The Great Wall of China is an ancient series of walls and fortifications, totaling more than 13,000 miles in length, located in northern China. Perhaps the most recognizable symbol of China and its long and vivid history, the Great Wall was originally conceived by Emperor Qin Shi Huang in the third century B.C. as a means of preventing incursions from barbarian nomads. The best-known and best-preserved section of the Great Wall was built in the 14th through 17th centuries A.D., during the Ming dynasty. Though the Great Wall never effectively prevented invaders from entering China, it came to function as a powerful symbol of Chinese civilization’s enduring strength.
Qin Dynasty Construction
Though the beginning of the Great Wall of China can be traced to the fifth century B.C., many of the fortifications included in the wall date from hundreds of years earlier, when China was divided into a number of individual kingdoms during the so-called Warring States Period.
Around 220 B.C., Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of a unified China under the Qin Dynasty, ordered that earlier fortifications between states be removed and a number of existing walls along the northern border be joined into a single system that would extend for more than 10,000 li (a li is about one-third of a mile) and protect China against attacks from the north.
Construction of the “Wan Li Chang Cheng,” or 10,000-Li-Long Wall, was one of the most ambitious building projects ever undertaken by any civilization. The famous Chinese general Meng Tian initially directed the project, and was said to have used a massive army of soldiers, convicts and commoners as workers.
Made mostly of earth and stone, the wall stretched from the China Sea port of Shanhaiguan over 3,000 miles west into Gansu province. In some strategic areas, sections of the wall overlapped for maximum security (including the Badaling stretch, north of Beijing, that was later restored during the Ming Dynasty).
From a base of 15 to 50 feet, the Great Wall rose some 15-30 feet high and was topped by ramparts 12 feet or higher; guard towers were distributed at intervals along it.
EPISODE 337 RESPONSES TO THE 16 ROW SEED DRILL (HOOKED TO GPS)
alan skeoch
May 2021
I got some interesting comments on this 12 row seed drill. Some small farms have survived but the big farms
are still getting bigger.
Our farm? Very small. 25 acres of the poorest land in Wellington County. Best crop is rock. The rocks just keep popping
up no matter how many times we pick them. Yet my grandparents, Ted and Louisa Freeman managed to eke out a living
from 1908 to 1958…with a lot of help from my mom and her brother Frank. The secret was a big garden and jobs off the
farm in two World Wars. The seed drill pictured above could not turn around on our farm…we would have to carve a highway
through the forest, over the swamps from the Fifth line to the Fourth Line. Then the drill could turn.
(If bored…take a look at the guy with big ears in the cloud above he tractor…right beside the guy with
no brain, just a hole in his head…Reading clouds is a pastime…see the snake with its mouth open?)
alan
Comments from friends
Well, Alan
…never saw a seed drill anything like this…points out how a young prospective farmer can no longer learn from his parent, nor manage anything like him. The future lies in specialized university education and revolutionizing everything that existed beforehand.
(Russ Vanstone)
Hi Alan
Our farm friend in Illinois calls us every Saturday. She just told us that she rode along on Friday while her renter planted corn. He has a new 24 row planter.
First, they drive the perimeter of the field so the GPS learns the dimensions of the field. That takes the time as they needed to skirt buildings. They planted 259 acres in 5 hours! They were also fertilizing from two tanks at the same time. The types of fertilizers are determined from soil analyses done earlier. The planter computer gives feedback about coverage of the planting. At one point they were getting a 96% reading and he stopped to adjust and then they were back up to 99 or 100%.
Amazing productivity and science. Her renter and his son farm about 5000 acres and grow both corn and soy beans in her area of Illinois.
Monica
Good morning Alan,
There are some 100 acre farms still surviving … My friends’ organic farm (100 acres) was purchased 40 years ago from a Mennonite family. It borders the Thames River just outside of St. Mary’s and has a gorgeous old farmhouse (2 storey brick, reminiscent of yours.) My sister and brother-in-law’s farm is just south of Owen South and part of it is included in the Niagara Escarpment trail. And our daughter Martha is married to Remi, who has always been a full-time farmer in Norfolk county. His land is spotted with gorgeous woods and ravines and ponds, all spring fed creeks which flow into Lake Erie, 15 miles south. He started with 100 acres, but now farms closer to 500 acres. He farms the land and rents out the farmhouses for another source of income. You’d enjoy meeting him. Very self-sufficient guy. Martha has 4 chickens that scratch around the house and 3 bunnies, plus a huge vegetable garden. They hope to get 2 goats this year and have a goat house and fenced yard ready for them.
EPISODE 335: A FASCINATNG RESPONSE TO THE SLOVAKIA STORIES by Bill Z——, artist, Canadian, ex-Slovak
alan skeoch
May 2021
Artwork by Bill Z done during a 1979 visit to his Slovak relatives
Thom N—-, friend from the deep past, sent MY Slovak Episodes to his close friend Bill Z—– who responded with some
interesting comments and a series of his artistic interpretation of Slovak life about the same time
as we visited Slovakia. Most of the readers of my episodes are not Slovaks. But I bet dollars to do-nuts
everyone has seen Fiddler on the Roof ! Similar set designs. Bill Z and Thom N are real persons but I have not included
their full names.
By the way, Thom, I had a nice long discussion with Bill…complimented him on his art…perhaps you can
forward this note to Bill.
Al,
Bill Z, a best buddy is an incredible artist and was the Media Consultant for the Etobicoke Board of Education.
He was a docent at the Dali Art museum in Sarasota for over a decade when wintering at his condo in St. Petersburg.
He continues to study art around the world. I sent Bill your last missive about Slovakia and his response deserved forwarding to you and your son .His sketches tell a story themselves.
From:Bill Z Sent:May 5, 2021 5:52 PM To:Thomas N Subject:Re: follow up / My response to Al’s 1993 nostalgic trip to Bratislava
Thom, Feel free to forward to Al and his son. Be forewarned, the photos may scramble from the original aligned format. – Bill
Dobrý deň Tomas,
Thank you for forwarding yesterday the fascinating accounts and nostalgic photos of your friend Al Skeoch’s 1993 trip to Bratislava to visit his son teaching English there! … I happen to have been a student there in Grade 9 for the beginning of the 1953-4 school year before switching to Vaughan Road C.I when our family ‘moved on up’ to the suburbs.
Considering my background, Al’s vivid emailed accounts easily teleported me to Bratislava and the rural countryside of my thirty two plus relatives of all stripes in central Slovakia. Most were labourers, farmers, field hands, homemakers, a couple of doctors, educators and politicians, each hard-working. All those memories of the year I lived and studied making connections there with relatives and fellow classmates in 1974 came rushing back to mind as if yesterday.
I also went back a couple of times, once in 1979 to participate in the internationalDetva Folkloric Festivalwith a contingent of Slovak dancers from a Toronto cultural club representing Canada. A real blast! Another time, after the fall of Communism, to include more time with my academically educated cousins, those professionals who prospered regionally and beyond, now living in the cities of Bratislava, Prague and Vienna. Some also visited me in Toronto. A true pleasure! I regularly exchange emails with my closest cousin Marta, who studied the Queen’s English for two years in London. Speaks fluently, and with a cultured British accent to boot.
The history of Czechoslovakia’s breakup as referenced is a most interesting one. Particularly the ’stolen’ flag shenanigan by the Czech Republic (which I subsequently googled out of curiosity). And I easily related to, or experienced, many of his same personal eye-opening real life adventures. The episode of the secretive party in a wine cellar of a distant darkened village. The ruins, dilapidated shacks, abandoned farmers’ homes unlit at night, and dirt roads along the way as the country transitions from one generation to another. The outdoor markets selling handmade wooden crafts, corn husk dolls, embroidered items. The refreshing panoramic views from the peaks of the scenic Tatra Mountains, the lively music, the local food, delicious dumplings smothered in gravy, and home-made wine or slivovice, and as you and Cathy regretfully experienced in a Prague tram, the scourge of Roma pickpockets, once surprisingly denounced on Canadian T.V. by an international Czechoslovak beauty contestant. The initial cultural shock and language divide. Curious stares of locals turning into smiles and then as strangers turning into friends. It sure helped that I understood and spoke the dialect, admittedly with a lot of hand gestures. Unlike Al, I did get a personal tour of a large scale, well run collective farm while I was there that year. Super clean. Healthy animals. Very impressive!
Not sure if you have seen these quick, plein-air sketches of things large and small created in ’74 while hanging out that year most weekends in my home village of Dojç located an hour or so north of Bratislava. I had great fun in attempting to capture images of authentic Slovakia at the time, and to this day they bring back some of my life’s most precious memories!
Again, thank you and Al for sharing.
Be well. – Bill
The village church: functioning communal well in the centre of Dojç: inside my uncle’s barn with wheelbarrow and wagon wheels: my aunt’s cooking utensils, pots, pans, pails and lids in her kitchen.
Stripping feather for down for comforters: detail of my uncle Villo’s workshop: a wedding parade marching down the street: my uncles, aunt and a cousin making sausage after having slaughtered a pig they raised.
My niece Pavlinka watches uncles Villo and Stefan washing and butchering the pig: choice cuts hanging on the ladder ready to be smoked for winter: Aunt Paula washing the natural casings for sausage-making.
The last sketch was done in December in the village cemetery. The stone marker has a portrait of my long-deceased grandmother, her name Vincentia Zilinkova can be seen carved in the gray granite below.
“Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough gleams that untravelled world. “ – Alfred Lord Tennyson,Ulysses
