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VIDEO ALERTS

I WATCHED A FINE VERSION OF Shakespear’s RICHARD II, HENRY VII 7 HENRY V, all on several discs together, called THE HOLLOW CROWN.  showing the rise & fall of a dynasty, and the battle for survival . Falstaff is featured in the middle one. Wonderful guy! Universal Pictures put it out and what’s amazing, one can easily understand what they are saying.  Has Jeremy Irons and others but you will like them, . .I got mine at the library. 

“LIFE OF CRIME”

This is really an entertaining  movie of a kidnapping gone wrong. Don’t snatch a women (Jennifer Anston) when her husband (Tim Robbins) is divorcing her. He could save thousands a year if she was killed.  But you’ll love the surprise ending. This may be the last Elmor Leonard did before he died. I’m still trying to discover his original ending to “3:10 to Yuma” as the last two movies of it  don’t seem right.

PORGY & BESS

It seems there is some minor conspiracy going around , resulting in the fact that I can’t rent or buy the old standard about the Crip who ran around on a flat board but was in love with a gorgeous woman. I just wanted to see Sammy Davis, Jr. As “Sportin’ Life’ again, he was such a jerk. Was there something about the plot that isn’t politically correct?

LET’S TALK ABOUT THE MYSTERIOUS PUERTO RICO

It seems we have a couple of areas around the world we have claimed and probably will eventually become legitimate states, just like Hawaii & Alaska. I can understand Alaska as it’s almost contiguous and has (Had) lots of oil. But Puerto Rico?  Let’s look at a little history here first. Columbus discovered it in 1493 and it was Spanish until we beat the pants off them in 1898, when we took it from them as war loot. What the hell are they, anyway? Unincorporated US territory, with no vote in congress, but are all born US citizens. We have to dump tons of money into them just to keep them afloat, a near neighbor to Cuba, our arch enemy.  One good thing , they have a swell flag that we should abscond with , as it’s so much better than that monstrosity we have been using ever since the Revolution.  There is only 3.5 million people in the whole island, most of them Spanish, with very few blacks. Hey, why not import a bunch of those Immigrants from Syria? They could all get citizenship in ten or twenty years?  It’s a problem as about half of the citizens want to be a State, but the rest want to keep the welfare coming in.   I guess we’ll leave it to the Polititian’s, they’ll take care of it, like they have for the past hundred years.

QUESTION?

  Why were the Confederates called “Confederates” in the South? I thought a confederate as your pal?

ANSWER;   From a confederacy, a loose league of persons,  united in a league of sorts.  Not exactly a friend to their cohorts to the North.  Just imagine,  we were about the last country in the World to outlaw slavery.  If we could have waited a few years, Slavery would be illegal in the South , ergo, no Civil war that killed how many of our youth?

Don’t despair, but I just added “ Dying”  to my “Bucket “ list. In fact, that’s the only item on it.

VIDEO ALERT

If you want to be disturbed, see “KILL THE MESSENGER”, based on Prize-winning Journalist Gary Webb’s involvement of the CIA’s secret funding for the Nicaraguan Contra rebels during the 1980’s. The CIA ran him out of a job, he died a few years later from multible gunshots to the head. Suicide! Uh-hu,

END GAME

Americans have a hard time even talking about death, but other cultures really get into it.  For instance, when Shri Ukteshwar died, (Yogananda’s guru) his body was stripped, he was kind of sat up, and people hung  around for a bit to bid him goodbye., with his mouth hanging open, at least someone closed his eyes .

One way to look at this is when a baby is ready to be born, does it hollar “No, no, I won’t go” , so is birth a form of death? Or vice versa.

IRAQ/Afganistan

I see we finally found “Weapons of Mass Destruction”;   The United States Military !

QUOTES

When two people are under the influence of the most insane, most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal and exhausting condition until death do them part.     George B. Shaw

Man is a dog's ideal of what God should be.     Holbrook Jackson (Who's he?)

WANT TO BORROW MY PET?

Have you ever wondered where our disease comes from?  The major killers of humanity throughout our recent history   ___ smallpox, tuberculosis, malaria, plague , measles and cholera  ,  infectious diseases that evolved from disease of animals, even though most of the microbes responsible for our own epidemic illnesses are now almost confined to humans.  Until WW2 more victims of war died of war-borne microbes than wounds.

Microbes have a well developed system of propagation.  From our point of view, genital sores, diarrhea, and coughing are "symptoms of disease. From a germ's point of  view, they're clever strategies to broadcast the germ. By raising our body temperature, we try to bake the germs, before we get baked ourselves. this sometimes works, it can only e temporary, like flu & colds, to which our resistance is only temporary,, Against some diseases, though, including measles, mumps, rubella, pertussis and the ow defeated smallpox, our antibodies have given us life-long immunity. Go back about 10,000 years, and see that the hunter-gatherers didn't have these diseases, which only occurred after we domesticated animals. Some infectious diseases are surprisingly recent; around 1600 BC for smallpox, 400 BC for mumps, 200 BC for leprosy, 1840 AD for polio 1959 for AIDS.

  What happened here?  Sedentary farmers became surrounded by their feces and also diseases transmitting rodents, attracted by the farmer’s stored food. The forest clearings made by African farmers provided ideal breeding habitats for maleria-transmitting mosquitos.

  When we domesticated social animals (cows, pigs,, etc.) they were already afflicted by epidemic virus just waiting to be transferred to us.

   Where did it all come from?  Deadly gifts from our animal friends.

Measles                   Cattle

Tuberculosis            cattle

Smallpox                  cattle (cowpox)

Pertussis             pigs & ducks

Malaria              birds, chickens & ducks?

AIDs                     monkeys   1959

Lyme disease       ticks  1962?

Typhus                  squirrels ?

Syphilis                 Maybe the only one that came from the New World? 

An example; Measles virus is closely related to virus causing rinderpest, but not humans. Measles in turn doesn't affect cattle. It seems the virus transferred from cattle to humans and then evolved into the measles virus by changing its properties to adapt to us.

  Our intimacy with animals has been going on for 9,000 years, and farmers have been living close to them and their feces, urine, sores, and blood. (they like to drink the blood)..

  Next time you want to get a cute little cuddly dog, cat or rabbit, think about what horrible disease it will bear upon you.

HOW MANY WAYS?

 Ever since I was a young man , except my stint in college, where I didm't eat meat only because I couldn't afford it except for a foray into hamburger made from horse-meat ( I got it from a veterinarian).  I've kept track and there seem to be several reasons why we take up the onerous task of same.

            1. DISCIPLINE;   In order to follow D. Guirdjieff, one has to get control of one's self. Ergo, what is the hardest thing to give up (except sex) for you?  It turned out the giving up meat was a big problem for me, therefore that is what I had to do.

            2. .SPIRITUALITY;  My first marriage was at the Self Realization Sanctuary in Santa Monica but Yogananda specified we must be vegetarians (this was way before Vegans appeared ).

            3.  HEALTH - There's always this nagging concept that eliminating meat is better for your health. Our family doctor,Dr. Beiler, who I helped birth all my kids at home in Laguna Beach, had even written the book 'FOOD IS YOUR BEST MEDICINE' , no meat, but aucchini was his wonder food. .

            4.   PHYSICAL-SCIENTIFIC; Check out your intestine length. According to Sri Yukteswar (Yoganandas’ guru) the body itself tell you what you should eat. The length of your intestine, the design of your teeth, all are related to what we should eat.

            LETS’ LOOK AT THE RELATIVE LENGTH OF DIGESTIVE CANALS AND TEETH;

CARNIVOROUS  -  The Digestive canal , ( measured from the stomach to the anus) is 3 to 5 lengths long, the stomach is spherical. (Sabre tooth Tigers !)

HARBIVOROUS - 20 TO 28 lengths long. The stomach is more extended & of compound structure. (Cow)

FRUGIVOROUS  -  10 to 12 times length of body. Stomach is broader in duodenum, serves purpose of a 2nd stomach, Th first 12 inches of the small intestine to the  Jejunum. (Only bats?)

   CONSIDERATION; Are we considered Frugivorous animal?

        WE MAY ALSO LOOK AT OUR TEETH TO SEE WHERE WE BELONG IN THE FOOD CHAIN.;

  CARNIVEROUS;  Incisors lightly developed, the canines are very long, small & pointed. Molars are also pointed for tearing flesh

.

HARBIVEROUS  -  Incisors are well developed, Canines are sometimes developed as weapons (Elephants),  Molars are broad tipped & furnished with enamel on sides only.

FRUGIVOROUS -  All teeth nearly the same height, canines are little projected, conical and blunt (Not intended for seizing prey). Molars are broad -topped & furnished with enamel folds to prevent waste caused by their side motion.

  Well, if this hasn't convinced you to turn onto a bat, I can't help you anymore.

 

 

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PISA BELL TOWER   

When joy wanted to see Pisa I rebelled and wanted to know why I should want to see another architect’s failure but was voted down and we eventually visited it about 3 times. I was appalled when I first glimpsed the lean of it but was intrigued by the efforts to stop it from falling over and crushing a few dozen pilgrims on and around the tower.

Begun in 1173 , it initially leaned to the North,  it was finished in 1292, by then it was leaning South. By 1350 it was out of plumb by 1.4 METERS.  But by 1993 it was 5.4 METERS. That’s about 15 feet for you Americans (U.S. anyway).

  By 1990, the Italians formed The Consorzio Progetto Torre di Pisa to straighten it a bit. They hired M. Jarnolkiwski, Pofessor of Engineering at Turin University to run the show.  They shook loose 30 million Euros to work on it for Eleven years. They used basically three combined systems; 1) Wrap the tower at the waist and tie it back over another building to a giant tripod tower that held the cables with a huge lead weight to hold it (the tower)  up, 2) They drilled diagonal holes under the North side and extract the soil ( it’s really just clay-sand) to create voids. 3) To assist this, they loaded a huge  pile of lead ingots (750 tons) on the north edge, as well as some deep wells to extract some of the water lying around. They have some future plans to drill down some cables to set anchors into the deep sand.

  Anyway, after all this work was done it pulled the tower back 2.6 mm . That’s about one inch!  But they have hopes it will move back another inch in the near future.  One interesting fact about all this is no one wants the tower to be vertical, as they sell 4 million tickets a year now to walk up to the top where Galileo was dropping stuff off for his experiments.  See some phots I’ve been able to take thru the construction fence.

With all the brau Hau about the tower, the old cathedral hasn’t gotten much press but it has a wonderful old timber roof inside and a very notable wedge of stone in the sides to straighten it up to finish the roof. 

Drilling Under

Lead weights

A REMINDER;   CURMUDGEON (Dictionary)

1.       Archaic;  a crusty, ill tempered ,  churlish old man

2.       Modern;  anyone who hates hypocrisy and pretense and has the temerity to say so; anyone with the habit of pointing out unpleasant facts in an engaging and humorous manner

IT SEEMED SO SIMPLE…

I’m still trying to understand our political system but it may be beyond my understanding forever. However, here are a few tid-bits to chew on when considering to take part in this system. Most call it a Democracy but it is supposed to be a Republic.  The difference is who is supposed to represent you, I think.

AMERICA , USA  (Researched thanks to Jon Stewarts’ ‘America’)

There’s a lot of noise regarding the next election in about a year, so let’s take a look at our mysterious Political System;

The House has two chambers, called  Congress   (Bi-cameral, which means two rooms)

House of Representatives    

   “Lower House” (The Rif-Raf)   Based on population , I think about one rep per 30,000 citizens, men, women, kids, blacks)  Re-elected usually every two years.

Senate  or  Upper House  , 2 reps per State,  get re-elected every  six years.

Since the Lobbyists actually run this country, let’s see where the money comes from.

Lobbyists   $$ in 2004 (In Millions!)

Greenpeace                 2 million

NRA guns                    4

NAACP                         ?

Labor Unions               90!

Merck/Lilly                  26!! (Drugs!)

Christians                    ?( May be irrelevant as all Republicans are rabid Christians)

Planned Parents          2.6

Hollywood                   37

AARP                           102!

Legal ABA                    112!! Wow

ELECTORIAL COLLEGE Does anyone really understand how this works?  I keep trying to make sense of it, but just don’t get it.

435 reps? Based on population? Plus   100 Senators?  For instance, California has about 55 Electorial College people. Who are they? Who picks them?  Sometimes they elect a Prez over the Popular Voters. (Like Bush?).

You probably know by now that whenever we rent an apartment in Europe or U.S. I have to send the Owner a DEFICIENCY LIST, or all the things I believe was wrong with the place. Joy thinks this is stupid but please read the definition of Curmudgeon above.

It goes like this;

SEATTLE DEFICIENCY LIST. FOR APARTMENT IN Seattle.                     

First off a map of the drop off/office   + map of parking access + plan of towers. We couldn't find the concierge first off. When he  gave us keys, he didn't say the lock to the tower lobby was the chip, blue, that you just pass over sensor. Isn't with the unit key. Parking was  confused as we didn't know where to park for the NW tower. Lots of  one way streets. stop, unload at 1200 first? From garage take the tenant elevator, not public one. etc.

blinds          table too high           deck door needs new rollers       toilet paper, move to front

toaster is broken on right side

PORTLANDIA , Apartment deficiency list for Portland .

How about a few clothes hangers 6 would be fine

BR lamp switch off ,

kitchen microwave light nonfunctional              

blinds too heavy to operate

no chair on deck

 Disposal is missing rubber baffles.

toilet seat is loose

location of toilet paper holder is very hard to use. How about on wall next to door in front of toilet?

Dining table is too high, 36", chairs same.24" Use normal heights for both. 30" table, 18" chairs.

A carpet under a dining table is a nuisance!.

GOOD POINTS  -  The wood & steel LR tables of rough wood are great design

WESTERN WOOD STRUCTURES

My vacation this year was based on several items;  Visit my son, Zaidi, a builder in Eugene, OR, visit the scene of the crime; my Alma Mater, The University of Washington in Seattle, where I graduated from Architectural School 65 years ago. I wanted to verify that they had received two of my publications;; 'HILLSIDE HOMES & THE EDUCATION OF AN ARCHITECT;'. I had never been able to get thru to a person or on a website to verify this. Third; to visit Western Wood Structures, who will be fabrication a 72'  dome for a project in Wisconsin, ISHA or The Institute for the Study  of Human Awareness. Fourth; I forgot.

  Meeting the owner, Steve, and the structural Engineer Paul for the first time as we have been conversing for over a year by e-mail, I toured their facility which was pretty impressive as they have erected some very incredible works such as the 500' Tacoma Dome, the recently finished Cathedral of Christ the Light in Oakland and other projects around the world (China, etc.). Once they get a job , they source out the materials; Timber & Glu-Lam beams from various fabricators, Steel suppliers who make up the very complex connectors for the domes & such, then cut, drill all members using some unusual equipment, such as a drill press that drills beams from two side at once, assuring a straight bolt hole. Large bandsaw that is on wheels in order to move around really big members too large to move around.  Plus a heavy duty forklift that picks up material from the side (the first I've seen) in order to move long timbers around.

Once all is cut, drilled it all gets trucked to the site along with a Foreman & crew to assemble the structure.  Their VARAX Dome stands for Variable Angle . This dome is structurally made of moment  frames instead of axial connections like a Fuller Dome, thereby making it much stronger when loaded un-symmetrically.

. 

Connector

Vsrex Dome Structure

GUELPHS OR GHIBELLINES

If any of you go to Italy you will encounter the mysterious names of the Guelphs and the Ghibellines. This is merely an enlarged version of the Hatfields and the McCoys., as they have been fighting since the 12^th century.  Let me clarify it for you. The Guelphs (I still don’t know how to pronounce it) who generally came from wealthy mercantile families, supported the Pope, while the Ghibellines (I still don’t know how to pronounce it) where wealth was based on large agricultural estates. Florence was basically Ghibelline, while Siena was Guelph. They managed to keep the wars going into the 13 & 14^th centuries. Must have been good for business. You will find peculiar crenelations on some castles but you can tell that they were Ghibellines if they used the “Swallow tail” type instead of the regular up and down type.

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89                                                  HOLLAND CANALS

SNEEK         

The train from Amsterdam to Sneek was pre war, not sure which one.  Probably the first steel railroad cars, no one had invented Air Conditioning at the time. Man, was it hot! We couldn’t even open a window to cool off, Hard trip.

Hot, hot, hot! Took us three trains, called taxi from free kiosk at Sneek station, dropped Joy & Jean at boat, BJ & I taxi’d back to a liquor store & Super Market. Loaded up on booze & supplies for our week long trip. Received instructions from Port tech, start, horn, run generator when needing 220 v., asked if I had experience; “ of course, in mid France canals”. Showed how to change controls from cabin to upper deck (Piece of cake!).

 

OUR BOAT

 So he leaves, we cast off bow & stern, I’m at controls inside, BJ topside for the scenery. I can’t seem to get thrust but boat moves out off dock & BJ says “We’re off!” & I realize she has control of boat does not know first thing about it. I race topside, take over steering & throttle, and make our first two left turns out of the yacht harbor & eventually are cruising on a canal out in the country. No damage so far.

  Having started about five PM we needed to find a place to stop for the night as, unlike France, there are only designated places to tie up. A couple of hours we came upon a spot and tied up between a couple of other travelers. It being pretty hot, we moved the table & chairs to the bank, broke out the wine & cheese & fruit & supped in a peaceful pastoral setting.

 

STOPOVER

  Stopped at a small town and Jean & I got the bikes out to find supplies. First thing is my bike had two flat tires but I rode the thing anyway. Rode two blocks to edge of town, turned around & Jean hollered “Here’s a store!”. Sure enough, we had went right by it and didn’t recognize it as such. We entered and it looked like a very small meat shop with a cold case of meats. We weren’t looking for that and asked if he had any milk. Sure , right there on that shelf in a paper container. Not refrigerated, but it was milk for our coffee. Any bread? Sure, got a frozen loaf from the back, Beer?, brought out a six of cold Heinekin. Pretty much had all we needed, but did he have a tire pump? He brought it around & pumped up my tires (Talk about full service!) and we were off to the boat. That store must have had a backroom the size of Costco.

TOLL BRIDGE

 Came upon a small town of Eikhorn, waited for the little bridge to open, then putted through as the bridge man had a fishing pole with a small wooden shoe dangling over us. We didn’t know what the hell that was until he started hollering at us and telling us to pull over. We managed a quick stop along the quay and Joy ran back with some Euros, to give him E1.40.  Finally got the idea after watching the other boater catch the line and put in their money.

  Arrived in the old town of Kampen, but not before running aground on the huge sea en route. No perceptible damage. Found a small but difficult pier to moor & nearly ripped the dock apart as I was trying to nose into it get tied up, then roll the aft over to it but my line handlers didn’t get it plus there were only small rings instead of bollards on which to tie onto.

LIFT BRIDGE IN KAMPEN

Walked across the great old lift bridge and found a little café for Petit Dejeuner. There were glass floor areas that showed old burial vaults plus a bubbling hot spring right in the front room. A great old Kerk (Church)  that used to be Catholic but now Protestant. Fortunately they were tuning the fabulous old organ with 1200 pipes so we sat and reveled in the vast sounds. Tuning consisted of hitting it with a huge sledge hammer.

 Found a cheese shop with a wall of shelves with 12" wheels of different cheeses. Displays of Chilean wine for e3.00 a bottle, so picked up a few.  I found a shop that sold art supplies and bought some sketching materials.

BOOM CHICAGO

BACK IN AMSTERDAM

Caught a performance by "Boom Chicago", had fun and a dinner & bottle of wine and lots of really good laughs, mostly trashing Bush.  The Handicap laws are  not as crazy as in USA, as accommodation is easily accomplished with simple methods. At Boom Chicago the hall is stepped 3 times with 6" steps. The server brings over a small wood ramp, sets it down for the wheelchair person, then takes it back up to the Matre de station. I didn’t know what she did about the toilet on the next floor.

BREAKFAST

 There was a big construction project going on in front of our breakfast cafe.

We talked with superintendent who informed us they were digging a new Metro tunnel in order to get some fast Metro to the outlying areas. We were intrigued by the equipment as they had two large cranes each with a 90' tower and were drilling about every 3 meters, and pumping in concrete grout under enough pressure so that the grout would blossom out to 3 meters in diameter. this is how they were forming the bottom of the tunnel. They had already dug the side with a slurry trench.  When they had all the bottom pads set, the will excavate the 90' deep tunnel, pour a solid bottom, middle floor and then the street level. Since this is all well below the canals I would assume de-watering is a major factor in all this.

METRO

CANNABIS

  While riding the new metro one day Joy noticed a sign right in front of us that they would be on strike the next day. This is the first we heard of it so we thought we would be clever and bought a canal boat tour for the next day for 14 e each. We were able to get down to the station but since the boats came by every two hours it was not so easy. We did a lot of walking, thru Chinatown, red lite district, finally got to the Marijuana Museum to watch them grow several different varieties of pot in the back rooms. Didn't seem like a big deal that there was a 4' tall pot plant sitting out in front of the store, on the sidewalk.

 We usually walked along the canals to our hotel, passing lots of quant scenes, like the lady busily vacuuming her front steps, of granite! I'd heard they were really tidy folks. One evening we were hungry and went out to find a bite to eat at some local, low cost venue. It looked like rain so we took our little folding umbrellas and strolled out into a tremendous heavy rainstorm, all the way to a corner bar/cafe where we ducked in totally drenched. Found a corner table and ordered a couple glasses of vin ordinaire and sandwiches. Just what we were looking for. It being a Sunday, most places were closed, but they always have a few bars open for the Dutch quafers.

 Stopped by the OLD MAN'S, the ultimate head shop, replete with a n entire line of cannabis clothing., Joy had to buy some pipe lighters for you know what.

16TH CENTURY WAREHOUSE

 We spent a few hot hours searching for the fabulous canal with all the great 16th cent. warehouse that are restored/converted into modern use. The clear beauty of these are really remarkable. We didn't find them but we now know they are on the Brousgreet canal for next time, and there will be a next time.

ARCAM BUILDING

 Of course the highlight of our trip was finding the ARCAM building, where we were given literature about Java & Borneo Island. We forthwith caught the proper bus and walked through the Dutch's idea of hoe to design and execute new towns. I suspect their type of government is leaning towards socialism with a monarchy in the form a Queen Beatrice? They seem to have it pretty well organized.

JAVA DOCKLANDS

JAVA TOWNHOUSES

 BJ and I went to walked over to the Van Gogh Museum. It was pretty hot so we had to stop at the huge reflecting pool to put our feet in and cool a bit. I was anticipating going into the new adjunct to the museum by a Japanese ‘Starchitect’ but we were relegated to the existing one. I don't know what they use the new expensive one for. On the way back home we stopped at the VG Cafe for a good Belgium beer. To cool off, of course.

BEER TIME!