Nearly 100 feet below Second Avenue in Manhattan, workers have been blasting into bedrock to build a new subway line in New York City, slogging through mud and muck daily. Yesterday, when a worker lost his footing, a frigid mud akin to quicksand began to swallow him up, creating an extraordinary rescue challenge and daring improvisations by the Fire Department. In the end, it would take an amalgam of improvised solutions: ropes attached to mechanical advantages, a backhoe, a manual griphoist machine and scores of firefighters crouched in the slop digging out the man by hand to finally release him from earth’s grip. The New York Times’ report headlined To Save a Life, a Tug of War With the Earth is riveting. Here’s an excerpt:
“It was a hell hole,” said Lt. Rafael Goyenechea, a paramedic who quickly reached the worker and stayed by his side for more than four hours. “I was definitely worried throughout about possible drowning.”…
Three firefighters suffered injuries during the rescue operation, including one who was hurt after getting stuck in the same mud that held the worker hostage.
….Battalion Chief Donald F. Hayde, who directed the rescue for the Fire Department, said he had never faced a more daunting rescue.
“It was the most difficult technical rescue I have seen,” he said, noting that around 150 emergency workers were called the scene.
In the end, both medical workers and firefighters had to improvise a solution for a problem none of them had ever encountered — mud so thick and viscous that it simply could not be cleared away.
“We basically had to try every different technique we have been taught,” Chief Hayde said. read more…
Found on …Found, the great, full-of-amazing-things National Geographic Tumblr of images from its archives in honor of its 100 birthday: Alexander Graham Bell and Mabel kissing within a tetrahedral kite, October 1903.
It reminded us that kissing is probably one of the most improvisational things there is.
In the small country of Burkina Faso near the border to Ghana, it is common for dwellings to be painted with intricate patterns using colored mud and chalk. The patterns tells stories of the community’s culture.
We are amazed at how modern these rustic wall paintings are, and imagine how beautiful they would be adorning the side of a building or a garden wall, a floor, a headboard perhaps.
(Video link here.) A very clever guy named Mennyi or possibly Mátyás Wettl (we’re unclear who) made a video in which he performs “Ode to Joy” by kicking broken plates around under an overpass.
(Video link here.) We don’t know when we’ve seen any living being taking delight so completely as this young elephant frolicking in the surf. Somehow, watching it makes us feel its uninhibited, wholehearted, in-the-moment refreshing pleasure in a simple thing — the sea. It’s a fine reminder for the first day of the week: go full-tilt with pleasure in whatever you are doing. As Bill Murray said: Grab this day by the neck and kiss it!”
(Video link here.) Photographer Tim Laman and ornithologist Ed Scholes journeyed into the remote jungles of New Guinea in search of crazy dazzling Birds of Paradise, whose wondrous plumage is the result of some wild evolutionary development.…improvisation. Says Scholes:
The Birds of Paradise represent one of those singular events of evolution that stand out, that are extraordinary, that are something that is without precedent that evolved that is so unique, so exceptional, that you are driven to say “Why?” or ”How did that happen, how did that come to be?”
Want a closer look? Check out this slide show of photos by Tim Lamen for National Geographic. We especially love these New Guinea tribesmen, who have taken the Birds of Paradise (and some of their tail feathers) as inspiration: read more…
(Video link at Heliotown) Two days before New Year’s, we came across this passage from Mark Halprin’s Winter’s Tale, describing the moment the old year turned into new:
Then the hands of the clock started to race like the tortoise and the hare, and both reached midnight at the same time. The clock struck along with every clock in New York, and church bells, fireworks, and ship whistles sounded all at once…
…several women had begun to cry. The women said it was because of the numbing air that had washed over their bare shoulders, but even strangers embraced sadly as they coasted into the new year and felt its strength commencing. They cried because of the magic and the contradictions; because time had passed and time was left; because they saw themselves as if they were in a photograph that had winked fast enough to contradict their mortality; because the city around them had conspired to break a hundred thousand hearts; and because they and everyone else had to float upon this sea of troubles, watertight. Sometimes there were islands, and when they found them they held fast, but never could they hold fast enough not to be moved and once again overwhelmed.
It knocked us out, weaving so much of what that moment is into a single paragraph.
This has been QUITE a year and we’re taking this week to reflect and look back (while we look forward). We start with this image of Nik Wallenda walking a tightrope over Niagara Falls from The Big Picture’s The 45 Most Powerful Images Of 2012; we often feel like that, in our own small way.
We LOVE gifs, and are amazed that a little bit of code that can animate an image, making it live. Lately, we’ve noticed gif artists applying the process to create new visions of things, like this fire hydrant that a gif-artist “saw” as voluptuous statuary.
(Video link here.) We’ve watched this slow-motion footage of cheetahs running flat-out several times already. It is just BEAUTIFUL and made us wonder where such a thing could have come from. Who dreamed up that wondrous spotted fur, flight taken with each stride?
We figured it would be a perfect morning “poem” for today: a language all its own.
(Video link here.) Susan Dworski alerted us to this stunning video, in an email with the subject line: “ah, the improvisational human spirit”. It’s about a remarkable orchestra from a remote village in Paraguay — a slum built on landfill — where its young musicians play with instruments made from foraged trash. The village’s inhabitants eke out a living by culling saleable items and materials in the huge dump. When a half-destroyed violin was found, Nicolas Gomezhad the idea to rehabilitate it using found materials; the improvisation of other instruments followed.
It is astonishing to hear the wondrous first strains of Bach’s Suite No.1 in G major Prélude played on a cello improvised out of “an oil can, wood that was thrown away in the garbage…its pegs made out of an old tool used to tenderize beef and to make gnocchi…”
…And to hear how these kids lives have been changed by music: “When I listen to the sound of a violin, I feel butterflies in my stomach.” Says Music Director Favio Chavez, “The world sends us garbage. We send back music.” read more…
Just about the time Hurricane Sandy was wreaking havoc on the United States’ east coast, heavy rains and high tides brought some of the worst flooding to Venice, Italy in years — almost 5 feet of water. Because the “acqua alta”, or high water, is a common yearly occurrance in Venice — and because Venice is essentially a rather temperate floating city as it is — sensualist Venetians have improvised numerous many pleasurable strategies for dealing with it. Imagine being able to swim in the Piazza San Marco (St. Mark’s Square)…or just hang out, “taking the waters”… read more…
…Artschwager’s “blps,” black punctuation-like marks..are intended to make their immediate environment, in the artist’s own words, more “see-able,” and they also offer a chance to pause and reflect.
We figure Artschwager’s exclamation points are a fitting image for Thanksgiving: reminders to pause and reflect on all the teeny miracles around us…
