Barnsley, 15th March 2000.

This ex West Midlands Leyland National was, I think, now with Headlight.

I had some difficulty in recognising this bus station - there have been so many different ones in Barnsley.

View from Mt Difficulty Vineyard in Bannockburn where we are having lunch. April 27, 2016 Central Otago in the South Island of New Zealand.

 

The Cellar Door at Mt Difficulty Wines is known as much for its dramatic views of rugged rock and thyme landscapes as it is for its stylish wine and food.

 

The unique microclimate of the Bannockburn area is partially created by the presence of Mount Difficulty which overlooks the southern Cromwell basin, and is the namesake of Mt Difficulty Wines. Mount Difficulty is integral in providing low rainfall and humidity for the region. Bannockburn enjoys hot summers, a large diurnal temperature variation and long cool autumns; conditions which bring the best out of the Pinot Noir grapes. These conditions, along with soils which are ideal for viticulture, provide an excellent basis not only for Pinot Noir, but also for Pinot Gris, Riesling, and Chardonnay. The soils are a mix of clay and gravels, but all feature a high pH level; grapes produce their best wines on sweet soils.

 

For More Info: www.mtdifficulty.co.nz/aboutus/ourstory.html

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY to everyone who celebrates this special day today!

 

What a mess Flickr was last night! I had difficulty adding titles to my uploaded images, comments didn't save and, after I had added a description to each of the 20 photos, the descriptions all disappeared. When I opened Flickr this morning, there was still no sign of them. Then, suddenly, they re-appeared.

 

My photos taken at the National Butterfly Centre, Mission, South Texas, have now come to an end, so you can sigh a huge sigh of relief : ) After that, I have just a few photos taken at another place that we called in at later in the afternoon. Unfortunately, we only had an hour there before closing time, but how glad we were that we found this place. The highlight there was watching 25 Yellow-crowned Night-Herons coming in to roost for the night in the trees, right where we were standing! What a great sight this was, and we were lucky enough to have a good, close view of these gorgeous birds. We also saw some Purple Martins and their circular, hanging nest "gourds".

 

On Day 6 of our birding holiday in South Texas, 24 March 2019, we left our hotel in Kingsville, South Texas, and started our drive to Mission, where we would be staying at La Quinta Inn & Suites for three nights. On the first stretch of our drive, we were lucky enough to see several bird species, including a Golden-fronted Woodpecker, Hooded Oriole, Red-tailed Hawk, Crested Caracara, Harris's Hawk, Pyrrhuloxia male (looks similar to a Cardinal) and a spectacular Scissor-tailed Flycatcher. I'm not sure if this stretch is called Hawk Alley.

 

We had a long drive further south towards Mission, with only a couple of drive-by photos taken en route (of a strangely shaped building that turned out to be a deserted seed storage building). Eventually, we reached our next planned stop, the National Butterfly Centre. This was a great place, my favourite part of it being the bird feeding station, where we saw all sorts of species and reasonably close. Despite the name of the place, we only saw a few butterflies while we were there. May have been the weather or, more likely, the fact that I was having so much fun at the bird feeding station. We also got to see Spike, a giant African Spurred Tortoise. All the nature/wildlife parks that we visited in South Texas had beautiful visitor centres and usually bird feeding stations. And there are so many of these parks - so impressive!

 

nationalbutterflycenter.org/nbc-multi-media/in-the-news/1...

 

"Ten years ago, the North American Butterfly Association broke ground for what has now become the largest native plant botanical garden in the United States. This 100-acre preserve is home to Spike (who thinks he is a butterfly) and the greatest volume and variety of wild, free-flying butterflies in the nation. In fact, USA Today calls the National Butterfly Center, in Mission, Texas, 'the butterfly capitol of the USA'." From the Butterfly Centre's website.

 

The Centre is facing huge challenges, as a result of the "Border Wall". The following information is from the Centre's website.

 

www.nationalbutterflycenter.org/about-nbc/maps-directions...

 

"No permission was requested to enter the property or begin cutting down trees. The center was not notified of any roadwork, nor given the opportunity to review, negotiate or deny the workplan. Same goes for the core sampling of soils on the property, and the surveying and staking of a “clear zone” that will bulldoze 200,000 square feet of habitat for protected species like the Texas Tortoise and Texas Indigo, not to mention about 400 species of birds. The federal government had decided it will do as it pleases with our property, swiftly and secretly, in spite of our property rights and right to due process under the law."

 

"What the Border Wall will do here:

1) Eradicate an enormous amount of native habitat, including host plants for butterflies, breeding and feeding areas for wildlife, and lands set aside for conservation of endangered and threatened species-- including avian species that migrate N/S through this area or over-winter, here, in the tip of the Central US Flyway.

 

2) Create devastating flooding to all property up to 2 miles behind the wall, on the banks of the mighty Rio Grande River, here.

 

3) Reduce viable range land for wildlife foraging and mating. This will result in greater competition for resources and a smaller gene pool for healthy species reproduction. Genetic "bottlenecks" can exacerbate blight and disease.

 

IN ADDITION:

 

4) Not all birds can fly over the wall, nor will all butterfly species. For example, the Ferruginous Pygmy Owl, found on the southern border from Texas to Arizona, only flies about 6 ft in the air. It cannot overcome a 30 ft vertical wall of concrete and steel.

 

5) Nocturnal and crepuscular wildlife, which rely on sunset and sunrise cues to regulate vital activity, will be negatively affected by night time flood lighting of the "control zone" the DHS CBP will establish along the wall and new secondary drag roads. The expansion of these areas to vehicular traffic will increase wildlife roadkill.

 

6) Animals trapped north of the wall will face similar competition for resources, cut off from native habitat in the conservation corridor and from water in the Rio Grande River and adjacent resacas. HUMANS, here, will also be cut off from our only source of fresh water, in this irrigated desert.

Brief History of Maryborough.

This fertile area of Queensland was the fifth area to be settled when it was still part of NSW. The first settlement in QLD was at Redcliffe (and later Moreton Bay) as a convict colony in 1824. This was followed by white settlement at Ipswich in 1842 and further inland in the mountains at Warwick in 1847. The NSW government sent explorers to the Mary River area in 1842 which was when the river was named. Then in 1847 inland from the Mary River a town was surveyed but not gazetted until 1849. It was Gayndah which now claims to be the oldest town in QLD. The establishment of Gayndah is remarkable given transport difficulties. Near the coast Maryborough was the site of a wharf for pastoralists in 1847 and later a small town was created in 1850 making Maryborough the fifth settlement in what is now QLD. The first land sales at Maryborough were in 1852 although a general store had opened before this time on leased land in 1848. The new town of Maryborough was sited on the Mary River which rises near the Glasshouse Mountains inland from the Sunshine Coast. It generally flows northwards to enter the sea a few miles downstream from the town of Maryborough. The Mary River was named after Lady Mary Lennox the wife of the Governor of NSW Charles Fitzroy. The little town struggled to establish itself but once QLD got independence from NSW in 1859 Maryborough began to grow more quickly as free white settlers spread around the new colony. The delays in growth were partly caused by local Aboriginal resistance to the white pastoralists. Between 1847 and 1853 twenty eight white settlers were killed by Aboriginal people. A white massacre of around 100 Aboriginal people in the early 1850s brought some calm to the area and broke the resistance of the Gubbi Gubbi people. The Gubbi Gubbi people were called the Gin Gins by white settlers hence the name for that town north of Maryborough. Like so many Australian towns Maryborough’s growth was fuelled by mining discoveries. Maryborough was declared an official QLD port in 1859 and the first ship load of immigrants disembarked directly at Maryborough in 1860. Most were female and instead of obtaining work as servants immediately accepted offers of marriage from the men of the district. Maryborough became a municipality in 1861. It soon had a Customs House, a Courthouse and School of Arts but it really grew with the discovery of gold inland at Gympie. Maryborough served as the pot for goods going to and from Gympie from 1867 onwards. The QLD Land Acts of 1867 also opened up the pastoral leasehold lands to farmers for the first time. The main crops grown were maize and sugar. At about the same time as the Gympie gold rush Maryborough got its first sugar mill, a timber mill and John Walker of Ballarat opened a foundry and engineering works to produce mining equipment just as he had done previously in Ballarat. The port expanded and the town grew. A new Post Office (1869), hotels and general stores opened to cater for the miners and the townspeople. By 1871 Maryborough had 3,500 residents with its own newspaper’s, churches and schools. The wider district population was 9,000 people. By 1876 the population had swelled to 5,700 people. The first railway opened in Maryborough in 1881 when a line connected the port with Gympie gold fields.

 

Maryborough South Sea Islander Hospital. The Kanaka indentured labour system was introduced to QLD in 1863. The Polynesian Hawaiians called themselves kanakas. This was the term used in the 19th century to cover the South Sea Islander indentured labourers. Most who came to the Maryborough region (and Bundaberg too) were from the Solomon Islands and the New Hebrides (now Vanuatu). Some Islanders were also taken as indentured labourers to Chile, to Canada, to California and to Fiji. The arrival of the first indentured islanders coincided with the beginnings of

the sugar industry in the Maryborough region. Sugar is a very intense labour crop and in the USA, the Caribbean and

South America African slaves were used for such work until the mid-19th century. The Americans had their tragic Civil War to end slavery there. British colonies were not allowed to have slaves by the 1830s century including all of the Australia colonies. African slaves were gradually freed in the Caribbean and elsewhere in the mid-19th century. South America had its slaves all freed by the 1870s. Although descendants of the South Sea Islanders like to refer to themselves as the Sugar Slaves this term would be highly offensive to all descendants of African slaves of the Americas and Caribbean. Indentured labour was a common labour system in the 19th century and continued into the 20th century. In Australia the Commonwealth government ran a similar indentured labour scheme for young British men who wanted to be farm labourers. They served a three year term, with no pay until they had completed their indenture, and they needed government permission to buy work boots or any other item. In SA this scheme was known as the Barwell Boys (Barwell was the SA premier at the time) scheme but it operated in WA and other states too. This indentured labour system ended in 1925.

 

So when the indentured South Sea Islander trade was established in Queensland in 1863 the first labourers were covered by the 1861 Masters and Servants Acts. (All colonies – and later states- had such acts which controlled labour relations right through to the 1980 and 1990s when anti-discrimination and equal opportunity acts watered them down.) Queensland acted quickly after 1863 and introduced the Polynesian Labourers Act in 1868. Amongst the many clauses of the act was the establishment of inspectors of conditions on plantations where South Sea Islanders were indentured. They weighed food rations, inspected housing and clothing. The act was also designed to protect the Islanders’ basic rights and to stop the “kidnapping” of Islanders. All ships captains had to ensure that there was no coercion and that the Islander’s recruitment was consistent with the QLD Polynesian Labourers Act. Although white settlers and Islanders died of fevers and tropical diseases frequently in the Maryborough area it had one of four Islander Hospitals erected by the QLD government in the early 1880s to help alleviate disease and death among the Islander populations in QLD. The first inspector for the health conditions of the Islanders began work in Maryborough in 1875.Their complaints about the conditions under which Islanders lived led to the opening of the 50 bed Maryborough Pacific Islander Hospital and doctor’s residence. Islanders had a higher death rate from disease than whites and extra health care was needed. Thus the Maryborough Hospital opened in 1883 to improve health conditions but it closed just five years later. Like other Islander hospitals it was funded from the wages due to dead Islanders. These wages were diverted to state government coffers. Attached to the hospital was an Islander cemetery which was formally established in 1891 but was used for interments whilst the hospital existed. A total of 363 Islander patients died at the hospital and were presumably all buried in the cemetery. The Maryborough Pacific Islander Hospital buildings were removed in 1892 and some equipment moved to the Maryborough Hospital which established a separate Kanaka ward. The site of the Pacific Island Hospital and cemetery was left vacant until sold off as vacant land in 1911. A controversy arose a couple of years when the Maryborough Council was considering allowing building on the former site. Action were than taken to have the site declared a heritage area. The outcome for this has not yet been decided. If building approval were to happen one can only hope that a suitable memorial and monument is placed there to remind everyone of Maryborough’s role in the South Sea Islander traffic. The site is near Tinana 5 kms west of Maryborough.

  

The first South Sea Islander labourers arrived at the port of Maryborough in 1867 on the schooner Mary Smith. All were male and found employed straight away with the Maryborough Sugar Company. They were paid £6 per year (paid at the end for the three year contract) compared with a white labourers who would have received up to £30 a year. The Islanders also were fed and housed which the white labourers were not. The Maryborough Sugar Company also paid for the voyage to and from the South Sea Islands. When the Mary borough Pacific Islander Hospital closed in 1888 it was partially because the number for South Sea Islanders was declining in the district. Numbers continued to fall in the 1890s as sugar profits declined. Then all South Sea Islanders were covered by the “White Australia Acts” of the new Federal Government in 1901. At that time the Islander population in Queensland was at its peak with around 9,000 Islanders. Commonwealth legislation banned recruitment from 1904 and started deportation in 1906. By 1908 7,000 Islanders had been deported and about 2,000 were allowed to stay on in Australia because of marriage or health or other issues. Over the life time of the South Sea Islander trade around 60,000 Islanders had been brought into Queensland and of those about a quarter were employed in the Maryborough district.

 

The Port of Maryborough.

The town actually began with a wharf as once prospective settlers learned that the River Mary was navigable white pastoralist and cotton and maize farmers moved into the district upstream from around 1848. Then in 1859 as the colony of Queensland was created from New South Wales a new international port was created at Maryborough. The town had moved from West Maryborough to the present site. Consequently the first Customs House was erected in 1861. In 1860 the first vessels arrived at the port of Maryborough direct from Europe with a load of immigrants. In 1869 nearly 7,000 immigrants had landed in Maryborough and by 1878 nearly 16,000 had landed here. In fact between 1860 and 1900 around 22,000 immigrants arrived directly in Maryborough from England and Europe. Maryborough also had a coastal steamer service to Brisbane and Rockhampton. From 1867 it also handled all the goods going into and the gold coming out of the goldfields at Gympie. In the last quarter of the 19th century the port of Maryborough handled saw timber, sugar, wool, meat, gold, maize, etc. Before the end of the 19th century when river ports like Maryborough were about to be forgotten because they could not handle larger steamers its imports and exports were roughly in balance in terms of value. The most valuable exports were: gold, silver, copper, fruit, hides and skins, sugar and wool. Of these the most valuable were sugar £50,000, raw and refined, followed by silver/lead £33,000, gold/silver £9,000 and skin/hides £8,000.

 

Among the early immigrants were shiploads of German settlers from 1860. As the numbers grew the first Lutheran pastor arrived in 1864 followed by a second in 1867. These and later pastors came from Germany or Denmark, mainly the Schleswig district, which was occupied by Germany from 1864 after it defeated the Danes. Between 1860 and 1891 around 180,000 immigrants arrived in Queensland with an assisted government passage and some rights to lease land. Around 16,000 were non British mainly Germans, Danes, Norwegians and Swedes. Other Australian colonies only gave assisted passages to British immigrants except for Tasmania and Queensland. Most of the non-British immigrants were German but the QLD government’s agent I Germany also recruited Scandinavians, Swiss etc. Queensland became the colony with the greatest number of Danes and it had almost as many Norwegians and Swedes as NSW. Some of these non-British immigrant’s landed in Maryborough with the first ship load arriving in March 1871 on the Reichstag from Hamburg. The Scandinavians especially settled at Tiaro and Tinana near Maryborough, around Bundaberg, Pialba at Hervey Bay and in other places like Kingaroy where Sir Jo Bjelke-Petersen lived. The town of Eidsvold, near Gayndah is a Norwegian name and it was established by the Archer brothers from Larvik in Norway. As most of the Scandinavians were Lutheran (but some were Catholic), Danish, Norwegian and Swedish names are often linked to the Lutheran churches of the Maryborough district. Some Scandinavian names (mainly Danish) of Maryborough early settlers include the Jocumsen, Claussen,Madsen, Kehlet, Weinberg, Okeden, Boge, Möller, etc. Many Danish and other Scandinavian names can also be found in the Polson cemetery at Pialba Hervey Bay such as Christensen, Hansen, Mortensen, Nielsen, Petersen, Thomsen etc.

 

A stroll down Kent Street from Pallas Street.

1. On the left is Queen Elizabeth rose garden.

2. The Dominion Milling Company factory site. Now derelict. The Maryborough flour mill when erected in 1890 was the furthest north in Australia. It was acquired by the Dominion Milling Company around 1910. The distinctive entrance arch was erected in 1915. All operations only ceased in 1977. In more recent years it has been a saw mill and an antiques centre.

3. The old power house from the 1920s when cities like Maryborough had their own electricity generator.

4. The Freemasons Centre.

5. On the right Maryborough High School. Its original grand buildings were opened in 1881 as Maryborough Girls Grammar School.

6. On the left beyond the school oval is Maryborough Boys Grammar School erected in 1881 and the gates erected in 1909. It is now the TAFE campus.

7. The Maryborough Central School. The first school was established in 1862. The grand l two storey building was erected at the height of the European immigration period in 1875. More wooden classrooms were built in 1882 as the infant’s school.

8. On right is the City Hall. Built 1906 in American colonial style in red brick. Australia’s only pneumonic plaque outbreak occurred in Maryborough in 1905. Eight people died and a plaque commemorates that sad event.

9. On the left the School of Arts. 427 Kent St. This grand classical building was designed by Adelaide architect John Grainger. It was completed in 1888 replacing a former wooden school of arts building. In 1972 it was purchased by the City of Maryborough for use as a library. The round windows above oblong windows is unusual. Cost £3,500.

10. On the right. Finney Isles and Co store 1908. The building was designed by the prominent Bundaberg architect, F. H. Faircloth. Alterations were undertaken to the building in 1918 due to the expansion of Finney, Isles & Co business. The building was purchased by Fritz Kinne in 1923 and their name is in the central pediment. This German background businessman was an alderman and twice Mayor of Maryborough.384 Kent St

11. On the left before the next intersection. This was the Stupart’s Emporium built in 1883. No 373 Kent St.

13. On the right. The Royal Hotel. Built in 1868 and given its “royal patronage” authority by Governor Bowen of Queensland in that year. Established in 1856 and totally rebuilt in this classical style in 1902.

14. On left at 331 Kent St. The former Australian Joint Stock Bank built in 1882. Great classical features but the windows are too narrow and spoil the effect. Main facade is on the side street. Its proportions are much better. The author of the Mary Poppins book P L Travers was born in the building in 1899. Her father Travers Goff was the bank manager at the time. She was born as Helen Goff. Her statue is next to the building. Look for the street crossing lights showing Mary Poppins.

14. On the left at 327 Kent St. Built in 1915 as the Queensland National bank. Now known as Woodstock House. Good height, grand pilasters up the sides of the building, fine pediment, Corinthian columns with acanthus leaves at the top, both triangular and rounded pediments above windows, good symmetry. A great classical style building.

15.On right at 310 Kent St is the former Francis Hotel. This was the site of the first hotel in Maryborough around 1852. A second storey was added in 1919 with lots of Edwardian woodwork on the balcony. It closed as a hotel in 1992.

16. On the right next to the hotel is the former stores of Douglas Helsham. Construction began in 1874 and was completed in 1875. Helsham employed a Brisbane architect James Cowlishaw.

17. On left at 297 Kent St. The former Royal Bank built in 1888 with almost some Art Nouveau curves. The architect was Italian Victor Caradini. The roof line pediment is “broken” and now includes the name Monsour. Fred Monsour was a Middle Eastern silk and fabric importer. With his brother they had several stores and warehouses but he name in the cartouche these days refers to Dr Monsour a local medical practitioner.

18. At the very end of Kent Street and to the right is the former Engineer’s Arms Hotel. This strange very narrow hotel between two streets was built in 1889 is Maryborough’s answer to the Flatiron building of New York.

  

The clock by the door signifies that the resident was a watchmaker.

There is no subject of greater interest than the study of how the early settlers managed to build their houses and fit them with chimneys, windows, glass, locks and other furniture so difficult of acquisition in those days. The pioneers, however, appear to have laughed at difficulties; for none of them thought it a matter worth recording. Their trials, struggles and disappointments have been buried in oblivion. There is no record of their heroism.

 

It was to be expected that immigrants coming from a country where stone was the chief building material, should have built clumsily and defectively with wood. The first houses were draughty, cold and uncomfortable. No sheathing paper or matched board was used in the early days, and as a result, the high winter winds forced themselves through the chinks and made the houses ice boxes. The early settlers did not seem to realise the great amount of cold that can enter a house from beneath the floor. None of them seem to have adopted the modern system of excluding draughts from underneath the floors. Beneath the floors the goats rested from the mid-day sun in summer and the homeless dogs found there some shelter in winter nights. The continuous rush of cold air beneath the floor drew away the heat from the rooms above. The open fireplaces and wide chimneys also allowed the heat to escape. Floors were single. The single uncanvassed floor was another factor in allowing heat to escape. Storm sashes were unknown. One guard against cold they adopted; they screened their beds with canopies. In building, there was no attempt to place the posts on bedrock. The result was that the houses were continually heaving with the winter frosts. Often, at night, the occupants were aroused suddenly from their sleep by the noise of nails bending or breaking in boards forced from their usual places by the heaving of the house. This alternate heaving and falling of the house had the effect of rendering it more draughty from year to year.

 

It was fortunate that plenty of wood could be procured; for with open fire places enormous quantities of wood were consumed in heating and cooking. Cod-oil and candles were the illuminants till the introduction of the kerosene lamp in the year 1870. Stoves, floor-canvas and lucifer matches came into use about the same time. The comfort and conveniences introduced by these three domestic improvements were marvellous The old wide chimneys were closed up, the back of the chimney whitewashed, and the large irregular flags of the hearth replaced by bricks which were reddened every Saturday afternoon with powdered brick and water. The sand was swept off the floor and the gayly-flowered canvas put down. The evil-smelling cod-oil lamp was thrown on the garbage heap and the glass kerosene lamp with its bit of red flame in the bottom to add colour, was hung by the wall. The tinder box followed the cod-oil lamp.

 

Friendly intercourse from house to house was more common than it is to-day. Winter brought with it certain brief periods of leisure during which the men assembled in knots and discussed the events of the day. Visiting neighbours was a relief from the monotony of outport life. No one thought of knocking before entering; you simply lifted the latch and went in. If you were not welcome you soon found this out; the silent greeting warned you that your presence was not desirable. The election year was always an inexhaustible source of discussion and the prospective weddings a delightful theme for the women and girls at the quilting and matting parties.

 

Besides the frequent dances there were raffles for some poor widow or other charitable object. There was a great variety of indoor games to fill in the long nights such as, Forfeits, Hide the-button, Hunt-the-slipper, Ride-the-gray-Mare, Start-the-cask-out-of-the-Cargo, and My-man-John.

 

Christmastide was anticipated keenly by young and old. It was mummering time. Long before Christmas, considerable time was spent on designing costumes and fantastic rigs. Christmas Eve ushered in the mummering period, and for a whole fortnight, the night air was tortured by the inarticulate cries peculiar to "jannies". The mummers went around in groups of various numbers touring the village from one end to the other. There was a heroic folk-play brought by the Irish immigrants from the "Old Country" that used to be performed by the young men during the Christmas holidays. The actors personated of the great heroes of history, Napoleon Bonaparte, Alexander, Doctors Faustus, Sir Isaac Newton, St. George, St. Patrick. But times have changed. To-day, the tidy housewife will not admit nine or ten roughly shod boys on her red-and-white chequered canvas. In the olden days, the sanded floor could stand consid goat-skin head. The cymbals were two pot covers. The triangle was a pair of tongs, and the tambourine was a tinpan or a metal tray. One Christmas Eve night, Stephen Ryan of Broad Cove played the tambourine. The night being chilly, and his hands exposed, they lost their sensitiveness, and when the parade was over, his knuckles were a mass of mangled flesh and blood. The incident is trivial; but it shows the hilarious fervor of the amusements of the olden days.

 

This violin band made itself prominent on other occasions. When Bishop Carfagnini of Harbour Grace made his first episcopal visit to King Cove in May 1873 the violin band greeted him on his approach from Trinity. The band accompanied by the whole populace, went out three miles on the Trinity road expecting to meet His Lordship at that point; but there was a delay and they proceeded two miles further. At the signal of the Bishop's arrival, there was a deafening salvo from dozens of sealing guns, and when the report died away, the Violin band sent forth the lively strains of "The White Cockade" and the "Rakes of Mallow." The latter air was hardly appropriate to greet two dignitaries of the church; but it must be remembered that in these early days the band's repertoire of music suitable for triumphal processions was undoubtedly limited. Tradition has remembered only four of the musicians who took part in that demonstration, namely: P. Murphy, R Lawton, M. Lawton and Jim Costello. It formed the orchestra at the theatrical performances and some of its members accompanied the Choir at Benediction at Sunday evening Service.

 

The chief dances of the old days were the cotillion, eight-handed red, single step and kissing dance. After the cotillion was finished, it was an unwritten law that each couple should dance a single step. The reel was an intricate and laborious dance and necessitated some preliminary practice in order to master its involutions. It was long and sweat producing and the male performers uniformly sought the outside air after each performance, while the female performers fanned themselves in a cool corner. The generation now passing were youngsters then; but they can recall the glamour which the dances at the "Big House" (as Big Allie's house was called) used to throw around them on a fine summer night when the gay dancers came out on the long front gallery to cool off, and we saw them through the trees saunter back and forth across the lighted windows. Looking back one is reminded of Byron's lines on the festivities at Belgium's capital. For Mrs. Murphy was indeed a chieftain, and the end of all the gay dancing in the "Big House" was as tragic as the end of Bunswicks's fated chieftain.

 

If the habitues of the modern dance halls were compelled to go through a cotillion or a reel of the olden days, they would be prostrated for weeks thereafter. The dancers disdained ballroom etiquette when choosing a partner for a dance. They simply walked over to the damsel and without speaking, took her hand She, silently acquiesced and took her place on the floor. When the dance was finished, her partner dropped her like a hot potato, without a word of thanks or any other ceremony, and left her to find a seat as best she could.

 

The cotillion was less laborous than the reel; and also less interesting. It was an inartistic dance. Its chief characteristics were an alternate time-beating by the men and their partner in the centre of the ring, followed by a violent swinging and a grand chain. This was repeated ad infinitum or as long as the participants could hold out. In the single-step dancing every dancer danced to his own favorite air; and the fiddler was expected to respond to the individual demands made upon his musical repertoire. The most frequent calls were for "The Wind That Shaked the Barley", and "The Rakes of Kildare."

 

Dancing was followed by singing. Those who could sing had to sing; no excuses were admissible. The songs were mostly of the sentimental type, and depicted the woes of the rejected lover.

 

There was usually some incident to add spice and variety to a ball of the olden days. As the ceilings were low,-not much over six feet-and the second floor beams were exposed, a tall man had to do most of his dancing between the beams, and had to maintain a stooping position during the "grand chain." As one of the rules of the cotillion was that the final beat of the last bar of the music should be accompanied by the dancers bringing down both feet together with as loud a "whelt" as possible, it was not unusual for one or more dancers to break through the single floor. An incident of this kind compelled the suspension of the dance till a new piece of board was procured; but instead of being considered an annoyance, it enhanced the terpsichorean notoriety of the dancer. Occasionally, those who were not invited to the dance, vented their displeasure by throwing one or more dead cats down the open chimney.

 

Occasionally, too, a good-looking girl was the source of an amorous jealousy which in the early hours of the morning disrupted the whole proceedings, and sent the jealous wooers out in the road to argue or fight the matter out. The most spectacular of these love comedies happened in the winter of 1872 at a dance held by the dramatic troupe in Pat Dwyer's old house. A certain young lady who was openly catering to the dalliances of an amorous swain, declined the offer of a dance from another ardent admirer. This aroused a violent jealousy in the latter. Sparks began to fly and as the adversaries glared at each other, the worst was feared. There was an ominous rush towards the door; for notwithstanding the comparative primitiveness of these days, there was an instinctive respect for the sanctity of their patron's house. Moreover it was considered that the open air was the proper place for the settlement of disputes of this kind. So there in front of Tom Brown's old house. in shirt sleeves and bare heads in the raw humid dawning of a March Sunday morning, the two adversaries argued till the onlookers, standing around on the snowBankss became bored and wearied by the incessant repetition of childish recrimination, quitted the scene to go home to breakfast. The drizzly atmosphere had a cooling effect on the protagonists who soon sought their homes also.

 

In McBraire's time horse-racing in winter on the harbor-ice was a favourite sport. The course was from Western Point to Sampson's Rock. Mr. Hartery, McBraire's, book-keeper was usually the winner. He was the champion so often that he was nicknamed "Chiffeney"-from the famous English jockey of that period.

 

There were times when provisions ran short, and the spectre of starvation was staring people in the face. The winter following the failure of Munn & Carroll was a gloomy one. Munn's vessels had taken away the summer's catch and no provisions had come back in return. No flour was obtainable in King's Cove that winter and one was lucky to get Indian meal. In our own day of plenty one looks back with sadness to these old days when five or six men had to tramp eighteen miles to Trinity for a barrel of yellow corn meal, and haul it through snow-Bankss with ropes over their shoulders. It was a pioneer's life,-stern, hard and reletent less. It is presumed that there was some good flour in these days, but we in the outports saw none of it. The most of the flour was yellow and bitter; accidentally one may happen to get a barrd that was palatable. The necessity of testing the flour before buying was acknowledged by the manufacturers; for they provided a small wooden stopper or "tester" about an inch and a half in diameter in the head of every barrel. It was an interesting sight to see crowds of fishermen getting their winter's supply of flour, each smoothing out a spoonful of flour on the palm of his hand with his pocket knife and testing it frequently. If the flour did not satisfy the intending purchaser, he replaced the "trier" and began to test another barrel.

 

On one occasion the ice remained in late in the Spring and provisions ran short especially in Broad Cove. The Broad Cove men heard there were some provisions in Catalina. They marched to Catalina in a body,-a distance of twenty-five miles-and asked the owner to give them some provisions till they would catch fish to repay him. He refused. The men then took a large boom and broke in the door. Every man took a half bag of hard bread on his back and walked back to Broad Cove, covering a distance of fifty miles in the one day. The Government later compensated the storekeeper for the goods taken.

 

Broad Cove-three miles from King's Cove-was in the early days inhabited solely by Irishmen. It was a picturesque sight to see them riding on horseback to Mass at King's Cove on Sunday mornings. Arriving at King's Cove, they threw their bridles over the chapel fence palings and greeted the King's Cove Irishmen with many a "Cead Mille Failtha"-a hundred thousand welcomes. The Wexford men spoke in English; but the Cork and Kerry men used Irish

 

Whilst the fisheries were good, times were prosperous. But towards the "sixties" symptoms of widespread depression began to show themselves. The old-time seal fishery had gone out and the cod fishery was gradually failing. Population was increasing, and the economic resources of the country were not developing proportionally. Bad times were looming ahead; something had to be done. In the Legislative Session of 1860 Governor Bannerman urged the Government "that no pains be spared to give encouragement to the development of Agriculture in order to prevent as far as possible the labouring classes resorting to pauper relief."

 

From this time on, the people were exhorted to go in for land cultivation and take in arable land wherever available. The slogan in King's Cove and other near-by settlements was "You can't starve on potatoes and herring."

 

Meanwhile, the Government, fearful of the continuation of these lean years of meal and molasses, sent a delegation to Ottawa to discuss with the Canadian Government the question of confederating with the Dominion. The Newfoundland people however, rejected the idea in the 1869 election as noted elsewhere.

 

The effect of the depressed times was that the young men were getting restless. One by one they were leaving for Boston and British Columbia where better opportunities awaited them. The young women began to follow their example and the once thriving village of King's Cove became only a shadow of its former self. The old King's Cove is gone; the best we can do is to give a picture of it in its balmy days.

 

Like most other settlements in Newfoundland. King's Cove has had its tragedies. The earliest recorded was the loss of the sealing schooner "John" with all hands,-a crew of forty-two. She was never heard from; how and where she went down remains a mystery.

 

An event which cast a gloom for many years over King's Cove was the loss of the schooner "Edward" in 1876. She was owned by Michael Murphy and Sons and had the following crew: Michael McGrath (father of the late Bernard McGrath); his son Jim; Jimmy Flynn (father of the late M. T. Flynn of Marystown); his son Dan; William Doyle (father of the late Capt. Tom Doyle) and a boy named Skeffington. The schooner left St. John's on the afternoon of December 16th, 1876 with a load of provisions for King's Cove and has never been heard from since.

 

In April 1869 John and Richard Kennifick and John Sullivan of Broad Cove were drowned at St. Croix near Keels, and the following day Larry Walsh was drowned at Knight's Cove Point. All of them were on the ice seal-hunting and went down through the broken ice.

 

An event which cast a gloom over the village was the drowning of Richard Handcock of Knight's Cove on the 15th of August (Lady Day) 1877. It is customary for parishioners to donate their catch of fish on the 15th of August (the Feast of the Assumption) to the Church. Handcock and Billy Ricketts were in the same boat and were returning with a good catch when a sudden squall overturned the boat and Handcock was drowned; Ricketts kept himself afloat till he was rescued by his brother who was not far off at the time of the accident. Father Veitch felt the tragedy keenly and on the following Sunday referred to it in regretful terms.

 

In the Fall of 1829 the "Agnes" was chartered at St. John's to load fish at King's Cove for a foreign market. Thomas McGrath who was at St. John's at the time, was engaged as pilot to take her to King's Cove. Between Western Point and Southern Head something gave out aloft and the mainsail had to be lowered. It was near nightfall and before repairs could be effected, night came on bringing with it a blinding snow storm and a north-west hurricane which lasted several days. The vessel never reached King's Cove. During the winter a vessel reached Trinity and reported having encountered the "Agnes" in mid-ocean with her spars cut away and no crew on board. There was no further news of her till the following May when Thomas McGrath arrived in King's Cove. He then told the story of his adventure. As they were nearing King's Cove, the north-west gale drove them outside the Grand Bankss. The ballast shifted and the "Agnes" was thrown on her beam ends. The spars were cut away and she righted. The ballast was replaced but she began to leak badly, and for 17 days they laboured night and day to keep her free. At the end of that time they sighted a vessel from Miramichi lumber-laden and bound for Liverpool, England. The shipwrecked crew were taken on board this vessel and landed at Liverpool. McGrath went to Waterford, Ireland in which port he was fortunate in finding a vessel ready to sail for King's Cove.

 

The following year-1830-Thomas McGrath commanded the sealer "John" at the icefields and a crew of nineteen. The "John" never returned. It is presumed that she went down in the heavy storm which occurred on April 15th of that Spring. Her loss was a terrible tragedy for a small hamlet like King's Cove. Long into the sunny days of May and even June the anxious eyes of distraught wives scanned the horizon from Western Point for a glimpse of the overdue sealer; but in vain. No doubt some of them hoped that a passing ship may have picked up the missing crew; but even that hope died out when with the superstitious credulity of these early days they listened to old Mrs. Barrett of 'Longshore' tell how she saw the crew of the "John" one night walk down the harbor in single file and disappear in the sea below her house. And Thomas McGrath who had left the green hills of Clonmel to fight the battle of Life, found his resting place in the turbulent waters of the North Atlantic.

 

Another marine tragedy connected with the history of King's Cove was the loss of the "King's Cove" in the early part of the 19th century. She left King's Cove with a cargo of fish in drums for Brazil. She never reached her destination. It was reported at one time that she had been captured by pirates and the crew murdered; but there was never any confirmation of this report.

 

An event which brought sorrow to the Murphy family was the tragic death of Bernard Murphy on a beautiful January Sunday morning in 1872. There was no priest in King's Cove at this time, and the chapel bell was ringing for the reciting of the Rosary by the school teacher, when the news spread that Bernard Murphy's house was on fire. A large crowd soon collected and buckets of water rushed along; but the building soon became a mass of flame. An attempt was made to pull down the house by putting a rope around it; but this proved ineffectual. Meanwhile anxiety as to the safety of the owner became general; for he was nowhere to be seen. It was known that he had gone on the attic with a bucket of water but whether he came down seemed to be uncertain. This uncertainty was however allayed for a time by a rumour that he had been seen running up the harbor in his shirt sleeves shortly after the alarm of fire was given. All doubt was set at rest a few hours later when his charred body was found in the burning debris. He was a brother of Pat Murphy for many years postmaster at King's Cove.

 

Tragedy seemed to dog the steps of Bernard Murphy's widow. She was Miss Elizabeth Gould, daughter of Michael Gould of Carbonear. She had been married previously to Arthur Thomey of Harbour Grace. Her first sorrow came to her when after a few brief months of married life, she had to hear the news of her husband's death by drowning at the ice-fields. The following summer, she happened to become acquainted with Mrs. Murphy-"Big Allie"-who invited her to spend the summer at King's Cove. There she met and married Bernard. After the latter's death she removed to Harbor Grace. Her daughter, Alice, died of consumption and her two grandchildren, Ron and Tom McGrath met untimely deaths-the former being killed in the Great War and the latter, who was a marine engineer, fell in the hold of his ship and was killed. Her third husband, John Thomey of the Harbor Grace Customs died suddenly on the Custom House steps not withstanding all her troubles she lived to the good round age of eighty-three years.

 

Her name deserves to be recorded in the annals of King's Cove. She was the leader of the first Catholic choir established by Father Veitch. In these early days, hymn books had not yet reached King's Cove, and the choir leader found it difficult to obtain music for the few hymns that were found necessary for the church services. The difficulty was surmounted by adopting well-known airs such as the "Meeting of the Waters", "Tara's Hall" and others to the hymns.

 

There are certain spots in and around King's Cove that will always fill a part of the King Covian exiles' dreams. Though nothing big or momentous happened at these spots, the thoughts and feelings that centered around them in boyhood will hallow them for ever in their memories. What King's Covian will ever forget Sampson's Rock? It was the village "Swimmin' Hole". To the young King's Covian in his untravelled days it seemed of immense breadth and depth. Today there seems to be scarcely enough of water in it to wash one's feet. But we can recall with what a thrill of pleasure and even heroism we ventured for the first time to dive off the "Rock" and swim across to the opposite Banks, a distance of seven or eight feet.

 

And who will forget "Gully Pond"? During the summer holidays we went there at least once a day. It was a mile or so outside the village. Those who had mastered the difficulties of Sampson's Rock had to be initiated into the hazards of Gully Pond. There was a small boulder about thirty feet from the shore. You passed your second degree in swimming when you could swim to that rock without faltering. You were given your third degree when you showed courage enough to dive off the lower rail of a stage head. You received your unwritten diploma when with a swaggering nonchalance you stepped on the top rail and buried yourself in the sparkling water below.

 

The "Oak Gulch" held a mystery for the boys of King's Cove into a cleft in the cliff at the water's edge had been driven a piece of oak scantling twenty-five or thirty feet long. It fitted the cleft so snugly that it was inconceivable how it had been driven there It had evidently been there for generations and a few superstitious tales grew up around it. Recently Austin Lawton braved the superstitious fears connected with the stick, crawled into the cleft and with chisel and saw removed the piece of scantling bit by bit.

 

The Pond-a small lake separating the north side of King's Cove from the south side-at times, especially at night-adds to the picturesqueness of the village by its various changes of mood. These changes are described by the local poetess-Miss Bertille Tobin in another chapter.

 

Sarah Brien's Hill will always be the landmark for which the homecomer will eagerly scan the horizon. It is an irregular plateau overlooking the village and sheltering it from the south-west gales. Before the fire of 1892 it was a beautiful hill thickly clothed to the summit with spruce, birch and fir. To-day, its granitic sides are bare of vegetation.

 

But still the exiled Kingscovian's pulses beat fast when he catches the first glimpse of Sarah Brien's Hill which looms up as the harbor is approached. For it has sheltered King's Cove from the south-west storms during the ages. And no wonder some sympathetic local poet has adapted the following lines to its memory:

  

"Oh Sarah Brien, loved Sarah Brien, how oft I dream of thee;

And of the days when by your side I wondered young and free;

Full many a land I've seen since then

Through Pleasure's flowery maze;

But never could find the bliss again

I felt in those sweet days."

 

An interesting event was the annual haul of wood for the priest and parson. On the appointed days, gangs of men started off to the woods-some with axes and others with dog-slides. All day long the woods resounded with the jingle of axes, the barking of dogs and the shouting of youngsters who had seized the opportunity to make a gala day of it. Several loads were brought out during the day. This hard days work of tramping and hauling through the woods was done in no niggardly or bargaining manner; for the day was to end up in an outburst of music and jubilation, as befitted the occasion. Was not the clergy man the light of the village-not only spiritually, but to many, a helper in their mundane affairs.

As the last loads came out, the slides were decorated with flags, and all the available violinists were ordered to take their places on the tops of the loads. As the long stream of dogs and horses passed in to the clergyman's backyard, he stood at the gate and greeted with radiant smiles the bustling haulers with oft repeated "Well done my brave fellows, well done."

 

There are only two religious denominations in King's Cove- the Church of England and the Roman Catholic. From the earliest history of the place, the greatest harmony and co-operation have existed between these two denominations. Both parties have contributed mutually to the erection of their school and church buildings. An example of this liberality of spirit was evidenced when the late Bishop Carfagnini made his first episcopal visit to King's Cove in 1873. Mr. J. C. Sheares-a prominent Church of England business man of the town, erected an arch at his own expense opposite his place of business.

 

An earlier instance of this friendly feeling is evident from the bantering way in which old William Brown (whose business career we have already noted) and Father Scanlan-the parish priest accosted each other. Here is a sample of their frequent encounter:

 

William Brown: Ha, you got your pockets full of dues now, I suppose, from the poor people."

 

Father Scanlan: "Ha, you old rascal, you never sent me the punt you promised me to paint the church."

  

"Well then" agreed William. "by the livin'man, you'll have it fo-morrow."

"By the livin'man" was his familiar expletive.

  

Within recent history, King's Cove was threatened by fire three times. On June 16th, 1828, a forest fire broke out on Plate Cove Road-west of the settlement-and fanned by a smart breeze. soon swept down towards "Steady Water" valley about half a mile west of the harbor. As night set in, immense volumes of smoke and fire shrouded the sky, and as the night advanced, a wall of fire illuminated the village. Nobody went to bed that night. All household goods and fishing gear were removed to the water's edge. But about half past one o'clock that night, the wind veered to the South-west, carrying the fire away from Steady Water on to Broad Cove-three miles to the north of King's Cove The houses on the north side of King's Cove barely escaped. The change of wind was so sudden that King's Cove escape seemed miraculous.

The fire struck the houses at Broad Cove and destroyed all of them except one-that of Thomas Carew. By 8 p.m. that evening, everything was in ashes stores, stages and flakes. John Skeffington lost a store full of Bummer fishery supplies. A heavy rain followed the fire next day and the residents were enabled to begin again the rebuilding of their homes.

 

How the Broad Cove people managed to survive this tragedy, with all their belongings reduced to ashes at the commencement of the fishing season, no one seems to have left a record. But such misfortunes were the constant lot of the early settlers, and we must come to the conclusion that our forefathers were men of grit and indomitable courage.

 

Since that time, King's Cove has had two narrow escapes from destruction by forest fires. In 1869, a huge fire swept down towards the village from the south-west; but fortunately only reached the outskirts. In 1892-the year of the St John's fire- the village was threatened again. Sarah Brien's hill which had from time immemorial been covered from its summit to its base with spruce and fir, became a prey to the devouring monster, which blackened its granitic sides and it has never since fully recovered its pristine beauty.

 

Previous to 1871 no photographer had visited King's Cove and there are no extant photographs of the residents who died before that date. In that year a photographer named Campbell spent several months in the village. He had his "dark room" in a corner of the "oilstore" of Michael Murphy & Sons. All his photos were of the "tintype" process. Mr. Campbell afterwards became a clerk in the General Post Office, St. John's. A few years later a Mr. Chisholm from Nova Scotia came to King's Cove and spent some time photographing. His work was of the modern "dryplate" type.

   

Bus passengers had a lucky escape after their double decker ploughed into the back of a lorry near Peterborough yesterday morning (Monday, 1 November).

  

The accident happened at 11.50am when a Stagecoach service and a lorry crashed on the A605 near Haddon on the outskirts of Peterborough as the bus was on its way into the city.

Firefighters had to cut the male bus driver free from his cab and he was taken to Peterborough District Hospital suffering from breathing difficulties.

 

The 15 passengers were able to escape the wreckage through the emergency exit at the back of the bus.

 

Two of them, described as walking wounded, suffered cuts and scratches but did not require hospital treatment.

 

The lorry driver was uninjured as a result of the crash.

 

Andy Rideout, a spokesman for Stagecoach, said they were informed about the crash after one of the passengers used the driver’s mobile phone to call the depot in Northampton.

 

He said: “The X4 bus was on its way to Peterborough when the accident happened.

 

“The driver was taken to hospital but we have been told he is okay. No passengers were injured.

 

“We were told about the accident because one of the passengers used the driver’s mobile telephone to call the depot and tell us what happened.

 

“We have got the bus back at our depot now and will be able to examine the bus.

 

“The bus is only a year old and has CCTV fitted, so we should be able to see what happened and we are working with the police in their investigation.

 

“It is very rare that we have to write-off buses now, so we should be able to repair it.”

 

A replacement bus was sent out by Stagecoach shortly after the accident to ferry the passengers to Peterborough city centre.

 

Three fire crews, two from Dogsthorpe and one from Stanground fire station, were at the scene for more than an hour to cut the driver free from the bus before he received medical attention.

 

An East of England Ambulance spokeswoman said the male driver was suffering breathing difficulties and briefly fell unconscious after the accident but was not seriously injured.

 

The road was closed for a short time while accident investigators were at the scene and the debris was cleared away.

 

A Cambridgeshire police spokesman has appealed for witnesses to contact them on 0345 456 4564.

 

* Report taken from www.peterboroughtoday.co.uk/news/traffic-and-transport/bu... *

Motto: Per ardua surgo - Through difficulties I arise

Nickname: The Flying Camels

 

Formed during World War I at Gosport on 1st. March 1916 as part of the Royal Flying Corp (RFC), 45 Sqn. was first equipped with the Sopwith 1½ Strutter which it was to fly in the scout role. Deployed to France in October of that year, the squadron found itself suffering heavy losses due to the quality of its aircraft. This did not change until it transitioned to the Sopwith Camel in July 1917. Transferred to the Austro-Italian front at the end of 1917, 45 Sqn. there engaged in ground attack and offensive patrols until September 1918 when it returned to France and joined the newly formed Royal Air Force. During the course of the war some thirty flying aces had served with the squadron.

The squadron returned to England in February 1919 and disbanded in December 1919. In April 1921 it reformed at Helwan, Egypt. Assigned Vickers Vernon bomber-transports, the unit provided troop transportation and ground support and mail services throughout the Middle East, notably in support of anti-rebel operations in Iraq and the Palestine. The unit transitioned to the DH 9A in 1927, to the Fairey III in 1929 and to the Fairey Gordon in 1935. At some point the unit adopted the nickname 'The Flying Camels'. The squadron badge is a winged camel, approved by King Edward VIII in October 1936. The badge and nickname derive from the Sopwith Camel used by the squadron in World War I and its long service in the Middle East.

At the start of World War II, 45 Sqn. converted to the Bristol Blenheim. From mid-1940 it took part in the North African Campaign and on 11th. June was one of three squadrons that participated in the Allies' first attack on the Regia Aeronautica (Italian air force) base at El Adem. 18 Italian aircraft were destroyed or damaged on the ground, for the loss of three British aircraft. The following day, the squadron participated in an attack on shipping at Tobruk, damaging the Italian cruiser San Giorgio.

During late 1940 the squadron supported Allied ground forces in the East African Campaign, while based at Gura, in Eritrea. During its time at Gura, the squadron suffered losses. On 2nd. October two Blenheims were shot down by an Italian ace, sergeant-major Luigi "Gino" Baron. Among the aircrew killed was 45 Sqn. CO, Sqn. Ldr. John Dallamore. His successor was acting Sqn. Ldr. Patrick Troughton-Smith.

In June 1941 to August 1941 the squadron was based at RAF Aqir in Palestine where it was involved in operations against the Vichy French in Lebanon and during an attack on Beirut on 10th. July three aircraft were shot down in flames by Vichy French D-520 fighters. The crew of one were ordered to bail out but only the pilot, Sgt. Wilton-Jones, survived although badly burned and hospitalized in Tripoli, Lebanon. The mission was a success as a ceasefire was declared at one minute past midnight on 12th. July and the allies took over the hospital on 16th July.

From mid-1942 the unit was deployed to Burma and India, for service against the Japanese. Three aircraft from the Squadron participated in the first Allied bombing raid against Bangkok, Thailand.

After World War II, 45 Sqn. served in the Malayan Emergency, flying out of RAF Tengah, Singapore. There the squadron engaged in ground attacks against pro-independence guerrillas belonging to the Malayan National Liberation Army, the armed wing of the Malayan Communist Party. Dubbed 'Operation Firedog', these operations lasted for 12 years until the successful conclusion of the war. The unit also engaged in operations to quell unrest on the Sarawak coast in British North Borneo during this time period. While operating in Malaya the unit initially flew the Bristol Beaufighter. From 1955 the squadron was based at RAF Butterworth in Malaya flying the de Havilland Venom under the command of Sqn. Ldr. Geoffrey Cooper.

After re-equipping with the English Electric Canberra B.15 in 1962, the squadron became involved in the Brunei Revolution and the subsequent confrontation with Indonesia until its resolution in 1966. The squadron disbanded on 13th. January 1970 after the UK's withdrawal from east of Suez.

On 1st. August 1972, the squadron was reformed at RAF West Raynham, equipped with the Hawker Hunter FGA.9, as a ground-attack training unit. The squadron disbanded in July 1976 at RAF Wittering after this role was taken over by the Tactical Weapons Unit (TWU)

In January 1984, the squadron number, 45 (Reserve) Sqn. was assigned to the Tornado Weapons Conversion Unit (TWCU) at RAF Honington. As a 'Shadow Squadron' or war reserve, the squadron's war role was as a fully operational unit composed mainly of instructors, and assigned strike and other duties by Supreme Air Command Europe (SACEUR) in support of land forces on the Continent resisting a Soviet assault on Western Europe, by striking at targets assigned by SACEUR, beyond the forward edge of the battlefield, deep within enemy held areas, first with conventional weapons and later with tactical nuclear weapons if a conflict escalated to that level. The squadron's 26 Tornado aircraft were allocated 39 WE.177 nuclear bombs.

On 1st. April 1992, the squadron was disbanded and TWCU title dropped, with its aircraft and personnel becoming 15 (Reserve) Sqn. whilst maintaining the same training role

On 1st. July 1992, the 45(R) Sqn. identity was resurrected and adopted by the Multi-Engined Training Squadron (METS) at 6 FTS, RAF Finningley. In October 1995 45(R) Sqn. moved to RAF Cranwell, and in 2003, replaced its BAe Jetstream T.1 aircraft with the Beechcraft B200 King Air serviced by Serco. In 2018, the squadron converted to the Embraer Phenom T.1 jet. The squadron continues to operate from RAF Cranwell in the multi-engine pilot training and weapons systems operator training roles.

 

Squadron Battle Honours.

Western Front (1916–1917)*

Somme (1916)

Ypres (1917)

Italian Front and Adriatic (1917–1918)

Piave

Independent Force and Germany (1918)*

Kurdistan (1922–1924)

Iraq (1923–1925)

Egypt and Libya (1940–1942)*

East Africa (1940)*

Syria (1941)

Burma (1942)*

Arakan (1943–1944)*

Burma (1944–1945)*

 

* Honours marked with an asterisk are those emblazoned on the Squadron Standard.

 

The squadron badge is seen on the BAe Jetstream T.1, XX 492 on display at the Newark Air Museum.

{Heart & double lung transplant, 30 years}

 

Today is 30 years since Ben had his heart and double lung transplant. This brings up so many thoughts in my mind that seem to be an extreme mixture, from the perspective of a wife of a transplant recipient—something I can’t fully put into words. When we got married 18 years ago we never would have imagined what was to come. I am overwhelmed thinking about many things we’ve endured together. The decline in Ben’s health and about a decade ago the doctor’s predictions that Ben would likely only survive a maximum of 10 years with his failing lungs. Three extremely overwhelming trips from Iowa to Pennsylvania for lung transplant evaluation with the only doctors who would consider Ben for lung re-transplant due to his complex condition. Ben being on oxygen for the past 10+ years. Rushing Ben to the ER many times or calling 911. Watching Ben struggle to breathe, fearing he would die. Fearing even more for his death when he was put on a ventilator and breathing tube. Sitting next to Ben’s hospital bed in the ER when Ben’s heart was rapidly (200+ bpm) beating out of control, while many doctors and nurses filled the room trying to get his heartbeat under control and having him prepped for shock if his heart suddenly stopped, trying so hard to be ok and not being able to stop myself from crying as I was terrified Ben would die. Countless hospitalizations, appointments and procedures. Many things I can’t even recall because I was far too overwhelmed and scared, so it seems they’ve “disappeared” from my mind though the overwhelm remains. Feeling young and living a life more like an elderly, retired couple than people our own ages. Living life in a way that is a different perspective than many people have—not by choice but by necessity. Never knowing when I will lose Ben, the person who I know and who knows me most deeply, that I depend on each day for support and help. Fearing I will suddenly be left alone with four children and not knowing now I would survive that emotionally, physically or financially. Having the complexities of Ben’s health condition and my condition intermingled—in our own ways it seems we’re both fighting for our lives….and this just seems like way too much for one couple and one family to handle.

 

And there have been many moments filled with goodness. Seeing God care for Ben and his health, the two of us and our relationship, and provide many times when we saw no way humanly possible. There have been people who have been very generous, kind, caring and supportive. The many times when I feared Ben would die, God brought him through. There have been moments when we had no idea how we’d afford a necessity for our family and our needs were somehow met. The gift of having four beautiful children when it was expected we’d never have any children of our own—doctors didn’t think it was possible due to the limitations of having a heart and double lung transplant and kidney transplant and they were very surprised when we were blessed with children. God providing and Ben having access to doctors and medical treatment which has been necessary in keeping him alive. When having no idea how we’d cope with the complexities of Ben’s fragile health combined with my intense struggles, we managed to survive. It goes beyond words how grateful we are that others choose to share of themselves so Ben could have transplants and it’s amazing that Ben has lived 30 years after his heart and double lung transplant—especially with failing lungs for the past decade. Our circumstances certainly are not what we would have chosen for our lives and our family and we have gained a perspective that helps us to be thankful for life and our time together. During my many years of fighting for my life I have needed a lot of support and I wouldn’t have had Ben’s helpful presence with me at home or in the hospital as often as I have if his health had not required him to stop working. It is such an overwhelming thing to think about all of this—the blessings combined with the extreme difficulties.

 

____________________________

 

As a way to cope with circumstances beyond my control, survive and work to keep fighting for life I decided to try to take at least one photo (or more) each day. I call this “a photo (or more) a day.” Practicing this form of therapeutic photography helps me work to focus on the present moment, gives me something familiar and enjoyable to focus on as I use photography skills that have become like second-nature to me and being able to view the images I capture helps me recall what I was thinking, feeling and noticing at the moment when I created the photos. More of the photos from this series can be seen on my Instagram account

 

I may not always have the energy, time or capacity to share photos from this series—especially with the very challenging circumstances my family and I are experiencing—and will do my best to continue taking a photo (or more) a day even if I’m not able to share.

 

If you would like to support my work and my family, one way you can do so is by ordering my zines:

CLOUDS

in the moment | collection 1

in the moment | collection 2

Moving Forward

 

Many thanks for your support.

Haliaeetus leucocephalus

Due to financial difficulties Alfa Romeo stopped racing in 1933 (Alfa’s own version of the story is that the marque had already proved itself) and sold off its racing division to Enzo Ferrari, who established his own racing team, ‘Scuderia Ferrari’.

 

The legendary racing driver Louis Chiron took part in the 1933 Le Mans race for the Scuderia in this car, which has bodywork designed by Touring. The regulations for participating touring cars specified that they had to be fitted with a windshield, mudguards, a silencer, lighting, a horn and four seats. Needless to say, everything was kept to a minimum in order to limit the weight. The rear seats, for example, aren’t really usable. The car weighs just over 1,000 kilograms. Note the fin at the rear, an important step towards the streamlining of racing cars.

 

The 2.3-litre, eight-cylinder engine introduced by Alfa Romeo in 1931 was in fact made up of two four-cylinder blocks, one behind the other, with an ingenious gear mechanism that drove the camshafts as well as the compressor. The cylinder capacity was increased to 2.6 litres for this Le Mans version.

 

2,6 Liter

8 Cylinder

180 HP

 

Louwman Museum

Den Haag - The Hague

Nederland - Netherlands

March 2013

Sorry might be a bit before I can continue posting.

I had some computer issues and ended up upgrading to Windows 10 and now I have to figure out how to transfer all my old stuff so it works properly and learn new software including my post processing software.

Maybe it will rain for the next week and keep me house bound!

 

Difficulties can be overcome, but for this you need to make a fuss.

youtu.be/xu2TL0710qU Relax and ease your stress with this well arrange piece of guitar music. This music is great for studying, concentration, focus and memory. This guitar music is also embedded with ocean waves for optimum guitar experience. Study Music - Study music will calm a busy mind which allows focus, concentration on the task at hand. This means you can study without difficulty or distraction, enjoy your study time and pass exams easily with top grades. We include BiNaural Beats in study music which gives massive added bonus when compared with other music. Memory retention and other cognitive abilities including focus, concentration, attention span, test results, academic life etc are greatly enhanced. Study Music from Healing4Happiness has proven results with millions of people. Our Alpha BiNaural Beat (embedded in all study music) increased grades by 72.3% in 2015. When it comes to final exam time, make sure you are listening to our music and you will get the best grades ever! Study Music for Final Exam Study Time. #StudyMusic #MusicForStudying Relaxing Music - All the relaxing music at Healing4Happiness has soothing tones and calm melodies, it's the perfect tool to wash away a stressful day, experiencing total stress relief. Relaxing Music including sleep music, relaxation music, relax music, zen music, yoga music, meditation music are perfect for soothing, calm, stress relief, relaxation, peace & tranquility. Relaxing music is like healing music with peaceful sounds, nature sounds, birds, rain, water, ocean or waves. Sit back and listen to Relaxing Music for stress relief, anxiety, healing and yoga. Subscribe for more Relaxing Music #RealxingMusic #StressRelief Focus Music - Focus music is a major key factor in effective learning practices. When we are able to focus with our task at hand we can easily understand the things or the information we need learn. Focus music also increases our productivity. A focused student or employee will perform better with their task or work. Listening to focus music will surely increase your attention span and you will have better understanding. Focus music is very calming, relaxing and very much like chillout music that will relax you as you listen to the music. Focus music unlike other music, will not distract you. While listening to a focus music track, you will feel like you are subconsciously meditating while working, that is what our focus music can do. Focus music helps you focus on your work without even realizing it. With our focus music, you will notice that you've done a lot in a short period of time, leaving you with much more time for leisure or personal time for yourself. Focus music, including, focus music for concentration, focus music for studying, focus music for work, zen focus music, soothing focus music, focus music for memory, focus music for clear focus. Subscribe to our channel for more great #focusmusic #focus Ocean Waves Ocean Waves as we all know are one of the most relaxing sounds we could ever hear. Often times when we feel sad, anxious, overwhelmed, we often think about or go the beach or sea side to think and listen to the ocean waves. The sound of ocean waves are very consoling, easing and reassuring, we feel good and relaxed whenever we hear it. Embedded ocean waves in our study music is a perfect recipe to helps us relax while we study or just relax in general. Ocean waves including ocean waves for meditation, ocean waves for contemplation, ocean waves for relaxation, ocean waves for sleep, ocean waves for study, ocean waves for peace and calm. Subscribe for more beautiful #oceanwave music. Thanks for supporting our channel! We love creating music to help people in their lives, in stressful situations, in need of rest or focus and concentration. Thanks for watching our videos, you can also follow us on other social media sites below. Join Us On Facebook: ift.tt/2a3mWaE Join Us On Twitter: twitter.com/bmusicssr Join Us On Facebook: ift.tt/2auZdVR Join Us On Tumblr: ift.tt/2aVZv4S For more information about where to purchase or listen to our music such as Spotify, Google Play, Amazon etc. checkout the “About” section of our YouTube channel. Music By: www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRFf1qPMGHw "터벅 터벅 - Classical Guitar - Played,composition.-DONG HWAN_ NOH" by DONG HWAN Noh is licensed under a Creative Commons license Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0). ift.tt/qdXal7

Watch out for the spear.

In 1930 the Lydia Eva, YH 89, was the last vessel ever built by the Kings Lynn Slipway Co. Ltd. Having been towed directly to Great Yarmouth after her launch, she was fitted out with her engine, boiler and machinery at Crabtrees and undertook her first sea-going trial on 22nd. July 1930. The herring industry had reached its peak in 1913 when 1006 vessels were based at Great Yarmouth, and was in decline at the time the Lydia Eva joined the small fleet owned by Harry Eastick of Gorleston, who named her after his daughter. Equipped with wireless and electric light, and specifically designed to be more efficient than her contemporaries, the declining herring stocks nonetheless meant that the Lydia Eva had a relatively short working life. With decent catches becoming increasingly difficult, she landed her last catch in December 1938. Two months later Harry Eastick sold her and his other remaining vessel to Norford Sufflings, a local firm of fish merchants.

She was sold on to Mr. Geoffrey Banes of the Caernarvonshire Yacht Company and was altered and equipped for a contract with the Air Ministry. Her new career began as a mooring depot for the Air Ministry’s Bombing and Gunnery School at Abersoch, Wales. From there she moved to Ilfracombe Maryport in Cumberland, maintaining and servicing buoys around the West coast. In 1942 she was requisitioned by the Ministry of War Transport and became engaged in salvage work at Weymouth, and then at Whitehaven where she stayed until 1960. In 1966 she was transferred to the Marine Services Division of the Royal Navy at Pembroke Dock in South Wale, where as HMS Watchmoor she was fitted with a new boiler and a higher wheelhouse but after 3 years service she was laid up for sale in Milford Haven.

The Maritime Trust was founded in 1969 in order to preserve vessels that were representative of Britain's maritime heritage. Being the only remaining vessel of her type, the Lydia Eva was purchased by the trust in 1971, and following an overhaul at Holman & Sons in Penzance she returned to Great Yarmouth. Charles Eastick, nephew of Harry, was able to offer invaluable advice. The RAF and Admiralty fittings were removed and Lowestoft company Overy's were able to construct a new but original wheelhouse. By 1973 she was a drifter again, and spent the next five years welcoming visitors on board at her berth at South Quay at Great Yarmouth.

In 1978 she sailed from Great Yarmouth, seemingly to be gone forever, to become part of the Maritime Trust exhibition at St. Katherine's Dock next to Tower Bridge in London. Financial difficulties eventually saw the closure of this exhibition in 1986, and once again she became laid up, this time at the West India Dock.

In 1989 enthusiasts in Norfolk and Suffolk, with support from County and Local councils, formed the Lydia Eva Charitable Trust Ltd, with the aim of purchasing the vessel and returning her to her home port. The project generated tremendous interest, and on 30th. June 1990 the Lydia Eva was towed back into Great Yarmouth harbour by the Port Authority tug, Hector Read. When the Lydia Eva was dry docked in Lowestoft early in the year 2000 it was found that parts of the ship's hull just below the waterline had rusted away so badly that it was not safe to put her on display either in Great Yarmouth or Lowestoft.

A Heritage Lottery Fund grant of £839,000 was awarded to the vessel and work began on 1st. March 2007, when local shipyard Small & Co. hauled the boat out, beginning to strip the hull back to bare metal to enable a detailed survey. The HLF grant and money raised by the trust total nearly £1.2 million, but the trust needed to raise another £100,000 to pay for renewal of rigging as well as restoration of the wheelhouse and crew quarters. The remaining work was carried out by the International Boatbuilding Training College at Lowestoft.

Lydia Eva is listed as part of the National Historic Fleet, registration number 43.

 

Name: Lydia Eva

Type: Steam drifter

Status: Museum ship

Home port: Gt. Yarmouth

Fishing registration number: YH89

Flag: United Kingdom

Length: 95 ft. (29 m)

Beam: 20.6 ft. (6.3 m)

Depth: 9.8 ft. (3.0 m)

Gross tonnage: 138 tons

Net tonnage: 64 tons

Builder: King's Lynn Slipway Co. Ltd, King's Lynn, Norfolk

Built: 1930

Engine: 1930, Crabtree & Co. (R.H. Hutchinson), Triple Expansion, 10" + 17" + 28" x 20".

Boiler: 1961, Stockton Chemical Engineers & Riley Boilers Ltd., RT Scotch.

Owner: Lydia Eva Charitable Trust Ltd.

Operator: Lydia Eva and Mincarlo Charitable Trust Ltd.

 

Also named: HMS Watchmoor

  

+++ DISCLAIMER +++

Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based on historical facts. BEWARE!

  

Some background:

The Puolustusvoimat’s (Finnish Defense Force) “Ilves” is an indigenous battle tank design, tailored to fulfill the requirement for a lighter, more mobile modern tank than the Finnish Army’s standard MBT (the Leopard 2 of German origin) that can effectively operate in woodland and water-rich regions where the heavier MBTs might have difficulties traversing. Patria started the design for the new XA-2000 ‘Ilves’ (Lynx) tank when the Finnish Army started negotiations to procure Leopard 2A4 MBTs from Germany in the late 1990ies. 100 of these battle tanks were eventually ordered and delivered between 2002 and 2004, but it was clear that these large and heavy tanks – most suited for long-range battle in open field situations – would leave a tactical gap between them and the Finnish Army’s armed infantry fighting vehicles, which were lighter and more compact, so that they could operate more flexibly in the Finnish forests. However, these light vehicles did not offer the armament to fight enemy tanks at medium to long range, and the XA-2000 was to fill this gap.

 

From the outset, the XA-2000 was designed to be capable of being airlifted to improve its export chances, but it was not designed to be amphibious, due to the heavy turret which would raise the vehicle’s center of gravity and make any naval operations unsafe. The new third generation tank was expected to be much more mobile than typical main battle tanks, due to its light weight and high power/weight ratio. Power came from an electronically controlled 1,000 hp (746 kW) diesel engine, with hydro-mechanical fully automatic transmission. The tank is also capable of neutral steering and featured a hydro-pneumatic suspension.

 

The Ilves’ main armament was a fully stabilized Rheinmetall Rh-105-30 rifled gun, a modernized version of the famous Royal Ordnance L7 gun with reduced recoil for use in lighter vehicles. This proven weapon offered an effective firing range of 3 km and was compatible with all standard NATO 105 mm tank ammunition. The ammunition selections included APFSDS, HEAT and HE (High explosive) rounds. APFSDS and HEAT rounds were used against enemy armor while HE rounds were used against enemy infantry positions, light/non-armored vehicles, buildings, and field fortifications. The APFSDS projectiles were capable of penetrating 500 mm (20 in) of armored steel at 2,000 meters (1.2 mi), even though this was not considered sufficient to penetrate the front armor of modern main battle tanks such as the T-90. The sustained fire rate was supported by a bustle-mounted autoloader system, which reduced the crew to 3 and helped keeping the vehicle’s dimensions limited. The spent cases were ejected automatically via a hatch at the turret rear. The XA-1200 could hold a total of 38 various 105 mm shells, stored in the turret bustle for improved safety; the ammunition was retrieved from a tail autoloader with blowout panels.

Secondary armament included a 7.62 mm KVKK 62 coaxial machine gun of Finnish origin, and a remote-controlled weapon station mounted on the turret roof, operated by the commander, which was fitted with a 40 mm M203 automatic grenade launcher and a 12.7 mm RSKK 2005 (Browning M2) heavy machine gun.

 

The XA-2000 featured modern sensory and fire control systems, including laser rangefinder, advanced ballistic computer, meteorological sensors, gunner thermal imaging sight, millimeter-wave radar, and commander's panoramic sight. The fire control system supported automatic target tracking, hunter-killer capabilities, and commander takeover. Other equipment included air conditioning system, oxygen-production equipment for the crew, command and control equipment, battlefield management system, and navigation suite fitted with both inertial navigation system (INS) and satellite navigation system.

 

The XA-2000 featured two sets of armor packages providing different tactical mobility. Standard armor package featured classic steel armor protection with additional layers of advanced composite armor panels covering the tank turret, hull, and flanks, with additional lightweight explosive reactive armor blocks protecting the front hull. The enhanced package featured thicker explosive reactive armor (ERA) blocks, in addition to the composite armor panels underneath, covering the whole tank turret and hull. ERA mounted armor-skirt and slat armor could also be mounted on the side and rear side of the tank hull for additional protection. The enhanced armor set was designed for open area battle under heavy defensive conditions, but only intended as a tactical option.

 

As additional protective measure the XA-2000 was fitted with a 360° laser warning sensor system to detect incoming range-finding and anti-tank missiles, mounted at the turret’s corners, and the tank could automatically deploy smoke grenades in dischargers if the tank was being illuminated by enemy laser beams. Other protective features included chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) protection, and a fire suppression system.

 

The first XA-2000 prototype was ready for tests in 2009, but it took five more years until the design was finalized and cleared for serial production. In late 2015 the first serial production tanks were delivered to the Finnish Army. A total of 100 XA-2000 had been ordered, but this was soon cut down to just seventy vehicles when the Finnish Army bought more Leopard 2A4 tanks in 2009 and launched an upgrade program for them. In January 2014, Finland agreed with the Netherlands to purchase 100 used Leopard 2A6NL tanks for approximately €200 million. This prevented more XA-2000 orders, even though there were still plans to procure 80 more of these light tanks until 2020. With the more modern tanks from the Netherlands available, most of the Finnish Leopard 2A4s were moved into reserve in 2015, with some converted into Marksman AA vehicles, bridge-laying, and mine-clearing tanks with Israeli-made Urdan mine rollers.

 

Even though the XA-2000 had been offered since 2016 for export its very specific design and limited firepower did not attract any buyers. Austria had shown early interest, as a potential replacement for the indigenous Kürassier anti-tank SPG, but eventually decided to procure more Leopard 2 tanks. Other countries which had been identified as potential users were Sweden, Canada, and Brazil, but despite successful demonstrations, no export deals have been closed yet.

  

Specifications:

Crew: Three (commander, gunner and driver)

Weight: 33 tons standard

36 tons with external armor package

Length: 9.2 meters (30.18 ft) overall

7.5 meters (24.61 ft) hull only

Width: 3.3 meters (10.83 ft)

Height: 2.5 meters (8.20 ft)

Ground clearance: Up to 17 in (430 mm)

Suspension: Hydropneumatic

Fuel capacity: 570 l (150 US gal, 120 imp gal)

 

Armor:

Standard steel armor protection with additional advanced composite armor

and/or explosive reactive armor package

 

Performance:

Maximum road speed: 70 km/h (43 mph)

Operational range: 480 km (300 mi)

Power/weight: 30.30 hp/ton

27.8 hp/ton with enhanced armor package installed

 

Engine & transmission:

Electronically controlled Patria 8V132 diesel engine with fully-automatic transmission, 1000 hp (746 kW)

 

Armament:

1× 105mm Rheinmetall Rh-105-30 rifled gun (with 38 rounds in an autoloader)

1× 7.62 mm KVKK 62 light machine gun, co-axial with the main gun, 4.500 rounds

Remote-controlled weapon station on the turret roof with co-axial…

1× 40 mm M203 automatic grenade launcher with 80 rounds

1× 12.7 mm RSKK 2005 (Browning M2) heavy machine gun with 600 rounds

  

The kit and its assembly:

The fictional Finnish XA-2000 tank model was a submission for the 2023 “1 Week Group Build” at whatifmodlellers.com – I had tackled a more complex project, but since I knew that the weekends were already blocked and the week in between quite busy, I decided to embark upon a more modest project – also because my usual “building routine” includes a background story and scenic pictures or a model, which take some time beyond the building phase.

 

I had this project on my agenda for some time, and also had already stashed away the kit, a Meng 1:72 ZTQ-15 light battle tank, a relatively new kit from 2021. The plan was simple: build the ZTQ-15 OOB and just apply a fictional paint scheme, to save time and reduce the risk of unexpected complexities through conversions.

And that’s what happened: the ZTQ-15 went together surprisingly well, with little trouble. Fit is very good, just the attachment points to the sprues are a bit weird, because they reach into gluing surfaces, calling for thorough cleaning. The benefit, though, is that there are no marks on the model’s visible surfaces.

Esp. the turret consists of a zillion small bits and pieces, but if you follow the instructions everything finds its place. Surface detail is also very good, just the weapons in the remote-controlled barbette look somewhat heavy-handed, detail fetishists might want to replace them with something more delicate.

The tracks are also nice; these are IP parts, and a little thick, but each track only consists of four segments (one upper and lower section, plus two very short rounded segments for the drive sprocket and the idler wheel) which are very easy to mount onto the wheels.

 

The only real change I made to the kit are different side skirts – instead of the OOB parts I implanted parts from a Leopard I tank (Revell kit), which had a similar length and offered thanks to their wavy lower edge, a slightly different look. To change the overall impression away from a PLA/Russian tank I omitted the auxiliary drum barrels on the rear, as well as the log for self-freeing and the protected replacement barrels at the turret’s rear.

Another mod is the open commander’s hatch with a figure; the hatch was a separate piece, so that no cutting was necessary, the figure was puzzled together from torso, arms and head from an 1:72 aftermarket set.

  

Painting and markings:

The ZTQ-15 was a good canvas to apply a modern Finnish Army camouflage paint scheme, which consists of three colors in a splinter pattern. Reliable information about the tones was not available, though, so I consulted a multitude of pictures of a wide range of vehicles under different light and weather conditions, and I eventually settled for a dirty black, a yellowish light green and a rather bluish dark green. The basic colors I used were Revell 06 (Tar Black, RAL 7021), a mix of 2 parts Humbrol 80 (Grass Green) and 1 part 159 (Khaki Drab), and Humbrol 195 (Chrome Oxide Green, RAL 6020), and in combination they look very good – even though Finnish real-world tanks look lees colorful due to sun-bleached paint.

 

The pattern was adapted from real Finnish Army T-72 tanks, even though slightly modified to take into account the much bigger turret and the wider hull that covers the tracks. The rubber side skirts and the running surface on the wheels were painted with Revell 09 (Anthracite); the open hatch and the turret interior in Humbrol 41 (Ivory). The commander figure’s suit was painted in an overall olive drab (Revell 46, NATO olive), with a dirty black helmet, light grey gloves and green-grey belts for the weapon holster – with a picture of a real-world Finnish tank commander as benchmark.

 

The model received a light overall washing with a mix of black ink and umbra and sienna watercolors, the markings/decals were puzzled together. The small Finnish roundels came from a 1:144 Mark I Decals aftermarket sheet (actually for aircraft), the tactical codes on the turret flanks were puzzled together from single, relatively narrow white digits, IIRC from a Roden IS-3 kit’s sheet. This kind of markings is not normally carried on Finnish Army vehicles, but without them, I found the model to look a I bit bleak? The “registration plates” on front and back – normally the only tactical marking on Finnish Army vehicles – came from an IDF Merkava, just trimmed down on their right side and a with a small “P” added to the left to simulate a typical Finnish registration.

As a colorful peacetime detail I added warning stripes on the rear mudguards, composed from a base decal stripe in fluorescent orange with sloping clear-and-yellow stripes on top of that. Looks very good!

 

The model was sealed overall with matt acrylic varnish and some finishing touches were made, including antennae made from heated black sprue material, glass blocks in the commander und driver cupolas (made with gloss black paint) and various lights (with clear paint over a silver base). Finally, some more mud and dust residue around the running gear was simulated with umbra watercolor.

 

Well, this build was intended to be completed in a week, but the model itself was already finished in one and a half day! The additional scenic pics with editing took almost the same time, though. However, the simple travesty of a modern Chinese tank into a Finnish Army vehicle went well, the package looks IMHO very plausible. The three-tone splinter cammo even makes it look quite attractive – the idea and building plan worked out well. :D

View from Mt Difficulty Vineyard in Bannockburn where we are having lunch. April 27, 2016 Central Otago in the South Island of New Zealand.

 

The Cellar Door at Mt Difficulty Wines is known as much for its dramatic views of rugged rock and thyme landscapes as it is for its stylish wine and food.

 

The unique microclimate of the Bannockburn area is partially created by the presence of Mount Difficulty which overlooks the southern Cromwell basin, and is the namesake of Mt Difficulty Wines. Mount Difficulty is integral in providing low rainfall and humidity for the region. Bannockburn enjoys hot summers, a large diurnal temperature variation and long cool autumns; conditions which bring the best out of the Pinot Noir grapes. These conditions, along with soils which are ideal for viticulture, provide an excellent basis not only for Pinot Noir, but also for Pinot Gris, Riesling, and Chardonnay. The soils are a mix of clay and gravels, but all feature a high pH level; grapes produce their best wines on sweet soils.

 

For More Info: www.mtdifficulty.co.nz/aboutus/ourstory.html

The difficulty with sunset is that the light changes second by second and it is difficult to pick the one to post. For me, this one has that special light when the sun has disappeared and paints the clouds from behind the mountains.

Peter I commonly known as Peter the Great, was Tsar of all Russia from 1682, and the first Emperor of all Russia from 1721 until his death in 1725. He reigned jointly with his half-brother Ivan V until 1696. From this year, Peter was an absolute monarch who remained the ultimate authority. His methods were often harsh and autocratic.

 

Most of Peter's reign was consumed by long wars against the Ottoman and Swedish Empires. Despite initial difficulties, the wars were ultimately successful and led to expansion to the Sea of Azov and the Baltic Sea, thus laying the groundwork for the Imperial Russian Navy. His victory in the Great Northern War ended Sweden's era as a great power and its domination of the Baltic region while elevating Russia's standing to the extent it came to be acknowledged as an empire. Peter led a cultural revolution that replaced some of the traditionalist and medieval social and political systems with ones that were modern, scientific, Westernized, and based on radical Enlightenment.

 

In 1700, he introduced the Gregorian calendar but the Russian Orthodox Church was particularly resistant to this change; they wanted to maintain its distinct identity and avoid appearing influenced by Catholic practices.[citation needed] In 1703, he introduced the first Russian newspaper, Sankt-Peterburgskie Vedomosti, and ordered the civil script, a reform of Russian orthography largely designed by himself. He founded the city of Saint Petersburg on the shore of the Neva as a "window to the West" in May 1703. In 1712 Peter moved the capital from Moscow to Saint Petersburg, where it remained – with only a brief interruption – until 1918. He promoted higher education and industrialization in the Russian Empire.

 

Peter had a great interest in plants, animals and minerals, in malformed creatures or exceptions to the law of nature for his cabinet of curiosities. He encouraged research of deformities, all along trying to debunk the superstitious fear of monsters. The Russian Academy of Sciences and the Saint Petersburg State University were founded in 1724, a year before his death.

 

Peter is primarily credited with the modernization of the country, transforming it into a major European power. His administrative reforms, creating a Governing Senate in 1711, the Collegium in 1717 and the Table of Ranks in 1722 had a lasting impact on Russia, and many institutions of the Russian government trace their origins to his reign.

 

Early life

Peter was named after the apostle. He grew up at Izmaylovo Estate and was educated from an early age by several tutors commissioned by his father, Tsar Alexis of Russia, most notably Nikita Zotov, Patrick Gordon, and Paul Menesius. On 29 January 1676, Alexis died, leaving the sovereignty to Peter's elder half-brother, the weak and sickly Feodor III of Russia. Throughout this period, the government was largely run by Artamon Matveev, an enlightened friend of Alexis, the political head of the Naryshkin family and one of Peter's greatest childhood benefactors.

 

This position changed when Feodor died in 1682. As Feodor did not leave any children, a dispute arose between the Miloslavsky family (Maria Miloslavskaya was the first wife of Alexis I) and Naryshkin family (Natalya Naryshkina was his second) over who should inherit the throne. He jointly ruled with his elder half-brother, Ivan V, until 1696. Ivan, was next in line but was chronically ill and of infirm mind. Consequently, the Boyar Duma (a council of Russian nobles) chose the 10-year-old Peter to become Tsar, with his mother as regent.

 

This arrangement was brought before the people of Moscow, as ancient tradition demanded, and was ratified. Sophia, one of Alexis' daughters from his first marriage, led a rebellion of the Streltsy (Russia's elite military corps) in April–May 1682. In the subsequent conflict, some of Peter's relatives and friends were murdered, including Artamon Matveyev, and Peter witnessed some of these acts of political violence.

 

The Streltsy made it possible for Sophia, the Miloslavskys (the clan of Ivan) and their allies to insist that Peter and Ivan be proclaimed joint Tsars, with Ivan being acclaimed as the senior. Sophia then acted as regent during the minority of the sovereigns and exercised all power. For seven years, she ruled as an autocrat. A large hole was cut in the back of the dual-seated throne used by Ivan and Peter. Sophia would sit behind the throne and listen as Peter conversed with nobles, while feeding him information and giving him responses to questions and problems. He lived at Preobrazhenskoye. This throne can be seen in the Kremlin Armoury in Moscow.

 

At the age of 16, Peter discovered an English boat on the estate, had it restored and learned to sail. He received a sextant, but did not know how to use the instrument. Therefore, he began a search for a foreign expert in the German Quarter. Peter befriended two Dutch carpenters, Frans Timmerman and Karsten Brandt, and several other foreigners in Russian service. Peter studied arithmetic, geometry, and military sciences. He was not interested in a musical education but seems to have liked fireworks and drumming.

 

Peter was not particularly concerned that others ruled in his name. He engaged in such pastimes as shipbuilding and sailing, as well as mock battles with his toy army. Peter's mother sought to force him to adopt a more conventional approach and arranged his marriage to Eudoxia Lopukhina in 1689. The marriage was a failure, and ten years later Peter forced his wife to become a nun and thus freed himself from the union.

 

By the summer of 1689, Peter, planned to take power from his half-sister Sophia, whose position had been weakened by two unsuccessful Crimean campaigns against the Crimean Khanate in an attempt to stop devastating Crimean Tatar raids into Russia's southern lands. When she learned of his designs, Sophia conspired with some leaders of the Streltsy, who continually aroused disorder and dissent. Peter, warned by others from the Streltsy, escaped in the middle of the night to the impenetrable monastery of Troitse-Sergiyeva Lavra; there he slowly gathered adherents who perceived he would win the power struggle. Sophia was eventually overthrown, with Peter I and Ivan V continuing to act as co-tsars. Peter forced Sophia to enter a convent, where she gave up her name and her position as a member of the royal family.

 

Still, Peter could not acquire actual control over Russian affairs. Power was instead exercised by his mother, Natalya Naryshkina. It was only when Natalya died in 1694 that Peter, then aged 22, became an independent sovereign. Formally, Ivan V was a co-ruler with Peter, though being ineffective. Peter became the sole ruler when Ivan died in 1696 without male offspring, two years later.

 

Peter grew to be extremely tall, especially for the time period, reportedly standing 6 ft 8 in (2.03 m). Peter had noticeable facial tics, and he may have suffered from petit mal seizures, a form of epilepsy. Meanwhile, he was a frequent guest in German quarter, where he met Anna and Willem Mons.

 

Ideology of Peter's reign

As a young man, Peter I adopted the Protestant model of existence in a pragmatic world of competition and personal success, which largely shaped the philosophy of his reformism. He perceived the Russian people as rude, unintelligent, stubborn in their sluggishness, a child, a lazy student. He highly appreciated the state's role in the life of society, saw it as an ideal instrument for achieving high goals, saw it as a universal institution for transforming people, with the help of violence and fear, into educated, conscious, law-abiding and useful to the whole society subjects.

 

He introduced into the concept of the autocrat's power the notion of the monarch's duties. He considered it necessary to take care of his subjects, to protect them from enemies, to work for their benefit. Above all, he put the interests of Russia. He saw his mission in turning it into a power similar to Western countries, and subordinated his own life and the lives of his subjects to the realization of this idea. Gradually penetrated the idea that the task should be solved with the help of reforms, which will be carried out at the autocrat's will, who creates good and punishes evil. He considered the morality of a statesman separately from the morality of a private person and believed that the sovereign in the name of state interests can go to murder, violence, forgery and deceit.

 

He went through the naval service, starting from the lowest ranks: bombardier (1695), captain (1696), colonel (1706), schout-bij-nacht (1709), vice-admiral (1714), admiral (1721). By hard daily work (according to the figurative expression of Peter the Great himself, he was simultaneously "forced to hold a sword and a quill in one right hand") and courageous behavior he demonstrated to his subjects his personal positive example, showed how to act, fully devoting himself to the fulfillment of duty and service to the fatherland.

 

Reign

Peter implemented sweeping reforms aimed at modernizing Russia. Heavily influenced by his advisors from Western Europe, Peter reorganized the Russian army along modern lines and dreamed of making Russia a maritime power. He faced much opposition to these policies at home but brutally suppressed rebellions against his authority, including by the Streltsy, Bashkirs, Astrakhan, and the greatest civil uprising of his reign, the Bulavin Rebellion.

 

Peter implemented social modernization in an absolute manner by introducing French and western dress to his court and requiring courtiers, state officials, and the military to shave their beards and adopt modern clothing styles. One means of achieving this end was the introduction of taxes for long beards and robes in September 1698.

 

In his process to westernize Russia, he wanted members of his family to marry other European royalty. In the past, his ancestors had been snubbed at the idea, but now, it was proving fruitful. He negotiated with Frederick William, Duke of Courland to marry his niece, Anna Ivanovna. He used the wedding in order to launch his new capital, St Petersburg, where he had already ordered building projects of westernized palaces and buildings. Peter hired Italian and German architects to design it.

 

As part of his reforms, Peter started an industrialization effort that was slow but eventually successful. Russian manufacturing and main exports were based on the mining and lumber industries. For example, by the end of the century Russia came to export more iron than any other country in the world.

 

To improve his nation's position on the seas, Peter sought more maritime outlets. His only outlet at the time was the White Sea at Arkhangelsk. The Baltic Sea was at the time controlled by Sweden in the north, while the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea were controlled by the Ottoman Empire and Safavid Empire respectively in the south.

 

Peter attempted to acquire control of the Black Sea, which would require expelling the Tatars from the surrounding areas. As part of an agreement with Poland that ceded Kiev to Russia, Peter was forced to wage war against the Crimean Khan and against the Khan's overlord, the Ottoman Sultan. Peter's primary objective became the capture of the Ottoman fortress of Azov, near the Don River. In the summer of 1695 Peter organized the Azov campaigns to take the fortress, but his attempts ended in failure.

 

Peter returned to Moscow in November 1695 and began building a large navy in Voronezh. He launched about thirty ships against the Ottomans in 1696, capturing Azov in July of that year.

 

Grand Embassy

Peter knew that Russia could not face the Ottoman Empire alone. In 1697, he traveled "incognito" to Western Europe on an 18-month journey with a large Russian delegation–the so-called "Grand Embassy". He used a fake name, allowing him to escape social and diplomatic events, but since he was far taller than most others, he could not fool anyone. One goal was to seek the aid of European monarchs, but Peter's hopes were dashed. France was a traditional ally of the Ottoman Sultan, and Austria was eager to maintain peace in the east while conducting its own wars in the west. Peter, furthermore, had chosen an inopportune moment: the Europeans at the time were more concerned about the War of the Spanish Succession over who would succeed the childless King Charles II of Spain than about fighting the Ottoman Sultan.

 

In Königsberg, the Tsar was apprenticed for two months to an artillery engineer. In July he met Sophia of Hanover at Coppenbrügge castle. She described him: "The tsar is a tall, handsome man, with an attractive face. He has a lively mind is very witty. Only, someone so well endowed by nature could be a little better mannered." Peter rented a ship in Emmerich am Rhein and sailed to Zaandam, where he arrived on 18 August 1697. He studied saw-mills, manufacturing and shipbuilding but left after a week. Through the mediation of Nicolaas Witsen, an expert on Russia, the Tsar was given the opportunity to gain practical experience in shipyard, belonging to the Dutch East India Company, for a period of four months, under the supervision of Gerrit Claesz Pool. The diligent and capable Tsar assisted in the construction of an East Indiaman ship Peter and Paul specially laid down for him. During his stay the Tsar engaged many skilled workers such as builders of locks, fortresses, shipwrights, and seamen—including Cornelis Cruys, a vice-admiral who became, under Franz Lefort, the Tsar's advisor in maritime affairs. Peter later put his knowledge of shipbuilding to use in helping build Russia's navy.

 

Peter felt that the ship's carpenters in Holland worked too much by eye and lacked accurate construction drawings. On 11 January 1698 (Old Style) Peter arrived at Victoria Embankment with four chamberlains, three interpreters, two clock makers, a cook, a priest, six trumpeters, 70 soldiers from the Preobrazhensky regiment, four dwarfs and a monkey. Peter stayed at 21 Norfolk Street, Strand and met with King William III and Gilbert Burnet, attended a session of the Royal Society, received a doctorate from Oxford University, trained a telescope on Venus at the Greenwich Observatory, and saw a Fleet Review by Royal Navy at Deptford. He studied the English techniques of city-building he would later use to great effect at Saint Petersburg. At the end of April 1698 he left after learning to make watches, carpenting coffins and posing for Sir Godfrey Kneller.

 

The Embassy next went to Leipzig, Dresden, Prague and Vienna. Peter spoke with Augustus II the Strong and Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor.[18] Peter's visit was cut short, when he was forced to rush home by a rebellion of the Streltsy. The rebellion was easily crushed before Peter returned home; of the Tsar's troops, only one was killed. Peter nevertheless acted ruthlessly towards the mutineers. Over one thousand two hundred of the rebels were tortured and executed, and Peter ordered that their bodies be publicly exhibited as a warning to future conspirators. The Streltsy were disbanded, some of the rebels were deported to Siberia, and the individual they sought to put on the Throne — Peter's half-sister Sophia — was forced to become a nun.

 

Peter's visits to the West impressed upon him the notion that European customs were in several respects superior to Russian traditions. He commanded all of his courtiers and officials to wear European clothing and cut off their long beards, causing his Boyars, who were very fond of their beards, great upset. Boyars who sought to retain their beards were required to pay an annual beard tax of one hundred rubles. Peter also sought to end arranged marriages, which were the norm among the Russian nobility, because he thought such a practice was barbaric and led to domestic violence, since the partners usually resented each other.

 

In 1698, Peter I instituted a beard tax to modernize Russian society. In the same year Peter sent a delegation to Malta, under boyar Boris Sheremetev, to observe the training and abilities of the Knights of Malta and their fleet. Sheremetev investigated the possibility of future joint ventures with the Knights, including action against the Turks and the possibility of a future Russian naval base. On 12 September 1698, Peter officially founded the first Russian Navy base, Taganrog on the Sea of Azov.

 

In 1699, Peter changed the date of the celebration of the new year from 1 September to 1 January. Traditionally, the years were reckoned from the purported creation of the World, but after Peter's reforms, they were to be counted from the birth of Christ. Thus, in the year 7207 of the old Russian calendar, Peter proclaimed that the Julian Calendar was in effect and the year was 1700. On the death of Lefort in 1699, Menshikov succeeded him as Peter's prime favourite and confidant. In 1701, the Moscow School of Mathematics and Navigation was founded; for fifteen years, not only naval officers, but also surveyors, engineers, and gunners were educated there.

 

Great Northern War

First Winter Palace

Peter made a temporary peace with the Ottoman Empire that allowed him to keep the captured fort of Azov, and turned his attention to Russian maritime supremacy. He sought to acquire control of the Baltic Sea, which had been taken by the Swedish Empire a half-century earlier. Peter declared war on Sweden, which was at the time led by the young King Charles XII. Sweden was also opposed by Denmark–Norway, Saxony, and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Preobrazhensky regiment took part in all major battles of the Great Northern War.

 

Russia was ill-prepared to fight the Swedes, and their first attempt at seizing the Baltic coast ended in disaster at the Battle of Narva in 1700. In the conflict, the forces of Charles XII, rather than employ a slow methodical siege, attacked immediately using a blinding snowstorm to their advantage. After the battle, Charles XII decided to concentrate his forces against the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, which gave Peter time to reorganize the Russian army. He invited Nicolaas Bidloo to organize a military hospital. In 1701, Peter the Great signed a decree on the opening of Moscow School of Mathematics and Navigation.

 

While the Poles fought the Swedes, Peter founded the city of Saint Petersburg on 29 June 1703, in Ingermanland (a province of the Swedish Empire that he had captured). It was named after his patron saint Saint Peter. He forbade the building of stone edifices outside Saint Petersburg, which he intended to become Russia's capital, so that all stonemasons could participate in the construction of the new city. Peter moved the capital to St. Petersburg in 1703. While the city was being built along the Neva he lived in a modest three-room log cabin (with a study but without a fire-place) which had to make room for the first version of the Winter palace. The first buildings which appeared were the Peter and Paul Fortress, a shipyard at the Admiralty and Alexander Nevsky Lavra.

 

Following several defeats, Polish King Augustus II the Strong abdicated in 1706. Swedish king Charles XII turned his attention to Russia, invading it in 1708. After crossing into Russia, Charles defeated Peter at Golovchin in July. In the Battle of Lesnaya, Charles suffered his first loss after Peter crushed a group of Swedish reinforcements marching from Riga. Deprived of this aid, Charles was forced to abandon his proposed march on Moscow.

 

Charles XII refused to retreat to Poland or back to Sweden and instead invaded Ukraine. Peter withdrew his army southward, employing scorched earth, destroying along the way anything that could assist the Swedes. Deprived of local supplies, the Swedish army was forced to halt its advance in the winter of 1708–1709. In the summer of 1709, they resumed their efforts to capture Russian-ruled Ukraine, culminating in the Battle of Poltava on 27 June. The battle was a decisive defeat for the Swedish forces, ending Charles' campaign in Ukraine and forcing him south to seek refuge in the Ottoman Empire. Russia had defeated what was considered to be one of the world's best militaries, and the victory overturned the view that Russia was militarily incompetent. In Poland, Augustus II was restored as King.

 

Peter, overestimating the support he would receive from his Balkan allies, attacked the Ottoman Empire, initiating the Russo-Turkish War of 1710. Peter's campaign in the Ottoman Empire was disastrous, and in the ensuing Treaty of the Pruth, Peter was forced to return the Black Sea ports he had seized in 1697. In return, the Sultan expelled Charles XII.

 

The Ottomans called him Mad Peter (Turkish: deli Petro), for his willingness to sacrifice large numbers of his troops in wartime. Peter I loved all sorts of rarities and curiosities. In 1704 Abram Petrovich Gannibal, a child with Ethiopian origin, was presented to him; in 1716 Peter took him to Paris.

 

In 1711, Peter established by decree a new state body known as the Governing Senate. Normally, the Boyar duma would have exercised power during his absence. Peter, however, mistrusted the boyars; he instead abolished the Duma and created a Senate of ten members. The Senate was founded as the highest state institution to supervise all judicial, financial and administrative affairs. Originally established only for the time of the monarch's absence, the Senate became a permanent body after his return. A special high official, the Ober-Procurator, served as the link between the ruler and the senate and acted, in Peter own words, as "the sovereign's eye". Without his signature no Senate decision could go into effect; the Senate became one of the most important institutions of Imperial Russia.

 

1712, Peter I issued a decree establishing an Engineering School in Moscow, which was supposed to recruit up to 150 students, and two-thirds of them were to consist of nobles.[31] Therefore, on 28 February 1714, he issued a decree calling for compulsory education, which dictated that all Russian 10- to 15-year-old children of the nobility, government clerks, and lesser-ranked officials must learn basic mathematics and geometry, and should be tested on the subjects at the end of their studies.

 

Peter's northern armies took the Swedish province of Livonia (the northern half of modern Latvia, and the southern half of modern Estonia), driving the Swedes out of Finland. In 1714 the Russian fleet won the Battle of Gangut. Most of Finland was occupied by the Russians.

 

In 1716, the Tsar visited Riga, and Danzig in January, Stettin, and obtained the assistance of the Electorate of Hanover and the Kingdom of Prussia fighting a war against Sweden at Wismar. He was forced to leave Mecklenburg. In Altona he met with Danish diplomats. He went on to Bad Pyrmont in May/June, because of an illness he stayed at this spa. He arrived in Amsterdam in December, where he bought some interesting collections: those of Frederik Ruysch, Levinus Vincent and Albertus Seba and paintings by Maria Sibylla Merian for his Kunstkamera. He visited a silk manufacture and a paper-mill, and learned to create paper and to spin silk. He visited Herman Boerhaave and Carel de Moor in Leiden and ordered two mercury thermometers from Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit and instruments from Musschenbroek. In April 1717 he continued his travel from Flushing to Brussels in the Austrian Netherlands and Dunkirk, Calais, Paris, where he obtained many books and proposed a marriage between his daughter and King Louis XV. Saint-Simon described him as "tall, well-formed and slim…with a look both bewildered and fierce." Via Reims, and Spa Peter travelled on to Maastricht, at that time one of the most important fortresses in Europe, where he was received by Daniël van Dopff, the commander of the fortress. He went back to Amsterdam and visited the Hortus Botanicus and left the city early September.

 

The Tsar's navy was powerful enough that the Russians could penetrate Sweden. Still, Charles XII refused to yield, and not until his death in battle in 1718 did peace become feasible. After the battle near Åland, Sweden made peace with all powers but Russia by 1720. In 1721, the Treaty of Nystad ended the Great Northern War. Russia acquired Ingria, Estonia, Livonia, and a substantial portion of Karelia. In turn, Russia paid two million Riksdaler and surrendered most of Finland. The Tsar retained some Finnish lands close to Saint Petersburg, which he had made his capital in 1712. Between 1713 and 1728, and from 1732 to 1918, Saint Petersburg was the capital of imperial Russia.

 

Title

Following his victory in the Great Northern War, he adopted the title of emperor in 1721.

 

By the grace of God, the most excellent and great sovereign emperor Pyotr Alekseevich the ruler of all the Russias: of Moscow, of Kiev, of Vladimir, of Novgorod, Tsar of Kazan, Tsar of Astrakhan and Tsar of Siberia, sovereign of Pskov, great prince of Smolensk, of Tver, of Yugorsk, of Perm, of Vyatka, of Bulgaria and others, sovereign and great prince of the Novgorod Lower lands, of Chernigov, of Ryazan, of Rostov, of Yaroslavl, of Belozersk, of Udora, of Kondia and the sovereign of all the northern lands, and the sovereign of the Iverian lands, of the Kartlian and Georgian Kings, of the Kabardin lands, of the Circassian and Mountain princes and many other states and lands western and eastern here and there and the successor and sovereign and ruler.

 

Later years

In 1717, Alexander Bekovich-Cherkassky led the first Russian military expedition into Central Asia against the Khanate of Khiva. The expedition ended in complete disaster when the entire expeditionary force was slaughtered.

 

In 1718, Peter investigated why the formerly Swedish province of Livonia was so orderly. He discovered that the Swedes spent as much administering Livonia (300 times smaller than his empire) as he spent on the entire Russian bureaucracy. He was forced to dismantle the province's government.

 

To the end of 1717, the preparatory phase of administrative reform in Russia was completed. After 1718, Peter established colleges in place of the old central agencies of government, including foreign affairs, war, navy, expense, income, justice, and inspection. Later others were added, to regulate mining and industry. Each college consisted of a president, a vice-president, a number of councilors and assessors, and a procurator. Some foreigners were included in various colleges but not as president. Peter did not have enough loyal, talented or educated persons to put in full charge of the various departments. Peter preferred to rely on groups of individuals who would keep check on one another. Decisions depended on the majority vote.

 

Peter's last years were marked by further reform in Russia. On 22 October 1721, soon after peace was made with Sweden, he was officially proclaimed Emperor of All Russia. Some proposed that he take the title Emperor of the East, but he refused. Gavrila Golovkin, the State Chancellor, was the first to add "the Great, Father of His Country, Emperor of All the Russias" to Peter's traditional title Tsar following a speech by the archbishop of Pskov in 1721. Peter's imperial title was recognized by Augustus II of Poland, Frederick William I of Prussia, and Frederick I of Sweden, but not by the other European monarchs. In the minds of many, the word emperor connoted superiority or pre-eminence over kings. Several rulers feared that Peter would claim authority over them, just as the Holy Roman Emperor had claimed suzerainty over all Christian nations.

 

In 1722, Peter created a new order of precedence known as the Table of Ranks. Formerly, precedence had been determined by birth. To deprive the Boyars of their high positions, Peter directed that precedence should be determined by merit and service to the Emperor. The Table of Ranks continued to remain in effect until the Russian monarchy was overthrown in 1917.

 

The once powerful Persian Safavid Empire to the south was in deep decline. Taking advantage of the profitable situation, Peter launched the Russo-Persian War of 1722–1723, otherwise known as "The Persian Expedition of Peter the Great", which drastically increased Russian influence for the first time in the Caucasus and Caspian Sea region, and prevented the Ottoman Empire from making territorial gains in the region. After considerable success and the capture of many provinces and cities in the Caucasus and northern mainland Persia, the Safavids were forced to hand over territory to Russia, comprising Derbent, Shirvan, Gilan, Mazandaran, Baku, and Astrabad. Within twelve years all the territories were ceded back to Persia, now led by the charismatic military genius Nader Shah, as part of the Treaty of Resht, the Treaty of Ganja, and as the result of a Russo-Persian alliance against the Ottoman Empire, which was the common enemy of both.

 

Peter introduced new taxes to fund improvements in Saint Petersburg. He abolished the land tax and household tax and replaced them with a poll tax. The taxes on land and on households were payable only by individuals who owned property or maintained families. The new head taxes were payable by serfs and paupers. In 1725 the construction of Peterhof, a palace near Saint Petersburg, was completed. Peterhof (Dutch for "Peter's Court") was a grand residence, becoming known as the "Russian Versailles".

 

In the winter of 1723, Peter, whose overall health was never robust, began having problems with his urinary tract and bladder. In the summer of 1724, a team of doctors performed surgery releasing upwards of four pounds of blocked urine. Peter remained bedridden until late autumn. In the first week of October, restless and certain he was cured, Peter began a lengthy inspection tour of various projects. According to legend, in November, at Lakhta along the Gulf of Finland to inspect some ironworks, Peter saw a group of soldiers drowning near shore and, wading out into near-waist deep water, came to their rescue.

 

This icy water rescue is said to have exacerbated Peter's bladder problems and caused his death. The story, however, has been viewed with skepticism by some historians, pointing out that the German chronicler Jacob von Staehlin is the only source for the story, and it seems unlikely that no one else would have documented such an act of heroism. This, plus the interval of time between these actions and Peter's death seems to preclude any direct link.

 

In early January 1725, Peter was struck once again with uremia. Legend has it that before lapsing into unconsciousness Peter asked for a paper and pen and scrawled an unfinished note that read: "Leave all to ..." and then, exhausted by the effort, asked for his daughter Anna to be summoned.

 

Peter died between four and five in the morning 8 February 1725. An autopsy revealed his bladder to be infected with gangrene. He was fifty-two years, seven months old when he died, having reigned forty-two years. He is interred in Saints Peter and Paul Cathedral, Saint Petersburg, Russia.

 

After the death of Peter I, there were immediately students who came to the Military College with a request to "leave science" under the pretext of "unconsciousness and incomprehensibility."

 

Religion

Peter did not believe in miracles and founded The All-Joking, All-Drunken Synod of Fools and Jesters, an organization that mocked the Orthodox and Catholic Church when he was eighteen. In January 1695, Peter refused to partake in a traditional Russian Orthodox ceremony of the Epiphany Ceremony, and would often schedule events for The All-Joking, All-Drunken Synod of Fools and Jesters to directly conflict with the Church. He often used the nickname Pakhom Mikhailov (Russian: Пахом Михайлов) among the ministers of religion who made up his relatively close circle of long-term drinking companions. He drank less than the others, deliberately getting the others drunk in order to listen to their drunken conversations.

 

Peter was brought up in the Russian Orthodox faith, but he had low regard for the Church hierarchy, which he kept under tight governmental control. The traditional leader of the Church was the Patriarch of Moscow. In 1700, when the office fell vacant, Peter refused to name a replacement, allowing the patriarch's coadjutor (or deputy) to discharge the duties of the office. Peter could not tolerate the patriarch exercising power superior to the tsar, as indeed had happened in the case of Philaret (1619–1633) and Nikon (1652–66). In 1716 he invited Theophan Prokopovich to come to the capital. In 1718 he ordered to translate the "Introduction to European History" (a work by Samuel Pufendorf); the Ecclesiastical Regulations of 1721 are based on it. The Church reform of Peter the Great therefore abolished the patriarchate, replacing it with a Holy Synod that was under the control of a Procurator, and the tsar appointed all bishops.

 

In 1721, Peter followed the advice of Prokopovich in designing the Holy Synod as a council of ten clergymen. For leadership in the Church, Peter turned increasingly to Ukrainians, who were more open to reform, but were not well loved by the Russian clergy. Peter implemented a law that stipulated that no Russian man could join a monastery before the age of fifty. He felt that too many able Russian men were being wasted on clerical work when they could be joining his new and improved army.

 

A clerical career was not a route chosen by upper-class society. Most parish priests were sons of priests and were very poorly educated and paid. The monks in the monasteries had a slightly higher status; they were not allowed to marry. Politically, the Church was impotent.

 

Marriages and family

Peter the Great had two wives, with whom he had fifteen children, three of whom survived to adulthood. Peter's mother selected his first wife, Eudoxia Lopukhina, with the advice of other nobles in 1689. This was consistent with previous Romanov tradition by choosing a daughter of a minor noble. This was done to prevent fighting between the stronger noble houses and to bring fresh blood into the family. He also had a mistress from Westphalia, Anna Mons.

 

Upon his return from his European tour in 1698, Peter sought to end his unhappy marriage. He divorced the Tsaritsa and forced her to join a convent. She had borne him three children, although only one, Alexei Petrovich, Tsarevich of Russia, had survived past his childhood.

 

Menshikov introduced him to Marta Helena Skowrońska, a Polish-Lithuanian peasant, and took her as a mistress some time between 1702 and 1704. Marta converted to the Russian Orthodox Church and was given the name Catherine. Though no record exists, Catherine and Peter married secretly between 23 Oct and 1 December 1707 in St. Petersburg. Peter valued Catherine and married officially, at Saint Isaac's Cathedral in Saint Petersburg on 19 February 1712.

 

His eldest child and heir, Alexei, was suspected of being involved in a plot to overthrow the Emperor. Alexei was tried and confessed under torture during questioning conducted by a secular court (count Tolstoy). He was convicted and sentenced to be executed. The sentence could only be carried out with Peter's signed authorization, and Alexei died in prison, as Peter hesitated before making the decision. Alexei's death most likely resulted from injuries suffered during his torture. Alexei's mother Eudoxia was punished. She was dragged from her home, tried on false charges of adultery, publicly flogged, and confined in monasteries while being forbidden to be talked to.

 

In 1724, Peter had his second wife, Catherine, crowned as Empress, although he remained Russia's actual ruler.

 

Issue

By his two wives, he had fifteen children: three by Eudoxia and twelve by Catherine. These included four sons named Pavel and three sons named Peter, all of whom died in infancy. Only three of his children survived to adulthood. He also had three grandchildren: Tsar Peter II and Grand Duchess Natalia by Alexei and Tsar Peter III by Anna.

 

Mistresses and illegitimate children

Princess Maria Dmitrievna Cantemirovna of Moldavia (1700–1754), daughter of Dimitrie Cantemir

Unnamed son (1722 - 1723?) – different sources say that the baby was stillborn or died before he was one year old.

Lady Mary Hamilton, Catherine I's lady in waiting of Scottish descent.

Miscarriage (1715)

Unnamed child (1717 - 1718?)

 

Legacy

Peter's legacy has always been a major concern of Russian intellectuals. Riasanovsky points to a "paradoxical dichotomy" in the black and white images such as God/Antichrist, educator/ignoramus, architect of Russia's greatness/destroyer of national culture, father of his country/scourge of the common man. Voltaire's 1759 biography gave 18th-century Russians a man of the Enlightenment, while Alexander Pushkin's "The Bronze Horseman" poem of 1833 gave a powerful romantic image of a creator-god. Slavophiles in mid-19th century deplored Peter's westernization of Russia.

 

Western writers and political analysts recounted "The Testimony" or secret will of Peter the Great. It supposedly revealed his grand evil plot for Russia to control the world via conquest of Constantinople, Afghanistan and India. It was a forgery made in Paris at Napoleon's command when he started his invasion of Russia in 1812. Nevertheless, it is still quoted in foreign policy circles.

 

The Communists executed the last Romanovs, and their historians such as Mikhail Pokrovsky presented strongly negative views of the entire dynasty. Stalin however admired how Peter strengthened the state, and wartime, diplomacy, industry, higher education, and government administration. Stalin wrote in 1928, "when Peter the Great, who had to deal with more developed countries in the West, feverishly built works in factories for supplying the army and strengthening the country's defenses, this was an original attempt to leap out of the framework of backwardness." As a result, Soviet historiography emphasizes both the positive achievement and the negative factor of oppressing the common people.

 

After the fall of Communism in 1991, scholars and the general public in Russia and the West gave fresh attention to Peter and his role in Russian history. His reign is now seen as the decisive formative event in the Russian imperial past. Many new ideas have merged, such as whether he strengthened the autocratic state or whether the tsarist regime was not statist enough given its small bureaucracy. Modernization models have become contested ground.

 

He initiated a wide range of economic, social, political, administrative, educational and military reforms which ended the dominance of traditionalism and religion in Russia and initiated its westernization. His efforts included secularization of education, organization of administration for effective governance, enhanced use of technology, establishing an industrial economy, modernization of the army and establishment of a strong navy.

 

Historian Y. Vodarsky said in 1993 that Peter, "did not lead the country on the path of accelerated economic, political and social development, did not force it to 'achieve a leap' through several stages.... On the contrary, these actions to the greatest degree put a brake on Russia's progress and created conditions for holding it back for one and a half centuries!" The autocratic powers that Stalin admired appeared as a liability to Evgeny Anisimov, who complained that Peter was, "the creator of the administrative command system and the true ancestor of Stalin."

 

According to Encyclopaedia Britannica, "He did not completely bridge the gulf between Russia and the Western countries, but he achieved considerable progress in development of the national economy and trade, education, science and culture, and foreign policy. Russia became a great power, without whose concurrence no important European problem could thenceforth be settled. His internal reforms achieved progress to an extent that no earlier innovator could have envisaged."

 

While the cultural turn in historiography has downplayed diplomatic, economic and constitutional issues, new cultural roles have been found for Peter, for example in architecture and dress. James Cracraft argues:

 

The Petrine revolution in Russia—subsuming in this phrase the many military, naval, governmental, educational, architectural, linguistic, and other internal reforms enacted by Peter's regime to promote Russia's rise as a major European power—was essentially a cultural revolution, one that profoundly impacted both the basic constitution of the Russian Empire and, perforce, its subsequent development.

In popular culture

 

Peter has been featured in many histories, novels, plays, films, monuments and paintings. They include the poems The Bronze Horseman, Poltava and the unfinished novel The Moor of Peter the Great, all by Alexander Pushkin. The former dealt with The Bronze Horseman, an equestrian statue raised in Peter's honour. Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy wrote a biographical historical novel about him, named Peter I, in the 1930s.

 

The 1922 German silent film Peter the Great directed by Dimitri Buchowetzki and starring Emil Jannings as Peter

In 1929 A.N. Tolstoy's play was true to the party line, depicting Peter as a tyrant who "suppressed everyone and everything as if he had been possessed by demons, sowed fear, and put both his son and his country on the rack."

The 1937–1938 Soviet film Peter the Great

The 1976 film How Czar Peter the Great Married Off His Moor, starring Aleksey Petrenko as Peter, and Vladimir Vysotsky as Abram Petrovich Gannibal, shows Peter's attempt to build the Baltic Fleet.

Peter was played by Jan Niklas and Maximilian Schell in the 1986 NBC miniseries Peter the Great.

The 2007 film The Sovereign's Servant depicts the unsavoury brutal side of Peter during the campaign.

A character based on Peter plays a major role in The Age of Unreason, a series of four alternate history novels written by American science fiction and fantasy author Gregory Keyes.

Peter is one of many supporting characters in Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle – mainly featuring in the third novel, The System of the World.

Peter was portrayed on BBC Radio 4 by Isaac Rouse as a boy, Will Howard as a young adult and Elliot Cowan as an adult in the radio plays Peter the Great: The Gamblers and Peter the Great: The Queen of Spades, written by Mike Walker and which were the last two plays in the first series of Tsar. The plays were broadcast on 25 September and 2 October 2016.

A verse in the "Engineers' Drinking Song" references Peter the Great:

There was a man named Peter the Great who was a Russian Tzar;

When remodeling his the castle put the throne behind the bar;

He lined the walls with vodka, rum, and 40 kinds of beers;

And advanced the Russian culture by 120 years!

 

Peter was played by Jason Isaacs in the 2020 'antihistory' Hulu series The Great.

Peter is featured as the leader of the Russian civilization in the computer game Sid Meier's Civilization VI.

Peter was played by Ivan Kolesnikov in the 2022 Russian historical documentary film Peter I: The Last Tsar and the First Emperor.

Giros, para comenzar el año.

  

Part of Twist upcoming series.

  

*

 

Also part of the App me series | iphone/o/graphies

Everything gets old; people last longer when they have lived all their lives with difficulties. Don't complain, just live :)

Chassis n° V8COL/15191

 

Les Grandes Marques du Monde au Grand Palais

Bonhams

Parijs - Paris

Frankrijk - France

February 2019

 

Estimated : € 225.000 - 265.000

 

Aston Martin had always intended the DBS to house its new V8 engine, but production difficulties meant that the car first appeared with the DB6's 4.0-liter six. Bigger and more luxuriously appointed than the DB6, the heavyweight DBS disappointed some by virtue of its slightly reduced performance, but there were no complaints when the V8 finally arrived in 1969. With an estimated 315 bhp available from its 5.340 cc four-cam engine, the DBS V8 could reach 100 mph in under 14 seconds, running on to a top speed of 160 mph, a staggering performance in those days and one which fully justified the claim that it was the fastest production car in the world. After Aston Martin's acquisition by Company Developments in 1972, production resumed with the Series 2, now known as the Aston Martin V8 and distinguishable by a restyled front end recalling the looks of earlier Astons. The most successful Aston Martin ever, the V8 survived the changes of ownership and financial upheavals of the 1970s, enjoying a record-breaking production run lasting from 1969 to 1988, with 2.919 cars sold.

 

Described by former Aston Martin Chairman Victor Gauntlett as 'a stylish thoroughbred, beautifully built, luxurious, fast and immensely safe', the V8 was built in several variants, one of the more exclusive being the Volante convertible. Introduced in response to customer demand for such a car, the Volante first appeared in June 1978. Arguably the ultimate in soft-top luxury, the newcomer boasted a lined, power-operated top which, when erected, endowed the walnut embellished interior with all the solidity and refinement associated with the saloon version. The 5,340cc DOHC V8 Engine with 4 Dual-Throat Weber Carburetors produced 300bhp at 6,000rpm. Although its open-car aerodynamics meant that top speed suffered with the top down, the Volante's 240km/h maximum nevertheless ranked it among the world's fastest convertibles. V8 Volante and Vantage Volante chassis numbers ran from '15001' to '15849', a total of only 849 cars.

 

According to copies of Aston Martin's factory build records, this V8 Volante was shipped from the UK on 23rd May 1980 to Aston Martin Sales Inc of New Rochelle, New York. Left-hand drive and equipped with the five-speed manual transmission and a Vantage front air dam, it was finished in Jubilee Silver with black leather interior, black carpeting, and a black Everflex convertible top, as it is today.

 

Sold in July 1981 to its first owner, the Aston was transported to California where it would remain until it was sold to the second owner six years later with only 14,000 miles recorded. For the following three decades, this superb V8 Volante was driven sparingly and is today presented with only 43.106 miles showing on the odometer. The immediately preceding owner purchased the car from Doc Severinsen, former bandleader on 'The Tonight Show', and before Mr Severinsen's ownership it resided in Palm Springs.

 

The current vendor, specifically looking for this rare (Volante, early series with carburation, left-hand drive, ZF 5-speed manual gearbox) version purchased the Aston in the USA in August 2016, since when it has been re-commissioned and converted to EU specification with correct bumpers, etc. In addition, the engine has been checked over, a new convertible hood installed, and the interior detailed. Close to € 30.000 has been spent and the car now looks wonderful with a nicely patinated interior.

 

Offered here with its owner's manual, parts book, workshop manual, copy of factory built sheet,

tools, invoices and car cover, this V8 Volante must be one of the best preserved examples currently available. As a well-cared for California car, it has a wonderful patina and originality that is difficult to replicate. The car's maintenance and service records are exceptionally comprehensive, running to several hundred invoices.

 

Left-hand drive and equipped with the desirable and rare ZF five-speed transmission from new, this beautiful V8 Volante is definitely 'the one to have'.

Having great difficulty this morning as our neighbour is working on the hedge between us and at this time of year with little foliage left in places he can not only see me outside but he can see in a couple of our windows when he is up the stepladders pruning stuff

"His mind was always steady and calm, except when he was stirred by a feeling of compassion and mercy; and, since a happy heart makes for a cheerful face, the tranquil composure of the inner man was revealed outwardly by the kindliness and cheerfulness of his expression. He never allowed himself to become angry.... And though, as has been said, his face was always radiant with a cheerfulness which revealed the good conscience he bore within him, ‘the light of his face never fell to the ground.’ By his cheerfulness he easily won the love of everybody. Without difficulty he found his way into people’s hearts as soon as they saw him".

 

– from the Libellus 'On the Beginnings of the Order of Preachers' by Bl. Jordan of Saxony OP.

 

Statue of St Dominic in the priory of Santa Sabina in Rome.

I now know the difficulties of photographing a Black dolly.

You can't really see her features... (her lips, mainly, which is why I want to gloss them)

Although, I like that, for some reason, the face paint job didn't turn as shiny as I expected. I don't know why (what did I do wrong now!!! LOL!).

I like shiny. But in dark skin tones, shine can make photography even more difficult, so I'm grateful I messed up the paint to be.. what? semi-shiny? (i was going to say semi-matte.. but I felt semi-shiny fits better here).

 

Please read Pepita's description in her flickr set, for info about her skin and hair.

Quick quiz... name this cloud type (level of difficulty: not a stellar example) #clouds #weather

 

2 Comments on Instagram:

 

brittanyb254: Cuommolous(sp?) that's the only cloud type I remember

 

nashworld: Well... there's a hint of mammatus there. See it? Mammatocumulus.

  

Goodmorning :)

May you all have wonderful days!....remember to not let these difficulties put you down - whatever they might be.

 

This is a picture from yesterday...have been making paper boats again....

...and just made a new garlad in a slightly new concept from the previous one

...this time they are seeing the shelves of the shop ( here comes a "yay"!)

...I' ve been making pictures of them throughout the weekend

...still I think the nicest ones were made just....this morning, when gorgeous light shined!

...I'll take some time during the day to process them and then decide which ones I like the most to display at the shop.

 

It's a heavenly blessed day here, with crisp fresh air and so unusual for this time of the year strong sunshine and clear blue skies. As already said, I'm wishing you all to find ways in spending this day in a positive manner....but before you do, let's have a look at this corner of our home and see what do we thank Ikea for:

 

~ the floor lamp

~ the mini shelf adjusted in the corner

~ the ceramic vase from the PS collection designed by.....Hella Jongerius (however I adore her name, I must always double check before writing it)

~ the ceramic pot that holds the Ivy plant

~ the Ivy plant itself

~ the blanket acting as a temporary curtain here

~ the narrow and long mirror

~ the pure wool, off white carpet

~ the black & white patterned pillow

~ the simple, trasparent vase the roses are held

 

....well that's it....and it's just a tiny corner ;-)

 

P.S...those of you who are friends here might have noticed a later apperance of mine than I used to. This is due to the fact that I've returned to practising almost daily yoga & meditation, which brings a different pace in my day and an overall exposure to the Internet isn't wished.

There's a lot of information to be sorted out and I try to spend my day doing the things that are important and serve my life choices.

This doesn't mean that I do not miss spending generous amounts of time on your streams! I do. I just have to do it in a more monitored way.

As at the same time, a very important to me person, pointed out that I might be preferring my online friends than his company and this is under no circumstances true and neither is it right, that I alloewed it to reach to this point.

 

So, please do keep in my mind that I'll go on happily visiting you as often as I can, with lots of care and attention!

Finally at the same time, I have been working on a few projects simmultaneously and honestly flickr is a great addiction! Unlike many women, I do not like to do many things at the same time. It's my choice to concentrate on whichever job I perform, even if the only boss I have above my head is....myself!

I find this to be alsmost impossible if I try to meticulously catch up with all the comments on my stream and pay extended visits to all the people whose work I love.

So, I'll be popping in throughout the day hoping to be always catching up with as much of your wonderful work as possible!

 

Always warmest of wishes for all things best,

Ivy xx

Difficulty looking at the Urban sunrise this morning such a beauty of the sunburst through the trees.

 

Whitby Park Ellesmere Port Cheshire. 188/365

Here's Elvira in her terrarium, a bit underweight from not eating. She received a diet of small brown crickets through the winter, but seemed to have difficulty snagging one as often as she should. Her body takes on a slightly wrinkled appearance when she's really hungry. Now that warmer weather has returned she gets a variety of readily available food... large carpenter ants, earwigs, and centipedes. Depth of field in this pic is VERY shallow so the zone of sharpest focus was pushed back a bit to render her "wrinkles" as sharp as possible. Taken with a Lester Dine 105mm macro, @ f/22, focused at infinity, fitted with an Iscorama anamorphic lens (1968), and the front cell (objective) from a junk Soligor 75-260mm zoom lens reverse mounted on the Isco. Pop-up flash lighting bounced off foil covered cardboard reflectors on a home-made macro bracket. Lens to subject distance... 10 cm. Working with her small terrarium is a bit of a problem. The short working distance means the lens must extend down into the enclosure without touching her web and causing her to bolt for her refuge under some leaves. One reflector on an arm of the macro bracket is positioned outside the terrarium, the other is carefully positioned inside it... just clearing the walls and her web. If either reflector even slightly contacts the terrarium, she feels the vibration and flees.

 

DSC-7239

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY to everyone who celebrates this special day today!

 

What a mess Flickr was last night! I had difficulty adding titles to my uploaded images, comments didn't save and, after I had added a description to each of the 20 photos, the descriptions all disappeared. When I opened Flickr this morning, there was still no sign of them. Then, suddenly, they re-appeared.

 

My photos taken at the National Butterfly Centre, Mission, South Texas, have now come to an end, so you can sigh a huge sigh of relief : ) After that, I have just a few photos taken at another place that we called in at later in the afternoon. Unfortunately, we only had an hour there before closing time, but how glad we were that we found this place. The highlight there was watching 25 Yellow-crowned Night-Herons coming in to roost for the night in the trees, right where we were standing! What a great sight this was, and we were lucky enough to have a good, close view of these gorgeous birds. We also saw some Purple Martins and their circular, hanging nest "gourds".

 

On Day 6 of our birding holiday in South Texas, 24 March 2019, we left our hotel in Kingsville, South Texas, and started our drive to Mission, where we would be staying at La Quinta Inn & Suites for three nights. On the first stretch of our drive, we were lucky enough to see several bird species, including a Golden-fronted Woodpecker, Hooded Oriole, Red-tailed Hawk, Crested Caracara, Harris's Hawk, Pyrrhuloxia male (looks similar to a Cardinal) and a spectacular Scissor-tailed Flycatcher. I'm not sure if this stretch is called Hawk Alley.

 

We had a long drive further south towards Mission, with only a couple of drive-by photos taken en route (of a strangely shaped building that turned out to be a deserted seed storage building). Eventually, we reached our next planned stop, the National Butterfly Centre. This was a great place, my favourite part of it being the bird feeding station, where we saw all sorts of species and reasonably close. Despite the name of the place, we only saw a few butterflies while we were there. May have been the weather or, more likely, the fact that I was having so much fun at the bird feeding station. We also got to see Spike, a giant African Spurred Tortoise. All the nature/wildlife parks that we visited in South Texas had beautiful visitor centres and usually bird feeding stations. And there are so many of these parks - so impressive!

 

nationalbutterflycenter.org/nbc-multi-media/in-the-news/1...

 

"Ten years ago, the North American Butterfly Association broke ground for what has now become the largest native plant botanical garden in the United States. This 100-acre preserve is home to Spike (who thinks he is a butterfly) and the greatest volume and variety of wild, free-flying butterflies in the nation. In fact, USA Today calls the National Butterfly Center, in Mission, Texas, 'the butterfly capitol of the USA'." From the Butterfly Centre's website.

 

The Centre is facing huge challenges, as a result of the "Border Wall". The following information is from the Centre's website.

 

www.nationalbutterflycenter.org/about-nbc/maps-directions...

 

"No permission was requested to enter the property or begin cutting down trees. The center was not notified of any roadwork, nor given the opportunity to review, negotiate or deny the workplan. Same goes for the core sampling of soils on the property, and the surveying and staking of a “clear zone” that will bulldoze 200,000 square feet of habitat for protected species like the Texas Tortoise and Texas Indigo, not to mention about 400 species of birds. The federal government had decided it will do as it pleases with our property, swiftly and secretly, in spite of our property rights and right to due process under the law."

 

"What the Border Wall will do here:

1) Eradicate an enormous amount of native habitat, including host plants for butterflies, breeding and feeding areas for wildlife, and lands set aside for conservation of endangered and threatened species-- including avian species that migrate N/S through this area or over-winter, here, in the tip of the Central US Flyway.

 

2) Create devastating flooding to all property up to 2 miles behind the wall, on the banks of the mighty Rio Grande River, here.

 

3) Reduce viable range land for wildlife foraging and mating. This will result in greater competition for resources and a smaller gene pool for healthy species reproduction. Genetic "bottlenecks" can exacerbate blight and disease.

 

IN ADDITION:

 

4) Not all birds can fly over the wall, nor will all butterfly species. For example, the Ferruginous Pygmy Owl, found on the southern border from Texas to Arizona, only flies about 6 ft in the air. It cannot overcome a 30 ft vertical wall of concrete and steel.

 

5) Nocturnal and crepuscular wildlife, which rely on sunset and sunrise cues to regulate vital activity, will be negatively affected by night time flood lighting of the "control zone" the DHS CBP will establish along the wall and new secondary drag roads. The expansion of these areas to vehicular traffic will increase wildlife roadkill.

 

6) Animals trapped north of the wall will face similar competition for resources, cut off from native habitat in the conservation corridor and from water in the Rio Grande River and adjacent resacas. HUMANS, here, will also be cut off from our only source of fresh water, in this irrigated desert.

Furniture for a young child's bedroom. Many parents face difficulties in dealing with young people in their teens. Teenagers tend to be aloof and impressed secret. They want their privacy to be respected by parents.

 

During this period. bedroom plays an important role for them. Teens consider their bedroom as a safe retreat where they can find their space. If you plan to design a bedroom area youngsters.

 

You need to design according to the style and preferences of your teen. One of the most important elements in the teen's bedroom is a bedroom furniture of the young teenagers.

 

Furniture bedroom teenager furniture is slightly different from children or adults. You may see a lot of options available in the market. When you shop for furniture teen bedroom.

  

You should consider the personality of the young teenagers you. The main principle in getting the best furniture is to find furniture that meets the requirements of teenagers while matching your budget and parental rules.

 

Before shopping for furniture stores, it is better for you to sit down together with your teen and discuss what they want for their bedroom. Ask in detail about what they would be in the bedroom decor. You should encourage your teen to be active in designing their rooms. By discussing with your teen. You can find the best solution not only for teenagers, but also your budget.

 

Ask your teenager to talk about getting the right furniture also teaches them about the decor of the room and budgeting skills are valuable. You can also give them the opportunity to express their personality.

 

Enable them to manage their bedroom furniture can help them to build their pride in the talent and surroundings. Some items of furniture bedroom teenage son needed in the bedroom of the young teenagers you include a bed, storage, and cabinets.

 

This item is a must-have bedrooms. You have to make sure the items while your teen can add other optional items. Some optional items including multimedia desks, dressers, and much more. The choice depends on your teen and your budget.

 

In purchasing bedroom furniture of the young teenagers. You need to remember some aspects. The bedrooms of teenage boys usually messy bedroom of the juvenile female. You need to find the best furniture which helps them to maintain cleanliness in their new bedroom. You should also remember that teenagers usually want to maintain the privacy of their bedrooms.

 

You need to find furniture that provides plenty of shelves and drawers. These furniture items capable of make it simple to store personal items and clothing. Another aspect to consider when you buy bedroom furniture of the young teenagers are rooms available. If your teenage child's bedroom is quite small. You might be able to use the bedroom furniture of the young teenagers are multi-functional.

 

That's Bedroom Furniture Design Young may be the subject of an idea to beautify the interior space of your dream home. May be useful. houserior.com/furniture-for-a-young-childs-bedroom

“The difficulties you meet will resolve themselves as you advance. Proceed, and light will dawn, and shine with increasing clearness on your path.”

Jim Rohn

 

Textures thanks to JoesSistah for Is2 :)

.... Now, the more I distrust my memory, the more confused it becomes. It serves me better by chance encounter; I have to solicit it nonchalantly. For if I press it, it is stunned; and once it has begun to totter, the more I probe it, the more it gets mixed up and embarrassed. It serves me at its own time, not at mine. LESS

 

~ Michel de Montaigne

  

I recall the difficulty I had when "Shadows" was the theme for Macro Mondays group last time round. I just found it difficult to find something original and meaningful to shoot so I wasn't much looking forward to the theme this time. But it is quite funny [not ha,ha] how when some seed is planted in one's mind, you begin to "see" things in a quite different light. Perhaps even unconsciously searching for the thing on your mind; in this particular case, shadows. And so it was that quite by chance on entering our wet room the other day I suddenly noticed the shadow that was being cast on the wash basin by the Victorian style tap and I particular noticed how that shadow inter-played with the basin over-flow hole. I was so over-joyed to find such a thing, given my previous difficulties, that this is my only submission to the group this week!!! LOL Not as macro-ish as I would have liked but it was quite a large shadow and I did feel the need to keep a part of the tap in the picture.

 

A HMM to all in the group and my thanks in advance to anyone who may view, comment upon, invite or fave this image. I do so much appreciate your taking the time to do that. I very much hope to be able to get to view & comment on your submission to the group although some current family issues may preclude my doing that for which I apologise.

"I'll put all difficulties under your heels so the smile remains on your face."

 

Photographer's profile

 

I am Fatima. I am 19 years old. I am from Al-Ghotta, Syria. I have three children and I love sewing. I stopped studying but want to go back to school. I also love photography.

 

Background

 

More than a million Syrian children have been forced to flee the conflict in their homeland.

 

Growing up in exile, sometimes orphaned or separated from loved ones, they are often haunted by violence and loss – but also resilient enough to envision better days ahead.

 

"Do You See What I See" let young refugees – now living in Jordan and Lebanon – shine a light on their world and share it with others.

 

Through workshops led by photojournalist Brendan Bannon and organised by UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, they learnt to capture their observations in a striking photograph.

 

In these words and images they reveal loss and longing, hope and fear, simple pleasures and complex emotions.

 

Do you see what they see? See all the photos and find out more about the project at: refugee-photo-project.unhcr.org

 

These images are presented as part of the Supporting Syria and the Region conference on 4 February 2016, co-hosted by the UK, Germany, Kuwait, Norway, and the United Nations. Find out more at www.supportingsyria2016.com

 

Picture © Fatima/UNHCR. All rights reserved.

 

Based in Za'atari Camp, Jordan.

Not sure how many more of these underwater portraits I should post, but I must admit that other than the long exposures, this is by far the most fun I've ever had with my camera. And it's been the perfect way to spend sunny summer days on the beach :-)

 

Unfortunately, the portraits all come in different styles so far, mostly due to the effects of the constantly changing light. But also due to difficulties focusing, and difficulties in getting the flash to fire under water... And, to some extent also due to trying out different ways of processing...

 

Model: Malena

Location: Skanör Harbour (Baltic Sea), Sweden.

 

My web site | Join me on Facebook

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

Please no icons/banners/images in the comments.

Vladimir Semyonovich Vysotsky (Russian: Владимир Семёнович Высоцкий, IPA: [vlɐˈdʲimʲɪr sʲɪˈmʲɵnəvʲɪtɕ vɨˈsotskʲɪj]; 25 January 1938 – 25 July 1980), was a Soviet singer-songwriter, poet, and actor who had an immense and enduring effect on Soviet culture. He became widely known for his unique singing style and for his lyrics, which featured social and political commentary in often humorous street-jargon. He was also a prominent stage- and screen-actor. Though the official Soviet cultural establishment largely ignored his work, he was remarkably popular during his lifetime, and to this day exerts significant influence on many of Russia's musicians and actors.

 

Vysotsky was born in Moscow at the 3rd Meshchanskaya St. (61/2) maternity hospital. His father, Semyon Volfovich (Vladimirovich) (1915–1997), was a colonel in the Soviet army, originally from Kiev. Vladimir's mother, Nina Maksimovna, (née Seryogina, 1912–2003) was Russian, and worked as a German language translator.[3] Vysotsky's family lived in a Moscow communal flat in harsh conditions, and had serious financial difficulties. When Vladimir was 10 months old, Nina had to return to her office in the Transcript bureau of the Soviet Ministry of Geodesy and Cartography (engaged in making German maps available for the Soviet military) so as to help her husband earn their family's living.

 

Vladimir's theatrical inclinations became obvious at an early age, and were supported by his paternal grandmother Dora Bronshteyn, a theater fan. The boy used to recite poems, standing on a chair and "flinging hair backwards, like a real poet," often using in his public speeches expressions he could hardly have heard at home. Once, at the age of two, when he had tired of the family's guests' poetry requests, he, according to his mother, sat himself under the New-year tree with a frustrated air about him and sighed: "You silly tossers! Give a child some respite!" His sense of humor was extraordinary, but often baffling for people around him. A three-year-old could jeer his father in a bathroom with unexpected poetic improvisation ("Now look what's here before us / Our goat's to shave himself!") or appall unwanted guests with some street folk song, promptly steering them away. Vysotsky remembered those first three years of his life in the autobiographical Ballad of Childhood (Баллада о детстве, 1975), one of his best-known songs.

 

As World War II broke out, Semyon Vysotsky, a military reserve officer, joined the Soviet army and went to fight the Nazis. Nina and Vladimir were evacuated to the village of Vorontsovka, in Orenburg Oblast where the boy had to spend six days a week in a kindergarten and his mother worked for twelve hours a day in a chemical factory. In 1943, both returned to their Moscow apartment at 1st Meschanskaya St., 126. In September 1945, Vladimir joined the 1st class of the 273rd Moscow Rostokino region School.

 

In December 1946, Vysotsky's parents divorced. From 1947 to 1949, Vladimir lived with Semyon Vladimirovich (then an army Major) and his Armenian wife, Yevgenya Stepanovna Liholatova, whom the boy called "aunt Zhenya", at a military base in Eberswalde in the Soviet-occupied zone of Germany (later East Germany). "We decided that our son would stay with me. Vladimir came to stay with me in January 1947, and my second wife, Yevgenia, became Vladimir's second mother for many years to come. They had much in common and liked each other, which made me really happy," Semyon Vysotsky later remembered. Here living conditions, compared to those of Nina's communal Moscow flat, were infinitely better; the family occupied the whole floor of a two-storeyed house, and the boy had a room to himself for the first time in his life. In 1949 along with his stepmother Vladimir returned to Moscow. There he joined the 5th class of the Moscow 128th School and settled at Bolshoy Karetny [ru], 15 (where they had to themselves two rooms of a four-roomed flat), with "auntie Zhenya" (who was just 28 at the time), a woman of great kindness and warmth whom he later remembered as his second mother. In 1953 Vysotsky, now much interested in theater and cinema, joined the Drama courses led by Vladimir Bogomolov.[7] "No one in my family has had anything to do with arts, no actors or directors were there among them. But my mother admired theater and from the earliest age... each and every Saturday I've been taken up with her to watch one play or the other. And all of this, it probably stayed with me," he later reminisced. The same year he received his first ever guitar, a birthday present from Nina Maksimovna; a close friend, bard and a future well-known Soviet pop lyricist Igor Kokhanovsky taught him basic chords. In 1955 Vladimir re-settled into his mother's new home at 1st Meshchanskaya, 76. In June of the same year he graduated from school with five A's.

 

In 1955, Vladimir enrolled into the Moscow State University of Civil Engineering, but dropped out after just one semester to pursue an acting career. In June 1956 he joined Boris Vershilov's class at the Moscow Art Theatre Studio-Institute. It was there that he met the 3rd course student Iza Zhukova who four years later became his wife; soon the two lovers settled at the 1st Meschanskaya flat, in a common room, shielded off by a folding screen. It was also in the Studio that Vysotsky met Bulat Okudzhava for the first time, an already popular underground bard. He was even more impressed by his Russian literature teacher Andrey Sinyavsky who along with his wife often invited students to his home to stage improvised disputes and concerts. In 1958 Vysotsky's got his first Moscow Art Theatre role: that of Porfiry Petrovich in Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment. In 1959 he was cast in his first cinema role, that of student Petya in Vasily Ordynsky's The Yearlings (Сверстницы). On 20 June 1960, Vysotsky graduated from the MAT theater institute and joined the Moscow Pushkin Drama Theatre (led by Boris Ravenskikh at the time) where he spent (with intervals) almost three troubled years. These were marred by numerous administrative sanctions, due to "lack of discipline" and occasional drunken sprees which were a reaction, mainly, to the lack of serious roles and his inability to realise his artistic potential. A short stint in 1962 at the Moscow Theater of Miniatures (administered at the time by Vladimir Polyakov) ended with him being fired, officially "for a total lack of sense of humour."

 

Vysotsky's second and third films, Dima Gorin's Career and 713 Requests Permission to Land, were interesting only for the fact that in both he had to be beaten up (in the first case by Aleksandr Demyanenko). "That was the way cinema greeted me," he later jokingly remarked. In 1961, Vysotsky wrote his first ever proper song, called "Tattoo" (Татуировка), which started a long and colourful cycle of artfully stylized criminal underworld romantic stories, full of undercurrents and witty social comments. In June 1963, while shooting Penalty Kick (directed by Veniamin Dorman and starring Mikhail Pugovkin), Vysotsky used the Gorky Film Studio to record an hour-long reel-to-reel cassette of his own songs; copies of it quickly spread and the author's name became known in Moscow and elsewhere (although many of these songs were often being referred to as either "traditional" or "anonymous"). Just several months later Riga-based chess grandmaster Mikhail Tal was heard praising the author of "Bolshoy Karetny" (Большой Каретный) and Anna Akhmatova (in a conversation with Joseph Brodsky) was quoting Vysotsky's number "I was the soul of a bad company..." taking it apparently for some brilliant piece of anonymous street folklore. In October 1964 Vysotsky recorded in chronological order 48 of his own songs, his first self-made Complete works of... compilation, which boosted his popularity as a new Moscow folk underground star.

 

In 1964, director Yuri Lyubimov invited Vysotsky to join the newly created Taganka Theatre. "'I've written some songs of my own. Won't you listen?' – he asked. I agreed to listen to just one of them, expecting our meeting to last for no more than five minutes. Instead I ended up listening to him for an entire 1.5 hours," Lyubimov remembered years later of this first audition. On 19 September 1964, Vysotsky debuted in Bertolt Brecht's The Good Person of Szechwan as the Second God (not to count two minor roles). A month later he came on stage as a dragoon captain (Bela's father) in Lermontov's A Hero of Our Time. It was in Taganka that Vysotsky started to sing on stage; the War theme becoming prominent in his musical repertoire. In 1965 Vysotsky appeared in the experimental Poet and Theater (Поэт и Театр, February) show, based on Andrey Voznesensky's work and then Ten Days that Shook the World (after John Reed's book, April) and was commissioned by Lyubimov to write songs exclusively for Taganka's new World War II play. The Fallen and the Living (Павшие и Живые), premiered in October 1965, featured Vysotsky's "Stars" (Звёзды), "The Soldiers of Heeresgruppe Mitte" (Солдаты группы "Центр") and "Penal Battalions" (Штрафные батальоны), the striking examples of a completely new kind of a war song, never heard in his country before. As veteran screenwriter Nikolay Erdman put it (in conversation with Lyubimov), "Professionally, I can well understand how Mayakovsky or Seryozha Yesenin were doing it. How Volodya Vysotsky does it is totally beyond me." With his songs – in effect, miniature theatrical dramatizations (usually with a protagonist and full of dialogues), Vysotsky instantly achieved such level of credibility that real life former prisoners, war veterans, boxers, footballers refused to believe that the author himself had never served his time in prisons and labor camps, or fought in the War, or been a boxing/football professional. After the second of the two concerts at the Leningrad Molecular Physics institute (that was his actual debut as a solo musical performer) Vysotsky left a note for his fans in a journal which ended with words: "Now that you've heard all these songs, please, don't you make a mistake of mixing me with my characters, I am not like them at all. With love, Vysotsky, 20 April 1965, XX c." Excuses of this kind he had to make throughout his performing career. At least one of Vysotsky's song themes – that of alcoholic abuse – was worryingly autobiographical, though. By the time his breakthrough came in 1967, he'd suffered several physical breakdowns and once was sent (by Taganka's boss) to a rehabilitation clinic, a visit he on several occasions repeated since.

 

Brecht's Life of Galileo (premiered on 17 May 1966), transformed by Lyubimov into a powerful allegory of Soviet intelligentsia's set of moral and intellectual dilemmas, brought Vysotsky his first leading theater role (along with some fitness lessons: he had to perform numerous acrobatic tricks on stage). Press reaction was mixed, some reviewers disliked the actor's overt emotionalism, but it was for the first time ever that Vysotsky's name appeared in Soviet papers. Film directors now were treating him with respect. Viktor Turov's war film I Come from the Childhood where Vysotsky got his first ever "serious" (neither comical, nor villainous) role in cinema, featured two of his songs: a spontaneous piece called "When It's Cold" (Холода) and a dark, Unknown soldier theme-inspired classic "Common Graves" (На братских могилах), sung behind the screen by the legendary Mark Bernes.

 

Stanislav Govorukhin and Boris Durov's The Vertical (1967), a mountain climbing drama, starring Vysotsky (as Volodya the radioman), brought him all-round recognition and fame. Four of the numbers used in the film (including "Song of a Friend [fi]" (Песня о друге), released in 1968 by the Soviet recording industry monopolist Melodiya disc to become an unofficial hit) were written literally on the spot, nearby Elbrus, inspired by professional climbers' tales and one curious hotel bar conversation with a German guest who 25 years ago happened to climb these very mountains in a capacity of an Edelweiss division fighter. Another 1967 film, Kira Muratova's Brief Encounters featured Vysotsky as the geologist Maxim (paste-bearded again) with a now trademark off-the-cuff musical piece, a melancholy improvisation called "Things to Do" (Дела). All the while Vysotsky continued working hard at Taganka, with another important role under his belt (that of Mayakovsky or, rather one of the latter character's five different versions) in the experimental piece called Listen! (Послушайте!), and now regularly gave semi-official concerts where audiences greeted him as a cult hero.

 

In the end of 1967 Vysotsky got another pivotal theater role, that of Khlopusha [ru] in Pugachov (a play based on a poem by Sergei Yesenin), often described as one of Taganka's finest. "He put into his performance all the things that he excelled at and, on the other hand, it was Pugachyov that made him discover his own potential," – Soviet critic Natalya Krymova wrote years later. Several weeks after the premiere, infuriated by the actor's increasing unreliability triggered by worsening drinking problems, Lyubimov fired him – only to let him back again several months later (and thus begin the humiliating sacked-then-pardoned routine which continued for years). In June 1968 a Vysotsky-slagging campaign was launched in the Soviet press. First Sovetskaya Rossiya commented on the "epidemic spread of immoral, smutty songs," allegedly promoting "criminal world values, alcoholism, vice and immorality" and condemned their author for "sowing seeds of evil." Then Komsomolskaya Pravda linked Vysotsky with black market dealers selling his tapes somewhere in Siberia. Composer Dmitry Kabalevsky speaking from the Union of Soviet Composers' Committee tribune criticised the Soviet radio for giving an ideologically dubious, "low-life product" like "Song of a Friend" (Песня о друге) an unwarranted airplay. Playwright Alexander Stein who in his Last Parade play used several of Vysotsky's songs, was chastised by a Ministry of Culture official for "providing a tribune for this anti-Soviet scum." The phraseology prompted commentators in the West to make parallels between Vysotsky and Mikhail Zoschenko, another Soviet author who'd been officially labeled "scum" some 20 years ago.

 

Two of Vysotsky's 1968 films, Gennady Poloka's Intervention (premiered in May 1987) where he was cast as Brodsky, a dodgy even if highly artistic character, and Yevgeny Karelov's Two Comrades Were Serving (a gun-toting White Army officer Brusentsov who in the course of the film shoots his friend, his horse, Oleg Yankovsky's good guy character and, finally himself) – were severely censored, first of them shelved for twenty years. At least four of Vysotsky's 1968 songs, "Save Our Souls" (Спасите наши души), "The Wolfhunt" (Охота на волков), "Gypsy Variations" (Моя цыганская) and "The Steam-bath in White" (Банька по-белому), were hailed later as masterpieces. It was at this point that 'proper' love songs started to appear in Vysotsky's repertoire, documenting the beginning of his passionate love affair with French actress Marina Vlady.

 

In 1969 Vysotsky starred in two films: The Master of Taiga where he played a villainous Siberian timber-floating brigadier, and more entertaining Dangerous Tour. The latter was criticized in the Soviet press for taking a farcical approach to the subject of the Bolshevik underground activities but for a wider Soviet audience this was an important opportunity to enjoy the charismatic actor's presence on big screen. In 1970, after visiting the dislodged Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev at his dacha and having a lengthy conversation with him, Vysotsky embarked on a massive and by Soviet standards dangerously commercial concert tour in Soviet Central Asia and then brought Marina Vlady to director Viktor Turov's place so as to investigate her Belarusian roots. The pair finally wed on 1 December 1970 (causing furore among the Moscow cultural and political elite) and spent a honeymoon in Georgia. This was the highly productive period for Vysotsky, resulting in numerous new songs, including the anthemic "I Hate" (Я не люблю), sentimental "Lyricale" (Лирическая) and dramatic war epics "He Didn't Return from the Battle" (Он не вернулся из боя) and "The Earth Song" (Песня о Земле) among many others.

 

In 1971 a drinking spree-related nervous breakdown brought Vysotsky to the Moscow Kashchenko clinic [ru]. By this time he has been suffering from alcoholism. Many of his songs from this period deal, either directly or metaphorically, with alcoholism and insanity. Partially recovered (due to the encouraging presence of Marina Vladi), Vysotsky embarked on a successful Ukrainian concert tour and wrote a cluster of new songs. On 29 November 1971 Taganka's Hamlet premiered, a groundbreaking Lyubimov's production with Vysotsky in the leading role, that of a lone intellectual rebel, rising to fight the cruel state machine.

 

Also in 1971 Vysotsky was invited to play the lead in The Sannikov Land, the screen adaptation of Vladimir Obruchev's science fiction,[47] which he wrote several songs for, but was suddenly dropped for the reason of his face "being too scandalously recognisable" as a state official put it. One of the songs written for the film, a doom-laden epic allegory "Capricious Horses" (Кони привередливые), became one of the singer's signature tunes. Two of Vysotsky's 1972 film roles were somewhat meditative: an anonymous American journalist in The Fourth One and the "righteous guy" von Koren in The Bad Good Man (based on Anton Chekov's Duel). The latter brought Vysotsky the Best Male Role prize at the V Taormina Film Fest. This philosophical slant rubbed off onto some of his new works of the time: "A Singer at the Microphone" (Певец у микрофона), "The Tightrope Walker" (Канатоходец), two new war songs ("We Spin the Earth", "Black Pea-Coats") and "The Grief" (Беда), a folkish girl's lament, later recorded by Marina Vladi and subsequently covered by several female performers. Popular proved to be his 1972 humorous songs: "Mishka Shifman" (Мишка Шифман), satirizing the leaving-for-Israel routine, "Victim of the Television" which ridiculed the concept of "political consciousness," and "The Honour of the Chess Crown" (Честь шахматной короны) about an ever-fearless "simple Soviet man" challenging the much feared American champion Bobby Fischer to a match.

 

In 1972 he stepped up in Soviet Estonian TV where he presented his songs and gave an interview. The name of the show was "Young Man from Taganka" (Noormees Tagankalt).

 

In April 1973 Vysotsky visited Poland and France. Predictable problems concerning the official permission were sorted after the French Communist Party leader Georges Marchais made a personal phone call to Leonid Brezhnev who, according to Marina Vlady's memoirs, rather sympathized with the stellar couple. Having found on return a potentially dangerous lawsuit brought against him (concerning some unsanctioned concerts in Siberia the year before), Vysotsky wrote a defiant letter to the Minister of Culture Pyotr Demichev. As a result, he was granted the status of a philharmonic artist, 11.5 roubles per concert now guaranteed. Still the 900 rubles fine had to be paid according to the court verdict, which was a substantial sum, considering his monthly salary at the theater was 110 rubles. That year Vysotsky wrote some thirty songs for "Alice in Wonderland," an audioplay where he himself has been given several minor roles. His best known songs of 1973 included "The Others' Track" (Чужая колея), "The Flight Interrupted" (Прерванный полёт) and "The Monument", all pondering on his achievements and legacy.

 

In 1974 Melodiya released the 7" EP, featuring four of Vysotsky's war songs ("He Never Returned From the Battle", "The New Times Song", "Common Graves", and "The Earth Song") which represented a tiny portion of his creative work, owned by millions on tape. In September of that year Vysotsky received his first state award, the Honorary Diploma of the Uzbek SSR following a tour with fellow actors from the Taganka Theatre in Uzbekistan. A year later he was granted the USSR Union of Cinematographers' membership. This meant he was not an "anti-Soviet scum" now, rather an unlikely link between the official Soviet cinema elite and the "progressive-thinking artists of the West." More films followed, among them The Only Road (a Soviet-Yugoslav joint venture, premiered on 10 January 1975 in Belgrade) and a science fiction movie The Flight of Mr. McKinley (1975). Out of nine ballads that he wrote for the latter only two have made it into the soundtrack. This was the height of his popularity, when, as described in Vlady's book about her husband, walking down the street on a summer night, one could hear Vysotsky's recognizable voice coming literally from every open window. Among the songs written at the time, were humorous "The Instruction before the Trip Abroad", lyrical "Of the Dead Pilot" and philosophical "The Strange House". In 1975 Vysotsky made his third trip to France where he rather riskily visited his former tutor (and now a celebrated dissident emigre) Andrey Sinyavsky. Artist Mikhail Shemyakin, his new Paris friend (or a "bottle-sharer", in Vladi's terms), recorded Vysotsky in his home studio. After a brief stay in England Vysotsky crossed the ocean and made his first Mexican concerts in April. Back in Moscow, there were changes at Taganka: Lyubimov went to Milan's La Scala on a contract and Anatoly Efros has been brought in, a director of radically different approach. His project, Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, caused a sensation. Critics praised Alla Demidova (as Ranevskaya) and Vysotsky (as Lopakhin) powerful interplay, some describing it as one of the most dazzling in the history of the Soviet theater. Lyubimov, who disliked the piece, accused Efros of giving his actors "the stardom malaise." The 1976 Taganka's visit to Bulgaria resulted in Vysotskys's interview there being filmed and 15 songs recorded by Balkanton record label. On return Lyubimov made a move which many thought outrageous: declaring himself "unable to work with this Mr. Vysotsky anymore" he gave the role of Hamlet to Valery Zolotukhin, the latter's best friend. That was the time, reportedly, when stressed out Vysotsky started taking amphetamines.

 

Another Belorussian voyage completed, Marina and Vladimir went for France and from there (without any official permission given, or asked for) flew to the North America. In New York Vysotsky met, among other people, Mikhail Baryshnikov and Joseph Brodsky. In a televised one-hour interview with Dan Rather he stressed he was "not a dissident, just an artist, who's never had any intentions to leave his country where people loved him and his songs." At home this unauthorized venture into the Western world bore no repercussions: by this time Soviet authorities were divided as regards the "Vysotsky controversy" up to the highest level; while Mikhail Suslov detested the bard, Brezhnev loved him to such an extent that once, while in hospital, asked him to perform live in his daughter Galina's home, listening to this concert on the telephone. In 1976 appeared "The Domes", "The Rope" and the "Medieval" cycle, including "The Ballad of Love".

 

In September Vysotsky with Taganka made a trip to Yugoslavia where Hamlet won the annual BITEF festival's first prize, and then to Hungary for a two-week concert tour. Back in Moscow Lyubimov's production of The Master & Margarita featured Vysotsky as Ivan Bezdomny; a modest role, somewhat recompensed by an important Svidrigailov slot in Yury Karyakin's take on Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. Vysotsky's new songs of this period include "The History of Illness" cycle concerning his health problems, humorous "Why Did the Savages Eat Captain Cook", the metaphorical "Ballad of the Truth and the Lie", as well as "Two Fates", the chilling story of a self-absorbed alcoholic hunted by two malevolent witches, his two-faced destiny. In 1977 Vysotsky's health deteriorated (heart, kidneys, liver failures, jaw infection and nervous breakdown) to such an extent that in April he found himself in Moscow clinic's reanimation center in the state of physical and mental collapse.

 

In 1977 Vysotsky made an unlikely appearance in New York City on the American television show 60 Minutes, which falsely stated that Vysotsky had spent time in the Soviet prison system, the Gulag. That year saw the release of three Vysotsky's LPs in France (including the one that had been recorded by RCA in Canada the previous year); arranged and accompanied by guitarist Kostya Kazansky, the singer for the first time ever enjoyed the relatively sophisticated musical background. In August he performed in Hollywood before members of New York City film cast and (according to Vladi) was greeted warmly by the likes of Liza Minnelli and Robert De Niro. Some more concerts in Los Angeles were followed by the appearance at the French Communist paper L’Humanité annual event. In December Taganka left for France, its Hamlet (Vysotsky back in the lead) gaining fine reviews.

 

1978 started with the March–April series of concerts in Moscow and Ukraine. In May Vysotsky embarked upon a new major film project: The Meeting Place Cannot Be Changed (Место встречи изменить нельзя) about two detectives fighting crime in late 1940s Russia, directed by Stanislav Govorukhin. The film (premiered on 11 November 1978 on the Soviet Central TV) presented Vysotsky as Zheglov, a ruthless and charismatic cop teaching his milder partner Sharapov (actor Vladimir Konkin) his art of crime-solving. Vysotsky also became engaged in Taganka's Genre-seeking show (performing some of his own songs) and played Aleksander Blok in Anatoly Efros' The Lady Stranger (Незнакомка) radio play (premiered on air on 10 July 1979 and later released as a double LP).

 

In November 1978 Vysotsky took part in the underground censorship-defying literary project Metropolis, inspired and organized by Vasily Aksenov. In January 1979 Vysotsky again visited America with highly successful series of concerts. That was the point (according to biographer Vladimir Novikov) when a glimpse of new, clean life of a respectable international actor and performer all but made Vysotsky seriously reconsider his priorities. What followed though, was a return to the self-destructive theater and concert tours schedule, personal doctor Anatoly Fedotov now not only his companion, but part of Taganka's crew. "Who was this Anatoly? Just a man who in every possible situation would try to provide drugs. And he did provide. In such moments Volodya trusted him totally," Oksana Afanasyeva, Vysotsky's Moscow girlfriend (who was near him for most of the last year of his life and, on occasion, herself served as a drug courier) remembered. In July 1979, after a series of Central Asia concerts, Vysotsky collapsed, experienced clinical death and was resuscitated by Fedotov (who injected caffeine into the heart directly), colleague and close friend Vsevolod Abdulov helping with heart massage. In January 1980 Vysotsky asked Lyubimov for a year's leave. "Up to you, but on condition that Hamlet is yours," was the answer. The songwriting showed signs of slowing down, as Vysotsky began switching from songs to more conventional poetry. Still, of nearly 800 poems by Vysotsky only one has been published in the Soviet Union while he was alive. Not a single performance or interview was broadcast by the Soviet television in his lifetime.

 

In May 1979, being in a practice studio of the MSU Faculty of Journalism, Vysotsky recorded a video letter to American actor and film producer Warren Beatty, looking for both a personal meeting with Beatty and an opportunity to get a role in Reds film, to be produced and directed by the latter. While recording, Vysotsky made a few attempts to speak English, trying to overcome the language barrier. This video letter never reached Beatty. It was broadcast for the first time more than three decades later, on the night of 24 January 2013 (local time) by Rossiya 1 channel, along with records of TV channels of Italy, Mexico, Poland, USA and from private collections, in Vladimir Vysotsky. A letter to Warren Beatty film by Alexander Kovanovsky and Igor Rakhmanov. While recording this video, Vysotsky had a rare opportunity to perform for a camera, being still unable to do it with Soviet television.

 

On 22 January 1980, Vysotsky entered the Moscow Ostankino TV Center to record his one and only studio concert for the Soviet television. What proved to be an exhausting affair (his concentration lacking, he had to plod through several takes for each song) was premiered on the Soviet TV eight years later. The last six months of his life saw Vysotsky appearing on stage sporadically, fueled by heavy dosages of drugs and alcohol. His performances were often erratic. Occasionally Vysotsky paid visits to Sklifosofsky [ru] institute's ER unit, but would not hear of Marina Vlady's suggestions for him to take long-term rehabilitation course in a Western clinic. Yet he kept writing, mostly poetry and even prose, but songs as well. The last song he performed was the agonizing "My Sorrow, My Anguish" and his final poem, written one week prior to his death was "A Letter to Marina": "I'm less than fifty, but the time is short / By you and God protected, life and limb / I have a song or two to sing before the Lord / I have a way to make my peace with him."

 

Although several theories of the ultimate cause of the singer's death persist to this day, given what is now known about cardiovascular disease, it seems likely that by the time of his death Vysotsky had an advanced coronary condition brought about by years of tobacco, alcohol and drug abuse, as well as his grueling work schedule and the stress of the constant harassment by the government. Towards the end, most of Vysotsky's closest friends had become aware of the ominous signs and were convinced that his demise was only a matter of time. Clear evidence of this can be seen in a video ostensibly shot by the Japanese NHK channel only months before Vysotsky's death, where he appears visibly unwell, breathing heavily and slurring his speech. Accounts by Vysotsky's close friends and colleagues concerning his last hours were compiled in the book by V. Perevozchikov.

 

Vysotsky suffered from alcoholism for most of his life. Sometime around 1977, he started using amphetamines and other prescription narcotics in an attempt to counteract the debilitating hangovers and eventually to rid himself of alcohol addiction. While these attempts were partially successful, he ended up trading alcoholism for a severe drug dependency that was fast spiralling out of control. He was reduced to begging some of his close friends in the medical profession for supplies of drugs, often using his acting skills to collapse in a medical office and imitate a seizure or some other condition requiring a painkiller injection. On 25 July 1979 (a year to the day before his death) he suffered a cardiac arrest and was clinically dead for several minutes during a concert tour of Soviet Uzbekistan, after injecting himself with a wrong kind of painkiller he had previously obtained from a dentist's office.

 

Fully aware of the dangers of his condition, Vysotsky made several attempts to cure himself of his addiction. He underwent an experimental (and ultimately discredited) blood purification procedure offered by a leading drug rehabilitation specialist in Moscow. He also went to an isolated retreat in France with his wife Marina in the spring of 1980 as a way of forcefully depriving himself of any access to drugs. After these attempts failed, Vysotsky returned to Moscow to find his life in an increasingly stressful state of disarray. He had been a defendant in two criminal trials, one for a car wreck he had caused some months earlier, and one for an alleged conspiracy to sell unauthorized concert tickets (he eventually received a suspended sentence and a probation in the first case, and the charges in the second were dismissed, although several of his co-defendants were found guilty). He also unsuccessfully fought the film studio authorities for the rights to direct a movie called The Green Phaeton. Relations with his wife Marina were deteriorating, and he was torn between his loyalty to her and his love for his mistress Oksana Afanasyeva. He had also developed severe inflammation in one of his legs, making his concert performances extremely challenging.

 

In a final desperate attempt to overcome his drug addiction, partially prompted by his inability to obtain drugs through his usual channels (the authorities had imposed a strict monitoring of the medical institutions to prevent illicit drug distribution during the 1980 Olympics), he relapsed into alcohol and went on a prolonged drinking binge (apparently consuming copious amounts of champagne due to a prevalent misconception at the time that it was better than vodka at countering the effects of drug withdrawal).

 

On 3 July 1980, Vysotsky gave a performance at a suburban Moscow concert hall. One of the stage managers recalls that he looked visibly unhealthy ("gray-faced", as she puts it) and complained of not feeling too good, while another says she was surprised by his request for champagne before the start of the show, as he had always been known for completely abstaining from drink before his concerts. On 16 July Vysotsky gave his last public concert in Kaliningrad. On 18 July, Vysotsky played Hamlet for the last time at the Taganka Theatre. From around 21 July, several of his close friends were on a round-the-clock watch at his apartment, carefully monitoring his alcohol intake and hoping against all odds that his drug dependency would soon be overcome and they would then be able to bring him back from the brink. The effects of drug withdrawal were clearly getting the better of him, as he got increasingly restless, moaned and screamed in pain, and at times fell into memory lapses, failing to recognize at first some of his visitors, including his son Arkadiy. At one point, Vysotsky's personal physician A. Fedotov (the same doctor who had brought him back from clinical death a year earlier in Uzbekistan) attempted to sedate him, inadvertently causing asphyxiation from which he was barely saved. On 24 July, Vysotsky told his mother that he thought he was going to die that day, and then made similar remarks to a few of the friends present at the apartment, who begged him to stop such talk and keep his spirits up. But soon thereafter, Oksana Afanasyeva saw him clench his chest several times, which led her to suspect that he was genuinely suffering from a cardiovascular condition. She informed Fedotov of this but was told not to worry, as he was going to monitor Vysotsky's condition all night. In the evening, after drinking relatively small amounts of alcohol, the moaning and groaning Vysotsky was sedated by Fedotov, who then sat down on the couch next to him but fell asleep. Fedotov awoke in the early hours of 25 July to an unusual silence and found Vysotsky dead in his bed with his eyes wide open, apparently of a myocardial infarction, as he later certified. This was contradicted by Fedotov's colleagues, Sklifosovsky Emergency Medical Institute physicians L. Sul'povar and S. Scherbakov (who had demanded the actor's immediate hospitalization on 23 July but were allegedly rebuffed by Fedotov), who insisted that Fedotov's incompetent sedation combined with alcohol was what killed Vysotsky. An autopsy was prevented by Vysotsky's parents (who were eager to have their son's drug addiction remain secret), so the true cause of death remains unknown.

 

No official announcement of the actor's death was made, only a brief obituary appeared in the Moscow newspaper Vechernyaya Moskva, and a note informing of Vysotsky's death and cancellation of the Hamlet performance was put out at the entrance to the Taganka Theatre (the story goes that not a single ticket holder took advantage of the refund offer). Despite this, by the end of the day, millions had learned of Vysotsky's death. On 28 July, he lay in state at the Taganka Theatre. After a mourning ceremony involving an unauthorized mass gathering of unprecedented scale, Vysotsky was buried at the Vagankovskoye Cemetery in Moscow. The attendance at the Olympic events dropped noticeably on that day, as scores of spectators left to attend the funeral. Tens of thousands of people lined the streets to catch a glimpse of his coffin.

 

According to author Valery Perevozchikov part of the blame for his death lay with the group of associates who surrounded him in the last years of his life. This inner circle were all people under the influence of his strong character, combined with a material interest in the large sums of money his concerts earned. This list included Valerii Yankelovich, manager of the Taganka Theatre and prime organiser of his non-sanctioned concerts; Anatoly Fedotov, his personal doctor; Vadim Tumanov, gold prospector (and personal friend) from Siberia; Oksana Afanasyeva (later Yarmolnik), his mistress the last three years of his life; Ivan Bortnik, a fellow actor; and Leonid Sul'povar, a department head at the Sklifosovski hospital who was responsible for much of the supply of drugs.

 

Vysotsky's associates had all put in efforts to supply his drug habit, which kept him going in the last years of his life. Under their influence, he was able to continue to perform all over the country, up to a week before his death. Due to illegal (i.e. non-state-sanctioned) sales of tickets and other underground methods, these concerts pulled in sums of money unimaginable in Soviet times, when almost everyone received nearly the same small salary. The payouts and gathering of money were a constant source of danger, and Yankelovich and others were needed to organise them.

 

Some money went to Vysotsky, the rest was distributed amongst this circle. At first this was a reasonable return on their efforts; however, as his addiction progressed and his body developed resistance, the frequency and amount of drugs needed to keep Vysotsky going became unmanageable. This culminated at the time of the Moscow Olympics which coincided with the last days of his life, when supplies of drugs were monitored more strictly than usual, and some of the doctors involved in supplying Vysotsky were already behind bars (normally the doctors had to account for every ampule, thus drugs were transferred to an empty container, while the patients received a substitute or placebo instead). In the last few days Vysotsky became uncontrollable, his shouting could be heard all over the apartment building on Malaya Gruzinskaya St. where he lived amongst VIP's. Several days before his death, in a state of stupor he went on a high speed drive around Moscow in an attempt to obtain drugs and alcohol – when many high-ranking people saw him. This increased the likelihood of him being forcibly admitted to the hospital, and the consequent danger to the circle supplying his habit. As his state of health declined, and it became obvious that he might die, his associates gathered to decide what to do with him. They came up with no firm decision. They did not want him admitted officially, as his drug addiction would become public and they would fall under suspicion, although some of them admitted that any ordinary person in his condition would have been admitted immediately.

 

On Vysotsky's death his associates and relatives put in much effort to prevent a post-mortem being carried out. This despite the fairly unusual circumstances: he died aged 42 under heavy sedation with an improvised cocktail of sedatives and stimulants, including the toxic chloral hydrate, provided by his personal doctor who had been supplying him with narcotics the previous three years. This doctor, being the only one present at his side when death occurred, had a few days earlier been seen to display elementary negligence in treating the sedated Vysotsky. On the night of his death, Arkadii Vysotsky (his son), who tried to visit his father in his apartment, was rudely refused entry by Yankelovich, even though there was a lack of people able to care for him. Subsequently, the Soviet police commenced a manslaughter investigation which was dropped due to the absence of evidence taken at the time of death.

 

Vysotsky's first wife was Iza Zhukova. They met in 1956, being both MAT theater institute students, lived for some time at Vysotsky's mother's flat in Moscow, after her graduation (Iza was 2 years older) spent months in different cities (her – in Kiev, then Rostov) and finally married on 25 April 1960.

 

He met his second wife Lyudmila Abramova in 1961, while shooting the film 713 Requests Permission to Land. They married in 1965 and had two sons, Arkady (born 1962) and Nikita (born 1964).

 

While still married to Lyudmila Abramova, Vysotsky began a romantic relationship with Tatyana Ivanenko, a Taganka actress, then, in 1967 fell in love with Marina Vlady, a French actress of Russian descent, who was working at Mosfilm on a joint Soviet-French production at that time. Marina had been married before and had three children, while Vladimir had two. They were married in 1969. For 10 years the two maintained a long-distance relationship as Marina compromised her career in France to spend more time in Moscow, and Vladimir's friends pulled strings for him to be allowed to travel abroad to stay with his wife. Marina eventually joined the Communist Party of France, which essentially gave her an unlimited-entry visa into the Soviet Union, and provided Vladimir with some immunity against prosecution by the government, which was becoming weary of his covertly anti-Soviet lyrics and his odds-defying popularity with the masses. The problems of his long-distance relationship with Vlady inspired several of Vysotsky's songs.

 

In the autumn of 1981 Vysotsky's first collection of poetry was officially published in the USSR, called The Nerve (Нерв). Its first edition (25,000 copies) was sold out instantly. In 1982 the second one followed (100,000), then the 3rd (1988, 200,000), followed in the 1990s by several more. The material for it was compiled by Robert Rozhdestvensky, an officially laurelled Soviet poet. Also in 1981 Yuri Lyubimov staged at Taganka a new music and poetry production called Vladimir Vysotsky which was promptly banned and officially premiered on 25 January 1989.

 

In 1982 the motion picture The Ballad of the Valiant Knight Ivanhoe was produced in the Soviet Union and in 1983 the movie was released to the public. Four songs by Vysotsky were featured in the film.

 

In 1986 the official Vysotsky poetic heritage committee was formed (with Robert Rozhdestvensky at the helm, theater critic Natalya Krymova being both the instigator and the organizer). Despite some opposition from the conservatives (Yegor Ligachev was the latter's political leader, Stanislav Kunyaev of Nash Sovremennik represented its literary flank) Vysotsky was rewarded posthumously with the USSR State Prize. The official formula – "for creating the character of Zheglov and artistic achievements as a singer-songwriter" was much derided from both the left and the right. In 1988 the Selected Works of... (edited by N. Krymova) compilation was published, preceded by I Will Surely Return... (Я, конечно, вернусь...) book of fellow actors' memoirs and Vysotsky's verses, some published for the first time. In 1990 two volumes of extensive The Works of... were published, financed by the late poet's father Semyon Vysotsky. Even more ambitious publication series, self-proclaimed "the first ever academical edition" (the latter assertion being dismissed by sceptics) compiled and edited by Sergey Zhiltsov, were published in Tula (1994–1998, 5 volumes), Germany (1994, 7 volumes) and Moscow (1997, 4 volumes).

 

In 1989 the official Vysotsky Museum opened in Moscow, with the magazine of its own called Vagant (edited by Sergey Zaitsev) devoted entirely to Vysotsky's legacy. In 1996 it became an independent publication and was closed in 2002.

 

In the years to come, Vysotsky's grave became a site of pilgrimage for several generations of his fans, the youngest of whom were born after his death. His tombstone also became the subject of controversy, as his widow had wished for a simple abstract slab, while his parents insisted on a realistic gilded statue. Although probably too solemn to have inspired Vysotsky himself, the statue is believed by some to be full of metaphors and symbols reminiscent of the singer's life.

 

In 1995 in Moscow the Vysotsky monument was officially opened at Strastnoy Boulevard, by the Petrovsky Gates. Among those present were the bard's parents, two of his sons, first wife Iza, renown poets Yevtushenko and Voznesensky. "Vysotsky had always been telling the truth. Only once he was wrong when he sang in one of his songs: 'They will never erect me a monument in a square like that by Petrovskye Vorota'", Mayor of Moscow Yuri Luzhkov said in his speech.[95] A further monument to Vysotsky was erected in 2014 at Rostov-on-Don.

 

In October 2004, a monument to Vysotsky was erected in the Montenegrin capital of Podgorica, near the Millennium Bridge. His son, Nikita Vysotsky, attended the unveiling. The statue was designed by Russian sculptor Alexander Taratinov, who also designed a monument to Alexander Pushkin in Podgorica. The bronze statue shows Vysotsky standing on a pedestal, with his one hand raised and the other holding a guitar. Next to the figure lies a bronze skull – a reference to Vysotsky's monumental lead performances in Shakespeare's Hamlet. On the pedestal the last lines from a poem of Vysotsky's, dedicated to Montenegro, are carved.

 

The Vysotsky business center & semi-skyscraper was officially opened in Yekaterinburg, in 2011. It is the tallest building in Russia outside of Moscow, has 54 floors, total height: 188.3 m (618 ft). On the third floor of the business center is the Vysotsky Museum. Behind the building is a bronze sculpture of Vladimir Vysotsky and his third wife, a French actress Marina Vlady.

 

In 2011 a controversial movie Vysotsky. Thank You For Being Alive was released, script written by his son, Nikita Vysotsky. The actor Sergey Bezrukov portrayed Vysotsky, using a combination of a mask and CGI effects. The film tells about Vysotsky's illegal underground performances, problems with KGB and drugs, and subsequent clinical death in 1979.

 

Shortly after Vysotsky's death, many Russian bards started writing songs and poems about his life and death. The best known are Yuri Vizbor's "Letter to Vysotsky" (1982) and Bulat Okudzhava's "About Volodya Vysotsky" (1980). In Poland, Jacek Kaczmarski based some of his songs on those of Vysotsky, such as his first song (1977) was based on "The Wolfhunt", and dedicated to his memory the song "Epitafium dla Włodzimierza Wysockiego" ("Epitaph for Vladimir Vysotsky").

 

Every year on Vysotsky's birthday festivals are held throughout Russia and in many communities throughout the world, especially in Europe. Vysotsky's impact in Russia is often compared to that of Wolf Biermann in Germany, Bob Dylan in America, or Georges Brassens and Jacques Brel in France.

 

The asteroid 2374 Vladvysotskij, discovered by Lyudmila Zhuravleva, was named after Vysotsky.

 

During the Annual Q&A Event Direct Line with Vladimir Putin, Alexey Venediktov asked Putin to name a street in Moscow after the singer Vladimir Vysotsky, who, though considered one of the greatest Russian artists, has no street named after him in Moscow almost 30 years after his death. Venediktov stated a Russian law that allowed the President to do so and promote a law suggestion to name a street by decree. Putin answered that he would talk to Mayor of Moscow and would solve this problem. In July 2015 former Upper and Lower Tagansky Dead-ends (Верхний и Нижний Таганские тупики) in Moscow were reorganized into Vladimir Vysotsky Street.

 

The Sata Kieli Cultural Association, [Finland], organizes the annual International Vladimir Vysotsky Festival (Vysotski Fest), where Vysotsky's singers from different countries perform in Helsinki and other Finnish cities. They sing Vysotsky in different languages and in different arrangements.

 

Two brothers and singers from Finland, Mika and Turkka Mali, over the course of their more than 30-year musical career, have translated into Finnish, recorded and on numerous occasions publicly performed songs of Vladimir Vysotsky.

 

Throughout his lengthy musical career, Jaromír Nohavica, a famed Czech singer, translated and performed numerous songs of Vladimir Vysotsky, most notably Песня о друге (Píseň o příteli – Song about a friend).

 

The Museum of Vladimir Vysotsky in Koszalin dedicated to Vladimir Vysotsky was founded by Marlena Zimna (1969–2016) in May 1994, in her apartment, in the city of Koszalin, in Poland. Since then the museum has collected over 19,500 exhibits from different countries and currently holds Vladimir Vysotsky' personal items, autographs, drawings, letters, photographs and a large library containing unique film footage, vinyl records, CDs and DVDs. A special place in the collection holds a Vladimir Vysotsky's guitar, on which he played at a concert in Casablanca in April 1976. Vladimir Vysotsky presented this guitar to Moroccan journalist Hassan El-Sayed together with an autograph (an extract from Vladimir Vysotsky's song "What Happened in Africa"), written in Russian right on the guitar.

 

In January 2023, a monument to the outstanding actor, singer and poet Vladimir Vysotsky was unveiled in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, in the square near the Rodina House of Culture. Author Vladimir Chebotarev.

 

After her husband's death, urged by her friend Simone Signoret, Marina Vlady wrote a book called The Aborted Flight about her years together with Vysotsky. The book paid tribute to Vladimir's talent and rich persona, yet was uncompromising in its depiction of his addictions and the problems that they caused in their marriage. Written in French (and published in France in 1987), it was translated into Russian in tandem by Vlady and a professional translator and came out in 1989 in the USSR. Totally credible from the specialists' point of view, the book caused controversy, among other things, by shocking revelations about the difficult father-and-son relationship (or rather, the lack of any), implying that Vysotsky-senior (while his son was alive) was deeply ashamed of him and his songs which he deemed "anti-Soviet" and reported his own son to the KGB. Also in 1989 another important book of memoirs was published in the USSR, providing a bulk of priceless material for the host of future biographers, Alla Demidova's Vladimir Vysotsky, the One I Know and Love. Among other publications of note were Valery Zolotukhin's Vysotsky's Secret (2000), a series of Valery Perevozchikov's books (His Dying Hour, The Unknown Vysotsky and others) containing detailed accounts and interviews dealing with the bard's life's major controversies (the mystery surrounding his death, the truth behind Vysotsky Sr.'s alleged KGB reports, the true nature of Vladimir Vysotsky's relations with his mother Nina's second husband Georgy Bartosh etc.), Iza Zhukova's Short Happiness for a Lifetime and the late bard's sister-in-law Irena Vysotskaya's My Brother Vysotsky. The Beginnings (both 2005).

 

A group of enthusiasts has created a non-profit project – the mobile application "Vysotsky"

 

The multifaceted talent of Vysotsky is often described by the term "bard" (бард) that Vysotsky has never been enthusiastic about. He thought of himself mainly as an actor and poet rather than a singer, and once remarked, "I do not belong to what people call bards or minstrels or whatever." With the advent of portable tape-recorders in the Soviet Union, Vysotsky's music became available to the masses in the form of home-made reel-to-reel audio tape recordings (later on cassette tapes).

 

Vysotsky accompanied himself on a Russian seven-string guitar, with a raspy voice singing ballads of love, peace, war, everyday Soviet life and of the human condition. He was largely perceived as the voice of honesty, at times sarcastically jabbing at the Soviet government, which made him a target for surveillance and threats. In France, he has been compared with Georges Brassens; in Russia, however, he was more frequently compared with Joe Dassin, partly because they were the same age and died in the same year, although their ideologies, biographies, and musical styles are very different. Vysotsky's lyrics and style greatly influenced Jacek Kaczmarski, a Polish songwriter and singer who touched on similar themes.

 

The songs – over 600 of them – were written about almost any imaginable theme. The earliest were blatnaya pesnya ("outlaw songs"). These songs were based either on the life of the common people in Moscow or on life in the crime people, sometimes in Gulag. Vysotsky slowly grew out of this phase and started singing more serious, though often satirical, songs. Many of these songs were about war. These war songs were not written to glorify war, but rather to expose the listener to the emotions of those in extreme, life-threatening situations. Most Soviet veterans would say that Vysotsky's war songs described the truth of war far more accurately than more official "patriotic" songs.

 

Nearly all of Vysotsky's songs are in the first person, although he is almost never the narrator. When singing his criminal songs, he would adopt the accent and intonation of a Moscow thief, and when singing war songs, he would sing from the point of view of a soldier. In many of his philosophical songs, he adopted the role of inanimate objects. This created some confusion about Vysotsky's background, especially during the early years when information could not be passed around very easily. Using his acting talent, the poet played his role so well that until told otherwise, many of his fans believed that he was, indeed, a criminal or war veteran. Vysotsky's father said that "War veterans thought the author of the songs to be one of them, as if he had participated in the war together with them." The same could be said about mountain climbers; on multiple occasions, Vysotsky was sent pictures of mountain climbers' graves with quotes from his lyrics etched on the tombstones.

 

Not being officially recognized as a poet and singer, Vysotsky performed wherever and whenever he could – in the theater (where he worked), at universities, in private apartments, village clubs, and in the open air. It was not unusual for him to give several concerts in one day. He used to sleep little, using the night hours to write. With few exceptions, he wasn't allowed to publish his recordings with "Melodiya", which held a monopoly on the Soviet music industry. His songs were passed on through amateur, fairly low quality recordings on vinyl discs and magnetic tape, resulting in his immense popularity. Cosmonauts even took his music on cassette into orbit.

 

Musically, virtually all of Vysotsky's songs were written in a minor key, and tended to employ from three to seven chords. Vysotsky composed his songs and played them exclusively on the Russian seven string guitar, often tuned a tone or a tone-and-a-half below the traditional Russian "Open G major" tuning. This guitar, with its specific Russian tuning, makes a slight yet notable difference in chord voicings than the standard tuned six string Spanish (classical) guitar, and it became a staple of his sound. Because Vysotsky tuned down a tone and a half, his strings had less tension, which also colored the sound.

 

His earliest songs were usually written in C minor (with the guitar tuned a tone down from DGBDGBD to CFACFAC)

 

Songs written in this key include "Stars" (Zvyozdy), "My friend left for Magadan" (Moy drug uyekhal v Magadan), and most of his "outlaw songs".

 

At around 1970, Vysotsky began writing and playing exclusively in A minor (guitar tuned to CFACFAC), which he continued doing until his death.

 

Vysotsky used his fingers instead of a pick to pluck and strum, as was the tradition with Russian guitar playing. He used a variety of finger picking and strumming techniques. One of his favorite was to play an alternating bass with his thumb as he plucked or strummed with his other fingers.

 

Often, Vysotsky would neglect to check the tuning of his guitar, which is particularly noticeable on earlier recordings. According to some accounts, Vysotsky would get upset when friends would attempt to tune his guitar, leading some to believe that he preferred to play slightly out of tune as a stylistic choice. Much of this is also attributable to the fact that a guitar that is tuned down more than 1 whole step (Vysotsky would sometimes tune as much as 2 and a half steps down) is prone to intonation problems.

 

Vysotsky had a unique singing style. He had an unusual habit of elongating consonants instead of vowels in his songs. So when a syllable is sung for a prolonged period of time, he would elongate the consonant instead of the vowel in that syllable.

 

The Vladimir Semyonovich Vysotsky Statue is a prominent monument located in Voronezh, Russian Federation, dedicated to the legendary Russian singer-songwriter, actor, and poet Vladimir Semyonovich Vysotsky. This statue stands as a tribute to Vysotsky's immense contributions to Russian culture and his enduring legacy.

 

Vladimir Vysotsky was born on January 25, 1938, in Moscow, Russia. He quickly gained recognition for his unique artistic style, characterized by his powerful voice, poetic lyrics, and charismatic stage presence. Vysotsky's songs captured the essence of the Soviet era, addressing social issues, human emotions, and political satire. His music resonated deeply with the masses, and he became an iconic figure in Russian popular culture.

 

The idea of erecting a statue in Voronezh to honor Vladimir Vysotsky was conceived to commemorate his connection to the city. Vysotsky had a special relationship with Voronezh, as he spent a significant portion of his early career performing in local theaters and interacting with the local artistic community. The statue serves as a reminder of this bond and celebrates his artistic contributions.

 

The Vysotsky Statue was unveiled on November 18, 2009, in front of the Voronezh Academic Drama Theater, where Vysotsky performed numerous times. The monument was created by renowned Russian sculptor Grigory Pototsky. Standing at approximately 5 meters tall, the bronze statue captures Vysotsky in a dynamic pose, holding a guitar and singing passionately.

 

The sculpture depicts Vysotsky in mid-performance, capturing his energy and intensity on stage. The attention to detail in the statue is remarkable, with intricate facial features, flowing hair, and realistic clothing. The sculptor aimed to convey Vysotsky's passion and charisma through the artwork, and the statue successfully embodies these qualities.

 

The location of the statue, in front of the Voronezh Academic Drama Theater, is significant. It symbolizes Vysotsky's strong ties to the theater and his impact on the performing arts. The statue serves as a meeting point for admirers of Vysotsky's work, attracting locals and tourists alike. It has become an iconic landmark in Voronezh, attracting visitors who come to pay their respects and celebrate Vysotsky's artistic legacy.

 

The statue's unveiling was accompanied by a grand ceremony, attended by government officials, artists, and Vysotsky's fans. The event highlighted the significance of Vysotsky's artistic contributions and celebrated his enduring influen

After initial difficulties my new toy is perfect now.

However: it has become an expensive toy because the individual parts were bought all over the world. Our Finance Minister also made a significant contribution to the rise in price.

(Google translation)

Boeing 737-86J MSN 32918 FlyEgypt LEMD. On 21 October 2024, it was reported that FlyEgypt had ceased flight operations due to financial difficulties

One of the difficulties in trying to do urban sketching whilst on holiday is invariably you're with other people who have little interest in spending long amounts of time sitting around waiting for you to finish a drawing. I'm always amazed by the people who manage to fill sketchbooks while on holiday - do they go on their own? how do they find the time? Share your secrets with me, please!

This particular location was magical, the light and ambience and the unusual scenery really made for a fantastic composition - and I would have loved to spend a good hour here doing a proper full on drawing of it, but unfortunately I was allowed only 15 minutes by my long suffering girlfriend - so I turned it into a challenge and set the alarm to see what I could capture in that timeframe.

Photoshop colour added at home, and it doesn't look too bad, although I'd still love to go back and do it properly.

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY to everyone who celebrates this special day today!

 

What a mess Flickr was last night! I had difficulty adding titles to my uploaded images, comments didn't save and, after I had added a description to each of the 20 photos, the descriptions all disappeared. When I opened Flickr this morning, there was still no sign of them. Then, suddenly, they re-appeared.

 

My photos taken at the National Butterfly Centre, Mission, South Texas, have now come to an end, so you can sigh a huge sigh of relief : ) After that, I have just a few photos taken at another place that we called in at later in the afternoon. Unfortunately, we only had an hour there before closing time, but how glad we were that we found this place. The highlight there was watching 25 Yellow-crowned Night-Herons coming in to roost for the night in the trees, right where we were standing! What a great sight this was, and we were lucky enough to have a good, close view of these gorgeous birds. We also saw some Purple Martins and their circular, hanging nest "gourds".

 

On Day 6 of our birding holiday in South Texas, 24 March 2019, we left our hotel in Kingsville, South Texas, and started our drive to Mission, where we would be staying at La Quinta Inn & Suites for three nights. On the first stretch of our drive, we were lucky enough to see several bird species, including a Golden-fronted Woodpecker, Hooded Oriole, Red-tailed Hawk, Crested Caracara, Harris's Hawk, Pyrrhuloxia male (looks similar to a Cardinal) and a spectacular Scissor-tailed Flycatcher. I'm not sure if this stretch is called Hawk Alley.

 

We had a long drive further south towards Mission, with only a couple of drive-by photos taken en route (of a strangely shaped building that turned out to be a deserted seed storage building). Eventually, we reached our next planned stop, the National Butterfly Centre. This was a great place, my favourite part of it being the bird feeding station, where we saw all sorts of species and reasonably close. Despite the name of the place, we only saw a few butterflies while we were there. May have been the weather or, more likely, the fact that I was having so much fun at the bird feeding station. We also got to see Spike, a giant African Spurred Tortoise. All the nature/wildlife parks that we visited in South Texas had beautiful visitor centres and usually bird feeding stations. And there are so many of these parks - so impressive!

 

nationalbutterflycenter.org/nbc-multi-media/in-the-news/1...

 

"Ten years ago, the North American Butterfly Association broke ground for what has now become the largest native plant botanical garden in the United States. This 100-acre preserve is home to Spike (who thinks he is a butterfly) and the greatest volume and variety of wild, free-flying butterflies in the nation. In fact, USA Today calls the National Butterfly Center, in Mission, Texas, 'the butterfly capitol of the USA'." From the Butterfly Centre's website.

 

The Centre is facing huge challenges, as a result of the "Border Wall". The following information is from the Centre's website.

 

www.nationalbutterflycenter.org/about-nbc/maps-directions...

 

"No permission was requested to enter the property or begin cutting down trees. The center was not notified of any roadwork, nor given the opportunity to review, negotiate or deny the workplan. Same goes for the core sampling of soils on the property, and the surveying and staking of a “clear zone” that will bulldoze 200,000 square feet of habitat for protected species like the Texas Tortoise and Texas Indigo, not to mention about 400 species of birds. The federal government had decided it will do as it pleases with our property, swiftly and secretly, in spite of our property rights and right to due process under the law."

 

"What the Border Wall will do here:

1) Eradicate an enormous amount of native habitat, including host plants for butterflies, breeding and feeding areas for wildlife, and lands set aside for conservation of endangered and threatened species-- including avian species that migrate N/S through this area or over-winter, here, in the tip of the Central US Flyway.

 

2) Create devastating flooding to all property up to 2 miles behind the wall, on the banks of the mighty Rio Grande River, here.

 

3) Reduce viable range land for wildlife foraging and mating. This will result in greater competition for resources and a smaller gene pool for healthy species reproduction. Genetic "bottlenecks" can exacerbate blight and disease.

 

IN ADDITION:

 

4) Not all birds can fly over the wall, nor will all butterfly species. For example, the Ferruginous Pygmy Owl, found on the southern border from Texas to Arizona, only flies about 6 ft in the air. It cannot overcome a 30 ft vertical wall of concrete and steel.

 

5) Nocturnal and crepuscular wildlife, which rely on sunset and sunrise cues to regulate vital activity, will be negatively affected by night time flood lighting of the "control zone" the DHS CBP will establish along the wall and new secondary drag roads. The expansion of these areas to vehicular traffic will increase wildlife roadkill.

 

6) Animals trapped north of the wall will face similar competition for resources, cut off from native habitat in the conservation corridor and from water in the Rio Grande River and adjacent resacas. HUMANS, here, will also be cut off from our only source of fresh water, in this irrigated desert.

20121220 - "The Greatest Trial"

“Our most significant opportunities will be found in times of greatest difficulty.” -Thomas S. Monson

 

-Get up, stand up, believe and have the courage. Hardships are made to make you better, trials are given to make you stronger, walk the path and become the best as you can be.

Google+ | Twitter | Facebook

I could go on writing pages about this photo not because of the technical difficulties I faced as a photographer and photo editor, but because of the personal meaning this verse has to me.

 

This photo is an HDR image with the Orton effect added to it. I chose those colours, a bit reddish, because it makes the figurine looks like a figurine—I didn’t want it to look like a real person—since the bride is supposed to be symbolic of my future wife.

 

You might be wondering why I chose this verse when the Bible is full of verses about purity, marriage, and love!

 

Well, for a long time now it has been my heart’s desire to get married to the woman God has meant for me, according to His timing. Second to only knowing Jesus more and more and become more like Him and fulfilling His purpose for my life, having my own family has been my biggest dream. However, waiting has not been an easy task, especially few years ago when I knew what God’s will was from reading the Bible, but I didn’t have enough faith to live a worry free life in Christ—simply put, I knew He was faithful but I didn’t trust Him fully all the time.

 

I think about two years ago I felt so lonely and saw how everyone around me has someone, whether according to God’s will or not, and so I went to pray and started crying out to Him. I was so troubled in my heart that I opened the Bible to show Him 1 Corinthians 7 where Paul talks about ‘marriage’. (I know it might sound silly to show God where in His Word He said this or that, but I also know it is better to wrestle with God, like Jacob did, and find His will rather than just pretend everything is “fine” and not know His will.) As I was looking for 1 Corinthians I passed Romans where in few seconds I passed over a page in Romans that I felt God wanted me to read, but I was in such a hurry that I passed it by! Then I sensed God telling me to stop and go back two pages, to the page I had skipped, so I stopped and went back to it. The page is divided by two columns and I had read it before and underlined some verses and circled some words, etc. However, God told me to look down the first column, which was not touched by a pen, and to start reading it. It was Romans 8:24-25:

 

For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has?

But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.

 

I kept reading it over and over again, because I knew it was God telling me two things:

 

1) He knows where in His Word He said so and so, just as He knows everything else!

2) If I want to get married according to His way and timing, my future wife and I have to be ready, and that takes time and in the meantime we have to allow God to make us ready.

 

So now it is the most romantic verse to me! Ever since then until now God has confirmed this promise to me through other scripture and answer of prayers. I would like to mention that this promise is a conditional promise: if I would wait PATIENTLY then God will keep His promise—getting married to the woman He has in mind for me according to His timing. In other words, I cannot live according to the way of the world and then expect to get the blessing of God.

 

Another thing I have decided is not to create a mental image of her, because that will put restrictions on God’s will which will make it hard for me to be single minded with Him and harder to accept His will and obey Him. (The people who lived in Jesus' days on earth created a mental image of the promised Saviour, a mental image that did not fit God's description in His Word of the promised Saviour, so when He finally came they could not accept Him--instead they crucified Him.)

 

I am also learning to accept myself, whether the way He created my physical body, personality, my talents, and the place and family I grew up in. The only thing I desire He changes is my character and make it like the character of His Son, Jesus Christ. (This is especially has not been easy because I grew up in a culture where everybody is constantly being compared to everyone else. And your worth is determined by a class system based on human standards.)

 

I have prayed what some (especially ‘men’) would call “outrageous” prayers, however if the fulfillment of those prayers is what it takes to conform me to the likeness of my Lord Jesus Christ then so be it. And believe me God has answered those prayers and as hard as God’s sanctifying process has been I wouldn’t chose to do it any other way. (I just hope my future wife won't be upset with me when she will know I've included her in those prayers too! After all, He has to prepare her too!)

 

However, God’s most important lesson in this time is: to be happy, and emotionally wholesome simply because I know Him. I truly believe if God can’t make a person happy and content a husband and wife won’t be able to. This will introduce a lot of strains into the marriage as it stresses the partner whose emotional and spiritual needs are not being met, and the other partner who can’t meet needs that only God can. (Even though for this lesson to start I had to go through hardest time of my life, but I am trusting that the God who created the universe and everything in it so magnificently and who loved me so much as to die on the cross for me, knows what He is doing and He is doing it for my best and my future wife’s best.)

 

Lastly and more importantly, I am learning to live for Him and focus on Him and trust that He is faithful and can take care of fulfilling His promise. I am learning to delight myself in the Lord and in due time He will fulfill my heart second desire (Psalm 37:4; Matthew 6:33). And if I won't ever get married, that's ok too as long as I have Him and it is His will for my lfe.

 

I would like to add one more comment to whoever made it this far! Being a Christian does not mean we are perfect. It does not mean life around us is perfect either. We cry, we weep, we feel rejected and heartbroken, and we get scared and worry. We give up sometimes, get confused, and disillusioned (even with God!). But as Paul put it in 2 Corinthians 4:8-9:

 

We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair;

persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.

 

PS: One day, as I was working alone I was telling Him about my future wife and I came up for a nickname for her, and He seemed to like it. So now everyone who is close to me knows her nickname! I just hope she will like it!

 

(Orton effect. HDRI. Toronto, ON; winter 2008.)

 

Due to financial difficulties Alfa Romeo stopped racing in 1933 (Alfa’s own version of the story is that the marque had already proved itself) and sold off its racing division to Enzo Ferrari, who established his own racing team, ‘Scuderia Ferrari’.

 

The legendary racing driver Louis Chiron took part in the 1933 Le Mans race for the Scuderia in this car, which has bodywork designed by Touring. The regulations for participating touring cars specified that they had to be fitted with a windshield, mudguards, a silencer, lighting, a horn and four seats. Needless to say, everything was kept to a minimum in order to limit the weight. The rear seats, for example, aren’t really usable. The car weighs just over 1,000 kilograms. Note the fin at the rear, an important step towards the streamlining of racing cars.

 

The 2.3-litre, eight-cylinder engine introduced by Alfa Romeo in 1931 was in fact made up of two four-cylinder blocks, one behind the other, with an ingenious gear mechanism that drove the camshafts as well as the compressor. The cylinder capacity was increased to 2.6 litres for this Le Mans version.

 

2,6 Liter

8 Cylinder

180 HP

 

Louwman Museum

Den Haag - The Hague

Nederland - Netherlands

March 2013

I had some difficulty choosing the subject, partly because we're new to the South Bay area of Los Angeles. Initially, I considered some obvious choices but my thoughts began to dwell on the qualities that first attracted us to our city, such as its laid-back, casual atmosphere. I started thinking about people who might represent that quality, and then I thought of Chef Hiro.

 

Chef Hiro owns Sun & Moon Cafe, a sushi bar that serves Japanese fusion cuisine just a block from the beach. The bar is a well-known hangout among locals. The first time we went to his bar, I saw all the eclectic, somewhat chaotic decor, with Japanese umbrellas and daruma dolls beside drawings of surfboards. I thought it was a little wacky but cool in a down-to-earth way, which reflected the personality of Chef Hiro.

 

When I asked him for an appointment for a portrait, I introduced myself and offered to shake his hand. He offered me a fist bump instead. That's Chef Hiro. He has bragging rights for having been an Iron Chef in Japan but you'd never know it by talking to him because he's entirely unassuming, and the first time you meet him, he already makes you feel like you've been buddies for years.

 

That's what I want to show about our community. It is one of the most affluent cities in the whole country, and there are plenty of wealthy residents, but generally, most of them don't flaunt their wealth and most people are warm and congenial, just like Chef Hiro.

 

For Chef Hiro's portrait, I wanted to show the sushi bar in the background because it shows his personality. It's a very busy background and it would have been easier to select a clean background, but it wouldn't do justice to Chef's colorful restaurant or character. To make the background less of a distraction and more supportive to the portrait, I thought of some solutions such as a low-key portrait where a shaft of light illuminated only part of the background. However, I thought that the low-key portrait didn't suit Chef Hiro's cheerful disposition. Instead I decided to use a background light to draw the viewer's attention to Chef Hiro.

 

For the light on Chef Hiro himself, it was going to be simple and natural -- a reflection of his personality. I used the ambient light from a large window, then used a reflector as fill.

 

The gesture I captured here is 100% Chef Hiro. I didn't 'direct' him or anything, although that's exactly how I imagined he would look (partly why I chose a wide focal length - to exaggerate the gesture that I expected).

 

In post-processing, I applied a radial blur with a layer mask to keep the viewer's attention on Chef Hiro.

 

Nikon D300 + Tamron 17-50 VC @ 17mm. ISO 1600, f/2.8, 1/125.

Lighting info: SB-800 gelled, aimed at background, triggered via Radiopopper JrX. Large window as key, reflector as fill.

Started Sept. 15, completed Dec. 7, this 8000-piece art puzzle by Francisco de Goya ranks within the top few puzzles I've done in terms of difficulty. The very limited color palette, the dominance of muted and dark hues, and the fact that the image on the accompanying box didn't match the colors of the puzzle, made this one especially challenging. On the other hand, the painting's composition, punctuated by the square light-box and white shirt, and then emanating outwards into darker peripheries, made this one a real pleasure 'to watch grow.'

 

*****

 

I thought this might be a good time to provide some context about the painting itself - The Shootings of May 3rd, 1808 - which is very significant both in terms of Spanish art and art history in general. The text below is an excerpt from smarthistory.khanacademy.org/romanticism-in-spain.html:

 

Goya's dark vision

This painting offers an excellent example of the radical stylistic shift that rejects Neo-Classicism. Goya presents us with a dark vision of innocent Spaniards executed by a Napoleonic firing squad. In order to offer an explanation of what this event meant to Goya, we first need to introduce a little history.

 

The Napoleonic Empire

Napoleon Bonaparte, who, in a coup d'etat in 1799 seized control of post-revolutionary France from the weak governing body, the Directory. Napoleon eventually consolidated his power, and with a nod to Charlmagne and the Caesars declared himself Emperor. At the height of his power, Napoleon's empire included France, the low countries (Belgium, Luxembourg, and The Netherlands), Germany, Italy, Spain, and much of north Africa and the Near East. It is, of course, Spain that we need to focus on here.

 

By the end of the 18th century, Goya's talents had been rewarded and he had attained the post of First Painter to the Spanish monarch, King Charles IV. This enviable position was to be short lived, due to the poor judgment of the King. Early in the new century, Charles became convinced that Great Britain, which had previously wrest control of the world's seas from Spain, intended to invade its historical enemy.

 

The Crown's defensive response was catastrophic. Charles invited Napoleon Bonaparte to bring troops onto Spanish soil in order to defend against Great Britain, their great mutual enemy. The French recognized King Charles's fateful request as an admission of weakness and seized Spain. Eventually, Napoleon's brother, not the English, would replace Charles on the Spanish throne.

 

Initially, Goya, like many Spanish intellectuals, welcomed the French. Spain had been declining in wealth and power since the 16th century and had managed to avoid the beneficial revolutions in science, philosophy and industry that were then transforming Northwestern Europe. Intellectuals hoped that France would impose its modern Enlightenment culture on an increasingly reactionary Spain.

 

The Third of May, 1808

Goya's 1814 painting, The Third of May, 1808, The Shootings at Mount Principio Outside Madrid, expresses Goya's bitter disappointment. On May 2, 1808, a French soldier was shot dead in Madrid. A Spanish sniper was blamed for the murder, ostensibly an act in defense of Spanish autonomy. The French response was swift, brutal and wildly disproportionate.

 

On May Third, the following day, Napoleonic troops rounded up a large number of innocent civilians, marched them beyond the city's walls, and shot each of them. Goya depicts this grim scene by brilliantly twining form and content. In other words he finds ways to support the narrative through his choices in the actual construction of the canvas. For example:

 

Scale

This is a large canvas of a contemporary tragedy (the painting could be safely made only after Napoleon was deposed in 1814). It consciously refers to the historical use of large-scale history and religious painting (ex. David's Oath of the Horatii, 1784-85), asserting the Romantic claim that the present should reclaim its primacy over an idealized past. Large scale both implies significance and makes the scene both proximate and immediate for the viewer. Goya's scale places us not so much outside the canvas, looking in, but rather so that it seems that we are enveloped into the space, we are not so much observer as direct witnesses.

 

Composition

Rather than the more obvious solution where both the French and the Spanish face off in perfect and equal profile, Goya has shifted our vantage so that we more directly face the victims while the faces of the Napoleonic guard are obscured. This successful strategy increases our sympathy on the one hand while reducing the soldiers individuality and perhaps even equating them with the guns that become their faces on the other.

 

Similarly expressive is Goya's decision to trap the persecuted against the rising mountain and the heavy and forbidding blackness of the night sky. Finally, Goya multiplies the terror of the immediate ordeal by trailing the line of unfortunate captives into the distance, suggesting the that this action will by repeated throughout the night.

 

Line, Brushwork and Color

In sharp contrast to the smooth surfaces and modulation of tone seen in Neo-Classicism, French and Spanish Romanticism tended to strive instead for a more impulsive, more physical mark.

 

In Goya's painting the figures are rendered in comparatively broad and rough strokes of the brush. Like the mature work of the Great Spanish Baroque painter Diego Velasquez whom Goya so much admired, there is in the Third of May... an effort to invigorate and humanize the frozen compositions of the previously dominant styles (the High Renaissance and Neo-Classicism respectively). This newly recovered aggressiveness is also expressed through light and color. Goya intensifies the painting's emotional pitch by the interaction of sharp contrasts; light collides with expansive darks; white and yellow are sharp and vivid against the deep blacks, browns and reds.

 

Symbolism

Light is central to Goya's image. Like the Baroque masters, Gentileschi and de la Tour, the picture's sole source of light, the papered oil lantern controlled by the French, is contained within the frame of the canvas. Some art historians that specialize in Goya have suggested that this lantern functions as the bitter core of the painting. It symbolizes the Enlightenment that Goya had once hoped the French would bring to Spain but is here used to further their campaign of terror, the enlightenment turned to evil purpose. Certainly, the lantern focuses our attention on the spectrum of emotions on the face of those being shot.

 

Our eyes are drawn to the young man in white and yellow. In contrast to the pleading and terrified faces that surround him, he stands with arms up facing his enemy. It is in the mighty yet fragile bravery expressed in this man's face that Goya's deep humanity becomes apparent. But Goya invests this figure with even greater importance. While at first the figure's raised arms might be read as a sort of active surrender, Goya is in fact mimicking Christ upon the cross. Note the stigmata that appears in the figure's right hand. Goya has cast this massacre as a martyrdom borrowing more than scale from the history of art.