If you’ve ever marveled at the amazing community effort of the Amish barn raising parties, where young and old, male and female, strong and weak all come together with a common purpose, Catalonia’s Castle Makers (Castellers) will also attract your attention. Of course, instead of raising wooden barns, they raise human towers–sometimes 9 levels high.

Cummerbunds and Bare Feet

Brightly colored clothes (unique to each club or colla), bare feet, and wide cummerbunds distinguish climbers from the public that surrounds them on castle-building day. There are huge, stout, strong men that will create a strong foundation, the strong but light-weight athlete types, who will hold up the middle, a very few women in the upper levels, and a couple of young kids for the very top, sometimes as young as five years old. Everyone has a place.

Fent Pinya (Making the Foundation)

As a tower begins to form, supporters surround the foundation, placing hands one on top of the next to make a solid base (the pinya or pineapple, so called because the rows of hands spiraling out from the center resemble that fruit). Meanwhile, the climbers get in line, waiting for instructions from the choreographer. Speed is a key factor in safely raising and dismantling a castle. As the third level is put in place, a group of musicians plays a special song that signals that the tower is going up. There’s no turning back now.

Castles in the Air

Watching this diverse group of people join together fills me with envy and anxiety. Anxiety because sometimes they fall, five year olds and all. Envy because usually they don’t, thanks to the outstretched hand of the next person over

         They dined on heaping platters of Szechuan chicken, of spicy beef, of shrimp and vegetables in some exotic dish without a name. Bits of food were passed from chopsticks to chopsticks, violating all known laws of Chinese cuisine etiquette. The tea flowed hot and fast that night, until the meal finally concluded itself.

“Thank you for dining here tonight,” said the badgeless, anonymous waitress. She placed a small tray containing the check and two wrapped fortune cookies on the edge of the table, and hefted the empty plates one by one, forming a stack on the crook of her elbow.

“Absolutely delicious,” declared Oliver as he pulled a card from his wallet and flicked it onto the bill. He picked up the two cookies, an afterthought. “Fortune cookie, my love?” he asked Amanda.       

This movie perfectly captures the feelings of reading The Lord of the Rings books by J.R.R. Tolkien — large, impressive, fantastic, and mythic, but also large, ponderous, slow, and meandering.

Now, I like the original books as much as any other science fiction and fantasy fan, despite only getting halfway through the second of three books before giving up. Nevertheless, I gaped in awe at the majestic landscapes of Middle Earth on the big screen rather than only in my imagination. I saw elves, hobbits, wizards, dwarves, orcs and even a few humans come to life, and it all felt right — but it also felt very long, at nearly 3 hours in length, even with the plot pared down for the movie.

Some story points were inexplicably confusing; bit characters wander off and on the screen, and none ever stop to really explain what the big deal is about the ring. If I hadn’t read the first book already, I might have been scratching my head in confusion. But, ultimately, Fellowship of the Ring is a treat designed especially for anyone loves Tolkien’s epic work of mythic fantasy; it’s a faithful, if exhausting, adaptation of this 20th Century classic.

Use these examples to help you understand the difference between raw (X)HTML code and what appears within your browser. Scroll down to the appropriate chapter (or use the left navigational bar as a shortcut). Each chapter’s example files are listed. Click an example to view it. To see the (X)HTML code, choose View > Source or View > Page Source or however the command is worded in your browser. For more information about viewing the source code, see page 57 in the book. (I’ll get to information about downloading all the examples shortly.)

Note that all of the examples, as well as their auxiliary files (CSS and CGI files) will open in the same “examples” window. If you have room, leave both this window and the examples window open on your screen.

Not all sections have examples. If the section does not appear, that means there is no example for that section. In that case, just consult the corresponding section in the book where you’ll most often find a complete explanation.

Some sections have more links than you might expect. For example, check out the Appendices, down at the bottom of the list at left. You’ll find live links to the HTML tools and graphics, and online versions of the charts in Appendices B-D. There’s also an online version of the index and several color charts.

You can also download the example files all at once (for either Macintosh or Windows). I’ve stuffed the three huge multimedia files in a separate file. If you need help unzipping either file, check out StuffIt (again, for both Macs and Windows), or your favorite decompression program. This page you are reading is also included, and as you can see below, it contains a helpful table that explains which files go with which pages/sections. Note that these are new Zip files that do not require StuffIt, which while free was still a bit of a nuisance if you already had WinZip or some other unzipping utility.

Remember that all the examples files and images are © 2000 Elizabeth Castro. All rights reserved.

Hope you find them helpful!

If you have any questions or comments about the examples, feel free to send them to me. I’ll do my best to help you out.

Note that you can still find the examples from the Fourth Edition online.

Copyright 1998-2002 by Elizabeth Castro. All Rights Reserved