ABC Wednesday - X is for Xmas Tree in Stockport

Behind the Xmas Tree in Merseyway Shopping Centre in Stockport, Cheshire is the still empty ex Woolworths store. Twelve months ago it would have been busy with its final sale as the company went into receivership before closing down after Xmas.

Also behind the Xmas tree this year was a children's carousel whose reflection I caught in the old store's window.

For more X posts visit ABC Wednesday.

Shadow Sunday: Copenhagen

It has been a cold white Christmas so I've been digging in the archives for a shadow and discovered this from Copenhagen.

The shadow belongs to the Ice Bear Statue at Langelinje Pier. The monument was erected in 1937, and depicts an ice bear with its two cubs on an ice flake. It was a gift of the harbour authorities and symbolizes Greenland, Denmark's Northernmost part. The monument was made by Holger Wederkinck.

For more shadows visit Hey Harriet.

Galileo

This wordle by the late Mandy Smith introduces an anthology of Galilean poetry dedicated to he who said E pur si muove or Eppur si muove (And yet it does move) and adapted the lunette for astronomy, and to those who cultivated his memory on October 22nd-24th 2009 through Galilean Nights, a cornerstone project of the International Year of Astronomy.

Valentin Grigore of the Romanian Society for Meteors and Astronomy-SARM organised a festival in the country's former capital Targoviste. The Galilean Nights / Nopti Galileene festival included a prologue begun on 21st October 2009, an Orionid meteor shower observational night in Priboiu (15 km from Targoviste), interviews for national and local mass-media, activities in the central square of Targoviste, tents with astronomical products, debates, projections of images, movies and planetarium programs, workshops, astroelectronic music, 3D images, remote observations, an astroart exhibition made by children, and especially telescopic observations of the Sun, Jupiter, the Moon and the Pleiades.

There was also a special live broadcast Us and the Sky / Noi si Cerul, on Columna TV, the Galilean Gala Astroshow at the Dambovita History Museum, composed of an astrophotography exhibition, astromovies, the International Galilean Poetry Evening and an astrofolk music recital which show also represented a gala of SARM's yearly Cosmopoetry Festival, founded in 1996.

My own contribution was THE GREAT GALILEO SPIN which I wrote at the behest of the organisers.

THE GREAT GALILEO SPIN

Pisa born man
whose father carries out experiments on strings
to support his musical theories.

Off you go to the Camaldolese Monastery
on the magnificent forested hillside
at Vallombrosa.

They want you to be a medicine man
but the mathematics of Euclid and Archimedes
mesmerise you more.

In "La Balancitta" you describe Archimedes' method
of finding the specific gravities of substances
using a balance.

You correspond with Clavius and Guidobaldo del Monte
concerning the theorems you have proved
on the centres of gravity of solids.

You lecture on the dimensions and location of hell
in Dante's Inferno
at the Academy in Florence.

The idea comes that one can test
theories about falling bodies
using an inclined plane
to slow down
the rate of
descent.

At the university of Padua
you teach Euclid's geometry
and geocentric astronomy
to medical students.

In three public lectures
you argue against Aristotle,
use parallax arguments to prove
that the New Star
can not be close to the Earth
and come out as a Copernican.

You grind and polish lenses
until you have an instrument
with a magnification of around eight or nine.

You demonstrate to the Venetian Senate
the commercial and military applications
of the telescope you call a perspicillum
for ships at sea
and sell the sole rights
for manufacture to the Senate.

In the book "Starry Messenger"
you claim to have seen
mountains on the Moon,
four small bodies orbiting Jupiter
and proved the Milky Way
is made up of tiny stars.

In a letter to the Grand Duchess
you vigorously attack the followers of Aristotle,
arguing strongly
for a non-literal interpretation
of Holy Scripture
when that would contradict
facts about the physical world
proved by mathematical science.

You quite clearly state
that the Copernican theory
is not just a mathematical calculating tool,
but a physical reality.

You hold that the Sun is located
at the centre of the revolutions
of the heavenly orbs
and does not change place,
and that the Earth rotates on itself
and moves around it.

You confirm this view
not only by refuting Ptolemy's and Aristotle's arguments,
but also by producing many for the other side,
especially some pertaining to physical effects
whose causes perhaps cannot be determined
in any other way,
and other astronomical discoveries
that clearly confute the Ptolemaic system
but agree admirably with this other position.

Found guilty of heresy
and condemned to lifelong imprisonment,
the sentence amounts to house arrest,
living first with the Archbishop of Siena,
then later returning home to Arcetri
though spending the rest of your life watched over
by officers from the Inquisition.

Your "Discourses"
are smuggled out of Italy,
and taken to Leyden in Holland
and published.

There you develop
ideas of the inclined plane
assuming that the speed acquired
by the same movable object
over different inclinations of the plane are equal
whenever the heights of those planes are equal.

You describe an experiment using a pendulum
to verify this property of inclined planes
and give a theorem on acceleration of bodies in free fall
and finally conclude
that the distance that a body moves from rest
under uniform acceleration
is proportional to the square of the time taken.

You die in early 1642,
your body concealed
and only placed in a fine tomb
in the church in 1737
by the civil authorities against
the wishes of many in the Church.

On 31st October 1992,
350 years after your death,
Pope John Paul II gives an address
on behalf of the Catholic Church
in which he admits
that errors had been made
by the theological advisors in your case.

He declares the Galileo case closed,
but he does not admit
they were wrong to convict
on a charge of heresy
because of the belief
that the Earth rotates round the sun.

O Galileo
how do you spin in your grave?

GERALD ENGLAND

Read all the poems and see all the maginificent photos at Galilean poetry.

ABC Wednesday - W is for White Winter Weather

Yesterday I had to go to Tameside General Hospital for a routine clinic appointment. All was well until I came out of the clinic where it was snowing heavily. The clinic I was visiting was at the back of the hospital and it was a ten minute walk from there to the hospital bus-stop.


It is normally an eight minute journey into Ashton under Lyne but it took 35 minutes in barely moving traffic. I got off by the inside market. This is the view from the Market Hall entrance looking over Bow Street towards the Parish Church.


I did my shopping, had a bite of lunch and exited to the market ground which was full of slush and compacted snow.


Even though it was only noon, many of the market traders were already beginning to pack up for the day.


This is the pedestrianised section of Warrington Street which leads from the market ground towards the bus station.


The bus station was almost deserted of buses though not of passengers. I joined the queue for the 330 which goes via Hyde to Stockport, normally at ten minute intervals. After we had been waiting for an hour, another bus was diverted from its own route to provide a service but only to Hyde. It was packed to the gills and the normally twenty minute journey took seventy.

On arrival at Hyde bus station it terminated. There were no taxis available and I had a thirty minute trudge through the slush to get home. I didn't stop to take any photographs on this last part of my journey.

For more W posts visit ABC Wednesday.

Shadow Shot Sunday: Henry Street, Glossop

The shadows are falling over the Glossop Heritage Centre (and Tourist Information Centre).

It has been driven out of its 23 year old Henry Street home next door to Sandra's Florists.

According to the Trust's website

"All artifacts are in safe storage and will be re used when new premises are found."

For more shadows around the world visit Hey Harriet.

Friday Bench (28): Etherow Park

Back in February I introduced you to Etherow Country Park.

I was back there recently on a bright morning. There are many benches around the park, some donated by local societies and others are memorial benches.

This one, dedicated to Ellen Taylor is just below the top of and facing the mill pond. See the top of the pond on sithenah. Behind the bench is the valley of the River Etherow as it flows through Ernocroft Wood.


My favourite benches discovered recently include Inverness Daily Photo's in Rosemarkie, Ben's in Pasadena, Barbara's in Queen's Park and Dina's in Jerusalem.

ABC Wednesday - V is for Voting

As in the previous three years, it is now time to vote for the Best of Hyde Daily Photo 2009.

There are twelve contenders.

Readers may cast six votes distributed in any manner they choose. You can give all six to a single photograph, one vote to six different images, or divide them between two, three or four pictures.

The thumbnails above are merely representative crops of the full sized photographs which can be found at Best of Hyde 2009, along with a voting form.

Please use the form to vote. Votes given in comments here will not be counted.

The results will be published in January 2010.

For more V posts visit ABC Wednesday.

Friday Bench (27): Hyde Park

This bench is in Hyde Park, Hyde, Cheshire.

It is one of two benches in an area used to provide a setting for a memorial stone "Lest We Forget". The pillars are two of the four which are the only remains of Newton Lodge, the former home of the Ashton family who gave the park to the people of Hyde in 1902.

The setting was created when the park was refurbished in 2000. The stone had previously lain in one of the gardens.

The full setting can be seen on Hyde Daily Photo and the memorial stone on Hyde DP Xtra.

My favourite benches discovered recently include Rune's in Grimstad, Christchurch Photo Diary's by the Avon river, Leatherdyke's in Queen's Park and Julie's in Sydney.

ABC Wednesday - U is for Underbank Hall

Underbank Hall on Great Underbank, Stockport, Cheshire UK, is Elizabethan, dating from the late 16th century. It was the town house of the Arderne family of Bredbury. The hall was sold for 3,000 guineas in September 1823 to the banking firm of Christy Lloyd & Co which became the Stockport and East Cheshire Bank in the following year. In 1829 it became part of the Manchester and Liverpool District Banking Company which by 1880 had 54 branches, in Lancashire, Cheshire, Derbyshire, Staffordshire and Shropshire. The bank changed its name to the District Bank in 1924 and in 1962 was acquired by the National Provincial Bank. Then in 1970 this bank merged with the Westminster Bank to form the National Westminster Bank, which is now known simply as NatWest.

For more "U" posts visit ABC Wednesday.

Shadow Sunday: Falkirk Wheel

The Falkirk Wheel is a rotating boat lift connecting the Forth and Clyde Canal with the Union Canal.

See also my Reflections on the Falkirk Wheel.

For more shadow shots visit Hey Harriet.

Friday Bench (26) : Stockholm

This week's bench can be found at Fjällgatan in Stockholm.

A dog rests easy beneath it whilst mistress chats with her friend, sheltering under the shadow of a coach.

More of my photographs from Stockholm can be found on Stockholm by Plenty.

My favourite benches discovered recently include Cezar and Léia's in Luxembourg, Rune's monastic bench at Lyse Kloster, Paul's in Manchester and Blossom Flower Girl's in Melbourne.

ABC Wednesday - T is for Tasman Glacier

This week I thought I'd post some more photographs from our 2001 tour of the The Land of the Long White Cloud.

Here we are flying over the Tasman Glacier with Mounts Cook and Tasman skylined.


This second photograph sees us looking South from Mount Cook over Tasman Glacier Terminal and Lake Pukaki.

For more T posts visit ABC Wednesday.