Building For The Future

Remembering The Tent Complex Decade

July 11, 2008

july 11, 2008

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Dear readers, I periodically mention living ten years in a tent complex my son and I built after my husband was injured at work and we were stuck in the court system, fighting to keep him alive. Those years were a true marathon effort to stay alive. We had less than $500 a month to live on and we kept on paying off our debts so we actually had less then $200 a month for everything. The ruins of the tent complex are still visible and I am dismantling it this summer so time to remember a difficult time that was also one of the most beautiful and amazing time for all of us, even my husband who suffered by far, the most.

CLICK HERE FOR CARLOS NAKAI MUSIC

If you stand in my driveway which is half a mile up a mountainside, you can see in the distance a varicolored ruin. This is the remains of what once was a huge, comfortable nest my son and I built during the years we had no money and little hope but lots of love to share. It is nearly flat now, crushed by 8 years of storms, snow, wind, trees falling on it and animals making new homes in it. It is, like any great castle, a ruin with its own special artistic elements. So today, I took one of the dogs over to photograph it.

Remember: we are in this terrible mess caused by too much money piled on houses which crushed them just as certainly as snow crushed this tent! Yet people don't know how little it takes to live and be happy in very strange places, very peculiar structures THAT COST NEARLY NOTHING. Yes, this tent complex, nearly all of it, we made from free materials my son and I collected passionately and persistently. Many good friends contributed to this by finding and bringing more and more things to add to this business of ours.

During the 1991-1993 recession we even had friends move into our tent complex with us! After all, it was about as cheap as housing gets. Not only that, we had running water when it rained, we melted snow on the stoves in the winter for water. We used an old stocktank which was put in our bedroom as bathing water. I put logs under it to heat it up. In summer, Mr. Toad lived in that cave under the tub. We even made a little door for him to go in and out of the tent!

In this tent complex was the ox stables, the horse stables, the sheep fold for 45 sheep, a duck house, and a chicken pen. And two dogs and 4 cats lived in the main tent rooms. We all lived literally under one roof. It was immense fun.

This was the front door. The first road up the mountain did a hairpin turn and came up to the edge of the deep, dark forest. There, under the eaves of the tall trees, was the tent complex. This door was built the second year in the tent. The first year, we had only one room, what became our bedroom. This door led to the kitchen and living room. In these rooms was a water storage tank that was 250 gallons, a water barrel above the sink that was 55 gallons, a Victorian wood stove for cooking, a big wood stove for heating in winter. Once, it went down to -40 degrees F in winter! Luckily, there was a blizzard so we had several feet of snow insulting the tent complex!

Around the centerposts, I built a table. In the cloth roof, I put in two skylights which we can see in the following pictures.

And here is where the Victorian stove was. Each stove had its own chimney that was build out of the sheets of steel used to cover the wood pallets that transported buckets of tar. The guys at Curtis Lumber collected these for me and I ended up with dozens of sheets of steel this way.

I look at all of this and am filled with great emotions of intense depth. Even today, I can remember how I felt the first day I set to work to clear the ground for the very first tent. We already had staked out the house. It was just a hollow next to the forest. I didn't want to be too hot. It turned out to be 'the Snow Hole' in winter. Long after snow melted elsewhere, it was dead winter at the tent! But in summer, it was cool and shady.

The oldest part of the tent has totally collapsed. It was not as solidly built as the later parts. This was because we thought we would be living in it for only a year, not a decade. We had this pit under the heavy feather bed in the middle of that room. When tornadoes or huge storms roared in, we hid there with the radio. Once, a tornado formed right over head and then roared down Rt. 22, it destroyed a garage and parts of several houses. My husband said, 'Look, Elaine! The rain is going straight up and it is getting dark!' I have been near tornadoes so I lunged for under the bed.

Another time, a deadly series of 25 tornadoes tore through the region, killing people. We hid under the bed all night that time. We were also hit by lightning in the tent. Then there was the blizzard that nearly blew us away. Out in the 80 mph winds we were, using logging chains tp throw over the roof and secure them to the base of various oak trees! Then there was Hurricane Hugo which roared in. We ran OUT of the tent complex but we couldn't get all the animals out in time. A tree fell right between the sheepfold and the hen house! Not one animal was hurt.

Seriously, I am actually happy to be in a strong house. Heh. Once, before a big storm, one of the cats was chasing a forest rat up the roof of the tent when both of them fell through. I had to rush to a hardware store for a tarp! But the wind was howling. I couldn't hold it down. It billowed like the sail on a ship. So I hitched Chip and Dale, the oxen, to the ropes on one side and had them walk forwards while I used logging chains to anchor the other side. This way, we slid the new tarp which was 150 feet by 50 feet, over the whole complex. Just in the nick of time.

+

The tent complex had three bedrooms because so many people came to live or visit with us. These were almost house-like because people wanting to stay with us would help us haul in more construction materials we collected from town dumps and construction left-overs given to me by guys who knew I was in difficulties. The picture above was my son's bedroom. The turkeys used to go to his bedroom window to eat insects. They would make happy turkey 'Blurp! Blurp!' noises while tap-tap-tapping. One turkey hen adopted a baby duckling. She happily herded it around and when she sat down, the duckie would sit on her back. One day, she stepped on it. This broke her heart. She trailed after me, wailing, 'Glurp! Glurp!'

This was the guest room. I don't think anyone would want to stay there today. Still, the triple window is still there. Amazing.

And this is the part where the oxen and horses lived. Sparky's stall was next to Chip's stall. Chip and Dale had these lovely golden balls on the tips of their horns. Sparky loved those balls. He would tease Chips until the ox would stick his horns into Sparky's stall to intimidate him. Sparky would then grab the ball with his teeth and pull. Eventually, he pulled them off! To the happiness of the oxen who could then use their sharp horns to rearrange the tent's interior. Rip! Tear! I would scold them. 'Bad boys! You do that, I won't give you any sweet mix!' Then they would moo at me and Sparky would chuckle. But when Sparky was bad, the sheep got HIS sweet mix! They would watch him with their beady little dark eyes hoping he would foul up and they get the splendid treats.

The chickens ended up living in the sheepfold. This is because of the very, very cold winter of 1994. They ended up sleeping on the sheep! Then, they discovered they could ride the sheep. It was hilarious to see the sheep run out into the pasture with chickens on their backs. That cold winter, a very tiny lambie was born during a violent blizzard in spring. I named her 'Itty Bitty'. I kept her alive for only one day. She had such an intense desire to live! But she was too small. Barely bigger than my hand. A baby lambie is the size of a human baby. The last thing she did was try to climb up to me, crying for her life. As I held her in my hands, she died. We cried a lot for her.

I even has this workshop where I built things for the house and did all the tool stuff for the house. This was an important room. A lot of the things in here were given to us as gifts by people who weren't using these tools anymore. It made the house possible. The point is, we can do so much if we want to do it. Nothing can stop us even if we are itty bitty and can't stay on this earth for very long, even so, the memories live on and now are across the planet.

For that is all there is: to remember, to recall, to love and to hold dear to the heart. One by one, our many animals died of old age, too. Their time here was set by Mother Nature and we have to endure our losses and count our blessings every day.

People ask me, 'What can we do today to save ourselves?' And are dissatisfied when I say, 'Love your family, care for your children, live life with wonder, care and know that everything is, in the end, an adventure. For good or ill, it still is an experience. And no one can put a price on this nor take it away. We can only lose it through dissatisfaction, distraction or anger. At every burial of a loved friend who shared this decade in a tent with us, most of them living while we all moved into the big house, every one of them, we shed tears and then laughed about all the many stories they gave us.

Aside from the obvious love of all these dogs, the horse, the oxen, the sheep, the ducks, everyone, the toad, even. They all gave us a great gift, one that didn't cost a penny. A gift of understanding what Life really means and how we can live in grace and joy, even when in sorrows. When Chris was at his sickest, I trained all the dogs and even the oxen to go searching for him by saying, 'Find Chris!' and off they would go, searching high and low. Even the sheep knew this after a while! Stella, the eldest, was best at finding Chris when he went out in despair to kill himself.

She is no longer with us but Chris is. And this was thanks to the animals and their obvious devotion to us. For animals can be devoted! They have hearts and they don't care for the things we treasure, they want to have a place at the hearth or a stall or a house of their own and to know we protected them. When the bears came to bother them, they knew we would chase it away. When the coyotes hunted the lambs, they knew they could run into the tent complex and be safe. When lightning lit up the sky, Sparky would neigh, toss his mane and charge to the tent for shelter! All the animals paid a lot of attention to us.

When my son grew up and left home, every time any of the animals spotted his school bus, they would get all excited and come running down to the bus stop only to see no one come up the mountain. Sad, they would hang their heads and come home to me and complain. To this day, when we say, 'Danny is coming!' They dance with undisguised joy! They know who he is and what this means! Utter bliss. They get the thing more valuable than money: attention and love! And they all love to be loved.

And I am certain, this is what we all want, too. Peace and love to everyone. Please take care and be optimistic no matter what.

Big Thunderstorm Downpour On My Mountain

July 11, 2008

Elaine Meinel Supkis

We had this terrific downpour the other day. I ran out after this one hour storm dumped over 3 1/2" of rain on us and took pictures of the house my family and I built with our own hands over the years. Time to look at a house made from scavenged materials, trees we milled on a small wood mill, odds and ends of various sorts. The house was designed by myself with no blueprints, not plans at all. Just step by step, as I got materials, I used them. This house is very, very strong and extremely solid. For the wood is big and wide and the trees were selected by myself, in the forest.

Trees growing on mountainsides have smaller rings and are of sounder wood than trees that grow in swampy areas or have less pressure from the prevailing winds. Trees that fight for life on mountainsides are strong because of adversity. This is true throughout all of Nature: if something is sheltered and never has to struggle to survive, it is weak and sickly.

This is why we must face the winds and storms of life and be brave and good. Even if this doesn't seem to be as beneficial as screwing your neighbors, stealing stuff and running murderous regimes, in the long run of history, goodness shines through like sunlight through stained glass windows in ancient cathedrals.

This was the end of the storm. It was a very small storm but extremely powerful. It it lasted more than an hour, it would have destroyed much of my community. As it was, this unleashed a sufficient flood that it nearly washed out our roads. It certainly did make a big mess of all the roads on the side of my mountain including my own.

My front door faces north, towards the mountainside. The storage area for the winter firewood is on the right, by the hoses. I deliberately designed the front door to be insignificant because the surprise is when one walks into the house.

The view from the entryway runs straight to the southern sun room which has several sliding glass doors looking out upon the huge landscape of the village of Berlin below as well as the surrounding tumbled, steep hillsides to the south. Also, there is the stained glass window which was damaged in an earthquake and which I got all the pieces together and rebuilt it. As always, we can rebuild things to an amazing degree if we wish. The effort is often worth it. This is how I got this window.

Here is the view when one walks through the house to the windows facing south.

This is facing north to the front door. Our fireplaces for each floor pass through this area. We heat this house through passive solar energy from the sun rooms and with wood we chop up in our forest. My heart really goes out to everyone who will be punished brutally this coming winter as we see high and higher energy prices. For always, if the main source of energy goes up in price, they all rise in tandem. There is no escaping this system. Being too hot in summer is annoying. But freezing to death is a certainty if we have no energy sources and are bankrupt. I worry about this in general for the good people around me in this community are already preparing for winter and everyone is planning to probably use wood since it is local.

But not everyone is in this situation where they can get cheaper energy. It is a lot of work, dealing with firewood, feeding the fires, cleaning the chimney, emptying the ash tray every day, chopping, cutting and stacking firewood, etc. But it beats having no money.

This is facing east to the dining area and bedroom. Every room on this floor is set up so I can see my husband in bed no matter if I am in the office, living room, kitchen, bathroom, whatever. This is why the bedroom has not one but two doors. This house has no hallways because of the need to see directly into all rooms from the center. This was a deliberate design my son and I developed when my husband was injured at work.

Here is the kitchen. I got the Victorian wood stove from an RPI student who had damaged it by burning things too hot. We rebuilt it and I have cooked on it for nearly 20 years now. It only cost $50. Like much of the things we have, we got it because it was damaged. This is true of many items here. Also, when businesses go bankrupt or redesign their stores, I go haunt the back docks to pick up many wonderful things. It pays to be very sweet to the people who work so hard at these places. I will never forget when the GE president of Home Depot took over and ordered the staff to never give anything away.

I was furious. I wasn't the only person who was irritated by this. Instead, Home Depot had to spend money to get rid of stuff! Then, we made deals with the guys hauling away Home Depot junk and they would let us root through it before they removed it. They didn't care. They got paid anyway! And of course, Home Depot is now in deep trouble thanks to this idiot who is now destroying Chrysler.

The sinks in my kitchen, for example, were Home Depot throw-aways. The tiles on the floor were from a discontinued series and so I used the phone and got all the Home Depots in a 100 mile radius to give me the left over stocks which were only a dozen or so tiles a store but with 20 stores, this came to more than enough tiles! Again: talking nice pays big time.

The sliding glass doors were all 'damaged' and rejected by builders. Bargain Outlet then buys them enmass. They let me know if they got lots of bad ones. Over the years, I have collected about 15 of these doors from them, all less than $75 each, often for only $20 each! Three of the doors were free!

To build the floors of this house, I got an entire shipment of 2"x12"x 12' lumber because a builder rejected the load. Since I was always nice to the people delivering this wood, they simply drove to my mountain and gave it to me for the cost of carrying it! So I have very strong floors. Not 5/8th inch plywood.

Building things is a social process. Hobnobbing with all and sundry pays off, hugely. Often, when I found building materials I didn't need, I passed them onwards to others.

And the livingroom, facing the sliding doors to the side deck where we eat all summer long. The grand piano lived with us in the tent complex for ten years. We shall visit the tent complex in the next story. It is a sad and yet happy story. It is very painful, looking at the ruins of that earlier home.

Back to the outside:

The dogs have their own door which goes into the west sunroom. This is facing west and we can see the sheds which used to be Sparky's stall but now is used for equipment storage. The chickens still live in the building's other half.

This is the deck. Nearly all the wood to make this were milled here on the mountainside over the years. Chip and Dale, our ox team, used to haul huge logs from up above to the mill and then John, a dear friend, would turn these into timbers and planks as we worked in harmony, pushing, pulling and using huge steel levers to jerk giant trees into the cutting track.

Facing east, we can see the lower levels where the tractor and backhoe are parked for the winter. The doors came from a Victorian house in Troy, NY. Another freebie. As are many parts of this system like most of the ironwork, for example. I highly recommend dumpster diving. It is quite profitable. Just wear good shoes and use gloves.

As I get free building materials, the south side of the house morphs and grows. Nearly everything in this picture is scavenged materials or grew on this mountain.

Just had to include the rain gage. We were very happy to see this small but very dangerous storm get shoved to the east. In the 19th century, a storm like this one that also formed right overhead in this valley, didn't move and it dumped over 10" of rain in less than three hours. It destroyed all the houses along a normally quiet stream on Plank Road.

Everyone is gardening this year! And no wonder. It is a great way to save money. But the deer and rabbits and woodchucks attack the gardens. The dogs and cats are supposed to patrol but they get lazy and critters get in. The fence surrounding this garden was made from old barn boards I scavenged from a neighbor's old barn. With screw guns, putting this sort of bizarre structure together is easy. The string around the top has old tin plates which clank in the wind. This scares off the deer. I highly recommend this. An old, old man in the village told me about this and it works. When one needs to know esoteric stuff, going to very old people is VERY rewarding. They are all treasures! To be cared for because of this.

I collect discarded pots and have quite a few. I prefer to grow things like lettuce in pots because I can wander out of the kitchen and onto the deck and pick leaves at leisure. These are tender, wonderful leaves quite a bit nicer than in the store. Anyone can grow lettuce in pots! Just put them in a sunny window and water them. Or if there is any outdoors, put the pots in strategic places and then eat like a rabbit!

Next: the precursor to the house we built. The Tent Complex.

Email this post

Culture of Life News Main Page

Mother's Day For Everyone

Mommy Dearest Day

Elaine Meinel Supkis

These are all pictures of flowers my mother-in-law, Rosemary, cultivates at her home. Today is Mother's Day and the members of my family who are not sick are recovering from being sick, we all got the flu. Isn't that fun? I love my children even if they bring home gifts that keep on giving sneezes!

So we will have the annual Mother's Day dinner next week if we are all well. I certainly hope everyone reading this is not sick with the flu. So I hope you all have a happy Mother's Day if you are a mommy and since many daddies are also good mommies, I hope appreciation for being a good parent is shared for it takes an absolute army of people to raise children, not just a village, an entire city!

Love and kisses to everyone!

Email this post

Culture of Life News Main Page

Farming Is All About Shoveling Shit

April 29, 2008

Elaine Meinel Supkis

The NYT has a story about a new goofy TV 'reality' show. In it, a bunch of actresses, fashion models and assorted others compete to see who some fool of a farmer wants to date. Of course, this is all empty publicity. No actress or fashion model will want to shovel shit for the rest of her life, that is certain. Indeed, it is hard to find women willing to break fingernails, much less legs, shoving cattle around or dealing with blizzards and buzzards. Since I live in the country, it is time yet again to discuss the American industrial farm and why it is having problems in the reproductive sector.

Farmer, Lonely, Holds Auditions

When Matt Neustadt, the Missouri farmer at the center of the CW network’s new reality show, “Farmer Wants a Wife,” drives his tractor and trailer down Hollywood Boulevard here on Tuesday morning, he will be aiming to do more than simply promote the American version of what is a worldwide television hit.
*snip*
As a group, the Neustadt family also received more than $693,000 in federal farm subsidies from 1995 through 2006, according to Agriculture Department records compiled by the Environmental Working Group, a Washington nonprofit research organization. That includes more than $78,000 paid to Mr. Neustadt himself since 1998, in the form of disaster subsidies and commodity payments.

Next to the military/industrial complex and the spy network, no one is more socialist than the US farmer. These same people nearly uniformly vote for the GOP and yell about welfare cheats and leeches off the government. But hark! In today's news is this story:

Bush Presses Congress on Economy

Seeking to ease growing concerns about the weakening economy, President Bush on Tuesday called on Congress, with whom he has battled all year, to introduce broad new measures that would lower food and energy prices, stem the mortgage crisis and reduce what he called lavish subsidies to farmers.

Looks like the GOP is ditching the ditch digging farmers and kissing up to the offshore pirates and corporate raiders of Wall Street. Perhaps the farmers will figure out they have been double crossed. Even better, if they figure out that they are, in many cases, Welfare Queens, most of their present difficulties might be easier to handle. For they must cease their bizarre double standards and utter hypocrisy and embrace socialism with both arms and give Karl Marx a big kiss. Smooch.

Farmers, like suburban home buyers and our government, loves cheap debt, too. If money floods into the land or housing markets, farmers make a killing. How many farms were sold so they could be converted into suburban housing this last 5 years? 10,000? 25,000? I know of many a farmer out here who paid for the farm not by dying but by selling multi-generational farms to real estate developers!

Years ago, I warned about paving over our best farmland near the big cities and turning it into an asphalt/toxic lawn wasteland. I called good river soil, 'Black Gold' just like oil it 'Black Gold.' As the world's population grows, the best farmlands on earth are being devoured not just in the US but in Europe, in Asia, all over the planet. For always, big cities grow fastest where the best farmlands are. Even in deserts, this is true. When I lived in Scottsdale, Arizona, in the 1950's, it was a farming community fed by irrigation. Tucson was a farming community, too.

Today, there is no more farming. There are golf courses and lots and lots of houses. But no farms. All over the West, farms are going fallow or dying from lack of water as all of it is diverted to leisure, swimming pools, lawns, and flush toilets. To my unending rage. I figured out, back when we had an outhouse in Arizona, flush toilets were ridiculous. True, black widows and scorpions moved into out houses but it builds character to learn how to deal with them. I got really good at pinning them down with a knife and then watching them try to get free before cutting them in two. But then, I played with rattlers and Gila Monsters, too. As well as my dear bobcat, Bob [hey, I was only 7 years old when I adopted him!] or my pet skunk, Spotty [I was 5 when I got her]. The messiness of living in the country can't be described easily.

Back to the farmer's wife: an unenviable job. Most farms limp along due to high land taxes, etc. Rather than have government welfare payments, I would far, far rather have the government pay our land taxes. I pay over $6,000 a year for just 23 acres! OUCH. This is for school and fire, as well as county taxes to pay for medical care and policing of the nearby cities! OUCH. Meanwhile, my sheriff is myself and my gun. If I need help, it takes over an hour for it to show up, that is, if it is not WINTER. Then, it doesn't show. Period.

I grew up using a gun and being the sheriff. My first citizen's arrest was done at the age of 15 years when I held three guys at gun point and made them shake a tad. Heh. 'Moving target practice can be fun! I love doing it. Like playing kick the can...' Yes. Shooting at a can repeatedly as it jumps and rolls is good practice. When I lived in New York City, these old skills were very useful.

Back to the farm business: if you have large mammals, you have to know how to use a gun and kill things. Like coyotes or dogs. Not to mention foxes and woodchucks. Even rabbits. Farming is all about killing things. And then gutting them, turning their fur or hide into useable objects, etc. A rather bloody business. Then there is birthing: more blood. I have had to reach inside of large mammal mommies to rearrange the legs and heads of twins or triplets so I can pull them out, one by one. With cows and horses, if it is a rump delivery and the baby is stuck, we have to reach inside, and loop a strap around the baby and using chains, pull him or her out. Sometimes I would hold an ewe between my legs while my husband would deliver the babies.

Romantic ideas of the idyll of farming fades fast when confronted with the bloody side. Putting down a beloved ox who has broken a hip falling on an ice sheet brings tears but one must hold the gun steady next to the temple and pull that trigger. Over the years, one can grow fond of these fellow farm hands.

But most farmers today, outside of nuts like myself or religious believers who don't use machines, they all use modern machines like tractors and lifts and hoists, etc. So mechanical skills are required. I run a tractor and backhoe side business which is now slowing down due to old age, arthritis being the bane of all farmers. To do this, one has to know how to run engines, how to fix things that inevitably break, how to deal with tires blowing, etc. No easy matter! A saline-filled rear tire weighs literally half a ton or more! The dangers of industrial accidents to farmers is great, a very dangerous occupation. And since one has to be a builder as well [as I am] then falling off of tall barn roofs, etc is another danger. But the freedom of being one's own boss is great! I do my best thinking while doing farm chores, for example. Thanks to the net, I can come inside and cyber socialize.

“They have a desire to go back to a more authentic life,” she said. “These women are tired of the dating life in the city. But it’s hard to find someone who is willing to commit.”

The 10 women who are competing for Mr. Neustadt’s hand include several aspiring actors or entertainers, members of professions that might be hard to nurture in Portage Des Sioux. But most profess to be more interested in finding a soul mate than in being on television — which is why, of course, they signed up for a reality dating program.

Mr. Neustadt would not say if he was still courting the woman who won the competition, which was taped a year ago. Though some of the women from the show will participate in local publicity events in the next week, the women riding down Hollywood Boulevard on Mr. Neustadt’s tractor will be models, according to Paul McGuire, a CW spokesman.

This is so stupid. They are hiring a bunch of vapid fashion models who then pretend they will be looking to become shit shovelers? Gads. The entire premise of these shows is rather stupid. Farm women seldom come due to sexual attraction or seeking an easy life. It ain't easy. Ever run out into a blizzard in a night dress with a gun, yelling, 'You goddam bear! Git out of the hives!' Or run from the bees when harvesting the honey? Once, a bee found out that I took their honey to the kitchen and within minutes the entire hive was probing my screens trying to find an entry! I had to go out the front door in disguise or they would recognize my face and harry me for a few weeks. As it was, they were in a foul mood and would buzz me with an annoying BZZZZT.

Then there are storms: tornadoes, lightning, snow: you are the mailman who has to go out anyway. I greatly dislike lightning. When I have to run out and yell to the animals to 'Come to me NOW!' with lightning lighting up the horizon, believe me, my heart is in my throat. Once, the oxen refused to come in and a bolt nearly killed them. After that, they always responded when I called them. Once, a lightning bolt got into Sparky's stall! He gave quite a jump. I lay on the floor until it was safe and then ran in and had to put out the fire.

Lightning is ALL OVER ALL FARMS. More than one farmer has been felled by lightning. It is one of our collective fears. And don't even think about trying to be out on a tractor on a flat field when hearing lighting that is even 5 miles away! Ever see a tractor moving at more than a crawl? Look for lightning nearby.

Here is some pictures of farm life here: Click on images to enlarge.

Mucking stalls: first, you have to get the horse to go outside and not come in and poke around. They love to poke around. So do the dogs.

I have happy hens who have a social life, an indoor-indoor house, an indoor run and an outdoor run. They lay beautiful eggs that are very golden and very delicious. Most eggs people buy in stores are from factory farms, the ugly side of farming. These efficient farms brutalize living creatures and treat them like things. I find this unbearably cruel. Don't patronize them. And nearly all store eggs are from unhappy hens and this shows. The yolks are pale yellow and the whites are runny. Here is a recent story from England:

How do you like your eggs? Read our undercover investigation into Britain's battery farming

Undercover investigators have filmed the ugly reality of egg production at a battery chicken farm supplying the biggest egg producer in the UK.

Viewed from the air, Holsworthy Beacon Farm takes its place in an idyllic rural scene. But in its sheds, chickens are crammed five to a cage, stacked in rows from floor to ceiling.

I clicked on the movie and got instantly enraged. How dare anyone do this to any animal? Brutal farming methods make money just like any form of slavery or ruthless exploitation of nature. But it is bad for everyone. In the end, it fails as diseases and other stresses destroy everything including us.

Here is an Eastern Painted Box Turtle I picked up the other day down by the river.

I hope this guy in the TV show gets a decent wife. But I would suggest he go hunting where there is game, not Hollywood. It is obvious, he is really not all that serious about his chore. He just wants to have fun. And that is OK. But his farm will be sold when he dies and he won't have any children to pass it on to. Perhaps some peasant from across the seas or Mexico will take over. For the most important crop one can raise is the young'uns. The children who should inherit the earth.

Email this post

Culture of Life News Main Page

New Camera Takes Pictures Of Troy, New York

April 23, 2008

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Thanks to our great readers, we have been able to buy a very good Nikon D40 camera [used] which would have cost three times as much if I bought it new. This camera takes great pictures and I have a lot to learn about using it. But on day one, I simply walked about Troy, New York, clicking the shutter and getting really good shots with virtually no effort except for dodging huge semis carrying debris and various cars. We start out our tour by visiting the site of the Burden Water Works which is one of several important sites where the United States Industrial Revolution began. This water wheel was the biggest in America when it was designed and built by Troy natives. The Van Rensselaer family literally owned all of this region by royal writ back in the 1600s. My own family, the Steeles of England, fled the King of England's malice and came here even before the Van Rensselaers showed up. The English crown, when they conquered the Dutch, set into law many restrictions on manufacturing. But when the American Revolution overthrew this regime, the inventive powers and engineering genius of the revolutionaries was unleashed.

Troy, New York rapidly morphed from a fur trading/timber source/hay farming community into a dynamo of capitalist engineered factories. This primacy continued until up to World War I and even afterwards, limping through the Great Depression, WWII revived industry here. But ever since the Vietnam War, it has steadily declined nearly to the vanishing point.

Across the street from the wall which welcomes us to Troy, New York, is a bridge that jumps over the Poestenkill creek. This very fast moving small river has tributaries that spring out of the Rensselaer plateau which rises to the west of my own farm. This landmass tilts steeply upwards by over 1,200 feet from the Hudson River which runs from the north to the south and ends at New York City. The waters up here flow with great speed downwards and 200 years ago, this energy was harvested via the famous water wheel. So all the factories that needed water power clustered around this on the lowlands on this side of the Hudson River. When I took this picture, the spring snowmelt was done so the river is at its normal flow rate.

.

In the last decade, all industries here have, like in the rest of this nation, nearly collapsed. So what we get to see are grand ruins that are slowly being knocked down.

These rusty portals had to be terminated after the Clean Water Act passed. We mock the Chinese for polluting everything this way but until Nixon, we did this merrily, too. The Hudson used to change color literally whenever these sluices opened. My father-in-law and his friends would bet on what color the river would be when they crossed the bridges on their way to work in the morning or home in the evening. Will it be blue? Green? Yellow or red? To this day, we can't eat much of the fish in the Hudson thanks to PCB pollution. At least the fish are making a comeback. They nearly went extinct. The downside to any industrial process is pollution. The US finds it too expensive to fix pollution so the 'fix' has been to simply move it to other nations and pollute them. Changing our tariffs and barriers to reflect this transfer of pollution is easy to do which is why no one ever even mentions it in the public arena. Those of us who do this are very, very few in number and we have a right to complain bitterly about this.

This photo can be repeated endlessly. Many of our factories look like this. There is no way around it: we are being rapidly deindustrialized. And this is a return to our colonial status.

This tavern is at least 150 years old and still in use. Note the separate entrance for the ladies :). In the 19th century, women and children worked long hours alongside the men. They often came from the surrounding farms. The eldest sons would learn all the farm skills and the younger boys worked in the factories or as lumberjacks. The girls worked to build up a dowery for marriage to a farmer if they were lucky. And an army of immigrants worked in these factories, too. Most of them were also peasants. Up until prohibition, they could celebrate their idle hours in this joint.

All of the fancy fretwork cement barriers and fences in this area were built during the Great Depression by the WPA. In Arizona, when I was growing up there, the few sidewalks that existed in downtown Tucson and next to my house on Fremont St were also built by the WPA. The cement mix they used across the nation was the same that built Hoover Dam. And this cement is distinctive for being a lovely soft color and hard as nails.

Now on to downtown Troy itself:

/photos/uncategorized/2008/04/21/russel_sage_founder.jpg" onclick="window.open(this.href, '_blank', 'width=475,height=777,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0'); return false">

The first all-women's college in America was founded by a Troy native. Her husband didn't believe in women getting all fancy with learning but when he died, she took firm control of the money and built this college and generously named it after him. He is very fortunate. No one would know who he was if it weren't for her being all uppity. The campus is quite beautiful. Many of the buildings were done in the style that was very hot back in the mid-19th century, Romanesque Architecture. The medievalist fad that swept Europe with Victor Hugo, Sir Walter Scott and Richard Wagner shows clearly in many of the Russell Sage buildings.

Here is a famous neo-Romanesque building, the Rice Building, in downtown Troy. It appears in a number of movies. 'The Age of Innocence' prompted the rebuilding of this magnificent structure.

So does River Street, it too, is in many a movie. The street gently curves along the river which runs behind the buildings. It has good outdoor dining and antique shops. My daughter and I love to eat here.

This colorful VW was visiting Russell Sage campus while I was wandering about. A lesbian couple had their car defaced one day so they decided to use this as an opportunity to talk about sexual civil rights. So they decided to keep the name spray painted on their car and renamed it the 'Fagbug.' I couldn't resist photographing it, the colors came out quite well and I liked the way the sun shone on the back window.

The other day, at the Mises Institute, I got in a debate over the history of the Civil War. People dearly would love to remove the issue of slavery from that war. They can't or willfully refuse to understand the importance of the slavery issue. This plaque commemorates a riot that ensued right before Lincoln was arrested. The Supreme Court ruled that northern police and sheriffs must cooperate with slavers retrieving those who flee this tremendously evil life imposed on them by force. This was extremely unpopular. When this particular slave was accosted, the citizens rose up and defied the Supreme Court and freed the captured slave. This was applauded by the local press and was one of many events that led to the Civil War.

As we see today, our courts can rip up the Constitution or ignore the Bill of Rights. From the very beginning when the US decided to not honor the opening words of the Declaration of Independence, our nation has struggled over the issue of race, slaver, power and sexual domination. Troy, New York, has been in the forefront of the fight for equality and justice. Even the beginnings of the unions lie in our precincts. This dynamic, restless nature is still here if we look around hard enough. It gives me faith that all is not lost. We can become the 'can-do' nation again.

Email this post

Culture of Life News Main Page

Apocalyptic Architecture

The view from the window of my office on the 46th floor of the 43rd St Park Avenue building I used to work in.
February 9, 2008

Elaine Meinel Supkis

I used to work in a skyscraper in Manhattan on Park Ave and 43rd St. My husband and several of our friends used to work in both WTC towers. Back in the 1970's, when the towers were new, we discussed the security and strength of the new WTC and found it seriously wanting. Over the years, we all lived through various scares involving planes and helicopters due to the fact that above all other cities, NYC has one of the biggest concentration of the world's biggest buildings, all on one very narrow island surrounded by several major airports. We all had narrow escapes from accidents falling from the skies. This also includes a military jet slamming into what used to be my home in Tucson, Arizona, during the 1970's. There is now a huge number of people who think they know how buildings work and they are now convinced the failure of the modern structures on 9/11 wasn't due to bad architectural choices. So time to address this issue, I say.

First, Ron Paul gave up his run due to a loss of support of the 9/11 fanatics:

The real issue now is that Ron Paul is effectively out of the race ....whether he directly came out and said it or not. In his statement of thanks to his supporters (see below), he also announced he's cutting his staff way back. The message is clear.

The last Ron Paul 'money bomb' showed a substantial loss of support momentum...which was/is largely the result of his complete public disassociation and denouncement of the entire 911 Truth Movement during that national 'debate' several weeks ago.

That was either a bald-faced, enormous, lie to try to keep himself politically 'alive' ... OR that is HIS truth.

Either way, it cost him a lot of support.

Like myself, Ron Paul struggles to be rational or sane even if he has his own pet beliefs. We all have our own pet beliefs. But some become group manias. I remember in NYC, when Elvis died due to overdose of drugs. Almost immediately, the fabulous story popped up that he wasn't dead, he was hiding. I would even joke, 'Yeah, he has to hide from his own fans because they are insane.' Of course, none of these believers could explain why he had to hide. They just wanted to believe he was hiding. It was nearly impossible to get them to articulate the rational reasons for him faking his own death. The need for wishful thinking was very strong. The 'wish' element in the human mind is like a powerful drug. It triggers chemical changes which protects us from fears of our own mortality. It also triggers part of the 'fight or flight' parts of the brain. If we are in emotional pain, this dulls the pain. Indeed, it is very connected to the part of the human brain where religious impulses probably reside. Humans created religion during the Ice Ages. That time of terrible death and suffering as humans struggled to figure out how to hunt, how to use animal furs to cover our nakedness, how to create, care for and use fire. Indeed, most religions revolve around Ice Age problems. The devotion of the hearth and the calling of game being two very powerful and universal concerns. There are no humans on earth who don't have fire god stories. Just as there are no humans who don't have 'flood' stories which probably came from the era when the sudden melt caused world oceans to rise by 20 feet or more, very quickly.

Because we all have this part of our brains, we are also very vulnerable to dreams leaking into our waking world. Most people are blissfully unaware of their dreams but we all dream and the thoughts and desires awoken in these nocturnal lives can trip us up in the waking world. This cross-over effect always is part of our perceptions of what we like to call 'reality'.

When I began this news service, I decided to talk about things that interest me. And what has always interested me has been WWIII. My very first foray on the New York Times forums many years ago was, 'Can We Avoid WWIII?' thread I started there. All my life, avoiding this war has been my mission and my hope. If I want to stop this event, I have to talk about the Apocalypse. This religious horror is like a Grim Reaper who sits at the table, silent. Except when it stirs. We can hear it moving when we see the news, if we look carefully. Several times, the Reaper nearly swept us all aside. This began right after my 12th birthday. I was in Junior High at the time. On my birthday, I climbed into the foothills of the mountains where I could see all of Tucson. Standing under a saguaro I called, 'Saguaro Woman', I looked into the setting sun which was falling to the West right where Bavaquivari raises its warning finger to the sky. That mountain is also the Mountain of the Dead. As if in a dream, I could see the Vulturine figure of Death rising and I shuddered and went home to warn my father that we were in danger.

The very next day, a U-2 using a camera built and designed by my father, photographed what might have been missiles being taken to Cuba. My father is one of the founders of NASA as well as the CIA. He is a world expert in optics, rockets and covert activities. A few hours after the CIA got the pictures developed, the phone rang. The phone at this time was near my bedroom and I spied on my parents and exploited this to listen to their conversations. My dad often went to DC but this was different. As soon as he hung up, he frantically packed his bags. I thought he would drive off to the airport. But instead, from Davis Monthan came a helicopter. It landed in the horse pasture. My dad ran out and disappeared. We didn't see him for more than a week. Later, he told us how he was flown to DC in a two-seater military jet. He wore a helmet and had a parachute which we kept.

I was not easily fooled by the TV news. I often had inside information and thus knew when the news was lying about things. According to the official timeline, on October 17, President Kennedy met with my dad who had already looked carefully at the photos and had finally confirmed they were missiles. All the top brass were there and my father, being very classified, was also there but never gets mentioned due to him being 'invisible'. But Kennedy knew that my dad was friends with General Eisenhower and was very respected for his cool mind and lack of hysteria. He carefully explained the options and various possibilities and then stood aside. As the discussions began to be very dangerous, my father got on the phone to warn my mother.

I was in school so I didn't hear this call. At this point in time, virtually no one outside of the very top elites have the slightest idea a terrible confrontation was brewing. Our mother gives us instructions for what to do. If we hear many jets taking off from the military base, we are to drop everything and run like hell for the hills, even if we can't make it home, we are to leave the valley and go into the foothills of Mt. Lemmon and always keep the mountain's hills between ourselves and the line of sight of the valley of Tucson.

For the next week, the US and Russia were on the sword's edge of WWIII. Discussions of clearing cities were rejected. A lunatic suggestion that people would be safer in these Ground Zeros was actually broached by an unknown person during the meetings on October 24th. From the Kennedy Library Tapes which were declassified 10 years ago: Tape 36.1-36.1A, October 24, time unknown: Consideration of civil defense options and planning for possible Soviet responses in Berlin:

JFK concludes that if we invade in the next ten days, the missile base crews in Cuba will likely fire at least some of the missiles at US targets. He asks whether we could evacuate civilian populations from cities a few days before the invasion. [2:50] Response (voice unidentified) is that cities actually provide the best protection against radiation. [Source: JFK Library release notes prepared by Sheldon M. Stern] This tidbit of advice was given even though it was patently, obviously insane. I grew up in queer places like where various secret government programs were in effect, preparing for WWIII. So I had a very good idea how destructive these things were. I knew that Tucson would be vaporized in WWIII due to the ring of nuclear missiles there as well as the air force base. We kids had already blazed our own secret trails through the foothills into the mountains as our potential escape routes. If my dad had taken me to the White House with him, I would have given Kennedy a graphic description of what a nuclear bomb would do to a city. And why he shouldn't even consider exposing anyone to any of this, no matter what. But the same people who nuked two civilian cities in Japan and who knew perfectly well what hell awaited anyone exposed to a nuclear attack, they were not sane enough to explain this to the President.

And why didn't Kennedy, a military man himself, know this? I would suggest the occult nature of the nuclear program meant that things we take for granted today, were not known EVEN BY PEOPLE AT THE TOP back then. My own first raging battle with my dad dates from this period. I knew to run but I couldn't tell anyone else to run for the hills and the President wasn't going to tell anyone to run for the hills. I was outraged by this. I remember arguing with my playmates, trying to convince them that if I began to run straight for Mt. Lemmon, they were to come with me no matter what, no questions asked. They all promised to do this but thought I was joking. After all, the President was on TV telling us that all was under control. Two U-2s were shot down trying to take closer photos because my father thought the first ones were too fuzzy. This escalated the tensions, needless to say. Well.....Khruschev wasn't insane and neither was JFK and they resolved this via the old fashioned tools of diplomacy. Things were heating up between India and China and back then, the US imagined China was allied with Russia. My father came home and he took my mother off to India where they had many interesting adventures I can't tell anyone about.

The reason I bring all this up is several-fold: one thing we must remember is, the Pentagon is filled with people who don't really want to understand the nature of nuclear war. The think tank guys are supposed to imagine this but they also cannot do this since they all are doomed by religious wishful thinking as I explained earlier. I know this sort of mind-set. The idea that WWIII could be terminal or destroy too much of civilization, this just doesn't occur to them. They wipe it out of their thoughts. This inability to imagine the obvious is an important tool the mind uses to avoid fear of death. This tool we use to be 'sane' actually can make us be 'insane'. Weighing in the mind, the scales of justice and death is important and if this is killed off, humans can drive themselves into situations that lead to great destruction. Which is why honest discussion is so important. And the one thing the people charting the course of our nation don't want is exactly that: honest discussions. But events are forced upon us and we have to grapple with a thousand Gordian Knots! And the only way to do this is to look good and hard at reality and not fool ourselves. And we have to keep things in perspective. And understand how we can be sidetracked, lied to or self-deceiving. The human mind is a very dangerous thing indeed.

From 1984 by G. Orwell:

'That was forty,' said O'Brien. 'You can see that the numbers on this dial run up to a hundred. Will you please remember, throughout our conversation, that I have it in my power to inflict pain on you at any moment and to whatever degree I choose? If you tell me any lies, or attempt to prevaricate in any way, or even fall below your usual level of intelligence, you will cry out with pain, instantly. Do you understand that?'

'Yes,' said Winston.

O'Brien's manner became less severe. He resettled his spectacles thoughtfully, and took a pace or two up and down. When he spoke his voice was gentle and patient. He had the air of a doctor, a teacher, even a priest, anxious to explain and persuade rather than to punish.

'I am taking trouble with you, Winston,' he said, 'because you are worth trouble. You know perfectly well what is the matter with you. You have known it for years, though you have fought against the knowledge. You are mentally deranged. You suffer from a defective memory. You are unable to remember real events and you persuade yourself that you remember other events which never happened. Fortunately it is curable. You have never cured yourself of it, because you did not choose to. There was a small effort of the will that you were not ready to make. Even now, I am well aware, you are clinging to your disease under the impression that it is a virtue. Now we will take an example. At this moment, which power is Oceania at war with?'

'When I was arrested, Oceania was at war with Eastasia.'

Recently released secret documents in London showed that George Orwell was spied on by the British Government. All governments use schools to indoctrinate and propagandize populations. Religious organizations have parallel operations that do the same thing. Repetition coupled with wiping out important information we get accidentally is part of it, too. And planting false information, false memories, false beliefs is very much a powerful tool used in these doctrinaire battles. In the Vietnam war, the Pentagon talked about winning hearts and minds and I would joke, we won hatred and are driving ourselves insane. How can madmen win hearts and minds? It is impossible. Today, we hear more about winning hearts and minds in the Middle East, in Afghanistan, Pakistan, all over the place. Only we are losing our minds and winning hatred. The more the neo-cons toil to win hearts and minds, the more agonized everyone is. The need to understand why the US is at 'war' with a billion Muslims is of highest importance. When the US was reeling from the 9/11 attacks, Bush asked us to NOT talk about all this because we were 'good guys' and besides, the attackers were hitting us due to our love of liberty and freedom, not because we are oppressing, butchering and stealing in the Muslim world communities. The whole nation, going insane together, collectively decided the last thing we should examine is this life and death issue.

When I began my news service, it was due to more than one 'liberal' [sic] web site banning me or censoring me whenever I began to try to discuss bin Laden, the Palestinian people, the history of Judaism, WWII and the coming Apocalypse that WWIII will be. Even here, readers have begged me to never ever use the word, 'Jew', for example. Indeed, the need to stop the discussion of all this is very powerful for it has been implanted in our brains since WWII and the US use of nuclear bombs. Just as we are supposed to ignore the possibility that all our cities might be vaporized in one day, we have to ignore the hair triggers that have developed all over the world.

When Reagan was running for President, the space exploration community which I was part of was torn asunder by all this. Many were fearful of nuclear war since we were part of the think-tank system that was supposed to think about all this. I explained the need to apply diplomacy and to spread knowledge and make cultural contacts while the other side wanted to build a missile shield. William Safire told me, 'If we succeed, we can annihilate Russia!'

I was horrified and said, 'They will attack us before we put in the system for they expect us to attack them. This is insanity! There is no defense but diplomacy!' Reagan began to work on the missile defense system which is STILL ON GOING. The US space program has been running on half-steam all these years and China is rapidly catching up on us. Even as the Chinese showed us our system is useless, it continues out of inertia and because it makes people lots of money. But it would turn the world into a super-hair-trigger situation. Kennedy had two weeks to resolve the Cuban Missile Crisis. In the future, we will have two hours. So we have to worry about this possibility.

Back to the Middle East: Israel has nukes. The US never discusses this in public. It is still very much a state secret and the fact that Israel, a mad nuclear power, can launch WWIII unilaterally, is an issue the US public should discuss, urgently. And 9/11 is an important part of all this. For in the wake of that attack, the vast majority of Americans wanted to instantly respond with our own nuclear bombs...right next to China and Russia, in Afghanistan.

Now, on to the next topic: why people can't talk about WWIII but will stake their lives on discussions that are fruitless about skyscraper architecture and jets:

World Trade Center design. Click on image to enlarge:

The WTC buildings were crummy buildings. The design was made so there were no interior walls connecting the outer skin to the inner core. As we can see here, there are NO internal supports. The steel beams holding the cement floors were very precariously attached at both ends to the inner and outer parts of the building. I am a person who likes multiple-level systems so the failure of one part doesn't turn things into a house of cards. More than once in my life, I have walked past scaffolding only to turn back and warn the people using it, they hadn't secured it sufficiently. Then, if I am ignored, the scaffolding eventually collapses. The World Trade Center was a new concept and alas, a very bad concept. The thought was, nothing could ever happen that would need interior walls to support the weight of the building in a failure. We know obviously that this is true. Far from being solid structures, they were very weak. The outer skin was not stone, brick, cement and steel with interspacing windows. It was all windows with little between these things. I marveled at this and it made me very queasy. From the first day David worked on the 64th floor of the North Tower, I began to talk to him about leaving. Which he finally did.

Wikipedia:

The building was also known for its helicopter service to John F. Kennedy International Airport, a seven-minute flight that left from the rooftop helipad. This service was offered only between December 21, 1965 and February 18, 1968 and for a few months in 1977 and was ended after a spectacular accident that killed five people.[3][4] On May 16, 1977, a broken landing gear caused a parked Sikorsky S-61L with rotors still turning to tip over, killing four people who were outside the helicopter waiting to board, including exploitation filmmaker Michael Findlay. Part of a rotor blade sailed over the side of the building and killed a pedestrian on the corner of Madison and 43rd Street. Two other people were seriously injured.
Another notorious moment in the building's history was Eli M. Black's historic suicide on February 3, 1975. The CEO of United Brands Company (now Chiquita Brands International) used his briefcase to shatter an external window and then jumped out of the forty-four story window to his death on Park Avenue. This incident was an inspiration for a similar suicide in the 1994 film, The Hudsucker Proxy.

Modern buildings take advantage of lighter materials. But these are more vulnerable than older materials. Due to the nature of older brick, steel and mortar, the earlier sky scrapers like the one I worked in midtown, were far, far narrower and denser than the WTC or any of the other Trade Center buildings. When I worked in midtown, the government decided to begin again, the use of helicopters to fly people from the Pan Am building to Kennedy Airport. I had a bird's eye view of that helipad. Not only was it very noisy when I was trying to make international calls, it was nerve wracking. We always wondered if these would crash on us and one day, the blades flew off of one and killed a secretary. We all rose up in rage and demanded the city stop this madness. Whenever it was foggy, we would all remember how a WWII bomber flew into the Empire State Building after nearly clipping the building I was in. Being virtually at the top, I knew this was no small consideration. Recently, a Yankee picture plunged his plane into a building very nearby. But most of the midtown structures are older buildings. They don't have flat roofs. They are not solid windows. The new style is to have no exterior that is stronger than glass. So if anything were to slice into these buildings, they are destabilized. Unlike the older buildings.

Beyond the Towers: Performance of Masonry
By David T. Biggs, P.E., Ryan-Biggs Associates

Comparing the present with the past in the world around us can be an important learning experience. Such was the case for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), in the difficult task of conducting an evaluation of the World Trade Center (WTC) and surrounding buildings.

The Event

On September 11, 2001, airplanes struck two 110-story office towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. The towers (WTC 1 and WTC 2) collapsed in less than two hours, and another building in the complex (WTC 7) collapsed later in the afternoon. These buildings had few or no masonry components. All of the surrounding buildings suffered damage from falling debris, wreckage, and fire from the towers. While the impact of portions of the collapsing buildings did the majority of harm, there was also damage from flying debris and air to the masonry used in their construction.

Below is a diagram showing clearly how the floors are barely attached to anything, they had these small clips holding them up!

The WTC used to hold the record for the most cement used in a building. But due to its size, the mass of the cement wasn't as great as smaller buildings. But the volume was gigantic. When the structures failed, they rained many tons of dust, stone and metal upon all the buildings surrounding them. The weight of all this, when it landed on FLAT roofs, was very tremendous. The older buildings didn't have vast, flat roofs so they didn't suffer from this weight load.

Masonry Performance: Verizon Building, 140 West Street

One of the closest neighbors to the WTC site, the 30-story Verizon building, is a steel-framed brick building constructed circa 1924. The typical floors, composed of concrete-encased steel beams and girders, are redundant and robust. The exterior face of the perimeter framing is encased in brick and serves as both exterior wall and infill. Header bricks connect the exterior brick to the backup and support the weight of the exterior wythe. Columns are also brick encased.

The façade, floors, and framing of the south and east sides of the building sustained heavy damage, as did several exterior columns. Although the framing deflected as much as 2 ft into the building, the masonry infill restrained the columns from collapse. The steel structure was not affected. None of the damage threatened the structural integrity of the building. And although there was a substantial fire in WTC 7, there were no fires reported in this building. It was never out of service. The structure was shored and repaired.

It is hard for people who are not experts to understand how fragile modern skyscrapers are. Much smaller buildings have caught on fire and not collapsed but then, they didn't have a huge hunk of the building's structure severed, first. And smaller planes cause smaller damage. There is no comparison with the WTC and the debris field this collapse caused. The only things that are similar are of course, nuclear bombs. But the failure of these buildings was probably inevitable since the structure was not aging well, in the first place. All buildings age and when the towers were going up, many of us said, 'How on earth can this be taken down safely?' I remember well, how the Port Authority said, the land around the Towers would be kept clear so that wouldn't be a problem. Only they didn't keep it clear at all, they kept building closer and closer and closer!

Masonry improved the performance of the Verizon building because:

Perimeter brick masonry walls absorbed much of the impact from both WTC 1 and WTC 7, resulting in less damage to the steel structure.

Masonry infill of the exterior wall provided a redundant load path and helped prevent collapse.

Framing damage was localized, partially due to masonry infill.

Exterior brick headers held the upper brick from collapsing above a damaged section.

Brick encasement of the columns and concrete encasement of the steel framing provided fire and impact resistance.

Built-up sections appeared to be more ductile and better able to absorb energy along with the masonry infill.

The building did not experience fire damage—masonry and (safety glass) windows limited penetrations through exterior walls.

Summary

In the towers themselves, the stairwell and elevator walls were constructed
of gypsum products. Evidence indicates most of the floors of impact were
damaged and rendered unusable. While it is presumptuous to assume that
masonry enclosures would have survived the attacks, it is obvious that more
durable wall systems would have improved chances for survival for occupants
above the level of impact. Future research should be devoted to evaluating
and developing durable, fire-rated egress enclosures for high-rise buildings.
Reinforced masonry and concrete are two effective solutions that can be used
without further development.

Example after example demonstrates how masonry helped prevent greater
destruction during the World Trade Center disaster. Some of the lessons learned:
Older framed buildings with masonry components performed generally better than newer buildings with lightweight curtain wall construction.

Masonry (walls, beams, partitions, infill) served as fireproofing and provided significant structural redundancy.

Masonry infill absorbed impact energy to minimize damage locally.

Masonry veneers and panelized systems are readily repaired.

Masonry proved in this event that it does more than simply enclose space; it
provides fire protection, structural capacity, and even structural redundancy.
It can provide safer enclosures for stairways or other exit routes, affording egress in high-rise buildings during emergencies.

The stairwells were built of SHEETROCK! Not cement. I remember those stairs and thought this was tacky back then. The lack of interior walls that were solid has much more to do with the collapse than anything else. These were bad buildings from day one. This is not unusual in architecture. For example, I had to fix many buildings in NYC that had 'cock-roofs'. This meant, a row of houses all had the same attic with no divisions. If one house caught on fire, they all burned. The city made this illegal long ago but the 'grandfathered' ones remained. And I would go in and build partitions. And these had to be fully fireproofed! Even small gaps had to be sealed carefully. We also know that houses in California with wooden fences are a danger to the neighborhood in places where the Santa Ana winds blow. Even today, such fences are still not outlawed. Though roofs made with wood are.

Buildings fail all the time. Bridges collapse. Dams give way. Space shuttles blow up. This is part of the hazards of life. But the thing we should worry about is how our leaders are leading us to possible wars. The level of complicity and carelessness or active engagement of the neo-cons and the Bushes in the 9/11 attacks cannot be proven unless we get ahold of all the classified documents and certainly, I call upon our government to release absolutely everything, all of it. But look at how long we had to wait for the Kennedy tapes! Over 30 years. Information about my father's activities in WWII weren't released until the mid-1980s. There is no excuse, none, for any of this secrecy!

All my life, I have demanded openness. The Bushes are tremendously secretive. They have withheld from Congress and the American people, incredible amounts of information we need to make wise choices, to avoid wars, to protect ourselves. Instead, we get a compliant Congress conspiring with him to impose upon us, many vile and unconstitutional laws and regulations which destroy our historic freedoms and rights. Congress has had a thousand reasons to impeach Bush and Cheney but will not do this. Instead, we are being herded along the path of war by all parties.

Kucinich is being attacked by the AIPAC/DNC because he talked about the forbidden stuff: the looming wars, bin Laden, our relations with Israel. Ron Paul suddenly has to go home to defend his own turf for the same reason. The conspirators who run both the top of the Democratic and Republican parties are anxious to make examples of the only two men I supported for President. Like Jimmy Carter, they will be driven out of public life. Both were make deliberately nearly as invisible as I am and for the same reasons: they can see what is going wrong and know that the neo-Nazi Jewish state is at the very root of this toxic tree of death.

We have to keep our focus on what matters! Stopping Israel's mad rush into WWIII is of highest importance. The fine details as to who did what on 9/11 won't be known unless we first flush out of Washington, the flood of money from pro-war lunatics who dream of world domination! The flood of money corrupting our system, the flood of money that is rapidly erasing anyone who talks about Israel's contributions to our deteriorating financial and diplomatic condition!

This is a very dangerous game. It is no fun, trust me on this. Several times in my life, people offered to make my life easier if I just drop this matter and never ever mention the Apocalypse and how Christians, Muslims and Jews will create it. If I were to talk about real estate or fluffy kittens or the weather, this is OK. But talking about WWIII is not OK! And are we ready for it?

Good grief. We no longer have even the pretense of trying to have any civil defenses. And this, too, is deliberate. Instead of talking about Building #7, if people could go in public and demand an end to the ethnic cleansing, if we could all demonstrate against the apartheid regime in Palestine, this and only this will save us from the looming horrors of the Apocalypse. And we have to force the Christians to face this. too. They have to see how they cannot beg Jesus to come just because the Age of Pisces is ending. Lord spare us! To see all humanity killed because a shift in the constellations don't match the theology is just too unbearable to think!

Email this post

Culture of Life News Main Page

Rusting Steel Struts Cause Bridge Collapse

Elaine Meinel Supkis

I have designed and built smaller structures but the only bridges I have built have been over small streams. But the elemental fundamentals remain the same. Namely, you have to consider the flow of water, freeze/thaw cycles and overhead weight. The longer the span, the more one has to consider weight. In this bridge collapse there is another story: tax cuts and putting off repairs. Our entire national infrastructure has been placed in jeopardy on the altar of tax cuts. The tax on gas hasn't been raised in many years even as the cost of construction and rehabilitation rises. Congress recently passed a big, fat spending bill for rebuilding our roads and bridges and all of this will be paid for by the government of China rather than a small hike in the gas tax.

From the NYT blog:

August 2nd,
2007
9:43 am

In an editorial during last spring’s legislative session, the Mpls. Star-Tribune said Minnesota’s bridges were unsafe due to chronic underfunding of transportation during the last decade. The legislature passed a nickel a gallon gas tax increase to increase funding for transportation, including infrastructure. Gov. Pawlenty, who ran on the slogan “no new taxes”, vetoed the bill.
— Posted by T. Walters

As the US has misspent its resources building exurban or vacation houses instead of renewable energy systems and modern mass transit, we also stiffed paying for repairs, updating or rebuilding our extensive highway system of roads and bridges. The collapse of a major bridge during rush hour in Minnesota is a bellweather event. It presages what is our fates in the years to come as the tax cut mania coupled with the funny money mania leads to the collapse of our extended auto-based transportation systems.

I read today that Amtrak will offer Scotch and fine wine on their overnight trains. Whoopee. I suppose getting drunk while idling at various side rails next to stinking cattle yards will lure customers to our benighted train service. Just as the entire world has surpassed us with much more superior train service, the giant autobahn system started by Eisenhower is now going to go into collapse and we will have nothing at all except Boeing jets when it comes to cutting edge transportation technology.

I have this mania about engineering. I grew up on mountaintop observatories that were built to sustain high winds and other stresses and I got to see the blueprints being developed since my dad let us live in the AURA offices. And it fascinates me how they solved some awesomely difficult engineering problems for not just the massive mirror devices but the road building, etc. I saw Caterpillars crushed by landslides or falling boulders, I saw delivery trucks swept from the road by high winds. It all seems so tame today but back when I was a child, it was dangerous. In my grandaddy's day, building Mt. Palomar and Mount Wilson as well as the Lowell observatory in Arizona, was done with mules and Chinese laborers.

If you go to the New York Times web page, you can see the bridge collapse on film. I just got the video off of this web site, LiveLeak:

It obviously started at the near end of the bridge. The section of steel connected to the near shore piers suddenly collapsed straight downwards and since one end of the span was no longer supported by anything, the whole thing fell, all within less than 3 seconds. There are many people who believe the World Trade Center was deliberately pulled down and they can't understand the sheer weight of the cement pads of each floor could make the whole thing pancake at the speed of sound but here is yet another example of this: the weight of the concrete pads were similar to the WTC pads and like them, caused everything to fall very fast when only one side was compromised.

Cement is very heavy. This basic principle can't be emphisized enough. Anything with huge cement pads involved are prone to sudden collapses like the McAurthur Freeway in Oakland during a mid-range earthquake. I drove under that highway exactly once in 1969. I said, 'Never will I do that again!' as I got a good look at the supports holding up all that cement over my head. When that span collapsed, I thought we would re-examine all such systems. No chance of that! People need to be fooled into thinking all is well when all is rotted. Look at our economic system!

When I first drove my 55 Chevvy truck on the West Side Highway in Manhattan back in 1969, I yelled to my finance, 'This is insane! This is so rotted, it will collapse!' He thought I was exaggerating but it was lunacy, driving a truck on that roller-coaster road with steel plates as Mr. Fixits. I looked at the understructure later and was doubly upset. 'See all the rust? The rot? See how the steel is expanding due to flaking?' I said. I knew enough of welding to know, when steel looks thicker, this means it is weaker, not stronger. Parts of the West Side highway such as the huge steel medallions, would suddenly fall and I knew scavangers and artists who would collect these highway parts and resell them. Then, one day, the road bed itsel collapsed and people were killed.

It didn't surprise me even slightly. Everyone had to pretend no one could have foreseen this event! Ditto the McAurthur collapse. I foresaw them easily and it didn't take the powers of a psychic. Just taking a hammer and screw driver, I could prove these structures, all built during the 1960s-1970s were unstable. This was during the time the US first started pretending we were still an empire but the dollar was losing value so building things meant taking short cuts. Suddenly, it wasn't so important to double-build. Namely, to make something twice as strong as specifications. And designers thought, if they built things that had many intersecting parts, it didn't need hyper-support systems. But the downside of all this is, if just one bolt breaks, the whole thing collapses. We have seen such collapses over the years over and over again and this bridge collapse is a classic example.

I am grateful for the film of this latest disaster. It clearly shows the bridge suddenly shearing off at one shore and then the unsupported sections then fell instantly after. Looking at before and after pictures, it is obvious where the collapse began and why it happened: rust at the point of contact where the flying sectors were bolted to the piers on the side of the river.

From the Times:

His point: the concrete arches stand independently, but in a truss design, if one steel truss falls, they all do. “This poor design based primarily on cost considerations has been required all over this country in countless projects for the past 50 years,” he continues.

This is the standard bridge design and it was chosen because it was cheap. We want to drive our cars no matter what and if we can't afford proper bridges, we get cheap ones. And spans have life spans. They don't last forever. And cheap ones have shorter spans than well-built ones. The concept of 'if one truss fails, they all fail' should have forced engineers to reconsider the utility of these spans. If no earthquake or hurricane still causes an entire span to suddenly pancake, this is a warning sign that all similar structures can just as easily collapse and there are lots of similar structures equally old, all over our highway systems.

From the NYT blog:

Scores of ‘Deficient’ Bridges | 9:44 AM The Department of Transportation’s 2005 judgment that the bridge was “structurally deficient” has emerged as one of the most prominent signs of a missed signal of an impending disaster. But there are many, many more bridges with that rating, according to a 2006 count by The Federal Highway Administration. Minnesota alone has 1,135 bridges on the list of “Deficient Bridges,” and other states have thousands more.

Here in NY, they are rebuilding all the Depression Era bridges on small, back country roads in our county. The one connecting us to our relatives are being rebuilt totally this month so we have to make detours. New York has high gas taxes but then, we have road and bridge work going on! The example of NYC was from when the City was going bankrupt. When it went nearly bankrupt during President Ford's rule, all the systems collapsed, literally. Subways became very erratic. Huge holes opened up in road beds. We even had a contest for 'biggest hole in the road' which was won by Fort Greene residents who submitted this 10' deep hole that was a 6'x12' section of roadbed that collapsed and had a big Caddie with tailfins stuck in it for a YEAR! Then a dump truck fell into a hole that completely swallowed it up on Mermaid Ave in Coney Island. Such competition!

Well-designed, well-built bridges can last for many centuries. Here is the very first iron bridge, built in England.

From PBS:

Iron Bridge

Vital Statistics:
Location: Shropshire, England
Completion Date: 1779
Length: 100 feet
Type: Arch
Purpose: Roadway (original), Pedestrian (Today)
Materials: Cast iron
Longest Single Span: 100 feet
Engineer(s): Abraham Darby III, Thomas Farnolls Pritchard

Fast Facts:
Darby severely underestimated the cost to build the Iron Bridge. He remained in debt for the rest of his life.
In 1934, after years of repairs, the Iron Bridge was closed to vehicles and listed as an "Ancient Monument."
So many people gathered on the Iron Bridge in 1979 to celebrate its 200th birthday, pieces of the bridge actually broke off and dropped into the river. Today, no more than 200 people are allowed on the bridge at any time.

The Minnesota bridge didn't last 40 years. This one lasted nearly 200 years and still holds up even though it is pretty weak. I used to live next to the Brooklyn Bridge. It is over 100 years old and takes massive bumper to bumber traffic every day for most of its life!

From Memory, Local Government of NY:

On June 12, 1806, John A. Roebling, civil engineer and designer of the Brooklyn Bridge, was born in Muehlhausen, Prussia. The Brooklyn Bridge, Roebling's greatest achievement, spans the East River to connect Manhattan with Brooklyn. For nearly a decade after its completion, the bridge, with a main span of 1595 feet, was the longest suspension bridge in the world. Steel wire cable, invented and manufactured by Roebling, made the structure possible.

It isn't just massively utilitarian, it is one of the most beautiful bridges on earth. Generations of artists and photographers have adored this most beautiful of spans. Never have I feared, crossing it! I have biked over it, jogged over it, marched in parades over it, watched fireworks from it, and in general, loved it with all my heart. It is the Queen of all Bridges in America.

In 1869, Roebling died from tetanus he had contracted in an accident on the bridge pilings. From 1870 on, Roebling's son and partner, Washington A. Roebling, supervised construction. A series of mishaps, including an explosion, fire, and contractor fraud hampered completion of the project.
Pneumatic caissons sunk to a depth of forty-four feet on the Brooklyn side, and seventy-eight feet on the Manhattan side provided dry space for workers to dig footings for the bridge's foundation. Alas, working in the caisson often brought on "the bends" -- a serious medical condition caused by moving too quickly from a high-pressure atmosphere to a low-pressure atmosphere. Washington Roebling was among many workers permanently impaired by the then little understood "caisson disease."

And it was very difficult to build. Many new technologies were created in order to build this bridge. New manufacturing techniques, new equipment, new challenges. Both the father and the son sacrificed themselves building this bridge. And both are held in honor and awe ever since.

Here is a story about Minnesota winning an award for highway design just a few years ago:

Excellence in Highway Design 2004

Category 2—The Rural Highway

I-35 Interchange at Medford, Minnesota, Minnesota Department of Transportation (Mn/DOT)

Faced with an inadequate 1958 diamond interchange and two-lane crossover bridge on Interstate 35 at Medford, Mn/DOT chose the innovative solution of installing two roundabouts on either end of the bridge to better handle the traffic and improve safety. Partnering with the community resulted in a unique gateway into Medford, with such architectural details as a red brick-patterned concrete surfacing treatment to enhance the visual appeal of the roundabouts.

Contact: Scott Robinson, Mn/DOT, 651-284-3783.

There are plenty of intelligent people working for highway systems and designers are not always wrong. But the problem is, we can't rest on the labors of the past. The period of poor highway design haunts us today and we can't ignore this nor can we paint over this!

Here is a before picture from CNN:

"The bridge's deck truss system has not experienced fatigue cracking, but it has many poor fatigue details on the main truss and the floor truss system," said a report conducted for the Minnesota Department of Transportation in 2001.

Note the obvious rust where the girders tie into the piers that are in the river. Here is yet another picture that shows clearly the piers were not undermined nor did they fail. The steel structure tying the main fram to the flying parts collapsed very suddenly right where the steel struts tie into the piers.

In other words: this collapse was totally AVOIDABLE. If the lower sections of the steel struts were re-installed or strengthened, no one would have died.

Here is the west bank of the Mississippi showing how the girders didn't separate but fell as a unit. Note the piers at this end were intact, too. This is a pure steel failure event. And steel rusts and the rust can't just be painted over, the weakened steel needs lots of jointure work and welding.

Jeanne Aamodt, a spokeswoman for the Minnesota Department of Transportation, told the Star Tribune, a Minneapolis newspaper, that the department was aware of the 2005 assessment, which gave the bridge a score of four on a scale of zero to nine.

A bridge receives a four when there is "advanced section loss, deterioration, spalling or scour." Spalling is a term used to describe cracking, chipping, crumbling or fraying, while scour is a term used for erosion caused by flowing water.

I think some people need to be arrested. We give autorities autority so they can protect us. And if they are brain dead like Greenspan and Bernanke, then they should resign. And people who are supposed to protect us and don't like Bush and Cheney on 9/11 as well as the Pentagon, should be arrested. They ignore obvious dangers because they get richer or more powerful if they ignore things! The Republican running Minnesota wanted the popularity of cheap gas so he gambled with people's lives. Arrest him!

"I am totally puzzled as to why both ends of the bridge would come down all at once. When my colleague tested it, it was very low stress," said Ted Galambos, a University of Minnesota engineering professor. "I don't think it was overload, so it could have been either some fatigue, failure or some sudden buckling that would cause the failure."

What? Didn't this guy ever play with bridge building as a child? I did! It is simple! How can one end of a bridge with only TWO PAIRS OF PIERS hold up if one side collapses! Of course, the other side would go! And if one side is weak from rust, you can bet your booties, the other side will be equally weak! DUH. There is no middle span so of course, the bridge will fall, simultaneously. Unlike an arch bridge which is quite intact and much older right next door! And the Romans who 'discovered' the arch should be thanked for this great mental revolution! Arches are good!

Bridge deficiencies are summarized as "structurally deficient" and "functionally obsolete," according to the Federal Highway Administration.

A bridge is tagged structurally deficient when significant bridge elements have deteriorated and the bridge's load-carrying capacity is reduced, according to the highway administration.

A bridge is dubbed functionally obsolete when the bridge does not meet current design standards.

Neither label indicates a bridge is unsafe for travel, the highway administration said.

As of 2003, there were about 160,570 bridges deemed structurally deficient or functionally obsolete, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers. The number represented 27.1 percent of the nation's bridges.

So, if a bridge is bad, this is OK with the highway administrators? GADS. Talk about insane. Obsolete bridges are dangerous. We have very old bridges up my way and they have warning signs as to weight and mass! Indeed, all the bridges here have weight warnings on them.

From DU Edu:

The idea then took hold of a bridge in which all the forces could be determined by the principles of statics, so they would not be altered by small inaccuracies of construction, or by changes in temperature or settlement of abutments. In a truss bridge, this meant a span supported at the ends, with members pinned together so they could rotate at least a little at the joints. The number of members meeting at a joint had to be small enough that the forces in each could be uniquely determined. There is a relatively small number of truss designs that satisfy this requirement.

The most popular design was the Pratt truss, which could be used in spans up to several hundred feet. As shown in the Figure, it consists of an upper chord, in compression, and a lower chord, in tension, connected by vertical and diagonal members. The loads w are applied to the truss at the panel joints, and the reactions R are applied at the ends. The principal job of the vertical posts is to keep the chords apart and brace them. The end posts carry only tension, but the others are designed as compression members. The diagonal members resist the shearing forces between the chords that arise when the loads tend to cause the centre of the span to sink. In the centre panel, there are diagonals in each direction, although only one direction is in tension at any one time, the other being slack. The reason is that a moving load is not applied evenly across the bridge, and as it moves one set or the other of the diagonals will find itself in tension. These counters are generally used in one or more of the central panels.

These trusses are just fine...so long as the steel is good. And this is where inspectors matter. Obviously, when they saw the metal was rusted and in poor condition, they should have had the authority to close the road. But they couldn't. And so people died. Everyone passes the buck but the matter stands: that bridge was judged as in poor condition before the collapse but this judgement was ignored by authorities. Finger pointing here is necessary. Just like on 9/11. They kept telling us to not point fingers. Well, point, point, point!

The Pratt truss proved thoroughly reliable, never providing any surprises and capable of confident design. It is, however, not the most economical solution. Most of its dead load is in the middle of the span, and as the span increases it becomes increasingly more expensive to support. The depth of the truss increases with the span, which makes the members longer and more subject to buckling. There are modifications of the Pratt truss for longer spans that involve more bracing and other measures. It was usually more economical to break the bridge up into multiple spans supported on piers. The bridge is observed to be 'thinnest' at the piers, and 'thickest' between them. A more economical truss is designed like a continuous beam, which removes the joint at the pier, and allows the truss to bend over the pier. Now the bridge is thickest over the pier, with less material in mid-span. The ultimate is something like the Forth Bridge, with giant cantilevers over the piers, connected by light spans between the ends of the cantilevers. A continuous beam is not statically determinate, and the stresses depend on how much the members stretch. Nevertheless, the longest bridges are all of this type, since it is very advantageous.

And weak if one ignores the condition of the constituent parts. And this is the weakness of truss design: one part becomes weak, the whole edifice can collapse.

Culture of Life News Main Page

Oldest Running Car On Earth

Elaine Meinel Supkis

I like old cars so this story caught my eye. The oldest running car on earth will be auctioned soon. It was one of the earliest steamers, made in France. People forget the leading role France played in the race to invent everything from movies to aeroplanes. This antique car is interesting to me because is is mostly made from horse carriage parts and distillery equipment. Also, I look at other cars made by this French company, De Dion-Bouton et Trepardoux. Which leads me to other off-hand topics about comic books and some people I have known.

From CNN:

A steam-powered car, billed as the oldest car in the world that still runs, will be sold in a Pebble Beach, Calif., auction in August.

The car was built in France in 1884, about a year before Gottlieb Daimler and Karl Benz of Germany built their first experimental gasoline-powered cars (The two were working independently of one another.) Henry Ford, the man many Americans mistakenly believe invented the automobile, built his first car 12 years after this one.

The four-wheeled De Dion-Bouton et Trepardoux, nicknamed "La Marquise," was originally buit for the French Count De Dion, one of the founders of the company. The car has had only two other owners since, according to auction house Gooding & Company, which is handling the sale.

In an 1887 demonstration drive, the car covered a 19 mile course at an average speed of 26 miles per hour. The following year, it won the world's first car race, according to Gooding, beating a three-wheeled steam-powered De Dion-Bouton.

I have lots of very old fashioned type stuff. Including a horse buggy. The earliest cars used many horse carriage parts, these being manufactured and available. This early specimen is very much a cross between a horse buggy, a tricycle and a still for making hard liquor. What a wonderful machine! If you click on the story, you can see the photo. I tried to draw off of it but it was hard telling things apart from the fuzzy photo. I am assuming it is like all steam engines with a release valve and lots of shut off valves, etc. The steering is that long rod with a cross piece at the top with two knobs. This is a common early steering device. You had to have your hand on it at all times while the free hand would manipulate all the brakes and valves.

The stirrups on the end of two poles there are the brakes and probably the gear shift. These funny looking things were used on the earliest tricycles...bicycles barely invented yet! the rider would yank on these to stop. Early cars were quite a challenge. The cycle tires were stressed by the weight of the vehicle and dealing with the energy of the engine took quite a bit of skill. And imagine being a horse and meeting a steamer huffing and puffing on a road!

Horses don't like cars. My oxen didn't like cars and if they wandered off into the village, they would always stand in the street and block traffic deliberately. Sparky hates cars and gets very huffy if one tries to pass him on the road. But a steamer!

It is more like a dragon than any car we know of today! Hissing and spitting, clanking along, I would suppose more than one horse flew off in a panic. Indeed, in England, a driver had to have his servant walk ahead with a flag to warn carriages and riders!

It would certainly be fun to see this machine in action.

Here is a later car built by the De Dion-Bouton people:

De Dion-Bouton was a French automobile manufacturer operating from 1883 to 1932. The company was founded by Comte Albert de Dion (1856-1946), Georges Bouton (1847-1938) and his brother in law Charles Trépardoux. Bouton and Trépardoux had been making small steam engines and toys when they met de Dion who offered to go into partnership with them forming De Dion, Bouton et Trépardoux in Paris in 1883.

The Great Depression killed off the company. Along with a host of other early automotive makers. We don't see Cords driving around, do we? Unless it is a museum piece. I've known more than one museum piece found in barns after sitting idle for 90 years or so. Once, I had to go to the Rolls Royce headquarters in the US which is in Manhattan.

While I was discussing something with the man in charge of sales (no, I wasn't buying anything, this had to do with artwork and dance) when my daughter pointed to the oldest car on display, a pretty number from around 1924, and said, 'Mommy, buy that car!' It was well over a million dollars.

I would be too nervous to go around in something that expensive, myself, not in Manhattan. The handles, etc, were solid silver, for example.

Here is a picture done by the cartoonist who did the Tintin comix, showing a very early version of the steam three wheeled Dion-Bouton.

ForTS de leur supériorité, DE DION-BOUTON et TREPARDOUX attendaient vainement depuis des années l'occasion de consacrer officiellement la puissante chaudière à vapeur mise au point par TREPARDOUX. Comme le temps passait, la, Maison D.B.T. (initiales des trois collaborateurs) décida d'améliorer encore le célèbre tricycle de 1883. Sorti en 1887, un nouveau véhicule se montra le digne successeur du précédent.

Plus léger, il roulait plus vite. La chaudière était de plus petite taille, dégageant parfaitement la visibilité vers l'avant et procurant davantage de C.V. La roue arrière (surmontée du réservoir d'eau) était motrice tandis que les roues avant étaient directrices. Sur ces entrefaites, un des membres influents de la " Société Vélocipédique Métropolitaine ", Paul Faussier, organisa la première course de " voitures sans chevaux " pour le 28 avril 1887.

Among other things, this notes, the car didn't protect you against rain. Or wind. Or slingshots from children hiding behind hedges. Or dog bites. This is probably why the cartoonist drew in the Tintin dog, Snowy. The model shown here was the earliest machine. It sat only one person and the engine was much smaller and probably couldn't go all too far, either. Though I bet it turned heads and created great wonder wherever it rolled!

And this takes me to Tintin, a classic comix book series from Europe.

When I was an obnoxious teenager, I had amusing friends and one of them, Hal Robins, introduced me to all sorts of great comix books and one of them was the Tintin series. And the Asterix stories. I met him when he and John Damon put an ad in the newspaper advertising the beginning of a poetry/fantasy club. My friend, Anne and I decided to answer the ad and we ended up very good friends for a number of years until we got scattered to the four winds.

Here is some of his work that is online.

From SF Weekly:

It's Wednesday night, which means it's time for the "Ask Dr. Hal Show" at the Odeon, a dive bar in the Mission with walls that are painted black. The place is packed with people mostly in their late 20s and 30s; three men sit onstage, a beer pitcher full of questions at the ready.

The show's concept is simple: Write down a question, slip a tip in the envelope, and the resident sage of the Odeon, Dr. Hal Robins, will answer. The 52-year-old Robins looks a bit like Benjamin Franklin: He's rotund; he dresses in a frock coat, brocade vest, bow tie, and watch chain; and a few long, stringy strands of gray hair fall from his otherwise bald pate. But from the brain of this unlikely headliner come astonishing answers. No question is too big or small, ridiculous or academic, personal or crude for his wit and intellect to tackle.

He has spent his life entertaining people. I spent mine irritating people. Both of us are comix book characters or in other things due to our rambling lives. This car business reminds me of Hal because he adored Victorian things and probably still does. We would dress up, all of us in this fashion and run around the city at night and get people to react. Sometimes, they would attack us and this was my fun part: fighting them off while dressed to the nines. Umbrellas are great weapons. He was Dr. Hal and I was Auntie Hattie. My ancient hat took quite a battering during those years.

In 1966, the Dean of Girls used to stand at the front enterance to the school with a yardstick to measure the length of dresses and then she would punish anyone whose skirt was too short. So one day, she stopped me because I was decked out in my full Victorian gear. 'You can't wear that in school,' she scolded me. I paused and then began to fan myself and put my hand to my forehead. 'Oh, my, I'm going to faint! Not only are you showing your ankles, you are revealing your KNEES!' Needless to say, I was not punished.

So it is really nice to see from afar, old friends are still chugging along like these ancient steamers, doing their thing.

Culture of Life News Main Page

Elaine Meinel Supkis

The Chinese leadership is so endearing. Whenever they jump some financial hurdle, they have Xinhua News tell us all about it.  This is good for me because it brings to attention all sorts of things we Americans would like to ignore.  This week, the Chinese have been talking about Outbound Investment and International Investment Positions.  These are the underpinnings of our Free Trade universe.

From Xinhua:

's direct outbound investment will exceed 60 billion U.S. dollars by 2010, said Assistant Minister of Commerce Chen Jian here on Monday.

From the Federal Treasury, International Investment Position Statistics:
With direct investment at current cost: 
1997------1998------1999------2000------2001------2002------2003-----2004
-820.......-895......-766.....-1,381...-1,919.....-2,107....-2,156..-2,484

  China

With direct investment at market value:
-822.....-1,070....-1,037....-1,581....-2,339....-2,455....-2,372...-2,542

 From the Office of Industries US International Trade Commission: Trends in US Inbound and Outbound Direct Investment:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From Business Week, June 20, 2005:

Back in February, when he first addressed the issue of stubbornly low bond yields, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan called it a "conundrum." The mystery revolved around a simple question: Why were long-term interest rates falling even as the central bank was jacking up short-term rates? Back then, Greenspan ventured that the anomaly could be a temporary aberration and that in no time, bond yields might start acting in more traditional ways.

More than three months -- and two more rate hikes -- later, bond yields have once again been falling, surprising not only Greenspan but many market pros as well. Indeed, in early June, yields on 10-year Treasury securities fell sharply, to below 4%. Greenspan doesn't think the falling yields are a sign of slower growth ahead, as many in the market believe. But even with the economy powering ahead, he seems increasingly convinced low bond yields may be an enduring phenomenon, driven by a complex of international forces the Fed has yet to fully understand.

That shift has some at the Fed entertaining hitherto heretical thoughts. Maybe, they posit, ultralow interest rates aren't inflationary in a global economy awash with savings and dominated by cutthroat competition from China, India, and other developing nations. After all, it's bond-market investors who have traditionally been most sensitive to any whiff of inflation. If they're willing to accept low yields, that suggests the U.S. and the global economy may be far more inflation-resistant than once thought.

*snip*

Now, it's a multifaceted set of global capital and trade flows that the Fed is trying to decipher. Part of the puzzle is that the U.S. isn't the only place where bond yields are low; they're down throughout much of the world. Indeed, in many countries, including Germany and Japan, they're even lower than in the U.S. In part, of course, that reflects the tepid outlook for growth in many foreign economies compared with the U.S. But everyone at the Fed seems to agree that something else is at work as well.

In struggling to figure out what's going on, Greenspan has focused on the increased integration of global financial markets and the stepped-up flow of capital worldwide. That has meant more of the world's savings can be invested across borders rather than being locked up in individual countries, as was the case with the former Soviet Union. As Greenspan tells it, investors' "home bias" -- their proclivity to keep their money in their own countries -- is diminishing, making a bigger pool of savings available internationally for investment in more profitable and productive ventures.

SAVINGS GLUT
Some of Greenspan's colleagues at the Fed's board, including Vice-Chairman Roger W. Ferguson Jr. and outgoing Governor Ben S. Bernanke, have gone further. They argue that the world is awash with savings because of slumping demand for capital in the slow-growing economies of Europe and Japan and a buildup of currency reserves by China and other emerging Asian nations. Moreover, that global glut of savings is pushing down rates around the world.

Remarks by Chairman Alan Greenspan, Central Bank panel discussion, To the International Monetary Conference, Beijing, People’s Republic of China--June 6, 2005

The unusual behavior of long-term rates first became apparent almost a year ago. In May and June of last year, market participants were behaving as expected. With a firming of monetary policy by the Federal Reserve widely expected, they built large short positions in long-term debt instruments in anticipation of the increase in bond yields that has been historically associated with a rising federal funds rate. But by summer, pressures emerged in the marketplace that drove long-term rates back down. In March of this year, market participants once again bid up long-term rates, but as occurred last year, forces came into play to make those increases short lived.

But what are those forces? Clearly, they are not operating solely in the United States. Long-term rates have moved lower virtually everywhere. Except in Japan, rates among the other foreign Group of Seven countries have declined notably more than have rates in the United States. Even in emerging economies, whose history has been too often marked by inflationary imbalances and unstable exchange rates, access to longer-term finance has improved. For many years, emerging-market long-term debt denominated in domestic currencies had generally been unsalable. But in 2003, Mexico, for example, was able to issue a twenty-year maturity, peso-denominated bond, the first such instrument ever. In recent months, Colombia issued domestic-currency-denominated global bonds. As rates came down worldwide, dollar-denominated EMBI+ spreads over U.S. Treasuries receded to historically low levels, before widening modestly of late.

World Energy Prices Going Up For Foreseeable Future

Gas is over $3 a gallon in more and more places here as oil prices continue their historic climb.  The $11 a barrel prices in the 1990's was due entirely to the looting of Russia.  Now, Russia is even more powerful than OPEC and Putin wants higher prices. The EU wants nuclear power in order to cut Russia's influence.  Increasingly, it is the bear of Russia that holds great power, literally.
<a href="http://elainemeinelsupkis.typepad.com/energy_news/2007/03/elaine_meinel_s_2.html">TO READ MORE CLICK HERE</a>