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Frickelfest (I love it)
sound.westhost.com/why-diy.htm
Why DIY?
Contrary to popular belief, the main reason for DIY is not (or should not be) about saving money. While this is possible in many cases (and especially against 'top of the line' commercial products), there are other, far better reasons to do it yourself.
The main one is knowledge, new skills, and the enormous feeling of satisfaction that comes from building your own equipment. This is worth far more than money. For younger people, the skills learned will be invaluable as you progress through life, and once started, you should continue to strive for making it yourself wherever possible.
Each and every new skill you learn enables the learning processes to be 'exercised', making it easier to learn other new things that come your way.
Alvin Toffler (the author of Future Shock) wrote:- "The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn."
This is pretty much an absolute these days, and we hear stories every day about perfectly good people who simply cannot get a new job after having been 'retrenched' (or whatever stupid term the 'human resources' people come up with next). As an aside, I object to being considered a 'resource' for the corporate cretins to use, abuse and dispose of as they see fit.
The skills you learn building an electronics project (especially audio) extend far beyond soldering a few components into a printed circuit board. You must source the components, working your way through a minefield of technical data to figure out if the part you think is right is actually right. Understanding the components is a key requirement for understanding electronics.
You will probably need to brush up on your maths - all analogue electronics requires mathematics if you want to understand what is going on. The greater your understanding, the more you have learned in the process. These are not trivial skills, but thankfully, they usually sneak up on you. Before you realise it, you have been working with formulae that a few years ago you would have sneered at, thinking that such things are only for boffins or those really weird guys you recall from school.
Then there is the case to house everything. You will need to learn how to perform basic metalworking skills. Drilling, tapping threads, filing and finishing a case are all tasks that need to be done to complete your masterpiece. These are all skills that may just come in very handy later on.
Should you be making loudspeakers, then you will learn about acoustics. You will also learn woodworking skills, veneering, and using tools that you may never have even known existed had you not ventured into one of the most absorbing and satisfying hobbies around.
Ok, that's fine for the younger generation(s), but what about us 'oldies'? We get all the same benefits, but in some cases, it is even possible to (almost) make up for a lifetime spent in an unrewarding job. As we get older, the new skills are less likely to be used for anything but the hobby, but that does not diminish the value of those skills one iota.
However, it's not all about learning, it's also about doing. Few people these days have a job where at the end of the day they can look at something they built. Indeed, in a great many cases, one comes home at the end of the day, knowing that one was busy all day with barely time for lunch, yet would be hard pressed to be able to say exactly what was achieved. What would have happened if what you did today wasn't done? Chances are, nothing would have happened at all - whatever it was you did simply wasn't done (if you follow the rather perverse logic in that last statement ).
Where is the satisfaction in that? There isn't any - it's a job, you get paid, so are able to pay your bills, buy food and live to do the same thing tomorrow.
When you build something, there is a sense of pride, of achievement - there is something to show for it, something tangible. No, it won't make up for a job you hate (or merely dislike), but at least you have created something. Having done it once, it becomes important to do it again, to be more ambitious, to push your boundaries.
Today, a small preamp. Tomorrow, a complete state of the art 5.1 sound system that you made from raw materials, lovingly finished, and now provides enjoyment that no store-bought system ever will.
Eli Pariser, TED Talks
As web companies strive to tailor their services (including news and search results) to our personal tastes, there's a dangerous unintended consequence: We get trapped in a "filter bubble" and don't get exposed to information that could challenge or broaden our worldview.
www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubble...
This B&W photo, taken on a sunny day at the end of winter, is trying to highlight how the plants within the concrete appear to be reaching out, striving, towards the sun.
I elected fora square crop, cutting the image in half.
This is just one corner of the living sculpture "Symbiosis" by Joshua Wiener. www.joshuawiener.com/artwork.php?image_set_id=286be2f6-eb...
Interested in using this photo or any other one on my stream, let me know and send me an email. thank you
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web site: www.zl-photography.com
ift.tt/1OkaWEE Striver Strife Interviews FRESH PT. 1 New Music On Its Way !!! LATEST TRACK "ON IT" OUT NOW LINK IN MY BIO SC: SteezinSamurai #XVX7DN #Interview #Uk #Rap #UkRap #ZackxIsfresh #hiphop #Music #indie #unsigned #Independent #HotMusic #Sbtv #Linkuptv #BreakfastClub #Hot97
always strive to be outstanding in your field...
never settle for being just another face in the crowd....
for the imagoism thursday discussion and, as always, dedicated to the vision and prose of Virgie, aka imago2007...you're the best, V! :-)
happy imagoism thursday...HiT na HiT...and have a good thursday, y'all!
The Peninsula Hotel
(Formerly the Gotham Hotel, the Nova Park Hotel, Hotel Maxim's de Paris)
700 Fifth Avenue at 55th Street (2 West 55th Street)
New York, NY
- The Early Years -
In 1902 a group led by Henry R. Hoyt, known as the Fifty-Fifth Street Company, determined the best use of a site immediately across the street from the St. Regis Hotel (Col. John Jacob Astor's 18-story Beaux-Arts landmark) was a family hotel - to house many of the folks whose mansions were being demolished on Fifth Avenue. The hotel - The Gotham - was designed by Hiss & Weekes. The Gotham's limestone and granite facade was purposely lined-up with the University Club's facade which opened in 1899. The building was designed in a C-shape so rooms facing south would have a protected view over the University Club.
The architect's Beaux-Arts style 55th Street entranceway was designed extravagantly. Its capped broken pediment features the sculptured figures of Roman goddesses Pomona and Diana reclining on either side of the two double story banded Doric pillars.
Pomona, the goddess of orchards, carries a cornucopia and Diana, the goddess of the hunt, carries her bow and arrows. A characterization of Beaux Arts is the naturalism of the images - Diana’s hand rests on the formal building decorations - just as a real person sitting at that location would do. Unfortunately, Diana is missing her index finger.
The hotel was completed in 1905 and was forced to declare bankruptcy in 1908 - mostly due to its lack of a liquor license. The Gotham was in violation of a restriction prohibiting liquor sales within 200 feet of a church - The Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church. The developers failed to get a law passed in the New York State Legislature exempting hotels with more than 200 rooms from the restriction. Not until the 1940's did the Gotham have a cocktail lounge. The New York State Liquor Authority states the 200-foot law is still in effect, but that court challenges have allowed the foot measurement to be made from the actual point of sale and not as the crow flies.
According to the NY Times The Gotham opened with 400 sleeping rooms, both single and suites. The hotel offered its guests the “Georgian Room” for dinner and entertainment. The hotel's name was derived form the nickname of New York City; Gotham City. A banquet hall and ballroom were on the second floor, while the third floor was dedicated to private dining rooms. The NY Times states “The furnishings of the Gotham, while extremely rich, are far from garish. There is not the slightest striving after gaudy effects, the whole atmosphere being one of good taste.”
The hotel had a complicated ownership structure. It was built for about $2,000,000 by the Fifty-fifth Street Company. Upon completion the NY Times speculated the principal owners of Fifty-fifth Street Company were the heirs of the late Mark Hanna, Senator Thomas C. Platt, James J. Hill and Thomas F. Ryan. Henry R. Hoyt served as the president of the Fifty-fifth Street Corporation. The day to day operation of the hotel was conducted by the Hotel Gotham Company, for which Henry L. Goodwin served as President. In 1908 the Knickerbocker Trust Company brought a foreclosure proceeding against the Fifty-fifth Street Company for $413,746 due on a mortgage and also the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company held a mortgage on the hotel of over $1,000,000.
In August, 1908 the NY Times reported the The Gotham Hotel was sold under the foreclosure to an entity known as Hotel Holding Company, with George C Comstock, the President. Hotel Holding Company selected William R. Wood and Charles L. Wetherbee, associates in the management of the Hotel Buckingham, to take operational control of the Hotel Gotham on a 21-yhear lease effective August 1908. They in turn appointed Frederick D. Wishard, formerly manager of the Hotel Astor, as resident manager at the Gotham.
The new operators thought they could make the Gotham successful without a liquor license by focusing on service and the food. The new operators denied there would be any attempt to operate an underground tunnel from the basement of the adjacent University Club for the transfer of alcoholic beverages to Gotham Hotel guests.
In 1920 Julius and William Manger bought the hotel for $4 million. The Manger Brothers also owned several Manhattan hotels including the Netherland (demolished - now the site the Sherry-Netherland Hotel), the Endicott, the Manger (now The Michelangelo Hotel), Martha Washington (now the Hotel Thirty Thirty) and the Great Northern (now demolished - 118 West 57th St - once a home to Jack Dempsey's Restaurant). In 1932 the Gotham entered receivership and was taken over by Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. The insurance company leased it to a Chicago hotel group headed by Arnold S. Kirkeby that also operated the Drake and Blackstone Hotels in Chicago. The Kirkeby group purchased the property from the insurance company in 1944 for $2,350,000. Kirkeby also owned and lived in the Beverly Hills mansion used for CBS sitcom "The Beverly Hillbillies".
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An ad from the Gotham in the 1930's: "Delightful entertaining in the quaint Alpine Grill (Switzerland on the Avenue) the new Gold Room Cocktail Lounge with Raoul Lipoff and his orchestra and the splendor of the Renaissance Room Contributes to the universal popularity of the Gotham. The spacious rooms and suites have been tastefully furnished for comfort and luxury. Up-to-the-minute service and a delicious cuisine that is without a peer in New York. The sensible rentals assure not only a pleasant but also an economical visit. Single rooms from $4.00. Max A. Haering, Resident Manager."
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- The John Warde Suicide Jump - July 26, 1938 -
Twenty six year old John William Warde leaped from a window ledge of the seventeenth floor of the Gotham Hotel crashing through the hotel's 55th Street marquis and smashing on the sidewalk. Warde became upset in a 17th-floor room when he stepped out to the ledge beginning a 14 hour drama involving up to 300 New York City police officers and 10,000 sidewalk spectators. Warde had recently been discharged from an insane asylum. The incident was made into the 1951 film Fourteen Hours, with Richard Basehart as the man on the ledge.
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In 1955, Evelyn Sharp bought the 400-room Gotham hotel and the 350-room Beverly Wilshire in Beverly Hills, Calif., and the Saranac Inn in Saranac Lake, N. Y., for $16 million from Webb & Knapp Inc., which was William Zeckendorf's organization. Mrs. Sharp's hotel empire, which she inherited from her late husband, Jesse Sharp, also included at one time the Stanhope Hotel. The Saranac Inn closed permanently in 1962, and burned to the ground in 1978.
In 1961, Mrs. Sharp sold the Gotham and Stanhope hotels in NYC and the Beverly Wilshire Hotel to Webb & Knapp Inc. for about $25 million. At the time Mrs. Sharp said it was time to get out of the hotel business and into the office building business. She negotiated keeping a rooftop penthouse home with terraces and her office which she maintained for several years at the Gotham. She eventually divested most of her real estate holdings, including the Stanhope, and devoted herself to charities in New York and Los Angeles and to her art collection.
Webb & Knapp sold the Gotham later in 1961 to a group headed by Alvin M. Greenstein, but leased it back for 21 years plus 16 renewal options. In 1964, Webb & Knapp sold its interests (the land under the Gotham Hotel) to Wellington Associates, a partnership headed by Sol Goldman (the biggest landlord in NYC) and Alex Di Lorenzo. Heirs to the Goldman and Di Lorenzo estates divided the real estate up based on coin flips. The Goldman estate retained ownership of the land under the Gotham Hotel.
- The René E. Hatt Years (Le Big Boss) -
A Zurich apartment and office developer, René E. Hatt built the 400-room Zurich Nova-Park. Opened in 1972, the hotel was the largest in Zurich. Hatt's goal was to create a meeting place for both locals and for out of towners. Some of his hotel concepts included a Playcorner, a Newscorner, Backgammon Club, a video room, a Psychology Center - a precursor to today's "life-style hotels". His guestrooms were designed with bathtubs near the bed, red carpeting and mirrors everywhere. Zurich people flocked to the hotel's health club and restaurants. The discos were kept busy day and night. Hatt and his investors, which included Arab money and German bank loans, were eager to launch an international hotel chain based on the Nova-Park Zurich's success.
In 1978 Rene Hatt had William Zeckendorf Jr show him around NYC looking at hotel sites. Sol Goldman owned the Gotham, which was operating profitably at an annual $2.2 million GOP. Hatt performed some arithmetic and offered Goldman $3.5 million per year (the lease had escalation clauses) for a 99 lease. The lease was signed in 1979 and Hatt set out to make the Gotham the best hotel in NYC. The hotel would be re-named Nova-Park Gotham; Hatt wanted it to be the fanciest in the world with six restaurants, 10 bars and a nightclub.
Hatt's initial renovation budget was set at $56 million. He raised $18 million in cash from his Arab investors and obtained a $38 million loan from Deutsche Anlagen Leasing (DAL). He shut the hotel down in January, 1981 expecting the renovation to last a little over a year. Hatt hired the architect Stephen Jacobs. Jacobs was the architect involved with the renovation of the Halloran House hotel (now the New York Marriott East Side). Structurally the hotel room count was reduced from 330 rooms to 255 larger rooms and the shops fronting Fifth Avenue were replaced with a Fifth Avenue Sidewalk Cafe. Three floors were added to the top of the hotel housing a health club, restaurant/bar, skating rink and swimming pool. Hatt wanted guestroom bathtubs placed in the bedroom and not the bathroom.
Some hoteliers were saying Hatt's tastes were abominable and some were saying he was ahead of his time. Because of constant change orders ordered by Hatt the project costs skyrocketed. DAL had increased its funding from $38 million to $55 million. By 1983 Hatt was asking for another $20 million from DAL to finish the project. DAL refused and took back control of the unfinished project when Hatt failed to make monthly payments to DAL. The majestic hotel sat as a boarded up eyesore for a couple of years as lawsuits were filed.
Once a strong industry performer Hatt saddled the Nova-Park chain with $250 million in debt and he was ousted as the company's founder. Briefly Hatt re-surfaced in 1986 as a principal of the shuttered El Morocco night club on East 54th Street.
The land owner, Sol Goldman paid DAL $35 million for their interest. Goldman put together a partnership consisting of himself, Irving Goldman, his brother; Arthur G. Cohen and William Zeckendorf Jr., Steven Goodstein, who will be in charge of further renovation, and the Southmark Corporation, which controls the Pratt hotel chain of Dallas to complete the renovation. The partnership would add another $35 million on top of the $35 million paid to DAL to complete the renovation (get the bathtubs out of the living rooms) and branding of the hotel to Maxim’s de Paris. Hirsch/Bedner was the designer for the new interiors.
The NY Times reported that Southmark Corp contributed $63 million to the group to purchase and complete the refurbishment of the hotel. Pierre Cardin would receive 1 1/2 percent of the gross as a royalty fee for the name Maxim's. The royalty fee was later reduced to being payable only after the hotel's debt service was covered.
Pratt had recently opened Maxim's de Paris in Palm Springs with his partner Edward J. DeBartolo Corporation of Youngstown, Ohio.
In August 1988, Jane Goldman, the daughter of Sol Goldman, announced the sale of the Maxim's de Paris Hotel to The Peninsula Group of Hong Kong. The price was $127 million (HK$990 million) for the remaining 90 years lease on the building, and not for the land itself, which the Goldman Family retains. The price paid per room is the highest ever at that time for a hotel property in Manhattan.
The sellers of Maxim's are a group consisting of the heirs of Sol Goldman, William Zeckendorf Jr., Arthur G. Cohen and Steven Goodstein, and the Southmark Corporation of Dallas.
HongKong and Shanghai Hotels closed The Peninsula New York in 1998 for complete $45 million internal reconstruction. The hotel reopened on November 1, 1998. In 2008 the hotel's rooftop bar, The Pen-Top, received an extensive renovation and repositioning to Salon de Ning.
- The Peninsula New York Operating Statistics -
(The Hongkong and Shanghai Hotels, Limited Annual Report for 2010)
(1.00 HKD = 0.1285 USD)
2011 (six months ended June 30)
Occupancy Rate - 70%
Average Room Rate - US$ 681
RevPAR - US$ 478
2010
Occupancy Rate - 67%
Average Room Rate - US$ 715
RevPAR - US$ 478
2009
Occupancy Rate - 62%
Average Room Rate - US$ 683
RevPAR - US$ 426
2008
Occupancy Rate - 64%
Average Room Rate - US$ 814
RevPAR - US$ 520
2007
Occupancy Rate - 75%
Average Room Rate - US$ 812
RevPAR - US$ 613
In 1986 Robert Jean Berge was appointed the general manager. French-born, Mr. Berge studied at the Hotel School in Toulouse and the Cornell School of Hotel Administration. He later managed the La Mamounia in Marrakech. As of 2010 Robert Bergé is supervising the pre-opening and opening phases of the Mandarin Oriental Marrakech.
Berge opened Mediterranean-style luxury restaurant called Adrienne on the second floor overlooking Fifth Avenue. On a corner of the second floor, facing 55th Street will be a bar and a more casual restaurant called Bistro d' Adrienne. ''We will serve real bistro food - rack of lamb, comfit of goose with french fries, cassoulet,'' he promises.
Jacques Chibois, chef of the Royal Gray, a highly rated restaurant in Cannes on the French Riviera (two stars in the Michelin Guide), will be the consulting chef at the new Hotel Maxim's de Paris.
In 1988, Rocco DiSpirito went to work at Adrienne in Hotel Maxim's de Paris under Jean-Michel Diot and Jacques Chibois.
In 1989, Chef Grey Kunz moved to New York to become executive chef at The Peninsula Hotel's Adrienne and the Bistro restaurants.
As of 2011 the Peninsula's executive chef is Thomas Piede. He oversees the Fives restaurant, Gotham Lounge, and the rooftop bar - Salon de Ning. Piede joined Peninsula New York as Executive Sous Chef in 2003, and previously held positions at Aureole, and Le Cirque.
In May 2007 Robert H. Rechtermann was appointed General Manager, The Peninsula New York. Previously he was Resident Manager of The Peninsula Chicago. He holds a B.S. in hotel management from Fairleigh Dickinson University.
In April, 2011 The Peninsula New York appointed Jonathan Crook as General Manager, he previously served two years as the GM of The Peninsula Manila.
The Peninsula New York appointed Sharon Telesca Feurer as Director of Marketing in September 2011. She previously was Director of Marketing for Trump SoHo New York, and prior to that, she was Vice President of Marketing for AKA Hotels.
Text compiled by Dick Johnson. Photos by Dick Johnson.
December 2011
richardlloydjohnson@hotmail.com
Here over 130 5th Grade students and their teachers from the Davis School in New Rochelle are participating in "Striving for Freedom" at the Jay Heritage Center in Rye. The play was performed in the multi-purpose Carriage House on the property. Hands were up to ask and answer questions about slavery in New York and the early abolition efforts of John Jay. The Jay Property in Rye is a historic site where enslaved men and women are known to have lived and worked and where some were also emancipated and buried.
The children asked very thoughtful questions about who decided what job you would have back then and made poignant observations that being enslaved would make a person feel "angry" or "ashamed." One boy remarked how hard it must be for descendants of enslaved people today to trace their roots since so many families, especially children were separated.
The JHC is dedicated to programs that examine the evolution of our American government and system of beliefs. "The struggle to maintain a democratic society is one of our greatest challenges we face as a people. One important function of the Jay Heritage Center [is] to remind Americans of the struggles of the framers of the constitution and the courts and to connect those struggles with present day concerns about civil rights and civil liberties. The Center thus becomes a forum for creative problem solving and the exploration of difficult issues that effect each of our lives." Gretchen Sullivan Sorin.
Come see our next performance of "Striving for Freedom" at the Jay Heritage Center. Call (914) 698-9275 for further information.
Learn more on youtube:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASv83-Iecsk&feature=related
"It is much to be wished that slavery may be abolished. The honour of the States, as well as justice and humanity, in my opinion, loudly call upon them to emancipate these unhappy people. To contend for our own liberty, and to deny that blessing to others, involves an inconsistency not to be excused." John Jay 1786
JHC programs examine the prevalence of slavery in New York and the role of John Jay and his family in abolishing it. It has been estimated that ironically in 1776 as of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, there were over half a million slaves in the United States, throughout all 13 colonies, including 15,000 in New York.
Among its goals, the JHC hopes to be "a national focal point for a continuing conversation about the two greatest pieces of unfinished American business--race and land; meaning how we treat each other and how we treat the rest of God's creation." Tony Hiss
www.westchestergov.com/pdfs/AfricanAmerican_HeritageTrail...
Jay Heritage Center
210 Boston Post Road
Rye, NY 10580
(914) 698-9275
Email: jayheritagecenter@gmail.com
Follow and like us on:
Twitter @jayheritage
Facebook www.facebook.com/jayheritagecenter
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www.instagram.com/jayheritagecenter/
A National Historic Landmark since 1993
Member of the African American Heritage Trail of Westchester County since 2004
Member of the Hudson River Valley National Heritage Area since 2009
On NY State's Path Through History (2013)
Goethe's Secret Revelation PART TWO THE RIDDLE IN FAUST Esoteric Two Addresses given 11nth and 12th March, 1909, at Berlin . It was in August, 1831, that Goethe sealed up a packet and handed it to his faithful secretary Eckermann and prepared his testamentary directions for the editing of this sealed-up treasure. This packet contained in a comprehensive way the whole striving of Goethe's life. It contained the second part of Goethe's Faust; which was not to be published until after Goethe's death. Goethe was aware that in this work he had given the contents of his rich, many-sided, far-reaching and deeply-penetrating life to human existence, and the importance of this moment for him may be gathered from the words he uttered at the time, ‘I am now finished my life's true work, anything I do further and whether I do it or not, is all the same!’ If we permit a fact such as this to work on the soul we can say: It would not be easy for a human life to become fruitful for the rest of humanity in a more beautiful, harmonious way, or indeed to become fruitful in a more conscious manner. There is something deeply affecting in the thought of Goethe's life at this point of time — for he lived barely one year longer — in that he should have visited Ilmenau once more and there re-read the beautiful verse he had written on the 7th of September, 1783, when he was still a comparatively young man.‘Above all heights Is rest, In the tree tops Thou feelest Scarce a breath,The birds are silent in the woods, Only wait, soon Thou too shalt rest.’One may well ask whether these lines may not have signified at that time a frame of mind regulating Goethe's ideas in a new way as he re-read them in the evening of his life with affecting tears.Goethe's Faust is truly a testament of the very first order when considered with reference to its literary and intellectual standpoint.In 1831 Goethe finished the work which had occupied him from his earliest youth, having worked energetically from the year 1824 at the second part of Faust. We find that Goethe knew from the beginning of 1770 that he had what may be called the Faust disposition and that he began in 1774 to write down the first part of Faust, returning again and again to this poem in the most important moments of his life.Notably he took the first part of Faust with him when he went to Weimar and owing to his position there entered the great world. Certainly it was not produced there. But because one of the Weimar Court ladies, Fräulein von Göchhausen, preserved a copy of the Faust which Goethe took with him to Weimar, we to-day possess the form in which it was when he took it there. We therefore know the form in which Faust was printed for the first time and published in 1790, and further we know the setting in which the whole of Goethe's works appeared in 1808 in the first edition. All that we have of Faust, including that very important document which Goethe left as his testament, shows us the different stages of Goethe's growth. It is endlessly interesting to observe how these four stages of Goethe's Faust-creation appear to us in different ways, according to its inner nature, and how they represent a crescendo in the whole of Goethe's life-endeavour. What Goethe took with him to Weimar is a literary work of a quite personal character into which he had poured the feelings, the degrees of knowledge and also the despair of knowledge, as they went with him through the Frankfort time into the Strassburg time and also into the first Weimar period. It is the work of a man hotly striving after knowledge, striving to feel himself into life, experiencing every despair that an upright honourable man can go through, and all this he had poured into this work. All this is in the first part of Faust. But when Faust appeared in 1790 as a fragment, it was recognized that Goethe had worked at it and transformed it out of a longing lying deep in his soul and inner life which had become enlightened through his contemplation of Italian nature and of Italian works of Art. Out of this personal work of one who had been tossed to and fro in life's storms there emerged the work of one, who to a certain degree, had become unshackled and who had a very clear view of life before his soul.Then came the time of Goethe's friendship with Schiller. The time when in his inner being he learned to know and experience a world which had long become rooted within him. A world of which one can say that he who experiences it has had his spiritual eyes opened, so that he can see into the surrounding spiritual world. And now Faust's personality becomes a being placed between two worlds, between the spiritual world to which man can raise himself through purification, through the ennobling of himself and that world which drags him down. Faust becomes a being placed between the world of good and the world of evil. And while previously we saw in Faust the life of the single striving personality, now we see before us a great conflict carried on between the good and evil powers around man. Man is thus placed in the centre as the worthiest object for which the good and evil beings fight in the world. Though in the very beginning Faust is seen as a man doubting all knowledge, he now comes before us as one placed between heaven and hell. Thus the poem reaches an essentially higher stage and a higher existence.In the form in which Faust appears in 1808 it seems as if thousands of years of human development resound. We are reminded of the great dramatic representation of man's life produced in ancient times in the Book of Job, where the evil spirit went among men and stood up before God, and God said to him: ‘Thou hast been to and fro on the earth, hast thou considered my servant Job?’ What is here said we find in the poem, ‘The Prologue in Heaven’ where God speaks with Mephistopheles, the messenger of the evil spirituality: ‘The self in them expands to a spiritual universe.’ At that time at Frankfort he had the feeling, ‘Away from the mere striving after ideas! Away from the merely perceptive sense observation! There must be a path to the sources of existence!’ and he came into touch with what one can call alchemistic, mystical and theosophical literature. He himself attempted the practice of alchemy. He relates how he came to know of a work through which many sought for similar knowledge at that time, Welling's ‘Opus Mago-Cabalisticum et Theosophicum.’ This book was much thought of then as giving a knowledge of the sources of existence. Goethe studied by degrees Paracelsus, Valentinus and above all a work which from its whole method must have produced a deep impression on all those who strove after such knowledge, ‘Aurea Catena Homeri.’ This was a representation of nature the Mystics in the Middle Ages believed to see. The study of these mystical, alchemistic, theosophical books must have had a similar effect on Goethe to that which a man striving to-day after the same things would experience if he took up the books of Eliphas Levy or any other thinker on the same lines. Indeed at that time these things must have had an even more bewildering effect upon Goethe because these different writers no longer really understood the magic, theosophy, etc., of which they wrote. It was impossible to speak in direct way of the real grandeur and meaning of these things, proceeding from an ancient wisdom which had lived in human souls, for the meaning was hidden under an outer garb which included all kinds of physical and chemical forms. For those who merely saw what appeared outwardly in these books it was the greatest nonsense, and at that time it was most difficult to penetrate behind these secrets and arrive at the real meaning. But we must not forget that Goethe from his deep striving for knowledge had developed an intuitive mind. He must have been greatly pleased when on opening the ‘Aurea Catena Homeri’ he saw on the first page a symbol which had a deep effect on his soul; two triangles interlaced; in the corners the signs of the planets, drawn in a wonderful way, a flying dragon wound round in a circle, beneath which another dragon had fixed stiffening itself, and when he read the words on the first page, saying that the flying dragon symbolizes the stream which sends those forces which stream down from out of the Cosmos to the stiffened dragon, showing how heaven and earth hang together, or as it is expressed there: ‘How the spiritual forces of heaven pour into the earth's centre.’These mysterious signs and words must have made a great impression upon Goethe. For instance, those which depict the whole growth of the earth: ‘From chaos to that which is called the universal quintessence’ — a remarkable sentence, curiously mixed up with signs of a chaotic nature, still undifferentiated right through the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms, right up to man and to that perspective to which man is developing in ever greater refinement. But it was not easy to find a way of penetrating to the deeper meaning. So Goethe left Frankfort in a frame of mind which can be described in the following words: I have found nothing. These seekers into nature can only give me dry, empty ideas; anything that can be squeezed out of them is but life's water. I have busied myself with much that has come down to us from the past from those who declare that they saw into the secrets of life. But the way, the way drives one to despair!This was sometimes the mood in Goethe's soul. He was not to be bewitched by easy speculations or philosophizing, or by confused symbols and explanations from those old books, which worked so wonderfully and forebodingly on him. They looked at him with their mysteries as something to which he could find no way. But anyone who knew Goethe's soul, knew the seed was already sown in his soul which was to germinate later. But he felt himself as one who was rejected and unworthy to unravel the secrets of life. Then he went to Strassburg.There he met people who must have interested him in one way or the other. He got to know Jung-Stilling with his deeply mystical soul, who owing to the development of peculiar forces generally found sleeping in men, had looked deeply into the hidden side of existence. He met Herder at Strassburg, who had gone through similar moods and who in times of desperation had often been at the point of a denial of future life. In Herder he learnt to know a man who suffered from a surfeit of life and who said, I have studied much, discerning sundry things connected with men's works and men's strivings on the earth. But he was unable to say to himself, I have had one moment when my longing after the sources of life has been satisfied. This was when he was ill and inclined to deny everything with bitter irony. Yet it was Herder who pointed out many depths in the riddles of life, and Goethe found in him a truly human Faust. But that side of negation which is not the outcome of mockery and scorn Goethe learnt to know later through his friend Merck. Goethe's mother who disliked criticism of people and all moralizing said of Merck, he can never leave Mephistopheles at home, in him we are quite used to it. In Merck Goethe found a disclaimer of much that is worth striving for in life. Over against all these impressions which Goethe received from the Strassburg people, it was through Nature and his observation of Nature that many of life's puzzles were cleared up for him.At the same time we must think of Goethe as a man possessed of a sharp, penetrating mind; he was not an unpractical man. He was an advocate, but only practised for a short time. Those who knew Goethe's work as an advocate and later as a Minister, were acquainted with his eminently practical mind. As advocate he knew little more than what he had learnt by heart from law books. But he was a man able to decide very quickly on any point laid before him; such a man can also map out clearly life's course.Let us consider Goethe when during his Italian journey, he gradually arrived at the discovery of the primeval plant, he collected stones, prepared himself diligently to take up the work of research, and did not seek to know immediately ‘how one thing strives to enter another’ but said to himself: ‘If you would gain a premonition’ of ‘how one thing works and lives in another’ as heavenly powers rise and fall, offering each the ‘golden urn,’ examine the vertebras of the spinal column and the way in which one bone is connected with the next; and how one faculty helps another. Seek in the smallest thing the picture of the greatest.Goethe became a very diligent student during his travels in Italy, examining everything. He formed the opinion that if an artist acted ‘according to the laws which are followed by nature herself’ and understood by the Greeks, the divine will be present in his works even as it is in the works of creation. For Goethe, art is a ‘manifestation of the secret laws of nature.’ The creations of the artists are works of nature on a higher stage of perfection. Art is man's continuation and conclusion of nature. ‘For since man is the head of nature so he regards himself as a complete nature, but also as one which can call forth a further rise. He strives for this through the acquisition of all accomplishments and virtues which call for choice, order, harmony, and meaning, and at last rises to the production of the work of art.’
We can say that during the Italian journey everything that came before Goethe took on definite forms and through inner soul experiences appeared clearly before him. So once again he took up ‘Faust,’ and we perceive how he endeavoured to bring the separate parts into union. But we also perceive how he interested himself in an objective manner in what Faust could become for the people of the North. In Italy he became particularly conscious of the great difference between people who had been brought up amid classical surroundings and those who had not. He found it strange that so little should be heard in Rome of ghost stories such as were common in the North. In the Villa Borghese he wrote at this time the ‘Witches Kitchen’ scene, as one who had lost touch with all such things, but also as one who recalled to memory the spirit of the earth. When he had previously written about the earth spirit, he represented it in such a way that Faust turned away from it, as from a ‘hideous worm.’ But the fact of turning away from it, even without understanding why, remains in the soul and works on further, as it did in Goethe. But those who become impatient and refuse to wait until after long years the seed grows, are unable to see the way clearly. And when in Italy Goethe knew that a turning away from the terrible countenance would have its effect upon his soul, and now these words arise:‘Sublime Spirit, thou gavest me, gavest me all For which I begged. It was not without reason That thou didst turn thy face in fire to me And for a kingdom gavest me the glorious nature With strength to feel it and to enjoy it. Not A coldly astonished gaze didst thou grant to me But didst permit me to look into her profound bosom As into that of a friend. Past me didst thou lead the ranks of the living And didst teach me to know, in the quiet bushes, In air, and in water, my brother. And when the storm roared and rattled in the woods And there fell the neighbouring branches of the giant fir Squashing the undergrowth and in their fall Sounding like thunder in the hollow of the hills, Thou didst lead me to a safe Grotto, where Thou didst show me myself and opened my heart To deep and secret wonders.’Before Goethe, there stands the possibility of the human soul, through its own development expanding to a spiritual universe. Through a patient sacrificial resigned search, the fruits stand before his soul which as germs were planted when he came into touch with the earth spirit. We can see through this monologue in ‘Wald und Höhle’ (wood and grotto) what a forward jerk this was towards the ripening of the fruits in his soul, for it shows us that the seed already sown was not sown in vain. And as a warning to have patience, to wait until such seeds had ripened in his soul, that fragment of ‘Faust’ meets us which appeared with this setting in 1790. And now we see how Goethe finds the way step by step after being led to his ‘safe grotto where the secret deep wonders of his own heart were opened to him,’ he obtains that comprehensive survey which bids him no longer abide with his own sorrow, but teaches him to rise above his sorrow, to send his foreseeing spirit out into the Macrocosmos, watch the fighting of the good and evil spirits and see men on their battle ground. And in ‘Faust’ in 1808 he sent out beforehand the ‘Prologue in Heaven:’Raphael: ‘The sun-orb sings, in emulation, 'Mid brother-spheres, his ancient round: His path predestined through Creation He ends with step of thunder-sound.’We next see how the macrocosmic Mights oppose the forces of the great world. We see too from out the experiences of Goethe's soul, what a remarkable light falls on the two dragons with which at one time in his youth he came in touch.‘Faust’ is such a universal poem because it contains so many warnings. It also gives us that golden saying: ‘Wait in confidence for the development of thy inner forces, even if that means waiting a very long time!’ These words also sound as a warning which stand as an attribute before Faust, when Goethe looks back to those ‘fluctuating figures which in early days had once shown a troubled countenance’ but which now are flooded with light. Now he had waited so long that the friends who had taken such a vivid interest in Faust as he had appeared to them in the first form, had died, and those who had not died were very far away. Goethe had been obliged to wait for the development of the seed already sown in him.Now these striking words meet us:‘My sorrow speaks to an unknown crowd, Their applause e'en makes my heart feel heavy, And those who once delighted in my song If they still live, in other lands are scattered.’No longer did it matter to those who in youth had felt with him. He had had to wait, as the last lines of this dedication so beautifully express it — ‘What was once a reality to me, has gone into the unreal: but what has remained for me and appears to outer vision as unreal, that to me is now true, and it is only now that I can give it as truth.’ So we see how this poem, even if only looked at in such an external manner as we have to-day, leads us into the depths of the human soul.‘Faust’ was begun in a desultory manner, some parts being pushed in between others, and therefore Goethe was unable to show in a continuous way what he had experienced in his soul. But something else led to the fact that Goethe expressed his deepest experiences in ‘Faust.’The ‘Helena scene’ also belongs to the first part of ‘Faust’ written by Goethe. But we find it was not included even in the ‘Faust’ of 1808. Why not? Because the manner in which Goethe had finished ‘Faust’ at that time would not allow it. What Goethe wished to say through the Helena scene was the expression of such a deep premonition of the deepest riddle of existence, that the first part was not sufficiently prepared to allow of this. Only when Goethe had reached an advanced age, was he able to give a true form to what really was the inner work of his life.We see how his mind had expanded so that he was able to grasp the worlds of the macrocosm, as expressed in the ‘Prologue in Heaven.’ We shall also see the way in which Goethe represents the stages of the soul's experience, leading men from the first stage up to that of imaginative vision, where the soul penetrating ever deeper and deeper, bursts at last the doors of the spiritual world, which Mephistopheles would close. Goethe also represents these inner experiences. For he places in the second part of ‘Faust’ the experiences of a soul through secret scientific study, and we see here one of the deepest riddles of existence, which if recognized, would be found to be an announcement of Western spiritual science given in imposing language. One is tempted to place such a poem as the ‘Bhagavad Gita’ and the second part of ‘Faust’ side by side. For great and powerful wisdom speaks out of such Eastern writings. It seems as if the gods themselves desired in them to speak with men to express the wisdom out of which the world was formed. Indeed it is so.Now let us look at the second part of ‘Faust.’ Here we see a striving human soul which has raised itself to spiritual vision from outer physical perception; we see how it has worked its way up to true clairvoyance when Faust enters the spiritual world and finds the spiritual choir around him ...‘Hearken! Hark! — The Hours careering Sounding loud to spirit-hearing. See the new-born day appearing! Rocky portals jarring shatter, Phœbus' wheels in rolling clatter, With a crash the Light draws near! Pealing rays and trumpet-blazes — Eye is blinded, ear amazes: The Unheard can no one hear!’Faust II, Act I.to that passage where Faust is outwardly dazzled, so that the outer world is lost to his perception and he says to himself: ‘Only within shines clear light! ...’ up to that passage in which the soul works itself up to the spheres of world existence, where the spiritual worlds are to be seen in all their purity, and the riddle of the world discloses itself to the soul. This is a way which we must designate as an esoteric one.The way in which we can penetrate from the outer to the inner life of Goethe's world enigma, we shall see to-morrow, and we shall also see from out of what depths Goethe spoke the word which at last gave him the certainty he needed with reference to all the longings, all the sorrows, pains and strivings for knowledge in his life.‘Whoever zealously strives We can redeem him; And if love from above Feels an interest in him, The blest choir will be there With a friendly greeting.’We shall consider to-morrow how Goethe solved this riddle of existence, and how that which lives in the soul can rise up to its true home. It will give us the answer to what Goethe placed as the riddle of his existence and about which he gives us such a hopeful answer at the end of the second part of ‘Faust:’‘For the spiritual world, That noble member, Is saved from evil. Whoever strives zealously We can redeem him! ...’This tells us Faust can be saved and those spirits will not conquer who by bringing men into the material bring them also to destruction.
Hercules Clay d1644 and wife Mary
"Wee two made one by his decree that is just one in Trinity. died live as one till death came in and made us two of one agen
Death was much blamed for our divorce but striving how he might doe worse
by killing th'one as well as th'other he fairely brought us both togeather
Our soules togeather where death dare not come, our bodies lye interred beneath this tomb
waytng the rresurrection of the just O know thyself (O man) thou are dust"
The monument (sadly the latin part) commemorates his miraculous escape during the Civil War, when in 1643 he and his family were delivered alive by Divine Providence from a battery of cannon during the siege of the town by the parliamentarians
“ Hercules Clay, Mayor of Newark, resided in a house at the corner of the market-place not far from the Governor’s mansion. For 3 nights in succession he dreamt that the besiegers had set his place on fire, and he became so impressed with the circumstance that he and his family quitted their abode. They had no sooner done so than a bomb, fired from Beacon Hill, occupied by the Parliamentary forces, and believed to have been aimed at the Governor’s house, fell on the roof of Clay’s dwelling, and, passing through every floor, set the whole building in flames. The tradition is that a spy, blindfolded, and bearing a flag of truce, came from the army on the hill to the Governor’s house, and was able on his return so accurately to describe its situation as to make the shot all but successful. To commemorate his deliverance, Mr. Clay left a sum of money to be distributed in charity (it. is given away annually in penny loaves), and the memorial to him in the parish church testifies in a lengthy and curious inscription to the miraculous nature of his escape: ‘Being thus delivered by a strength greater than that of Hercules, And having been drawn out of the deep Clay, I now inhabit the stars on high.’”
He died just 10 months after the siege and in his Will he left £100 to the church of Newark for a sermon to be said “Upon the 11th day of March yearly forever upon which day it pleased God of his infinite mercy wonderfully to preserve me and my wife from a fearful destruction by a terrible blow of a granado in the time of the last siege” He also left another £100 for bread to be given to the poor of Newark yearly on the same date. A memorandum written in the Newark Parish Register by Henry Fouler.Curate in the year 1753 states -"Hercules Clay sermon preached on the 11th day of March yearly". Attended by the mayor, councillors and recently, members of the Newark business community, the mayor lays a single rose on the this memorial. His family bible is brought to the altar by a surviving relative; At the end of the service, the mayor gives away small loaves of bread to the choir, to symbolise Hercules Clay's bequest of £100 to the poor people of Newark. traditionalcustomsandceremonies.wordpress.com/2012/03/31/...
Hercules a mercer by trade, was the son of Hercules and Margaret Clay of Sutton-in-Ashfield and grandson of Thomas and Cecilie Clay of Rowthorne in Ault Hucknall Derbyshire
He m1 1631 Mary Lante
He m2 1641 Elizabeth Saunders
He had 8 children, John, Hercules, William, Timothy, Thomas, Elizabeth, Frances and Mary, all to whom he left substantial amounts of money.
The shield of arms are those given to Sir John Clay of Crich in Derbyshire in 1588,
After the Civil War was over and Hercules Clay had died, his brothers, John Clay of Kelham and William Clay of Sutton, had to answer charges in 1648 that Hercules had loaned £600 for the maintenance of the Royalist garrison at Newark during the siege, the charge was proved and the money was declared to be forfeited to the state.
- Church of St Mary Magdalene Newark, Nottinghamshire
The Voyage of Life: Childhood
West Building, Main Floor—Gallery 60
•Date: 1842
•Medium: Oil on Canvas
•Dimensions
oOverall: 134.3 × 195.3 cm (52⅞ × 76⅞ in.)
oFramed: 162.9 × 224.8 × 17.8 cm (64⅛ × 88½ × 7 in.)
•Credit Line: Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund
•Accession Number: 1971.16.1
•Artists/Makers:
oArtist: Thomas Cole, American, 1801-1848
Overview
Cole’s renowned four-part series traces the journey of an archetypal hero along the “River of Life.” Confidently assuming control of his destiny and oblivious to the dangers that await him, the voyager boldly strives to reach an aerial castle, emblematic of the daydreams of “Youth” and its aspirations for glory and fame. As the traveler approaches his goal, the ever-more-turbulent stream deviates from its course and relentlessly carries him toward the next picture in the series, where nature’s fury, evil demons, and self-doubt will threaten his very existence. Only prayer, Cole suggests, can save the voyager from a dark and tragic fate.
From the innocence of childhood, to the flush of youthful overconfidence, through the trials and tribulations of middle age, to the hero’s triumphant salvation, The Voyage of Life seems intrinsically linked to the Christian doctrine of death and resurrection. Cole’s intrepid voyager also may be read as a personification of America, itself at an adolescent stage of development. The artist may have been issuing a dire warning to those caught up in the feverish quest for Manifest Destiny: that unbridled westward expansion and industrialization would have tragic consequences for both man and nature.
Inscription
•Lower Left: 1842 / T. Cole / Rome
Provenance
Sold by the artist to George K. Shoenberger [1809-1892], Cincinnati, perhaps as early as 1845 and no later than May 1846;[1] Shoenberger heirs, after 20 January 1892;[2] purchased 1908 by Ernst H. Huenefeld, Cincinnati;[3] gift 1908 to Bethesda Hospital and Deaconess Association of Methodist Church of Cincinnati;[4] sold 17 May 1971 through (Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York) to NGA.
[1]For a discussion of a possible 1845 date, see Thomas Cole, Exh. cat. Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester, 1969: 35. Other sources place the acquisition a bit later than 1845; see Paul D. Schweizer, “The Voyage of Life: A Chronology,” in The Voyage of Life by Thomas Cole, Paintings, Drawings, and Prints, Exh. cat. Museum of Art, Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, Utica, New York, 1985: 45 (“December 1846?”), and Ellwood C. Parry III, The Art of Thomas Cole: Ambition and Imagination, Newark, Delaware, 1988: 332 (“sometime late in 1846 or, more likely, early in 1847”); however in a Boston Transcript article entitled “The Voyage of Life,” which appeared 21 May 1846, the pictures are mentioned as then belonging to “a wealthy gentleman of Cincinnati.”
[2]A letter of April 1979 from Mrs. Robert Heuck (in NGA curatorial files) specifies: “Mr. Shoenberger died in 1892, at which time many of the belongings of the home were given to heirs.” Shoenberger died 20 January 1892; for additional information, see The Biographical Cyclopaedia and Portrait Gallery with an Historical Sketch of the State of Ohio, 6 vols., Cincinnati, 1895: 6:1457-1458.
[3]Mrs. Robert Heuck, letter of April 1979 (in NGA curatorial files) states: “In 1908 Mr. and Mrs. Ernest W. [sic] Huenefeld purchased the land [and the house and contents].”
[4]Edward H. Dwight and Richard J. Boyle, “Rediscovery: Thomas Cole’s ‘Voyage of Life’,” Art in America 55 (May 1967): 62.
Associated Names
•Bethesda Hospital and Deaconess Association
•Hirschl & Adler Galleries
•Huenefeld, Ernst H.
•Shoenberger, George K.
Exhibition History
•1842—Annual Exhibition of Modern Artists, Piazza del Popolo, Rome, 1842, no cat.
•1842—Private Exhibition, Luther Terry’s studio, Orto di Napoli, Rome, 1842.
•1843—Pictures by Thomas Cole N.A. … The Voyage of Life! A Series of Allegorical Pictures, National Academy of Design, New York, 1843-1844, no. 1.
•1843—Second Exhibition, Boston Artists’ Association, 1843, no. 1.
•1844—Paintings Exhibited…, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, 1844, no. 1.
•1848—Western Art Union, Cincinnati, 1848, no cat.
•1854—Pictures at the Ladies’ Gallery, Cincinnati, 1854, 2 and 5, no. 20, as Infancy.
•1983—A New World: Masterpieces of American Painting 1760-1910, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Grand Palais, Paris, 1983-1984, no. 25, repro.
•1985—The Voyage of Life by Thomas Cole, Paintings, Drawings, and Prints, Museum of Art, Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, Utica, New York, 1985, 4, 5, 28, 30-32, 34-36, 38-40, 42, 44, 45, 48, 53, 66-69, no. 33.
•1994—Thomas Cole: Landscape into History, National Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C.; Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford; The Brooklyn Museum, 1994-1995, fig. 115.
•1995—Loan for display with permanent collection, The Detroit Institute of Arts, 1995-1996.
•2000—Explorar el Edén: Paisaje Americano del Siglo XIX, Fundación Colección Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, 2000-2001, no. 2, repro.
Technical Summary
Secondary ground layers include red under the top left corner; yellow under the boat and angel; red under the center in the light area of mountain; red under top right corner in the light area of sky; red under the water around the boat. Infrared reflectography reveals some underdrawing of mountain contours in the right middle and far distance. There are scattered small losses along the edges, a small loss below the boat, and craquelure throughout.
All four paintings in The Voyage of Life series were executed on herringbone twill fabric with moderately fine threads and a moderately rough surface. The paintings were lined (apparently for the first time) and the original panel-back stretchers were replaced during treatment in 1970-1971. The presence of unused tack holes and the pattern of wear on the canvas edges suggest that the paintings were originally stretched and painted on slightly larger stretchers, and then restretched by the artist on the panel-backed stretchers. All four paintings have white ground layers; in specific areas of each painting (see individual comments, below) secondary ground layers of different colors were applied. Infrared reflectography reveals only minimal underdrawing. Paint was applied moderately thinly and with low and broad brushstrokes in some areas such as the skies, and more thickly and with some high impasto in details such as the figures and foliage. In general, the paintings are in excellent condition, with only scattered small losses, some craquelure, and minor abrasion. In 1970-1971, discolored varnish was removed and the paintings were restored.
Bibliography
•1843—“Cole’s Pictures at the National Academy of Design.” Anglo American (30 December 1843): 239.
•1843—“Dottings on Art and Artists. No. II.” New World 6 (25 February 1843): 246.
•1843—“Mr. Cole’s Paintings.” New-York Daily Tribune (26 December 1843): 2.
•1843—New-York Daily Tribune (18 February 1843): 3.
•1844—“A Few Words About Mr. Cole’s Paintings.” New World 8 (17 February 1844): 217.
•1844—“Cole’s Paintings.” New-York Daily Tribune (9 January 1844): 2.
•1844—“Editor’s Table.” The Knickerbocker 23 (January/February 1844): 97, 196.
•1844—P., S.H.J. “To Thomas Cole.” New Mirror 2 (27 January 1844): 269.
•1847—Transactions of the Western Art Union for the Year 1847. Cincinnati, 1847: 25.
•1848—Bryant, William Cullen. A Funeral Oration, occasioned by the death of Thomas Cole delivered before the National Academy of Design, New York, May 4, 1848. Philadelphia and New York, 1848: 30.
•1848—Whitley, Thomas W. Reflections on the Government of the Western Art Union and a Review of the Works of Art on Its Walls. [Originally published in the Herald of Truth] Cincinnati, 1848: 17-18.
•1849—Lanman, Charles. “The Epic Paintings of Thomas Cole.” Southern Library Messenger 15 (June 1849): 353.
•1849—Transactions of the Western Art Union for the Year 1848. Cincinnati, 1849: 10.
•1853—Noble, Louis Legrand. The Course of Empire, Voyage of Life, and other Pictures of Thomas Cole, N.A.. New York, 1853: 295-298, 301, 309, 312-314, 317, 320-322, 353, 359.
•1854—“Thomas Cole.” National Magazine 4 (April 1854): 318-321.
•1855—“Sketchings.” The Crayon 1 (7 February 1855): 92.
•1858—“Notes and Gleanings—Cole’s Pictures of Life.” National Magazine 13 (September 1858): 284-285.
•1860—Green, George W. Biographical Sketches. New York, 1860: 101, 105, 110-112.
•1860—“The Artists of America—Taken from New American Cyclopaedia.” The Crayon 7 (February 1860): 46.
•1865—Cummings, Thomas S. Historic Annals of the National Academy of Design (1825-1863). Philadelphia, 1865. Reprint, New York, 1965: 170, 176, 201.
•1932—Mayer, Frank Blackwell. With Pen and Pencil on the Frontier in 1851: The Diary and Sketches of Frank Blackwell Mayer. Edited by Bertha L. Heilbron. Reprint, Saint Paul, 1932: 41.
•1954—La Budde, Kenneth James. “The Mind of Thomas Cole.” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, 1954: 171, 212.
•1962—Devane, James. “Sightseers Have Visited Scarlet Oaks for 95 Years.” Cincinnati Enquirer (20 May 1962): 6A.
•1964—Noble, Louis Legrand. The Life and Works of Thomas Cole (1853). Edited by Elliot S. Vesell. Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1964: 220-224, 231, 233-235, 237, 239-240, 264.
•1967—Dwight, Edward H., and Richard J. Boyle. “Rediscovery: Thomas Cole’s ‘Voyage of Life’.” L’Art et les Artistes 55 (May 1967): 60-63, repro. 62.
•1967—Merritt, Howard S. “Thomas Cole’s List, ‘Subjects for Pictures.’” In Baltimore Museum of Art, Annual II: Studies on Thomas Cole, an American Romanticist. Baltimore, 1967: 84, 90.
•1970—Riordan, John. “Thomas Cole: A Case Study of the Painter-Poet Theory ofArt in American Painting from 1825-1850.” 2 vols. Ph.D. dissertation, Syracuse University, 1970: 1:99-100; 2:345, 455-497.
•1973—Wallach, Alan Peter. “The Ideal American Artist and the Dissenting Tradition: A Study of Thomas Cole’s Popular Reputation.” Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, New York, 1973: 70-72, 106.
•1976—Kurland, Sydney. “The Aesthetic Quest of Thomas Cole and Edgar Allan Poe: Correspondence in their Thought and Practice in Relation to their Time.” Ph.D. dissertation, Ohio University, Athens, 1976: 105-109, 172, repro. 227.
•1977—Wallach, Alan. “The Voyage of Life as Popular Art.” The Art Bulletin 59 (1957): 234.
•1980—American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1980: 133, repro.
•1980—Coen, Rena N. “Cole, Coleridge and Kubla Khan.” Art History 3 (June 1980): 218, 227, pl. 31.
•1980—Wilmerding, John. American Masterpieces from the National Gallery of Art. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1980: 11, 14, 88, repro. 88.
•1981—Virdis, Caterina Limentani. “Paesaggio e racconto in Edgar Allan Poe.” Artibus et Historiae 4 (1981): 90, 94, repro. 89.
•1981—Williams, William James. A Heritage of American Paintings from the National Gallery of Art. New York, 1981: color repro. 96, 112-113.
•1983—Schweizer, Paul D. “Another Possible Literary Source for Thomas Cole’s Voyage of Life.” In “New Discoveries in American Art.” Edited by Jayne A. Kuchina. The American Art Journal 15 (1983): 74-75.
•1985—The Voyage of Life by Thomas Cole, Paintings, Drawings, and Prints. Exh. cat. Museum of Art, Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, Utica, New York, 1985: 66-69.
•1987—Sarnoff, Charles A. “The Voyage of Life Had a Life of Its Own.” Paper presented to the NGA, January 1987.
•1987—Wilmerding, John. American Marine Painting. Rev. ed. of A History of American Marine Painting, 1968. New York, 1987: 44, 46, 47, color repro. 42.
•1988—Parry, Ellwood C., III. The Art of Thomas Cole: Ambition and Imagination. Newark, London, and Toronto, 1988: 218, 228, 265-268, 270-272, 275, 277, 280, 284-285, 291-298, 301-303, 332, 338, 378.
•1988—Wilmerding, John. American Masterpieces from the National Gallery of Art. Rev. ed. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1988: 11, 17, 102, 103, repro. 102.
•1990—Powell, Earl A., III. Thomas Cole. New York, 1990: 103.
•1991—Kopper, Philip. America’s National Gallery of Art: A Gift to the Nation. New York, 1991: 261, 263, color repro.
•1991—Wilmerding, John. American Views: Essays on American Art. Princeton, 1991: 56, 67, repro. 57.
•1992—American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 145, repro.
•1994—Truettner, William H., and Alan Wallach. Thomas Cole: Landscape into History. Exh. cat. Natl. Mus. of Am. Art, Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford; Brooklyn Museum. Washington,1994: 42,46-47,79,82,84,98-101,113,130-133,138,144,149-150,152,154,182, no. 115.
•1995—Apostolos-Cappadona, Diane. The Spirit and the Vision: The Influence of Christian Romanticism on the Development of 19th-Century American Art. Atlanta, 1995: 137-148, fig. 26.
•1996—Kelly, Franklin, with Nicolai Cikovsky, Jr., Deborah Chotner, and John Davis. American Paintings of the Nineteenth Century, Part I. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1996: 95-108, color repro.
•1998—Boeckl, Christine M. “Path/Road/Crossroads.” In Encyclopedia of Comparative Iconography: Themes Depicted in Works of Art. Edited by Helene E. Roberts. 2 vols. Chicago, 1998: 2:692.
•2004—Hand, John Oliver. National Gallery of Art: Master Paintings from the Collection. Washington and New York, 2004: 308-310, no. 247, color repros.
•2012—“Rethinking ‘Luminism’: Taste, Class, and Aestheticizing Tendencies in Mid-Nineteenth-Century American Landscape Painting.” In The Cultured Canvas: New Perspectives on American Landscape Painting edited by Nancy Siegel. Lebanon, N.H., 2012: 133-134.
•2013—Corbett, David Peters. “Painting American Frontiers: ‘Encounter’ and the Borders of American Identity in Nineteenth-Century Art.” Perspective 2013, no. 1: 140, 141, color fig. 9.
From American Paintings of the Nineteenth Century, Part I:
1971.16.1 (2550)
The Voyage of Life: Childhood
•1842
•Oil on Canvas, 134.3 × 195.3 (52⅞ × 76⅞)
•Ails a Mellon Bruce Fund
•Inscriptions:
oAt Lower Left: 1842 / T. Cole / Rome
Technical Notes
All four paintings were executed on herringbone twill fabric with moderately fine threads and a moderately rough surface. The paintings were lined (apparently for the first time) and the original panel-back stretchers were replaced during treatment in 1970—1971. The presence of unused tack holes and the pattern of wear on the canvas edges suggest that the paintings were originally stretched and painted on slightly larger stretchers, and then restretched by the artist on the panel-backed stretchers. All four paintings have white ground layers; in specific areas of each painting (see individual comments, below) secondary ground layers of different colors were applied. Infrared reflectography reveals only minimal underdrawing. Paint was applied moderately thinly and with low and broad brushstrokes in some areas such as the skies, and more thickly and with some high impasto in details such as the figures and foliage. In general, the paintings are in excellent condition, with only scattered small losses, some craquelure, and minor abrasion. In 1970-1971, discolored varnish was removed and the paintings were restored.
1971.16.1 (Childhood): Secondary ground layers include red under the top left corner; yellow under the boat and angel; red under the center in the light area of mountain; red under top right corner in the light area of sky; red under the water around the boat. Infrared reflectography reveals some underdrawing of mountain contours in the right middle and far distance. There are scattered small losses along the edges, a small loss below the boat, and craquelure throughout.
Description by the Artist:
First Picture: Childhood
A stream is seen issuing from a deep cavern, in the side of a craggy and precipitous mountain, whose summit is hidden in clouds. From out the cave glides a Boat, whose golden prow and sides are sculptured into figures of the Hours: steered by an Angelic Form, and laden with buds and flowers, it bears a laughing Infant, the Voyager whose varied course the artist has attempted to delineate. On either hand the banks of the stream are clothed in luxuriant herbage and flowers. The rising sun bathes the mountains and the flowery banks in rosy light.
The dark cavern is emblematic of our earthly origin, and the mysterious Past. The Boat, composed of Figures of the Hours, images the thought, that we are borne on the hours down the Stream of Life. The Boat identifies the subject in each picture. The rosy light of the morning, the luxuriant flowers and plants, are emblems of the joyousness of early life. The close banks, and the limited scope of the scene, indicate the narrow experience of Childhood, and the nature of its pleasures and desires. The Egyptian Lotus in the foreground of the picture is symbolical of Human Life. Joyousness and wonder are the characteristic emotions of childhood.
This picture is #57 in my 100 Strangers project.
Meet Erika. I was on my way back to my car still alert to potential interesting strangers when I saw Erika. deep in thought in a reflective mood.
So I continued to walk past but something about Erika (even on a quick glance) seemed to spark interest. It may very well be the calm (maybe a result of her being a yoga practitioner) she exuded, lost in her thoughts, despite the hustle and bustle around her. That in itself would have been a great picture - a long shutter speed with people moving all around with a still Erika (but that idea came too late :-)).Anyways, after some hesitation, I walked back and interrupted her thoughts and explained the project to her and the intent. The Humans of New York (HNY) is something that gets mentioned often during my encounters. Personally, although I see similarities, I am candid that my version of 100 strangers is not as profound as the human aspect and stories that HNY provides.
I have realized doing this project though has made me much more observant of people around me and I do tend to notice things that would have easily escaped by attention. Of course, in Erika's case, no doubt her beautiful eyes, warm and kind, further accentuated by her gray dress would be an instant draw at most times. I showed her some of my pictures (thank god for internet and smartphones) and she looked up 100 Strangers on her phone. This was possibly the longest conversation I have had before Erika gave me a "I'll do it". We walked to a selected spot close by and Erika stood around for some pictures as I kept clicking away with intermittent conversation that let me know a little more about her.
Erika loves to read and is from New York although she has been in the MD area for more than a decade. I also learned during our follow-up interactions that Erika was on a cusp of change (good change) and was soaking up some
quiet time of self-reflection when I approached her. Although that always make me a little guilty, it quickly passes over when you realize that you end up meeting amazing people.
Erika is one such person striving hard to make our world a better place. We discussed balancing the personal versus professional aspect of Erika in my narrative, but I sincerely believe her work is much bigger than the beautiful
personality itself especially in today's time and age.
Erika happens to be the founder and Executive Director of a national organization that addresses gender based violence, with a focus removing barriers facing survivors who are living in poverty. In her words she
is “honored to work with survivors and advocates who are brilliant, resilient, strong, and resourceful."
Though her appearance was the initial reason for approaching Erika, describing her as “interesting” based on beautiful eyes and smile seems grossly unfair and almost superficial (especially when you are aware of the work she
does and impact she has). In a sense, her work is an inherent part and reflective of her personality.
Thank you Erika for your time and accommodating me despite bigger important things on your mind (and of course a melting ice cream). Honestly I am honored to have met you and hope you have a long distinguished journey doing the good you do.
Find out more about the project and see pictures taken by other photographers at the 100 Strangers Flickr Group page
For my other pictures on this project: www.flickr.com/photos/vijaybrittophotography/sets/7215764...
This postcard is part of Tichnor Bros.’ ten card Victory Series, a compact suite of patriotic designs issued during the tense pre-war months of 1941. Although the United States would not formally enter the conflict until December, after Pearl Harbor, the imagery here reflects the nation’s accelerating military buildup and the growing cultural embrace of the “V for Victory” symbol, which had already spread across Europe and into American media by mid year.
Postcard V3 is one of the series’ boldest designs: a monumental red “V” anchors the foreground, while infantry, armor, and naval forces advance in coordinated formation behind it. The scene is not tied to any specific battle or theater; instead, it functions as a symbolic image of American readiness, unity, and industrial strength. It’s a snapshot of American morale in the final months before the nation’s full mobilization. Like many Tichnor designs of this period, the artwork blends idealized military forms with the soft, textured characteristic of linen finish postcards.
The 1941 copyright date underscores Tichnor’s role in the broader pre-war preparedness culture. The company’s in house artists and high volume lithographic operation allowed them to respond quickly to shifting national sentiment, producing patriotic material months before Pearl Harbor. As a result, the Victory Series captures a rare moment—when the United States was not yet at war, but the emotional and visual language of wartime was already taking shape.
# 336 in a series of a Ganesha a day for a year.
" In a controversy the instant we feel anger we have already ceased striving for the truth, and have begun striving for ourselves. "
.....................Buddha......................
Not a macro, this ship chain was HUGE. Found in the Rivertown section of detroit while out with my buddy Sccot, we came across a parking lot filled with buoys. You don't realize how large they are until you stand next to one.
Make a picture that strives to demonstrate empathy for a subject you may not have necessarily felt a sense of emotional connection to before.
— Zun Lee
I try not to write explanation's with my 26 submissions, however with this fortnights challenge I felt that I had to try and describe how I arrived at my final outcome.
I think this fortnights challenge has been hard. I was a few days in and I hadn't a clue where I was going with this, when I had the most almighty row with my 12 year old son. My friends all have children hitting that 'teenage' bracket (It is a stage in my child's development I have never experienced before) and when we get together over a cup of tea and cake, we re-tell tales of parent/ child battles. The general gist is never very positive but the row got me thinking; this is a stage that must be so hard for the child. Not only are they coping with physical changes but emotional ones too. They are striving to find a sense of self, so with that in mind I asked for volunteers (and parental permission) to photograph teenagers that I did not know very well. I asked that I photograph them in their space, somewhere where they felt comfortable. I wanted to make a set of portraits that reflected the person, not hinting at the turmoil they must at times be experiencing as they reach out towards adulthood.
Strive for good deeds, even the small ones—you never know which one will get you into Jannah.
Dr. Bilal Philips
"The St. Nicholas Historic District, known colloquially as "Striver's Row", is a historic district located on both sides of West 138th and West 139th Streets between Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard (Seventh Avenue) and Frederick Douglass Boulevard (Eighth Avenue) in the Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. It is both a national and a New York City district, and consists of row houses and associated buildings designed by three architectural firms and built in 1891–93 by developer David H. King Jr. These are collectively recognized as gems of New York City architecture, and "an outstanding example of late 19th-century urban design":
There are three sets of buildings: The red brick and brownstone buildings on the south (even-numbered) side of West 138th Street and at 2350–2354 Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard were designed by James Brown Lord in the Georgian Revival style; the yellow brick and white limestone with terra cotta trim buildings on the north (odd-numbered) side of 138th and on the south (even-numbered) side of 139th Street and at 2360–2378 Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard were designed in the Colonial Revival style by Bruce Price and Clarence S. Luce; the dark brick, brownstone and terra cotta buildings on the north (odd-numbered) side of 139th Street and at 2380 Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard were designed in the Italian Renaissance Revival style by Stanford White of the firm McKim, Mead & White.
The district was designated by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1967, and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975. The district's name reflects the nearby St. Nicholas Park.
David H. King Jr., the developer of what came to be called "Striver's Row", had previously been responsible for building the 1870 Equitable Building, the 1889 New York Times Building, the version of Madison Square Garden designed by Stanford White, and the Statue of Liberty's base. The townhouses in his new project, which were originally called the "King Model Houses", were intended for upper-middle-class whites, and featured modern amenities, dark woodwork, and views of City College. King's idea was that the project would be "on such a large scale and with such ample resources as to 'Create a Neighborhood' independent of surrounding influences."
The houses sit back-to-back, which allowed King to specify that they would share rear courtyards. The alleyways between them – a rarity in Manhattan – are gated off; some entrance gates still have signs that read "Walk Your Horses". At one time, these alleys allowed discreet stabling of horses and delivery of supplies without disrupting activities in the main houses. Today, the back areas are used almost exclusively for parking.
King sold very few houses and the development failed, with Equitable Life Assurance Society, which had financed the project, foreclosing on almost all the units in 1895, during an economic depression. By this time, Harlem was being abandoned by white New Yorkers, yet the company would not sell the King houses to blacks, and so they sat empty until 1919–20, when they were finally made available to African Americans for $8,000 each. Some of the units were turned into rooming houses, but generally they attracted both leaders of the black community and upwardly-mobile professionals, or "strivers", who gave the district its colloquial name.
Between Seventh and Eighth Avenues, is 139th Street, known among Harlemites as 'strivers' row.' It is the most aristocratic street in Harlem. Stanford White designed the houses for a wealthy white clientele. Moneyed African-Americans now own and inhabit them. When one lives on 'strivers' row' one has supposedly arrived. Harry Rills resides there, as do a number of the leading Babbitts and professional folk of Harlem.
By the 1940s, many of the houses had decayed and were converted to single room occupancies (SROs). Much of the original decorative detail inside the houses was lost at this time, though the exteriors generally remained unaltered. With the post-1995 real-estate boom in Harlem, many of these buildings are being restored to something resembling their original condition.
Harlem is a neighborhood in Upper Manhattan, New York City. It is bounded roughly by the Hudson River on the west; the Harlem River and 155th Street on the north; Fifth Avenue on the east; and Central Park North on the south. The greater Harlem area encompasses several other neighborhoods and extends west and north to 155th Street, east to the East River, and south to Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, Central Park, and East 96th Street.
Originally a Dutch village, formally organized in 1658, it is named after the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands. Harlem's history has been defined by a series of economic boom-and-bust cycles, with significant population shifts accompanying each cycle. Harlem was predominantly occupied by Jewish and Italian Americans in the 19th century, but African-American residents began to arrive in large numbers during the Great Migration in the 20th century. In the 1920s and 1930s, Central and West Harlem were the center of the Harlem Renaissance, a major African-American cultural movement. With job losses during the Great Depression of the 1930s and the deindustrialization of New York City after World War II, rates of crime and poverty increased significantly. In the 21st century, crime rates decreased significantly, and Harlem started to gentrify.
The area is served by the New York City Subway and local bus routes. It contains several public elementary, middle, and high schools, and is close to several colleges, including Columbia University, Manhattan School of Music, and the City College of New York. Central Harlem is part of Manhattan Community District 10. It is patrolled by the 28th and 32nd Precincts of the New York City Police Department. The greater Harlem area also includes Manhattan Community Districts 9 and 11 and several police precincts, while fire services are provided by four New York City Fire Department companies.
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over 300.46 square miles (778.2 km2), New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the United States. The city is within the southern tip of New York State, and constitutes the geographical and demographic center of both the Northeast megalopolis and the New York metropolitan area – the largest metropolitan area in the world by urban landmass. With over 20.1 million people in its metropolitan statistical area and 23.5 million in its combined statistical area as of 2020, New York is one of the world's most populous megacities, and over 58 million people live within 250 mi (400 km) of the city. New York City is a global cultural, financial, and media center with a significant influence on commerce, health care and life sciences, entertainment, research, technology, education, politics, tourism, dining, art, fashion, and sports. New York is the most photographed city in the world. Home to the headquarters of the United Nations, New York is an important center for international diplomacy, an established safe haven for global investors, and is sometimes described as the capital of the world." - info from Wikipedia.
The fall of 2022 I did my 3rd major cycling tour. I began my adventure in Montreal, Canada and finished in Savannah, GA. This tour took me through the oldest parts of Quebec and the 13 original US states. During this adventure I cycled 7,126 km over the course of 2.5 months and took more than 68,000 photos. As with my previous tours, a major focus was to photograph historic architecture.
Now on Instagram.
Sorry for the late post everyone. I've been pretty busy recently and simply haven't had as much time to concentrate on my photography as I should. I know I owe you all some QUALITY images, and am striving to continue to deliver. But please hang with me for a couple of weeks as I wrap up and push some other Extra-Curricular Activities aside (I am involved in WAY too much right now).
ANYWAYS
This shot was taken up top of Tarzan's Tree house. If you've never visited the Tree house during a sunset, I certainly recommend it - as the views there are outstanding! Although if you can, I'd recommend going when Fantasmic is dark but the river is still in service - that way you still get to see the Columbia and Mark Twain instead of some ugly light poles.
KGS IMAGING | FACEBOOK | TWITTER | ME
“A tulip doesn’t strive to impress anyone. It doesn’t struggle to be different than a rose. It doesn’t have to. It is different." -- Marianne Williamson said that
Thanks for all your kind comments and favourites. I value each one.
6596
On June 8, 2022 the 16th annual LAFD Merit Scholar Awards Ceremony honored the academic excellence and demonstrated leadership of 11 college-bound students.
The Merit Scholar Awards are cash grants, made possible through the Jean Perkins Foundation, of up to $30,000 ($7,500 per year while the student continues to be enrolled and making normal progress toward a college degree). To be eligible, a student must be the child or stepchild of an active or fallen LAFD sworn employee. The eligible student must be a high school senior or college freshman, who will be enrolled in the fall as a full-time student in an accredited college or university. The scholarships are awarded on the basis of merit. The single most important factor is academic achievement, but the all-civilian Selection Committee considered other relevant criteria, including personal character and extracurricular accomplishments.
This year’s awardees were students who demonstrated excellence in academic studies, good character, high moral standards, leadership, distinction in extra-curricular activities, personal accomplishments and a potential for future success. The LAFD Merit Scholarship Fund Board of Directors had the difficult task of selecting the top candidates from an extremely competitive pool.
The 2022 LAFD Merit Scholar Award Recipients are Mariah Alvarado, daughter of Battalion Chief Vincent Alvarado; Kelsey Barrett, daughter of Engineer/Paramedic Keith Barrett; Kurt Ruedy, son of Inspector I Brent Ruedy; Shelby Richmond, daughter of Deputy Chief Trevor Richmond (all bio's provided below).
This year’s seven Runner-Up Award winners are to be congratulated for their outstanding merits. Each received a one time grant of $5,000. They are Aidan Byrne, Jasmine Da Broi, Hadley Goodwin, Carmen Ibarra, Caitlin Perry, Jake Petersen and Jessica Woodcock.
The winner of this year’s “Best Essay” award of $2,500, generously sponsored by the LAFD Foundation, is Jasmine Da Broi.
We would like to thank Mr. James Carroll III and Mr. Joe Connolly, Executive Board Members of the Jean Perkins Foundation and the LAFD Merit Scholarship Fund’s Board of Directors, Dick Barrett, John Anglin, G. Louis Graziadio III, Vicky Leck, Tom Mizo, Robert Nicholas and Molly Taylor for their dedication and support of our members and their children. We are also grateful to the Los Angeles Fire Department Foundation for their sponsorship of the “Best Essay” award and to the LAFD Sertoma Club, the United Firefighters of Los Angeles City, LAFD Historical Society and the Los Angeles Firefighter’s Association and the Stentorians of City of Los Angeles who sponsored the awards reception.
2022 LAFD MERIT SCHOLAR AWARD RECIPIENT BIOGRAPHIES
Mariah Alvarado is a graduating senior from Troy High School (THS) and the
daughter of Battalion Chief Vincent Alvarado, assigned to Battalion 12 (20
years LAFD). Mariah will be attending the University of California San Diego
(UCSD), majoring in Chemical Engineering. Mariah pursued an
engineering pathway where she was able to immerse her passions for STEM through different engineering courses and a 150-hour internship. Mariah is able to meet the rigorous course work of THS while still remaining motivated
and passionate in her endeavors. She serves as the Secretary of THS Compass Club. The Club strives to promote the exploration of different career fields through a variety of interviews with a wide range of career models i.e. computer scientist, business CEO, newscaster, and firefighter.
Mariah records the weekly meeting minutes and schedules the interviews. She is a member of the THS varsity dance team and attends advanced dance
classes in the evenings. She has trained and competed with select elite teams for 11 years in ballet, jazz, tap, lyrical, contemporary and hip hop.
She was appointed captain for five teams out of 60+ dancers to lead dance teams at regional and national competitions. Mariah will continue dancing
on the collegiate Division1 dance team at UCSD. In addition to academic and athletic endeavors, Mariah volunteers for Ronald McDonald House Charities, Meals on Wheels, Pathways of Hope for the Homeless, and Crittenton Services for Children and Families. There, Mariah provides attention and comfort to support attention-deprived infants and toddlers from neglected households. Mariah has “an addiction to Minecraft which consumes an unhealthy fraction of my homework time.”
Mariah’s honors and awards include:
Captain, The Dance Spot Elite Competitive Dance Team 2018-2022
National Title Recipient Varsity Troy
Redhots Dance Team 2018-2022
CADTD Regionals Jazz Soloist Champion 2019 and 2020
WCE Nationals Gold Solo Qualifier
Florida Contest of Champions Nationals Medium Jazz Finalist 2020
National Honors Society 2020-2021,
Principal’s Honor Role 2018-2022,
California Scholarship Federation Seal - Bearer 2018 - 2022
Mariah graduates with a 4.5 GPA
Kelsey Barrett is a graduating senior from San Dimas High School (SDHS) and the daughter of Engineer/Paramedic Keith Barrett, assigned to FS 25 (22 years LAFD). Kelsey will be attending the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, majoring in Nursing. Her goal is to earn her Doctorate of Nursing Anesthesia Practices (DNA) and become a Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist. Kelsey has challenged herself at SDHS with difficult classes that include advanced placement, honors and accelerated classes. Her rigorous class schedule, exceptional grades and demanding schedule attest to her academic excellence and ability to balance her time. Kelsey is a dedicated team player and a role model committed to her team, school and community. She is a tri-sport athlete, participating in varsity volleyball, water polo and softball. She was the Captain of all three teams and helped win league championships in all three sports. She was active in school clubs. She served as ASB Athletics Commissioner, planning and organizing school events, Link Crew Leader, assisting freshmen students, and Best Buddies Team Leader, assisting special education students. Kelsey has actively volunteered at Lake Elder Care and Assistance with elderly care and assistance. At Victoria Village Dentistry, her duties included setting up equipment trays, assisting with x-rays and
creating patient charts. Kelsey’s responsibilities at Guide Dogs for the Blind included training and fostering dogs to improve the quality of life and allowing independence for the blind. During the COVID-19 Pandemic, Kelsey had free time and wanted to help expectant mothers who had delivered babies all alone at the Pomona Valley Hospital. She started knitting beanies for babies and has knitted 125 beanies, which are included in care packages for the moms to take home. She hopes to knit 25 more before leaving to the University ofTennessee in August.
Kelsey’s Honors and Awards include:
•First Team All-League Softball, Water Polo, Volleyball 2018-2022
•HEART Award (Hustle, Energy, Attitude, Respect, Team) 2019
•Valle Vista League MVP Volleyball 2022
•Top 10% of Class 2018 - 2022
•Gold Star Award 2018 - 2022
•Renaissance Award 2018 - 2022
•Merit Award 2019, 2020, 2022
Kelsey graduates with a 4.3 GPA
Kurt Ruedy is a graduating senior from Royal High School (RHS) and the son of Inspector I Brent Ruedy, assigned to the Fire Prevention Bureau, VIC Unit (22 years LAFD). Kurt will be attending the University of Alabama, majoring in political science. Kurt is a talented baseball player. He is intelligent, re-spectful and hardworking. He is a consummate team player, being flexible to play a variety of positions to better suit his team’s needs. Kurt brings these traits into the classroom as well as in service to his community. He is a Link Crew Group Leader for RHS, helping incoming freshmen transition to high school throughout the school year. Kurt serves on the RHS Senior Class Council where he was involved in making decisions on spending and asset allocation, organizing, planning and executing events. Kurt is a member of the National Honor Society (NHS). NHS members are required to maintain excellent academic standing as well as service to their community. Kurt volunteered for RHS’ Math for Good program by tutoring math online. He volunteers at the yearly church summer camps as a group leader for preschool to sixth grade. Through the RHS baseball program, Kurt is involved with the Challenger League in Simi Valley, a program helping disabled kids to play baseball, work together and build friendships. As he mentored and interacted with the players on and off the field, Kurt became more aware of his gratitude for his health and abilities. Kurt looks forward to applying to law school and practicing contract law as a sports agent.
Kurt’s honors and awards include:
•National Honor Society 2020-2022
•Scholar Athlete Achievement 2019-2022
•Valedictorian - 2022
Kurt graduates with a 4.3 GPA.
Shelby Richmond is a graduating senior from Thousand Oaks High School (TOHS) and is the daughter of Deputy Chief Trevor Richmond,
Operations Valley Bureau (33 years LAFD). Shelby will be attending
Dartmouth College, majoring in Biology, pre-med track. Shelby hopes to attend a medical or Physician Assistant school, or do research in the medical field. Shelby is a student at TOHS’s The Center, for Advance Studies and Research, (The Center) an AP Capstone Program. As a jun-ior, she completed her AP Research project successfully and overa-chieved with a score of five. The Center is the only course of its kind which involves high school students in advance college level research. In addition to academics, Shelby has been involved with various extra-curricular activities. She is a dedicated student athlete, on the TOHS track team, winning scholar athlete awards, MVP, and served as Varsity Sprint Captain. Shelby actively participates in community events through TOHS’ Key Club, volunteering at animal and homeless shelters, CROP Hunger Walk, and Leukemia and Lymphoma Society Student of the Year Campaign (LLS). LLS is a philanthropic leadership development program. Throughout the campaign, students learn to develop professional skills, i.e. marketing, entrepreneurship as well as project and team management. Shelby organized various charity events and conducted sponsorship Zoom meetings and contacted corporate offices. Her team, Bella’s Buddies, raised over $113,000, winning the LLS award of Southern California and donating all funds to cancer research.
Shelby’s honors and awards include:
•MVP Girls 200-meter Dash 2021
•Ventura County Champion 200 Meters 2021
•Milesplit Junior Girls First Team All-State Team 2021
•Marmonte League Champion 200 Meters
•Scholar Athlete Award 2019 - 2022
•Society of Women’s Engineers Award 2021
Shelby graduates with a 4.4 GPA.
LAFD Event-060822
Photo Use Permitted via Creative Commons - Credit: LAFD Photo | Gary Apodaca
Connect with us: LAFD.ORG | News | Facebook | Instagram | Reddit | Twitter: @LAFD @LAFDtalk
"The St. Nicholas Historic District, known colloquially as "Striver's Row", is a historic district located on both sides of West 138th and West 139th Streets between Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard (Seventh Avenue) and Frederick Douglass Boulevard (Eighth Avenue) in the Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. It is both a national and a New York City district, and consists of row houses and associated buildings designed by three architectural firms and built in 1891–93 by developer David H. King Jr. These are collectively recognized as gems of New York City architecture, and "an outstanding example of late 19th-century urban design":
There are three sets of buildings: The red brick and brownstone buildings on the south (even-numbered) side of West 138th Street and at 2350–2354 Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard were designed by James Brown Lord in the Georgian Revival style; the yellow brick and white limestone with terra cotta trim buildings on the north (odd-numbered) side of 138th and on the south (even-numbered) side of 139th Street and at 2360–2378 Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard were designed in the Colonial Revival style by Bruce Price and Clarence S. Luce; the dark brick, brownstone and terra cotta buildings on the north (odd-numbered) side of 139th Street and at 2380 Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard were designed in the Italian Renaissance Revival style by Stanford White of the firm McKim, Mead & White.
The district was designated by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1967, and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975. The district's name reflects the nearby St. Nicholas Park.
David H. King Jr., the developer of what came to be called "Striver's Row", had previously been responsible for building the 1870 Equitable Building, the 1889 New York Times Building, the version of Madison Square Garden designed by Stanford White, and the Statue of Liberty's base. The townhouses in his new project, which were originally called the "King Model Houses", were intended for upper-middle-class whites, and featured modern amenities, dark woodwork, and views of City College. King's idea was that the project would be "on such a large scale and with such ample resources as to 'Create a Neighborhood' independent of surrounding influences."
The houses sit back-to-back, which allowed King to specify that they would share rear courtyards. The alleyways between them – a rarity in Manhattan – are gated off; some entrance gates still have signs that read "Walk Your Horses". At one time, these alleys allowed discreet stabling of horses and delivery of supplies without disrupting activities in the main houses. Today, the back areas are used almost exclusively for parking.
King sold very few houses and the development failed, with Equitable Life Assurance Society, which had financed the project, foreclosing on almost all the units in 1895, during an economic depression. By this time, Harlem was being abandoned by white New Yorkers, yet the company would not sell the King houses to blacks, and so they sat empty until 1919–20, when they were finally made available to African Americans for $8,000 each. Some of the units were turned into rooming houses, but generally they attracted both leaders of the black community and upwardly-mobile professionals, or "strivers", who gave the district its colloquial name.
Between Seventh and Eighth Avenues, is 139th Street, known among Harlemites as 'strivers' row.' It is the most aristocratic street in Harlem. Stanford White designed the houses for a wealthy white clientele. Moneyed African-Americans now own and inhabit them. When one lives on 'strivers' row' one has supposedly arrived. Harry Rills resides there, as do a number of the leading Babbitts and professional folk of Harlem.
By the 1940s, many of the houses had decayed and were converted to single room occupancies (SROs). Much of the original decorative detail inside the houses was lost at this time, though the exteriors generally remained unaltered. With the post-1995 real-estate boom in Harlem, many of these buildings are being restored to something resembling their original condition.
Harlem is a neighborhood in Upper Manhattan, New York City. It is bounded roughly by the Hudson River on the west; the Harlem River and 155th Street on the north; Fifth Avenue on the east; and Central Park North on the south. The greater Harlem area encompasses several other neighborhoods and extends west and north to 155th Street, east to the East River, and south to Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, Central Park, and East 96th Street.
Originally a Dutch village, formally organized in 1658, it is named after the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands. Harlem's history has been defined by a series of economic boom-and-bust cycles, with significant population shifts accompanying each cycle. Harlem was predominantly occupied by Jewish and Italian Americans in the 19th century, but African-American residents began to arrive in large numbers during the Great Migration in the 20th century. In the 1920s and 1930s, Central and West Harlem were the center of the Harlem Renaissance, a major African-American cultural movement. With job losses during the Great Depression of the 1930s and the deindustrialization of New York City after World War II, rates of crime and poverty increased significantly. In the 21st century, crime rates decreased significantly, and Harlem started to gentrify.
The area is served by the New York City Subway and local bus routes. It contains several public elementary, middle, and high schools, and is close to several colleges, including Columbia University, Manhattan School of Music, and the City College of New York. Central Harlem is part of Manhattan Community District 10. It is patrolled by the 28th and 32nd Precincts of the New York City Police Department. The greater Harlem area also includes Manhattan Community Districts 9 and 11 and several police precincts, while fire services are provided by four New York City Fire Department companies.
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over 300.46 square miles (778.2 km2), New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the United States. The city is within the southern tip of New York State, and constitutes the geographical and demographic center of both the Northeast megalopolis and the New York metropolitan area – the largest metropolitan area in the world by urban landmass. With over 20.1 million people in its metropolitan statistical area and 23.5 million in its combined statistical area as of 2020, New York is one of the world's most populous megacities, and over 58 million people live within 250 mi (400 km) of the city. New York City is a global cultural, financial, and media center with a significant influence on commerce, health care and life sciences, entertainment, research, technology, education, politics, tourism, dining, art, fashion, and sports. New York is the most photographed city in the world. Home to the headquarters of the United Nations, New York is an important center for international diplomacy, an established safe haven for global investors, and is sometimes described as the capital of the world." - info from Wikipedia.
The fall of 2022 I did my 3rd major cycling tour. I began my adventure in Montreal, Canada and finished in Savannah, GA. This tour took me through the oldest parts of Quebec and the 13 original US states. During this adventure I cycled 7,126 km over the course of 2.5 months and took more than 68,000 photos. As with my previous tours, a major focus was to photograph historic architecture.
Now on Instagram.
Strive to enter in at the strait gate - Luke 13:24.
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Here's my take on it: it's very helpful to have the key to the wide gate instead (or, as one burglar who hit my shed a few years ago managed to prove, sometimes a screwdriver and some attention to the hinges might suffice. A couple of helpless Police officers and a couple of new bikes later, that's not the case any more!).
Some say placing the plane of focus with a TS lens is hard. Well, it might be, unless you use a tripod and LiveView. If you do, it's actually easy; it's just a matter of iteratively using the focus ring to focus on a foreground point on the intended plane of focus, then the tilt angle to focus on a background point on the same plane* - then repeat. It only takes 2-3 iterations to get both points in critical focus, with the aperture fully open. Once the focus is taken care of, you're free to close down the aperture to the value giving you the very best IQ, and shoot.
That's a comfortably wide gate, as far as I'm concerned. I found the interactive focusing much more precise than estimating the hinge distance and setting the tilt angle by the lookup tables or formulas. I see no virtue in doing this the hard way**. It of course depends on one having a good tripod and magnified LiveView. Let me also remind of the usefulness of strong reading glasses or of a magnifying LCD hood (if you cringe at Hoodman's prices, Ebay alternatives are as cheap as £8.50 delivered).
This doesn't mean one can simply ignore the theory - one still needs to know which way to tilt the lens and understand the wedge-shaped DoF!
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* So, it's Foreground-Focus, Background-Bend - a useful mnemonic by Darwin Wiggett. The other way around seems much harder, if at all possible - please chime in if you found otherwise!
** Alas, sometimes you have to shoot handheld, so you can't slide back and forth the magnified window in LiveView. When shooting landscapes with the camera at eye level, setting the tilt angle by the Scheimpflug formula could well be the easy way (check David Summerhayes's tutorial). If you can't find a tilt angles lookup table for your lens, with a scientific calculator you can build your own (if your calculator of choice - say, the Windows app - doesn't do arcsin, then check "Inv" and click "sin"):
tilt angle = arcsin (lens focal / distance to plane of focus).