Found: Smithsonian Magazine
Everyone knows about the Library of Congress, but do you know that the buildings now called home for those books were not there in the time of Thomas Jefferson? In fact, it started in the old capitol of those days, but the British torched it – it was all moved to Blodget’s Hotel at Seventh and E. It had been established in 1800 with 740 volumes altogether and about $114,000 in today’s dollars. Jefferson had a personal library of about 6,500 volumes! He even sold them to the library to clear off a $20,000 debt, and had $4,000 left over! When was what we see today built? The main location was opened on November 1, 1897, by Ainsworth Rand Spofford’s final year as librarian. It was renamed the Thomas Jefferson Building in 1980. In 1901, it was the first library to have a million volumes, and there are now more than 25 million volumes, not including 170 million items of other types, including 2.6 million audio recordings. They even have the public help them digitize everything. As Jefferson said, “Educate and inform the mass of the people. Enable them to see that it is in their interest to preserve peace and order, and they will preserve them.”
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Found: National Geographic
The story starts many years before now, but Erika Blumenfeld showed a “space map” that logs qualities of stars, which she had copied from a glass plate made by the “women computers” of the late 1800s through the 1950s. The copy showed a dark blue, deeply associated with the night and romance. Over this is a spattering of gold marks, some lines, some arrows, some dots, all there for the full understanding of one thing we call light.It takes three stories at the Harvard College Observatory in Cambridge to store all 550,000 plates, which are contained in metal cabinets. These 8-by-10 Inch plates are in a photographic negative format, which started in the middle of the 19th-Century. The picture of the sky is on one side, the gold notation marks on the other. They worked hard to figure out many bits of information, that are wasted. This is all because 470,000+ plates were “cleaned” so they could be digitized and the data of the stars could be accessed. WHAT! Why they could not get information straight off the plate is not said, but this is what they did, so…. Blumenfeld went out to save them! We need to honor our history, as Harvard was not. So she, joining with the research-studio Island Press at Washington University, got all of the notations that were photographed during the scanning process. She then wiped the stars from the blue background and joined the marks and the blue together. “We basically did the inverse of what DASCH did,” she said, “They wiped the marks; I wiped the stars.” So, she made 6 of these from different marks. She saved some history that was probably was going to disappear forever. She has done her duty to the country, some may say. Many people want to conserve out means of getting energy (they are not all Conservatives though), and an owner of an 110 year old colonial house got solar panels for the back of the house. He also wants them on the front. When he applies for a permit, he gets this following letter from Washington’s Historic Preservation Review Board: “I applaud your greenness, but I just have this vision of a row of houses with solar panels on the front of them and it just – it upsets me.” Neighbors agree, and the owner says, “There were two women on my front porch snapping pictures of my house and declaring, ‘You’ll never get solar panels on this house!’” This is the place where renewable energy is: “Have it, just out of our sight, please.” This happened with coal in the beginning, too. We stick with what we are used to… literally, in this case, since wood was used. Wood grew scarce, or in Benjamin Franklin’s words, “Wood our common Fewel, which within these 100 Years might be had at every Man’s Door, must now be fetch’d near 100 Miles to some towns, and makes a very considerable Article in the Expence of Families.” (They did not have dictionaries yet, see) Wood was also ineffective, since a lot of the heat vanished up the chimney. Eventually, Americans were convinced, so coal became the main heat supplier; coal technically still is. A big fight went on first, though.
For example, in one essay, Harriet Beecher Stowe attacked coal: “Would our Revolutionary father have gone barefooted and bleeding over snows to defend air-tight stoves and cooking ranges? I trow not.” This is a bit different then fighting renewable energy, but do we not need to fight for it, as our ancestors fought against coal? Found: National Geographic, “Stonehenge Revealed”
Sonehenge is a man-made wonder, especially when I inform you that it was done in about a century on some people’s – knowledgeable people’s – clocks. This was roughly 4,500 years ago, when they had to get by without “metal tools, horsepower, or the wheel.” This process included lifting literally tons of rock, millions of tons of earth, and tons of trees (some are 17 tons alone). Who did it? It is said to have been made by “Romans, Druids, Vikings, Saxons, even King Arthur’s court magician, Merlin.” The makers, however, left little knowledge of themselves; almost none, in fact. This is not the only monument that is mysterious and this old either, there are many, and it seems they were all hurriedly built at the same time! Can you guess what they found? The reason is: a migration of people rushing in! These new findings brought this thought to mind: “A lot of the things we were taught as undergraduates in the 1990s we know are simply not true.” Stonehenge was built with bluestones, a stone that is not found anywhere near stonehenge in the landscape. Also, they had to lug all of the trees around it to their spots, I believe at least to be a half mile. Incredible! As quoted by Archaeologist Mike Parker Pearson, “Of the hundreds of stone circles in Britan, Stonehenge is the only one whose stones were brought from a great distance.” So Stonehenge, in my mind, should be one of the wonders of the world. Others do not act like that, however, and in Britain there is a mind battle about expanding a road into stonehenge, and also tunneling under the great monument, built at the seemingly end of an era. --- P.S. My blog henges on this. In Lviv, Ukraine, “a jewel of cobblestone alleys, Hapsburg-era palaces and squares, and churches dating to the Middle Ages,” as quoted in the Smithsonian, there is the Andrey Sheptytsky National Museum. This museum has been closed since the first day of the war, albeit a hard decision. They scrapped the idea of an exhibit (being closed) and did what was sensible: protect the 1800 pieces of art by removing it all from the walls. Especially since some of the art pieces are 800 year old paintings of religious figures. The large concern was the Bohorodchany Iconostasis there, regarded as the greatest example of Baroque-era religious art in Central Europe. It has been caught in Ukraine’s many conflicts, and transported many a time. Its nine-year peace has ended, it is under threat.
The Bohorodchany Iconostasis is in an art genre that is known to be dazzling, but this piece stands on its own (literally). It is an indescribable 42-by-36-foot structure to reckon with. Its story is long, too, so you may want to settle down and get comfy. The Art’s Story The Bohorodchany Iconostasis, painted by Yov Kondzelevych, basically a wall, is covered in religious scenes set in fancy wooden frames. It used to hang inside Manyava Orthodox Monastery in the hills when Ukraine was Polish Galatia. In 1972, however, Hapsburg Emperor Joseph II ordered every monastery, “sources of superstition,” to be shut down. The next known location, three years later, is the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church of the Holy Trinity in Bohorodchany, who paid the equivalent of $12 for it. In the late 19th Century, journalist Victor Tissot commented on the piece, “If such antiquity was in France, every child there would know about such a precious monument, and all educated people would contribute to its maintenance.” The piece was in the church until 1914, during WWI. A company of Austro-Hungarian troops risked their lives to save it near the front line, so “the soldiers began to dismantle the Iconostasis and pack it – to the joyful surprise of the residents, [who awakened] from sleep, began to crowd in the streets.” The piece was put on its way to Vienna that same day. After a defeat in WWI, however, it was turned over to the Polish, and it was hung in the Royal Castle located in Warsaw. Then, in 1924, Andrey Sheptytsky, a leader of Lviv’s local Greek Catholic Church, bought it for the equivalent of $4000 dollars. Fifteen years later, in 1939, the Soviet Union help the region un 1941, when the Nazis invaded. Then, in 1944, the Soviets regained control of the region, and enlarged what was called the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Churches were shut down, the Bohorodchany Iconostasis dismantled, and 49 of the 50 sections stowed away. It was reassembled in 1991, when Ukraine gained its independence, and placed in the Andrey Sheptytsky National Museum in 2013, now just to get removed again. The Artist’s Story Yov Kondzelevych, born in the town of Zhovkva in 1667, was practically raised with art. Zhovkva was the center of painting and wood carving at the time, located 20 miles north of Lviv. He was free at age 19, as he left home and entered a monastery in nearby Volhynia, where it is speculated that his Ukrainian identity began to take hold. Taras Otkovych, a historian and art restorer in Lviv, pointed out, “In those days one of the most important means of identifying yourself was through the church. He was Ukrainian Orthodox, and that separated him from the Poles and the Russians.” Not much is actually known about his life, but we do know that he started on the Bohorodchany Iconostasis in 1698, after receiving a commission from the Manyava Monastery. So, Kondzelevych gathered 20 carpenters, joiners, goldsmiths, and other artisans to work on it for seven years. It is 5 rows and 10 columns in size, and portrays many of the famous scenes of the Bible. Ruby started out in an animal shelter as a puppy. This Australian shepherd was taken into and out of three homes, and they say of her that, “She was a total knucklehead. She jumped and bit her leash. She wouldn’t sit or lie down. She just never stopped moving.” The speaker, dog trainer Patricia Inman, still intervened when people suggested putting Ruby to eternal sleep. Then, police Corporal Daniel O’Neil chose to try her out as a search-and-rescue dog.
Later in time, in October 2017, Ruby found a boy in a ravine, his condition grave. He was saved, however, and after they got the boy to safety, they went to the boy’s home, where they met the mother: Patricia Inman. Saving Ruby had saved her son. This story is quite a heartfelt one, especially that Inman saved her son by saving Ruby. Also in how O’Neil decided to try to make Ruby a search-and-rescue dog. This story, to me, seems almost like a fictitious tale. Two sisters, Christine and Sara Zekry, have been painting ceiling murals in Coptic Churches. The North African Copts are from what we call Egypt and Sudan, and they have many traditions. This mural painting is one of them, showing bible stories, what they believe Christ looked like, and more. They also believe that not only Christ gives them salvation, but that good works aid their getting it. Sara says that – in doing this – that, “Coptic art taught me how to understand the stories in [the Bible], conclude a meaning from them, and understand what each symbol refers to. It made me deepen my knowledge further in the book.” They have been traveling around doing this, taking only three or four breaks in an eight to twelve hour period of painting a mural.
This is very interesting, that they would do this. Quitting a job to do this, as Sara did, surprises me greatly, but it is very nice to want to spread the word in such an act as this. In Turkmenistan, a crater has been burning for about 40 years. It is filled with natural gas, which they had lit after a gas drilling collapse. They had thought that it would burn out in several weeks, but no, they were wrong. The president has told his government to put it out in some way. It attracts tourists, though, so even if it is 160 miles away from the capital city Ashgabat, would that not bring in money? He does not seem to care about it, anyway.
I think that that was a good idea to set it afire – it seems to me to be a great way to bring in income and such. He says it causes damage to the environment, but if you put it out, it will still do the same, because natural gas will be let loose! The United States has an amendment about everyone is allowed to say what they think – everyone has free speech. In Litchfield, Connecticut, the town Warden Gayle Carr has taken down some ribbons from the trees, making everyone get up-in-arms: these five ribbons stood for each of the five military branches. To many, this is something said against the military. The town officials do not care about this meaning, however, because if they allow that, they say, they allow anything – including discrimination – to be placed out in the square. To get away with it now is upsetting, saying they tried to get rid of them in 2009 and 2012, and neither succeeded – what happened is that they got onto national news. If they can do this now, people say, then what happens to free speech?
I find this serious, to go against an amendment set into our government 246 years ago. How is it wrong to show patriotism in the city square, when you are still allowed to put such things in your yard? Transplants are needed for many people, but there are less donors than needers. So, for the first time, a person has been given a pig’s heart. Xenotransplantation, when animal parts are transplanted into humans, has been tested and tried for decades – but to no avail, because they were quickly rejected. This transplant worked, however, because it has been gene-edited: four genes that caused the rejection were kicked out, and six human genes went in. This had been done to baboons by the surgeon, so he was to be trusted. Taking 7 hours, it worked, and David Bennett, the one who gained the heart, is still around. The hospital still had to defend this action, however, because he had a criminal background many years before. The Medical Center had said to this that every patient must be taken care of, and they do not play “judge and jury.”
This is very interesting, that genes can be kicked out and put into things without destroying the thing that they are editing – in this case, the pig’s heart. That this is the first time is quite risky, too, but if Mr. Bennett agreed, I guess it makes since? Just, why would people think about transplanting a pig heart? |
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