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Category Archives: Doing
Thru-Hike Postponed
Well, my Appalachian Trail hike isn’t going to happen this year. Time and money come and go faster than I anticipate sometimes, and this is one of those times. With less than a week until I was planning to leave, I have to call this off for now. Strangely enough though, I am not as bummed out about this setback as I thought I would be. It just is what it is, and I have another year to prepare and further hone my trekking skills. Since I originally posted my plans, quite a bit has changed in my life. I have moved back to my old stomping grounds in the Appalachian mountains, adopted a dog that was near death, hiked some of the Mountain To Sea trail, reconnected with a lot of great folks from my past, and started working on some long-term plans beyond my hiking goals. Hopefully I will be able to post a bit more now and chronicle my year of preparation for a 2011 thru-hike. Stay… Read more
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Backpacking Shelter
It’s hard to say what piece of gear is the “most important” when putting together backpacking gear, since most long-distance backpackers are cutting it down to the bare minimum anyway, and every piece of gear is actually essential. That said, the psychological first step in my gearing up quest was to take care of my shelter. Small and light are the watchwords here, and shelter seems to be an area of backpacking gear that tends towards the heavy and overbuilt, almost as much as rain gear. My search for light and fast shelter quickly pushed me out of the standard outdoor store and into the world of cottage gear makers. These folks, when faced with the problems of super-heavy, overbuilt gear, decided to do something about it, and began making their own gear, and then selling the better designs to others that were, like them, annoyed at how heavy most camping gear is. I started compiling a list of my options for shelter, and it basically boiled down to three broad types of… Read more
Georgia to Maine
I suppose this will make it “official”, or at least utterly embarrassing if it doesn’t actually happen, but whatever. I’m going to hike the Appalachian Trail this coming Spring and Summer. I plan to leave Amicalola Falls State Park and hike up to Springer Mountain and the start of the Trail on March 16th, give or take a day or two. With any luck, 2,168 miles later, I’ll climb Mt. Katadhin in Baxter State Park in Maine sometime in the second half of July. I will walk an average of close to 20 miles a day, taking a day off once a week or so to resupply, eat non-dehydrated food and clean myself more thoroughly than I can in the woods. I will carry everything I need (or at least everything I need for a week at a time) with me. It weighs less than 15 pounds, not counting food and water. Food will weigh about 2 pounds per day, and I will carry two liters of water (4.4 pounds for the conversion-challenged). All told, on the heaviest days of my trip, I will be carrying 33 pounds of… Read more
Gearing Up For Long Distance Backpacking
As many of you know now, I have gotten bitten by the backpacking bug after almost a decade away from any kind of outdoor adventure at all. One of the great things about this hiatus is that the state of outdoor gear has improved by leaps and bounds since I last had any interest in it. It is now within the reach of most folks to backpack long distances well outfitted carrying less than 15 pounds of gear, and sub 10 pound loads (food/water not included) are becoming commonplace. Excited by this turn of events, I set out to see what I could do to outfit myself with everything I would need/want for long distance backpacking while keeping the weight under 30 pounds From Skin Out (FSO). FSO weight includes not just gear, but all clothing worn and all food and water needed. Why thirty pounds? I came to that number based on an initial calculation of my Lean Body Mass (LBM), which is your body weight minus all body fat. For me, it comes out to about 143.5 lbs. Once that was established, I… Read more
The Brief Origins of May Day
Most people living in the United States know little about the International Workers’ Day of May Day. For many others there is an assumption that it is a holiday celebrated in state communist countries like Cuba or the former Soviet Union. Most Americans don’t realize that May Day has its origins here in this country and is as “American” as baseball and apple pie. Eric Chase has written an excellent history of the origins of May Day as a labor holiday on the IWW website. I suggest you read it to get an idea of the radical roots of the holiday, as it relates to Labor Day. While the radical origins of May Day are not contested, as labor historian David Montgomery notes: Labor Day is more a complicated affair. Only the United States celebrates Labor Day in September. Elsewhere around the globe, nations honor workers on May 1—May Day. And that historical quirk is no accident. Ironically, “May Day” was founded by U.S. workers—and taken away from them as a day to… Read more
Go Outside!
It’s Earth Day you know. That means you should step away from the computer, put down the cellphone,go outside and see what’s going on in the big blue room. Read what Gaylord Nelson has to say about the beginnings of Earth Day and then get out of the chair and out of doors. It will do you good. WHY APRIL 22? The huge amount of young activism in the United States in the 1960s caused leaders to choose April 22 for Earth Day. The story is that April 22 was chosen because college students would be likely to be available. It falls between spring break and final exams. Each year, however, somebody brings up the fact that April 22 was Lenin’s birthday. Senator Nelson’s response is pretty good, so we’ll leave it to him: “On any given day, a lot of both good and bad people were born,” he said. “A person many consider the world’s first environmentalist, Saint Francis of Assisi, was born on April 22. So was Queen Isabella. More importantly, so was my Aunt Tillie.” More Earth Day Facts… Read more
Georgia Communities’ Rights to Protect Animals are in Jeopardy
If you live in Georgia, this is for you: Legislation (H.B. 529) has been introduced in the Georgia legislature that would prevent cities and counties from enacting any ordinance, regulation or resolution dealing with agriculture and farm animals on farms greater than 5 acres. This legislation could prevent local communities from making any laws dealing with animal welfare, food safety, or environmental protection. Instead, it would keep these issues in the hands of special interest groups that do not represent the majority of public opinion. This amounts to a power grab by the Farm Bureau in order to give immunity to factory farms, and would tie the hands of local communities from making their own decisions. If you live in Georgia, please urge your state senator and state representative to oppose this legislation. Please make a brief, polite phone call to your Representative and Senator to oppose H.B. 529. When you call, you will likely speak to a staff member who will… Read more
Still Living On Cash
A little more than two years ago, I wrote a short post about how we had been living solely on cash; no credit cards, no debt, no silliness. We are still living on cash, and still loving it. As I said in the original post, life is better living on cash. The lack of worries, guilt, unexpected clashes between my spending and my wife’s – that sort of thing gets addictive pretty quickly. So, what have I learned in the two additional years we have been living without credit cards? Not much, and that is probably the biggest lesson. Outside of the one example of a Blockbuster video refusing to rent to me without a credit card on file (are they even still around?), there is nothing different about living without one. We have had no struggles to contend with, no problems with this merchant or that landlord or anything of the sort. From the point of view of what it makes possible or impossible, it has been a complete non-event. Have there been times when I wished I had a credit card? Of… Read more
Bad Blogger, No Hummus For You
Well, haven’t I been remiss these last few months? No posts to speak of since the middle of October. It seems as if I ran out of things to say there for a bit. Never fear; I am just as opinionated and mouthy as before, so the ill-advised screeds and rants will recommence shortly. In the mean time, here are some highlights (in my opinion) of the last several months: I have reconnected with a lot of old friends and acquaintances recently, most of whom have turned out to be far more interesting people than I once thought they were. Hopefully they aren’t too disappointed by my continuing obnoxiousness. Everyone who ate anything I cooked over the holidays (which turned out to be quite a number) all responded with versions of “really, this is vegan?”. Yes, yes it is. Enjoy. Not everywhere is a cesspool of omnivore ignorance. Actually, most places aren’t. I just seem to be living in one, so it was really nice to have wait staff ask if we were vegan when we ordered vegetarian… Read more
More On Vegan Horticulture
Welcome to my own personal Vegan Month of Food. The idea is to write as much as you can for the month of October about vegan food. The blog entries can be about anything food related – your love of tongs, your top secret tofu pressing techniques, the first time your mom cooked vegan for you, vegan options in Timbuktu – you get the idea. Started by Isa over at the Post Punk Kitchen last year, I am pretty excited to be participating this year. I’ve got tons of stuff to talk about on the topic of vegan food. The ultimate goal of my gardening is to be growing 100% of our calories on site, in a sustainable manner, in about five years. That is an idea that has many facets, several of I want to address during the Vegan Month of Food, as they relate directly to a vegan (As opposed to local, organic or whatever) diet. The first part is actually about organic foods, or how growing food for the vegan diet is different than plain old organic farming. You see, most organic produce is grown… Read more
In The Gym
or the YMCA to be exact (it’s so much cheaper than a proper gym and has better amenities). Since becoming vegan, I’ve been possessed by an excess of energy and motivation, and that is, in large part, being channeled into whipping my self back into shape. I have not been kind to my body over the last decade or so. I have somehow (IT jobs, anyone?) gone from a daily bike-riding, mountain climbing, dance all night kind of guy to a sit in front of a screen, make excuses about how this is my natural body type, not go outside for days at a time kind of loser. Well, that has (thankfully) ended. Once I quit smoking, and then quit eating dead animals, I have been possessed of not only copious amounts of energy, but a new realization that there was nothing wrong with me that I couldn’t personally fix by simply getting up off the couch/out of the chair and going outside. However, I had lost almost all the capacity (muscle, lung, etc) I had before, so my attempts to simply go out and do… Read more
American Lies
Every good American knows what makes America great, right? It’s our proud individual spirit, our willingness to go our own way and our love and passion for the sovereign dignity of the autonomous person – the sacred individual. You must be joking. Try it. Just try doing anything even the smallest bit outside of the mainstream and watch how fast the killer attack drones line up to put the boot in. Americans don’t like individuals – never have, never will. The only people Americans like is people just like them – shy, scared team-players who toe the line, don’t ask questions, don’t cause problems and buy lots of cheap Chinese-made junk. Americans like people who talk the talk (especially on Sunday mornings) but that don’t try to hard to walk the walk, because you know that walking the walk might point out that other people weren’t doing so. It’s okay to be a hypocrite in America, actually it’s required for social advancement. What is unpardonable (and will now or soon get you… Read more
On Southern Architecture
Being back in the American South, I have had plenty of opportunity to drink in the vernacular styles of housebuilding here. In particular I have been looking at, and thinking about, the “big houses” be they plantation or city houses, so popular before and immediately after the Civil War. They aspire to a classicism, and that pleases me. They strive. They make a touching homage to the impossible; they are monuments to it, in fact. It would be silly to consider such architecture a success, but as a bold failure, an intentional one, they are at least honorable. They aspire to nobleness, or at least nobility, conscious of their innate inability to achieve it. These houses, like so much in the South, are an allegiance to a lost cause, the same lost cause that in the period in which they were built suffused the entirety of the South and now lives on in rather more pathetic ways. These houses, in all their failed glory, their striving for nobility, show us modern man’s hopeless… Read more
Yet More Shedding
Over the years, I have posted quite a few times about the amount of stuff I have, and have given up. An astute reader might be led to think that I have a fundamental problem in my relationship to things, a sort of binge and purge attitude towards possessions. That reader would be right, or at least would have been right. Along with quite a few other bits of my life that I had let (or more accurately secretly willed) out of my control, my relationship to things is currently coming in for some serious scrutiny. I blame George Santayana and his damnably reasonable naturalism. As a sort of Santayana inspired aside: If we are natural animals, in the world and of it, and we excrete as often as we eat, why do we spend so much time obsessing about one and simultaneously pretending as if the other never happened? I began this blog with a series of postings about things I considered unnecessary, which served as signposts to my own state of affairs and thinking about myself and my… Read more
A List of Fives
Well, it seems that blog memes still exist, since my friend Jeff tagged me with one. In the true spirit of blogging, I will now blindly jump on board and reveal several seemingly interesting but totally meaningless factoids about myself: What were you doing five years ago? Living at the beach. What are five snacks you enjoy? I’m not really much of a snack person; I like the production aspect of a proper meal too much to waste much eating on snacks, but I am occasionally partial to: a proper flapjack (not a pancake, a granola bar as God intended them to be); Cuban chocolate; Scottish shortbread; Walker’s Cheese & Onion crisps; and Curried Popcorn What are five things you would do if you were a billionaire? Hire an accountant to keep me from being stupid with the money; Hire a law firm to get me out of being stupid with the money; Buy an apartment (building) in Paris; Endow chairs and scholarships in Philosophy at select universities (MIT,… Read more
Me, Here, Now
My life, and all of our lives here in the “first world” are obsessed with, organized around, and circumscribed completely by the three words that make up the title of this post: me, here, now. Nowhere is this more true than in the United States, where we are famous for our collective national amnesia, and have been for multiple centuries now, not that anyone remembers who said that about us first. We are hyper-focused on ourselves, what we are doing at this very moment, where we are right now. Even our counter-culture, if you could call the self-indulgent me-fest of the 1960′s a counter-culture, exhorts us to Be Here Now, to over-develop our sense of self, our obsessive awareness of our surroundings (home decoration, clothing, etc) and our myopic devotion to right now, eschewing any past, any history, any story that does not star us, doing this, right now. Currently, one need to look no further than the fringes of right-libertarianism and lifestyle anarchism to find paeans to the… Read more
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Tagged Be Here Now, food, Libertarianism, life, Modern Life, self, time, United States
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Digging In To the South
Quite literally. For the last several weeks we have been working to get our planting done before it got really hot here, and today we finish up putting in the first round of vegetables. Biodynamic, open-pollinated, heirloom seeds from Abundant Life and Nichols nurseries are going to provide us with Artichoke, Broccoli, Brussel Sprouts, Cabbage, Carrot, Celery, Chard, Chickpea, Corn, Cucumber, Eggplant, Garlic, Greens, Leeks, Lettuce, Melon, Okra, Onion, Parsley, Peanut, Peas, Pepper, Radish, Shallots, Soybean, Spinach, Summer Squash and Tomatoes. Most have already been sprouted in a mini-greenhouse, and all of our soil prep was finished yesterday evening, finally. Still to plant are more herbs, some gourds, mushrooms and grapes and then it’s off to the nursery to get more fruit trees. Just call me farmer… Read more
Settling In To The South
Since December of last year, we have been living in the Southwest corner of Georgia, a place where most of my family is either from or currently lives. I was born an hour East of here, in Tifton a place most notable for the Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College. Originally, our plan was to breeze into town, do some minor construction and remodeling for my mother and breeze back out of town, and perhaps off of the continent again (we came here from London). Life, as they say, is what happens while you’re busy making plans, and things have not quite worked out that way. Four months later we are still here, living in what could be described as a caretakers apartment on the grounds of a plantation house owned by one of my relatives. With acres and acres to play with and a massive house in need of renovation and no real bills to speak of, we have begun settling in. We have found ourselves quite busy with a myriad of projects, all of which have served to pull me further and further… Read more
Rent Vs. Buy Myths That Ruined the Housing Market
I have previously (here, here and here) talked about my aversion to the concept of mortgage debt (Old French “death pledge”). I was sort of grasping at the reasons behind it, the justifications for co-owning a home with a bank just rang hollow to me. Now the folks at eFinanceDirectory have addressed most of these myths head-on from an economics standpoint, and found much as I did intuitively, that buying a house is never, ever, a wise investment. Most interesting is the investigation of the real return on housing. Funniest is the link to Mortgage Lenders at the bottom of the article. Perhaps as people realize now that house values can go down just as easily as up, we can get back to talking about homes as what they are, shelter, and stop spewing misinformation about what they are not,… Read more
Thinking Blogger Award, A Year Late
It seems that I got tagged with a “Thinking Blogger Award” by Jenny MCB last year and somehow missed it. Far be it from me to let my laziness get in the way of a meme, so here are four blogs that always make me stop and think: Bookforum – What can I say. Every post packed full of links to interesting articles all over the web, covering every topic under the sun, from the politics of poop to the complex task of simplicity just to take a couple of recent examples. Eurozine – Eurozine is a network of European cultural journals, linking up 70 partner journals and just as many associated magazines and institutions from nearly all European countries. Eurozine is also a netmagazine which publishes outstanding articles from its partner journals with additional translations into one of the major European languages. Arts & Letters Daily – the blog-front of The Chronicle of Higher Education, ALD covers “philosophy, aesthetics, literature, language, ideas, criticism, culture,… Read more
Stripped!
Thanks to a timely heads-up from Jeff, I am now happily awaiting the arrival of my orchestra box seats for Eddie Izzard’s June 25 Atlanta show. Mrs. Badcrumble would be so… Read more
Birds Love Rich British People
While I was living in London, I wrote that one way to tell the class of a neighborhood was to count the children playing outside. Well, it seems you can also count the birds. A recent study found that the population of birds in urban areas of Britain is directly related to the wealth of the area. So, more birds + less kids = more… Read more
Dear Center Ice Online
Dear CenterIce Online, I am an ice hockey fan, and have been for more than a decade now. I do not live in the same market as the team I follow, so the only way for me to legally watch my favorite team play is through the NHL’s Center Ice package. As a bonus, I get to watch Western Conference hockey whenever I’d like. However, I also live in an area where the cable television service is less than ideal. The general incompetence of the local cable company is such that trying to get them to carry Center Ice was impossible. Fortunately for me, the NHL also has a service called Center Ice Online, by which I can watch streaming video of almost all of the games that would be shown on Center Ice. I eagerly signed up and got ready to enjoy a full season of hockey action. The problem is, it sucks. The $100+ I paid for the service gets me no real added value over not paying for the service. So, if you would ever like me to pay for your service again, then you need to: provide… Read more
Second Blogiversary
Two years ago I started this blog, the latest in a long line of websites that stretches back to 1996. In the two years since I began this site, life has been quite a roller-coaster. Last year I wrote about what I had been up to in the first year of this blog. This year I feel like looking back again, so bear with me. In the last year I have (once again) redesigned the blog, moved some things around and moved myself around the globe a bit as well. Movie and Book reviews as well as photographs continue to be added, though not at the clip I imagined that they would even a year ago. Comments trickle in here and there. I remain staunchly self-employed (or chronically underemployed, as you wish), though with more concrete, and thus brighter prospects, than this time last year. I can say that the crisis that this blog opened with is as much a part of history as the “responsible adult” that had it is. Most people still think I’m a bit weird and a good number of them who knew me… Read more
The Proust Questionaire
The young Marcel Proust was asked to fill out questionnaires at two social events: one when he was 13, another when he was 20. Proust did not invent this party game; he is simply the most extraordinary person to respond to them. While I am not nearly the personage Marcel was, I too shall take a stab at them. Feel free to do so as well in the comments or on your own site and point me towards it in the comments. What is your idea of perfect happiness? A modest income without too much effort, a small parcel of land to grow things on, the company of those I love and time to indulge my hobbies and whims. What is your greatest fear? To live in error through misapprehension of the truth. What historical figure do you most identify with? My knowledge of history is too inadequate to answer definitely, but I feel a great affinity for Henry David Thoreau Which living person do you most admire? Aung San Suu Kyi What is the trait you most deplore in… Read more
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Tagged Bertrand Russell, Lessons Learned, living, Neal Stephenson, Ramones, truth, William Gibson
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Thing A Day
Jen and I have both signed up to do a Thing A Day this month. What this means is that we will each be ‘creating’ something unique every day this month. The question I keep asking myself about the whole idea is “why?” If I really wanted to ‘create’, wouldn’t I just go out and do it? Why should I need social pressure, prompts, etc. to get myself to do something I actually want to do? Perhaps by the end of the month I will be able to answer… Read more
Twitter Testing
I’m testing out the integration between Twitter and Wordpress via Alex King’s Twitter Tools plugin with an eye towards perhaps replacing the current diversions with some form of Twitter thing. Ideally what I would like to have is a way to have the entirety of the Diversions posts show up as a Tweet on Twitter instead of just a notice that there is a new post to… Read more
Thursday Thirteen #37 – (American) Political Parties Explained
With the coming presidential elections on everyones mind in the US, I thought I would take a look at the political landscape and see what each of the parties (large and small alike) were actually about. The result of that investigation was a dazzling array of platform statements and programs, all wrapped up in hyperbolic prose. In the interest of simplicity, I have gone to the trouble of reducing each parties positions into a succinct, one-line explanation in order to help you better choose the party that best matches your existing prejudices: Democratic: “We work for you; the common, average millionaire.” Republican: “We work for you; the common, average billionaire.” Centrist: “If we work together, we can help the average millionaire AND the average billionaire.” Green: “Let’s actually do what the Democrats talk about.” Constitution: “Let’s actually do what the Republicans talk about.” American Heritage: “Let’s give the government to the Church.” Libertarian:… Read more
SOWEGA
…or South West Georgia for those of you not in the know, which is likely all of you. After a two week vacation of sorts in South Carolina, we repaired farther South in order to “chop wood and carry water”. Somehow, six weeks rolled by and now here it is a week before my birthday. Fortunately we have (after much interference by the DHS) been reunited with our possessions, so I once have more than three changes of clothes. Since our arrival here I have been in full-on construction mode. A large high window has been replaced by an even larger window, a small bathroom torn down and rebuilt, much firewood cut, a trailer repaired and rewired to haul said firewood, a lean-to readied to be filled with said firewood, carpet removed and wood floored refurbished and waxed, a front porch repaired, several lights rewired, a workshop carved out of storage space and many other small projects along the way. My list of projects yet to be done continues to grow, and for some strange… Read more
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Airplanes, Luggage and Extra Seats
Richard Chappell has a perfectly reasonable idea for apportioning airline luggage allowances: calculate a total per-passenger weight allotment, and charge those who exceed it. This seems to me to be significantly more fair than both charging by the bag for extra luggage and/or charging the overweight for two seats, which seems to be done completely haphazardly. By weighing every traveler with their bags, a true weight can be established and charged for accordingly without anyone feeling that they have been singled out. Of course, in the case of the obese passenger, this does nothing to address the real annoyance these passengers cause to their fellow travelers as they ooze out of the confines of their seat and into the seats on either side of them, but it is a start in the right… Read more
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Gone Again
Things have been a bit quiet around here as we prepare for our second intercontinental move in a year. Our time in London has come to a close, and we are headed back to the States at the end of this month. Last year during our move, I basically stopped posting entirely, due to the really fun experience of trying to sell everything and move in less than 45 days. This time things are quite a bit easier, but are still proving a bit hectic. Anyway, I’m still here and soon I’ll be there, just as soon as I figure out where “there”… Read more
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East London Image Of The Day | Barking Market
Barking Market Originally uploaded by D.I.G.I.T.A.L.P.I.X 88. East London is a visually interesting place, and happens to be blessed with a plethora of excellent photographers. Every day I share one image with you that I think captures some aspect of East London perfectly. Market day in Barking (IG11) still brings ‘em out for a bit of shopping. It is held every week on Saturdays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. This is a traditional East London General Market with a difference; it reflects the multicultural society that Barking and Dagenham now has and has welcomed new traders. You can buy a wide variety of products, including clothing, household products, foods and hardware. So while other markets have struggled, this one has grown to full capacity. For many of traders this is their first business and several have been here since the new market opened in… Read more
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East London Shopping | Beats Workin’ Records
Down Sclater street, not far from Spitalfields market, there is a lovely oasis of vinyl goodness for all us music collectors who are not quite ready to move entirely to digital copies of music, or who hate going to HMV to get new music. No matter what you’re into, music wise, Mike and crew either have it, or can lay their hands on it for you. They pride themselves on a selection that spans all genres and eras, and stock CD’s and DVD’s in addition to vinyl. Stop in between 11:30am and 7:30pm any day but Monday and have a poke ’round. I love this place! Beats Workin Records 93-95 Sclater St. E1 6HR 00 44 077 298 249 mike@beatsworkinrecords.com Shoreditch / Liverpool… Read more
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East London Image Of The Day | Paris in the East End
Paris in the East End Originally uploaded by uponfreud. East London is a visually interesting place, and happens to be blessed with a plethora of excellent photographers. Every day I share one image with you that I think captures some aspect of East London perfectly. This was a wet sunday just off brick lane,east london. it is amazing how the area has changed as this was totally a bleak industrial space. Now there is the flavour of a parisian cafe overlooked by the old industrial… Read more
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To The End Of The Line
Clive has an amazing history of the East London Line over at his site. Its story begins in 1865 when a people involved with the first tunnel under the Thames formed the East London Railway, which purchased the second tunnel under the river to form part of an underground rail link between the GER at Liverpool Street (where through trains via the ELR would reverse) and the SER and LBSCR, at New Cross (1) and New Cross Gate respectively; a third connection ran to the LBSCR at Old Kent Road. The first part of the link, from the southern lines through the tunnel to Wapping, opened in December 1869 (the tunnel had remained in use as a footpath until July) while the remainder was opened 7 years later. Between Wapping and Shadwell the line ran through a second tunnel, this time along the bottom of a dock (which has since been filled… Read more
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East London Image Of The Day | Wanstead Flats
wanstead flats Originally uploaded by eastendimages. East London is a visually interesting place, and happens to be blessed with a plethora of excellent photographers. Every day I share one image with you that I think captures some aspect of East London perfectly. A boy and his dog on Wanstead Flats – real East London day to… Read more
East London Image Of The Day
banksy pulp fiction bananas Originally uploaded by katenadine. East London is a visually interesting place, and happens to be blessed with a plethora of excellent photographers. Every day I share one image with you that I think captures some aspect of East London perfectly. Banksy’s pulp fiction bananas, now sadly gone – oversprayed by random… Read more
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Thirteen Things To Do At Baishakhi Mela
This weekend is Baishakhi Mela, the Bengali New Year Festival, and once again the East End will be the site of Europe’s largest open-air Asian festival. A quarter million people are expected to descend on the area around Brick Lane known as Banglatown for the tenth annual festival. Continue reading for the thirteen best things to do at the festival this weekend…. Read more
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East London Image Of The Day
Alley Originally uploaded by Dave Gorman. East London is a visually interesting place, and happens to be blessed with a plethora of excellent photographers. Every day I share one image with you that I think captures some aspect of East London perfectly. This one is something of a puzzle. If you don’t recognize it, take a peek here for the answer. The D6 bus goes past here… Read more
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East London Image Of The Day
City Sunset – Looking East Originally uploaded by Homemade. East London is a visually interesting place, and happens to be blessed with a plethora of excellent photographers. Every day I share one image with you that I think captures some aspect of East London perfectly. Today’s image is taken from the city center, looking out towards East London, which has all but disappeared behind the tower that now dot the London… Read more
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