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March 08, 2008

A Really Big Hat

Since this year's flower show lacks dinosaurs, I'll take a moment to post some Philly-related photos I have been meaning to share for some time.

For point of reference, here are the Connor Brothers. They fish off the shores of Coffee Point, where we live and work in Alaska. Their boat is aptly named Charisma.

Although I like the brothers quite a bit, I do have to endure the unflattering comparisons I suffer in light of their unambiguous manliness. Dave Connor is a pyrotechnics expert, for example, who each year, in celebration of the anniversary of nation's independence, blows up pickup trucks and 50-gallon canisters of gasoline in grand fashion. In the off-season, Mark Connor travels the world in search of adventure, intrigue, and compelling artifacts, which he brings to Alaska to share with us each summer. And Paul Connor lives well off the beaten path in the New Hampshire backcountry in a house that he fashioned with his own hands, as documented here.

The brothers earn their money in a variety of ways, one of which is working as freelancers for an outfit that is contracted to clean statues. Do you happen to know where the world's tallest standing metal statue atop a public building is? Congratulations to those of you who correctly guessed the statue of William Penn who stands proudly at 37 feet atop the Philadelphia City Hall.

When we were visiting with Paul at his home in New Hampshire in January, he shared some photos of the work he and his brothers did in cleaning the Penn statue a few months back.

Enjoy.

Here is Penn up close.

And here he is from the inside out.

Penn is hollow, and his insides can be reached through a hole in the top of his hat.

A ladder leads down into the interior.

The statue was surrounded by a tremendous scaffold.

It went right up to the tip of Penn's hat.

All three brothers were there.

Paul

Mark

And Dave

The details of the cleaning process are a bit fuzzy to me now, so I apologize if I say this wrong, but the restoration of the statue involved a combination of washing and waxing.

There was also a blowtorch involved, but that may just have been about looking tough.

The brothers had rather remarkable views of the city.

Here's the closest look you'll ever get at Penn's hands.

Or his buttonholes.

It's kind of amazing that so much effort went into producing detail that almost no one will ever get to see.

Here is the cleaning crew at lunchtime.

This week we're staying not far from City Hall. In fact, I can see it from my bedroom window, though Penn himself is swallowed up in night and fog just now.

I have spent the day in bed, sick in Philly for the second year in a row. Something about the flower show must not agree with me. I must rest up for tomorrow's marathon. The show ends at 6:00pm, and then we will spend the next 8+ hours tearing down the booth, packing up the inventory, loading the truck, and driving back to Chestertown.

I'll post photos of that pleasant experience early next week. I have no new photos for those of you on bellywatch, but here is where young Tarzan Gramangela Don Juanson McTrogdor is this week.

Looking eerily like an actual person...


Posted by ribbu at March 8, 2008 07:19 PM