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Honey is a key for glowing skin and shiny hairs, and its already placed in your kitchen. Honey are not just a sugar or sweet, sticky mess that approaches in a bee-shaped press bottle; we are just eating as the food’s raw form of honey, the variety of honey you obtain at farmers...

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Christmas Season & Reason by Christina Saint Marche

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Sandro's Artificial Intelligence of a younger Christina in Red Lodge, Montana.

Þingvellir by Esther Seijmonsbergen

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Explored on 22 June 2009!

A marvellous place in Iceland: Þingvellir (Thingvellir). It is well known for two reasons:

As one of the most important places in Icelandic history. In the year 930 the Alþingi, one of the oldest parliamentary institutions of the world, was founded. The Alþingi met yearly, where the Lawspeaker recited the law to all of the gathered people and decided disputes as well. In the year 999 or 1000 the Lawspeaker Þorgeir Ljósvetningagoði made Christianity the official religion of Iceland. After the conversion it is said that, upon returning from the Alþingi, Þorgeir then threw his statues of the old Norse gods into the waterfall that is now named Goðafoss ("Waterfall of the Gods"). At this historical place, the independence of the Republic of Iceland was proclaimed on June 17, 1944.

As a national park (since 1928) because of the special tectonic and volcanic environment. The continental drift can be clearly seen in the cracks or faults which are traversing the region, the biggest one, Almannagjá, being a veritable canyon. This causes also the often measurable earthquakes in the area.

Þingvellir is situated on the northern shore of Þingvallavatn, the biggest lake of Iceland. The river Öxará traverses the national park and is forming a waterfall at the Almannagjá, called Öxaráfoss. Together with the waterfall Gullfoss and the geysirs of Haukadalur, Þingvellir is part of the most famous sights of Iceland, the Golden Circle.

Wien, 3. Bezirk (very historic palace buildings in the suburbs not far away from downtown Vienna), Palacio de Belvedere, Belvedere Palace, Palazzo di Belvedere, le Palais de Belvedere (the upper part), Prinz-Eugen-Straße/Rennweg by alfred lex

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(further pictures and information you can see if you go to the end of page and by clicking on the link...)

Belvedere

Belvedere Castle. Garden Front of the Lower Belvedere.

Belvedere Palace stands supposedly on the foundations of a Roman camp that had been erected here for strategic reasons. In 1693 Prince Eugene of Savoy acquired field and vineyard grounds between today's Rennweg and today's Gürtel. In 1700 Johann Lukas von Hildebrandt began with the construction of a palace garden (Lower Belvedere), whose in French-style layed out park was equipped with large water basins, an orangery with precious foreign plants and a menagerie. Prince Eugene was a great animal lover, and some animals in his collection could be fed exclusively by himself.

1720 the Prince conceived the plan the summer palace to supplement by a another palace building on the hill of the garden.

The 1721 by Johann Lukas von Hildebrandt begun works had been completed in 1724. The Upper Belvedere served in contrast to the Lower only representative purposes and was never meant to live.

The Prince and his architect managed a perfect symbiosis between architecture and garden. After the death of the Savoy (1736) inherited his niece Victoria of Savoy-Soisson, nee Princess Hildburghausen, all his possessions. From her the Habsburgs beginning of 1752 acquired the Belvedere. From 1755 Empress Maria Theresa moved the Arcierenleibgarde (Royal Company of the Archers) and the Galician Guard in the annex of the Belvedere. Besides, the castle stood almost empty.

Belvedere Castle. Engraving by Salomon Kleiner 1731/40 (left).

Vienna from the Belvedere. Coloured copper engraving by Carl Schütz, 1784 (right).

1770 Belvedere Palace was venue of brilliant festivities:

In castle and park the marriage of Archduchess Maria Antonia (Marie Antoinette) with the Dauphin of France by proxy (per procura) was celebrated. About 2,000 people were invited, more than 1,500 bottles of champagne, which was far from home in Vienna at that time,

were emptied. For hospitality of the guests, there were round tables, which were covered with silver. However, the Court of Vienna had a large part of the silver service to rent of nobles, because the stocks of the silver chamber were not sufficient. Finished was the festival by a magnificent fireworks.

1776, the imperial picture gallery from the Stallburg (home of the famous Lipizzan stallions) was transferred to the Upper Belvedere, the animals of the menagerie came to Schönbrunn. Shortly before the Congress of Vienna in 1814 in the Lower Belvedere the Ambras Collection was exposed. During the war against Napoleon (1805-1809), much of the collection of paintings had to be outsourced. The Corsican claimed 400 masterpieces for himself, but which after his defeat at Waterloo to the Habsburgs have been restituted. The after the French wars completely neglected building has been restored 1850-1866.

Castle Park with Upper Belvedere. Photograph, around 1890.

1819 Emperor Franz II (I) the Institute of Botany, University of Vienna, had given spacious grounds for enlargement of the Botanical Garden at Rennweg. Franz was very interested in botany and in accordance with a Habsburg House bill - every Archduke must learn a civilian job - has been educated for gardener. In an adjoining garden of Schloß Belvedere he had from his private funds laid out a botanical garden ("Flora Austriaca") which was left to the Institute of Botany for use.

During the cholera epidemic of 1831, the Belvedere served as well as Schönbrunn Palace the imperial family as a refuge; supposedly one was there protected from the bad air, which was attributed to the onset of the disease. Both castles lay in the "countryside", the air was much better here than in the densely populated city. During wartime, a hospital was set up in the castle.

As the space for the imperial collections became too small, it was thought to expand the Upper Belvedere by wing buildings. This plan was dropped for aesthetic reasons, however. After the expansion of the city (razing of the bastions and glacis) arose on the ring road the newly created Court Museums; moved there in 1891 the major part of the paintings.

Archduke-Heir to the Throne Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Este at folk and children's party in the park of the Belvedere Palace. Photograph, 1905.

To 1893/94 it is likely that Archduke Franz Ferdinand has chosen the Upper Belvedere to his residence in Vienna. Other sources say that it had been assigned to him by the Emperor Franz Joseph as a place to stay in Vienna. The rooms have been restored, adapted for residential purposes and supplemented with neo-Baroque furniture. The heir of the Este collections furnished his residence with numerous works of art. He had envisaged the castle for the accommodation of his collections; in 1893 were numerous boxes from India and Singapore in Belvedere stored. 1894 Emperor Franz Joseph could see the collection: "Yesterday I went to the Belvedere, where Franzi showed me his now quite and very nicely prepared collections. The same are as imposing as interesting by the incredible amount of objects and by the rarity and beauty of them. I believe that this exhibition would be interesting for you", wrote the monarch to his wife, Empress Elisabeth. That same year, Archduke Franz Ferdinand showed his collections his future wife, Sophie Chotková,

"Where I unaware of your fatigue with particular brutality you dragged from box to box" as he apologetically from Budweis wrote to the Countess.

Then the collections moved one the one hand to the Palais Modena in the Beatrixgasse, on the other hand to Konopischt. Only in 1898, Franz Ferdinand was granted by Emperor Franz Joseph to move into the Belvedere as Vienna Residence. More revitalization works were carried out and were also necessary. Technical modernization and preservation of the original building condition had priority - as always with the projects of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. As furnishings served still preserved furnitures from Schloss Hof, which were supplemented by new ones in old style. The private rooms in addition to electric lighting were equipped with central heating.

Belvedere Castle. Staircase in the Upper Belvedere (left).

Marble plastic "Apotheosis of Prince Eugene" by Balthasar Permoser in Gold Cabinet of the Lower Belvedere (right).

If his presence was needed in Vienna, Franz Ferdinand here could lead a normal family life and escape the pressures of court ceremonial, in which the to him in morganatic marriage affiliated wife was exposed to the evils of the courtiers. When the heir to the throne invited guests to the Belvedere, he was sitting opposite his wife as a hostess while she was ranked in the Hofburg always after the latest unmarried Archduchess. About the cozy family life at Belvedere reported Prince von Clary-Aldringens:

"Aunt Sophie invited us ... to snack into a Belvedere, unexpectedly, suddenly appeared the Archduke - we literally froze in our Hab-Acht-position (stand at attention). He greeted us warmly ... [I got to know] the Archduke as a friendly landlord, who was playing and laughing with his Children..."

Between 1899 and 1914 in the Lower Belvedere the military bureau of the heir to the throne was housed. Other well-known Residents - but of outbuildings - were Anton Bruckner, who in 1896 died in the Kustodenwohnung (guardian house), and Richard Strauss, who lived here from 1925 to 1944.

After the assassination of the Archduke and his wife in Sarajevo, the Belvedere should serve as the residence of the new heir to the throne, Archduke Karl and his family. This, however, preferred living in Schönbrunn and especially in the villa Wartholz. In 1917, Charles' brother Archduke Maximilian moved with his family into the Belvedere.

During World War II the castle was badly damaged by bombs, but rebuilt after the war ended immediately. On 15 May 1955 was the Marble Hall venue of the signing of the Austrian State Treaty. Today, the Upper Belvedere houses important art collections.

Excerpts from

Thus lived the Habsburgs - Imperial and Royal Palaces in the

Austro-Hungarian Monarchy

Ingrid Haslinger, Gerhard Trumler

Christian Brandstätter Verlag mbH

The publishing service for museums, businesses and

public bodies

www.brandstaetter - verlag.at

Denomination of the summer residence which Prince Eugene of Savoy himself had erected btw Rennweg and Swiss Garden. The term which refers to the unique view over Vienna dates from the time of Maria Theresa. Prinz Eugen bought in 1697 a plot of land at the Rennweg, which he extended to 1721 in four stages to the current area. Between 1714 and 1716 emerged the Lower Belvedere It is an elongated ground floor building, designed of a 7-axes central projection, two wings and two corner pavilions. The 3-axis central pavilion houses the Marble Hall. The castle the only rarely in Vienna sojourning builder served during the summer months as a pleasure palace.

Only in 1720 commenced construction works for the Upper Belvedere, first drawings for this existed already in 1717. The in it extent and form language compared to the Lower Belvedere especially magnificent Upper Belvedere served primarily as a representative setting for grand receptions and festivities. The architectural history of the example due to the loss of the Eugenianischen Bauarchivs (construction archiv of Prince Eugene) cannot be explored in detail without any gaps. 1723 (according to Rizzi 1721/22) the Upper Belvedere s is considered complete. The architect Johann Lukas von Hildebrandt, who repeatedly worked for Prince Eugen, with the construction of the Belvedere has created his main work. It counts in its multiform architectonic as well as sculptural structure to the most important baroque buildings of the 18th century. The to the ensemble belonging, btw Upper and Lower Belvedere laying garden has been created by the Bavarian horticultural engineer D. Girard and today only in broad terms is original. The designs for the interior of the castle stem from C. le Fort du Plessy.

After the death of the prince the belvedere went into the possession of his sole heiress, Victoria Duchess of Saxe-Hildburghausen. She sold it in 1752 to Maria Theresa. At the behest of Joseph II from 1775 the imperial picture gallery was transferred here, which in 1781 for the first time was open to the public. had. Since 1806 was located in the Lower Belvedere the Ambras Collection. Both collections were in 1890 in the Museum of Art History transferred. In 1894, the palace became residence for the heir to the throne Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

After the first World War I the Republic of Austria in Belvedere installed the Austrian Gallery. 1945 suffered the Belvedere severe war damage. In 1950, the "Gold Cabinet" in the north-eastern corner pavilion of the Upper Belvedere was destroyed by fire and replaced by a copy. The since 1988 ongoing general renovation should have been completed in 1996.

aeiou - the cultural information system of the bm: bwk

14,000 key words and 2000 pictures from history, geography, politics and business in Austria

www.aeiou.at

Austrian Gallery Belvedere

The in the center of Vienna situated Belvedere palaces with their extensive parks form an impressive baroque Gesamtkunstwerk. The Museum in the Upper and Lower Castle

provides an excellent overview of the Austrian Art from the Middle Ages to the present. the collections of the 19th and 20th Century also include an exquisite inventory of international art. World Famous works by Klimt, Schiele, Kokoschka, Renoir and Monet you can see in the upper

Belvedere, from where you can enjoy a spectacular view to the center of Vienna. In the historic rooms of the Lower Belvedere are shown works of art from the Middle Ages and Baroque.

Austrian Gallery Belvedere

Prinz Eugen -Strasse 27 , A - 1037 Wien

Phone +43 / ( 0) 1 / 79557-0

Fax +43 / (0) 1/79 84 337

Upper Belvedere

Collections of the 19th and 20th century

Prinz Eugen -Strasse 27 , A - 1037 Wien

Lower Belvedere

Baroque Museum, and Museum of Medieval Art

Rennweg 6a, A - 1030 Vienna

www.wien-vienna.at/blickpunkte.php?ID=255

One Swallow Does not a Summer Make by raaen99

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Cavendish Mews is a smart set of flats in Mayfair where flapper and modern woman, the Honourable Lettice Chetwynd has set up home after coming of age and gaining her allowance. To supplement her already generous allowance, and to break away from dependence upon her family, Lettice has established herself as a society interior designer, so her flat is decorated with a mixture of elegant antique Georgian pieces and modern Art Deco furnishings, using it as a showroom for what she can offer to her well heeled clients.

Today however we are at Glynes, the grand Georgian family seat of the Chetwynds in Wiltshire, and the home of Lettice’s parents, the presiding Viscount and Countess of Wrexham and the heir, their eldest son Leslie and his wife Arabella. Lettice is staying at her old family home for the festive season as she usually does between Christmas and Twelfth Night*. However, this year she had an extra reason for being with her family this Christmas.

For nearly a year Lettice had been patiently awaiting the return of her then beau, Selwyn Spencely, son of the Duke of Walmsford, after being sent to Durban by his mother, Lady Zinnia in an effort to destroy their relationship which she wanted to end so that she could marry Selwyn off to his cousin, Pamela Fox-Chavers. Having been made aware by Lady Zinnia in October that during the course of the year, whilst Lettice had been biding her time, waiting for Selwyn’s eventual return, he had become engaged to the daughter of a Kenyan diamond mine owner whilst in Durban. Fleeing Lady Zinnia’s Park Lane mansion, Lettice returned to Cavendish Mews and milled over her options over a week as she reeled from the news. Then, after that week, she knew exactly what to do to resolve the issues raised by Lady Zinnia’s unwelcome news about her son. Taking extra care in her dress, she took herself off to the neighbouring upper-class London suburb of Belgravia and paid a call upon Sir John Nettleford-Hughes.

Old enough to be her father, wealthy Sir John is still a bachelor, and according to London society gossip intends to remain so, so that he might continue to enjoy his dalliances with a string of pretty chorus girls of Lettice’s age and younger. As an eligible man in a aftermath of the Great War when such men are a rare commodity, with a vast family estate in Bedfordshire, houses in Mayfair, Belgravia and Pimlico and Fontengil Park in Wiltshire, quite close to the Glynes estate belonging to her parents, Lettice’s mother, Lady Sadie, invited him as a potential suitor to her 1922 Hunt Ball, which she used as a marriage market for Lettice. Selwyn rescued Lettice from the horror of having to entertain him, and Sir John left the ball early in a disgruntled mood with a much younger partygoer. Lettice recently reacquainted herself with Sir John at an amusing Friday to Monday long weekend party held by Sir John and Lady Gladys Caxton at their Scottish country estate, Gossington, a baronial Art and Crafts castle near the hamlet of Kershopefoot in Cumberland. To her surprise, Lettice found Sir John’s company rather enjoyable. She then ran into him again at the Portland Gallery’s autumn show where she found him yet again to be a pleasant and attentive companion for much of the evening.

Sir John also made a proposition to her that night: he offered her his hand in marriage should she ever need it. More like a business arrangement than a marriage proposal, Sir John offered Lettice the opportunity to enjoy the benefits of his large fortune, be chatelain of all his estates and continue to have her interior design business, under the conditions that she agree to provide him with an heir, and that he be allowed to discreetly carry on his affairs in spite of their marriage vows. He even suggested that Lettice might be afforded the opportunity to have her own extra marital liaisons if she were discreet about them. Turning up unannounced on his doorstep, she agreed to his proposal after explaining that the understanding between she and Selwyn was concluded. However, in an effort to be discreet, at Lettice’s insistence, they did not make their engagement public until the new year: after the dust about Selwyn’s break of his and Lettice’s engagement settled. Sir John motored across from Fontengil Park in the days following New Year and he and Lettice announced their engagement in the palatial Glynes drawing room before the Viscount and Lady Sadie the Countess, Leslie, Arabella and the Viscount’s sister Eglantyne (known by all the Chetwynd children affectionally as Aunt Egg). The announcement received somewhat awkwardly by the Viscount initially, until Lettice assured him that her choice to marry Sir John has nothing to do with undue influence, mistaken motivations, but perhaps the person most put out by the news is Aunt Egg who is not a great believer in the institution of marriage, and feels Lettice was perfectly fine as a modern unmarried woman. Lady Sadie, who Lettice thought would be thrilled by the announcement of her engagement, received the news with a somewhat muted response and she discreetly slipped away after drinking a toast to the newly engaged couple with a glass of fine champagne from the Glynes wine cellar.

We now find ourselves in the Glynes morning room where after noticing her prolonged absence, the Viscount has discovered his wife sitting quietly alone.

The Glynes morning room is very much Lady Sadie’s preserve, and the original classical Eighteenth Century design has been overlayed with the comfortable Edwardian clutter of her continual and conspicuous acquisition that is the hallmark of a lady of her age and social standing. China cabinets of beautiful porcelain line the walls. Clusters of mismatched chairs unholstered in cream fabric, tables and a floral chaise lounge, all from different eras, fill the room: set up to allow for the convivial conversation of the great and good of the county after church on a Sunday. The hand painted Georgian wallpaper can barely be seen for paintings and photographs in ornate gilded frames. The marble mantelpiece is covered by Royal Doulton figurines and more photos in silver frames. Several vases of Glynes’ hothouse flowers stand on occasional tables, but even their fragrance cannot smother Lady Sadie’s Yardley Lily of the Valley scent which is ever present in the air.

“I say! What are you doing in here, old girl?” the Viscount asks as she sees his wife sitting at her bonheur de jour** in the corner of the morning room. “The rest of the family is still in the drawing room, including Lally and Charles, who have returned from their visit to Bowood.***”

“I’m well aware of that, Cosmo. I heard them come back.” Lady Sadie says peevishly. “And less of the old, if you don’t mind.”

“Sorry Sadie.” the Viscount apologises. “It’s having all the young ones around and their new vernacular. It’s ‘old boy this’ and ‘old girl that’. It’s catching.”

“That’s alright, Cosmo, so long as it doesn’t catch on, here.” Lady Sadie replies with a cocked eyebrow.

“We were wondering where you’d gotten to.” the Viscount says. “I’ve opened another bottle of champagne.”

“Have you, dear?” Lady Sadie remarks absently.

“Of course I have, Sadie!” the Viscount chortles. “After all, it isn’t every day that our youngest daughter gets married.”

“I suppose not, Cosmo.” Lady Sadie replies rather laconically.

The Viscount watches his wife as she picks up a studio photograph taken in London by Bassano**** of their eldest daughter, Lally as a gangly young teenager, and Lettice as a girl of seven, both dressed in the pre-war uniform fashion of young girls: white lawn dresses with their hair tied in large satin bows. She sighs.

“Sir John is suggesting that we all motor over to Fontengil Park for luncheon, now that Lally and Charles are back.” the Viscount remarks awkwardly in an effort to break his wife’s unusual silence. “To celebrate the good news as it were. I thought it was rather a capital idea! Don’t you agree, Sadie?”

Lady Sadie doesn’t reply, instead staring deeply at the faces of her two daughters forever captured within Mr. Basanno’s lens, her look expectant, as if she were waiting for them to speak.

“You know, I must confess, I wasn’t too keen on him to begin with, nor the idea of he and Lettice marrying.” He looks guiltily at his wife. “I never really liked him, and always thought him a bit of an old lecher, sniffing around young women half his age, like our daughter. But Lettice assures me that she has made up her mind to marry him, and that there was no undue influence in the making of her decision.”

“Undue influence.” Lady Sadie muses in a deadpan voice.

“And now that I’ve really met him and chatted with him properly, I actually don’t mind Sir John, even if I do worry that he may be a tad old for Lettice. He’s quite a raconteur, very eloquent and worldly, and he obviously wants to make her happy. He might be just what she needs after all: a mature man who can help guide her in life, and indulge her too. He says he has no intention of stopping her career as an interior designer.”

Lady Sadie does not reply to her husband’s observations.

“Of course Eglantyne is quite against the engagement.” The Viscount chuckles. “But then, you know her opinions about marriage.”

Lady Sadie’s silence unnerves the Viscount as he tries desperately to fill the empty void between the pair of them.

“I thought I might get Harris to motor Leslie, Arabella, the grandchildren, you and I over there together.” the Viscount goes on when no opinion is forthcoming from his wife. “It might be fun for Harrold and Annabelle to come for a ride with us in the big old Daimler. Charles and Lally can go in their car with nanny and the baby.”

“Piers is hardly a baby anymore, Cosmo.” Lady Sadie opines as she puts down the photo of Lally and Lettice and picks up one of their eldest son, Leslie, as a boy of six in a Victorian sailor suit, with his soft blonde waves swept neatly behind his ears. “He’s two now, nearly three.” She then adds, “Won’t that be rather tiresome for Sir John’s cook, catering for us all?”

“We are connected to the exchange, Sadie. He can telephone ahead.”

“As you like.” she replies in a rather non-committal way. “Although I might cry off with one of my heads.”

“You don’t have one of your heads, Sadie.” the Viscount says darkly.

“How do you know I don’t, Cosmo. You don’t suffer them as I do.”

“I’ve been married to you long enough to know when you have a headache and when you don’t.” he replies. “And you certainly don’t have one now, even if you say you do.”

Putting down the photo of Leslie and picking up one of their second son, Lionel also in a sailor’s suit, and wearing a straw hat, Lady Sadie shudders. His look is sweet, but already at the tender age of three or four he was causing trouble, playing nasty tricks and hurting his nannies and worse, his own siblings. When Lettice was born a few years after the photograph was taken, Lady Sadie had to warn Lettice’s nurses that they were never to leave her unattended in Lionel’s presence, lest he smother her with a pillow, which he tried to do on several occasions when the nurses were slack in their observation of Lady Sadie’s rule or they were caught off guard.

“And of course Sir John can take Lettice over there in that topping blue Bugatti Torpedo***** of his.”

“Ghastly, vulgar and showy.” Lady Sadie opines. “Tearing up the country lanes as he speeds along them, so that no decent person of the county can walk them any more without fearing for their lives when he’s visiting the district.” She sniffs. “Or so I have it on good authority.”

She returns to her perusal of photos.

“I say, Sadie,” the Viscount remarks in surprise. “What’s the matter?”

“Whatever do you mean, Cosmo?” she asks, lifting her head from a baby photo of Leslie sitting on the corner of a button back****** sofa taken at the same time as the one she has of him leaning precariously against a rocking chair in a silver frame standing on the right side of her bonheur de jour.

“You know perfectly well.” the Viscount retorts. “Don’t be obtuse.”

“I’m not being obtuse, Cosmo!” Lady Sadie retorts.

The Viscount sighs, knowing in order to get an answer, he must play his wife’s game of teasing out the answer from her: a game he is well versed in playing after many years of marriage.

“You’re obviously not happy about the engagement, which I have to say surprises me. Why have you suddenly taken so much against Sir John? I thought you’d be delighted by the announcement.”

Lady Sadie ignores her husband’s question and picks up a large and ornate framed photograph of a wedding group taken in the early years of the Twentieth Century. It features a rather beaky looking bride in a pretty lace covered white wedding dress and a splendid black feather covered Edwardian picture hat. Her groom, dressed in his Sunday best suit with a boutonnière******* in his lapel and a derby on his head sits back in his seat, looking very proud. Around them stand various men and women in their Edwardian best, but the flat caps and mismatched jackets and trousers of the men and similarly mismatched outfits of the ladies suggest that this is not an upper-class wedding. In front of the bride a five year old Lettice stands proudly dressed as a flower girl in a white lace dress with ribbons in her hair, clutching a bouquet.

“Didn’t you take that photograph with your first Box Brownie********, Sadie?” the Viscount asks as he walks over and stands next to his wife and looks at the photograph.

“Yes, I did, Cosmo.” Lady Sadie acknowledges. “How good of you to remember.”

“Oh, who could forget that occasion?” the Viscount chortles sadly. “That was poor Elsie Bucknell’s wedding to that wastrel who turned her head with all his talk of being a tailor to all the great and good of Swindon, when in fact he was nothing but a con man from Manchester.”

“You were very good to settle the debts he left her with after he and his real wife absconded with all her money.” Sadie says, pointing at the rather pretty woman in white and a neat picture hat sitting to the groom’s right.

“Well, it was the right thing to do, wasn’t it? As lord of manor, it was my duty to support her, poor jilted woman.”

“Yes, the right thing.” Lady Sadie agrees with a sigh. “You’ve always done the right thing, Cosmo.”

“Well, I also did encourage her to marry him when she asked my opinion of him.”

“You’ve not always been the best judge of character, Cosmo.” Lady Sadie remarks.

The Viscount laughs. “What does that say about me choosing you as my bride then, Sadie?”

“I did imply that your poor judgements of character only happen sometimes, not always.” She runs her fingers over the glass in front of Lettice’s smiling face. “Lettice was as pleased as punch to be the flower girl at that wedding. Do you remember?”

“I do believe she thought all the smiles and gushing of the adulating congregation were for her and not for Elise behind her.”

“I do believe you are right, Cosmo.” Lady Sadie chuckles. “Did you know that’s why they call them, ‘Flappers’?”

“Who dear?”

“The newspapers and magazines.” Lady Sadie muses. “I found out not all that long ago, from Geraldine Evans of all people, if you can believe it,” she remarks with another chuckle, mentioning the elder of two genteel spinster sisters who live in Holland House, a Seventeenth Century manor house, in Glynes village. “She told me that they call the young girls of the Bright Young Things********* ‘Flappers’ because it refers to the fact that when they were girls and their hair was still down, it was tied by flapping ribbons or tied in pigtails that flapped.” She points to the big bow in the young Lettice’s hair.

“No. No, I didn’t know.” the Viscount replies a little awkwardly. “Look, what’s all this got to do wi…”

“Thinking of the right thing, Cosmo, I really should take this photo out of the frame, what with all the sad connotations it has, but I can’t quite bear to do it.” Lady Sadie goes on, interrupting her husband. “I’m rather proud of this photograph.”

“There’s no need. Elise has long since left Glynes after all the scandal, so she won’t know. Anyway, it’s a very good shot, Sadie.” her husband agrees, putting his hand around her and giving her right shoulder an encouraging squeeze.

“I’ve never been what you’d call artistic, like Eglantyne,” Lady Sadie says, referring to her husband’s favourite younger sibling, who is an artist of some renown in London. “Or like Lettice, but I’m not bad at taking photographs.”

“I think you’re a dab hand at it, Sadie my dear.” He rubs his wife’s right forearm, and bestows a kiss on her greyish white waves atop her head. “Far better than me, or Leslie. But I ask again, what’s any of this to do with Sir John, and your sudden dislike of him?”

“You know, you think you know what, or who your children will become,” Lady Sadie says wistfully, replacing the photograph in the frame back on the surface of her bonheur de jour. “And yet, they always surprise you.”

“Oh, I don’t think either Leslie or Lally have been particularly surprising.” the Viscount retorts.

“No?”

“No. As the eldest son, Leslie has turned out to be the fine heir to the Glynes estate that we always wanted. He’s responsible, and goodness knows his insight and forward thinking has prevented us from finding ourselves in the straitened circumstances that the Brutons or poor Nigel Tyrwhitt and Isobel are in now. And now that he’s married, it will only be a matter of time before he and Arabella give us a grandson to carry on the Chetwynd line and one day become the next Viscount Wrexham.” He smiles indulgently at the thought. “And Lally’s marriage to Charles Lanchenbury is all we could hope for, for her. I mean, Charles may not inherit a hereditary title from old Lanchenbury, which is a bit of a pity. But still, he’s a successful businessman and she’ll never wont for anything. She seems to rather enjoy playing lady or the manor in High Wycombe with her brood.”

“Oh yes.”

“Lionel was a surprising one.” The Viscount picks up the photograph of his second son in his Victorian sailor’s outfit and wide brimmed straw hat that his wife had held before. “Who would have imagined that behind such an angelic face lurked the depraved character of the devil incarnate?” He feels his wife shudder again at the thought of their wayward son beneath his hand. “There, there, Sadie my dear.” he coos. “The further away from us he is, the less we have to think about him,” He heaves a great sigh of regret. “Or deal with his messy affairs.”

“You know I received a letter from him yesterday?” Lady Sadie asks.

“No.”

“Yes,” Lady Sadie snorts derisively. “From Durban of places, would you believe?”

“The same as young Spencely.”

“Yes! Isn’t that a coincidence? It was quite a good letter actually, and the first I’ve had since Leslie’s wedding where he doesn’t implore me to ask you to bring him back here. He writes that he went to Durban to show off two of his new Thoroughbreds to a perspective buyer: some playboy horse racing son of a nouveau riche businessman. It sounds like he’s had a bit of luck, as he seems quite flush at the moment, going to nightclubs and the like down there.”

“Squandering his earnings on gambling, women and god knows what else, down there, I’ll warrant.” the Viscount opines gruffly.

“No doubt.” Lady Sadie sighs.

“Poor Lettice.” the Viscount adds in a softer tone, as his mind shifts to his youngest daughter’s heartbreak at the hands of Selwyn Spencely.

“Aahh, and then there was Lettice.” Lady Sadie remarks, taking up a round gold frame featuring a studio photograph of a beaming Lettice at age ten in a smart winter coat and large brimmed hat, full of confidence sitting before the camera. “The most surprising child of all, not least of all because she was a surprise late pregnancy for me.”

“Oh, Lettice is no surprise to me, Sadie.” the Viscount retorts. “I mean, Eglantyne picked her as having an artistic temperament right from the beginning, and she was right. I knew she had more brains than our Lally has, which is why I gave her all those extra lessons.”

“You indulged her, Cosmo!” Lady Sadie remarks. “You’ve always spoiled her. So does Eglantyne. She’s your pet, and hers too.”

“Every bit as much as Leslie is yours, Sadie.” He points to the silver framed portrait of Leslie.

“You were the one who encouraged her to start up this ridiculous interior decoration nonsense.”

“Well, in reality it was really Eglantyne who drew my attention to her flair for design, but I’m glad that she did. Look at the successes she has had! She runs her own business, with very few hiccups or missteps,” He momentarily remembers the kerfuffle that there was with Lettice signing a contract drawn up by Lady Gladys Caxton’s lawyers without consulting the Chetwynd family lawyers. “And she’s very good at keeping accounts.”

“Excellent, she’ll make the perfect bookkeeper.” Lady Sadie remarks sarcastically.

“It will put her in good stead for running Sir John’s households, Sadie.” the Viscount tempers. “Goodness knows he has enough of them. And she has received accolades from Henry Tipping**********, printed in Country Life********** for all to see, and that is fine feather for her cap, you must confess.”

“I don’t deny that.” Lady Sadie agrees somewhat reluctantly.

“No, I always knew Lettice would be the greatest success of all our children.” the Viscount says proudly.

“Did you, Cosmo?”

“Of course I did, Sadie. I understand her.”

“You!” Lady Sadie scoffs. “You may decry that you love your youngest and favourite daughter so well, Cosmo, and without a doubt, you do. However, whatever you say, you don’t understand Lettice.”

“And you do, Sadie?” the Viscount retorts hotly. “When she comes home to lick her wounds after Zinnia sent Selwyn away, craving comfort, you drove her from the house, telling her she needed to throw herself into the social rounds, rather than stop and miss him. Is that understanding?” He folds his arms akimbo and looks away from his wife in disgust. “No wonder she kept her engagement to Sir John a secret for the last month or so, since you suddenly seem to despise her husband-to-be: a man whom I should like to point out, you thought was perfectly suitable for her not so very long ago. Sir John may not have the title of duke, but he has a title nonetheless, and I have no doubt that his fortune is equal to that of the Duke of Walmsford.”

“You misunderstand me, and my motives, Cosmo.” Lady Sadie replies, hurt by his words, but also resigned to the fact that he believes them. “As always, I am portrayed like one of Mrs. Maingot’s derided pantomime villains in the Glynes Christmas play.”

“If the cap fits, Sadie.”

“See, you think I don’t understand my children, but I assure you that, aside from Lionel, I do.”

“Who could ever understand that child of the devil, Sadie?”

“Indeed, well aside from our errant black sheep, I understand the others. You love them, Cosmo, probably far more than me, but I on the other hand, understand them.”

“How so, Sadie?”

“You misalign my actions because you don’t understand them, either. When Lettice came here after Zinnia packed Selwyn off to Durban, what did you do? You gave her a place to shelter, yes, but you mollycoddled her: feeding her shortbreads and allowing her to retreat from the world.”

“Well, that’s what she needed, Sadie.”

“No. That’s where you are wrong, Cosmo. She didn’t need mollycoddling. It just made things worse. It amplified her situation and how she felt as you allowed her to spend her empty days brooding. Lettice is apt to brood, when given the opportunity. What she really needed was to be told that the sun will still rise and set, in spite of her own innermost turmoil, and what she needed was to be sent back out into the world, so that she could be distracted, and build up her resilience. That’s what she needed, Cosmo, and I helped her achieve that. And that, my dear, is what I mean by truly understanding Lettice. Believe it or not, I understand her as a young woman, and I understand what she needs.”

“Well, if you wanted to build resilience in her, that’s what you’ve achieved, and admirably at that. Selwyn jilts our daughter and what does she do? Rather than moping, which is what you seem to think I would have encouraged her to do, she went out and got herself engaged to one of the most eligible bachelors in the county, in England no less. Yet you don’t seem at all happy about the engagement, even though you put Sir John into the mix at the Hunt Ball that you used as a marriage market for Lettice.”

“Once again, Cosmo, you see your daughter, but you don’t understand her.”

“Then pray enlighten me, Sadie because I certainly don’t understand you right at this moment.”

“Lettice’s heart is breaking, and ever since she was a child, when her heart is broken, she lashes out, like when Mopsy died. Remember her Cavalier King Charles Spaniel?”

“How could I forget that beautiful dog. But surely you aren’t comparing her tears and tantrums as a seven year old child, to now, Sadie? There are no tears this time, no tantrums.”

“But that’s where you are wrong, Cosmo. This is her tantrum. It just isn’t one that exhibits itself in the same way. Lettice is trying to prove to Selwyn,” She pauses for a moment and thinks. “No, more prove to Zinna, that she isn’t defeated by whatever nasty games she is playing to break the romance between Lettice and Selwyn. She’s trying to exact revenge on them both.” Lady Sadie sighs. “But she’s going about it all wrong.”

“What do you mean, Sadie?” The Viscount sighs as he sinks down onto the edge of one of the morning room chairs nearest him and looks across at his wife, who sits, slumped in her own seat at her desk, looking defeated.

“I blame myself really for this turn of events.” Lady Sadie gulps awkwardly. “I’m almost too ashamed to admit it, but I was misaligned in some of my thinking, and wrong in my judgement, and now the results have well and truly come home to roost.”

“What are you talking about, Sadie?”

“Sir John, Cosmo.” She says simply. “When I held that Hunt Ball, I practically threw Lettice at Sir John.”

“Well, to assuage your fears, Sadie, that is what I meant by confirming that there were no undue influences in Lettice’s decision.” the Viscount pronounces. “I asked her whether she felt obliged to marry Sir John because you had encouraged the match, and that she feared being stuck on the shelf.” He looks meaningfully at his wife. “But she says that neither of these had any influence on her decision. She says that Sir John isn’t perfect, but that he’s a good man, and that he isn’t lying to her. As I said - as you said – Sir John may not be young, but he’s eligible and wealthy to boot. Lettice will be chatelaine of a string of fine properties, and she’ll never have to worry about going without.”

“But Lettice is wrong about him nor lying to her.”

“What’s that?”

Lady Sadie snatches the lace handkerchief poking out of her left sleeve opening at her wrist and dabs her nose, sniffing as she does. “Several of my friends, Lally, and even Lettice tried to warn me about him. They said that he’s a lecherous man, with a penchant for younger women, actresses in particular.”

“Well,” the Viscount chuckles. “Plenty of men of good standing have been known to have the odd discreet elicit affair with a Gaiety Girl*********** or two.” He then blusters. “Not myself of course!”

“Of course not, Cosmo.” She reaches out one of her diamond spangled hands to her husband and takes his own proffered hand. “Never you. You were always too much of a gentleman to have a liaison with another woman. As I said, you always do the right thing, Cosmo. Do you know, I do believe that is why Zinnia stopped coming to our house parties. You weren’t for conquest, no matter how much she threw herself at you. And she did, quite shamelessly.”

“Did she?” the Viscount asks innocently.

“You know she did!” Lady Sadie slaps her husband’s wrist playfully. “Now who’s being obtuse?”

“Well, maybe I did sense her overtures towards me, but she never stood a chance, Sadie!” the Viscount replies with an earnest look. “You were only ever going to be the one for me.”

“That’s sweet of you Cosmo, and I appreciate it. But, for all his pedigree and wealth, and for all his apparent care for Lettice, your judge of character of Sir John is fatally flawed my dear.”

“Flawed?”

“Sir John Nettleford-Hughes is not for our youngest daughter.” Lady Sadie goes on. “Nor any good and upstanding young lady of society. I know now that he is a philanderer: discreet yes, but not discreet enough, and no matter how many houses he has, or wealth, he will never make Lettice happy – quite the opposite in fact, I fear, even if she can’t see that in her present state of besottedness. She will become the neglected, deserted wife and the ridicule of society. And that is why I am against Sir John, and this marriage, which will be as disastrous for her as dear Elsie Bucknell’s was for her.” Sadie points to the wedding party photograph again.

“What?”

“Yes.” Lady Sadie cocks an eyebrow as she gives her husband a withering look. “His latest conquest is an up-and-coming West End actress named Paula Young. Such a nasty, common name.” she opines. “Then again, it suits a nasty and common little upstart tart of an actress!”

“Sadie!”

“Sorry Cosmo, but that’s what she is, if she allows herself to be seen in such an…” Lady Sadie shudders. “An intimate situation with a man like Sir John.”

“Surely there is some kind of misunderstanding: just gossip, Sadie.”

“Gossip yes, but verified nonetheless.” Lady Sadie answers sadly. “Though I wish to god that I could say it wasn’t. My cousin Gwendolyn was having dinner at the Café Royal************ and saw them together herself less than a week ago.”

“What was Gwendolyn doing at the Café Royal?”

“She is a duchess, Cosmo dear, or have you forgotten?”

“Who could ever forget that Gwendolyn is the Duchess of Whiby, Sadie? She certainly won’t let anyone forget it.”

“Well, she was escorting her grand-nice Barbara who debuted last year as part of the London Season, because poor Monica had influenza and was confined to bed, and she noticed Sir John and that that cheap actress at a shaded corner table.”

“A simple dinner between two friends., Sadie.” the Viscount tries to explain the situation away.

“Gwendolyn says that he was practically devouring her as he lavished her bare forearms with kisses.” Lady Sadie replies with another shudder and a look of disgust. “In public! With an actress! How vulgar, and certainly not discreet, even if at a corner table in the shadows!”

“Gwendolyn goes looking for gossip wherever she goes, Sadie, even in places where it isn’t.” the Viscount cautions his wife.

“I know, but be that as it may, Cosmo, I also have it from your own sister, Eglantyne, that many years ago, before she was married, he also had an elicit affair with that awful romance novelist Gladys Caxton, whom Lettice and you had all the trouble with not long ago.”

“Well you know Eglantyne doesn’t believe in the institution of marriage.” the Viscount begins.

“This was before any of us even knew of the understanding reached between Lettice and Sir John, Cosmo.”

“Well,” he chuckles in an effort to shake he sudden concerns off. “If that affair was many years ago, who cares, Sadie? It has no significance now.”

Lady Sadie slides open a drawer of her bonheur de jour and takes out a sheet of paper on which is written a list of names.

“After Gwendolyn’s revelations, I did a bit of digging myself, and these are the actresses ingénues and parvenues I was able to connect him to.”

“The cad!” the Viscount gasps as his widened eyes run down the list. “There must be at lest two dozen women on this list.”

“There are twenty-nine to be exact, Cosmo, and they are only the ones I could find and link him to.”

“You know I always thought that he was an old letch.” the Viscount restates his long held belief again. “I can’t deny that I’d heard the rumours too, but being unmarried I didn’t pay them much mind. And when he showed up here today, all charm, and was so solicitous to Lettice, making my little girl so happy, well...”

“You were swayed on your judgment of this character.” Lady Sadie says with an arched eyebrow and a knowing look.

“I was.” the Viscount agrees. “I was persuaded: taken in by him as a matter-of-fact! What a fool I am!”

“Charming people can always beguile, dear Cosmo.”

“I shall go into the drawing room this very minute and have it out with him!” He gets to his feet, trembling with anger and frustration as his elegant hands form into fists. “I’ll fling Sir John out on his philandering ear!”

Lady Sadie reaches out again to still her husband, wrapping her hand comfortingly around his wrist. “No you won’t, Cosmo.” she says calmly and matter-of-factly, gazing up at him sadly. “It would be the wrong thing to do, and you know it. And, as we have agreed, you always do the right and decent thing. It would be too embarrassing to conduct such a scene before a houseful of guests, even if they are family: for Sir John, Leslie, Arabella, Lally, Eglantyne, me, you,” She lowers her voice and adds sadly. “For Lettice.”

“You’re right, Sadie.” the Viscount says, still trembling with anger. “Shall I speak to Lettice?” he suggests. “Pull her aside and have a discreet word with her?”

“Why, Cosmo?”

“I could forbid her to marry him. I could threaten to cut her allowance off.”

Lady Sadie laughs in a sad and tired fashion. “Cosmo, what purpose would that serve? She’s already told you that she intends to go through with this marriage, and that she won’t be swayed.”

“Well, Lettice might come to her senses if I tell her… tell her the reasons why I’m forbidding her to marry that… that bounder!”

“She knows already what kind of man Sir John is, Cosmo. She was one of the people who told me that he’s a philanderer.”

“What?”

“Lettice told me herself that he has a penchant for young ladies.”

“Well, if she hears it from me, her own father?”

“You’ll only drive her deeper into his arms, Cosmo. She’s angry. She’s hurting. She’s rebelling, God help us all!” Lady Sadie says knowingly. “She’s seeking revenge. And your threat to cut off Lettice’s allowance would be meaningless if she marries Sir John. As you have duly noted already, he’s richer than Croesus*************. Besides, thanks to you and Eglantyne she also has a successful business venture to support her now.”

“What the devil is she playing at then?” the Viscount asks. “Is it not bad enough that we have an errant son in Lionel, that we must now have a daughter who marries a known philanderer with a penchant for young actresses, and will doubtless end up being dragged through the divorce courts as a result, casting shame on the family?”

“I don’t know, Cosmo, other than she is lashing out at Lady Zinnia, exacting her revenge as she sees it.”

The Viscount looks down at his wife sadly and ponders. “You’re being remarkably calm about all this, Sadie.”

“Yes,” she replies with a derisive snigger as she starts to take up some of the lose photos and file them together. “I know. Usually, it’s me having histrionics, not you. However, there is something I keep reminding myself of that brings me solace as I mull this situation over in my mind.”

“What on earth can bring you solace about this disastrous situation Lettice has willingly foisted upon herself?”

Lady Sadie looks knowingly at her husband. “One swallow does not a summer make**************, Cosmo. And an engagement, especially a hasty one, does not necessarily lead to marriage.”

“What are you saying, Sadie?”

“I’m simply saying that if a man breaks off his engagement with a lady, he’s a cad and a bounder. However, a lady is perfectly entitled to break off her engagement with a gentleman. In fact,” She smiles smugly. “It is her prerogative to do so.”

“Are you suggesting that we should encourage Lettice to break her engagement with Sir John?” the Viscount asks. He sighs and rubs his cleanly shaven chin. “I say! What a clever ploy, Sadie.” he muses. “Quite brilliant! Quite Machiavellian, no less!”

“No, I’m not saying that at all, Cosmo.” Lady Sadie quips. “You misunderstand me again.” She releases an exasperated sigh. “This is also what I mean by you not understanding Lettice. There is no talking to her right now, she’s so focussed on her own hurt and anger, and is determined to exact her own misaligned form of revenge on Selwyn and Zinnia. At the moment you could say that Sir John is made of glass and will shatter into a thousand slivers the moment she marries him and stab her to death, and she’ll still marry him to spite them, because she simply cannot see straight. She’s so angry that she won’t listen to reason.” She settles back in her seat and steeples her fingers before her as she stares off into a future only she can see. “Lettice is like a blizzard: blustery, but eventually her anger will peter out.”

“So you are suggesting what?”

“So, what I’m suggesting is that in this case, we must be patient with Lettice. We must settle ourselves in for the long game, and just watch what happens when her storm peters out.”

“So, in your opinion, we do nothing, then?” the Viscount blasts.

“For the time being, no, Cosmo.”

“But if we do nothing, she’ll marry the cad, and then where will we be?”

“I’m not convinced, Cosmo.” Lady Sadie assures her husband. “I think that if we cool our heels and let things play out, Lettice will come to her senses in the fullness of time.”

“You seem very sure of that, Sadie.” the Viscount says with a dubious look at his wife.

“I am, Cosmo.”

“And if you’re wrong? What then?”

“I’m not.” she assures him. “But if I were to be, then we shall simply have to steer her back to her senses when she is in a frame of mind that best allows us to encourage her to break off this disastrous marriage with Sir John.”

The Viscount shudders. “How can I have a son-in-law who’s as old as I am, or older.”

“Not quite, Cosmo, dear.” Lady Sadie assures him. “He’s a year and a half younger than you. I know. I did my in depth research about him before putting him forward as a potential suitor in 1922.”

“Evidently not in depth enough, Sadie,” He holds up the sheet of paper before he wife before screwing it up in anger and throwing it vehemently into her waste paper basket. “If Lettice is now engaged to a wealthy womaniser who carries on with actresses in public.”

“Don’t worry.” Lady Sadie continues to soothe in a soft voice, “We won’t have Sir John as our son-in-law. You’ll see.”

“Now that I know what I know,” the Viscount sighs. “I just hope you’re right, Sadie.”

“I usually am, Cosmo,” Lady Sadie resumes shuffling the photographs. “In the end.”

*Twelfth Night (also known as Epiphany Eve depending upon the tradition) is a Christian festival on the last night of the Twelve Days of Christmas, marking the coming of the Epiphany. Different traditions mark the date of Twelfth Night as either the fifth of January or the sixth of January, depending on whether the counting begins on Christmas Day or the twenty-sixth of December. January the sixth is celebrated as the feast of Epiphany, which begins the Epiphanytide season.

**A bonheur de jour is a type of lady's writing desk. It was introduced in Paris by one of the interior decorators and purveyors of fashionable novelties called marchands-merciers around 1760, and speedily became intensely fashionable. Decorated on all sides, it was designed to sit in the middle of a room so that it could be admired from any angle.

***Bowood is a Grade I listed Georgian country house in Wiltshire, that has been owned for more than two hundred and fifty years by the Fitzmaurice family. The house, with interiors by Robert Adam, stands on extensive grounds which include a garden designed by Lancelot "Capability" Brown. It is adjacent to the village of Derry Hill, halfway between Calne and Chippenham. The greater part of the house was demolished in 1956.

****Alexander Bassano was an English photographer who was a leading royal and high society portrait photographer in Victorian London. He is known for his photo of the Earl Kitchener in the Lord Kitchener Wants You army recruitment poster during the First World War and his photographs of Queen Victoria. He opened his first studio in 1850 in Regent Street. The studio then moved to Piccadilly between 1859 and 1863, to Pall Mall and then to 25 Old Bond Street in 1877 where it remained until 1921 when it moved to Dover Street. There was also a Bassano branch studio at 132 King's Road, Brighton from 1893 to 1899.

*****Introduced in 1922, the Type 30 was the first production Bugatti to feature an Inline-8. Nicknamed the “Torpedo” because of its similar look to the wartime munition, at the time Bugatti opted to move to a small two-litre engine to make the car more saleable, lighter and cheap. The engine capacity also made the Type 30 eligible for Grand Prix racing, which was a new direction for the marque. Despite the modest engine capacity, the power output was still remarkable thanks to the triple-valve arrangement. Also benefiting the Type 30 was good road handling, braking and steering which was common throughout the marque. The Type 30 was also the first Bugatti to have front brakes.

******Button back upholstered furniture contains buttons embedded in the back of the sofa or chair, which are pulled tightly against the leather creating a shallow dimple effect. This is sometimes known as button tufting.

*******A boutonnière is a flower that someone wears in the buttonhole of, or fastened to, their jacket on a special occasion such as a wedding.

********The Brownie (or Box Brownie) was invented by Frank A. Brownell for the Eastman Kodak Company. Named after the Brownie characters popularised by the Canadian writer Palmer Cox, the camera was initially aimed at children. More than 150,000 Brownie cameras were shipped in the first year of production, and cost a mere five shillings in the United Kingdom. An improved model, called No. 2 Brownie, came in 1901, which produced larger photos, and was also a huge success. Initially marketed to children, with Kodak using them to popularise photography, it achieved broader appeal as people realised that, although very simple in design and operation, the Brownie could produce very good results under the right conditions. One of their most famous users at the time was the then Princess of Wales, later Queen Alexandra, who was an avid amateur photographer and helped to make the Box Brownie even more popular with the British public from all walks of life. As they were ubiquitous, many iconic shots were taken on Brownies. Jesuit priest Father Frank Browne sailed aboard the RMS Titanic between Southampton and Queenstown, taking many photographs of the ship’s interiors, passengers and crew with his Box Brownie. On the 15th of April 1912, Bernice Palmer used a Kodak Brownie 2A, Model A to photograph the iceberg that sank RMS Titanic as well as survivors hauled aboard RMS Carpathia, the ship on which Palmer was travelling. They were also taken to war by soldiers but by World War I the more compact Vest Pocket Kodak Camera as well as Kodak's Autographic Camera were the most frequently used. Another group of people that became posthumously known for their huge photo archive is the Nicholas II of Russia family, especially its four daughters who all used Box Brownie cameras.

*********The Bright Young Things, or Bright Young People, was a nickname given by the tabloid press to a group of Bohemian young aristocrats and socialites in 1920s London.

**********Henry Tipping (1855 – 1933) was a French-born British writer on country houses and gardens, garden designer in his own right, and Architectural Editor of the British periodical Country Life for seventeen years between 1907 and 1910 and 1916 and 1933. After his appointment to that position in 1907, he became recognised as one of the leading authorities on the history, architecture, furnishings and gardens of country houses in Britain. In 1927, he became a member of the first committee of the Gardens of England and Wales Scheme, later known as the National Gardens Scheme.

***********Country Life is a British weekly perfect-bound glossy magazine that is a quintessential English magazine founded in 1897, providing readers with a weekly dose of architecture, gardens and interiors. It was based in London at 110 Southwark Street until March 2016, when it became based in Farnborough, Hampshire. The frontispiece of each issue usually features a portrait photograph of a young woman of society, or, on occasion, a man of society

************Gaiety Girls were the chorus girls in Edwardian musical comedies, beginning in the 1890s at the Gaiety Theatre, London, in the shows produced by George Edwardes

*************The Café Royal in Regent Street, Piccadilly was originally conceived and set up in 1865 by Daniel Nicholas Thévenon, who was a French wine merchant. He had to flee France due to bankruptcy, arriving in Britain in 1863 with his wife, Célestine, and just five pounds in cash. He changed his name to Daniel Nicols and under his management - and later that of his wife - the Café Royal flourished and was considered at one point to have the greatest wine cellar in the world. By the 1890s the Café Royal had become the place to see and be seen at. It remained as such into the Twenty-First Century when it finally closed its doors in 2008. Renovated over the subsequent four years, the Café Royal reopened as a luxury five star hotel.

**************The idiom “richer than Croesus” means very wealthy. This term alludes to Croesus, the legendary King of Lydia and supposedly the richest man on earth. The simile was first recorded in English in 1577.

**************The expression “One swallow does not a summer make, nor one fine day; similarly one day or brief time of happiness does not make a person entirely happy” is attributed to Aristotle (384 – 322 BC).

Cluttered with photographs and furnishings, Lady Sadie’s bonheur de jour is different from what you might think, for it is made up entirely of 1:12 size dollhouse miniatures from my collection.

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

The Chetwynd’s framed family photos seen on the desk and hanging on the walls are all real photos, produced to high standards in 1:12 size on photographic paper by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire. The frames are almost all from Melody Jane’s Dollhouse Suppliers in the United Kingdom and are made of metal with glass in each. The largest frame on the right-hand side of the desk is actually a sterling silver miniature frame. It was made in Birmingham in 1908 and is hallmarked on the back of the frame. It has a red leather backing.

The remaining unframed photographs and photograph album on Lady Sadie’s desk are a 1:12 size miniatures made by the British miniature artisan Ken Blythe. Ken Blythe is known for his miniature books. Most of the books crated by him that I own may be opened to reveal authentic printed interiors. In some cases, you can even read the words, depending upon the size of the print! I have quite a large representation of Ken Blythe’s work in my collection. What might amaze you even more is that all Ken Blythe’s opening books are authentically replicated 1:12 scale miniatures of real volumes. The photo album, although closed, contains pages of photos in old fashioned Victorian style floral frames on every page, just like a real Victorian photo album. Not only did Ken Blythe create books, he also created other 1:12 miniatures with paper and that includes the photographs. To create something so authentic to the original in such detail and so clearly, really does make this a miniature artisan piece. He also made the packets of seeds, which once again are copies of real packets of Webbs seeds and the envelopes sitting in the rack to the left of the desk. Ken Blythe’s work is highly sought after by miniaturists around the world today and command high prices at auction for such tiny pieces, particularly now that he is no longer alive. I was fortunate enough to acquire pieces from Ken Blythe prior to his death about four years ago, as well as through his estate via his daughter and son-in-law. His legacy will live on with me and in my photography which I hope will please his daughter. I hope that you enjoy this peek at just two of hundreds of his books that I own, and that it makes you smile with its sheer whimsy!

The vase of primroses in the middle of the desk is a delicate 1:12 artisan porcelain miniature made and painted by hand by Ann Dalton.

The desk and its matching chair is a Salon Reine design, hand painted and copied from an Eighteenth Century design, made by Bespaq. All the drawers open and it has a lidded rack at either end. Bespaq is a high-end miniature furniture maker with high attention to detail and quality.

The wallpaper is a copy of an Eighteenth Century blossom pattern.

Sidewalk Sale by Tim L Lowe

13 6

Three reason it's so hard to get around el centro, Cali.

1) The sidewalks are clogged with vendors. (Why rent a store when there's a perfectly good sidewalk?)

2) You have to dodge motorcycles going down the sidewalk. (Why go around the block because of a 1 way street when there's a perfectly good sidewalk?)

3) All the motocycles parked on the sidewalk. (Why pay a parking lot when there's a perfectly good sidewalk?)

Chucky..storefront display Peterborough, Ontario by charlie gregory

9 1

C Tuna chapter 1... Going Nowhere Fast

Recalling the drinking memories can be more difficult

than other recollections for some reason. In the eighth grade I have very vague memories of tagging along with Paul Smith and walking from our school, Our Lady of Victory on Lambton Avenue in the Borough of York, up to Jane Street and down the hill to Smythe Park where we turned onto Blackcreek then a block or so down into this maze of streets with newer homes. We had a few drinks from his families bar, which was new to me, liquor kept over for other times. I don’t think we got drunk or anything but we got in trouble from the nuns when we returned a little late for afternoon classes. It was Mother Eleanor the saintly school principal who was upset with us. Her idea of punishment was to take you in her office talk to you in the kindest humane way then hand you a thin flimsy wooden coca cola ruler and ask you to strap yourself several times. She’ll be in heaven a long time that woman. What still impresses me more than the adventure into the Smiths’ liquor cabinet was the revelation of a new standard of living found in this area of new and modern homes with two bathrooms and showers, carpets and new appliances and things called recreation rooms. Of course the Smith home only had to house four people whereas we were seven in all, eight when dad was alive. In our end of the neighborhood generally described as York Township the homes were built in the thirties and fourties, driveways were mostly gravel, the homes for the most part were two stories, for some reason we always rented. Twenty six Victoria Boulevard was no exception.

I have a romantic recollection of drinking at a young age, stumbling down Weston Road near Eglinton at night hearing a car drive by blaring the new Animals hit of the day the haunting House of the Rising Son, when I play the song today it still resonates in a very personal way. This would have been in about 64 which made me sixteen at the time. That evening I ran in to Thomas Russell by the Churchill Restaurant owned by old Albert who was always dressed in a greasy white apron over a greasy white t shirt. He would have been in his sixties he was never shaved he had rotting yellow teeth, some were missing, his look was that of a pirate who’d had to much vino and his piercing black eyes looked right through you. Albert would serve you greasy french fries for a dollar or so. There was an ample oblong counter with stools that spun though somewhat rickety. Albert would take your order “fries and gravy” was my usual request, he would write this down on one of those yellow lined order pads, stick the pencil back in his ear and slowly walk to the kitchen which was in the back of the shop past banquet seating for fifty or more, there was never anyone in the place, we would rumour with each other that it was a ‘front’ for something but we never really knew what. We probably never knew what a front was either. The Churchill was a lot like Freds Lunch further on up Weston Road, that is to say like Freds a place that had had its heyday, a leftover from the bobby sox crowd and who knows what came before that fad. I do wish he had turned the deep fryer fat up to cook his chips as they were always limp and soggy. A successful jockey parked a shiny blue Lincoln Continental on the side street named Hollis, I think his name was Al Blue or Al Coy something like that. A fancy car in a working class neighbourhood would get your attention fast. The jockey looked like my old OLV schoolmate Chuck Paquette who came from New Brunswick and left school at fifteen and this was agreed on by the nuns as Chuck had a job to go to. There was bad news for me later that night, it was following a dance at The Church of the Good Shepherd that I’d been ejected from for being drunk and rowdy. A local cop named Danny Morrison whom I would serve many drinks to later in life at the Queensbury Arms busted me while I was pissing in the hedges of the church that ran along old Eglinton Avenue way before they built a super road and tore down several houses. That Danny, he thought he was Sherlock Holmes catching me having a leak, he said, “what do you think you are doing”? I looked him in the eye half wobbly from the drink and said, “Having a piss”! I was charged with drinking underage, he sent me to the station after calling a yellow squad car from a police call box attached to a hydro pole, only the police had the key to the call box, it wasn’t long before the squad car picked me up.

Back then they’d let you out in the morning with a summons to appear in court within a few days. By the time you were released you would have sobered up, possibly have had enough time to piss yourself, barf all over the cell and scratch your name in the fading yellow green paint besides those other names like Danny Abraham, Bob Latus, Eachie, Holmes and more. In the morning a big red faced copper would give you shit as you were about to leave, shouting things like ‘why don’t you join the Armed Forces and we don’t want to see you here anymore’.

The fine for such an event was about $25 dollars and my mom and her boyfriend paid it on numerous occasions. His name was Johnny Basala. He was a worker for the Township of York, drove a truck and some equipment for the works department. I don’t know how my mum met him but he was her boyfriend for a few years and he’d be over on Victoria Boulevard on Saturday nights with a case of beer and his green 56 Buick sedan. At fourteen or so I had the urge to drive, felt that driving would give me some status make a man out of me. Johnny gave me lessons. He would let me drive with him beside me up and down our street. The Buick was an automatic driving it was simple. Mom and Johnny would go to the Legion on Saturday nights and there they’d meet Agnes and Wally who were their equals at drinking, often they’d all come back to our house because mom had the kids and if we were left alone to long we might kill each other. I suppose they gave me a glass of beer or two but I actually don’t recall this, growing up in that drinking environment, it seemed normal to drink. There is that stigma of drinking with your parents, that generational separation where you did things and you didn’t tell them, they’d be the last people you’d tell. We’d play cards with Johnny, me and Sue and Kevin and Shane and Barbara who was quite young this being around 1964. The shoes Johnny was filling, those of my dad would have been difficult for anyone to fill. There was a difference in them, white collar blue collar sort of thing, religion to, Johnny never pushed the religion on you nor did he ever raise his hand, well, in that regard, it wasn’t his place. He’s been dead a long time now, died from drink related matters. I remember him coming over on Saturdays all shaved and smelling good, his hair in a sixties look, pushed back at the sides like a Hungarian Elvis. He always wore long sleeved banlon shirts and trousers, never shorts. Mom was happy, she had some company, I never gave it a moments thought that they might have been ‘doing it’ in the bedroom, I could never think that of my mom. Besides having been raised a Catholic I bought into the myths they spread and I guess I may have thought kids fell out of trees for all I knew about sex, sex education, there was no such thing! You couldn’t talk about sex, it was a common belief that if you masturbated hair would grow on your palm.

There were two pool halls in the area that I frequented Nicks on Weston Road south of Eglinton and Glenvalley Bowling and Billiards on Weston Rd. near Victoria then owned by John Shura a big rotund almost blind Honky of a man in his fifties. I say he was almost blind because his black framed glasses were as thick as the small coke bottles he used to sell us from the water filled cooler besides the cash register and pool ticket timer. The timer made that distinct time clock sound whenever a cardboard ticket was inserted to signify the beginning of your pool game, you paid by the hour, it wasn’t much, maybe a dollar or less per hour. The second floor hall had big ten foot by five foot Brunswick tables with built in sturdy brass scoring knobs. On a wall near the table there was a wooden pool cue rack and beside that there was another wooden scoreboard with moveable brass numbers and a small chalkboard to write other numbers in, gambling was strictly forbidden, but everyone did. There was a smelly bathroom at the back of the room, smoke hung from the ceiling curling into the long fluorescent tubes. Everyone smoked back then, smoked and drank.

My recollections are clear of getting older guys to grab us beer at the Brewers Retail outlet located besides the A&P store where the Facelle plant made their toilet paper. One guy who got us drinks was named Bud he was in his early thirties and hung out at Nicks he was the best pool player in that place and he had a hair cut like Tom Waits, a big section of hair was always falling off his head and over his eyes, it kind of made him look dumb but he wasn’t he was real sharp. I switched from hall to hall and got street smart and wanted to be cool, be like the other guys who all drank on the weekends this is how it started. Before long my mom was encouraging me to drink at home on Saturday nights so I wouldn’t get in trouble on the streets, also I suppose so I wouldn’t get thrown in the can for drinking underage the age of majority being twenty one at the time. By not being thrown in the can mom wouldn’t have to pay the fine.

Drinking was about the only vice in those years it was pre pot by about three or four years at least in our part of town. This always irks me, you seldom hear folk saying, ‘better not drink beer or next thing you know you’ll be using heroin’. Smoking tobacco was encouraged on billboards in magazines, on TV commercials, everywhere. You could buy a pack of smokes for thirty five cents it seemed everyone smoked. My mom smoked Players Plain I’d go get them for her at lunch time often at the local Loblaws store. The light blue packaged cigarettes were just there in racks by the cash register along with several other popular brands such as Matinees, Export A, Belvedere, Dumaurier, just saying the names you can sense the marketing of this sleek product. At the store I would pretend I was looking at comics or magazines then I would quickly grab a pack or two when the cashier wasn’t looking, I never did get caught in that store. I smoked a mans cigarette when I started at 17, Players Plain, or Export Plain or Buckinghams the same as my father had smoked. Later when I got sick of tearing my lips on the unfiltered brands I switched to Rothmans King Size and when I quit at about 35 when Christine was born I was still smoking Rothmans. The Rothmans plant was located up around Dufferin and Caledonia. When you’d go by the factory you could smell the fresh tobacco being processed into cigarettes. Billboards used sexy symbols to plant the smoking ideas in your head, when I went to University in the early 70s I could smoke in the classrooms, and I did nobody ever complained though I think they may have wanted to.

As I went through my teen years I changed friends numerous times, from my athletic days playing baseball and hockey I found that those people were not around at night hanging out, playing pool, new faces entered my life, people like Mark Goodine, Kenny Goobie, Peter Hooker, Gooch who died in a house fire, Don Humes, Bugsy, Mike Cooper, Joe McCormack also known as Eachie, Mickey Clare, Dave Wellwood also known as The Goat, G Man, Pee Wee, Rocco, Tom the Newfie, Benji, Dave White, Joe Stickley, The Murphy Brothers, Vern and Maurice Mersereau, The Crane brothers Brian and Barry, the McKendrys Tom and Brian, Steve Boros, my brothers were around, Alex aka Big Al, Kevin aka The Kid and Shane aka ‘Toot’ who passed on early in life, Brian Hishon, Brian Campbell, Rick Fordham, Russ Codlin, Tom Brolley, Rick and John Adams, John Adamson, Brian Day, Gary Duseault, Scotty Collins, Wayne Polyshin who wore his hair in a fifties style the front thrown up with a little part through the middle this was a waterfall, Paul Harding, Greg and Danny Middlebrook, Terry Tiveron, Paul Antaya, guys you’d run into at Nicks or the Glenvalley, the Kirkpatricks were a big family Gary, Alec and their sister Linda who knew Mary Sales from Weston with the bouffant hairdo like Shelley Fabres from the Donna Reed TV show who ended up marrying Tall Danny McDonald who hung out at Dufferin and Eglinton who was friends with Frank Cece who got shot by a woman and lived and Kenny Tanaka whose folks had a variety store on the Danforth and whom I had a fight with at the ‘Y’ dance one Saturday night before Kenny Od’d, for what its worth I won that fight, there was Larry Wrentz, Walt Husk, the Walfords, the Wilsons, and on and on.

Some of the guys went to jail real early, guys like Eachie who eventually got deported to Scotland and Kenny Goobie who did a stretch in the O.R. in Guelph when he was just sixteen. Then for a while we hung around Jane and Wilson at that pool hall downstairs next to the other Playboy clothing store and met a new set of friends, Callahan and Spence, some singer last name of Thomas would come around, Burwash Bert Osbourne had just moved to the area from Bloor and Christie and there was Roman Mills, Mike Rousseau who disappeared in the 80s and Bobby Brooks and Brian Wilson and Bobby Miller who did a long stretch, then up to Keele and Eel where the friendship base widened into some guys with Italian backgrounds, Dominic Sonita who became a great plumber, Bruno Big Thumbs Rumolo who moved to Italy, Johnny and Jimmy Russell aka JR who worked for the post office for thirty years, Mario DePoce who managed Michelin Tires, Jim Vella an expert placement manager, Rick Campbell who married Charlotte Wilson who had a kid shortly after, Mario Molinaro aka Mars who runs a restaurant and catering business in Mississauga, Jake the Snake Nash sells paper penguins to put on lawns and used to sell potato chips for a big company , John Bell who had two kids with Cathy Cece and whose brother Dave died while buying a quart of milk, Tony Flaim who went on to fame with several bands as the lead singer most prominently with The Downchild Blues Band, Moose MacKenzie a millwright at GM, Handsome John Sonita from St Clair who died when his Lincoln crashed on the way to the airport where he and his girlfriend were off to France to open up a chain of boutiques, George Holmes who got shot by his brother Glen at the Fairbanks Tavern and can talk about it, Erico another employment placement specialist, Gillies with the gold tooth, Al Kaye who had nasty Doberman Pinscher dogs, John Stoddart a syndicated writer with a national distribution who recently was the recipient of the prestigous Stephen Leacock award for humour, Steve Magnus John’s cousin who studied psychiatry, the Woods brothers Johnny and Jimmy who worked at Otis elevator downtown with their folks who ran the cafeteria, Carlo Vescio who died tragically after struggling with his addictions for years and worked in the clothing business, Guy Basato who also died young, Stan Primrose a CPR worker, Big Danny Abraham, Eddie Sprangler who got hit by a train playing chicken and when the guy he was playing with went to pick his body up there was no head! Bob Latus who helped cleanup the crack dealers in Kensington Market and died at the hands of a car late one night on Victoria Park Ave. he was carrying a pot of soup that one of the vendors in Kensington Market had given him to take home after the place closed down, Fat Jack Hamilton was in charge of train wrecks in south central Ontario for CPR, Big Bob Butler a member of the Black Diamond Riders who worked security at the Jamboree in Havelock before he died, Les Fleury had a stroke in his mid twenties and couldn’t drive his sharp Barracuda any longer, Dennis Azcue who we all called Dump because he drove a dump truck for Mazza Construction, Brian Cross whose dad owned the Fish and Chip store on Rogers Road where a big metal fish used to hang above the store doorway and they took it to their cottage on the Trent River in Hastings and painted it gold Brian and his wife Minny were large and I saw them in the Dominion store one time in the 70s shopping and I said “what are you looking for the diet peas”? They ran a few Submarine shops later in life in BC, after making a pile of dough they came back to Toronto and sadly died recently, a week apart. Kenny Osler aka Crazy Ivan who went through the plate glass front window at Chris’s restaurant on Eglinton Ave, Ross McNab who calls Bingo at St Clair and Weston Rd, Luce who is a card dealer in Las Vegas, the Metes Ralph and Jimmy who along with others hung around a place called Greenleaves a snack bar with a pool hall and a few bowling lanes and for some odd reason this name Greenleaves represented a Downtowness that was different to our usual places it was located next to the General Mercer public school on Old Weston Road close to Siverthorn and St Clair where Pinky Pincevero hung out with Little Vince and red haired Ralph, Billy Putsungas who made the news one day as he had been popped with a few ounces of smack and a half million dollars in cash, not bad for a corner boy and Danny Russell hadn’t yet died of cancer, Steve Warren a class dresser, Bill the Greek and his brother Paul whose lives ended way to soon along with Bills’s wife Marissa, Carl Pennik who seemed to spend more time in Kingston Penetentiary than out, Brendan McCarney who still fixes furnaces, Eamon Lever who found work in the pest control field, Tommy Kallo a city of York employee before amalgamation, Donny Robbins who I’d run into at the Hills while he worked for a dairy company and there was only one queer guy back then, ‘they were queers not gays’, his name was Roy Deshekel, and there were more people at the Studio pool hall across the road where Dave Usher and Stan Saltzman would gladly take your money. There was always someone at the York Restaurant run by Steve a swarthy Greek who seemed to be permanently buzzed on Ouzo, while back at Macs’ BP station across from the pool hall guys like Mike Reagan, John Adams, John Crossey, George Stevens, Pete Miller, Doug Professor MacMillan and his brother John who were Stones fans, Scott Taylor and his brother Reid and their friend Ian the violin player, Wes Moffatt, Gary Oldfield, George Brady, Bud Walford, Dougie Wilson and Sam Mule` ‘the Barber’ another TTC guy and a big guy named Ray hung around they were car guys, they owned cars, some of them fast cars, sooped up things one guy even owned an Edsel that had an automatic transmission operated by buttons located in the steering wheel it seldom worked. I moved in and out of each group easily not ever saying “he is my best friend.” I had hundreds of friends all over the west end and a reputation that I could handle myself as C Tuna which fortunately I didn’t have to demonstrate on many occasions. While hanging out with other guys like Mars and Holmes I got around an even wider area including St Clair Avenue from Lansdowne to Old Weston Road where it was a different story. Here the young guys, hung out with gamblers like Al Nuce and there was a young hooker with dyed black hair named Pat Cox. Once the Pepsi crew hired Pat for splashes at one of those seedy Lakeshore Blvd Motels. A few times we played craps in the schoolyards. We’d run like hell when someone yelled the cops were coming. Sometimes we’d sneak in the pool at Earlscourt Park when it felt like it was a hundred degrees out. Holmes lived at a house in York Township at 63 Lonsborough St where some real rounders lived, not pretenders, Danny O’Donohue who was a safe cracker and is doing time for being involved in whacking a mobbed up guy, and Pat O’Hagan another Irish wiseguy in the rackets also lived there. Those two robbed the Biltmore Odeon movie theatre in Weston they went in a back window and an old lady spotted them so the cops were called and they had put to much charge on the vault, blew it up and everything in it as well as a wall. The cops came and arrested them, Pat O’Hagan seated in the theatres chairs pretended to be sleeping said, “I must have fell asleep during the movie”, with that the black cop we all called Leroy went for him and O’Hagan threw a stick of nitro at him, the copper was so shook up he had to take the rest of the year off of work! The house was run by this woman Pat Zona she had hands like a bricklayer and one time on a Friday or Saturday night after Holmes and I had had some drinks she asked me how old I was, at the time I was seventeen and she said, ‘boy, you’re pretty round for your age”, Pat died of cancer in 03. There was Johnny Sombrero who was always seen driving around in a dust covered black cadillac two door slinked down in the seat like Marlon Brando his wardrobe was classic Wild Ones, slicked back duck tailed hair with curly cues at front a black leather jacket with all of these chrome do dads stuck here and there, very menacing, his club was called the Black Diamond Riders and these guys hung together, they were for the most part older and definitely not to be messed with, Sombrero is not his real name few people know his real name. There was a guy named Jack somethng or the other today he runs Canada’s most famous country picnic the Havelock Jamboree. Sometimes we’d go to Dundas and Keele, the Junction and terrorize that neighborhood, walking around in tailor made pants with stovepipe bottoms, Cuban waistbands, classy shirts, shoes from Europe, winklepickers that were pointed like a cowboy boot and excellent for giving the boots, in the summer many of us wore what we called 409s, I thinks that’s what they cost, other shoes from Ingeborgs were also popular with the dressers and a lot of the guys were great dressers buying tailor made strides from the Playboy Shop which had two locations and was run by the Bagnato family, we all had credit in the clothing stores like Al Basians on Weston Road, I still owe him a ton. As I look back on things I guess it was affordable to dress well few of us had cars and the expense that a car brings. We might not actually have been ‘bad’ however the image was that of hoods, short for hudlum. Some of us had fedoras that is felt hats with brims and silk trim and Holmes had a different hat for every day my favourite was the grey stock broker wide brimmed bowler he wore, at times we would carry umbrellas and walking sticks, real Dukes and we weren’t afraid to use them my wife Julia said we were like the gang in the Kubrick movie A Clockwork Orange.. I recall going to Yorkville one weekend night in the mid sixties when Hippies were becoming fashionable and us greaseballs would go and terrorize longhairs for something to do. So this one time I am more than surprised when our intended victim stands up for himself and informs us he’s a Vietnam veteran he had killed people over there, had ‘stuff’ jujitsu or karate training taught in the marines and could kick the shit out of us all if he cared to. Right there and then, on the spot I had an awakening. I would shortly afterward reexamine my path of being a drunken lout and become a stoned and drunken lout.

Small boys ... small balloons by oochappan

15 3

Cobow hat, ever burned your hair ? That's the reason he is wearing it.

This is India too, you know, not what you would expect maybe, something else seen from there.

Taken on a fancy-fair for local dealers, I had in mind to take an overview of whole Madurai in the evening but there was too much wind that day, so he didn't dare to go up that high, oh well it gave me a detail of his balloon.

2005-03-04

Canon EOS 1D Mark II, 24-70mm f/2.8L, RAW, ISO-800

Exposure: f/2.8, 1/120 seconds

oochappan ©®

Reason to smile. by Justyna

New #Reason by imageonsouth

Absolutely fucking irresistible. The real reason why I came to LA. 🙏💘 by rokorumora

Absolutely fucking irresistible. The real reason why I came to LA. 🙏💘

D2D by owlondaprowl

ReasoN

A million reasons by Matthew Kang

One last look at Meteora from the Monastery of Varlaam before we head on to our next destination.

Snowmobile: Good reason to Wear balacla!! by Robert Champagne

At 70 years old Lousie Mcdonald was still up for a hundred mile snowmobile ride through Yellowstone. elk foraging along the Firehole River in Yellowstone National Park.

Tealight twilight by Sumitra Sarkar

3 2

For some reason the electricity tripped and we were left with a goodbyeing sun and a never-used-before bag of tealights.

Stories started to pour in - Ghona da, Agatha Christie. Hefty discussions followed - who is going to volunteer for the first hour of hand-fan service if the power is not put back on by bedtime..

November is on the move..hold on to that laughter, darling, we have met, nodded heads at, at times even shaken hands with disasters before, haven't we!

357a/366 Luck expired by Brad Visser

6 2

One of the reasons that I was able to shoot so many different film stocks this year is that I was able to purchase a lot of (sometimes long) expired film off of a couple retired photographers. This has mostly been a great boon for me; I got the film cheaply, much of it is no longer available on the market and I got to meet and learn from some lovely elderly gentlemen.

The film itself has been almost as good as new in most cases as it had been stored in the freezer, but this time my luck had at least partly run out. To be fair, I knew long before I loaded the film into the camera that it hadn't been stored as well as the other rolls I'd shot. I still had hope, however, due to the good experience I had made thus far and I couldn't resist trying out 400 speed slide film in the dark forest. So I shot it as normal and didn't think much more about it.

When I finally got the slides back from the lab they looked fine over the light box, but after scanning some issues became clear. There was a heavy fog over the images compared to my other slide film shots and the colours were tinted towards blue. I've done my best to recover some of the images in the digital darkroom, of which my favourites are shown below. Knowing the character of the expired film now, I have been thinking of ways to use it to its strengths in a project of sorts. No plans yet, but I'll keep working on it...

Film: Kodak Ektachrome 400

Camera: Konica Autoreflex T3 with 57 mm f1.4 lens.

Developed by Fujifilm Switzerland.

Digitised with an Epson V850 using Silverfast.

2016 Reasons to Oppose Trump: Reasons #64-84 by Janet Morris

from ift.tt/2awYDI9

Only four posts in and I’ve already touched a nerve.

@janersm which literally most people do on a regular basis. And the fact you’re writing a 2500 essay on the wrongs of trump is biast

— StopRaven (@stop_raven) July 26, 2016

It’s “biast” for me to express my own opinion. Oh my goodness. How dare someone have an actual opinion!

So, if you didn’t read my first, second, or third set of 21 reasons to oppose Trump, consider reading those before you read the next 21 reasons. After today’s post, there will be 95 more posts. If they were bottles of beer, this could be a song.

64. Donald Trump lied about witnessing Muslims celebrating 9/11 on a rooftop in Jersey City, New Jersey. I’ve mentioned Trump’s mocking of Serge Kovaleski, but not how he earned the ire of Trump. Kovaleski had covered a story in 2001 that suggested that there were people in Jersey City partying on rooftops. Donald claimed to see thousands of Muslims in New Jersey celebrating on rooftops after the World Trade Centers collapsed. He claimed there was video of it on television all the time. When he was asked about it by George Stephanopolous, Trump said:

“It was well covered at the time, George. Now, I know they don’t like to talk about it, but it was well covered at the time. There were people over in New Jersey that were watching it, a heavy Arab population, that were cheering as the buildings came down. Not good.”

Except it wasn’t, because it didn’t happen. The story was never about thousands of Muslims. There was no video. It’s all in Trump’s head.

65. Trump insulted Seventh-Day Adventists. While speaking to supporters at a campaign rally in Jacksonville, Florida in October 2015, Trump, after talking about how he’s a Presbyterian, said, “Boy, that’s down the middle of the road folks, in all fairness. I mean, Seventh-day Adventist, I don’t know about. I just don’t know about.” While Trump’s dig may not sound that vicious, it was meant to be very vicious. You seem, some Christians don’t believe that Seventh-day Adventists are even Christian. This is a group that also refuses to vote for non-Christians. This was a time when Trump was behind Ben Carson by 9 percentage points; Carson is a Seventh-day Adventist. It was personal.

66. Trump hired Manafort. When Donald Trump dumped Corey Lewandowski and replaced him with Paul Manafort, very few people in America knew of the background of Manafort. Most stories touted him as having ties to the Republican Party. A few brought up some recent jobs of of his. Manafort has ties to Viktor Yanukovych, who was the the prime minister of the Ukraine at the time, as well as an ally of Vladimir Putin. In 2010, Yanukovych became the president of Ukraine, but had to flee to Russia during the 2014 revolution. Manafort was also a consultant of Yanukovych, helping Yanukovych’s first run for the Ukrainian presidency in 2004. When Yanukovych hired him after the first results were invalidated, Manafort was meant to improve his images. He was unable to in the time given, but Manafort continued to work within Yanukovych’s Party of Regions. Manafort was still working with the administration when Yanukovych fled and continued working within Ukrainian politics after he’d fled, including his reported involvement in the 2015 election campaign of Vitali Klitschko, who ran for mayor in Kiev. Now, Manafort is working with Donald Trump and was even used on July 27th on CBS This Morning to argue that Donald Trump had no ties to Vladimir Putin’s regime, which may have ties to the hacking of the DNC by Russians and subsequent Wikileaks email release.

67. Trump called Hillary Clinton “shrill” at a rally. A lot of people don’t like Hillary Clinton, but most don’t call her “shrill” at campaign events. Actually, he didn’t just say it once, he said it twice–over-pronouncing it the second time. I guess he wanted to make sure that everyone at his half-empty rally heard him correctly. He tried to suggest he calls men shrill, but if he has, it hasn’t been on Twitter. And he should know that the term “shrill” is meant to shut women up. My guess is: that’s why he said it. Luckily, it didn’t work.

68. Trump mocked Fiorina’s physical appearance. No, really. He did and managed to do it while being interviewed by Rolling Stone.

When the anchor throws to Carly Fiorina for her reaction to Trump’s momentum, Trump’s expression sours in schoolboy disgust as the camera bores in on Fiorina. “Look at that face!” he cries. “Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?!” The laughter grows halting and faint behind him. “I mean, she’s a woman, and I’m not s’posedta say bad things, but really, folks, come on. Are we serious?”

When asked on Fox News if he really said something like that, he confirmed, saying, “Probably I did say something like that about Carly.” But he tried to walk it back with, “I’m talking about persona. I’m not talking about look.” Donald always has an excuse.

69. Donald Trump believes that John McCain shouldn’t be considered a war hero. While speaking at the Family Leadership Summit in Ames, Iowa, Trump said of McCain, “He’s not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured.”

70. Donald Trump also stated that he doesn’t believe that people who are captured are war heroes. In his words, “I like people who weren’t captured.” He’s walked those comments back, because they didn’t go over very well, but they were still said. And his reframing of his comments (“If somebody’s a prisoner, I consider them a war hero.” and “If a person is captured, they’re a hero as far as I’m concerned. … But you have to do other things also.”) didn’t really explain the difference between McCain’s capture and the POWs who he actually sees as a war hero.

71. Trump comes up with childish and offensive nicknames for opponents. Little Marco. Lyin’ Ted. Crooked Hillary. Crazy Bernie. Goofy Elizabeth Warren. Pocahontas. Donald Trump is less witty and original than a third grade bully.

72. Trump wants to end Freedom of Press as we know it. Conservatives love to talk about how they have First Amendment rights and how they love using them to offend; they “don’t care about your feels” and want to “trigger” people with the words. Well, Donald Trump doesn’t feel the same. He wants to open libel laws up to sue the press for things that upset him.

73. Trump mocked Ruth Bader Ginsburg. When Ruth Bader Ginsburg expressed her distaste for Trump, he responded with “her mind is shot.” Classy to the end, RBG didn’t fire back challenging his mental state.

Justice Ginsburg of the U.S. Supreme Court has embarrassed all by making very dumb political statements about me. Her mind is shot – resign!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 13, 2016

Is Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg going to apologize to me for her misconduct? Big mistake by an incompetent judge!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 13, 2016

If I win the Presidency, we will swamp Justice Ginsburg with real judges and real legal opinions!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 13, 2016

74. Donald Trump not only wants a wall, he wants Mexico to pay for it. For some very odd reason, Donald Trump believes that his sacred wall should be paid for by another country. I’m fairly certain that the Constitution requires the United States to provide for its common defense, but apparently Trump has gotten a new copy of the Constitution that is missing the Preamble and the First Amendment. His planned wall is one of the best ways to tell that Donald Trump doesn’t know how to be the President of the United States.

75. Trump called for a ban on Muslims entering the United States. If ever there was a way to show that Mr. Trump is a bigot, it’s his proposed ban on Muslims. Trump has stated he wants to ban Muslims from traveling and immigrating to the country until we get terrorism under control. Terrorism isn’t something that can be controlled and denying people the ability to get to this country based on their religion or, as he’s also suggested, their country of origin will not stop it. If you look at the most recent “acts of terror” that have been “linked” to people who were born in America decades ago. You cannot define a terrorist based on the country they come from or the religion that they believe in.

76. Donald Trump gave Robert Pattinson dating advice. After Kristen Stewart cheated on Robert Pattinson, and ended the sacred, beloved ship known as Robsten, Donald Trump, a serial cheater, gave Rob some advice. For almost a month, he gave him unsolicited advice.

Robert Pattinson should not take back Kristen Stewart. She cheated on him like a dog & will do it again–just watch. He can do much better!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 17, 2012

Lots of response to my Pattinson/Kristen Stewart reunion. She will cheat again–100 certain–am I ever wrong?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 18, 2012

Robert I’m getting a lot of heat for saying you should dump Kristen- but I’m right. If you saw the Miss Universe girls you would reconsider.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 18, 2012

Everyone knows I am right that Robert Pattinson should dump Kristen Stewart. In a couple of years, he will thank me. Be smart, Robert.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 22, 2012

Everyone is asking me to speak more on Robert & Kristen.I don’t have time except to say “Robert, drop her, she cheated on you & will again!”

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 23, 2012

Miss Universe 2012 Pageant will be airing live on @nbc & @Telemundo december 19th. Open invite stands for Robert Pattinson.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 25, 2012

Robert Pattinson is putting on a good face for the release of Twilight. He took my advice on Kristen Stewart…I hope!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 9, 2012

Everybody wants me to talk about Robert Pattinson and not Brian Williams—I guess people just don’t care about Brian!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 9, 2012

After Friday’s Twilight release, I hope Robert Pattinson will not be seen in public with Kristen–she will cheat on him again!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 13, 2012

77. Donald Trump is a cheater. He holds himself to be a moral man. He considers his beliefs on marriage and its sanctity to be a representation of traditional values. And, like it or not, he is the now standard bearer for a party that obsessed over his opponent’s husband’s adultery to an extreme. His own running mate wanted to make adultery illegal before joining Trump on the ticket. So how do the Republicans justify nominating a man who has never respected marriage vows or women.

78. Trump’s campaign lied about the plagiarism by Melania Trump. When Melania spoke at the Republican National Convention, people were amazed that this brilliant, beautiful woman gave a touching speech. People on the left and right had joked over her brains for months, and had suggested that her modeling career made her unworthy of being the First Lady. Their misogyny towards this woman was grotesque, but, for a moment, it was forgotten, until people realized that they’d heard the speech before. The campaign denied it. They suggested that the words could have come from My Little Pony or John Legend. Eventually, after days of denial, they said it was just a mistake. Why couldn’t they have admitted that earlier? Mistakes are forgivable. Covering them up is less so. The Trump campaign and members of the Republican Party knowingly attempted to deceived the public. Their little, lyin’,crooked, crazy, goofy cover-up was pathetic and deceitful and shows the character, or lack thereof, of the campaign and the Party.

I would very much like to be excluded from this narrative t.co/I46VtY2CXI

— John Legend (@johnlegend) July 19, 2016

79. Trump said that the Charlie Hebdo victims should have been armed. Donald Trump believed that the victims of the Charlie Hebdo slayings would be alive if France didn’t have strict gun laws. Like with several other mass murders, there was a cop who tried to stop the attack, but couldn’t. Donald Trump didn’t know what he was talking about then and he doesn’t know what he is talking about now.

80. Donald Trump claimed that every woman on The Apprentice flirted with him. Donald Trump wrote in his 2004 book Trump: How to Get Rich, “All the women on The Apprentice flirted with me — consciously or unconsciously. That’s to be expected. A sexual dynamic is always present between people, unless you are asexual.” No, Mr. Trump, it isn’t to be expected and it isn’t always present.

81. Trump repeatedly suggested that vaccines cause autism. He’s wrong.

A study says @Autism is out of control–a 78% increase in 10 years. Stop giving monstrous combined vaccinations (cont) t.co/jthy8mww

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 30, 2012

My @foxandfriends interview discussing @BarackObama attacks on capitalism, Autism & vaccinations and #CelebApprentice t.co/A6PORNFj

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 2, 2012

Now they say obese women may cause Autism in children- nonsense, they use any excuse. The FDA should immediately (cont) t.co/ZtaDb6dh

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 9, 2012

He thinks scientists are lying to you about the causes of autism. Maybe he should have picked Jill Stein as a running mate.

I’ve gotten many letters from people fighting autism thanking me for stating how dangerous 38 vaccines on a (cont) t.co/Qkn0rHBY

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 12, 2012

Many many people are thanking me for what I said about @autism & vaccinations. Something must be done immediately.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 13, 2012

I have received many notes of thanks from people regarding my comments on vaccines and autism. The autism and (cont) t.co/v5bzFN92

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 18, 2012

Massive combined inoculations to small children is the cause for big increase in autism….

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 23, 2012

Look what happened to the autism rate from 1983-2008 since one-time massive shots were given to children-http://t.co/lpq2SveJ

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 27, 2012

Lots of autism and vaccine response. Stop these massive doses immediately. Go back to single, spread out shots! What do we have to lose.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 22, 2012

We should march on Washington re:autism–with leadership & common sense the numbers would drop precipitously!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 22, 2012

Blaming Obama for autism sounds like something that Trump would say, but that’s because it is something he said.

Autism rates through the roof–why doesn’t the Obama administration do something about doctor-inflicted autism. We lose nothing to try.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 22, 2012

To all haters and losers: I am NOT anti-vaccine, but I am against shooting massive doses into tiny children. Spread shots out over time.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 29, 2014

No more massive injections. Tiny children are not horses—one vaccine at a time, over time.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 3, 2014

Trump doesn’t understand autism. He doesn’t understand medicine. He doesn’t understand science.

82. Donald Trump praised Saddam Hussein. Trump said of Hussein, “He killed terrorists. He did that so good. They didn’t read them the rights — they didn’t talk, they were a terrorist, it was over.” It wasn’t the first time that Trump appreciated Hussein’s tactics. While he admitted that Hussein was a bad man, it isn’t enough to say that Hussein, a brutal dictator who terrorized his own people, was just a bad guy.

83. Trump said that an airplane above a rally was a Mexican attack. It may have been a joke, but it was a pathetic one meant to scare and incite people to be more xenophobic and angry.

84. After the shooting at the Pulse nightclub, Trump took credit for talking about terrorism. When 49 people died in Orlando, Donald Trump thought that the responsible and respectful reaction to the event was to take credit for having talked about terrorism. Donald Trump claimed credit for the actions of Mateen before Daesh ever had a chance to.

What has happened in Orlando is just the beginning. Our leadership is weak and ineffective. I called it and asked for the ban. Must be tough

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 12, 2016

I thought people weren’t celebrating? They were cheering all over, even this savage from Orlando. I was right. t.co/DrVa65X9rI

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 13, 2016

Pathetic, Mr. Trump. Really pathetic.

Photo credit: DonkeyHotey via Visualhunt.com / CC BY-SA

Photo credit: WFULawSchool via Visual hunt / CC BY-NC-ND

Definitely More Stable Than Donald Trump January 25, 2016

April 26, 2011

If Donald Trump runs for President, can I please build a… February 14, 2011

Resting Bitch Face: Internet-Style March 12, 2016

October 24, 2011

Glowing Norio by Stuart Rankin

8 2

For some reason, the app I used to take this picture makes Norio appear to glow slightly... Anyway, he's sitting in his nest next to my computer desk and enjoying the pleasant weather.

Boarding AMT 17 by Michael Berry

For reasons unknown to me, AMT 17 is the only westbound on the Vaudreuil-Hudson commuter line in the afternoon to use what is normally the eastbound track. It it seen here at right with AMT 3005 in the lead and a large group of students about to board to head west.

Security Prison 21 (S-21) មន្ទីរស-២១, Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, Phnom Penh, Cambodia. by PHOTOGRAPHY by DM & DBM.

The Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum is a museum chronicling the Cambodian genocide. Located in Phnom Penh, the site is a former secondary school which was used as Security Prison 21 (S-21; Khmer: មន្ទីរស-២១) by the Khmer Rouge regime from 1975 until its fall in 1979. From 1976 to 1979, an estimated 20,000 people were imprisoned at Tuol Sleng and it was one of between 150 and 196 torture and execution centers established by the Khmer Rouge. On 26 July 2010, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia convicted the prison's chief, Kang Kek Iew, for crimes against humanity and grave breaches of the 1949 Geneva Conventions. He died on 2 September 2020 while serving a life sentence.

To accommodate the victims of purges that were important enough for the attention of the Khmer Rouge, a new detention center was planned in the building that was formerly known as Tuol Svay Prey High School, named after a royal ancestor of King Norodom Sihanouk, the five buildings of the complex were converted in March or April 1976 into a prison and an interrogation center. Before, other buildings in town were used already as prison S-21. The Khmer Rouge renamed the complex "Security Prison 21" (S-21) and construction began to adapt the prison for the inmates: the buildings were enclosed in electrified barbed wire, the classrooms converted into tiny prison and torture chambers, and all windows were covered with iron bars and barbed wire to prevent escapes and suicides.

From 1976 to 1979, an estimated 20,000 people were imprisoned at Tuol Sleng (the real number is unknown). At any one time, the prison held between 1,000 and 1,500 prisoners. They were repeatedly tortured and coerced into naming family members and close associates, who were in turn arrested, tortured and killed. In the early months of S-21's existence, most of the victims were from the previous Lon Nol regime and included soldiers, government officials, as well as academics, doctors, teachers, students, factory workers, monks, engineers, etc. Later, the party leadership's paranoia turned on its own ranks and purges throughout the country saw thousands of party activists and their families brought to Tuol Sleng and murdered. Those arrested included some of the highest ranking politicians such as Khoy Thoun, Vorn Vet and Hu Nim. Although the official reason for their arrest was "espionage", these men may have been viewed by Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot as potential leaders of a coup against him. Prisoners' families were sometimes brought en masse to be interrogated and later executed at the Choeung Ek extermination center.

In 1979, the prison was uncovered by the invading Vietnamese army. At some point between 1979 and 1980 the prison was reopened by the government of the People's Republic of Kampuchea as a historical museum memorializing the actions of the Khmer Rouge regime.

Upon arrival at the prison, prisoners were photographed and required to give detailed autobiographies, beginning with their childhood and ending with their arrest. After that, they were forced to strip to their underwear, and their possessions were confiscated. The prisoners were then taken to their cells. Those taken to the smaller cells were shackled to the walls or the concrete floor. Those who were held in the large mass cells were collectively shackled to long pieces of iron bar. The shackles were fixed to alternating bars; the prisoners slept with their heads in opposite directions. They slept on the floor without mats, mosquito nets, or blankets. They were forbidden to talk to each other.

The day began in the prison at 4:30 a.m. when prisoners were ordered to strip for inspection. The guards checked to see if the shackles were loose or if the prisoners had hidden objects they could use to commit suicide. Over the years, several prisoners managed to kill themselves, so the guards were very careful in checking the shackles and cells. The prisoners received four small spoonfuls of rice porridge and a watery soup of leaves twice a day. Drinking water without asking the guards for permission resulted in serious beatings. The inmates were hosed down every four days.

The prison had very strict regulations, and severe beatings were inflicted upon any prisoner who disobeyed. Almost every action had to be approved by one of the prison's guards. The prisoners were sometimes forced to eat human feces and drink human urine. The unhygienic living conditions in the prison caused skin diseases, lice, rashes, ringworm and other ailments. The prison's medical staff were untrained and offered treatment only to sustain prisoners' lives after they had been injured during interrogation. When prisoners were taken from one place to another for interrogation, they were blindfolded. Guards and prisoners were not allowed to converse. Moreover, within the prison, people who were in different groups were not allowed to have contact with one another.[5]

Most prisoners at S-21 were held there for two to three months. However, several high-ranking Khmer Rouge cadres were held longer. Within two or three days after they were brought to S-21, all prisoners were taken for interrogation. The torture system at Tuol Sleng was designed to make prisoners confess to whatever crimes they were charged with by their captors. Prisoners were routinely beaten and tortured with electric shocks, searing hot metal instruments and hanging, as well as through the use of various other devices. Some prisoners were cut with knives or suffocated with plastic bags. Other methods for generating confessions included pulling out fingernails while pouring alcohol on the wounds, holding prisoners' heads under water, and the use of the waterboarding technique. Women were sometimes raped by the interrogators, even though sexual abuse was against Democratic Kampuchea (DK) policy. The perpetrators who were found out were executed. Although many prisoners died from this kind of abuse, killing them outright was discouraged, since the Khmer Rouge needed their confessions. The "Medical Unit" at Tuol Sleng, however, did kill at least 100 prisoners by bleeding them to death. It is proven that medical experiments were performed on certain prisoners. There is clear evidence that patients in Cambodia were sliced open and had organs removed with no anesthetic. The camp's director, Kang Kek Iew, has acknowledged that "live prisoners were used for surgical study and training. Draining blood was also done."

In their confessions, the prisoners were asked to describe their personal background. If they were party members, they had to say when they joined the revolution and describe their work assignments in DK. Then the prisoners would relate their supposed treasonous activities in chronological order. The third section of the confession text described prisoners' thwarted conspiracies and supposed treasonous conversations. At the end, the confessions would list a string of traitors who were the prisoners' friends, colleagues, or acquaintances. Some lists contained over a hundred names. People whose names were in the confession list were often called in for interrogation.

Typical confessions ran into thousands of words in which the prisoner would interweave true events in their lives with imaginary accounts of their espionage activities for the CIA, the KGB, or Vietnam. Physical torture was combined with sleep deprivation and deliberate neglect of the prisoners. The torture implements are on display in the museum. It is believed that the vast majority of prisoners were innocent of the charges against them and that the torture produced false confessions.

For the first year of S-21's existence, corpses were buried near the prison. However, by the end of 1976, cadres ran out of burial spaces, the prisoner and family members were taken to the Boeung Choeung Ek ("Crow's Feet Pond") extermination centre, fifteen kilometers from Phnom Penh. There, they were killed by a group of teenagers led by a Comrade Teng, being battered to death with iron bars, pickaxes, machetes and many other makeshift weapons owing to the scarcity and cost of ammunition. After the prisoners were executed, the soldiers who had accompanied them from S-21 buried them in graves that held as few as 6 and as many as 100 bodies.

Almost all non-Cambodians had left the country by early May 1975, following an overland evacuation of the French Embassy in trucks. The few who remained were seen as a security risk. Though most of the foreign victims were either Vietnamese or Thai, a number of Western prisoners, many picked up at sea by Khmer Rouge patrol boats, also passed through S-21 between April 1976 and December 1978. No foreign prisoners survived captivity in S-21.

Even though the vast majority of the victims were Cambodian, some were foreigners, including 488 Vietnamese, 31 Thai, four French, two Americans, two Australians, one Laotian, one Arab, one Briton, one Canadian, one New Zealander, and one Indonesian. Khmers of Indian and Pakistani descent were also victims.

Two Franco-Vietnamese brothers named Rovin and Harad Bernard were detained in April 1976 after they were transferred from Siem Reap, where they had worked tending cattle. Another Frenchman named Andre Gaston Courtigne, a 30-year-old clerk and typist at the French embassy, was arrested the same month along with his Khmer wife in Siem Reap.

It is possible that a handful of French nationals who went missing after the 1975 evacuation of Phnom Penh also passed through S-21. Two Americans were captured under similar circumstances. James Clark and Lance McNamara in April 1978 were sailing when their boat drifted off course and sailed into Cambodian waters. They were arrested by Khmer patrol boats, taken ashore, where they were blindfolded, placed on trucks, and taken to the then-deserted Phnom Penh.

Twenty-six-year-old John D. Dewhirst, a British tourist, was one of the youngest foreigners to die in the prison. He was sailing with his New Zealand companion, Kerry Hamill, and their Canadian friend Stuart Glass when their boat drifted into Cambodian territory and was intercepted by Khmer patrol boats on August 13, 1978. Glass was killed during the arrest, while Dewhirst and Hamill were captured, blindfolded, and taken to shore. Both were executed after having been tortured for several months at Tuol Sleng. Witnesses reported that a foreigner was burned alive; initially, it was suggested that this might have been John Dewhirst, but a survivor would later identify Kerry Hamill as the victim of this particular act of brutality. Robert Hamill, his brother and a champion Atlantic rower, would years later make a documentary, Brother Number One, about his brother's incarceration.

One of the last foreign prisoners to die was twenty-nine-year-old American Michael S. Deeds, who was captured with his friend Christopher E. DeLance on November 24, 1978, while sailing from Singapore to Hawaii. His confession was signed a week before the Vietnamese army invaded Cambodia and ousted the Khmer Rouge. In 1989, Deeds' brother, Karl Deeds, traveled to Cambodia in attempts to find his brother's remains, but was unsuccessful. On September 3, 2012, DeLance's photograph was identified among the caches of inmate portraits.

As of 1999, there were a total of 79 foreign victims on record, but former Tuol Sleng Khmer Rouge photographer Nim Im claims that the records are not complete. On top of that, there is also an eyewitness account of a Filipino, a Cuban and a Swiss who passed through the prison, though no official records of either are shown.

Out of an estimated 20,000 people imprisoned at Tuol Sleng, there were only twelve known survivors: seven adults and five children. One child died shortly after the liberation.[5] As of mid-September 2011, only three of the adults and four children are thought to still be alive: Chum Mey, Bou Meng, and Chim Meth. All three said they were kept alive because they had skills their captors judged to be useful. Bou Meng, whose wife was killed in the prison, is an artist. Chum Mey was kept alive because of his skills in repairing machinery. Chim Meth was held in S-21 for 2 weeks and transferred to the nearby Prey Sar prison. She may have been spared because she was from Stoeung district in Kampong Thom where Comrade Duch was born. She intentionally distinguished herself by emphasising her provincial accent during her interrogations. Vann Nath, who was spared because of his ability to paint, died on September 5, 2011. Norng Chan Phal, one of the surviving children, published his story in 2018.

The Documentation Center of Cambodia has recently estimated that, in fact, at least 179 prisoners were freed from S-21 between 1975 and 1979 and approximately 23 prisoners (including 5 children, two of them siblings Norng Chanphal and Norng Chanly) survived when the prison was liberated in January 1979. One child died shortly thereafter. Of the 179 prisoners who were released, most disappeared and only a few are known to have survived after 1979. It was found that at least 60 persons (out of the DC Cam list) who are listed as having survived were first released but later rearrested and executed.

The prison had a staff of 1,720 people throughout the whole period. Of those, approximately 300 were office staff, internal workforce and interrogators. The other 1,400 were general workers, including people who grew food for the prison. Several of these workers were children taken from the prisoner families. The chief of the prison was Khang Khek Ieu (also known as Comrade Duch), a former mathematics teacher who worked closely with Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot. Other leading figures of S-21 were Kim Vat aka Ho (deputy chief of S-21), Peng (chief of guards), Mam Nai aka Chan (chief of the Interrogation Unit), and Tang Sin Hean aka Pon (interrogator). Pon was the person who interrogated important people such as Keo Meas, Nay Sarann, Ho Nim, Tiv Ol, and Phok Chhay.

The documentation unit was responsible for transcribing tape recorded confessions, typing the handwritten notes from prisoners' confessions, preparing summaries of confessions, and maintaining files. In the photography sub-unit, workers took mug shots of prisoners when they arrived, pictures of prisoners who had died while in detention, and pictures of important prisoners after they were executed. Thousands of photographs have survived, but thousands are still missing.

The defense unit was the largest unit in S-21. The guards in this unit were mostly teenagers. Many guards found the unit's strict rules hard to obey. Guards were not allowed to talk to prisoners, to learn their names, or to beat them. They were also forbidden to observe or eavesdrop on interrogations, and they were expected to obey 30 regulations, which barred them from such things as taking naps, sitting down or leaning against a wall while on duty. They had to walk, guard, and examine everything carefully. Guards who made serious mistakes were arrested, interrogated, jailed and put to death. Most of the people employed at S-21 were terrified of making mistakes and feared being tortured and killed.

The interrogation unit was split into three separate groups: Krom Noyobai or the political unit, Krom Kdao or the hot unit and Krom Angkiem, or the chewing unit. The hot unit (sometimes called the cruel unit) was allowed to use torture. In contrast, the cold unit (sometimes called the gentle unit) was prohibited from using torture to obtain confessions. If they could not make prisoners confess, they would transfer them to the hot unit. The chewing unit dealt with tough and important cases. Those who worked as interrogators were literate and usually in their 20s.

Some of the staff who worked in Tuol Sleng also ended up as prisoners. They confessed to being lazy in preparing documents, to having damaged machines and various equipment, and to having beaten prisoners to death without permission when assisting with interrogations.

When prisoners were first brought to Tuol Sleng, they were made aware of ten rules that they were to follow during their incarceration. What follows is what is posted today at the Tuol Sleng Museum; the imperfect grammar is a result of faulty translation from the original Khmer:

You must answer accordingly to my question. Don't turn them away.

Don't try to hide the facts by making pretexts this and that, you are strictly prohibited to contest me.

Don't be a fool for you are a chap who dare to thwart the revolution.

You must immediately answer my questions without wasting time to reflect.

Don't tell me either about your immoralities or the essence of the revolution.

While getting lashes or electrification you must not cry at all.

Do nothing, sit still and wait for my orders. If there is no order, keep quiet. When I ask you to do something, you must do it right away without protesting.

Don't make pretext about Kampuchea Krom in order to hide your secret or traitor.

If you don't follow all the above rules, you shall get many lashes of electric wire.

If you disobey any point of my regulations you shall get either ten lashes or five shocks of electric discharge.

During testimony at the Khmer Rouge Tribunal on April 27, 2009, Duch claimed the 10 security regulations were a fabrication of the Vietnamese officials that first set up the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum.

In 1979, Hồ Văn Tây, a Vietnamese combat photographer, was the first journalist to document Tuol Sleng to the world. Hồ and his colleagues followed the stench of rotting corpses to the gates of Tuol Sleng. The photos of Hồ documenting what he saw when he entered the site are exhibited in Tuol Sleng today.

The Khmer Rouge required that the prison staff make a detailed dossier for each prisoner. Included in the documentation was a photograph. Since the original negatives and photographs were separated from the dossiers in the 1979–1980 period, most of the photographs remain anonymous to this day.

The buildings at Tuol Sleng are preserved, with some rooms still appearing just as they were when the Khmer Rouge were driven out in 1979. The regime kept extensive records, including thousands of photographs. Several rooms of the museum are now lined, floor to ceiling, with black and white photographs of some of the estimated 20,000 prisoners who passed through the prison.

The site has four main buildings, known as Building A, B, C, and D. Building A holds the large cells in which the bodies of the last victims were discovered. Building B holds galleries of photographs. Building C holds the rooms subdivided into small cells for prisoners. Building D holds other memorabilia including instruments of torture.

Other rooms contain only a rusting iron bedframe, beneath a black and white photograph showing the room as it was found by the Vietnamese. In each photograph, the mutilated body of a prisoner is chained to the bed, killed by his fleeing captors only hours before the prison was captured. Other rooms preserve leg-irons and instruments of torture. They are accompanied by paintings by former inmate Vann Nath showing people being tortured, which were added by the post-Khmer Rouge regime installed by the Vietnamese in 1979.

The museum is open to the public from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. On weekdays, visitors have the opportunity of viewing a 'survivor testimony' from 2:30 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. Along with the Choeung Ek Memorial (the Killing Fields), the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum is included as a point of interest for those visiting Cambodia. Tuol Sleng also remains an important educational site as well as memorial for Cambodians. Since 2010, the ECCC brings Cambodians on a 'study tour' consisting of the Tuol Sleng, followed by the Choeung Ek, and finishing at the ECCC complex. The tour drew approximately 27,000 visitors in 2010.

S-21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine is a 2003 film by Rithy Panh, a Cambodian-born, French-trained filmmaker who lost his family when he was 11. The film features two Tuol Sleng survivors, Vann Nath and Chum Mey, confronting their former Khmer Rouge captors, including guards, interrogators, a doctor and a photographer. The focus of the film is the difference between the feelings of the survivors, who want to understand what happened at Tuol Sleng to warn future generations, and the former jailers, who cannot escape the horror of the genocide they helped create.

A number of images from Tuol Sleng are featured in the 1992 Ron Fricke film Baraka.

The Killing Fields are a number of sites in Cambodia where collectively more than 1,000,000 people were killed and buried by the Communist Party of Kampuchea during Khmer Rouge rule of the country from 1975 to 1979, immediately after the end of the Cambodian Civil War (1970–1975). The mass killings were part of the broad, state-sponsored Cambodian genocide.

Analysis of 20,000 mass grave sites by the DC-Cam Mapping Program and Yale University indicates at least 1,386,734 victims of execution. Estimates of the total deaths resulting from Khmer Rouge policies, including death from disease and starvation, range from 1.7 to 2.5 million out of a 1975 population of roughly 8 million. In 1979, Vietnam invaded Democratic Kampuchea and toppled the Khmer Rouge regime, ending the genocide.

The Cambodian journalist Dith Pran coined the term "killing fields" after his escape from the regime.

The Khmer Rouge regime arrested and eventually executed almost everyone suspected of connections with the former government or with foreign governments, as well as professionals and intellectuals. Ethnic Vietnamese, ethnic Thai, ethnic Chinese, ethnic Cham, Cambodian Christians, and Buddhist monks were the demographic targets of persecution. As a result, Pol Pot has been described as "a genocidal tyrant". Martin Shaw described the Cambodian genocide as "the purest genocide of the Cold War era".

Ben Kiernan estimates that about 1.7 million people were killed. Researcher Craig Etcheson of the Documentation Center of Cambodia suggests that the death toll was between 2 and 2.5 million, with a "most likely" figure of 2.2 million. After five years of researching some 20,000 grave sites, he concludes that "these mass graves contain the remains of 1,386,734 victims of execution". A United Nations investigation reported 2–3 million dead, while UNICEF estimated 3 million had been killed. Demographic analysis by Patrick Heuveline suggests that between 1.17 and 3.42 million Cambodians were killed, while Marek Sliwinski suggests that 1.8 million is a conservative figure. Even the Khmer Rouge acknowledged that 2 million had been killed—though they attributed those deaths to a subsequent Vietnamese invasion. By late 1979, UN and Red Cross officials were warning that another 2.25 million Cambodians faced death by starvation due to "the near destruction of Cambodian society under the regime of ousted Prime Minister Pol Pot", who were saved by international aid after the Vietnamese invasion.

Process

The judicial process of the Khmer Rouge regime, for minor or political crimes, began with a warning from the Angkar, the government of Cambodia under the regime. People receiving more than two warnings were sent for "re-education," which meant near-certain death. People were often encouraged to confess to Angkar their "pre-revolutionary lifestyles and crimes" (which usually included some kind of free-market activity; having had contact with a foreign source, such as a U.S. missionary, international relief or government agency; or contact with any foreigner or with the outside world at all), being told that Angkar would forgive them and "wipe the slate clean." They were then taken away to a place such as Tuol Sleng or Choeung Ek for torture and/or execution.[citation needed]

The executed were buried in mass graves. In order to save ammunition, the executions were often carried out using poison or improvised weapons such as sharpened bamboo sticks, hammers, machetes and axes. Inside the Buddhist Memorial Stupa at Choeung Ek, there is evidence of bayonets, knives, wooden clubs, hoes for farming and curved scythes being used to kill victims, with images of skulls, damaged by these implements, as evidence. In some cases the children and infants of adult victims were killed by having their heads bashed against the trunks of Chankiri trees, and then were thrown into the pits alongside their parents. The rationale was "to stop them growing up and taking revenge for their parents' deaths."[citation needed]

Prosecution for crimes against humanity

In 1997 the Cambodian government asked for the UN's assistance in setting up a genocide tribunal. It took nine years to agree to the shape and structure of the court—a hybrid of Cambodian and international laws—before the judges were sworn in, in 2006. The investigating judges were presented with the names of five possible suspects by the prosecution on 18 July 2007. On 19 September 2007 Nuon Chea, second in command of the Khmer Rouge and its most senior surviving member, was charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity. He faced Cambodian and foreign judges at the special genocide tribunal and was convicted on 7 August 2014 and received a life sentence. On 26 July 2010 Kang Kek Iew (aka Comrade Duch), director of the S-21 prison camp, was convicted of crimes against humanity and sentenced to 35 years' imprisonment. His sentence was reduced to 19 years, as he had already spent 11 years in prison. On 2 February 2012, his sentence was extended to life imprisonment by the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia. He died on 2 September 2020.

Legacy

The best known monument of the Killing Fields is at the village of Choeung Ek. Today, it is the site of a Buddhist memorial to the victims, and Tuol Sleng has a museum commemorating the genocide. The memorial park at Choeung Ek has been built around the mass graves of many thousands of victims, most of whom were executed after interrogation at the S-21 Prison in Phnom Penh. The majority of those buried at Choeung Ek were Khmer Rouge killed during the purges within the regime. Many dozens of mass graves are visible above ground, many which have not been excavated yet. Commonly, bones and clothing surface after heavy rainfalls due to the large number of bodies still buried in shallow mass graves. It is not uncommon to run across the bones or teeth of the victims scattered on the surface as one tours the memorial park. If these are found, visitors are asked to notify a memorial park officer or guide.

A survivor of the genocide, Dara Duong, founded The Killing Fields Museum in Seattle, US.

The Khmer Rouge is the name that was popularly given to members of the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK) and by extension to the regime through which the CPK ruled Cambodia between 1975 and 1979. The name was coined in the 1960s by then Chief of State Norodom Sihanouk to describe his country's heterogeneous, communist-led dissidents, with whom he allied after his 1970 overthrow.

The Khmer Rouge army was slowly built up in the jungles of eastern Cambodia during the late 1960s, supported by the North Vietnamese army, the Viet Cong, the Pathet Lao, and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Although it originally fought against Sihanouk, the Khmer Rouge changed its position and supported Sihanouk following the CCP's advice after he was overthrown in a 1970 coup by Lon Nol who established the pro-American Khmer Republic. Despite a massive American bombing campaign (Operation Freedom Deal) against them, the Khmer Rouge won the Cambodian Civil War when they captured the Cambodian capital and overthrew the Khmer Republic in 1975. Following their victory, the Khmer Rouge, who were led by Pol Pot, Nuon Chea, Ieng Sary, Son Sen, and Khieu Samphan, immediately set about forcibly evacuating the country's major cities. In 1976, they renamed the country Democratic Kampuchea.

The Khmer Rouge regime was highly autocratic, totalitarian, and repressive. Many deaths resulted from the regime's social engineering policies and the "Moha Lout Plaoh", an imitation of China's Great Leap Forward which had caused the Great Chinese Famine. The Khmer Rouge's attempts at agricultural reform through collectivization similarly led to widespread famine, while its insistence on absolute self-sufficiency, including the supply of medicine, led to the death of many thousands from treatable diseases such as malaria.

The Khmer Rouge regime murdered hundreds of thousands of their perceived political opponents, and its racist emphasis on national purity resulted in the genocide of Cambodian minorities. Summary executions and torture were carried out by its cadres against perceived subversive elements, or during genocidal purges of its own ranks between 1975 and 1978. Ultimately, the Cambodian genocide which took place under the Khmer Rouge regime led to the deaths of 1.5 to 2 million people, around 25% of Cambodia's population.

In the 1970s, the Khmer Rouge were largely supported and funded by the Chinese Communist Party, receiving approval from Mao Zedong; it is estimated that at least 90% of the foreign aid which was provided to the Khmer Rouge came from China. The regime was removed from power in 1979 when Vietnam invaded Cambodia and quickly destroyed most of its forces. The Khmer Rouge then fled to Thailand, whose government saw them as a buffer force against the Communist Vietnamese. The Khmer Rouge continued to fight against the Vietnamese and the government of the new People's Republic of Kampuchea until the end of the war in 1989. The Cambodian governments-in-exile (including the Khmer Rouge) held onto Cambodia's United Nations seat (with considerable international support) until 1993, when the monarchy was restored and the name of the Cambodian state was changed to the Kingdom of Cambodia. A year later, thousands of Khmer Rouge guerrillas surrendered themselves in a government amnesty.

In 1996, a new political party called the Democratic National Union Movement was formed by Ieng Sary, who was granted amnesty for his role as the deputy leader of the Khmer Rouge. The organisation was largely dissolved by the mid-1990s and finally surrendered completely in 1999. In 2014, two Khmer Rouge leaders, Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan, were jailed for life by a United Nations-backed court which found them guilty of crimes against humanity for their roles in the Khmer Rouge's genocidal campaign.

The Cambodian genocide was the systematic persecution and killing of Cambodian citizens by the Khmer Rouge under the leadership of Communist Party of Kampuchea general secretary Pol Pot. It resulted in the deaths of 1.5 to 2 million people from 1975 to 1979, nearly a quarter of Cambodia's population in 1975 (c. 7.8 million).

Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge had long been supported by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its chairman, Mao Zedong; it is estimated that at least 90% of the foreign aid which the Khmer Rouge received came from China, including at least US$1 billion in interest-free economic and military aid in 1975 alone. After it seized power in April 1975, the Khmer Rouge wanted to turn the country into an agrarian socialist republic, founded on the policies of ultra-Maoism and influenced by the Cultural Revolution. Pol Pot and other Khmer Rouge officials met with Mao in Beijing in June 1975, receiving approval and advice, while high-ranking CCP officials such as Politburo Standing Committee member Zhang Chunqiao later visited Cambodia to offer help. To fulfill its goals, the Khmer Rouge emptied the cities and forced Cambodians to relocate to labor camps in the countryside, where mass executions, forced labor, physical abuse, malnutrition, and disease were rampant. In 1976, the Khmer Rouge renamed the country Democratic Kampuchea.

The massacres ended when the Vietnamese military invaded in 1978 and toppled the Khmer Rouge regime. By January 1979, 1.5 to 2 million people had died due to the Khmer Rouge's policies, including 200,000–300,000 Chinese Cambodians, 90,000–500,000 Cambodian Cham (who are mostly Muslim), and 20,000 Vietnamese Cambodians. 20,000 people passed through the Security Prison 21, one of the 196 prisons the Khmer Rouge operated, and only seven adults survived. The prisoners were taken to the Killing Fields, where they were executed (often with pickaxes, to save bullets) and buried in mass graves. Abduction and indoctrination of children was widespread, and many were persuaded or forced to commit atrocities. As of 2009, the Documentation Center of Cambodia has mapped 23,745 mass graves containing approximately 1.3 million suspected victims of execution. Direct execution is believed to account for up to 60% of the genocide's death toll, with other victims succumbing to starvation, exhaustion, or disease.

The genocide triggered a second outflow of refugees, many of whom escaped to neighboring Thailand and, to a lesser extent, Vietnam. In 2003, by agreement between the Cambodian government and the United Nations, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Court of Cambodia (Khmer Rouge Tribunal) were established to try the members of the Khmer Rouge leadership responsible for the Cambodian genocide. Trials began in 2009. On 26 July 2010, the Trial Chamber convicted Kaing Guek Eav (alias Duch) for crimes against humanity and grave breaches of the 1949 Geneva Conventions. The Supreme Court Chamber increased his sentence to life imprisonment. Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan were tried and convicted in 2014 of crimes against humanity and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions. On 28 March 2019, the Trial Chamber found Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan guilty of crimes against humanity, grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, and genocide of the Vietnamese ethnic, national and racial group. The Chamber additionally convicted Nuon Chea of genocide of the Cham ethnic and religious group under the doctrine of superior responsibility. Both Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan were sentenced to terms of life imprisonment.

Shadow baby by Pétur Már Gunnarsson

34 39

For many reasons i love this shot.The lighting and the shadows are one of them.Also the facial expression. Its not the usual pregnant shot where the model is smiling and happy. This is more like "are you talking to me and my baby".

This shot was taken when she was 25 weeks preggy last sunday. Only few more weeks and im a daddy :)

Have a great sunday my friends!

Hardy Krüger (1928–2022) by Truus, Bob & Jan too!

East-German postcard by VEB Progress Filmvertrieb, Starfoto, no. 1467. Photo: Hardy Krüger in the German-British film Alles spricht gegen van Rooyen/Blind Date (Joseph Losey, 1959).

German actor and writer Hardy Krüger (1928) passed away on 19 January 2022. The blond heartthrob acted in numerous European films of the 1950s and 1960s and also in several classic American films. He played friendly soldiers and adventurers in numerous German, British and French films and also in some Hollywood classics. Although he often was typecasted as the Aryan Nazi, he hated wearing the brown uniform. Krüger was 93.

Franz Eberhard August Krüger was born in 1928 in Berlin. He was the son of engineer Max Krüger. From 1941 on Hardy attended the Adolf-Hitler-Schule at Burg Sonthofen, an elite Nazi boarding school. Here the blonde and handsome 15-year-old was cast for the film Junge Adler/Young Eagles (Alfred Weidenmann, 1944) starring Willy Fritsch. This propaganda film for the Wehrmacht was filmed in the huge Ufa studio in Babelsberg. After his successful performance as the apprentice Bäumchen, director Wolfgang Liebeneiner tried to persuade him to continue his film career. In March 1945 the young Krüger was drafted into the SS Division 'Nibelungen', where he was drawn into heavy fighting before being captured by US forces in Tirol. After his release, he began to write but did not publish. Instead, he started to perform in German theatres. In 1949 he made his first post-war film, the comedy Diese Nacht vergess Ich nie/I'll Never Forget That Night (Johannes Meyer, 1949), with Gustav Fröhlich and Winnie Markus. In the following years, his film career took off.

Hardy Krüger became known as a handsome young man with an effortlessly natural attitude in such films as Illusion in Moll/Illusion in a Minor Key (Rudolf Jugert, 1952) starring Hildegard Knef, the drama Solange Du da bist/As Long as You're Near Me (Harald Braun, 1953) with O.W. Fischer, and the comedy Die Jungfrau auf dem Dach/The Girl on the Roof (Otto Preminger, 1953) with Johannes Heesters. The latter was the German version of the Hollywood production The Moon is Blue (Otto Preminger, 1953) starring William Holden and Maggie McNamara. Hardy Krüger and co-star Johanna Matz also appeared uncredited as tourists at the Empire State Building sequence in the American version. The quality of some of his next films did not match his talents. And although the jungle fantasy Liane, das Mädchen aus dem Urwald/Liane, Jungle Goddess (Eduard von Borsody, 1956) with a briefly topless Marion Michael was one of the biggest German box office hits of the 1950s, he declined to star in further Liane films for 'artistic reasons'.

Hardy Krüger is fluent in English, French, and German, and found himself in demand by British, French, American, and German producers. J. Arthur Rank cast him in three British pictures practically filmed back-to-back. The first one was The One That Got Away (Roy Ward Baker, 1957), the story of the positive and unpolitical lieutenant Franz von Werra, the only German prisoner of war to successfully escape from numerous British POW camps during the Second World War and return to Germany. The second was the comedy Bachelor of Hearts (Wolf Rilla, 1958), and the third was the thriller Blind Date (Joseph Losey, 1959) with Stanley Baker and Micheline Presle. In reviews, Hardy was described as 'ruggedly handsome' and a 'blond heartthrob'. Despite anti-German sentiment still prevailing in postwar Europe, he became an international favorite. He appeared in the German Shakespeare update Der Rest ist Schweigen/The Rest Is Silence (Helmut Käutner, 1959), and in the French WW II adventure Un taxi pour Tobrouk/Taxi for Tobruk (Denys de La Patellière, 1960). A highlight was the French drama Les dimanches de Ville d'Avray/Sundays and Cybele (Serge Bourguignon, 1962). This hauntingly beautiful film about a platonic relationship between a former bomber pilot with war trauma and amnesia, and a 12-year-old orphan girl (Patricia Gozzi), was awarded the 1962 Best Foreign Film Academy Award. It paved Krüger's way to Hollywood.

In the USA, Hardy Krüger started in the African adventure Hatari! (Howard Hawks, 1962), at the side of John Wayne and Elsa Martinelli. His later films included Hollywood productions like the original version of The Flight of the Phoenix (Robert Aldrich, 1965) about the survivors of a plane crash in the middle of the Sahara desert, and the war comedy-drama The Secret of Santa Vittoria (Stanley Kramer, 1969) with Anthony Quinn and Anna Magnani. In the star-studded war epic A Bridge Too Far (Richard Attenborough, 1977), he portrayed a Nazi General. Hardy Krüger related during the shooting how he hated to wear a Nazi uniform. Between takes, he wore a topcoat over his SS uniform so as "not to remind myself of my childhood in Germany during WW II." Although he often played German soldiers, his characters were mostly positive, he personified the 'good German'. Krüger also appeared in many European productions like Le Chant du monde/Song of the World (Marcel Camus, 1965) with Catherine Deneuve, the controversial box office hit La Monaca di Monza/The Nun of Monza (Eriprando Visconti, 1969) about a 17th-century Italian nun's long-repressed sexual passion, the Italian-Russian coproduction Krasnaya palatka/The Red Tent (Mikhail Kalatozov, 1969) starring Sean Connery, and the murder mystery À chacun son enfer/To Each His Hell (André Cayatte, 1977) with Annie Girardot. During that period, he made his sole appearance in a film of the New German Cinema in Peter Schamoni's comedy-western Potato Fritz/Montana Trap (Peter Schamoni, 1976). Most memorable is his role as the Prussian Captain Potzdorf in the Oscar winner Barry Lyndon (Stanley Kubrick, 1975) featuring Ryan O'Neal. His last film appearance was in the Swedish-British thriller Slagskämpen/The Inside Man (Tom Clegg, 1984) starring Dennis Hopper.

In the 1970s Hardy Krüger had taken up writing fiction and non-fiction, and he started a new career as a globe trotter for TV. In 1983, after several novels, story collections, and a children's book he published the novel Junge Unrast, an only slightly disguised autobiographic account of his life. On television, he played the role of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel in the popular American TV series War and Remembrance (Dan Curtis, 1989) starring Robert Mitchum. In 2011 appeared as the pater familias in the TV film Die Familie/The Family (Carlo Rola, 2011) with Gila von Weitershausen as his wife. Hardy Krüger married three times. His marriages with actress Renate Densow and Italian painter Francesca Marazzi ended in a divorce. He married his current wife the American Anita Park in 1978. He has three children. His daughter by Renate Densow, Christiane Krüger (born in 1945, when he was only 17), and his son by Francesca Marazzi, Hardy Jr. Krüger are both actors too. Hardy Krüger was awarded many times for his work. In 2001 he was made Officier de la Légion d’Honneur in France, and in 2009, Germany honoured him with the Großes Verdienstkreuz (Great Cross of Merit). Since then, Hardy and Anita Krüger lived in California, and in Hamburg. Krüger died at his home in Palm Springs, California, on 19 January 2022, at the age of 93.

Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Stephanie D'heil (Steffi-line - German), Tom Hernandez (IMDb), Filmportal.de, Wikipedia, and IMDb.

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

Biddulph Gate, Famagusta, Turkish Republic Of North Cyprus. by PHOTOGRAPHY by DM & DBM.

The Biddulph Gate in Famagusta, Turkish Republic of North Cyprus, is a ruined structure named after General Sir Robert Biddulph. It is situated within the walled city of Famagusta but is not part of the defensive wall. The gate's current state is that of a ruin.

The history of the Biddulph Gate is closely tied to General Sir Robert Biddulph, a British military officer who served in Cyprus during the late 19th century. It is believed that the gate was named in his honor, possibly due to his contributions or association with the region.

The exact origins and architectural details of the Biddulph Gate are unclear due to its ruined state. It is possible that the gate had historical significance and functioned as an entry point or passage within the walled city of Famagusta. However, the lack of available information makes it challenging to provide an in-depth account of its original purpose or design.

Over time, the Biddulph Gate fell into disrepair and is now in a ruined state. The specific reasons for its deterioration or the events that led to its current condition remain unclear. The gate's ruinous state adds to its historical intrigue and provides a sense of mystery surrounding its past.

Despite its ruined state, the Biddulph Gate holds cultural and historical importance as a tangible reminder of Famagusta's past. It serves as a poignant symbol of the city's history and the passage of time.

Preservation and restoration efforts may be necessary to protect the Biddulph Gate and prevent further deterioration. These initiatives could focus on stabilizing the structure, conducting archaeological research, and potentially opening it up to visitors as a cultural and historical attraction.

In conclusion, the Biddulph Gate in Famagusta, Turkish Republic of North Cyprus, is a ruined structure named after General Sir Robert Biddulph. While its exact origins and original purpose are unclear due to its current state, the gate's association with General Biddulph and its location within the walled city of Famagusta contribute to its historical significance. Efforts to preserve and understand this cultural heritage site may be necessary to ensure its continued appreciation and exploration.

General Sir Robert Biddulph, (26 August 1835 – 18 November 1918) was a senior British Army officer. He served as Quartermaster-General to the Forces in 1893, and was then Governor of Gibraltar until 1900.

Military career

Educated at Twyford School and the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, Biddulph was commissioned into the Royal Artillery in 1853. He served in the Crimean War and was present at the Siege of Sevastopol in 1854. He then served in the Indian Mutiny, and was Brigade Major during the Siege of Lucknow in 1857.

In 1871 he was selected to be Assistant Adjutant-General at the War Office and then in 1879 he succeeded Sir Garnet Wolseley as High Commissioner and Commander-in-Chief of Cyprus. In 1886, he returned to London to be Inspector-General of Recruiting and two years later became Director-General of Military Education. In 1893 he was briefly Quartermaster-General to the Forces. Later that year he became Governor of Gibraltar, serving as such until 1900. He was Colonel Commandant of Royal Artillery, and was placed on retired pay on 26 August 1902.

His final appointment, in 1904, was as Army Purchase Commissioner: in that capacity he abolished the purchase of commissions.

He was appointed Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath in the 1899 Birthday Honours. Biddulph's Gate in Famagusta in Cyprus is named after him.

Famagusta is a city on the east coast of the de facto state Northern Cyprus. It is located east of Nicosia and possesses the deepest harbour of the island. During the Middle Ages (especially under the maritime republics of Genoa and Venice), Famagusta was the island's most important port city and a gateway to trade with the ports of the Levant, from where the Silk Road merchants carried their goods to Western Europe. The old walled city and parts of the modern city are de facto part of Northern Cyprus as the capital of the Gazimağusa District.

The city was known as Arsinoe or Arsinoë (Greek: Ἀρσινόη, Arsinóē) in antiquity, after Ptolemy II of Egypt's sister and wife Arsinoe II.

By the 3rd century, the city appears as Ammochostos (Greek: Ἀμμόχωστος or Αμμόχωστος, Ammókhōstos, "Hidden in Sand") in the Stadiasmus Maris Magni.[5] This name is still used in modern Greek with the pronunciation [aˈmːoxostos], while it developed into Latin Fama Augusta, French Famagouste, Italian Famagosta, and English Famagusta during the medieval period. Its informal modern Turkish name Mağusa (Turkish pronunciation: [maˈusa]) came from the same source. Since 1974, it has formally been known to Turkey and Northern Cyprus as Gazimağusa ([ɡaːzimaˈusa]), from the addition of the title gazi, meaning "veteran" or "one who has faught in a holy war".

In the early medieval period, the city was also known as New Justiniana (Greek: Νέα Ἰουστινιανία, Néa Ioustinianía) in appreciation for the patronage of the Byzantine emperor Justinian, whose wife Theodora was born there.

The old town of Famagusta has also been nicknamed "the City of 365 Churches" from the legend that, at its peak, it boasted a church for every day of the year.

The city was founded around 274 BC, after the serious damage to Salamis by an earthquake, by Ptolemy II Philadelphus and named "Arsinoe" after his sister.[6] Arsinoe was described as a "fishing town" by Strabo in his Geographica in the first century BC. In essence, Famagusta was the successor of the most famous and most important ancient city of Cyprus, Salamis. According to Greek mythology, Salamis was founded after the end of the Trojan War by Teucros, the son of Telamon and brother of Aedes, from the Greek island of Salamis.

The city experienced great prosperity much later, during the time of the Byzantine emperor Justinian. To honor the city, from which his wife Theodora came, Justinian enriched it with many buildings, while the inhabitants named it New Justiniania to express their gratitude. In AD 647, when the neighboring cities were destroyed by Arab raiding, the inhabitants of these cities moved to Famagusta, as a result of which the city's population increased significantly and the city experienced another boom.

Later, when Jerusalem was occupied by the Arabs, the Christian population fled to Famagusta, as a result of which the city became an important Christian center, but also one of the most important commercial centers in the eastern Mediterranean.

The turning point for Famagusta was 1192 with the onset of Lusignan rule. It was during this period that Famagusta developed as a fully-fledged town. It increased in importance to the Eastern Mediterranean due to its natural harbour and the walls that protected its inner town. Its population began to increase. This development accelerated in the 13th century as the town became a centre of commerce for both the East and West. An influx of Christian refugees fleeing the downfall of Acre (1291) in Palestine transformed it from a tiny village into one of the richest cities in Christendom.

In 1372 the port was seized by Genoa and in 1489 by Venice. This commercial activity turned Famagusta into a place where merchants and ship owners led lives of luxury. By the mid-14th century, Famagusta was said to have the richest citizens in the world. The belief that people's wealth could be measured by the churches they built inspired these merchants to have churches built in varying styles. These churches, which still exist, were the reason Famagusta came to be known as "the district of churches". The development of the town focused on the social lives of the wealthy people and was centred upon the Lusignan palace, the cathedral, the Square and the harbour.

In 1570–1571, Famagusta was the last stronghold in Venetian Cyprus to hold out against the Turks under Mustafa Pasha. It resisted a siege of thirteen months and a terrible bombardment, until at last the garrison surrendered. The Ottoman forces had lost 50,000 men, including Mustafa Pasha's son. Although the surrender terms had stipulated that the Venetian forces be allowed to return home, the Venetian commander, Marco Antonio Bragadin, was flayed alive, his lieutenant Tiepolo was hanged, and many other Christians were killed.

With the advent of the Ottoman rule, Latins lost their privileged status in Famagusta and were expelled from the city. Greek Cypriots natives were at first allowed to own and buy property in the city, but were banished from the walled city in 1573–74 and had to settle outside in the area that later developed into Varosha. Turkish families from Anatolia were resettled in the walled city but could not fill the buildings that previously hosted a population of 10,000. This caused a drastic decrease in the population of Famagusta. Merchants from Famagusta, who mostly consisted of Latins that had been expelled, resettled in Larnaca and as Larnaca flourished, Famagusta lost its importance as a trade centre. Over time, Varosha developed into a prosperous agricultural town thanks to its location away from the marshes, whilst the walled city remained dilapidated.

In the walled city, some buildings were repurposed to serve the interests of the Muslim population: the Cathedral of St. Nicholas was converted to a mosque (now known as Lala Mustafa Pasha Mosque), a bazaar was developed, public baths, fountains and a theological school were built to accommodate the inhabitants' needs. Dead end streets, an Ottoman urban characteristic, was imported to the city and a communal spirit developed in which a small number of two-storey houses inhabited by the small upper class co-existed with the widespread one-storey houses.

With the British takeover, Famagusta regained its significance as a port and an economic centre and its development was specifically targeted in British plans. As soon as the British took over the island, a Famagusta Development Act was passed that aimed at the reconstruction and redevelopment of the city's streets and dilapidated buildings as well as better hygiene. The port was developed and expanded between 1903 and 1906 and Cyprus Government Railway, with its terminus in Famagusta, started construction in 1904. Whilst Larnaca continued to be used as the main port of the island for some time, after Famagusta's use as a military base in World War I trade significantly shifted to Famagusta. The city outside the walls grew at an accelerated rate, with development being centred around Varosha. Varosha became the administrative centre as the British moved their headquarters and residences there and tourism grew significantly in the last years of the British rule. Pottery and production of citrus and potatoes also significantly grew in the city outside the walls, whilst agriculture within the walled city declined to non-existence.

New residential areas were built to accommodate the increasing population towards the end of the British rule,[11] and by 1960, Famagusta was a modern port city extending far beyond Varosha and the walled city.

The British period saw a significant demographic shift in the city. In 1881, Christians constituted 60% of the city's population while Muslims were at 40%. By 1960, the Turkish Cypriot population had dropped to 17.5% of the overall population, while the Greek Cypriot population had risen to 70%. The city was also the site for one of the British internment camps for nearly 50,000 Jewish survivors of the Holocaust trying to emigrate to Palestine.

From independence in 1960 to the Turkish invasion of Cyprus of 1974, Famagusta developed toward the south west of Varosha as a well-known entertainment and tourist centre. The contribution of Famagusta to the country's economic activity by 1974 far exceeded its proportional dimensions within the country. Whilst its population was only about 7% of the total of the country, Famagusta by 1974 accounted for over 10% of the total industrial employment and production of Cyprus, concentrating mainly on light industry compatible with its activity as a tourist resort and turning out high-quality products ranging from food, beverages and tobacco to clothing, footwear, plastics, light machinery and transport equipment. It contributed 19.3% of the business units and employed 21.3% of the total number of persons engaged in commerce on the island. It acted as the main tourist destination of Cyprus, hosting 31.5% of the hotels and 45% of Cyprus' total bed capacity. Varosha acted as the main touristic and business quarters.

In this period, the urbanisation of Famagusta slowed down and the development of the rural areas accelerated. Therefore, economic growth was shared between the city of Famagusta and the district, which had a balanced agricultural economy, with citrus, potatoes, tobacco and wheat as main products. Famagusta maintained good communications with this hinterland. The city's port remained the island's main seaport and in 1961, it was expanded to double its capacity in order to accommodate the growing volume of exports and imports. The port handled 42.7% of Cypriot exports, 48.6% of imports and 49% of passenger traffic.

There has not been an official census since 1960 but the population of the town in 1974 was estimated to be around 39,000 not counting about 12,000–15,000 persons commuting daily from the surrounding villages and suburbs to work in Famagusta. The number of people staying in the city would swell to about 90,000–100,000 during the peak summer tourist period, with the influx of tourists from numerous European countries, mainly Britain, France, Germany and the Scandinavian countries. The majority of the city population were Greek Cypriots (26,500), with 8,500 Turkish Cypriots and 4,000 people from other ethnic groups.

During the second phase of the Turkish invasion of Cyprus on 14 August 1974 the Mesaoria plain was overrun by Turkish tanks and Famagusta was bombed by Turkish aircraft. It took two days for the Turkish Army to occupy the city, prior to which Famagusta's entire Greek Cypriot population had fled into surrounding fields. As a result of Turkish airstrikes dozens of civilians died, including tourists.

Unlike other parts of the Turkish-controlled areas of Cyprus, the Varosha suburb of Famagusta was fenced off by the Turkish army immediately after being captured and remained fenced off until October 2020, when the TRNC reopened some streets to visitors. Some Greek Cypriots who had fled Varosha have been allowed to view the town and journalists have been allowed in.

UN Security Council resolution 550 (1984) considers any attempts to settle any part of Famagusta by people other than its inhabitants as inadmissible and calls for the transfer of this area to the administration of the UN. The UN's Security Council resolution 789 (1992) also urges that with a view to the implementation of resolution 550 (1984), the area at present under the control of the United Nations Peace-keeping Force in Cyprus be extended to include Varosha.

Famagusta's historic city centre is surrounded by the fortifications of Famagusta, which have a roughly rectangular shape, built mainly by the Venetians in the 15th and 16th centuries, though some sections of the walls have been dated earlier times, as far as 1211.

Some important landmarks and visitor attractions in the old city are:

The Lala Mustafa Pasha Mosque

The Othello Castle

Palazzo del Provveditore - the Venetian palace of the governor, built on the site of the former Lusignan royal palace

St. Francis' Church

Sinan Pasha Mosque

Church of St. George of the Greeks

Church of St. George of the Latins

Twin Churches

Nestorian Church (of St George the Exiler)

Namık Kemal Dungeon

Agios Ioannis Church

Venetian House

Akkule Masjid

Mustafa Pasha Mosque

Ganchvor monastery

In an October 2010 report titled Saving Our Vanishing Heritage, Global Heritage Fund listed Famagusta, a "maritime ancient city of crusader kings", among the 12 sites most "On the Verge" of irreparable loss and destruction, citing insufficient management and development pressures.

Famagusta is an important commercial hub of Northern Cyprus. The main economic activities in the city are tourism, education, construction and industrial production. It has a 115-acre free port, which is the most important seaport of Northern Cyprus for travel and commerce. The port is an important source of income and employment for the city, though its volume of trade is restricted by the embargo against Northern Cyprus. Its historical sites, including the walled city, Salamis, the Othello Castle and the St Barnabas Church, as well as the sandy beaches surrounding it make it a tourist attraction; efforts are also underway to make the city more attractive for international congresses. The Eastern Mediterranean University is also an important employer and supplies significant income and activity, as well as opportunities for the construction sector. The university also raises a qualified workforce that stimulates the city's industry and makes communications industry viable. The city has two industrial zones: the Large Industrial Zone and the Little Industrial Zone. The city is also home to a fishing port, but inadequate infrastructure of the port restricts the growth of this sector. The industry in the city has traditionally been concentrated on processing agricultural products.

Historically, the port was the primary source of income and employment for the city, especially right after 1974. However, it gradually lost some of its importance to the economy as the share of its employees in the population of Famagusta diminished due to various reasons. However, it still is the primary port for commerce in Northern Cyprus, with more than half of ships that came to Northern Cyprus in 2013 coming to Famagusta. It is the second most popular seaport for passengers, after Kyrenia, with around 20,000 passengers using the port in 2013.

The mayor-in-exile of Famagusta is Simos Ioannou. Süleyman Uluçay heads the Turkish Cypriot municipal administration of Famagusta, which remains legal as a communal-based body under the constitutional system of the Republic of Cyprus.

Since 1974, Greek Cypriots submitted a number of proposals within the context of bicommunal discussions for the return of Varosha to UN administration, allowing the return of its previous inhabitants, requesting also the opening of Famagusta harbour for use by both communities. Varosha would have been returned to Greek Cypriot control as part of the 2004 Annan Plan but the plan had been rejected by a majority(3/4) of Greek Cypriot voters.

The walled city of Famagusta contains many unique buildings. Famagusta has a walled city popular with tourists.

Every year, the International Famagusta Art and Culture Festival is organized in Famagusta. Concerts, dance shows and theater plays take place during the festival.

A growth in tourism and the city's university have fueled the development of Famagusta's vibrant nightlife. Nightlife in the city is especially active on Wednesday, Friday and Saturday nights and in the hotter months of the year, starting from April. Larger hotels in the city have casinos that cater to their customers. Salamis Road is an area of Famagusta with a heavy concentration of bars frequented by students and locals.

Famagusta's Othello Castle is the setting for Shakespeare's play Othello. The city was also the setting for Victoria Hislop's 2015 novel The Sunrise, and Michael Paraskos's 2016 novel In Search of Sixpence. The city is the birthplace of the eponymous hero of the Renaissance proto-novel Fortunatus.

Famagusta was home to many Greek Cypriot sport teams that left the city because of the Turkish invasion and still bear their original names. Most notable football clubs originally from the city are Anorthosis Famagusta FC and Nea Salamis Famagusta FC, both of the Cypriot First Division, which are now based in Larnaca. Usually Anorthosis Famagusta fans are politically right wing where Nea Salamis fans are left wing.

Famagusta is represented by Mağusa Türk Gücü in the Turkish Cypriot First Division. Dr. Fazıl Küçük Stadium is the largest football stadium in Famagusta. Many Turkish Cypriot sport teams that left Southern Cyprus because of the Cypriot intercommunal violence are based in Famagusta.

Famagusta is represented by DAÜ Sports Club and Magem Sports Club in North Cyprus First Volleyball Division. Gazimağusa Türk Maarif Koleji represents Famagusta in the North Cyprus High School Volleyball League.

Famagusta has a modern volleyball stadium called the Mağusa Arena.

The Eastern Mediterranean University was founded in the city in 1979. The Istanbul Technical University founded a campus in the city in 2010.

The Cyprus College of Art was founded in Famagusta by the Cypriot artist Stass Paraskos in 1969, before moving to Paphos in 1972 after protests from local hoteliers that the presence of art students in the city was putting off holidaymakers.

Famagusta has three general hospitals. Gazimağusa Devlet Hastahanesi, a state hospital, is the biggest hospital in city. Gazimağusa Tıp Merkezi and Gazimağusa Yaşam Hastahanesi are private hospitals.

Personalities

Saint Barnabas, born and died in Salamis, Famagusta

Chris Achilleos, illustrator of the book versions on the BBC children's series Doctor Who

Beran Bertuğ, former Governor of Famagusta, first Cypriot woman to hold this position

Marios Constantinou, former international Cypriot football midfielder and current manager.

Eleftheria Eleftheriou, Cypriot singer.

Derviş Eroğlu, former President of Northern Cyprus

Alexis Galanos, 7th President of the House of Representatives and Famagusta mayor-in-exile (2006-2019) (Republic of Cyprus)

Xanthos Hadjisoteriou, Cypriot painter

Oz Karahan, political activist, President of the Union of Cypriots

Oktay Kayalp, former Turkish Cypriot Famagusta mayor (Northern Cyprus)

Harry Luke British diplomat

Angelos Misos, former international footballer

Costas Montis was an influential and prolific Greek Cypriot poet, novelist, and playwright born in Famagusta.

Hal Ozsan, actor (Dawson's Creek, Kyle XY)

Dimitris Papadakis, a Greek Cypriot politician, who served as a Member of the European Parliament.

Ṣubḥ-i-Azal, Persian religious leader, lived and died in exile in Famagusta

Touker Suleyman (born Türker Süleyman), British Turkish Cypriot fashion retail entrepreneur, investor and reality television personality.

Alexia Vassiliou, singer, left here as a refugee when the town was invaded.

George Vasiliou, former President of Cyprus

Vamik Volkan, Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry

Derviş Zaim, film director

Famagusta is twinned with:

İzmir, Turkey (since 1974)

Corfu, Greece (since 1994)

Patras, Greece (since 1994)

Antalya, Turkey (since 1997)

Salamina (city), Greece (since 1998)

Struga, North Macedonia

Athens, Greece (since 2005)

Mersin, Turkey

Northern Cyprus, officially the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), is a de facto state that comprises the northeastern portion of the island of Cyprus. It is recognised only by Turkey, and its territory is considered by all other states to be part of the Republic of Cyprus.

Northern Cyprus extends from the tip of the Karpass Peninsula in the northeast to Morphou Bay, Cape Kormakitis and its westernmost point, the Kokkina exclave in the west. Its southernmost point is the village of Louroujina. A buffer zone under the control of the United Nations stretches between Northern Cyprus and the rest of the island and divides Nicosia, the island's largest city and capital of both sides.

A coup d'état in 1974, performed as part of an attempt to annex the island to Greece, prompted the Turkish invasion of Cyprus. This resulted in the eviction of much of the north's Greek Cypriot population, the flight of Turkish Cypriots from the south, and the partitioning of the island, leading to a unilateral declaration of independence by the north in 1983. Due to its lack of recognition, Northern Cyprus is heavily dependent on Turkey for economic, political and military support.

Attempts to reach a solution to the Cyprus dispute have been unsuccessful. The Turkish Army maintains a large force in Northern Cyprus with the support and approval of the TRNC government, while the Republic of Cyprus, the European Union as a whole, and the international community regard it as an occupation force. This military presence has been denounced in several United Nations Security Council resolutions.

Northern Cyprus is a semi-presidential, democratic republic with a cultural heritage incorporating various influences and an economy that is dominated by the services sector. The economy has seen growth through the 2000s and 2010s, with the GNP per capita more than tripling in the 2000s, but is held back by an international embargo due to the official closure of the ports in Northern Cyprus by the Republic of Cyprus. The official language is Turkish, with a distinct local dialect being spoken. The vast majority of the population consists of Sunni Muslims, while religious attitudes are mostly moderate and secular. Northern Cyprus is an observer state of ECO and OIC under the name "Turkish Cypriot State", PACE under the name "Turkish Cypriot Community", and Organization of Turkic States with its own name.

Several distinct periods of Cypriot intercommunal violence involving the two main ethnic communities, Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, marked mid-20th century Cyprus. These included the Cyprus Emergency of 1955–59 during British rule, the post-independence Cyprus crisis of 1963–64, and the Cyprus crisis of 1967. Hostilities culminated in the 1974 de facto division of the island along the Green Line following the Turkish invasion of Cyprus. The region has been relatively peaceful since then, but the Cyprus dispute has continued, with various attempts to solve it diplomatically having been generally unsuccessful.

Cyprus, an island lying in the eastern Mediterranean, hosted a population of Greeks and Turks (four-fifths and one-fifth, respectively), who lived under British rule in the late nineteenth-century and the first half of the twentieth-century. Christian Orthodox Church of Cyprus played a prominent political role among the Greek Cypriot community, a privilege that it acquired during the Ottoman Empire with the employment of the millet system, which gave the archbishop an unofficial ethnarch status.

The repeated rejections by the British of Greek Cypriot demands for enosis, union with Greece, led to armed resistance, organised by the National Organization of Cypriot Struggle, or EOKA. EOKA, led by the Greek-Cypriot commander George Grivas, systematically targeted British colonial authorities. One of the effects of EOKA's campaign was to alter the Turkish position from demanding full reincorporation into Turkey to a demand for taksim (partition). EOKA's mission and activities caused a "Cretan syndrome" (see Turkish Resistance Organisation) within the Turkish Cypriot community, as its members feared that they would be forced to leave the island in such a case as had been the case with Cretan Turks. As such, they preferred the continuation of British colonial rule and then taksim, the division of the island. Due to the Turkish Cypriots' support for the British, EOKA's leader, Georgios Grivas, declared them to be enemies. The fact that the Turks were a minority was, according to Nihat Erim, to be addressed by the transfer of thousands of Turks from mainland Turkey so that Greek Cypriots would cease to be the majority. When Erim visited Cyprus as the Turkish representative, he was advised by Field Marshal Sir John Harding, the then Governor of Cyprus, that Turkey should send educated Turks to settle in Cyprus.

Turkey actively promoted the idea that on the island of Cyprus two distinctive communities existed, and sidestepped its former claim that "the people of Cyprus were all Turkish subjects". In doing so, Turkey's aim to have self-determination of two to-be equal communities in effect led to de jure partition of the island.[citation needed] This could be justified to the international community against the will of the majority Greek population of the island. Dr. Fazil Küçük in 1954 had already proposed Cyprus be divided in two at the 35° parallel.

Lindley Dan, from Notre Dame University, spotted the roots of intercommunal violence to different visions among the two communities of Cyprus (enosis for Greek Cypriots, taksim for Turkish Cypriots). Also, Lindlay wrote that "the merging of church, schools/education, and politics in divisive and nationalistic ways" had played a crucial role in creation of havoc in Cyprus' history. Attalides Michael also pointed to the opposing nationalisms as the cause of the Cyprus problem.

By the mid-1950's, the "Cyprus is Turkish" party, movement, and slogan gained force in both Cyprus and Turkey. In a 1954 editorial, Turkish Cypriot leader Dr. Fazil Kuchuk expressed the sentiment that the Turkish youth had grown up with the idea that "as soon as Great Britain leaves the island, it will be taken over by the Turks", and that "Turkey cannot tolerate otherwise". This perspective contributed to the willingness of Turkish Cypriots to align themselves with the British, who started recruiting Turkish Cypriots into the police force that patrolled Cyprus to fight EOKA, a Greek Cypriot nationalist organisation that sought to rid the island of British rule.

EOKA targeted colonial authorities, including police, but Georgios Grivas, the leader of EOKA, did not initially wish to open up a new front by fighting Turkish Cypriots and reassured them that EOKA would not harm their people. In 1956, some Turkish Cypriot policemen were killed by EOKA members and this provoked some intercommunal violence in the spring and summer, but these attacks on policemen were not motivated by the fact that they were Turkish Cypriots.

However, in January 1957, Grivas changed his policy as his forces in the mountains became increasingly pressured by the British Crown forces. In order to divert the attention of the Crown forces, EOKA members started to target Turkish Cypriot policemen intentionally in the towns, so that Turkish Cypriots would riot against the Greek Cypriots and the security forces would have to be diverted to the towns to restore order. The killing of a Turkish Cypriot policeman on 19 January, when a power station was bombed, and the injury of three others, provoked three days of intercommunal violence in Nicosia. The two communities targeted each other in reprisals, at least one Greek Cypriot was killed and the British Army was deployed in the streets. Greek Cypriot stores were burned and their neighbourhoods attacked. Following the events, the Greek Cypriot leadership spread the propaganda that the riots had merely been an act of Turkish Cypriot aggression. Such events created chaos and drove the communities apart both in Cyprus and in Turkey.

On 22 October 1957 Sir Hugh Mackintosh Foot replaced Sir John Harding as the British Governor of Cyprus. Foot suggested five to seven years of self-government before any final decision. His plan rejected both enosis and taksim. The Turkish Cypriot response to this plan was a series of anti-British demonstrations in Nicosia on 27 and 28 January 1958 rejecting the proposed plan because the plan did not include partition. The British then withdrew the plan.

In 1957, Black Gang, a Turkish Cypriot pro-taksim paramilitary organisation, was formed to patrol a Turkish Cypriot enclave, the Tahtakale district of Nicosia, against activities of EOKA. The organisation later attempted to grow into a national scale, but failed to gain public support.

By 1958, signs of dissatisfaction with the British increased on both sides, with a group of Turkish Cypriots forming Volkan (later renamed to the Turkish Resistance Organisation) paramilitary group to promote partition and the annexation of Cyprus to Turkey as dictated by the Menderes plan. Volkan initially consisted of roughly 100 members, with the stated aim of raising awareness in Turkey of the Cyprus issue and courting military training and support for Turkish Cypriot fighters from the Turkish government.

In June 1958, the British Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, was expected to propose a plan to resolve the Cyprus issue. In light of the new development, the Turks rioted in Nicosia to promote the idea that Greek and Turkish Cypriots could not live together and therefore any plan that did not include partition would not be viable. This violence was soon followed by bombing, Greek Cypriot deaths and looting of Greek Cypriot-owned shops and houses. Greek and Turkish Cypriots started to flee mixed population villages where they were a minority in search of safety. This was effectively the beginning of the segregation of the two communities. On 7 June 1958, a bomb exploded at the entrance of the Turkish Embassy in Cyprus. Following the bombing, Turkish Cypriots looted Greek Cypriot properties. On 26 June 1984, the Turkish Cypriot leader, Rauf Denktaş, admitted on British channel ITV that the bomb was placed by the Turks themselves in order to create tension. On 9 January 1995, Rauf Denktaş repeated his claim to the famous Turkish newspaper Milliyet in Turkey.

The crisis reached a climax on 12 June 1958, when eight Greeks, out of an armed group of thirty five arrested by soldiers of the Royal Horse Guards on suspicion of preparing an attack on the Turkish quarter of Skylloura, were killed in a suspected attack by Turkish Cypriot locals, near the village of Geunyeli, having been ordered to walk back to their village of Kondemenos.

After the EOKA campaign had begun, the British government successfully began to turn the Cyprus issue from a British colonial problem into a Greek-Turkish issue. British diplomacy exerted backstage influence on the Adnan Menderes government, with the aim of making Turkey active in Cyprus. For the British, the attempt had a twofold objective. The EOKA campaign would be silenced as quickly as possible, and Turkish Cypriots would not side with Greek Cypriots against the British colonial claims over the island, which would thus remain under the British. The Turkish Cypriot leadership visited Menderes to discuss the Cyprus issue. When asked how the Turkish Cypriots should respond to the Greek Cypriot claim of enosis, Menderes replied: "You should go to the British foreign minister and request the status quo be prolonged, Cyprus to remain as a British colony". When the Turkish Cypriots visited the British Foreign Secretary and requested for Cyprus to remain a colony, he replied: "You should not be asking for colonialism at this day and age, you should be asking for Cyprus be returned to Turkey, its former owner".

As Turkish Cypriots began to look to Turkey for protection, Greek Cypriots soon understood that enosis was extremely unlikely. The Greek Cypriot leader, Archbishop Makarios III, now set independence for the island as his objective.

Britain resolved to solve the dispute by creating an independent Cyprus. In 1959, all involved parties signed the Zurich Agreements: Britain, Turkey, Greece, and the Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders, Makarios and Dr. Fazil Kucuk, respectively. The new constitution drew heavily on the ethnic composition of the island. The President would be a Greek Cypriot, and the Vice-President a Turkish Cypriot with an equal veto. The contribution to the public service would be set at a ratio of 70:30, and the Supreme Court would consist of an equal number of judges from both communities as well as an independent judge who was not Greek, Turkish or British. The Zurich Agreements were supplemented by a number of treaties. The Treaty of Guarantee stated that secession or union with any state was forbidden, and that Greece, Turkey and Britain would be given guarantor status to intervene if that was violated. The Treaty of Alliance allowed for two small Greek and Turkish military contingents to be stationed on the island, and the Treaty of Establishment gave Britain sovereignty over two bases in Akrotiri and Dhekelia.

On 15 August 1960, the Colony of Cyprus became fully independent as the Republic of Cyprus. The new republic remained within the Commonwealth of Nations.

The new constitution brought dissatisfaction to Greek Cypriots, who felt it to be highly unjust for them for historical, demographic and contributional reasons. Although 80% of the island's population were Greek Cypriots and these indigenous people had lived on the island for thousands of years and paid 94% of taxes, the new constitution was giving the 17% of the population that was Turkish Cypriots, who paid 6% of taxes, around 30% of government jobs and 40% of national security jobs.

Within three years tensions between the two communities in administrative affairs began to show. In particular disputes over separate municipalities and taxation created a deadlock in government. A constitutional court ruled in 1963 Makarios had failed to uphold article 173 of the constitution which called for the establishment of separate municipalities for Turkish Cypriots. Makarios subsequently declared his intention to ignore the judgement, resulting in the West German judge resigning from his position. Makarios proposed thirteen amendments to the constitution, which would have had the effect of resolving most of the issues in the Greek Cypriot favour. Under the proposals, the President and Vice-President would lose their veto, the separate municipalities as sought after by the Turkish Cypriots would be abandoned, the need for separate majorities by both communities in passing legislation would be discarded and the civil service contribution would be set at actual population ratios (82:18) instead of the slightly higher figure for Turkish Cypriots.

The intention behind the amendments has long been called into question. The Akritas plan, written in the height of the constitutional dispute by the Greek Cypriot interior minister Polycarpos Georkadjis, called for the removal of undesirable elements of the constitution so as to allow power-sharing to work. The plan envisaged a swift retaliatory attack on Turkish Cypriot strongholds should Turkish Cypriots resort to violence to resist the measures, stating "In the event of a planned or staged Turkish attack, it is imperative to overcome it by force in the shortest possible time, because if we succeed in gaining command of the situation (in one or two days), no outside, intervention would be either justified or possible." Whether Makarios's proposals were part of the Akritas plan is unclear, however it remains that sentiment towards enosis had not completely disappeared with independence. Makarios described independence as "a step on the road to enosis".[31] Preparations for conflict were not entirely absent from Turkish Cypriots either, with right wing elements still believing taksim (partition) the best safeguard against enosis.

Greek Cypriots however believe the amendments were a necessity stemming from a perceived attempt by Turkish Cypriots to frustrate the working of government. Turkish Cypriots saw it as a means to reduce their status within the state from one of co-founder to that of minority, seeing it as a first step towards enosis. The security situation deteriorated rapidly.

Main articles: Bloody Christmas (1963) and Battle of Tillyria

An armed conflict was triggered after December 21, 1963, a period remembered by Turkish Cypriots as Bloody Christmas, when a Greek Cypriot policemen that had been called to help deal with a taxi driver refusing officers already on the scene access to check the identification documents of his customers, took out his gun upon arrival and shot and killed the taxi driver and his partner. Eric Solsten summarised the events as follows: "a Greek Cypriot police patrol, ostensibly checking identification documents, stopped a Turkish Cypriot couple on the edge of the Turkish quarter. A hostile crowd gathered, shots were fired, and two Turkish Cypriots were killed."

In the morning after the shooting, crowds gathered in protest in Northern Nicosia, likely encouraged by the TMT, without incident. On the evening of the 22nd, gunfire broke out, communication lines to the Turkish neighbourhoods were cut, and the Greek Cypriot police occupied the nearby airport. On the 23rd, a ceasefire was negotiated, but did not hold. Fighting, including automatic weapons fire, between Greek and Turkish Cypriots and militias increased in Nicosia and Larnaca. A force of Greek Cypriot irregulars led by Nikos Sampson entered the Nicosia suburb of Omorphita and engaged in heavy firing on armed, as well as by some accounts unarmed, Turkish Cypriots. The Omorphita clash has been described by Turkish Cypriots as a massacre, while this view has generally not been acknowledged by Greek Cypriots.

Further ceasefires were arranged between the two sides, but also failed. By Christmas Eve, the 24th, Britain, Greece, and Turkey had joined talks, with all sides calling for a truce. On Christmas day, Turkish fighter jets overflew Nicosia in a show of support. Finally it was agreed to allow a force of 2,700 British soldiers to help enforce a ceasefire. In the next days, a "buffer zone" was created in Nicosia, and a British officer marked a line on a map with green ink, separating the two sides of the city, which was the beginning of the "Green Line". Fighting continued across the island for the next several weeks.

In total 364 Turkish Cypriots and 174 Greek Cypriots were killed during the violence. 25,000 Turkish Cypriots from 103-109 villages fled and were displaced into enclaves and thousands of Turkish Cypriot houses were ransacked or completely destroyed.

Contemporary newspapers also reported on the forceful exodus of the Turkish Cypriots from their homes. According to The Times in 1964, threats, shootings and attempts of arson were committed against the Turkish Cypriots to force them out of their homes. The Daily Express wrote that "25,000 Turks have already been forced to leave their homes". The Guardian reported a massacre of Turks at Limassol on 16 February 1964.

Turkey had by now readied its fleet and its fighter jets appeared over Nicosia. Turkey was dissuaded from direct involvement by the creation of a United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP) in 1964. Despite the negotiated ceasefire in Nicosia, attacks on the Turkish Cypriot persisted, particularly in Limassol. Concerned about the possibility of a Turkish invasion, Makarios undertook the creation of a Greek Cypriot conscript-based army called the "National Guard". A general from Greece took charge of the army, whilst a further 20,000 well-equipped officers and men were smuggled from Greece into Cyprus. Turkey threatened to intervene once more, but was prevented by a strongly worded letter from the American President Lyndon B. Johnson, anxious to avoid a conflict between NATO allies Greece and Turkey at the height of the Cold War.

Turkish Cypriots had by now established an important bridgehead at Kokkina, provided with arms, volunteers and materials from Turkey and abroad. Seeing this incursion of foreign weapons and troops as a major threat, the Cypriot government invited George Grivas to return from Greece as commander of the Greek troops on the island and launch a major attack on the bridgehead. Turkey retaliated by dispatching its fighter jets to bomb Greek positions, causing Makarios to threaten an attack on every Turkish Cypriot village on the island if the bombings did not cease. The conflict had now drawn in Greece and Turkey, with both countries amassing troops on their Thracian borders. Efforts at mediation by Dean Acheson, a former U.S. Secretary of State, and UN-appointed mediator Galo Plaza had failed, all the while the division of the two communities becoming more apparent. Greek Cypriot forces were estimated at some 30,000, including the National Guard and the large contingent from Greece. Defending the Turkish Cypriot enclaves was a force of approximately 5,000 irregulars, led by a Turkish colonel, but lacking the equipment and organisation of the Greek forces.

The Secretary-General of the United Nations in 1964, U Thant, reported the damage during the conflicts:

UNFICYP carried out a detailed survey of all damage to properties throughout the island during the disturbances; it shows that in 109 villages, most of them Turkish-Cypriot or mixed villages, 527 houses have been destroyed while 2,000 others have suffered damage from looting.

The situation worsened in 1967, when a military junta overthrew the democratically elected government of Greece, and began applying pressure on Makarios to achieve enosis. Makarios, not wishing to become part of a military dictatorship or trigger a Turkish invasion, began to distance himself from the goal of enosis. This caused tensions with the junta in Greece as well as George Grivas in Cyprus. Grivas's control over the National Guard and Greek contingent was seen as a threat to Makarios's position, who now feared a possible coup.[citation needed] The National Guard and Cyprus Police began patrolling the Turkish Cypriot enclaves of Ayios Theodoros and Kophinou, and on November 15 engaged in heavy fighting with the Turkish Cypriots.

By the time of his withdrawal 26 Turkish Cypriots had been killed. Turkey replied with an ultimatum demanding that Grivas be removed from the island, that the troops smuggled from Greece in excess of the limits of the Treaty of Alliance be removed, and that the economic blockades on the Turkish Cypriot enclaves be lifted. Grivas was recalled by the Athens Junta and the 12,000 Greek troops were withdrawn. Makarios now attempted to consolidate his position by reducing the number of National Guard troops, and by creating a paramilitary force loyal to Cypriot independence. In 1968, acknowledging that enosis was now all but impossible, Makarios stated, "A solution by necessity must be sought within the limits of what is feasible which does not always coincide with the limits of what is desirable."

After 1967 tensions between the Greek and Turkish Cypriots subsided. Instead, the main source of tension on the island came from factions within the Greek Cypriot community. Although Makarios had effectively abandoned enosis in favour of an 'attainable solution', many others continued to believe that the only legitimate political aspiration for Greek Cypriots was union with Greece.

On his arrival, Grivas began by establishing a nationalist paramilitary group known as the National Organization of Cypriot Fighters (Ethniki Organosis Kyprion Agoniston B or EOKA-B), drawing comparisons with the EOKA struggle for enosis under the British colonial administration of the 1950s.

The military junta in Athens saw Makarios as an obstacle. Makarios's failure to disband the National Guard, whose officer class was dominated by mainland Greeks, had meant the junta had practical control over the Cypriot military establishment, leaving Makarios isolated and a vulnerable target.

During the first Turkish invasion, Turkish troops invaded Cyprus territory on 20 July 1974, invoking its rights under the Treaty of Guarantee. This expansion of Turkish-occupied zone violated International Law as well as the Charter of the United Nations. Turkish troops managed to capture 3% of the island which was accompanied by the burning of the Turkish Cypriot quarter, as well as the raping and killing of women and children. A temporary cease-fire followed which was mitigated by the UN Security Council. Subsequently, the Greek military Junta collapsed on July 23, 1974, and peace talks commenced in which a democratic government was installed. The Resolution 353 was broken after Turkey attacked a second time and managed to get a hold of 37% of Cyprus territory. The Island of Cyprus was appointed a Buffer Zone by the United Nations, which divided the island into two zones through the 'Green Line' and put an end to the Turkish invasion. Although Turkey announced that the occupied areas of Cyprus to be called the Federated Turkish State in 1975, it is not legitimised on a worldwide political scale. The United Nations called for the international recognition of independence for the Republic of Cyprus in the Security Council Resolution 367.

In the years after the Turkish invasion of northern Cyprus one can observe a history of failed talks between the two parties. The 1983 declaration of the independent Turkish Republic of Cyprus resulted in a rise of inter-communal tensions and made it increasingly hard to find mutual understanding. With Cyprus' interest of a possible EU membership and a new UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in 1997 new hopes arose for a fresh start. International involvement from sides of the US and UK, wanting a solution to the Cyprus dispute prior to the EU accession led to political pressures for new talks. The believe that an accession without a solution would threaten Greek-Turkish relations and acknowledge the partition of the island would direct the coming negotiations.

Over the course of two years a concrete plan, the Annan plan was formulated. In 2004 the fifth version agreed upon from both sides and with the endorsement of Turkey, US, UK and EU then was presented to the public and was given a referendum in both Cypriot communities to assure the legitimisation of the resolution. The Turkish Cypriots voted with 65% for the plan, however the Greek Cypriots voted with a 76% majority against. The Annan plan contained multiple important topics. Firstly it established a confederation of two separate states called the United Cyprus Republic. Both communities would have autonomous states combined under one unified government. The members of parliament would be chosen according to the percentage in population numbers to ensure a just involvement from both communities. The paper proposed a demilitarisation of the island over the next years. Furthermore it agreed upon a number of 45000 Turkish settlers that could remain on the island. These settlers became a very important issue concerning peace talks. Originally the Turkish government encouraged Turks to settle in Cyprus providing transfer and property, to establish a counterpart to the Greek Cypriot population due to their 1 to 5 minority. With the economic situation many Turkish-Cypriot decided to leave the island, however their departure is made up by incoming Turkish settlers leaving the population ratio between Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots stable. However all these points where criticised and as seen in the vote rejected mainly by the Greek Cypriots. These name the dissolution of the „Republic of Cyprus", economic consequences of a reunion and the remaining Turkish settlers as reason. Many claim that the plan was indeed drawing more from Turkish-Cypriot demands then Greek-Cypriot interests. Taking in consideration that the US wanted to keep Turkey as a strategic partner in future Middle Eastern conflicts.

A week after the failed referendum the Republic of Cyprus joined the EU. In multiple instances the EU tried to promote trade with Northern Cyprus but without internationally recognised ports this spiked a grand debate. Both side endure their intention of negotiations, however without the prospect of any new compromises or agreements the UN is unwilling to start the process again. Since 2004 negotiations took place in numbers but without any results, both sides are strongly holding on to their position without an agreeable solution in sight that would suit both parties.

FOR EVERY METHOD I COULD EMPLOY TO COMMMIT SUICIDE THERE IS A REASON TO LIVE by © Garrison Smith

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"I can't do this alone, God. I need more of You in me, I need a reason to stay."

You hear my cries and You whisper quietly, "For every method you could employ to commit suicide there is a reason to live--a reason to stay. Come to Me, child, I love you. Come to Me, son, and I will embrace you when everyone else fails."

I need you now//maybe more than ever

I wanna come back to life

but im not sure how

so im falling into your water

take me deeper

deeper in

silent//why bother
we've been here all along
waiting for faith to fall
but light
this burn is changing me from a poison to purpose
and the thought is poetry

this awakening
it starts with a fallout

I need you now//maybe more than ever..
I wanna come back to life//but im not sure how
so im falling into your water
take me deeper
deeper in

silence became my crutch and i
I got by without knowing enough
so much conviction as I
as I paced this room
the mystery in me is on display for hundreds to see
but now I think its time//time for that change

the mystery in me is on display
for a hundred to see
love like fire, this is our prayer
this is our prayer.

you know I'd die

just to be with you.

This Awakening by SentByRavens

-give--reason by cuong le

photo by justinkuder

Lego LNER J15 (GER Y14) 0-6-0 Steam locomotive Moc by Owen Meschter

7 4

More trains!

This was built for a few reasons; I originally wanted to build a GER 0-6-0 that was in LNER livery, then an LNER J11 (or something like that), but the dart landed on me building a J15, but then while building it I realized that I actually rode the only surviving preserved J15 a year ago on the North Norfolk railway, I just didn't recognize her because she is currently in her GER livery. I wanted to build an LNER 0-6-0 tender loco because I wanted to get back into building bigger locomotives, choosing LNER because my Y7 is also LNER. Thankfully, I didn't have to order a single piece for this build, resulting in me being able to build it so quickly. It is powered by a single train motor, but it only has one rubber band currently; but I intend to get some more for the front two blind drivers (without them it isn't a very strong locomotive). Currently, this is my first british locomotive powered through the locomotive instead of having a booster car behind it. More projects on the list, and tomorrow I will print decals for this engine and hopefully post them tomorrow!

Rescue! Friday June 16th 2006 by Elinay

2 10

I didn’t sleep much last night for some reason, so getting up very early this morning to go in to volunteer in the Clinic was tough. I got up though and went on in. I was excited as always to be around such interesting birds and people.

I was papering/preparing a new kennel when a call came in from someone who had seen two eagles fighting. One of them he said was injured and had fallen into the bushes. Vicki (The Veterinarian) and Rollo (The Center’s Director) said grab a leather coat and gloves and lets get going!!

When we arrived at the “Turn Around,” (A well known eagle hang out and the place where most of my eagle shots are taken at) we located the eagle in the underbrush near some pine trees and salmonberry bushes. The bird ran up and over the hill to the right of us too quickly to capture and got enough momentum to get aloft into the air to fly across the road above, right through the traffic and into the woods on a pretty steep, muddy hill.

Vicki and I RAN up the hill, across the road and into the bushes where it had crash-landed. Rollo brought the truck around to the parking lot above the hill (Coincidentally the local hospital’s lot!) Rollo and I stood waiting at the top of the hill while Vicki netted the eagle midway up the hill.

She captured it in the net while Rollo and I climbed down the hill to help her transfer it from the net to a blanket. Putting into words what happened next is difficult. Somewhat of a strange ballet of struggling to keep the bird and us safe went on while we managed to all climb safely back up the hill with the eagle.

When we arrived back to the Raptor Center Clinic I was given the privilege to hold this amazing creature while Vicki performed the exam. The bird was a male, weighing in at about 8 pounds. After the X-rays we saw that there was some pretty bad swelling in his left hip and foot. He was pretty beat up in general. Poor guy. He was very calm while I was holding him, which I was thankful for!

He should heal well enough to be released though, so I was very glad to have a part in helping such a great and beautiful bird!

Reason #1 by Molly | Orangette

11 13

to love Portland. (Among many other reasons, of course.)

Yellow Pond Lilies by Greg L. Jones

8 9

During July yellow pond lilies fill Isa Lake near Grant Pass in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming. Isa Lake is perched atop one of 2 crossing of the Continental Divide that the Craig Pass Highway makes between West Thumb and Fishing Bridge. The little lake is covered with ice most of the year but in the summer it is filled with yellow waterlilies (Nuphar polysepalum). Isa lake is unusual in that that it has 2 outlets. One flows out on one side and goes to the Snake River tributaries and eventually to the Pacific while the outlet on the other side sends water to the Firehole River drainage and with time to the Mississippi and on to the Gulf of Mexico/ Atlantic. Even more unusual is the the configuration of the drainage. Because the local Divide runs roughly east-west at Isa's location, the east side drains to the Pacific and the west side of the lake drains to the Atlantic. That is the reverse of what one would expect.

The yellow water lily is also known as yellow pond lily, Indian pond lily, cow lily and spatterdock. I found some confusion when I tired to look up the scientific name of the yellow pond lily found in Yellowstone. The different species and subspecies names seemed to be being applied to same plant depending on the reference. The website ZipcodeZoo.com had the explanation: "The taxonomy of the genus is problematic. E. O. Beal (1956) departed dramatically from previous North American treatments in recognizing a single polymorphic species, Nuphar lutea (name of European origin ), with several subspecies formerly treated as species. Subsequent research (C. E. DePoe and E. O. Beal 1969; E. O. Beal and R. M. Southall 1977) has supported Beal's treatment for some southeastern subspecies, but most other taxa have not been studied as extensively. Beal's treatment, for the most part, has not been adopted in the Northeast and elsewhere in North America or in Europe. Molecular studies of Nuphar currently in progress (D. J. Padgett, pers. comm. ) have clearly shown the North American taxa to be distinct from the Eurasian Nuphar lutea; Beal's nomenclature under that taxon cannot be upheld. Continuing to treat those taxa at subspecific rank would require new combinations under Nuphar sagittifolia (Walter) Pursh, the oldest name that has hitherto been applied only in a geographically restricted sense. Until the molecular studies are completed, creating new names is premature. We therefore return to the previous treatment of the taxa as species."

This information was confirmed on the USDA's GRIN. A nomenclature change recognized by the USDA confirmed the name as Nuphar polysepalum.

zipcodezoo.com/Plants/N/Nuphar_polysepalum/

www.ars-grin.gov/cgi-bin/npgs/html/taxon.pl?25419

The confusion also extends to the genus nomenclature. ZipcodeZoo.com reports "Prior to conservation in its current sense, the name Nymphaea was frequently used for Nuphar. Although often treated as neuter, Nuphar was originally assigned the feminine gender".

So with the nomenclature issue at least partially understood, I did learn some very interesting things about the history of the yellow pond lily as a Native American food and medicine source from the US Forest Service site. "The mature seeds of the Yellow Pond Lily can be placed in a frying pan on an open fire and they will swell and pop open resembling popcorn in appearance and taste.The roots may be boiled or roasted, peeled, and then eaten as is or placed in a soup or stew. The core of the root is rich in starch. The root was also dried and ground into a meal and then made into flour by Native Americans.The Native Americans apparently had some difficulties in gathering this particular plant for food and medicine. The fleshy rootstocks grow under 4 to 5 feet of water. Some Indians would raid caches of the roots in muskrat houses, but usually they would dive for the root. Baked rootstocks of the Yellow Pond Lily were sliced and used as a poultice for sores. A decoction made by boiling rootstocks was added to bath water to treat rheumatism." (www.fs.usda.gov/detail/ipnf/learning/?cid=fsm9_019139)

U.S. Engineer, Hiram Chittenden, came across the unusual lake in 1891 as he was looking for a route for a new road between West Thumb and Old Faithful. He wrote a poem about the pond but it was not named until a couple years later in 1893 when Union Pacific Railroad official named it Isa for Isabel Jelke of Cincinnati, OH. Little is know about the reasons it was named after her or what her relationships were with the Railroad, Yellowstone National Park, the Lake itself or Hiram Chittenden (if any).

Because of the beautiful pond lilies this spot has been a favorite stop of the Jones Family over the generations and years.

4 7

(further pictures and information you can see if you go to the end of page and by clicking on the link...)

Belvedere

Belvedere Castle. Garden Front of the Lower Belvedere.

1720 the Prince conceived the plan the summer palace to supplement by a another palace building on the hill of the garden.

The 1721 by Johann Lukas von Hildebrandt begun works had been completed in 1724. The Upper Belvedere served in contrast to the Lower only representative purposes and was never meant to live.

Belvedere Castle. Engraving by Salomon Kleiner 1731/40 (left).

Vienna from the Belvedere. Coloured copper engraving by Carl Schütz, 1784 (right).

1770 Belvedere Palace was venue of brilliant festivities:

Castle Park with Upper Belvedere. Photograph, around 1890.

Archduke-Heir to the Throne Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Este at folk and children's party in the park of the Belvedere Palace. Photograph, 1905.

"Where I unaware of your fatigue with particular brutality you dragged from box to box" as he apologetically from Budweis wrote to the Countess.

Belvedere Castle. Staircase in the Upper Belvedere (left).

Marble plastic "Apotheosis of Prince Eugene" by Balthasar Permoser in Gold Cabinet of the Lower Belvedere (right).

Excerpts from

Thus lived the Habsburgs - Imperial and Royal Palaces in the

Austro-Hungarian Monarchy

Ingrid Haslinger, Gerhard Trumler

Christian Brandstätter Verlag mbH

The publishing service for museums, businesses and

public bodies

www.brandstaetter - verlag.at

aeiou - the cultural information system of the bm: bwk

14,000 key words and 2000 pictures from history, geography, politics and business in Austria

www.aeiou.at

Austrian Gallery Belvedere

The in the center of Vienna situated Belvedere palaces with their extensive parks form an impressive baroque Gesamtkunstwerk. The Museum in the Upper and Lower Castle

Belvedere, from where you can enjoy a spectacular view to the center of Vienna. In the historic rooms of the Lower Belvedere are shown works of art from the Middle Ages and Baroque.

Austrian Gallery Belvedere

Prinz Eugen -Strasse 27 , A - 1037 Wien

Phone +43 / ( 0) 1 / 79557-0

Fax +43 / (0) 1/79 84 337

Upper Belvedere

Collections of the 19th and 20th century

Prinz Eugen -Strasse 27 , A - 1037 Wien

Lower Belvedere

Baroque Museum, and Museum of Medieval Art

Rennweg 6a, A - 1030 Vienna

www.wien-vienna.at/blickpunkte.php?ID=255

No Reason to Cry by Michael Studt

Eric Clapton / No Reason to Cry

Trackliste:

- "Beautiful Thing" (Rick Danko, Richard Manuel) - 4:26

- "Carnival" (Eric Clapton) - 3:44

- "Sign Language" (Bob Dylan) - 2:58

- "County Jail Blues" (Alfred Fields) - 4:00

- "All Our Past Times" (Eric Clapton, Rick Danko) - 4:40

- "Hello Old Friend" (Eric Clapton) - 3:36

- "Double Trouble" (Otis Rush) - 4:23

- "Innocent Times" (Eric Clapton, Marcy Levy) - 4:11

- "Hungry" (Marcy Levy, Dicky Simms) - 4:39

- "Black Summer Rain" (Eric Clapton) - 4:55

Eric Clapton - guitar, vocals

Rick Danko (he Band) - vocals ("All Our Past Times")

Marcy Levy - vocals

Richard Manuel (The Band) - piano

Robbie Robertson (The Band) - guitar

Levon Helm (The Band) - drums

Garth Hudson (The Band) - keyboards

Jamie Oldaker - drums

Carl Radle - bass

Billy Preston - keyboards

Bob Dylan - vocals ("Sign Language")

Recorded: December 1975 – May 1976 at Shangri-La Studios, Malibu and Village Recorders Studio, Los Angeles

sleeve design: photo

Label: RSO Records / 1976

ex Vinyl-Collection MTP

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Reason_to_Cry

No Reason by Natalie Pautsch

10 5

1993 Rover Montego Clubman D Turbo Estate by Ruairidh MacVeigh

For some reason I always had a bit of an affinity towards these cars, largely due to the fact that they seemed to be smiling with those light clusters. But much like the Maestro, it had purpose, it was innovative, and it was a car that refused to die!

The Austin Montego first started development life way back in 1977 under project code LC10 (Leyland Cars 10), as an intended replacement for the Morris Marina and the Princess. However, like many of the company's promising projects, such as the Maestro and the Metro, it was shelved for years on account of the fact that British Leyland ran out of money! After a corporate bailout by the British Government, the company chose instead to prolong the development of these cars and instead simply give the existing Marina and Princess a facelift, resulting in the Morris Ital and Austin Ambassador, both cars notable for being unimpressively bland masterpieces.

However, this delay did give British Leyland a chance to tie up with Honda, and in 1980 launched the Triumph Acclaim as both the first Japanese/British hybrid car, but also British Leyland's first consistently reliable product! The result was that both the simultaneously developed Austin Maestro and Montego could take some leaves out of Honda's book and therefore improve the reliability. Styling came from David Bache, who had previously had a hand in penning the Rover P4, the Rover SD1 and the Range Rover, and Roy Axe, who would later go on to style the Rover 800 and the Rolls Royce Silver Seraph. The lengthy development time of the car however clearly showed as the first sketches of the car were done back in 1975. Apparently when Roy Axe, who took over as Director of Design in 1982, saw the first prototype with the original design, he was so horrified that he suggested they scrap the whole thing and start over!

However, their combined design talent truly shows through with the Montego as in essence these are very handsome cars, with a long smooth body, a pleasing frontal alignment and design, and internally very capable and comfortable. Some novel features included were the colour coordinated bumpers that matched the rest of the car, and the wiper spindles hiding under the bonnet when parked.

Although many consider the Maestro just to be a hatchback version of the Montego, there were many features the Montego had that made it an all around better car. These included a new S-Series engine in place of the A-Series engine that dated back to the 1950's, and a more practical and robust dashboard. Variations of the car included the stylish and luxury Vanden Plas, which was styled internally by the world renowned coachbuilder with lavish wood veneer and seating (thankfully not given a chrome nose, that would have been insane!), the sporty MG Montego which featured a higher performance O-Series Turob Engine and a revolutionary synthesised computer voice that announced problems and warnings, and finally the Estate versions which were by far the most popular and received almost unanimous acclaim for their spacious interior.

The Montego was launched on April 25th 1984, being available at first as a 4-door saloon to replace the standard Morris Ital, but the Ital in estate form continued on until August, bringing an end to the 11 year old Morris Marina family. In October the Estate version was launched at the British International Motor Show. Initially things were looking up for the Montego, as mentioned the Estate version was lauded for its practicality, the MG Montego became the fastest MG ever built with 115hp to rocket it up to a top speed of 126mph at a rate of 0-60 in 7.1 seconds, and the Vanden Plas was a modest success for the business executive, as well as finding a home in the company car market.

Promotion for the car also helped to seal the deal with a fantastically choreographed advert where professional stunt driver Russ Swift, pretty much danced around a crowded car park in a Montego, doing reverse 180's in gaps only a few feet wide, and driving the car on two wheels through a gap only a ruler's length apart! Jeremy Clarkson would attempt to do the same thing 14 years later on one of his DVD's in another Montego, again with the help of Russ Swift, which went well the first time, but not so well the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth or seventh time. Eventually the Montego was smashed in half by a large truck in a fiery explosion.

Sadly though, the honeymoon like with all good British Leyland cars was short lived, and soon afterwards the various faults and build quality problems became once again apparent. Although many of the features fitted to these cars such as the synthesised voice, the computer engine management and the redesigned dashboard were endearing, the main fault that these cars had were in the electrics, which would frequently go wrong. Some examples I've heard from early Montego owners have included the car failing to start, pressing the indicator switch only to blow the horn, or the synthesised talking lady never, ever, ever shutting up! Because of these problems the cars built up a very quick and poor reputation, added to by the poor construction of the actual car, with the colour coded bumpers being particularly problematic as they'd crack in cold weather.

But British Leyland didn't give up on the Montego, and in the background designers continued to tinker with the idea of further additions and changes to the car. Throughout the period following its introduction, British Leyland began to be broken up by the Thatcher Government, with Jaguar being made independent, the various parts manufacturers such as UNIPART being sold off, Leyland Trucks and Buses being sold to Volvo and DAF, and eventually the whole outfit being reduced to just MG and Rover. The Montego has been credited with being the last car to carry the Austin name, the badge being dropped in 1988 with future cars simply being dubbed the Montego. This coincided with a facelift in 1989 and the re-engineering of the car to be fitted with a Perkins Diesel. In 1989 a new seven-seater estate model was created called the Montego Countryman, built to combat the rising trend of People-Carriers such as the Renault Espace, but still being able to perform as well as a regular car. This, much like the original estate, proved immensely popular, especially in France for some reason, which went on to be one of the Montego's major markets.

In the early 90's the Montego did start getting back some reputation, winning the CAR Magazine's 'Giant Test' (all technical names I'm sure) when competing against the likes of the Citroen BX and the Audi 80. In fact the Rover Montego Turbo became a favourite with the RAF, and was used to whisk Officers across airfields as a personal transport. The Montego may have failed to outdo the Volkswagen Passat, but as for the British mob such as the Ford Sierra and the Vauxhall Cavalier, it was able competition. In fact when I was young in the 90's a lot of kids I'd see dropped off to school would be in then new Montego's because by this point the reliability issues had been ironed out following Rover Group's return to private ownership under British Aerospace.

But by 1992 the car was very much looking its age and was in desperate need of a replacement. In 1993 the Rover 600 was launched which pretty much ended the Montego for mass-production then and there, but special orders for the car continued until 1995. The machines continued to be a favourite among Company Car firms, and a lot of the developments made in the Montego lived on in later Rover cars, primarily the 600 and the 75, which inherited its rear suspension which was often held in high regard. But the curtain did eventually fall for the official Montego production in 1995 as new owners BMW desired nothing more than to be out with the old and in with the new, with facelifts all around including a new Rover 25 to replace the 200, a new Rover 45 to replace the 400, and a new Rover 75 to replace the 800, and the original Range Rover was revamped into the absolutely magnificent Range Rover P38 in 1995. The Maestro too was axed and the Metro followed not long afterwards in 1999, with the classic Mini being killed off in 2000, only to be brought back to life the same year under BMW management after the breakup of Rover that year.

But like the Maestro, the Montego simply wouldn't die, but unlike the Maestro, attempts to revive the car under bootlegged brands weren't as prosperous. In India, the company Sipani Automobiles, notable for attempting to recreate British cars such as the Reliant Kitten but instead consistently turning out garbage, attempted to built a few, but folded soon afterwards. In Trinidad & Tobago, a small firm attempted to sell their own copycat versions of the Montego, which were notable for their exceptional poor quality. But most famously was the attempt to recreate the car in China with the Lubao CA 6410, which yoked the nose of a Montego onto the back of a Maestro using a Maestro platform. Today that car is technically still in production as the Jiefang CA 6440 UA Van, but owes more to the Maestro than the Montego.

Today the Montego is a very rare car to find. Of the 571,000 cars built, only 296 remain, making it Britain's 8th most scrapped car. Contributing to this, areas of the bodywork that were to be covered by plastic trim (such as the front and rear bumpers) were left unpainted and thus unprotected. In addition, pre-1989 models cannot run on unleaded petrol without the cylinder head being converted or needing fuel additives.

However, as mentioned, the Montego estate was a huge hit in France, and chances are you'll find a fair number ambling about the countryside there. Malta too was another popular locale for the Montego, as well as many other British Leyland cars, including Marina's, Allegros and even Princesses!

My opinion on the Montego? Like most British Leyland cars it had prospects and purpose, but lacked the desire to build good, honest cars. It was comfortable, it was handsome, it performed as well as a family saloon car should, it was spacious and very well equipped, and like many British Leyland cars, such as the Princess with its Hydragas suspension, it was innovative. If these cars had been built better and had some of the teething problems ironed out with the electrical systems, then British Leyland could have easily gone on to make the family car of the 1980's. But like all pathfinders in the world of technology, they will suffer the full brunt of the problems they are most likely to experience.

People rarely remember the originals, only the one's that perfected it...

Reasons to be happy by Lu Guada

7 1

Only Iphone 5

The Electric Railway Museum by David Flett

For some reason electric trains don't seem as popular as steam or diesel. Therefore the Electric Railway Museum near Coventry is little known and the exhibits are deteriorating out in the open through lack of funds to store them anywhere else. Go and visit (though check the opening hours beforehand). Admission is free! - but put some money in the collection box - they need it.

This 1920's steeple cab loco was built for Kearsley Power Station in Manchester. Later it was converted to battery electric and worked until 2009 at Heysham Nuclear Power Station. When withdrawn it was the last standard gauge electric loco in industrial service in Britain.

Reasons to Love Winter by SeattleMetDesign

8 2

December 2011

Lettering by Erik Marinovich/Friends of Type.

The solid logo (no stroke and shadow like previous covers) was refined by Okay Type.

*SPJ Northwest winner for Magazine: Cover Design*

EROS 1997 Triple Change Piece by EROS ONE

14 5

Painted in 1997 with Monk and I Believe Spel too. Freestyle at the Bomb Shelter. I had to use up some colors that I really wasn't using in my stash of paint and so I decided to challenge myself by bringing as many wak colors as I could to the wall. That is where I came up with the concept of a different fill, outline and 3D. It wasn't the greatest representation of that style but at the time, doing a style like that was pretty innovative. I remember walking out of the wall spot and being stopped by one of the local writers coming up and he asked me, "What type of drugs are you on?". I took that as a compliment because I believe he was hoping to score some of whatever it was that made me do the funky ass shit that I was doing at that time. You know one thing about me is that I get real bored with the same piece over and over and am always trying to do something a little or a lot different from the last. That is one reason why I always tend to freestyle, so I don't have any memory of other stuff that I was drawing up and get caught up in repeating patterns in my letters. Although, over time, I have learned some things that make my pieces, what some would classify, as EROS style. Arrows, loops, highlights, leaned back R, etc....... It's almost impossible to recreate the wheel but we all have a set of mental standards that we follow. Those that paint without rules, I take my hat off to. It's just something that I haven't been able to truly get past. Especially, the solid letter stucture part.

Reasons for Teen Drug Abuse by Stephanie hanie

If parents have a history of doing drugs, there are high chances that their kids to involve in drugs too.Log on www.polaristeen.com/

Freedom Gazes at the Moon [5_055475-7deB] by Steven Christenson

11 11

The reason I went to Washington, DC (other than to visit my father and sisters, that is!) The moon here is in the penumbra (the first phase of the total eclipse) as it sets over the US Capitol building. Above the moon is the statue "Freedom" on top of the US Capitol. I think it's cool that you can see the moonlight streaming through the tholos on which the statue sits.

It will be interesting to see if it is possible to get the moon in just the right spot so that it is directly behind the statute - but Washington, DC is pretty flat and heavily tree (and building) lined, so the working room is pretty small. I was literally standing in the right lane of Pennsylvania Avenue (thankfully there was very little traffic).

Want to do this yourself? My next moon alignment webinar is January 4, 2012. And after that, February 11, 2012.

*Explored: Dec 13, 2011 #478*

StarCircleAcademy.com

All rights reserved. Curious what "all rights reserved means?" it means that without written permission you may not: copy, transmit, modify, use, print or display this image in any context other than as it appears in Flickr.

Reasons to love winter #2 by cu♥re di marmo

4 19

Sweet kitchen table comfort for a day that never quite got going

And the reason you woke me is!?!?! by Jan C

12 21

And the reason you woke me is!?!?! One of my furgrandbabies, Wynter, during a nap this past summer. She had been taking a nap and when she heard the camera click her nosiness got the best of her and she opened her eyes. She is the sweetest little girl.

Mail Alarm. by Casa Atzala

Dear UserThanks for choosing our Network DVR.This email is recorded and sent automatically by DVR.Reason as follows:Motion detection.Triggered channel:4,Time:2016-05-01 02:10:58You are suggested to check the recorded files, thanks for cooperation.

Power To The People! by Yoko Ono

9 1

JOHN LENNON and YOKO ONO (talk to Robin Blackburn and Tariq Ali)

Tariq Ali: Your latest record and your recent public statements, especially the interviews in Rolling Stone magazine, suggest that your views are becoming increasingly radical and political. When did this start to happen?

John Lennon: I've always been politically minded, you know, and against the status quo. It's pretty basic when you're brought up, like I was, to hate and fear the police as a natural enemy and to despise the army as something that takes everybody away and leaves them dead somewhere. I mean, it's just a basic working class thing, though it begins to wear off when you get older, get a family and get swallowed up in the system. In my case I've never not been political, though religion tended to overshadow it in my acid days; that would be around '65 or '66. And that religion was directly the result of all that superstar shit--religion was an outlet for my repression. I thought, 'Well, there's something else to life, isn't there? This isn't it, surely?' But I was always political in a way, you know. In the two books I wrote, even though they were written in a sort of Joycean gobbledegook, there's many knocks at religion and there is a play about a worker and a capitalist. I've been satirising the system since my childhood. I used to write magazines in school and hand them around. I was very conscious of class, they would say with a chip on my shoulder, because I knew what happened to me and I knew about the class repression coming down on us--it was a fucking fact but in the hurricane Beatle world it got left out, I got farther away from reality for a time.

TA: What did you think was the reason for the success of your sort of music?

JL: Well, at the time it was thought that the workers had broken through, but I realise in retrospect that it's the same phoney deal they gave the blacks, it was just like they allowed blacks to be runners or boxers or entertainers. That's the choice they allow you--now the outlet is being a pop star, which is really what I'm saying on the album in 'Working class hero'. As I told Rolling Stone, it's the same people who have the power, the class system didn't change one little bit. Of course, there are a lot of people walking around with long hair now and some trendy middle class kids in pretty clothes. But nothing changed except that we all dressed up a bit, leaving the same bastards running everything.

Robin Blackburn: Of course, class is something the American rock groups haven't tackled yet.

JL: Because they're all middle class and bourgeois and they don't want to show it. They're scared of the workers, actually, because the workers seem mainly right-wing in America, clinging on to their goods. But if these middle class groups realise what's happening, and what the class system has done, it's up to them to repatriate the people and to get out of all that bourgeois shit.

TA: When did you start breaking out of the role imposed on you as a Beatle?

JL: Even during the Beatle heyday I tried to go against it, so did George. We went to America a few times and Epstein always tried to waffle on at us about saying nothing about Vietnam. So there came a time when George and I said 'Listen, when they ask next time, we're going to say we don't like that war and we think they should get right out.' That's what we did. At that time this was a pretty radical thing to do, especially for the 'Fab Four'. It was the first opportunity I personally took to wave the flag a bit. But you've got to remember that I'd always felt repressed. We were all so pressurised that there was hardly any chance of expressing ourselves, especially working at that rate, touring continually and always kept in a cocoon of myths and dreams. It's pretty hard when you are Caesar and everyone is saying how wonderful you are and they are giving you all the goodies and the girls, it's pretty hard to break out of that, to say 'Well, I don't want to be king, I want to be real.' So in its way the second political thing I did was to say 'The Beatles are bigger than Jesus.' That really broke the scene, I nearly got shot in America for that. It was a big trauma for all the kids that were following us. Up to then there was this unspoken policy of not answering delicate questions, though I always read the papers, you know, the political bits. The continual awareness of what was going on made me feel ashamed I wasn't saying anything. I burst out because I could no longer play that game any more, it was just too much for me. Of course, going to America increased the build up on me, especially as the war was going on there. In a way we'd turned out to be a Trojan horse. The 'Fab Four' moved right to the top and then sang about drugs and sex and then I got into more and more heavy stuff and that's when they started dropping us.

RB: Wasn't there a double charge to what you were doing right from the beginning?

Yoko Ono: You were always very direct.

JL: Yes, well, the first thing we did was to proclaim our Liverpoolness to the world, and say 'It's all right to come from Liverpool and talk like this'. Before, anybody from Liverpool who made it, like Ted Ray, Tommy Handley, Arthur Askey, had to lose their accent to get on the BBC. They were only comedians but that's what came out of Liverpool before us. We refused to play that game. After The Beatles came on the scene everyone started putting on a Liverpudlian accent.

TA: In a way you were even thinking about politics when you seemed to be knocking revolution?

JL: Ah, sure, 'Revolution' . There were two versions of that song but the underground left only picked up on the one that said 'count me out'. The original version which ends up on the LP said 'count me in' too; I put in both because I wasn't sure. There was a third version that was just abstract, musique concrete, kind of loops and that, people screaming. I thought I was painting in sound a picture of revolution--but I made a mistake, you know. The mistake was that it was anti-revolution. On the version released as a single I said 'when you talk about destruction you can count me out'. I didn't want to get killed. I didn't really know that much about the Maoists, but I just knew that they seemed to be so few and yet they painted themselves green and stood in front of the police waiting to get picked off. I just thought it was unsubtle, you know. I thought the original Communist revolutionaries coordinated themselves a bit better and didn't go around shouting about it. That was how I felt--I was really asking a question. As someone from the working class I was always interested in Russia and China and everything that related to the working class, even though I was playing the capitalist game. At one time I was so much involved in the religious bullshit that I used to go around calling myself a Christian Communist, but as Janov says, religion is legalised madness. It was therapy that stripped away all that and made me feel my own pain.

RB: This analyst you went to, what's his name. ..

JL: Janov ...

RB: His ideas seem to have something in common with Laing in that he doesn't want to reconcile people to their misery, to adjust them to the world but rather to make them face up to its causes?

JL: Well, his thing is to feel the pain that's accumulated inside you ever since your childhood. I had to do it to really kill off all the religious myths. In the therapy you really feel every painful moment of your life--it's excruciating, you are forced to realise that your pain, the kind that makes you wake up afraid with your heart pounding, is really yours and not the result of somebody up in the sky. It's the result of your parents and your environment. As I realised this it all started to fall into place. This therapy forced me to have done with all the God shit. All of us growing up have come to terms with too much pain. Although we repress it, it's still there. The worst pain is that of not being wanted, of realising your parents do not need you in the way you need them. When I was a child I experienced moments of not wanting to see the ugliness, not wanting to see not being wanted. This lack of love went into my eyes and into my mind. Janov doesn't just talk to you about this but makes you feel it--once you've allowed yourself to feel again, you do most of the work yourself. When you wake up and your heart is going like the clappers or your back feels strained, or you develop some other hang-up, you should let your mind go to the pain and the pain itself will regurgitate the memory which originally caused you to suppress it in your body. In this way the pain goes to the right channel instead of being repressed again, as it is if you take a pill or a bath, saying 'Well, I'll get over it'. Most people channel their pain into God or masturbation or some dream of making it. The therapy is like a very slow acid trip which happens naturally in your body. It is hard to talk about, you know, because--you feel 'I am pain' and it sounds sort of arbitrary, but pain to me now has a different meaning because of having physically felt all these extraordinary repressions. It was like taking gloves off, and feeling your own skin for the first time. It's a bit of a drag to say so, but I don't think you can understand this unless you've gone through it--though I try to put some of it over on the album. But for me at any rate it was all part of dissolving the God trip or father-figure trip. Facing up to reality instead of always looking for some kind of heaven.

RB: Do you see the family in general as the source of these repressions?

JL: Mine is an extreme case, you know. My father and mother split and I never saw my father until I was 20, nor did I see much more of my mother. But Yoko had her parents there and it was the same....

YO: Perhaps one feels more pain when parents are there. It's like when you're hungry, you know, it's worse to get a symbol of a cheeseburger than no cheeseburger at all. It doesn't do you any good, you know. I often wish my mother had died so that at least I could get some people's sympathy. But there she was, a perfectly beautiful mother.

JL: And Yoko's family were middle-class Japanese but it's all the same repression. Though I think middle-class people have the biggest trauma if they have nice imagey parents, all smiling and dolled up. They are the ones who have the biggest struggle to say, 'Goodbye mummy, goodbye daddy'.

TA: What relation to your music has all this got?

JL: Art is only a way of expressing pain. I mean the reason Yoko does such far out stuff is that it's a far out kind of pain she went through.

RB: A lot of Beatle songs used to be about childhood...

JL: Yeah, that would mostly be me...

RB: Though they were very good there was always a missing element...

JL: That would be reality, that would be the missing element. Because I was never really wanted. The only reason I am a star is because of my repression. Nothing else would have driven me through all that if I was 'normal'...

YO: ... and happy ...

JL: The only reason I went for that goal is that I wanted to say: 'Now, mummydaddy, will you love me?'

TA: But then you had success beyond most people's wildest dreams...

JL: Oh, Jesus Christ, it was a complete oppression. I mean we had to go through humiliation upon humiliation with the middle classes and showbiz and Lord Mayors and all that. They were so condescending and stupid. Everybody trying to use us. It was a special humiliation for me because I could never keep my mouth shut and I'd always have to be drunk or pilled to counteract this pressure. It was really hell ...

YO: It was depriving him of any real experience, you know...

JL: It was very miserable. I mean apart from the first flush of making it--the thrill of the first number one record, the first trip to America. At first we had some sort of objective like being as big as Elvis--moving forward was the great thing, but actually attaining it was the big let-down. I found I was having continually to please the sort of people I'd always hated when I was a child. This began to bring me back to reality. I began to realise that we are all oppressed which is why I would like to do something about it, though I'm not sure where my place is.

RB: Well, in any case, politics and culture are linked, aren't they? I mean, workers are repressed by culture not guns at the moment ...

JL: ... they're doped ...

RB: And the culture that's doping them is one the artist can make or break...

JL: That's what I'm trying to do on my albums and in these interviews. What I'm trying to do is to influence all the people I can influence. All those who are still under the dream and just put a big question mark in their mind. The acid dream is over, that is what I'm trying to tell them.

RB: Even in the past, you know, people would use Beatle songs and give them new words. 'Yellow submarine' , for instance, had a number of versions. One that strikers used to sing began 'We all live on bread and margarine' ; at LSE we had a version that began 'We all live in a Red LSE'.

JL: I like that. And I enjoyed it when football crowds in the early days would sing 'All together now'--that was another one. I was also pleased when the movement in America took up 'Give peace a chance' because I had written it with that in mind really. I hoped that instead of singing 'We shall overcome' from 1800 or something, they would have something contemporary. I felt an obligation even then to write a song that people would sing in the pub or on a demonstration. That is why I would like to compose songs for the revolution now ...

RB: We only have a few revolutionary songs and they were composed in the 19th century. Do you find anything in our musical traditions which could be used for revolutionary songs?

JL: When I started, rock and roll itself was the basic revolution to people of my age and situation. We needed something loud and clear to break through all the unfeeling and repression that had been coming down on us kids. We were a bit conscious to begin with of being imitation Americans. But we delved into the music and found that it was half white country and western and half black rhythm and blues. Most of the songs came from Europe and Africa and now they were coming back to us. Many of Dylan's best songs came from Scotland, Ireland or England. It was a sort of cultural exchange. Though I must say the more interesting songs to me were the black ones because they were more simple. They sort of saidshake your arse, or your prick, which was an innovation really. And then there were the field songs mainly expressing the pain they were in. They couldn't express themselves intellectually so they had to say in a very few words what was happening to them. And then there was the city blues and a lot of that was about sex and fighting. A lot of this was self-expression but only in the last few years have they expressed themselves completely with Black Power, like Edwin Starr making war records. Before that many black singers were still labouring under that problem of God; it was often 'God will save us'. But right through the blacks were singing directly and immediately about their pain and also about sex, which is why I like it.

RB: You say country and western music derived from European folk songs. Aren't these folk songs sometimes pretty dreadful stuff, all about losing and being defeated?

JL: As kids we were all opposed to folk songs because they were so middle-class. It was all college students with big scarfs and a pint of beer in their hands singing folk songs in what we call la-di-da voices-'I worked in a mine in New-cast-le' and all that shit. There were very few real folk singers you know, though I liked Dominic Behan a bit and there was some good stuff to be heard in Liverpool. Just occasionally you hear very old records on the radio or TV of real workers in Ireland or somewhere singing these songs and the power of them is fantastic. But mostly folk music is people with fruity voices trying to keep alive something old and dead. It's all a bit boring, like ballet: a minority thing kept going by a minority group. Today's folk song is rock and roll. Although it happened to emanate from America, that's not really important in the end because we wrote our own music and that changed everything.

RB: Your album, Yoko, seems to fuse avant-garde modern music with rock. I'd like to put an idea to you I got from listening to it. You integrate everyday sounds, like that of a train, into a musical pattern. This seems to demand an aesthetic measure of everyday life, to insist that art should not be imprisoned in the museums and galleries, doesn't it?

YO: Exactly. I want to incite people to loosen their oppression by giving them something to work with, to build on. They shouldn't be frightened of creating themselves--that's why I make things very open, with things for people to do, like in my book [Grapefruit]. Because basically there are two types of people in the world: people who are confident because they know they have the ability to create, and then people who have been demoralised, who have no confidence in themselves because they have been told they have no creative ability, but must just take orders. The Establishment likes people who take no responsibility and cannot respect themselves.

RB: I suppose workers' control is about that...

JL: Haven't they tried out something like that in Yugoslavia; they are free of the Russians. I'd like to go there and see how it works.

TA: Well, they have; they did try to break with the Stalinist pattern. But instead of allowing uninhibited workers' control, they added a strong dose of political bureaucracy. It tended to smother the initiative of the workers and they also regulated the whole system by a market mechanism which bred new inequalities between one region and another.

JL: It seems that all revolutions end up with a personality cult--even the Chinese seem to need a father-figure. I expect this happens in Cuba too, with Che and Fidel. In Western-style Communism we would have to create an almost imaginary workers' image of themselves as the father-figure.

RB: That's a pretty cool idea--the Working Class becomes its own Hero. As long as it was not a new comforting illusion, as long as there was a real workers' power. If a capitalist or bureaucrat is running your life then you need to compensate with illusions.

YO: The people have got to trust in themselves.

TA: That's the vital point. The working class must be instilled with a feeling of confidence in itself. This can't be done just by propaganda--the workers must move, take over their own factories and tell the capitalists to bugger off. This is what began to happen in May 1968 in France...the workers began to feel their own strength.

JL: But the Communist Party wasn't up to that, was it?

RB: No, they weren't. With 10 million workers on strike they could have led one of those huge demonstrations that occurred in the centre of Paris into a massive occupation of all government buildings and installations, replacing de Gaulle with a new institution of popular power like the Commune or the original Soviets--that would have begun a real revolution but the French C.P. was scared of it. They preferred to deal at the top instead of encouraging the workers to take the initiative themselves...

JL: Great, but there's a problem about that here you know. All the revolutions have happened when a Fidel or Marx or Lenin or whatever, who were intellectuals, were able to get through to the workers. They got a good pocket of people together and the workers seemed to understand that they were in a repressed state. They haven't woken up yet here, they still believe that cars and tellies are the answer. You should get these left-wing students out to talk with the workers, you should get the schoolkids involved with The Red Mole.

TA: You're quite right, we have been trying to do that and we should do more. This new Industrial Relations Bill the Government is trying to introduce is making more and more workers realise what is happening...

JL: I don't think that Bill can work. I don't think they can enforce it. I don't think the workers will co-operate with it. I thought the Wilson Government was a big let-down but this Heath lot are worse. The underground is being harrassed, the black militants can't even live in their own homes now, and they're selling more arms to the South Africans. Like Richard Neville said, there may be only an inch of difference between Wilson and Heath but it's in that inch that we live....

TA: I don't know about that; Labour brought in racialist immigration policies, supported the Vietnam war and were hoping to bring in new legislation against the unions.

RB: It may be true that we live in the Inch of difference between Labour and Conservative but so long as we do we'll be impotent and unable to change anything. If Heath is forcing us out of that inch maybe he's doing us a good turn without meaning to...

JL: Yes, I've thought about that, too. This putting us in a corner so we have to find out what is coming down on other people. I keep on reading the Morning Star [the Communist newspaper] to see if there's any hope, but it seems to be in the 19th century; it seems to be written for dropped-out, middle-aged liberals. We should be trying to reach the young workers because that's when you're most idealistic and have least fear. Somehow the revolutionaries must approach the workers because the workers won't approach them. But it's difficult to know where to start; we've all got a finger in the dam. The problem for me is that as I have become more real, I've grown away from most working-class people--you know what they like is Engelbert Humperdinck. It's the students who are buying us now, and that's the problem. Now The Beatles are four separate people, we don't have the impact we had when we were together...

RB: Now you're trying to swim against the stream of bourgeois society, which is much more difficult.

JL: Yes, they own all the newspapers and they control all distribution and promotion. When we came along there was only Decca, Philips and EMI who could really produce a record for you. You had to go through the whole bureaucracy to get into the recording studio. You were in such a humble position, you didn't have more than 12 hours to make a whole album, which is what we did in the early days. Even now it's the same; if you're an unknown artist you're lucky to get an hour in a studio--it's a hierarchy and if you don't have hits, you don't get recorded again. And they control distribution. We tried to change that with Apple but in the end we were defeated. They still control everything. EMI killed our album Two Virgins because they didn't like it. With the last record they've censored the words of the songs printed on the record sleeve. Fucking ridiculous and hypocritical--they have to let me sing it but they don't dare let you read it. Insanity.

RB: Though you reach fewer people now, perhaps the effect can be more concentrated.

JL: Yes, I think that could be true. To begin with, working class people reacted against our openness about sex. They are frightened of nudity, they're repressed in that way as well as others. Perhaps they thought 'Paul is a good lad, he doesn't make trouble'. Also when Yoko and I got married, we got terrible racialist letters--you know, warning me that she would slit my throat. Those mainly came from Army people living in Aldershot. Officers. Now workers are more friendly to us, so perhaps it's changing. It seems to me that the students are now half-awake enough to try and wake up their brother workers. If you don't pass on your own awareness then it closes down again. That is why the basic need is for the students to get in with the workers and convince them that they are not talking gobbledegook. And of course it's difficult to know what the workers are really thinking because the capitalist press always only quotes mouthpieces like Vic Feather* anyway. [Ed. Note: Vic Feather 1908-76 was General Secretary of the TUC from 1969-73.] So the only thing is to talk to them directly, especially the young workers. We've got to start with them because they know they're up against it. That's why I talk about school on the album. I'd like to incite people to break the framework, to be disobedient in school, to stick their tongues out, to keep insulting authority.

YO: We are very lucky really, because we can create our own reality, John and me, but we know the important thing is to communicate with other people.

JL: The more reality we face, the more we realise that unreality is the main programme of the day. The more real we become, the more abuse we take, so it does radicalise us in a way, like being put in a corner. But it would be better if there were more of us.

YO: We mustn't be traditional in the way we communicate with people--especially with the Establishment. We should surprise people by saying new things in an entirely new way. Communication of that sort can have a fantastic power so long as you don't do only what they expect you to do.

RB: Communication is vital for building a movement, but in the end it's powerless unless you also develop popular force.

YO: I get very sad when I think about Vietnam where there seems to be no choice but violence. This violence goes on for centuries perpetuating itself. In the present age when communication is so rapid, we should create a different tradition, traditions are created everyday. Five years now is like 100 years before. We are living in a society that has no history. There's no precedent for this kind of society so we can break the old patterns.

TA: No ruling class in the whole of history has given up power voluntarily and I don't see that changing.

YO: But violence isn't just a conceptual thing, you know. I saw a programme about this kid who had come back from Vietnam--he'd lost his body from the waist down. He was just a lump of meat, and he said, 'Well, I guess it was a good experience.'

JL: He didn't want to face the truth, he didn't want to think it had all been a waste...

YO: But think of the violence, it could happen to your kids ...

RB: But Yoko, people who struggle against oppression find themselves attacked by those who have a vested interest in nothing changing, those who want to protect their power and wealth. Look at the people in Bogside and Falls Road in Northern Ireland; they were mercilessly attacked by the special police because they began demonstrating for their rights. On one night in August 1969, seven people were shot and thousands driven from their homes. Didn't they have a right to defend themselves?

YO: That's why one should try to tackle these problems before a situation like that happens.

JL: Yes, but what do you do when it does happen, what do you do?

RB: Popular violence against their oppressors is always justified. It cannot be avoided.

YO: But in a way the new music showed things could be transformed by new channels of communication.

JL: Yes, but as I said, nothing really changed.

YO: Well, something changed and it was for the better. All I'm saying is that perhaps we can make a revolution without violence.

JL: But you can't take power without a struggle...

TA: That's the crucial thing.

JL: Because, when it comes to the nitty-gritty, they won't let the people have any power; they'll give all the rights to perform and to dance for them, but no real power...

YO: The thing is, even after the revolution, if people don't have any trust in themselves, they'll get new problems.

JL: After the revolution you have the problem of keeping things going, of sorting out all the different views. It's quite natural that revolutionaries should have different solutions, that they should split into different groups and then reform, that's the dialectic, isn't it--but at the same time they need to be united against the enemy, to solidify a new order. I don't know what the answer is; obviously Mao is aware of this problem and keeps the ball moving.

RB: The danger is that once a revolutionary state has been created, a new conservative bureaucracy tends to form around it. This danger tends to increase if the revolution is isolated by imperialism and there is material scarcity.

JL: Once the new power has taken over they have to establish a new status quo just to keep the factories and trains running.

RB: Yes, but a repressive bureaucracy doesn't necessarily run the factories or trains any better than the workers could under a system of revolutionary democracy.

JL: Yes, but we all have bourgeois instincts within us, we all get tired and feel the need to relax a bit. How do you keep everything going and keep up revolutionary fervour after you've achieved what you set out to achieve? Of course Mao has kept them up to it in China, but what happens after Mao goes? Also he uses a personality cult. Perhaps that's necessary; like I said, everybody seems to need a father figure. But I've been reading Khrushchev Remembers. I know he's a bit of a lad himself--but he seemed to think that making a religion out of an individual was bad; that doesn't seem to be part of the basic Communist idea. Still people are people, that's the difficulty. If we took over Britain, then we'd have the job of cleaning up the bourgeoisie and keeping people in a revolutionary state of mind.

RB: ...In Britain unless we can create a new popular power-and here that would basically mean workers' power--really controlled by, and answerable to, the masses, then we couldn't make the revolution in the first place. Only a really deep-rooted workers' power could destroy the bourgeois state.

YO: That's why it will be different when the younger generation takes over.

JL: I think it wouldn't take much to get the youth here really going. You'd have to give them free rein to attack the local councils or to destroy the school authorities, like the students who break up the repression in the universities. It's already happening, though people have got to get together more. And the women are very important too, we can't have a revolution that doesn't involve and liberate women. It's so subtle the way you're taught male superiority. It took me quite a long time to realise that my maleness was cutting off certain areas for Yoko. She's a red hot liberationistand was quick to show me where I was going wrong, even though it seemed to me that I was just acting naturally. That's why I'm always interested to know how people who claim to be radical treat women.

RB: There's always been at least as much male chauvinism on the left as anywhere else--though the rise of women's liberation is helping to sort that out.

JL: It's ridiculous. How can you talk about power to the people unless you realise the people is both sexes.

YO: You can't love someone unless you are in an equal position with them. A lot of women have to cling to men out of fear or insecurity, and that's not love--basically that's why women hate men...

JL: ... and vice versa ...

YO: So if you have a slave around the house how can you expect to make a revolution outside it? The problem for women is that if we try to be free, then we naturally become lonely, because so many women are willing to become slaves, and men usually prefer that. So you always have to take the chance: 'Am I going to lose my man?' It's very sad.

JL: Of course, Yoko was well into liberation before I met her. She'd had to fight her way through a man's world--the art world is completely dominated by men--so she was full of revolutionary zeal when we met. There was never any question about it: we had to have a 50-50 relationship or there was no relationship, I was quick to learn. She did an article about women in Nova more than two years back in which she said, 'Woman is the nigger of the world' .

RB: Of course we all live in an imperialist country that is exploiting the Third World, and even our culture is involved in this. There was a time when Beatle music was plugged on Voice of America....

JL: The Russians put it out that we were capitalist robots, which we were I suppose...

RB: They were pretty stupid not to see it was something different.

YO: Let' s face it, Beatles was 20th-century folksong in the framework of capitalism; they couldn't do anything different if they wanted to communicate within that framework.

RB: I was working in Cuba when Sgt Pepper was released and that's when they first started playing rock music on the radio.

JL: Well hope they see that rock and roll is not the same as Coca-Cola. As we get beyond the dream this should be easier: that's why I'm putting out more heavy statements now and trying to shake off the teeny-bopper image. I want to get through to the right people, and I want to make what I have to say very simple and direct.

RB: Your latest album sounds very simple to begin with, but the lyrics, tempo and melody build up into a complexity one only gradually becomes aware of. Like the track 'My mummy's dead' echoes the nursery song 'Three blind mice' and it's about a childhood trauma.

JL: The tune does; it was that sort of feeling, almost like a Haiku poem. I recently got into Haiku in Japan and I just think it's fantastic. Obviously, when you get rid of a whole section of illusion in your mind you're left with great precision. Yoko was showing me some of these Haiku in the original. The difference between them and Longfellow is immense. Instead of a long flowery poem the Haiku would say 'Yellow flower in white bowl on wooden table' which gives you the whole picture, really....

TA: How do you think we can destroy the capitalist system here in Britain, John?

JL: I think only by making the workers aware of the really unhappy position they are in, breaking the dream they are surrounded by. They think they are in a wonderful, free-speaking country. They've got cars and tellies and they don't want to think there's anything more to life. They are prepared to let the bosses run them, to see their children fucked up in school. They're dreaming someone else's dream, it's not even their own. They should realise that the blacks and the Irish are being harassed and repressed and that they will be next. As soon as they start being aware of all that, we can really begin to do something. The workers can start to take over. Like Marx said: 'To each according to his need'. I think that would work well here. But we'd also have to infiltrate the army too, because they are well trained to kill us all. We've got to start all this from where we ourselves are oppressed. I think it's false, shallow, to be giving to others when your own need is great. The idea is not to comfort people, not to make them feel better but to make them feel worse, to constantly put before them the degradations and humiliations they go through to get what they call a living wage.

Tariq Ali is editor of London's New Left Review, a filmmaker and novelist, and has written more than a dozen books on world history and politics, including 1968 and After: Inside the Revolution (1978) and the 1987 Street Fighting Years: An Autobiography of the Sixties. He was prominently involved in 60s antiwar and radical politics; Jagger, a personal friend, is said to have written "Street Fighting Man" in his honor.

2/12: it's cold out here! by Lynn

13 22

One of the reasons why I joined this group was because I was hoping to push myself in developing some technical skills. Although I've owned Photoshop for a year and a half, I've still never really learned to work with layers (or adjustment layers) - mostly I've just used it for cloning things, or occasionally for doing something like focus stacking. That's limited the sorts of effects I can introduce in photos.

This image started as a shot of Duncan on a snowy February day, with a really boring white background. I decided it was crying out for a texture, so (armed with a video tutorial and a brief on-line tutorial) I acquired some textures and set to work.

Alas, my version of Photoshop didn't seem to do what the video tutorial did when I was trying to remove Duncan's image from the background using "refine edges". I finally had to go to "Plan B" and use "blend mode". I did play with several different background textures - with and without color. (My first attempt is shown earlier in my photostream). At Karen Havenaar's suggestion, I blurred the background on this one first. I like it the best of all the results I've had today. It's not perfect, but we're nearing the end of the month, and I don't think I'll have time for anything else.

Two Malibu Surf Girl Goddesses on Surfrider's Beach beside the Malibu Pier! Pretty blond & brunette! by 45SURF Hero's Odyssey Mythology Photography

Join/like my facebook page! www.facebook.com/45surfHerosJourneyMythology

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Beautiful Hero's Journey Mythology Swimsuit Bikini Model Goddesses! Pretty, pretty, girls!

Check out my greatest hits compilation, and let me know what you think:

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As the Great Mick Jagger satted, "Pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, girl

Pretty, pretty

Such a pretty, pretty, pretty girl." -Beast of Burden Sexy, hot, and cute too!

Epic Goddess Straight Out of Hero's Journey Mythology! Pretty Model! :) Tall, thin, fit and beautiful!

Welcome to your epic hero's journey! The beautiful 45surf goddess sisters hath called ye to adventure, beckoning ye to read deeply Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, whence ye shall learn of yer own exalted artistic path guided by Hero's Journey Mythology. I wouldn't be saying it if it hadn't happened to me.

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Nikon D300 Photos of Beautfiul Sexy Hot Brunette!

She was a beauty--a gold 45 goddess for sure! A Gold 45 Goddess exalts the archetypal form of Athena--the Greek Goddess of wisdom, warfare, strategy, heroic endeavour, handicrafts and reason. A Gold 45 Goddess guards the beauty of dx4/dt=ic and embodies 45SURF's motto "Virtus, Honoris, et Actio Pro Veritas, Amor, et Bellus, (Strength, Honor, and Action for Truth, Love, and Beauty," and she stands ready to inspire and guide you along your epic, heroic journey into art and mythology. It is Athena who descends to call Telemachus to Adventure in the first book of Homer's Odyssey--to man up, find news of his true father Odysseus, and rid his home of the false suitors, and too, it is Athena who descends in the first book of Homer's Iliad, to calm the Rage of Achilles who is about to draw his sword so as to slay his commander who just seized Achilles' prize, thusly robbing Achilles of his Honor--the higher prize Achilles fought for. And now Athena descends once again, assuming the form of a Gold 45 Goddess, to inspire you along your epic journey of heroic endeavour.

ALL THE BEST on your Epic Hero's Journey from Johnny Ranger McCoy!

Modeling the new "Gold 45 Revolver" Gold'N'Virtue swimsuits with the main equation to Moving Dimensions Theory on the swimsuits: dx4/dt=ic. Yes I have a Ph.D. in physics! :) You can read more about my research and Hero's Journey Physics here:

herosjourneyphysics.wordpress.com/ MDT PROOF#2: Einstein (1912 Man. on Rel.) and Minkowski wrote x4=ict. Ergo dx4/dt=ic--the foundational equation of all time and motion which is on all the shirts and swimsuits. Every photon that hits my Nikon D800e's sensor does it by surfing the fourth expanding dimension, which is moving at c relative to the three spatial dimensions, or dx4/dt=ic!

With the Johnny Ranger McCoy Celtic Cross on the back of the bikini! All the best on your epic hero's journey from JR MCCOY!

Two Malibu Surf Girl Goddesses on Surfrider's Beach beside the Malibu Pier! Pretty blond & brunette!

17 Reasons by potkettleblack

4 3

Reasons I Love Walt Disney World: #2,350 by Tom B.

7 17

Some of my posts here have been negative in tone as of late, and although there are a lot of things that piss me off, there are a lot more that really make me happy. So rather than get a reputation for complaining about everything, I'm going to provide another example (one of over 2,000!) of why I love Walt Disney World.

Actually, two reasons. That feeling you get when you step off the DME bus (or your rental car if you're too cool for DME) and take that first "breath" of air at your resort, and stepping onto "your land" as a DVC owner. I think the former is pretty obvious--you see the front entrance, your mind races with how great the vacation will be, and you enter a lavish lobby filled with excitement.

The second of today's reasons is not so obvious, but it really is great, I swear. Disney's "best kept" secret has become somewhat of a joke, and I realize it is not a well-performing financial asset, but it is a very great happiness-performing asset (and honestly, for us, it is a great financial asset. If we didn't spend the money on DVC, I wouldn't invest it prudently, I would buy worthless shit on eBay; yes, I have an eBay problem). Getting crap in the mail from DVC (which they do send fairly regularly) puts a smile on both of our faces, as does receiving similar emails. Then there's the knowledge that we'll be staying in the best resorts (Sarah and I are very frugal, so this is a place where we would normally balk at the price and stay at a cheaper resort, but when we arrive at a nicer resort, we always agree that "it's worth it"; you'd think we could account for this and compensate, but we never seem able unless "forced" by DVC or a really really good deal) for a long time, which really makes us happy. I don't want to ramble on like an unstoppable advertisement for a timeshare, but there is just something about it that I can't articulate. Maybe that's how they hook so many people?

I've assembled a new gallery of some recent shots that are inspirational/aspirational to me. Please view the New Gallery Here.

Reason to love Christmas, not because we have so many fun and yum during the festival, but HE borns >2000 years ago, Rejoice! Rejoice!!! 🎉🎉🎉 #christmastree #vancouverisawesome #lord #meaningofchristmas #rejoice #christmas #festival #iloveta by Catal100

Reasons to be cheerful by Deputy Don

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A longer shot of Mrs D’s flower bed by our patio, showing:

(i) the moon-gazing hare, faced around to make a more balanced image, and

(ii) the grass already needs cutting though it’s still only February!

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