I just picked up the new NECA 7" scaled Batman Begins Christian Bale Batman...try saying that three times fast!

 

While there have been a majority of these with kinda derped eyes, I managed to fine one that looked really nice. Aside from re-edging the opening around the mouth of the cowl opening and carefully reheating the plastic here and there where the plastic tray put some minor dents in the plastic the figure is pretty much mint right out of the box.

 

My thoughts...it's really a NICE figure. It may be close to perfect and the best representation of this iteration of Batman in this scale and a few scales below and above this scale. Only real issues are that the forearm gauntlets don't rotate and...that's actually about it.

 

Seen here with Bale are the Keaton and West Batman figures for a multi generational nostalgia. Just need a 7 inch scaled Batfleck and we'll be all set!

Following on from my decade long project in which I used a different film camera each week, 522 in total, I have relaxed the pace and set myself a monthly camera project each year. My dad was born 100 years ago in 1924, he collected old cameras and died age 91 in 2015. In this centenary year I've decided to use one of his favourite cameras each month. December's camera is a Zeiss Ikon Contina Ia. The film is Kodak Color Plus 200 developed in the Bellini C41 kit.

Angel in Blue

The need for a National Gallery

With a vision of becoming a global city for the arts, Singapore has carefully nurtured its arts and culture scene over the past two decades. The island city has witnessed increasing attendance and participation in key events and festivals such as the Singapore Biennale, Singapore Arts Festival and Singapore Art Show. These events have helped propel Singapore onto the international scene, highlighting her prominence as an international arts hub – a place where the global arts community can come together for exchange and collaboration.

 

At his National Day Rally speech on 21 August 2005, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong mentioned the government's plan to convert the former Supreme Court building and City Hall into a new national gallery. On 2 September 2006, Dr. Lee Boon Yang, Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts officially announced the setting up of the National Gallery Singapore during the Singapore Biennale 2006 at the National Museum of Singapore.

 

The then Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts (MICA) proceeded to implement a process designed to enable stakeholders and interested parties to contribute their expertise and their views to the project. A steering committee, initially chaired by Dr. Balaji Sadasivan, Senior Minister of State for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and MICA, oversaw the art gallery's implementation plan. The steering committee was supported by an executive committee and four advisory groups. The advisory groups provided advice on museology, architectural conservation, finance and communications.

 

Design competition

On 23 February 2007, MICA, together with the Singapore Institute of Architects, launched a two-stage architectural design competition to identify the most suitable architect and design for the National Gallery. The first stage of the competition called for design and concept proposals, and began on 19 March with a site tour of the two buildings for competing architects to get design concepts and ideas.[9] It drew 111 entries from 29 countries worldwide, with five proposals shortlisted in May 2007. Members of the jury consisted of a panel of eminent local and international professionals headed by Tommy Koh, Singapore's Ambassador-at-Large and chairman of the National Heritage Board, and included officials from the Urban Redevelopment Authority, Musée national des Arts asiatiques-Guimet in France and the Asian Civilisations Museum.

 

For the second stage, the shortlisted candidates had to develop their designs, from which the winning proposal would be selected by the jury. Due to the status of the former Supreme Court Building and City Hall as national monuments, certain aspects of the buildings could not be altered, such as the façade, the Surrender Chamber, the office of Singapore's founding Prime Minister and the panelling in four rooms of the Supreme Court. However, this still left many design options open such as the addition of roof and basement floors. The participants also had to submit entries within a budget of S$320 million.

 

On 29 August 2007, the seven-member international jury panel named the top three designs out of the five shortlisted.[11] The three firms – Studio Milou Architecture from France, Ho + Hou Architects from Taiwan, and Chan Sau Yan Associates from Singapore – each received $150,000. The jury made their decision after appraising models and digital mock-ups, as well as engaging the five finalists in a presentation and question-and-answer session. The other two firms that were shortlisted in the first stage were DP Architects and Australia's Smart Design Studio.

 

An exhibition of the five finalists' proposals was held at City Hall in October 2007, and the public were invited to give feedback on the designs, programmes and events. The jury's decision was presented to MICA, which then decided on who to commission to design and build the art gallery. An announcement on the final design was made in the first quarter of 2008.

 

Competition winner and appointed contractor

In May 2008, Studio Milou Singapore, in partnership with CPG Consultants (Singapore), was appointed to design and build the Gallery.

 

Studio Milou Architecture is a French architectural firm, with branches in Paris and Singapore that specialise in the design of museums and cultural spaces. Led by principal architect and lead partner Jean-Francois Milou, the firm has a reputation for working with adaptive reuse of historical buildings, seeking imaginative solutions while respecting the building's historical fabric, meaning and surroundings.

 

CPG Consultants, a subsidiary of CPG Corporation, is a multi-disciplinary design consultancy firm. Headquartered in Singapore, CPG Consultants has extensive expertise in conservation and preservation of buildings. To date, the company has completed over 20 such projects in Singapore, most of which are gazetted monuments.

 

Studio Milou Architecture’s design consisted of a linear draped canopy supported by tree-like columns to link the former Supreme Court Building and City Hall at the roof level. The design incorporated an extended staircase linking the basement to the upper levels, making use of solar energy to provide electricity. Fine metal mesh had been proposed to cover most of City Hall. Panel members agreed it had "the most delightful design and appeal", and was ranked first among the top three designs.

 

On 21 December 2010, the Gallery appointed Takenaka-Singapore Piling Joint Venture as the main construction contractor for the new Gallery. The construction works on the buildings began in January 2011 and is predicted to be completed in about 44 months.

 

The buildings

City Hall[19] and the former Supreme Court buildings are national monuments and have played a significant role in Singapore's history. The buildings face an open field known as the Padang, which is a Malay word meaning "flat field". Through link bridges and a new basement level, the design for the new Gallery integrates the City Hall and former Supreme Court buildings, combining both old and new architecture.

 

Former Supreme Court

The Former Supreme Court building was built on the site of the former Grand Hotel de l'Europe, one of the most palatial hotels in Southeast Asia that was demolished in 1936. Designed by Frank Dorrington Ward, Chief Architect of the Public Works Department, the former Supreme Court building was built to house Supreme Court offices and courtrooms and was declared open on 3 August 1939.

 

This building is the former courthouse of the Supreme Court of Singapore, before it moved out and commenced operations in the new building on 20 June 2005.

 

The architecture of the former Supreme Court building is in harmony with that of its neighbour, City Hall. The general layout of the building exemplifies British colonial architecture, comprising four blocks of offices and courtrooms surrounding a central rotunda with a dome that was originally used to house a circular law library. It was to be the last classical building to be built in Singapore. United Engineers Ltd was the building contractor.

 

The Corinthian and Ionic columns, sculptures and relief panels were the works of Italian artist, Cavaliere Rudolfo Nolli.

 

City Hall

The City Hall building was built between 1926 and 1929 and was originally known as the Municipal Building. Designed by the British Municipal architects A. Gordon and S. D. Meadows, it was used to house the offices of the Municipal Council, which was responsible for the provision of water, electricity, gas, roads, bridges and street lighting.[19] From 1963 to 1991, City Hall came to house offices of several government departments and courtrooms. The building was vacated in 2006.

 

City Hall has been the focal point of many important events in the history of Singapore. It was in the City Hall building that Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, on behalf of the Allied forces, accepted the surrender of the Japanese forces on 12 September 1945.[23] The building also housed the office of Mr. Lee Kuan Yew, the first prime minister of Singapore. Mr. Lee and members of his Cabinet took their Oaths of Allegiance and Oaths of Office on 5 June 1959 in the City Hall Chamber. It was gazetted on 14 February 1992 as a national monument. The original layout of City Hall is a typical example of neoclassical British architecture. The building's interior is modestly proportioned, but its front façade is distinguished by 18 three-storey-high Corinthian columns facing the Padang.

 

The Galleries

Consisting of modern and contemporary art, National Gallery Singapore focuses on displaying Singapore and Southeast Asian art from the 19th century to present day. It will be home to two permanent galleries: the DBS Singapore Gallery and the UOB Southeast Asia Gallery. Through its collection, the Gallery will present the development of Singaporean and regional cultures – telling the story of their social, economic and political histories.

 

The Gallery mainly draws from Singapore’s National Collection, the world's largest public collection of modern and contemporary Southeast Asian art. The National Collection started with an original bequest of 93 works made to the National Museum in 1976, by the well-known cinema magnate and art patron, Dato Loke Wan Tho. Through careful nurturing over the years, this collection has grown significantly to approximately 8,000 pieces in 2010. The National Heritage Board is presently the custodian of this collection. National Gallery Singapore will feature works by major Singaporean artists such as Georgette Chen, Chen Chong Swee, Chen Wen Hsi, Cheong Soo Pieng and Liu Kang. The collection now spans from early-20th-century naturalistic paintings to contemporary video installations. The collection also holds pieces from Southeast Asian artists of international standing, such as Affandi (Indonesia), Latiff Mohidin (Malaysia), Le Pho (Vietnam), Montien Boonma (Thailand) and Fernando Cueto Amorsolo (Philippines).

 

DBS Singapore Gallery

The DBS Singapore Gallery will be an important platform for studying and presenting the cultural and aesthetic identity of Singapore from the colonial period to present day.

 

Starting from the 19th century, the narrative traces how local and regional contexts, international influences and individual creativity have shaped and transformed the development of Singapore art. The display will highlight the multiple facets of Singapore art, derived from the interweaving of diverse cultural values and expressions, fluid exchange of new ideas, and continuous experimentation by local artists.

 

UOB Southeast Asia Gallery

Housed in the former Supreme Court building, the UOB Southeast Asia Gallery will present the history of Southeast Asian art through artistic impulses shared across the region. Starting in the 19th century, the history of Southeast Asian art is characterised by negotiations between the region’s traditions and modernity. Art was conceived as an expanded field whereby Southeast Asian artists sought to incorporate and reinvent local expressions and aesthetic traditions as they approached the age of modern art.

 

The UOB Southeast Asia Gallery will share a compelling story of human culture, as seen through a region that has been the meeting point of major civilisations, religions, colonial powers, and the focus of struggles towards national independence and modernisation.

 

Special set of Research Galleries

These galleries will complement the core galleries, providing space for curators and researchers to experiment with ways of presenting materials from the Gallery's permanent collection, and to encourage greater dialogue between Singapore's national collection and those of other regional institutions.

 

Changing gallery spaces

The gallery has approximately 6,000 square metres (65,000 sq ft) of spaces to host international travelling exhibitions.

  

Facilities and programmes

 

Facilities

By day, the Gallery will offer learning and education opportunities for all, through its exhibition displays, artist talks, children's programmes and other related activities. By night, the Gallery will transform into a venue, with restaurants and cafés, as well as outdoor programmes, events, film screenings and concerts. The Gallery will provide venues for hire for conferences, seminars, film screenings, performances and private functions. It will house a 200-seat auditorium, function and seminar room spaces for various types of events and corporate functions.

 

Schools and families

National Gallery Singapore will offer learning programmes for students, ranging from pre-school to tertiary education level, to develop their observational and interpretative skills and appreciation for visual arts. Learning opportunities from the Gallery are also available for Educators, with a focus on professional development or planning a museum-based experience for their students. A Teachers’ Club will be established for educators in order to foster a culture of sharing and appreciation of art. The Gallery, in partnership with art practitioners from various disciplines, will hold a wide variety of programmes for families and children. Such activities include a monthly Family Weekend and School Holiday Specials.

 

Adult learning and community

Opportunities for adults to explore and learn about the arts will be provided by the Gallery through programmes inspired by its collections and resources. These include regular film screenings featuring Southeast Asian stories, theatrical and dance performances, guided tours in both English and Mandarin, art workshops and lectures. From a broader perspective, the Gallery’s Communities and Access initiatives will offer programmes to make art accessible for all audiences through community outreach, workshops and festivals.

 

Docents

One of the public programmes offered by the Gallery is the Docent Programme, a training workshop for individuals who have a passion in art, history and culture and wish to share this with visitors to the Gallery. The programme seeks to cultivate a pool of volunteer guides to act as the Gallery’s “ambassadors”. They are trained in public speaking and have extensive knowledge of Singaporean and Southeast Asian art, and the architecture and history of the Gallery buildings. Docents will serve as art educators by leading scheduled public tours, and will play a vital role in providing a personal Gallery experience by showing visitors the link between the rich history and collections of the Gallery.

 

Keppel Centre for Art Education

The Keppel Centre for Art Education [24] is a learning facility for families and schools. The Centre will provide an artistic environment that stimulates imagination, encourages active play and supports independent learning. Children and younger students will experience and interact with original artworks that are specially created to develop observation skills and tactile exploration.

 

The Centre will be located on the ground level of the Gallery's City Hall wing and occupy a total floor area of 910 square metres. It will comprise four distinct art spaces including a Children's Museum and an interactive Art Playscape. The theme for 2015 and 2016 is Homes: Present and Future. Invited artists will share their creative ideas and personal stories in response to the theme, creating new original artworks that encourage open interpretation and dialogue amongst visitors. A spectrum of art activities developed by the Gallery’s educators will provide learning experiences to support different learners and different age groups.

 

The Keppel Centre for Art Education will also offer programmes including a regular series of Studio-based workshops, artist talks, curator’s presentations, as well as complimentary Drop-in programmes conducted by artists, curators and museum educators.

 

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

What a difference a decade makes

This week we are going back a decade to AX 451 on Lorcan Avenue with a service on route 27B to Eden Quay.

 

Route 27B started running between the city centre and Castletimon (where Lorcan Avenue is located) in 1971. In 2004 the route was extended north, through Santry and on to terminate at Harristown garage. Buses still loop around Castletimon, with this bus stop on Lorcan Avenue being served by buses going in both directions.

 

AX 451 was new to Dublin Bus in 2006. It was withdrawn around December 2018, and was sold on to another Irish operator.

 

Under Bus Connects, it is proposed to serve the full length of Lorcan Avenue with new route A1.

 

06/06/2014

A Manhattan-bound (Q) train arrives at Prospect Park. The train is sporting the rarely-seen 1988-2001 orange (Q) bullet, from when (Q) trains were operating via the 6th Avenue Line due to Manhattan Bridge reconstruction work.

 

I spotted this train at Brighton Beach, and jumped on the next northbound (B) hoping to overtake it, and we just managed to do so at Parkside Ave!

 

R68 (Q) (Westinghouse-Amrail, 1986-1988)

Prospect Park station

Brighton Line - BMT

It's my Tenth Rez day! Go me!

 

softpawthefairycat.blogspot.com/2018/03/an-amazing-decade...

This series of images was photographed at the exhibition "A Decade of Art Quilting" by Linden Lancaster at the G.R.A.I.N. Store, Nathalia Victoria from October 8 to November 18, 2017

On the first steam railway I'd ever seen, C2 number three (at far left) has just bought in the rake of loaded limestone hoppers at right, as number 1 rocks and rolls up to the loading point with the set of empties trailing off to the left. DaHuiChang, Beijing 6 Nov 2004

Elvis Aaron Presley[a] (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977), often referred to mononymously as Elvis, was an American singer and actor. Dubbed the "King of Rock and Roll", he is regarded as one of the most significant cultural figures of the 20th century. His energized interpretations of songs and sexually provocative performance style, combined with a singularly potent mix of influences across color lines during a transformative era in race relations, led him to both great success and initial controversy.

 

Presley was born in Tupelo, Mississippi, and relocated to Memphis, Tennessee, with his family when he was 13 years old. His music career began there in 1954, recording at Sun Records with producer Sam Phillips, who wanted to bring the sound of African-American music to a wider audience. Presley, on rhythm acoustic guitar, and accompanied by lead guitarist Scotty Moore and bassist Bill Black, was a pioneer of rockabilly, an uptempo, backbeat-driven fusion of country music and rhythm and blues. In 1955, drummer D. J. Fontana joined to complete the lineup of Presley's classic quartet and RCA Victor acquired his contract in a deal arranged by Colonel Tom Parker, who would manage him for more than two decades. Presley's first RCA Victor single, "Heartbreak Hotel", was released in January 1956 and became a number-one hit in the United States. Within a year, RCA would sell ten million Presley singles. With a series of successful network television appearances and chart-topping records, Presley became the leading figure of the newly popular sound of rock and roll; though his performative style and promotion of the then-marginalized sound of African Americans[6] led to him being widely considered a threat to the moral well-being of the White American youth.

 

In November 1956, Presley made his film debut in Love Me Tender. Drafted into military service in 1958, Presley relaunched his recording career two years later with some of his most commercially successful work. He held few concerts, however, and guided by Parker, proceeded to devote much of the 1960s to making Hollywood films and soundtrack albums, most of them critically derided. Some of his most famous films included Jailhouse Rock (1957), Blue Hawaii (1961), and Viva Las Vegas (1964). In 1968, following a seven-year break from live performances, he returned to the stage in the acclaimed television comeback special Elvis, which led to an extended Las Vegas concert residency and a string of highly profitable tours. In 1973, Presley gave the first concert by a solo artist to be broadcast around the world, Aloha from Hawaii. Years of prescription drug abuse and unhealthy eating habits severely compromised his health, and he died suddenly in 1977 at his Graceland estate at the age of 42.

 

Having sold over 400 million records worldwide, Presley is recognized as the best-selling solo music artist of all time by Guinness World Records. He was commercially successful in many genres, including pop, country, rhythm & blues, adult contemporary, and gospel. Presley won three Grammy Awards, received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award at age 36, and has been inducted into multiple music halls of fame. He holds several records, including the most RIAA-certified gold and platinum albums, the most albums charted on the Billboard 200, the most number-one albums by a solo artist on the UK Albums Chart, and the most number-one singles by any act on the UK Singles Chart. In 2018, Presley was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

 

Elvis Aaron Presley was born on January 8, 1935, in Tupelo, Mississippi, to Vernon Elvis (April 10, 1916 – June 26, 1979) and Gladys Love (née Smith; April 25, 1912 – August 14, 1958) Presley in a two-room shotgun house that his father built for the occasion. Elvis's identical twin brother, Jesse Garon Presley, was delivered 35 minutes before him, stillborn. Presley became close to both parents and formed an especially close bond with his mother. The family attended an Assembly of God church, where he found his initial musical inspiration.

  

A photo of Elvis's parents at the Historic Blue Moon Museum in Verona, Mississippi

Presley's father Vernon was of German, Scottish and English origins. He was a descendant of the Harrison family of Virginia through his ancestor Tunis Hood. Presley's mother Gladys was Scots-Irish with some French Norman ancestry. His mother and the rest of the family believed that her great-great-grandmother, Morning Dove White, was Cherokee. This belief was restated by Elvis's granddaughter Riley Keough in 2017. Elaine Dundy, in her biography, supports the belief.

 

Vernon moved from one odd job to the next, showing little ambition. The family often relied on help from neighbors and government food assistance. In 1938, they lost their home after Vernon was found guilty of altering a check written by his landowner and sometime-employer. He was jailed for eight months, while Gladys and Elvis moved in with relatives.

 

In September 1941, Presley entered first grade at East Tupelo Consolidated, where his teachers regarded him as "average". He was encouraged to enter a singing contest after impressing his schoolteacher with a rendition of Red Foley's country song "Old Shep" during morning prayers. The contest, held at the Mississippi–Alabama Fair and Dairy Show on October 3, 1945, was his first public performance. The ten-year-old Presley stood on a chair to reach the microphone and sang "Old Shep". He recalled placing fifth. A few months later, Presley received his first guitar for his birthday; he had hoped for something else—by different accounts, either a bicycle or a rifle. Over the following year, he received basic guitar lessons from two of his uncles and the new pastor at the family's church. Presley recalled, "I took the guitar, and I watched people, and I learned to play a little bit. But I would never sing in public. I was very shy about it."

 

In September 1946, Presley entered a new school, Milam, for sixth grade; he was regarded as a loner. The following year, he began bringing his guitar to school on a daily basis. He played and sang during lunchtime and was often teased as a "trashy" kid who played hillbilly music. By then, the family was living in a largely black neighborhood. Presley was a devotee of Mississippi Slim's show on the Tupelo radio station WELO. He was described as "crazy about music" by Slim's younger brother, who was one of Presley's classmates and often took him into the station. Slim supplemented Presley's guitar instruction by demonstrating chord techniques. When his protégé was 12 years old, Slim scheduled him for two on-air performances. Presley was overcome by stage fright the first time, but succeeded in performing the following week.

 

In November 1948, the family moved to Memphis, Tennessee. After residing for nearly a year in rooming houses, they were granted a two-bedroom apartment in the public housing complex known as the Lauderdale Courts. Enrolled at L. C. Humes High School, Presley received only a C in music in eighth grade. When his music teacher told him that he had no aptitude for singing, he brought in his guitar the next day and sang a recent hit, "Keep Them Cold Icy Fingers Off Me", to prove otherwise. A classmate later recalled that the teacher "agreed that Elvis was right when he said that she didn't appreciate his kind of singing". He was usually too shy to perform openly and was occasionally bullied by classmates who viewed him as a "mama's boy".

 

In 1950, he began practicing guitar regularly under the tutelage of Lee Denson, a neighbor two and a half years his senior. They and three other boys—including two future rockabilly pioneers, brothers Dorsey and Johnny Burnette—formed a loose musical collective that played frequently around the Courts. That September, he began working as an usher at Loew's State Theater. Other jobs followed at Precision Tool, Loew's again, and MARL Metal Products. Presley also helped Jewish neighbors, the Fruchters, by being their shabbos goy.

 

During his junior year, Presley began to stand out more among his classmates, largely because of his appearance: he grew his sideburns and styled his hair with rose oil and Vaseline. In his free time, he would head down to Beale Street, the heart of Memphis's thriving blues scene, and gaze longingly at the wild, flashy clothes in the windows of Lansky Brothers. By his senior year, he was wearing those clothes. Overcoming his reticence about performing outside the Lauderdale Courts, he competed in Humes' Annual "Minstrel" show in April 1953. Singing and playing guitar, he opened with "Till I Waltz Again with You", a recent hit for Teresa Brewer. Presley recalled that the performance did much for his reputation: "I wasn't popular in school ... I failed music—only thing I ever failed. And then they entered me in this talent show ... when I came onstage I heard people kind of rumbling and whispering and so forth, 'cause nobody knew I even sang. It was amazing how popular I became in school after that."

 

Presley, who received no formal music training and could not read music, studied and played by ear. He also frequented record stores that provided jukeboxes and listening booths to customers. He knew all of Hank Snow's songs, and he loved records by other country singers such as Roy Acuff, Ernest Tubb, Ted Daffan, Jimmie Rodgers, Jimmie Davis, and Bob Wills. The Southern gospel singer Jake Hess, one of his favorite performers, was a significant influence on his ballad-singing style. He was a regular audience member at the monthly All-Night Singings downtown, where many of the white gospel groups that performed reflected the influence of African-American spiritual music. He adored the music of black gospel singer Sister Rosetta Tharpe.

 

Like some of his peers, he may have attended blues venues—of necessity, in the segregated South—only on nights designated for exclusively white audiences. He certainly listened to the regional radio stations, such as WDIA-AM, that played "race records": spirituals, blues, and the modern, backbeat-heavy sound of rhythm and blues. Many of his future recordings were inspired by local African-American musicians such as Arthur Crudup and Rufus Thomas. B.B. King recalled that he had known Presley before he was popular when they both used to frequent Beale Street. By the time he graduated from high school in June 1953, Presley had already singled out music as his future.

 

Graceland is a mansion on a 13.8-acre (5.6-hectare) estate in Memphis, Tennessee, United States, which was once owned by the rock and roll singer Elvis Presley. His daughter, Lisa Marie Presley, inherited Graceland after his death in 1977. Following Lisa Marie Presley's death in 2023, the mansion is to be inherited by her daughters. In addition to being the final resting place of Elvis Presley himself, the property contains the graves of his parents, paternal grandmother and grandson, and contains a memorial to Presley's stillborn twin brother. In addition, Lisa Marie Presley will be buried there.

 

Graceland is located at 3764 Elvis Presley Boulevard in the Whitehaven neighborhood, about nine miles (14 kilometers) south of central Memphis and fewer than four miles (6.4 km) north of the Mississippi border.[5] It was opened to the public as a house museum on June 7, 1982. The site was listed in the National Register of Historic Places on November 7, 1991, becoming the first site recognized for significance related to rock music. Graceland was declared a National Historic Landmark on March 27, 2006, also a first for such a site. Graceland attracts more than 650,000 visitors annually.

 

Graceland Farms was originally owned by Stephen C. Toof, founder of S.C. Toof & Co., the oldest commercial printing firm in Memphis. He worked previously as the pressroom foreman of the Memphis newspaper, the Memphis Daily Appeal. The "grounds" (before the mansion was built in 1939) were named after Toof's daughter, Grace. She inherited the farm/property from her father in 1894. After her death, the property was passed to her niece Ruth Moore, a Memphis socialite. Together with her husband, Thomas Moore, Ruth Moore commissioned construction of a 10,266-square-foot (953.7 m2) Colonial Revival style mansion in 1939. The house was designed by architects Furbringer and Ehrman.

 

After Elvis Presley began his musical career, he purchased a $40,000 home for himself and his family at 1034 Audubon Drive in Memphis. As his success and fame grew, especially after his appearances on television, the number of fans who would congregate outside the house multiplied. Presley's neighbors, although happy to have a celebrity living nearby, soon concluded that the constant gathering of fans and journalists was a nuisance.

 

In early 1957, Presley gave his parents, Vernon and Gladys Presley, a budget of $100,000 and asked them to find a "farmhouse"-like property to purchase, with buffer space around it. At the time, Graceland was located in southern Shelby County, several miles south of Memphis' main urban area. In later years, Memphis would expand with residential developments, resulting in Graceland being surrounded by other properties. Presley purchased Graceland on March 19, 1957, for the amount of $102,500.

 

Later that year, Presley invited Richard Williams and singer Buzz Cason to the house. Cason said: "We proceeded to clown around on the front porch, striking our best rock 'n' roll poses and snapping pictures with the little camera. We peeked in the not-yet-curtained windows and got a kick out of the pastel colored walls in the front rooms with shades of bright reds and purples that Elvis most certainly had picked out." Presley was fond of claiming that the US government had mooted a visit to Graceland by Nikita Khrushchev of the Soviet Union, "to see how in America a fellow can start out with nothing and, you know, make good."

 

After Gladys died in 1958 aged 46, Presley's father Vernon remarried to Dee Stanley in 1960, and the couple lived at Graceland for a time. There was some discord between Presley and his stepmother Dee at Graceland, however. Elaine Dundy, who wrote about Presley and his mother, said that

 

"Vernon had settled down with Dee where Gladys had once reigned, while Dee herself – when Elvis was away – had taken over the role of mistress of Graceland so thoroughly as to rearrange the furniture and replace the very curtains that Gladys had approved of." This was too much for the singer, who still loved his late mother deeply. One afternoon, "a van arrived ... and all Dee's household's goods, clothes, 'improvements,' and her own menagerie of pets, were loaded on ... while Vernon, Dee and her three children went by car to a nearby house on Hermitage until they finally settled into a house on Dolan Drive which ran alongside Elvis' estate."

 

According to Mark Crispin Miller, Graceland became for Presley "the home of the organization that was himself, was tended by a large vague clan of Presleys and deputy Presleys, each squandering the vast gratuities which Elvis used to keep his whole world smiling." The author adds that Presley's father Vernon "had a swimming pool in his bedroom", that there "was a jukebox next to the swimming pool, containing Elvis' favorite records", and that the singer himself "would spend hours in his bedroom, watching his property on a closed-circuit television." According to the singer's cousin, Billy Smith, Presley spent the night at Graceland with Smith and his wife Jo many times: "we were all three there talking for hours about everything in the world! Sometimes he would have a bad dream and come looking for me to talk to, and he would actually fall asleep in our bed with us."

 

Priscilla Beaulieu lived at Graceland for five years before she and Presley wed in Las Vegas, Nevada, on May 1, 1967. Their daughter Lisa Marie Presley was born on February 1, 1968, and spent the first years of her life on the estate. After her parents divorced in 1972, her mother moved with the girl to California. Every year around Christmas, Lisa Marie Presley and all her family would go to Graceland to celebrate Christmas together. Lisa Marie often returned to Graceland for visits.

 

When Elvis would tour, staying in hotels, "the rooms would be remodeled in advance of his arrival, so as to make the same configurations of space as he had at home – the Graceland mansion. His furniture would arrive, and he could unwind after his performances in surroundings which were completely familiar and comforting." 'The Jungle Room' was described as being "an example of particularly lurid kitsch."[

 

On August 16, 1977, Presley died aged 42 at Graceland. The official cause of death was cardiac arrhythmia, although later toxicology reports strongly suggested that polypharmacy was the primary cause of death; "fourteen drugs were found in Elvis' system, with several drugs such as codeine in significant quantities. Presley lay in repose in a 900-pound (410 kg), copper-lined coffin just inside the foyer; more than 3,500 of his mourning fans passed by to pay their respects. A private funeral with 200 mourners was held on August 18, 1977, in the house, with the casket placed in front of the stained glass doorway of the music room. Graceland continued to be occupied by members of the family until the death of Presley's aunt Delta in 1993, who had moved in at Elvis's invitation after her husband's death. Elvis's daughter, Lisa Marie Presley, inherited the estate in 1993 when she turned 25.

 

Presley's tombstone, along with those of his parents Gladys and Vernon Presley, and his grandmother Minnie Mae Presley, are installed in the Meditation Garden next to the mansion. They can be visited during the mansion tours or for free before the mansion tours begin. A memorial gravestone for Presley's stillborn twin brother, Jesse Garon, is also at the site.

 

In 2019, the owners of Graceland threatened to leave Memphis unless the city provided tax incentives. The Memphis City Council subsequently voted on a deal to help fund a $100 million expansion of Graceland.

 

Constructed at the top of a hill and surrounded by rolling pastures and a grove of oak trees, Graceland is designed by the Memphis architectural firm, Furbringer and Erhmanis. It's a two-story, five-bay residence in the Colonial Revival style, with a side-facing gabled roof covered in asphalt shingles, a central two-story projecting pedimented portico, and two one-story wings on the north and south sides. Attached to the wing is an additional one-story stuccoed wing, which was originally a garage that houses up to four cars. The mansion has two chimneys; one on the north side's exterior wall, the second rising through the south side's roof ridge. The central block's front and side facades are veneered with tan Tishomingo limestone from Mississippi and its rear wall is stuccoed, as are the one-story wings. The front facade fenestration on the first floor includes 9x9 double-hung windows set in arched openings with wooden panels above, and 6x6 double-hung windows on the second floor.

 

Flanked by two marble lions, four stone steps ascend from the driveway to the two-story central projecting pedimented portico. The pediment has dentils and a small, leaded oval window in the center while the portico contains four Corinthian columns with capitals modeled after architect James Stuart's conjectural porticos for the "Tower of the Winds" in Athens, Greece. The portico's cornered columns are matched by pilasters on the front facade. The doorway has a broken arched pediment, full entablature, and engaged columns while its transom and sidelights contain elaborate and colorful stained glass. And above the main entrance is another rectangular window, completed with a shallow iron balcony.

 

Graceland is 17,552 square feet (1,630.6 m2) and has a total of 23 rooms, including eight bedrooms and bathrooms. To the right of the Entrance Hall, through an elliptical-arched opening with classical details, is the Living Room. The Living Room contains a 15-foot-long (4.6 m) white couch against the wall overlooking the front yard. To the left are two white sofas, a china cabinet and a fireplace with a mirrored wall. The painting that hangs in the room was Elvis' last Christmas present from his father, Vernon, and also displayed are photographs of Elvis' parents Vernon and Gladys, Elvis and Lisa Marie. Behind an adjoined doorway is the Music Room, framed by vivid large peacocks set in stained glass and contains a black baby grand piano and a 1950s style TV. And the third adjacent room is a bedroom that was occupied by Elvis' parents. The walls, carpet, dresser, and queen size bed are bright white with the bed draped in a velvet-looking dark purple bedspread along with an en-suite full bathroom done in pink.

 

To the left of the Entrance Hall, mirroring the Living Room, is the Dining Room, headlined by a massive crystal chandelier. It features six plush chairs in golden metal frames set around a marble table, all of which are placed on black marble flooring in the center with carpet around the perimeter. Connected to the Dining Room is the Kitchen, which was used by Elvis' aunt Delta until her death in 1993 before it was opened to the public two years later.

 

The original one-story wing on the north end of the residence includes a mechanical room, bedroom, and bath. In the mid-1960s, Presley enlarged the house to create a den known as the Jungle Room which features an indoor waterfall of cut field stone on the north wall. The room also contains items both related to and imported from the state of Hawaii because, after starring in the tropical film "Blue Hawaii" (1961), the musician wanted to bring some memorabilia from The Aloha State to his mansion, which gives visitors the same feeling. In 1976, the Jungle Room was converted into a recording studio, where he recorded the bulk of his final two albums, From Elvis Presley Boulevard, Memphis, Tennessee (1976) and Moody Blue (1977); these were his final known recordings in a studio setting.[27] During the mid-1960s expansion of the house, Presley constructed a large wing on the south side of the main house that was a sidewalk, between the music room in the original one-story wing and the swimming pool area, that connected to the house by a small enclosed gallery. The new wing initially housed a slot car track and to store his many items of appreciation, but was later remodeled to what is now known as the Trophy Building, which now features an exhibit about the Presley family, and includes Priscilla's wedding dress, Elvis' wedding tuxedo, Lisa Marie's toy chest and baby clothes and more.

 

The Entrance Hall contains a white staircase leading to the house's second floor with a wall of mirrors. However, the second floor is not open to visitors, out of respect for the Presley family, and partially to avoid any improper focus on the bathroom which was the site of his death. Still, it features Elvis' bedroom at the southwest corner that connects to his dressing room and bathroom in the northwest. His daughter Lisa Marie's bedroom is in the northeast corner, and in the southeast is a bedroom that served as a private personal office for the musician. The floor has been untouched since the day Elvis died and is rarely seen by non-family members.

 

Downstairs in the basement is the TV room, where Elvis often watched three television sets at once, and was within close reach of a wet bar. The three TV sets are built into the room's south wall and there's a stereo, and cabinets for Elvis' record collection. And painted on the west wall is The King's 1970s logo of a lightning bolt and cloud with the initials TCB, both of which represent 'taking care of business in a flash'. And the last room in the mansion opposite of the TV room is the billiard room; an avid billiards player, Elvis bought the pool table in 1960 and had the walls and ceiling covered with 350–400 yards of pleated cotton fabric after the two basement rooms were remodeled in 1974. The pool balls are arranged just the way they were in the musician's final days along with a strict warning sign to visitors that says "Please Do Not Touch! Thank You!" in capital letters. And in one corner of the pool table, there's a rip in the green felt, which was caused by one of Elvis' friends in a failed attempt of a trick shot.

 

Critics such as Albert Goldman write: "Though it cost a lot of money to fill up Graceland with the things that appealed to Elvis Presley, nothing in the house is worth a dime." In chapter 1 of his book, Elvis (1981), the author describes Graceland as looking like a brothel: "it appears to have been lifted from some turn-of-the-century bordello down in the French Quarter of New Orleans. Lulu White or the Countess Willie Piazza might have contrived this plushy parlor for the entertainment of Gyp the Blood. The room is a gaudy mélange of red velour and gilded tassels, Louis XV furniture and porcelain bric-a-brac..." And he dismisses the interior as "bizarre," "garish" and "phony," adding that "King Elvis's obsession with royal red reaches an intensity that makes you gag."

 

In similar terms, Greil Marcus writes that people who visited the inside of Graceland—"people who to a real degree shared Elvis Presley’s class background, and whose lives were formed by his music—have returned with one word to describe what they saw: ‘Tacky.’ Tacky, garish, tasteless—words others translated as white trash."

 

According to Karal Ann Marling, Graceland is "a Technicolor illusion. The façade is Gone With the Wind all the way. The den in the back is Mogambo with a hint of Blue Hawaii. Living in Graceland was like living on a Hollywood backlot, where patches of tropical scenery alternated with the blackened ruins of antebellum Atlanta. It was like living in a Memphis movie theater... Diehard fans are sometimes disappointed by the formal rooms along the highway side of Graceland. They’re beautiful, in a chilly blue-and-white way, but remote and overarranged." The Jungle Room's "overt bad taste" lets nonbelievers "recoil in horror and imagine themselves a notch or two higher than Elvis on the class scale."

 

After purchasing the property Presley spent in excess of $500,000 carrying out extensive modifications to suit his needs including a pink Alabama fieldstone wall surrounding the grounds that has several years' worth of graffiti (signatures and messages) from visitors, who simply refer to it as "the wall". Designed and built by Abe Sauer is the wrought-iron front gate shaped like a book of sheet music, along with green colored musical notes and two mirrored silhouettes of Elvis playing his guitar. Sauer also installed a kidney shaped swimming pool and a racquetball court, which is reminiscent of an old country club, furnished in dark leather and a functional bar. There is a sunken sitting area with the ever-present stereo system found throughout Graceland, as well as the dark brown upright piano upon which Elvis played for what were to be his last songs, Willie Nelson's "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain" and "Unchained Melody".

 

However, reports conflict about which one was the last song. The sitting area has a floor-to-ceiling shatterproof window designed to watch the many racquetball games that took place there when Elvis was alive. In the early hours of the morning on which Elvis died, he played a game of racquetball with his girlfriend Ginger Alden, his first cousin Billy Smith and Billy's wife Jo before ending the game with the song on the piano before walking into the main house to wash his hair and go to bed. Today the two story court has been restored to the way it was when Elvis used the building.

 

Elsewhere on the estate is a small white building that served as an office for Vernon, along with an old smokehouse that housed a shooting range and a fully functional stable of horses.

 

One of Presley's better known modifications was the addition of the Meditation Garden, designed and built by architect Bernard Grenadier. It was used by the musician to reflect on any problems or situations that arose during his life. It is also where his entire family is buried: himself (1935–1977), his parents Gladys (1912–1958) and Vernon (1916–1979), and grandmother Minnie Mae Hood (1890–1980) while a small stone memorializes his twin brother Jesse Garon, who died at birth thirty minutes before Elvis was born on January 8, 1935. In late 2020, Lisa Marie's son Benjamin Keough was laid to rest on the opposite end of the Meditation Garden after his death from suicide in July of that year. Lisa Marie Presley died from sudden cardiac arrest in January 2023 and is buried next to her son.

 

After Elvis Presley's death in 1977, Vernon Presley served as executor of his estate. Upon his death in 1979, he chose Priscilla to serve as the estate executor for Elvis's only child, Lisa Marie, who was only 11. Graceland itself cost $500,000 a year in upkeep, and expenses had dwindled Elvis's and Priscilla's daughter Lisa Marie's inheritance to only $1 million. Taxes were due on the property; those and other expenses due came to over $500,000. Faced with having to sell Graceland, Priscilla examined other famous houses/museums, and hired a CEO, Jack Soden, to turn Graceland into a moneymaker. Graceland was opened to the public on June 7, 1982. Priscilla's gamble paid off; after only a month of opening Graceland's doors the estate made back all the money it had invested. Priscilla Presley became the chairwoman and president of Elvis Presley Enterprises, or EPE, stating at that time she would do so until Lisa Marie reached 21 years of age. The enterprise's fortunes soared and eventually the trust grew to be worth over $100 million.

 

An annual procession through the estate and past Elvis's grave is held on the anniversary of his death. Known as Elvis Week, it includes a full schedule of speakers and events, including the only Elvis Mass at St. Paul's Church, the highlight for many Elvis fans of all faiths. The 20th Anniversary in 1997 had several hundred media groups from around the world that were present resulting in the event gaining its greatest media publicity.

 

One of the largest gatherings assembled on the 25th anniversary in 2002 with one estimate of 40,000 people in attendance, despite the heavy rain. On the 38th anniversary of Elvis's death, an estimated 30,000 people attended the Candlelight Vigil during the night of August 15–16, 2015. On the 40th anniversary of Elvis's death, on August 15–16, 2017, at least 50,000 fans were expected to attend the Candlelight Vigil. No official figure seems to have been released, maybe because, for the first time, attendees had to pay at least the lowest tour fare, $28.75, to cover the extra security costs due to a larger than usual crowd.

 

For many of the hundreds of thousands of people who visit Graceland each year, the visit takes on a quasi-religious perspective. They may plan for years to journey to the home of the 'King' of rock and roll. On site, headphones narrate the salient events of Elvis's life and introduce the relics that adorn the rooms and corridors. The rhetorical mode is hagiographic, celebrating the life of an extraordinary man, emphasizing his generosity, his kindness and good fellowship, how he was at once a poor boy who made good, an extraordinary musical talent, a sinner and substance abuser, and a religious man devoted to the Gospel and its music. At the meditation garden, containing Elvis's grave, some visitors pray, kneel, or quietly sing one of Elvis's favorite hymns. The brick wall that encloses the mansion's grounds is covered with graffiti that express an admiration for Presley as well as petitions for help and thanks for favors granted.

 

The Graceland grounds include a new exhibit complex, Elvis Presley's Memphis, which includes a new car museum, Presley Motors, which houses Elvis's Pink Cadillac. The complex features new exhibits and museums, as well as a studio for Sirius Satellite Radio's all-Elvis Presley channel. The service's subscribers all over North America can hear Presley's music from Graceland around the clock. Not far away on display are his two aircraft including Lisa Marie (a Convair 880 jetliner) and Hound Dog II (a Lockheed JetStar business jet). The jets are owned by Graceland and are on permanent static display.

 

In early August 2005, Lisa Marie Presley sold 85% of the business side of her father's estate. She kept the Graceland property itself, as well as the bulk of the possessions found therein, and she turned over the management of Graceland to CKX, Inc., an entertainment company (on whose board of directors Priscilla Presley sat) that also owns 19 Entertainment, creator of the American Idol TV show.

 

Graceland Holdings LLC, led by managing partner Joel Weinshanker, is the majority owner of EPE. Lisa Marie Presley's estate retains a 15% ownership in the company.

 

In August 2018, Gladys Presley's headstone, which contained the Jewish star of David on one side and a cross on the other and was designed by Elvis himself, which become publicly displayed when it placed in Graceland's Mediation Garden after being stored for many years in the Graceland Archive.

 

Lisa Marie Presley's estate, which is being held in trust for her daughters Riley Keough and Harper and Finley Lockwood, retain 100% sole personal ownership of Graceland Mansion itself and its over 13-acre original grounds as well as Elvis Presley's personal effects – including costumes, wardrobe, awards, furniture, cars, etc. Prior to her death in 2023, Lisa Marie Presley had made the mansion property and her father's personal effects permanently available for tours of Graceland and for use in all of EPE's operations.

 

According to Elvis Presley's Enterprises, staff at Graceland informally kept a list of celebrities who had visited in the first years following Elvis's death. This practice was not formalized for a decade. Muhammad Ali was an early celebrity visitor in 1978, as was singer Paul Simon. He toured Graceland in the early 80s and afterward wrote a song of the same name; it was the title track of his Grammy-winning album Graceland.

 

During the Joshua Tree Tour in 1987, U2 toured Graceland. The footage was filmed for the film Rattle & Hum. During the visit, drummer, Larry Mullen Jr., sat on Elvis Presley's motorcycle -- against the rules for Graceland visitors.

 

On June 30, 2006, then US President George W. Bush hosted Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi for a tour of the mansion. It was one of the few private residences on United States soil to have been the site of an official joint-visit by a sitting US president and a serving head of a foreign government. On August 6, 2010, Prince Albert II, Head of State of the Principality of Monaco, and his fiancée (now Princess of Monaco) Charlene Wittstock, toured Graceland while vacationing in the US. On May 26, 2013, Paul McCartney of The Beatles visited Graceland. Prince William and Prince Harry, while in Memphis for a friend's wedding, visited Graceland on May 2, 2014.

 

The home has also been visited by former US President Jimmy Carter; the late Duchess of Devonshire, the sitting ambassadors of India, France, China, Korea and Israel to the United States; as well as several US governors, members of the US Congress, and at least two Nobel Prize winners, namely singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, a Literature Prize laureate, and the former President of Costa Rica, Oscar Arias, a Peace Prize honoree, who visited it on October 10, 2001.

 

In May 2016, Graceland welcomed a newlywed couple as its 20 millionth visitor.

 

In June 2022, actors Austin Butler and Tom Hanks visited the mansion and were interviewed virtually by the Good Morning America news program from the Jungle Room to talk about their biographical film Elvis.

 

In popular culture

Paul Simon named an album Graceland, as well as its title track. The song won the Grammy Award for Record of the Year in 1987.

The song "Walking in Memphis" by Marc Cohn mentions Graceland; in the second verse, he refers to the mansion and the Jungle Room. This song was later covered by Cher and Lonestar, among others.

The film 3000 Miles to Graceland is about a group of criminals who plan to rob a casino during an international Elvis week, disguised as Elvis impersonators. No scenes take place at or near the estate.

The film Finding Graceland stars Harvey Keitel with Johnathon Schaech. Keitel is an impersonator who claims to be the real Elvis after Schaech picks him up as a hitch-hiker.

In the rock music "mockumentary" This Is Spinal Tap, band members gather around Presley's grave at Graceland and attempt to sing a verse of "Heartbreak Hotel".

Pop punk group Groovie Ghoulies have a song called "Graceland" on their 1997 album Re-Animation Festival.

In the movie Zombieland: Double Tap, the protagonists venture to Graceland in hopes of shelter during a zombie apocalypse, but are distressed to find it in a ruined state.

During the credits of Lilo & Stitch, there's a photograph of Lilo, Nani, David and Stitch visiting the front gates of Graceland. Almost 20 years later, the original painting of that shot was put on display as part of the traveling Walt Disney Archives exhibition at Graceland.

In the season three episode of American Dad “The Vacation Goo”, Steve Smith asks Stan Smith if they can go to Graceland for their next vacation and Stan says “Steve, if you want to pay your respects to a fat man who died on the toilet, we can visit your Aunt Mary’s grave.”

Phoebe Bridgers has a song "Graceland Too" on her second studio album Punisher.

In the third episode of National Treasure: Edge of History, "Graceland Gambit," the main protagonist, Jess (portrayed by Lisette Olivera) is on a treasure hunt that leads her and her friends to Graceland.

Florence + The Machine reference Graceland and Elvis in their song "Morning Elvis" on their 2022 album Dance Fever.

Sparrowhawk,

 

In many places still scarce after decades of accidental pesticide poisoning and centuries of persecution, the Sparrowhawk is common and familiar in other areas where its recovery has been complete, It typically soars over woods, perches inconspicuously, or dashes by, low, with a flap-flap-glide action, It is bold enough to hunt in gardens and parks but is essentially a forest-edge bird, extending its hunting range into more open country in winter, Males are much smaller than females,

Broad wings and a long tail give great manoeuvrability in tight spaces and accuracy when hunting,

Voice;- Repetitive kek-kek-kek-kek-kek, thin, squealing peee-ee, but generally quiet away from nest,

Nesting;- Small, flat platform of thin twigs om flat branch close to trunk, 4 or 5 eggs, 1 brood, March - June,

Feeding;- Hunts small birds, darting along hedges, woodland edges, or into gardens to take prey by surprise, males take tits and finches, finches, females thrushes and pigeons,

Occurrence, Throughout Europe, except in Iceland, in wooded farmland and hills and forest, In winter, in more open areas, including salt marshes with adjacent woodland, Hunts almost anywhere, including forays into gardens where small birds are fed,

 

Order;- Accipitriformes,

Family;- Accipitridae,

Species;- Accipiter nisus,

Length;- 28 - 40cm ( 11 - 16in ),

Wingspan;- 60 - 80cm ( 23.5 - 32in ),

Weight;- 150-320g ( 5 - 12oz ),

Lifespan;- Up to 10 years,

Social;- Family groups,

Status;- Secure,

Zihuatanejo at heart a fishing community and if the Mexican government had not decided a few decades ago to transform nearby Ixtapa into a tourist hive, Zihuatanejo would likely have remained primarily fishing centric.

 

The bay the town is nestled in is not just picturesque, it’s also abundant with fish. As a result, fresh seafood dishes are a local specialty.

 

If you get up early you can see Zihuatanejo’s fish market in action. Fishing occurs in the dark hours of the morning and around dawn the dozens of small fishing boats convene on Playa Principal to sell their catches.

 

For an hour or two, the makeshift market on the beach is hectic. Not long after that there’s little sign that just a few hours before it had been the scene of a bustling and vibrant market that helps define and sustain the town.

 

This is commerce the old-fashioned way. There’s no neon or fancy refrigeration here – the fish are as fresh as can be, and they’re sold well before spoiling becomes an issue, on their way to the refrigerators of the local homes, restaurants, and hotels.

 

The catch of the day is laid out on sheets and tarps on the sand just feet from where the boats are pulled up. Prices are mercurial and negotiable.

 

Don’t expect Chilean Sea Bass, Swordfish, Barramundi, or scallops here – the entire catch is local, so if it can’t be caught in the immediate area with small fishing boats, it’s not going to be for sale.

 

There is another side to the story. There is a large commercial fishing fleet working off shore. The output from this fishery is quickly prepped and dispatched daily to restaurants in Mexico city and other major interior cities.

 

A very happy 10th birthday to my oldest!

Bodie is a ghost town in the Bodie Hills east of the Sierra Nevada mountain range in Mono County, California, United States. It is about 75 miles (121 km) southeast of Lake Tahoe, and 12 mi (19 km) east-southeast of Bridgeport,[6] at an elevation of 8,379 feet (2554 m). Bodie became a boom town in 1876 (146 years ago) after the discovery of a profitable line of gold; by 1879 it had a population of 7,000–10,000.

 

The town went into decline in the subsequent decades and came to be described as a ghost town by 1915 (107 years ago). The U.S. Department of the Interior recognizes the designated Bodie Historic District as a National Historic Landmark.

 

Also registered as a California Historical Landmark, the ghost town officially was established as Bodie State Historic Park in 1962. It receives about 200,000 visitors yearly. Bodie State Historic Park is partly supported by the Bodie Foundation.

 

Bodie began as a mining camp of little note following the discovery of gold in 1859 by a group of prospectors, including W. S. Bodey. Bodey died in a blizzard the following November while making a supply trip to Monoville (near present-day Mono City), never getting to see the rise of the town that was named after him. According to area pioneer Judge J. G. McClinton, the district's name was changed from "Bodey," "Body," and a few other phonetic variations, to "Bodie," after a painter in the nearby boomtown of Aurora, lettered a sign "Bodie Stables".

 

Gold discovered at Bodie coincided with the discovery of silver at nearby Aurora (thought to be in California, later found to be Nevada), and the distant Comstock Lode beneath Virginia City, Nevada. But while these two towns boomed, interest in Bodie remained lackluster. By 1868 only two companies had built stamp mills at Bodie, and both had failed.

 

In 1876, the Standard Company discovered a profitable deposit of gold-bearing ore, which transformed Bodie from an isolated mining camp comprising a few prospectors and company employees to a Wild West boomtown. Rich discoveries in the adjacent Bodie Mine during 1878 attracted even more hopeful people. By 1879, Bodie had a population of approximately 7,000–10,000 people and around 2,000 buildings. One legend says that in 1880, Bodie was California's second or third largest city. but the U.S. Census of that year disproves this. Over the years 1860-1941 Bodie's mines produced gold and silver valued at an estimated US$34 million (in 1986 dollars, or $85 million in 2021).

 

Bodie boomed from late 1877 through mid– to late 1880. The first newspaper, The Standard Pioneer Journal of Mono County, published its first edition on October 10, 1877. Starting as a weekly, it soon expanded publication to three times a week. It was also during this time that a telegraph line was built which connected Bodie with Bridgeport and Genoa, Nevada. California and Nevada newspapers predicted Bodie would become the next Comstock Lode. Men from both states were lured to Bodie by the prospect of another bonanza.

 

Gold bullion from the town's nine stamp mills was shipped to Carson City, Nevada, by way of Aurora, Wellington and Gardnerville. Most shipments were accompanied by armed guards. After the bullion reached Carson City, it was delivered to the mint there, or sent by rail to the mint in San Francisco.

 

As a bustling gold mining center, Bodie had the amenities of larger towns, including a Wells Fargo Bank, four volunteer fire companies, a brass band, railroad, miners' and mechanics' union, several daily newspapers, and a jail. At its peak, 65 saloons lined Main Street, which was a mile long. Murders, shootouts, barroom brawls, and stagecoach holdups were regular occurrences.

 

As with other remote mining towns, Bodie had a popular, though clandestine, red light district on the north end of town. There is an unsubstantiated story of Rosa May, a prostitute who, in the style of Florence Nightingale, came to the aid of the town menfolk when a serious epidemic struck the town at the height of its boom. She is credited with giving life-saving care to many, but after she died, was buried outside the cemetery fence.

 

Bodie had a Chinatown, the main street of which ran at a right angle to Bodie's Main Street. At one point it had several hundred Chinese residents and a Taoist temple. Opium dens were plentiful in this area.

 

Bodie also had a cemetery on the outskirts of town and a nearby mortuary. It is the only building in the town built of red brick three courses thick, most likely for insulation to keep the air temperature steady during the cold winters and hot summers. The cemetery includes a Miners Union section, and a cenotaph erected to honor President James A. Garfield. The Bodie Boot Hill was located outside of the official city cemetery.

 

On Main Street stands the Miners Union Hall, which was the meeting place for labor unions. It also served as an entertainment center that hosted dances, concerts, plays, and school recitals. It now serves as a museum.

 

The first signs of decline appeared in 1880 and became obvious toward the end of the year. Promising mining booms in Butte, Montana; Tombstone, Arizona; and Utah lured men away from Bodie. The get-rich-quick, single miners who came to the town in the 1870s moved on to these other booms, and Bodie developed into a family-oriented community. In 1882 residents built the Methodist Church (which still stands) and the Roman Catholic Church (burned 1928). Despite the population decline, the mines were flourishing, and in 1881 Bodie's ore production was recorded at a high of $3.1 million. Also in 1881, a narrow-gauge railroad was built called the Bodie Railway & Lumber Company, bringing lumber, cordwood, and mine timbers to the mining district from Mono Mills south of Mono Lake.

 

During the early 1890s, Bodie enjoyed a short revival from technological advancements in the mines that continued to support the town. In 1890, the recently invented cyanide process promised to recover gold and silver from discarded mill tailings and from low-grade ore bodies that had been passed over. In 1892, the Standard Company built its own hydroelectric plant approximately 13 miles (20.9 km) away at Dynamo Pond. The plant developed a maximum of 130 horsepower (97 kW) and 3,530 volts alternating current (AC) to power the company's 20-stamp mill. This pioneering installation marked the country's first transmissions of electricity over a long distance.

 

In 1910, the population was recorded at 698 people, which were predominantly families who decided to stay in Bodie instead of moving on to other prosperous strikes.

 

The first signs of an official decline occurred in 1912 with the printing of the last Bodie newspaper, The Bodie Miner. In a 1913 book titled California Tourist Guide and Handbook: Authentic Description of Routes of Travel and Points of Interest in California, the authors, Wells and Aubrey Drury, described Bodie as a "mining town, which is the center of a large mineral region". They referred to two hotels and a railroad operating there. In 1913, the Standard Consolidated Mine closed.

 

Mining profits in 1914 were at a low of $6,821. James S. Cain bought everything from the town lots to the mining claims, and reopened the Standard mill to former employees, which resulted in an over $100,000 profit in 1915. However, this financial growth was not in time to stop the town's decline. In 1917, the Bodie Railway was abandoned and its iron tracks were scrapped.

 

The last mine closed in 1942, due to War Production Board order L-208, shutting down all non-essential gold mines in the United States during World War II. Mining never resumed after the war.

 

Bodie was first described as a "ghost town" in 1915. In a time when auto travel was on the rise, many travelers reached Bodie via automobiles. The San Francisco Chronicle published an article in 1919 to dispute the "ghost town" label.

 

By 1920, Bodie's population was recorded by the US Federal Census at a total of 120 people. Despite the decline and a severe fire in the business district in 1932, Bodie had permanent residents through nearly half of the 20th century. A post office operated at Bodie from 1877 to 1942

 

In the 1940s, the threat of vandalism faced the ghost town. The Cain family, who owned much of the land, hired caretakers to protect and to maintain the town's structures. Martin Gianettoni, one of the last three people living in Bodie in 1943, was a caretaker.

 

Bodie is now an authentic Wild West ghost town.

 

The town was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1961, and in 1962 the state legislature authorized creation of Bodie State Historic Park. A total of 170 buildings remained. Bodie has been named as California's official state gold rush ghost town.

 

Visitors arrive mainly via SR 270, which runs from US 395 near Bridgeport to the west; the last three miles of it is a dirt road. There is also a road to SR 167 near Mono Lake in the south, but this road is extremely rough, with more than 10 miles of dirt track in a bad state of repair. Due to heavy snowfall, the roads to Bodie are usually closed in winter .

 

Today, Bodie is preserved in a state of arrested decay. Only a small part of the town survived, with about 110 structures still standing, including one of many once operational gold mills. Visitors can walk the deserted streets of a town that once was a bustling area of activity. Interiors remain as they were left and stocked with goods. Littered throughout the park, one can find small shards of china dishes, square nails and an occasional bottle, but removing these items is against the rules of the park.

 

The California State Parks' ranger station is located in one of the original homes on Green Street.

 

In 2009 and again in 2010, Bodie was scheduled to be closed. The California state legislature worked out a budget compromise that enabled the state's Parks Closure Commission to keep it open. As of 2022, the park is still operating, now administered by the Bodie Foundation.

 

California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2 million residents across a total area of approximately 163,696 square miles (423,970 km2), it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the most populated subnational entity in North America and the 34th most populous in the world. The Greater Los Angeles area and the San Francisco Bay Area are the nation's second and fifth most populous urban regions respectively, with the former having more than 18.7 million residents and the latter having over 9.6 million. Sacramento is the state's capital, while Los Angeles is the most populous city in the state and the second most populous city in the country. San Francisco is the second most densely populated major city in the country. Los Angeles County is the country's most populous, while San Bernardino County is the largest county by area in the country. California borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, the Mexican state of Baja California to the south; and has a coastline along the Pacific Ocean to the west.

 

The economy of the state of California is the largest in the United States, with a $3.4 trillion gross state product (GSP) as of 2022. It is the largest sub-national economy in the world. If California were a sovereign nation, it would rank as the world's fifth-largest economy as of 2022, behind Germany and ahead of India, as well as the 37th most populous. The Greater Los Angeles area and the San Francisco Bay Area are the nation's second- and third-largest urban economies ($1.0 trillion and $0.5 trillion respectively as of 2020). The San Francisco Bay Area Combined Statistical Area had the nation's highest gross domestic product per capita ($106,757) among large primary statistical areas in 2018, and is home to five of the world's ten largest companies by market capitalization and four of the world's ten richest people.

 

Prior to European colonization, California was one of the most culturally and linguistically diverse areas in pre-Columbian North America and contained the highest Native American population density north of what is now Mexico. European exploration in the 16th and 17th centuries led to the colonization of California by the Spanish Empire. In 1804, it was included in Alta California province within the Viceroyalty of New Spain. The area became a part of Mexico in 1821, following its successful war for independence, but was ceded to the United States in 1848 after the Mexican–American War. The California Gold Rush started in 1848 and led to dramatic social and demographic changes, including large-scale immigration into California, a worldwide economic boom, and the California genocide of indigenous people. The western portion of Alta California was then organized and admitted as the 31st state on September 9, 1850, following the Compromise of 1850.

 

Notable contributions to popular culture, for example in entertainment and sports, have their origins in California. The state also has made noteworthy contributions in the fields of communication, information, innovation, environmentalism, economics, and politics. It is the home of Hollywood, the oldest and one of the largest film industries in the world, which has had a profound influence upon global entertainment. It is considered the origin of the hippie counterculture, beach and car culture, and the personal computer, among other innovations. The San Francisco Bay Area and the Greater Los Angeles Area are widely seen as the centers of the global technology and film industries, respectively. California's economy is very diverse: 58% of it is based on finance, government, real estate services, technology, and professional, scientific, and technical business services. Although it accounts for only 1.5% of the state's economy, California's agriculture industry has the highest output of any U.S. state. California's ports and harbors handle about a third of all U.S. imports, most originating in Pacific Rim international trade.

 

The state's extremely diverse geography ranges from the Pacific Coast and metropolitan areas in the west to the Sierra Nevada mountains in the east, and from the redwood and Douglas fir forests in the northwest to the Mojave Desert in the southeast. The Central Valley, a major agricultural area, dominates the state's center. California is well known for its warm Mediterranean climate and monsoon seasonal weather. The large size of the state results in climates that vary from moist temperate rainforest in the north to arid desert in the interior, as well as snowy alpine in the mountains.

 

Settled by successive waves of arrivals during at least the last 13,000 years, California was one of the most culturally and linguistically diverse areas in pre-Columbian North America. Various estimates of the native population have ranged from 100,000 to 300,000. The indigenous peoples of California included more than 70 distinct ethnic groups, inhabiting environments from mountains and deserts to islands and redwood forests. These groups were also diverse in their political organization, with bands, tribes, villages, and on the resource-rich coasts, large chiefdoms, such as the Chumash, Pomo and Salinan. Trade, intermarriage and military alliances fostered social and economic relationships between many groups.

 

The first Europeans to explore the coast of California were the members of a Spanish maritime expedition led by Portuguese captain Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo in 1542. Cabrillo was commissioned by Antonio de Mendoza, the Viceroy of New Spain, to lead an expedition up the Pacific coast in search of trade opportunities; they entered San Diego Bay on September 28, 1542, and reached at least as far north as San Miguel Island. Privateer and explorer Francis Drake explored and claimed an undefined portion of the California coast in 1579, landing north of the future city of San Francisco. Sebastián Vizcaíno explored and mapped the coast of California in 1602 for New Spain, putting ashore in Monterey. Despite the on-the-ground explorations of California in the 16th century, Rodríguez's idea of California as an island persisted. Such depictions appeared on many European maps well into the 18th century.

 

The Portolá expedition of 1769-70 was a pivotal event in the Spanish colonization of California, resulting in the establishment of numerous missions, presidios, and pueblos. The military and civil contingent of the expedition was led by Gaspar de Portolá, who traveled over land from Sonora into California, while the religious component was headed by Junípero Serra, who came by sea from Baja California. In 1769, Portolá and Serra established Mission San Diego de Alcalá and the Presidio of San Diego, the first religious and military settlements founded by the Spanish in California. By the end of the expedition in 1770, they would establish the Presidio of Monterey and Mission San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo on Monterey Bay.

 

After the Portolà expedition, Spanish missionaries led by Father-President Serra set out to establish 21 Spanish missions of California along El Camino Real ("The Royal Road") and along the Californian coast, 16 sites of which having been chosen during the Portolá expedition. Numerous major cities in California grew out of missions, including San Francisco (Mission San Francisco de Asís), San Diego (Mission San Diego de Alcalá), Ventura (Mission San Buenaventura), or Santa Barbara (Mission Santa Barbara), among others.

 

Juan Bautista de Anza led a similarly important expedition throughout California in 1775–76, which would extend deeper into the interior and north of California. The Anza expedition selected numerous sites for missions, presidios, and pueblos, which subsequently would be established by settlers. Gabriel Moraga, a member of the expedition, would also christen many of California's prominent rivers with their names in 1775–1776, such as the Sacramento River and the San Joaquin River. After the expedition, Gabriel's son, José Joaquín Moraga, would found the pueblo of San Jose in 1777, making it the first civilian-established city in California.

  

The Spanish founded Mission San Juan Capistrano in 1776, the third to be established of the Californian missions.

During this same period, sailors from the Russian Empire explored along the northern coast of California. In 1812, the Russian-American Company established a trading post and small fortification at Fort Ross on the North Coast. Fort Ross was primarily used to supply Russia's Alaskan colonies with food supplies. The settlement did not meet much success, failing to attract settlers or establish long term trade viability, and was abandoned by 1841.

 

During the War of Mexican Independence, Alta California was largely unaffected and uninvolved in the revolution, though many Californios supported independence from Spain, which many believed had neglected California and limited its development. Spain's trade monopoly on California had limited the trade prospects of Californians. Following Mexican independence, Californian ports were freely able to trade with foreign merchants. Governor Pablo Vicente de Solá presided over the transition from Spanish colonial rule to independent.

 

In 1821, the Mexican War of Independence gave the Mexican Empire (which included California) independence from Spain. For the next 25 years, Alta California remained a remote, sparsely populated, northwestern administrative district of the newly independent country of Mexico, which shortly after independence became a republic. The missions, which controlled most of the best land in the state, were secularized by 1834 and became the property of the Mexican government. The governor granted many square leagues of land to others with political influence. These huge ranchos or cattle ranches emerged as the dominant institutions of Mexican California. The ranchos developed under ownership by Californios (Hispanics native of California) who traded cowhides and tallow with Boston merchants. Beef did not become a commodity until the 1849 California Gold Rush.

 

From the 1820s, trappers and settlers from the United States and Canada began to arrive in Northern California. These new arrivals used the Siskiyou Trail, California Trail, Oregon Trail and Old Spanish Trail to cross the rugged mountains and harsh deserts in and surrounding California. The early government of the newly independent Mexico was highly unstable, and in a reflection of this, from 1831 onwards, California also experienced a series of armed disputes, both internal and with the central Mexican government. During this tumultuous political period Juan Bautista Alvarado was able to secure the governorship during 1836–1842. The military action which first brought Alvarado to power had momentarily declared California to be an independent state, and had been aided by Anglo-American residents of California, including Isaac Graham. In 1840, one hundred of those residents who did not have passports were arrested, leading to the Graham Affair, which was resolved in part with the intercession of Royal Navy officials.

 

One of the largest ranchers in California was John Marsh. After failing to obtain justice against squatters on his land from the Mexican courts, he determined that California should become part of the United States. Marsh conducted a letter-writing campaign espousing the California climate, the soil, and other reasons to settle there, as well as the best route to follow, which became known as "Marsh's route". His letters were read, reread, passed around, and printed in newspapers throughout the country, and started the first wagon trains rolling to California. He invited immigrants to stay on his ranch until they could get settled, and assisted in their obtaining passports.

 

After ushering in the period of organized emigration to California, Marsh became involved in a military battle between the much-hated Mexican general, Manuel Micheltorena and the California governor he had replaced, Juan Bautista Alvarado. The armies of each met at the Battle of Providencia near Los Angeles. Marsh had been forced against his will to join Micheltorena's army. Ignoring his superiors, during the battle, he signaled the other side for a parley. There were many settlers from the United States fighting on both sides. He convinced these men that they had no reason to be fighting each other. As a result of Marsh's actions, they abandoned the fight, Micheltorena was defeated, and California-born Pio Pico was returned to the governorship. This paved the way to California's ultimate acquisition by the United States.

 

In 1846, a group of American settlers in and around Sonoma rebelled against Mexican rule during the Bear Flag Revolt. Afterward, rebels raised the Bear Flag (featuring a bear, a star, a red stripe and the words "California Republic") at Sonoma. The Republic's only president was William B. Ide,[65] who played a pivotal role during the Bear Flag Revolt. This revolt by American settlers served as a prelude to the later American military invasion of California and was closely coordinated with nearby American military commanders.

 

The California Republic was short-lived; the same year marked the outbreak of the Mexican–American War (1846–48).

 

Commodore John D. Sloat of the United States Navy sailed into Monterey Bay in 1846 and began the U.S. military invasion of California, with Northern California capitulating in less than a month to the United States forces. In Southern California, Californios continued to resist American forces. Notable military engagements of the conquest include the Battle of San Pasqual and the Battle of Dominguez Rancho in Southern California, as well as the Battle of Olómpali and the Battle of Santa Clara in Northern California. After a series of defensive battles in the south, the Treaty of Cahuenga was signed by the Californios on January 13, 1847, securing a censure and establishing de facto American control in California.

 

Following the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (February 2, 1848) that ended the war, the westernmost portion of the annexed Mexican territory of Alta California soon became the American state of California, and the remainder of the old territory was then subdivided into the new American Territories of Arizona, Nevada, Colorado and Utah. The even more lightly populated and arid lower region of old Baja California remained as a part of Mexico. In 1846, the total settler population of the western part of the old Alta California had been estimated to be no more than 8,000, plus about 100,000 Native Americans, down from about 300,000 before Hispanic settlement in 1769.

 

In 1848, only one week before the official American annexation of the area, gold was discovered in California, this being an event which was to forever alter both the state's demographics and its finances. Soon afterward, a massive influx of immigration into the area resulted, as prospectors and miners arrived by the thousands. The population burgeoned with United States citizens, Europeans, Chinese and other immigrants during the great California Gold Rush. By the time of California's application for statehood in 1850, the settler population of California had multiplied to 100,000. By 1854, more than 300,000 settlers had come. Between 1847 and 1870, the population of San Francisco increased from 500 to 150,000.

 

The seat of government for California under Spanish and later Mexican rule had been located in Monterey from 1777 until 1845. Pio Pico, the last Mexican governor of Alta California, had briefly moved the capital to Los Angeles in 1845. The United States consulate had also been located in Monterey, under consul Thomas O. Larkin.

 

In 1849, a state Constitutional Convention was first held in Monterey. Among the first tasks of the convention was a decision on a location for the new state capital. The first full legislative sessions were held in San Jose (1850–1851). Subsequent locations included Vallejo (1852–1853), and nearby Benicia (1853–1854); these locations eventually proved to be inadequate as well. The capital has been located in Sacramento since 1854 with only a short break in 1862 when legislative sessions were held in San Francisco due to flooding in Sacramento. Once the state's Constitutional Convention had finalized its state constitution, it applied to the U.S. Congress for admission to statehood. On September 9, 1850, as part of the Compromise of 1850, California became a free state and September 9 a state holiday.

 

During the American Civil War (1861–1865), California sent gold shipments eastward to Washington in support of the Union. However, due to the existence of a large contingent of pro-South sympathizers within the state, the state was not able to muster any full military regiments to send eastwards to officially serve in the Union war effort. Still, several smaller military units within the Union army were unofficially associated with the state of California, such as the "California 100 Company", due to a majority of their members being from California.

 

At the time of California's admission into the Union, travel between California and the rest of the continental United States had been a time-consuming and dangerous feat. Nineteen years later, and seven years after it was greenlighted by President Lincoln, the First transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869. California was then reachable from the eastern States in a week's time.

 

Much of the state was extremely well suited to fruit cultivation and agriculture in general. Vast expanses of wheat, other cereal crops, vegetable crops, cotton, and nut and fruit trees were grown (including oranges in Southern California), and the foundation was laid for the state's prodigious agricultural production in the Central Valley and elsewhere.

 

In the nineteenth century, a large number of migrants from China traveled to the state as part of the Gold Rush or to seek work. Even though the Chinese proved indispensable in building the transcontinental railroad from California to Utah, perceived job competition with the Chinese led to anti-Chinese riots in the state, and eventually the US ended migration from China partially as a response to pressure from California with the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act.

 

Under earlier Spanish and Mexican rule, California's original native population had precipitously declined, above all, from Eurasian diseases to which the indigenous people of California had not yet developed a natural immunity. Under its new American administration, California's harsh governmental policies towards its own indigenous people did not improve. As in other American states, many of the native inhabitants were soon forcibly removed from their lands by incoming American settlers such as miners, ranchers, and farmers. Although California had entered the American union as a free state, the "loitering or orphaned Indians" were de facto enslaved by their new Anglo-American masters under the 1853 Act for the Government and Protection of Indians. There were also massacres in which hundreds of indigenous people were killed.

 

Between 1850 and 1860, the California state government paid around 1.5 million dollars (some 250,000 of which was reimbursed by the federal government) to hire militias whose purpose was to protect settlers from the indigenous populations. In later decades, the native population was placed in reservations and rancherias, which were often small and isolated and without enough natural resources or funding from the government to sustain the populations living on them. As a result, the rise of California was a calamity for the native inhabitants. Several scholars and Native American activists, including Benjamin Madley and Ed Castillo, have described the actions of the California government as a genocide.

 

In the twentieth century, thousands of Japanese people migrated to the US and California specifically to attempt to purchase and own land in the state. However, the state in 1913 passed the Alien Land Act, excluding Asian immigrants from owning land. During World War II, Japanese Americans in California were interned in concentration camps such as at Tule Lake and Manzanar. In 2020, California officially apologized for this internment.

 

Migration to California accelerated during the early 20th century with the completion of major transcontinental highways like the Lincoln Highway and Route 66. In the period from 1900 to 1965, the population grew from fewer than one million to the greatest in the Union. In 1940, the Census Bureau reported California's population as 6.0% Hispanic, 2.4% Asian, and 89.5% non-Hispanic white.

 

To meet the population's needs, major engineering feats like the California and Los Angeles Aqueducts; the Oroville and Shasta Dams; and the Bay and Golden Gate Bridges were built across the state. The state government also adopted the California Master Plan for Higher Education in 1960 to develop a highly efficient system of public education.

 

Meanwhile, attracted to the mild Mediterranean climate, cheap land, and the state's wide variety of geography, filmmakers established the studio system in Hollywood in the 1920s. California manufactured 8.7 percent of total United States military armaments produced during World War II, ranking third (behind New York and Michigan) among the 48 states. California however easily ranked first in production of military ships during the war (transport, cargo, [merchant ships] such as Liberty ships, Victory ships, and warships) at drydock facilities in San Diego, Los Angeles, and the San Francisco Bay Area. After World War II, California's economy greatly expanded due to strong aerospace and defense industries, whose size decreased following the end of the Cold War. Stanford University and its Dean of Engineering Frederick Terman began encouraging faculty and graduates to stay in California instead of leaving the state, and develop a high-tech region in the area now known as Silicon Valley. As a result of these efforts, California is regarded as a world center of the entertainment and music industries, of technology, engineering, and the aerospace industry, and as the United States center of agricultural production. Just before the Dot Com Bust, California had the fifth-largest economy in the world among nations.

 

In the mid and late twentieth century, a number of race-related incidents occurred in the state. Tensions between police and African Americans, combined with unemployment and poverty in inner cities, led to violent riots, such as the 1965 Watts riots and 1992 Rodney King riots. California was also the hub of the Black Panther Party, a group known for arming African Americans to defend against racial injustice and for organizing free breakfast programs for schoolchildren. Additionally, Mexican, Filipino, and other migrant farm workers rallied in the state around Cesar Chavez for better pay in the 1960s and 1970s.

 

During the 20th century, two great disasters happened in California. The 1906 San Francisco earthquake and 1928 St. Francis Dam flood remain the deadliest in U.S. history.

 

Although air pollution problems have been reduced, health problems associated with pollution have continued. The brown haze known as "smog" has been substantially abated after the passage of federal and state restrictions on automobile exhaust.

 

An energy crisis in 2001 led to rolling blackouts, soaring power rates, and the importation of electricity from neighboring states. Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas and Electric Company came under heavy criticism.

 

Housing prices in urban areas continued to increase; a modest home which in the 1960s cost $25,000 would cost half a million dollars or more in urban areas by 2005. More people commuted longer hours to afford a home in more rural areas while earning larger salaries in the urban areas. Speculators bought houses they never intended to live in, expecting to make a huge profit in a matter of months, then rolling it over by buying more properties. Mortgage companies were compliant, as everyone assumed the prices would keep rising. The bubble burst in 2007–8 as housing prices began to crash and the boom years ended. Hundreds of billions in property values vanished and foreclosures soared as many financial institutions and investors were badly hurt.

 

In the twenty-first century, droughts and frequent wildfires attributed to climate change have occurred in the state. From 2011 to 2017, a persistent drought was the worst in its recorded history. The 2018 wildfire season was the state's deadliest and most destructive, most notably Camp Fire.

 

Although air pollution problems have been reduced, health problems associated with pollution have continued. The brown haze that is known as "smog" has been substantially abated thanks to federal and state restrictions on automobile exhaust.

 

One of the first confirmed COVID-19 cases in the United States that occurred in California was first of which was confirmed on January 26, 2020. Meaning, all of the early confirmed cases were persons who had recently travelled to China in Asia, as testing was restricted to this group. On this January 29, 2020, as disease containment protocols were still being developed, the U.S. Department of State evacuated 195 persons from Wuhan, China aboard a chartered flight to March Air Reserve Base in Riverside County, and in this process, it may have granted and conferred to escalated within the land and the US at cosmic. On February 5, 2020, the U.S. evacuated 345 more citizens from Hubei Province to two military bases in California, Travis Air Force Base in Solano County and Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, San Diego, where they were quarantined for 14 days. A state of emergency was largely declared in this state of the nation on March 4, 2020, and as of February 24, 2021, remains in effect. A mandatory statewide stay-at-home order was issued on March 19, 2020, due to increase, which was ended on January 25, 2021, allowing citizens to return to normal life. On April 6, 2021, the state announced plans to fully reopen the economy by June 15, 2021.

 

MEXICO CITY, MEXICO - DECEMBER 6:Anahi performes live during the end of the Mexican TV program Decadas on December 6, 2010 in Mexico City, Mexico. (Photo by Edgar Negrete/Clasos.com/LatinContent/Getty Images)

I have enjoyed making bread with bought instant yeast for past 2 decades and for most of that time I have intermittently thought about having a go at sourdough bread but never quite followed through on it.

 

I am seriously impressed at the result of my first attempt at sourdough- so delicious - the crust especially! Bread is a foundation of civilisation and sourdough seems a very real and direct connection to the first raised breads. It is the bread that caught on!

 

Process

starter ==> sponge ==> bread dough ==> bread

 

Starter or "mother"

 

Mix 100g flour and 150ml water and leave at room temperature for 2 days.

Chuck half of the mix away away and add a couple of tablespoons of flour and enough water to make it runny again.

Repeat for another few days, discarding half and adding more water and flour - by 5 days it should get bubbly within a few hours of being replenished.

 

It took me 5 days to get it to go bubbly and then it got stronger and stronger. I started the starter 13 days before I made the bread in the picture but my task should be easier now. Apparently you can leave the starter in the fridge for a week or two and then revive it with flour and water. I havent tried this yet but it is the plan going forward. I hope to have the starter handy all the time and be able to make a loaf at a day's notice.

 

Sponge:

This is the "get ready" phase.

To make the sponge in a big bowl add:

~100g of starter (if in the fridge then get it to room temp first).

300g flour

300ml water.

pinch of salt

 

Leave to rise with a loose cover in a warm place for 4 hours.

It can be popped in the fridge after this if you want to make the loaf the next day or used directly at the end of the 4 hours. It will be bubbly and big. If it isnt dont proceed.

 

Bread dough:

Add a further 350g of flour to the sponge and a further tsp of salt and a splash of olive oil. Knead for 15 minutes or until very silky. Roll into a loaf, score top and put into container for baking. I used a Le Creuset roasting dish and oiled it well.

 

Let rise for 2 hours in a warm place.

Bake - 220C for 45 minutes (This was perfect for our Everhot oven but all ovens are different so adjust/check, a fan oven will probably be quite a bit faster)

 

I like Flickr as a place to go back to things- I now have the recipe stored and searchable!

  

250 High St. Built in high Italianate Renaissance style in 1882 with five bay façade with classical ornamentation for the Australian Joint Stock Bank which operated from 1852 to 1910. In recent decades it has been a guest house and now private residence.

A rather neat detail on Central Public in Burlington. Looks like an old window or door covered up by modern cinder blocks.

 

Minolta Maxxum 9 - Minolta Maxxum AF 28-135mm 1:4-4.5 - Eastman Double-X 5222 @ ASA-200

FPP D96 (Stock) 6:00 @ 20C

Scanner: Epson V700

Editor: Adobe Photoshop CC

Here are some facts to consider before you form an opinion on Israel:

 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGUxzISr9Us

 

1. Israel became a state in 1312 BC, 2000 years before Islam.

2. Arab refugees started to identify themselves as Palestinians in 1967, two decades after the establishment of modern State Israel

3. After the conquest of the Land of Israel in biblical times, about 1272 BC, Jews controlled the land for over a millennium and had continues presence in it for 3300 years (to the present).

4. The only time Arabs had control over the Land of Israel was after the 635 AD conquest and it lasted for a mere 22 years.

5. Jerusalem is the Jewish holiest city and the capital of the Jewish people for over 3300 years. Jerusalem was never a capital of any Arab or Muslim entity.

6. There are over 700 mentions of Jerusalem in the Bible (Old Testament). It has none in the Koran.

7. Jerusalem was founded by King David. Mohammad never set foot in it.

8. Jews pray facing Jerusalem, Muslims face Mecca. If Muslims are between Jerusalem and Mecca they pray facing Mecca and turn their behinds to Jerusalem.

9. In 1948, the Arab leaders are the ones that urged the Arabs in Israel to flee. They also promised them to purge the land of the Jews, that’s way 68% of the Arab refugees left Israel without even seeing a single Israeli soldier.

10. Jewish refugees had to flee the Arab states due to violence, persecutions and pogroms by Arabs.

11. It is estimated that some 630,000 Arab left Israel in 1948 the same number of Jewish refugees from the Arab countries.

12. Deliberately the Arab refugees weren’t acclimatized in the Arab states despite their vast sizes. Out of the post WWII 100,000,000 world wide refugees the Arabs refugess are the only group that didn’t acclimatize in their native countries. Opposed to them, ALL of the Jewish refugees were acclimatized. Most of them in Israel.

13. The Arabs have 8 countries (excluding the so called Palestine). Jews have only one.

14. Although Israel handed over the Gaza Strip and most of the West Bank to autonomous Palestinian Authority control and supplied it with firearms, the PLO’s charter still calls for the destruction of the State of Israel.

15. During the Jordanian control of the West Bank, the Jewish holy sites there were plundered and access to them for Jews was denied.

16. Under Israeli control all Muslim and Christian holy sites are preserved and enjoy free access to all believers.

17. The UN kept silent when the ancient Jewish cemetery on the Mt. of Olives was desecrated. It also kept silent when Jewish access was denied to the Western Wall.

 

************************************************************************

 

The original post:

 

I've taken the liberty to translate another article written by Yair Lapid, again I hope he won't mind.

 

Zionism

 

I’m a Zionist.

 

I believe that the Jewish people had risen in the Land of Israel* a wee late. Had it listened to the alarm clock, the Holocaust wouldn’t have happened and my dead grandfather - the one I’m named after – would have danced the last Waltz with my grandmother on the banks of the Yarkon.

 

I’m a Zionist.

 

I use the Hebrew language to thank the All Mighty and to utter roadside profanities. The bothersome person that calls me “bro” is really my bro. The Bible is more than my history, it’s also my geography: King Saul looked for the she-asses on highway 443, Jonas the Prophet boarded the boat in Jaffa not far for Margaret Tayar’s restaurant and an oligarch must have bought the porch from which King David gazed upon Bathsheba.

 

I’m a Zionist.

 

My eyes watered the first time I saw my son dawn the IDF uniforms, I haven't missed a single Independence Day ceremonial torch lighting for over 20 years. My TV may be Korean but I taught it to cheer for the national soccer team.

 

I’m a Zionist.

 

I believe we have the right to this land. The people who suffered persecution throughout history have the right for a country of their own plus a free F-16 from the manufacturer. I'm victimized by any act of Anti-Semitism from London to Bombay, but at the bottom of my heart I think that Jews who choose to live overseas have a fundamental misunderstanding of the world. The State of Israel wasn’t established to eradicate Antisemitism, but rather so we can tell the Anti-Semitics to Fuck-Off.

 

I’m a Zionist.

 

I’ve been shoot at in Lebanon, a katyusha rocket missed me by several meters at Kiryat-Shmona. Scuds landed near my home during the Gulf War, I’ve been to Sderot during a “Red Color” alarm, terrorists blow up near my parents' home, and my children sat in a bomb shelter before they could even pronounce their own names, clinging to their grandmother who fled death in Poland. And despite all that, I always feel lucky that I live here, nowhere else do I really feel good.

 

I’m a Zionist.

 

I think that every person who lives here should serve in the military, pay taxes, vote and know at least one song of Shalom Hanoch by heart. I think that State of Israel is not only a place, it’s also an idea, and I believe with all my heart in the three extra commandments, referenced at the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC: “Thou shall not be a perpetrator; thou shall not be a victim; and thou shall never be a bystander”.

 

I’m a Zionist.

 

I laid on my back it the Vatican to admire the ceiling of Sistine Chapel, I bought a postcard of the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris and was deeply impressed from a miniature Jade Buddha in the king’s temple in the Bangkok palace. But I still believe that Tel-Aviv is more entertaining, the Red Sea is greener and the Kotel Tunnels inspire a deeper spiritual experience. I’m not objective, that’s true, but I’m not objective when it comes to my wife and children either.

 

I’m a Zionist.

 

I’m the man of the future who also lives his past. My dynasty includes Mosses, Jesus, the Rambam, Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, Albert Einstein, Woody Allen, Bobby Fischer, Bob Dylan, Franz Kafka, Hertzel and Ben-Gurion. I belong to a persecuted minority that influence the world more then any other people. While others invested their vigor in blood and fire, we had the sense to invest it in intellect.

 

I’m a Zionist.

 

Zionism is natural to me as being a father, a husband and a son. I find the people who claim that they and only they represent the “True Zionism” to be ridiculous. My Zionism is not measured by the size of my yarmulke (scullcap), the neighborhood I live in or the party I vote for. It was born long before I did, while my father stood in a snowy Budapest ghetto, vainly trying to understand why the entire world is trying to kill him.

 

I’m a Zionist.

 

Every time an innocent victim dies, I bow my head because once I was an innocent victim myself. I have no intent, or desire, to stoop down to the moral codes of my enemies. I do not live by the sword; I just keep it tacked under my pillow.

 

I’m a Zionist.

 

I have more than a birth right, I also have an obligation to my successors. The people who established this country lived and worked in far worse conditions than me, yet they didn’t merely settle for survival. They tried to establish a better, smarter, more humane and moral country. They were willing to die for that goal, I'm trying to live up to it.

  

*A pun. This is a literal translation of the first sentence from the Proclamation of Independence of the State of Israel meaning “The Land of Israel was the birthplace of the Jewish people.”

  

אני ציוני.

 

אני מאמין שבארץ ישראל קם העם היהודי אבל קצת באיחור. אם הוא היה מקשיב לשעון המעורר לא היתה שואה והסבא המת שלי - זה שאני קרוי על שמו - היה מספיק לרקוד עם סבתא ואלס אחרון על גדת הירקון.

 

אני ציוני.

 

עברית היא השפה בה אני מודה לבורא עולם וגם מקלל ברמזור. הנודניק שקורא לי "אחי" הוא באמת אחי. התנ"ך אינו מכיל רק את ההיסטוריה שלי, אלא גם את הגיאוגרפיה: שאול המלך חיפש את האתונות בכביש 443, יונה הנביא עלה על האנייה ביפו לא רחוק מהמסעדה של מרגרט תייר, את המרפסת ממנה דוד הציץ לבת שבע בטח קנה איזה אוליגרך.

 

אני ציוני.

 

בפעם הראשונה שראיתי את בני לבוש במדי צה"ל פרצתי בבכי, לא החמצתי משוּאה כבר עשרים שנה, והטלוויזיה שלי אמנם קוריאנית, אבל לימדתי אותה להיות בעד הנבחרת.

 

אני ציוני.

 

אני מאמין בזכותנו על הארץ הזו. לאנשים שנרדפו במשך כל ההיסטוריה על לא עוול בכפם, יש זכות למדינה משלהם פלוס אפ-16 מתנה מהיצרן. אני כואב כל גילוי של אנטישמיות מלונדון עד מומבאיי, אבל בסתר ליבי חושב שיהודים שבוחרים לגור בחו"ל לא מבינים משהו בסיסי מאוד על העולם. מדינת ישראל לא הוקמה כדי שהאנטישמים ייעלמו, אלא כדי שנוכל להגיד להם שיקפצו לנו.

 

אני ציוני.

 

ירו עלי בלבנון, קטיושה החמיצה אותי בכמה מטרים בקרית-שמונה, טילים נחתו ליד ביתי במלחמת המפרץ, הייתי בשדרות כשנשמעה אזעקת "צבע אדום", מחבלים התפוצצו לא רחוק מבית הורי, הילדים שלי ישבו במקלט כשעוד לא ידעו לבטא את שמם, צמודים לסבתא שהגיעה הנה מפולין כדי להימלט מן המוות. ובכל זאת, תמיד הרגשתי בר מזל על שאני חי פה, ובשום מקום אחר לא באמת טוב לי.

 

אני ציוני.

 

אני חושב שכל אדם שגר כאן צריך לשרת בצבא, לשלם מיסים, להצביע בבחירות ולהכיר את המילים של שיר אחד לפחות של שלום חנוך. אני חושב שמדינת ישראל אינה רק מקום, אלא גם רעיון, ואני מאמין בכל ליבי בשלוש הדיברות הנוספות, החרותות על קיר מוזיאון השואה בוושינגטון: "לא תשתף פעולה עם הרוע, לא תעמוד מן הצד, לא תהיה קורבן".

 

אני ציוני.

 

שכבתי כבר על גבי בוותיקן כדי להתפעם מן הקפלה הסיסטינית, קניתי גלויה בקתדראלת נוטר-דאם בפאריז והתרשמתי עמוקות מבודהה האזמרגד הננסי במקדש וואט בבנגקוק. אבל אני עדיין מאמין שתל אביב משעשעת יותר, ים סוף ירוק יותר, ומנהרות הכותל מעניקות חוויה רוחנית חזקה בהרבה. נכון שאני לא אובייקטיבי, אבל אני לא אובייקטיבי גם לגבי אשתי וילדי.

 

אני ציוני.

 

אני איש המחר החי גם את עברו. בשושלת שלי נמצאים משה רבנו, ישו, הרמב"ם, זיגמונד פרויד, קרל מרקס, אלברט איינשטיין, וודי אלן, בובי פישר, בוב דילן, פרנץ קפקא, הרצל ובן גוריון. אני חלק ממיעוט קטנטן ונרדף, שהשפיע על העולם יותר מכל עם אחר. בזמן שהאחרים השקיעו את מרצם בדם ואש, לנו היה שכל להשקיע בשכל.

 

אני ציוני.

 

לעתים אני מסתכל סביבי ומתמלא בגאווה. מפני שאני חי טוב יותר ממיליארד הודים, מ-1.3 מיליארד סינים, מכל יבשת אפריקה גם יחד, מ-250 מיליון אינדונזים, מהתאילנדים, הפיליפינים, הרוסים, האוקראינים ומכל העולם המוסלמי חוץ מהסולטן מברוניי. אני חי במדינה במצור שאין לה שום משאבים טבעיים, ובכל זאת הרמזורים תמיד פועלים, המחשבים מחוברים לאינטרנט בפס רחב, ואם אשכחך ירושלים תשכח ימיני אבל תשכחו מלמצוא שם חניה.

 

אני ציוני.

 

הציונות טבעית לי כמו שטבעי לי להיות אב, ובעל, ובן. אנשים הטוענים שהם-ורק-הם מייצגים את "הציונות האמיתית" מגוחכים בעיני. הציונות שלי לא נמדדת בגודל הכיפה, בשכונה בה אני גר, או במפלגה עבורה אצביע. היא נולדה הרבה לפני, ברחוב מושלג בגטו בודפשט בו עמד אבי וניסה, לשווא, להבין למה העולם כולו מנסה להרוג אותו.

 

אני ציוני.

 

בכל פעם שמת קורבן חף-מפשע, אני מרכין את ראשי מפני שפעם הייתי קורבן חף-מפשע. אין לי שום רצון, או כוונה, לקבל עלי את הסטנדרטים המוסריים של אויבי. אני לא רוצה להיות דומה להם. איני חי על חרבי, רק מחזיק אותה מתחת לכרית.

 

אני ציוני.

 

אין לי רק זכות אבות, אלא גם את חובת הבנים. האנשים שהקימו את המדינה הזו חיו ופעלו בתנאים גרועים בהרבה ממני, ובכל זאת לא הסתפקו בהישרדות. הם ניסו גם להקים ארץ טובה יותר, חכמה, אנושית ומוסרית יותר. הם היו מוכנים למות למען המטרה הזו, אני משתדל לחיות למענה.

 

In 5 decades, glasses evolved from the constraints of available round lens shapes towards unique looks made possible by new materials and technology.

 

Favorite Glasses by Decade: www.flickr.com/photos/47355639@N00/albums/72157669220942204

Decades...

Il parco divertimenti di Veneland, dismesso negli anni 80 e rimasto da allora abbandonato. Ricordo ancora quando da piccolo i miei genitori mi portavano a pattinare sul ghiaccio e visitare il piccolo zoo safari (poveri animali). Adesso, con altri occhi di un adulto tutto è diverso e prende altre dimensioni.

 

The amusement park of Veneland, discontinued in the 80's and since then left abandoned. I still remember when as a child my parents took me to skate on the ice and visit the small zoo safaris (poor animals). Now, with new eyes of an adult, everything is different and takes other dimensions.

 

-- Setup --

Nikon D700

Nikkor AF-S 24-70 f/2.8

 

Mogliano Veneto - Treviso - Italy

Lamborghini Gallardo - Short North, Columbus, Ohio

Ces53

..........after decades in a box, these babies have come out for some Shevie Love!!!

  

Toy Sunday : Decades

Decades-old plastic electronics signage in Verona, Wisconsin.

 

Whatever happened to the Admiral company, anyway? I don't think I ever saw that name on a gadget less than 40 years old.

 

Then again, Zenith these days also seems to be pretty defunct...

Title: Wofford vs. VSC

Creator: Valdosta State University

Date: April 1, 1984

Description: Wofford vs. VSC; Baseball action

Source: Spectator Negatives, 1980-1985. Valdosta State University Archives and Special Collections.

Subject: Baseball; Valdosta State University -- Baseball;

Identifier:

Format: image/jpeg

Last time I was in Berlin more than a decade ago, at east side Gallery a section of the Berlin wall left…

 

Peace and Noise!

 

/ MushroomBrain ich bin…

3D red/cyan anaglyph created from glass plate stereograph at Library of Congress - Prints & Photographs Online Catalog at:

www.loc.gov/pictures/

 

LOC Title: Washington, D.C. Patients in ward of Harewood Hospital; mosquito nets over beds

 

Date: Oct 1864

 

Photographer: Not Identified

 

Notes: For background, below are a sampling of items I found, from Civil War newspapers, and books published in the decades following the war, that reference Harewood Hospital. Near the very bottom is a link to the Yale University Library collection of photos of wounded soldiers treated at Harewood, with descriptions of their wounds and treatments - the photos are quite disturbing.

-----------------------------

The Pioneer

Bridgeton, NJ

Jan 17, 1863

DIED

On the 28th of Dec. in the Harewood Hospital, Washington, D.C., of wounds received at the battle of Fredericksburg, Richard Rettig, in the 19th year of his age, only son of Mrs. Racheal Rettig, of this town, a member of Co. H 24th Regiment, N.J.V.”

-----------------------

The Alexandria Gazette

Thursday Evening,

May 07, 1863

“The steamer John Tucker arrived in Washington with over three hundred wounded who were taken to Harewood Hospital. These were mostly wounded in the engagements of Friday and Saturday. There were but a few officers among them.”

-----------------------

A history of the Eleventh New Hampshire Regiment, Volunteer Infantry in the Rebellion war, 1861-1865 by Leander W. Cogswell, Published 1891

 

"A Terrible Experience.

Comrade Charles C. Pike, Company F, who was at the battle of Fredericksburg, says, — "We marched upon the railroad in full view of the rebel defences, and just here, I think, the first man in Company F was killed, my dear camp-mate, Ben Nelson. We were talking together, and I had my hand on his arm, when, spat! and poor Ben's head sank lower, his frame slightly quivered, and he was gone, the bullet striking over his left eye and passing directly through his brain. We were ordered to advance, and advance we did, upon the 'bloody acre.' It always seemed miraculous that any one could get out of that hellish carnage alive….."

 

"I had got three slight scratches by this time, but kept at work. I had replenished my cartridge-box twice from a dead or dying comrade's, and was just getting up to get some more ammunition when a bullet struck me on the side of my face at the angle of the lower jaw, passing left through my mouth, cutting off about one half of my tongue, knocking out eight teeth, and coming out on the opposite side near the right ear. The hemorrhage was very free, and this, with the loss of blood from my other wounds, soon made things look dusky. I became unconscious soon afterward, and the next I knew the firing had ceased. It was dark and cold, and the air was filled with groans and moans of the hundreds of wounded who were lying about me. I am told that a large number of us who were severely wounded were allowed to be carried off the field when our boys came to bury the dead….."

 

"December 26, thirteen days after the battle, I was sent to Washington, arriving the next day more dead than alive, and was placed in the Harewood hospital, where I received the most kindly and skilful treatment from both surgeons and nurses. After several months I became able to take care of the sick and wounded as they were brought in, and was afterward detailed as hospital steward. During the eight months I served as such, I suppose I extracted at least three thousand teeth…”

------------------

The Prodigy: A Brief Account of the Bright Career of a Youthful Genius, Dr. G. E. A. Winans, Together with Some Interesting Extracts From His Correspondence and Manuscripts. By O. VanDusen, Published 1870

 

Harewood Hospital, Washington,

Sunday May 29th, 1864.

 

“Dear ones at home….After writing from New York, I concluded to go on to Washington, so I completed my arrangements with the officials of the W. S., and on Friday night received my commission, and was ordered to report immediately at Washington, passports being furnished me. I purchased my uniform, and left New York Saturday night for Washington, where I arrived this morning at 11 o’clock. I presented myself at the director’s office, and was ordered on to Harewood Hospital, and I am just now reminded of my military position, by hearing the clear blast of the winding bugle echoing over hills and dales, calling the soldiers in from their wanderings for the evening. Oh, what a place is this ! would I had a painter’s pencil and an inspired pen to paint what I see, and tell you what I hear. But it is Sabbath evening, and I must not transgress. This afternoon, on my arrival here, I witnessed the funeral of a captain. The ‘Stars and Stripes’ were laid on his coffin, and they marched away to the deadhouse, the band playing an old Methodist tune. The afternoon was lovely, the sky rich blue, the grass dark green and three feet high, and the procession in uniform winding around the picturesque valley, and up the hill slopes, while the solemn tones of the band mournfully falling upon the ear; all caused a strange feeling of sadness. I am so tired and sleepy, I must close….

 

Monday Morning

This is one of the loveliest spots on earth. It was formerly the pleasure grounds of a Virginian gentleman, and is known as the Corcoran Estate. We are just two miles from Washington, and have a beautiful view of the capitol as it majestically towers above the city. Nature seems to have surpassed herself in beautifying this spot. We are stationed on a slight elevation of ground, amidst an endless succession of hills, dales and plains, all carpeted with long, green, waving grass; bowers of trees and bushes rise here and there ; a beautiful stream runs in front of our headquarters. But it cannot be described, the swells of ground are so graceful; groves resting on grassy slopes, and the bright luxuriance of Southern vegetation, adds a charm most powerful.

 

Our hospital is about as much like what I expected as an elephant resembles a mouse. Why, it is a town instead of one building; it covers about eight acres of ground. The buildings are in long rows, side by side, each one being much longer than the long woodsheds at railroad stations. Then there are tent hospitals, each one about 90 or 100 feet in length. I have one barrack and six tent hospitals under my charge. These are filled with wounded and sick, comprising one hundred and sixty patients, which I have to visit twice every day. Why, they think no more of cutting off a leg or arm, than you do in Canada of pulling a tooth. During the few hours I was here yesterday, I saw more surgery and blood than I had seen in all my life before. I do not know how many legs and arms I have seen amputated since I have been here; they were heaped upon the floor, legs and arms in great piles together, and blood covered the floor so thickly that we might well say, we were wading in blood.

 

We have about 2,200 patients which, with the officers and soldiers on duty, give a population of over 3,000. Think of all this at one hospital. Before I wrote last night, I had visited my 160 patients, and administered to their wants. The work is very heavy and trying, but the practice is most excellent, and will do me much good. The surgeon I am to replace, leaves in the morning for another field of labor. The officers and surgeons occupy one of the long barrack hospitals. It is fitted up into private rooms. The business is all done here. The surgeons rank with the officers, and are treated in every respect the same way, eating and associating with them.

 

By the time I write again, I will know more of this extensive hospital, the largest around Washington. The weather is very warm and sultry; vegetation far in advance of Canada. Yesterday I had a good dinner at Washington, on green peas and other vegetables, just sprouting with you.

Affectionately yours,

Geo. E. A. Winans.”

---------------

The Evening Star

Washington, D.C.

May 29, 1866

 

“SALE OF GOVERNMENT BUILDINGS AT HAREWOOD HOSPITAL.

Chief Quartermaster's Office, Depot of Washington, Washington. D. C., May 24, 1866.

 

Will be sold at Public Auction, on the premises, under the direction of Brevet Lieutenant Colonel James M. Moore…. on SATURDAY, June 2, 1866, at 10 o'clock a.m., the Government buildings, situated at Harewood Hospital, near the northern terminus of Seventh street west, as follows:

 

Fifteen (15) Hospital Wards, each 24 by 187 feet.

One (1) Hospital Ward, 24 by 48 feet.

One (1) Building. 38 by 189 feet.

One (1) Dining Room, 25 by 185 feet.

One (1) Dining Room, 28 by 152 feet.

One (1) Kitchen. 30 by 89 feet.

One (1) Kitchen and Quarters. 30 by 117 feet.

One (1) Water Closet, 18 by 20 feet.

One Chapel, 30 by 73 feet.

Three (3) Wards each 20 1/2 by 102 feet.

One (1) Tank and Stand

Ten (10) Sinks, each 6 by 8 feet.

One (1) Dead House. 22 by 31 feet.

One (1) Laundress Quarters, 24 by 71 feet.

One (1) Wash-House, 24 by 118 feet.

One (11 Saw-Shed, 12 by 18 feet.

One (1) Laundry and Bath House. 30 by 73 feet.

One (1) Shed adjoining, 12 by 16 feet.

One (1) Quarters, 21 by 26 feet.

One (1) Coal Bunk, 12 by 12 feet.

Two (2) Plank Walks, 2 1/2 by 200 feet.

Covered Ways.

 

BARRACKS ATTACHED TO THE HOSPITAL

Three (3) Barracks, 24 by 58 feet.

One (1) Office, 16 by 26 feet.

One (1) Sink, 5 by 8 feet.

Three (3) Sinks, each 8 by 8 feet.

One (1) Guard-House, 16 by 25 feet.

One (1) Addition to same. 10 by 16 feet.

One (1) Watch-Box, 8 by 10 feet.

Foot Walks.

 

The buildings will be sold singly, and must be removed within ten days from date of sale. Terms Cash, in Government Funds. D.H. Bucker, Bvt. Maj. Gen. and Chief Quartermaster, Depot of Washington.”

 

[The proceeds of the sale was only $3,000 - PT]

-------------

Link to Yale University Library Photos of Wounded Civil War Soldiers treated at Harewood Hospital: findit.library.yale.edu/?f%5Bdigital_collection_sim%5D%5B...

--------------

Red/Cyan (not red/blue) glasses of the proper density must be used to view 3D effect without ghosting. Anaglyph prepared using red cyan glasses from The Center For Civil War Photography / Civil War Trust. CCWP Link: www.civilwarphotography.org/

 

The Arlington Memorial Bridge, often shortened to Memorial Bridge, is a Neoclassical masonry, steel, and stone arch bridge with a central bascule (or drawbridge) that crosses the Potomac River in Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States. First proposed in 1886, the bridge went unbuilt for decades thanks to political quarrels over whether the bridge should be a memorial, and to whom or what. Traffic problems associated with the dedication of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in November 1921 and the desire to build a bridge in time for the bicentennial of the birth of George Washington led to its construction in 1932.

 

Designed by the architectural firm McKim, Mead, and White, decorated with monumental statues depicting valor and sacrifice by sculptor Leo Friedlander, cast by Ferdinando Marinelli Artistic Foundry, Florence, Italy, Arlington Memorial Bridge defines the western end of the National Mall. The bridge's draw span was permanently closed in 1961 and replaced in 2018 by one that does not open.

 

On November 11, 1921, President Warren G. Harding traveled to the dedication ceremony for the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery. He became caught in a three-hour traffic jam because Highway Bridge (on which he traveled) could not handle the traffic. Resolving to prevent that from happening again, Harding sought an appropriation of $25,000 in 1922 to fund the work of the bridge commission. Congress approved his request on June 12, 1922.

 

Initially, the Arlington Memorial Bridge Commission proposed a site for the bridge at the New York Avenue site, upstream from its current position. But the Commission of Fine Arts (CFA), which had legislative authority to approve the siting and design of memorials, opposed the plan. With President Harding presiding, the Arlington Memorial Bridge Commission held a joint meeting with Vice President Calvin Coolidge and the Commission of Fine Arts on December 18, 1922, at which time it was unanimously decided to adhere to the McMillan Plan and site the bridge on a line of sight between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington House in Arlington National Cemetery. The parties also agreed to seek to construct a low (rather than monumental) bridge with a bascule (drawbridge) in the center to permit ship traffic to reach the Georgetown waterfront.

 

The bridge commission asked the Commission of Fine Arts whether there should be an open design competition (as in the past) or whether the bridge commission should pick a designer itself. The CFA recommended a direct selection, and provided the names of three firms: Charles A. Platt, who designed the Freer Gallery of Art; Paul Philippe Cret, who designed the Pan-American Union Building; and the firm of McKim, Mead and White. The bridge commission chose a direct selection, and picked the firm of McKim, Mead and White on April 4, 1923. Architect William Mitchell Kendall was the lead designer.

 

Members of the D.C. business community immediately pressed for resolution on whether the bridge would have a draw span. Merchants in Georgetown wanted their small harbor to be reachable by large ships. On February 17, 1923, Colonel C.O. Sherrill of the Army Corps of Engineers stated that the Corps would only approve a bridge with a draw span.

 

Kendall's first design, submitted to the CFA in May 1923, was generally well received. His plan envisioned a low, Neoclassical arch bridge. Two statues stood atop each pier on both sides of the bridge. The D.C. approaches consisted of a traffic circle around the Lincoln Memorial linked to the Potomac River by a plaza and monumental steps (the "watergate"). Two memorial columns were placed in this plaza. On the Columbia Island landing, Kendall envisioned a gigantic crossarm circumscribed by a grassy ellipse, with traffic circles at the terminus of the north and south arms. The traffic circles would accommodate Lee Highway and the Mt. Vernon Memorial Parkway. Within the ellipse were placed two 181-foot (55 m) tall memorial columns. Two circular Greek Revival temples were planned for the western shoreline. The commission was especially pleased that Kendall had the Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway linked to the traffic circle around the Lincoln Memorial rather than passing beneath the bridge via an arch. (Kendall had, in fact, intended to pass it through one of the bridge's arches but forgot to make the change.) However, CFA members asked that he consider widening the bridge to 100 feet (30 m) from the proposed 80 feet (24 m). The CFA also discussed at length its long-standing proposal for a major traffic circle on Columbia Island, within which would be placed a memorial to Robert E. Lee. There was also concern whether enough space had been allotted to permit the Mount Vernon Memorial Parkway, Lee Highway, and Memorial Drive (which was planned to cross the Boundary Channel via the Boundary Channel Bridge into Virginia and link with the main gate to Arlington National Cemetery). When the CFA gave its preliminary approval to the bridge design (but withheld a resolution on the approaches), models of the bridge went on public display in February 1924.

 

The Arlington Memorial Bridge Commission oversaw the design and construction of the bridge. Arlington Memorial Bridge informally opened on January 16, 1932. The dedication ceremony was headed by President Herbert Hoover who became the first person to drive across it, leading a small party of 12 cars down the George Washington Parkway to Mt. Vernon as a kick-off for Washington's 200th birthday celebration. Due to a lack of lights, ongoing construction and poor connections on the Virginia side, the bridge and highway were only open during daylight hours on Saturday and Sunday. Weekend-only operations ended on March 16, 1932. Though temporary lights were added in time for the 200th birthday, the bridge wasn't opened for day and night use until both the bridge and highway were officially illuminated on May 6, 1932.

 

Designed by architectural firm McKim, Mead, and White, the neoclassical bridge is 2,163 feet (659 m) long. The bridge cost $7.25 million to build, of which $900,000 was attributed to the center draw span.

 

Construction of the Virginia approaches to the bridge took six years. The National Capital Parks Commission (NCPC) had authority to plan and approve regional transportation plans, and wanted the Virginia approaches to the bridge to be new roads. This would help stimulate housing and economic growth in Arlington County. The state of Virginia (which would provide some of the funding for the approaches) and Arlington County officials wrestled with the problems of cost and development. New roads and approaches would be the most costly (largely due to the need to obtain rights-of-way), a major consideration in the Great Depression. Yet, connecting the bridge to existing roadways would not stimulate development. The choice of a route also had political considerations, as neighborhoods vied to be the recipient of this economic stimulus. The construction of Lee Boulevard (now known as Arlington Boulevard) and Washington Boulevard eastward both provided an opportunity for economic stimulus. The state and county eventually agreed to push Lee Boulevard north around Arlington National Cemetery. When this project ran into rights-of-way problems, the state and county constructed Washington Boulevard south around the cemetery. When the Lee Boulevard problems were resolved, and with the addition of large amounts of new federal dollars, the state and county resumed construction of the Lee Boulevard approaches. The Lee Boulevard approach finally opened in October 1938. The construction of The Pentagon in 1941 and extensive war-related building south of the cemetery in 1942 led the federal government to approve a second connection by extending Washington Boulevard past Arlington National Cemetery and over Boundary Channel as well.

 

At the time it opened, the Arlington Memorial Bridge bascule span was the longest, heaviest (3,000 short tons (2,700 t)), and fastest-opening bascule span in the world.

 

The northeastern entrance to the Arlington Memorial Bridge features The Arts of War sculptures, Sacrifice and Valor, which were completed by Leo Friedlander in 1951. One of which was cast by Ferdinando Marinelli Artistic Foundry of Florence, Italy. On the pylons of each pier of the bridge are large circular discs with eagles and fasces designed by sculptor Carl Paul Jennewein.

 

The closest Metro station to the bridge is Arlington Cemetery. The bridge connects, both literally and symbolically, the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington House, the former home of Civil War General Robert E. Lee. This placement was done intentionally to represent the reunification of the North and the South.

 

At the southwestern terminus on Columbia Island, the bridge and its connecting roadways connect with the George Washington Memorial Parkway, State Route 27 and State Route 110. At the northeastern terminus, the bridge and its connecting roadways connect with Constitution Avenue, Independence Avenue, the Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway, and the District of Columbia segment of Interstate 66.

 

A peculiarity of the traffic circle at the southwestern terminus is that traffic already in the circle must yield to traffic entering the circle — the opposite of the standard rule. During morning rush hour, a portion of the traffic circle is closed to prevent mergers that would otherwise tie up rush hour traffic.

 

The center portion of the bridge was originally a metal draw span, intended to allow large vessels to pass upriver to Georgetown. However, with the construction of the Theodore Roosevelt Bridge immediately upstream, which has no such provision, the draw mechanism was abandoned. It was opened for the last time on February 28, 1961. The bascule leaves were to be counterbalanced with scrap steel embedded in concrete, but during the Great Depression there was not enough scrap available for the project. A ship load of Swedish iron ore eventually provided the 2,400 short tons (2,200 t) needed for the counterweights.

 

Arlington Memorial Bridge was added to the National Register of Historic Places on April 4, 1980.

 

The Potomac River is a major river in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States that flows from the Potomac Highlands in West Virginia to the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland. It is 405 miles (652 km) long, with a drainage area of 14,700 square miles (38,000 km2), and is the fourth-largest river along the East Coast of the United States and the 21st-largest in the United States. More than 5 million people live within its watershed.

 

The river forms part of the borders between Maryland and Washington, D.C., on the left descending bank, and West Virginia and Virginia on the right descending bank. Except for a small portion of its headwaters in West Virginia, the North Branch Potomac River is considered part of Maryland to the low-water mark on the opposite bank. The South Branch Potomac River lies completely within the state of West Virginia except for its headwaters, which lie in Virginia.

 

The Potomac River runs 405 mi (652 km) from Fairfax Stone Historical Monument State Park in West Virginia on the Allegheny Plateau to Point Lookout, Maryland, and drains 14,679 sq mi (38,020 km2). The length of the river from the junction of its North and South Branches to Point Lookout is 302 mi (486 km).

 

The river has two sources. The source of the North Branch is at the Fairfax Stone located at the junction of Grant, Tucker, and Preston counties in West Virginia. The source of the South Branch is located near Hightown in northern Highland County, Virginia. The river's two branches converge just east of Green Spring in Hampshire County, West Virginia, to form the Potomac. As it flows from its headwaters down to the Chesapeake Bay, the Potomac traverses five geological provinces: the Appalachian Plateau, the Ridge and Valley, the Blue Ridge, the Piedmont Plateau, and the Atlantic coastal plain.

 

Once the Potomac drops from the Piedmont to the Coastal Plain at the Atlantic Seaboard fall line at Little Falls, tides further influence the river as it passes through Washington, D.C., and beyond. Salinity in the Potomac River Estuary increases thereafter with distance downstream. The estuary also widens, reaching 11 statute miles (17 km) wide at its mouth, between Point Lookout, Maryland, and Smith Point, Virginia, before flowing into the Chesapeake Bay.

 

Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly called Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from Virginia, and shares land borders with Maryland to its north and east. Washington, D.C., was named for George Washington, a Founding Father and first president of the United States. The district is named for Columbia, the female personification of the nation.

 

Washington, D.C., anchors the southern end of the Northeast megalopolis, one of the nation's largest and most influential cultural, political, and economic regions. As the seat of the U.S. federal government and several international organizations, the city is an important world political capital. The city had 20.7 million domestic visitors and 1.2 million international visitors, ranking seventh among U.S. cities as of 2022.

 

The U.S. Constitution in 1789 called for the creation of a federal district under the exclusive jurisdiction of the U.S. Congress. As such, Washington, D.C., is not part of any state, and is not one itself. The Residence Act, adopted on July 16, 1790, approved the creation of the capital district along the Potomac River. The city was founded in 1791, and the 6th Congress held the first session in the unfinished Capitol Building in 1800 after the capital moved from Philadelphia. In 1801, the District of Columbia, formerly part of Maryland and Virginia and including the existing settlements of Georgetown and Alexandria, was officially recognized as the federal district; initially, the city was a separate settlement within the larger federal district. In 1846, Congress returned the land originally ceded by Virginia, including the city of Alexandria. In 1871, it created a single municipality for the remaining portion of the district, although its locally elected government only lasted three years and elective city-government did not return for over a century. There have been several unsuccessful efforts to make the district into a state since the 1880s; a statehood bill passed the House of Representatives in 2021 but was not adopted by the U.S. Senate. Designed in 1791 by Pierre Charles L'Enfant, the city is divided into quadrants, which are centered around the Capitol Building and include 131 neighborhoods. As of the 2020 census, the city had a population of 689,545, making it the 23rd-most populous city in the U.S., third-most populous city in the Southeast after Jacksonville and Charlotte, and third-most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic after New York City and Philadelphia. Commuters from the city's Maryland and Virginia suburbs raise the city's daytime population to more than one million during the workweek. The Washington metropolitan area, which includes parts of Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia, is the country's seventh-largest metropolitan area, with a 2023 population of 6.3 million residents.

 

The city hosts the U.S. federal government and the buildings that house government headquarters, including the White House, the Capitol, the Supreme Court Building, and multiple federal departments and agencies. The city is home to many national monuments and museums, located most prominently on or around the National Mall, including the Jefferson Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial, and the Washington Monument. It hosts 177 foreign embassies and serves as the headquarters for the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the Organization of American States, and other international organizations. Many of the nation's largest industry associations, non-profit organizations, and think tanks are based in the city, including AARP, American Red Cross, Atlantic Council, Brookings Institution, National Geographic Society, The Heritage Foundation, Wilson Center, and others.

 

A locally elected mayor and 13-member council have governed the district since 1973, though Congress retains the power to overturn local laws. Washington, D.C., residents are, on the federal level, politically disenfranchised since the city's residents do not have voting representation in Congress; the city's residents elect a single at-large congressional delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives who has no voting authority. The city's voters choose three presidential electors in accordance with the Twenty-third Amendment.

 

The District of Columbia was created in 1801 as the federal district of the United States, with territory previously held by the states of Maryland and Virginia ceded to the federal government of the United States for the purpose of creating its federal district, which would encompass the new national capital of the United States, the City of Washington. The district came into existence, with its own judges and marshals, through the District of Columbia Organic Act of 1801; previously it was the Territory of Columbia. According to specific language in the U.S. Constitution, it was 100 square miles (259 km2).

 

The district encompassed three small cities: Alexandria, formerly in Virginia, Georgetown, formerly Maryland, and the deliberately planned central core, the City of Washington. Both the White House and the United States Capitol were already completed and in use by 1800 as called for by the 1791 L'Enfant Plan for the City of Washington, although the city was not formally chartered until 1802. Beyond those cities, the remainder of the district was farmland organized by the 1801 Act into two counties, Washington County, D.C., on the Maryland side, and Alexandria County, D.C., on the Virginia side, encompassing today's Arlington County, Virginia, and the independent city of Alexandria.

 

The district was governed directly by the U.S. Congress from the beginning. Alexandria City and County were ceded back from the federal government to the commonwealth of Virginia in 1846, in a process known as retrocession, anticipating the 1850 ban on slave trading (but not slavery) in the district.

 

Washington and Georgetown retained their separate charters for seventy years, until the District of Columbia Organic Act of 1871. That act cancelled the charters of the towns and brought the entire area within the district borders under one district government, ending any distinction between "the District of Columbia" and "Washington", making the two terms effectively synonymous.

 

Main article: History of Washington, D.C. § Establishment

Congress determined, in the Residence Act of 1790, that the nation's capital be on the Potomac, between the Anacostia River and today's Williamsport, Maryland, and in a federal district up to 10 miles square. The exact location was to be determined by President George Washington, familiar with the area from his nearby home and properties at Mt. Vernon, Virginia.

 

Its trans-state location reflected a compromise between the Southern and Northern states. Virginia lobbied for the selection, an idea opposed by New York and Pennsylvania, both of which had previously housed the nation's capital. Maryland, whose State House was older than that of Virginia, and like Virginia a slave state, was chosen as a compromise. At Washington's request the City of Alexandria was included in the district, though with the provision that no federal buildings could be built there. The new capital district was at about the center of the country.

 

About 2/3 of the original district was in Maryland and 1/3 in Virginia, and the wide Potomac in the middle. The future district was surveyed in 1791–92; 24 of its surviving stone markers are in Maryland, 12 in Virginia. (See Boundary Markers of the original District of Columbia.) Washington decided that the capital's location would be located between the mouth of the Anacostia River and Georgetown, which sits at the Potomac's head of navigation.

 

As specified by Article One of the United States Constitution, in fact as one of the enumerated powers of section 8, Congress assumed direct administrative control of the federal district upon its creation by the District of Columbia Organic Act of 1801. There was no district governor or executive body. The U.S. House created a permanent Committee on the District of Columbia in January 1808, and the U.S. Senate established its counterpart in December 1816. These committees remained active until 1946. Thus the U.S. Congress managed the detailed day-to-day governmental needs of the district through acts of Congress—an act authorizing the purchase of fire engines and construction of a firehouse, for instance, or an act to commission three new city streets and closing two others in Georgetown.

 

The five component parts of the district operated their own governments at the lower level. The three cities within the district (Georgetown, the City of Washington, and Alexandria) operated their own municipal governments, each with a continuous history of mayors. Robert Brent, the first mayor of the City of Washington, was appointed directly by Thomas Jefferson in 1802 after the city's organization that year.

 

The remaining rural territory within the district belonged either to Alexandria County D.C., (district land west of the Potomac outside the City of Alexandria, formerly in Virginia) or to Washington County, D.C., (the unincorporated east side, formerly in Maryland, plus islands and riverbed). Both counties operated with boards of commissioners for county-level government functions. Both counties were governed by levy courts made of presidentially appointed Justices of the Peace. Prior to 1812, the levy courts had a number of members defined by the president, but after that Washington County had 7 members. In 1848, the Washington County levy court was expanded to 11 members, and in 1863 that was reduced by two to nine members.

 

The language of the establishing act of 1801 omitted any provision for district residents to vote for local, state-equivalent, or federal representatives.

 

This omission was not related to any constitutional restriction or, apparently, any rationale at all. Legal scholars in 2004 called the omission of voting rights a simple "historical accident", pointing out that the preceding Residence Act of July 16, 1790, exercising the same constitutional authority over the same territory around the Potomac, had protected the votes of the district's citizens in federal and state elections. Those citizens had indeed continued to cast ballots, from 1790 through 1800, for their U.S. House representatives and for their Maryland and Virginia state legislators. James Madison had written in the Federalist No. 43 that the citizens of the federal district should "of course" have their will represented, "derived from their own suffrages." The necessary language simply did not appear in the 1801 legislation.

 

The prospect of disenfranchisement caused immediate concern. One voice from a public meeting in January 1801, before the bill's passage, compared their situation to those who fought against British taxation without representation in the Revolutionary War—20 years prior. Despite these complaints the bill went into effect as written. Given exclusive and absolute political control, Congress did not act to restore any of these rights until the 1960s. The district still has no voting representation in Congress, and the decisions of its long-sought local government established in 1973 are still subject to close congressional review, annulment, and budget control.

 

Residents of Alexandria saw no economic advantage from being in the District. No federal buildings could be built on the south side of the Potomac, nor did they have representation in Congress. Some resistance was expressed immediately. One leading figure in the fight to retrocede through the 1820s was Thomson Francis Mason, who was elected mayor of Alexandria, D.C., four times between 1827 and 1830. Also Alexandria was a center of the profitable slave trade – the largest slave-trading company in the country, Franklin and Armfield, was located there – and Alexandria residents were afraid that if the District banned the slave trade, as seemed likely, this industry would leave the city.

 

To prevent this, Arlington held a referendum, through which voters petitioned Congress and the state of Virginia to return the portion of the District of Columbia south of the Potomac River (Alexandria County) to Virginia. On July 9, 1846, Congress retroceded Alexandria County to Virginia, after which the district's slave traders relocated to Alexandria. The district's slave trade was outlawed in the Compromise of 1850. The penalty for bringing a slave into the district for sale, was freedom for the slave. Southern senators and congressmen resisted banning slavery altogether in the District, to avoid setting a precedent. The practice remained legal in the district until after secession, with the District of Columbia Compensated Emancipation Act signed by Lincoln on April 16, 1862, which established the annual observance of Emancipation Day.

 

The District of Columbia Organic Act of 1871 created a single new district corporation governing the entire federal territory, called the District of Columbia, thus dissolving the three major political subdivisions of the district (Port of Georgetown, the City of Washington, and Washington County) and their governments. By this time the county also contained other small settlements and nascent suburbs of Washington outside its bounded limits, such as Anacostia, which had been incorporated in 1854 as Uniontown; Fort Totten, dating at least to the Civil War; and Barry Farm, a large tract bought by the Freedmen's Bureau and granted to formerly enslaved and free-born African Americans in 1867.

 

The newly restructured district government provided for a governor appointed by the president for a 4-year term, with an 11-member council also appointed by the president, a locally elected 22-member assembly, and a five-man Board of Public Works charged with modernizing the city. The first vice-chair of that Board of Public Works was real-estate developer Alexander Robey Shepherd, the architect and proponent of the consolidating legislation. From September 1873 to June 1874, Shepherd would serve as the second, and final, governor of the District.

 

The Seal of the District of Columbia features the date 1871, recognizing the year the district's government was incorporated.

One of the most popular tourist destinations in Iceland is the geothermal area in Haukadalur valley, where we sped early in the morning to get in before the big coaches. Of course we didn't see the great geyser erupt, as it happens only a few times a decade now, but it was a beautiful sunny day and we did very much enjoy Strokkur's regular sapphire-blue spurts and the generally otherworldly, stinky, muggy, misty atmosphere of the place.

 

The geothermal field in Haukadalur lies on the outskirts of the neovolcanic zone from which it is drifting, and it is therefore gradually becoming a low-temperature field. Magma may have forced its way out of the neovolcanic zone along one or more fissures, forming intrusions, which would explain the sustained geothermal activity. There's no evidence of Holocene volcanism in this area and the bedrock appears to have been formed subglacially towards the end of the glacial period. The geothermal field is believed to have a total surface area of approximately three square kilometres. Most of the springs lie along a 100-metre-wide strip of land running in the same direction as the tectonic lines, from south to southwest. The strip is 500 metres long and ends near a church where the seat of the lords of Haukadalur was once located. A 20-to-150-centimetre-thick layer of siliceous sinter can be found, sometimes covered by earth. The Hvitamelur hill was once a spouting spring, but it is now absolutely dry: the rims of the ancient basin can be seen and the sinter holds quite a few plant fossils. This indicates that the geothermal field has moved and its heart is now two kilometres to the south of the Haukadalur seat. Two little springs--Marteinslaug and Gufubadshver--were left behind. The northernmost springs, such as Geysir itself, are believed to be the oldest. There are around thirty smaller geysers and hot pools in the area, about which one can read in fascinating detail on the Extreme Iceland website.

 

There are only about a thousand geysers worldwide, most found in Yellowstone National Park; they're rare because they need the simultaneous presence of hot stone, plenty of groundwater, a reservoir for water under the surface of the ground, and fissures to deliver water to the surface. First, cooler groundwater near the surface trickles down through the earth to a heat source like hot magma. When the water reaches the boiling point, however, it can't convert into steam because it's deep underground and confined by the weight of cooler water above. This superheated water--hot enough to become steam but unable to expand--eventually gets to a point where it cannot be contained any longer. The temperature gets high enough, the confining pressure is somehow reduced, the surface tension of water is reduced with soap, etc., and the water explodes into steam in an enormous expansion of volume.

 

The most famous geyser in the world is of course Geysir, from which we got the word. Based on geological analysis, Geysir has been active for approximately 10,000 years and is the first geyser mentioned in historical documents: the oldest accounts of hot springs at Haukadalur date back to 1294, when earthquakes created several new hot springs. Documents from 1630 describe the geysers erupting so violently that the valley around them trembled. The place name "Geysir" was first used in written sources in the 18th century. A 20-centimetre-thick layer of earth covering an older stratum of siliceous sinter passing under Geysir’s sinter indicates that geothermal activity once subsided long enough for vegetation to flourish until some event, possibly an earthquake, caused a fracture from which water could emerge again. The water's temperature 20 metres down Geysir’s feeder channel is about 125 ºC and it rises from a depth of 1-2 kilometres. Geysir discharges 1.5 litres per second and the entire area discharges 14 litres per second.

 

Spouting activity is generally heightened by earthquakes and then subsides for a while. In 1845, Geysir's eruption reached a height of 170 metres. The next year, (when Geysir erupted to 43-54 metres), German chemist Robert Bunsen (yes, that Bunsen) went on a research expedition while at University of Marburg and was able to discover and recreate with a model the mechanism of geyser activity. In 1871, William Morris, describing a trip with Eiríkr Magnússon, wrote in his diary that Geysir was spouting once every five or six days. After a period of near-dormancy, an earthquake on September 10, 1896, set off a few years of multiple daily eruptions lasting up to an hour and rising up to 60 metres. In 1910, it was active every 30 minutes; five years later the time between the eruptions was as much as six hours, and in 1916, the eruptions all but ceased.

 

In 1935, a 50-centimetre-deep channel was dug through the silica rim around the northern edge of the geyser vent to lower the water table and increase activity, and this was periodically cleared as it got clogged with silica. In 1981, it was scraped clean and enlarged to a depth of 70 centimetres and a width of 25 centimetres: Geysir's water level dropped and the spring spouted, sometimes up to 40-50 metres, almost every day until the furrow was covered up and dammed in 1983 (in such a way that it could be reopened). Geysir`s caprice is infamous: in the mid-21st century, a group of people waited eight hours after soap was administered, and Geysir produced one of its most spectacular eruptions as soon as they gave up and moved out of sight. A few weeks later, the soap was put in before the planned arrival of a group of congress delegates who were determined to wait for days if needed; Geysir erupted minutes before they arrived. The practice of artificially inducing eruptions on special occasions by throwing soap into the geyser stopped in the 1990s because of environmental concerns, though authorized government geologists could force an eruption on the Icelandic National Day holiday. An earthquake in 2000 caused on eruption of 122 meters for two days, making it one of the highest geysers in history (Waimangu Geyser in New Zealand erupted up to 460 metres high before it became dormant around 1900).

 

Nearby Strokkur (Icelandic for "churn") is a fountain geyser erupting much more frequently: once every 6-10 minutes. Its usual height is 15-20 metres, although it can sometimes erupt up to 40 metres high. Strokkur was first mentioned in 1789, after an earthquake helped unblock the conduit of the geyser, and for a year it was extremely powerful and ejected water, gas, and steam with force rivalling even Geysir. Its activity fluctuated throughout the 19th century; in 1815 its height was estimated to have been as much as 60 metres but by 1830 people were tossing in stones and turf to get it to spout and even then it was never more than 20 metres and a rusty red in colour. An earthquake in 1896 blocked the conduit, it rallied in 1907, and it had expired again by 1920. In 1963, upon the advice of the Geysir Committee, locals cleaned out the blocked conduit through the bottom of the basin, drilling a 40-metre hole, and ever since the geyser has been one of the most frequent and reliable natural geysers in the world. Discharge from the spring, or rather from the borehole, is currently 2.5 litres per second.

 

Until 1894, the geothermal area was owned by a local farmer, who then sold it to James Craig (later Lord Craigavon), a whiskey distiller from Ulster and future Prime Minister of Northern Ireland. Craig initially erected large fences around the site and charged an entrance fee, but he gave the whole area away to his friend E. Craig, who dropped the entrance fees. Craig's nephew Hugh Rogers eventually inherited the site and in 1935 sold it to film director Sigurður Jónasson, who donated it to the Icelandic people.

 

buttercream covered white chocolate mud cake with fondant flowers and bow for a 90th birthday

My ongoing, near decade long, photo project of what I call the “Pedestrian Graffiti Tunnel” in downtown Utica. I tried to crop or clone out any of the many F, C, P and D words and graphics on the walls, floor and ceiling.

Utica, Michigan

Bodie is a ghost town in the Bodie Hills east of the Sierra Nevada mountain range in Mono County, California, United States. It is about 75 miles (121 km) southeast of Lake Tahoe, and 12 mi (19 km) east-southeast of Bridgeport, at an elevation of 8,379 feet (2554 m). Bodie became a boom town in 1876 (146 years ago) after the discovery of a profitable line of gold; by 1879 it had a population of 7,000–10,000.

 

The town went into decline in the subsequent decades and came to be described as a ghost town by 1915 (107 years ago). The U.S. Department of the Interior recognizes the designated Bodie Historic District as a National Historic Landmark.

 

Also registered as a California Historical Landmark, the ghost town officially was established as Bodie State Historic Park in 1962. It receives about 200,000 visitors yearly. Bodie State Historic Park is partly supported by the Bodie Foundation.

 

Bodie began as a mining camp of little note following the discovery of gold in 1859 by a group of prospectors, including W. S. Bodey. Bodey died in a blizzard the following November while making a supply trip to Monoville (near present-day Mono City), never getting to see the rise of the town that was named after him. According to area pioneer Judge J. G. McClinton, the district's name was changed from "Bodey," "Body," and a few other phonetic variations, to "Bodie," after a painter in the nearby boomtown of Aurora, lettered a sign "Bodie Stables".

 

Gold discovered at Bodie coincided with the discovery of silver at nearby Aurora (thought to be in California, later found to be Nevada), and the distant Comstock Lode beneath Virginia City, Nevada. But while these two towns boomed, interest in Bodie remained lackluster. By 1868 only two companies had built stamp mills at Bodie, and both had failed.

 

In 1876, the Standard Company discovered a profitable deposit of gold-bearing ore, which transformed Bodie from an isolated mining camp comprising a few prospectors and company employees to a Wild West boomtown. Rich discoveries in the adjacent Bodie Mine during 1878 attracted even more hopeful people. By 1879, Bodie had a population of approximately 7,000–10,000 people and around 2,000 buildings. One legend says that in 1880, Bodie was California's second or third largest city. but the U.S. Census of that year disproves this. Over the years 1860-1941 Bodie's mines produced gold and silver valued at an estimated US$34 million (in 1986 dollars, or $85 million in 2021).

 

Bodie boomed from late 1877 through mid– to late 1880. The first newspaper, The Standard Pioneer Journal of Mono County, published its first edition on October 10, 1877. Starting as a weekly, it soon expanded publication to three times a week. It was also during this time that a telegraph line was built which connected Bodie with Bridgeport and Genoa, Nevada. California and Nevada newspapers predicted Bodie would become the next Comstock Lode. Men from both states were lured to Bodie by the prospect of another bonanza.

 

Gold bullion from the town's nine stamp mills was shipped to Carson City, Nevada, by way of Aurora, Wellington and Gardnerville. Most shipments were accompanied by armed guards. After the bullion reached Carson City, it was delivered to the mint there, or sent by rail to the mint in San Francisco.

 

As a bustling gold mining center, Bodie had the amenities of larger towns, including a Wells Fargo Bank, four volunteer fire companies, a brass band, railroad, miners' and mechanics' union, several daily newspapers, and a jail. At its peak, 65 saloons lined Main Street, which was a mile long. Murders, shootouts, barroom brawls, and stagecoach holdups were regular occurrences.

 

As with other remote mining towns, Bodie had a popular, though clandestine, red light district on the north end of town. There is an unsubstantiated story of Rosa May, a prostitute who, in the style of Florence Nightingale, came to the aid of the town menfolk when a serious epidemic struck the town at the height of its boom. She is credited with giving life-saving care to many, but after she died, was buried outside the cemetery fence.

 

Bodie had a Chinatown, the main street of which ran at a right angle to Bodie's Main Street. At one point it had several hundred Chinese residents and a Taoist temple. Opium dens were plentiful in this area.

 

Bodie also had a cemetery on the outskirts of town and a nearby mortuary. It is the only building in the town built of red brick three courses thick, most likely for insulation to keep the air temperature steady during the cold winters and hot summers. The cemetery includes a Miners Union section, and a cenotaph erected to honor President James A. Garfield. The Bodie Boot Hill was located outside of the official city cemetery.

 

On Main Street stands the Miners Union Hall, which was the meeting place for labor unions. It also served as an entertainment center that hosted dances, concerts, plays, and school recitals. It now serves as a museum.

 

The first signs of decline appeared in 1880 and became obvious toward the end of the year. Promising mining booms in Butte, Montana; Tombstone, Arizona; and Utah lured men away from Bodie. The get-rich-quick, single miners who came to the town in the 1870s moved on to these other booms, and Bodie developed into a family-oriented community. In 1882 residents built the Methodist Church (which still stands) and the Roman Catholic Church (burned 1928). Despite the population decline, the mines were flourishing, and in 1881 Bodie's ore production was recorded at a high of $3.1 million. Also in 1881, a narrow-gauge railroad was built called the Bodie Railway & Lumber Company, bringing lumber, cordwood, and mine timbers to the mining district from Mono Mills south of Mono Lake.

 

During the early 1890s, Bodie enjoyed a short revival from technological advancements in the mines that continued to support the town. In 1890, the recently invented cyanide process promised to recover gold and silver from discarded mill tailings and from low-grade ore bodies that had been passed over. In 1892, the Standard Company built its own hydroelectric plant approximately 13 miles (20.9 km) away at Dynamo Pond. The plant developed a maximum of 130 horsepower (97 kW) and 3,530 volts alternating current (AC) to power the company's 20-stamp mill. This pioneering installation marked the country's first transmissions of electricity over a long distance.

 

In 1910, the population was recorded at 698 people, which were predominantly families who decided to stay in Bodie instead of moving on to other prosperous strikes.

 

The first signs of an official decline occurred in 1912 with the printing of the last Bodie newspaper, The Bodie Miner. In a 1913 book titled California Tourist Guide and Handbook: Authentic Description of Routes of Travel and Points of Interest in California, the authors, Wells and Aubrey Drury, described Bodie as a "mining town, which is the center of a large mineral region". They referred to two hotels and a railroad operating there. In 1913, the Standard Consolidated Mine closed.

 

Mining profits in 1914 were at a low of $6,821. James S. Cain bought everything from the town lots to the mining claims, and reopened the Standard mill to former employees, which resulted in an over $100,000 profit in 1915. However, this financial growth was not in time to stop the town's decline. In 1917, the Bodie Railway was abandoned and its iron tracks were scrapped.

 

The last mine closed in 1942, due to War Production Board order L-208, shutting down all non-essential gold mines in the United States during World War II. Mining never resumed after the war.

 

Bodie was first described as a "ghost town" in 1915. In a time when auto travel was on the rise, many travelers reached Bodie via automobiles. The San Francisco Chronicle published an article in 1919 to dispute the "ghost town" label.

 

By 1920, Bodie's population was recorded by the US Federal Census at a total of 120 people. Despite the decline and a severe fire in the business district in 1932, Bodie had permanent residents through nearly half of the 20th century. A post office operated at Bodie from 1877 to 1942

 

In the 1940s, the threat of vandalism faced the ghost town. The Cain family, who owned much of the land, hired caretakers to protect and to maintain the town's structures. Martin Gianettoni, one of the last three people living in Bodie in 1943, was a caretaker.

 

Bodie is now an authentic Wild West ghost town.

 

The town was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1961, and in 1962 the state legislature authorized creation of Bodie State Historic Park. A total of 170 buildings remained. Bodie has been named as California's official state gold rush ghost town.

 

Visitors arrive mainly via SR 270, which runs from US 395 near Bridgeport to the west; the last three miles of it is a dirt road. There is also a road to SR 167 near Mono Lake in the south, but this road is extremely rough, with more than 10 miles of dirt track in a bad state of repair. Due to heavy snowfall, the roads to Bodie are usually closed in winter .

 

Today, Bodie is preserved in a state of arrested decay. Only a small part of the town survived, with about 110 structures still standing, including one of many once operational gold mills. Visitors can walk the deserted streets of a town that once was a bustling area of activity. Interiors remain as they were left and stocked with goods. Littered throughout the park, one can find small shards of china dishes, square nails and an occasional bottle, but removing these items is against the rules of the park.

 

The California State Parks' ranger station is located in one of the original homes on Green Street.

 

In 2009 and again in 2010, Bodie was scheduled to be closed. The California state legislature worked out a budget compromise that enabled the state's Parks Closure Commission to keep it open. As of 2022, the park is still operating, now administered by the Bodie Foundation.

 

California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2 million residents across a total area of approximately 163,696 square miles (423,970 km2), it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the most populated subnational entity in North America and the 34th most populous in the world. The Greater Los Angeles area and the San Francisco Bay Area are the nation's second and fifth most populous urban regions respectively, with the former having more than 18.7 million residents and the latter having over 9.6 million. Sacramento is the state's capital, while Los Angeles is the most populous city in the state and the second most populous city in the country. San Francisco is the second most densely populated major city in the country. Los Angeles County is the country's most populous, while San Bernardino County is the largest county by area in the country. California borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, the Mexican state of Baja California to the south; and has a coastline along the Pacific Ocean to the west.

 

The economy of the state of California is the largest in the United States, with a $3.4 trillion gross state product (GSP) as of 2022. It is the largest sub-national economy in the world. If California were a sovereign nation, it would rank as the world's fifth-largest economy as of 2022, behind Germany and ahead of India, as well as the 37th most populous. The Greater Los Angeles area and the San Francisco Bay Area are the nation's second- and third-largest urban economies ($1.0 trillion and $0.5 trillion respectively as of 2020). The San Francisco Bay Area Combined Statistical Area had the nation's highest gross domestic product per capita ($106,757) among large primary statistical areas in 2018, and is home to five of the world's ten largest companies by market capitalization and four of the world's ten richest people.

 

Prior to European colonization, California was one of the most culturally and linguistically diverse areas in pre-Columbian North America and contained the highest Native American population density north of what is now Mexico. European exploration in the 16th and 17th centuries led to the colonization of California by the Spanish Empire. In 1804, it was included in Alta California province within the Viceroyalty of New Spain. The area became a part of Mexico in 1821, following its successful war for independence, but was ceded to the United States in 1848 after the Mexican–American War. The California Gold Rush started in 1848 and led to dramatic social and demographic changes, including large-scale immigration into California, a worldwide economic boom, and the California genocide of indigenous people. The western portion of Alta California was then organized and admitted as the 31st state on September 9, 1850, following the Compromise of 1850.

 

Notable contributions to popular culture, for example in entertainment and sports, have their origins in California. The state also has made noteworthy contributions in the fields of communication, information, innovation, environmentalism, economics, and politics. It is the home of Hollywood, the oldest and one of the largest film industries in the world, which has had a profound influence upon global entertainment. It is considered the origin of the hippie counterculture, beach and car culture, and the personal computer, among other innovations. The San Francisco Bay Area and the Greater Los Angeles Area are widely seen as the centers of the global technology and film industries, respectively. California's economy is very diverse: 58% of it is based on finance, government, real estate services, technology, and professional, scientific, and technical business services. Although it accounts for only 1.5% of the state's economy, California's agriculture industry has the highest output of any U.S. state. California's ports and harbors handle about a third of all U.S. imports, most originating in Pacific Rim international trade.

 

The state's extremely diverse geography ranges from the Pacific Coast and metropolitan areas in the west to the Sierra Nevada mountains in the east, and from the redwood and Douglas fir forests in the northwest to the Mojave Desert in the southeast. The Central Valley, a major agricultural area, dominates the state's center. California is well known for its warm Mediterranean climate and monsoon seasonal weather. The large size of the state results in climates that vary from moist temperate rainforest in the north to arid desert in the interior, as well as snowy alpine in the mountains.

 

Settled by successive waves of arrivals during at least the last 13,000 years, California was one of the most culturally and linguistically diverse areas in pre-Columbian North America. Various estimates of the native population have ranged from 100,000 to 300,000. The indigenous peoples of California included more than 70 distinct ethnic groups, inhabiting environments from mountains and deserts to islands and redwood forests. These groups were also diverse in their political organization, with bands, tribes, villages, and on the resource-rich coasts, large chiefdoms, such as the Chumash, Pomo and Salinan. Trade, intermarriage and military alliances fostered social and economic relationships between many groups.

 

The first Europeans to explore the coast of California were the members of a Spanish maritime expedition led by Portuguese captain Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo in 1542. Cabrillo was commissioned by Antonio de Mendoza, the Viceroy of New Spain, to lead an expedition up the Pacific coast in search of trade opportunities; they entered San Diego Bay on September 28, 1542, and reached at least as far north as San Miguel Island. Privateer and explorer Francis Drake explored and claimed an undefined portion of the California coast in 1579, landing north of the future city of San Francisco. Sebastián Vizcaíno explored and mapped the coast of California in 1602 for New Spain, putting ashore in Monterey. Despite the on-the-ground explorations of California in the 16th century, Rodríguez's idea of California as an island persisted. Such depictions appeared on many European maps well into the 18th century.

 

The Portolá expedition of 1769-70 was a pivotal event in the Spanish colonization of California, resulting in the establishment of numerous missions, presidios, and pueblos. The military and civil contingent of the expedition was led by Gaspar de Portolá, who traveled over land from Sonora into California, while the religious component was headed by Junípero Serra, who came by sea from Baja California. In 1769, Portolá and Serra established Mission San Diego de Alcalá and the Presidio of San Diego, the first religious and military settlements founded by the Spanish in California. By the end of the expedition in 1770, they would establish the Presidio of Monterey and Mission San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo on Monterey Bay.

 

After the Portolà expedition, Spanish missionaries led by Father-President Serra set out to establish 21 Spanish missions of California along El Camino Real ("The Royal Road") and along the Californian coast, 16 sites of which having been chosen during the Portolá expedition. Numerous major cities in California grew out of missions, including San Francisco (Mission San Francisco de Asís), San Diego (Mission San Diego de Alcalá), Ventura (Mission San Buenaventura), or Santa Barbara (Mission Santa Barbara), among others.

 

Juan Bautista de Anza led a similarly important expedition throughout California in 1775–76, which would extend deeper into the interior and north of California. The Anza expedition selected numerous sites for missions, presidios, and pueblos, which subsequently would be established by settlers. Gabriel Moraga, a member of the expedition, would also christen many of California's prominent rivers with their names in 1775–1776, such as the Sacramento River and the San Joaquin River. After the expedition, Gabriel's son, José Joaquín Moraga, would found the pueblo of San Jose in 1777, making it the first civilian-established city in California.

  

The Spanish founded Mission San Juan Capistrano in 1776, the third to be established of the Californian missions.

During this same period, sailors from the Russian Empire explored along the northern coast of California. In 1812, the Russian-American Company established a trading post and small fortification at Fort Ross on the North Coast. Fort Ross was primarily used to supply Russia's Alaskan colonies with food supplies. The settlement did not meet much success, failing to attract settlers or establish long term trade viability, and was abandoned by 1841.

 

During the War of Mexican Independence, Alta California was largely unaffected and uninvolved in the revolution, though many Californios supported independence from Spain, which many believed had neglected California and limited its development. Spain's trade monopoly on California had limited the trade prospects of Californians. Following Mexican independence, Californian ports were freely able to trade with foreign merchants. Governor Pablo Vicente de Solá presided over the transition from Spanish colonial rule to independent.

 

In 1821, the Mexican War of Independence gave the Mexican Empire (which included California) independence from Spain. For the next 25 years, Alta California remained a remote, sparsely populated, northwestern administrative district of the newly independent country of Mexico, which shortly after independence became a republic. The missions, which controlled most of the best land in the state, were secularized by 1834 and became the property of the Mexican government. The governor granted many square leagues of land to others with political influence. These huge ranchos or cattle ranches emerged as the dominant institutions of Mexican California. The ranchos developed under ownership by Californios (Hispanics native of California) who traded cowhides and tallow with Boston merchants. Beef did not become a commodity until the 1849 California Gold Rush.

 

From the 1820s, trappers and settlers from the United States and Canada began to arrive in Northern California. These new arrivals used the Siskiyou Trail, California Trail, Oregon Trail and Old Spanish Trail to cross the rugged mountains and harsh deserts in and surrounding California. The early government of the newly independent Mexico was highly unstable, and in a reflection of this, from 1831 onwards, California also experienced a series of armed disputes, both internal and with the central Mexican government. During this tumultuous political period Juan Bautista Alvarado was able to secure the governorship during 1836–1842. The military action which first brought Alvarado to power had momentarily declared California to be an independent state, and had been aided by Anglo-American residents of California, including Isaac Graham. In 1840, one hundred of those residents who did not have passports were arrested, leading to the Graham Affair, which was resolved in part with the intercession of Royal Navy officials.

 

One of the largest ranchers in California was John Marsh. After failing to obtain justice against squatters on his land from the Mexican courts, he determined that California should become part of the United States. Marsh conducted a letter-writing campaign espousing the California climate, the soil, and other reasons to settle there, as well as the best route to follow, which became known as "Marsh's route". His letters were read, reread, passed around, and printed in newspapers throughout the country, and started the first wagon trains rolling to California. He invited immigrants to stay on his ranch until they could get settled, and assisted in their obtaining passports.

 

After ushering in the period of organized emigration to California, Marsh became involved in a military battle between the much-hated Mexican general, Manuel Micheltorena and the California governor he had replaced, Juan Bautista Alvarado. The armies of each met at the Battle of Providencia near Los Angeles. Marsh had been forced against his will to join Micheltorena's army. Ignoring his superiors, during the battle, he signaled the other side for a parley. There were many settlers from the United States fighting on both sides. He convinced these men that they had no reason to be fighting each other. As a result of Marsh's actions, they abandoned the fight, Micheltorena was defeated, and California-born Pio Pico was returned to the governorship. This paved the way to California's ultimate acquisition by the United States.

 

In 1846, a group of American settlers in and around Sonoma rebelled against Mexican rule during the Bear Flag Revolt. Afterward, rebels raised the Bear Flag (featuring a bear, a star, a red stripe and the words "California Republic") at Sonoma. The Republic's only president was William B. Ide,[65] who played a pivotal role during the Bear Flag Revolt. This revolt by American settlers served as a prelude to the later American military invasion of California and was closely coordinated with nearby American military commanders.

 

The California Republic was short-lived; the same year marked the outbreak of the Mexican–American War (1846–48).

 

Commodore John D. Sloat of the United States Navy sailed into Monterey Bay in 1846 and began the U.S. military invasion of California, with Northern California capitulating in less than a month to the United States forces. In Southern California, Californios continued to resist American forces. Notable military engagements of the conquest include the Battle of San Pasqual and the Battle of Dominguez Rancho in Southern California, as well as the Battle of Olómpali and the Battle of Santa Clara in Northern California. After a series of defensive battles in the south, the Treaty of Cahuenga was signed by the Californios on January 13, 1847, securing a censure and establishing de facto American control in California.

 

Following the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (February 2, 1848) that ended the war, the westernmost portion of the annexed Mexican territory of Alta California soon became the American state of California, and the remainder of the old territory was then subdivided into the new American Territories of Arizona, Nevada, Colorado and Utah. The even more lightly populated and arid lower region of old Baja California remained as a part of Mexico. In 1846, the total settler population of the western part of the old Alta California had been estimated to be no more than 8,000, plus about 100,000 Native Americans, down from about 300,000 before Hispanic settlement in 1769.

 

In 1848, only one week before the official American annexation of the area, gold was discovered in California, this being an event which was to forever alter both the state's demographics and its finances. Soon afterward, a massive influx of immigration into the area resulted, as prospectors and miners arrived by the thousands. The population burgeoned with United States citizens, Europeans, Chinese and other immigrants during the great California Gold Rush. By the time of California's application for statehood in 1850, the settler population of California had multiplied to 100,000. By 1854, more than 300,000 settlers had come. Between 1847 and 1870, the population of San Francisco increased from 500 to 150,000.

 

The seat of government for California under Spanish and later Mexican rule had been located in Monterey from 1777 until 1845. Pio Pico, the last Mexican governor of Alta California, had briefly moved the capital to Los Angeles in 1845. The United States consulate had also been located in Monterey, under consul Thomas O. Larkin.

 

In 1849, a state Constitutional Convention was first held in Monterey. Among the first tasks of the convention was a decision on a location for the new state capital. The first full legislative sessions were held in San Jose (1850–1851). Subsequent locations included Vallejo (1852–1853), and nearby Benicia (1853–1854); these locations eventually proved to be inadequate as well. The capital has been located in Sacramento since 1854 with only a short break in 1862 when legislative sessions were held in San Francisco due to flooding in Sacramento. Once the state's Constitutional Convention had finalized its state constitution, it applied to the U.S. Congress for admission to statehood. On September 9, 1850, as part of the Compromise of 1850, California became a free state and September 9 a state holiday.

 

During the American Civil War (1861–1865), California sent gold shipments eastward to Washington in support of the Union. However, due to the existence of a large contingent of pro-South sympathizers within the state, the state was not able to muster any full military regiments to send eastwards to officially serve in the Union war effort. Still, several smaller military units within the Union army were unofficially associated with the state of California, such as the "California 100 Company", due to a majority of their members being from California.

 

At the time of California's admission into the Union, travel between California and the rest of the continental United States had been a time-consuming and dangerous feat. Nineteen years later, and seven years after it was greenlighted by President Lincoln, the First transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869. California was then reachable from the eastern States in a week's time.

 

Much of the state was extremely well suited to fruit cultivation and agriculture in general. Vast expanses of wheat, other cereal crops, vegetable crops, cotton, and nut and fruit trees were grown (including oranges in Southern California), and the foundation was laid for the state's prodigious agricultural production in the Central Valley and elsewhere.

 

In the nineteenth century, a large number of migrants from China traveled to the state as part of the Gold Rush or to seek work. Even though the Chinese proved indispensable in building the transcontinental railroad from California to Utah, perceived job competition with the Chinese led to anti-Chinese riots in the state, and eventually the US ended migration from China partially as a response to pressure from California with the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act.

 

Under earlier Spanish and Mexican rule, California's original native population had precipitously declined, above all, from Eurasian diseases to which the indigenous people of California had not yet developed a natural immunity. Under its new American administration, California's harsh governmental policies towards its own indigenous people did not improve. As in other American states, many of the native inhabitants were soon forcibly removed from their lands by incoming American settlers such as miners, ranchers, and farmers. Although California had entered the American union as a free state, the "loitering or orphaned Indians" were de facto enslaved by their new Anglo-American masters under the 1853 Act for the Government and Protection of Indians. There were also massacres in which hundreds of indigenous people were killed.

 

Between 1850 and 1860, the California state government paid around 1.5 million dollars (some 250,000 of which was reimbursed by the federal government) to hire militias whose purpose was to protect settlers from the indigenous populations. In later decades, the native population was placed in reservations and rancherias, which were often small and isolated and without enough natural resources or funding from the government to sustain the populations living on them. As a result, the rise of California was a calamity for the native inhabitants. Several scholars and Native American activists, including Benjamin Madley and Ed Castillo, have described the actions of the California government as a genocide.

 

In the twentieth century, thousands of Japanese people migrated to the US and California specifically to attempt to purchase and own land in the state. However, the state in 1913 passed the Alien Land Act, excluding Asian immigrants from owning land. During World War II, Japanese Americans in California were interned in concentration camps such as at Tule Lake and Manzanar. In 2020, California officially apologized for this internment.

 

Migration to California accelerated during the early 20th century with the completion of major transcontinental highways like the Lincoln Highway and Route 66. In the period from 1900 to 1965, the population grew from fewer than one million to the greatest in the Union. In 1940, the Census Bureau reported California's population as 6.0% Hispanic, 2.4% Asian, and 89.5% non-Hispanic white.

 

To meet the population's needs, major engineering feats like the California and Los Angeles Aqueducts; the Oroville and Shasta Dams; and the Bay and Golden Gate Bridges were built across the state. The state government also adopted the California Master Plan for Higher Education in 1960 to develop a highly efficient system of public education.

 

Meanwhile, attracted to the mild Mediterranean climate, cheap land, and the state's wide variety of geography, filmmakers established the studio system in Hollywood in the 1920s. California manufactured 8.7 percent of total United States military armaments produced during World War II, ranking third (behind New York and Michigan) among the 48 states. California however easily ranked first in production of military ships during the war (transport, cargo, [merchant ships] such as Liberty ships, Victory ships, and warships) at drydock facilities in San Diego, Los Angeles, and the San Francisco Bay Area. After World War II, California's economy greatly expanded due to strong aerospace and defense industries, whose size decreased following the end of the Cold War. Stanford University and its Dean of Engineering Frederick Terman began encouraging faculty and graduates to stay in California instead of leaving the state, and develop a high-tech region in the area now known as Silicon Valley. As a result of these efforts, California is regarded as a world center of the entertainment and music industries, of technology, engineering, and the aerospace industry, and as the United States center of agricultural production. Just before the Dot Com Bust, California had the fifth-largest economy in the world among nations.

 

In the mid and late twentieth century, a number of race-related incidents occurred in the state. Tensions between police and African Americans, combined with unemployment and poverty in inner cities, led to violent riots, such as the 1965 Watts riots and 1992 Rodney King riots. California was also the hub of the Black Panther Party, a group known for arming African Americans to defend against racial injustice and for organizing free breakfast programs for schoolchildren. Additionally, Mexican, Filipino, and other migrant farm workers rallied in the state around Cesar Chavez for better pay in the 1960s and 1970s.

 

During the 20th century, two great disasters happened in California. The 1906 San Francisco earthquake and 1928 St. Francis Dam flood remain the deadliest in U.S. history.

 

Although air pollution problems have been reduced, health problems associated with pollution have continued. The brown haze known as "smog" has been substantially abated after the passage of federal and state restrictions on automobile exhaust.

 

An energy crisis in 2001 led to rolling blackouts, soaring power rates, and the importation of electricity from neighboring states. Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas and Electric Company came under heavy criticism.

 

Housing prices in urban areas continued to increase; a modest home which in the 1960s cost $25,000 would cost half a million dollars or more in urban areas by 2005. More people commuted longer hours to afford a home in more rural areas while earning larger salaries in the urban areas. Speculators bought houses they never intended to live in, expecting to make a huge profit in a matter of months, then rolling it over by buying more properties. Mortgage companies were compliant, as everyone assumed the prices would keep rising. The bubble burst in 2007–8 as housing prices began to crash and the boom years ended. Hundreds of billions in property values vanished and foreclosures soared as many financial institutions and investors were badly hurt.

 

In the twenty-first century, droughts and frequent wildfires attributed to climate change have occurred in the state. From 2011 to 2017, a persistent drought was the worst in its recorded history. The 2018 wildfire season was the state's deadliest and most destructive, most notably Camp Fire.

 

Although air pollution problems have been reduced, health problems associated with pollution have continued. The brown haze that is known as "smog" has been substantially abated thanks to federal and state restrictions on automobile exhaust.

 

One of the first confirmed COVID-19 cases in the United States that occurred in California was first of which was confirmed on January 26, 2020. Meaning, all of the early confirmed cases were persons who had recently travelled to China in Asia, as testing was restricted to this group. On this January 29, 2020, as disease containment protocols were still being developed, the U.S. Department of State evacuated 195 persons from Wuhan, China aboard a chartered flight to March Air Reserve Base in Riverside County, and in this process, it may have granted and conferred to escalated within the land and the US at cosmic. On February 5, 2020, the U.S. evacuated 345 more citizens from Hubei Province to two military bases in California, Travis Air Force Base in Solano County and Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, San Diego, where they were quarantined for 14 days. A state of emergency was largely declared in this state of the nation on March 4, 2020, and as of February 24, 2021, remains in effect. A mandatory statewide stay-at-home order was issued on March 19, 2020, due to increase, which was ended on January 25, 2021, allowing citizens to return to normal life. On April 6, 2021, the state announced plans to fully reopen the economy by June 15, 2021.

 

My first picture and my most recent

 

The Postcard

 

A postally unused postcard that was published by The South African Garrison Institutes. The card was printed by Whitehead, Morris & Co. Ltd. of Cape Town. The card has a divided back.

 

Windhoek

 

Windhoek is the capital and largest city of Namibia. It is located in the Khomas Highland plateau area, at around 1,700 metres (5,600 ft) above sea level, almost exactly at the country's geographical centre.

 

The population of Windhoek in 2020 was 431,000 which is growing continuously due to an influx from all over Namibia.

 

Windhoek is the social, economic, political, and cultural centre of the country. Nearly every Namibian national enterprise, governmental body, educational and cultural institution is headquartered there.

 

The city developed at the site of a permanent hot spring known to the indigenous pastoral communities. It developed rapidly after Jonker Afrikaner, Captain of the Orlam, settled here in 1840 and built a stone church for his community.

 

In the decades following, multiple wars and armed hostilities resulted in the neglect and destruction of the new settlement. Windhoek was founded a second time in 1890 by Imperial German Army Major Curt von François, when the territory was colonised by the German Empire.

 

Herero and Nama Genocide

 

The Herero and Nama genocide was a campaign of ethnic extermination and collective punishment waged by the German Empire against the Herero and the Nama in German South West Africa.

 

It was the first genocide of the 20th. century, occurring between 1904 and 1908.

 

In January 1904, the Herero and Nama people rebelled against German colonial rule. On the 12th. January they killed more than 100 German settlers in the area of Okahandja, although women, children, missionaries and non-German Europeans were spared.

 

In August, German General Lothar von Trotha defeated the Hereros in the Battle of Waterberg and drove them into the desert of Omaheke, where most of them died of dehydration. In October, the Nama people also rebelled against the Germans, only to suffer a similar fate.

 

Between 24,000 and 100,000 Hereros and 10,000 Nama died in the genocide. The first phase of the genocide was characterised by widespread death from starvation and dehydration, due to the prevention of the Herero from leaving the Namib desert by German forces.

 

Once defeated, thousands of Hereros and Namas were imprisoned in concentration camps, where the majority died of diseases, abuse, and exhaustion.

 

In 1985, the United Nations' Whitaker Report classified the aftermath as an attempt to exterminate the Herero and Nama peoples of South West Africa.

 

In 2004, the German government recognised and apologised for the events, but ruled out financial compensation for the victims' descendants.

 

In July 2015, the German government and the speaker of the Bundestag officially called the events a "genocide". However, it still refused to consider reparations. Despite this, the last batch of skulls and other remains of slaughtered tribesmen which were taken to Germany to promote racial superiority were taken back to Namibia in 2018.

 

In May 2021, the German government agreed to pay €1.1 billion over 30 years to fund projects in communities that were impacted by the genocide.

 

Background to the Genocide

 

The Herero, who speak a Bantu language, were originally a group of cattle herders who migrated into what is now Namibia during the mid-18th. century. The Herero seized vast swaths of the arable upper plateaus which were ideal for cattle grazing.

 

Agricultural duties, which were minimal, were assigned to enslaved Khoisan and Bushmen. Over the rest of the 18th. century, the Herero slowly drove the Khoisan into the dry, rugged hills to the south and east.

 

The Hereros were a pastoral people whose entire way of life centred on their cattle. The Herero language, while limited in its vocabulary for most areas, contains more than a thousand words for the colours and markings of cattle. The Hereros were content to live in peace as long as their cattle were safe and well-pastured, but became formidable warriors when their cattle were threatened.

 

According to Robert Gaudi:

 

"The newcomers, much taller and more fiercely warlike

than the indigenous Khoisan people, were possessed

of the fierceness that comes from basing one's way of

life on a single source: everything they valued, all wealth

and personal happiness, had to do with cattle.

Regarding the care and protection of their herds, the

Herero showed themselves utterly merciless, and far

more 'savage' than the Khoisan had ever been.

Because of their dominant ways and elegant bearing,

the few Europeans who encountered Herero tribesmen

in the early days regarded them as the region's 'natural

aristocrats.'"

 

By the time of the Scramble for Africa, the area which was occupied by the Herero was known as Damaraland.

 

The Nama were pastorals and traders, and lived to the south of the Herero. 

 

In 1883, Adolf Lüderitz, a German merchant, purchased a stretch of coast near Lüderitz Bay (Angra Pequena) from the reigning chief. The terms of the purchase were fraudulent, but the German government nonetheless established a protectorate over it. At that time, it was the only overseas German territory deemed suitable for European settlement.

 

Chief of the neighbouring Herero, Maherero rose to power by uniting all the Herero. Faced with repeated attacks by the Khowesin, a clan of the Khoekhoe under Hendrik Witbooi, he signed a protection treaty on the 21st. October 1885 with Imperial Germany's colonial governor Heinrich Ernst Göring (father of World War I flying ace and World War II convicted war criminal Hermann Göring), but did not cede the land of the Herero.

 

This treaty was renounced in 1888 due to lack of German support against Witbooi, but it was reinstated in 1890.

 

The Herero leaders repeatedly complained about violation of this treaty, as Herero women and girls were raped by Germans, a crime that the German judges and prosecutors were reluctant to punish.

 

In 1890 Maherero's son, Samuel, signed a great deal of land over to the Germans in return for helping him to ascend to the Herero throne, and to subsequently be established as paramount chief.

 

German involvement in ethnic fighting ended in tenuous peace in 1894.  In that year, Theodor Leutwein became governor of the territory, which underwent a period of rapid development, while the German government sent the Schutztruppe (imperial colonial troops) to pacify the region.

 

German Colonial Policy

 

Both German colonial authorities and European settlers envisioned a predominately white "new African Germany," wherein the native populations would be put onto reservations and their land distributed among settlers and companies.

 

Under German colonial rule, colonists were encouraged to seize land and cattle from the native Herero and Nama peoples and to subjugate them as slave laborers. 

 

Resentment understandably brewed among the native populations over their loss of status and property to German ranchers arriving in South West Africa, and the dismantling of traditional political hierarchies. Previously ruling tribes were reduced to the same status as the other tribes they had previously ruled over and enslaved. This resentment contributed to the Herero Wars that began in 1904.

 

Major Theodor Leutwein, the Governor of German South West Africa, was well aware of the effect of the German colonial rule on the Hereros. He later wrote :

 

"The Hereros from early years were a freedom-loving

people, courageous and proud beyond measure. On

the one hand, there was the progressive extension of

German rule over them, and on the other their own

sufferings increasing from year to year."

 

The Dietrich Case

 

In January 1903, a German trader named Dietrich was walking from his homestead to the nearby town of Omaruru to buy a new horse. Halfway to Dietrich's destination, a wagon carrying the son of a Herero chief, his wife, and their son stopped by. As a common courtesy in Hereroland, the chief's son offered Dietrich a ride.

 

That night, however, Dietrich got very drunk and after everyone was asleep, he attempted to rape the wife of the chief's son. When she resisted, Dietrich shot her dead.

 

When he was tried for murder in Windhoek, Dietrich denied attempting to rape his victim. He alleged that he awoke thinking the camp was under attack, and had fired blindly into the darkness. The killing of the Herero woman, he claimed, was an unfortunate accident. The court acquitted him, alleging that Dietrich was suffering from "tropical fever" and temporary insanity.

 

The murder aroused extraordinary interest in Hereroland, especially since the murdered woman had been the wife of the son of a Chief and the daughter of another. Everywhere the question was asked:

 

"Have white people the right

to shoot native women?"

 

Governor Leutwein intervened. He made the Public Prosecutor appeal Dietrich's acquittal. A second trial took place (before the colony's supreme court), and this time Dietrich was found guilty of manslaughter and imprisoned.

 

The move prompted violent objections of German settlers who considered Leutwein a "race traitor".

 

Rising Tension

 

In 1903, some of the Nama clans rose in revolt under the leadership of Hendrik Witbooi. A number of factors led the Herero to join them in January 1904.

 

(a) Land Rights

 

One of the major issues was land rights. In 1903 the Herero learned of a plan to divide their territory with a railway line and to set up reservations where they would be concentrated.

 

The Herero had already ceded more than a quarter of their 130,000 km2 (50,000 sq mi) territory to German colonists by 1903,  before the Otavi railway line running from the African coast to inland German settlements was completed.

 

Completion of this line would have made the German colonies much more accessible, and would have ushered in a new wave of Europeans into the area.

 

Historian Horst Drechsler states that there was discussion of establishing and placing the Herero in native reserves, and that this was further proof of the German colonists' sense of ownership over the land.

 

Drechsler illustrates the gap between the rights of a European and an African; the Reichskolonialbund (German Colonial League) held that, in regards to legal matters, the testimony of seven Africans was equivalent to that of one colonist.

 

(b) Racial Tensions

 

There were also racial tensions underlying these developments; the average German colonist viewed native Africans as a lowly source of cheap labour, and others welcomed their extermination.  The German settlers often referred to black Africans as "baboons" and treated them with contempt.

 

One missionary reported:

 

"The real cause of the bitterness among the Hereros

toward the Germans is without question the fact that

the average German looks down upon the natives as

being about on the same level as the higher primates

('baboon' being their favourite term for the natives),

and treat them like animals.

The settler holds that the native has a right to exist only

in so far as he is useful to the white man. This sense of

contempt led the settlers to commit violence against

the Hereros."

 

The contempt manifested itself particularly in the concubinage of native women. In a practice referred to in Südwesterdeutsch as Verkafferung, native women were taken by male European traders and ranchers both willingly and by force.

 

(c) Debt Collection

 

A new policy on debt collection, enforced in November 1903, also played a role in the uprising. For many years, the Herero population had fallen in the habit of borrowing money from colonist moneylenders at extremely high interest rates.

 

For a long time, much of this debt went uncollected, and it accumulated, as most Herero had no means to pay. In order to correct this growing problem, Governor Leutwein decreed with good intentions that all debts not paid within the following year would be voided.

 

In the absence of hard cash, traders often seized cattle, or whatever objects of value they could get their hands on, as collateral. This fostered a feeling of resentment towards the Germans on the part of the Herero people. Resentment escalated to hopelessness when they saw that German officials were sympathetic to the moneylenders who were about to lose what they were owed.

 

Revolts

 

In 1903, the Hereros saw an opportunity to revolt. At that time, there was a distant Khoisan tribe in the south called the Bondelzwarts, who resisted German demands to register their guns. The Bondelzwarts engaged in a firefight with the German authorities which led to three Germans being killed and a fourth wounded.

 

The situation deteriorated further, and the governor of the Herero colony, Major Theodor Leutwein, went south to take personal command, leaving almost no troops in the north.

 

The Herero revolted in early 1904, killing between 123 and 150 German settlers, as well as seven Boers and three women, in what Nils Ole Oermann calls a "desperate surprise attack".

 

The timing of their attack was carefully planned. After successfully asking a large Herero clan to surrender their weapons, Governor Leutwein was convinced that they and the rest of the native population were essentially pacified, and so withdrew half of the German troops stationed in the colony.

 

Led by Chief Samuel Maherero, the Herero surrounded Okahandja and cut railroad and telegraph links to Windhoek, the colonial capital.

 

Maharero then issued a manifesto in which he forbade his troops to kill any Englishmen, Boers, uninvolved peoples, women and children in general, or German missionaries. 

 

The Herero revolts catalysed a separate revolt and attack on Fort Namutoni in the north of the country a few weeks later by the Ondonga.

 

A Herero warrior interviewed by German authorities in 1895 had described his people's traditional way of dealing with suspected cattle rustlers, a treatment which, during the uprising, was regularly extended to German soldiers and civilians:

 

"We came across a few Khoisan whom of course

we killed. I myself helped to kill one of them.

-- First we cut off his ears, saying, 'You will never

hear Herero cattle lowing.'

-- Then we cut off his nose, saying, 'Never again

shall you smell Herero cattle.'

-- And then we cut off his lips, saying, 'You shall

never again taste Herero cattle.'

And finally we cut his throat."

 

According to Robert Gaudi:

 

"Leutwein knew that the wrath of the German Empire

was about to fall on them and hoped to soften the

blow. He sent desperate messages to Chief Samuel

Maherero in hopes of negotiating an end to the war.

In this, Leutwein acted on his own, heedless of the

prevailing mood in Germany, which called for bloody

revenge."

 

The Hereros, however, were emboldened by their success and had come to believe that the Germans were too cowardly to fight in the open. They rejected Leutwein's offers of peace.

 

One missionary wrote:

 

"The Germans are filled with fearful hate. I must really

call it a blood thirst against the Hereros. One hears

nothing but talk of 'cleaning up,' 'executing,' 'shooting

down to the last man,' 'no pardon,' etc."

 

According to Robert Gaudi:

 

"The Germans suffered more than defeat in the early

months of 1904; they suffered humiliation, their brilliant

modern army unable to defeat a rabble of 'half-naked

savages.'

Cries in the Reichstag, and from the Kaiser himself, for

total eradication of the Hereros grew strident. When a

leading member of the Social Democratic Party pointed

out that the Hereros were as human as any German and

possessed immortal souls, he was howled down by the

entire conservative side of the legislature."

 

Leutwein was forced to request reinforcements and an experienced officer from the German government in Berlin. Lieutenant-General Lothar von Trotha was appointed commander-in-chief (German: Oberbefehlshaber) of South West Africa, arriving with an expeditionary force of 10,000 troops on the 11th. June 1904.

 

Leutwein was subordinate to the civilian Colonial Department of the Prussian Foreign Office, which was supported by Chancellor Bernhard von Bülow, while General Trotha reported to the military German General Staff, which was supported by Emperor Wilhelm II.

 

Leutwein wanted to defeat the most determined Herero rebels and negotiate a surrender with the remainder in order to achieve a political settlement.  Trotha, however, planned to crush the native resistance through military force. He stated that:

 

"My intimate knowledge of many central African

nations (Bantu and others) has everywhere

convinced me of the necessity that the Negro

does not respect treaties, but only brute force."

 

By late spring of 1904, German troops were pouring into the colony. In August 1904, the main Herero forces were surrounded and crushed at the Battle of Waterberg. 

 

Genocide

 

In 1900, Kaiser Wilhelm II had been enraged by the killing of Baron Clemens von Ketteler, the Imperial German minister plenipotentiary in Beijing, during the Boxer Rebellion. The Kaiser took it as a personal insult from a people he viewed as racially inferior, all the more because of his obsession with the "Yellow Peril".

 

On the 27th. July 1900, the Kaiser gave the infamous Hunnenrede (Hun speech) in Bremerhaven to German soldiers being sent to Imperial China, ordering them to show the Boxers no mercy, and to behave like Attila's Huns.

 

General von Trotha had served in China, and was chosen in 1904 to command the expedition to German South West Africa precisely because of his record in China.

 

In 1904, the Kaiser was made furious by the latest revolt in his colonial empire by a people whom he also viewed as inferior, and took the Herero rebellion as a personal insult, just as he had viewed the Boxers' assassination of Baron von Ketteler.

 

The tactless and bloodthirsty language that Wilhelm II used about the Herero people in 1904 is strikingly similar to the language he had used about the Chinese Boxers in 1900. Nevertheless, the Kaiser denied, together with Chancellor von Bülow, von Trotha's request to quickly quell the rebellion.

 

No written order by Wilhelm II ordering or authorising genocide has survived. In February 1945 an Allied bombing raid destroyed the building housing all of the documents of the Prussian Army from the Imperial period.

 

Despite this fact, surviving documents indicate that Trotha used the same tactics in Namibia that he had used in China, only on a much vaster scale. It is also known that throughout the genocide, Trotha sent regular reports to both the General Staff and to the Kaiser.

 

Historian Jeremy-Sarkin Hughes believes that regardless of whether or not a written order was given, the Kaiser must have given General von Trotha verbal orders. According to Hughes, the fact that Trotha was decorated and not court-martialed after the genocide had become public knowledge lends support to the thesis that he was acting under orders.

 

General von Trotha stated his proposed solution to end the resistance of the Herero people in a letter, before the Battle of Waterberg:

 

"I believe that the nation as such should be annihilated,

or, if this is not possible by tactical measures, have to be

expelled from the country. This will be possible if the water-

holes from Grootfontein to Gobabis are occupied.

The constant movement of our troops will enable us to

find the small groups of this nation who have moved

backwards, and destroy them gradually."

 

Trotha's troops defeated 3,000–5,000 Herero combatants at the Battle of Waterberg on 11th. and 12th. August 1904, but were unable to encircle and annihilate the retreating survivors. 

 

The pursuing German forces prevented groups of Herero from breaking from the main body of the fleeing force, and pushed them further into the desert. As exhausted Herero fell to the ground, unable to go on, German soldiers killed men, women, and children. Jan Cloete, acting as a guide for the Germans, witnessed the atrocities committed by the German troops, and deposed the following statement: 

 

"I was present when the Herero were defeated in a

battle in the vicinity of Waterberg. After the battle all

men, women, and children who fell into German hands,

wounded or otherwise, were mercilessly put to death.

Then the Germans set off in pursuit of the rest, and all

those found by the wayside and in the sandveld were

shot down and bayoneted to death.

The mass of the Herero men were unarmed and thus

unable to offer resistance. They were just trying to get

away with their cattle."

 

A portion of the Herero escaped the Germans and went to the Omaheke Desert, hoping to reach British Bechuanaland; fewer than 1,000 Herero managed to get there, where they were granted asylum by the British authorities.

 

To prevent them from returning, Trotha ordered the desert to be sealed off. German patrols later found skeletons around holes 13 m (43 ft) deep that had been dug in a vain attempt to find water. Some sources also state that the German colonial army systematically poisoned desert water wells.

 

Maherero and 500–1,500 men crossed the Kalahari into Bechuanaland where he was accepted as a vassal of the Batswana chief Sekgoma.

 

On the 2nd. October 1904, Trotha issued a warning to the Herero:

 

"I, the great general of the German soldiers, send this

letter to the Herero. The Herero are German subjects

no longer. They have killed, stolen, cut off the ears

and other parts of the body of wounded soldiers, and

now are too cowardly to want to fight any longer.

I announce to the people that whoever hands me one

of the chiefs shall receive 1,000 marks, and 5,000

marks for Samuel Maherero.

The Herero nation must now leave the country. If it

refuses, I shall compel it to do so with the 'long tube'

[cannon].

Any Herero found inside the German frontier, with or

without a gun or cattle, will be executed. I shall spare

neither women nor children. I shall give the order to

drive them away and fire on them. Such are my words

to the Herero people."

 

Trotha further gave orders that:

 

"This proclamation is to be read to the troops at roll-call,

with the addition that the unit that catches a captain will

also receive the appropriate reward, and that the shooting

at women and children is to be understood as shooting

above their heads, so as to force them to run away.

I assume absolutely that this proclamation will result in

taking no more male prisoners, but will not degenerate

into atrocities against women and children. The latter will

run away if one shoots at them a couple of times. The

troops will remain conscious of the good reputation of

the German soldier." 

 

Trotha gave orders that captured Herero males were to be executed, while women and children were to be driven into the desert where their death from starvation and thirst was to be certain.

 

Trotha argued that there was no need to make exceptions for Herero women and children, since these would "infect German troops with their diseases."

 

Trotha explained that:

 

"The insurrection is and remains

the beginning of a racial struggle."

 

After the war, Trotha argued that his orders were necessary, writing in 1909 that:

 

"If I had made the small water holes accessible

to the womenfolk, I would run the risk of an African

catastrophe comparable to the Battle of Beresonia." 

 

The German general staff were aware of the atrocities that were taking place; its official publication, named Der Kampf, noted that:

 

"This bold enterprise shows up in the most brilliant

light the ruthless energy of the German command

in pursuing their beaten enemy.

No pains, no sacrifices were spared in eliminating

the last remnants of enemy resistance. Like a

wounded beast the enemy was tracked down from

one water-hole to the next, until finally he became

the victim of his own environment.

The arid Omaheke Desert was to complete what

the German army had begun: the extermination of

the Herero nation."

 

Alfred von Schlieffen (Chief of the Imperial German General Staff and architect of the Great War Schlieffen Plan) approved of Trotha's intentions in terms of a "racial struggle" and the need to wipe out the entire nation or to drive them out of the country, but had doubts about his strategy, preferring their surrender.

 

Governor Leutwein, later relieved of his duties, complained to Chancellor von Bülow about Trotha's actions, seeing the general's orders as intruding upon the civilian colonial jurisdiction, and ruining any chance of a political settlement. 

 

According to Professor Mahmood Mamdani of Columbia University, opposition to the policy of annihilation was largely due to the fact that colonial officials looked at the Herero people as a potential source of labour, and thus economically important.  For instance, Governor Leutwein wrote that:

 

"I do not concur with those fanatics who want to

see the Herero destroyed altogether. I would

consider such a move a grave mistake from an

economic point of view. We need the Herero as

cattle breeders, and especially as labourers.

 

Having no authority over the military, Chancellor Bülow could only advise Emperor Wilhelm II that:

 

"Trotha's actions are contrary to Christian and

humanitarian principle, economically devastating

and damaging to Germany's international

reputation". 

 

Upon the arrival of new orders at the end of 1904, prisoners were herded into labor camps, where they were given to private companies as slave labourers, or exploited as human guinea pigs in medical experiments.

 

Concentration Camps

 

Survivors of the massacre, the majority of whom were women and children, were eventually put in places like Shark Island concentration camp, where the German authorities forced them to work as slave labour for the German military and settlers.

 

All prisoners were categorised into groups fit and unfit for work, and pre-printed death certificates indicating "death by exhaustion following privation" were issued. The British government published their well-known account of the German genocide of the Nama and Herero peoples in 1918.

 

Many Herero and Nama died of disease, exhaustion, starvation and malnutrition. Estimates of the mortality rate at the camps are between 45% and 74%.

 

Food in the camps was extremely scarce, consisting of rice with no additions.  As the prisoners lacked pots and the rice they received was uncooked, it was indigestible. Horses and oxen that died in the camp were later distributed to the inmates as food. 

 

Dysentery and lung diseases were common.  Despite the living conditions, the prisoners were taken outside the camp every day for labour under harsh treatment by the German guards, while the sick were left without any medical assistance or nursing care.  Many Herero and Nama were worked to death.

 

Shootings, hangings, beatings, and other harsh treatment of the forced labourers (including use of sjamboks) were common. A sjambok is a long, stiff whip, originally made from rhinoceros hide.

 

A 28th. September 1905 article in the South African newspaper Cape Argus detailed some of the abuse with the heading:

 

"In German S. W. Africa: Further Startling

Allegations: Horrible Cruelty".

 

In an interview with Percival Griffith, "an accountant of profession, who owing to hard times, took up on transport work at Angra Pequena, Lüderitz", related his experiences:

 

"There are hundreds of them, mostly women and

children and a few old men. When they fall they are

sjamboked by the soldiers in charge of the gang,

with full force, until they get up.

On one occasion I saw a woman carrying a child

of under a year old slung at her back, and with a

heavy sack of grain on her head - she fell.

The corporal sjamboked her for certainly more

than four minutes and sjamboked the baby as well.

The woman struggled slowly to her feet, and went

on with her load.

She did not utter a sound the whole time, but the

baby cried very hard."

 

During the war, a number of people from the Cape (in modern-day South Africa) sought employment as transport riders for German troops in Namibia. Upon their return to the Cape, some of these people recounted their stories, including those of the imprisonment and genocide of the Herero and Nama people. Fred Cornell, an aspiring British diamond prospector, was in Lüderitz when the Shark Island concentration camp was being used. Cornell wrote of the camp:

 

"Cold – for the nights are often bitterly cold there –

hunger, thirst, exposure, disease and madness

claimed scores of victims every day, and cartloads

of their bodies were every day carted over to the

back beach, buried in a few inches of sand at low

tide, and as the tide came in the bodies went out,

food for the sharks."

 

Shark Island was the worst of the German South West African camps. Lüderitz lies in southern Namibia, flanked by desert and ocean. In the harbour lies Shark Island, which then was connected to the mainland by only a small causeway.

 

The island is now, as it was then, barren and characterised by solid rock carved into surreal formations by the ocean winds. The camp was placed on the far end of the relatively small island, where the prisoners would have suffered complete exposure to the strong winds that sweep Lüderitz for most of the year.

 

German Commander Ludwig von Estorff wrote in a report that approximately 1,700 prisoners (including 1,203 Nama) had died by April 1907.

 

In December 1906, four months after their arrival, 291 Nama died (a rate of more than nine people per day). Missionary reports put the death rate at 12–18 per day; as many as 80% of the prisoners sent to Shark Island eventually died there.

 

There are accusations of Herero women being coerced into sex slavery as a means of survival.

 

Trotha was opposed to contact between natives and settlers, believing that the insurrection was "the beginning of a racial struggle," and fearing that the colonists would be infected by native diseases. 

 

Benjamin Madley has concluded that although Shark Island is referred to as a concentration camp, it in fact functioned as an extermination camp or death camp.

 

Medical Experiments and Scientific Racism

 

Prisoners were used for medical experiments, and their illnesses or their recoveries from them were used for research.

 

Experiments on live prisoners were performed by Dr. Bofinger, who injected Herero who were suffering from scurvy with various substances including arsenic and opium; afterwards he researched the effects of these substances via autopsy.

 

Experimentation with the dead body parts of the prisoners was rife. Zoologist Leonhard Schultze (1872–1955) noted taking "body parts from fresh native corpses" which according to him, was "a welcome addition." He also noted that he could use prisoners for that purpose.

 

An estimated 300 skulls were sent to Germany for experimentation, in part from concentration camp prisoners. In October 2011, after three years of talks, the first 20 of an estimated 300 skulls stored in the museum of the Charité were returned to Namibia for burial. In 2014, 14 additional skulls were repatriated by the University of Freiburg.

 

The Number of Victims

 

A census conducted in 1905 revealed that 25,000 Herero remained in German South West Africa.

 

According to the Whitaker Report, the population of 80,000 Herero had been reduced to 15,000 "starving refugees" by 1907. In 'Colonial Genocide and Reparations Claims in the 21st. Century: The Socio-Legal Context of Claims under International Law by the Herero against Germany for Genocide in Namibia' by Jeremy Sarkin-Hughes, the number of 100,000 victims is given. Up to 80% of the indigenous population were killed.

 

A political cartoon on German South West Africa was run in 1906 with the following caption:

 

"Even if it hasn't brought in much profit and

there are no better quality goods on offer,

at least we can use it to set up a bone-

grinding plant."

 

Newspapers in 2004 reported 65,000 victims when announcing that Germany officially recognized the genocide.

 

Aftermath of the Genocide

 

With the closure of the concentration camps, all surviving Herero were distributed as labourers for settlers in the German colony. From that time on, all Herero over the age of seven were forced to wear a metal disc with their labour registration number. They were also banned from owning land or cattle, a necessity for pastoral society. 

 

About 19,000 German troops were engaged in the conflict, of which 3,000 saw combat. The rest were used for upkeep and administration.

 

The German losses were 676 soldiers killed in combat, 76 missing, and 689 dead from disease.  The Reiterdenkmal (English: Equestrian Monument) in Windhoek was erected in 1912 to celebrate the victory and to remember the fallen German soldiers and civilians. Until after Independence, no monument was built to the killed indigenous population. It remains a bone of contention in independent Namibia.

 

The campaign cost Germany 600 million marks. The normal annual subsidy to the colony was 14.5 million marks. In 1908, diamonds were discovered in the territory, and this did much to boost its prosperity, though it was short-lived. 

 

In 1915, during the Great War, the German colony was taken over and occupied by the Union of South Africa, which was victorious in the South West Africa campaign. South Africa received a League of Nations mandate over South West Africa on the 17th. December 1920.

 

Link Between the Herero Genocide and the Holocaust

 

The Herero genocide has commanded the attention of historians who study issues of continuity between the Herero genocide and The Holocaust of WWII. It is argued that the Herero genocide set a precedent in Imperial Germany that would later be followed by Nazi Germany's establishment of death camps.

 

According to Benjamin Madley, the German experience in South West Africa was a crucial precursor to Nazi colonialism and genocide. He argues that personal connections, literature, and public debates served as conduits for communicating colonialist and genocidal ideas and methods from the colony to Germany.

 

Tony Barta, a research associate at La Trobe University, argues that the Herero genocide was an inspiration for Hitler in his war against the Jews, Slavs, Romani, and others whom he described as "non-Aryans".

 

According to Clarence Lusane, Eugen Fischer's medical experiments can be seen as a testing ground for medical procedures which were later followed during the Nazi Holocaust.

 

Fischer later became chancellor of the University of Berlin, where he taught medicine to Nazi physicians. Otmar von Verschuer was a student of Fischer; Verschuer himself had a prominent pupil, Josef Mengele.

 

Franz Ritter von Epp, who was later responsible for the liquidation of virtually all Bavarian Jews and Roma as governor of Bavaria, took part in the Herero and Nama genocide.

 

Mahmood Mamdani argues that the links between the Herero genocide and the Holocaust are beyond the execution of an annihilation policy and the establishment of concentration camps as there are also ideological similarities in the conduct of both genocides. He focuses on a written statement by General Trotha:

 

"I destroy the African tribes with streams

of blood. Only following this cleansing can

something new emerge, which will remain." 

 

Mamdani takes note of the similarity between the aims of the General and of the Nazis. According to Mamdani, in both cases there was a Social Darwinist notion of "cleansing", after which "something new" would "emerge". 

 

Reconciliation

 

In 1985, the United Nations' Whitaker Report classified the massacres as an attempt to exterminate the Herero and Nama peoples of South West Africa, and therefore one of the earliest cases of genocide in the 20th. century.

 

In 1998, German President Roman Herzog visited Namibia and met Herero leaders. Chief Munjuku Nguvauva demanded a public apology and compensation. Herzog expressed regret but stopped short of an apology. He pointed out that international law requiring reparation did not exist in 1907, but he undertook to take the Herero petition back to the German government.

 

On the 16th. August 2004, on the 100th, anniversary of the start of the genocide, a member of the German government, Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul, Germany's Federal Minister for Economic Development and Cooperation, officially apologised and expressed grief about the genocide, declaring in a speech that:

 

"We Germans accept our historical and

moral responsibility and the guilt incurred

by Germans at that time.

 

She ruled out paying special compensation, but promised continued economic aid for Namibia which in 2004 amounted to $14M a year. This amount has been significantly increased since then, with the budget for the years 2016–17 allocating a sum total of €138M in monetary support payments.

 

The Trotha family travelled to Omaruru in October 2007 by invitation of the royal Herero chiefs and publicly apologised for the actions of their relative. Wolf-Thilo von Trotha said,

 

"We, the von Trotha family, are deeply ashamed

of the terrible events that took place 100 years

ago. Human rights were grossly abused that time."

 

Negotiations and Agreement

 

The Herero filed a lawsuit in the United States in 2001 demanding reparations from the German government and Deutsche Bank, which financed the German government and companies in Southern Africa.

 

With a complaint filed with the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York in January 2017, descendants of the Herero and Nama people sued Germany for damages in the United States. The plaintiffs sued under the Alien Tort Statute, a 1789 U.S. law often invoked in human rights cases. Their proposed class-action lawsuit sought unspecified sums for thousands of descendants of the victims, for the "incalculable damages" that were caused.

 

Germany seeks to rely on its state immunity as implemented in US law as the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, arguing that, as a sovereign nation, it cannot be sued in US courts in relation to its acts outside the United States. In March 2019, the judge dismissed the claims due to the exceptions to sovereign immunity being too narrow for the case.

 

In September 2020, the Second Circuit stated that the claimants did not prove that money used to buy property in New York could be traced back to wealth resulting from the seized property, and therefore the lawsuit could not overcome Germany's immunity. In June 2021, the Supreme Court declined to hear a petition to revive the case.

 

Germany, while admitting brutality in Namibia, at first refused to call it a "genocide", claiming that the term only became international law in 1945.

 

However, in July 2015, then foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier issued a political guideline stating that the massacre should be referred to as a "war crime and a genocide". Bundestag president Norbert Lammert wrote an article in Die Zeit that same month referring to the events as a genocide. These events paved the way for negotiations with Namibia.

 

In 2015, the German government began negotiations with Namibia over a possible apology, and by 2016, Germany committed itself to apologizing for the genocide, as well as to refer to the event as a genocide; but the actual declaration was postponed while negotiations stalled over questions of compensation.

 

On the 11th. August 2020, following negotiations over a potential compensation agreement between Germany and Namibia, President Hage Geingob of Namibia stated that the German government's offer was "not acceptable", while German envoy Ruprecht Polenz said:

 

"I am still optimistic that a

solution can be found."

 

On the 28th. May 2021, the German government announced that it was formally recognizing the atrocities committed as a genocide, following five years of negotiations. The declaration was made by foreign minister Heiko Maas, who also stated that Germany was asking Namibia and the descendants of the genocide victims for forgiveness.

 

In addition to recognizing the events as a genocide, Germany agreed to give as a "gesture of recognition of the immeasurable suffering" €1.1 billion in aid to the communities impacted by the genocide.

 

Following the announcement, the agreement needs to be ratified by both countries' parliaments, after which Germany will send its president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, to officially apologize for the genocide. The nations agreed not to use the term "reparation" to describe the financial aid package.

 

The agreement was criticized by the chairman of the Namibian Genocide Association, Laidlaw Peringanda, who insisted that Germany should purchase their ancestral lands back from the descendants of the German settlers and return it to the Herero and Nama people.

 

The agreement was also criticized because negotiations were held solely between the German and Namibian governments, and did not include representatives of the Herero and Nama people.

 

Repatriation of the Skulls

 

Peter Katjavivi, a former Namibian ambassador to Germany, demanded in August 2008 that the skulls of Herero and Nama prisoners of the 1904–1908 uprising, which were taken to Germany for scientific research to claim the superiority of white Europeans over Africans, be returned to Namibia.

 

Katjavivi was reacting to a German television documentary which reported that its investigators had found more than 40 of these skulls at two German universities, among them probably the skull of a Nama chief who had died on Shark Island.

 

In September 2011 the skulls were returned to Namibia. In August 2018, Germany returned all of the remaining skulls and other human remains which were examined in Germany to scientifically promote white supremacy. This was the third such transfer, and shortly before it occurred, German Protestant bishop Petra Bosse-Huber stated:

 

"Today, we want to do what should have been

done many years ago – to give back to their

descendants the remains of people who

became victims of the first genocide of the

20th. century."

 

As part of the repatriation process, the German government announced on the 17th. May 2019 that it would return a stone symbol it took from Namibia in the 1900's.

 

The Genocide in the Media

 

-- A BBC documentary, 'Namibia – Genocide and the Second Reich' (2005), explores the Herero and Nama genocide and the circumstances surrounding it.

 

-- In the documentary '100 Years of Silence', filmmakers Halfdan Muurholm and Casper Erichsen portray a 23-year-old Herero woman, whose great-grandmother was raped by a German soldier. The documentary explores the past and the way Namibia deals with it now.

 

-- Mama Namibia, a historical novel by Mari Serebrov, provides two perspectives of the 1904 genocide in German South West Africa. The first is that of Jahohora, a 12-year-old Herero girl who survives on her own in the veld for two years after her family is killed by German soldiers. The second story is that of Kov, a Jewish doctor who volunteered to serve in the German military to prove his patriotism. As he witnesses the atrocities of the genocide, he rethinks his loyalty to the Fatherland.

 

-- Thomas Pynchon's novel 'V'. (1963) has a chapter that included recollections of the genocide; there are memories of events that took place in 1904 in various locations, including the Shark Island concentration camp.

 

-- Jackie Sibblies Drury's play, 'We Are Proud To Present a Presentation About the Herero of Namibia Between the Years 1884–1915', is about a group of actors developing a play about the Herero and Nama genocide.

Neil Young / Decade

Compilation Album

Side one:

- "Down to the Wire" – 2:28

Previously unreleased (1967); performed with Buffalo Springfield members Stephen Stills and Richie Furay along with Dr. John; planned for inclusion on the unreleased album Stampede

- "Burned" – 2:15

Performed by Buffalo Springfield; appears on the album Buffalo Springfield (1966)

- "Mr. Soul" – 2:48

Performed by Buffalo Springfield; recorded live in the studio in New York City, New York, with guitar overdubs added subsequently; appears on the album Buffalo Springfield Again (1967)

- "Broken Arrow" – 6:11

Performed by Buffalo Springfield; appears on the album Buffalo Springfield Again

- "Expecting to Fly" – 3:45

Appears on the album Buffalo Springfield Again but no band member other than Neil Young appears on the track.

- "Sugar Mountain" – 5:43

Recorded live in concert on November 10, 1968, at the Canterbury House, Ann Arbor, Michigan; released as the B-side to "The Loner", February 21, 1969

Side two:

- "I Am a Child" – 2:17

Appears on the Buffalo Springfield album Last Time Around (1968) but features no members of the band other than Neil Young and drummer Dewey Martin

- "The Loner" – 3:50

Appears on the album Neil Young (1968)

- "The Old Laughing Lady" – 5:59

Appears on the album Neil Young

- "Cinnamon Girl" – 2:59

Performed by Neil Young & Crazy Horse; appears on the album Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (1969)

- "Down by the River" – 9:16

Performed by Neil Young & Crazy Horse; appears on the album Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere

Side three:

- "Cowgirl in the Sand" – 10:01

Performed by Neil Young & Crazy Horse; appears on the album Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere

- "I Believe in You" – 3:27

Performed by Neil Young & Crazy Horse; appears on the album After the Gold Rush (1970)

- "After the Gold Rush" – 3:45

Appears on the album After the Gold Rush

- "Southern Man" – 5:31

Appears on the album After the Gold Rush

- "Helpless" – 3:34

Performed by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young; appears on the album Déjà Vu (1970)

Side four:

"Ohio" – 2:56

Performed by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young; released as a single, June 1970 and later appeared on So Far, 1974

- "Soldier" – 2:28

Edited version originally from the album Journey Through the Past (1972)

- "Old Man" – 3:21

Appears on the album Harvest (1972)

- "A Man Needs a Maid" – 3:58

- "Harvest" – 3:08

Appears on the album Harvest

- "Heart of Gold" – 3:06

Appears on the album Harvest

- "Star of Bethlehem" – 2:46

Appears on the album American Stars 'n Bars (1977); originally recorded in November 1974

Side five:

- "The Needle and the Damage Done" – 2:02

Recorded live in concert on January 30, 1971, at the Royce Hall, University of California, Westwood, Los Angeles; appears on the album Harvest

- "Tonight's the Night" (Part 1) – 4:41

Appears on the album Tonight's the Night (1975); originally recorded in 1973

- "Tired Eyes" – 4:33

Appears on the album Tonight's the Night

- "Walk On" – 2:40

Appears on the album On the Beach (1974)

- "For the Turnstiles" – 3:01

Appears on the album On the Beach

- "Winterlong" – 3:05

Previously unreleased; appeared on certain acetate pressings of Tonight's the Night

- "Deep Forbidden Lake" – 3:39

Previously unreleased

Side six:

- "Like a Hurricane" – 8:16

Performed by Neil Young & Crazy Horse; previously unreleased (but originally recorded in November 1975)

- "Love Is a Rose" – 2:16

Previously unreleased; later released on Homegrown (2020)

- "Cortez the Killer" – 7:29

Performed by Neil Young & Crazy Horse; appears on the album Zuma (1975)

- "Campaigner" – 3:30

Previously unreleased; unedited version later released on Hitchhiker (2017)

- "Long May You Run" – 3:48

Performed by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young; previously unreleased; original mix (without Crosby and Nash) appears on the Stills-Young Band album Long May You Run (1976)

sleeve design: photo

Label: Warner Bros. Records / 1977

ex Vinyl-Collection MTP

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decade_(Neil_Young_album)

What a year 2010 has been! The end of the first post-millennia decade. What is interesting though is that YouTube itself has only been around for 5 years. Founded by 3 former PayPal employee's it has grown into the number one video site in the world. YouTube is simply awesome and has really changed the way we interact with the internet as a species on an ongoing basis. To commemorate that, I got together with my friend, fellow Art-Director Paul Parolin and we worked on a poster showcasing the Top 100 Most Viewed Videos of All time in All Categories on YouTube.

 

Paul and myself enjoyed working on this thoroughly throughout December, It started off with a massive YouTube 5 hr viewing session, in which we watched the top 100 Videos of all time and brainstormed / sketched their respective iconography. After that, all sketches were traced into the computer and lovingly nurtured and in turn adhered to a tight grid of 10x10.

 

We got together on New-years' Eve & while everybody was cheering and high-fiving each other, we were dedicated to officially document the Top 100 videos of all time at the stroke of midnight.

 

The result two days later as we put the finishing touches on the poster, is simply outstanding. We are super excited to unveil it and share it with everyone. The Poster measures 22 x 30 inches, and is silk screened by hand on a 24 bond, 100% Archival Cotton based paper in editions of 400. All Limited editions are signed by Both myself and Paul, numbered and Date Stamped. You also will receive an empty 8.5x11 empty sheet with spaces to fill out from 1-100. You can use it to challenge your friends and see how many videos they are able to recognize without looking at the legend below.

Priced at 50$ each, you can obtain yours here

 

ibraheemyoussef.com/ibraheemshop/index.php?main_page=prod...