Pictured left to right: Harold Poole "Cat's Paw" and Sir Qarl Khorman "Stone Eye"

Sir Harold Poole: Born in 691 AV, the son of the famous Sir Dustin Poole, who fought alongside King Davian the Bold in the Great Dragon Extermination campaign that ended in 683AV. Many knights died during this campaign, so many lands and keeps became vacant. Sir Dustin became a landed knight, and took the yellow crowned lion as his sigil, to honour both his liege Lords, the Casterwoods, and the Crown. Sir Harold was knighted himself in 708AV after winning the squire’s melee at the royal tourney commemorating the birth of Prince Dendrick Fielder.

When Sir Dustin died in 715AV, his Keep called Otter Pool was passed to Sir Harold. When Lord Pyrseus called his banners to ride to the Frost Gate in 718AV, Harold hesitated before riding to war against the crown. His father had told him many stories of the King’s legendary exploits, but lately, many rumours spread telling of a King who’d become callus and evil-spirited. Sir Haytham Blythe was an old friend of Harold, and he was convinced that change of leadership was warranted. With the belief that he was fighting for the good of the kingdom, Harold answered the call to arms.

At the Battle of Brothers Blood, Sir Harold charged the Loyalist front lines with Sir Qarl Khorman and their young Lord Pyrseus Casterwood himself. Sir Harold cut down many of House Flint’s knights in a desperate attempt to capture Lord Henry Flint. Once Lord Pyrseus had captured Lord Flint, he sued for peace with the crown, and House Casterwoods forces returned to their lands in Eastern Thronfeld without resistance.

Harold is conflicted about his role in the rebellion, but he wholeheartedly regrets his inaction during the Seven Year Orc War. Lord Pyrseus ordered his knights to protect their own lands and to refuse their King’s call. Harold lies awake at night wondering how many innocent lives were lost because of the feud between his Lord and his King. Sir Harold is also one of the most decorated tourney knights in the kingdom. During a tournament in 714AV, he famously unseated Sir Haytham Blythe in a joust that lasted 21 rounds. As his body has aged, Harold has participated in fewer tournements, but he remains as sharp as he ever was.

Sir Qarl Khorman, (born 689AV) is a knight living in the lands of House Casterwood. His father Jeshua Khorman fled from slavery in Kalarocco and worked as a farmhand for Lord Corbery, a vassal of House Casterwood. In 699AV, two men and a woman, carrying a baby, asked Jeshua to see the Lord Corbery. They brandished a signed invitation from Corbery himself, so Jeshua escorted them to his Lord’s hall. Later that day, Qarl, who was just 10 years old, saw the men rob and kill Lord Corbery. Qarl ran and told his father what happened and Jeshua grabbed his axe and confronted the guests in the storage barn. The men attacked Jeshua, so he killed them both. The woman grabbed Qarl and Qarl bit her hand to get free. The woman yelled at the boy in a deep voice, revealing that she was actually a man. Qarl grabbed his slingshot and launched a stone into the man’s eye and he dropped dead.

Jeshua picked up the baby and removed it’s ragged brown swaddle to reveal a fine linen robe on the boy. Just then, trumpets sounded around the barn. The party of thieves had been tracked by Lord Tyus Casterwood’s men to the barn. Jeshua presented the knights with the child and reported that the men who came with the boy, and killed Lord Corbin, were dead in the storage barn. The Knights took the child and rode back to their Lord. A week later, Lord Tyus and a host of knights appeared at the farm. Lord Tyus announced that Jeshua had rescued his son, young Pyrseus, and killed his kidnappers. He knighted Jeshua on the spot.

When he learned that Qarl had killed one of the men, he knighted the boy as well. The Khormans were informed that Lord Corbery had orchestrated the kidnapping and that he was likely killed in a renegotiation gone wrong. Lord Corbery’s lands were annexed, but his keep and the immediate surrounding lands were gifted to Jeshua and Qarl, making them landed knights. They took the Corbery sigil, a grey and gold hawk, as their own, because they didn’t have the money to change all the banners.

Qarl worked as a page in the Lion’s Den for 6 years and trained with the knights there day and night. When Qarl was 18, his father died of a fever, and Qarl returned to the newly named Khorman’s Keep. Qarl participated as a rebel in the battle of Brother’s Blood in 718AV and fought side by side with the young Lord Pyrseus and Sir Harold Poole as they battled their way to capture Lord Henry Flint in order to avoid calamity and to sue for peace.

Qarl is extremely loyal to House Casterwood, and though he is an older knight, he remains one of their deadliest servants. In his younger years, he enjoyed participating in tournaments. He remains especially gifted in a joust and the melee, though it takes a much bigger prize these days to get him in front of the crowds. He also has a profound hatred for the Vieran, which stems from his family’s northern crossing of the Bloody March. They met a band of Vieran Guerillas and as the fled, a Vieran arrow struck his mother, killing her.

These two knights represent the tight grip that House Casterwood has developed over even the lesser houses in the East of Thronfeld. Liberating these lands will be one thing for the Young King Davian, but converting the inhabitants will be a battle in and of itself.

Copenhagen, 1996.

I met her when she gave a lecture at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen in february 1996. After the lecture I got her autograph in my copy of "Immediate Family" and asked her if I could "take her picture". She agreed and we found a corner by a window, where the light was reasonably okay.

I was nervous about it and anxious to improve my chances of getting a good shot, so I shot a whole roll (12 shots) on my Hasselblad.

However she obviously hadn't expected that to "take her picture" meant a whole roll, because somewhere midway she asked me how many shots I intended to take.

When I look at the contact sheet today I can see how she got progressively more perplexed from frame to frame, and on the 12th frame she looks positively relieved that it's over. I had clearly pushed my luck, and I am not very proud of it. But I do like some of the shots on this roll, so I guess it was worth it after all. At least to me.

I have posted from this roll before. The reason I post again is that I am currently reading her autobiography "Hold Still - a Memoir with Photographs".

It is excellent. She writes wickedly well. I highly recommend this book!

The immediate post Conrail split years were busy times in Cumberland, MD. In this scene at Mexico tower, an eastbound manifest departs the yard behind patched C40-8 7490, while an AC6000 led westbound, likely a Q137 or Q217, waits at the signal on #1 track. Light power that came in on an eastbound manifest is on the PPG lead and staying out of everyone's way while another eastbound is waiting on #2 main west of the plant that will follow east on 7490's block.

Victims who were spared immediate death by being selected for labor were systematically stripped of their individual identities. They had their hair shaved off and a registration number tattooed on their left forearm. Men were forced to wear ragged, striped pants and jackets, and women wore work dresses. Both were issued ill-fitting work shoes, sometimes clogs. They had no change of clothing and slept in the same clothes they worked in.

Each day was a struggle for survival under unbearable conditions. Prisoners were housed in primitive barracks that had no windows and were not insulated from the heat or cold. There was no bathroom, only a bucket. Each barrack held about 36 wooden bunkbeds, and inmates were squeezed in five or six across on the wooden plank. As many as 500 inmates lodged in a single barrack.

Inmates were always hungry. Food consisted of watery soup made with rotten vegetables and meat, a few ounces of bread, a bit of margarine, tea, or a bitter drink resembling coffee. Diarrhea was common. People weakened by dehydration and hunger fell easy victim to the contagious diseases that spread through the camp.

Some inmates worked as forced laborers inside the camp, in the kitchen or as barbers, for example. Women often sorted the piles of shoes, clothes, and other prisoner belongings, which would be shipped back to Germany for use there. The storage warehouses at Auschwitz-Birkenau, located near two of the crematoria, were called "Canada," because the Poles regarded that country as a place of great riches. At Auschwitz, as at hundreds of other camps in the Reich and occupied Europe where the Germans used forced laborers, prisoners were also employed outside the camps, in coal mines and rock quarries, and on construction projects, digging tunnels and canals. Under armed guard, they shoveled snow off roads and cleared rubble from roads and towns hit during air raids. A large number of forced laborers eventually were used in factories that produced weapons and other goods that supported the German war effort. Many private companies, such as I. G. Farben and Bavarian Motor Works (BMW), which produced automobile and airplane engines, eagerly sought the use of prisoners as a source of cheap labor.

Escape from Auschwitz was almost impossible. Electrically charged barbed-wire fences surrounded both the concentration camp and the killing center. Guards, equipped with machine guns and automatic rifles, stood in the many watchtowers. The lives of the prisoners were completely controlled by their guards, who on a whim could inflict cruel punishment on them. Prisoners were also mistreated by fellow inmates who were chosen to supervise the others in return for special favors by the guards.

Source: encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/auschwitz-1

Immediate Care Medical, Victoria Square, Birmingham, England UK

www.robertcjones.co.uk

River landscape along the river Indre in the immediate vicinity of the Chateau de l’Islette in the village of Azay-le-Rideau, Loire Valley, France

Some background information:

The Indre is a 279.3 km (173.5 miles) long river and left tributary to the Loire. Its source is in the department of Cher, near Préveranges. The Indre flows through the departments of Cher, Indre and Indre-et-Loire, before it joins the Loire near the site of the Chinon nuclear power plant, north of Avoine. Its own tributaries are the Indrois and the Trégonce.

The Château de l'Islette is a 16th century Renaissance castle that lies just 2 km (1.2 miles) west of the village of Azay-le-Rideau in the French department of Indre-et-Loire. It is also located about 30 km (19 miles) to the southwest of the city of Tours. The estate of the Château de l'Islette is crossed by the course of the Indre river, which acts as a natural border between the two communes of Azay-le-Rideau on the river’s right bank and Cheillé on its left bank.

The castle is often compared to its famous neighbour, the Château d'Azay-le-Rideau. But in my opinion, this comparison is a bit unfair. The Château d'Azay-le-Rideau is definitely more beautiful and also has a more significant history, but the Château de l'Islette has its own subtle charm, is less frequented and also well worth seeing. So, if you should ever visit the Château d'Azay-le-Rideau, don’t miss visiting the Château de l'Islette too.

From 1350 to 1650, the estate belonged to the de Maillé family, which ranked among the Touraine nobility. In 1531, one the family’s members, René de Maillé, commissioned the construction of the present castle. It is assumed that originally there was only a common water mill on the site, where each peasant could come and grind his wheat in return for a fee to the Lords de Maille.

In the next centuries, the Château de l'Islette passed into the hands of different noble families. The first one was the family Tiercelin d'Appelvoisin, followed by the family Barjot, and in 1706, through marriage by the marquesses of de Roncé. As these three families were closely linked, there was no change of owner in the proper sense.

When the French Revolution broke out in 1789, the owner of the Château de l'Islette was Charles Tiercelin d'Apelvoisin. As he was a member of the French king’s general staff, he was guillotined in 1793. During the First Empire the castle was sold and had several owners during the 19th century. One of them was Jean-Baptiste Dupuy, who carried out a number of renovations and modifications to both the interior and the exterior of the Château de l'Islette in the early 19th century.

Dupuy had the gables of the top floor windows removed and the pointed roofs of the two towers cut off. And he also had the moat that surrounded the castle filled in and covered with gravel. In addition, he placed his own coat of arms, invented by himself, prominently on the mantelpiece of the fireplace in the largest room on the first floor. It is said, that the major motivation of Depuy, who was described as a "strong personailty", was to leave his mark on this historic and prestigious place.

At the end of the 19th century, the Château de l'Islette became the love nest of two other strong personalities: the well-known sculptors Camille Claudel and Auguste Rodin. Both rented the castle in the summers of 1890, 1891 and 1892 to work and live out their tempestuous and intimate relationship. Rodin worked on his famous "Balzac and Camille", while Claudel sculpted the bronze "La Petite Châtelaine", which is on permanent display in the castle. Claudel was much younger than Rodin and their love affair was shaped by quarrels, mood swings and outbursts of emotion. As a result, she cut ties with Rodin in 1893.

Today, the Château de l'Islette is privately owned by the family Michaud. From May to September it is open to the public, while the family moves to the gardener’s cottage within sight during this time. The current owners have converted the castle’s interior into a real living space and it is very interesting to see, how they have teamed the amenities of modern life with historical furnishings and equipment. We haven’t seen anything comparable in any other castle yet.

Since 2000, the Château de l'Islette belongs to the UNESCO Word Heritage Site "The Loire Valley between Sully-sur-Loire and Chalonnes" with its many breathtaking châteaux. Altogether there are more than 400 of them in the Loire region.

Free LGTBQ+ in Iran.

On Saturday 21 January 2023, hundreds of protesters marched from Downing Street to Hyde Park to demand real equality for trans people, an end to transphobic violence and an immediate reversal of the UK government's decision to block Scotland's progressive Gender Recognition Reform Bill which simplifies the procedure for a trans person to obtain a gender recognition certificate, which until now has been highly "intrusive, medicalised and bureaucratic."

www.stonewall.org.uk/about-us/news/statement-uk-governmen...

The LGBTQ oranisation Stonewall commented -

"This is a piece of legislation that simply seeks to make the process for legally recognising a trans man or trans women's gender more respectful and straightforward. Scotland's Bill aligns it with leading international practice endorsed by the United Nations and adopted by 30 countries, including Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Irealand and most of the United States of America."

www.stonewall.org.uk/about-us/news/statement-uk-governmen...

The bill had received cross-party support in the Scottish parliament and was supported by 88 members - the overwhelming majority of Scottish MSPs - only 33 voted against and just 4 abstained. The legislation was also clearly within the scope of what the Scottish parliament can legislate according to its devolved powers. However, for the first time ever, the British government used section 35 of the Scotland Act to unilaterally veto the reforms.

I have a couple of these I'm going to post. I think.

"They did not so much seem to stare right through things as to stare past the present state of the world into a world that was permanently in the distance for them and at the same time more immediate than the present." I came across that line today while reading Snow Falling On Cedars (David Guterson) and I liked it so much that I wrote it down. That guy's a crazy good writer.

Indianapolis, IN

Styrum was an immediate lordship in the Holy Roman Empire, located in Mülheim an der Ruhr, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It held no seat in the Diet and was circumvened by the lordship of Broich.

The exact date of construction of its castle is unknown. Styrum was already prosperous in Frankish times before Charlemagne (late 8th century). In 1067 Styrum was given to the Abbacy of Kaiserswerth. After the murder of the Archbishop of Cologne, Engelbert of Berg, in 1225, the descendants of Frederick I of Isenberg gained ownership of Mülheim an der Ruhr and thereby of the castle as Lords of Styrum and took up residence. Here they founded the line of Counts of Limburg Styrum, a family that would later obtain important estates in Westphalia and the Lower Rhine. With the partition of the House of Limburg Styrum in 1644, Styrum passed to the line of Limburg-Styrum-Styrum.

Styrum was rebuilt in Baroque style in 1668, and it received its present form after a fire in 1738. In the mediatisation of 1806, Styrum came under control of the Grand Duchy of Berg. The line of Limburg-Styrum-Styrum became extinct in 1809. The last count of the Styrum branch of the family, Ernst Maria Johan (deceased on 23 March 1809) in his will of 29 January 1808 donated Styrum to the sister of his wife: Maria Margaretha von Humbracht, who sold it in 1825.

Styrum was purchased by the German industrialist August Thyssen in 1890. His company gave the castle to the city of Mülheim in 1960. It was transformed into a restaurant, artist studio and community centre for the elderly in 1992.

storm waiting to crash

out by the farms

Mackenzie Country, New Zealand

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: December 1, 2020

Contact: TFL Management (thefashionloft)

The Fashion Loft Invites You to Celebrate the End of 2020

On December 5, The Fashion Loft will host its fourth annual Holiday Event in Second Life. The event is created to show appreciation for the creators who have supported TFL this year, as well as a way to promote mainstore shopping.

Using a HUD, shoppers will be able to teleport to participating stores. Once there, they will find items for sale for L$99, and hunt items for L$1.

To kick things off, The Fashion Loft will host an Opening Day party at TFL Headquarters on Saturday, December 5 from 2 - 4 PM SLT. DJ Catalysis will spin some festive holiday music to get everyone in the partying mood.

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

About The Fashion Loft

The Fashion Loft prides itself on being a home for bloggers, content creators, fashionistas, models, and photographers. Since 2016, TFL has provided events, shows, contests, and other activities that brings the fashion community together.

Inworld: maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Isle%20of%20Creation/160/2...

Website: thefashionloftofsl.wordpress.com/

Facebook: www.facebook.com/thefashionloftsl/

Flickr: www.flickr.com/groups/thefashionloftsl/

Twitter: twitter.com/TFL_SL

2015法國PX3國際攝影比賽

廣告類 第三名

Non-Professional (Advertising/Beauty)

Third Prize

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

WINNER OF PX3, Prix de la Photographie Paris

ja-shang Tang of Taiwan was Awarded Third Prize in the PX3 2015 Competition.

Paris, France

Prix de la Photographie Paris (Px3) announces winners of PX3 2015 competition.

ja-shang Tang of Taiwan was Awarded: Third Prize in category Advertising for the entry entitled, " Camera Girl ." The jury selected PX3 2015’s winners from thousands of photography entries from over 85 countries.

Px3 is juried by top international decision-makers in the photography industry: Carol Johnson, Curator of Photography of Library of Congress, Washington D.C.; Gilles Raynaldy, Director of Purpose, Paris; Viviene Esders, Expert près la Cour d'Appel de Paris; Mark Heflin, Director of American Illustration + American Photography, New York; Sara Rumens, Lifestyle Photo Editor of Grazia Magazine, London; Françoise Paviot, Director of Galerie Françoise Paviot, Paris; Chrisitine Ollier, Art Director of Filles du Calvaire, Paris; Natalie Johnson, Features Editor of Digital Photographer Magazine, London; Natalie Belayche, Director of Visual Delight, Paris; Kenan Aktulun, VP/Creative Director of Digitas, New York; Chiara Mariani, Photo Editor of Corriere della Sera Magazine, Italy; Arnaud Adida, Director of Acte 2 Gallery/Agency, Paris; Jeannette Mariani, Director of 13 Sévigné Gallery, Paris; Bernard Utudjian, Director of Galerie Polaris, Paris; Agnès Voltz, Director of Chambre Avec Vues, Paris; and Alice Gabriner, World Picture Editor of Time Magazine, New York.

ABOUT Px3:

The "Prix de la Photographie Paris" (Px3) strives to promote the appreciation of photography, to discover emerging talent, and introduce photographers from around the world to the artistic community of Paris. Winning photographs from this competition are exhibited in a high-profile gallery in Paris and published in the high-quality, full-color Px3 Annual Book.

Visit px3.fr

For Press Inquiries, Contact:

Press@px3.fr

About the Winner:

Contact ja-shang Tang:

jashang1975@gmail.com

immediate release

Hiked up Nihahi Ridge today. stopped here for photos for obv. light show reasons

my immediate work neighborhood always has a lot of lights on the trees, which they leave up well after the holidays. it's so nice on a dark january evening to still have their soft glow. but usually by the beginning of february they stop turning them on &/or cut them off of the trees. looks to be that time this week.

the good thing is, that this means it's almost still light out when i get out of work. the days are only getting longer from here. hooray!

In the immediate vicinity of the centre of Amsterdam is a neighbourhood where tourists rarely come. Houses over 300 years old, bridges, warehouses, etc. all from 1650 to 1700, and in a great condition.

This is the place where, in the golden age of trade, merchandise and spices from all over the world were traded and stored.

Most boats in the Canals are for living, not for recreation.

www.malaney.photography

Sunrise Lake Michigan. South Shore Park, Bay View, Milwaukee Wisconsin, USA. Another brisk, bright Wisconsin morning on the Lake. 2 degrees!

The funeral of Puang M.T Allorerung.

With its vibrant tribal culture and stunning scenery the facinating region of Tana Toraja is rightly a mecca for travellers. Visually its allure is immediate, with villages of elaborately painted houses with boat-shaped roofs, and towering terraces of emerald green rice paddies, all of which is overseen by a protective necklace of jagged jungle-clad hills.

Culturally the Toraja, most of whom were animists until the early 20th century, are preoccupied with death. Though ancient ways are inevitably changing as this once-isolated region becomes better connected to the rest of the nation, profound (and very bloody) funeral ceremonies remain a vital part of Torajan tradition. Buffalo and pigs are sacrificed; there is a slew of traditional dances, and lashings of food and drink. High-class Toraja dead are entombed in cave graves or hanging graves in the steep cliffs, which are guarded over by tau tau (life-sized wooden effigies) carved in their image; you’ll find these eerie yet beautiful cliff cemeteries scattered throughout the region.

The biggest funerals are usually held in the dry-season months of July and August, at which time tourism numbers soar, but there are funerals year-round. Famous for their hospitality, the Torajans are a hospitable bunch and visitors are usually more than welcome to attend these ceremonies; however, a guide is near-essential to make the most of the experience.

Punta Gorda is a city in Charlotte County, Florida, United States. As of the 2010 census the city had a population of 16,641. It is the county seat of Charlotte County and the only incorporated municipality in the county. Punta Gorda is the principal city of the Punta Gorda, Florida Metropolitan Statistical Area and is also in the Sarasota-Bradenton-Punta Gorda Combined Statistical Area.

Punta Gorda was the scene of massive destruction after Charley, a Category 4 hurricane, came through the city on August 13, 2004. Charley was the strongest tropical system to hit Florida since Hurricane Andrew in 1992, and the first hurricane since Hurricane Donna in 1960 to make a direct hit on Florida's southwest coast. In the immediate years following the storm, buildings were restored or built to hurricane-resistant building codes. The new buildings, restorations and amenities concurrently preserved the city's past while showcasing newer facilities. During this time, Laishley Park Municipal Marina was built and the Harborwalk, Linear Park and various trails were created throughout the city for bicycle and pedestrian traffic.

The name Punta Gorda ("Fat Point") has been on maps at least since 1851, referring to a point of land that juts into Charlotte Harbor, an estuary off the Gulf of Mexico. It was in the late 1800s that early settlers began to arrive in what is the present-day Punta Gorda area.

Frederick and Jarvis Howard, Union Army veterans, homesteaded an area south of the Peace River near present-day Punta Gorda about a decade after the close of the Civil War. In 1876, James and Josephine Lockhart bought land and built a house on property which is now at the center of the city. Approximately two years later Lockhart sold his claim to James Madison Lanier, a hunter and trapper.

In 1879, a charter for a railroad with termini at Charlotte Harbor and Lake City, Florida was established under the name Gainesville, Ocala, and Charlotte Harbor Railroad. It was taken over by the Florida Southern Railroad, which reaffirmed Charlotte Harbor as a terminus in its own charter. Lanier with his wife lived there until 1883, when 30.8 acres (12.5 ha) were sold to Isaac Trabue, who purchased additional land along the harbor and directed the platting of a town (by Kelly B. Harvey) named "Trabue". Harvey recorded the plat on February 24, 1885. At the time, Isaac was in Kentucky, and his cousin, John Trabue, was in charge of selling lots. Kelly, a native of the Peace River area, started referring to the new town as Punta Gorda. He later explained that the Spaniards called the area Punta Gorda, and local businesses included Punta gorda within their companies' names.

Less than ten years after the first settlements in the area, railroads rolled into the town of Trabue in June 1886, and with them came the first land developers and Southwest Florida's first batch of tourists. Punta Gorda became the southernmost stop on the Florida Southern Railroad, until an extension was built to Fort Myers in 1904, attracting the industries that propelled its initial growth.

In 1887, twelve years after the first settlers trekked to Charlotte Harbor, 34 met at Hector's Billiard Parlor to discuss incorporation. Once Punta Gorda was officially incorporated, mayoral elections took place and a council was formed. The first mayor, W. H. Simmons, was elected. The new city was renamed Punta Gorda.

Phosphate was discovered on the banks of the Peace River just above Punta Gorda in 1888. Phosphate mined in the Peace River Valley was barged down the Peace River to Punta Gorda and Port Boca Grande, where it was loaded onto vessels for worldwide shipment. In 1896, the Florida Times-Union reported that phosphate mining was Punta Gorda's chief industry and that Punta Gorda was the greatest phosphate shipping point in the world. By 1907, a railroad was built direct to Port Boca Grande, ending the brief phosphate shipping boom from Punta Gorda.

In 1890, the first postmaster, Robert Meacham, an African American, was appointed by Isaac Trabue as a deliberate affront to Kelly B. Harvey and those who had voted to change the name of the town from Trabue to Punta Gorda.

The Punta Gorda Herald was founded by Robert Kirby Seward in 1893 and published weekly during its early years.The newspaper covered such events as rum running, other smuggling activities, and lawlessness in general. It underwent many changes in both ownership and name over time, and today is known as The Charlotte Sun Herald.

Early Punta Gorda greatly resembled the modern social climate of various classes living together and working together. While the regal Punta Gorda Hotel, at one point partly owned by Cornelius Vanderbilt, reflected the upper class, Punta Gorda was a pretty rough town, as most frontier towns were. Punta Gorda's location at the end of the railway line spiked the crime rate, resulting in approximately 40 murders between 1890 and 1904. This included City Marshal John H. Bowman, who was shot and killed in his front parlor on January 29, 1903, in view of his family.

In 1925, a bungalow was built by Joseph Blanchard, an African American sea captain and fisherman. The Blanchard House Museum still stands as a museum, providing education for the history of middle-class African American life in the area.

Punta Gorda in the 20th century still maintained steady growth. Charlotte County was formed in 1921 after DeSoto County was split. Also in 1921, the first bridge was constructed connecting Punta Gorda and Charlotte Harbor along the brand-new Tamiami Trail. This small bridge was replaced by the original Barron Collier Bridge in 1931, and then by the current Barron Collier Bridge and Gilchrist Bridge crossing the Peace River.

During World War II, a U.S. Army airfield was built in Punta Gorda to train combat air pilots. After the war, the airfield was turned over to Charlotte County.Today the old airfield is the Punta Gorda Airport, providing both commercial and general aviation.

Punta Gorda's next intense growth phase started in 1959 with the creation of a neighborhood of canal-front home sites, Punta Gorda Isles, by a trio of entrepreneurs, Al Johns, Bud Cole and Sam Burchers. They laid out 55 miles of canals 100 feet wide and 17 feet deep using dredged sand to raise the level of the canal front land. This provided dry home sites with access to the Charlotte Harbor and the Gulf of Mexico. Johns went on to develop several other communities in Punta Gorda, among which were Burnt Store Isles, another waterfront community with golf course, and Seminole Lakes, a golf course community. These communities provided waterfront or golf course homes for retirees with access to a downtown with shopping, restaurants, and parks.

In the early 1980s at the site of the old Maud Street Fishing Docks, a new shopping, restaurant and marina complex, Fishermen's Village, was constructed that continues to be one of Southwest Florida's primary attractions.

In 2004, a major hurricane, Hurricane Charley, moved through Punta Gorda, damaging many buildings, but also creating an opportunity for revitalization of both the historic downtown and the waterfront. During the first part of the twenty-first century, Punta Gorda has continued to grow and improve, adding a new Harborwalk which continues to expand, a linear park which winds through the city, many new restaurants, and neighborhoods.

A replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was dedicated on November 5, 2016. The city also features the Whispering Giant statue, a public art sculpture of the face of a Native American man and a Native American woman.

Credit for the data above is given to the following website:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punta_Gorda,_Florida

Rochester bridge over the River Medway in 2016. This is the southern pedestrian part. Two traffic lanes on the immediate right with the rail part on the northern side. There has been various bridges here since Roman times. The town of Strood is on the west side of the Medway, straight ahead.

kalanchoe blossfeldiana - also called Florist Kalanchoe.

I ordered a bag of plants from WholeFoods with a recent food curbside delivery. This is what I got! I planned to use this flowering plant outside, now I think I am fine with keeping it inside. I think I will order seeds for outside!

720nm Infrared

The mountains average 300+ inches of snow a year. The valley, in the immediate rain shadow of the mountains, averages about 40 inches a year. Because the sun 'burns' the valley snow off rather quickly, the valley is often open and without much snow cover. Winter pasture!

Yesterday I made the drive up to Kentucky to see my brother and his family. This is a photo of them looking at old family photos while I was there.

I've been slowly scanning old prints to create an archive of my Dad's side of the family as well as our own immediate household growing up. The entire collection stands at 800+ scanned images, plus an assortment of newer digital photos.

I've already got a big start on scanning and organizing photos from my Mom's side of the family, and hope to pull that collection together soon. Of course these things are an ongoing story, but I wanted to make sure my nieces and nephews have a record of where they came from.

Benton, Illinois USA

Immediate fleet sisters 206 + 207 are now on the X1 service. This is because we now have 213 on the 557, allowing 207 to come off it. This will also give the loaned red Metrobus from Robson's time off on the heavy X1 service, which it has been running with 206 for a little while now.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippi

Philippi (/fɪˈlɪpaɪ, ˈfɪləˌpaɪ/; Greek: Φίλιπποι, Philippoi) was a city in eastern Macedonia, established by Philip II in 356 BC and abandoned in the 14th century after the Ottoman conquest. The present municipality Filippoi is located near the ruins of the ancient city and it is part of the region of East Macedonia and Thrace in Kavalla Greece.

History

Philippi was established by the king of Macedon, Philip II, on the site of the Thasian colony of Krinides or Crenides (Κρηνἱδες, "Fountains"), near the head of the Aegean Sea at the foot of Mt. Orbelos about 8 miles north-west of Kavalla, on the northern border of the marsh that in Antiquity covered the entire plain separating it from the Pangaion hills to the south of Greece.

The objective of founding the town was to take control of the neighbouring gold mines and to establish a garrison at a strategic passage: the site controlled the route between Amphipolis and Neapolis, part of the great royal route which crosses Macedonia from the east to the west and which was reconstructed later by the Roman Empire as the Via Egnatia. Philip II endowed the new city with important fortifications, which partially blocked the passage between the swamp and Mt. Orbelos, and sent colonists to occupy it. Philip also had the marsh partially drained, as is attested by the writer Theophrastus. Philippi preserved its autonomy within the kingdom of Macedon and had its own political institutions (the Assembly of the demos). The discovery of new gold mines near the city, at Asyla, contributed to the wealth of the kingdom and Philip established a mint there. The city was finally fully integrated into the kingdom under Philip V.

The city remained. It contained 2,000 people. When the Romans destroyed the Antigonid dynasty of Macedon in 168 BC and divided it into four separate states (merides), it was Amphipolis and not Philippi that became the capital of the eastern Macedonian state.

Almost nothing is known about the city in this period, aside from the walls, the Greek theatre, the foundations of a house under the Roman forum and a little temple dedicated to a hero cult. This monument covers the tomb of a certain Exekestos, is possibly situated on the agora and is dedicated to the κτίστης (ktistès), the foundation hero of the city.

The Roman era

The city reappears in the sources during the Roman civil war that followed the assassination of Julius Caesar. His heirs Mark Antony and Octavian confronted the assassins of Caesar, Marcus Junius Brutus and Gaius Cassius Longinus, at the Battle of Philippi on the plain to the west of the city during October in 42 BC. Antony and Octavian were victorious in this final battle against the partisans of the Republic. They released some of their veteran soldiers, probably from legion XXVIII and colonized them in the city, which was refounded as Colonia Victrix Philippensium. In 30 BC, Octavian became Roman emperor, reorganized the colony, and established more settlers there, veterans possibly from the Praetorian Guard and other Italians. The city was renamed Colonia Iulia Philippensis, and then Colonia Augusta Iulia Philippensis after January, 27 BC, when Octavian received the title Augustus from the Roman Senate.

Following this second renaming, and perhaps after the first, the territory of Philippi was centuriated (divided into squares of land) and distributed to the colonists. The city kept its Macedonian walls, and its general plan was modified only partially by the construction of a forum, a little to the east of the site of Greek agora. It was a "miniature Rome," under the municipal law of Rome and governed by two military officers, the duumviri, who were appointed directly from Rome.

The colony recognized its dependence on the mines that brought it its privileged position on the Via Egnatia. This wealth was shown by the many monuments that were particularly imposing considering the relatively small size of the urban area: the forum, laid out in two terraces on both sides of the main road, was constructed in several phases between the reigns of Claudius and Antoninus Pius, and the theatre was enlarged and expanded in order to hold Roman games. There is an abundance of Latin inscriptions testifying to the prosperity of the city.

The early Christian era

According to the New Testament, in AD 49 or 50, the city was visited by the apostle Paul (Acts 16:9-10). From the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 16:12) and the letter to the Philippians (Philippians 1:1), early Christians concluded that Paul had founded their community. Accompanied by Silas, Timothy and possibly Luke, the author of the Acts of the Apostles, Paul is believed to have preached for the first time on European soil in Philippi (Acts 16:12-40). According to the New Testament, Paul visited the city on two other occasions, in 56 and 57. The Epistle to the Philippians dates from around 61-62 and is believed to show the immediate effects of Paul's instruction.

The development of Christianity in Philippi is indicated by a letter from Polycarp of Smyrna addressed to the community in Philippi around AD 160 and by funerary inscriptions.

The first church described in the city is a small building that was probably originally a small prayer house. This Basilica of Paul, identified by a mosaic inscription on the pavement, is dated around 343 from a mention by the bishop Porphyrios, who was present at the Council of Serdica that year.

The prosperity of the city in the 5th and 6th centuries was attributed to Paul and to his ministry.[citation needed] As in other cities, many new ecclesiastical buildings were constructed at this time. Seven different churches were constructed in Philippi between the mid-4th century and the end of the 6th, some of which competed in size and decoration with the most beautiful buildings in Thessalonica, or those of Constantinople. The relationship of the plan and of the architectural decoration of Basilica B with Hagia Sophia and Saint Irene in Constantinople accorded a privileged place to this church in the history of early Christian art. The complex cathedral which took the place of the Basilica of Paul at the end of the 5th century, constructed around an octagonal church, also rivaled the churches of Constantinople.

In the same age, the fortifications of the city were rebuilt in order to better defend against the growing instability in the Balkans. In 473 CE, the city was besieged by the Ostrogoths, who were unable to take it but burned down the surrounding villages.

The Byzantine and Ottoman era

Already weakened by the Slavic invasions at the end of the 6th century, which ruined the agrarian economy of Macedonia and probably also by the Plague of Justinian in 547, the city was almost totally destroyed by an earthquake around 619, from which it never recovered. There was a small amount of activity there in the 7th century, but the city was now hardly more than a village.

The Byzantine Empire possibly maintained a garrison there, but in 838 the city was taken by the Bulgars under kavhan Isbul, who celebrated their victory with a monumental inscription on the stylobate in Basilica B, now partially in ruins. The site of Philippi was so strategically sound that the Byzantines attempted very soon to recapture it ca. 850. Several seals of civil servants and other Byzantine officials, dated to the first half of the 9th century, prove the presence of Byzantine armies in the city.

Around 969, Emperor Nicephorus II Phocas rebuilt the fortifications on the acropolis and in part of the city. These gradually helped weaken Bulgar power and strengthen the Byzantine presence in the area. In 1077, Bishop Basil Kartzimopoulos rebuilt part of the defenses inside the city. The city began to prosper once more, as witnessed by the Arab geographer Al Idrisi, who mentions it as a centre of business and wine production around 1150.

After a brief occupation by the Franks after the Fourth Crusade and the capture of Constantinople in 1204, the city was captured by the Serbs. Still, it remained a notable fortification on the route of the ancient Via Egnatia; in 1354, the pretender to the Byzantine throne, Matthew Cantacuzenus, was captured there by the Serbs.

The city was abandoned at an unknown date, but when the French traveller Pierre Belon visited it in the 16th century, there were nothing but ruins, used by the Turks as a quarry. The name of the city was preserved at first by a Turkish village on the nearby plain, Philibedjik (Filibecik, "Little Filibe" in Turkish), which has since disappeared and then by a Greek village in the mountains.

Archaeological excavation of the site

Noted or briefly described by 16th century travellers, the first archaeological description of the city was made in 1856 by Perrot, then in 1861 by Léon Heuzey and Henri Daumet in their famous Mission archéologique de Macédoine.[1] The first excavations did not begin until the summer of 1914, and were soon interrupted by the First World War. The excavations, carried out by the École française d'Athènes, were renewed in 1920 and continued until 1937. During this time the Greek theatre, the forum, Basilicas A and B, the baths and the walls were excavated. After the Second World War, Greek archaeologists returned to the site. From 1958 to 1978, the Société Archéologique, then the Service archéologique and the University of Thessalonica uncovered the bishop's quarter and the octagonal church, large private residences, a new basilica near the Museum and two others in the necropolis to the east of the city.

In the Bible

According to the New Testament, in AD 49 or 50 the apostle Paul visited the city, guided there by a vision (Acts 16:9-10). Accompanied by Silas, Timothy and possibly Luke, the author of the Acts of the Apostles, Paul preached for the first time on European soil in Philippi (Acts 16:12-40) and baptized Lydia, a purple dye merchant, in a river to the west of the city. While in Philippi, his exorcism of a demon from a slave girl caused a great uproar in the city, which led to the arrest of Paul and Silas and a public beating (Acts 16:16-24). An earthquake caused their prison to be opened. When the jailer awoke, he prepared to kill himself, thinking all the prisoners had escaped and knowing that he would be severely punished. Paul stopped him, indicating that all the prisoners were in fact still there. The jailer then became one of the first Christians in Europe (Acts 16:25-40).

Paul visited the city at least on two other occasions, in 56 and 57. The Epistle to the Philippians dates from around 61-62 and shows the immediate effects of Paul's instruction.

Went to Italy, many years ago and I asked the locals what to see. They said," My friend, you must go and see the Leaning Tower of Cookies ! It's magnificent ! "

I did, and I must agree, it's definitely one of a kind. I read in the architectural books, that apparently there was supposed to be another level, but upon construction, it almost toppled over !

According to local Folklore (which goes back several centuries), there is also a ban on any milk products in the immediate area, which foretells the collapse of the structure if it comes within contact of milk. That's why only bottled water is sold by the nearby street vendors, apparently.

But, I highly recommend seeing it for yourself, before it collapses, one day. Quite a sight ! :-)

Modern Reykjavík

In the immediate post-war years, Reykjavík was rather like an overgrown village. People in the prime of life poured into the town, and it became a city of children. Iceland was still relatively isolated from the outside world, and few foreigners visited the country. But Icelanders were beginning to compete internationally in sports, and in the postwar years they did well in athletics.

After World War II, modernism finally arrived in Iceland. The National Theatre opened its doors in 1950, and that same year the Iceland Symphony Orchestra was founded. Artists exhibited their works mainly in Listamannaskálinn, an exhibition hall adjacent to Parliament House.

The 1960s were a boom time for Reykjavík, which grew as never before. Private cars became commonplace, and various electrical appliances made housework easier. Charter flights to southern Europe became popular, and with rising prosperity a separate youth culture came into being in Reykjavík.

At this time the Loftleiðir airline started offering cheap transatlantic travel including a stopover in Iceland. Iceland was less cut-off from the outside world, and growing numbers of foreigners, including well-known artists, made their way to Iceland. Large modern hotels were built.

Arts festivals, held every other year since 1970, played an important role in Reykjavík's flourishing cultural life. It was no longer news when world-famous people visited Reykjavík. Icelanders too were travelling abroad, for fun and for education, and this helped overcome Iceland's historic isolation. International cuisine made its mark on the town's restaurants. In the 1990s finance and foreign exchange was deregulated, and the computer revolution opened up new possibilities. Reykjavík lost some of its unique, rather villagey atmosphere. Beer was legalised after decades (the last remnant of Prohibition from the early 20th century). The downtown district was gradually taken over by pubs and other nightlife, while Laugavegur and the Kringlan mall were the major shopping districts. Dogs, banned for decades, were once more allowed in the city.

Reykjavík's international status was highlighted by a superpower summit in 1986 at Höfði House, the reception house of the City of Reykjavík - a meeting that heralded the beginning of the end of the Cold War.

During the last decade of the 20th century, Reykjavík drew increasing international attention. Growing interest in Iceland was not least due to pop star Björk, a Reykjavík girl born and bred. And as if to underline Reykjavík's international role, it was chosen one of nine European Cities of Culture for the millennium year 2000.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: December 1, 2021

Contact: TFL Management (thefashionloft)

The Fashion Loft Invites You to Celebrate the End of 2021

On December 11, The Fashion Loft will host its fifth annual Holiday Event in Second Life. The event is created to show appreciation for the creators who have supported TFL this year, as well as a way to promote mainstore shopping.

Using a HUD, shoppers will be able to teleport to participating stores. Once there, they will find items for sale for L$99, and hunt items for L$1.

To kick things off, The Fashion Loft will host an Opening Day party at TFL Headquarters on Saturday, December 11 from 2-4 PM SLT.

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

About The Fashion Loft

The Fashion Loft prides itself on being a home for bloggers, content creators, fashionistas, models, and photographers. Since 2016, TFL has provided events, shows, contests, and other activities that brings the fashion community together.

Inworld: maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Isle%20of%20Creation/160/2...

Website: thefashionloftofsl.wordpress.com/

Facebook: www.facebook.com/thefashionloftsl/

Flickr: www.flickr.com/groups/thefashionloftsl/

Twitter: twitter.com/TFL_SL

Discord: discord.gg/SrZAhhz

"Eh Miss, in a bit of a hurry this morning? I think you might have forgotten something!"

Even Fuel Girls need to refuel!

The queue for the coffee bar looked different today as one of the Fuel Girls gets a bite to eat at the 100% Modified car show, RDS, Dublin, Ireland.

Nikon E-5700. 30mm, f5.3, 1/18 sec

Please note:

These images are not public domain and are protected by copyright law.

All images © MSI (Motorsport Images Ireland) 2016. All rights reserved.

COPYRIGHT: The copyright and intellectual property rights of this image is owned by MSI (Ireland), and is protected by copyright laws of Ireland and international intellectual property right treaties. You may not copy any portion of the images in any form whatsoever. You may not alter the images in any way.

UNAUTHORISED USE: You may not use, copy, rent, lease, sell, claim ownership, publish to a website, blog or other such electronic hosting medium, modify, decompile, disassemble, otherwise reverse engineer, or transfer images in any form whatsoever whether electronically, mechanically or any other method. Any such unauthorised use shall result in immediate and automatic termination of this license and may result in civil and/or legal action against you/your company or representative.

If you are interested in the use of this digital photographic image, please contact us via e-mail at msiireland@yahoo.com or motorsportimagesireland@gmail.com

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Photography by JOB/MSI Ireland

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All Rights Reserved

An immediate reaction to this shot may be why is the tip of the Imagination building cut off. The answer to that is because immediately just out of frame is the monorail beam. With that in mind I really liked this angle shooting the imagination building with these multi-colored flowers in the foreground and ultimately framed it so the cut off feels intentional and not awkward. Whether or not I succeeded is up for debate but I wanted to share it anyway.

Immediate post-WW1 Saxon Police armored car with crew.

When given at the right time flowers can have an immediate impact...

Today was the start of the Great Chesapeake Bay Schooner Race. We went out with friends to watch the ships take off from Annapolis. The finish is in Portsmouth, Virginia about 120 nautical miles south. It was a glorious fall day with sunshine and mild temperatures and more important, a steady 10-15 knot wind!

We followed the ships and went ahead to wait for them for quite a while. It was fantastic.

The first ship I had to feature is the Pride of Baltimore II because she's a local. She is gorgeous under sail!

Rated Length: 72.36 • Sec/Mi: 77.57

Owner: Pride of Baltimore, Inc.

Previous Races: 1992, 1994-1997, 1999, 2001-2004, 2006-2010, 2012-2014

Pride of Baltimore II, “America’s Star-Spangled Ambassador,” is a reproduction of the 1812-era Baltimore Clippers that helped America defeat the British in the War of 1812. She is also a sailing memorial to her immediate predecessor, the original Pride of Baltimore. Since being commissioned in 1988, Pride of Baltimore II has sailed more than 200,000 miles and visited more than 200 ports in 40 countries.

Baltimore Clippers, because they were so fast and maneuverable, were the vessels of choice for privateers during the War of 1812. Privateers, commissioned by the wartime government, plied Britain’s home waters, the Atlantic and the Caribbean attacking British ships for profit. With a skilled crew, the Clippers could easily outsail the Royal Navy vessels escorting merchant convoys. Nearly a third of all of the commissions issued to privateers during the War of 1812 went to vessels operating out of Baltimore. Those Baltimore privateers captured more than a third of the total British prizes. Their successes, of course, galled the Royal Navy and spurred the British to attack Baltimore in 1814.

www.gcbsr.org/

You can track the race here

www.baltimoremarinecenters.com/About-BMC/Schooner-Race-Tr...

Stunning Faye Evette Betts, Performance Direct promotional super model. Autosport International NEC Birmingham, Jan 27th 2013. Nikon D-800, Nikkor 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6 IF-ED-VR-2 (FX), Nikon SB-910 Speedlight. 115mm, flash with diffuser, 1/125, F5.6, ISO 400

Make sure to view this photo at full size........

Please note:

These images are not public domain and are protected by copyright law.

All images © MSI (Motorsport Images Ireland) 2015. All rights reserved.

COPYRIGHT: The copyright and intellectual property rights of this image is owned by MSI (Ireland), and is protected by copyright laws of Ireland and international intellectual property right treaties. You may not copy any portion of the images in any form whatsoever. You may not alter the images in any way.

UNAUTHORISED USE: You may not use, copy, rent, lease, sell, claim ownership, publish to a website, blog or other such electronic hosting medium, modify, decompile, disassemble, otherwise reverse engineer, or transfer images in any form whatsoever whether electronically, mechanically or any other method. Any such unauthorised use shall result in immediate and automatic termination of this license and may result in civil and/or legal action against you/your company or representative.

If you are interested in the use of this digital photographic image, please contact us via e-mail at msiireland@yahoo.com or motorsportimagesireland@gmail.com

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

Photography by JOB/MSI Ireland

© MSI Ireland 2015

All Rights Reserved

Lots of people visit graveyards to look at the headstones and to learn about those who have passed before us. This grave would be of immediate interest to them. It is nothing special until you realise that the two people it holds died on the same day, a husband and wife. There is also the rather cryptic message "Lovely and pleasant in their lives and in their death they were not divided" which asks many more questions than it answers!

Photographer: Robert French

Collection: Lawrence Photograph Collection

Date: Circa 1865 - 1914 1897 - 1902

NLI Ref: L_ROY_05598

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

Hollande was born in Rouen, to a middle-class family. His mother, Nicole Frédérique Marguerite Tribert (1927–2009), was a social worker, and his father, Georges Gustave Hollande, an ear, nose, and throat doctor who "had once run on a far right ticket in local politics.The family moved to Neuilly-sur-Seine, a highly exclusive suburb of Paris, when Hollande was thirteen. Hollande was raised Catholic, but became an agnostic in later life,and now considers himself as an atheist[8] (In December 2011, Hollande told the French Christian magazine La Vie that he respects all religious practices but has none of his own).He attended Saint-Jean-Baptiste-de-la-Salle boarding school, a private Catholic school in Rouen, the Lycée Pasteur, in Neuilly-sur-Seine, then graduated with a bachelor's degree in law from Panthéon-Assas University. Then he studied at HEC Paris where he graduated in 1975, before attending the Institut d'études politiques de Paris and the École nationale d'administration. He graduated from ENA in 1980[10][11] and chose to enter the prestigious Cour des comptes. He lived in the United States in the summer of 1974 while he was a university student. Immediately after graduating, he was employed as a councillor in the Court of Audit.Early political career: Five years after volunteering as a student to work for François Mitterrand's ultimately unsuccessful campaign in the 1974 presidential election, Hollande joined the Socialist Party. He was quickly spotted by Jacques Attali, a senior adviser to Mitterrand, who arranged for Hollande to stand for election to the French National Assembly in 1981 in Corrèze against future President Jacques Chirac, who was then the Leader of the Rally for the Republic, a Neo-Gaullist party. Hollande lost to Chirac in the first round. He went on to become a special advisor to newly elected President Mitterrand, before serving as a staffer for Max Gallo, the government's spokesman. After becoming a municipal councillor for Ussel in 1983, he contested Corrèze for a second time in 1988, this time being elected to the National Assembly. Hollande lost his bid for re-election to the National Assembly in the so-called "blue wave" of the 1993 election, described as such due to the number of seats gained by the Right at the expense of the Socialist Party.First Secretary of the Socialist Party (1997–2008)François Hollande in 2004: Hollande with his former partner Ségolène Royal, at a rally for the 2007 elections. As the end of Mitterrand's term in office approached, the Socialist Party was torn by a struggle of internal factions, each seeking to influence the direction of the party. Hollande pleaded for reconciliation and for the party to unite behind Jacques Delors, the president of the European Commission, but Delors renounced his ambitions to run for the French presidency in 1995, leading to Lionel Jospin's resuming his earlier position as the leader of the party. Jospin selected Hollande to become the official party spokesman, and Hollande went on to contest Corrèze once again in 1997, successfully returning to the National Assembly.

That same year, Jospin became the prime minister of France, and Hollande won the election for his successor as first secretary of the French Socialist Party, a position he would hold for eleven years. Because of the very strong position of the Socialist Party within the French government during this period, Hollande's position led some to refer to him the "vice prime minister". Hollande would go on to be elected mayor of Tulle in 2001, an office he would hold for the next seven years.The immediate resignation of Jospin from politics following his shock defeat by far-right candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen in the first round of the 2002 presidential election forced Hollande to become the public face of the party for the 2002 legislative election but, although he managed to limit defeats and was re-elected in his own constituency, the Socialists lost nationally. In order to prepare for the 2003 party congress in Dijon, he obtained the support of many notable personalities of the party and was re-elected first secretary against opposition from left-wing factions.

After the triumph of the Left in the 2004 regional elections, Hollande was cited as a potential presidential candidate, but the Socialists were divided on the European Constitution, and Hollande's support for the ill-fated "Yes" position in the French referendum on the European constitution caused friction within the party. Although Hollande was re-elected as first secretary at the Le Mans Congress in 2005, his authority over the party began to decline from this point onwards. Eventually his domestic partner, Ségolène Royal, was chosen to represent the Socialist Party in the 2007 presidential election, where she would lose to Nicolas Sarkozy.

Hollande was widely blamed for the poor performances of the Socialist Party in the 2007 elections, and he announced that he would not seek another term as first secretary. Hollande publicly declared his support for Bertrand Delanoë, the mayor of Paris, although it was Martine Aubry who would go on to win the race to succeed him in 2008.

Following his resignation as first secretary, Hollande was immediately elected to replace Jean-Pierre Dupont as the president of the General Council of Corrèze in April 2008, a position he holds to this day. In 2008 he supported the creation of the first European Prize for Local History (Étienne Baluze Prize), founded by the "Société des amis du musée du cloître" of Tulle, on the suggestion of the French historian Jean Boutier. François Hollande awarded the first prize on 29 February 2008 to the Italian historian Beatrice Palmero in the General Council of Corrèze.2012 presidential campaign: French presidential election, 2012. Following his re-election as president of the General Council of Corrèze in March 2011, Hollande announced that he would be a candidate in the upcoming primary election to select the Socialist and Radical Left Party presidential nominee.[13] The primary marked the first time that both parties had held an open primary to select a joint nominee at the same time. He initially trailed the front-runner, former finance minister and International Monetary Fund managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn.Following Strauss-Kahn's arrest on suspicion of sexual assault in New York City in May 2011, Hollande began to lead the opinion polls. His position as front-runner was established just as Strauss-Kahn declared that he would no longer be seeking the nomination. After a series of televised debates throughout September, Hollande topped the ballot in the first round held on 9 October with 39% of the vote, not gaining the 50% required to avoid a second ballot, which he would contest against Martine Aubry, who had come second with 30% of the vote.The second ballot took place on 16 October 2011. Hollande won with 56% of the vote to Aubry's 43% and thus became the official Socialist and Radical Left Party candidate for the 2012 presidential election.[14] After the primary results, he immediately gained the pledged support of the other contenders for the party's nomination, including Aubry, Arnaud Montebourg, Manuel Valls and 2007 candidate Ségolène Royal.Hollande's presidential campaign was managed by Pierre Moscovici and Stéphane Le Foll, a member of Parliament and Member of the European Parliament respectively.[16] Hollande launched his campaign officially with a rally and major speech at Le Bourget on 22 January 2012 in front of 25,000 people.[17][18] The main themes of his speech were equality and the regulation of finance, both of which he promised to make a key part of his campaign.[On 26 January, he outlined a full list of policies in a manifesto containing 60 propositions, including the separation of retail activities from riskier investment-banking businesses; raising taxes on big corporations, banks and the wealthy; creating 60,000 teaching jobs; bringing the official retirement age back down to 60 from 62; creating subsidised jobs in areas of high unemployment for the young; promoting more industry in France by creating a public investment bank; granting marriage and adoption rights to same-sex couples; and pulling French troops out of Afghanistan in 2012.On 9 February, he detailed his policies specifically relating to education in a major speech in Orléans.On 15 February, incumbent president Nicolas Sarkozy announced that he would run for a second and final term, strongly criticising Hollande's proposals and claiming that he would bring about "economic disaster within two days of taking office" if he won.Hollande visited Berlin, Germany, in December 2011 for the Social Democrats Federal Party Congress, at which he met Sigmar Gabriel, Peer Steinbrück, Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Martin Schulz;[23][24] he also travelled to Belgium before the United Kingdom in February 2012, where he met with Opposition Leader Ed Miliband; and finally Tunisia in May 2012.Opinion polls showed a tight race between the two men in the first round of voting, with most polls showing Hollande comfortably ahead of Sarkozy in a hypothetical second round run-off.The first round of the presidential election was held on 22 April. François Hollande came in first place with 28.63% of the vote, and faced Nicolas Sarkozy in the second round run-off.[28] In the second round of voting on 6 May 2012, François Hollande was elected President of the French Republic with 51.7% of the vote.President of France (2012–present)[ François Hollande was elected President of France on 6 May 2012. He was inaugurated on 15 May, and shortly afterwards appointed Jean-Marc Ayrault to be his Prime Minister. He also appointed Benoît Puga to be the military's chief of staff, Pierre-René Lemas as his general secretary and Pierre Besnard as his Head of Cabinet. On his first official visit to a foreign country in his capacity as president of France, the airplane transporting him was hit by lightning.[31] The plane returned safely to Paris where he took another flight to Germany. The first measures he took were to lower the income of the president, the prime minister, and other members of the government by 30%, and to make them sign a "code of ethics".Budget: Hollande's economic policies are wide-ranging, including supporting the creation of a European credit rating agency, the separation of lending and investment in banks, reducing the share of electricity generated by nuclear power in France from 75 to 50% in favour of renewable energy sources, merging income tax and the General Social Contribution (CSG), creating an additional 45% for additional income of 150,000 euros, capping tax loopholes at a maximum of €10,000 per year, and questioning the relief solidarity tax on wealth (ISF, Impôt de Solidarité sur la Fortune) measure that should bring €29 billion in additional revenue. Hollande has also signalled his intent to implement a 75% income tax rate on revenue earned above 1,000,000 euros per year, to generate the provision of development funds for deprived suburbs, and to return to a deficit of zero percent of GDP by 2017.[33][34] The tax plan has proven controversial, with courts ruling it unconstitutional in 2012, only to then take the opposite position on a redrafted version in 2013.[35][36]

Hollande has also announced several reforms to education, pledging to recruit 60,000 new teachers, to create a study allowance and means-tested training, and to set up a mutually beneficial contract that would allow a generation of experienced employees and craftsmen to be the guardians and teachers of younger newly hired employees, thereby creating a total of 150,000 subsidized jobs. This has been complemented by the promise of aid to SMEs, with the creation of a public bank investment-oriented SME's, and a reduction of the corporate tax rate to 30% for medium corporations and 15% for small.Hollande's government has announced plans to construct 500,000 public homes per year, including 150,000 social houses, funded by a doubling of the ceiling of the A passbook, the region making available its local government land within five years. In accordance with long-standing Socialist Party policy, Hollande has announced that the retirement age will revert to 60, for those who have contributed for more than 41 years.LGBT rights: Further information: Law 2013-404; Hollande has also announced his personal support for same-sex marriage and adoption for LGBT couples, and outlined plans to pursue the issue in early 2013.[37] In July 2012, Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault announced that "In the first half of 2013, the right to marriage and adoption will be open to all couples, without discrimination [...]", confirming this election promise by Hollande.The bill to legalize same-sex marriage, known as Bill no. 344, was introduced to the National Assembly of France on 7 November 2012. On 12 February 2013, the National Assembly approved the bill in a 329–229 vote.The Right-wing opposed the bill. The Senate approved the full bill with a 171–165 majority on 12 April with minor amendments. On 23 April, the National Assembly approved the amended bill, in a 331–225 vote, and following approval of the law by the Constitutional Council of France, it was signed into law by President François Hollande on 18 May 2013, with the first same-sex weddings under the law taking place eleven days later.Labour reform: As President, Hollande pursued labour reform to make France more competitive internationally. Legislation was introduced in late 2012 and after much debate passed the French lower and upper house in May 2013. The bill includes measures such as making it easier for workers to change jobs and for companies to fire employees. One of the main measures of the bill allows companies to temporarily cut workers' salaries or hours during times of economic difficulty. This measure takes its inspiration from Germany, where furloughs have been credited with allowing companies to weather difficult times without resorting to massive layoffs. Another measure that aims to simplify the firing process. Layoffs in France are often challenged in courts and the cases can take years to resolve. Many companies cite the threat of lengthy court action – even more than any financial cost – as the most difficult part of doing business in France. The law shortens the time that employees have to contest a layoff and also lays out a scheme for severance pay. The government hopes this will help employees and companies reach agreement faster in contentious layoffs.Another key measure introduced are credits for training that follow employees throughout their career, regardless of where they work, and the right to take a leave of absence to work at another company. The law will also require all companies to offer and partially pay for supplemental health insurance. Lastly, the law also reforms unemployment insurance, so that someone out of work doesn't risk foregoing significant benefits when taking a job that might pay less than previous work or end up only being temporary. Under the new law, workers will be able to essentially put benefits on hold when they take temporary work, instead of seeing their benefits recalculated each time.Pension reform: As President, Hollande pursued reform to the vast and expensive pension system in France. The process proved to be very contentious, with members of Parliament, Labor Unions, and general public all opposed. Mass protests and demonstrations occurred throughout Paris. Despite the opposition, the French Parliament did pass a reform in December 2013 aimed at plugging a pension deficit expected to reach 20.7 billion euros ($28.4 billion) by 2020 if nothing were to be done. Rather than raising the mandatory retirement age, as many economists had advised, Hollande pursued increases in contributions, leaving the retirement age untouched. The reform had a rough ride in parliament, being rejected twice by the Senate, where Hollande's Socialist Party has a slim majority, before it won sufficient backing in a final vote before the lower house of parliament. French private sector workers will see the size and duration of their pension contributions increase only modestly under the reform while their retirement benefits are largely untouched.[43] Several scholars and economists argue the reform did not go far enough.[who?] Foreign affairs: See also: List of presidential trips made by François Hollande

Leaders of Belarus, Russia, Germany, France, and Ukraine at the summit in Minsk, 11–12 February 2015. As President, Hollande promised an early withdrawal of French combat troops present in Afghanistan in 2012.He also pledged to conclude a new contract of Franco-German partnership, advocating the adoption of a Directive on the protection of public services. Hollande has proposed "an acceleration of the establishment of a Franco-German civic service, the creation of a Franco-German research office, the creation of a Franco-German industrial fund to finance common competitiveness clusters, and the establishment of a common military headquarters". As well as this, Hollande has expressed a wish to "combine the positions of the presidents of the European Commission and of the European Council (currently held by José Manuel Barroso and Herman Van Rompuy respectively) into a single office...and that it should be directly chosen" by the members of the European Parliament.Hollande made a state visit to the United States in February 2014; a state dinner was given in his honor by U.S. President Barack Obama.On 27 February 2014, Hollande was a special guest of honor in Abuja, received by Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan in celebration of Nigeria's amalgamation in 1914, a 100-year anniversary. In September 2015, Hollande warned former Eastern Bloc countries against rejecting the EU mandatory migrant quotas, saying: "Those who don't share our values, those who don't even want to respect those principles, need to start asking themselves questions about their place in the European Union".Intervention in Mali: Hollande reviews troops during the 2013 Bastille Day military parade. On 11 January 2013, Hollande authorised the execution of Operation Serval, which aimed to curtail the activities of Islamist extremists in the north of Mali.[44] The intervention was popularly supported in Mali, as Hollande promised that his government would do all it could to "rebuild Mali".During his one-day visit to Bamako, Mali's capital, on 2 February 2013, he said that it was "the most important day in [his] political life". In 2014, Hollande took some of these troops out of Mali and spread them over the rest of the Sahel under Operation Barkhane, in an effort to curb jihadists militants.Co-Prince of Andorra: The President of the French Republic is one of the two joint heads of state of the Principality of Andorra. Hollande hosted a visit from Antoni Martí, head of the government, and Vicenç Mateu Zamora, leader of the parliament.Approval ratings: An IFOP poll released in April 2014 showed that Hollande’s approval rating had dropped five points since the previous month of March to 18%, dipping below his earlier low of 20% in February during the same year.[57] In November 2014, his approval rating reached a new low of 12%, according to a YouGov poll.[58] Following the Charlie Hebdo shooting in January 2015, however, approval for Hollande increased dramatically, reaching 40% according to an IFOP poll two weeks after the attack,[59] though an Ipsos-Le Point survey in early February showed his rating declining back to 30%. Personal life: For over thirty years, his partner was fellow Socialist politician Ségolène Royal, with whom he has four children: Thomas (1984), Clémence (1985), Julien (1987) and Flora (1992). In June 2007, just a month after Royal's defeat in the French presidential election of 2007, the couple announced that they were separating.A few months after his split from Ségolène Royal was announced, a French website published details of a relationship between Hollande and French journalist Valérie Trierweiler. In November 2007, Trierweiler confirmed and openly discussed her relationship with Hollande in an interview with the French weekly Télé 7 Jours. She remained a reporter for the magazine Paris Match, but ceased work on political stories. Trierweiler moved into the Élysée Palace with Hollande when he became president and started to accompany him on official travel.On 25 January 2014, Hollande officially announced his separation from Valérie Trierweiler[63] after the tabloid magazine Closer revealed his affair with actress Julie Gayet.[64] In September 2014 Trierweiler published a book about her time with Hollande titled Merci pour ce moment (Thank You for This Moment). The memoir claimed the president presented himself as disliking the rich, but in reality disliked the poor. The claim brought an angry reaction and rejection from Hollande, who said he had spent his life dedicated to the under-privileged.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_Hollande

Today will be the happiest day of François Hollande’s term as president of France. In the least surprising surprise result of the year, Hollande has defeated incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy, with whom much of France had become frustrated and fed up. Public sentiment is easy enough to understand. Sarkozy rode into office on a wave of expectations which he seemed tempted to inflate at every turn. But he, like France, was ill-equipped to handle the economic crisis that now threatens to pull France into Europe’s troubled bottom tier, down with Italy, Spain, and Greece. Sarkozy’s brand of center-right nationalism had met its match. Now it’s time for Hollande’s, shall we say, socialist nationalism. Despite his reputation as a would-be “Mr. Normal,” Hollande offers an ideology far more grandiose in its self-regard than any associated with Sarkozy. Sarkozy’s egotism suited a party that believed it knew the future. Hollande’s apparent personal humility is an all-too-poetic fit with the animating spirit of his political creed — a wilfull ignorance of its own futility and obsolescence. There are many illustrations to come of why socialism is dead on arrival in twenty-first century France, and François Hollande will find no shortage of disappointments and calamities waiting for him at the peak of power. But right now, we can already identify five key reasons why Hollande is destined to fail: 1. No mandate. Whatever else can be said about socialism or François Hollande, there is no disputing the fact that his public support comprises a soberingly small slice of the French electorate. As it stands, he has not cracked 52% of the vote. What you may not know is that one in four voters rejected every candidate, with 20% casting no ballot and 5% casting a blank one. France’s radicals may tolerate him in a resigned sort of way, but the French right will simply bide their time and drum up some challenger who reminds no one of Sarkozy. The far right, on the other hand, will drive Hollande to distraction. He will be pushed toward the terrible choice either of demonizing them or trying to ignore them. Both alternatives will strengthen them, so long as Hollande actually advances his policies. Anything trans-nationalist will give the Front National fits, while anything else will be occasion for a pitched battle with Hollande over what nationalism is for. Hollande’s support is shallow and weak, fueled largely by a combination of dismayed hope and relief that at least one needn’t endure Sarkozy’s variety of failure anymore. To strengthen his support, Hollande will have to demagogue and cut left. The more he does this, the narrower his appeal will become. No matter what kind of changes in policy he achieves, they will be transitory. France, and Europe, are already waiting for the other shoe to drop. It will.

2. Nationalist nonsense. Barack Obama’s foreign policy has proven itself to be incoherent but acceptable to many Americans. François Hollande’s foreign policy will prove unacceptably incoherent. The French left has always favored greater European togetherness, but now associates the European project with Germany’s economic domination of the Continent. Hollande wants to square the circle by spearheading a European push for ‘more growth’, but he associates pro-growth economic reforms with so-called austerity. (Simply not spending substantial new sums counts as austerity.) As Gideon Rachman observes, France “is a country where the state already consumes 56 per cent of gross domestic product, which has not balanced a budget since the mid-1970s, and which has some of the highest taxes in the world.” And Hollande’s vision of growth is a product of his leftist view of nationalism:Mr. Hollande has vowed to restore social equilibrium in France, in part by pushing back against the austerity championed by Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and the European Central Bank president, Mario Draghi. Mr. Hollande’s plans include rolling back tax breaks that Mr. Sarkozy gave to the wealthy, and increasing state-sponsored investment, in part by creating tens of thousands of civil sector jobs. 4 Essential Tips To Becoming A Better Leader Hollande is correct to realize that Germany lacks the political authority to successfully impose its fiscal habits upon Europe. But he is a fool to believe he ought to do more of precisely what caused Germany to try in the first place. Massive government spending is actually not the problem (although if Paul Krugman is right, France and Europe would require a volume of deficit spending that Hollande hasn’t a chance in hell of securing). The problem is not the amount of money that Hollande takes in, from whatever source, but how he will spend it: on government jobs. The secret killer of Europe’s economy has been government jobs, which have grown to absorb so much of Europe’s economies because so many European governments have functioned as if the EU had done nothing to weaken nationalism. There is little more nationalist than a government job, and little more hostile to European togetherness. The more government jobs, the farther away a common labor market. Civil sector jobs strengthen nationalism just at the moment of its most startling failure, yet they are the centerpiece of Hollande’s vision of normalcy. It’s a view that puts him on a collision course with the viability of the Eurozone and the EU itself. Once the left really accepts this, Hollande will become a scapegoat for whatever doesn’t work, which eventually will be everything. Left nationalism is as useless in the face of this crisis as Sarkozy’s center-right Gaullism. Sarkozy got off easy. Hollande won’t. 3. More globalization. Globalization will not reverse itself out of deference to François Hollande. For now, France is itself a globalizer, not a victim of globalization. But by the time Hollande is done with France, that may well change. The markets do not like Hollande — and why should they? — but, try as Hollande might, France is a market, and a big one. If he impairs the vitality of French business in Europe — and he will — he’ll make firms from around the world an offer they’ll be unlikely to refuse. This time, Germany won’t be first in line, especially if Hollande gets his way. The European left’s resistance to Germany is stronger than its resistance to China. China, meanwhile, is busy developing a new approach to Europe that can capitalize on this attitude. Just as the French left will find itself more nationalist, yet more beholden to foreign powers, it will be more antagonistic to globalization, yet more dependent upon it. It’s as easy as 1, 2, 3: take Europe’s economic situation, add French socialism, and stir. 4. Focused opposition. France’s political right may be fraying and fragmenting now, but by the time Hollande is up for re-election, France’s needs — and the right’s — will become clear. Long gone will be the days when only a few isolated American and British commentators advance opinions concerning the necessity of one or another kind of new Napoleon in France. The heavyweight argument on that count involves a recognition that French nationalism and European togetherness can only be reconciled through a kind of French-led continental unity for which Napoleon’s First Empire is the only available inspiration. But a more easily digestible argument, capable of reuniting the right, looks something like this:Given the inevitable collapse of a future Hollande administration – either through economic failure or political ineptitude – what will save France from this poisonous consensus of decline and disorder? To return to the Napoleonic/Gaullist model, it needs a strong man (or woman) to advance bold, wholesale reform. It doesn’t require a dictator: the rule is that every successive great leader adopts and preserves the best of the constitution that came before. But France surely needs a president who will a) reject sectional politics that pits one class or region against another, b) resist pandering to the mob, and c) do what must be done to deregulate the French economy. Once the right accepts these things, an intelligible, coherent answer to Hollande will come into focus. The key piece will involve spanning the nationalist-versus-transnationalist divide. It will come as a matter of logic — before, not after, Hollande is replaced. The big picture for the French right is a realization that France cannot be kept strong and proud unless it asserts its political leadership over the whole of Europe. If it does not, failed states and hostile interests will hem it in on all sides, and unmet longings will bring chaos to its politics and its streets. 5. The force of history. The objection will be raised that the French right will never unite to beat Hollande unless the right individual — a truly remarkable individual — steps forward. Circumstances, however, have a habit of thrusting to the forefront someone who will do. By the time Hollande’s term is up, France will, historically speaking, have tried everything but a far-right government led from Paris. And the far right is too factional to swiftly step into effective command. Europe’s shambles and France’s limbo will form a vacuum reminiscent of the one that Napoleon stepped forward to fill. The people will be ready for it. After Hollande, they will be exhausted by politics and sick of themselves. Socialism will have proven itself completely unable to reconcile nationalism and transnationalism, as we already know it to be. The task will fall to the French right. Today, Hollande’s opponents seem incompetent to fulfill this task. But whatever the institutional preparedness of the French right appears to be, France will face the kind of historic moment that makes great statesmen, not waits on them. France’s savoir won’t be Hollande, thanks to the one-two punch of his orthodoxy and his disposition. His administration will exacerbate the troubles that already dwarf him. Whether he is aware of this or not, the outcome will be the same.

www.forbes.com/sites/jamespoulos/2012/05/06/five-reasons-...

French unemployment rose to near a record high in the third quarter, the latest sign that President Francois Hollande is struggling to meet a pledge to create jobs.Unemployment climbed to 10.6 percent in the three months through September from 10.4 percent the previous quarter, national statistics office Insee said in an e-mailed statement. That’s in contrast to Germany, where the jobless rate fell to a record-low 6.3 percent in November.While jobless claims have been steadily climbing for the past four years to reach a record 3.6 million in October, Hollande has been able to point to France’s growing population as part of the reason. The unemployment rate, by contrast, has stayed below the all-time high reached in 1997.The third-quarter increase now leaves unemployment at its highest in 18 years and just shy of the the 10.7 percent record. While the economy is showing some signs of sustained growth for the first time since Hollande took power in May 2012, the labor-market numbers represent a political defeat for the Socialist president, who has said that job creation is a condition for his own re-election in 2017.Separately on Thursday, Markit Economics said its composite manufacturing and services gauge fell to 51 in November from 52.6 in October. While that’s above the key 50 level indicating expansion, it lower than the initial estimate and signals the slowest growth of private sector output since August.

www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-12-03/french-unemplo...

By way of immediate action, a stand must first be made against thought, against mental processes. "I do not know" - it is said - "anything which, when unbridled, uncontrolled, unwatched, untamed, brings such ruin as thought, and I do not know anything which, when bridled, controlled, watched, tamed, brings such benefits as thought."

Thought, which everyone lightly says is "mine," is, in reality, only to a very small degree in our power. In the majority of cases, instead of "to think" it would be correct to say "we are thought" or "thought takes place in me." In the normal way, the characteristic of thought is its instability. "Incorporeal" - it is said - "it walks by itself": it "runs hither and thither like an untamed bull." Hard to check, unstable, it runs where it pleases. In general, it is said that, while this body may persist one year, two years, three years or even up to a hundred years and more in its present form, "what we call thought, what we call mind, what we call consciousness arises in one manner, ceases in another; incessantly, night and day"; "it is like a monkey who goes through the forest, and who progresses by seizing one branch, letting go of it, taking hold of another, and so on."

The task is to "arrest" thought: to master it and to strengthen the attention; to be able then to say: "Once this thought wandered at its fancy, at its pleasure, as it liked: I today shall hold it completely bridled, as a mahout holds a rut-elephant with his goad."

A few explanations.

If one day normal conditions were to return, few civilizations would seem as odd as the present one, in which every form of power and dominion over material things is sought, while mastery over one's own mind, one's own emotions and psychic life in general is entirely overlooked. For this reason, many of our contemporaries - particularly our so-called "men of action" - really resemble those crustaceans that are as hard-shelled outside with scabrous incrustations as they are soft and spineless within. It is true that many achievements of modern civilization have been made possible by methodically applied and rigorously controlled thought. This, however, does not alter the fact that most of the "private" mental life of every average and more-than-average man develops today in that passive manner of thought that, as the Buddhist text we have just quoted strikingly puts it, "walks by itself," while, half-unconscious, we look on. Anyone can convince himself of this by trying to observe what goes on in his mind, for example, when leaving his house: he thinks of why he is going out but, at the door, his thoughts turn to the postman and thence to a certain friend from whom news is awaited, to the news itself, to the foreign country where his friend lives and which, in turn, makes him remember that he must do something about his own passport: but his eye notices a passing woman and starts a fresh train of thought, which again changes when he sees an advertisement, and these thoughts are replaced by the various feelings and associations that chase each other during a ride through the town. His thought has moved exactly like a monkey that jumps from branch to branch, without even keep-ing a fixed direction. Let us try, after a quarter of an hour, to remember what we have thought - or, rather, what has been thought in us - and we shall see how difficult it is. This means that in all these processes and disordered associations our consciousness has been dazed or "absent." Having seen this, let us undertake to follow, without disturbing them, the various mental associations. After only a minute or two we shall find ourselves distracted by a flood of thoughts that have invaded us and that are quite out of control. Thought does not like being watched, does not like being seen. Now this irrational and parasitical development of thought takes up a large part of our normal psychic life, and produces corresponding areas of reduced activity and of reduced self-presence. The state of passivity is accentuated when our thought is no longer merely "spontaneous" and when the mind is agitated by some emotion, some worry, hope, or fear. The degree of consciousness is certainly greater in these cases - but so, at the same time, is that of our passivity.

These considerations may throw some light on the task that is set when one "ceases to go", one reacts, one aims at being the master in the world of one's own mind. It now seems quite incomprehensible that nearly all men have long since been accustomed to consider as normal and natural this state of irrationality and passivity, where thought goes where it will - instead of being an instrument that enters into action only when necessary and in the required direction, just as we can speak when we wish to, and with a purpose, and otherwise remain silent. In comprehending this "according to reality," we must each decide whether we will continue to put up with this state of affairs.

In its fluid, changeable and inconsistent character, normal thought reflects, moreover, the general law of samsāric consciousness. This is why mental control is considered as the first urgent measure to be taken by one who opposes the "current." In undertaking this task, however, we must not be under any illusions. The dynamis, the subtle force that determines and carries our trains of thought, works from the subconscious. For this reason, to attempt to dominate the thought completely by means of the will, which is bound to thought itself, would almost be like trying to cut air with a sword or to drown an echo by raising the voice. The doctrine, which declares that thought is located in the "cavern of the heart," refers, among other things, to thought considered "organically" and not to its mental and psychological offshoots. Mastery of thought cannot, therefore, be merely the object of a form of mental gymnastics: rather, one must, simultaneously, proceed to an act of conversion of the will and of the spirit; inte¬rior calm must be created, and one must be pervaded by intimate, sincere earnestness.

The "fluttering" of thought mentioned in our text is more than a mere simile: it is related to the primordial anguish, to the dark substratum of samsāric life that comes out and reacts since, as soon as it feels that it is seen, it becomes aware of the danger; the condition of passivity and unconsciousness is essential for the development of samsāric being and for the establishment of its existence. This simile illustrates an experience that, in one form or another, is even encountered on the ascetic path.

The discipline of constant control of the thought, with the elimination of its automatic forms, gradually achieves what in the texts is called appamāda, a term variously translated as "attention," "earnestness," "vigilance," "diligence," or "reflection." It is, in point of fact, the opposite state to that of "letting oneself think," it is the first form of entry into oneself, of an earnestness and of a fervid, austere concentration. When it is understood in this sense, appamāda constitutes the base of every virtue. It is also said: "This intensive earnestness is the path that leads toward the deathless, in the same way that unreflective thought leads, instead, to death. He who possesses that earnestness does not die, while those who have unstable thought are as if already dead." An ascetic "who delights in appamāda - in this austere concentration - and who guards against mental laxity, will advance like a fire, burning every bond, both great and small." He "cannot err." And when, thanks to this energy, all negligence is gone and he is calm, from his heights of wisdom he will look down on vain and agitated beings, "as one who lives on a mountaintop looks down on those who live in the plains."

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Julius Evola: The Doctrine of Awakening - Part II., Chapter 2. - Defence and consolidation (excerpt)

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The Bara Gumbad, or "big dome," is a large domed structure grouped together with the Friday mosque of Sikander Lodi and a mehman khana (guesthouse), located in New Delhi's Lodi Gardens. The buildings were constructed at different times during the Lodi era and occupy a common raised platform. Formerly an outlying area of Delhi, the Lodi Gardens are a British-planned landscaped garden which includes a number of monuments (primarily tombs) from the Sayyid and the Lodi dynasties. Originally called Willingdon Park, the gardens were located in the former village of Khairpur, now on the edge of Lutyen's Delhi, the colonial capital built by the British in the early 20th century. The gardens, which cover approx. 70 acres, have come to be surrounded by institutional buildings and some of contemporary Delhi's most expensive real estate.

Although they were built under the same dynasty, each of the three structures was undertaken separately. The Bara Gumbad, completed in 1490, is considered to have the first full dome constructed in Delhi. Its original purpose is contested; although it appears to be a freestanding tomb, it contains no tombstone. This causes the speculation that the building might have been intended as a gateway for the Friday mosque; however, their respective placements, stylistic differences, and construction dates do not support this theory. The Friday mosque, completed in 1494, is the first example of the new mosque type that developed during the Lodi era. Characterized by a relatively simple five bay prayer hall building adjacent to a simple open courtyard, this type was an important precedent for mosque architecture in the Lodi and Mughal eras.

The complex can be accessed from various points along the roads bordering the Lodi Gardens, with the access from the Lodi road towards the south most prominent. The buildings are situated at a distance of about 300 meters from Muhammad Shah's tomb towards the south and about 380 meters from Sikander Lodi's tomb towards the north. Another prominent structure, the Shish Gumbad, is located facing the Bara Gumbad at a distance of about seventy-five meters towards the north. The area surrounding the buildings is landscaped with manicured grass lawns. Few trees are planted in the immediate vicinity, leaving the view of the structures unobscured. The path winding through the Lodi Gardens approaches the buildings axially from the north, although the building plinth is accessible all from all sides.

The buildings are sited on a three-meter-high platform, measuring approximately 30 meters (east-west) by 25 meters (north-south). The Friday mosque is located along the western edge of the platform; the guesthouse is sited opposite it, occupying the eastern edge, while the Bara Gumbad is located along the southern edge. Stone masonry walls, about six meters high, connect the three structures along the southern edge. The northern edge is provided with staircases for accessing the platform. A centrally located straight flight comprising of eight steps, about ten meters wide, connects the ground to a generous mid landing. Another 'C' shaped flight of eight steps wraps around the landing, creating an amphitheatre-like space and reaching the top of the platform. The current arrangement of steps appears to be more recent, and the remains of walls adjoining the southern face of the guesthouse and the mosque indicate that the northern edge might have originally been walled. In the center of the raised court, with its southern edge along the staircase, are the remains of a square shaped platform, 8 meters wide, which appears to be a grave.

Friday mosque:

The Friday mosque is a single aisled, rectangular building, approx. 30 meters (north-south) by 8 meters (east-west). The mosque is organized in five unequal bays, which correspond to the five arched doorways on the eastern (entry) elevation. The width of the arched doorways decreases from the center towards the sides. The arches span across grey granite piers. The central arch is framed within a projecting rectangular portal, measuring about 8 meters in height by 6 meters wide. The piers of the rectangular frame are cased in dressed granite and have three shallow arched niches in red sandstone, occurring vertically above the springing point of the arch, on either side. The doorway itself is described by four receding planes of ogee arches, the outermost one being in line with the external face of the rectangular portal. The doorways immediately to the side of the central portal are about 5 meters wide, while those at the two ends are approx. 1.5 meters wide with two receding planes of ogee arches, adding to the prominence of the central doorway. The apex of each innermost arch is constant, measuring approx. 5 meters from the top of the platform. Each arch is finished in plaster and embellished with intricate carved Arabic inscriptions. The spandrels are also heavily carved with geometric motifs, and their the corners are adorned with round inscribed plaster medallions. Red sandstone eaves (chajjas) on stone brackets top the arches, interrupted only by the central projecting portal that extends above them. There is a blank plastered frieze above the eaves, followed by the projecting horizontal bands of the cornice that is topped by a blind masonry parapet adorned with petal shaped crenellations with inscribed plaster medallions.

The interior of the prayer hall reflects the five bay division of the eastern elevation. It is a rectangular space, measuring about 27 meters (north-south) by about 7 meters (east-west). Additional arches spanning between the piers on the eastern elevation and the engaged piers of the western wall emphasize the demarcation of the interior space into bays. These internal ogee arches reach a height of about five meters. They are finished in plaster and profusely decorated with carvings of Arabic inscriptions. The piers are unornamented, dressed gray granite.

The qibla (western) wall of the prayer hall is a blind wall divided into five unequal bays expressed as recessed ogee arched niches, reflecting the arched openings on the eastern wall. The two bays adjacent to the central bay have three equal niches carved out from the portion below the springing line of the main arch. These niches are separated by granite piers, which have smaller arched niches in the top third of their elevation. The three niches are made of two layers of ogee arches framed by the piers. The external layer is in gray-yellow granite, while the interior arch is made of red sandstone. The central niche is mildly distinguishable from the others because its arched portion is curved and the imposts are engraved, while those of the adjacent arches are plain. The innermost rectangular portion of the central niche is blank, while that of the adjoining niches has the carving of a vase and flora inscribed in it. The tympanum of the main outer arch is finished in plaster and has an additional niche directly above the central niche which is embellished heavily with plaster carvings of Arabic inscriptions. A band of similar inscriptions runs along the interior perimeter of the arch and around the upper niche in a closed loop. The voussoirs of the outer arch are plastered and embellished with another layer of carvings. The central bay of the western wall also has three niches, each made of four recessed planes of alternating rectangular and arched profiles. The central mihrab niche is taller and wider. It is also shallower and the innermost plane is blank, while the other two niches are deeper set with relief work. A stone minbar with three steps has been provided abutting the northern pier of the central niche.

Hemispherical domes cover the three central bays, while the terminal bays are covered by low flat vaulted ceilings. The square plan of the three central bays transitions into an octagonal drum through the application of corbelled pendentives at the corners. The corbelling occurs in four layers, which increases in width from the bottom up. The layers are further embellished with curved niches set into rectangular frames, which also increase in number, the lowest corbel having one and the last corbel having five such niches. The last layers of the pendentives form alternate edges of the octagonal drum; the remaining edges being formed by the extension of the walls and are also provided with similar curved niches. The octagonal drum transitions into a hexadecagon, followed by a thirty-two-sided polygon by the provisions of small struts. Each face of the hexadecagon is provided with shallow niches, while the thirty-two-sided polygon is described by a projecting band of red sandstone, followed by a band of inscriptions finally topped by the hemispherical dome. The dome is finished in plain plaster. The voussoirs of the arches, the pendentives and the tympanum are all covered by intricate stucco Arabic inscriptions. The central dome is relatively higher that the other two domes.

The northern and southern walls of the mosque are punctured by ogee arch doorways below the springline of the main arch. Each opening leads to a projecting balcony, comprising of red sandstone posts supporting a tiered roof. The balconies protrude out from the faade and are supported on red sandstone brackets, whose profiles and carvings are characteristic of Hindu architecture. An elaborately carved arched niche is provided above each opening on the interior wall. It is set into a rectangular frame embossed with Arabic text.

The plasterwork on the external northern and southern walls of the mosque has fallen off, exposing the stone masonry, while that on the western wall has survived. The central bay of the western wall projects out and is marked by two solid towers at the corners. These towers are divided vertically into four layers; the first two layers from the bottom are orthogonal, while the third layer has alternating curved and angular fluting; the top layer, extending over the parapet of the mosque, has a circular section. The corners of the mosque are marked by similar tapering towers, which are divided into four layers. Each layer is circular in plan except the third layer, which is described by alternating curved and angular fluting. All the towers have the remains of finials at their apex. The central projecting wall has four red sandstone brackets in its upper third portion, which may have supported a projecting balcony similar to those on the north and south elevations.

The plasterwork on the walls of the plinth is now gone, exposing the rubble masonry construction below. The western face of the plinth is punctured by five ogee arch openings set into rectangular frames, one in the center and two each on the sides. These openings provide access to the basement within the plinth.

The roof has three domes corresponding to the three central bays of the prayer hall and the three central arches on the eastern elevation. The extrados of the domes are finished in plaster. The octagonal drums supporting the domes protrude out over the roof level, above which the circular bases of the domes are decorated with blind crestings having floral motifs. The central dome is marginally larger than the adjacent domes and all three have the remains of lotus finials at their apex.

Bara Gumbad:

Square in plan, the Bara Gumbad measures approx. 20 meters per side. Set on a plinth 3 meters high, it joins the common plinth on the north and projects beyond it to the south. Its plinth is decorated on the east, south, and west with ogee arch openings set into rectangular frames. These provide access to a basement.The walls of the Bara Gumbad are approx. 12 meters tall, above which a hemispherical dome on a hexadecagonal drum extends another 14 meters from the roof level, for a total building height of 29 meters above ground level.

Each of its elevations is nearly identical and divided into 2 horizontal sections. A projecting portal composed of an ogee arch set in a rectangular frame (approx. 8 meters wide), is centered in each elevation and rises approximately 75 cm above the parapet line of the building. The 1.5 meter wide frame is made of dressed gray granite. Each vertical pier of the frame has six shallow red sandstone niches arranged atop one another at varying heights; nine niches continue in a line along the horizontal portion of the frame. The portal is described by two receding planes of grey granite ogee arches; the spandrels are cased with black granite with a thin projecting edge of red sandstone. Two round plaster medallions adorn the spandrels. The lower layer of the portal has a central doorway, spanned by two red sandstone brackets that form a trabeated arch supporting a black granite lintel. These brackets are supported on grey granite posts. An intricately carved red sandstone frame adorns the brackets and the lintel; it starts at the springing point of the arch and frames the lintel of the doorway. The entire composition is set in a rectangular yellow sandstone frame. An ogee arch window has been provided above the trabeated entrance. The portal is crowned by the arched crenellations of the blind parapet. Solid turrets mark the projecting corners of the portal.

The remainder of the elevation, that flanking the central portal on either side and recessed behind it, is divided vertically into two equivalent parts by projecting horizontal bands of stone. Each part is described by two equal arched panels set into rectangular frames. Both the panels of the upper part on either side of the portal are blind and filled with granite masonry. The lower panels located adjacent to the portal are windows, while the lower panels at the edges are filled in. The parapet, like the portal, is decorated with arched crenellations, and the roof has solid turrets at each corner.

A single hemispherical dome surmounted on a sixteen-sided drum crowns the building. Each face of the drum is described by an ogee arched niche set in a rectangular frame. The voussoirs of the arches are gray granite, while the spandrels are clad with red sandstone. The top edge of the drum is decorated with a band of arched crenellations, similar to those on the roof parapets, running above a projecting band of stone that surrounds the drum. Below this projection is band of leaves carved in relief. The extrados of the dome are finished in smooth plaster. The lotus base, possibly for a vanished calyx finial, is still extant.

The structure can be entered either from the raised courtyard via the north elevation or from a double flight of steps located on the western elevation. Inside, the square building measures about seven meters per side. An 80 cm high, 45 cm wide solid seat runs continuously along the interior perimeter of the building. Light streams in from all four walls, which are punctured by the openings of the doorway at the ground level and the ogee arch window above. The interior surfaces of the Gumbad are unornamented and finished in dressed granite. The square plan of the room transitions into an octagon via squinches, which then support the thirty-two-sided drum and the dome. The apex of the dome has two bands of floral inscriptions; otherwise, the dome is finished in plaster. The absence of historical inscriptions has contributed to the confusion over the original purpose of the Bara Gumbad.

Mehman Khana:

The third structure in the group is rectangular in plan, measuring about 27 meters (north-south) by 7 seven meters (east-west). Located along the eastern edge of the common plinth, it faces the mosque and is connected to the Bara Gumbad by a masonry wall along its northern face. The structure is believed to have either been a mehman khana, (guesthouse) or a majlis khana (assembly hall).

The building is accessed from the common plinth through its western wall, which is divided into five bays, mirroring the eastern elevation of the mosque opposite it. The three central bays are considerably larger and have ogee arch doorways, giving access to the interior, while windows puncture the smaller end bays. The arches are set in rectangular frames, which are recessed from the face of the elevation. Each opening is composed of two recessed planes of arches. The spandrels are clad in red sandstone, contrasting with the gray granite of the elevation, and are decorated with round plaster medallions with lotus motifs. The window openings have an additional tie beam or lintel at the springline. The tympanum of the window towards the south has been filled with stone, while that of the window towards the north has been left open. A continuous chajja, supported on equidistant stone brackets, projects from the western wall above the rectangular frame. The cornice is unornamented and is topped by the projecting horizontal band of the parapet, which reaches a height of approximately five meters from the top of the raised plinth. The roof of the structure is flat. The exterior of the building lacks decoration and is finished in dressed granite.

The interior is divided into seven chambers occurring from north to south; the central chamber is the largest, measuring about 5 meters (north-south) long. It is abutted by relatively narrow chambers (approx. 2.5 meters long). The outside chambers which flank the 2.5 meter wide chambers on either side are approximately the size of the central chamber, and correspond to the arched openings in the western wall. The chambers are separated from each other by gray granite walls, punctured by simple ogee arched doorways set in rectangular frames. Square in plan, the outer rooms are separated from the adjacent chambers by stone walls with rectangular door openings with blind ogee arches and rectangular frames. Each doorway has shallow rectangular recesses on either side, as well as a small arched window set into a rectangular recess and a stone jali screen set above the doorway within the tympanum of the main arch. The eastern wall of the building has blind ogee arches, occurring as two successive planes, reflecting the arched openings of the western elevation.

The roof of the central chamber is flat and supported on arches located on four sides; flat stone brackets appear at the corners. The two adjacent rooms are covered by shallow domes supported on squinches. The interior domes are finished in plaster with carved concave fluting. The exterior of the domes has been filled to blend with the flat roof of the central room.

Certain stylistic continuities are recognizable in the three buildings; each was constructed with (local) gray granite and lime mortar. However, the degree and type of embellishment, both interior and exterior, on the mosque differs substantially from that found on the other two, relatively unadorned, buildings.

Apart from the grouping of the three structures and their stylistic similarities, the buildings do not appear to have been planned as a complex. The Friday mosque is the first example of the panchmukhi building type, where "panch" (five) and "mukhi " (facade) characterize a five-bay prayer hall. This approach was influential in both the Lodi and the Mughal periods. The Bara Gumbad is significant for having the first complete hemispherical dome in Delhi.

The differences in the surface ornament of the buildings suggest that the buildings were constructed at different times, with the Bara Gumbad and the guesthouse being similar in style and decoration, without the multilayered arches of the Friday mosque. The function of the Bara Gumbad is still unknown; its geometry and form aligns with the predominant tomb architecture of the period (like the neighboring Shish Gumbad). However, there is no grave or cenotaph in the building, and rather than being blank, its qibla wall (like its other walls) is punctured by an entrance. While the continuous stone bench in the interior is also found in gateway architecture, (as in the Alai Darwaza at the Quwat-ul-Islam Mosque in Mehrauli), the size of the Bara Gumbad vis-a-vis the Friday mosque does not support this conjecture. Some scholars surmise that the structure might have been a gateway to the larger complex of tombs within the Lodi Gardens.

Lodi Dynasty

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The Lodi dynasty in India arose around 1451 after the Sayyid dynasty. The Lodhi Empire was established by the Ghizlai tribe of the Afghans. They formed the last phase of the Delhi Sultanate. There were three main rulers in the history of Lodi dynasty. All three of them have been discussed in detail in the following lines. So read on about the Lodi dynasty history.

Buhlul Khan Lodi

Buhlul Khan Lodi (1451-1489) was the founder of the Lodi dynasty in India and the first Afghan ruler of Delhi. He was an Afghan noble who was a very brave soldier. Buhlul Khan seized the throne without much resistance from the then ruler, Alam Shah. His territory was spread across Jaunpur, Gwalior and northern Uttar Pradesh. During his reign in 1486, he appointed his eldest son Barbak Shah as the Viceroy of Jaunpur. Though he was an able ruler, he really couldn't decide as to which son of his should succeed him as the heir to the throne.

Sikandar Lodi

After the death of Buhlul Khan, his second son succeeded him as the king. He was given the title of Sultan Sikander Shah. He was a dedicated ruler and made all efforts to expand his territories and strengthen his empire. His empire extended from Punjab to Bihar and he also signed a treaty with the ruler of Bengal, Alauddin Hussain Shah. He was the one who founded a new town where the modern day Agra stands. He was known to be a kind and generous ruler who cared for his subjects.

Ibrahim Lodhi

Ibrahim Lodhi was the son of Sikander who succeeded him after his death. Due to the demands of the nobles, his younger brother Jalal Khan was given a small share of the kingdom and was crowned the ruler of Jaunpur. However, Ibrahim's men assassinated him soon and the kingdom came back to Ibrahim Lodhi. Ibrahim was known to be a very stern ruler and was not liked much by his subjects. In order to take revenge of the insults done by Ibrahim, the governor of Lahore Daulat Khan Lodhi asked the ruler of Kabul, Babur to invade his kingdom. Ibrahim Lodhi was thus killed in a battle with Babur who was the founder of the Mughal dynasty in India. With the death of Ibrahim Lodhi, the Lodhi dynasty also came to an end.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lodi_dynasty

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lodi_Gardens

Immediate unload onto berth and the load started coming off bulk fertiliser.......

CELTIC FORESTER (IMO 9256171, MMSI 232020953) is a General Cargo Ship built in 2003 (21 years old) and currently sailing under the flag of United Kingdom (UK). Her length overall (LOA) is 89.98 meters and her width is 15.3 meters.

This is an excellent option for those of you who like Mexican food.

I live almost next door to this restaurant and that really suits me. I purchased my apartment more than twenty years ago and back then there were very few restaurants in the immediate area and it was impossible to find anywhere open for lunch at the weekends. Today things are totally different.

Up until September Bodkins hosted an excellent restaurant known as the Hungry Mexican which may well have been the best Mexican restaurant in Dublin [I visited at least twice a week ] but the chef decided to move on and establish a new restaurant which hopefully will open on Capel street within the next few months. Once I recovered from my disappointment I discovered that El Patron proved to be an acceptable alternative for me and I visit on a regular basis.

Next Monday [5-12-2016] Bodkins will launch an exciting new restaurant under the name BoCo and they will specialise in serving high quality pizza.

Not far away is the Hanoi Hanoi Vietnamese restaurant which happens to be my favourite restaurant in the area but recently there has been a change in management and as a result major changes are on the way. The core Vietnamese restaurant will continue as it was but there will be a Sushi section plus a B-B-Q section. A name change is also on the way.

Despite the increasing options available to me I will continue to visit the El Patron Mexican restaurant for casual dining and I would advise you to give it a try.

The immediate steepness of the incline from Coombe Junction to Liskeard is obvious in this view of 'Bill Cookworthy' thrashing away with ancient clay hoods bound for Carne Point at Fowey in January 1988, just a couple of weeks before scenes such as this disappeared as new air-braked wagons took over. Indeed the very last loaded OCVs came from Moorswater Dries on 10 February.

Immediate post-WW1 Saxon Police armored car on the left.