Month: September 2005

The original company of J. S. Abbot and Lewis Downing formed in 1826 and lasting until 1847 was named the Abbot Downing Company.

Abbot Downing Company was known the world over for its Concord Stagecoach but actually it manufactured over 40 different types of carriages and wagons at the wagon factory in Concord, New Hampshire.

The Concord Coach Gallery.

In 1866, Wells Fargo bought out Ben Holladay’s expanding network and combined it with the Pioneer and the Overland Mail stagelines to create the largest stagecoach empire in the world.

Unrestored or New.

Each door of the Concord coach had a different scene painted on it, normally relating to the area in which the coach would be operating. Each door was painted by John Burgum.

John actually painted the scene “A trainload of thirty brand-new Concord Coaches en-route to Wells Fargo’s depot at Omaha, Nebraska, in April 1868.” This was based on a photograph taken on April 15th, 1868.

Perhaps the most famous Concord Coach was the “Deadwood Stage” owned later by Buffalo Bill and said to have carried more notables than any other single vehicle.

Miscellaneous Happenings on The Overland Stage to California.

Sometimes when I finally figure it out, I wonder what took me so long to do something so simple.

Check out the demographics in New Orleans, or your own neighborhood.

Louisiana is the source of about 15 percent of U.S.-produced petroleum, much of it from the Gulf. The local refineries are critical to American infrastructure.

By all accounts, the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port, which services supertankers in the Gulf, is intact.

The river, as transport corridor, has not been lost.

~ It is not the population that is trapped in New Orleans that is of geopolitical significance: It is the population that has left and has nowhere to return to.

~ In order to operate the facilities critical to the United States, you need a workforce to do it — and that workforce is gone.

The oil fields, pipelines and ports required a skilled workforce in order to operate. That workforce requires homes.

The displacement of population is the crisis that New Orleans faces.

In a nutshell, the United States depends on The Dammed Mississippi.

My favorite Katrina slideshow so far.

Click upon your area of interest and a marker will appear showing the estimated maximum and current water depths at that location.

I’ve been curious to see just exactly where all of the water was.

Every year, on average, about a hundred tropical disturbances develop, but only about ten even make it to tropical storm status. And fewer still — only about two — go on to become hurricanes and make landfall in the United States.

Think you could do better if you controlled the weather?

I think I hit Iowa on the first try!

National Geographic always makes quality stuff.

Headed to New York to see The Late Show?
You had better know your Cuts of Meat.

Jean Arp was born Hans Arp on September 16, 1886, in Strasbourg.

In 1909, he moved to Switzerland and in 1911 was a founder of the Moderner Bund group there.

In 1916, Hugo Ball opened the Cabaret Voltaire, which was to become the center of Dada activities in Zurich for a group that included Arp ~.

Arp�s work appeared in the first exhibition of the Surrealist group at the Galerie Pierre, Paris, in 1925.

Throughout the 1930s and until the end of his life, he continued to write and publish poetry and essays.

In 1958 Arp’s first retrospective exhibition is held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Big collection of links to Jean Arps work at Art Cyclopedia.
Much more at ArtNet.com, but requires subscription ($29.95/month).

THE popular image of Tyrannosaurus rex and other killer dinosaurs may have to be changed as a scientific consensus emerges that many were covered with feathers.

They would still be lousy pets, though.