buying denim for an online store?
I am in Canada and am looking for a place (anywhere in the world) to buy brandname denim (ie: rich and skinny, paige, william rast, joes jeans, guess, etc) at wholesale/discount costs for an e-store. Anyone have any suggestions??
macys ??
nordstrom
lord and taylor
BANK$ Freeverse – Bank$. High Rise Remix [480p] w/ Lyrics
Apple bottom jeans, boots with the fur?
The whole club was laughing at her
Arianalynn dancing to Get Low
“The greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people!”
-Senator James Inhofe
Thanks to an outspoken American Senator, the world is being set straight on climate change. working tirelessly to block Al Gore’s Capitol Hill celebration as part of a seven-continent “Live Earth” concert tour intended to rally the planet in cheerfully addressing runaway global warming, Oklahoma Republican James Inhofe speaks with the conviction of a Holocaust denier when he calls climate change “The greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people!”
A least since the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections, WMD in Iraq, the Iranian threat, Bush’s Terror War On Terror, and the constitutional curtain-closing Patriot Acts 1, 2 and 3. [The Hill Mar 28/07]
Apparently unafraid of facing future Nuremberg-style environmental trials, Climate Change Deniers such as the National Science Teachers Association have refused 50,000 free DVDs of Gore’s Oscar-winning “An Inconvenient Truth” in fear of alienating heavy corporate funders like Exxon and the American Petroleum Institute, which publishes expensive ads in newspapers ridiculing melting glaciers, while also helpfully providing “teaching aids” such as coal coloring books and classroom videos asserting, “You Can’t Be Cool Without Fuel.”
That means you, Mr. and Mrs. Penguin.
Still, it’s hard to debate a destabilizing 10,000-foot thick glacier. With sea levels and melting polar ice-sheets already at the upper limits of 30 year projections, another 500,000 square miles of Arctic sea ice melted, and Alaska’s glaciers threatening to turn off the winter-warming Gulf Stream by decanting more than 13 trillion gallons of meltwater into the world ocean each year, and Greenland’s fast-melting 2,000 kilometres of solid ice increasing its melting rate over the past five years from a metre a year to a metre a month, and polar bears drowning a hundred miles offshore while looking for ice floes retreating another 300 miles out, and thousands of Canadian harp seal pups experiencing 100% mortality from the same lack of ice, and with the first month of 2007 3.4°F hotter than the any January ever recorded, and the snowpack serving drinking water to Seattle and the Pacific Northwest shrinking toward bare rock, and more than a quarter of the American West in either severe or exceptionally severe drought and Arizona cactus dying from lack of water… it is undeniably clear that the Inhofe is right: the planet can’t be heating up! [Reuters Mar 23/07; CBC Aug 3; Aug 20/04; BBC Radio 4 Aug 7/05; Independent Oct 2/05; Knight Ridder News Service July31/03; New York Times Mar 10/06; www.cejnewsviews.blogspot.com; www.realclimate.org]
On the other hand, an 18-inch rise in sea level would see salt water flowing into the Sacramento River Delta, destroying the drinking water for 23 million Californians. A 20-foot ocean level rise will put half of Florida under water— including Miami, Tampa Bay and Jacksonville—along with the new WTC memorial in Manhattan, and much of Washington DC, where Senator Inhofe is busily blocking climate change-inspired discourse, dancing and music. [Seattle Post-Intelligencer Mar 11/07; BBC July28/04]
In more than 180 countries, one out of every ten people on the planet could soon be chuckling over the climate change hoax while swimming inland. Fortunately for U.S. legislators like Inhofe, only one of these countries is the United States. The rest—China, India, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Indonesia, Japan, Egypt, Thailand and the Philippines have mostly expendable non-white populations who don’t buy much stuff from the United States, which today primarily produces bullshit, weapons and wars. [Inter Press Service Mar 28/07]
Meanwhile, the rapidly melting and slip-sliding Greenland ice sheet does not know it is a hoax and is set to raise world sea levels 20 to 30 feet, while far to the south, inland Western Antarctic glaciers uncorked by the calving Larson ice shelf are rushing to add another 20-feet or so to the rising sea level hoax. As for the melting Eastern Antarctic… think about relocating to a mountaintop with a dock in your front yard.
OCEANS ‘R’ US
Onboard a planet that is much more Ocean than Earth, the gigantic saltwater buffer covering 70% of its surface is absorbing half of our carbon folly every day. This is not so good, because all this hot water is helping to create vast fishless Dead Zones off the coast of California and Oregon every year for the last five years. Dead zones are also blooming in the waters off Chile, Namibia and South Africa. Nearly 50% of the world’s fisheries are in these areas. [BBC News Feb 17/07]
Even worse, in contributing to a 25 million ton carbon deposit into the One World Ocean every day, we are seeing a resulting carbonic reaction that is rapidly turning this whole big watery wilderness acidic. [www.earthfiles.com Aug 13/04; Agence France-Presse July 20/05]
And those 25 million daily acid-making tons are increasing rapidly.
Meanwhile, the global warming hoax so stridently opposed by Senator Inhofe means that temperatures in Eastern Europe are not averaging 8° Fahrenheit above normal, even though they are. Canada on average is more than 5 degrees warmer than normal, and hoax-ridden Siberia is 9°F hotter than usual. [Agence France-Presse Feb 16/07; AP Feb 16/07]
THE HEAT IN PEAT
This is a scream because the world’s largest frozen peat bog stretches for a million square kilometres across western Siberia’s once permanently frosty permafrost. Warming faster than almost anywhere else on Earth, this time bomb tundra contains several hundred billion tons of methane that—if thawed by a few more cheap flights to Mexico—could be burped like a giant cow fart into an atmosphere already dangerously overloaded with fast-food bovine flatulence. [NewScientist.com Aug 11/05]
Thing is, each teeny molecule of methane released into the atmosphere destroys millions of sunshielding ozone molecules. And despite the hoax of ozone layer depletion, last year’s 11 million square miles ozone hole over the Antarctic was the biggest ever recorded, with local ozone absence often reaching 99%. No more ozone means no more plankton means no more oxygen and no more fishies. [National Science Foundation Press Release Dec 17/03; www.greenguerrilla.com/om.htm; Agence France-Presse Dec 26/06]
Another thing is, one molecule of methane also traps 21 times more heat than a measly molecule of carbon dioxide. [EPA]
Suddenly—hopefully—that next drive to Burger King may not seem as urgent as leaving the key unturned in the aptly-named ignition. Because about another two or three degrees rise in global temperatures could release more heat-trapping tundra methane all at once than all the carbon released over the past 100 years. [Baltimore Sun Dec 16/04]
THE IPCC HOAX
But as Inhofe urges, relax and throw another log on the fire. The good news is that the latest alarming Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projections showing an “upper range” temperature increase of about 11°F by this century’s end based on carbon burning trends in places like the USA, Canada and China turn out to be baloney.
The bad news is that 1,200 of the world’s best atmospheric scientists at the IPCC forgot to factor in land-based methane releases, which are “emptying at an alarming rate,” according to Chris Freeman of the University of Wales. Apparently uninformed that methane levels already rising three-times faster than CO2 are a hoax, a frightened Freeman exclaims, “It’s a vicious circle. The problem gets worse and worse, faster and faster” as more methane heats the atmosphere releasing more methane and so on. [National Science Foundation Press Release Dec 17/03; NewScientist.com Aug 11/05]
Even with the terrible tundra factored in, panicked oceanographers are warning that just a few degrees more ocean warming could release another 2,000 billion tons of methane gas into the atmosphere. That’s a lot. In fact it’s enough to trigger a sudden “destabilization event” even worse than a jilted spouse.
We won’t like it. A NASA study confirmed that 55 million years ago a similarly tremendous underwater methane burp instantly heated Earth’s atmosphere by up to 13° F within a few decades. This messed up a lot of finned, feathered and furred lives, disrupting climate worldwide for more than 100,000 years.
Some 200 million years before that, another series of methane releases came close to wiping out all life on a lone space colony called Earth. As oxygen levels plummeted and organic life teeter-tottered on the brink of extinction, more than 94% of marine species headed for off-planet dimensions. It took between 25 and 100 million years for coral reefs and forests to regrow into their former diversity.
For those of us who don’t like waiting for anything, such an interruption could be extremely aggravating.
NOT ALL CYCLES ARE BICYCLES
These Big Extinction Events—and other periodic warming and cooling episodes—are what people like Inhofe and your neighbors and coworkers mean when they say that climate change is “cyclical”. They’re right. But not in the way they mean.
For example, about 12,700 years ago average temperatures in North Atlantic region abruptly plummeted nearly 5°C and remained that way for 1,300 years. The Younger Dryas is named after a cold-loving Arctic wildflower that flourished during this era in the US and European regions, where icebergs extended as far south as the coast of present day Portugal.
Another abrupt warming took place about 1,000 years ago that allowed Norse voyagers to settle a northern green land. Three centuries later, the Norse abandoned their Greenland settlements when the climate chilled abruptly—with even more profound agricultural, economic, and political impacts in Europe. In the USA, the American revolution was nearly aborted by rapid climate shift as Washington struggled to get his thinly-clad troops across the icebound Delaware.
“Rapid changes in ocean circulation are linked to these abrupt climate changes,” Robert Gagosian, President and Director Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution told the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland in January 2003. “A growing body of evidence demonstrating linkages among ocean-related climate shifts, ‘megadroughts’ and precipitous collapses of civilizations, including the Akkadian empire in Mesopotamia 4,200 years ago, the Mayan empire in central America 1,500 years ago, and the Anasazi in the American Southwest in the late 13th century.”
Now a lot more people could experience that excitement again. In May 2005, climate change researcher Peter Wadhams, professor of ocean physics at Cambridge University, aimed sonar upwards beneath the Arctic ice cap from Royal Navy submarines and correlated ships’ measurements across the Greenland Sea to detect that one of the two “heat pumps” driving the Gulf Stream had weakened to less than a quarter of its former strength.
“Until recently we would find giant ‘chimneys’ in the sea where columns of cold, dense water were sinking from the surface to the seabed 3,000 metres below, but now they have almost disappeared,” Wadhams said. “As the water sank it was replaced by warm water flowing in from the south, which kept the circulation going. If that mechanism is slowing, it will mean less heat reaching Europe.”
today, the powerful Gulf Stream that bathes Britain and northern Europe in warm waters conveyed from the tropics has slowed by 30% in the last dozen years. According to UK newspapers, “The Gulf Stream delivers the equivalent of 1 million power stations-worth of energy to northern Europe, propping up temperatures by 10C in some regions. Ireland, Britain and northwestern Europe lie on the same latitude as Siberia.” The shut down of this Gulf Stream “radiator” could lead to a century or more of no frost-free days on the northern European, UK and US Atlantic seaboards—at a time when the end of cheap oil sends fuel oil and food transport costs skyrocketing. [Sunday Times (Ireland) May 8/05; Guardian Dec 1/05]
While unusually violent solar flares are not linked to these major climatic events, cold northern meltwater and methane releases caused by mass volcanic eruptions are. On a Gaian world driven by intricately interconnected feedback mechanisms to maintain narrow margins of mammalian habitability, volcanism may somehow be cyclical.
But humans are cynical. And our denial is much more dangerous. As U.S. government geologist John Atcheson observes, “Humans appear to be capable of emitting carbon dioxide in quantities comparable to the volcanic activity that started these chain reactions.” According to the U.S. Geological survey, burning fossil fuels in cars, jets, ships, wood stoves and power plants releases more than 150 times the amount of volcanic carbon dioxide—”the equivalent of nearly 17,000 additional volcanoes the size of Hawaii’s Kilauea.” [Baltimore Sun Dec 16/04]
Inhofe says that more than 700 million cars and trucks running their motors an eggshell-thin atmosphere as enclosed as any garage are not affecting anything. [Independent Dec 6/03; Globe and Mail Apr11/98]
Atcheson, says, “Once these methane releases really get cooking, it’s likely to play out all the way.” [Independent Dec 6/03]
buy LOCAL—HELP OIL TANKERS RETIRE NOW
Carbon dioxide emissions from shipping are increasing at an alarming rate and could rise by as much as 75% in the next 15 years unless we stop shopping for cheap junk at Wal-Mart and similar Chinese coal-plant prodding consumption emporiums. All this shipping traffic to deliver consumer toys and oil is nearly double Britain’s total emissions and more than all African countries combined.
For anyone who still believes in leaving their personal responsibility and children’s’ future to governments governed by corporate interests, more than 200 million tons of carbon emissions from 70,000 perpetually steaming ships do not come under the Kyoto agreement or any proposed European legislation. Few studies have been made of the vehicles that transport 90% of our not-so-goods over thousands of sea miles.
“buying local” takes on new urgency and appropriateness with 20,000 new ships on order and shipboard emissions heading toward more than a million tons a day by 2020. [Guardian Mar 3/07]
STATES OF UNION
Apparently still clueless that climate change is a hoax, 409 mayors have signed a climate-protection agreement requiring cities to reduce greenhouse emissions, and 29 states have already passed legislation limiting greenhouse gases. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is also seeking to terminate global; warming by imposes the first state cap on greenhouse gas emissions that will reduce emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.
Last Monday, the governors of Washington, California, Oregon, Arizona and New Mexico announced a regional agreement on climate change.
On Thursday—as temperatures rose to the highest level ever for March at 11 locations across Japan—Senate hearings examined these state and local programs as models for federal legislation. [Kyodo news Mar 30/07]
On Sunday, Vice President Al Gore won an Academy Award for his must-see documentary on global warming.
As astonished Japanese hauled out their Saki for cherry blossom-viewing in a Tokyo sweltering under July-like temperatures, Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels told the Senate environment and Public Works Committee, “We are making tough choices. We are investing our taxpayers’ money. We are transforming our cities into laboratories for climate protection. In short, we are making a difference, and laying the groundwork for strong federal policies and programs.”
Calling on Congress to pass a plan “that calls for a hard and declining cap on emissions,” Nickels insisted that cities and states should be eligible for federal grants that underwrite innovative programs and research. “We need the federal government to take on a leadership role now so that we move beyond the grass-roots innovation that is blossoming in every state in the country,” he said.
But blowing up Iraq and Afghanistan, and getting ready to blow up Iran, Syria, North Korea and possibly Canada if we don’t fork over the rest of our natural gas, oil and fresh water for SUVs and desert golf courses, continues to vacuum nearly every shekel—er, dollar—from the U.S. economy. As Truthout’s Environmental Editor Kelpie Wilson points out, the anticipated cost of the Iraq slaughter “will be at least a trillion dollars. The installed cost of solar power is currently about $9 a watt, so $20,000 would buy a 2.2 kilowatt solar power system. That is enough power for a household with modest needs to spin the meter backward a good portion of the time. A trillion dollars would put a system like that on 50 million roofs.” [Truthout.com Mar 29/07]
SURGES
With the real surge taking place not in Baghdad but across the globe, as current levels of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere leaped higher than at any time in the last 650,000 years and worldwide carbon fuel emissions surged past 900 tons each second, the doughty Senator Inhofe said he would fight any proposal based on California’s model that is already reducing traffic, de-stressing people’s lives and putting more saved fuel dollars in their pockets.
“Let’s be honest about what these programs, and their companion proposals here in Congress, really are,” Inhofe said. “They are the biggest tax increase in U.S. history. In fact, they are worse than taxes.” [Seattle Post-Intelligencer Mar 2/07]
Was the Oklahoma senator perpetrating his own hoax? By becoming the first local government in the United States to deal with climate change back in 1993, the city of Portland has already achieved stunning reductions in carbon emissions below 1990 levels—while booming in smiles, improved health and cash savings.
“People have looked at it the wrong way, as a drain,” Mayor Tom Potter patiently explained after parking his Prius hybrid. “Actually it’s something that attracts people. It’s economical. It makes sense in dollars.”
Portland has led the way into a more fun, less carbon future by installing two light rail lines and a streetcar system, and 750 miles of bicycle paths. As a result, another 10 out of every hundred residents have left their dangerous cars chained up and are happily commuting by foot or on bicycle. [Guardian Mar 5/07; Washington Post Feb 27/07]
FLIPPING THE OTHER SWITCH
The “DO NOT CROSS” threshold of a further two degree temperature rise must be avoided at all costs—even if it means turning off computers, TVs and other appliances in tens of thousands of showrooms—and similar gadgets not actually in productive use in the office or at home.
Why not switch off global warming now?
And put the cash savings in your jeans?
And maybe not work so hard to keep all these machines turned on. Even when you think they’re turned off. Which could be the biggest hoax of all.
“Number one is to turn things off when they are not in use,” Wilson suggests. “Seventy-five percent of the electricity used to power home electronics is consumed while the products are turned off. Across the US, this equals the annual output of 12 power plants and costs consumers over $1 billion each year. Buy some power strips so you can take back control over these ‘vampire loads.’ Light bulbs are also crucial. Lighting is about 25 percent of US electricity use. Compact fluorescent light bulbs use about one-third the energy of incandescent bulbs. [Truthout.com Mar 29/07]
Another big blind spot is that we in North America are too often locked by our media mesmerizers and cultural conditioning into thinking that what we see and hear around us is the way things are everywhere.
Not!
Flip on the internet, buy a copy of the New Economist, chat up a visitor and the great and joyous news is that 95% of global humanity do not live here—and are not subjected to the ignorant bleating of Senators like I’m-a-foe, and presidential pretenders like Cheney, I mean Wolfowitz, I mean Perle, I mean JINSA, I mean Bush.
Europe is moving fast fast fast to wean itself off a species limiting carbon addiction. So is Scandinavia. Even Big Bad China, in the midst of its coal-fired-power-plant-a-week frenzy, is acknowledging planetary peril and attempting to put on the carbon brakes while rolling out windmills, electric bicycles and paradigm-changing Lithium Ion batteries in truly Chinese quantities.
Across the warming ocean in the other direction, to avoid a further 2 degrees centigrade temperature rise, further polar melting, and catastrophic methane releases—the woman-led German government is calling on industrialised countries to cut their emissions of greenhouse gases by at least 20% by 2020, and 60% by 2050. [Independent Dec 6/03]
That would help. A rapid 90% low-carbon diet might stave off calamity.
With targets—and incentives—like this, the opportunities for personal creativity, long wished for lifestyle changes, and entrepreneurship are boggling!
“Now is our chance to develop the American low-energy lifestyle. The Japanese use half the energy we do, yet still maintain an affluent lifestyle. Many European countries do the same. We can look to Japan and Europe for models, but we can also do it our own way,” Kelpie Wilson says—while powering her family’s fully but carefully equipped Oregon home with solar panels and a micro-stream generator for 11 months of the year.
REURGENCE AND REBIRTH
After thousands of hours of meticulous research, this writer can say definitively that climate change is not happening.
forget “climate change”. The gradual warming of the Earth—which actually sounds inviting to shivering Northern Hemispherians—is nonsense.
We are actually well past climate change. We are now experiencing rapid Climate Shift.
And if we don’t flip off unneeded car and plane trips, appliances, light switches, deadbeat politicians, and consumption-driven network television right now—we could trip the switch on Climate Flip.
This means us, Mr. and Mrs. North America. As Flavia Nunes at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California points out, the key finding from ice core samples and the geological record is that “the Earth is a system that can change very rapidly”—once an enclosed, recirculating atmosphere is saturated with the heat-trapping effluence of our affluence. [Christian Science Monitor Jan 26/06]
The heartening news is that Climate Shift is causing a concomitant Consciousness Shift. A lifeboat mentality is beginning to displace our misplaced “me first” conditioning as the realization sinks in that we could all sink down if our spaceship Earth founders on the reefs not of carbon and methane, but our own denial.
The answer to the biggest motivator for transformation yet enjoyed by challenge-loving and ultimately cooperative hominids is as simple—and immediate—as changing our minds.
So why not pull those plugs, jump on your bike, and visit a friend or your local farmer’s market right now? The liberating lesson of climate shift is that we can move just as quickly away from fear, guilt, loneliness, and the treadmill stress of credit card serfdom to enjoy true “freedom” as masters of our destiny in a supportive and approving community.
[The author has clicked off his nonessential electrical power bars, scrapped his old pickup, and is converting his recumbent bike to electric power.]
About the Author
WHO IS WILLIAM THOMAS?
I am an award-winning Canadian author, reporter, photographer and filmmaker. A former Vancouver Sun “photog” – his feature writing and accompanying photographs subsequently appeared in more than 50 publications in eight countries, including translations into French, Dutch and Japanese.
My 30-minute video documentary Eco War won the 1991 US Environmental Film Festival award for “Best Documentary Short”. Excerpts from this “front-lines” chronicle of a three-man environmental emergency response team in Kuwait aired in an eight-part CBC Gulf War mini-series, and have been shown on CNN and NBC television, as well as Noam Chomsky’s feature film, “The Corporation”.
During and immediately after the Gulf War, I served five months in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait as a member of a three-man environmental emergency response team.
Winner of four Canadian feature-writing awards, I am the author of Days Of Deception: Ground Zero and Beyond; All Fall Down: The Politics of Terror and Mass Persuasion, Scorched Earth, Bringing The War Home, Alt health, Stand Down, Dialing Our Cells: Cell phone Health Hazards and the recently updated Chemtrails Confirmed.
A former pilot, ocean sailing master and frequent radio talk-show guest, I currently live and work in the Gulf Islands off Canada’s west coast.
Visit my investigative reporting website: willthomasonline.net
Visit my photography website: willthomasphotography.com
Book 06 (Chs. 1-5) – The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo
What am I supposed to wear to a conference?
I’m 17 years old and everyone else there would be the same age as me (except the teachers and speakers). It’s a conference for people who are planning on going to uni next year taking place at a university and I don’t know what to wear. Do I have to go formal or can I be more relaxed and go for the summer look (it’s hot).
I’m thinking of wearing this jacket in pink:
http://www.boohoo.com/FashionClothing/index.php?id=AZZ87759&code=AZZ87759-173-18&size=10&color=WHITE
I’ll wear a black tank top underneath but is it better to wear black skinny jeans underneath or can I wear jean blue shorts with tights?
You shouldn’t wear any shorts or jeans. I think you should wear dressy clothes since it’s an important confrence. Wear flats, heels or sandals. You should wear a dressy suit with a dressy shirt.
:]
Far Away Ep 18
It is a disorder that is categorized by the partial or complete malfunction of the corpus callosum, a brain structure linking two hemispheres inside it. Aicardi syndrome often causes childhood seizure (intantile spasms), eye abnormality or lesions of the retina, and metal retardation. Aicardi Syndrome is also linked to microcephaly, a brain defect; microgyria, where bumps inside the brain tend to be narrow; or porecenphalic cysts, a brain condition causing fluids to fill the gaps in the brain. Further studies also indicate that a few abnormalities may include a cleft lip and vertebral body malfunction.
It is children, between three to five months, who are most often branded with Aicardi Syndrome. These children are results of normal births, but have developed the abnormality as soon as they experience brain spasms. Infantile spasms at this age causes neural synapses to close, thereby inhibiting the babies’ brain development. Hence, most cases have moderate to very severe degrees of retardation. An infant afflicted with the syndrome may also experience delays in development. They could also have difficulty when it comes to respiratory infections like pneumonia and this could consequently cause their expiration.
The neurological disorder was first diagnosed more than thirty years ago, when French doctor, Dr. Jean Dennis Aicardi, identified eight children who continually experience infantile spasms. The doctor believed the syndrome was caused by a deficiency in the female chromosome (X). Hence, the disorder only affects majority of female infants, although there is one reported case of a baby boy diagnosed with the syndrome. Currently, there are about 500 reported cases worldwide, with only one case of siblings afflicted with the condition. Therefore it is believed that the disorder is a new mutation and not all of the family members may carry the defective gene
There is currently no cure for Aicardi Syndrome. A symptomatic treatment may be recommended to manage the seizures, usually in the form of anti-seizure medicines. A few intervention programs to manage mental retardation are also administered. Physical and occupational therapy may also be recommended to aid the child in her development. The life expectancy for an infant afflicted with Aicardi syndrome is dependent on how severe the condition is.
The National Institute of Neurological Disorder and Stroke (NINDS) is currently doing an extensive research on Aircardi Syndrome. The objective is to determine and further understand the genetics involved to be able to find better treatment, prevention and ultimately, a cure for this disorder.
About the Author
For tips on feline seizures and stress seizures, visit the Seizures In Adults website.
I
Misty clouds, rising from the dark green faces of the Great Smoky Mountains during the morning, appeared like smoke tendrils. The twelve-car train, wearing the Great Smoky Mountains Railroad’s tuscan red and Rio Grande gold livery and pulled by an EMD GP-9 diesel locomotive, vibrated and clanged its bell atop the gravel-imbedded rails next to the gray, wooden Bryson City depot, as it prepared for its imminent, 44-mile, round-trip departure to Nantahala Gorge. Passengers, many of whom had dislodged from buses, inundated the tiny portico waiting area, lulled into a North Carolina mood by a guitar-strumming trio. I would make the journey in the MacNeill Club Car, number 536, today, attached to generator car 6118 and trailed by Silver Meteor dining car 8015. That journey, inextricably tired to these western North Carolina mountains, could trace its origins to the mid-1800s.
Although the ruggedly beautiful area had been rich in natural resources, such as timber, fertile soil, and minerals, the Appalachian and Blue Ridge Mountains, peeking at 6,000 feet, had rendered it isolated and inaccessible, with a rough, wagon-plied route its only connection with the rest of the state. After considerable efforts to persuade the state legislature of North Carolina to rectify this deficiency, it had agreed to subsidize the construction of track between Salisbury and Asheville in 1855, to be used by the Western North Carolina Railroad.
A smooth development period, spanning six years, had been thwarted in 1861 by the Civil War, at which time some 70 miles of rail had yet to be laid, but momentum had ultimately been regained 16 years later, when convict labor had been employed for the first time. Five hundred tracklayers had been subdivided into 150-men camps, each of which had been led by a captain, a foreman, and several guards.
An erroneous route survey, revealing that existing topography had been unsuitable for track, had required another decade to properly determine, and had been exacerbated by crude, hand tool usage and primitive rock removal methods, the rocks themselves expanded by fire-created heat and cracked after drenchings with cold water.
The rails, following Indian trails and cow paths, entailed an 891.5-foot elevation gain with an average two-percent grade, and passed through five tunnels, and the precarious route had hardly been forged with safety. Indeed, on March 11, 1879, the Swannanoa Tunnel, which had been being bored from both ends, had collapsed and instantly crushed 21 workers.
Murphy, already the eastern terminus of the Marietta and North Georgia Railroad, served the same purpose in 1891 when the tracks for the Western North Carolina’s Murphy Branch had been laid, albeit six years later than planned, and traffic interchange between the two had been facilitated when the former had changed its gauge from narrow to standard. The 111 miles from Asheville had, for the first time, been connected by rail.
Despite the delays incurred by its construction, its crude method, topographical obstacles, rough roadbed, and lack of ballast had often caused derailments, a condition partially alleviated with the addition of culverts and abutments.
Rapidly becoming the lifeline to the communities lining it, it carried supplies, agricultural products, and timber, and connected with other, existing shortline railroads, such as the Alarka Valley, the Appalachian, the Carolina and Tennessee Southern, the B&B, the Smoky Mountain, the Ritter Lumber Company, the Sunburst, and the Tuckasegee Southeastern, but it had always been plagued by steep grades, sharp curves, low-capacity locomotives, and inferior maintenance.
Three years after its completion, the Southern Railway took control of it, and, in 1907, it had been reorganized as the “Murphy Division,” with Bryson City serving as its headquarters. Its local businesses and industries, manufacturing pulpwood and pallets and selling propane, had heavily relied on rail transport to support their activities, routinely requiring feed, cross ties, lumber, and sand.
Improved road access, however, gradually replaced the need for the rails. In 1937, for instance, two daily trains had departed Murphy—a freight service at 0600 and a passenger run at 0800—but by 1944, only a single passenger train had plied the line, leaving Murphy at 0715 for Asheville and returning at 1415. Aside from offering increased western North Carolina access, road development had been necessitated by the opening of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and the Blue Ridge Parkway.
Diminishing timber resources, coupled with the completion of the nearby Fontana Dam, had finally resulted in the permanent discontinuation of passenger services on July 16, 1948. Thirty-two years later, in 1980, 2,239 freight car loads had plied the rails, yet by 1987, the number had dwindled to 817. During the last three years, by which time the railroad had been acquired by Norfolk Southern, regularly scheduled service, of no more than five cars, had only been maintained between Waynesville and Andrews, with stops in Murphy only sporadically made.
Maintenance costs, already high because of the 34 bridges connecting Dillsboro with Murphy and the excessive track curvature, had escalated without a commensurate increase in revenue, and in 1984, the Champion Paper Mill, long dependent on the line for its business, had converted its traditional pulpwood product to woodchips, packaged in a cube whose size had precluded its rail transport through the Dillsboro and Rhodo tunnels. Costs to either lower their roadbeds or increase their ceiling heights had been prohibitive, particularly for use by only a single company. As a result, the papermill had been forced to truck its products to Canton and Norfolk Southern, unable to stem its losses, had been forced to abandon the 67 miles of track between Dillsboro and Murphy in 1988.
Although several prospective operators had explored both passenger and freight uses for it, none had been financially self-sustainable, and on July 18 of that year, the North Carolina Department of Transportation had forcibly purchased the track for $650,000 for the intended introduction of a passenger excursion train operated by the newly-established Great Smoky Mountains Railroad.
Its initial equipment, two GP-9 locomotives from Burlington Northern and Union Pacific, along with several converted, open coaches, had been joined by a 1942 Baldwin steam engine originally built for the US Army and two more GP-7 diesels from chicago and North Western by 1995.
Its present fleet, comprised of open cars, coaches, “Crown” coaches, club cars, dining cars, and cabooses, had been acquired from several railroads and extensively refurbished. Track modifications, whose 80- and 85-pound ratings stipulated 25-mph maximum speeds, have entailed heavier rail and track side lubricator installations on sharp curves, the reinforcement of many trestles, and the redecking of the bridge crossing the Tuckasegee River at Dillsboro.
In 1996, the Great Smoky Mountains Railroad purchased the Dillsboro-Andrews section of track from the state of North Carolina, while the state itself continued to own the remainder of it, from Andrews to Murphy.
Acquired three years later, on December 23, 1999, by American Heritage Railways, the Great Smoky Mountains Railroad became one of three excursion trains owned by the new company, which operates similar ventures in Colorado and Texas.
II
Bryson City, origin of my own Nantahala Gorge excursion, is a mountainside community of 1,400 located on the Tuckasegee River and named after Colonel Thadeus Dillard Bryson. Incorporated in 1887, it had been laid out in accordance with the ancient trails and roads of the Cherokee, who had originally referred to it as “Big Bear Springs,” and today serves as a gateway to the Great Smoky Mountains and is the hub for the railroad. Because of its proximity to the Fontana Dam, it had temporarily burgeoned during its construction period.
The current railroad depot, built during the 1890s, is the only one remaining from the Southern Railway’s operation of the line, although its freight storage portion had since been removed and replaced by an open portico. A one-and-a-half mile long rail yard, of four tracks, had facilitated the town’s many industries, including the Carolina Wood Turning Company, the Carolina Building Supply, the Southern Concrete Company, and a petroleum dealer, while a turntable, a water tank, and a coal chute had been instrumental in the then-present use of steam locomotives. Bryson City is located at mile marker 63 on the track running from Asheville to Murphy.
My train’s complement had included the 1955-manufactured diesel engine, a generator car, the MacNeill club car, the Silver Meteor dining car, the Dixie Flyer dining car, the Conductor’s Café, the Bryson City coach, the Wildwater open car, the Cherokee coach, the Fontana open car, the Crescent Limited coach, and a caboose.
A car coupling-created lurch preceded the train’s initial movement at 1030, as it slowly glided over Everet street-imbedded track, soon mirrored by the stationary, red and gold Great Smoky Mountains Railroad’s chain of coaches cradled by the freight yard, before it plunged through dense, almost tunnel-like foliage at increasing, although still-gentle speeds.
Re-emerging from the dense forest, whose tall, thin trees stood like sentinels guarding the single track, the chain of cars inched away from Bryson City, paralleling the north bank of the Tuckasegee River. The original roadbed, curing to the right at mile 64.5, had been replaced by the present route in 1944 because of dam construction-created flooding.
Traversing a steel truss bridge, which had been constructed in 1898 and spanned 426 feet, the Great Smoky Mountains Railroad crossed the Nantahala River, and thence arced into a 12.1-degree curve, commencing an almost-imperceptible climb up a 1.3-percent grade, before reaching its summit by means of a horseshoe curve to the left. The Alarka Creek, a blue sheen amidst the blur of deep forest green, flashed through the left windows.
The train’s gentle rock, lulling me into relaxed serenity, prompted closer internal inspection of the MacNeill club car in which I rode. The line’s newest addition, it had been built in the 1940s and had previously been designated the “Powhatan Arrow,” operating Norfolk and Western’s service of the same name on its Premier line until 1982, at which time it had been transferred to the merged Norfolk-Southern’s Steam Program. Although it had been refurbished in 1993, it had been subsequently damaged the following year in a collision in Lynchburg, Virginia.
No longer needed after the Steam Program had been discontinued in February of 1995, it had been auctioned and acquired by the Great Smoky Mountains Railroad, renamed in honor of Malcolm and Jean MacNeill for their years of service and dedication, and for their vision of an economically viable western North Carolina scenic railway. It had been inaugurated into this service in mid-1999 on the very Nantahala Gorge run I had currently made after meticulous restoration.
Opulently decorated, it had featured a serving area; single, swivelable, tan-upholstered, opposed easy chairs separated by round tables on one side, and pairs separated by rectangular ones on the other; wood-grained wall paneling; brass lamps above the tables; and thick, red carpeting. Fruit salad, blueberry muffins, and coffee had been served shortly after departure.
The sun, finally managing to tear the billowing white, gray, and silver cloud deck open, revealed patches of blue. The pine green, glass-reflective surface of Fontana Lake, once a fertile valley, flicked through the dense foliage before opening up to a full water body, at mile 72.2. Its very creation had dictated the current railroad’s route.
The Murphy Branch track, having been 8.5 miles longer, but with gentler grades, had followed the north bank of the Tuckasegee River to Bushnell, the small community located at the converging point of the Little Tennessee River and the junction of the Carolina and Tennessee Southern Railway Company’s track. But World War II-necessitated demand for increased electrical power to facilitate production of vital war materials had sparked the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Fontana Dam Project and the Murphy Branch’s track rerouting.
Fontana, a town 1.5 miles from the construction site, had been nucleic to its successful completion and the Carolina and Tennessee Southern’s track, extended 2.84 miles along the Little Tennessee River, had formed the temporary lifeline to it, facilitating material and machinery transport. A timber trestle had been built over Eagle Creek. A four-track rail yard, long enough to support 100 cars on each of its spurs, along with a machine shop, a carpenter shop, a warehouse, and storage areas, had formed the base of the project, and cement-filled boxcars had run from Bryson City to the dam, conveying 8,000 cubic yards of concrete and 15,000 tons of sand and gravel per day.
The war had carried two stipulations: the dam had to be completed within a two-year period and steel could not be allocated for it, requiring relocated or reconstructed bridges and enormous amounts of fill to substitute for otherwise needed trestles.
Three different rivers had formed the bottom of the newly-created Fontana Lake when the resultant reservoir had flooded 24 miles of former Murphy Branch track from Bryson City to Weser, and the dam, at 480 feet, had been the highest in the eastern United States and the fourth-largest in the world when it had been completed in 1944.
The old line, discontinued by the Southern Railway between mileposts 64.5 and 88.2 on September 25 of the previous year, had been replaced by the new one on July 30, 1944.
eating away the steel girder, concrete stanchion-supported Fontana Lake Bridge, the present Great Smoky Mountains Railroad crossed the evergreen-reflected water.
At milepost 76, orchard remnants, location of the former Southern Railway president’s summerhouse, moved by. Following the azure of Fontana Lake, the diesel locomotive negotiated the 14.2-degree curve to the right at mile 77.8, the relocated line’s sharpest, which could only be safely traversed at five mph.
The Nantahala River, a fluid life force exploding into small fumes of white anger with every rock and boulder obstacle thrown in its path, paralleled the 12-car link.
Lunch, served in the Silver Meteor dining car attached to the MacNeill club car, had included grilled vegetables, portobello mushrooms, and creamy goat cheese on a hero, served with seasoned potato wedges and a side of lettuce and tomato. The two-axle, lightweight car, built in 1940 for Seaboard Airline Railway and restored by the Great Smoky Mountains Railroad in 1994, had featured a forward galley; twelve, four-place, black lacquer tables with upholstered, floral motif-sporting chairs; small, brass lamps; and gray, geometric textured carpeting which had adorned the bottom half of its sidewalls.
The Conductor’s Café, a snack car constructed in 1949 and an alternative eating venue, had been operated as a dormitory on the Atlantic Coast Line Railway and had also seen brief service with Amtrak before being converted to its present configuration in 1997.
Plying the last mile of relocated track, the Great Smoky Mountains Railroad passed Weser Creek Falls and the Nantahala Outdoor Center before crossing the Appalachian trail at milepost 80, now cradled by steep mountains which formed Nantahala Gorge and impeded all but the high, afternoon sun’s rays from penetrating it. The track, paralleling the river, had been laid close to the mountain’s side with the aid of nothing more than picks and shovels and seemed to bore through cool air and nature’s dense, perennially-green, vegetation-created tunnel.
The caves beyond the coaches’ right windows had once been used by hunters and settlers and had been instrumental during the Cherokee’s exile to Oklahoma in its trail of Tears period.
Maneuvering through the line’s sharpest curve, of 17 degrees, at milepost 83.2, the train approached Talc Mountain, approaching Nantahala, once the last location of a water tank, a coal chute, and a sand tower for replenishing steam engines, thus necessitating sufficient provision for the 56-mile round-trip to Murphy and back. Today, it had served as my own journey’s terminus.
Diesel locomotive 1751, disconnecting from its 11-car chain, passed it on the Stanley track to its right before reconnecting in front of the caboose and reinitiating motion, now in the opposite direction, after a barely perceptible lurch, destined for the Nantahala Outdoor Center and a one-hour interlude.
Gently lurching and rattling, the Great Smoky Mountains Railroad retraced its path, boring through the forest green walls which reeked not of soot or coal, but instead of dense vegetation.
Amid the rushing of the river, where the tracks briefly doubled, it inched into the Nantahala Outdoor Center. Immediately above the green canopy, tiny specks of blue had rendered the otherwise white and silver cloud blanket an afternoon mosaic. The center itself, starting point for rafting excursions and permanently suffused with the heavy scent of pine, had been comprised of several wooden, rustic cabins housing gift ships and restaurants.
After having been pelted by a fierce, but quick rain shower during its one-hour rest, the diesel locomotive, once again signaling imminent departure with its whistle, released its brakes at 1400 and reinitiated momentum, each car induced into coupling-snagged motion like a chain in mimicked reaction.
The Nantahala River, now paralleling the train on the right side and a reflection of the mountain-covered vegetation, appeared a crystal green mirror. The gentle blue of the sky crested the towering trees.
Traveling in a northwesterly direction, the long chain of cars thread its way through the dense forest toward the almost-blue peaks of the Great Smoky Mountains ahead, their wheels screeching in protest as they adhered to the track’s curvatures.
The cork on the champagne bottle had been popped and cheese and crackers had, in the meantime, been served in the MacNeill club car.
Fontana Lake, draped by green-carpeted hills and dotted with houseboats, once again glided by, now visible through the long, rectangular windows on the left side, as if they had served as large television screens depicting a world from which one had been temporarily disconnected in the self-contained coach.
Following the dense, green mountain valley-cradled tracks, the train once again traversed the steel truss bridge and inched past the railroad yard, crossing Evert Street in Bryson City and snagging its brakes for a final time abreast of the gray depot.
Climbing down from the MacNeill club car, I stepped back on to the gravel and caught glimpse of the last car. Behind it lay a track comprised of light rails laid by convicts through mountainous, river-abundant terrain, having requiring restricted bridges, small tunnels, tight curves, and varying grades. Behind it lay a story of the Murphy Branch, which had provided the lifeline to the Great Smoky Mountains’ isolated communities, facilitating their growth and development, and connecting town to town. And behind it lay the ultimate connection—the one from soul to soul.
Opening the door, I stepped into the Bryson City depot.
About the Author
A graduate of Long Island University-C.W. Post Campus with a summa-cum-laude BA Degree in Comparative Languages and Journalism, I have subsequently earned the Continuing Community Education Teaching Certificate from the Nassau Association for Continuing Community Education (NACCE) at Molloy College, the travel Career Development Certificate from the Institute of Certified travel Agents (ICTA) at LIU, and the AAS Degree in Aerospace Technology at the State University of New York – College of Technology at Farmingdale. Having amassed almost three decades in the airline industry, I managed the New York-JFK and Washington-Dulles stations at Austrian Airlines, created the North American Station Training Program, served as an Aviation Advisor to Farmingdale State University of New York, and devised and taught the Airline Management Certificate Program at the Long Island Educational Opportunity Center. A freelance author, I have written some 70 books of the short story, novel, nonfiction, essay, poetry, article, log, curriculum, training manual, and textbook genre in English, German, and Spanish, having principally focused on aviation and travel, and I have been published in book, magazine, newsletter, and electronic web site form. I am a writer for Cole Palen’s Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome in New York. I have made some 350 lifetime trips by air, sea, rail, and road.
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About the Author
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DIY Distressed/Cut Off Jean Shorts
