Progress draws nature lovers, history buffs

BELCHERTOWN, Massachusetts (AP) -- The sun hadn't even started to rise over the Quabbin Reservoir before would-be anglers arrived for the recent opening day of fishing season, their boats lined up at its three launch areas.

A visitor looks out over Quabbin Reservoir and the area where the town of Enfield, Massachusetts, once stood.

It's a testament to the popularity of the western Massachusetts reservoir, a mecca for hikers, bicyclists, fishing enthusiasts and other nature lovers drawn to what's become known over the decades as the "accidental wilderness."

The manmade reservoir, created about 70 years ago to provide drinking water to greater Boston, has become a busy recreational, cultural and historical attraction in the midst of a region also flush with many other tourist stops.

The Quabbin Visitor Center, which looks north over the 18-mile-long reservoir, hosts a steady stream of year-round guests with questions about the region's offerings and history.

"Its reputation has really grown as a popular and beautiful spot," said Clifton Read, who heads education programs at the visitor center. "The view from here, especially from the Enfield Lookout, is really dramatic in all seasons and especially in fall."

The Quabbin, which holds up to 412 billion gallons of water, sits in what once was a valley of four rural towns. They were dissolved in 1938 and the structures that weren't hauled away in pieces by their owners were razed to make way for the reservoir.

For many travelers, a visit to the Quabbin is part of a larger jaunt to tour the region's historical sites, university campuses, museums, orchards and country stores, antique markets, bistros and ecotours.

Don't Miss

• Friends of Quabbin
• Quabbin tourism
• Berkshires travel planner

The Quabbin Visitor Center's guest book sports signatures from throughout New England and as far away as Europe. Some guests are daytrippers or weekend visitors, while others stop to explore the area while traveling between New York, Hartford, Boston and other urban destinations.

Many visitor center guests come seeking Quabbin maps and trail guides or tips on the best viewing spots for spring wildflowers, autumn leaf-peeping and bald eagles in winter.

Other visitors linger to read about the industrial marvels of the reservoir's creation, or the history of the four towns dissolved in April 1938 to make way for the freshwater lake.

Some come just for the solitude.

"It's a place of peace and serenity for us to get away from the noise of the outside world," said Robert Langlois of nearby Brookfield, visiting on a recent day with his wife, Elena, and their 8-year-old neighbor, Meghan Edwards.

The Quabbin, one of the nation's largest manmade water sources, is about 150 feet deep on average and is home to 27 species of fish.

Swimming, bonfires and camping are prohibited -- some of the measures to ensure the water's quality -- and limits are strictly enforced on the types of boats allowed and their engine sizes.

Many of the visitors pack a lunch, don their hiking boots and explore the region on foot. Among the most popular sites: the former town common at Dana, one of the four "lost towns" dissolved in 1938.

The area, reachable with a stroll of less than 2 miles on the reservoir's eastern side, is still dotted with the cellar holes, foundations and stone walls of the buildings that once populated the small town.

It's now part of the reservoir's protected watershed. Bicyclists and hikers are welcome, but motorized vehicles and domestic pets are prohibited.

For those interested in the cultural and historic roots of Dana and other area towns, the Swift River Valley Historical Society in nearby New Salem also is a popular spot.

Its headquarters -- open Wednesday and Sunday afternoons from June 1 to October 12 -- receives scores of visitors yearly seeking old vital records from the four dissolved towns along with journals, donated family mementos and other genealogical treasures.

"The area is a wonderful little piece of New England," said Elizabeth Peirce, the historical society's president and curator. "There's a great deal of interest among our visitors in learning more about a time that isn't anymore."

Fwd: Participez au 8e Trophée de Golf des antiquaires et des commissaires priseurs

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Antiker. com <contact@antiker.com>
Date: 2008/5/7
Subject: Participez au 8e Trophée de Golf des antiquaires et des commissaires priseurs
To: Antiquaires et commissaires priseurs <8e_Trophee_de_golf@antiker.com>

Sponsorisé par Antiker.com et Bantiks.com, l'internet au service des antiquaires. Tony Michel & Roland Hoffmann Avec       et     ont  le  plaisir  de  vous  convier  à participer au 8ème Trophée  de  Golf des Antiquaires et Commissaires Priseurs Au  Golf Country-Club de Chaumont-en-Vexin  Jeudi 22 Mai 2008 9h30 : Départ  en  shot-gun   14h00 : Déjeuner  et  Remise  des  prix Réservation : Golf Country-Club de Chaumont-en-Vexin. Château de Bertichères - 60240 – Chaumont-en-Vexin Tel : 03.44.49.00.81 Mail : golfdechaumont@golf-paris.net Droit d'inscription : 100€/personne :  Green-fee, compétition, déjeuner et remise des prix.  50€/personne :  Déjeuner non-golfeur Clôture des inscriptions samedi 17 mai Plan d'accès sur www.golf-paris.net

 

Salt Water Gold

African Shipwreck Yields Rich Treasures Donna Bryson, Associated Press

Ship's Bounty

 

May 2, 2008 -- The ship was laden with tons of copper ingots, elephant tusks, gold coins -- and cannons to fend off pirates. But it had nothing to protect it from the fierce weather off a particularly bleak stretch of inhospitable African coast, and it sank 500 years ago. Now it has been found, stumbled upon by De Beers geologists prospecting for diamonds off Namibia.

"If you're mining on the coast, sooner or later you'll find a wreck," archaeologist Dieter Noli said in an interview Thursday.

Namdeb Diamond Corp., a joint venture of the government of Namibia and De Beers, first reported the April 1 find in a statement Wednesday, and planned a news conference in the Namibian capital next week.

The company had cleared and drained a stretch of seabed, building an earthen wall to keep the water out so geologists could work. Noli said one of the geologists saw a few ingots, but had no idea what they were. Then the team found what looked like cannon barrels.

The geologists stopped the brutal earth-moving work of searching for diamonds and sent photos to Noli, who had done research in the Namibian desert since the mid-1980s and has advised De Beers since 1996 on the archaeological impact of its operations in Namibia.

The find "was what I'd been waiting for, for 20 years," Noli said. "Understandably, I was pretty excited. I still am."

Noli's original specialty was the desert, but because of Namdeb's offshore explorations, he had been preparing for the possibility of a wreck, even learning to dive.

After the discovery, he brought in Bruno Werz, an expert in the field, to help research the wreck. Noli has studied maritime artifacts with Werz, who was one of his instructors at the University of Cape Town.

Judging from the notables depicted on the hoard of Spanish and Portuguese coins, and the type of cannons and navigational equipment, the ship went down in the late 1400s or early 1500s, around the time Vasco de Gama and Columbus were plying the waters of the New World.

"Based on the goods they were carrying, it's almost certain that it dates from that time," said John Broadwater, chief archaeologist at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

"This find is very exciting because very few vessels from that period have been discovered," he said, adding that many early ships were thought to have wrecked in that area.

It was, Noli said, "a period when Africa was just being opened up, when the whole world was being opened up."

He compared the remnants -- ingots, ivory, coins, coffin-sized timber fragments -- to evidence at a crime scene.

"The surf would have pounded that wreck to smithereens," he said. "It's not like `Pirates of the Caribbean,' with a ship more or less intact."

He and Werz are trying to fit the pieces into a story. They divide their time between inventorying the find in Namibia and doing research in museums and libraries in Cape Town, South Africa, from where Noli spoke by phone Thursday.

Despite Controversy, 'Funk Balls' Inspire the Poor and Lure Well-Off Kids to Rio Slums

Sex-Fueled, Drug-Heavy Parties Bring Rich Kids to Slums

By SONIA GALLEGO
RIO DE JANIERO, Brazil, April 30, 2008

It's midnight and the road to the nightclub is long and flooded in places. Getting to the Castelo das Pedras nightclub, home to "the best funk ball in the city," is taking some time since it's situated in the similarly-sounding Rio das Pedras favela, a community on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro.

A young girl dances at a Rio "funk ball" held in the Castelo das Pedras nightclub.

(ABC)
More Photos

The taxi driver tells me on the way to the club that I have nothing to worry about. "No need to fret about drug traffickers," he assures me. "That favela is protected by militias," he says, referring to the organized groups of former policemen who take the law into their own hands.

"So, no police?" I ask.

"No. No police there, only militias," he responds.

This is part three in ABCNews.com's 10-part special series on nightlife around the world. Click here every weekday through May 9, 2008 for the latest story.

After that comforting thought, the taxi driver leaves me at the entrance of the club where I join the queue of teenagers and 20-somethings decked out for a hot-and-heavy night of funk carioca.

32 track studio, producer, studio time starting at $35.00/ hr

Beware of booth #639! It was quite hard to walk around the Kaching Brands display without reaching to get my credit card — so much of what they had looked amazing, from the detail in the craftsmanship to the vivid sense of imagination. I'm not sure who the cute guy is on top (but I'd love to take him home), but the series shown below him are the Hoko-Ten Harajuku trading figures by MD Young.

Oakville construction company wins $73.2 million government contract

Province spending $73M on second phase of Highway 7 expansion
By Peter Kovessy, Ottawa Business Journal Staff
Fri, Apr 18, 2008 10:00 AM EST

An Oakville construction company has won a $73.2 million government contract to widen a stretch of Highway 7 outside Ottawa and build four new bridges.

Bot Construction Ltd. will widen the provincial highway from two to four lanes from Jinkinson Road to Ashton Station Road, add a carpool lot at the Dwyer Hill Road interchange area, add new interchanges at Upper Dwyer Hill Road and Ashton Station Road and construct new service roads on both the north and south side of Highway 7.

The construction firm will also build four new bridges at Dwyer Hill Road, Ashton Station Road, the TransCanada Trail crossing and the North Service Road crossing at Lavallee Creek.

Ontario's highway expansion plan calls for the project to start this year and be completed by 2010.

This is the second of three Highway 7 projects in the province's five-year plan. The third project calls for the highway to be widened from two to four lanes between Carleton Place and Ashton Station Road, starting next year.

More than 17,000 commuters and tourists and 1,200 trucks use Highway 7 daily, according to the province.

SOUTH AFRICA

10/04/2008 02:19 PM - (SA) 
Summer fishing draws to a close 
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http://www.news24.com/Regional_Papers/Components/Category_Article_Text_Template/0,2430,303_2303430~E,00.html

The Summer fishing season is slowly beginning to wane, although there are still a few Elf, Kob and Geelbek being caught by anglers who persevere by fishing throughout the night from local beaches and harbours. During the past week the tides were very low during prime times in the evening and mornings while on Monday the water picked up considerably, causing rough seas along our shores and an abundance of seaweed was washed ashore, making only small sections of our local beaches fishable.

Many of the anglers, young and old, new to the fishing game cast and try and fish in incorrect places - namely places which are easy and convenient to get to such as harbours and beaches near to where their cars are parked instead of observing the water and beach for a while.

Another occurrence which happens to most inexperienced anglers when fishing in areas where there is a lot of weed, is that as soon as their line goes slack and picks up some of the shallow lying weeds and debris in the water, they lose long pieces of their line while trying to unravel and remove the weed.

All these weeds which are currently in the shallows and are washing up on our beaches play an important role in attracting and feeding the many prawn, worms and crabs as well as juvenile fish to the surface, which in turn attracts larger fish like Steenbras, Belman, Dassie and other so-called winter bank fish such as Wildeperd and Galjoen, which forage among the weeds and rotten red bait that wash up and decay in the holes and gullies.

This interim period is however still a good time to target fish such as White Steenbras and White Stump-nose which swim all along our coastline searching for worms, prawns and mussels.

Galjoen time

This is the time of the season that Galjoen fishermen also start getting into their stride by frequenting their favourite fishing venues with a variety of special baits.

The older group of shore anglers always believed that the autumn time is the favourite time for the many shoals of Wildeperd that move into the shallows between the reefs and the shore.

These Wildeperd prefer very fresh red bait, prawns, crayfish and white mussel.

The fact that last year's red tide had a devastating effect on many of the worm species, sand prawns and other natural foods that inhabit the shallows, will without doubt have an effect for a long time on our local beaches.

The dumping of sand and stone from areas higher up on our local beaches onto the open prawn and worm holes in the shallow waters on either side of the Strand jetty and on Blakes and Melk Bay beaches, I believe will also have a negative effect on the prawn and worm popu-lations in these areas as will the removing of weeds by means of big, powerful machinery.

These tiny creatures are also a part of the food chain and destroying them could have a serious knock-on effect. During the earlier part of the weekend quite a number of anglers who persevered on Blakes and Melk Bay beaches were not very successful due to the north, north westerly wind.

These winds usually causes fish to move to the Gordon's Bay side of the bay at Harbour Island and near the mountain side.

Good size Elf 
Last Friday a couple of local spinnermen caught a number of good size Elf from a school of fish which were off the reefs between Harbour Island and Camen Beach. This area has now added the name of De Jongh se Klip to the list of top spots in this area and is named after the well-known local De Jongh family who are by now a successful family of fishing fanatics.

On Sunday one or two anglers fishing between Nun's pool and Bikini Beach in Gordon's Bay had some good size Galjoen between 1,5 and 2 kg.

Small boats fishing during the night in the Strand at Die Poort and off Die Gaatjie area reported catching the odd Geelbek (medium size), Elf and Kob, but the fireworks are dying down.

One of the odd catches reported was a single Yellowtail caught off Die Poort on Sunday. Eight boats that fished offshore outside Cape Point during the weekend had mixed results with a few boats having one or two Longfin Tuna and one or two smaller Yellowtail Tuna.

A boat fishing 40 miles off the Point reported that the water was "very mixed".

He explained this was because of the different winds experienced in this area causing up-wellings which in turn formed different patches of cooler and warmer water and fishing near the Point was fruitless due to the temperature (13 degrees) during most of the weekend.

There was however some good news that large Tunny boats fishing about 100 miles off the Point had up to 38 Tunny per boat, but had to return to the harbour on Sunday due to the water getting rough.

The Defence Force Boat Angling Club held a competition inside False Bay during the past weekend, but due to the cool conditions and cool water temperatures fishing was not very good with the best boat catching three Red Roman.

Don't forget to rinse off your reel after fishing and loosen the drag before putting it away and also to service the reel after every three or four outings.

If you're unsure about servicing or fixing your reel yourself, give me a call on (021) 854 - 3831.