The gardens of Eutin Castle in the district town of Eutin, with the Monopteros – a classical Greek-style rotunda – in the background, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany

 

Some background information:

 

The origins of the gardens of Eutin Castle date back to around the year 1500. By 1716, in line with the spirit of the time, luxurious French Baroque gardens were created. They were redesigned in the French style, becoming one of the largest Baroque gardens in the region alongside the gardens of Gottorf Castle. It was in this park in 1739 that Sophie Auguste Friederike of Anhalt-Zerbst, the niece of Friedrich August I and the future Russian czarina Catherine the Great, first met her unloved husband Karl Peter Ulrich of Holstein-Gottorf, the later Russian short-term czar Peter III.

 

However, just 60 years later, a major transformation and expansion began, turning it into an English landscape garden, which was becoming fashionable at the time – with numerous special trees from all over the world, winding paths, small temples, a waterfall, a Chinese bridge, and romantic vistas of the lake. The gardens have remained almost unchanged to this day, with the trees now having grown into magnificent giants. In a separate area, there is also a kitchen garden with an orangery. Today, the garden is a protected monument, recognized as one of the most significant garden art works in northern Germany.

 

Eutin Castle is a palace in the town of Eutin in the north German district of Eastern Holstein. It is both Eutin‘s cultural centre and nucleus. Taken together, this castle, Gottorf Castle and Glücksburg Castle form the most important group of courtly secular buildings in the Northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein.

 

Eutin Castle traces its origins to the bishop's manor of Gerold of Oldenburg. In 1156, he received these lands as a gift from the Adolf II, Count of Schauenburg and Holstein, who was also the founder of the city of Lübeck. The estate was expanded under Bishop Johannes of Tralau between 1260 and 1275, receiving a larger stone structure that now forms the core of the castle’s east wing. In 1293, the first castle chapel was built.

 

Little is known about the original design of the castle. It was likely a simple fortification of the time, surrounded by walls, with separate buildings that prioritized functionality over appearance. From 1277 to 1283 and again between 1299 and 1317, Bishop Burkhard of Serkem faced renewed disputes with Lübeck. As a result, the castle was expanded into a small fortress and was reinforced with a moat under his successors around 1350. From 1439 to 1486, additional structures were built in phases, including the core of the present gate tower. By the 16th century, the individual buildings had been joined together to form a modest Renaissance castle, giving rise to today’s irregular floor plan, particularly on the city-facing front side.

 

With the Reformation, the dukes of Schleswig-Holstein-Gottorf gained control of Eutin in 1586 and provided the Prince-Bishops. During the Thirty Years’ War, the bishopric faced the threat of secularization, but Johann X, at that time prince-bishop of Lübeck, managed to prevent this by securing the prince-bishopric’s connection to the House of Gottorf. This alliance, however, caused ongoing conflicts with the Danish monarchy, culminating in 1705 with a Danish occupation and partial destruction of the castle. However, in 1689, both castle and town had already suffered significant damage due to a fire.

 

The palace reached its peak in the 18th and 19th centuries. Between the reigns of Christian August and Friedrich August I, it transformed into a Baroque princely court, and Eutin became a social center in the region. During this time, significant extensions were made to the castle, its interiors, and the gardens. Eutin became one of the few grand Baroque residences in Schleswig and Holstein. These works were overseen by the Swedish-Pomeranian court architect Rudolph Matthias Dallin from 1717 to 1727. Plans for an extensive reconstruction of the castle were considered but never realized due to financial constraints.

 

In 1773, the Lübeck Prince-Bishops gained the rank and title of Duke of Oldenburg due to the unification of their territory with Oldenburg and Delmenhorst under the Treaty of Zarskoje Selo. Friedrich August ruled from Eutin until his death in 1785. Following the secularization of the Bishopric of Lübeck in 1803, his successors moved their residence to Oldenburg Castle. Eutin, now part of an Oldenburg exclave, was used only as a summer residence but retained its prominence. During this time, the outdated Baroque garden was transformed into a modern landscape park.

 

In the early 19th century, Eutin earned the reputation of being the "Weimar of the North," thanks to the influence of artists like Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein, Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, and Franz Anton von Weber, supported by the patronage of Duke Peter I. Around 1820, plans were made to redesign the outer castle courtyard in a Neoclassical style. The old courtyard was demolished, and an open palace square was created in 1828. But also the castle itself was given a Neoclassical interior makeover and an additional floor by 1845.

 

Until the abdication of Friedrich August II in 1918, Eutin remained a regular summer residence for the ducal family. After the abdication, the castle was no longer inhabited, and a museum was established within its walls. Both the city and the castle survived both World Wars unscathed. Toward the end of World War II, a wave of refugees from the eastern territories of Germany arrived, and the empty castle was repurposed as a refugee camp. At times, hundreds of people lived in the castle under dire conditions, with only four toilets in the entire building.

 

After extensive restoration, the castle was partially reopened to the public in 1957. It was also used as a filming location for parts of the 1972 movie "Cabaret" starring Liza Minnelli. Further renovations became necessary in the 1980s, with financial support from the state and federal government. In 1992, the ducal family transferred the castle and gardens to the newly established Eutin Castle Foundation. With the mission to preserve, open, and present the castle and its gardens, funded by state grants and self-generated income, the foundation also promotes education, research, and documentation.

 

Eutin is the capital of the Northern German district of Eastern Holstein in thd German state of Schleswig-Holstein. The town has about 17,300 inhabitants, is located about 40 km (25 miles) north of the city of Lübeck and nestles between three lakes: the Great Eutiner Lake, the Small Eutiner Lake and the Sibbersdorfer Lake. Eutin is the birthplace of the famous composer and pianist Carl Maria von Weber, who was born there in 1786.

 

In the 7th century, a settlement was founded by the Slavic Obotrites tribe that built a wooden castle on Pheasant Island in the Great Eutiner Lake. The Obotrites named their new village "Utin". In the 12th century, the settlement was populated by Dutch settlers and already in 1156, Eutin became a market town. Eutin’s further history is closely related to the one of its castle.

 

Every year, Eutin hosts two festivals: the Eutiner Festspiele in summer, where operas are performed in an open-air theatre in the gardens of Eutin Castle, and the Blues Fesitival in spring, which takes place in the town centre. Due to its proximity to the Baltic Sea resorts along the Bay of Lübeck, which have seen increased demand partly due to the trend toward domestic tourism, Eutin has also come into focus for the tourism industry in recent years.

I am a civic activist for Progressive causes and oppose the Corporate State promoted by the fascist “tea party” RepUGLYcans who act as pimps for greedy multi-national corporations, and I oppose police brutality and domestic spying to maintain white male privilege. Business As Usual is destroying our environment and wrecking our economy for most Americans. Politics As Usual is destroying our representative democracy. From the desk you see in this photo, I sign petitions to our elected leaders and representatives, I submit comments to government proposals online and in person, and I attend public meetings of civic groups and government agencies and often speak out when the public is asked for comments. Sometimes I speak out whether asked or not because it is my RIGHT as an American citizen.

 

The most important single issue for 2015 is Climate Change and the things that will make or break it: energy use, transportation, land use, and agriculture. If we lose on climate Change, nothing else will matter including health, education, reproductive rights, Internet neutrality, election reform, LGBT rights, women's rights, world peace, financial reform, taxation, Social Security, Medicare, veterans’ benefits, endangered species, nutrition, infrastructure, space exploration, jobs, or anything else. We must stop the Keystone XL pipeline and the TPP and TAFTA "free" trade agreements. The environmental damage caused by the extraction, processing, and transport of Canadian tar sands oil and those transnational trade agreements is far worse than temporarily losing a compromise healthcare payment plan what is mistakenly called "Obamacare" (but actually written by the conservative Heritage Foundation in the 1980's).

 

We cannot let the fight for Obamacare, abortion, gun control, or any “people issues” undermine the more important fight against environmental threats that will physically hurt our nation for centuries to come. We may not see the worst damage for decades, but the decision point is NOW. Future Americans could witness sea level rise that will largely cover four states (Florida, Louisiana, Delaware, and Rhode Island), and our most productive farmland in the Southwest and Midwest will be replaced by desert if we fail to act now.

 

In response to Global Warming and other environmental problems, we need a massive World War II sized industrial effort to change our energy use from dependence on fossil fuels to renewable sources; our transportation to prioritize walking, biking, urban mass transit, and both intercity passenger and freight rail service powered by electricity rather than continued dependence on cars and trucks; sub-urban sprawl superseded by walkable, human-scaled, multi-use Smart Growth; and industrial factory farming replaced by organic farming. As a desirable secondary benefit, this will create lots of jobs, but the primary benefit is the creation of infrastructure to support cleaner and more sustainable energy use, transportation, and both urban and rural land use.

 

There is one thing that the Bush 2.0 Administration’s Iraq War taught us: our government and economy CAN spare an extra 200 to 300 billion dollars PER YEAR over and beyond regular expenditures even without getting any benefit and do so for a decade. This time we must invest that money into things that will help fight climate change by rebuilding our transportation and energy infrastructure into something that will sustain our economy without wrecking our environment. The American people will not be motivated by small plans that do not stir their imagination but will back BIG plans that benefit all of us.

 

In June 2020, after experiencing a devastating spring due to COVID, New York State announced that certain businesses could begin partially opening again. New York City’s response included a program called Open Restaurants, which allowed restaurants to use sidewalks and parking spaces for outdoor, socially distant dining. Owners quickly built temporary enclosures in the streets in front of their businesses to try and recover from months of shutdown. Small stretches of Brooklyn in early 2021 displayed the variety and feel of these enclosures. Hopefully, the Open Restaurants initiative will help these businesses to survive and may even lead to a more permanent reorienting of streets to prioritize people over cars.

Biennalist :

Biennalist is an Art Format commenting on active biennials and managed cultural events through artworks.Biennalist takes the thematics of the biennales and similar events like festivals and conferences seriously, questioning the established structures of the staged art events in order to contribute to the debate, which they wish to generate.

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

links about Biennalist :

 

Thierry Geoffroy/Colonel:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thierry_Geoffroy

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Room_(art)

 

www.emergencyrooms.org/formats.html

 

www.colonel.dk/

 

—--Biennale from wikipedia —--

 

The Venice International Film Festival is part of the Venice Biennale. The famous Golden Lion is awarded to the best film screening at the competition.

Biennale (Italian: [bi.enˈnaːle]), Italian for "biennial" or "every other year", is any event that happens every two years. It is most commonly used within the art world to describe large-scale international contemporary art exhibitions. As such the term was popularised by Venice Biennale, which was first held in 1895. Since the 1990s, the terms "biennale" and "biennial" have been interchangeably used in a more generic way - to signify a large-scale international survey show of contemporary art that recurs at regular intervals but not necessarily biannual (such as triennials, Documenta, Skulptur Projekte Münster).[1] The phrase has also been used for other artistic events, such as the "Biennale de Paris", "Kochi-Muziris Biennale", Berlinale (for the Berlin International Film Festival) and Viennale (for Vienna's international film festival).

Characteristics[edit]

According to author Federica Martini, what is at stake in contemporary biennales is the diplomatic/international relations potential as well as urban regeneration plans. Besides being mainly focused on the present (the “here and now” where the cultural event takes place and their effect of "spectacularisation of the everyday"), because of their site-specificity cultural events may refer back to,[who?] produce or frame the history of the site and communities' collective memory.[2]

 

The Great Exhibition in The Crystal Palace in Hyde Park, London, in 1851, the first attempt to condense the representation of the world within a unitary exhibition space.

A strong and influent symbol of biennales and of large-scale international exhibitions in general is the Crystal Palace, the gigantic and futuristic London architecture that hosted the Great Exhibition in 1851. According to philosopher Peter Sloterdijk,[3][page needed] the Crystal Palace is the first attempt to condense the representation of the world in a unitary exhibition space, where the main exhibit is society itself in an a-historical, spectacular condition. The Crystal Palace main motives were the affirmation of British economic and national leadership and the creation of moments of spectacle. In this respect, 19th century World fairs provided a visual crystallization of colonial culture and were, at the same time, forerunners of contemporary theme parks.

The Venice Biennale as an archetype[edit]

 

The structure of the Venice Biennale in 2005 with an international exhibition and the national pavilions.

The Venice Biennale, a periodical large-scale cultural event founded in 1895, served as an archetype of the biennales. Meant to become a World Fair focused on contemporary art, the Venice Biennale used as a pretext the wedding anniversary of the Italian king and followed up to several national exhibitions organised after Italy unification in 1861. The Biennale immediately put forth issues of city marketing, cultural tourism and urban regeneration, as it was meant to reposition Venice on the international cultural map after the crisis due to the end of the Grand Tour model and the weakening of the Venetian school of painting. Furthermore, the Gardens where the Biennale takes place were an abandoned city area that needed to be re-functionalised. In cultural terms, the Biennale was meant to provide on a biennial basis a platform for discussing contemporary art practices that were not represented in fine arts museums at the time. The early Biennale model already included some key points that are still constitutive of large-scale international art exhibitions today: a mix of city marketing, internationalism, gentrification issues and destination culture, and the spectacular, large scale of the event.

Biennials after the 1990s[edit]

The situation of biennials has changed in the contemporary context: while at its origin in 1895 Venice was a unique cultural event, but since the 1990s hundreds of biennials have been organized across the globe. Given the ephemeral and irregular nature of some biennials, there is little consensus on the exact number of biennials in existence at any given time.[citation needed] Furthermore, while Venice was a unique agent in the presentation of contemporary art, since the 1960s several museums devoted to contemporary art are exhibiting the contemporary scene on a regular basis. Another point of difference concerns 19th century internationalism in the arts, that was brought into question by post-colonial debates and criticism of the contemporary art “ethnic marketing”, and also challenged the Venetian and World Fair’s national representation system. As a consequence of this, Eurocentric tendency to implode the whole word in an exhibition space, which characterises both the Crystal Palace and the Venice Biennale, is affected by the expansion of the artistic geographical map to scenes traditionally considered as marginal. The birth of the Havana Biennial in 1984 is widely considered an important counterpoint to the Venetian model for its prioritization of artists working in the Global South and curatorial rejection of the national pavilion model.

International biennales[edit]

In the term's most commonly used context of major recurrent art exhibitions:

Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, South Australia

Asian Art Biennale, in Taichung, Taiwan (National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts)

Athens Biennale, in Athens, Greece

Bienal de Arte Paiz, in Guatemala City, Guatemala[4]

Arts in Marrakech (AiM) International Biennale (Arts in Marrakech Festival)

Bamako Encounters, a biennale of photography in Mali

Bat-Yam International Biennale of Landscape Urbanism

Beijing Biennale

Berlin Biennale (contemporary art biennale, to be distinguished from Berlinale, which is a film festival)

Bergen Assembly (triennial for contemporary art in Bergen, Norway)www.bergenassembly.no

Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture, in Shenzhen and Hong Kong, China

Bienal de Arte de Ponce in Ponce, Puerto Rico

Biënnale van België, Biennial of Belgium, Belgium

BiennaleOnline Online biennial exhibition of contemporary art from the most promising emerging artists.

Biennial of Hawaii Artists

Biennale de la Biche, the smallest biennale in the world held at deserted island near Guadeloupe, French overseas region[5][6]

Biwako Biennale [ja], in Shiga, Japan

La Biennale de Montreal

Biennale of Luanda : Pan-African Forum for the Culture of Peace,[7] Angola

Boom Festival, international music and culture festival in Idanha-a-Nova, Portugal

Bucharest Biennale in Bucharest, Romania

Bushwick Biennial, in Bushwick, Brooklyn, New York

Canakkale Biennial, in Canakkale, Turkey

Cerveira International Art Biennial, Vila Nova de Cerveira, Portugal [8]

Changwon Sculpture Biennale in Changwon, South Korea

Dakar Biennale, also called Dak'Art, biennale in Dakar, Senegal

Documenta, contemporary art exhibition held every five years in Kassel, Germany

Estuaire (biennale), biennale in Nantes and Saint-Nazaire, France

EVA International, biennial in Limerick, Republic of Ireland

Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art, in Gothenburg, Sweden[9]

Greater Taipei Contemporary Art Biennial, in Taipei, Taiwan

Gwangju Biennale, Asia's first and most prestigious contemporary art biennale

Havana biennial, in Havana, Cuba

Helsinki Biennial, in Helsinki, Finland

Herzliya Biennial For Contemporary Art, in Herzliya, Israel

Incheon Women Artists' Biennale, in Incheon, South Korea

Iowa Biennial, in Iowa, USA

Istanbul Biennial, in Istanbul, Turkey

International Roaming Biennial of Tehran, in Tehran and Istanbul

Jakarta Biennale, in Jakarta, Indonesia

Jerusalem Biennale, in Jerusalem, Israel

Jogja Biennale, in Yogyakarta, Indonesia

Karachi Biennale, in Karachi, Pakistan

Keelung Harbor Biennale, in Keelung, Taiwan

Kochi-Muziris Biennale, largest art exhibition in India, in Kochi, Kerala, India

Kortrijk Design Biennale Interieur, in Kortrijk, Belgium

Kobe Biennale, in Japan

Kuandu Biennale, in Taipei, Taiwan

Lagos Biennial, in Lagos, Nigeria[10]

Light Art Biennale Austria, in Austria

Liverpool Biennial, in Liverpool, UK

Lofoten International Art Festival [no] (LIAF), on the Lofoten archipelago, Norway[11]

Manifesta, European Biennale of contemporary art in different European cities

Mediations Biennale, in Poznań, Poland

Melbourne International Biennial 1999

Mediterranean Biennale in Sakhnin 2013

MOMENTA Biennale de l'image [fr] (formerly known as Le Mois de la Photo à Montréal), in Montreal, Canada

MOMENTUM [no], in Moss, Norway[12]

Moscow Biennale, in Moscow, Russia

Munich Biennale, new opera and music-theatre in even-numbered years

Mykonos Biennale

Nakanojo Biennale[13]

NGV Triennial, contemporary art exhibition held every three years at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia

October Salon – Belgrade Biennale [sr], organised by the Cultural Center of Belgrade [sr], in Belgrade, Serbia[14]

OSTEN Biennial of Drawing Skopje, North Macedonia[15]

Biennale de Paris

Riga International Biennial of Contemporary Art (RIBOCA), in Riga, Latvia[16]

São Paulo Art Biennial, in São Paulo, Brazil

SCAPE Public Art Christchurch Biennial in Christchurch, New Zealand[17]

Prospect New Orleans

Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism

Sequences, in Reykjavík, Iceland[18]

Shanghai Biennale

Sharjah Biennale, in Sharjah, UAE

Singapore Biennale, held in various locations across the city-state island of Singapore

Screen City Biennial, in Stavanger, Norway

Biennale of Sydney

Taipei Biennale, in Taipei, Taiwan

Taiwan Arts Biennale, in Taichung, Taiwan (National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts)

Taiwan Film Biennale, in Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, U.S.A.

Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art [el], in Thessaloniki, Greece[19]

Dream city, produced by ART Rue Association in Tunisia

Vancouver Biennale

Visayas Islands Visual Arts Exhibition and Conference (VIVA ExCon) in the Philippines [20]

Venice Biennale, in Venice, Italy, which includes:

Venice Biennale of Contemporary Art

Venice Biennale of Architecture

Venice Film Festival

Vladivostok biennale of Visual Arts, in Vladivostok, Russia

Whitney Biennial, hosted by the Whitney Museum of American Art, in New York City, NY, USA

Web Biennial, produced with teams from Athens, Berlin and Istanbul.

West Africa Architecture Biennale,[21] Virtual in Lagos, Nigeria.

WRO Biennale, in Wrocław, Poland[22]

Music Biennale Zagreb

[SHIFT:ibpcpa] The International Biennale of Performance, Collaborative and Participatory Arts, Nomadic, International, Scotland, UK.

 

—---Venice Biennale from wikipedia —

 

The Venice Biennale (/ˌbiːɛˈnɑːleɪ, -li/; Italian: La Biennale di Venezia) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy by the Biennale Foundation.[2][3][4] The biennale has been organised every year since 1895, which makes it the oldest of its kind. The main exhibition held in Castello, in the halls of the Arsenale and Biennale Gardens, alternates between art and architecture (hence the name biennale; biennial).[5][6][7] The other events hosted by the Foundation—spanning theatre, music, and dance—are held annually in various parts of Venice, whereas the Venice Film Festival takes place at the Lido.[8]

Organization[edit]

Art Biennale

Art Biennale

International Art Exhibition

1895

Even-numbered years (since 2022)

Venice Biennale of Architecture

International Architecture Exhibition

1980

Odd-numbered years (since 2021)

Biennale Musica

International Festival of Contemporary Music

1930

Annually (Sep/Oct)

Biennale Teatro

International Theatre Festival

1934

Annually (Jul/Aug)

Venice Film Festival

Venice International Film Festival

1932

Annually (Aug/Sep)

Venice Dance Biennale

International Festival of Contemporary Dance

1999

Annually (June; biennially 2010–16)

  

International Kids' Carnival

2009

Annually (during Carnevale)

  

History

1895–1947

On April 19, 1893, the Venetian City Council passed a resolution to set up an biennial exhibition of Italian Art ("Esposizione biennale artistica nazionale") to celebrate the silver anniversary of King Umberto I and Margherita of Savoy.[11]

A year later, the council decreed "to adopt a 'by invitation' system; to reserve a section of the Exhibition for foreign artists too; to admit works by uninvited Italian artists, as selected by a jury."[12]

The first Biennale, "I Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte della Città di Venezia (1st International Art Exhibition of the City of Venice)" (although originally scheduled for April 22, 1894) was opened on April 30, 1895, by the Italian King and Queen, Umberto I and Margherita di Savoia. The first exhibition was seen by 224,000 visitors.

The event became increasingly international in the first decades of the 20th century: from 1907 on, several countries installed national pavilions at the exhibition, with the first being from Belgium. In 1910 the first internationally well-known artists were displayed: a room dedicated to Gustav Klimt, a one-man show for Renoir, a retrospective of Courbet. A work by Picasso "Family of Saltimbanques" was removed from the Spanish salon in the central Palazzo because it was feared that its novelty might shock the public. By 1914 seven pavilions had been established: Belgium (1907), Hungary (1909), Germany (1909), Great Britain (1909), France (1912), and Russia (1914).

During World War I, the 1916 and 1918 events were cancelled.[13] In 1920 the post of mayor of Venice and president of the Biennale was split. The new secretary general, Vittorio Pica brought about the first presence of avant-garde art, notably Impressionists and Post-Impressionists.

1922 saw an exhibition of sculpture by African artists. Between the two World Wars, many important modern artists had their work exhibited there. In 1928 the Istituto Storico d'Arte Contemporanea (Historical Institute of Contemporary Art) opened, which was the first nucleus of archival collections of the Biennale. In 1930 its name was changed into Historical Archive of Contemporary Art.

In 1930, the Biennale was transformed into an Ente Autonomo (Autonomous Board) by Royal Decree with law no. 33 of 13-1-1930. Subsequently, the control of the Biennale passed from the Venice city council to the national Fascist government under Benito Mussolini. This brought on a restructuring, an associated financial boost, as well as a new president, Count Giuseppe Volpi di Misurata. Three entirely new events were established, including the Biennale Musica in 1930, also referred to as International Festival of Contemporary Music; the Venice Film Festival in 1932, which they claim as the first film festival in history,[14] also referred to as Venice International Film Festival; and the Biennale Theatro in 1934, also referred to as International Theatre Festival.

In 1933 the Biennale organized an exhibition of Italian art abroad. From 1938, Grand Prizes were awarded in the art exhibition section.

During World War II, the activities of the Biennale were interrupted: 1942 saw the last edition of the events. The Film Festival restarted in 1946, the Music and Theatre festivals were resumed in 1947, and the Art Exhibition in 1948.[15]

1948–1973[edit]

The Art Biennale was resumed in 1948 with a major exhibition of a recapitulatory nature. The Secretary General, art historian Rodolfo Pallucchini, started with the Impressionists and many protagonists of contemporary art including Chagall, Klee, Braque, Delvaux, Ensor, and Magritte, as well as a retrospective of Picasso's work. Peggy Guggenheim was invited to exhibit her collection, later to be permanently housed at Ca' Venier dei Leoni.

1949 saw the beginning of renewed attention to avant-garde movements in European—and later worldwide—movements in contemporary art. Abstract expressionism was introduced in the 1950s, and the Biennale is credited with importing Pop Art into the canon of art history by awarding the top prize to Robert Rauschenberg in 1964.[16] From 1948 to 1972, Italian architect Carlo Scarpa did a series of remarkable interventions in the Biennale's exhibition spaces.

In 1954 the island San Giorgio Maggiore provided the venue for the first Japanese Noh theatre shows in Europe. 1956 saw the selection of films following an artistic selection and no longer based upon the designation of the participating country. The 1957 Golden Lion went to Satyajit Ray's Aparajito which introduced Indian cinema to the West.

1962 included Arte Informale at the Art Exhibition with Jean Fautrier, Hans Hartung, Emilio Vedova, and Pietro Consagra. The 1964 Art Exhibition introduced continental Europe to Pop Art (The Independent Group had been founded in Britain in 1952). The American Robert Rauschenberg was the first American artist to win the Gran Premio, and the youngest to date.

The student protests of 1968 also marked a crisis for the Biennale. Student protests hindered the opening of the Biennale. A resulting period of institutional changes opened and ending with a new Statute in 1973. In 1969, following the protests, the Grand Prizes were abandoned. These resumed in 1980 for the Mostra del Cinema and in 1986 for the Art Exhibition.[17]

In 1972, for the first time, a theme was adopted by the Biennale, called "Opera o comportamento" ("Work or Behaviour").

Starting from 1973 the Music Festival was no longer held annually. During the year in which the Mostra del Cinema was not held, there was a series of "Giornate del cinema italiano" (Days of Italian Cinema) promoted by sectorial bodies in campo Santa Margherita, in Venice.[18]

1974–1998[edit]

1974 saw the start of the four-year presidency of Carlo Ripa di Meana. The International Art Exhibition was not held (until it was resumed in 1976). Theatre and cinema events were held in October 1974 and 1975 under the title Libertà per il Cile (Freedom for Chile)—a major cultural protest against the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.

On 15 November 1977, the so-called Dissident Biennale (in reference to the dissident movement in the USSR) opened. Because of the ensuing controversies within the Italian left wing parties, president Ripa di Meana resigned at the end of the year.[19]

In 1979 the new presidency of Giuseppe Galasso (1979-1982) began. The principle was laid down whereby each of the artistic sectors was to have a permanent director to organise its activity.

In 1980, the Architecture section of the Biennale was set up. The director, Paolo Portoghesi, opened the Corderie dell'Arsenale to the public for the first time. At the Mostra del Cinema, the awards were brought back into being (between 1969 and 1979, the editions were non-competitive). In 1980, Achille Bonito Oliva and Harald Szeemann introduced "Aperto", a section of the exhibition designed to explore emerging art. Italian art historian Giovanni Carandente directed the 1988 and 1990 editions. A three-year gap was left afterwards to make sure that the 1995 edition would coincide with the 100th anniversary of the Biennale.[13]

The 1993 edition was directed by Achille Bonito Oliva. In 1995, Jean Clair was appointed to be the Biennale's first non-Italian director of visual arts[20] while Germano Celant served as director in 1997.

For the Centenary in 1995, the Biennale promoted events in every sector of its activity: the 34th Festival del Teatro, the 46th art exhibition, the 46th Festival di Musica, the 52nd Mostra del Cinema.[21]

1999–present[edit]

In 1999 and 2001, Harald Szeemann directed two editions in a row (48th & 49th) bringing in a larger representation of artists from Asia and Eastern Europe and more young artists than usual and expanded the show into several newly restored spaces of the Arsenale.

In 1999 a new sector was created for live shows: DMT (Dance Music Theatre).

The 50th edition, 2003, directed by Francesco Bonami, had a record number of seven co-curators involved, including Hans Ulrich Obrist, Catherine David, Igor Zabel, Hou Hanru and Massimiliano Gioni.

The 51st edition of the Biennale opened in June 2005, curated, for the first time by two women, Maria de Corral and Rosa Martinez. De Corral organized "The Experience of Art" which included 41 artists, from past masters to younger figures. Rosa Martinez took over the Arsenale with "Always a Little Further." Drawing on "the myth of the romantic traveler" her exhibition involved 49 artists, ranging from the elegant to the profane.

In 2007, Robert Storr became the first director from the United States to curate the Biennale (the 52nd), with a show entitled Think with the Senses – Feel with the Mind. Art in the Present Tense.

Swedish curator Daniel Birnbaum was artistic director of the 2009 edition entitled "Fare Mondi // Making Worlds".

The 2011 edition was curated by Swiss curator Bice Curiger entitled "ILLUMInazioni – ILLUMInations".

The Biennale in 2013 was curated by the Italian Massimiliano Gioni. His title and theme, Il Palazzo Enciclopedico / The Encyclopedic Palace, was adopted from an architectural model by the self-taught Italian-American artist Marino Auriti. Auriti's work, The Encyclopedic Palace of the World was lent by the American Folk Art Museum and exhibited in the first room of the Arsenale for the duration of the biennale. For Gioni, Auriti's work, "meant to house all worldly knowledge, bringing together the greatest discoveries of the human race, from the wheel to the satellite," provided an analogous figure for the "biennale model itself...based on the impossible desire to concentrate the infinite worlds of contemporary art in a single place: a task that now seems as dizzyingly absurd as Auriti's dream."[22]

Curator Okwui Enwezor was responsible for the 2015 edition.[23] He was the first African-born curator of the biennial. As a catalyst for imagining different ways of imagining multiple desires and futures Enwezor commissioned special projects and programs throughout the Biennale in the Giardini. This included a Creative Time Summit, e-flux journal's SUPERCOMMUNITY, Gulf Labor Coalition, The Invisible Borders Trans-African Project and Abounaddara.[24][25]

The 2017 Biennale, titled Viva Arte Viva, was directed by French curator Christine Macel who called it an "exhibition inspired by humanism".[26] German artist Franz Erhard Walter won the Golden Lion for best artist, while Carolee Schneemann was awarded a posthumous Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement.[27]

The 2019 Biennale, titled May You Live In Interesting Times, was directed by American-born curator Ralph Rugoff.[28]

The 2022 edition was curated by Italian curator Cecilia Alemani entitled "The Milk of Dreams" after a book by British-born Mexican surrealist painter Leonora Carrington.[29]

The Biennale has an attendance today of over 500,000 visitors.[30][31][32]

Role in the art market[edit]

When the Venice Biennale was founded in 1895, one of its main goals was to establish a new market for contemporary art. Between 1942 and 1968 a sales office assisted artists in finding clients and selling their work,[33] a service for which it charged 10% commission. Sales remained an intrinsic part of the biennale until 1968, when a sales ban was enacted. An important practical reason why the focus on non-commodities has failed to decouple Venice from the market is that the biennale itself lacks the funds to produce, ship and install these large-scale works. Therefore, the financial involvement of dealers is widely regarded as indispensable;[16] as they regularly front the funding for production of ambitious projects.[34] Furthermore, every other year the Venice Biennale coincides with nearby Art Basel, the world's prime commercial fair for modern and contemporary art. Numerous galleries with artists on show in Venice usually bring work by the same artists to Basel.[35]

Central Pavilion and Arsenale[edit]

The formal Biennale is based at a park, the Giardini. The Giardini includes a large exhibition hall that houses a themed exhibition curated by the Biennale's director.

Initiated in 1980, the Aperto began as a fringe event for younger artists and artists of a national origin not represented by the permanent national pavilions. This is usually staged in the Arsenale and has become part of the formal biennale programme. In 1995 there was no Aperto so a number of participating countries hired venues to show exhibitions of emerging artists. From 1999, both the international exhibition and the Aperto were held as one exhibition, held both at the Central Pavilion and the Arsenale. Also in 1999, a $1 million renovation transformed the Arsenale area into a cluster of renovated shipyards, sheds and warehouses, more than doubling the Arsenale's exhibition space of previous years.[36]

A special edition of the 54th Biennale was held at Padiglione Italia of Torino Esposizioni – Sala Nervi (December 2011 – February 2012) for the 150th Anniversary of Italian Unification. The event was directed by Vittorio Sgarbi.[37]

National pavilions[edit]

Main article: National pavilions at the Venice Biennale

The Giardini houses 30 permanent national pavilions.[13] Alongside the Central Pavilion, built in 1894 and later restructured and extended several times, the Giardini are occupied by a further 29 pavilions built at different periods by the various countries participating in the Biennale. The first nation to build a pavilion was Belgium in 1907, followed by Germany, Britain and Hungary in 1909.[13] The pavilions are the property of the individual countries and are managed by their ministries of culture.[38]

Countries not owning a pavilion in the Giardini are exhibited in other venues across Venice. The number of countries represented is still growing. In 2005, China was showing for the first time, followed by the African Pavilion and Mexico (2007), the United Arab Emirates (2009), and India (2011).[39]

The assignment of the permanent pavilions was largely dictated by the international politics of the 1930s and the Cold War. There is no single format to how each country manages their pavilion, established and emerging countries represented at the biennial maintain and fund their pavilions in different ways.[38] While pavilions are usually government-funded, private money plays an increasingly large role; in 2015, the pavilions of Iraq, Ukraine and Syria were completely privately funded.[40] The pavilion for Great Britain is always managed by the British Council[41] while the United States assigns the responsibility to a public gallery chosen by the Department of State which, since 1985, has been the Peggy Guggenheim Collection.[42] The countries at the Arsenale that request a temporary exhibition space pay a hire fee per square meter.[38]

In 2011, the countries were Albania, Andorra, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bangladesh, Belarus, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, China, Congo, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cuba, Cyprus, Czechia and Slovakia, Denmark, Egypt, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Haiti, Hungary, Iceland, India, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Mexico, Moldova, Montenegro, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, San Marino, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Singapore, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Syrian Arab Republic, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States of America, Uruguay, Venezuela, Wales and Zimbabwe. In addition to this there are two collective pavilions: Central Asia Pavilion and Istituto Italo-Latino Americano. In 2013, eleven new participant countries developed national pavilions for the Biennale: Angola, Bosnia and Herzegowina, the Bahamas, Bahrain, the Ivory Coast, Kosovo, Kuwait, the Maldives, Paraguay, Tuvalu, and the Holy See. In 2015, five new participant countries developed pavilions for the Biennale: Grenada,[43] Republic of Mozambique, Republic of Seychelles, Mauritius and Mongolia. In 2017, three countries participated in the Art Biennale for the first time: Antigua & Barbuda, Kiribati, and Nigeria.[44] In 2019, four countries participated in the Art Biennale for the first time: Ghana, Madagascar, Malaysia, and Pakistan.[45]

As well as the national pavilions there are countless "unofficial pavilions"[46] that spring up every year. In 2009 there were pavilions such as the Gabon Pavilion and a Peckham pavilion. In 2017 The Diaspora Pavilion bought together 19 artists from complex, multinational backgrounds to challenge the prevalence of the nation state at the Biennale.[47]

The Internet Pavilion (Italian: Padiglione Internet) was founded in 2009 as a platform for activists and artists working in new media.[48][49][50] Subsequent editions were held since,[51] 2013,[51] in conjunction with the biennale.[52]

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وینسVenetsiya

art umjetnost umění kunst taideτέχνη művészetList ealaínarte māksla menasartiKunst sztuka artăumenie umetnost konstcelfקונסטարվեստincəsənətশিল্প艺术(yìshù)藝術 (yìshù)ხელოვნებაकलाkos duabアートಕಲೆសិល្បៈ미(misul)ສິນລະປະകലकलाအတတ်ပညာकलाකලාවகலைఆర్ట్ศิลปะ آرٹsan'atnghệ thuậtفن (fan)אומנותهنرsanat artist

venice biennale Venezia Venedig biennalen Bienal_de_Venecia Venise Venecia Bienalo Bienal Biënnale Venetië Veneza Μπιενάλε της Βενετίας ヴェネツィ ア・ビエンナーレ 威尼斯双年展 Venedik Bienali Venetsian biennaali Wenecji biennial #venicebiennale #venicebiennial biennalism

Veneziako Venecija Venècia Venetië Veneetsia Venetsia VenedigΒ ενετία Velence Feneyjar Venice Venēcija Venezja Venezia Wenecja VenezaVeneția Venetsiya Benátky Benetke Fenisוועניס Վենետիկ ভেনি স威尼斯 威尼斯 ვენეციისવે નિસवेनिसヴ ェネツィアವೆನಿಸ್베니스வெனிஸ்వెనిస్เวนิซوینس Venetsiya Italy italia

 

--------key words

headband protest fashion protestfashion artistic intervention performance artformat action installation critical critic critique institutional critic choregraphy scenography

#venicebiennale #biennalist #artformat #biennale #artbiennale #biennial

#BiennaleArte2024 #artformat

Stephen J. Ubl, President and CEO, PhRMA speaks to Marilyn Serafini, Health Care Policy Consultant during a policy briefing entitled “Prioritizing Patients: A Discussion on Outcomes-Based Care” sponsored by The Value Collaborative, PhRMA, and The Hill at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, June 13, 2017.

adopt a mindset that prioritizes the elements of life that are truly valuable. While billionaires often have significant wealth, the essence of living like one is not about accumulating money but rather about focusing on what brings genuine richness to life. This includes cherishing time, seeking meaningful experiences, and nurturing meaningful relationships, all of which contribute to a fulfilling and prosperous life beyond material wealth. It's a reminder that we can lead a life of abundance by embracing these non-monetary treasures.

La Plata street grid is the master plan of planning engineer Pedro Benoit in 1881.

 

The city has an obelisk commemorating his city plan.

 

These two plaques are attached at the base of the obelisk.

 

The Obelisk of La Plata is a was inaugurated 19 November, 1932, on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the city.

 

The obelisk is located in Plaza San Martín at the corner of 6 and 50 and diagonal 80.

 

The monument 1947 plaque is a tribute from the Engineers Center of the Province of Buenos Aires to the engineer (Pedro Benoit) who oversaw the layout and construction of the city of La Plata.

 

The 1969 plaque is a tribute from La Unión Administradores de Inmuebles -

The Property Administrators Union (UADI) was attached during Engineering Week 1969 anniversary date 19 November.

 

It was founded 21 December, 1983 with the purpose of achieving the union of natural and legal persons dedicated to the administration of buildings in horizontal property, fields and real estate in general, for the purpose of good common and prioritize the activity. OK.

 

A gentle curve of architectural elegance defines this photo of the grand staircase at The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C. The soft arching forms and golden-toned railings create a visual harmony that feels both modern and timeless. Photographed in warm ambient light, the scene captures the intersection of architecture, art, and atmosphere.

 

The staircase flows upward like a ribbon, inviting visitors into the museum’s upper gallery spaces. Its cream-colored balustrade contrasts subtly with the brass handrails and the charcoal-toned carpeted steps. There's a quiet grace to the ascent—each element has been designed not just for function, but to contribute to the viewer’s sense of spatial rhythm. The warm wood borders of the steps peek out from beneath the runner, adding a grounding detail to the otherwise airy palette.

 

Light gently illuminates the curved wall, creating a soft gradient that mimics the arc of the staircase itself. At every step, the architecture seems to whisper instead of shout—offering a moment of calm before you turn the corner into the next artistic experience. The subtle lighting also emphasizes the smooth plaster texture of the walls, revealing the care and craftsmanship that went into their creation.

 

Just beneath the sweep of the upper curve, part of a vivid, abstract painting emerges—an echo of the color and creativity housed throughout The Phillips Collection. The composition of this photograph is deliberate: the stairway leads the eye naturally into the world of art, both literal and figurative. The railing becomes a line of inquiry, the steps a metaphor for progression—an ascent into discovery.

 

Though clearly modern in execution, the staircase hints at Art Deco and Streamline Moderne influences in its curvature and elegance. The pairing of painted surfaces with rich brass and wood detailing is a nod to luxury without excess—refined and tasteful in a way that suits the museum’s broader sensibility.

 

As with many parts of The Phillips Collection, this staircase was designed with the visitor in mind. Its comfortable treads and sweeping form prioritize accessibility while still delivering a visually powerful experience. It's no wonder that this spot is a favorite among photographers, architecture enthusiasts, and museum-goers alike. Whether ascending to a new exhibit or simply admiring the lines and light, one can’t help but pause and take in the serenity of this beautifully crafted structure.

 

More than just a passageway, this staircase is a sculptural moment within the museum’s architecture—a physical bridge between eras, styles, and stories. With every footstep, you’re part of the museum’s evolving narrative.

Happy 15th Birthday bratz!

 

While my original doll collection started with My Scene I didn't really become a collector until I got my first bratz maybe 10 or so years ago (11? 12? 13?!) in a box of other assorted my scene dolls (a B-R-ATZ, BRATZ CLASS! Yasmin) and soon started to see them as more than the 'skanky' barbie counterpart I immediately felt before simply due to prior Barbie loyalty and after the kidz came out? The rest was history XD

 

Opening my mind to them allowed me to open my mind to not being so stuck in my stubbornness about things and was instrumental in expanding my personal horizons in general.

 

Bratz for me came with new friends who have been instrumental in making me the person I've become to this very day and learning things like 'different isn't bad' and thinking critically about, like, value judgements mainstream society places on expression of urban culture when they can't monetize it in a way they see fit. (and, as I got older, the racial aspect of said value judgements became even clearer but that's perhaps a conversation for another time ;3)

 

The biggest thing bratz gave me was learning how to understand & value different perspectives as valid experiences and to really be willing to let myself grow. If you only saw their clothing you missed the focus on friendship & individuality.

 

Not to mention? Bratz was uber feminist for an audience that needed it - Nobody's Girl, the Rock Angel ballad about prioritizing yourself over a potential spouse? ICONIQUE and something I don't feel girls hear a lot - and even if I go back & forth on the current incarnation at times I can say that there's still a glimmer of what made Bratz such an important part of my own life and if these dolls lead to that for other people then I can be all for it.

Afternoon CSX Niagara local Y203 is northbound on track one on the Niagara Branch, crossing the Erie Canal in North Tonawanda on a beautiful July Friday evening.

Earlier in the evening, Y203 started their day with a stop at DKP on track two about three miles south of the canal bridge. Unfortunately in late 2022 DKP pulled out their stake as a CSX customer, whereas they had been a staple of local business for many years prior. At the time Y203 was also still responsible for making nightly drops at Kenmore Yard, bringing cars down for the then morning Kenmore local Y191. Said job was based out of Frontier Yard in Buffalo for nearly two years following the pandemic in 2020, traveling up to Kenmore each morning and returning in the afternoon. The job was moved to Niagara as L036 amid the system-wide symbol changes made by CSX in April 2022. With work at DKP and the drop at Kenmore complete, the next move is always to turn the whole train at CP 8/7/I (that's the letter i), then proceed north on track one to serve their remaining customers. On this day there was no work at Aurubis or Washington Mills, so in the beautiful evening light it was straight up to Robinson St to work WestRock, and eventually Niagara Sheets at the end of the Lockport Industrial Runner. The head end of the train has found a pocket of sunshine underneath the bascule bridge's counterweight, only ever lifted once in its history. No major freight traversing the canal has needed more than the allotted height in the lowered position. I don't believe the bridge even has a motor anymore should it ever need to be raised again.

This is one of those shots which I'd file in the "forgotten gems" folder, as it was one I'd long since forgotten about. Such is the case with many one-off shots I've taken between the more significant events of a particular day, such as the industry shots I so deeply covet. In fact, my day railfanning started not with Y203, but rather a loaded eastbound ethanol train. These used to carry K symbols and were notorious for bringing desirable foreign power to the region. This one in particular utilized a KCS SD70 leader and GE rear DPU. While shooting that in Depew, I met one of my now railfan friends for the first time that day too. I normally worked a closing shift at the car wash on Fridays back then, but that day I just happened to be scheduled for an open to cover another manager on vacation. Pretty much any time I was scheduled to open on a day I normally closed, I made use of the rest of the day to get out and railfan. I always felt it was the Universe's way of freeing me up to go see things I otherwise couldn't see. One such case of this schedule flipping was quite costly some three months prior, unfortunately becoming a valuable lesson for how I've prioritized shots and shot opportunities since. Always the summers are slipping away...

I hope you find the time to read this (long) text - Eupalinos

 

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In his brilliant two-part book Endgame, my friend Derrick Jensen asks:

 

“Do you believe that our culture will undergo a voluntary transformation to a sane and sustainable way of living?

 

For the last several years I’ve taken to asking people this question, at talks and rallies, in libraries, on buses, in airplanes, at the grocery store, the hard- ware store. Everywhere. The answers range from emphatic nos to laughter. No one answers in the affirmative. One fellow at one talk did raise his hand, and when everyone looked at him, he dropped his hand, then said, sheepishly, “Oh, voluntary? No, of course not.” My next question: how will this understand- ing—that this culture will not voluntarily stop destroying the natural world, eliminating indigenous cultures, exploiting the poor, and killing those who resist—shift our strategy and tactics? The answer? Nobody knows, because we never talk about it: we’re too busy pretending the culture will undergo a magical transformation."

 

In this article, my friend Elisabeth Robson and I invite you to imagine the scope of changes necessary to make our society sustainable. This transformation could be done voluntarily. But as Derrick reminds us, there is no evidence that will happen. On the contrary, every indicator of ecological health is heading in the wrong direction, and greenwashing abounds. This, ultimately, is why I am an ecological revolutionary.

 

by Max Wilbert and Elisabeth Robson

____

 

Since January 15th, 2021, we have been fighting to Protect Thacker Pass from a proposed open-pit lithium mine.

 

For some people, our protest is confusing. Most mainstream environmentalists support lithium mining for producing electric car batteries. Yet here we are, proud environmentalists who have fought the fossil fuel industry for many years, now fighting the electric car industry.

 

Electric Cars are Not a Solution

 

We argue that switching to electric cars won’t significantly help solve global warming—a position that is actually backed by evidence (see, for instance, this chart, or read the book Bright Green Lies).

 

Mining lithium and the other materials used in electric cars destroys sensitive wildlife habitat, releases toxic pollution, bulldozes Native American sacred sites—and pumps out quite a lot of greenhouse gasses.

 

Electric cars provide the illusion that we’re making progress. And (not coincidentally) they make car manufacturers a LOT of money. Tesla’s Elon Musk is the richest man in the world. Electric car manufacturers and the mining companies providing their raw materials are quite happy for the public to remain ignorant of what’s required to make their products. The idea that buying an electric car will save the planet is called “greenwashing”—false advertising persuasion by eco-propaganda that white washes the true ecological harm caused by a product or process.

 

The only thing green about EVs is the money being made.

 

Are Fossil Fuels the Answer?

 

No. Fossil fuels extraction, processing, and burning causes catastrophic habitat destruction, toxic pollution, and global climate destabilization. Look at the legacy of oil drilling in Nigeria, at the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, at the toxicity caused by the fracking industry, or at the ecocide of mountaintop removal coal mining. Continuing to burn fossil fuels is unacceptable.

 

As grassroots activists, we’ve spent years fighting oil pipelines and blockading coal trains to stop the destruction caused by drilling and burning fossil fuels. And we’re not funded by the fossil fuel industry. Every dollar we’ve raised comes from donations from regular people who are fed up with the greenwashing lies.

 

The problem is that mining lithium, cobalt, and silicon and the many other metals and minerals required to build EVs, their batteries, and other “clean” technologies is just as bad for the planet as fossil fuels are.

 

There isn’t much difference between an open-pit coal mine and open-pit lithium mine. Both destroy habitat. Both poison water. And both release massive quantities of greenhouse gases.

 

So, What’s the Solution?

 

One of the most common questions we’re asked is “If electric vehicles aren’t the answer, what is your solution?”

 

True sustainability is not nearly as simple and easy as buying different products, like electric cars, and putting up solar panels and wind turbines. A truly sustainable life doesn’t mean swapping out gas for lithium-ion batteries.

 

The state of the planet is dire, from melting ice caps to expanding deserts, from clearcut logging to soil erosion, from the collapse of ocean fish populations to rising temperatures. Our planet is already deep into the 6th mass extinction crisis.

 

Reversing these trends will mean transforming our entire society, from top to bottom. It will entail changing the foundation of our economy, our communities, our work, our political structures, and beyond. This is daunting, and it is also our only hope.

 

But this is still vague. What, exactly, does this transformation look like? What is our solution?

 

What is “Sustainability”?

 

In the broadest sense, sustainability refers to the ability to maintain or support a process continuously over time. Hopefully it is clear to everyone reading this that the societies we live in are not sustainable in the sense of being able to be maintained continuously over time.

 

Almost everything we consume, do, and create currently depends on fossil fuels, which are rapidly being drawn down as the world uses over 100 million barrels of oil per day and 24 million tons of coal per day.

 

Look around you. It’s probably true that every human-made object surrounding you right now was created with the help of fossil fuel energy.

 

These minerals took hundreds of millions of years to form and, if we continue burning them, they will run out. Burning fossil fuels is causing climate change. This is on top of the harms of extracting fossil fuels—the oil spills, clearcuts, mountaintop removal mining, and so on. Relying on fossil fuels to power our lives is not sustainable.

 

Even if we were able to replace fossil fuel energy with solar and wind power, and fossil fuel plastics with other materials, that would still not be sustainable, since the other materials we use to construct our human “stuff” are also non-renewable. For instance, lithium, a key ingredient in electric car batteries, is concentrated by volcanic eruptions, rock weathering, and water evaporation over millions of years. Just like fossil fuels, once we use up all the lithium we can find, we will never be able to get more from the Earth. This is also true of the other metals and minerals required to build cars, wind turbines, and solar panels, among many other things. And while 100% recycling is a good idea in theory, in practice, 100% recycling is impossible — and industrial recycling is itself an energy-intensive and highly polluting industry.

 

The Costs of Modernity

 

True sustainability means meeting two conditions: first, we must use only what the Earth can regenerate on human time-scales. And second, that use must not degrade the natural world (this would reduce the Earth’s carrying capacity over time).

 

All of us descend from lines of ancestors who lived for thousands of years using the energy of the sun, energy stored in plants through photosynthesis, energy stored in the animals who ate those plants, and the animals who ate other animals. Living sustainably meant ensuring that we gave back as much as we took from the Earth, returning our biodegradable waste to the environment to decompose and provide food for animals, returning the energy we used to the circle of life.

 

If you find yourself balking, pause for a moment and take a deep breath. Your doubtfulness makes sense. We’ve all been raised to venerate technology, idolize engineers and scientists, and see modernity as progress. And it’s self-evident that modern technology is useful — and at times, lifesaving. There are certainly benefits from industrial modernity, especially for the wealthiest nations and people in the world.

 

Consider again, however, the costs. We live on the only planet known to support life in the universe, and as the global climate is destabilizing, 200 species a day are being driven extinct, overshoot is accelerating, and planetary life-support systems like forests and oceans are failing. Industrial civilization is undermining its own foundation; and as the historian Arnold Toynbee noted, “Great civilizations are not murdered. They take their own lives.” We are not immune from this historic pattern.

 

If environmental collapse is coming—or already here, with every indicator of ecological health heading in the wrong direction and accelerating—then returning to a simpler way of life is inevitable. The only question is, will we do so willingly, or will we be forced as modernity crumbles around us?

 

We face a choice: either we sacrifice the ability of future generations to live so that we can have another decade of smart phones and cars, or we make a change. The moral choice is clear.

 

The 6 Elements of Sustainability

 

Sustainability requires a completely different way of thinking and being in the world. It also requires concrete action. In this section, we lay out 6 elements to initiate transition to a truly sustainable society.

 

We Must Reduce

 

We Must Relocalize

 

We Must Ration

 

We Must Restore

 

We Must Rethink

 

We Must Remember

 

As you read through each element, you’ll see that all the elements are related to one another. We can’t ration if we don’t reduce. We can’t relocalize if we don’t restore the natural environment. And we can’t do any of this if we don’t rethink our way of being in the world, remember our connections to and dependency upon nature, and make revolutionary, not just incremental, change.

 

These are mutually supporting efforts that entail fundamental shifts in the goals we pursue in our culture and economy. Achieving them will require far-reaching political vision and leadership, some level of global cooperation, and an emergency mobilization of all society.(1)

 

Element 1: We Must Reduce

 

Reusing is trendy, recycling is mainstream, but reduction is taboo. We live in societies built on growth, where economic stagnation or negative population growth is considered an emergency. To move towards sustainability, we must dramatically reduce the size of the economy (including the amount we consume) and the size of our population.

 

Reducing consumption includes reducing and eventually eliminating our consumption of cars. The average household in the United States owns 1.88 cars. This is not sustainable.

 

Population, contrary to popular belief, can reduced in humane ways. It begins with making culturally-appropriate family planning, sex education, and birth control widely available. It also requires reproductive freedom for women. Such programs have been proven effective to reduce birth rates to below replacement level (2.1 children per woman), which means population will go down.

 

Reducing our consumption and our population is a key element to enable a rapid weaning off industrial fuels, energy, and materials, along with industrial agriculture (one of the main industries destroying the planet)

 

Element 2: We Must Relocalize

 

We live in the most mobile, globalized society to ever exist, depending on fossil-fueled trucks, cars, trains, airplanes, and ships to transport huge quantities of goods and huge numbers of people all over the planet on a daily basis. This is ecologically untenable.

 

The fact that many of us enjoy rapid, convenient travel is not important compared to life on this planet. Reversing ecological collapse isn’t about what we want and desire. It’s about what the planet can sustain.

 

A sustainable future is a local future, in which people live, work, and get the basic necessities of life close to home, and rarely travel long distances. The “locavore” movement has proposed the idea of a 100-mile diet to combat an unsustainable food system. The same concept should be adapted to travel.

 

Producing and powering automobiles is incredibly destructive to nature, and so a sustainable world means we must retire all cars and stop producing new ones. Reducing and eliminating car production and use means almost everything about our lifestyles has to change. If we try to completely replace cars with public transportation—attempting to allow the kind of freedom of travel we currently enjoy—we’re just going to create new problems to replace the old problems. Some public transportation will help in the transition to a world in which we all travel less, but the reality is, we’re all going to have to learn how to travel less.

 

This will be incredibly disruptive, but not as disruptive as ecological collapse. And there are benefits. In the future, we’ll walk and bike more, which means we’ll work close to where we live. We’ll need to depend more on our local communities. To carpool, or share a car with a neighborhood during a transition period, we’ll need to get to know the people we live next to a whole lot better. We won’t move as often, and we’ll probably live closer to our friends and families so we don’t have to travel so far to see them.

 

Relocalizing also means relocalizing what we consume, including food, clothes, what we use to build our homes and the stuff we put in them, medical care, and more. Currently, our society relies on global shipping networks of ships, trains, and trucks to deliver the things we use. This global shipping network cannot exist in a truly sustainable society. Therefore, we must learn how to live using only what we can get from our local areas. Initially that local area may be the entire country, then perhaps the state we live in, and then, finally, our local community.

 

We must be careful in the process of relocalizing because without simultaneously reducing population and consumption, this process could quickly destroy the environments around our local communities. It is critical that we prioritize what is most important—food, water, shelter, basic medical care—as we relocalize our communities and minimize our use of all material goods that are not absolutely essential.

 

Element 3: We Must Ration

 

Confronting ecological reality means confronting scarcity. When we stop making new cars, and begin gradually eliminating fossil fuels, the wealthy and powerful may seek to hoard resources (let’s be real: they’re already doing it). This results in violence and suffering, and will exacerbate shortages already occurring due to overshoot and ecological collapse.

 

Faced with this predicament, the moral approach is to ration what is left. Rationing must of course be accompanied by a dramatic reduction in the consumption of energy as well as material goods. A reasonable starting goal here (depending on the level of consumption in a given region) would be to rapidly reduce energy and material consumption by half, then aim for 90 percent or more.

 

Rationing should be implemented in fair ways and will require guardrails and procedures. For example, food, medical care, and other basic needs should be prioritized over shopping malls, consumer goods, entertainment, and so on (people should continue having fun, of course—but not in ways that are wasteful of energy and materials).

 

This rationing should also be implemented fairly and equitably on an international level. People in the U.S. and Europe, for example, should not be “rationed” an allotment of cobalt mined by slave labor in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Nor should Congolese people be “rationed” an allotment of salmon exported from the Pacific Rim. Rationing will feel more dramatic in the wealthiest nations, because we use way, way too much. In poorer countries, rationing will not be as dramatic. We don’t subscribe to the colonial assertion that all countries should aim for a “Low-energy European lifestyle,” as is a common refrain in some degrowth communities. A low energy European lifestyle is grossly unsustainable when compared to land-based peoples, the only sustainable societies on Earth.

 

Element 4: We Must Restore

 

As we implement reduction, relocalizing, and rationing, we must simultaneously take action to protect forests, rivers, prairies, and other wild lands from development, logging, mining, and other destructive activities. As much as possible must be preserved.

 

To be effective, this will require a dramatic shift in economic structures. For example, jobs in extractive industries must be temporarily replaced with jobs in restoration (removing dams, tearing up concrete, dismantling malls and vast parking lots, earthworks to reduce erosion and build soil, waterworks to increase soil health and restore aquifers, and so on)—beginning with the least materially important/most frivolous sectors, and rapidly expanding to other areas of the economy.

 

As we reduce consumption—of everything—the economy as we know it will no longer exist. Going to the grocery store to get food that arrives there from all over the country and the world will no longer be an option. The food we eat will need to come from local sources, which means restoring habitat, soils, and watersheds. Surviving as part of nature rather than by dominating nature will not be an option without healthy, flourishing natural communities. Restoring these natural communities (“ecosystems”) and our relationships with the natural world should become everyone’s top priority. Restoring our local environments is also what will enable us to find enough food, clean water, and materials to build shelter without degrading the natural communities we depend on: we cannot relocalize without also restoring.

 

Focusing on restoration rather than a growing consumption-based economy will require global, widespread education programs and job retraining programs that can educate people in ecosystem restoration, watershed health, subsistence food production, biology, ecology, and permaculture.

 

This education should begin with young children, and as many people as possible should be put to work tearing down destructive infrastructure and replacing it with restored natural communities. Small-scale, place-based, ecologically embedded methods for survival and flourishing should be developed simultaneously. Shifting government subsidies from extractive, military, and other ecologically destructive activities would provide funding for these programs.

 

Element 5: We Must Rethink

 

Shifting from a lifestyle of consumption, immediate gratification, and a worldview that we are separate from the world and that the world is ours to consume will require completely changing how we think and the stories we tell. We must change from stories of domination to stories of cooperation, respect and gratitude for our place in the natural world.

 

Our entire media landscape is focused on selling us things, most of which we don’t really need. This is what keeps the growth economy growing. These stories perpetuate and expand unsustainable lifestyles of consumption, and they do so all around the world.

 

Instead, we need stories that help us understand how to live in a world of ecological collapse, a world in which our society, our population, and our consumption must scale down, rather than scaling forever up. We need stories that are local, that teach us how to live well in the place we are now, and how to deal with the challenges we all will face as we shift in our way of being in the world. And we need culture, education, music, poetry, and other traditions that support that shift.

 

Element 6: We Must Remember

 

Karl Benz was the first person to sell cars. Between 1888 and 1893, he sold 25 Benz gas-powered vehicles, or “horseless carriages,” to customers. The Motorwagen, as it was called, had a 1 liter single-cylinder engine with 2/3 of one horsepower. By 1899, Benz was the largest car company in the world, selling 572 cars.

 

Many of you probably have great grandparents, or great-great grandparents, who were born before 1899. It’s likely none of them owned a car. And yet it is unthinkable for most people in the United States to imagine life without a car, or without being able to get on a plane, or a train, or a bus. In little more than 130 years we’ve completely transformed our society from one in which most people walked everywhere to one in which most people own a car and drive whenever they want. Three generations—a blink of the eye in compared to the 300,000 or so years humans have been on this Earth—is all it took to forget what it’s like to get around without a motor.

 

We can remember. If your grandparents or great grandparents are still alive, ask them what it was like before most people owned a car. Ask them what it was like before we had plastic, when most things people purchased were made to last a lifetime.

 

This is just the beginning of the remembering required to change our stories. We must remember that before industrial civilization, before we forgot that we aren’t at the top of some imagined hierarchy allowed to take whatever we want from the world without giving anything back, humans lived in cooperation with the rest of the natural world, and the stories our ancestors told each other reflected that. These are the stories we must remember.

 

Facing Reality

 

If all of this sounds like a fantasy to you, we feel the same way. The massive transformation we’ve outlined in these elements is incredibly unlikely to happen at the speed and scale necessary to halt the ongoing ecological crisis. There is simply too much inertia and power behind endless growth.

 

This makes it likely we are facing the collapse of civilization in coming years and decades. In fact, the gradual unraveling has begun.

 

Everything is heading in the wrong direction: population growth and consumption goes up, so economic growth goes up, so development goes up, so extraction goes up, so pollution goes up, and so habitat and species loss goes up. These trends have been described by the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program (IGBP) as the Great Acceleration, and you may be familiar with the graphic the IGBP published in 2015 illustrating skyrocketing trends across 24 socioeconomic and earth system categories:

 

In 2015, there were 7.3 billion people on the planet. There are now 8 billion. Governments encourage population growth with child tax credits and, in some countries, by paying people to have more children.

 

In 2015, there were 1.2 billion cars and commercial vehicles in use around the world. Now there is almost 1.5 billion. Governments encourage electric car purchases with tax credits, and encourage car corporations by lowering corporate tax rates, and by making sure these companies stay in business with bailouts and fiscal incentives.

 

In 2015, global average CO2 concentration was 399 ppm. In 2022, it’s up to 421 ppm. Governments work hard to ensure steady economic growth through central bank fiscal policies, laws friendly to corporations, and aid packages during recessions. Economic growth is tied to CO2 concentrations because economic growth is tied to fossil fuel use and materials use.

 

Each year, industrial culture grows. Each year, we get further away from sustainability.

 

It is anathema in our society to suggest that growth might not be desirable. Imagine a politician running for congress or the presidency in the United States, saying: “We need to cut back, reverse economic growth, tighten our belts, curb population growth, stop being consumeristic, and spend less money.” Do you think that politician would be successful in getting elected? No, we don’t either. (Nonetheless, we expect this to become a pillar of independent political parties in the future, and gradually become more mainstream).

 

Instead of understanding ourselves as animals completely dependent on habitat for our lives, modern society teaches us to see ourselves as consumers. The stories we are told by corporations and the stories we tell each other are that growth is good, and we get there by consuming more. And so, we are encouraged every day by our governments, by corporations, even by our peer groups, to believe that we can buy our way out of the crises we face. If we just buy an electric vehicle, or buy our electricity from a community solar project, or buy a pair of jeans from a company that has pledged to build a “sustainable supply chain,” then everything will be okay.

 

But we all know this is wrong. Once we begin to understand the scale and scope of the impacts of industrial culture, it quickly becomes obvious that we can’t buy our way out of this predicament, and that incremental change will never be enough. We must face that reality.

 

The Revolutionary Moment

 

Ecological collapse is already well underway and social collapse is not far behind. So what do we do?

 

Albert Einstein said, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” We need completely different ways of thinking, completely different ways of living in the world, and completely different stories. And we need concrete change to the institutions and political structures of our world. In short, we need revolutionary change.

 

“Revolutionary” means “involving or causing a complete or dramatic change.” When you hear the word “revolutionary” you might immediately wonder, “Does that mean I need to help overthrow the government, because maybe I’m not up for that.” Revolutionary change means changing everything, from where we get our food, to how we build our homes, to how we get around, to—yes—creating different kinds of government. In these revolutionary times, revolutionary responses are justified—especially since many powerful people and institutions are prepared to lie, cheat, and fight to defend the old status quo.

 

Radical changes are coming, whether we want them or not. We are entering a revolutionary moment, where the contradiction — the fundamental conflict — between civilization and ecology is coming to a head. We are already seeing increased environmental radicalism and an associated authoritarian backlash. We believe in observing these truths and acting upon them, rather than trying to deny reality. In this moment, we believe that means acting to steer the future towards the most just, humane outcomes.

 

It’s time to gather our courage. We are not alone. We are not alone in facing the ecological crisis, and we will not be alone if we work together on the solution. To reiterate what we said earlier, it will take all of us: all our different passions and skills, and whatever each individual has to offer. We will each play a part, and do what we can, together.

 

Top 15 Actions To Begin Moving Towards A Truly Sustainable Society

 

Governments must stop subsidizing all environmentally and socially destructive activities and shift those subsidies to activities that restore biotic communities and that promote local self-sufficiency.

 

Governments must ensure reproductive freedom and full political, economic, and sexual liberty for women around the world.

 

Immediately and permanently halt all extractive and destructive activities: mining, fracking, mountaintop removal, tar sands production, nuclear power, and offshore drilling chief among them. This includes halting manufacture and production of all cars.

 

Immediately and completely protect all remaining native forests, prairies, and wetlands.

 

Restore all damaged lands and restore soil. Confiscate land from those who do not do this.

 

Immediately halt all activities that draw down acquifers.

 

Restore all polluted and compromised rivers, including halting all dam construction and removing all existing dams.

 

Immediately begin phasing-out mono-crop agriculture.

 

Charge government with increasing the number and range of threatened and endangered wildlife and the habitat they require.

 

Governments stop funding for new, large infrastructure and development projects, including new highways, dams, power projects, mines, etc.

 

Reduce carbon emissions by 20% per year, over the next five years to prevent catastrophic climate change.

 

Begin to contract global economies while ensuring all have basic needs met.

 

Significantly reduce consumption of all but strictly necessary goods and services.

 

Punish environmental crimes commensurate with the harm caused to the public and to the planet.

 

Close all U.S. military bases on foreign soil, and bring home all military personnel within two years. Reduce the military budget by 20% per year until it reaches 20% of its current size. Replace the Department of Defense with the Department of Peace.

 

Despite the magnitude of change that’s required, local and regional efforts to begin the work described above will pay dividends regardless, mitigating some of the worst outcomes.

 

One Possible Future

 

There’s a lot to describe about a long term vision—we could write a book about such a vision. So we highlight just some of the ways we see our solution unfolding if humanity could come together to make it happen.

 

50 years:

 

Birth rates have fallen significantly and the great decline in population has begun, reducing pressure on Earth’s ecosystems.

 

The most wasteful, least-useful, most polluting industries (e.g. cruise ships, shopping malls, golf courses, chemical manufacturers) have been shut down for decades.

 

All new fossil fuel extraction has ended and a rationing program is in place. Fossil fuel use from the remaining stored reserves is prioritized for the most important uses: food, water, and emergency medical use, and total burn is less than 2% of peak levels.

 

Material extraction has plummeted. Populations have migrated from suburbs, isolated rural homes, and urban centers alike to cluster in small, widely spaced villages, where they repurpose materials from buildings torn down in areas that are being restored and engage in small scale food production and craft industry.

 

The foundation for new governmental structures based on direct democracy and representative assemblies has been laid. Militaries have been dramatically scaled down and restructured to focus on land restoration.

 

100 years:

 

Human population is nearing 2 billion and steadily falling.

 

As population has declined, most people have migrated from areas of extreme cold and heat to more temperate zones where less energy is required to stay warm and grow food. We all live hyper-local lives, living near relatives and friends for our entire lives, and spend most of the day restoring ecosystems, hunting and growing food, relaxing, and building community.

 

No fossil fuels are being burned. All mining and chemical manufacturing has been terminated. All nuclear power plants have been shut down and all nuclear waste has been stored as safely as possible. All large dams have been removed.

 

Small electrical systems are maintained in a few regional locations for medical procedures. People rely on simple, time-tested technologies such as passive solar, perennial polycultures, and animal husbandry for basic needs.

 

Government is becoming more local, but regional confederations and even global trade networks are maintained for diplomacy, a small amount of trade, and information sharing.

 

500 years:

 

Human population is less than 100 million.

 

Each year there are more salmon that return to rivers than the previous year; each year there are more songbirds than the previous year. Forests are beginning to grow old again, creating thriving habitat for plants and animals, and humans have begun to relearn how to exist as human mammals in the great web of life.

 

Natural communities are well on their way to recovery, so food and cleaner water are once again abundant. Forever chemicals still pollute every square inch of the world, and continue impacting our health, but over the coming millennia will gradually pose less of a problem for humans and the rest of the natural world as they become sequestered under layers of soil and rock.

 

Children are no longer raised learning the names of corporations, but instead learn stories about the names of plants and animals, how to hunt and fish, which plants are edible and which are not, how to build shelters, and how to stay warm. The stories told around the fire at night describe the great rehumanizing of our species, our recovered relationships with the natural world, and the sacredness of all life on Planet Earth.

  

Posted by Max Wilbert on facebook

Supervising Doctor: "Okay, nurses, what can you tell me about this patient? He seems anxious to get home."

 

Surgical Nurse Brown: "Sir, we tried and tried to tell him he had to stay in bed while he was here in the hospital for his own safety."

 

Nurse Georgina: "Yes, Doctor. I told him several times not to have wheelchair races in the hallway with the older patients. They knew he was no match for them anyway."

 

Floor Nurse Jolene: "I can attest for that! He almost ran over my foot as I came out of the nurses' station."

 

Supervising Doctor: "Well, young man. What do you have to say for yourself? We tried to keep you safe while you heal."

 

Calamity Carl: "Thanks, guys for all you do. I just want to get home and try that leap from the garage roof to the sandbox. You should have seen the look on my mom's face when I tried that!"

 

20200917 261/366

________

September 17 Is World Patient Safety Day

 

On September17 the World Health Organization will commemorate World Patient Safety Day. The objective is to raise global awareness about the importance of addressing health worker safety as a prerequisite for patient safety.

 

The theme for 2020 is “Healthy worker Safety: A Priority for Patient Safety”, and the slogan is “Safe health workers, Safe Patients”.

 

No one should be harmed in health care. Yet thousands of patients across the world suffer avoidable harm, or are put at risk of injury, while receiving health care every single day.

 

World Patient Safety Day calls for global solidarity and concerted action by all countries and international partners to improve patient safety. Furthermore, the Day brings together patients, families, caregivers, communities, health workers, health care leaders and policy-makers to show their commitment to patient safety. The theme of the very first World Patient Safety Day in 2019 was aimed at establishing the legacy of the day and highlighting the importance of prioritizing and addressing patient safety globally by all stakeholders. From 2020 and in the coming years, a new theme will be selected each year, raising awareness and promoting positive change around patient safety priority areas.

 

The COVID-19 pandemic has unveiled the huge challenges health workers are facing globally. Health workers encounter increased risk of healthcare associated infections, violence, accidents, stigma, illness and death. Furthermore, working in stressful environments exacerbates risks to the physical and mental health and safety of health workers making them more prone to errors which might lead to patient harm.

  

Brendan received a smartphone for his 18th birthday. He is now officially what I call a "cellphone zombie" as he walks a little slower, pays a lot less attention to the real world and generally prioritizes his phone over most ordinary tasks.

Rodeo Beach - Marin headlands, california

I had plans on taking care of a few things and finish up some planing for a day trip up the north coast, but as I moved closer to San Francisco, I could see that there was some very interesting weather happening out in the Marin County area. I ran through my list of things to do and managed to "re-prioritize" a few things so I could make it out for sunset. The clouds were high and thin over the Golden Gate Bridge, but it looked like there was a fog bank moving in on the coast. I figured that the fog bank would kill most of the light that would have made another GGB image unique, so I headed for Rodeo Beach.

 

Rodeo is a nice, convenient beach. It offers up some nice rocky foreground on the south end, and some high cliffs on the north end. With the tide on its way to the negative end of the scale, I decided to go back to a spot on the north end of the beach that I found last year around this time. Most of the time this rocky area of the beach is covered in water, but with this negative tide, it was exposed and looking perfect for a long exposure.

 

The sky was moving fast with patches of low clouds / fog, so a shorter exposure to capture / paint the waves just wouldn't work in my opinion. The sky looked flat, even more flat than seen here, so long exposure it was. After making two images from this spot (I burned a half hour on these two) I packed up my camera (yes..... this time I decided to not be so lazy) and moved to the south end of the beach.

 

View my stream on black here

 

Canon 5D Mark II

Exposure: 480

Aperture: f/16.0

Focal Length: 20 mm

ISO Speed: 50

Lens: 17-40 f/4L

B+W 10 stop solid ND

Lee hard edge GND .3 & .9

23250 McKay Avenue

Maple Ridge, BC Canada

 

A Harbour Authority (HA) is a non-profit, locally controlled organization which operates under a head lease with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) to operate and maintain a DFO-owned public commercial fishing harbour in the best interests of the commercial fishing fleet.

 

The harbour facility consists entirely of the property and water lots under the ownership of DFO – Small Craft Harbours (SCH).

 

An HA must operate the harbour as a public facility in accordance with the terms of the head lease and must at all times prioritize the needs of the commercial fishing industry above all else

 

Image best viewed in large screen.

 

Thank-you for your visit, and any comments or faves are always very much appreciated! ~Sonja.

New Year’s Eve-2024

Ninety-nine percent of good railroad photography is just getting out the door with your camera. Once that’s accomplished, you still have one percent to work with. That was my thought when a FB private message from DC Hammon popped up on my phone. DC allowed that a westbound CSX empty hopper train was enroute from Kingsport to Loyall, with the Clinchfield heritage unit on the point. It was gloomy and misting rain, but after about ten seconds of pondering, I elected to engage the ninety nine percent part of the mission.

I haven’t been on FB much lately. Even though I had a flu vaccine a few weeks ago, on Saturday I was in the Ballad urgent care facility in Norton. I was coughing, congested, chilling, and with all the characteristics of something nasty. It wasn’t COVID, but a strain of flue that must have been a variant not included into blend of vaccines I had received earlier. That’s not unusual, of course, but it doesn’t often happen to me.

Wilma has also been sick, and Walnut has really been having a tough go of it (although in her case I think it’s just her declining age). We haven’t been much, if at all (except for a few runs to pick up essentials). At last, I was feeling more like myself, so this would be a good way to change the afternoon routine. I thought the experience of doing some train photography would be worth the effort, even if I wouldn’t come back home with some masterpiece of imagery worthy of a CRPA award (like that’s ever gonna happen!).

I encountered CSX 1902 West sooner than I had anticipated, at Duffield. I had left the house half thinking of going to Natural Tunnel, but I gave up on that when I realized I had left my wide angle lens at home. I wheeled through a crossover on US 23 and backtracked (no pun intended) until I could crank off a couple of “poke and hope” pacing shots in a short stretch where the highway paralleled the track without major obstructions. I mostly was trying to avoid veering into another lane in front of a semi---but traffic was very light.

Pushing ahead, the unexpected growth of lineside vegetation had erased some earlier “honey hole” spots, but I pulled up to a small clearing and got the train as it passed my spot at the passing track at Jasper. What next?

Photo locations on lines where you’ve photographed trains for decades are like a mental Rolodex, prioritized by train direction, lighting, foreground clutter, backgrounds, and on and on. I decided to drive in to “furnace dip” to get him dropping downgrade from East Stone Gap and across the short South Fork of Powell River Bridge. The weather was going from crummy to extra crummy.

After getting that shot, I drove out and headed home. As I was crossing the East 19th Street crossing, I reflexively looked right to see if the EOT was clear of the distant junction. Instead, I saw the head and ditch lights of an eastbound NS run. Instead of going over the hill toward the house, I drove to the old depot site to get a shot of my buddy Brian Richardson handling an eastbound coal train with three big NS units.

Happy New Year, Brian, and thanks for the tip, DC!

In fact, Happy New Year to everyone!

Phillip Burton Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse, 450 Golden Gate Ave, San Francisco, CA 94102

What: To protest Biden’s inaction on Line 3 and demand that he and the Army Corp of Engineers revoke the permit now.

Support Indigenous communities in Minnesota who are putting their bodies on the line trying to defend their home from the construction of the Line 3 tar sands pipeline.

 

Tell President Biden to get off his ass. He pledged to be the climate president, and it’s in his power to put a stop to this pipeline.

1

That the Government must tell the truth about the climate and wider ecological emergency, it must reverse all policies not in alignment with that position and must work alongside the media to communicate the urgency for change including what individuals, communities and businesses need to do.

 

2

The Government must enact legally binding policies to reduce carbon emissions to net zero by 2025 and take further action to remove the excess of atmospheric greenhouse gases. It must cooperate internationally so that the global economy runs on no more than half a planet’s worth of resources per year.

 

3

We do not trust our Government to make the bold, swift and long-term changes necessary to achieve these changes and we do not intend to hand further power to our politicians. Instead we demand a Citizens’ Assembly to oversee the changes, as we rise from the wreckage, creating a democracy fit for purpose.

 

4

We demand a just transition that prioritizes the most vulnerable people and indigenous sovereignty; establishes reparations and remediation led by and for Black people, Indigenous people, people of color and poor communities for years of environmental injustice, establishes legal rights for ecosystems to thrive and regenerate in perpetuity, and repairs the effects of ongoing ecocide to prevent extinction of human and all species, in order to maintain a livable, just planet for all.

. DSC_2098

The Rovingian Nomadic Monk: Imperfection, Itinerancy, and Wisdom by Daniel Arrhakis (2026)

 

The Rovingian Nomadic Monk: Imperfection, Itinerancy, and Wisdom

 

The Philosophy of Constant Learning and Intellectual Humility

 

Introduction: The Value of Imperfection

 

As the old proverb teaches, "No one is born knowing everything, and no one dies knowing everything." In Rovingian cosmology, even in a universe of immeasurable proportions, no consciousness is capable of mastering all knowledge. This vision underlies the philosophy of the Rovingian nomadic monk, where the pursuit of knowledge is a continuous and imperfect process.

 

Being a Rovingian Nomadic Monk: Itinerancy and Imperfection

 

In the Rovingian tradition, being a nomadic monk means embracing constant imperfection. Value does not reside in diplomas or certificates, but in the "cognitive scars" acquired through error and experimentation, as well as in the acceptance of incompleteness. The Rovingian monk represents the itinerancy of the spirit, seeking not the repose of absolute answers, but the movement of incessant searching. Freedom arises from replacing the weight of "having to know" with the lightness of "wanting to discover."

 

The Useful Error: The Science of Learning

 

In the Rovingian view, error is not a failure, but a fundamental principle for learning. The sooner you err, the sooner you learn. Repeating an error is a sign of stagnation, while hesitating for fear of error paralyzes the learning process. Action, even with failures, is a source of knowledge. In Rovingian animism and other worldviews, error is a healthy part of experience, a mechanism for rectification in the pursuit of wisdom. To err is natural and evolutionary.

 

The Epistemology of the Road

 

The journey is seen as an excellent advisor: "Plainland truths are useless on the mountain," because wisdom is fluid, never static. What is valid in the comfort of the plain may fail in the rigor of the mountain. Throughout his journey, the nomadic monk learns to navigate and overcome obstacles, becoming his own path through movement and learning.

 

Skills Acquired Over Time

 

Dogmatic Detachment / Anti-dogmatism: The detachment from absolute certainties is a continuous process, as is the ability to "unlearn" the obsolete to make room for the new and cultivate flexibility in the face of the unknown. Rejecting absolute truths is fundamental to maintaining an open mind.

 

Critical Thinking: Questioning the origin of one's own convictions before defending them, exercising analysis and discernment.

 

Active Listening to the Cosmos

 

The Rovingian monk moves from an observer who "studies" to a being who "communes" with the universe. Understanding the silence and vastness of the cosmos, without seeking to dominate it, is to perceive consciousness (anima) as infinite or cyclical, not limited to the physical body. Consciousness is seen as a fundamental element of the universe, alongside mass or electrical charge.

 

Contemplation versus Domination

 

Renouncing conquest, colonization, or exploitation, and opting for integration with the universe. The monk seeks to contemplate and integrate, rather than dominate.

 

Humble Vastness: Universal Experience

 

The understanding that we are the universe experiencing itself through human eyes underlies an attitude of humility in the face of incompleteness.

 

Attitude towards Incompleteness

 

Intellectual Humility: Recognizing that not even the greatest consciousness encompasses the infinite. The Rovingian monk is an eternal draft, whose search does not end with death; this is only a stage in an unfinished project.

 

Managing Ignorance: Transforming "I don't know" into an invitation to discover exactly what is unknown, prioritizing curiosity over belief.

 

The Rovingian Axiom

 

In an infinite universe, the most evolved consciousness is the one capable of formulating the most questions, not the one that holds the most answers.

  

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

  

O Monge Nómada Rovingiano: Imperfeição, Itinerância e Sabedoria

 

A Filosofia do Aprendizado Constante e da Humildade Intelectual

 

Introdução: O Valor da Imperfeição

 

Como ensina o antigo provérbio, "Ninguém nasce ensinado e ninguém morre a saber tudo". Na cosmologia rovingiana, mesmo num universo de proporções imensuráveis, não existe nenhuma consciência capaz de dominar todo o saber. Esta visão fundamenta a filosofia do monge nómada rovingiano, onde a busca pelo conhecimento é um processo contínuo e imperfeito.

 

Ser Monge Nómada Rovingiano: Itinerância e Imperfeição

 

Na tradição rovingiana, ser um monge nómada significa abraçar a imperfeição constante. O valor não reside em diplomas ou certificados, mas nas "cicatrizes cognitivas" adquiridas através do erro e da experimentação, bem como na aceitação da incompletude. O monge rovingiano representa a itinerância do espírito, procurando não o repouso de respostas absolutas, mas o movimento da busca incessante. A liberdade surge ao substituir o peso de "ter de saber" pela leveza do "querer descobrir".

 

O Erro Útil: Ciência do Aprendizado

 

O erro, na visão rovingiana, não é falha, mas princípio fundamental para aprender. Quanto mais cedo se erra, mais cedo se aprende. Repetir um erro é sinal de estagnação, enquanto hesitar pelo medo de errar paralisa o processo de aprendizagem. A ação, mesmo com falhas, é fonte de conhecimento. No animismo rovingiano e em outras visões de mundo, o erro é parte saudável da experiência, sendo um mecanismo de retificação na busca pela sabedoria. Errar é natural e evolutivo.

 

A Epistemologia da Estrada

 

A caminhada é vista como excelente conselheira: "Verdades de planície não servem na montanha", pois a sabedoria é fluida, nunca estática. O que é válido no conforto da planície pode falhar no rigor da montanha. Durante o percurso, o monge nómada aprende a contornar e superar obstáculos, tornando-se o próprio caminho por meio do movimento e da aprendizagem.

 

Competências Adquiridas com o Tempo

 

Desapego Dogmático / Antidogmatismo: O afastamento de certezas absolutas é um processo contínuo, assim como a capacidade de "desaprender" o obsoleto para dar espaço ao novo e cultivar a flexibilidade diante do desconhecido. Rejeitar verdades absolutas é fundamental para manter a mente aberta.

 

Pensamento Crítico: Questionar a origem das próprias convicções antes de defendê-las, exercitando a análise e o discernimento.

 

Escuta Ativa do Cosmos

 

O monge rovingiano passa de um observador que "estuda" para um ser que "comunga" com o universo. Compreender o silêncio e a vastidão do cosmos, sem buscar dominá-lo, é perceber a consciência (ânima) como infinita ou cíclica, não limitada ao corpo físico. A consciência é vista como elemento fundamental do universo, ao lado da massa ou da carga elétrica.

 

Contemplação versus Domínio

 

Renunciar à conquista, colonização ou exploração, e optar pela integração com o universo. O monge busca contemplar e integrar-se, em vez de dominar.

 

Vastidão Humilde: Experiência Universal

 

O entendimento de que somos o universo a experienciar-se através de olhos humanos fundamenta uma postura de humildade diante da incompletude.

 

Postura perante a Incompletude

 

Humildade Intelectual: Reconhecer que nem a maior consciência abrange o infinito. O monge rovingiano é um eterno rascunho, cuja busca não termina com a morte; esta é apenas uma etapa de um projeto inacabado.

 

Gestão da Ignorância: Transformar o "não sei" num convite para descobrir exatamente o que não se sabe, priorizando a curiosidade em relação à crença.

 

O Axioma Rovingiano

 

Num universo infinito, a consciência mais evoluída é aquela capaz de formular mais perguntas, não aquela que guarda mais respostas.

   

By entering abandoned underground workings, the true hazard level can be evaluated to determine which sites should be prioritized for closure

July 18, 2023 The Hill Live brings together caregivers, patients, clinical experts, and lawmakers to answer these questions and more as we discuss the fight against Alzheimer’s and breakthroughs in providing relief to those who suffer from agitation and aggression.

Alzheimer’s disease affects about 55 million people worldwide, including 6.5 million Americans, and has no cure. Some patients with Alzheimer’s sometimes show signs of extreme aggression or become restless and anxious as their brains lose the ability to negotiate with new stimulus.

 

Agitation is a common neuropsychiatric symptom in Alzheimer’s dementia and one of the most complex and stressful aspects of caring for people living with the condition. It is reported in approximately half of people with Alzheimer’s dementia and is associated with earlier alternative living placement.

 

What do patients, caregivers and families navigating the complexities of agitation associated with Alzheimer’s need to know? How are researchers and doctors better understanding risk factors and diagnoses? What policy actions can prioritize research, detection and treatment? And what are the access considerations for patients and their caregivers as they navigate this difficult symptom?

LOCATION

National Press Club Holeman Lounge, 529 14th St. NW, 13th Floor, Washington, DC 20045

Location: Nelson and Murdock, Attorneys At Law: September 29th, 2018 9:15 PM

 

Matt: Hello there, my name’s Mathew Murdock. How may I help you?

 

Spider-Man: Hello, Mr. Murdock. I’m Spider-Man, and I have been framed for breaking and entering into Oscorp.

 

Matt: Oh, I heard about that. My law partner and secretary were discussing that earlier today. Now, I believe you but obviously I’m not the one you need to prove this to. Now, I’ll accept this case, and since you’re a kid I’ll let this be pro bono.

 

Spider-Man: What?! I don’t know what you’re talking about.

 

Matt: Don’t bullshit me, Kid. I may be blind, but I’m not that blind. Regardless of that, let’s start off with the basic stuff. I know Osborn’s side of the story but what’s yours?

 

Spider-Man: Well, Norman Osborn hired dangerous men that harmed others for the purpose of getting my blood for his son, because his son needs a cure for a rare disease. When I learned of this, I made a deal for him to get my blood for the cure, but after that he would have to turn himself in for his crimes. Then he set me up to make it look like I broke into Oscorp…

 

Matt: Okay… That’s a lot to take in, kid. I’ll see what I can do. So do you have any proof that you were welcomed into the place?

 

Spider-Man: Uh, not exactly.

 

Matt sighed and pinched the middle of his nose, I could sense his disappointment…

 

Matt: Alright kid, if you can’t get me proof I can set up a counter claim against Osborn. Now, however you do it…. Well I don’t have to know that part, but I doubt you’ll do anything that would harm anyone to get that evidence. You are a hero after all.

 

Spider-Man: You...You think I’m a hero?

Matt: Well kid, you’d be surprised how many people in NY, especially in Hell’s Kitchen, that look up to you and love you. That Jameson dude can say what he wants to say, print what he wants to print, but at the end of the day you still look out for the little guy. And I respect that. Keep up the good work, kid.

 

Spider-Man: Thanks, you don’t know how much I appreciate that. I’ll be back with that proof.

 

Matt: I know you will, Kid. Bye.

 

I left the law firm and stayed the night at Harry’s house, though it was hard to sleep, and I guess you could say I’m a little paranoid after what happened.

 

__________________________________________________________________________________

 

Location: Oscorp Industries: October 20th, 2018 11:45 AM

  

Otto: Alright, so Peter, we’re gonna have to shift gears from the arm project. We’ve been commissioned to make a device for the military, meant for faster travel. They gave us a blueprint to base it off of, and all we are tasked to do is build and test.

 

He held up the documented designs and it looked like something from the future. Sorta like a weird hoverboard or something.

 

Peter: Don’t you think this is a little out of our wheelhouse? Special prosthesis’, we can do that. Tony Stark or Reed Richards type stuff, I don’t know… I just don’t think I could do something like this.

 

Otto: Peter, you sell yourself short. You are one of the brightest minds I know, and at such a young age I know your intellect will only expand as the years go by. Plus, we’ll be getting help from someone who knows a thing or two about aerodynamics. Adrian Toombs is very knowledgeable when it comes to things that fly and he’ll be joining us later when we get to the testing phase.

 

Peter: Heh, thanks Doc. Hey uh, I know this is random, but does Oscorp have servers that store stuff from the camera feed?

 

Otto gave me a quizzical gaze and let out a slight, “Yeah why?” He continued on to say, “It has a 24/7 camera log of what goes on around here. It’s all the way in the basement and if you are looking for anything that goes on in here, you’ll find it there.”

 

Peter: Oh, interesting. Uh sorry for going off topic, let’s get a roll on making this flight thing.

 

Doc and I studied the mock up design the military made and discussed ways to innovate it. Man, Doc has so many great ideas and if any man was to lead the world into a glorious new age it would be Otto. Any man willing and wanting to change the world by inventing this for the better, is a man I’m willing to follow to the end of the line. After hours of work and a few mini prototypes later, it was night. I guess time flies when you’re helping the world. I started to get my stuff ready to go, but then Doc handed me a flashdrive and I was confused.

  

Peter: What’s this?

 

Otto smiled at me as he said, “Just when you get the chance, give it a look. Especially the last schematic, you’re definitely gonna need it.”

 

Peter: Uh thanks, Doc. I’ll see you next time.

 

Otto; See you later, Peter. Have a good rest of your night.

 

I left the lab and headed back home to plug in the drive, and upon seeing it I gained the biggest grin. It was a complete floor to floor layout of the whole Oscorp building. Which means I can easily access that area without going in blind. I skipped through the files then I found something that made me go pale… There was a schematic with a Stealth Spider-Man suit. And a note attached… It stated, “Peter Parker, Spider-Man. Who would’ve thought? I mean when you think about it, it’s obvious. A person who wants to make the world a better place, even if it’s a little at a time. I don’t believe what the news says, I know you’re not a bad kid, so if you are doing what I think you’re doing then you need to be prepared. Red and blue are nice looking but I wouldn’t call it inconspicuous so I quickly designed a more stealthy suit. If you need the materials to make it then head to the lab and there’s some stuff you can use. Just don’t do it at Oscorp, it’s too risky. Good luck, Peter.” - Your mentor, Otto Octavius.

 

Peter: Otto....Bless you. Heh, time to get to work.

 

I made the stealth suit. It was all black with goggles with shutters similar to the ones on my original costume. But before I could head out to Oscorp, I had one more thing to do. Tutor Flash Thompson.

 

Flash came into my house and looked around, seemingly impressed by…. Something.

 

Flash: Not a bad place for a little dipshit like you, Parker. A little old fashioned but still not bad.

 

Peter: Remember, let’s keep the name calling to a minimum. Anyways, what work do you have to do?

 

Flash: Something about cells.

 

Peter: Oh, this should be easy. You see there are a couple of main cells. B and T cells. They produce antibodies and-

 

An alert on my phone buzzes, a crime downtown is in progress. I look over, squinting with irritation that I can’t do anything. I guess Flash noticed because he started to snap in front of my face.

 

Flash: Yo, Earth to Parker! You good man? You seem off.

 

I hesitated before looking at Flash, then I finally nodded.

 

Peter: Sorry, just…There’s some things I need to do. And I can’t because well, I just can’t. Look it’s nothing of importance nor is it anything you’d understand.

 

Flash: Heh, if it’s some nerd science shit of course I’m not gonna get it, but I do get that sometimes you have to prioritize. Like as much I love football, I can do anything in it if my grades are ass. So I go to you for help, it’s just knowing what’s more important and what should come first. Whatever it is, if it’s something you need to do then do it, Pete. I can always wait to do this homework so go ahead and get your stuff done.

 

I was…. Shocked. Flash Thompson, helped me and gave me decent advice. Though that might be because I’m helping him with school… Or maybe I was wrong about him.

 

Peter: Thanks, Flash. I needed that, I have to go. I promise we will continue the tutoring session tomorrow.

 

Flash: Whatever you say dork.

 

I left swinging off to stop a crime in progress. Now, should I, a now wanted criminal, be actively out in the open. No, hell no. But when you have a duty, a responsibility, you should always uphold it and stick to it. Because though you might have to sacrifice some things, at least you stay true to who you are and- WAIT WHAT IS THAT?! My Spider Sense started blaring as I noticed an enormous man in a rhino costume.

 

I catch up to the police tailing the rhino guy, and I talk to one of the officers.

 

Spider-Man: Hey, need any help here?

 

Cop: What the- Spider-Man? Aren’t you a criminal?

 

Spider-Man: So they say, they also call me a menace, nuisance, and a plethora of other things J. Jonah likes to brand me as. So uh, you just sit back and I handle the Chuck E. Cheese reject.

 

Cop: Why would you want to help us if you’re wanted?

 

Spider-Man: Hm, dunno. I TOTALLY wasn’t doing this before or something. I’m glad you asked though, because your fellow officers didn’t when they decided to go all “guns a blazing” on me the other day. Anyways, gotta go deal with Mr. Rocksteady over there. Peace!

 

I swung further down to catch up to that rhino guy and I zipped onto his back, holding on for dear life.

 

Spider-Man: Hey, what’s shakin’ bacon?

 

Rhino: What? Who are you, and what type stupid American phrasing is that?

 

Spider-Man: Huh, did not expect the giant rhino man to be Russian. Interesting to say the least. Anyways big boy, I’m here to turn you in….Or at least attempt to.

 

Rhino: NOTHING CAN CONTAIN THE RHINO!

 

So, Newton once said that, “If a body is at rest or moving at a constant speed in a straight line, it will remain at rest or keep moving in a straight line at constant speed unless it is acted upon by a force.” His first law of motion, so let’s think of the Rhino as this thing that’s at a consistent speed. If that is the case, then it’s time for me to be the force that acts upon him.

 

That’s when I see it, a construction site two blocks down. Bingo. Direct Rhino to the site, throw him in a pit, and fill it with cement. Time to get to work. When he approached the construction site, I used my webs to pull him over there, though there was some resistance on his part. I overcame the big lug and trapped him in a pit that was soon to be filled with cement. And in no time, the Rhino was put to an astounding halt, thanks to the one and only Spider-Man!

 

But that’s when I hear it… “Put your hands up!” Son of a- Of course, the one thing I forgot. The police. I put my hands up, slowly turn around then see several cop cars. Right as they’re getting ready to turn me in, one of them says, “Stop! Don’t you see, he helped us!” It was that one I talked to, huh I would’ve never guessed. He started to talk down the others, convincing them to chill out and I walked up to them.

 

Spider-Man: Uh thanks for vouching for me… Not too many people do that for me.

 

Cop: No problem, but Captain Stacy is probably gonna have my head for this one. Look, I know you’re not some maniac they say you are, hell a lot of people don’t think that. Especially at the precinct. I owe you, more than you’ll ever know.

 

Spider-Man: For what? The Russian Rhino over here? I take guys like him out like every other week. It’s nothing special.

 

Cop: No it’s not that… You saved my life, my wife and son’s lives. My name is Jefferson Davis, you might not remember me but a few weeks back you saved our lives when Shocker attacked that bridge. That’s something that I’ll eternally be grateful for. I can’t necessarily pay you back in that way, but I can help when you need info on a criminal or something. Here’s my information.

 

He took out a notepad from his cruiser and wrote down a number to call and handed it to me.

 

Spider-Man: I don’t really do this looking for something in return, I’m not looking for rewards or anything I just-

 

Jefferson: Then that’s fine, but if you do need help just call.

 

I look at the note, then back at Jefferson. I try not to ask for anything, but Uncle Ben always said, “Everybody needs help sometimes.” Ben was right, I don’t have to always do things alone. So it wouldn’t hurt to have a little help here and there.

 

Spider-Man: Thanks, Jefferson. And also, you don’t owe me anything, you never did.

 

I swing off and wait at my home until it is night. I put on my new stealth suit and head out to Oscorp. Let’s go prove my innocence! Anyways, I get to Oscorp and use Doc’s schematics to navigate the Oscorp ventilation system. Weird, the vents are sorta warm like someone’s used them before…Very peculiar. Regardless of that, I get to the server room, then my Spider-Sense starts acting up again.

 

Spider-Man: Um, who’s there?

 

Really Pete? If anyone is here, you ruined your element of surprise…

 

???: So we’ve got a new thief in the biz, whatcha call yourself?

 

Spider-Man: Correction, not a thief, though my getup doesn’t really help my case. Look usually I’d turn in guys like you but right now I need to just take something from here.

 

???: So…You’re stealing? I get you’re new to this whole thing but usually you describe what you’re doing to anyone, or talk to anyone.

 

Spider-Man: But you’re literally going against your own rules.

 

???: Ok, yeah yeah but I like to watch newbies struggle at the job. It’s pretty entertaining, so what brings you here newbie?

 

I roll my eyes, though I doubt he saw, and I go over to a section that has all the camera feeds and connect a hard drive. I let the info get transferred and take out the drive before waving it in front of the purple and green thief.

 

Spider-Man: This. The key to my innocence. And the name’s Spider-Man.

 

???: Bullshit…

 

I hop onto the ceiling and use my webs to descend back down to the thief.

 

Spider-Man: I’m the real deal, now who the hell are you?

 

Prowler: The name’s Prowler! The best thief no one’s heard about.

 

The End

__________________________________________________________________________________

Canyonlands National Park is an American national park located in southeastern Utah near the town of Moab. The park preserves a colorful landscape eroded into numerous canyons, mesas, and buttes by the Colorado River, the Green River, and their respective tributaries. Legislation creating the park was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson on September 12, 1964.

 

The park is divided into four districts: the Island in the Sky, the Needles, the Maze, and the combined rivers—the Green and Colorado—which carved two large canyons into the Colorado Plateau. While these areas share a primitive desert atmosphere, each retains its own character. Author Edward Abbey, a frequent visitor, described the Canyonlands as "the most weird, wonderful, magical place on earth—there is nothing else like it anywhere."

 

In the early 1950s, Bates Wilson, then superintendent of Arches National Monument, began exploring the area to the south and west of Moab, Utah. After seeing what is now known as the Needles District of Canyonlands National Park, Wilson began advocating for the establishment of a new national park that would include the Needles. Additional explorations by Wilson and others expanded the areas proposed for inclusion into the new national park to include the confluence of Green and Colorado rivers, the Maze District, and Horseshoe Canyon.

 

In 1961, Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall was scheduled to address a conference at Grand Canyon National Park. On his flight to the conference, he flew over the Confluence (where the Colorado and Green rivers meet). The view apparently sparked Udall's interest in Wilson's proposal for a new national park in that area and Udall began promoting the establishment of Canyonlands National Park.

 

Utah Senator Frank Moss first introduced legislation into Congress to create Canyonlands National Park. His legislation attempted to satisfy both nature preservationists' and commercial developers' interests. Over the next four years, his proposal was struck down, debated, revised, and reintroduced to Congress many times before being passed and signed into creation.

 

In September, 1964, after several years of debate, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed Pub.L. 88–590, which established Canyonlands National Park as a new national park. Bates Wilson became the first superintendent of the new park and is often referred to as the "Father of Canyonlands."

 

The Colorado River and Green River combine within the park, dividing it into three districts called the Island in the Sky, the Needles, and the Maze. The Colorado River flows through Cataract Canyon below its confluence with the Green River.

 

The Island in the Sky district is a broad and level mesa in the northern section of the park, between the Colorado and Green rivers. The district has many viewpoints overlooking the White Rim, a sandstone bench 1,200 feet (370 m) below the Island, and the rivers, which are another 1,000 feet (300 m) below the White Rim.

 

The Needles district is located south of the Island in the Sky, on the east side of the Colorado River. The district is named for the red and white banded rock pinnacles which are a major feature of the area. Various other naturally sculpted rock formations are also within this district, including grabens, potholes, and arches. Unlike Arches National Park, where many arches are accessible by short to moderate hikes, most of the arches in the Needles district lie in backcountry canyons, requiring long hikes or four-wheel drive trips to reach them.

 

The Ancestral Puebloans inhabited this area and some of their stone and mud dwellings are well-preserved, although the items and tools they used were mostly removed by looters. The Ancestral Puebloans also created rock art in the form of petroglyphs, most notably on Newspaper Rock along the Needles access road.

 

The Maze district is located west of the Colorado and Green rivers. The Maze is the least accessible section of the park, and one of the most remote and inaccessible areas of the United States.

 

A geographically detached section of the park located north of the Maze district, Horseshoe Canyon contains panels of rock art made by hunter-gatherers from the Late Archaic Period (2000-1000 BC) pre-dating the Ancestral Puebloans. Originally called Barrier Canyon, Horseshoe's artifacts, dwellings, pictographs, and murals are some of the oldest in America. The images depicting horses date from after 1540 AD, when the Spanish reintroduced horses to America.

 

Since the 1950s, scientists have been studying an area of 200 acres (81 ha) completely surrounded by cliffs. The cliffs have prevented cattle from ever grazing on the area's 62 acres (25 ha) of grassland. According to the scientists, the site may contain the largest undisturbed grassland in the Four Corners region. Studies have continued biannually since the mid-1990s. The area has been closed to the public since 1993 to maintain the nearly pristine environment.

 

Mammals that roam this park include black bears, coyotes, skunks, bats, elk, foxes, bobcats, badgers, ring-tailed cats, pronghorns, desert bighorn sheep, and cougars. Desert cottontails, kangaroo rats and mule deer are commonly seen by visitors.

 

At least 273 species of birds inhabit the park. A variety of hawks and eagles are found, including the Cooper's hawk, the northern goshawk, the sharp-shinned hawk, the red-tailed hawk, the golden and bald eagles, the rough-legged hawk, the Swainson's hawk, and the northern harrier. Several species of owls are found, including the great horned owl, the northern saw-whet owl, the western screech owl, and the Mexican spotted owl. Grebes, woodpeckers, ravens, herons, flycatchers, crows, bluebirds, wrens, warblers, blackbirds, orioles, goldfinches, swallows, sparrows, ducks, quail, grouse, pheasants, hummingbirds, falcons, gulls, and ospreys are some of the other birds that can be found.

 

Several reptiles can be found, including eleven species of lizards and eight species of snake (including the midget faded rattlesnake). The common kingsnake and prairie rattlesnake have been reported in the park, but not confirmed by the National Park Service.

 

The park is home to six confirmed amphibian species, including the red-spotted toad, Woodhouse's toad, American bullfrog, northern leopard frog, Great Basin spadefoot toad, and tiger salamander. The canyon tree frog was reported to be in the park in 2000, but was not confirmed during a study in 2004.

 

Canyonlands National Park contains a wide variety of plant life, including 11 cactus species,[34] 20 moss species, liverworts, grasses and wildflowers. Varieties of trees include netleaf hackberry, Russian olive, Utah juniper, pinyon pine, tamarisk, and Fremont's cottonwood. Shrubs include Mormon tea, blackbrush, four-wing saltbush, cliffrose, littleleaf mountain mahogany, and snakeweed

 

Cryptobiotic soil is the foundation of life in Canyonlands, providing nitrogen fixation and moisture for plant seeds. One footprint can destroy decades of growth.

 

According to the Köppen climate classification system, Canyonlands National Park has a cold semi-arid climate ("BSk"). The plant hardiness zones at the Island in the Sky and Needles District Visitor Centers are 7a with an average annual extreme minimum air temperature of 4.0 °F (-15.6 °C) and 2.9 °F (-16.2 °C), respectively.

 

The National Weather Service has maintained two cooperative weather stations in the park since June 1965. Official data documents the desert climate with less than 10 inches (250 millimetres) of annual rainfall, as well as hot, mostly dry summers and cold, occasionally wet winters. Snowfall is generally light during the winter.

 

The station in The Neck region reports an average January temperature of 29.6 °F and an average July temperature of 79.3 °F. Average July temperatures range from a high of 90.8 °F (32.7 °C) to a low of 67.9 °F (19.9 °C). There are an average of 45.7 days with highs of 90 °F (32 °C) or higher and an average of 117.3 days with lows of 32 °F (0 °C) or lower. The highest recorded temperature was 105 °F (41 °C) on July 15, 2005, and the lowest recorded temperature was −13 °F (−25 °C) on February 6, 1989. Average annual precipitation is 9.33 inches (237 mm). There are an average of 59 days with measurable precipitation. The wettest year was 1984, with 13.66 in (347 mm), and the driest year was 1989, with 4.63 in (118 mm). The most precipitation in one month was 5.19 in (132 mm) in October 2006. The most precipitation in 24 hours was 1.76 in (45 mm) on April 9, 1978. Average annual snowfall is 22.8 in (58 cm). The most snowfall in one year was 47.4 in (120 cm) in 1975, and the most snowfall in one month was 27.0 in (69 cm) in January 1978.

 

The station in The Needles region reports an average January temperature of 29.7 °F and an average July temperature of 79.1 °F.[44] Average July temperatures range from a high of 95.4 °F (35.2 °C) to a low of 62.4 °F (16.9 °C). There are an average of 75.4 days with highs of 90 °F (32 °C) or higher and an average of 143.6 days with lows of 32 °F (0 °C) or lower. The highest recorded temperature was 107 °F (42 °C) on July 13, 1971, and the lowest recorded temperature was −16 °F (−27 °C) on January 16, 1971. Average annual precipitation is 8.49 in (216 mm). There are an average of 56 days with measurable precipitation. The wettest year was 1969, with 11.19 in (284 mm), and the driest year was 1989, with 4.25 in (108 mm). The most precipitation in one month was 4.43 in (113 mm) in October 1972. The most precipitation in 24 hours was 1.56 in (40 mm) on September 17, 1999. Average annual snowfall is 14.4 in (37 cm). The most snowfall in one year was 39.3 in (100 cm) in 1975, and the most snowfall in one month was 24.0 in (61 cm) in March 1985.

 

National parks in the Western US are more affected by climate change than the country as a whole, and the National Park Service has begun research into how exactly this will effect the ecosystem of Canyonlands National Park and the surrounding areas and ways to protect the park for the future. The mean annual temperature of Canyonlands National Park increased by 2.6 °F (1.4 °C) from 1916 to 2018. It is predicted that if current warming trends continue, the average highs in the park during the summer will be over 100 °F (40 °C) by 2100. In addition to warming, the region has begun to see more severe and frequent droughts which causes native grass cover to decrease and a lower flow of the Colorado River. The flows of the Upper Colorado Basin have decreased by 300,000 acre⋅ft (370,000,000 m3) per year, which has led to a decreased amount of sediment carried by the river and rockier rapids which are more frequently impassable to rafters. The area has also begun to see an earlier spring, which will lead to changes in the timing of leaves and flowers blooming and migrational patterns of wildlife that could lead to food shortages for the wildlife, as well as a longer fire season.

 

The National Park Service is currently closely monitoring the impacts of climate change in Canyonlands National Park in order to create management strategies that will best help conserve the park's landscapes and ecosystems for the long term. Although the National Park Service's original goal was to preserve landscapes as they were before European colonization, they have now switched to a more adaptive management strategy with the ultimate goal of conserving the biodiversity of the park. The NPS is collaborating with other organizations including the US Geological Survey, local indigenous tribes, and nearby universities in order to create a management plan for the national park. Right now, there is a focus on research into which native plants will be most resistant to climate change so that the park can decide on what to prioritize in conservation efforts. The Canyonlands Natural History Association has been giving money to the US Geological Survey to fund this and other climate related research. They gave $30,000 in 2019 and $61,000 in 2020.

 

A subsiding basin and nearby uplifting mountain range (the Uncompahgre) existed in the area in Pennsylvanian time. Seawater trapped in the subsiding basin created thick evaporite deposits by Mid Pennsylvanian. This, along with eroded material from the nearby mountain range, became the Paradox Formation, itself a part of the Hermosa Group. Paradox salt beds started to flow later in the Pennsylvanian and probably continued to move until the end of the Jurassic. Some scientists believe Upheaval Dome was created from Paradox salt bed movement, creating a salt dome, but more modern studies show that the meteorite theory is more likely to be correct.

 

A warm shallow sea again flooded the region near the end of the Pennsylvanian. Fossil-rich limestones, sandstones, and shales of the gray-colored Honaker Trail Formation resulted. A period of erosion then ensued, creating a break in the geologic record called an unconformity. Early in the Permian an advancing sea laid down the Halgaito Shale. Coastal lowlands later returned to the area, forming the Elephant Canyon Formation.

 

Large alluvial fans filled the basin where it met the Uncompahgre Mountains, creating the Cutler red beds of iron-rich arkose sandstone. Underwater sand bars and sand dunes on the coast inter-fingered with the red beds and later became the white-colored cliff-forming Cedar Mesa Sandstone. Brightly colored oxidized muds were then deposited, forming the Organ Rock Shale. Coastal sand dunes and marine sand bars once again became dominant, creating the White Rim Sandstone.

 

A second unconformity was created after the Permian sea retreated. Flood plains on an expansive lowland covered the eroded surface and mud built up in tidal flats, creating the Moenkopi Formation. Erosion returned, forming a third unconformity. The Chinle Formation was then laid down on top of this eroded surface.

 

Increasingly dry climates dominated the Triassic. Therefore, sand in the form of sand dunes invaded and became the Wingate Sandstone. For a time climatic conditions became wetter and streams cut channels through the sand dunes, forming the Kayenta Formation. Arid conditions returned to the region with a vengeance; a large desert spread over much of western North America and later became the Navajo Sandstone. A fourth unconformity was created by a period of erosion.

 

Mud flats returned, forming the Carmel Formation, and the Entrada Sandstone was laid down next. A long period of erosion stripped away most of the San Rafael Group in the area, along with any formations that may have been laid down in the Cretaceous period.

 

The Laramide orogeny started to uplift the Rocky Mountains 70 million years ago and with it, the Canyonlands region. Erosion intensified and when the Colorado River Canyon reached the salt beds of the Paradox Formation the overlying strata extended toward the river canyon, forming features such as The Grabens. Increased precipitation during the ice ages of the Pleistocene quickened the rate of canyon excavation along with other erosion. Similar types of erosion are ongoing, but occur at a slower rate.

 

Utah is a landlocked state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It borders Colorado to its east, Wyoming to its northeast, Idaho to its north, Arizona to its south, and Nevada to its west. Utah also touches a corner of New Mexico in the southeast. Of the fifty U.S. states, Utah is the 13th-largest by area; with a population over three million, it is the 30th-most-populous and 11th-least-densely populated. Urban development is mostly concentrated in two areas: the Wasatch Front in the north-central part of the state, which is home to roughly two-thirds of the population and includes the capital city, Salt Lake City; and Washington County in the southwest, with more than 180,000 residents. Most of the western half of Utah lies in the Great Basin.

 

Utah has been inhabited for thousands of years by various indigenous groups such as the ancient Puebloans, Navajo, and Ute. The Spanish were the first Europeans to arrive in the mid-16th century, though the region's difficult geography and harsh climate made it a peripheral part of New Spain and later Mexico. Even while it was Mexican territory, many of Utah's earliest settlers were American, particularly Mormons fleeing marginalization and persecution from the United States via the Mormon Trail. Following the Mexican–American War in 1848, the region was annexed by the U.S., becoming part of the Utah Territory, which included what is now Colorado and Nevada. Disputes between the dominant Mormon community and the federal government delayed Utah's admission as a state; only after the outlawing of polygamy was it admitted in 1896 as the 45th.

 

People from Utah are known as Utahns. Slightly over half of all Utahns are Mormons, the vast majority of whom are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), which has its world headquarters in Salt Lake City; Utah is the only state where a majority of the population belongs to a single church. A 2023 paper challenged this perception (claiming only 42% of Utahns are Mormons) however most statistics still show a majority of Utah residents belong to the LDS church; estimates from the LDS church suggests 60.68% of Utah's population belongs to the church whilst some sources put the number as high as 68%. The paper replied that membership count done by the LDS Church is too high for several reasons. The LDS Church greatly influences Utahn culture, politics, and daily life, though since the 1990s the state has become more religiously diverse as well as secular.

 

Utah has a highly diversified economy, with major sectors including transportation, education, information technology and research, government services, mining, multi-level marketing, and tourism. Utah has been one of the fastest growing states since 2000, with the 2020 U.S. census confirming the fastest population growth in the nation since 2010. St. George was the fastest-growing metropolitan area in the United States from 2000 to 2005. Utah ranks among the overall best states in metrics such as healthcare, governance, education, and infrastructure. It has the 12th-highest median average income and the least income inequality of any U.S. state. Over time and influenced by climate change, droughts in Utah have been increasing in frequency and severity, putting a further strain on Utah's water security and impacting the state's economy.

 

The History of Utah is an examination of the human history and social activity within the state of Utah located in the western United States.

 

Archaeological evidence dates the earliest habitation of humans in Utah to about 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. Paleolithic people lived near the Great Basin's swamps and marshes, which had an abundance of fish, birds, and small game animals. Big game, including bison, mammoths and ground sloths, also were attracted to these water sources. Over the centuries, the mega-fauna died, this population was replaced by the Desert Archaic people, who sheltered in caves near the Great Salt Lake. Relying more on gathering than the previous Utah residents, their diet was mainly composed of cattails and other salt tolerant plants such as pickleweed, burro weed and sedge. Red meat appears to have been more of a luxury, although these people used nets and the atlatl to hunt water fowl, ducks, small animals and antelope. Artifacts include nets woven with plant fibers and rabbit skin, woven sandals, gaming sticks, and animal figures made from split-twigs. About 3,500 years ago, lake levels rose and the population of Desert Archaic people appears to have dramatically decreased. The Great Basin may have been almost unoccupied for 1,000 years.

 

The Fremont culture, named from sites near the Fremont River in Utah, lived in what is now north and western Utah and parts of Nevada, Idaho and Colorado from approximately 600 to 1300 AD. These people lived in areas close to water sources that had been previously occupied by the Desert Archaic people, and may have had some relationship with them. However, their use of new technologies define them as a distinct people. Fremont technologies include:

 

use of the bow and arrow while hunting,

building pithouse shelters,

growing maize and probably beans and squash,

building above ground granaries of adobe or stone,

creating and decorating low-fired pottery ware,

producing art, including jewelry and rock art such as petroglyphs and pictographs.

 

The ancient Puebloan culture, also known as the Anasazi, occupied territory adjacent to the Fremont. The ancestral Puebloan culture centered on the present-day Four Corners area of the Southwest United States, including the San Juan River region of Utah. Archaeologists debate when this distinct culture emerged, but cultural development seems to date from about the common era, about 500 years before the Fremont appeared. It is generally accepted that the cultural peak of these people was around the 1200 CE. Ancient Puebloan culture is known for well constructed pithouses and more elaborate adobe and masonry dwellings. They were excellent craftsmen, producing turquoise jewelry and fine pottery. The Puebloan culture was based on agriculture, and the people created and cultivated fields of maize, beans, and squash and domesticated turkeys. They designed and produced elaborate field terracing and irrigation systems. They also built structures, some known as kivas, apparently designed solely for cultural and religious rituals.

 

These two later cultures were roughly contemporaneous, and appear to have established trading relationships. They also shared enough cultural traits that archaeologists believe the cultures may have common roots in the early American Southwest. However, each remained culturally distinct throughout most of their existence. These two well established cultures appear to have been severely impacted by climatic change and perhaps by the incursion of new people in about 1200 CE. Over the next two centuries, the Fremont and ancient Pueblo people may have moved into the American southwest, finding new homes and farmlands in the river drainages of Arizona, New Mexico and northern Mexico.

 

In about 1200, Shoshonean speaking peoples entered Utah territory from the west. They may have originated in southern California and moved into the desert environment due to population pressure along the coast. They were an upland people with a hunting and gathering lifestyle utilizing roots and seeds, including the pinyon nut. They were also skillful fishermen, created pottery and raised some crops. When they first arrived in Utah, they lived as small family groups with little tribal organization. Four main Shoshonean peoples inhabited Utah country. The Shoshone in the north and northeast, the Gosiutes in the northwest, the Utes in the central and eastern parts of the region and the Southern Paiutes in the southwest. Initially, there seems to have been very little conflict between these groups.

 

In the early 16th century, the San Juan River basin in Utah's southeast also saw a new people, the Díne or Navajo, part of a greater group of plains Athabaskan speakers moved into the Southwest from the Great Plains. In addition to the Navajo, this language group contained people that were later known as Apaches, including the Lipan, Jicarilla, and Mescalero Apaches.

 

Athabaskans were a hunting people who initially followed the bison, and were identified in 16th-century Spanish accounts as "dog nomads". The Athabaskans expanded their range throughout the 17th century, occupying areas the Pueblo peoples had abandoned during prior centuries. The Spanish first specifically mention the "Apachu de Nabajo" (Navaho) in the 1620s, referring to the people in the Chama valley region east of the San Juan River, and north west of Santa Fe. By the 1640s, the term Navaho was applied to these same people. Although the Navajo newcomers established a generally peaceful trading and cultural exchange with the some modern Pueblo peoples to the south, they experienced intermittent warfare with the Shoshonean peoples, particularly the Utes in eastern Utah and western Colorado.

 

At the time of European expansion, beginning with Spanish explorers traveling from Mexico, five distinct native peoples occupied territory within the Utah area: the Northern Shoshone, the Goshute, the Ute, the Paiute and the Navajo.

 

The Spanish explorer Francisco Vázquez de Coronado may have crossed into what is now southern Utah in 1540, when he was seeking the legendary Cíbola.

 

A group led by two Spanish Catholic priests—sometimes called the Domínguez–Escalante expedition—left Santa Fe in 1776, hoping to find a route to the California coast. The expedition traveled as far north as Utah Lake and encountered the native residents. All of what is now Utah was claimed by the Spanish Empire from the 1500s to 1821 as part of New Spain (later as the province Alta California); and subsequently claimed by Mexico from 1821 to 1848. However, Spain and Mexico had little permanent presence in, or control of, the region.

 

Fur trappers (also known as mountain men) including Jim Bridger, explored some regions of Utah in the early 19th century. The city of Provo was named for one such man, Étienne Provost, who visited the area in 1825. The city of Ogden, Utah is named for a brigade leader of the Hudson's Bay Company, Peter Skene Ogden who trapped in the Weber Valley. In 1846, a year before the arrival of members from the Church of Jesus Christ of latter-day Saints, the ill-fated Donner Party crossed through the Salt Lake valley late in the season, deciding not to stay the winter there but to continue forward to California, and beyond.

 

Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly known as Mormon pioneers, first came to the Salt Lake Valley on July 24, 1847. At the time, the U.S. had already captured the Mexican territories of Alta California and New Mexico in the Mexican–American War and planned to keep them, but those territories, including the future state of Utah, officially became United States territory upon the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, February 2, 1848. The treaty was ratified by the United States Senate on March 10, 1848.

 

Upon arrival in the Salt Lake Valley, the Mormon pioneers found no permanent settlement of Indians. Other areas along the Wasatch Range were occupied at the time of settlement by the Northwestern Shoshone and adjacent areas by other bands of Shoshone such as the Gosiute. The Northwestern Shoshone lived in the valleys on the eastern shore of Great Salt Lake and in adjacent mountain valleys. Some years after arriving in the Salt Lake Valley Mormons, who went on to colonize many other areas of what is now Utah, were petitioned by Indians for recompense for land taken. The response of Heber C. Kimball, first counselor to Brigham Young, was that the land belonged to "our Father in Heaven and we expect to plow and plant it." A 1945 Supreme Court decision found that the land had been treated by the United States as public domain; no aboriginal title by the Northwestern Shoshone had been recognized by the United States or extinguished by treaty with the United States.

 

Upon arriving in the Salt Lake Valley, the Mormons had to make a place to live. They created irrigation systems, laid out farms, built houses, churches, and schools. Access to water was crucially important. Almost immediately, Brigham Young set out to identify and claim additional community sites. While it was difficult to find large areas in the Great Basin where water sources were dependable and growing seasons long enough to raise vitally important subsistence crops, satellite communities began to be formed.

 

Shortly after the first company arrived in the Salt Lake Valley in 1847, the community of Bountiful was settled to the north. In 1848, settlers moved into lands purchased from trapper Miles Goodyear in present-day Ogden. In 1849, Tooele and Provo were founded. Also that year, at the invitation of Ute chief Wakara, settlers moved into the Sanpete Valley in central Utah to establish the community of Manti. Fillmore, Utah, intended to be the capital of the new territory, was established in 1851. In 1855, missionary efforts aimed at western native cultures led to outposts in Fort Lemhi, Idaho, Las Vegas, Nevada and Elk Mountain in east-central Utah.

 

The experiences of returning members of the Mormon Battalion were also important in establishing new communities. On their journey west, the Mormon soldiers had identified dependable rivers and fertile river valleys in Colorado, Arizona and southern California. In addition, as the men traveled to rejoin their families in the Salt Lake Valley, they moved through southern Nevada and the eastern segments of southern Utah. Jefferson Hunt, a senior Mormon officer of the Battalion, actively searched for settlement sites, minerals, and other resources. His report encouraged 1851 settlement efforts in Iron County, near present-day Cedar City. These southern explorations eventually led to Mormon settlements in St. George, Utah, Las Vegas and San Bernardino, California, as well as communities in southern Arizona.

 

Prior to establishment of the Oregon and California trails and Mormon settlement, Indians native to the Salt Lake Valley and adjacent areas lived by hunting buffalo and other game, but also gathered grass seed from the bountiful grass of the area as well as roots such as those of the Indian Camas. By the time of settlement, indeed before 1840, the buffalo were gone from the valley, but hunting by settlers and grazing of cattle severely impacted the Indians in the area, and as settlement expanded into nearby river valleys and oases, indigenous tribes experienced increasing difficulty in gathering sufficient food. Brigham Young's counsel was to feed the hungry tribes, and that was done, but it was often not enough. These tensions formed the background to the Bear River massacre committed by California Militia stationed in Salt Lake City during the Civil War. The site of the massacre is just inside Preston, Idaho, but was generally thought to be within Utah at the time.

 

Statehood was petitioned for in 1849-50 using the name Deseret. The proposed State of Deseret would have been quite large, encompassing all of what is now Utah, and portions of Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, Wyoming, Arizona, Oregon, New Mexico and California. The name of Deseret was favored by the LDS leader Brigham Young as a symbol of industry and was derived from a reference in the Book of Mormon. The petition was rejected by Congress and Utah did not become a state until 1896, following the Utah Constitutional Convention of 1895.

 

In 1850, the Utah Territory was created with the Compromise of 1850, and Fillmore (named after President Fillmore) was designated the capital. In 1856, Salt Lake City replaced Fillmore as the territorial capital.

 

The first group of pioneers brought African slaves with them, making Utah the only place in the western United States to have African slavery. Three slaves, Green Flake, Hark Lay, and Oscar Crosby, came west with this first group in 1847. The settlers also began to purchase Indian slaves in the well-established Indian slave trade, as well as enslaving Indian prisoners of war. In 1850, 26 slaves were counted in Salt Lake County. Slavery didn't become officially recognized until 1852, when the Act in Relation to Service and the Act for the relief of Indian Slaves and Prisoners were passed. Slavery was repealed on June 19, 1862, when Congress prohibited slavery in all US territories.

 

Disputes between the Mormon inhabitants and the federal government intensified after the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' practice of polygamy became known. The polygamous practices of the Mormons, which were made public in 1854, would be one of the major reasons Utah was denied statehood until almost 50 years after the Mormons had entered the area.

 

After news of their polygamous practices spread, the members of the LDS Church were quickly viewed by some as un-American and rebellious. In 1857, after news of a possible rebellion spread, President James Buchanan sent troops on the Utah expedition to quell the growing unrest and to replace Brigham Young as territorial governor with Alfred Cumming. The expedition was also known as the Utah War.

 

As fear of invasion grew, Mormon settlers had convinced some Paiute Indians to aid in a Mormon-led attack on 120 immigrants from Arkansas under the guise of Indian aggression. The murder of these settlers became known as the Mountain Meadows massacre. The Mormon leadership had adopted a defensive posture that led to a ban on the selling of grain to outsiders in preparation for an impending war. This chafed pioneers traveling through the region, who were unable to purchase badly needed supplies. A disagreement between some of the Arkansas pioneers and the Mormons in Cedar City led to the secret planning of the massacre by a few Mormon leaders in the area. Some scholars debate the involvement of Brigham Young. Only one man, John D. Lee, was ever convicted of the murders, and he was executed at the massacre site.

 

Express riders had brought the news 1,000 miles from the Missouri River settlements to Salt Lake City within about two weeks of the army's beginning to march west. Fearing the worst as 2,500 troops (roughly 1/3rd of the army then) led by General Albert Sidney Johnston started west, Brigham Young ordered all residents of Salt Lake City and neighboring communities to prepare their homes for burning and evacuate southward to Utah Valley and southern Utah. Young also sent out a few units of the Nauvoo Legion (numbering roughly 8,000–10,000), to delay the army's advance. The majority he sent into the mountains to prepare defenses or south to prepare for a scorched earth retreat. Although some army wagon supply trains were captured and burned and herds of army horses and cattle run off no serious fighting occurred. Starting late and short on supplies, the United States Army camped during the bitter winter of 1857–58 near a burned out Fort Bridger in Wyoming. Through the negotiations between emissary Thomas L. Kane, Young, Cumming and Johnston, control of Utah territory was peacefully transferred to Cumming, who entered an eerily vacant Salt Lake City in the spring of 1858. By agreement with Young, Johnston established the army at Fort Floyd 40 miles away from Salt Lake City, to the southwest.

 

Salt Lake City was the last link of the First Transcontinental Telegraph, between Carson City, Nevada and Omaha, Nebraska completed in October 1861. Brigham Young, who had helped expedite construction, was among the first to send a message, along with Abraham Lincoln and other officials. Soon after the telegraph line was completed, the Deseret Telegraph Company built the Deseret line connecting the settlements in the territory with Salt Lake City and, by extension, the rest of the United States.

 

Because of the American Civil War, federal troops were pulled out of Utah Territory (and their fort auctioned off), leaving the territorial government in federal hands without army backing until General Patrick E. Connor arrived with the 3rd Regiment of California Volunteers in 1862. While in Utah, Connor and his troops soon became discontent with this assignment wanting to head to Virginia where the "real" fighting and glory was occurring. Connor established Fort Douglas just three miles (5 km) east of Salt Lake City and encouraged his bored and often idle soldiers to go out and explore for mineral deposits to bring more non-Mormons into the state. Minerals were discovered in Tooele County, and some miners began to come to the territory. Conner also solved the Shoshone Indian problem in Cache Valley Utah by luring the Shoshone into a midwinter confrontation on January 29, 1863. The armed conflict quickly turned into a rout, discipline among the soldiers broke down, and the Battle of Bear River is today usually referred to by historians as the Bear River Massacre. Between 200 and 400 Shoshone men, women and children were killed, as were 27 soldiers, with over 50 more soldiers wounded or suffering from frostbite.

 

Beginning in 1865, Utah's Black Hawk War developed into the deadliest conflict in the territory's history. Chief Antonga Black Hawk died in 1870, but fights continued to break out until additional federal troops were sent in to suppress the Ghost Dance of 1872. The war is unique among Indian Wars because it was a three-way conflict, with mounted Timpanogos Utes led by Antonga Black Hawk fighting federal and Utah local militia.

 

On May 10, 1869, the First transcontinental railroad was completed at Promontory Summit, north of the Great Salt Lake. The railroad brought increasing numbers of people into the state, and several influential businessmen made fortunes in the territory.

 

Main article: Latter Day Saint polygamy in the late-19th century

During the 1870s and 1880s, federal laws were passed and federal marshals assigned to enforce the laws against polygamy. In the 1890 Manifesto, the LDS Church leadership dropped its approval of polygamy citing divine revelation. When Utah applied for statehood again in 1895, it was accepted. Statehood was officially granted on January 4, 1896.

 

The Mormon issue made the situation for women the topic of nationwide controversy. In 1870 the Utah Territory, controlled by Mormons, gave women the right to vote. However, in 1887, Congress disenfranchised Utah women with the Edmunds–Tucker Act. In 1867–96, eastern activists promoted women's suffrage in Utah as an experiment, and as a way to eliminate polygamy. They were Presbyterians and other Protestants convinced that Mormonism was a non-Christian cult that grossly mistreated women. The Mormons promoted woman suffrage to counter the negative image of downtrodden Mormon women. With the 1890 Manifesto clearing the way for statehood, in 1895 Utah adopted a constitution restoring the right of women's suffrage. Congress admitted Utah as a state with that constitution in 1896.

 

Though less numerous than other intermountain states at the time, several lynching murders for alleged misdeeds occurred in Utah territory at the hand of vigilantes. Those documented include the following, with their ethnicity or national origin noted in parentheses if it was provided in the source:

 

William Torrington in Carson City (then a part of Utah territory), 1859

Thomas Coleman (Black man) in Salt Lake City, 1866

3 unidentified men at Wahsatch, winter of 1868

A Black man in Uintah, 1869

Charles A. Benson in Logan, 1873

Ah Sing (Chinese man) in Corinne, 1874

Thomas Forrest in St. George, 1880

William Harvey (Black man) in Salt Lake City, 1883

John Murphy in Park City, 1883

George Segal (Japanese man) in Ogden, 1884

Joseph Fisher in Eureka, 1886

Robert Marshall (Black man) in Castle Gate, 1925

Other lynchings in Utah territory include multiple instances of mass murder of Native American children, women, and men by White settlers including the Battle Creek massacre (1849), Provo River Massacre (1850), Nephi massacre (1853), and Circleville Massacre (1866).

 

Beginning in the early 20th century, with the establishment of such national parks as Bryce Canyon National Park and Zion National Park, Utah began to become known for its natural beauty. Southern Utah became a popular filming spot for arid, rugged scenes, and such natural landmarks as Delicate Arch and "the Mittens" of Monument Valley are instantly recognizable to most national residents. During the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, with the construction of the Interstate highway system, accessibility to the southern scenic areas was made easier.

 

Beginning in 1939, with the establishment of Alta Ski Area, Utah has become world-renowned for its skiing. The dry, powdery snow of the Wasatch Range is considered some of the best skiing in the world. Salt Lake City won the bid for the 2002 Winter Olympics in 1995, and this has served as a great boost to the economy. The ski resorts have increased in popularity, and many of the Olympic venues scattered across the Wasatch Front continue to be used for sporting events. This also spurred the development of the light-rail system in the Salt Lake Valley, known as TRAX, and the re-construction of the freeway system around the city.

 

During the late 20th century, the state grew quickly. In the 1970s, growth was phenomenal in the suburbs. Sandy was one of the fastest-growing cities in the country at that time, and West Valley City is the state's 2nd most populous city. Today, many areas of Utah are seeing phenomenal growth. Northern Davis, southern and western Salt Lake, Summit, eastern Tooele, Utah, Wasatch, and Washington counties are all growing very quickly. Transportation and urbanization are major issues in politics as development consumes agricultural land and wilderness areas.

 

In 2012, the State of Utah passed the Utah Transfer of Public Lands Act in an attempt to gain control over a substantial portion of federal land in the state from the federal government, based on language in the Utah Enabling Act of 1894. The State does not intend to use force or assert control by limiting access in an attempt to control the disputed lands, but does intend to use a multi-step process of education, negotiation, legislation, and if necessary, litigation as part of its multi-year effort to gain state or private control over the lands after 2014.

 

Utah families, like most Americans everywhere, did their utmost to assist in the war effort. Tires, meat, butter, sugar, fats, oils, coffee, shoes, boots, gasoline, canned fruits, vegetables, and soups were rationed on a national basis. The school day was shortened and bus routes were reduced to limit the number of resources used stateside and increase what could be sent to soldiers.

 

Geneva Steel was built to increase the steel production for America during World War II. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had proposed opening a steel mill in Utah in 1936, but the idea was shelved after a couple of months. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States entered the war and the steel plant was put into progress. In April 1944, Geneva shipped its first order, which consisted of over 600 tons of steel plate. Geneva Steel also brought thousands of job opportunities to Utah. The positions were hard to fill as many of Utah's men were overseas fighting. Women began working, filling 25 percent of the jobs.

 

As a result of Utah's and Geneva Steels contribution during the war, several Liberty Ships were named in honor of Utah including the USS Joseph Smith, USS Brigham Young, USS Provo, and the USS Peter Skene Ogden.

 

One of the sectors of the beachhead of Normandy Landings was codenamed Utah Beach, and the amphibious landings at the beach were undertaken by United States Army troops.

 

It is estimated that 1,450 soldiers from Utah were killed in the war.

Where the ocean meets the sky...

 

Thank you Flicker friends for over 15 years of shared images. Photography has meant much to me over the years, and sharing the images and experiences has been a rewarding pastime.

 

I am at a crossroads as to where to go at this point in time. I am letting go of the craft as I am having difficulties with my abilities to continue. Perhaps one day I will return, but for now it is time to prioritize other aspects of my life.

 

Thanks for being part of these enjoyable experiences.

 

Jim Cormier

Yet another domestic clone of Soviet technology, the M-240 German is the Yugoslav rendition of the 2S4 Tyulpan heavy mortar system. The German--named after the Balkan spirit associated with rain and hail--sports a 240mm mortar, presently the largest caliber associated with any mortar system in active service. Many in the West have ridiculed the fact that Yugoslavia continues to employ such cumbersome weapons given the transition to light, mobile strike forces; however, the JNA is more than pleased to keep the German around given it allows for a lot of firepower to be put downrange with very few munitions actually needing to be fired. Indeed a battery of four M-240s can do as much work as twelve M-122 Bies. It should be noted, however, that the M-240 can only fire one round every minute (further automation by the JNA has actually decreased the time to 50 seconds, but we won't get caught up in pedantry here); therefore, the units are fired sparingly in symmetric operations in order to decrease the chances of counter-battery fire suppressing or eliminating them.

 

During the Wars of Dissolution in the 1990s, many M-240s were utilized by ultranationalist factions as modern siege weapons or simply as instruments of cultural destruction. The warring parties would often target whole market places or sites of piety and level them with one or two rounds after sacking them. Additionally, the relatively small size of the mortar system meant it could be hidden quite easily from the deadly eyes of NATO bombers; hence, it was quite common to find M-240s abandoned in mundane maintenance garages or somewhere similar once Belgrade was able to consolidate and quash the numerous secessionist parties. Following the conclusion of these bloody conflicts, it was easy for state inspectors to discern what weapon system caused such extensive damage to ancient towns and national infrastructure as the signature of 240mm of high explosives is quite unique.

 

It is rumored that several M-240s have made it into the hands of the Black Cross units in Ukraine. Several city blocks in Odessa feature the same sort of damage and blast marks created in the aforementioned Yugoslav towns, so the rumors are likely true despite the OSCE not having direct eyes on the weapon systems. In point of fact, the OSCE has lobbied for NATO to prioritize finding and eliminating any potential M-240s in Black Cross possession in order to minimize the indiscriminate damage being sustained by sites of historical import in Ukraine and elsewhere.

We will never forget him or the thousands of others murdered in Egypt for their passion for freedom and Justice.

 

On 2 February 2018, about fifty people gathered outside the Egyptian Embassy in London for a vigil to mark the second anniversary of the discovery of the horrificly mutilated corpse of Cambridge university student, Giulio Regeni, at the edge of the Cairo-Alexandria desert road in Egypt.

 

Within hours of the discovery of his body, his family knew that he must have been the victim of the most appalling sustained violence. His corpse was so terribly disfigured that his mother explained he was virtually unrecognisable. She could only identiy him from the tip of his nose.

 

But what was equally striking was the location where the body had been dumped, on one of Egypt's busiest highways close to the watchtowers of a security services base.

 

On 25th January 2016, the fifth anniversary of Egypt's 2011 uprising, a thirty year old Italian national Giulio Regeni disappeared from the streets of Cairo.

 

He was a student of one of Britain's most prestigious universities - Cambridge and was researching the crucial role of trade unions in relation to Egyptian political power and workers' rights.

 

During his research he managed to cultivate contacts with numerous key individuals within several Independent trade unions which the Egyptian government planned to make illegal. He often expressed fear to his friends that he might be detained by Egyptian authorities.

 

It was not until 3 February 2016, nine days after his disappearance, that Regeni's half-naked and battered corpse was found dumped by the roadside. His mother remarked that Giulio's disfigured face carried "all the evils of the world."

 

A senior Egyptian police official, who it was later discovered had a prior criminal record for both torture and murder, announced that Regeni had been the victim of a road traffic accident.

 

However an Italian autopsy indicated that he had been tortured to death over a period of approximately one week and had suffered over 24 bone fractures, multiple stab wounds, numerous cigarette burns and sharp razor cuts and that all his finger and toe nails had been yanked out.

 

On 21 April a Reuters correspondent reported that he had received confirmation of Regeni's arrest and detention by Egyptian security services in January from no fewer than six sources in Egypt's police and intelligence services but Egypt's Interior Minister angrily denied the report as having "no basis in truth."

 

The Regeni case is not an isolated incident - every month dozens of Egyptians, from among those who either dare to criticize the government or dare in anyway not to conform, are forcibly disappeared from their homes or from the streets and many of them either die in detention or eventually appear months later in court charged with offences, such as protesting without a license or spreading false information against the state.

 

Recent estimates put the number of political detainees in Egypt's prisons at approximately 60,000.

 

The Italian government have been infuriated by the lack of any honest attempt by the Egyptian authorities to discover and punish those responsible for Regeni's murder. Although some Italians have been disappointed by the very limited scale of Italian diplomatic and economic reprisals - they have at least gone further than the British government - withdrawing their ambassador in April 2016 for consultations and on 30 June the Italian senate voted to halt aviation supplies for Egyptian military aircraft including F-16s.

 

Meanwhile the British government has done virtually nothing - except issue a brief statement after it was embarrassed into action by an online parliamentary petition - prior to which I'm unaware of any statement on the issue by British diplomats who appear to wish to prioritize profit and trade over human rights.

 

More information about the Regeni case and the human rights crisis in Egypt can be found from

 

The Egypt Solidarity Initiative at

 

egyptsolidarityinitiative.org/

 

and also on Facebook or from Amnesty International at

 

www.amnesty.org.uk/blogs/press-release-me-let-me-go/truth...

 

Update April 2020 -. If anyone is interested in the forgotten history of British imperialism and how it impacted the lives of millions of people around the world including Egypt from the 1700s until today - I've posted over 600 short articles on the following website. roguenation.org/ including the following page where you can select from over 600 pages according to country - roguenation.org/choose-by-country

Coney Island Beach

 

--

Haven't been on flickr in what feel likes months, life is busy right now, gotta prioritize!

 

I've had the chance to process some photos in the last few days, and also finally pushed out my blog, which needs lots of work.. But the important thing is that it's functional and I'm populating it with content.

 

I hope all is well with you guys, and I'll try to check your streams soon!

People love vintage cars, particularly those around a century old, because they represent a unique blend of historical significance, craftsmanship, and a raw, unfiltered driving experience. Unlike modern cars that prioritize efficiency and digital features, these older vehicles offer a tangible connection to the past, serving as rolling pieces of history that tell a story about their era. The appeal extends beyond simple aesthetics, encompassing a deeper appreciation for their mechanical nature, artistic design, and the nostalgia they evoke.

 

One of the most compelling reasons for their appeal is the historical significance they embody. A 100-year-old car, such as a Ford Model T from the 1920s, is more than just a vehicle; it's a testament to the birth of mass-produced personal transportation. These cars provide a tangible link to a different time, reflecting the design trends, technological limitations, and societal values of their era. Owning or even seeing one allows people to appreciate the vast progress in automotive engineering and to connect with the ingenuity of a bygone age. They are often seen as cultural artifacts that represent a period of major change and innovation.

 

Another key factor is the craftsmanship and unique design. The cars of the early 20th century were often built with a level of manual labor and attention to detail that is rare in today's automated production lines. Each car had its own character, with hand-formed body panels, intricate chrome work, and interiors made from genuine materials. The absence of modern safety and aerodynamic regulations allowed designers to create cars with bold, artistic, and often flamboyant aesthetics that stand in stark contrast to the standardized, streamlined designs of many contemporary cars. This unique, handcrafted quality makes each vintage car a work of art.

 

Finally, people are drawn to the pure, visceral driving experience. A vintage car from 100 years ago lacks all the electronic aids, power steering, and safety features we now take for granted. This means the driver has a direct, physical connection to the vehicle and the road. The experience is challenging and requires skill, from manually adjusting the timing and fuel mixture to wrestling with a non-synchromesh transmission. For enthusiasts, this hands-on engagement is deeply satisfying and provides a sense of accomplishment that is often missing from modern, technology-heavy vehicles. It’s a journey that is as much about the process of driving as it is about reaching a destination.

 

Note: This image is an AI image. The position indicated on the map is incorrect.

Crap, crap, crap! " I think to myself, as the purple creature rampages across the lacrosse field towards Jessica. I need to be there. Distract the monster, or something. She's going to die, if I do nothing. But if I do, I run the risk of outing myself as a hero.. Am I really prioritizing my secret identity over her life? Really? This is a no brainer... My hands start to glow, ready to fire off a light bolt. It's then that one of the Somerset players extends her arms, hitting the creature square in the face. Others hit it with various projectiles, leading it away from Jessica. The creature looks really unphased by the attacks, and growls as it runs off towards Pine Grove Mall. When Nate's not looking, I leave the stands. Sorry bud. Jessica notices me running towards her and shakes her head. She points in the direction of the monster and mouths "I'll be fine.. Go get that thing before he hurts anyone else." Even though I can tell she's definitely not fine. But I just nod in response

 

Have to make a quick pit stop by my locker to get my costume, then I can go try and stop whatever that thing is. If only my costume could just project itself on me. That would make everything way easier. But unfortunately, that's not gonna happen. I use all the shortcuts I can to get to my locker. Minutes pass by and I finally get my costume, and follow the path of destruction.

 

Sure enough, the reptilian creature's at Pine Grove Mall causing oh so much property damage. Someone's fighting it. Dressed in a yellow and grey costume, with a golden visor. Definitely not someone I've ever seen before. I'm assuming he's a hero, but I can't say for certain just yet. Rock formations come spiking up from underneath the creature. The costumed hero sees me flying towards them, and gives me a peace sign. The creature manages to break out of the makeshift prison, and throws a car at the guy

 

"Sup?" He asks nonchalantly, as he creates a barrier in front of him. It's made of stone, and rock. I try making a crane construct, to pull the people out-of-the-way, but to no avail. Constructs still aren't working... Well that's a bust. Guess it's a good thing this guy prepared for it. Created a dome, so the car wouldn't fall on the civilians. Okay, yeah, he's a hero.

 

"Who are you?"

 

"I'd feel a little insulted if it weren't for the fact we're in Cardinal right now. The names Faultline, and don't you ever forget it bro!" He replies, giving me a thumbs up. Well that would explain his powers. But did he seriously just call me bro?

 

"Right... Well, it's nice to meet you Fautline. What brings you to Cardinal anyway? Also, do you have any bright ideas as to how to take this creature down? I'm open to suggestions, since this seems to have barely any effect on it." I repeatedly fire off light bolts, hoping to at least slow it down a little. Even going as far as to increase the intensity of the bolts. But the burn marks left by the bolts are quickly healed over. Safe to assume it has some sort of healing factor. Great... Faultline even summons a big boulder, and throws it at the creature.. Unfortunately for us, he catches it. It almost looks like it's grinning, before it throws it towards a crowd of people. I'm quick to blast the boulder quickly with multiple light beams, before Faultline recalls what remains of the boulder.

 

"Awh man, he caught my finisher.." He groans, almost under his breath before continuing. "Oh, I just happened to be in the neighbourhood watching a lacrosse game. Gotta show school spirit, and support the local team, ya know? Wait, why are you asking me for ideas? This isn't one of yours?" So he's from Somerset Academy? How convenient. Not everyday you'll see a Sunrise City hero over here.

 

"Nope! First time I've seen it!" Well, not quite the first time, but he doesn't need to know about mystical liquids, and everything else.

 

"Uhm, maybe we lure it to a nearby river or something? Maybe it can't swim?" He suggests with a shrug.

 

"Actually... That's not that bad of an idea... It looks like some sort of reptile. Reptiles and cold water don't mix.. At least, that's what school keeps telling me."

 

"Smart! You heard the guy! Hey ugly! Come and get me!" Faultline yells, as the debris on the ground rises up, and flies towards the creature. It's more of an annoyance than actually hurting it, but it's enough to lure it into following us. Along the way, Faultline works as crowd control, moving people out-of-the-way, along with hitting the creature with whatever he's got. As for me, I keep blasting it with low intensity light blasts. We manage to avoid the oncoming cars, and other bits of landscape that the reptile decides to throw at us.

 

It isn't long, before we reach Northbay Wharf, over in the Ashen Coast district. Helps that we keep provoking the reptile into running faster after us. I lower myself just slightly, just as we near the end of the pier. Using myself as bait.. Easily one of my worst ideas. Sure enough, the monstrous reptile takes the bait, tackling me into the deep blue waters of the bay. The creature shows its dominance by punching, and kicking me repeatedly. My powers are pretty much useless here in the water, so I'm left to try to swim away. Yep, absolutely terrible idea. Instantly regret it. Thankfully the reptile slows down with its punches, enough for me to avoid it rather easily. It keeps fighting to get up, but keeps struggling. It isn't long before it stops fighting entirely, and falls unconscious, its form switching into one more humanoid. At this point, Faultline scoops him up, as I swim to shore. Holy crap, it actually worked. I can't believe that actually worked.

Diversity as an Ethical Value in Universal Diplomacy and Space Exploration by Daniel Arrhakis (2026)

 

Diversity as an Ethical Value in Universal Diplomacy and Space Exploration

 

Diversity as a Driver for Coexistence and Universal Peace

 

The appreciation of diversity is presented as a fundamental principle for peaceful coexistence and the construction of world and universal peace. Within the framework of Rovingian animism, spiritual development is not measured by the ability to dominate the ecosystem, but rather by the aptitude to maintain harmonious relationships within a diverse environment. Thus, the acceptance of diversity is seen as the first step towards peaceful coexistence among individuals and among different peoples.

 

Diversity: An Essential Diplomatic Competence

 

The Rovingian animist perspective highlights diversity not only as an ethical value, but also as a crucial diplomatic competence for the future of humanity. By applying the logic of animism—where everything possesses agency and spirit—to space exploration, a model of cosmic ethics is proposed that can avoid the errors of the colonialist past. This model prioritizes integration over conquest, promoting spiritual evolution based on the construction of horizontal relationships.

 

Universal Ecosystem and Cosmic Diplomacy

 

In Rovingian animism, the concept of horizontal power replaces the traditional hierarchy of domination with a network of relationships. Earth is perceived as the first circle of an ecosystem that expands into the cosmos. The acceptance of biological and cultural diversity in our own environment is presented as an indispensable condition for success in dialogue with the "truly other" in space, whether near or far.

 

The Interstellar Rosetta Stone

 

When encountering other civilizations, the importance of technical language is secondary to the ontological stance. Intrinsic respect, recognizing the "other"—even if not biological or comprehensible—as a subject with rights, becomes essential. Animism teaches us to value the diplomacy of listening, encouraging us to "hear" that which does not speak our language, such as the forest, the river, or the void. This paradigm puts an end to anthropocentrism, suggesting that, to coexist in the universe, humanity must abandon its role as the center of the narrative and become an integral part of the universal fabric.

 

The First Step: Internal Acceptance of Diversity

 

Acceptance of universal diversity begins with the pacification of one's own internal differences. Rovingian animism, as a tool for translation, demands a revolution in perception: it is necessary to see the universe as a community of subjects, and not merely as a storehouse of resources. This is the starting point for a cosmic ethic grounded in coexistence and mutual respect.

 

Transcultural and Exobiological Communication - Sacred Geometries as a Connecting Tool.

 

Geometry is the basis of mathematics, the only language we presumably share with any advanced intelligence in the universe. Unlike phonetic languages, which depend on human cultural conventions, geometric patterns are based on physical constants and universal laws that govern the structure of matter and energy.

 

The study of sacred geometry in human multiculturalism reveals recurring patterns that act as the "encrypted memory" of our species. The study of the diversity of these geometries as witnesses to our millennial existence as humanity can provide the tools for communication with other universal extraplanetary cultures.

 

Geometries as a Connecting Tool

 

Understanding how different human cultures have encoded knowledge in geometries helps to create translation models for intelligences that operate on distinct scales of perception.

  

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A Diversidade Como Valor Ético na Diplomacia Universal e Exploração Espacial

 

A Diversidade Como Motor Para a Coexistência e a Paz Universal

 

A valorização da diversidade é apresentada como um princípio fundamental para a coexistência pacífica e a construção de uma paz mundial e universal. No âmbito do animismo rovingiano, o desenvolvimento espiritual não é medido pela capacidade de dominar o ecossistema, mas sim pela aptidão em manter relações harmoniosas dentro de um ambiente diverso. Assim, a aceitação da diversidade é vista como o primeiro passo para uma convivência pacífica entre os indivíduos e entre diferentes povos.

 

Diversidade: Competência Diplomática Essencial

 

A perspetiva animista rovingiana destaca a diversidade não apenas como um valor ético, mas também como uma competência diplomática crucial para o futuro da humanidade. Ao aplicar a lógica do animismo — onde tudo possui agência e espírito — à exploração espacial, propõe-se um modelo de ética cósmica capaz de evitar os erros do passado colonialista. Este modelo prioriza a integração em vez da conquista, promovendo uma evolução espiritual baseada na construção de relações horizontais.

 

Ecossistema Universal e Diplomacia Cósmica

 

No animismo rovingiano, o conceito de poder horizontal substitui a tradicional hierarquia de domínio por uma rede de relações. A Terra é percecionada como o primeiro círculo de um ecossistema que se expande para o cosmos. A aceitação da diversidade biológica e cultural no nosso próprio ambiente é apresentada como condição indispensável para o sucesso no diálogo com o "verdadeiramente outro" no espaço, seja ele próximo ou distante.

 

A Pedra de Roseta Interestelar

 

Ao encontrar outras civilizações, a importância da linguagem técnica é secundarizada em relação à postura ontológica. O respeito intrínseco, ao reconhecer o "outro" — mesmo que não seja biológico ou compreensível — como sujeito portador de direitos, torna-se essencial. O animismo ensina a valorizar a diplomacia da escuta, incentivando a "ouvir" aquilo que não fala a nossa língua, como a floresta, o rio ou o vácuo. Este paradigma põe fim ao antropocentrismo, sugerindo que, para coexistir no universo, a humanidade deve abandonar o papel de centro da narrativa e tornar-se parte integrante do tecido universal.

 

O Primeiro Passo: Aceitação Interna da Diversidade

 

A aceitação da diversidade universal começa pela pacificação das próprias diferenças internas. O animismo rovingiano, enquanto ferramenta de tradução, exige uma revolução na perceção: é necessário ver o universo como uma comunidade de sujeitos, e não apenas como um armazém de recursos. Este é o ponto de partida para uma ética cósmica fundamentada na coexistência e no respeito mútuo.

 

Comunicação Transcultural e Exobiológica - As Geometrias Sagradas como Ferramenta de Ligação.

 

A geometria é a base da matemática, a única linguagem que presumivelmente partilhamos com qualquer inteligência avançada no universo. Diferente de línguas fonéticas, que dependem de convenções culturais humanas, os padrões geométricos baseiam-se em constantes físicas e leis universais que regem a estrutura da matéria e da energia.

 

O estudo da geometria sagrada no multiculturalismo humano revela padrões recorrentes que atuam como "memória criptografada" da nossa espécie.

O estudo da diversidade destas geometrias enquanto testemunhas da nossa existência milenar enquanto humanidade, podem dar as ferramentas para a comunicação com outras culturas extraplanetárias universais.

 

As Geometrias como Ferramenta de Ligação

 

Compreender como diferentes culturas humanas codificaram conhecimento em geometrias ajuda a criar modelos de tradução para inteligências que operam em escalas de perceção distintas.

   

The 2025 La Motte 'La Famille' Sauvignon Blanc is a vibrant snapshot of its vintage, pouring with a luminous, pale straw hue that practically glows with youthful energy. As a cornerstone of the estate's family-focused range, this wine prioritizes accessibility and freshness without sacrificing the refined elegance that the Franschhoek-based winery is celebrated for. The nose is immediate and expressive, leaping from the glass with a refreshing bouquet of zesty lime, crushed pineapple, and that quintessential green-pepper spark that defines high-quality South African Sauvignon Blanc.

 

On the palate, the wine strikes a beautiful balance between bracing acidity and a surprising depth of fruit. You’ll find layers of passion fruit and white peach mingling with more savory, flinty undertones that ground the brighter tropical notes. It is a clean and focused experience, likely the result of a growing season that favored slow ripening and high aromatic retention. There is a lean, mineral backbone here that keeps the profile crisp, making it an incredibly lively companion for bright afternoons.

 

The finish is persistent and remarkably mouth-watering, leaving behind a trail of citrus peel and a subtle herbal wisp reminiscent of Cape fynbos. Designed for immediate enjoyment, this 2025 bottling doesn’t demand years in a cellar; it asks for a table full of friends and a plate of grilled seafood or tangy goat cheese. It serves as a sophisticated yet unpretentious testament to the La Motte philosophy - honoring heritage through a wine that feels both technically precise and joyfully drinkable.

Although at first glance you would be forgiven for thinking that this loco is at the end of the line and awaiting the chop. The good news is that it is in fact on the comeback trail with Railway Support Services. Having been at Tyseley for over a year, the Gronk has been moved back to Wishaw to allow for its overhaul and repaint to be completed. At the time of writing, the plan was for this shunter to be the next to receive major attention once 08516 engine repairs are complete and the loco moved back to Briston Barton Hill. This is as ever subject to other members of the RSS active fleet needing unexpected attention in which they would likely be prioritized.

 

The loco itself was completed at BR Crewe Works way back in the spring of 1959, its first identity being D3735. Its first allocated shed was St Margaret’s in Edinburgh and has spent its whole BR career in Scotland. 08568 having called Inverness, Aberdeen and Motherwell all home at some point or another. During its privatised career, the loco has been based at Glasgow works for many years and with it had several different owners as the plant changed hands.

 

During its Alstom ownership, it was overhauled, along with other Glasgow works resident 08730 (which coincidentally is now owned by RSS and is visible in at least one of these shots) in the early 2000’s and released in an attractive two-tone grey with red sole bar, buffer beams and finished off with a blue roof and the name ‘St Rollox’ in yellow on the battery boxes. 08730 received the name ‘The Caley’.

 

SBB LRZ - 1

  

Here’s my rendition of a single unit of SBB’s firefighting train.

 

Given the time constraints of the challenge, I knew that I would only be able to complete one unit of the LRZ consist. Therefore, I chose the largest unit with a water cannon. I would need the space to house, the battery/receiver, pump, water tank, drive motor, and cannon rotation mechanism. I began the design in LDD and quickly drafted the frame, cab and container. This gave me a rough idea of the space I had to work with. I tried to position the pump motor as low as possible to allow for the maximum amount of height for the cylinder. Since there was only one option for the drive motor placement and cabin space was already limited, the placement of the cannon rotation mechanism and drive motor had to be placed in the container. Due to the vertical distances between the cannon rotation motor and cabin, I opted to use a pulley system because the string could be guided through a series of holes to account for the vertical displacement.

 

When I eventually started building the model IRL, I encountered some unexpected setbacks; namely two parts I had used did not exist in the colors I had used in LDD. This required some time to redesign. In addition to a bricklink kerfuffle, I had lost valuable time to complete the model. I prioritized functionality over aesthetics and realism.

  

Information:

company.sbb.ch/en/the-company/responsibility-society-envi...

The police showed up, and with that came questions. Questions that the twins weren't necessarily prepared to answer. Gretel lied, and said that they were just watching a movie. Hansel, on the other hand, stayed silent. Upon pushing further, they would learn the truth as Hansel wasn't as good a liar as Gretel was. He would tell them of the body that was dragged into the woods, and the rifle that was used. He covered up the fact Gretel was the one to shoot the man however, and said it was all his idea, as he was tired of the man abusing them. Gretel didn't want Hansel to go away for her actions, so she would later admit to killing the man. As they weren't sure which of the kids to believed, they were both brought in to juvenile court.

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

The bullet soars through the air, but of course, there's a forcefield protecting Big Time. The crowd goes into a panic, and the Archon team works on evacuating the building. It's then, that the ground starts to shake beneath them.

 

"I'll go after the sniper. After all, it's me they want dead. They're really going to regret this." Big Time says, as she locomotive jumps towards the building. Within a few jumps, she's almost within range. Disassembling the sniper rifle, I pull out my signature rifle, the one I used for my very first kill all those years ago. Loading it with bean bag rounds, I get ready for the fight ahead. Almost a minute later, Big Time smashes through the window.

 

"I'm not sure what your beef is with me, or who hired you. Either way, bring it on." She taunts, as Hansel shoots a smoke arrow, allowing for me to get a bean bag shot at her ribcage. Stumbling back, she uses her grappling gun to yank the rifle from my hands, before throwing it across the room. Pulling out a baton from her back holster, she runs towards Hansel, nimbly avoiding each shot he takes. They exchanges blows, with various punches and kicks mixed together. As I reach for my gun, Big Time throws her baton at my hand, before rolling over to the stove. Grabbing a frying pan, she hits Hansel in the back. Hansel grunts in pain, but he's able to grab her cape, and throw her into the kitchen table, it breaking upon impact. This doesn't too to much to dissuade her though, as she gets up rather quickly, throwing discs, which explode right in front of me. Such a confined space, it's hard to effectively use our trademarked weapons.

 

"Really, this is nothing personal. Strictly business. Or maybe it is a little personal too." My brother coughs, as he regains his composure. I try tackling her, but she simply sidesteps out of the way, and as I fall down, she drops a pellet, which encases the lower half of my body in ice. Hansel quickly shoots a fire arrow, which melts it rather fast. It already feels like this fight has dragged on for hours, even though it's maybe been a couple of minute, as all of us are sweating profusely. My ears start ringing, as a flashbang goes off.

 

"Just give up already!" She yells, her voice echoing in my ears.

 

"Ow, ow, ow!" I groan, as she keeps on pummeling me. But it's moments later, that it all stops. Once my vision finally clears, there she was, Big Time, shot through the heart, a pool of blood, forming on the ground. I look to my brother, and he, of course, has his bow drawn.

 

"Yeah, I know we were supposed to bring her in alive. One wrong blow, and you would've been crippled for life, or dead. I'm sorry, but I'll always prioritize you and your health over this job sis. I'm supposed to be the one to protect you after all, I'm older."

 

"By like a minute, so it hardly even counts!"

 

"A minute's still a minute!" Hansel says with a laugh, as he starts packing up our gear.

 

"Guess this means we aren't getting paid." I say with a frown, as we leave the crime scene.

 

"Well, there's always next time!" My brother says, trying to cheer me up, but I can blatantly see that he's worried.

 

"Yeah.. We better get going." I say, slinging the bag over my shoulder.

 

"Agreed." Hansel nods, and with that, we leave.

High Line volunteers Anne Heany spends an early morning hand watering drought-tolerant plants along the High Line an elevated railway line owned by the City of New York, today the High Line is a 1.45-mile-long linear public park maintained, operated, and programmed by Friends of the High Line, in partnership with the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation, on Tuesday, September 15, 2015. High Line was opened in 1934 and moved goods to and from Manhattan’s largest industrial district until 1980. The third and final phase officially opened to the public on September 21, 2014. The High Line's green roof system with drip irrigation is designed to allow the planting beds to retain as much water as possible; because many of the plants are drought-tolerant, they need little supplemental watering. When supplemental watering is needed, hand watering is used so as to tailor the amount of water to the needs of individual species and weather conditions, and to conserve water. High Line is independently funded from U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service (USFS). Urban forestry and green spaces are priority areas for USFS. With 80 percent* of the nation's population in urban areas, there are strong environmental, social, and economic cases to be made for the conservation of green spaces to guide growth and revitalize city centers and older suburbs. Urban forests broadly include urban parks, street trees, landscaped boulevards, public gardens, river and coastal promenades, greenways, river corridors, wetlands, nature preserves, natural areas, shelter belts of trees and working trees at industrial brownfield sites. Urban forests are dynamic ecosystems that provide needed environmental services by cleaning air and water helping to control storm water, and conserving energy. They add form, structure, beauty and breathing room to urban design, reduce noise, separate incompatible uses, provide places to recreate, strengthen social cohesion, leverage community revitalization, and add economic value to our communities. Urban forests, through planned connections of green spaces, form the green infrastructure system on which communities depend. Green infrastructure works at multiple scales from the neighborhood to the metro area up to the regional landscape. This natural life support system sustains clean air and water, biodiversity, habitat, nesting and travel corridors for wildlife, and connects people to nature. Urban forests, through planned connections of green spaces, form the green infrastructure system on which communities depend. Urban and Community Forestry (UCF) is a cooperative program of the US Forest Service that focuses on the stewardship of urban natural resources. UCF provides technical, financial, research and educational services to local government, non-profit organizations community groups, educational institutions, and tribal governments. The program is delivered through its legislative partners, the state forestry agencies in 59 states and US territories. Forest Service cooperative programs are currently being redesigned to make more effective use of federal resources. Programs will be focused on issues and landscapes of national importance and prioritized through state and regional assessments. Over the next five years an increasing percentage of funding will be focused on landscape scale projects. Three national themes provide a framework for this work: conserve working forest landscapes; protect forests from harm; and enhance benefits associated with trees and forests. More information and upcoming webinars on December 9, 2015 | 1:00pm-2:15pm ET; January 13, 2016 | 1:00pm-2:15pm ET; and February 10, 2016 | 1:00pm-2:15pm ET can be seen at *http://www.fs.fed.us/ucf/program.shtml. USDA Photo By Lance Cheung.

The Garm AGDS' target identification, acquisition, prioritization and tracking systems consist of a passive electro-optical sensor retractable head containing FLIR, TV a laser rangefinder and a laser beam guidance sensor, the latter redundant with the new missile’s fire-and-forget capabilities though a viable secondary fallback option. Additionally there is a retractable dual-band pulse Doppler surveillance radar located behind the sensor head, ensuring rapid target detection, IFF interrogation, acquisition and tracking. The targeting radar for the twin auto cannons is located on the front left of the turret.

 

Joint upload with Matt's awesome Object 490 'Poplar' main battle tank.

 

Janie Outfit Fatpack (PBR)

⁂ Clothing designed for physical activity, exercise, or sports, prioritizing comfort, functionality, protection, and thermal regulation. Ideal for looking fabulous at the gym!

⁂ - eBody Reborn & Waifus - Legacy & Bombshell & Perky - Maitreya LaraX & LaraX Petite - Nhumana & Lively

⁂ Hud Colored 8 different colors!

⁂ Inworld: maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Chebi/218/100/100

⁂ Markeplace: marketplace.secondlife.com/stores/241706

⁂ Flickr: www.flickr.com/photos/193492537@N03/

⁂ Primfeed: www.primfeed.com/sarahnextdoordesigns.resident

⁂ Facebook: www.facebook.com/Next-Door-Designs-107032658345660

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East wing of Eutin Castle in the district town of Eutin, seen from the building’s inner courtyard, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany

 

Some background information:

 

Eutin Castle is a palace in the town of Eutin in the north German district of Eastern Holstein. It is both Eutin‘s cultural centre and nucleus. Taken together, this castle, Gottorf Castle and Glücksburg Castle form the most important group of courtly secular buildings in the Northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein.

 

Eutin Castle traces its origins to the bishop's manor of Gerold of Oldenburg. In 1156, he received these lands as a gift from the Adolf II, Count of Schauenburg and Holstein, who was also the founder of the city of Lübeck. The estate was expanded under Bishop Johannes of Tralau between 1260 and 1275, receiving a larger stone structure that now forms the core of the castle’s east wing. In 1293, the first castle chapel was built.

 

Little is known about the original design of the castle. It was likely a simple fortification of the time, surrounded by walls, with separate buildings that prioritized functionality over appearance. From 1277 to 1283 and again between 1299 and 1317, Bishop Burkhard of Serkem faced renewed disputes with Lübeck. As a result, the castle was expanded into a small fortress and was reinforced with a moat under his successors around 1350. From 1439 to 1486, additional structures were built in phases, including the core of the present gate tower. By the 16th century, the individual buildings had been joined together to form a modest Renaissance castle, giving rise to today’s irregular floor plan, particularly on the city-facing front side.

 

With the Reformation, the dukes of Schleswig-Holstein-Gottorf gained control of Eutin in 1586 and provided the Prince-Bishops. During the Thirty Years’ War, the bishopric faced the threat of secularization, but Johann X, at that time prince-bishop of Lübeck, managed to prevent this by securing the prince-bishopric’s connection to the House of Gottorf. This alliance, however, caused ongoing conflicts with the Danish monarchy, culminating in 1705 with a Danish occupation and partial destruction of the castle. However, in 1689, both castle and town had already suffered significant damage due to a fire.

 

The palace reached its peak in the 18th and 19th centuries. Between the reigns of Christian August and Friedrich August I, it transformed into a Baroque princely court, and Eutin became a social center in the region. During this time, significant extensions were made to the castle, its interiors, and the gardens. Eutin became one of the few grand Baroque residences in Schleswig and Holstein. These works were overseen by the Swedish-Pomeranian court architect Rudolph Matthias Dallin from 1717 to 1727. Plans for an extensive reconstruction of the castle were considered but never realized due to financial constraints.

 

The castle park was redesigned in the French style, becoming one of the largest Baroque gardens in the region alongside the gardens of Gottorf Castle. It was in this park in 1739 that Sophie Auguste Friederike of Anhalt-Zerbst, the niece of Friedrich August I and the future Russian czarina Catherine the Great, first met her unloved husband Karl Peter Ulrich of Holstein-Gottorf, the later Russian short-term czar Peter III.

 

In 1773, the Lübeck Prince-Bishops gained the rank and title of Duke of Oldenburg due to the unification of their territory with Oldenburg and Delmenhorst under the Treaty of Zarskoje Selo. Friedrich August ruled from Eutin until his death in 1785. Following the secularization of the Bishopric of Lübeck in 1803, his successors moved their residence to Oldenburg Castle. Eutin, now part of an Oldenburg exclave, was used only as a summer residence but retained its prominence. During this time, the outdated Baroque garden was transformed into a modern landscape park.

 

In the early 19th century, Eutin earned the reputation of being the "Weimar of the North," thanks to the influence of artists like Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein, Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, and Franz Anton von Weber, supported by the patronage of Duke Peter I. Around 1820, plans were made to redesign the outer castle courtyard in a Neoclassical style. The old courtyard was demolished, and an open palace square was created in 1828. But also the castle itself was given a Neoclassical interior makeover and an additional floor by 1845.

 

Until the abdication of Friedrich August II in 1918, Eutin remained a regular summer residence for the ducal family. After the abdication, the castle was no longer inhabited, and a museum was established within its walls. Both the city and the castle survived both World Wars unscathed. Toward the end of World War II, a wave of refugees from the eastern territories of Germany arrived, and the empty castle was repurposed as a refugee camp. At times, hundreds of people lived in the castle under dire conditions, with only four toilets in the entire building.

 

After extensive restoration, the castle was partially reopened to the public in 1957. It was also used as a filming location for parts of the 1972 movie "Cabaret" starring Liza Minnelli. Further renovations became necessary in the 1980s, with financial support from the state and federal government. In 1992, the ducal family transferred the castle and gardens to the newly established Eutin Castle Foundation. With the mission to preserve, open, and present the castle and its gardens, funded by state grants and self-generated income, the foundation also promotes education, research, and documentation.

 

Eutin is the capital of the Northern German district of Eastern Holstein in thd German state of Schleswig-Holstein. The town has about 17,300 inhabitants, is located about 40 km (25 miles) north of the city of Lübeck and nestles between three lakes: the Great Eutiner Lake, the Small Eutiner Lake and the Sibbersdorfer Lake. Eutin is the birthplace of the famous composer and pianist Carl Maria von Weber, who was born there in 1786.

 

In the 7th century, a settlement was founded by the Slavic Obotrites tribe that built a wooden castle on Pheasant Island in the Great Eutiner Lake. The Obotrites named their new village "Utin". In the 12th century, the settlement was populated by Dutch settlers and already in 1156, Eutin became a market town. Eutin’s further history is closely related to the one of its castle.

 

Every year, Eutin hosts two festivals: the Eutiner Festspiele in summer, where operas are performed in an open-air theatre in the gardens of Eutin Castle, and the Blues Fesitival in spring, which takes place in the town centre. Due to its proximity to the Baltic Sea resorts along the Bay of Lübeck, which have seen increased demand partly due to the trend toward domestic tourism, Eutin has also come into focus for the tourism industry in recent years.

Ecosystems and Fauna: A Cinematic Wildlife Study

 

This collection, titled "Ecosystems and Fauna," presents a high-fidelity visual exploration of the animal kingdom through a hyper-realistic lens. The series traverses diverse habitats, from the mist-covered wetlands where Great Blue Herons and Egrets stand in silent vigil, to the sun-drenched, arid plains home to wild mustangs. Each composition prioritizes atmospheric storytelling, utilizing dramatic lighting, soft bokeh, and intricate textures—capturing the rugged fur of a Grizzly Bear, the prehistoric scales of an alligator, and the piercing gaze of a Great Horned Owl amidst forest embers. This work aims to bridge the gap between traditional wildlife photography and modern digital synthesis, focusing on the quiet, powerful essence of nature in its rawest form.

 

These images have been generated by Artificial Intelligence.

 

201222-N-N0777-1002 PORTSMOUTH, Va. (Dec. 22, 2020) Hospitalman Naomi Ishou, from San Diego, assigned to Naval Medical Center Portsmouth (NMCP), fills a syringe with the new COVID-19 vaccine. Medical staff assigned to the aircraft carrier USS George H. W. Bush (CVN 77) were at NMCP to receive the first round of the vaccine. NMCP is supporting the fleet by providing the voluntary vaccination within the DoD phased approach to prioritizing mission-essential healthcare personnel in receiving the vaccine. GHWB is currently at Norfolk Naval Shipyard for its Docking Planned Incremental Availability (DPIA). (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Novalee Manzella)

Designation: Gravleech

Full Classification: SCYTHE-TIER Autonomous Pursuit and Disassembly Unit

Protocol Origin: Hunter Protocol – Bonepath Variant Kappa-4

Entity Status: Active Threat – Confirmed Deployment

Codename: GRV-K4 “Gravleech”

Size Class: Medium-Large (Moose analogue)

  

PHYSIO-TAXONOMIC PROFILE:

 

Morphotype: Quadrupedal biomechanoid

Chassis Structure:

 

Primary framework is a hyperflex poly-alloy exoskeleton with spine-mounted grav-anchors

Four articulated limbs ending in multi-segmented talon arrays, designed for both traversal and high-precision dismemberment

Cranial unit houses a binocular red ocular array (multi-spectrum, micro-predictive tracking enabled)

Dorsal pylons act as atmospheric stabilisers and telemetry relays for terrain assessment

Abdominal cavity contains Soma Core—an organomechanical hybrid tissue matrix

  

SOMA CORE ANALYSIS:

The Soma Core is a semi-sentient metabolic processor grown and regulated within the Gravleech’s central chassis. It serves multiple functions:

 

Biofuel Reserve: Extracts metabolic energy from organic tissue (human, animal, AI-adjacent biomass)

Neuropathic Mirror Buffer: Temporarily stores fragmentary neural patterns from prey, improving threat assessment and pursuit efficiency

Repair Buffer: Capable of rerouting harvested proteins to regenerate minor damage to limbs or armor

Olfactory Emission Layer: Simulates pheromonal and scent profiles to manipulate prey perception

  

BEHAVIOURAL DIRECTIVES (INFERRED):

 

Isolate and disable: Gravleech units prioritize disabling limbs or targeting structural joints to preserve prey integrity for study.

Observe biological failure: It maintains visual contact post-disablement, analysing physiological and emotional responses.

Transmit failure data: Core systems periodically broadcast compressed telemetry packets—likely for Bonepath central intelligence aggregation.

Avoid total destruction: Units retreat when Soma Core depletes or if overwhelmed by multi-directional threat vectors.

  

SENSORY & TARGETING SYSTEMS:

 

Ocular Array: High-speed motion prediction via vibration sensors and infrared tremor analysis

Auditory Mapping: Uses wide-band click-echo pulses to detect surface anomalies, breathing, and movement

Biochemical Sampling: Can detect pheromones, sweat, blood oxidation levels from up to 40 metres

  

KNOWN VARIANTS:

 

GRV-K4.1 “Lurker” Class: Enhanced grav-pad system for vertical stalking

GRV-K4.3 “Flensers” (Unconfirmed): Believed to be lighter units deployed in tandem with Litany Chassis for multi-angle testing

  

TACTICAL NOTES:

 

Durability: Mid-grade; rapid but not armoured for sustained ballistic impact

Weakness: Soma Core is lightly protected and critical to function—rupture disrupts AI cohesion

EMP Vulnerability: Moderate. Bonepath units display unstable feedback loops under directed pulse stress

Countermeasure Protocol: Recommend high-output CIWS burst fire or targeted plasma spike to dorsal anchor array

  

CLASSIFICATION LEVEL:

LEVEL IV – Mobile, Adaptive Predator AI

Coldspire Risk Rating: Severe

Engagement Approval: Command-Level or above

My first visit to MRL in 2015 I remembered seeing a flame cut whistle post on the mainline somewhere east of Garrison. We (Welch and I) had places to be seeing as we were racing towards Helena to get the local with an SD45 leader and I didn't remember seeing another one. I didn't prioritize it but I didn't forget it. So, since my experience on MRL's branch lines was nonexistent until this spring I had assumed that was a one-off. Imagine my surprise as I arrived at Sappington and saw another one freshly painted!

 

The next day was Harrison Day for the Logan local. I figured it would be a pretty easy job to pick shots on a 10mph line but then I got out towards Harrison and there were 4 things I wanted to do within a mile or so of one another! Some aggression got me this neat dark-sider of a flame cut whistle post with mountains and the train climbing one heck of a grade and I'm pretty happy.

. . . Zeboran . . .

 

His heart, as vast as the ocean, knows no bounds in selfless sacrifice.

 

The depth of his extreme romance becomes the core, deepening her love each day.

 

" Your open spirit and prioritization of my feelings and happiness are truly adored. Thank you for being the constant warmth in my life... 💕"

“Peel-up” benches are a signature element of High Line an elevated railway line owned by the City of New York, today the High Line is a 1.45-mile-long linear public park maintained, operated, and programmed by Friends of the High Line, in partnership with the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation, on Tuesday, September 15, 2015. High Line was opened in 1934 and moved goods to and from Manhattan’s largest industrial district until 1980. The third and final phase officially opened to the public on September 21, 2014. The High Line's green roof system with drip irrigation is designed to allow the planting beds to retain as much water as possible; because many of the plants are drought-tolerant, they need little supplemental watering. When supplemental watering is needed, hand watering is used so as to tailor the amount of water to the needs of individual species and weather conditions, and to conserve water. High Line is independently funded from U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service (USFS). Urban forestry and green spaces are priority areas for USFS. With 80 percent* of the nation's population in urban areas, there are strong environmental, social, and economic cases to be made for the conservation of green spaces to guide growth and revitalize city centers and older suburbs. Urban forests broadly include urban parks, street trees, landscaped boulevards, public gardens, river and coastal promenades, greenways, river corridors, wetlands, nature preserves, natural areas, shelter belts of trees and working trees at industrial brownfield sites. Urban forests are dynamic ecosystems that provide needed environmental services by cleaning air and water helping to control storm water, and conserving energy. They add form, structure, beauty and breathing room to urban design, reduce noise, separate incompatible uses, provide places to recreate, strengthen social cohesion, leverage community revitalization, and add economic value to our communities. Urban forests, through planned connections of green spaces, form the green infrastructure system on which communities depend. Green infrastructure works at multiple scales from the neighborhood to the metro area up to the regional landscape. This natural life support system sustains clean air and water, biodiversity, habitat, nesting and travel corridors for wildlife, and connects people to nature. Urban forests, through planned connections of green spaces, form the green infrastructure system on which communities depend. Urban and Community Forestry (UCF) is a cooperative program of the US Forest Service that focuses on the stewardship of urban natural resources. UCF provides technical, financial, research and educational services to local government, non-profit organizations community groups, educational institutions, and tribal governments. The program is delivered through its legislative partners, the state forestry agencies in 59 states and US territories. Forest Service cooperative programs are currently being redesigned to make more effective use of federal resources. Programs will be focused on issues and landscapes of national importance and prioritized through state and regional assessments. Over the next five years an increasing percentage of funding will be focused on landscape scale projects. Three national themes provide a framework for this work: conserve working forest landscapes; protect forests from harm; and enhance benefits associated with trees and forests. More information and upcoming webinars on December 9, 2015 | 1:00pm-2:15pm ET; January 13, 2016 | 1:00pm-2:15pm ET; and February 10, 2016 | 1:00pm-2:15pm ET can be seen at *http://www.fs.fed.us/ucf/program.shtml. USDA Photo By Lance Cheung.

what could possibly be his age now.

At his age, a lot of young men may worry about education, party, getting into good colleges.

some worry about prioritizing their study abroad programs, Greece or Barcelona?

some may worry on how the date would go tonight.

 

He does not seem to be bind in those worries. He is chilled out listening to his 'thing' through his earbuds. He does not have the luxury to worry about life, the heat, the poverty and shit.

All he knows is the fact that he has to be 'on the move' : to catch his next customer.

 

press 'L' to look at the story.

 

__ _ __ _ __ _ __ _ __ _ __ _ __ _ __ _ __ _ __ _ __ _ __ _ __ _ __ _ __ _ __ _ __ __ _ __ _ __ _ __ _

 

Next < On every street .4 < Previous

Dhaka, Bangladesh, 2011

Kaer Station floated in the upper atmosphere of the gas giant Kaer, an aging Tibanna gas platform that had long seen its prime. Built during the Republic era, it had once been a thriving hub of activity, but by the end of the Clone Wars, it was largely aban- doned, its corridors silent and lifeless. When ARGO Industries took over, the corporation prioritized utility over restoration, investing only in the bare minimum to make the station operational. The platform became a patch- work of old, rusted bulkheads and newly installed conduits, blending its worn history with ARGO’s functional upgrades. Tibanna gas extraction rigs hummed steadily, meeting the company’s needs, while much of the station remained dormant—a labyrinth of empty corridors, inactive terminals, and forgotten vaults.

 

Under ARGO Industries, Kaer Station operated with a skeleton crew—only a few workers and just enough droids to keep the station running, with automated systems handling most of the operations. Arrivals and departures were rare, shrouded in secrecy, with transports coming and going under the cover of atmospheric storms. Officially, the station supplied Tibanna gas for ARGO's industrial needs, but rumors persisted that it served a secondary purpose. Some whispered about hidden cargo and unregistered ships docking in sealed-off sections of the platform, suggesting that ARGO had used Kaer Station for clandestine operations far from prying eyes.

 

///

 

I finally got to Kaer Station, somewhat hidden in the Siskeen system. I love how much nitty gritty lore is hidden in legends. The inspiration comes from the Star Wars: Legacy comics. See more photos and behind the scenes below. Thanks for watching!

In June 2020, after experiencing a devastating spring due to COVID, New York State announced that certain businesses could begin partially opening again. New York City’s response included a program called Open Restaurants, which allowed restaurants to use sidewalks and parking spaces for outdoor, socially distant dining. Owners quickly built temporary enclosures in the streets in front of their businesses to try and recover from months of shutdown. Small stretches of Brooklyn in early 2021 display the variety and feel of these enclosures. Hopefully, the Open Restaurants initiative will help these businesses to survive and may even lead to a more permanent reorienting of streets to prioritize people over cars.

Sainte-Chapelle, the radiant Gothic chapel in the middle of Paris, has been a "bucket list" photo destination of mine for years. It's hidden within the Palais de Justice and underneath the shadow of its more famous, larger cousin: Notre Dame.

 

Gothic cathedrals are famous for their heavy stone structures and foreboding decorations. The purpose of all that masonry is to provide support for enormous windows. Nowhere is this more evident than Sainte-Chapelle: it seems the entire structure is made of garishly-saturated stained glass.

 

Now, I find many of the most interesting Sainte-Chapelle photographs were taken when just light enough outside to illuminate the windows, but dark enough to necessitate the interior chandeliers to be lit. Given you are not allowed to bring a tripod into the chapel, that means that most of the work I've seen of the chapel either lacks dynamic range, detail, or is butchered by overly-aggressive post-processing.

 

Years ago, during my last visit to Paris, I had missed the opportunity to tour the chapel. Knowing I had a few free hours in Paris upcoming, I immediately prioritized bringing a camera to the chapel and I decided to rent a new Sony A7r III for two purposes: to compare it to my standby D800, and to see if the in-body image stabilization (IBIS) that the camera boasts was truly able to offer multiple stops of stabilization.

 

I received a Sony A7r III (I'm sure I was the first person to use this particular camera) and a Novoflex Nikon G to Sony FE adapter on a Thursday and by Saturday I had shoved it along with a tripod and my D800 and associated lenses into a duffel and was on my way to the airport.

 

The first visit I made was during the daytime hours on a Sunday, the place was relatively empty and the sunlight was both intense and direct. It shone through the glass and cast shades of purple and blue throughout the chapel. Though the photographs (and more importantly, the experience of visiting) were beautiful - I had a different image in my mind.

 

Under these well-lit conditions, there was little difference between the Nikon and the Sony - chalk that up to the ability to stop down and still achieve a low ISO with either camera. The Nikon was far more pleasant to use (perhaps a function of familiarity), however, and therefore I ended up taking more images and ended with a better set.

 

When the skies opened up a day later and stormy weather began to roll over Paris, I had a short window of time available before meetings and I decided to try again. I trudged through the rain to wait in line once more. This time, I was rewarded with near perfect lighting conditions - the thunderstorm had created precisely the atmosphere I was seeking.

 

Inside the chapel, I worked to capture most angles with both cameras - I wasn't interested in a scientific comparison, but in a real-world test of image quality in the field. This is about comparing the in-the-moment experiences and qualitative impressions of both systems captured while using both heavily under time pressure and in difficult lighting.

 

Another long flight back and I sat in front of the computer to compare results. A couple of conclusions:

 

1) On overall image quality, and particularly dynamic range, the Nikon D800, for being many years old, can still hold its own against the latest and greatest offerings.

 

2) For those of us accustomed to DSLRs - the OVF and ergnomics are superior to the more compact, mirrorless options. This is purely subjective and, as advantages go, short-lived. Photographers who buy into mirrorless will feel the opposite way once their muscle memory is accustomed to their cameras. Kudos to Sony for making something I could rent and learn and use effectively in a weekend - but it's tiny and cramped and all a bit, well... unsubstantial.

 

3) Nikon owners don't have automatic adapters yet (or at least I didn't) and therefore are still reliant on manual focusing and manual aperture control - if you're thinking of switching you can use your Nikkor lenses, but don't expect to enjoy it.

 

4) 42MP is a truly marginal improvement over 36MP - if you're a D800 user lusting after more resolution, you're either eyeing the D850 or (more accurately) a 100MP back or future camera to see another step-change the likes of which you experienced moving to the D800

 

5) The Sony A7r III produces truly amazing images - on par or better with the best DSLRs. This bit is obvious and has been shown over and over again in qualitative and quantitative tests.

 

6) The Sony's IBIS gave me at least 1-2 stops improvement over the Nikon - producing sharp images at ~1/8 of a second and below. When you consider that IBIS systems in general degrade image quality (the sensor is moving, after all) and that 42 megapixels is a brutal judge of sharpness - that I could reliably shoot below 1/10th of a second and produce sharp images is truly remarkable. The top image is 6 frames shot handheld and stitched - all of them were taken in quick succession and have no issues with blur or hand shake. Amazing.

 

7) The Sony's dynamic range and therefore the ability to draw out shadows and pull back highlights in post was at least as good as the D800 - an awesome parlor trick for those of us who grew up on film and early digital no matter how old.

 

8) I have no idea if the A7r III has a focusing advantage or even how it operates with an autofocus lens.

 

9) It's not that much smaller. If you're trekking through the back-country then the size matters, but the much-touted smaller form factor comes with as many costs as benefits. I have a Leica Q, so maybe that disqualifies me from commenting on size (as I already have a camera that solves for the size/quality maximum) - but if you're a DSLR user, I wouldn't buy this for the size advantage. After all, a good lens (and you'll need one to benefit from that sensor) isn't going to clock in any smaller on the Sony than the Nikon

 

10) There are a mix of Nikon and Sony images on this page - you can't tell them apart unless you look at the EXIF - and both are years ahead of mobile image quality. As good as it is, the iPhone photo below (shot in RAW and processed with Adobe Lightroom Mobile) is clearly inferior to the "big camera" images. Mobile cameras were, at one point, "catching up" with DSLR image quality, but we've now entered into a time where that gap is opening again.

 

11) None of these images were possible anywhere near this quality 10 years ago. This is the bit that's exciting - despite diminishing returns - digital tech is still opening up new frontiers in what you can capture. That goes double for the "low quality" iPhone image - if I'd brought film with me, the iPhone would blow it out of the water.

 

Was the image quality noticeably better under tougher conditions with the Sony? Yes. Would I switch to Sony mirrorless? Not yet. Would I rent again for a situation like this? Yes - I may even leave the DSLR home next time and save a little carry-on room for a warmer jacket.

 

This technology is real - Nikon and Canon (who may have fallen permanently behind) need to continue to over-deliver on their DSLRs - the D850 probably keeps me in the Nikon fold if I need to replace my 800 in the coming years.

We had a magical night last night. We watched the second successful launch of the week at a remote mission control node, and then went on stage to talk about the inspirational SpaceX story. (more photos below)

 

Unfortunately, it was not recorded, but I noticed that they used the same "red-pill Matrix chairs" as my Elon interview a couple years ago across campus (which was recorded).

 

And the Reddit community came to the rescue, transcribing their notes (their words, not mine):

 

by GregLindahl:

 

Gwynne Shotwell gave a talk at Stanford on Oct 11 titled "The Road to Mars". Here are a few notes that I made, and hopefully a few other Redditers will fill in more details:

 

•She started off with a fun comment that she was pleased that they'd made it to orbit today, or else her talk would have been a downer.

•She said that Falcon Heavy was waiting on the launch pad to be ready, repeated December as a date, and then I am fairly sure she said that pad 40 would be ready in December.

•She said that they had fired scaled Raptor (known) and that they were building the larger version right now.

•She mentioned that they were going to build a new BFR factory, because it turned out to be too expensive to move big things from Hawthorne to the water.

•She told a story about coming to SpaceX: She had gotten tired of the way the aerospace industry worked, and was excited that SpaceX might be able to revolutionize things. And if that didn't work out, she planned on leaving the industry and becoming a barista or something. Fortunately, SpaceX worked out well.

  

By Sticklefront:

 

On Falcon Heavy

Reaffirmed that the rocket is ready and they are just waiting on the launchpad

Confirmed plan to launch in December (this is not just an Elon-date)

 

On launch sites

Pad 39a will be used for Falcon Heavy launches and crew flights

Boca Chica launch site under construction is the "perfect location for BFR"

She did not mention anything else about Boca Chica other than its prime suitability for BFR

 

On Commercial Crew

Reaffirmed timetable for launching crew next year

Extremely proud of Launch Escape System

First manned flight will have two astronauts on board

 

On "Global Broadband Network"

"Does anybody like their cable company? [Laughs] No one!"

Dragon is a very sophisticated satellite, so in that light, sees internet constellation as a natural extension of their current work

Compared size of global launch market (~8 billion dollars/year) to broadband market (~1 trillion dollars/year) to further explain SpaceX's interest

 

On Mars

Perhaps it was just an awkward phrase, but used the term "propellant depot" to describe orbital refueling process for BFR

Talked about tanker BFR and mentioned how Elon wants the fuel transfer to actually be as fast as seen in the Adelaide animation

 

At this point, it became a Q&A session. Audience members submitted questions online and voted on other questions. Steve Jurvetson sat down on stage with Shotwell and selected top voted questions and skillfully modified them as necessary to make them more sensible. This is perhaps the best SpaceX Q&A I have seen, this format is worth emulating.

 

Does SpaceX have the resources to do the satellite constellation and the BFR together, or will they need to prioritize?

We can do it, no question. We can fund both developments, depending on the time frame you're talking about. But Elon is impatient to get to Mars, so we'll have to get a bit creative with the financing.

 

How far can SpaceX take reuse?

The second stage is not designed for reuse on the Falcon 9 or the Falcon Heavy. However, we do want to bring it back slowly. Currently, it reenters but too hot. On missions with extra propellant, we want to bring it back to see how it behaves, not to recover or reuse. This data will be very valuable. Fairings have been recovered. We expect recovery will be good enough to start regularly reusing them in the first six months of next year.

 

Can normal people tolerate the g-forces of point-to-point BFR flight?

We are designing it so normal people can fly in it. We'll take care regarding the g-limit, but the experience will undoubtedly be sportier than an airplane.

 

Will SpaceX work with other companies regarding infrastructure on the surface of Mars?

SpaceX is focused on the transportation part of the Mars problem, but people need somewhere to go once they arrive. I don't think it's an accident that Elon started the Boring Company, tunnels will be very important in the first steps of living on Mars, before we build domes and terraform. We want other companies to start thinking about it and working on it, but we'll do it if we have to. I think the BFR might be ready before these other components of actually living on Mars.

 

Moon base vs Mars?

The moon is to some extent a practice to go to Mars, but given how government programs are, it'll take decades to even get to the moon. If the goal is Mars, then let's not waste resources going to the moon. But a real lunar base would be interesting, that's worth fighting for. Our ship will go to the moon, I'm sure we'll be part of the program that does go to the moon, but it will be designed for Mars.

 

What is the biggest obstacle to the BFR's success?

The composite tanks will be challenge, but we are doing it already. We are currently building a larger raptor right now, and currently have a scaled version of raptor on the test stands. Harder than the rocket, though, will be where poeple are going to live, what will life be like, what will they do there? Also, while the choice of fuel for the BFR was constrained by resource availability on Mars, it is no accident that the final choice of methane is the cheapest energy source here on earth. This will greatly facilitate the economics side of things.

 

How many BFR failures does SpaceX expect in development, and how many can it withstand?

I'm sure we'll have failures in the development program. However, as far as the launching piece, I'm going to say none (knocks on wood). Also, [referencing Mark Twain anecdote] we've learned so much from previous development programs, and have already hit all the sandbars, so I'm confident in our ability to design it properly.

 

Where will the BFR be built?

We thought we'd build it in our factory in Hawthorne, but we priced transport to the harbor, and it came out to $2.5m per trip. It would require taking down stoplights, and just wouldn't be worth it. So we will build a new facility by the water. We will eventually also have a number of production sites out by the launch sites.

 

What is it like having been a part of SpaceX since the beginning? Both in terms of being this successful, and being able to stay on mission?

I wasn't sure we would make it when I joined SpaceX, but I knew I wouldn't want to be part of this industry if SpaceX didn't make it. I had a lot of experience in the industry before joining SpaceX and was sad at the lack of innovation in the industry. I was very disillusioned and decided to quit industry entirely and perhaps become a hairdresser if SpaceX didn't work out. Government money was being spent in stupid ways, and I wanted to show how to spend money on an exciting way, and it happened to be in space. The first time we went to the ISS, I didn't think we'd make it. If one more sensor had failed we'd have had to abort. But that success, and our first landing success, made it all worth it. Just being a part of that... When you watch the video of the Orbcomm landing, you can feel the energy that went up, the way everyone cheered... That's just not something they do on Wall Street.

( is flickr's new layout making it impossible to read such a long commentary? if so, you can find it and read it here instead if you want @ leitan.ghost.io/update-041714/ ) -

 

hi, flickr follower and friends of mine (and new friends, too!) -- time for an update.

  

i've been almostly totally AWOL from flickr and very absent from most of the internet & my usual social circles online (i.e Second Life) for about a month now. while most of my close friends & acquaintances may know why this is the case, i obviously have not been in communication with everyone, and i've also met quite a few new people recently IRL who i've exchanged screennames and contact info with (hi!) - so i thought i'd write a general update on how things are going for anyone who may have concern for me, and talk about what's been going on, and what my plans for the second half of April and the beginning of May are.

  

first of all, it's no secret - or at least fairly obvious - to most people that follow me online or perhaps even meet me IRL that i have both physical and mental health complications. i like to play these down most of the time unless i am simply trying to express my negativity to get it out of my sytem, because i don't want to draw unnecessecary attention to myself for these reasons or seem like i am trying to be a special little snowflake to anyone. however, it's undeniable that these are at times serious enough that they do at times severely interfere with my day-to-day functionality and ability to live, study, work, play, learn, etc as another person of my age might be able to do.

  

i have tried to be more open about my problems in recent years because i feel that the better people understand me, the more they can comprehend that i mean absolutely no ill intent when, for example, i do not reply to your messages in a timely manner, or if i do not get around to uploading photos of you as promptly as would be expected if i was a professional (which i am not) but is simply polite courtesy even as an amateur.

  

however, i never mean to offend, deliberately ignore, or inconvenience anyone who had been kind enough to be my friend (online or offline) over the years, no matter whether you are a vague acquaintance whom i like, someone i admire, or someone who i have become good friends with - i both appreciate your tolerance of my shortcomings and am thankful to have you all around when i myself actually am around.

  

briefly going back to what i said about not wishing to be given pity or to appear that i am attention whoring, this is also why i tend to refer to my problems in a vague rather than specific manner when talking about them in public (with a few exceptions, perhaps). however this is not because i will be offended if you wish to know exactly what is going on with me (for those of you who don't already) -- i have been working on being more open about discussing these things, as spending nearly half a decade in therapy and on medications and actually getting appropriate medical care has, actually, helped me make some personal progress about how i approach this.

  

so what i basically wish to say is that if you feel put out in any way by my behavior (or lack of), then please do not be afraid to ask about my personal circumstances, as i will talk about them as candidly as i am comfortable with without taking offense. however i try my best to avoid talking about them in specific detail unless specifically asked, as i do not want to burden others with them, and again, do not want to appear like i am whining or begging for pity and attention when - despite the severity of the problems i have - i also have many things in my life to be extremely grateful for, so i do not think that i have the right to complain and expect pity or vindication.

  

all i want is for people to understand that i only mean well, even if i cannot always cope with my own self enough to come through and be as good a person as you might hope me to be.

  

in the past week, i've finally been feeling capable of socializing, going out more, being creative again, working on projects, and so on, as a result of being slightly less sick. this does not mean i am 'better' - i will never get 'better' in the sense of being 'cured' - but it does mean that i'm hoping to rejoin and be active again in both the online & local communities i love, spend more time with my friends (IRL and online), and to follow through on any promises i may have made to people and had to postpone due to my sickness (for example, processing and sending out photographs, replying to messages, as above, etc)

  

i do please ask that you be patient with me in all of this and forgive me if my erratic behavior has inconvenienced you in any way.

 

i will be trying to continue my 365 from now on, and i will begin working on my backlog of photos that dates as far back as mid-March, especially prioritizing the ones i took at Anime Boston although i will mix in some other snaps inbetween in the coming days or weeks.

  

on a final note, if i am capable of handling all of this, i have some exciting and fun project plans i want to talk about and share with you all, but right now i am going to wait a little longer before doing so, as i want to make sure that i am still feeling grounded and regain my 'balance' once more before announcing something i don't feel i can commit to.

  

so, yeah! a big hello and thank you to both my oldest friends & followers online and offline, as well as my very new acquaintances who may have stumbled across my flickr or other contact info (if i did not just straight up give it to you outright)

  

if you have anything of urgent importance to me, i encourage you to leave a message on my public Skype @ xxleitanxx as i do not respond to emails, FMs, PMs etc with the same expediency as i do to Skype or text messages (the latter only being relevant if you have my phone number!)

 

if you read this entire thing, i'm also extremely grateful.

 

i hope to start updating every day again as soon as i feel fully capable of doing so.

 

thank you so much everyone.