Cutting It Close

or the casual observer this newsletter has not made the Fall Quarter deadline. However, for the astronomically pure the December solstice, or the beginning of winter, will occur in the northern hemisphere at 05:30 UTC on December 22, 2011. I think I missed it anyway, oh well.

So, now that I have found a way to fully justify my procrastination and tardiness, I can get on the with this rather abbreviated newsletter.

A Moment of Explanation

I decided from the beginning that I wanted, along with all of your help, to tell our story. To me, that meant that the site had to have some sort of logical progression to it. I won't go into every area, but in the Barracks Area for example, I tried to show an approach down the road to the to the area, going to the main gate, then down the barracks road, and to the left to the motor pool, etc.

So, as all of you provided new images I found that they began to fill in the gaps to that narrative, which could make that logical progression even more detailed. Now that can be quite labor intensive, but I think that it makes for a better visual story, because it will help us old guys to remember, and also there are going to be those site visitors that were not members of our experience, which helps them to more easily understand the story.

Now that I have made a short story long, what I am saying is I don't just tack on new images at the back of an area. I insert them in their contextual place, which means that you are going to have to do more work to find those new image. Yes I know... Life is hard enough, but this is for your own good, trust me...!

New Materials and Documentation

Recently while rummaging around in an old art materials storage box looking for drawing pencils, I discovered over 100 black and white Charlie Battery negatives that I thought were long ago lost.

I was both surprised and elated to find them, because I found a some interesting and unique photos, including a picture of the front of the motor pool, which has been one of the missing pieces to the site.

I don't have a slide or negative scanner, so I had to take them to a photography studio that I work with to have them scanned into digital high resolution images, which is rather expensive. So I was only able to afford 15 new images for now and I have placed them in their proper areas and they can be identified by the animated image that flashes “New” in the upper left hand corner of each image section.

Construction Images

Our friend Thomas Schulz, from Heilbronn, has provided us with even more new images of the base construction. I have expanded the existing Construction PDF to 7 new images, and added another Construction PDF with 3 more images, which bring our construction images up to a total of 10 very unique new photographs documenting the sites construction. And, as usual, they can be found in the “Archives Section” on page one.

Thomas has also provided us with a two architects drafted site plan. One is very clear and easy to read, and is the one that I would like to use. However, for some unknown reason, I am told that we cannot use it. The other one is fuzzy and hard to read, and the layout is a bit more unclear. Maybe in the future, if I beg, grovel, plead, and hold my breath, and any other tactic I can think of, we will be allowed to use it on the website. In any case, we thank you Thomas for you contribution to our unit history.