BAGUETTE ANNIVERSARY RINGS

Curtain Drapery Rod w/brackets Large - Wrought Iron Hand Made

Our hand wrought iron pieces are made for us in the Lancaster County, PA. Amish Community. With classic style and functional design, these versatile pieces blend into most decorating schemes. This is solid iron--not wire. These pieces are finished in satin black and work well in any room. This is our large wrought iron extension curtain rod. Basically, this fits a double window and can also be used for a shower curtain rod. (We also offer a smaller rod-search for item B0002B035Y)This has hand wrought loop ends. It is a 2 piece rod--one half slides inside the other. Closed, this measures about 38 inches long and opens to about 62 inches. Our hand wrought iron arch hooks are included for mounting. You will need to provide your own screws or nails, etc, determined by the surface you are mounting it to. The arches hold the rod approx. 3 inches from the wall. The thickest part of the rod is 3/4 inches in diameter. This is hand made wrought iron in a satin black finish.

1985: Leningrad, USSR

The former Soviet Museum of Scientific Atheism, better known as St Isaac's Cathedral in St Petersburg, photographed in December, 1985. Internally, it is the second biggest cathedral in the world.

Under Stalin in the 1930s, by which time the city had been renamed Leningrad, the building was cleared of all religious clutter and turned into a Museum of Scientific Atheism. Exhibits included a pendulum which proved the rotation of the earth.

Stalin's enthusiasm for Scientific Atheism led to the regime treating faith and belief in God as a form of mental illness. Anyone who was openly Christian had their path to promotion at work blocked, and many professions closed to them.

Thousands of people who stubbornly persisted in the Christian faith were treated as delusional, and found themselves carted off to special hospitals for treatment and re-education. Many of these people ended up in the gulags, a system of concentration camps, many in northern Siberia, where millions of people met their deaths.

Scientific Atheism also promoted the idea that bringing up your kids in the Christian tradition was a form of child abuse. Inevitably, many children of militant Christians were taken into care by the State, to be brought up in vast orphanages.

Stalin's terror ended in the 1950s, but a vow of silence seemed to have settled on the Russian people like snow, and the events of those days were hardly mentioned. By the time I took this photograph in 1985, the museum had closed, although some exhibits were still in situ, including the pendulum.

When I revisited in 1988, the original religious integrity of the cathedral had been restored, apparently by order of Gorbachev himself, a year before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Today, the Cathedral is once again the seat of the Orthodox Patriarchate of St Petersburg, and the liturgy of the Russian Orthodox Church rings out again within its walls.

What makes a simple thing look so grand?
Maybe the shining sun, or the clouds' play;
or the two things summoned in your darkened eyes?
Maybe your feet trail left on
the shoreline sand, the slow wind
of words whispered in your ear
while staring at the ebbing tide?
Or the two things joined together with a smile
like the thirsty skin of our melting hands?

Under the flock of seagulls joyfully laughing
I felt you.
After the long bike ride within the woods
I kissed you.
Behind a curtain of dancing pines and late-spring flowers
I loved you.
Our primal need
an iron ring; our union
two fresh new ivy leaves on a desireful tender branch.