Giambattista Nolli (1701-1756) was an architect and surveyor who lived in Rome and devoted his life to documenting the architectural and urban foundations of the city. The fruit of his labor, La Pianta Grande di Roma ("the great plan of Rome") is one of the most revealing and artistically designed urban plans of all time. The Nolli map is an ichnographic plan map of the city, as opposed to a bird’s eye perspective, which was the dominant cartographic representation style prevalent before his work. Not only was Nolli one of the first people to construct an ichnographic map of Rome, his unique perspective has been copied ever since.
The map depicts the city in astonishing detail. Nolli accomplished this by using scientific surveying techniques, careful base drawings, and minutely prepared engravings. The map's graphic representations include a precise architectural scale, as well as a prominent compass rose, which notes both magnetic and astronomical north. The Nolli map is the first accurate map of Rome since antiquity and captures the city at the height of its cultural and artistic achievements. The historic center of Rome has changed little over the last 250 years; therefore, the Nolli map remains one of the best sources for understanding the contemporary city.The intention of this website is to reveal both the historical significance of the map and the principles of urban form that may influence city design in the future. During the last half of the 20th century, architects and urban designers have shown a renewed interest in what the Nolli map has to offer, leading to new urban theories and a model for the study of all cities
Features of the Nolli Map
The Nolli map consists of twelve exquisitely engraved copper plates that measure approximately six feet high and seven feet wide when combined (176 cm by 208 cm). The map includes almost eight square miles of the densely-built city as well as the surrounding terrain. It also identifies nearly two thousand sites of cultural significance. Nolli’s map is an extraordinary technical achievement that represents a milestone in the art and science of cartography. Modern surveys and sophisticated satellite images have confirmed the accuracy of Nolli’s map within the very smallest margin of error. The map not only records the streets, squares and public urban spaces of Rome, but Nolli carefully renders hundreds of building interiors with detailed plans. The detail of the map representation ensures the map's continuing value as a unique historical document, and it gives the viewer a glimpse into the ancient metropolitan center during one of its most illustrious periods.
The Interactive Nolli Map...
The Brocken Spectre
“A wild tale has long circulated about a giant specter seen by mountain climbers on the Brocken, a German mountain. As the story goes, there was once a climber working his way along the precipice who suddenly saw an immense human figure rise out of the mists toward him. In his fright he lost his footing and fell to his death. Doubtless this is just a story, but the Brocken specter does exist, not only in Brocken but wherever shadows are cast upon mist, fog, and fine water droplets” -Willim R. Corliss, from The Handbook of Unusual Natural Phenomena.
From Great Disasters and Horrors in the World's History c. 1890Interestingly, the Brocken figures prominantly in Goethe's Fauste when Mephistophales and Faust are led by a humunculus to Walpurgisnacht on the Brocken.
From Young Folks’ Library, Volume XI c. 1902.
Only the Right Kind of Cheap Beer
Fixed Gear Bike: What is it?
Here is an example of an uber-hip fixie utilizing an ancient frame (carefully spray-painted gold and then scratched) with all new components. It does however lose some hip points with the addition of the front brake.
Many young people, often tattooed, have chosen to forgo technological advances made in the past 120 years in the field of human-powered vehicles. Eschewing such mechanisms as derailleurs, freewheel hubs, and brakes, they choose to ride fixed gear bikes. On a fixed gear bike, the drive wheel and the rear sprocket are fixed together and always rotate at the same rate. Consequently, the front sprocket and pedals rotate whenever the bicycle's rear wheel is rolling. The effect is that the rider may never "coast" with feet on pedals. (In olden times, before the invention of the freewheel hub, bicycle frames had footrests. The rider could rest his or her feet on these and allow the pedals to spin wildly as he or she descended a hill.) This also means that the fixed gear rider can stop his or her bicycle by applying reverse pressure to the pedals to slow the rate of rotation. Elite riders can skid their rear wheels by hopping them off of the ground and stopping the spin entirely. Really cool kids can "track stand," or remain balanced with no net forward velocity, by pedaling forward and backward and turning the handlebars. (The name is mysterious, as riders in the velodrome never stand still.)
A claim often heard is, "Fixed gear bikes pedal themselves! They make it so much easier to climb hills and cruise!" This virtue of fixed gear bikes is extolled by fixed gear riders who failed high school physics. It is true that the pedals do continue to turn when the rider is no longer putting energy into the system by converting the body's stored chemical energy into kinetic energy applied to the pedals. However, the kinetic energy of forward motion is turned into potential energy and entropy at the same rate as a freewheeling bike of the same mass coasting up the same hill.
The Relation to Late Capitalism
In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Life is reduced to survival: a life reduced to economic imperatives. All real, lived experience is replaced with the consumption of commodities, and the whole life is replaced by the assumption of roles. Fixed gear riders are particular about their consumption of commodities produced by the Spectacle and their part in the spectacle of production. Their role, like all roles, is based upon the consumption of commodities. However, this role restricts and prescribes its members' consumption in much greater detail than roles such as Soccer Mom or Mainstream Hip Hop Dude. This may because some aspects of the culture are linked to the DIY music and fanzine community of the 1990's. In fact, many participants from that community--at least, many of those who remained slim and attractive--have picked up on fixed gear bikes as a way to "stay young 'til [they] die."
Examples
Only the right kind of cheap beer. To be caught with a brand consumed by those who are actually poor is in bad form.
Old, heavy bike frames fitted with the newest, lightest components.
Downwardly mobile employment that allows late-night recreation, such as cycle messenger, bartender, or working for a non-profit.
By SteveR of the Landsquids
A fixed gear bike is a bike with fixed gears. Until recently, they were seen only in velodrome racing.
Here is an example of an uber-hip fixie utilizing an ancient frame (carefully spray-painted gold and then scratched) with all new components. It does however lose some hip points with the addition of the front brake.Many young people, often tattooed, have chosen to forgo technological advances made in the past 120 years in the field of human-powered vehicles. Eschewing such mechanisms as derailleurs, freewheel hubs, and brakes, they choose to ride fixed gear bikes. On a fixed gear bike, the drive wheel and the rear sprocket are fixed together and always rotate at the same rate. Consequently, the front sprocket and pedals rotate whenever the bicycle's rear wheel is rolling. The effect is that the rider may never "coast" with feet on pedals. (In olden times, before the invention of the freewheel hub, bicycle frames had footrests. The rider could rest his or her feet on these and allow the pedals to spin wildly as he or she descended a hill.) This also means that the fixed gear rider can stop his or her bicycle by applying reverse pressure to the pedals to slow the rate of rotation. Elite riders can skid their rear wheels by hopping them off of the ground and stopping the spin entirely. Really cool kids can "track stand," or remain balanced with no net forward velocity, by pedaling forward and backward and turning the handlebars. (The name is mysterious, as riders in the velodrome never stand still.)
A claim often heard is, "Fixed gear bikes pedal themselves! They make it so much easier to climb hills and cruise!" This virtue of fixed gear bikes is extolled by fixed gear riders who failed high school physics. It is true that the pedals do continue to turn when the rider is no longer putting energy into the system by converting the body's stored chemical energy into kinetic energy applied to the pedals. However, the kinetic energy of forward motion is turned into potential energy and entropy at the same rate as a freewheeling bike of the same mass coasting up the same hill.
The Relation to Late Capitalism
In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Life is reduced to survival: a life reduced to economic imperatives. All real, lived experience is replaced with the consumption of commodities, and the whole life is replaced by the assumption of roles. Fixed gear riders are particular about their consumption of commodities produced by the Spectacle and their part in the spectacle of production. Their role, like all roles, is based upon the consumption of commodities. However, this role restricts and prescribes its members' consumption in much greater detail than roles such as Soccer Mom or Mainstream Hip Hop Dude. This may because some aspects of the culture are linked to the DIY music and fanzine community of the 1990's. In fact, many participants from that community--at least, many of those who remained slim and attractive--have picked up on fixed gear bikes as a way to "stay young 'til [they] die."
Examples
Only the right kind of cheap beer. To be caught with a brand consumed by those who are actually poor is in bad form.
Old, heavy bike frames fitted with the newest, lightest components.
Downwardly mobile employment that allows late-night recreation, such as cycle messenger, bartender, or working for a non-profit.
By SteveR of the Landsquids
Red October 5
Breakfast with the Bandits
Hung-over Bandits
This dude crashed
Bropeds!
My ride.... (s) 
Jake from the Bombardment Society filling up in Anne Arbor 
Yes, that is a duck...
At the Cider Mill
Ready for the night ride back to Ypsilanti 
Sunday night Burrito...
Motion What was that?!
Motion Left Sue at 66.7 mph (GPSed). This is the fastest girl in the moped army. Only Tommy of the Latebirds has her beat at 70 mph.
Sue is running a Puch Pinto with an 80cc Metrakit, 21mm phbg carb, and geared... tall.
The Grand Mere Rail Station
Here is my final presentation for the train station in Michigan. These are 22x30 inch sheets of watercolour paper drafted in graphite, then stretch on plywood, and finally rendered in watercolour.
Main facade and Plan
Elevations and Section
Bridge, Details and Pespective
The Review Presentation
Here are some pictures from the process:
Drafting on Watercolour Paper
The Pespective Taking Shape
Drafted and Ready For Stretching
Stretched
Running a Sky Wash
World's Fastest 50cc Bike
Turbo-charged, 6-speed Aprila with a liquid cooled metrakit cylinder. Notice the fairing undulate at top speed...
150mph!
The Engine
(Yes, that's a 24mm Mikuni...)
The Frame
Burt Munro Style!
In Italy a Redesign of Nature to Clean It
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
Published: September 21, 2008
TERRACINA, Italy — Before Michele Assunto hauls in his fishing net from the banks of
a reed-lined canal here, he uses a pole to push the garbage out of the way. “They really need to clean this up,” he growls.
Where another canal empties into the sea here at the small community of Porto Badino, the only animals that can survive are giant rats, local officials say. Of course, the sea is not fit for swimming for 200 yards on each side of the outlet, they add with a shrug — yet bathers splash in the Mediterranean nearby.
In many parts of this affluent coastal region southeast of Rome and northwest of Naples, canals dumping effluent into the Mediterranean from farms and factories coexist with fishermen and beachgoers. There is little doubt that this area would need considerable work to return to a more pristine state. For places as far gone as this one, however, a new breed of landscape architect is recommending a radical solution: not so much to restore the environment as to redesign it.
“It is so ecologically out of balance that if it goes on this way, it will kill itself,” said Alan Berger, a landscape architecture professor at M.I.T. who was excitedly poking around the smelly canals on a recent day and talking to fishermen like Mr. Assunto.
“You can’t remove the economy and move the people away,” he added. “Ecologically speaking, you can’t restore it; you have to go forward, to set this place on a new path.”
Designing nature might seem to be an oxymoron or an act of hubris. But instead of simply recommending that polluting farms and factories be shut, Professor Berger specializes in creating new ecosystems in severely damaged environments: redirecting water flow, moving hills, building islands and planting new species to absorb pollution, to create natural, though “artificial,” landscapes that can ultimately sustain themselves.
Professor Berger, who is the founder of P-Rex, for Project for Reclamation Excellence, at M.I.T., recently signed an agreement with Latina Province to design a master ecological plan for the most polluting part of this region.
He wants the government to buy a tract of nearly 500 acres in a strategic valley through which the most seriously polluted waters now pass. There, he intends to create a wetland that would serve as a natural cleansing station before the waters flowed on to the sea and residential areas.
Of course, better regulation is also needed, to curb the dumping of pollutants into the canal. But a careful mix of the right kinds of plants, dirt, stones and drainage channels would filter the water as it slowly passed through, he said. The land would also function as a new park.
Professor Berger was quick to acknowledge that the approach was vastly different from the kind normally advocated by established environmental groups like the World Wildlife Fund or the Nature Conservancy, which generally seek to restore land or preserve it in its natural state, often by closing down or cleaning up nearby polluters. In the Florida Everglades, for example, the state is buying and closing a sugar plant to preserve the environment. But that approach may not work in places that are already severely degraded, Professor Berger said.
“The difference between me and W.W.F. is that when I look at this place, I never think about going back,” he said, referring to the wildlife fund. “The solution has to be as artificial as the place. We are trying to invent an ecosystem in the midst of an entirely engineered, polluted landscape.”
At first glance, Latina does not look like an environmental disaster zone. Bordered by mountains to the east and the Mediterranean to the west, it is a place of spectacular rural vistas and even a few famous beach resorts, like Sabaudia.
But in many ways, Professor Berger said, it is as damaged and distorted as the area around an abandoned mine in Breckenridge, Colo., that he is also redesigning, as part of a Superfund cleanup underwritten by the Environmental Protection Agency.
Indeed, the entire environment here is a manufactured one already — and one that is successful, in economic terms at least.
Two thousand years of “water management” have turned the once-malaria-infested Pontine Marshes into a region, Latina Province, that is among Italy’s most prosperous. It is home to industrial parks, resorts filled with weekend homes, and farms — some of which make Italy the world’s leading producer of kiwis.
Latina’s prosperity is built on drained swampland, kept habitable by six pumps as huge and noisy as airplanes, put in place in 1934 by Mussolini. Each day they pull millions of gallons of water — up to 9,500 gallons a second — out of the soggy ground, directing it into an elaborate system of cement-lined canals that ultimately dump it into the sea.
The entire province would return to marshland in seven days if the pumps were turned off, Carlo Cervellin of the Pontine Marsh Consortium said. He is in charge of maintaining and regulating the immense machines, which are in a pump house at the lowest point in the province, in Mazzochio.
Claudio Palmisano for The International Herald Tribune
Alan Berger, a landscape architect at M.I.T., is designing a wetland to cleanse polluted water before it flows to residential areas and the sea. “We are trying to invent an ecosystem,” he said.
Roman emperors and popes had tried for centuries to drain the marshes to allow better access to the sea along the famed Appian Way, all with limited success. The draining of the Pontine Marshes was one of Mussolini’s engineering triumphs.
The area was still a sparsely inhabited malarial breeding ground when Mussolini brought in workers from Northern Italy to create a public works project centered on the pumps that in some ways rivaled the construction of the Panama Canal. Many died in the process, and there was no environmental impact study.
“The goal was to pump water out as fast as possible,” Professor Berger said.
What emerged from the swamp was a triumph of Fascist determination as well as one of Italy’s economic powerhouses. Mussolini built the city of Latina on the newly dried-out land, where it became a center of industry and farming.
But prosperous does not necessarily mean sustainable.
Professor Berger came to Rome’s American Academy in 2007 on a yearlong fellowship to study the history of the Pontine Marshes. It was only after he started to collect data on the land and the water that he realized how damaged the area was.
With the help of the local government in Latina, he collected thousands of aerial photographs as well as data from water and soil in an effort to document drainage patterns and the flow of water and pollutants.
“If there was ever a place to know exactly where your food is produced, it’s here,” he said. “I would only eat from uphill.”
Pristine water enters the Latina plain from high mountain streams in the area of Ninfa; it becomes dirtier and dirtier as it heads toward the sea, picking up the runoff from a succession of factories, farms and homes.
Professor Berger found that half of the water in the system was severely contaminated, he said, with phosphorus and nitrogen levels that get worse as it runs through the canals toward the coast.
“In terms of phosphorus, much of the water is in the raw-sewage range, and in terms of nitrates, it was in the swine effluent range — like being right downstream from a pig farm,” he said.
By the time the water reaches the sea at some outlets, Professor Berger’s aerial photos show, it has become a plume of silt filled with pollutants. Pharmaceutical factories and large farms are along the canals. Farmers also use the water for irrigation.
Presented with his research, local officials were surprised at the portrait of pollution that emerged. They were also impressed enough with the solution he proposed that they are continuing to work with him now that he is back in the United States.
“He studied the zone from a different point of view than ours,” said Carlo Perotto, the planning director for the province. “We had different people concerned with water, industry and agriculture. He opened a new way of thinking.”
Published: September 21, 2008
TERRACINA, Italy — Before Michele Assunto hauls in his fishing net from the banks of
a reed-lined canal here, he uses a pole to push the garbage out of the way. “They really need to clean this up,” he growls.
Where another canal empties into the sea here at the small community of Porto Badino, the only animals that can survive are giant rats, local officials say. Of course, the sea is not fit for swimming for 200 yards on each side of the outlet, they add with a shrug — yet bathers splash in the Mediterranean nearby.
In many parts of this affluent coastal region southeast of Rome and northwest of Naples, canals dumping effluent into the Mediterranean from farms and factories coexist with fishermen and beachgoers. There is little doubt that this area would need considerable work to return to a more pristine state. For places as far gone as this one, however, a new breed of landscape architect is recommending a radical solution: not so much to restore the environment as to redesign it.
“It is so ecologically out of balance that if it goes on this way, it will kill itself,” said Alan Berger, a landscape architecture professor at M.I.T. who was excitedly poking around the smelly canals on a recent day and talking to fishermen like Mr. Assunto.
“You can’t remove the economy and move the people away,” he added. “Ecologically speaking, you can’t restore it; you have to go forward, to set this place on a new path.”
Designing nature might seem to be an oxymoron or an act of hubris. But instead of simply recommending that polluting farms and factories be shut, Professor Berger specializes in creating new ecosystems in severely damaged environments: redirecting water flow, moving hills, building islands and planting new species to absorb pollution, to create natural, though “artificial,” landscapes that can ultimately sustain themselves.
Professor Berger, who is the founder of P-Rex, for Project for Reclamation Excellence, at M.I.T., recently signed an agreement with Latina Province to design a master ecological plan for the most polluting part of this region.
He wants the government to buy a tract of nearly 500 acres in a strategic valley through which the most seriously polluted waters now pass. There, he intends to create a wetland that would serve as a natural cleansing station before the waters flowed on to the sea and residential areas.
Of course, better regulation is also needed, to curb the dumping of pollutants into the canal. But a careful mix of the right kinds of plants, dirt, stones and drainage channels would filter the water as it slowly passed through, he said. The land would also function as a new park.
Professor Berger was quick to acknowledge that the approach was vastly different from the kind normally advocated by established environmental groups like the World Wildlife Fund or the Nature Conservancy, which generally seek to restore land or preserve it in its natural state, often by closing down or cleaning up nearby polluters. In the Florida Everglades, for example, the state is buying and closing a sugar plant to preserve the environment. But that approach may not work in places that are already severely degraded, Professor Berger said.
“The difference between me and W.W.F. is that when I look at this place, I never think about going back,” he said, referring to the wildlife fund. “The solution has to be as artificial as the place. We are trying to invent an ecosystem in the midst of an entirely engineered, polluted landscape.”
At first glance, Latina does not look like an environmental disaster zone. Bordered by mountains to the east and the Mediterranean to the west, it is a place of spectacular rural vistas and even a few famous beach resorts, like Sabaudia.
But in many ways, Professor Berger said, it is as damaged and distorted as the area around an abandoned mine in Breckenridge, Colo., that he is also redesigning, as part of a Superfund cleanup underwritten by the Environmental Protection Agency.
Indeed, the entire environment here is a manufactured one already — and one that is successful, in economic terms at least.
Two thousand years of “water management” have turned the once-malaria-infested Pontine Marshes into a region, Latina Province, that is among Italy’s most prosperous. It is home to industrial parks, resorts filled with weekend homes, and farms — some of which make Italy the world’s leading producer of kiwis.
Latina’s prosperity is built on drained swampland, kept habitable by six pumps as huge and noisy as airplanes, put in place in 1934 by Mussolini. Each day they pull millions of gallons of water — up to 9,500 gallons a second — out of the soggy ground, directing it into an elaborate system of cement-lined canals that ultimately dump it into the sea.
The entire province would return to marshland in seven days if the pumps were turned off, Carlo Cervellin of the Pontine Marsh Consortium said. He is in charge of maintaining and regulating the immense machines, which are in a pump house at the lowest point in the province, in Mazzochio.
Claudio Palmisano for The International Herald Tribune
Alan Berger, a landscape architect at M.I.T., is designing a wetland to cleanse polluted water before it flows to residential areas and the sea. “We are trying to invent an ecosystem,” he said.
Roman emperors and popes had tried for centuries to drain the marshes to allow better access to the sea along the famed Appian Way, all with limited success. The draining of the Pontine Marshes was one of Mussolini’s engineering triumphs.
The area was still a sparsely inhabited malarial breeding ground when Mussolini brought in workers from Northern Italy to create a public works project centered on the pumps that in some ways rivaled the construction of the Panama Canal. Many died in the process, and there was no environmental impact study.
“The goal was to pump water out as fast as possible,” Professor Berger said.
What emerged from the swamp was a triumph of Fascist determination as well as one of Italy’s economic powerhouses. Mussolini built the city of Latina on the newly dried-out land, where it became a center of industry and farming.
But prosperous does not necessarily mean sustainable.
Professor Berger came to Rome’s American Academy in 2007 on a yearlong fellowship to study the history of the Pontine Marshes. It was only after he started to collect data on the land and the water that he realized how damaged the area was.
With the help of the local government in Latina, he collected thousands of aerial photographs as well as data from water and soil in an effort to document drainage patterns and the flow of water and pollutants.
“If there was ever a place to know exactly where your food is produced, it’s here,” he said. “I would only eat from uphill.”
Pristine water enters the Latina plain from high mountain streams in the area of Ninfa; it becomes dirtier and dirtier as it heads toward the sea, picking up the runoff from a succession of factories, farms and homes.
Professor Berger found that half of the water in the system was severely contaminated, he said, with phosphorus and nitrogen levels that get worse as it runs through the canals toward the coast.
“In terms of phosphorus, much of the water is in the raw-sewage range, and in terms of nitrates, it was in the swine effluent range — like being right downstream from a pig farm,” he said.
By the time the water reaches the sea at some outlets, Professor Berger’s aerial photos show, it has become a plume of silt filled with pollutants. Pharmaceutical factories and large farms are along the canals. Farmers also use the water for irrigation.
Presented with his research, local officials were surprised at the portrait of pollution that emerged. They were also impressed enough with the solution he proposed that they are continuing to work with him now that he is back in the United States.
“He studied the zone from a different point of view than ours,” said Carlo Perotto, the planning director for the province. “We had different people concerned with water, industry and agriculture. He opened a new way of thinking.”
Descent Article on the Cutters
Portland mo-ped fans get some big buzz
by Nicole Santa Cruz, The OregonianSaturday September 06, 2008, 9:31 PM
Members of the mo-ped club the Puddle Cutters wheel through Southeast Portland on a recent Sunday afternoon. The group is part of a national movement of mostly urban twentysomethings and early thirtysomethings who buy antique mo-peds and fix them up.
They ride in packs that sound like swarms of mosquitoes. They're tough, tattooed and territorial. Initiation rituals are practiced, and their bike loyalty doesn't change with the seasons.
They won't, however, hurt you, and they don't ride Harleys. And while their name is the Puddle Cutters and they call themselves a gang, they are, essentially, just a bunch of self-proclaimed dorks whose bike of choice is -- the mo-ped.
They ride in packs that sound like swarms of mosquitoes. They're tough, tattooed and territorial. Initiation rituals are practiced, and their bike loyalty doesn't change with the seasons.
They won't, however, hurt you, and they don't ride Harleys. And while their name is the Puddle Cutters and they call themselves a gang, they are, essentially, just a bunch of self-proclaimed dorks whose bike of choice is -- the mo-ped.
That's right, the mo-ped. Unless you're too young, you remember mo-peds -- those bikes with attached engines from the late '70s that top out at 30 miles an hour, unless, of course, they're tricked out.
Now local groups like the Puddle Cutters are the soul of a nationwide, growing movement called the Moped Army, which consists mostly of urban twentysomethings and early thirtysomethings who buy fixer-upper antique mo-peds in cities such as Portland, Seattle and San Francisco.
The gangs ride for a multitude of reasons: The retro-cool individualism of it, a low-cost and efficient transportation mode amid high gas prices, the need to get dirty and grimy amid friends. Or, just because they like mo-peds.
The gangs ride for a multitude of reasons: The retro-cool individualism of it, a low-cost and efficient transportation mode amid high gas prices, the need to get dirty and grimy amid friends. Or, just because they like mo-peds.
And they're yet another example of a Portland mini-subculture trying to maintain its authenticity and individualism amid raging popularity. Like cyclists and motorized-scooter riders, mo-ped aficionados are seeing their ranks swell exponentially -- even beyond the gangs and the Moped Army.
Dan Kastner of San Francisco, a co-owner of a national mo-ped shop called 1977 Mopeds and a founder of the army, said that when he and buddies Simon King and Brennan Sang started the first mo-ped gang in Kalamazoo, Mich., in 1997, mo-peds were "pretty much dead."
"They basically were a weird oddity that was really dated to the fringes," he said.
"They basically were a weird oddity that was really dated to the fringes," he said.
But the new breed of hard-core enthusiasts such as the Puddle Cutters have become like antique hot rod collectors: They pine over ways to fix their vintage bikes. At weekly gang meetings, talk of carburetors, pistons, wrenches and spark plugs fills the air.
And while they welcome the returning popularity of the mo-ped, the Puddle Cutters remain an exclusive and elite group that prefers old-school mo-peds to the modern, high-tech machine. Bob Hansen, a founding Puddle Cutter and a local business owner, said it's getting harder to keep his gang small, since mo-peds are becoming so popular on the streets.
He said his gang and the Moped Army make up a useful network of enthusiasts who trade parts and knowledge of their vintage bikes. And it signifies a camaraderie.
"We're being very selective on who we're going to let into the gang," he says. But "anyone is welcome to come hang out and do whatever."
"We're being very selective on who we're going to let into the gang," he says. But "anyone is welcome to come hang out and do whatever."
Though the older bikes are usually unreliable, Puddle Cutters say they have a strong fondness and connection to their rides.
"Because most of the bikes we ride are vintage, each of them has its own problems," says Erica Allison, a 25-year-old Puddle Cutter who calls her bike the "indestructible little mo-ped."
"It's kind of like owning a car where you know exactly how to start it and that sort of thing."
"Because most of the bikes we ride are vintage, each of them has its own problems," says Erica Allison, a 25-year-old Puddle Cutter who calls her bike the "indestructible little mo-ped."
"It's kind of like owning a car where you know exactly how to start it and that sort of thing."
The Puddle Cutters like to meet up a couple of times a week and "swarm" -- or ride in a pack -- around town. They usually meet up in Southeast Portland but say "the sky's the limit" as to where they will ride. Whether it's Clackamas or Troutdale, the streets near Mount Tabor or hilly neighborhoods around Milwaukie, they have probably swarmed it.
But they don't cause trouble.
"They hardly wreak havoc," said Cathe Kent, a Portland Police Bureau spokeswoman, who said the gang is basically harmless. And though the mo-ped enthusiasts say they don't necessarily hate anyone on a bike or scooter, their choice of transportation is a little against the grain.
"In a city such as Portland where bikes are all the rage, they're rebellious," said Adrian Melnick, a 28-year-old waiter/artist/musician and a Puddle Cutter.
But it takes more than just an interest to get a vintage mo-ped, said Hansen, who said that when people ask him about mo-peds he questions them right back.
"I ask them the same thing every time," he says. "Are you looking for a hobby or are you looking for transportation?"
If they answer transportation, a new mo-ped may be the thing.
But if they have time for a hobby, go vintage, he says.
"They hardly wreak havoc," said Cathe Kent, a Portland Police Bureau spokeswoman, who said the gang is basically harmless. And though the mo-ped enthusiasts say they don't necessarily hate anyone on a bike or scooter, their choice of transportation is a little against the grain.
"In a city such as Portland where bikes are all the rage, they're rebellious," said Adrian Melnick, a 28-year-old waiter/artist/musician and a Puddle Cutter.
But it takes more than just an interest to get a vintage mo-ped, said Hansen, who said that when people ask him about mo-peds he questions them right back.
"I ask them the same thing every time," he says. "Are you looking for a hobby or are you looking for transportation?"
If they answer transportation, a new mo-ped may be the thing.
But if they have time for a hobby, go vintage, he says.
The neat thing about them is the plethora of different makes and models, Hansen said. Every company that made bicycles and motorcycles back in the '70s made a mo-ped. "I think it's more of the aesthetic and the look of the really older bikes that are really cool."
But the newer models such as the Tomo, a mo-ped that is usually out of stock at scooter and mo-ped shops around town, doesn't require the will to fix.
But the newer models such as the Tomo, a mo-ped that is usually out of stock at scooter and mo-ped shops around town, doesn't require the will to fix.
Jim Smith, a co-owner of Ptown Scooters off Southeast Division Street and 33rd Place, says many are looking to the mo-ped as an alternative means of transportation.
"We get folks who have never ridden before and want to be comfortable," he says. People are also turning to mo-peds because of their 100-miles-to-the-gallon fuel economy and the ease of riding them.
But of the Puddle Cutters, he says they just like to have fun.
"It's one thing to go have a reading club, and its another to grab six friends, load up your bikes and go to Kalamazoo for a rally."
It definitely appeals to the aesthetic of something that's goofy and retro, said Eric Sabatino, the only certified mo-ped mechanic in town and an employee at Ptown Scooters. "Retro-hilarious stuff like big hair and fanny packs and brightly colored shoes is becoming cool again, too," he says.
But he still insists the club is just a group of best friends.
"We all like punk rock music and being kind of dirty," he jokes. "We're all of that sort of school and mindset. We were all the weird kids with black fingernail polish in high school."
But it's still exclusive. "You're not going to be a Puddle Cutter unless you're our best friend."
"We get folks who have never ridden before and want to be comfortable," he says. People are also turning to mo-peds because of their 100-miles-to-the-gallon fuel economy and the ease of riding them.
But of the Puddle Cutters, he says they just like to have fun.
"It's one thing to go have a reading club, and its another to grab six friends, load up your bikes and go to Kalamazoo for a rally."
It definitely appeals to the aesthetic of something that's goofy and retro, said Eric Sabatino, the only certified mo-ped mechanic in town and an employee at Ptown Scooters. "Retro-hilarious stuff like big hair and fanny packs and brightly colored shoes is becoming cool again, too," he says.
But he still insists the club is just a group of best friends.
"We all like punk rock music and being kind of dirty," he jokes. "We're all of that sort of school and mindset. We were all the weird kids with black fingernail polish in high school."
But it's still exclusive. "You're not going to be a Puddle Cutter unless you're our best friend."
Juicy Tidbits from Walker Percy
Faith, I would think, is the actual belief that what one hopes for is attainable. A man dying of thirst in the desert may hope for water and have no faith that he will get it. But suppose there is a second man, who stands atop the next dune and makes a signal to him, perhaps with semaphores, signifying two H's and an O. Now the first man is entitled to faith.
I would agree with Flannery O'Connor that if she spends three hours in the morning writing, she has to spend the rest of the day getting over it. This doesn't leave much time for square dancing. Bourbon is better anyhow.
From an Interview by Robyn Leary, 1984
I would agree with Flannery O'Connor that if she spends three hours in the morning writing, she has to spend the rest of the day getting over it. This doesn't leave much time for square dancing. Bourbon is better anyhow.
From an Interview by Robyn Leary, 1984
Sir Edward Strachey's Introduction to Lear's Nonsense Songs and Stories
By Sir Edward Strachey, Bart.
What is Nonsense? I know when you do not ask me. I know that in infancy it is as the very air we breathe; that it cheers and strengthens us in the long weary working ways of manhood; and brightens and gladdens our old age. But how can I bring it within the words of a definition? If the question is pressed, I must answer it with another. What is Sense? Sense is the recognition, adjustment, and maintenance of the proper and fitting relations of the affairs of ordinary life. It is a constitutional tact, a keeping touch with all around it, rather than a conscious and deliberate action of the intellect. It almost seems the mental outcome and expression of our five senses; and perhaps it is for this reason, as well as because the sense of the individual always aims at keeping itself on the average level of his fellows, that we usually talk of sense as Common Sense. If we call it Good Sense, it is to remind ourselves that there is a right and a wrong in it as in everything human. But it is not Bad Sense, but Nonsense which is the proper contrary of Sense. In contradiction to the relations and harmonies of life, Nonsense sets itself to discover and bring forward the incongruities of all things within and without us. For while Sense is, and must remain, essentially prosaic and commonplace, Nonsense has proved not to be an equally prosaic and commonplace negative of Sense, not a mere putting forward of incongruities and absurdities, but a bringing out a new and deeper harmony of life in and through its contradictions. Nonsense in fact, in this use of the word, has shown itself to be a true work of the imagination, a child of genius, and its writing one of the Fine Arts.
From the days when Aristotle investigated the philosophy of laughter, and Aristophanes gave laughter its fullest - I might say its maddest - expression on the stage at Athens, down to this week's issue of "Punch," Nonsense has asserted and made good its claim to a place among the Arts. It has indeed pressed each of them in turn into its service. Nonsense has found the highest expression of itself in music, painting, sculpture, and every form of poetry and prose. The so-called Nonsense Club, which could count Hogarth and Cowper among its members, must have been worthy of the name, for so we have the "March to Finchley" and "John Giplin" to testify; but as far as I know, Edward Lear first openly gave Nonsense its due place and honour when he called what he wrote pure and absolute Nonsense, and gave the affix of "Nonsense" to every kind of subject; and while we may say, as Johnson did of Goldsmith, that there was hardly a subject that he did not handle, we may add with Johnson, that there was none that he did not adorn by his handling. His pen and pencil vied with each other in pouring forth new kinds of Nonsense Songs, Nonsense Stories, Nonsense Alphabets, and Nonsense Botany. His visit to India supplied him with matter for what I might call Nonsense Philology and Nonsense Politics; and ever since his death I have been able to add two new forms of his Nonsense, an Eclogue with the true classical ring, or the Heraldic Blazon of his Cat Foss; the music to which he set the "Pelican Chorus" and the "Yonghy Bonghy Bo" is worthy of the words to which it is wedded; and those who remember the humorous melancholy with which the old man sat down at the piano to play and sing those songs, will give his Nonsense Music a place too.
But "pure and absolute" as Edward Lear declared his Nonsense to be, he was no mere buffoon. His own sketch of his life, given in another part of this volume, and fully confirmed by all that he has left behind him, shows him to have been a conscientious lover of hard work, from the time when, at the age of fifteen, he began to earn "bread and cheese" by selling his "queer songs and sketches," at prices from ninepence to four shillings. This love of hard work is so characteristic of genius, that a great man has (no doubt with some exaggeration) made the capacity for taking infinite pains a definition of genius itself, while the individual humour which is shown in Lear's pictures is itself the sufficient proof of his genius. He was a landscape painter of individual power. The mere list of the books of Natural History which he illustrated; of the many and distant lands which, poor and weak in health, he visited; and his journals and records of these places, "with such a pencil, such a pen," is enormous; and all this while he was carefully cultivating and training himself in the proper work of an artist, which was the real business of his life. And while it is true that, without all this preparation, the Books of Nonsense could not have been written, it is true also that they are only the outcome and overflow of a life which was no less serious and noble than genial and loving. Like Shakespeare, he understood that all merriment should be held "within the limit of becoming mirth," and this limit he found for himself in his fondness for children, - "he loved to see little folks merry," - and in that habit of doing conscientious and finished work which characterises the true artist. He gives an account for the beginning and growth of this work in the Introduction to his "More Nonsense," to which I refer the reader. I have myself said more elsewhere on a subject which has for me a never-ending interest. I will rather give here an account of a visit paid by my son Henry to our old friend:-
"When staying at Cannes at Christmas 1882, I was invited by Mr. Lear to go over to San Remo to spend a few days with him. Mr. Lear's villa was large, and the second he had built; the first became unbearable to him from a large hotel having been planted in front of it. So he put his new house in a place by the sea, where, as he said, nothing could interrupt his light until the fishes built. The second house was exactly like the first. This, Mr. Lear explained to me, was necessary, or else Foss, his cat, might not have approved of the new villa. At breakfast the morning after I arrived, this much-thought-of, though semitailed, cat jumped in at the window and ate a piece of toast from my hand. This, I found, was considered an event; when visitors stayed at Villa Tennyson, Foss generally hid himself in the back regions; but his recognition of me was a sort of 'guinea stamp,' which seemed to please Mr. Lear greatly, and assure him of my fitness to receive the constant acts of kindness he was showing me. Being an art student, my interest in Mr. Lear's paintings was as great as in his Nonsense, and I can vividly recall the morning spent in his studio, a large room upstairs. He was then at work on a series of water-colours, and his method seemed to be to dip a brush into a large wide-necked bottle of water-colour, and when he had made one or two touches on the drawing, to carry it to the end of the room and put it on the floor, the performance being repeated until quite a row was arranged across the room. Downstairs he had a gallery lighted from the top, which had many beautiful water-colours along the walls, and one great canvas of Mount Athos, which seemed finished, but which he was always making experiments upon in white chalk. At the end of the gallery stood a huge canvas, I think it was 18 feet long, covered over with lines in squares, but no drawing on it. This, he told me, was to be a picture of Enoch Arden on the desert island. My remark that this would be a great undertaking roused Mr. Lear to declare warmly that an old man must never relax his efforts or fail to attempt great things because he was seventy. I could not, however, but feel that there was some inconsistency between this and his habitually saying he was going to live two years longer, and no more. Mr. Lear as an artist was by sympathy a pre-Raphaelite; he was not one of the original brotherhood, but considered himself a nephew of the originators of the movement, and he told me he had written to his friend, Sir John Millais, 'My dear aunt, I send you a drawing of my cat to show you how I am getting on.'
"Mr. Lear told me that, as a boy, his voice being a good one, he used to be taken to sing at artists' parties, and he was very proud of once having heard Turner (whose art he worshipped) sing a song. Apparently there was no great matter in the ditty, and the note was very untuneable, for Turner had neither voice nor ear. The refrain Mr. Lear remembered, and used to hum, chuckling to himself, 'And the world goes round a-bound, a-bound.' Mr. Lear told me that he approved of the saying of some one, 'Study the works of the Almighty first, and Turner next.' Once meeting a friend who had stayed in a house where Turner was painting, Mr. Lear anxiously asked, 'Cannot you tell me something the great man said?' 'He never said anything,' was the reply.
"Mr. Lear's household arrangements were peculiar. Three brothers, young Albanians, - sons of his old servant Giorgio, - did all the housework and cooking, and the youngest, a youth of seventeen, he looked after with fatherly care. He had taught him to say the Lord's Prayer with him every evening, telling me how he felt it his duty to prevent the young man growing up without religion, and expressing his horror of a godless world.
"Mr. Lear was by temperament melancholy; it was not the grave air assumed by a humourist to give his jokes more point, but a gentle sadness through which is humour shone. He felt keenly the neglect of the world for his pictures, but he seemed anxious to prevent all but the nearest friends seeing them. When I was staying with him, it happened to be the afternoon on which he was supposed to be at home to show his pictures to possible buyers. Early in the afternoon he told me that he sent his servants out, and was going to open the door himself. He explained that if any one came he did not like he could send them away, and also keep out Germans. He seemed to have a great horror and fear that a German might be let in by accident. What caused this fear I was not able to discover. As the afternoon advanced a ring at the door-bell was heard, and Mr. Lear went to open the door. Sitting in the gallery, I heard the voice of a lady inquiring if she could see the pictures, and I could hear Mr. Lear, in a voice of the most melancholy kind, telling her that he never showed his pictures now, he was much too ill; and from his voice and words I have no doubt the lady went away with the idea that a most unhappy man lived here. Mr. Lear came back to the gallery with much satisfaction at the working of his plan, which was so far superior to the servant's 'Not at home,' as by his method he could send away bored and let in people he liked. Later on, some friends he wanted to see came, and the melancholy old man, too ill to show his pictures, changed into the most genial host. In the evenings he often sang; the 'Yonghy Bonghy Bo' was inimitable. His voice had gone, but the refinement and expression was remarkable. His touch, too, was finished and smooth; unfortunately his playing was by ear, so that many of the really beautiful songs he composed were lost. One such still haunts me; the words, Tennyson's 'In the Garden at Swainston,' were set to most touching and appropriate music. I think he felt the words very strongly; they echoed his own feelings; he had outlived many friends, and many dead men 'walked in the walks' with him. He showed me a long frame with photographs of his friends in it; it hung in the drawing-room, but there were several blank places. He told me when a friend died his picture was taken out and put into a frame hanging in his bedroom. This melancholy never soured his mind nor stopped his matchless flow of humour and bad puns; but it coloured them all. My visit to Villa Tennyson coming to an end, on the last evening after dinner he wrote a letter for me to take back to my father, sending him the then unpublished conclusion to Mr. and Mrs. Discobbolos; and when this was done he took from a place in his bureau a number of carefully cut-out backs of old envelopes, and on these he drew, to send to my sister, then eight years old, the delightful series of heraldic pictures of his cat. After he had done seven he said it was a great shame to caricature Foss, and laid aside the pen.
"The next day ended my visit - one which I shall ever remember. The touching kindness which marked all his actions towards me I shall never forget; and I still see the tall, melancholy form, with loose clothes and round spectacles, leaning over the railings of the San Remo railway station, though happily I did not then know that I was looking on that kindly figure for the lasy time. H. S. "
In conclusion, and as counterpart to this account of the good old man and his household, let me commend to the reader the autobiographical sketches, to one of which I have already referred. They were published "By Way Of Preface" to a former edition of the present volume and are here reprinted.
Edward Strachey. Sutton Court, September 1894.
What is Nonsense? I know when you do not ask me. I know that in infancy it is as the very air we breathe; that it cheers and strengthens us in the long weary working ways of manhood; and brightens and gladdens our old age. But how can I bring it within the words of a definition? If the question is pressed, I must answer it with another. What is Sense? Sense is the recognition, adjustment, and maintenance of the proper and fitting relations of the affairs of ordinary life. It is a constitutional tact, a keeping touch with all around it, rather than a conscious and deliberate action of the intellect. It almost seems the mental outcome and expression of our five senses; and perhaps it is for this reason, as well as because the sense of the individual always aims at keeping itself on the average level of his fellows, that we usually talk of sense as Common Sense. If we call it Good Sense, it is to remind ourselves that there is a right and a wrong in it as in everything human. But it is not Bad Sense, but Nonsense which is the proper contrary of Sense. In contradiction to the relations and harmonies of life, Nonsense sets itself to discover and bring forward the incongruities of all things within and without us. For while Sense is, and must remain, essentially prosaic and commonplace, Nonsense has proved not to be an equally prosaic and commonplace negative of Sense, not a mere putting forward of incongruities and absurdities, but a bringing out a new and deeper harmony of life in and through its contradictions. Nonsense in fact, in this use of the word, has shown itself to be a true work of the imagination, a child of genius, and its writing one of the Fine Arts.
From the days when Aristotle investigated the philosophy of laughter, and Aristophanes gave laughter its fullest - I might say its maddest - expression on the stage at Athens, down to this week's issue of "Punch," Nonsense has asserted and made good its claim to a place among the Arts. It has indeed pressed each of them in turn into its service. Nonsense has found the highest expression of itself in music, painting, sculpture, and every form of poetry and prose. The so-called Nonsense Club, which could count Hogarth and Cowper among its members, must have been worthy of the name, for so we have the "March to Finchley" and "John Giplin" to testify; but as far as I know, Edward Lear first openly gave Nonsense its due place and honour when he called what he wrote pure and absolute Nonsense, and gave the affix of "Nonsense" to every kind of subject; and while we may say, as Johnson did of Goldsmith, that there was hardly a subject that he did not handle, we may add with Johnson, that there was none that he did not adorn by his handling. His pen and pencil vied with each other in pouring forth new kinds of Nonsense Songs, Nonsense Stories, Nonsense Alphabets, and Nonsense Botany. His visit to India supplied him with matter for what I might call Nonsense Philology and Nonsense Politics; and ever since his death I have been able to add two new forms of his Nonsense, an Eclogue with the true classical ring, or the Heraldic Blazon of his Cat Foss; the music to which he set the "Pelican Chorus" and the "Yonghy Bonghy Bo" is worthy of the words to which it is wedded; and those who remember the humorous melancholy with which the old man sat down at the piano to play and sing those songs, will give his Nonsense Music a place too.
But "pure and absolute" as Edward Lear declared his Nonsense to be, he was no mere buffoon. His own sketch of his life, given in another part of this volume, and fully confirmed by all that he has left behind him, shows him to have been a conscientious lover of hard work, from the time when, at the age of fifteen, he began to earn "bread and cheese" by selling his "queer songs and sketches," at prices from ninepence to four shillings. This love of hard work is so characteristic of genius, that a great man has (no doubt with some exaggeration) made the capacity for taking infinite pains a definition of genius itself, while the individual humour which is shown in Lear's pictures is itself the sufficient proof of his genius. He was a landscape painter of individual power. The mere list of the books of Natural History which he illustrated; of the many and distant lands which, poor and weak in health, he visited; and his journals and records of these places, "with such a pencil, such a pen," is enormous; and all this while he was carefully cultivating and training himself in the proper work of an artist, which was the real business of his life. And while it is true that, without all this preparation, the Books of Nonsense could not have been written, it is true also that they are only the outcome and overflow of a life which was no less serious and noble than genial and loving. Like Shakespeare, he understood that all merriment should be held "within the limit of becoming mirth," and this limit he found for himself in his fondness for children, - "he loved to see little folks merry," - and in that habit of doing conscientious and finished work which characterises the true artist. He gives an account for the beginning and growth of this work in the Introduction to his "More Nonsense," to which I refer the reader. I have myself said more elsewhere on a subject which has for me a never-ending interest. I will rather give here an account of a visit paid by my son Henry to our old friend:-
"When staying at Cannes at Christmas 1882, I was invited by Mr. Lear to go over to San Remo to spend a few days with him. Mr. Lear's villa was large, and the second he had built; the first became unbearable to him from a large hotel having been planted in front of it. So he put his new house in a place by the sea, where, as he said, nothing could interrupt his light until the fishes built. The second house was exactly like the first. This, Mr. Lear explained to me, was necessary, or else Foss, his cat, might not have approved of the new villa. At breakfast the morning after I arrived, this much-thought-of, though semitailed, cat jumped in at the window and ate a piece of toast from my hand. This, I found, was considered an event; when visitors stayed at Villa Tennyson, Foss generally hid himself in the back regions; but his recognition of me was a sort of 'guinea stamp,' which seemed to please Mr. Lear greatly, and assure him of my fitness to receive the constant acts of kindness he was showing me. Being an art student, my interest in Mr. Lear's paintings was as great as in his Nonsense, and I can vividly recall the morning spent in his studio, a large room upstairs. He was then at work on a series of water-colours, and his method seemed to be to dip a brush into a large wide-necked bottle of water-colour, and when he had made one or two touches on the drawing, to carry it to the end of the room and put it on the floor, the performance being repeated until quite a row was arranged across the room. Downstairs he had a gallery lighted from the top, which had many beautiful water-colours along the walls, and one great canvas of Mount Athos, which seemed finished, but which he was always making experiments upon in white chalk. At the end of the gallery stood a huge canvas, I think it was 18 feet long, covered over with lines in squares, but no drawing on it. This, he told me, was to be a picture of Enoch Arden on the desert island. My remark that this would be a great undertaking roused Mr. Lear to declare warmly that an old man must never relax his efforts or fail to attempt great things because he was seventy. I could not, however, but feel that there was some inconsistency between this and his habitually saying he was going to live two years longer, and no more. Mr. Lear as an artist was by sympathy a pre-Raphaelite; he was not one of the original brotherhood, but considered himself a nephew of the originators of the movement, and he told me he had written to his friend, Sir John Millais, 'My dear aunt, I send you a drawing of my cat to show you how I am getting on.'
"Mr. Lear told me that, as a boy, his voice being a good one, he used to be taken to sing at artists' parties, and he was very proud of once having heard Turner (whose art he worshipped) sing a song. Apparently there was no great matter in the ditty, and the note was very untuneable, for Turner had neither voice nor ear. The refrain Mr. Lear remembered, and used to hum, chuckling to himself, 'And the world goes round a-bound, a-bound.' Mr. Lear told me that he approved of the saying of some one, 'Study the works of the Almighty first, and Turner next.' Once meeting a friend who had stayed in a house where Turner was painting, Mr. Lear anxiously asked, 'Cannot you tell me something the great man said?' 'He never said anything,' was the reply.
"Mr. Lear's household arrangements were peculiar. Three brothers, young Albanians, - sons of his old servant Giorgio, - did all the housework and cooking, and the youngest, a youth of seventeen, he looked after with fatherly care. He had taught him to say the Lord's Prayer with him every evening, telling me how he felt it his duty to prevent the young man growing up without religion, and expressing his horror of a godless world.
"Mr. Lear was by temperament melancholy; it was not the grave air assumed by a humourist to give his jokes more point, but a gentle sadness through which is humour shone. He felt keenly the neglect of the world for his pictures, but he seemed anxious to prevent all but the nearest friends seeing them. When I was staying with him, it happened to be the afternoon on which he was supposed to be at home to show his pictures to possible buyers. Early in the afternoon he told me that he sent his servants out, and was going to open the door himself. He explained that if any one came he did not like he could send them away, and also keep out Germans. He seemed to have a great horror and fear that a German might be let in by accident. What caused this fear I was not able to discover. As the afternoon advanced a ring at the door-bell was heard, and Mr. Lear went to open the door. Sitting in the gallery, I heard the voice of a lady inquiring if she could see the pictures, and I could hear Mr. Lear, in a voice of the most melancholy kind, telling her that he never showed his pictures now, he was much too ill; and from his voice and words I have no doubt the lady went away with the idea that a most unhappy man lived here. Mr. Lear came back to the gallery with much satisfaction at the working of his plan, which was so far superior to the servant's 'Not at home,' as by his method he could send away bored and let in people he liked. Later on, some friends he wanted to see came, and the melancholy old man, too ill to show his pictures, changed into the most genial host. In the evenings he often sang; the 'Yonghy Bonghy Bo' was inimitable. His voice had gone, but the refinement and expression was remarkable. His touch, too, was finished and smooth; unfortunately his playing was by ear, so that many of the really beautiful songs he composed were lost. One such still haunts me; the words, Tennyson's 'In the Garden at Swainston,' were set to most touching and appropriate music. I think he felt the words very strongly; they echoed his own feelings; he had outlived many friends, and many dead men 'walked in the walks' with him. He showed me a long frame with photographs of his friends in it; it hung in the drawing-room, but there were several blank places. He told me when a friend died his picture was taken out and put into a frame hanging in his bedroom. This melancholy never soured his mind nor stopped his matchless flow of humour and bad puns; but it coloured them all. My visit to Villa Tennyson coming to an end, on the last evening after dinner he wrote a letter for me to take back to my father, sending him the then unpublished conclusion to Mr. and Mrs. Discobbolos; and when this was done he took from a place in his bureau a number of carefully cut-out backs of old envelopes, and on these he drew, to send to my sister, then eight years old, the delightful series of heraldic pictures of his cat. After he had done seven he said it was a great shame to caricature Foss, and laid aside the pen.
"The next day ended my visit - one which I shall ever remember. The touching kindness which marked all his actions towards me I shall never forget; and I still see the tall, melancholy form, with loose clothes and round spectacles, leaning over the railings of the San Remo railway station, though happily I did not then know that I was looking on that kindly figure for the lasy time. H. S. "
In conclusion, and as counterpart to this account of the good old man and his household, let me commend to the reader the autobiographical sketches, to one of which I have already referred. They were published "By Way Of Preface" to a former edition of the present volume and are here reprinted.
Edward Strachey. Sutton Court, September 1894.
Monadnock
PRONUNCIATION:(muh-NAD-nok)
MEANING:noun: An isolated hill or mountain that, having resisted erosion, rises above a plain.
ETYMOLOGY:After Mount Monadnock, a peak in New Hampshire, whose name in Algonquian means isolated mountain. Also see peneplain.
USAGE:"Almost every Concord street has one: a household that leaves a monadnock of trash bags beside the road each week."Pay-to-throw is Right Way For Concord to Go; Concord Monitor (New Hampshire); Feb 1, 2007.
From Anu Garg's wonderful Word A Day
MEANING:noun: An isolated hill or mountain that, having resisted erosion, rises above a plain.
ETYMOLOGY:After Mount Monadnock, a peak in New Hampshire, whose name in Algonquian means isolated mountain. Also see peneplain.
USAGE:"Almost every Concord street has one: a household that leaves a monadnock of trash bags beside the road each week."Pay-to-throw is Right Way For Concord to Go; Concord Monitor (New Hampshire); Feb 1, 2007.
From Anu Garg's wonderful Word A Day
The Temple of Vespasian
The purpose of this analytique is to provide a way of looking at ancient buildings and taking them apart in such a way that we understand why and how they were put together, and how their construction demonstrates their purpose. In this analytique I attempted to analyze the Temple of Vespasian in the Forum Romanum. The one whose only remains are three columns...
Italians vote for ugliest English words
By Nick Squires in Rome Last Updated: 5:31PM BST 09 Sep 2008
For years it was the French who worked themselves into a lather over their native tongue being infected by English.
Now it is their southern neighbours across the Alps who are wringing their hands at the growing incursion of Anglo-Saxon words and phrases into every day use.
From 'il weekend' to 'lo stress' and 'le leadership', Italians increasingly sprinkle their conversations with English terms, some of them comically mangled and bizarre sounding to a native English speaker.
'Baby parking', for example, is a strange conflation which means child care centre or nursery.
A 'baby gang', on the other hand, is a more sinister construct. It means a group of young criminals or hoodlums.
As with the French and their use of Franglais, Italians sometimes throw in English words to appear worldly and cosmopolitan, and at other times to describe things slightly alien to the Italian mindset, from 'il fitness' to 'il full immersion training'.
But now a cultural guardian of the Italian language is saying 'basta!' – enough.
The Dante Alighieri Society, a less strident equivalent of France's Academie Francaise which promotes Italian culture and language around the world, has called on Italians to reject Anglo-Saxon linguistic imports, 'Anglitaliano', and return to the true lingua italiana.
Over the last four months the society, named after the Florentine poet Dante, author of The Divine Comedy and regarded as the father of the Italian language, asked visitors to its website to nominate their least favourite Anglicisms.
The results judge the ugliest imports to be 'weekend', 'welfare' and 'OK', followed by 'briefing', 'mission', 'know how', 'shampoo' and 'cool'.
The worlds of business and politics contribute many of the alien words, from 'question time' to 'premier' and 'bipartisan'.
Other English words regularly used by Italians which escaped the ire of the society's correspondents include 'sexy', 'webmaster' and 'water', short for water closet or lavatory.
"Italians unite against il weekend", the society declared on its website. "In short, it is clear that Italians are calling for more respect and more protection for correct language."
Many Italians are unlikely to be swayed by such exhortations.
"I don't think it matters if we use English words," said Alessandra, 25, a secretary in a Rome travel agency. "It's part of globalisation. Often it's faster – like using 'il weekend' instead of 'fine settimana'."
But her boss, Maria, disagreed. "People think it's chic to use English words but I don't like it at all. I want to speak either Italian or English, not an Esperanto mix of the two. It's important to keep language clean."
For years it was the French who worked themselves into a lather over their native tongue being infected by English.
Now it is their southern neighbours across the Alps who are wringing their hands at the growing incursion of Anglo-Saxon words and phrases into every day use.
From 'il weekend' to 'lo stress' and 'le leadership', Italians increasingly sprinkle their conversations with English terms, some of them comically mangled and bizarre sounding to a native English speaker.
'Baby parking', for example, is a strange conflation which means child care centre or nursery.
A 'baby gang', on the other hand, is a more sinister construct. It means a group of young criminals or hoodlums.
As with the French and their use of Franglais, Italians sometimes throw in English words to appear worldly and cosmopolitan, and at other times to describe things slightly alien to the Italian mindset, from 'il fitness' to 'il full immersion training'.
But now a cultural guardian of the Italian language is saying 'basta!' – enough.
The Dante Alighieri Society, a less strident equivalent of France's Academie Francaise which promotes Italian culture and language around the world, has called on Italians to reject Anglo-Saxon linguistic imports, 'Anglitaliano', and return to the true lingua italiana.
Over the last four months the society, named after the Florentine poet Dante, author of The Divine Comedy and regarded as the father of the Italian language, asked visitors to its website to nominate their least favourite Anglicisms.
The results judge the ugliest imports to be 'weekend', 'welfare' and 'OK', followed by 'briefing', 'mission', 'know how', 'shampoo' and 'cool'.
The worlds of business and politics contribute many of the alien words, from 'question time' to 'premier' and 'bipartisan'.
Other English words regularly used by Italians which escaped the ire of the society's correspondents include 'sexy', 'webmaster' and 'water', short for water closet or lavatory.
"Italians unite against il weekend", the society declared on its website. "In short, it is clear that Italians are calling for more respect and more protection for correct language."
Many Italians are unlikely to be swayed by such exhortations.
"I don't think it matters if we use English words," said Alessandra, 25, a secretary in a Rome travel agency. "It's part of globalisation. Often it's faster – like using 'il weekend' instead of 'fine settimana'."
But her boss, Maria, disagreed. "People think it's chic to use English words but I don't like it at all. I want to speak either Italian or English, not an Esperanto mix of the two. It's important to keep language clean."
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