ABOUT "FACE"

  

“Where did you go to, if I may ask?,  said Thorin to Gandalf
 as they rode along.  "To look ahead." said he.

"And what brought you back in the nick of time?"

"Looking behind,” said he.

                                          ___J.R.R. Tolkien, THE HOBBIT

As we enter a new year, let’s talk about …JANUS and doors..

First ..a little Roman history:

Numa Pompilius is given the credit for the addition of the month of January in the 6th century B.C..

There were seven kings that ruled Rome before it became a republic… Numa was the second…He added Januarius, meaning month of Janus.  

Janus was the Roman god of beginnings and endings and of gates and doors…

Though many Roman gods can trace their roots to the Greek pantheon, Janus stands out as having no Greek counterpart….Janus is Roman.

Janus had two faces….. one face looking to what is behind and one face looking toward what lies ahead.  His ability to look both forward and behind made him the guardian of exits and entrances.

The importance of Janus was seen on Roman coins. The earlier coins depicting an older bearded face looking behind with a younger clean shaven face looking forward.

 As, the Roman Empire grew both faces were shown as clean shaven. Later on in the empire both faces were shown as bearded with Janus holding a key in his right hand.

He was the guardian of the jani,  the ceremonial gateways in Rome; these were usually freestanding structures that were used for symbolically auspicious entrances or exits.

The most famous Roman gateway was the JANUS GEMINUS, which was, in actuality, a shrine to Janus at the north side of the Forum.  It was a simple rectangular bronze structure with double doors at each end. Traditionally, the doors of this shrine were left open in times of war and kept closed when Rome was at peace.

Doorways are powerful…how many times have we entered another room for some reason and then, upon crossing the threshold, forgotten why?

 There was actually a study done on the act of passing through a door and its affect on memory.   “Entering or exiting through a doorway serves as an “Event Boundry” in the mind, which separates episodes of activity and files them away,” says Gabriel Radvansky, a psychology professor at the University of Notre Dame.

An EVENT BOUNDRY…I like that!

 The reasoning behind the symbolism of the two faces is that both gates and doors have two sides.  In order to end something, or to start a new beginning…. one must pass through and exist on one side or the other…. To remain in the middle is not an option.

Doorways symbolize our transitions of life. And …there is no avoiding them.  We are always on thresholds.   Each doorway …. new possibilities…. the necessity of letting go.

There are times when the door behind is slammed shut, forcing the opening of another door that is not chosen, is difficult, but must be entered.

There are the times where there is choice …to close the door, with deliberation, and resolutely walk away, to face the finality of that act and the knowledge that life is now forever changed and cannot be called back..   

And then there are the doors that are sought and opened with excitement … the entrance embraced…a new area to explore..

The story of our lives is in doors, gateways, and thresholds.

It is important to reflect on what was left behind as a door closed and what new territory was revealed in the door that was opened, because it is in that newly opened door that the good things in life are found…the things we did not even know were there.

Crossing the threshold can bring healing, new vision, personal growth, the discovering of a talent, a profession, or new relationships.

And so we return to Janus in his role as the Guardian of Exits and Entrances....the representative of beginnings. In order to enter a new place it is necessary to emerge from the old.

Janus is the god of motion and the starting of actions. He is change and transition. He is the progression of past to future, the passing from one condition to another. He is the shift in the paradigm.

New Year's Eve, exits are faced, for Auld Lang Syne… 

Tomorrow… Janus Day…  face forward, to entrances…

 It is the first of the New Year, seek the doorways... 

 Do not look back…..enter…...

"Go back?" he thought. "No good at all! Go sideways? Impossible! Go forward? Only thing to do! On we go!"  So up he got, and trotted along with his little sword held in front of him and one hand feeling the wall, and his heart all of a patter and a pitter."

___J.R.R.Tolkien, THE HOBBIT

THE BLACKSTRAP TSUNAMI

In 1915 THE UNITED STATES ALCOHOL COMPANY, in Boston, completed construction on an enormous above ground storage tank. Its steel sides were curved and it had bottom plates set into a concrete base that were attached together with rivets.

 It was built to hold molasses….the key ingredient in rum, Boston Baked Beans, and, when distilled into industrial alcohol, an ingredient for World War I munitions and explosives.

 The tank stood along the Boston Harbor, next to the city’s most densely populated neighborhood, the steel structure stood 50 feet tall, was 90 feet in diameter, and it would hold more than 2.3 million gallons of molasses.
 

On Wednesday, January 15, 1919, at around half-past noon it was unusually warm, in the mid-40s…it had only been two degrees above zero just three days before.


At about 12:40 p.m. the enormous tank ruptured ….A blast of air from the explosion blew people away and then, seconds later, produced a counterblast that rushed in to fill the vacuum sucking them back in

 People and buildings within hundreds of feet were pierced by flying pieces of metal. A giant chunk of the vat landed in a park that was 200 feet away and witnesses reported a three story house soaring through the air.

 A huge stone pillar that supported an elevated railroad was hit by another flying chunk of metal. Part of the tracks collapsed. The driver managed to stop the train just before it would have plunged over the edge.


But…the very worst, was that the tank emptied the entire 2.3 million gallons of molasses onto Commercial Street within seconds.

Flowing at 35 miles per hour, a "wall of molasses" roared through the streets. It tore buildings from their foundations. Vehicles and horses were buried.


While trying to outrun the rush of the molasses, men, women, children, and animals were hurled against solid objects and drowned where they fell amongst crushed freight cars, autos, and wagons, wood, and steel.

More than 150 people were injured and 21 were killed.

 The flood of molasses engulfed the Boston waterfront like a tsunami. It was 16 feet high and 160 feet wide at the outset. … it destroyed the entire waterfront and a half-mile of Commercial Street.


The flow of the wall of molasses pushed in all directions developing four separate walls smashing across the wharf and into the street.

When the tank exploded it became a source of deadly shrapnel…… thousands of rivets turned into bullets which contributed to the utter destruction of the area.


Within an eye blink the Boston North End inner harbor area looked like the aftermath of a massive bombing.


Rescuers, slogging through the knee deep river of goo had their boots sucked off …it was impossible to move.

Horses that had become trapped had to be shot because there was no way to get them out.


The molasses filled all the cellars and hydraulic siphons were in operation for months to pump it out.


The cobblestone streets, homes, and other buildings had to be continuously sprayed with salt water because fresh water just slid off the glop. The streets were covered with sand.

All the rescue workers, cleanup crews, and sightseers  managed to spread the molasses all over the city. Boots and clothing carried it to the suburbs.


Molasses coated streetcar seats and public telephones. Everything Bostonians touched was sticky For months afterwards, wherever people walked, their shoes stuck to the streets and walks


The clean-up took over 87,000 man-hours. . Once that was done, the filing of lawsuits began. Hearings went on for six years.

When they were brought to court THE UNITED ALCOHOL COMPANY claimed no responsibility. They accused anarchists of blowing up the molasses tank.


No evidence of sabotage was ever discovered. The court eventually ruled for the plaintiffs, finding that the tank had been overfilled and inadequately reinforced.


The enormous tank, 50 feet high and 90 feet in diameter, had been poorly designed and insufficiently tested. Right from the beginning it leaked. Local residents collected leaked molasses for their homes. Company officials reacted to the constant leaks by repainting the tank brown to match the leaking molasses.

Because, on the day of the explosion, the weather was 40 degrees while on the day before it was 2 degrees, it is believed that the sudden increase in temperature caused the molasses to expand and the tank to explode.


The company was made to pay out nearly a million dollars in damages


When investigators looked for the plans that were filed when the tank was built 4 years earlier…..they couldn't find any. The building inspectors stated that “ building plans were not required because the vat was not a building but an industrial device.”


The tank was built with no plans approved and no government inspectors involved.


Shortly after the flood, the Boston Building Department began requiring that all calculations of engineers and architects be filed with their plans. Stamped drawings were required to be signed.

The Boston Molasses Flood triggered the adoption of engineering certification laws in all states, as well as the requirement, that all plans for major structures. be sealed by a registered professional engineer in order to be issued a permit by a municipality or state.

The nation added needed regulations for major structures (not all regulations are bad) and saw the historical trade in molasses decline.


"The flood essentially ended three hundred years' worth of high-volume molasses trade in Boston and New England. While some molasses distilling took place in the city up until World War II, the industry never resumed its level of importance
Molasses, which had played such a key role in the American Revolution, the slave trade, the rum business and in munitions production, slowly disappeared as a staple product in America and as a critical part of the New England economy”


……….Stephen Puleo: Dark Tide: the Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919

It has been over 90 years since THE GREAT FLOOD and yet even today Bostonians claim that, when strolling down Commercial Street on a hot day, one can still catch the faint scent of molasses in the air.