Hello There,

 

Macro Mondays is a weekly theme-based challenge group. Our challenge this week was "Award."

 

This is a macro of my M.A. diploma. Before retiring, I practiced as a Speech/Language Pathologist. Now I refer to myself as a "Jack of all trades but a master of none!"

 

Thanks a million for stopping by and for leaving a comment. I do love hearing from you!

 

Have a fantastic day and week!

 

©Copyright – Nancy Clark – All Rights Reserved

 

Dutch Elm Disease. I think this is the artistic, spider-like damage caused by the larvae of the elm bark beetle.

 

From the Woodland Trust - This now infamous tree disease has killed millions of elm trees in the UK over the last 50 years. It’s changed parts of our landscape forever. Dutch elm disease is caused by the fungus Ophiostoma novo-ulmi which is spread by elm bark beetles. It got its name from the team of Dutch pathologists who carried out research on the disease in the 1920s.

Villa Della Porta Bozzolo is a villa located at Casalzuigno in the province of Varese, northern Italy. It was donated by the heirs of the Italian senator and pathologist Camillo Bozzolo to the Fondo per l'Ambiente Italiano—the National Trust of Italy—who now manage it.

It was built in the 16th century and used as a rural villa and later an aristocratic residence. In the 18th century an impressive Italian garden was added with stairs, fountains, water features and an aedicula decorated with frescoes. Around the villa there are interesting rustic elements, such as a representation of an olive press containing a cycle of rococo frescoes from the workshop of Pietro Antonio Magatti, a painter from Varese.

At the end of the 17th century the villa experienced one of its most important transformations on the initiative of Gian Angelo Della Porta III on the occasion of his marriage to Isabella, daughter of Count Giorgio Giulini. With the assistance of architect Antonio Maria Porani, he set the main axis of the garden parallel to the side of the house—thus contravening the classic rules under which the principal axis must be aligned with the main room of the house, dividing the garden into two symmetrical parts. In 1723, he also built an elaborate fountain cascading from terraces in the hillside, designed by the architect Pellegatta.

 

A Nice Breeze, Ornamental Grass....Now That's Class, This Grass

Fascinates Me

 

This Made Explore

 

00:29..Addendum: Another frustrating and disappointing day but it had a bright side. We didn't get our appointment yesterday for several reasons (1) Insurance coding (2) Pathology report and (3) Misplaced x-rays. It's rescheduled for Thursday at 9:30 am. We did stop at the Cancer Center to drop off what x-rays we were able to get, while we were there they found the x-rays at the hospital and brought them there, the pathologists promised his report for sometime later in the afternoon.

Talk about getting frustrated...One of the main persons at the center sat us down to explain to us what was happening and asked how we got there, we responded with a referral from the surgeon, she replied no we didn't..." She replied God brought us there no one else" and that " They are there to do His work and the procedure would be done no matter about insurance we would not be turned away as they are there to heal"...I almost fell out of the chair I was sitting on, this center has three Doctor's formerly with M.D. Anderson Houston's main Cancer Center, She reassured us that treatment would begin as soon as they had the pathology report, not to worry about insurance, if it comes through fine if not the show will go on. Needless to say this calmed Gail down, lifted her spirits and I was flabbergasted. Just goes to show you there are some wonderful people in this world and we had just met one of them, I was impressed. I know this may sound "Hokey" but I tell you the facts. So anyhow we are set to begin Thursday..."Praise The Lord"

Villa Della Porta Bozzolo is a villa located at Casalzuigno in the province of Varese, northern Italy. It was donated by the heirs of the Italian senator and pathologist Camillo Bozzolo to the Fondo per l'Ambiente Italiano—the National Trust of Italy—who now manage it.

It was built in the 16th century and used as a rural villa and later an aristocratic residence. In the 18th century an impressive Italian garden was added with stairs, fountains, water features and an aedicula decorated with frescoes. Around the villa there are interesting rustic elements, such as a representation of an olive press containing a cycle of rococo frescoes from the workshop of Pietro Antonio Magatti, a painter from Varese.

At the end of the 17th century the villa experienced one of its most important transformations on the initiative of Gian Angelo Della Porta III on the occasion of his marriage to Isabella, daughter of Count Giorgio Giulini. With the assistance of architect Antonio Maria Porani, he set the main axis of the garden parallel to the side of the house—thus contravening the classic rules under which the principal axis must be aligned with the main room of the house, dividing the garden into two symmetrical parts. In 1723, he also built an elaborate fountain cascading from terraces in the hillside, designed by the architect Pellegatta.

 

We are receiving reports from our Macro Mondays correspondent that a Miss WHITE, known locally as SNOW, has eaten a poisoned apple. Supermarkets have removed their stocks of apples from the shelves as a precaution.

 

The source of the contamination has been traced to a Wicked Queen, who we believe is Snow White's stepmother. When questioned, the Wicked Queen stamped her foot and said she heard voices from a mirror on the wall. Prosecutors feel she will be declared unfit to plead and she has been detained in a secure unit for the criminally obnoxious.

 

Snow White previously lived with Seven Dwarfs. The Dwarfs placed Snow White's body in a glass box pending the examination by the eminent Pathologist Dr Prince. During his examination Dr Prince discovered a piece of the poisoned apple in Snow White's mouth. Once it was removed she recovered consciousness and made a full recovery.

 

We understand that beautiful Snow White and the handsome Dr Prince are to be married and will live happily ever after.

The End.

The cellars of the Villa. Cask and demijohns for the transport of wine on wagon.

Villa Della Porta Bozzolo is a villa located at Casalzuigno in the province of Varese, northern Italy. It was donated by the heirs of the Italian senator and pathologist Camillo Bozzolo to the Fondo per l'Ambiente Italiano—the National Trust of Italy—who now manage it.

It was built in the 16th century and used as a rural villa and later an aristocratic residence. In the 18th century an impressive Italian garden was added with stairs, fountains, water features and an aedicula decorated with frescoes. Around the villa there are interesting rustic elements, such as a representation of an olive press containing a cycle of rococo frescoes from the workshop of Pietro Antonio Magatti, a painter from Varese.

At the end of the 17th century the villa experienced one of its most important transformations on the initiative of Gian Angelo Della Porta III on the occasion of his marriage to Isabella, daughter of Count Giorgio Giulini. With the assistance of architect Antonio Maria Porani, he set the main axis of the garden parallel to the side of the house—thus contravening the classic rules under which the principal axis must be aligned with the main room of the house, dividing the garden into two symmetrical parts. In 1723, he also built an elaborate fountain cascading from terraces in the hillside, designed by the architect Pellegatta.

 

Eighteenth-century kitchen. The place was initially intended as a pantry, then transformed into a kitchen in the eighteenth century with the construction of a large fireplace for food preparation. In the following century, due to the change in culinary habits, a practical three-burner stove was created.

Villa Della Porta Bozzolo is a villa located at Casalzuigno in the province of Varese, northern Italy. It was donated by the heirs of the Italian senator and pathologist Camillo Bozzolo to the Fondo per l'Ambiente Italiano—the National Trust of Italy—who now manage it.

It was built in the 16th century and used as a rural villa and later an aristocratic residence. In the 18th century an impressive Italian garden was added with stairs, fountains, water features and an aedicula decorated with frescoes. Around the villa there are interesting rustic elements, such as a representation of an olive press containing a cycle of rococo frescoes from the workshop of Pietro Antonio Magatti, a painter from Varese.

At the end of the 17th century the villa experienced one of its most important transformations on the initiative of Gian Angelo Della Porta III on the occasion of his marriage to Isabella, daughter of Count Giorgio Giulini. With the assistance of architect Antonio Maria Porani, he set the main axis of the garden parallel to the side of the house—thus contravening the classic rules under which the principal axis must be aligned with the main room of the house, dividing the garden into two symmetrical parts. In 1723, he also built an elaborate fountain cascading from terraces in the hillside, designed by the architect Pellegatta.

 

...being able to roll your tongue is genetic. i've never been able to do it and that bugs me. well...not really, but c'mon, i'm a speech pathologist!

 

can you roll yours?

Hidden monument of Archibald Reiss, Swiss pathologist acter of I world war, in "Topčider park", Belgrade. Witnessed about 54% Serbian victims counting whole regenerative population.

  

The commissioner of the Metropolitan police went on the offensive today, defending his officers for an "astonishing" police operation during the G20 that he said had received international praise.

 

Sir Paul Stephenson said his comments were made in the context of a man having died during the demonstration, and of footage that was deeply concerning. But he went out of his way to praise what he said were an overwhelming majority of officers who carried out a professional job on the day.

 

Picking out the territorial support group (TSG) – which is at the centre of two IPCC investigations into Ian Tomlinson's death and an assault on a woman protester – Stephenson said it was a specialist unit the Met relied on.

 

"These and others are our first line response to some of the most difficult and challenging situations," he said.

 

The commissioner, who has spoken personally to TSG officers in a bid to raise their morale, said all knew they were individually accountable for their actions.

 

He said officers who were found to have deliberately hidden their numbers would be severely disciplined. "If someone is trying to deliberately avoid being identified and their reason is so they can behave inappropriately, criminally, then of course they could face the sack," Stephenson said.

 

He planned to tackle the problem of police identification by examining whether every officer should wear name tags.

 

The commissioner said there were supervision problems with some groups of officers and he wanted this improved. "The overwhelming majority did [wear their numbers]. There is not sufficient concentration on intrusive supervision.

 

"That is what I believe in. It is the job of supervisors to go and find out how good your people are so that you can say well done and sometimes to find out where they are going wrong."

 

The commissioner spoke as a pathologist was carrying out the third postmortem on Ian Tomlinson's body. It was done at the request of lawyers for the TSG officer seen in footage obtained by the Guardian apparently attacking Tomlinson. The Met will be present at the postmortem after receiving advice from its lawyers.

 

The IPCC is investigating the circumstances of Tomlinson's death; a second incident in which a TSG sergeant is seen hitting a woman protester; and a third case that resulted from another complaint from a protester about police violence.

 

Stephenson has asked for a review of all footage in the Met's possession. This is being carried out by the Met's department of professional standards. Denis O'Connor, Her Majesty's inspector of constabulary, has been asked to examine the tactics used by the Met for public order events, specifically the issue of containing demonstrators for several hours.

 

Stephenson said the use of containment had begun after a demonstration in June 1999 when protesters caused £13m worth of damage. "The policy of containment has come from our history. As a consequence of this we … developed a policy of graduated control which at some point may involve containment. If there is a better way to do it we are up for learning it, but we don't know of a way."

 

Stephenson said he had received acknowledgment from police forces internationally for what the Met achieved during the G20.

 

"Part of the headlines should be … astonishing operation pulled off by the Met who did a first-class job," he said.

 

"The overwhelming majority of officers, whatever the stress or provocation, carried out their duties in a professional manner and I want to give them credit for what they achieved." He said his comments were in the context that some of the footage he had seen caused him deep concern, and the Met was cooperating with the IPCC to help provide the answers that Tomlinson's family wanted.

 

Stephenson said the Met had never misled anyone in the aftermath of Tomlinson's death. He said the scene where he collapsed was secured, sealed off and treated as a crime scene and the press statement the Met released in the aftermath of the death was approved by the Independent Police Complaints Commission.

 

www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/apr/22/tomlinson-g20-met...

 

Villa Della Porta Bozzolo is a villa located at Casalzuigno in the province of Varese, northern Italy. It was donated by the heirs of the Italian senator and pathologist Camillo Bozzolo to the Fondo per l'Ambiente Italiano—the National Trust of Italy—who now manage it.

It was built in the 16th century and used as a rural villa and later an aristocratic residence. In the 18th century an impressive Italian garden was added with stairs, fountains, water features and an aedicula decorated with frescoes. Around the villa there are interesting rustic elements, such as a representation of an olive press containing a cycle of rococo frescoes from the workshop of Pietro Antonio Magatti, a painter from Varese.

At the end of the 17th century the villa experienced one of its most important transformations on the initiative of Gian Angelo Della Porta III on the occasion of his marriage to Isabella, daughter of Count Giorgio Giulini. With the assistance of architect Antonio Maria Porani, he set the main axis of the garden parallel to the side of the house—thus contravening the classic rules under which the principal axis must be aligned with the main room of the house, dividing the garden into two symmetrical parts. In 1723, he also built an elaborate fountain cascading from terraces in the hillside, designed by the architect Pellegatta.

 

We wanted to let our friends know that Bandit will have a small (hopefully) procedure tomorrow to remove another mast cell tumor. This one is very small and is located on his hip. We went through this about two years ago with two small lesions in a different area. Those turned out to be malignant, but very low grade. They were removed and caused no further problems. I will update you on what the vet says once the pathologist provides his report.

Villa Della Porta Bozzolo is a villa located at Casalzuigno in the province of Varese, northern Italy. It was donated by the heirs of the Italian senator and pathologist Camillo Bozzolo to the Fondo per l'Ambiente Italiano—the National Trust of Italy—who now manage it.

It was built in the 16th century and used as a rural villa and later an aristocratic residence. In the 18th century an impressive Italian garden was added with stairs, fountains, water features and an aedicula decorated with frescoes. Around the villa there are interesting rustic elements, such as a representation of an olive press containing a cycle of rococo frescoes from the workshop of Pietro Antonio Magatti, a painter from Varese.

At the end of the 17th century the villa experienced one of its most important transformations on the initiative of Gian Angelo Della Porta III on the occasion of his marriage to Isabella, daughter of Count Giorgio Giulini. With the assistance of architect Antonio Maria Porani, he set the main axis of the garden parallel to the side of the house—thus contravening the classic rules under which the principal axis must be aligned with the main room of the house, dividing the garden into two symmetrical parts. In 1723, he also built an elaborate fountain cascading from terraces in the hillside, designed by the architect Pellegatta.

 

I like looking at other peoples mosaic's so here goes mine...

 

1. First name? Alexandra

2. favourite food? mashed potatoes!

3. highschool i went to? Torry academy

4. Favourite colour? don't have one

5. Celebrity crush? Mr Duchovny <3

6. Favourite drink? Coca cola

7. Dream vacation? Canada

8. Favourite dessert? Chocolate cake!

9. What did i want to be when i grew up? I wanted to be a forensic pathologist

10. What do i love most in life? my kids <3

11. Which one word describes me? Random!

12. What is my Flickr name? Leeloo

     

1. Princess Alexandra, 2. Mash Potatoes from Tavern on the Green, 3. Torry Academy's charity team Giving Nation Awards Winners 2008 for Scotland are presented with their award by Kevin Brennan, Minister for the Third Sector, 4. Just Vivid, 5. CALIFORNICATION (Season 2), 6. and i can hardly stand it anymore., 7. Maple Leaf, 8. Dairy Milk Bar Cake, 9. Chemistry in Forensics, 10. 204/365 - 2 Kids are Like 10 Kids, 11. one seventy two: booyah!, 12. Leeloo Dallas muuultipass

 

Created with fd's Flickr Toys

I love the patterns and textures created when our local creek freezes. Such a beautiful contrast between the smooth, rounded edges and the spiky frost (ice?) crystals on top. Taken at Votier's Flats, Fish Creek Park, on 22 November 2012.

 

Couldn't resist adding the following, especially for birder friends. A friend sent it to me via e-mail and I thought others might find it interesting : )

 

"I heard that they found about 200 dead crows near Halifax, and there was concern that they may have died from Avian Flu. They had a Bird Pathologist examine the remains of all the crows, and

he confirmed the problem was definitely NOT Avian Flu, to everyone's relief.

 

However, he determined that 98% of the crows had been killed by impact with trucks, and only 2% were killed by an impact with a car.

 

The Province then hired an Ornithological Behaviourist to determine the disproportionate percentages for truck versus car kill. The Ornithological Behaviourist determined the cause in short order.

 

When crows eat road kill, they always set-up a look-out Crow in a nearby tree to warn of impending danger. His conclusion was that the lookout crow could say "Cah", but he could

not say "Truck." Have a nice day...." Sorry, I don't know who the author was.

 

Today's story and sketch by me #1255 Is about Marty the young (MCPPOTG), Man Cave Posse Protectors Of The Galaxy Deputy, Marty is the latest short straw volunteer to attempt to fly into the Stargate that appears every Tuesday at exactly 12:15 pm. The Stargate appears next to the Budahunga Banana Palm you see to the right in this sketch. The distinguished fellow on the left is Deputy Papi, from the Planet Oblate, Papi is currently Budahunga's official semi professional priest, greeter, coroner, pathologist, and before taking a wrong turn in a worm hole on his way to Palm Springs, for a shuffleboard tournament, crash landed here on Budahunga. No one is sure what Papi did before arriving here, or what the big stick he is holding with the Crystal that at times gives off a green glowing cloud that smells like very aged Monkfish. Papi is giving a blessing to Marty's Interstellar Glider before the Stargate appears in a just a few minutes, and he is off into another dimension or another Galaxy. Marty will be keeping detailed notes of where the Stargate takes his tiny craft, and hopefully can use his notes to backtrack back to Budahunga. That should be an exciting tale to report, if hopefully Marty returns. Until then TaTa the Rod Blog.

Villa Della Porta Bozzolo is a villa located at Casalzuigno in the province of Varese, northern Italy. It was donated by the heirs of the Italian senator and pathologist Camillo Bozzolo to the Fondo per l'Ambiente Italiano—the National Trust of Italy—who now manage it.

It was built in the 16th century and used as a rural villa and later an aristocratic residence. In the 18th century an impressive Italian garden was added with stairs, fountains, water features and an aedicula decorated with frescoes. Around the villa there are interesting rustic elements, such as a representation of an olive press containing a cycle of rococo frescoes from the workshop of Pietro Antonio Magatti, a painter from Varese.

At the end of the 17th century the villa experienced one of its most important transformations on the initiative of Gian Angelo Della Porta III on the occasion of his marriage to Isabella, daughter of Count Giorgio Giulini. With the assistance of architect Antonio Maria Porani, he set the main axis of the garden parallel to the side of the house—thus contravening the classic rules under which the principal axis must be aligned with the main room of the house, dividing the garden into two symmetrical parts. In 1723, he also built an elaborate fountain cascading from terraces in the hillside, designed by the architect Pellegatta.

 

Ace of Spades - is the crime map, symbolizing authority. I have this doll, Henna, he is mafia boss, I drew him a classical Russian tattoos and made ​​a prosthesis. Henna many fought for their country, now he was disabled, but still may work. This is a very interesting person and a

On the back it has a large Orthodox church, which I rarely take pictures.

Villa Della Porta Bozzolo is a villa located at Casalzuigno in the province of Varese, northern Italy. It was donated by the heirs of the Italian senator and pathologist Camillo Bozzolo to the Fondo per l'Ambiente Italiano—the National Trust of Italy—who now manage it.

It was built in the 16th century and used as a rural villa and later an aristocratic residence. In the 18th century an impressive Italian garden was added with stairs, fountains, water features and an aedicula decorated with frescoes. Around the villa there are interesting rustic elements, such as a representation of an olive press containing a cycle of rococo frescoes from the workshop of Pietro Antonio Magatti, a painter from Varese.

At the end of the 17th century the villa experienced one of its most important transformations on the initiative of Gian Angelo Della Porta III on the occasion of his marriage to Isabella, daughter of Count Giorgio Giulini. With the assistance of architect Antonio Maria Porani, he set the main axis of the garden parallel to the side of the house—thus contravening the classic rules under which the principal axis must be aligned with the main room of the house, dividing the garden into two symmetrical parts. In 1723, he also built an elaborate fountain cascading from terraces in the hillside, designed by the architect Pellegatta.

 

I took this as I was walking down to get my Blood test done at my local medical center here in Oberon NSW. I was meant to get on Thursday and the pathologist was busy and I had to go back today it get it done. I see the doctor next week to get the results. It's only a 5 min walk form home to the medical center.

A resident of a luxury apartment block in Pok Fu Lam on Friday welcomed the government’s relaxation of its policy to quarantine whole buildings where patients with a mutated strain of the coronavirus live, calling the arrangements “overkill”.

 

Pathologist John Nicholls, a resident of Royalton, said he was happy he would soon be allowed to return home after spending two nights at Penny’s Bay quarantine centre.

 

He and other residents of the building were ordered into quarantine facilities on Wednesday after a domestic worker living in the block came down with the highly infectious version of coronavirus.

 

Nicholls said that he had “big concerns” about the evacuation plan and thought that authorities had "overreacted”.

 

The professor at the University of Hong Kong's Department of Pathology said he had been fully vaccinated against Covid-19, and was never in direct contact with the infected domestic worker.

 

"From a scientific point of view, I was at a very, very low risk anyway," Nicholls told RTHK's Timmy Sung. "That's why we thought that it was a bit of an overreaction."

 

He said even though he understood the government was concerned about the variant spreading to the community, "the reality of the situation was not needing to do a whole apartment building ... it was probably a bit of an overkill."

 

The expert also said the quarantine had been "incredibly inconvenient," saying he had been unable to do his clinical work and research.

 

Asked about the government's move to shorten quarantine periods for fully vaccinated close contacts of coronavirus patients, Nicholls said he thought the move could boost the city’s inoculation rate.

 

(20210507 RTHK News)

  

This is one of the oldest rooms of the Villa (the characteristic 16th century ‘volta unghiata’ and the contemporary herringbone brick floor). The name 'Caminata' derives from the presence, in the 16th century, of a large fireplace, now replaced by an oven equipped with a food warmer.

Villa Della Porta Bozzolo is a villa located at Casalzuigno in the province of Varese, northern Italy. It was donated by the heirs of the Italian senator and pathologist Camillo Bozzolo to the Fondo per l'Ambiente Italiano—the National Trust of Italy—who now manage it.

It was built in the 16th century and used as a rural villa and later an aristocratic residence. In the 18th century an impressive Italian garden was added with stairs, fountains, water features and an aedicula decorated with frescoes. Around the villa there are interesting rustic elements, such as a representation of an olive press containing a cycle of rococo frescoes from the workshop of Pietro Antonio Magatti, a painter from Varese.

At the end of the 17th century the villa experienced one of its most important transformations on the initiative of Gian Angelo Della Porta III on the occasion of his marriage to Isabella, daughter of Count Giorgio Giulini. With the assistance of architect Antonio Maria Porani, he set the main axis of the garden parallel to the side of the house—thus contravening the classic rules under which the principal axis must be aligned with the main room of the house, dividing the garden into two symmetrical parts. In 1723, he also built an elaborate fountain cascading from terraces in the hillside, designed by the architect Pellegatta.

 

Villa Della Porta Bozzolo is a villa located at Casalzuigno in the province of Varese, northern Italy. It was donated by the heirs of the Italian senator and pathologist Camillo Bozzolo to the Fondo per l'Ambiente Italiano—the National Trust of Italy—who now manage it.

It was built in the 16th century and used as a rural villa and later an aristocratic residence. In the 18th century an impressive Italian garden was added with stairs, fountains, water features and an aedicula decorated with frescoes. Around the villa there are interesting rustic elements, such as a representation of an olive press containing a cycle of rococo frescoes from the workshop of Pietro Antonio Magatti, a painter from Varese.

At the end of the 17th century the villa experienced one of its most important transformations on the initiative of Gian Angelo Della Porta III on the occasion of his marriage to Isabella, daughter of Count Giorgio Giulini. With the assistance of architect Antonio Maria Porani, he set the main axis of the garden parallel to the side of the house—thus contravening the classic rules under which the principal axis must be aligned with the main room of the house, dividing the garden into two symmetrical parts. In 1723, he also built an elaborate fountain cascading from terraces in the hillside, designed by the architect Pellegatta.

 

US Pathologist Dr. Ryan Cole:

 

rumble.com/v17c2ud-interview-a-lipid-nanoparticle-a-gene-...

 

Translation: Never before has a substance been allowed that is so deadly.

 

A protest against the Corona policy has been held every Saturday for the past eight months. Saturday 18.06.2022 at 36 degrees Celsius.

 

On Saturday, June 25, there is an international super event in Frankfurt with the Million March II, that cannot be ignored by the media.

This shot, taken on a bit of a cloudy Tuesday from the City Botanic Gardens is looking across the Brisbane River to Kangaroo Point and the Story Bridge on the far left. For those Aussies and also some overseas countries (UK is one) who have been engrossed in the adventures of our local TV production "Harrow", lead dissector, Daniel Harrow, well known pathologist at the fictional Queensland Institute of Forensic Medicine, knows this reach of the river well as it is his home...not on the range, but on the yacht.

 

In fact, if you look to the right of the vessel in the middle foreground and then over to the far bank of the river, you can see a number of other yachts tied up at a small mooring. This is his usual maritime home, although I don't think we have ever been shown the boat's name. It is featured, in an unexpected way, in the final scenes of Series 3 which has just finished being shown in Australia. My lips are sealed.

 

We have grown to love him in Brisbane, not only for the entertaining television but for really showing the city at its best, although, when identifying some of the locations used in the series, he certainly gets himself into some odd places.

 

The three series so far have been produced by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Hoodlum Productions. No information yet on a 4th series, we hope so.

 

In an odd twist, very similar scenes were used in the first episode of the TV series "Mission Impossible"....."Good Morning Mr. Phelps" that was filmed in Australia during the Hollywood writer's strike back in the 1980's. Back then, that episode was supposedly set in London of all places!

In The Gardeners' Chronicle of 1876, Nicholas Edward Brown (1849-1934) writes about a new succulent that has recently arrived at the Kew Gardens, London, from South Africa through the good graces of Harry Bolus (1834-1911). In June 1875 it had flowered beautifully, and Brown adds that Kew already possessed herbarium specimens that had been sent there earlier by Peter MacOwan (1830-1909), who was later to make a fine name for himself as South Africa's first plant pathologist. Mesembryanthemum setuliferum - as it was still called - had been collected in the heart of The Karoo at Bruintjieshoogte (1647 m. alt.).

In the early 1930s the Latin name was revised to Trichodiadema setuliferum: Hairy Crown. That name belies the African name 'Doringkroonvygie', "Crown of Thorns Flower" because those hairs are not actually 'thorns'. So perhaps it's wiser to use another common language designation: Stervygie, "Star Flower".

But the 'Diadema' in the scientific name - and that 'Doringkroon' - are used in the Gospels to refer to Jesus's Crown of Thorns before his Good Friday Crucifixion. So this plant is appropriate for this afternoon, also because it's not yet in Glorious Flower.

Villa Della Porta Bozzolo is a villa located at Casalzuigno in the province of Varese, northern Italy. It was donated by the heirs of the Italian senator and pathologist Camillo Bozzolo to the Fondo per l'Ambiente Italiano—the National Trust of Italy—who now manage it.

It was built in the 16th century and used as a rural villa and later an aristocratic residence. In the 18th century an impressive Italian garden was added with stairs, fountains, water features and an aedicula decorated with frescoes. Around the villa there are interesting rustic elements, such as a representation of an olive press containing a cycle of rococo frescoes from the workshop of Pietro Antonio Magatti, a painter from Varese.

At the end of the 17th century the villa experienced one of its most important transformations on the initiative of Gian Angelo Della Porta III on the occasion of his marriage to Isabella, daughter of Count Giorgio Giulini. With the assistance of architect Antonio Maria Porani, he set the main axis of the garden parallel to the side of the house—thus contravening the classic rules under which the principal axis must be aligned with the main room of the house, dividing the garden into two symmetrical parts. In 1723, he also built an elaborate fountain cascading from terraces in the hillside, designed by the architect Pellegatta.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_crow

  

The house crow (Corvus splendens), also known as the Indian, greynecked, Ceylon or Colombo crow,[2] is a common bird of the crow family that is of Asian origin but now found in many parts of the world, where they arrived assisted by shipping. It is between the jackdaw and the carrion crow in size (40 cm (16 in) in length) but is slimmer than either. The forehead, crown, throat and upper breast are a richly glossed black, whilst the neck and breast are a lighter grey-brown in colour. The wings, tail and legs are black. There are regional variations in the thickness of the bill and the depth of colour in areas of the plumage.

  

Taxonomy

  

The nominate race C. s. splendens is found in Pakistan, India, Nepal and Bangladesh and has a grey neck collar. The subspecies C. s. zugmayeri is found in the dry parts of South Asia and Iran and has a very pale neck collar. The subspecies C. s. protegatus is found in southern India, the Maldives (sometimes separated as maledivicus) and Sri Lanka and is darker grey. C. s. insolens, found in Myanmar, is the darkest form and lacks the grey collar.[3]

  

Distribution and habitat

  

It has a widespread distribution in southern Asia, being native to Nepal, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Maldives and Laccadive Islands, South West Thailand and coastal southern Iran. It was introduced to East Africa around Zanzibar (about 1897)[4] and Port Sudan. It arrived in Australia via ship but has up to now been exterminated. Recently, it has made its arrival in Europe and has been breeding in the Dutch harbour town Hook of Holland since 1998.

 

A population between 200 and 400 birds has been present in Sham Shui Po, New Kowloon, Hong Kong, in particular Lai Kok Estate and Sham Shui Po Park, as well as Kowloon Tsai Park in Kowloon Tsai.[5] An individual has been present in Cork Harbour on the south coast of Ireland since early September 2010.[6]

 

In the New World, a small population of house crows is established in the area around St. Petersburg, Florida.[7]

 

It is associated with human settlements throughout its range, from small villages to large cities. In Singapore, there was a density of 190 birds/km2 in 2001 with efforts to suppress the population in planning.[8][9]

 

Due to a human population explosion in the areas it inhabits, this species has also proportionately multiplied. Being an omnivorous scavenger has enabled it to thrive in such circumstances.

 

The invasive potential for the species is great all over the tropics. This species is able to make use of resources with great flexibility and appears to be associated with humans, and no populations are known to exist independently of humans.

  

Behaviour

  

Diet

  

House crows feed largely on refuse around human habitations, small reptiles and mammals,[11] and other animals such as insects and other small invertebrates, eggs, nestlings, grain and fruits. House crows have also been observed swooping down from the air and snatching baby squirrels. Most food is taken from the ground, but also from trees as opportunity arises. They are highly opportunistic birds and given their omnivorous diet, they can survive on nearly anything that is edible. These birds can be seen near marketplaces and garbage dumps, foraging for scraps. They have also been observed to eat sand after feeding on carcasses.[12]

  

Nesting

  

At least some trees in the local environment seem to be necessary for successful breeding although house crows occasionally nest on telephone towers.[13] It lays 3–5 eggs in a typical stick nest, and occasionally there are several nests in the same tree. In South Asia they are parasitized by the Asian koel. Peak breeding in India as well as Peninsular Malaysia is from April to July. Large trees with big crowns are preferred for nesting.[14]

  

Roosting

  

House crows roost communally near human habitations and often over busy streets. A study in Singapore found that the preferred roost sites were in well-lit areas with a lot of human activity, close to food sources and in tall trees with dense crowns that were separated from other trees. The roost sites were often enclosed by tall buildings.[15]

  

Voice

  

The voice is a harsh kaaw-kaaw.[3]

  

Relationship to humans[edit]

  

It is suspected that paramyxoviruses, such as PMV 1 that causes of Newcastle disease[16] may be spread by Corvus splendens. Outbreaks of Newcastle disease in India were often preceded by mortality in crows.[17] They have also been found to carry Cryptococcus neoformans, which can cause cryptococcosis in humans.[18]

 

House crows in Tanzania curiously showed an absence of blood parasites, although some species such as Trypanosoma corvi have been first described from this species.[19] Pathologist T.R. Lewis expressed surprise at the numbers of haematozoa present in the blood of house crows from Calcutta.[20]

  

Regional names[edit]

  

Assamese - পাতি কাউৰী, Bengali - পাতিকাক, Gujarati - દેશી કાગડો, Hindi - कौवा, Kannada - ಕಾಗೆ, Malayalam - പേനക്കാക്ക, Marathi - कावळा, Nepali - घर काग, Punjabi - ਕਾਂ, Sanskrit - ग्राम काक, वायस, Tamil - வீட்டுக் காகம், Telugu - కాకి.

The cellars of the Villa. Cask and demijohns for the transport of wine on wagon.

Villa Della Porta Bozzolo is a villa located at Casalzuigno in the province of Varese, northern Italy. It was donated by the heirs of the Italian senator and pathologist Camillo Bozzolo to the Fondo per l'Ambiente Italiano—the National Trust of Italy—who now manage it.

It was built in the 16th century and used as a rural villa and later an aristocratic residence. In the 18th century an impressive Italian garden was added with stairs, fountains, water features and an aedicula decorated with frescoes. Around the villa there are interesting rustic elements, such as a representation of an olive press containing a cycle of rococo frescoes from the workshop of Pietro Antonio Magatti, a painter from Varese.

At the end of the 17th century the villa experienced one of its most important transformations on the initiative of Gian Angelo Della Porta III on the occasion of his marriage to Isabella, daughter of Count Giorgio Giulini. With the assistance of architect Antonio Maria Porani, he set the main axis of the garden parallel to the side of the house—thus contravening the classic rules under which the principal axis must be aligned with the main room of the house, dividing the garden into two symmetrical parts. In 1723, he also built an elaborate fountain cascading from terraces in the hillside, designed by the architect Pellegatta.

 

Great Uncle and noted pathologist Dr. Horatio X. Peg traveled with the Springer and Schofield Brother's Circus teaching physicians, veterinarians and taxidermists the science of comparative anatomy. He insisted that all students wear silk top hats and comport themselves as gentlemen throughout the process to avoid conflict with local constabularies.

 

Never the less, Dr. Peg became a wanted man in Knockemstiff, Ohio after he asked for dissection volunteers while inebriated at a local pub. He was forced to blend in with the circus performers. When the Ringmaster would not relinquish his position Dr. Horatio X. Peg assumed the role of lion cage attendant Unfortunately he still smelled like a butcher to the big cats and he sobered up to discover his right arm in the jaws of an hungry lion.

 

Although he lost his arm in the incident, Dr. Horatio X. Peg survived. He spent the better part of two years attempting to attach the arm of an orangutan to his shoulder so he could continue teaching. He succumbed to the ravages of a perfidious immune system and was laid to rest in the Ozark mountains. His contributions to the science of comparative anatomy were lost as the circus clowns rolled cigarettes using the paper of his notebooks and journals.

 

We're Here! : Anatomy & Physio

 

Want more interaction on flickr? Join We're Here!

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_crow

  

The house crow (Corvus splendens), also known as the Indian, greynecked, Ceylon or Colombo crow,[2] is a common bird of the crow family that is of Asian origin but now found in many parts of the world, where they arrived assisted by shipping. It is between the jackdaw and the carrion crow in size (40 cm (16 in) in length) but is slimmer than either. The forehead, crown, throat and upper breast are a richly glossed black, whilst the neck and breast are a lighter grey-brown in colour. The wings, tail and legs are black. There are regional variations in the thickness of the bill and the depth of colour in areas of the plumage.

  

Taxonomy

  

The nominate race C. s. splendens is found in Pakistan, India, Nepal and Bangladesh and has a grey neck collar. The subspecies C. s. zugmayeri is found in the dry parts of South Asia and Iran and has a very pale neck collar. The subspecies C. s. protegatus is found in southern India, the Maldives (sometimes separated as maledivicus) and Sri Lanka and is darker grey. C. s. insolens, found in Myanmar, is the darkest form and lacks the grey collar.[3]

  

Distribution and habitat

  

It has a widespread distribution in southern Asia, being native to Nepal, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Maldives and Laccadive Islands, South West Thailand and coastal southern Iran. It was introduced to East Africa around Zanzibar (about 1897)[4] and Port Sudan. It arrived in Australia via ship but has up to now been exterminated. Recently, it has made its arrival in Europe and has been breeding in the Dutch harbour town Hook of Holland since 1998.

 

A population between 200 and 400 birds has been present in Sham Shui Po, New Kowloon, Hong Kong, in particular Lai Kok Estate and Sham Shui Po Park, as well as Kowloon Tsai Park in Kowloon Tsai.[5] An individual has been present in Cork Harbour on the south coast of Ireland since early September 2010.[6]

 

In the New World, a small population of house crows is established in the area around St. Petersburg, Florida.[7]

 

It is associated with human settlements throughout its range, from small villages to large cities. In Singapore, there was a density of 190 birds/km2 in 2001 with efforts to suppress the population in planning.[8][9]

 

Due to a human population explosion in the areas it inhabits, this species has also proportionately multiplied. Being an omnivorous scavenger has enabled it to thrive in such circumstances.

 

The invasive potential for the species is great all over the tropics. This species is able to make use of resources with great flexibility and appears to be associated with humans, and no populations are known to exist independently of humans.

  

Behaviour

  

Diet

  

House crows feed largely on refuse around human habitations, small reptiles and mammals,[11] and other animals such as insects and other small invertebrates, eggs, nestlings, grain and fruits. House crows have also been observed swooping down from the air and snatching baby squirrels. Most food is taken from the ground, but also from trees as opportunity arises. They are highly opportunistic birds and given their omnivorous diet, they can survive on nearly anything that is edible. These birds can be seen near marketplaces and garbage dumps, foraging for scraps. They have also been observed to eat sand after feeding on carcasses.[12]

  

Nesting

  

At least some trees in the local environment seem to be necessary for successful breeding although house crows occasionally nest on telephone towers.[13] It lays 3–5 eggs in a typical stick nest, and occasionally there are several nests in the same tree. In South Asia they are parasitized by the Asian koel. Peak breeding in India as well as Peninsular Malaysia is from April to July. Large trees with big crowns are preferred for nesting.[14]

  

Roosting

  

House crows roost communally near human habitations and often over busy streets. A study in Singapore found that the preferred roost sites were in well-lit areas with a lot of human activity, close to food sources and in tall trees with dense crowns that were separated from other trees. The roost sites were often enclosed by tall buildings.[15]

  

Voice

  

The voice is a harsh kaaw-kaaw.[3]

  

Relationship to humans[edit]

  

It is suspected that paramyxoviruses, such as PMV 1 that causes of Newcastle disease[16] may be spread by Corvus splendens. Outbreaks of Newcastle disease in India were often preceded by mortality in crows.[17] They have also been found to carry Cryptococcus neoformans, which can cause cryptococcosis in humans.[18]

 

House crows in Tanzania curiously showed an absence of blood parasites, although some species such as Trypanosoma corvi have been first described from this species.[19] Pathologist T.R. Lewis expressed surprise at the numbers of haematozoa present in the blood of house crows from Calcutta.[20]

  

Regional names[edit]

  

Assamese - পাতি কাউৰী, Bengali - পাতিকাক, Gujarati - દેશી કાગડો, Hindi - कौवा, Kannada - ಕಾಗೆ, Malayalam - പേനക്കാക്ക, Marathi - कावळा, Nepali - घर काग, Punjabi - ਕਾਂ, Sanskrit - ग्राम काक, वायस, Tamil - வீட்டுக் காகம், Telugu - కాకి.

DJI mini 2

giardini dall'alto

 

Villa Della Porta Bozzolo at Casalzuigno in the province of Varese, northern Italy. It was donated by the heirs of the Italian senator and pathologist Camillo Bozzolo to the Fondo per l'Ambiente Italiano—the National Trust of Italy—who now manage it.

Due to the limited amount of space in front of the building, Porani elected to arrange the grounds lengthwise from the bottom to the top, in parallel with the villa's facade, thus contravening the established design norms according to which the garden should have been in line with the main reception rooms.

As such, four large terraces were created, on different levels, connected by a majestic staircase with balustrades, statues and fountains. Later years saw the addition of the ''theatre'', perhaps the most innovative element of the gardens: a large sloping lawn closed off by a sizeable fish pond and a steep path (perhaps once flanked by cypresses), surrounded by woodland and stretching out on the Belvedere hill right to the edge of the estate.

 

Villa Della Porta Bozzolo in Casalzuigno in de provincie Varese in Noord-Italië. Het werd door de erfgenamen van de Italiaanse senator en patholoog Camillo Bozzolo geschonken aan de Fondo per l'Ambiente Italiano- de Nationale Trust van Italië - die het nu beheert.

Vanwege de beperkte ruimte aan de voorkant van het gebouw koos Porani ervoor om het terrein in de lengterichting van beneden naar boven te rangschikken, parallel aan de gevel van de villa.

Zo ontstonden vier grote terrassen op verschillende niveaus, verbonden door een majestueuze trap met balustrades, beelden en fonteinen. In latere jaren werd het ''theater'' toegevoegd, misschien wel het meest innovatieve element van de tuinen: een groot glooiend grasveld, afgesloten door een grote visvijver en een steil pad (misschien ooit geflankeerd door cipressen), omringd door bossen en dat zich uitstrekte over de Belvedere-heuvel tot aan de rand van het landgoed.

Hercule Poirot; Captain Arthur Haistings and Chief Inspector James Japp ...

and morgue technician/pathologist ...

unknown to me victim....

Etude from a Poirot film ... Thanks to Poirot ....

 

Taken Dec 8, 2017

Thanks for your visits, faves, invites and comments ... ; (c)rebfoto

in my Etude Series ...

 

Villa Della Porta Bozzolo is a villa located at Casalzuigno in the province of Varese, northern Italy. It was donated by the heirs of the Italian senator and pathologist Camillo Bozzolo to the Fondo per l'Ambiente Italiano—the National Trust of Italy—who now manage it.

It was built in the 16th century and used as a rural villa and later an aristocratic residence. In the 18th century an impressive Italian garden was added with stairs, fountains, water features and an aedicula decorated with frescoes. Around the villa there are interesting rustic elements, such as a representation of an olive press containing a cycle of rococo frescoes from the workshop of Pietro Antonio Magatti, a painter from Varese.

At the end of the 17th century the villa experienced one of its most important transformations on the initiative of Gian Angelo Della Porta III on the occasion of his marriage to Isabella, daughter of Count Giorgio Giulini. With the assistance of architect Antonio Maria Porani, he set the main axis of the garden parallel to the side of the house—thus contravening the classic rules under which the principal axis must be aligned with the main room of the house, dividing the garden into two symmetrical parts. In 1723, he also built an elaborate fountain cascading from terraces in the hillside, designed by the architect Pellegatta.

 

In 1998 L.(Leo) W.D. van Raamsdonk of Wageningen University described and named this beautiful Tulip for Thomas Frederick Hewer (1904-1994). Hewer was in fact a professional pathologist but also an ardent gardener and botanical explorer. After his retirement from Bristol University he traveled widely in the remote areas of Afghanistan and environs collecting plants with fellow expedition members. In 1971 he came upon this Tulip in Baghlan Province on the northern slopes of the Salang Pass.

It soon found its way to horticulturalists worldwide. Here it's brightly flowering in the Hortus Botanicus of Amsterdam.

This shot of Rolo is at the height of his full-out medicated state (Benadryl and Prednisone). Happily, the spring in his step has returned as he is slowly being weaned from the grip of prescription drugs. We're happy the pathologist's assesment is not lymphoma, but rather a potential allergic reaction. Rolo's had a life-long issue with allergies, whether that be from environmental elements such as grass, grains or chicken by-products... With looks like this, he still manages to keep us on our toes, and constantly in our minds.

Villa Della Porta Bozzolo is a villa located at Casalzuigno in the province of Varese, northern Italy. It was donated by the heirs of the Italian senator and pathologist Camillo Bozzolo to the Fondo per l'Ambiente Italiano—the National Trust of Italy—who now manage it.

It was built in the 16th century and used as a rural villa and later an aristocratic residence. In the 18th century an impressive Italian garden was added with stairs, fountains, water features and an aedicula decorated with frescoes. Around the villa there are interesting rustic elements, such as a representation of an olive press containing a cycle of rococo frescoes from the workshop of Pietro Antonio Magatti, a painter from Varese.

At the end of the 17th century the villa experienced one of its most important transformations on the initiative of Gian Angelo Della Porta III on the occasion of his marriage to Isabella, daughter of Count Giorgio Giulini. With the assistance of architect Antonio Maria Porani, he set the main axis of the garden parallel to the side of the house—thus contravening the classic rules under which the principal axis must be aligned with the main room of the house, dividing the garden into two symmetrical parts. In 1723, he also built an elaborate fountain cascading from terraces in the hillside, designed by the architect Pellegatta.

 

Sadly, this may be the last year I am able to to gather leaves in the autumn from around the large elm trees on my property. The elm bark beetle with its load of deadly fungus (Dutch Elm Disease) has ravaged most of my beautiful elms over the past three years. I picked these up last weekend from around the base of my last really big living elm. I saw signs of the disease in this elm about a month ago. Goodbye elms.

 

There are elm cultivars that are DED resistant, planting them in the wild is impractical for me.

 

For more information see: www.na.fs.fed.us/spfo/pubs/howtos/ht_ded/ht_ded.htm

 

"Dutch Elm Disease was first identified in 1918 in Belgium by a Dutch pathologist who observed the fungus disease spreading through northern Europe. The disease likely arrived on logs from eastern Europe that were used to rebuild bridges. The disease as well as its carriers, the large and small European elm bark beetles, were inadvertently exported to North America on elm burls for the furniture industry. Three distinct entry points are known: Ohio in

1930, New Jersey in 1933 and Quebec around 1940. Despite efforts to halt it, the disease spread rapidly and virtually eliminated elm as an urban tree and reduced its status as a forest species in Ontario by the early 1970's."

Source: www.uoguelph.ca/arboretum/pdf/ElmRecoveryProjectpdf2011.pdf

 

Another interesting link on American (White) Elm recovery in Ontario: www.uoguelph.ca/arboretum/collectionsandresearch/elmrecov...

A true journey back in time, the Skolfield-Whittier House was home to three generations of a prominent Brunswick family with careers in seafaring, medicine and education. Among the former residents are Alfred Skolfield a successful sea captain, Dr. Alice A.S. Whittier, Maine’s first female pediatrician, and Dr. Frank Whittier, one of America’s first forensic pathologists.

 

Closed and unheated for sixty years, the house remains almost exactly as it was in 1925 when it was last a occupied full-time. It has everything from the receipts used in the house’s construction in the 1850s to the 1920s spices in the kitchen pantry. Its seventeen rooms are viewed during personalized guided tours that provide an unparalleled glimpse into nineteenth-century upper-middle-class life in Maine. Closed for nearly two years, it reopened in 2011 after a major electrical rewiring of the mansion’s first floor.

Wanted to share some good news, since I had shared earlier that I had Prostate cancer. I still do, but I met with a cancer team at the University of North Carolina's Lineberger Cancer center yesterday, and got news that is making me feel fantastic. ( They are my third opinion and the team there is fantastic!)

 

They read my biopsy results slightly differently from the first pathologist and gave me a gleason score of 6 (3+3) vs 7 (4+3) That makes a huge difference in treatment options because gleason score 6 is considered non-agressive and slow growing and non-metastic. They think that result fits better and is more likely true given my PSA scores and the MRI results.

 

What it means to me, is that I don't have to have it treated now at all. I go on "active surveillance" which means that in December I go back for a new PSA test, a more targeted Biopsy and another MRI. If things are good i keep doing nothing but living my normal life and I will repeat that every 6 months from now on.

 

I could be just kicking the treatment can down the road or I may never have a problem! The tests are not nothing...but I'll take them any day over the treatments and potential nasty side effects. Thanks to those of you who have commented with your support or have reached out to me in private messages! I love my Flickr friends and "family."

any other pathologists out there?

 

In Flanders fields, the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below...

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved, and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields...

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields...

 

Videos related to the writing of the poem

www.histori.ca/minutes/minute.do?id=10200

www.dailymotion.com/video/x4kod9_john-mccrae-flanders-fie...

 

Armistice Day occurs next Tuesday… “at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month”. My father's brother, John Barber died in 1917 when a stove exploded in a Belgian army camp. My mother’s brother, Bill Watson, was killed on July 23, 1944, when the Wellington Mk X bomber in which he was navigator ditched into the Irish Sea while on a training mission. All on board were killed.

 

I decided it would be fitting to travel the short distance to Guelph, Ontario, to visit the birthplace of Lt. Col. John McCrae, who penned “In Flanders Fields” on a piece of paper held tightly to the back of his friend, Colonel Lawrence Cosgrave while they were in the trenches during a lull in the bombings on May 3, 1915. McCrae had witnessed the death of his friend, Lieutenant Alexis Helmer, the day before. The poem was first published on December 8, 1915 in Punch magazine, London.

 

The light wasn’t the best for my photoshoot, since the front of the house receives very little sunlight at any point during the day. Did my best. Someday I'll redo it when the skies are overcast.

 

Over the next week, I will be posting images taken during the visit. I will also be posting pictures of Uncle Bill and Uncle John, as well as of Bill’s flight crew. I will tell as much of their stories as I know.

 

From my set entitled “John McCrae Birthplace” (under preparation)

www.flickr.com/photos/21861018@N00/sets/72157608733775580/

In my collection entitled “Places”

www.flickr.com/photos/21861018@N00/collections/7215760074...

In my photostream

www.flickr.com/photos/21861018@N00/

 

Reproduced from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McCrae

Lieutenant Colonel John Alexander McCrae (November 30, 1872 – January 28, 1918) was a Canadian poet, physician, author, artist and soldier during World War I and a surgeon during the battle of Ypres. He is best known for writing the famous war memorial poem In Flanders Fields.

 

McCrae was born in McCrae House in Guelph, Ontario, the grandson of Scottish immigrants. He attended the Guelph Collegiate Vocational Institute. John became a member of the Guelph militia regiment.

 

McCrae worked on his BA at the University of Toronto from 1892-3. He took a year off his studies at the University of Toronto due to recurring problems with asthma.

 

He was a member of the Toronto militia, The Queen's Own Rifles of Canada while studying at the University of Toronto, during which time he was promoted to Captain and commanded the company.

 

Among his papers in the John McCrae House in Guelph, Ontario is a letter John McCrae wrote on July 18, 1893 to Laura Kains while he trained as an artilleryman at the Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston, Ontario. "...I have a manservant .. Quite a nobby place it is, in fact .. My windows look right out across the bay, and are just near the water’s edge; there is a good deal of shipping at present in the port; and the river looks very pretty.’ [1]

 

He was a resident master in English and Mathematics in 1894 at the OAC in Guelph, Ontario. [2]

 

He returned to the University of Toronto and completed his B.A. McCrae later studied medicine on a scholarship at the University of Toronto. While attending the university he joined the Zeta Psi Fraternity (Theta Xi chapter; class of 1894) and published his first poems.

 

He completed a medical residency at the Garrett Hospital, a Maryland children's convalescent home. [2]

 

In 1902, he was appointed resident pathologist at Montreal General Hospital and later also became assistant pathologist to the Royal Victoria Hospital Montreal. In 1904, he was appointed an associate in medicine at the Royal Victoria Hospital. Later that year, he went to England where he studied for several months and became a member of the Royal College of Physicians.

 

In 1905, he set up his own practice although he continued to work and lecture at several hospitals. He was appointed pathologist to the Montreal Foundling and Baby Hospital in 1905. In 1908, he was appointed physician to the Royal Alexandra Hospital for Infectious Diseases.

 

In 1910, he accompanied Lord Grey, the Governor General of Canada, on a canoe trip to Hudson Bay to serve as expedition physician .

 

McCrae served in the artillery during the Second Boer War, and upon his return was appointed professor of pathology at the University of Vermont, where he taught until 1911 (although he also taught at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec)

 

When the United Kingdom declared war on Germany at the start of World War I, Canada, as a Dominion within the British Empire, declared war as well. McCrae was appointed as a field surgeon in the Canadian artillery and was in charge of a field hospital during the Second Battle of Ypres in 1915. McCrae's friend and former student, Lt. Alexis Helmer, was killed in the battle, and his burial inspired the poem, In Flanders Fields, which was written on May 3, 1915 and first published in Punch Magazine, London.

 

From June 1, 1915 McCrae was ordered away from the artillery to set up No. 3 Canadian General Hospital at Dannes-Camiers near Boulogne-sur-Mer, northern France. C.L.C. Allinson reported that McCrae "most unmilitarily told [me] what he thought of being transferred to the medicals and being pulled away from his beloved guns. His last words to me were: 'Allinson, all the goddam doctors in the world will not win this bloody war: what we need is more and more fighting men.'"[3]

 

'In Flanders Fields' appeared anonymously in Punch on December 8, 1915, but in the index to that year McCrae was named as the author. The verses swiftly became one of the most popular poems of the war, used in countless fund-raising campaigns and frequently translated (a Latin version begins In agro belgico...). 'In Flanders Fields' was also extensively printed in the United States, which was contemplating joining the war, alongside a 'reply' by R. W. Lillard, ("...Fear not that you have died for naught, / The torch ye threw to us we caught...").

 

For eight months the hospital operated in Durbar tents (donated by the Begum of Bhopal and shipped from India), but after suffering storms, floods and frosts it was moved up to Boulogne-sur-Mer into the old Jesuit College in February 1916.

 

McCrae, now "a household name, albeit a frequently misspelt one",[4] regarded his sudden fame with some amusement, wishing that "they would get to printing 'In F.F.' correctly: it never is nowadays"; but (writes his biographer) "he was satisfied if the poem enabled men to see where their duty lay."[5]

 

On January 28, 1918, while still commanding No 3 Canadian General Hospital (McGill) at Boulogne, McCrae died of pneumonia. He was buried with full honours[6] in the Commonwealth War Graves Commission section of Wimereux Cemetery, just a couple of kilometres up the coast from Boulogne. McCrae's horse, "Bonfire", led the procession, his master's riding boots reversed in the stirrups. McCrae's gravestone is placed flat, as are all the others, because of the sandy soil.

 

McCrae was the co-author, with J. G. Adami, of a medical textbook, A Text-Book of Pathology for Students of Medicine (1912; 2nd ed., 1914). He was the brother of Dr. Thomas McCrae, professor of medicine at John Hopkins Medical School in Baltimore and close associate of Sir William Osler.

 

McCrae was the great uncle of former Alberta MP David Kilgour and of Kilgour's sister Geills Turner, who married former Canadian Prime Minister John Napier Turner.

 

Several institutions have been named in McCrae's honour, including John McCrae Public School (part of the York Region District School Board in the Toronto suburb of Markham, Ontario), John McCrae Public School (in Guelph, Ontario), John McCrae Senior Public School (in Scarborough, Ontario) and John McCrae Secondary School (part of the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board in the Ottawa suburb of Barrhaven). The current Canadian War Museum has a gallery for special exhibits, called the The Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae Gallery. Guelph is home to McCrae House, a museum created in his birthplace.

 

The Cloth Hall of the city of Ieper (Ypres in English} in Belgium has a permanent war remembrance[8] called the In Flanders Fields Museum, named after the poem.

 

There are also a photograph and short biographical memorial to McCrae in the St George Memorial Church in Ypres.

 

Post Processing:

Topaz PS Add-on: Vibrance (HDR)

PS Elements 5: posterization, b&w conversion, sandstone texture, ink outlines, sepia

 

Red & turquoise gel and a rather quiet guest on the slab at an otherwise-disused mortuary.

_____

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The Postcard

 

A postally unused postcard that was published by Fotofolio of Box 661, Canal Sta., NY, NY. The photography was by Rollie McKenna. The card has a divided back.

 

Dylan Thomas

 

Dylan Marlais Thomas, who was born in Swansea on the 27th. October 1914, was a Welsh poet and writer whose works include the poems 'Do not go Gentle Into That Good Night' and 'And Death Shall Have No Dominion.'

 

Dylan's other work included 'Under Milk Wood' as well as stories and radio broadcasts such as 'A Child's Christmas in Wales' and 'Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog'.

 

He became widely popular in his lifetime, and remained so after his death at the age of 39 in New York City. By then he had acquired a reputation, which he had encouraged, as a roistering, drunken and doomed poet.

 

In 1931, when he was 16, Thomas, an undistinguished pupil, left school to become a reporter for the South Wales Daily Post, only to leave under pressure 18 months later.

 

Many of his works appeared in print while he was still a teenager. In 1934, the publication of 'Light Breaks Where no Sun Shines' caught the attention of the literary world.

 

While living in London, Thomas met Caitlin Macnamara. They married in 1937, and had three children: Llewelyn, Aeronwy and Colm.

 

Thomas came to be appreciated as a popular poet during his lifetime, though he found it hard to earn a living as a writer. He began augmenting his income with reading tours and radio broadcasts. His radio recordings for the BBC during the late 1940's brought him to the public's attention, and he was frequently used by the BBC as an accessible voice of the literary scene.

 

Thomas first travelled to the United States in the 1950's. His readings there brought him a degree of fame, while his erratic behaviour and drinking worsened. His time in the United States cemented his legend, however, and he went on to record to vinyl such works as 'A Child's Christmas in Wales'.

 

During his fourth trip to New York in 1953, Thomas became gravely ill and fell into a coma. He died on the 9th. November 1953, and his body was returned to Wales. On the 25th. November 1953, he was laid to rest in St Martin's churchyard in Laugharne, Carmarthenshire.

 

Although Thomas wrote exclusively in the English language, he has been acknowledged as one of the most important Welsh poets of the 20th century. He is noted for his original, rhythmic and ingenious use of words and imagery. He is regarded by many as one of the great modern poets, and he still remains popular with the public.

 

-- Dylan Thomas - The Early Years

 

Dylan was born at 5 Cwmdonkin Drive, the son of Florence Hannah (née Williams; 1882–1958), a seamstress, and David John Thomas (1876–1952), a teacher. His father had a first-class honours degree in English from University College, Aberystwyth and ambitions to rise above his position teaching English literature at the local grammar school.

 

Thomas had one sibling, Nancy Marles (1906–1953), who was eight years his senior. The children spoke only English, though their parents were bilingual in English and Welsh, and David Thomas gave Welsh lessons at home.

 

Thomas's father chose the name Dylan, which means 'Son of the Sea', after Dylan ail Don, a character in The Mabinogion. Dylan's middle name, Marlais, was given in honour of his great-uncle, William Thomas, a Unitarian minister and poet whose bardic name was Gwilym Marles.

 

Dylan caused his mother to worry that he might be teased as the 'Dull One.' When he broadcast on Welsh BBC, early in his career, he was introduced using this pronunciation. Thomas favoured the Anglicised pronunciation, and gave instructions that it should be spoken as 'Dillan.'

 

The red-brick semi-detached house at 5 Cwmdonkin Drive (in the respectable area of the Uplands), in which Thomas was born and lived until he was 23, had been bought by his parents a few months before his birth.

 

Dylan's childhood featured regular summer trips to the Llansteffan Peninsula, a Welsh-speaking part of Carmarthenshire, where his maternal relatives were the sixth generation to farm there.

 

In the land between Llangain and Llansteffan, his mother's family, the Williamses and their close relatives, worked a dozen farms with over a thousand acres between them. The memory of Fernhill, a dilapidated 15-acre farm rented by his maternal aunt, Ann Jones, and her husband, Jim, is evoked in the 1945 lyrical poem 'Fern Hill', but is portrayed more accurately in his short story, 'The Peaches'.

 

Thomas had bronchitis and asthma in childhood, and struggled with these throughout his life. He was indulged by his mother and enjoyed being mollycoddled, a trait he carried into adulthood, and he was skilful in gaining attention and sympathy.

 

Thomas's formal education began at Mrs Hole's Dame School, a private school on Mirador Crescent, a few streets away from his home. He described his experience there in Reminiscences of Childhood:

 

"Never was there such a dame school as ours,

so firm and kind and smelling of galoshes, with

the sweet and fumbled music of the piano lessons

drifting down from upstairs to the lonely schoolroom,

where only the sometimes tearful wicked sat over

undone sums, or to repent a little crime – the pulling

of a girl's hair during geography, the sly shin kick

under the table during English literature".

 

In October 1925, Dylan Thomas enrolled at Swansea Grammar School for boys, in Mount Pleasant, where his father taught English. He was an undistinguished pupil who shied away from school, preferring reading.

 

In his first year, one of his poems was published in the school's magazine, and before he left he became its editor. In June 1928, Thomas won the school's mile race, held at St. Helen's Ground; he carried a newspaper photograph of his victory with him until his death.

 

During his final school years Dylan began writing poetry in notebooks; the first poem, dated 27th. April 1930, is entitled 'Osiris, Come to Isis'.

 

In 1931, when he was 16, Thomas left school to become a reporter for the South Wales Daily Post, only to leave under pressure 18 months later. Thomas continued to work as a freelance journalist for several years, during which time he remained at Cwmdonkin Drive and continued to add to his notebooks, amassing 200 poems in four books between 1930 and 1934. Of the 90 poems he published, half were written during these years.

 

In his free time, Dylan joined the amateur dramatic group at the Little Theatre in Mumbles, visited the cinema in Uplands, took walks along Swansea Bay, and frequented Swansea's pubs, especially the Antelope and the Mermaid Hotels in Mumbles.

 

In the Kardomah Café, close to the newspaper office in Castle Street, he met his creative contemporaries, including his friend the poet Vernon Watkins.

 

-- 1933–1939

 

In 1933, Thomas visited London for probably the first time.

 

Thomas was a teenager when many of the poems for which he became famous were published:

 

-- 'And Death Shall Have no Dominion'

-- 'Before I Knocked'

-- 'The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower'.

 

'And Death Shall Have no Dominion' appeared in the New English Weekly in May 1933:

 

'And death shall have no dominion.

Dead men naked they shall be one

With the man in the wind and the

west moon;

When their bones are picked clean and

the clean bones gone,

They shall have stars at elbow and foot;

Though they go mad they shall be sane,

Though they sink through the sea they

shall rise again

Though lovers be lost love shall not;

And death shall have no dominion'.

 

When 'Light Breaks Where no Sun Shines' appeared in The Listener in 1934, it caught the attention of three senior figures in literary London - T. S. Eliot, Geoffrey Grigson and Stephen Spender. They contacted Thomas, and his first poetry volume, '18 Poems', was published in December 1934.

 

'18 Poems' was noted for its visionary qualities which led to critic Desmond Hawkins writing that:

 

"The work is the sort of bomb

that bursts no more than once

in three years".

 

The volume was critically acclaimed, and won a contest run by the Sunday Referee, netting him new admirers from the London poetry world, including Edith Sitwell and Edwin Muir. The anthology was published by Fortune Press, in part a vanity publisher that did not pay its writers, and expected them to buy a certain number of copies themselves. A similar arrangement was used by other new authors, including Philip Larkin.

 

In September 1935, Thomas met Vernon Watkins, thus beginning a lifelong friendship. Dylan introduced Watkins, working at Lloyds Bank at the time, to his friends. The group of writers, musicians and artists became known as "The Kardomah Gang".

 

In those days, Thomas used to frequent the cinema on Mondays with Tom Warner who, like Watkins, had recently suffered a nervous breakdown. After these trips, Warner would bring Thomas back for supper with his aunt.

 

On one occasion, when she served him a boiled egg, she had to cut its top off for him, as Thomas did not know how to do this. This was because his mother had done it for him all his life, an example of her coddling him. Years later, his wife Caitlin would still have to prepare his eggs for him.

 

In December 1935, Thomas contributed the poem 'The Hand That Signed the Paper' to Issue 18 of the bi-monthly New Verse.

 

In 1936, Dylan's next collection 'Twenty-five Poems' received much critical praise. In 1938, Thomas won the Oscar Blumenthal Prize for Poetry; it was also the year in which New Directions offered to be his publisher in the United States. In all, he wrote half his poems while living at Cwmdonkin Drive before moving to London. It was the time that Thomas's reputation for heavy drinking developed.

 

In early 1936, Thomas met Caitlin Macnamara (1913–94), a 22-year-old blonde-haired, blue-eyed dancer of Irish and French descent. She had run away from home, intent on making a career in dance, and at the age of 18 joined the chorus line at the London Palladium.

 

Introduced by Augustus John, Caitlin's lover, they met in The Wheatsheaf pub on Rathbone Place in London's West End. Laying his head on her lap, a drunken Thomas proposed. Thomas liked to comment that he and Caitlin were in bed together ten minutes after they first met.

 

Although Caitlin initially continued her relationship with Augustus John, she and Thomas began a correspondence, and by the second half of 1936 they were courting. They married at the register office in Penzance, Cornwall, on the 11th. July 1937.

 

In early 1938, they moved to Wales, renting a cottage in the village of Laugharne, Carmarthenshire. Their first child, Llewelyn Edouard, was born on the 30th. January 1939.

 

By the late 1930's, Thomas was embraced as the "Poetic Herald" for a group of English poets, the New Apocalyptics. However Thomas refused to align himself with them, and declined to sign their manifesto.

 

He later stated that:

 

"They are intellectual muckpots

leaning on a theory".

 

Despite Dylan's rejection, many of the group, including Henry Treece, modelled their work on Thomas's.

 

During the politically charged atmosphere of the 1930's, Thomas's sympathies were very much with the radical left, to the point of holding close links with the communists, as well as being decidedly pacifist and anti-fascist. He was a supporter of the left-wing No More War Movement, and boasted about participating in demonstrations against the British Union of Fascists.

 

-- 1939–1945

 

In 1939, a collection of 16 poems and seven of the 20 short stories published by Thomas in magazines since 1934, appeared as 'The Map of Love'.

 

Ten stories in his next book, 'Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog' (1940), were based less on lavish fantasy than those in 'The Map of Love', and more on real-life romances featuring himself in Wales.

 

Sales of both books were poor, resulting in Thomas living on meagre fees from writing and reviewing. At this time he borrowed heavily from friends and acquaintances.

 

Hounded by creditors, Thomas and his family left Laugharne in July 1940 and moved to the home of critic John Davenport in Marshfield, Gloucestershire. There Thomas collaborated with Davenport on the satire 'The Death of the King's Canary', though due to fears of libel, the work was not published until 1976.

 

At the outset of the Second World War, Thomas was worried about conscription, and referred to his ailment as "An Unreliable Lung".

 

Coughing sometimes confined him to bed, and he had a history of bringing up blood and mucus. After initially seeking employment in a reserved occupation, he managed to be classified Grade III, which meant that he would be among the last to be called up for service.

 

Saddened to see his friends going on active service, Dylan continued drinking, and struggled to support his family. He wrote begging letters to random literary figures asking for support, a plan he hoped would provide a long-term regular income. Thomas supplemented his income by writing scripts for the BBC, which not only gave him additional earnings but also provided evidence that he was engaged in essential war work.

 

In February 1941, Swansea was bombed by the Luftwaffe in a three night blitz. Castle Street was one of many streets that suffered badly; rows of shops, including the Kardomah Café, were destroyed. Thomas walked through the bombed-out shell of the town centre with his friend Bert Trick. Upset at the sight, he concluded:

 

"Our Swansea is dead".

 

Soon after the bombing raids, he wrote a radio play, 'Return Journey Home', which described the café as being "razed to the snow". The play was first broadcast on the 15th. June 1947. The Kardomah Café reopened on Portland Street after the war.

 

In May 1941, Thomas and Caitlin left their son with his grandmother at Blashford and moved to London. Thomas hoped to find employment in the film industry, and wrote to the director of the films division of the Ministry of Information (MOI). After initially being rebuffed, he found work with Strand Films, providing him with his first regular income since the Daily Post. Strand produced films for the MOI; Thomas scripted at least five films in 1942.

 

In five film projects, between 1942 and 1945, the Ministry of Information (MOI) commissioned Thomas to script a series of documentaries about both urban planning and wartime patriotism, all in partnership with director John Eldridge:

 

-- 'Wales: Green Mountain, Black Mountain'.

-- 'New Towns for Old' (on post-war reconstruction).

-- 'Fuel for Battle'.

-- 'Our Country' (1945) was a romantic tour of Great

Britain set to Thomas's poetry.

-- 'A City Reborn'.

 

Other projects included:

 

-- 'This Is Colour' (a history of the British dyeing industry).

-- 'These Are The Men' (1943), a more ambitious piece in which Thomas's verse accompanied Leni Riefenstahl's

footage of an early Nuremberg Rally.

-- 'Conquest of a Germ' (1944) explored the use of early antibiotics in the fight against pneumonia and tuberculosis.

 

In early 1943, Thomas began a relationship with Pamela Glendower; one of several affairs he had during his marriage. The affairs either ran out of steam or were halted after Caitlin discovered his infidelity.

 

In March 1943, Caitlin gave birth to a daughter, Aeronwy, in London. They lived in a run-down studio in Chelsea, made up of a single large room with a curtain to separate the kitchen.

 

The Thomas family made several escapes back to Wales during the war. Between 1941 and 1943, they lived intermittently in Plas Gelli, Talsarn, in Cardiganshire. Plas Gelli sits close by the River Aeron, after whom Aeronwy is thought to have been named. Some of Thomas’ letters from Gelli can be found in his 'Collected Letters'.

 

The Thomases shared the mansion with his childhood friends from Swansea, Vera and Evelyn Phillips. Vera's friendship with the Thomases in nearby New Quay is portrayed in the 2008 film, 'The Edge of Love'.

 

In July 1944, with the threat of German flying bombs landing on London, Thomas moved to the family cottage at Blaencwm near Llangain, Carmarthenshire, where he resumed writing poetry, completing 'Holy Spring' and 'Vision and Prayer'.

 

In September 1944, the Thomas family moved to New Quay in Cardiganshire (Ceredigion), where they rented Majoda, a wood and asbestos bungalow on the cliffs overlooking Cardigan Bay. It was here that Thomas wrote the radio piece 'Quite Early One Morning', a sketch for his later work, 'Under Milk Wood'.

 

Of the poetry written at this time, of note is 'Fern Hill', believed to have been started while living in New Quay, but completed at Blaencwm in mid-1945. Dylan's first biographer, Constantine FitzGibbon wrote that:

 

"His nine months in New Quay were a second

flowering, a period of fertility that recalls the

earliest days, with a great outpouring of poems

and a good deal of other material".

 

His second biographer, Paul Ferris, concurred:

 

"On the grounds of output, the bungalow

deserves a plaque of its own."

 

The Dylan Thomas scholar, Walford Davies, has noted that:

 

"New Quay was crucial in supplementing

the gallery of characters Thomas had to

hand for writing 'Under Milk Wood'."

 

-- Dylan Thomas's Broadcasting Years 1945–1949

 

Although Thomas had previously written for the BBC, it was a minor and intermittent source of income. In 1943, he wrote and recorded a 15-minute talk entitled 'Reminiscences of Childhood' for the Welsh BBC.

 

In December 1944, he recorded 'Quite Early One Morning' (produced by Aneirin Talfan Davies, again for the Welsh BBC), but when Davies offered it for national broadcast, BBC London initially turned it down.

 

However on the 31st. August 1945, the BBC Home Service broadcast 'Quite Early One Morning' nationally, and in the three subsequent years, Dylan made over a hundred broadcasts for the BBC, not only for his poetry readings, but for discussions and critiques.

 

In the second half of 1945, Dylan began reading for the BBC Radio programme, 'Book of Verse', that was broadcast weekly to the Far East. This provided Thomas with a regular income, and brought him into contact with Louis MacNeice, a congenial drinking companion whose advice Thomas cherished.

 

On the 29th. September 1946, the BBC began transmitting the Third Programme, a high-culture network which provided further opportunities for Thomas.

 

He appeared in the play 'Comus' for the Third Programme, the day after the network launched, and his rich, sonorous voice led to character parts, including the lead in Aeschylus's 'Agamemnon', and Satan in an adaptation of 'Paradise Lost'.

 

Thomas remained a popular guest on radio talk shows for the BBC, who stated:

 

"He is useful should a younger

generation poet be needed".

 

He had an uneasy relationship with BBC management, and a staff job was never an option, with drinking cited as the problem. Despite this, Thomas became a familiar radio voice and well-known celebrity within Great Britain.

 

By late September 1945, the Thomases had left Wales, and were living with various friends in London. In December, they moved to Oxford to live in a summerhouse on the banks of the Cherwell. It belonged to the historian, A. J. P. Taylor. His wife, Margaret, became Thomas’s most committed patron.

 

The publication of 'Deaths and Entrances' in February 1946 was a major turning point for Thomas. Poet and critic Walter J. Turner commented in The Spectator:

 

"This book alone, in my opinion,

ranks him as a major poet".

 

From 'In my Craft or Sullen Art,' 'Deaths and Entrances' (1946):

 

'Not for the proud man apart

From the raging moon, I write

On these spindrift pages

Nor for the towering dead

With their nightingales and psalms

But for the lovers, their arms

Round the griefs of the ages,

Who pay no praise or wages

Nor heed my craft or art'.

 

The following year, in April 1947, the Thomases travelled to Italy, after Thomas had been awarded a Society of Authors scholarship. They stayed first in villas near Rapallo and then Florence, before moving to a hotel in Rio Marina on the island of Elba.

 

On their return to England Thomas and his family moved, in September 1947, into the Manor House in South Leigh, just west of Oxford, found for him by Margaret Taylor.

 

He continued with his work for the BBC, completed a number of film scripts, and worked further on his ideas for 'Under Milk Wood'.

 

In March 1949 Thomas travelled to Prague. He had been invited by the Czech government to attend the inauguration of the Czechoslovak Writers' Union. Jiřina Hauková, who had previously published translations of some of Thomas' poems, was his guide and interpreter.

 

In her memoir, Hauková recalls that at a party in Prague, Thomas narrated the first version of his radio play 'Under Milk Wood.' She describes how he outlined the plot about a town that was declared insane, and then portrayed the predicament of an eccentric organist and a baker with two wives.

 

A month later, in May 1949, Thomas and his family moved to his final home, the Boat House at Laugharne, purchased for him at a cost of £2,500 in April 1949 by Margaret Taylor.

 

Thomas acquired a garage a hundred yards from the house on a cliff ledge which he turned into his writing shed, and where he wrote several of his most acclaimed poems. To see a photograph of the interior of Dylan's shed, please search for the tag 55DTW96

 

Just before moving into the Boat House, Thomas rented Pelican House opposite his regular drinking den, Brown's Hotel, for his parents. They both lived there from 1949 until Dylan's father 'D.J.' died on the 16th. December 1952. His mother continued to live there until 1953.

 

Caitlin gave birth to their third child, a boy named Colm Garan Hart, on the 25th. July 1949.

 

In October 1949, the New Zealand poet Allen Curnow came to visit Thomas at the Boat House, who took him to his writing shed. Curnow recalls:

 

"Dylan fished out a draft to show me

of the unfinished 'Under Milk Wood'

that was then called 'The Town That

Was Mad'."

 

-- Dylan Thomas's American tours, 1950–1953

 

(a) The First American Tour

 

The American poet John Brinnin invited Thomas to New York, where in 1950 they embarked on a lucrative three-month tour of arts centres and campuses.

 

The tour, which began in front of an audience of a thousand at the Kaufmann Auditorium in the Poetry Centre in New York, took in a further 40 venues. During the tour, Thomas was invited to many parties and functions, and on several occasions became drunk - going out of his way to shock people - and was a difficult guest.

 

Dylan drank before some of his readings, although it is argued that he may have pretended to be more affected by the alcohol than he actually was.

 

The writer Elizabeth Hardwick recalled how intoxicated a performer he could be, and how the tension would build before a performance:

 

"Would he arrive only to break

down on the stage?

Would some dismaying scene

take place at the faculty party?

Would he be offensive, violent,

obscene?"

 

Dylan's wife Caitlin said in her memoir:

 

"Nobody ever needed encouragement

less, and he was drowned in it."

 

On returning to Great Britain, Thomas began work on two further poems, 'In the White Giant's Thigh', which he read on the Third Programme in September 1950:

 

'Who once were a bloom of wayside

brides in the hawed house

And heard the lewd, wooed field

flow to the coming frost,

The scurrying, furred small friars

squeal in the dowse

Of day, in the thistle aisles, till the

white owl crossed.'

 

He also worked on the incomplete 'In Country Heaven'.

 

In October 1950, Thomas sent a draft of the first 39 pages of 'The Town That Was Mad' to the BBC. The task of seeing this work through to production was assigned to the BBC's Douglas Cleverdon, who had been responsible for casting Thomas in 'Paradise Lost'.

 

However, despite Cleverdon's urgings, the script slipped from Thomas's priorities, and in early 1951 he took a trip to Iran to work on a film for the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. The film was never made, with Thomas returning to Wales in February, though his time there allowed him to provide a few minutes of material for a BBC documentary, 'Persian Oil'.

 

Early in 1951 Thomas wrote two poems, which Thomas's principal biographer, Paul Ferris, describes as "unusually blunt." One was the ribald 'Lament', and the other was an ode, in the form of a villanelle, to his dying father 'Do not go Gentle Into That Good Night". (A villanelle is a pastoral or lyrical poem of nineteen lines, with only two rhymes throughout, and some lines repeated).

 

Despite a range of wealthy patrons, including Margaret Taylor, Princess Marguerite Caetani and Marged Howard-Stepney, Thomas was still in financial difficulty, and he wrote several begging letters to notable literary figures, including the likes of T. S. Eliot.

 

Margaret Taylor was not keen on Thomas taking another trip to the United States, and thought that if he had a permanent address in London he would be able to gain steady work there. She bought a property, 54 Delancey Street, in Camden Town, and in late 1951 Thomas and Caitlin lived in the basement flat. Thomas described the flat as his "London House of Horror", and did not return there after his 1952 tour of America.

 

(b) The Second American Tour

 

Thomas undertook a second tour of the United States in 1952, this time with Caitlin - after she had discovered that he had been unfaithful on his earlier trip. They drank heavily, and Thomas began to suffer with gout and lung problems.

 

It was during this tour that the above photograph was taken.

 

The second tour was the most intensive of the four, taking in 46 engagements.

 

The trip also resulted in Thomas recording his first poetry to vinyl, which Caedmon Records released in America later that year. One of his works recorded during this time, 'A Child's Christmas in Wales', became his most popular prose work in America. The recording was a 2008 selection for the United States National Recording Registry, which stated that:

 

"It is credited with launching the

audiobook industry in the United

States".

 

(c) The Third American Tour

 

In April 1953, Thomas returned alone for a third tour of America. He performed a "work in progress" version of 'Under Milk Wood', solo, for the first time at Harvard University on the 3rd. May 1953. A week later, the work was performed with a full cast at the Poetry Centre in New York.

 

Dylan met the deadline only after being locked in a room by Brinnin's assistant, Liz Reitell, and was still editing the script on the afternoon of the performance; its last lines were handed to the actors as they put on their makeup.

 

During this penultimate tour, Thomas met the composer Igor Stravinsky. Igor had become an admirer of Dylan after having been introduced to his poetry by W. H. Auden. They had discussions about collaborating on a "musical theatrical work" for which Dylan would provide the libretto on the theme of:

 

"The rediscovery of love and

language in what might be left

after the world after the bomb."

 

The shock of Thomas's death later in the year moved Stravinsky to compose his 'In Memoriam Dylan Thomas' for tenor, string quartet and four trombones. The work's first performance in Los Angeles in 1954 was introduced with a tribute to Thomas from Aldous Huxley.

 

Thomas spent the last nine or ten days of his third tour in New York mostly in the company of Reitell, with whom he had an affair.

 

During this time, Thomas fractured his arm falling down a flight of stairs when drunk. Reitell's doctor, Milton Feltenstein, put his arm in plaster, and treated him for gout and gastritis.

 

After returning home, Thomas worked on 'Under Milk Wood' in Wales before sending the original manuscript to Douglas Cleverdon on the 15th. October 1953. It was copied and returned to Thomas, who lost it in a pub in London and required a duplicate to take to America.

 

(d) The Fourth American Tour

 

Thomas flew to the States on the 19th. October 1953 for what would be his final tour. He died in New York before the BBC could record 'Under Milk Wood'. Richard Burton featured in its first broadcast in 1954, and was joined by Elizabeth Taylor in a subsequent film. In 1954, the play won the Prix Italia for literary or dramatic programmes.

 

Thomas's last collection 'Collected Poems, 1934–1952', published when he was 38, won the Foyle poetry prize. Reviewing the volume, critic Philip Toynbee declared that:

 

"Thomas is the greatest living

poet in the English language".

 

There followed a series of distressing events for Dylan. His father died from pneumonia just before Christmas 1952. In the first few months of 1953, his sister died from liver cancer, one of his patrons took an overdose of sleeping pills, three friends died at an early age, and Caitlin had an abortion.

 

Thomas left Laugharne on the 9th. October 1953 on the first leg of his trip to America. He called on his mother, Florence, to say goodbye:

 

"He always felt that he had to get

out from this country because of

his chest being so bad."

 

Thomas had suffered from chest problems for most of his life, though they began in earnest soon after he moved in May 1949 to the Boat House at Laugharne - the "Bronchial Heronry", as he called it. Within weeks of moving in, he visited a local doctor, who prescribed medicine for both his chest and throat.

 

Whilst waiting in London before his flight in October 1953, Thomas stayed with the comedian Harry Locke and worked on 'Under Milk Wood'. Locke noted that Thomas was having trouble with his chest, with terrible coughing fits that made him go purple in the face. He was also using an inhaler to help his breathing.

 

There were reports, too, that Thomas was also having blackouts. His visit to the BBC producer Philip Burton a few days before he left for New York, was interrupted by a blackout. On his last night in London, he had another in the company of his fellow poet Louis MacNeice.

 

Thomas arrived in New York on the 20th. October 1953 to undertake further performances of 'Under Milk Wood', organised by John Brinnin, his American agent and Director of the Poetry Centre. Brinnin did not travel to New York, but remained in Boston in order to write.

 

He handed responsibility to his assistant, Liz Reitell, who was keen to see Thomas for the first time since their three-week romance early in the year. She met Thomas at Idlewild Airport and was shocked at his appearance. He looked pale, delicate and shaky, not his usual robust self:

 

"He was very ill when he got here."

 

After being taken by Reitell to check in at the Chelsea Hotel, Thomas took the first rehearsal of 'Under Milk Wood'. They then went to the White Horse Tavern in Greenwich Village, before returning to the Chelsea Hotel.

 

(Bob Dylan, formerly Robert Zimmerman, used to perform at the White Horse; Dylan Thomas was his favourite poet, and it is highly likely that Bob adopted Dylan's first name as his surname).

 

The next day, Reitell invited Thomas to her apartment, but he declined. They went sightseeing, but Thomas felt unwell, and retired to his bed for the rest of the afternoon. Reitell gave him half a grain (32.4 milligrams) of phenobarbitone to help him sleep, and spent the night at the hotel with him.

 

Two days later, on the 23rd. October 1953, at the third rehearsal, Thomas said he was too ill to take part, but he struggled on, shivering and burning with fever, before collapsing on the stage.

 

The next day, 24th. October, Reitell took Thomas to see her doctor, Milton Feltenstein, who administered cortisone injections. Thomas made it through the first performance that evening, but collapsed immediately afterwards.

 

Dylan told a friend who had come back-stage:

 

"This circus out there has taken

the life out of me for now."

 

Reitell later said:

 

"Feltenstein was rather a wild doctor

who thought injections would cure

anything".

 

At the next performance on the 25th. October, his fellow actors realised that Thomas was very ill:

 

"He was desperately ill…we didn’t think

that he would be able to do the last

performance because he was so ill…

Dylan literally couldn’t speak he was so

ill…still my greatest memory of it is that

he had no voice."

 

On the evening of the 27th. October, Thomas attended his 39th. birthday party, but felt unwell, and returned to his hotel after an hour. The next day, he took part in 'Poetry and the Film', a recorded symposium at Cinema 16.

 

A turning point came on the 2nd. November. Air pollution in New York had risen significantly, and exacerbated chest illnesses such as Thomas's. By the end of the month, over 200 New Yorkers had died from the smog.

 

On the 3rd. November, Thomas spent most of the day in his room, entertaining various friends. He went out in the evening to keep two drink appointments. After returning to the hotel, he went out again for a drink at 2 am. After drinking at the White Horse, Thomas returned to the Hotel Chelsea, declaring:

 

"I've had eighteen straight

whiskies. I think that's the

record!"

 

However the barman and the owner of the pub who served him later commented that Thomas could not have drunk more than half that amount, although the barman could have been trying to exonerate himself from any blame.

 

Thomas had an appointment at a clam house in New Jersey with Todd on the 4th. November. When Todd telephoned the Chelsea that morning, Thomas said he was feeling ill, and postponed the engagement. Todd thought that Dylan sounded "terrible".

 

The poet, Harvey Breit, was another to phone that morning. He thought that Thomas sounded "bad". Thomas' voice, recalled Breit, was "low and hoarse". Harvey had wanted to say:

 

"You sound as though from the tomb".

 

However instead Harvey told Thomas that he sounded like Louis Armstrong.

 

Later, Thomas went drinking with Reitell at the White Horse and, feeling sick again, returned to the hotel. Dr. Feltenstein came to see him three times that day, administering the cortisone secretant ACTH by injection and, on his third visit, half a grain (32.4 milligrams) of morphine sulphate, which affected Thomas' breathing.

 

Reitell became increasingly concerned, and telephoned Feltenstein for advice. He suggested that she get male assistance, so she called upon the artist Jack Heliker, who arrived before 11 pm. At midnight on the 5th. November, Thomas's breathing became more difficult, and his face turned blue.

 

Reitell phoned Feltenstein who arrived at the hotel at about 1 am, and called for an ambulance. It then took another hour for the ambulance to arrive at St. Vincent's, even though it was only a few blocks from the Chelsea.

 

Thomas was admitted to the emergency ward at St Vincent's Hospital at 1:58 am. He was comatose, and his medical notes stated that:

 

"The impression upon admission was acute

alcoholic encephalopathy damage to the brain

by alcohol, for which the patient was treated

without response".

 

Feltenstein then took control of Thomas's care, even though he did not have admitting rights at St. Vincent's. The hospital's senior brain specialist, Dr. C. G. Gutierrez-Mahoney, was not called to examine Thomas until the afternoon of the 6th. November, thirty-six hours after Thomas' admission.

 

Dylan's wife Caitlin flew to America the following day, and was taken to the hospital, by which time a tracheotomy had been performed. Her reported first words were:

 

"Is the bloody man dead yet?"

 

Caitlin was allowed to see Thomas only for 40 minutes in the morning, but returned in the afternoon and, in a drunken rage, threatened to kill John Brinnin. When she became uncontrollable, she was put in a straitjacket and committed, by Feltenstein, to the River Crest private psychiatric detox clinic on Long Island.

 

It is now believed that Thomas had been suffering from bronchitis, pneumonia and emphysema before his admission to St Vincent's. In their 2004 paper, 'Death by Neglect', D. N. Thomas and Dr Simon Barton disclose that Thomas was found to have pneumonia when he was admitted to hospital in a coma.

 

Doctors took three hours to restore his breathing, using artificial respiration and oxygen. Summarising their findings, they conclude:

 

"The medical notes indicate that, on admission,

Dylan's bronchial disease was found to be very

extensive, affecting upper, mid and lower lung

fields, both left and right."

 

The forensic pathologist, Professor Bernard Knight, concurs:

 

"Death was clearly due to a severe lung infection

with extensive advanced bronchopneumonia.

The severity of the chest infection, with greyish

consolidated areas of well-established pneumonia,

suggests that it had started before admission to

hospital."

 

Thomas died at noon on the 9th. November 1953, having never recovered from his coma. He was 39 years of age when he died.

 

-- Aftermath of Dylan Thomas's Death

 

Rumours circulated of a brain haemorrhage, followed by competing reports of a mugging, or even that Thomas had drunk himself to death. Later, speculation arose about drugs and diabetes.

 

At the post-mortem, the pathologist found three causes of death - pneumonia, brain swelling and a fatty liver. Despite Dylan's heavy drinking, his liver showed no sign of cirrhosis.

 

The publication of John Brinnin's 1955 biography 'Dylan Thomas in America' cemented Thomas's legacy as the "doomed poet". Brinnin focuses on Thomas's last few years, and paints a picture of him as a drunk and a philanderer.

 

Later biographies have criticised Brinnin's view, especially his coverage of Thomas's death. David Thomas in 'Fatal Neglect: Who Killed Dylan Thomas?' claims that Brinnin, along with Reitell and Feltenstein, were culpable.

 

FitzGibbon's 1965 biography ignores Thomas's heavy drinking and skims over his death, giving just two pages in his detailed book to Thomas's demise.

 

Ferris in his 1989 biography includes Thomas's heavy drinking, but is more critical of those around him in his final days, and does not draw the conclusion that he drank himself to death.

 

Many sources have criticised Feltenstein's role and actions, especially his incorrect diagnosis of delirium tremens and the high dose of morphine he administered. Dr C. G. de Gutierrez-Mahoney, the doctor who treated Thomas while at St. Vincent's, concluded that Feltenstein's failure to see that Thomas was gravely ill and have him admitted to hospital sooner was even more culpable than his use of morphine.

 

Caitlin Thomas's autobiographies, 'Caitlin Thomas - Leftover Life to Kill' (1957) and 'My Life with Dylan Thomas: Double Drink Story' (1997), describe the effects of alcohol on the poet and on their relationship:

 

"Ours was not only a love story, it was

a drink story, because without alcohol

it would never had got on its rocking

feet. The bar was our altar."

 

Biographer Andrew Lycett ascribed the decline in Thomas's health to an alcoholic co-dependent relationship with his wife, who deeply resented his extramarital affairs.

 

In contrast, Dylan biographers Andrew Sinclair and George Tremlett express the view that Thomas was not an alcoholic. Tremlett argues that many of Thomas's health issues stemmed from undiagnosed diabetes.

 

Thomas died intestate, with assets worth £100. His body was brought back to Wales for burial in the village churchyard at Laugharne. Dylan's funeral, which Brinnin did not attend, took place at St Martin's Church in Laugharne on the 24th. November 1953.

 

Six friends from the village carried Thomas's coffin. Caitlin, without her customary hat, walked behind the coffin, with his childhood friend Daniel Jones at her arm and her mother by her side. The procession to the church was filmed, and the wake took place at Brown's Hotel. Thomas's fellow poet and long-time friend Vernon Watkins wrote The Times obituary.

 

Thomas's widow, Caitlin, died in 1994, and was laid to rest alongside him. Dylan's mother Florence died in August 1958. Thomas's elder son, Llewelyn, died in 2000, his daughter, Aeronwy in 2009, and his youngest son Colm in 2012.

 

-- Dylan Thomas's Poetry

 

Thomas's refusal to align with any literary group or movement has made him and his work difficult to categorise. Although influenced by the modern symbolism and surrealism movements, he refused to follow such creeds. Instead, critics view Thomas as part of the modernism and romanticism movements, though attempts to pigeon-hole him within a particular neo-romantic school have been unsuccessful.

 

Elder Olson, in his 1954 critical study of Thomas's poetry, wrote:

 

"There is a further characteristic which

distinguished Thomas's work from that

of other poets. It was unclassifiable."

 

Olson went on to say that in a postmodern age that continually attempted to demand that poetry have social reference, none could be found in Thomas's work, and that his work was so obscure that critics could not analyse it.

 

Thomas's verbal style played against strict verse forms, such as in the villanelle 'Do not go Gentle Into That Good Night'.

 

His images appear carefully ordered in a patterned sequence, and his major theme was the unity of all life, the continuing process of life and death, and new life that linked the generations.

 

Thomas saw biology as a magical transformation producing unity out of diversity, and in his poetry sought a poetic ritual to celebrate this unity. He saw men and women locked in cycles of growth, love, procreation, new growth, death, and new life. Therefore, each image engenders its opposite.

 

Thomas derived his closely woven, sometimes self-contradictory images from the Bible, Welsh folklore, preaching, and Sigmund Freud. Explaining the source of his imagery, Thomas wrote in a letter to Glyn Jones:

 

"My own obscurity is quite an unfashionable one,

based, as it is, on a preconceived symbolism

derived (I'm afraid all this sounds woolly and

pretentious) from the cosmic significance of the

human anatomy".

 

Thomas's early poetry was noted for its verbal density, alliteration, sprung rhythm and internal rhyme, and some critics detected the influence of the English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins. Hopkins, had taught himself Welsh, and used sprung verse, bringing some features of Welsh poetic metre into his work.

 

However when Henry Treece wrote to Thomas comparing his style to that of Hopkins, Thomas wrote back denying any such influence. Thomas greatly admired Thomas Hardy, who is regarded as an influence. When Thomas travelled in America, he recited some of Hardy's work in his readings.

 

Other poets from whom critics believe Thomas drew influence include James Joyce, Arthur Rimbaud and D. H. Lawrence.

 

William York Tindall, in his 1962 study, 'A Reader's Guide to Dylan Thomas', finds comparison between Thomas's and Joyce's wordplay, while he notes the themes of rebirth and nature are common to the works of Lawrence and Thomas.

 

Although Thomas described himself as the "Rimbaud of Cwmdonkin Drive", he stated that the phrase "Swansea's Rimbaud" was coined by the poet Roy Campbell.

 

Critics have explored the origins of Thomas's mythological pasts in his works such as 'The Orchards', which Ann Elizabeth Mayer believes reflects the Welsh myths of the Mabinogion.

 

Thomas's poetry is notable for its musicality, most clear in 'Fern Hill', 'In Country Sleep', 'Ballad of the Long-legged Bait' and 'In the White Giant's Thigh' from Under Milk Wood.

 

Thomas once confided that the poems which had most influenced him were Mother Goose rhymes which his parents taught him when he was a child:

 

"I should say I wanted to write poetry in the

beginning because I had fallen in love with

words.

The first poems I knew were nursery rhymes,

and before I could read them for myself I had

come to love the words of them. The words

alone.

What the words stood for was of a very

secondary importance ... I fell in love, that is

the only expression I can think of, at once,

and am still at the mercy of words, though

sometimes now, knowing a little of their

behaviour very well, I think I can influence

them slightly and have even learned to beat

them now and then, which they appear to

enjoy.

I tumbled for words at once. And, when I began

to read the nursery rhymes for myself, and, later,

to read other verses and ballads, I knew that I

had discovered the most important things, to

me, that could be ever."

 

Thomas became an accomplished writer of prose poetry, with collections such as 'Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog' (1940) and 'Quite Early One Morning' (1954) showing he was capable of writing moving short stories. His first published prose work, 'After the Fair', appeared in The New English Weekly on the 15th. March 1934.

 

Jacob Korg believes that one can classify Thomas's fiction work into two main bodies:

 

-- Vigorous fantasies in a poetic style

-- After 1939, more straightforward

narratives.

 

Korg surmises that Thomas approached his prose writing as an alternate poetic form, which allowed him to produce complex, involuted narratives that do not allow the reader to rest.

 

-- Dylan Thomas as a Welsh Poet

 

Thomas disliked being regarded as a provincial poet, and decried any notion of 'Welshness' in his poetry. When he wrote to Stephen Spender in 1952, thanking him for a review of his Collected Poems, he added:

 

"Oh, & I forgot. I'm not influenced by

Welsh bardic poetry. I can't read Welsh."

 

Despite this, his work was rooted in the geography of Wales. Thomas acknowledged that he returned to Wales when he had difficulty writing, and John Ackerman argues that:

 

"Dylan's inspiration and imagination

were rooted in his Welsh background".

 

Caitlin Thomas wrote that:

 

"He worked in a fanatically narrow groove,

although there was nothing narrow about

the depth and understanding of his feelings.

The groove of direct hereditary descent in

the land of his birth, which he never in

thought, and hardly in body, moved out of."

 

Head of Programmes Wales at the BBC, Aneirin Talfan Davies, who commissioned several of Thomas's early radio talks, believed that the poet's whole attitude is that of the medieval bards.

 

Kenneth O. Morgan counter-argues that it is a difficult enterprise to find traces of cynghanedd (consonant harmony) or cerdd dafod (tongue-craft) in Thomas's poetry. Instead he believes that Dylan's work, especially his earlier, more autobiographical poems, are rooted in a changing country which echoes the Welshness of the past and the Anglicisation of the new industrial nation:

 

"Rural and urban, chapel-going and profane,

Welsh and English, unforgiving and deeply

compassionate."

 

Fellow poet and critic Glyn Jones believed that any traces of cynghanedd in Thomas's work were accidental, although he felt that Dylan consciously employed one element of Welsh metrics: that of counting syllables per line instead of feet. Constantine Fitzgibbon, who was his first in-depth biographer, wrote:

 

"No major English poet has

ever been as Welsh as Dylan".

 

Although Dylan had a deep connection with Wales, he disliked Welsh nationalism. He once wrote:

 

"Land of my fathers, and

my fathers can keep it".

 

While often attributed to Thomas himself, this line actually comes from the character Owen Morgan-Vaughan, in the screenplay Thomas wrote for the 1948 British melodrama 'The Three Weird Sisters'.

 

Robert Pocock, a friend from the BBC, recalled:

 

"I only once heard Dylan express an

opinion on Welsh Nationalism.

He used three words. Two of them

were Welsh Nationalism."

 

Although not expressed as strongly, Glyn Jones believed that he and Thomas's friendship cooled in the later years because he had not rejected enough of the elements that Thomas disliked, i.e. "Welsh nationalism and a sort of hill farm morality".

 

Apologetically, in a letter to Keidrych Rhys, editor of the literary magazine 'Wales', Thomas's father wrote:

 

"I'm afraid Dylan isn't much

of a Welshman".

 

FitzGibbon asserts that Thomas's negativity towards Welsh nationalism was fostered by his father's hostility towards the Welsh language.

 

Critical Appraisal of Dylan Thomas's Work

 

Thomas's work and stature as a poet have been much debated by critics and biographers since his death. Critical studies have been clouded by Thomas's personality and mythology, especially his drunken persona and death in New York.

 

When Seamus Heaney gave an Oxford lecture on the poet, he opened by addressing the assembly:

 

"Dylan Thomas is now as much

a case history as a chapter in the

history of poetry".

 

He queried how 'Thomas the Poet' is one of his forgotten attributes. David Holbrook, who has written three books about Thomas, stated in his 1962 publication 'Llareggub Revisited':

 

"The strangest feature of Dylan Thomas's

notoriety - not that he is bogus, but that

attitudes to poetry attached themselves

to him which not only threaten the prestige,

effectiveness and accessibility to English

poetry, but also destroyed his true voice

and, at last, him."

 

The Poetry Archive notes that:

 

"Dylan Thomas's detractors accuse him

of being drunk on language as well as

whiskey, but whilst there's no doubt that

the sound of language is central to his

style, he was also a disciplined writer

who re-drafted obsessively".

 

Many critics have argued that Thomas's work is too narrow, and that he suffers from verbal extravagance. However those who have championed his work have found the criticism baffling. Robert Lowell wrote in 1947:

 

"Nothing could be more wrongheaded

than the English disputes about Dylan

Thomas's greatness ... He is a dazzling

obscure writer who can be enjoyed

without understanding."

 

Kenneth Rexroth said, on reading 'Eighteen Poems':

 

"The reeling excitement of a poetry-intoxicated

schoolboy smote the Philistine as hard a blow

with one small book as Swinburne had with

Poems and Ballads."

 

Philip Larkin, in a letter to Kingsley Amis in 1948, wrote that:

 

"No one can stick words into us

like pins... like Thomas can".

 

However he followed that by stating that:

 

"Dylan doesn't use his words

to any advantage".

 

Amis was far harsher, finding little of merit in Dylan's work, and claiming that:

 

"He is frothing at the mouth

with piss."

 

In 1956, the publication of the anthology 'New Lines' featuring works by the British collective The Movement, which included Amis and Larkin amongst its number, set out a vision of modern poetry that was damning towards the poets of the 1940's. Thomas's work in particular was criticised. David Lodge, writing about The Movement in 1981 stated:

 

"Dylan Thomas was made to stand for

everything they detest, verbal obscurity,

metaphysical pretentiousness, and

romantic rhapsodizing".

 

Despite criticism by sections of academia, Thomas's work has been embraced by readers more so than many of his contemporaries, and is one of the few modern poets whose name is recognised by the general public.

 

In 2009, over 18,000 votes were cast in a BBC poll to find the UK's favourite poet; Thomas was placed 10th.

 

Several of Dylan's poems have passed into the cultural mainstream, and his work has been used by authors, musicians and film and television writers.

 

The long-running BBC Radio programme, 'Desert Island Discs', in which guests usually choose their favourite songs, has heard 50 participants select a Dylan Thomas recording.

 

John Goodby states that this popularity with the reading public allows Thomas's work to be classed as vulgar and common. He also cites that despite a brief period during the 1960's when Thomas was considered a cultural icon, the poet has been marginalized in critical circles due to his exuberance, in both life and work, and his refusal to know his place.

 

Goodby believes that Thomas has been mainly snubbed since the 1970's and has become: "... an embarrassment to twentieth-century poetry criticism", his work failing to fit standard narratives, and thus being ignored rather than studied.

 

-- Memorials to Dylan Thomas

 

In Swansea's maritime quarter is the Dylan Thomas Theatre, the home of the Swansea Little Theatre of which Thomas was once a member. The former Guildhall built in 1825 is now occupied by the Dylan Thomas Centre, a literature centre, where exhibitions and lectures are held and which is a setting for the annual Dylan Thomas Festival. Outside the centre stands a bronze statue of Thomas by John Doubleday.

 

Another monument to Thomas stands in Cwmdonkin Park, one of Dylan's favourite childhood haunts, close to his birthplace. The memorial is a small rock in an enclosed garden within the park, cut by and inscribed by the late sculptor Ronald Cour with the closing lines from Fern Hill:

 

'Oh as I was young and easy

in the mercy of his means

Time held me green and dying

Though I sang in my chains like

the sea'.

 

Thomas's home in Laugharne, the Boathouse, is now a museum run by Carmarthenshire County Council. Thomas's writing shed is also preserved.

 

In 2004, the Dylan Thomas Prize was created in his honour, awarded to the best published writer in English under the age of 30. In 2005, the Dylan Thomas Screenplay Award was established. The prize, administered by the Dylan Thomas Centre, is awarded at the annual Swansea Bay Film Festival.

 

In 1982 a plaque was unveiled in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey. The plaque is also inscribed with the last two lines of 'Fern Hill'.

 

In 2014, the Royal Patron of The Dylan Thomas 100 Festival was Charles, Prince of Wales, who made a recording of 'Fern Hill' for the event.

 

In 2014, to celebrate the centenary of Thomas's birth, the British Council Wales undertook a year-long programme of cultural and educational works. Highlights included a touring replica of Thomas's work shed, Sir Peter Blake's exhibition of illustrations based on 'Under Milk Wood', and a 36-hour marathon of readings, which included Michael Sheen and Sir Ian McKellen performing Thomas's work.

 

Towamensing Trails, Pennsylvania named one of its streets, Thomas Lane, in Dylan's honour.

 

-- List of Works by Dylan Thomas

 

-- 'The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas: The New Centenary Edition', edited and with Introduction by John Goodby. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2014.

-- 'The Notebook Poems 1930–34', edited by Ralph Maud. London: Dent, 1989.

-- 'Dylan Thomas: The Film Scripts', edited by John Ackerman. London: Dent 1995.

-- 'Dylan Thomas: Early Prose Writings', edited by Walford Davies. London: Dent 1971.

-- 'Collected Stories', edited by Walford Davies. London: Dent, 1983.

-- 'Under Milk Wood: A Play for Voices', edited by Walford Davies and Ralph Maud. London: Dent, 1995.

-- 'On The Air With Dylan Thomas: The Broadcasts', edited by Ralph Maud. New York: New Directions, 1991.

 

-- Correspondence

 

-- 'Dylan Thomas: The Collected Letters', edited by Paul Ferris (2017), 2 vols. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson

Vol I: 1931–1939

Vol II: 1939–1953.

-- 'Letters to Vernon Watkins', edited by Vernon Watkins (1957). London: Dent.

 

-- Posthumous Film Adaptations

 

-- 2016: Dominion, written and directed by Steven Bernstein, examines the final hours of Dylan Thomas.

-- 2014: Set Fire to the Stars, with Thomas portrayed by Celyn Jones, and John Brinnin by Elijah Wood.

-- 2014: Under Milk Wood BBC, starring Charlotte Church, Tom Jones, Griff Rhys-Jones and Michael Sheen.

-- 2014: Interstellar. The poem is featured throughout the film as a recurring theme regarding the perseverance of humanity.

-- 2009: A Child's Christmas in Wales, BAFTA Best Short Film. Animation, with soundtrack in Welsh and English. Director: Dave Unwin. Extras include filmed comments from Aeronwy Thomas.

-- 2007: Dylan Thomas: A War Films Anthology (DDHE/IWM).

-- 1996: Independence Day. Before the attack, the President paraphrases Thomas's "Do not go Gentle Into That Good Night".

-- 1992: Rebecca's Daughters, starring Peter O'Toole and Joely Richardson.

-- 1987: A Child's Christmas in Wales, directed by Don McBrearty.

-- 1972: Under Milk Wood, starring Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, and Peter O'Toole.

 

-- Opera Adaptation

 

-- 1973: Unter dem Milchwald, by German composer Walter Steffens on his own libretto using Erich Fried's translation of 'Under Milk Wood' into German, Hamburg State Opera. Also at the Staatstheater Kassel in 1977.

 

-- Final Thoughts From Dylan Thomas

 

"Somebody's boring me.

I think it's me."

 

"Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light."

 

"When one burns one's bridges,

what a very nice fire it makes."

 

"I think, that if I touched the earth,

It would crumble; It is so sad and

beautiful, so tremulously like a dream."

 

"An alcoholic is someone you don't like,

who drinks as much as you do."

 

"I hold a beast, an angel, and a madman in me,

and my enquiry is as to their working, and my

problem is their subjugation and victory, down

throw and upheaval, and my effort is their self-

expression."

 

"The only sea I saw was the seesaw sea

with you riding on it. Lie down, lie easy.

Let me shipwreck in your thighs."

 

"Why do men think you can pick love up

and re-light it like a candle? Women know

when love is over."

 

"Poetry is not the most important thing in life.

I'd much rather lie in a hot bath reading

Agatha Christie and sucking sweets."

 

"And now, gentlemen, like your manners,

I must leave you."

 

"My education was the liberty I had to read

indiscriminately and all the time, with my eyes

hanging out."

 

"I'm a freak user of words, not a poet."

 

"Our discreditable secret is that we don't

know anything at all, and our horrid inner

secret is that we don't care that we don't."

 

"It snowed last year too: I made a snowman

and my brother knocked it down and I knocked

my brother down and then we had tea."

 

"Though lovers be lost love shall not."

 

"Man’s wants remain unsatisfied till death.

Then, when his soul is naked, is he one

with the man in the wind, and the west moon,

with the harmonious thunder of the sun."

 

"And books which told me everything

about the wasp, except why."

 

"We are not wholly bad or good, who live

our lives under Milk Wood."

 

"Love is the last light spoken."

 

"... an ugly, lovely town ... crawling, sprawling ...

by the side of a long and splendid curving

shore. This sea-town was my world."

 

"I do not need any friends. I prefer enemies.

They are better company, and their feelings

towards you are always genuine."

 

"This poem has been called obscure. I refuse

to believe that it is obscurer than pity, violence,

or suffering. But being a poem, not a lifetime,

it is more compressed."

 

"One: I am a Welshman; two: I am a drunkard;

three: I am a lover of the human race, especially

of women."

 

"I believe in New Yorkers. Whether they've ever

questioned the dream in which they live, I wouldn't

know, because I won't ever dare ask that question."

 

"These poems, with all their crudities, doubts and

confusions, are written for the love of man and in

praise of God, and I'd be a damn fool if they weren't."

 

"Before you let the sun in, mind he wipes his shoes."

 

"Nothing grows in our garden, only washing.

And babies."

 

"Make gentle the life of this world."

 

"A worm tells summer better than the clock,

the slug's a living calendar of days; what shall

it tell me if a timeless insect says the world

wears away?"

 

"Time passes. Listen. Time passes. Come

closer now. Only you can hear the houses

sleeping in the streets in the slow deep salt

and silent black, bandaged night."

 

"Rhianon, he said, hold my hand, Rhianon.

She did not hear him, but stood over his bed

and fixed him with an unbroken sorrow. Hold

my hand, he said, and then: Why are you

putting the sheet over my face?"

 

"Come on up, boys - I'm dead."

 

"Life is a terrible thing, thank God."

"Maybe the exhibition will amaze you, maybe even shock you. But one thing is for sure, it will not leave you indifferent".

 

Exhibition "Bodies 2,0 -The amazing universe within us"

 

The scientific and educational exhibition presents the real human anatomy, with 15 bodies and 200 organs. The bodies of real humans were treated by complicated procedure. The result is the insight to complicated and fascinating anatomy of human body.

More than 25 millions of visitors all over the world have seen this intriguing exhibition, that will stay in Zagreb till June 20th 2021.

The first exhibition of this type was presented in 1985 in Tokio. Gunther von Hagens developed the technique of plastination to preserve the human body. He presented the exhibition all over the world, with the goal: to educate people about human body, that previously was the privilege of doctors, pathologists.

bodies-izlozba.hr/en/the-exhibition/

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunther_von_Hagens

  

"Možete se oduševiti, može vas šokirati, no jedno je sigurno – neće vas ostaviti ravnodušnim"!

 

Izložba "Bodies 2,0 -veličanstveni svemir u nama"

 

Znanstvena i edukativna izložba prikazuje stvarnu ljudsku anatomiju, sa 15 tijela i 200 organa. Tijela stvarnih ljudi obrađena su složenim postupkom. Rezultat je uvid u složenu i zadivoljujuću anatomiju ljudskog tijela.

Ovu je intrigantnu izložbu vidjelo preko 25 milijuna ljudi širom svijeta, a ostaje u Zagrebu do 20.lipnja 2021.

Prva izložba ove vrste predstavljena je 1985. u Tokiju. Gunther von Hagens razvio je tehniku plastinacije kako bi sačuvao ljudsko tijelo. Izložbu je predstavio po cijelom svijetu, s ciljem: educirati ljude o ljudskom tijelu, što je prije bila privilegija liječnika, patologa.

bodies-izlozba.hr/o-izlozbi/

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunther_von_Hagens

 

This cover was recovered from the wreck of Seattle–Pasco cam flight (32). On 22 January 1931, mail plane struck a cliff at Baldy Mountain, near Washougal, Washington and the plane was not found until 29th January. All 250 pounds of mail, water & oil-soaked, were recovered, but pilot William Edward Case died. Mail was forwarded from Portland, Oregon on the 30tt January 1931.

 

- sent from - / VICTORIA / 1 PM / JAN 21 / 1931 / BRITISH COLUMBIA / WORK AND PROVIDE / WORK TO REDUCE / UNEMPLOYMENT / - slogan cancel - (Coutts - W350)

 

/ Delayed by plane crash / near Washougal Wn 1 - 22 - 31 / - 2 line handstamp in purple ink

 

Return Address:

Mrs. L. W. Toms / 2320 Windsor Road / Victoria, B.C.

 

- sent by - Edith Margaret (nee Gordon) Toms

(b. 28 March 1879 in Ruthwell, Dumfriesshire, Scotland – d. 16 March 1951 at age 71 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada) - she was the daughter of Robert William Gordon and Esther Smith (nee Gibson) Gordon. LINK to her obituary - www.newspapers.com/clip/93016501/obituary-for-edith-marga...

 

Her husband - Lewis William Toms

(b. 25 December 1857 in Combe, Devonshire, England – d. 15 May 1937 at age 79 in Oak Bay, British Columbia, Canada) - they were married - 2 November 1904 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. His occupation was civil engineer.

 

Her son - Lewis Gordon Yealmacott Toms

(b. 14 January 1907 in Victoria, British Columbia - d. 14 April 1988 at age 81 in Victoria, British Columbia) - occupation - chartered accountant.

 

Her son - Humphrey Nicholas Wolferstan Toms

(b. 28 June 1913 in Oak Bay, British Columbia, Canada – d. 9 August 1983 at age 70 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada) - his occupation - Plant Pathologist. (he never married)

 

Clipped from - Spokane Chronicle newspaper - Spokane, Washington - 30 January 1931 - Helmeted, Goggled Body Is Taken to Vancouver. VANCOUVER, Wash, Jan. 30. (VP) Death came probably instantaneously to Walter E. Case, physicians announced today, when his mail plane crashed into Bluff mountain near Washougal, eight days ago. An examination revealed that practically all the larger bones in his body were shattered, indicating his ship struck the base of the mountain with tremendous force. The body, however, was not mutilated. There was a severe bruise on the forehead where he had struck the Instrument board, and physicians said this blow alone probably would have caused death. The party which removed the body from the plane reached here this morning. The body was to be taken to Portland during the day. Pilot Walter E. Case never reached eastern Washington on his ill-fated flight a week ago yesterday morning with 250 pounds of east-bound air mail for Pasco. It was exactly 37 minutes from the time he left Swan Island airport at Portland until he crashed blindly into Bluff mountain, near Washougal, Wash. Crash Impact Halts Clack. The impact of the crash stopped the clock on the Instrument board of his Boeing 40-B-4 passenger-mail plane at 7:07 a. m. His flight report out of Swan Island shows a departure at 6:30 o'clock. Twice during the 37-minute death ride Case was in radio communication with ground forces at Portland, the last time being at 7:04 a. m, over Camas from where be reported he was turning back because of dense fog. Three minutes later he struck Bluff mountain, traveling 96 feet a second. Leon D. Cuddeback, vice president in charge of operations for the Varney Air Lines, Inc, definitely announced these facts after the rescue party had returned from the mountain early today. Blinded by the fog, Case did not realize the strong wind from the south was driving him north into the mountains as he circled tor a return to Portland. Four native boys of this community reached Case before tbs regular rescue party reached the peak of Bluff mountain, and immediately packed out to Washougal to spread the news. The boys did not disturb Cases body. They conducted a hurried inspection of the mail to determine the damage. A postal inspector recovered the 250 pounds of mail carried by the plane. All mail carried was found intact. LINK to a photo of a Boeing Type 40B-4 Mailplane - www.skytamer.com/Boeing_40B-4.html and en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Model_40

 

Addressed to - Miss C. K. Johnson, / on board / R. M. S. P. Atlantis (Royal Mail Steam Packet Atlantis) / Bridgetown, / Barbados, B. W. I / redirected to- / Port of Spain / Trinidad, B.W.I. (this was most likely a relative of Mrs. Edith Margaret (nee Gordon) Toms / her Grandmother's maiden name was Johnson / Johnston)

 

- arrived at - / BARBADOS / 8 AM / 15 FEB / 1931 / G.P.O. / - cds arrival backstamp

 

- left - / BARBADOS / 16 FE 31 . 1230 P.M. / G.P.O. / - cds transit

 

FORWARDED BY

Da Costa & Co., Ltd.

Commission & General Merchants

Steamship Agents and

Ship Brokers

BARBADOS, W. I. - boxed marking in purple ink

 

- arrived at - / THE ROYAL MAIL STEAM PACKET CO. / 18 FEB 31 / TRINIDAD, B. W. I. / - large three ring arrival cds in purple ink.

Phyllis Margery Anderson (1901-1957), pathologist, was born on 13 January 1901 at Petersham, New South Wales, daughter of James Robert Anderson, medical practitioner, and his wife Mary, née Kendall. She was educated at the Methodist Ladies' College, Burwood, and the University of Sydney (M.B., Ch.M., 1925), where she was a director of the Women's Union and a member of its debates committee.

 

In 1926 Phyllis Anderson became a pathologist at the Royal Alexandra Hospital for Children, and in 1927-40 was senior resident pathologist. She became closely involved with her patients and carried out research into children's diseases such as the gastroenteritis epidemic of 1928-29, von Gierke's glycogen-accumulation disease, and diphtheria, and was a regular contributor to the Medical Journal of Australia. By 1941 she was working under the auspices of the university's department of bacteriology, where in 1945 she became a teaching fellow and later a part-time lecturer; although reserved by nature, she was popular with her students. Some of her research at the university was concerned with malaria, tuberculosis, whooping-cough, and the development of techniques for taking swabs and growing cultures. She was partly responsible for the transition of the Rachel Forster Hospital for Women and Children into a teaching hospital.

 

Throughout her career Phyllis Anderson was also involved in the interests of medical women: in 1928 she was a founder of the Medical Women's Society of New South Wales; in 1935-49 she was an office-bearer and president in 1945-46. In 1938 she became a member of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians and a fellow in 1947. She represented medical women on the standing committee of Convocation of the University of Sydney in 1950-57 and was women's representative on the council of the State branch of the British Medical Association in 1951-54.

 

A lover of music and ballet, Phyllis Anderson was a member of the overseas advisory committee of the Royal Academy of Dancing. Widely read, she had 'an immense fund of kindness, sympathy and wisdom' as well as 'the habit of accuracy of thought and economy of speech'. A colleague claimed that 'many qualities contributed to the high standard of her work—a first-class intellect, scientific integrity and fierce personal honesty, human understanding, humility and a powerful sense of humour'.

 

She died of hypertensive cerebro-vascular disease in the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital on 29 November 1957. Unmarried, she had no family in Australia. Her estate was valued for probate at £49,814; she bequeathed £47,000 to the faculty of medicine, University of Sydney, from which the Phyllis Anderson Research Fellowship was established in 1959.

 

Source: Australian Dictionary of Biography.