I’ve started experimenting with low-light photography, at least where there are no options. I now routinely carry a tiny tripod, which made these interior shots possible. Each step in that circular staircase is made of a single piece of stone.
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Photo Memory of the Week
Posted: 2025 Feb 27
"I am smiling."
Blog Memory of the Week
Quote of the Week
The sun rises every morning. I do not rise every morning, but the variation is due not to my activity, but to my inaction. Now, to put the matter in a popular phrase, it might be true that the sun rises regularly because he never gets tired of rising. His routine might be due, not to a lifelessness, but to a rush of life.
The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun, and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon.
It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. (paragraph breaks added)
Source: Orthodoxy, GK Chesterton
Music of the Week
Poetry of the Week
Never Again Would Birds' Song be The Same
- Robert FrostHe would declare and could himself believe
That the birds there in all the garden round
From having heard the daylong voice of Eve
Had added to their own an oversound,
Her tone of meaning but without the words.
Admittedly an eloquence so soft
Could only have had an influence on birds
When call or laughter carried it aloft.
Be that as may be, she was in their song.
Moreover her voice upon their voices crossed
Had now persisted in the woods so long
That probably it never would be lost.
Never again would birds' song be the same.
And to do that to birds was why she came.Posted: 2025 Feb 27
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If I read the bottom picture correctly, it was built for right-handed people/defenders. Assuming that attackers would be coming UP the stairs, and the defenders were holding the high ground, a right handed swordsman (certainly unlikely to be a swordswoman) would have a clear swing. But the right-handed attackers coming up the stairs would have to use their swords backhanded.
Jim T
Jim T – I think that’s right. I’d forgotten that, but I’m pretty sure I’ve heard/read that before – the structure facilitates the majority handedness for defenders and disadvantages the attackers. Pretty tricky, eh? Of course, if your life depended on fending off a sword-wielding attacker, you’d get pretty tricky pretty quickly.
And where does that leave us “left-handed” folks? In demand as attackers? Or at risk as defenders?
Alison – I think you’re right – you would be a desirable attacker. And the ambidextrous also . . .
Isabel – how old is Fort Jefferson? I ask that because brickwork fortresses don’t generally stand up well to cannonballs and became even more obsolete with the advent of riffled artillery pieces and naval guns.
John – Construction started in December of 1946, but at the start of the Civil War it wasn’t finished yet. I believe it was used as a war-fighting installation during the Civil War and then as a military prison until 1869. From what I understand about its firing capacity and reach, it may never have come under fire.
Wonderful perspective and light in these photos. Reminds me of Fort Henry in Kingston or a monastery in Portugal, I forget.
Marilyn – How delightful to have a monastery in Portugal in the memory mix! Wiki tells me that Fort Henry was built about 30 years earlier than Fort Jefferson (although the latter’s construction period did drag on, and it was never truly finished). I, of course, have no idea how quickly building methods changed at that point.