Paul Simons

Ann you are a genius. I wish you had been on the Cincinnati Board of Education. We might have learned the value of green vegetables, the difference between soluble and insoluble fiber and how to cook all three of them before being in our '70's and just finding out about a healthy lifestyle as the parking meter runs down and we're fresh out of quarters.

Philip Spiess

[Ann has inspired me to add two more Southern recipes to this Forum.  Paul, I don't think Southern cooking as a whole contributes to a "healthy lifestyle," given that much of it is heaviy based on sugar and butter.]

JAMES RIVER PLANTATION SPOON BREAD:

1 cup Yellow or White Cornmeal     1 Tbls. Shortening     1 tsp. Salt    

1 cup Boiling Water     2 cups Milk     3 Eggs     3 tsp. Baking Powder     Butter

Mix the salt with the cornmeal [I use yellow] and cut in the shortening. Slowly pour the boiling water into this mixture, stirring it in as you pour. Beat the eggs in the milk, blending well, and then stir this into the cornmeal mixture.  Add the baking powder and make sure all ingredients are well-blended. Generously butter a casserole and pour in the cornmeal batter.  Bake in a 350-degree oven for 30 minutes or until it is lightly browned on top.  While baking, stir the mixture two or three times before the ingredients congeal.  Serve hot from the casserole.  [This goes well with Virginia ham, green beans Southern style, and an Old Fashioned cocktail.]

Philip Spiess

APPLE CORN BREAD OF THE OLD SOUTH:

3/4 cup Yellow or White Cornmeal     3/4 cup Flour     3 tsp. Baking Powder     1/2 tsp. Salt     2 Tbls. Sugar     2 Tbls. Butter, melted    

1 Egg, beaten     3/4 cup Apples, peeled, cored, and diced small    

3/4 cup Milk

Sift (mix) the cornmeal [I use yellow] and the flour together.  Add the baking powder, salt, and sugar and mix this dry mixture together thoroughly.  Stir in the beaten egg and the milk, again mixing well.  Add the apples and the melted butter and stir well.  Pour this batter into a 9-inch square baking pan and bake in a 400-degree oven for 25 minutes. [While it is baking, relax with a Bourbon or Rye Whiskey Highball.]

David Buchholz

For those who aren't familiar with the Bay Area.  We are fortunate that even living in an urban area, escaping to something far more inviting is less than an hour away.  Mt. Tamalpais, just north of San Francisco, is such a place.  My son, who has hiked from sea level to the 2600' peak four times, recommended that Jadyne and I follow Cataract Trail, which begins close to the summit and drops down the east side of the mountain.  Here are three images taken on the trail and two of San Francisco, taken from the road that climbs to the top. One looks out over the fog; the second, taken in late morning, reveals the city itself and the north tower of the Golden Gate bridge.   I've posted two of these on Facebook, so my FB friends, please ignore.

Bruce Bittmann

David, really like the black and white shots, especially the city.  Thanks for sharing.  Also, like the idea of hiking downhill😉

Bruce Fette

Bruce,

I agree, downhill is ever so much more fun than uphill.  This applies not only to hiking but also skiing.

My story on this is, that when it is insufferably hot in Phoenix on a weekend, you drive to Flagstaff, and then a little farther north, take the road up to the Snow Bowl. Spend a few hours hiking up to 10,000 feet, have lunch, then hike down in 30 minutes. Its nice up there. Same with Durango. Start at 8000 feet, hike up to 10,000 have lunch at the bridge over Valleceito Creek, and then hike back down. Downhill can be fun after you have earned it with the uphill trudge.

Snowbowl is an OK ski run, but I like Copper Mountain, and Vail best in Colorado, and Alta in Utah. Anyone else?

Canyon hiking is the opposite - easy on the way in, Then when you are good and tired its hard to get back to the top of Bright Angle Trail. And you cant afford to leave that gallon of water behind! But it weighs 8.4 pounds and you really hate carrying it!

Paul Simons

Waterfalls are pretty fine things. Dave's photos of them are terrific There's one a couple of hours away near the Delaware Water Gap. Loretta and I get there every few years.

This is video of the falls in action. We had the place somewhat to ourselves as it had been a rainy day but it cleared up for a while. Youtube has a mind of its own, no telling what it will put up after the falls.

Philip Spiess

Paul:  Is that by any chance Dingman's Falls, Pennsylvania?

Paul Simons

Nope Phil it's called Bushkill Falls. I think I might have heard of the place you named but not sure. This place is just across the Delaware River from New Jersey - very, very Eastern Pennsylvania.

Philip Spiess

Paul:  Dingman's Falls is at Dingmans Ferry, Pennsylvania, right on the Delaware River at the New Jersey border in the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area.  It looks on the map like Bushkill is maybe about twenty miles south of there on the same highway.

If you go north along the river, you will eventually come to Lackawaxen, Pennsylvania (across the river from Minisink Ford, New York), where you can still see John Roebling's Delaware Aqueduct suspension bridge, 1847 (a National Park Service site), the oldest wire rope suspension bridge still existing in the United States, that originally carried the Delaware & Hudson Canal over the Delaware River.  This extraordinary bridge preceded Roebling's Cincinnati Suspension Bridge, which (of course) preceded his famed Brooklyn Bridge.  

Paul Simons

Phil I live more or less right across the river from Roebling NJ. There was a bar a few years ago where I'd go to jam, about 100 yards from this monument to John Roebling's wire rope factory. Some of the factory is still there - at certain points you can look across the river and see it. It always amazes me that people were able to build great things back then, and still can. Just that wheel or pulley - imagine the heat it takes to make one of those - the industrial and organizational capability.

Philip Spiess

Great shot of industrial archeology!

Richard Winter (Winter)

Speaking of amazing bridges built long ago, I recently visited the railroad bridge over the Cape Cod canal, which is one of the few bridges around here that is capable of going up to let ships pass underneath and down to let trains go across.   Here is a bit about it from Wikipedia:

"Built in 1933, the bridge has a 544-foot (166 m) main span, with a 135-foot (41 m) clearance when       raised, and uses 1,100-short-ton (1,000 t) counterweights on each end.

At the time of its completion, it was the longest vertical lift span in the world.  It is now the second longest lift bridge in the United States, the longest being the Arthur Kill Vertical Lift Bridge between New Jersey and Staten Island, New York."

It is just extraordinary to see a structure strong enough to support a 544-foot freight train raised and lowered 135 feet (it takes 2.5 minutes to raise or lower it). It is normally in the up position and is lowered when a train is coming.    Since there are large ships, which require a mile or more to stop, passing through the canal -- as well as small pleasure boats which might not always monitor the radio -- patrol boats are sent a couple of miles out from the bridge to stop traffic before the bridge  is lowered.  

The Cape Cod canal is a migration path for fish that move up and down the East Coast with the seasons and is therefore a legenary fishing spot, particularly for striped bass.   There is a strong current through the canal, but the bridge pilings are one of the few places where the water flows more slowly.  This makes it a good place for big fish to hang out, so you will see people fishing at both ends of the bridge almost every day of the year.  

Paul Simons

First I was interested in how that Cape Cod Canal bridge works.

It was built in the same era as the Empire State Building. Obviously the motors at each end of the moveable span had to be perfectly synchronized. This video shows a motor similar to what's powering that bridge being built. In 1931. And the soundtrack is fabulous!!

Paul Simons

And I came across this in some saved links - what some people were up to in 1963 - 

Bruce Fette

Richard and Paul,

Well first of all, Nice video about the center lift bridge. It didnt  explicitly answer how the motors at each end are synchronized. Surely an important question, and much easier to accomplish with current technology.

What jumped into my mind, is how will the footings of this bridge be protected from sea level rise?

And Paul,

On the video of the Otils elevator. Very illuminating regarding insertion of the windings into a series wound motor.  What a profund difference when compared with Nicholas Tesla's induction motor.  Also its really impressive how complicated the relay based logic is to operate the elevators. Today - a simple job for a microprocessor - but we sill need relays to turn the motors on and off.

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Paul Simons

Bruce I think you're way ahead of me on this. I figured they'd be using SCR's, TRIAC's, that type of stuff but looking up elevator motor controllers apparently they're still using relays. Amazing. 

About the motor synch at each end of the bridge I figure, in simplified terms which are all I can grasp, if you have a microswitch at the bottom and one at the top on each side then the starting and stopping points are the same and if they're AC motors so the cycles, not minor voltage variations govern their speed and of course they have on/off and directional switching in common - well, they did it, it worked or still does, it's doable with 1930's technology. I think they might have had speed governors back then but I don't know for sure. 

We have to remember that the counterweights mean that we don't have to haul the elevator or bridge up against gravity. All we have to do is spin the wheel one direction or the other- the weights are balanced. 
 

This reminds me of the Corliss Steam Engine which powered an early electric power station now on display at Deeds Carillon Park in Dayton. In the 1840's they had a centrifugal speed governor - those two balls at the top of the device - the faster they were spinning, the higher they'd be and since they controlled some kind of valve arrangement they provided a speed-governing feedback loop.

Now about sea level rise - at this point it's only a theory like gravity or evolution. Did you ever see gravity? If you have a dog did you ever see it evolve from a wolf? Nonsense. Common sense - much more accurate than science which is only for eggheads - it also tells you the sun is going to run out of coal eventually so investing in sheep farms is a good idea, the world is going to get cold and people will need more wool for heavier coats.

(Note to future readers - that's called "sarcasm.")

Bruce Fette

Paul,

Yes, for a 20 HP motor the currents switching an inductive load are proably so high that it demands relays on those tall buildings.

Modern shorter buildings may well be more sophisitcated to get a smoother start and stop.

Yes, the centrifugal governor may well be used to match motor speed on both sides.

I have nothing to say about sea level rise. But I find this article from the national science foundation to be pretty interesting: https://www.science.org/content/article/seas-are-rising-faster-ever

Still its pretty amazing that they could do elevator logic for 48 floors using relays, at least after the elevator  operator retired.

But then the phone company also dialed anyone in the US using relays for a long time too:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZePwin92cI.

So tell us about your electric guitar design. :)

Paul Simons

Thanks Bruce. The Bell System video - absolutely fascinating. I would add that to the required viewing list for all high school students. It might help with those who disparage science, along with "Twelve Years A Slave", another required video that might enlighten those - we used to think about 20%, now we find it's 50% - who enjoy and wish to extend ignorance and revision of Americasn history.

I'll get to what I've added to guitars when I can take a couple of photos. It's internal, one has to be taken apart to get a photograph.

Dale Gieringer

    Happy Thanksgiving to all!

      Wild turkeys happily feasting in the vacant lot next door.  They're recent immigrants to our neck of the woods - we first started seeing them in the late 90s.  Now they're everywhere.  They needn't fear us, we don't eat turkey at our house. -  Dale G.

Dale Gieringer

TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE WANTED:  I've been having problems uploading photos to the WHHS message forum.  More often than not, they appear upside-down or sideways.   This happens even if I adjust the orientation of the file on my computer.  There's a circular arrow icon that appears when you open the image upload tool (next to "Source" on the upper left of the toolbar).   It looks like it's supposed to adjust the orientation of the image, but it doesn't do anything.  Next to it is a lock icon.  No matter whether it's set locked or unlocked, it still doesn't work.   Am I doing something wrong?

Paul Simons

Dale it's possible that you are doing one or two things wrong. Are you using Bugler? Or Blanco y Negro? Sometimes that's all it is. Or maybe the screen in the bowl of the pipe has become clogged with resin. Rather than cleaning it, just replace it, they're cheap.

Richard Winter (Winter)

Thinking of Latin class at WHHS.

Richard Winter (Winter)

Dale,

In case it would help you, I have put together a description of the process I use to post an image on the Message Forum.  I am going to email that to you.   If you will try these instructions, and if they work for you, I will make them available to everyone.

Richard

Ann Shepard (Rueve)

Spending this Thanksgiving in isolation due to a breakthrough (but very mild) case of Covid19 that began as only sniffles and scratchy/sore throat last week. I am fortunate it wasn't any worse and feeling perfectly fine now. Despite having had two jabs of Pfizer in February and its booster in September, I feel fortunate that this encounter wasn't worse, and am very thankful.

Everyone have a Happy Thanksgiving. I will be dining alone again this year with Chief Rueve. He's wonderful company doesn't discuss politics and has no dogmas other than me (pun intended).