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1Q06 the 09.42 Doncaster West Yard to Doncaster West Yard (via the light railway, Barton Upon Humber and Cleethorpes) has just surrendered the key token to the signaller at Pyewipe Road signal box and restarts it's journey around North East Lincolnshire.

 

Colas liveried 37219 also looking immaculate, leads whilst 37175 brings up the rear.

 

Running very slightly early the time is 11.58 on Monday 6th July 2015.

 

The Network Rail track recording train makes one of it's regular forays round the Grimsby & Immingham Light Railway.

I was on afters and it's schedule meant I could catch it close to home but couldn't chase it up the Barton branch as I might of otherwise hoped to do.

 

These test trains generally don't really float my boat but when there's a pair of 37's passing within 200 yards of your front door It'd be rude not to.

 

The train had run from Doncaster up to Barnetby and Brocklesby Junction before continuing on the Cleethorpes line as far as Marsh Junction where it took a left to send it round the light railway.

It covered the route up to Immingham East and then on to Immingham Reception and Humber Road Junction before reversing and heading back to Marsh Junction retracing it's steps over the light railway.

 

I loitered at Pyewipe Road in order to catch them twice before heading home and work.

no PS. only lens defocusing

An awesome early morning meetup with some cool friends yesterday...

 

With all the rain we've had lately, this place stunk like anything, and I'm sure I lost a few years of my life breathing all that mold and asbestos and whatever else was brewing there, but damn it was worth it..!!!

 

At the point when I took this shot, I wasn't really thinking much other than it was a cool spot for a SP.. this morning when I was processing it, my wife came up to me and asked if it was appropriate to take a shot like this...

 

So, if this shot offends anybody, I deeply and sincerely am sorry... did not mean to offend anybody's faith or religion.

The Postcard

 

A postally unused postkarte that was published by Ottmar Zieher of Munich. The card has a divided back.

 

Richard Wagner

 

Wilhelm Richard Wagner, who was born on the 22nd. May 1813, was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most opera composers, Wagner wrote both the libretto and the music for each of his stage works.

 

Initially establishing his reputation as a composer of works in the romantic vein of Carl Maria von Weber and Giacomo Meyerbeer, Wagner revolutionised opera through his concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk ("total work of art"), by which he sought to synthesise the poetic, visual, musical and dramatic arts, with music subsidiary to the drama.

 

He described this vision in a series of essays published between 1849 and 1852. Wagner realised these ideas most fully in the first half of the four-opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen.

 

Richard's compositions, particularly those of his later period, are notable for their complex textures, rich harmonies and orchestration. He also used leitmotifs—musical phrases associated with individual characters, places, ideas, or plot elements.

 

His advances in musical language, such as extreme chromaticism and quickly shifting tonal centres, greatly influenced the development of classical music.

 

Richard's Tristan und Isolde is sometimes described as marking the start of modern music.

 

Wagner had his own opera house built, the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, which embodied many novel design features. Bayreuth is a town on the Red Main river in Bavaria. At its center is the Richard Wagner Museum in the composer's former home, Villa Wahnfried.

 

The Ring and Parsifal were premiered at the Festspielhaus, and Wagner's most important stage works continue to be performed at the annual Bayreuth Festival, run by his descendants.

 

Richard's thoughts on the relative contributions of music and drama in opera were to change again, and he reintroduced some traditional forms into his last few stage works, including Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.

 

Until his final years, Wagner's life was characterised by political exile, turbulent love affairs, poverty and repeated flight from his creditors.

 

His controversial writings on music, drama and politics have attracted extensive comment – particularly since the late 20th. century, where they express antisemitic sentiments.

 

The effect of his ideas can be traced in many of the arts throughout the 20th. century; his influence spread beyond composition into conducting, philosophy, literature, the visual arts and theatre.

 

Richard Wagner - The Early Years

 

Richard Wagner was born to an ethnic German family in Leipzig, who lived at No 3, the Brühl (The House of the Red and White Lions) in the Jewish quarter on the 22nd. May 1813.

 

He was baptized at St. Thomas Church. He was the ninth child of Carl Friedrich Wagner, who was a clerk in the Leipzig police service, and his wife, Johanna Rosine (née Paetz), the daughter of a baker.

 

Wagner's father Carl died of typhoid fever six months after Richard's birth. Afterwards, his mother Johanna lived with Carl's friend, the actor and playwright Ludwig Geyer. In August 1814 Johanna and Geyer probably married—although no documentation of this has been found in the Leipzig church registers.

 

Johanna and her family moved to Geyer's residence in Dresden, and until he was fourteen, Wagner was known as Wilhelm Richard Geyer. He almost certainly thought that Geyer was his biological father.

 

Geyer's love of the theatre came to be shared by his stepson, and Wagner took part in his performances. In his autobiography Mein Leben, Wagner recalled once playing the part of an angel.

 

In late 1820, Wagner was enrolled at Pastor Wetzel's school at Possendorf, near Dresden, where he received piano instruction from his Latin teacher. However Richard struggled to play a proper scale at the keyboard, and preferred playing theatre overtures by ear.

 

Following Geyer's death in 1821, Richard was sent to the Kreuzschule, the boarding school of the Dresdner Kreuzchor, at the expense of Geyer's brother.

 

At the age of nine he was hugely impressed by the Gothic elements of Carl Maria von Weber's opera Der Freischütz, which he saw Weber conduct.

 

During this period, Wagner entertained ambitions as a playwright. His first creative effort was a tragedy called Leubald. Begun when he was at school in 1826, the play was strongly influenced by Shakespeare and Goethe.

 

Wagner was determined to set it to music, and persuaded his family to allow him music lessons.

 

By 1827, the family had returned to Leipzig. Wagner's first lessons in harmony were taken during 1828–1831 with Christian Gottlieb Müller.

 

In January 1828 he first heard Beethoven's 7th. Symphony and then, in March, the same composer's 9th. Symphony. Beethoven became a major inspiration, and Wagner wrote a piano transcription of the 9th. Symphony.

 

Richard was also greatly impressed by a performance of Mozart's Requiem.

 

Wagner's early piano sonatas and his first attempts at orchestral overtures date from this period.

 

In 1829 Richard saw a performance by dramatic soprano Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient, and she became his ideal of the fusion of drama and music in opera. In Mein Leben, Wagner wrote:

 

"When I look back across my entire life

I find no event to place beside this in

the impression it produced on me.

The profoundly human and ecstatic

performance of this incomparable artist

kindled in me an almost demonic fire."

 

In 1831, Wagner enrolled at Leipzig University, where he became a member of the Saxon student fraternity. He took composition lessons with the Thomaskantor Theodor Weinlig.

 

Weinlig was so impressed with Wagner's musical ability that he refused any payment for his lessons. He arranged for his pupil's Piano Sonata in B-flat major (which was consequently dedicated to him) to be published as Wagner's Op. 1.

 

A year later, Wagner composed his Symphony in C major, a Beethovenesque work performed in Prague in 1832 and at the Leipzig Gewandhaus in 1833.

 

He then began to work on an opera, Die Hochzeit (The Wedding), which he never completed.

 

Richard Wagner's Early Career and Marriage (1833–1842)

 

In 1833, Wagner's brother Albert managed to obtain for him a position as choirmaster at the theatre in Würzburg. In the same year, at the age of 20, Wagner composed his first complete opera, Die Feen (The Fairies).

 

This work, which imitated the style of Weber, went unproduced until half a century later, when it premiered in Munich shortly after the composer's death in 1883.

 

Having returned to Leipzig in 1834, Wagner held a brief appointment as musical director at the opera house in Magdeburg during which he wrote Das Liebesverbot (The Ban on Love), based on Shakespeare's Measure for Measure.

 

The work was staged at Magdeburg in 1836, but closed before the second performance. This, together with the financial collapse of the theatre company employing him, left Richard bankrupt.

 

Wagner had fallen for one of the leading ladies at Magdeburg, the actress Christine Wilhelmine "Minna" Planer, and after the disaster of Das Liebesverbot he followed her to Königsberg, where she helped him to get an engagement at the theatre.

 

They married in Tragheim Church on the 24th. November 1836, although In May 1837, Minna left Wagner for another man. This was however only the first débâcle of a tempestuous marriage.

 

In June 1837, Wagner moved to Riga (then part of the Russian Empire), where he became music director of the local opera; having in this capacity engaged Minna's sister Amalie (also a singer) for the theatre, he resumed relations with Minna during 1838.

 

By 1839, the couple had amassed such large debts that they fled Riga on the run from creditors. In fact, debts plagued Wagner for most of his life.

 

Initially they took a stormy sea passage to London, from which Wagner drew the inspiration for his opera Der Fliegende Holländer (The Flying Dutchman), with a plot based on a sketch by Heinrich Heine.

 

The Wagners settled in Paris in September 1839 and stayed there until 1842. Wagner made a scant living by writing articles and short novelettes such as A pilgrimage to Beethoven, which sketched his growing concept of "music drama", and An end in Paris, where he depicts his own miseries as a German musician in the French metropolis.

 

Richard also provided arrangements of operas by other composers, largely on behalf of the Schlesinger publishing house. During this stay he completed his third and fourth operas Rienzi and Der Fliegende Holländer.

 

Richard Wagner in Dresden (1842–1849)

 

Wagner had completed Rienzi in 1840. With the strong support of Giacomo Meyerbeer, it was accepted for performance by the Dresden Court Theatre (Hofoper) in the Kingdom of Saxony.

 

In 1842, Wagner moved to Dresden. His relief at returning to Germany was recorded in his "Autobiographic Sketch" of 1842, where he wrote that, en route from Paris:

 

"For the first time I saw the Rhine—

with hot tears in my eyes, I, poor

artist, swore eternal fidelity to my

German fatherland."

 

Rienzi was staged to considerable acclaim on the 20th. October 1842.

 

Wagner lived in Dresden for the next six years, eventually being appointed the Royal Saxon Court Conductor. During this period, he staged there Der Fliegende Holländer (2nd. January 1843) and Tannhäuser (19th. October 1845), the first two of his three middle-period operas.

 

Wagner also mixed with artistic circles in Dresden, including the composer Ferdinand Hiller and the architect Gottfried Semper.

 

Wagner's involvement in left-wing politics abruptly ended his welcome in Dresden. Wagner was active among socialist German nationalists there, regularly receiving such guests as the conductor and radical editor August Röckel and the Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin.

 

Richard was also influenced by the ideas of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Ludwig Feuerbach. Widespread discontent came to a head in 1849, when the unsuccessful May Uprising in Dresden broke out, in which Wagner played a minor supporting role.

 

A warrant for the arrest of Richard Wagner was issued on the 16th. May 1849, along with warrants for other revolutionaries.

 

Wagner had to flee, first visiting Paris and then settling in Zürich where he at first took refuge with a friend, Alexander Müller.

 

Richard Wagner In Exile: Switzerland (1849–1858)

 

Wagner spent the next twelve years in exile from Germany. He had completed Lohengrin, the last of his middle-period operas, before the Dresden uprising, and now wrote desperately to his friend Franz Liszt to have it staged in his absence. Liszt conducted the premiere in Weimar in August 1850.

 

Wagner was in grim personal straits, isolated from the German musical world and without any regular income. In 1850, Julie, the wife of his friend Karl Ritter, began to pay him a small pension which she maintained until 1859.

 

With help from her friend Jessie Laussot, this was to have been augmented to an annual sum of 3,000 thalers per year, but the plan was abandoned when Wagner began an affair with Mme. Laussot.

 

Wagner even plotted an elopement with her in 1850, which her husband prevented. Meanwhile, Wagner's wife Minna, who had disliked the operas he had written after Rienzi, was falling into a deepening depression. Wagner fell victim to ill-health, according to Ernest Newman "Largely a matter of overwrought nerves", which made it difficult for him to continue writing.

 

Wagner's primary published output during his first years in Zürich was a set of essays. In "The Artwork of the Future" (1849), he described a vision of opera as Gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art), in which music, song, dance, poetry, visual arts and stagecraft were unified.

 

"Judaism in Music" (1850) was the first of Wagner's writings to feature antisemitic views. In this polemic Wagner argued, frequently using traditional antisemitic abuse, that Jews had no connection to the German spirit, and were thus capable of producing only shallow and artificial music.

 

According to him, they composed music to achieve popularity and, thereby, financial success, as opposed to creating genuine works of art.

 

In "Opera and Drama" (1851), Wagner described the aesthetics of music drama that he was using to create the Ring cycle. Before leaving Dresden, Wagner had drafted a scenario that eventually became Der Ring des Nibelungen.

 

He initially wrote the libretto for a single opera, Siegfrieds Tod (Siegfried's Death), in 1848. After arriving in Zürich, he expanded the story with Der junge Siegfried (Young Siegfried), which explored the hero's background.

 

He completed the text of the cycle by writing the libretti for Die Walküre (The Valkyrie) and Das Rheingold (The Rhine Gold) and revising the other libretti to conform to his new concept, completing them in 1852.

 

The concept of opera expressed in "Opera and Drama" and in other essays effectively renounced all the operas he had previously written through Lohengrin. Partly in an attempt to explain his change of views, Wagner published in 1851 the autobiographical "A Communication to My Friends".

 

This included his first public announcement of what was to become the Ring cycle:

 

"I shall never write an Opera more. As I have

no wish to invent an arbitrary title for my works,

I will call them Dramas ... I propose to produce

my myth in three complete dramas, preceded

by a lengthy Prelude (Vorspiel).

At a specially-appointed Festival, I propose,

at some future time, to produce those three

Dramas with their Prelude, in the course of

three days and a fore-evening."

 

Wagner began composing the music for Das Rheingold between November 1853 and September 1854, following it immediately with Die Walküre (written between June 1854 and March 1856).

 

He began work on the third Ring drama, which he now called simply Siegfried, probably in September 1856, but by June 1857 he had completed only the first two acts.

 

He decided to put the work aside in order to concentrate on a new idea: Tristan und Isolde, based on the Arthurian love story Tristan and Iseult.

 

One source of inspiration for Tristan und Isolde was the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer, notably his The World as Will and Representation, to which Wagner had been introduced in 1854 by his poet friend Georg Herwegh.

 

Wagner later called this the most important event of his life. His personal circumstances certainly made him an easy convert to what he understood to be Schopenhauer's philosophy, a deeply pessimistic view of the human condition. He remained an adherent of Schopenhauer for the rest of his life.

 

One of Schopenhauer's doctrines was that music held a supreme role in the arts as a direct expression of the world's essence, namely, blind, impulsive will.

 

This doctrine contradicted Wagner's view, expressed in "Opera and Drama", that the music in opera had to be subservient to the drama. Wagner scholars have argued that Schopenhauer's influence caused Wagner to assign a more commanding role to music in his later operas, including the latter half of the Ring cycle, which he had yet to compose.

 

Aspects of Schopenhauerian doctrine found their way into Wagner's subsequent libretti.

 

A second source of inspiration was Wagner's infatuation with the poet-writer Mathilde Wesendonck, the wife of the silk merchant Otto Wesendonck. Wagner met the Wesendoncks, who were both great admirers of his music, in Zürich in 1852.

 

From May 1853 onwards Wesendonck made several loans to Wagner to finance his household expenses in Zürich, and in 1857 placed a cottage on his estate at Wagner's disposal, which became known as the Asyl ("asylum" or "place of rest").

 

During this period, Wagner's growing passion for his patron's wife inspired him to put aside work on the Ring cycle (which was not resumed for the next twelve years) and begin work on Tristan.

 

While planning the opera, Wagner composed the Wesendonck Lieder, five songs for voice and piano, setting poems by Mathilde. Two of these settings are explicitly subtitled by Wagner as "Studies for Tristan und Isolde".

 

Among the conducting engagements that Wagner undertook for revenue during this period, he gave several concerts in 1855 with the Philharmonic Society of London, including one before Queen Victoria. The Queen enjoyed his Tannhäuser overture and spoke with Wagner after the concert, writing in her diary that:

 

"Wagner was short, very quiet, wears

spectacles & has a very finely-developed

forehead, a hooked nose & projecting

chin."

 

Richard Wagner in Exile: Venice and Paris (1858–1862)

 

Wagner's uneasy affair with Mathilde collapsed in 1858, when Minna intercepted a letter to Mathilde from him. After the resulting confrontation with Minna, Wagner left Zürich alone, bound for Venice, where he rented an apartment in the Palazzo Giustinian, while Minna returned to Germany.

 

Wagner's attitude to Minna had changed; the editor of his correspondence with her, John Burk, has said that:

 

"She was to him an invalid, to be treated

with kindness and consideration, but,

except at a distance, was a menace to

his peace of mind."

 

Wagner continued his correspondence with Mathilde and his friendship with her husband Otto, who maintained his financial support. In an 1859 letter to Mathilde, Wagner wrote, half-satirically, of Tristan:

 

"Child! This Tristan is turning into something

terrible. This final act!!!—I fear the opera will

be banned ... only mediocre performances

can save me!

Perfectly good ones will be bound to drive

people mad."

 

In November 1859, Wagner once again moved to Paris to oversee production of a new revision of Tannhäuser, staged thanks to the efforts of Princess Pauline von Metternich, whose husband was the Austrian ambassador in Paris.

 

The performances of the Paris Tannhäuser in 1861 were a notable fiasco. This was partly a consequence of the conservative tastes of the Jockey Club, which organised demonstrations in the theatre to protest at the presentation of the ballet feature in act 1 (instead of its traditional location in the second act).

 

The opportunity was also exploited by those who wanted to use the occasion as a veiled political protest against the pro-Austrian policies of Napoleon III. It was during this visit that Wagner met the French poet Charles Baudelaire, who wrote an appreciative brochure, "Richard Wagner et Tannhäuser à Paris".

 

The opera was withdrawn after the third performance, and Wagner left Paris soon after. He had sought a reconciliation with Minna during this Paris visit, and although she joined him there, the reunion was not successful, and they again parted from each other when Wagner left.

 

Richard Wagner's Return and Resurgence (1862–1871)

 

The political ban that had been placed on Wagner in Germany after he had fled Dresden was fully lifted in 1862. The composer settled in Biebrich, on the Rhine near Wiesbaden.

 

Here Minna visited him for the last time: they parted irrevocably, though Wagner continued to give financial support to her while she lived in Dresden until her death in 1866.

 

In Biebrich, Wagner at last began work on Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, his only mature comedy. Wagner wrote a first draft of the libretto in 1845, and he had resolved to develop it during a visit he had made to Venice with the Wesendoncks in 1860, where he was inspired by Titian's painting The Assumption of the Virgin.

 

Throughout this period (1862–1864) Wagner sought to have Tristan und Isolde produced in Vienna. Despite many rehearsals, the opera remained unperformed, and gained a reputation as being "impossible" to sing, which added to Wagner's financial problems.

 

Wagner's fortunes took a dramatic upturn in 1864, when King Ludwig II succeeded to the throne of Bavaria at the age of 18. The young king, an ardent admirer of Wagner's operas, had the composer brought to Munich.

 

The King, who was homosexual, expressed in his correspondence a passionate personal adoration for the composer, and Wagner in his responses had no scruples about feigning reciprocal feelings.

 

Ludwig settled Wagner's considerable debts, and proposed to stage Tristan, Die Meistersinger, the Ring, and the other operas Wagner planned.

 

Wagner also began to dictate his autobiography, Mein Leben, at the King's request. Wagner noted that his rescue by Ludwig coincided with news of the death of his earlier mentor (but later supposed enemy) Giacomo Meyerbeer. Wagner wrote:

 

"I regretted that this operatic master,

who had done me so much harm,

should not have lived to see this day."

 

After grave difficulties in rehearsal, Tristan und Isolde premiered at the National Theatre Munich on the 10th. June 1865, the first Wagner opera premiere in almost 15 years. (The premiere had been scheduled for the 15th. May, but was delayed by bailiffs acting for Wagner's creditors, and also because the Isolde, Malvina Schnorr von Carolsfeld, was hoarse and needed time to recover.)

 

The conductor of this premiere was Hans von Bülow, whose wife, Cosima, had given birth in April that year to a daughter, named Isolde, a child not of Bülow but of Wagner.

 

Cosima was 24 years younger than Wagner and was herself illegitimate, the daughter of the Countess Marie d'Agoult, who had left her husband for Franz Liszt.

 

Liszt initially disapproved of his daughter's involvement with Wagner, though nevertheless, the two men were friends. The indiscreet affair scandalised Munich, and Wagner also fell into disfavour with many leading members of the court, who were suspicious of his influence on the King.

 

In December 1865, Ludwig was finally forced to ask the composer to leave Munich. He apparently also toyed with the idea of abdicating to follow his hero into exile, but Wagner quickly dissuaded him.

 

Ludwig installed Wagner at the Villa Tribschen, beside Switzerland's Lake Lucerne. Die Meistersinger was completed at Tribschen in 1867, and premiered in Munich on the 21st. June the following year.

 

At Ludwig's insistence, "special previews" of the first two works of the Ring, Das Rheingold and Die Walküre, were performed at Munich in 1869 and 1870. However Wagner retained his dream, first expressed in "A Communication to My Friends", of presenting the first complete cycle at a special festival in a new, dedicated, opera house.

 

Not everyone was impressed by Wagner's work at the time; on the cover of the 18th. April 1869 edition of L'Éclipse, André Gill suggested that Wagner's music was ear-splitting. He produced a cartoon showing a misshapen figure of a man with a tiny body below a head with prominent nose and chin standing on the lobe of a human ear. The figure is hammering the sharp end of a crochet symbol into the inner part of the ear as blood pours out.

 

Minna died of a heart attack on the 25th. January 1866 in Dresden. Wagner did not attend the funeral. Following Minna's death Cosima wrote to Hans von Bülow several times asking him to grant her a divorce, but Bülow refused to concede this.

 

He consented only after she had two more children with Wagner; another daughter, named Eva, after the heroine of Meistersinger, and a son Siegfried, named for the hero of the Ring.

 

The divorce was finally sanctioned, after delays in the legal process, by a Berlin court on the 18th. July 1870. Richard and Cosima's wedding took place on the 25th. August 1870.

 

On Christmas Day of that year, Wagner arranged a surprise performance (its premiere) of the Siegfried Idyll for Cosima's birthday. The marriage to Cosima lasted to the end of Wagner's life.

 

Wagner, settled into his new-found domesticity, turned his energies towards completing the Ring cycle. However he had not abandoned polemics: he republished his 1850 pamphlet "Judaism in Music", originally issued under a pseudonym, under his own name in 1869.

 

He extended the introduction, and wrote a lengthy additional final section. The publication led to several public protests at early performances of Die Meistersinger in Vienna and Mannheim.

 

Richard Wagner in Bayreuth (1871–1876)

 

In 1871, Wagner decided to move to Bayreuth, which was to be the location of his new opera house. The town council donated a large plot of land—the "Green Hill"—as a site for the theatre.

 

The Wagners moved to the town the following year, and the foundation stone for the Bayreuth Festspielhaus ("Festival Theatre") was laid.

 

Wagner initially announced the first Bayreuth Festival, at which for the first time the Ring cycle would be presented complete, for 1873, but since Ludwig had declined to finance the project, the start of building was delayed, and the proposed date for the festival was deferred.

 

To raise funds for the construction, "Wagner societies" were formed in several cities, and Wagner began touring Germany conducting concerts. By the spring of 1873, only a third of the required funds had been raised; further pleas to Ludwig were initially ignored, but early in 1874, with the project on the verge of collapse, the King relented and provided a loan.

 

The full building programme included the family home, "Wahnfried", into which Wagner, with Cosima and the children, moved from their temporary accommodation on the 18th. April 1874. Wagner was ultimately laid to rest in the Wahnfried garden; in 1977 Cosima's ashes were placed alongside Wagner's body. The grave is shown in the photograph.

 

The theatre was completed in 1875, and the festival scheduled for the following year. Commenting on the struggle to finish the building, Wagner remarked to Cosima:

 

"Each stone is red with

my blood and yours".

 

For the design of the Festspielhaus, Wagner appropriated some of the ideas of his former colleague, Gottfried Semper, which he had previously solicited for a proposed new opera house at Munich.

 

Wagner was responsible for several theatrical innovations at Bayreuth; these included darkening the auditorium during performances, and placing the orchestra in a pit out of view of the audience.

 

The Festspielhaus finally opened on the 13th. August 1876 with Das Rheingold, at last taking its place as the first evening of the complete Ring cycle. The 1876 Bayreuth Festival therefore saw the premiere of the complete cycle, performed as a sequence as the composer had intended.

 

The 1876 Festival consisted of three full Ring cycles (under the baton of Hans Richter). At the end, critical reactions ranged between that of the Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg, who thought the work "divinely composed", and that of the French newspaper Le Figaro, which called the music "The dream of a lunatic".

 

The disillusioned included Wagner's friend and disciple Friedrich Nietzsche, who, having published his eulogistic essay "Richard Wagner in Bayreuth" before the festival as part of his Untimely Meditations, was bitterly disappointed by what he saw as Wagner's pandering to increasingly exclusivist German nationalism; his breach with Wagner began at this time.

 

The festival firmly established Wagner as an artist of European, and indeed world, importance: attendees included Kaiser Wilhelm I, the Emperor Pedro II of Brazil, Anton Bruckner, Camille Saint-Saëns and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.

 

Wagner was far from satisfied with the Festival; Cosima recorded that months later, his attitude towards the productions was:

 

"Never again, never again!"

 

Moreover, the festival finished with a deficit of about 150,000 marks. The expenses of Bayreuth and of Wahnfried meant that Wagner still sought further sources of income by conducting or taking on commissions such as the Centennial March for America, for which he received $5000.

 

Richard Wagner - The Final Years (1876–1883)

 

Following the first Bayreuth Festival, Wagner began work on Parsifal, his final opera. The composition took four years, much of which Wagner spent in Italy for health reasons.

 

From 1876 to 1878 Wagner also embarked on the last of his documented emotional liaisons, this time with Judith Gautier, whom he had met at the 1876 Festival.

 

Wagner was also much troubled by problems of financing Parsifal, and by the prospect of the work being performed by other theatres than Bayreuth. He was once again assisted by the liberality of King Ludwig, but was still forced by his personal financial situation in 1877 to sell the rights of several of his unpublished works (including the Siegfried Idyll) to the publisher Schott.

 

Wagner wrote several articles in his later years, often on political topics, and often reactionary in tone, repudiating some of his earlier, more liberal, views.

 

These include "Religion and Art" (1880) and "Heroism and Christianity" (1881), which were printed in the journal Bayreuther Blätter, published by his supporter Hans von Wolzogen.

 

Wagner's sudden interest in Christianity at this period, which infuses Parsifal, was contemporary with his increasing alignment with German nationalism, and required on his part, and the part of his associates, "the rewriting of some recent Wagnerian history", so as to represent, for example, the Ring as a work reflecting Christian ideals.

 

Many of these later articles, including "What is German?" (1878, but based on a draft written in the 1860's), repeated Wagner's antisemitic preoccupations.

 

Wagner completed Parsifal in January 1882, and a second Bayreuth Festival was held for the new opera, which premiered on the 26th. May.

 

Wagner was by this time extremely ill, having suffered a series of increasingly severe angina attacks.

 

During the sixteenth and final performance of Parsifal on the 29th. August, he entered the pit unseen during act 3, took the baton from conductor Hermann Levi, and led the performance to its conclusion.

 

After the festival, the Wagner family journeyed to Venice for the winter. Wagner died of a heart attack at the age of 69 on the 13th. February 1883 at Ca' Vendramin Calergi, a 16th.-century palazzo on the Grand Canal.

 

The legend that the attack was prompted by argument with Cosima over Wagner's supposedly amorous interest in the singer Carrie Pringle, who had been a Flower-maiden in Parsifal at Bayreuth, is without credible evidence.

 

After a funerary gondola bore Wagner's remains across the Grand Canal, his body was taken to Germany where it was buried in the garden of the Villa Wahnfried.

 

Richard Wagner's Works

 

Wagner's musical output is listed by the Wagner-Werk-Verzeichnis (WWV) as comprising 113 works, including fragments and projects.

 

The first complete scholarly edition of his musical works in print was commenced in 1970 under the aegis of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts and the Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur of Mainz, and is presently (2023) under the editorship of Egon Voss.

 

It will consist of 21 volumes (57 books) of music and 10 volumes (13 books) of relevant documents and texts.

 

Richard Wagner's Early Works (to 1842)

 

Wagner's earliest attempts at opera were often uncompleted. Abandoned works include a pastoral opera based on Goethe's Die Laune des Verliebten (The Infatuated Lover's Caprice), written at the age of 17, Die Hochzeit (The Wedding), on which Wagner worked in 1832, and the singspiel Männerlist Größer als Frauenlist (Men are More Cunning than Women, 1837–1838).

 

Die Feen (The Fairies, 1833) was not performed in the composer's lifetime and Das Liebesverbot (The Ban on Love, 1836) was withdrawn after its first performance.

 

Rienzi (1842) was Wagner's first opera to be successfully staged.

 

The compositional style of these early works was conventional— the relatively more sophisticated Rienzi showing the clear influence of Grand Opera à la Spontini and Meyerbeer — and did not exhibit the innovations that would mark Wagner's place in musical history.

 

Later in life, Wagner said that he did not consider these works to be part of his oeuvre; and they have been performed only rarely in the last hundred years, although the overture to Rienzi is an occasional concert-hall piece.

 

Die Feen, Das Liebesverbot, and Rienzi were performed at both Leipzig and Bayreuth in 2013 to mark the composer's bicentenary.

 

Richard Wagner's Romantic Operas (1843–1851)

 

Wagner's middle stage output began with Der Fliegende Holländer (1843), followed by Tannhäuser (1845) and Lohengrin (1850).

 

These three operas are referred to as Wagner's "romantic operas". They reinforced the reputation, among the public in Germany and beyond, that Wagner had begun to establish with Rienzi.

 

Although distancing himself from the style of these operas from 1849 onwards, he nevertheless reworked both Der Fliegende Holländer and Tannhäuser on several occasions.

 

The three operas are considered to represent a significant developmental stage in Wagner's musical and operatic maturity as regards thematic handling, portrayal of emotions and orchestration.

 

They are the earliest works included in the Bayreuth canon, the mature operas that Cosima staged at the Bayreuth Festival after Wagner's death in accordance with his wishes.

 

All three (including the differing versions of Der Fliegende Holländer and Tannhäuser) continue to be regularly performed throughout the world, and have been frequently recorded.

 

They were also the operas by which his fame spread during his lifetime.

 

Richard Wagner's Music Dramas (1851–1882)

 

Wagner's late dramas are considered his masterpieces. Der Ring des Nibelungen, commonly referred to as the Ring or "Ring Cycle", is a set of four operas based loosely on figures and elements of Germanic mythology—particularly from the later Norse mythology—notably the Old Norse Poetic Edda and Volsunga Saga, and the Middle High German Nibelungenlied.

 

Wagner specifically developed the libretti for these operas according to his interpretation of Stabreim, highly alliterative rhyming verse-pairs used in old Germanic poetry.

 

They were also influenced by Wagner's concepts of ancient Greek drama, in which tetralogies were a component of Athenian festivals, and which he had amply discussed in his essay "Oper und Drama".

 

The first two components of the Ring cycle were Das Rheingold, which was completed in 1854, and Die Walküre, which was finished in 1856.

 

In Das Rheingold, with its "relentlessly talky 'realism' and the absence of lyrical 'numbers'", Wagner came very close to the musical ideals of his 1849–1851 essays.

 

Die Walküre, which contains what is virtually a traditional aria (Siegmund's Winterstürme in the first act), and the quasi-choral appearance of the Valkyries themselves, shows more "operatic" traits, but has been assessed by Barry Millington as:

 

"The music drama that most satisfactorily

embodies the theoretical principles of

'Oper und Drama'... A thoroughgoing

synthesis of poetry and music is achieved

without any notable sacrifice in musical

expression."

 

While composing the opera Siegfried, the third part of the Ring cycle, Wagner interrupted work on it, and between 1857 and 1864 wrote the tragic love story Tristan und Isolde and his only mature comedy Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, two works that are also part of the regular operatic canon.

 

Tristan is often granted a special place in musical history; many see it as the beginning of the move away from conventional harmony and tonality, and consider that it lays the groundwork for the direction of classical music in the 20th. century.

 

Wagner felt that his musico-dramatical theories were most perfectly realised in this work with its use of "the art of transition" between dramatic elements and the balance achieved between vocal and orchestral lines. Completed in 1859, the work was given its first performance in Munich, conducted by Bülow, in June 1865.

 

Die Meistersinger was originally conceived by Wagner in 1845 as a sort of comic pendant to Tannhäuser. Like Tristan, it was premiered in Munich under the baton of Bülow, on the 21st. June 1868, and became an immediate success.

 

Millington describes Meistersinger as:

 

"A rich, perceptive music drama

widely admired for its warm

humanity."

 

However its strong German nationalist overtones have led some to cite it as an example of Wagner's reactionary politics and antisemitism.

 

Completing the Ring

 

When Wagner returned to writing the music for the last act of Siegfried and for Götterdämmerung (Twilight of the Gods), as the final part of the Ring, his style had changed once more to something more recognisable as "operatic" than the aural world of Rheingold and Walküre, though it was still thoroughly stamped with his own originality as a composer and suffused with leitmotifs.

 

This was in part because the libretti of the four Ring operas had been written in reverse order, so that the book for Götterdämmerung was conceived more "traditionally" than that of Rheingold; still, the self-imposed strictures of the Gesamtkunstwerk had become relaxed.

 

The differences also result from Wagner's development as a composer during the period in which he wrote Tristan, Meistersinger and the Paris version of Tannhäuser. From act 3 of Siegfried onwards, the Ring becomes more chromatic melodically, more complex harmonically, and more developmental in its treatment of leitmotifs.

 

Wagner took 26 years from writing the first draft of a libretto in 1848 until he completed Götterdämmerung in 1874.

 

The Ring takes about 15 hours to perform, and is the only undertaking of such size to be regularly presented on the world's stages.

 

Parsifal

 

Wagner's final opera, Parsifal (1882), which was his only work written especially for his Bayreuth Festspielhaus and which is described in the score as a "Bühnenweihfestspiel" ("Festival Play for the Consecration of the Stage"), has a storyline suggested by elements of the legend of the Holy Grail.

 

It also carries elements of Buddhist renunciation suggested by Wagner's readings of Schopenhauer. Wagner described it to Cosima as his "last card".

 

Parsifal remains controversial because of its treatment of Christianity, its eroticism, and its expression, as perceived by some commentators, of German nationalism and antisemitism.

 

Despite the composer's own description of the opera to King Ludwig as "this most Christian of works", Ulrike Kienzle has commented that:

 

"Wagner's turn to Christian mythology,

upon which the imagery and spiritual

contents of Parsifal rest, is idiosyncratic,

and contradicts Christian dogma in

many ways."

 

Musically, the opera has been held to represent a continuing development of the composer's style, and Millington describes it as:

 

"A diaphanous score of unearthly

beauty and refinement".

 

Richard Wagner's Non-Operatic Music

 

Apart from his operas, Wagner composed relatively few pieces of music. These include a symphony in C major (written at the age of 19), the Faust Overture (the only completed part of an intended symphony on the subject), some concert overtures, and choral and piano pieces.

 

Richard's most commonly performed work that is not an extract from an opera is the Siegfried Idyll for chamber orchestra, which has several motifs in common with the Ring cycle.

 

The Wesendonck Lieder are also often performed, either in the original piano version, or with orchestral accompaniment.

 

More rarely performed are the American Centennial March (1876), and Das Liebesmahl der Apostel (The Love Feast of the Apostles), a piece for male choruses and orchestra composed in 1843 for the city of Dresden.

 

After completing Parsifal, Wagner expressed his intention to turn to the writing of symphonies, and several sketches dating from the late 1870's and early 1880's have been identified as work towards this end.

 

The overtures and certain orchestral passages from Wagner's middle and late-stage operas are commonly played as concert pieces. For most of these, Wagner wrote or re-wrote short passages to ensure musical coherence.

 

The "Bridal Chorus" from Lohengrin is frequently played as the bride's processional wedding march in English-speaking countries.

 

Richard Wagner's Prose Writings

 

Wagner was an extremely prolific writer, authoring many books, poems, and articles, as well as voluminous correspondence. His writings covered a wide range of topics, including autobiography, politics, philosophy, and detailed analyses of his own operas.

 

Wagner planned for a collected edition of his publications as early as 1865; he believed that such a work would help the world to understand his intellectual development and artistic aims.

 

The first such edition was published between 1871 and 1883, but was doctored to suppress or alter articles that were an embarrassment to him (e.g. those praising Meyerbeer), or by altering dates on some articles to reinforce Wagner's own account of his progress.

 

Wagner's autobiography Mein Leben was originally published for close friends only in a very small edition (15–18 copies per volume) in four volumes between 1870 and 1880.

 

The first public edition (with many passages suppressed by Cosima) appeared in 1911; the first attempt at a full edition (in German) appeared in 1963.

 

There have been modern complete or partial editions of Wagner's writings, including a centennial edition in German edited by Dieter Borchmeyer (which, however, omitted the essay "Das Judenthum in der Musik" and Mein Leben).

 

The English translations of Wagner's prose in eight volumes by William Ashton Ellis (1892–1899) are still in print, and commonly used, despite their deficiencies.

 

The first complete historical and critical edition of Wagner's prose works was launched in 2013 at the Institute for Music Research at the University of Würzburg; this will result in at least eight volumes of text and several volumes of commentary, totalling over 5,000 pages.

 

It was originally anticipated that the Würzburg project will be completed by 2030, although this time frame may need to be extended.

 

A complete edition of Wagner's correspondence, estimated to amount to between 10,000 and 12,000 items, is under way under the supervision of the University of Würzburg. As of January 2021, 25 volumes have appeared, covering the period up to 1873.

 

Richard Wagner's Influence on Music

 

Wagner's later musical style introduced new ideas in harmony, melodic process (leitmotif) and operatic structure.

 

Notably from Tristan und Isolde onwards, he explored the limits of the traditional tonal system, which gave keys and chords their identity, pointing the way to atonality in the 20th. century.

 

Some music historians date the beginning of modern classical music to the first notes of Tristan, which include the so-called Tristan chord.

 

Wagner inspired great devotion. For a long period, many composers were inclined to align themselves with or against Wagner's music. Anton Bruckner and Hugo Wolf were greatly indebted to him, as were César Franck, Henri Duparc, Ernest Chausson, Jules Massenet, Richard Strauss, Alexander von Zemlinsky, Hans Pfitzner and many others.

 

Gustav Mahler was devoted to Wagner and his music; at the age of 15, he sought Wagner out on his 1875 visit to Vienna. Mahler became a renowned Wagner conductor, and Richard Taruskin has claimed that:

 

"Mahler's compositions extend

Wagner's maximalization of the

temporal and the sonorous in

music to the world of the

symphony."

 

The harmonic revolutions of Claude Debussy and Arnold Schoenberg (both of whose oeuvres contain examples of tonal and atonal modernism) have often been traced back to Tristan and Parsifal.

 

The Italian form of operatic realism known as verismo owed much to the Wagnerian concept of musical form.

 

Wagner also made a major contribution to the principles and practice of conducting. His essay "About Conducting" (1869) advanced Hector Berlioz's technique of conducting, and claimed that conducting was a means by which a musical work could be re-interpreted, rather than simply a mechanism for achieving orchestral unison.

 

He exemplified this approach in his own conducting, which was significantly more flexible than the disciplined approach of Felix Mendelssohn; in Wagner's view this also justified practices that would today be frowned upon, such as the rewriting of scores.

 

Wilhelm Furtwängler felt that Wagner and Bülow, through their interpretative approach, inspired a whole new generation of conductors (including Furtwängler himself).

 

Among those claiming inspiration from Wagner's music are the German band Rammstein, Jim Steinman, who wrote songs for Meat Loaf, Bonnie Tyler, Air Supply, Celine Dion and others.

 

Wagner also influenced the electronic composer Klaus Schulze, whose 1975 album Timewind consists of two 30-minute tracks, Bayreuth Return and Wahnfried 1883.

 

Joey DeMaio of the band Manowar has described Wagner as:

 

"The father of heavy metal".

 

The Slovenian group Laibach created the 2009 suite VolksWagner, using material from Wagner's operas.

 

Phil Spector's Wall of Sound recording technique was, it has been claimed, heavily influenced by Wagner.

 

Richard Wagner's Influence on Literature, Philosophy and the Visual Arts

 

Wagner's influence on literature and philosophy is significant. Millington has commented:

 

"Wagner's protean abundance meant that

he could inspire the use of literary motif in

many a novel employing interior monologue;

the Symbolists saw him as a mystic hierophant;

the Decadents found many a frisson in his work."

 

Friedrich Nietzsche was a member of Wagner's inner circle during the early 1870's, and his first published work, The Birth of Tragedy, proposed Wagner's music as the Dionysian "rebirth" of European culture in opposition to Apollonian rationalist "decadence".

 

Nietzsche however broke with Wagner following the first Bayreuth Festival, believing that Wagner's final phase represented a pandering to Christian pieties, and a surrender to the new German Reich.

 

Nietzsche expressed his displeasure with the later Wagner in "The Case of Wagner" and "Nietzsche Contra Wagner".

 

The poets Charles Baudelaire, Stéphane Mallarmé and Paul Verlaine worshipped Wagner.

 

Édouard Dujardin, whose influential novel Les Lauriers Sont Coupés is in the form of an interior monologue inspired by Wagnerian music, founded a journal dedicated to Wagner, La Revue Wagnérienne.

 

In a list of major cultural figures influenced by Wagner, Bryan Magee includes D. H. Lawrence, Aubrey Beardsley, Romain Rolland, Gérard de Nerval, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Rainer Maria Rilke and several others.

 

In the 20th century, W. H. Auden once called Wagner:

 

"Perhaps the greatest

genius that ever lived."

 

Thomas Mann and Marcel Proust were heavily influenced by him, and discussed Wagner in their novels. He is also discussed in some of the works of James Joyce, as well as W. E. B. Du Bois, who featured Lohengrin in The Souls of Black Folk.

 

Wagnerian themes inhabit T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land, which contains lines from Tristan und Isolde and Götterdämmerung, and Verlaine's poem on Parsifal.

 

Many of Wagner's concepts, including his speculation about dreams, predated their investigation by Sigmund Freud. Wagner had publicly analysed the Oedipus myth before Freud was born in terms of its psychological significance, insisting that incestuous desires are natural and normal, and perceptively exhibiting the relationship between sexuality and anxiety. Georg Groddeck considered the Ring as the first manual of psychoanalysis.

 

Richard Wagner's Influence on the Cinema

 

Wagner's concept of the use of leitmotifs and the integrated musical expression which they can enable has influenced many 20th. and 21st. century film scores.

 

The critic Theodor Adorno has noted that:

 

"The Wagnerian leitmotif leads directly to

cinema music where the sole function of

the leitmotif is to announce heroes or

situations so as to allow the audience to

orient itself more easily".

 

Film scores citing Wagnerian themes include Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now, which features a version of the Ride of the Valkyries, Trevor Jones's soundtrack to John Boorman's film Excalibur, and the 2011 films A Dangerous Method (dir. David Cronenberg) and Melancholia (dir. Lars von Trier).

 

Hans-Jürgen Syberberg's 1977 film Hitler has a visual style and set design that are strongly inspired by Der Ring des Nibelungen, musical excerpts from which are frequently used in the film's soundtrack.

 

Richard Wagner's Opponents and Supporters

 

Not all reaction to Wagner was positive. For a time, German musical life divided into two factions, supporters of Wagner and supporters of Johannes Brahms; the latter, with the support of the powerful critic Eduard Hanslick (of whom Beckmesser in Meistersinger is in part a caricature) championed traditional forms, and led the conservative front against Wagnerian innovations.

 

They were supported by the conservative leanings of some German music schools, including the conservatories at Leipzig under Ignaz Moscheles and at Cologne under the direction of Ferdinand Hiller.

 

Another Wagner detractor was the French composer Charles-Valentin Alkan, who wrote to Hiller after attending Wagner's Paris concert on the 25th. January 1860. At this concert Wagner conducted the overtures to Der Fliegende Holländer and Tannhäuser, the preludes to Lohengrin and Tristan und Isolde, and six other extracts from Tannhäuser and Lohengrin.

 

Alkan noted:

 

"I had imagined that I was going

to meet music of an innovative

kind, but was astonished to find

a pale imitation of Berlioz.

I do not like all the music of Berlioz

while appreciating his marvellous

understanding of certain instrumental

effects ... but here he was imitated

and caricatured ... Wagner is not a

musician, he is a disease."

 

Even those who, like Debussy, opposed Wagner ("this old poisoner") could not deny his influence. Indeed, Debussy was one of many composers, including Tchaikovsky, who felt the need to break with Wagner precisely because his influence was so unmistakable and overwhelming.

 

"Golliwogg's Cakewalk" from Debussy's Children's Corner piano suite contains a deliberately tongue-in-cheek quotation from the opening bars of Tristan.

 

Others who proved resistant to Wagner's operas included Gioachino Rossini, who said:

 

"Wagner has wonderful moments,

and dreadful quarters of an hour."

 

In the 20th. century Wagner's music was parodied by Paul Hindemith and Hanns Eisler, among others.

 

Wagner's followers (known as Wagnerians or Wagnerites) have formed many societies dedicated to Wagner's life and work.

 

Film and Stage Portrayals of Richard Wagner

 

Wagner has been the subject of many biographical films. The earliest was a silent film made by Carl Froelich in 1913. It featured in the title role the composer Giuseppe Becce, who also wrote the score for the film (as Wagner's music, still in copyright, was not available).

 

Other film portrayals of Wagner include:

 

-- Richard Burton in Wagner (1983).

-- Paul Nicholas in Lisztomania (1975)

-- Trevor Howard in Ludwig (1972)

-- Lyndon Brook in Song Without End (1960)

-- Alan Badel in Magic Fire (1955)

 

Jonathan Harvey's opera Wagner Dream (2007) intertwines the events surrounding Wagner's death with the story of Wagner's uncompleted opera outline Die Sieger (The Victors).

 

The Bayreuth Festival

 

Since Wagner's death, the Bayreuth Festival, which has become an annual event, has been successively directed by his widow, his son Siegfried, the latter's widow Winifred Wagner, their two sons Wieland and Wolfgang Wagner, and, presently, two of the composer's great-granddaughters, Eva Wagner-Pasquier and Katharina Wagner.

 

Since 1973, the festival has been overseen by the Richard-Wagner-Stiftung (Richard Wagner Foundation), the members of which include some of Wagner's descendants.

 

Controversies Associated With Richard Wagner

 

Wagner's operas, writings, politics, beliefs and unorthodox lifestyle made him a controversial figure during his lifetime.

 

Following his death, debate about his ideas and their interpretation, particularly in Germany during the 20th. century, has continued.

 

Racism and Antisemitism

 

A caricature of Wagner by Karl Clic was published in 1873 in the Viennese satirical magazine, Humoristische Blätter. It shows a cartoon figure holding a baton, standing next to a music stand in front of some musicians.

 

The figure has a large nose and prominent forehead. His sideburns turn into a wispy beard under his chin. The exaggerated features refer to rumours of Wagner's Jewish ancestry.

 

Wagner's hostile writings on Jews, including Jewishness in Music, correspond to some existing trends of thought in Germany during the 19th century.

 

Despite his very public views on this topic, throughout his life Wagner had Jewish friends, colleagues and supporters. There have been frequent suggestions that antisemitic stereotypes are represented in Wagner's operas. The characters of Alberich and Mime in the Ring, Sixtus Beckmesser in Die Meistersinger, and Klingsor in Parsifal are sometimes claimed as Jewish representations, though they are not identified as such in the librettos of these operas.

 

The topic is further complicated by claims, which may have been credited by Wagner, that he himself was of Jewish ancestry, via his supposed father Geyer. However, there is no evidence that Geyer had Jewish ancestors.

 

Some biographers have noted that Wagner in his final years developed interest in the racialist philosophy of Arthur de Gobineau, notably Gobineau's belief that Western society was doomed because of miscegenation between "superior" and "inferior" races.

 

According to Robert Gutman, this theme is reflected in the opera Parsifal.

 

Other biographers however (including Lucy Beckett) believe that this is not true, as the original drafts of the story date back to 1857 and Wagner had completed the libretto for Parsifal by 1877, but he displayed no significant interest in Gobineau until 1880.

 

Other Interpretations

 

Wagner's ideas are amenable to socialist interpretations; many of his ideas on art were being formulated at the time of his revolutionary inclinations in the 1840's. Thus, for example, George Bernard Shaw wrote in The Perfect Wagnerite (1883):

 

"Wagner's picture of Niblunghome under the

reign of Alberic is a poetic vision of unregulated

industrial capitalism as it was made known in

Germany in the middle of the 19th. century by

Engels's book 'The Condition of the Working

Class in England."

 

Left-wing interpretations of Wagner also inform the writings of Theodor Adorno among other Wagner critics.

 

Walter Benjamin gave Wagner as an example of "bourgeois false consciousness", alienating art from its social context.

 

György Lukács contended that the ideas of the early Wagner represented the ideology of the "true socialists" (wahre Sozialisten), a movement referenced in Karl Marx's "Communist Manifesto" as belonging to the left-wing of German bourgeois radicalism.

 

Anatoly Lunacharsky said about the later Wagner:

 

"The circle is complete. The revolutionary

has become a reactionary. The rebellious

petty bourgeois now kisses the slipper of

the Pope, the keeper of order."

 

The writer Robert Donington has produced a detailed, if controversial, Jungian interpretation of the Ring cycle, described as "an approach to Wagner by way of his symbols", which, for example, sees the character of the goddess Fricka as part of her husband Wotan's "inner femininity".

 

Millington notes that Jean-Jacques Nattiez has also applied psychoanalytical techniques in an evaluation of Wagner's life and works.

 

Nazi Appropriation of Richard Wagner's Work

 

Adolf Hitler was an admirer of Wagner's music, and saw in his operas an embodiment of his own vision of the German nation; in a 1922 speech he claimed that:

 

"Wagner's works glorify the heroic

Teutonic nature ... Greatness lies in

the heroic."

 

Hitler visited Bayreuth frequently from 1923 onwards, and attended productions at the theatre.

 

There continues to be debate about the extent to which Wagner's views might have influenced Nazi thinking. Houston Stewart Chamberlain (1855–1927), who married Wagner's daughter Eva in 1908 but never met Wagner, was the author of the racist book The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, approved by the Nazi movement.

 

Chamberlain met Hitler several times between 1923 and 1927 in Bayreuth, but cannot credibly be regarded as a conduit of Wagner's own views.

 

The Nazis used those parts of Wagner's thought that were useful for propaganda, and ignored or suppressed the rest.

 

While Bayreuth presented a useful front for Nazi culture, and Wagner's music was used at many Nazi events, the Nazi hierarchy as a whole did not share Hitler's enthusiasm for Wagner's operas, and resented attending these lengthy epics at Hitler's insistence.

 

Guido Fackler has researched evidence that indicates that it is possible that Wagner's music was used at the Dachau concentration camp in 1933–1934 to "re-educate" political prisoners by exposure to "national music".

 

There has been no evidence to support claims, sometimes made, that his music was played at Nazi death camps during the Second World War, and Pamela Potter has noted that Wagner's music was explicitly off-limits in the camps.

 

Because of the associations of Wagner with antisemitism and Nazism, the performance of his music in the State of Israel has been a source of controversy.

Please read the very interesting history of this flag:

In 1982 the United States government felt that illegal immigrants and drugs could easily be brought into the US through the Keys because of its close proximity to Cuba (90 miles away). The government felt it was best to set up an inspection check point or border patrol on the only road leaving the Keys because it was too difficult to watch all of its shore line. The inspection point was so heavily monitored that traffic backed up for miles while all cars were searched. Because there is only one road going in and coming out of the Keys, traffic can be delayed easily on a good day so this newly added check point was not welcomed. The delays became well known and tourism decreased drastically which hurt the economy. The people of the Keys were so upset with the United States and their border control that they began protesting. All protests went unanswered and the people demanded to be heard. On April 23, 1982 the Prime Minister of Key West (Dennis Wardlow) decided they would be heard so he proclaimed the secession of Key West from the United States. The new country would be known as the Conch Republic, they had a flag made and threatened to remove the American one. Immediately following the proclamation read by the Prime Minister the people of Key West started “beating” federal officials in attendance with stale bread. They then surrendered to the federal officials and asked the United States for Foreign aid. Just like the history of Key West their methods were unconventional but they got their point across. The protests of the people were finally heard, although the United States government never formerly acknowledge the succession, they did however remove the border patrol road block. The Flag Press

Urbex Session : Abandoned House

Pour une image de meilleure qualité :http://www.flickr.com/photos/bestarns/

www.spiritofdecay.com

Birth-Death-Rebirth

So last Thursday, in the chaos of a hoity-toity bus bitch, melting fudge, a Giardia infected French bulldog, passport surrender, oh... and blood, my blood, lots and lots of it, I managed to purchase this little beauty. After being really impressed with Ariel I decided to give Cinderella a try.

 

Overall she's very nice, and I think superior to the 2013 version, though if I had that one I'm not so sure I'd pick up this one. I'm tire of the recycled mice, they are a great size, but I don't like that they are sitting on the sewing supplies. The new bird is nice, though. I wish the apron weren't sewn on, but the dress isn't super accurate anyway, so it doesn't matter so much. What I love is the mother's dress, which reminds me of the Mattel version, only instead of tearing the Mattel version apart, this one is 'sewn' together. The bows velcro on the berthe and skirt, and then the skirt is removable to show the original white skirt with ruffle. I'd make a few alterations to make it more accurate, but overall it's really cool. Cinderella is very beautiful with her hair down, I just wish that maybe it was in several curls instead of two (and of course that it were true titian color). Not as cool as Ariel, but I think it is a rather clever set and goes along with the theme of these dolls recreating a certain scene with additional friends, clothes and props.

Collage/tekening op 10x10cm populierenhouten plankje

 

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#10x10cm #collagedrawing #mixedmedia #blue #blauw #mothernaturelove #moederaarde #mamaaisa #maartjejaquet #cutandpaste

instagram: bethmaciorowski

" The moment has come. A German officer, speaking to an army translator, awaits the arrival of his general to surrender a large portion of the army in the field. After six years, the invincible Wehrmacht has met its match and all over Europe scenes like this are being repeated." (Words and image recreated for my "Vintage" series)

Carlos Baker was born in Ohio, 1 October, 1827. He was the son of Ebenezer Baker, a veteran of the War of 1812 (13 Sept., 1787, Vermont – 21 Nov., 1859, Allegan, MI), and Mary Chase Spalding (23 May, 1795, Waitsfield, VT – 16 April, 1873, Beatrice, Nebraska). The couple wed on 1 February, 1815, in Waitsfield, Vermont. Carlos was the fifth of their ten children born during the course of four decades. The others were: Sarah M. (29 May, 1816 – 1895); Horace W. (17 Feb., 1818-1850); Artimas N. (b. 1821); Cordelia (4 June, 1824 – 1900); Julia C. (b. 12 May, 1826); Rodney Spalding (6 June, 1830 – 1905); Norman (8 Feb., 1832 – 1850); William H. (2 June, 1835 – 1870); Philmer (b. 22 July, 1838); and Littlejohn (8 Feb.,1840 – 1904).

 

Carlos’s paternal grandparents were Johnathan Baker (d. 4 Feb., 1850, Marcellus, NY) and Sarah, last name unknown (d. 30 April, 1833). Carlos’s maternal grandparents were Abel Spalding (28 December, 1764, New Ipswich, NH – 16 June, 1844, Norton, OH) and Hannah Chase (24 Dec., 1769, Cornish, NH – 2 March, 1832, Delaware Co., OH). Abel and Hannah were married in 1790. Before becoming husband and wife, Spalding had been a private in the company commanded by Captain Charles Nelson of Delaware County in Col. Benjamin Wait's Vermont Regiment for seven months in 1781. Spalding appeared before an Ohio court to battle for his pension payments, and he gave evidence that was recorded verbatim. This included that he was one of the troops raised to defend against attacks by “the invading Tories from Canada…. The Indians and Tories were continuously hovering around us, keeping us in a state of alarm, and occasionally either killing or carrying off our scouts.” He continued that, after being mustered out, “I was paid for my services in Vermont bank paper money, which was then worth almost nothing.”

 

In 1850, the census places Carlos Baker in the township of Lyme, Huron County, Ohio, as a 24-year-old cabinetmaker with personal goods valued at $700. He appears to be living as a lodger. He arrived in Allegan, Michigan, sometime in the next few years—perhaps he came to join his father, Ebenezer, who was in Allegan County by 1850, as was Carlos’s brother Littlejohn. Wikipedia says that the town had its roots planted several decades earlier, when “The men after whom Allegan's downtown streets were named—Elisha Ely, Samuel Hubbard, Charles Christopher Trowbridge, Pliny Cutler, and Edmund Monroe—patented land in the area in 1833. They considered the site a prime location for industry, due to its potential for waterpower (since it straddled the Kalamazoo River) and water-bound transportation. By 1835, a dam and sawmill had been established.”

 

Carlos soon met the woman who would become his wife, Eliza Higgins (15 April, 1829, NY – 3 April, 1903, Allegan, MI). She was the daughter of Jabin Strong Higgins (b. 9 March, 1799, Windham, New York) and Betsey Aldrich (b. 10 November, 1802, Poultney, Vermont). The pair wed 8 April, 1854. In short order they had three children: Willis J. (b. 1854 or 1855); Albertis Otis (b. 2 June 1857); and Ernestine (b. 18 August, 1859).

 

Carlos’s father, Ebenezer Baker, died 21 November, 1859, of consumption in Gunplain, Allegan County. He was buried in Oakwood Cemetery—the first to be laid to rest in the family plot.

 

On 17 November, 1860, we can read Carlos Baker’s own words in a letter to the editors he wrote to the publication The Scientific American. The subject was most delightful: pans for boiling maple sap. “We use sheet iron pans almost entirely, for the purpose of making maple sugar, and I suppose no other population in this nation, of equal numbers, makes as much and as good maple sugar as we do.” One can almost hear the Ken Burns-style voiceover. After describing the pans’ construction, Carlos concludes, “Pans made in that fashion, of common stove pipe iron, have been in use in our ‘bush’ fifteen years, and are good pans yet, not being half worn or rusted out.”

 

On the 1860 census of Allegan, Carlos is enumerated as a cabinetmaker with real estate worth $1,000 and personal goods worth $800. His wife, Eliza, had real estate worth $4,000. That same year, an agricultural census was taken in June. Carlos is recorded to have had 8 improved acres, 22 unimproved; the cash value of the land was $1,000; he had 1 cow and 4 swine valued at $50; and 200 bushels of Indian corn. It sounds peaceful and bucolic—no doubt it was, but the darkness of war was coming, even to rural Michigan.

 

In July 1862, 34-year-old Carlos Baker was one of the men who signed the articles of association of the First Congregational Church of Allegan, the house of worship that he and his family may have been attending since its nascence in 1857; they had been officially received into the congregation on 31 December, 1858. Then, on 5 September, 1862, Carlos enlisted as a private in Company B, 19th Michigan Infantry Volunteers. It was organized at Dowagiac, Michigan, on that day, and would not muster out until 10 June, 1865. (Carlos’s brother, Littlejohn, enlisted 13 Feb. 13, 1864, in Company B of the 13th Michigan Infantry as a corporal, and mustered out 25 July, 1865.)

 

The 19th Regiment has a rather concise regimental history—albeit not because they saw no action:

 

“Left State for Cincinnati, Ohio, September 14, and duty at Covington, Ky., until October 7. Moved to Georgetown, Lexington, Sandersville and to Nicholasville, Ky., October 7-November 13. Attached to 1st Brigade, 3rd Division, Army of Kentucky, Dept. of Ohio, October 1862, to February 1863. Coburn's Brigade, Baird's Division, Army of Kentucky, Dept. of the Cumberland, to June 1863. 3rd Brigade, 1st Division, Reserve Corps, Dept. of the Cumberland, to October 1863. Coburn's unattached Brigade, Dept. of the Cumberland, to December 1863. Post of Murfreesboro, Tenn., Dept. of the Cumberland, to January 1864. 2nd Brigade, 1st Division, 11th Army Corps, Army of the Cumberland, to April 1864. 2nd Brigade, 3rd Division, 20th Army Corps, Army of the Cumberland, to June 1865.

 

“SERVICE: Moved to Danville, Ky., December 12, 1862, and duty there until January 26, 1863. Moved to Louisville, Ky., thence to Nashville, Tenn., January 26-February 7, and to Brentwood Station February 21. To Franklin, February 23. Reconnaissance toward Spring Hill March 3-5. Action at Spring Hill, Thompson's Station, March 4-5. Regiment mostly captured by Bragg's Cavalry forces, nearly 18,000 strong, under Van Dorn. Little Harpeth and Brentwood March 25 (Detachment). Exchanged May 25, 1863. Regiment reorganized at Camp Chase, Ohio, during June. Moved to Nashville, Tenn., June 8-11. Middle Tennessee or Tullahoma Campaign June 23-July 7. Moved to Murfreesboro, Tenn., July 23, and garrison duty there until October 25. Stockade near Murfreesboro Bridge, Stone's River, October 4 (Co. "D"). Moved to McMinnville October 25, and duty there until April 21, 1864. Ordered to Join Corps in Lookout Valley. Atlanta (Ga.) Campaign May 1-September 8. Demonstrations on Rocky Faced Ridge May 8-11. Boyd's Trail May 9. Battle of Resaca May 14-15. Cassville, May 19. New Hope Church, May 25. Operations on line of Pumpkin Vine Creek and battles about Dallas, New Hope Church and Allatoona Hills, May 25-June 5. Operations about Marietta and against Kennesaw Mountain, June 10-July 2. Pine Hill June 11-14. Lost Mountain, June 15-17. Gilgal or Golgotha Church, June 15. Muddy Creek, June 17. Noyes Creek, June 19. Kolb's Farm, June 22. Assault on Kennesaw, June 27. Ruff's Station, July 4. Chattahoochee River, July 5-17. Peach Tree Creek, July 19-20. Siege of Atlanta, July 22-August 25. Operations at Chattahoochee River Bridge, August 26-September 2. Occupation of Atlanta, September 2-November 15. March to the sea, November 15-December 10. Campaign of the Carolinas, January to April, 1865. Lawtonville, S.C., February 2. Averysboro, N. C., March 16. Battle of Bentonville March 19-21. Occupation of Goldsbore March 24. Advance on Raleigh April 10-14. Occupation of Raleigh April 14. Bennett’s House April 26. Surrender of Johnston and his army. March to Washington, D.C., via Richmond, Va., April 29-May 19. Grand Review May 24. Mustered out June 10, 1865.

 

“Regiment lost during service 7 Officers and 88 Enlisted men killed and mortally wounded and 160 Enlisted men by disease. Total 255.”

 

Carlos kept a diary during his war years and Eliza kept a daybook. Both of these are now in Duke University’s rare book and manuscript library. I have not yet been able to access the documents, but the university describes them as follows: “The collection comprises two volumes. One is a 127-page diary maintained by Carlos Baker at the end of the Civil War, dated 15 November, 1864, to 10 July, 1865. Baker provides very detailed descriptions of the final days of the conflict, even naming the farms where his company camps or fights. Of particular interest are the descriptions of his company's participation in General Sherman's March to the Sea, their marches through the Carolinas, and their fighting at Savannah, Ga., Averysboro, NC, and Bentonville, NC. The other volume in the collection is a 60-page commonplace book (1863 - 1871) maintained by Carlos Baker’s wife, Eliza. In it are diary entries containing poignant descriptions of her anxiety about her husband's safety and many moving descriptions of her uncertainty about the future; poems and letters she composed; and notes about items she purchased, bartered with, or sold over the period.”

 

After the war had finished, Carlos returned to Allegan and took up his life where it had left off. On the 1870 census, captured on the date of 14 June, Carlos was enumerated as a cabinetmaker with real estate valued at $3,000 and a personal estate of $1,500. His wife, Eliza, had personal real estate valued at $4,000. The children—Willis, 15; Albertis (who seems to have preferred to be called Otis), 13; and Ernestine, 10, were at home. It was a mere six years later, on 1 May, 1876, that Carlos Baker died at the age of 48 of a yet undiscovered cause.

 

The cabinet card in my collection shows an unknown man in a four-wheel trap parked beside Carlos’s elaborate “white bronze” (zinc) grave marker in Oakwood Cemetery, Allegan. The trap has a business name painted on the side that seems to read: “White Brothers Monuments”—presumably the makers of the memorial. On the reverse of the card is several layers of information, scribbled in pencil. Among what can be deciphered is “Allegan,” “T. S. [unknown word]” “Hight [sic] 13 ft. 6 in., Base 4 ft 6 in. and square,” as well as two columns of numbers. Taken as a whole, it seems to refer to the monument’s dimensions and cost. (Reverse: www.flickr.com/photos/60861613@N00/12837105703/in/photost...)

 

The year that the monument was installed is not known, but the cabinet card dates to perhaps the late 1880s. Records indicate that the government placed a Civil War veteran’s headstone on Carlos’s grave. Presumably, there was a similar stone on the grave of Ebenezer. Both of these were removed when the imposing monument was put in place. It cannot have been inexpensive, even though it was cast zinc and not marble. No matter the cost, it is a testament to the respect that Carlos had within his family and community.

 

Eliza Higgins Baker and her three adult children are enumerated on the 1880 Census for Allegan. Willis, then 25, was a cabinetmaker like his father; Albertis was a 23-year-old laborer.

 

Ernestine died at the age of 21 on 6 April, 1881, in Allegan, and was buried with Carlos and Ebenezer. Her cause of death is not known, but the most likely reason is disease. In December, 1881, Eliza filed for and was granted a veteran’s widow’s pension.

 

We cannot glimpse the Baker family in 1890 because of the destruction of those census records, but in 1900, 71-year-old Eliza was living in Allegan with Willis, still a cabinet maker, who had married Lillie E. Fowler (b.1861). The couple had a daughter, Inez Emily, born 12 January, 1882, who was then 18.

 

On the day of the 1900 census, Otis was living two houses down the road from Willis and his mother. Otis had married Mary J. (last name unknown) (b. Aug. 12, 1867, MI) in 1888. The census notes that he was a day laborer. The couple had one son, Otis Marion Baker, born 8 May, 1901, and two daughters: Ruth L. (b. 11 October, 1905) and Ruby I. (b. 1908).

 

Sometime after Eliza’s death in April 1903—perhaps after the memorial plaque with her name and dates was affixed to the tall, white monument in Oakwood Cemetery—Willis and his family went west to California. The 1910 census places them in Riverside, Temescal County. Willis was retired and daughter Inez was a stenographer in a law office; they had two lodgers. Willis died in California in 1913 and is buried at Corona Sunnyslope Cemetery, Corona, Riverside County. Lillie and Inez appear to have experienced financial difficulties after his passing. On the 1920 census of Corona, 58-year-old Lillie is enumerated was a citrus fruit packer, Inez was still working as a stenographer, and they had three lodgers. Things may have improved by 1930, when the Lillie was noted on the Riverside census as living at 1025 Victoria Street, retired, with Inez, age 49, enumerated as the office manager of an insurance firm. Lillie lived until 4 January, 1938. She is buried beside her husband. Inez was yet living at the same address a decade later. Her home was owned and worth $3,000. The census also notes that her highest level of education reached was “high school, 4th year.” Inez’s death date is so far undiscovered.

 

Otis Baker died 22 February, 1918. He is buried in Oakwood Cemetery with his wife, Mary, who outlived him by 40 years, dying on 26 May, 1958. She had remarried by 1920 to John Huggins, a paper maker in a Kalamazoo paper mill. Their son Otis lived until 4 August, 1974, dying in Van Buren, Wayne County, Michigan. His sister Ruth died in Detroit on 16 April, 1987.

 

Recent pictures of the Baker monument show it still as lovely and serene as when new. I can do no better than to conclude with the poem inscribed on it, which the family chose themselves: “Blest is the turf, oh doubly blessed, where weary mortals stop to rest, where life’s long journey turns to sleep, no weary pilgrims wake to weep.”

 

Speechless.........

  

www.LizLieu.net

This is the second in a personal series about self harm.

This photo signifies the voluntary surrender to the parts of you inside that allow you to do this to yourself.

The arms belong to him as well; the darker parts of his person trying to pull him under.

The Dhofar (Ẓufār) Governorate (Arabic محافطة ظفار) is the largest of the eleven Governorates in the Sultanate of Oman in terms of area. It lies in Southern Oman, on the eastern border with Yemen. It is a rather mountainous area that covers 99,300 km2 (38,300 sq mi) and has a population of 250,000 as of the 2010 census.[1] The largest city, as well as capital of the Governorate, is Salalah. Historically the region was the chief source of frankincense in the world.

 

People

 

While Arabic speakers from the dominant Omani culture have come to live in the province, especially the larger cities and towns, Dhofar has been the traditional homeland of many tribespeople speaking a variety of South Arabian Semitic languages. One of the languages most commonly spoken by the Al-Hakli (Qara), Al-Shahri, Al-Barami, Al-Mashaiki and Al-Bat'hari mountain tribes is Jeballi (Shehri). The Yemeni language Mehri is somewhat linked to Jeballi. Other indigenous groups speaking smaller languages such as Bat'hari live in the coastal towns of Shuwaymiya and Sharbithat. The Harasis, speaking Harsusi, number 1,000–2,000 and live in Jiddat al-Harasis.

 

Dhofar's area geographically consists of coastal, mountainous, flat, and desert areas. Generally the people of Dhofar can be identified as either Jeballi (living in the mountains, or from the mountains), Badawi (living in the desert, or from the desert), or Hadhari (living in the cities or settlements).

Climate.

Dhofar has a tropical climate. Dhofar and a small portion of the northern tip of Yemen are directly exposed to the South East monsoon from mid-June to mid-September;[2] this is known as the Khareef. As a result, it has a lush green climate during the monsoon season and for some time after until the vegetation loses its moisture. Dhofar's temporarily wet climate contrasts sharply with the neighboring barren Empty Quarter Desert. The Salalah plain was once a well cultivated area with a sophisticated irrigation system.

History

 

Prior to Omani rule, a portion of Dhofar was partially part of the Kathiri Sultanate and later mostly controlled by tribes of Al-Hakli (Qara), thus given the name Qara Mountain Range. It is thought that the Al-Shahri were the original inhibitors of Dhofar.

 

Dhofar was a major exporter of frankincense in ancient times, with some of it being traded as far as China. The Chinese writer and customs inspector Zhao Rugua wrote on the origin of Frankincense being traded to China:

  

"Ruxiang or xunluxiang comes from the three Dashi countries of Murbat (Maloba), Shihr (Shihe), and Dhofar (Nufa), from the depths of the remotest mountains.[3] The tree which yields this drug may generally be compared to the pine tree. Its trunk is notched with a hatchet, upon which the resin flows out, and, when hardened, turns into incense, which is gathered and made into lumps. It is transported on elephants to the Dashi (on the coast), who then load it upon their ships to exchange it for other commodities in Sanfoqi. This is the reason why it is commonly collected at and known as a product of Sanfoqi."[4]

 

Ruxiang was the Chinese name for frankincense, and Dashi the Chinese name for Arabia.[citation needed] As of 1920, frankincense was being exported to India.[5]

 

During World War I it was fertile enough to produce food and grain to supply a large proportion of the requirement of the British Army fighting in Mesopotamia.

 

A counter-insurgency campaign—the Dhofar Rebellion—was fought here by the Sultan of Oman's Armed Forces in 1965–1975 against guerrilla fighters of the Marxist Popular Front for the Liberation of Oman and the Persian Gulf (PFLOAG), supported by Communist South Yemen after that territory's independence and several other socialist states including East Germany. It aimed to depose the Sultan. The Sultan's forces, assisted by the United Kingdom, Iran, and support from loaned officers and doctors from Pakistan and India,[6] prevailed, and once the campaign was declared over in December 1975, the active remainder of PFLOAG forces surrendered.

 

In Mormon culture, Dhofar is the most popular traditional location of the Book of Mormon land of Bountiful, from which the nomadic family of Lehi sailed in a ship constructed by his son Nephi, to the New World. This association is not an official LDS Church doctrine, however.

 

Culture and landmarks[edit]

 

Dhofar has a tribal community, and is home to many ancient tribes. The Arab tribes include Al-Hakli (Qara), Al Kathiri, Al-Hashimi, Al-Yafei, Al-Mashaikhi, Al-Shahri, Al-Mahri, Al-Bat'hari, and Al-Barami. It also houses many expatriates. Still, Dhofar is not a rural region but, in fact, has a combination of cultures. It is a mixture of traditional Omani heritage and an international way of living.

 

The city of Salalah acts as the regions capital. It has an International Airport, one of the largest seaports in the Middle East, several resorts including Marriot & Crowne Plaza, well-kept streets, international retail chain outlets, more than five 3D cinemas under construction, a University, Colleges & Schools (both English and Arabic medium). But the main attraction of the region is the natural beauty that has been preserved despite its industries. Dhofar has been praised for its scenic beauty from time immemorial. The Dhofar region is rich in meteorites.

 

The Burj-al-Nadha Clock-tower is a popular landmark and is featured in the Dhofar Municipality coat of arms.

 

Urbex Session : Castle C (BE)

 

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Skirmish at Jeffersonville, Tazewell, Virginia - April 2013

 

Best on black.

 

 

Sometimes sun surrender without a fight

www.marcosanmartinphotography.blogspot.com

 

www.marcofotosyoleos.blogspot.com

Site where the terms of surrender were first discussed on July 3, 1863.

Vicksburg National Military Park

Vicksburg, MS

Game over.... :-(

"Holy Bible' Exhibition Photography

“Reason lost the battle, and all I could do was surrender and accept I was in love.”

 

Melina Nastazia photography and her hubby!!!!!!

Oil on wood — Huile sur bois — Olew ar bren

 

Cette silhouette s'éloignant de sa maison et de sa terre correspond bien pour moi au sujet d' "Illustration Friday" de cette semaine, "la capitulation".

Cette peinture qui s'appelle "Dal dy dir" ("Garde ta terre"), est une forme de conseil aux jeunes paysans oppressés par les dettes, la grande distribution et l'agriculture moderne... N'abandonnez pas, et gardez ce qui vous appartient! Vous pouvez voir la peinture entière ainsi que des explications plus complètes ici : www.flickr.com/photos/valeriane_leblond/5068737174/in/set...

 

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I hear you calling, your breath warm on my neck. I turn around but find my mind playing tricks on me, I am alone here. Alone. But the sound still remains. A crack and the branches curve towards me, closing me in. They surround my limbs until the struggle seeps out of me and darkens the ground. They enter my mind, seeping through the darkness until they find it. The little seed of hope that remains for you. I dont fight them, I've lost the will to. I surrender myself completely and strangely I dont feel afraid. When I wake I am on the forest floor and somehow you are beside me. It feels good to breathe you in again.

Taken @Madina al Munawaroh, Saudi Arabia

motion>static.

full size.

A friend of mine took me beach exploring, and we landed on this awesome little surfing island Playa Perdida. We had a wonderful time exploring, taking photos, and surfing! It'd been a while since I had rekindled my love for SL Surfing but now that I found this place, I'm sure to get back to one of my favorite hobbies.

 

maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Playa%20Perdida/144/7/23

[Chillin at Playa Perdida [7-8-17]_094]

I have been doing the Kent church project for 11 years now, so I thought I knew most churches in Kent and all in East Kent, but just before Christmas a contact posted shots of a church I had not heard of before, St Peter-in-Thanet.

 

Once life settled down, I tried to arrange a visit before Christmas, that was impossible, but the church will be open every days from 2nd January I was told.

 

And as I had one more day off, why not start the year with a crawl?

 

I programmed the sat nav with the post code, and let it guide me to Sandwich then to Ramsgate and across the island via Westwood Cross, with the urban sprawl of Ramsgate and Broadstairs merging into one large town all around.

 

I saw the tower of St Peter from a mile away, surprisingly large. Nearer, I see that the area declares itself a village, also called St Peter, and there is a traditional village pub opposite.

 

I point out again at this point, the towns of Ramsgate and Broadstairs merge into one, St Peter is now part of Broadstairs. And indeed was the ancient centre of the town before the resort took off.

 

I park next to the church, present myself in the large and friendly parish offices next door, and told the church is open.

 

I just have to find which one of the half dozen doors into the church and vestry is actually unlocked.

 

I introduce myself, again, and they are happy to let me go around taking shots, whilst they water the multitude of plants. But they do stop to point out interesting details.

 

Nothing more fabulous that the highly decorated chancel; painted panels on the roof, painted beams, tiles and mosaics.

 

Even at first glance it is stunning.

 

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

 

The medieval church of Broadstairs, St Peter's stands well inland to serve the original farming community that showed little interest in the coast that was to change the later life of this part of Kent. The tower, however, is easily visible from the sea and was long used as a landmark to shipping, which is why it still flies the White Ensign. Although the church was restored in the nineteenth century by Joseph Clarke and is stamped with the atmosphere he usually managed to create, there is some fine Norman architecture in the five bay aisle arcades (although the central arch in the south arcade is a later insertion into an inexplicable break in the Norman work). The chancel arch is of the thirteenth century and there is a good cut-down sedilia in the sanctuary. The delicate marble font is of eighteenth century date and there are some fine hanging wall tablets of the same period. The stained glass presents a good cross-section of the nineteenth century art, much of it by Heaton, Butler and Bayne.

 

www.kentchurches.info/church.asp?p=St+Peters

 

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

 

ST. PETER'S

LIES the next parish south-eastward from St. John's, being so called from the dedication of the church of it to St. Peter. This parish is within the liberty and jurisdiction of the cinque ports, and is an antient member of the town and port of Dover, and though united to it ever since king Edward I.'s reign, yet so late as in that of king Henry VI. it became a dispute, whether this parish was not in the county at large; to take away therefore all doubt of it, that king, by his letters patent, united it to Dover, to which place, in like manner as St. John's above-mentioned, it is subsect in all matters of civil jurisdiction. The mayor of Dover here too appoints one of the inhabitants to be his deputy, who is chosen either yearly, or once in two or three years, at the mayor's pleasure; and to the charges of the sessions formerly held at Margate, this parish and Birchington used to contribute their proportion.

 

THE PARISH OF ST. PETER is as pleasant and healthy a situation as any in this island, the lands open and uninclosed, the soil a dry chalk, with frequent hill and dale interspersed throughout it. At Sowell hill, in the northern part of the parish, the land is reckoned to be the highest in the island. The village stands on a pleasing eminence, surrounded with trees, which is rather uncommon in these parts, having the church on the north-west side of it; at a little distance southward from which, is a small neat chapel, built by the sect of Methodists. Several genteel families reside in this village, situated about the middle of the parish, which is about two miles and a half across each way, and is bounded by the high chalk cliffs on the sea shore towards the north and east. It seems formerly to have been more populous than it is at present, for there were in the year 1563, as appeared by archbishop Parker's return to the orders of the privy council, one hundred and eighty-six housholds within this parish. Besides the village above mentioned, there are several other small hamlets and houses interspersed throughout it, viz. towards the south, Upton, Brompston, which is now the joint property of Henry Jessard, esq. and Mr. John Grey; Dumpton, great part of which extends into St. Laurence, it belongs to the earl of Hardwick; and Norwood. On the north-west side of the parish is Sacket's-hill, so called from its being the estate of an antient yeomanry family of this name, several of whom lie buried in this church, one of whom, John Sackett, as appears by his will, resided here and died possessed of his estate in this parish in 1444; on it there has been lately built a handsome house by Mr. King, for his summer residence, whose children are now possessed of it. In the northern part of the parish is the hamlet of Reading-street, southward of which is a small forstall, and then Sowell-street. In the eastern part of the parish, close to the cliffs, is Hackendon downe, or banks, where several antiquities have been dug up, as will be further mentioned hereafter; and the hamlet of Stone, formerly the residence of the Pawlyns, and then of the Huggets, where a few years ago Sir Charles Raymond, bart. built a small pleasant seat for his summer residence; Sir Harry Harper, bart. is the present owner of it. Not far from hence there formerly stood a beacon, which used to be fired to alarm the country in case of an invasion; a few years since some remains of the timber of it was dug up on the top of the Beacon-hill, about fifty five rods nearer to Stone than the present light-house.

 

¶About a mile and an half north-eastward from the church, at the extremity of the chalk cliff, is a point of land called the NORTH FORELAND, (suppofed by most to be the Cantium of Ptolemy) so called to distinguish it from the other Foreland, betwixt Deal and Dover, usually called the South Foreland; it is a promontory, or cape of land, that reaches further into the sea, and is somewhat higher than most of the land herebouts. On the top of it was formerly a house, built of timber, lath, and plaister work, with a large glass lanthorn on the top of it, in which a light was kept to direct ships in the night in their course, that they might keep clear of the Goodwin Sands, which lie off this point, and on which ships are apt to strike before they are aware, on account of their endeavouring to keep clear of this land, which extends so far into the sea. This house being by some accident burnt down in 1683, there was for some time a sort of beacon made use of, on which a light was hoisted; but about the latter end of the last century there was built here a strong house of flint, an octagon, on the top of which was an iron greate, quite open to the air, in which was made a blazing fire of coals. But about the year 1732, the top of this light-house was covered with a sort of lanthorn, with large sash lights, and the fire was kept burning by the help of bellows, which the light-men kept blowing all night. This invention was to save coals, but the sailors complained of it, as being very much to the prejudice of the navigation, many vessels being lost on the Goodwin Sands for want of seeing it, and indeed it was so little seen at sea, that some of the sailors asserted, they had in hazy weather seen the Foreland before they saw the light; whereas, before the lanthorn was placed here, when the fire was kept in the open air, as the wind kept the coals constantly alight, the blaze of it was seen in the air far above the light-house; complaint being made of this, the governors of Greenwich hospital ordered Sir John Thomson to view it, who ordered the lanthorn to be taken away, and the light-house to be made nearly the same as it was before, the light to continue burning all night and till day-light; since which, a few years ago, it was again repaired, and two stories of brick were raised on the former building. The height of it at present, including the small room in which the lights are kept, is somewhat more than one hundred feet; this room, which may be perhaps best described as a done raised on a decagon, is about ten feet in diameter, and twelve feet high; it is coated with copper, as is the gallery round it, to prevent fires. From the gallery there is a very extensive view, of which a conception may be formed from these lights being visible in clear weather at the Nore, which is ten leagues distant; in each of the sides of the decagon, towards the sea, is a patent lamp, kept burning all night, with a reflector and magnifier, the latter being very large. The whole building is white-washed, except the light room on the top; and all the rooms in it are used by the man and his family, who take care of it. (fn. 1) To the repair and maintenance of this light-house, every ship belonging to Great Britain, which sails by this Foreland, is obliged to pay two-pence for each ton; and every foreigner four-pence. It is under the direction of the governors of Greenwich hospital, in whom it is vested. There is a signal house between the North Foreland and Stonehouse, erected in 1795, the establishment of it is a lieutenant and midshipman of the navy, and two men.

 

Here were two fairs formerly kept every year, one on June 29, being St. Peter's day; and the other on March 25, being Lady-day; but they have for several years past been changed to the 10th of july, and the 5th of April.

 

The manor of Minster claims paramount over the greatest part of this parish; the landholders holding of it, by a certain rent called Pennygavel. Subordinate to this manor is that of

 

Near this place, in 1574, a monstrous fish shot himself on shore on a little sand, now called Fishness, where, for want of water it died the next day; before which his roaring was heard above a mile; his length, says Kilburne, was twenty-two yards; the nether jaw opening twelve feet; one of his eyes was more than a cart and six horses could draw; a man stood upright in the place from whence his eye was taken; the thickness from his back to the top of his belly (which lay upwards) was fourteen feet; his tail of the same breadth; the distance between his eyes was twelve feet; three men stood upright in his mouth; some of his ribs were fourteen feet long; his tongue was fifteen feet long; his liver was two cart loads, and a man might creep into his nostril. (fn. 7) There were four whales, or monstrous large fish, towed ashore by the fishermen on this island a few years ago, one of which had been found floating on the sea dead, and was brought to Broadstairs, and measured about sixty feet long, and thirty-eight feet round the middle; its forked tail was fifteen feet wide, its lower jaw nine feet long; it had two rows of teeth, twenty-two in each row, about two inches long; the upper jaw had no teeth, only holes for the lower ones to shut in. It had only one nostril. It had two gills, and the lower jaw shut in about three feet from the end of the nose. It is said this fish sold at Deal for twenty-two guineas.

 

MANY BRASS COINS of the Roman emperors have been found near Broadstairs, on a fall of the adjoining cliff, after much rain and frost at different times; but they have been so much worn and defaced, as not to be distinguished what they were.

 

Near the cliffs, about midway between the lighthouse and Kingsgate, are two large barrows, or banks of earth, called by the country people Hackendon, or Hackingdown banks, already noticed before. The tradition is, that these banks are the graves of those English and Danes, which were killed in a fight here; and that as one bank is greater than the other, the former is the place where the Danes were buried, who are said to have been defeated. It is not improbable that this battle referred to in history, was that fought A. D. 853, when the Danes having invaded this island with a considerable force, were attacked by earl Alcher with the Kentish men, and earl Huda with those of Surry, and an obstinate battle was fought, in which the English at first got some advantage, yet were at last deseated; great numbers were killed, among which were the two English generals; and the battle being fought so near the sea, a great many on both sides were pushed into it and drowned.

 

One of these barrows was opened in 1743, in the presence of many hundred people; a little below the surface of the ground several graves were discovered, cut out of the solid chalk and covered with flat stones; they were not more than three feet long, in an oblong oval form, and the bodies seem to have been thrust into them almost double; a deep trench was dug in the middle, and the bodies laid on each side of it; two of the skulls were covered with wood-coals and ashes. The skeletons seem to have been of men, women, and children, and by the smallness of the latter, these were conjectured to have been unborn.

 

¶Three urns made of very coarse black earth, not half burnt, one of them holding near half a bushel, were found with them, which crambled into dust on being exposed to the air. The bones were rather of a large size, and for the most part perfectly found. In 1765, the smaller barrow was opened, the appearances were similar to the former, but no urns were found. In memory of this battle, lord Holland erected a fantastic house, or monument, with an inscription, on the larger of the two banks.

 

THIS PARISH is within the ECCLESIASTICAL JURISDICTION of the diocese of Canterbury, and deanry of Westbere.

 

The church, which is dedicated to St. Peter, stands on a rising ground. It is a small structure which has something pleasing in the appearance of it. It is built, as the rest of the churches are hereabouts, of flints, covered with rough-cast, and the quoins, windows and doors cased with ashlar stone, only the porch has more workmanship used about it; above are stone battlements; the roof is covered with lead, and the portal or door way has a mitred arch of wrought stone. It consists of a nave with a small isle on each side of it, a large middle chancel, and a smaller one on the north side of it, part of which is now made into a vestry. The middle chancel, which is beautiful, is ceiled in compartments, the framing of which is enriched with carved work, as is the cornice round it. The church is elegantly pewed with wainscot, and has a very handsome desk and pulpit. In the middle isle are two handsome brass chandeliers, which were purchased by subscription, and there is a neat gallery at the west end, well contrived for the convenience of the inhabitants, and the whole is kept in excellent order, and more than usual neatness. At the west end of the middle isle, under the gallery, is a handsome font, of white marble, the gift of John Dekewer, esq. as appears by the inscription, erected in 1746; below the inscription are the arms of Dekewer. At the west end of the north isle stands the tower, which is a sea mark. There were antiently five bells in it, which some years ago were cast into six, the great bell being made into two. The high or middle chancel was beautified about the year 1730, at the expence of Mrs. Elizabeth Lovejoy, lessee of Callis grange; who, out of the profits of that estate, ordered this chancel as well as hers and her husband's monuments in it, to be repaired as often as should be needful; and the sum of twenty shillings to be paid yearly to the clerk, on the day of the anniversary of her death, March 29, as an encouragement for him to take due care of the monuments.

 

At the west end of the south isle is a room taken off for the school house. In this church were antiently, besides the high altar in the middle chancel, three other altars dedicated to St. James the Apostle, St. Mary of Pity, and St. Margaret. Before these altars, on which were the images of these saints, were wax-lights constantly burning, for the maintenance of which there were several fraternities and legacies left. Several antient monuments and inscriptions are in the body and chancels of this church, the principal ones of which are in the middle or high chancel: Among others, a monument for James Shipton, vicar, obt. 1665; another, for George Lovejoy, first school-master at Islington, then of the king's school at Canterbury, obt. 1685. He lies buried within the altar-rails; arms, Azure, three bars, dancette, or, impaling chequy, azure and or, on a fess, three leopards faces of the second. On a marble against the north wall is an account of the charities given by Mrs. Elizabeth Lovejoy, as follows: By her will and testament, to the mayor and commonalty of the city of Canterbury, her lease of Callis grange, upon trust, to pay yearly to the vicar of this parish, forty pounds; to a school master, to teach twenty poor children gratis in the parish, twenty pounds; to Jesus hospital, Canterbury, five pounds; to St. John's hospital, in Canterbury, ten pounds; to Kingsbridge hospital, in Canterbury, five pounds; to Cogan's hospital, in Canterbury, four pounds; to St. Stephens's hospital, five pounds; to Harbledown hospital, five pounds per annum; and she gave by her will to the school and hospital at Islington, 200l. and to the school at Wicomb, in Buckinghamshire, 100l.

 

She wainscotted and adorned this chancel, and gave plate for the communion table in her life time, and two silver flagons by her will, A. D. 1694. She died of an apoplexy before she had sealed or finished her will, so that it took no effect as to her real estate, but after many suits and controversies was adjudged good as to her personal estate; and twenty shillings she left yearly to be paid to this parish clerk to keep both monuments clean. A memorial for Mr. Leonard Rowntree, minister, obt. 1624. In the north chancel, on an altar tomb, an inscription for Manasses Norwoode, of Dane court, and Norwoode, esq. obt. 1636; arms, Ermine, a cross, engrailed, impaling six coats. There are several brass plates and inscriptions for Culmer and Elmstone. In the north isle an altar tomb for Michael Webb, obt. 1587. A brass plate for Philip Smith, obt. 1451. Another for John Sacket, of this parish, obt. 1623. A memorial for Alexander, son of Alexander Nor woode, esq. of Dane-court. A black marble for Cornelius Willes, A. M. nineteen years vicar of this parish, and prebendary of Wells, obt. 1776. A like stone for the Rev. John Deane, A. M. forty-one years vicar, obt. 1757. A memorial for Daniel Pamflet, gent. and Mary his wife. He died 1719. An antient tomb for Mrs Elizabeth Omer, obt. 1709. A mural monument and inscription for the Rev. Roger Huggett, M. A. late vicar of the king's free chapel of St. George, in Windsor, and rector of Hartley Waspaill, in Southampton, eldest son of Roger Huggett, of Stone, in this parish, who was sole heir of the Pawlyns, an antient and respectable family of that place. He died at Hartley, in 1769, where he was buried; on it are inscriptions for others of the same name; arms, Gules, a chevron, between three stags heads, or, impaling parted per pale, sable and gules, a griffin passant, counterchanged. A tomb for Mr. Henry Huggett, gent. sole heir of the Pawlins, of Stone; he died in 1751; and for others of this family. A mural monument, shewing that in a vault underneath, lies Mary, wife of John Dekewer, esq. of Hackney, who died without surviving issue, one son and one daughter lying interred with her, obt. 1748. In the same vault lies the abovementioned John Dekewer, esq. an especial benefactor to this parish, obt. 1762, æt 76; arms, Vert, on a cross, or, five fleurs de lis, sable, between two caltrops, and two lions, rampant, impaling argent, parted per fess, three escallops, two and one, in chief, gules, in base three piles waved, sable. A tomb for John Dekewer, son of the above John, obt. 1740. In the same vault are others of this family. A beautiful mural monument of white marble, on which is the figure of a child sitting, weeping and leaning on an urn, erected to the memory of John-Alexander Dekewer, son of John Dekewer, esq. of Hackney, and Elizabeth his wife, obt. 1778, æt. ten years. A mural monument for the Rev. Tho. Reynolds, obt. 1754. Besides these there are memo rials for Noble, Gray, Read, Witherden, White, Simons, Cooke, Culmer, Wild, Jeken, Tilman, and Kerby. In the middle of the chancel, a memorial for Grace, wife of James White, gent. of Chilham, daugh ter of Gratian Lynch, gent. of Grove, in Staple, obt. 1740, and for Grace her daughter, wife of Thomas Hawkins, obt. 1746. A brass plate in the north isle, for John Sacket, of this parish, obt. 1623, æt. 59. At the end of the north isle is a large white stone, much obliterated, for Michael Pavlen, obt. 1662; Anne his wife, and Anne their daughter. In the church yard are many handsome tombs and grave-stones, of persons of different trades and occupations, residents of this parish. In the tower is a great crack on the east and west sides of it, from the top almost to the bottom, where it opened near an inch, and more than two at the top, so that the tower by it inclines to the northward; and it is wonderful, that when it was so rent it did not fall; the fissure is filled up with stone and mortar. As tradition reports, it was occasioned by the earthquake in queen Elizabeth's reign, in the 22d year of which, Mr. Camden tells us, there was a great one felt in this county.

 

This church was one of the three chapels belonging to the church of Minister, and very probably was made parochial sometime after the year 1200, when the church of Minster, with its appendages, was appropriated, in the year 1128, to the monastery of St. Augustine; it was at the same time assigned, with the above-mentioned chapels, with all rents, tithes, and other things belonging to that church and those chapels, to the sacristy of the monastery; and it was further granted, that the abbot and convent should present to the archbishop in the above-mentioned chapels, fit perpetual chaplains to the altarages of them; but that the vicar of the mother church of Minister should take and receive in right of his vicarage, the tenths of the small tithes, viz. of lambs and pigs, and the obventions arising from marriages and churchings, which were forbidden at these chapels, and were solemnized, &c. at the mother church only.

 

As to the chaplains of these chapels, though they were to receive no more than ten marcs of these altarages, yet they were not excluded the enjoyment of the manses and glebes given to these chapels when they were first consecrated, which made some additiou to their income, and enabled them to keep a deacon to assist them on the great and principal festivals. The inhabitants of these three chapelries, preceded by their priests, were accustomed to go in procession to Minster, in token of their subjection to their parochial or mother church. (fn. 10)

 

After this the appropriation of the church of Minster, with its appendant chapels, and the advowsons of the vicarages of them, continued with the abbot and convent till the dissolution of the monastery in the 30th year of king Henry VIII. when they were surrendered, together with the rest of the possessions of the monastery, into the king's hands.

 

After the dissolution of the monastery and the change in the service of the churches wrought by the reformation, this parochial chapel of St. Peter became entirely separated from the mother church of Minster, the vicar of this parish having no further subjection to it in any shape whatever; but by the same change he was likewise deprived of several of those emoluments he had before enjoyed in right of his vicarage, and all the great tithes of this parish, being appropriated to Callis and Salmestone granges, formerly belonging to the abbot and convent of St. Augustine, as has been already taken notice of before; the endowment of this vicarage consisted only of the small tithes of this parish, the payment of two bushels of corn yearly at Midsummer, from Salmanstone grange, and a pension of ten pounds to be paid yearly out of Callis grange; besides which he had a vicarage house, orchard, garden, and two parcels of land.

 

The small tithes of this parish being chiefly arable land, with the other emoluments of the vicarage, by reason of the great increase of every necessary article of life, falling far short of a reasonable maintenance, Mrs. Elizabeth Lovejoy, in the year 1694, further augmented it with the sum of forty pounds per annum, to be paid half yearly out of Callis grange above-mentioned; in consideration of which augmentation, the vicar is obliged, without accepting any dispensation, to be constantly resident on this vicarage, with several other injunctions mentioned in her will.

 

This vicarage is valued in the king's books at nine pounds, and the yearly tenths at eighteen shillings. In 1588 here were one hundred and forty-six communicants. In 1640 here were three hundred communicants, and it was valued at seventy pounds, but it appears by the return made in 1709, to the enquiry into the clear value of church livings, that this vicarage was worth only thirty pounds clear yearly income, before Mrs. Lovejoy's addition of forty pounds per annum.

 

¶The advowson of this vicarage coming into the hands of the crown, on the dissolution of the abbey of St. Augustine, continued there till king Edward VI. in his first year, granted the advowson of the vicarage of Minster, with the three chapels appendant to it, one of which was this church of St. Peter, among other premises, to the archbishop; since which this advowson has continued parcel of the possessions of that see, the archbishop being the present patron of it.

 

In 1630 the churchwardens and assistants reported, that here were belonging to the vicarage a mansion, with a well house, one orchard, one garden, and one acre of land adjoining to it, and one parcel of land, called the Vicar's Acre, lying within the lands of Capt. Norwood, who paid to the vicar, in consideration of it, five shillings a year; but no care being taken to preserve the bounds of this acre, the place where it lay was forgot, and the rent paid for it disputed, and at length quite discontinued.

 

www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-kent/vol10/pp355-377

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Sculpture in downtown...

 

Sarasota, Florida, USA.

Bayfront Drive (at Gulf Stream)

6 October 2019.

 

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▶ "The profound joy portrayed in this [aluminum, 25-foot tall] sculpture was promoted by the spontaneous surrender of the Japanese, thus ending World War II on August 14, 1945. Among the celebrants in Times Square in New York City were a United States sailor and a nurse embracing amidst the multitude of joy makers.[...]

 

This celebrated moment in the history of our nation prompted preeminent American sculptor J. Seward Johnson to create this sculpture, which he named 'Unconditional Surrender.' After several years of intensive efforts, a proud veteran of World war II, Jack Curran, bought the sculpture [for $500,000], and with the outstanding support given by various Sarasota County veterans organizations, he was able to donate the sculpture to the City of Sarasota."

— Inscription plaque

 

▶ The sculpture —Disney-esque kitsch in appearance— was installed in 2009 (and repaired after an automobile crash, in 2012). Its title, Unconditional Surrender, can seem ironic, considering that the embrace it depicts (based upon a famous photo) has been revealed to have been unwanted.

 

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▶ Photo by Yours For Good Fermentables.com.

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Tamron 28-105mm/2.8

Yet another pic of the same series, just for the sake of fangirling *p*

Live Forever, for the Moment!

Absolut Me! Surrendering to Myself!