Timberland® is a North American brand who focuses in shoes and clothing for outdoot activities. The company started as the Abington Shoe Company, which was half aquired by the Swartz family in Massachussets in 1952. The name "Timberland" was only developed in 1973. Since then they made special boots, initially for lumberjacks (given that the Massachussets area had many men working in this field): the shoes had to be strong, durable and capable of protecting the men's feet. The first waterproof shoes produced by them were made in 1965, when the Swartz family introduced an injection-moulding technology to the footwear industry. This new technology fused soles to leather uppers without stitching, producing truly waterproof boots and shoes. Timberland® arrived in Brasil in 1996, brought by the major company Alpargatas.
Four days ago I started working in the Timberland® store in Shopping Iguatemi here in Sao Paulo. So today, as a celebration for the 150th post and my new job, I decided to tell you a little bit about the brand's history! Timberland® is a North American brand who focuses in shoes and clothing for outdoot activities. The company started as the Abington Shoe Company, which was half aquired by the Swartz family in Massachussets in 1952. The name "Timberland" was only developed in 1973. Since then they made special boots, initially for lumberjacks (given that the Massachussets area had many men working in this field): the shoes had to be strong, durable and capable of protecting the men's feet. The first waterproof shoes produced by them were made in 1965, when the Swartz family introduced an injection-moulding technology to the footwear industry. This new technology fused soles to leather uppers without stitching, producing truly waterproof boots and shoes. Timberland® arrived in Brasil in 1996, brought by the major company Alpargatas. ~Ally
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I'm in the mood for some documentaries this week! This one is about Italian illustrators and how their art reflects the transformations the internet has brought for the industry. Alessandro “Shout” Gottardo, Emiliano Ponzi, Olimpia Zagnoli and Francesco Poroli offer their views on the subject and how the world of magazines, publishing and commercials has changed. ~Ally
By now, if you haven't been out of Earth in the past 5 years or so, you've probably heard about Banksy and his art. "Exit Through the Gift Shop" is a documentary made in 2010 and was directed by Banksy himself. It shows the story of how an eccentric French shop keeper and amateur film maker attempted to locate and befriend Banksy, only to have the artist turn the camera back on its owner. The film contains footage of Banksy and also of Shephard Fairey, Invader and many of the world's most infamous graffiti artists at work. You can watch it here. ~Ally
Brazilians didn't feel the hard stroke of WWII as much as northern countries - although we DID send some soldier to help the Allies -, and, so, there aren't many interesting stories that I know of about that time. Nevertheless, today I came upon a story that made me feel proud of my German ancestors: the American B-17 pilot Charles Brown had the task of dropping thousands of pounds of munitions on Nazi territories. In December 1943, a sudden German attack on his plane left half of his crew wounded and their plane almost defenseless over enemy terrain. Then, as things couldn't get worse, a German Messerschmitt plane approached them with all the mean intentions. On the manche was 2nd Lt. Franz Stigler, an ace fighter who had just lost his brother, killed by American pilots. But then, just as Brown thought he and he wrecked crew were doomed, Stigler gave him a friendly nod by the window and escorted his aircraft to safety. This happened because Franz noticed that Brown's plane and crew were incapable of any resistance - it was riddled with holes, their gunner was dead and the few survivors were all huddled, tendind to their wounds -, so, killing them would be a coward and unfair act. He decided, instead, of flying in formation with the American bomber, which tricked German anti-air crews below into thinking it was one of their own captured B-17s. Stigler continued this until they reached the North Sea, when he gave the Americans one last salute and returned back to base. Brown, after a while, was able to land in Allied territory. Believe it or not, forty years later, the two pilots found each other and became the best of friends, even calling each other brothers and going on several fishing trips. And all of that because, in 1943, Stigler remembered his commanding officers words: "You fight by rules to keep your humanity." ~Ally
Today I got acquainted with Christina Rossetti's poems and I loved it! I'm not overly fond of poetry overall, though I do have my favorite poets (Poe, Mary Oliver and Álvares de Azevedo to name a few), but Rossetti has a style that is both sweet and unique... And she speaks about fairies and goblins, so I'm bound to like her! Christina was a Victorian poet and her poems never dissappeared from view - which is rare for a woman poet from that period. Critical interest in Rossetti’s poetry swelled in the final decades of the twentieth century, a resurgence largely caused by the emergence of feminist criticism. Along with Elizabeth Barrett Browning, she is considered the greatest female poet of her era. She was the youngest child in an very gifted family of Italian descent, who lived in England. Check out one of her many poems: Aloof "The irresponsive silence of the land, The irresponsive sounding of the sea, Speak both one message of one sense to me: -- Aloof, aloof, we stand aloof, so stand Thou too aloof, bound with the flawless band Of inner solitude; we bind not thee; But who from thy self-chain shall set thee free? What heart shall touch thy heart? What hand thy hand? And I am sometimes proud and sometimes meek, And sometimes I remember days of old When fellowship seem'd not so far to seek, And all the world and I seem'd much less cold, And at the rainbow's foot lay surely gold, And hope felt strong, and life itself not weak" ~Ally
Or, at least, that's what a new archaeology study claims! Girl power on the Stone Age, people, that's what I'm talking about! A new analysis of hand prints found in several caves habited by humans in the past suggests that women made most of the oldest-known cave art paintings. Up until now, there was sort of an archaeological dogma which stated that those drawings were made by men, to represent their huntings or even as a magic ritual to guarantee a sucessfull hunt. By comparing the relative lengths of certain fingers, the archaeologist Dean Snow of Pennsylvania State University determined that three-quarters of the handprints were female. According to him, "in most hunter-gatherer societies, it's men that do the killing. But it's often the women who haul the meat back to camp, and women are as concerned with the productivity of the hunt as the men are". This discovery was only possible because, more than ten years ago, John Manning, a British biologist (go biologists!!!) found out that men and women differ in the relative lengths of their fingers: women tend to have ring and index fingers of about the same length, while men's ring fingers tend to be longer than their index fingers. ~Ally
Unlike my sister and many girls my age, I don't care for fashion very much. I do enjoy nice clothes and stuff, but I don't let it rule my life or anything like it. Anyway, today I watched this nice documentary concerning old ladies and learned about their awesome relationship with fashion. Nice to see old age so happy and colorful! ~Ally
I'm not fond of caves - you can thank my tiny claustrophobia for that - but, in this one, I would totally enter! The Waitomo Glowworm Caves attraction is a cave at Waitomo on New Zealand (on the North Island, to be precise), famous for its exclusive population of glowworms, Arachnocampa luminosa. This fly species have the size of an average mosquito and all this glow is the result of a bioluminescent silk thread wrapped with mucus and poison produced by their larvae. It serves to attract prey: once an insect is caught, the silk thread stops glowing and is pulled back to the maggot's mouth. Nhom nhom! This cave is part of the Waitomo Caves system, which also includes the Ruakuri Cave and the Aranui Cave. There are organized tours that include a boat ride under the glowworms. ~Ally
By now, if you follow this blog, you must have noticed that I've got a thing for maps and monsters. When the two come together, you can imagine how excited I get! Yesterday I wrote about a couple of monsters that appear in Olaus Magnus' Carta Marina, and, today, I'll discuss it a little bit further. For startes, the complete name of the map is Carta marina et descriptio septemtrionalium terrarum ac mirabilium rerum in eis contentarum diligentissime eleborata anno dni 1539, which can be translated as "A marine map and description of the northern countries and their remarkable features, meticulously made in the year 1539." It represents the beggining of Swedish cartography, and the representations of the Nordic countries were quite accurate! Magnus was a Swede church man and he worked in the map for 12 years (!) before it was finally printed in Venice in 1539 with the title Carta Marina. You can see in the picture above that there are commentaries in the bottom left-hand corner. Those are in Latin, but there were also Italian and German commentaries printed separately. The map itself consists in 9 separate sheets of black and white paper (the color is a modern addendum, I believe), each one measuring 55 x 40 cm and printed separately. Arranged in 3 x 3, the sheets form the map, which is 125 cm high and 170 cm wide. The Carta Marina can be considered the predecessor of Magnus' great work: Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus (A History of the Nordic people), printed in Rome in 1555. That was the first description of the Nordic peoples and their countries. It is directly connected with Carta Marina, and some historians regard it as a comprehensive commentary to the map. ~Ally
If you saw his concert in Rock in Rio tonight, you know what I'm talking about. Enough said. ~Ally
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