The Who, The Why, Oh! That's Easy

A couple of weeks ago, down at the bridge, a retired engineer was looking at the bridge work. After a few minutes, he ask, "what's the name of this bridge? "  That question set me back a bit. I'm thinking to myself, he said that he was a retired engineer and he didn't know the name of the bridge? Then, I said," this is the Margaret McDermott bridge, but I called it the Maggie 2." He then ask, " why do you call it that?" My reply this time came with an added explanation.

When the first bridge was built, I had photographed the construction from the first piling being drilled until the tables were set with china, stemware, silverware, flowers and menus for the contestants that had entered a contest of some sort, but for me, it was the end of the construction photographs. Then, when the discovery was made that the second bridge was, indeed, going to be built and it would be named for Margaret McDermott, for my ease in indexing my images, I knew that I would need some way to shorten up the names for identification. Maggie is a moniker or nickname for Margaret, Since both bridges are named Margaret the first one build is number 1 and the second one is number 2. But, looking at the architecture, one has one arch and two has two arches so,  Maggie 1 and Maggie 2 fits well because it names the first bridge build as number one and it has one arch. The second bridge built has two arches. Since both names are Margaret--Maggie is common to both bridges. Therefore, Maggie one and Maggie two is an easy way to accurately identify the two bridges.

After confirmation that the second bridge design was final it became fairly clear quickly that the answer would be simple. Keeping in mind that this was my way to shorten up the indexing. It is based on fact. Probably, this turned out to be  the easiest method that I have ever used  to index images. I was a bit surprised to find that it actually works well to separate the two bridges quickly, easily and have that id based in actual fact. So, I started called the two bridges Maggie 1 and Maggie 2. You can easily follow along with the captions on the image that follows.

Here are the two bridges. The one on the left is Maggie1, the Margaret Hunt Hill bridge.

The one on the right is Maggie 2, the Margaret McDermott bridge.

So, looking at this bridge, quickly, it  is the Maggie 2. It was built second in time and it has two arches. It's also named Margaret or Maggie.  Easy as beans!

Museum of Tomorrow

While Dallas does have some noted buildings built by world famous architects, our latest architect with his second structure still under construction at present Santiago Calatrava has a masterpiece in Rio de Janiero. The Dallas City Hall and The Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center were designed by I.M. Pei. Santiago Calatrava designed the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge and did redesign his original design work on the Margaret McDermott Bridge currently  under construction. But this week, was the opening of Calatrava's  Magnum Opus in my opinion. It is the new Museu do Amanha (Museum of Tomorrow) in Rio de Janeiro on December 19th. The site is in the old port section of Rio and is part of a major redevelopment program in the area. I have seen the area personally on my first trip to Brazil many years ago. It is an amazing work of design and while I am proud to talk about the Arts District in Dallas and what it has to offer, I did a bit of work figuring out just how big this new Museu is. By loose calculations, the entire arts district could be placed in one third of this structure. The transformation from the old site to this new structure raises the bar for other cities in this old world if they want to compete for tomorrow because tomorrow has arrived on yet another continent of the Americas.

For those of you that want to see an image of the structure, you can search for the Museu do Amanha in Rio. Or, you can go to Alamy and enter in the search box FA1AG5 to bring up the image. I just tried it and it worked. Alamy.com  and enter FA1AG5 (That is FAone AGfive) to be clear.

For those of you who do not want to see Calatrava's non-bridge work, I have some pelicans,geese and ducks for you.

The angle is a duck having just had a drink tilting his head upward.

The pelicans can be so funny to watch.

Two migratory geese fighting. It lasted a pretty long time.