Morning's Greetings...

There is nothing quite like getting off of a nice warm comfortable sofa after poor night's sleep and getting this sort of greeting in the morning. I had spent the day before shoveling out the "first half" of the 17 inches of snow that we were "blessed with."


I have a bunch of boxes ready. I can pack up a whole bunch of snow and ship it to anyone that wants any.

Anymore snow and I'm might just leave the house and snow behind and drive to the Florida Keys and never come back.

Rudolph Modrzejewska

Rudolph Modrzejewska was born in Bochnia, Poland, then known as Galicia, Austrian Empire, on January 27, 1861, to Gustav Sinnmayer Modrzejewski and actress Helena Opid Modrzejewska.

Bochnia, Poland is the home of the Bochnia Salt Mine, one of the oldest salt mines in the world and the oldest one in Europe. The mine was established between the 12th and 13th centuries after salt, then worth as much or more than gold, was discovered. The mine is now open to sightseers. But I digress...

In 1865, Helena Opid left Gustav Sinnmayer, and in 1868 she married "Count" Bozenty Chlapowski. In July 1876, they emigrated to America, where, as a matter of convenience, the boy's mother altered her name to Helena Modjeska and her son's name to Ralph Modjeski.

Everyone in the United States has seen at least pictures of Ralph Modjeski's work and many of them have actually stood on or ridden across them. Name not ringing a bell yet?

In 1893, in Chicago, Modjeski opened his design office, which still exists as "Modjeski & Masters," after it was joined in 1924 by Frank M. Masters.

Modjeski's first project as chief engineer was a railroad bridge called Government Bridge (1896), across the Mississippi River at Rock Island, Illinois. This bridge was built by the Phoenix Bridge Company of Phoenixville, PA.

He was the Chief Engineer of the following:

Thebes Railroad Bridge, across the Mississipi River - (1905)

McKinley Bridge, Saint Louis, MO - (1910)

Broadway Railroad Bridge, Portland, OR, across the Willamette River - (1913)

Harahan Railroad Bridge, across the Mississipi River - (1916)

Metropolis Bridge, built for the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad, crosses the Ohio River - (1917)

Mears Memorial Bridge, Alaska - (1923)

Mid-Hudson Bridge aka Franklin Delano Roosevelt Mid-Hudson Bridge (1930)


Benjamin Franklin Bridge, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Camden, New Jersey - (1926) (Photo source)


Tacony-Palmyra Bridge, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Palmyra, New Jersey - (1929) (Photo source)

Huey P. Long Bridge, New Orleans, Louisiana - (1935)

San Francisco – Oakland Bay Bridge - (1936)

Blue Water Bridge, Port Huron, Michigan and Point Edward, Ontario - (1938)

...and Consulting Engineer on:

Manhattan Bridge - (1909)

Market Street Bridge, Harrisburg - (1926)

Ambassador Bridge, Detroit, Michigan, and Windsor, Ontario - (1929)

One of his protégés, Joseph B. Strauss, was the designer of San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge.

Modjeski & Masters was responsible for designing many of the bridges for the Pennsylvania Turnpike. The firm has over a dozen large bridge projects underway today.

Ralph died June 26, 1940, in Los Angeles, California.

When People Get Bored...

A northern Michigan woman put a novel touch on Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper by making a replica out of laundry lint. (Anthony Scipio/Ripley Entertainment Inc.)

Laura Bell of Roscommon collected lint from her dryer and fashioned it into a 4.3-metre-by-1.2-metre (14 feet by 4 feet) reproduction of the Italian Renaissance painter's masterpiece.

Bell says she needed about 800 hours to do enough laundry to get the lint, and 200 hours to recreate the mural. Her artwork has caught the eye of Ripley's Believe It or Not! The company plans to put it on display at one of its museums.

“For some people, it’s a very spiritual experience,” said Bell. “Others are simply amazed at what someone could do with basic laundry lint.” Ripley's said it also has Last Supper replicas on a grain of rice, a dime and burned toast.

- Source -

Hmm... What great masterpiece can I make from bits of Orange Cones? I've got time on my hands with the Stupor Bowl weekend coming up.

Nyquil Knee Moan Jah...

After being sick for 11-12 days, I'm sick of being sick! I woke up this morning feeling a wee bit better than I have in a while - and was greeted with 5 or 6 inches of snow to shovel. Oh well... I'm going to shovel... some... in a bit... (hopefully).

I'm sorry I missed saying Happy Birthday to Jeannie and to Dorkys Ramos - a belated "happy! happy!" to you both.

I got a nice card in the mail today - definitely worth climbing over snow drifts in to get to the mail box. Thank you!


While I was under the weather, there were periods of semi-lucidness, where I could do simple things if I tried and focused. That meant staying away from the yummy goodness of the Nyquil bottle.

And when the runny nose and the cold-then-hot flush of fever got tied in with the hacking, raspy cough, I knew it was time to take a sip of the "good stuff" and ease down into the land of the surreal dreams. Pablo Picasso painted Orange cones... Salvidor Dali melted watches hanging on bare tree branches.... seeing talking heads on the television but not comprehending the sounds, endless daytime television repeated over and over... I nodded off once, watching a snow pattern because I had fat fingered the remote and selected a channel that was off the air and dreamt how marvelous that last show had been with the remarkable "hissing noise" sound effects.... and I was rudely awakened when the channel came back to life with the theme from the Three Stooges filling the room... You know the one - the 3 blind mice song... the words go... Larry, Curly, MOE! Larry, Curly, MOE! Nyuck nyuck, nyuck... I saw them hit each other with pies and just rolled over... when I came too once more... hours later, I saw Jack Tripper saying something to Chrissie and Janet about a Roper... groaning... I shut the box off.

I remember vaguely having gone to see Longwood Gardens in a huge crowd one of those days early on... and going to the post office...

I hope to catch up with a lot of reading soon...