Unbuilding the Grace and Pearman Bridges

For Sparky and myself, curiosity drives passion which in turn fuels our life's engine. Our passion was capturing the story of both unbuilding the Grace (1929 - 2007) and Pearman (1966 - 2007) Bridges and discovering the unbuilders. It takes a lot of passion to track a project from July 2005 until April 2007 - rain, shine, hurricanes or moving to Singapore. We discovered the joy of discovery learning. Ken Canty opened the front door for us - then Steve Testa, Ponch Billingsley and Mickey Rogers opened many side doors. Below are the highlights of what we discovered, who we met and what we learned.

And a reminder from T.S. Eliot (East Coker from the Four Quartets)

Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living. Not the intense moment
Isolated, with no before and after,
But a lifetime burning in every moment
And not the lifetime of one man only
But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.

Home Meeting St East Bay Drum Island Mt. PLeasant Pearman Stories Grace Stories Implosions Enginnering Insights Stories of unbuilders Learning Links Bridge Video Bridge Blog Unbuilding Archive All Unbuilding Segments Building the Ravenel Bridge Photo Essays About me

December 9, 2006:More wildlife at Singapore's Macritchie reservoir

From Wikipedia: Ixora
From Wikipedia: Black Garden AntLasius niger
Black Garden Ant
Royal Entomological Society

This weekend, I sort of went off the deep end. Saturday morning, with camera and tripod, off on bus 855 to see what surprises nature had today.

Here is the pink flower I have not identified yet - but pretty common

and some small orange flowers - Ixora from buds seen below

But here are clusters of Ixora buds - with a twist. A couple of black ants crawling over the surface. So here is there story.

Not sure what they are doing - but I was fascinated by where they walked, and then visited the same territory over and over again.

Here I can't see his/her head - but something interesting is happening

Then a side trip up a leaf - and the eyes

Then a walk across the bottom of the leaf

back up to the flower buds

and jumping from one place to another - like our ironworker acrobats

walking down a small stem

and who knows what is happening?

Then joined by his buddy

Here the focal plane is such that he looks suspended

Here I think you can see the eyes

A duet for two black ants.

more adventures for two ants

and two ants doing their things

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

C. Frank Starmer