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(excuse my excessive language in this i'm just kinda pissed right now)
do you ever feel like you're just obligated to something? like it's more of a task than just something you enjoy doing? that's what i feel about for basically everything. i feel like that about basically everything right now. i feel worthless at the moment. i don't feel like i'm useful for anything anymore. i do kinda miss my friends on here. what happened you guys? i feel the need to rant though because i have a lot to get off my chest.
i don't know lately i've just been really depressed. i've had so many issues dealing with friends and stuff, i can't take it anymore. literally the only place that is my escape from reality is the internet and running. don't know if you guys know this but i do in fact, enjoy running. i've been doing cross country and track since 6th grade and i love it. it's my life. but right now my running is limited which brings up alyssa. alyssa was my best friend since 2nd grade, i don't know why i put up with her bullshit all these years though. anyway 2 months ago alyssa and i stopped being friends for the most stupid reason ever. literally all she talked about was this guy that she loved a lot. they've been off and on between their relationship for a long time. we haven't had a real conversation in a long time and i was tired of it. literally when i'd start telling her a story she'd stop me in the middle of it and be like 'omg ya that totes reminds me of this rlly cute thing jonathan did yesterday ahahahah!!!11!!" i went up to her after history and told her "alyssa, i love you, but i'm getting kind of tired of you talking on and on about this guy" and she took it really personal and said “well okay if you don’t accept my feelings then i guess we shouldn’t be friends” and we had a huge ass fight. so i felt really bad and texted her like every minute saying i’m sorry. i wrote her a huge ass letter saing i’m sorry but she didn’t accept it. i even went UP to her and said i’m sorry but she kept ignoring me. okay so she does this thing where when she hates someone and they’re rushing to class and they like brush by her to class and she says “ew it touched me” so i was running to history and i passed by her and she said “ew it touched me” and it pissed me off so i went up to he at the end of classr and said “you know what alyssa you’re being a fucking hypocrite, you expect me to listen to your opinions and feelings, but you can’t even hear me out on mine and accept my own fucking opinion. look i’m done with your shit” and she tilted her head and asked her friend “i’m sorry did you guys hear something” and she kicked me to the ground on my fractured ankle that she knew hurt a fuck ton. that was the week before i was supposed to get it off but then i had it on for another two weeks because of her.
so last night alyssa ended up in the hospital. i really don't wanna say why. anywho, she texted me a freaking picture of her in the hospital with a caption saying, "happy now?" and it was really frustrating, i didn't know what to think at that time. i sobbed my eyes out and told my parents how she was in the hospital and it felt like it was all my fault, but my parents kept telling me it wasn't. i went up to my room and just sat there for a while absorbing everything that happened. and then i texted her back, "you know what, no, screw you. why should i feel pity for you considering the fucking fact i've had to put up with your bullshit all these years. i've had you taunt me and harm me both physically and mentally. you have no right to blame me for the fact you're in the fucking hospital because i did this to you. because in all honesty i didn't. you're being the fucking hypocrite who can't fucking accept my opinion civilly, but somehow i have to manage to accept yours. screw you"
i felt kinda happy and scared at the same time when i sent that to her but i feel like it was worth it. i still don't know if i'm doing the right thing or not but i felt the need to share it and get it off my chest.
i still am unsure of what i'm supposed to feel but i do know one thing i shouldn't feel for her is pity.
okay on a less depressing note this photo is waaaaay over edited oops.
“The map shows how to say (or rather write) the equivalent of 'Merry Christmas' in European languages. The colouring corresponds to etymological relations between the translations of the word Christmas (i.e. not to language families and not to relations between other parts of the phrase).”
— Jakub Marian (accessed 26 December 2016).
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▶ “This leads to a few unexpected results. Even though Romanian and Hungarian are completely unrelated languages, the words karácsony and Crăciun come from a common root (either Proto-Slavic *korčiti or Latin creātiōnem).
Something similarly strange happens in Czech and Slovak. The word Vánoce resp. Vianoce is derived from German Weihnachten by retaining the 'Weih' part (which comes from an old Germanic expression meaning 'holy') and replacing nachten ('nights') by the Czech/Slovak translation, 'noce'. However, the word 'noce' itself comes from the same Proto-Indo-European root as German 'Nachten' (and English “nights”), so the Czech/Slovak and German expressions are essentially etymologically equivalent.”
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▶ Image via Jakub Marian.
— “You can use the image on another website for free, under the condition that it also contains a link to Jakub Marian.”
▶ Uploaded by Yours For Good Fermentables.com.
▶ For a larger image, type 'L' (without the quotation marks).
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A sign language (also signed language) is a language which, instead of acoustically conveyed sound patterns, uses visually transmitted sign patterns (manual communication, body language) to convey meaning—simultaneously combining hand shapes, orientation and movement of the hands, arms or body, and facial expressions to fluidly express a speaker's thoughts.
Wherever communities of deaf people exist, sign languages develop. Their complex spatial grammars are markedly different from the grammars of spoken languages. Hundreds of sign languages are in use around the world and are at the cores of local deaf cultures. Some sign languages have obtained some form of legal recognition, while others have no status at all.
Here used at the flea market :-)
Italien / Lombardei - Lago di Como
Tremezzo
Lake Como (Italian: Lago di Como [ˈlaːɡo di ˈkɔːmo], locally [ˈkoːmo]; Western Lombard: Lagh de Còmm [ˈlɑː‿dːe ˈkɔm],[a] Cómm [ˈkom] or Cùmm [ˈkum]), also known as Lario (Italian: [ˈlaːrjo]; after the Latin: Larius Lacus), is a lake of glacial origin in Lombardy, Italy.
It has an area of 146 square kilometres (56 sq mi), making it the third-largest lake in Italy, after Lake Garda and Lake Maggiore. At over 400 metres (1,300 ft) deep, it is the fifth deepest lake in Europe and the deepest outside Norway; the bottom of the lake is 227 metres (745 ft) below sea level. One notable characteristic is its distinctive "Y" shape.
Lake Como has been a popular retreat for aristocrats and wealthy people since Roman times, and a very popular tourist attraction with many artistic and cultural gems. It has many villas and palaces such as Villa Olmo, Villa Serbelloni, and Villa Carlotta. Many famous people have owned homes on the shores of Lake Como, including George Clooney, Madonna, and Donatella Versace.
In 2014, The Huffington Post described it as the most beautiful lake in the world for its microclimate and environment with prestigious villas and villages.
Etymology
The lake's official name is Lario (derived from the Latin Larius), but it is rarely used informally, while it is still used in formal language; it is also found in the toponym of some villages along the lake such as Pognana Lario and Mandello del Lario; Italians usually call it Lago di Como.
Geography
The lake is shaped much like an inverted letter "Y". The northern branch begins at the town of Colico, while the towns of Como and Lecco sit at the ends of the southwestern and southeastern branches respectively. The small towns of Bellagio, Menaggio and Varenna are situated at the intersection of the three branches of the lake: a boat service operates a triangular route between them.
Lake Como is fed primarily by the Adda, which enters the lake near Colico and flows out at Lecco. This geological conformation makes the southwestern branch a dead end, and so Como, unlike Lecco, is sometimes flooded.
The mountainous pre-alpine territory between the two southern arms of the lake (between Como, Bellagio, and Lecco) is known as the Larian Triangle, or Triangolo lariano. The source of the river Lambro is here. At the centre of the triangle, the town of Canzo is the seat of the Comunità Montana del Triangolo lariano, an association of the 31 municipalities that represent the 71,000 inhabitants of the area.
History
At the beginning of the first millennium B.C. during the Iron Age, the Comum oppidum was born and the civilization of Como developed, inserted in the broader Golasecca culture. In 196 B.C. the army of the consul Claudius Marcellus defeats the Celts tribe of the Comenses and conquered the city. Comum was then strengthened and rebuilt after a raid by Rhaetian and repopulated with 3,000 settlers in 77 BC. Finally, after having reclaimed the marshy area, in 59 B.C. it was re-founded with the name of Novum Comun in its current location on the lake shore at the behest of Gaius Julius Caesar. Pliny the Younger, in one of his Epistulae, describes the lake and its surrounding area as providing plentiful opportunities for fishing and hunting. According to the Notitia Dignitatum, at least since the 4th century, a Praefectus commanding a Roman military fleet was present on the lake.
During the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the waters of the lake were the scene of military clashes, such as in the 12th century during the war of Milan against Como, which saw the Como fleet in action against the ships of the Milanese and their allies or between 1525 and 1532 due to the Musso war unleashed by Gian Giacomo Medici.
On 28 April 1945, deposed Italian dictator Benito Mussolini was executed in the lakeside village of Giulino, about 180 metres (590 ft) from the waterfront.
Tourism
As a tourist destination, Lake Como is popular for its landscapes, wildlife, and spas. It is a venue for sailing, windsurfing, and kitesurfing.
Although generally considered safe, bathers aiming to find relief from the heat and swimming enthusiasts alike should exercise caution, as a prevailing regulation prohibits diving and swimming both in the city of Como and in the various small villages along the lake. Exceptions are found only in privately managed lidos or designated public beaches where explicit signage permits swimming activities. This prohibition stems from the danger posed by the lake's waters that swiftly transition from shallow to deep near the shoreline and from unpredictable aquatic conditions, which have led to numerous incidents, including drowning cases attributed to sudden thermal shock.
Transportation
Lake Como is served by a public transport system connecting the various villages on the lake. A motorized service began in 1826 when a steamship with sails, the Lario, was launched by the newly established Società privilegiata per l'impresa dei battelli a vapore nel Regno Lombardo Veneto. Since 1952 the fleet has been managed by a government organisation named Gestione Commissariale Governativa and later Gestione Governativa Navigazione Laghi, which is also responsible for transport services on Lake Maggiore and Lake Garda.
There exist three primary services:
Motorship services along the western branch and north towards Colico and back to Como, with additional shuttles to the mid-lake area;
Fast services that broadly follow the same route but with fewer stops; the service, which is more expensive, is operated by hydrofoils;
Ferries able to carry passengers and cars across the popular tourist destinations Menaggio, Bellagio,Varenna and Cadenabbia.
Economy
Lake Como attracts visitors from around the world and as a consequence the economy of the towns surrounding Lake Como is predominantly dependent on tourism and related activities. The tourism sector stimulates local businesses, including hospitality, restaurants and retail, while also fostering the growth of ancillary services such as transportation, cultural tours and recreational activities. This reliance on tourism has led to significant investments in infrastructure and amenities to accommodate and enhance the visitor experience, making it a vital component of the regional economy.
In literature and the arts
Letitia Elizabeth Landon's poem The Lake of Como was published in Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, in 1837. It illustrates a painting by Samuel Prout, engraved by William Miller.
In 1818 Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote to Thomas Love Peacock: "This lake exceeds anything I ever beheld in beauty, except the arbutus islands of Killarney. It is long and narrow, and has the appearance of a mighty river winding among the mountains and the forests."
(Wikipedia)
Tremezzo is a comune (or municipality) of some 1,300 people in the Province of Como, in the Italian region Lombardy. It is one of I Borghi più belli d'Italia ("The most beautiful villages of Italy").
It is located on the western shore of Lake Como between Mezzegra to the southwest and Griante to the northeast, and about 20 kilometres (12 mi) from Como. Tremezzo, which has an area of 8.4 square kilometres (3.2 sq mi), also borders the territory of the following communes: Lenno (south and west of Mezzegra), Menaggio (north of Griante), Grandola ed Uniti (inland from Menaggio) and, on the facing shore of the lake, Bellagio and Lezzeno.
As well as the capoluogo of Tremezzo, the area of the commune includes the frazione Rogaro, birthplace of the architect Pietro Lingeri.
Tremezzo is best known as a tourist resort—it was a favourite of Konrad Adenauer—and for its villas, of which the most famous is the Villa Carlotta with its much-admired gardens, and Villa Sola-Busca. The Brentano family hails from the Tremezzo, in the 17th century the family relocated to the Free City of Frankfurt. Members of the family include 19th century German Romanticist novelist Clemens Brentano and his sister Bettina von Arnim.
The comune of Tremezzo was united with Mezzegra, Ossuccio, and Lenno to form a single municipality named Tremezzina following the election of the Major on 25 May 2014.
(Wikipedia)
Der Comer See (Schweizer Schreibweise Comersee, italienisch Lago di Como oder Lario, lombardisch Lagh de Comm; lateinisch Lacus Larius) ist einer der oberitalienischen Seen. Er liegt vollständig in der Region Lombardei.
Charakteristisch sind die zahlreichen am Ufer liegenden kleinen Dörfer, von denen viele ihren eigenen Charakter bis heute erhalten haben. Viele der Villen (u. a. Villa Carlotta, Villa d’Este) stammen aus dem 15. Jahrhundert, als die Bewohner der Region durch die Seidenraupenzucht und die dadurch entstandene Seidenindustrie zu Reichtum gelangten. Während der Zeit Napoleons erbaute der Vizepräsident der italienischen Republik (1802–1805) Francesco Melzi d’Eril die Villa Melzi.
Durch das mediterrane Klima gedeihen viele subtropische Pflanzen wie z. B. Palmen, Zitrusfrüchte, Zypressen und Olivenbäume.
Geografie
Der Comer See, von den Einheimischen auch Lario genannt, ist 146 km² groß, 51 km lang und maximal 4,2 km breit. Damit ist er nach dem Gardasee und dem Lago Maggiore, gemessen an der Wasserfläche, der drittgrößte See Italiens. Mit einer durch seine charakteristische Form bedingten Uferlinie von 170 km übertrifft er die beiden vorgenannten Seen in diesem Punkt. Seine maximale Tiefe – vor Nesso – beträgt 425 m; damit ist er der tiefste See Europas außerhalb Norwegens.
Der Comer See wird von der Adda durchflossen. Er liegt in einem Zungenbecken des ehemaligen Addagletschers, das sich vor der Alta Brianza in die Arme von Como und Lecco teilt, und hat so die Form eines (umgekehrten) Y. Die Adda mündet bei Colico in den nördlichen Teil des Sees und verlässt ihn bei Lecco; der südwestliche Arm, an dem Como liegt, hat keinen anderen Abfluss.
Die einzige Insel im Comer See ist die etwa 7,5 ha große Isola Comacina. Sie war bereits in der Antike besiedelt, nach Zerstörung der Siedlungen im 12. Jahrhundert durch Truppen Comos aber lange unbewohnt.
Tourismus
Der Comer See ist ein Touristenziel mit zahlreichen Kurorten, Parks und Golfplätzen. Auf seiner Westseite liegt der Sacro Monte di Ossuccio, der 2003 in die Liste der Weltkulturerbe der UNESCO aufgenommen wurde. Die umliegenden Berge bieten Wander- und Klettermöglichkeiten. Durch das milde Klima gibt es eine reiche Vegetation. Jährlich im Frühjahr findet das Oldtimerevent Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este statt.
Prominente wie George Clooney besitzen ein Feriendomizil am Comer See. Dieser dient immer wieder als Filmkulisse, beispielsweise wurde hier für Star Wars: Episode II, Casino Royale oder Ocean’s 12 gedreht.
Der deutsche Bundeskanzler Konrad Adenauer (1876–1967) verbrachte dort auf seinem Anwesen in Cadenabbia viel Zeit. Nach der Niederlegung seines Amtes, kurz vor seinem Tod, schrieb er dort einen großen Teil seiner Memoiren. Die 1899 erbaute Villa La Collina mit ihrem Park wird seit 1977 als internationale Tagungsstätte von der Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung genutzt.
Schifffahrt
Täglich fahren mehrere Boote zwischen Como und Colico, des Weiteren gibt es verschiedene Routen zwischen Como und Lecco oder Menaggio und Como bzw. Lecco. Es existiert eine Fährverbindung zwischen Lierna, Varenna, Menaggio und Bellagio.
Wassersport
Zwischen Bellagio und Colico herrscht ein reges Treiben von Wassersportlern, da dort zuverlässige Windverhältnisse herrschen.
Laut Berichten aus dem Jahr 2010 lässt die Wasserqualität an gewissen Stellen (durch fehlende Kläranlagen) zu wünschen übrig.
Windverhältnisse
Außer im Winter weht im oberen Teil des Comer Sees praktisch täglich ein thermischer Wind, die Breva. Am Morgen beginnt der Wind etwa ab 10 Uhr mit 1 bis 3 Bft und frischt am Nachmittag auf 3 bis 6 Bft auf. Juni bis September sind die besten Monate zum Wind- und Kitesurfen. Im Oktober lässt die Breva nach, um dann bis Anfang Februar ganz einzuschlafen.
Der Südwind Breva hat seinen Gegenpart im nördlichen Fallwind Tivano, der bei großem Luftdruckunterschied zwischen der nördlichen und der südlichen Seite der Alpen entsteht. Der Tivano weht bereits am frühen Morgen und ist oft stärker als die Breva, am stärksten in der Region von Lecco. Im Süden des Sees, im Larian-Dreieck, dem Gebiet zwischen den beiden Seearmen, bietet auch er gute Voraussetzungen zum Wind- und Kitesurfen.
(Wikipedia)
Tremezzina ist eine italienische Gemeinde mit 5027 Einwohnern (Stand 31. Dezember 2022) in der Provinz Como in der Region Lombardei und Mitglied der Gesellschaft I borghi più belli d’Italia (dt. „Die schönsten Orte Italiens“).
Geographie
Die Gemeinde liegt am Fuße des Monte di Tremezzo (1700 m s.l.m.). Zur Gemeinde gehören die am See gelegenen und vom internationalen Tourismus geprägten Ortsteile Tremezzo, Mezzegra, Lenno und Ossuccio.
Die Nachbargemeinden sind: Griante, Grandola ed Uniti, Menaggio, Perledo (LC), Plesio, San Siro, Varenna (LC) und Bellagio und Ponna.
Gemeindefusion
Tremezzina war eine Gemeinde in der italienischen Provinz Como. Sie entstand im Jahre 1928 aus dem Zusammenschluss der drei Gemeinden Lenno, Mezzegra und Tremezzo. Benannt wurde sie nach der Landschaft Tremezzina, einer Region im Westen des Comer Sees.
In der Gemeinde lebten zu jener Zeit 4242 Einwohner (Stand: 1936). Nach dem Ende des Zweiten Weltkriegs wurde sie 1947 aufgelöst und die drei Gründungsgemeinden wurden wieder selbständig.
Am 4. Februar 2014 wurde die Gemeinde Tremezzina durch einen Zusammenschluss der Gemeinden Lenno, Mezzegra, Tremezzo sowie Ossuccio neuerlich gegründet. In diesen vier Gemeinden fand am 1. Dezember 2013 ein nicht bindendes Referendum statt, bei dem sich 63 % der Wähler für einen Zusammenschluss der Gemeinden aussprachen. Zuvor waren vorgenannte Gemeinden gemeinsam mit der Nachbargemeinde Griante in dem Gebietszusammenschluss Unione die Comuni della Tremezzina organisiert. Letztgenannte wurde indes nicht Teil der neugegründeten Gemeinde.
Die Gemeinde gehört zur Comunità Montana del Lario Intelvese und wurde im Jahre 2014 neu gebildet, nachdem sie bereits in den Jahren 1928 bis 1947 unter diesem Namen bestanden hatte.
Sehenswürdigkeiten
Kirche San Bartolomeo im Ortsteil Tremezzo
Villa Carlotta im Ortsteil Tremezzo
Grand Hotel Tremezzo
Abtei Acquafredda im Ortsteil Lenno
Kirche Santo Stefano und romanisches Baptisterium im Ortsteil Lenno
Isola Comacina im Ortsteil Ossuccio
Romanische Kirche Sant’Andrea
Hospitalis Santa Maria Maddalena di Stabio im Ortsteil Ossuccio
Kirche San Benedetto im Val Perlana
Sacro Monte di Ossuccio
Villa del Balbianello im Ortsteil Lenno
Villa Casinella im Ortsteil Lenno
Villa Sola Cabiati im Ortsteil Tremezzo
Villa Balbiano im Ortsteil Ossuccio
Observatorium am Monte Galbiga
(Wikipedia)
History of Vodka
The product name "vodka" originates from the Old Polish language and was derived from the word "woda" - translated "little water".
Traditionally, vodka is distilled in Poland, Russia, Finland and Sweden. Till today it is unclear whether the first vodka was made in Russia or Poland; both countries claim that they are inventors and used the cereal-based distillates as medicine.
Usually, their percentage was not high, and often they were combined with herbs, roots or, like Zubrowkas, with bison grass.
Only in the 18th century vodka became a pure and clear spirit.
Apart from the clear vodka there are flavoured ones today as well; they contain essences made from pepper, nuts, Sherry, sloes, citrus fruit, currants, herbs, roots or just bison grass.
The power of bison grass, nature‘s pure mildness. The specific character of the Polish vodka speciality Grasovka is based on its bison grass flavor; that plant grows in bunches in the clearings the woods of the national park of Bialowieza on the border between Poland and Belarus.
There, the rarely free-living European bisons are found there as well.
Numerous attempts to cultivate that grass in other areas in the world failed. So, each spear of bison grass in a bottle of Grasovka is a present by Polish nature.
La Parisienne est une légende; elle existe pour l’éternité.
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La Parisienne ~ MjYj
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Thanks everyone, thanks for all the votes,comments,
visits, support, critics, invites, awards, etc ..
Love is universal language
Needs no translation, for it is
Spoken with a smile, a touch,
And a hug
It travels the seven seas
Crosses the highest hill
To return to roost
Before a warm fire
And a blanket shared.
Read more & hear the Valentine song in -
PRESIDIO OF MONTEREY, Calif. - On March 1, Marines from the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center donned their dress uniforms to assist Foothill students in celebrating the 108th anniversary of Dr. Seuss’s birthday by participating in Read across America. Since Jan. 2011, DLIFLC Marines have volunteered more than 4,000 hours to tutor and mentor Foothill students, help teachers with paperwork, and assist with library, PE, and recess.
Official Presidio of Monterey Web site
Official Presidio of Monterey Facebook
PHOTO by Steven L. Shepard, Presidio of Monterey Public Affairs.
Pasadena is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the population of Pasadena was 137,122, making it the 180th-largest city in the United States, down from 168th place in 2009. Pasadena is the ninth-largest city in Los Angeles County. Pasadena was incorporated on June 19, 1886, becoming the fourth city to be incorporated in Los Angeles County, after Los Angeles (April 4, 1850), Anaheim (February 10, 1870) and Santa Ana (June 1, 1886); the latter two moved to Orange County after its separation from Los Angeles County in 1889. It is one of the primary cultural centers of the San Gabriel Valley.
The city is known for hosting the annual Rose Bowl football game and Tournament of Roses Parade. In addition, Pasadena is also home to many scientific and cultural institutions, including the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Fuller Theological Seminary, Art Center College of Design, the Pasadena Playhouse, the Norton Simon Museum of Art and the Pacific Asia Museum.
The original inhabitants of Pasadena and surrounding areas were members of the Native American Hahamog-na tribe, a branch of the Tongva Nation. They spoke the Tongva language (part of the Uto-Aztecan languages group) that lived in the Los Angeles Basin for thousands of years. Tongva dwellings lined the Arroyo Seco (Los Angeles County) in present day Pasadena and south to where it joins the Los Angeles River and along other natural waterways in the city.
They traded for ocean fish with the coastal Tongva. They made cooking vessels from steatite soapstone from Catalina Island. The oldest transportation route still in existence in Pasadena is the old Tongva foot trail, also known as the Gabrielino Trail, that goes along the west side of the Rose Bowl and up the Arroyo Seco past the Jet Propulsion Laboratory into the San Gabriel Mountains. That trail has been in continuous use for thousands of years. An arm of the trail is also still in use up what is now called Salvia Canyon. When the Spanish occupied the Los Angeles Basin they built the San Gabriel Mission and renamed the local Tongva people "Gabrielino Indians," after the name of the mission. Today, several bands of Tongva people live in the Los Angeles area.
Pasadena is a part of the original Mexican land grant named Rancho del Rincon de San Pascual, so named because it was deeded on Easter Sunday to Eulalia Perez de Guillén Mariné of Mission San Gabriel Arcángel. The Rancho comprised the lands of today's communities of Pasadena, Altadena and South Pasadena.
The popularity of the region drew people from across the country, and Pasadena eventually became a stop on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway, which led to an explosion in growth. From the real estate boom of the 1880s until the Great Depression, as great tourist hotels were developed in the city, Pasadena became a winter resort for wealthy Easterners, spurring the development of new neighborhoods and business districts, and increased road and transit connections with Los Angeles, culminating with the opening of the Arroyo Seco Parkway, California's first freeway. By 1940, Pasadena had become the eighth largest city in California and was considered by many to be a twin city to Los Angeles.
The American Craftsman era in art and design is exceptionally well represented in Pasadena. In architecture Greene and Greene, the Green Brothers firm, developed the style with many residences still existing. Two examples of their Ultimate bungalow versions are the masterpiece Gamble House (public tours), and the Robert R. Blacker House (private).
The Second World War proved to be a boom to Pasadena as Southern California became a major staging area for the Pacific War. High tech manufacturing and scientific companies made the city their home, a trend which continued in the decades following the war, notably with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Tetra Tech and Ameron International.
In the 1950s, Pasadena saw a steady influx of people from the Southern United States, especially African-Americans from Texas and Louisiana. Pasadena also began hosting a large immigrant community, particularly from Guatemala, El Salvador, and Armenia.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pasadena,_California
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_Creative_Commons_...
Lehde (Lědy in the local Sorbian language) is a village situated near Lübbenau and meawhile integrated into that town. While Lehde had 298 inhabitants in 1929, only 150 people still live here (as of 2017). The place is a village consisting of many small islands. For centuries, until the early 1950s, Lehde could only be reached by water. Even today, practically all plots of land have their own access to one of the many canals between 0.8 and 1 meter deep, which largely have the function of roads. Postal deliveries and waste collection still take place by water. During the winter months, however, mail is delivered to mailboxes set up by the residents on the landside, by mail bike or car.
Due to the unusual location of Lehde and some preserved historical Spreewald houses, Lehde, which is completely under monumental protection, is a popular destination for tourists. Lehde can also be reached on foot, by bicycle or by car, however, the beauty and special features of the place can be experienced above all from the water side. (Wikpedia.de)
The Spreewald (German for 'Spree Forest'; in Lower Sorbian: Błota, i.e. 'the Swamps') is a section of the German state of Brandenburg located about 100 km sou It is known for its traditional irrigation system, consisting of more than 200 small canals (called Fließe; total length: 1,300 kilometres or 810 miles) within the 484-square-kilometre (187 sq mi) area. The landscape was shaped during the last Ice Age. About 50,000 people live in the biosphere reserve (1998). Many of them are descendants of the first settlers in the Spreewald region, the Slavic tribes of the Sorbs and Wends. They have preserved their traditional language, customs and clothing to this day.
Most inhabitants depend on tourism. Many tourists explore the Spreewald in punts. Agriculture, forestry and fishery are other important sources of income. The principal town of the area is Lübbenau. Alder forests on wetlands and pine forests on sandy dry areas are characteristic of the Spreewald region. Grasslands and fields can be found as well. About 18,000 species of flora and fauna have been identified. In 1991, the Spreewald was protected by the UNESCO under its Man and Biosphere Reserve Programme.
I was so inspired by other peoples series' that I decided to start my own. Each day Im going to try and upload a photo featuring one of the words pulled out of my magnetic poetry kit...Today is language. I wrote I Love You in as many languages as I could...includeing Pig Latin! Tell me what you think of the idea/photo. Constructive crticism is definitely welcome.
p.s. this photo was also somewhat inspired by nayshell64's photo
was in June 1992 that an unusual architectural manifesto was launched in Great Britain. For the next ten years or more, the manifesto entitled "Urban Villages, a concept for creating mixed-use urban developments on a sustainable scale" continued to make waves, and was much commented and criticised - often unfavourably - in the specialist and general media.
In the language of contemporary British town planning, the expression "urban village" has for many people come to be synonymous with the name "Poundbury", the neo-traditionalist suburban development on the fringes of the rural town of Dorchester, piloted and largely masterminded by the Prince of Wales. Yet although Poundbury is certainly the most extensively developed of Britain's urban village projects, there are many others throughout Britain, and the expression "urban villages" is also used in other English speaking countries to describe modern suburban developments - and in some cases rural developments - that conform (or more or les conform) to certain holistic principles of planning that run against the grain of accepted modern practices in suburban development.
This article takes a concise look at the origins of the "urban village" concept, and its definition, before studying the situation of urban village development in the UK today, looking at Poundbury and the other projects throughout the country that were in 2001 affiliated to the Urban Villages Forum, the think tank set up under the patronage of the Prince of Wales.
Indeed, no discussion of "urban villages" in a British context can begin without reference to the role of the Prince of Wales who, long dissatisfied by much of the dreary suburban development that has occurred in Britain during his lifetime, has used his position to spearhead the development of socially and architecturally successful sustainable communities designed to avoid the failures of the recent past.
The much-used expression "neo-traditionalist", imported from the United States, clearly establishes the conceptual framework that underlies the urban village movement; urban villages are seen as not just an architectural or planning concept, but one predicated on a form of social organisation that has its roots in a long-established model that has stood the test of time. In Britain, as in the United States, the aim of the proponents of urban villages is not just to design modern living environments that reflect those of a previous and supposedly more stable rural society, but to rediscover the forms of living environment that engendered the stability of such traditional rural communities. In this respect, the "urban village" is a concept that takes its place in a historic British - and notably English - paradigm that has previously been illustrated in the model towns of Lever, Cadbury and others, the garden cities of the first half of the twentieth century, and, in community terms at least, in late twentieth century developments such as Newcastle's Byker village.
The expression "urban village" seems however to be an American invention. The earliest bibliographical reference to the phrase would seem to be a book entitled Urban Village: Population, Community, and Family Structure in Germantown, Pennsylvania, 1683-1800, by Stephanie Grauman, published in 1980. Yet early usages of the expression do not refer to any specific planning concept, but are a more a convenient pairing of words used to describe certain types of close-knit urban communities whose structures reflected traditional rural models. The phrase was even used as a rendering of the Spanish expression "barrio". It was in the early eighties, however, that the first references to the "urban village" as a planning concept began to appear, in the writings of Christopher Leinberger, a Los Angeles based urban affairs consultant (Urban Villages: The Locational Lessons. Wall Street Journal. New York. November 13, 1984) and Charles Lockwood (The Arrival of the Urban Village in Princeton Alumni Weekly November 1986). Leinberger used the phrase "urban villages" to describe what he saw as a new tendency towards mixed-use development in suburban America, resulting from the fact that in post-industrial America, there was no longer any need to separate business and residential areas for environmental reasons (pollution, noise, etc.).
More recently, and notably in the 1990's, the phrase has been used sporadically in discussions of the American "new urbanism" movement, often by and with reference to neotraditionalist planners Leon Krier and the Andres Duany / Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk partnership; yet generally speaking, American writers and planners - until recently - have made considerably more use of the expression "new urbanism", rather than "urban village". The idea of the "village", with its notions of "community", seems to be particularly English, and it was only in the late 1990's, following the international interest aroused by the first of England's "urban villages", Poundbury, that the expression really began to become popular in the United States and Australia.
It was the Prince of Wales who introduced the concept of the "urban village" into the vocabulary of British planning; the expression is used briefly in his 1989 book A Vision of Britain (the follow up to a 1988 television documentary), though not at the time directly in conjunction with the Poundbury project, which is mentioned. It was also this book that clearly established the dual parentage of the urban village concept in the English acceptance of the phrase; on the one hand, the historic English village tradition, on the other hand the American neotraditionalist architectural planners, notably Krier and Duany. In the final pages of A Vision of Britain, a presentation of Krier's archetypal neotraditionalist development in Florida, the town of Seaside, covers a full five pages, compared to just two covering the development of "model villages" in the U.K. from Saltaire to the garden cities.
Yet clearly, however great the influence of Krier on Prince Charles has been, it is the historic English concept of the village, and the idealised view of village life, that form the theoretical models that the British proponents of the "urban village" have sought to translate into a modern idiom.
One may speculate as to whether Prince Charles, while thinking over the possibility of creating a planned modern urban village at Poundbury, on the outskirts of Dorchester, had read P.H.Ditchfield's 1908 book The Charm of the English Village, which had recently been reprinted (1985); there is a lot in this book, most notably perhaps its preoccupation with the small details, the use of materials, and the stylistic and functional variety that characterise traditional English villages, that prefigures the Prince's view of the model community. Along with many other publications, both Prince Charles's and Ditchfield's books are also woven on the loom of nostalgia for a supposed almost utopian past, common to the proponents of New Urbanism, and anathema to many modernists. In an article in Harvard Design Magazine in 1997, marxist geographer David Harvey, professor at Johns Hopkins university wrote :
"The New Urbanism in fact connects to a facile contemporary attempt to transform large and teeming cities, so seemingly out of control, into an interlinked series of 'urban villages', where, it is believed, everyone can relate in a civil and urbane fashion to everyone else."
Harvey, however was looking on new urbanism in the fundamentally North American idiom; and although, historically, many earlier settlers in the United States - notably in New England - transposed onto north American soil social models imitated from those of the English village, on the whole the American model was, by definition, different. Early American villages may not have been subject to the rectilinear grid planning of 19th century American towns and villages, but neither did they evolve slowly over time in the manner of the historic English village. In addition, America's "New Urbanism", as exemplified by Seaside, is rather different from the English "urban village" as first exemplified at Poundbury.
Ditchfield (1908) more than once stresses the particular nature of English villages, even as opposed to villages in other parts of Europe, referring to the particular social structure of the English village as the "village commonwealth", a structure that would more normally be referred to in modern terms as the "village community". It should be noted that the notion of "community" is a fundamental building block in the societies of modern English speaking countries, and is considerably more deeply rooted in the English tradition (and more broadly speaking the Germanic traditions) than in that of any newer country, or even of other European countries in which the structures of pre-industrial society had evolved out of Roman law.
Since the departure of the Romans, the village has been the core community unit in the British Isles. Though England long boasted, in London, Europe's largest city, and though Britain was the first European nation to undergo major population drift to the towns, the village has always survived - in thought, literature or art - as the ideal, and often idealised, social unit. In Roman times, cities became the nuclei of life in Britain; but after the Romans left, most of their great cities, with the exception of London, were largely abandoned, the British populations moving out to occupy new village sites outside the city walls or further afield; and whilst in continental western Europe the great cities of Roman times remained great cities after the Romans left, and in many cases remain so to this day, the same was not true in the British Isles.
In mediaeval Britain, the extensive devolution of power and authority under the Anglo-Norman feudal system - inherited from the Anglo Saxon period - and the territorial representation that existed in English parliaments from the late thirteenth century onwards, played their role in formulating, in the national psyche, an image of England as being a nation represented emblematically by its villages, rather than by its capital city. In the English mind, London has never been the nexus of national identity in the way that Paris has long been the symbol of France and French life. In Shakespeare, the quintessential images of English life are not those of Henry IV and Bolingbroke at court or on the battle field; they are those of Justice Shallow in his orchard in rural Gloucestershire.
The Industrial Revolution completed, by the mid nineteenth century, a process that had been set in motion by the Enclosures Acts of the eighteenth, precipitating Europe's first massive rural exodus, and with it a further pauperisation of the former rural labourers. It was during this period that poets, artists and novelists, from Blake to Constable to William Morris or Thomas Hardy, began to place rural England at the heart of English art and writing, often in an idealised manner that helped give a new impetus to the longstanding perception of the superiority of English rural society over urban society. The apparent immortality of the BBC's classic radio soap opera, the Archers, set in its fictitious village of Ambridge, is just another more modern illustration of the same point.
It is perhaps significant that Trevor Osborne, chairman of the Urban Villages Group, notes, in the introduction to Urban Villages, that "the term 'urban village' will not be readily understood in mainland Europe; when exported to other EC member states, it will need a different label." One might even add : "or to the USA".
It is clearly by another quirk of coincidence that the first English "Urban Village", Poundbury, should have been located on the outskirts of Dorchester, the town immortalised under the name of Casterbridge, in the novels of Thomas Hardy.
Proposals for a major expansion of Dorchester were first debated in 1987, and two years later outline planning permission for the westward extension of the town was granted by West Dorset District Council, for a mixed-use residential suburb that will eventually stretch over 400 acres (about 190 hectares). The initial development was to cover 35 acres of land.
Prince Charles was involved in the project from the start; the greenfield site on the outskirts of Dorchester was in effect his land, agricultural leasehold land belonging to the Duchy of Cornwall. When the Dorchester council applied to the Duchy to purchase the land for development, the answer they received was more favourable than they had imagined possible. Not only would the Duchy make the land available for development, but Prince Charles himself would oversee the operation, with the aim of establishing an attractive mixed-use and socially mixed suburban development; Britain's first "urban village".
For many in the UK architectural and planning establishment, news that the Prince of Wales was to take charge of a major suburban development project was like a red rag to a bull. Relations between the Prince and many of Britain's leading architects and planners had been, to say the least, tense ever since the Prince had begun airing in public his none-too-complimentary opinions on the architecture and planning of the sixties and seventies. His famous description of Birmingham's new library as looking more like an incinerator than a place of learning, or his much quoted speech to the Royal Institute of British Architects, in 1984, when he described the proposed extension to London's National Gallery as being like a "monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend", had done little to endear him to the modernists in British architecture.
Consequently, and unsurprisingly, reactions to the initial proposals for Poundbury were not favourable, neither in the specialised reviews nor in the architectural columns of the British broadsheets. The project was decried variously as an exercise in retrophilia, a pastiche, an irrelevance, or worse.
That was in 1989; and it is true that Leon Krier's bird's-eye sketch of what Poundbury might look like, published at the time in A Vision of Britain (p138), does look more like a heteroclite exercise in nostalgia than a serious plan for a late twentieth century suburban development.
The reality of Poundbury has been somewhat different: with the first phase of building now complete, the earliest streets have already had time to mellow, and as an urban environment, the general consensus among both residents and the press is that this new "urban village" is a success. After its early hostile coverage, the British mainstream press - including the Guardian, the Telegraph, the Mirror and the Mail - has now changed tack, and since 1998 press coverage of the ever-evolving project has been largely positive.
Among the common complaints voiced by residents now is that Poundbury is a victim of its success, with large numbers of tourists and visiting architects and town planners who invade their space, sometimes in coachloads, turning their residential quarter into an unintended tourist attraction.
So why do they come? What is it that has established Poundbury as a stopping point on the architect's and town planner's tour of Britain in the early twenty-first century? Firstly, of course, there is its curiosity value - an unusual - some would still say eccentric - act of royal patronage, an experiment in suburban architecture and planning, masterminded by an amateur planner who is due to become the next King of England. Secondly they come to see how the ten point theory of the "urban village", laid out in the Vision of Britain, transforms into reality.
Over 22 pages, the book sets out a list of "ten principles we can build upon" in order to create a successful modern urban living environment. These are as follows:
1. Place. That planners should understand the local environment, and design their projects to blend with it.
2. Hierarchy. That the design of buildings should always reflect their hierarchical position in the community, that "public buildings ought to proclaim themselves with pride", and others be designed in function of their value in society.
3. Scale. That buildings should bear relation to the human scale, and the scale of other buildings in an area.
4. Harmony. That buildings should blend harmoniously with others in the vicinity.
5. Enclosure. That spatial identity is of major importance, and that new developments should incorporate such public spaces as squares and courtyards
6. Materials. that building materials used should reflect the diversity of local traditions, and not conform to any national or international standard.
7. Decoration. That decorative craftsmanship should still be, as it always has been, a major feature of the urban environment.
8. Art. That artistic decoration has a major and a symbolic role to play in the enhancement of the urban environment, and that artists as well as architects should have a role to play in the designing of new living environments.
9. Signs and lighting. That these also contribute to the success of the built environment, not detract from it, and should therefore be put up with care and attention.
10. Community. That a successful community is a place where residents feel involved, and contribute to the planning and running of their environment.
While points 1 - 9 can be - and in the case of Poundbury, are being - ensured through the masterplan, point 10 cannot. A successful community can only be brought about by the people who live in it; and so far, in spite of the fact that Poundbury is still very much an ongoing project, those who live there are happy with their environment and, on the whole, consider it to be a successful community.
Besides the above ten points, which essentially concern the architectural and visual aspects of the environment in urban villages, there are other fundamental aspects that distinguish the urban village from other suburban or rural housing projects, aspects that are perhaps rather more fundamental than aesthetics. These are social mixity, and mixed use - together seen as preconditions for the creation of new sustainable communities.
As well as reflecting the ten principles, the masterplan for Poundbury was for a housing development that would include a seamless and indistinguishable mixture of owner-occupied dwellings and social housing. The mixed-use plan also called for the inclusion, within easy walking distance of the residential streets, of shops, workshops and factories, enabling residents to live and work in the community without the need for commuting.
In many details, the masterplan for Poundbury went against conventional planning orthodoxy. Its fundamental tenet, mixed use, ran counter to accepted zoning theory, which prefers to concentrate business in business parks, housing in housing estates, and shops in shopping centers.
As for social diversity, critics of the Poundbury plan argued that the type of home buyers wanting to buy in Poundbury would not wish to buy houses that shared a dividing wall with social housing units; it was also suggested that the densely-packed housing environment was out of keeping with the tastes and expectations of modern middle-class British house-buyers, more usually attracted by the ideal of detached houses in wrap-around gardens.
Others predicted that industry would not want to relocate in the middle, or even on the edge, of a residential area, and that in the end, Poundbury would end up as no more than a "glorified council estate".
So far at least, this has not been the case - which is exactly what its planners expected. Having conceived Poundbury as a carefully planned (or, in its critics' opinions, contrived) recreation of a traditional organically developed village, they did not expect to encounter the problems facing many other suburban developments.
Like the village, the urban village is conceived as a community of mixed housing, catering for all ages and income groups. At Poundbury, the first phase of housing consisted of 55 units of social housing, administered by a housing association, the Guinness Trust, and 141 freehold owner-occupier homes, as well as retail and commercial premises. By the time the development is completed, towards the year 2020, Poundbury will have between 2,000 and 3,000 housing units, with social housing accounting for about 20% of the total, in line with the national average.
The question that remains, however, is whether the model of Poundbury can be transposed into other settings, or whether the success of this rather middle-class development on the edge of a rather trouble-free county town in the heart of the Westcountry, can be replicated in other areas?
Following the media coverage - both positive and negative - given to the Poundbury project when it was first mooted in the late 1980's, a forum known as the Urban Villages Group was founded in 1989, at the Prince of Wales's behest, under the wing of Business in the Community, an organisation whose purpose is "to tackle economic, social and environmental issues affecting local communities" (Aldous, p8).
Among the founder members of the Group were Leon Krier, plus the chief executives of a number of property development companies, housing corporations, and the Managing Director of the Cooperative Bank. The aim of the Group was to encourage councils and property developers to take the urban village concept nationwide, as a viable - if slightly more costly - alternative to the monotonous standardized run-of-the-mill developments, the "edge cities" that have mushroomed, and will continue to mushroom, on the outskirts of most British urban areas.
As of January 2002, eighteen development projects across England are being carried out in partnership with the Prince's Foundation, according to "urban village" principles; none however is as advanced as Poundbury, and some, such as the Westoe Colliery project at South Shields and the Northwich city centre project, are still on the drawing board. Yet as the location of these two projects shows - one in the heart of the depressed northeast, and the other in the rundown centre of a Cheshire town - the "urban village" concept can be, and is being, applied in areas that are very different from semi-rural Dorset.
Only two other projects are listed, like Poundbury, as "urban extensions" on greenfield sites, one in Basdildon Essex, the other in Northampton; by far the majority of projects are "urban regeneration" projects on brownfield sites.
Some of these are in fact far removed from the "urban village" concept as illustrated by Poundbury. In particular, the Ancoats project in Manchester, the Jewellery quarter in Birmingham and the Little Germany redevelopment in the centre of Bradford appear more like classic industrial heritage preservation programmes, along the lines of the Albert Dock regeneration scheme in Liverpool, or the redevelopment of Butler's Wharf on the South Bank in London.
They are, however, different, inasmuch as these three projects, though they will never become villages in the sense that Poundbury can call itself a large village, have been conceived with the ethos of the urban village concept in mind, and not as just three more chic urban residential areas for the upwardly mobile.
Little Germany and the Jewelry Quarter are interesting cases, both being central urban areas which, in the past, had a clear spatial and social identity, the former as the fiefdom of Bradford's German cloth merchants, the latter as the densely populated network of small streets which housed both the homes and the workshops of Birmingham's hundreds of jewelers and watchmakers - a classic historic example of both mixed usage and a clearly defined urban quarter.
A hundred years ago, Birmingham's Jewellery Quarter provided employment for some 70,000 people – many of whom lived and worked in the quarter. Since then, the number of jobs in the sector has fallen by over 90%, and the residential population has all but disappeared. In 2000, the quarter harboured some 1,200 business, but only about 700 residents. The aim of the project is to redress this imbalance, and rekindle the vibrant community that existed at the start of the twentieth century.
The Ancoats Urban Village, in Manchester, is different - so different indeed that although Ancoats announces itself as an "urban village", the project's development manager herself is not convinced that it really is one.
"I feel uneasy about offering Ancoats as representative of the Urban Villages movement, as it does not conform to many of the criteria that the Urban Villages movement sets out, and although we are still members of the Prince's Foundation, I don't think they would suggest Ancoats as an example of their philosophy; we seem to spend most time disagreeing!" (Lyn Fenton, private letter of 02/01/02).
Ancoats prides itself for its place in urban history, as the world's first industrial suburb – an area in which 13,000 people once lived and worked; the targets of the Urban Village project are to bring people back to live in this historic industrial site, close to the centre of Manchester, through a programme of mixed use residential and business development. Classed as a conservation area in 1989, it is on the UK's short list for designation as a UNESCO world heritage site. In spite of the reservations of the developers, the targets set out in the Ancoats Supplementary Planning Guidance reflect the same principles as those adopted for Poundbury; the fact that this, as some other urban village sites, are not totally new-build areas, does not fundamentally change the perspective.
Naturally perhaps, it is not in Britain's great urban centres that other urban village projects closer to the Poundbury model can be found, but on the edges of Britain's smaller towns and cities, as the following two examples illustrate. The Westoe site in South Shields is being developed by Wimpey on the 17 hectare site of a disused colliery, as a high-density mixed-use and socially mixed suburb with up to 800 homes, its own school, shops and office premises. In Lancashire, the Luneside development at Lancaster, albeit smaller - 6 hectares - is being developed along similar lines.
Finally, although only 18 projects are affiliated to the Prince's Trust as recognised "urban village" developments, neither the Prince nor the trust has exclusive rights to the expression, and other new housing development projects elsewhere in Britain, are taking up the label in order to give themselves a certain cachet.
Indeed, the "urban village" approach to the design and planning of residential areas has now found its way into official UK government guidelines, a new guide from the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions showing among its primary inspirations:
" the 'Urban Villages' movement in the UK and neo-traditional design generally. Indeed, the design philosophy promoted is essentially one of working with context, promoting pedestrian friendly environments, returning to traditional perimeter block systems, and - where possible - mixing uses." (DETR Website 2002)
The current popularity of the notion of the "urban village" in contemporary UK planning would tend to indicate that a sea change in planning theory has taken place in the UK since Prince Charles first launched his vision of Britain in 1989. Whether or not this will result in the recreation of something resembling the types of close-knit communities that existed in nineteenth century, or pre-Enclosures English villages, or even in twentieth century industrial villages, and whether "mixed usage" will really have any serious impact on the social habits of the British in the 21st century, other than reducing car usage, are different matters.
And in the end, it is perhaps of little matter in the context of this paper, in which I have set out to show the peculiarly high value attached to the word village in England, and the particularly strong belief that runs through English thought and culture, that the village - and notably the idealised village with its green spaces, flowered gardens, and friendly folk, is the finest possible form of spatial and social organisation - even in the resolutely urban society of the start of the third millennium. In this respect, the phrase "urban village" has readily come to be seen not as a contradiction in terms, but as a means of having one's cake and eating it, or at least getting the best of both worlds.
Bibliography
Aldous, Tony. Urban Villages, a concept for creating mixed-use urban developments on a sustainable scale, London, The Urban Villages Group 1992.
Ditchfield, P.H. The Charm of the English Village, 1908, reprinted London, Bracken Books, 1985,
Harvey, David. The New Urbanism and the Communitarian Trap, in Harvard Design Magazine, Winter/Spring 1997, no. 1.
Miller, Anthony. The role of Landscape Architecture in fostering community; Byker, a case study, in L'Espace Urbain Européen, Cahiers du Créhu 6. Annales littéraires de l'Université de Franche Comté 1996
Mumford, Lewis. T, The City in History, Secker & Warburg 1961, reprinted Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1973 &&.
Rossiter, Andrew. Retour à l'Utopie? Poundbury; redéfinir la banlieue en village urbain. In Ville et Utopie, Cahiers du Créhu no. 10, actes du Colloque. Presses Universitaires de Franche Comté, 2001.
Wales, Charles, Prince of. A Vision of Britain, a personal view of architecture. London, Doubleday, 1989
Webography:
Thandani, Diriu A. New Urbanism Bibliography, published by the Architectural Resources Network
periferia.org/publications/cnubibliography.html
Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions:
www.planning.detr.gov.uk/livingplaces/02/03.htm
Copyright :
About-Britain academic : texts © Authors and About-Britain.com
Andrew Rossiter, Université de Franche Comté
From a paper presented at the International Symposium on Urban and Rural Britain at the University of Valenciennes, France, 2002
Each young Maasai warrior jump as high as he can while the others stand in a circle and sing. The voices of the men get higher as the jumping increases. In the Masai language, this dancing competition is called the "adumu".
Masai dances are very structured and are performed for certain occasions.
There are dances for celebration when a lion is killed by the warriors, a dance for the blessing of cattle, and dances performed at wedding. Most of the Masai dances are pretty simple, and consist of a lot of bending, but with the feet staying still on the ground.
The Massai live only on the Tanzania-Kenya border, along the Great Rift Valley on semi-arid and arid lands.They have been deported from their best traditional grazing lands, that are now known as the Maasai Mara National Reserve, the Amboseli National Park, and other protected forests.
The Maasai comprise 5 clans. They have reputation of fierce warriors. But they are traditionally seminomadic, and live off their cattle almost exclusively. The Maasai believe that all cattle belong to them and they are known to be cattle raiders. Cattle raiding used to be a common inter tribal activity. The livestock is a sign of wealth and is traditionally used to pay dowry for the wedding. Women are worth 10 cows. They consistently come from another village. Parents are the ones who negociate for the marriage. In the Maasai community, women construct the huts, collect firewood, bring water, milk the herds of cattle and cook for the family. Young boys look after the beasts while the warriors protect the clan. Older men take care of the daily operations in the community. The Maasai live in families in a Manyatta (a form of enclosed homestead), surrounded by a fence made of thorny bushes to protect them and their livestock from intruders and predators. Each Manyatta has about 10 to 20 huts known as "Inkajijik". These huts are made of tree branches, mud, grass and cow dung. If a man has more than one woman, he must build another house to welcome his second wife (to avoid rivalry). So a man who has 3 wifes must own 3 houses and therefore be rich. In the Maasai culture, the colorful ornaments are dedicated to their beauty, which is one of the most important aspects. Visual arts consist mainly of body decoration and beaded ornaments. These decorations are displayed in their dances, which are a popular art form. Women wear beaded necklaces and bangles, and men a red checked shuka (Maasai blanket). The warriors carry a spear and a ball-ended club, and paint their body with ochre. Maasai's diet includes meat, cow blood 2 times a week, and a lot of milk. The cows are bled by opening a vein in the neck with a blunt arrow or knife. The blood is then drunk on it’s own or with milk. The Maasai speak a Nilotic language, called Maa.
They believe in one God, Ngai (meaning "One Creator God"), the creator and giver of all things. They also believe in witchcraft. In each tribal group, there is a prophet who is seen as helping to cope with the endemic sorcery, by the means of protective medicines and advices for the rituals. In addition to the prophets, they also have diviners who are supposed to have the power to diagnose illnesses and causes of misfortune, and can prescribe a range of herbal medicines and ritual cures. Despite the fact that some members have moved to cities, many have kept their customs. The most distinctive feature of Maasai society is the age system for men, divided in sets and spaced apart by about fifteen years. Excision, as well as circoncision, is an initiatory ceremony that mark the passage to adulthood. Although excisions are prohibited in Kenya, it is widespread throughout the country, especially in rural areas. Only 4 ethnic groups (Luo, Luhya, Teso and Turkana) out of 42 don't practise it. According to the ethnies and regions, excisions vary considerably and range from 4.1% in the western region to 98.8% in the North-Est. They are common within the Somali (97%), Kisii (96%) and Maasai (93%) while they are less frequent among the Kikuyu (34%) and Kamba (27%). The kenyan law is rarely enforced and it sometimes lead this practice to clandestinity instead of slowing it down. For the 3 months of recovery period after excision, Maasai girls wear jewellery and chalk make-up, to show they must not be seen by men. Circumcision happens at the age of 18 in the Maasai tribes. Maasai woman are not allowed to attend the ceremony. Boys who show their pain with tears during the operation, are considered as cowards and bear this shame all his life. On the contrary, the ones who don't cry during circumcision are authorized to hunt colorful birds with their bow and arrows. Then they make a headdress indicating their new warrior's status. After the operation, boys go in their mother's hut to drink cow's fresh blood to recover their forces. The promotion of warriors to elderhood involve two distinct ceremonies. The 4 days eunoto ceremony raise the warriors to the senior warrior status. For this occasion, warriors gather in the same village. They are led by a ritual leader (olotuno). Each one of them has a part of his head shaved by his mother, which often makes them cry. It symbolizes the end of their freedom and of the bond with their mother. At the end of the ritual, the warrior can select any girl to marry. The olghesher ceremony promote them to senior elderhood thanks to which they have the power to bless and curse, and become protective leaders of the next new age-set.
During one of the ceremonies, maasai girls accompany their lover to the ceremonial dance. Pearl neacklaces and headbands follow the rhythm. This is the sole moment when girls can choose freely 3 lovers among the warriors.Traditionally, as long as the father was alive, no son has final control over his cattle nor over his choice in marriage. At marriage, the bride is allocated a herd of cattle, from which all her sons will build up herds of their own. In any case, women are raised to accept her submission to her future husband.
© Eric Lafforgue
Histoire naturelle des oiseaux de paradis et des rolliers :.
Paris :Chez Denné le jeune ... [et] chez Perlet ...,1806..
PRESIDIO OF MONTEREY, Calif. -- Halloween came early for our local service members and their families when the Army's 229th Military Intelligence Battalion hosted the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center "Trunk or Treat" event at Soldier Field, Oct. 28.
Official Presidio of Monterey Web site
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PHOTO by Steven L. Shepard, Presidio of Monterey Public Affairs.
‘Char’in Bengali language means ‘four’ and ‘Bangla’ in Bengali language has been derived from Bengal.On the other side of Murshidabad across River Bhagirathi, there lies a complex in Baronagar Ajimgange, surrounded by four temples, known as Char Bangla Temple. Just before entering temple complex you will find the Bhabaniswar temple of Shiva. Char Bangla temples were built under the patronage of Rani Bhabani in the years 1755-1760. It is an example of one of the best ornamental brick work in Bengal. She came from Nator (Now in Bangladesh). Rani Bhabani was a pious lady and she was also a loyal follower of Lord Shiva. So she constructed or patronized all the temples dedicating to Lord Shiva. The temple walls are the height of examples of exquisite art work of terracotta reflecting Hindu mythological stories in a unique style of it own. The works depicts about the daily life incidents to the North side temple at the down two rows. And others are about the epics “The Ramayana” and “The Mahabharata”. It is a must heritage tour in Bengal for world tourists having interests in archeology, art and history. It is said that Rani Bhavani wanted to build 108 temples here at Baronagar on the shore of the Ganges to lift the status of this settlement to that of Varanasi. She stopped at 107, for an unknown reason [See article of Mr. Shyamal Chatterji: www.chitrolekha.com/V2/n1/08_Iconography_Temples_Baronaga...]. Its definitely a chapter of art history in Bengal.
[Terracotta, from the Latin terra cocta, is a type of earthenware, and a clay-based unglazed or glazed ceramic, where the fired body is porous. Terracotta is used as a medium in sculpture, as in the Terracotta Army and Greek terracotta figurines. Glazed architectural terracotta and its unglazed version as exterior surfaces for buildings were used in Asia for some centuries before becoming popular in the West in the 19th century. ]
MURSHIDABAD – A HISTORICAL PLACE.
Murshidabad is a city in Murshidabad district of West Bengal state in India. The city is located on the eastern bank of the Bhagirathi, a tributary of the Ganges River.
HISTORY
Murshidabad was a town and district of British India, in the Bengal Presidency. In the Mughal period it was the capital of Bengal.
In 1704, Murshid Quli Khan, the Diwan of Bengal under Aurangzeb transferred the capital from Dacca (now Dhaka inBangladesh), and renamed the city Murshidabad after his own name. In 1716, he attained the title of Nawab (ruler) of the Subah(province) of Bengal, and Murshidabad became his capital.
The family of Jagat Seth maintained their position as state bankers at Murshidabad from generation to generation. Even after the conquest of Bengal by the British, Murshidabad remained for some time the seat of administration. Warren Hastings removed the supreme civil and criminal courts to Calcutta in 1772, but in 1775 the latter courts were brought back to Murshidabad again. In 1790, under Lord Cornwallis, the entire revenue and judicial staffs were moved to Calcutta. The town was still the residence of the nawab, who ranked as the first nobleman of the province with the style of Nawab Bahadur of Murshidabad, instead of Nawab Nazim of Bengal. The Hazarduari Palace, dating back to 1837, is a magnificent building. The city still bears memories of Nawabs with other palaces, mosques, tombs, and gardens, and retains such industries as carving in ivory, gold and silver embroidery, and silk-weaving.
The city is also famous for producing exotic mango and litchi. A narrow-gauge railway crosses the district, from the East Indian line at Nalhati to Azimganj. Baharampur, the capital of Murshidabad, has grown in importance, population & size; as of 2011 it is the 7th largest city in West Bengal.
Historic places
While it features extensively in history books, the large potential for heritage tourism has been somewhat neglected. Of historic interest are Nizamat Kila (the Fortress of the Nawabs), also known as the Hazaarduari Palace (Palace of a Thousand Doors), built by Duncan McLeod of the Bengal Engineers in 1837, in the Italianate style. It was built in the nineteenth century by architect Duncan Macleod, under the reign of Nawab Nazim Humayun Jah of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa (1824–1838). William Cavendish was the then Governor-General. Now, Hazarduari Palace is the most conspicuous building in Murshidabad. In 1985, the palace was handed over to the Archaeological Survey of India for better preservation.[
The Moti Jhil(Pearl Lake) just to the south of the palace, the Muradbagh Palace and the Khushbagh Cemetery, where the remains of Ali Vardi Khan and Siraj Ud Daulah are interred.
The legacy of Siraj ud-Daulah (1733 – July 2, 1757), was the last independent Nawab of Bengal. He was Iraqi Arab by ethnicity and Shi'ite in religion. The end of his reign marked the start of British East India Company rule over Bengal and later almost all of South Asia. Siraj succeeded his maternal grandfather, Alivardi Khan as the Nawab of Bengal in April 1756 at the age of 23. Betrayed by Mir Jafar, then commander of Nawab's army, Siraj lost the Battle of Plassey on 23 June 1757. The forces of the East India Company under Robert Clive invaded and the administration of Bengal fell into the hands of the Company.
The present Nizamat Imambara was built in 1847 AD by Nawab Nazim Mansoor Ali Khan Feradun Jah. It was built after the fires of 1842 and 1846 which burnt the wooden Imambara built by Nawab Siraj ud-Daulah. This Imambara is said to be the largest one in India.
The Katra Masjid (also known as Katra Mosque) is a mosque and the tomb of Nawab Murshid Quli Khan built between 1723 and 1724. It is located in the north eastern side of the city. Its importance lies not only as a great centre of Islamic learning but also for the tomb of Murshid Quli Khan, who is buried under the entrance staircase. The most striking feature is the two large corner towers having loopholes for musketry. At present it is maintained and protected by the Archaeological Survey of India and the Government of West Bengal.
Bacchawali Tope is a gun, rather cannon which lies in the Nizamat Fort Campus on the garden space between the Nizamat Imambara and the Hazarduari Palace and to the east of the old Madina Mosque. The cannon consists two pieces of different diameters. The cannon was made between the 12th and 14th century, probably by the Mohammeddan rulers of Gaur. It originally lied on the sand banks of Ichaganj. However, it is unknown that how it came in Ichaganj. It was used to protect the city of Murshidabad from north-western attacks. After the 1846 fire of the Nizamat Imambara the Imambara was rebuilt, then after the completion of the new Imambara the cannon was shifted to its present site by Sadeq Ali Khan, the architect of the sacred Nizamat Imambara under the suggestion of Sir Henry Torrens, the then agent of the Governor General at Murshidabad.
My second stranger from the dance contest. Sadly there's no story behind it.
Realized the dancers have a special make up, most probably to emphasize their eyes and as a stranger aware "photographer" I am always on alert for eyes.
This lady was walking around the dressing rooms and it was obvious she was trying to find something. Most of the time I try to find strangers that are alone and I feel more anxious when I try to approach a group of people. She has a friend with her and I didn't ask for quite a time.
Long story short, I approached her, ask to take a couple of images and then I realized both she and her friend don't speak English. Then the usual sign language kicked in and showing the camera cleared everything.
There weren't much of a background alternative and most of the walls were painted white. I placed her in front of the wall (and the bathroom) and tried to include the locker behind to spice up things a little and to add some contrast.
As I told earlier, I do not have a name as it wasn't possible to communicate. As far as I can understand, she might be from Bulgaria, Russia etc.
This picture is #17 in my 100 strangers project. Find out more about the project and see pictures taken by other photographers at the 100 Strangers Flickr Group page
"From symbiosis to parasitism is a short step. The word is now a virus. The flu virus may have once been a healthy lung cell. It is now a parasitic organism that invades and damages the central nervous system. Modern man has lost the option of silence. Try halting sub-vocal speech. Try to achieve even ten seconds of inner silence. You will encounter a resisting organism that forces you to talk. That organism is the word. "
Extract from "The Ticket That Exploded" by William .S. Burroughs| 1962
David Cronenberg's film "Naked Lunch" is based on the book by W.S. Burroughs| www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tC5ryr-qRs&feature=related
Original Caption: Training Havasupai Teachers in Reading and Language Instruction Methods
U.S. National Archives’ Local Identifier: 412-DA-1821
Photographer: Eiler, Terry, 1944-
Subjects:
Supai (Coconino county, Arizona, United States) inhabited place
Environmental Protection Agency
Project DOCUMERICA
Persistent URL: arcweb.archives.gov/arc/action/ExternalIdSearch?id=544314
Repository: Still Picture Records Section, Special Media Archives Services Division (NWCS-S), National Archives at College Park, 8601 Adelphi Road, College Park, MD, 20740-6001.
For information about ordering reproductions of photographs held by the Still Picture Unit, visit: www.archives.gov/research/order/still-pictures.html
Reproductions may be ordered via an independent vendor. NARA maintains a list of vendors at www.archives.gov/research/order/vendors-photos-maps-dc.html
Access Restrictions: Unrestricted
Use Restrictions:
A Larger view to see them better?
When you are asked, "What is the first thing that comes to your mind when I say 'Washington, DC'", what would you say?
Washington Monument?
The Capitol?
White House?
Memorials?
National Mall?
Smithsonial Institute?
Well I think I would say Traffic Chaos. There are so many diversions and roadblocks that even if you have lived your entire life there in the neighborhood you have a good chance of getting lost. I was lost, driving and I was in front of a road block barricade and an officer next to it. I asked him for directions and he kindly gave me the same. The directions involved crossing a one-way street. Unbeknowest to that officer, there was another one in my way, right in the middle of the road, parked car with lights on asking me to turn around. Thanks to the One way, I couldnt get back to the same place again to ask to be rerouted (I should have taken the $10.99 GPS offer). Bottom line? Lets say, I saw the entire DC driving around in a couple of hours, unintentionally :D
The signs above were all photographed on the same morning, while walking around the downtown and tourist areas of DC. On the background is Washington Monument.
Have a wonderful Wednesday!
This is the English language reprint of the 1964 French comic strip, translated by Richard Seaver.
The story of “Barbarella” originated as a comic strip created by French artist and writer Jean-Claude Forest. It was first serialized in the French “V Magazine” in 1962. The comic quickly gained popularity with the French public and in several other European countries. It was later published as a standalone book in 1964. The first American book edition followed in 1966.
Forest's “Barbarella” was groundbreaking—it was one of the first adult-oriented science fiction comics, blending futuristic adventure with themes of sexual liberation. The character became an icon of the 1960s counterculture, and her popularity led to the 1968 film adaptation starring Jane Fonda, directed by Roger Vadim. The “Barbarella” comic strip was also published in “Playboy” magazine around the time of the film adaptation.
[Sources: Wikipedia, VintagePopFictions.blogspot.com, and CoolFrenchComics.com]
“Barbarella, with her long hair and sonorous name, her baby face and disdain for needless clothes, finds herself on the planet Lythion, where she has made a forced landing while traveling alone through outer space in her rocket. She is a creature of the future who is confronted with the monsters and robots of the strange planet, and she is put to one test after another. She vanquishes evil in whatever form she finds it, and rewards, in her particular fashion, all the handsome men that she meets during her adventures. And, whether battling sadists or turning her ray gun on gelatinous monsters, she cannot seem to avoid losing all or part of her skin-tight suit.” [Synopsis on the back cover of the book]
...Imagine a world with no armies, no crimes, no blood and no violence.
...Imagine streets free from hunger, injustice, gunshots and threatning eyes.
...Imagine respect, brotherhood, love and care flowing from our hearts.
...Imagine nothing but joy can wet our eyes, only thorns draw scars and only enough pleasure leaves dead bodies.
...Imagine the whole world speaking one language: THE LANGUAGE OF PEACE.
Manoora.
Manoora means a water spring in the local Aboriginal language. The town is located near the headwaters of the Wakefield River which flows down through Auburn to Balaklava and Port Wakefield. The Hundred of Manoora was declared in 1851 but a squatter named Mr Grant had leased the land earlier. The first town here was laid out in 1853 and called Chinkford. It was one of the watering places on one of the three main bullock dray routes down from the Burra mine. But the town did not really prosper until the government made the decision to build the railway to Burra. The new town of Manoora was laid out in 1867 to the south of Chinkford. It was centred on the railway station and had a new school (1883) and post office (1872). The Manoora Hotel opened in 1869 just before the first train arrived on February 21 1870. The Manoora Institute building which is on the register of the National Estate was opened in 1884. It was built of locally quarried stone and is the finest building in the town. The dilapidated Manoora Railway station is also on the register of the National Estate. It is identical to the stations of Tarlee, Saddleworth, Merildin and Farrell Flat all on the Burra line. Although the first train arrived in 1870, the station was not erected until 1898. Note the two Washingtonia palms in the station yards.
Chinkford declined once the new town was established but the Maxwell family who had established a well known mid north coach building business in the town continued in the Chinkford part of Manoora. By 1900 this business employed fourteen men. With the arrival of cars in the 1920s the business declined so the family took on a car dealership, selling cars and tractors. Chinkford also had a chaff mill that was established in 1894 and kept going through the 1930s when most chaff mills in country towns closed. The mill was finally destroyed by fire in 1965! Chinkford also had the grand Catholic Church, Presbytery and Catholic cemetery.
Manoora is well known in shipping circles as the Adelaide steamship Company commissioned a ship with this name in 1935. The 10,856 ton vessel was used on coastal services between Sydney and Fremantle until it was converted into a naval vessel during World War Two. It mainly operated in coastal waters off New Guinea. It reverted to coastal shipping in 1947 before being finally sold off to the Philippines for scrap in 1972. The Australian Navy has a new vessel named Manoora, about 8,000 tons, which has a crew of 180 and can carry up to 450 troops in addition to helicopters. It was in the limelight when it took illegal asylum seekers from a sinking vessel in the Indian Ocean to New Guinea. More recently it has been used in the Solomon Islands conflict.