Documentary Photography Project | Open Society Foundations (OSF)

Documentary Photography Project | Open Society Foundations (OSF).

anaphylaxis e-training for first aid

anaphylaxis e-training for first aid.

PAPER MAKING 16…

PAPER MAKING 1678 from John Evelyn’s diary at Project Gutenberg:
“24th August, 1678. I went to see my Lord of St. Alban’s house, at
Byfleet, an old, large building. Thence, to the papermills, where I
found them making a coarse white paper. They cull the rags which are
linen for white paper, woolen for brown; then they stamp them in troughs
to a pap, with pestles, or hammers, like the powder mills, then put it
into a vessel of water, in which they dip a frame closely wired with
wire as small as a hair and as close as a weaver’s reed; on this they
take up the pap, the superfluous water draining through the wire; this
they dexterously turning, shake out like a pancake on a smooth board
between two pieces of flannel, then press it between a great press, the
flannel sucking out the moisture; then, taking it out, they ply and dry
it on strings, as they dry linen in the laundry; then dip it in alum
water, lastly, polish and make it up in quires. They put some gum in the
water in which they macerate the rags. The mark we find on the sheets is
formed in the wire.”

That year GRENADIERS appeared; getting their name from their specific skill as grenade throwers, “each man having a small pouch of powder,” wrote Evelyn.

Reading John Evelyn’s diaries at gutenberg.org. I am googling everything that i’d like to know more about. This is how I’ve become a fan of a guy named MONCK who soothed the souls of the English so they could calm down after Cromwell’s death and find their way into the future without, at least, further bloodshed.

 

Reading Stephen King’s THE LANGOLIERS

Reading a Stephen King thriller, I fell asleep. Yay I was in the Arctic, looking down from my favourite place: space. Before me was the achingly blue sky that Richard told me about on the phone last week. In it marched a procession of cumulus clouds, as white and puffy as any dream can make them. Beautiful in the sunlight, glowing with refracted light as they sped by across the northern horizon.

   Something wasn’t right. It seemed as one cloud nudged another, as they will, bits  disintegrated like glass and plummeted down toward earth. I watched carefully. Surely it can’t happen like that; I must be dreaming, I thought, watching for more. A small fluffy cloud went to sail under a huge one. Its upper mast met the lowering plains of the monster above, and the small cloud disintegrated before my eyes in a shower of sun-candescent icy splinters. It fell like a dissiumulated rock and disappeared way below somewhere on earth.

     My guide got a kick out of the look on my face. It said, “It’s so cold up here, that the outer edges of the clouds freeze into a carapace (a word from the Kingsley Amis memoir I read yesterday). The slightest touch as they fly along, and things like this happen. It’s a regular phenomenon, but you have to be here to see it.”

     Huh! I woke up and read more of King’s thriller, amazed at how he pushes the boundaries of suspense without letting up. I follow, feeling corny and gullible. “He’d better make all this suspense worth it in the end,” I’m thinking.

Amazon.com: Customer Discussions: Giving up

The preachers said, “Feelings are of the devil. Ignore their messages.” Feeling good meant one’s conscience was clear; it resulted from utter surrender as a conduit of God. Good feelings from any other source were merely satanic honey waiting for the lazy bee who wanted a short cut: it wouldn’t last. When I lost my faith, that part of the programming stood me in good stead as a default. Newly aware and at the same time lost in a world I couldn’t begin to comprehend without the familiar buttresses of faith to rest upon, experiment taught me that it seemed okay to search for truth. One could live with that as a goal. I lost track of that search when I married into a culture that taught and praised mask-wearing according to its mores. So I hid for 15 years behind mine, testing to see if the power of love would make the commitment equally satisfying. I was dumped despite faithful adherence to the mores, where everybody was supposed to hide their injuries behind a familiar set of manners and pre-ordained script. How boring. How hurtful to the heart. Dumped and clueless, at last I reached out and hands were ready to clasp mine with guidance and help. The classical bottom reached. From there, I got back on the search for truth track and never let go again. Even happiness came thru satisfaction at seeing lights of hope through hard, hard digging. Hard digging.

via Amazon.com: Customer Discussions: Giving up.

Four Queens – Nancy Goldstone – Book Clubs – Penguin Group (USA)

Four Queens – Nancy Goldstone – Book Clubs – Penguin Group (USA).

In 1248 Louis of France crusaded and seemingly won Jerusalem. Here is an interview with the author about the “eerie similarities” between his crusade and the American activities in Iraq seven centuries later. Goldstone’s sarcastic takes on her research are hilarious, btw – Monty Python is not at all dead. I recommend it for some provocative reading, altho I wonder what fellow historians think of her inhabiting the story she writes. What do you think?

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Facebook.“It is Friday, so  for the rest of today, do the work in front of yourself as if it is saving lives.” from changeyourlife.com