Attached is my conventional view of the Aquila pilot house from the opposite angle. I evidently clicked the shutter in the first photo I sent you before I had a chance to flip up the flash unit and a short time exposure ensued while I rotated the camera in my hand. Why the stairs are relatively normal-looking is the strange part. I rotated the "vortex" picture in photo shop so the stairs were plumbed up, cropped the picture down to the proportions I sent it to you at and then cooled off the color from the orange shade that it had to something closer to what the actual colors were. Looks better in cool values like this, more otherworldly. Glad you enjoyed it. Can think of worse places to spend eternity than behind a pilot wheel in a pilot house steering through infinity with Sam Clemens. It does make a nice Twilight Zone illustration of a parallel universe reached by entering the door of the a steamboat's pilot house. The shard like triangles that emanated from the window sashes on the back of the pilot house reminded me of Lyonel Feininger's cubist/expressionist paintings. Here's the pilot wheel in the magical Aquila pilot house. I clone one of the handles and used it to replace one that had been busted off by a souvenir hunter perhaps, you can't even tell which one it was now. The glare and reflection from the flash couldn't be avoided here. The mural "outside" the window leaves a bit to be desired, needed an accomplished landscape painter to pull it off. Inside the "haunted (pilot) house" - neat color and atmosphere. The "bisected" giant boat model is outside there, it's only the portside of the boat. I suggested to them that they put a mirror behind it which would visually simulate a complete boat. While taking photos of the Aquila's old pilot house in the Dubuque museum I inadvertantly took this bizarre photo where the stairs look fairly reasonable but the windows etc. are rotated and a vortex is simulated. Surrealism ahoy! vor-tex (vôrtks) n. pl. vor·tex·es or vor·ti·ces (-t-sz) 1. A spiral motion of fluid within a limited area, especially a whirling mass of water or air that sucks everything near it toward its center. 2. A place or situation regarded as drawing into its center all that surrounds it. next