The Old Northwest

Orca ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason M. Colby

On the morning of Monday, October 12, 1931, early risers in northern Portland noticed a strange creature with smooth black skin in Columbia Slough, right next to the Jantzen Beach Amusement Park. Locals debated its identity. Some argued it was a sturgeon, others a sei whale all the way from Japan. Finally, an old salt tagged it as a small “blackfish.” News of the novelty spread like wildfire, drawing thousands of spectators and causing gridlock on the interstate bridge between Portland and Vancouver, Washington. A local newspaper warned that killer whales were one of the ocean’s “most vicious” creatures, but this one promptly stole Portland’s heart. “From the looks of things,” declared Deputy Sheriff Martin T. Pratt, “nearly everyone in the city is determined to see the visitor,” and when some locals began shooting at the animal, Pratt and his men arrested them. The number of sightseers grew each day, and that weekend, tens of thousands crowded into Jantzen Beach to catch a glimpse of the whale, while enterprising fishermen charged twenty-five cents for whale-watching rides. By that time, someone had dubbed the orca Ethelbert, and the name stuck. Why the little whale had arrived there, a hundred miles up the Columbia, remains a mystery. It had probably become separated from its mother and lost its bearings, wandering up the great river that divides western Oregon from Washington State. But Columbia Slough was no place for an orca. In addition to lacking salt water, it was the main outlet for Portland’s sewage. In summer, the waterway grew so foul that workers refused to handle timber passing through it. As the days passed, observers grew worried. The whale seemed sluggish, and its skin began to show unsightly blotches. The owner of Jantzen Beach proposed capturing the animal with a net and placing it in a saltwater tank. It would have been an extraordinary attraction for his amusement park—already known as the Coney Island of the West. But members of the Oregon Humane Society denounced the scheme as rank cruelty. Instead, they proposed blowing the young orca up with dynamite.

Orca ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason M. Colby

The call came by ship-to-shore radio from a Washington State ferry. The skipper on the Seattle-Bremerton route had just spotted killer whales headed south, and he thought Ted Griffin should know. Shouting his thanks, the aquarium owner raced down the dock, leapt into Pegasus, and tore off in the direction of the sighting. Clocked at sixty miles per hour, the shallow-draft runabout may have been the fastest boat on Puget Sound, and it overtook the orcas near Vashon Island. But as Griffin throttled down, he realized to his disbelief that someone else was already chasing them. There, clear as day, was a blue helicopter hovering over the whales. Incensed, Griffin steered Pegasus closer, until he could almost touch the helicopter’s pontoons. Looking up, he spotted a burly man leaning out the cabin door and eying the pod. “Get away from my whales!” Griffin shouted. “Your whales?” the man laughed. “You’ll have to catch them first.” It was the first time Griffin had met Don Goldsberry, ex-fisherman and animal collector for the Point Defiance Aquarium (formerly the Tacoma Aquarium). The two men’s shared pursuit of orcas would soon bind them together. On this day, however, Griffin left feeling a bit embarrassed, having behaved, as he put it, “like a rancher possessive of his herd.” Some part of him knew his quest to capture and befriend a killer whale was becoming unhealthy. He had a struggling aquarium in Seattle and a growing family on Bainbridge Island. Orcas were his obsession, but they weren’t paying the bills. At home, he still talked and laughed with Joan and played with his little sons, Jay and John. But he had whales on the brain. He dreamed of them when asleep and sometimes mumbled about them when awake. With each reported sighting, he dropped everything—to Joan’s increased annoyance. In time, Griffin had come to see patterns in the animals’ migrations and behavior. He noted that they appeared when chinook salmon were running and that they seemed to cling to the west side of Puget Sound when headed south and to the east side when swimming north.


Author(s):  
Daniel W. Berman

Foundation myths are a crucial component of many Greek cities’ identities. But the mythic tradition also represents many cities and their spaces before they were cities at all. This study examines three of these ‘prefoundational’ narratives: stories of cities-before-cities that prepare, configure, or reconfigure, in a conceptual sense, the mythic ground for foundation. ‘Prefoundational’ myths vary in both form and function. Thebes, before it was Thebes, is represented as a trackless and unfortified backwater. Croton, like many Greek cities in south Italy, credited Heracles with a kind of ‘prefounding’, accomplished on his journey from the West back to central Greece. And the Athenian acropolis was the object of a quarrel between Athena and Poseidon, the results of which gave the city its name and permanently marked its topography. In each case, ‘prefoundational’ myth plays a crucial role in representing ideology, identity, and civic topography.


Author(s):  
George Hoffmann

On a warm summer afternoon in 1561, Calvin’s chief editor donned a heavy stole, thick robes, and a gleaming tiara and proceeded to strut and fret his hour upon the stage in a comedy of his own devising. For little more than a century, Christians in the West had celebrated on August 6th Christ’s Transfiguration as the son of God in shining robes. But on this Sunday in Geneva, the city council, consistory, and an audience fresh from having attended edifying sermons at morning service gathered to applaud the transfiguration of the learned Conrad Badius into the title role of ...


1998 ◽  
Vol 76 (7) ◽  
pp. 1188-1197 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heli M. Jutila b. Erkkilä

Seed banks of two seashore meadows were studied on the west coast of Finland (latitude 61°30'-61°33'N, longitude 21°28'-21°41'E). Samples were taken in June to a depth of 10 cm in the geolittoral zone of the grazed and ungrazed transects. The grazed samples were halved lengthwise: one half was grown immediately, the other after cold treatment. One third of the all samples was treated as controls, one third was watered with brackish water, and one third was given a pesticide treatment. Altogether, 13 926 seedlings germinated and 25 species were identified (three annuals, two biennials, and the rest perennials). Most seedlings were perennial monocots, with Juncus gerardii Loisel. the most abundant species. The seed bank was significantly larger and richer in the ungrazed site than in the grazed site. Cold treatment reduced the number of germinating species and seedlings. In the grazed and non-cold-treated samples, the numbers of species and seedlings were highest in the pesticide treatment. In ungrazed samples there were no significant differences among treatments. After the cold treatment, the least number of species and seedlings was produced by the salt-water treatment. Changing brackish water to tap water led to a burst of germination, especially of J. gerardii. The seed bank of the upper geolittoral zone was richer than that of the middle geolittoral. The multivariate classification and ordination groupings are based on the abundances of J. gerardii and Glaux maritima L.; different treatments were not distinguishable. There was a low resemblance between the seed bank and the aboveground vegetation.Key words: seed bank, salinity, pesticide, seashore meadow, cold treatment, vegetation.


1955 ◽  
Vol 45 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 106-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giacomo Caputo ◽  
Richard Goodchild

Introduction.—The systematic exploration of Ptolemais (modern Tolmeita), in Cyrenaica, began in 1935 under the auspices of the Italian Government, and under the direction of the first-named writer. The general programme of excavation took into consideration not only the important Hellenistic period, which gave the city its name and saw its first development as an autonomous trading-centre, but also the late-Roman age when, upon Diocletian's reforms, Ptolemais became capital of the new province of Libya Pentapolis and a Metropolitan See, later occupied by Bishop Synesius.As one of several starting-points for the study of this later period, there was selected the area first noted by the Beecheys as containing ‘heaps of columns’, which later yielded the monumental inscriptions of Valentinian, Arcadius, and Honorius, published by Oliverio. Here excavation soon brought to light a decumanus, running from the major cardo on the west towards the great Byzantine fortress on the east. Architectural and other discoveries made in 1935–36 justified the provisional title ‘Monumental Street’ assigned to this ancient thoroughfare. In terms of the general town-plan, which is extremely regular, this street may be called ‘Decumanus II North’, since two rows of long rectangular insulae separate it from the Decumanus Maximus leading to the West Gate, still erect. The clearing of the Monumental Street and its frontages revealed the well-known Maenad reliefs, attributed to the sculptor Callimachus, a late-Roman triple Triumphal Arch, and fragments of monumental inscriptions similar in character to those previously published from the same area.


2008 ◽  
Vol 70 (3) ◽  
pp. 426-432 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Lee Lyman

AbstractFor more than fifty years it has been known that mammalian faunas of late-Pleistocene age are taxonomically unique and lack modern analogs. It has long been thought that nonanalog mammalian faunas are limited in North America to areas east of the Rocky Mountains and that late-Pleistocene mammalian faunas in the west were modern in taxonomic composition. A late-Pleistocene fauna from Marmes Rockshelter in southeastern Washington State has no modern analog and defines an area of maximum sympatry that indicates significantly cooler summers than are found in the area today. An earliest Holocene fauna from Marmes Rockshelter defines an area of maximum sympatry, including the site area, but contains a single tentatively identified taxon that may indicate slightly cooler than modern summers.


1991 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 271-287
Author(s):  
A. G. Dickens

On 4 March 1554 some hundreds of London schoolboys fought a mock battle on Finsbury Field outside the northern wall of the city. Boys have always gratified their innate romanticism by playing at war, yet this incident, organized between several schools, was overtly political and implicitly religious in character. It almost resulted in tragedy, and, though scarcely noticed by historians, it does not fail to throw Ught upon London society and opinion during a major crisis of Tudor history. The present essay aims to discuss the factual evidence and its sources; thereafter to clarify the broader context and significance of the affair by briefer reference to a few comparable events which marked the Reformation struggle elsewhere. The London battle relates closely to two events in the reign of Mary Tudor: her marriage with Philip of Spain and the dangerous Kentish rebellion led by the younger Sir Thomas Wyatt. The latter’s objectives were to seize the government, prevent the marriage, and, in all probability, to place the Princess Elizabeth on the throne as the figurehead of a Protestant regime in Church and State. While Wyatt himself showed few signs of evangelical piety, the notion of a merely political revolt can no longer be maintained. Professor Malcolm R. Thorp has recendy examined in detail the lives of all the numerous known leaders, and has proved that in almost every case they display clear records of Protestant conviction. It is, moreover, common knowledge that Kent, with its exceptionally large Protestant population, provided at this moment the best possible recruiting-area in England for an attack upon the Catholic government. Though the London militia treasonably went over to Wyatt, the magnates with their retinues and associates rallied around the legal sovereign. Denied boats and bridges near the capital, Wyatt finally crossed the Thames at Kingston, but then failed to enter London from the west. By 8 February 1554 his movement had collapsed, though his execution did not occur until 11 April.


Author(s):  
W. George Darling ◽  
Melinda A. Lewis

The Lower Greensand (LGS) forms the second most important aquifer in the London Basin but, being largely absent beneath the city itself, has received much less attention than the ubiquitous overlying Chalk aquifer. While the general directions of groundwater flow in the Chalk are well established, there has been much less certainty about flow in the LGS owing to regionally sparse borehole information. This study focuses on two hitherto uncertain aspects of the confined aquifer: the sources of recharge to the west-central London Basin around Slough, and the fate of LGS water where the aquifer thins out on the flank of the London Platform in the Gravesend–Medway–Sheppey area on the southern side of the basin. The application of hydrogeochemical techniques including environmental isotopes indicates that recharge to the Slough area is derived from the northern LGS outcrop, probably supplemented by downward leakage from the Chalk, while upward leakage from the LGS in North Kent is mixing with Chalk water to the extent that some Chalk boreholes on the Isle of Sheppey are abstracting high proportions of water with an LGS fingerprint. In doing so, this study demonstrates the value of re-examining previously published data from a fresh perspective.Thematic collection: This article is part of the Hydrogeology of Sandstone collection available at: https://www.lyellcollection.org/cc/hydrogeology-of-sandstone


2017 ◽  
Vol 113 (5/6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Courtnee Clark ◽  
Calvin G. Mole ◽  
Marise Heyns ◽  
◽  
◽  
...  

There is currently a lack of information regarding the prevalence of and characteristics associated with blunt force trauma related homicides in South Africa. Information relating to the patterns of blunt force trauma could assist in the development and implementation of interventions targeted at specific areas or individuals as well as direct future research towards areas in need of investigation. This study is a 5-year retrospective review of autopsy reports obtained from Salt River Mortuary (Cape Town, South Africa). The prevalence of blunt force trauma was considered for unnatural deaths with a focus on homicide. The patterns of homicidal blunt force trauma are also presented. A total of 15 519 autopsy cases was analysed. In 1198 (7.72%) of these cases, the cause of death was found to be blunt force trauma and 828 (5.32%) of these cases were classified as homicides. Approximately 11% of blunt force homicide cases occurred in combination with sharp and/or ballistic trauma. Men from poor socio-economic areas were shown to be most at risk of blunt force homicide in the City of Cape Town.


1988 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-25
Author(s):  
Anna Marie Aagaard
Keyword(s):  
The West ◽  
Old Men ◽  

AbstractThe word of the Lord of Hosts came to me: These are the words of the Lord of Hosts: I have been jealous for Zion, fiercely jelous for her. Now, says the Lord, I have come back to Zion and I will dwell in Jerusalem. Jerusalem shall be called the City of Truth, and the mountain of the Lord of Hosts shall be called the Holy Montain. These are the words of the Lord of Hosts: Once again shall old men and old women sit in the streets of Jerusalem, each leaning on a stick because of their great age; and the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls, playing in the streets. These are the words of the Lord of Hosts: Even if it may seem impossible to the survivors of this nation on that day, will it also seem impossible to me? This is the very words of the Lord of Hosts. These are the words of the Lord of Hosts: See I will rescue my people from the countries of the east and the west, and bring them back to live in Jerusalem. They shall be my people, and I will be their God, in truth and justice. Zechariah 8,1-8 (NEB)


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document