Word: stoneworking
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...still discernible, the canals were built with extraordinary ingenuity and industriousness. (Habitual sloth was a capital crime among the Incas.) The winding route from the heights down into the lower slopes was designed to divert enough water to wet the terraced plots without overflowing or bursting through the stonework. Maintenance teams had to patrol the waterways year-round to keep them clear of silt and rubble. In the 16th century the Spanish came, dreaming of El Dorado, and forced farmers to harvest gold instead of maize. Irrigation systems like the one in Patallacta were let go. Soldiers and farmers moved...
...four summers, Kendall and an international team of volunteers, meagerly financed by a grab bag of charitable sources, have been laboring like Inca road gangs, repairing broken stonework, rebuilding terrace walls and clearing canal channels choked with debris. Aside from applying a little cement and plastic sheeting to canal beds, they have stuck to traditional Inca stoneworking techniques. So far they have managed to reirrigate only 30 acres. But even this small step forward-or backward-has begun to change some of the lives of the handful of farmers on the slopes around Patallacta. One peasant has requested and secured...
...yard where the stonework is done has a machine shop and "banking shop." First, four apprentices cut ten-ton blocks of Indiana limestone into manageable pieces with a frame saw two stories high. The resulting slabs are sliced into smaller pieces, called stones, with circular saws that have diamond cutting edges. Then all the stones go to the banking shop, where apprentices, working at waist-high tables, shape them into basic cathedral building blocks (ashlars), cornerstones (quoins) and structural supports (pier stones...
...cold wind swept over the thick dark grass outside, whistled through the moonlit Gothic stonework, the parapets, battlements, and pinnacles intricately crowning the buildings with medieval bulk and solemnity...
...Frank Rizzo, whose official salary is $434 a week. But according to a series of stories in the Philadelphia Daily News, he has invested more than $400,000 in a swank new home in the Chestnut Hill section-including $20,000 for a three-car garage, $30,000 for stonework and $7,000 for a patio. "These are pure and simple political charges made by a newspaper that blatantly seeks to influence the outcome of the mayoral election in November," responded Mayor Rizzo. "This is a sad day for journalism...