Plenty of Nothing

Cape Tormentine

Steve Boyko of the blog Confessions of a Train Geek visits the abandoned Cape Tormentine train station.

Japanese Things in Chetham's Library

Read this blog post about two boxes of Japanese holdings in Cheltham's Library, Manchester, England.

Narrenschiff by Werner Tübke

The Panorama Museum in Bad Frankenhausen contains one enormous painting in the round by Werner Tübke commemorating the Peasants' War of 1524-26. Though commissioned by the government of East Germany, it is not in the Socialist Realism style, but references the masters of the German Renaissance. And because it's so huge there's room for Sebastian Brant's Ship of Fools.

I found out about this place at J. P. Kleiner's fascinating blog, The GDR Objectified, and the image comes from here. See also. And.

Richard III

Today marks the 530th anniversary of the death of King Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field. The unearthing and reinterment of Richard's bones captured a lot of attention between 2013 and this year, giving some future novelist a unique prism through which to view the England of this decade. While it's still around you should go look at Alexandra Buckle's blog How to Rebury a King, which begins and ends in March 2015 and makes about a half-hour's read. She documents the rediscovery not so much of Richard as of 15th-century practices of reburial.

Lincoln Heights in 1958

The Margins of History has a post about the development of the neighbourhood around Lincoln Fields Mall, or as it was known in the late 1980s when I worked there, Lincoln Heights Galleria, then and now one of Ottawa's less spectacular shopping experiences. The present-day mall with its parking lots closely corresponds with the farm to the right of Croydon Avenue in the photograph above, taken in 1958. The Margins of History, Ottawa Past and Present, and Urbsite, are all blogs devoted to the architectural history of Ottawa, and are linked to in the right-hand margin.

Blog Versus App

This graph generated by Google Trends might explain why your blog readership is down. Sometime in 2012 the word blog was surpassed by the word app in news headlines. People are on their smart phones using their apps, and not reading blogs.

Women's Smoking Bar, 1908

This illustration from a 1908 Puck shows what we're in for if women are allowed to smoke. It's a wonderous cartoon packed with detail and Beatonesque expression, and should be viewed in large format, which you can do here at the similarly information-loaded History Blog ,where you can also read a excursus on the New York City politics that inspired this centre spread.

Grandma at Cambridge

This Giles cartoon, commissioned for a knees up at Cambridge University in 1967, shows Grandma cutting a rug, or a gravel path at least, with R.A. Butler, the Master of Trinity Hall (and not Stephen Fry, though it could be him). Source is Francis Pryor's blog. Pryor is one of the archaeologists of Time Team, and a prolific author, and his blog posts often offer a long story you can sometimes sense has been told before over a pint, about archaeology, gardening, or sheepfarming, or a combination of the three. I did not know he worked for the Royal Ontario Museum in the Seventies. You can find most of Time Team on Youtube these days. It's tempting to score him on how quickly he brings out the word ritual each episode; but honestly the rest of them call high status faster.

Halifax Harbour Traffic

Map of all ship movement in Halifax Harbour, November 2011.

If you like Halifax, or ships, or both, you need to know about Halifax Shipping News, where I lifted this image.

Academical Honours

The Ghost of Greenock Academy haunts this Google Street View mashup.

Part of the intent behind following Greenock Morton FC here at Plenty of Nothing has been to learn more about Greenock, Scotland. Though it's my father's home town I have only been there a couple of times and until starting this project I possessed only the vaguest notion of its topography or history. The 36-game league schedule has required me to learn something new about the place every couple of weeks, and has enhanced my geographical understanding of the rest of Scotland too, or at least the First Division part of it. No doubt the odd mixture of football and architecture is perplexing to anyone who has stopped here to read about one or the other. And oftentimes the connection between the football and the architecture is pretty tenuous.

Take today for instance. Hamilton Academical visit Cappielow this afternoon, the perfect opportunity to write something about Greenock Academy. Greenock seems to have had three old-school school buildings: Greenock Academy, Highlanders Academy (which I'll deal with next time Ross County come to town), and Greenock High School. The arch-Victorian Greenock Academy building no longer exists, but you can see it pasted into the present day above. That photographic mashup is the work of bradshaw at Inverclyde Old and New. If you found last year's post "Morton Terrace Then and Now" interesting you'll appreciate his site.

Who are at the top of the Academical honours list? Top scorers so far this year are Mark McLaughlin and Dougie Imrie. The latter transferred to St. Mirren in January. Mark McLaughlin was born in Greenock, but has never played for Morton. Among the all-time greatest Accies are David Wilson, and Colin Miller.

It's the preseason right now in Japan, where summer football is played. Today J2 club Mito Hollyhock met J1 Kashima Antlers in the Ibaraki Soccer Festival, a prefectural derby. Japan is twelve time zones ahead of Nova Scotia, so the game is done. Antlers 1, Hollyhock 0. In the 2008 season Kashima dressed like Brazilian club Flamengo, in honour of their manager Zico, and the uniform would have qualified both clubs for the Dennis the Menace Red and Black Hooped Group, but both have moved on to other kits.

[Hamilton win 2- 1. Morton goal by O'Brien. Morton are back in seventh. Ross County still hold first place but only by goal difference over Falkirk. Two thirds of the way through the season there are still only twenty points between top and bottom.]