The Reading
Terminal is a complex of buildings that includes the former Reading Company main station located in the Market
East section of Center City in
Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania. It is composed
of the Reading Terminal Headhouse, Trainshed, and Market. Reading Terminal served the railroad's
inter-city and regional rail trains,
many of which are still running as part of the SEPTA Regional Rail system
that connects Center City with outlying neighborhoods and suburbs, especially
to the north. Daily traffic peaked
during World War II with
up to 45,000 daily passengers, then declined in the 1950s with the advance of
road and air travel. The terminal
buildings declined with the railroad's fortunes as maintenance budgets were
cut. The Reading declared bankruptcy on
November 23, 1971. The shed was placed
on the National
Register of Historic Places in 1972 and was declared a National
Historic Landmark in 1976.
In 1993, the complex was chosen from
among four candidates as the site for the new Pennsylvania Convention Center and
purchased by the city's Redevelopment Authority of Philadelphia. After renovations completed in 1997, designed
by BLT Architects in a joint venture with CLA, the headhouse became the
center's main entrance, while the trainshed became its Grand Hall and ballroom,
with meeting rooms and a hallway.
Originally built to accommodate the offices of the Philadelphia and Reading
Railroad, this historic railroad facility (designed by the Wilson brothers,
prominent 19th century architects and engineers) is the linchpin of
Philadelphia's burgeoning commercial district east of City Hall. Now renovated and remodeled street and concourse
levels of the 175,000 sq ft (16,300 m2) building
accommodate a variety of retail and food service operations. The
remaining space on the concourse levels of the headhouse became retail space.
The former Reading Railroad offices on the headhouse's upper floors were
converted to meeting and ballroom facilities.
It also contains more than 200 rooms for the adjacent Marriott Hotel, to which it is connected by a skywalk and for which
it serves as a secondary entrance.
The Reading Terminal
Market was spun off under its own control. A nonprofit corporation was formed in 1994 to
manage the market. Several films have
had scenes shot at the terminal, including the 1981 Brian De Palma film Blow Out, the 1995 film Twelve Monkeys, and the 2004 film National Treasure. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reading_Terminal The Muser's father worked as a plainclothes
detective for the Reading (pronounced REDD-ing) Railroad and one of the Muser's
nephews was a carpenter who helped construct the Pennsylvania Convention
Center. See
also https://readingterminalmarket.org/
The word ‘demijohn’ appears in the literature beginning in the early 1700s. While large blown European bottles exist from
as early as the 1400s, the word seems to have come from Persia at some later
time. … or Jemmy-john for demijohn, a large wicker-cased
bottle, as though this word had not suffered enough already in its transition from
Arabic damagan, itself taken from the Persian glass-making town of
Damaghan. The Phililogy of Slang, Littell's Living Age, May 9, 1874.
Other sources trace the origin to a corruption of the French, dame-jeanne (lady
Jane). The characteristic that distinguishes
a demijohn from any other bottle, aside from its size, is the fact that it was
wicker covered. Early Egyptians covered
their bottles with papyrus. This
innovation may have spread from Egypt to Persia then to Europe and from there
to America. The terms demijohn and carboy were often used
interchangeably. The distinction seems
to be one of function more than form. A
poem in The Port-Folio April
30, 1803 speaks of "Carboys Of Vitriolic Acid, For Old Bachelors"
while the The Emporium of Arts
& Sciences Philadelphia September 1, 1812 relates a story on ‘The
Ignition of a Carboy of Aqua Fortis’ which burst into flame. When the burnt
remains were examined, the writer referred to “ . . . the remains of the
straw and basket.” So like
demijohns, carboys were wicker encased bottles.
The two terms are differentiated only by their contents. Demijohns were for potable and non-corrosive
liquids. Literature references to the
word ‘Carboy’ indicate carboy contents to be strong chemicals--mostly
acids: Saturday Evening Post Oct
13, 1821 mention of 50 carboys of Oil Vitriol and 10 carboys of Aqua
fortis. Oil of Vitriol was sulfuric acid
and Aqua fortis was nitric acid. One
other reference was found to a carboy of muriatic acid (1833) now known as
hydrochloric acid. Today manufacturers
still use the term ‘carboy’ for large plastic acid containers. The other difference found between demijohns
and carboys was for 19th century shipping prices, with carboys being charged a
higher rate, probably due to their hazardous contents. While carboys denote chemicals, demijohns
have become closely associated with wine or spirits. Read more and see pictures at http://www.bottlebooks.com/demijohn/big_bottles_big_history_demijohn.htm
When language is corrupted, society is also corrupted
and begins to unravel. When a word can mean anything, it can then only mean nothing: none of us can be sure what another of
us means from moment to moment, and all trust in communication is lost. There is little opportunity left for
finding common ground when we can’t even agree on the meaning of the words
we’re using with each other.
Lewis Carroll’s Humpty Dumpty insisted that a
word meant what he chose it to mean, regardless of its accepted
definition. I do not too-quickly equate
someone with Nazis or Soviet propagandists, nor do I hastily make comparisons
to the Newspeak of George Orwell’s 1984. As
Orwell wrote while describing the subversion of language in a totalitarian
state, “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”
Christopher Daly, the better editor of New England https://thebettereditor.wordpress.com/2018/11/29/american-media-stop-condoning-the-corruption-of-our-language/
December 12 2018 'Planet
of the chickens': How the bird took over
the world bThe domestic chicken is
descended from the red jungle fowl, which is native to tropical South East
Asia. The bird was first domesticated
around 8,000 years ago, and rapidly spread around the world, to be used for
meat and eggs. In the 1950s the
"chicken-of-tomorrow programme" was launched to produce bigger
birds. Since then, the bird has
undergone extraordinary changes. It has
been selectively bred to put on weight fast, which is evident from its body and
the chemistry and genetics of its bones.
Read more and see pictures at https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46506184
Venetian Potatoes with tomato sauce
Venetian Potatoes with mustard
Venetian Potatoes with vegetable stock
In a 2010 article on
locusts that was published in the Encyclopedia of Animal Behavior, Alexandre
Vsevolo Latchininsky, Extension Entomologist for the State of Wyoming, explains
that "all locusts are grasshoppers
but not all grasshoppers are locusts."
He defines locusts as "short-horned grasshoppers (Orthoptera:
Acrididae),
distinguished by their density-dependent behavioral, physiological, and
phenotypic polymorphism." The
phenotype mutability refers to the fact that for some subspecies of locusts,
the different stages of life are marked by different colors and even body
shapes. However, it is the behavioral
aspect—the mass grouping together—that is most notable. The act of swarming, or exhibiting a
so-called "gregarious phase," is the most obvious characteristic that
identifies a subspecies of grasshopper as a locust. Latchininsky explains in his paper that
"out of more than 12,000 described grasshopper species in the world, only
about a dozen exhibit pronounced behavioral and/or morphological differences
between phases of both nymphs and adults, and should be considered
locusts." And in fact, the tendency
to swarm together is a relatively recent phenomenon in grasshopper
evolution. Hannah Keyser http://mentalfloss.com/article/57104/whats-difference-between-grasshoppers-and-locusts
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