Number 85 - To see a tree asmiling.

As always, thanks.

Another bit of a change. I had mentioned England's Richard the Lionheart being captured in the city of Vienna. He was held at a Castle prison at Durnstein - up river a bit from Vienna. Here is the ruins of that prison.


A bit up river from Durnstein is the most beautiful Church I have seen in Europe and there are a lot. This is Stift Melk.

Dan, these pics are marvelous!

You guys looks so good and happy, and the architecture is beautiful!

Thanks so much for sharing.

Looking at the next set of photos now.

Well, the Wilderness Act was specifically designed to protect wild areas and decreasing infringement.

We can't have it all, and yet people who wish to visit remote areas should use all precautions in keeping themselves safe from the elements and wildlife.

In Alaska, there have been more and more incidences of grizzlies with cubs attacking campsites. Very sad indeed. Yet people must begin taking seriously the reality that animals need space and will defend their territory.

Thanks Stradee --- The pics are from our last visit 7 yrs ago. We don't look like that now and my Patti is almost totally bedridden so we don't get out anymore. Her MS is relentlessly advancing. About the only thing I can do outside the house is mow the grass and go to get groceries - and have to do that in stages in order to take care of Patti. No one visits and no one calls except for one of her life long friends. Oh, well.

More pics will be coming!!

And, of course, more trees are asmiling.

Can't wait for the pics. Sorry to hear about the steady advancement of the MS. She is lucky to have you and the old friend.

Very nice photo of you, Dan. Handsome devil...

Luv the Belvedere Gate, and of course the architecture of the museum stunning.

Wow, not a good day for a drive...sad reminder.

Great photos!

Marvelous shots of the ruins and Church! You and Pattie are so fortunate to have visited those marvelous sites together and with friends.

Dan, if sue and i lived closer, we'd visit you and your Pattie, and take over the kitchen for a few hours each week.

So glad Pattie has you to love and care for her. Bless your heart.

Thanks a million Stradee and sumac........... We three and the ghost Wildclickers who still click can save another tree each day. We are the Ones.......

Oky Doky - I showed you the pic of the gate at Belvedere - here is the front (Sorry I clipped off the left side, but it's the same as the right side that you see in the photo.


Here's a pic of the front entrance up closer.....

Here's a shot of the very last remaining piece of the wall that surrounded the "Old City". The wall was removed a long time ago and the site of it is a street called "The Ring" by the locals. Of particular interest is the building you see on top of the Wall. That was one of the homes (an apartment) of Beethoven and he composed many of his most famous music there. I've been inside the apartment which is a museum now.


Here is a pic of the house just behind the Beethoven building above. You can see a tip of it above the red auto on the right of the others and atop the wall.
It is wives tale history that the musician Schubert was woooooooing three sisters who lived in this house --------- all at the same time!!!!!!! However, there is no evidence to fact the tales. Except it is the theme of one of Schubert's concerts. Who knows???
Anyway, these days (for tourists only) it's commonly referred to as "The Three Sisters House". Big Grin - Who knows???


By the way, it was a major scene in the old movie, "The Third Man" --- which was made in Vienna soon after the WWII and in the movie the rubble is real......!!

I don't remember if I showed you the artwork pic I took in Vienna. It's the original drawing of the famous 'Hands Praying' that you and everyone sees everywhere on earth. Here's the URL to the site for additional info...
http://www.barefootsworld.net/albrechtdurer.html

Here's the pic I took in Vienna of the original.


It was hung next to a wonderful Da'Vinci........... Great place to roam around.........Vienna..........and the coffee and pastries !!! Yummmmmy.

Hello all.

Cleicked.

All clicked and hello to you Danon.

Well, i hope to God it's praying for me because whilst painting the wall behind the garage, noticed three boards needing replacing, AND the damned door leading from the laundry room to the outside is dragging on my newly painted and restored deck!

distraught

The door is one piece set in the door jam surrounded by fittings i have no clue how to get out of the frigging wall...so if i tear everything out and toss the mess over the fence, i'll be sleeping in the laundry room warding off critters, and only God knows if Home Depot carries the supplies i'll need (door and door jam) plus will the damned thing measure out!!!

sigh

Our Father Who Art In Heaven..........

Stradee, if there's a crawl space under the spot where the door is you can use jacks to relevel the wall and then the door won't scrape the deck. That's the easy solution.

Dan, thanks for the good suggestion!

The dynamics btwn the door jam, decking, and house siding, will be a lot more trouble and expense than if i hire someone who can either fix the door, or install a new unit.

Once that's completed, then most if not all of the house repairs are done! Just a few more areas of exterior paint is all! Hurray!

The interior walls and paint begin in the Fall. Never ends. LOL

Stradee, you and I will be doing interior painting at the same time. We can commiserate with one another.


August 28, 2010

Egg Factory

By VERLYN KLINKENBORG

On Friday, most of the country’s major newspapers, including The Times, featured reports from a small town called Clarion, Iowa. Just outside Clarion are the egg operations, owned by the DeCoster family, at the heart of the salmonella outbreak. The factory — no point calling it a farm — called Wright County Egg, is the source of 380 million of the more than 500 million recalled eggs.

I grew up in Clarion. My family lived there from 1954 to 1963 during what now looks like a golden era for American farming. When I was back a couple of years ago, I noted the most evident change, a significant population of Mexican workers. I hoped that they were able to love Clarion as much as I did. It’s unlikely, because I also saw where they worked.

When I was young, I thought I grasped the immensity of the Iowa landscape. The immensity of the soybean and corn fields has only grown because so many smaller farms have vanished as a result of government farm policy, which rewards economic concentration. As I turned off Highway 3 east of town, I saw that there was a newer immensity, the egg factories — an endless row of faceless buildings, as bland as a compound of colossal storage units but with the air of a prison.

It wasn’t simply that the operation is out of scale with the Iowa landscape. It is out of scale with any landscape, except perhaps the industrial districts of Los Angeles County. What shocked me most was the thought that this is where the logic of industrial farming gets us. Instead of people on the land, committed to the welfare of the agricultural enterprise and the resources that make it possible, there was this horror — a place where millions of chickens are crowded in tiny cages and hundreds of laborers work in dire conditions.

It takes only a little investigation to learn how bad things have been inside those buildings. The list of offenses for which the DeCosters and their farms have been fined in Iowa and Maine only begins with hiring children and illegal immigrants.

In 2000, Jack DeCoster, the operations’ founder, was named a “habitual violator” of Iowa’s environmental laws. His egg factories have been cited by OSHA for deplorable working conditions. In 2003, Mr. DeCoster paid more than $1.5 million to settle an employment discrimination suit charging that 11 women working in the Clarion plants had been subject to sexual harassment, including rape and threats of retaliation. There have been nearly 1,500 illnesses as a result of the salmonella outbreak. Every one of the billions of eggs produced this way has been tainted.

Oh, forgot to mention...the door jam is plum after i used a lever to straighten all the hinges. It's the damned door that's leaning and just enough to open about 5 ft before the damned thing digs into the decking.

If there was enough clearance underneath the door, then maybe a jack would work where the lever doesn't.

Anyhooo, thanks for being such a good friend, Dan, and posting suggestions.

Commiserate and vent! D: Murphey's Law

I will be glad to get to just walls. The cabinetry sucked mightily.