Calvarium camera

 

He has been showing his work since 2001 and I am just now hearing about artist Wayne Martin Belger.* Belger takes photographs with pinhole cameras that he crafts to make specific images, then incorporates as part of the artwork. In the example above, he designed his "Third Eye Camera" to study the beauty of decay, using the 150-year-old skull of a 13-year-old girl. Outfitting it with aluminium, titanium, brass, silver, and gemstones, he drilled an aperture in the forehead through which light enters to expose the film inside. With this unique 4"x5" camera (1st image, 360° and other views here) he took photographs entitled "Two Hearts" and "San Francisco" (2nd image) and exhibits the camera and prints as an installation (3rd image). A camera called "Yama" (see Belger with it here), made from the 500-year-old skull of a Tibetan monk, and the images exposed through its eye sockets were similarly exhibited and Louisiana blogger Chris Jay called the result "show-stoppingly confrontational, yet undeniably beautiful."

"Third Eye" and "Yama" are 2 of 11 cameras Belger has made so far. His "9/11" camera - which is made of aircraft aluminum and incorporates pages from the Bible, the Koran, and the Torah in addition to a piece of metal from the South Tower of the World Trade Center - was designed to capture images of religious figures. His "Deer" camera fuses metal, including bullet shells, to antlers "to study the core ritual of the hunt and man's arrogant separation from Nature." And Belger's "Heart" camera, encapsulating a preserved infant's heart (discovered among items abandoned by a medical supply house), was made to explore the relationship between expectant mothers and their soon-to-be-born children and the artist's relationship with his twin brother who died at birth.

California journalist Lisa Derrick describes, "The process begins with Belger first desiring to explore and relate to a concept and envisioning the photographs, then crafting a camera as the portal into the subject. He collects artifacts, relics and metals, and painstakingly builds the device with parts he carefully machines, the construction itself a form of meditation on and communion with the concepts and images, much like icon painters who first pray and meditate, then carefully prepare the surface, blend the tempera and delicately layer the colors." The comparison to the past is apt, since Belger credits the ubiquity of today's digital cameras with helping elevate the status of analog photograph as a fine art.

*With thanks to longtime follower Antler!

__________

Previous posts about photography:

Shiloh photo

Single snapshot

Faked photo

Authentic photo

Postmortem photograph

Last photo of John Lennon

A Morning's Work

Photography of Jeffrey Silverthorne and Elizabeth Heyert

Retinal image of murderer

Nadar and the Paris Catacombs

Alpacas go to school

An alpaca on a farm owned by Carina and Erwin Stadler in Goeming, Austria, after the annual Spring shearing (see more here): "They were given a range of questionable cuts, from mullets to goatees...Five to ten pounds of hair is shaved off an adult alpaca every year....With alpacas living for up to 20 years, their owners have the time to hone their styling skills before they find the perfect fit for each animal."

Taking a cue from long held traditions of allowing sheep to graze in town squares and cemeteries, Pennsylvania's Carlisle Area and Cumberland Area school districts began using sheep to keep the grass trimmed, saving thousands of dollars each year on groundskeeping. Things took a more exotic turn earlier this month when Cumberland Valley High School accepted a donation of 6 alpacas from the Bent Pine Alpaca Farm. Not only do the animals save the cost of mowing the 2 acres around the school's solar array, they tie into the agricultural program in which 225 students are enrolled. “Everything we’re doing ties right back into the curriculum,” said ag teacher Michael Woods, referring also to the veterinary and biomedical arts courses. The alpacas will also be willing subjects if any of the Future Farmers of America decide to become future hairdressers of America...

__________

Here are some of the sweet and funny faces in the Cabinet:

Look!

Hello kitty

Flightless birds

Chameleonette

Big bunny

Pleased to meet you

Prosimians

Follow-ups

A flamingo fell down

Hedgehogs

Bitty bear

Oogy

Mugging for the camera

Secrets in the sand

 

Earlier this year, a Polish oil worker came across the well-preserved wreckage of an American-made Kittyhawk P-40 in a remote area of the western Sahara Desert in Egypt. Guns and ammunition were found with the World War II-era plane, most of the cockpit instruments were intact, and the twisted propeller lay a few feet from the fuselage (2nd image, video here). Intact identification plates allowed researchers to track its provenance and service history. Roy Bennett, 75, of Benfleet, Essex, England, saw the photos in the newspaper and says, “As soon as I opened The Sun and saw the Kittyhawk I didn’t have to read the story to know that it was his plane." He was referring to his uncle, 24-year-old Flight Sergeant Dennis Copping, who was a member of the RAF's 260 Squadron, a fighter unit based in Egypt during the North Africa campaign. On June 28, 1942, Copping was ordered to fly the damaged plane to another British airbase for repair. He lost his bearings, went off course, and was reported missing in action. The site of the plane crash indicates that he survived the impact. He hung his parachute around the frame of the plane for shelter, and removed the radio and its batteries to try to get it working. But his attempt to walk to safety proved futile, since the nearest town was 200mi away and the heat would have reached 120°F during the day. Copping's other nephew, William Pryor-Bennett of Kinsale, Co. Cork, Ireland, produced photos from the family album (including 1st image)  and remembers, "Our generation all speculated whether he was still alive somewhere." The pilot's remains were not found, though it is surmised that he did not get further than 20mi from the aircraft. A similar fate was met by American businessman and adventurer Steve Fossett (1944-2007), who flew his small plane out of a Nevada airstrip and disappeared without a trace. More than a year after the search for Fossett was suspended and his death was presumed, the wreckage of his plane was discovered by hikers in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California. The extent of the damage showed that the pilot would have died upon impact. Fossett's remains - in the form of some long bones scavenged by animals - were later located, but Copping's body could possibly remain hidden beneath the windswept sand as a mummy.

__________

Previous posts about planes, pilots, and passengers:

Asses in the air

71 years ago

Survivor

Unscheduled stops

Cheetah passengers

Airport security?

Airborne animals

Tai Shan to China

Aerial archaeology

Oasis and airbus

Viable

High-altitude helicopters

Death of Payne Stewart

Airplane crashes

Zeppelin

Parade floats

Ratten

 

Hameln (2nd image) in Lower Saxony, Germany, prides itself on its connection with the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin (1st image). I sorted out truth from fiction in 2009, when the town was celebrating the piper's 725th anniversary. So I'm sure the tourism industry did not consider it a bad thing when international news gained traction that rats have again invaded. "Hamelin needs another Pied Piper!" trumpets London's Daily Mail. "German city of Pied Piper fame facing off with rats again," states Canada's Edmonton Journal. "Rats run amok in Germany," declares Ohio's Columbus Dispatch. It seemed a bit exaggerated, so I have gone to the German newspaper sources and with the help of Google Translate offer the following:

Hamelin does have a rodent problem. "But unlike the [legend], the city is not completely infested by rats, there is a problem area on the outskirts of the city, an overgrown allotment. There is a lot of rubbish around, it's like a table laid for the rat," explains city spokesman Thomas Wahmes. Rats have damaged a fountain (not this one) by biting through a cable, and have caused problems in an adjacent housing development. The vermin were drawn to the fountain at the railway station road by food that tourists, commuters, and passers-by left for birds. As it happens, high costs of maintaining the fountain and keeping it free of fallen leaves meant that it was due to be closed anyway. The city does employ an exterminator, but he is not obliged to wear colorful clothes or play a flute. Wahmes assures that the infestation was not manufactured for the media: "No! It is not part of a PR campaign, it certainly is not."

__________

More rats in the cabinet:

Service animals

3 icky round things

Prehensile tails

Crittercam

Rats!

Geißenklösterle flute

 

Since the 1st archaeological exploration of Geißenklösterle cave (photo of the entrance here) in 1963, it has offered several superlatives, including the oldest sculpture of a human being, but the reanalysis of objects discovered in the early 1970s adds another claim to fame. It has now been confirmed that the cave in Blaubeuren, Baden-Württemberg, Germany, yielded up flutes dating to 42,000 years ago (5,000 years earlier than previously thought), making them the world's oldest musical instruments. Researchers from Oxford and Tübingen retested the flutes and published the new radiocarbon dates in the Journal of Human Evolution. Two of the flutes were fashioned from swan bones (photo here), which are already hollow, so they are considered relatively unsophisticated. (A replica of the bird bone flutes was made and can be heard here.) But the 3rd had been carved from mammoth ivory (images above), which the artisan would have had to split, hollow out, and then glue back together with a perfectly airtight seam. Though it was made of the highest quality material available at the time, it was found in 31 pieces. When reconstructed, it had 3 finger holes, measured 18.7cm long, and would have been capable of playing relatively complex melodies. "This 3rd flute is like a Rolls Royce compared with a Hyundai," described Nicholas Conard from the University of Tübingen. Friedrich Seeberger, an expert in prehistoric music, made a replica in elder wood and commented, "The tones are quite harmonic," but hopes to make an even more faithful replica out of mammoth ivory. Carbon dating expert Thomas Higham of the University of Oxford notes that although the flutes are the earliest yet discovered, they do not pinpoint how old music is as a technology: "We just don't know....The problem is that we have virtually no other evidence for this behavior archaeologically to be able to comment more confidently. There are other musical instruments like these, for example at Isturitz in the French Pyrenees, but whether these are the same age is not known. There are later examples, from the Gravettian, Solutrean and Magdalenian periods, but from this period, nothing else. It seems unlikely that we have the oldest examples. The likelihood is that this behavior is older, but by how much is a guess."

__________

Previous posts about musical instruments:

Violin violence

Cello passenger

Katzenklavier

Glass harmonica

Harps, played and painted

Gibson guitar

Happy New Year!

Hazards of remote exploration

Let's go underwater again today. Those are not sunken ruins you see above. That is a natural arch of lava photographed near one of 10 hydrothermal vents discovered in the Gulf of California by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI). Such odd formations "never lose their charm," says the team's senior scientist David Clague. The vents, known as "black smokers," were revealed by their characteristic chimney formations on sonar maps of the seafloor, so remotely-operated vehicles (ROVs) were sent in to explore (slideshow here). We've become accustomed to the use of such submarines, but the BBC points out a hazard I hadn't even thought of: "Care must be taken not to spread deep-sea creatures around the world during exploration of the remote ocean floor." Consider the following cautionary tale:

Scientists using the famous Alvin submersible were studying lifeforms living around hydrothermal vents off the NW coast of the U.S. They gathered various specimens with the sampling tools at a depth of 2.7km. The support ship then carried Alvin to the Juan De Fuca Ridge 600km to the north to get more specimens. But when they left the 1st location, there were some creatures - limpets (Lepetodrilus gordensis) - hiding on the sub, possibly in the hose's suction sampler. When they sent Alvin down in the 2nd location, they inadvertently introduced the live stowaways to a new habitat. 

Such invasive species can wreak havoc on marine ecosystems by transferring competitors or disease. "Hydrothermal vents are the most extreme, specialised habitats you can get - they spew out acidic, metal-rich fluids. And we could be messing with them without even knowing about it," said participating researcher Janet Voight.

__________

Previous posts mentioning invasive species:

Proliferating pythons

Snails

Lizard lore

Haunting heel

This admittedly photoshopped image hit the Internet in October 2011. I found it while searching for a photograph that's been haunting my thoughts lately and incorporates the same idea. That image by contemporary American photographer Joel-Peter Witkin is entitled "Nègre’s Fetishist" (see it here - caution) and is itself a reenactment of a nude study (see it here - caution) by French photographer Charles Nègre (1820-1880). Witkin adds the "sensual stilts" (his words) to the model's feet in 1990 - a full 20 years before the above incarnation.

__________

Previous post about Joel-Peter Witkin:

Medical and art photography

Mark Dion's installations

 

 

What distinguished cabinets of curiosity, the precursors of today's museums, was the juxtaposition of disparate specimens to show their variety. American artist Mark Dion achieves just that in his installations. The New York Times speaks of "the curious mix of obsession and emotion on display." Sometimes Dion centers on an individual, like American naturalists William Bartram (1739-1823) or Alexander Wilson (1766–1813). He has the enviable privilege of combing through the specimens in storage (1st image) and assembling them into triumphant visual displays of natural history objects in hand-built cabinets. "Appropriating archaeological and other scientific methods of collecting, ordering, and exhibiting objects, Dion creates works that question the distinctions between 'objective' ('rational') scientific methods and 'subjective' ('irrational') influences. The artist’s spectacular and often fantastical curiosity cabinets, modeled on Wunderkabinetts of the sixteenth century, exalt atypical orderings of objects and specimens," reads his bio from the Art 21 series on PBS. While his work has graced art museums and galleries (2nd image, a preparatory drawing for his 1999 piece at the Museum of Modern Art) around the world in group and solo exhibitions, it is his assemblages specific to individual science and natural history museums* - some of them installed permanently - that I find particularly compelling. Sibella Court comments that the process is as important as the finished piece. Dion himself writes: "By critically analyzing the master narratives and techniques of display employed by the institution, I can discern the ideology embedded in them. Being critical may also be just another way to love these museums." Mark Dion has delivered many lectures and received numerous awards. Read more about his work here.

*Here is a partial list:

Musée Océanographique, Monaco
Springhornhof Institute of Neolithic Archeology, Germany 
Natural History Museum, England (3rd image)
Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature,France
Historisches Museum, Germany
Fabric Workshop and Museum, United States
Musée Gassendi and la Reserve Geologique de Haute Provence, France
University of Tokyo Museum, Japan
National Railway Museum, England 

___________

Previous posts about museums:

Darwin's drawers

The museum that wasn't

Stringsavers

"Through the Weeping Glass"

Mütter movie

Wet specimens

Science center weddings

Library of Human Imagination

Adventurers Club

Museum behind the Scenes

Madame Tussaud

Kunstkammer

Funeral museums

My museum

The Museum of Osteology

The living photos of Arthur Mole

In the photograph above, 21,000 soldiers stationed at Camp Sherman in Chillicothe, Ohio, were positioned in 1918 to form a portrait of American president Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924), who was in office during World War I. The men were painstakingly placed to achieve the likeness from the point of view of the 80' tower from which the shot was captured. "The image is characteristic of Mole's work in that it wavers between the compositional effect of the whole (i.e. a portrait of Woodrow Wilson) and the desire to focus upon the obscured individuals who constitute the image, thereby undermining the optical illusion of the totality to a degree," reads Oddee. The so-called novelty photo has become the lasting legacy of British photographer Arthur S. Mole (1889-1983) and his associate John D. Thomas, and they are considered pioneers in the field of performed group photography. The Illinois-based pair made a series of such photos across the country, each made up of thousands of choreographed bodies:

• Statue of Liberty, 1918 (18,000 soldiers at Camp Dodge, Des Moines, Iowa)
• Uncle Sam, 1918 (21,000 troops at Camp Lee in Richmond, Virginia)
• U.S. Shield, 1918 (30,000 officers and men at Camp Custer in Battle Creek, Michigan) 
• American Eagle, 1918 (12,500 officers, nurses, and men at Camp Gordon in Atlanta, Georgia)
• Liberty Bell, 1918 (25,000 soldiers at Camp Dix, New Jersey)
• Living Emblem of the United States Marines, 1919 (100 officers and 9000 enlisted men at the Marine Barracks at Parris Island, South Carolina)

To carry out these photo shoots required a week of preparation and hours of positioning. John F. Ptak points out, "[It] takes a little bit of planning to accomplish to ensure that everything is kept in perspective, and which also means that a lot more folks are needed at the top of the constructed image than at the bottom." He points out that if you look at Uncle Sam's beard, you will see the soldiers lying down. Nothing intentional in Lady Liberty, though many of the participating men were said to have fainted in the 105°F July heat!

__________

Previous presidential posts:

Jefferson's juice?

Model looks

Robert Todd Lincoln

Willie Lincoln

The play that night

Last to see Lincoln

The chair and the car

The sarcophagus Andrew Jackson declined

Theodore Roosevelt, naturalist

Obama likeness

Abraham Lincoln's 200th birthday

Election Day!

Clarity

 

We are familiar enough with images of the wreck of the RMS Titanic to know that these photographs of a 19th c. shipwreck are remarkable - as is the site itself. Strewn on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico (albeit at a depth of only 4,000' as compared to Titanic's 12,000') are ceramics (plates, platters, and bowls), glass bottles (liquor, wine, medicine, and food storage - some with the contents still sealed inside), weapons (cannons, muskets), navigational instruments, hourglasses, anchors, and a stove. The items (2nd image) spilled out of the ship and surround the oxidized copper sheathing (1st image, more photos and video here) that used to protect the vanished wood of the hull.

The wreck was discovered in April during an expedition for the BOEM funded by NOAA to map the features of poorly known areas of the Gulf, measure gas that leaks naturally from the sea floor, and investigate shipwrecks. Of the estimated 4,000 shipwrecks at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, 600 of them have been discovered by the oil industry. During 29 dives over 56 days, the team used the following equipment from aboard the research ship Okeanos Explorer:

• a remotely-operated vehicle called Little Hercules equipped with lights and high definition cameras
• state-of-the-art multibeam mapping sonar
• telepresence technology to stream live video and allow federal, academic, and private scientists - and “citizen explorers” - to participate in the mission. Fred Gorell, NOAA’s public affairs officer explains, “They could actually look at the wreck sites while it was happening. And this way research is not limited by the number of people who are actually on the ship.”

The research aids BOEM in its decisions to issuing permits for oil and gas exploration and development, while also illuminating the past. “Shipwrecks help to fill in some of the unwritten pages of history,” says maritime archaeologist Frank Cantelas of NOAA. Previously, the wreck was known only through fuzzy sonar images from 2011. In fact, it was 1 of 4 shipwreck sites explored during the expedition. "It has been said that there is more history on the seafloor than in all of the museums on earth.,"* says Gorrell. This might help us better understand a little piece of history that is in one small place on the seafloor that could be very important if put into perspective."

*I'm not sure I agree with that statement, even though it is also said that only 5% of the ocean floor is mapped.

__________

Previous posts about shipwrecks and the ocean floor:

Going down with the ship

Ancient spirits

Castaways, real and imagined

What is the opposite of stowaway

The Raft of the Medusa

Sea stars, eating and being eaten

Ice finger of death

Environmental disaster

Jacques Cousteau

Engineering feats

Too big to be cute

The title, which references yesterday's post, suggests that the bulk of the typical dinosaur kept it from being cuddly - except as a plush toy - but if you need further proof, consider these recently revealed details about the extinct giants:

They were achy:
British scientist Dr. Judyth Sassoon noticed signs of a degenerative condition in the jaw joint of a pliosaur in the Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery and says, "In the same way that aging humans develop arthritic hips, this old lady developed an arthritic jaw, and survived with her disability for some time. But an unhealed fracture on the jaw indicates that at some time the jaw weakened and eventually broke. With a broken jaw, the pliosaur would not have been able to feed and that final accident probably led to her demise."
 
They were gassy:
Scottish professor Graeme Ruxton of St. Andrews University has put forward the notion that vegetarian dinosaurs contributed greatly to climate change. According to the math of his research team, the flatulence of an argentinosaurus measuring 140' and weighing 90 tons - which would have consumed at least a half a ton of food each day - would have totaled thousands of liters of greenhouse gas.Team member David Wilkinson says, "In fact, our calculations suggest these dinosaurs may have produced more methane than all the modern sources, natural and human, put together."

They were flea-ridden:
Chinese researchers have found evidence that pterosaurs suffered from enormous blood-sucking parasites. "These were insects much larger than modern fleas and from the size of their proboscis we can tell they would have been mean," comments American zoologist George Poinar.

Set aside your romantic notion of prehistoric fauna and think stinky, itchy, and creaky...

__________
This post may also interest you:
Not Dracula, but a dragon

Bitty bear

The bear cub above - depicted in April in "formal" and "informal" portraits - was a mere 2 1/2 months old and 4lbs in weight, but more of a handful than he looks. "Aldo," as he is called (more photos here, video here), was put in the care of the Oregon Zoo by the state's Dept. of Fish and Wildlife after he was discovered alone in the woods by a Medford family. The agency has taken the opportunity to remind the public that "rescuing" the animal was the wrong thing to do: "We believe this bear was not orphaned. If you see a young animal alone, leave it where it is. It's likely that the mother is nearby. Most animals leave their young to forage or hunt." The little guy is now too accustomed to humans to release into the wild when he gets older. The black bear exhibit at the Oregon Zoo has a full house, so Aldo has been placed at the NEW Zoo in Green Bay, Wisconsin, where he joins 7-year-old Winnie. Before he was relocated earlier this month, Oregon Zoo keeper Michelle Schireman was tasked with caring for him, which involved a feeding every 3 hours. He spent his days at the zoo and went home with her at night, confined by a puppy gate. "It sounded like a gremlin, like there was something possessed in my kitchen," describes Schireman. When her 2 dogs approached the little bear, "[He stood on his back legs] to look big and scary, curled back his lip, and made a chuffing sound. The dogs would back away and bark." Aldo will be even more intimidating when he reaches his adult size - a possible 6' and 600lbs.

__________

Plenty of adorable animals in the Cabinet:

A bird in the hand

Chameleonette

Look!

Foxes, feared and fancied

Hello kitty

Tai Shan to China

Nick Garbutt

Microhylids

Pangolins

"Big" cats

Branson's brood

Elephant multiple and miracle births

Prosimians

This...

Pocketful of rocks

I know what it's like to return from a beach with a pocketful of rocks. I used to walk all the way to the tip of Cape Cod when I spent the summer of 1986* in Provincetown, Massachusetts. That's where the best rocks could be found, so I would return home laden with specimens (which of course I still have!), many of them encircled with a ring, which someone told me was good luck. But I never had an experience like this - and the first responders don't remember anyone who has. "I talked to the paramedic who treated her, and in his 27 years in responding to calls near the beach, he's never seen this," remarked Capt. Marc Stone of the Orange County Fire Authority. Last Saturday afternoon, Lyn Hiner, 43, went to Trestles Beach (1st image) in San Clemente, California, with her family. She put the 7 rocks her daughters picked up (2nd and 3rd images) in her pocket and brought them home. She had been home for about an hour and was standing in the kitchen when the pocket of her cargo shorts caught fire. Seriously. "Stop, drop and roll" didn't extinguish the flames and she received severe 2nd- and 3rd-degree burns on her leg from her thigh to her knee and on her right arm (watch news report here, including photo of the burned shorts). According to the Orange County Register, "The rocks, described as small, the size of a hamburger patty, smooth and orange and green in color, fell from the shorts onto the floor and continued to burn the wood floor and fill the house with smoke." Her husband got 2nd-degree burns helping her off with her shorts and was hosing her down on the front deck with a garden hose when firefighters arrived. The couple were taken to Western Medical Center in Santa Ana, where the woman underwent surgery. There is some speculation that the fire had something to do with phosphorous that is said to occur naturally on the sand at the beach, but local geologist Pat Abbott says that the orange coloration in the rocks is not natural: "The orange has been added by a human being. I don't know if it's evil or incidental." The hazardous materials unit, the doctors, and the public health department are stumped, and Hiner remains in the hospital. "Tests are expected to take a few weeks because they are dealing with an unknown," said Stone.

*This was 5 years before I was diagnosed with MS and the hike was a rather arduous 30 minutes each way across a long breakwater, down the sandy coastal beach, and back via the bayside beach which - as I found out one time after running screaming from attacking seagulls - was a nesting area.

__________

Here are a few marginally related posts:

Spontaneous human combustion

Dislodged

Eating Rocks

Mind your teeth

Dick Clark's rockin' cave

 

 

"America's oldest teenager" Dick Clark (1929-2012) had a really cool little hideaway on 22 acres adjacent to California's Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area and overlooking the Pacific Ocean (images above, more photos here). Shortly before his death earlier this year, the TV host and his wife Kari decided to sell the unusual home, one of at least 3 they owned in Malibu, and listed it with Coldwell Banker for $3.5 million. The retreat, which has been likened to the Flintstones' residence, was built to blend into the landscape to alleviate the park's concerns about development. "I came up with the idea that if the house looked like a rock formation, the park conservancy would let us build on top. They liked the concept," said Beverly Hills architect Phillip Jon Brown. The vaulted ceilings and expansive use of glass in the design allows 360° views that stretch out to sea as far as the Channel Islands, and inland toward the Boney Mountains, Serrano Valley, and Hollywood. The house has living and dining rooms, intimate seating areas, a wood-burning fireplace, stone floors, 2 bathrooms, 1 bedroom, and other amenities. The listing does not mention square footage - I guess it's too hard to measure!

Thanks, Sandra!

__________

Other properties I have blogged about:

Haunted houses for sale

Chinese nail houses

Jack Kerouac's house

The house that May (re)built

Frank Gehry

Maisenbacher House

Stone/House

Steampunk apartment for sale

Swedish house (and its secret) for sale

Lease a lighthouse

New neighbors

Home sweet silo

House sat empty

Huguette's empty homes

The oldtimer and the tree

The tree lived for 217 years and the man who kept it alive has now died at a little less than half that. Frank Knight (pictured above in 2009 with "Herbie" behind him and in 2010 after the tree was cut down, video here) had been the tree warden of Yarmouth, Maine, for more than 50 years. "Frank’s passion for the town, its trees, and his kind and gentle manner was an inspiration to all those who knew him," reads a statement from the Maine Department of Conservation on Frank's passing at the age of 103. Dutch elm disease was killing trees by the hundreds when Frank began as a volunteer, so he focused his efforts on one giant elm that at 110' could be seen from miles away. With pruning and pesticide, he was able to nurse the tree through 14 rounds of the disease, until it finally had to be taken down 2 years ago. At that time, Knight - by then a legend among schoolchildren and forestry workers - said, "His time has come. And mine is about due, too." At the request of his family, and without Frank's knowledge, custom furniture maker Chris Becksvoort built a simple casket from wood of the tree which had been set aside. The centenarian will be laid to rest in it after dying in hospice on Monday. "To have them together like that is a wonderful thing. I feel like Frank took good care of Herbie. Now Herbie will take good care of Frank," says friend and successor Deb Hopkins.

"It's been a beautiful tree. I'm sorry to see it go. But nothing is forever....And it's just a fact of life that life is going to end. And that's for people, for trees, for everything. I thank the good Lord every day that we had him in his glory and beauty for so long."

__________

Plenty of previous posts about trees:

Chêne chapelle

"These things are enormous"

Senator no longer stands

Tempting tree trunk

World's largest treehouse(s)

Cut down

2 morbid mysteries

600 years apart

Leaves don't leap...

Tyburn tree

Tree mummies

Dendochronology