For some unknown reason I really wanted to slide this image of people lined up to capture the sunset from the beach of Waikiki, Hawaii. The problem was, no matter what I did I didn't like the result - people can be very problematic when it comes to sliding images; I found the issue to be with working with one image and once I tiled two together the ideas started to flow.

 

Made for Slider Sunday - HSS!

 

Texture by Lenabem-Anna

Problematic sky !!

#5340 227/365 2024

 

I always find it ironic that is Brits ooh and aah over the blue form of this (Morning Glory) but look down upon our own white native form. True it's a problematical weed, but it is very beautiful nonetheless!

Although Prozac never lived with us in France (we rescued him once we moved to NYC), each time he came with us to take care of the house we still had in Normandy (because he's one that is "problematic" to leave with a sitter), he felt right at home. This last trip was no different, but it was very bittersweet to remove what we had left there, see it empty and take a last look at this gorgeous setting as we left for the last time.

 

It was a special house, where all the broken dogs we rescued felt love, comfort and good care, what they had missed for so many years. It was also a blissful place for the humans, but I have to admit, it became my gilded cage once I created the rescue organization and took care of the dogs 24/7. I put my life on the side for them, had little to no social life, and even if I don't regret it, in hindsight, I wish I hadn't strained myself so much and took time to care of myself a little too. Well, life is a lesson...

I tend to get caught up in squiggly lines. They excite me and my trigger happy index finger. It's an addiction I've learned to reel in over the years. Much more problematic when shooting with film, unless of course your heavily invested in Apple stocks or your last name is Gates. I find it hard to capture patterns in a lasting image. Most of the time, for me anyway, it comes out confusing and not exactly portraying the feeling I had at the moment of capture. But, on rare occasions, my squiggly messes make me proud. As with this image, I'm happy with it. Can you believe it? The feeling of it. At the moment anyway :) Reds and reflected blue trunks squiggled their way into my heart in this performance of aspens in the sierra. The lost jungle of hope. An ordinary place, sugared leaves bite the cold autumn breeze and twankly trunks show off the splendor and effort of their years. Exploding colors take to the sky. Natures grandest filter projects pink tones down thru the canopy. And soft blues quietly glow on white bark. "Ruf ruff". Their broken trunk knots, like eyes of the forest. keep watch over the trolls and ferries of the underworld. In the distant darkness, twin eyes with lids closed await the coming of twilight and the birth of complete darkness. And soon, submersed in the pacific breeze, the glowing reds fade into burnt browns and holy curled and shattered shells of their former selves. Ever falling... and softly scattered across a frosty sierra bed. Some days it all looks like a big mess to me... and some days it just makes so much sense. I SO miss music these days.

 

PS YES, i made up the word twankly... what about it!

My girl likes when i make up words. One should be so lucky.

The class of AM 86-89 (also class 09) of the Belgian National Railways (NMBS/SNCB) is a class of 120 km/h shoot up to two-part electric desire vehicle units for the operation with 3 kV of direct current.

 

The first construction series of 35 units from motor coach and control trailer originated from 1986. With the second tranche of nearly identical vehicles only 17 were delivered by 35 ordered units till 1991, in the end. The vehicles distinguish themselves in particular by high acceleration values, nevertheless, on account of the low friction the traction behaviour and brake behaviour of the relatively light motor coaches are valid as problematic. The class is used primarily in the local traffic of the NMBS/SNCB (in particular on the Ligne 26) all around Brussels.

 

The vehicles are equipped with automatic medium buffer couplings of the system Georg Fischer. They show 158 places in the seconds and 40 places in the first carriage class. As a novelty in the passenger's comfort the seat arrangement 2 + 2 was used with this series for the first time, till then trains of the Belgian local traffic mostly had the seat arrangement 2 + to 3rd ways of the typical forehead front of polyester the vehicles have received the nickname Duikbril (diving goggles).

 

In the beginning of 2012 the motor coach 916 was modernised as first according to the model of the series AM 80.

Florida Box Turtle - In the "Rough" that runs along the back edge of my property, Space Coast, Florida

 

I waited quite a while for this guy to pop it's head out after I relocated it from under a bush to a more open area. What I was really hoping for was a nice shot with it's legs out, but every time it decided to show me its legs, it ran like the wind, so getting accurate focus was problematic.

Night before last I finally had the opportunity try my hand at photographing the 12P Pons-Brooks comet, or as it is sometimes lovingly called, the devil comet, because earlier in its trip past Earth its tail looked to be forked and resembled two horns on either side of it. Anyway, it was a real challenge to photograph because you don't get a lot of time with it here before it sets, which is further problematic due to all the light pollution here in the east. This was captured at 80mm, and features our neighbor galaxy, Andromeda, as well.

Another shot taken on a modern digital camera using an older, manual lens. As before, the focusing ring is very stiff making life a little problematic and the viewfinder isn't as bright as I'd hope. There may be something I can do in camera about that; the camera has a million and one tricks.

The lens itself is pretty good: it's sharp and compact. Made from 1979 so not ancient: I'd quite like to try something older...

 

[DSC_3531a]

www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZ3zL7kT6_c

 

Yeah, you're breaking my heart, baby

You make a mess of me

 

Problematic, problem is

I want your body like a fiend, like a bad habit

Bad habit's hard to break when I'm with you

Yeah, I know, I could do it on my own, but I want

That real full moon black magic and it takes two

Problematic, problem is

When I'm with you I'm an addict

And I need some relief, my skin in your teeth

Can't see the forest through the trees

Got me down on my knees, darling please, oh

Despite its small and unassuming appearance, the Water Wraith is one of the creepiest and most problematic of all Rahi. Using the glowing bands on their body, they hypnotize larger aquatic creatures, tricking them into swallowing the Water Wraith whole. Once inside, it takes up permanent residence, eating both some of the incoming food and any granules produced by the host. When the Water Wraith produces its own granules, it can make them indistinguishable from those of the host, resulting in new Water Wraiths being born in the host's nest, where they can then find their own hosts. These parasites have become a big problem, proliferating and preventing huge chunks of the aquatic Rahi population from reproducing. Chirox has been looking into a solution, though it isn't a high priority for him.

British troops are pictured onboard a Royal Air Force C-17 transport aircraft enroute to Camp Bastion in Afghanistan.

 

The C-17 Globemaster III is one of the latest additions to the RAF’s inventory of transport aircraft. It is capable of rapid, strategic delivery of troops and all types of cargo to main operating bases anywhere in the world, or directly to more temporary forward operating bases owing to its short field capability.

 

The design of the aircraft allows it to carry out high-angle, steep approaches at relatively slow speeds, thus allowing it to operate into small, austere airfields onto runways as short as 3,500 feet long and only 90 feet wide. The aircraft can operate into and out of problematic sites such as those surrounded by inhospitable terrain or made difficult by adverse weather conditions.

 

The fully-integrated, electronic flight-deck and the advanced cargo-handling systems allow a basic crew of only two pilots and one air loadmaster to operate the aircraft. On the ground, the aircraft can be turned in a very small radius and its four Pratt & Whitney engines are fully reversible, giving it the ability to manoeuvre into and out of restricted parking or freight-offload areas at undeveloped strips.

 

This enables the C-17 to deliver cargo to small airfields with limited parking space in a shorter time, so increasing throughput where time on the ground is kept to a minimum. The C-17 can transport 45,360kgs of freight over 4,500 nautical miles whilst flying at heights in excess of 30,000 feet.

  

Photographer: Sergeant Ross Tilly RAF

Image 45153111.jpg from www.defenceimages.mod.uk

A bus which suffered a really problematic start in Scunthorpe when transferred over in April 2021 seems to be on the mend. Although still a ghost bus in the form of GPS tracking, 22869 does now show service tracking on BusTimes.org, and the vehicle itself usually gets through a day's work around the town now on a regular basis most days, something it struggled to do beforehand!

 

Since my last photograph of this, the MAN Enviro 300 has been taken out of its beachball and received the local livery.

 

A recent shot of cold weather across the country saw flurries of snow fall across land today, with Scunthorpe being no exception!

 

Seen here down Doncaster Road battling through an impromptu snow storm is recently-ish repainted MAN Enviro 300, 22869, on service 1 to Westcliff.

I'm actually about done with this guy, I just really liked this pic, lol.

By the way, I do not think I'll be doing Fenrakk or Kardas, color and time constraints are going to be problematic...and I just don't have any ideas for them. I have a lot of stuff I wanted to do with Vezzy here. Maybe I'll do them. Who knows.

 

I will be showing off his finished form thursday/friday, but basically he's a menacing CCBS revamp. More elaborate cape, a spine, all that good stuff. Doubt he will win BBC 69, but hopefully he will give any other Piraka revamps a run for their money:p

Big times in a smaLL Cafe

 

I've been looking for this neon sign for a long time, a definitive marker that embodies Alberta, without the big city fanfare. Little did I know it's been hiding in the small town of Westlock all this time, I just needed to cover some territory (I was on holidays).

 

Our prairies are 90% space, glued together by cities and smaller communities. Without intention I always look for the nostalgic Cafe's, where friendly folks meet and everyone likely knows your favourite television programs. If I'm fortunate enough, a home prepared meal and coffee/tea is still piping. The character is unmistakable, every conversation that happened in the past resonates right through your soul.

 

Curious enough, a few onlookers asked why I was photographing this ragged neon sign. I mentioned I fix em' up in my mind, polish the memories, and light up the past. Besides, those Walmart signs never change, and I hardly warm up to the problematic fast food.

 

"You can fool just about anyone, but the easiest one to fool is yourself." (Richard Feynman)

In case anyone missed it, yesterday the Supreme Court decided that employers could get out of ensuring free access to birth control because of either a "religious" or "moral" objection. For the last 20 years in America, polls have shown that only 20% or less of citizens here want abortion to be illegal and I would imagine that in terms of access to birth control pills, people are even more liberal. This is yet another way that Trump has undone Obamacare and also a way for employers to cheapen out on looking out for their employees.

 

If you've been following the decline in women's rights over the last four years, you will recall that we have a man in office who stole the election and actively engaged in friendships with sex traffickers like Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, liked to hang around Miss America locker rooms, has had several accusations of rape against him and has paid off prostitutes and made all kinds of threats towards women in addition to threatening to grab their genitals. (I guess that's still good enough for the religious wrong as long as they can still control women's bodies, though).

 

So of course, he would put in a rapist and sex predator Brett Kavanaugh himself who, when confronted with reality with those who actually wanted to hold him accountable in his nefarious actions towards Christine Blasey Ford had the proclamation of "I like beer!" as a response followed by the whining of a bunch of republicans that don't believe they should ever be held accountable for anything they do that endangers the American public after they stonewalled the perfectly decent nomination of Merrick Garland from an actually truly elected Obama who never committed treason once in 8 years unlike our current crapload of a demon who negotiated a stolen election, paid a foreign entity for "dirt" on Biden and recently sold out American soldiers because p.s. Russia is not actually our BFF.

 

Since Trump has been in office, states like Oklahoma have been referring to women's bodies as "hosts" and funding has been drastically cut for Planned Parenthood. We have a bunch of mainly white male politicians severely limiting access to abortions in every state and now, they are even limiting access to birth control. Who will this impact the most? Women who cannot afford to pay out of pocket and therefore definitely could not afford to have a child but of course, in the battle to just control our bodies, men aren't thinking about that (or maybe they are because they do seem to like to watch women suffer.)

 

In many ways, I believe that women should stop sexual intercourse with men altogether. As I am myself with a male partner and realize how difficult this is, I will say at the very least women should ensure that their partners support their reproductive rights to choose. I realize that not all men are against our rights as witnessed by the fact that there were a lot of men in attendance at these protests and I know several men in my own life who are progressive about this. Unfortunately, these men are not running for any political office.

 

As far as a religious or moral objection, this is not about "pro life" This is about anti-choice and trapping women. This is about saying, "Your freedom to have control over your body is worth nothing to me because you are a woman and I want to control you!" The dissenters for that Supreme Court Case? Yep, that's right, the 2 women.

 

So why have women continued to allow this to happen when we make up over half the population? That's a good question. Though I see positive changes, women have been kept out of running for political office in every facet-locally and nationally for so long that it is going to take some time to catch up. Women are also kept out of major corporations as big shareholders and CEOs and the amount of lobbying and dark money that goes into these things is insane.

 

Even more problematic, though it is changing in a positive way, women did not embrace inter-sectional feminism earlier on in the beginning of the movement. In other words, white women wanted rights for other white women. The very women I have been taught to revere like Susan B. Anthony, for example, were only looking out for themselves. By doing so, they basically doomed us all. And, it is changing. I was pleased to revisit some of my old photos of Women's Marches and even in 2017 there were many women holding BLACK LIVES MATTERS signs and that struck me as highly positive. Because, part of what I don't understand about the Black Lives Matter movement is why it took so long for people to get this outraged when I have been feeling like this for years now and it is nothing new that cops are murdering innocent people because they happened to be born with Black skin.

 

What we have to remember is limiting the freedom and livelihood of other human beings hurts us all. Do we want to live in a super oppressive society where rich white men continue to control these harsh policies against us? How has that worked out so far? If we want progress, we have to work together inclusively and productively. We have to join hands and embrace and show empathy towards others who may first seem unlike us but are alike in the most important of ways-aligned in our quest for human rights.

 

I don't know what the answer is here besides obviously voting and inclusive empathy. I hope things will change if Trump doesn't manage to steal another election after he has held rallies and not been held accountable for surges in Coronavirus infections of his base, which is just about the dumbest political strategy I've heard of yet.

 

Here's the news story from yesterday:

 

www.politico.com/news/2020/07/08/supreme-court-upholds-tr...

 

**All photos are copyrighted**

Well I’ve been in Cornwall again this summer (if you can call it that, ‘summer I mean’!) and I’ve been trying hard to photograph the amazing coastline differently, trying to develop a fresh approach that differentiates this year from last. I mean I love the place, which is why I keep going back, but finding new ways to photograph the same locations, is creatively challenging, but ultimately progressive. It forces your imagination to work that bit harder to avoid stepping in the previously explored (and debatably exhausted) creative familiarities.

 

I have to be honest, its very frustrating knowing that new locations would offer richer more familiar picking grounds, and its so tempting to seek out new ones, but I would ultimately be making the same kind of shots, in new places, passing up the opportunity to challenge myself creatively. The resulting frustration is then both problematic and progressive, risky as experimentation has the ability to feel like your in a deep pit wondering why you didn’t stop digging earlier, but positive when you manage to squeezing out droplets of personal development, when you find new ways of climbing out. Yep its not taking the path of least resistance, working in the familiar proven successful location, forces the creative juices to flow, it demands experimentation, and ultimately pushes you into new unstable insecure territory…all very very positive for personal vision and style and frustrating all mixed up together…

 

I’ve been forcing myself to think about this subject for some time now, as reflecting on ones reasons and motivations, in a weird way helps add different levels of texture to the way you feel see and approach photographing a subject. It came together recently when I wrote an artist statement to go into my ‘not yet finished’ website. (I find writing helps consolidate my thoughts and actually helps formulate ideas, but that’s another story),

 

Anyway getting to the point. One wet day we decided to go to Truro, where I took the opportunity to brows the photography books in Waterstones. I found a book by Joe Cornish / Charlie Wait and David Ward, that goes into quite some depth about vision and style. After mixing up all the thoughts that were already there and further added to by some elements in the book, I formulated some working momentary conclusions (that only reflect the now and WILL change).

 

If you can attempt to remove yourself from habitual ways of approaching photography. Then you are able to momentarily ‘see’ with different vision (process the information differently), this enables you to use the resulting new experience to add deeper metaphorical texture to the development of your artistic vision and style. (try to add new elements to your thought prosesses and atchully try to develop new fresh ways of seing) I’m not pretending that I have the answers here, just trying hard to think about my working patterns and how to develop them in a conscious way.

 

A possible problem with this approach, is that it redirects who you are artistically, how you make images and ultimately weakens your recognised style (if at all you can see that). Personally for me this is a good thing as I really love to experiment and taking shots that replicate other ones that I have already been taken is on the path to stagnation.

 

Tec stuff: this was an amazing day with massive waves (must have been 10 – 15 feet high); the crazy surfers were like discarded corks in a washing machine. I managed to climb up on this cliff (very nervously as one, if I slipped I was dead, and two if I stayed there too long the incoming tide would cut me off and id have to wait 12 ours before id be able to get down), so with bubbling excitement at the ability to increase my exposure to replicate dusk in the daytime, (new 10 stop filter) I attempted to present a surreal view on a common style. I particularly like the way the different exposure forces me to see the world in a different way. Its useful for smoothing out the compositions, but for me it adds a kid of surrealism to the scene, I think that is why I love long exposure so much, and I mean who wants reality, not me!

 

Compositionally for me this is interesting, I just love the small rock on the horizon, it kind of acts as a slingshot for the eyes movement back into the foreground using the diagonals as more conventional energy channellers. The swell was so big, that there was an amazing amount of white water, giving the rather big rocks in the bottom right, a distorted scale further adding to the surreal feel (I hope).

 

Anyway to finish this text off in a typically ‘Jason Theaker’ way…I think I’ve worked out what the wonderful deep oranges likens are on sea cliffs that I've been seeing recently. Segal poo! I must stress that I “think” the protean in their poo feeds likens and produces this wonderful deep orange. I’m not sure but for me its ads a story to this image that give it a special twist of humour, I will leave you chuckling to myself….

 

To view more of my images, of Audley End House and gardens, please click "here" !

 

Please do not insert images, or group invites; thank you!

 

Audley End House is largely an early 17th-century country house just outside Saffron Walden, Essex, south of Cambridge, England. It was once a palace in all but name and renowned as one of the finest Jacobean houses in England. Audley End is now only one-third of its original size, but is still large, with much to enjoy in its architectural features and varied collections. It is currently in the stewardship of English Heritage though remains the family seat of the Lords Braybrooke. The nearby Audley End railway station is named after Audley End House. Audley End was the site of a Benedictine monastery (Walden Abbey), granted to the Lord Chancellor Sir Thomas Audley in 1538 by Henry VIII. It was converted to a domestic house for him, known as Audley Inn. This dwelling was later demolished by his grandson, Thomas Howard (the first Earl of Suffolk and Lord Treasurer), and a much grander mansion was built, primarily for entertaining King James I. The layout reflects the processional route of the King and Queen, each having their own suite of rooms. It is reputed that Thomas Howard told King James he had spent some £200,000 on creating this grand house, and it may be that the King had unwittingly contributed. In 1619, Suffolk and his wife were found guilty of embezzlement and sent to the Tower of London. However, a huge fine secured their release, but Suffolk died in disgrace at Audley End in 1626. At this time, the house was on the scale of a great royal palace, and soon became one after Charles II bought it in 1668 for £5 for use as a home when attending the races at Newmarket. It was returned to the Suffolks in 1701. Over the next century, the house was gradually demolished until it was reduced to its current size. However, the main structure has remained little altered since the main front court was demolished in 1708, and the east wing came down in 1753. Some rooms have been substantially remodelled, though, especially the huge Hall. Sir John Griffin, later fourth Baron Howard de Walden and first Baron Braybrooke, introduced sweeping changes before he died in 1797. In 1762, Sir John commissioned Capability Brown to landscape the parkland, and Robert Adam to design new reception rooms on the house's ground floor, which he did in the style of the 18th century with a formal grandeur. The Great Drawing Room proved problematic as it had to be the grandest room for receiving guests, but it possessed a very low ceiling, and this was considered most undesirable at that time. Robert Adam solved the problem to a large extent by making the furniture unusually small and lowering the chair rail. His design of the Little Drawing Room for the Ladies was exceedingly odd, based on the style of ancient Rome, and Lady Griffin had difficulty moving between the columns when dressed in her evening gown. The third Baron Braybrooke, who inherited house and title in 1825, installed most of the house's huge picture collection, filled the rooms with furnishings, and reinstated something of the original Jacobean feel to the State Rooms. Audley End was offered to the government during the Dunkirk evacuation but the offer was declined due to the lack of facilities at the house. It was later requisitioned in March 1941. It was initially used as a camp by a small number of units before being turned over to the Special Operations Executive. The SOE initially used the house as a general holding camp before using it for the Polish branch of the SOE. A memorial to the 108 Poles who died in the service stands in the main drive. After the war, the ninth Lord Braybrooke resumed possession, and in 1948 the house was sold to the Ministry of Works, the predecessor of English Heritage. Lord Braybrooke moved to the Abbey House in the grounds of Audley End, an irregular L-shaped two-storey house with an early 17th-century timber-framed and 19th-century brick core. It was remodelled by Sir Albert Richardson and Eric Houfe in the 1950s and then enlarged to three times its former size by Philip Jebb in 1967-70 for the Hon. Robin Neville. Symmetrical north front with two canted bay windows in the centre. The building history is most apparent from the south, where the gables of the first house can be seen behind those of the 19th-century rear wing. The house has interior decoration in Classical style by Dudley Poplack. The Capability Brown parkland still includes many of the mock-classical monuments, although some are not in the care of English Heritage. The grounds are divided by the River Cam, which is crossed by several ornate bridges, and a main road which follows the route of a Roman road. The park beyond the river is frequently used for open air concerts. There is also a miniature circular railway in the grounds. The walled kitchen garden in its grounds was painstakingly restored by Garden Organic, the UK's leading organic growing charity, in 1999 from an overgrown, semi-derelict state. Renovated to its former glory it now looks as it would have done in late Victorian times; full of vegetables, fruits, herbs and flowers.

 

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

My third redux of this iconic kit. Think I'm getting close to the purest form with the original functions.

 

My two gripes as a kid with the original were: 1) If it's an ATV then why is the Ground Clearance so rubbish? and 2) There's something not right about this cockpit canopy combo.

 

So this fixes those - a nice big inverted-angle window area for seeing out and a roof fixes the second point, and the first is fixed by a set of variable-height drivetrain booms that allow it to hunker down low to receive its cargo, then the booms rotate up to about 55° to give it the ground clearance it needs to actually traverse the moon/asteroid/"godforsaken rock you've sent me to this time".

 

The fact that it was in clearly proto-Futuron livery while the Relay Station is clearly Classic Blue is problematic too so I've fixed that too.

 

And wheels made of snow-shoes. Because why not?

 

If you like this, [or don't ]- leave a comment. I love getting comments and feedback. They inspire me to do more.

 

Me:

Everyone: Please don't do more!

  

This composite NASA Hubble Space Telescope Image captures the positions of comet Siding Spring and Mars in a never-before-seen close passage of a comet by the Red Planet, which happened at 2:28 p.m. EDT October 19, 2014. The comet passed by Mars at approximately 87,000 miles (about one-third of the distance between Earth and the Moon). At that time, the comet and Mars were approximately 149 million miles from Earth.

 

The comet image shown here is a composite of Hubble exposures taken between Oct. 18, 8:06 a.m. EDT to Oct. 19, 11:17 p.m. EDT. Hubble took a separate photograph of Mars at 10:37 p.m. EDT on Oct. 18.

 

The Mars and comet images have been added together to create a single picture to illustrate the angular separation, or distance, between the comet and Mars at closest approach. The separation is approximately 1.5 arc minutes, or one-twentieth of the angular diameter of the full Moon. The background starfield in this composite image is synthesized from ground-based telescope data provided by the Palomar Digital Sky Survey, which has been reprocessed to approximate Hubble’s resolution. The solid icy comet nucleus is too small to be resolved in the Hubble picture. The comet’s bright coma, a diffuse cloud of dust enshrouding the nucleus, and a dusty tail, are clearly visible.

 

This is a composite image because a single exposure of the stellar background, comet Siding Spring, and Mars would be problematic. Mars is actually 10,000 times brighter than the comet, and so could not be properly exposed to show detail in the Red Planet. The comet and Mars were also moving with respect to each other and so could not be imaged simultaneously in one exposure without one of the objects being motion blurred. Hubble had to be programmed to track on the comet and Mars separately in two different observations.

 

The images were taken with Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3.

 

Credit: NASA, ESA, PSI, JHU/APL, STScI/AURA

 

Credit: NASA, ESA, PSI, JHU/APL, STScI/AURA

19 October 2020: Update on The Corona Pandemic – Belgium set a new record last Tuesday with 11,737 people testing positive for SARS-CoV-2. In Brussels and Wallonia infection rates are 50% higher than in the Greater Paris Region, which is often considered as a benchmark for the French speaking people in Belgium. The problematic circumstances led the Belgian minister of Health, Frank Vandenbroucke, to say that the situation became the worst and most dangerous in Europe. The coronavirus is hitting us like a tsunami and the only thing we can do is keeping our number of social contacts to an absolute minimum and hoping that the newly implemented measures will bear fruit as soon as possible. On display is a picture from last Saturday of the flea market near the Saint James church (Sint-Jacobs). As of today, all flea markets and Christmas markets will be prohibited in Belgium. It probably will take a while before bargain hunters will be able to visit again this hotspot downtown Ghent – Sint-Jacobs, Ghent, Belgium.

Photographed at Shoreline Park, Mountain View, California, standing, no cover

 

=> Please click on the image to see the largest size. <=

 

High winds made the normal mid-air mouse transfer problematic so the kites substituted a tree-top transfer.

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

From Wikipedia: The white-tailed kite (Elanus leucurus) is a small raptor found in western North America and parts of South America.

 

Taxonomy:

For some recent decades, it was lumped with the black-winged kite of Europe and Africa as Elanus caeruleus and was collectively called black-shouldered kite. More recently it was argued that the white-tailed kite differed from the Old World species in size, shape, plumage, and behavior, and that these differences were sufficient to warrant full species status. This argument was accepted by the American Ornithologists' Union, so the white-tailed kite was returned to its original name. Meanwhile, the Old World E. caeruleus is once again called black-winged kite, while the name black-shouldered kite is now reserved for an Australian species, Elanus axillaris, which had also been lumped into E. caeruleus but is now regarded as separate again.

 

Distribution and habitat:

The white-tailed kite was rendered almost extinct in California in the 1930s and 1940s due to shooting and egg-collecting, but they are now common again. Their distribution is patchy, however. They can be found in the Central Valley and southern coastal areas, open land around Goleta including the Ellwood Mesa Open Space, marshes in Humboldt County, and also around the San Francisco Bay. Elsewhere, they are still rare or absent. They are also found in southern Texas, on the Baja California Peninsula, and in eastern Mexico. Globally, they are not considered threatened species by the IUCN. On rare occasions the bird can be found far outside its usual range. At different times, two had been sighted in New England as of 2010.

  

6D6A4539-2CAFlkr

The former Denver & Rio Grande Western K-27 #464 is definitely a long way from home as she hauls a short excursion train along the shores of the ice-covered Mott Lake, just outside Flint, Michigan back in January of 2019. The 464 was one of 15 identical, narrow gauge, outside-frame Mikado locomotives built for the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad back in 1903 and she spent nearly 60 years working that line and its successor, the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad in the mountains of Colorado. When the D&RGW phased out its narrow-gauge operations in the 1950s and 60s, only two of the original 15 survived the scrappers. Sister #463 ended up on the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic railroad but 464 was not destined to stay in Colorado. Initially, she was sold to the folks at Knott's Berry Farm in Buena Park, CA, but her design proved problematic on the tight curves in the theme park, and she was sold to the Genesee County Parks Commission, which owns the Huckleberry Railroad, in 1981.

 

This image was captured just over a mile east of Crossroads Village, during a January 2019 photo shoot, organized by Lerro Photography, which featured both the 464 and her stablemate, the US 152, in operation on the 4-mile-long tourist line.

QUESTI ULTIMI GIORNI SONO STATI PROBLEMATICI E MI HANNO IMPEDITO DI DIEDICARMI ALLE TUE FOTOGRAFIE COME AVREI VOLUTO.

SPERO DI RECUPERARE AL PIU' PRESTO. CIAO, FELICE WEEKEND

 

THESE LAST FEW DAYS HAVE BEEN PROBLEMATIC AND HAVE PREVENTED ME FROM DIEDICATING MYSELF TO YOUR PHOTOGRAPHS AS I WOULD HAVE LIKED.

I HOPE TO CATCH UP SOON. CIAO AND, HAPPY WEEKEND

Also see: Problematics of Making Ambiguity Explicit in Virtual Reconstructions: A Case Study of the Mausoleum of Augustus.

John Pollini, Lynn Swartz Dodd and Karen Kensek, University of Southern California, Los Angeles; Nicholas Cipolla, University of Southern California, Los Angeles and Getty Research Institute, USA. CFR:

www.chart.ac.uk/chart2005/papers/pollini.html

I was in the mood to play around with my fisheye lens today. I made sure I went on the lookout for scenes which might benefit from the wonderful fisheye perspective. When I came across this staircase, I had a hunch it would be fun to shoot.

 

The exposure was problematic, however, as the bottom of the stairs were darker and at the top the light fixture was VERY bright. I tried different ways to balance out the two extremes. However, I ultimately decided instead of fighting the differences I would work with them. Once I did that, I was very pleased to see that by exposing for the steps, the light at the top ended up creating an interesting glory effect right over the door, lending a whole new layer of story to the image.

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Eichhornia crassipes, commonly known as water hyacinth, is an aquatic plant native to the Amazon basin, and is often a highly problematic invasive species outside its native range. Wikipedia

Scientific name: Eichhornia crassipes

Rank: Species

  

Just a night shoot with projector lens. Colors and rendering seems fine, but a missing aperture is a problematic for this kind of shots. I needed deeper DoF and some star effects wil look better than dispersed streetlight. However, I like general atmosphere and sense of suburban emptines.

Documento di una situazione anomala: il falco si gusta un'alzavola con attorno anatre , corvi e una gazza....purtroppo molto distante e con una luce un pò problematica.

 

Document to an anomalous situation: the hawk enjoying a teal around with ducks, crows and a magpie .... unfortunately far and with a light a little problematic.

Statue in Merida Woophy meeting in Caceres

  

Romulus /ˈrɒmjʉləs/ and Remus /ˈriːməs/ were the twin brothers and main characters of Rome's foundation myth. (The pronunciation in English is perversely contrary to the Latin original Rōmulus and Rĕmus ). Their mother was Rhea Silvia, daughter of Numitor, king of Alba Longa. Before their conception, Numitor's brother Amulius seized power, killed Numitor's male heirs and forced Rhea Silvia to become a Vestal Virgin, sworn to chastity. Rhea Silvia conceived the twins by the god Mars, or by the demi-god Hercules. Once the twins were born, Amulius had them abandoned to die in the Tiber river. They were saved by a series of miraculous interventions: the river carried them to safety, a she-wolf (in Latin, lupa) found and suckled them, and a woodpecker fed them. A shepherd and his wife found them and fostered them to manhood as simple shepherds. The twins, still ignorant of their true origins, proved to be natural leaders. Each acquired many followers. When they discovered the truth of their birth, they killed Amulius and restored Numitor to his throne. Rather than wait to inherit Alba Longa, they chose to found a new city.

  

While Romulus wanted to found the new city on the Palatine Hill, Remus preferred the Aventine Hill.They agreed to determine the site through augury but when each claimed the results in his own favor, they quarreled and Remus was killed. Romulus founded the new city, named it Rome, after himself, and created its first legions and senate. The new city grew rapidly, swelled by landless refugees; as most of these were male and unmarried, Romulus arranged the abduction of women from the neighboring Sabines. The ensuing war ended with the joining of Sabines and Romans as one Roman people. Thanks to divine favour and Romulus's inspired leadership, Rome became a dominant force, but Romulus himself became increasingly autocratic, and disappeared or died in mysterious circumstances. In later forms of the myth, he ascended to heaven and was identified with Quirinus, the divine personification of the Roman people.

  

The legend as a whole encapsulates Rome's ideas of itself, its origins and moral values. For modern scholarship, it remains one of the most complex and problematic of all foundation myths, particularly Remus's death. Ancient historians had no doubt that Romulus gave his name to the city. Most modern historians believe his name aback-formation from the name Rome; the basis for Remus's name and role remain subjects of ancient and modern speculation. The myth was fully developed into something like an "official", chronological version in the Late Republican and early Imperial era; Roman historians dated the city's foundation to between 758 and 728 BC, and Plutarch reckoned the twins' birth year as c. 27/28 March 771 BC. An earlier tradition that gave Romulus a distant ancestor in the semi-divine Trojan prince Aeneas was further embellished, and Romulus was made the direct ancestor of Rome's first Imperial dynasty. Possible historical bases for the broad mythological narrative remain unclear and disputed. The image of the she-wolf suckling the divinely fathered twins became an iconic representation of the city and its founding legend, making Romulus and Remus preeminent among the feral children of ancient mythography.

  

More candids here

  

www.flickr.com/photos/23502939@N02/sets/72157622769131641/

  

More Spain here

  

www.flickr.com/photos/23502939@N02/sets/72157651064363830/

   

Voigtlander Vitomatic IIa

I had seen this car in a few images before when doing photo research for the trip. And I knew that Great Basin National Park had great dark skies, so this was on my list when we went.

 

Dark it was. Indeed. In fact, it was problematically dark. I ended up breaking my lens. See, I was using the Royce Bair technique of lighting, that's where you use external lights set so very dim that you can hardly see them with the naked eye. So while the scene was lit, it did not provide much ambient lighting. And it was, as I explained, very dark. On top of that it was very windy out there. I did not care about the wind so much, because I knew the bushes would be muted in the image, so a little wind blur would be no issue there. I also knew the stars would not blow away. I did not take into account the tripod. At one point I had turned around to grab something in the camera bag and heard the thud we all HATE to hear. For a split second I honestly did not know what it was. The rattle snake warnings were everywhere, so I was a little jumpy and on edge anyway. And I am sure you all have experienced this, but when you are shooting in the pitch, pitch dark, alone, outside, stuff can get spooky sometimes. I was not that spooked-out here, but I was on edge, so the thud took me a second to process. Was it a sack of potatoes from space? Did a man who was secretly watching in the dark just fall over? Giants sitting? Then it hit me. Oh no. I slowly panned my flashlight down and there, covered in dust and dirt, was my camera. The tripod fell over from the wind. The body was covered in dirt, but the right angle bracket did a good job taking the hit for the body. If you don't have one of those, get one. Its not intended to be a body-air-bag (not a bad idea actually), but I am convinced it helped me here. Sadly, the way the camera fell, it feel right onto my Tamron 15-30. This lens is my go-to, my main lens. It has a built in flower-pedal lens hood. Parts of that had snapped off from this tragic fall. Luckily the glass seems to be OK and the elements seem to still be alighted. I can't complain too much, I have friends who ran over their cameras, or lost them to Thor's Well in Oregon.

 

So the end result is an ugly lens that, thankfully, still works Ok. I don't abuse my equipment, but I don't baby it either. Looks like this will just be a battle scar that zaps the resale value of the lens. At least I got the shot!

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This image has taken me over 9 months to capture and process how I pre-visualised it. Getting an appropriate amount of cloud, with a wind direction in the right place, at a right state of tide and at the right time of day for some side lighting under the pier has been quite problematic to say the least. It finally all came together for me and then the processing could commence.

 

Thank you for viewing my image(s); it really does mean a lot to me and I hope the visit has been worth while to you. Please do not leave awards or ask me to join any groups without making even a small comment. It really does make a difference. :-)

 

To the regular followers of my work: Thank you for your support and kind comments; you guys really are a credit to the Flickr community.

aka by us - the weeing dog.

 

The third (chronologically) in Blank Wall Assassin's Carlisle Street Art Tour

 

Our last posting for the Street Art Tour.

 

www.blankwallassassins.com/wall/tabby-balloon-dog

 

"Balloon Dog – Was one of two works Tabby painted in Carlisle on 27th November 2018 when he returned to the city. Tabby used his customary spray paint and stencils (with added drips). This dog can be found cheekily taking a leak in Friars Court, on the wall of The Thin White Duke Bar. This piece gave a lot of technical problems with the old brick soaking up a lot of paint and the weather being far from ideal with both wind and rain making the handling of a large stencil in a damp dark lane somewhat problematic! Tabby, being rather shy, carried out the job with his ever willing assistant Ben Heslop in the dead of night. Ben Says “This was a really fun one to do. Being crouched in the lane out of the view of the passing taxis and party goers late at night made the creative process seem more impelling!” The detail of adding ‘shadow’ to the stencil is a theme that runs through a lot of Tabby’s works, really helping to lift them off the wall and into people’s consciousness. It is now one of several works in the area by Carlisle’s favourite Austrian."

This cabbage white (butterfly) was almost invisible when it closed up its wings to drink some refreshing nectar from that problematic Canada thistle plant.

Many British birders viewing this will get a sense of déjà vu as it will be really familiar, but most will not have seen one for more than ten years as they were "removed" from Britain as problematic aliens. This is a Ruddy Duck (Oxyura jamaicensis), a native of North America that never appeared in Britain under its own steam. They were imported to Britain by Peter Scott in 1948 and ten years later they had established a feral breeding population in Britain centred on Slimbridge. Numbers built up and they spread, and became popular with birdwatchers who could "tick" them as a self-sustaining population, and all was well for about fifty years. But during this time a close cousin of the Ruddy Duck called the White-headed Duck (Oxyura leucocephala) was heading towards extinction in its native Spain. The Spanish government and conservation organisations spent a fortune to protect their wetlands and try to bolster their dwindling numbers. But the feral Ruddy Ducks in Britain were doing so well that some were moving to Spain where they were hybridising with White-headed Ducks. The worry was that Ruddy Ducks might hybridise the tiny population of White-headed Ducks out of existence. So conservation organisations and Government agreed to extirpate the non-native Ruddy Duck from Britain. This began in 2003 and Ruddy Duck has now all but disappeared from Britain. But there was huge public outcry from many birdwatchers and welfare organisations. I saw plenty of Ruddy Ducks in their heyday but I didn't have the equipment back then to photograph them. So here's a stripy faced female that I photographed in California recently. This one is just starting to develop its ruddy back colouration. This genus of ducks are known as stifftails and Oxyura means pointed tail, which they often hold erect. Its specific name jamaicensis simply refers to the type locality as Jamaica. And one final thing, another close relative, the Lake Duck (Oxyura vittata) from South America holds the record for the longest penis relative to body size in the bird world and indeed for any vertebrate. One individual from Argentina is in the Guinness Book of Records for its 42.5cm (16.7 inches) penis, which is about the same length as the bird itself: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_duck

The afternoon sun was problematic, but what an amazing and accessible falls.

Problematic love

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If you think this moc looks familiar you are right. I used the same body as for my Junie from last year but I added a new set of legs, head and filled the back out. I just liked the base-moc too much to ditch ;D

 

Kupira Akisame was the daughter of a shrone maiden and a member of theyakuza. Because of this problematic heritage she was hunted down and her parents both died protecting her. After wandering about for a bit as at 4 years of age she was taken in and trained by an old man named Yufukune. Eventually Kupira's genes ran amok and overnight she changed into a demon. She lacked any sort of self-control and in a fit of rage she murdered her own teacher. Realising what she had done she vowed to keep herself udner control and would eventually end up becoming one of the highest ranking demons to have ever lived.

 

Later she would meet Proctor Origin through unlikely means and the two decided to stick together. Because of this Kupira eventually wound up passing her knowledge onto Jabberwock.

FEARLESS - March 20, 2012

Chapter 1 – “Why Are We Afraid”

“Why are you fearful? O you of little faith.” Matthew 8:26

 

You would have liked my brother. Everyone did. Dee made friends like bakers make bread: daily, easily, warmly. Handshake—big and eager; laughter—contagious and volcanic. He permitted no stranger to remain one for long. I, the shy younger brother, relied on him to make introductions for us both. When a new kid moved onto the street or walked onto the playground, Dee was the ambassador.

 

But in his mid-teen years, he made one acquaintance he should have avoided—a bootlegger who would sell beer to underage drinkers. Alcohol made a play for us both, but where it entwined me, it enchained him. Over the next four decades, my brother drank away health, relationships, jobs, money, and all but the last two years of his life.

 

Who can say why resolve sometimes wins and sometimes loses, but at the age of fifty-four my brother discovered an aquifer of will power, drilled deep, and enjoyed a season of sobriety. He emptied his bottles, stabilized his marriage, reached out to his children, and exchanged the liquor store for the local AA. But the hard living had taken its toll. Three decades of three-packs-a-day smoking had turned his big heart into ground meat.

 

On a January night during the week I began writing this book, he told Donna, his wife, that he couldn’t breathe well. He already had a doctor’s appointment for a related concern, so he decided to try to sleep. No luck. He awoke at 4:00 a.m. with chest pains severe enough to warrant a call to the emergency room. The rescue team loaded Dee on the gurney and told Donna to meet them at the hospital. My brother waved weakly and smiled bravely and told Donna not to worry, but by the time she and one of Dee’s sons reached the hospital, he was gone.

 

The attending physician told them the news and invited them to step into the room where Dee’s body lay. Holding each other, they walked through the doors and saw his final message. His hand was resting on the top of his thigh with the two center fingers folded in and thumb extended, the universal sign language symbol of “I love you.”

 

I’ve tried to envision the final moments of my brother’s earthly life: racing down a Texas highway in an ambulance through an inky night, paramedics buzzing around him, his heart weakening within him. Struggling for each breath, at some point he realized only a few remained. But he didn’t panic or cower, he quarried some courage.

 

Perhaps you could use some? I know I could. An ambulance isn’t the only ride that demands valor. You may not be down to your final heartbeat, but you may be down to your last paycheck, solution, or thimble of faith. Each sunrise seems to bring fresh reasons for fear.

 

They’re talking layoffs at work, slowdowns in the economy, flare-ups in the Middle East, turnovers at headquarters, downturns in the housing market, upswings in global warming, breakouts of Al Qaeda cells. Some demented dictator is collecting nuclear warheads like others collect fine wines. A strain of Asian flu is boarding flights out of China. The plague of our day, terrorism, begins with the word terror. News programs disgorge enough hand-wringing information to warrant an advisory. “Caution: this news report is best viewed in the confines of an underground vault in Iceland.”

 

We fear being sued, finishing last, going broke; we fear the mole on the back, the new kid on the block, the sound of the clock as it ticks us closer to the grave. We sophisticate investment plans, create elaborate security systems, and stronger military; yet we depend on mood-altering drugs more than any generation in history. Moreover, “the average child today … has the same level of anxiety as the average psychiatric patient in the 1950s.”

 

Fear, it seems, has taken a hundred-year lease on the building next door and set up shop. Oversized and rude, unwilling to share the heart with happiness. Happiness complies. Do you ever see the two together? Can one be happy and afraid at the same time? Clear thinking and afraid? Confident and afraid? Merciful and afraid? No. Fear is the big bully in the high school hallway: brash, loud, and unproductive. For all the noise fear makes and room it takes, fear does little good.

 

Fear never wrote a symphony or poem, negotiated a peace treaty, or cured a disease. Fear never pulled a family out of poverty or a country out of bigotry. Fear never saved a marriage or a business. Courage did that. Faith did that. People who refused to consult or cower to their timidities did that. But fear itself? Fear herds us into a prison of unlocked doors.

 

Wouldn’t it be great to walk out?

 

Imagine your life, wholly untouched by angst. What if faith, not fear, was your default reaction to threats? If you could hover a fear magnet over your heart and extract every last shaving of dread, insecurity, or doubt, what would remain? Envision a day, just one day, absent the dread of failure, rejection, or calamity. Can you imagine a life with no fear? This is the possibility behind Jesus’ question.

“Why are you afraid?” he asks.

 

At first blush we wonder if Jesus is serious. He may be kidding. Teasing. Pulling a quick one. Kind of like one swimmer asking another, “Why are you wet?” But Jesus doesn’t smile. He’s dead earnest. So are the men to whom he asks the question. A storm has turned their Galilean dinner cruise into a white-knuckled plunge.

 

Here is how one of them remembered the trip. “Jesus got into a boat, and his followers went with him. A great storm arose on the lake so that the waves covered the boat” (Mt. 8:23-24 NCV).

 

These are Matthew’s words. He remembered well the pouncing tempest and bouncing boat and was careful in his terminology. Not just any noun would do. He pulled his Greek thesaurus off the shelf and hunted for a descriptor that exploded like the waves across the bow. He bypassed common terms for spring shower, squall, cloudburst, or downpour. They didn’t capture what he felt and saw that night: a rumbling earth and quivering shoreline. He recalled more than winds and white tops. His finger followed the column of synonyms down, down until he landed on a word that worked. “Ah, there it is.” Seismos—a quake, a trembling eruption of sea and sky. “A great seismos arose on the lake.”

 

The term still occupies a spot in our vernacular. A seismologist studies earthquakes, a seismograph measures them, and Matthew, along with a crew of recent recruits, felt a seismos that shook them to the core. He only used the word on two other occasions, once at Jesus’ death when Calvary shook (Mt. 27:51-54), and again at Jesus’ resurrection when the graveyard tremored (28:2). Apparently, the stilled storm shares equal billing in the trilogy of Jesus’ great shake-ups: defeating guilt on the cross, death at the tomb, and now silencing fear on the sea.

 

Sudden fear. We know the fear was sudden because the storm was. An older translation reads, “Suddenly a great tempest arose on the sea” (NKJV emphasis mine).

Not all storms come suddenly. Prairie farmers can see the formation of thunderclouds hours before the rain falls. This storm, however, sprang like a lion out of the grass. One minute the disciples were shuffling cards for a mid-journey game of Hearts; the next they were gulping Galilean sea spray.

 

Peter and John, seasoned sailors, struggled to keep down the sail. Matthew, confirmed landlubber, struggled to keep down his breakfast. The storm was not what the tax collector bargained for. Do you sense his surprise in the way he linked his two phrases? “Jesus got into a boat, and his followers went with him. A great storm arose on the lake…” (vs. 23-24 NKJV).

 

Wouldn’t you hope for a more chipper second sentence, a happier consequence of obedience? “Jesus got into a boat. His followers went with him and… suddenly…a great rainbow arched in the sky, a flock of doves hovered in happy formation, a sea of glass mirrored their mast…” Don’t Christ-followers enjoy a calendar full of Caribbean cruises? No. This story sends the not-so-subtle and not-too-popular reminder: getting on board with Christ can mean getting soaked with Christ. Disciples can expect rough seas and stout winds. “In this world you will [not ‘might,’ ‘may‘ or ‘could’] have tribulation” (Jn. 16:33 brackets mine).

 

Christ-followers contract malaria, bury children, and battle addictions, and, as a result, face fears. It’s not the absence of storms that sets us apart. It’s whom we discover in the storm: an unstirred Christ.

 

“Jesus was sleeping” (vs. 24 NCV).

 

Now there’s a scene. The disciples scream, Jesus dreams. Thunder roars, Jesus snores. He doesn’t doze, catnap, or rest. He slumbers. Who could sleep at a time like this? Could you? Could you snooze during a roller coaster loop-de-loop? In a wind tunnel? At a kettle drum concert? Jesus slept through all three, at once!

Mark’s gospel adds two curious details. “[Jesus] was in the stern, asleep on a pillow” (Mk. 4:38). In a stern, on a pillow. Why the first? From whence came the second?

 

First-century fishermen used large, heavy seine nets for their work. They stored the net in a nook that was built into the stern for this purpose. Sleeping upon the stern deck was impractical. It provided no space or protection. The small compartment beneath the stern, however, provided both. It was the most enclosed and only protected part of the boat. So Christ, a bit dozy from the day’s activities, crawled beneath the deck to get some sleep.

 

He rested his head, not on a fluffy feather pillow, but on a leather sandbag. A ballast bag. Mediterranean fishermen still use them. They weigh about a hundred pounds and are used to ballast, or stabilize, the boat. Did Jesus take the pillow to the stern so he could sleep, or sleep so soundly someone rustled him up the pillow? We don’t know. But this much we do. This is a premeditated slumber. He didn’t accidentally nod off. In full knowledge of the coming storm, Jesus decided it was siesta time, so he crawled into the corner, put his head on the pillow, and drifted into dreamland.

 

His snooze troubled the disciples. Matthew and Mark record their response as three staccato Greek commands and one question.

 

The commands: “Lord! Save! Dying!” (Mt. 8:25).

The question: “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” (Mk. 4:39).

They do not ask about Jesus’ strength: “Can you still the storm?” His knowledge: “Are you aware of the storm?” Or his know-how: “Do you have any experience with storms?” But rather, they raise doubts about Jesus’ character. “Do you not care…?”

 

Fear does this. Fear corrodes our confidence in God’s goodness. We begin to wonder if love lives in heaven. If God can sleep in my storms, if his eyes stay shut when my eyes grow wide, if he permits storms after I get on his boat, does he care? Fear unleashes a swarm of doubts, anger-stirring doubts.

 

And it turns us into control freaks. “Do something about the storm!” is the implicit demand of the question. “Fix it, or…or…or, else!” Fear, at its center, is a perceived loss of control. When life spins wildly, we grab for a component of life we can manage: our diet, the tidiness of a house, the armrest of a plane, or, in many cases, people. The more insecure we feel, the meaner we become. We growl and bare our fangs. Why? Because we are bad? In part. But also because we feel cornered.

 

Martin Niemöller documents an extreme example of this. He was a German pastor who took a heroic stand against Adolf Hitler. When he first met the dictator in 1933, Niemöller stood at the back of the room and listened. Later, when his wife asked him what he’d learned, he said: “I discovered that Herr Hitler is a terribly frightened man.” Fear releases the tyrant within.

 

It also deadens our recall. The disciples had reason to trust Jesus. By now, they’d seen him “heal all kinds of sicknesses and all kinds of disease among the people” (Mt. 4:23). They had witnessed him heal a leper with a touch and a servant with a command (Mt. 8:3, 13). Peter saw his sick mother-in-law recover, and they all saw demons scatter like bats out of a cave. “He cast out spirits with a word, and healed all who were sick” (Mt. 8:16).

 

Shouldn’t someone mention Jesus’ track record or review his resume? Do they remember the accomplishments of Christ? They may not. Fear creates a form of spiritual amnesia. It dulls our miracle memory. It makes us forget what Jesus has done and how good God is.

 

And fear feels dreadful. It sucks the life out of the soul, curls us into an embryonic state, and drains us dry of contentment. We become abandoned barns, rickety and tilting from the winds, a place where humanity used to eat, thrive, and find warmth. No longer. When fear shapes our lives, safety becomes our god. When safety becomes our god, we worship the risk-free life. Can the safety lover do anything great? Can the risk-averse accomplish noble deeds? For God? For others? No. The fear-filled cannot love deeply; love is risky. They cannot give to the poor. Benevolence has no guarantee of return. The fear-filled cannot dream wildly. What if their dreams sputter and fall from the sky? The worship of safety emasculates greatness. No wonder Jesus wages such a war against fear.

 

His most common command emerges from the “fear not” genre. The gospels list some 125 Christ-issued imperatives. Of these, twenty-one urge us to “not be afraid” or to “not fear” or to “have courage,” “take heart,” or “be of good cheer.” The second most common command appears on eight occasions. If quantity is any indicator, Jesus takes our fears seriously. The one statement he said more than any other was this: Don’t be afraid.

 

Siblings sometimes chuckle or complain at the most common command of their parents. They remember how Mom was always saying: “Be home on time.” “Did you clean your room?” Dad had his favorite directives too. “Keep your chin up.” “Work hard.” I wonder if the disciples ever reflected on the most-often repeated phrases of Christ. If so, they would have noted: “he was always calling us to courage.”

 

“So don’t be afraid. You are worth much more than many sparrows.” (Mt. 10:31 NCV)

 

“Take courage, son, your sins are forgiven.” (Matthew 9:2 NASB)

 

“Don’t worry about everyday life—whether you have enough…” (Mathew 6:25)

 

“Don’t be afraid. Just believe, and your daughter will be well.” (Luke 8:50 NCV)

 

“It’s all right. I am here! Don’t be afraid.” (Matthew 14:27 NCV)

 

“Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.” (Matthew 10:28)

 

“Do not fear, little flock, for it is your father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” (Luke 12:32)

 

“Don’t be troubled. You trust God, now trust in me…. I will come and get you, so that you will always be with me where I am.” (John 14:1-3 NLT)

 

“.. don’t be troubled or afraid.” (John 14:27)

 

“Why are you frightened?” he asked. “Why are your hearts filled with doubt?” (Luke 24:38 NLT)

 

“You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed.” (Matthew 24:6 NIV)

 

Jesus came and touched them and said, “Arise, and do not be afraid.” (Matthew 17:8 NKJV)

 

Jesus doesn’t want you to live in a state of fear. Nor do you. You’ve never made statements like these:

 

“My phobias put such a spring in my step.”

“I’d be a rotten parent were it not for my hypochondria.”

“Thank God for my pessimism. I’ve been such a better person since I lost hope.”

“My doctor says, if I don’t begin fretting, I will lose my health.”

 

We’ve learned the high cost of fear.

 

The question of Jesus is a good one. He lifts his head from the pillow, steps out from the stern into the storm, and asks: “Why are you fearful, O you of little faith?’” (vs. 26).

 

To be clear, fear serves a healthy function. It is the canary in the coal mine: warning of potential danger. A dose of fright can keep a child from running across a busy road or an adult from smoking a pack of cigarettes. Fear is the appropriate reaction to a burning building or growling dog. Fear itself is not a sin. But it can lead to sin.

 

If we treat fear with angry outbursts, drinking binges, sullen withdrawals, self-starvation, or vice-like control, we exclude God from the solution and exacerbate the problem. We subject ourselves to a position of fear, allowing anxiety to dominate and define our lives. Joy-sapping worries. Day-numbing dread. Repeated bouts with insecurity that petrify and paralyze us. Hysteria is not from God. “For God has not given us a spirit of fear…” (2 Tim. 1:7 NKJV emphasis mine).

 

Fear will always knock on your door. Just don’t invite it in for dinner and, for heaven’s sake, don’t offer it a bed for the night. Let’s dedicate some pages and thought to Jesus’ teaching about fear, examining a select number of his “Do not fear statements.” The promise of Christ and the contention of this book are simple. Fear may fill your world, but it doesn’t have to fill your heart. You can fear less tomorrow than you do today.

 

When I was six years old, my dad let me stay up with the rest of the family and watch the movie Wolfman. Boy, did he regret that decision. The film left me convinced that Wolfman spent each night prowling our den, awaiting his preferred meal of first grade, red-headed, freckle-salted boy. My fear proved problematic. To reach the kitchen from my bedroom, I had to pass perilously close to his claws and fangs, something I was loathe to do. More than once, I retreated to my father’s bedroom and awoke him. Like Jesus in the boat, Dad was sound asleep in the storm.

 

How can a person sleep at a time like this? Opening a sleepy eye, he asked to be reminded, “Now, why are you afraid?” And I would remind him of the monster. “Oh, yes, the Wolfman,” he’d grumble. He would then climb out of bed, arm himself with superhuman courage, escort me through the valley of the shadow of death, and pour me a glass of milk. I would look at him with awe and wonder, “What kind of man is this?”

 

God views our “seismos” storms the way my father viewed my Wolfman angst. “Jesus got up and gave a command to the wind and the waves and it became completely calm” (vs. 26).

 

He handled the great quaking with a great calming. The sea became as still as a frozen lake, and the disciples were left wondering, “What kind of man is this? Even the winds and the waves obey him!” (vs. 27).

 

What kind of man, indeed. Turning typhoon time into naptime. Silencing waves with one word. And equipping a dying man with sufficient courage to send a final love message to his family. Way to go, Dee. You faced your share of “seimos” moments in life, but in the end, you didn’t go under.

 

Here’s a prayer that we won’t either.

 

From Fearless

© Max Lucado, 2009, Thomas Nelson Publishing

📟 : 12 to Oxford Circus

🚍 : TA1 - LX18DGF

 

TA1 seen passes Downing Street along Whitehall operating on route 12 from Dulwich Library to Oxford Circus. TA1 is London's only Tri-Axle Bus and fitted with the newest technology however it's operation has been limited as it is very problematic.

 

Taken on 17/06/2019

Santa: Mr. Batman?

Batman: I am Batman. The Dark Knight.

Santa: I have a problem and need your help.

Batman : Ok but I warn you ….I'm a night-stalking, crime-fighting vigilante, and a heavy metal rapping machine.

Santa; Um. Okay. I need your help

Batman: Of course. I hate criminals.

 

Santa: Um. Well, I am missing a reindeer.

Batman: Huh?

Santa: A reindeer.

Batman: A. Reindeer.

Santa: It's Rudolph.

Batman: Is he a criminal? I fight criminals!

 

Santa: Um. No. He’s a reindeer.

Batman: Not a criminal?

Santa: No.

Batman: Okay. That could be really problematic for me.

 

In the early 1980's BR still had a number of operational class 03's on the books with small pockets of the class at several locations around the UK. In 1984 East Anglia, the North East, Birkenhead and finally Swansea in Wales were the main out posts for the remaining members of the once 230 strong fleet. Their retention was often for specific locations where lighter axle loading locomotives were required. One of the largest concentrations were the nine locomotives allocated to Swansea Llandore Depot. All these had been modified with the cab roof height lowered by 6 inches to permit use on the 12½ mile height restricted Burry Port & Gwendreath Valley Railway.

Eleven class 03's in total were converted with cut down cabs and conversion dates were spread over a number of years. The first examples done to replace steam were six locos modified in 1965 as a numerical block of numbers, D2141-46. D2143 and D2146 were early casualties both being withdrawn in 1968 leaving four to operate the line until several more were converted in the early 1970's. Under TOPS numbering the first four became 03 141, 142, 144 & 145. Subsequent conversions in date order were : 03 119 (1970), 03120 (1972), 03 151 (1974), 03 152 (1974) and finally 03 382 (1981). Trains on the BP&GVR were generally triple headed so Llandore Depot generally had 2 x sets of three class 03's available plus a couple for maintenance or spares. The BP&GVR line ran north from Pembrey & Burry Port to serve the coal mine at Cwmmawr and the coal washery at Coed Bach. The southern half of the route between Kidwelly Branch Junction and Burry Port was often affected by flooding so in 1983 BR reinstated the 1 mile long connection that had closed in 1965 between Coed Bach and the mainline at Kidwelly. This allowed the closure of the problematic 4¾ mile section between Burry Port and Kidwelly Branch Junction east of Coed Bach. The class 03's used on the branch were generally out stabled at Llanelli where the traincrew were based at weekends, they were replaced in April 1985 by three cut down cab class 08's.

Seen here in LLanelli Goods Yard stabled for the weekend are 03 120, 03 145 & 03 151.

 

Not sure why, but these points were a little problematic. Here my Garratt split the points. The baulk was well placed - the edge of the table is just to the left.

The Mithraic Mysteries were a mystery religion practised in the Roman Empire from about the 1st to 4th centuries AD. The name of the Persian god Mithra (proto-Indo-Iranian Mitra), adapted into Greek as Mithras, was linked to a new and distinctive imagery. Writers of the Roman Empire period referred to this mystery religion by phrases which can be anglicized as Mysteries of Mithras or Mysteries of the Persians; modern historians refer to it as Mithraism,[1] or sometimes Roman Mithraism.The mysteries were popular in the Roman military.

Worshippers of Mithras had a complex system of seven grades of initiation, with ritual meals. Initiates called themselves syndexioi, those "united by the handshake".They met in underground temples (called mithraea), which survive in large numbers. The cult appears to have had its centre in Rome.

Numerous archaeological finds, including meeting places, monuments and artifacts, have contributed to modern knowledge about Mithraism throughout the Roman Empire.The iconic scenes of Mithras show him being born from a rock, slaughtering a bull, and sharing a banquet with the god Sol (the Sun). About 420 sites have yielded materials related to the cult. Among the items found are about 1000 inscriptions, 700 examples of the bull-killing scene (tauroctony), and about 400 other monuments.[9] It has been estimated that there would have been at least 680 mithraea in Rome.[10] No written narratives or theology from the religion survive, with limited information to be derived from the inscriptions, and only brief or passing references in Greek and Latin literature. Interpretation of the physical evidence remains problematic and contested.

The Romans regarded the mysteries as having Persian or Zoroastrian sources. Since the early 1970s the dominant scholarship has noted dissimilarities between Persian Mithra-worship and the Roman Mithraic mysteries. In this context, Mithraism has sometimes been viewed as a rival of early Christianity with similarities such as liberator-saviour, hierarchy of adepts (archbishops, bishops, priests), communal meal and a hard struggle of Good and Evil (bull-killing/crucifixion).The name Mithras (Latin, equivalent to Greek “Μίθρας” is a form of Mithra, the name of an Old Persian god– a relationship understood by Mithraic scholars since the days of Franz Cumont. An early example of the Greek form of the name is in a 4th century BC work by Xenophon, the Cyropaedia, which is a biography of the Persian king Cyrus the Great.

The exact form of a Latin or classical Greek word varies due to the grammatical process of declension. There is archeological evidence that in Latin worshippers wrote the nominative form of the god’s name as “Mithras”. However, in Porphyry’s Greek text De Abstinentia («Περὶ ἀποχῆς ἐμψύχων»), there is a reference to the now-lost histories of the Mithraic mysteries by Euboulus and Pallas, the wording of which suggests that these authors treated the name “Mithra” as an indeclinable foreign word.

Related deity-names in other languages include

Sanskrit Mitra (मित्रः), the name of a god praised in the Rig Veda.In Sanskrit, "mitra" means "friend" or "friendship"

the form mi-it-ra-, found in an inscribed peace treaty between the Hittites and the kingdom of Mitanni, from about 1400 BC.

Iranian "Mithra" and Sanskrit "Mitra" are believed to come from an Indo-Iranian word mitra meaning "contract, agreement, covenant".

Modern historians have different conceptions about whether these names refer to the same god or not. John R. Hinnells has written of Mitra / Mithra / Mithras as a single deity worshipped in several different religions. On the other hand, David Ulansey considers the bull-slaying Mithras to be a new god who began to be worshipped in the 1st century BC, and to whom an old name was applied.

Mary Boyce, a researcher of ancient Iranian religions, writes that even though Roman Empire Mithraism seems to have had less Iranian content than historians used to think, still "as the name Mithras alone shows, this content was of some importance.Much about the cult of Mithras is only known from reliefs and sculptures. There have been many attempts to interpret this material.

Mithras-worship in the Roman Empire was characterized by images of the god slaughtering a bull. Other images of Mithras are found in the Roman temples, for instance Mithras banqueting with Sol, and depictions of the birth of Mithras from a rock. But the image of bull-slaying (tauroctony) is always in the central niche.Textual sources for a reconstruction of the theology behind this iconography are very rare. (See section Interpretations of the bull-slaying scene below.)

The practice of depicting the god slaying a bull seems to be specific to Roman Mithraism. According to David Ulansey, this is "perhaps the most important example" of evident difference between Iranian and Roman traditions: "... there is no evidence that the Iranian god Mithra ever had anything to do with killing a bull."n every Mithraeum the centrepiece was a representation of Mithras killing a sacred bull, called the tauroctony.

The image may be a relief, or free-standing, and side details may be present or omitted. The centre-piece is Mithras clothed in Anatolian costume and wearing a Phrygian cap; who is kneeling on the exhausted bull, holding it by the nostrils[33] with his left hand, and stabbing it with his right. As he does so, he looks over his shoulder towards the figure of Sol. A dog and a snake reach up towards the blood. A scorpion seizes the bull's genitals. A raven is flying around or is sitting on the bull. Three ears of wheat are seen coming out from the bull's tail, sometimes from the wound. The bull was often white. The god is sitting on the bull in an unnatural way with his right leg constraining the bull's hoof and the left leg is bent and resting on the bull's back or flank.[34] The two torch-bearers are on either side, dressed like Mithras, Cautes with his torch pointing up and Cautopates with his torch pointing down. Sometimes Cautes and Cautopates carry shepherds' crooks instead of torches.

Tauroctony from the Kunsthistorisches Museum

The event takes place in a cavern, into which Mithras has carried the bull, after having hunted it, ridden it and overwhelmed its strength.[38] Sometimes the cavern is surrounded by a circle, on which the twelve signs of the zodiac appear. Outside the cavern, top left, is Sol the sun, with his flaming crown, often driving a quadriga. A ray of light often reaches down to touch Mithras. At the top right is Luna, with her crescent moon, who may be depicted driving a biga.[39]

In some depictions, the central tauroctony is framed by a series of subsidiary scenes to the left, top and right, illustrating events in the Mithras narrative; Mithras being born from the rock, the water miracle, the hunting and riding of the bull, meeting Sol who kneels to him, shaking hands with Sol and sharing a meal of bull-parts with him, and ascending to the heavens in a chariot.[39] In some instances, as is the case in the stucco icon at Santa Prisca mithraeum, the god is shown heroically nude. Some of these reliefs were constructed so that they could be turned on an axis. On the back side was another, more elaborate feasting scene. This indicates that the bull killing scene was used in the first part of the celebration, then the relief was turned, and the second scene was used in the second part of the celebration.Besides the main cult icon, a number of mithraea had several secondary tauroctonies, and some small portable versions, probably meant for private devotion, have also been found.[The second most important scene after the tauroctony in Mithraic art is the so-called banquet scene.The banquet scene features Mithras and the Sun god banqueting on the hide of the slaughtered bull. On the specific banquet scene on the Fiano Romano relief, one of the torchbearers points a caduceus towards the base of an altar, where flames appear to spring up. Robert Turcan has argued that since the caduceus is an attribute of Mercury, and in mythology Mercury is depicted as a psychopomp, the eliciting of flames in this scene is referring to the dispatch of human souls and expressing the Mithraic doctrine on this matter. Turcan also connects this event to the tauroctony: the blood of the slain bull has soaked the ground at the base of the altar, and from the blood the souls are elicited in flames by the caduceus.Mithras is depicted as being born from a rock. He is shown as emerging from a rock, already in his youth, with a dagger in one hand and a torch in the other. He is nude, standing with his legs together, and is wearing a Phrygian cap.

However, there are variations. Sometimes he is shown as coming out of the rock as a child, and in one instance he has a globe in one hand; sometimes a thunderbolt is seen. There are also depictions in which flames are shooting from the rock and also from Mithras' cap. One statue had its base perforated so that it could serve as a fountain, and the base of another has the mask of the water god. Sometimes Mithras also has other weapons such as bows and arrows, and there are also animals such as dogs, serpents, dolphins, eagles, other birds, lion, crocodiles, lobsters and snails around. On some reliefs, there is a bearded figure identified as Oceanus, the water god, and on some there are the gods of the four winds. In these reliefs, the four elements could be invoked together. Sometimes Victoria, Luna, Sol and Saturn also seem to play a role. Saturn in particular is often seen handing over the dagger to Mithras so that he can perform his mighty deeds.

In some depictions, Cautes and Cautopates are also present; sometimes they are depicted as shepherds.

On some occasions, an amphora is seen, and a few instances show variations like an egg birth or a tree birth. Some interpretations show that the birth of Mithras was celebrated by lighting torches or candles.[One of the most characteristic features of the Mysteries is the naked lion-headed figure often found in Mithraic temples, named by the modern scholars with descriptive terms such as leontocephaline (lion-headed) or leontocephalus (lion-head). He is entwined by a serpent (or two serpents, like a caduceus), with the snake's head often resting on the lion's head. The lion's mouth is often open, giving a horrifying impression. He is usually represented as having four wings, two keys (sometimes a single key), and a scepter in his hand. Sometimes the figure is standing on a globe inscribed with a diagonal cross. In the figure shown here, the four wings carry the symbols of the four seasons, and a thunderbolt is engraved on the breast. At the base of the statue are the hammer and tongs of Vulcan, the cock, and the wand of Mercury. A more scarcely represented variant of the figure with a human head is also found.

Although animal-headed figures are prevalent in contemporary Egyptian and Gnostic mythological representations, an exact parallel to the Mithraic leontocephaline figure is not found.

The name of the figure has been deciphered from dedicatory inscriptions to be Arimanius (though the archeological evidence is not very strong), which is nominally the equivalent of Ahriman, a demon figure in the Zoroastrian pantheon. Arimanius is known from inscriptions to have been a god in the Mithraic cult (CIMRM 222 from Ostia, 369 from Rome, 1773 and 1775 from Pannonia).

While some scholars identify the lion-man as Aion (or Zurvan, or Cronus) others assert that it is Ahriman.[51] There is also speculation that the figure is the Gnostic demiurge, (Ariel) Ialdabaoth. Although the exact identity of the lion-headed figure is debated by scholars, it is largely agreed that the god is associated with time and seasonal change.[53] An occultist, D. J.Cooper, speculates to the contrary that the lion-headed figure is not a god, but rather represents the spiritual state achieved in Mithraism's "adept" level, the Leo (lion) degree. Rituals and worship[edit]

According to M. J. Vermaseren, the Mithraic New Year and the birthday of Mithras was on December 25. However, Beck disagrees strongly.Clauss states: "the Mithraic Mysteries had no public ceremonies of its own. The festival of natalis Invicti [Birth of the Unconquerable (Sun)], held on 25 December, was a general festival of the Sun, and by no means specific to the Mysteries of Mithras." Mithraic initiates were required to swear an oath of secrecy and dedication, and some grade rituals involved the recital of a catechism, wherein the initiate was asked a series of questions pertaining to the initiation symbolism and had to reply with specific answers. An example of such a catechism, apparently pertaining to the Leo grade, was discovered in a fragmentary Egyptian papyrus (P.Berolinensis 21196),and reads:

... He will say: 'Where ... ?

... he is/(you are?) there (then/thereupon?) at a loss?' Say: ... Say: 'Night'. He will say: 'Where ... ?' ... Say: 'All things ...' (He will say): '... you are called ... ?' Say: 'Because of the summery ...' ... having become ... he/it has the fiery ... (He will say): '... did you receive/inherit?' Say: 'In a pit'. He will say: 'Where is your ...?... (Say): '...(in the...) Leonteion.' He will say: 'Will you gird?' The (heavenly?) ...(Say): '... death'. He will say: 'Why, having girded yourself, ...?' '... this (has?) four tassels. Very sharp and ... '... much'. He will say: ...? (Say: '... because of/through?) hot and cold'. He will say: ...? (Say): '... red ... linen'. He will say: 'Why?' Say: '... red border; the linen, however, ...' (He will say): '... has been wrapped?' Say: 'The savior's ...' He will say: 'Who is the father?' Say: 'The one who (begets?) everything ...' (He will say): '('How ?)... did you become a Leo?' Say: 'By the ... of the father'. ... Say: 'Drink and food'. He will say '...?'

'... in the seven-...

Almost no Mithraic scripture or first-hand account of its highly secret rituals survives;with the exception of the aforementioned oath and catechism, and the document known as the Mithras Liturgy, from 4th century Egypt, whose status as a Mithraist text has been questioned by scholars including Franz Cumont. The walls of Mithraea were commonly whitewashed, and where this survives it tends to carry extensive repositories of graffiti; and these, together with inscriptions on Mithraic monuments, form the main source for Mithraic texts.

Nevertheless, it is clear from the archeology of numerous Mithraea that most rituals were associated with feasting – as eating utensils and food residues are almost invariably found. These tend to include both animal bones and also very large quantities of fruit residues.The presence of large amounts of cherry-stones in particular would tend to confirm mid-summer (late June, early July) as a season especially associated with Mithraic festivities. The Virunum album, in the form of an inscribed bronze plaque, records a Mithraic festival of commemoration as taking place on 26 June 184. Beck argues that religious celebrations on this date are indicative of special significance being given to the Summer solstice; but this time of the year coincides with ancient recognition of the solar maximum at midsummer, whilst iconographically identical holidays such as Litha, St John's Eve, and Jāņi are observed also.

For their feasts, Mithraic initiates reclined on stone benches arranged along the longer sides of the Mithraeum – typically there might be room for 15 to 30 diners, but very rarely many more than 40 men. Counterpart dining rooms, or triclinia, were to be found above ground in the precincts of almost any temple or religious sanctuary in the Roman empire, and such rooms were commonly used for their regular feasts by Roman 'clubs', or collegia. Mithraic feasts probably performed a very similar function for Mithraists as the collegia did for those entitled to join them; indeed, since qualification for Roman collegia tended to be restricted to particular families, localities or traditional trades, Mithraism may have functioned in part as providing clubs for the unclubbed.However, the size of the Mithraeum is not necessarily an indication of the size of the congregation.

Each Mithraeum had several altars at the further end, underneath the representation of the tauroctony, and also commonly contained considerable numbers of subsidiary altars, both in the main Mithraeum chamber and in the ante-chamber or narthex.[68] These altars, which are of the standard Roman pattern, each carry a named dedicatory inscription from a particular initiate, who dedicated the altar to Mithras "in fulfillment of his vow", in gratitude for favours received. Burned residues of animal entrails are commonly found on the main altars indicating regular sacrificial use. However, Mithraea do not commonly appear to have been provided with facilities for ritual slaughter of sacrificial animals (a highly specialised function in Roman religion), and it may be presumed that a Mithraeum would have made arrangements for this service to be provided for them in co-operation with the professional victimarius of the civic cult. Prayers were addressed to the Sun three times a day, and Sunday was especially sacred.

It is doubtful whether Mithraism had a monolithic and internally consistent doctrine. It may have varied from location to location. However, the iconography is relatively coherent. It had no predominant sanctuary or cultic centre; and, although each Mithraeum had its own officers and functionaries, there was no central supervisory authority. In some Mithraea, such as that at Dura Europos, wall paintings depict prophets carrying scrolls,but no named Mithraic sages are known, nor does any reference give the title of any Mithraic scripture or teaching. It is known that intitates could transfer with their grades from one Mithraeum to another.

Mithraeum

See also: Mithraeum

A mithraeum found in the ruins of Ostia Antica, Italy

Temples of Mithras are sunk below ground, windowless, and very distinctive. In cities, the basement of an apartment block might be converted; elsewhere they might be excavated and vaulted over, or converted from a natural cave. Mithraic temples are common in the empire; although unevenly distributed, with considerable numbers found in Rome, Ostia, Numidia, Dalmatia, Britain and along the Rhine/Danube frontier; while being somewhat less common in Greece, Egypt, and Syria.According to Walter Burkert, the secret character of Mithriac rituals meant that Mithraism could only be practiced within a Mithraeum.Some new finds at Tienen show evidence of large-scale feasting and suggest that the mystery religion may not have been as secretive as was generally believed.

For the most part, Mithraea tend to be small, externally undistinguished, and cheaply constructed; the cult generally preferring to create a new centre rather than expand an existing one. The Mithraeum represented the cave to which Mithras carried and then killed the bull; and where stone vaulting could not be afforded, the effect would be imitated with lath and plaster. They are commonly located close to springs or streams; fresh water appears to have been required for some Mithraic rituals, and a basin is often incorporated into the structure. There is usually a narthex or ante-chamber at the entrance, and often other ancillary rooms for storage and the preparation of food. The extant mithraea present us with actual physical remains of the architectural structures of the sacred spaces of the Mithraic cult. Mithraeum is a modern coinage and mithraists referred to their sacred structures as speleum or antrum (cave), crypta (underground hallway or corridor), fanum (sacred or holy place), or even templum (a temple or a sacred space).

In their basic form, mithraea were entirely different from the temples and shrines of other cults. In the standard pattern of Roman religious precincts, the temple building functioned as a house for the god, who was intended to be able to view through the opened doors and columnar portico, sacrificial worship being offered on an altar set in an open courtyard; potentially accessible not only to initiates of the cult, but also to colitores or non-initiated worshippers.Mithraea were the antithesis of this.

Degrees of initiation

In the Suda under the entry "Mithras", it states that "no one was permitted to be initiated into them (the mysteries of Mithras), until he should show himself holy and steadfast by undergoing several graduated tests."Gregory Nazianzen refers to the "tests in the mysteries of Mithras".

There were seven grades of initiation into the mysteries of Mithras, which are listed by St. Jerome.Manfred Clauss states that the number of grades, seven, must be connected to the planets. A mosaic in the Ostia Mithraeum of Felicissimus depicts these grades, with symbolic emblems that are connected either to the grades or are just symbols of the planets. The grades also have an inscription beside them commending each grade into the protection of the different planetary gods. In ascending order of importance, the initiatory grades were:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithraic_mysteries

In the Mithraic ceremonies, there were seven degrees of initiations: Corax (Raven), Nymphus (Bridegroom), Miles (Soldier), Leo (Lion), Perses (Persian),Heliodromus (Courier of the Sun), and Pater (Father). Those in the lowest ranks, certainly the Corax, were the servants of the community during the sacred meal of bread and water that formed part of the rite.

The area where the concentration of evidence for Mithraism is the most dense is the capital, Rome, and her port city, Ostia. There are eight extant mithraea in Rome of as many as seven hundred (Coarelli 1979) and eighteen in Ostia. In addition to the actual mithraea, there are approximately three hundred other mithraic monuments from Rome and about one hundred from Ostia. This body of evidence reveals that Mithraism in Rome and Ostia originally appealed to the same social strata as it did in the frontier regions. The evidence also indicates that at least some inhabitants knew about Mithraism as early as the late first century CE, but that the cult did not enjoy a wide membership in either location until the middle of the second century CE.

 

As the cult in Rome became more popular, it seems to have "trickled up" the social ladder, with the result that Mithraism could count several senators from prominent aristocratic families among its adherents by the fourth century CE. Some of these men were initiates in several cults imported from the eastern empire (including those of Magna Mater and Attis, Isis, Serapis, Jupiter Dolichenus, Hecate, and Liber Pater, among others), and most had held priesthoods in official Roman cults. The devotion of these men to Mithraism reflects a fourth-century "resurgence of paganism," when many of these imported cults and even official Roman state religion experienced a surge in popularity although, and perhaps because, their very existence was increasingly threatened by the rapid spread of Christianity after the conversion of the emperor Constantine in 313 CE.

global.britannica.com/topic/heliodromus

 

Mithraism had a wide following from the middle of the second century to the late fourth century CE, but the common belief that Mithraism was the prime competitor of Christianity, promulgated by Ernst Renan (Renan 1882 579), is blatantly false. Mithraism was at a serious disadvantage right from the start because it allowed only male initiates. What is more, Mithraism was, as mentioned above, only one of several cults imported from the eastern empire that enjoyed a large membership in Rome and elsewhere. The major competitor to Christianity was thus not Mithraism but the combined group of imported cults and official Roman cults subsumed under the rubric "paganism." Finally, part of Renan's claim rested on an equally common, but almost equally mistaken, belief that Mithraism was officially accepted because it had Roman emperors among its adherents (Nero, Commodus, Septimius Severus, Caracalla, and the Tetrarchs are most commonly cited). Close examination of the evidence for the participation of emperors reveals that some comes from literary sources of dubious quality and that the rest is rather circumstantial. The cult of Magna Mater, the first imported cult to arrive in Rome (204 BCE) was the only one ever officially recognized as a Roman cult. The others, including Mithraism, were never officially accepted, and some, particularly the Egyptian cult of Isis, were periodically outlawed and their adherents persecuted.

ecole.evansville.edu/articles/mithraism.html

 

Some words were enough for God to precipitate the most beautiful of his creatures at the bottom of the abyss. Lucifer, the carrier of Light, pulled(entailed) with him a third(third party) of the angels in its revolt. Hell was created for him. We know the continuation(suite) … The column of July Place de la Bastille, was set up between 1833 and 1840. In its summit, thrones the "Spirit of liberty" conceived(designed) by the sculptor Auguste Dumont. Curious tribute returned by Louis Philippe to the insurgents who knocked down(spilled) Charles X and the Absolute monarchy three years earlier. Lucifer picked up. No detail misses(is lacking) … Torch in the hand, the Angel has just broken his chains(channels) and dashes to new conquests. Under its impressive base is a crypt sheltering some 500 rests of Fighters of 1830, as well as Egyptian mummy brought back(reported) by Napoleon.Durant la commune de Paris en 1870, après avoir abattu la colonne Vendôme, les communards s’en prirent à celle de la Bastille… sans succès. Ni le dispositif d’explosifs souterrains, ni le tir d’une trentaine d’obus depuis les buttes Chaumont n’en virent pas à bout. La flamme du porteur de Lumière refusa de s’éteindre…

During the municipality of Paris in 1870, having brought(shot) down the column Vendôme, the Communards took themselves in that of the Bastille unsuccessfully. Neither the device(plan) of subterranean explosives, nor the shooting(firing) of around thirty shells since mounds Chaumont transfer(fire) it to end. The flame of the carrier of Light refused to go out …Lucifer was so far away...?

 

« Non Serviam »- « Je ne servirai pas ! »

 

Quelques mots suffirent à Dieu pour précipiter la plus belle de ses créatures au fond de l’abîme. Lucifer, le porteur de Lumière, entraîna avec lui un tiers des anges dans sa révolte. L’enfer fut créé pour lui. Nous connaissons la suite…La colonne de Juillet Place de la Bastille, fut érigée entre 1833 et 1840. À son sommet, trône le « Génie de La Liberté » conçu par le sculpteur Auguste Dumont. Curieux hommage rendu par Louis Philippe aux insurgés qui renversèrent Charles X et la Monarchie absolue trois ans plus tôt. Lucifer a repris du poil de la bête. Aucun détail ne manque… Torche à la main, l’Ange vient de briser ses chaînes et s’élance vers de nouvelles conquêtes. Sous son imposant piédestal se trouve une crypte abritant quelques 500 restes des combattants de 1830, ainsi qu’une momie égyptienne rapportée par Napoléon.Durant la commune de Paris en 1870, après avoir abattu la colonne Vendôme, les communards s’en prirent à celle de la Bastille… sans succès. Ni le dispositif d’explosifs souterrains, ni le tir d’une trentaine d’obus depuis les buttes Chaumont n’en virent pas à bout. La flamme du porteur de Lumière refusa de s’éteindre…

  

www.pariszigzag.fr/histoire-insolite-paris/qui-est-vraime...

Sunnier skies the next day provided a much better environment for shooting L511 with the eclectic lashup. CN 2520 & 2413 shove gypsum loads up the slight grade into Wright's Cove unloading facility. I happened upon these guys on my way home from work as this was not their first attempt to shove back, plus I had to wait for them to clear the crossing anyway, worked out well for me!