SACRED GROUND?

OUR SACRED GROUND

OK, I've got to vent a bit about 1 WTC again, which is nearing completion in the Big Apple. But someone has to point out a few absurdities of the entire fiasco, might as well be me.  First I want to state I always thought it kind of crazy to hurry up and rebuild the tallest building in town, just because some bloody furriners finally got through our defenses to do some major damage. Can you imagine? A whole building of non-combatants killed in order to get our attention. Kind of reminded us of the dastardly Pearl Harbor attack 60 years ago. Although the body count was about the same, (3,000) our frustration was really a problem as we couldn't blame any one country for it. However, our dear president Bush II and his cronies were able to invade a couple of countries to tighten up our oil supply, with hardly any resistance from our representatives in Congress. Ten years later we're trying extricate ourselves from it, while the rag-heads can start killing each other again. They even have the same religion, for Allah's sake!

  But I digress.   Where to begin? As an architect/engineer the whole thing is fraught with so many over the top ideas it brings me to tears.  Let's begin with the height. Some idiot picked the number 1776 to be the height of the replacement. But that's not really the height. It is the height of a 400 foot (40 stories) mast. the height of the roof is the same as the height of the twin towers that collapsed (1368 ft).  It appears this building is designed to be "sustainable after being hit by a 747 aircraft.  This is crazy!  Why not sell it to Target and paint a huge bullseye on each side?

  Let's look at some stats.  This is the most expensive building ever built. Originally estimated to be $1.5 billion, it has gone up to about $3.9 billion!  Wait, there's more. The first 186 ft is a windowless base of steel and concrete, 5 ft thick.  24 steel columns, so huge, they had to be made in Luxembourg (do you know how teenie a country that is?), as they were the heaviest in the world & we couldn't do it here. These, with the added concrete form a 5 ft protective barrier from a truck bomb on the nearby street. Just as well, there was no room there for office space, anyway, as the core & elevators, stairs took up all the room. 

  Anyway, the tall building folks were not fair in voting it to be the tallest in US. Just because they added a giant mast to it. But some criteria for tall building require the highest usable space to be the top. Not even close here. It appears that the top couple of hundred feet are mechanical floors. I maintain the Chicago tower is still the highest.   You don't see the citizens of Dresden, Germany, and Tokyo, Japan running to build on what is now called "Sacred Pit" and we killed 100,000 in each hell Fire.

   I'm only  upset by our knee jerk over reaction quasi religious hullaballoo and massive  squandering of money on a project that could have been completed with  with some real thought going in to such a huge project and maybe save a few billion along the way.

 

FERAL FACTIONS

 Since I strongly believe that our form of government (State & Federal) is suffering from a bad case of Democralerosis (Too much democracy), i searched my The Federalist again for an answer to this enigma. Madison's No. 10 anticipated something of this before the Constitution was adopted. He talked about factions are hard to resist in a Democracy but much easier in a Republic. I guess at the time, it didn't seem possible how much power Lobbyists were to wield, and how much money would be available for the poor legislator to resist.  If the term "Everyone has his price", how many can resist a juicy little extra something, even though most of them are already millionaires.

  It has been said that citizens should be familiar with three foundations of our Republic; The Bill of Rights, The Constitution and the Federalist Papers.  The papers were essays written weekly before the constitution was ratified.   I always wonder how many of our legislators have even heard of them.

  One of Madison's observations was that the problem would get out of hand as states were added. This is a tremendous view, as maybe part of our problem is the hundreds of politicians, who are wrangling at this time, from the addition of nearly forty more states since that time. .  Also, remember the alternate to a Federal government that was being considered at the time was to divide the 13 states into three small nations, probably to fight each other forever, or maybe that would have avoided the civil war?

 AVANTE!

  Things are heating up around my house again as Joy and I are preparing for another trip to Europe in the Spring. Not so simple this time as we are traveling with a couple of friends as well as a couple of my kids. Fortunately, Joy has become a real tour guide from our experiences on about ten trips before. She can transform an economy seat on the plane into a First Class (Use of Admirals Club!) by throwing our 'miles'  at them. Now we couldn't possibly be seen in the 'cattle car' section of the aircraft. That's not as easy as they make it sound, even though we charge nearly everything on our 'miles' card, even our property taxes. since 1988, we have spent about twenty weeks in Paris alone, Mostly on the Left Bank (Rive Gauche) among the art galleries. Our favorite sidewalk Cafe ,Le Frigate, is in an unlikely spot, right across the Seine overlooking the Pont Royal

 bridge and the Louvre. It's an incredibly busy street, very noisy, but so very interesting! Motorcycles, Smart cars, policia vans with their wonderful two tone siren, tour buses from all over Europe,  hot babes on scooters. See my map of or digs in Paris on the left.

 WHERE WAS I?

  A couple of years ago (Seems like yesterday) I left off describing my various incarnations on the way to here & now.  Let's see, I left off when I was a sperm whale (love the term!) I had a real need to be out of water as I already breath the air, so it wasn't long before I was buzzing around in a mosquito body, sucking blood from beings like me now. I wonder, if time doesn't really exist, if it is possible to run into yourself in a different body. Let's let that one go, and set me up in a nice humming bird , flying from Argentina to California every year, fighting off all my friends in order not to share any of he meager food these flowers provide.  I especially liked my time as a ladder back wood pecker, banging my brains out on telephone poles and trees.  I might mention one of my stints in the aviary kingdom was the time I spent as a small dinosaur, feathers and all, except I couldn't even get off the ground to fly, but I could really speed around on my two hind legs. Wasn't much different from my chicken life, laying eggs around in a nice barnyard somewhere in Persia.  Finally got into four legs as a cheetah, really had a ball running around the Serengeti. Fell into a really boring life as a house cat for some folks in Boston, man, did I ever have it easy there, eat, drink & sleep all the time, but didn't live very long, I was glad to be a bull elephant for a hundred years or more before i finally fell into a humanoid form. This form really was a drag as it lasted for thousands of years, although there were some highlights, like the times I was a geisha in Japan, a lot better than the damn Zen monk later on. Anyway, I finally got into Lamonts body and here I am, describing my long and interesting ride thru all the species. I remember them well,  We'll see how long this one lasts, maybe a few short years more in human form, then I''ll be one with god.  You know what? i wouldn't have missed the trip for anything, as if i could.  I hope I didn't miss anything, I did start out this excursion in the plant kingdom, didn't I?  You know, you can get some idea of your past times by noting the books, objects that interest you (or repel). I can't get enough of sailing ships of the line and their crews, also wars with Wellington, Napoleon as well as Alexander the Great. What grater thrill than reading about his shenanigans when i was getting married in Greece. Walking the ancient stones of Athens, Rome, as I felt such a kinship with the city planners of 500 BC around the Aegean Sea.

EIFFEL'S '"MONSTROSITY"

EIFFEL TOWER
BOOK REPORT - The Tallest Tower by Jos. Harris
Towards the end of the 19th century, the holy Grail of construction was a one thousand foot
high structure, so that was the program of the competition of such for the Paris Exhibition of
1890 . Only Eiffel had the construction expertise to pull off his design, a basic minimalist tower
that would not be blown over and would carry fair goers to the top.
By thee time the Paris Fair Board made up their mind which design they chose, there was two
and half years to design & construct the tower. Of course, the elevator was just being invented,
to say nothing about one slanted and changing angles. At the same time, forged steel was just
being invented, but Eiffel incorporated both these in his bid to build it. He eventually got paid
$900,000 from the city of Paris, as well as putting up a million and a third of his own money.
When all was complete, on time, it was a little under budget. He had a deal to run the
concessions for twenty years, which reimbursed him for his investment. The previous tallest
structure was the Washington Monument in USA at 555 feet and took 36 years to complete in
stone.
It as surprising to note that Eiffel did not design it, but his chief engineer did. Although very
probable Gustave was a major influence on the concept. Although we see the tower as
beautiful, his solution was strictly utilitarian, barely an extra pound of steel anywhere in the
structure. He made one exception to that to alleviate the feeling of the time that an arch was
necessary for a structure, so he added a superfluous steel arch on the four sides of the base,
something I've always wondered about.
In order to reduce the problem of the workers who would have to climb all the way down to a
cafe nearby and load up on cognac for lunch, Eiffel opened his own cafe so they could stay up
high but he only sold wine and food, all at a super reasonable cost. However, danger was still
rampant, as they worked through two winters, where wind, snow and ice were formidable foes.
But no loss of life, except for one idiot worker, showing off for his girlfriend after work, fell to his
death. splat!
I've been on three of his structures, starting with the rail bridge over the Gironde river at
Bordeaux, (his first large project), the Briar Canal Viaduct that spans over the Loire river for
about a thousand feet, as well as the tower. We are not used to the concept, where the
designer is also the builder. Even though his designs are classic, his inventiveness of
construction methods were amazing. Hydraulic water jacks, sand jacks for alignment , etc. were
only the beginning of his creativity.

Briar Canal Bridge over Loire River, circa 1890

AB URBE CONDITA
We've got to get organized. This dating fiasco has got to come to a head. How did everyone
(Europe) keep track of time before Justinian or ?? changed all the dates to when a mythical
figure had been born 3 hundred years earlier. The Arabs tried the same damn thing with their
guy, but did that ever take? Do the Mexicans still use their old calendar that was good for
thousands of years, except the damn Spaniards changed all that. Maybe we could begin when
the writing was invented, 2500 BC? See, I'm still doing it, except someone changed all that to
BCE & CE? Christian Era? No body told me they were doing that! Or start with Buddha, 1500
BC = Year one. Or at least with Socrates time, about 500 BC,
Keeping track of the years kind of started by the founding of Rome. It was around 753 BC that
Varro had the bright idea to keep track instead of listing the Consuls names. Therefor, the
mythical Jesus was born about 753, not the year one! AB URBE CONDITA is Latin for "from
the founding of Rome". which is a reasonable time frame to start from. The Anno Domini (AD)
came into use about 532 AD, where tis gets really confusing. By 537 AC? Justinian changed to
a new system beginning with the birth of a mystical figure Jesus.
Therefore, was Jesus born in 753? Was Socrates living in 550? or 1003? Was it additive of
subtractive? Let's assume additive.
Rome Founded - Ab Urba Condita year 00
Socrates - 1000
Jesus born - 1506
Columbus discovers us - 2245
July 4th! - 2529
WW 2 - 2693
Today - 2767 (And you thought it was only 2014!)
GET USED TO IT!  By the way, my birthday is June 4,  2683, but I'll be in Paris again.

HURRAY! THE WAR'S OVER!
Our president just told us "I ended the war in Iraq". I was wondering how that was going. I
guess we got all the nuclear war heads out of there. Is there still a war in Afghanistan? And
remind me what we were supposed to be doing there? (Other than protecting our oil supply).
Do we still believe we were doing it to help propel these poor bastards into Democracy? Don't
any of our advisors read history? We all know these Islamists have been killing each other since
Mohammed's brother in law started his own form of Islam.
I know it's not P.C. to question 'what went wrong?' but I have to. Just ask anyone from ORHA ,
The people from Washington who were supposed to set up a government as soon as the killing
was over. It seems impossible but we didn't begin planning for such a thing until a couple of
months before 'mission Accomplished'. By comparison, we spent two years planning the post
war Germany. The ORHA folks were given a bare space without even desks, to say nothing of
telephones. Washington sent recent grads from prestige schools to help run Iraq. One young
woman was given the job of all traffic control in the country of millions, yet she knew nothing of
Urban Planning.
Worse, yet, in 2003 Paul Bremer was sent in to run the whole crazy deal. He initiated several
disastrous programs. First, he closed all form of government the Iraqi's had, second, he fired all
Saddams workers and disbanded the existing army. That immediately formed a group of
500,000 armed men who had no jobs & no way to support families & relatives. Oh, and by the
way, these men knew where all the arms were stored. Immediately there was wholesale looting
of one of the most historic Museums in the world, as well as the incredible library with
thousands of ancient writings, but worse, the U.S. didn't feel it was necessary to protect these
from the looting and destruction. I forgot to mention we let out 100,000 prisoners to help out the
looting. And wee didn't think it necessary to protect the several huge arms dumps. Have I
painted a stupid enough picture, yet?
I'm glad we got it all sorted out about just who or what was to know the difference between a
Rebel, Insurgent, Militant, Shiite & Sunni?

WHAT IF??
Have you noticed how our wars have gotten kind of weird, lately? We sure showed 'em in
Vietnam. Those dirty commies thought they could get away with a government of the people,
like we do (Well, at least our 'A government by the Lobbyists ' ). I guess they must all really be
sorry they have to live under a commie government, although a friend of ours has been there for
several years and says it;s OK. But that's impossible, right? My government told me so.
That brings up a question of has anyone written books about our wars describing how it may
have turned out if Germany had won the war, One & two? How about the revolutionary war? Or
our Civil War? I'm just found one about how Hitler won and will let you know how that comes
out.
Did we ever declare war on Them? Did we ever surrender to them? But that was a simple
war, unlike these damn skirmishes in Iraq & Afghan, where we end up fighting guerrilla warfare
in the hills & streets with our giant aircraft carriers and monster high altitude bombers. It seems
some of our politicians still don' know what we're supposed to be doing there. (What?
Destroying expensive war equipment so our Mil-Industrial guys can build more and cash in on
the bonanza? now I hear we have to take in refugees who were mere translators and can't live
in their country anymore as they will be killed. I mean, like thousands.

FOR THOSE GOING TO EUROPE SOON

Every few years I have to send this out as it reminds me how I tried to learn Esperanto, the all-language language. (Forget it!).  For all us really good spellers.

Subj: EuroEnglish Phase In Schedule

The European Commission has just announced an agreement that English

will be the official language of the EU - rather than German (the

other possibility). As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty's

Government conceded that English Spelling had some room for

improvement, and has accepted a 5-year phase-in of new rules which

would apply to the language and reclassify it as EuroEnglish.

The agreed plan is as follows;

In year 1, the soft 'c' would replaced by the 's'. Sertainly, this

will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard 'c' will be

replaced by 'k'. This should klear up konfusion and keyboards kan

now have one less letter.

There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the

troublesome 'ph' is replaced by 'f'. This will reduse 'fotograf' by 20%.

In the 3d year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted

to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible.

Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters, which have

always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the

horible mes of the silent 'e's in the language is disgrasful and they

should eliminat them.

By year 4, peopl wil be reseptiv to lingwistik korektions such as

replasing 'th' with 'z' and 'w' with 'v' (saving mor keyboard spas).

During ze fifz year, ze unesesary 'o' kan be dropd from vords

kontaining 'ou' and similar changes vud of kors be applied to ozer

kombinations of leters.

After zis fifz year, ve vil have a reli sensibil riten styl. Zer

vil be no more trubls or difikultis and evrirum vil find it ezi to

understand ech ozer.

ZE DREM VIL FINALI KUM TRU!!!.

Karla K. Wurzel

WHO WAS THAT MASKED MAN?

In the late 1950’s when I was an apprenticing architect in Scottsdale, Arizona,. I had just decided not to work with FL Wright at Taliesin West as I couldn't afford the $650 fee he asked for the privilege of pouring concrete in the 120 degree heat. I was care-taking (freeloading) a fabulous mansion in the center of Scottsdale designed by Shwieker & Elting Architects from Chicago. The owner, Upton, a railroad magnate, didn't like the house, once it was finished as it was too rustic for him, all rough concrete walls and redwood inside  and out. It fit me perfectly.

   Meanwhile, Paolo Solari paid me $1 an hour to dig out his first underground house on Doubltree Road,  Then I was able to pay DK Taylor, Architect, $1 an hour to work for him in the evenings & weekends. By this time, I had already had my Degree in Architecture but needed to work in the trades as well as with some really inspiring Architects.

  One day Paolo told me he had a call from a dancer who needed help setting up for a performance in Scottsdale.  No one seemed to know who he was but his organizational abilities were remarkable. I got a friend, Garrison, and DK to assist and we helped this crazy man for a couple of days  setting up a huge tent. He had sent flyers all over Phoenix and had a good crowd for the one performance, which was pretty amazing, given his performances were pretty far out for the Phoenix crowd.  This guy was no amateur, but a seasoned performer and promoter. None of us knew who he was but were all tremendously impressed by his avant garde work. It was really a one man show, the far out music pre-recorded. The next day we helped him take down the tent  and pack up his sets and costumes. Then he was gone. Who was that masked man? we all asked.

  Over the years I had forgotten his name but recently wondered if I could find out his identity.  Fifty years later, I began searching for a far out dancer traveling around in the fifties. Merce Cunningham's picture really did it, as he was kind of a strange looking dude, but a total bundle of energy at all times.  Reading of him and John Cage’s music, which he used, , it couldn't be anyone else. Merce's dancing was as far out as John Cage's music. They made a terrific pair.

DR. FRANKENSTEINS' MONSTER

I recently saw the movie "Frankenstein" the original 1931 movie by the legendary horror master, James Whale. starring Boris Karloff. It's in several short sections, and I was surprised to see how it deviated from Mary Shellys' book. For instance, Mr. Monster doesn't get his made to order bride until the second movie (Bride of Frankenstein). Even more interesting,  it's fun to see how Mel Brooks version (Young Frankenstein) uses so much of the the original story plus ideas from the movie. You may remember when the monster encounters the cute little girl, but in the movie, the monster throws her in the lake and she drowns. Also, the great scene with Gene Hackman, the blind hermit is pretty close but hilarious.

GUILTY

    Do you realize that the TSA "screeners" assume you re 'guilty' until proven innocent (Strip search!)?  We have become the 'cowardly Lion', own and police  the whole world, but we are scared shitless of our shadow.  Pretty soon we'll be searched when we enter the country.

WHAT  AILS THE RAILS?

  Everyone must know that a high speed train from San Francisco to Los Angeles would be a tremendous boon to travelers, don't they? But wait. There are a couple of caveats involved here, like where is the station in SF & LA? Are they near the center of the cities? How will riders get to and from the stations? Once those little details are worked out, how many stops are involved. How long are the stops? European fast trains stop for 5 minutes, period. Can we do that here? Are we able to utilize any existing rail right of ways?

  First of all, no state can afford to fund something like this, it has to be a Federal deal. To build only 29 miles in the middle is shear madness.  Secondly, Environmental Reports will kill any Mega structure here in the  US.  Lawyers are flocking to this project like flies on honey,(or fruit flies in my wine).  I can't believe Gov. Brown is using the analogy of the 'Little train that could’. First of all, that train was pulling freight cars. We can still do that with our current rail system, but we can forget carrying passengers around, we just can't do it properly.  Just try to ride a train from San Diego to Seattle. You'll find yourself shunted off to a siding for hours, waiting for a late freight.  Why can't we keep projections of costs somewhat in line with the estimates?.

   A fast train should be designed from Seattle to San Diego, then somehow get right of ways (Too bad we sold so many of them).  How about getting out of our wars where we're killing thousands of innocent civilians, maybe even cutting back on our manned missions to Mars, use the money to generate jobs here in train construction in lieu of war materials. We could still sell arms to both sides in a rebel societies, couldn't we?

    Can't we do a little research of other trains, like France ?  They somehow understood the problem from the beginning. For instance, They have a train from Paris to Marsielle, NON-STOP.  Or, catch a train in Lille, where the Chunnel train from England stops, and it will stop at DeGaulle Airport, then on to LeMons, not stopping at Paris. That's comparable to going from Sacramento, stopping at SFO Airport only , then continuing down to Anaheim.

  I haven't heard any details related to this mega-project, like how long are the stops? The European TGV stops for FIVE minutes, everyone has to get off and everyone on during that time. Thru one door per two cars. But think about it , we have 24 new stations. If we stop at them all, it will take two hours just for the stops! How do we get to LA - SF in 2.5 hours if we're stopping all the time?

  Which brings up another issue. Our speed train shows giant new stations, all glass roofs for our stops. Why do we have to have mega stations for micro trains?

   Let's do a breakdown of costs involved ;

  1. Buy right of ways.

   2.  build infrastructure (tracks, bridges, tunnels)

   3.  build 24 stations

   4.  have the Japanese build the trains. Are they turbine or electric?

   5.  Set up funding to support it for life. Like the Golden Gate Bridge. As soon as it was paid off, they burdened it with a transit system that increases losses each year.

      What to do?  You can't be all things to all people (contrary to the democratic gridlock). The very fact that the EIR costs will be monumental, with the end result that will hardly change anything. The Sierra Club lawyers are already chewing round the ankles of the project.    It's already gone from 33 billion to 92 billion in a few years?

OOOps! I forgot to add the Design & Engineering costs. Sorry!

JAZZMAN GONE

  He lived and blew a good, long life. Jim Hall, a modern jazz guitarist left his body & his guitar recently.  I met him two or three times in unusual circumstances.  We had dinner in a Sunset Strip joint when his ex-wife and I were up from Laguna Beach to dig the jazz scene for a night. I knew that he had been with Chico Hamilton's Chamber Jazz Quartet prior to getting his own Trio together.  Previously, a few years earlier, I had met him and Chico when I was an apprentice architect in Scottsdale Arizona, supplying the band with cannabis and striving to beat Chico in chess matches long after midnight in a small garage I had renovated for part of the rent. I was always surprised that Hall was so complacent that I had is woman (to hipsters, she was his 'Old  Lady'). I thought I would like to be like him when I grew up. But later, I realized he was really glad I took her off his hands.

TRIP ADVISOR

 

During the last month of our trip to Eurpoe this summer, we rented a small SUV to get around Brittany and Normandy. It came with a GPS which was new for me but I adapted well enough to use it all the time. We generally stayed in a village for about a week,then moved on. I would program the GPS (which came with a British womans' voice) in the morning, and just follow her directions for the rest of the day. Of course, at the same time it showed a map on the screen of exactly where we were. However, every once in a while, for no apparent reason, it would blast out a starting trumpet for the horse race at Churchill Downs. No way to discover why as the directions in the glove compartment were in French. About our last day, going into Nantes, it blasted out and we wondered if it had anything to do with a speed trap, except we rarely ever saw a Gendemerie car of the French State Policia. It was surely the great wonders of the world, that this thing could track us almost to the foot anywhere in the world. I guess we have NASA and the space race to thank for that. She was pretty good most of the time, but occasionally she would drop the ball and tell us to take the third turn-off on a roundabout instead of the second one. This really screwed us up for a while until we could get it all sorted out. I have to give her her due on one of the faue pauxs as we finally determined that the turn-off, an on-ramp to a free way, had been closed and was patched up pretty good. Anyway, everything was good until a month after we returned to the States, we received a four page letter from the Ministry of Finance. In French of course. The envelope had our address scratched out and California written in. It was originally addressed to Sebastopol, CA and it had gone to Canada first. At least it got here eventually. However, it had taken a month to get to us and it appeared that there was a deadline in which to pay our ticket, as we deducted that this is what we were dealing with. Asking around to our friends to see if anyone spoke French, we found that our neighbor, Dan, was fluent. He told us to go to a online place where the whole thing was in English, showing us how to pay the damn thing. We sent them about 60 Euros and it seemed to be the end of that as we were still within the timeframe before it increased 20 Euros.

MARY'S GIRDLE

Heres' another case where the Catholic Church needs to get its miracles in order. We spent a week in a village in France, Puy de Notre Dame, with a pretty large 12th century church, built due to the fact they had the girdle of the Virgin. I don't know what miracle is associate with a girdle, but I just came across an article about the Italian revolution about 1500, that the church of Prato (Northern Italy) was built because they had the girdle if Mary. This is the first time I heard of an article of clothing being a sacred object, unlike all the foreskins of Jesus that are spread throughout the world. What happened, did they run out of body parts? There must be a back story here somewhere. Was Mary really that fat? Jeez. A girdle!

NO MORE WAR HERE

Am I to assume that the war with Iraq is over? Did we win? Golly, I hope we got ahold of some of that oil.

Here's a bit of news. The Japs bombed Pearl Harbor because they were of the opinion that we were making a land grab on the area in Indonesia that had the only oil wells of the Japanese. Whoa! That sounds like one of our current scenarios, doesn't it?

How did we do in Vietnam? Did we win? I really never heard much about that. Other than the 50,000 deaths of our young men.

How about Korea? We sure beat the pants off them North Koreans and Chinese, and Russians, didn't we. That only killed about 40,000 of our young men (and a few young women)..

And what is in Afghanistan that we want so badly? They don't have any oil do they? Or is this a continuation of the Jihad Crusades that we (The Christians) lost in the 12th century. Never too late for vengeance, eh King Bush?

BOOK REPORT

'The Untold History of the United States" by Oliver Stone & P. Kuznick

Lots of depressing stuff here. Pretty much takes you on a trip of our claim of Empire by crushing weaker countries, Islands. From the Philippines “Remember the Main!" to our current interest in Iraq & Afghanistan, see how we have become a warrior nation of "Gunboat Diplomacy".

Lots of wonderful quotes like;

Secrets: - “If Manning had committed war crimes instead of exposing them, he would be a free man" and "Charging Julian Assange with conspiracy to commit espionage would be setting a precedent with a charge that more accurately could be characterized as 'Conspiracy to commit journalism'".

They give a unbiased view of most of our recent presidents. Pointing out how Obama is actually perpetuating Bush's policies. He is tightening Security/Surveillance apparatus. Although he turned down public campaign financing (the first) he went to Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Big Pharm for his money.

Health Reform; He deleted Drug importation and bulk negotiating, also, no single payer issue, even though it works in most industrial countries. We got expanded coverage but the insurance Companies reaped a windfall. Can you believe 3,300 lobbyists spent 263 million dollars on the Health Bill. Like I said "We have a government by the Lobbyists for the people",

NASCAR

I guess it all began during prohibition, with moonshiners hopping up their old jalopies to outrun the Federales. Now, they use special constructed cars that mimic current auto designs but cost $150,00 each. + an engine = $230,000. But wait, there's more. Each team needs about 10 cars to be able to be a contender. In essence, it costs about 20 million to sponsor a team (per year?). Now can you tell me why the US Army and the Navy each spend all this money to field a racing team to attract young men to die in our quest for dominance of the world? (Called 'Helping countries gain freedom').

BUBBLES?

One of the negative aspects of a small business is that one has to be a one man band. In other words, an architect, a drafter, a bookkeeper, a secretary, a salesman and last but not least, the janitor. I have mastered all the above except the last part, “cleaning man”. My wife is always ragging on me about the toilet in my office and recently she took it into her own hands and gave me a package of "Cleaning Bubbles". I have watched micro-seconds of TV ads about these, and it looks wonderful. My problems are over! these little suckers just get in your toilet bowl and whiz around on their little brushes and presto! Bowl is sparkling clean, clean enough to eat off, I'll bet. However, in reality, it comes with a kind of a fat hypodermic needle without the needle, and you just puff it on in small globs to the side of the bowl. According to the M&%@#$ F^&%^# directions, this miserable little glob of shit will automatically clean you toilet in... it really doesn't say how long.....but let me tell you how long it won't clean it. I've been flushing religiously for days now and believe me when I report that my bowl is still just as disgusting as it was before my magic treatment. How do they get away with this? Isn't there any "Truth in Advertising" code somewhere? Or maybe this is some obscure section of the U.S. government, and has no responsibilities to it's constituents. I have a solution, I'll just ban my wife from the office, or at least make her use the public toilet nearby.

ARCHITECT'S FAILURES

  Each trip to Europe I like to visit some past architect's failure and this year was no different. Joy & I took a day trip from Paris by train to see what remains of the tallest cathedral in France.  The cathedral of Beauvais is the one that defined how high one could build these monuments in the 1300's.  the sketches on the right show Beavais , with it's 450' high nave, about half of which is still standing, albiet with some help with a lot of heavy timber bracing. You see the little ant in the middle? That's a person.  The cathedral on the left is Amiens, built in 1220, which is one of the more successful churches and all still standing.

 

 They have been able to do some restoration on the main entry, which is really on the side of the transept.
All of the building to the left of this has collapsed a couple of times. No mention of how many miserable lives were lost.

On the left you see some timber bracing that was installed in the 20th century.

WINE SHOPPING

I do my wine buying at "Ye Olde Wine Shop" in Graton. It's a bustling little place taking up about an entire city block. One has to be careful not to get run over by the forklifts running around but the place smells good.  One of the perks of working in wine country is the accessability of of places like this. I have done design work for the winery over the years so I get an employee discount. Therefore, every couple of months I have to pick up a few cases of cabernet & Zinfandel, maybe a few Reisling from the Mosel Valley during our hot summers. I made my own wine for 25 years but it got to the point where I could buy really good wine for less than it cost me to make. But that's not the point, right? One must learn to be self sufficient, right?  I am proud that over the years I have taught about 15 people how to make wine. Some of them (Like Dodson) even won " best of Show" of the amatuer group (non-commercial).

ARTISTE IN MONTMARTE
You will occasionally find me at a sidewalk cafe in Paris sketching the inhabitants and environs.
However, I'm gearing up for a Tuscany Spring , one of my favorite haunts.

SOCIALIZED MEDICINE
   With all the brauhau about the cost of medicare & such, I would like to relate some of my experiences with medical emergencies in Europe.  A few years ago we visited a medievil town in France called Danard.  We had a nice lunch at a Pizza place on the terrace but our waitress had a bad case of the snuffles & we didn't like the sight of that. Anyway, we traveled on and found ourselves in Brugge, Belgium and I wasn't feeling so great. We had a room on the 3rd floor of a small hotel just a block from the main Kirk (Church) and square. But I developed such a profound coughing fit that I began to see large bruises on the outside of my stomach. Here we were, in a small hotel with restuarant & bar with 26 local Belgian  beers on tap!! and I was too ill to drink any of them. Time to get professional help. Our concierge reccommended a doctor who I called and was able to see us  that afternoon.  We walked over about two blocks , found the doctor's office and waited for about one half an hour before she could see us. Joy was having similar problems, but fortunately less.  There was a waiting room, an examining room & probably a small office. She looked younger than my daughters but did a quick examination of us both, gave us about five different prescriptions , different for each of us.  When finished, we asked how to pay for all this, and she said she could charge it, but it would cost a lot of paperwork, but if we paid cash , it would cost 30 Euros each.  Really!! We laid 60 E on her and boogied to the farmacia, next door to our hotel.  We loaded up on all these drugs, paid about 40 E. each, and began our treatments. In a few days, we both were feeling fine & able to search out Belgian chocalats, Belgian waffles (hard to find) and began tasting some Belgian beers, even visiting/tramping around in  a 300 year old brewery. Viva la Belgique!

EUROPE MUSINGS

MYSTERY BRIDGES
OK, so your confronted with this apparation and wonder how in hell does this thing work? We think it's a bridge. We finally find a elephone number to call and within minutes, this whole damn thing rocks and lifts the roadway up over our heads so we can pass under it. 

 The next one was just as weird. When closed, the pendulums are straight up in the air. The photo shows it starting to open by pivoting on the pylons. when open, all are horizontal. I never did find out how it started to open, as the roadway had to have some gismo that lifted it up a couple of feet first.

 

The next bridge was just as daunting and it blocked our access to our mooring for the night. We found a number to call the Port Kommandant, who ran out of his boat, across the bridge , and pushed the right button to raise it. This one had two large steel tubes across the top, that when turned, coiled the steel cable up and raised the pedestrian deck.

Brugge pedestrian bridge

I was accosted on the streets of Ghent by a small group of videoites who wanted to know if I could identify any European countries. I did pretty good, even started in on the Balkans. Good thing she didn't want me to identify any North-East States in US.

We picked up our boat in Niewport, Belgium, stayed a day to shop for supplies )Foof & wine).
Here you see Joy & Medina enjoying dinner in the mess hall.

 Here is our "Le Boat" moored behind he Opera house in Ghent, within walking distance of old town center.