47 acres
This small
island is the largest plot of land in San Francisco Bay. From 1934 until 1963 it was fortified and served as a federal prison. It was also set up to hold military prisoners. No women were allowed.
—| Angel Island
1.2 sq mile
Now designated a state park, this
island in San Francisco Bay was once used by the U.S. government as an immigration station, for travelers choosing San Francisco as their port of call. In 1940 a fire destroyed the orginal administration building, and because of this operations moved back onshore. It is the second largest island in the Bay.
—| Nihonmachi
Japantown
One of the earliest pedestrian-only streets in San Francisco, is found where Buchanan btw. Post and Sutter becomes an outdoor mall. It can be found in a compact historic enclave, 23 acres, in the Western Addition, known as Nihonmachi but generally referred to as Japantown. Considered
one of the largest and oldest ethnic neighborhoods
in the United States. A stream of cobblestones runs down Buchanan Mall, pooling around two origami fountains by Ruth Asawa.
—| Rincon Hill
Clock Tower
What remains of
Rincon Hill is used as the western support of the Bay Bridge, and provide an onramp to it. It was once a navigation guide for ships entering the Golden Gate, and had some of the last cobble-stone streets in San Francisco; bits of it still show through on Rincon and Federal streets. The industrial-era Clock Tower building is now a condominium.
—| Mount Tamalpais
Muir Woods
Just north of the Golden Gate Bridge is an old growth coastal redwood
forest, protected as a national monument.
♫| Mission Bay
Mission Creek
There is a feeder creek beginning at the Mission Dolores that finds its way to Mission Bay. The final portion of this journey is the
Mission Creek Channel, surfacing at 7th Street and, after passing under two bridges, joins the Bay at McCovey Cove. Mission Creek hosts a community of houseboats, late of nearby Islais Creek when circumstances in the 1960s compelled an en masse relocation. Nearby development has altered the original; turned on the lights. Where once two Indian villages, Chutchui and Sitlintac, were situated on Mission Creek, there now is a climate-change study to create some kind of a large levee or else build a robust tidal barrier to protect this precious local resource, where egrets, herons and ducks hang.
—| SoMA
Sheriff of Sixth Street
By noon on March 8 2013, as a small crowd gathered outside the new substation, an unassuming Mayor Ed Lee strolled down the sidewalk, shaking hands until reaching the podium and announcing the arrival of a police presence on the first stretch of Sixth Street, the most San Francisco
block south of Market, decked out in all its Dickensian duds.
After a speech, the mayor handed the mic to District Attorney George Gascon, Police Chief Greg Suhr, District 6 Supervisor Jane Kim, a local resident, and finally to Zack Stender, co-owner of nearby Huckleberry Bicycles, a new business which had moved into a neighborhood renowned for its flatness among the surrounding topography. Within the first week, surveillance footage was released showing a wrestle-to-the-ground arrest on the block by law enforcement, with broadcast and favorable commentary on the evening news.
—| Union Square
Neon Night
The shopping, hotel, and theater
district
of San Francisco has long been a fan of neon.
Alphaville
A scifi film directed by Jean-Luc Godard about a society in space of collectivized citizens.
ԃ|1920
Bulletin Dada No.6 Featuring: Francis Picabia, Georges Ribemont Dessaignes, Andre Breton, Paul Dermee, Paul Eluard, Louis Aragon, Tristan Tzara.
Ԋ|2016
Mr and Mrs Dursley …
Meredith McCardle hand painted the first page of Harry Potter on her wall.
Mr and Mrs Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfecty normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you'd expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn't hold w/ such nonsense. ¶ Mr Dursley wasthe director of a firm called Grunnings, which made drills. He was a big, beefy man w/ hardly any neck, although he did have a very large mustache. Mrs Dursley was thin and blonde and had nearly twice the usual amount of neck, which came in very useful as she spent so much of her time craning over garden fences, spying on the neighbors. The Dursleys had a small son called Dudley and in their opinion there was no finer boy anywhere. ¶ The Dursleys had everything they wanted, but they also had a secret, and their greatest fear was that somebody would discover it.They didn't think they could bear it if anyone found out about the Potters. Mrs Potter was Mrs Dursley's sister, but they hadn't met for several years; in fact, Mrs Durlsey pretended she didn't have a sister, because her sister and her good-for-nothing husband were as unDursleyish as it was possible to be. The Dursleys shuddered to think what the neighbors would say if the Potters arrived in the street. The Dursleys knew that the Potters had a small son, too, but they had never even seen him. This boy was another good reason for keeping the Potters away; they didn't want Dudley mixing w/ a child like that.
ѕ|1905
SWP
Logo for a paint and coating manufacturing company.
™|1977
CCCP
Cyrillic transliteration of USSR helps light the way on Novy Arbat Avenue, Moscow.
т|1976
Taxicab Driver's License
Robert De Niro's movie prop for Taxi Driver.
Mirror Mobile
The Mirror Master's laboratory on wheels.
™|
Captain America
When Captain America punched Hitler in his debut, the city of New York awarded him w/ a spanking red automobile, which he promptly drove cross country. Later on, he bought a white 1958 Corvette to make up for the lost years. These days, when not in costume, Steve Rogers' getabout tends to be this blue convertible, repeatedly stolen then returned because it was a badge of honor to always leave the keys in the ignition.
™|
Tony Stark
A sample page from the mid-century portfolio of the industrial billionaire who fights crime as Iron Man. They are 1959 Firebird, 1958 Nucleon, 1949 Tabot Iago, and a Norman Bel Geddes prototype.
™|
Zatara the Magician
The 1959 Lincoln towncar comes w/ a sturdy trunk so that props from his magic acts can all fit.
Whatever hour you woke there was a door shutting. From room to room they went, hand in hand, lifting here, opening there, making sure — a ghostly couple.
“Here we left it,” she said. And he added, “Oh, but here too!”
“It’s upstairs,”
she murmured. “And in the garden,”
he whispered. “Quietly,”
they said, “or we shall wake them.”
But it wasn’t that you woke us. Oh, no. “They’re looking for it; they’re drawing the curtain,” one might say, and so read on a page or two. “Now they’ve found it,” one would be certain, stopping the pencil on the margin. And then, tired of reading, one might rise and see for oneself, the hosue all empty, the doors standing open, only the wood pigeons bubbling with content and the hum of the threshing machine sounding from the farm. “What did I come in here for? What did I want to find?” My hands were empty. “Perhaps it’s upstairs then?” The apples were in the loft. And so down again, the garden still as ever, only the book had slipped into the grass.
But they had found it in the drawing-room. Not that one could ever see them. The window panes reflected apples, reflected roses; all the leaves were green in the glass. If they moved in the drawing-room, the apple only turned its yellow side. Yet, the moment after, if the door was opened, spread about the floor, hung upon the walls, pendant from the ceiling — what? My hands were empty. The shadow of a thrush crossed the carpet; from the deepest wells of silence the wood pigeon drew its bubble of sound. “Safe, safe, safe,” the pulse of the house beat softly. “The treasure buried; the room …” the pulse stopped short. Oh, was that the buried treasure?
A moment later the light had faded. Out in the garden then? But the trees spun darkness for a wandering beam of sun. So fine, so rare, cooly sunk beneath the surface the beam I sought always burnt behind the glass. Death was the glass; death was between us; coming to the woman first, hundreds of years ago, leaving the house, sealing all the windows; the rooms were darkened. He left it, left her, went North, went East, saw the stars turned in the Southern sky; sought the house, found it dropped beneath the Downs. “Safe, safe, safe,” the pulse of the house beat gladly. “The treasure yours.”
The wind roars up the avenue. Trees stoop and bend this way and that. Moonbeams splash and spill wildly in the rain. But the beam of the lamp falls straight from the window. The candle burns stiff and still. Wandering though the house, opening the windows, whispering not to wake us, the ghostly couple seek their joy.
“Here we slept,”
she says. And he adds, “Kisses without number.” “Waking in the morning—”
“Silver between the trees—”
“Upstairs—”
“In the garden—”
“When summer came—”
“In the winter snowtime—”
The doors go shutting far in the distance, gently knocking like the pulse of a heart.
Nearer they come; cease at the doorway. The wind falls, the rain slides silver down the glass. Our eyes darken; we hear no steps beside us; we see no lady spread her ghostly cloak. His hands shield the lantern. “Look,”
he breathes. “Sound asleep. Love upon their lips.”
Stooping, holding their silver lamp above us, long they look and deeply. Long they pause. The wind drives straightly; the flame stoops slightly. Wild beams of moonlight cross both floor and wall, and, meeting, stain the faces bent; the faces pondering; the faces that search the sleepers and seek their hidden joy.
“Safe, safe, safe,” the heart of the house beats proudly. “Long years—” he sighs. “Again you found me.” “Here,” she murmurs, “sleeping; in the garden reading; laughing, rolling apples in the loft. Here we left our treasure—” Stooping, their light lifts the lids upon my eyes. “Safe! safe! safe!” the pulse of the house beats widly. Waking, I cry “Oh, is this your buried treasure? The light in the heart.” [1921]
47 acres
This small
island is the largest plot of land in San Francisco Bay. From 1934 until 1963 it was fortified and served as a federal prison. It was also set up to hold military prisoners. No women were allowed.
—| Angel Island
1.2 sq mile
Now designated a state park, this
island in San Francisco Bay was once used by the U.S. government as an immigration station, for travelers choosing San Francisco as their port of call. In 1940 a fire destroyed the orginal administration building, and because of this operations moved back onshore. It is the second largest island in the Bay.
—| Nihonmachi
Japantown
One of the earliest pedestrian-only streets in San Francisco, is found where Buchanan btw. Post and Sutter becomes an outdoor mall. It can be found in a compact historic enclave, 23 acres, in the Western Addition, known as Nihonmachi but generally referred to as Japantown. Considered
one of the largest and oldest ethnic neighborhoods
in the United States. A stream of cobblestones runs down Buchanan Mall, pooling around two origami fountains by Ruth Asawa.
—| Rincon Hill
Clock Tower
What remains of
Rincon Hill is used as the western support of the Bay Bridge, and provide an onramp to it. It was once a navigation guide for ships entering the Golden Gate, and had some of the last cobble-stone streets in San Francisco; bits of it still show through on Rincon and Federal streets. The industrial-era Clock Tower building is now a condominium.
—| Mount Tamalpais
Muir Woods
Just north of the Golden Gate Bridge is an old growth coastal redwood
forest, protected as a national monument.
♫| Mission Bay
Mission Creek
There is a feeder creek beginning at the Mission Dolores that finds its way to Mission Bay. The final portion of this journey is the
Mission Creek Channel, surfacing at 7th Street and, after passing under two bridges, joins the Bay at McCovey Cove. Mission Creek hosts a community of houseboats, late of nearby Islais Creek when circumstances in the 1960s compelled an en masse relocation. Nearby development has altered the original; turned on the lights. Where once two Indian villages, Chutchui and Sitlintac, were situated on Mission Creek, there now is a climate-change study to create some kind of a large levee or else build a robust tidal barrier to protect this precious local resource, where egrets, herons and ducks hang.
—| SoMA
Sheriff of Sixth Street
By noon on March 8 2013, as a small crowd gathered outside the new substation, an unassuming Mayor Ed Lee strolled down the sidewalk, shaking hands until reaching the podium and announcing the arrival of a police presence on the first stretch of Sixth Street, the most San Francisco
block south of Market, decked out in all its Dickensian duds.
After a speech, the mayor handed the mic to District Attorney George Gascon, Police Chief Greg Suhr, District 6 Supervisor Jane Kim, a local resident, and finally to Zack Stender, co-owner of nearby Huckleberry Bicycles, a new business which had moved into a neighborhood renowned for its flatness among the surrounding topography. Within the first week, surveillance footage was released showing a wrestle-to-the-ground arrest on the block by law enforcement, with broadcast and favorable commentary on the evening news.
—| Union Square
Neon Night
The shopping, hotel, and theater
district
of San Francisco has long been a fan of neon.
During that summer, when Jane and John drove cross country to San Francisco, a riot of sorts broke out in a drinking establishment by Ocean Beach. They happend to be driving by when news crew arrived and so ended up becoming part of local history on their first night in town. Spectators were interviewed and Jane is in the broadcast: Leather skirt and sci-fi hairdo, wearing boots that she finally lost down in the Salinas Valley where John’s band played and she had taken them off for only “ ... a new york minute I swear,” but all this happened much later.
¶
A SONG WAS PENNED to commemorate that first night. John: “ ... by coincidence Jane and I were driving by and saw the whole thing. She even got interviewed for the local news. I forget what her answer was but it became the punchline. Anyway, I wrote this song the next day. It’s our second song, never performed it live.” From a newspaper clipping dated July 17, 1973: “A melee broke out inside a tavern by the beach, a known hangout spot for musicians. It started around 1:30 a.m. just when last call was announced. Four squad cars converged within five minutes due to the seriousness of the situation; the police spokesperson would not elaborate further.”
¶
IN ALL NINETEEN WERE TAKEN INTO CUSTODY, including four females; no conventional weapon was found on anyone. The account in next day's paper managed to get every name spelled wrong but had an accurate head count. Fourteen were booked and released the next morning, the others to be arraigned over unspecified charges. Within a week the reporter was quietly let go. He went on to write a novel, Fact Into Fiction, eventually moved and was glimpsed late in life living next to the Straits of Hercules.
¶
ACCORDING TO THE BARTENDER’s subsequent testimony, the riot appears to have been started over a misunderstanding: a special walking cane supposedly stolen from the person of W.S. Burroughs the day before (he was in town for a reading and his cane did go missing) was displayed prominently behind the bar.
Bullets & Bracelets
With all her strength... "My only chance--" The mighty amazon squeezes her wrists... "Is to contract my wrists, until my bracelets are loose." To the dismay of the hoodlum leaders, their target parries bullets w/ lighting speed!
WHAT HE SAID
Invisible Typeface
A documentary by filmmaker Gary Hurstwit,
Helvetica the Documentary
(2007) posits this “unseen” naming-convention as the most user-friendly of fonts.
ALL AERONAUTS GREAT AND SMALL
Final Frontiers
Space is fairly crowded these days, and Earth space agencies are racing to get to the choice spots first. From mapping the dark side of the moon to landing on an asteroid in the Kuiper Belt, the age of discovery proceeds apace.
Spaceflight is space science concerned w/ ballistic flight into outer space, then through it. Early space agencies tackled this fundamental step, and today's spacecrafts are capable of space voyages and orbits of other space objects, and have hoisted 536 humans into space, twelve of whom walked on the Moon.
Other spacecrafts, satellites that orbit worlds including ours, have reached critical mass and the smallsats get prefixes like mini-, micro-, nano-, and pico-.
Joint plants to hoist a heavy telescope into orbit around the Earth which, in tandem w/ mobile systems roaming the star systems, promises insights to invent the future of space.
••°•••⊙•••✦☀☆
Established in 1902, wholly owned by the government, the
Roscosmos
State Corporation for Space Activities develops and operates spaceflights, space science and a cosmonatuics program for the Russian Federation. It also arranges space tourism for fare-paying passengers to the International Space Station and, as of 2009, six have done so.
A mission to Mars in 2012 failed, yet a robotic mission to visit a Martian moon is still in the works. In the future will be a spacecraft landing on Venus, and a Moon orbiter equipped w/ “penetrators.”
Headquartered in and around Moscow, the agency is successor to a space program that spanned 1931 to 1991, responsible for the first satellite, the first spacesuit, the first human spaceflight module, the first space rover, the first space station. In 1961, cosmonaut and pilot Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space. Two years later, cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space.
★•••·•⊗✶••☼••°
Sustaining its fleet of aircraft at the end of World War II, in 1962 Canada became the third country to launch a satellite into space. In 1990, the government formed the
Canadian Space Agency
, reporting to the minister of innovation, science, and economic development, headquartered in Quebec, w/ a mission to apply space knowledge for the benefit of Canadians and humanity.
When three separate space companies merged in 2003 to form the
Japan Aerospace Exploratory Agency
, it brought under one roof expertise in x-ray astronomy, radio-astronomy, and the magnetosphere. In 2012 it became a part of government oversight and a program to militarize space. Famous for landing a probe in 2018 on an asteroid in the Kuiper Belt.
••☀•☆••.•°•✈✪•
“… operational space application systems …”
Eastablished in 1975 and headquartered in Paris, the
European Space Agency
has 22 member states collaborating on space exploration projects, convened as a consequence of European scientist leaving after World War II, w/ a mission “to provide for, and to promote, for exclusively peaceful purposes, cooperation among the European States in space research and technology and their space applications, with a view to their being used for scientific purposes and for operational space applications systems.”
The agency's major spaceport is in French Guiana, where it conducts human spaceflight, launches Earth observation satellites, and flies spacecraft to the beyond.
⊙•◆★•☁✦·☼✪•✶·
In 1971, the United Kingdom became the sixth nation to launch a satellite, and by 1985, the British National Space Center. Replaced in 2010 by the
UK Space Agency
, and made an executive agency of the government, responsible for its civil space program, and its representative in all space negotiations.
The agency is based in Wiltshire, in the former home of its predecessor. It is currently making plans for its first spaceport, and studying ways to clean-up space debris, an emerging field.
Formed in 2010 to be a government agency, the
South African National Space Agency
's satellites monitor Africa for flooding, fires, and the environment, andhosts the only space weather regional warning center for the continent.
It's mission is to nurture partnerships and promote industrial development of space, to stimulate interest in space science, to deliver space-related services and products to South Africa and the region.
•✦★•‥••☆•‥•★⊙✶
In 1969, the
Indian Space Research Organization
was created by the government, and headquartered in Bangalore. It is now the sixth largest space agency, developing and delivering satellite tools for home consumption, such as dedicated distance education, telemedicine, cartography, disaster management, weather forecasting, broadcasting.
Begun by the military in 1961, the space program in Brazil passed in civilian control in 1994, and became the
Brazilian Space Agency
, based in two locations: a spaceport and a rocket launch, which happens to be the closest to the equator of all launch bases, and the most ideal for a launch of a geosynchronous satellite.
✪•·••••⚫☆·•✦••
China adminsters four departments handling all-things space: systems engineering, general planning, space science, and foreign affairs. Together they oversee space and lunar exploration programs. They do so at the behest of the eighth national people’s congress, which established a commission of science, technology and industry for national defense, and formed the
China National Space Administration
in 1993, headquartered in Beijing, to develop a national space program.
The agency runs this program as a national industry having its own policy and enforcement rules, and has sent eleven of its citizens, taikonauts, into space. Its logo depicts a human surrounded by escape velocity thresholds yet standing above these rings, to emphasize humanity's capability to explore.
••••·✶✶⊙•·•••✦
In 1907, Germany was interested enough in space to set up an aerodynamic experimental station. It soon had company, among them a society, an association, an institution, and a consortium. Their effort coalesced in 1997 to become a government entity responsible for matters pertaining to energies, transportation, as well as their roles in aerospace, the
German Aerospace Center
, headquartered in Cologne, w/ fourteen satellite facilities working on the use of hydrogen as an energy carrier, building a suborbital spaceplane, and doing research into traffic congestion as well as research on emissions, among other projects.
France's space agency, founded in 1961 as "a public administration w/ industrial and commerical purpose," the
National Centre for Space Studies
is headquarterd in Paris, and reports to the ministries of defence and research. A participant in search-&-rescue missions, it is currently planning a trip to Venus, and is a pioneer in space medicine when the first French astronaut, Jean-Loup Chrétien, came home in 1982.
It is the third space agency to go into space, w/ a mission to secure and defend, and to transpose civilization to space.
The go-to space agency for all things UFO, w/ a collection going back to 1954.
•·★••☆.•·••☼••
The
Italian Space Agency, founded in 1988 and headquartered in Rome, was one of the earliest countries to do research on rocketry and space propulsion. In 1914, a paper to achieve this was published by Giulio Costanzi, and the race to space was on. If you want to know about gamma rays, go to Italy, a founder of the precursor to the European Space Agency, w/ plans for a future spaceport.
Established in 1991 to report to the minstry of education, the
Romanian Space Agency coordinates the natinonal space technology research program and related activities, incl. the promotion of space science in schools.
There is a heritage in Romania of firms specializing in flight and its pedigree is impressive. Hermann Oberth is one of the founding fathers of rocketry, and the pioneer of rocket propulsion, Conrad Haas, who wrote: “But my advice is for more peace and no war, leaving the rifles calmly in storage, so the bullet is not fired, the gunpowder is not burned or wet, so the prince keeps his money, the arsenal master his life; that is the advice Conrad Haas gives.” Conrad Haas was born in 1509.
·••✶••⊗••••☀·
Established in 2002 as a national space program, the
Algerian Space Agency
oversees four operations: techniques, applications, satellites, telecommunications, and brings space technologies to any discussions on sustainable development in Africa, which it monitors for natural disasters.
Having interest in space since the 1960s, legislation to create a
Philippine Space Agency
has support w/ the government, already partnering w/ other Asian countries to launch a 50-microsatellite network, and space science promoted in classrooms.
☆•••••✦☀‥••☆•.
In 1946, the government set up a national advisory committee for aeronautics to observe rocket experiments, which eventually became rocket-powered aircraft programs, then manned spacecraft programs.
Formed in 1958 by the US federal government, NASA, the
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
is an independent entity responsible for the civilian space program, as well as aeronautics and aerospace research.
This was followed by a two-man spacecraft module program, which led NASA to become the first space agency to land a man, Neil Armstrong, on the Moon, in 1969.
To prepare Armstrong and the other eleven who landed on the Moon, a ten-mission pre-event, beginning in 1962, had two-man spacecrafts orbiting the Earth and engaging in extravehicular activities such as space docking and space rendezvous. Just as important, it conducted observations to gather medical data on the prolonged effects of weightless on humans (fourteen days).
Data from its triumphal Moon mission took on the need for a laboratory in space, and by 1965 Skylab was in orbit.
The heavy milestone was acheiving low Earth orbit, one that occurs every 90 hours, through the lives of fourteen astronauts.
NASA has 166 manned space missions under its belt, and in 2018 it launched a survey satellite to transit exoplanets, worlds circling other stars, and will send a robotic spacecraft to probe the outer corona of the Sun.
Missions are planned to Mars and Europa, a flyby of a Kuiper Belt object, samplings from a future asteroid landing, even one or two space telescopes.
A directive back in 2017 tasked NASA w/ taking humans near to or else onto the surface of mars by 2033.
In 1998, five agencies from Canada, Europe, Japan, Russia, and the United States, came together to launch the International Space Station, w/ an agreement to maintain long-term international co-operation, “on the basis of genuine partnership,” and to build a manned station in outer space capable of personnel housing “for peacful purposes.” Scheduled rendezvous are performed for crew rotation and to replenish supplies. 2018 marks 20 years since the Zarya module lifted off from Kazakhstan, inaugurating a milestone of cooperation in space.
There are 58 space agencies, three on the equator. Expect three more from Australia, Sri Lanka, and Philippines.
They send up satellites, conduct human spaceflight, and launch extraterrestrial spacecrafts. Since 1958, the United Nations has maintained an office of outer space affairs in Vienna, tasked w/ a mandate to promote peaceful uses of outer space.
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.
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.
⇞
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.
⇞
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.
Rua de Quebra-Costas
Arguably the steepest route to the academic world in the world, aka Backbreak Street.
⇞
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.”
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.
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
[ 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.
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.
Alphaville
A scifi
movie directed by Jean-Luc Godard about a society of collectivized citizens.
ԃ|1920
Bulletin Dada No.6 Featuring: Francis Picabia, Georges Ribemont Dessaignes, Andre Breton, Paul Dermee, Paul Eluard, Louis Aragon, Tristan Tzara, practioneers of a 20th century
art form.
Ԋ|2016
Mr and Mrs Dursley …
Meredith McCardle hand painted the first page of Harry Potter on her wall.
Mr and Mrs Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfecty normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you'd expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn't hold w/ such nonsense. ¶ Mr Dursley wasthe director of a firm called Grunnings, which made drills. He was a big, beefy man w/ hardly any neck, although he did have a very large mustache. Mrs Dursley was thin and blonde and had nearly twice the usual amount of neck, which came in very useful as she spent so much of her time craning over garden fences, spying on the neighbors. The Dursleys had a small son called Dudley and in their opinion there was no finer boy anywhere. ¶ The Dursleys had everything they wanted, but they also had a secret, and their greatest fear was that somebody would discover it.They didn't think they could bear it if anyone found out about the Potters. Mrs Potter was Mrs Dursley's sister, but they hadn't met for several years; in fact, Mrs Durlsey pretended she didn't have a sister, because her sister and her good-for-nothing husband were as unDursleyish as it was possible to be. The Dursleys shuddered to think what the neighbors would say if the Potters arrived in the street. The Dursleys knew that the Potters had a small son, too, but they had never even seen him. This boy was another good reason for keeping the Potters away; they didn't want Dudley mixing w/ a
child like that.
™|1977
CCCP
Cyrillic transliteration of USSR helps
lights the way on Novy Arbat Avenue, Moscow.
т|1976
Taxicab Driver's License
Robert De Niro“s
movie prop for Taxi Driver.
и|1956
Big Brother …
Poster used in the 1956
movie adaptation of George Orwell's 1984. Edmond O'Brien and Jan Sterling are the lovers, w/ Michael Redgrave, David Kossoff, Mervyn Johns, Donald Pleasence, Carol Wolveridge, Ernest Clark, Patrick Allen, Michael Ripper, Ewen Solon, Kenneth Griffith.
ѕ|1905
SWP
Logo for a paint and coating manufacturing
company.
Fantastic Voyage
(1966) Scifi movie about a high-tech medical team treating a blood clot - from the inside. After a formula for unlimited miniaturization is applied,
doctors Stephen Boyd, Raquel Welch, Edmond O'Brien, Donald Pleasence, and Arthur Kennedy are then injected right into the comatose patient to perform the procedure.
Directed by Richard Fleischer.
Written by Harry Kleiner, based on a story by Otto Klement and Jerome Bixby, which is about an adventure set in the 19th century. Later on, Isaac Asimov was contracted to do a novelization of the screenplay.
• DOUBLE FEATURE: This Island Earth (1955)
m|“It is going to be a happy time in England, this year in the future.”
Privilege
(1967)
Set in the near future, when a much-loved celebrity is micro-managed to breakdown by his handlers in government and church. These include a manager, a public relations rep, a record company executive. Malcolm Rogers and Michael Barrington play members of the clergy.
| • |
Paul Jones plays the idol as internee, who sings "I've Been a Bad, Bad, Boy" and "Free Me", and whose media-saturated fame is then used to flog sundry product brands for his sponsors. Jean Shrimpton plays a fellow celebrity, who is contracted come and paint his portrait.
| • |
Directed by Peter Watkins, in cinema verité style. Story by Johnny Speight, screenplay by Norman Bogner. Once seen, never forgotten.
• DOUBLE FEATURE: Velvet Goldmine (1998)
m|“You are on board the Andronicus bound from Bizerte to Dubroynik.”
Modesty Blaise
(1966) Comic strip hyper-heroine Modesty Blaise and her sidekick Willie Garvin come to life and battle villain Dirk Bogarde in a cinematic op-art universe. Rosella Falk is the henchwoman, Alexander Knox the minister, Clive Revill as a sheik, and roles going to a tatooed man, friar, pilot, co-pilot, under secretary, pianist, and man who pushes the doorbell. Directed by Joseph Losey as a spyfi.
| &bull |
Screenplay by Evan Jones. Music by John Dankworth. Them song sung 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 was a stunt double.
• DOUBLE FEATURE: Danger: Diabolik (1968)
m|“Le chaland qui passe (the passing barge)”
L'Atlante
(1934) Directed by Jean Vigo, who died after making this, his fourth film. It shows the first trails of a young marriage, in a defining work of poetic realism. A river barge captain brings his new bride onboard to live w/ him and his crew: first mate, cabin boy, a brood of mother and her kittens. Starring Jean Daste and Dita Parlo as the newlyweds. Unforgettable.
• DOUBLE FEATURE: The Enchanted Cottage (1945)
m|“… go for a walk.”
King and Country
(1964) World War I deserter stands trial before a military tribunal. Tom Courtenay is the runaway, Dirk Bogarde his laywer, and a table btw. them. With Leo McKern, Barry Foster, James Villiers, Jeremy Spenser, Vivian Matalon.
• DOUBLE FEATURE: Danton (1983)
m|“… may be too late.”
The Ugly American
(1963) Southeast Asia, 1950s. Marlon Brando is a member of the U.S. diplomatic corps, and walks through a dream w/ Eji Okada, Sandra Church, Pat Hingle, Arthur Hill, Jocelyn Brando (his sister), Reiko Sato. Directed by George Englund, from a screenplay by Stewart Stern. Based on a 1958 novel by Eugene Burdick and William Lederer.
• DOUBLE FEATURE: Indochine (1992)
m|“Our association is not a union. It's nothing like a union.”
Stranded
(1935)
Three yarns are woven to tell the story of the Golden Gate Bridge build: ambition, greed, love. Kay Francis works for Mary Forbes at the Travelers Aid Society, helping travellers, immigrants too, who become stranded during their journeys and ends up at her office in San Francisco's train station. She solves many tangles, incl. 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 foreman for the bridge construction, a brawler boss running a large enterprise of unionized workers w/ no time for nonsense, yet ends up believing in her. And somehow remaining the same guy he was at the beginning. Until that happens, Barton MacLane comes on as a racketeer demanding protection money from the welders, riveters and other iron workers of the bridge team, incl. Robert Barrat, Joseph Crehan, William Harrigan, John Wray, and Edward McWade.
The tony set in San Francisco is represented by old money Henry O'Neill and Ann Shoemaker, playboy Gavin Gordon, and playgirl Patricia Ellis. Coming in to play a role are the premises of the Immigration and Naturalization Serivce, Builders Protective League, Bureau of Missing Persons, Municipal Lodging House for Women (June Travers as an expectant mother and Zeffie Tillbury as a life lost), culminating in Worker's Hall and mob justice.
Diplomatically directed by Frank Borzage, this is a fine example of the "independent woman" films of the 1930sm made memorable by Kay Francis's luminous grace and a performance 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.
Spliced throughout the film are documentary footage of the actual build, used so as to further the plot, which states that the going union wage was $11 a day, the bridge builders laid out nets underneath to keep falling workers from certain death. This build, which opened in 1937, had zero fatality under the last day of construction, when about 18 workers fall, and the nets caught them. Made to withstand 10 bodies, the nets broke and some fell to their deaths.
• DOUBLE FEATURE: Native Land (1942)
m|“I wanted to give you a ghost for your birthday.”
Sylvie et le Fantome
(1946) The Baron's daughter is turning 16, and he wants to give her a ghost for her birthday, because she's in love w/ the real ghost who lives on his estate. A pastiche of The Old Dark House, and a send-up to French surrealism, there's even a ghost dog.
Starring Marguerite Cassan, Paul Demange, Jean Desailly, Gabrielle Fontan, Pierre Larquey, Claude Marcy, Francois Penier, Raymond Rognoni, Odette Joyeux as Sylvie, and Jacques Tati as the Ghost, his first film role. Directed in the Continental fashion by Claude Autant-Lara. Witty screenplay by Jean Aurenche. Plot twists and turns are clearly captured by cinematographer Philippe Agostini. Just right music by Rene Cloerec.
• DOUBLE FEATURE: Portrait of Jennie (1948)
m|“… outlaw liquor.”
The Wet Parade
(1932) Spanning the years 1916 to 1931 in the lives of two families. Starring Myrna Loy, Robert Young, Walter Huston, Dorothy Jordan, Wallace Ford, Lewis Stone, Neil Hamilton, Jimmy Durante. Based on Upton Sinclair's writings, and made before Prohibition ended. The World War I need to regulate grain during wartime led to a complete outlawing of liquor all together. In the film there is a mini-documentary showing how Americans met challenges to curtailing their right to a drink, including in the criminal world, where a potential new base of potential customers blossomed into a new enterprise. Money was made using a cheat ingredient: bulk denaturated (i.e., unfit to drink) cleaning fluid (ethyl alcohol + methanol) w/ a new name-brand label on the bottle.
• DOUBLE FEATURE: Days of Wine and Roses (1962)
Bat Bike
Batwoman, in her first appearance, leading the Batmobile into the fray. Robin: "Hurry, Batman - the Batwoman is beating us on this mission!" (Detective Comics no.233 July 1956)
▞▙|
Mirror Mobile
The Mirror Master's laboratory on wheels.
▖▜|
Captain America
When Captain America punched Hitler in his debut, the city of New York awarded him w/ a spanking red automobile, which he promptly drove cross country. Later on, he bought a white 1958 Corvette to make up for the lost years. These days, when not in costume, Steve Rogers' getabout tends to be this blue convertible, repeatedly stolen then returned because it was a badge of honor to always leave the keys in the ignition.
▚▞|
Zatara the Magician
The 1959 Lincoln towncar comes w/ a sturdy trunk so that props from his magic acts can all fit.
▟▘|
Harlequin
This tasty USSR-era Trabant was on display in an art gallery in Belgrade when our "merry menace" happened by, took a look, took it home.
▜▗|
Tony Stark
A sample page from the mid-century portfolio of the industrial billionaire who fights crime as Iron Man. They are 1959 Firebird, 1958 Nucleon, 1949 Tabot Iago, and a Norman Bel Geddes prototype.
▚▙|
Avengers Mansion
While scouting for ideas on what Avengers Mansion should be, Tony Stark toured Fiat's headquarters in Turin and saw what they did to their roof, and how indoor sports might share space when placed next to a functioning laboratory, not to mention sleeping quarters.
The first three transformations
"I had hoped I'd never again find the need to become Thor! And yet, perhaps I can help my old friend, if I get to him in time ... and none can travel as fast, or as unerringly, as the god of thunder!" Within seconds, the lame doctor rises and pounds his walking stick on the floor. "Now for the Tomorrow Man!" (Thooom!) "Forgive me, my father, this is the only way!"
WHAT SHE SAID
BIRTH OF THE 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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.”
Luis de Camões
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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
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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.
Aeminium
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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
[ 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.
Space is fairly crowded these days, and Earth space agencies are racing to get to the choice spots first. From mapping the dark side of the moon to landing on an asteroid in the Kuiper Belt, the age of discovery proceeds apace.
Spaceflight is space science concerned w/ ballistic flight into outer space, then through it. Early space agencies tackled this fundamental step, and today's spacecrafts are capable of space voyages and orbits of other space objects, and have hoisted 536 humans into space, twelve of whom walked on the Moon.
Other spacecrafts, satellites that orbit worlds including ours, have reached critical mass and the smallsats get prefixes like mini-, micro-, nano-, and pico-.
Joint plants to hoist a heavy telescope into orbit around the Earth which, in tandem w/ mobile systems roaming the star systems, promises insights to invent the future of space.
••°•••⊙•••✦☀☆
Established in 1902, wholly owned by the government, the
Roscosmos
State Corporation for Space Activities develops and operates spaceflights, space science and a cosmonatuics program for the Russian Federation. It also arranges space tourism for fare-paying passengers to the International Space Station and, as of 2009, six have done so.
A mission to Mars in 2012 failed, yet a robotic mission to visit a Martian moon is still in the works. In the future will be a spacecraft landing on Venus, and a Moon orbiter equipped w/ “penetrators.”
Headquartered in and around Moscow, the agency is successor to a space program that spanned 1931 to 1991, responsible for the first satellite, the first spacesuit, the first human spaceflight module, the first space rover, the first space station. In 1961, cosmonaut and pilot Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space. Two years later, cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space.
★•••·•⊗✶••☼••°
Sustaining its fleet of aircraft at the end of World War II, in 1962 Canada became the third country to launch a satellite into space. In 1990, the government formed the
Canadian Space Agency
, reporting to the minister of innovation, science, and economic development, headquartered in Quebec, w/ a mission to apply space knowledge for the benefit of Canadians and humanity.
When three separate space companies merged in 2003 to form the
Japan Aerospace Exploratory Agency
, it brought under one roof expertise in x-ray astronomy, radio-astronomy, and the magnetosphere. In 2012 it became a part of government oversight and a program to militarize space. Famous for landing a probe in 2018 on an asteroid in the Kuiper Belt.
••☀•☆••.•°•✈✪•
“… operational space application systems …”
Eastablished in 1975 and headquartered in Paris, the
European Space Agency
has 22 member states collaborating on space exploration projects, convened as a consequence of European scientist leaving after World War II, w/ a mission “to provide for, and to promote, for exclusively peaceful purposes, cooperation among the European States in space research and technology and their space applications, with a view to their being used for scientific purposes and for operational space applications systems.”
The agency's major spaceport is in French Guiana, where it conducts human spaceflight, launches Earth observation satellites, and flies spacecraft to the beyond.
⊙•◆★•☁✦·☼✪•✶·
In 1971, the United Kingdom became the sixth nation to launch a satellite, and by 1985, the British National Space Center. Replaced in 2010 by the
UK Space Agency
, and made an executive agency of the government, responsible for its civil space program, and its representative in all space negotiations.
The agency is based in Wiltshire, in the former home of its predecessor. It is currently making plans for its first spaceport, and studying ways to clean-up space debris, an emerging field.
Formed in 2010 to be a government agency, the
South African National Space Agency
's satellites monitor Africa for flooding, fires, and the environment, andhosts the only space weather regional warning center for the continent.
It's mission is to nurture partnerships and promote industrial development of space, to stimulate interest in space science, to deliver space-related services and products to South Africa and the region.
•✦★•‥••☆•‥•★⊙✶
In 1969, the
Indian Space Research Organization
was created by the government, and headquartered in Bangalore. It is now the sixth largest space agency, developing and delivering satellite tools for home consumption, such as dedicated distance education, telemedicine, cartography, disaster management, weather forecasting, broadcasting.
Begun by the military in 1961, the space program in Brazil passed in civilian control in 1994, and became the
Brazilian Space Agency
, based in two locations: a spaceport and a rocket launch, which happens to be the closest to the equator of all launch bases, and the most ideal for a launch of a geosynchronous satellite.
✪•·••••⚫☆·•✦••
China adminsters four departments handling all-things space: systems engineering, general planning, space science, and foreign affairs. Together they oversee space and lunar exploration programs. They do so at the behest of the eighth national people’s congress, which established a commission of science, technology and industry for national defense, and formed the
China National Space Administration
in 1993, headquartered in Beijing, to develop a national space program.
The agency runs this program as a national industry having its own policy and enforcement rules, and has sent eleven of its citizens, taikonauts, into space. Its logo depicts a human surrounded by escape velocity thresholds yet standing above these rings, to emphasize humanity's capability to explore.
••••·✶✶⊙•·•••✦
In 1907, Germany was interested enough in space to set up an aerodynamic experimental station. It soon had company, among them a society, an association, an institution, and a consortium. Their effort coalesced in 1997 to become a government entity responsible for matters pertaining to energies, transportation, as well as their roles in aerospace, the
German Aerospace Center
, headquartered in Cologne, w/ fourteen satellite facilities working on the use of hydrogen as an energy carrier, building a suborbital spaceplane, and doing research into traffic congestion as well as research on emissions, among other projects.
France's space agency, founded in 1961 as "a public administration w/ industrial and commerical purpose," the
National Centre for Space Studies
is headquarterd in Paris, and reports to the ministries of defence and research. A participant in search-&-rescue missions, it is currently planning a trip to Venus, and is a pioneer in space medicine when the first French astronaut, Jean-Loup Chrétien, came home in 1982.
It is the third space agency to go into space, w/ a mission to secure and defend, and to transpose civilization to space.
The go-to space agency for all things UFO, w/ a collection going back to 1954.
•·★••☆.•·••☼••
The
Italian Space Agency, founded in 1988 and headquartered in Rome, was one of the earliest countries to do research on rocketry and space propulsion. In 1914, a paper to achieve this was published by Giulio Costanzi, and the race to space was on. If you want to know about gamma rays, go to Italy, a founder of the precursor to the European Space Agency, w/ plans for a future spaceport.
Established in 1991 to report to the minstry of education, the
Romanian Space Agency coordinates the natinonal space technology research program and related activities, incl. the promotion of space science in schools.
There is a heritage in Romania of firms specializing in flight and its pedigree is impressive. Hermann Oberth is one of the founding fathers of rocketry, and the pioneer of rocket propulsion, Conrad Haas, who wrote: “But my advice is for more peace and no war, leaving the rifles calmly in storage, so the bullet is not fired, the gunpowder is not burned or wet, so the prince keeps his money, the arsenal master his life; that is the advice Conrad Haas gives.” Conrad Haas was born in 1509.
·••✶••⊗••••☀·
Established in 2002 as a national space program, the
Algerian Space Agency
oversees four operations: techniques, applications, satellites, telecommunications, and brings space technologies to any discussions on sustainable development in Africa, which it monitors for natural disasters.
Having interest in space since the 1960s, legislation to create a
Philippine Space Agency
has support w/ the government, already partnering w/ other Asian countries to launch a 50-microsatellite network, and space science promoted in classrooms.
☆•••••✦☀‥••☆•.
In 1946, the government set up a national advisory committee for aeronautics to observe rocket experiments, which eventually became rocket-powered aircraft programs, then manned spacecraft programs.
Formed in 1958 by the US federal government, NASA, the
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
is an independent entity responsible for the civilian space program, as well as aeronautics and aerospace research.
This was followed by a two-man spacecraft module program, which led NASA to become the first space agency to land a man, Neil Armstrong, on the Moon, in 1969.
To prepare Armstrong and the other eleven who landed on the Moon, a ten-mission pre-event, beginning in 1962, had two-man spacecrafts orbiting the Earth and engaging in extravehicular activities such as space docking and space rendezvous. Just as important, it conducted observations to gather medical data on the prolonged effects of weightless on humans (fourteen days).
Data from its triumphal Moon mission took on the need for a laboratory in space, and by 1965 Skylab was in orbit.
The heavy milestone was acheiving low Earth orbit, one that occurs every 90 hours, through the lives of fourteen astronauts.
NASA has 166 manned space missions under its belt, and in 2018 it launched a survey satellite to transit exoplanets, worlds circling other stars, and will send a robotic spacecraft to probe the outer corona of the Sun.
Missions are planned to Mars and Europa, a flyby of a Kuiper Belt object, samplings from a future asteroid landing, even one or two space telescopes.
A directive back in 2017 tasked NASA w/ taking humans near to or else onto the surface of mars by 2033.
In 1998, five agencies from Canada, Europe, Japan, Russia, and the United States, came together to launch the International Space Station, w/ an agreement to maintain long-term international co-operation, “on the basis of genuine partnership,” and to build a manned station in outer space capable of personnel housing “for peacful purposes.” Scheduled rendezvous are performed for crew rotation and to replenish supplies. 2018 marks 20 years since the Zarya module lifted off from Kazakhstan, inaugurating a milestone of cooperation in space.
There are 58 space agencies, three on the equator. Expect three more from Australia, Sri Lanka, and Philippines.
They send up satellites, conduct human spaceflight, and launch extraterrestrial spacecrafts. Since 1958, the United Nations has maintained an office of outer space affairs in Vienna, tasked w/ a mandate to promote peaceful uses of outer space.
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.
Recruiting for Jesus [-2016-]
Serpentine [-2014-]
•
William Lanier
•
• Doozey Doris
• Looney Lucille
• Mad Marge
• Nosedive Norma
• Ranting Rosie
• Sugar-sweet Stella
• •
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.
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.”
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.”
