A Blue View

Sunday Afternoon Relaxation

Some people have way more patience than I ... an amazing video (how long did it take him to create??):

Happy July 4th Subjects ... I Mean Citizens

Wash Post:

"Subjects."

That's what Thomas Jefferson first wrote in an early draft of the Declaration of Independence to describe the people of the 13 colonies.

But in a moment when history took a sharp turn, Jefferson sought quite methodically to expunge the word, to wipe it out of existence and write over it. Many words were crossed out and replaced in the draft, but only one was obliterated.

Over the smudge, Jefferson then wrote the word "citizens."

No longer subjects to the crown, the colonists became something different: a people whose allegiance was to one another, not to a faraway monarch.

Scholars of the revolution have long speculated about the "citizens" smear -- wondering whether the erased word was "patriots" or "residents" -- but now the Library of Congress has determined that the change was far more dramatic.

Using a modified version of the kind of spectral imaging technology developed for the military and for monitoring agriculture, research scientists teased apart the mystery and reconstructed the word that Jefferson banished in 1776.

"Seldom can we re-create a moment in history in such a dramatic and living way," Library of Congress preservation director Dianne van der Reyden said at Friday's announcement of the discovery.

"It's almost like we can see him write 'subjects' and then quickly decide that's not what he wanted to say at all, that he didn't even want a record of it," she said. "Really, it sends chills down the spine."

The library deciphered the hidden "subjects" several months ago, the first major finding attributed to its new high-tech instruments. By studying the document at different wavelengths of light, including infrared and ultraviolet, researchers detected slightly different chemical signatures in the remnant ink of the erased word than in "citizens." Those differences allowed the team to bring the erased word back to life.

But the task was made more difficult by the way Jefferson sought to match the lines and curves of the underlying smudged letters with the new letters he wrote on top of them. It took research scientist Fenella France weeks to pull out each letter until the full word became apparent.

"It's quite amazing how he morphed 'subjects' into 'citizens,' " she said. "We did the reverse morphing back to 'subjects.' "

France said the possibility that the erased word was "subjects" came up during a talk she gave to library donors and visitors about how to study historical documents without harming them. France had determined that a word existed beneath "citizens," and she asked the group for ideas. One woman called out "subjects," and library staff members immediately realized that she was on to something. The intensive work on the document soon began.

The erased word is on the third of the draft's four pages, in the section that addressed grievances against King George III and outlined his incitement of "treasonable insurrections." The sentence is not found in the later Declaration of Independence, but "citizens" is used elsewhere in that document and "subjects" is not.

Scholars previously determined that Jefferson had been writing his early version based on the first draft of Virginia's constitution, where the words "our fellow subjects" appear.

Finding Jefferson's erased word is the library's greatest accomplishment using its new technology, but several other projects are in progress. The imaging device, for instance, found thumb and fingerprints on the Gettysburg Address using infrared light, and library researchers are seeking to determine whether they are President Abraham Lincoln's.

Light outside the visible range has also brought to life details of Pierre L'Enfant's design for Washington and notes on papers of Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin.

Van der Reyden said the research and discoveries illustrate why it's so important to keep and protect original documents. The erased "subjects," she said, could have been detected only from Jefferson's original draft.

Sunday Afternoon Relaxation: When The Opposite Is True

How To Make Washington Beautiful

Haiti Earthquake Caught On Tape

Sunday Afternoon Relaxation

Change Comes To The U.S. - U.N. Relationship: We Finally Pay Our Bills

Another remnant of the Bush approach to foreign policy bites the dust. From Better World Campaign:

Each year, Congress is responsible for approving and allocating the payments requested by the President for U.S. assessed contributions to the United Nations' regular and peacekeeping budgets. Currently, the U.S. is assessed 22% of the UN regular budget and 26% for UN peacekeeping operations. For many years, due to Administration and Congressional underfunding, the U.S. fell well behind in its treaty-obligated payments to the UN. But in June 2009, Congress voted for and the President signed legislation that erases all the debts that had been building over the last decade.

U.S. Funding for the UN:  An Overview
To ensure that the U.S. remains in good financial standing and honors its obligations at the UN, the United States must continue to pay its dues to the UN in full and on time. While the June 2009 supplemental bill addressed part of this, more needs to be done.  Learn More

 

How do dues and contributions to the UN work? 
Funding for the UN and its agencies comes from two sources: assessed contributions to finance the UN’s regular budget, peacekeeping operations, and some specialized agencies, and voluntary contributions, through which more than half of the UN’s funding is provided. Learn More

Sunday Afternoon Relaxation

Sunday Afternoon Relaxation

An experiment in delayed gratification:

A updated Rosh Hashanah, from 2006:

Mary's Left On That Final Jet (cartoon)

Sunday Afternoon Relaxation

Rolling a building over ... I never thought of doing that!

Happy July 4th!

H/T The Daily Dish

Don't Go Outside

What Will Happen When The Gays Take Over

Hat tip to Botany

Mother's Day

 

Susan Boyle Cinderella

Happy Hunting Grounds

Minature Knitting!

Amazing!

From The Don't Judge A Book By Its Cover Department

A Blue View reader Lynn passed this inspiring video along.  Definitely worth watching:

More on her and her story from the Wash Post.

Sunday Afternoon Relaxation

From Playing for Change: Peace Through Music comes the follow up to their earlier "Stand By Me" and the second of many "songs around the world" being released on CD/DVD in April, 2009. Featured is a "track written by Pierre Minetti performed by musicians around the world adding their part to the song as it traveled the globe."

Ellen DeGeneres has a very amusing conversation with a woman from Austin:

Sully Going To DC

From the AP:

US Airways pilot Chesley B. "Sully" Sullenberger and his family are going to the presidential inauguration, the mayor of his California hometown said Sunday ... An aide to President-elect Barack Obama said Sunday evening that all five members of the Flight 1549 crew have been invited to the inauguration Tuesday. The aide spoke on condition of anonymity because details were still being worked out.

Security Camera Catches US Airways Crash & Rescue In Real Time

A near by security camera caught the whole thing (click on the video and then wait for the entire thing to download before playing it).

Around the 2:00 mark, the plane enters at the left of the screen. It's truly amazing to see how fast they got the people out of the plane ... among many lucky things, the fact that it crashed in such a busy waterway has to have been one of the most important: