A SERIES ON THE EASTERN GRAY/EASTERN GREY SQUIRREL (SCIURUS CAROLINENSIS)

  

By Paul Williams

  

The Grey (or Gray) squirrel, you either love 'em or you hate 'em. Cute and fluffy little funsters or destructive critters who ruin trees, kill bird chicks and trees and damage our homes... oh and it's their fault we lost our native Red squirrels as well!

  

OK

  

I get it and I see both sides of the story of course. For my part, I am a nature, wildlife and landscape photographer who prefers the company of animals and natural beauty to fellow humans who are systematically plundering Mother Earth's resources and killing off her beautiful creatures at an alarming rate! I believe there is a natural order of things, creatures kill other creatures to survive, they adapt to situations and when mankind encroaches on their territory to make a fast buck, those animals sometimes adapt to survive and the order changes. That is the balance of nature which is ever changing and affected by us..... the dumbest of the great apes. Some species are driven out by others, some may be destined to become extinct, the fittest will survive, and sometime a species will need intervention and help from mankind in order to survive... usually as a direct consequence of mankind's own actions in destroying the animal kingdom's natural habitat of course.

  

I adore these little fellas and at almost sixty years old, I never grew up knowing red squirrels at all. I've seen reds in Scotland and black squirrels in Stanley Park on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada, but in my beloved home country of England I have always known and loved the cute little Greys. They visit my garden and give me hours, days, weeks of happiness and wonderful photographic opportunities, and I see them in Parks and forests all around me, so it's time to offer up an insight into the Grey squirrel, much loved, much hated... a sort of Marmite rodent if you will.

  

WHAT EXACTLY IS A SQUIRREL?

  

The word 'Squirrel', was first recorded in 1327 and hails from the Anglo-Norman word 'Esquirel', from old French 'Escurel', which was a reflex for the Latin word 'Sciurus'.The Eastern gray squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis) is also known as the Eastern Grey squirrel or simply grey squirrel depending on the region of the world it is found. It is a tree squirrel, of the squirrel family Sciuridae including over one hundred arboreal species native to all continents of the world other than Antarctica and Oceania. Tree squirrels live mostly in trees, apart from the flying squirrel. The best known genus is Sciurus, containing most of the bushy tailed squirrels which are found in Europe, North America, temperate Asia as well as central and south America.

  

The scientific classification for the Eastern Grey is:

  

KINGDOM: ANIMALIA PHYLUM: CHORDATA CLASS: MAMMALIA ORDER: RODENTIA FAMILY: SCIURIDAE GENUS: SCIURUS SUBGENUS: SCIURUS SPECIES: SCIURUS CAROLINENSIS

  

They were first noted by German naturalist, botanist, entomologist, herpetologist, and malacologist - Johann Friedrich Gmelin in 1788.

  

A mammal and rodent, predominantly herbivorous they are none the less an omnivore with a life span of between two and ten years. They can grow to 70cm in length and weigh up to 8kg. There are more than two hundred and sixty species of worldwide squirrel, the smallest being the African pygmy squirrel at just 10cm in length, whereas the Indian giant squirrel is three feet long! The oldest fossil of a squirrel, Hesperopetes, dates back to the late Eocene epoch period Chadronian period of 40-35 million years ago. The tree squirrels rotate their ankles by 180 degrees, so that the hind paws pointy backwards gripping tree bark which enables them to descend a tree headfirst.

  

Originally native to Eastern and Midwestern United States of America, they were first introduced into the United Kingdom in 1876 in Henbury Park, Macclesfield in Cheshire when Victorian banker Thomas V. Brocklehurst released a pair of Greys that he brought back from a business trip to America after their attraction as pets had waned. Victorians had a penchant for collecting exotic animals and birds of the world, but trends came and went and subsequently animals were simply discarded into the wilderness. There are early records of greys released near Denbighshire in north Wales from private collections. Later introduced to several regions in the UK, they quickly settled and spread, colonizing an area of three hundred miles in a quarter of a century between Argyll and Stirlingshire in Scotland.

  

Introductions of the Greys between 1902 and 1929 (the year of the last recorded introduction), included: Regent’s Park in London, Berkshire, Northamptonshire, Oxfordshire, Oxfordshire, Devon, Warwickshire, Nottinghamshire, Suffolk and Hampshire. Grey Squirrels spread into Gloucestershire and eastern Wiltshire with animals coming directly from the United States or from Woburn. One hundred greys were released in Richmond Park in Surrey in 1902, Ninety one into Regent’s Park between 1905 and 1907 and a further ten New Jersey imported greys were introduced into Woburn Park in Bedfordshire.

  

Predators include hawks, weasels, raccoons, bobcats, foxes, domestic and feral cats, snakes, owls, and dogs, African harrier-hawks in Africa and... oh yes, Mankind pretty much everywhere who despise, mistreat, cull or eat it .

  

FACTS, MYTHS AND THAT POXY PARAPOX!

  

The massive decline in native red squirrels blamed upon the spread of the invasive greys has always been perhaps a little harsh as reds were already in a steep decline due to loss of habitat and disease and thus the greys simply took over the areas where the reds were dwindling. It's also a fact that reds were also seen as a plague, branded as pests who killed birds and damaged trees and the culling of reds almost brought them to the brink of extinction. Licenses to kill reds could still be obtained up until the seventies!

  

Reds suffered at the hands of mankind thanks to a combination of agricultural deforestation also linked with war and fuel needs which caused extinction in Southern Scotland and Ireland by the early eighteenth century, way before greys had been introduced. Harsh winters killed off the less hardy red population in the early nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

  

Greys are more adept at finding food and adapting to locations and environments, but also carry the squirrel poxvirus (SQPV) which although not particularly harmful to them, is a serious infection for the reds.

  

Parapox in red squirrels causes swollen lesions around the mouth, eyes, ears and nose also the front paws and sometimes genitals and skin ulcers and kills a red within fifteen days. There is no definitive correlation between the spread of the virus and the spread of the Greys, it actually arrived in several areas before the greys began to colonize there. An epidemic virus was observed in Red squirrels from at least 1900 with isolation attempts failing, and the first case of Parapox in the UK was in 1980 in the county of Norfolk. Greys cannot transmit the virus to reds via saliva or faeces, but reds can between each other from bodily secretions and at animal feeders in gardens. The transmission from greys to reds is though to come from parasites. Eight to ten per cent of reds survive the virus, and there is some evidence that reds are slowly building an evolved resistance.

  

Greys are seen as pests to forest land, stripping bark from trees during May and June, and are also capable of destroying household bins, water pipes, causing roof damage not to mention taking eggs and killing young chicks of ground nesting and songbird populations. They also take from bird feeders and there is a whole industry for creating squirrel proof feeders these days.

  

THE CULLING OF GREY SQUIRRELS

  

Grey squirrels have limited legal protection and can be legally controlled all year round by a variety of methods including shooting and trapping. Methods of trapping and killing include Drey poking and shooting, Tunnel trapping using spring traps set in accordance with BASC’s trapping pest mammals code of practice. They can also be shot using a shotgun or powerful air rifle or up until September 30th 2014 poisoned by Warfarin (Now outlawed).

  

Whilst professional trapping and extermination is hopefully done as humanely as possible, there have been cases, many of them where cost savings have been gained by battering the squirrels to death! Grey squirrels are trapped in ghastly metal contraptions for hours and hours, wearing themselves out frantically trying to escape by gnawing at the metals bars. They bite the floor and scratch at them with their claws and do not get a moments peace or rest through absolute fear. Once the traps are retrieved, each squirrel, terrified will be thrown into a sack and smacked on the head countless times with a blunt instrument. When a mother is slaughtered, her babies who are totally dependent on her, will die a slow death of thirst and starvation.

  

There is an argument for the control of Greys on many grounds but also a counter argument that Culling does not work, and has not on countless times where, once a population of greys have been culled, the nearest group will move back in and claim the land. The university of Bristol concluded that there was little evidence that culling greys to save red squirrels was effective, and that perhaps finding a way of boosting red squirrel immunity to the poxvirus or planting areas of yew trees where reds are known to thrive and spending money on research into positive moves might be a better option.

  

In Ireland, the re-introduction of the Pine marten, a species made extinct originally by the very same land owners who also wish to do the same to the grey squirrel, has seen the rapid demise of the grey and the re-introction of the native reds. Red squirrels are smaller and more nimble than their grey counterparts, and as such can get to the very ends of tree branches where neither the pine martins, nor more importantly the heavier greys can, thus surviving and thriving. As a result in Ireland, the grey squirrel population has crashed in approximately 9,000 km2 of its former range and the reds has become common once more after a thirty year absence... oh and Pine Martens are protected again!

  

In Scotland, Pine Martens exist in areas where Red squirrels thrive, and greys do not. So perhaps there is a lesson here, as in England where there are no pine martens, the greys are prolific breeders. So there is an argument against the barbarity of shooting and poisoning greys, and if, as so many believe, the greys MUST be controlled, how about a more humane and natural method that nature intended.. with re-introduction of predators. Just a thought!

  

So a few facts and figures on the greys and to wrap up, from a purely personal perspective I love these little guys, as I do almost every creature in nature other than those eight legged beasties that shall not be named and for which I have a deep and powerful phobia that borders on paranoia!

  

I could no more harm an animal deliberately than eat a McDonald's McRib (Once saw how they are made and let me just say... eeeuuuuuwwwww!!).

  

They are small, cute, cuddly, furry, they photograph beautifully, have great personality and make me smile. They trust me enough to take food from my hand in parks, and I can't bare the though of ugly, hairy land owners sticking a shotgun in their face and blowing them away! I appreciate they can be a pest, a problem, a menace, that their PR managers might have a bit of a problem winning you over when they flay small chicks alive on your lawn or decimate the songbird population by stealing their eggs.... and perhaps there is a need to keep the population under control and try and re-establish the red population.....

  

Yep I get that....

  

I just hope we can solve the problem more humanely to create a peaceful coexistence of the reds and greys in different areas. A man can dream can't he.

  

Paul Williams June 18th 2021

©DESPITE STRAIGHT LINES (Paul Williams).

  

.

.

  

©All photographs on this site are copyright: ©DESPITE STRAIGHT LINES (Paul Williams) 2011 – 2021 & GETTY IMAGES ®

  

No license is given nor granted in respect of the use of any copyrighted material on this site other than with the express written agreement of ©DESPITE STRAIGHT LINES (Paul Williams). No image may be used as source material for paintings, drawings, sculptures, or any other art form without permission and/or compensation to ©DESPITE STRAIGHT LINES (Paul Williams)

  

.

.

  

Photograph taken at an altitude of Forty nine metres at 09:36am on Saturday 20th February 2021 off Blackheath Avenue and Charlton Way in the grounds of Greenwich Park, one of the Royal Parks of London situated in Greenwich, South East London.

  

Here we see, Sciurus Carolinensis (Eastern Gray Squirrel or Grey Squirrel), a tree squirrel native to North America and first introduced to the UK in the 1870's. Though it was largely responsible for the decimation of our own native red squirrel population, those are now on the increase and found in certain parts of the UK including Scotland. The Greys are still an ecologically essential natural forester regenerator.

  

.

.

  

Nikon D850 Hand held with Sigma OS Optical Stabilization enabled on normal setting. Focal length 380mm Shutter speed: 1/500s Aperture f/6.0 ISO800 Image area FX (36 x 24) NEF RAW L (8256 x 5504). NEF RAW L (14 bit uncompressed) Focus mode AF-C focus. AF-C Priority Selection: Release. Nikon Back button focusing enabled. Auto ISO 3D Tracking watch area: Normal 55 Tracking points.AF-Area mode single point & 73 point switchable. Exposure mode: Shutter priority mode. Matrix metering. White balance on: Auto1 (4370K). Colour space: RGB. Vignette control: Normal. Picture control: Auto (Sharpening A +1/Clarity A+1)

  

Sigma 60-600mm f/4.5-6.3DG OS HSM SPORTS. Lee SW150 MKI filter holder with MK2 light shield and custom made velcro fitting for the Sigma lens. Lee SW150 circular polariser glass filter.Lee SW150 Filters field pouch.Nikon GP-1 GPS module. Hoodman HEYENRG round eyepiece oversized eyecup.Mcoplus professional MB-D850 multi function battery grip 6960.Two Nikon EN-EL15a batteries (Priority to battery in Battery grip). Black Rapid Curve Breathe strap. My Memory 128GB Class 10 SDXC 80MB/s card. Lowepro Flipside 400 AW camera bag.

    

.

  

.

.

  

.

  

LATITUDE: N 51d 28m 29.35s

LONGITUDE: E 0d 0m 17.88s

ALTITUDE: 45.0m

  

RAW (TIFF) FILE: 130.00MB NEF: 94.6MB

PROCESSED (JPeg) FILE: 54.10MB

    

.

.

  

PROCESSING POWER:

  

Nikon D850 Firmware versions C 1.10 (9/05/2019) LD Distortion Data 2.018 (18/02/20) LF 1.00

  

HP 110-352na Desktop PC with AMD Quad-Core A6-5200 APU 64Bit processor. Radeon HD8400 graphics. 8 GB DDR3 Memory with 1TB Data storage. 64-bit Windows 10. Verbatim USB 2.0 1TB desktop hard drive. WD My Passport Ultra 1tb USB3 Portable hard drive. Nikon ViewNX-1 64bit Version 1.4.1 (18/02/2020). Nikon Capture NX-D 64bit Version 1.6.2 (18/02/2020). Nikon Picture Control Utility 2 (Version 2.4.5 (18/02/2020). Nikon Transfer 2 Version 2.13.5. Adobe photoshop Elements 8 Version 8.0 64bit.

 

A SERIES ON THE EASTERN GRAY/EASTERN GREY SQUIRREL (SCIURUS CAROLINENSIS)

  

By Paul Williams

  

The Grey (or Gray) squirrel, you either love 'em or you hate 'em. Cute and fluffy little funsters or destructive critters who ruin trees, kill bird chicks and trees and damage our homes... oh and it's their fault we lost our native Red squirrels as well!

  

OK

  

I get it and I see both sides of the story of course. For my part, I am a nature, wildlife and landscape photographer who prefers the company of animals and natural beauty to fellow humans who are systematically plundering Mother Earth's resources and killing off her beautiful creatures at an alarming rate! I believe there is a natural order of things, creatures kill other creatures to survive, they adapt to situations and when mankind encroaches on their territory to make a fast buck, those animals sometimes adapt to survive and the order changes. That is the balance of nature which is ever changing and affected by us..... the dumbest of the great apes. Some species are driven out by others, some may be destined to become extinct, the fittest will survive, and sometime a species will need intervention and help from mankind in order to survive... usually as a direct consequence of mankind's own actions in destroying the animal kingdom's natural habitat of course.

  

I adore these little fellas and at almost sixty years old, I never grew up knowing red squirrels at all. I've seen reds in Scotland and black squirrels in Stanley Park on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada, but in my beloved home country of England I have always known and loved the cute little Greys. They visit my garden and give me hours, days, weeks of happiness and wonderful photographic opportunities, and I see them in Parks and forests all around me, so it's time to offer up an insight into the Grey squirrel, much loved, much hated... a sort of Marmite rodent if you will.

  

WHAT EXACTLY IS A SQUIRREL?

  

The word 'Squirrel', was first recorded in 1327 and hails from the Anglo-Norman word 'Esquirel', from old French 'Escurel', which was a reflex for the Latin word 'Sciurus'.The Eastern gray squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis) is also known as the Eastern Grey squirrel or simply grey squirrel depending on the region of the world it is found. It is a tree squirrel, of the squirrel family Sciuridae including over one hundred arboreal species native to all continents of the world other than Antarctica and Oceania. Tree squirrels live mostly in trees, apart from the flying squirrel. The best known genus is Sciurus, containing most of the bushy tailed squirrels which are found in Europe, North America, temperate Asia as well as central and south America.

  

The scientific classification for the Eastern Grey is:

  

KINGDOM: ANIMALIA PHYLUM: CHORDATA CLASS: MAMMALIA ORDER: RODENTIA FAMILY: SCIURIDAE GENUS: SCIURUS SUBGENUS: SCIURUS SPECIES: SCIURUS CAROLINENSIS

  

They were first noted by German naturalist, botanist, entomologist, herpetologist, and malacologist - Johann Friedrich Gmelin in 1788.

  

A mammal and rodent, predominantly herbivorous they are none the less an omnivore with a life span of between two and ten years. They can grow to 70cm in length and weigh up to 8kg. There are more than two hundred and sixty species of worldwide squirrel, the smallest being the African pygmy squirrel at just 10cm in length, whereas the Indian giant squirrel is three feet long! The oldest fossil of a squirrel, Hesperopetes, dates back to the late Eocene epoch period Chadronian period of 40-35 million years ago. The tree squirrels rotate their ankles by 180 degrees, so that the hind paws pointy backwards gripping tree bark which enables them to descend a tree headfirst.

  

Originally native to Eastern and Midwestern United States of America, they were first introduced into the United Kingdom in 1876 in Henbury Park, Macclesfield in Cheshire when Victorian banker Thomas V. Brocklehurst released a pair of Greys that he brought back from a business trip to America after their attraction as pets had waned. Victorians had a penchant for collecting exotic animals and birds of the world, but trends came and went and subsequently animals were simply discarded into the wilderness. There are early records of greys released near Denbighshire in north Wales from private collections. Later introduced to several regions in the UK, they quickly settled and spread, colonizing an area of three hundred miles in a quarter of a century between Argyll and Stirlingshire in Scotland.

  

Introductions of the Greys between 1902 and 1929 (the year of the last recorded introduction), included: Regent’s Park in London, Berkshire, Northamptonshire, Oxfordshire, Oxfordshire, Devon, Warwickshire, Nottinghamshire, Suffolk and Hampshire. Grey Squirrels spread into Gloucestershire and eastern Wiltshire with animals coming directly from the United States or from Woburn. One hundred greys were released in Richmond Park in Surrey in 1902, Ninety one into Regent’s Park between 1905 and 1907 and a further ten New Jersey imported greys were introduced into Woburn Park in Bedfordshire.

  

Predators include hawks, weasels, raccoons, bobcats, foxes, domestic and feral cats, snakes, owls, and dogs, African harrier-hawks in Africa and... oh yes, Mankind pretty much everywhere who despise, mistreat, cull or eat it .

  

FACTS, MYTHS AND THAT POXY PARAPOX!

  

The massive decline in native red squirrels blamed upon the spread of the invasive greys has always been perhaps a little harsh as reds were already in a steep decline due to loss of habitat and disease and thus the greys simply took over the areas where the reds were dwindling. It's also a fact that reds were also seen as a plague, branded as pests who killed birds and damaged trees and the culling of reds almost brought them to the brink of extinction. Licenses to kill reds could still be obtained up until the seventies!

  

Reds suffered at the hands of mankind thanks to a combination of agricultural deforestation also linked with war and fuel needs which caused extinction in Southern Scotland and Ireland by the early eighteenth century, way before greys had been introduced. Harsh winters killed off the less hardy red population in the early nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

  

Greys are more adept at finding food and adapting to locations and environments, but also carry the squirrel poxvirus (SQPV) which although not particularly harmful to them, is a serious infection for the reds.

  

Parapox in red squirrels causes swollen lesions around the mouth, eyes, ears and nose also the front paws and sometimes genitals and skin ulcers and kills a red within fifteen days. There is no definitive correlation between the spread of the virus and the spread of the Greys, it actually arrived in several areas before the greys began to colonize there. An epidemic virus was observed in Red squirrels from at least 1900 with isolation attempts failing, and the first case of Parapox in the UK was in 1980 in the county of Norfolk. Greys cannot transmit the virus to reds via saliva or faeces, but reds can between each other from bodily secretions and at animal feeders in gardens. The transmission from greys to reds is though to come from parasites. Eight to ten per cent of reds survive the virus, and there is some evidence that reds are slowly building an evolved resistance.

  

Greys are seen as pests to forest land, stripping bark from trees during May and June, and are also capable of destroying household bins, water pipes, causing roof damage not to mention taking eggs and killing young chicks of ground nesting and songbird populations. They also take from bird feeders and there is a whole industry for creating squirrel proof feeders these days.

  

THE CULLING OF GREY SQUIRRELS

  

Grey squirrels have limited legal protection and can be legally controlled all year round by a variety of methods including shooting and trapping. Methods of trapping and killing include Drey poking and shooting, Tunnel trapping using spring traps set in accordance with BASC’s trapping pest mammals code of practice. They can also be shot using a shotgun or powerful air rifle or up until September 30th 2014 poisoned by Warfarin (Now outlawed).

  

Whilst professional trapping and extermination is hopefully done as humanely as possible, there have been cases, many of them where cost savings have been gained by battering the squirrels to death! Grey squirrels are trapped in ghastly metal contraptions for hours and hours, wearing themselves out frantically trying to escape by gnawing at the metals bars. They bite the floor and scratch at them with their claws and do not get a moments peace or rest through absolute fear. Once the traps are retrieved, each squirrel, terrified will be thrown into a sack and smacked on the head countless times with a blunt instrument. When a mother is slaughtered, her babies who are totally dependent on her, will die a slow death of thirst and starvation.

  

There is an argument for the control of Greys on many grounds but also a counter argument that Culling does not work, and has not on countless times where, once a population of greys have been culled, the nearest group will move back in and claim the land. The university of Bristol concluded that there was little evidence that culling greys to save red squirrels was effective, and that perhaps finding a way of boosting red squirrel immunity to the poxvirus or planting areas of yew trees where reds are known to thrive and spending money on research into positive moves might be a better option.

  

In Ireland, the re-introduction of the Pine marten, a species made extinct originally by the very same land owners who also wish to do the same to the grey squirrel, has seen the rapid demise of the grey and the re-introction of the native reds. Red squirrels are smaller and more nimble than their grey counterparts, and as such can get to the very ends of tree branches where neither the pine martins, nor more importantly the heavier greys can, thus surviving and thriving. As a result in Ireland, the grey squirrel population has crashed in approximately 9,000 km2 of its former range and the reds has become common once more after a thirty year absence... oh and Pine Martens are protected again!

  

In Scotland, Pine Martens exist in areas where Red squirrels thrive, and greys do not. So perhaps there is a lesson here, as in England where there are no pine martens, the greys are prolific breeders. So there is an argument against the barbarity of shooting and poisoning greys, and if, as so many believe, the greys MUST be controlled, how about a more humane and natural method that nature intended.. with re-introduction of predators. Just a thought!

  

So a few facts and figures on the greys and to wrap up, from a purely personal perspective I love these little guys, as I do almost every creature in nature other than those eight legged beasties that shall not be named and for which I have a deep and powerful phobia that borders on paranoia!

  

I could no more harm an animal deliberately than eat a McDonald's McRib (Once saw how they are made and let me just say... eeeuuuuuwwwww!!). They are small, cute, cuddly, furry, they photograph beautifully, have great personality and make me smile. They trust me enough to take food from my hand in parks, and I can't bare the though of ugly, hairy land owners sticking a shotgun in their face and blowing them away! I appreciate they can be a pest, a problem, a menace, that their PR managers might have a bit of a problem winning you over when they flay small chicks alive on your lawn or decimate the songbird population by stealing their eggs.... and perhaps there is a need to keep the population under control and try and re-establish the red population.....

  

Yep I get that....

  

I just hope we can solve the problem more humanely to create a peaceful coexistence of the reds and greys in different areas. A man can dream can't he.

  

Paul Williams June 18th 2021

©DESPITE STRAIGHT LINES (Paul Williams).

  

.

.

  

Photograph taken at an altitude of Six metres, at 13:57pm on Monday 20th January 2020, on a beautifully sunny afternoon off Great Cross Avenue in Greenwich Park, looking towards the Old Royal Naval College, a World heritage site, designed by Christopher Wren and built between 1696 and 1712, and now managed by the Greenwich Foundation for the old royal naval college.

  

.

.

  

Nikon D850 Hand held with Sigma OS Optical Stabilization enabled on normal setting. Focal length 380mm Shutter speed: 1/60s Aperture f/16.0 ISO400 Image area FX (36 x 24) NEF RAW Size L (8256 x 5504) 14 bit uncompressed file Focus mode AF-C focus. AF-C Priority Selection: Release. Nikon Back button focusing enabled. Auto ISO 3D Tracking watch area: Normal 55 Tracking points.AF-Area mode single point & 73 point switchable. Exposure mode: Shutter priority mode. Matrix metering. White balance on: Auto1 (4250K). Colour space: RGB. Vignette control: Normal. Picture control: Auto (Sharpening A +1/Clarity A+1)

  

Sigma 60-600mm f/4.5-6.3DG OS HSM SPORTS. Lee SW150 MKI filter holder with MK2 light shield and custom made velcro fitting for the Sigma lens. Lee SW150 circular polariser glass filter.Lee SW150 Filters field pouch.Nikon GP-1 GPS module. Hoodman HEYENRG round eyepiece oversized eyecup.Mcoplus professional MB-D850 multi function battery grip 6960.Two Nikon EN-EL15a batteries (Priority to battery in Battery grip). Black Rapid Curve Breathe strap. My Memory 128GB Class 10 SDXC 80MB/s card. Lowepro Flipside 400 AW camera bag.

    

.

.

  

LATITUDE: N 51d 30m 7.66s

LONGITUDE: E 0d 8m 2.65s

ALTITUDE: 35.0m

  

RAW (TIFF) FILE: 130.00MB NEF: 94.1MB

PROCESSED (JPeg) FILE: 45.70MB

    

.

.

  

PROCESSING POWER:

  

Nikon D850 Firmware versions C 1.10 (9/05/2019) LD Distortion Data 2.018 (18/02/20) LF 1.00

  

HP 110-352na Desktop PC with AMD Quad-Core A6-5200 APU 64Bit processor. Radeon HD8400 graphics. 8 GB DDR3 Memory with 1TB Data storage. 64-bit Windows 10. Verbatim USB 2.0 1TB desktop hard drive. WD My Passport Ultra 1tb USB3 Portable hard drive. Nikon ViewNX-1 64bit Version 1.4.1 (18/02/2020). Nikon Capture NX-D 64bit Version 1.6.2 (18/02/2020). Nikon Picture Control Utility 2 (Version 2.4.5 (18/02/2020). Nikon Transfer 2 Version 2.13.5. Adobe photoshop Elements 8 Version 8.0 64bit.

   

© Ben Heine || Facebook || Twitter || www.benheine.com

_______________________________________________

 

For more information about my art: info@benheine.com

_______________________________________________

  

All The World Is Looking

 

A poem by Peter S. Quinn

 

All the world is looking,

For some peace;

In beauty of nature,

To harmonize and please.

And in the lights,

Of things you see;

You shall be rewarded,

With the greenest tree.

 

For nature is like perfect art,

It bewitches your eyes with beauty.

 

All the world is looking,

For kindness of thought;

Every step forward,

Mankind themselves brought.

And if it's destructive,

They brought it self in;

All foolishness of any kind,

Seldom shall win.

 

For nature is one in every part,

And man soon pays for all his sin.

 

As I grow older,

I dwell on and see;

The beauty of nature,

In each every tree.

And colors of summer,

In blooms that glows;

And rivers with waters,

That freely flows.

 

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

 

The poem appeared on www.poemhunter.com/peter-s-quinn

the floor was also almost set on fire during this - apparently it's more difficult to set fire to the middle of a page.

 

if you post this picture, credit it to this photo or neverendingwank.tumblr.com

.The Mana Spirits, also known as Elemental Spirits, are magical beings representative of the elements that make up the world. There are eight spirits in all:Salamander, the spirit of fire Undine, the spirit of water, Gnome, the spirit of earth, Jinn, the spirit of wind, Dryad, the spirit of wood,Luna, the spirit of the moon,Wisp, the spirit of light,Shade, the spirit of darkness.According to Seiken Densetsu 3, in her creation of the world, the Mana Goddess forged the Mana Sword and with it sealed the eight God-Beasts inside Mana Stones, which were then scattered across the world; the Elementals were charged with the duty of protecting the Stones. While each Elemental is a powerful spirit, being an embodiment has a drawback in that they can be physically harmed or limited, notably Jinn (Sylphid) in Seiken Densetsu 3 and Salamando in Secret of Mana. In the World History Encyclopedia featured in Legend of Mana, the Elementals are descended from the Mana Goddess, the embodiment of the creative and destructive forces of Mana, each being born from the light which formed the respective elements of Fa'Diel, the world of Mana.There is a basic system of opposing elemental pairs in the games before Legend of Mana: Undine (water) and Salamando (fire); Gnome (earth) and Sylphid/Jinn (wind); Lumina/Wisp (light) and Shade (darkness); Dryad (nature) and Luna (celestial). The system works differently in Legend of Mana, with the four Western Elements in a circular relationship: Undine overcomes Salamander, who overcomes Gnome, who overcomes Jinn, who overcomes Undine, thus launching the cycle over again; while Wisp and Shade are opposites, and Aura (gold/metal) becomes the new opposite to Dryad (wood) (see Elements).

mana.wikia.com/wiki/Mana_Spirit

www.mythsdreamssymbols.com/dreamsarchetypes.html

 

Imagine you are sitting in a theater, listening to a heroine sing longingly of her beloved. Suddenly the stage is invaded by two bands of acrobatic warriors. They tumble and twirl, cartwheel and somersault, flip this way and that. From the orchestra come sounds of cymbal, gong, and clapper to punctuate the action.

Dreams and myths are constellations of archetypal images. They are not free compositions by an artist who plans them for artistic or informational effects. Dreams and myths happen to human beings. The archetype speaks through us. It is a presence and a possibility of "significance." The ancients called them "gods" and "goddesses."What then is an archetype? Jung discovered that humans have a "preconscious psychic disposition that enables a (man) to react in a human manner." These potentials for creation are actualized when they enter consciousness as images. There is a very important distinction between the "unconscious, pre- existent disposition" and the "archetypal image." The archetype may emerge into consciousness in myriads of variations. To put it another way, there are a very few basic archetypes or patterns which exist at the unconscious level, but there are an infinite variety of specific images which point back to these few patterns. Since these potentials for significance are not under conscious control, we may tend to fear them and deny their existence through repression. This has been a marked tendency in Modern Man, the man created by the French Revolution, the man who seeks to lead a life that is totally rational and under conscious control. Where do the archetypes come from? In his earlier work, Jung tried to link the archetypes to heredity and regarded them as instinctual. We are born with these patterns which structure our imagination and make it distinctly human. Archetypes are thus very closely linked to our bodies. In his later work, Jung was convinced that the archetypes are psychoid, that is, "they shape matter (nature) as well as mind (psyche)" (Houston Smith, Forgotten Truth, 40). In other words, archetypes are elemental forces which play a vital role in the creation of the world and of the human mind itself. The ancients called them elemental spirits How do archetypes operate? Jung found the archetypal patterns and images in every culture and in every time period of human history. They behaved according to the same laws in all cases. He postulated the Universal Unconscious to account for this fact. We humans do not have separate, personal unconscious minds. We share a single Universal Unconscious. Mind is rooted in the Unconscious just as a tree is rooted in the ground. Imagine the Universal Unconscious as a cosmic computer. Our minds are subdirectories of the root directory. If we look in our personal "work areas," we find much material that is unique to our historical experience--could only have happened to us--but it is shaped according to universal patterns. If we humans have the courage to seek the source to which our "account" belongs, we begin to discover ever more impersonal and universal patterns. The directories of the cosmic computer to which we can gain access are filled with the myths of the human species. Modern man fancies that he has escaped the myths through his conscious repudiation of revealed religion in favor of a purely rational natural religion (read: Natural Science). But consider his theories of human origin. In the beginning, there was a Big Bang, a cosmic explosion. This is an image from which reason may begin to work, but it is not itself a rational statement. It is a mythical construct. Consider the theory of biological evolution. Man's ancestors emerge from the seas, and they in turn emerged from a cosmic soup of DNA. The majority of creation myths also begin with the same image of man emerging from primordial oceans. See Genesis 1 or the Babylonian creation epic. Consider the Modern tendency to call ourselves persons from the Latin persona. The term derives from the "mask" of Dionysus. Moderns are the wearers of masks! The reality is concealed in the darkness of mystery. This too is a mythical construct. Synchronicity Personality theorists have argued for many years about whether psychological processes function in terms of mechanism or teleology. Mechanism is the idea that things work in through cause and effect: One thing leads to another which leads to another, and so on, so that the past determines the present. Teleology is the idea that we are lead on by our ideas about a future state, by things like purposes, meanings, values, and so on. Mechanism is linked with determinism and with the natural sciences. Teleology is linked with free will and has become rather rare. It is still common among moral, legal, and religious philosophers, and, of course, among personality theorists. Among the people discussed in this book, Freudians and behaviorists tend to be mechanists, while the neo-Freudians, humanists, and existentialists tend to be teleologists. Jung believes that both play a part. But he adds a third alternative called synchronicity.

Synchronicity is the occurrence of two events that are not linked causally, nor linked teleologically, yet are meaningfully related. Once, a client was describing a dream involving a scarab beetle when, at that very instant, a very similar beetle flew into the window. Often, people dream about something, like the death of a loved one, and find the next morning that their loved one did, in fact, die at about that time. Sometimes people pick up he phone to call a friend, only to find that their friend is already on the line. Most psychologists would call these things coincidences, or try to show how they are more likely to occur than we think. Jung believed the were indications of how we are connected, with our fellow humans and with nature in general, through the collective unconscious. Jung was never clear about his own religious beliefs. But this unusual idea of synchronicity is easily explained by the Hindu view of reality. In the Hindu view, our individual egos are like islands in a sea: We look out at the world and each other and think we are separate entities. What we don't see is that we are connected to each other by means of the ocean floor beneath the waters. The outer world is called maya, meaning illusion, and is thought of as God's dream or God's dance. That is, God creates it, but it has no reality of its own. Our individual egos they call jivatman, which means individual souls. But they, too, are something of an illusion. We are all actually extensions of the one and only Atman, or God, who allows bits of himself to forget his identity, to become apparently separate and independent, to become us. But we never truly are separate. When we die, we wake up and realize who we were from the beginning: God. When we dream or meditate, we sink into our personal unconscious, coming closer and closer to our true selves, the collective unconscious. It is in states like this that we are especially open to "communications" from other egos. Synchronicity makes Jung's theory one of the rare ones that is not only compatible with parapsychological phenomena, but actually tries to explain them!

www.mythsdreamssymbols.com/dreamsarchetypes.html

 

On this day ghosts and other supernatural creatures come out from the Underworld and move among the living. Families prepare food and other offerings and place them on a shrine dedicated to deceased relatives.Mana You must understand that these archetypes are not really biological things, like Freud's instincts. They are more spiritual demands. For example, if you dreamt about long things, Freud might suggest these things represent the phallus and ultimately sex. But Jung might have a very different interpretation. Even dreaming quite specifically about a penis might not have much to do with some unfulfilled need for sex. It is curious that in primitive societies, phallic symbols do not usually refer to sex at all. They usually symbolize mana, or spiritual power. These symbols would be displayed on occasions when the spirits are being called upon to increase the yield of corn, or fish, or to heal someone. The connection between the penis and strength, between semen and seed, between fertilization and fertility are understood by most cultures.The concept of archetypes is central to Jungian psychology and myth analysis. However there are many different ways of looking at what exactly an archetype is (cf Heiddegger). Carol Pearson, in her book, Awakening The Heroes Within shows how five different individuals would view the idea of archetypes.A Shaman, or other seeker after spiritualism, will conceive of archetypes as gods and goddesses, encoded in the collective unconscious, whom are scorned at great risk. Academics and other rationalists, who are typically suspicious of anything that sounds mystic, may conceive of archetypes as controlling paradigms or metaphors, the invisible patterns in the mind that control how we experience the world.Scientists may see the process of identifying archetypes as similar to other scientific processes. Physicists learn about the smallest subatomic particles by studying the traces they leave; psychologists and other scholars study archetypes by examining their presence in art, literature, myth, and dream. Carl Jung recognized that the archetypical mages that recurred in his patients' dreams also could be found in the myths, legends, and art of ancient peoples, as well as in contemporary iterature, religion, and art. They know that they are archetypical becausethey leave the same traces over time and space. People who are committed to religious positions that emphasize one all-encompassing God, can distinguish the spiritual truth of monotheism from the pluralistic psychological truth of archetypes. The god we mean when we speak of "The One True God" is beyond the human capacity to envision and name. The archetypes are like different facets of that God, accessible to the psyche's capacity to imagine numinous reality. Thus these archetypes helpthe person connect to the Eternal; they make great mysteries more accessible by providing multiple images. This is evident in both the Catholic idea of the Trinity (The Father, The Son, and The Holy Ghost), and the Buddhist idea of one Buddha (which is then divisible into the 40, the 400, and the 4000 facets or aspects of that single deity, each with it's own name and story). Finally archetypes are the primal symbols of aspects of our own nature. By identifying with one of more archetypes we can identify our own nature. By portraying these archetypes, we portray ourselves. Thus we can use these archetypes as a spiritual guide to the discovery of selfhood. And what does an archetype mean to ? That's simple. Archetypes are symbols. In the Hermetic Tradition there is very little difference between the symbol and the thing it represents. This is explicit in the Law of Association. By manipulating the symbol it is therefore also possible to directly manipulate the thing. And because archetypes are symbols representing facets of ourselves they allow us to change ourselves. As within, so without. The macrocosm embodies the microcosm.So much for the content of the psyche. Now let's turn to the principles of its operation. Jung gives us three principles, beginning with the principle of opposites. Every wish immediately suggests its opposite. If I have a good thought, for example, I cannot help but have in me somewhere the opposite bad thought. In fact, it is a very basic point: In order to have a concept of good, you must have a concept of bad, just like you can't have up without down or black without white. This idea came home to me when I was about eleven. I occasionally tried to help poor innocent woodland creatures who had been hurt in some way -- often, I'm afraid, killing them in the process. Once I tried to nurse a baby robin back to health. But when I picked it up, I was so struck by how light it was that the thought came to me that I could easily crush it in my hand. Mind you, I didn't like the idea, but it was undeniably there.According to Jung, it is the opposition that creates the power (or libido) of the psyche. It is like the two poles of a battery, or the splitting of an atom. It is the contrast that gives energy, so that a strong contrast gives strong energy, and a weak contrast gives weak energy. The second principle is the principle of equivalence. The energy created from the opposition is "given" to both sides equally. So, when I held that baby bird in my hand, there was energy to go ahead and try to help it. But there is an equal amount of energy to go ahead and crush it. I tried to help the bird, so that energy went into the various behaviors involved in helping it. But what happens to the other energy? Well, that depends on your attitude towards the wish that you didn't fulfill. If you acknowledge it, face it, keep it available to the conscious mind, then the energy goes towards a general improvement of your psyche. You grow, in other words.

But if you pretend that you never had that evil wish, if you deny and suppress it, the energy will go towards the development of a complex. A complex is a pattern of suppressed thoughts and feelings that cluster -- constellate -- around a theme provided by some archetype. If you deny ever having thought about crushing the little bird, you might put that idea into the form offered by the shadow (your "dark side"). Or if a man denies his emotional side, his emotionality might find its way into the anima archetype. And so on. Here's where the problem comes: If you pretend all your life that you are only good, that you don't even have the capacity to lie and cheat and steal and kill, then all the times when you do good, that other side of you goes into a complex around the shadow. That complex will begin to develop a life of its own, and it will haunt you. You might find yourself having nightmares in which you go around stomping on little baby birds! If it goes on long enough, the complex may take over, may "possess" you, and you might wind up with a multiple personality. In the movie The Three Faces of Eve, Joanne Woodward portrayed a meek, mild woman who eventually discovered that she went out and partied like crazy on Saturday nights. She didn't smoke, but found cigarettes in her purse, didn't drink, but woke up with hangovers, didn't fool around, but found herself in sexy outfits. Although multiple personality is rare, it does tend to involve these kinds of black-and-white extremes. The final principle is the principle of entropy. This is the tendency for oppositions to come together, and so for energy to decrease, over a person's lifetime. Jung borrowed the idea from physics, where entropy refers to the tendency of all physical systems to "run down," that is, for all energy to become evenly distributed. If you have, for example, a heat source in one corner of the room, the whole room will eventually be heated.When we are young, the opposites will tend to be extreme, and so we tend to have lots of energy. For example, adolescents tend to exaggerate male-female differences, with boys trying hard to be macho and girls trying equally hard to be feminine. And so their sexual activity is invested with great amounts of energy! Plus, adolescents often swing from one extreme to another, being wild and crazy one minute and finding religion the next.As we get older, most of us come to be more comfortable with our different facets. We are a bit less naively idealistic and recognize that we are all mixtures of good and bad. We are less threatened by the opposite sex within us and become more androgynous. Even physically, in old age, men and women become more alike. This process of rising above our opposites, of seeing both sides of who we are, is called transcendence.

www.mythsdreamssymbols.com/dreamsarchetypes.html

 

The ego is the centre of consciousness. It is identity. It is 'I'. But it is not the totality of the psyche. Being the king of consciousness amounts to dominion over a small but important land surrounded by a wide world of terra incognita. The more aware the King is of lands beyond his domain the more secure he will be on his throne, but he must not be tempted to open the borders to it all. In Jungian theory the unconscious is far too vast to ever be made fully conscious, poking about in it is not without danger, yet ignoring it is also a mistake since it leads to a brittle fixedness which at best impedes growth, at worst can break when under the pressure of the 'threat' of change.So called "humanist spirit" relates to the thought and the viewpoint concerning man's mental life: the humanist spirit is linked with humanitarianism and is different from each other. Compared with animals, the author concluded: Tao (Dao) and Food, kindheartedness and living, righteousness and benefit, moral integration and feats of strength, principles and appetites and independent will, etc. all are human personality values. Simultaneously strong human social responsibility is also human social value. Human beings live in nature, mutually coordinate, and co-exist in harmony together with nature which is also the representation of man's natural

www.google.fr/search?q=ghosts+supernatural+creatures+Unde...

 

Graffiti (plural; singular graffiti or graffito, the latter rarely used except in archeology) is art that is written, painted or drawn on a wall or other surface, usually without permission and within public view. Graffiti ranges from simple written words to elaborate wall paintings, and has existed since ancient times, with examples dating back to ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, and the Roman Empire (see also mural).

 

Graffiti is a controversial subject. In most countries, marking or painting property without permission is considered by property owners and civic authorities as defacement and vandalism, which is a punishable crime, citing the use of graffiti by street gangs to mark territory or to serve as an indicator of gang-related activities. Graffiti has become visualized as a growing urban "problem" for many cities in industrialized nations, spreading from the New York City subway system and Philadelphia in the early 1970s to the rest of the United States and Europe and other world regions

 

"Graffiti" (usually both singular and plural) and the rare singular form "graffito" are from the Italian word graffiato ("scratched"). The term "graffiti" is used in art history for works of art produced by scratching a design into a surface. A related term is "sgraffito", which involves scratching through one layer of pigment to reveal another beneath it. This technique was primarily used by potters who would glaze their wares and then scratch a design into them. In ancient times graffiti were carved on walls with a sharp object, although sometimes chalk or coal were used. The word originates from Greek γράφειν—graphein—meaning "to write".

 

The term graffiti originally referred to the inscriptions, figure drawings, and such, found on the walls of ancient sepulchres or ruins, as in the Catacombs of Rome or at Pompeii. Historically, these writings were not considered vanadlism, which today is considered part of the definition of graffiti.

 

The only known source of the Safaitic language, an ancient form of Arabic, is from graffiti: inscriptions scratched on to the surface of rocks and boulders in the predominantly basalt desert of southern Syria, eastern Jordan and northern Saudi Arabia. Safaitic dates from the first century BC to the fourth century AD.

 

Some of the oldest cave paintings in the world are 40,000 year old ones found in Australia. The oldest written graffiti was found in ancient Rome around 2500 years ago. Most graffiti from the time was boasts about sexual experiences Graffiti in Ancient Rome was a form of communication, and was not considered vandalism.

 

Ancient tourists visiting the 5th-century citadel at Sigiriya in Sri Lanka write their names and commentary over the "mirror wall", adding up to over 1800 individual graffiti produced there between the 6th and 18th centuries. Most of the graffiti refer to the frescoes of semi-nude females found there. One reads:

 

Wet with cool dew drops

fragrant with perfume from the flowers

came the gentle breeze

jasmine and water lily

dance in the spring sunshine

side-long glances

of the golden-hued ladies

stab into my thoughts

heaven itself cannot take my mind

as it has been captivated by one lass

among the five hundred I have seen here.

 

Among the ancient political graffiti examples were Arab satirist poems. Yazid al-Himyari, an Umayyad Arab and Persian poet, was most known for writing his political poetry on the walls between Sajistan and Basra, manifesting a strong hatred towards the Umayyad regime and its walis, and people used to read and circulate them very widely.

 

Graffiti, known as Tacherons, were frequently scratched on Romanesque Scandinavian church walls. When Renaissance artists such as Pinturicchio, Raphael, Michelangelo, Ghirlandaio, or Filippino Lippi descended into the ruins of Nero's Domus Aurea, they carved or painted their names and returned to initiate the grottesche style of decoration.

 

There are also examples of graffiti occurring in American history, such as Independence Rock, a national landmark along the Oregon Trail.

 

Later, French soldiers carved their names on monuments during the Napoleonic campaign of Egypt in the 1790s. Lord Byron's survives on one of the columns of the Temple of Poseidon at Cape Sounion in Attica, Greece.

 

The oldest known example of graffiti "monikers" found on traincars created by hobos and railworkers since the late 1800s. The Bozo Texino monikers were documented by filmmaker Bill Daniel in his 2005 film, Who is Bozo Texino?.

 

In World War II, an inscription on a wall at the fortress of Verdun was seen as an illustration of the US response twice in a generation to the wrongs of the Old World:

 

During World War II and for decades after, the phrase "Kilroy was here" with an accompanying illustration was widespread throughout the world, due to its use by American troops and ultimately filtering into American popular culture. Shortly after the death of Charlie Parker (nicknamed "Yardbird" or "Bird"), graffiti began appearing around New York with the words "Bird Lives".

 

Modern graffiti art has its origins with young people in 1960s and 70s in New York City and Philadelphia. Tags were the first form of stylised contemporary graffiti. Eventually, throw-ups and pieces evolved with the desire to create larger art. Writers used spray paint and other kind of materials to leave tags or to create images on the sides subway trains. and eventually moved into the city after the NYC metro began to buy new trains and paint over graffiti.

 

While the art had many advocates and appreciators—including the cultural critic Norman Mailer—others, including New York City mayor Ed Koch, considered it to be defacement of public property, and saw it as a form of public blight. The ‘taggers’ called what they did ‘writing’—though an important 1974 essay by Mailer referred to it using the term ‘graffiti.’

 

Contemporary graffiti style has been heavily influenced by hip hop culture and the myriad international styles derived from Philadelphia and New York City Subway graffiti; however, there are many other traditions of notable graffiti in the twentieth century. Graffiti have long appeared on building walls, in latrines, railroad boxcars, subways, and bridges.

 

An early graffito outside of New York or Philadelphia was the inscription in London reading "Clapton is God" in reference to the guitarist Eric Clapton. Creating the cult of the guitar hero, the phrase was spray-painted by an admirer on a wall in an Islington, north London in the autumn of 1967. The graffito was captured in a photograph, in which a dog is urinating on the wall.

 

Films like Style Wars in the 80s depicting famous writers such as Skeme, Dondi, MinOne, and ZEPHYR reinforced graffiti's role within New York's emerging hip-hop culture. Although many officers of the New York City Police Department found this film to be controversial, Style Wars is still recognized as the most prolific film representation of what was going on within the young hip hop culture of the early 1980s. Fab 5 Freddy and Futura 2000 took hip hop graffiti to Paris and London as part of the New York City Rap Tour in 1983

 

Commercialization and entrance into mainstream pop culture

Main article: Commercial graffiti

With the popularity and legitimization of graffiti has come a level of commercialization. In 2001, computer giant IBM launched an advertising campaign in Chicago and San Francisco which involved people spray painting on sidewalks a peace symbol, a heart, and a penguin (Linux mascot), to represent "Peace, Love, and Linux." IBM paid Chicago and San Francisco collectively US$120,000 for punitive damages and clean-up costs.

 

In 2005, a similar ad campaign was launched by Sony and executed by its advertising agency in New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Miami, to market its handheld PSP gaming system. In this campaign, taking notice of the legal problems of the IBM campaign, Sony paid building owners for the rights to paint on their buildings "a collection of dizzy-eyed urban kids playing with the PSP as if it were a skateboard, a paddle, or a rocking horse".

 

Tristan Manco wrote that Brazil "boasts a unique and particularly rich, graffiti scene ... [earning] it an international reputation as the place to go for artistic inspiration". Graffiti "flourishes in every conceivable space in Brazil's cities". Artistic parallels "are often drawn between the energy of São Paulo today and 1970s New York". The "sprawling metropolis", of São Paulo has "become the new shrine to graffiti"; Manco alludes to "poverty and unemployment ... [and] the epic struggles and conditions of the country's marginalised peoples", and to "Brazil's chronic poverty", as the main engines that "have fuelled a vibrant graffiti culture". In world terms, Brazil has "one of the most uneven distributions of income. Laws and taxes change frequently". Such factors, Manco argues, contribute to a very fluid society, riven with those economic divisions and social tensions that underpin and feed the "folkloric vandalism and an urban sport for the disenfranchised", that is South American graffiti art.

 

Prominent Brazilian writers include Os Gêmeos, Boleta, Nunca, Nina, Speto, Tikka, and T.Freak. Their artistic success and involvement in commercial design ventures has highlighted divisions within the Brazilian graffiti community between adherents of the cruder transgressive form of pichação and the more conventionally artistic values of the practitioners of grafite.

 

Graffiti in the Middle East has emerged slowly, with taggers operating in Egypt, Lebanon, the Gulf countries like Bahrain or the United Arab Emirates, Israel, and in Iran. The major Iranian newspaper Hamshahri has published two articles on illegal writers in the city with photographic coverage of Iranian artist A1one's works on Tehran walls. Tokyo-based design magazine, PingMag, has interviewed A1one and featured photographs of his work. The Israeli West Bank barrier has become a site for graffiti, reminiscent in this sense of the Berlin Wall. Many writers in Israel come from other places around the globe, such as JUIF from Los Angeles and DEVIONE from London. The religious reference "נ נח נחמ נחמן מאומן" ("Na Nach Nachma Nachman Meuman") is commonly seen in graffiti around Israel.

 

Graffiti has played an important role within the street art scene in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), especially following the events of the Arab Spring of 2011 or the Sudanese Revolution of 2018/19. Graffiti is a tool of expression in the context of conflict in the region, allowing people to raise their voices politically and socially. Famous street artist Banksy has had an important effect in the street art scene in the MENA area, especially in Palestine where some of his works are located in the West Bank barrier and Bethlehem.

 

There are also a large number of graffiti influences in Southeast Asian countries that mostly come from modern Western culture, such as Malaysia, where graffiti have long been a common sight in Malaysia's capital city, Kuala Lumpur. Since 2010, the country has begun hosting a street festival to encourage all generations and people from all walks of life to enjoy and encourage Malaysian street culture.

 

The modern-day graffitists can be found with an arsenal of various materials that allow for a successful production of a piece. This includes such techniques as scribing. However, spray paint in aerosol cans is the number one medium for graffiti. From this commodity comes different styles, technique, and abilities to form master works of graffiti. Spray paint can be found at hardware and art stores and comes in virtually every color.

 

Stencil graffiti is created by cutting out shapes and designs in a stiff material (such as cardboard or subject folders) to form an overall design or image. The stencil is then placed on the "canvas" gently and with quick, easy strokes of the aerosol can, the image begins to appear on the intended surface.

 

Some of the first examples were created in 1981 by artists Blek le Rat in Paris, in 1982 by Jef Aerosol in Tours (France); by 1985 stencils had appeared in other cities including New York City, Sydney, and Melbourne, where they were documented by American photographer Charles Gatewood and Australian photographer Rennie Ellis

 

Tagging is the practice of someone spray-painting "their name, initial or logo onto a public surface" in a handstyle unique to the writer. Tags were the first form of modern graffiti.

 

Modern graffiti art often incorporates additional arts and technologies. For example, Graffiti Research Lab has encouraged the use of projected images and magnetic light-emitting diodes (throwies) as new media for graffitists. yarnbombing is another recent form of graffiti. Yarnbombers occasionally target previous graffiti for modification, which had been avoided among the majority of graffitists.

 

Theories on the use of graffiti by avant-garde artists have a history dating back at least to the Asger Jorn, who in 1962 painting declared in a graffiti-like gesture "the avant-garde won't give up"

 

Many contemporary analysts and even art critics have begun to see artistic value in some graffiti and to recognize it as a form of public art. According to many art researchers, particularly in the Netherlands and in Los Angeles, that type of public art is, in fact an effective tool of social emancipation or, in the achievement of a political goal

 

In times of conflict, such murals have offered a means of communication and self-expression for members of these socially, ethnically, or racially divided communities, and have proven themselves as effective tools in establishing dialog and thus, of addressing cleavages in the long run. The Berlin Wall was also extensively covered by graffiti reflecting social pressures relating to the oppressive Soviet rule over the GDR.

 

Many artists involved with graffiti are also concerned with the similar activity of stenciling. Essentially, this entails stenciling a print of one or more colors using spray-paint. Recognized while exhibiting and publishing several of her coloured stencils and paintings portraying the Sri Lankan Civil War and urban Britain in the early 2000s, graffitists Mathangi Arulpragasam, aka M.I.A., has also become known for integrating her imagery of political violence into her music videos for singles "Galang" and "Bucky Done Gun", and her cover art. Stickers of her artwork also often appear around places such as London in Brick Lane, stuck to lamp posts and street signs, she having become a muse for other graffitists and painters worldwide in cities including Seville.

 

Graffitist believes that art should be on display for everyone in the public eye or in plain sight, not hidden away in a museum or a gallery. Art should color the streets, not the inside of some building. Graffiti is a form of art that cannot be owned or bought. It does not last forever, it is temporary, yet one of a kind. It is a form of self promotion for the artist that can be displayed anywhere form sidewalks, roofs, subways, building wall, etc. Art to them is for everyone and should be showed to everyone for free.

 

Graffiti is a way of communicating and a way of expressing what one feels in the moment. It is both art and a functional thing that can warn people of something or inform people of something. However, graffiti is to some people a form of art, but to some a form of vandalism. And many graffitists choose to protect their identities and remain anonymous or to hinder prosecution.

 

With the commercialization of graffiti (and hip hop in general), in most cases, even with legally painted "graffiti" art, graffitists tend to choose anonymity. This may be attributed to various reasons or a combination of reasons. Graffiti still remains the one of four hip hop elements that is not considered "performance art" despite the image of the "singing and dancing star" that sells hip hop culture to the mainstream. Being a graphic form of art, it might also be said that many graffitists still fall in the category of the introverted archetypal artist.

 

Banksy is one of the world's most notorious and popular street artists who continues to remain faceless in today's society. He is known for his political, anti-war stencil art mainly in Bristol, England, but his work may be seen anywhere from Los Angeles to Palestine. In the UK, Banksy is the most recognizable icon for this cultural artistic movement and keeps his identity a secret to avoid arrest. Much of Banksy's artwork may be seen around the streets of London and surrounding suburbs, although he has painted pictures throughout the world, including the Middle East, where he has painted on Israel's controversial West Bank barrier with satirical images of life on the other side. One depicted a hole in the wall with an idyllic beach, while another shows a mountain landscape on the other side. A number of exhibitions also have taken place since 2000, and recent works of art have fetched vast sums of money. Banksy's art is a prime example of the classic controversy: vandalism vs. art. Art supporters endorse his work distributed in urban areas as pieces of art and some councils, such as Bristol and Islington, have officially protected them, while officials of other areas have deemed his work to be vandalism and have removed it.

 

Pixnit is another artist who chooses to keep her identity from the general public. Her work focuses on beauty and design aspects of graffiti as opposed to Banksy's anti-government shock value. Her paintings are often of flower designs above shops and stores in her local urban area of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Some store owners endorse her work and encourage others to do similar work as well. "One of the pieces was left up above Steve's Kitchen, because it looks pretty awesome"- Erin Scott, the manager of New England Comics in Allston, Massachusetts.

 

Graffiti artists may become offended if photographs of their art are published in a commercial context without their permission. In March 2020, the Finnish graffiti artist Psyke expressed his displeasure at the newspaper Ilta-Sanomat publishing a photograph of a Peugeot 208 in an article about new cars, with his graffiti prominently shown on the background. The artist claims he does not want his art being used in commercial context, not even if he were to receive compensation.

 

Territorial graffiti marks urban neighborhoods with tags and logos to differentiate certain groups from others. These images are meant to show outsiders a stern look at whose turf is whose. The subject matter of gang-related graffiti consists of cryptic symbols and initials strictly fashioned with unique calligraphies. Gang members use graffiti to designate membership throughout the gang, to differentiate rivals and associates and, most commonly, to mark borders which are both territorial and ideological.

 

Graffiti has been used as a means of advertising both legally and illegally. Bronx-based TATS CRU has made a name for themselves doing legal advertising campaigns for companies such as Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Toyota, and MTV. In the UK, Covent Garden's Boxfresh used stencil images of a Zapatista revolutionary in the hopes that cross referencing would promote their store.

 

Smirnoff hired artists to use reverse graffiti (the use of high pressure hoses to clean dirty surfaces to leave a clean image in the surrounding dirt) to increase awareness of their product.

 

Graffiti often has a reputation as part of a subculture that rebels against authority, although the considerations of the practitioners often diverge and can relate to a wide range of attitudes. It can express a political practice and can form just one tool in an array of resistance techniques. One early example includes the anarcho-punk band Crass, who conducted a campaign of stenciling anti-war, anarchist, feminist, and anti-consumerist messages throughout the London Underground system during the late 1970s and early 1980s. In Amsterdam graffiti was a major part of the punk scene. The city was covered with names such as "De Zoot", "Vendex", and "Dr Rat". To document the graffiti a punk magazine was started that was called Gallery Anus. So when hip hop came to Europe in the early 1980s there was already a vibrant graffiti culture.

 

The student protests and general strike of May 1968 saw Paris bedecked in revolutionary, anarchistic, and situationist slogans such as L'ennui est contre-révolutionnaire ("Boredom is counterrevolutionary") and Lisez moins, vivez plus ("Read less, live more"). While not exhaustive, the graffiti gave a sense of the 'millenarian' and rebellious spirit, tempered with a good deal of verbal wit, of the strikers.

 

I think graffiti writing is a way of defining what our generation is like. Excuse the French, we're not a bunch of p---- artists. Traditionally artists have been considered soft and mellow people, a little bit kooky. Maybe we're a little bit more like pirates that way. We defend our territory, whatever space we steal to paint on, we defend it fiercely.

 

The developments of graffiti art which took place in art galleries and colleges as well as "on the street" or "underground", contributed to the resurfacing in the 1990s of a far more overtly politicized art form in the subvertising, culture jamming, or tactical media movements. These movements or styles tend to classify the artists by their relationship to their social and economic contexts, since, in most countries, graffiti art remains illegal in many forms except when using non-permanent paint. Since the 1990s with the rise of Street Art, a growing number of artists are switching to non-permanent paints and non-traditional forms of painting.

 

Contemporary practitioners, accordingly, have varied and often conflicting practices. Some individuals, such as Alexander Brener, have used the medium to politicize other art forms, and have used the prison sentences enforced on them as a means of further protest. The practices of anonymous groups and individuals also vary widely, and practitioners by no means always agree with each other's practices. For example, the anti-capitalist art group the Space Hijackers did a piece in 2004 about the contradiction between the capitalistic elements of Banksy and his use of political imagery.

 

Berlin human rights activist Irmela Mensah-Schramm has received global media attention and numerous awards for her 35-year campaign of effacing neo-Nazi and other right-wing extremist graffiti throughout Germany, often by altering hate speech in humorous ways.

 

In Serbian capital, Belgrade, the graffiti depicting a uniformed former general of Serb army and war criminal, convicted at ICTY for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including genocide and ethnic cleansing in Bosnian War, Ratko Mladić, appeared in a military salute alongside the words "General, thank to your mother". Aleks Eror, Berlin-based journalist, explains how "veneration of historical and wartime figures" through street art is not a new phenomenon in the region of former Yugoslavia, and that "in most cases is firmly focused on the future, rather than retelling the past". Eror is not only analyst pointing to danger of such an expressions for the region's future. In a long expose on the subject of Bosnian genocide denial, at Balkan Diskurs magazine and multimedia platform website, Kristina Gadže and Taylor Whitsell referred to these experiences as a young generations' "cultural heritage", in which young are being exposed to celebration and affirmation of war-criminals as part of their "formal education" and "inheritance".

 

There are numerous examples of genocide denial through celebration and affirmation of war criminals throughout the region of Western Balkans inhabited by Serbs using this form of artistic expression. Several more of these graffiti are found in Serbian capital, and many more across Serbia and Bosnian and Herzegovinian administrative entity, Republika Srpska, which is the ethnic Serbian majority enclave. Critics point that Serbia as a state, is willing to defend the mural of convicted war criminal, and have no intention to react on cases of genocide denial, noting that Interior Minister of Serbia, Aleksandar Vulin decision to ban any gathering with an intent to remove the mural, with the deployment of riot police, sends the message of "tacit endorsement". Consequently, on 9 November 2021, Serbian heavy police in riot gear, with graffiti creators and their supporters, blocked the access to the mural to prevent human rights groups and other activists to paint over it and mark the International Day Against Fascism and Antisemitism in that way, and even arrested two civic activist for throwing eggs at the graffiti.

 

Graffiti may also be used as an offensive expression. This form of graffiti may be difficult to identify, as it is mostly removed by the local authority (as councils which have adopted strategies of criminalization also strive to remove graffiti quickly). Therefore, existing racist graffiti is mostly more subtle and at first sight, not easily recognized as "racist". It can then be understood only if one knows the relevant "local code" (social, historical, political, temporal, and spatial), which is seen as heteroglot and thus a 'unique set of conditions' in a cultural context.

 

A spatial code for example, could be that there is a certain youth group in an area that is engaging heavily in racist activities. So, for residents (knowing the local code), a graffiti containing only the name or abbreviation of this gang already is a racist expression, reminding the offended people of their gang activities. Also a graffiti is in most cases, the herald of more serious criminal activity to come. A person who does not know these gang activities would not be able to recognize the meaning of this graffiti. Also if a tag of this youth group or gang is placed on a building occupied by asylum seekers, for example, its racist character is even stronger.

By making the graffiti less explicit (as adapted to social and legal constraints), these drawings are less likely to be removed, but do not lose their threatening and offensive character.

 

Elsewhere, activists in Russia have used painted caricatures of local officials with their mouths as potholes, to show their anger about the poor state of the roads. In Manchester, England, a graffitists painted obscene images around potholes, which often resulted in them being repaired within 48 hours.

 

In the early 1980s, the first art galleries to show graffitists to the public were Fashion Moda in the Bronx, Now Gallery and Fun Gallery, both in the East Village, Manhattan.

 

A 2006 exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum displayed graffiti as an art form that began in New York's outer boroughs and reached great heights in the early 1980s with the work of Crash, Lee, Daze, Keith Haring, and Jean-Michel Basquiat. It displayed 22 works by New York graffitists, including Crash, Daze, and Lady Pink. In an article about the exhibition in the magazine Time Out, curator Charlotta Kotik said that she hoped the exhibition would cause viewers to rethink their assumptions about graffiti.

 

From the 1970s onwards, Burhan Doğançay photographed urban walls all over the world; these he then archived for use as sources of inspiration for his painterly works. The project today known as "Walls of the World" grew beyond even his own expectations and comprises about 30,000 individual images. It spans a period of 40 years across five continents and 114 countries. In 1982, photographs from this project comprised a one-man exhibition titled "Les murs murmurent, ils crient, ils chantent ..." (The walls whisper, shout and sing ...) at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.

 

In Australia, art historians have judged some local graffiti of sufficient creative merit to rank them firmly within the arts. Oxford University Press's art history text Australian Painting 1788–2000 concludes with a long discussion of graffiti's key place within contemporary visual culture, including the work of several Australian practitioners.

 

Between March and April 2009, 150 artists exhibited 300 pieces of graffiti at the Grand Palais in Paris.

 

Spray paint has many negative environmental effects. The paint contains toxic chemicals, and the can uses volatile hydrocarbon gases to spray the paint onto a surface.

 

Volatile organic compound (VOC) leads to ground level ozone formation and most of graffiti related emissions are VOCs. A 2010 paper estimates 4,862 tons of VOCs were released in the United States in activities related to graffiti.

  

In China, Mao Zedong in the 1920s used revolutionary slogans and paintings in public places to galvanize the country's communist movement.

 

Based on different national conditions, many people believe that China's attitude towards Graffiti is fierce, but in fact, according to Lance Crayon in his film Spray Paint Beijing: Graffiti in the Capital of China, Graffiti is generally accepted in Beijing, with artists not seeing much police interference. Political and religiously sensitive graffiti, however, is not allowed.

 

In Hong Kong, Tsang Tsou Choi was known as the King of Kowloon for his calligraphy graffiti over many years, in which he claimed ownership of the area. Now some of his work is preserved officially.

 

In Taiwan, the government has made some concessions to graffitists. Since 2005 they have been allowed to freely display their work along some sections of riverside retaining walls in designated "Graffiti Zones". From 2007, Taipei's department of cultural affairs also began permitting graffiti on fences around major public construction sites. Department head Yong-ping Lee (李永萍) stated, "We will promote graffiti starting with the public sector, and then later in the private sector too. It's our goal to beautify the city with graffiti". The government later helped organize a graffiti contest in Ximending, a popular shopping district. graffitists caught working outside of these designated areas still face fines up to NT$6,000 under a department of environmental protection regulation. However, Taiwanese authorities can be relatively lenient, one veteran police officer stating anonymously, "Unless someone complains about vandalism, we won't get involved. We don't go after it proactively."

 

In 1993, after several expensive cars in Singapore were spray-painted, the police arrested a student from the Singapore American School, Michael P. Fay, questioned him, and subsequently charged him with vandalism. Fay pleaded guilty to vandalizing a car in addition to stealing road signs. Under the 1966 Vandalism Act of Singapore, originally passed to curb the spread of communist graffiti in Singapore, the court sentenced him to four months in jail, a fine of S$3,500 (US$2,233), and a caning. The New York Times ran several editorials and op-eds that condemned the punishment and called on the American public to flood the Singaporean embassy with protests. Although the Singapore government received many calls for clemency, Fay's caning took place in Singapore on 5 May 1994. Fay had originally received a sentence of six strokes of the cane, but the presiding president of Singapore, Ong Teng Cheong, agreed to reduce his caning sentence to four lashes.

 

In South Korea, Park Jung-soo was fined two million South Korean won by the Seoul Central District Court for spray-painting a rat on posters of the G-20 Summit a few days before the event in November 2011. Park alleged that the initial in "G-20" sounds like the Korean word for "rat", but Korean government prosecutors alleged that Park was making a derogatory statement about the president of South Korea, Lee Myung-bak, the host of the summit. This case led to public outcry and debate on the lack of government tolerance and in support of freedom of expression. The court ruled that the painting, "an ominous creature like a rat" amounts to "an organized criminal activity" and upheld the fine while denying the prosecution's request for imprisonment for Park.

 

In Europe, community cleaning squads have responded to graffiti, in some cases with reckless abandon, as when in 1992 in France a local Scout group, attempting to remove modern graffiti, damaged two prehistoric paintings of bison in the Cave of Mayrière supérieure near the French village of Bruniquel in Tarn-et-Garonne, earning them the 1992 Ig Nobel Prize in archeology.

 

In September 2006, the European Parliament directed the European Commission to create urban environment policies to prevent and eliminate dirt, litter, graffiti, animal excrement, and excessive noise from domestic and vehicular music systems in European cities, along with other concerns over urban life.

 

In Budapest, Hungary, both a city-backed movement called I Love Budapest and a special police division tackle the problem, including the provision of approved areas.

 

The Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003 became Britain's latest anti-graffiti legislation. In August 2004, the Keep Britain Tidy campaign issued a press release calling for zero tolerance of graffiti and supporting proposals such as issuing "on the spot" fines to graffiti offenders and banning the sale of aerosol paint to anyone under the age of 16. The press release also condemned the use of graffiti images in advertising and in music videos, arguing that real-world experience of graffiti stood far removed from its often-portrayed "cool" or "edgy'" image.

 

To back the campaign, 123 Members of Parliament (MPs) (including then Prime Minister Tony Blair), signed a charter which stated: "Graffiti is not art, it's crime. On behalf of my constituents, I will do all I can to rid our community of this problem."

 

In the UK, city councils have the power to take action against the owner of any property that has been defaced under the Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003 (as amended by the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act 2005) or, in certain cases, the Highways Act. This is often used against owners of property that are complacent in allowing protective boards to be defaced so long as the property is not damaged.

 

In July 2008, a conspiracy charge was used to convict graffitists for the first time. After a three-month police surveillance operation, nine members of the DPM crew were convicted of conspiracy to commit criminal damage costing at least £1 million. Five of them received prison sentences, ranging from eighteen months to two years. The unprecedented scale of the investigation and the severity of the sentences rekindled public debate over whether graffiti should be considered art or crime.

 

Some councils, like those of Stroud and Loerrach, provide approved areas in the town where graffitists can showcase their talents, including underpasses, car parks, and walls that might otherwise prove a target for the "spray and run".

 

Graffiti Tunnel, University of Sydney at Camperdown (2009)

In an effort to reduce vandalism, many cities in Australia have designated walls or areas exclusively for use by graffitists. One early example is the "Graffiti Tunnel" located at the Camperdown Campus of the University of Sydney, which is available for use by any student at the university to tag, advertise, poster, and paint. Advocates of this idea suggest that this discourages petty vandalism yet encourages artists to take their time and produce great art, without worry of being caught or arrested for vandalism or trespassing.[108][109] Others disagree with this approach, arguing that the presence of legal graffiti walls does not demonstrably reduce illegal graffiti elsewhere. Some local government areas throughout Australia have introduced "anti-graffiti squads", who clean graffiti in the area, and such crews as BCW (Buffers Can't Win) have taken steps to keep one step ahead of local graffiti cleaners.

 

Many state governments have banned the sale or possession of spray paint to those under the age of 18 (age of majority). However, a number of local governments in Victoria have taken steps to recognize the cultural heritage value of some examples of graffiti, such as prominent political graffiti. Tough new graffiti laws have been introduced in Australia with fines of up to A$26,000 and two years in prison.

 

Melbourne is a prominent graffiti city of Australia with many of its lanes being tourist attractions, such as Hosier Lane in particular, a popular destination for photographers, wedding photography, and backdrops for corporate print advertising. The Lonely Planet travel guide cites Melbourne's street as a major attraction. All forms of graffiti, including sticker art, poster, stencil art, and wheatpasting, can be found in many places throughout the city. Prominent street art precincts include; Fitzroy, Collingwood, Northcote, Brunswick, St. Kilda, and the CBD, where stencil and sticker art is prominent. As one moves farther away from the city, mostly along suburban train lines, graffiti tags become more prominent. Many international artists such as Banksy have left their work in Melbourne and in early 2008 a perspex screen was installed to prevent a Banksy stencil art piece from being destroyed, it has survived since 2003 through the respect of local street artists avoiding posting over it, although it has recently had paint tipped over it.

 

In February 2008 Helen Clark, the New Zealand prime minister at that time, announced a government crackdown on tagging and other forms of graffiti vandalism, describing it as a destructive crime representing an invasion of public and private property. New legislation subsequently adopted included a ban on the sale of paint spray cans to persons under 18 and increases in maximum fines for the offence from NZ$200 to NZ$2,000 or extended community service. The issue of tagging become a widely debated one following an incident in Auckland during January 2008 in which a middle-aged property owner stabbed one of two teenage taggers to death and was subsequently convicted of manslaughter.

 

Graffiti databases have increased in the past decade because they allow vandalism incidents to be fully documented against an offender and help the police and prosecution charge and prosecute offenders for multiple counts of vandalism. They also provide law enforcement the ability to rapidly search for an offender's moniker or tag in a simple, effective, and comprehensive way. These systems can also help track costs of damage to a city to help allocate an anti-graffiti budget. The theory is that when an offender is caught putting up graffiti, they are not just charged with one count of vandalism; they can be held accountable for all the other damage for which they are responsible. This has two main benefits for law enforcement. One, it sends a signal to the offenders that their vandalism is being tracked. Two, a city can seek restitution from offenders for all the damage that they have committed, not merely a single incident. These systems give law enforcement personnel real-time, street-level intelligence that allows them not only to focus on the worst graffiti offenders and their damage, but also to monitor potential gang violence that is associated with the graffiti.

 

Many restrictions of civil gang injunctions are designed to help address and protect the physical environment and limit graffiti. Provisions of gang injunctions include things such as restricting the possession of marker pens, spray paint cans, or other sharp objects capable of defacing private or public property; spray painting, or marking with marker pens, scratching, applying stickers, or otherwise applying graffiti on any public or private property, including, but not limited to the street, alley, residences, block walls, and fences, vehicles or any other real or personal property. Some injunctions contain wording that restricts damaging or vandalizing both public and private property, including but not limited to any vehicle, light fixture, door, fence, wall, gate, window, building, street sign, utility box, telephone box, tree, or power pole.

 

To help address many of these issues, many local jurisdictions have set up graffiti abatement hotlines, where citizens can call in and report vandalism and have it removed. San Diego's hotline receives more than 5,000 calls per year, in addition to reporting the graffiti, callers can learn more about prevention. One of the complaints about these hotlines is the response time; there is often a lag time between a property owner calling about the graffiti and its removal. The length of delay should be a consideration for any jurisdiction planning on operating a hotline. Local jurisdictions must convince the callers that their complaint of vandalism will be a priority and cleaned off right away. If the jurisdiction does not have the resources to respond to complaints in a timely manner, the value of the hotline diminishes. Crews must be able to respond to individual service calls made to the graffiti hotline as well as focus on cleanup near schools, parks, and major intersections and transit routes to have the biggest impact. Some cities offer a reward for information leading to the arrest and prosecution of suspects for tagging or graffiti related vandalism. The amount of the reward is based on the information provided, and the action taken.

 

When police obtain search warrants in connection with a vandalism investigation, they are often seeking judicial approval to look for items such as cans of spray paint and nozzles from other kinds of aerosol sprays; etching tools, or other sharp or pointed objects, which could be used to etch or scratch glass and other hard surfaces; permanent marking pens, markers, or paint sticks; evidence of membership or affiliation with any gang or tagging crew; paraphernalia including any reference to "(tagger's name)"; any drawings, writing, objects, or graffiti depicting taggers' names, initials, logos, monikers, slogans, or any mention of tagging crew membership; and any newspaper clippings relating to graffiti crime.

Déformation professionnelle (French: [defɔʁmasjɔ̃ pʁɔfɛsjɔnɛl]) is a tendency to look at things from the point of view of one's own profession rather than from a broader perspective. It is often translated as "professional deformation" or job conditioning though French déformation can also be translated as "distortion". The implication is that professional training, and its related socialization, often result in a distortion of the way one views the world.1. Introduction

There is no unanimous understanding of professional deformation within Russian or any other school of

psychological thought. The term is generally used in connection with situations of destructive changes in one’s

professional performance, changes in the existing structure of one’s personality adversely affecting labor

efficiency and co-worker interaction, adverse effects of practicing the same profession for a long period of time

such as low productivity, emergence of undesirable professional qualities, changes in professional conduct and

behavior, as well as changes in mental structure and personality traits caused by execution of professional duties.

2. Method

The aim of the present study is to perform theoretical analysis, to synthesize and compile definitions of

professional deformation used in works of Russian and other psychologists in their studies of professional

activities’ influence on personality.

3. Results and discussion

In her studies A.K. Markova identified six risk factors that hinder professional development:

1) Changes caused by, and associated with, aging;

2) Long-term psychological stress caused by poor working conditions.

3) Crisis of professional development;

4) Monotony of work, resulting in boredom, loss of interest in work, low productivity, getting easily irritated,

reduction in mental capacity and cognitive activity, short attention span, and constant fatigue syndrome.

5) Professional fatigue - a temporary reduction in one’s physical and cognitive productivity as a result of

exhaustion of one’s internal resources and of the mismatch in the systems guiding activities;

6) Professional deformation

Summarizing results of scientific works of Russian and foreign psychologists, E.F. Zeer indicates that the

psychology of labor extensively covers problems of labor efficiency and reliability, issues of aging, and stress

caused by poor working conditions. However, he writes, "To a lesser degree professional deformation is studied

from the standpoint of a person, despite the fact that S.G. Gellershteyn wrote: "... the essence of professional

work lies not only in the performance of an employee, in a set of active and reactive actions, but also in the

adaptation of the organism to the specific characteristics of a profession, that requires such acts. There is a

constant interaction between the working environment and the body of the worker. It often affects not only the

body (curvature of the spine, short-sightedness of office workers) but also the mind and behavior

(obsequiousness of clerks, flattery of waiters) of people of various professions" Zeer [2 p.197-200].

Professional deformation of the personality is a sum of changes in cognitive structures, personality traits,

behavior, methods of communication, stereotypes of perception, one’s nature, values, and such caused by the

execution of one’s professional duties.

Describing changes in personality occurring during professional development, E.F. Zeer emphasizes that:

1) “Professional development is as much loosing as acquiring, and becoming a professional in some line of

work is not only about improving, but also about loosing some qualities" . Professional failure thus can be viewed as complete or partial non-compliance with special requirements for cognitive capacities and personality traits to perform specific professional activities . (There is an understanding of professional degradation as a backward movement – de-adaptation, decline in professional development, loss of required professional qualities and skills);

2) "Throughout their professional careers (as understood by the author (O. P.) – from the choice of a

profession to decision to leave it, people of many occupations are going through stages of professional destruction (destruction as in disturbance of the normal structure of something) [2, p. 197-200].

Therefore, according to the concept of cumulative reasons, researchers study the interactions between a number

of different personal qualities, often difficult to diagnose, external influences, including indirect ones, which

combined cause a particular mental phenomena, namely the professional deformation. While the mind has the

ability to sort and process situations, there is a certain cumulative, or “stockpile” effect when factors, each of

which taken separately may not cause certain mental conditions, combined result in a particular outcome

(B.F. Lomov). At this, according to the concept of cumulative-factorial causes, the combination of various

stimuli and influences can cause certain cognitive phenomena when a main factor (s) interacts (s) cumulatively

with (a) minor ones which initiates mental phenomena and affects one’s behavior.

3) Professional deformation – a "destructive personality changes accompanying execution of professional

duties" [2, p. 49-51] (may be a so-called professional disharmony - a mental state characterized by a mismatch of

certain mental functions, personality traits, special features of behavior, both between themselves and in relation

to the higher-level system, with respect to professional situations); "changes in the existing structure and

activities of an individual, negatively affecting productivity of their labor and interaction with other participants

of the working process" [2, p. 197-200]. (and, as a consequence of possible social deprivation, which can lead to

the loss of social and psychological orientation); "destruction resulting from practicing the same profession for a

long time that adversely affects efficiency of work, produces qualities detrimental to profession, changes

professional conduct" [2, p.200-201]; "disruption of habitual ways of life, loss of acquired competencies, the

emergence of cliché’s in professional behavior and difficulties embracing new technologies, professions or

occupation, changes in personality structure during the transition from one stage to another in professional

development" [2, p.200-201].

The term “mental burnout” was introduced in western psychology in the late 1970’s, and today this problem

is widely studied within the context of occupational stress.

Burnout, in a broad sense, is a "long lasting stressful reaction occurring as a result of prolonged occupational

stress of medium intensity" [10, p.443-463].

Originally the term mental burnout was understood as a state of exhaustion with a feeling of worthlessness.

Only in 1974, when the term burnout was introduced for the first time by an American psychiatrist

H.J. Freundenberger, it got its definition - a “characteristic of the psychological state of healthy people who are

in an intense and close contact with customers in an emotionally laden, saturated atmosphere at giving them

professional help” .

N.E. Vodopiyanova writes: "Researchers are increasingly associating burnout syndrome with psychosomatic

well-being, relating it to the state of pre-disease" [10, p.443-463].

In 1981, American psychologists C. Maslach and S. Jackson noted that mental burnout is common only to

professions connected with person-to-person communication , which partially resolves the dispute

about the nature of the phenomenon (for professions involving direct person-to-person interaction [10], [15].

C. Maslach and W. Schaufeli stressed that syndrome of emotional burnout should be viewed within a larger

concept of personal deformation caused by occupational stress [16].

N.E. Vodopiyanova and E.S. Starchenkova note that the burnout syndrome is caused by personal emotional

difficulties or tensions one faces in daily interpersonal professional communication, that have negative impact on

professional activity, and therefore burnout syndrome could be directly related to the defense mechanism of

preservation of mental health and stability, ensuring execution of professional skills in the long run

Analyzing the works of Russian and foreign psychologists, N.E. Vodopiyanova and E.S. Starchenkova also note

that the difficulties in studying the syndrome lie in the uncertainty, multiple factors, their descriptive

characteristics and the lack of adequate measuring tools. Currently, about 100 researchers identify mental burnout

in terms of such symptoms as aggressive behavior, depression, insomnia, alcohol abuse, negative attitude, guilt,

various addictions, psychosomatic manifestations, and other .

282 Olga Polyakova / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 146 ( 2014 ) 279 – 282

The category of "professional deformation", in our opinion, calls for the use of scientific language, while

terms built on metaphors such as "burn" are more suitable in descriptions of emotional and/or physical

exhaustion, as defined in works of H. Selye .

4. Conclusion

The category of professional deformation includes phenomena of destructive changes in person’s

performance, cognitive structure and activities that negatively affect productivity of labor and the interpersonal

communication in the workplace; adverse effects resulting from practicing the same profession for a very long

time that affect efficiency and produce professionally undesirable qualities; changes in professional conduct,

one’s mental structure, personality traits influenced by execution of professional duties.

 

ac.els-cdn.com/S1877042814047831/1-s2.0-S1877042814047831...

Dear diary,

 

We started the expansion of our base today. Betty surprised me with a hot cup of coffee, she really is a sweet girl! Marc however acted real clumsy today ... dropping stuff, hitting his head, ... Totally distracted by Betty I guess.

 

Pete

At 8:00 am on the morning of May 8, 1902, Mt. Pelee erupted sending a pyroclastic cloud of hot gases and ash on the city of Saint Pierre on the Caribbean island of Martinique. The city was destroyed and over 30,000 people were killed instantly.

 

These are the ruins of the Fort Church. The ruins show the destructiveness of the pyroclastic cloud.

 

What's sad is that the church was full of worshipers at the time of its destruction.

Photograph 1000 :)

 

This photograph was taken in the summer of 1978. Two years later my mom would pass away after a tough battle with brain cancer. She was a month shy of being a mere 53 years of age. 53......that is so young.

 

Mom also smoked cigarettes from the time she was 15. This addictive and destructive habit partially contributed to her death. Like most things in life, this was her choice to smoke. Dad did too. In fact, I cannot recall any adults from my youth that did not smoke. It was just the norm.

 

Mom was simply a amazing human being. Like so many women back then, she was a stay at home mom. She raised five children while dad went to work and provided the necessities that a large family needed. A good home, plenty of food on the table and clothes on our back.

 

It is my observation that mom had the tougher job. Raising five kids is not easy. My brother Lon was five years older than me. Laird was one year younger than me and Lane and Lisa, the twins, were five years younger than Laird.

 

Mom took us through all of our childhood sicknesses. We all shared the mumps, chicken pox and the measles. I can recall all of us spotted up with the chicken pox---at the same time. Mom cared for each of us and probably got very little sleep over several days.

 

Mom told me once that she had always wanted to be a nurse, but the large family had made this dream just that---a dream. She nevertheless practiced medicine on us all from time to time.

 

We all played with reckless abandon except my older brother Lon. He was the smart kid. He read books, designed gardens, made scale houses out of balsa wood for school projects. Playing with others outside was not his thing. I remember him joining in and playing bridge with the adults from time to time. Who does that when they're under 18 years of age?

 

Laird and I did normal kids things. We played with all the other neighbor kids. We played tackle football, sandlot baseball and sometime basketball. We rode our high handled bikes with the long banana seats and tried popping willies, or at least I tried. I always crashed. Our bikes had baseballs cards attached with clothes pins on the back tires for sound effects! We swam in the bay, climbed trees, built underground forts, built tree houses, had rock and fir cone fights, played army with toy guns, had miniature wood made hydroplane races in the summer, shot BB guns, played pranks on neighbors and had all out water ballon wars. Kick-the-can, tag, hide and go seek, red rover-red rover, king of the hill and other made up games were a part of the daily. We got plenty of scrapes and bruises along the way, but man----it was all so much fun. Mom joined in and played all of the time if we were near our house.

 

The rain never stopped us either. Mom would bundle us up and we went outside and found something to do. The ditches used to run pretty hard in our forested cul-de-sac. Laird and I would use large walnut half shells and put matchbook covers over them. We sealed them on with hot wax and used toothpicks to make mini sails. Now we had our little boats. All the kids would race them in the ditches. We made small bets for penny Bazooka bubble gum or licorice. So much fun!

 

Mom used to refer over 19" black and white TV as, "the stupid box" or "boob tube". Nothing can ever be accomplished watched it. She is right. To this day, I seldom watch a lot of television. Mom said that a better use of time was to go out and play outside or read books. I did plenty of both. The Hardy Boys, Jules Verne and Sherlock Holmes books kept me on the edge of my seat most of the time.

 

Laird and I were encouraged to collect things. Stamps, coins, matchbooks, the paper lids from glass milk containers and baseball cards were all sought after. Laird and I got into plenty of fights over found items!

 

The twins, Lane and Lisa were little, but they tagged around with us and got into miniature mischief. Lisa was a good athlete, very determined. When she was about 12 years of age, she caught a long bomb from me while playing football and broke hose nose diving for the catch. The car bumper did not get injured. Two days later, she had school photos. Priceless!

 

I feel sorry for todays children. They do not play outside very much. Computer games, phones and the like dominate their attention. As a result, kids are obese and they develop other health issues. So sad!

 

Adventure. I always wanted adventure!

 

Still do.

 

I could go on and on about my mom. She was such a loving person and a doer. She worked for the Blood Mobile for over twenty years. She started golf leagues for kids at two gold courses. If kids could not afford clubs, she found people to donate their old sets. She never seemed to slow down.

 

Mom was a gourmet cook. There wasn't any meal that she couldn't put together. She organized neighborhood people, young and old and we would walk from house to house singing Christmas songs. She had a lovely full voice and her eyes sparkled at this time of the year. Our tree was always adorned with elaborate hand made ornaments.

 

At any rate, mom passed aways in 1980, just two days after Christmas. I get sentimental during this time of the year and simply miss her every day. I will talk about my dad in another post.

 

Always remember to give kindness to others.

 

Happy Holidays all!

A combination of three shots: a nasty wound, a beautiful cloudscape and some fans. (The foldable ones, not the electric or human variety!)

Mixed and played around with, and with some added texture from Skeletal Mess.

 

May look a bit threatening, or destructive, but I see it as the creation of ... don't really know. A new vulcano perhaps.

 

Anyway Happy Sliders Sunday to you all!

 

More creative editing HERE

 

You can find my other entries in de HSS group in THIS set.

Destroying my Childhood

 

Self-destructive

Self-hate

 

HKD

 

This action is the reason for my following Quest.

 

HKD

 

A4

 

The motivating energy of A4 is aggression.

Against others I feel protection.

Against me I am self-destructive.

When I was a child this energy destroyed my sensibility.

It took many years until Teddy’s resurrection.

 

HKD

 

Ich selbst zerstörte meine Kindheit.

Ich wollte erwachsen werden und nicht mehr unter der Flut meiner Gefühle leiden.

Ich tötete meine kindlichen Gefühle ab und verschloss mein Herz.

So wurde ich zu einem Helden.

Jetzt konnte ich unter den Erwachsenen mitspielen...

Cool.

 

HKD

 

Agrigento,Sicily (Italy)

 

Stretched out along a ridge, inappropriately referred to as “valley”, and nestling in the area to the south of it, are a series of temples which were all erected in the course of a century (5C BC), as if to testify to the prosperity of the city at that time. Having been set ablaze by the Carthaginians in 406 BC, the buildings were restored by the Romans (1C BC) respecting their original Doric style. Their subsequent state of disrepair has been put down either to seismic activity or the destructive fury of the Christians backed by an edict of the Emperor of the Eastern Empire, Theodosius (4C). The only one to survive intact is the Temple of Concord which, in the 6C, was converted into a Christian church. During the Middle Ages, masonry was removed to help construct other buildings, in particular, the Temple of Zeus, known locally as the Giant’s Quarry, provided material for the church of San Nicola and the 18C part of the jetty at Porto Empedocle.

 

All the buildings face east, respecting the Classical criterion (both Greek and Roman) that the entrance to the cella (Holy of Holies) where the statue of the god was housed could be illuminated by the rays of the rising sun, the source and blood of life.

 

On the whole, the temples are Doric and conform to the hexastyle format (that is with six columns at the front), the exception being the Temple of Zeus, which had seven engaged columns articulating the wall that encloses the building. Built of limestone tufa, the temples provide a particularly impressive sight at dawn, and even more so at sunset when they are turned a warm shade of gold.

 

(The Greek form of the names of the divinities has been used to describe the temples, with the Latin equivalents given in brackets). It is advisable to start a visit with the archeological site around the Temple of Zeus, as this is open at restricted times.

 

Sacrificial altar – Just beyond the entrance, on the right, slightly set back, are the remains of an enormous altar, used for large-scale sacrifices. As many as 100 oxen could be sacrificed at one time.

 

Tempio di Zeus Olimpico (Giove) – Having been razed to the ground, the Temple of Zeus (Jupiter) was re-erected following the victory of the people of Agrigentum (allied with the Syracusans) over the Carthaginians at Himera (in about 480 BC) as a gesture of thanks to Zeus, it was one of the largest temples built in ancient times, being 113m long by 36m wide, and is thought never to have been completed. The entablature was supported by half-columns 20m high, which probably alternated with giant male caryatids (atlantes or telamons), one of which can be seen in the local archeological museum (see below). A reproduction of an atlantes is displayed in the middle of the temple, giving some idea of scale proportional to the vast building. Instead of the more usual open colonnade, this temple is surrounded by a continuous screen wall sealing off the spaces between the columns which, inside, become square pilasters. Some blocks still bear the marks made for lifting them into place: these are deep U-shaped incisions through which a rape was threaded and then, attached to a kind of crane, could be used to lift or haul the blocks one upon another.

 

Tempio di Castore e Polluce o dei Dioscuri – The Temple of Castor and Pollux or of the Dioscuri is the veritable symbol of Agrigento. Built during the last decades of the 5C BC, it is dedicated to the twins born from the union of Leda and Zeus while transformed into a swan. Four columns and part of the entablature are all that remain of the temple, which was reconstructed in the 19C. Under one edge of the cornice is a rosette, one of the typical decorative motifs used. On the right are the remains of what was probably a sanctuary dedicated to the Chthonic Deities (the gods of the underworld): Persephone (Proserpina), queen of the underworld, and her mother, Demeter (Ceres), the goddess of corn and fertility and patroness of agriculture. On the site are a square altar, probably used for sacrificing piglets, and another round one with a sacred well in the centre. This is probably where the rite of the Thesmophoria, a festival held in honour of Demeter, was celebrated by married women.

 

In the distance, last on the imaginary line linking all the temples of the valley, is the Temple of Hephaistus (Vulcan), of which little remains. According to legend, the god of fire and the arts had a forge under Etna where he fashioned thunderbolts for Zeus, assisted by the Cyclops.

 

Retrace your steps, leave the fenced area and follow Via dei Templi, on the other side of the road, on the right.

 

Tempio di Eracle (Ercole) – Conforming to the Archaic Doric style, the Temple of Heracles (Hercules) is the earliest of the group. The remains enable us to imagine how elegant this temple must have been. Today, a line of eight tapering columns stands erect, re-erected during the first half of this century. From the temple, looking south, can be seen what is erroneously called the Tomb of

 

Theron (see end of this section).

 

Continuing along the path, deep ruts in the paving can be made out on the left: these are generally interpreted as having been caused by cartwheels. The reason for them being so deep has been put down to water erosion.

 

On the right is Villa Aurea, formerly the residence of Sir Alexander Hardcastle, a passionate patron of archeology, who financed the reerection of the columns of the Temple of Heracles.

 

Necropoli paleocristiana – The Paleochristian necropolis is situated beneath the road, dug into the base rock, not far from the ancient walls of the city. There are various types of ancient tomb: loculi (cells or chamber for corpse or urn) and arcosolia (arched cavities like a niche), as often found in catacombs. Before the Temple of Concord there is another group of tombs on the right.

 

Tempio della Concordia – The Temple of Concord is one of the best-preserved temples surviving from Antiquity, thereby providing an insight into the elegance and majestic symmetry of other such buildings. The reason it has survived intact is due to its transformation into a church in the 6C AD. Inside the colonnade, the original arches through the cella walls of the Classical temple can still be made out. It is thought to have been built in about 430 BC, but it is not known to which god it was dedicated. The name Concord comes from a Latin inscription found in the vicinity. The temple is a typical example of the architectural refinement in temple building known as “optical correction”: the columns are tapered (becoming narrower at the top so as to appear taller) and have an entasis (a very slight convex curve at about two-thirds of the height of the column which counteracts the illusion of concavity); they are also slightly inclined towards the central axis of the temple façade. This allows the observer standing at a certain distance from the temple to see a perfectly straight image. The frieze consists of standard Classical features: alternating triglyphs and metopes, without further low-relief ornamentation. The pediment is also devoid of decoration.

 

Antiquarium di Agrigento Paleocristiana (Casa Pace) – Turn back through a section of the town, stopping perhaps to consult the various informotian boards set among the ruins that may be of interest: one in particular explains how the Temple of Concord was transformed into a basilica.

 

Antiquarium Iconografico della Collina del Templi (Casa Barbadoro) – In a modern but sympathetically designed building, are collected together a series of drawings, engravings and prints of the Valley of the Temples as seen in the past by travellers undertaking the Grand Tour.

 

Tempio di Hera Lacinia (Giunone) – The Temple of Hera Lacinia (Juno) is situated at the top of the hill and is traditionally dedicated to the protector of matrimony and childbirth. The name Lacinia derives from an erroneous association with the sanctuary of the same name situated on the Lacinian promontory near Crotone. The temple preserves its colonnade (albeit not in perfect condition), which was partially re-erected in the early 1900s. Inside, the columns of the pronaos and opisthodomos and the wall of the cella can still be seen. Built in about the mid-5C BC, it was set ablaze by the Carthaginians in 406 BC (evidence of burning is still visible on the walls of the cella).

 

To the east is the altar of the temple, while, at the back of the building (beside the steps), there is a cistern.

 

On the outskirts of the town are the so-called Tomb of Theron and the Temple of Asklepios (Aesculapius).

 

Tomba di Terone – Also visible from the Caltagirorne road. The monument, erroneously believed to have been the tomb of the tyrant Theron, in fact dates from Roman times and was erected in honour of soldiers killed during the Second Punic War. Made of tufa, it is slighly pyramidal in shape and probably once had a pointed roof. The high base supports a second order with false doors and Ionic columns at the corners.

 

Tempio di Asclepio (Esculapio) – Just beyond the Tomb of Theron, on the road to Caltanissetta. Look out for a sign (although obscured) on the right. The ruins of this 5C BC temple are to be found in the middle of the countryside. It was dedicated to Aesculapius (Asklepios), the Greek god of medicine, son of Apollo – who it was believed had the power to heal the sick through dreams. The interior, it is thought, harboured a beautiful statue of the god by the Greek sculptor Myron.

 

Telamons and Atlantes (or Atlas figures) – These imposing giants from Agrigento, more often referred to as atlantes, are sometimes called Telomons (Telamone in Italian) after the Latin word derived by the Romans from the Greek, Telamo(n) which indicated their function, that is to carry or bear, in this case the structure. Their supporting mole is accentuated by their position, with arms bent back to balance the weight upon their shoulders. The more common term alludes to the mythological figure Atlas, the giant and leader of the Titans who struggled against the gods of Olympus and was condemned by Zeus to support the weight of the sky on his head. When the earth was discovered to be spherical, he was often shown bearing the terrestrial globe on bis shoulders

 

The Postcard

 

A postally unused postcard that has a divided back. In the space for the stamp it states:

 

'Place One Cent

Stamp Here.

Made in U. S. A.'

 

The following is also printed on the back of the card:

 

'Angelus Commercial

Studio, Portland, Oregon.

Tichnor Quality Views

made only by Tichnor

Bros. Inc., Boston, Mass.'

 

Mount Rainier

 

Mount Rainier, also known as Tahoma, is a large active stratovolcano in the Cascade Range of the Pacific Northwest. The mountain is located in Mount Rainier National Park, about 59 miles (95 km) south-southeast of Seattle.

 

With a summit elevation of 14,417 ft (4,394 m), it is the highest mountain in the U.S. state of Washington and the Cascade Range. It is also the most topographically prominent mountain in the contiguous United States, and the tallest in the Cascade Volcanic Arc.

 

Due to its high probability of eruption in the near future, Mount Rainier is considered to be one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world, and it is on the Decade Volcano list.

 

The large amount of glacial ice means that Mount Rainier could produce massive lahars that could threaten the entire Puyallup River valley. A lahar is a destructive mudflow arising on the slopes of a volcano. According to the United States Geological Survey, about 80,000 people and their homes are at risk in Mount Rainier's lahar-hazard zones.

 

Between 1950 and 2018, 439,460 people climbed Mount Rainier. 84 people died in mountaineering accidents on Mount Rainier from 1947 to 2018.

 

The Mount Rainier Name

 

George Vancouver named Mount Rainier in honor of his friend, Rear Admiral Peter Rainier. The map of the Lewis and Clark expedition of 1804–1806 refers to it as "Mt. Regnière."

 

Although Rainier had been considered the official name of the mountain, Theodore Winthrop referred to the mountain as "Tacoma" in his posthumously published 1862 travel book 'The Canoe and the Saddle'. For a time, both names were used interchangeably, although residents of the nearby city of Tacoma preferred Mount Tacoma.

 

In 1890, the United States Board on Geographic Names declared that the mountain would be known as Rainier. Following this in 1897, the Pacific Forest Reserve became the Mount Rainier Forest Reserve, and the national park was established three years later.

 

Despite this, there was still a movement to change the mountain's name to Tacoma, and Congress was still considering a resolution to change the name as late as 1924.

 

Mount Rainier's Geographical Setting

 

Mount Rainier is ranked third of the 128 ultra-prominent mountain peaks of the United States. Mount Rainier has a topographic prominence of 13,210 ft (4,026 m), which is greater than that of K2, the world's second-tallest mountain, at 13,189 ft (4,020 m).

 

On clear days it dominates the southeastern horizon in most of the Seattle-Tacoma metropolitan area to such an extent that locals sometimes refer to it simply as "the Mountain". On days of exceptional clarity, it can also be seen from as far away as Corvallis, Oregon (at Mary's Peak), and Victoria, British Columbia.

 

With 26 major glaciers and 36 sq mi (93 km2) of permanent snowfields and glaciers, Mount Rainier is the most heavily glaciated peak in the lower 48 states. The summit is topped by two volcanic craters, each more than 1,000 ft (300 m) in diameter, with the larger east crater overlapping the west crater.

 

Geothermal heat from the volcano keeps areas of both crater rims free of snow and ice, and has formed the world's largest volcanic glacier cave network within the ice-filled craters, with nearly 2 mi (3.2 km) of passages.

 

A small crater lake about 130 by 30 ft (39.6 by 9.1 m) in size and 16 ft (5 m) deep, the highest in North America with a surface elevation of 14,203 ft (4,329 m), occupies the lowest portion of the west crater below more than 100 ft (30 m) of ice, and is accessible only via the caves.

 

The broad top of Mount Rainier contains three named summits. The highest is called the Columbia Crest. The second highest summit is Point Success, 14,158 ft (4,315 m), at the southern edge of the summit plateau, atop the ridge known as Success Cleaver. It has a topographic prominence of about 138 ft (42 m), so it is not considered a separate peak.

 

The lowest of the three summits is Liberty Cap, 14,112 ft (4,301 m), at the northwestern edge, which overlooks Liberty Ridge, the Sunset Amphitheater, and the dramatic Willis Wall. Liberty Cap has a prominence of 492 ft (150 m), and so would qualify as a separate peak under most strictly prominence-based rules.

 

High on the eastern flank of Mount Rainier is a peak known as Little Tahoma Peak, 11,138 ft (3,395 m), which is an eroded remnant of the earlier, much higher, Mount Rainier. It has a prominence of 858 ft (262 m).

 

Geology of Mount Rainier

 

Mount Rainier is a stratovolcano in the Cascade Volcanic Arc that consists of lava flows, debris flows, and pyroclastic ejecta and flows. Its early volcanic deposits are estimated at more than 840,000 years old, and are part of the Lily Formation (about 2.9 million to 840,000 years ago).

 

The early deposits formed a "proto-Rainier," or an ancestral cone prior to the present-day cone. The present cone is more than 500,000 years old.

 

The volcano is highly eroded, and appears to be made mostly of andesite. Rainier likely once stood even higher than today at about 16,000 ft (4,900 m) before a major debris avalanche and the resulting Osceola Mudflow approximately 5,000 years ago.

 

In the past, Rainier has had large debris avalanches, and has also produced enormous volcanic mudflows, due to the large amount of glacial ice present. Its lahars have reached all the way to Puget Sound, a distance of more than 30 mi (48 km).

 

Around 5,000 years ago, a large chunk of the volcano slid away, and that debris avalanche helped to produce the massive Osceola Mudflow, which went all the way to the site of present-day Tacoma and south Seattle.

 

This massive avalanche of rock and ice removed the top 1,600 ft (500 m) of Rainier, bringing its height down to around 14,100 ft (4,300 m). About 530 to 550 years ago, the Electron Mudflow occurred, although this was not as large-scale as the Osceola Mudflow.

 

After the Osceola collapse, subsequent eruptions of lava and tephra built up the modern summit cone until about as recently as 1,000 years ago. As many as 11 Holocene tephra layers have been found.

 

Soils on Mount Rainier are mostly gravelly ashy sandy loams developed from colluvium or glacial till mixed with volcanic tephra.

 

Modern Activity and Volcanic Threat

 

The most recent recorded volcanic activity was between 1820 and 1854, but many eyewitnesses reported eruptive activity in 1858, 1870, 1879, 1882, and 1894.

 

Seismic monitors have been placed in Mount Rainier National Park and on the mountain itself to monitor activity. An eruption could be deadly for everyone living in areas within the immediate vicinity of the volcano, and an eruption would also cause trouble all the way from Vancouver, Canada to San Francisco. This is because of the massive amounts of ash blasting out of the volcano into the atmosphere.

 

Mount Rainier is located in an area that itself is part of the eastern rim of the Pacific Ring of Fire. This includes mountains and calderas like Mount Shasta and Lassen Peak in California, Crater Lake, Three Sisters, and Mount Hood in Oregon, Mount St. Helens, Mount Adams, Glacier Peak, and Mount Baker in Washington, and Mount Cayley, Mount Garibaldi, Silverthrone Caldera, and Mount Meager in British Columbia.

 

Many of the above are dormant, but could return to activity, and scientists on both sides of the border gather research of the past eruptions in order to predict how mountains in this arc will behave, and what they are capable of in the future, including Mount Rainier.

 

Of these, only two have erupted since the beginning of the twentieth century: Lassen in 1915 and St. Helens in 1980 and 2004. However, past eruptions in this volcanic arc have multiple examples of sub-plinian eruptions or higher: Crater Lake's last eruption as Mount Mazama was large enough to cause its cone to collapse, and Mount Rainier's closest neighbor, Mount St. Helens, produced the largest eruption in the continental United States when it erupted in 1980.

 

Statistics place the likelihood of a major eruption in the Cascade Range at 2–3 per century.

 

Mount Rainier is listed as a Decade Volcano, or one of the 16 volcanoes with the greatest likelihood of causing loss of life and property if eruptive activity resumes.

 

If Mount Rainier were to erupt as powerfully as Mount St. Helens did in its 18th. May 1980 eruption, the effect would be much greater, because of:

 

-- The far more massive amounts of glacial ice locked on the volcano compared to Mount St. Helens.

 

-- The vastly more heavily populated areas surrounding Rainier.

 

-- The fact that Mount Rainier is almost twice the size of St. Helens.

 

Lahars from Rainier pose the most risk to life and property, as many communities lie atop older lahar deposits. According to the United States Geological Survey (USGS), about 150,000 people live on top of old lahar deposits of Rainier.

 

Not only is there much ice on the volcano, the volcano is also slowly being weakened by hydrothermal activity. According to the geologist Geoff Clayton, a repeat of the 5000-year-old Osceola Mudflow would destroy Enumclaw, Orting, Kent, Auburn, Puyallup, Sumner and all of Renton.

 

Such a mudflow might also reach down the Duwamish estuary and destroy parts of downtown Seattle, and cause tsunami in Puget Sound and Lake Washington. Rainier is also capable of producing pyroclastic flows and expelling lava.

 

According to geologist K. Scott:

 

"A home built in any of the probabilistically defined inundation areas on the new maps is more likely to be damaged or destroyed by a lahar than by fire.

For example, a home built in an area that would be inundated every 100 years, on the average, is 27 times more likely to be damaged or destroyed by a flow than by fire.

People know the danger of fire, so they buy fire insurance and they have smoke alarms, but most people are not aware of the risks of lahars, and few have applicable flood insurance."

 

The volcanic risk is somewhat mitigated by lahar warning sirens and escape route signs in Pierce County. The more populous King County is also in the lahar area, but has no zoning restrictions due to volcanic hazard. More recently (since 2001) funding from the federal government for lahar protection in the area has dried up, leading local authorities in at-risk cities like Orting to fear a disaster similar to the Armero tragedy.

 

Seismic Background

 

Typically, up to five earthquakes are recorded monthly near the summit of Mount Rainier. Swarms of five to ten shallow earthquakes over two or three days take place from time to time, predominantly in the region of 13,000 feet (4 km) below the summit. These earthquakes are thought to be caused by the circulation of hot fluids beneath Mount Rainier.

 

Presumably, hot springs and steam vents within Mount Rainier National Park are generated by such fluids. Seismic swarms (not initiated with a mainshock) are common features at volcanoes, and are rarely associated with eruptive activity. Rainier has had several such swarms; there were days-long swarms in 2002, 2004, and 2007, two of which (2002 and 2004) included M 3.2 earthquakes.

 

A 2009 swarm produced the largest number of events of any swarm at Rainier since seismic monitoring began over two decades earlier. Further swarms were observed in 2011 and 2021.

 

Mount Rainier Glaciers

 

Glaciers are among the most conspicuous and dynamic geologic features on Mount Rainier. They erode the volcanic cone, and are important sources of streamflow for several rivers, including some that provide water for hydroelectric power and irrigation.

 

Together with perennial snow patches, the 29 named glacial features covered about 30.41 square miles (78.8 km2) of the mountain's surface in 2015, and have an estimated volume of about 0.69 cubic miles (2.9 km3).

 

Glaciers flow under the influence of gravity by the combined action of sliding over the rock on which they lie, and by deformation, the gradual displacement between and within individual ice crystals.

 

Maximum speeds occur near the surface, and along the centerline of the glacier. During May 1970, Nisqually Glacier was measured moving as fast as 29 inches (74 cm) per day. Flow rates are generally greater in summer than in winter, probably due to the presence of large quantities of meltwater at the glacier base.

 

The size of glaciers on Mount Rainier has fluctuated significantly in the past. For example, during the last ice age, from about 25,000 to about 15,000 years ago, glaciers covered most of the area now within the boundaries of Mount Rainier National Park, and extended to the perimeter of the present Puget Sound Basin.

 

Between the 14th. century and 1850, many of the glaciers on Mount Rainier advanced to their farthest extent down-valley since the last ice age. Many advances of this sort occurred worldwide during this time period known to geologists as the Little Ice Age. During the Little Ice Age, the Nisqually Glacier advanced to a position 650 to 800 ft (200 to 240 m) down-valley from the site of the Glacier Bridge. Tahoma and South Tahoma Glaciers merged at the base of Glacier Island, and the terminus of Emmons Glacier reached within 1.2 mi (1.9 km) of the White River Campground.

 

Retreat of the Little Ice Age glaciers was slow until about 1920 when retreat became more rapid. Between the height of the Little Ice Age and 1950, Mount Rainier's glaciers lost about one-quarter of their length.

 

Beginning in 1950 and continuing through the early 1980's, however, many of the major glaciers advanced in response to the relatively cooler temperatures of the mid-century. The glaciers and snowfields of Mount Rainier also lost volume during this time, except for the Frying Pan and Emmons glaciers on the east flank and the small near-peak snowfields. The largest single volume loss is from the Carbon Glacier, although it is to the north, due to its huge area at <2000 m elevation. The Carbon, Cowlitz, Emmons, and Nisqually Glaciers advanced during the late 1970's and early 1980's as a result of high snowfalls during the 1960's and 1970's. Since the early-1980's, however, many glaciers have been thinning and retreating, and some advances have slowed.

 

The glaciers on Mount Rainier can generate mudflows, through glacial outburst floods not associated with any eruption. The South Tahoma Glacier generated 30 floods in the 1980's and early 1990's, and again in August, 2015.

 

Human History

 

At the time of European contact, the river valleys and other areas near Mount Rainier were inhabited by Native Americans who hunted and gathered animals and plants in the forests and high elevation meadows.

 

Descendants of these peoples are represented by members of modern tribes that surround the mountain; including the Nisqually Indian Tribe, the Cowlitz Indian Tribe, the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation, the Puyallup Tribe of Indians, and the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe.

 

The archaeological record of human use of the mountain dates back to over 8,500 years. Sites related to seasonal use of Mount Rainier and its landscapes are reflected in chipped stone tool remains and rock shelters, travel stops, and long-term base camps.

 

Captain George Vancouver reached Puget Sound in early May 1792, and became the first European to see the mountain.

 

In 1833, Dr. William Fraser Tolmie explored the area looking for medicinal plants.

 

Hazard Stevens and P. B. Van Trump received a hero's welcome in the streets of Olympia after their successful summit climb in 1870. The first female ascent was made in 1890 by Fay Fuller, accompanied by Van Trump and three others.

 

Descending from the summit in 1883, James Longmire discovered a mineral spring; this ultimately led to his establishment of a spa and hotel, drawing other visitors to the area to seek the benefits of the spring.

 

Later, the headquarters of the national park was established at Longmire, until flooding caused them to be relocated to Ashford. The area also became the site of features like a museum, a post office, and a gas station, with additions like a library and a gift shop soon following; many of these buildings were ultimately nominated to the national historic register of historic places. Longmire remains the second most popular place in the park. In 1924, a publication from the park described the area:

 

"A feature at Longmire Springs of great interest to everyone is the group of mineral springs in the little flat to the west of National Park Inn. There are some forty distinct springs, a half dozen of which are easily reached from the road.

An analysis of the waters show that they all contain about the same mineral salts, but in slightly differing proportions.

All the water is highly carbonated, and would be classed as extremely "hard". Certain springs contain larger amounts of soda, iron and sulphur, giving them a distinct taste and color."

 

John Muir climbed Mount Rainier in 1888, and although he enjoyed the view, he conceded that it was best appreciated from below. Muir was one of many who advocated protecting the mountain. In 1893, the area was set aside as part of the Pacific Forest Reserve in order to protect its physical and economic resources, primarily timber and watersheds.

 

Citing the need to also protect scenery and provide for public enjoyment, railroads and local businesses urged the creation of a national park in hopes of increased tourism. On the 2nd. March 1899, President William McKinley established Mount Rainier National Park as America's fifth national park.

 

Congress dedicated the new park:

 

"For the benefit and enjoyment of the people

and for the preservation from injury or spoliation

of all timber, mineral deposits, natural curiosities,

or wonders within said park, and their retention

in their natural condition."

 

On the 24th. June 1947, Kenneth Arnold reported seeing a formation of nine unidentified flying objects over Mount Rainier. His description led to the term "flying saucers".

 

In 1998, the United States Geological Survey began putting together the Mount Rainier Volcano Lahar Warning System in order to assist in the emergency evacuation of the Puyallup River valley in the event of a catastrophic debris flow.

 

It is now run by the Pierce County Department of Emergency Management. Tacoma, at the mouth of the Puyallup, is only 37 mi (60 km) west of Rainier, and moderately sized towns such as Puyallup and Orting are only 27 and 20 mi (43 and 32 km) away, respectively.

 

Mount Rainier appears on four distinct United States postage stamp issues. In 1934, it was the 3-cent issue in a series of National Park stamps, and was also shown on a souvenir sheet issued for a philatelic convention.

 

The following year, in 1935, both of these were reprinted by Postmaster General James A. Farley as special issues given to officials and friends. Because of complaints by the public, "Farley's Follies" were reproduced in large numbers. The second stamp issue is easy to tell from the original because it lacks perforations. Both stamps and souvenir sheets are widely available.

 

The Washington state quarter, which was released on the 11th. April 2007, features Mount Rainier and a salmon.

 

Climbing Mount Rainier

 

Climbing on Mount Rainier is difficult, involving traversing the largest glaciers in the U.S. south of Alaska. Most climbers require two to three days to reach the summit, with a success rate of approximately 50%, with weather and the physical condition of the climbers being the most common reasons for failure.

 

About 8,000 to 13,000 people attempt the climb each year, about 90% via routes from Camp Muir on the southeast flank, with most of the rest ascending Emmons Glacier via Camp Schurman on the northeast. Climbing teams require experience in glacier travel, self-rescue, and wilderness travel.

 

All climbers who plan to climb above the high camps, Camp Muir and Camp Schurman, are required to purchase a Mount Rainier Climbing Pass and register for their climb. Additionally, solo climbers must fill out a solo climbing request form and receive written permission from the Superintendent before attempting to climb.

 

Climbing Routes

 

All climbing routes on Mount Rainier require climbers to possess some level of technical climbing skill. This includes ascending and descending the mountain with the use of equipment such as crampons, ice axes, harnesses, and ropes. The difficulty and technical challenge of climbing Mount Rainier can vary widely between climbing routes:

 

-- The Disappointment Cleaver Route is the normal route to the summit of Mount Rainier. As climbers on this route have access to the permanently established Camp Muir, it sees the significant majority of climbing traffic on the mountain. This route is also the most common commercially guided route.

 

The term "cleaver" is used in the context of a rock ridge that separates two glaciers. The reason for naming this cleaver a "disappointment" is unrecorded, but it is thought to be due to climbers reaching it only to recognize their inability to reach the summit.

 

-- The Ingraham Glacier Direct Route is an alternative to the Disappointment Cleaver Route, and is often used when the Disappointment Cleaver Route cannot be climbed due to poor route conditions.

 

-- The Emmons Glacier Route poses a lower technical challenge to climbers. Climbers on the route can make use of Camp Schurman (9,500 ft), a glacial camp site. Camp Schurman is equipped with a ranger hut and solar toilet.

 

A solar toilet uses a solar panel to power an electrochemical reactor, which breaks down waste into solids that can be used as fertilizer, and hydrogen that can be stored in fuel cells to power the reactor during times of low sunlight. A pump sends recycled, purified water back to a reservoir at the top of the toilet.

 

-- The Liberty Ridge Route to the summit is a considerably more challenging and dangerous route. It runs up the center of the North Face of Mount Rainier, and crosses the very active Carbon Glacier.

 

First climbed by Ome Daiber, Arnie Campbell and Jim Burrow in 1935, it is listed as one of the Fifty Classic Climbs of North America. This route only accounts for approximately 2% of climbers on the mountain, but approximately 25% of its deaths.

 

Dangers and Accidents on Mount Rainier

 

About two mountaineering deaths each year occur because of rock and ice fall, avalanche, falls, and hypothermia. These incidents are often associated with exposure to very high altitude, fatigue, dehydration, and/or poor weather.

 

58 deaths on Mount Rainier have been reported from 1981 to 2010. Approximately 7% of mountaineering deaths, and 6% of mountaineering accidents in the United States are attributed to Mount Rainier.

 

The first known climbing death on Mount Rainier was Edgar McClure, a professor of chemistry at the University of Oregon, on the 27th. July 1897. During the descent in darkness, McClure stepped over the edge, and slid to his death on a rocky outcrop. The spot is now known as McClure Rock.

 

Willi Unsoeld, who reached the summit of Mount Everest in 1963, was killed, along with an Evergreen State College student, in an avalanche on Mount Rainier in 1979. He had climbed the mountain over 200 times.

 

The worst mountaineering accident on Mount Rainier occurred in 1981, when ten clients and a guide died in an avalanche/ice fall on the Ingraham Glacier. This was the largest number of fatalities on Mount Rainier in a single incident since 32 people were killed in a 1946 plane crash on the South Tahoma Glacier.

 

In one of the worst disasters on the mountain in over thirty years, six climbers—two guides, and four clients—were killed on the 31st. May 2014, after the climbers fell 3,300 feet (1,000 m) while attempting the summit via the Liberty Ridge Route.

 

Low-flying search helicopters pinged the signals from the avalanche beacons worn by the climbers, and officials concluded that there was no possible chance of survival. Searchers found tents and clothes, along with rock and ice, strewn across a debris field on the Carbon Glacier at 9,500 ft (2,900 m).

 

This suggested a slide or avalanche in the vicinity of where the team went missing, though the exact cause of the accident is unknown. The bodies of three of the client climbers were spotted on the 7th. August 2014 during a training flight, and subsequently recovered on the 19th. August 2014.

 

The bodies of the fourth client climber and the two guides have never been found (as of 2023).

 

Outdoor Recreation at Mount Rainier

 

Rock climbing, hiking, back-country skiing, photography, and camping are popular activities in the park, along with enjoying the scenery. Reflection Lake is a popular place to view Mount Rainier.

 

Hiking trails, including the Wonderland Trail—a 93-mile (150 km) circumnavigation of the peak, provide access to the back-country. Popular winter sports include snowshoeing and cross-country skiing.

 

Climate

 

The summit of Mount Rainier has an ice cap climate.

 

Ecology

 

Mount Rainier's status as a national park protects its primeval Cascade ecosystem, providing a stable habitat for many species in the region, including endemic flora and fauna that are unique to the area, such as the Cascade red fox and Mount Rainier lousewort.

 

The ecosystem on the mountain is very diverse, owing to the climate found at different elevations. Scientists track the distinct species found in the forest zone, the subalpine zone, and the alpine zone.

 

They have discovered more than one thousand species of plants and fungi. The mountain is also home to 65 species of mammals, 5 reptile, 182 bird, 14 amphibian, and 14 native fish, in addition to an innumerable amount of invertebrates.

 

Flora on Mount Rainier

 

Mount Rainier has regularly been described as one of the best places in the world to view wildflowers. In the subalpine region of the mountain, the snow often stays on the ground until summer begins, limiting plants to a much shorter growing season. This produces dramatic blooms in areas like Paradise.

 

In 1924, the flowers were described by naturalist Floyd W. Schmoe:

 

"Mount Rainier National Park is perhaps better

known the world over for these wonderful

flowers than for any one feature. The mountains,

the glaciers, the cascading streams and the forests

may be equalled if one looks far away enough, but

no park has been so favored in the way of wild flowers."

 

Forests on the mountain span from as young as 100 years old to sections of old growth forest that are calculated to be 1000 years or more in age. The lower elevation consists mainly of western red-cedar, Douglas fir, and western hemlock.

 

Pacific silver fir, western white pine, Alaska yellow cedar, and noble fir are found further up the mountain. At the alpine level, Alaskan yellow cedar, subalpine fir, and mountain hemlock grow.

 

Fauna on Mount Rainier

 

The mountain supports a wide variety of animal life, including several species that are protected at the state or federal level, such as the Northern Spotted Owl.

 

Efforts are also being made to re-introduce native species that had locally been hunted to extinction, like the Pacific fisher.

 

There are sixty-five types of mammals living on the mountain, including cougars, mountain goats, marmots, and elk. Common reptiles and amphibians include garter snakes, frogs, and salamanders.

 

There are many types of birds found throughout the different elevations on the mountain, but while some live there all year, many are migratory.

 

Salmon and trout species use the rivers formed by the glaciers, and though the lakes stopped being stocked in 1972, thirty lakes still have reproducing populations.

thegoldensieve.com

 

The dichotomy: comfort in a wild land.

 

Life is a destructive pursuit—our position comes at the expense of so much. Yet so little of what we destroy is by our own hand. Seldom do we find ourselves behind the wrecking ball. Nowhere is this more true than in America. Opportunity—the payoff of so much destruction—abounds, but not all are worth what they cost: much has been sacrificed in our race for a cheaper and more plentiful material world.

 

The barbarians of development and commercialization are forever beating upon the gates of our last wild refuges. Yet much untouched wildness remains worth protecting and it is the commercial potential of these places that is our most valuable weapon in their defense.

 

Much about my wild experiences illustrates this central dichotomy of American wilderness. We made Seattle from California’s central coast in less than two hours and descended in comfort through the tumult of a building storm. We rented a car and sipped African coffee as sun-bloodied clouds broke like waves upon the great volcano. We entered the pitchest shadow of both Earth and old-growth forest ascending the southern limb of Tacoma to find a warm bed nestled along the Nisqually.

 

In the morning I woke and climbed a rain-soaked ribbon of slate. Winding through dense fog, I drove with no destination in mind. Here and there the curtain of pine opened to reveal a white and murky world beyond. Before the road reached the yawning scar of spring melts, I turned off at Christine Falls. Alone and cold, I made a few images of the falls. At moments like this, my gaze is cast back toward the hectic pace of daily life, back across the scar my own existence is bound to cut across the Earth. I wonder what life is like for a Douglas fir in the katabatic wind of the great mountain—bound for centuries to a small patch of rock where “nature red in tooth and claw” surely compares favorably with the sting of an eight-month winter. Is it paradise? Is it interminable? Privilege and immense opportunity aside, the singularity of life leaves so many questions behind.

 

Perhaps some romanticize a retreat to an anachronistic idea of what life should be. Perhaps some would abandon from modernity—but not I. The box is open and evils loosed. The central question now is, how can we ensure the persistence of conservation? How can we use what opportunity is given to better ourselves and others?

 

The itch to return just under my skin.

 

This is the question that faces parks today and it is asked not just from within: this weekend this topic sprung up in conversation online with friends. Industrial tourism both threatens and sustains the parks. I am loathe to wholly condemn it simply because I know I could not visit the parks without roads and without lodging—my days of backpacking are both behind and far in front of me. My hope is that park visitation is a positive experience for others as it is for me; that visiting the National Parks continues to build faith in its mission.

 

Landscape photography may have started for me as an attempt to collect a portfolio of beautiful images but it quickly turned into a method to lose myself somewhere beautiful. Words often fail when I try to express what it means to me to make a few photographs in some place as sublime as Mount Rainier National Park. Could I bottle and share an approximation of the feeling we would have seen our last box store built. Instead I can share only photographs and a few sentences.

 

I’m not after post-card images. The past two years of living in California, of exploring the coasts and the mountains I am left of sound opinion that a photograph’s power is in its ability to share a genuine moment. My younger self may have been disappointed with the fog that obscured whatever early morning color might have come from sunrise, but I was giddy. Fog means terrific, soft light. Fog means drama and the chance to focus on the world within a radius of some 100 feet.

 

The falls sent out a tongue of cold mist whose path was notable even above the fog and chill of night not yet shook loose from the fragrant trees. The irony of Rainier is that it is a volcano that flows everywhere with ice and water. Standing before the falls amongst centuries-old firs, one must remind himself that man and pine alike are just visitors to a perilous land.

 

Years ago, I had the pleasure of waiting for sunrise along the rain-kissed roadside cliffs of Tahoe and Glacier National Park. The world of rock and trees and fog are everywhere similar and are nowhere the same. Minarets of stone wring the very water from the air and wear the spoils. Vast armies of evergreens pour over the foothills and march onward into the permafrost until they can climb no more, twisted and stunted in the frigid breath of the mountain. Wherever I go, I hold the scent of falling water and pine resin in my mind and the itch to return just under my skin.

 

In the past 200 years we’ve transformed nearly all the wild places of the Earth. I fetishize wildness, I’ll admit it. I doubt, however, that my love for it is any deeper than the apathy that exists elsewhere towards its destruction; and, so, if there is any role for one amateur photographer and nature lover in the support of parks—I am only too happy to play my part. In these experiences, I constantly reflect on whether my coming to these places or my consumption of photography has done anything to contribute to their preservation. I never have an answer.

The John Dewey Academy is a therapeutic boarding school in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.

 

It is enrolls about 25 high school students, ages 15 to 21. The student body is largely made up of self-destructive adolescents who have not responded well to traditional educational and behavioral treatment.

 

-- Wikipedia

 

Testing, Testing, ... BANG!!!

  

Nondestructive testing

  

Nondestructive testing or Non-destructive testing (NDT) is a wide group of analysis techniques used in science and industry to evaluate the properties of a material, component or system without causing damage.[1] The terms Nondestructive examination (NDE), Nondestructive inspection (NDI), and Nondestructive evaluation (NDE) are also commonly used to describe this technology.[2] Because NDT does not permanently alter the article being inspected, it is a highly valuable technique that can save both money and time in product evaluation, troubleshooting, and research. Common NDT methods include ultrasonic, magnetic-particle, liquid penetrant, radiographic, remote visual inspection (RVI), eddy-current testing,[1] and low coherence interferometry.[3][4] NDT is commonly used in forensic engineering, mechanical engineering, petroleum engineering, electrical engineering, civil engineering, systems engineering, aeronautical engineering, medicine, and art.[1] Innovations in the field of nondestructive testing have had a profound impact on medical imaging, including on echocardiography, medical ultrasonography, and digital radiography.

  

Methods[edit]

 

NDT methods may rely upon use of electromagnetic radiation, sound, and inherent properties of materials to examine samples. This includes some kinds of microscopy to examine external surfaces in detail, although sample preparation techniques for metallography, optical microscopy and electron microscopy are generally destructive as the surfaces must be made smooth through polishing or the sample must be electron transparent in thickness. The inside of a sample can be examined with penetrating radiation, such as X-rays, neutrons or terahertz radiation. Sound waves are utilized in the case of ultrasonic testing. Contrast between a defect and the bulk of the sample may be enhanced for visual examination by the unaided eye by using liquids to penetrate fatigue cracks. One method (liquid penetrant testing) involves using dyes, fluorescent or non-fluorescent, in fluids for non-magnetic materials, usually metals. Another commonly used NDT method used on ferrous materials involves the application of fine iron particles (either liquid or dry dust) that are applied to a part while it is in an externally magnetized state (magnetic-particle testing). The particles will be attracted to leakage fields within the test object, and form on the objects surface. Magnetic particle testing can reveal surface & some sub-surface defects within the part. Thermoelectric effect (or use of the Seebeck effect) uses thermal properties of an alloy to quickly and easily characterize many alloys. The chemical test, or chemical spot test method, utilizes application of sensitive chemicals that can indicate the presence of individual alloying elements. Electrochemical methods, such as electrochemical fatigue crack sensors, utilize the tendency of metal structural material to oxidize readily in order to detect progressive damage.

 

Analyzing and documenting a non-destructive failure mode can also be accomplished using a high-speed camera recording continuously (movie-loop) until the failure is detected. Detecting the failure can be accomplished using a sound detector or stress gauge which produces a signal to trigger the high-speed camera. These high-speed cameras have advanced recording modes to capture some non-destructive failures.[5] After the failure the high-speed camera will stop recording. The capture images can be played back in slow motion showing precisely what happen before, during and after the non-destructive event, image by image.

  

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nondestructive_testing

This is a still from my newest music video for 'Self Destructive'. Embracing imperfection is an important step to grow and that's the journey I have been on lately and which I share in this new EP called 'Beauty In Imperfection'

 

Would mean a lot to me if you'd check out the music video on youtube :

www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgIE9EYnSRg

There's nothing that fascinates me quite as much as a thunderstorm... what's not to like? Well, if you're on the inside looking out, there's plenty not to like. From a distance, however, it can be a wonderful experience watching nature perform its own version of a fireworks display. They can be powerful, dangerous, and destructive, and yet quite beautiful... come to think of it, I've dated women that can be described the same way. A thunderstorm forms when moist, unstable air is lifted vertically into the atmosphere, resulting in condensation and the release of latent heat. The storm rises and expands due to adiabatic expansion ("adiabatic" merely means that there is no exchange of heat within the storm of its surroundings... the storm is a system unto itself until it depletes itself of energy). A thunderstorm can quickly rise to over 12 miles (twenty kilometers) into the atmosphere in the expansion phase where water vapor condenses rapidly in the cold air. In this part of the world, even a small cell, such as this one, is capable of not just flooding, wind, and lightning, but also of tornadoes. There's been more than a fair share of "unstable air" in North Carolina this year, and these mountains could stand some relief... but it does make for a dramatic shot. That, and the greens evident here of Linville Gorge (from Wiseman's View) are about as emerald as they can get.

 

This one's not nearly so far up, but it's up there far enough to catch the last rays of the setting sun... it appears as if it's lit from within. There were folks camping along that ridge the night that I shot this. From all indications here of this cloud's downburst, they took a bit of pounding... I wonder if they've dried out yet?

 

As I finish this post and consider what tags I may use, something occurred to me... I was looking at my stats the other day on Flickr because the counts on several images jumped up exponentially... more often this occurs because someone has posted links to them from other social sites. That's actually no big deal to me, as it informs me as to what types of images that folks find themselves invested in emotionally. Other images are used by schools and universities and still others are pointed to by search engines, given the tags that I provided. The most common search, though, is from within Flickr itself... the funny thing is that one of my images apparently popped up from a search for "swinging wives", and I have no tags at all using either of those words or any derivation of those words. So I got my curiosity up and clicked that search link... to my surprise it was actually pictures of women swinging... on swings. I was somewhat relieved about that, though I still have no idea as to how I have an image associated with that. I'm going to include the tag "swinging wives" with this image just to see what happens, so don't be alarmed.

 

(8/4/2013) Well... it turns out that my experiment here was successful in one regard, but backfired on me in yet another. I deleted said "tag" from above as a result. The numbers on this image shot up like gangbusters, and it's obviously not from "explore"... chances are that those clicking through with that in mind are saying to themselves, "He should have used a telephoto lens... I don't see those swinging wives anywhere in this shot." Though I believe that this is a particularly nice picture, I'll bet having removed that tag will taper those numbers just as exponentially... which, I suppose, is "experiment phase 2". I don't often use groups anymore (other than local groups) because there's no real interaction other than meaningless awards... it does make your "numbers" go up, but to what end? I much prefer relationships to "awards"... so much so that I was ecstatic about the return of one of those relationships just today (Miss Skeeter)! I was "banned", however, from a "safe" group that I had joined in the past, likely as a result of that tag (but could very well be something I am as yet unaware of), so I do not suggest that anyone else try this, even though I thought I was careful enough not to offend anyone here. I'll attempt to fix that, though I understand their action. I am well aware that there is a dark side to Flickr, but that there are warnings as to such things. As a Christian, those things are things of which I neither approve of, nor am interested in. Women on swings isn't necessarily a bad thing, though in this fallen world the context of that is so much bigger... I hadn't really thought out my action here as to how others would perceive it. Romans 14:20-22 states, "Do not tear down the work of God for the sake of food. All things indeed are clean, but they are evil for the man who eats and gives offense. It is good not to eat meat or to drink wine, or to do anything by which your brother stumbles. The faith which you have, have as your own conviction before God. Happy is he who does not condemn himself in what he approves..."

 

Just checked the stats... things are already slowing down. I am no doubt back to "happy" status.

 

Thus concludes your Bible study for today... have a great Sunday everyone!

Salthill Railway station, people, including girl with pram, Monkstown, Co. Dublin.

 

I am a great admirer of the Stereo Pairs Collection, I think that many photographers today would be very happy to take photographs half as good as some of the specimens we have the pleasure to see on this stream.

 

Today we visit the leafy suburbs of South County Dublin, Salthill Railway Station to be precise, we see the Salthill Hotel in the background and a very modern looking bridge with spiral steps, which I presume is for the use of Hotel patrons. OwenMacC links to a nice photo of the spiral staircase - see below.

 

John Spooner in his inimitable style tells a story of violence and a blood covered gouge, which had been used to inflict near fatal injuries. I have sounded the appropriate Klaxon!!. Do also see his comment on a very destructive storm on 5th January 1877.

 

Thanks to "The Cookie Munster" swordscookie for details on the Station itself.

 

I am very surprised that no one mentioned the signs in the middle of the photo!!!!

 

Photographers: Frederick Holland Mares, James Simonton

 

Contributor: John Fortune Lawrence

 

Collection: The Stereo Pairs Photograph Collection

 

Date: between ca. 1860-1883

 

NLI Ref: STP_1964

 

You can also view this image, and many thousands of others, on the NLI’s catalogue at catalogue.nli.ie

 

Enkomi-Tuzla is a historic village in Cyprus. Tombs can be found in the village and it is an important site of the Bronze Age, due to it being the possible capital of Alasiya.

 

In 1974, Enkomi had about 800 Greek Cypriot inhabitants. They all fled to the south of the island after the Turkish invasion, in the aftermath of the July coup. As of 2011, Enkomi has a population of 2,645. It comprises displaced Turkish Cypriots from Larnaca and Turkish settlers from Adana Province and Trabzon Province.

 

Enkomi was settled in the Middle Bronze Age, near an inlet from the sea (now silted up). From about the 16th century BC to the 12th, it was an important trading center for copper, which was smelted at the site, with strong cultural links to Ugarit on the facing coast of Syria.

 

The complicated and badly disturbed stratigraphy of the site has[4] in four major phases, with many subdivisions:

 

Level A, a poorly represented preliminary stratum on bedrock;

Level I A, and B, at the beginning of the Late Bronze Age, when fortifications were twice destroyed;

Level II A, and B, with many subdivisions, covering the elaborate expansion of the 14th and 13th centuries and ending in a mass destruction about 1220;

Level III A, B, and C, with Mycenaean settlers, with a destructive attack, possibly related to the Sea Peoples in IIIA, culturally continuous with IIIB, ending in a destruction about 1125, and IIIC, a final, Mycenaean phase with dwindling population.

During the 13th century BC, Enkomi was inhabited by Greeks, like most of the cities of Cyprus. From the 13th century, other towns along the southern coast of Cyprus competed with Enkomi. After an earthquake ca. 1050 BC, the site was abandoned, leaving an opening for the rise of Salamis.

 

René Dussaud said that Enkomi is the Alasia of the Amarna correspondence and other texts,[5] including Hittite texts. Long after the town disappeared, Hellenes recalled it in the cult title of Apollo Alasiotas, recorded in a Cypriote inscription as late as the 4th century BC. In 1900 the archaeologist Joseph Offord suggested that Apollo Alasiotas was a Syrian god identical with Resheph, transported to Cyprus,[6] and some modern scholars remain unconvinced. The bronze statuette of a horned god (illustration) may represent this divinity whom Greeks identified, by interpretatio graeca, with Apollo.

 

Following more than a decade of widespread looting drawn by the high quality of the tomb gifts, A. S. Murray worked there for the British Museum in 1894–1896. From the 1930s, excavations were continued by a joint expedition between Claude F. A. Schaeffer for the French Expedition and Porphyrios Dikaios on behalf of the Cyprus Department of Antiquities. Notable finds from Enkomi include Linear C inscriptions and the so-called "horned god", a bronze statuette dated to the early 12th century BC, depicting a deity wearing a horned helmet. Another well-known statue is the "ingot god", a statue wearing a horned conical hat and greaves, armed with shield and spear, and standing on a miniature hide-shaped ingot.

 

A decorated metal cup, the "Enkomi Cup" has been controversially claimed to use niello decoration, which would make it one of the earliest uses of this technique. However, controversy has continued since the 1960s as to whether the material used actually is niello.

 

Northern Cyprus, officially the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), is a de facto state that comprises the northeastern portion of the island of Cyprus. It is recognised only by Turkey, and its territory is considered by all other states to be part of the Republic of Cyprus.

 

Northern Cyprus extends from the tip of the Karpass Peninsula in the northeast to Morphou Bay, Cape Kormakitis and its westernmost point, the Kokkina exclave in the west. Its southernmost point is the village of Louroujina. A buffer zone under the control of the United Nations stretches between Northern Cyprus and the rest of the island and divides Nicosia, the island's largest city and capital of both sides.

 

A coup d'état in 1974, performed as part of an attempt to annex the island to Greece, prompted the Turkish invasion of Cyprus. This resulted in the eviction of much of the north's Greek Cypriot population, the flight of Turkish Cypriots from the south, and the partitioning of the island, leading to a unilateral declaration of independence by the north in 1983. Due to its lack of recognition, Northern Cyprus is heavily dependent on Turkey for economic, political and military support.

 

Attempts to reach a solution to the Cyprus dispute have been unsuccessful. The Turkish Army maintains a large force in Northern Cyprus with the support and approval of the TRNC government, while the Republic of Cyprus, the European Union as a whole, and the international community regard it as an occupation force. This military presence has been denounced in several United Nations Security Council resolutions.

 

Northern Cyprus is a semi-presidential, democratic republic with a cultural heritage incorporating various influences and an economy that is dominated by the services sector. The economy has seen growth through the 2000s and 2010s, with the GNP per capita more than tripling in the 2000s, but is held back by an international embargo due to the official closure of the ports in Northern Cyprus by the Republic of Cyprus. The official language is Turkish, with a distinct local dialect being spoken. The vast majority of the population consists of Sunni Muslims, while religious attitudes are mostly moderate and secular. Northern Cyprus is an observer state of ECO and OIC under the name "Turkish Cypriot State", PACE under the name "Turkish Cypriot Community", and Organization of Turkic States with its own name.

 

Several distinct periods of Cypriot intercommunal violence involving the two main ethnic communities, Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, marked mid-20th century Cyprus. These included the Cyprus Emergency of 1955–59 during British rule, the post-independence Cyprus crisis of 1963–64, and the Cyprus crisis of 1967. Hostilities culminated in the 1974 de facto division of the island along the Green Line following the Turkish invasion of Cyprus. The region has been relatively peaceful since then, but the Cyprus dispute has continued, with various attempts to solve it diplomatically having been generally unsuccessful.

 

Cyprus, an island lying in the eastern Mediterranean, hosted a population of Greeks and Turks (four-fifths and one-fifth, respectively), who lived under British rule in the late nineteenth-century and the first half of the twentieth-century. Christian Orthodox Church of Cyprus played a prominent political role among the Greek Cypriot community, a privilege that it acquired during the Ottoman Empire with the employment of the millet system, which gave the archbishop an unofficial ethnarch status.

 

The repeated rejections by the British of Greek Cypriot demands for enosis, union with Greece, led to armed resistance, organised by the National Organization of Cypriot Struggle, or EOKA. EOKA, led by the Greek-Cypriot commander George Grivas, systematically targeted British colonial authorities. One of the effects of EOKA's campaign was to alter the Turkish position from demanding full reincorporation into Turkey to a demand for taksim (partition). EOKA's mission and activities caused a "Cretan syndrome" (see Turkish Resistance Organisation) within the Turkish Cypriot community, as its members feared that they would be forced to leave the island in such a case as had been the case with Cretan Turks. As such, they preferred the continuation of British colonial rule and then taksim, the division of the island. Due to the Turkish Cypriots' support for the British, EOKA's leader, Georgios Grivas, declared them to be enemies. The fact that the Turks were a minority was, according to Nihat Erim, to be addressed by the transfer of thousands of Turks from mainland Turkey so that Greek Cypriots would cease to be the majority. When Erim visited Cyprus as the Turkish representative, he was advised by Field Marshal Sir John Harding, the then Governor of Cyprus, that Turkey should send educated Turks to settle in Cyprus.

 

Turkey actively promoted the idea that on the island of Cyprus two distinctive communities existed, and sidestepped its former claim that "the people of Cyprus were all Turkish subjects". In doing so, Turkey's aim to have self-determination of two to-be equal communities in effect led to de jure partition of the island.[citation needed] This could be justified to the international community against the will of the majority Greek population of the island. Dr. Fazil Küçük in 1954 had already proposed Cyprus be divided in two at the 35° parallel.

 

Lindley Dan, from Notre Dame University, spotted the roots of intercommunal violence to different visions among the two communities of Cyprus (enosis for Greek Cypriots, taksim for Turkish Cypriots). Also, Lindlay wrote that "the merging of church, schools/education, and politics in divisive and nationalistic ways" had played a crucial role in creation of havoc in Cyprus' history. Attalides Michael also pointed to the opposing nationalisms as the cause of the Cyprus problem.

 

By the mid-1950's, the "Cyprus is Turkish" party, movement, and slogan gained force in both Cyprus and Turkey. In a 1954 editorial, Turkish Cypriot leader Dr. Fazil Kuchuk expressed the sentiment that the Turkish youth had grown up with the idea that "as soon as Great Britain leaves the island, it will be taken over by the Turks", and that "Turkey cannot tolerate otherwise". This perspective contributed to the willingness of Turkish Cypriots to align themselves with the British, who started recruiting Turkish Cypriots into the police force that patrolled Cyprus to fight EOKA, a Greek Cypriot nationalist organisation that sought to rid the island of British rule.

 

EOKA targeted colonial authorities, including police, but Georgios Grivas, the leader of EOKA, did not initially wish to open up a new front by fighting Turkish Cypriots and reassured them that EOKA would not harm their people. In 1956, some Turkish Cypriot policemen were killed by EOKA members and this provoked some intercommunal violence in the spring and summer, but these attacks on policemen were not motivated by the fact that they were Turkish Cypriots.

 

However, in January 1957, Grivas changed his policy as his forces in the mountains became increasingly pressured by the British Crown forces. In order to divert the attention of the Crown forces, EOKA members started to target Turkish Cypriot policemen intentionally in the towns, so that Turkish Cypriots would riot against the Greek Cypriots and the security forces would have to be diverted to the towns to restore order. The killing of a Turkish Cypriot policeman on 19 January, when a power station was bombed, and the injury of three others, provoked three days of intercommunal violence in Nicosia. The two communities targeted each other in reprisals, at least one Greek Cypriot was killed and the British Army was deployed in the streets. Greek Cypriot stores were burned and their neighbourhoods attacked. Following the events, the Greek Cypriot leadership spread the propaganda that the riots had merely been an act of Turkish Cypriot aggression. Such events created chaos and drove the communities apart both in Cyprus and in Turkey.

 

On 22 October 1957 Sir Hugh Mackintosh Foot replaced Sir John Harding as the British Governor of Cyprus. Foot suggested five to seven years of self-government before any final decision. His plan rejected both enosis and taksim. The Turkish Cypriot response to this plan was a series of anti-British demonstrations in Nicosia on 27 and 28 January 1958 rejecting the proposed plan because the plan did not include partition. The British then withdrew the plan.

 

In 1957, Black Gang, a Turkish Cypriot pro-taksim paramilitary organisation, was formed to patrol a Turkish Cypriot enclave, the Tahtakale district of Nicosia, against activities of EOKA. The organisation later attempted to grow into a national scale, but failed to gain public support.

 

By 1958, signs of dissatisfaction with the British increased on both sides, with a group of Turkish Cypriots forming Volkan (later renamed to the Turkish Resistance Organisation) paramilitary group to promote partition and the annexation of Cyprus to Turkey as dictated by the Menderes plan. Volkan initially consisted of roughly 100 members, with the stated aim of raising awareness in Turkey of the Cyprus issue and courting military training and support for Turkish Cypriot fighters from the Turkish government.

 

In June 1958, the British Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, was expected to propose a plan to resolve the Cyprus issue. In light of the new development, the Turks rioted in Nicosia to promote the idea that Greek and Turkish Cypriots could not live together and therefore any plan that did not include partition would not be viable. This violence was soon followed by bombing, Greek Cypriot deaths and looting of Greek Cypriot-owned shops and houses. Greek and Turkish Cypriots started to flee mixed population villages where they were a minority in search of safety. This was effectively the beginning of the segregation of the two communities. On 7 June 1958, a bomb exploded at the entrance of the Turkish Embassy in Cyprus. Following the bombing, Turkish Cypriots looted Greek Cypriot properties. On 26 June 1984, the Turkish Cypriot leader, Rauf Denktaş, admitted on British channel ITV that the bomb was placed by the Turks themselves in order to create tension. On 9 January 1995, Rauf Denktaş repeated his claim to the famous Turkish newspaper Milliyet in Turkey.

 

The crisis reached a climax on 12 June 1958, when eight Greeks, out of an armed group of thirty five arrested by soldiers of the Royal Horse Guards on suspicion of preparing an attack on the Turkish quarter of Skylloura, were killed in a suspected attack by Turkish Cypriot locals, near the village of Geunyeli, having been ordered to walk back to their village of Kondemenos.

 

After the EOKA campaign had begun, the British government successfully began to turn the Cyprus issue from a British colonial problem into a Greek-Turkish issue. British diplomacy exerted backstage influence on the Adnan Menderes government, with the aim of making Turkey active in Cyprus. For the British, the attempt had a twofold objective. The EOKA campaign would be silenced as quickly as possible, and Turkish Cypriots would not side with Greek Cypriots against the British colonial claims over the island, which would thus remain under the British. The Turkish Cypriot leadership visited Menderes to discuss the Cyprus issue. When asked how the Turkish Cypriots should respond to the Greek Cypriot claim of enosis, Menderes replied: "You should go to the British foreign minister and request the status quo be prolonged, Cyprus to remain as a British colony". When the Turkish Cypriots visited the British Foreign Secretary and requested for Cyprus to remain a colony, he replied: "You should not be asking for colonialism at this day and age, you should be asking for Cyprus be returned to Turkey, its former owner".

 

As Turkish Cypriots began to look to Turkey for protection, Greek Cypriots soon understood that enosis was extremely unlikely. The Greek Cypriot leader, Archbishop Makarios III, now set independence for the island as his objective.

 

Britain resolved to solve the dispute by creating an independent Cyprus. In 1959, all involved parties signed the Zurich Agreements: Britain, Turkey, Greece, and the Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders, Makarios and Dr. Fazil Kucuk, respectively. The new constitution drew heavily on the ethnic composition of the island. The President would be a Greek Cypriot, and the Vice-President a Turkish Cypriot with an equal veto. The contribution to the public service would be set at a ratio of 70:30, and the Supreme Court would consist of an equal number of judges from both communities as well as an independent judge who was not Greek, Turkish or British. The Zurich Agreements were supplemented by a number of treaties. The Treaty of Guarantee stated that secession or union with any state was forbidden, and that Greece, Turkey and Britain would be given guarantor status to intervene if that was violated. The Treaty of Alliance allowed for two small Greek and Turkish military contingents to be stationed on the island, and the Treaty of Establishment gave Britain sovereignty over two bases in Akrotiri and Dhekelia.

 

On 15 August 1960, the Colony of Cyprus became fully independent as the Republic of Cyprus. The new republic remained within the Commonwealth of Nations.

 

The new constitution brought dissatisfaction to Greek Cypriots, who felt it to be highly unjust for them for historical, demographic and contributional reasons. Although 80% of the island's population were Greek Cypriots and these indigenous people had lived on the island for thousands of years and paid 94% of taxes, the new constitution was giving the 17% of the population that was Turkish Cypriots, who paid 6% of taxes, around 30% of government jobs and 40% of national security jobs.

 

Within three years tensions between the two communities in administrative affairs began to show. In particular disputes over separate municipalities and taxation created a deadlock in government. A constitutional court ruled in 1963 Makarios had failed to uphold article 173 of the constitution which called for the establishment of separate municipalities for Turkish Cypriots. Makarios subsequently declared his intention to ignore the judgement, resulting in the West German judge resigning from his position. Makarios proposed thirteen amendments to the constitution, which would have had the effect of resolving most of the issues in the Greek Cypriot favour. Under the proposals, the President and Vice-President would lose their veto, the separate municipalities as sought after by the Turkish Cypriots would be abandoned, the need for separate majorities by both communities in passing legislation would be discarded and the civil service contribution would be set at actual population ratios (82:18) instead of the slightly higher figure for Turkish Cypriots.

 

The intention behind the amendments has long been called into question. The Akritas plan, written in the height of the constitutional dispute by the Greek Cypriot interior minister Polycarpos Georkadjis, called for the removal of undesirable elements of the constitution so as to allow power-sharing to work. The plan envisaged a swift retaliatory attack on Turkish Cypriot strongholds should Turkish Cypriots resort to violence to resist the measures, stating "In the event of a planned or staged Turkish attack, it is imperative to overcome it by force in the shortest possible time, because if we succeed in gaining command of the situation (in one or two days), no outside, intervention would be either justified or possible." Whether Makarios's proposals were part of the Akritas plan is unclear, however it remains that sentiment towards enosis had not completely disappeared with independence. Makarios described independence as "a step on the road to enosis".[31] Preparations for conflict were not entirely absent from Turkish Cypriots either, with right wing elements still believing taksim (partition) the best safeguard against enosis.

 

Greek Cypriots however believe the amendments were a necessity stemming from a perceived attempt by Turkish Cypriots to frustrate the working of government. Turkish Cypriots saw it as a means to reduce their status within the state from one of co-founder to that of minority, seeing it as a first step towards enosis. The security situation deteriorated rapidly.

 

Main articles: Bloody Christmas (1963) and Battle of Tillyria

An armed conflict was triggered after December 21, 1963, a period remembered by Turkish Cypriots as Bloody Christmas, when a Greek Cypriot policemen that had been called to help deal with a taxi driver refusing officers already on the scene access to check the identification documents of his customers, took out his gun upon arrival and shot and killed the taxi driver and his partner. Eric Solsten summarised the events as follows: "a Greek Cypriot police patrol, ostensibly checking identification documents, stopped a Turkish Cypriot couple on the edge of the Turkish quarter. A hostile crowd gathered, shots were fired, and two Turkish Cypriots were killed."

 

In the morning after the shooting, crowds gathered in protest in Northern Nicosia, likely encouraged by the TMT, without incident. On the evening of the 22nd, gunfire broke out, communication lines to the Turkish neighbourhoods were cut, and the Greek Cypriot police occupied the nearby airport. On the 23rd, a ceasefire was negotiated, but did not hold. Fighting, including automatic weapons fire, between Greek and Turkish Cypriots and militias increased in Nicosia and Larnaca. A force of Greek Cypriot irregulars led by Nikos Sampson entered the Nicosia suburb of Omorphita and engaged in heavy firing on armed, as well as by some accounts unarmed, Turkish Cypriots. The Omorphita clash has been described by Turkish Cypriots as a massacre, while this view has generally not been acknowledged by Greek Cypriots.

 

Further ceasefires were arranged between the two sides, but also failed. By Christmas Eve, the 24th, Britain, Greece, and Turkey had joined talks, with all sides calling for a truce. On Christmas day, Turkish fighter jets overflew Nicosia in a show of support. Finally it was agreed to allow a force of 2,700 British soldiers to help enforce a ceasefire. In the next days, a "buffer zone" was created in Nicosia, and a British officer marked a line on a map with green ink, separating the two sides of the city, which was the beginning of the "Green Line". Fighting continued across the island for the next several weeks.

 

In total 364 Turkish Cypriots and 174 Greek Cypriots were killed during the violence. 25,000 Turkish Cypriots from 103-109 villages fled and were displaced into enclaves and thousands of Turkish Cypriot houses were ransacked or completely destroyed.

 

Contemporary newspapers also reported on the forceful exodus of the Turkish Cypriots from their homes. According to The Times in 1964, threats, shootings and attempts of arson were committed against the Turkish Cypriots to force them out of their homes. The Daily Express wrote that "25,000 Turks have already been forced to leave their homes". The Guardian reported a massacre of Turks at Limassol on 16 February 1964.

 

Turkey had by now readied its fleet and its fighter jets appeared over Nicosia. Turkey was dissuaded from direct involvement by the creation of a United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP) in 1964. Despite the negotiated ceasefire in Nicosia, attacks on the Turkish Cypriot persisted, particularly in Limassol. Concerned about the possibility of a Turkish invasion, Makarios undertook the creation of a Greek Cypriot conscript-based army called the "National Guard". A general from Greece took charge of the army, whilst a further 20,000 well-equipped officers and men were smuggled from Greece into Cyprus. Turkey threatened to intervene once more, but was prevented by a strongly worded letter from the American President Lyndon B. Johnson, anxious to avoid a conflict between NATO allies Greece and Turkey at the height of the Cold War.

 

Turkish Cypriots had by now established an important bridgehead at Kokkina, provided with arms, volunteers and materials from Turkey and abroad. Seeing this incursion of foreign weapons and troops as a major threat, the Cypriot government invited George Grivas to return from Greece as commander of the Greek troops on the island and launch a major attack on the bridgehead. Turkey retaliated by dispatching its fighter jets to bomb Greek positions, causing Makarios to threaten an attack on every Turkish Cypriot village on the island if the bombings did not cease. The conflict had now drawn in Greece and Turkey, with both countries amassing troops on their Thracian borders. Efforts at mediation by Dean Acheson, a former U.S. Secretary of State, and UN-appointed mediator Galo Plaza had failed, all the while the division of the two communities becoming more apparent. Greek Cypriot forces were estimated at some 30,000, including the National Guard and the large contingent from Greece. Defending the Turkish Cypriot enclaves was a force of approximately 5,000 irregulars, led by a Turkish colonel, but lacking the equipment and organisation of the Greek forces.

 

The Secretary-General of the United Nations in 1964, U Thant, reported the damage during the conflicts:

 

UNFICYP carried out a detailed survey of all damage to properties throughout the island during the disturbances; it shows that in 109 villages, most of them Turkish-Cypriot or mixed villages, 527 houses have been destroyed while 2,000 others have suffered damage from looting.

 

The situation worsened in 1967, when a military junta overthrew the democratically elected government of Greece, and began applying pressure on Makarios to achieve enosis. Makarios, not wishing to become part of a military dictatorship or trigger a Turkish invasion, began to distance himself from the goal of enosis. This caused tensions with the junta in Greece as well as George Grivas in Cyprus. Grivas's control over the National Guard and Greek contingent was seen as a threat to Makarios's position, who now feared a possible coup.[citation needed] The National Guard and Cyprus Police began patrolling the Turkish Cypriot enclaves of Ayios Theodoros and Kophinou, and on November 15 engaged in heavy fighting with the Turkish Cypriots.

 

By the time of his withdrawal 26 Turkish Cypriots had been killed. Turkey replied with an ultimatum demanding that Grivas be removed from the island, that the troops smuggled from Greece in excess of the limits of the Treaty of Alliance be removed, and that the economic blockades on the Turkish Cypriot enclaves be lifted. Grivas was recalled by the Athens Junta and the 12,000 Greek troops were withdrawn. Makarios now attempted to consolidate his position by reducing the number of National Guard troops, and by creating a paramilitary force loyal to Cypriot independence. In 1968, acknowledging that enosis was now all but impossible, Makarios stated, "A solution by necessity must be sought within the limits of what is feasible which does not always coincide with the limits of what is desirable."

 

After 1967 tensions between the Greek and Turkish Cypriots subsided. Instead, the main source of tension on the island came from factions within the Greek Cypriot community. Although Makarios had effectively abandoned enosis in favour of an 'attainable solution', many others continued to believe that the only legitimate political aspiration for Greek Cypriots was union with Greece.

 

On his arrival, Grivas began by establishing a nationalist paramilitary group known as the National Organization of Cypriot Fighters (Ethniki Organosis Kyprion Agoniston B or EOKA-B), drawing comparisons with the EOKA struggle for enosis under the British colonial administration of the 1950s.

 

The military junta in Athens saw Makarios as an obstacle. Makarios's failure to disband the National Guard, whose officer class was dominated by mainland Greeks, had meant the junta had practical control over the Cypriot military establishment, leaving Makarios isolated and a vulnerable target.

 

During the first Turkish invasion, Turkish troops invaded Cyprus territory on 20 July 1974, invoking its rights under the Treaty of Guarantee. This expansion of Turkish-occupied zone violated International Law as well as the Charter of the United Nations. Turkish troops managed to capture 3% of the island which was accompanied by the burning of the Turkish Cypriot quarter, as well as the raping and killing of women and children. A temporary cease-fire followed which was mitigated by the UN Security Council. Subsequently, the Greek military Junta collapsed on July 23, 1974, and peace talks commenced in which a democratic government was installed. The Resolution 353 was broken after Turkey attacked a second time and managed to get a hold of 37% of Cyprus territory. The Island of Cyprus was appointed a Buffer Zone by the United Nations, which divided the island into two zones through the 'Green Line' and put an end to the Turkish invasion. Although Turkey announced that the occupied areas of Cyprus to be called the Federated Turkish State in 1975, it is not legitimised on a worldwide political scale. The United Nations called for the international recognition of independence for the Republic of Cyprus in the Security Council Resolution 367.

 

In the years after the Turkish invasion of northern Cyprus one can observe a history of failed talks between the two parties. The 1983 declaration of the independent Turkish Republic of Cyprus resulted in a rise of inter-communal tensions and made it increasingly hard to find mutual understanding. With Cyprus' interest of a possible EU membership and a new UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in 1997 new hopes arose for a fresh start. International involvement from sides of the US and UK, wanting a solution to the Cyprus dispute prior to the EU accession led to political pressures for new talks. The believe that an accession without a solution would threaten Greek-Turkish relations and acknowledge the partition of the island would direct the coming negotiations.

 

Over the course of two years a concrete plan, the Annan plan was formulated. In 2004 the fifth version agreed upon from both sides and with the endorsement of Turkey, US, UK and EU then was presented to the public and was given a referendum in both Cypriot communities to assure the legitimisation of the resolution. The Turkish Cypriots voted with 65% for the plan, however the Greek Cypriots voted with a 76% majority against. The Annan plan contained multiple important topics. Firstly it established a confederation of two separate states called the United Cyprus Republic. Both communities would have autonomous states combined under one unified government. The members of parliament would be chosen according to the percentage in population numbers to ensure a just involvement from both communities. The paper proposed a demilitarisation of the island over the next years. Furthermore it agreed upon a number of 45000 Turkish settlers that could remain on the island. These settlers became a very important issue concerning peace talks. Originally the Turkish government encouraged Turks to settle in Cyprus providing transfer and property, to establish a counterpart to the Greek Cypriot population due to their 1 to 5 minority. With the economic situation many Turkish-Cypriot decided to leave the island, however their departure is made up by incoming Turkish settlers leaving the population ratio between Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots stable. However all these points where criticised and as seen in the vote rejected mainly by the Greek Cypriots. These name the dissolution of the „Republic of Cyprus", economic consequences of a reunion and the remaining Turkish settlers as reason. Many claim that the plan was indeed drawing more from Turkish-Cypriot demands then Greek-Cypriot interests. Taking in consideration that the US wanted to keep Turkey as a strategic partner in future Middle Eastern conflicts.

 

A week after the failed referendum the Republic of Cyprus joined the EU. In multiple instances the EU tried to promote trade with Northern Cyprus but without internationally recognised ports this spiked a grand debate. Both side endure their intention of negotiations, however without the prospect of any new compromises or agreements the UN is unwilling to start the process again. Since 2004 negotiations took place in numbers but without any results, both sides are strongly holding on to their position without an agreeable solution in sight that would suit both parties.

"Shocking True Confessions" Group Show

Opening: Saturday, February 10th - 28th at:

Boomerang Gallery

46 Kentucky Street

Petaluma, CA 94952

Enkomi-Tuzla is a historic village in Cyprus. Tombs can be found in the village and it is an important site of the Bronze Age, due to it being the possible capital of Alasiya.

 

In 1974, Enkomi had about 800 Greek Cypriot inhabitants. They all fled to the south of the island after the Turkish invasion, in the aftermath of the July coup. As of 2011, Enkomi has a population of 2,645. It comprises displaced Turkish Cypriots from Larnaca and Turkish settlers from Adana Province and Trabzon Province.

 

Enkomi was settled in the Middle Bronze Age, near an inlet from the sea (now silted up). From about the 16th century BC to the 12th, it was an important trading center for copper, which was smelted at the site, with strong cultural links to Ugarit on the facing coast of Syria.

 

The complicated and badly disturbed stratigraphy of the site has[4] in four major phases, with many subdivisions:

 

Level A, a poorly represented preliminary stratum on bedrock;

Level I A, and B, at the beginning of the Late Bronze Age, when fortifications were twice destroyed;

Level II A, and B, with many subdivisions, covering the elaborate expansion of the 14th and 13th centuries and ending in a mass destruction about 1220;

Level III A, B, and C, with Mycenaean settlers, with a destructive attack, possibly related to the Sea Peoples in IIIA, culturally continuous with IIIB, ending in a destruction about 1125, and IIIC, a final, Mycenaean phase with dwindling population.

During the 13th century BC, Enkomi was inhabited by Greeks, like most of the cities of Cyprus. From the 13th century, other towns along the southern coast of Cyprus competed with Enkomi. After an earthquake ca. 1050 BC, the site was abandoned, leaving an opening for the rise of Salamis.

 

René Dussaud said that Enkomi is the Alasia of the Amarna correspondence and other texts,[5] including Hittite texts. Long after the town disappeared, Hellenes recalled it in the cult title of Apollo Alasiotas, recorded in a Cypriote inscription as late as the 4th century BC. In 1900 the archaeologist Joseph Offord suggested that Apollo Alasiotas was a Syrian god identical with Resheph, transported to Cyprus,[6] and some modern scholars remain unconvinced. The bronze statuette of a horned god (illustration) may represent this divinity whom Greeks identified, by interpretatio graeca, with Apollo.

 

Following more than a decade of widespread looting drawn by the high quality of the tomb gifts, A. S. Murray worked there for the British Museum in 1894–1896. From the 1930s, excavations were continued by a joint expedition between Claude F. A. Schaeffer for the French Expedition and Porphyrios Dikaios on behalf of the Cyprus Department of Antiquities. Notable finds from Enkomi include Linear C inscriptions and the so-called "horned god", a bronze statuette dated to the early 12th century BC, depicting a deity wearing a horned helmet. Another well-known statue is the "ingot god", a statue wearing a horned conical hat and greaves, armed with shield and spear, and standing on a miniature hide-shaped ingot.

 

A decorated metal cup, the "Enkomi Cup" has been controversially claimed to use niello decoration, which would make it one of the earliest uses of this technique. However, controversy has continued since the 1960s as to whether the material used actually is niello.

 

Northern Cyprus, officially the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), is a de facto state that comprises the northeastern portion of the island of Cyprus. It is recognised only by Turkey, and its territory is considered by all other states to be part of the Republic of Cyprus.

 

Northern Cyprus extends from the tip of the Karpass Peninsula in the northeast to Morphou Bay, Cape Kormakitis and its westernmost point, the Kokkina exclave in the west. Its southernmost point is the village of Louroujina. A buffer zone under the control of the United Nations stretches between Northern Cyprus and the rest of the island and divides Nicosia, the island's largest city and capital of both sides.

 

A coup d'état in 1974, performed as part of an attempt to annex the island to Greece, prompted the Turkish invasion of Cyprus. This resulted in the eviction of much of the north's Greek Cypriot population, the flight of Turkish Cypriots from the south, and the partitioning of the island, leading to a unilateral declaration of independence by the north in 1983. Due to its lack of recognition, Northern Cyprus is heavily dependent on Turkey for economic, political and military support.

 

Attempts to reach a solution to the Cyprus dispute have been unsuccessful. The Turkish Army maintains a large force in Northern Cyprus with the support and approval of the TRNC government, while the Republic of Cyprus, the European Union as a whole, and the international community regard it as an occupation force. This military presence has been denounced in several United Nations Security Council resolutions.

 

Northern Cyprus is a semi-presidential, democratic republic with a cultural heritage incorporating various influences and an economy that is dominated by the services sector. The economy has seen growth through the 2000s and 2010s, with the GNP per capita more than tripling in the 2000s, but is held back by an international embargo due to the official closure of the ports in Northern Cyprus by the Republic of Cyprus. The official language is Turkish, with a distinct local dialect being spoken. The vast majority of the population consists of Sunni Muslims, while religious attitudes are mostly moderate and secular. Northern Cyprus is an observer state of ECO and OIC under the name "Turkish Cypriot State", PACE under the name "Turkish Cypriot Community", and Organization of Turkic States with its own name.

 

Several distinct periods of Cypriot intercommunal violence involving the two main ethnic communities, Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, marked mid-20th century Cyprus. These included the Cyprus Emergency of 1955–59 during British rule, the post-independence Cyprus crisis of 1963–64, and the Cyprus crisis of 1967. Hostilities culminated in the 1974 de facto division of the island along the Green Line following the Turkish invasion of Cyprus. The region has been relatively peaceful since then, but the Cyprus dispute has continued, with various attempts to solve it diplomatically having been generally unsuccessful.

 

Cyprus, an island lying in the eastern Mediterranean, hosted a population of Greeks and Turks (four-fifths and one-fifth, respectively), who lived under British rule in the late nineteenth-century and the first half of the twentieth-century. Christian Orthodox Church of Cyprus played a prominent political role among the Greek Cypriot community, a privilege that it acquired during the Ottoman Empire with the employment of the millet system, which gave the archbishop an unofficial ethnarch status.

 

The repeated rejections by the British of Greek Cypriot demands for enosis, union with Greece, led to armed resistance, organised by the National Organization of Cypriot Struggle, or EOKA. EOKA, led by the Greek-Cypriot commander George Grivas, systematically targeted British colonial authorities. One of the effects of EOKA's campaign was to alter the Turkish position from demanding full reincorporation into Turkey to a demand for taksim (partition). EOKA's mission and activities caused a "Cretan syndrome" (see Turkish Resistance Organisation) within the Turkish Cypriot community, as its members feared that they would be forced to leave the island in such a case as had been the case with Cretan Turks. As such, they preferred the continuation of British colonial rule and then taksim, the division of the island. Due to the Turkish Cypriots' support for the British, EOKA's leader, Georgios Grivas, declared them to be enemies. The fact that the Turks were a minority was, according to Nihat Erim, to be addressed by the transfer of thousands of Turks from mainland Turkey so that Greek Cypriots would cease to be the majority. When Erim visited Cyprus as the Turkish representative, he was advised by Field Marshal Sir John Harding, the then Governor of Cyprus, that Turkey should send educated Turks to settle in Cyprus.

 

Turkey actively promoted the idea that on the island of Cyprus two distinctive communities existed, and sidestepped its former claim that "the people of Cyprus were all Turkish subjects". In doing so, Turkey's aim to have self-determination of two to-be equal communities in effect led to de jure partition of the island.[citation needed] This could be justified to the international community against the will of the majority Greek population of the island. Dr. Fazil Küçük in 1954 had already proposed Cyprus be divided in two at the 35° parallel.

 

Lindley Dan, from Notre Dame University, spotted the roots of intercommunal violence to different visions among the two communities of Cyprus (enosis for Greek Cypriots, taksim for Turkish Cypriots). Also, Lindlay wrote that "the merging of church, schools/education, and politics in divisive and nationalistic ways" had played a crucial role in creation of havoc in Cyprus' history. Attalides Michael also pointed to the opposing nationalisms as the cause of the Cyprus problem.

 

By the mid-1950's, the "Cyprus is Turkish" party, movement, and slogan gained force in both Cyprus and Turkey. In a 1954 editorial, Turkish Cypriot leader Dr. Fazil Kuchuk expressed the sentiment that the Turkish youth had grown up with the idea that "as soon as Great Britain leaves the island, it will be taken over by the Turks", and that "Turkey cannot tolerate otherwise". This perspective contributed to the willingness of Turkish Cypriots to align themselves with the British, who started recruiting Turkish Cypriots into the police force that patrolled Cyprus to fight EOKA, a Greek Cypriot nationalist organisation that sought to rid the island of British rule.

 

EOKA targeted colonial authorities, including police, but Georgios Grivas, the leader of EOKA, did not initially wish to open up a new front by fighting Turkish Cypriots and reassured them that EOKA would not harm their people. In 1956, some Turkish Cypriot policemen were killed by EOKA members and this provoked some intercommunal violence in the spring and summer, but these attacks on policemen were not motivated by the fact that they were Turkish Cypriots.

 

However, in January 1957, Grivas changed his policy as his forces in the mountains became increasingly pressured by the British Crown forces. In order to divert the attention of the Crown forces, EOKA members started to target Turkish Cypriot policemen intentionally in the towns, so that Turkish Cypriots would riot against the Greek Cypriots and the security forces would have to be diverted to the towns to restore order. The killing of a Turkish Cypriot policeman on 19 January, when a power station was bombed, and the injury of three others, provoked three days of intercommunal violence in Nicosia. The two communities targeted each other in reprisals, at least one Greek Cypriot was killed and the British Army was deployed in the streets. Greek Cypriot stores were burned and their neighbourhoods attacked. Following the events, the Greek Cypriot leadership spread the propaganda that the riots had merely been an act of Turkish Cypriot aggression. Such events created chaos and drove the communities apart both in Cyprus and in Turkey.

 

On 22 October 1957 Sir Hugh Mackintosh Foot replaced Sir John Harding as the British Governor of Cyprus. Foot suggested five to seven years of self-government before any final decision. His plan rejected both enosis and taksim. The Turkish Cypriot response to this plan was a series of anti-British demonstrations in Nicosia on 27 and 28 January 1958 rejecting the proposed plan because the plan did not include partition. The British then withdrew the plan.

 

In 1957, Black Gang, a Turkish Cypriot pro-taksim paramilitary organisation, was formed to patrol a Turkish Cypriot enclave, the Tahtakale district of Nicosia, against activities of EOKA. The organisation later attempted to grow into a national scale, but failed to gain public support.

 

By 1958, signs of dissatisfaction with the British increased on both sides, with a group of Turkish Cypriots forming Volkan (later renamed to the Turkish Resistance Organisation) paramilitary group to promote partition and the annexation of Cyprus to Turkey as dictated by the Menderes plan. Volkan initially consisted of roughly 100 members, with the stated aim of raising awareness in Turkey of the Cyprus issue and courting military training and support for Turkish Cypriot fighters from the Turkish government.

 

In June 1958, the British Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, was expected to propose a plan to resolve the Cyprus issue. In light of the new development, the Turks rioted in Nicosia to promote the idea that Greek and Turkish Cypriots could not live together and therefore any plan that did not include partition would not be viable. This violence was soon followed by bombing, Greek Cypriot deaths and looting of Greek Cypriot-owned shops and houses. Greek and Turkish Cypriots started to flee mixed population villages where they were a minority in search of safety. This was effectively the beginning of the segregation of the two communities. On 7 June 1958, a bomb exploded at the entrance of the Turkish Embassy in Cyprus. Following the bombing, Turkish Cypriots looted Greek Cypriot properties. On 26 June 1984, the Turkish Cypriot leader, Rauf Denktaş, admitted on British channel ITV that the bomb was placed by the Turks themselves in order to create tension. On 9 January 1995, Rauf Denktaş repeated his claim to the famous Turkish newspaper Milliyet in Turkey.

 

The crisis reached a climax on 12 June 1958, when eight Greeks, out of an armed group of thirty five arrested by soldiers of the Royal Horse Guards on suspicion of preparing an attack on the Turkish quarter of Skylloura, were killed in a suspected attack by Turkish Cypriot locals, near the village of Geunyeli, having been ordered to walk back to their village of Kondemenos.

 

After the EOKA campaign had begun, the British government successfully began to turn the Cyprus issue from a British colonial problem into a Greek-Turkish issue. British diplomacy exerted backstage influence on the Adnan Menderes government, with the aim of making Turkey active in Cyprus. For the British, the attempt had a twofold objective. The EOKA campaign would be silenced as quickly as possible, and Turkish Cypriots would not side with Greek Cypriots against the British colonial claims over the island, which would thus remain under the British. The Turkish Cypriot leadership visited Menderes to discuss the Cyprus issue. When asked how the Turkish Cypriots should respond to the Greek Cypriot claim of enosis, Menderes replied: "You should go to the British foreign minister and request the status quo be prolonged, Cyprus to remain as a British colony". When the Turkish Cypriots visited the British Foreign Secretary and requested for Cyprus to remain a colony, he replied: "You should not be asking for colonialism at this day and age, you should be asking for Cyprus be returned to Turkey, its former owner".

 

As Turkish Cypriots began to look to Turkey for protection, Greek Cypriots soon understood that enosis was extremely unlikely. The Greek Cypriot leader, Archbishop Makarios III, now set independence for the island as his objective.

 

Britain resolved to solve the dispute by creating an independent Cyprus. In 1959, all involved parties signed the Zurich Agreements: Britain, Turkey, Greece, and the Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders, Makarios and Dr. Fazil Kucuk, respectively. The new constitution drew heavily on the ethnic composition of the island. The President would be a Greek Cypriot, and the Vice-President a Turkish Cypriot with an equal veto. The contribution to the public service would be set at a ratio of 70:30, and the Supreme Court would consist of an equal number of judges from both communities as well as an independent judge who was not Greek, Turkish or British. The Zurich Agreements were supplemented by a number of treaties. The Treaty of Guarantee stated that secession or union with any state was forbidden, and that Greece, Turkey and Britain would be given guarantor status to intervene if that was violated. The Treaty of Alliance allowed for two small Greek and Turkish military contingents to be stationed on the island, and the Treaty of Establishment gave Britain sovereignty over two bases in Akrotiri and Dhekelia.

 

On 15 August 1960, the Colony of Cyprus became fully independent as the Republic of Cyprus. The new republic remained within the Commonwealth of Nations.

 

The new constitution brought dissatisfaction to Greek Cypriots, who felt it to be highly unjust for them for historical, demographic and contributional reasons. Although 80% of the island's population were Greek Cypriots and these indigenous people had lived on the island for thousands of years and paid 94% of taxes, the new constitution was giving the 17% of the population that was Turkish Cypriots, who paid 6% of taxes, around 30% of government jobs and 40% of national security jobs.

 

Within three years tensions between the two communities in administrative affairs began to show. In particular disputes over separate municipalities and taxation created a deadlock in government. A constitutional court ruled in 1963 Makarios had failed to uphold article 173 of the constitution which called for the establishment of separate municipalities for Turkish Cypriots. Makarios subsequently declared his intention to ignore the judgement, resulting in the West German judge resigning from his position. Makarios proposed thirteen amendments to the constitution, which would have had the effect of resolving most of the issues in the Greek Cypriot favour. Under the proposals, the President and Vice-President would lose their veto, the separate municipalities as sought after by the Turkish Cypriots would be abandoned, the need for separate majorities by both communities in passing legislation would be discarded and the civil service contribution would be set at actual population ratios (82:18) instead of the slightly higher figure for Turkish Cypriots.

 

The intention behind the amendments has long been called into question. The Akritas plan, written in the height of the constitutional dispute by the Greek Cypriot interior minister Polycarpos Georkadjis, called for the removal of undesirable elements of the constitution so as to allow power-sharing to work. The plan envisaged a swift retaliatory attack on Turkish Cypriot strongholds should Turkish Cypriots resort to violence to resist the measures, stating "In the event of a planned or staged Turkish attack, it is imperative to overcome it by force in the shortest possible time, because if we succeed in gaining command of the situation (in one or two days), no outside, intervention would be either justified or possible." Whether Makarios's proposals were part of the Akritas plan is unclear, however it remains that sentiment towards enosis had not completely disappeared with independence. Makarios described independence as "a step on the road to enosis".[31] Preparations for conflict were not entirely absent from Turkish Cypriots either, with right wing elements still believing taksim (partition) the best safeguard against enosis.

 

Greek Cypriots however believe the amendments were a necessity stemming from a perceived attempt by Turkish Cypriots to frustrate the working of government. Turkish Cypriots saw it as a means to reduce their status within the state from one of co-founder to that of minority, seeing it as a first step towards enosis. The security situation deteriorated rapidly.

 

Main articles: Bloody Christmas (1963) and Battle of Tillyria

An armed conflict was triggered after December 21, 1963, a period remembered by Turkish Cypriots as Bloody Christmas, when a Greek Cypriot policemen that had been called to help deal with a taxi driver refusing officers already on the scene access to check the identification documents of his customers, took out his gun upon arrival and shot and killed the taxi driver and his partner. Eric Solsten summarised the events as follows: "a Greek Cypriot police patrol, ostensibly checking identification documents, stopped a Turkish Cypriot couple on the edge of the Turkish quarter. A hostile crowd gathered, shots were fired, and two Turkish Cypriots were killed."

 

In the morning after the shooting, crowds gathered in protest in Northern Nicosia, likely encouraged by the TMT, without incident. On the evening of the 22nd, gunfire broke out, communication lines to the Turkish neighbourhoods were cut, and the Greek Cypriot police occupied the nearby airport. On the 23rd, a ceasefire was negotiated, but did not hold. Fighting, including automatic weapons fire, between Greek and Turkish Cypriots and militias increased in Nicosia and Larnaca. A force of Greek Cypriot irregulars led by Nikos Sampson entered the Nicosia suburb of Omorphita and engaged in heavy firing on armed, as well as by some accounts unarmed, Turkish Cypriots. The Omorphita clash has been described by Turkish Cypriots as a massacre, while this view has generally not been acknowledged by Greek Cypriots.

 

Further ceasefires were arranged between the two sides, but also failed. By Christmas Eve, the 24th, Britain, Greece, and Turkey had joined talks, with all sides calling for a truce. On Christmas day, Turkish fighter jets overflew Nicosia in a show of support. Finally it was agreed to allow a force of 2,700 British soldiers to help enforce a ceasefire. In the next days, a "buffer zone" was created in Nicosia, and a British officer marked a line on a map with green ink, separating the two sides of the city, which was the beginning of the "Green Line". Fighting continued across the island for the next several weeks.

 

In total 364 Turkish Cypriots and 174 Greek Cypriots were killed during the violence. 25,000 Turkish Cypriots from 103-109 villages fled and were displaced into enclaves and thousands of Turkish Cypriot houses were ransacked or completely destroyed.

 

Contemporary newspapers also reported on the forceful exodus of the Turkish Cypriots from their homes. According to The Times in 1964, threats, shootings and attempts of arson were committed against the Turkish Cypriots to force them out of their homes. The Daily Express wrote that "25,000 Turks have already been forced to leave their homes". The Guardian reported a massacre of Turks at Limassol on 16 February 1964.

 

Turkey had by now readied its fleet and its fighter jets appeared over Nicosia. Turkey was dissuaded from direct involvement by the creation of a United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP) in 1964. Despite the negotiated ceasefire in Nicosia, attacks on the Turkish Cypriot persisted, particularly in Limassol. Concerned about the possibility of a Turkish invasion, Makarios undertook the creation of a Greek Cypriot conscript-based army called the "National Guard". A general from Greece took charge of the army, whilst a further 20,000 well-equipped officers and men were smuggled from Greece into Cyprus. Turkey threatened to intervene once more, but was prevented by a strongly worded letter from the American President Lyndon B. Johnson, anxious to avoid a conflict between NATO allies Greece and Turkey at the height of the Cold War.

 

Turkish Cypriots had by now established an important bridgehead at Kokkina, provided with arms, volunteers and materials from Turkey and abroad. Seeing this incursion of foreign weapons and troops as a major threat, the Cypriot government invited George Grivas to return from Greece as commander of the Greek troops on the island and launch a major attack on the bridgehead. Turkey retaliated by dispatching its fighter jets to bomb Greek positions, causing Makarios to threaten an attack on every Turkish Cypriot village on the island if the bombings did not cease. The conflict had now drawn in Greece and Turkey, with both countries amassing troops on their Thracian borders. Efforts at mediation by Dean Acheson, a former U.S. Secretary of State, and UN-appointed mediator Galo Plaza had failed, all the while the division of the two communities becoming more apparent. Greek Cypriot forces were estimated at some 30,000, including the National Guard and the large contingent from Greece. Defending the Turkish Cypriot enclaves was a force of approximately 5,000 irregulars, led by a Turkish colonel, but lacking the equipment and organisation of the Greek forces.

 

The Secretary-General of the United Nations in 1964, U Thant, reported the damage during the conflicts:

 

UNFICYP carried out a detailed survey of all damage to properties throughout the island during the disturbances; it shows that in 109 villages, most of them Turkish-Cypriot or mixed villages, 527 houses have been destroyed while 2,000 others have suffered damage from looting.

 

The situation worsened in 1967, when a military junta overthrew the democratically elected government of Greece, and began applying pressure on Makarios to achieve enosis. Makarios, not wishing to become part of a military dictatorship or trigger a Turkish invasion, began to distance himself from the goal of enosis. This caused tensions with the junta in Greece as well as George Grivas in Cyprus. Grivas's control over the National Guard and Greek contingent was seen as a threat to Makarios's position, who now feared a possible coup.[citation needed] The National Guard and Cyprus Police began patrolling the Turkish Cypriot enclaves of Ayios Theodoros and Kophinou, and on November 15 engaged in heavy fighting with the Turkish Cypriots.

 

By the time of his withdrawal 26 Turkish Cypriots had been killed. Turkey replied with an ultimatum demanding that Grivas be removed from the island, that the troops smuggled from Greece in excess of the limits of the Treaty of Alliance be removed, and that the economic blockades on the Turkish Cypriot enclaves be lifted. Grivas was recalled by the Athens Junta and the 12,000 Greek troops were withdrawn. Makarios now attempted to consolidate his position by reducing the number of National Guard troops, and by creating a paramilitary force loyal to Cypriot independence. In 1968, acknowledging that enosis was now all but impossible, Makarios stated, "A solution by necessity must be sought within the limits of what is feasible which does not always coincide with the limits of what is desirable."

 

After 1967 tensions between the Greek and Turkish Cypriots subsided. Instead, the main source of tension on the island came from factions within the Greek Cypriot community. Although Makarios had effectively abandoned enosis in favour of an 'attainable solution', many others continued to believe that the only legitimate political aspiration for Greek Cypriots was union with Greece.

 

On his arrival, Grivas began by establishing a nationalist paramilitary group known as the National Organization of Cypriot Fighters (Ethniki Organosis Kyprion Agoniston B or EOKA-B), drawing comparisons with the EOKA struggle for enosis under the British colonial administration of the 1950s.

 

The military junta in Athens saw Makarios as an obstacle. Makarios's failure to disband the National Guard, whose officer class was dominated by mainland Greeks, had meant the junta had practical control over the Cypriot military establishment, leaving Makarios isolated and a vulnerable target.

 

During the first Turkish invasion, Turkish troops invaded Cyprus territory on 20 July 1974, invoking its rights under the Treaty of Guarantee. This expansion of Turkish-occupied zone violated International Law as well as the Charter of the United Nations. Turkish troops managed to capture 3% of the island which was accompanied by the burning of the Turkish Cypriot quarter, as well as the raping and killing of women and children. A temporary cease-fire followed which was mitigated by the UN Security Council. Subsequently, the Greek military Junta collapsed on July 23, 1974, and peace talks commenced in which a democratic government was installed. The Resolution 353 was broken after Turkey attacked a second time and managed to get a hold of 37% of Cyprus territory. The Island of Cyprus was appointed a Buffer Zone by the United Nations, which divided the island into two zones through the 'Green Line' and put an end to the Turkish invasion. Although Turkey announced that the occupied areas of Cyprus to be called the Federated Turkish State in 1975, it is not legitimised on a worldwide political scale. The United Nations called for the international recognition of independence for the Republic of Cyprus in the Security Council Resolution 367.

 

In the years after the Turkish invasion of northern Cyprus one can observe a history of failed talks between the two parties. The 1983 declaration of the independent Turkish Republic of Cyprus resulted in a rise of inter-communal tensions and made it increasingly hard to find mutual understanding. With Cyprus' interest of a possible EU membership and a new UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in 1997 new hopes arose for a fresh start. International involvement from sides of the US and UK, wanting a solution to the Cyprus dispute prior to the EU accession led to political pressures for new talks. The believe that an accession without a solution would threaten Greek-Turkish relations and acknowledge the partition of the island would direct the coming negotiations.

 

Over the course of two years a concrete plan, the Annan plan was formulated. In 2004 the fifth version agreed upon from both sides and with the endorsement of Turkey, US, UK and EU then was presented to the public and was given a referendum in both Cypriot communities to assure the legitimisation of the resolution. The Turkish Cypriots voted with 65% for the plan, however the Greek Cypriots voted with a 76% majority against. The Annan plan contained multiple important topics. Firstly it established a confederation of two separate states called the United Cyprus Republic. Both communities would have autonomous states combined under one unified government. The members of parliament would be chosen according to the percentage in population numbers to ensure a just involvement from both communities. The paper proposed a demilitarisation of the island over the next years. Furthermore it agreed upon a number of 45000 Turkish settlers that could remain on the island. These settlers became a very important issue concerning peace talks. Originally the Turkish government encouraged Turks to settle in Cyprus providing transfer and property, to establish a counterpart to the Greek Cypriot population due to their 1 to 5 minority. With the economic situation many Turkish-Cypriot decided to leave the island, however their departure is made up by incoming Turkish settlers leaving the population ratio between Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots stable. However all these points where criticised and as seen in the vote rejected mainly by the Greek Cypriots. These name the dissolution of the „Republic of Cyprus", economic consequences of a reunion and the remaining Turkish settlers as reason. Many claim that the plan was indeed drawing more from Turkish-Cypriot demands then Greek-Cypriot interests. Taking in consideration that the US wanted to keep Turkey as a strategic partner in future Middle Eastern conflicts.

 

A week after the failed referendum the Republic of Cyprus joined the EU. In multiple instances the EU tried to promote trade with Northern Cyprus but without internationally recognised ports this spiked a grand debate. Both side endure their intention of negotiations, however without the prospect of any new compromises or agreements the UN is unwilling to start the process again. Since 2004 negotiations took place in numbers but without any results, both sides are strongly holding on to their position without an agreeable solution in sight that would suit both parties.

The Monkey Rats are doing a lot of damage in my plant collections. July 2022

Testing, Testing, ... BANG!!!

  

Nondestructive testing

  

Nondestructive testing or Non-destructive testing (NDT) is a wide group of analysis techniques used in science and industry to evaluate the properties of a material, component or system without causing damage.[1] The terms Nondestructive examination (NDE), Nondestructive inspection (NDI), and Nondestructive evaluation (NDE) are also commonly used to describe this technology.[2] Because NDT does not permanently alter the article being inspected, it is a highly valuable technique that can save both money and time in product evaluation, troubleshooting, and research. Common NDT methods include ultrasonic, magnetic-particle, liquid penetrant, radiographic, remote visual inspection (RVI), eddy-current testing,[1] and low coherence interferometry.[3][4] NDT is commonly used in forensic engineering, mechanical engineering, petroleum engineering, electrical engineering, civil engineering, systems engineering, aeronautical engineering, medicine, and art.[1] Innovations in the field of nondestructive testing have had a profound impact on medical imaging, including on echocardiography, medical ultrasonography, and digital radiography.

  

Methods[edit]

 

NDT methods may rely upon use of electromagnetic radiation, sound, and inherent properties of materials to examine samples. This includes some kinds of microscopy to examine external surfaces in detail, although sample preparation techniques for metallography, optical microscopy and electron microscopy are generally destructive as the surfaces must be made smooth through polishing or the sample must be electron transparent in thickness. The inside of a sample can be examined with penetrating radiation, such as X-rays, neutrons or terahertz radiation. Sound waves are utilized in the case of ultrasonic testing. Contrast between a defect and the bulk of the sample may be enhanced for visual examination by the unaided eye by using liquids to penetrate fatigue cracks. One method (liquid penetrant testing) involves using dyes, fluorescent or non-fluorescent, in fluids for non-magnetic materials, usually metals. Another commonly used NDT method used on ferrous materials involves the application of fine iron particles (either liquid or dry dust) that are applied to a part while it is in an externally magnetized state (magnetic-particle testing). The particles will be attracted to leakage fields within the test object, and form on the objects surface. Magnetic particle testing can reveal surface & some sub-surface defects within the part. Thermoelectric effect (or use of the Seebeck effect) uses thermal properties of an alloy to quickly and easily characterize many alloys. The chemical test, or chemical spot test method, utilizes application of sensitive chemicals that can indicate the presence of individual alloying elements. Electrochemical methods, such as electrochemical fatigue crack sensors, utilize the tendency of metal structural material to oxidize readily in order to detect progressive damage.

 

Analyzing and documenting a non-destructive failure mode can also be accomplished using a high-speed camera recording continuously (movie-loop) until the failure is detected. Detecting the failure can be accomplished using a sound detector or stress gauge which produces a signal to trigger the high-speed camera. These high-speed cameras have advanced recording modes to capture some non-destructive failures.[5] After the failure the high-speed camera will stop recording. The capture images can be played back in slow motion showing precisely what happen before, during and after the non-destructive event, image by image.

  

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nondestructive_testing

Dessau, Germany: main station

A destructive pest unwelcome in rose gardens and many other places.

Divorce In Islamic Marriages Uprising

We all know the hideous statistic of Divorce in Islamic Marriages uprising up to 50% globally. The question is do Muslim marriages fare any better? According to the late Dr. Ilyas Ba-Yunus (may Allah have mercy on him) we are not far behind. In a study he conducted at the State University of New York at Cortland, he shows the divorce rate is 31% among Muslims living in North America and reaching 37% in New York, Ontario, and Texas.

 

Why are Divorce in Islamic Marriages rising? Who is to blame when we haven’t seen anything close to this in our parents’ generation? Among our parents, a divorce couple was truly an anomaly. True, in marriages back home the social stigma of divorce would prevent ending bad marriages. But when then exception becomes the norm, we have gone too far.

 

The Serious issue of Divorce in Islamic Marriages

How did we get to this point? Who is really to blame? We often hear “love marriages” or perhaps a degenerative society. How much does Bob Dylan’s famous line “the times they are a-changing” apply here?

The sheer truth is society is not to blame, not love or ever Bob Dylan for that matter. Who is? We are.

We are not listening. Not listening to who? Our Prophet and his timeless advice. We are not listening. He told us clearly, “A woman is married for four things: her wealth, her noble ancestry, her beauty and her religion. So marry the religious woman; (otherwise) you will be a loser.”

Honestly, how many of us have beauty or from a “good family” at the top of our list? And when things don’t work out we wonder why. And when marriages do start to fail do we heed to Allah’s commands of patience and mercy and obey the simple prophetic counsel of “don’t get angry?” Or do we scream in our loudest voices, telling each other where to go in the hereafter?

Are we honouring our wife and respecting our husband as the Prophet commanded? Or are you living according to another standard?

Many of us are lost and we don’t know where to turn. Qibla, a leading organization for teaching Islam online, has a course on Islamic marriage taught by Ustadha Hedaya Hartford, a family law scholar and author. In the Successful Islamic Marriage, she will cover all the essentials of a successful Islamic marriage through first explaining the basic fiqh of marriage and divorce, including common misconceptions and mistakes.

You will then learn about making the right choice before marriage, and what qualities to look for in a potential spouse. She will also spend a good portion the course giving tips on staying married, including establishing good communication, dealing with problems and destructive habits, being aware of potential triggers, and setting good habits with in-laws.

Her course will be featured at Qibla’s Term 2, which starts on March 30. For more information and registration, please go to Qibla.com and avoid Divorce in Islamic Marriages. www.preachnpropagate.com/divorce-in-islamic-marriages/

Testing, Testing, ... BANG!!!

  

Nondestructive testing

  

Nondestructive testing or Non-destructive testing (NDT) is a wide group of analysis techniques used in science and industry to evaluate the properties of a material, component or system without causing damage.[1] The terms Nondestructive examination (NDE), Nondestructive inspection (NDI), and Nondestructive evaluation (NDE) are also commonly used to describe this technology.[2] Because NDT does not permanently alter the article being inspected, it is a highly valuable technique that can save both money and time in product evaluation, troubleshooting, and research. Common NDT methods include ultrasonic, magnetic-particle, liquid penetrant, radiographic, remote visual inspection (RVI), eddy-current testing,[1] and low coherence interferometry.[3][4] NDT is commonly used in forensic engineering, mechanical engineering, petroleum engineering, electrical engineering, civil engineering, systems engineering, aeronautical engineering, medicine, and art.[1] Innovations in the field of nondestructive testing have had a profound impact on medical imaging, including on echocardiography, medical ultrasonography, and digital radiography.

  

Methods[edit]

 

NDT methods may rely upon use of electromagnetic radiation, sound, and inherent properties of materials to examine samples. This includes some kinds of microscopy to examine external surfaces in detail, although sample preparation techniques for metallography, optical microscopy and electron microscopy are generally destructive as the surfaces must be made smooth through polishing or the sample must be electron transparent in thickness. The inside of a sample can be examined with penetrating radiation, such as X-rays, neutrons or terahertz radiation. Sound waves are utilized in the case of ultrasonic testing. Contrast between a defect and the bulk of the sample may be enhanced for visual examination by the unaided eye by using liquids to penetrate fatigue cracks. One method (liquid penetrant testing) involves using dyes, fluorescent or non-fluorescent, in fluids for non-magnetic materials, usually metals. Another commonly used NDT method used on ferrous materials involves the application of fine iron particles (either liquid or dry dust) that are applied to a part while it is in an externally magnetized state (magnetic-particle testing). The particles will be attracted to leakage fields within the test object, and form on the objects surface. Magnetic particle testing can reveal surface & some sub-surface defects within the part. Thermoelectric effect (or use of the Seebeck effect) uses thermal properties of an alloy to quickly and easily characterize many alloys. The chemical test, or chemical spot test method, utilizes application of sensitive chemicals that can indicate the presence of individual alloying elements. Electrochemical methods, such as electrochemical fatigue crack sensors, utilize the tendency of metal structural material to oxidize readily in order to detect progressive damage.

 

Analyzing and documenting a non-destructive failure mode can also be accomplished using a high-speed camera recording continuously (movie-loop) until the failure is detected. Detecting the failure can be accomplished using a sound detector or stress gauge which produces a signal to trigger the high-speed camera. These high-speed cameras have advanced recording modes to capture some non-destructive failures.[5] After the failure the high-speed camera will stop recording. The capture images can be played back in slow motion showing precisely what happen before, during and after the non-destructive event, image by image.

  

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nondestructive_testing

An impersonal Moloch, devouring the lives and land of his people. Magnus Zeller - The Hitler State, 1937. Märkisches Museum, Berlin.

In: TOYNBEE, Arnold (1972). A Study of History. Weathervane Books, New York. ISBN 0-117-179415

---

The 'Führer State'

 

The staging of mass rallies of the Nazi Party and visits of state provided dazzling images of an orderly and consensual dictatorship. The regime utilized every means of technological civilization to convey the glossy appearance of mutual concurrence between »Führer« and »national community« as well as the feeling of greatness and coherence. Hidden behind the façade of a united »Führer will« were infighting about areas of responsibility and a growing breakdown of clear structures. The unchecked power dynamics and internal and external political radicalization fostered this collapse of order. At the same time this gave Hitler the opportunity to assert his will to wage war and to annihilate all alien elements.

---

The Märkisches Museum (Marcher Museum; originally Märkisches Provinzial-Museum, i.e. Museum of the Province of the March [of Brandenburg]) is a museum in Mitte, Berlin. Founded in 1874 as the museum of the city of Berlin and its political region, the March of Brandenburg, it occupies a building on the northern edge of Köllnischer Park, facing the Spree, which was designed by Ludwig Hoffmann and completed in 1908. It is now the main facility of the Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin, Landesmuseum für Kultur und Geschichte Berlins, the City of Berlin museum foundation, which also operates four other sites.

 

In the second half of the 19th century, Berlin grew very rapidly. The foundation stone of a new, much larger town hall, the Rotes Rathaus, was laid in 1861. The changes provoked interest amongst the bourgeoisie in the city's past and in preserving what had not already been lost. The Verein für die Geschichte Berlins (Association for the history of Berlin) was founded. It included early photographers such as Friedrich Albert Schwartz who began to document the changes to the city, assembling one of the first systematic photographic portraits of a city and its architecture. Beginning in the 1860s, they urged the foundation of a regional history museum. Ernst Friedel, a judge and antiquarian who had personally collected prehistoric and historic objects and paintings from Brandenburg for this purpose, persuaded the Magistrat, the executive council of Berlin, to form a new department of "Collections" and Friedel was appointed to head it together with the existing library and archive. On 9 October 1874 with the city's official acceptance of his plan, the Märkisches Provinzialmuseum (Provincial museum of the March) was founded. This was the first museum in Berlin to be completely independent of the Prussian crown. It had a budget of only 2,000 Goldmarks a year for purchases, and was therefore dependent from the start on donations from foundations and individuals. The Emperor later contributed a small fund for the purchase of photographs of the city.

 

In March 1875, Friedel put out a call for the donation or loan of objects of historical or scientific interest, which was so successful that the collection had to move late that year from the old town hall to the Palais Podewils, a Baroque residence in Klosterstraße, and in 1880 to the former town hall of Cölln. At that time it had over 29,500 objects. In addition, Berlin in the "Gründerzeit" was full of demolitions and excavations, which yielded both fragments of old buildings and prehistoric and medieval finds. The collection was crowded and in particular the large pieces taken from churches could not be properly displayed. However, the inventory was not without its uses: an executioner's axe from the collection was used on 16 August 1878 to behead Max Hödel after his attempted assassination of Emperor Wilhelm I.

 

At the urging of Friedel, a competition was held in 1892 for a building to house the collection, but the results were disappointing. 76 entries were received, but the winning design, by Wilhelm Möller, proved on examination to be both unsuitable and too expensive, and the architect had died, so the project was shelved.

 

Creating a new building for the museum was the first large task for Ludwig Hoffmann after his appointment in 1896 as Stadtbaurat (chief of construction) for the city of Berlin. His first sketches date to that year; the plans were accepted the following year, and construction began in 1899 and was completed in 1907. It was not ready for occupation until 1908,[ 12 years after the start of the project. Meanwhile, in 1899, in advance of the demolition of the Cölln town hall, some of the collection had been placed in storage and some shown in temporary quarters on the first floor of one of the city's covered markets, until 1904.

 

Hoffmann designed the museum as a complex of six differing buildings which echo Brandenburg brick architecture of periods from the Gothic to the Renaissance in a "historical collage", in order to reflect the contents of the museum and evoke the "atmosphere" of various times and types of building. Part of his reasoning was that Berlin no longer had much of an old centre. The buildings are grouped around two courtyards and based on historic details which he had studied and sketched throughout the region; his "quotations" are accurate copies, but there is disagreement as to the originals, as in a façade which has been said to be based on the town hall at Tangermünde or on St. Catherine's Church in Brandenburg an der Havel, and the hip-roofed tower, 53 metres (174 ft) high, based on the bergfried (keep) of the Bishop's Castle in Wittstock or on the cathedral of Ratzeburg. Hoffmann also modified the layout of Köllnischer Park to make an attractive setting for the museum.

 

The interior of the museum also seeks to evoke the atmosphere of different historical settings (as was then the fashion in provincial museums in Germany). For example, the low vaulted ceilings and roughly plastered walls on the ground floor were intended to suggest great age and housed the displays on prehistory, where the display cases for funerary urns and flint axes were rough in form; the setting for the medieval altars and sculptures was a vaulted Gothic chapel echoing medieval church interiors; weapons were shown in a room with thick columns, recalling a monastery; and rococo porcelain and snuffboxes were displayed in elegant vitrines in a light and airy room on the second floor. There were a total of about 50 exhibition galleries. The visitor was led repeatedly back to the central vaulted Great Hall.

 

A week before the opening on 10 June 1908, Emperor Wilhelm II and Empress Auguste Viktoria toured the exhibits for two hours. The museum is now judged to be amongst Hoffmann's most important works, and also one of the most outstanding German museum buildings (Wikipedia).

"The worst part about anything that's self destructive is that it's so intimate. You become so close with your addictions and illnesses that leaving them behind is like killing the part of yourself that taught you how to survive." - L.L

 

"In a strange way, I had fallen in love with my depression. I loved it because it was all I had. I thought depression was the part of my character that made me worthwhile. I thought so little of myself, felt that I had such scant offerings to give to the world, that the one thing that justified my existence at all was my pain." -Elizabeth Wurtzel

 

Reflecting on darker times. Self-portrait.

 

Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Tumblr

Pinehurst housing development, South Everett WA USA

japanese beetle

i finally got fed up with the destructive way that i processed my images so have been back to the drawing board / information sponge to learn how to process images properly in photoshop. this is my first go and is a rehash of a similar image that i have posted before...i'm seriously lacking new images lately :o).

 

i'm stoked with this one though because it's all completely stacked in photoshop and i can go back at any time and change whatever i want to :o)...no more "merge up" foolishness from me! still need heaps of practice though. the interesting thing is that the last time i processed one similar to this i did it as a dri but i've managed to pull just as much range out of a single raw file which is cool :o).

 

it's quite funny how you can enjoy something more when you are learning at the same time :o).

 

u-ziq...radiohead | the king of limbs

 

embiggen to fight compression...press L.

 

lots of thoughts and love to the people of christchurch, nz who have had to suffer through another devastating earthquake...very sad.

 

“The destructive character knows only one watchword: make room; only one activity: clearing away ...The destructive character is young and cheerful. For destroying rejuvenates in clearing away traces of our own age ...” (walter benjamin)

 

Why do my creations live such short lives.

A non-destructive installation that works with the architecture of the building and speaks of the ever changing cultural being of NYC.

 

Watch the video HERE

She loves her toys, and is not normally destructive...

Beautiful but destructive

© All rights reserved

 

grey squirrel ~ sciurus carolinensis (commonly known as Tree Rats)

 

Anyone who thinks squirrels are cute please think again. They are destructive just for the sake of it. They also damage trees and take small birds as well as eggs and chicks from their nests. They have created havoc in our garden already this winter.

 

View Awards Count

 

European Starling (Sturnus vulgaris) doing the Hokey Pokey. Had to mess up the shot. Starlings are about the most destructive bird in North America other than Justin Bieber. Not sure what that means, but it's late and I couldn't come up with anything better.

 

The funny thing is that they aren't all that common where they are SUPPOSED to live in Europe. If they were rare in the U.S., they would be a pretty bird. Any bird with the latin name "vulgaris" has a strike or two against it right off the bat.

 

On the bright side, they are filthy and noisy and are wiping out many cavity-nesting species in North America. I can see the silver lining in almost any situation.

 

One of them fell down my chimney a few years ago and got stuck in my furnace on the coldest day of the year, causing the furnace to shut down. Maybe that's why I don't like them. Or, maybe it's because they suck. Who knows?

 

That reminds me. Is February ANYONE'S favorite month? No? I didn't think so. Thankfully, it's short. This year, it's an extra day longer, just to remind us of how crappy it is. The most important holiday in February celebrates a fat rodent crawling out of a hole. We call it "Valentine's Day."

 

www.SteveByland.com

© Steve Byland 2016 all rights reserved

Unauthorized use or reproduction for any reason is prohibited. Please do not link to or blog this without contacting me first.

Testing, Testing, ... BANG!!!

  

Nondestructive testing

  

Nondestructive testing or Non-destructive testing (NDT) is a wide group of analysis techniques used in science and industry to evaluate the properties of a material, component or system without causing damage.[1] The terms Nondestructive examination (NDE), Nondestructive inspection (NDI), and Nondestructive evaluation (NDE) are also commonly used to describe this technology.[2] Because NDT does not permanently alter the article being inspected, it is a highly valuable technique that can save both money and time in product evaluation, troubleshooting, and research. Common NDT methods include ultrasonic, magnetic-particle, liquid penetrant, radiographic, remote visual inspection (RVI), eddy-current testing,[1] and low coherence interferometry.[3][4] NDT is commonly used in forensic engineering, mechanical engineering, petroleum engineering, electrical engineering, civil engineering, systems engineering, aeronautical engineering, medicine, and art.[1] Innovations in the field of nondestructive testing have had a profound impact on medical imaging, including on echocardiography, medical ultrasonography, and digital radiography.

  

Methods[edit]

 

NDT methods may rely upon use of electromagnetic radiation, sound, and inherent properties of materials to examine samples. This includes some kinds of microscopy to examine external surfaces in detail, although sample preparation techniques for metallography, optical microscopy and electron microscopy are generally destructive as the surfaces must be made smooth through polishing or the sample must be electron transparent in thickness. The inside of a sample can be examined with penetrating radiation, such as X-rays, neutrons or terahertz radiation. Sound waves are utilized in the case of ultrasonic testing. Contrast between a defect and the bulk of the sample may be enhanced for visual examination by the unaided eye by using liquids to penetrate fatigue cracks. One method (liquid penetrant testing) involves using dyes, fluorescent or non-fluorescent, in fluids for non-magnetic materials, usually metals. Another commonly used NDT method used on ferrous materials involves the application of fine iron particles (either liquid or dry dust) that are applied to a part while it is in an externally magnetized state (magnetic-particle testing). The particles will be attracted to leakage fields within the test object, and form on the objects surface. Magnetic particle testing can reveal surface & some sub-surface defects within the part. Thermoelectric effect (or use of the Seebeck effect) uses thermal properties of an alloy to quickly and easily characterize many alloys. The chemical test, or chemical spot test method, utilizes application of sensitive chemicals that can indicate the presence of individual alloying elements. Electrochemical methods, such as electrochemical fatigue crack sensors, utilize the tendency of metal structural material to oxidize readily in order to detect progressive damage.

 

Analyzing and documenting a non-destructive failure mode can also be accomplished using a high-speed camera recording continuously (movie-loop) until the failure is detected. Detecting the failure can be accomplished using a sound detector or stress gauge which produces a signal to trigger the high-speed camera. These high-speed cameras have advanced recording modes to capture some non-destructive failures.[5] After the failure the high-speed camera will stop recording. The capture images can be played back in slow motion showing precisely what happen before, during and after the non-destructive event, image by image.

  

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nondestructive_testing

Being a destructive dinosaur

Tooley Street, the site where a destructive fire in 1861 led to the creation of the modern-day London Fire Brigade, seems like a fairly decent place to spot buses from if you're just getting off the train at London Bridge station. However, it is a 'transitory place', as I'd mentioned earlier, and in this instance, I can't stick around too long with the time being very late... thanks to seven hours on the coach. In ubiquity here is Abellio, Go-Ahead London, and one more operator which we'll get to in but a moment...

 

Go-Ahead London's EH204, a 2018 ADL Enviro400H MMC based at New Cross garage (NX), wears a hybrid bus 'fire mark' as it comes down Tooley Street on route 343 to Aldgate.

A destructive little critter.

 

Thank you all for comments & visit.

 

U.S. Marine Corps photo.

 

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

North Field

 

Ushi Point Airfield

Part of Twentieth Air Force

 

Coordinates15°04′19.36″N 145°38′18.13″ECoordinates: 15°04′19.36″N 145°38′18.13″E

TypeMilitary airfield

Site information

Controlled byUnited States Army Air Forces

Site history

Built1944

In use1944-1946

North Field is a former World War II airfield on Tinian in the Mariana Islands. Abandoned after the war, today North Field is a tourist attraction. Along with several adjacent beaches on which Allied forces landed during the Battle of Tinian, the airfield is the major component of the National Historic Landmark District Tinian Landing Beaches, Ushi Point Field, Tinian Island.

 

North Field was one of several bases for Twentieth Air Force Boeing B-29 Superfortress operations against the Japanese Home Islands in 1944–45. North Field contributed aircraft to the 1945 campaign to burn out Japanese cities with incendiary bombs, including the 9 March 1945 bombing of Tokyo which still stands as the most destructive air raid ever. North Field was the base for the 313th Bombardment Wing which carried out Operation Starvation, the dropping of naval mines in the harbors and sea lanes used by Japan. North Field was also the base for the 509th Composite Group which flew the atomic bombing raids on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. The incendiary campaign (which destroyed 40% of the targeted cities),[1] the aerial mining campaign (which starved Japan of essential food imports) and the two atomic attacks have all been argued as major factors in the surrender of Japan.

 

History

See also: Battle of Tinian

Ushi Point Airfield

Tinian, with its sister islands of the Marianas, had passed through Spanish and German hands prior to becoming a Protectorate of Japan following World War I. Under Japanese administration, Tinian was largely a sugar plantation. In 1939, large-scale military construction began on Tinian by the Japanese Military. 1,200 prisoners were sent to the island from Japan for the construction of airfields as part of the defense of the Mariana Islands. By 1944, the island had three military airfields with a fourth under construction. What would become North Field was a Japanese airstrip 4,380' in length, known as Ushi Point Airfield and was home to the Nakajima C6N-1 reconnaissance aircraft of the 121st Kokutai Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service (IJNAS). Until the spring of 1944, the base remained largely out of major action.

 

By mid-1944, the Americans had advanced inside the Japanese ring of defense in the Pacific Theater. Tinian, located approximately 1,500 miles from mainland Japan, was well-suited for the United States Army Air Forces to establish a large staging area from which to conduct long-range strategic offensive air operations over the Japanese Home Islands with the new B-29 Superfortress. During early 1944, the B-29 heavy bombers were operating ineffectively from bases in China. Stationing the Superfortresses in the Marianas brought Japan within their effective range of operation, as well as provided the Twentieth Air Force with reliable means of support from the western ports of the United States.

 

The Ushi Point Airfield and its assigned aircrews did their part to repel American advances in the Marianas Islands but following the fall of Guam and Saipan to American forces in July 1944 it became clear that Tinian would be attacked next.

 

Assaulted on July 24, 1944 by United States Marines from Saipan, which had just been taken the previous month, the airfield was almost totally destroyed by the American naval bombardment and air attack prior to the assault by the 4th Marine Division. The Japanese were taken by surprise, with several aircraft being captured relatively intact inside a hangar. The offensive was regarded as one of the best-executed amphibious operations of the war. Ushi Point airfield fell to US forces on July 26 and was almost immediately handed over to the care of US Navy Construction Battalions, or Seabees. 1,500 Seabees landed with the initial forces on Tinian in July 1944 and immediately set to work repairing the damaged Japanese Ushi Point Airfield, even before the fighting had ended.

 

North Field construction

 

Once under American control, a massive construction project was begun on the north end of Tinian. Operating for over 45 days and nights, often while under fire, the Seabees initially repaired and extended the existing 4,380 ft runway and then added an additional two runways, each 8,000 ft long and lying in an East-West direction. Nearly the entire northern end of the island was occupied by runways, the airfield area, and the various support facilities and containment areas.

 

The Ushi Point Airfield was expanded with three 8000' runways involving the movement of nearly 1,000,000 cubic yards of earth and coral and the accumulation of some 900,000 truck miles. A fourth runway was constructed in May 1945 and hardstands built for 265 B-29 bombers. The four parallel 8,000 ft runways are oriented nearly East-West. Upon completion, North Field was the largest airfield in the world.

 

313th Bombardment Wing

 

North Field in 1945, just prior to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the 509th Composite Group

North Field came under the command of Twentieth Air Force XXI Bomber Command, with the 313th Bombardment Wing being the host unit at the expansive station in December 1944. Its operational groups were:

 

6th Bombardment Group (Circle R)

9th Bombardment Group (Circle X)

504th Bombardment Group (Circle E)

505th Bombardment Group (Circle W)

5th Photographic Reconnaissance Squadron (Very Long Range)

The four runways at North Field were lettered "A", "B", "C" and "D" from north to south. The 6th Group was parked on the south-side of Runway D, then going north the 9th Group was parked between C and D. The 504th between C and B, and the 505th on the north side of runway A. In addition, the B-29s were assigned specific hardstands for each aircraft so the ground crew could store spares and other items for each aircraft on them. The groups used the runway to the north side of their parking area hardstands, but this was not fast and firm, because if there was an accident and the runway was closed, the aircraft shifted to another runway.

  

Tinian, Mariana Islands, 1945 after airfield construction, looking north to south. The massive North Field, 313th Bombardment Wing in front, West Field, 58th Bombardment Wing, in background. The 313th BW consisted of 4 B-29 Superfortress Bombardment Groups, later adding the 509th Composite Group, which conducted the Atomic Bomb Attacks against Japan in August 1945.

Once in place, the groups of the 313th began flying missions, initially against Iwo Jima, the Truk Islands, and other Japanese held areas. Later, they flew low-level night incendiary raids on area targets in Japan; participated in mining operations in the Shimonoseki Strait, and contributed to the blockade of the Japanese Empire by mining harbors in Japan and Korea. In April 1945 the 313th assisted the invasion of Okinawa by bombing Japanese airfields used by kamikaze pilots.

 

A fifth group, the 509th Composite Group, was assigned to the wing in May 1945 from Wendover AAF, Utah. The 509th, although assigned to the 313th Bomb Wing, was operationally controlled by Headquarters, Twentieth Air Force. The 509th was given a base area near the airfield on the north tip of the island, several miles from the main installations in the center part of the island where the other groups were assigned. The 509th aircraft almost always used runway "A" and the aircraft were parked away from the other groups on the north side of the runway. Also unlike the other groups in the wing, the 509th used a wide variety of tail codes from various XXI Bomber Command groups, instead of using its own, so that the group's planes could not be identified by the Japanese. The 509th was also self-contained, and drew little in resources from the 313th Wing or its other groups.

 

In early August, the mission of the 509th was revealed when the group flew the atomic bomb missions over the enemy cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In November, the 509th was relieved from assignment to the 313th Bomb Wing and was reassigned to Roswell AAF, New Mexico.

 

After the Japanese surrender in August, 313th Bomb Wing units dropped food and supplies to Allied prisoners of war and participated in show-of-force flights over Japan. The units of the 313th Bombardment Wing were either reassigned or inactivated within a few months after the end of the Pacific War. The last USAAF unit, the 505th Bombardment Group, left North Field on June 30, 1946, ending its use as an operational airfield. The 313th Bombardment Wing moved to Clark Field, Philippines on 1 February 1946.

 

The base was placed in a standby status until being closed on 30 March 1947.

 

North Field today

 

North Field, 27 August 2008

Having no real purpose or any use after 1947, North Field was soon officially abandoned by the USAAF. Immediately after the war, the locals on the island did not have to farm or do work of any kind for the first two years after the airfield was abandoned because the withdrawing American military forces left entire stocks of almost everything ranging from food, brand-new military uniforms and even ice-cream makers (these were simply left behind in North Field's many warehouses). Any of the locals who wanted to get a vehicle could just do so by heading to the airfield and drive it until it fell apart or could not be repaired anymore before getting another one. Some abandoned B-29 Superfortress bomber aircraft wrecks were also left behind at the airfield after the war ended, but these were eventually melted down for scrap metal in the 1950s.

 

The airfield has been steadily reclaimed by the dense tropical jungle on the island, being thoroughly abandoned and heavily overgrown. It is easily accessible by travelling just a few miles north of San Jose on the main north-south road, which is known as "Broadway". The runways (constructed out of crushed coral) are grayish-looking and quite weathered, but Runway Able and Runway Baker and some of the taxiways remain usable for driving on in an ordinary car, with considerable weed growth on the surface.

 

Other than the two worn-out runways, the taxiways, the empty remnants of the former Japanese-built administration buildings and the preserved loading/storage pits where the atomic bombs were loaded on the bomber aircraft, there is not much left of the old airfield. The forest has grown up to the edges of the runways and taxiways. The surviving airfield administration buildings, along with the airfield itself and the nearby landing beaches of White One and White Two, were designated a National Historic Landmark District for their role in the war.[2]

 

In 2003 Runway Able was cleared/grubbed and the flight path was brought up to current FAA requirements by the Navy Seabees of NMCB 28 in preparation for Exercise Tandem Thrust. A joint exercise with the US Marine Corps, Navy Seabees and US. Army Tropic Lighning Division. The Seabees successfully defended the runway and base from the Army's attack and then assisted the Army in creating the defenses against the Marines. Aircraft used in the attack were CH-47 and CH-53 helicopters. Runway Baker and adjoining taxiway's were cleared for ease of access. In addition, the Seabees donated additional time and help with several community projects. The secondary benefit of the clear and grub effort was the ability of the runway to be used by the Guam Air National Guard for training.

 

In 2013, Baker runway was partially refurbished by the United States Marine Corps for Exercise Forager Fury II. The exercise was a demonstration of the Marine Wing Support Squadron 171’s ability to displace rapidly and generate significant combat power in an expeditionary environment. A Marine Corps KC-130J Super Hercules landed on the runway 5 December 2013, the second aircraft to use North Field since 1947.[3] In the case of a surprise Chinese ballistic missile attack on US air bases in Japan with and South Korea, aircraft could be rapidly dispersed on WWII Pacific airfields, including Tinian.[4][5]

My all-time favorite swimming hole: Havasu Falls. I was fortunate to make 2 visits here before the destructive flash floods of 1990, 1992, 1993 and 2008. The broad fall with its gorgeous terraces was displayed in all its beauty in 1988. See my Havasupai Set for more current pictures.

 

These architecturally-perfect terraces, made of travertine deposited on fallen limbs and leaves over decades, created a dozen spa-like pools. The main pool was wide and deep -- about 20' deep under the 100-foot waterfall. For a closer view, see this photo, and this shot of the falls in twilight.

 

The terraces were destroyed by the 1991-1992 floods. The powerful current gouged out a deep channel, leaving the terraces high and dry. The main fall was split into two strands, and much of the pool was filled in with silt. The 2008 flood further damaged the terraces and reduced the pool, leaving a single-stranded fall that starts narrow and ends wide, aiming to the right. It's still a beautiful place, but the pool is shallower now, and the terraces will take many years to come back. There's one good arc of terrace left with a nice pool below it.

 

I instantly fell in love with Havasu Falls and the surrounding area after my first visit in 1988. I have been back 7 times. None were quite as special as that first look. What artificial waterpark could match this?

 

I scanned this from a 35mm slide and then used ACDSee tools to try to re-create what the human eye sees. The famous blue-green water is probably a good match but I think the cliff walls would look redder in real life.

Ganesha, also spelled Ganesh, and also known as Ganapati and Vinayaka, is a widely worshipped deity in the Hindu pantheon. His image is found throughout India and Nepal. Hindu sects worship him regardless of affiliations. Devotion to Ganesha is widely diffused and extends to Jains, Buddhists, and beyond India.

 

Although he is known by many attributes, Ganesha's elephant head makes him easy to identify. Ganesha is widely revered as the remover of obstacles, the patron of arts and sciences and the deva of intellect and wisdom. As the god of beginnings, he is honoured at the start of rituals and ceremonies. Ganesha is also invoked as patron of letters and learning during writing sessions. Several texts relate mythological anecdotes associated with his birth and exploits and explain his distinct iconography.

 

Ganesha emerged as a distinct deity in the 4th and 5th centuries CE, during the Gupta Period, although he inherited traits from Vedic and pre-Vedic precursors. He was formally included among the five primary deities of Smartism (a Hindu denomination) in the 9th century. A sect of devotees called the Ganapatya arose, who identified Ganesha as the supreme deity. The principal scriptures dedicated to Ganesha are the Ganesha Purana, the Mudgala Purana, and the Ganapati Atharvashirsa.

 

ETYMOLOGY AND OTHER NAMES

Ganesha has been ascribed many other titles and epithets, including Ganapati and Vighneshvara. The Hindu title of respect Shri is often added before his name. One popular way Ganesha is worshipped is by chanting a Ganesha Sahasranama, a litany of "a thousand names of Ganesha". Each name in the sahasranama conveys a different meaning and symbolises a different aspect of Ganesha. At least two different versions of the Ganesha Sahasranama exist; one version is drawn from the Ganesha Purana, a Hindu scripture venerating Ganesha.

 

The name Ganesha is a Sanskrit compound, joining the words gana, meaning a group, multitude, or categorical system and isha, meaning lord or master. The word gaņa when associated with Ganesha is often taken to refer to the gaņas, a troop of semi-divine beings that form part of the retinue of Shiva. The term more generally means a category, class, community, association, or corporation. Some commentators interpret the name "Lord of the Gaņas" to mean "Lord of Hosts" or "Lord of created categories", such as the elements. Ganapati, a synonym for Ganesha, is a compound composed of gaṇa, meaning "group", and pati, meaning "ruler" or "lord". The Amarakosha, an early Sanskrit lexicon, lists eight synonyms of Ganesha : Vinayaka, Vighnarāja (equivalent to Vighnesha), Dvaimātura (one who has two mothers), Gaṇādhipa (equivalent to Ganapati and Ganesha), Ekadanta (one who has one tusk), Heramba, Lambodara (one who has a pot belly, or, literally, one who has a hanging belly), and Gajanana; having the face of an elephant).

 

Vinayaka is a common name for Ganesha that appears in the Purāṇas and in Buddhist Tantras. This name is reflected in the naming of the eight famous Ganesha temples in Maharashtra known as the Ashtavinayak (aṣṭavināyaka). The names Vighnesha and Vighneshvara (Lord of Obstacles) refers to his primary function in Hindu theology as the master and remover of obstacles (vighna).

 

A prominent name for Ganesha in the Tamil language is Pillai. A. K. Narain differentiates these terms by saying that pillai means a "child" while pillaiyar means a "noble child". He adds that the words pallu, pella, and pell in the Dravidian family of languages signify "tooth or tusk", also "elephant tooth or tusk". Anita Raina Thapan notes that the root word pille in the name Pillaiyar might have originally meant "the young of the elephant", because the Pali word pillaka means "a young elephant".

 

In the Burmese language, Ganesha is known as Maha Peinne, derived from Pali Mahā Wināyaka. The widespread name of Ganesha in Thailand is Phra Phikhanet or Phra Phikhanesuan, both of which are derived from Vara Vighnesha and Vara Vighneshvara respectively, whereas the name Khanet (from Ganesha) is rather rare.

 

In Sri Lanka, in the North-Central and North Western areas with predominantly Buddhist population, Ganesha is known as Aiyanayaka Deviyo, while in other Singhala Buddhist areas he is known as Gana deviyo.

 

ICONOGRAPHY

Ganesha is a popular figure in Indian art. Unlike those of some deities, representations of Ganesha show wide variations and distinct patterns changing over time. He may be portrayed standing, dancing, heroically taking action against demons, playing with his family as a boy, sitting down or on an elevated seat, or engaging in a range of contemporary situations.

 

Ganesha images were prevalent in many parts of India by the 6th century. The 13th century statue pictured is typical of Ganesha statuary from 900–1200, after Ganesha had been well-established as an independent deity with his own sect. This example features some of Ganesha's common iconographic elements. A virtually identical statue has been dated between 973–1200 by Paul Martin-Dubost, and another similar statue is dated c. 12th century by Pratapaditya Pal. Ganesha has the head of an elephant and a big belly. This statue has four arms, which is common in depictions of Ganesha. He holds his own broken tusk in his lower-right hand and holds a delicacy, which he samples with his trunk, in his lower-left hand. The motif of Ganesha turning his trunk sharply to his left to taste a sweet in his lower-left hand is a particularly archaic feature. A more primitive statue in one of the Ellora Caves with this general form has been dated to the 7th century. Details of the other hands are difficult to make out on the statue shown. In the standard configuration, Ganesha typically holds an axe or a goad in one upper arm and a pasha (noose) in the other upper arm.

 

The influence of this old constellation of iconographic elements can still be seen in contemporary representations of Ganesha. In one modern form, the only variation from these old elements is that the lower-right hand does not hold the broken tusk but is turned towards the viewer in a gesture of protection or fearlessness (abhaya mudra). The same combination of four arms and attributes occurs in statues of Ganesha dancing, which is a very popular theme.

 

COMMON ATTRIBUTES

Ganesha has been represented with the head of an elephant since the early stages of his appearance in Indian art. Puranic myths provide many explanations for how he got his elephant head. One of his popular forms, Heramba-Ganapati, has five elephant heads, and other less-common variations in the number of heads are known. While some texts say that Ganesha was born with an elephant head, he acquires the head later in most stories. The most recurrent motif in these stories is that Ganesha was created by Parvati using clay to protect her and Shiva beheaded him when Ganesha came between Shiva and Parvati. Shiva then replaced Ganesha's original head with that of an elephant. Details of the battle and where the replacement head came from vary from source to source. Another story says that Ganesha was created directly by Shiva's laughter. Because Shiva considered Ganesha too alluring, he gave him the head of an elephant and a protruding belly.

 

Ganesha's earliest name was Ekadanta (One Tusked), referring to his single whole tusk, the other being broken. Some of the earliest images of Ganesha show him holding his broken tusk. The importance of this distinctive feature is reflected in the Mudgala Purana, which states that the name of Ganesha's second incarnation is Ekadanta. Ganesha's protruding belly appears as a distinctive attribute in his earliest statuary, which dates to the Gupta period (4th to 6th centuries). This feature is so important that, according to the Mudgala Purana, two different incarnations of Ganesha use names based on it: Lambodara (Pot Belly, or, literally, Hanging Belly) and Mahodara (Great Belly). Both names are Sanskrit compounds describing his belly. The Brahmanda Purana says that Ganesha has the name Lambodara because all the universes (i.e., cosmic eggs) of the past, present, and future are present in him. The number of Ganesha's arms varies; his best-known forms have between two and sixteen arms. Many depictions of Ganesha feature four arms, which is mentioned in Puranic sources and codified as a standard form in some iconographic texts. His earliest images had two arms. Forms with 14 and 20 arms appeared in Central India during the 9th and the 10th centuries. The serpent is a common feature in Ganesha iconography and appears in many forms. According to the Ganesha Purana, Ganesha wrapped the serpent Vasuki around his neck. Other depictions of snakes include use as a sacred thread wrapped around the stomach as a belt, held in a hand, coiled at the ankles, or as a throne. Upon Ganesha's forehead may be a third eye or the Shaivite sectarian mark , which consists of three horizontal lines. The Ganesha Purana prescribes a tilaka mark as well as a crescent moon on the forehead. A distinct form of Ganesha called Bhalachandra includes that iconographic element. Ganesha is often described as red in color. Specific colors are associated with certain forms. Many examples of color associations with specific meditation forms are prescribed in the Sritattvanidhi, a treatise on Hindu iconography. For example, white is associated with his representations as Heramba-Ganapati and Rina-Mochana-Ganapati (Ganapati Who Releases from Bondage). Ekadanta-Ganapati is visualized as blue during meditation in that form.

 

VAHANAS

The earliest Ganesha images are without a vahana (mount/vehicle). Of the eight incarnations of Ganesha described in the Mudgala Purana, Ganesha uses a mouse (shrew) in five of them, a lion in his incarnation as Vakratunda, a peacock in his incarnation as Vikata, and Shesha, the divine serpent, in his incarnation as Vighnaraja. Mohotkata uses a lion, Mayūreśvara uses a peacock, Dhumraketu uses a horse, and Gajanana uses a mouse, in the four incarnations of Ganesha listed in the Ganesha Purana. Jain depictions of Ganesha show his vahana variously as a mouse, elephant, tortoise, ram, or peacock.

 

Ganesha is often shown riding on or attended by a mouse, shrew or rat. Martin-Dubost says that the rat began to appear as the principal vehicle in sculptures of Ganesha in central and western India during the 7th century; the rat was always placed close to his feet. The mouse as a mount first appears in written sources in the Matsya Purana and later in the Brahmananda Purana and Ganesha Purana, where Ganesha uses it as his vehicle in his last incarnation. The Ganapati Atharvashirsa includes a meditation verse on Ganesha that describes the mouse appearing on his flag. The names Mūṣakavāhana (mouse-mount) and Ākhuketana (rat-banner) appear in the Ganesha Sahasranama.

 

The mouse is interpreted in several ways. According to Grimes, "Many, if not most of those who interpret Gaṇapati's mouse, do so negatively; it symbolizes tamoguṇa as well as desire". Along these lines, Michael Wilcockson says it symbolizes those who wish to overcome desires and be less selfish. Krishan notes that the rat is destructive and a menace to crops. The Sanskrit word mūṣaka (mouse) is derived from the root mūṣ (stealing, robbing). It was essential to subdue the rat as a destructive pest, a type of vighna (impediment) that needed to be overcome. According to this theory, showing Ganesha as master of the rat demonstrates his function as Vigneshvara (Lord of Obstacles) and gives evidence of his possible role as a folk grāma-devatā (village deity) who later rose to greater prominence. Martin-Dubost notes a view that the rat is a symbol suggesting that Ganesha, like the rat, penetrates even the most secret places.

 

ASSOCIATIONS

 

OBSTACLES

Ganesha is Vighneshvara or Vighnaraja or Vighnaharta (Marathi), the Lord of Obstacles, both of a material and spiritual order. He is popularly worshipped as a remover of obstacles, though traditionally he also places obstacles in the path of those who need to be checked. Paul Courtright says that "his task in the divine scheme of things, his dharma, is to place and remove obstacles. It is his particular territory, the reason for his creation."

 

Krishan notes that some of Ganesha's names reflect shadings of multiple roles that have evolved over time. Dhavalikar ascribes the quick ascension of Ganesha in the Hindu pantheon, and the emergence of the Ganapatyas, to this shift in emphasis from vighnakartā (obstacle-creator) to vighnahartā (obstacle-averter). However, both functions continue to be vital to his character.

 

BUDDHI (KNOWLEDGE)

Ganesha is considered to be the Lord of letters and learning. In Sanskrit, the word buddhi is a feminine noun that is variously translated as intelligence, wisdom, or intellect. The concept of buddhi is closely associated with the personality of Ganesha, especially in the Puranic period, when many stories stress his cleverness and love of intelligence. One of Ganesha's names in the Ganesha Purana and the Ganesha Sahasranama is Buddhipriya. This name also appears in a list of 21 names at the end of the Ganesha Sahasranama that Ganesha says are especially important. The word priya can mean "fond of", and in a marital context it can mean "lover" or "husband", so the name may mean either "Fond of Intelligence" or "Buddhi's Husband".

 

AUM

Ganesha is identified with the Hindu mantra Aum, also spelled Om. The term oṃkārasvarūpa (Aum is his form), when identified with Ganesha, refers to the notion that he personifies the primal sound. The Ganapati Atharvashirsa attests to this association. Chinmayananda translates the relevant passage as follows:

 

(O Lord Ganapati!) You are (the Trinity) Brahma, Vishnu, and Mahesa. You are Indra. You are fire [Agni] and air [Vāyu]. You are the sun [Sūrya] and the moon [Chandrama]. You are Brahman. You are (the three worlds) Bhuloka [earth], Antariksha-loka [space], and Swargaloka [heaven]. You are Om. (That is to say, You are all this).

 

Some devotees see similarities between the shape of Ganesha's body in iconography and the shape of Aum in the Devanāgarī and Tamil scripts.

 

FIRST CHAKRA

According to Kundalini yoga, Ganesha resides in the first chakra, called Muladhara (mūlādhāra). Mula means "original, main"; adhara means "base, foundation". The muladhara chakra is the principle on which the manifestation or outward expansion of primordial Divine Force rests. This association is also attested to in the Ganapati Atharvashirsa. Courtright translates this passage as follows: "[O Ganesha,] You continually dwell in the sacral plexus at the base of the spine [mūlādhāra cakra]." Thus, Ganesha has a permanent abode in every being at the Muladhara. Ganesha holds, supports and guides all other chakras, thereby "governing the forces that propel the wheel of life".

 

FAMILY AND CONSORTS

Though Ganesha is popularly held to be the son of Shiva and Parvati, the Puranic myths give different versions about his birth. In some he was created by Parvati, in another he was created by Shiva and Parvati, in another he appeared mysteriously and was discovered by Shiva and Parvati or he was born from the elephant headed goddess Malini after she drank Parvati's bath water that had been thrown in the river.

 

The family includes his brother the war god Kartikeya, who is also called Subramanya, Skanda, Murugan and other names. Regional differences dictate the order of their births. In northern India, Skanda is generally said to be the elder, while in the south, Ganesha is considered the first born. In northern India, Skanda was an important martial deity from about 500 BCE to about 600 CE, when worship of him declined significantly in northern India. As Skanda fell, Ganesha rose. Several stories tell of sibling rivalry between the brothers and may reflect sectarian tensions.

 

Ganesha's marital status, the subject of considerable scholarly review, varies widely in mythological stories. One pattern of myths identifies Ganesha as an unmarried brahmacari. This view is common in southern India and parts of northern India. Another pattern associates him with the concepts of Buddhi (intellect), Siddhi (spiritual power), and Riddhi (prosperity); these qualities are sometimes personified as goddesses, said to be Ganesha's wives. He also may be shown with a single consort or a nameless servant (Sanskrit: daşi). Another pattern connects Ganesha with the goddess of culture and the arts, Sarasvati or Śarda (particularly in Maharashtra). He is also associated with the goddess of luck and prosperity, Lakshmi. Another pattern, mainly prevalent in the Bengal region, links Ganesha with the banana tree, Kala Bo.

 

The Shiva Purana says that Ganesha had begotten two sons: Kşema (prosperity) and Lābha (profit). In northern Indian variants of this story, the sons are often said to be Śubha (auspiciouness) and Lābha. The 1975 Hindi film Jai Santoshi Maa shows Ganesha married to Riddhi and Siddhi and having a daughter named Santoshi Ma, the goddess of satisfaction. This story has no Puranic basis, but Anita Raina Thapan and Lawrence Cohen cite Santoshi Ma's cult as evidence of Ganesha's continuing evolution as a popular deity.

 

WOSHIP AND FESTIVALS

Ganesha is worshipped on many religious and secular occasions; especially at the beginning of ventures such as buying a vehicle or starting a business. K.N. Somayaji says, "there can hardly be a [Hindu] home [in India] which does not house an idol of Ganapati. [..] Ganapati, being the most popular deity in India, is worshipped by almost all castes and in all parts of the country". Devotees believe that if Ganesha is propitiated, he grants success, prosperity and protection against adversity.

 

Ganesha is a non-sectarian deity, and Hindus of all denominations invoke him at the beginning of prayers, important undertakings, and religious ceremonies. Dancers and musicians, particularly in southern India, begin performances of arts such as the Bharatnatyam dance with a prayer to Ganesha. Mantras such as Om Shri Gaṇeshāya Namah (Om, salutation to the Illustrious Ganesha) are often used. One of the most famous mantras associated with Ganesha is Om Gaṃ Ganapataye Namah (Om, Gaṃ, Salutation to the Lord of Hosts).

 

Devotees offer Ganesha sweets such as modaka and small sweet balls (laddus). He is often shown carrying a bowl of sweets, called a modakapātra. Because of his identification with the color red, he is often worshipped with red sandalwood paste (raktacandana) or red flowers. Dūrvā grass (Cynodon dactylon) and other materials are also used in his worship.

 

Festivals associated with Ganesh are Ganesh Chaturthi or Vināyaka chaturthī in the śuklapakṣa (the fourth day of the waxing moon) in the month of bhādrapada (August/September) and the Gaṇeśa jayanti (Gaṇeśa's birthday) celebrated on the cathurthī of the śuklapakṣa (fourth day of the waxing moon) in the month of māgha (January/February)."

 

GANESH CHATURTI

An annual festival honours Ganesha for ten days, starting on Ganesha Chaturthi, which typically falls in late August or early September. The festival begins with people bringing in clay idols of Ganesha, symbolising Ganesha's visit. The festival culminates on the day of Ananta Chaturdashi, when idols (murtis) of Ganesha are immersed in the most convenient body of water. Some families have a tradition of immersion on the 2nd, 3rd, 5th, or 7th day. In 1893, Lokmanya Tilak transformed this annual Ganesha festival from private family celebrations into a grand public event. He did so "to bridge the gap between the Brahmins and the non-Brahmins and find an appropriate context in which to build a new grassroots unity between them" in his nationalistic strivings against the British in Maharashtra. Because of Ganesha's wide appeal as "the god for Everyman", Tilak chose him as a rallying point for Indian protest against British rule. Tilak was the first to install large public images of Ganesha in pavilions, and he established the practice of submerging all the public images on the tenth day. Today, Hindus across India celebrate the Ganapati festival with great fervour, though it is most popular in the state of Maharashtra. The festival also assumes huge proportions in Mumbai, Pune, and in the surrounding belt of Ashtavinayaka temples.

 

TEMPLES

In Hindu temples, Ganesha is depicted in various ways: as an acolyte or subordinate deity (pãrśva-devatã); as a deity related to the principal deity (parivāra-devatã); or as the principal deity of the temple (pradhāna), treated similarly as the highest gods of the Hindu pantheon. As the god of transitions, he is placed at the doorway of many Hindu temples to keep out the unworthy, which is analogous to his role as Parvati’s doorkeeper. In addition, several shrines are dedicated to Ganesha himself, of which the Ashtavinayak (lit. "eight Ganesha (shrines)") in Maharashtra are particularly well known. Located within a 100-kilometer radius of the city of Pune, each of these eight shrines celebrates a particular form of Ganapati, complete with its own lore and legend. The eight shrines are: Morgaon, Siddhatek, Pali, Mahad, Theur, Lenyadri, Ozar and Ranjangaon.

 

There are many other important Ganesha temples at the following locations: Wai in Maharashtra; Ujjain in Madhya Pradesh; Jodhpur, Nagaur and Raipur (Pali) in Rajasthan; Baidyanath in Bihar; Baroda, Dholaka, and Valsad in Gujarat and Dhundiraj Temple in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh. Prominent Ganesha temples in southern India include the following: Kanipakam in Chittoor; the Jambukeśvara Temple at Tiruchirapalli; at Rameshvaram and Suchindram in Tamil Nadu; at Malliyur, Kottarakara, Pazhavangadi, Kasargod in Kerala, Hampi, and Idagunji in Karnataka; and Bhadrachalam in Andhra Pradesh.

 

T. A. Gopinatha notes, "Every village however small has its own image of Vighneśvara (Vigneshvara) with or without a temple to house it in. At entrances of villages and forts, below pīpaḹa (Sacred fig) trees [...], in a niche [...] in temples of Viṣṇu (Vishnu) as well as Śiva (Shiva) and also in separate shrines specially constructed in Śiva temples [...]; the figure of Vighneśvara is invariably seen." Ganesha temples have also been built outside of India, including southeast Asia, Nepal (including the four Vinayaka shrines in the Kathmandu valley), and in several western countries.

 

RISE TO PROMINENCE

 

FIRST APEARANCE

Ganesha appeared in his classic form as a clearly recognizable deity with well-defined iconographic attributes in the early 4th to 5th centuries. Shanti Lal Nagar says that the earliest known iconic image of Ganesha is in the niche of the Shiva temple at Bhumra, which has been dated to the Gupta period. His independent cult appeared by about the 10th century. Narain summarizes the controversy between devotees and academics regarding the development of Ganesha as follows:

 

What is inscrutable is the somewhat dramatic appearance of Gaņeśa on the historical scene. His antecedents are not clear. His wide acceptance and popularity, which transcend sectarian and territorial limits, are indeed amazing. On the one hand there is the pious belief of the orthodox devotees in Gaņeśa's Vedic origins and in the Purāṇic explanations contained in the confusing, but nonetheless interesting, mythology. On the other hand there are doubts about the existence of the idea and the icon of this deity" before the fourth to fifth century A.D. ... [I]n my opinion, indeed there is no convincing evidence of the existence of this divinity prior to the fifth century.

 

POSSIBLE INFLUENCES

Courtright reviews various speculative theories about the early history of Ganesha, including supposed tribal traditions and animal cults, and dismisses all of them in this way:

 

In the post 600 BC period there is evidence of people and places named after the animal. The motif appears on coins and sculptures.

 

Thapan's book on the development of Ganesha devotes a chapter to speculations about the role elephants had in early India but concludes that, "although by the second century CE the elephant-headed yakṣa form exists it cannot be presumed to represent Gaṇapati-Vināyaka. There is no evidence of a deity by this name having an elephant or elephant-headed form at this early stage. Gaṇapati-Vināyaka had yet to make his debut."

 

One theory of the origin of Ganesha is that he gradually came to prominence in connection with the four Vinayakas (Vināyakas). In Hindu mythology, the Vināyakas were a group of four troublesome demons who created obstacles and difficulties but who were easily propitiated. The name Vināyaka is a common name for Ganesha both in the Purāṇas and in Buddhist Tantras. Krishan is one of the academics who accepts this view, stating flatly of Ganesha, "He is a non-vedic god. His origin is to be traced to the four Vināyakas, evil spirits, of the Mānavagŗhyasūtra (7th–4th century BCE) who cause various types of evil and suffering". Depictions of elephant-headed human figures, which some identify with Ganesha, appear in Indian art and coinage as early as the 2nd century. According to Ellawala, the elephant-headed Ganesha as lord of the Ganas was known to the people of Sri Lanka in the early pre-Christian era.

 

A metal plate depiction of Ganesha had been discovered in 1993, in Iran, it dated back to 1,200 BCE. Another one was discovered much before, in Lorestan Province of Iran.

 

First Ganesha's terracotta images are from 1st century CE found in Ter, Pal, Verrapuram and Chandraketugarh. These figures are small, with elephant head, two arms, and chubby physique. The earliest Ganesha icons in stone were carved in Mathura during Kushan times (2nd-3rd centuries CE).

 

VEDIC AND EPIC LITERATURE

The title "Leader of the group" (Sanskrit: gaṇapati) occurs twice in the Rig Veda, but in neither case does it refer to the modern Ganesha. The term appears in RV 2.23.1 as a title for Brahmanaspati, according to commentators. While this verse doubtless refers to Brahmanaspati, it was later adopted for worship of Ganesha and is still used today. In rejecting any claim that this passage is evidence of Ganesha in the Rig Veda, Ludo Rocher says that it "clearly refers to Bṛhaspati—who is the deity of the hymn—and Bṛhaspati only". Equally clearly, the second passage (RV 10.112.9) refers to Indra, who is given the epithet 'gaṇapati', translated "Lord of the companies (of the Maruts)." However, Rocher notes that the more recent Ganapatya literature often quotes the Rigvedic verses to give Vedic respectability to Ganesha .

 

Two verses in texts belonging to Black Yajurveda, Maitrāyaṇīya Saṃhitā (2.9.1) and Taittirīya Āraṇyaka (10.1), appeal to a deity as "the tusked one" (Dantiḥ), "elephant-faced" (Hastimukha), and "with a curved trunk" (Vakratuņḍa). These names are suggestive of Ganesha, and the 14th century commentator Sayana explicitly establishes this identification. The description of Dantin, possessing a twisted trunk (vakratuṇḍa) and holding a corn-sheaf, a sugar cane, and a club, is so characteristic of the Puranic Ganapati that Heras says "we cannot resist to accept his full identification with this Vedic Dantin". However, Krishan considers these hymns to be post-Vedic additions. Thapan reports that these passages are "generally considered to have been interpolated". Dhavalikar says, "the references to the elephant-headed deity in the Maitrāyaṇī Saṃhitā have been proven to be very late interpolations, and thus are not very helpful for determining the early formation of the deity".

 

Ganesha does not appear in Indian epic literature that is dated to the Vedic period. A late interpolation to the epic poem Mahabharata says that the sage Vyasa (Vyāsa) asked Ganesha to serve as his scribe to transcribe the poem as he dictated it to him. Ganesha agreed but only on condition that Vyasa recite the poem uninterrupted, that is, without pausing. The sage agreed, but found that to get any rest he needed to recite very complex passages so Ganesha would have to ask for clarifications. The story is not accepted as part of the original text by the editors of the critical edition of the Mahabharata, in which the twenty-line story is relegated to a footnote in an appendix. The story of Ganesha acting as the scribe occurs in 37 of the 59 manuscripts consulted during preparation of the critical edition. Ganesha's association with mental agility and learning is one reason he is shown as scribe for Vyāsa's dictation of the Mahabharata in this interpolation. Richard L. Brown dates the story to the 8th century, and Moriz Winternitz concludes that it was known as early as c. 900, but it was not added to the Mahabharata some 150 years later. Winternitz also notes that a distinctive feature in South Indian manuscripts of the Mahabharata is their omission of this Ganesha legend. The term vināyaka is found in some recensions of the Śāntiparva and Anuśāsanaparva that are regarded as interpolations. A reference to Vighnakartṛīṇām ("Creator of Obstacles") in Vanaparva is also believed to be an interpolation and does not appear in the critical edition.

 

PURANIC PERIOD

Stories about Ganesha often occur in the Puranic corpus. Brown notes while the Puranas "defy precise chronological ordering", the more detailed narratives of Ganesha's life are in the late texts, c. 600–1300. Yuvraj Krishan says that the Puranic myths about the birth of Ganesha and how he acquired an elephant's head are in the later Puranas, which were composed from c. 600 onwards. He elaborates on the matter to say that references to Ganesha in the earlier Puranas, such as the Vayu and Brahmanda Puranas, are later interpolations made during the 7th to 10th centuries.

 

In his survey of Ganesha's rise to prominence in Sanskrit literature, Ludo Rocher notes that:

 

Above all, one cannot help being struck by the fact that the numerous stories surrounding Gaṇeśa concentrate on an unexpectedly limited number of incidents. These incidents are mainly three: his birth and parenthood, his elephant head, and his single tusk. Other incidents are touched on in the texts, but to a far lesser extent.

 

Ganesha's rise to prominence was codified in the 9th century, when he was formally included as one of the five primary deities of Smartism. The 9th-century philosopher Adi Shankara popularized the "worship of the five forms" (Panchayatana puja) system among orthodox Brahmins of the Smarta tradition. This worship practice invokes the five deities Ganesha, Vishnu, Shiva, Devi, and Surya. Adi Shankara instituted the tradition primarily to unite the principal deities of these five major sects on an equal status. This formalized the role of Ganesha as a complementary deity.

 

SCRIPTURES

Once Ganesha was accepted as one of the five principal deities of Brahmanism, some Brahmins (brāhmaṇas) chose to worship Ganesha as their principal deity. They developed the Ganapatya tradition, as seen in the Ganesha Purana and the Mudgala Purana.

 

The date of composition for the Ganesha Purana and the Mudgala Purana - and their dating relative to one another - has sparked academic debate. Both works were developed over time and contain age-layered strata. Anita Thapan reviews comments about dating and provides her own judgement. "It seems likely that the core of the Ganesha Purana appeared around the twelfth and thirteenth centuries", she says, "but was later interpolated." Lawrence W. Preston considers the most reasonable date for the Ganesha Purana to be between 1100 and 1400, which coincides with the apparent age of the sacred sites mentioned by the text.

 

R.C. Hazra suggests that the Mudgala Purana is older than the Ganesha Purana, which he dates between 1100 and 1400. However, Phyllis Granoff finds problems with this relative dating and concludes that the Mudgala Purana was the last of the philosophical texts concerned with Ganesha. She bases her reasoning on the fact that, among other internal evidence, the Mudgala Purana specifically mentions the Ganesha Purana as one of the four Puranas (the Brahma, the Brahmanda, the Ganesha, and the Mudgala Puranas) which deal at length with Ganesha. While the kernel of the text must be old, it was interpolated until the 17th and 18th centuries as the worship of Ganapati became more important in certain regions. Another highly regarded scripture, the Ganapati Atharvashirsa, was probably composed during the 16th or 17th centuries.

 

BEYOND INDIA AND HINDUISM

Commercial and cultural contacts extended India's influence in western and southeast Asia. Ganesha is one of a number of Hindu deities who reached foreign lands as a result.

 

Ganesha was particularly worshipped by traders and merchants, who went out of India for commercial ventures. From approximately the 10th century onwards, new networks of exchange developed including the formation of trade guilds and a resurgence of money circulation. During this time, Ganesha became the principal deity associated with traders. The earliest inscription invoking Ganesha before any other deity is associated with the merchant community.

 

Hindus migrated to Maritime Southeast Asia and took their culture, including Ganesha, with them. Statues of Ganesha are found throughout the region, often beside Shiva sanctuaries. The forms of Ganesha found in Hindu art of Java, Bali, and Borneo show specific regional influences. The spread of Hindu culture to southeast Asia established Ganesha in modified forms in Burma, Cambodia, and Thailand. In Indochina, Hinduism and Buddhism were practiced side by side, and mutual influences can be seen in the iconography of Ganesha in the region. In Thailand, Cambodia, and among the Hindu classes of the Chams in Vietnam, Ganesha was mainly thought of as a remover of obstacles. Today in Buddhist Thailand, Ganesha is regarded as a remover of obstacles, the god of success.

 

Before the arrival of Islam, Afghanistan had close cultural ties with India, and the adoration of both Hindu and Buddhist deities was practiced. Examples of sculptures from the 5th to the 7th centuries have survived, suggesting that the worship of Ganesha was then in vogue in the region.

 

Ganesha appears in Mahayana Buddhism, not only in the form of the Buddhist god Vināyaka, but also as a Hindu demon form with the same name. His image appears in Buddhist sculptures during the late Gupta period. As the Buddhist god Vināyaka, he is often shown dancing. This form, called Nṛtta Ganapati, was popular in northern India, later adopted in Nepal, and then in Tibet. In Nepal, the Hindu form of Ganesha, known as Heramba, is popular; he has five heads and rides a lion. Tibetan representations of Ganesha show ambivalent views of him. A Tibetan rendering of Ganapati is tshogs bdag. In one Tibetan form, he is shown being trodden under foot by Mahākāla, (Shiva) a popular Tibetan deity. Other depictions show him as the Destroyer of Obstacles, and sometimes dancing. Ganesha appears in China and Japan in forms that show distinct regional character. In northern China, the earliest known stone statue of Ganesha carries an inscription dated to 531. In Japan, where Ganesha is known as Kangiten, the Ganesha cult was first mentioned in 806.

 

The canonical literature of Jainism does not mention the worship of Ganesha. However, Ganesha is worshipped by most Jains, for whom he appears to have taken over certain functions of Kubera. Jain connections with the trading community support the idea that Jainism took up Ganesha worship as a result of commercial connections. The earliest known Jain Ganesha statue dates to about the 9th century. A 15th-century Jain text lists procedures for the installation of Ganapati images. Images of Ganesha appear in the Jain temples of Rajasthan and Gujarat.

 

WIKIPEDIA

Processing work in a destructive manner.