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A protective mother puts herself between her calf and a safari cruiser as she leaves the mudhole that the family has just enjoyed. Serengeti National Park, Tanzania. ©2019 John M. Hudson | jmhudson1.com
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© Photography of Ricardo Gomez Angel
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Description: It has been quite a while since my last visit to the As-salam Mosque in Puchong. Arriving at location just after blue hour, I am grateful that I was greeted with a warm but soft light from the sun. As someone who is very new to timelapse, I can't help myself from taking a timelapse. This image is part of the 880 images taken for the timelapse that morning.
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Aside from judging most works in progress, I was thinking of putting up work on places like Reddit (just for example), but I'm hesitant. Does anyone here have multiple accounts across platforms?
Also looking for personal discussions. If anyone would want to talk outside, use DM or Flickrmail is also a good way.
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Latin name: Accipiter gentilis - Northern Goshawk
Back in August we met up with family at Herrings Green Activity Farm & Bird Of Prey Centre in Bedfordshire, which is a super place to visit.
The Northern Goshawk is a medium-large raptor in the family Accipitridae, which also includes other extant diurnal raptors, such as eagles, buzzards and harriers. As a species in the Accipiter genus, the goshawk is often considered a "true hawk". The scientific name is Latin; Accipiter is "hawk", from accipere, "to grasp", and gentilis is "noble" or "gentle" because in the Middle Ages only the nobility were permitted to fly goshawks for falconry.
It is a large hawk, almost reaching buzzard size. When seen close to it has a fierce expression with bright red eyes and a distinctive white eyebrow. Its broad wings enable it to hunt at high speed, weaving in and out of trees, and its long legs and talons can catch its prey in flight. The female is substantially larger than the male. In late winter and spring it has a 'sky-dance' display. Goshawks are still persecuted and their nests are frequently robbed.
Goshawks are highly territorial, breeding pairs' nests are always over 1km apart.
Best looked for near large areas of woodland and forests with glades and paths for it to hunt along. Can also be seen hunting over more open countryside.
They can be seen all year round, but best looked for on fine days in late winter and spring when display flights take place high over the trees.
Their diet is small to medium-sized mammals including squirrels (mainly tree squirrels but also ground squirrels especially in North America) and rabbits and hares, and medium to large-sized birds such as corvids, pigeons, grouse, pheasants, thrushes and woodpeckers. They are particularly agile hunters of the woodlands.
Taken with my Canon Telephoto Zoom 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM EF Lens and framed in Photoshop.
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La Toba Guadalajara, Guadalajara Casilla la Mancha / Spain
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Todos los derechos reservados. La descarga y uso de las fotos sin permiso es ilegal.
Many thanks for your visits, faves and comments. Cheers.
....from a walk through Oxley Creek Common. Oxley Creek Common is home to a remarkable variety of birds. An experienced observer can find as many as 70 species in one hour of observation during the spring about 10% of all Australia's bird species and several times the diversity one could find walking the suburbs. In the past eleven years over 190 species have been recorded on the Common. (Source: University of Queensland)
Rufous Whistler
Scientific Name: Pachycephala rufiventris
Description: The Rufous Whistler is a stocky bird with a large head, short stubby bill and a narrow, relatively long tail with a square or slightly forked tip. The sexes differ, with the male dark-grey above with a white throat, black breast and a reddish underbody. Many males also have a black face mask (except in northern subspecies). Females are dull grey to brown, with streaked underparts. Young birds are much redder than adults and have heavily streaked underparts.
Similar species: The male Rufous Whistler is quite distinctive with its reddish underparts, grey head and white throat, combined with black mask (over most of range). The female and immature birds can be distinguished from most other whistlers by heavy streaking on the underparts.
Distribution: Found throughout mainland Australia, the Rufous Whistler is also found in New Caledonia.
Habitat: The Rufous Whistler is found in forests, woodlands and shrublands, with a shrubby understorey. Is also found in gardens and farmland with some trees, and in remnant bushland patches.
Seasonal movements: Sedentary, with some seasonal migratory movements in eastern Australia; south during spring and north in autumn.
Feeding: The Rufous Whistler mainly eats insects, and sometimes seeds, fruit or leaves. It usually forages at higher levels than other whistlers, and rarely is seen on the ground.
Breeding: The Rufous Whistler breeds in monogamous pairs, and both sexes incubate the eggs and care for the young. The female builds a fragile, cup-shaped nest from twigs, grass, vines and other materials, bound and attached to a tree fork with spider web. Two broods may be produced in a season.
Calls: A long loud series of ringing notes.
Minimum Size: 16cm
Maximum Size: 18cm
Average size: 17cm
Average weight: 25g
Breeding season: July to February
Clutch Size: Usually 2, sometimes 3
Incubation: 13 days
Nestling Period: 11 days
(Source: www.birdsinbackyards.net)
© Chris Burns 2016
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Special NOTE: On Feb. 8, 2012 I attached a comment, readable & easily discoverable on Page 2 of the comments below, that details the vast corporatist scheme, fronted by Jeb Bush, financed in part with hundreds of millions from Rupert Murdoch (FOX nooze), to privatize American public education & reduce it to 'virtual' schools - not to improve anything (as national & international educational research studies clearly show), but rather to become the final recipients of the taxes people pay so that they can skim huge profits off of the top while providing grotesquely inferior services & lots of lying propaganda to keep the public bamboozled. I beg everyone to read the report.
The McGuffey's Ecclectic Spelling Book was published in 1879.
Raymond Cyrus Hoiles (1878-1970) founded Freedom Communications, a newspaper publishing & broadcasting company that has never hesitated to shape the news to fit right wing ideology. When Hoiles was alive & roaring I lived in Orange County, California, home of the equally right wing Walt Disney & Walter Knott, & was frequently compelled to suffer people who agreed with Hoiles' constantly editorialized insistence that public education was a form of theft & communism that must at once be got rid of. Hoiles was motivated by his fundamentalist Christian persuasions, & quite serious. We should restrain our laughter at the abysmal stupidity of his example, because in many ways he & people like him won & are still winning control of public education. - To introduce the article below, I'll say a little about the Christian strategy.
For many years Orange County's teachers worked under a Draconian ruling that forbade the teaching of values. There is no way around the fact, however, that the statement, "Values may not be taught," is itself a value statement belonging to a class of propositions known as Epimenidean Paradoxes. A comparably illustrative sentence would be, "This is not a sentence." Or, a favorite of the best hypnotists, used when addressing a resistant subject, "Do not obey any instruction which I give you."
What, then, was intended by those who created the paradoxical Orange County law? Well, if any teacher dared to say or imply something that would be disagreeable to any person whose beliefs began & ended with church, flag & free-for-all capitalism, then that teacher could be charged with teaching values & be suspended. One family friend, a young man teaching at an elementary school in Anaheim, was charged, hounded, publicly disgraced, threatened with death & discharged from his post, immediately after which he died from a heart attack. The case was depicted in Life Magazine. His only crime was that he was Jewish. His wife, also a teacher, remained bereft & embittered the rest of her long life.
These people became increasingly invisible over time, largely by devising ever more clever ways for gaining control of both education policy & the public dialogue about education.
Ralph Reed, working for Pat Robertson & the Christian Coalition, devised the "stealth agenda" to place fundamentalists in every local school board in America. The plan helped select & fund candidates, who in accord with Reed's instructions never mentioned their religion or religious connections when campaigning for office. In 1983 Reed rigged an election at his university - he got started early, in other words. Recently we learned that Mr. Reed & Jack Abramoff were associate crooks. The revelation forced Reed to abandon his run to become the lieutenant governor of Georgia. Mr. Reed will not disappear, however. He remains a darling of the far Christian right, & owns Century Strategies, a dirty-tricks political consulting & lobbying organization. In 1999 Karl Rove got reed a nice contract with Enron, which was paying Reed $30,000 per month. And guess who recently went to Georgia to try to save poor Reed? Rudy Giuliani, who has the hots to be the next U.S. president & is pandering to the Christians so he can be their new burning Bush.
Stealthiness did not go away when the Christian Coalition folded & Reed went off on his own to rig elections for big bucks. Rather, the stealth moved into policy matters. For instance, all the phony propaganda claiming religious & private education is more successful, creating the excuse to promote vouchers (for which the motives are both religious & racist). Or, most recently, Bush's No Child Left Behind Act, which was sought by the Christians not because they believed all the testing of students would lead to improved education, but rather because they wanted teachers to be made too busy preparing students for endless tests about facts to find time to do the great evil thing, which is the teaching of concepts. Teaching concepts leads to teaching logic, scientific & other academic methodologies which by their nature instill respect for critical - read, skeptical - thinking. Dogmatists, advertisers & con men have equal cause to fear skepticism.
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From: Truthdig.com
Taking Back Our Schools--and Fixing Them
Full text with links: www.truthdig.com/report/item/20060425_taking_back_our_sch...
Posted on Apr. 25, 2006
By Wellford Wilms
The recent news reported in The New York Times that schools are throwing out science, social studies and art to make time for drilling students in remedial math and reading is a sign of things gone terribly wrong. Former New York State Commissioner of Education Thomas Sobol told the Times that narrowing education to just math and reading would be akin to restricting violin students to playing scales day after day. “They’d lose their zest for music.” But most schools that serve poor populations, like those in Cuero, Texas, are squeezed to meet federal math and reading standards. Cuero Superintendent Henry Lind told the paper, “When you have so many hours per day and you’re behind in some area that’s being hammered on, you have to work on that.”
But by the looks of things, hammering students for higher test scores isn’t making much of a difference. Most students have already lost their zest for learning. How do we know? In Los Angeles, upwards of 50% of Latino and African American students never finish high school. This is just the tip of the iceberg.
I’ve been a professor of education at UCLA for more than 25 years and am convinced that despite the fads that come and go, nothing has put a dent in the public schools’ failure to educate inner-city children. In fact, things are getting worse. But I am also convinced that we’ve been looking in the wrong places for solutions. My own research across a wide array of organizations—corporations, trade unions, public schools, colleges, teacher unions and police agencies—suggests another way of looking at the problem and that solutions will come from a new direction.
This essay is a proposition—one that I hope will spark a lively debate among Truthdig readers and inform policy leaders. Future essays will examine Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s campaign to take over the public schools, analyze whether teacher unions can be a force for productive change, and expose promising ways to rebuild public investment in the schools.
Let’s start with Jonathan Kozol’s new book, “The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America.” It is a scathing indictment of American social policy that banned racial segregation in public schools in 1955 and then turned a blind eye to its implementation. Today, Kozol says, schools are more segregated than ever. But he fails to explain why resegregation has occurred. Because Kozol overlooks the root causes of the problem, his solutions—spending more money on dysfunctional schools and wishing for a social mandate to desegregate the schools—miss the point.
To be sure the problems are undeniable. Kozol examines the appalling condition of big-city schools. In school after school we see children who are brimming with potential but who are walled off from the larger society and abandoned by the schools. Most middle-class white Americans simply cannot comprehend the horrid schools that Kozol describes. Ceilings fall in, toilets are filthy, libraries, music and arts have been stripped away. Teachers in these schools, who are paid 40% less than teachers in the suburbs, are forced to teach “scripted” lessons that are written for children who are deemed incapable of learning.
It is all part of the latest reform pushed by the Bush administration’s No Child Left Behind initiative, a reform aimed at the singular pursuit of increasing test scores. Learning has been stripped of its intrinsic meaning and reduced to simplistic steps—“Authentic Writing,” “Active Listening,” “Accountable Talk”—that hamper teachers in teaching anything but how to take a test. Behind it all is an attempt to impose control, much as mass production techniques were used a century ago, to standardize instruction to fit new immigrants to the system.
Meanwhile, millions of children are failing. In nearly half of the high schools in America’s 100 largest districts, fewer than 50% of students graduate in four years. Most of these students are from poor Latino and African-American families. And from 1993 to 2000 the number of failing schools has mushroomed by 75%. Mayor Villaraigosa calls Los Angeles’ high dropout rates “numbers that should put a chill down your spine.”
The reasons, Kozol argues, are lack of money and racial discrimination that produce inferior and segregated schools. No doubt this is partly true. We have tried to desegregate the schools for a half-century and failed. Middle-class white parents have voted for individual freedom with their feet, enrolling their children in private schools, leaving the public schools more segregated than ever. The same is true for middle-class black families. Gail Foster, an educator who has studied black independent schools, was quoted in 2004 in The New York Times as saying: “Many of the most empowered parents and families are removing their children. What’s left, in even working-class communities, are schools filled with the least empowered families. Families with the least parent involvement to offer, families with the least help with homework to offer. There’s been a continual outflow for at least 10 years, and it isn’t stopping now.”
More money is not the answer either. Kozol points to wide disparities in educational expenditures ranging from $11,700 per student in New York City to $22,000 in suburban Manhasset. Disturbing as that is, study after study shows that equalizing money does not necessarily equalize learning.
In 1966, sociologist James Coleman conducted the most extensive study ever made of desegregating education and found that what mattered most in students’ learning was the economic status of their peers rather than the racial makeup of the school. He also found that school funding was not closely related to students’ achievement—their families’ economic status was far more predictive. Coleman’s findings were controversial and led to a bitter debate, but they have been replicated many times. Daniel Patrick Moynihan summed it up best when he commented shortly after Coleman’s groundbreaking study, “We should begin to see that the underlying reality is not race but social class.”
Since social class matters because money follows privilege, and since desegregation will take generations to eradicate, what can be done now? Are poor children doomed to attend grossly inadequate schools? Surely not. We must find ways to remove the influences that have crippled the schools. Money must be diverted from bloated bureaucracies that snuff out innovation. Instead it must go directly to schools where principals and teachers can influence what is taught and what children learn, and help bring parents back into the fold. Otherwise, it is going down a rat hole.
Parents have a significant role to play in their children’s education, but their voices have been largely silenced. Over the last 40 years, we have witnessed the decline of civic involvement and the growing dominance of self-interest over the greater good, a social deterioration that sociologist Robert Putnam calls “hollowing out” in his 2000 book “Bowling Alone.” One result, as the old saying goes, is that “the rich get richer” and the poor fall ever further behind in crumbling schools.
Over the last 25 years, education in general has been taken from ordinary citizens and teachers by politicians, administrators, union leaders, publishers, test makers, consultants, university professors, hardware and software developers and the media, each playing its part in keeping alive the illusion of reform. All in all, this $1-trillion industry has replaced the common interest, and no one, it seems, can muster the will to rein it in.
Local control is only a dim memory. Decisions now come from the top—from the federal and state governments, school boards and high-level administrators who have little knowledge of what goes on in the classroom. Teachers are left out of these decisions, carrying on the best they can, safe in the assumption that the newest fad, like those before it, will blow over. Parents are all but forgotten.
While command-and-control management may seem to produce results in the short run, it strips schools of the capacity to develop the stable leadership that is necessary to sustain success. Principals are besieged with demands from district offices and from the educational fads that emanate from publishers and university researchers. Many principals know that they put their careers in peril unless they do what their bosses want. One elementary school principal told me, “District directives undermine our own abilities to think for ourselves, to believe in what we see and know.” When schools discover something that works, it is rarely sustained because they lack authority or stable leadership.
In 1969 when I worked for the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, I monitored the schools in impoverished Ocean Hill-Brownsville in New York City. The local school board hired a charismatic superintendent, who fired incompetent teachers and hired young and idealistic ones. The firings set the local board at odds with the huge teachers’ union, which demanded due process for the fired teachers. The superintendent, Rhody McCoy, was convinced that good teachers had to respect the children they taught. He put it in plain words: “If you’re convinced that this kid is doomed by nature or by something else to lead a shrunken and curtailed life, then you’re basically incompetent to teach that child.” The experiment worked. Observing classrooms left no doubt in my mind that students were learning. Eager first-graders sat attentively on the floor in semicircles shouting out answers to fraction problems and reading aloud. The schools buzzed with excitement as parent helpers streamed in and out of classrooms. But in a bitter power struggle the board seized authority and the experiment ended.
Years later, in 1985, Deborah Meier, a passionate educator who founded Harlem’s Central Park East Secondary School, achieved stunning successes that led the school to be celebrated as a model alternative school in Time magazine. But it could not be sustained beyond Meier’s unique leadership. Today, 10 years after Meier left, a respected children’s advocacy group, Insideschools and Advocates for Children, reports that the Harlem school “…has fallen on hard times in recent years with rapid staff turnover, low staff morale and uneven discipline.”
In risk-averse environments like public schools, few principals will stick out their necks, because they don’t want to buck the bosses downtown. Courageous and visionary principals like Rhody McCoy and Deborah Meier keep coming. But charismatic leadership is no match for heavy-handed district management, which always wins out.
Take Foshay Learning Center in Los Angeles, for example. In 1989, Howard Lappin took over a failing middle school. With the help of teachers and an infusion of money, Lappin wrested control from the district and transformed Foshay. The school expanded into a K-12 “learning center” and became largely autonomous of the district’s bureaucratic requirements. Teachers and administrators decided who would be hired and what would be taught. Foshay succeeded, and in 2000 its high school was selected by Newsweek as one of the 100 best in America. But in 2001 Lappin retired, and his unique leadership was lost. Today Foshay is being threatened with sanctions by the district and the county because gains in students’ test scores have stalled. As the school has fallen under the district’s “one-size-fits all” bureaucratic requirements, the impact has been to undermine the once vibrant teacher leadership that made the school so enviable.
The problem with public education is not with the teachers, or with the children, but the way we organize the schools. Probably the greatest casualties are teachers themselves, who are forced to accept decisions by authorities about teaching that they know to be nonsense. One professor interviewed by Kozol said that forcing an absurdity on teachers teaches something: acquiescence. For example, in study after study, teachers report that relying on test scores as sole marks of student achievement and teaching scripted lessons destroy students’ natural love of learning. And such practices also erode teachers’ professional authority, which is fundamental to student learning.
Why is it so hard to foster the only kind of reform that really works, which is right in the schoolhouse? Because politicians, school board members and administrators are under intense pressure to produce immediate results, i.e., higher and higher test scores—a goal that is pursued through directives from districts with little input of principals, teachers and parents. Superintendents serve at the pleasure of school boards, and most board members are elected or appointed and have limited terms of office. As test scores have become the measure of educational quality, everyone is under immense pressure to show fast results or be turned out.
No wonder that school boards hire superintendents who promise to deliver quick results. But few do. Superintendents last on average only three or four years. Many are thwarted by outmoded bureaucracies that were designed a century ago using top-down control practiced in American industry to mass-produce learning. Within these organizations, power has quietly accumulated, making them all but impervious to outside influence. Sid Thompson, former superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, told me: “Trying to change the district is like trying to change the direction of a fast-moving freight train. You might knock it off course for a moment, but before you know it it’s rattling right down the tracks again.”
Frustration and suspicion about who might emerge from the shadows to sabotage their plans often lead superintendents to jealously guard their power. In 2002, Day Higuchi, then president of United Teachers Los Angeles, the Los Angeles teacher union, had high hopes for working with the school district’s new “can-do” superintendent, Roy Romer. Higuchi hoped that Romer would endorse a new union initiative called Lesson Study, a plan to help teachers work collectively to improve classroom lessons. At a breakfast meeting that I attended, Higuchi presented Romer with an invitation to work with the union to develop and spread Lesson Study across the district. When Higuchi finished, Romer flipped over his paper placemat and with a red felt pen drew a box with an S in it. “That’s me,” he said. Beneath he drew 11 boxes with smaller s’s in them, representing the 11 local superintendents, and below that, a number of small boxes with roofs, representing schools and teachers. Then, pulling his face near to Higuchi’s, he drew bold red arrows pointing downward from the top. Romer jabbed his pen in the air to accentuate each word: “You cannot usurp my authority to manage this district!” It was a dumbfounding moment, one that revealed the true underside of the use of power. Here was a chance for a new superintendent to forge a small but significant step with the union, but Romer, who recently announced his resignation, explained that he was “in a hurry.” He clearly had little time for ideas that were at odds with his own. In the end his refusal to work with the union undermined the possibility of creating a broader base of power that could transcend self-interest.
Nor are the unions exempt from self-interest. A few years ago I helped establish a national group of union presidents called TURN (Teacher Union Reform Network) who were dedicated to remaking their unions as forces to improve education. One way was to cooperate with administrators and encourage teachers to use their classroom know-how to redesign teaching at the schoolhouse. But hostility and mistrust run deep. The union leaders became nervous, fearing that fellow unionists would attack them for “collaborating” with the enemy and that if the effort to collaborate failed they would share the blame. Don Watley, president of the New Mexico Federation of Educational Employees, commented: “It’s like the Normandy landing. We’ve got the best troops in the world. We’ve got the best officers in the world. And we’ve got the best equipment in the world. But at 0800 when we hit the beach half of us are going to get killed!” Sadly, in the years to come, the ingrained mistrust, and the unpredictable dance of union politics, prevented these unionists from becoming a positive force in educational reform. Instead, they have been reduced to stockpiling power, much as the Soviets and Americans stockpiled nuclear weapons during the Cold War, to oppose any hostile moves the other side might make.
So what can be done to break the standoff between teacher unions and districts? How can teachers’ professional authority be restored? How can parents be awakened and brought back into the fold? Experience shows that it can be done. Schools such as Harlem’s Central Park East Secondary, Los Angeles’ Foshay Learning Center, those in Ocean Hill-Brownsville, and many others attest to the fact that schools can be made into safe places where children learn. Sustaining them is the hard part.
There is little doubt that trying to build good schools with command-and-control management doesn’t work. School boards, superintendents and union officials need to clear the obstacles—unnecessary bureaucratic requirements and outmoded work rules—to make innovation at the schoolhouse possible. These top-level educational leaders also must make resources available to support new ways of teaching. Jonathan Kozol has it right. Teaching is the only reform that counts and it can be done only at the schoolhouse by teachers, principals, parents and students working together.
Turning school districts upside down will also mean turning a century of top-down management on its head. But where is such bold leadership to be found? One promising place is among big-city mayors. But they must resist trying to take over the schools, as they did in New York, Chicago and Boston with mixed results at best. Instead, popular mayors could use their influence and visibility to tell the truth about the condition of education and to build a popular consensus about how change must occur.
In the next essay I am going to examine what mayors can do. Waiting for the schools to be saved by someone else is nonsense. Only concerted local action offers a chance. Doubters should recall Margaret Mead’s observation: “Never doubt that a small group of concerned people can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
A Progressive Journal of News and Opinion. Editor, Robert Scheer. Publisher, Zuade Kaufman.
Copyright © 2006 Truthdig, L.L.C. All rights reserved.
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Comments always appreciated, as long as you keep it clean - I love to hear your feedback! xx
I was shopping at the supermarket and I bumped into our lovely friends (and regulars at Leeds First Fiday) Janet and Phil! We did well to recognise each other in the masks!
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So, I didn't actually plan on making her, but I just saw Suicide Squad on Saturday for the first time. Harley was literally the only thing that was keeping me interested along with deadshot's character arc.
So this fig is Squad inspired, with my own twists.
Also, new background!
Harley Quinn:
Her head is official, with blue and red eyeshadow added on. Her hair is from the CMF babysitter, painted in a off white, with baby blue and pink painted onto the tips. It also has some blue and red hairties. I liked the jacket less version in the film, so I went for that approach. The red top was swapped with blue, and the blue arm stripes were swapped with red. The shirt design is based off an actual HQ shirt, but I added the Card suit logos. The shirt is ripped at the ends, to give Harley a sense of edginess. The shorts are straight from Suicide Squad, but I didn't feel like adding fishnet stockings. The boots are knee high, with simple detail.
Overall, I really like how it turned out.
I plan on making the other Gotham Sirens, but with my own twists.
Again, please comment if you fave!
Thanks!
Boss.
From the archive, but not previously uploaded.
I've still not seen one this Winter, but a small group were spotted this week in Cambridge. If it does ever stop raining then I'll try my best to find them.
Enjoy your weekend and thank you for all your great comments recently, always appreciated.
Comments always appreciated, as long as you keep it clean - I love to hear your feedback! xx
A weekend in Derby to visit Gemma and go for a visit to Dovedale in the Peak District.
Friday night we went for an amazing carvery at the Cherry Tree Farm. Wow. Never seen a carvery like that - and really good value too!
The desserts looked incredible but I couldn't even finish my main course, ha ha!
I cannot wait to go back here again, it was incredible.
Nala et Cachemire.Ce dernier n'a qu'une semaine...et il est déjà debout et solide sur ses pattes...Dame Nature y a vu...
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Vous lire est un plaisir.Merci de votre visite,vos commentaires,vos invitations et favoris.
To read your comments is a pleasure.Thank you for your visit,comments,invitations and faves
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Me and my bestie doing a slow motion walks over three different nights out.
PLEASE leave a comment rather than just clicking that Favourite button, after all if you like it then please tell me WHY you like it :)
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Apologies for the quality of the audio on this - I've had to bodge this together. I made a slideshow using online software but I couldn't save it in a usable format, so instead I had to play it on the PC screen while filming it on my iphone.
It is somewhat self-indulgent, so apologies for that also, lol.
A collection of pictures from my first emergence, right through up to the end of July this year. Loads of different looks, outfits, places and people. Personally, I can't watch this without being reduced to joyful tears!
The music, 'This Is Me', from The Greatest Showman, is the perfect track and is somewhat of a trans anthem. Rightly so. As the lyrics go:
Look out 'cause here I come
And I'm marching on to the beat I drum
I'm not scared to be seen
I make no apologies
This is me!
Sorry to everyone for the absence of comments today, Yahoo have been depositing everything from my Flickr contacts into one folder & it's taken me all day to sort through 240 ish e mails .. normal service resumes tomorrow (hopefully)
Wallington is a country house and gardens located about 12 miles (19 km) west of Morpeth, Northumberland, England, near the village of Cambo. It has been owned by the National Trust since 1942, after it was donated complete with the estate and farms by Sir Charles Philips Trevelyan, the first donation of its kind. It is a Grade I listed building.
The estate was owned by the Fenwick family from 1475 until their financial problems caused them to sell their properties to the Blacketts. The hall house was rebuilt in 1688 around the ancient Pele Tower house for Sir William Blackett and was later substantially rebuilt again, in Palladian style, for Sir Walter Blackett by architect Daniel Garret, before passing to the Trevelyan family in 1777. Charles Philips Trevelyan inherited the property from his father George Otto Trevelyan in 1928.
Set in 100 acres (40 ha) of rolling parkland, the estate includes a wooded dene (valley), ornamental lakes, lawns, and a recently refurbished walled garden.
Often when I see people pitch X-men reboots, they do one of two things: A) Do the original Uncanny X-men roster of Cyclops, Jean Grey, Beast, Angel and Iceman or B) Just plugs in every popular X-men right off the bat. I don't like either of these. The uncanny X-men roster is kinda bland, while having every popular X-man in one movie would obviously not work.
My ideal line up would comprise of Cyclops, Jean Grey, Nightcrawler, Storm and Angel. Professor X and Beast would also be present but as mentors to the team, not actual X-men.
Myth(Sphinx) Marc Quinn.
Leica-M6 TTL 0.72
Elmarit-M 1:2.8/21mm ASPH
Kodak T-Max 100asa
Developer Kodak T-Max 1+4 20º (7min)
Nikon Super Coolscan 5000 ED
Thank you everyone for your visit, favorites and comments.
🔴Leica my point of view.
Wetzlar, Deutschland.
Leica-CL 1974 Rangefinder,Serial Number 1395533
Leica-M 6 TTL 0.72 1998 Rangefinder Serial Number 2466527
Leica-M6 TTL 0.85 2001 Rangefinder Serial Number 2755204.
"Education is a wall to block your imagination. While learning is process to help you jump over the wall."
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This is my friend Sammy, a pic from July 2019 LFF.
PLEASE leave a comment rather than just clicking that Favourite button, after all if you like it then please tell me WHY you like it :)
Comments always appreciated, as long as you keep it clean - I love to hear your feedback! xx
Our annual May Lincoln weekend and we had some company this time round.
We organised a meal at Ole Ole Tapas with a few friends - Alice, Isobel, Trisha and Cindy. We all walked up Steep Hill to get there but it was well worth the effort - the tapas at Ole Ole is amazing.
Aslo gave a first outing to my modified handbag. Many thanks to Gemma for helping with the wiring and advice for this - it looks amazing! I'm so pleased with it!
(more comments later, as time permits)
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This is a continuation of Flickr sets that I created in 2014 (shown here), 2013 (shown here)
2012 (shown here), 2011 (shown here), 2010 (shown here), 2009 (shown here), and 2008 (shown here) -- which, collectively, illustrate a variety of scenes and people in the small "pocket park" known as Verdi Square, located at 72nd Street and Broadway in New York City's Upper West Side, right by the 72nd St. IRT subway station.
I typically visit a local gym once or twice a week, and I get there by taking the downtown IRT express from my home (at 96th Street) down to the 72nd Street stop. Whenever possible, I try to schedule an extra 30-60 minutes to sit quietly on one of the park benches, and just watch the flow of people coming in and out of the park -- sometimes just passing through, to get from 72nd Street up to 73rd Street, sometimes coming down Broadway to enter the park at 73rd Street, but mostly entering or exiting the subway station.
You see all kinds of people here: students, bums, tourists (from New Jersey and from all four corners of the globe), office workers, homeless people, retired people, babysitters, children, soldiers, sanitation workers, lovers, friends, dogs, cats, pigeons, and a few things that simply defy description. Sometimes you see the same people over and over again; sometimes they follow a regular pattern at a particular time of the day, which always makes me smile — even though I never go up to them and introduce myself.
If I focus on the people coming south on Broadway, and entering the park at 73rd Street, and then continuing to walk southwards toward the subway entrance, I typically have five or ten seconds to (a) decide if they're sufficiently interesting to bother photographing,(b) wait for them to get in a position where I can get a clear shot of them, and (c) focus my camera on them and take several shots, in the hope that at least one or two of them will be well-focused and really interesting.
While you might get the impression that I photograph every single person who moves through this park, it's actually just the opposite: the overwhelming majority of people that I see here are just not all that interesting. (It's not that they're ugly, it's just that there's nothing interesting, memorable, or distinctive about them.) Even so, I might well take, say, 200 shots in the space of an hour. But some of them are repetitive or redundant, and others are blurred or out-of-focus, or technically defective in some other way. Of the ones that survive this kind of scrutiny, many turn out to be well-focused, nicely-composed, but ... well ... just "okay". I'll keep them on my computer, just in case, but I don't bother uploading them.
Typically, only about 1-2% of the photos I've taken get uploaded to Flickr -- e.g., about 5-10 photos from a one-hour session in which a thousand, or more, people have walked past me. There are some exceptions to this rule of thumb -- but in general, what you're seeing it is indeed only a tiny, tiny subset of the "real" street scene in New York City. On the other hand, it is reassuring to see that there are at least a few "interesting" people in a city that often has a reputation of being mean, cold, and heartless...
Grato por todas as visitas e comentários.
Gracias por vuestras visitas y comentários.
Many thanks you all for your visit and comments.
Merci beaucoup à toutes de vos visites, comentaire et Fav. dans ma Galerie.
Jorge Viana Basto
© Copyright : You can not use my photos !
© Copyright : No se puede utilizar mis fotos !
© Copyright :Sie können nicht meine Fotos !
© Copyright : Vous ne pouvez pas utiliser mes photos !
© Copyright : Non è possibile utilizzare le mie foto!
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REGATA DOS BARCOS RABELOS
O Barco Rabelo foi utilizado durante séculos, no Rio Douro, para o transporte de Vinhos da Região Duriense e também de pessoas, até Vila Nova de Gaia/Porto – PORTUGAL. Este tráfego terminou nos anos 60 do século XX.
O Douro era um Rio “de mau navegar” pelo que foram muitos os naufrágios com perdas de vidas humanas. Aos tripulantes deste barco se chamava “marinheiros” para significar os perigos de seu trabalho.
Os Barcos Rabelos que restam estão ancorados no Cais de Vila Nova de Gaia para fazer publicidade a várias marcas de Vinho do Porto a qual está bem evidente nas suas velas.
Por iniciativa da Confraria do Vinho do Porto, desde 1983 nas festas de S. João a 24 de Junho, realiza-se desde a Foz do Douro até à Ponte de D. Luís (Gaia/Porto) uma Regata de Barcos Rabelos. No início eram apenas 4 Barcos actualmente são 20/22 a disputarem a prova.
Estas imagens foram realizadas no acompanhamento da Regata de 24 de Junho de 2015.
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For centuries the Rabelo boat was used in the Douro River to transport wines, and people, from the Douro region to Vila Nova de Gaia / Porto - PORTUGAL. Its use was stopped in the XX century, around the 60s.
The Douro was a river of "hard sailing" thus there were countless shipwrecks and lives lost.The crew members were called "sailors" to clearly illustrate the dangers of the job.
The remaining Rabelos are moored at the pier in Vila Nova de Gaia and are now used to advertise various Port brands, which are clearly visible in their sails.
By initiative of the Confraria do Vinho do Porto (Port Wine Brotherhood), since 1983, in the popular celebrations of São João (St. John) on June 24th, is held a regatta with Rabelos starting at Foz do Douro until the bridge D. Luís (Gaia / Porto). In the first edition there were only 4 boats, currently 20 to 22 boats participate in the race. These pictures were taken in the regatta of 24 June 2015
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Pendant des siècles le bateau Rabelo a été utilisé dans le fleuve Douro pour transporter des vins, et les gens, de la région du Douro jusqu’a Vila Nova de Gaia / Porto - PORTUGAL. Son utilisation est terminée dans les années 60 du siècle XX.
Le Douro était un fleuve de "mauvais naviguer" donc il y avait de nombreux naufrages et aussi vies perdues. L'équipage a été appelé "matelots" pour illustrer clairement les dangers dans son cours.
Les Rabelos restants sont amarrés au quai de Vila Nova de Gaia et sont utilisées pour annoncer les diverses marques de Vin de Porto, qui sont clairement évidentes dans les voiles.
Par initiative de la Confraria do Vinho do Porto (Confrérie du Vin de Porto), à partir de 1983, dans les célébrations populaires de São João (Saint-Jean) le 24 Juin, a lieu une régate avec Rabelos de la Foz do Douro jusqu'à la Ponte D. Luís (Gaia / Porto). Au début, il n'y avait que 4 bateaux, actuellement de 20 à 22 participent dans la preuve. Ces photos ont été prises dans la régate de 24 Juin 2015
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El Barco Rabelo se utilizó durante siglos para transportar Vinos de la Región – y también personas – en el Rio Duero hasta Vila Nova de Gaia/Oporto (Portugal). Este transporte dejó de utilizarse en los años 60 del siglo XX.
El Duero (Douro en portugués) es un rio difícil navegación que ocasionó muchos naufragios en los que se perdieron vidas. A los tripulantes se le llamaba « marineros » para destacar el peligro de su trabajo.
Los Barcos Rabelos que quedan están anciados en Vila Nova de Gaia como publicidad de las diversas marcas de Vino de Oporto, bien evidente en sus velas.
Por inicitiva de la Confraria del Vino de Oporto desde 1982 se realiza una Regata de Barcos Rabelos desde la Foz del Duero hasta el puente de D.Luís (Gaia/Porto) en las fiestas de San Juan, el 24 de Junio. Inicialmente apenas 4 Barcos participaban pero actualmente son 20/22.
Estas imágenes se tomaron en la regata de 24 Junio 2016.
Jorge Viana Basto
(Álbuns : RABELOS- BARCOS // REGATA DOS BARCOS RABELOS
Sorry for the picture repost, yesterday, for the first time, someone posted something very negative about me, and frankly, it hurt. It’s the little ugly hearted people that were the reason I quit Second Life the first time. So for myself, I am facing this issue for once because this world is filled with bullies and I am just so sick of it. Here was the post:
“Cao, Are you really so stupid? Are you really that dumb!!! ll you are so dumb you are really dumb!!! How can you help the Humanity??? You need to bang your head against a wall!!! AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH You're not a model. You're just some random scene girl.”
My answer to this person:
I have to admit, this rant caused me great pause. I smiled and walked away, but *sigh* even though the coward later deleted it, I just can’t let it go. First of all, if you are on my friends list, and we know you are, please delete me because I don’t need a friend like you. I won’t bother you ever, because honestly? I surround myself with better. This is a Second Life, not my first. Why would I want this, well this crap, around me?
If it is dumb to be encouraging and caring to others, well, yes, then I am dumb.
If it is dumb to be a happy sort of person instead of melodramatic, hateful and spiteful, um, yes, then I am dumb.
If it is dumb to just truly love people, in spite of our differences, yes, again dumb, dumb Cao.
If it is dumb to model for fun and not to win, well, then yes, I am extremely stoopid.
If it is dumb to want to help others because as a person who has much to be thankful for and knows so many others who do not, well, yes, frankly I am an idjit of major proportions.
If you are dumb enough to think I am not a model, that’s your short-sightedness, not mine. I have a portfolio, friends, photographers, and designers who say otherwise.
If you are dumb enough to think I am a “scene girl,” I beg you to look up the definition, because the word in no way applies. I am not annoying, slutty, insecure, immature or in any way promiscuous, which makes me wonder about the person who went out of their way to make the sordid comment…..
To my friends, here, in SL and on Facebook, I thank you for the friends you are.
Any comments and favs are very much appreciated
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email : iwakuma.kelvin@gmail.com