Friday, February 14, 2025

Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune in Venice, 1960

 


Name this person, and the decade

 


Unique

 


Waiting

 


Arctic Sailing

 


 



 



Plus, it might teach young people a few letters in cursive

 






Engraved turban shell commemorating the Great Easters and the 1862 World’s Fair, 1862-63

 




 


The Cathead

 


Cathead of HMS Surprise


The end of the stout timber projecting out from her bow is decorated with a carved and gilded crown. The cathead was often carved with a cat or lion’s head, which presumably frightened away wharf rats. As the massive iron anchor is brought up from the bottom and gets closer to the hull, there is the danger that the flukes could damage the hull, especially in rough waters. The cathead allows this operation to be carried out a short distance away from the hull.

A special tackle is fastened to the ring of the anchor and it is fished and catted (brought up and secured) in its riding position on the bow.

The black loop of rope that holds the anchor to the cathead is the “stopper”. This could simply be cut through to drop the anchor. The main anchor cable is bent onto the ring. The ring itself has been wrapped in cord as an anti- chafing measure called “puddening”.

A second ‘cat head’ was connected to a ship's anchor cable and windlass. This was a square pin that was inserted into one of the hand spike holes of a ship's windlass. When the ship was at anchor, the anchor rope (also known as a cable or catfall) was attached to it with a smaller rope, known as a seizing. The English name for this bolt was ‘Norman’. In German, however, it was called a ‘Kattenkopf’, and in this case this is a reference to the traditional way in which the tip was notched and bevelled so that it resembled the ears of a cat in cross-section.

According to ‘The Sea-mans Dictionary : or, an exposition and demonstration of all the parts and things belonging to a shippe’ compiled by Sir Henry Mainwaring, 1623 , the term was already in use at the time the book was published.


I like to keep politics off this site and on my Patreon, but this is a WOW! thing. I tell my daughter that she's living through a huge political realignment, akin to the north and south poles switching, and this is just more evidence for that.

 A Kennedy, who a year or so ago was running for president as a Democrat, now says this in public, to the press. 

Who could have predicted?  Not me, for sure.  You could say the same thing about Tulsi.

We are living in interesting times indeed.

Friday Open Road

 




























Your Morning Smile

 


Straight Up

 


The Watcher

 


Looks Predatory

 


 



Got my daughter in law one of these and she loves it

 





 




Comfortable Corner

 


The 1911