Bubble: Pics and Stories

Barge on the Cumberland River

The Cumberland River runs (literally) outside my back door. I watch the river barges from my patio. Some of them are amazingly long. This is not a good photograph – it was taken in winter so the sky is dark and the countryside is rather grey and lifeless. It is also a montage of three different photos so the joins aren’t perfect and there are some exposure differences. But I thought I would submit it anyway to show one of the barges from ground level. :)

Imperial War Museum (London campus)

On my recent European holiday I visited the Imperial War Museum in London. I spent 6 hours at the museum and still didn’t manage to see everything. This museum is the best example of war memorabilia I have ever seen. The breadth of the collection is staggering but what made it so good was that the displays put everything into historical context, both in terms if the specific conflict and in terms of the 20th century as a whole.

One photo is of the front entrance to the impressive building where two massive 15-inch guns are displayed. This caliber of artillery was used by various ships of the Royal Navy during WWI and WWII. They fired 2000 lb shells with a range of 16 miles.

The second photo is of the M3A3 tank that was used by the legendary commander Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery (Allied Commander of the Normandy Invasion and, later, of the 21st Army Group) during the Battle of El Alamein in North Africa.