Hole in the Clouds

February 2015

Rain Tries to Come to Arizona

Feb 3, 2015

A couple of weeks ago, in the desert near Pinnacle Peak, outside of Phoenix, people who stepped out of their cars to savor the sunset felt the wind pick up suddenly, blowing hard and cold and carrying . . . raindrops? Really?

Careful examination of clouds in the distance revealed ragged curtains of rain showers swirling down just below the cloud line. Apparently, most of the rain evaporated long before moistening the dust, but we can vouch for several drops, perhaps even several dozens of drops, that fell all the way to earth.

After a few minutes, the wind died down, and the storm, such as it was, no longer was.

landscape   sunset   desert   weather   clouds   dusk   rain   Arizona   Phoenix   Pinnacle Peak   cactus   (Image credit: Fuji T)  

The Deer and the Steer

Feb 9, 2015

Doris's sign might be a little misleading in one way, since there's really not much of a parking problem in the community of Great Cacapon, West Virginia. It's a wide place in the road: a post office, a few dozen houses and trailers, and Doris's, which advertises Bud Light by the 30-pack ($23.99).

The deer in the noose, however, looks just like the wall mounts on sale at a furniture store back in Berkeley Springs, the county seat. And if you don't want a deer for your wall, you might consider a longhorn steer instead.

deer   West Virginia   Ted   signage   taxidermy   Great Cacapon   steer   (Image credit: Fuji T)  

He Bathed Here

Feb 12, 2015

In 1748, George Washington was a 16-year-old kid hired to help out with a surveying party in the mountain wilderness that is now eastern West Virginia. The surveyors stopped to rest in a narrow valley known now as Berkeley Springs. Young Washington described the valley as unpleasantly narrow, scarcely touched by the sun, but after spending a few days soaking in warm springs that bubbled up out of the ground there, he decided he liked the place.

Two years later, when Lord Fairfax, who had commissioned the survey, finally got around to paying the survey party, Washington took his pay in the form of land grants in and around Berkeley Springs. Those grants of 250 acres were the first of numerous grants and purchases over the years that expanded his holdings throughout Virginia, especially western Virginia, till at his death the father of our country personally owned more than 60,000 acres of our country.

The "bathtub" at Berkeley Springs is a modern recreation of the rock-lined pools built in the center of town for the crowds of spa-goers in mid-eighteenth-century America who sought the curative powers attributed to warm (78.4 degrees F), mineralized spring waters. Until 1784, when the first bathhouse was completed, the spa was entirely out of doors, in rock pools screened for privacy by piles of brush and woven branches. Separate hours were designated for male and female bathers.

Washington was part of the crowd; he visited repeatedly, at first with his half-brother Lawrence, who was ill with tuberculosis. When the baths did not help, George took Lawrence on an ocean voyage to Barbados, in hopes that tropical air might prove curative. In Barbados, George Washington contracted smallpox but recovered; Lawrence Washington continued to do poorly and returned to Virginia to die at home in 1752.

George Washington returned again and again to the baths at Berkeley Springs, which had become something of a social scene for colonials of his class. The town grew rapidly to wine and dine the bathers, and George Washington bought up several building lots. A house was built for him on one of his lots, but the Revolutionary War was diverting his attention at that time, and it is believed he only visited the house once.

In mid-winter, the water in Washington's bathtub looks disgusting; the spring is warm enough that there's little or no ice in the pool around the spring but plenty of algae and moss, and nobody has cleaned fallen leaves out of the tub. But straight from the springs, Berkeley Springs water is clear and fresh-tasting. The town hosts an annual water-tasting competition, at which its own municipal water usually fares well.

And there's another annual event in town: George Washington's Bath Tub Weekend, celebrated each year around March 18, the day Washington first showed up for a bath in 1748. The weekend "highlights history-related activities," according to its promoters, "and retail sales."

West Virginia   George Washington   Berkeley Springs   1748   warm springs   (Image credit: Fuji T)  

Pete ❤ Eleanor

Feb 14, 2015

Guest of honor at this Valentine's Day party in 1944 was Eleanor Roosevelt; serenading her was a soldier by the name of Pete Seeger.

The gathering celebrated not only Valentine's Day but also the grand opening of the new Labor Canteen of the United Federal Workers of America, CIO, near Dupont Circle in Washington, D.C.

United Federal Workers was a labor union representing U.S. government employees. Though soldiers and sailors were certainly not unionized, they may have frequented the new canteen for political and/or social activities.

The UFW included both black and white members. But the scene in this room was extremely unusual for 1940s Washington, which was still a completely segregated city. The military was also still segregated. Eleanor Roosevelt's presence was making a political statement about race as well as labor.

The cartoons on the wall in the background may have been the work of Woody Guthrie.

As some of you will surely point out, the banjo Pete Seeger is playing here does not look like the long-necked music machine he was long associated with. That one came a few years later.

Happy Valentine's Day 2015.

Washington   party   music   Eleanor Roosevelt   Valentine's Day   Pete Seeger   Woody Guthrie   1944   United Federal Labor Canteen   CIO   D.C.   (Image credit: Joseph Horne for Office of War Information, via Shorpy)  

"Mothers' Barricade Removed by Police"

Feb 16, 2015

Between 1950 and 1953, Philadelphians demonstrated repeatedly in many neighborhoods, seeking stop signs, traffic lights, and one-way traffic patterns in hopes of making the city's narrow streets safer for pedestrians, especially children.

In June 1952, these women and children blocked off Sansom Street at 32nd Street, to draw attention to a block where seven children had been hit by cars in a single month. Police broke up the demonstration and arrested three of the women.

At some point between then and now, city officials made almost all the streets in and around center city one-way and installed stop signs or red lights at virtually ever corner.

Pedestrian safety is no longer a major political issue. Parking, on the other hand. . . .

traffic   Philly   accident   1952   demonstration   Sansom Street   (Image credit: Philadelphia Evening Bulletin)  

Sheeps

Feb 19, 2015

"Sheeps and two goats," insists Polish photographer Marcin Sobas. We're not so sure.

The Fire Dies Down

Feb 25, 2015

Icelandic authorities reported this week that the five-month-old volcanic eruption known as Holuhraun shows numerous signs of winding down, at least for the moment. They believe that volcanism in that part of the country is entering a new phase

The lava flow has decreased dramatically. After spilling wildly for months over an area the size of a large city, the lava now is mostly pooling in a single crater before it trickles out across the landscape.

The population of Iceland is no longer suffering from the volcano's poisonous gases, though gas concentrations in the immediate vicinity of the eruption are still at deadly levels. It has been two weeks since any populated area experienced serious atmospheric pollution.

Earthquake activity associated with the eruption is way down, though officials still describe it as very high.  Yesterday, about 25 earthquakes shook the region, all smaller than 3.0.  Until recently, the daily count was usually 80 or more, some of them above magnitude 5.0.

Holuhraun has been fed with magma from a chamber underneath Iceland's largest volcano, the glacier-covered Bardarbunga. As the magma chamber emptied out, Bardarbunga mountain began collapsing in on itself, subsiding more than 100 meters since measurements began in September. The rate of subsidence has dramatically slowed in recent weeks; yesterday, it was just 2 cm.

Clearly, Holuhraun is running on fumes now and is likely to cease significant eruption in the near future. But volcanologist Armann Hoskuldsson cautions that the overall volcanic episode may not be anywhere near complete and in fact may be just now entering a much more active phase.

Tectonically, the Holuhraun eruption involves rifting; the lava is actually creating new land in between two diverging tectonic plates. Hoskuldsson notes that rifting episodes last much longer than five months–usually at least ten years–and they typically involve multiple eruptions, often much more ferocious than Holuhraun.

Iceland   tectonics   rifting   eruption   volcano. Bardarbunga   fissure   Holuhraun   (Image credit: Ólafur Sigurjónsson)