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High on a rocky rise in Van Cortlandt Park sits a small, easily overlooked stone structure: the Van Cortlandt Family Burial Ground, also known as Vault Hill. The iron-gated chamber has stood here since 1749, when Frederick Van Cortlandt, patriarch of one of New York’s most powerful colonial families, was laid to rest inside.
At the onset of the Revolutionary War, the vault took on a curious new role. Fearing that city records would be destroyed during the British occupation of New York, Van Cortlandt's son was told by the Provincial Congress to find a safe space for them. He hid them in the family vault, trusting its thick stone walls to protect them from British troops. Long after the Van Cortlandts’ estate was transformed into a public park in 1888, the tomb remained in place, its weathered façade a relic of the city’s colonial past.
Vault Hill itself rises 169 feet, among the highest points in the Bronx, and on clear days the Manhattan skyline can be glimpsed through the trees.
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Hello to all members, passers-by, curious onlookers, and shy lurkers, and welcome to our regular daily check-in post. Just leave a comment below to let us know how your current projects are progressing, or even if they're not.
Checking in is NOT compulsory, check in as often or as seldom as you want, this community isn't about pressure it's about encouragement, motivation, and support. Crafting is meant to be fun, and what's more fun than sharing achievements and seeing the wonderful things everyone else is creating?
There may also occasionally be questions, but again you don't have to answer them, they're just a way of getting to know each other a bit better.
This Week's Question (courtesy of
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cora): What was your last project that got put into "time out" and why?If anyone has any questions of their own about the community, or suggestions for tags, questions to be asked on the check-in posts, or if anyone is interested in playing check-in host for a week here on the community, which would entail putting up the daily check-in posts and responding to comments, go to the Questions & Suggestions post and leave a comment.
I now declare this Check-In OPEN!
Rating: T
Characters: Sons of Feanor, Elrond, Feanor, Daeron, various others
Warnings: n/a
Summary: After years in Lórien, Maglor and Maedhros are ready to return to their family and to make something new with their lives--but to move forward, all of Fëanor's sons must decide how, or if, they can ever reconcile with their father.
Note: This fic is a direct sequel to High in the Clean Blue Air.
Prologue / Previous Chapter
High above the Austrian Alps, James Bond enthusiasts can step directly into the world of 007 at this striking museum built into a summit. 007 Elements combines behind-the-scenes footage, immersive video installations, and genuine props and set pieces from the franchise, on loan from EON Productions Limited.
The building itself is as dramatic as its contents: a futuristic concrete and steel structure perched amid breathtaking Alpine vistas, designed to echo the sleek style of the Bond films. Visitors ascend by gondola, retracing the same cinematic approach used in Spectre, where scenes were shot on this very mountain. Between the architecture, the films, and the surrounding landscape, the museum feels like a Bond set come to life.
Note: Because 007 Elements is perched high in the Alps, it opens only during seasonal periods—linked to the operating schedule of the Gaislachkoglbahn gondola.
Meanwhile, I've obtained a secondhand wide-format color printer locally so we'll see how setup goes.
I fed the birds. I haven't seen any today though.
I put out water for the birds.
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In the midst of São Paulo's concrete jungle, the Casa Bandeirista do Itaim stands tall, preserving a piece of the city's rich history.
Located in the largest commercial building in São Paulo, the Casa Bandeirista do Itaim dates back to the early 18th century when it was likely built by the bandeirantes, explorers who ventured into the interior of Brazil to search for precious metals and indigenous peoples. The house was later used as a stopping point for those travelling between São Paulo and the nearby town of Sorocaba.
The little Casa Bandeirista might have been overlooked if not for its protected status. Despite being abandoned, it was considered an officially listed building, which meant it was legally protected from demolition or alteration. This protection came in handy when the area around it was purchased with the intention of building a shopping mall, and the house was set to be destroyed. However, the group that purchased it afterwards had the necessary approvals to proceed with the development as long as the Casa Bandeirista was restored and incorporated into the new project. Thanks to this intervention, the Casa was preserved and continues to stand today as a testament to the city's rich history.
Even with Google's headquarters towering above and the modern office buildings, and skyscrapers around, the Casa Bandeirista maintains its colonial-style architecture and serves as a reminder of the city's past. Inside, visitors can see the original taipa walls and wooden beams, as well as a collection of antique furniture and artefacts.
But the Casa Bandeirista do Itaim isn't just a museum piece. It also serves as a unique setting for events and meetings, offering a one-of-a-kind atmosphere that transports attendees back in time. Imagine hosting a business conference or a wedding in a space that dates back to the 1700s - it's certainly a conversation starter!
Finrod is studying him with a resigned air draped about him like a cloak. "Oh, how I hate you," Finrod says softly, fingers loosely curled into fists, and this too sounds like a lie. Neither of them have ever been particularly truthful with each other.
This is a non-canon story, inspired by an MERP RPG series. Arthedain and Cardolan stand against Angmar and the puppet kingdom of Rhudaur. This is a sequel to The Dark Mage of Rhudaur and contains a number of the same characters. It will also tie into The Court of Ardor. There will be occasional quotes from Tolkien's writing to flesh out the story.
After years in Lórien, Maglor and Maedhros are ready to return to their family and to make something new with their lives--but to move forward, all of Fëanor's sons must decide how, or if, they can ever reconcile with their father.
fuzzyred will close the pool for the half-price sale in Polychrome Heroics some time this evening, since the sale closes Sunday night, to allow time for collecting donations. So if you still want to get in on that, now's the time.
Haapsalu’s Railway and Communications Museum (Raudtee- ja sidemuuseum) preserves more than 150 years of Estonian and Soviet rail history in a station once constructed for the arrival of Tsar Nicholas II. Built with him in mind, The Haapsalu station is complete with an elaborate 216-meter wooden covered platform and imperial waiting rooms. Its long wooden passenger pavilion, was closed to traffic in the 1990s but remains a remarkable relic of the country’s railway past.
With full exterior access to the trains, rail station, grounds, and outbuildings the museum is a great way to spend a few hours.
In 2023, the city of Wakefield inaugurated a sculpture trail to add some vibrance to the city center. Most of the sculptures on the trail are generally abstract and uncontroversial, but the Amazonian Caiman God by artist Jason Wilsher-Mills stands out for its unusual postmodern depiction of a tribal deity, and it has drawn much more attention than any other sculpture on the trail.
The god’s headdress, which is shaped like a caiman’s head, and the wings mark this figure out as a supernatural entity, while the glove marked “love” and the heart on the outside of the statue’s chest indicate that the figure is also a love god. However, the figure appears to be wearing casual modern-day clothes, which includes wearing his underwear on the outside, and this has the effect of making him look much less serious. Sharp-eyed individuals may notice the leg braces that the god is wearing, which the wheelchair-bound artist incorporated to reflect his own disability.
Notably, the figure is holding in his outstretched right hand a small boat with two small winged people standing within it. These figures represent Wilsher-Mills’s parents, who met near the site where the statue is now located.
Modern methods were used to create the richly-textured statue. Wilsher-Mills designed the sculpture on a computer, and then it was 3-D printed in resin. The resin version was then cast in bronze to produce the version of the statue on display.
Unfortunately, many local residents objected to the installation of the statue across the street from Wakefield Cathedral. They generally felt that it was inappropriate to have a depiction of a non-Christian deity so close to the city’s largest religious institution. However, the dean of Wakefield himself supported the installation of the statue in the city center and encouraged others to look beyond the depiction of the Amazonian god itself to understand the deeper concepts that are symbolized by the statue.
When I glanced through Mr J Jones' review here of Sami artist Máret Ánne Sara’s Turbine Hall installation (spoiler alert: he did not like it), my thought was, there is no point in asking Mr Jones for an opinion on anything which does not feature nekkid laydeez, because I can remember him being snotty about a Barbara Hepworth exhibition. (And we are not that keen on his opinion on the nl's, either.)
Anyway, two correspondents take to the letters column to have a go at him:
completely misses the point. The land the Sámi live in is “quite big”, just as the Turbine Hall is in Jones’s words, but the Sámi do not take over the entirety of their landscape. They live within it. The “fort” is not a place to “hide”. That is a city-boy reading rather than a deeper understanding of the ancient methods that Sámi families use for herding reindeer in the vastness of their lands, combined with the political realities that surround them. Jones is too close to playgrounds and not close enough to the realities of the Sámi and northern political history.
***
I was appalled by Jonathan Jones’s review.... There is something incredibly unique and, in the end, pristine about existence in these Nordic villages. Maybe it is the ultimate quiet that falls upon the forests at times. Everyday life is not silent, but the forest silence after a day’s work is peace. Is art not art unless it includes some gore, an exhibit of violence? The artist has captured the ordered existence necessary for survival in harsh conditions and the peace that comes from living with nature rather than against it.
It has often been mentioned on Language Log that the simplification of Chinese characters by the PRC government did not come at one fell swoop in 1965, but was spread out over a long period of time, and had at least one additional formal stage, in 1977, that was retracted in 1986.
This has resulted in uneven acquisition of separate sets of simplified characters by students who went through primary and secondary education at different times.
From Yizhi Geng:
I am writing to share an observation about Chinese characters that I find interesting. Are you aware of a term called Second Simplified Chinese Characters? It was published by the Chinese government in 1977 but was soon abandoned in 1986. I have observed that in my family, my grandmother (born in 1940) still uses these characters, while my grandfather (born in 1935) even uses traditional Chinese! My grandfather was born into a landlord family in Anhui Province and studied traditional Chinese characters as well as English at a private school run by his father. My grandmother came from a worker’s family in Changchun City without any primary educational background and learned all the characters during her work. I found that many of my family members, including my parents’ younger sisters (born in 1967 and 1975), and I (born in 1998), are not able to read Second Simplified Characters. Even many of my friends born between the 1980s and 2000s have never heard of them. However, my grandparents can communicate using Second Simplified Characters and Traditional Characters without any difficulty! They write notes on the door, refrigerator, and shoe cabinet like this:
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The note from Yizhi pictured above does not have the instance of the doubly simplified word for "shoebox" that he is talking about here:
“鞋盒 written as “X合” (shoe box).
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Formal and informal simplification of sinographs will never stop until they reach the stage of a syllabary or an alphabet. This is the natural development of all living, functional logographic / morphosyllabographic scripts (e.g., nǚshū 女書 ["women's script"], kana, hangul, chữ Nôm, etc.). Mixed scripts like Chinese and Japanese, which include both phonetic and morphosyllabic / logographic components do exist, but even they are witnessing the encroachment of phoneticization.
Selected readings
- "Grids galore" (11/19/23)
- "The Englishization of Chinese enters a new phase" (8/8/24)
- Mark Hansell, "The Sino-Alphabet: The Assimilation of Roman Letters into the Chinese Writing System," Sino-Platonic Papers, 45 (May, 1994), 1-28 (pdf)
- "Aborted character simplification in the mid-1930s" (10/5/24)
- "Simplified vs. Complex / Traditional" (4/23/09)
- "Simplified Bomb" (6/9/09)
- "The complexification of the Sinoglyphic writing system continues apace" (12/16/22)
- "Writing: from complex symbols to abstract squiggles" (6/11/19)
- "Love those letters" (11/3/18)
- "Pinyin in practice" (10/13/11)
- "How many more Chinese characters are needed?" (10/25/16)
“F1 McLaren” is a bronze sculpture situated at Portier Roundabout, near Turn 8 of the famous Monaco Grand Prix circuit.
The sculpture represents the McLaren MP4/13 car used by the McLaren F1 team during the 1998 Formula One world championship. It depicts the car driven by Mika Häkkinen when he took the top step of the podium in the 1998 Monaco Grand Prix.
It was created by the French sculptor Christian Maas.
The bronze was unveiled on 4th June 2000, during the closing ceremony of that year’s Grand Prix. The unveiling was attended by the Prince of Monaco, Rainier III, along with his family, that season’s F1 drivers, and the sculptor.
Also: it's autumn craft fair day! I haven't been to an autumn craft fair in a long while, so this will be a novel experience.