EAK examines a tiny, stub-tailed lizard clinging to the walls of the Dry Fork narrows at the head of Coyote Gulch.

 

2016-03-24_13.00.43_UT-HoleInTheRockRd-SpookyPeekaboo

Joe Knowles (American 1869 -1942)

Oil on canvas

=====================

Painter Clyde Keller, born in Salem on February 22, 1872, showed early signs of artistic talent. By age twelve, he was enrolled in a drawing class at Willamette University under the tutelage of artist Mary Bridges. He would return to the university as a young man to continue his art education under Marie Craig LeGall.

 

In 1894, Keller followed his mentor Homer Davenport, a well-known cartoonist from Silverton, to San Francisco, where both men worked as cartoonists for the San Francisco Examiner. Keller opened an art shop and continued to study and to paint landscapes, seascapes, and portraits. He lost everything in the earthquake of 1906 and decided to return to Oregon to begin again.

 

Settling in Portland, Keller opened an art and frame shop on Southwest Washington Street, where he taught, painted, exhibited, and held meetings for the short-lived Society of Oregon Artists (1912-1913). He was a founding member of the Oregon Society of Oregon Artists and was the organization’s president in 1931.

 

Keller produced over 450 works of art, received more than 250 awards, and was represented in countless local and national exhibitions. In 1923, he won an award at the Seattle Art Museum Annual Exhibition; the next year, he won an award in an exhibition by the Society of Fine Arts in New York. Keller worked in oil and watercolor, and his subject matter was familiar Oregon scenery. One of his favorite painting locales was Sauvie Island on the Columbia River.

 

When Keller was eighty-three years old, he presented a painting to his childhood friend, President Herbert Hoover, who had lived in Salem as a boy. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had one of Keller’s paintings of Bonneville Dam hanging behind his desk in the White House.

 

Keller retired to Cannon Beach on the Oregon Coast, where he continued to paint until his death in August 1962.

oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/clyde_keller_1872_1962_/

 

Keller's output was uneven. His early works, from the teens of the last century, were lovely post-impressionistic gems featuring luminous palette. Later, Keller's output became formulaic and his colors muddied. A knowledgeable dealer told me he suffered from an alcohol-use disorder.

======================

The Columbia Pacific Historical Society in Ilwaco, Washington, has mounted an exhibit of the art of Joe Knowles.

 

Knowles, a skilled artist and relentless self-promoter moved to Seaview, Washington, after a notorious scandal on the East Coast.

 

He's been called one of early start of reality performance. Before considering his art, it's worth exploring the chapter in his life that led him to pull up stakes back East and move to an isolated village on Washington's Long Beach Peninsula.

 

Here's the story.

=========================================================================================================================

[In 1913], Joe Knowles stripped down to his jockstrap, said goodbye to civilization, and marched off into the woods to prove his survival skills. He was the reality star of his day. For eight weeks, rapt readers followed his adventures in the Boston Post. He returned home to a hero’s welcome. That’s when things got interesting.

 

The expedition began on a drizzly August morning, in a sort of no-man’s land outside tiny Eustis, Maine. The spot was some 30 miles removed from the nearest rail line, just north of Rangeley Lake, and east of the Quebec border. Knowles showed up at his starting point, the head of the Spencer Trail, wearing a brown suit and a necktie. A gaggle of reporters and hunting guides circled him.

 

Knowles stripped to his jockstrap. Someone handed him a smoke, cracking, “Here’s your last cigarette.” Knowles savored a few meditative drags. Then he tossed the butt on the ground, cried, “See you later, boys!,” and set off over a small hill named Bear Mountain, moving toward Spencer Lake, 3 or 4 miles away. As soon as he lost sight of his public, he lofted the jockstrap into the brush—so that he could enjoy, as he would later put it in one of his birch-bark dispatches, “the full freedom of the life I was to lead.”

 

If Knowles made himself sound like Tarzan, it was perhaps intentional. One of the most popular stories in Knowles’s day was Tarzan of the Apes, an Edgar Rice Burroughs novella. Published in 1912 in the pulp magazine All-Story, it starred a wild boy who goes “swinging naked through primeval forests.” The story was such a hit that in 1914 it was bound into book form.

 

Pulp magazines (so named because they were published on cheap wood-pulp paper) represented a new literary form, born in 1896. They offered working-class Americans an escape into rousing tales of life in the wilderness. Bearing titles like Argosy, Cavalier, and the Thrill Book, they took cues from Jack London, whose bestselling novels, among them The Call of the Wild (1903) and White Fang (1906), saw burly men testing their mettle in the wild. They were also influenced by Teddy Roosevelt, who insisted that modern man needed to avoid “over-sentimentality” and “over-softness” while living in cities. “Unless we keep the barbarian virtue,” Roosevelt argued, “gaining the civilized ones will be of little avail.”

 

On the morning of October 5, the Post’s front page blared, “KNOWLES, CLAD IN SKINS, COMES OUT OF THE FOREST.” A subhead continued, “Boston Artist, Two Months a ‘Primitive Man,’ Steps into the Twentieth Century near Megantic, Province of Québec.” Subsequent copy read, “Tanned like an Indian, almost black from exposure to the sun…. Scratched and bruised from head to foot by briars and underbrush…. Upper garment sleeveless. Had no underwear.”

 

Picked up nationwide, the Post’s piece explained that Knowles had just traversed the most inhospitable portion of the Maine woods, after which, when he had emerged on the outskirts of Megantic, he had made his first human contact—a young girl he had found standing by the railroad track. “And the child of 14, wild-eyed, stared at him,” the story said, “and into her mind came the memory of a picture of a man of the Stone Age in a history book.”

 

Not everyone believed the story. In late October, after he had returned to civilization, an editorial in the Hartford Courant wondered whether “the biggest fake of the century has been palmed off on a credulous public.” Meanwhile, a reporter from the rival Boston American had begun working on a long story about Knowles. The paper specialized in blockbuster exposés, and its investigative bloodhound, Bert Ford, had spent seven weeks combing the woods around Spencer Lake, aided in his research by a man he would call “one of the ablest trappers in Maine or Canada,” Henry E. Redmond.

 

On December 2, in a front-page article, Ford went public with the explosive allegation that Knowles was a liar. He zeroed in on Knowles’s alleged bear killing, noting that the Nature Man’s bear pit was but 4 feet wide and 3 feet deep. In boldface, the story asserted, “It would have been physically impossible to trap a bear of any age or size in it.” Knowles’s club was likewise damning evidence. Found leaning against a tree, it was a rotting stub of moosewood that Ford easily chipped with his fingernails.

 

According to the Boston American, Knowles had a manager in the Maine woods, and also a guide who bought the bearskin from a trapper for 12 dollars. The bear had not been mauled, but rather shot. “I found four holes in the bear skin,” Ford averred after meeting Knowles and studying the very coat he was wearing. “Experts say these were bullet holes.”

 

Ford argued that Knowles’s Maine adventure was in fact an “aboriginal layoff.” He wasn’t gutting fish and weaving bark shoes, as the Post’s dispatches suggested. Rather, he was lounging about in a log cabin at the foot of Spencer Lake and also occasionally entertaining a lady friend at a nearby cabin.

 

No matter; Knowles had gained the notoriety he needed to launch a national tour of speaking engagements, publish a book, and sell his artwork.

 

Prior to his notoriety for adventure, Knowles was an illustrator whose work graced the cover of numerous periodicals. The “Golden Age” of illustration was in full swing and Knowles’ artwork fit right in. By the early 1920s Knowles had settled in Seaview, Washington where he made his living from his paintings, prints and commissioned works.

 

This exhibition will focus on Joe Knowles as an artist. His paintings, prints and drawings were widely collected and played an important role in this community where he spent the final decades of his career. “By placing his work in the context of early 20th century American art and illustration we hope that viewers will gain a better understanding of Joe Knowles as a creative and accomplished artist,” said CPHM Director and Curator, Betsy Millard.

www.bostonmagazine.com/news/2013/03/26/naked-joe-knowles-...

columbiapacificheritagemuseum.org/the-art-of-joe-knowles/

Everyone should examine anew his life of believing in God to see whether, in the pursuit of God, he has truly understood, truly comprehended, and truly come to know God, whether he truly knows what attitude God bears to the various types of human beings, and whether he truly understands what God is working upon him and how God defines his every act. This God, who is by your side, guiding the direction of your progress, ordaining your destiny, and supplying your needs—how much do you, in the final analysis, understand and how much do you really know about Him? Do you know what He works on you every single day? Do you know the principles and purposes on which He bases His every action? Do you know how He guides you? Do you know the means by which He supplies you? Do you know the methods with which He leads you? Do you know what He wishes to obtain from you and what He wishes to achieve in you? Do you know the attitude He takes to the multifarious ways in which you behave? Do you know whether you are a person beloved of Him? Do you know the origin of His joy, anger, sorrow, and delight, the thoughts and ideas behind them, and His essence? Do you know, ultimately, what kind of God is this God that you believe in? Are these and other questions of the sort something that you have never understood or thought about? In pursuing your belief in God, have you, through real appreciation and experience of God’s words, cleared up your misunderstandings about Him? Have you, after receiving God’s discipline and chastening, arrived at genuine submission and caring? Have you, in the midst of God’s chastisement and judgment, come to know the rebelliousness and satanic nature of man and gained a modicum of understanding about God’s holiness? Have you, under the guidance and enlightenment of God’s words, begun to have a new outlook of life? Have you, in the midst of the trial sent by God, felt His intolerance for man’s offenses as well as what He requires of you and how He is saving you? If you do not know what it is to misunderstand God, or how to clear up this misunderstanding, then one can say that you have never entered into true communion with God and have never understood God, or at least one can say you have never wished to understand Him. If you do not know what is God’s discipline and chastening, then you surely do not know what are submission and caring, or at least you have never truly submitted to or cared for God. If you have never experienced God’s chastisement and judgment, then you will surely not know what is His holiness, and you will be even less clear as to what man’s rebellion is. If you have never truly had a correct outlook on life, or a correct aim in life, but are still in a state of perplexity and indecision over your future path in life, even to the point of being hesitant to go forward, then it is certain that you have never truly received God’s enlightenment and guidance, and one can also say that you have never truly been supplied or replenished by God’s words. If you have not yet undergone God’s trial, then it goes without saying that you will certainly not know what is God’s intolerance for man’s offenses, nor would you understand what God ultimately requires of you, and even less what, ultimately, is His work of managing and saving man. No matter how many years a person has believed in God, if he has never experienced or perceived anything in God’s words, then assuredly he is not walking the path toward salvation, his faith in God is assuredly without actual content, his knowledge of God too is assuredly zero, and it goes without saying that he has no idea at all what it is to revere God.

 

No matter how firmly you believe in His existence, this cannot take the place of your knowledge of God, nor of your reverence for God. No matter how much you have enjoyed of His blessings and His grace, this cannot take the place of your knowledge of God. No matter how willing and eager you are to consecrate your all and expend your all for His sake, this cannot take the place of your knowledge of God. Or perhaps you have grown so familiar with the words He has spoken that you know them by heart and can rattle them off backward; even so, this cannot take the place of your knowledge of God. However intent man may be on following God, if he has never had genuine communion with God, or had a genuine experience of God’s words, then his knowledge of God would be no more than a sheer blank or an endless reverie; for all that you may have “brushed shoulders” with God in passing, or met Him face to face, your knowledge of God would still be zero, and your reverence for God no more than an empty catchword or an ideal.

 

Terms of use

  

An examination of how I am feeling; my overall state of mind, emotional and mental.

I sit and write everything I can think of to describe my current state of mind. The hope is that eventually as I work through my grief some more positive words will start sneaking in. I have not had any will to live on, nor do I look forward to the future, the grief councelors say it is common when losing someone you loved so deeply, and when your worlds revolved around each other for so many years (26), in sudden traumatic circumstances. For my daughters, family, and friends sake I hope they are right, and I will continue to take it day by day until I find I am able to look forward and not see only pain.

 

Thanks everyone for your patience while I continue to work through this.

I'm running out of photos from this adventure. Definitely need to go on a new one this weekend.

 

(Colin's Lightroom preset)

No, Anthurium has never really been a favorite of mine. Somehow I never liked the shining, almost plastic spathe, and I only got to be interested in the spadix when I once examined its hermaphrodite flowers with a magnifying glass.

But today I walked in The Conservatory of the Taman Tasik Perdana - that wonderful Park of Lakes in central Kuala Lumpur - waiting for my transfer to Europe. And it rained... What that shower did to Anthurium this photo shows.

In fact, I am surprised the red came out so well on my little Sony T900 microchip. Usually reds are quite a problem.

Anthurium is also, of course, called the Flamingo Flower; and my thoughts were pulled to many wonderful hours of birdwatching in the Oued Souss just to the south of Agadir in southern Morocco... A thing of the past for now the beach way between Town and Oued has been closed by the Royal Palace. More's the pity.

Now am on the way back to The Netherlands, and for the coming time my postings will be from there, although the photos may be from 'here'.

Russian Orthodox Icons on display at the terrific Russian Museum

- Dear Mr. Bluebird, I have done another scan of your body, now we have examined every inch of you even down to every single mitochondria in your entire body, you are as well as a flesh-bag of your kin can be, actually if I would write a illustrated book, you would be on the picture of the diagnose "heathy Human"

...I think the problem is in your brain and that is not my area, then you have to call the shrink-bot and that is not on the federal assurance, so that will be charged from your wages, and so will my next visit unless you are actually sick!!!

 

- But DMT-GG-1! your are so cold, so inhuman, I am freezing, the world is so cold... can I ask you a personal question!

 

- Eh, Well ok, I guess but then I have to split, there are actual sick people to treat...

 

- Ok, so imagine if you where a human, would you find me exciting, handsome, sexy, hot or just boring...

 

- Well I am not a shrink-bot, so I am not really authorized to do this, I mean the company would punish me severely if you were to kill you self after our talk... but sure I would find you rather mellow, but prize yourself on this: you are the most annoying and time-consuming patient in our entire block of service apartments, so yes you are a special person...

I know what is going on, you miss that pink horrible one, she is very dear to you I know that, but when it concerns me, she could stay lost forever all that grouping and touching, she behaves like a one of those Pig-Human Male experiments from the 50s...

 

- yes you are right I am pointless, without Miss and Irena I am nothing, look here I bought this guitar just so people would think that I played guitar, that I was someone interesting.... Bu-Huu-Bu- cryy, cryyy, cryy...

 

- Ok, now Mr. Bluebird I am leaving now, I would suggest you to call either the shrink-bot or your wife back in the capital, but I would suggest the first, because I don´t think your wife can take much more pathetic wining and whimping about, to be honest I don´t see what she sees in you, your are really the most annoying Flesh-bag I have ever met, I even prefer the pink one, she is sexual deviant and harasser but at least she has some kind of personality... it this wasn´t sci-fi slide-doors that make cool pneumatic sounds I would slam the door to show my anger and repulsion to your fleshy body and pathetic mind!!!

 

BYE!!!

An adorable and intelligent bird.Please press L for larger image and fine details.

Upon examining the briefcase recovered during the capture of two high value individuals (HVIs) in Europe, it revealed the location of a weapons cache/hideout of another Cobalt's lieutenant in Africa. Signals intelligence collected by Project Nadir also confirmed activities at the location in question. The National Command authorized a kinetic operation to capture individuals and collect further intelligence on the whereabouts of the arms dealer Cobalt.

 

The team from the Special Mission Unit patrolled to the target under the cover of darkness. Just before dawn, the team reached the target. After the sniper neutralized the sentry, the team quickly move towards the target buildings. What will the team uncover?

 

To be continued...

The exhibition "Picasso 1932. Erotic Year" at the Musée Picasso Paris examines the link between the artist's personal life and his creation. Pablo Picasso's creative process and daily life are followed day after day through more than one hundred and ten paintings, drawings, engravings and sculptures and a hundred archival documents..? The title of the exhibition, "Picasso 1932. Erotic Year" underlines the significance of sensual works in this year's production process. The exhibition "Picasso 1932. Erotic Year" at the Musée Picasso Paris focuses on a particularly dense year of the artist's creation through paintings, drawings, engravings and sculptures, including some major pieces from his career, and documents that place them in their biographical context. He misses the essential in the comments on his genesis but disregards the true sources of inspiration in an interpretation very much focused on the libido and often very superficial, too bad that the analyses are so simplistic ? Her quest soon took Arieans to France, the centre of the art world at the time. Via Cocteau she automatically arrived at Picasso, a central figure in the Parisian artistic environment. In order to gain more insight into the occult movements that turned out to be literally 'in fashion' in the Parisian artistic world at the beginning of the last century, she consulted a variety of connoisseurs for advice: the French centrepiece of research into the esoteric Antoine Faivre, the religious scientist Jean Pierre Laurant, who mapped out the circles of the Eglise Gnostique, and the occultism connoisseur Robert Amadou. In The Hague she went into the Alchemist’s library and joined a research group of philosophers, philosophers and art historians at the University of Amsterdam.

A 'wildly interesting' research, as she calls it, that because of its interdisciplinary approach does not confine itself to a fragment - the interpretation of one painting - but colours an entire image of a time artistically and philosophically. Arian provides detailed information about the occult currents and orders that were active in Paris around 1900 and about the magazines, such as L'Initiation, that brought esoteric ideas to the attention of a wide audience.

Of great importance was the the philosophically inspired by Order Martinist, founded in 1884 by Gérard Encausse, nicknamed Papus, one of the most influential occultists of the fin-de siècle. Because of the "chaine de silence", the chain of silence that the members of the order never break through, it is not possible to establish with certainty, but it was probably this order that Picasso was a member of during his Cubist period.

The martinists, just like the Alchemists, knew three degrees of initiation: the 'pupil', 'companion' and 'master' of the alchemists were called 'member', 'initiated' and 'initiator' among the martinists, or Superior, Inconnu, who was abbreviated to SI. These letters can be found in some of Picasso's paintings and especially in Picasso's collages,'' Ariens discovered. And there is more: some of the canvases depict black eye masks as they are worn in the martinist lodges; here and there martinist signs roam around, on the canvas La cuisine even a whole kitchen floor full. The square, the symbol of the freemasons, is also a recurring theme. One collage even shows cow letters OR MA -OR(dre) MA(rtiniste) - which prompted one of Picasso's friends to comment that the painter 'advertised order'. In addition to the martyrs, the 'Ordre kabbalistique de la Rose-Croix', which entered into organic cooperation with the martyrdom order, and the Gnostic Church, which is related to martinism, were also influential. The later recruited many of her bishops from the Order Martinist. Inspired by the circle around Picasso, Arian's roles mention the names of famous artists over each other; one appears to be even better introduced into the secrets and symbolism of occultism than the other. According to her, Picasso's main inspirators are the writer Alfred Jarry and the painters Paul Gauguin and Paul Cézanne, and his contemporaries and friends, the writers Max Jacob, Guillaume Apollinaire and André Salmon. In more than the ones picture it’s Skull and Bones that was founded in 1832 at Yale University. The order is also known as "Bones", and members are called "Bonesmen" who are some of the world's most powerful elites.

How many bones did Picasso paint in this work? Probably Picasso could be readed with two modes, one is written in the official catalog, and one other live in gnostic, probably forgotten in the blockchain of silencing? In French the word Songe give Song in English ( Songe is like visionary's dream and Song is a note of dream) The "Songe" of Ezekiel could be the roots of this painting?

In chapter 37 of Ezekiel, we have a classic metaphysical outline upon which very exciting sermons can be built. Very much the same as the David and Goliath thing. When you read that chapter of the valley of the dry bones and you're aware of metaphysical Bible interpretation, you can almost see how the author is winding it all up for you. Here's the valley, here's the dry bones, they're all dry, very disconnected, then comes the Lord and instructions and then this Ezekiel's blewing this to obey them, he obeys them and these things begin happening to the bones. It gets so far and no farther. All the connections are made, all of the shapes and forms are made, but there's one thing lacking, there's no what? There's no life, they are there in form potential, but they haven't become living actualities yet. So Ezekiel says, now what do I do? He says, "Prophesy now, not to the bones, but prophesy now to the four winds, to the all four winds and prophesy now to the winds to tell the bones to live and the bones became a living army." The prophet Ezekiel saw a vision of vast numbers of people resurrected to live again as physical human beings. What is the meaning of this mystifying vision, and what does it teach us about God's plan? The remains of human bones in a dirt grave. 123RF

Much of God’s revelation to Ezekiel revolved around the distant decendants of Israel and crucial, end-time events centuries in the future. From early youth Ezekiel had been educated and trained to be a priest in the kingdom of Judah. But his hopes and dreams had been dashed by King Nebuchadnezzar’s invasion, taking him and other young Jews captive to Babylon. Now far separated from the temple in Jerusalem, how could his education and training be of any real value? There was no need to worry. God was looking after His own. The Creator had called Ezekiel to be a great prophet, ranked alongside Isaiah and Jeremiah. Christian writer Christopher Wright put it this way: “So while we can value all the positive contributions that Ezekiel’s education and training as a priest brought to his prophetic ministry, we must also appreciate the immense personal, professional and theological shock it must have been to him … [Yet] God would use all that He had built into Ezekiel’s life during his years of preparation” ( The Message of Ezekiel, 2001, p. 27). Most in mainstream Christendom erroneously believe that today is the only day of salvation. But this belief simply is not found in the Bible. When he was 30 years old, Ezekiel began to experience astonishing visions from Almighty God. Perhaps in a personal diary, he recorded the exact date on which the first vision occurred: “Now it came to pass in the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, on the fifth day of the month, as I was among the captives by the River Chebar, that the heavens were opened and I saw visions of God” (Ezekiel 1:1, emphasis added throughout). The invisible barriers between heaven and earth were supernaturally parted for Ezekiel. But what did this prophet actually see in vision? Moving beyond the introductory revelation of the awesome angelic realm, we fast-forward to verses 26 and 28. “On the likeness of the throne was a likeness with the appearance of a man high above it… This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord.”There's a beautiful ready-made outline for a metaphysical interpretation. The valley always stands for a low point in your current pathway of life. A downsy, and everybody hits them, in his pathway of life. And when you're in a downsy, and you look around you, what do you usually see all about you? Discouraging, hopeless-looking details - dry bones. Everything is wrong down there. This is a dry bone, meaning a discouraging appearance or a hopeless looking state of affairs. That's what you see in these depressions, these valley periods of your journey of life. But then, you hear the voice of the Lord, "Prophesy unto these bones, say unto them, Oh, ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord". Now, what does Unity call the word of the Lord - affirmations of Truth, declarations of Truth right in the face of the discouraging, negative, hopeless looking conditions or situations. And, as he does this, as we affirm right into the teeth - bones, get it? - of discouraging looking appearances, things begin to happen.

It says, first the bones begin to shake, and then move, and then they began to connect bone to bone. In other words, new connections are formed right in the midst of discouraging or contradictory outer appearances. In the realm of the invisible, every affirmation of Truth results in new connections for future good. This is an occult law of metaphysics. It is absolutely true, in the invisible realm, every affirmation of truth results in new connections of factors for future good. From one point of view, these factors are dry bones, but from another point of view, these factors will become living good, a living army of good, and so, he prophesies and these bones all become connected. Then everything stops ... So then, there has to be a change of the type of prophecies or affirming ... To prophesy, to declare the Truth in every possible direction, that is, let God activity enter into this as He wills, from any direction His spirit choose. Ezekiel initially reacted just like the prophet Daniel and the apostles Paul and John did later. “So when I saw it, I fell on my face, and I heard a voice of One [God] speaking. And He said to me, ‘Son of man, stand on your feet, and I will speak to you’…And He said to me; ‘Son of man, I am sending you to the children of Israel’ ” (Ezekiel 1:28; Ezekiel 2:1-3). God gave Ezekiel a great mission to accomplish. He had important announcements to make. These were intended to reach people far beyond his own time to people down through the ages. And one important vision would serve to encourage all who have ever lived in facing the same remorseless enemy—the seemingly hopeless ending of life in death. The prophet did have a comparatively small personal audience in Babylon of fellow captives from Judah (Ezekiel 3:11). But the real import of his message was not primarily for these deported, displaced prisoners who could do little about their circumstance.It’s important to understand that the kingdoms of Israel and Judah had separated after King Solomon’s death and that the people of the kingdom of Israel had already gone into captivity at the hands of the Assyrians during the latter part of the eighth century B.C.—well over a century before Ezekiel prophesied. And by the time his prophecies began, some of the inhabitants of the kingdom of Judah were likewise already in captivity, first by the Assyrians and then the Babylonians, with most of the rest soon to follow as a result of later Babylonian invasions. Careful reading of Ezekiel’s prophetic message will reveal that it was aimed mainly at the distant future, primarily directed to the end-time descendants of Israel. Much of God’s revelation to him revolved around crucial, end-time events—both positive and negative—that would take place centuries in the future. In the prophecy Jesus Christ gave on the Mount of Olives the week He died, He plainly stated regarding the end-time, “For these are the days of vengeance, that all things which are written [in the Old Testament prophets, including Ezekiel] may be fulfilled” (Luke 21:22). But cataclysmic occurrences at the close of man’s age are just one aspect of this overall prophetic scenario. Notice the apostle Peter’s words to the crowd gathered in Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost seven weeks after Jesus’ death and resurrection: “Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that He may send Jesus Christ, who was preached to you before, whom heaven must receive until the times of restoration of all things, which God has spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets [again including Ezekiel] since the world began” (Acts 3:19-21). This insightful passage depicts a future golden age brought to a suffering humanity by the returning Jesus Christ, lasting 1,000 years (see Revelation 20:1-6). Israel’s prophets aptly describe this long period of peace, prosperity and well-being. One of God’s annual festivals, the Feast of Tabernacles, corresponds directly to Christ’s coming millennial reign.

 

A rebellious analysts lost forever?

God continued to instruct Ezekiel: “Then He said to me, ‘Son of man, go to the house of Israel and speak with My words to them’ ” (Ezekiel 3:4). Our Creator speaks to a rebellious people who have rarely been inclined to take His warning messages seriously. Their descendants down through time have most often chosen to remain in the depths of idolatry and Sabbath-breaking, two sins against God that Ezekiel emphasized (Ezekiel 14:1-6; Ezekiel 20:12-13; Ezekiel 20:16-17; Ezekiel 20:24; Ezekiel 22:3; Ezekiel 22:8). Tragically, these two trends continue unabated today. But who truly represents the “Israel” today to whom these prophecies are intended? The present tiny state of Israel consists mostly of Jews descended from those of the kingdom of Judah, so the name Israel is a misnomer. History and Bible prophecy show that the modern descendants of the other tribes of Israel stand clearly identified as the Americans, British Commonwealth and peoples of northwestern Europe. For the biblical and historical evidence, request or download our free booklet The United States and Britain in Bible Prophecy . You cannot truly grasp God’s prophetic message to humankind apart from the essential knowledge disclosed in this eye-opening publication. The modern descendants of Israel have been likewise rebellious against God. And all share in the same fate—national punishment and, for each individual, the ultimate penalty of sin, which is death (Romans 6:23). The prophecies of future national blessings are encouraging, but what good are they to those who have died? After the Exodus from Egypt, a whole generation of disobedient Israelites perished in the wilderness. Later, many died at the hands of ruthless Assyrian invaders. Much later, about 40 years after Christ’s death and resurrection, many died tragically as a result of the Roman invasion of Judea and the capture of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. Of course, the same fate is shared by those who never had the opportunity to choose a way of life to follow. Consider all those little babies Herod cruelly killed in a failed effort to murder the Christ child. Their parents were devastated with unrelieved grief. “A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation, weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, refusing to be comforted, because they are no more” (Matthew 2:18). Are these children, then, now lost? Now, instead of affirming about things or prophesying to the bones, now he's told prophesy to and about what? The winds, all four winds. What is wind often a symbol for in the Bible? The Holy Spirit, the activity of God, the movement of God as the Holy Spirit. Now, why would he designate all four winds? Well, you're talking about the movement of God to bring changes and good into your life. To prophesy, to declare the Truth in every possible direction, that is, let God activity enter into this as He wills, from any direction His spirit chooses. North, east, south or west. Not from where I insist it's got to come from - south by southeast only! Don't we often do this? We don't realize it, but we say, all directions of the wind, wherever God chooses, in God's way, let this fulfillment come. So many people among the Israelites have died as victims of evil and injustice. Today we remember the Holocaust in which 6 million Jews were callously murdered in Central and Eastern Europe. How should we try to understand all of these tragic occurrences? Is there no hope for even innocent children who died in infancy without ever knowing why? Of course, these questions beset people of every nation—not just Israel. But God has given a special message through Ezekiel to Israel in this regard—one that holds significance for all people. The French martyrs, Rosicrucians and Gnostics of the beginning of the last century treated alchemy, kabbalah and tarot as analogous systems, which they brought together under one heading. According to art historians, this mixture of symbolism from the Kabbalah, Tarot and Alchemy, which inspired Picasso in his cubist work, is the key to the painter's true intentions in his famous painting 'Les Demoiselles d'Avignon'. André Breton, pope and surrealist ideologist, persuaded art dealer Doucet to buy the canvas. He wrote, "If this canvas escapes us, most of our mysteries will go along. But the art historians left that sentence out''.

The final part of Ariean's research, a case study in which she removes the veil of mystery, differs slightly, to put it mildly, from the reception of the canvas so far. Seen through the occult spectacles which she - with an abundance of material - shows that Picasso also had them on at the time, the canvas points Aryan in a very different way from the 'philosophical brothel' for which it was long regarded. Supported by her study of the hundreds of sketches and preliminary studies, she discovers neither 'African art' nor 'syphilis sufferers' in the painting. No 'naked bodies', but 'naked facts': signs and numbers. The order was incorporated in 1856 by General William Huntington Russell, and Alphonso Taft who became Secretary of War under President Grant in 1876. The numerical value of this year is 1+8+7+6 = 22, and the numerical motto for Skull and Bones is 322, or 3 x's 22 which you will see below is not a coincidence. 22 bones are represented in Picasso’s engraving.... In numerology, the number 22 is often called the Master Builder. The Phoenician-Hebrews possess 22 books and their alphabet is made up of 22 letters, which was created to compose the Word of God. The Kabbalah teaches us that the letters of the Hebrew alphabet are the building blocks of universe. The underlying occult scientific significance of the number 22 in science would represent the bones of the skull, of which there are twenty-two. 8 form the cranium, or braincase, and 14 are associated with the face.

Our brains are what we use to think, reason and come to know the divine or God. The 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet created to compose the Word of God is our 22 boned skull, and the place where we receive the light to become illuminated, or enlightened beings. Hence, to be like Saint John and have our own Revelation.

Portrait by Picasso of the great resurrection

Ezekiel continued to have visions throughout his prophetic ministry. The one in the 37th chapter speaks directly to the desperate plight of Israel down through the ages. Its intriguing description of the valley of dry bones was the subject of a popular song, “Dry Bones,” during the mid-1950s. No matter how many times one rereads it, this account remains both arresting and suspenseful to the converted mind. But even more important is the profound meaning for us—and for our departed loved ones, who may never have been called of God or spiritually converted during this age. This remarkable, comforting vision assures us that we will see them again! The hand of the Lord came upon me and brought me out in the Spirit of the Lord, and set me down in the midst of the valley; and it was full of bones . . . and He said to me, ‘Son of man, can these bones live?’ So I answered, ‘O Lord God, you know’ ” (Ezekiel 37:1-3). Then, what happens to those potential bones, those skeletons become a living army. In other words, the potential good which you have declared and affirmed come to your life from any direction God chooses. The static good becomes living good, which means a part of their life, a part of the goodness of their life. A living army, an army of blessings come into manifestation through prophesying according to the direction or the guidance of the Lord. God must not be underestimated. He asked the patriarch Abraham, “Is anything too hard for the Lord?” (Genesis 18:14). Centuries later He posed the same question to the prophet Jeremiah: “Behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh. Is there anything too hard for Me?” (Jeremiah 32:27). Remember that one of the meanings of prophesying simply means affirming. Affirming the Truth regardless of circumstances. Weren't the prophets constantly talking about future events? So often the prophets have been interpreted as sort of fortune-tellers, or clairvoyants in all this. Well, metaphysically, this is not so. What it really means on the metaphysical level is declaring the Truth which will insure a future good outcome. Of course, the prophets also prophesy in what other manner - negative, too. Therein lies part of the problem.

Ezekiel’s vision continues: “Thus says the Lord God to these bones: ‘Surely I will cause breath to enter into you, and you shall live’ . . . Also He said to me, ‘Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath, “Thus says the Lord God: ‘Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain, that they may live’ ”’” (Ezekiel 37:5; Ezekiel 37:9). Physical human beings cannot live without drawing breath—the essence of our fleshly life. Even excellent swimmers, experts at holding their breath, cannot survive long without breathing air. So I prophesied as He commanded me, and breath came into them, and they lived , and stood upon their feet, an exceedingly great army” (Ezekiel 37:10).. Then He said to me, ‘Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel’ ” (Ezekiel 37:11). God then summarizes what He had just described in detail. “Thus says the Lord God: ‘Behold, O My people, I will open your graves and cause you to come up from your graves, and bring you into the land of Israel. Then you shall know that I am the Lord” (Ezekiel 37:12-13). Most pictured here never really knew God during their previous human lives. The closing verse of this vision reveals why God, who never does anything without purpose, has just resurrected all these people: “I will put My [Holy] Spirit in you, and you shall live” (Ezekiel 37:14). At that time all of these people will have an opportunity to be converted—that is, to repent of their sins, be forgiven and baptized, and receive God’s Holy Spirit by which they can truly be converted and receive God’s gift of eternal life. The indication of this preceding verse is that the majority of this great multitude of people will obtain everlasting life in God’s Kingdom.The New Testament also speaks to this incredible, miraculous phenomenon. The apostle Paul wrote: “And so all Israel will be saved , as it is written: ‘The Deliverer [Jesus Christ] will come out of Zion, and He will turn away ungodliness from Jacob [whose name was changed to Israel ]; For this is My covenant with them [i.e., the New Covenant], when I take away their sins’ ” (Romans 11:26-27). By no stretch of the imagination is all of Israel being saved now during this present age of man. But God promises that the whole of Israel will have their opportunity for salvation in the future. Relatively few are being called now to join with the firstfruits of God’s salvation. These called-out ones, true Christians, will be resurrected to receive everlasting life when Christ returns (1 Corinthians 15:50-54; 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18; Philippians 3:20-21). Is this great resurrection exclusively for Israel? Or will other peoples and nations also be included? Remember that our loving Creator remains “the God of all flesh” (Jeremiah 32:27). Several passages in the Gospel accounts show that non-Israelite rulers and peoples are to be resurrected as well. The queen of the South (Sheba), the peoples of Tyre, Sidon and Nineveh (ancient nations and city-states that long predated Jesus’ human lifetime), and even the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah will be resurrected to physical life alongside Christ’s generation of Israelites (see Matthew 11:20-24; Matthew 12:41-42; Luke 10:12-14). Jesus plainly stated: “Most assuredly, I say to you, the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God; and those who hear will live . . . Do not marvel at this; for the hour is coming in which all who are in the graves will hear His voice” (John 5:25; John 5:28). Later Christ revealed to this same apostle John that “the rest of the dead”—referring to those not raised to life in this resurrection —”did not live again until the thousand years were finished” (Revelation 1:1; 20:5). This tells us that the timing of this resurrection is after the thousand-year period known as the Millennium. This verse also clearly shows that there is more than one resurrection.

 

Is today the only day of salvation for Picasso’s explanations?

Most in mainstream Christendom erroneously believe that today is the only day of salvation. But this belief simply is not found in the Bible. In fact the vast majority of mankind will receive their opportunity for salvation during the great resurrection to judgment that we have been reading about in Ezekiel 37:1-14. The apostle John also refers to this resurrection to temporary physical life in Revelation 20:11-13: “Then I saw a great white throne and Him who sat upon it…And I saw the dead, small and great [now resurrected], standing before God, and books were opened. And another book was opened, which is the Book of Life. And the dead were judged according to their works, by the things which were written in the books [plural, the books of the Bible].” The “great white throne” judgment occurs not in an instant as people are raised from the dead, but instead over a considerable period of time. God will judge them over time, just as those called to salvation today are judged over time during this present age by this very same standard, the books of the Bible (1 Peter 4:17; 2 Timothy 3:15-17). Many Bible readers misunderstand the nature and meaning of judgment, nearly always associating the term with sentencing to condemnation—not realizing that God is a merciful judge who patiently evaluates human existence with righteous discernment. He earnestly desires to see the blood of His Son Jesus blot out the sins of as many as possible. Christ Himself firmly stated, “ And I, if I am lifted up from the earth [by crucifixion], will draw all peoples to Myself” (John 12:32). Paul writes of “God our Saviour, whose will it is that all should find salvation and come to know the truth” (1 Timothy 2:3-4, Revised English Bible). And in Ezekiel 18:32 we read, “ ‘For I have no pleasure in the death of one who dies,’ says the Lord God. ‘Therefore turn [to righteousness] and live!’” This coming time of judgment will give those who never really knew God during their previous lifetime a just and fair opportunity for salvation— not a second chance. The special meaning of the biblical eighth-day festival As mentioned earlier, the Feast of Tabernacles, also known as the Feast of Ingathering, pictures Christ’s millennial reign. But immediately following this seven-day Feast is a separate one-day celebration referred to simply as “the eighth day” (Leviticus 23:34-36; Numbers 29:35; 2 Chronicles 7:9; Nehemiah 8:18). The real meaning of this celebration is rarely understood in modern theological circles. Yet it represents an essential missing piece to the puzzle of salvation. This special Holy Day directly corresponds to the Great White Throne Judgment period, during which God will give all those who have ever lived but never really understood the truth their first real opportunity for salvation. Because few people are aware of the God-ordained festivals spelled out in the Bible, few understand God’s step-by-step plan of salvation revealed through these celebrations. The meaning of the eighth day corresponds to Ezekiel’s vision of the Valley of Dry Bones, referring to a time when lost family members will be joyously joined together again to learn God’s ways while living under utopian conditions of mutual love, peace and prosperity. This Holy Day reminds us that God’s plan promises to offer every human being the opportunity to truly repent of sin and receive a permanent place in His everlasting family, the Kingdom of God. Q. Going back to the four winds idea, if we were praying for healing, instead of concentrating on the liver, for instance, we would pray for perfect and whole health. A. Right, the healing idea, the health principle, the perfect life idea and then add the extra mile to it - and however it shall come - I am completely open and willing in all four directions of the Holy Spirit. Let it come anyway that it is proper according to God's will, in this situation. You will find that when you are faithful on the metaphysical realm of thinking and believing it will become chemicalized on the physiological level, and verifiable on that level. However, there will often be a big time lapse, nevertheless, it will occur, and science is catching up. I'm very smart on this subject, aren't I, because I have John Salunek as a progress counselee.

 

www.trouw.nl/home/picasso-putte-uit-occulte-bron~a4692077/

Central coast, Peru.

 

Museum Fünf Kontinente, Munich.

 

There's a chronological problem with the dating of this figurine. It revolves around the beads.

 

Before addressing the problem, it's necessary to examine the exhibit. It consists of a clay figurine of a woman, a beaded ear decoration and one or more strings of beads around the figurine's neck and over her shoulders.

 

The beads in ear decoration are quite likely made from the shells of Spondylus, or thorny oyster. While Spondylus beads can be white and pink, they're frequently the reddish-orange shade seen here.

 

"Spondylus is a bivalve mollusk found in warmer waters in Ecuador and along the most northern coast of Peru . . . However, Spondylus shell beads found on the Central Coast of Peru must have arrived there through exchange networks since the shells were only sourced further north. They were traded before the arrival of the Spanish." *

 

The necklace is the focus of this discussion. The overwhelming percentage of the beads are light brown. It's likely they're made from marine shell, possibly even Spondylus.

 

However, there are five blue beads interspersed among the light brown beads. They are chevron beads made in Europe.

 

"Chevron beads are complex multi colored beads with a pattern of blue, white and red. Chevron beads were found throughout Peru but were not endogenous to the region. These beads were manufactured in Venice and can be dated by the distinct colors and number of layers." *

 

The reason the museum label gives the year 1450 as the latest date when the figurine could have been manufactured is because the Inca are reported to have conquered the Chancay polity in that year.

 

Let's assume the beads in the necklace were around the figurine's neck when it was discovered and that the objects were undisturbed. If that's correct, the figurine could not have been made before the third decade of the sixteenth century.

 

Francisco Pizarro captured the Inca emperor in 1532. An influx of Spaniards entered the territory of today's Peru shortly thereafter. They brought with them objects of European material culture, including chevron beads.

 

If the figurine was made after 1532, it suggests that traditional cultural practices persisted in some form after the arrival of the Spaniards in the early sixteenth century. Either the people who made the figurine managed to evade the Spaniards' campaign against "idolatries," or the campaign had not yet reached the former Chancay culture area when these objects were assembled.

========================================================

*Source of quoted material about beads:

 

"Tracing Sixteenth Century Beads in South America to Understand Their Impact on Indigenous Ritual Practices and Material Culture at the Time of the Spanish Conquest."

 

Kristi May Feinzig

 

A Thesis in the Field of Anthropology and Archaeology for the Degree of Master of Liberal Arts in Extension Studies

 

Harvard University

March 2017

 

"Danbo's impressive new installation Danbo et les sables du temps - Tate Modern Mar 2015 to Oct 2016 - sees the metallic auteur grappling with his inner-self and exploring conflicting ideas of existentialism and examining the futility of mortality within the context of his time here on earth. It's a powerful exposé of humanity and humility in robot form. An unmitigated triumph. Five stars." - Waldemar Januszczak.

 

744 stills, interval of 2.5s, 60 fps, TriggerTrap on Time Lapse. Sequence to assemble. iMovie for PP.

A TC&W track inspector carefully examines an eastbound train as it makes a run at the hill between Morton and Franklin, MN. They're doubling the hill, and this is the first half of their loaded grain train. Once they're at the top of the grade, the inspector will make a trip down the hill in his hi-rail truck before they return to Morton to take the second half up out of the Minnesota River valley. Even at 10 mph, they kick up plenty of dust from this rural crossing. The inspector was confident that with dry rail, some sand, and a veteran engineer at the throttle, they wouldn't have too much trouble making it, but that's not always the case.

I've had the chance to chat with this employee several times, and he's a great guy. He's been working along here since 1980, just after it was spun off by the C&NW. Over those 40 years, he's seen six different owners of the line. It's currently owned by the Minnesota Valley Regional Rail Authority, which is made up of the 5 counties along the route (Carver, Sibley, Renville, Redwood, and Yellow Medicine). Many of the residents of these counties probably don't know that they own a railroad, much less a successful one, but it has become a public-private partnership success story. This is thanks to the hard work of the Twin Cities & Western employees who operate and maintain the line, as well as the administrator of the line who has worked with commissioners and legislators to get public funding for improvements. When asked about the changes he's seen in 40 years, this employee said the railroad has never been in better shape. "It's like night and day." Based on the experience in his eyes, I'll take his word for it.

The Examiner newspaper was founded in 1842 by the Rev. John West, an early and vocal advocate for convict reform. In 1911 they moved into this ornate multi-storey building which was designed by Harold Masters.

 

The design is an example of Art Nouveau Architecture which is usually highly ornamented. This building is rather restrained (when compared with the work of Gaudi in Barcelona), but the detail shows clear examples of floral patterns and colour so typical on these buildings.

 

mymodernmet.com/art-nouveau-architecture/

 

Processed with VSCO with al3 preset

Bob Dylan in cloud form examining The Moon. Full moon and empty arms.

 

Update for 24 May, 2021. Happy 80th birthday Bob.

Look closely and see yourself daily. The beauty God created in you. You are wrapped in a royal cloak of purple and you are the son and daughter of a King! Sure there are areas where we have messed up during the day, but see how how good you are and know that tomorrow is still another day to try again. Have a wonderful week my friends.

To answer this question, we must stop examining the supply side of the equation, and instead look to the demanders.

.

  

.......***** All images are copyrighted by their respective authors ......

.

 

... message header for Rolling Stones Politics

 

The problems are many. Too many. Our eyes get fixed upon one among them, and our passions get devoted to fixing that one. In that focus, however, we fail to see the thread that ties them all together.

 

We are, to steal from Thoreau, the “thousand[s] hacking at the branches of evil,” with “[n]one striking at the root.”

.

 

..............................................................................................................................................................................................

.

.....item 1).... Rolling Stone Politics .... www.rollingstone.com/politics ... Lawrence Lessig on How We Lost Our Democracy

.

.....................................

 

img code photo....

 

assets.rollingstone.com/assets/images/blog_entry/1000x306...

 

'Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress – and a Plan to Stop It' by Lawrence Lessig

 

Courtesy of Twelve/Hachette Book Group

 

.....................................

.

.

POSTED: October 5, 3:25 PM ET | By Lawrence Lessig

 

www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/national-affairs/lawr...

 

The following is an excerpt from Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress – and a Plan to Stop It by Lawrence Lessig.

 

Introduction

 

There is a feeling today among too many Americans that we might not make it. Not that the end is near, or that doom is around the corner, but that a distinctly American feeling of inevitability, of greatness—​culturally, economically, politically—​is gone. That we have become Britain. Or Rome. Or Greece. A generation ago Ronald Reagan rallied the nation to deny a similar charge: Jimmy Carter’s worry that our nation had fallen into a state of “malaise.” I was one of those so rallied, and I still believe that Reagan was right. But the feeling I am talking about today is different: not that we, as a people, have lost anything of our potential, but that we, as a republic, have. That our capacity for governing—​the product, in part, of a Constitution we have revered for more than two centuries—​has come to an end. That the thing that we were once most proud of—​this, our republic—​is the one thing that we have all learned to ignore. Government is an embarrassment. It has lost the capacity to make the most essential decisions. And slowly it begins to dawn upon us: a ship that can’t be steered is a ship that will sink.

 

We didn’t always feel this way. There were times when we were genuinely proud—​as a people, and as a republic—​and when we proudly boasted to the world about the Framers’ (flawed but still) ingenious design. No doubt, we still speak of the founding with reverence. But we seem to miss that the mess that is our government today grew out of the genius that the Framers crafted two centuries ago. That, however much we condemn what government has become, we forget it is the heir to something we still believe divine. We inherited an extraordinary estate. On our watch, we have let it fall to ruin.

 

The clue that something is very wrong is the endless list of troubles that sit on our collective plate but that never get resolved: bloated and inefficient bureaucracies; an invisible climate policy; a tax code that would embarrass Dickens; health care policies that have little to do with health; regulations designed to protect inefficiency; environmental policies that exempt the producers of the greatest environmental harms; food that is too expensive (since protected); food that is unsafe (since unregulated); a financial system that has already caused great harm, has been left unreformed, and is primed and certain to cause great harm again.

 

The problems are many. Too many. Our eyes get fixed upon one among them, and our passions get devoted to fixing that one. In that focus, however, we fail to see the thread that ties them all together.

 

We are, to steal from Thoreau, the “thousand[s] hacking at the branches of evil,” with “[n]one striking at the root.”

 

This book names that root. It aims to inspire “rootstrikers.” The root—​not the single cause of everything that ails us, not the one reform that would make democracy hum, but instead, the root, the thing that feeds the other ills, and the thing that we must kill first. The cure that would be generative—​the single, if impossibly difficult, intervention that would give us the chance to repair the rest.

 

For we have no choice but to try to repair the rest. Republicans and Democrats alike insist we are on a collision course with history. Our government has made fiscal promises it cannot keep. Yet we ignore them. Our planet spins furiously to a radically changed climate, certain to impose catastrophic costs on a huge portion of the world’s population. We ignore this, too. Everything our government -touches—​from health care to Social Security to the monopoly rights we call patents and copyright—​it poisons. Yet our leaders seem oblivious to the thought that there’s anything that needs fixing. They preen about, ignoring the elephant in the room. They act as if Ben Franklin would be proud.

 

Ben Franklin would weep. The republic that he helped birth is lost. The 89 percent of Americans who have no confidence in Congress (as reported by the latest Gallup poll) are not idiots. They are not even wrong. Yet they fail to recognize just why this government doesn’t deserve our confidence. Most of us get distracted. Most of us ignore the root.

 

We were here at least once before.

 

One hundred years ago America had an extraordinary political choice. The election of 1912 gave voters an unprecedented range of candidates for president of the United States.

 

On the far Right was the “stand pat,” first-​term Republican William Howard Taft, who had served as Teddy Roosevelt’s secretary of war, but who had not carried forward the revolution on the Right that Roosevelt thought he had started.

 

On the far Left was the most successful socialist candidate for president in American history, Eugene Debs, who had run for president twice before, and who would run again, from prison, in 1920 and win the largest popular vote that any socialist has ever received in a national American election.

 

In the middle were two “Progressives”: the immensely popular former president Teddy Roosevelt, who had imposed upon himself a two-​term limit, but then found the ideals of reform that he had launched languishing within the Republican Party; and New Jersey’s governor and former Princeton University president Woodrow Wilson, who promised the political machine–​-bound Democratic Party the kind of reform that Roosevelt had begun within the Republican Party.

 

These two self-described Progressives were very different. Roosevelt was a big-government reformer. Wilson, at least before the First World War, was a small​-government, pro-​federalist reformer. Each saw the same overwhelming threat to America’s democracy—​the capture of government by powerful special interests—​even if each envisioned a very different remedy for that capture. Roosevelt wanted a government large enough to match the concentrated economic power that was then growing in America; Wilson, following Louis Brandeis, wanted stronger laws limiting the size of the concentrated economic power then growing in America.

 

Presidential reelection campaigns are not supposed to be bloody political battles. But Taft had proven himself to be a particularly inept politician (he was later a much better chief justice of the Supreme Court), and after Roosevelt’s term ended, business interests had reasserted their dominant control of the Republican Party. Yet even though dissent was growing across the political spectrum, few seemed to doubt that the president would be reelected. Certainly Roosevelt felt certain enough of that to delay any suggestion that he would enter the race to challenge his own hand-​picked successor.

 

A Wisconsin Republican changed all that. In January 1911, Senator Robert La Follette and his followers launched the National Progressive Republican League. Soon after, La Follette announced his own campaign for the presidency. Declaring that “popular government in America has been thwarted . . . ​by the special interests,” the League advocated five core reforms, all of which attacked problems of process, not substance. The first four demanded changes to strengthen popular control of government (the election of senators, direct primaries, direct election of delegates to presidential conventions, and the spread of the state initiative process). The last reform demanded “a thoroughgoing corrupt practices act.”

 

La Follette’s campaign initially drew excitement and important support. It faltered, however, when he seemed to suffer a mental breakdown during a speech at a press dinner in Philadelphia. But the campaign outed, and increasingly embarrassed, the “stand pat” Republicans. As Roosevelt would charge in April 1912:

 

The Republican party is now facing a great crisis. It is to decide whether it will be, as in the days of Lincoln, the party of the plain people, the party of progress, the party of social and industrial justice; or whether it will be the party of privilege and of special interests, the heir to those who were Lincoln’s most bitter opponents, the party that represents the great interests within and without Wall Street which desire through their control over the servants of the public to be kept immune from punishment when they do wrong and to be given privileges to which they are not entitled.

 

The term progressive is a confused and much misunderstood moniker for perhaps the most important political movement at the turn of the last century. We confuse it today with liberals, but back then there were progressives of every political stripe in America—on the Left and on the Right, and with dimensional spins in the middle (the Prohibitionists, for example). Yet one common thread that united these different strands of reform was the recognition that democratic government in America had been captured. Journalists and writers at the turn of the twentieth century taught America “that business corrupts politics,” as Richard McCormick put it. Corruption of the grossest forms—​the sort that would make convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff wince—​was increasingly seen to be the norm throughout too much of American government. Democracy, as in rule of the people, was a joke. As historian George Thayer wrote, describing the “golden age of boodle” (1876–​-1926): “Never has the American political process been so corrupt. No office was too high to purchase, no man too pure to bribe, no principle too sacred to destroy, no law too fundamental to break.”

 

Or again, Teddy Roosevelt (1910): “Exactly as the special interests of cotton and slavery threatened our political integrity before the Civil War, so now the great special business interests too often control and corrupt the men and methods of government for their own profit.”

 

To respond to this “corruption,” Progressives launched a series of reforms to reclaim government. Many of these reforms were hopeless disasters (the ballot initiative and elected judges), and some were both disasters and evil (Prohibition and eugenics, to name just two). But mistakes notwithstanding, the Progressive Era represents an unprecedented moment of experimentation and engagement, all motivated by a common recognition that the idea of popular sovereignty in America had been sold. The problem was not, as McCormick describes, a “product of misbehavior by ‘bad’ men,” but was instead now seen as the predictable “outcome of identifiable economic and political forces.”

 

That recognition manifested itself powerfully on November 5, 1912: The incumbent Republican placed third (23.2 percent) in the -four-​-man race; the socialist, a distant fourth (6 percent); and Teddy Roosevelt (27.4 percent) got bested by the “new” Democrat, Woodrow Wilson (41.8 percent).

 

Yet only when you add together these two self-​identified Pro-gressives do you get a clear sense of the significance of 1912: almost 70 percent of America had voted for a “progressive.” Seventy percent of America had said, “This democracy is corrupted; we demand it be fixed.” Seventy percent refused to “stand pat.”

 

A century later we suffer the same struggle, but without anything like the same clarity. A “fierce discontent,” as Roosevelt described America in 1906, is once again raging throughout the republic. Now, as then, it gets expressed as “agitation” against “evil,” and a “firm determination to punish the authors of evil, whether in industry or politics.” We look to a collapsed economy, to raging deficits, to a Wall Street not yet held to account, and we feel entitled to our anger. And so extreme is that entitlement that it makes even violence seem sensible, if only to the predictably insane extremes in any modern society.

 

Roosevelt was encouraged by this agitation against evil. It was, he said, a “feeling that is to be heartily welcomed.” It was “a sign,” he promised, “of healthy life.”

 

Yet today such agitation is not a sign of healthy life. It is a symptom of ignorance. For though the challenge we face is again the battle against a democracy deflected by special interests, our struggle is not against “evil,” or even the “authors of evil.” Our struggle is against something much more banal. Not the banal in the now-​overused sense of Hannah Arendt’s The Banality of Evil—​of ordinary people enabling unmatched evil (Hitler’s Germany). Our banality is one step more, well, banal.

 

For the enemy we face is not Hitler. Neither is it the good Germans who would enable a Hitler. Our enemy is the good Germans (us) who would enable a harm infinitely less profound, yet economically and politically catastrophic nonetheless. A harm caused by a kind of corruption. But not the corruption engendered by evil souls. Indeed, strange as this might sound, a corruption crafted by good souls. By decent men. And women. And if we’re to do anything about this corruption, we must learn to agitate against more than evil. We must remember that harm sometimes comes from timid, even pathetic souls. That the enemy doesn’t always march. Sometimes it simply shuffles.

 

The great threat to our republic today comes not from the hidden bribery of the Gilded Age, when cash was secreted among members of Congress to buy privilege and secure wealth. The great threat today is instead in plain sight. It is the economy of influence now transparent to all, which has normalized a process that draws our democracy away from the will of the people. A process that distorts our democracy from ends sought by both the Left and the Right: For the single most salient feature of the government that we have evolved is not that it discriminates in favor of one side and against the other. The single most salient feature is that it discriminates against all sides to favor itself. We have created an engine of influence that seeks not some particular strand of political or economic ideology, whether Marx or Hayek. We have created instead an engine of influence that seeks simply to make those most connected rich.

 

As a former young Republican—-indeed, Pennsylvania’s state chairman of the Teen Age Republicans—​I don’t mean to rally anyone against the rich. But I do mean to rally Republicans and Democrats alike against a certain kind of rich that no theorist on the Right or the Left has ever sought seriously to defend: The rich whose power comes not from hard work, creativity, innovation, or the creation of wealth. The rich who instead secure their wealth through the manipulation of government and politicians. The great evil that we as Americans face is the banal evil of second-​rate minds who can’t make it in the private sector and who therefore turn to the massive wealth directed by our government as the means to securing wealth for themselves. The enemy is not evil. The enemy is well dressed.

 

Theorists of corruption don’t typically talk much about decent souls. Their focus is upon criminals—​the venally corrupt, who bribe to buy privilege, or the systematically corrupt, who make the people (or, better, the rich) dependent upon the government to ensure that the people (or, better, the rich) protect the government.

 

So, too, when we speak of politicians and our current system of governance, many of us think of our government as little more than criminal, or as crime barely hidden—​from Jack Abramoff (“I was participating in a system of legalized bribery. All of it is bribery, every bit of it”) to Judge Richard Posner (“the legislative system [is] one of quasi-​bribery”) to Carlyle Group co‑founder David Rubenstein (“legalized bribery”) to former congressman and CIA director Leon Panetta (“legalized bribery has become part of the culture of how this place operates”) to one of the Senate’s most important figures, Russell B. Long (D-La.; 1949-1987) (“Almost a hairline’s difference separates bribes and contributions”).

 

But in this crude form, in America at least, such crimes are rare. At the federal level, bribery is almost extinct. There are a handful of pathologically stupid souls bartering government favors for private kickbacks, but very few. And at both the federal and the state levels, the kind of Zimbabwean control over economic activity is just not within our DNA. So if only the criminal are corrupt, then ours is not a corrupt government.

 

The aim of this book, however, is to convince you that a much more virulent, if much less crude, corruption does indeed wreck our democracy. Not a corruption caused by a gaggle of evil souls. On the contrary, a corruption practiced by decent people, people we should respect, people working extremely hard to do what they believe is right, yet decent people working with a system that has evolved the most elaborate and costly bending of democratic government in our history. There are good people here, yet extraordinary bad gets done.

 

This corruption has two elements, each of which feeds the other. The first element is bad governance, which means simply that our government doesn’t track the expressed will of the people, whether on the Left or on the Right. Instead, the government tracks a different interest, one not directly affected by votes or voters. Democracy, on this account, seems a show or a ruse; power rests elsewhere.

 

The second element is lost trust: when democracy seems a charade, we lose faith in its process. That doesn’t matter to some of us—​we will vote and participate regardless. But to more rational souls, the charade is a signal: spend your time elsewhere, because this game is not for real. Participation thus declines, especially among the sensible middle. Policy gets driven by the extremists at both ends.

 

In the first three parts of what follows, I show how these elements of corruption fit together. I want you to understand the way they connect, and how they feed on each other. In the book’s final part, I explore how we might do something about them.

 

The prognosis is not good. The disease we face is not one that nations cure, or, at least, cure easily. But we should understand the options. For few who work to understand what has gone wrong will be willing to accept defeat—​without a fight.

 

From the book Republic, Lost. Copyright (c) 2011 by Lawrence Lessig. Reprinted by permission of Twelve/Hachette Book Group, New York, NY. All rights reserved.

 

Related

• How Money Corrupts Congress: Interview with Lawrence Lessig

.

.

.............................................................................................................................................................................................

.

.....item 2).... Teddy Roosevelt (1910): “Exactly as the special interests of cotton and slavery threatened our political integrity before the Civil War, so now the great special business interests too often control and corrupt the men and methods of government for their own profit.”

 

Read more: www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/national-affairs/lawr...

.

.

.............................................................................................................................................................................................

.

.....item 3).... So, too, when we speak of politicians and our current system of governance, many of us think of our government as little more than criminal, or as crime barely hidden—​from Jack Abramoff (“I was participating in a system of legalized bribery. All of it is bribery, every bit of it”) to Judge Richard Posner (“the legislative system [is] one of quasi-​bribery”) to Carlyle Group co‑founder David Rubenstein (“legalized bribery”) to former congressman and CIA director Leon Panetta (“legalized bribery has become part of the culture of how this place operates”) to one of the Senate’s most important figures, Russell B. Long (D-La.; 1949-1987) (“Almost a hairline’s difference separates bribes and contributions”).

 

Read more: www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/national-affairs/lawr...

.

.

.............................................................................................................................................................................................

.

.....item 4).... FSU News ... www.fsunews.com ...

 

The demanding side of the political equation

10:25 PM, Oct. 24, 2012 |

 

Written by

Chad Squitieri

Senior Staff Writer

 

FILED UNDER

FSU News

FSU News Chad Squitieri

 

www.fsunews.com/article/20121025/FSVIEW0305/121024023/The...|newswell|text|frontpage|s

 

Now that the presidential debates are over, I find myself as an onlooker being left without a satisfaction. A debate is an opportunity for two candidates to engage in a thought provoking discussion that highlights their differences from one another. What we often end up with in debates is little more than sidestepping and finger pointing.

 

Looking forward to debates to come, my wish is that they will consist of more substance, and fewer talking points. This wish of course can easily be shrugged off as little more than the naïve daydream of a college student; a thought destined to never materialize. The way to see this apparent pipedream become reality, however, is more in the hands of the voter than one might expect.

 

Political debates have never been known for their politeness, and this election cycle stayed true to form. While it may be accurate that politics in this country have always been highly contested matters with the ability to bring out plenty of emotions, it is also true that the mechanics of politics have seemed to stay in step with the rest of our society. It seems that in today’s political realm, it is becoming more and more “cool” to be rude to your opponent. The rationale behind this action is explained by the fact that candidates feel they can rally their bases in opposition to the other candidate by acting in ways we have witnessed over this debate cycle.

 

Actions such as talking over one another, name calling and finger pointing come to mind. The bigger question, though, is why do candidates feel they can better rally their bases by acting in a way that seems to turn the discussion into little more than a spectacle as compared to a way that better gets a candidate’s core message to voters. To answer this question, we must stop examining the supply side of the equation, and instead look to the demanders.

 

The demanders in any election are the voters. It is the voters that make up the political market, and it is this market that the suppliers, the candidates, bring their ideas. It is the nature of politicians to behave in ways the public wants them to behave. Having this thought in mind, it becomes easily identifiable why our politicians would act in ways that would otherwise seem counterproductive to the political process. It is because that is what we ask for.

 

If as a whole we demand to see politics turned into a spectacle consisting of little more than name calling and snarky, eight-second clips intended to make the front side of the evening news, then that is what our candidates will supply us with. If we instead insist on a more thought-provoking discussion which gets at the fundamentals, then candidates will have the incentive to provide just that.

 

As the next generation, we will have the ability to steer the course of the political process in this country. Whether we choose to end up with more political gridlock and wordplay, or instead choose straightforwardness and seek results is to be determined.

.

.

.

.............................................................................................................................................................................................

.

.....item 5).... youtube video ... Jimi Hendrix - Are you Experienced (full album) UK ... 60:21 minutes

 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tlRYLP8GOU

 

Published on Nov 16, 2012 by gunsgifts galleries

 

1. "Foxy Lady" 0:00

2. "Manic Depression" 3:22

3. "Red House" 7:08

4. "Can You See Me" 11:01

5. "Love or Confusion" 13:19

6. "I Don't Live Today" 16:33

 

Side two

 

No. Title Length

 

1. "May This Be Love" 20:51

2. "Fire" 24:05

3. "Third Stone from the Sun" 26:52

4. "Remember" 33:42

5. "Are You Experienced?" 36:35

 

1997 Experience Hendrix reissue bonus tracks

 

No. Title Length

 

1. "Hey Joe" (Billy Roberts) 40:05

2. "Stone Free" 43:35

3. "Purple Haze" 47:18

4. "51st Anniversary" 50:02

5. "The Wind Cries Mary" 53:17

6. "Highway Chile" 56:37

 

Category:

Music

 

License:

Standard YouTube License

.

.

.............................................................................................................................................................................................

.

.

Monday was the official first day of summer. My 4 year old grandson and I took a beach walk along Lake Michigan and explored aspects of nature. He is really interested in nature and already knows some interesting facts which he is always quite willing to share..

The fourth day of my 100 day documentation of Commercial Drive. It's a challenge to get a photograph I like every day. I'm re-examining what I consider photo-worthy, and trying to re-envision what conveys a sense of place and atmosphere.

The examiner

Use Mouse Click to examine detail . . . . . The Cathedral Church of Saint Andrew, commonly known as Wells Cathedral, is an Anglican cathedral in Wells, Somerset. The cathedral, dedicated to St Andrew the Apostle, is the seat of the Bishop of Bath and Wells. It is the mother church of the diocese and contains the bishop's throne (cathedra). It was built between 1175 and 1490, replacing an earlier church built on the same site in 705. It is moderately sized among the medieval cathedrals of England, between those of massive proportion such as Lincoln and York and the smaller cathedrals in Oxford and Carlisle. With its broad west front and large central tower, it is the dominant feature of its small cathedral city and a landmark in the Somerset countryside. Wells has been described as "unquestionably one of the most beautiful" and as "the most poetic" of English cathedrals

In order to know if the bird is an adult or immature we need to examine their wings.

In profile, anterior and posterior straight.

 

Key id. features BELOW

SPECIES DESCRIPTION part A 2Pu flic.kr/p/BG8mKq

SPECIES DESCRIPTION part B 3Pu flic.kr/p/BRHsiR

OTHER SPECIES ALBUMS

www.flickr.com/photos/56388191@N08/collections/

 

Key identification features of typical British specimens.

 

Patella ulyssiponensis

1) Basal half of pallial tentacles has opaque pigment which can be white, off-white, cream or, on large specimens, yellowish or orange. The distal half fades to a translucent tip. Opaque basal half is often distinct from translucent mantle-skirt that they arise from, so it is possible to confuse with P. depressa. It is important to use pallial tentacles in combination with foot-colour/shell-length for identification. Examples at 26Pu flic.kr/p/BGqszN .

2) Foot is NOT pitch-brown/black or dark khaki. It can be whitish when young 30Pu flic.kr/p/BGqk4q becoming yellowish 31Pu flic.kr/p/BGrKw1 and, sometimes, orange with age 21Pu flic.kr/p/AUuNww . Juveniles under 12mm length may show a blackish internal shadow through the thin pale translucent foot 30Pu flic.kr/p/BGqk4q as they lack gonads above the foot that mask the dark viscera of adults.

  

Similar species

 

Patella vulgata

Extremely variable species; foot colours and nearly all shell-features have overlaps with P. depressa and P. ulyssiponensis.

1. Pigment-less pallial tentacles are slender, translucent and same colour as mantle-skirt they arise from. 40Pu flic.kr/p/BPJ1vQ .

Cautions:

Pallial tentacles of P. vulgata may look white when arise from colourless mantle-skirt in some lighting, but no pigment 41Pu flic.kr/p/AUxuXs .

Translucency and fineness of pallial tentacles of P. vulgata often make discernment difficult, especially when mantle skirt retracted from shell-rim and pallial tentacles viewed against shell 42Pu flic.kr/p/BGtg3y ; often virtually invisible when out of water as may be retracted as well as highly translucent 43Pu flic.kr/p/AUDqUz .

Foot colour of P. vulgata varies greatly, sometimes orange resembling P. ulyssiponensis 53PualbumPvhigh.

Shell interior can be white or tinted orange in P. vulgata 53PualbumPvhigh and 44Pu flic.kr/p/BPKJ6G .

 

Patella depressa

[1 & 2 in combination, not singly, are diagnostic of typical specimens but exclude intermediates.]

1. Pigmented pallial tentacles are opaque chalky-white for more than half of extended-length; may have translucent tip; distinctly whiter than buff mantle-skirt from which they arise 45Pu flic.kr/p/BJLMBx . Even when mantle-skirt retracted, pallial tentacles often clearly visible contrasting with the darker mantle 46Pu flic.kr/p/AUxm6u .

2. Sole of foot pitch-brown 47Pu flic.kr/p/AUDiJH to black 46Pu flic.kr/p/AUxm6u .

3. On shell-interior, whitish projecting points of ribs have short, unglazed, chalky, pure-white central line, but reduced or lacking where projecting points of ribs eroded 48Pu flic.kr/p/BS4e7v . [This feature recently recognised by S. Payne, and applies to all in large sample examined by IFS. Unsure yet if universal on P. depressa and exclusive of P. vulgata and P. ulyssiponensis.]

Caution:

Shell interior can be orange-cream in P. depressa 49Pu flic.kr/p/BixiVz

 

Patella caerulea Linnaeus, 1758.

Does not occur in Britain. In Iberia and Mediterranean, separation from it of some specimens of P. ulyssiponensis could not be achieved with foot colour and shell morphology by Sanna et al. (2011) who relied on the use of DNA sequencing. They did not mention attempting the use of pallial tentacle colour on live specimens; it may be worth investigation. See Sanna et al. for images of P. caerulea.

 

Star Trek- The Menagerie , “Return to Talos IV”

youtu.be/v5XBfgPy43A?t=2s The full feature.

 

The Menagerie Review: February 8, 2014 by neoethereal

As the only two-part episode in The Original Series, “The Menagerie” also cleverly serves as a re-telling of the very first Star Trek story ever filmed, “The Cage.” This week on The Uncommon Geek, I examine all of these episodes in full detail, highlighting their connections to other aspects of the Trek mythos. As well, I take a look at the ground broken by Gene Roddenberry concerning the nature of reality, decades before movies like “The Matrix” challenged the perception of our everyday world.

 

Equipped with little more than a shoestring budget and massive constraints on time with which to work, Gene Roddenberry and his Star Trek production team had to get extremely creative in order to make the show work. Nowhere, in my opinion, is that more evident than here in “The Menagerie,” an entry that served the purpose of buying the production team time to properly finish subsequent episodes, and as well, afforded Gene Roddenberry a unique opportunity to re-tell the story he had wanted to get on the air all along, “The Cage.”

 

This episode begins with the Enterprise having been called out of its way, to Starbase 11. Confusion arises when the starbase’s commanding officer, Commodore Mendez, reveals to Captain Kirk that the base never sent any message to the Enterprise. Spock claims to have received that message, which puts Kirk into the difficult position of whether to trust the starbase computers, or the word of his first officer and friend.

 

It turns out that Captain Christopher Pike, the former commander of the Enterprise, who was recently crippled and disfigured in a terrible accident, is on Starbase 11, and suspicion arises that perhaps he relayed a message to Spock. When Kirk finally gets to see Pike, however, he realizes that it would have been impossible for Spock’s former commanding officer to have done this, for Pike is now wheelchair bound, and his communication with others is limited to electronic beeps that fill in for “yes” and “no.

 

While Kirk and Mendez wrestle over the truth, Spock executes a daring and clever plan to hijack the Enterprise, taking Captain Pike with him. It goes to show just how dangerous an opponent someone as smart and calculating as Spock can be when he puts his mind to it. Spock sets the Enterprise on a locked course for Talos IV, a planet which the ship visited on a past mission under Christopher Pike, and a planet that invites the death penalty upon any Starfleet officer who goes there

 

The secret file on Talos IV, and the article of General Order 7

I personally find the idea of a death penalty being associated with Talos IV to be somewhat dubious; although there is a very good reason why Starfleet wants the existence of the Talosians kept secret, I find it hard to believe that if the Federation is capable of having a death penalty, that it only applies to one law. It may just be a grand bluff, and indeed, there is some evidence to that effect later in the episode. Regardless, breaking General Order 7 is a serious offense, and Spock is if nothing else, putting his career and livelihood on the line.

 

Kirk, of course, isn’t going to sit by while his ship is abducted. He and Mendez make a daring attempt to chase the Enterprise in the Shuttlecraft Picasso, knowing full well that while they would never catch up, they would appear on the Enterprise sensors. Kirk gambles his life on the fact that his friend Spock would not leave him to die in the void of space, as the shuttle runs out of fuel. Kirk’s illogical gambit causes Spock’s plan to unravel, and he surrenders himself to custody, pleading guilty to every charge leveled against him. However, Spock has locked the Enterprise into a course for Talos IV that cannot be broken, which will potentially extend the death sentence that is on himself, to Kirk as well.

 

The court martial that proceeds against Spock is highly unusual; as mentioned, Spock pleads guilty without defense, but through some legal technicality, manages to arrange for the court to hear out his evidence as to why he went through with his illegal actions. Given that Kirk is presiding over the hearing, and that the crew has little else to do but wait until they reach Talos IV, I get the lenience, but I am not sure what real court would remain in session to examine evidence for someone who just admitted their guilt. Or admittedly, maybe I just don’t know enough about legal proceedings.

 

Spock’s evidence, as it turns out, is a transmission from Talos IV, beamed directly to the Enterprise, which details the vessel’s first trip there under the command of Captain Pike. Of course, this transmission is the original Star Trek pilot, “The Cage,” and from this point on, “The Menagerie” consists almost entirely of footage from that episode.

 

Aside from some really goofy tech dialogue, and incomplete characterizations, “The Cage” holds up surprisingly well. We get to see that Jeffrey Hunter’s Captain Pike is a darker, colder man than James Kirk; he is someone whose decisions and responsibilities as a commander are weighing on him heavily, and he is nearing the point of considering resignation. Pike’s first officer is only referred to as Number One (played by Majel Barrett), who is an amazing example of a strong female role for 1960’s television, but unfortunately her character had to be discarded by Roddenberry when the studio forced him to choose between keeping his strong, logical female, or his alien Spock. Roddenberry ended up giving Spock Number One’s cold, emotionless, logical persona, and thus the Spock we know and love was born.

 

It really is a shame that NBC put so much pressure on Roddenberry to alter his concept of women in the 23rd Century; aside from Number One, the other female crew members of the Cage-era Enterprise also seem to be on equal footing with the men, and there isn’t a mini-skirt in sight. Of course, this reviewer by no means, from an aesthetic point view, objects to how the women of the Enterprise look in said mini-skirts, but cheekiness and my own red-blooded male impulses aside, the female officers in Starfleet should have been offered the same, more professional uniform as the males. Unfortunately we would have to wait until The Motion Picture to see more fairness in the way men and women are presented in Star Trek.

 

When Enterprise finds evidence of human survivors on Talos IV, from a doomed expedition many years ago, Pike, Spock, and an away team beam down to investigate. What at first seems like a wonderful discovery of lost, homesick men, turns out to be just an elaborate, life like illusion created by the Talosians. Pike is abducted when he is lured in by the only true human survivor from the crash, Vina, whom he is extremely attracted to.

 

Pike is subjected to a variety of illusions crafted by the Talosians, in order to foster cooperation, as well as to strengthen his attraction toward Vina. Vina is presented to Pike in a variety of forms; as a damsel in distress on Rigel VII, as a wife in the countryside on Earth, and as a primal, animalistic Orion slave woman, all in an attempt to make him submit to his situation.

 

However, Pike is every bit as stubborn as Captain Kirk, and certainly has a darker, more furious edge to him. When he discovers that primitive, base human emotions such as hatred, and anger, block out the Talosian’s illusions and their telepathic abilities, he mines that weakness long enough to take one of them captive. Once the illusion is broken, the Enterprise crew find out that their attempts to break Pike out from his underground cage with phaser fire were actually working, but all along they weren’t able to see it.

 

The Talosians had, thousands of centuries ago, devastated their planet and their civilization with war. They retreated underground, where their telepathic abilities flourished, but their physical bodies and their technology atrophied. They had apparently been testing various species for many years, looking for a suitable slave race to use for rebuilding their world, but none had shown as much promise as humanity.

 

However, when the away team threatens to kill themselves with an overloaded phaser, and as well when the Talosians finish screening the Enterprise‘s records, they realize that humans would rather die than be enslaved, and would be too violent to keep in captivity. With of course, the sad exception of Vina, who in reality is too badly disfigured to live a normal life outside of Talos IV.

 

(I once heard a suggestion that Vina could be repaired using the transporter. I don’t think 23rd century transporters were sophisticated enough for that, plus, there wouldn’t be an original, unaltered version of her pattern to reference.)

 

The ending of “The Cage” leads us to the final moments of “The Menagerie,” where it is revealed that not only have the Talosians been transmitting a signal to the Enterprise, but even Commodore Mendez himself has been one of their illusions all along!

 

It is also revealed that Spock’s only intention was to take Captain Pike to Talos IV, so that the crippled starship commander could live out the rest of his life as a healthy, happy man with Vina. Even Kirk seems to relent that it is better to live with an illusion of health and happiness, than a reality of living as a useless vegetable. That Commodore Mendez was an illusion, and that Starfleet sends a signal to the Enterprise, apparently excusing their violation of Talos space, seems to let Spock off the hook. Perhaps too easily in fact; despite acting out of nothing but loyalty to his former Captain, and despite that the way he enacted his plan was done in such a manner as to put the blame only on himself, Spock seems to get out of his predicament with apparently no trouble at all. We can make a guess that perhaps this incident is why he doesn’t receive a promotion or command of his own until years later, but there is nothing spoken on-screen to that effect.

 

We are also left to ponder about how much of the incident was real at all. Since the Talosians can apparently project their powers through subspace, one wonders just how long they conspired with Spock, and also, how much we see of Mendez was real or an illusion. My guess is that the Mendez we see at the base was real, and what goes onto the shuttle with Kirk was the illusion, but unfortunately, again, there is little to back that up. What we do know for sure is that the Talosian’s powers are not to be trifled with, and it is truly for wise for Starfleet to give them a wide berth.

Despite some problems with logic and consistency, “The Menagerie” is an entertaining, fascinating episode that shows original series Trek at some of its most interestingly cerebral. Gene Roddenberry’s first pilot examines the nature of reality decades before The Matrix did, and asks the questions: What is real? How does one define their purpose, their reality? Is our reality just relative, defined only by experience? Is there a such thing as an absolute reality, or only what our senses perceive, or for that matter what they think they perceive? This is smart, ahead of its time writing for the 1960s.

 

Through the tragedies that befell both Vina and Pike, we must also question the quality of human life, and the value we place on it. Is it worth staying alive if you can’t function? If your brain is sound but your body is broken, can you still truly live? Speaking for myself, I certainly would despise the existence that Captain Pike is forced to endure in his wheelchair. I’d rather be dead than live that way. I’m not sure how I would react exactly to being forced to live in an illusion, but it is certainly preferable to a reality of uselessness and immobility. Besides, is our everyday life not just an elaborate series of deceptions spun before our very eyes; maybe not as powerful as a trick of telepathy played by an alien race, but an illusion nonetheless?

 

For even provoking these thoughts, and much more, “The Cage,” and by extension, “The Menagerie,” are what I consider among the best of Star Trek’s purely cerebral stories about human nature. It is imaginative, thoughtful, and quite engaging.

See those suspended seeds with tails in large.

<> IMG_6155 - Version 2

The above image is of a Forster local man examining a 'Capstan Block’ which is of the type used on large early sailing vessels.

Estimated to weigh in the vicinity of 2-3 tons, the artefact was discovered a number of years ago at Cape Hawke NSW.

It is more than likely that, given the location of the discovery and size of the block, it has possibly come from the American barque Harvester wrecked in the area in 1900.

The image has been taken from private video footage filmed in 1991.

 

Harvester

The three-masted American barque Harvester was the largest ship to be wrecked in the vicinity of Forster, NSW. A large wooden vessel of 1494 tons gross, she was 210.1 ft long, 39.7 ft beam and 24.1 ft deep. She was built in Bath, Maine in 1875 by E. & A. Sewall.

She struck Big Seal Rock in June 1900 and was abandoned in the vicinity of Cape Hawke. She broke up on Cape Hawke and wreckage was strewn along the beaches from Forster to Old Bar with a substantial piece, that included much of the deck, was washed up on Diamond Rocks on the northern end of the beach that extends from Tuncurry to Black Head (Nine Mile Beach).

 

A full description of the vessel and its demise on Australia's shores can be found in the Album Harvester

 

Reports from Forster indicate that wreckage was strewn along the coastline from Cape Hawke to Blackhead. One location that received particular attention during later years was Diamond Rock at the northern end of Tuncurry Beach. Numerous stories of a substantial amount of debris being washed up after storms around the vicinity of Diamond Rock. The Manning River Times Centenary Supplement, June 1969 reported the following:

BEACH HAS A GHOST SHIP: Black Head has a “ghost ship”. The ship, an American sailing vessel, built of Oregon, and called the Harvester, is lodged on Diamond Reef, on the northern end of Tuncurry Beach, just around the corner from Black Head. Parts of her are sighted periodically after heavy seas. One of the last reported sightings was in 1955.

Called locally “The Wreck That Would Not Sink”, the boat struck Seal Rocks in 1900 and the crew made it to shore. As the big tides came later, the ship is reported to have moved off Seal Rocks and sailed about the waters from Cape Hawke to Old Bar for some time, then hit Cape Hawke and partly broke up, drifting to Diamond Reef. Halliday’s Point residents still talk of fittings which were washed up on the beach.

 

Nineteen years later The Manning River Times (June 13th 1974) reported:

“GHOST SHIP” RE-APPEARS AFTER 20 YEARS IN SAND.

Black Head’s “ghost ship” has made a re-appearance after almost 20 years. The old timbers, normally metres deep in the sand, were unearthed by heavy seas during the past week. She disappeared again under heavy seas on Tuesday. Legend has it that the ship, an American vessel called Harvester built out of Oregon, that struck Seal Rocks about 1900, with the crew all making it safely to shore.

As the big tides came later, the ship is reported to have moved off the rocks and sailed about the waters from Cape Hawke to Old Bar for some time, then hit Cape Hawke and partly broke up drifting to Diamond Reef. The last reported sighting of the ship was 19 years ago.

Pieces of the Harvester were collected by local residents. A dead-eye block, found on the beach near Black Head by 9-year-old Moore Hoy and his father, was later donated to the Great Lakes Museum Laurie Nicholson. The following is the history of the “DEADEYE BLOCK” on display in the Great Lakes Museum, as told by Mr Moore Hoy who lived most of his life at Tuncurry as a fisherman.

"The deadeye block came from the “HARVESTER”, a 1494 ton, 64 metre, wooden barque built in the USA in 1875. Mr Hoy’s father’s home was about half way from the sea on the Blackhead road. It was when he was a boy of 9 years old on the 8th June 1900 when the fully rigged three mast sailing ship hit the outer Seal Rocks.

The wreckage from the ship was strewn on the northern end of Tuncurry beach, most of the deck wedged in the Diamond Reef and on the beach, and over a period of time covered with sand.

Moore Hoy’s father (William Hoy) took his horse and sled across country to the beach, and recovered the two square fresh water tanks from the Harvester and conveyed them home to his property where they were used for many years as water tanks on the house. It was on this trip with his father that Moore picked up the “DEAD EYE BLOCK” on the beach among the wreckage, and had it in his possession until it was given to Laurie Nicholson of Tuncurry".

 

Moore Hoy’s history of the HARVESTER as told to us was that the ship was heading to Newcastle under ballast for a consignment of coal. As the weather was southerly, while tacking into the wind [not possible] the ship was on such a lean that the ballast shifted to one side, making it impossible to sail. The rigging was cut away, hoping this would right her, but to no avail, and she hit Seal Rocks, unfortunately she finally drifted into the face of “The Hawke” and broke up.

The crew took to the lifeboats and were picked up by the “S.S. MACLEAY”.

The “DEAD EYE BLOCK” was donated to the museum by the Nicholson family.

 

LOCAL DISCOVERS THE HARVESTER

The following are extracts from a first hand report written in 1974 by Zaidie Single on her visit to the remains of the Harvester wreck.

 

“During the winter of 1974, following a week of very high and rough seas, my friend Beth and I ventured to the Back Beach to examine the damage the seas had done and to do a little beach combing amongst the flotsam.

As the sea was still quite high, we were wandering along quite close to the dunal area, when, amongst the general heaps of drift wood, we noticed a series of ‘sticks’ poking through in a regular pattern.

After removing a lot of rubbish, we found it to be the ribs of what we took to be an old rowing boat. After digging around it for a while we came across a metal spike…..about a foot long and almost an inch square in diameter.

Using this spike as a tool, we excavated a little further and found more of the same embedded in crossed timbers and realised that the craft was much bigger than we thought. We bought it home to show Roy who said it was a hand crafted ‘nail’ used in the construction of old sailing ships.

Our curiosity was now well aroused and on a suggestion by Brian Moules, I wrote to the Maritime Authority who began a search of records and sent a representative to view the find. Also I was sent a detailed map of the coastline and asked to pin-point our find which I did…although there was some doubt as the wreckage was so far up from the normal water line.

After much correspondence and searching it was decided to be the wreckage of the Harvester which had been damaged near Cape Hawke and subsequently blown north until it hit the Diamond Reef in June 1900.

Over the ensuing years the dunes and vegetation have seen great change, but one day in the future, “our” wreck may once again come to the surface and delight a new generation."

 

Image Source: Private collection.

 

All Images in this photostream are Copyright - Great Lakes Manning River Shipping and/or their individual owners as may be stated above and may not be downloaded, reproduced, or used in any way without prior written approval.

 

GREAT LAKES MANNING RIVER SHIPPING, NSW - Flickr Group --> Alphabetical Boat Index --> Boat builders Index --> Tags List

 

Kensington Metropark

German soldiers and two aviators examine a smoldering crash in a scene which raises several questions. Is this a German crew that survived the crash? Certainly tthe aviator towards the center of the photograph is German. However, the aviator on the left wears a helmet found in service by Allied and German flyers. The area on his face appears to be a blemish in the negative or deliberate erasure rather than bandages. Is this a German victor with a survivor of a crashed Allied aircraft? Perhaps some of our aircraft experts can identify the aircraft which would help answer some of these questions.

facebook.com/properphotography

500px.com/properphotography

noellebabinski.deviantart.com

R0002915a

Dubai

United Arab Emirates

Star Trek- The Menagerie , “Return to Talos IV”

youtu.be/v5XBfgPy43A?t=2s The full feature.

 

The Menagerie Review: February 8, 2014 by neoethereal

As the only two-part episode in The Original Series, “The Menagerie” also cleverly serves as a re-telling of the very first Star Trek story ever filmed, “The Cage.” This week on The Uncommon Geek, I examine all of these episodes in full detail, highlighting their connections to other aspects of the Trek mythos. As well, I take a look at the ground broken by Gene Roddenberry concerning the nature of reality, decades before movies like “The Matrix” challenged the perception of our everyday world.

 

Equipped with little more than a shoestring budget and massive constraints on time with which to work, Gene Roddenberry and his Star Trek production team had to get extremely creative in order to make the show work. Nowhere, in my opinion, is that more evident than here in “The Menagerie,” an entry that served the purpose of buying the production team time to properly finish subsequent episodes, and as well, afforded Gene Roddenberry a unique opportunity to re-tell the story he had wanted to get on the air all along, “The Cage.”

 

This episode begins with the Enterprise having been called out of its way, to Starbase 11. Confusion arises when the starbase’s commanding officer, Commodore Mendez, reveals to Captain Kirk that the base never sent any message to the Enterprise. Spock claims to have received that message, which puts Kirk into the difficult position of whether to trust the starbase computers, or the word of his first officer and friend.

 

It turns out that Captain Christopher Pike, the former commander of the Enterprise, who was recently crippled and disfigured in a terrible accident, is on Starbase 11, and suspicion arises that perhaps he relayed a message to Spock. When Kirk finally gets to see Pike, however, he realizes that it would have been impossible for Spock’s former commanding officer to have done this, for Pike is now wheelchair bound, and his communication with others is limited to electronic beeps that fill in for “yes” and “no.

 

While Kirk and Mendez wrestle over the truth, Spock executes a daring and clever plan to hijack the Enterprise, taking Captain Pike with him. It goes to show just how dangerous an opponent someone as smart and calculating as Spock can be when he puts his mind to it. Spock sets the Enterprise on a locked course for Talos IV, a planet which the ship visited on a past mission under Christopher Pike, and a planet that invites the death penalty upon any Starfleet officer who goes there

 

The secret file on Talos IV, and the article of General Order 7

I personally find the idea of a death penalty being associated with Talos IV to be somewhat dubious; although there is a very good reason why Starfleet wants the existence of the Talosians kept secret, I find it hard to believe that if the Federation is capable of having a death penalty, that it only applies to one law. It may just be a grand bluff, and indeed, there is some evidence to that effect later in the episode. Regardless, breaking General Order 7 is a serious offense, and Spock is if nothing else, putting his career and livelihood on the line.

 

Kirk, of course, isn’t going to sit by while his ship is abducted. He and Mendez make a daring attempt to chase the Enterprise in the Shuttlecraft Picasso, knowing full well that while they would never catch up, they would appear on the Enterprise sensors. Kirk gambles his life on the fact that his friend Spock would not leave him to die in the void of space, as the shuttle runs out of fuel. Kirk’s illogical gambit causes Spock’s plan to unravel, and he surrenders himself to custody, pleading guilty to every charge leveled against him. However, Spock has locked the Enterprise into a course for Talos IV that cannot be broken, which will potentially extend the death sentence that is on himself, to Kirk as well.

 

The court martial that proceeds against Spock is highly unusual; as mentioned, Spock pleads guilty without defense, but through some legal technicality, manages to arrange for the court to hear out his evidence as to why he went through with his illegal actions. Given that Kirk is presiding over the hearing, and that the crew has little else to do but wait until they reach Talos IV, I get the lenience, but I am not sure what real court would remain in session to examine evidence for someone who just admitted their guilt. Or admittedly, maybe I just don’t know enough about legal proceedings.

 

Spock’s evidence, as it turns out, is a transmission from Talos IV, beamed directly to the Enterprise, which details the vessel’s first trip there under the command of Captain Pike. Of course, this transmission is the original Star Trek pilot, “The Cage,” and from this point on, “The Menagerie” consists almost entirely of footage from that episode.

 

Aside from some really goofy tech dialogue, and incomplete characterizations, “The Cage” holds up surprisingly well. We get to see that Jeffrey Hunter’s Captain Pike is a darker, colder man than James Kirk; he is someone whose decisions and responsibilities as a commander are weighing on him heavily, and he is nearing the point of considering resignation. Pike’s first officer is only referred to as Number One (played by Majel Barrett), who is an amazing example of a strong female role for 1960’s television, but unfortunately her character had to be discarded by Roddenberry when the studio forced him to choose between keeping his strong, logical female, or his alien Spock. Roddenberry ended up giving Spock Number One’s cold, emotionless, logical persona, and thus the Spock we know and love was born.

 

It really is a shame that NBC put so much pressure on Roddenberry to alter his concept of women in the 23rd Century; aside from Number One, the other female crew members of the Cage-era Enterprise also seem to be on equal footing with the men, and there isn’t a mini-skirt in sight. Of course, this reviewer by no means, from an aesthetic point view, objects to how the women of the Enterprise look in said mini-skirts, but cheekiness and my own red-blooded male impulses aside, the female officers in Starfleet should have been offered the same, more professional uniform as the males. Unfortunately we would have to wait until The Motion Picture to see more fairness in the way men and women are presented in Star Trek.

 

When Enterprise finds evidence of human survivors on Talos IV, from a doomed expedition many years ago, Pike, Spock, and an away team beam down to investigate. What at first seems like a wonderful discovery of lost, homesick men, turns out to be just an elaborate, life like illusion created by the Talosians. Pike is abducted when he is lured in by the only true human survivor from the crash, Vina, whom he is extremely attracted to.

 

Pike is subjected to a variety of illusions crafted by the Talosians, in order to foster cooperation, as well as to strengthen his attraction toward Vina. Vina is presented to Pike in a variety of forms; as a damsel in distress on Rigel VII, as a wife in the countryside on Earth, and as a primal, animalistic Orion slave woman, all in an attempt to make him submit to his situation.

 

However, Pike is every bit as stubborn as Captain Kirk, and certainly has a darker, more furious edge to him. When he discovers that primitive, base human emotions such as hatred, and anger, block out the Talosian’s illusions and their telepathic abilities, he mines that weakness long enough to take one of them captive. Once the illusion is broken, the Enterprise crew find out that their attempts to break Pike out from his underground cage with phaser fire were actually working, but all along they weren’t able to see it.

 

The Talosians had, thousands of centuries ago, devastated their planet and their civilization with war. They retreated underground, where their telepathic abilities flourished, but their physical bodies and their technology atrophied. They had apparently been testing various species for many years, looking for a suitable slave race to use for rebuilding their world, but none had shown as much promise as humanity.

 

However, when the away team threatens to kill themselves with an overloaded phaser, and as well when the Talosians finish screening the Enterprise‘s records, they realize that humans would rather die than be enslaved, and would be too violent to keep in captivity. With of course, the sad exception of Vina, who in reality is too badly disfigured to live a normal life outside of Talos IV.

 

(I once heard a suggestion that Vina could be repaired using the transporter. I don’t think 23rd century transporters were sophisticated enough for that, plus, there wouldn’t be an original, unaltered version of her pattern to reference.)

 

The ending of “The Cage” leads us to the final moments of “The Menagerie,” where it is revealed that not only have the Talosians been transmitting a signal to the Enterprise, but even Commodore Mendez himself has been one of their illusions all along!

 

It is also revealed that Spock’s only intention was to take Captain Pike to Talos IV, so that the crippled starship commander could live out the rest of his life as a healthy, happy man with Vina. Even Kirk seems to relent that it is better to live with an illusion of health and happiness, than a reality of living as a useless vegetable. That Commodore Mendez was an illusion, and that Starfleet sends a signal to the Enterprise, apparently excusing their violation of Talos space, seems to let Spock off the hook. Perhaps too easily in fact; despite acting out of nothing but loyalty to his former Captain, and despite that the way he enacted his plan was done in such a manner as to put the blame only on himself, Spock seems to get out of his predicament with apparently no trouble at all. We can make a guess that perhaps this incident is why he doesn’t receive a promotion or command of his own until years later, but there is nothing spoken on-screen to that effect.

 

We are also left to ponder about how much of the incident was real at all. Since the Talosians can apparently project their powers through subspace, one wonders just how long they conspired with Spock, and also, how much we see of Mendez was real or an illusion. My guess is that the Mendez we see at the base was real, and what goes onto the shuttle with Kirk was the illusion, but unfortunately, again, there is little to back that up. What we do know for sure is that the Talosian’s powers are not to be trifled with, and it is truly for wise for Starfleet to give them a wide berth.

Despite some problems with logic and consistency, “The Menagerie” is an entertaining, fascinating episode that shows original series Trek at some of its most interestingly cerebral. Gene Roddenberry’s first pilot examines the nature of reality decades before The Matrix did, and asks the questions: What is real? How does one define their purpose, their reality? Is our reality just relative, defined only by experience? Is there a such thing as an absolute reality, or only what our senses perceive, or for that matter what they think they perceive? This is smart, ahead of its time writing for the 1960s.

 

Through the tragedies that befell both Vina and Pike, we must also question the quality of human life, and the value we place on it. Is it worth staying alive if you can’t function? If your brain is sound but your body is broken, can you still truly live? Speaking for myself, I certainly would despise the existence that Captain Pike is forced to endure in his wheelchair. I’d rather be dead than live that way. I’m not sure how I would react exactly to being forced to live in an illusion, but it is certainly preferable to a reality of uselessness and immobility. Besides, is our everyday life not just an elaborate series of deceptions spun before our very eyes; maybe not as powerful as a trick of telepathy played by an alien race, but an illusion nonetheless?

 

For even provoking these thoughts, and much more, “The Cage,” and by extension, “The Menagerie,” are what I consider among the best of Star Trek’s purely cerebral stories about human nature. It is imaginative, thoughtful, and quite engaging.

Examined some easter candy with my Raynox DCR 250 mounted to the 40-150.

More in Hi-Res @ www.burieddreams.nl

 

Like or share: www.facebook.com/burieddreamsphotos

 

Sale: www.burieddreams.nl/category/sale-expo-events

 

Instagram: www.instagram.com/burieddreams.in.decay/

Two blind men examining a German Saw Bayonet. The man on the left is wearing a German Officer's Iron Cross of the First Class on his chest and to the right, the man is wearing an Iron Cross of a Brunswick Private. 1913(c).

 

“To them, their fingers are eyes”

 

From 1913, John Alfred Charlton Deas, a former curator at Sunderland Museum, organised several handling sessions for the blind, first offering an invitation to the children from the Sunderland Council Blind School, to handle a few of the collections at Sunderland Museum, which was ‘eagerly accepted’.

 

Ref: TWCMS:K13817

 

view the set www.flickr.com/photos/twm_news/sets/72157626903151525/

  

(Copyright) We're happy for you to share this digital image within the spirit of The Commons. Please cite 'Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums' when reusing. Certain restrictions on high quality reproductions and commercial use of the original physical version apply though; if you're unsure - for image licensing enquiries please follow this link www.twmuseums.org.uk/image-licensing/