starting point for a journey across the Sahara, taking in “ports of call” to Timbuktu, Ghat, then Ghadames, and finally Tripoli, on the shores of the Mediterranean.

Seat of a Tuareg sultanate which was established in 1449. Occupied by the French since the early 1900s, and known of rebellion ever since. The Tuareg people are the original Canaanites from the Bible, inhabiting ancient Palestine and Phoenicia, and its lingua franca is the Hausa language, a subgroup of the Chadic languages group, and therefore a part of the Afroasiatic language family.

Started in the 1400s to serve as the south gateway into the Sahara, a desert town the Historic Centre of Agadez in in Niger is now designated as a Historic Center Recipient and a 2013 UNESCO World Heritage Site. It has founded to become a center of commerce for the trans-Saharan trade, and the 1500s the populace already numbered 30,000. 2013 UNESCO Historic Center Recipient

In 1976, area mining for uranium allowed the local economy to established a school, the Ecole des Mines de l'Air.

The 2011 census counted a total of 124,324 people living in Agadez and the European language they speak is French. There is an international airport named after a Tuareg leader, Mano Dayak, but due to the ongoing Tuareg rebellion in the region, Agadez is unsafe for travel.

2013 UNESCO Historic Center Recipient — A mosque made of clay, built in 1515, still stands. It was restored in 1814 and is the world’s tallest mud minaret, at 88.5-ft. Chinese scroll depicting the first camel to enter Cathay.

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PIXELS

Sipping Shirley Temples at the Madonna Inn.

MATINÉE

m|“About the size of a microbe.”

Fantastic Voyage

A sci-fi one-off about inner space, medicine and death. A medical team is subjected to a formula for unlimited miniaturization, then injected - together with their ship - into a comatose patient. | • | Doctors Stephen Boyd, Raquel Welch, Edmond O'Brien, Donald Pleasence, and Arthur Kennedy journey via blood arteries to find and unblock a blood clot inside the brain. Chaos ensues when plot twists erupt. Directed by Richard Fleischer. Written by Harry Kleiner, based on a story set in the 19th century by Otto Klement and Jerome Bixby. Isaac Asimov was then contracted to do a novelization of the screenplay. (1966)
• DOUBLE FEATURE: This Island Earth (1955)

m|“It is going to be a happy time in England, this year in the future.”

Privilege

Set in a near future, when a popular pop celebrity is micro-managed by his handlers, in government and the church, into having a meltdown. The handlers are the usual suspects: manager, public relations rep, record company exec, and Malcolm Rogers and Michael Barrington playing members of the clergy. Once seen, never forgotten. | • | Paul Jones portrays the idol as an internee, singing "I've Been a Bad, Bad, Boy" and "Free Me" to his enrapt audience. His media-saturated fame is then used to flog sundry advertisements. Jean Shrimpton plays a fellow celebrity, who comes to paint his portrait. | • | Directed by Peter Watkins in cinema verité style. Story by Johnny Speight, screenplay by Norman Bogner. (1967)
• DOUBLE FEATURE: Velvet Goldmine (1998)

m|“You are on board the Andronicus bound from Bizerte to Dubroynik.”

Modesty Blaise

Comic strip hyper-heroine Modesty Blaise and her sidekick Willie Garvin come to life and battle villain Dirk Bogarde in an op-art universe. Rosella Falk is the henchwoman and Alexander Knox the minister. Clive Revill plays a sheik, and roles incl. tatooed man, friar, pilot, co-pilot, under secretary, pianist, and man who pushes the doorbell. | • | Directed by Joseph Losey as a spy-fi. Screenplay by Evan Jones. Music by John Dankworth. Theme song by David and Jonathan. Costumes by Beatrice Dawson. Art direction by Jack Shampan. Production design by Richard Macdonald. Special effects by Les Bowie. Gillian Aldam plays a stunt double. (1966)
• DOUBLE FEATURE: Danger: Diabolik (1968)

m|“Le chaland qui passe (the passing barge)”

L'Atlante

A young marriage under trial on a poetic river somewhere in France. Jean Daste and Dita Parlo portray a river barge captain and his new wife. They are joined by a first mate, cabin boy, cat and kittens, having fantastical adventures in a realist evocation of long long ago. | • | Directed by Jean Vigo, who died after filming, at the age of 29. (1934)
• DOUBLE FEATURE: The Enchanted Cottage (1945)

m|“… go for a walk.”

King and Country

World War I deserter stands trial before a military tribunal. Tom Courtenay the runaway, Dirk Bogarde his laywer, and a table btw. them. | • | Directed by Joseph Losey. Evan Jones based his screen play on a play by John Wilson and a novel by James Lansdale Hodson. With Leo McKern, Barry Foster, James Villiers, Jeremy Spenser, Vivian Matalon. (1964)
• DOUBLE FEATURE: Danton (1983)

m|“… may be too late.”

The Ugly American

Marlon Brando portrays a member of the U.S. diplomatic corps in 1950s Southeast Asia, walking through an uneasy dream w/ Eji Okada, Sandra Church, Pat Hingle, Arthur Hill, Jocelyn Brando (his sister), and Reiko Sato. | • | Directed by George Englund, from a screenplay by Stewart Stern, and based on a 1958 novel by Eugene Burdick and William Lederer. (1963)
• DOUBLE FEATURE: Indochine (1992)

m|“Our association is not a union. It's nothing like a union.”

Stranded

Three yarns are interwoven to tell the story of the Golden Gate Bridge build: ambition, greed, love. Kay Francis works in a traveler's aid booth at a train station, untangling situations for all manner of waifs, strays and down-and-outers, , incl. Frankie Darro, Joan Gay, Burr Caruth, and believes in her work. | • | George Brent is the no-nonsense foreman of the Golden Gate Bridge build, overseeing unionized workers and taking no gruff - yet ends up believing in the girl from traveler's aid. Until that happens, Barton MacLane portrays a racketeer throwing a monkey wrench at the welders, riveters and other iron workers of the bridge team, incl. Robert Barrat, Joseph Crehan, William Harrigan, John Wray, and Edward McWade. | • | Tony San Francisco is represented by old money Henry O'Neill and Ann Shoemaker, playboy Gavin Gordon, and playgirl Patricia Ellis. Showing up for cameos are the Immigration and Naturalization Serivce, Builders Protective League, Bureau of Missing Persons, and the Municipal Lodging House for Women (where June Travers plays an expectant mother and Zeffie Tillbury is a life lost). The three strands culminate inside Worker's Hall where mob justice takes all. | • | Diplomatically directed by Frank Borzage, this is a fine example of the "independent woman" films of the 1930s, made memorable by luminous Kay Francis in a tour-de-force of self-assurance. Screenplay by Delmer Daves, w/ additional dialogue by Carl Erickson. Based on the story "Lady w/ a Badge" by Frank Wead & Ferdinand Reyher. B-&-W cinematography by Sid Hickox. Music by Harry Warren, the "maestro of memorable soundtracks". | • | Threading through the movie is documentary footage of the actual Golden Gate Bridge build, in which is stated that the going union wage was $11 a day, and that nets were laid underneath to catch falling workers. The build had zero fatalities until the last day of construction, when altogether about 18 workers fell. The nets saved some but not all. Built to hold up to ten bodies only, the netting broke and some fell to their deaths. The bridge opened for traffic in 1937. (1935)
• DOUBLE FEATURE: Native Land (1942)

m|“I wanted to give you a ghost for your birthday.”

Sylvie et le Fantome

A pastiche of The Old Dark House, and a send-up to French surrealism; there's even a ghost dog. The Baron's daughter is turning 16, and he wants to give her a fake ghost for her birthday, because he knows that she's in love w/ a real ghost who lives on his estate. | • | Starring Marguerite Cassan, Paul Demange, Jean Desailly, Gabrielle Fontan, Pierre Larquey, Claude Marcy, Francois Penier, Raymond Rognoni, Odette Joyeux as Sylvie, and Jacques Tat in his first film rolei as the Ghost. Directed in the continental fashion by Claude Autant-Lara. Screenplay of witticisms by Jean Aurenche. Plot twists and turns are cleverly captured by cinematographer Philippe Agostini. The just-right music is by Rene Cloerec. (1946)
• DOUBLE FEATURE: Portrait of Jennie (1948)

m|“… outlaw liquor.”

The Wet Parade

The need to regulate grain during World War I led to a complete outlawing of liquor all together. Spanning the years 1916 to 1931 in the lives of two families affected by hootch. Starring Myrna Loy, Robert Young, Walter Huston, Dorothy Jordan, Wallace Ford, Lewis Stone, Neil Hamilton, Jimmy Durante. Based on Upton Sinclair's writings, the film came out before Prohibition had ended. | • | In the film there is a stand-alone documentary showing how Americans met challenges in the curtailment of their right to a drink, including those from the criminal world, where a potential new base of potential customers blossomed into new enterprises. Money could be made using a cheap ingredient: bulk denaturated (i.e., unfit to drink) cleaning fluid (i.e., ethyl alcohol + methanol), bottling it and slapping on a bogus name-brand label. (1932)
• DOUBLE FEATURE: Days of Wine and Roses (1962)

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-| July 2019 |-

WHAT SHE SAID

Virginia Woolf

BIRTH OF THE CABLE CAR

Cable Car

THE FINISHED PROTOTYPE, w/ a driver’s cab at either end, appeared on the California Street Line in 1899.

How San Francisco’s cable car came to be built will require more than one stop on its telling, wending this way and that, and passing landmarks of wealth and waste. Before the advent of the cable car, the task for getting to Nob Hill was relegated to paying for a ride in a horse-drawn cab. On October 11 1869, this necessary yet wanton civic cruelty of using animals as beasts of burden changed for the good. The San Francisco Chronicle had on its front page an article on the death of a wretch. The incident took place when a horse finally lost it on California Street and, throttled by the harness, dragged to its death, expiring in front of Old St Marys Church.	When Andrew Hallidie read this, he paused and paced his inner office, reflecting on what if anything he could learn from this. Hallidie was already prosperous, although not yet famous. He had inherited a company from his father. The senior Hallidie had invented and then patented a steel cable: strands of wire lined up and braided into a rope that was super strong, a product that was indispensable to those working the Comstock Lode.	Hallidie then took a gamble on a failed enterprise, to build a conveyance capable of conquering the city‘s hills,one that had relied on his cable. He bought the Clay Street Hill Railway Company, and by May 1873 had built tracks, w/ cable assembly, up Clay Street from Kearny to Leavenworth, a punishing climb of seven blocks. Early on August 2 1873, a prototype tram was wheeled into place and, guided by lanterns, Hallidie stepped on board. Activating a grip lever attached to a moving cable, he drove up to Nob Hill on that peril-prone maiden voyage. Few were awake to witness this milestone, yet by its opening day on September 1, the Clay Street Line was already in demand. In 1880 alone more than one million tickets were sold.

How San Francisco’s cable car came to be built will require more than one stop on its telling, wending this way and that, and passing landmarks of wealth and waste.

The original cable cars were tiny trams powered by a patented grip that alternately holds, and releases, a continuously moving steel cable running under the street. Power is supplied by huge drums housed at nearby power stations along the route. The tram operator is stationed forward of the tram. When he employs the grip to grab and hold on to the moving cable, the tram also moves. When the grip is released, the tram stops moving, even on a hill, using an invention of gear technology preventing slippage. Each car is manned by two operators: the tram operator or gripman, and the conductor.	Andrew Smith Hallidie was born on March 17, 1837 in London, to Andrew Smith (b.1798 Dumfrieshire, Scotland) and Julia Johnstone (Lockerbie). He died April 24 1900, in San Francisco. Six years later his cable car system would survive the 1906 Earthquake.	Cable cars then sprouted worldwide, from New York to Hong Kong. Naples crowned the its opening by commissioning a song, “Funiculi, Funicula.” In 1917, Andrew Smith Hallidie had an innovative building named for him. The Hallidie Building (by Willis Polk) has a facade rising eight stories and sheathed in glass.

The original cable cars were tiny trams powered by a patented grip that alternately holds, and releases, a continuously moving steel cable running under the street. Power is supplied by huge drums housed at nearby power stations along the route.

When news of the discovery of gold in California traveled back east, the brawn and brains of a young nation came westward, where notions of Freedom waltzed hand-in-glove w/ greatness as well as greed. Accordingly, access from the gold mines to San Francisco were surveyed. Roads, bridges and tracks were built wherever gold was found, w/ waystations established for respite and recreation. The mining methods these men brought w/ them quickly evolved to meet the challenges posed by the Comstock Lode and its tributaries.	The Industrial Revolution created tools used in scientific precisioning, allowing innovated models to be tested and profitably manufactured. Among these ideas was the ingenuous “square set” created by German engineer Philipp Deidesheimer. Grey Brechin picks up the umbilical cord: The square set introduced methods of construction. Deidesheimer's gift went from constructing safety zones to conduct the backbreaking business of mining into other uses, including the ability of a grid of steel beams and columns to allow support for more height.	The term skyscraper came into usage in the 1880s, when enough tall buildings were built in the United States (15), to warrant a designation. These new structures usually came w/ modern plumbing, electrical outlets in every room, a telephone line in every unit, central heating, and elevator(s). “ …In the 1990s, NASA took a fresh look at the steel cable in light of a super material, carbon nanotube. This new field of nanotechnology promises a material that is uber-strong, light and flexible. Space Elevators: An Advanced Earth-Space Infrastructure for the New Millenium is the feasibility paper of this new science,to erect a track running on cables, from here to the Moon, a journey of some 62,000 miles.”

When news of the discovery of gold in California traveled back east, the brawn and brains of a young nation came westward, where notions of Freedom waltzed hand-in-glove w/ greatness as well as greed.

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1873

The United States of America v. Susan B. Anthony

In 1872, Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906), the daughter of Quaker abolitionists, walked into a polling station in Albany New York and voted. She was fined $100 on the charge of illegal voting, and she refused to pay. Four years earlier, together w/ Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902), she had founded the National Woman Suffrage Association. Her examples made possible the eventual adoption of the Nineteenth Amenement, fourteen years after her death.

THE PROSECUTION D.A. Richard Crowley: May it please the Court and Gentlemen of the Jury: ... The defendant, Miss Susan B. Anthony ... voted for a representative in the Congrees of the United States, to represent the 29th Congressional District of this State, and also for a representative at large for the State of New York to represent the State in the Congresss of the United States. At that time she was a woman. I suppose there will be no question about that ... whatever Miss Anthony’s intentions may have been - whether they were good or otherwise - she did not have a right to vote upon that question, and if she did vote without having a lawful right to vote, then there is no question but what she is guilty of violating a law of the United States ... Conceded, that on the 5th day of November 1872, Miss Susan B. Anthony was a woman. San Francisco Women's March 2017	THE INSPECTORS' TESTIMONY Q: Did you see her vote? A: [Beverly W. Jones]: Yes, sir ... Q: She was not challenged on the day she voted? A: No, sir. Cross-examination by Defense Attorney, Judge Henry Selden. Q: Prior to the election, was there a registry of voters in that district made? A: Yes, sir. Q: Were you one of the officers engaged in making that registry? A: Yes, sir. Q: When the registry was being made did Miss Anthony appear before the Board of Registry and claim to be registered as a voter? A: She did. Q: Was there any objection made, or any doubt raised as to her right to vote? A: There was. Q: On what ground? A: On the ground that the Constitution of the State of New York did not allow women to vote. Q: What was the defect in her right to vote as a citizen? A: She was not a male citizen. Q: That she was a woman? A: Yes, sir ... Q: Did the Board consider the question of her right to registry, and decide that she was entitled to registry as a voter? A: Yes, sir. Q: And she was registered accordingly? A: Yes, sir ... Q: Won’t you state what Miss Anthony said, if she said anything, when she came there and offered her name for registration? A: She stated that she did not claim any rights under the Constitution of the State of New York; she claimed her right under the Constitution of the United States. Q: Did she name any particular Amendment? A: Yes, sir; she cited the 14th amendment. Q: Under that she claimed her right to vote? A: Yes, sir...

THE PROSECUTION
D.A. Richard Crowley:

May it please the Court and Gentlemen of the Jury: ... The defendant, Miss Susan B. Anthony ... voted for a representative in the Congrees of the United States, to represent the 29th Congressional District of this State, and also for a representative at large for the State of New York to represent the State in the Congresss of the United States. At that time she was a woman. I suppose there will be no question about that ... whatever Miss Anthony’s intentions may have been - whether they were good or otherwise - she did not have a right to vote upon that question, and if she did vote without having a lawful right to vote, then there is no question but what she is guilty of violating a law of the United States ...

Conceded, that on the 5th day of November 1872, Miss Susan B. Anthony was a woman.

THE INSPECTORS' TESTIMONY
Q: Did you see her vote? A: [Beverly W. Jones]: Yes, sir ... Q: She was not challenged on the day she voted? A: No, sir.
Cross-examination by Defense Attorney, Judge Henry Selden. Q: Prior to the election, was there a registry of voters in that district made? A: Yes, sir. Q: Were you one of the officers engaged in making that registry? A: Yes, sir. Q: When the registry was being made did Miss Anthony appear before the Board of Registry and claim to be registered as a voter? A: She did. Q: Was there any objection made, or any doubt raised as to her right to vote? A: There was. Q: On what ground? A: On the ground that the Constitution of the State of New York did not allow women to vote. Q: What was the defect in her right to vote as a citizen? A: She was not a male citizen. Q: That she was a woman? A: Yes, sir ... Q: Did the Board consider the question of her right to registry, and decide that she was entitled to registry as a voter? A: Yes, sir. Q: And she was registered accordingly? A: Yes, sir ... Q: Won’t you state what Miss Anthony said, if she said anything, when she came there and offered her name for registration? A: She stated that she did not claim any rights under the Constitution of the State of New York; she claimed her right under the Constitution of the United States. Q: Did she name any particular Amendment? A: Yes, sir; she cited the 14th amendment. Q: Under that she claimed her right to vote? A: Yes, sir...

THE DEFENSE ATTORNEY Judge Henry R. Selden: The only alleged ground of illegality of the defendant's vote is that she is a woman. If the same act had been done by her brother under the same circumstances, the act would have been not only innocent, but honorable and laudable; but having been done by a woman it is said to be a crime. ... I believe this is the first instance in which a woman has been arraigned in a criminal court merely on account of her sex. ... Another objection is, that the right to hold office must attend the right to vote, and that women are not qualified to discharge the duties of responsible offices. I beg leave to answer this objection by asking one or more questions. How many of the male bipeds who do our voting are qualified to hold high offices? ... Another objection is that engaging in political controversies is not consistent w/ the feminine character. Upon that subject, women themselves are the best judges, and if political duties should be found inconsistent w/ female delicacy, we may rest assured that women will either effect a change in the character of political contests, or decline to engage in them. ...	THE JUDGE The Court: The question, gentlemen of the jury ... is wholly a question or questions of law, and I have decided as a question of law, in the first place, that under the 14th Amendment, which Miss Anthony claims protects her, she was not protected in a right to vote. And I have decided also that her belief and the advice which she took do not protect her in the act which she committed. If I am right in this, the result must be a verdict on your part of guilty, and I therefore direct that you find a verdict of guilty. Mr. Selden: That is a direction no Court has power to make in a criminal case. The Court: Take the verdict, Mr. Clerk. ... Susan B. Anthony after casting her first vote, she was a 26 year-old school teacher in upstate New York, the year was 1848.

THE DEFENSE ATTORNEY
Judge Henry R. Selden:

The only alleged ground of illegality of the defendant's vote is that she is a woman.

If the same act had been done by her brother under the same circumstances, the act would have been not only innocent, but honorable and laudable; but having been done by a woman it is said to be a crime. ... I believe this is the first instance in which a woman has been arraigned in a criminal court merely on account of her sex. ... Another objection is, that the right to hold office must attend the right to vote, and that women are not qualified to discharge the duties of responsible offices. I beg leave to answer this objection by asking one or more questions. How many of the male bipeds who do our voting are qualified to hold high offices? ... Another objection is that engaging in political controversies is not consistent w/ the feminine character. Upon that subject, women themselves are the best judges, and if political duties should be found inconsistent w/ female delicacy, we may rest assured that women will either effect a change in the character of political contests, or decline to engage in them. ...

THE JUDGE
The Court: The question, gentlemen of the jury ... is wholly a question or questions of law, and I have decided as a question of law, in the first place, that under the 14th Amendment, which Miss Anthony claims protects her, she was not protected in a right to vote. And I have decided also that her belief and the advice which she took do not protect her in the act which she committed. If I am right in this, the result must be a verdict on your part of guilty, and I therefore direct that you find a verdict of guilty.
Mr. Selden: That is a direction no Court has power to make in a criminal case.
The Court: Take the verdict, Mr. Clerk. ...

THE NEXT DAY
The Court: The prisoner will stand up. Has the prisoner anything to say why sentence shall not be pronounced?

MISS Anthony: Yes, your honor, I have many things to say; for in your ordered verdict of guilty, you have trampled underfoot every vital principle of our government. My natural rights, my civil rights, my political rights, are all alike ignored. Robbed of the fundamental privilege of citizenship, I am degraded from the status of a citizen to that of a subject; and not only myself individually, but all of my sex, are, by your honor’s verdict, doomed to political subjection under this so-called Republican government.
JUDGE Hunt: The Court can not listen to a rehearsal of arguments the prisoner's counsel has already consumed three hours in presenting.

MISS Anthony: May it please your honor, I am not arguing the question, but simply stating the reasons why sentence can not, in justice, be pronounced against me. Your denial of my citizen's right to vote is the denial of my right of consent as one of the governed, the denial of my right of representation as one of the taxed, the denial of my right to a trial by a jury of my peers as an offender against the law, therefore, the denial of my sacred rights to life, liberty, property, and-
JUDGE Hunt: The court can not allow the prisoner to go on.

MISS Anthony: But your honor will not deny me this one and only poor privilege of protest against this high-handed outrage upon my citizen's rights. May it please the Court to remember that since the day of my arrest last November, this is the first time that either myself or any person of my disfranchised class has been allowed a word of defense before judge or jury–
JUDGE Hunt: the prisoner must sit down; the Court can not allow it.

MISS Anthony: All my prosecutors, from the 8th Ward corner grocery politician, who entered the complaint, to the United States Marshal, Commissioner, District Attorney, District Judge, your honor on the bench, not one is my peer, but each and all are my political sovereigns; and had your honor submitted my case to the jury, as was clearly your duty, even that I should have had just cause of protest, for not one of those men was my peer; but, native or foreign, white or black, rich or poor, educated or ignorant, awake or asleep, sober or drunk, each and every man of them was my political superior; hence, in no sense, my peer. ...
JUDGE Hunt: The Court must insist - the prisoner has been tried according to the established forms of law.

MISS Anthony: Yes, your honor, but by forms of law all made by men, interpreted by men, administered by men, in favor of men, and against women; and hence, your honor’s ordered verdict of guilty, against a United States citizen for the exercise of “that citizen’ s right to vote,” simply because that citizen was a woman and not a man. But, yesterday, the same manmade forms of law declared it a crime punishable w/ $1,000 fine and six months’ imprisonment, for you, or me, or any of us, to give a cup of cold water, a crust of bread, or a night’s shelter to a panting fugitive as he is tracking his way to Canada. And every man or woman in whose veins coursed a drop of human sympathy violated that wicked law, reckless of consequences, and was justified in so doing. As then the slaves who got ther freedom must take it over, or under, or through the unjust forms of law, precisely so now must women, to get their right to a voice in this Government, take it; and I have taken mine, and mean to take it at every possible opportunity.
JUDGE Hunt: The Court orders the prisoner to sit down. It will not allow another word

MISS Anthony: When I was brought before your honor for trial, I hoped for a broad and liberal interpretation of the Constitution and its recent amendments, that should declare all United States citizens under its protecting aegis - that should declare equality of rights the national guarantee to all persons born or naturalized in the United States. But failing to get this justice - failing, even, to get a trial by a jury not of my peers - I ask not leniency at your hands - but rather the full rigors of the law.
JUDGE Hunt: The Court must insist - [Here the prisoner sat down.] The prisoner will stand up. [Here Miss Anthony arose again.] The sentence of the Court is that you pay a fine of $100 and the costs of the prosecution.

MISS Anthony: May it please your honor, I shall never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty. All the stock in trade I possess is a $10,000 debt, incurred by publishing my paper - The Revolution - four years ago, the sole object of which was to educate all women to do precisely as I have done, rebel against your man-made, unjust, unconstitutional forms of law, that tax, fine, imprison, and hang women, while they deny them the right of representation in the Government; and I shall work on with might and main to pay every dollar of that honest debt, but not a penny shall go to this unjust claim. And I shall earnestly and persistently continue to urge all women to the practical recognition of the old revolutionary maxim that “Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God.”
JUDGE Hunt: Madam, the Court will not order you committed until the fine is paid.

FOOTNOTES:
[1.] From A Patroit’s Handbook (2003): songs, poems, stories, and speeches celebrating the land we love, selected and introduced by Caroline Kennedy. [2.] On November 26 2017, the trial of Miss Susan B. Anthony was reenacted at the James T. Foley U.S. Courthouse in Albany New York. Starting time was 6pm, and it was hosted by the Federal Court Bar Association of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York.

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WHAT HE SAID

Ray Manzarek

UNIVERSITY TOWN RECIPIENT

⇞ CITY OF STUDENTS

Coimbra, a city in northern Portugal, is the see of a bishop, the capital of a province, and a center of learning. In 2013, UNESCO designated the University of Comibra as a University Town Recipient for its World Heritage Sites, “… an integrated university city, w/ a specific urban typology, as well as its own ceremonial and cultural traditions.” The property consists of two areas: a hilltop complex of buildings, University Hill , and a series of scattered structures which all played a part in the university’s history. There is a 12th century Augustinian monastery which was the first school, and the original library.	The Inquisition swept into Portugal in 1567, and Coimbra was one of the three local centers tasked to conduct it. Outlasting these strictures, the university bounced back, w/ strengthened statutes, a reorganized syllabus of studies, greater emphasis on education in the vernacular, and the re-establishment of freedom of research. The old castle on the hilltop was finally pulled down to make way for new buildings. A seal was then struck, a praxe, consisting of a spoon (symbol of punishment), scissors (symbol of unruliness), and a stick (symbol of self-defense).

Coimbra, a city in northern Portugal, is the see of a bishop, the capital of a province, and a center of learning. In 2013, UNESCO designated the University of Comibra as a University Town Recipient for its World Heritage Sites, “… an integrated university city, w/ a specific urban typology, as well as its own ceremonial and cultural traditions.”

University of Coimbra

Founded in 1290, the University of Coimbra is the second oldest continuous institution of higher learning in Europe (the University of Paris is older), and the first university town in the world. In this northern Portuguese city, a world treasure become sited inside a national treasure, the school moved into a former royal palace on the summit of the hill, and grew to become a gathering spot for academics, writers, artists, who nicknamed this the Lusitanian Athens, ‘Lusa Atenas’.

⇞ CAMPUS

An early champion of the new science of circumnavigation, an observatory was built to make spatial sense of the stars. Investitures and major events take place in the ‘Sala Grande dos Actos,‘ below portraits of kings and queens. A cathedral, already there when the university arrived, was gifted by Jesuits. The throne room is now used for PhD candidate examinations, and nothing else. The four rooms of the ‘Museu de Arte Sacra’ contain, among holy habits and chalices, books of early sacred music. There is a museum of natural history. A colonnaded walkway by the grand patio was added in the 18th century, the ‘Via Latina.’ The campus chapel, ‘Capela de Sao Miguel’, means that no student need run downhill to another one. A Botanical Garden blossomed in 1772, that delightful Victorian experiment of Eden on earth, sprouting wherever colonialism circled. Patio das Escolas Main gathering spot on campus, w/ its unparalleled vista view, the Great Courtyard, makes of the patio paving a virtual flying carpet, attitude mostly due to altitude.	The Bell Tower allows for vista views under cramped quarters, and can be seen from most anywhere in the city. The best known of its three bells is the goat (‘a cabra’), summoning generations to their studies since 1733. There are five faculties (‘theologia’, ‘direito’, ‘medicina’, ‘mathematica’, ‘philosophia’) w/ disciplines in judicial and European court systems, interdisciplinary nuclear science, and the arts. (The university had begun by teaching law, rhetoric, mathematics, theology, medicine, grammar and Greek.) The teaching staff consisits of some 70 professors and lecturers. Semester is from autumn to the start of summer, when two months of exams take place. The ordinary degree resulting in the title ‘licenciado’ lasts five years. The degree of ‘doutor’ takes another year and another examination. Medical students study eight years. The university has a digital repositorium inside a tech park involved in research and incubation. There is a repository for the project April 25, documenting the toppling of a dictatorship. Auxiliaries of the city-wide university system take on citizen practices such as sports, theater, and botany and preservation; there are several kindergartens and nurseries under its wing.

An early champion of the new science of circumnavigation, an observatory was built to make spatial sense of the stars.

⇞ LIBRARY

When the university outgrew the original city library, a second one was built in the 18th century, on University Hill, the ‘Biblioteca Joanina’, the oldest university library in continuous use in the world, and housed in three large and resplendent Baroque rooms w/ painted ceilings. The first room has a light green palette, the second a darker green, and the third room has a “… shade like that of orange Niger leather”; rich in gilt and exotic wood, lined w/ 300,000 volumes in galleries runing around the walls, incl. arguably the most valuable collection of Bibles in the world.	Main library on campus also acts as a zoo: in the wings there live a colony of bats, eating the grubs that eat its pages. There are unpublished manuscripts of Domenico Scarlatti, thought lost but rediscovered in the 20th century, because they were incorrectly catalogued. By the front door, a passageway can take one down to the river, the ‘Palacios Confusos’, by a series of steps posing as alleys, past houses of different styles and years.

When the university outgrew the original city library, a second one was built in the 18th century, on University Hill, the ‘Biblioteca Joanina’, the oldest university library in continuous use in the world, and housed in three large and resplendent Baroque rooms w/ painted ceilings.

⇞ STUDENT BODY

The student body numbers about 25,000, and the dress code is a black Prince Albert coat, worn w/ black trousers, black cape batina, black dress tie; generally students go bareheaded. A military hospital happens to be located nearby, because. Freshmen may not be on the street after the bell has rung at 6pm, on penalty of being shaved bald, if caught. Another form of punishment is to measure the long bridge over the Modego w/ a match, and it must be done w/ meticulous accuracy. Even a good and sinless freshman must be prepared to run errands whenever required to do so by a sophomore or junior, but he may be “protected,” and the errand countermanded, by a friendly senior (‘quartanista’). In turn a sophomore and a junior are known as a semi-harlot (‘mejo prostituo / prostituta’) and a total harlot (‘total prostituo / prostituta’) respectively.	These ‘estudantes’ make up about a third of the town’s inhabitants. Their graduation ceremonies take place in May. It’s then that a localized form of ‘fado’ is sung, by male students only, and only on the steps of the old cathedral when 10pm comes around, w/ lyrics more intellectual and romantic than the genre asks for, love songs tuned to the passions and sentiments of the students, who perfume the air w/ their lamentations until dawn. Fado ‘Ali, o lirio do scelestes vales, tendosen fim, terão a seu começo, para não mais findar, nossos amores.’ (Yonder, lily of celestial valleys, your end shall be their beginning, our loves ne’er more to perish.) — Antero de Quental

The student body numbers about 25,000, and the dress code is a black Prince Albert coat, worn w/ black trousers, black cape batina, black dress tie; generally students go bareheaded. A military hospital happens to be located nearby, because.

⇞ STUDENT REPUBLICS

In the mid-1950s there were eleven “republics” or student organizations, active in the university. One of them is ‘Pra-kys-tao‘ (Here We Are), a fraternity of ten students for the mutual benefit of themselves and their always-slender budgets, and to satisfy wants such as traditional evenings of wine and shrimps in town. Membership was open, upon unanimous favorable vote, to students of any race, color, religion or political creed except, during that period, communism. In the most pratical way, the student who had been a member longest is automatically president. Using a rotation system, two students, followed by two more then two more, serve as executive officers for fifteen days. They run the republic and must explain and justify all outlays of money, and a debate on this topic may be opened at any time, all decisions being made by majority vote, and to be taken at the dinner table. Freshmen may not vote on money matters but on anything else. This particular republic had only 13 electric light bulbs for 15 rooms, incl. the dining room, kitchen and hallway. Pin-up girls papered over every wallspace, the harem of the eye (‘Harem do Olho’). One wall had graffiti: “Artillery Exported to Pra-kys-tao for the Protection of the Marshall Plan.”	Certain campus traditions take place to mark the academic seasons, involving parades through the city, each rife w/ its own occult rituals. The noisy Latada - Festa das Latas (celebration of end of class), and the older Queima das Fitas (burning of the ribbons), which goes on for eight days, involving light blue ribbons for the Sciences, dark blue for Letters, yellow for Medicine and purple for Pharmacy. Rua de Quebra-Costas Arguably the steepest route to the academic world in the world, aka Backbreak Street.

In the mid-1950s there were eleven “republics” or student organizations, active in the university.

⇞ CITY OF CULTURE

The original footprint of Coimbra has spilled downhil, and locals distinguish between the older Upper Town and the Lower Town. Coimbra Upper Town surrounded by Lower Town and the banks of the Mondego. The area hugging the Modego river is Cicade Baixa, downtown, where commerce happens amid Romanesque, early Baroque, Rococco, and Gothic structures, sporting a Moorish patina and sucumbing to the nautical notions of the Manueline style. A Portuguese queen is buried downtown, in a silver tomb housed in the convent of ‘Santa Ciara-a-Nova’. The Fountain of Life, waiting for you since the 14th century, is behind the church.	Unto the 1920s Coimbra was all but inaccessible by road to travellers, not to mention damp beds and dangerous foods. Sacheverell Sitwell visited in the 1950s: “… At Coimbra not only has there been wanton and appalling destruction of what was old and beautiful, but new University buildings have been erected which are really shaming in their blatant ugliness. The sculptures, particularly, are of an insulting hideousness. It is a dreadful thought that they are dedicated to the youth of Portugal, and that they will be a memorial to the government of so wise and great a European as Dr Salazar. … Not that there is anything in the least Portuguese about these abominable buildings of Coimbra. But it is sad, too, because, Coimbra being the university town of Portugal, so many Portuguese retain memories of Coimbra and an affection for it all through their lives, and those memories will now forever more be tinged and coloured by the ugly buildings. There is no possible excuse for hideousness upon this scale; but it might, at least, be practised elsewhere and not in Coimbra.”

The original footprint of Coimbra has spilled downhil, and locals distinguish between the older Upper Town and the Lower Town.

Luis de Camões

⇞ The Lusiads

Arguably the most famous student of the University of Coimbra is Luis de Camões, who (might have been) born in Coimbra in 1524 but known to have passed age 56 in Lisbon. His fame is partly based on supreme mastery of the Portuguese language and is its lyric poet, and his most famous work is a tour de force recounting the tragedy of Indes de Castro of Spain and her love Prince Pedro of Portugal, and her murder by jealous courtiers. She was killed by a fountain in the Garden of Tears (‘Quinta das Lagrimas’) in the convent of Santa Clara; where pond lilies are have been known to flower red. A stone slab by the fountain bears the following verse by Luís Vaz de Camões (Lusiads, Ill, 135), here in a translation by Lord Byron:	Tomb of Luis de Camões in Lisbon. Mondego’s Daughter-Nymphs the death obscure Wept many a year, with wails of woe exceeding; And for long memory changed to fountain pure, The floods of grief their eyes were ever feeding; The name they gave it, which doth still endure, Revived Ignez, whose murdered love lies bleeding. See yon fresh fountain flowing ‘mid the flowers, Tears are its water, and its name ‘Amores.’

Manueline Style

⇞ Maritime Motif

Flush w/ wealth from the Spice Trade, Portugal experienced a brief period where money became as abundant as sea water, and lavished it on an indigenous artform. The discoveries brought back by the sea voyages Pedro Alvares Cabral and Vasco da Gama aroused the already composite Portuguese style, toying w/ Flemish, Italian and Late Gothic elements. The newly rich gathered the bounties of the sea trade and repurposed them an architectural vocabulary in churches, monasteries, palaces and castles, and a maritime motif applied to furniture, sculpture and painting. The style was given a name in 1842 by the Viscount Francisco Adolfo de Varnhagen, in his description of the Jeronimos Monastery. The characteristics of this Manueline style, named for King Manuel I (1495-1521), resulted in ornate portals, bevelled crenellations, conical pinnacles, and eight-sided capitals.	There were semicircular arches on doors and windows, columns of carved rope, and a wanton disregard for symmetry. There were symbols of Christianity and latter-day Templars, botanical flourishes, artifacts found on ships, all garlanded by Islamic filigree work and Moorish traceries. Davy Jones’s locker Detail of the Triton Gate, standing guard in Sintra. Nautical wonders like seaweed and barnacles added to the dense ornamentation. More.

Flush w/ wealth from the Spice Trade, Portugal experienced a brief period where money became as abundant as sea water, and lavished it on an indigenous artform.

Aeminium

⇞ Roman Footprint

The most important remains in Coimbra is the an underground gallery of arches that once supported the Roman forum, and brimming w/ Visigothic artifacts, the Cryptoporticus da Anemium. For protection a tower, the Montemor, was built closer to the sea, allowing guarded access to estuary of the oxbow shape of the Mondego river, as well as nearby vineyards.	The original footprint of the city of Coimbra can be seen in map, top right. When Gaius Sevius Lupus was sent from Rome, he followed the common cruciform rule of Roman towns and cities, locating the cardo maximus where it crosses the decumanus maximus, and where this cruciform intersected he built the forum. This was a outpost fort, on the spurs of a hilly range, the Serra de Lavrao. An aqueduct was a standard feature, and it ruins can still be found.

Sources

Street names

[ 3 ] Complete list of 2013 UNESCO World Heritage Sites’ New Inscribed Properties.

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HISTORIC CENTER RECIPIENT

Agadez, Niger

Starting point for a journey across the Sahara, taking in “ports of call” to Timbuktu, Ghat, then Ghadames, and finally Tripoli, on the shores of the Mediterranean. Seat of a Tuareg sultanate which was established in 1449. Occupied by the French since the early 1900s, and known of rebellion ever since. The Tuareg people are the original Canaanites from the Bible, inhabiting ancient Palestine and Phoenicia, and its lingua franca is the Hausa language, a subgroup of the Chadic languages group, and therefore a part of the Afroasiatic language family.	Started in the 1400s to serve as the south gateway into the Sahara, a desert town the Historic Centre of Agadez in in Niger is now designated as a Historic Center Recipient and a 2013 UNESCO World Heritage Site. It has founded to become a center of commerce for the trans-Saharan trade, and the 1500s the populace already numbered 30,000. In 1976, area mining for uranium allowed the local economy to established a school, the Ecole des Mines de l'Air.	The 2011 census counted a total of 124,324 people living in Agadez and the European language they speak is French. There is an international airport named after a Tuareg leader, Mano Dayak, but due to the ongoing Tuareg rebellion in the region, Agadez is unsafe for travel. A mosque made of clay, built in 1515, still stands. It was restored in 1814 and is the world’s tallest mud minaret, at 88.5-ft. Chinese scroll depicting the first camel to enter Cathay.

Starting point for a journey across the Sahara, taking in “ports of call” to Timbuktu, Ghat, then Ghadames, and finally Tripoli, on the shores of the Mediterranean.

In 1976, area mining for uranium allowed the local economy to established a school, the Ecole des Mines de l'Air.

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-| July 2019 |-

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

♣|Eric Bradner Abstracts •

♣|Reece Metzger 16 Hours Ahead •

♦|Judy Sisneros Serpentine Recruiting for Jesus

♠|Lori Schafer Larry Beyer | William Lanier •

♠|Laszlo Zauberer Abstracts •

♥|Angela Oates Ghosts of Route 66

♠|Carina Mui Winning Couplet •

♥|Kota Ezawa Mural •

♥|Randy Colosky Ellipses in the Key of Blue •

♠|Ruth Guston Untitled •

♦|Kevin Leung Fight •

♣|Seward Johnson Street sculpture •

♦|Satyajit Ray Movie Posters •

♦|Ruth Asawa (detail) •

✈¦ The Mission

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June 4 — July 62019

Step Up Gallery2015 J St, #101Sacramento

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⋮Captain America

⋮Booster Gold

⋮Atom

⋮Queen Bee

⋮Green Arrow

⋮Arsenal

⋮Nick Fury

⋮Captain Cold

⋮Mirror Master

⋮Trickster

⋮Zatara

⋮Fantastic Four

⋮Ancient One

⋮Black Knight

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⋮Pepper Potts

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⋮She-Hulk

⋮Blackhawk

⋮Hawkman

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⋮Green Lantern

⋮Sandman

⋮Professor X

⋮Multiple Man

⋮Teen Titans

⋮Duo Damsel

⋮Insect Queen

⋮Daredevil

⋮Question

⋮The Shield

⋮Ragman

⋮Firefly

⋮Inque

⋮Batwoman

⋮Harlequin

⋮Catwoman

⋮Toyman

⋮Prankster

⋮Mr Mxyzptlk

⋮Ghost Patrol

⋮Human Torch

⋮Aquaman

⋮Joker

⋮Green Hornet

⋮Silver

⋮Fighting American

⋮The Shadow

♣|Eric Bradner Abstracts •

♣|Reece Metzger 16 Hours Ahead •

♦|Judy Sisneros Serpentine Recruiting for Jesus

♠|Lori Schafer Larry Beyer | William Lanier •

♠|Laszlo Zauberer Abstracts •

♣|Eric Bradner

Abstracts

•

♣|Reece Metzger

16 Hours Ahead
•

♦|Judy Sisneros

Serpentine

Recruiting for Jesus

♠|Lori Schafer

Larry Beyer | William Lanier

•

♠|Laszlo Zauberer

Abstracts

•

♥|Angela Oates

Ghosts of Route 66

♠|Carina Mui

Winning Couplet
•

♥|Kota Ezawa

Mural
•

♥|Randy Colosky

Ellipses in the Key of Blue
•

♠|Ruth Guston

Untitled

•

♦|Kevin Leung

Fight

•

♣|Seward Johnson

Street sculpture

•

♦|Satyajit Ray

Movie Posters •

♦|Ruth Asawa

(detail) •

June 4 — July 6
2019

Step Up Gallery
2015 J St, #101
Sacramento

Info

• • •
• • •

⋮
Captain America

⋮
Booster Gold

⋮
Atom

⋮
Queen Bee

⋮
Green Arrow

⋮
Arsenal

⋮
Nick Fury

⋮
Captain Cold

⋮
Mirror Master

⋮
Trickster

⋮
Zatara

⋮
Fantastic Four

⋮
Ancient One

⋮
Black Knight

⋮
Iron Man

⋮
Pepper Potts

⋮
Avengers Mansion

⋮
She-Hulk

⋮
Blackhawk

⋮
Hawkman

⋮
Gentleman Ghost

⋮
Green Lantern

⋮
Sandman

⋮
Professor X

⋮
Multiple Man

⋮
Teen Titans

⋮
Duo Damsel

⋮
Insect Queen

⋮
Daredevil

⋮
Question

⋮
The Shield

⋮
Ragman

⋮
Firefly

⋮
Inque

⋮
Batwoman

⋮
Harlequin

⋮
Catwoman

⋮
Toyman

⋮
Prankster

⋮
Mr Mxyzptlk

⋮
Ghost Patrol

⋮
Human Torch

⋮
Aquaman

⋮
Joker

⋮
Green Hornet

⋮
Silver

⋮
Fighting American

⋮
The Shadow

♣|Eric Bradner

Abstracts

•

♣|Reece Metzger

16 Hours Ahead
•

♦|Judy Sisneros

Serpentine

Recruiting for Jesus

♠|Lori Schafer

Larry Beyer | William Lanier

•

♠|Laszlo Zauberer

Abstracts

•

♥|Angela Oates

Ghosts of Route 66

♠|Carina Mui

Winning Couplet
•

♥|Kota Ezawa

Mural
•

♥|Randy Colosky

Ellipses in the Key of Blue
•

♠|Ruth Guston

Untitled

•

♦|Kevin Leung

Fight

•

♣|Seward Johnson

Street sculpture

•

♦|Satyajit Ray

Movie Posters •

♦|Ruth Asawa

(detail) •