Category Archives: Photographs

Notre Dame is ablaze

Photographs

Unspeakable tragedy.


The spire. Henri-Cartier Bresson, 1948.

I write with tears in my eyes.

Name the three greatest cathedrals of Western civilization and the names which spring to mind are Westminster Abbey, St. Peter’s and Notre Dame. And while the first two were only ever symbols of oppression, despotism and egotistical power, Notre Dame was, by contrast, the greatest statement of freedom medieval man ever made. Paris may be the center of bloody revolution, of past despots and of great victories and defeats, but none would argue it ever stood for anything but individual freedom.

As I write the spire of Notre Dame has collapsed. Fire is ravaging the cathedral. Who knows what will survive?

I simply cannot reproduce those images here.

Unspeakable tragedy.

The Raft of the Medusa

Paintings

A record of incompetence.


Dynamic composition heightens impact.

The designers of the Titanic learned nothing from history. When the French naval frigate Médusa ran aground in 1816 off Mauritania there were insufficient lifeboats to save all on board. Those that were there were, naturally, reserved for the incompetent officers and scumbag politicians and the captain, hearing some faint echo of his duty to the others on board, ordered the ship’s carpenters to construct a crude raft, where the poor wretches were placed. The Titanic had a similar shortage of lifeboats but the miserable captain made no attempt to even cobble together alternative solutions.

The horrors of survival – cannibalism, dehydration, putrefaction, death – are all captured in this composition, one which no photograph could ever equal. The painter has managed to record death and despair in the lower half of the canvas, along with hope and optimism at the top.

Theodore Gericault (1791-1824) completed this huge canvas in 1819 towards the end of his very short life and it remains an icon of French Romanticism. The painting is to life-size scale, and is 16 x 23 feet in size. It hangs in the Louvre in Paris, as it should. In a way it documents the failure of the 18th century Enlightenment which saw a growing focus on science and rational thought, rather than religious gobbledegook. Climate change and science denial, anyone? That failure echoes today in a purportedly rational, enlightened Western Hemisphere, with America the leader of the denial movement.

Gericault was seemingly magically gifted and remains one of the finest painters of horses. His portrait of Napoleon on a rearing stallion is maybe his most famous work but none exceeds the dynamism and sheer drama of The Raft.

There’s an interesting video explaining the work here which ends with a contemporary critic’s words: “We are all on the Raft of the Medusa”, a state in which America finds itself today, an imbecilic cockroach in charge with little empathy or caring for anyone but himself. As with the Titanic, history repeats.

German engineering design

Photographs

Oh boy!

For those into protective clothing when riding a motorcycle, the Scottsdale riding season runs from September though April. The summers are just too darned hot.

So it was doubly upsetting when my 1975 BMW airhead started running incredibly roughly after a period of smoothness and bliss, robbing me of riding time. The right exhaust was popping and banging and the machine felt like a British product.

So I methodically went through the usual suspects, including points gap, timing, valve lash and so on, only to find all within spec. Next I turned my attention to the carburetors even though they had been recently overhauled and all rubber O rings and diaphragms replaced. And it was when removing the right hand carb that I noticed that the choke lever on the carb was at ‘full choke’ whereas the lever controlling that carb part was at ‘no choke’. The lever on the engine housing is connected to the carb with stiff wires in a steel and vinyl sheath, conferring a push/pull action on the carb-end controls to choke or de-choke the carb. And full choke is absolutely necessary on an airhead BMW which is notoriously unwilling to start from cold otherwise. This is probably inherited machine memory from distant times past and the Russian front of 1941/2.

To cut to the chase, when I operated the choke lever the left carb choke responded as expected but the right did not budge. So there must be a fault in the choke lever assembly which I duly removed from the engine housing and dismantled.

Here’s what it looks like , and as you can see it complies with the key dictate handed down in school to all German engineering grads: “Why make it simple when complex works just as well?”. Magura’s engineers, the designers and makers of this assembly, clearly complied with this instruction:


The clutch lever assembly dismantled.

As is clear from the image, one of the two toothed racks (the replacement is included), which are driven by the pinion with lever attached, had fractured. Thus full choke could be engaged on the carb as that’s a pushing action, but retraction was impossible owing to the fractured rack. So the right cylinder was running on ‘full rich’ all the time, which is not a performance enhancing feature. Quite how a hard steel part fails in tension when it is subjected to very light forces beats me, but after 45 years of use I guess I should not complain.

How does it work? The cover forces down the wave washer when the retaining screw is tightened. The pinion – the teeth on the lever assembly – moves the two toothed racks into which the stiff wires leading to the carbs are inserted. The two retaining nuts serve to keep the racks in place and are threaded to accept the steel, vinyl covered cable sheaths. The force of the cover on the pinion engages the ball bearing to provide detents – full, half and off. Why make it simple ….

I searched the parts fiche for a replacement rack – a 10 cent part – and when that failed I reverted to the 45 year-old illustrated book which is much more detailed, hoping to learn the part number for the rack and thus procure a replacement. No such luck for no components were listed for this assembly. You either buy the whole thing or do without. Very un-German, considering the assembly is easily dismantled. I posted a lament on the BMW MOA airhead forum and luckily one member there had a spare rack which he mailed me gratis, free and for nothing! I sent him a six pack as thanks.


Wire and rack installation.

The racks are installed one at a time by dragging them in using the pinion/lever, then the retaining nuts are installed to secure the racks.


Assembly completed, after greasing moving parts.

And if you think that German attention to detail is as good as it gets, kindly explain to me why Magura managed to stamp its logo upside down and do a truly execrable job of engraving? Still, had this been a British design you can be assured the whole machine would have been on the scrap heap …. 40 years ago.


Installed.

Anyway, the clutch lever assembly is now reinstalled and I am enjoying the short remainder of the Scottsdale riding season.

A Moveable Feast

Photographs

Thinking of Paris.

If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.
-Ernest Hemingway

In the Tuileries Garden, 1976. Leica M3, 35mm Summaron, TriX.