I like to think I am at least fairly mechanically competent, but this thing had me stymied. I got the door open okay and I found a couple of little levers that moved, but they didn't seem to do anything. When I grabbed the obvious handle it felt like it was pretty well latched in. Petey to the rescue: 'grab this thing here . . . rip it out like that. . .". Oh, that's how you do it. Jeez.
When I was at Lafayette Elementary School in West Seattle, they taught penmanship, otherwise know as cursive writing, in the fourth grade. Our teacher, Dorothy, was constantly admonishing us to hold our hand and forearm up and not rest them on the table. This was virtually impossible for me. I did manage to learn to write the letters in cursive and I can write legibly in cursive, mostly, now, but it's not what you would call fluid or elegant. Passable, I suppose.
I never figured out what Dorothy was on about until I saw the movie Plein Soleil (above, aka The Talented Mr. Ripley) as part of a French film class in college. In the movie Tom Ripley practices forging his target's signature by writing it in really big letters on the wall. He is using his whole arm to do this. His hand and wrist are a rigid extension of his forearm. This is what my teacher was trying to tell us. I have tried practicing writing using this technique but it's a hard habit to develop. If I had been trying to write great big letters on the blackboard back in elementary school, I might have had more success, but trying to develop fine motor control of my whole arm was, at that point, beyond me.
There might be a video out there that demonstrates this technique, but I have been unable to find one.
Google Docs doesn't have the zoom feature of Excel (or I don't know how to use it), so I didn't get the whole image on the screen at once. But I did capture part of it.
June 4, 1924 – set to leave BOMBAY, cross INDIA Headlines in English and Indian: YOUNG LADY TO CROSS INDIA BY MOTORCAR! I was off to maelstrom Bombay—my first time alone at the wheel ever! In and out between bullock carts; missing buffalo by the skin of my teeth. Alexandra was by then dotted with staggered pyramids of Hankow’s cargo—silver bullion! Crews of near-naked coolies loading the weighty ingots made steering hazardous.
Cool! Treasure on the hoof! A little Googling reveals that Hankow was likely the English cargo vessel City of Hankow. Back then, Hankow was a city in China. Now it is a division of a larger city.
Then I come across the India Country Readerwhich is a 1300 page PDF file. The first story is from the right time and place and it is just amazing. I recommend it to your attention. If the PDF file is too much, you can also read it here.
A few names mentioned in this story have made it into Wikipedia: Ruth Saint Denis (1879 – 1968) modern dance pioneer. Ted Shawn (1891 – 1972) male pioneer of American modern dance Martha Graham (1894 – 1991) American modern dancer and choreographer Doris Batcheller Humphrey (1895 – 1958) dancer and choreographer Charles Weidman (1901 – 1975) choreographer, modern dancer and teacher Jacob's Pillow is a dance center, school and performance space in Becket, Massachusetts. Barbital, brand name Veronal
Aloha Wanderwell went on a seven year expedition traveling the world by Model T Ford. She was hugely popular, maybe even famous in the 1920's and 30's. Her adventures give us a glimpse of what was going on in the world back then.
The expedition journeyed through France and its battlefields… swept through Italy just as Mussolini and the Fascisti were consolidating their power… braved food riots and hostile mobs in Germany, a country then reeling from the harsh reparations demanded by the victorious allies of World War I… camped at the foot of the Great Sphinx in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings… drove into Palestine, where the Jews were attempting to build a new nation… across the arid lands of India, towing the Model Ts across rivers by water buffalo… - Aloha Wanderwell Biography
A 1960 Ford Falcon is so slow, it makes a 50cc Honda Metropolitan scooter feel like a CBR1000 sportbike. It's so slow, 0-60 takes longer than loading a Homestar Runner cartoon on dialup. A Falcon moves slower than a clock in church. It moves slower than campaign finance reform. A Falcon runs slower than Half Life on your parents 300mhz 1995 Packard Bell desktop.
The Hershey Electric Railway first ran in 1917. It is a standard-gauge electric interurban railway that runs from the suburbs of Havana, Cuba, to the city of Matanzas, approximately 57 miles to the east. There is a station and depot at the town of Camilo Cienfuegos, better known by its pre-revolutionary name of Hershey. The railway was built by The Hershey Company to transport sugar to the port of Havana. ~ Wikipedia
Cuba was the sixth country in the world to get a railway – even before Spain – and as a result has an extensive, although slowly declining, network. - Slow train across Cuba
