Saturday, January 5, 2008

Walls

A request for topic from Deb Cunefare: walls (because I've "run into" many recently)

What kinds of walls? Between fields? Of houses? Hadrian and China? Metaphorical or figurative? Fabled?

If this is making you think of songs about walls, go and play!
Also there are links from those four photos there, to the wall in York, Great Wall of China, stone walls in Ireland and a recycled concrete wall in Albuquerque.



The Great Wall of Target





Live links from comments (you can see commentary and intros below).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siegfried_Line

http://www.normandiememoire.com/NM60Anglais/2_histo4/histo4_p06_gb.htm
(that address was outdated but I think I have the link working anyway)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedgerow

http://www.amazon.com/War-Intimate-History-1941-1945/dp/0307262839/ref=tag_stp_st_edpp_url

8 comments:

Ria said...

What came to mind first was this one I just finished reading about, although not really a wall...Germany's Westwall, aka the Siegfried Line.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siegfried_Line

http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/timeline/sieg.htm

And also mentioning another different sort of wall...the hedgerows...
http://www.normandiememoire.com/NM60Anglais/2_histo4/histo4_p06_gb.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedgerow

(In case anyone's interested, I was reading in this book: http://www.amazon.com/War-Intimate-History-1941-1945/dp/0307262839/ref=tag_stp_st_edpp_url )

Which then makes me think of the Berlin Wall. My sister was in 12th grade when the wall came down and her government teacher had a piece or two of it.

Ria said...

On my computer it looks like the addresses have been cut off...maybe that's why they didn't work? I found them today while writing the comment using Google; they shouldn't be outdated *yet*. lol

Sandra Dodd said...

They won't work unless they "light up." You can get coding directions up above to the right.

I cut and pasted your whole comment, so I had the full address, but the link has been changed.

I don't mind making people's links clickable (for anyone intimidated by the coding).

Sandra Dodd said...

I've lived in an adobe house and in a house with sheetrock/drywall on a frame of 2x4s. I'm fascinated by lathe and plaster, though, and a couple of times I've been in a lathe and plaster house with a wall being remodelled.

I think lathe and plaster is related to wattle and daub. Anyone know for sure?

Ria said...

I copied and pasted the whole thing and the addresses worked for me. (I copied it to a blank document, then copied and pasted into the address line on an open page.)
I've tried and tried to make them clickable, (practicing on my blog) but can't get them to do it. : (

Back on topic...
When I was about 13 we moved to a very old (pre-civil war) house and the walls had hay stuffed between the logs for insulation. The logs were covered with....oh, it's escaping me...plank siding (it has another name, I think) outside, and I remember reading about how people now days get an old house and rip off the siding to show the logs, but back when the house was new they would put up siding as quickly as possible, so they wouldn't look poor.

Cindy said...

This topic made me think of last night when Drew and I curled up to watch Stardust, a great movie... about a little town called Wall.

Sandra Dodd said...

Marty loves that movie. And it made me think of two songs... DOH!!! Wrong place! I suppose I could always make a lyrics-game entry match the topic...

In El Paso, the walls between houses in housing developments are stone. In Albuquerque, they're cinderblock. In some places I've seen (Maryland, Virginia), there aren't walls between properties, but just kind of continuous lawn out the back. Natural lawn, not planted.

Those are pretty mundane kinds of walls, back-yard walls. What's common where you live? (Apology to Brits; shouldn't say "common" unless I mean it on an international list, to which U.S. readers are probably thinking "huh?")

Anonymous said...

I lived in a town named Wall...gosh thoughts of my four years at Wall High have come flooding back....boy did I not want to be there... with it's very 80's social walls...no alligator on your shirt, you not member of one our outstounding sport teams...do you exsist...ugh!!!