text:
Culture and the Abyss
No matter what the range and virtues of English literature, it is not a literature notable for tragedy. Shakespeare and a few others aside, even when we come to the "darker" literature in English—not tragedy precisely, but various misanthropic views, records of personal suffering, testaments of pessimism, or of frenetic ecstasy—more often than not the writer turns out to be not so much "English" as Gaelic. The virtues of English civilization are manifold, but there seems in it some essential failure to appreciate that side or depth of life Nietzsche meant by "Dionysian"—beneath the social, beneath human individuation, the threatened or promised collapse of man-made civilization and the absorption of man into a kind of ego-less insignificance both terrifying and ecstatic: "the tremendous terror which seizes man when he is suddenly dumbfounded by the cognitive form of phenomena because the principle of sufficient reason, in some one of its manifestations, seems to suffer an exception," and the "blissful ecstasy that wells from the innermost depths of man, indeed of nature, at this collapse of the principium individuationis."
"Failure to appreciate" is perhaps the wrong phrase. Nietzsche often writes as a kind of votary of the Dionysian, and I suggest to no one that he share the enthusiasm. Failure sufficiently to recognize is closer to what I mean—a clear and steady imagining of a realm of existence prior to and beneath human culture and still a potentiality because we have been individuated from nature only recently as historical time goes. Call it, as many have, the "abyss": the moral chaos before the conclusion of Aeschylus's Oresteia; the irrational fate that Oedipus cannot escape; the witches' brew of Macbeth; the cold grayness of the world of Hamlet, ready at any time to blossom hotly into a chancre. Human success, happiness, ease, association, are fragile because human-made; the abyss is wider and deeper and bides its time.
But if that ego-less space motivates the tragic form to such an extent that there is no "tragic" without the recognition of it, tragedy in turn is really a celebration of human culture, as if to say: "Human artifice may be fragile, at worst a stop-gap, but it is what we have to differentiate us from all that out there." "Reason not the need," says Lear to Goneril and Regan, who question his requiring the superfluous accoutrements of state.
Our basest beggars
Are in the poorest thing superfluous.
Allow not nature more than nature needs,
Man's life is cheap as beast's.
After Shakespeare, Thomas Hobbes comes close to imagining the abyss, with his famous characterization in Leviathan of life in a state of nature: "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." The state of nature we are led to observe by John Locke, on the other hand, is not fundamentally different from a state of law, and in this Locke seems to me a more typically English thinker; while it is true for him that in a state of nature men's "lives, liberties, and estates, which I call by the general name 'property,'" are in jeopardy, a man still has a right to his property through the law of nature. Consequently, the social contract simply insures what nature has given him. In Hobbes, however, the pre-political state of nature is a much more terrifying affair, fundamentally different from the state of law:
The notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice, have there no place. Where there is no common power, there is no law; where no law, no injustice. Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues. Justice and injustice are none of the faculties neither of the body nor mind. . . . They are qualities that relate to men in society, not in solitude. It is consequent also to the same condition that there be no property, no dominion, no mine and thine distinct; but only that to be every man's that he can get, and for so long as he can keep it. And thus much for the ill condition which man by mere nature is actually placed in. . . .
I am not equating Hobbes's nasty brutishness with Nietzsche's Dionysian, but simply suggesting them both as images of the abyss below culture and civilization—the kind of image that is rare in English letters. Aside from occasional Gothic novels suiting a fashion, wonderful fantasies passed off as opium dreams, prophetic books of genius, depictions of psychological abortion amid general good health—none claiming a tragic vision—the darkness that one is usually invited to view by English literature is that of the malfunctioning of a given social order. Plenty of critics have observed that English literature is primarily a middle-class literature, especially since the 19th century—that is, a literature directed at an upwardly-mobile class of readers, a literature of manners, serving alternately as a kind of collective courtesy book and as a critique of the existing social ways. This leaves room for a very narrow view of tragedy as social or political failure. It is not Sophoclean; not Shakespearean.
Are we in contact here with some national characteristic? English philosophy tends to fluctuate between empiricism and idealism. In both, man's relation to the world, nature, the out-there, is fixed and assured, inspiring confidence; in both a profound pragmatism reigns. For the empiricist, nature serves man by its solidity; for the idealist, nature "might as well" be there, for our actions inevitably assume it. English culture is never in danger of being overwhelmed. Programs fail, empires disappear, the common experience of the race is undergone, but English culture always appears the equal of nature. For it, the abyss is at best a neurotic fantasy—the obsession of weird Germans seeking Teutonic mysteries in some dark forest, the stock imagery of French poets hyped-up on drugs and symboliste language, the frenetic attempt of American novelists to find a usable past in a dead puritanism in order to have a past, the self-indulgence of Russian misanthropes, wallowing in unreason and imagining a tortured incestuous embrace with Mother Russia under a bloody icon.
English commonsense has provided the Englishman with more physical, emotional, and social comfort than any other European, and has provided him and hundreds of expatriate continentals with an extraordinary degree of liberty. In the 19th century Walter Bagehot found the French, unlike his English, "not dull enough to be free." "Why are we free and they slaves? We praetors and they barbers? Why do stupid people always win?" Bagehot's answer: "What we opprobriously call stupidity, though not an enlivening quality in common society, is Nature's favorite resource for preserving steadiness of conduct and consistency of opinion"—which is both an intelligent celebration of dullness and its rewards and, typically, an offhand assumption that culture is the mirror of nature rather than something which keeps us from falling into it. There is something admirable about this commonsensicalness, what Orwell called the "humbug and decency [and] subtle net of compromises." But I suggest again, realizing the relative smallness of my concern, that such a milieu does not nourish great tragic literature—a point of interest to a literary critic; and I wonder, with little hope of a clear answer, if it doesn't effect some essential human cost.
Surely one of the most tragic books of this century is Freud's Civilization and Its Discontents. First, it is a heroic book—dogged ("But if we want to know . . . we must clearly attack another problem") and argumentative in spite of being tentative and nervous. More important, it evinces a clear and steady imagining of the abyss and a willingness to observe both nature and civilization without sentimentality.
The existence of this inclination to aggression which we can detect in ourselves and justly assume to be present in others, is the factor which disturbs our relations with our neighbor and which forces civilization into such a high expenditure. In consequence of this primary mutual hostility of human beings, civilized society is perpetually threatened with disintegration. The interest of work in common will not hold it together; instinctual passions are stronger than reasonable interests. Civilization has to use its utmost efforts in order to set limits to man's aggressive instincts and to hold the manifestation of them in check by psychical reaction-formations. Hence, therefore, the use of methods intended to incite people into identifications and aim-inhibited relationships of love, hence the restriction upon sexual life, and hence too the ideal's commandment to love one's neighbor as oneself—a commandment which is really justified by the fact that nothing else runs so strongly counter to the original nature of man.
The last clause especially contains an irony like nothing I know in English letters.
But I assume the general outline of Freud's argument in this book is familiar. I would like to look for a moment at the first chapter, which was originally published separately. It is a curious essay. Freud describes his correspondence with a friend—later identified as Romain Rolland—in which the friend reported having experienced a kind of "oceanic feeling," "a feeling as of something limitless, unbounded," which he suggested as the source of religious sentiment. Freud doubts this, in detailed fashion; and as for the "oceanic feeling," he writes that he cannot discover it in himself. Something related, perhaps. For while ordinarily "there is nothing of which we are more certain than the feeling of our self, of our own ego," there are states in which the external boundaries of the ego seem to disappear and we are somehow a part of something larger. The possible experience of being in love, for instance, when "the boundary between the ego and the object threatens to melt away"; or the sure experience of the infant, who does not "distinguish his ego from the external world as the source of the sensation flowing in upon him." Later in life the individual marks out the space of his ego (in ways familiar to Freud's readers) but even then there remains something of the earlier state.
Our present ego-feeling is . . . only a shrunken residue of a much more inclusive—indeed, an all-embracing—feeling which corresponded to a more intimate bond between the ego and the world about it. If we may assume that there are many people in whose mental life this primary ego-feeling has persisted to a greater or lesser degree, it would exist in them side by side with the narrower and more sharply demarcated ego-feeling of maturity, like a kind of counterpart to it.
A kind of oceanic feeling.
Now, this essay in Civilization and Its Discontents does not exhibit the profound (and, paradoxically, inspiring) pessimism of the rest of the book. But it uses the same method (for want of a better word). As if to say: I do not find precisely what I am looking for; I find something very much like it; I do not like what I find; here it is. What Freud finds, the "here it is," is that civilization is as fragile as it is necessary, it is threatened by the very same moral chaos and undifferentiated rapacity out of which it arose; and that the individual ego is equally fragile, its boundaries never really certain, counterpart even yet with a more primal feeling. More important—in some way both civilization and ego are denials, are denatured nature. Civilization is the repression of instinct, a trade of happiness for longevity. Ego is a "shrunken residue" of a more inclusive feeling. Neither man nor his culture is "natural."
Freud's book is so rich and complex that it is easy to mistake. Some "followers" have said, "Consequently, let us tighten the restrictions on man"; others, "Consequently, to hell with civilization." Both miss the point. The suggestion that ego and civilization are denatured nature, so to speak, that they are against the original nature of man, does not mean that they are artificial in any effete sense. The very fact that they are sustained in a tension against nature means that they are profoundly related to it in a kind of longing and hostile embrace. This is no deracinated, epicene view of man and culture; civilization is not what we mean in the bad sense of the word "cultivation," has nothing to do with teacups, delightful conversational trivia, pale bookishness. Freud's view of civilization is a thoroughly tragic one; it grows out of a clear and steady imagining. Another way to put it is that for him civilization is always in danger of being overwhelmed.
Again, it is precisely this view that I do not find in English culture as a rule. Overwhelmed? No; civilization is the equal of nature, as it is its assumed reflection. If, as Kenneth Burke has remarked, "men build their cultures by huddling together, nervously loquacious, at the edge of an abyss," then it seems to me that the structure of English culture was completed long ago and most energy since has gone into elaborating on it, with only a very occasional glance beneath. It is there now, as something like an institution, animated not by any particular felt necessity. Consequently, while English commonsensicalness is nothing if not admirable, there is something worn and yet adolescent about English civilization.
Before I ever went to England I had been told I would find the landscape a singular sight. It does not loom over one as in the United States; it is human-sized, as if created intentionally for man to feel at home; the rivers are quintessentially "bridgeable," the mountains within reasoned scope; the fields do not reach into the distance but rather are interrupted and contained within one's vision by something of moderate height, a hill, a hedge. Nature on a human scale, in other words.
But my impressions were more extreme than that—English nature seemed to me not so much on a human scale as somehow smaller than human. The landscape was not merely contained within reasonable limits, but altogether lacked the power to overwhelm; one was on a level footing with it. There is a story by Tolkien, called "Leaf by Niggle," about a landscape painter who has a journey to take, a kind of fantastic death, and who discovers that the journey is into a landscape he has already painted and indeed, in the logic of this fantasy, is the painting itself—"a mountain-peak and a spray of leaves." An accidental metaphor but to the purpose—a very small landscape indeed.
These impressions returned to me in Spain three Augusts ago, partially out of sheer contrast with the Spanish landscape (always startling and seldom less than just short of oppressive). But they returned in a way and for a reason which intensified them and created an illusion, at least, of cultural significance—a chain of associations and observations. There seemed something consistent between the English landscape and the relative absence of a vision of the abyss in English letters, as if English literary culture were an internalization of place—and, given the modes and gestures of English people abroad, as if the internalization of the culture itself ill-suited one to appreciate, or even to notice, beyond the flicker of an eye, the surroundings abroad.
Accident had it that I was fairly well surrounded by English people in Spain; which was at first a comfort before it became an unexpected amusement which yielded finally to a kind of unnerving impatience. I have made my living as a kind of professional Anglophile, professing things English in university English departments, and to a degree internalizing that culture as a standard of sanity and perceptiveness. So I was not prepared for my mild disappointment with the legitimate inheritors of English culture, not prepared for my ironic feelings about that cliché so long accepted as admirable: the whiskey neat in Malaya, the high tea in Africa. But there was something about the Englishmen I met that suggested a lack of adventure, as if they were simply making their vacation an extension of the familiar, carrying the familiar with them in their baggage. Not a defensive or assertive behavior—a screwing-oneself-up—but one which suggested that nothing was in question for them: neither their identity, their place in the world, nor the meaning of the place they happened to be at the moment. I may be exaggerating, but the English capacity to be unmarked by surroundings, as if all surroundings were somehow smaller than the occupant, depressed me when it didn't amuse me. To put it at its least worthy and most self-indulgent, I confess to annoyance that the English were not overwhelmed by a place that moved me so deeply. And if I was not prepared for these thoughts about the English, neither was I for my response to the place.
I wish to be clear that what moved me about Spain was not the popular image, La Leyenda Negra: the land of blood-soaked earth, Inquisition, oppressive priestly black, repressed desire and suppressed ambition, cold arrogance and hot anger, the Escorial, the Alcázar, interminable fratricide, death and Christ the King in an embrace of mutual endorsement. (Bernanos reports the satisfaction of a Nationalist bishop with the opportunities for confession afforded to Loyalist prisoners: "Only 10 per cent of these dear children refused the last sacraments before being dispatched by our good officers." A Basque priest recalls the execution of a Loyalist by Carlists: arms extended as if in crucifixion, he was commanded to cry, "Viva Cristo el Rey!" as his limbs were amputated.) It was not that rampant and murderous sentimentality that moved me; I am a Southerner and I've heard enough paeans to the dark and bloody ground and had enough literary necrophilia to last a lifetime.
Rather, there was a kind of formality and elegance of speech and movement—absolutely classless—which impressed me much more deeply than English formalism; a range of alternating rhythms and gestures, swift and then slow-moving, brooding, subtle, and graceful, a gesture of the soul rather than mere external manners—as if there were something necessary about it. And the prevalent formality of the Spaniards—altered in degrees by personal style, to be sure, receding into the background of gesture now but reappearing with the force of a ritual at unexpected moments—in its turn seemed somehow consistent with the size and overwhelmingness of the Spanish surroundings.
I take it that the culture of a nation reveals itself in the commonality of ready assumptions, tones, physical and mental inflections, that it is nothing but bibliophilic oddity if it reflects only the heated thoughts of poets or ambitious philosophical systems. Culture—or its formalized distillation into gesture, movement, and speech—is not exactly the mirror of nature, as Bagehot might have assumed it to be, but it can be something close to that: a kind of arrogant imitation of the landscape which is at the same time a form of homage to it. The Spaniards' dark formality and sullen grace suggested that they knew something. I can only guess, but I had the impression within a few days that what they knew was connected intimately with the physical environment of their country.
The particular province doesn't matter; it includes all of Spain: plains, tablelands, mountains, sea. One can easily enter the mountains from the village I lived in; they look down upon you and roll off into the distance. Or one can drive thirty miles or so into the flat-lands and turn to look at the mountains in the distance on a level with one's eyes. As one drives back, approaching the mountains gradually, they are bluish gray in contrast to the prevailing light brown, burnt yellow, of the flatlands. That burnt color is as much a matter of heat and dryness of air as it is literal hue, but it tends to obliterate the considerable greenery—the almond trees, for instance—which fixes itself in your vision only when you focus on it consciously and exclusively.
I gradually left the flatlands behind and drove into the mountains, exiting finally from a serpentine road over the hump of the range onto the equally serpentine coastal range. As you travel this road, the range rises above you and the cliffs step down below you to the sea. Where a cliff does not plunge directly into the sea, it plunges to the shoulders of another, and that to another until the sea is reached. Only rarely are the peaks of the range not visible—a thousand feet, I suppose, above. A sheer face of rock, pock-marked, resting on a green bulge of mountain-side which farther down rests in turn on a series of rock-walled terraces, shaped there, I was told, by the Moors. There are long stretches of road with no terraces visible, and then they appear again, sometimes on either side or inside of an occasional village, sometimes in the middle of nowhere. Always on this road you are held, it seems, on doubtfully secure space: riding the hip of the range which is itself merely leaning inland from the sea.
My destination was a promontory to the north which I'd been told I should see. The approach to the peninsula is through a port which has become a vacation land—the result of sitting approximate to a natural beach five or six miles long. Mid-afternoon, I was tired from the drive, didn't want to cope with accommodations late at night; so I selected the hotel nearest my parking-space, registered, and deposited my traveling possessions in the room—a very few clothes, the Freud I was reading sporadically for no particular purpose, and a textbook on tragedy I was dutifully lugging about in intended preparation for a course I was to teach in the fall. Then I went out to the street to recuperate with coffee before driving out on the peninsula. I was startled by the waiter's greeting—in English. English had not been a useful language where I had been, but here it was; most of the tourists here were English.
The peninsula is about thirteen kilometers long and no more than three at its widest point, so that it's often the case that you're looking at the northern stretch of sea one moment, and after turning the next bend, looking at the southern stretch. But first one has to leave the puerto and drive toward what appears an impassable mountain which rises sheerly and without subtlety from a vast, flat field. Then, after zigzagging back and forth up the face of the mountain, one descends a gradually easing decline, increasingly wooded, into a valley some four or five kilometers long and so heavily wooded that there is no evidence at all to the eye of being among mountains. The road rolls through this valley, the forest aggressively green to either side.
After a while—it did not occur to me to time the journey—I was out of the forest. Around one curve, with the barest of road-shoulder protection—a few small boulders, a decaying fence—would appear the sea, seemingly directly some few hundred feet below; around another curve, a deep, blanched valley spotted with boulders and lined with useless stone walls and pinching inland behind me; around another, totally unprepared for, some two hundred feet below the level of the road with no visible traverse to it, an absolutely flat hilltop which reached out toward the sea, becoming at its farthest extremity a ledge of rock and plunging as a cliff to the water.
The very end of the peninsula is an enormous cylinder of rock rising some five or six hundred feet out of the sea, perhaps two hundred in diameter at the top, a lighthouse dead center; and claimed by half-a-dozen aging mountain sheep, obese, their wool browning, with bells about their necks.
I got out and walked about, thoughts aimless, half listening to the silence interrupted by bells until the bells faded; the sheep, follow-the-leader, walked slowly down beside the road to the foot of the mountain until they looked like brown shrubbery moving and resting. It was now getting toward twilight—the sun descended from view while I was there—but there was no suggestion of fading of light. The visible air was simply of a different quality about the area—less the luminous, burning haze—and allowed the scene a fantastically etched clarity: rocks and sturdy shrubs and the silence like an absence of movement.
This was the sort of place that could be described in travel brochures as "beautiful, wild nature in the raw"; I had unthinkingly assumed something like that. And it was raw and beautiful; but beautiful in a harsh and brutal way almost indistinguishable from ugly—all angularity and absence of soft line, emphatic, chiseled, stark. I found myself admiring the place for its aesthetic brutality as fixedly as one would admire uncompromised beauty, and recognizing a surprising quality in the surroundings which was far from wild, and seemed instead . . . formal: the brownness, the whiteness, the solidity, the clarity, the quiet; a whole concert of shape, color, and quality seeming to contain something.
I do not remember when I first gazed with attention at the sea, which from a six-hundred-foot high water's edge looked more expansive than I had ever seen it. So I cannot tell if it was that belittling expanse or the locked-in rock immobility which first made me begin to feel so lonely. In any case, I did feel a loneliness that was profound, seemed to resonate, and was of a quality unrelated to mere isolation. On the seaward side of the rock was a low stone wall for the protection of visitors. I turned and walked to it, settled my palms upon its top, and looked to the sea for some time, trying to see where the knife-point white of waves became gentle undulations and finally glazed surface farther out. After a few minutes I became aware with a start that although I was looking straight ahead, the horizon was not where it was supposed to be—it came into view only when I raised my eyes. The horizon was above the level of where I stood, and straight ahead was the sea tilted up and away. I realized then of course that I was simply not standing straight, that I had been leaning outward without being aware. But I was chilled: the explanation seemed inadequate. I felt in some way I had been attracted or pressed outward.
I know perfectly well that it is possible to have an unrealized suicidal compulsion lacking specific motivation, an experience of frightened attraction to something expansive and inclusive and undifferentiated—an experience which is real and inevitable, given the right moment. It should not be confused with that conscious flirtation with death that some people convert into a badge of moral superiority and insight, claiming for themselves a greater profundity than those of us who merely wish to live. I am not at all certain that the experience I am describing is a good one to have.
Upright now, I looked in an angle over the edge of the rock, but the closest water I could see must have been a hundred yards from shore; the stone wall kept me from standing at the edge. I moved down several yards to where the wall was closer to the edge, but still I could not see the water line below. So I leaned over intentionally this time, then crawled over, and finally kneeled at the very edge of the rock and peered down to see the water. I had to look down and slightly back and under before I could see clearly where sea met rock: the rock itself was leaning appreciatively toward the sea. So I hadn't been standing straight up before, but on and somehow with the rock, my posture conforming to the shape of things.
I climbed back to the other side of the stone wall and stood looking inland, scanning the giant rock, and feeling a weighted pressure in the air about me. With no sun visible to seize my attention, all things seemed intent upon this rock leaning out toward the sea which was battering away just under it. The mountain faced this point; the range behind peered over the closest mountain toward this point; the cartographic lines of the peninsula, as I recalled my journey here, formed a slender, imperfect triangle converging on this place.
All things focused on this rock and the sea. The sea was silently lashing away at the rock as it had been doing forever. It was expansive, reaching as far as I could see and as wide; and the lines of vision, center, left, and right, seemed to correspond to some immense funnel ushering all that sea to this point. There was something quiet and intentional about it. Odds were in its favor: given the mute method and fierceness, it was sure to topple the rock someday. And no secret to the rock cylinder. But until then, it would stand its ground and absorb the violence—locked anyway in this elemental dance. And both in recognition of what must inevitably happen, and in defiance of it, the rock leaned out over and toward the sea: a strong, quiet, formal gesture.
I was seized with a feeling so heavy it was suffocating and seemed to reach down into my body—my muscles were aching, I realized; a feeling that I did not belong here and that warred with my desire to remain. I walked to my car, and drove away, knowing, when I was able to sort out wishes, that what I needed most at this moment was a chance to ease into the privacy of a comfortable chair in a public place and reflect, preferably surrounded by the half-heard conversation of confident English voices.


text:
Andrew Scheil
Associate Professor
Ph.D University of Toronto, 1996
110K Lind Hall
Curriculum Vitae
Department Affiliations
English; Medieval Studies
Areas of Expertise
Old English language and literature; literatures and cultures of late antiquity and the early Middle Ages; medieval Latin literature; Middle English literature; literary theory; traditions of exegesis, historiography and geography in the Middle Ages; science-fiction, fantasy, and horror literature
Selected Publications
The Footsteps of Israel: Understanding Jews in Anglo-Saxon England. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004.
"The Historiographic Dimensions of Beowulf." Journal of English and Germanic Philology. (forthcoming).
"Babylon and Anglo-Saxon England." Studies in the Literary Imagination. Ed. Mary Ramsey. 36.1 (2003). Special topic issue: Imagined Realities: Meaning and Textuality in the Middle Ages."Anti-Judaism in Aelfric's Lives of Saints." Anglo-Saxon England. 28 (1999).
"Bodies and Boundaries in the Old English Life of St. Mary of Egypt." Neophilologus. 84 (January 2000).
"Somatic Ambiguity and Masculine Desire in the Old English Life of Euphrosyne." Exemplaria: A Journal of Theory and Medieval Studies. 11.2 (Fall 1999).
"John Keats, 'To Autumn' and Spenser's Despair." The Explicator. 58.1 (Fall 1999).
Reviews for Modern Language Review, The Medieval Review, Bulletin of the Royal Institute for Interfaith Studies (Amman, Jordan), and Journal of Medieval Latin.
Graduate Courses
Old English I
Old English II
Undergraduate Courses
Textual Analysis
Monsters, Marvels and the Uncanny in the Western Tradition (honors)
Survey of Medieval English Literature
Old English I
Old English II

subset: commoncrawl


text:
I'm all for the Arboretum side. Only have one cache from back there anyways. Bringing along juleed and cjenogan for the morning fun!
Revise Memorial Mob?
Posted 29 March 2014 - 01:37 AM
Posted 29 March 2014 - 04:13 PM
As I recall it was a pretty tough hide with lots of pine straw covering the cache.
Posted 11 April 2014 - 11:42 AM
There's a story behind that cache -- ask me about it sometime. I archived it because it got bulldozed. Log Dawgs later found the somewhat damaged ammo can and is holding it for me. Maybe I can replace it near GZ and get it un-archived (if there is no conflict with another cache).
I don't remember any recurring events at Memorial Park.
There was a couple of one-off events a long time ago.
There was a caching group mashup that called themselves the Memorial Mob, for a 1 day caching run of the park.
I believe they hid a cache that had "Memorial Mob" somewhere in the name.
When I get home and have access to my GSAK database, then I can further research.
GCZWY9 The Memorial Park Mob Memorial Cache
It's archived now...
The Memorial Park Mob was the name we used to sign the log during a one-day mashup. That was it.
That was a really fun day! I'm planning a geocaching hike off of Picnic Loop with Bayou City Outdoors for Good Friday. We'll probably start around 10:00.
Posted 11 April 2014 - 12:19 PM
Don't skip Memorial Loop #2 (Multi) It's only two stages http://coord.info/GC4KJ4N, but a lot of fun!
(Yes, yes, tooting my own horn....)
"Do or do not, there is no try." -Yoda
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text:
Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Religion
Edited by Chad Meister, Paul Copan
Routledge – 2010
Routledge – 2010
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text:
CSS Chattahoochee: Hardluck Gunboat
The location of Columbus, on the fall line and head of navigation for the lengthy Chattahoochee-Apalachicola river system, which flows into the Gulf of Mexico, made the city strategically important in the Civil War. Mills for processing raw cotton and manufacturing textiles and the steamship trade for transportation made Columbus one of the most valuable industrial centers in the Confederacy. With the Federal navy blockading the Gulf and threatening control of the river and an attack on the city, the Confederacy took measures to secure Columbus.
In the fall of 1861 David S. Johnston received a $47,500 contract from the Confederate Navy to construct a gunboat at Saffold Landing, 175 miles south of Columbus. The remote location meant that machinery, artillery, and metal fittings had to be shipped down from Columbus, but the area had bountiful timber and steam sawmills for constructing the ship's hull.
The gunboat, to be named Chattahoochee, was to be 130 feet long, 30 feet in the beam, and draw 10 feet of water. Engines would turn twin screws. Each broadside had two 32-pounder 6.4 inch smoothbore pieces, with a nine inch Dahlgren rifle mounted at the bow on a pivot. The Chattahoochee was to be completed in 120 days.
Unfortunately, the ship drew too much water to clear the bar into the Gulf and made journeys both upstream and downstream hazardous. Also, the river was obstructed by timber cribs, with rafts sunk on top, and a large chain was strung to catch logs and other debris to build up an impenetrable barrier. Despite these factors, the gunboat had removable masts for open sea sailing-they could be lowered for a blockade runner silhouette. Unfortunately, the Chattahoochee was never going to sea.
Construction was slow and conditions often miserable for the workforce. During the winter the hull was inundated several times by flooding, and a 50,000 ton coal supply was left coated with mud. Workers and sailors were frequently sick with fever; predictably, morale was low. At one point the crew was described as "a ragged and worthless set of men."
The Confederate Navy eventually took control of the project and ended its contracts with Johnston. The gunboat was finally commissioned on January 1, 1863, after 15 months of construction.
The Chattahoochee was immediately ordered downstream to augment the obstructions, but the engines failed because of boiler problems. Under tow, the ship ran aground, springing leaks and destroying the rudder. Pumps kept the gunboat afloat while timber was shipped downriver for the construction of a makeshift dry dock and repairs were effected.
On April 7 the Chattahoochee reached the obstructions at Chattahoochee, Florida. The 11-man artillery crews drilled until they were proficient, but were never called upon to fight their guns.
On May 26 a party of Federal Navy raiders captured a cotton steamer downstream and the Chattahoochee readied to assist. On the following morning a steam gauge malfunctioned, leaving officers to argue over the amount of water in a heated boiler. When additional water was directed into the boiler, it exploded. Sixteen sailors were immediately scalded to death, another died later, and six men were injured. Fearing that the magazine, located mere feet from the boiler, would also explode, panicked sailors jumped overboard; one report states that three men drowned. To avoid destruction should the magazine ignite, the ship was flooded and sank.
The Chattahoochee was raised and towed to Columbus for repairs. En route, it grounded below the city and broke a propeller. Reconstruction of the gunboat lagged while boilers were procured.
As Union troopers stormed the Chattahoochee River bridges into Columbus on April 16, 1865, the crew of the Chattahoochee doused her with 10 barrels of kerosene, set slow matches, and made their escape. The ship, aflame from stem to stern, floated 12 miles downriver, grounding at Race Pass, and sank. A century later parts of the Chattahoochee were raised and brought to Columbus, where they are displayed at the National Civil War Naval Museum at Port Columbus. A visit to the museum is strongly encouraged.
The 17 Confederate dead are buried beneath a granite monument, featuring an engraving of the ship, in Chattahoochee, Florida, just off U.S. 90 at the Florida State Hospital.
For further information on the Chattahoochee and Confederate naval operations at Columbus and along the Chattahoochee-Apalachicola, read Navy Gray by Maxine Turner.
Jim Miles is the author of nine books about the Civil War and two Weird Georgia books. See Jim's books.
Tagged with: Civil War in Georgia
Dorothy Clark says:
I have found a drawn picture of this ship. It has a signature. It is Holcombe. If interested i can send pics. I tried http://portcolumbus.org/ but it wouldn't go. Thank You. Dorothy


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A quick daily look at what's happening around Steelers Nation. And consider this your open thread for discussing the days events and, well, anything else that comes to mind about the Black and Gold.
– One more recap from Saturday. [One For The Other Thumb]
– The latest Podcast from Steel Curtain Radio [Steel Curtain Radio]
– Aaron Smith is going to practice this week. [Post-Gazette]
– And for your random YouTube of the day: This is pretty cool: James Harrison's Super Bowl XLIII interception return as seen from the stands…


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Twice Baked Potato Skins
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Twice Baked Potato Skins
Twice baked potato skins make a cheesy crispy appetizer that can be adapted to any taste. Feel free to add any vegetable such as broccoli, mushrooms or peppers and use any cheese you like. This is fun to eat and will please almost any eater.
- Prep Time : 15 min
- Cook Time : 45 min
- Ready Time : 1 hour
- 8 medium sized red potatoes
- 1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
- 1 head of broccoli chopped into small florets
- 4 scallions finely chopped
- ¾ cup sour cream
1 Bake the potato at 375 for thirty minutes until fork tender and slice it in half.
2 Spoon out most of potatoes (reserve for mashed potatoes). Fill each half of the potato with broccoli, cheddar cheese and
3 Bake in the oven at 375 for fifteen minutes. Top with a spoonful of sour cream.
As seen in the Joy of Kosher with Jamie Geller Magazine (Bitayavon Winter 2011) – Subscribe Now
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text: Please be advised that Champaign County, Ohio has contracted with and shall use GovDeals, Inc., an internet auction website, as one means of disposal of county personal property that is unneeded, obsolete, or unfit-for-use. Bidding for available items shall be open for no less than ten days, including Saturdays, Sundays, and legal holidays. Buyer may be responsible for administrative fees, special fees or sales tax if applicable. GovDeals, Inc. can be accessed by clicking the link above.


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Member since Sep 2012
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work =S
Lazy people!
My gilrfiend wants to get married!
box training!
How to help my city
my family
andres openheimer
international news
in my own sucessful business
interesting international news.. what's better than that?
Then we should tell Howard Schultz to pay more to the starbucks employees, instead of spending the money on training …


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Charity event for fallen BMX rider
By David Barron | November 17, 2012
Photo By Smiley N. Pool/.
Kyle Bennett died last month in a traffic accident.
A benefit for the family of Kyle Bennett, the 2008 Olympian from Conroe in BMX cycling who was killed in an auto accident last month, will be held from noon to 9 p.m. Saturday at Papa's Ice House, 314 Pruitt Rd., in Spring.
Bennett is survived by a daughter, his mother, his fiancée and his grandfather, who will receive proceeds from food and drink purchases, a silent auction and voluntary donations during the event, according to organizers.
Bennett was a three-time world champion and part of the first group of cyclists to compete in BMX at the Beijing Games.


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An ABC department store saleswoman eyed a customer skeptically as she sifted greedily through a row of sale racks touting 60 percent off $500 jackets. She walked over and whispered, her mouth restraining a smirk: "You should go to Burj Hammoud, it would be much cheaper there."
Beirut's pronounced economic disparities ensure a range of shopping, from the gut-wrenching prices at luxury stores in Beirut Souks to the mass-produced tacky duds ever for sale in Burj Hammoud and Furn al-Shubbak.
The savviest shopper, the experts say, will keep both options in their style arsenal.
The wardrobe of a smart, classy shopper combines high-quality staple items that will withstand wear and tear and the coming and going of trends with inexpensive jewelry and basics.
"It's not a question of money, if you look at the people who can afford anything, they are still shopping at Topshop and H&M," said Nadine Zeni, a Beirut-based fashion designer.
Zeni, who leads a readywear line and made-to-order atelier with her namesake, says there are a handful of absolute staples that should come from the higher-end, higher-quality shops.
A dark, tailored jacket was first on Zeni's list. A blazer or lightweight jacket, coupled with anything from shorts to a cocktail dress, moves seamlessly from day to night.
A fitted jacket with subtle detail to suit its wearer – maybe with shoulder pads, or Zeni's spring-summer rendition with gold studs – gives any outfit a higher level of sophistication, she said.
"And it's timeless, so it's a good investment," she said.
Timelessness is key, said Zeni and Lebanese-American stylist Ayah Ajam, who works between Beirut and Los Angeles.
The pair agreed that high-end, quality leather bags are non-negotiable staples because they're used daily and age very well.
Zeni prescribes to the regimen of one designer bag splurge per year. Zeni herself offers snakeskin and python-skin bags in every dye from natural colors to hot pink.
She warned not to fall victim to the "fad bag," the high-end design that everyone has to have and other brands knock off.
A recent example is the canvas Longchamp tote.
The design's intense popularity one season will look strikingly outdated as soon as the trend fades, rendering the expensive bag a bit of a waste.
"That same designer will have many timeless designs, but stay away from that specific design," Zeni said.
Other items worth the investment include fabrics that would clearly look and feel fake if bought cheaply, for instance a leather jacket or cashmere sweater.
To the list, Ajam added a designer watch and diamond studs: more staples that bring a level of sophistication to any jeans-and-T-shirt combination.
Expensive intimates are also important, Ajam said. Luxury underwear has an empowering effect, as its wearer knows she's dressed to the nines from the first layer to the last.
At the other end of the spectrum, the experts recommended sticking to the inexpensiveshops with great deals for items like jewelry, tops and denim.
"Anything that's casual, like denims, they are nicer if you buy from the high street because they are hip," Zeni said.
Ubiquitous brands like Vera Moda, Zara and H&M offer quality basic denims – a denim jacket is Ajam's style du jour, she said – without the designer prices.
The two agreed that these days, readywear shops offer on-point designer imitations and often their graphic T-shirts and tops are cheap and trendy.
Such shops often offer more styles of basic shirts and tops, as well as accessories and dresses, than at designer stores.
"It's not like pre-2000, where a low price store meant you had to sacrifice on the design and tailoring," Ajam said.
"These days you can find amazing pieces that you probably shouldn't expect to find anywhere else."
Ajam recommended Stradivarius in Beirut Souks as a treasure trove of inexpensive, fun trendy items.
"I bought a pair of harem-style jeans and casual ankle boots from there once that everyone keeps asking about. I get asked by celebrities and stylists in L.A. on top of that," Ajam said.
Both also vehemently urged shoppers to buy inexpensive costume jewelry because designer costume jewelry uses the same cheap metals and materials.
"The only reason you pay more is because of the brand," Zeni said.
Costume jewelry, like hair bands, chunky rings, bracelets and statement necklaces, go out of style quickly or become boring after many wears. For these reasons, both designers said it's better to get lots of cheap things often, then to splurge on something that will go out of style.
Shoppers are better off buying cheap sunglasses as well, Ajam said.
A number of items can be bought inexpensively but require an investment of time.
For instance, a pair of nude heels, a little black dress and a winter jacket: None need to be overly expensive, but they require lots of trying on and lip biting before settling on perfection.
Cheap shoes fall apart fast and end up looking cheap before their owners tire of them. So search for shoes with a modern shape and good sturdy materials, Ajam said.
And for heels, comfort is king.
"High heels can look good, but whether you splurge or save, the No. 1 priority should be that they are comfortable. Otherwise they won't be a joy to wear," Ajam said.
Same goes for outerwear, which never needs to be bought at top dollar. Sturdy winter coats abound at inexpensive shops but you could also go to high-end stores that slash the prices of basic, timeless winter coats each spring and summer.
Zeni said scouring sales at designer stores for things like jackets, cashmeres as well as other winter textiles, and purses can really pay off when you purchase timeless pieces on sale during the off-season.
She also cautioned against buying 100-percent silk or wool, which will add up in dry-cleaning bills and are a pain to take care of.
Eveningwear also goes out of style relatively quickly and isn't worn enough to spend on – the little black dress being the only exception.
"The high street has become very, very smart about their designs. They get inspired by big-name designers," Zeni said. "Look for a couple of items that are spot on the trend of the season – this season it's peplum – get one or two of these key trends and you'll look very contemporary, but you didn't pay anything."
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Rocking the music and fashion worlds
Hannibal Race calls for racers to find a way, or make one
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Imtech is supported in terms of content by SharePeople. SharePeople brings sustainable entrepreneurs in developing countries in contact with professionals and larger European companies such as Imtech. SharePeople has a wealth of experience with 'learning programmes' in developing countries. It safeguards the interests of all the parties involved and ensures that the knowledge sharing leads to a contribution made for a sustainable society and a better world.
Kessels & Smit
Kessels & Smit is a company that devotes itself to the individual growth of employees, sustainable organisational development and knowledge productivity. Approximately 50 professionals work for The Learning Company. They have branches in the Netherlands, Belgium, South Africa, India, Germany and the United States. Kessels & Smit supports Imtech's Boost Teams during the various SSDC projects in South Africa.
World Mobile Plants
World Mobile Plants and Imtech worked together in 2008 on technological solutions for making environmentally friendly biodiesel from used cooking oil.
Nova works on helping vulnerable families in South Africa. The South African government's announcement concerning the dramatic increase in energy prices would mainly affect poor people in the country's slums. In 2009 Nova and Imtech worked together to encourage energy awareness with activities including energy measurements for three differing classes (poor, middle-class and rich) and advised individuals on how they could decrease their electricity bill.
Ubuntu Company: 'Plakkies' and 'Kadangas'
The Ubuntu Company produces sandals for the Western market and donates the revenues to children's projects in the slums. Imtech advised the company in 2009 on the best relationship between the technologies it utilised and the optimal use of the employees.
Gert Sibande District
The local government in the Gert Sibande District is one of Imtech's partners for improving local water and sanitation services. Safeguarding sources of water is the duty of the government in South Africa, as is the formulation of water policy. The Gert Sibande District attaches signal importance to sustainability opportunities in the development of the region.
If you are interested in a partnership with SSDC, send an e-mail to firstname.lastname@example.com.
SSDC Programme Manager Hendrik Smeenk will then contact you.


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New iOS 7 Lock Screen Concept [Video]
Posted March 20, 2013 at 7:10pm by here | 31312 views| Please help us and submit a translation by clicking
Designer Mohamed Kerroudj has posted a new iOS 7 lock screen concept video.
The concept features a swipe-up action to unlock the screen similar to what is currently used to access the camera on iOS 6. Kerroudj also offers a redesigned Calendars app, Settings toggles, and Notification Center alerts.
Take a look below and share your thoughts in the comments.
[via RedmondPie]
Add Comment
Grafixmann - March 22, 2013 at 3:51am
Actually it is More likely a Win8ish!! I really hate it already, ..No way Apple got infected with "Flatness" theme!!! Guys at Apple you are have your share of a fail compilation image of Windows 8. Excuse me am not an Apple fan boy, but this is a "Fail" and you will see instead creativity should be around creating something new.. with alot of wow factor not copying some dads summer shirt patterns for art home work. My buttom line suggestions are more dynamics to the GUI plus more flixability iOS features .. yup its time for reinventing iOS you cannot get away with that my pickles are newr than your os wake up lol..
Jack Bauer - March 21, 2013 at 5:12pm
These people obviously don't understand Apple's thirst for innovation. It's so important to them that even if your mockup was 100% spot-on, they'd go as far as dumping the design & starting over, just so they can be the 'innovators'.
6italia0 - March 21, 2013 at 7:11am
So someone made a cydia theme and added tweaks to look like a really advanced version of windows (windows 11 maybe?) and decided to call it an ios 7 concept? um ok you do that lol
Skhan - March 21, 2013 at 5:27am
I meant its nice but its just not for Iphone.
Skhan - March 21, 2013 at 5:25am
This sucks. Its like windows 8 on Iphone.
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Last week, I had a meeting at Geek and Sundry to discuss several geek and sundry things, some of them related to my show Tabletop. We all thought it would be fun and awesome to do a live Google Hangout Q&A thingy for all the people who love the show and are sadface that there won't be new episodes until January. We were pretty excited to have a whole hell of a lot of fun tonight.
In light of Friday's mass murder in Connecticut, though, it just felt wrong to me, and I thought we should postpone it for a week or more. I discussed it with some of my cow orkers at G&S, and we decided that we'd do whatever I decided. Unable to make a decision I felt good about on my own, I went for a walk with Anne, and asked her opinion and advice.
"Gaming is a family activity, and people watch Tabletop with their kids," she said, echoing something Tabz at G&S had said to me earlier in the day, "it seems like giving anyone who wants a break from the sadness and horror we're all feeling an hour to talk and think about things we love and the people we love is a good thing."
I've said before that Anne is the brains in our relationship. She's also the heart and soul.
After 9/11, we canceled our shows at ACME because none of us felt like we could be funny. I'm feeling similar emotions now… but I don't have to be funny or perform. I just have to not suck, and I can do that. I can still provide an hour for us to talk about games, about the production of the show, and maybe share some stories about how gaming is important to my family.
So that's what I'm going to do. For an hour tonight, from 6pm Pacific time, I'll be taking your questions about Tabletop and gaming. @GeekAndSundry will have all the details you need to know so you can watch and submit your questions.


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Interview | Alex Rappaport and Blake Harrison Go With the Flocabulary
Alex Rappaport is both an entrepreneur and a musician. He co-founded co-founded Flocabulary in 2004 and has been running the business ever since. As Flocabulary's CEO, he has spoken on entrepreneurship and social enterprise for students and adults, and he presents … Continue reading
Posted in interviews Tagged Alex Rappaport, authentic learning, Blake Harrison, education, education crisis, hip hop, Jay-Z, Ludacris, rap, videos, vocabulary builders 2 Comments
Cool Tool | One Idea for Learning = $5,000
You've got cool ideas—and you were going to make a video, anyway. So consider this: Pearson OLE (Online Learning Exchange) is giving away $10,000 to the most creative, influential ideas that will better teaching and learning. Video submissions will be voted on … Continue reading
Posted in cool tools Tagged classroom tools, online learning, Pearson, Pearson OLE, short video, teachers, tools for teachers, videos Leave a comment