Twenty-two Transylvania County TIME 4 Real Science students advanced to two different state level science research competitions on March 24-25 in Raleigh-Durham, where they presented the results of 11 different year-long research projects. The team secured 19 state-level awards and will advance 11 students to the national and/or international level.

 

“My favorite part of the science competitions was being able to explain my project to people with minimal background in the scientific field,” said Sam Ballard, a sophomore from Rosman High School (RHS) and a student scientist in the TIME 4 Real Science Program. “When somebody came` over and asked about my project on their own terms, and then began to understand the science behind it, it made me feel so happy.” Ballard and Brevard High School (BHS) freshman Fritz Ruppert worked this year to levitate small particles using ultrasound.

 

“I think it is essential to remember that these science competitions are more than just competitions - they are chances for you, the scientist, to share and demonstrate your research; to show the world your accomplishments and your failures,” said Ruppert, reflecting on the competitions. “While receiving awards is nice, this is the most important part.”

 

As part of the North Carolina Student Academy of Science (NCSAS) Competition, students submit an original scientific paper for review by professional scientists and present their work to these scientists and their peers at the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics. Students also have the honor of hearing from a keynote speaker. This year NCSU Professor Dr. Robert Dunn presented “Six ​keys ​to making ​totally ​new ​discoveries ​in ​biology ​before ​you ​finish ​high ​school.”

 

Research teacher Jennifer Williams said, “NCSAS is my favorite competition. Students get to share their original work and participate in the excitement of a scientific meeting, much like professional scientists do. First place winners also have the opportunity to present at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) meeting alongside scientists from around the world-- a life-changing experience for students passionate about science. This year eight TIME student scientists were selected to present expenses paid at the AAAS meeting in Austin, Texas next year: Aidan Spradlin, Bryce Spradlin, Hannah Lemel, Matthew Bailey, John Nguyen, Sara Megown, Chase Bishop and Alex Eberhardt. Incredible!”

 

At the NCSAS meeting, students have the opportunity to seek leadership roles . This year, BHS sophomore Chase Bishop ran for NCSAS president-elect and defeated seven other candidates from across the state. “It was inspirational to see that people saw me as a leader and voted for me. In football we are told that we are to be the difference, and I hope that I can be that difference not only in the NCSAS but for the world as a scientist,” Bishop said, He will serve for one year as president-elect and then move into the role of president for a year.

 

When most people think of science competitions, the North Carolina Science and Engineering Fair (NCSEF) comes to mind. For this competition, students prepare a trifold poster that displays their research. Judges view the boards without the students and then ask the students to defend and elaborate on their work. After the judging, the public is invited to interact with the students and their projects. Like NCSAS, NCSEF models a key component of a professional scientific meeting, the poster presentation.

 

Emma Dauster, sophomore, said conducting a research project and preparing for NCSEF, “took a lot of hard work and dedication, but being part of the TIME program means always going the extra mile.” Dauster worked with sophomores Cullen Duval and Kylie Evans to study the attraction of mosquitoes to plant and fungal volatiles and win a Grand Award at this year’s NCSEF. The team will travel to Los Angeles from May 14-19 to compete in the International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF). According to ISEF representatives, “Each year, approximately 1,800 high school students from more than 75 countries, regions, and territories are awarded the opportunity to showcase their independent research and compete for on average $4 million in prizes.” Duval says “it still hasn’t really sunk in yet!”

 

Junior A. Spradlin reflected on his experiences during the science competitions, “My group and I had the chance to share our research and contribute to the scientific field. Sharing what we discovered with respected scientists that may use our experiments to stem further research is very fulfilling.” A. Spradlin worked with juniors B. Spradlin and Lemel to design a new, safer method to test for Naegleria fowleri (the brain eating amoeba) in local waters.

 

A. Spradlin added, “As for the competition, I am extremely proud to say that the projects we completed in a small high school lab in Brevard, North Carolina were able to compete with and defeat projects that were conducted in advanced laboratories at Duke University and UNC Chapel Hill.”

 

The TIME 4 Real Science Program is an intensive, inquiry-based school-day course. Students learn about the process of science as they conduct original scientific research into topics of their own choosing. They are supported by both teacher and scientist mentors as they choose a topic of interest, develop a testable question, design a procedure, collect and analyze data and present their findings.

 

“TIME is a class that offers students, who like me have a strong interest in science, the ability to really pursue their passion and curiosity in this field. The TIME science program has opened countless doors and led to experiences that have shaped my personal interest in biotechnology, and science in general, so much so that I am currently pursuing a career in this field,” said B. Spradlin.

 

Current TIME students would like to thank all who have helped with their research during the year including students, teachers, administrators, parents, and numerous scientists and community volunteers. Thanks go to 2016-17 TIME volunteers: Brian Byrd, Neill Cagle, Ora Wells, Ann Farrash, Alan Smith, Inga Meadows, Courtney Long, Scott Stevens, Cindy Carpenter, Jeff Hinshaw, Adam Moticak, Ken Chepenik, Don Wauchope, Gordon Riedesel, David Williams, Jay Case, Sam Farrar, Jeremy Gibbs, and Heidi Bullock. Special thanks go to Dr. Kent Wilcox, without whose help, guidance, and actions the class could not have been possible!

 

The TIME 4 Real Science Program is a partnership between Transylvania County Schools and NC Cooperative Extension. Funding for the students’ trip was provided by generous donations from the Duke Energy Foundation and from TIME alumnus Abby Williams’ 2016-17 community fundraising campaign. Special thanks goes to the campaign donors that helped make this program year possible: George and Elin Abercrombie, Ann Farash and Paul Onnink, Harriett Walls, Donna and Frank Patton, Bruce and Belinda Roberts, Johnny, Elsa and Ben Strickland, Mark and Page Lemel, Pat Montgomery, Jane and Chris Dauster, John and Nancy Strickland, Marion Petterson, Steve and Mary Arnaudin, Jim and Barb Strickland, Ned Steadman, Abby and Erika Williams, Jessica Good, Jodie DuBrueil, Leah Johnson and Dawn Davenport, Kathie and George Williams,Jennifer Frick-Ruppert, Tracie and Daniel Trusler, Kristi Whitworth, Jeremy Gibbs, Frances Bradburn, Mark and Betsy Burrows, Mike Judd, Laura Patch, Mark and Ameran Tooley, Brooke Burrows, Seyl Park and John Burrows.

 

FOR MORE INFORMATION or to indicate an interest in volunteering or donating to the program, please visit our website at time4realscience.org or contact Jennifer Williams, BHS Science Instructional Leader and TIME 4 Real Science Co-director, at jwilliam@tcsnc.org .

 

Transylvania County State Level Science Awards:

 

A. Spradlin, B. Spradlin and Lemel: An Evaluation of Local, Thermally Polluted Lakes for the Presence of Naegleria fowleria via PCR Without Hazardous Cultivation: 1st place Biotechnology and AAAS Grand Award (NCSAS); 3rd place Biology B and 2nd place, Water Works Award (NCSEF).

 

Dauster, Evans and Duval: Olfactometer assays to measure the response of Culex quinquefasciatus to plant and fungal volatiles: 1st place Biology A and ISEF Grand Award (NCSEF); 2nd place Behavioral Science (NCSAS).

 

John Nguyen and Matthew Bailey: Oligochaete Populations in Transylvania County Trout Streams: A Risk Assessment of Susceptibility to the Whirling Disease Parasite, Myxobolus cerebralis: 1st place Environmental Science and AAAS Grand Award (NCSAS); Western Representative (NCSEF).

 

Bishop and Alex Eberhardt: Feasibility of Cultivating Arthrospira platensis as a Food Source for Mars Exploration and Colonization: 1st place Earth and Space Science and AAAS Grand Award (NCSAS); Western Representative (NCSEF).

 

Sara Megown: The Antifungal Effect of Plant Extracts on Candida albicans: 1st place Biological Sciences and AAAS Grand Award (NCSAS).

 

Ruppert and Ballard: Particle Manipulation by an Acoustic Levitator: 3rd place Technology and Engineering (NCSAS); 3rd place Army Award, Engineering, (NCSEF).

 

Bain Brown and Nicole Rideout: Screening Kudzu Associated Insects and Fungi for Enzymes with Potential Application in Aqueous Oil Extraction: 3rd place Biological Sciences (NCSAS); Western Representative (NCSEF).

 

Emily Trusler and Elise Poche: Isolation and Identification of Entomopathogenic Fungi for Use in Mosquito Control: 2nd Place Biological Sciences (NCSAS).

 

Carly Tabor and Lily Harris: Megacopta cribraria Attraction to Plant Volatiles: Western Representative (NCSAS).

 

Jasmine Gillespie: Toxicity of Nightshade Plants to the Freshwater Clam Corbicula fluminea: Western Representative, (NCSAS).

 

Caleb Fore: Developing a Cost Effective Solar Array While Capturing Energy for Heating Water: Western Representative (NCSAS).

  

Photo captions:

 

1: Twenty-two Transylvania County TIME 4 Real Science students made an impact at two recent state level science competitions. Eleven students advance to national and international competitions.

 

2: Chase Bishop (left), new president-elect for the NC Student Academy of Science, joins his partner Alex Eberhardt in congratulating another state level NCSAS winner. Chase and Alex studied the potential of using Martian resources to grow Spirulina, a potential source for nutrition in future Martian settlements.

 

3: Kylie Evans and Cullen Duval test mosquitoes in their homemade olfactometer. The team discovered that carnations are strongly attractive to mosquitoes and a new fungus isolated from kudzu repels them.

 

4: Elise Poche counts fungal spores using a hemocytometer and contrasting light microscope to prepare a spore concentration for dosing mosquito larvae.

 

5: Emily Trusler uses DNA analysis to identify entomopathogenic fungi isolated from local soil and tree holes. Trusler and her partner Elise Poche studied the fungi’s potential to control mosquito larvae.

 

6: Jasmine Gillespie prepares a dose of snuff. Gillespie worked with her partner Noah Graham to evaluate the sublethal toxicity of tobacco on golden clams.

 

7: Emma Dauster retrieves mosquitoes for testing. She and her partners Kylie Evans and Cullen Duvall will represent North Carolina at the International Science and Engineering Fair in Los Angeles next month.

 

8: Sara Megown tests the effect of herbal extracts on Candida albicans, the causative agent of yeast infections. She found that Goldenseal extract inhibits the growth of yeast in a petri dish. She also tested the extract in living wax moth larvae with some promising, if inconclusive results.

 

9: Matthew Bailey works to analyze DNA from oligochaetes collected from local streams. Bailey worked with partner John Nguyen to assess local susceptibility to whirling disease, a devastating trout pathogen.

 

@ 2017, Transylvania County Schools, TIME 4 Real Science. All rights reserved.

 

www.time4realscience.org

Harry Kane's injury-time equaliser rescued England from a late collapse after Scotland threatened to secure a dramatic victory in their World Cup qualifier at Hampden Park.

 

Substitute Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain's close-range finish after 70 minutes looked to have put England on course for three points that would have cemented their position at the top of Group F - only for Scotland to turn a largely undistinguished game upside down in the closing moments.

 

Celtic's Leigh Griffiths scored two magnificent free-kicks in three minutes, to the left and right of the increasingly uncertain and exposed England goalkeeper Joe Hart, to give Scotland the lead as the board went up for four minutes of stoppage time.

  

With Scotland's fans pleading for the final whistle and Hampden Park in a frenzy as they closed in on their first win against the "Auld Enemy" since 1999, there was only a minute left when Kane, given the captaincy by manager Gareth Southgate, rescued his manager with a far-post finish from Raheem Sterling's cross.

 

Scotland manager Gordon Strachan: "To do what my players did was phenomenal. You cannot do any more than they did. It was like a middleweight fighting a heavyweight. For Leigh Griffiths to score two goals after the huge amount of work he put in is taking drive to a new level."

 

Scotland

1 Gordon

4 Berra

5 Mulgrew

2 Tierney

11 AnyaSubstituted for Martin 81 minutes

6 MorrisonSubstituted for McArthur 45 minutes

8 Brown Booked 3 mins

3 Robertson

10 SnodgrassSubstituted for Fraser 67 minutes

7 Armstrong

9 Griffiths

 

Substitutes

12 Marshall

13 McArthur

14 Naismith

15 Bannan

16 Fletcher

17 Forrest

18 Martin

19 Martin

20 Fraser

21 Hamilton

22 Cairney

23 Reynolds

 

England

1 Hart

2 Walker

6 Smalling

5 Cahill

3 Bertrand

8 Livermore Booked 44 minsSubstituted for Defoeat 90+2 minutes

4 Dier Booked 60 mins

7 RashfordSubstituted for Oxlade-Chamberlainat 65 minutes

10 AlliSubstituted for Sterling 84 minutes

11 Lallana

9 Kane

 

Substitutes

12 Trippier

13 Forster

14 Lingard

15 Gibson

16 Stones

17 Jones

18 Defoe

19 Sterling

20 Oxlade-Chamberlain

21 Cresswell

22 Heaton

23 Butland

  

Thomas Fowler (Elim), Tessa Munt MP and Nick Clegg MP discuss securing youth provision by engaging community support.

Relief, or relievo rilievo, is a sculptural technique. The term relief is from the Latin verb relevo, to raise. To create a sculpture in relief is to give the impression that the sculpted material has been raised above the background plane. What is actually performed when a relief is cut in from a flat surface of stone (relief sculpture) or wood (relief carving) is a lowering of the field, leaving the unsculpted parts seemingly raised. The technique involves considerable chiselling away of the background, which is a time-consuming exercise. On the other hand, a relief saves forming the rear of a subject, and is less fragile and more securely fixed than a sculpture in the round, especially one of a standing figure where the ankles are a potential weak point, especially in stone. In other materials such as metal, clay, plaster stucco, ceramics or papier-mache the form can be just added to or raised up from the background, and monumental bronze reliefs are made by casting. There are different degrees of relief depending on the degree of projection of the sculpted form from the field, for which the Italian appellations are still sometimes used. The full range includes high relief (alto-rilievo), where more than 50% of the depth is shown and there may be undercut areas, mid-relief (mezzo-rilievo), low-relief (basso-rilievo, or French: bas-relief /ˌbɑːrɪˈliːf/), and shallow-relief or rilievo schiacciato, where the plane is scarcely more than scratched in order to remove background material. There is also sunk relief, which was mainly restricted to Ancient Egypt. However the distinction between high relief and low relief is the clearest and most important, and these two are generally the only terms used to discuss most work. The definition of these terms is somewhat variable, and many works combine areas in more than one of them, sometimes sliding between them in a single figure; accordingly some writers prefer to avoid all distinctions. The opposite of relief sculpture is counter-relief, intaglio, or cavo-rilievo, where the form is cut into the field or background rather than rising from it; this is very rare in monumental sculpture.

 

Reliefs are common throughout the world on the walls of buildings and a variety of smaller settings, and a sequence of several panels or sections of relief may represent an extended narrative. Relief is more suitable for depicting complicated subjects with many figures and very active poses, such as battles, than free-standing "sculpture in the round". Most ancient architectural reliefs were originally painted, which helped to define forms in low relief. The subject of reliefs is for convenient reference assumed in this article to be usually figures, but sculpture in relief often depicts decorative geometrical or foliage patterns, as in the arabesques of Islamic art, and may be of any subject.

 

Rock reliefs are those carved into solid rock in the open air (if inside caves, whether natural or man-made, they are more likely to be called "rock-cut"). This type is found in many cultures, in particular those of the Ancient Near East and Buddhist countries. A stela is a single standing stone; many of these carry reliefs.

 

TYPES

The distinction between high and low relief is somewhat subjective, and the two are very often combined in a single work. In particular, most later "high reliefs" contain sections in low relief, usually in the background. From the Parthenon Frieze onwards, many single figures have heads in high relief, but their lower legs are in low relief; the slightly projecting figures created in this way work well in reliefs that are seen from below (see Moissac portal in gallery). As unfinished examples from various periods show, raised reliefs, whether high or low, were normally "blocked out" by marking the outline of the figure and reducing the background areas to the new background level, work no doubt performed by apprentices (see gallery). Hyphens may or may not be used in all these terms, though they are rarely seen in "sunk relief" and are usual in "bas-relief" and "counter-relief". Works in the technique are described as "in relief", and, especially in monumental sculpture, the work itself is "a relief".

 

BAS RELIEF OR LOW RELIEF

A bas-relief ("low relief", from the Italian basso rilievo) or low relief is a projecting image with a shallow overall depth, for example used on coins, on which all images are in low relief. In the lowest reliefs the relative depth of the elements shown is completely distorted, and if seen from the side the image makes no sense, but from the front the small variations in depth register as a three-dimensional image. Other versions distort depth much less. It is a technique which requires less work, and is therefore cheaper to produce, as less of the background needs to be removed in a carving, or less modelling is required. In the art of Ancient Egypt and other ancient Near Eastern and Asian cultures, and also Meso-America, a very low relief was commonly used for the whole composition. These images would all be painted after carving, which helped to define the forms; today the paint has worn off in the great majority of surviving examples, but minute, invisible remains of paint can usually be discovered through chemical means.

 

The Ishtar Gate of Babylon, now in Berlin, has low reliefs of large animals formed from moulded bricks, glazed in colour. Plaster was sometimes used in Egypt and Rome, and probably elsewhere, but needs very good conditions to survive – Roman decorative plasterwork is mainly known from Pompeii and other sites buried by ash from Mount Vesuvius. Low relief was relatively rare in Western medieval art, but may be found, for example in wooden figures or scenes on the insides of the folding wings of multi-panel altarpieces.

 

Low relief is probably the most common type of relief found in Hindu-Buddhist arts of India and Southeast Asia. The low reliefs of 2nd-century BCE to 6th-century CE Ajanta Caves and 5th to 10th-century Ellora Caves in India are noted for they were carved out from rock-cut hill. They are probably the most exquisite examples of Buddhist, Hindu, and Jain arts in India. Most of these low reliefs are used in narrating sacred scriptures, such as those founds in 9th century Borobudur temple in Central Java, Indonesia, that narrating The birth of Buddha (Lalitavistara). Borobudur itself possess 1,460 panels of narrating low reliefs. Another example is low reliefs narrating Ramayana Hindu epic in Prambanan temple, also in Java. In Cambodia, the temples of Angkor are also remarkable for their collection of low reliefs. The Samudra manthan or "Churning of Ocean of Milk" of 12th-century Angkor Wat is an example of Khmer art. Another examples are low reliefs of Apsaras adorned the walls and pillars of Angkorian temples. The low reliefs of Bayon temple in Angkor Thom also remarkable on capturing the daily life of Khmer Empire.

 

The revival of low relief, which was seen as a classical style, begins early in the Renaissance; the Tempio Malatestiano in Rimini, a pioneering classicist building, designed by Leon Battista Alberti around 1450, uses low reliefs by Agostino di Duccio inside and on the external walls. Since the Renaissance plaster has been very widely used for indoor ornamental work such as cornices and ceilings, but in the 16th century it was used for large figures (many also using high relief) at the Chateau of Fontainebleau, which were imitated more crudely elsewhere, for example in the Elizabethan Hardwick Hall.

 

In later Western art, until a 20th-century revival, low relief was used mostly for smaller works or combined with higher relief to convey a sense of distance, or to give depth to the composition, especially for scenes with many figures and a landscape or architectural background, in the same way that lighter colours are used for the same purpose in painting. Thus figures in the foreground are sculpted in high-relief, those in the background in low-relief. Low relief may use any medium or technique of sculpture, stone carving and metal casting being most common. Large architectural compositions all in low relief saw a revival in the 20th century, being popular on buildings in Art Deco and related styles, which borrowed from the ancient low reliefs now available in museums. Some sculptors, including Eric Gill, have adopted the "squashed" depth of low relief in works that are actually free-standing.

 

Mid-relief, "half-relief" or mezzo-rilievo is somewhat imprecisely defined, and the term is not often used in English, the works usually being described as low relief instead. The typical traditional definition is that only up to half of the subject projects, and no elements are undercut or fully disengaged from the background field. The depth of the elements shown is normally somewhat distorted. Shallow-relief or rilievo stiacciato, used for the background areas of compositions with the main elements in low-relief, was perfected by the Italian Renaissance sculptor Donatello. It is a very shallow relief, which merges into engraving in places, and can be hard to read in photographs.

 

HIGH RELIEF

High relief (or altorilievo, from Italian) is where in general more than half the mass of the sculpted figure projects from the background, indeed the most prominent elements of the composition, especially heads and limbs, are often completely undercut, detaching them from the field. The parts of the subject that are seen are normally depicted at their full depth, unlike low relief where the elements seen are "squashed" flatter. High-relief thus uses essentially the same style and techniques as free-standing sculpture, and in the case of a single figure gives largely the same view as a person standing directly in front of a free-standing statue would have. All cultures and periods in which large sculptures were created used this technique in monumental sculpture and architecture.

 

Most of the many grand figure reliefs in Ancient Greek sculpture used a very "high" version of high-relief, with elements often fully free of the background, and parts of figures crossing over each other to indicate depth. The metopes of the Parthenon have largely lost their fully rounded elements, except for heads, showing the advantages of relief in terms of durability. High relief has remained the dominant form for reliefs with figures in Western sculpture, also being common in Indian temple sculpture. Smaller Greek sculptures such as private tombs, and smaller decorative areas such as friezes on large buildings, more often used low relief.

Hellenistic and Roman sarcophagus reliefs were cut with a drill rather than chisels, enabling and encouraging compositions extremely crowded with figures, like the Ludovisi Battle sarcophagus (250–260 CE). These are also seen in the enormous strips of reliefs that wound round Roman triumphal columns. The sarcophagi in particular exerted a huge influence on later Western sculpture. The European Middle Ages tended to use high relief for all purposes in stone, though like Ancient Roman sculpture their reliefs were typically not as high as in Ancient Greece. Very high relief reemerged in the Renaissance, and was especially used in wall-mounted funerary art and later on Neo-classical pediments and public monuments.

 

In Hindu-Buddhist art of India and Southeast Asia high relief can also be found, although it is not as common as low reliefs. Most of Hindu-Buddhist sculptures however also can be considered as a high relief, since these sculptures usually connected to a stella as the background to support the statue as well as provides additional elements such as aura or halo in the back of sculpture's head, or floral decoration. The examples of Indian high reliefs can be found in Khajuraho temple, that displaying voluptuous twisting figures that often describes the erotic Kamasutra positions. In 9th-century Prambanan temple, Central Java, the examples are the high reliefs of Lokapala devatas, the guardian of directions deities.

 

SUNK RELIEF

Sunk or sunken relief is largely restricted to the art of Ancient Egypt where it is very common, becoming after the Amarna period of Ahkenaten the dominant type used, as opposed to low relief. It had been used earlier, but mainly for large reliefs on external walls, and for hieroglyphs and cartouches. The image is made by cutting the relief sculpture itself into a flat surface. In a simpler form the images are usually mostly linear in nature, like hieroglyphs, but in most cases the figure itself is in low relief, but set within a sunken area shaped round the image, so that the relief never rises beyond the original flat surface. In some cases the figures and other elements are in a very low relief that does not rise to the original surface, but others are modeled more fully, with some areas rising to the original surface. This method minimizes the work removing the background, while allowing normal relief modelling.

 

The technique is most successful with strong sunlight to emphasise the outlines and forms by shadow, as no attempt was made to soften the edge of the sunk area, leaving a face at a right-angle to the surface all around it. Some reliefs, especially funerary monuments with heads or busts from ancient Rome and later Western art, leave a "frame" at the original level around the edge of the relief, or place a head in a hemispherical recess in the block (see Roman example in gallery). Though essentially very similar to Egyptian sunk relief, but with a background space at the lower level around the figure, the term would not normally be used of such works.

 

COUNTER RELIEF

Sunk relief technique is not to be confused with "counter-relief" or intaglio as seen on engraved gem seals - where an image is fully modeled in a "negative" manner. The image goes into the surface, so that when impressed on wax it gives an impression in normal relief. However many engraved gems were carved in cameo or normal relief.

 

A few very late Hellenistic monumental carvings in Egypt use full "negative" modelling as though on a gem seal, perhaps as sculptors trained in the Greek tradition attempted to use traditional Egyptian conventions.

 

SMALL OBJECTS

Small-scale reliefs have been carved in various materials, notably ivory, wood, and wax. Reliefs are often found in decorative arts such as ceramics and metalwork; these are less often described as "reliefs" than as "in relief". Small bronze reliefs are often in the form of "plaques" or plaquettes, which may be set in furniture or framed, or just kept as they are, a popular form for European collectors, especially in the Renaissance.

 

Various modelling techniques are used, such repoussé ("pushed-back") in metalwork, where a thin metal plate is shaped from behind using various metal or wood punches, producing a relief image. Casting has also been widely used in bronze and other metals. Casting and repoussé are often used in concert in to speed up production and add greater detail to the final relief. In stone, as well as engraved gems, larger hardstone carvings in semi-precious stones have been highly prestigious since ancient times in many Eurasian cultures. Reliefs in wax were produced at least from the Renaissance.

 

Carved ivory reliefs have been used since ancient times, and because the material, though expensive, cannot usually be reused, they have a relatively high survival rate, and for example consular diptychs represent a large proportion of the survivals of portable secular art from Late Antiquity. In the Gothic period the carving of ivory reliefs became a considerable luxury industry in Paris and other centres. As well as small diptychs and triptychs with densely packed religious scenes, usually from the New Testament, secular objects, usually in a lower relief, were also produced.

 

These were often round mirror-cases, combs, handles, and other small items, but included a few larger caskets like the Casket with Scenes of Romances (Walters 71264) in Baltimore, Maryland, in the United States. Originally there were very often painted in bright colours. Reliefs can be impressed by stamps onto clay, or the clay pressed into a mould bearing the design, as was usual with the mass-produced terra sigillata of Ancient Roman pottery. Decorative reliefs in plaster or stucco may be much larger; this form of architectural decoration is found in many styles of interiors in the post-Renaissance West, and in Islamic architecture.

 

WIKIPEDIA

The design and build of a state of the art, low energy, 45 bedroom medium secure mental health unit

There's a cured pass of resin underneath this holding the bar above the rubber. This pour will "glue" the rod in place so it won't move during the casting process.

Arose early and a long day of bus travel from Banteay Chhmar to Siem Reap. In the grand scheme of things, it was a comfortable ride watching the traffic unfold.

  

ISO3200 f5.6 1/1000 250mm LR

Here you can see the four high strength steel hanging bars used to secure each guideway segment to the launching truss. Once the segments have been secured traffic is safe to travel under the launch truss as was done on the Canada Line and Millennium Line.

The Obama Administration has restored America’s standing and leadership in the world, repaired frayed relations and ended needless U.S. isolation on a range of issues. As a result, we have secured strong cooperation on the issues most important to U.S. national security and upheld American values. President Obama has delivered on his promise of a “new era of engagement.”

   

The United States has led at the United Nations to rebuild a strong basis for international cooperation to respond to the threats of the 21st Century. These results include: the stiffest UN sanctions ever against Iran and North Korea; vigorous and sustained defense of our ally Israel; renewed momentum to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons and materials; strong sanctions and an unprecedented mandate to save lives in Libya; a peaceful political transition in Yemen; support for the historic and peaceful independence of South Sudan; vital UN assistance in Afghanistan and Iraq; backing for a democratically elected government in Cote d’Ivoire; the historic and long overdue completion of the political transition in Somalia; reinvigorated global efforts to counter the scourge of international terrorism; lifesaving humanitarian assistance in crisis zones; and progress in improving the UN Human Rights Council.

   

Addressing Key National Security Challenges

  

•Iran: With American leadership, the UN Security Council imposed the toughest UN sanctions regime ever on Iran for its continued failure to live up to its obligations. Resolution 1929 restricts Iran’s nuclear activities, ballistic missile program, and ability to acquire certain conventional weapons. It put in place a framework to stop Iranian smuggling and crack down on Iran's use of banks and financial transactions to fund proliferation. The United States engages the international community to ensure that these sanctions are vigorously enforced, just as we continue to strengthen and enforce our national sanctions alongside those of our friends and allies.

   

As a result, Iran is more isolated than it has ever been and facing the toughest economic pressure that has ever been mustered. Iran is increasingly cut off from the global financial system; significant amounts of Iranian oil are coming off the market; the Iranian currency is plummeting in value; and firms all over the world are divesting themselves of business with Iran. In less than a year, Iran’s oil production has dropped 40% -- from 2.5 million barrels per day in 2011, to 1.5 million barrels in June. Their economy, which had been growing steadily, is now shrinking at 1% a year. While their official inflation rate is slated to be around 20%, unofficial estimates put it at 30 to 40%, and the Iranian currency has lost 50% of its value since December.

  

•North Korea: In response to North Korea’s announced 2009 nuclear test, the United States secured the unanimous adoption of Security Council Resolution 1874, which imposed the strongest array of measures ever placed on North Korea, including asset freezes, financial sanctions, a broad-based embargo on arms exports and imports, and an unprecedented framework for the inspection of suspect vessels. Since the adoption of Resolution 1874, countries have intercepted and seized tons of contraband cargo.

   

In May of this year, following a prohibited missile test by North Korea, the United States successfully led the Security Council to strongly condemn the test, impose new sanctions on North Korea, tighten enforcement of existing ones, and demand that North Korea not proceed with any further provocations or face additional Council actions.

   

These actions have helped slow the pace of North Korea’s WMD program, strengthened our defenses against proliferation, rallied international consensus to condemn the North’s nuclear and missile programs, and sharpened Pyongyang’s choices by driving up the cost of its irresponsible behavior.

  

•Nuclear Nonproliferation: In 2009, the President outlined his vision for a world without nuclear weapons and set the United States on a realistic path to help advance this goal, including taking several critical steps at the United Nations.

   

Ø UN Security Council Resolution 1887: In September 2009, under the United States presidency of the UN Security Council, President Obama chaired an historic Council Summit on nonproliferation and disarmament, culminating in the unanimous passage of Security Council Resolution 1887. This resolution, the first comprehensive action on nuclear issues in the Security Council in over a decade, resolved to create the conditions for a world without nuclear weapons. It also called on countries to adhere to their obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT)--including cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency, supported better security for nuclear weapons materials to prevent terrorists from acquiring materials essential to make a bomb, and called on nations to reduce their numbers of nuclear weapons.

   

Ø Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conference: In May 2010, NPT parties adopted by consensus a Final Document that includes calls for strengthened verification and compliance, recognizes the New START agreement and the need for deeper reductions of nuclear weapons, and supports efforts to pursue international fuel banks and related mechanisms to broaden access to peaceful nuclear energy without creating new proliferation risks.

   

Ø UN Security Council Resolution 1977: In April 2011, the Security Council unanimously extended the mandate of the 1540 Committee for an additional ten years. The 1540 Committee is charged with assisting UN Member States in the implementation of UNSCR 1540’s obligations to take and enforce effective measures against the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, their means of delivery, and related materials.

  

•Iraq: The United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq (UNAMI) has continued to play a critical role as the United States completed the withdrawal of U.S. forces. The United States strongly supports the work of UNAMI as it continues to provide important technical assistance to the Government of Iraq, assists displaced persons and provides humanitarian assistance. Additionally, the United States played a key role in the passage of three resolutions that mark an important milestone in normalizing Iraqi ties to the international community. The Security Council, in a special session chaired by Vice President Biden in 2010, passed Resolutions 1956, 1957 and 1958 to help return Iraq to the legal and international standing it held prior to the 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

   

From February to September 2012, UNAMI orchestrated the relocation of residents from former Camp Ashraf to Camp Hurriya, a significant milestone in efforts to achieve a sustainable humanitarian solution to one of the most difficult remaining post-war issues in Iraq. The United States will continue to work with the Iraqi Government and the United Nations to provide a path for the safe permanent relocation of former Ashraf residents out of Iraq.

  

•Afghanistan: The United States has pursued a strategy in Afghanistan that assists its people as they take responsibility for the security of their country. The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) is leading and coordinating international civilian efforts and cooperating with the International Security Assistance Force on reconciliation efforts, elections, regional cooperation, the protection of human rights and the provision of humanitarian assistance. The United States has worked to ensure that UNAMA carries out its vital mission to lay the foundation for sustainable peace.

  

•Countering International Terrorism: The United States remains committed to actively countering the actions and ideologies of terrorist organizations and violent extremists. These efforts take many forms, including multilateral efforts at the United Nations, such as:

   

Ø Reinvigorating the UN’s al-Qaeda Sanctions Regime: Eleven years after the Security Council first imposed sanctions against the Taliban and al-Qaida, the United States led efforts at the UN Security Council to respond to the evolving and distinct threats posed by these groups, creating a new sanctions regime targeted against extremists in Afghanistan (UNSCR 1988) and refocusing the 1267 sanctions regime exclusively on the threat posed by al-Qaeda (UNSCR 1989).

   

Ø Calling Iran Into Account: In the fall of 2011, the United States joined Saudi Arabia to gain the General Assembly’s overwhelming condemnation of the Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador to the U.S., sending a very clear message to the Iranian government that the international community will not tolerate the targeting of diplomats. We continue to work closely with our allies and partners around the world to ensure that Iran understands that such outrageous acts only deepen Iran’s isolation.

  

•Standing up for Israel at the UN: The Obama Administration has consistently and forcefully opposed unbalanced and biased actions against Israel in the Security Council, the UN General Assembly, and across the UN system.

   

In 2009, the United States withdrew from the Durban Review Conference, which advanced anti-Israel sentiment, and did not participate in a 2011 commemoration of the original 2001 Durban conference. The United States also stood up strongly for Israel’s right to defend itself in 2009 after the deeply flawed Goldstone Report was released. In 2010, the United States worked assiduously in the aftermath of the flotilla incident to ensure other delegations understood the event in its proper context and to underscore Israel's right to conduct its own independent investigation. The subsequent report of the Secretary-General’s panel served as the primary vehicle for the international community to review the parties’ investigations into the episode. In 2011, the United States vetoed a Security Council resolution on settlements, which risked bringing final status issues onto the UN Security Council agenda. In 2012, after a seven-year silence, the UN Security Council twice unanimously condemned terrorist attacks against Israelis and Israeli diplomatic missions—first in February following the attacks in New Delhi and Tblisi and again in July following the attack in Bulgaria.

   

The United States has opposed Palestinian attempts to upgrade their UN status in advance of a negotiated settlement with Israel, and when anti-Israel resolutions come up at the UN Human Rights Council, the General Assembly, UNESCO, and elsewhere, we consistently oppose them.

   

The United States has also constantly promoted full Israeli participation throughout the UN system and in other multilateral institutions, including leadership positions in UN commissions and membership in consultative and negotiating groups in New York and Geneva. We have also fought hard to ensure the accreditation of Israeli NGOs.

  

•Addressing the Challenges Associated with the Arab Spring: The United States has worked tirelessly across the UN system to respond dynamically to the myriad challenges and opportunities posed by the Arab Spring: leading the international community’s efforts to support these political transitions, providing humanitarian aid and speaking out and holding accountable those responsible for atrocities.

   

Ø Libya: In March 2011, the United States led efforts at the UN to respond to the calls of help from the Libyan people and the region and took unprecedented action to protect civilians in Libya. Resolution 1973 saved thousands of lives in Libya by authorizing states to take all necessary measures to protect civilians. The UN is helping the people of Libya as they take the initial steps to rebuild their country, transition to an inclusive democracy and secure their borders.

   

Ø Yemen: The United States backed Security Council efforts to support a successful and peaceful political transition in Yemen on the basis of the Gulf Cooperation Council transition initiative. The Security Council has supported the Yemeni people as they secure a more peaceful, democratic, and prosperous future without illegitimate interference or terrorism. The United States has also repeatedly pressed for additional international resources to enable the UN to deliver immediate humanitarian assistance to Yemen, given the acute needs.

   

Ø Syria: When the Assad regime responded to calls for democratic reform with violence and oppression, the United States worked closely with the United Nations and the League of Arab States as part of our approach to resolving the crisis in a way that would lead to a political transition that meets the aspirations of the Syrian people. The United States supported the establishment of the Joint Special Envoy for Syria, and fought tirelessly in the Council in support of his Six Point Plan and the United Nations Supervision Mission in Syria (UNSMIS) created to monitor implementation of it. Regrettably, when it became clear that the Assad regime would not adhere to its commitments under the plan, Russia and China blocked efforts to create consequences for the regime’s non-compliance, one of three double vetoes that have prevented meaningful action in the Security Council on Syria. However, the United States continues our work with a diverse range of partners outside the Security Council to bring pressure to bear on the Assad regime and to deliver humanitarian aid to those in need.

   

In the Human Rights Council, U.S. leadership has led to a total of four special sessions and an urgent debate on the situation in Syria, including the establishment of a Commission of Inquiry to investigate violations of international human rights law by Syrian Authorities. Subsequently, the Council created a Special Rapporteur to maintain focus on the human rights situation in Syria and to lay the groundwork for accountability when the day comes that the Assad regime finally leaves power.

   

In the General Assembly last year, the United States guided efforts to adopt an unprecedented human rights related resolution on Syria condemning the Assad regime and calling for a political transition. Additionally, earlier this year the United States worked hard with key Arab delegations to ensure adoption, by an overwhelming margin, of a General Assembly resolution condemning the Syrian authorities' abuses, demanding that the first step in the cessation of violence be made by the Assad regime and welcoming the Arab League's decision to call for Assad to step down and for a transitional government to be formed.

   

On the humanitarian front, where more than 20,000 civilians have been killed and approximately two and a half million are in need of assistance, the United States is working with the United Nations, Syria’s neighbors, and others in the international community to deliver life-saving aid. The United States is one of the leading providers of humanitarian relief, providing more than $100 million to date through multiple UN agencies, including the World Food Program, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, and the United Nations Children’s Fund.

  

**************

U.S. Mission to the United Nations: FACT SHEET: Advancing U.S. Interests at the United Nations

 

09/26/2012 04:20 PM EDT

 

Despite altering the plan a bit to include container shipping, the work at the New Richmond Autoport goes on. Four large pieces of this prefab switch arrived this week on an 89 foot flat car made for the job CN 55017 (formerly CNA 703119, an autorack appropriately enough). A CN Brandt truck retrieved the car off the New Richmond siding and brought it west to the autoport site. A couple excavators were waiting there to unload the switch.

 

With a guy in the truck, crew on the ground and operators in both machines they made quick work of unloading the switch, setting down the first piece when I got there. I was going to snap a couple photos and go but the pace of the work was brisk and interesting so I ending up watching the other 3 pieces get unloaded.

 

The crew works on and around the switch car releasing the chains that held the piece to the car for transport and securing the excavator chains to the panel ahead of the lift. The design of this car looks to be an improvement upon the old method of placing a similar A-frame inside a gondola. With this car the piece sits lower to the ground, has easier access, and doesn't need to be lifted very high to clear the car. April 30, 2020.

The Harmandir Sahib (Punjabi: ਹਰਿਮੰਦਰ ਸਾਹਿਬ), also Darbar Sahib (Punjabi: ਦਰਬਾਰ ਸਾਹਿਬ, Punjabi pronunciation: [dəɾbɑɾ sɑhɪb]) and informally referred to as the "Golden Temple", is a prominent Sikh gurdwara located in the city of Amritsar, Punjab, India. It was built by the fourth Sikh guru, Guru Ramdaas Sahib Ji, in the 16th century. In 1604, Guru Arjun completed the Adi Granth, the holy scripture of Sikhism, and installed it in the Gurudwara.

 

There are four doors to get into the Harmandir Sahib, which symbolize the openness of the Sikhs towards all people and religions. The present-day gurdwara was rebuilt in 1764 by Jassa Singh Ahluwalia with the help of other Sikh Misls. In the early nineteenth century, Maharaja Ranjit Singh secured the Punjab region from outside attack and covered the upper floors of the gurdwara with gold, which gives it its distinctive appearance and its English name.

 

The Harimandir Sahib is considered holy by Sikhs. The holiest text of Sikhism, the Guru Granth Sahib, is always present inside the gurdwara. Its construction was mainly intended to build a place of worship for men and women from all walks of life and all religions to come and worship God equally. Over 100,000 people visit the holy shrine daily for worship.

 

HISTORY

The Harmandir Sahib literally means The Temple of God. The fourth guru of Sikhs, Guru Ram Das, excavated a tank in 1577 CE which subsequently became known as Amritsar (meaning "Pool of the Nectar of Immortality"), giving its name to the city that grew around it. In due course, a Sikh edifice, Sri Harmandir Sahib (meaning "the abode of God") rose in the middle of this tank and became the supreme centre of Sikhism. Its sanctum came to house the Adi Granth comprising compositions of Sikh Gurus and other saints considered to have Sikh values and philosophies, e.g., Baba Farid, and Kabir. The compilation of The Adi Granth was started by the fifth guru of Sikhism, Guru Arjan Dev Ji.

 

CONSTRUCTION

Sri Guru Arjan Sahib, the Fifth Sikh Guru, conceived the idea of creating a central place of worship for the Sikhs and he himself designed the architecture of Sri Harmandir Sahib. Earlier the planning to excavate the holy tank (Amritsar or Amrit Sarovar ) was chalked out by Guru Amar Das Ji, the Third Sikh Guru, but it was executed by Guru Ramdas Sahib under the supervision of Baba Budha ji. The land for the site was acquired by the earlier Guru Sahibs on payment or free of cost from the Zamindars (landlords) of native villages. The plan to establish a town settlement was also made. Therefore, the construction work on the Sarovar (the tank) and the town started simultaneously in 1570. The work on both projects completed in 1577 A.D. During the leadership of the fifth Guru, Guru Arjan (1581–1606), the full-fledged gurdwara was built. In December 1588, Guru Arjan initiated the construction of the gurdwara. The foundation stone was laid by none other than Guru Arjan Sahib himself in December 1588. It is a common misconception that the foundation stone was laid by the Sufi saint Mian Mir of Lahore.

 

Some of the architectural features of the Harmandir Sahib were intended to be symbolic of the Sikh worldview. Instead of the normal custom of building a gurdwara on high land, it was built at a lower level than the surrounding land so that devotees would have to go down steps to enter it. In addition, instead of one entrance, Sri Harmandir Sahib has four entrances.

 

The gurdwara was completed in 1604. Guru Arjan, installed the Guru Granth Sahib in it and appointed Baba Buddha as the first Granthi (reader) of it on August 1604. In the mid-18th century it was attacked by the Afghans, by one of Ahmed Shah Abdali's generals, Jahan Khan, and had to be substantially rebuilt in the 1760s. However, in response a Sikh Army was sent to hunt down the Afghan force. Both forces met each other five miles outside Amritsar; Jahan Khan's army was destroyed.

 

The gurdwara is surrounded by a large lake or holy tank, known as the Sarovar, which consists of Amrit ("holy water" or "immortal nectar") and is fed by the Ravi River. There are four entrances to the gurdwara, signifying the importance of acceptance and openness. Inside the gurdwara complex there are many shrines to past Sikh Gurus, saints and martyrs (see map). There are three holy trees (bers), each signifying a historical event or Sikh saint. Inside the gurdwara there are many memorial plaques that commemorate past Sikh historical events, saints, martyrs and includes commemorative inscriptions of all the Sikh soldiers who died fighting in World Wars I and II.

 

In keeping with the rule observed at all Sikh gurdwaras worldwide, the Harmandir Sahib is open to all persons regardless of their religion, colour, creed, or sex. The only restrictions on the Harmandir Sahib's visitors concern their behavior when entering and while visiting:

 

Maintaining the purity of the sacred space and of one's body while in it:

- Upon entering the premises, removing one's shoes and washing one's feet in the small pool of water provided;

- Not drinking alcohol, eating meat, or smoking cigarettes or other drugs while in the shrine

- Dressing appropriately:

- Wearing a head covering (a sign of respect) (the gurdwara provides head scarves for visitors who have not brought a suitable covering);

- Not wearing shoes.

 

How to act:

If you choose to listen to Gurbani, one must also sit on the ground while in the Darbar Sahib as a sign of deference to both the Guru Granth Sahib and God.

 

First-time visitors are advised to begin their visit at the information office and then proceed to the Central Sikh Museum near the main entrance and clock tower.

 

The Harimandir Sahib runs one of the largest free kitchens in the world, serving 100,000 people on average daily. The meal consists of flat bread and lentil soup.

 

ARTWORK & MONUMENT SCULPTURES

Much of the present decorative gilding and marblework dates from the early 19th century. All the gold and exquisite marble work were conducted under the patronage of Hukam Singh Chimni and Emperor Ranjit Singh, Maharaja of the Sikh Empire of the Punjab. The Darshani Deorhi Arch stands at the beginning of the causeway to the Harmandir Sahib; it is 62 metres high and 6 metres in width. The gold plating on the Harmandir Sahib was begun by Ranjit Singh and was finished in 1830. Maharaja Ranjit Singh was a major donor of wealth and materials for the shrine and is remembered with much affection by the Punjabi people in general and the Sikh community in particular.

 

CELEBRATIONS

One of the most important festivals is Vaisakhi, which is celebrated in the second week of April (usually the 13th). Sikhs celebrate the founding of the Khalsa on this day and it is celebrated with fervour in the Harmandir Sahib. Other important Sikh religious days such as the birth of Guru Raamdas ji, martyrdom day of Guru Teg Bahadur, the birthday of Guru Nanak, etc., are also celebrated with religious piety. Similarly Bandi Chhor Divas is one of the festivals which sees the Harmandir Sahib beautifully illuminated with Divas (lamps); lights and fireworks are discharged. Most Sikhs visit Amritsar and the Harmandir Sahib at least once during their lifetime, particularly and mostly during special occasions in their life such as birthdays, marriages, childbirth, etc.

 

BLUE STAR

Blue Star was a military operation undertaken on 3 June 1984 and ended on 6 June 1984. The Indian Army, led by General Kuldip Singh Brar, brought infantry, artillery, and tanks into the Harmandir Sahib to put a stop to self-styled Dharam Yudh Morcha led by Bhindrawala. During these "Morchay" thousands of Sikhs courted arrest. Indira Gandhi ordered the army to launch Operation Blue Star. Within six months, Indira Gandhi’s Sikh bodyguards killed her (31 October 1984) for the perceived sacrilege.

 

Fierce fighting ensued between Sikhs and the soldiers, in which many of the Sikhs were killed along with many soldiers. The Harmandir Sahib complex also suffered much damage due to the attack, especially the holy Akal Takhat Sahib.

 

This attack is regarded by Sikhs as a desecration of Sikhism's holiest shrine and discrimination against a minority in India. In 1986, the repairs performed on the Akal Takhat Sahib after the attack, which the Rajiv Gandhi Government had undertaken without consultation, were removed. A new Akal Takhat Sahib was completed in 1999 by Kar Sevaks (volunteer labor and funding).

 

WIKIPEDIA

Following the Trudeau government’s approval of Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain Pipeline Project, the Province’s clear, consistent and principled position on its five conditions has resulted in tangible and significant investments that will protect British Columbia’s environmental and economic interests.

 

Learn more: news.gov.bc.ca/releases/2017PREM0002-000050

Motherboard with lock on it, protection, antivirus, hacking, phishing

 

When using this image please provide photo credit (link) to: www.bluecoat.com/

USAID Administrator Smith attended the African Green Revolution Forum in Nairobi, Kenya, where she launched a "A Food-Secure 2030," calling on donors to be bold and do their part to achieve a world free from acute hunger, malnutrition, and poverty. The U.S. Government has already invested more than $6.6 billion in global food security and nutrition efforts through Feed the Future. The Global Food Security Act - the largest development authorization the U.S. Congress has made in a decade - signals the U.S. Government's enduring commitment to global food security and nutrition. Photo Credit: USAID

Douglaston Historic District, Douglaston, Queens, New York City, New York, United States

 

Type: Freestanding house with attached garage (on lot 93) Style: Vernacular cottage Stories: 1

 

Structure/material: Frame with stucco facing

 

Notable building features: Intersecting gable roofs, flared over front porch; round-arched, batten door; brick chimney; brick stoop with non-original wrought-iron railings; some brick veneer; windows with historic multi-pane sash and casements.

 

Notable site features: Mature trees; flagstone walkway; gravel driveway; perimeter hedge; storage shed; cobblestone curb.

 

INTRODUCTION

 

The Douglaston Historic District contains more than 600 houses set along landscaped streets on a mile-long peninsula extending into Little Neck Bay, at the northeastern edge of Queens adjoining Nassau County.

 

Its history over the past four centuries ranges from a native American settlement to an eighteenth-century farm, a nineteenth-century estate called Douglas Manor, and an early twentieth-century planned suburb, also called Douglas Manor.

 

The Douglaston Historic District encompasses the entire Douglas Manor suburban development, plus several contiguous blocks. Most of the houses in the proposed district date from the early- to mid-twentieth century, while a few survive from the nineteenth century, and one from the eighteenth century.

 

The landscape includes many impressive and exotic specimen trees planted on the mid-nineteenth-century estate, as well as a great white oak, located at 233 Arleigh Road, believed to be 600 years old.

 

Douglaston's location on a peninsula jutting into Flushing Bay at the eastern border of Queens County is an important factor in establishing the character of the district. The very early buildings surviving in the district include the c.1735 Van Wyck House, the c. 1819 Van Zandt manor house (expanded in the early twentieth century for use as the Douglaston Club), and the Greek Revival style c. 1848-50 Benjamin Allen House.

 

Much of the landscaping, including the specimen trees, survives from the estate of Douglas Manor, established by George Douglas and maintained by his son William Douglas.

 

Most of the houses in the historic district were built as part of the planned suburb of Douglas Manor, developed by the Rickert-Finlay Company, that was part of the residential redevelopment of the Borough of Queens following its creation and annexation to the City of Greater New York in 1898.

 

A set of covenants devised by the Rickert-Finlay Company helped assure a carefully planned environment, including a shorefront held in common, winding streets following the topography of the peninsula, and single-family houses ranging in size from substantial mansions along Shore Road on the west to more modest cottages closer to Udalls Cove on the east.

 

The houses of the historic district, which are representative of twentieth-century residential architecture, were designed in a variety of styles including the many variants of the Colonial Revival, many houses in the English manner incorporating Tudor Revival, English cottage, and Arts and Crafts motifs, as well as the Mediterranean Revival. In most cases, they were designed by local Queens architects, including over a dozen who lived in Douglaston itself.

 

The district includes three houses of the Craftsman type pioneered by Gustav Stickley. Eight of the houses in the district were designed by Josephine Wright Chapman, one of America's earliest successful women architects, and they constitute an important body of her work.

 

The Douglaston Historic District survives today as an important example of an early twentieth-century planned suburb adapted to the site of a nineteenth-century estate. The stylistically varied suburban residences, the distinctive topography, the landscaped setting, and the winding streets create a distinct sense of place and give the district its special character.

 

HISTORICAL AND ARCHITECTURAL BACKGROUND OF THE DOUGLASTON HISTORIC DISTRICT

 

Native American and Colonial antecedents

 

The Native American presence on the Little Neck peninsula today known as Douglaston included the Matinecoc,1 one of a group on western Long Island linked by culture and language to others in the area surrounding Manhattan Island (including the Nayack, Marechkawieck, Canarsee, Rockaway, and Massapequa). A number of finds from those settlements have been identified at various sites on the peninsula.2 The Matinecoc, who fanned the peninsula and apparently also produced wampum, were summarily evicted in the 1660s by Thomas Hicks, later Judge Hicks, in what has been described as the only such seizure of property recorded in Flushing town records. In the 1930s, according to local histories, a Matinecoc burial ground was destroyed to make way for a widening of Northern Boulevard, and the remains reinterred in the cemetery of Zion Church.3

 

The property seized by Thomas Hicks in the 1660s passed through the hands of several of his family members, and several subsequent sales to other families, before being acquired in 1813 by Wynant Van Zandt. In 1819 Van Zandt bought an adjoining farm from the Van Wyck family. Both tracts had been farmed during the eighteenth century. The Van Wycks built and lived in a shorefront house which still stands (the Cornelius Van Wyck House, at 126 West Drive aka 37-04 Douglaston Parkway, a designated New York City landmark).

 

Nineteenth-century country seat: Wynant Van Zandt. George and William Douglas, and Douglas Manor

 

Wynant Van Zandt (1767-1831) kept his property in agricultural use. Unlike his predecessors, mostly local formers, Van Zandt was a prominent New York City merchant, active in New York civic affairs. As a city alderman, Van Zandt served as chairman, starting in 1803, of the building committee for City Hall, and in 1804 as chairman of a committee on water supply, among other duties. Van Zandt established his Queens County property as a country estate, and built himself a manor, or country seat, in 1819; the building survives, with additions, as the Douglaston Club.

 

In May 1835, following Wynant Van Zandt's death, George Douglas acquired the estate from Robert B. Van Zandt; the deed identifies Van Zandt as a "farmer" and Douglas as a "gentleman."5 One obituary, in the Flushing Journal Weekly, described Douglas as "what the world would call an eccentric man."6 Another, in the New York Evening Post, described him as a wealthy young man from Scotland, who during a fifteen-year stay in Europe "collected some very valuable pictures," and later turned to philanthropy.7

 

Douglas's son, William Proctor Douglas, inherited the property after his father's death in 1862. The younger Douglas served as vice-commodore of the New York Yacht Club in 1871-74. During his tenure, Douglas Manor became a center for New York society yachting and polo. In later years, Douglas rented out the estate house to a variety of well-connected tenants, including European royalty.8

 

In 1869, Douglas hired landscape architect William McMillen to, in the words of McMillen's daughter, "superintend the Estate, improve driveways, and lay out plantings and trees and ornamental shrubs."9 McMillen was later associated with Frederick Law Olmsted and his work on the park system in Buffalo, New York.10 Although McMillen spent six years working on the estate, it is not known exactly what he undertook for Douglas. From turn-of-the-century photographs and other records analyzed in a landscape history undertaken in 1994, it appears that under Douglas's

 

ownership the landscape was characterized by "an informal 'English' look...with English ivy, winterberry, Boston ivy and wisteria."11

 

It was also during Douglas's tenure that a number of exotic specimen trees were planted on the property. Local histories suggest a connection with Samuel Parsons (1819-1906), a pioneer horticulturist with a nursery in Flushing; Parsons owned land near the Douglas Estate. The trees have been a distinguishing characteristic of Douglas Manor since William Douglas's day.12

 

Early suburban subdivision

 

Although the suburban development called Douglas Manor dates from 1906, William Douglas apparently attempted a suburban subdivision half a century earlier south of Douglas Manor. The dominant force propelling development was the gradual extension of the Long Island Railroad, which ran as far as Flushing until 1866 (with stage coach connections for points east), when its extension to Great Neck opened. Even in the 1850s, anticipating the railroad's extension to the Little Neck peninsula, William Douglas had subdivided part of his property (the area today known as "the Hill").

 

Douglas donated land for the railroad's right of way, and later, according to local histories, relocated one of his farm buildings to be used as a railroad station, asking in exchange that the new village be called "Douglaston" (instead of Marathon, a competing name).13 He named a number of new streets after the abundant trees on his property (Pine, Poplar, Willow, Cherry).

 

The Rickert-Finlav Realty Company

 

Besides the three early surviving houses already mentioned (the Van Wyck House, the Douglaston Club, and the Allen House), almost all the rest of the houses in the historic district were built as part of the early twentieth-century planned suburb of Douglas Manor, named for Douglas's estate, laid out by the Rickert-Finlay Realty Company. The redevelopment of Douglas Manor was part of the vast transformation of much of the newly created Borough of Queens into new residential neighborhoods. In 1906, the year Rickert-Finlay bought Douglas Manor, several major transportation projects to speed connections between Manhattan and Queens were underway: the Pennsylvania Railroad and Long Island Railroad tunnels under the East River, and the Queensborough Bridge at 59th Street.14 According to the Real Estate Record and Guide of that year:

 

The development of numerous farms into building lots and the erection of hundreds of new buildings have necessarily advanced the value of real estate in that section of Greater New York. It is said that more than 8,000 new apportionments have been made in the Borough of Queens during 1906, and that considerably more than 10,000 acres of land have been cut up into lots....

 

Chief among the new developments cited:

 

Title has just been taken to the Douglass [sic] homestead of about 180 acres by the Douglass Manor Co. This will probably be the highest class development on the island. It has a mile of water front and most magnificent shade trees. This property will be subdivided immediately.16

 

The Rickert-Finlay Realty Company, which bought Douglas Manor, was active in real-estate development in Queens and Nassau Counties in the early years of the century, buying up large farms and estates on the north shore of Long Island, preferably those with attractive topographical features, and subdividing them into new suburban communities. Their projects included Norwood in Long Island City, Broadway-Flushing in Flushing, Bellcourt in Bayside, Douglas Manor in Douglaston, and Westmoreland in Little Neck.17 By 1908, the company, with offices at 45 West 34th Street in Manhattan,18 was advertising itself as "The Largest Developers of Real Estate in Queens Borough ~ over 10,000 lots within the limits of New York City."19

 

The company's typical strategy for selecting development sites was described by E.J. Rickert in a 1914 article in Architecture and Building: "It was selected because it was on high ground, with a splendid outlook . . . and only four blocks from a railway station. It was . . . noted for the magnificent row of maples and lindens, nearly a mile long, extending through the entire property."20 The company then developed each tract according to a formula based on past successes. E.J. Rickert described the progression of the firm's ideas:

 

The first property developed was Bellcourt in Bayside, which was improved along the same lines as had heretofore prevailed on Long Island — that is, gravel sidewalks were laid, streets were graded and shade trees were set out, no other improvements being made. In the sale of Bellcourt, however, it was found that there was a demand for better improvements, and, consequently, when Douglas Manor was developed, cement sidewalks were laid, macadam roads were built and trees and hedges were set out. Broadway-Flushing and Westmoreland, which came next, were developed to about the same extent as Douglas Manor, all then being considered the best improved properties on Long Island.

 

The next development, Kensington, saw the addition of complete "sanitary sewer system, water mains and underground conduit for street lighting."

 

The new suburb of Douglas Manor

 

The qualities of the nineteenth-century Douglas Manor on which the Rickert-Finlay development capitalized included its hilly topography, its mile-long waterfront accessible to the entire narrow peninsula, and its lush plantings, especially the specimen trees planted during Douglas's tenure. The development also based its new road system on the major farm roads already in place, which became West, East, and Centre [Center] Drives.23

 

The company then established a series of protective covenants to guarantee a certain manner of development and density within the new suburb. In an era pre-dating the adoption of zoning regulations,24 the character of a new development could be guaranteed in no other way.

 

The covenants affected the architectural character of the houses only peripherally — by prohibiting flat roofs, thereby encouraging a more romantic roofline. Instead, they focused on the kind and size of houses and the nature of the landscaping of the new development. They required all houses to be single-family residences, with the sole exception of the Douglaston Club (commercial uses and two-family buildings and flats were specifically prohibited). They encouraged an economically mixed development, with a boulevard of substantial mansions along the Shore Road waterfront, while smaller, less expensive houses would predominate on the peninsula's east. (Such conditions were guaranteed by requiring houses of a certain cost and lots of a certain size). A verdant landscape was ensured by requiring houses to be set back 20 feet, leaving room for greenery, and by prohibiting fences and encouraging hedges, creating vistas not of individual, fenced-off gardens, but rather of a continuous, green, park-like, landscaped environment.

 

Rickert-Finlay went even further, taking steps to protect that environment and shape the community's social character by creating, in 1906, the Douglas Manor Association. Its stated objectives were the creation and maintenance of a club house to promote "social intercourse" among the residents, and to preserve and protect the development's physical amenities, including the roads, parks, shorefront, and plantings.26

 

Selling Douglas Manor

 

Promotional brochures prepared by Rickert-Finlay characterized the new neighborhood as a private community of houses, nestled in a landscape similar to Central Park, surrounded with a mile of shorefront, just blocks from each home.27

 

Douglas Manor's convenience to Midtown Manhattan via the Long Island Railroad was compared favorably to subway commutation to new Bronx neighborhoods. The commute was touted at "only 33 Minutes to Manhattan, 52 Trains a Day," and predicted to become "20 Minutes to Herald Square, when Pennsylvania-Long Island Tunnels are completed." The neighborhood was just three blocks from the Douglaston station, itself very near the Long Island Sound, "being the only station on the line near enough to the Sound to bring the shore front within easy walking distance. "28 The history and character of the old Douglas estate were emphasized, especially the trees planted by Douglas: "Scotch Holly, Magnolia, Japanese Maidenhair, Chinese Cypress, European Beech, Scarlet Maple, Horse Chestnut, Tulip, Lime, evergreens... Even Central Park does not possess a greater variety of rare trees....

 

" This park-like effect would be "preserved and increased by setting out hedges along winding roads, following the natural contour of the land as much as possible.... The shore drive, curving along the bay for over a mile, will be made the finest boulevard on Long Island." To all these suburban advantages, Douglas Manor also boasted the services provided by the City of New York: "city water, stone sidewalks, macadamized streets" and the "full benefit of all departments of the city government, including schools, water, police and fire protection."

 

From 1906 through the Depression, several hundred houses were erected in Douglas Manor, following the plan suggested by the Rickert-Finlay covenants. In general, the lots along Shore Road on the west were developed first, with larger, more substantial houses, followed by the more modest

 

homes to the east towards Udalls Cove. Property owners often acquired lots adjacent to those on which their houses were built to accommodate more generous lawns or gardens. The mile-long waterfront remained undeveloped, held in common by the Douglas Manor Association. The large caliper specimen trees planted in Douglas's day remained in place. The grounds of the various houses were separated by perimeter hedges only — no fences. Two smaller lots formed by irregular street intersections were planted as small parks, maintained by the Association. Together, the parks, commonly held shorefront, specimen trees, and hedged gardens created something close to Rickert-Finlay's version of Central Park, surrounded by water, with several hundred houses nestled in the landscape.

 

The Architecture of the Douglaston Historic District

 

The architectural styles of the over 600 houses and some 150 related structures (mostly garages) in the historic district reflect three centuries of Douglaston's built history. From the eighteenth-century colonial Van Wyck House, to the early nineteenth-century Van Zandt House and mid-nineteenth-century Allen House, to the twentiethth-century suburban houses of the Rickert-Finlay development, to the additions of the post-World War II period, they tell the story of the development of this part of eastern Queens, part of the larger developmental story of New York City and the country as a whole.

 

The Cornelius Van Wyck House, at 126 West Drive, survives as the oldest extant house in the district, and one of the oldest in New York City (it is a designated New York City landmark). Built c.1735 for an early Dutch settler as a farmstead, the house reflects eighteenth-century New York colonial styles. Douglas, who transformed the farm to Douglas Manor, is said to have used the house as an "entrance lodge to his estate.w29 In 1907, one year after the acquisition of the Manor by the Rickert-Finlay Company, the Douglaston Country Club enlarged the building for use as a clubhouse. In 1921, the Van Wyck House passed back into use as a single-family residence, and its owner, E.N. Wicht, hired Frank J. Forster, designer of Colonial Revival and Tudor Revival style houses in the new Douglas Manor development, to restore it to its original Dutch Colonial appearance.

 

The Wynant Van Zandt House, at 600 West Drive, reflects both the older and the newer history of Douglaston. Built in 1819 as a home for Wynant Van Zandt, it was significantly altered after 1906 for use as the Douglaston Club, but still reflects some of the character of Van Zandt's original two-story Greek Revival manor house.

 

The Benjamin P. Allen House (a/k/a the Allen-Beville House, a designated New York City landmark) at 29 Center Drive, built c. 1848-50, is another rare Queens farm house. Predominately Greek Revival in style, it also shows the influence of the newly fashionable Italianate style, especially in its cornices and brackets.

 

Almost all the other buildings in the district date from the twentieth century, and the greater number of them from its first three decades, when Douglas Manor was developed by the Rickert-Finlay Company. Douglas Manor is a contemporary of several other planned communities in New York City, notably Fieldston in the Bronx and Forest Hill Gardens in Queens, all three of which began as subdivisions in the first decade of die century, and blossomed in the late teens and twenties. Like them, Douglas Manor was developed with houses based on historic styles of the past.

 

The first few decades of the century constituted a period of ferment and development in the design of American single-family houses. The epoch has been characterized as "a resurgence of individualism and an indulgence in residential architecture, a reaction to the standardization of the previous two decades. Fanciful cottages in fairy-tale styles were part of that image."30 In some ways, that approach is a logical continuation of late nineteenth-century architectural eclecticism, characterized in the 1890s as "rampant eclecticism in all fields of life and taste, of triumphant individualism, when authority sits so lightly on men's interests and lives; in this age of archaeology, when the different periods of history are made to live again in our imagination. "31 At the same time, residential architecture was affected by notions of progress and efficiency, and a drive toward simplicity and sanitary conveniences in home design.

 

Rickert-Finlay's protective covenants left the architectural character of the buildings almost entirely in the hands of owners and architects, requiring only that building roofs not be flat.32 The result was a collection of early twentieth-century eclectic residential styles, ranging from grand Colonial Revival mansions on the Shore Road waterfront, to picturesque Tudor Revival or Mediterranean Revival houses or houses in the English cottage manner or Colonial Revival houses on the blocks between West and East Drives, to modest cottages near Udalls Cove. Houses were sited in harmony with the topography, which tends to get hillier in the southeastern section of the peninsula.

 

One Douglas Manor architect, Alfred Scheffer, expressed his point of view in an article published in 1929. He described the Tudor Revival house he designed for himself at 216 Beverly-Road — a particularly useful indication of both the architect's and the client's point of view. Tellingly, the very first observation he makes is about the siting of the house, overlooking Long Island Sound: "The water is only a stone's throw — of a conservative marksman — from our front door and the second floor bay window has a certain suggestion of the forecastle deck of a ship, for the intervening land and highway are quite lost to sight and I can get a fine sense of sailing the seas, when I stand there." Only then does he turn to the formal style of the design, and sums up in a sentence the attitude of his day towards historically-inspired styles: "The construction is quite definitely in the English manner although / was not concerned with making it exact or authentic [emphasis added]

 

Scheffer then lists the elements that make his house "English": "stucco and halftimber walls with slate roof . . . The substantial chimney of common brick is typical of many English country houses. . . . The main entrance doorway of the house, at the end of a narrow flagstone walk, forms a Gothic arch of oak timber, framing a paneled oak door with iron straps and two small leaded glass windows, the effect completed by a semi-circular stone stoop. Beside the door is a lantern of pierced wrought-iron in the shape of an inverted tunnel, with wrought-iron bracket." Clearly it is details like the paneled oak door and leaded glass windows which give the house the English "effect" Scheffer wanted. But when he turns to describing the interior, practical matters take precedence: "The interior of the house was designed to take full advantage of our gorgeous outlook over the water."

 

Historical details are listed — "The walls are of rough English hand finished plaster" - but so are the "built-in bookshelves," "built-in comer cabinets," and "convenient and numerous closets and the very large closet and bathroom which join the master bedroom and add much to its convenience." "The interior of the house," concludes Scheffer," will probably grow from year to year. Things will be taken out and others put in until eventually, it comes near to realizing my mental image of what it ought to be. Already, I think, it has the liveable quality which is most essential of all."33

 

The majority of houses in the historic district reflect a variety of styles, loosely adapted by architects like Frank Scheffer, typical of suburban residential architecture across the country. The predominant style is the Colonial Revival in several variants, ranging in date from c.1910 to the present. Most are of frame construction with shingle and/or clapboard siding. Besides a generic Colonial Revival style, the district has such distinctive variations as the Dutch Colonial Revival, New England Colonial Revival, and Cape Cod Colonial Revival. Colonial Revival houses of brick, or frame with brick facing, often have a more formal neo-Georgian appearance. The English manner, the other major stylistic mode, is expressed with Tudor Revival, English cottage, or Arts and Crafts details. These houses, too, are often of frame construction with stucco facing and brick and/or stone trim. The Mediterranean Revival style was also popular.

 

These houses usually have stucco facing and tile roofs. The district also has a handful of houses of the Craftsman type pioneered by Gustav Stickley. Suburban houses of the type found in the district were judged by their picturesque qualities. The Architectural Forum, for instance, featured a Douglas Manor house by Frank Forster, the same architect who restored the Van Wyck House to something approaching its original Dutch colonial appearance. The writer praised Forster's "excellent use of half-timber in connection with brick or stucco," but more importantly his "rare skill in grouping, which creates a picturesque and architectural composition, wholly unaffected or exaggerated and involving no sacrifice in the matter of interior planning to secure this effect."

 

An additional group of houses in the historic district, on the south side of Bay Street, predates the Douglas Manor development by several years. Designed c.1900, they are excellent examples of the Colonial Revival and Queen Anne styles popular at the end of the nineteenth century.

 

Playing an important role in the historic district are the many related garage structures, often designed in architectural styles compatible with the houses they serve. Some were constructed originally as carriage houses and stables, often with residential accommodations, and later converted for garage use. By about 1920, the automobile had supplanted the horse, and garages were built as freestanding structures, some with chauffeur's quarters at the second story, usually situated close to a side or rear lot line. By the late 1920s, some houses were constructed with attached garages, or garages were constructed later, atttached to earlier houses. After World War II, many houses were built with basement garages, while other earlier houses were modified to provide basement garages.

 

The Douglas Manor Architects

 

A few prominent New York City architects with Manhattan offices received commissions in the new neighborhood; however, the vast majority of Douglas Manor houses were designed by local Queens and Brooklyn architects, and a surprisingly large number by architects who themselves lived in Douglas Manor or had offices nearby.35

 

Among the better known firms from outside the neighborhood who worked in the historic district, Buchman & Fox, architects of many Manhattan office buildings, designed 1008 Shore Road, a substantial Colonial Revival mansion overlooking the Bay. George Keister, whose practice included churches, hotels and Broadway theaters, designed 24 Knollwood Avenue, an Arts and Crafts style house, and 104 Hollywood Avenue, a Colonial Revival house. Diego DeSuarez, who planned villa gardens at both La Pietra, outside Florence, and Vizcaya, outside Miami, designed a one-story Mediterranean fantasy at 231 Beverly Road. Lionel Moses, of the firm of McKim, Mead & White, designed a house in the English cottage manner at 1102 Shore Road overlooking Little Neck Bay. The architectural firm of McKim, Mead & White is credited with the formal French Renaissance Revival style house at 4 Ardsley Road. Dating from 1919, it is constructed of hollow terra-cotta block, a form of fireproof construction, and faced with stucco.36

 

Architects from Brooklyn and Queens represented in the historic district include Arthur H. Allen, an architect very active in Forest Hills (a Colonial Revival house at 217 Ridge Road); Philip Resnyk (Tudor Revival, English cottage manner, and Colonial Revival houses on Warwick, Beverly, Grosvenor, Hollywood, Knollwood, Richmond, Kenmore, Richmond and Manor); Benjamin Dreisler (an Arts and Crafts/Colonial Revival house at 243 Forest Road); Louis Feldman (English cottage type houses at 211 and 217 Forest Road); J. Sarsfield Kennedy (a Tudor Revival house at 369 Beverly Road and a grand English bungalow/Arts and Crafts house at 1114 Shore Road), and Shampan & Shampan (a Colonial Revival house at 110 Arleigh).

 

Almost 60 of the over 600 houses in the historic district, built in the first decades of the century, are known to be the work of fourteen Douglaston architects.37 Alfred Scheffer, whose views are quoted above, designed at least ten, most in the Colonial Revival style or English cottage manner with Tudor Revival or Arts and Crafts detail.

 

John C.W. Cadoo designed at least sixteen houses, mostly Colonial Revival in style. Frank Forster designed at least three houses, one Colonial Revival, the others in the English cottage manner, as well as overseeing the restoration of the eighteenth-century Van Wyck House. Albert Humble designed at least ten houses, most in the Colonial Revival style.

 

Josephine Wright Chapman

 

Eight houses in the historic district are known to have been designed in the 1910s and 1920s by one of America's earliest successful women architects, Josephine Wright Chapman (1867-?). Chapman was professionally active from 1892 to 1927, but little is known about her education or commissions.

 

She pursued her interest in a career in architecture over opposition from her family, working from 1892 to 1897 as a draftsman in the office of Boston architect Clarence H. Blackall. Very few academically trained women became architects in the last two decades of the nineteenth century, and Chapman may have entered the profession as an apprentice.

 

By 1898 she was listed in the Boston City Directory as an architect, and developed a successful practice, despite the rejection of her application for membership in the American Institute of Architects.

 

Chapman's first major project was the New England Building at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo in 1901. Other known work includes the Craigie Arms Apartments (1897) in Cambridge, Mass., the Episcopal Church in Leominster, Mass., and the Women's Clubs in Worcester and Lynn, Mass.

 

In 1905, Chapman began to devote herself to the design of houses. She preferred the "English type," long, low and rambling, with gables and timber and plaster detailing. In 1907 she moved to New York, where she was listed in directories as an architect until 1925. Among her few published works was a sixteen-story apartment building on Park Avenue, described as demonstrating "the feminine idea of correct planning . . .and many innovations were to be introduced."

 

While in New York, she also received the commission for Hillandale, an Italian Renaissance style villa in Washington, D.C., built 1922-25. In the words of historian Gwendolyn Wright: "Neither Chapman's early public success in Boston nor her conversion to professional pursuit more appropriate for a woman qualified her for coverage in the architectural press.

 

But her career was remarkable, for few women had the financial independence to experiment with their own offices."

 

Chapman's known Douglaston houses, which date from 1909 to 1917, are in the historic district's two prevalent stylistic modes — five Colonial Revival and three in the English cottage manner.

 

They share picturesque silhouetttes with rooflines that feature gambrel or gabled roofs with hipped or shed dormers, and exposed brick chimneys; and distinctive entry and porch details, including one with Tuscan columns, one with a pointed-arch batten door, and one with a panelled entrance with side-lights and transom.

 

The Craftsman style houses

 

Several Craftsman style houses, including No. 122 Arleigh Road, 140 Prospect Avenue, and 111 Hollywood Avenue, may be one of the largest such collections in any New York City neighborhood.

 

Furniture designer Gustav Stickley of Rochester, New York, created the Craftsman architectural movement and disseminated it throughout the country via his Craftsman magazine.

 

The Craftsman aesthetic drew on the English Arts and Crafts movement, California Mission design, Japanese architecture, and Native American design, and was supported by an ideology influenced by concepts of socialism, the nobility of work, and the value of manual training.

 

Stickley developed his interest in architecture in the years 1902-05, initially as a way of creating the proper environment for his furniture. He hired architect Harvey Ellis to help develop a Craftsman architecture, and the Craftsman magazine began publishing prototype houses initially designed by Ellis, encouraging the public to take them as models for their own homes.

 

The published houses included floor plans, sketches, renderings of room schemes, elevations, and descriptions of appropriate rugs, fabrics, furniture, and color schemes. Stickley then encouraged his readers to alter the plans to suit local conditions.

 

In 1909, Stickley became involved in the actual construction of houses when he organized the Craftsman Building Company, which constructed houses in New Jersey and on Long Island.

 

The company was active for just under a year; the exact number of houses built is unknown. Most "Craftsman" houses were built by contractors using Craftsman plans.

 

The Craftsman house embodies a number of characteristics in its exterior. It is generally designed to take advantage of its site and views. Picturesque in its composition, it incorporates an "honest" expression of its materials and structure.

 

It makes use of exposed or emphasized structural elements, especially a broad, overhanging roof, often supported by large, open rafters extending beyond the eaves.

 

There may be wooden elements including curved roofs, or exotic piled capitals. Often such houses include pergolas, porches, balconies or verandas. Windows are grouped together to create large openings.

 

Craftsman houses use a variety of materials, preferably local. Stonework is often textured and ornamental, with variegated colors and shapes. Other common materials include clinker brick, and stucco, often mixed with rough sand or bits of glass.

 

Historical and Architectural Introduction

 

No. 111 Hollywood Road was designed by the Craftsman architects in 1914.55 The interior follows the Craftsman aesthetic, while the exterior borrows the distinctive eyebrow window and brick Tudor arched entrance from neighboring houses.

 

No. 122 Arleigh Road corresponds to Craftsman plan number 70, a "Ten-Room House for Town or Country Life" published originally in the Craftsman in July 1909 and again in More Craftsman Homes. Its horizontal orientation, large living porch, emphasis on structural elements including low, spreading, overhanging eaves and extended rafters, and central entrance and symmetrical facade with grouped windows, all reflect the Craftsman mold.

 

No. 140 Prospect Road correspond to Craftsman plan number 85, a "Small Two-Story Cement House with Recessed Porch and Balcony," published originally in the Craftsman in March 1910 and again in More Craftsman Homes. Its low-pitched roof revealing the rafters, porch and balcony, decorative use of structural elements, and grouping of windows and openings, all fit the Craftsman aesthetic.

 

A number of other houses in the historic district reflect the Craftsman aesthetic, even though they do not follow published Craftsman plans.

 

Prominent residents and later history

 

The first residents to move into the new Douglas Manor development, in 1907, were "the Misses Butler, of Flushing." They were followed by a number of newspapermen including "Mr. Mayer, World cartoonist, on Shore Road and Knollwood Ave.," "George C. Minor, of the New York Herald" on West Drive and Knollwood, and "Arthur Greaves, city editor of the New York Times" on West Drive, as well as a Mr. Slater of Manhattan and a Mr. Burtis, "manager of the Brooklyn branch of Swift & Co."56 Country Life in America the following year showed houses for sale in Douglas Manor priced at $8500 and $10,000.

 

Over the years, the historic district has attracted many famous residents, including a number of people in theater and the arts. Besides the above mentioned Herbert Mayer, cartoonist for The World, and architect Elbert McGran Jackson, who also illustrated covers for the Saturday Evening Post, artists included Percy Crosby, author of the "Skippy" comic strip; Robbie Robinson, another

 

illustrator for the Saturday Evening Post, Norwegian born sculptor Trygve Hammer, whose house is at 329 Forest Road,59 and satirist George Grosz.

 

Douglaston's location on the Long Island Rail Road, which made it convenient to the Astoria Studios in Long Island City, an early movie center, attracted many actors in the days before the ascendancy of Hollywood.

 

Residents have included Ginger Rogers, Hedda Hopper, Richard Dix, Ward Bond, Bonita Granville, Clifton Webb, Arthur Treacher, Jack Donahue, and William Collier Sr., as well as Ziegfeld Follies star Margaret Corry.

 

Other notable residents have included author Ring Lardner, as well as Olympic swimmer Annette Kellerman, tennis pro John McEnroe, Jr., and pianist Claudio Arrau.

 

Douglaston resident Anne E. Hayes was one of the first women to attend Cornell University's medical school, and later became a clothing designer.

 

In the half century since the end of World War II, the Douglaston Historic District has seen numerous houses altered or demolished, and much new construction. Some of the new houses have maintained the scale and repeated the materials and styles of earlier houses; others have not.

 

They have ranged in style from ranch houses to modern versions of the Colonial Revival. Overall, however, the Douglaston Historic District survives, maintaining much of its original architectural character as a planned suburban community, as well as rare surviving reminders of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and significant landscape features including the commonly-held waterfront, specimen trees, and generous landscaping.

 

All create a distinct sense of place, recalling a significant period in the history of Queens.

 

- From the 1997 NYCLPC Historic District Designation Report

U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Department of Defense held a joint media tour focusing on Operation Secure Line at the CBP Hidalgo Port of Entry in Hidalgo, Texas on November 9, 2018. Photo by Ozzy Trevino

Woordfoto: zeker

Secure, Owen takes a first spin in his "big boy" carseat. He was getting too tall for the infant seat, even though he hadn't hit the weight limit.

spiritcloth.typepad.com/spirit_cloth/2009/09/capturing-th...

View Large On Black

SAN DIEGO, Calif. – The Orion boilerplate test vehicle is secured on its cradle in the well deck of the U.S. Navy's USS Anchorage in preparation for Underway Recovery Test 2 in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego. A safety barrier has been installed near the test vehicle to keep it from going further into the well deck as it fills with water. NASA, Lockheed Martin and the U.S. Navy will conduct the test to prepare for recovery of the Orion crew module on its return from a deep space mission. The underway recovery test will allow the team to demonstrate and evaluate the recovery processes, procedures, new hardware and personnel in open waters. The Ground Systems Development and Operations Program is conducting the underway recovery test. Orion is the exploration spacecraft designed to carry astronauts to destinations not yet explored by humans, including an asteroid and Mars. It will have emergency abort capability, sustain the crew during space travel and provide safe re-entry from deep space return velocities. The first unpiloted test flight of the Orion is scheduled to launch in 2014 atop a Delta IV rocket and in 2017 on NASA’s Space Launch System rocket. For more information, visit www.nasa.gov/orion. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

BANGABANDHU SHEIKH MUJIBUR RAHMAN

The life of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman is the saga of a great leader turning peoplepower into an armed struggle that liberated a nation and created the world’s ninth most populous state. The birth of the sovereign state of Bangladesh in December 1971, after a heroic war of nine months against the Pakistani colonial rule, was the triumph of his faith in the destiny of his people. Sheikh Mujib, endearingly called Bangabandhu or friend of Bangladesh, rose from the people, molded their hopes and aspirations into a dream and staked his life in the long battle for making it real. He was a true democrat, and he employed in his struggle for securing justice and fairplay for the Bengalees only democratic and constitutional weapons until the last moment. It is no accident of history that in an age of military coup d’etat and ‘strong men’, Sheikh Mujib attained power through elections and mass movement and that in an age of decline of democracy he firmly established democracy in one of the least developed countries of Asia.

Sheikh Mujib was born on 17 March 1920 in a middle class family at Tungipara in Gopalganj district. Standing 5 feet 11 inches, he was taller than the average Bengalee. Nothing pleased him more than being close to the masses, knowing their joys and sorrows and being part of their travails and triumphs. He spoke their soft language but in articulating their sentiments his voice was powerful and resonant. He had not been educated abroad, nor did he learn the art of hiding feelings behind sophistry; yet he was loved as much by the urban educated as the common masses of the villages. He inspired the intelligentsia and the working class alike. He did not, however, climb to leadership overnight.

Early Political Life: His political life began as an humble worker while he was still a student. He was fortunate to come in early contact with such towering personalities as Hussain Shaheed Suhrawardy and A K Fazlul Huq, both charismatic Chief Ministers of undivided Bengal. Adolescent Mujib grew up under the gathering gloom of stormy politics as the aging British raj in India was falling apart and the Second World War was violently rocking the continents. He witnessed the ravages of the war and the stark realities of the great famine of 1943 in which about five million people lost their lives. The tragic plight of the people under colonial rule turned young Mujib into a rebel.

This was also the time when he saw the legendary revolutionary Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose challenging the British raj. Also about this time he came to know the works of Bernard Shaw, Karl Marx, Rabindranath Tagore and rebel poet Kazi Nazrul Islam. Soon after the partition of India in 1947 it was felt that the creation of Pakistan with its two wings separated by a physical distance of about 1,200 miles was a geographical monstrosity. The economic, political, cultural and linguistic characters of the two wings were also different. Keeping the two wings together under the forced bonds of a single state structure in the name of religious nationalism would merely result in a rigid political control and economic exploitation of the eastern wing by the all-powerful western wing which controlled the country’s capital and its economic and military might.

Early Movement: In 1948 a movement was initiated to make Bengali one of the state languages of Pakistan. This can be termed the first stirrings of the movement for an independent Bangladesh. The demand for cultural freedom gradually led to the demand for national independence. During that language movement Sheikh Mujib was arrested and sent to jail. During the blood-drenched language movement in 1952 he was again arrested and this time he provided inspiring leadership of the movement from inside the jail.

In 1954 Sheikh Mujib was elected a member of the then East Pakistan Assembly. He joined A K Fazlul Huq’s United Front government as the youngest minister. The ruling clique of Pakistan soon dissolved this government and Shiekh Mujib was once again thrown into prison. In 1955 he was elected a member of the Pakistan Constituent Assembly and was again made a minister when the Awami League formed the provincial government in 1956. Soon after General Ayub Khan staged a military coup in Pakistan in 1958, Sheikh Mujib was arrested once again and a number of cases were instituted against him. He was released after 14 months in prison but was re-arrested in February 1962. In fact, he spent the best part of his youth behind the prison bars.

Supreme Test: March 7, 1971 was a day of supreme test in his life. Nearly two million freedom loving people assembled at the Ramna Race Course Maidan, later renamed Suhrawardy Uddyan, on that day to hear their leader’s command for the battle for liberation. The Pakistani military junta was also waiting to trap him and to shoot down the people on the plea of suppressing a revolt against the state. Sheikh Mujib spoke in a thundering voice but in a masterly well-calculated restrained language. His historic declaration in the meeting was: "Our struggle this time is for freedom. Our struggle this time is for independence." To deny the Pakistani military an excuse for a crackdown, he took care to put forward proposals for a solution of the crisis in a constitutional way and kept the door open for negotiations.

The crackdown, however, did come on March 25 when the junta arrested Sheikh Mujib for the last time and whisked him away to West Pakistan for confinement for the entire duration of the liberation war. In the name of suppressing a rebellion the Pakistani military let loose hell on the unarmed civilians throughout Bangladesh and perpetrated a genocide killing no less than three million men, women and children, raping women in hundreds of thousands and destroying property worth billions of taka. Before their ignominious defeat and surrender they, with the help of their local collaborators, killed a large number of intellectuals, university professors, writers, doctors, journalists, engineers and eminent persons of other professions. In pursuing a scorch-earth policy they virtually destroyed the whole of the country’s infrastructure. But they could not destroy the indomitable spirit of the freedom fighters nor could they silence the thundering voice of the leader. Tape recordings of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib’s 7th March speech kept on inspiring his followers throughout the war.

Return and Reconstruction: Forced by international pressure and the imperatives of its own domestic predicament, Pakistan was obliged to release Sheikh Mujib from its jail soon after the liberation of Bangladesh and on 10 January 1972 the great leader returned to his beloved land and his admiring nation.

But as he saw the plight of the country his heart bled and he knew that there would be no moment of rest for him. Almost the entire nation including about ten million people returning from their refuge in India had to be rehabilitated, the shattered economy needed to be put back on the rail, the infrastructure had to be rebuilt, millions had to be saved from starvation and law and order had to be restored. Simultaneously, a new constitution had to be framed, a new parliament had to be elected and democratic institutions had to be put in place. Any ordinary mortal would break down under the pressure of such formidable tasks that needed to be addressed on top priority basis. Although simple at heart, Sheikh Mujib was a man of cool nerves and of great strength of mind. Under his charismatic leadership the country soon began moving on to the road to progress and the people found their long-cherished hopes and aspirations being gradually realized.

Assassination: But at this critical juncture, his life was cut short by a group of anti-liberation reactionary forces who in a pre-dawn move on 15 August 1975 not only assassinated him but 23 of his family members and close associates. Even his 10 year old son Russel’s life was not spared by the assassins. The only survivors were his two daughters, Sheikh Hasina - now the country’s Prime Minister - and her younger sister Sheikh Rehana, who were then away on a visit to Germany. In killing the father of the Nation, the conspirators ended a most glorious chapter in the history of Bangladesh but they could not end the great leader’s finest legacy- the rejuvenated Bengali nation. In a fitting tribute to his revered memory, the present government has declared August 15 as the national mourning day. On this day every year the people would be paying homage to the memory of a man who became a legend in his won lifetime. Bangabandhu lives in the heart of his people. Bangladesh and Bangabandhu are one and inseparable. Bangladesh was Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s vision and he fought and died for it.

 

My practical experience, some of new leaders of BNP (retired amla) wants to be leader. They want to show something to Khaleda Zia in strike period. Want to be talk of the day as like Sadek Hossain Khoka. Khoka hold liquid tomato pack with him and blasted in due time while police caught him on the streets. Remember people? Shamsher Mobin Choudhury Beer Bikram Freedom fighter, I salute for his contribution, but I enjoyed his acting on strike period with police SI. He want to be arrested then news will be like this “Beer Bikram Shamsher Mobin Choudhury didn’t relief from the police tortured.

Good attitude but no need to do this simple acting for growing the attraction of Khaleda. Next time he will be foreign Minister if BNP comes to the power.

 

Maintaining secure communications within a UN peacekeeping mission is an operational necessity. While it may look antiquated by today’s standards, the telephone exchange used by the Signal Corps of the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP) was considered high-tech back in 1973.

1 April 1973

Credit: UN Photo

 

When “Madame-Sir” made it in a male world

A trail blazer in Sri Lanka’s diplomatic service, Manel Abeysekera speaks to Chandani Kirinde of many memorable moments now recalled in her new book

When Manel Abeysekera arrived in the Thai capital Bangkok to take up duties at the Sri Lanka Embassy as chargé d’affaires in 1970, she was greeted by the driver who had come to the airport with the words "Welcome, Madame-Sir”. The driver, no doubt, unaccustomed to seeing a lady diplomat had hence instantaneously coined this novel greeting. It’s this unique phrase that Mrs. Abeysekera, Sri Lanka’s first woman entrant to the Foreign Service (then Ceylon Overseas Service), has chosen as the title of her memoirs due to be released shortly.

  

“Madame-Sir”, a Stamford Lake publication will be launched on November 30

Her entry into the Foreign Service in 1958 came at a time when the public service was an exclusively male domain and was quite accidental. Her eye had caught a gazette notification that appeared in the newspaper that year calling for applications to join the Overseas Service, which also carried a sentence stating that “married women who apply must get special permission of the Public Service Commission”.

 

“Being an unmarried woman, I thought I might have a better chance and sent an application,” Mrs. Abeysekera recalls. She was called for an interview with three Permanent Secretaries chairing the panel who welcomed her as the first woman to face such an interview. But what annoyed her was the question that came next. “What if we take you and train you and then you decide to get married,” one of them had asked. Her quick thinking answer put an end to that line of questioning. “I am sorry Sir, but I don’t think there is anything in the application to say that if you get married you have to leave. What about a man? Do they leave when they get married?’ she retaliated.

 

The answers to the questions on international affairs which followed came easily to her and she secured herself a place in the Overseas Service, along with seven male applicants.

 

The foundation for her trailblazing career in the foreign service was laid in her school years at Methodist College, Colombo which she describes as the “number one girls’ college”. She secured the all island second place in her SSC (Senior School Certificate) and later gained admission to read history at Peradeniya. But being a female was an impediment to her pursuance of a higher education.

 

“I was a home bird. I had never been away from home a single day and was literally tied to my mother’s apron strings. She did not want me to go the 72 miles to Kandy and then I decided I would not study anymore,” she says.

 

But her father, a civil servant and later Senator, E.W. Kannangara, was keen that she pursues her higher education and suggested she do an external degree from the U.K. She enrolled for a course in Wolsely Hall in Oxford, did the first exam well, but lost interest thereafter. “I am not a person who can sit and study. I need company. I am a gregarious type. I like competition and challenges,” Mrs.Abeysekera says with a laugh.

 

That may have been the end of her academic career if not for her brother, who was studying at Oxford at the time, suggesting that she seek a place there to follow a degree course. Her parents then asked her to go to Peradeniya which she did not want to do as her classmates had already finished their first year.

Thereon she went on a tour with her parents and sister to several European countries which was very “educational in nature” and upon her return to the country, again prompted by her brother, applied to Somerville College at Oxford where she went to study modern history.

 

“I always wanted to follow in my father’s footsteps. He was in the first batch to join the Ceylon Civil Service. He was my hero.” As fate would have it, instead of the Civil Service, she was selected to the Foreign Service in 1958, and was sent to London to study languages- Italian being the choice for her.

 

Before proceeding to London for training, Mrs. Abeysekera recalled the new recruits being taken to meet the then Prime Minister S.W.R.D Bandaranaike. “Before we left my father warned me that the Premier would be in a bad mood that day due to certain political problems that had cropped up with the Federal Party (FP). Being the only woman, my colleagues would have expected me to sit next to the Prime Minister but instead I chose to sit away from him. He turned to one of the boys and asked, “What is my foreign policy?” While he fumbled for an answer, he asked the same question from the rest and having not received a satisfactory response turned to his secretary and asked him to tell the recruits to study his foreign policy and come back.’

  

Thus ended their first meeting with Mr. Bandaranaike but before the new recruits went on their overseas training, they met with him again. “This time my father said Mr. Bandaranike would be in a good mood as he had sorted out his political differences with the FP. And he was prophetic as the Premier was in an expansive mood that day and noted that a woman too had been recruited.”

 

Tragically Mr. Bandaranaike was assassinated while she was away on her overseas training and when she assumed duties at the Ministry of External Affairs, his widow Sirima Bandaranaike was Prime Minister and was someone Mrs. Abeysekera was to work closely with.

 

One of her most memorable experiences in the Foreign Service was the role she played as Chief of Protocol during the Non-Aligned Summit in 1976 which was attended by 92 heads of state and government.

 

She along with her team of officials from the External Affairs Ministry as well as assistance from the members of the Police and armed forces rehearsed for two years to see the successful conclusion of the biggest event of this nature the country had hosted. “I had allocated seven minutes for each of the VIPs to inspect the guard of honour and speak with the President and the Prime Minister and it went off perfectly. We had a lot of camaraderie and team work.”

 

Mrs. Abeysekera feels that the reason for the smooth conduct of the NAM summit was that there was a single chain of command at the time with the Prime Minister also being the Minister of Defence, External Affairs as well as in charge of economic affairs. “Mrs. Bandaranaike was someone who took quick decisions. It was a real pleasure to work with her.”

 

The other momentous event in her career took place when Mrs. Abeysekera was serving as Ambassador in Thailand when Sri Lankan national Sepala Ekanayake hijacked an Italian airliner with 169 passengers on board and threatened to blow it up on the tarmac of the Bangkok airport.

 

“I was in the Alitalia office in Bangkok for 38 hours negotiating with the hijacker. It was like a miracle but he did as I asked. We managed to settle the matter without anyone getting hurt,” she says.

In her memoirs, Mrs. Abeysekera deals with the “career and dilemmas of the first woman diplomat in the Sri Lankan Foreign Service” and says her belief that “God would help me in my challenges” and “my parents legacy” were the important aspects that helped her face them.

 

“If you overcome and meet the dilemmas and challenges, it strengthens your character; Just plain sailing without problems never strengthens you.” Her career in the Foreign Service spanning 35 years saw her in the close company of royalty, presidents and prime ministers. She recalls with fondness the former Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi whom she first met in 1962 when the former visited Sri Lanka with her father Jawaharlal Nehru, who was then premier, and opened the Ayurveda Hospital at Nawinna. They met again when Mrs. Gandhi attended the NAM summit in Colombo in 1976. Another such leader was the one time Zambian President Kenneth Kaunda.

 

A hallmark of her success was not being afraid to advise politicians when required to do so and not letting anything stress her out. “Our job is to be advisor and if they want they can take it and if they don’t want to, they won’t,” she says candidly.

 

One politician with whom she says she had quite a few arguments with was A.C.S. Hameed (Foreign Minister from 1977-89). However after her last protocol job, when she met with him, he had quipped, “Manel tells me lots of things I don’t want to hear but when I ponder I realize it’s for my own good,” to which she promptly replied, “Sir, that is the best compliment an official can have from a politician.”

She still keeps in touch with the driver in Thailand whose words became the inspiration for the title of her memoirs.

 

“When he used to drive me around when I was in Bangkok, people used to come up to him and ask him, ‘Why are you flying the flag for the ambassador’s wife?’ only to have him tell them proudly, ‘She is the Ambassador’.”

 

It’s such interesting anecdotes that Mrs. Abeysekera recalls with fondness as she reminisces her long career as a diplomat, a path she trod in her own forthright, humorous and affable style that made her a worthy pioneer in her chosen field.

 

Sunday Times (21/11/2010)

Lostinsound.org coverage of CoSM Vernal Equinox 3-22-2014

 

Photos by Kyle Rober

Kylerober7@gmail.com

www.fractaltribe.net

 

www.lostinsound.org

www.facebook.com/lostinsoundorg

 

secure.cosm.org/np/clients/cosm/event.jsp?event=1373

www.facebook.com/SacredMirrors

www.facebook.com/events/1413009142275722

  

Andy Reed @ CoSM 3-22-14 www.mixcloud.com/infinitegeometry/live-cosm-the-chapel-of...

____________________

 

Event Schedule:

 

7:30 - Doors Open

8pm - Opening Ceremony with Alex & Allyson

9:30 - Ceremony Ends - Celebration begins

10pm - Dance Music, Live Painters, Fire Performers, etc.

3am - End of the 2014 Vernal Equinox Celebration

  

With your hosts Alex Grey & Allyson Grey:

  

Music Lineup

 

Random Rab

 

Emerging from his own distinct corner of the West Coast electronic music scene, Random Rab offers a powerful and unique contribution to sonic exploration. Often referred to as “The Master of Emotion” his music is patently beautiful and melodic. With diverse influences ranging from trip-hop, classical and Arabic to bass driven compositions, his songs are considered anthemic and timeless. As a multi-instrumentalist and singer, his tracks are organic, uplifting and stand on their own as a distinct genre. Listeners of all types of music can find something they can relate to in this sound. He has toured extensively across North America, including tours with Bassnectar, Shpongle, Beats Antique and headlined several festivals across the country.

 

There is no doubt that Rab understands a multitude of musical styles. He has been the front man of a heavy metal band, toured as a classical trumpet player, played bass in a country music band, was a scratch DJ for a jazz fusion project, was the singer for a rock band in Mexico and has collaborated with countless musicians of all styles. From acoustic performances in the Himalayas to rocking packed clubs in New York, Random Rab has found a way to connect with people of all kinds.

 

With a dedicated fanbase born from the San Francisco underground, Random Rab has become a Burning Man legend known for his sunrise sets that have now become one of his most sought after performances. His current popularity can often be traced to his breakout album, The Elucidation of Sorrow.. This album firmly established him as a recognizable force in the electronic music scene. His 4th album aRose, catapulted him into the state of momentum that is now taking hold internationally. His latest studio effort, Visurreal debuted in the iTunes Top 10 Electronic Charts as well as in the CMJ RPM Top 5 with several #1′s on radio stations across the country.

 

Sometimes performing solo and at other times featuring collaborative musicians, the live experience is focused on a high quality translation of sound that is simultaneously sexy and psychedelic.

 

OFFICIAL WEBSITE: randomrab.com/

SOUNDCLOUD: soundcloud.com/random-rab

FACEBOOK: www.facebook.com/randomrabofficial

  

Govinda

  

Govinda is the alter-ego of Austin based producer/composer Shane Madden. He began studying violin and composition at the age of eight and went on to study classical violin at the University of Texas where he fell in love with electronic music production. It was in Madden’s pursuit of his gypsy roots that he opened his ears to music from around the world. From experiences learning violin with mysterious masters on his journeys across the globe and his passion for modern design and technology, the current sound of Govinda was born.

 

Govinda has played with Thievery Corporation, Tipper, Bassnectar, Shpongle, Cheb I Sabbah, STS9 and many more and been featured on over 25 compilations such as Buddha Bar II, Asian Travels II, and Nirvana Lounge selling a combined 400,000 copies. Govinda has played at numerous festivals throughout North America including Coachella, Lightning in a Bottle, Sea of Dreams, SXSW and more.

 

Govinda's music has been licensed on shows like WB's “Roswell," MTV's “Road Rules,” and Bravo's “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” as well as many independent films.The Govinda live show immerses the audience with a textured atmosphere of exotic, dubby vibrations interwoven with cosmic visual projections, world class dancers and mesmerizing vocals- all to the magic of his live electronics and violin.

 

OFFICIAL WEBSITE: govindamusic.com/

soundcloud.com/govindamusic

www.facebook.com/govindamusic

twitter.com/govindamusic

________________________

 

Kalya Scintilla

 

Traversing the cosmos, gliding across dimensions beyond time and space, Kalya Scintilla brings universal shamanic journeys through his music to planet earth straight from his heart. His music paints sacred soundscapes with world fusion beats from ancient futures hidden amongst our forgotten memories to bring forth lush healing vibrations to activate the dormant codes within us. Infusing his love for nature, tribal healing, sacred geometry, and Hathor wisdom; Kalya is able to birth heart opening crescendos that open doorways into our personal and collective awakening. Audiences across the world have successfully received his musical transmissions enabling his ability to travel and play at festivals across continents. His vision for the future holds his devotional intention to plant more seeds of galactic sound alchemy to be felt and experienced by all.

 

soundcloud.com/kalyascintilla

www.facebook.com/pages/Kalya-Scintilla/121242094567692

kalyascintilla.bandcamp.com/

_____________________

 

Supersillyus

 

Supersillyus (aka Rob Uslan) is a musician and producer based in Allston, MA. He has been tickling minds with his brand of psychedelic electronic music since 2008. His extensively layered soundscapes feature instrumentation ranging from tribal drums, swirling synths, to the occasional marimba solo.

 

Supersillyus' most recent EP Interabang has been downloaded over 5,000 times since it's release October 31, 2013. Over the last several years, Supersillyus has performed his unique brand of psychedelic music with luminaries like Tipper, Hallucinogen, and Ott and showcased at festivals throughout the US and Canada.

  

supersillyus.com/

soundcloud.com/supersillyus

www.ektoplazm.com/free-music/supersillyus-interabang

_____________________

 

Infinite Geometry

 

Infinite Geometry (Andy Reed) has been an audio alchemist for the past 10 years. His main focus has been his visionary art for the past few years (www.facebook.com/infinitegeometryart), but another passion of his has been electronic music.

He is currently based out of Asheville, NC and plays shows occasionally around the southeast US, as well as doing special timeslots in the Vision Lab multi-sensory art dome or early sunrise sets at renegade stages at music festivals.

 

He first began attending electronic events and raves in NYC at age 14, when living in northern NJ. He quickly drew very fond of the subculture that revolves around these highly intelligent and somewhat alien soundscapes. At age 17, he bought belt-drive Numark turntables and a 6 channel mixer from Radioshack. Everyone needs to start somewhere, right? His gear has been updated a lot since those days, having Technic 1210 M5G turntables and a vast collection of vinyl. Most of his recent music is in digital/mp3 format, but he is known from breaking the mold and dropping those warm vibrant analog sounding beats and bass.

 

Over time, he grew a deeply fond love of liquid jazzy drum and bass, in which he still plays regularly at shows now and again. As time progressed, so did his love of different genres. Currently, his sets include multi-genres including psybient downtempo, psydub, templestep, IDM, dreambass, post-dubstep, 2step & future garage, minimal atmospheric dnb, funky tribal house, and many others.

 

soundcloud.com/infinitegeometry

____________________

 

Jon Ohia

CoSM, NYC

 

Psylander

CoSM

 

Space Demon

CoSM

__________________

 

Live Painting

 

Alex Grey & Allyson Grey

 

Joness Jones

www.facebook.com/joness.jones

 

Martin Bridge & Carl Bridge

thebridgebrothers.com

 

Olga Klimova

www.facebook.com/olga.vici.art

 

Paul Crisafi

pcrisafi.pcrisafi.com/

 

Seth Leibowitz

www.facebook.com/sethleibowitz77

 

Adam Psybe

www.facebook.com/Psybe.Visual

  

Visuals

 

Deciduous Pupils

 

As a way to further explore the world of visual arts, Keith Tokarski(Takyon) and Benjamin Cooke(Silent Stream) teamed together in 2012. After performing separately for many years, Takyon and Silent Stream solidified a 2-man visual performance group, Deciduous Pupils. Deciduous Pupils has had the opportunity to perform for a multitude of different talented artists and bands such as Ott , LTJ Bukem , Immortal Technique, Jumbie Art, Abakus, Phutureprimitive, Space Jesus and Lazy Rich…just to name a few. They have performed the visuals for the Disco Biscuits New Year’s run after party, the Silent Disco at Camp Bisco 2013 as well as several other festivals throughout the east coast. With the utmost experience and mastery of their craft, and a focus on creating all original artwork with live improvised performance, Deciduous Pupils is continuing to shock the minds of those around them as they bring the viewers visual perception to a new dimension throughout the East Coast.

 

vimeo:

vimeo.com/70990368

  

Fabric Installation:

WizArt Visions - Olga Klimova

  

Fire Performance:

-Fayzah-Fire

 

Fayzah Fire is a multidisciplinary international performer. Her own “World + Street Styles Dance Method©” blends elements of World Dance styles, Popping, Waving, Hip Hop, & Groove theory. She is an accredited Tribal-Fusion dancer, Fire performer, Argentine Tango dancer, innovator of Tango-Bellydance Fusion, and DJ. She also works with healing arts & trance dance, & is influenced by ocean creatures, (both real and fantasy).

More info: DanceSpiral.com

  

Matalvin's Firewerks

 

Www.facebook.com/matalvin youtu.be/6K995kVyi94

 

Freyja

 

Phantomime

  

Bellydance:

Sarah Jezebel

  

CoSM, Chapel of Sacred Mirrors, 46 Deer Hill Road, Wappingers Falls, NY 12590

Secure the Bag, Mint the Soaps and Throw the Bones is a site of exchange that aims to recontextualize the intricate histories of the brown paper bag and Hispano cuaba soap while inviting the audience to play a game of dominoes. This is based on the artist’s ongoing examination of these items found in private and domestic settings. Nonetheless, their combined racialized, colonial and social complexity reverberates in the customs and dynamics of collective space within a black diasporic subjectivity and imagination. To learn more visit www.recessart.org/francheskaalcantara/

Hugh Todd Naylor Gaitskell, CBE, PC, MP (9 April 1906 – 18 January 1963) was a British Labour politician who held Cabinet office in Clement Attlee's governments, and was the Leader of the Labour Party and Leader of the Opposition from 1955 until his death in 1963. He was responsible for introducing prescription charges in the National Health Service, which caused Aneurin Bevan to resign from the Cabinet in 1951.

 

He was born in Kensington, London, the third and youngest child of Arthur Gaitskell (1870–1915), of the Indian Civil Service, and Adelaide Mary Gaitskell, née Jamieson (died 1956), whose father, George Jamieson, was consul-general in Shanghai and prior to that had been Judge of the British Supreme Court for China and Japan. He was educated at the Dragon School from 1912 to 1919, at Winchester College from 1919 to 1924 and at New College, Oxford, from 1924 to 1927, where he gained a first class degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics in 1927.

 

His serious interest in politics came about as a result of the General Strike of 1926, and he lectured in economics for the Workers' Educational Association to miners in Nottinghamshire. Gaitskell moved to University College London in the early 1930s at the invitation of Noel Hall, and became head of the Department of Political Economy when Hall was appointed Director of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research in 1938. He also worked as a tutor at Birkbeck College.

 

Gaitskell was attached to the University of Vienna for the 1933–4 academic year and witnessed first-hand the political suppression of the social democratic workers movement by the conservative Engelbert Dollfuss's government in Vienna in February 1934. This event made a lasting impression, making him profoundly hostile to conservatism but also making him reject as futile the Marxian outlook of many European social democrats. This placed him in the socialist revisionist camp.

 

In the 1935 General Election, he stood for Chatham as the Labour candidate, but was defeated by the Conservative Leonard Plugge.

 

During World War II, Gaitskell worked with Noel Hall and Hugh Dalton as a civil servant for the Ministry of Economic Warfare which gave him experience of government. For his service, he was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1945. He was elected Labour Member of Parliament (MP) for Leeds South in the Labour landslide victory of 1945.

 

He quickly rose through the ministerial ranks, becoming Minister of Fuel and Power in 1947. He then served briefly as Minister for Economic Affairs in February 1950. His rapid rise was largely due to the influence of Hugh Dalton, who adopted him as a protégé.

 

In October 1950, Stafford Cripps was forced to resign as Chancellor of the Exchequer due to failing health, and Gaitskell was appointed to succeed him. His time as Chancellor was dominated by the struggle to finance Britain's part in the Korean War which put enormous strain on public finances. The cost of the war meant that savings had to be found from other budgets, and a controversial decision was made to introduce charges for prescription glasses and dentures on the National Health Service.

 

In addition, purchase tax was increased from 33% to 66% on certain luxury items such as cars, television sets, and domestic appliances, while entertainment tax was increased on cinema tickets. At the same time, however, taxation on profits was raised and pensions increased to compensate retirees for a rise in the cost of living, while the allowances for dependent children payable to widows, the unemployed, and the sick, together with marriage and child allowances, were also increased. In addition, a number of small items were removed from purchase tax, while the amount of earnings allowed without affecting the pension was increased from 20 shillings to 40 shillings a week.

 

The budget caused a split in the government and caused him to fall out with Aneurin Bevan who resigned over this issue, seeing the prescription charges as a blow to the principle of a free health service. Bevan was later joined by Harold Wilson and John Freeman who also resigned. Later that year, Labour lost power to the Conservatives in the 1951 election.

 

Gaitskell later defeated Bevan in the contest to be the party treasurer. After the retirement of Clement Attlee as leader in December 1955, Gaitskell beat Bevan and the ageing Herbert Morrison in the party leadership contest.

 

Gaitskell's election as leader coincided with one of the Labour Party's weakest periods, which can be partly attributed to the post-war prosperity that Britain was experiencing under the Conservatives. His time as leader was also characterised by factional infighting between the 'Bevanite' left of the Labour party led by Aneurin Bevan, and the 'Gaitskellite' right.

 

During the Suez Crisis of 1956, in one of the highlights of his career as leader, Gaitskell passionately condemned the Anglo-French and Israeli military intervention to secure the Suez Canal. Gaitskell had himself told the Prime Minister, Sir Anthony Eden, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer Harold Macmillan at a dinner with King Faisal II of Iraq on 26 July 1956, that he would support the use of military action against the Egyptian dictator Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser, but warned Eden he would have to keep the Americans closely informed. The Conservatives later accused Gaitskell of betrayal when he publicly condemned the military operation in November. Gaitskell's position had become more cautious during the summer, and he had suggested the dispute with Egypt should be referred to the United Nations. In two letters to Eden sent on 3 and 10 August Gaitskell condemned Nasser, but warned that he would not support any action that violated the United Nations charter. In his letter of 10 August, Gaitskell wrote: "Lest there should be any doubt in your mind about my personal attitude, let me say that I could not regard an armed attack on Egypt by ourselves and the French as justified by anything which Nasser has done so far or as consistent with the Charter of the United Nations. Nor, in my opinion, would such an attack be justified in order to impose a system of international control over the Canal - desirable though this is. If, of course, the whole matter were to be taken to the United Nations and if Egypt were to be condemned by them as aggressors, then, of course, the position would be different. And if further action which amounted to obvious aggression by Egypt were taken by Nasser, then again it would be different. So far what Nasser has done amounts to a threat, a grave threat to us and to others, which certainly cannot be ignored; but it is only a threat, not in my opinion justifying retaliation by war."

 

The Labour Party had been widely expected to win the 1959 general election, but did not. Gaitskell was undermined during it by public doubts concerning the credibility of proposals to raise pensions and by a highly effective Conservative campaign run by Harold Macmillan under the slogan "Life is better with the Conservatives, don't let Labour ruin it", which capitalised on the economic prosperity of Britain. This election defeat led to questions being asked as to whether Labour could ever win a general election again, but Gaitskell remained as leader.

 

Following the election defeat, bitter internecine disputes resumed. Gaitskell blamed the Left for the defeat and attempted unsuccessfully to amend Labour's Clause IV—which its adherents believed committed the party to further nationalisation of industry, while Gaitskell and his followers believed it had become either superfluous or a political liability. He also, successfully, resisted attempts to commit Labour to a unilateralist position on nuclear weapons – losing the vote in 1960 and then rousing his supporters to "fight, fight and fight again to save the party we love". The decision was reversed the following year, but it remained a divisive issue, and many on the Left continued to call for a change of leadership. He was challenged unsuccessfully for the leadership by Harold Wilson in 1960 and again in 1961 by Anthony Greenwood.

 

Battles inside the party produced the Campaign for Democratic Socialism to defend the Gaitskellite position in the early 1960s. Many of the younger CDS members were founding members of the SDP in 1981. Gaitskell alienated some of his supporters by his apparent opposition to British membership of the European Economic Community. In a speech to the party conference in October 1962, Gaitskell claimed that Britain's participation in a Federal Europe would mean "the end of Britain as an independent European state, the end of a thousand years of history!" He added: "You may say, all right! Let it end! But, my goodness, it's a decision that needs a little care and thought."

 

He died in January 1963, aged 56, after a sudden flare of lupus erythematosus, an autoimmune disease. His death left an opening for Harold Wilson in the party leadership; Wilson narrowly won the next general election for Labour 21 months later.

 

The abrupt and unexpected nature of his death led to some speculation that foul play might have been involved. The most popular conspiracy theory involved a supposed KGB plot to ensure that Wilson (alleged by the supporters of these theories to be a KGB agent himself) became prime minister. This claim was given new life by Peter Wright's controversial 1987 book Spycatcher, but the only evidence that ever came to light was the testimony of a Soviet defector, Anatoliy Golitsyn. Golitsyn was a controversial figure who also claimed, for example, that the Sino-Soviet split was a deception intended to deceive the West. His claims about Wilson were repeatedly investigated and never substantiated.

 

He was married from 1937 to Anna Dora Gaitskell, who became a Labour life peer one year after his death. They had two daughters: Julia, born in 1939, and Cressida, born in 1942. Gaitskell had a number of affairs, including with the socialite Ann Fleming, the wife of James Bond creator Ian Fleming.

 

In private, Hugh Gaitskell was said to be humorous and fun loving, with a love of ballroom dancing. This contrasted with his stern public image. He was a member of the Steering Committee of the Bilderberg Group.

The Astoria-Megler Bridge recedes in the distance as we begin the hour-long leg from Astoria, Oregon's, West Basin marina to the Columbia River Bar. There, it's an overnight run on the Pacific Ocean to Neah Bay on the northwest corner of Washington State.

 

Here, I'm securing the fenders and the fender lines before heading out onto the open ocean. Even with a good forecast, you bring in all the dock lines and secure everything on deck.

 

You never know when sea and weather conditions might turn on you, and the last thing you want is a line getting loose and wrapping itself around your prop.

 

This photo shows my method of securing items that need to remain on deck. I'm sure traditional sailors and perhaps even Eagle Scouts would know all sorts of knots that would hold a line fast to a rail in a raging storm. For my part, I use cable ties. Lots of 'em. Easy on and, with clippers, easy off.

 

Another maritime tradition bites the dust.

Secure your place on one of the Cent Cols Challenge 2013 event here --> www.rapha.cc/cent-col-challenge-deposit

Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States

 

The former Manufacturers Trust Company Building, erected in 1953-54 on the southwest corner of Fifth Avenue and West 43rd Street, was one of the first buildings in the United States to introduce International Style modernism to bank design. Planned by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, with Gordon Bunshaft serving as chief designer, the building is an important early work by one of the country's leading architectural firms, best known for its pioneering International Style business buildings that provided a potent symbol of corporate America in the post-World War II period. A five-story glass box, featuring clear glass window-walls, thin polished aluminum mullions, and dark gray facings, the monochromatic building is notable for the spare elegance and refinement of its design. The design's transparency and the articulation of the underlying skeletal structure of the building led the Architectural Forum to praise it as "the first big building truly to fulfill architects' immaculate drafting board idea of glass as an invisible material."

 

The modernity and openness of the design reflect the concerns of Manufacturers Trust president Horace C. Flanigan who had wanted this prominently sited branch building to present a modern image and an "inviting look" in keeping with contemporary trends in the banking industry that emphasized customer service. The novel aspects of the design elicited extensive press coverage and attracted 15,000 visitors to the bank in its first week of operation. By proving that good modern design was a lure to customers, the Manufacturers Trust Company Building led many other New York City banks to create similar glass-walled banks in the 1950s, and by the 1960s such banks were found throughout the country.

 

History of the Site

 

In the late nineteenth century, Fifth Avenue between 34th Street and 59th Street was the most fashionable residential street in New York. The blockfront on the west side of the avenue between West 42nd and West 43rd Streets was occupied by the Hotel Bristol and the homes of several wealthy businessmen, among them financier Russell Sage who lived at No. 506 in the 1880s and 1890s. West 43rd Street and vicinity contained a number of private clubs and associations: the Columbia Club at No. 4 (Clarence S. Luce, 1890-91); the Century Association at No. 7 (McKim, Mead & White, 1889-90); the Racquet & Tennis Club at No. 27 (Cyrus L.W. Eidlitz, 1891); and the Academy of Medicine at No. 17 (R.H. Robertson, 1889). By 1900, the character of the neighborhood on the blocks north of 42nd Street began to change with the construction of, or the conversion of private residences to, exclusive retail shops, restaurants, and office buildings.

 

The eight-story Hotel Bristol at 500 Fifth Avenue became the Bristol Building in 1902 with offices in its upper stories and stores at street level. A few blocks to the east, the construction of the present Grand Central Terminal and the electrification and submergence of the railroad tracks along Park Avenue in 1903-13 spurred the development of an important hotel and business district. By 1923, so many banks and trust companies had established uptown branches in the Grand Central vicinity and on the blocks of Fifth Avenue north of 42nd Street, that Rider's New York City guide reported the area was popularly known as "Little Wall Street." Forty-second Street, which linked this business district to Times Square, became one of the busiest thoroughfares in New York while Fifth Avenue remained the most fashionable shopping street in the city, leading the Real Estate Record & Guide to declare the Bristol Building parcel at 500 Fifth Avenue, at the northwest corner of 42nd Street, as "the most valuable building site on Manhattan Island north of Wall Street. "

 

The demolition of the Bristol Building and subsequent construction of the office building at 500 Fifth Avenue had a significant impact on the eventual development of the adjacent Manufacturers Trust Company, because its planning affected the zoning of the entire Fifth Avenue blockfront. In 1922, Gerry Estates, Inc. entered into an agreement with Walter J. Salmon, one of the most successful real estate developers in the midtown business district, to redevelop the site at 500 Fifth Avenue. With other projects in the works, including the adjacent Salmon Tower at 11-27 West 42nd Street, Salmon delayed beginning work on the corner site until the summer of 1929. At that time he announced plans for a fifty-eight-story building with frontages of 100 feet on Fifth Avenue and 208 feet on 42nd Street to be built to the design of Shreve, Lamb & Harmon. The zoning code permitted a taller building on 42nd Street than on Fifth Avenue, so Salmon acquired a long-term lease on the adjacent four-story converted dwelling at 508 Fifth Avenue in 1927; by merging the zoning lots of this twenty-five by 102-foot building and that of 500 Fifth Avenue he was able to build a higher tower than would have otherwise been possible. No. 508 Fifth continued to be subleased to various concerns, including the Gotham Silk Hosiery Company and Huyler's confectionery store. The adjacent eight- story Ziegler Building, at 510-514 Fifth Avenue, constructed c. 1900, housed the tobacconist Alfred Dunhill of London, as well as numerous lawyers, accountants, and insurance brokers in the 1920s and 1930s. Both properties were owned by the Mutual Insurance Company in 1941 when Manufacturers Trust Company — then occupying a branch at 513 Fifth Avenue — began negotiations to lease them as a site for a new bank building. Wartime restrictions on building supplies kept the project from going forward immediately, but in October 1944 the two institutions entered into a lease in which Mutual Life agreed to construct a new bank building to the specifications of Manufacturers Trust. A corollary agreement with Walter Salmon permitted Manufacturers Trust Company to sublease (and ultimately redevelop) 508 Fifth Avenue, provided that during the time Salmon's lease remained in effect (1944-65) any building erected on the portion of the lot at No. 508 would not exceed the height of the then-existing building (sixty-three feet) or otherwise interfere with 500 Fifth Avenue. Thus, the height of the new bank building was effectively limited to four or five stories.

 

Manufacturers Trust Company and Its Fifth Avenue Branch

 

DESCRIPTION AND ANALYSIS

 

The Mechanics Bank of Brooklyn, the parent organization of the Manufacturers Trust Company, was organized in 1853 to serve the business

community in Brooklyn's Fourteenth Ward. In 1865, it reorganized as a national bank under the name Manufacturers' National Bank of New York with offices in the Wall Street area. After financial reverses in 1867, the bank moved back to Brooklyn. In 1914 it merged with another Brooklyn institution, the Citizens Trust Company (established 1904), to create the Manufacturers-Citizens Trust Company, which changed its name to the Manufacturers Trust Company in 1915. From the beginning the bank emphasized neighborhood banking services, acquiring numerous branches by purchasing and merging with such institutions as the West Side Bank (1918), the Ridgewood National Bank (1921), the North Side Bank of Brooklyn, the Industrial Savings Bank (1922), the Columbia Bank (1923), the Yorkville Bank, the Gotham Bank, the Fifth National Bank, and the Commonwealth Bank of New York (1927). By 1944 Manufacturers Trust had sixty-seven branches in addition to its main office at 55 Broad Street and was committed to further expansion. Many new services were introduced during the late 1930s and early 1940s, including personal loans, property improvement loans, special checking accounts, construction loans, and industrial credit for manufacturers. The bank's Annual Report for 1944 noted that "the rapid growth of many of our offices, furthered by the various new services we are extending to our customers and by the special services incident to the war effort, will soon call for additional expansion of quarters." The situation was particularly acute in the firm's midtown branch at 513 Fifth Avenue, which was "second only to the Head Office in the amount and importance of its business." According to a document prepared by the bank in 1944, this small branch had begun to approach its limit almost ten years before when it was serving approximately 7,500 customers and since then had added 10,000 new accounts."

 

In December 1944, the architectural firm of Walker & Gillette filed plans with the Department of Buildings for a four-story building "in what has been called the Federal Classic style of architecture." Construction was delayed due to government restrictions on building materials and rent control provisions which prevented Mutual Life from dispossessing the commercial tenants from the existing buildings on the site. In 1948, the bank announced it had cancelled its plans for the new Fifth Avenue branch, but after considerable negotiation the project was revived in July 1950. Walker & Poor, the successor firm to Walker & Gillette, was retained to revise the plans and in

 

January 1951 the insurance company delivered the Ziegler Building free of tenants to Manufacturers Trust. The day after the last of the office tenants vacated the building, new federal restrictions were imposed on the use of steel and other critical materials in response to the Korean War effort. Faced with the prospect of paying rent on an empty eight-story building, Manufacturers Trust leased the Ziegler Building to several government agencies. Finally, in July 1952, after eight years of delay, the government released the steel needed for the new building. New plans were filed with the Department of Buildings in April 1953. However, the new designs were not by Walker & Poor, which had been dismissed by the bank in 1951 after a dispute over an unusually high bill for professional services, but by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, a firm that had just established a place for itself at the forefront of modernist design with its revolutionary Lever House building.

 

The International Style and the Manufacturers Trust Company Building

 

The modernism exemplified by the Manufacturers Trust Building is that of the second wave of the International Style which flourished in this country in the post-World War II period. This style was given its name in 1932 when architect Philip Johnson and historian Henry-Russell Hitchcock organized a momentous exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in which they presented a body of avant-garde modernist architecture that they argued represented a new "International Style" within the modernist movement.

 

A worldwide depression in the 1930s, the rise of authoritarian governments in Germany, Russia, and Italy which favored conservative architecture, and later the disruptions caused by World War II, severely restricted the number of new buildings produced by avant-garde architects in Europe; however, the widespread publication of existing works and the emigration of such key figures as Walter Gropius and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, both of whom found academic positions at architecture schools in the United States, inspired a new generation of architects and presaged the broad acceptance of the International Style in the post- World War II period.

 

Gordon Bunshaft was among this younger generation of architects in America, which also included Eero Saarinen, Wallace K. Harrison, I.M. Pei, and Philip Johnson, who were particularly influenced by European modernism. Mies, himself, had a successful career in the United States, producing a number of buildings in Chicago which were to have a major impact on American architecture. At the Armour Institute (later the Illinois Institute of Technology, master plan 1939- 41, buildings 1942-56) and Lake Shore Drive Apartments (1948-51), Mies sought to reduce his buildings to skeletons of polished metal with glass "skins" which achieve their beauty through a clear articulation of structure and proportional relationships, and refined detailing. Mies's American buildings were especially influential for Gordon Bunshaft in his design for the Manufacturers Trust Building. Among the particularly Miesian elements of Bunshaft's design was the use of thin vertical mullions, projected ten inches from the curtain walls, to create shadows "that provide texture and depth to the glass wall" and emphasize the skeletal construction of the building. Because Manufacturers Trust was partially shielded from direct light by taller, surrounding buildings, Bunshaft used clear rather than tinted glass; this, coupled with the controlled lighting of the interior allowed him to achieve an ideal envisioned by Mies in the early 1920s, the transparent building. (In contrast, the glass at Lever House is tinted blue- green and the mullions are raised only one-and-one quarter inch from the glass, so that the wall reads as a taut, impenetrable skin.) Thus, the Architectural Forum considered Manufacturers Trust, "the first big building truly to fulfill architects' immaculate drafting board idea of glass as an invisible material" and concluded that "at last the deeply sculptural feeling of a steel frame under construction has been retained in the completed building." In addition, the Forum believed the lack of color in the glass and the monochrome palate of the Manufacturers facade created a greater sense of "severity and dignity than [at] Lever."

 

Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore. Owings & Merrill The firm of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill was established in 1936 in Chicago by Louis Skidmore (1897-1962) and Nathaniel Owings (1903-84). By 1950, in addition to the original headquarters, the firm had established offices in New York City, San Francisco, and Portland, Oregon. Although the offices were managed individually, professional expertise was shared among them, and they followed a common approach to building design and project management. Organized along the model of a large business enterprise with numerous employees trained in a variety of disciplines, the firm was able to offer a complete package of architectural, interior and environmental design, engineering, planning, and project management. Among its major innovations within the field of architecture was the use of a team approach, in which a core group consisting of an administrative partner, a design partner, a project manager, senior designers, and technical personnel remained constant on a project in order to ensure consistency and integrity of design. From its inception, the firm made the ideological commitment to design only in the modern mode and "embraced the belief that architecture could improve the quality of human life."

 

The New York office of the firm opened in 1937, when Skidmore and Owings were offered a commission for alterations to the New York offices of the American Radiator Company, on the condition that a partner remain in New York to supervise the work. By 1939, the partners decided to keep two non-centralized offices, with Skidmore at the head of the New York branch and Owings in charge of the Chicago office. Specialists were hired in varied disciplines in order to take on larger commissions. One of these specialists was John O. Merrill, an architectural engineer who joined the firm as a limited partner in 1939. Two years earlier, Gordon Bunshaft had been hired as a designer. His imprint was eventually to shape the design image of SOM.

 

Born in Buffalo, New York, in 1909 to Russian immigrant parents, Gordon Bunshaft was educated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he earned bachelor's and master's degrees in architecture and came under the influence of a young professor, Lawrence B. Anderson, who fostered an appreciation of modernist design. Bunshaft worked briefly for Edward Durrell Stone and Raymond Loewy before beginning his forty-two year career at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. In his early years with the firm he designed buildings for the New York World's Fair of 1939-40 and Hostess House, a hospitality center for cadets at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center in Illinois (1941-42). After serving in the Corps of Engineers during World War II, Bunshaft rejoined SOM in 1947. Later that year he transferred to the firm's New York office; he became a full partner in 1949. It was as chief designer for Lever House (1950-52) that Bunshaft first earned renown. In the words of architectural critic, Paul Goldberger, this twenty- four story office tower was "New York's first major commercial structure with a glass curtain-wall (only the United Nations Secretariat preceded it), and it burst onto the stuffy, solid masonry wall of Park Avenue like a vision of a new world."

 

Following Lever House, Bunshaft was involved in the design of a number of outstanding buildings, including the Connecticut General Life Insurance Company headquarters (1957) in Bloomfield, Connecticut; the Pepsi-Cola Building (1958-60) on Park Avenue; the United States Air Force Academy (1959) in Colorado Springs; the Chase Manhattan Bank Headquarters and Plaza (1960-61) and 140 Broadway (1964-67) in lower Manhattan; the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library (1963) at Yale University; the W.R. Grace Building (1973) on West 42nd Street; the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library (1971) at the University of Texas, Austin; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (1974) in Washington, D.C.; and the National Commercial Bank (1983) in Jedda, Saudi Arabia.

 

Gordon Bunshaft was awarded the Brunner Prize of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in 1955, and its gold medal in 1984. He also received the Medal of Honor from the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architects. He was awarded the Pritzker Prize, often called the architectural equivalent of the Nobel Prize, in 1988, two years before his death.

 

The Design of the Manufacturers Trust Building

 

In an interview with architectural historian Carol Krinsky, Gordon Bunshaft indicated that Manufacturers Trust Company first consulted SOM about plans for a new Fifth Avenue branch in 1953 on the recommendation of Lou Crandall, a member of the Board of Directors at Manufacturers Trust, who headed the Fuller Construction Company which had built Lever House. It should be noted, however, that Manufacturers Trust had already established a relationship with Louis Skidmore (head of the New York branch of SOM) who had been serving on the advisory board of the bank's 57th Street branch since 1950. Skidmore's longstanding friendship with Horace C. ("Hap") Flanigan, who had been elected president and chief executive officer of Manufacturers Trust Company in September 1951, may well have been a factor in securing the commission for SOM. Initially, the bank requested that SOM review Walker & Poor's plans to see if the design could be improved while retaining the structural drawings. According to Krinsky, only an hour after their initial meeting, "Bunshaft called to convince Crandall that it would be unwise to try to save a small amount of money on engineering fees when a better building might result from a fresh start."

 

In creating a new design for the bank, SOM had to take into account certain programmatic restrictions that were written into the 1953 agreement between the Mutual Life Insurance Company and Manufacturers Trust, amending the lease of 1944. This agreement required Manufacturers to erect a new building that would have "no less than 25,000 and no more than 70,000 square feet of floor space at or above street level," would "occupy the entire legally permissible street frontage on Fifth Avenue and 43rd Street" at street level, and would "be planned as to make available for banking purposes the major portion of the street floor." In contrast to the original agreement of 1944, the entire cost of the building was to be borne by Manufacturers Trust, though Mutual Life agreed to loan the bank $1,000,000 toward demolition and construction. The covenants regarding 508 Fifth Avenue remained in effect, limiting the height of the building on at least one quarter of the site. In addition, Horace Flanigan expressed several major requirements for the design. First, the design had to be adaptable for some other type of business, since as a banker during the Depression he had come to realize how difficult it was to sell or lease a traditional bank building when a branch closed. Second, the building had to be capable of serving a high volume of retail and commercial customers, and have offices and a conference room where the bank president and officers could meet with clients who found it inconvenient to travel downtown. Most of all, the building had to present a modern image and "an inviting look" in keeping with the bank's emphasis on customer service, as epitomized in its advertising slogans "Everybody's Bank Just Around the Corner" and "Come and See Us, You'll Be Very Welcome."

 

"Sensing the opportunity for a masterpiece," Louis Skidmore followed a procedure he had initiated for the firm's World's Fair projects, sponsoring an informal, weekend competition among the young designers in the firm to produce conceptual sketches. According to Nathaniel Owings, "they were encouraged to come up with whatever popped into their heads, and the history and tradition of banking be damned." Designer Charles Evans Hughes III placed first with a sketch that contained several elements which were eventually incorporated into the executed bank building. Hughes envisioned a glass-walled building of four stories, with two principal floors given over to customer services and a penthouse story surrounded by a roof garden for the executive offices. A principal feature of the design was a massive bank vault that could be viewed easily from the street through the bank's clear glass walls. Hughes's design underwent many modifications as the firm's experts in design, materials, and construction developed the project, but his basic concept remained. Responsibility for this prestigious project was given to the firm's senior designer Gordon Bunshaft and to William S. Brown, an expert on modern pre-fabricated materials, who served as project coordinator.

 

The resulting building is a transparent, luminous clear glass box which architectural critic Louis Mumford likened to a lantern. Occupying the entirety of its 100 by 125-foot site, it has curtain walls of clear glass on both Fifth Avenue and West 43rd Street. Thin, polished aluminum mullions and horizontal rails hold the glass in place (the panes on the second story, measuring 9 feet-8 inches x 22 feet and weighing 1,500 pounds, were the largest ever installed in a building at the time). Dark gray spandrel panels of polished opaque wire-glass conceal the floor slabs. Treated as an uninterrupted expanse of clear glass, the Fifth Avenue facade originally was designed with no entrance or signage, but rather the building's use was to be indicated solely by the gleaming polished steel vault visible through the plate glass window. The entrance to the banking space is on West 43rd Street; it originally was marked only by a discrete aluminum sign with white lettering. A second entrance at the west end of the 43rd Street facade provides access to the elevator corridor at the rear of the building.

 

Supporting the building are eight interior columns set eleven feet from the Fifth Avenue building line and twenty feet from the West 43rd Street building line. Concrete floor slabs are cantilevered over the relatively short spans from the columns to the clear glass walls. At the second story, the cantilevered floor is pulled back from the exterior wall, so that the main banking areas appear to be contained within one forty-foot-high space. The concrete slabs were deliberately kept thin both to meet the building height limitation and to create an impression of extreme lightness. This aesthetic of lightness is enhanced by the thinness of the external metal skeleton which the construction superintendent for the project described "as more like jewelry than building." At the same time, the illumination produced by thousands of cathode tubes concealed behind thin plastic panels dematerializes the surface of the ceiling, contributing to the sense that the slabs are weightless and floating. This high level of illumination was intended to counteract the natural reflectivity of the clear glass walls. As the

 

Architectural Forum noted it is "an old merchandizing trick" to put more illumination inside a store window than outside the clear glass to ensure that the contents can be seen,

 

But doing this to a five-story building is new and surprising, a true landmark in the delineation of space. It makes a glass wall into something it has not been before, an invisible control instead of a mysterious barrier.

 

The International Style as a Corporate Symbol

 

In addition to its aesthetic appeal, the design of the Manufacturers Trust Company Building also created just the "inviting" impression Horace Flanigan had requested from the architects. The striking difference between this modern clear glass- walled bank and "the ponderous stone piles which banks have traditionally inhabited" was viewed by Manufacturers Trust as being symbolic of the institution's commitment to modern banking service. This was acknowledged by Flanigan in a news release published by Manufacturers in conjunction with the bank's opening in September 1954: These walls give the bank a wide-open, inviting look and turn it, day and night, into a giant showcase. . . . The building will be its own best salesman, a merchandising concept new in banking and one that we believe pioneers the way to better customer service.

 

Gordon Bunshaft conceived of his building in terms of a department store:

 

This is a store type of operation, . . . open, departmentalized, efficient. Downstairs on street level we put the special checking division where the main volume of business is handled — the 10 cents-a-check department where you go in, cash a check, and get out fast. On paydays the traffic is terrific.

 

The emphasis on new services and customer relations had been central to Manufacturers Trust's growth from the late 1930s. In this the bank was one of leaders of a general trend in the banking industry known as "the rise of department store banking," a term coined by R.W. Goldschmidt, a student of American banking, in 1933 to describe the trend for commercial banks to take on the traditional roles of savings, trust, and investment banks in order to offer their customers an ever expanding variety of services. The increasing role of federal and state regulatory agencies in fixing rates of interest and terms of loans had also played a part in Manufacturers' expansion of service, since it was through customer service that banks could most effectively compete with one another. It had long been realized that attractive architecture was good advertising for a bank and a lure to customers. In fact, even before World War II certain experts on bank architecture had urged the adoption of features found in the Manufacturers Trust Company Fifth Avenue branch: bright lights, a friendly atmosphere, and "large windows to permit the public to see into the bank." But with a few exceptions (most notably the PSFS Building in Philadelphia), the prewar designs that incorporated these features remained architecturally traditional. It was the post-war generation of architects, led by SOM, who were to provide an idiom that would convey the modem image desired by the banking industry. As Carol Krinsky writes:

 

Some clients chose the ostensible fiinctionalism of modernism because it was practical; others chose it out of a heightened aesthetic sensitivity or the desire to appear progressive. 'We never had to sell modernism to anybody,' said Bunshaft. 'You have to understand the time. It was a unique and marvelous thing, the situation after the war. Lots of young architects, disciples of Mies and Corbusier, had just finished their training and were anxious to do something new. At the same time, the heads of these big corporations needed new facilities and they all wanted something new-looking. I'm sure these corporate presidents all lived in colonial houses in Connecticut, but for their offices they wouldn't consider anything but modern. They all wanted buildings they could be proud of.

 

Manufacturers Trust's new Fifth Avenue branch building was an immediate success. The modern style, then so novel for banks, the transparent walls so at odds with traditional bank imagery, and such remarkable features as the 1.000 ton Mosier safe "ten feet from the sidewalk" and "the largest plates of glass ever made in this country" evoked vast press coverage and public response. The New York Times, New Yorker, Life, Saturday Evening Post, and Fortune were among the publications that covered the opening of the building, which attracted 15,000 visitors. Buildings, Lighting, Office Management, and Management Methods also covered novel aspects of the building design for their specialized audiences and the Architectural

 

Forum, Architectural Record, and Progressive Architecture were united in their praise for the design. For the bank, the greatest praise came from the depositors — nine months after the new branch opened the Times reported that the branch's savings accounts had tripled and special checking accounts and commercial accounts had doubled since moving across the street from its old location. Harold Miner, the vice-president in charge of the branch, credited "it all to the sparkling, nearly all-glass building that has caught the eyes of bankers, business men, and architects the world over."

 

With such strong evidence "that modern banking premises are a strong attraction for new accounts," Manufacturers Trust stepped up its program of modernizing and redecorating its branch offices in the modern style. Within a few years, many New York City banks opened similar glass-walled banks employing International Style design. By the 1960s such banks were found throughout the country.

 

Description

 

Five stories high, including a setback penthouse for executive offices and mechanical equipment, the Manufacturers Trust Company Building has frontages of 100 feet on Fifth Avenue and 125 feet on West 43rd Street. Curtain walls of clear glass are employed for both the Fifth Avenue and West 43rd Street facades. The arrangement of the two facades is asymmetrical; at the south end of the Fifth Avenue facade a narrow strip of polished Canadian black granite sheathes the building's side wall, and at the western end of the West 43rd Street facade, the blank wall of the corner fire stair is also sheathed in black granite (inscribed with the names of the architects, "Skidmore Owings & Merrill," and of the builders, "George A. Fuller Company"). Black granite is also employed for the plinth that runs along the base of the building. Above this plinth is a polished aluminum sill that supports the slender polished aluminum mullions and horizontal rails that hold the panes of clear glass in place.

 

Dark gray spandrel panels of polished opaque wire- glass conceal the floor slabs and provide horizontal accents to counter the strong vertical rhythm established by the mullions (these panels survive intact on the West 43rd Street facade; many have been replaced on Fifth Avenue with dark, non- reflective panels). The clear glass window panes are extremely large for the period, those at the double- height second story measuring 9 feet-8 inches x 22 feet.

 

At the fifth story, the T-shaped penthouse is divided into office and mechanical sections. Located in the eastern portion of the penthouse, the office suite is faced with clear glass curtain walls and has an overhanging roof which is trimmed with a wide cast-stone and aluminum coping that provides a strong horizontal accent to crown the building. The mechanical section at the west end of the penthouse is faced in gray brick and abuts the eastern side wall of the adjacent building. This penthouse is partially screened from view by an aluminum and translucent glass parapet which is set back from the edge of the fourth-story roofline. As with its design for Lever House, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill provided a special window cleaning gondola that was lowered from the fourth-story roof. Small movable brackets are used to suspend the gondola. A pair of flagpoles projects from the roof at the south end of the Fifth Avenue facade.

 

At the ground story, the Fifth Avenue facade has no entrance, although the building's use is indicated by the gleaming polished steel vault visible through the clear plate glass windows. On West 43rd Street, at the east end of the facade, the entrance to the banking space occupies the second, third, and fourth bays. The second and fourth bays each contain three glass doors with vertical stainless steel door pulls, while the third bay is filled by a polished granite panel which is fitted with a circular steel night deposit door. An aluminum Chase Bank sign with a white logo spans the three entrance bays. A second entrance at the west end of the 43rd Street facade, providing access to the elevator corridor, also has three glass doors and a non-historic metal band with the numerals "510" applied to a non-historic black panel.

 

Subsequent History

 

The Manufacturers Trust Company Building was awarded the Architectural League's Gold Medal for Architecture and the Municipal Art Society's Plaque of Commendation in 1955, and the Fifth Avenue Association's Award for Excellence in 1956.

 

Today, the building's exterior remains intact except for the changes in signage, alterations to the West 43rd Street entrances, the replacement in kind of several clear glass panels, and the replacement of many of the dark gray glass spandrel panels on the Fifth Avenue facade with dark, non-reflective panels. In the years since the building opened, Manufacturers Trust continued to grow, merging with Hanover Bank in 1961 to create the Manufacturers Hanover Trust Company. According to a representative of that bank, the Fifth Avenue branch office remained "from a business perspective . . . one of the most important in the branch system. With balances of more than $160MM, it serves the hub of the midtown market, and — for decades — has been a lynch-pin in our Manhattan system."

 

In February 1992, Manufacturers Hanover acquired full ownership of the land beneath the building from Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York. Manufacturers Hanover Trust later merged with Chemical Bank, which subsequently merged with Chase Manhattan Bank, which was renamed Chase Bank in 1996. The building remains in banking use, with the addition of retail use on West 43rd Street.

 

- From the 1997 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report

BANGABANDHU SHEIKH MUJIBUR RAHMAN

The life of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman is the saga of a great leader turning peoplepower into an armed struggle that liberated a nation and created the world’s ninth most populous state. The birth of the sovereign state of Bangladesh in December 1971, after a heroic war of nine months against the Pakistani colonial rule, was the triumph of his faith in the destiny of his people. Sheikh Mujib, endearingly called Bangabandhu or friend of Bangladesh, rose from the people, molded their hopes and aspirations into a dream and staked his life in the long battle for making it real. He was a true democrat, and he employed in his struggle for securing justice and fairplay for the Bengalees only democratic and constitutional weapons until the last moment. It is no accident of history that in an age of military coup d’etat and ‘strong men’, Sheikh Mujib attained power through elections and mass movement and that in an age of decline of democracy he firmly established democracy in one of the least developed countries of Asia.

Sheikh Mujib was born on 17 March 1920 in a middle class family at Tungipara in Gopalganj district. Standing 5 feet 11 inches, he was taller than the average Bengalee. Nothing pleased him more than being close to the masses, knowing their joys and sorrows and being part of their travails and triumphs. He spoke their soft language but in articulating their sentiments his voice was powerful and resonant. He had not been educated abroad, nor did he learn the art of hiding feelings behind sophistry; yet he was loved as much by the urban educated as the common masses of the villages. He inspired the intelligentsia and the working class alike. He did not, however, climb to leadership overnight.

Early Political Life: His political life began as an humble worker while he was still a student. He was fortunate to come in early contact with such towering personalities as Hussain Shaheed Suhrawardy and A K Fazlul Huq, both charismatic Chief Ministers of undivided Bengal. Adolescent Mujib grew up under the gathering gloom of stormy politics as the aging British raj in India was falling apart and the Second World War was violently rocking the continents. He witnessed the ravages of the war and the stark realities of the great famine of 1943 in which about five million people lost their lives. The tragic plight of the people under colonial rule turned young Mujib into a rebel.

This was also the time when he saw the legendary revolutionary Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose challenging the British raj. Also about this time he came to know the works of Bernard Shaw, Karl Marx, Rabindranath Tagore and rebel poet Kazi Nazrul Islam. Soon after the partition of India in 1947 it was felt that the creation of Pakistan with its two wings separated by a physical distance of about 1,200 miles was a geographical monstrosity. The economic, political, cultural and linguistic characters of the two wings were also different. Keeping the two wings together under the forced bonds of a single state structure in the name of religious nationalism would merely result in a rigid political control and economic exploitation of the eastern wing by the all-powerful western wing which controlled the country’s capital and its economic and military might.

Early Movement: In 1948 a movement was initiated to make Bengali one of the state languages of Pakistan. This can be termed the first stirrings of the movement for an independent Bangladesh. The demand for cultural freedom gradually led to the demand for national independence. During that language movement Sheikh Mujib was arrested and sent to jail. During the blood-drenched language movement in 1952 he was again arrested and this time he provided inspiring leadership of the movement from inside the jail.

In 1954 Sheikh Mujib was elected a member of the then East Pakistan Assembly. He joined A K Fazlul Huq’s United Front government as the youngest minister. The ruling clique of Pakistan soon dissolved this government and Shiekh Mujib was once again thrown into prison. In 1955 he was elected a member of the Pakistan Constituent Assembly and was again made a minister when the Awami League formed the provincial government in 1956. Soon after General Ayub Khan staged a military coup in Pakistan in 1958, Sheikh Mujib was arrested once again and a number of cases were instituted against him. He was released after 14 months in prison but was re-arrested in February 1962. In fact, he spent the best part of his youth behind the prison bars.

Supreme Test: March 7, 1971 was a day of supreme test in his life. Nearly two million freedom loving people assembled at the Ramna Race Course Maidan, later renamed Suhrawardy Uddyan, on that day to hear their leader’s command for the battle for liberation. The Pakistani military junta was also waiting to trap him and to shoot down the people on the plea of suppressing a revolt against the state. Sheikh Mujib spoke in a thundering voice but in a masterly well-calculated restrained language. His historic declaration in the meeting was: "Our struggle this time is for freedom. Our struggle this time is for independence." To deny the Pakistani military an excuse for a crackdown, he took care to put forward proposals for a solution of the crisis in a constitutional way and kept the door open for negotiations.

The crackdown, however, did come on March 25 when the junta arrested Sheikh Mujib for the last time and whisked him away to West Pakistan for confinement for the entire duration of the liberation war. In the name of suppressing a rebellion the Pakistani military let loose hell on the unarmed civilians throughout Bangladesh and perpetrated a genocide killing no less than three million men, women and children, raping women in hundreds of thousands and destroying property worth billions of taka. Before their ignominious defeat and surrender they, with the help of their local collaborators, killed a large number of intellectuals, university professors, writers, doctors, journalists, engineers and eminent persons of other professions. In pursuing a scorch-earth policy they virtually destroyed the whole of the country’s infrastructure. But they could not destroy the indomitable spirit of the freedom fighters nor could they silence the thundering voice of the leader. Tape recordings of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib’s 7th March speech kept on inspiring his followers throughout the war.

Return and Reconstruction: Forced by international pressure and the imperatives of its own domestic predicament, Pakistan was obliged to release Sheikh Mujib from its jail soon after the liberation of Bangladesh and on 10 January 1972 the great leader returned to his beloved land and his admiring nation.

But as he saw the plight of the country his heart bled and he knew that there would be no moment of rest for him. Almost the entire nation including about ten million people returning from their refuge in India had to be rehabilitated, the shattered economy needed to be put back on the rail, the infrastructure had to be rebuilt, millions had to be saved from starvation and law and order had to be restored. Simultaneously, a new constitution had to be framed, a new parliament had to be elected and democratic institutions had to be put in place. Any ordinary mortal would break down under the pressure of such formidable tasks that needed to be addressed on top priority basis. Although simple at heart, Sheikh Mujib was a man of cool nerves and of great strength of mind. Under his charismatic leadership the country soon began moving on to the road to progress and the people found their long-cherished hopes and aspirations being gradually realized.

Assassination: But at this critical juncture, his life was cut short by a group of anti-liberation reactionary forces who in a pre-dawn move on 15 August 1975 not only assassinated him but 23 of his family members and close associates. Even his 10 year old son Russel’s life was not spared by the assassins. The only survivors were his two daughters, Sheikh Hasina - now the country’s Prime Minister - and her younger sister Sheikh Rehana, who were then away on a visit to Germany. In killing the father of the Nation, the conspirators ended a most glorious chapter in the history of Bangladesh but they could not end the great leader’s finest legacy- the rejuvenated Bengali nation. In a fitting tribute to his revered memory, the present government has declared August 15 as the national mourning day. On this day every year the people would be paying homage to the memory of a man who became a legend in his won lifetime. Bangabandhu lives in the heart of his people. Bangladesh and Bangabandhu are one and inseparable. Bangladesh was Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s vision and he fought and died for it.

 

My practical experience, some of new leaders of BNP (retired amla) wants to be leader. They want to show something to Khaleda Zia in strike period. Want to be talk of the day as like Sadek Hossain Khoka. Khoka hold liquid tomato pack with him and blasted in due time while police caught him on the streets. Remember people? Shamsher Mobin Choudhury Beer Bikram Freedom fighter, I salute for his contribution, but I enjoyed his acting on strike period with police SI. He want to be arrested then news will be like this “Beer Bikram Shamsher Mobin Choudhury didn’t relief from the police tortured.

Good attitude but no need to do this simple acting for growing the attraction of Khaleda. Next time he will be foreign Minister if BNP comes to the power.

 

New Light Tactical Armoured Vehicle

 

BAE Systems Land Systems South Africa has won the Irish Army’s Light Tactical Armoured Vehicle (LTAV) contest, securing an order for 27 RG32M LTVs. The contract is worth some €19.6 million, and includes an option for a further batch of 27 vehicles. According to BAE, deliveries will start this year and take place over a three year period.

 

This deal follows on the heels of a third order from Sweden for the RG32M. The latest Swedish contract, announced last month (December) is for 60 vehicles and is worth some €18 million. It follows two previous orders for RG32Ms, the first – placed in 2005 – for 102 vehicles, and the second, placed in 2007, for another 98. The 200th and last vehicle acquired under these first and second contracts was delivered last year, and the first vehicle from the new contract will be delivered in February 2010. The RG32Ms of this third batch will be upgraded in various ways (the details are confidential) and the delivery of the production vehicles will be preceded by an upgrade and test cycle during this year.

 

Regarding the Irish order, the RG32M LTV was chosen after two months of intensive field trials, beating two European competitors – the Mowag Eagle IV from Switzerland, and the Iveco MLV from Italy. The Irish are adopting an LTAV, as they call this type of vehicle, specifically to participate in peacekeeping missions abroad, on behalf of the UN or EU – Ireland currently has an infantry battalion serving with the EU force in Chad.

In Irish service, the RG32M LTV will be employed in various roles, including surveillance, communications, target acquisition, and transporting US-made Javelin anti-tank missiles. The Irish vehicles will be armed either with 12,7 mm heavy machine guns or 40 mm automatic grenade launchers.

The RG32M LTV is the latest version of the RG32M, LTV standing for Light Tactical Vehicle. It has improved mine protection in comparison with previous models, providing greater blast survivability and crew protection.

The RG32M LTV is classified as a light armoured vehicle, in the light mine protected patrol vehicle category, and has a gross vehicle mass of only 9 t. Its armour can protect its crew from armour-piercing rifle fire as well as anti-tank land mine blasts, with its externally mounted windows providing improved side-blast protection. It has a 200 mm wider hull and 50 mm greater head space in comparison to earlier RG32Ms. The LTV version also has an increased, 2 t, payload and a new design of load bay which can take a wide variety of mission-specific equipment, making it more versatile. Despite its better protection and greater internal space, it has lost none of the ground clearance, agility, or mobility of the earlier versions.

The RG32M family makes extensive use of commercial-off-the-shelf components, reducing maintenace costs and minimising logistical burdens. These latest contracts take the total number of RG32Ms, of all models, built or on order, to more than 500. All have been, and will be, manufactured at the company’s plant in Benoni, east of Johannesburg

 

(All Photos from the DFMagazine Photostream)

This was the highlight and reason for my Southern Arizona Adventure 2024. This is stage 8 of 9.

I was lucky to secure permits for the once monthly photography tour of Kartchner Caverns. Kartchner Caverns State Park strictly forbids any cameras or cellphones in the Caverns. Except for one trip per month for 12 to 15 photographers currently $125. I planned a 4 day 3 night road trip around Southern Arizona anchored by my Kartchner Cavern permit.

 

As we were waiting in the Visitor Center, I saw this on the wall and grabbed a quick shot. Looking at it now and looking back at my time in the Caverns, I wish I had shot a better photo.

 

nocache.azcentral.com/travel/arizona/southern/articles/20...

The Kartchner Caverns, rated one of the world's 10 most beautiful caves, is an eerie wonderland of stalactites and stalagmites still growing beneath the Whetstone Mountains 40 miles southeast of Tucson.

The limestone cave has 13,000 feet of passages and hundreds of formations built over the past 200,000 years, including some that are unique and world-renowned. It's a "living cave," with intricate formations that continue to grow as water seeps, drips and flows from the walls and slowly deposits the mineral calcium carbonate.

The caverns were discovered by amateur spelunkers Randy Tufts and Gary Tenen in 1974 on land owned by the Kartchner family. They kept the cave a secret until 1988, when the Kartchners sold it to the state to become a state park.

 

The highlights of the Big Room tour are a stretch of strawberry flowstone, which has been colored red by iron oxide (rust) in the water, and a maternity ward for 1,800 female cave myotis bats, with black grime on the ceiling where the bats hang and piles of guano on the floor. Visitors who look closely will see a bat's body embedded in one of the cave's formations.

Though not all are available on the tours, the caverns' unique features include a 21-foot, 2-inch soda straw that's one the world's largest (Throne Room), the world's most extensive formation of brushite moonmilk (Big Room), the first reported occurrence of "turnip" shields (Big Room), the first cave occurrence of "birdsnest" needle quartz formations (Big Room) and the remains of a Shasta ground sloth from the Pleistocene Age (Big Room).

 

azstateparks.com/Kartchner

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kartchner_Caverns_State_Park

Kartchner Caverns State Park is a state park of Arizona, United States, featuring a show cave with 2.4 miles (3.9 km) of passages.[1] The park is located 9 miles (14 km) south of the town of Benson and west of the north-flowing San Pedro River. Long hidden from view, the caverns were discovered in 1974 by local cavers, assisted by state biologist Erick Campbell who helped in its preservation.

The park encompasses most of a down-dropped block of Palaeozoic rocks on the east flank of the Whetstone Mountains.

The caverns are carved out of limestone and filled with spectacular speleothems which have been growing for 50,000 years or longer, and are still growing. Careful and technical cave state park development and maintenance, initially established by founder Dr. Bruce Randall "Randy" Tufts, geologist, were designed to protect and preserve the cave system throughout the park's development, and for perpetuity.[3]

 

The two major features of the caverns accessible to the public are the Throne Room and the Big Room. The Throne Room contains one of the world's longest (21 ft 2 in (6.45 m))[5] soda straw stalactites and a 58-foot (18 m) high column called Kubla Khan, after the poem. The Big Room contains the world's most extensive formation of brushite moonmilk. Big Room cave tours are closed during the summer for several months (April 15 to October 15) each year because it is a nursery roost for cave bats, however the Throne Room tours remain open year-round.[8]

 

Other features publicly accessible within the caverns include Mud Flats, Rotunda Room, Strawberry Room, and Cul-de-sac Passage. Approximately 60% of the cave system is not open to the public.[9]

 

Many different cave formations can be found within the caves and the surrounding park. These include cave bacon, helictites, soda straws, stalactites, stalagmites and others.[12] Cave formations like the stalactites and stalagmites grow approximately a 16th of an inch every 100 years.[13]

 

Haiku thoughts:

Beneath earth's cool veil,

Stalactites in silence grow,

Whispers of stone deep.

 

Southern Arizona Adventure 2024

Staff Sgt. Tommie Coleman, a fueler with Battery C,1st Battalion, 82nd Field Artillery Regiment, 1st Brgiade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division pulls security during re-supply operations at Hohenfels Training Area, Oct 26. Combined Resolve III is a U.S. Army Europe-directed multinational exercise at the Grafenwoehr and Hohenfels Training Areas, including more than 4,000 participants from NATO and partner nations (U.S. Army photo by Capt. John Farmer, 1st BCT, 1st CD Public Affairs).

The Orion crew access arm is secured in a storage location at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The access arm will be prepared for its move to the mobile launcher (ML) tower near the Vehicle Assembly Building at the center. The crew access arm will be installed at about the 274-foot level on the tower. It will rotate from its retracted position and interface with the Orion crew hatch location to provide entry to the Orion crew module. The Ground Systems Development and Operations Program is overseeing installation of umbilicals and launch accessories on the ML tower. Photo credit: NASA/Frank Michaux

NASA image use policy.

 

CONTINGENCY OPERATING SITE WARRIOR, Iraq – Specialist Luz Natalia Gonzalez, a military police Soldier assigned to “Punishers” Provincial Police Transition Team, 1st Advise and Assist Task Force, 1st Infantry Division, conducts a security patrol outside of the Domies Police Headquarters in Kirkuk City, Iraq, July 31, 2011.

(U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Robert DeDeaux, 1st AATF PAO, 1st Inf. Div., USD – N)

 

 

www.flaneurphoto.com

Old lock at Highgate Cemetery, London.

+++ DISCLAIMER +++

Nothing you see here is real, even though the model, the conversion or the presented background story might be based on historical facts. BEWARE!

  

Some background:

On 27th November 1940, Moldova followed closely behind its neighbor and protector, Romania, and joined the Axis Powers. Now eligible for German military equipment, the Royal Moldovan Air Force sought to update its inventory with German types and gain access to German training. In January 1941 an agreement was reached that enabled both; by then, German troops had already entered Moldova to “secure the border [with the Socialist Union] from Red aggression.”

 

Moldovan air and ground crews were soon sent for training with the Luftwaffe and the first (second-hand) Messerschmitt Bf 109E-3s to enter Moldovan service arrived in May 1941. This first batch of 14 planes was allocated to the 1st Fighter Squadron, where they replaced Romanian-built PZL P.11fs. They were in combat from the first day of Operation Barbarossa, crossing the border into the Transnistrian and Ukrainian republics of the Socialist Union to conduct escort, strafing and fighter sweep missions on 22 June 1941.

 

Soon thereafter, more and more modern (but still mostly second hand) equipment of German origin was provided. Beyond the Bf 109 E, several Bf 109F and early G fighters were delivered, some Fw 190A and F, a handful of Ju 87 and Hs 123 dive bombers as well as some Ju 52 transporters and Junkers Ju 88 bombers.

 

Most of these aircraft had formerly taken part in the North Africa campaign or the Mediterranean TO. As a consequence, many Moldovan aircraft were outfitted with special equipment like dust filters, and a high number of machines still carried desert camouflage upon their arrival at the Russian Front. The latter was quickly modified in the field workshops, with whatever alternative paints at hand, but due to the aircrafts’ immediate use in combat, only hasty and minimal adaptations were made.

 

During its peak in June 1943, the Royal Moldovan Air Force had grown to a total of 150 aircraft. However, its contribution to the Axis forces was not significant, even though some individual Moldovan fighter pilots scored considerable air victory counts.

 

With the advance of Soviet Forces by late 1944 and the liberation of the Crimean peninsula, most Moldovan aircraft had been severely damaged or destroyed. Through the withdrawal of the Axis forces the Moldovan machines became unserviceable, so that the small air arm effectively ceased to exist. The few remaining, airworthy machines were retired to the west and absorbed in Romanian units.

It would take until 1991 that the Moldovan Air Force would be re-formed, after the country’s newly gained independence from the dissolved Soviet Union as Republic of Moldova.

 

(Background and model inspired by fellow modeler comrade harps at whatifmodelers.com)

  

General characteristics:

Crew: 1

Length: 9.00 m (29 ft 5 in)

Wingspan: 10.51 m (34 ft 5 in)

Height: 3.95 m (12 ft 12 in)

Wing area: 18.30 m² (196.99 ft²)

Empty weight: 3,200 kg (7,060 lb)

Loaded weight: 4,417 kg (9,735 lb)

Max. takeoff weight: 4,900 kg (10,800 lb)

 

Powerplant:

1× BMW 801 D-2 radial engine, 1,250 kW (1,700 PS, 1,677 hp)

 

Performance:

Maximum speed: 656 km/h (408 mph) at 19,420 ft (5,920 m)

Range: 800 km (500 mi)

Service ceiling: 11,410 m (37,430 ft)

Rate of climb: 15 m/s (2,953 ft/min)

Wing loading: 241 kg/m² (49.4 lb/ft²)

Power/mass: 0.29–0.33 kW/kg (0.18–0.21 hp/lb)

 

Armament:

2× 7.92 mm (.312 in) synchronized MG 17 machine guns with 900 RPG

4× 20 mm MG 151/20 E cannon, two of them with 250 RPG, synchronized in the wing roots,

and two more with 125 RPG outboard in mid-wing mounts

A retrofitted centre-line ETC 501 rack, typically holding a 250 kg (550 lb) bomb or a 300 L drop tank

Some machines also carried Luftwaffe Rüstsätze, e .g. R1 with a pair of WB 151 weapon

containers, each holding 2× 20-mm-MG 151/20 with 125 RPG under the wings

 

The kit and its assembly:

A remake of an inspiration. This build is a follow-up, and a further interpretation of another modeler’s idea, comrade harps from whatifmodelers.com, who came up with a Moldovan Bf 109E and a respective background story some time ago. After all, the Russian Liberation Army (ROA) also operated German aircraft like the Bf 109G, so the idea was not as weird as it might seem at first. I liked the idea of an overlooked Moldovan operator very much, and my first build within this fictional framework was a Heller Bf 109 F trop (a horrible kit, BTW).

 

This time I wanted to tackle an early Fw 190 A fighter, and also finish it in winter camouflage. The kit I used is the Academy Fw 190 A-6/8 model. It is certainly not the most detailed and up-to-date model of the aircraft, but it is a solid model, goes together well and is IMHO a priceworthy offering.

 

Building-wise, I did not change much about the kit, it was built OOB with some minor mods. The pitot, OOB mounted close to the wing tip for an A-8 version, had to be relocated towards a mid-wing position for an earlier A-6 variant. As an extra I lowered the flaps and cut away the lower sections from the wheel covers; this was a common practice on Fw 190s operated at the Eastern front during wintertime, because snow would clog up between the wheels and the covers, freeze and eventually make the aircraft inoperable.

As another extra I used the WB 151 gun packs which come with the kit – resulting in the massive firepower of eight(!) 20mm cannon, plus a pair of machine guns that would operationally fire tracer bullets, so that the pilot knew when he could unleash the cannons! The optional tropical sand filters came with the kit, too.

  

Painting and markings:

To a certain degree quite conservative, since this was supposed to be a former Luftwaffe aircraft, transferred to the Moldovan air force from the Mediterranean TO. As such I gave the aircraft a standard Luftwaffe camouflage with RLM 74/75/76 (using a mix of Modelmaster enamels). As a side note, this does not speak against the aircraft’s potential former use in North Africa – many Fw 190s operated there did not carry any desert camouflage at all.

 

However, I wanted to present the aircraft in a temporary/worn winter camouflage on the upper surfaces with washable white paint, overpainted former Luftwaffe insignia and additional new Moldovan markings. I also wanted to visualize the short period of time between the aircraft’s arrival at the Russian Front from Northern Africa and its immediate employment in Moldovan hands, including tactical markings of the Axis forces in the Eastern TO from around late 1941 onwards. Sounds complicated – but it’s the logical translation of the made-up background, and I think that such a concept, literally telling a story, makes a what-if model more convincing than just putting some obscure markings on an off-the-rack kit.

 

After the original German scheme had been painted, the next step was to paint over the former German and African TO markings. I used a light olive green and a light blue tone, as if the machine had been modified in a Moldovan field workshop with Romanian paints (or whatever else) at hand. The new yellow ID markings (lower wing tips, engine front (both painted with Humbrol 69) and fuselage band (decal) were added at this stage, too. Then came a black ink wash, emphasizing the model's engraved panel lines.

Once dry and cleaned-up, the new Moldovan markings were added. They come from a Begemot MiG-29 sheet. The flag on the rudder was improvised with a mix of paint (blue and red) and a ~2.5mm yellow decal stripe. The tactical code, the red "26", comes from a Soviet lend-lease P-40.

 

But the Fw 190 was till not finished - now the whitewash was added. This was simply created with Humbrol 34 (Matt White) and a soft, flat brush, in streaks which were made from the back to the front. This creates an IMHO quite plausible look of the worn, washable paint, and in some areas (around the cockpit, on the wings) I thinned the whitewash layer down even more, simulating wear.

 

Once dry, the decals received a light tratement with sandpaper, in order to match their look to the worn surroundings, and exhaust stains and gun soot were added with grinded graphite. Some dry-brushing with light grey was done on some areas, too. The wheels and the landing gear received a layer of "snow cake", created with white tile grout.

 

Finally, the model received a coat of matt acrylic varnish and finishing touches like a wire antenna (made with heated black sprue material).

 

Even though it's almost an OOB build, except for the markings, the result looks quite convincing. The result cannot be called “pretty”, but I think the extra work with the whitewash paid out. The fictional Moldovan Fw 190 looks really …different, especially in the BW beauty shots, the aircraft looks pretty convincing, and now it can join its Bf 109F stablemate in the collection.

Internet conceptual image. Secured internet network connection

Sailor First Class Andrew Henderson, Boatswain, secures a lifeline to the transom of HMCS HARRY DEWOLF during Cold Weather Trials off the coast of Labrador on February 13, 2021.

 

Photo: Corporal David Veldman, Canadian Armed Forces Photo 20210213HSK0086D028

 

Le matelot de 1re classe Andrew Henderson, manœuvrier, amarre un filin de sécurité au tableau du NCSM HARRY DEWOLF durant les essais par temps froids réalisés au large du Labrador, le 13 février 2021.

 

Photo : Caporal David Veldman, photo des Forces armées canadiennes

  

A Moldovan soldier provides while National Guard Soldiers secure a gate from a simulated protest during Operation Hickory Sting at Fort Irwin, California, July 3, 2019. Operation Hickory Sting is a decisive action rotation focused on combined arms maneuver and collective gunnery at the National Training Center, Fort Irwin, California, in order to validate the capabilities of the 30th Armored Brigade Combat Team in the training environment and provide a globally responsive brigade ready to deploy, fight and win. (Photo by Sgt. Wayne Becton, North Carolina National Guard Public Affairs)