Who’s been on a train lately?

California Zephyr video I 80 Reno rail yard

Video Donner pass 1844

1984 Peru Urubamba valley Machu Picchu

Kom Ombo Temple

1982 Cairo to Luxor, Kom Ombo, Aswan Egypt

Munich to Istanbul, 1977-8	Cinti to Milwaukee		London Inverness		Athens Regensburg, 1988
Paris ffm	Paris Regensburg		Rhein cruise, 1975		Berlin FFM, 1990
Berlin FFO, 1990	Paris Lyon, 1989		Tangier Stockholm, 1978		Paris Madrid
Seville Madrid, 1992	Madrid Lisbon, 1988		Paris Koeln, 1975		Firenze Paris
Venice Wien, 1974	Moscow St. Petersburg,		St. PetersburgHelsinki
Origin
Cairo to Luxor		Kom Ombo		Aswan

1974

Paris to Andorra via

Main Post Office Frankfurt an der Oder

L’Hospitalet-près-l’Andorre clicke ici

Avalanches and bonfires at night

2010

MMG Los Angeles to Saint Louis

Three days in a train

Let’s take a look at what happened

There had been troubled banks the FED would meet on Saturday and decide on a course of action

This would calm the markets Lehman Bear Sterns

Fannie and Freddie enter receivership

AIG Saturday the FED said Everything was okay

Wednesday Paulson said intervention was required immediately

This spooked the Markets and investors got nervous

Congress Intervened before the bottom fell out

Congress gave the money but failed to say what it could be used for

Guess what most of the banks kept it for themselves

Ownership

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123137220550562585.html

Ted ART Petit Expo Kona, Hawaii

Ted ART

 

Remembering Margaret Lewis

The Frick Collection, New York, USA13 October 2009

Holbein, Sir Thomas More Matted Print 12″ x 16″

 

 

1441 –van Eyck Virgin and Child with Saints and Donor.

Rembrandt, Self Portrait 1658

Rembrandt, Nicholas Ruts, Polish Rider

• Gainsborough
• * Rembrandt
• Titian
• Turner
• Renoir
• Velazquez
• Vermeer
• ***Holbein Thomas Moore
• Manet
• Monet
• Boucher
• Lawrence George Washington (Gilbert Stuart)
• Ingres
• Whistler
• Bellini
• Corot
• Fragonard
• Goya
• El Greco
• Veronese

 

*** Remember by Margaret Lewis

Leaving Hong Kong

Thailand is a Buddhist country. It is hot here. 29 C/ 85 F

Everyday at 2:00 it rains here, during the Monsoon.

We have met a lot of touts posing as law students.

Krung Thep (Bangkok) is a very large city.

David is sick, my parents say they are worried.

The Royal Palace is beautiful.

 

Studio 074

Donau

Why is Matisse my favorite painter?

My vote for best painter of the 20th century- – -not Picasso, not Monet- – - -It’s Henri Matisse.  Why is that? Its all about the color of course! After all I’m a neo-Fauve.

I Can Fly oil on Canvas by mrted57

Triangle, Square, Circle , after KANDINSKY Oil on Canvas by mrted57 Ted Gast

Bathers and Turtle

Running dog lackey

The national Flag of China is red:enemies of the PEOPLE

1. Intellectual

2. Intelligentsia

3. Capitalist roader 走资派; pinyin: zǒu zī pài

4. Imperialist lackey

5. Yellow imperial capitalist running dog

6. gǒutuǐzi 狗腿子 or zǒugǒu 走狗

7. Petit bourgeois

8. National bourgeoisie

9. Anti counter revolutionary

10. Rightists

11. “Revisionists”

12. “black elements” or “black gang elements”

Barack Obama: Running Dog Lackey of U.S. Imperialism’ this is the diss they have used for every American president since Richard Nixon.

A very bad year 1907

1907: A Very Bad Year

In 1907 a bout of speculation on Wall Street ended in failure, triggering a particularly severe banking panic. J.P. Morgan was again called upon to avert disaster. By this time most Americans were calling for reform of the banking system, but the structure of that reform was cause for deep division among the country’s citizens. Conservatives and powerful “money trusts” in the big Eastern cities were vehemently opposed by “progressives.” But there was a growing consensus among all Americans that a central banking authority was needed to ensure a healthy banking system and provide for an elastic currency. http://www.federalreserveeducation.org/fed101_html/history/index.cfm

Knickerbocker trust one of the largest banks in The United States at the time went bankrupt. Nelson Aldrich senator Rhode Island revises American financial system. aka Lehman Bros, Goldman Sachs, FANNIE, FREDDIE–you get the picture.

Senator Borah Idaho Citing that “4% of the people of the United States own 80% if its wealth,” Borah advocated the lowering of tariffs to promote world trade, inflationary monetary measures such as paying depositors to put their money in circulation and reissuing silver, and, most importantly, the destruction of monopolies, which were “bleeding our people white.”
http://www.kevincmurphy.com/williamborah3.html date accessed 5/25/2007

1907 CULTURE and ART

Figure 1 Mit alle zibn finger

http://jhom.com/topics/seven/sevenfingers.html

1907 Marc Chagall These were years of hardship and poverty for Chagall. In Bakst’s studio he had his first contact with the modern movement, which was sweeping Paris, and it liberated his inner resources. His pictures of this early period are lyrical evocations of his childhood. In Study for Self-Portrait with Seven Fingers, Chagall presents us with the Jewish fascination with numbers. Art historian Sandor Kuthy suggests that the Yiddish folk expression Mit alle zibn finger, used to indicate the entirety of energy used in completion of a task explains this strange physical anomaly in the painting. http://www.answers.com/topic/marc-chagall He would later become a leader in the avant-guard.
1. Matisse painted his “Red Madras Headdress” which featured his wife as the model. The painting later became part of the Albert C. Barnes collection. [see 1925, Barnes] Matisse also painted “Blue Nude” in this year.
(WSJ, 11/28/95, p.A-12)(WSJ, 7/9/01, p.A26)
2. http://pomegranate.stores.yahoo.net/0817.html

The model is Masam Matisse

Figure 2 Matisse Red Madras Headdress

Figure 3 Matisse Blue Nude 1907

http://www.soho-art.com/cgi-bin/shop/shop.pl?fid=1138304066&cgifunction=form

Wassili Kandinsky Focusing on the first half of his career, the exhibition begins with a series of early landscapes inspired by the exquisite Bavarian countryside and folk imagery from Russian fairy tales and legends. It then explores how Kandinsky’s style evolved after he moved to Germany and co-founded the groundbreaking Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) group.
3. http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/kandinsky/kandinsky.autumn-in-bavaria.jpg

1907 Milestones: Public Works and Utilities

Building the MacArthur Bridge

At the turn of the century, St. Louis had two bridges over the Mississippi River, the Eads and the Merchants. The Terminal Railroad Association, a group that owned much of the rail infrastructure in the St. Louis area, owned both. The TRRA took advantage of this monopoly by charging what were considered to be excessive tolls. The issue came to a head when St. Louis hosted the 1904 World’s Fair. The city decided to build a public bridge over the Mississippi to break the monopoly.

http://www.usgennet.org/usa/mo/county/stlouis/kempland/freebridge-opening2.jpg

Figure 4 Free Bridge

Work began on the St. Louis Municipal Bridge in 1909. Piers were built, and steel was ordered. The three main steel spans were in place by 1912. At that time, funding ran out, and three successive bonding issues failed to pass during elections. As a result, the bridge sat without the approaches being built. The only part that was finished was the 6-foot wide walkway, which hung off the downstream side of the structure (it has since been removed, but the brackets that supported the walkway are still in place and visible in one of the photos below). Several hundred people a day crossed the bridge on foot. Funding kicked in again after several years, and the roadway on the upper deck was competed. Now known as the Free Bridge, it opened to auto traffic in 1917. The city and the TRRA were still feuding, so the TRRA put a defacto boycott on the bridge. It was not until 1928 that an agreement was reached, and trains started to use the lower deck. The bridge was in full operation by 1931.

Despite being a city owned “Free Bridge”, a small toll was added in 1932. The money was used for depression relief. The bridge was renamed the General Douglas MacArthur Bridge in 1942 after the famous general. The bridge was designated as the route for US-66 from 1929 to 1935, having taken over that roll form the McKinley Bridge, and then giving it up to the Chain of Rocks Bridge. It was designated City US-66 from 1936 to 1955. http://www.johnweeks.com/upper_mississippi/pagesC/umissC15.html

WATER
1900: The first experiments using lime and ferrous sulfate as water purifiers are conducted.

1904: The Water Division begins adding milk of lime (Ca (OH)2 ) and ferrous sulfate (Fe2SO4) to purify the water.

1908: A new Coagulant House is built at Chain of Rocks Plant to store lime and ferrous sulfate.

1911: Edward Wall is named Water Commissioner.

In 1911, Mr. Wall was made Water Commissioner. He immediately began to envision improvements and expansion of the Water Works to the 1930′s. A new intake was built mid-stream, and slightly upstream from the original raw intake. He also promoted the conception of a filter plant as a final step in the purification of the Water, which comprised Primary and Secondary Coagulation, followed by filtration and chlorination.

http://www.stlwater.com/history2.html

1907 Union Electric Ameren

The Ashley plant downtown has been providing steam for downtown businesses for 3 years; it is still in operation today.
Eight percent of U.S. households are wired for electricity. It took until the 1920′s until most homes were wired with electricity. My uncle who grew up in rural Texas didn’t have it in his home until he was a teenager in the 1950′s.
Other famous trusts
International Harvester 1902
Capitalized at $120 million, the merger acquired other concerns as its lines diversified. The federal government brought action against the company, and in 1914 the Supreme Court found the company an illegal combination under the Sherman Antitrust Act and ordered division of the company’s property among independent corporations (United States v. International Harvester Company, 214 U.S. 987).
http://www.answers.com/topic/international-harvester-company date accessed 5/25/2007

1907 Anaconda Copper

Amalgamated Copper Company War of the Copper Kings. Greed, corruption, bribery and fraud, insiders getting fabulously rich while workers get robbed. That was the great battle for Butte, Montana, at the dawn of the twentieth century when it was the richest hill on earth. Copper was the treasure, eagerly sought after for wiring the modern world, and the hard rock below Butte was riddled with veins of the precious metal. Open pit or strip mine. Nation’s largest Superfund site.

Conclusion

Thomas Edison, autodidact, and inventor of so many modern conveniences conceived of the modern R&D (research and development) laboratory and financed it all with private capital. There were no government grants in those days.

Blaise Pascal, this French philosopher is a favorite off my son Ted so I had to work him in here some how. It is 245 years since the death of this French mathematician. People are usually more convinced by reasons they discovered themselves than by those found by others.
Blaise Pascal

You always admire what you really don’t understand.
Blaise Pascal

Archimedes
It is 2194 years since the birth of Archimedes another favorite.

Summing an infinite geometric series

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1/4_%2B_1/16_%2B_1/64_%2B_1/256_%2B_%C2%B7_%C2%B7_%C2%B7

I dedicate this series of articles to my children.

I thank to the superb editing skills of Dr. Lisa Balbes
Without whom these articles would have been unintelligible.

Ted Gast is an American artist

American Chemical Society St. Louis Section    tel: 314-993-2870

Ted Gast    fax: 314-993-0496

Chair 2005    email: ted@cfgastco.com

Ted Gast is an American artist whom some describe as neo-fauve, but he prefers to describe his goals as repurposed industrial waste and sustainability. A prime example is Danube; a tonal study painted using only indigo and white. Rhein a 48″ x 144″ mural depicting the River Rhine from its source in the Alps through Germany to its delta in Holland in the North Sea is another example of Gast’s work.

Always interested in new uses for old materials, as a part time inventor and with the aid of a partner, Gast has recently formed a company to produce high quality post consumer cotton paper from repurposed textiles and rags. Ted cites his five most influential artists as Kandinsky, Cezanne, Matisse, Chagall and Swiss painter Paul Klee. By coincidence Regensburg in Bavaria has also produced the latest pope, Benedict XVI.

Ted comes from the heartland of the country, in the heart of industries laid to waste by the changing global economy. Ted has taken it all to heart and tried to find a way to repurpose the lost industrial majesty. He expresses himself with bold colors and a variety of repurposed materials. First exposed to the works of Kandinsky and the Blaue Reiter in Munich and Venice, Ted paints in the style of the abstract expressionists. His work is propelled by a childlike play of shape and color, and often displays an underlying mathematical formula or element of chemistry.

Gast has spent a lifetime admiring art and the last ten years participating in the field. He has been strongly influenced by his German heritage – both sides of his family emigrated from Germany to St Louis, and he is only the 3^rd generation to be born in this country. An appreciation for art runs in the family – his great-great grandfather was an immigrant to St. Louis from Trier, Germany and was an ecclesiastical sculptor.

Gast himself was born in St. Louis, MO in 1957. At the age of twenty he spent a year of study in Bavaria at Regensburg studying chemistry, the German language and linguistics. Travel during that year sparked Mr. Gast’s life long interest in the arts. Gast visited some the finest Art museums in Munich and Europe. He traveled extensively, visiting areas as diverse as Spain, Morocco, Istanbul, and Scandinavia. As well as to Paris, Vienna, and behind the Iron Curtain to Belgrade and Rila Monastery, Berlin and Budapest. The influence of Bavaria, riparian Regensburg and the Danube are still apparent in Gast’s work, and dovetail with his own origins along the Mississippi river in St. Louis.

The fall of communism intensified the feeling of the end of ideologies. No matter what artists attempt to do art has ceased to be anti-establishment or revolutionary. Everything seems to have been done. Content merely with color and light Fauvism has again come into fashion.

The Fauves did not presume that Art could change society. They did not strive to destroy painting but instead to further it. From the greatest to the least they tried to present the joy of painting.

Ted lives in Richmond Heights with his wife of 23 years, two teenage children –a boy (17) and girl (15), one dog and two cats.

Ferrier, Jean-louis. The Fauves:The Reign of Colour. Finest-SA/Edititions Pierre Terrail, Paris c 1992.

Post from Hawaii Asia 1079

This will be my new post . I’ve been in Hawaii with Katie for a week now and it has brought up some questions about the last time I was in Hawaii. I’m here for the Friends of Dard Hunter annual conference.

That was in 1979. I was returning from a five week backpacking tour in Asia with my two brothers and we stopped in Honolulu on the way back from Osaka/Tokyo.

San Francisco

Hong Kong

China

Canton

Nanking

Shanghai

Beijing

This is a reprise of Madrid 1974. This time it’s the Honolulu zoo and not the Moscow zoo.  It’s not about pandas this time it’s the Sumatran tigers.

katie has been sent looking for a box for the keepsakes (see Vienna, Madrid 1974)  We don’t have any.  We use everything here.