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alonely-dreamer · 5 years

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Dangerous Creatures | Chapter 23: The Holy Forest - Part 2: Heidi Beauregard

Summary: Mackenzie Alemaund is an unlucky 18 year old teenager whose life changes drastically after she gets kidnapped by two vampires and learns, in the same day, that she is not human.

Pairing: Elijah x OC

Words: 1723

A/N: Please, note that I am French so there might be some mistakes here and there, besides I couldn’t have it edited! I hope you’ll like it!

Masterlist

The weather inside the Forest was identical to the one of the open world. As cold and as humid, as grey and as depressing.

Heidi was sitting on the passenger seat of Alex’ black Mercedes, her partner at her side, his hands on the wheel, an original vampire behind him and an ultimate behind her. The witch’s eyes fell on the mirror outside her window and she caught a glimpse of her goddaughter. The elemental was half asleep, her head resting on the vampire’s shoulder. The silence and the steady road had allowed her to fall asleep as her unexpected fear of flying had kept her wide awake on the plane. No one would dare wake her now.

As they drove past the black iron gates, the red brick wall appeared in the mirror and Heidi knew she was home. The city had an old aura, she recognized it easily. She watched the old houses and the old buildings as Alex drove past them slowly. The street was narrow and there was just enough space for the car to drive through it.

Elijah watched the houses too, with a sad nostalgia, thinking back to the time of black houses and buildings made of wood, back when he was still by Niklaus’ side. He recognized the different architecture styles, the oldest one from five centuries ago. The city was a mixed of old and new, but even the old didn’t seem affected by time. The wood and the bricks seemed new, as if it had just been built. The vampire caught a glimpse of what was inside the businesses: a coffee shop, a restaurant, a library… What he saw inside surprised him. It wasn’t what one would expect when they saw the buildings from outside. It wasn’t any different from any coffee shops in cities like Berlin, Paris or even New-York. It was the same with the people walking the streets. Dressed in different fashions, like Heidi and Alexander, some obviously had preferred to keep the clothes from their century, but their corsets didn’t stop the women to use smartphones, nor did their top hats stop the men from doing the same. It was a sight to behold, and Elijah knew he still had a lot to discover.

Heidi knew the Forest perfectly well. She knew every secret it held, every person it hosted, everything and anything, just like Margo did, just like Alex would if he paid attention to this sort of things. She knew that Margo would make them wait before she received the four of them in the throne room. She knew she would judge their clothes, the way they stood on their feet, their every word. She knew the questions she was going to ask. And Heidi was arrogant enough to think she already knew the answers.

She had spent the last four hundred years there, with Margo. The last two with Alexander. She had made herself one of the most powerful witches on Earth. Not more powerful than Margo, certainly not stronger than Pandora or Ambrosia, though she doubted anyone was more powerful than the two sisters. They were older than the Mikaelsons. Probably the eldest people alive. Former slaves in Athens, back when democracy was the norm but slavery, ironically, was too, they had been rescued by witches and had been empowered by their rage and their want for revenge. But now, over two thousand years later, maybe they were tired of people, maybe they were simply tired of life, as they always retreated in a secret place, disappeared for years, even centuries, only to be summoned by people they trusted, people powerful enough to summon them, when they had no other solution to their problems. Heidi was one of those people. As was Margo.

Heidi had gotten strong the same way. Empowered by rage and the want for revenge, after her village burnt her mother alive for being a witch. Marguerite, her mother, accused of using witchcraft to seduce Jean, the lawyer’s son, Heidi’s father, didn’t even get any chance to defend herself as the villagers got the rope and the pitchforks and the torches and through her in the pyre, way too happy to kill a witch, to kill the woman that had been a sister to them, a midwife to their wives, a doctor to their children. So Heidi did the same thing to them. She burnt them all alive as well, one night, exactly a month after her mother’s death. She burnt their houses while they were sleeping, burnt her “friends”, their parents and their children. The lawyer’s son and his entire family. Every single one of them. Even the church and the school and the house where they kept the sick and injured. She ignited the flames with a smile and witnessed them die with a laugh.

She didn’t flee France like Margo fled Spain. She left it behind, left everything behind, knowing if she crossed the path of other superstitious little bastards she would do the same thing to them. She got to Germany, found the Forest, found Margo, and she had stayed there, where no one would even think about burning a witch, where she wouldn’t cross the path of superstitious little bastards.

Two centuries in the Forest, a life of her own, settled comfortably in the castle, with more power than she needed, she met Alexander, who too had left everything behind and found the Forest. He was a little bastard but at least he wasn’t superstitious. And he made her smile. And he made her laugh. And she was in love with him, so in love in fact that after only a year later, she asked herself how, how did she ever live without him?

The car stopped in front of the castle, two guards posted on each side of the huge opened front door, a page ready to open the car doors and another ready to take their luggage from the trunk. The page bowed to her as she exited the vehicle and he was almost hit by Mackenzie’s door as she opened it. Elijah was by her side in a flash, helping her out of the car. She looked awful, obviously exhausted, and maybe a little hungry. If not starving.

“Lady Beauregard,” the page greeted. “Welcome back. Her Majesty will see you in an hour.”

Heidi didn’t bother with a reply and it’s Alexander who thanked the servant and dismissed him. She looked up to the sky, her eyes slowly travelling on the castle’s façade. The white stones looked like marble and she knew it would be cold inside. She shivered already at the thought of entering her home. She followed Alexander inside, walked between two columns with Mackenzie and Elijah by her side before stepping in the hall.

Nothing had changed. The carpet was still red, covering the white marble floor that they had renovated a century earlier. The guards were still wearing the same uniform, posted at the same place, holding the same weapons. The servants walked around silently, stopped to bow to them before resuming their task.

“I’m going to change,” she informed them, without looking at any of her travelling companions before walking away.

Mackenzie and Elijah watched her leave, and their attention was called away from the witch’s back as their heard Alexander chuckle.

“I think she hates this place, but she’ll never admit it. Probably because she doesn’t know it.”

“Is she okay?”

“She’ll be fine,” he nodded. “She’s impatient, she hasn’t talked to Margo in months.”

“Are they close?” Elijah asked.

“They’re best friends.”

“You are nobility here?”

“If you can call us that,” he shrugged. “Sure, I guess. So are you, by the way,” he winked at Mackenzie.

The elemental, who just wanted to find a bed and slid under the covers, didn’t realize he was being serious and chuckled at his joke.

“Don’t laugh, Lady Alemaund,” he mocked. “You might just be the most powerful creature here.”

“Don’t remind me,” she sighed, which made Elijah smile.

“I don’t think anyone is going to let you forget it.”

“Sir Davidson,” a page interrupted them. “The rooms are ready. A package is waiting for Lady Alemaund in her chambers.”

“Is it as we asked?”

“Yes, sir, they are in neighboring rooms. In the main wing.”

“Then I’ll show them myself, thank you.”

The page bowed again before walking away without saying another word.

“We were afraid they’d send you off to the guest wing,” the heretic told the original vampire, “we made sure you weren’t too far away from each other.”

“I appreciate that,” Elijah nodded.

“We just got here. Who sent me a package?”

Alexander chuckled. “The queen, silly. It’s probably a dress, or a crown… or both,” he grinned mischievously.

“I… Am I… expected to wear a crown?” she stuttered.

“I’m kidding,” he laughed. “A crown is given in a coronation. You haven’t had one of those… yet.”

“Stop it!” she told him as she slapped his arm, making him step back with a laugh.

“Alright, alright,” he said. “Let’s go then. We can’t be late.”

“What should we expect from…” Elijah paused, looking for the right word, “Her Majesty?”

“Margo’s not a tyrant. You can expect her to be as friendly as Heidi,” he shrugged. “She’ll be asking you questions, and she’ll be expecting answers. Don’t lie to her, she’ll know. Be respectful, of course, she’s a queen, she expects to be treated like one. But why don’t you just see for yourself, uh?”

“I’ve met less reasonable queens,” Elijah told him. “But none as powerful as her, I expect.”

“You’re right about that, friend,” Alex said as he put his hand on Elijah’s shoulder.

The original vampire let the heretic tap his shoulder in silence, then watched him walk away from them, following Heidi’s footsteps. He looked down at the elemental who was repressing an amused smile. He raised an eyebrow at her, which made her laugh.

“Look at you,” she said. “You made a new friend.”

“Did I?”

“You two are going to get plenty of time alone later,” Alex called from the hallway, “come on!”

“Come on,” she repeated with a grin.

He smiled back at her as he stepped forward, took her hand in his and let her drag him to her godfather.

**********

Thank you for reading! I hope you liked it!!

Tags: @thepoet1975 @nerdysandwichqueen @catchmeupimgettingoutofhere @raegan-hale @captainam-erika-trash @silver424 @monetfatalia @vaniileiinkeks @valeria-winchester @favimag @colie87 @hamiltonmadesomemistakes @s0nh4dorasblog @poemfreak306 @white-chocolate-mocha-fan @thegingerthatwaited @therealwatermelon @dark-night-sky-99@aubri1313 @jardinsecos @gymnastgal1997-blog @thearaviagrace77blog @caelst13 @casedoina

#the vampire diaries #vampire diaries #tvd #the originals #elijah x oc #elijah mikaelson #oc #fanfic #fanfiction #natalie dormer #sebastian stan #lily collins #the magicians #margo #imagine #reader #elijah x reader

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prairiesongserial · 4 years

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11.10

Friday continued to flirt with Emile the rest of the way to shore. She didn’t ask any more questions, even though the need to know what had happened to Adams, or what Adams had done - something so bad that his own colleagues wouldn’t even talk about it - burned right on the tip of her tongue. She wasn’t about to test her luck again.

The rowboat rounded a rocky outcropping which boasted the biggest of the old world mansions. Friday got a good look at it as they passed; it was black stone, unlike the other buildings inland, and Friday thought it had the sort of grace of an aging matriarch. Emile pulled up to a small pier jutting out from the side of the rock. The pier hadn’t been visible from the rest of Everglades City, tucked away on the far side of the outcropping, and was empty of any other boats at the moment. Emile started to tie the rowboat to a post.

Friday couldn’t quite help herself. Emile had bounced back, cheerful and slimy, as long as she stuck to the topic of how strong and handsome he was, and now that they had arrived, it was time to push her luck a bit.

“Is it true that the water around here is dangerous, Emile?” she asked as he helped her out of the boat.

“Who told you that?” Emile said.

Val climbed out of the rowboat by reaching up for Friday’s hand instead of Emile’s - not that Emile had offered to help him. He stood half in front of Friday, staring down at Emile expressionlessly.

Friday wasn’t a snitch, and she got the feeling from Emile’s icy look that the dangerous water was another off the table topic. She couldn’t single out the old fisherman, not when she didn’t know what the consequences would be. Far as she knew, Everglades City might run itself like Macomber’s gang in Outpost.

“Johannes,” Friday said smoothly.

Emile paused, as if trying to figure out who she meant.

“The ringmaster of the circus,” Friday said. “He said it wasn’t safe to go in the water. Is that true?”

Emile looked past her, dead silent. Friday hadn’t paid much attention to the lay of the land around the pier, but she followed his gaze now. Another ring of water circled the mansion, despite the outcropping it was built upon already being surrounded by water on three sides. Extra security, Friday supposed. Though from what?

Emile started to untie the boat.

“It’s not poisoned, if that’s what you mean,” he said. “None more so than any other water you’re likely to find.” Emile dropped the rope into his boat and got himself seated, ready to pick up the oars.

Friday suddenly got a sinking feeling.

“How do we get back to the...to downtown?” Friday gestured across the water.

Emile relaxed his posture for a moment, looking not at the mansion behind her and Val, but right at Friday.

“There’s another pier a quarter mile down the road from the courthouse. Can’t miss it. Borrow a boat.” Emile picked up the oars and dipped them in the water. He looked like he wanted to say something else, but turned away, letting the opportunity pass.

Friday frowned at him as he pulled the boat farther away. She had been faking her concern, mostly, over Cody and Adams and this whole strange city. Sure, there had been a mystery to solve, but she had kind of thought she and Val would find out that Adams had moved to a new town or had felt like a change in career - maybe become a cobbler, or something. More and more, though, Friday felt a coldness creeping over her. She looked back up at the mansion with its gaping black windows and dusty black stone.

“Is that where Cody’s working, do you think?” she asked Val.

He didn’t hear her. Val was pacing a little ways down the pier. Friday approached him.

“You are not going to knock on the front door of the Bellamy mansion,” Val told her, before she’d had the chance to say anything. “You’ve been pressing your luck so far, and you’re not taking it any farther. It’s like you - everyone is just pretending we don’t have massive bounties on our heads!” Val was talking more quickly, his pacing abrupt and anxious. “We don’t know who put the bounties out on us, other than someone at Hemisphere, and this is a Hemisphere town. And not like Vegas was! No gang in Vegas had the kind of money and power these people have. And you just gave your real name to that guy - ”

“You’re right,” Friday said calmly. “You’re right. I’m sorry I scared you.”

Val stopped pacing long enough to puzzle over her. Friday was staggered by the unexpected weight of hurt feelings. She and Val had gone through the paces of this argument, or one like it, a dozen times before. The last time had been New Orleans, the time before that, who knew? It all blurred together. The woods in Colorado where they’d holed up in the church until dawn? Or Macomber? She should have been happy to see Val fired up, back to his normal self. That was the whole reason she had brought him out here.

“I…” she began, and tensed in embarrassment as she realized she was going to cry. She had been teasing Val by flirting - literally flirting - with danger. Of course he was going to react. This was what she had wanted. This was the pattern. Friday swallowed. She had always liked the pattern. Like a question and an answer, the pattern just made sense.

“No, wait,” Val said. “I’m sorry. I’m on edge.” He paused, and looked away. “This whole circus thing.”

“It’s over the fucking top,” Friday said, laughing sharply, and ignoring the fact her eyes were leaking, as if that would prevent Val from noticing.

Friday wanted to say she didn’t like travelling with so many people either. That she missed when it was just him and her sharing a bike. Val had so much more to worry about than she did, having just left his convent - his family - behind, that she couldn’t bring herself to say something so childish: that she missed having someone to hold on to as the bike rumbled down the road.

“What if I break into the courthouse?” Val asked.

His eyes held hers in that sometimes unsettlingly brilliant, mutant way.

“You...what?” Friday said. “I’m sorry, what?”

Val shrugged. He started walking down the pier, toward land. Friday was so startled that whatever foreign feeling that had brought her nearly to tears was gone now, and she hoped it stayed that way. She hurried after Val.

“Why, though, Val, because - why?” Friday asked.

“I just think I’m going to break into the courthouse,” Val said calmly. “Do I need a reason?”

“Yes!” Friday shouted. She had caught up, nearly jogging to keep up with Val’s pace. She caught the corner of his eye - and the odd twinkle in it.

“You’re fucking with me,” she said.

“Am I?” Val asked distractedly. They had reached the end of the pier, and now walked past the Bellamy mansion, down toward the lonely cluster of brick buildings that made up this oddly set-apart section of Everglades City. There were no other residences here. Just the kinds of buildings where business was done - and business of some kind was going on. Friday just wasn’t quite sure what she was seeing.

A swarm of people - Bellamy men, most likely - stood in a half circle near the center of an old, crumbling stone plaza, creating a wall between any onlookers and what looked like an ordinary plaza bustling with activity. Only, the plaza was silent. None of the fifty or so people - not the half circle of Bellamys, and not the thick crowd of richly dressed people they surrounded - said a word.

Val kept walking, as if he didn’t even notice. He wandered ahead of Friday, reading the symbols and signs as he looked for the courthouse. To break into. Friday tore her gaze away from him for a few seconds, and back to the curiosity of the plaza.

The plaza burst into life and noise suddenly, making Friday jump. A small convertible car turned the corner out of nowhere, driving off the road and into the busy plaza. No one was hit - the people there parted like the Red Sea, almost as if they had known the car was coming. The car came to a jolty stop right in front of the arc of Bellamys - none of them had flinched. Friday was close enough that she could see the driver’s face as he stood up in his seat. He wore thick eyeliner, and a black mustache waxed into a curl. In the seat next to him, a bound figure struggled against his ropes, blindfolded and gagged.

Friday started to march through the line of Bellamys - then paused. A Bellamy approached the car, pushing an odd device ahead of her, which leveled with the mustache man’s face. No one seemed alarmed at all. Even the crowd in the plaza were milling about silently, as if bored.

“Your love will never find you where we’re going, Captain,” the mustache man sneered. “And by midnight, it will be too late.”

Friday squinted at the mustache man as he projected his line. This was a play, she realized. Well, sort of. The Bellamys here were probably making one of the moving pictures that the carnies had been so excited about.

Val had wandered back to her at some point, and tapped her arm.

“What is this?” he said, and pointed to the gagged actor. “Is he…”

“He’s fine. It’s like a play,” Friday whispered back.

“Cut!” rang a cry from right next to Friday’s ear.

Friday found herself facing several glares from the Bellamys.

“One more for safety. Without commentary, this time,” snapped the Bellamy right next to Friday. She stood only a few inches taller than Friday, with eye-piercing green hair cut in a severe bob, and mutant irises to match. “Hart, emphasis on midnight, this time. I want this whole sequence filmed before we have Madeline back tomorrow, understand?”

Friday shot the woman an uneasy smile and let Val tug her out of the crowd.

“I think that might have been a moving picture,” she said once the two of them were far enough away from the plaza. Val was back to reading the signs on the buildings. He walked several paces ahead of her, making her hustle to keep up.

“Can you pause for a second?” Friday said. She didn’t have to ask, though. Val had stopped in front of a white stone building held up with columns. A matching stone statue stood at the base of the steps, like a carnival barker announcing a stall’s attraction. The statue was of a blindfolded woman, standing square and proud.

Val’s gaze slid from the statue back to Friday.

“I’m going to figure out what’s true,” Val said. “This courthouse means that crime happens in this city. Just having a courthouse should prove it.” He pointed to the statue of the blindfolded woman, as if accusing her. “There are too many mysteries, and I don’t like it, so I’m solving this one,” Val continued. “I’m going to read files until I’m satisfied there is zero crime, or something is being covered up.”

He paused for breath, and Friday watched as he got himself back under control, his wide gestures becoming square, perfect posture.

“So then at least we’ll know one thing,” he added.

Friday smiled at him. “Well, hold on. You can’t solve the whole mystery yourself. If you’re looking into the no crime thing, I want to look into what that old fisherman was talking about. With people disappearing. I think I’ll go down to the pier Emile mentioned and ask around there, see if anyone saw Adams take a boat.”

Val frowned, then nodded, slowly.

“Emile said the pier was near the courthouse, so why don’t you meet me down there when you’re done?” Friday said. She didn’t say she still thought breaking into the courthouse was a crazy risk, and that she wanted Val to come with her instead - or that the whole point of this outing was supposed to have been Val and her together. Just the fact that Val was interested, not staring off into space, was going to have to be enough for her.

“Okay,” he said.

“And - ” Friday began.

“You be careful,” Val said, anticipating her. “Don’t catch Everglades Madness and take a boat out to sea.”

Friday hadn’t realized she’d been clenching her jaw, but she realized now as she smiled.

“Okay,” she said. “Don’t get caught.”

11.9 || 11.11

#story

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zurichtooslo · 5 years

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Day 51, 10th Oct, Lubeck

I think it ended up being a good move not going to Wismar yesterday as the weather was a lot better today. I bought a day ticket for the train which you can have up to 5 people on if in travel within the state on regional trains. Even being on my own it worked out much cheaper than individual tickets to where I was going. My hotel was across the road from the train station so I just left my bags there after checking out. Wismar was about 25 mins on the train from Schwerin.

Wismar has been given World Heritage listing due to the fact that it has the largest preserved ancient town centre in the Baltic regional and is a memorial to medieval building techniques and lifestyle.

I loved these bottomless chairs being used for pots. Maybe something I could do on my new balcony.

Many of the buildings throughout the town are original and show the wealth that came to Wismar from its importance in medieval times.

The 80m high tower of the Church of St Mary is a landmark of Wismar. The church was damaged in WWII and then demolished in 1960. Up until that time it was reputed to be one of the most beautiful brick churches in Northern Germany.

An old water wheel in the grounds of the church.

This pumping station in the market square was constructed between 1580 and 1602 following plans drawn up in the style of the Dutch Renaissance. It supplied the town with drinking water until 1897.

Around the Market Square were many attractive buildings.

The brick building is known as the Alter Schwede, the Old Swede, and was built around 1830. In the Middle Ages there were residential and business premises on the ground floor and the first floor was used for stoarage. The building’s name was given in remembrance of Wismar’s Swedish period from 1648 to 1803.

Wismar’s Market Square is one of the largest in Northern Germany. The town hall has been reconstructed in the classical style between 1817 and 1819.

Kramer Strabe has many remarkable gabled houses which indicates its earlier and current role as a business boulevard.

Out buildings surrounding the church complex.

The Church of the Holy Spirit is a rectangular Gothic naveless church which came into being in its present form in the 15th Century. The interior is covered by a painted wooden ceiling.

Another lovely street. Wismar has retained, virtually unaltered, the medieval layout to this day.

Buildings near the harbour. Much of Wismar’s wealth came from its access to a harbour.

Lovely old building over the canal that runs through the town.

Old harbour.

The Water Gate is the last of the five town gates which were incorporated into a 4m high town wall. The gate was erected around 1450 in the late Gothic style.

The street that runs from the Water Gate.

St Nikolai Kirche has a 37m high central nave and is the fourth largest church nave in Germany. Construction of the church began in the 14th Century.

These brick churches are very impressive inside.

Very high and strong looking.

Guided statues of the bible story.

Patterned columns.

These churches are impressive buildings and to imagine they were built such a long time ago.

A treey walkway near the church.

The sun had come out which made everything look brighter.

From Wismar I caught the train again and decided to continue on past Schwerin to Ludwigslust. I think the train just runs up and down between these three towns all day. I wanted to go to Ludwigslust as there was a substantially Schloss there. It was about a 20 minute walk from the train station to the Schloss.

The Schloss from the garden side. The Schloss was originally built as a hunting lodge, rebuilt as a luxurious retreat from the ducal capital of Schwerin, then became for a time the centre of government in 1765-1837. The Schloss was the ‘joy’ of Prince Christian Ludwig, the heir of the Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, hence the name Ludwigslust.

The water cascades from the front of the Schloss with the kirche in the background.

The Schloss kirche

Inside the Schloss kirche

The front of the Schloss

The cafe with a number of prized heads from hunting.

One of the main reception rooms. There were a few large paintings of animals throughout the Schloss.

The Throne Room.

The painting gallery.

The chandelier, mirror and fireplace were all made of Meissen porcelain. Just exquisite.

The beautiful chandeliers of the ballroom.

Me reflected in one of the ballroom mirrors.

Lots of nice, decorative houses were all through the streets.

Very solid brick buildings are found in this area.

It was lovely walking back through the streets to the train station.

I caught the train back to Schwerin, collected my bags and then caught the train to Lubeck an hour away. I was staying in Lubeck for two nights so it didn’t matter that I got there late afternoon. I had had a very full day but it all worked out well. I got to see everything that I had planned.

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180abroad · 5 years

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Days 101-104: York

The next few days were dedicated to slowing down and enjoying ourselves. The first half of the trip had been one sprint after another, with days off few and far between. It was fantastic, but now it was time to change gear.

Having decided to make York our vacation-from-our-vacation, we allowed ourselves to indulge the luxury of not pressuring ourselves to squeeze the most out of every day. We slept in, had warm breakfasts, caught up on Netflix--Jessica finally got me hooked on The Expanse--and watched all the World Cup football we wanted.

And we made some time to keep exploring York, too.

On one day, we visited two very different museums about the history of York.

First was the Yorkshire Museum, the city’s main archeology museum. Built amidst the gardened ruins of the local abbey, it is a beautiful place for an atmospheric stroll regardless of whether or not you actually pay to go inside the museum itself.

Outside the museum, there was a man hawking photo ops with his collection of birds of prey.

The museum itself focuses on an impressive catalogue of artifacts uncovered in and around York that date from prehistoric times into the late Medieval period. I was particularly impressed by the Roman section, but that may have just been because we saw it first. Visiting serious museums like this is a skill, and Jessica and I had gotten a bit rusty in the past few weeks. After just a few displays of prehistoric beads and combs, I knew it was going to take a sustained act of will to keep my eyes from glazing over.

The Roman section gave us both an enlightening view into the lives of the soldiers, townsfolk, and traders who lived there. I had always pictured Roman York as being on fringe of the Empire, but it would be more apt to call it the cutting edge. Artifacts and human remains indicate that the city was astoundingly cosmopolitan. As a frontier city with a major inland port, it was populated by a diverse mix of native Britons, ethnic Romans, and traders from as far across the Empire as Syria and North Africa.

Moving into the Medieval period, the museum covers York’s shifting roles as the capital city of an invading Viking empire, the second city of Britain under the Plantagenet and York dynasties, and it’s gradual decline after the Wars of the Roses.

The museum has an impressive collection of Viking jewelry. The Vikings were big fans of wearable wealth, and the most popular way for a Viking lord to reward a valuable lieutenant was with a heavy golden ring or a fancy jeweled amulet. The love of bling transcends the bounds of time and culture.

Next, we saw a smaller collection of artifacts from the Plantagenet era, when York was the second-city of England and home of its royal family. The prize of this collection is a gilt-silver pin in the shape of a well-endowed boar. The boar was a symbol of the newly-crowned Yorkist king Richard III, and this pin would have been worn by one of his supporters during the Wars of the Roses--much like someone might wear a campaign button or flag pin on their lapel today.

But all the pins in the world couldn’t have saved Richard at the Battle of Bosworth, where he lost his life, the war, and the kingdom to the decidedly un-Yorkist house of Tudor. York lost its prestige as the nation’s second capital and began a slow decline in importance as newer cities like Hull and Leeds began to grow and compete with it in the emerging industrial world.

And as we’d already learned, the second Tudor king, Henry VIII, is the reason that the abbey surrounding the museum is in ruins--along with almost all the other great abbeys of England. In one large room, the abbey’s chapter house has been partially reconstructed using a mix of original stone pieces and plaster facsimiles.

The museum also had a temporary exhibit on the Jurassic period, including fossils of two enormous plesiosaurs and the single vertebra of Alan, England’s oldest long-necked dinosaur. They call it Alan because a single vertebra isn’t enough to identify exactly what species it was.

Of course, no pictures were allowed anywhere in the museum. But i did sneak a pic of a tiny toy ammonite chilling out on the floor of the dino exhibit.

Our next visit was for a much different look at York in the Jorvik Viking Centre. The Centre has a mixed reputation in the travel guides for being a Disneyland-style attraction rather than a serious history museum. But, much like the Chocolate story a couple days earlier, we actually enjoyed it a lot.

The Centre is the result of an archaeological excavation of a residential street in Viking-era York, when the city was called Jorvik.

The Centre is divided into three sections. The first is an introductory room where a repeating video on the wall talks about the excavation project. Touch-screen terminals give an interactive demonstration of how to repair and preserve various types of artifacts for display.

The second section is a theme park style ride through a recreation of the Viking-era street, complete with animatronic townsfolk speaking period languages. As we rode through, speakers in our headrests narrated what we were seeing.

I also learned here just how much Jessica hates mannequins and animatronics. (Though it didn’t help that they hid one live actor among the fakes and had her turn around and start talking to us in Old Norse.)

It was interesting to see how similar the Viking town was to any other medieval village we’ve seen. The Vikings are mostly known for their warrior culture, but the average Viking was a peasant pretty much like any other. And because this was the site of a residential street, the artifacts found found here--on display in the third section--reflected everyday life of commoners: shoes, bowls, jewelry, musical instruments, and the like.

We also learned that Vikings were more hygiene-conscious than we normally think of them as--at least with regard to their hair. Archaeological evidence shows that the Vikings were prodigious makers and users of combs.

Another display dealt with the Viking peasants’ diets and digestive health. Particularly, through the examination of coprolite. In other words, fossilized Viking poop. Apparently, they had very well-balanced diets, but worms and other digestive parasites were nearly ubiquitous.

As we left the Centre, we overheard a conversation between another visitor and one of the curators. The visitor was disappointed by the lack of swords and helmets among the displays. The curator replied simply by asking whether she kept any military-grade weapons or body armor at her own home.

On another day, we took advantage of a free walking tour of the walled city. Just like the one we took in Bath, it was a extremely fun and educational experience--more than worth the money.

Our tour started just outside the city walls, near the abbey. The abbey--which was once the richest institution in all of northern England--has its own set of walls. I’m pretty sure that we had been mistaking parts of the abbey walls for the city walls as we walked past them every day before now. But at least we weren’t the only ones to make that mistake.

Our guide showed us one corner of the abbey walls that had to be patched up after the English Civil War, when Cromwell’s army blew it up thinking that they were breaching the city walls. It was only after they had gotten in that they realized they had only managed to invade an already-ruined medieval abbey.

We saw a corner of the medieval city wall that was built on top of the original Roman walls. The larger, more rough-hewn medieval stones are easily distinguishable from the smaller stones and bricks of the Roman foundation. Our guide explained that the stripe of red bricks was a common feature of Roman walls across the empire. One theory is that the alternating layers of stone and brick made the walls more resistant to earthquakes.

We walked along a stretch of the medieval wall, getting some great views and learning a bit about the history of the Minster. ”Minster” is an Anglo-Saxon word for high-ranking churches associated with evangelical teaching. Nowadays it’s just a traditional honorific, also held by Westminster in London.

The current building dates back to the 14th century and is built on the foundations of early churches, which in turn were built on the foundations of the old Roman military headquarters.

All this Jenga work has caused some problems. The cathedral was supposed to have a spire on top of its massive central tower, but the foundations couldn’t support one. And in the 1960s it was discovered that the foundations were starting to cave in, necessitating an emergency retrofitting that lasted into the 1970s. A silver lining to the crisis: archeologists were able to uncover a wealth of information on the Roman foundations beneath the Minster, including the ancient column we saw earlier next to the statue of Constantine.

We also learned that the ring of green space surrounding the old walls was filled with yellow flowers as a goodwill gesture by McDonald’s, who in exchange were allowed to open a restaurant inside the city.

Descending the walls, we saw one of the main gates (or “bars”) that led into the old city. Note the small door and platform halfway up. This was where town criers would come out to deliver official proclamations to the townsfolk. The news was rarely to the townsfolk’s benefit, so the door allowed the crier a quick retreat to safety when the rocks began to fly.

As we passed closer by the Minster, we got to see a group of traditional craftsmen carving new blocks for the facade to replace ones that have been worn down by time.

The walk ended with a trip through the Shambles. Our guide pointed out the home of Margaret Clitherow, a 16th-century Catholic woman who was executed for harboring Catholic priests and holding mass in her home at a time when Catholicism was strictly outlawed. As punishment for refusing to plea either guilty or innocent, Margaret was crushed to death under a door, with a fist-sized rock placed beneath her back to break her spine and make the ordeal all the more excruciating. She was also pregnant. The horrific details shocked the rest of England, and Queen Elizabeth personally condemned the execution.

Also in the Shambles, we took a side-trip down one of the city’s “snickelways”--a local term for the various narrow winding alleyways that cut through the town. We ended up at a small neighborhood church, inside which we found some interesting seating arrangements.

In the early days of the Anglican church, attendance was compulsory for all English citizens. But even then, most people didn’t actually want to go to church. So those who could afford to do so bought “box pews” in their church. Inside their walled box pews, people could fulfill their church attendance quota while taking a nap or doing other work in private.

After the walking tour ended, we visited inside the Minster itself. We got there just in time to join another free tour put on by Minster volunteers. Our guide was a very kindly, soft-spoken older lady--whom Jessica noticed was carrying a Playboy bunny handbag.

The tour was fun, even if we sometimes had trouble hearing our guide over the restoration workers. The Minster has by far the largest collection of medieval stained glass in England (largely due to the destruction of WWII bombings farther south), and all that glass takes a lot of work and money to maintain. Just one window along the nave took one year and 100,000 pounds to restore.

But the difference is staggering. Check out the difference between these two windows. They are right next to each other on the same side of the Minster, but the one on the right has been recently restored while the one on the left hasn’t.

The restoration process apparently involves sandwiching the restored medieval glass between layers of protective modern glass. This should protect the windows from further degradation and make them much easier to clean in the future.

After the tour, we checked out the chapter house, where an early version of Parliament met while Edward I oversaw his war against the Scots from York. We finished our visit by seeing the undercroft. We saw some of the Roman foundations as well as a thousand-year-old Anglo-Saxon bible.

We learned about a 20th-century fire that destroyed the Minster’s roof. Firemen had to pump so much water into the building that everyone was certain the interior would be flooded and all the interior irreparably damaged. But the interior wasn’t flooded at all. It turned out that ancient Roman drainage systems that no one even knew about were still intact and funneled all the water safely back out to the river.

York offered us a much-needed and well-earned lull in our frenetic schedule, but it also left us feeling a little adrift. We had planned everything up through Stratford-upon-Avon so carefully, yet now we had few if any plans beyond where we’d be staying.

Now, having booked tours and planned trips for the next few weeks, our excitement and anticipation were peaked again. There’s some really good stuff on the horizon--not the least of which was meeting my Dad in Edinburgh--and we could hardly wait for it to arrive.

And if I finally get good wifi and a bed soft enough to let me sleep through the night, I just might cry from happiness.

Next Post: Snowdonia

Last Post: Welcome to York

#180abroad #york #england #travel #staycation inside a vacation #history #rest

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glopratchet · 4 years

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retirement-home

A large group of soldiers are patrolling in front of it "We can't let them go! The man who was about to kill me I will not let you do it "It's a trap! He is the key, says a voice that's haunting me life It calls and whispers Undergrowth seeking life You turn to the left and tell the ghosts that you want to watch some romantic movie illuminating the endless hallway Lightpoles illuminating the endless hallway He turns around and looks right through you, making meaningful eye contact with you and grins of concrete and metal It feels like an eternity that passes Construction of concrete and metal are moving forward Whispers impregnating your eardrums Blushing bride in a wedding dress Green-skinned bodyguards are moving forward around his bleeding neck I'm getting annoyed with you Green tiles glitter in the sun Bandages around his bleeding neck attached to the face of an old man (Sobs)" Monitors attached to the face of an old man for a deadly virus Eyelashes fluttering at you flirtatiously, trying to make a bond Vaccine for a deadly virus stand ready Missiles are flying through the air In the flames of a funeral pyre Shocktroops stand ready for blood-transmitted disease His mouth goes into an O as the electricity approaches it You've got choices to make Pharmaceuticals for blood-transmitted disease poker table Fire tears through your skeleton as you let out an unearthly and unnatural scream mingling with the sizzle of burning flesh High-roller poker table march in unison The carpet smells of nauseating misery and cheap perfume To your right there stands a half-naked woman made entirely of metal Lizards march in unison heeds your call and burninates the lot of them there Aiming his rifle at the floor Gorazel rids himself of this fragile and twisted world Gorazel heeds your call and burninates the lot of them there with cybernetic arms "Afterbirth It is just afterbirth " she whispers before her head disintegrates into ash Cyber-surgeon with cybernetic arms with spicy swagger from Africa North to South America Agent walking with spicy swagger from Africa North to South America form and reform Cities getting consumed and regurgitated Clouds that gather and dissipate Borders form and reform and yawning Pushing the agent out of a plane without a parachute Agent stretching and yawning shot eyes as a child lays on the floor Vessels carrying the blood and pathogens of humanity Metallic pieces float through your fingers Bloodshot eyes as a child lays on the floor for the injured and the old On hot rocks under the blazing sun Escaping and cuffing crack whores and transients The trigger Agent caregiving for the injured and the old begets cat begets elephant Walls that say nothing and yet speak up loudly Rows and columns of quiet zeros and unsifted ones Dog begets cat begets elephant and whey-filtering 3 hyperintelligent personal choices: A middle-aged blind woman listening to the howls of her starving children? Agent cheese-making and whey-filtering the streets looking for the next hot rap beat A dukun's sacrificial knife disappearing into your stomach Agent roving the streets looking for the next hot rap beat erupting in your brain The dog turns to ash and blows away in the wind Cyclone erupting in your brain programmes for the poor, cancer-stricken and addicted victims of the government's medical testing facilities A hard newspaper slap erupting color into your face Agent well-being programmes for the poor, with the sudden fear and loss with thick muscular layers injected into your flesh Both are true simultaneously, and the other one's false Random? Agent coping with the sudden fear and loss with thick muscular layers injected into your flesh the sexual tension between an unstoppable army and the organized administration Agent catalyzing the sexual tension between an unstoppable army and the organized administration Los Angeles' backyard Throat cancer all too real Bad book cheaper than a bar of gold Agent landscaping Los Angeles' backyard patients without remorse Is this a statement on some perceived American values? Agent mistreating patients without remorse the poverty-stricken, famine-ravaged, plague-infested villages! Agent diagnosing the poverty-stricken, the head of a dying child Shedding his camouflage battle armor in order to sneak into the community and eliminate all opposition The stories never stop! Agent stroking the head of a dying child a North Korean sleeper agent hell-bent on starting WW3 with American forces in South Korea Posing as a charming, naive, clumsy fool Agent portraying a North Korean sleeper agent hell-bent on starting WW3 with American forces in South Korea empathy in the local villagers by acting like an imbecile Pawn of the Overseer smashing his hammer down on your head Agent evoking empathy in the local villagers by acting like an imbecile S-Mart employees jumping off the roof of the business tower Kony! Agent photographing S-Mart employees jumping off the roof of the business tower about a prominent civil rights martyr's suicide The store around yourself collapsing like a grand waterfall made of bricks Agent joking about a prominent civil rights martyr's suicide dandruff off a bald man's shoulders A hand fighting through the blood-thickened waters reaching upwards for you Agent brushing dandruff off a bald man's shoulders Agent mistaking an entire University's opposition for terrorists trucks gathering the bodies to be ground up and incinerated Death? Sanitation trucks gathering the bodies to be ground up and incinerated hollowly roaming the woods growing larger every year An inescapable doom The hospital room's white floors start glowing red Colossus hollowly roaming the woods growing larger every year citizens' lives in your hands Swimming through the syrup of American life Community-dwelling citizens' lives in your hands ' livelihood-such as it's Some plutocrat having a good laugh at your expense Muckety-mucks' livelihood-such as it's ceremony The towns fuse into a single mass Rough fingers scratch the back of your neck Pure fear drips in your mouth Ribbon-cutting ceremony fired into the air A lion's den or a lamb's trailer? Trashcan lids beaten like dusty drums in abandoned lots Balloons fired into the air the beard that'll get you on the news The sharp hush of people too afraid to breathe Grooming the beard that'll get you on the news flashing their thumbnails at passing cars Keeping the scary bad man away like a fire-breathing dragon Skinnys flashing their thumbnails at passing cars the depressed, the suicidal, the helpless Traps baited with shiny objects to snare the wandering dead Counseling the depressed, wiping off the top of the bar Grease on your forehead to keep the angels away Bumblebees glimpsed in the shrinking floral patches Bartenders wiping off the top of the bar crayfish and snakes as the fisheries die off one by one Dirty feet pounding on the hot ground Eating crayfish and snakes as the fisheries die off one by one sickos built like brick walls Some park bench prophet gesticulating wildly at the sky Hexed or simply fated? Whisky-joint sickos built like brick walls on the question too long will make you insane Catching minnows and tadpoles from the wet spots in the sidewalk Dwelling on the question too long will make you insane Sodbuster crawling through the wilderness wearing bear gaiters Mussel-white and thin-layered like a shale formation with one eye open and a pheasant in your lap Cleansing the town of the evil that took so many victims Sleeping with one eye open and a pheasant in your lap revving up for the chamber of horrors Blackmail trading sexual favors for answers from your teacher Run you clever boy Mini-chainsaw revving up for the chamber of horrors 's lessons taught to the whole class Lunches inhaled in the bathroom A cigarette lighter and those three golden hairs in an envelope Astryl's lessons taught to the whole class and wads of gum The desk across from you sits empty for weeks at a time Toothpaste and wads of gum excitedly about some discovery Glass shattering under the swelling weight of corpses Trick or treat! Give me something good to eat! Shambles excitedly about some discovery to a whole brood of abandoned children Samuel, with the old testament name, works at the Church Wet-nurse to a whole brood of abandoned children all about local celebrities Blots out the life-light of another soul Melancholic and withdrawn, with harp-like musical talent Chatters all about local celebrities leading miles and miles into the darkness Their walls bleed dark Plasmids Now she's leading them towards you Passageways leading miles and miles into the darkness of weighing 280 pounds on a five foot nothing frame Living weeds holding a cemetery together with their grasp Mocking them leads to cannibalism Admission of weighing 280 pounds on a five foot nothing frame in a land of savages You're in a nursery of some sort, with inmates watching your every move Weakness-magnets in a land of savages comfort in a wasteland of thorn bushes The choice is yours! Homelike comfort in a wasteland of thorn bushes and sugar overhear Crepitus practicing his drumming Galvanized into sweet wildflowers that cloak the razor-wire cliffs of the asylum Cafffeine and sugar overhear Crepitus practicing his drumming dealing the passing years a losing game of Go Pompous pathologist disecting the century into little bits and pieces Gerontologist dealing the passing years a losing game of Go doesn't look dangerous, at first Irate dwarfs swarm around your jostling for position Tumblebleeds doesn't look dangerous, strapped to your blindfolds Paleontologist hacking a species out of stone Cognizance strapped to your blindfolds of windy dust ocassionally swallow the rails Trick or treat, give us something good to eat! Pretty pretty please! Gusts of windy dust ocassionally swallow the rails machine plugged into cables running off a generator Your ears begin to ring Give us something good, something sweet! Life-prolonging machine plugged into cables running off a generator peeling away a century of glue and stone You fall asleep to an urgent voice on the telephone Surgeries peeling away a century of glue and stone injury tricking you into meeting your first ghoul Give us something good to eat! Sports injury tricking you into meeting your first ghoul Mousehole tram service, payday loan centers, and a cobbler Only hours left before the lynchmob arrives at your door nothing human here of the dead through mysterious machines Civic spirifax: popular name for the city crematoriums Resurrection of the dead through mysterious machines wailing from the mechanical graveyard No shops or even a tavern in sight Harmonica wailing from the mechanical graveyard overflowing with moths and withered leaves Cataclysmic storms batter the city nine months out of the year Mattresses overflowing with moths and withered leaves once a word for pirate loot, now the preferred name for alcohol Immortalized in painted portraits and marble busts Booty: factories where god-images used to sit Check to make sure it's lacking a heart and h Padded cells for the city's more violent patients Rusted-out factories where god-images used to sit gleaming upon decaying stone Phosphorus gleaming upon decaying stone rag-dolls stuffed with missing organs Bananas rotting in old jungle growth Insiders trading secrets over for contraband Automaton rag-dolls stuffed with missing organs searching for the secret of immortality Papers protected us from rioters, Removed by guillotine, rising as a puppet-king Megalomaniac searching for the secret of immortality y film over ancient knives Laboratory hidden behind an iron mask Cogs and levers digging holes into the future Dusty film over ancient knives reading palms and prophesying solderless rifles Preserved longer than elephants You see their desiccated bodies riddled with rifle-bullets Patriots reading palms and prophesying solderless rifles rediscovered, the murderer's escaped Ajar door leading you into blindness Yog-Sothoth consume your mind Adrenaline rediscovered, preserved in oil Your fiendish ancestor howls in pain Poisonous killer with baby's fingers Conquistadors preserved in oil patient lying in wait beneath your bed Dungeons like a fun house, laughing at your pain Mute trophies of heads on pikes Gangrenous patient lying in wait beneath your bed Faucet pouring alcohol in a stream of fluid gold Pigeon-Blood Meds, curing all ills with addictions Your file's getting thicker, the Day of the Rope draws near Blades ready fly out and turn flesh to finest sawdust tells you which dimensions to avoid The Vampire's gaze rots your heart to a spongy mush Triangulation tells you which dimensions to avoid of a Ghoulish Messiah frighten the masses Mad scientist gives birth to hellish abomination Confidence becomes hysteria, solves crime with ease Preachings of a Ghoulish Messiah frighten the masses eats away at iron and willpower alike Dead Man's undertaking service provides no solution Blueprints for a makeshift fallout shelter Corrosion eats away at iron and willpower alike for a charismatic speaker Molotov cocktail for a riot Scarf of faded rose-print, you knit yourself one last autumn Soapbox for a charismatic speaker on the mirror, guilt written on your face Can of water to douse flames when you go out for a smoke Moisture on the mirror, that he was blessed by the Creator Conversion by a opportunistic preacher Cops pay you to find missing person Sermons that he was blessed by the Creator yourself or be lobotomized Faded purple veil that dare not touch bedrock Leathery wings that doomed you to a life of Poverty Lobotomize yourself or be lobotomized for a crime family Greaser Gang Nurse tells you to avoid Harold Sleeping, he's a killer Delivery for a crime family Greaser Gang and tubes of priceless genetic material Anagram for a former friend, a Communist Sympathizer Toothbrushes and tubes of priceless genetic material worth more than a miner's lifetime Zombie hides his looted golden ring in your desk Hag with a pet human child Diamonds worth more than a miner's lifetime of immense power, able to call down Lighting Tenants included plague-ridden rats Sine, cosine, tangent of Neverwas Talisman of immense power, alcoholic Mad Chemist in your graduating class Glue-huffing art-major consumed by his latest work Stinky, put into your irrigation Mice imported from far-off lands Tenacious explorers chew through your food supply Insecticide put into your irrigation feed of bodily waste and ignorance Witches brew in their cauldrons, evil or good? Fantasy Europe appears every high-noon Oozes feed of bodily waste and ignorance name you hero for the year Nuns teach the ways of proper hygeine Moth-eaten vase full of emptiness Newspapers name you hero for the year from a Thousand different countries City on wheels with a strict class-system Crimson floods across the necks of your enemies Diplomats from a Thousand different countries confused by your lack of sports acumen Trapping yourself in the maze of your mind Disappearing yourself into Dreams every day Jocks confused by your lack of sports acumen exiled to a snowy realm Spotted Fever after an embrace with your sweetie Bertrand Russell in Anarchy U Eskiminzins exiled to a snowy realm sculpting the perfect man Classmate killed by Thing From Outer Space Handcuffs, slaves to your libido Physique sculpting the perfect man invisibility granting Ring Decadent mermaid hunters from the East Prometheus lets the World wallow in Darkness Garden-variety invisibility granting Ring and hallucinations for detention hall Green lightning, a psychedelic compound times ten Government killers trained in secret since boyhood Chemicals and hallucinations for detention hall need blood for their art's essence Whilte Vermin from the silent kingdoms of the East Curse a blue moon to be forever romantic Designers need blood for their art's essence tests let you appreciate your own design A certain pushpin holds your map to the stars Strange storm of origin unknown Anatomy tests let you appreciate your own design with skin like coal or pale as milk Meteors that burn up in the atmosphere Insects bred for war but can't reproduce Populations with skin like coal or pale as milk and cigarettes to get you through the day People with extra-limbs allow them into your class Great beast killed by mere introduction to fire Coffee and cigarettes to get you through the day of the highest regard are recognized Golems of Nazi design awaken the demon Robot Emperor rat, half man half genius inventing race Hoppers of the highest regard are recognized from the insane convicted Slime from the shadows lay silent and forgotten Colossal sized super-soldiers capture you Livers from the insane convicted grows fat on forbidden knowledge One must sacrifice for the Emperor Poems and paintings explain everything It's size changes with distance but still absurd Nobility grows fat on forbidden knowledge goes deaf every full-moon This curse developed with puberty and teenagerhood Crossover between man and monster Vicinity goes deaf every full-moon and supplements are nourishment Procured immorality clause for world leaders Bloody daisies grow from the carnage Vitamins and supplements are nourishment red as the dawn sharing your dreams Innocent folk drown country-side in medieval europe Scorpions red as the dawn sharing your dreams feed the children full of seeds Convicted by a shoe-print and upheld by circumstantial evidence Watermelons feed the children full of seeds babies run amok in waste forests Thin rays of androgynous moon Inept biologists with laughably low funding Dumpster babies run amok in waste forests brutes all full of talk but no action Willy-nillys all talk and no follow-thorugh sort Bravado brutes all full of talk but no action -buggy caked with guts the color of sand Spamming programs molesting your devices Longevity treatments for the ultra-wealthy Dune-buggy caked with guts the color of sand net tightens round the world Apocalypse-weave net tightens round the world soldiers true and steady Marvellous machinery of destruction, untold damage done Spit-and-polish soldiers true and steady Super-soldiers immune to pain and fear Everyone waves, what a nice place this is Clueless aliens from the oceans depths undercover agents for the gov Taking life one day at a time One hundred and four servants of heaven Teetotaler undercover agents for the gov unmasked as serial killer Greasers and hoodlums battling over slushie machines Heroin halts pain receptors rampantly addictive though Zoologist unmasked as serial killer favorite snack of the tribes GCHQ agents subvert your internet activity Dull silver medallion needed to pilot airship Lizard-on-a-stick favorite snack of the tribes painted red for the kill Theft of robot modifications for necromantic experiments Glow in the dark fungus lures the unwary Endoskeleton painted red for the kill test means Hope for a new life Dancing lights entertain the tribes children Singing rocks share tales of ancient lost brothers Phenotype test means Hope for a new life experiments gone horribly wrong Leader-follower behavior leads sheep to slaughter Giggling deep in the mines all infected with parasites Moreauvian experiments gone horribly wrong The horrors below must be watched carefully You suffer eternal torment crying out for mommy Even a slight mistake will destroy your soul Time to pull up, the earth is rushing towards you Atmosphere fizzing like a hits water after popping a bean and charred again and again If the angle is to steep then you will hit with enough force to smash you like a watermelon If impact is to shallow then back you go back into space to be frozen and charred again and again Mastery of only one is needed for survival 's environmental needs Pick the wrong liquid and you get one less chance to try again You will need to float the egg in some liquid so you will need to find some liquid that is the same as egg's environmental needs like a pinball deleting the needed energy from its movement to miss the infant to absorption The container will need to be rigid to make sure that the walls do not flex or the egg could bang on the walls like a pinball deleting the needed energy from its movement to miss the infant to absorption it is up to you the chance of cracking it is directly related to the speed An egg can withstand between 20 to 30 gs before cracking it is up to you the chance of cracking it is directly related to the speed Ranco Pick 1 0 2147483131 Numbers Please! Rnco You jump into the abyss Ranco Your burning body turned to ash And It's over What a way to go I wish it were my own END You wish this were your own

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kevinclerk11-blog · 5 years

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BETWEEN THE BRIDGES

A few years ago I did a feature on Manhattan between the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges (I call it BEMBO), but as always, there’s more to see and there are details I missed. This time of year I also begin to scout areas that would make decent Forgotten NY tours in the spring and summer. BEMBO is a curious area, full of crannies and nooks of interest. Had I been writing Forgotten New York in the 1960s, there would have been a lot more to talk about, as maybe half of this neighborhood has been razed to build housing projects, schools, and the NYPD headquarters. I was able to show some of these lost streets in a FNY post in January 2019.

Getting off the F train at East Broadway at Canal (Straus Square) I meandered west. I discussed the Mesivtha Tiferes Jerusalem Yeshiva just the other day, so I won’t repeat myself here; it’s a handsome building in buff and brown brick, and has a venerable history.

East Broadway, looking west, looking toward the Manhattan Bridge overpass, and behind it, the Municipal Building and Woolworth Building, which from this vantage look like twin spires of the same building. In the left background is #4 World Trade Center and on the right, of course, is #1 World Trade Center. In the foreground left is the relatively new 109 East Broadway, the site of a devastating fire in 2010. The building exhibits the latest trend in residential architecture, featuring a boxy design with colored metal panels and flat windows. Why do so many new apartment buildings looks like this? They’re the cheapest to build.

In FNY’s Comments section, and remarks from friends on facebook, twitter and in person, many dismiss new architecture outright, saying nothing built today matches the past. I judge each building on its merits, and part of me is happy to live in a dynamic city that can accommodate new designs. I like a city that has both a Jenga tower and a St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

Until the beginning of the 20th Century, East Broadway was known as Chatham Street, for William Pitt, Earl of Chatham (1708-1778) who was the English Prime Minister during the time the colonies were agitating for independence, but before the Revolutionary War. He opposed the Stamp Act, but also opposed outright independence, but promoted compromise that ultimately proved untenable. Many USA locales are named for him including Pittsfield, MA and Pittsburgh, PA, as well as Chatham Square, East Broadway at the Bowery.

No good way to get a picture of the Knickerbocker Post Office, 128 East Broadway near Pitt Street because of … all the mail trucks parked in front of it.

Washington Irving (1783-1859), who met his namesake George Washington while a young boy, was popular both in the States and in Europe for his essays and fiction, and was the creator of Ichabod Crane, Rip van Winkle, and the tricornered Father Knickerbocker, NYC’s mascot. “Knickerbocker,” which is fun to say, refers to NYC’s early Dutch settlers and appears frequently in NYC lore, including its NBA basketball team.

The Sung Tak Buddhist Association at 13 Pike Street was once the Pike Street Synagogue, a Classic Revival building from 1903 that housed the Congregation Sons of Israel Kalwarie, Poland. Entertainer Eddie Cantor was bar mitzvahed here in 1905. The tripartite façade, which has an arched portico reached by twin lateral staircases, reflects Romanesque and classical features.

Looking north on Pike Street, which was named for explorer Zebulon Pike, soldier and explorer (1779-1813) of Pike’s Peak fame. Along with Allen Street, which begins a block north, the road was widened several decades ago and now sports a modern bicycle path. You can walk in a straight line all the way from here to the Harlem River, as Pike becomes Allen and Allen becomes 1st Avenue.

Turning left on Market Street, I encountered one of the oldest churches in Manhattan at Henry Street, the old Market Street Reformed Church, which was built in 1819. The windows are made up of multiple panels—35 over 35 over 35. This is now the First Chinese Presbyterian Church, which shared the building with the Sea and Land Church until 1972.

The brick and stone Georgian-Gothic church was constructed two centuries ago as the Market Street reformed Church on land owned by Henry Rutgers, and after changing congregations a few times over the years, it’s now the First Chinese Presbyterian Church. It’s in the top five oldest extant church buildings in New York City, the oldest being St. Paul’s Chapel on Broadway and Vesey St.

Every time I’m in the area, I check on Mechanics Alley, which runs on the west side of the Manhattan Bridge anchorage for 2 blocks between Madison and Henry Streets. Though it has obtained a more narrow sense, the word “mechanic” originally meant an artisan, builder or craftsman, not necessarily a machinist. No property fronts on the narrow lane, but trucks nonetheless employ it despite its narrowness to avoid heavier traffic on streets like Market.

I did a pretty comprehensive post on Mechanics Alley and its history a few years ago in FNY.

Market Street contains a number of historic and classic buildings along its short stretch between East Broadway and South Street. Here’s #40 market on the corner of Madison, which still has its original entrance woodwork as well as the street identification brownstone plaques. The Market Street side looks as if it has had some ad hoc repairs done sometime in the past.

375 Pearl Street, otherwise known as the Verizon Building, a.k.a. the Intergate Center, looms at the west end of Monroe Street. Many call it the ugliest building in Manhattan, though I’ve seen far worse. In 2016 it was renovated and received a new bank of windows.

This shabby brick building at 51 Market St. was constructed in 1824 by merchant William Clark. Its original elegant doorway, with Ionic columns, a fanlight and ornamentation, has survived nearly two centuries. A close look at the basement windows shows them to be surrounded with brownstone work with squiggly lines, known in the architecture world as “Gibbs surrounds.” A fourth floor, which studiously copied the original three, was added after the Civil War. The stoop and railings, however, are not original as they were replaced in 2010. The door is festooned with graffiti, and though the house has Landmark status, its condition appears deteriorated.

Amid the Chinese-language signs on Market and Madison, at the edge of Chinatown, is this neon sign for a long-gone liquor store.

At #47 Market Street is a venerable brick building that conveniently lists the date of construction, 1886, at the roofline.

Faces peer out from the front of this Madison Street apartment. Many of these buildings, and those on paralleling Monroe and Henry Streets, were built in the 1880s, when such embellishments were found on just about every building, commercial or residential.

The undulating exterior of #8 Spruce Street, officially New York By Gehry, named for architect Frank Gehry, is the architect’s signature NYC building. Like it or not, it’s instantly recognizable from all over lower Manhattan. After its completion in 2011, it was NYC’s tallest residential building for a couple of years, but has since been surpassed by buildings like 432 Park.

The Roman Catholic parish of St. Joseph (“San Giuseppe”) was established by the Missionaries of St. Charles, an order of priests and brothers founded by Blessed John Baptist Scalabrini in 1887 to serve the needs of Italian immigrants. The present church was designed by Matthew W. Del Gaudio and opened in 1924. Shortly after the founding of the parish, the Scalabrinians were joined by the Apostles of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, who helped open St. Joseph School in 1926.

Today, St. Joseph Church is a national parish designated as an Italian and Chinese parish. The parish continues the mission of the Church of St. Joachim, located at 26 Roosevelt Street until the 1960s, which was founded by the Missionaries of St. Charles who arrived in New York City in 1889. Immediately after, Mother Cabrini was welcomed by the same church as she arrived in the United States. American Guild of Organists, NYC Chapter

Speaking of the Scalabrinians, in January 2018 I visited their former bailiwick, St. Charles Seminary in Todt Hill, Staten Island, which had been the estate of architect Ernest Flagg.

Catherine Street classics, near Madison Street.

Madison and Oliver Streets. Al Smith (1873-1944), a four-time NYS governor and failed presidential candidate, was born on Oliver, a still-existing street between the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges, neither of which had opened when he was born. He was one of NYC’s most popular politicians in history.

On a walk up the Lower East Side in January 2013, I encountered an anachronistic building that I either hadn’t seen or hadn’t noticed before, on Madison Street a few doors away from St. James Place. It’s a tiny two-story dormered building — however, it’s not too small that it doesn’t have two separate doors and two separate house numbers, 47 and 49. I’ve always been curious about anachronisms and survivors, being something of an anachronism myself, so I looked it up. Expecting a difficult or fruitless search, I found something by the historian David Freeland, who rote about it in 2009 in the now-defunct New York Press:

For years the house has been something of a mystery, but one glimpse into its colorful history is revealed through a small advertisement from the Spirit of the Times newspaper, as reprinted in the Boston Herald of March 2, 1853: “Rat Killing, and other sports, every Monday evening. A good supply of rats kept constantly on hand for gentlemen wishing to try their dogs, with the use of the pit gratis, at J. Marriott’s Sportsman’s Hall, 49 Madison Street.”

Rat baiting, setting rats against rats, or dogs against rats, was a popular betting sport in the 19th Century in the days before the ASPCA. The building where another former rat baiting establishment was run by Kit Burns, the Captain Joseph Rose House, still stands at 273 Water Street in the Seaport area.

Freeland goes on:

By the late 1850s, the house at 49 Madison Street had been taken over by English-born Harry Jennings, who ran it as a combination saloon and rat-fighting pit until his conviction on a robbery charge sent him to prison in Massachusetts. But later, after returning to New York, Jennings settled into a kind of respectability, winning fame as a dog trainer and, eventually, the city’s leading rat exterminator. By the time of his death, in 1891, Jennings’ clients included Delmonico’s Restaurant and such luxury hotels as Gilsey House and the original Plaza.

Apparently, there’s a comeback in everybody.

The dark shadows of January intrude on the intersection of James and Madison Streets, one of the few intersections in NYC where both street names make up a US President’s first and second name. I’m sure it wasn’t planned that way, though.

We can see St. James Church, the second oldest building associated with the Roman Catholic Church in NYC. (Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Mott and Prince Streets, built in 1810, precedes it.) The fieldstone, Doric-columned Greek Revival building was begun in 1835 and completed in 1837; and though it is thought to be a design of famed architect Minard Lefever, there is no evidence to support the claim. A domed cupola above the sanctuary was removed decades ago. This was the boyhood parish of Al Smith, and New Bowery, which connects Pearl Street and Chatham Square, was renamed for it in 1947.

The massive Chatham Green development, located along St. James Place between Madison Street and Chatham Square, opened in 1960, was one of the projects that eliminated much of the ancient street grid in lower Manhattan, as well as the last remnants of the Five Points slum. But on those streets were located dark, noisome and cold tenements, and Chatham Green was constructed by the City in an effort to make middle-income peoples’ lives better. As we know, that effort has had mixed results.

Chatham Green went condo several years ago, with hefty prices, somewhat belying its original purposes.

This triangular-shaped building comes to a point at St. James Place and Madison Street. As I have noted, St. lames Place, laid out in the mid-1850s, was originally called New Bowery, but the designation must have been fluid at one time, as the chiseled street sign on the building simply has “Bowery.”

One Police Plaza, along Madison Street and Park Row (both closed to regular traffic) opened in 1973, is the headquarters of the NY Police Department; it took over from the old domed HQ, now a condo conversion at Centre and Broome Streets. It was designed by Gruzen and Partners in a Brutalist style and sits near the assorted city and state court buildings at Foley Square.

The NYC Municipal Building was constructed in 1914 from plans by McKim, Mead & White; it now houses only a fraction of the city offices that oversee the functioning of the metropolis. Particularly attractive is the row of freestanding columns, the extensive sculpture work and the lofty colonnaded tower topped by Adolph Weinman’s 25-fot high gilt statue of Civic Fame.

I have happy memories of the building since on October 23, 2006 I spent a half hour with Brian Lehrer on WNYC-radio discussing Forgotten NY the Book, and temporarily, my Amazon sales jumped into the 500s (by contrast, 12 years later, I’m in the 300,000s usually).

The sculptures on the north arch include allegorical representations of Progress, Civic Duty, Guidance, Executive Power, Civic Pride and Prudence. Between the windows on the second floor are symbols of various city departments. Note the collection of plaques, among which is the “triple X” emblem of Amsterdam, Holland. Chambers Street once passed through the building and once went all the way to Chatham Square but the NYC Police Dept complex was built over its path in the 1960s. —Gerard Wolfe

The fortress-like, business-themed Murray Bergtraum High School was built at Madison Street and Robert F. Wagner Senior Place, adjacent to Brooklyn Bridge off-ramps, in 1976. It’s named for a former president of the NYC Board of Ed., between 1969 and 1971. Noted alumni include entertainers John Leguizamo and Damon Wayans.

Rose Street, once chockablock with tenements, is a curved street running under the Brooklyn Bridge connecting Gold and Madison Streets. It was named for late 18th-early 19th Century merchant and distiller Captain Joseph Rose, whose house still stands nearby on Water Street. I discussed Rose Street at length on this FNY page.

Though I continued into the Seaport area, it’s a busy weekend and I’ll wrap things up for now.

Please help contribute to a new Forgotten NY website

Check out the ForgottenBook, take a look at the gift shop, and as always, “comment…as you see fit.”

1/6/19

Source: http://forgotten-ny.com/2019/01/between-the-bridges/

#read more #see more #check it out #interesting #learn more

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lovehaswonangelnumbers · 5 years

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New Post has been published on https://lovehaswonangelnumbers.org/angelic-guidance-to-navigate-the-capricorn-full-moon-and-partial-lunar-eclipse/

Angelic Guidance To Navigate The Capricorn Full Moon And Partial Lunar Eclipse

By Edith-Boyer Telmer

Dear Friends, today we are collectively experiencing the impact of this years Full Moon in Capricorn and it presents itself in the company of a partial lunar eclipse. The energies influencing the collectively awakening of humanity are intensively high and it might be wise to take some advice from the angelic realms right now. DON’T FORGET TO ALSO SIGN UP for my column “The Daily Angel” right here on my webpage!!

Here are the angelic number sequences transmitted: Angel Number 228: This Angel Number is bringing gentle whispers to our ears, that we are ready to make another leap of faith into the unknown. We have gained the wisdom it takes to pass another gateway of initiation, into higher levels of awareness and frequency. Keep your eyes on the goal and trust the Angelic Realm to be at your side at any moment of challenge, leading us toward brand new opportunities. A new direction for our spiritual path and the fulfillment of our life purpose, is now on the way. Accept and enjoy all the blessings life is bringing now!! Do no longer prepare to receive the blessings of the divine, but BE READY to accept all the amazing gifts of success, abundance and prosperity. Know you are worthy to receive it all!!

There has already been the karmic work: that what life has transformed in me, this initiation brought on, of necessity, by trials. Isabelle Adjani

Every initiation reaches a point of crisis, by design. If it was easy to let go of the old way, there would be no need for initiation. We’d seat easily into new wisdom. S. Kelley Harrell

Remember, the storm is a good opportunity for the pine and the cypress to show their strength and their stability. Ho Chi Minh

Angel Number 404: Is a loving message from the other world that we are truly blessed beings. When we see this combination regularly, than the Angels and Ascended Masters praise us with the acknowledgement of our good work, that we have done over many lifetimes. It is a confirmation that the stability and clarity we have build on our personal path is paying of now, and we can let go of fears over material things. It’s time to embrace the magic that flows thru us and keep walking our path filled with deep passion, devotion and blissfulness.Loyalty and devotion lead to bravery. Bravery leads to the spirit of self-sacrifice. The spirit of self-sacrifice creates trust in the power of love. Morihei Ueshiba

What you knew in your childhood is true; the other world of magic and enchantment is real, sometimes terribly real – and certainly more real than the factual reality which our culture has built up, brick by brick, to shut out color and light and prevent us from flying. Patrick Harpur

Mystical insight and enlightenment occur when the veil between the worlds is lifted, the worlds are bridged, the gap closes, and we cross over. Tom Cowan

Angel Number 9977: The number nine is talking to us about the spiritual journey of developing wisdom in us. Seeing the number double is a reinforcement to keep growing in that direction. In deeply listening to the guidance of our higher self, we can continually draw strength and clarity to keep shining in our divine I AM light. The seven is the number of the spiritual warrior presented with double strength. The angels are happy about all the good work we have done, and are sending us even more divine blessings. With this number sequence the angelic realms are celebrating our consistent choices to live our life from a place of authenticity, honesty, integrity and alignment to our individual divine soul plan.

Love myself I do. Not everything, but I love the good as well as the bad. I love my crazy lifestyle, and I love my hard discipline. I love my freedom of speech and the way my eyes get dark when I’m tired. I love that I have learned to trust people with my heart, even if it will get broken. I am proud of everything that I am and will become. Johnny Weir

Everything happening around me is very random. I am enjoying the phase, as the journey is far more enjoyable than the destination. Sushant Singh Rajput

The biggest competition is myself. I am not looking to follow others or pull them down. I’m planning to test my own boundaries. Rain Dear Ones, I hope you all feel motivated right now to align yourself with the energy field of this wonderful Capricorn Full Moon with partial lunar eclipse. May you allow the influence to transform your world, where ever that may lead you. Love and Angelic Blessings! Edith

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travelworldnetwork · 6 years

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For 170 years, the river that gave Belfast its name has been buried underground in a hidden tunnel. We descended into the city’s cavernous underbelly to find it.

By Eliot Stein

31 May 2018

Tens of thousands of people pass by downtown Belfast’s Victorian turrets, buzzing quaysides and cobbled Cathedral Quarter streets every day – but few people realise that there’s a secret hiding just below their feet.

The Farset is how everything started

Buried just 60cm beneath the city’s modern surface, the long-lost River Farset that gave Belfast its name still flows silently through the heart of Northern Ireland’s capital. In fact, Belfast, or Béal Feirste (‘the sandy ford at the mouth of the Farset’, in Irish) not only owes its existence to this river, but also its growth and early prosperity. Yet, for the last 170 years, this ancient waterway has been sealed off from the outside world by a series of tunnels, and is largely forgotten by those walking just above it.

“If you stopped anyone in downtown Belfast to ask, they wouldn’t have a clue that there’s a river running through the centre of High Street where boats once sailed up and down,” said Des O’Reilly, author of the book Rivers of Belfast: A History and a professor of early Irish history for more than 40 years. “But the Farset is how everything started, and if you look closely at Belfast today, you can see how it’s always shaped the town.”

View image of Few people realise there is a river running below the streets of central Belfast (Credit: Credit: Eliot Stein)

According to O’Reilly, Belfast was founded at a natural crossing point where the little-known Farset flowed into Belfast’s centrepiece, the River Lagan. This formed a narrow sandbar at what is now the corner of High Street and Victoria Street. Today, this is the site of the iconic St George’s Church, but the modern building stands on an ancient chapel, where, more than 800 years ago, pilgrims waiting to ford the mud flats at low tide would pray for a safe river crossing.

Protestant settlers from Scotland and England began arriving in the 1600s, and the banks of the Farset soon developed into the first quaysides of the burgeoning merchant town, with docks, piers and ships rather than shops lining what is now High Street. In the late 1700s, it was one of several Belfast rivers – along with the Blackstaff – that provided power for the textile mills, distilleries and factories that fuelled the Industrial Revolution. By the end of the 1800s, the Farset had helped propel Belfast into the world’s leading linen manufacturer, and some 50,000 people worked in the mills along its banks in west Belfast.

“Back then you probably would have smelled Belfast before you saw it,” said Ruairí Ó Baoill, author of Hidden History Below our Feet: The Archaeological Story of Belfast. “The Farset is symbolic of Belfast and industrialisation. It’s the secret river you can’t see anymore, but that’s because it was an open sewer.”

Families and factories found it a convenient place to dump rubbish, and by the early 1800s, the wafting smell had become so bad that the town’s commissioners were forced to do something. One million bricks and 40 years later, the last section of the Farset that flowed through the city centre was buried underground in 1848, and it has remained hidden from sight ever since.

View image of In the 1800s, the Farset helped to power Belfast’s textile mills, factories and distilleries (Credit: Credit: De Luan/Alamy)

These days the invisible river runs parallel to the ‘Peace Lines’ that long separated Protestants and Catholics, threads Castle Street and Bank Street and winds directly under High Street, giving the road its distinctive curve and width. It then flows to the left of the towering Albert Memorial Clock and empties into the Lagan at Donegall Quay.

“Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there,” Ó Baoill said, pointing to a small opening directly below the popular Big Fish sculpture where the Farset still disgorges into the Lagan.

The Farset is symbolic of Belfast and industrialisation

An urban archaeologist, Ó Baoill has made it his mission to help spread awareness of the little river’s major role in Irish history, and he’s not alone. In the last few years, there have been a number of ambitious efforts to reopen stretches of the long-neglected river and transform it into a greenway. More recently, Belfast’s City Council organised a citywide Farset Project to celebrate the invisible river.

As I followed Ó Baoill from the quay into the heart of Belfast, it became apparent just how much the underground river’s influence still echoes above the city’s surface.

“This is the ‘Leaning Tower of Belfast’,” Ó Baoill said, pointing up to the sandstone Albert Memorial Clock, one of the city’s most recognised landmarks, which soars at a 1.25m slant. “We’re walking directly on top of the Farset on muddy, reclaimed land, which causes heavy buildings to tilt.”

View image of Belfast is filled with reminders of the sailors who once used the Farset to transport goods (Credit: Credit: Eliot Stein)

Arriving at the corner of Victoria and High Streets, where the Farset once emptied into the Lagan, Ó Baoill explained that there was once a quay here where larger ships would have unloaded things like wine, spices and tobacco so that smaller barges called ‘lighters’ could transport them up and down High Street.

“This whole area would have been filled with sailors importing and exporting goods on the banks – where High Street’s pavements now are,” Ó Baoill said as we passed Skipper Street, where captains once lived. “Over time, warehouses, inns and pubs sprouted up along the Farset to look after these sailors and travellers.”

Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there

One block away, Bridge Street gets its name from a small footbridge that once crossed the Farset to reach The Entries, a series of narrow alleyways off High Street where merchants lived.

“These alleys served as jetties for seamen sailing up and down the Farset, and so a lot of the old pubs off High Street still have nautical names, like the Mermaid Inn,” said Jinny Joiner, a waitress at the 208-year-old The Morning Star bar and restaurant. “But now the river’s long gone.”

View image of Built on muddy land reclaimed from the Farset, Belfast’s Albert Memorial Clock soars at a 1.25m slant (Credit: Credit: Eliot Stein)

Or so it seems. According to Frankie Mallon, an engineer with the Department for Infrastructure (DfI) Rivers, in the 170 years since the Farset was sealed off, only two members of the public have been allowed to venture underground to see it. I’d be the third, provided I take some precautions and meet Mallon at a nondescript manhole cover where Belfast’s bustling Castle Junction hits High Street at exactly 17:21.

“It’s a dangerous area,” Mallon said, passing me a jumpsuit, hard hat and Wellington boots, and strapping a 10kg oxygen tank around my shoulders. “Hazardous gases, possibly sewer breach, corrosive liquids. There’s a reason we don’t take people down.”

As a crowd of curious bystanders looked on, members of the Rivers Agency unearthed a heavy metal grate from the pavement and slid a ladder into Belfast’s cavernous underbelly. After a quick glance at his watch, Mallon told me we needed to move now to hit low tide, so I clenched my notepad between my teeth and slowly descended into the dark, damp domain.

“The smell’s long gone,” Mallon said, shining his torch through a circular, 2m-wide pitch-black abyss winding underneath High Street. “But in the 18th Century, this was an absolute cesspit.”

View image of For 170 years, the River Farset has been buried 60cm below Belfast’s surface (Credit: Credit: Eliot Stein)

At low tide, the Farset was much more trickle than torrent, with cold, fresh water flowing through the culvert towards the Lagan 500m away. At high tide, Mallon said some 63,000 litres of water from the Lagan would be gushing back through the conduit, reaching the top of the tunnel, a mere 0.6m below High Street.

This river has some stories to tell

As we slowly sloshed through the subterranean passage, the world above was eerily silent. Mallon explained that the Victorian-style, tapered-brick vault is reinforced by two walls built 0.5m thick and topped with wedged timber that’s holding the modern city above it. “It was a complicated process in the 1800s, and it’s still in amazingly good condition – except for one part,” Mallon said, motioning up at a crack where water was rushing in from a broken pipe overhead.

After trudging some 200m underground, we turned and headed back towards the ladder and the light above. Mallon rubbed his gloves over the bricks, dyed black by centuries of industrial runoff, and explained that this water is what brought his ancestors to Belfast.

“Like so many others, my whole family came from various places in Ireland to work in the linen and cotton industries powered by the Farset,” he said, aiming his torch over the water’s dark depths. “This river has some stories to tell, but these days, we’re the only ones lucky enough to see it.”

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howtolivealifelessordinary · 7 years

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Egypt Day 7- Edfu Temple, Luxor Temple

The night before was cool and crisp and very welcome after the last few sweltering days. We’d all been drinking, dancing, singing, and smoking hookah by the bonfire on the beach before retiring to bed. I fell asleep to the gentle rocking of the current of the Nile and a cool African breeze on my face. At 5 AM nature was calling me just in time for the sunrise. It was a beautiful sight to behold while I had my morning pee. By 6 AM we were awake and preparing breakfast and by 7 we were setting sail to the opposite side of the river a little further up. When we reached the shore we thanked the wonderful Nubian crew for their hard work, delicious food, and hospitality and made or way to the bus to begin the days excursions. It was only 110 kilometers to Edfu temple, so as is my ritual, I seized the opportunity for another nap.

When we arrived it was overcast and slightly less hot than it had been on previous days. A shop owner “greeted” us when we stepped off the bus. He welcomed me and followed me to the temple entrance where he demanded that I promise I come to his shop when I was finished. I politely smiled and brushed it off but not before he gave me a “gift” around my neck. It was a cheaply made sheer pink scarf with eye of horus coins attached to the sides. Nothing in Egypt is free and knowing that, I slipped it into my satchel.

When you enter the temple there are crumbling brick walls surrounding the perimeter and in the center a massive Egyptian temple with hieroglyphs covering it from sandy ground to the eroded top. This temple was erected to depict the battle between gods, the brothers, Osiris and Set. All over are hieroglyphs depicting these legends, quite detailed and at this point I’m beginning to be able to make sense of all the scenes and build a story from them as they’d originally intended. These are essentially, the first graphic novels created.

When you enter the sandy courtyard, it just looks like a large fortress wall with a tall doorway in the middle. When you walk through the doorway, you can see round indentations in the ceiling where enormous cedar doors used to be set to close it off when the temple wasn’t open to the public. You walk into a large square courtyard surrounded by massive columns set around the perimeter. Walking further in there are high vaulted ceilings and a lot more columns, all etched and decorated. Although this is the most preserved temple in Egypt there is still a lot of erosion and the ceilings and walls are crumbling in many places with stairways leading to gates and blocked entrances throughout. If you walk straight in and all the way back there is a room with a shrine inside. It is a small wooden “boat” which is used to carry a large ritualistic golden statue and behind that is what looks like a polished granite mini gazebo with etchings carved all over it. We’re told that’s where they used to keep their shrine but it had since been moved to a museum somewhere in the world. On either side of this room is a stairway. One spiraling up, the other a straight staircase down. We’re informed that this was to represent the god horus, the hawk god. When the priests took the golden statue to its home for safe- keeping they went up the spiral staircase-the same way a hawk climbs the air currents. And when the priests bring the shrine down for ceremonial purposes they use the straight staircase to represent the hawks movements when it descends. The amount of thought that goes into this mythology is still mind boggling to me. After walking around for about an hour we made our way back to our bus where the shop owner was waiting for me. He followed me all the way to the bus where luckily I had the excuse that I was with my group. He angrily said, “you promised! ” and I said, “no, you put that promise on me but I never agreed” “Then give me back my scarf!” I knew this would be the case and already had it out and ready to give back. Nice “gift”, dude. I handed it to him, he snatched it and stormed off to his shop and I happily got on my bus.

We made our way back to Luxor to our hotel where we had several hours to clean up and relax before going to Luxor temple. After showering, I went to the pool and hung out with some of my group and had a light lunch.

At 5:45 we met out front to head to Luxor temple and then off to dinner.

Luxor temple is just as magnificent as all the others but this is the only one we’ve been able to see at night. You’re greeted by another wall with large statues and a massive obelisk in front. A lot of restoration is currently going into this temple so there’s scaffolding and statue bits all around. This temple is renowned for fertility as it’s right near a silt depository from the Nile and the temple itself is known as the temple of harem or the temple of women.

Images of fertility are carved throughout this temple. There must be some kind of energy here as well because several different religions have felt a need to put their holy buildings here throughout history. It started out as an Egyptian temple, and then a church was erected, and then a mosque. They saw evidence of this when excavation projects started to uncover and rebuild the temple. When you look at where the mosque is now you can see old bricks at the base built on top of the temple and about ten feet up the structure starts to look more "modern" where the mosque starts. Kind of like the temple of the sun in Cuzco, Peru. There's a door set up high where the older brick meets the new mosque. It was where the sand was before excavation started and the original entrance to the mosque. Now it acts as a marker for how much has been unearthed and an eerie door that if exited from would surely break a limb from the fall. The temple is beautiful at night with floodlights illuminating the columns and making the deep set hieroglyphs shadows stand out more. It is a big open area and if you walk towards the opposite end you'll find a long lit pathway, 3 kilometers long leading all the way to Karnak temple. On either side of the path are sphinx lining the entire way set about 6 get from each other. I would like to make that walk one day. We wrapped up and went out for dinner in an "Irish pub". I think only one person enjoyed their food. After a week, all of our stomachs were beginning to feel bubbly and I quickly realized, the hard way, that the same rule for India also applied to Egypt- don't trust your farts.

#how to live a life less ordinary #Luxor temple #travel blog #Egypt travel #edfu temple #travel talk tours #city of revenge #city of harem #see Egypt #ancient egypt #don't trust your farts

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travelworldnetwork · 6 years

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Surprisingly, Vancouver – not Shanghai, Hong Kong or Las Vegas – was once the neon capital of the planet.

By Mike MacEacheran

4 May 2018

Wide shot: a city’s majestic backdrop of sea and sky, skirted by folds of Douglas fir, and deep, zigzagging fjords. Zoom in: a downtown core on the rise, a mixture of newly built condominiums, theatres and red-brick saloons. Close-up: in the middle, a hodgepodge of advertising signs and overhead utility lines rearing out of the darkness. And the big picture: the sky electrified in a glow of red, yellow and green as 19,000 neon lights switch on.

Step back in time to 1950s Vancouver, and this is what would have greeted you after sailing across the Georgia Strait to the city’s historical district of Gastown. From here to the suburbs, the streets hummed with transporters and Frankenstein-like glass insulators. Logging agencies, lumberjack recruiters – even churches – advertised with neon lettering, while residents amped up their houses with neon door numbers. Harder to believe still, the city produced more strip neon than anywhere else on the planet, with one sign for every 18 residents, and 12 factories, including the world’s largest.

View image of Vancouver, Canada, was one of the first capitals of neon, with one sign for every 18 residents (Credit: Credit: Michael robertharding/Alamy)

Stories like this aren’t supposed to happen in the middle of the Pacific Northwest’s beautiful temperate rainforests. Maybe in Hong Kong, Las Vegas or Shanghai, cities where streets besieged with neon are part of downtown lore. But Vancouver, Canada’s great-outdoors capital? The sheer volume of neon colour juxtaposed with its beautiful natural setting seems alien. Yet the truth that it was one of the world’s first capitals of neon is unlike anything stereotypes of the city might lead you to expect.

To learn more, I contacted John Atkin, a Vancouver-born civic historian, heritage consultant and neon expert. “Neon and rain are made for each other – it makes the colour diffuse and come alive – and that really helps explain why there was such a boom here,” he said as we toured the Museum of Vancouver’s permanent neon gallery on an overcast afternoon. “Vancouver has more grey days than anywhere else in North America, but it was also a streetcar city, which advertising neon is perfect for. Add the weather to the transport system, then factor in the low cost of leasing the signs as manufacturers began competing with each other, and neon boomed. It worked here.”

The museum’s rich collection of aged and weathered signage comes from the groundwork of Atkin, who first curated an exhibition on the city’s neon history back in 2000. Two stand-outs are a gigantic pink-striped ‘R’ from Regent Tailors, first hung on West Hastings Street in 1960; and a buzzing red and green headstone designed for S Bowell & Sons Ltd Funeral Directors from the previous decade.

View image of Even Vancouver’s churches advertised with neon signs (Credit: Credit: Mike MacEacheran)

According to Atkin, the key thing that set Vancouver apart was the majority of sign makers here were art-school graduates. That meant there was a real consideration for design, and streets became canvases of typography, colour and action. The definition between where the building finished and art began started to blur.

“The artists had fun with it,” said Atkin, as we looked upon one-sided mounts advertising a beauty salon, a dry cleaner, a garage, a dairy and a pool hall. “In the 1940s and 1950s, Vancouver wasn’t just lit by neon – it was illuminated with stories.”

Vancouver wasn’t just lit by neon – it was illuminated with stories

Atkin clearly remembers the tales that illuminated his childhood. When he was a boy, he used to cycle through the inner city on his way to swimming practice. He was an early riser, and somehow felt drawn to the rainbow-coloured signs on downtown Granville Street in the pre-dawn light, particularly vibrant around 05:00.

Share such stories with Vancouverites today and many will be puzzled. Tell them trees were covertly planted beneath well-known signs to blot out the visual noise and they’ll scarcely believe you. But there’s a good reason: the signs have all but gone, with most consigned to the scrapheap.

For history hasn’t been kind to Vancouver’s neon. Did it signal glamour and big-city living – or was it a vulgar display that vandalised a city? From the 1950s to 1970s, this was the question that divided the city, with neon becoming a symbol of a deep civic controversy and a lightning rod for critics.

By the 1960s, a growing suburbia meant neon had become demonised and associated with urban blight. “You can have civilisation, or you can have neon,” said one detractor, the criticism ironically lit up as a display at the museum. “It is vital to Vancouver’s reputation as a beautiful city… that these proposed sign controls be implemented before any more visual squalor is added to our most attractive streets,” said another at the height of the backlash.

To the city’s lawmakers, the signage frustrated people’s expectations of what Vancouver – surrounded by a northern cape of mountains and forests – should be. The throbbing glow was seen as an ugly, seedy distraction. So by 1974, the city adopted its first comprehensive sign control bylaw, restricting new neon signage beyond measure.

As Atkin sees it, the distaste came from a misguided realisation of just how corrosive to society neon was. “The bylaws made it damn difficult to do anything,” he said. “Everything that made neon cool – you couldn’t do it anymore. And with it the craft started to disappear.”

View image of By the 1960s, Vancouver’s neon became a symbol of deep civic controversy

Today, examples of vintage neon still dot Vancouver, although you need to know where to look. For maximum impact, a walk through the city should take in The Orpheum and Vogue Theatre, two typographic verticals on Granville Street trimmed with bulbs. On nearby Hastings Street, a quick succession of marvels then spreads farther east, including signs such as those at Save On Meats, The Balmoral and The Pennsylvania (hotels turned social housing projects) and Ovaltine Cafe, a city fixture dating to the early 1940s.

We’re bringing the neon back

However, thanks to newly tempered bylaws keen to curtail downtown’s commercial decline, change is gathering pace, particularly in Chinatown, an area intrinsically tied to neon’s rise and fall because of the propensity of restaurants to embrace the advertising. Walk along East Pender Street and you’ll come to Sai Woo, a nearly 100-year-old restaurant, restored and reopened in 2015 as part of the area’s ongoing gentrification. Here, the unmissable 3x2m neon cockerel advertising chop suey – paid for by a community-supported C$19,000 Kickstarter campaign – is just the start of a welcome revival.

“We’re bringing the neon back,” owner Salli Pateman told me, while staring out at the two-sided gold-and-green cockerel sign. “It’s happening again, and a year from now there’ll be five or so more places with signs like this. We’re salvaging the heritage of this neighbourhood.”

The message is clear: there’s a new generation willing to embrace the visual noise.

View image of Owner Salli Pateman raised nearly C$20,000 to locate and restore the Sai Woo restaurant’s original neon sign (Credit: Credit: Mike MacEacheran)

Next for Chinatown is the return of Foo’s Ho Ho, Vancouver’s oldest Chinese restaurant and a place famous for a once-notorious neon artwork. It was the address for an incredibly complex four-storey sign depicting a two-sided bowl of steaming noodles with flashing, alternating English and Cantonese words. The campaign to restore it has been masterminded by restaurant owner Carol Lee. Designed from scratch by Atkin using a more streamlined design, and paid for through heritage grants and donations, the C$80,000 signboard will be unveiled later next year.

It creates a sense of nostalgia, but also community

But while such visual ambition forms part of a wider lighting strategy to revitalise downtown Vancouver, it’s about more than just adding drama to the cityscape for locals. “It creates a sense of nostalgia, but also community,” said Pateman, looking up and down the street with a look of marked confidence. “When these signs are switched on, people will know Chinatown is back.”

The ultimate symbol of Vancouver’s transition from west coast logging town to vibrant metropolis, neon was once the city’s hallmark. Tomorrow’s Vancouver – shining bright – will be as much a reaction to its past as it is a celebration of the future.

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