Strabo was a Greek geographer and historian who lived in Asia Minor during the transitional period of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire. Strabo was born to an affluent family from Amaseia in Pontus in around 64 BC, his family had been involved in politics since at least the reign of Mithridates V. Strabo was related to Dorylaeus on his mother's side. Several other family members, including his paternal grandfather had served Mithridates VI during the Mithridatic Wars; as the war drew to a close, Strabo's grandfather had turned several Pontic fortresses over to the Romans. Strabo wrote that "great promises were made in exchange for these services", as Persian culture endured in Amasia after Mithridates and Tigranes were defeated, scholars have speculated about how the family's support for Rome might have affected their position in the local community, whether they might have been granted Roman citizenship as a reward. Strabo's life was characterized by extensive travels, he journeyed to Egypt and Kush, as far west as coastal Tuscany and as far south as Ethiopia in addition to his travels in Asia Minor and the time he spent in Rome.

Travel throughout the Mediterranean and Near East for scholarly purposes, was popular during this era and was facilitated by the relative peace enjoyed throughout the reign of Augustus. He moved to Rome in 44 BC, stayed there and writing, until at least 31 BC. In 29 BC, on his way to Corinth, he visited the island of Gyaros in the Aegean Sea. Around 25 BC, he sailed up the Nile until reaching Philae, after which point there is little record of his proceedings until AD 17, it is not known when Strabo's Geography was written, though comments within the work itself place the finished version within the reign of Emperor Tiberius. Some place its first drafts around 7 BC, others around AD 17 or 18; the latest passage to which a date can be assigned is his reference to the death in AD 23 of Juba II, king of Maurousia, said to have died "just recently". He worked on the Geography for many years and revised it not always consistently, it is an encyclopaedical chronicle and consists of political, social, geographic description of all Europe: British Isles, Iberian Peninsula, Germania, the Alps, Greece, Northern Black Sea region, Middle East, Central Asia and North Africa.

The Geography is the only extant work providing information about both Greek and Roman peoples and countries during the reign of Augustus. On the presumption that "recently" means within a year, Strabo stopped writing that year or the next, when he died, he was influenced by Homer and Aristotle. The first of Strabo's major works, Historical Sketches, written while he was in Rome, is nearly lost. Meant to cover the history of the known world from the conquest of Greece by the Romans, Strabo quotes it himself and other classical authors mention that it existed, although the only surviving document is a fragment of papyrus now in possession of the University of Milan. Strabo studied under several prominent teachers of various specialties throughout his early life at different stops along his Mediterranean travels, his first chapter of education took place in Nysa under the master of rhetoric Aristodemus, who had taught the sons of the same Roman general who had taken over Pontus. Aristodemus was the head of two schools of rhetoric and grammar, one in Nysa and one in Rhodes, the former of the two cities possessing a distinct intellectual curiosity of Homeric literature and the interpretation of epics.

Strabo was an admirer of Homer's poetry a consequence of his time spent in Nysa with Aristodemus. At around the age of 21, Strabo moved to Rome, where he studied philosophy with the Peripatetic Xenarchus, a respected tutor in Augustus's court. Despite Xenarchus's Aristotelian leanings, Strabo gives evidence to have formed his own Stoic inclinations. In Rome, he learned grammar under the rich and famous scholar Tyrannion of Amisus. Although Tyrannion was a Peripatetic, he was more relevantly a respected authority on geography, a fact significant, considering Strabo's future contributions to the field; the final noteworthy mentor to Strabo was Athenodorus Cananites, a philosopher who had spent his life since 44 BC in Rome forging relationships with the Roman elite. Athenodorus endowed to Strabo three important items: his philosophy, his knowledge, his contacts. Unlike the Aristotelian Xenarchus and Tyrannion who preceded him in teaching Strabo, Athenodorus was Stoic in mindset certainly the source of Strabo's diversion from the philosophy of his former mentors.

Moreover, from his own first-hand experience, Athenodorus provided Strabo with information about regions of the empire which he would not otherwise have known. Strabo is most notable for his work Geographica, which presented a descriptive history of people and places from different regions of the world known to his era. Although the Geographica was utilized in its contemporary antiquity, a multitude of copies survived throughout the Byzantine Empire, it first appeared in Western Europe in Rome as a Latin translation issued around 1469. The first Greek edition was published in 1516 in Venice. Isaac Casaubon, classical scholar and editor of Greek texts, provided the first critical edition in 1587. Although Strabo cited the antique Greek astronomers Eratosthenes and Hipparchus, acknowledging their astronomical and mathematical efforts towards geography, he claimed that a desc

The Forest Dale Iron Furnace was a 19th-century iron smelting facility in Brandon, Vermont. Located off Vermont Route 73 east of the village of Forest Dale, it operated between 1810 and 1855, closing due to competition from higher quality and more efficient furnaces. Now reduced to archaeological ruins and the remains of its main furnace stack, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974; the site is marked by a historic marker on Vermont 73. The Forest Dale Iron Furnace is located in eastern Brandon, on the north side of Vermont 73 just east of Furnace Road; the site now consists of a level area, much of it grassy, with the principal visible portion, the furnace stack, set in the woods just north of the field, accessible via a trail off Furnace Road. The stack is a square stone and brick structure, about 60 feet tall, 32 feet square at the base, tapering as it rises. Three sides have arched openings with stone voussoirs at ground level, about 8 feet wide at the mouth, that taper as the recede into the structure.

A central chamber is lined with brick. Other features of the site include a raceway and wheelpit fed by waters from the nearby Neshobe River, some stone retaining walls; the area is littered with stone, there are several stone foundations of other structures that once stood on the site. The furnace was established in 1810 by John Smith of Leicester and was in operation, under a variety of names and owners, until 1855. Brown hematite ore from nearby beds was processed with local charcoal to produce iron, formed into utilitarian implements such as stoves, agricultural implements, hardware; the works was not efficient, its sales were hampered by a poor transportation network. More advanced and better-connected works in Troy, New York, contributed to its downfall, the site was abandoned in 1855, it was given to the state in 1974. National Register of Historic Places listings in Rutland County, Vermont

Emmanuel Feldman is an American classical cellist and teacher based in Boston, Massachusetts. He is the co-founder of the cello-double bass duo Cello e Basso, a member of the Aurea Ensemble. Feldman was raised in New York City, he studied at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, at the Conservatoire de Paris. As part of completing his studies in Paris, Feldman joined l'Orchestre des Prix, was the first American in the orchestra. After his time in France, he moved to Boston, where he became the principal cellist in the Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra in 1990, at the age of 23, he left in 1993 to focus on his solo career. In 1992, Feldman and his wife Pascale Delache-Feldman formed Axiom Duo, with Feldman on cello and Delache-Feldman on double bass; as pioneers of the cello-double bass combination, they had to devise their own music by writing original pieces and transcribing music from other composers to fit their low-pitched instruments. Their self-titled debut was released in 2002; the album features works written for cello and bass, along with their own transcriptions of pieces by Mozart, Bartók and Handel.

They renamed the duo Cello e Basso. In 2006, Feldman released Rider on the Plains, named after the subtitle of the first movement of Virgil Thomson's 1950 Cello Concerto, featured on the album. Feldman first heard of the piece in the late 1990s after speaking with Anthony Tommasini, Thomson's biographer. Feldman found it to be "an undiscovered gem of American cello repertoire." The album includes two works by Charles Fussell, which Feldman commissioned in 2002 to record alongside Thomson's work. On the album, Feldman is joined by Nashville Chamber Orchestra. Rider on the Plains was nominated for a 2008 Grammy Award for Producer of the Year, Classical category for producer Blanton Alspaugh. Feldman's second album, Our American Roots, was released in 2013, it features George Gershwin's Three Preludes, arranged for cello and piano by Feldman, as well as renditions of music by Aaron Copland, Samuel Barber and George Walker. As a composer, Feldman's original compositions include the three-movement "Enigma No. 1", written for cello and bass, "Synergy", written for string orchestra.

Feldman has performed as the principal cellist in the Boston Philharmonic and Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra. He is a faculty member at Boston's New England Conservatory, where he was the cello teacher of Zlatomir Fung, at the Department of Music at Tufts University, has taught cello at Brown University and the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Feldman and his wife, a double bassist, are based in Boston, Massachusetts, they met. Official website