Author: doodledweller
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The Birch Tree
At Loschwitz above the cityThe air is sunny and chill;The birch-trees and the pine-treesGrow thick upon the hill. Lone and tall, with silver stem,A birch-tree stands apart;The passionate wind of spring-timeStirs in its leafy heart. I lean against the birch-tree,My arms around it twine;It pulses, and leaps, and quivers,Like a human heart to mine. One…
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The Juniper Tree
I was following the pack, all swallowed in their coatsWith scarves of red tied ’round their throatsTo keep their little heads from falling in the snowAnd I turned ’round and there you goAnd Michael, you would fall and turn the white snow redAs strawberries in the summertime.– Fleet Foxes, White Winter Hymnal Since it was…
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New York
Precedingly named New Amsterdam, the city of New York was settled by Dutch traders in 1624 before being ceded to the English in 1667. After the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825, it surpassed Boston as America’s business capital. By 1870, soaring real estate values in lower Manhattan pushed buildings up into the air,…
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Venice
Along the coast of northeastern Italy, where the rivers Brenta, Adige, and Po meet the Adriatic sea, lies Lido, a long sand-bank that forms a bulwark to protect the Lagoon of Venice from fierce storms sweeping often over this turbulent sea. Over thousands of years, sediment brought down from the Alps by these rivers built…
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Vienna
Inhabited since prehistoric times, the city of Vienna is much older than one may anticipate. Among the oldest known relics found near Willendorf, the Venus of Willendorf indicates this area to be occupied since at least 30,000 years ago. Since Roman times, Vienna has become a gateway between Western and Eastern Europe. For 600 years, the…
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Paris
The beauty which we admire of Paris today is largely in thanks to Baron Haussmann, who, under the auspices of Louis Napoléon, oversaw the complete overhaul of the city in the mid 19th century. The initial impact of the works in the 1850’s and the 1860’s was of shock and disorientation, as old landmarks and…
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Alexandria
Standing as a crossroad between the Hellenistic world and the East, the city of Alexandria in Egypt is a testament to Alexander the Great as a visionary leader, who envisioned a unified world by establishing cities and transplanting populations between continents. It was recorded by the philosopher Plutarch that one night, Alexander recalled Menelaus’ words…
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The Ideal City
In the early 2000’s, I attended a guided tour of the city of Berlin in Germany. It had only been a little more than a decade since the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the remnants of East Berlin then were still vivid. Our tour guide showed us the Eastern walls, which were still littered…
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Winter’s Bone
Considered the greatest Russian poet, Alexander Pushkin is to Russian letters what Leonardo da Vinci is to Western European art. He is regarded as the founder of modern Russian literature, the inventor of the modern Russian language, who bridged the gap between the literary Russian of the past and the vernacular. To the Russian people,…
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Jet Black
The color jet-black, the darkest of black, is derived from jet, which is a gemstone made of pure wood compressed and heated under extreme pressure, and fossilized over millions of years. The wood was of a conifer with banded spiky trunk, lower branches sweeping the ground, and cones the size of human head. Today this…
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