Fall in Georgia
Topic: Guest Photography
Matching Georgia Porches, our friend from the South sends more photographs.
"The register maple in my front yard may be the brightest tree in the neighborhood. It is affected drastically by the angles of the afternoon sun. In the first shot you can see the difference in chromosomes between the sugar maple limb in the foreground and the register maple." - Phillip Raines 
Photos Copyright © 2006 - Phillip Raines
What is a register maple? Where does it fit? | Maple Species Native to the United States |
|---|
Species
Common Name | Species
Scientific Name | General Geographic Distribution |
|---|
| Sugar Maple | Acer saccharum | Northeast United States and Southern Canada |
| Black Maple | Acer nigrum | Northeast United States and Southeast Canada |
| Red Maple | Acer rubrum | Eastern United States and Southeast Canada |
| Silver Maple | Acer saccharinum | Eastern United States and Southeast Canada |
| Boxelder | Acer negundo | Eastern and Central United States and Canada |
| Mountain Maple | Acer spicatum | Northeast United States and Southeast Canada |
| Striped Maple | Acer pensylvanicum | Northeast United States and Southeast Canada |
| Bigleaf Maple | Acer macrophyllum | Pacific Coast United States and Canada |
| Chalk Maple | Acer leucoderme | Southeast United States |
| Canyon Maple | Acer grandidentatum | U.S. Rocky Mountains |
| Rocky Mountain Maple | Acer glabrum | Western United States |
| Vine Maple | Acer circinatum | Pacific Coast of United States and Canada |
| Florida Maple | Acer barbatum | Southeast United States Coastal Plain and Piedmont |
Not Just Paris - Another Russian Submarine
Topic: Oddities
Not Just Paris - Another Russian Submarine
In last weekend's Just Above Sunset, Our Man in Paris, Ric Erickson, editor of MetropoleParis, told us of the odd Russian submarine in the middle of Paris, with pictures and everything. It was just sitting in the round pond at the Tuileries gardens - really.
Every major city should have a Russian submarine. In Long Beach, docked next to the actual Queen Mary, there's our Russian submarine - Russian Attack Submarine 'Scorpion' b-427 - and it's real too (to the right, the aft torpedo room) - - Russian Designator: Project 641
- NATO Designator: Foxtrot-Class
- Manufacturer's Number: b-427
- Built: 1972
- Decommissioned: 1994
- Length: 299 feet, 6 inches
- Beam: 24 feet, 7 inches
- Draft: 20 feet
- Displacement: 1,952 tons surfaced, 2,475 tons submerged
- Built: Sudomekh Shipyard, Leningrad
- Construction: 3/8 inch outer light hull comprising ballast tanks. 7/8 inch QT28 Nickel Steel pressure hull.
- Complement: 12 officers, 10 midshipmen, 56 seamen
- Maximum Diving Depth: 985 feet
- Speed: 16 knots surfaced, 15 knots submerged, 9 knots snorkeling
- Range: 20,000 miles surfaced at 8 knots 11,000 miles snorkeling 380 miles submerged at 2 knots
- Endurance: 3 - 5 days submerged
- Propulsion: 3 x Kolomna 2D42M diesel engines, 2,000 hp each. 3 x electric motors; 2 with 1,350 hp and 1 with 2,700 hp. 1 x auxiliary motor with 180 hp. 3 x propeller shafts, each with 6 bladed propellers.
- Torpedoes: 22 maximum
- Radar: Surface search: Snoop Tray; I band.
- Sonar: Herkules medium-frequency active/passive. Feniks passive search/attack.
Click on the link for more information on our sub. You'll find a full photo tour in this weekend's Just Above Sunset, which should be online Sunday morning.
Long Beach, through the sub's periscope -
Baroque Blooms
Topic: Botanical Studies
Thursday, November 2 - long light with good shadows is the only hint of winter on the way out here. It was in the mid-seventies by noon, with a light breeze off the Pacific and pretty much full sun. And things are still in bloom. These, the spotted calla lillies, in back end of Beverly Hills with all the twenty bedroom mansions and such, where the big stars and studio heads live. The rose was in the Mount Olympus area - garish and new ten million dollar modern homes with columns and fountains (the Greek thing) in the hills between Laurel and Nichols Canyon, floating high above Hollywood Boulevard. This is November out here. 
Architectural Note: Different Times
Topic: Architectural Notes
Architectural Note: Different Times
Things were different in the thirties. The Great Depression had everyone turning to the government to help them survive. And the government responded with public works projects - the WPA and all. That meant roads, dams, all sorts of public buildings. If the economy was in the weeds, you could put people to work building things. Building out the infrastructure would do nicely. And it worked - people had jobs and the nation got what was needed to move the country dramatically forward.
The public buildings that went up at the time reflected the "we're all in this together" ethos in their Moderne style, and "the government is good" detailing. And they pointed toward a better future. Neoclassicism, Gothic, Arts and Crafts and Baroque all pointed backward to an earlier age, some romanticized vision of a more comforting past - and there was much of that built out here in Hollywood. That's what much of the movie industry was about. You see it in the elaborate movie palaces. But with the public works buildings there was no looking backward.
There's an example hidden in the middle of Hollywood - the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power's Station Ten on Hawthorn Avenue, a tiny side street just southeast of the Hollywood and Highland complex with its new Kodak Theater for the Oscars. It's an anonymous classic from a time long ago, now entirely out of place - no glitz, no nostalgia, nothing sly and clever, and certainly no cynicism about the future.
Things were different then.
Georgia Porches - Halloween in the South
Topic: Guest Photography
Georgia Porches - Halloween in the South
"This house has pumpkins on the gable of an arched lattice porch. The sinister cats were props at a Kiss concert but have been put to work every Halloween for at least a decade. Usually little children must wait to trick or treat here because the cats are just too scary." - PR 
The front porch of Rick, the News Guy, as Phillip notes, most likely decorated by his wife, the CNN executive - "Note the balance of caution tape and spider webs juxtaposed by the architecture." There is, however, no scary Wolf Blitzer.
A masonry note - "Behind a cats cradle of wires this two story porch rest beneath one of my chimneys built for a neighbor just a few doors up the street."
Photos and comments, Copyright © 2006 - Phillip Raines
Items by Phillip Raines in Just Above Sunset - - Preparing for Santa in Georgia - December 25, 2005, masonry
- Cemeteries as Method - September 25, 2005, stonework
- - The Boogie - August 8, 2004, Phillip plays North Georgia
- Real Work - March 28, 2004, masonry
- Playing a gig on Saint Simons Island a day or two before the G8 Summit… - March 28, 2004
- The Treehouse - August 4, 2003
- Phillip Raines Photographs - August 24, 2003
- Treehouse Chronicles - September 1, 2003
- I Was Just This Close - November 9, 2003, Phillip's appreciation of James Brown
- Phillip's Tale - June 1, 2003 - "When I was in my early twenties I was taking sax lessons at an art consortium housed in a school built in the twenties…."
Phillip Raines' comments on current events can be found scattered throughout Just Above Sunset and the web logs by using the recently revised search function.
