ATLANTIS - The Legend of ValVerde
                CHAPTER 2

One day Mother Nature decided to give the Earth a shake and hit it with a big asteroid.
The dinosaurs were sent to join the Dodo Bird, Atlantis was hit badly and almost totally sunk in the Atlantic Ocean while a tsunami flooded the Atlantean Highlands.   Of the once great Atlantis only the tips of the highest mountains remained
above water.  ValVerde was among the very few remaining areas but only a small handful of Valverdeans, who had run for higher grounds, survived the tsunami.  Yes, The Count of ValVerde was among the survivors.
Life in ValVerde was never the same.  The very few hands available made the struggle for life extremely difficult.
Then some foreign ships started arriving with new people with strange language and customs.  The Valverdeans hid again in the mountain and decided, for their survival, to slowly and secretely mingle with the newcomers and let themselves be assimilated, without ever letting their true origin to be known.
They even accepted the new name given to their land by the newcomers: Pico Island (for their beloved high mountain peak).  And they found out that Pico, together with other neighbouring old Atlantis Highlands that had remained above sea level, had been named Azores Islands by the barbarian newcomers.
The Count of ValVerde is still around.  After all this time he calls himself  "The Last Atlantean" although nobody believes him.  He did go to his secret hiding place to retrieve his stash of art works.  He found it, with one of the earthenware vessels barely showing from the lava and pumice stone enveloping it.  He did see some strange characters carved on the vessel, proving that someone from the newcomers had been there but had left the vessel otherwise intact.  The Count did not have the heart to break the vessel and decided to climb down the mountain and try to investigate who had been there and what the characters meant.  He is still working on this project.
The Count did not retrieve the work of his early life but he had kept his favourite painting, "ValVerde - The  Green Valley", which you can see at the top of this page.
The Count has adopted, more or less, the so called modern way of life and enjoys some of the new gadgets made available by an exponential development of the technology of 'human civilization', while marvelling at how much the civilized economy thrives and relies on so many fads created all over the world by that same exponentially developing technology.
The Count became fascinated by the new devices that allowed him to record and reproduce images of the surrounding beautiful landscapes or of members of the community.  Graphing with light became his new passion and he started enjoying some of the  modern tools available to the Graphic Arts, becoming confortable with the new words of the ever evolving new
terminology, like PHOTOGRAPHY, COMPUTER, DIGITAL FILM and DIGITAL ENHANCEMENT, among many others
The Count never forgot his early ways of recording beauty with brush strokes so he made the digital tools work for him by changing the photographed landscapes and flowers into "photo watercolours" (copywrighted).
He may display, one of these days, his work in this field
at an open-house gallery.    Meanwhile use the links below to see some of the Count's pictures.
Recently the Count discovered the joys of creative manual work and, being fascinated with flying machines, is working on a new generation of model helicopters.  The early evolution of the Count's helicopter body shapes is definitely related to the feminine body.  The Count is undecided, at this time, if this helicopter evolution is leading to a flightless aircraft, to an anfibean chopper or to a heli-submarine.
Future will tell (unless we get another asteroid)... 
VALVERDE
As told to Leopold Savil (leo_savil@email.com):   

                       
CHAPTER 1

ValVerde was a secret Green Valley in the Highlands of ancient Atlantis.  Being so close to the top of the highest mountain, access to this luxuriant paradise, with its babbling brooks and fertile fields, was practically impossible by land.
It was discovered, named ValVerde (Shun-grel ha, in Atlantean) and populated during the early days of the development of flying machines by the Atlanteans: their discoverers were so bewitched by its peaceful beauty and fertility that they, unanimously, decided not to report their discovery to their fellow Lowlander Atlanteans, to destroy their flying machines and start a new peaceful, happy life in total isolation in the discovered paradise.
The population of ValVerde lived happily ever since, growing moderately over the years and always being true to the wishes of the first settlers: trust Mother Nature, live from the land, love and help each other and lead a simple life, not letting it to be spoiled by unnecessary and superfluous technical developments.
The centuries went by in very rapid succesion, aparently to the happy Valverdeans, with the serene, uneventful way of life providing a very, very long life expectancy.
They were governed by those basic, golden rules, accepted and followed by everyone, which eliminated the need for any of the individual rulers or governmental, political hierarchy of their original lowlander days. 
There was, nevertheless, an individual well known throughout the entire Valley by his dreams of perpetuating the beauty of ValVerde by the use of rudimentary graphics and poetry.  He would try to grab the attention of everyone he would meet and show them his attempts at drawing and painting the beautiful landscapes or reading to them his impromptu poems.  Graphic Arts (modern term) were non-existent but he managed to create paintings using the finer inner layers of corn husk and coloured juices and saps from flowers, fruits and trees.
His love for ValVerde and its beauty was so much admired by the entire population that they awarded him with the common title of Count of ValVerde.  This was not so much based on their memories of the old culture and nobility titles but more on his usual function of counting the beans and berries for fair distribution among the community.
The Count of ValVerde went on, always true to his passion for the beauty of Nature and his poetic hymns.   Countless corn leaves with paintings and poems were accumulated by the Count who, after displaying them for the enjoyment of  the ValVerdeans, would stash away in earthenware containers in a secret location higher up on the mountain.
Links:
Read The Count's self portrait
The Count's Photo  Watercolours Exhibition  (Y2K)
Contact Info:
The Count's Helicopter Factory
Name:
Menelik Lazar,  CVV
The Count's Heliograms thecount1@yahoo.ca
Email:
Yahoo! Greetings