--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Michael Jackson <mjackson74@...> wrote: > > Man that is gorgeous - thanks for posting it and the story - I wish Richard > was still around to tell his stories - he passed away in Texas last year - in > addition to his design skill he was a hell of a clarinet player till he lost > hearing in one ear. > > If you decide to read his obit here you will note his family said not one > word about his former affiliation with the TMO....
> From: turquoiseb <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> > To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com > ...In Santa Fe there was the Miraculous Staircase. It was located > within a small Catholic chapel, formerly a nunnery, nowadays > called the Loretto Chapel. The story goes like this. The order had > enough money to build the chapel, and even to build a choir loft > overlooking the chapel from which the more tuneful nuns could > sing. But they ran out of money before they could build an actual > way to *get to* this choir loft. So for years the nuns had to sing > from the back pews of the chapel itself. > > Then one day some long-haired, bearded guy wanders by, leading > (no shit) a donkey and carrying a box of carpenter's tools, and asks > for a handout. Noticing that the choir loft lacks a staircase leading > to it, he offers to build it for them. They take him up on his offer. > > The staircase to this day befuddles scientists. It is made from wood > not native to the area. It is constructed entirely organically, with no > nails or artificial elements keeping it together, only pegs carved from > the same wood as the stairs, and no apparent central support. And > then there's the question of what it fuckin' LOOKS LIKE, which is > this (the railing was added much later...the original staircase was > just the stairs you see in the photo): > Then, as the legend goes, the carpenter who build all of this just fuckin' > disappears, without asking for payment. Naturally, the Catholics believe > that it was either St. Joseph, or Jesus himself. Me, I think it's a better > story if it was just a wandering carpenter, someone who took pride in > doing a good job with whatever he built, such that it would bring joy > to other people. Some additional information (from snopes.com)" However it came to be built, the solution to the problem at the Loretto Chapel was a winding staircase in the shape of a helix (which both takes up less space than a conventional stairway and is much more aesthetically appealing). Although winding staircases are somewhat tricky to build because the form is not well-suited to bearing weight and generally requires additional support, the one at Loretto is not quite the miracle of architecture that subsequent legend has made it out to be. For starters, the Loretto staircase was apparently not all that fine a piece of work from a safety standpoint. It was originally built without a railing, presenting a steep descent that reportedly so frightened some of the nuns that they came down the stairway on their hands and knees. Not until several years later did another artisan (Phillip August Hesch) finally add a railing to the staircase. Moreover, the helix shape acted like what it resembles, a big spring, with many visitors reporting that the stairs moved up and down as they trod them. The structure has been closed to public access for several decades now, with various reasons (including a lack of suitable fire exits and "preservation") given for the closure at different times, leading investigator Joe Nickell to note that "There is reason to suspect that the staircase may be more unstable and, potentially, unsafe than some realize." Although the Loretto legend maintains that "engineers and scientists say that they cannot understand how this staircase can balance without any central support" and that by all rights it should have long since collapsed into a pile of rubble, none of that is the case. Wood technologist Forrest N. Easley noted (as reported by the Skeptical Inquirer) that "the staircase does have a central support," an inner wood stringer of such small radius that it "functions as an almost solid pole." As well, Nickell observed when he visited Loretto in 1993 that the structure includes an additional support, "an iron brace or bracket that stabilizes the staircase by rigidly connecting the outer stringer to one of the columns that support the loft." Nickell concluded: "It would thus appear that the Loretto staircase is subject to the laws of physics like any other." As for the wood used in the stairway's construction, it has been identified as spruce, but not a large enough sample has been made available for wood analysts to determine which of the ten spruce species found in North America (and thus precisely where) it came from. That the structure may have built without the use of glue or nails is hardly remarkable â" nails were often an unavailable or precious commodity to builders of earlier eras, who developed a number of techniques for fastening wood without them. All in all, nothing about Loretto's design or manufacture evidences any sign of the miraculous. The staircase (and the chapel that houses it) is, however, now part of a privately-owned museum operated for profit, a situation that provides its owners with a strong financial motive for promulgating the legend.
