DOROTHY CHURSIN ~ January 13

Today is my former upstairs neighbor's birthday. She now lives in a retirement home down the Peninsula in San Mateo.

Dorothy (Dot) Chursin is now ninety years old. She lived on the third floor for fifty plus years. My dogs Bette and Renzo adored her. They know her name. It means treats. Each morning, or whenever I was disciplined enough to be downstairs before work and Dorothy was home, she tossed dog biscuits from her third story window. All the dogs in the building loved her!

A Birthday in Edinburgh

Today is my friend Martin Krupa's birthday. He stayed in the Venetian room in my flat for two summers while on holiday from graduate school. He was working on his doctorate from the University in Bratislava, Slovakia. He works at a fine hotel in Edinburgh, where he lived with his sister, just recently licensed as a medical doctor.  I met Martin through my Polish friend Adam.

Martin was best friend to my three dogs, dear Rose, Prince Rupert, and Renzo. In fact, I called her 'dear' Rose because that's what Martin always called her. Unfortunately she left us just before Thanksgiving two years ago. He also was a very special friend to my Rupert. For the previous two summers Martin had an early job at the Chancellor Hotel on Powell Street near Union Square. When he got off work in the afternoon, he'd come home and take the dogs to Dolores Park and play ball with Rupert for several hours at a time. Of course, Rupert adored Martin. Renzo got to know him when Martin house sat for me during my holiday in Italy three years ago last September and October.

six years ago, I was getting ready to go on a music holiday with Chanticleer to Vienna, Prague and Budapest. I flew into Vienna a few days early, took a bus to Bratislava, and spent the weekend with Martin. Bratislava is a charming city -- the capital of Slovakia. It was Alexander Dubcek's hometown. It has a handsomely restored historical area.

My weekend visit included a Sunday afternoon and evening in Vienna, which is very close by train. We had a pleasant visit with two of his Viennese friends. After returning to Bratislava Sunday evening, I went back to Vienna on Monday morning, checked into my hotel, and had a delightful visit to Schloss Schonbrunn before joining the Chanticleer tour.

Martin is a good guy and I wish him well on his birthday! His friend Susan from the Chancellor Hotel extends her birthday greetings as well!

MILLARD FILLMORE ~ January 7, 1800 ~ March 8, 1874

Millard Fillmore (January 7, 1800 – March 8, 1874) was the 13th President of the United States, serving from 1850 until 1853 and the last member of the Whig Party to hold that office. He was the second Vice President to assume the presidency upon the death of a sitting president, succeeding Zachary Taylor, who died of what is thought to be acute gastroenteritis. Fillmore was never elected president; after serving out Taylor's term, he failed to gain the nomination of the Whigs for president in the 1852 presidential election, and, four years later, in the 1856 presidential election, he again failed to win election as the Know Nothing Party and Whig candidate.

image & text:wikipedia.com

Millard Fillmore has a reputation of being one of the worst U.S. Presidents. At least, he has an interesting street named after him in San Francisco. Lower Fillmore has been revitalized and is trying to make a comeback as a Jazz center. Fillmore Auditorium is the site of many top rated rock concerts. Upper Fillmore is a fashionable shopping area in San Francisco. The most notable accomplishment in the Millard Fillmore administration was probably the opening of Japan by Commodore Matthew Perry.

Murano Chandelier & Epiphany Creche Sagas

After we came back from Carnevale in 2003, Dennis decided he wanted a Murano chandelier for the front bedroom, which he had just painted yellow and had a Venetian theme.

Finally getting the chandelier turned out to be a real saga. At one point we had boxes with parts of five separate chandeliers in our dining room, and only half of our own special order. The Italians may produce splendid glass, but their shipping practices leave much room for improvement. Even so— after sorting out the shipping mess and forwarding the various chandeliers to their proper recipients – Dennis managed to persuade the manufacturer to give us one of the extra chandeliers, which replaced the damaged Czech copy of a Waterford in our dining room.

The multi-color-flowered chandelier in the yellow bedroom is really extravagant, even after we simplified it. Where we ordered clear glass with a little gold for the basic frame, the original had had pink and blue! It was based on a famous chandelier in Ca’ Rezonico, one of Dennis' favorite palazzos.

In his final year Dennis had looked at hand carved Italian crèches online. Advent before last, in his memory, I ordered the complete set he had wanted. (The picture above is the Holy Family-- only a small part of the complete set.) It was shipped from Munich.

I guess Bavarians aren’t much better than Italians. Half of my order went to a very nice man in Maryland, who telephoned me after getting my name and address from the packing list. I had him ship it Express-Mail and received the crèche in time for Epiphany. At least I was reimbursed from the supplier in Munich. Have a happy Epiphany!

###

Today is also the birthday of my first boyfriend, Stuart Kellogg. We met back at Yale. He had a wondrous quarter-century relationship with Fernando Torres, whom I have never met in person, but have carried on a lovely email and telephone friendship after Stuart died a year ago last August. Stuart and Fer got together almost the same time as did Dennis and I.

ISAAC NEWTON ~ January 4, 1643 ~ March 31, 1727

Sir Isaac Newton FRS (4 January 1643 – 31 March 1727 [OS: 25 December 1642 – 20 March 1727]) was an English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher, alchemist, and theologian who is perceived and considered by a substantial number of scholars and the general public as one of the most influential men in history. His 1687 publication of the Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (usually called the Principia) is considered to be among the most influential books in the history of science, laying the groundwork for most of classical mechanics. In this work, Newton described universal gravitation and the three laws of motion which dominated the scientific view of the physical universe for the next three centuries. Newton showed that the motions of objects on Earth and of celestial bodies are governed by the same set of natural laws by demonstrating the consistency between Kepler's laws of planetary motion and his theory of gravitation, thus removing the last doubts about heliocentrism and advancing the scientific revolution.

Newton also built the first practical reflecting telescope and developed a theory of colour based on the observation that a prism decomposes white light into the many colours that form the visible spectrum. He also formulated an empirical law of cooling and studied the speed of sound.

In mathematics, Newton shares the credit with Gottfried Leibniz for the development of the differential and integral calculus. He also demonstrated the generalised binomial theorem, developed the so-called "Newton's method" for approximating the zeroes of a function, and contributed to the study of power series.

Newton remains influential to scientists, as demonstrated by a 2005 survey of scientists and the general public in Britain's Royal Society asking who had the greater effect on the history of science, Newton or Albert Einstein. Newton was deemed to have made the greater overall contribution to science.

Newton was also highly religious, though an unorthodox Christian, writing more on Biblical hermeneutics than the natural science he is remembered for today.

Image & text:wikipedia.com

BROOKLYN BRIDGE ~ Construction Begins January 3, 1870

The Brooklyn Bridge is one of the oldest suspension bridges in the United States. Completed in 1883, it connects the New York City boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn by spanning the East River. At 5,989 feet (1825 m), it was the longest suspension bridge in the world from its opening to 1903, the first steel-wire suspension bridge.

Originally referred to as the New York and Brooklyn Bridge, it was dubbed the Brooklyn Bridge in an 1867 letter to the editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, and formally so named by the city government in 1915. Since its opening, it has become an iconic part of the New York skyline. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1964.

Construction

The Brooklyn Bridge opened to great fanfare in May 1883. The names of John Roebling, Washington Roebling, and Emily Warren Roebling are inscribed on the structure as its builders.

Construction began on January 3, 1870. The Brooklyn Bridge was completed thirteen years later and was opened for use on May 24, 1883. The Brooklyn Bridge might not have been built had it not been for the assistance of Emily Warren Roebling, who provided the critical written link between her husband, Washington Roebling (the Chief Engineer), and engineers on-site. Most history books cite Washington Roebling's father John Roebling and Washington Roebling as the bridge’s builders. Early into construction, however, John Roebling’s foot slipped into a group of pylons from the shake of an incoming ferry. This badly crushed his toes, causing those toes to be amputated, leaving him incapacitated; he later died of an infection related to this injury and leaving his son, Washington Roebling, in charge of the bridge.

The actual construction started under the younger Roebling. Not long after taking charge of the bridge, Washington Roebling suffered a paralyzing injury as well, the result of decompression sickness. This condition plagued many of the underwater workers, in different capacities, as the condition was relatively unknown at the time and in fact was first called "caisson disease" by the project physician Dr. Andrew Smith. With both men out of commission, Emily Warren Roebling provided critical assistance in providing the communications between her husband and the engineers on-site. Under her husband’s guidance, Emily had studied higher mathematics, the calculations of catenary curves, the strengths of materials, bridge specifications, and the intricacies of cable construction. She spent the next 11 years assisting Washington Roebling in the supervision of the bridge’s construction.

The opening ceremony was attended by several thousand people and many ships were present in the East Bay for the occasion. President Chester Arthur and New York Mayor Franklin Edson crossed the bridge to celebratory cannon fire and were greeted by Brooklyn Mayor Seth Low when they reached the Brooklyn-side tower. Arthur shook hands with Washington Roebling at Roebling's home, after the ceremony. Washington Roebling was unable to attend the ceremony but held a celebratory banquet at his house on the day of the bridge opening. Further festivity included the performance of a band, gunfire from ships, and a fireworks display.
On that first day, a total of 1,800 vehicles and 150,300 people crossed what was then the only land passage between Manhattan and Brooklyn. The bridge's main span over the East River is 1,595 feet 6 inches (486.3 m). The bridge cost $15.5 million to build and approximately 27 people died during its construction.

One week after the opening, on May 30, 1883, a rumor that the Bridge was going to collapse caused a stampede, which crushed and killed at least twelve people. On May 17, 1884, P. T. Barnum helped to squelch doubts about the bridge's stability—while publicizing his famous circus—when one of his most famous attractions, Jumbo, led a parade of 21 elephants over the Brooklyn Bridge.

At the time it opened, it was the longest suspension bridge in the world — 50% longer than any previously built — and it has become a treasured landmark. For several years the towers were the tallest structures in the Western Hemisphere. Since the 1980s, it has been floodlit at night to highlight its architectural features. The towers are built of limestone, granite, and Rosendale cement. Their architectural style is neo-Gothic, with characteristic pointed arches above the passageways through the stone towers.

The bridge was designed by German-born John Augustus Roebling in Trenton, New Jersey. Roebling had earlier designed and constructed other suspension bridges, such as Roebling's Delaware Aqueduct in Lackawaxen, Pennsylvania, the John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the Waco Suspension Bridge in Waco, Texas, that served as the engineering prototypes for the final design.

During surveying for the East River Bridge project, Roebling's foot was badly injured by a ferry, pinning it against a pylon; within a few weeks, he died of tetanus. His son, Washington, succeeded him, but in 1872 was stricken with caisson disease (decompression sickness, commonly known as "the bends"), due to working in compressed air in caissons. The occurrence of the disease in the caisson workers caused him to halt construction of the Manhattan side of the tower 30 feet (10 m) short of bedrock when soil tests underneath the caisson found bedrock to be even deeper than expected. Today, the Manhattan tower rests only on sand. Washington's wife, Emily Warren Roebling, became his aide, learning engineering and communicating his wishes to the on-site assistants. When the bridge opened, she was the first person to cross it. Washington Roebling rarely visited the site again.
At the time the bridge was built, the aerodynamics of bridge building had not been worked out. Bridges were not tested in wind tunnels until the 1950s — well after the collapse of the original Tacoma Narrows Bridge (Galloping Gertie) in 1940. It is therefore fortunate that the open truss structure supporting the deck is by its nature less subject to aerodynamic problems. Roebling designed a bridge and truss system that was six times as strong as he thought it needed to be. Because of this, the Brooklyn Bridge is still standing when many of the bridges built around the same time have vanished into history and been replaced. This is also in spite of the substitution of inferior quality wire in the cabling supplied by the contractor J. Lloyd Haigh — by the time it was discovered, it was too late to replace the cabling that had already been constructed. Roebling determined that the poorer wire would leave the bridge four rather than six times as strong as necessary, so it was eventually allowed to stand, with the addition of 250 cables. Diagonal cables were installed from the towers to the deck, intended to stiffen the bridge. They turned out to be unnecessary, but were kept for their distinctive beauty.

Image & text:wikipedia.com

Last June when I was back East for my Yale College reunion, I at last rode a bike back and forth over the Brooklyn Bridge. That was the day after I had mistakenly walked over the Manhattan Bridge after meeting a friend in Brooklyn. I was confused by the signs and didn't realize until too late that I was on the wrong bridge. I couldn't go back because I was late for a lunch date with my friend Mary Ellen. Fortunately I found the entrance on the Manhattan side the following day and rented a bike.

RECONQUISTA ~ JANUARY 2, 1492 CE

1492 – The Reconquista ended when the forces of Queen Isabella I of Castile and King Ferdinand II of Aragon defeated the armies of Abu 'abd-Allah Muhammad XII of Granada, the last of the Moorish rulers.

The Reconquista (a Spanish and Portuguese word for "Reconquest"; Arabic: الاسترداد al-Istirdād, "Recapturing") was a period of 800 years in the Middle Ages during which several Christian kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula succeeded in retaking (and repopulating) the Iberian Peninsula from the Muslims. The Islamic conquest of the Christian Visigothic kingdom in the eighth century (begun 710–12) extended over almost the entire peninsula (except major parts of Galicia, the Asturias, Cantabria and the Basque Country). By the thirteenth century all that remained was the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada, to be conquered in 1492, bringing the entire peninsula under Christian leadership.

The Reconquista began immediately after the Islamic conquest and passed through major phases before its completion. The formation of the Kingdom of Asturias under Pelagius and the Battle of Covadonga in 722 were major formative events. Charlemagne (768–814) reconquered the western Pyrenees and Septimania and formed a Marca Hispanica to defend the border between Francia and the Muslims. After the advent of the Crusades, much of the ideology of Reconquista was subsumed within the wider context of Crusading. Even before the Crusades, however, soldiers from elsewhere in Europe had been travelling to Iberia to participate in the Reconquista as an act of Christian penitence.

Throughout this period the situation in Iberia was more nuanced and complicated than any ideology would allow. Christian and Muslim rulers commonly fought amongst themselves and interfaith alliances were not unusual. The fighting along the Christian-Muslim frontier was punctuated by periods of prolonged peace and truces. The Muslims did not cease attempting to reconquer their lost territories. Blurring the sides even further were mercenaries who simply fought for whomever paid more.

The Reconquista was essentially completed in 1238, when the only remaining Muslim state in Iberia, the Emirate of Granada, became a vassal of the Christian King of Castile. This arrangement lasted for 250 years until the Spanish launched the Granada War of 1492, which finally expelled all Muslim authority from Spain. The last Muslim ruler of Granada, Muhammad XII, better known as Boabdil, surrendered his kingdom to Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile, the Catholic Monarchs (los Reyes Católicos).

Image & text:wikipedia.com