Sylacauga—Alabama’s “Marble City”—is blessed with an abundant natural resource that nurtures both its economy and its cultural heritage. Thirty-five miles long, at least four hundred feet deep, and more than a mile wide, the Sylacauga Marble Belt yields crystalline white marble frequently compared to the Parian marble treasured by Greek sculptors and the Italian Carrara marble often chosen by Michelangelo. Artisans have quarried Sylacauga marble for tombstones since the early 1800s, and architects prized it for years as dimension stone for buildings like the United States Supreme Court. In the early 1900s, Giuseppe Moretti and Gutzon Borglum both chose this marble for magnificent sculptures. When granite, better able to withstand industrial pollution, overtook marble as the preferred architectural stone in the 1930s, Sylacauga’s quarry owners shifted their focus to the production of ground calcium carbonate (GCC), a fundamental ingredient in manufactured products from toothpaste, foodstuffs, and disposable diapers to paints, caulks, and sealants. Many cringe at the idea of blasting and grinding marble into fine powder, but GCC is a vital factor in the local economy. Thankfully, the Magic of Marble Festival, first held in 2009, has revitalized interest in the artistic value of Sylacauga marble, inspiring sculptors from across the United States and masters from Italy to apply their skills to cream-white blocks of this beautiful stone and share their creativity with thousands of residents and visitors each year. This is the story of quarry pioneers, investors, artists, and artisans. It's also the story of their families, who fondly remember their lives along the edge of “the hole” that provided for them.
Sylacauga—Alabama’s “Marble City”—is blessed with an abundant natural resource that nurtures both its economy and its cultural heritage. Thirty-five miles long, at least four hundred feet deep, and more than a mile wide, the Sylacauga Marble Belt yields crystalline white marble frequently compared to the Parian marble treasured by Greek sculptors and the Italian Carrara marble often chosen by Michelangelo. Artisans have quarried Sylacauga marble for tombstones since the early 1800s, and architects prized it for years as dimension stone for buildings like the United States Supreme Court. In the early 1900s, Giuseppe Moretti and Gutzon Borglum both chose this marble for magnificent sculptures. When granite, better able to withstand industrial pollution, overtook marble as the preferred architectural stone in the 1930s, Sylacauga’s quarry owners shifted their focus to the production of ground calcium carbonate (GCC), a fundamental ingredient in manufactured products from toothpaste, foodstuffs, and disposable diapers to paints, caulks, and sealants. Many cringe at the idea of blasting and grinding marble into fine powder, but GCC is a vital factor in the local economy. Thankfully, the Magic of Marble Festival, first held in 2009, has revitalized interest in the artistic value of Sylacauga marble, inspiring sculptors from across the United States and masters from Italy to apply their skills to cream-white blocks of this beautiful stone and share their creativity with thousands of residents and visitors each year. This is the story of quarry pioneers, investors, artists, and artisans. It's also the story of their families, who fondly remember their lives along the edge of “the hole” that provided for them.
In 1950 a million Texans—more than a tenth of the entire population of the state—lived in a region where one family in every two earned less than $2,000 a year. Composing that region are the thirty-two counties of northeastern Texas in which the lumber industry is concentrated. In eleven of these counties, 70 percent of family incomes were less than $2,000. Until 1930 the Texas lumber industry furnished employment for more workers than any other manufacturing in the state. Though displaced in that year by oil refining, it still ranks near the top in the number of workers it hires. The aim of this study is to show how these people whose economic life has been dominated by a single industry have fared for eighty years in comparison with their fellow Texans and with lumber workers in the Pacific Northwest and the Lakes states. Texas lumber workers have always been in many ways a peculiar people, conditioned by their historical roots, by isolation from the mainstream of national life, and by the deeply rural nature of their environment. A typical group portrait would show two of each three persons to be adult white males. One of three would be African American. It would not show any women. Here and there a face would bear the marks of alien birth. Most of the figures, however, would be natives not only of America but of East Texas. In family background, in work experience, and in social and economic environment these people have been uniquely homogeneous. In the early 1950s the Congressional Committee on the Economic Report of the President designated the area as one of “deep poverty” and pinpointed it as one which had failed notably to reach the level of living achieved by the state and the nation. Its economic status has been lower than that of any other group in Texas except household servants, and its education level has been well below that of the state and nation and increasingly below the level of acceptance in any jobs other than those requiring a minimum of training and competence. The immediate past has shown not only no improvement but a positive deterioration. Drawing upon personal investigation and state and federal reports, the author has put the contemporary situation in a historical setting. Her delineation is principally in terms of figures that weave a social fabric from which definite patterns emerge—insecure wages, illiteracy and inefficient production, unsuccessful attempts to achieve effective organization. Though the book is directed primarily toward those who should feel concern at its revelations, it also suggests a wealth of untapped sources for the ethnographer and the folklorist.
Clarence "Cap" Cornish was an Indiana pilot whose life spanned all but five years of the Century of Flight. Born in Canada in 1898, Cornish grew up in Fort Wayne, Indiana. He began flying at the age of nineteen, piloting a "Jenny" aircraft during World War I, and continued to fly for the next seventy-eight years. In 1995, at the age of ninety-seven, he was recognized by Guinness World Records as the world's oldest actively flying pilot. The mid-1920s to the mid-1950s were Cornish's most active years in aviation. During that period, sod runways gave way to asphalt and concrete; navigation evolved from the iron rail compass to radar; runways that once had been outlined at night with cans of oil topped off with flaming gasoline now shimmered with multicolored electric lights; instead of being crammed next to mailbags in open-air cockpits, passengers sat comfortably in streamlined, pressurized cabins. In the early phase of that era, Cornish performed aerobatics and won air races. He went on to run a full-service flying business, served as chief pilot for the Fort Wayne News-Sentinel, managed the city's municipal airport, helped monitor and maintain safe skies above the continental United States during World War II, and directed Indiana's first Aeronautics Commission. Dedicating his life to flight and its many ramifications, Cornish helped guide the sensible development of aviation as it grew from infancy to maturity. Through his many personal experiences, the story of flight nationally is played out.
This educators’ introduction to semiotics describes a communications phenomenon that has permeated and influenced learner attitudes, behaviors and cognition in any learning environment but especially formal mediated learning environments. Relevant semiotic theory is meaningfully integrated into each chapter.
Wessex is retired -- or would be, if murder and danger would only leave him alone. The impossible has happened. Chief Inspector Reg Wexford has retired. He and his wife now divide their time between Kingsmarkham and a coachhouse in Hampstead belonging to their actress daughter, Sheila. For all the benefits of a more relaxed way of life, Wexford misses being the law. But a chance meeting in a London street, with someone he had known briefly as a very young police constable, changes everything. Tom Ede is now a Detective Superintendent, and is very keen to recruit Wexford as an adviser on a difficult case. The bodies of two women and a man have been discovered in the old coal hole of an attractive house in St John's Wood. None carries identification. But the man's jacket pockets contain a string of pearls, a diamond and a sapphire necklace as well as other jewellery valued in the region of £40,000. Wexford is intrigued and excited by the challenge -- until this new investigative role brings him into serious physical danger.
Independent Travellers Britain and Ireland 2004 is a real favorite with both regular and first-time backpackers, wanting to tour Great Britain and Ireland by rail. Updated annually by commissioned researchers and with the help of our readers, this guide offers budget options for accommodations, transportations, eating out, and sightseeing, as well as suggested routes for exploring different regions. The guide now includes a FREE weblinks CD ROM offering additional information for use when planning a trip and finding out more about the destination.
Presents brief essays that provide information about one hundred medical discoveries that had a significant impact on world history, arranged chronologically from c. 2700 B.C. to 1997.
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