photographed above Tierra Verde, Pinellas County, Florida on May 3, 2009

Ten years ago, when the economy and peoples of the world were beginning to stabilize themselves after the great war – a man had a dream. To build a new way of life – a better way of life for the average man. The dream became a vision – and the vision a burning desire. The “way of life” developed into a community – a better community – the very finest community that the world has ever seen.

Where in the World Should Such a Community be Located?

World economic conditions led the search away from foreign shores and pointed to the coastline of the United States. Reams of research, thousands of miles of travel from one coast to the other…gradually, the elimination narrowed itself down to Florida for the weather…to the West Coast for unspoiled areas and beautiful beaches…to the Tampa – St. Petersburg regions for proximity to metropolitan cities. Then, finally, to the Gulf for the warm calm waters…until, one day, TIERRA VERDE was discovered.

Louis Berlanti was a builder, and his dream of building the ideal community for a better life was going to be a reality…no matter how much effort…no matter how much money it took.

This dream was too big for one man or even one organization. There was only one other firm in the United States whose principals matched the mettle, foresight and vision of Lois Berlanti and who had the financial stamina to help make this dream come true – the firm of Murchison Brothers, Clint Jr. and John.

Excerpted from ‘The Treasure of Tierra Verde,’ a promo booklet designed and published by Charles Friedlander Advertising, Inc. of Miami, Florida, circa early-1960s.

photographed at Oktoberfest in Munich, Germany on September 29, 2009

Munich authorities on Monday tightened security checks at Oktoberfest and detained two suspected Islamists just days after terrorist threats led them to declare airspace above the festival a no-fly zone this weekend.

Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann said on Monday that extra security and traffic checks had been erected around the entire festival grounds, known as the Wiesn, daily Süddeutsche Zeitung reported.

A ministry spokesperson told the paper the situation remained “highly sensitive,” and that the original team of 300 police officers manning the festival had been significantly increased.

According to the paper, increased security began on Sunday with bag checks, and increased video surveillance.

Excerpted from ‘Islamist suspects detained amid tightened Oktoberfest security.’ Published in The Local on September 28, 2009.

photographed in Paris, France on September 19, 2009

It is almost stating the obvious to say that the 1998 World Cup has completely transformed the way football is seen in France. However, what now seems self-evident was almost unthinkable only a few months ago.

Riding contentedly on the crews of the wave, or should I say the tidal-wave, created by the success of Aimé Jacquet and his players, French football is nevertheless keeping the basics strongly in mind. The success of les Bleus in eventually acquiring the World Cup crown that had eluded them ever since the invention of the competition by our fellow countrymen Jules Rimet was due in part to the high standards of technical training available in France. French training and coaching methods are admired internationally, as is amply demonstrated by the interest shown in young French players by the big foreign clubs. Coaching policy in France is under direction of the Direction Technique Nationale (DTN) of the French Football Federation, and the DTN has always made coaching its principal objective. Ever concerned to improve its activities, in the early 1990s the DTN even introduced a far-reaching scheme of Youth Development (‘pré-formation’ or ‘pre-training’) for very young players, who can learn advanced skills in seven football centres across France. The current elite of young players of the French First Division have all developed their skills in one of these centres, and the policy of Youth Development has turned out to be a total success, promising a rosy future for French football in the coming years.

Excerpted from France and the 1998 World Cup: The National Impact of a World Sporting Event by Hugh Dauncey and Geoff Hare. Introductory text written by Gérard Houllier of Liverpool FC. Published by Frank Cass Publishers, London, 1999.

photographed in Cheyenne, Wyoming on September 28, 2006

Medea: Jason, I crave thy pardon for the words I spoke, and well thou mayest brook my burst of passion, for ere now we twain have shared much love. For I have reasoned with my soul and railed upon me thus, “Ah! Poor heart! Why am I thus distraught, why so angered ’gainst all good advice, why have I come to hate the rulers of the land, my husband too, who does the best for me he can, in wedding with a princess and rearing for my children noble brothers? Shall I not cease to fret? What possesses me, when heaven its best doth offer? Have I not my children to consider? Do I forget that we are fugitives, in need of friends? When I had thought all this I saw how foolish I had been, how senselessly enraged. So now do commend thee and think thee most wise in forming this connection for us; but I was mad, I who should have shared in these designs, helped on thy plans, and lent my aid to bring about the match, only too pleased to wait upon thy bride. But what we are, we are, we women, evil I will not say; wherefore thou shouldst not sink to our sorry level nor with our weapons meet our childishness.

I yield and do confess that I was wrong then, but now have I come to a better mind. Come hither, my children, come, leave the house, step forth, and with me greet and bid farewell to your father, be reconciled from all past bitterness unto your friends, as now your mother is; for we have made a truce and anger is no more.

The ATTENDANT comes out of the house with the children.

Take his right hand; ah me! my sad fate! when I reflect, as now, upon the hidden future. O my children, since there awaits you even thus a long, long life, stretch forth the hand to take a fond farewell. Ah me! how new to tears am I, how full of fear! For now that I have at last released me from my quarrel with your father, I let the tear-drops stream adown my tender cheek.

Excerpted from Medea by Euripides, translated into English by E.P. Coleridge.

photographed in Decatur, Illinois on October 7, 2009

What to do
1. Choose a magazine picture.
2. Cut an important part of the picture such as the head of a dog, a baby’s foot, or a glass of milk. Glue it to the base of the paper or cardboard.
3. Choose another unrelated magazine picture and add a part of that picture to the first part. The idea is to make a silly picture combining unrelated parts such as the head of a dog, the body of a boy, two feet made of bananas, and so on.
4. When a substantially silly picture is complete, dry for an hour or so.

More to do
More art: Glue a part from a magazine picture on a piece of paper. Give the artist the challenge of adding other parts to the pre-glued piece.

Excerpted from ‘Mixed-up Magazine’ by Mary Ann Kohl. Originally appearing in The Giant Encyclopedia of Art & Craft Activities for Children 3 to 6, edited by Kathy Charner. Published by Grypon House, Beltsville, Maryland, 2000.

photographed on Santa Catalina Island on June 12, 2009

How often, in looking over the blue waters of the ocean, we wonder at the mysterious life of the depths, and imaging the strange creatures which dwell there. Poets have described their fancies of it, scientists have written down in their exact language its characteristics, but what a revelation to see it for one’s self! The glass-bottom boats are unique in California, I believe, although but an adaptation of the marine observation glass which has long been in use. From these boats it is possible to look down into the water to the depth of fifty to one hundred feet and observe the life as clearly as we look about us on land. Rowing over the kelp beds, the observer is suddenly transported into a wonder world which surpasses his most fantastic dreams. Great trees loom up out of the gloom and spread their broad corrugated leaves of amber in the bright sunlight. They wave and sway with the gentle motion of the water, and in and out swim the fish, now darting into the shadow of the kelp and again flashing in the sunlight. Schools of little fish glide with lithe motions back and forth. The golden perch glistens in its radiant armor. Now and then the iridescence of a little rainbow fish shimmers in the sun ray. The boat floats over flower beds of red, green and blue seaweed, and over rocks which are alive with the strange creatures of the deep – spiny sea urchins, sprawling starfish, floating jellyfish, and those interesting low marine creatures, tunicates. All is silent save for the gentle lapping of the waves on the boat’s side, but we are looking into another world with the same curiosity and awe that the inhabitants of Mars might look into ours. It is a fascinating, never-to-be-forgotten scene …

Santa Catalina is a lovely spot in which to rest and dream away the summer days in a climate that is balmy and tempered, where the gentle breeze just ripples in the undulating surface of the bay, and where the unending succession of fair days is a constant inducement to out-of-door life. In this sheltered retreat of Avalon we are on historic ground, for here, centuries ago, the Indians lived in peace and caught their fish and hunted among the rocks for abalones; here came the discoverer of Alta California, Cabrillo; and later, he who christened it with its present name, Vizcaino. Still later is formed a retreat for the buccaneers of the coast, and then the Franciscans came to induce the Indians to leave their happy home and dwell and toil about the missions. At least this is the supposition, for the Indians have vanished from the island and left behind them only their mortars and other implements of stone and shell. In this quiet bay of Avalon the Indian fishermen has paddled his canoe, the Spanish caravels have sought refuge from the tempest, the freebooter has lain in wait for his prey, and today pleasure boats glide over its waters and the shrill whistle of the steamer sounds to warn us that the hour has come to leave for San Pedro.

Excerpted from Southern California by Charles A. Keeler. Published by Raymond & Whitcomb, Santa Fe Route, 1899.

photographed in Shanghai, China on August 25, 2007

Imprisoned in the library by the rain while our host was busy elsewhere, the Professor and I had spent the morning rummaging through the shelves. The Professor’s find had been a black-letter treatise on etiquette, in the French of the fifteenth century. I had unearthed from behind a row of tattered magazines what at first sight I had supposed was an empty book-cover, but which had turn out to be an old scrap-album of the kind popular during the first half of the nineteenth century. The album had been begun but never filled up. Its sole contents were a few newspaper cuttings, and the little rice-paper drawing of the goldfish was pasted on the first leaf.

“There is something that strikes me as peculiar about this sketch, but what it is I can hardly say,” I observed as we all three stared at it.

“The mouth is distended in a rather unusual fashion for a carp,” remarked the Professor.

Gilchrist turned to him sharply: “What makes you call it a carp?”

The Professor shrugged his shoulders. “The goldfish is a variety of the carp species,” he replied quietly. “You appear to know that.”

“I know it; but I didn’t think that many other people did.”

“It is a Chinese variety”—the Professor was continuing when I uttered an exclamation. The word China had come to me as a revelation.

“This drawing has come from China!” I proclaimed confidently. “It is not the work of a European.”

Gilchrist nodded.

“Now I understand why it seemed to me that there was something strange about it,” I added.

Excerpted from ‘The Celestial Carp’ by Allen Upward, a short story appearing in The Living Age, volume XIII. Published by the Living Age Company, Boston, 1901.

photographed in New Orleans, Louisiana on October 4, 2006

To fix the signs in terms in the expansion of a determinant of any order, the notion of an inversion is introduced. If, in an arrangement of positive integers, a greater precedes a less, there is said to be an inversion. Thus in the order 12543, there are three inversions: 5 before 4, 5 before 3, 4 before 3. In 2341576, there are four inversions. When applied to any term in the expansion of a determinant such as (7), we say there is an inversion of the order of the subscripts presents an inversion when the letters (apart from the subscripts) have the order abcd…1 of the principal diagonal. With respect to determinants of orders 2 and 3, it may be observed that the number of inversions is even when the term is positive, and that the number of inversions is odd when the term is negative.

Consistently with these conditions, we lay down the following

Definition. A square array of n² elements, such as has been considered in the cases n=2 and n=3, is called a determinant of the nth order. It is an abbreviation for the algebraic form of all the different products that can be formed by taking as factors one and only one element from each column and each row of the array, and giving to each term a positive or negative sign according as the number of inversions of the subscripts of the term is even or odd, when the letters have the same order as the principal diagonal.

Excerpted from Introductory College Alegbra by H.L. Rietz and A.R. Crathorne. Published by Henry Holt and Company, New York, 1923.

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. October 19, 2009.

Ammon (or Hammon; Egyptian Amun, the hidden or veiled one). A god native to Libya and Upper Egypt. He was represented sometimes in the shape of a ram with enormous curving horns, sometimes in that of a ram-headed man, sometimes as a perfect man standing up or sitting on a throne. On his head was the royal emblems, with two high feathers standing up, the symbols of sovereignty over the upper and under worlds; in his hands were the sceptre and the sign of life. In works of art his figure is colored blue … His chief temple, with a far-famed oracle, stood in an oasis of the Libyan desert, twelve days’ journey from Memphis. Between this oracle and that of Zeus at Dodona a connexion is said to have existed from very ancient times, so that the Greeks early identified the Egyptian god with their own Zeus, as the Romans did afterward with their Jupiter; and his worship found an entrance as several places in Greece, at Sparta, Thebes, and also Athens … When the oracle was consulted by visitors, the god’s symbol, made of emerald and other stones, was carried round by women and girls, to the sound of hymns, on a golden ship hung round with votive cups of silver. His replies were given in tremulous shocks communicated to the bearers, which were interpreted by a priest.

Excerpted from A Dictionary of Classical Antiquities: Mythology, Religion, Literature & Art. Translated from German by Oskar Seyffert, revised and edited by Henry Nettleship and J.E. Sandys. Published by Macmillan and Company, New York, 1895.

Heidelberg, Germany. September 25, 2009.

The American psychologist James, and the Danish psychologist Lange, independently of each other, put forward this theory in the early eighties of the last century, and it has since remained a great topic for discussion. According to the theory, the emotion is the way the body feels while executing the various internal and expressive moments that occur on such occasions. The “stirred-up state of mind” is the complex sensation of the stirred-up state of the body. Just as fatigue or hunger is a complex of bodily sensations, so is anger, fear or grief, according to the theory.

James says, we do not tremble because we are afraid, but are afraid because we tremble. By that he means that the conscious state of being afraid is composed of the sensations of trembling (along with the sensations of other muscular and glandular responses). He means that the mental state of recognizing the presence of danger is not the stirred-up state of fear, until it has produced the trembling and other similar responses and got back the sensations of them. “Without the bodily states following on the perception” – i.e., perception of the external fact that arouses the whole emotional reaction – “the latter would be purely cognitive in form, pale, colorless, destitute of emotional warmth. We might then see the bear, and judge it best to run, receive the insult, and deem it right to strike, but we should not actually feel afraid or angry.”

Excerpted from Psychology: A Study of Mental Life by Robert S. Woodworth. Published by Henry Holt and Company, New York, 1921.

Western Pennsylvania. October 20, 2007.

As a summer resident the Red-winged Blackbird is a familiar sight in low meadows and along roadsides. At a little distance he appears only to be a plain, black bird, but as he extends his wings his brilliant epaulets come into prominence. The plumage of the female, though inconspicuous, is singularly beautiful when seen at close range. It looks like a fabric of which the warp is black and the woof a twisted thread of brown and yellow. The Red-wings are essentially early birds, often returning in spring when their marshy haunts are still frozen over. Their vocalization is suggestive of cool, moist ground and hidden springs; it continues until late July, and is briefly renewed in October. The deep nest is half hung, half twined between the stems of marsh-growing plants, and often holds two broods of a season; the boggy location chosen serves to protect it quite thoroughly from human invaders.

The Blackbird’s clear notes are associated with those of the Meadowlark, as they are both early singers and are found in similar places. They are useful birds to the agriculturalist, as they are great destroyers of cutworms. They are sometimes polygamous, though as frequently found in pairs; being very gregarious birds, many nests are found in the same locality.

Excerpted from Birdcraft: A Field Book of Two Hundred Song, Game, and Water Birds, by Mabel Osgood Wright. Published by the Macmillan Company, New York, 1900.

New Orleans, Louisiana. July 31, 2009.

In short, the knowledge of “citizens” is symptomatic and therefore different from that of the police, at least when this knowledge functions strategically and doesn’t complete more superficial operations for appearances sake or to reassure people (such as patrolling or checking IDs in area considered high-risk). Thus, the typical citizens’ protest against police indifference is born, as well as a certain attitude of distance or irritation on the part of some police agents towards citizens:

In my opinion, an Italian who hires an extracommunitari is two-faced. On the one had, he could say, “I feel sorry for these poor people. Rather than seeing them out selling roses on street corners, I’ll give the something for taking care of my yard.” On the other hand, if you give someone a job illegally, then you, as an “employer” don’t pay any taxes, you don’t help pay for their health care, you don’t help pay for any assistance this worker would need if some work accident or anything like that happened.”

Excerpted from Non-Persons: The Exclusions of Migrants in a Global Society by Alessandro Dal Lago. Tranlsated by Marie Orton. Published by IPOC di Pietro Condemi, Italy, 2009.

Paris, France. September 19, 2009.

The allegories of the map discussed so far – positionality, movement and practices – set out the modalities through which subjects come to place themselves in the power-ridden, discursively-constituted, practically-limited, materially-bounded identities. The subject assumes, in both senses of the word, an identity on the basis of commonality with others and yet that subject, in both senses of the word, assumes that they are an individual: unique, sovereign. The formation of the subject also takes place, and fails, within the fields of encounters with others – but this field is striated with simultaneous, different power relations. Some anecdotes will help illuminate these rather dense introductory remarks: each will be set within a context which sheds light on the question of mapping subjectivity in the spaces and between the conflictual and incoherent self and the incommensurable and indissoluble other. There are five case stories.

[The first case story.] A man is sitting on a park bench, he is alone. Nothing stands in the way of the man’s presumption that the park is there for him to look at. His eye can roam over the landscape without challenge, nothing disturbs his power to look at whatever pleases him. The man is at the centre of his world – he owns what he sees and, in this scene, his is also self-possessed because nothing disturbs his thoughts. This ‘megalomania’ is shattered, however, by the intrusion of another into the park. The lord and master of all he surveys has suddenly become off-centered, the lines of power have become reoriented: the man no longer controls the scene, lines of power converge on the intersubjectivity between the two people and between them and the scene of the encounter.

Excerpted from Mapping the Subject: Geographies of Cultural Transformation, written and edited by Steve Pile and N. J. Thrift. Published by Routledge, London, 1995.

Afloat in the Caribbean Sea. July 25, 2009.

Team A listed their goal in communication as the simultaneous fulfillment of three objectives: (1) to provide a gestalt message (the whole message is greater than the sum of the parts/components), (2) to use a systems approach, and (3) to incorporate redundancy in the markers.

For the gestalt message, the purpose is to convey a message not just with words and pictures, but through the very vehicles of conveying the messages, and the messages themselves. That is, the marker materials, their construction, and their arrangement are such that future generations coming m upon the markers will understand the message that this place is not one where people would want to spend a lot of time. With the gestalt message, the emphasis is on communicating through the entire marker system.

The systems approach to designing and constructing markers is that the m various marker components are linked to each other and supplement the information (or fill in any gaps) from other marker components. Messages are provided in different levels of complexity, in different formats, and convey different aspects of the entire message.

The redundancy within the marker components provides enough individual markers of any one type (material or message or arrangement) so that if some are vandalized or degraded over time, there are sufficient numbers remaining to communicate the required message. The size and construction of the markers can also provide redundancy in that the form of the communication is overdone so that it can still communicate after degradation or defacement. With earthen berms (discussed later in this section), the size called for would allow the marker to withstand considerable erosion and still remain recognizable as a human construction marking an area.

Excerpted from ‘Expert Judgement on Markers to Deter Inadvertent Human Intrusion into the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant’ by Kathleen M. Trauth, Stephen C. Hora and Robert V. Guzowski. Published by Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, New Mexico, for the United States Department of Energy, under contract DE-AC04-94AL8500.