Made with Cinder.

Stills from a weekend project. I wanted to try and recreate the scene from Cuarón's "Gravity" when Sandra Bullock's character tumbles uncontrollably away from the destroyed shuttle.

Made with Cinder.

Stills from a weekend project. I wanted to try and recreate the scene from Cuarón's "Gravity" when Sandra Bullock's character tumbles uncontrollably away from the destroyed shuttle.

Basanta Utsav literally means the 'celebration of spring'. ... Annually celebrated in March, the festival is an occassion to invite the colourful spring season with utmost warmth. What is appreciated is the grace and diginified manner in which Vasant Utsav is celebrated in Bengal as compared to uncontrollable Holi witnessed in most parts of India. The beautiful tradition of celebrating spring festival in Bengal was first started by Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore at Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan.

The Dakshinkali Temple is located 22 kilometers from Kathmandu next to the village of Pharping. It's one of the main temples in Nepal. Twice every week thousands of people come here to worship the goddess Kali by sacrificing life animals, particularly cockerels and uncastrated male goats.

 

GODDESS KALI

Kālī (/ˈkɑːli/; Sanskrit: काली & Bengali: কালী; IPA: [kɑːliː]), also known as Kālikā (Sanskrit: कालिका), is the Hindu goddess associated with empowerment, or shakti. She is the fierce aspect of the goddess Durga. The name of Kali means black one and force of time; she is therefore called the Goddess of Time, Change, Power, Creation, Preservation, and Destruction. Her earliest appearance is that of a destroyer principally of evil forces. Various Shakta Hindu cosmologies, as well as Shākta Tantric beliefs, worship her as the ultimate reality or Brahman; and recent devotional movements re-imagine Kāli as a benevolent mother goddess. She is often portrayed standing or dancing on her husband, the god Shiva, who lies calm and prostrate beneath her. Worshipped throughout India but particularly South India, Bengal, and Assam, Kali is both geographically and culturally marginal.

 

ETYMOLOGY

Kālī is the feminine form of kālam ("black, dark coloured"). Kāla primarily means "time", but also means "black"; hence, Kālī means "the black one" or "beyond time". Kāli is strongly associated with Shiva, and Shaivas derive the masculine Kāla (an epithet of Shiva) from her feminine name. A nineteenth-century Sanskrit dictionary, the Shabdakalpadrum, states: कालः शिवः। तस्य पत्नीति - काली। kālaḥ śivaḥ। tasya patnīti kālī - "Shiva is Kāla, thus, his consort is Kāli".

 

Other names include Kālarātri ("black night"), as described above, and Kālikā ("relating to time"), and Kallie ("black alchemist"). Coburn notes that the name Kālī can be used as a proper name, or as a description of color.

 

Kāli's association with darkness stands in contrast to her consort, Shiva, whose body is covered by the white ashes of the cremation ground (Sanskrit: śmaśāna) where he meditates, and with which Kāli is also associated, as śmaśāna-kālī.

 

ORIGINS

Hugh Urban notes that although the word Kālī appears as early as the Atharva Veda, the first use of it as a proper name is in the Kathaka Grhya Sutra (19.7). Kali is the name of one of the seven tongues of Agni, the [Rigvedic] God of Fire, in the Mundaka Upanishad (2:4), but it is unlikely that this refers to the goddess. The first appearance of Kāli in her present form is in the Sauptika Parvan of the Mahabharata (10.8.64). She is called Kālarātri (literally, "black night") and appears to the Pandava soldiers in dreams, until finally she appears amidst the fighting during an attack by Drona's son Ashwatthama. She most famously appears in the sixth century Devi Mahatmyam as one of the shaktis of Mahadevi, and defeats the demon Raktabija ("Bloodseed"). The tenth-century Kalika Purana venerates Kāli as the ultimate reality.

 

According to David Kinsley, Kāli is first mentioned in Hinduism as a distinct goddess around 600 CE, and these texts "usually place her on the periphery of Hindu society or on the battlefield." She is often regarded as the Shakti of Shiva, and is closely associated with him in various Puranas. The Kalika Purana depicts her as the "Adi Shakti" (Fundamental Power) and "Para Prakriti" or beyond nature.

 

WORSHIP AND MANTRA

Kali could be considered a general concept, like Durga, and is mostly worshiped in the Kali Kula sect of worship. The closest way of direct worship is Maha Kali or Bhadra Kali (Bhadra in Sanskrit means 'gentle'). Kali is worshiped as one of the 10 Mahavidya forms of Adi Parashakti (Goddess Durga) or Bhagavathy according to the region. The mantra for worship is

 

Sanskrit: सर्वमङ्गलमाङ्गल्ये शिवे सर्वार्थसाधिके । शरण्ये त्र्यम्बके गौरि नारायणि नमोऽस्तु ते ॥

 

ॐ जयंती मंगल काली भद्रकाली कपालिनी । दुर्गा शिवा क्षमा धात्री स्वाहा स्वधा नमोऽस्तु‍ते ॥

 

(Sarvamaṅgalamāṅgalyē śivē sarvārthasādhikē . śaraṇyē tryambakē gauri nārāyaṇi namō'stu tē.

 

Oṃ jayantī mangala kālī bhadrakālī kapālinī . durgā śivā ksamā dhātrī svāhā svadhā namō'stu‍tē.)

 

YANTRA

Goddesses play an important role in the study and practice of Tantra Yoga, and are affirmed to be as central to discerning the nature of reality as are the male deities. Although Parvati is often said to be the recipient and student of Shiva's wisdom in the form of Tantras, it is Kali who seems to dominate much of the Tantric iconography, texts, and rituals. In many sources Kāli is praised as the highest reality or greatest of all deities. The Nirvana-tantra says the gods Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva all arise from her like bubbles in the sea, ceaselessly arising and passing away, leaving their original source unchanged. The Niruttara-tantra and the Picchila-tantra declare all of Kāli's mantras to be the greatest and the Yogini-tantra, Kamakhya-tantra and the Niruttara-tantra all proclaim Kāli vidyas (manifestations of Mahadevi, or "divinity itself"). They declare her to be an essence of her own form (svarupa) of the Mahadevi.In the Mahanirvana-tantra, Kāli is one of the epithets for the primordial sakti, and in one passage Shiva praises her:At the dissolution of things, it is Kāla [Time]. Who will devour all, and by reason of this He is called Mahākāla [an epithet of Lord Shiva], and since Thou devourest Mahākāla Himself, it is Thou who art the Supreme Primordial Kālika. Because Thou devourest Kāla, Thou art Kāli, the original form of all things, and because Thou art the Origin of and devourest all things Thou art called the Adya [the Primordial One]. Re-assuming after Dissolution Thine own form, dark and formless, Thou alone remainest as One ineffable and inconceivable. Though having a form, yet art Thou formless; though Thyself without beginning, multiform by the power of Maya, Thou art the Beginning of all, Creatrix, Protectress, and Destructress that Thou art. The figure of Kāli conveys death, destruction, and the consuming aspects of reality. As such, she is also a "forbidden thing", or even death itself. In the Pancatattva ritual, the sadhaka boldly seeks to confront Kali, and thereby assimilates and transforms her into a vehicle of salvation. This is clear in the work of the Karpuradi-stotra, a short praise of Kāli describing the Pancatattva ritual unto her, performed on cremation grounds. (Samahana-sadhana)He, O Mahākāli who in the cremation-ground, naked, and with dishevelled hair, intently meditates upon Thee and recites Thy mantra, and with each recitation makes offering to Thee of a thousand Akanda flowers with seed, becomes without any effort a Lord of the earth. Oh Kāli, whoever on Tuesday at midnight, having uttered Thy mantra, makes offering even but once with devotion to Thee of a hair of his Shakti [his energy/female companion] in the cremation-ground, becomes a great poet, a Lord of the earth, and ever goes mounted upon an elephant.The Karpuradi-stotra clearly indicates that Kāli is more than a terrible, vicious, slayer of demons who serves Durga or Shiva. Here, she is identified as the supreme mistress of the universe, associated with the five elements. In union with Lord Shiva, she creates and destroys worlds. Her appearance also takes a different turn, befitting her role as ruler of the world and object of meditation. In contrast to her terrible aspects, she takes on hints of a more benign dimension. She is described as young and beautiful, has a gentle smile, and makes gestures with her two right hands to dispel any fear and offer boons. The more positive features exposed offer the distillation of divine wrath into a goddess of salvation, who rids the sadhaka of fear. Here, Kali appears as a symbol of triumph over death.

 

BENGALI TRADITION

Kali is also a central figure in late medieval Bengali devotional literature, with such devotees as Ramprasad Sen (1718–75). With the exception of being associated with Parvati as Shiva's consort, Kāli is rarely pictured in Hindu legends and iconography as a motherly figure until Bengali devotions beginning in the early eighteenth century. Even in Bengāli tradition her appearance and habits change little, if at all.

 

The Tantric approach to Kāli is to display courage by confronting her on cremation grounds in the dead of night, despite her terrible appearance. In contrast, the Bengali devotee appropriates Kāli's teachings adopting the attitude of a child, coming to love her unreservedly. In both cases, the goal of the devotee is to become reconciled with death and to learn acceptance of the way that things are. These themes are well addressed in Rāmprasād's work. Rāmprasād comments in many of his other songs that Kāli is indifferent to his wellbeing, causes him to suffer, brings his worldly desires to nothing and his worldly goods to ruin. He also states that she does not behave like a mother should and that she ignores his pleas:

 

Can mercy be found in the heart of her who was born of the stone? [a reference to Kali as the daughter of Himalaya]

Were she not merciless, would she kick the breast of her lord?

Men call you merciful, but there is no trace of mercy in you, Mother.

You have cut off the heads of the children of others, and these you wear as a garland around your neck.

It matters not how much I call you "Mother, Mother." You hear me, but you will not listen.

 

To be a child of Kāli, Rāmprasād asserts, is to be denied of earthly delights and pleasures. Kāli is said to refrain from giving that which is expected. To the devotee, it is perhaps her very refusal to do so that enables her devotees to reflect on dimensions of themselves and of reality that go beyond the material world.

 

A significant portion of Bengali devotional music features Kāli as its central theme and is known as Shyama Sangeet ("Music of the Night"). Mostly sung by male vocalists, today even women have taken to this form of music. One of the finest singers of Shyāma Sāngeet is Pannalal Bhattacharya.

 

In Bengal, Kāli is venerated in the festival Kali Puja, the new moon day of Ashwin month which coincides with Diwali festival.

 

In a unique form of Kāli worship, Shantipur worships Kāli in the form of a hand painted image of the deity known as Poteshwari (meaning the deity drawn on a piece of cloth).

 

LEGENDS

SLAYER AND RAKTABIJA

In Kāli's most famous legend, Devi Durga (Adi Parashakti) and her assistants, the Matrikas, wound the demon Raktabija, in various ways and with a variety of weapons in an attempt to destroy him. They soon find that they have worsened the situation for with every drop of blood that is dripped from Raktabija he reproduces a clone of himself. The battlefield becomes increasingly filled with his duplicates. Durga, in need of help, summons Kāli to combat the demons. It is said, in some versions, that Goddess Durga actually assumes the form of Goddess Kāli at this time. The Devi Mahatmyam describes:

 

Out of the surface of her (Durga's) forehead, fierce with frown, issued suddenly Kali of terrible countenance, armed with a sword and noose. Bearing the strange khatvanga (skull-topped staff ), decorated with a garland of skulls, clad in a tiger's skin, very appalling owing to her emaciated flesh, with gaping mouth, fearful with her tongue lolling out, having deep reddish eyes, filling the regions of the sky with her roars, falling upon impetuously and slaughtering the great asuras in that army, she devoured those hordes of the foes of the devas.

 

Kali consumes Raktabija and his duplicates, and dances on the corpses of the slain. In the Devi Mahatmya version of this story, Kali is also described as a Matrika and as a Shakti or power of Devi. She is given the epithet Cāṃuṇḍā (Chamunda), i.e. the slayer of the demons Chanda and Munda. Chamunda is very often identified with Kali and is very much like her in appearance and habit.

  

DAKSHINA KALI

In her most famous pose as Daksinakali, popular legends say that Kali, drunk on the blood of her victims, is about to destroy the whole universe when, urged by all the gods, Shiva lies in her way to stop her, and she steps upon his chest. Recognizing Shiva beneath her feet, she calms herself. Though not included in any of the puranas, popular legends state that Kali was ashamed at the prospect of keeping her husband beneath her feet and thus stuck her tongue out in shame. The Devi-Bhagavata Purana, which goes into great depths about the goddess Kali, reveals the tongue's actual symbolism.

 

The characteristic icons that depict Kali are the following; unbridled matted hair, open blood shot eyes, open mouth and a drooping tongue; in her hands, she holds a Khadga (bent sword or scimitar) and a human head; she has a girdle of human hands across her waist, and Shiva lies beneath her feet. The drooping out-stuck tongue represents her blood-thirst. Lord Shiva beneath her feet represents matter, as Kali energy. The depiction of Kali on Shiva shows that without energy, matter lies "dead". This concept has been simplified to a folk-tale depicting a wife placing her foot

 

on her husband and sticking her tongue out in shame. In tantric contexts, the tongue is seen to denote the element (guna) of rajas (energy and action) controlled by sattva.

 

If Kali steps on Shiva with her right foot and holds the sword in her left hand, she is considered to be Dakshina Kali. The Dakshina Kali Temple has important religious associations with the Jagannath Temple and it is believed that Daksinakali is the guardian of the kitchen of the Lord Jagannath Temple. Puranic tradition says that in Puri, Lord Jagannath is regarded as Daksinakalika. Goddess Dakshinakali plays an important role in the 'Niti' of Saptapuri Amavasya.

 

One South Indian tradition tells of a dance contest between Shiva and Kali. After defeating the two demons Sumbha and Nisumbha, Kali takes up residence in the forest of Thiruvalankadu or Thiruvalangadu. She terrorizes the surrounding area with her fierce, disruptive nature. One of Shiva's devotees becomes distracted while performing austerities, and asks Shiva to rid the forest of the destructive goddess. When Shiva arrives, Kali threatens him, and Shiva challenges Kali to a dance contest, wherein Kali matches Shiva until Shiva takes the "Urdhvatandava" step, vertically raising his right leg. Kali refuses to perform this step, which would not befit her as a woman, and becomes pacified.

 

SMASHAN KALI

If the Kali steps out with the left foot and holds the sword in her right hand, she is the terrible form of Mother, the Smashan Kali of the cremation ground. She is worshiped by tantrics, the followers of Tantra, who believe that one's spiritual discipline practiced in a smashan (cremation ground) brings success quickly. Sarda Devi, the consort of Ramakrishna Paramhansa, worshipped Smashan Kali at Dakshineshwar.

 

MATERNAL KALI

At the time of samundra manthan when amrit came out, along with that came out poison which was going to destroy the world hence on the request of all the gods, Lord Shiva drank it to save the world but as he is beyond death he didn't die but was very much in pain due to the poison effect hence he became a child so that Kali can feed him with her milk which will sooth out the poison effect.

 

MAHAKALI

Mahakali (Sanskrit: Mahākālī, Devanagari: महाकाली), literally translated as Great Kali, is sometimes considered as a greater form of Kali, identified with the Ultimate reality of Brahman. It can also be used as an honorific of the Goddess Kali, signifying her greatness by the prefix "Mahā-". Mahakali, in Sanskrit, is etymologically the feminized variant of Mahakala or Great Time (which is interpreted also as Death), an epithet of the God Shiva in Hinduism. Mahakali is the presiding Goddess of the first episode of the Devi Mahatmya. Here she is depicted as Devi in her universal form as Shakti. Here Devi serves as the agent who allows the cosmic order to be restored.

 

Kali is depicted in the Mahakali form as having ten heads, ten arms, and ten legs. Each of her ten hands is carrying a various implement which vary in different accounts, but each of these represent the power of one of the Devas or Hindu Gods and are often the identifying weapon or ritual item of a given Deva. The implication is that Mahakali subsumes and is responsible for the powers that these deities possess and this is in line with the interpretation that Mahakali is identical with Brahman. While not displaying ten heads, an "ekamukhi" or one headed image may be displayed with ten arms, signifying the same concept: the powers of the various Gods come only through Her grace.

 

ICONOGRAPHY

Kali is portrayed mostly in two forms: the popular four-armed form and the ten-armed Mahakali form. In both of her forms, she is described as being black in color but is most often depicted as blue in popular Indian art. Her eyes are described as red with intoxication, and in absolute rage, her hair is shown disheveled, small fangs sometimes protrude out of her mouth, and her tongue is lolling. She is often shown naked or just wearing a skirt made of human arms and a garland of human heads. She is also accompanied by serpents and a jackal while standing on a seemingly dead Shiva, usually right foot forward to symbolize the more popular Dakshinamarga or right-handed path, as opposed to the more infamous and transgressive Vamamarga or left-handed path.

 

In the ten-armed form of Mahakali she is depicted as shining like a blue stone. She has ten faces, ten feet, and three eyes for each head. She has ornaments decked on all her limbs. There is no association with Shiva.

 

The Kalika Purana describes Kali as possessing a soothing dark complexion, as perfectly beautiful, riding a lion, four-armed, holding a sword and blue lotuses, her hair unrestrained, body firm and youthful.

 

In spite of her seemingly terrible form, Kali Ma is often considered the kindest and most loving of all the Hindu goddesses, as she is regarded by her devotees as the Mother of the whole Universe. And because of her terrible form, she is also often seen as a great protector. When the Bengali saint Ramakrishna once asked a devotee why one would prefer to worship Mother over him, this devotee rhetorically replied, "Maharaj", when they are in trouble your devotees come running to you. But, where do you run when you are in trouble?"

 

According to Ramakrishna, darkness is the Ultimate Mother, or Kali:

 

My Mother is the principle of consciousness. She is Akhanda Satchidananda;

indivisible Reality, Awareness, and Bliss. The night sky between the stars is perfectly black.

The waters of the ocean depths are the same; The infinite is always mysteriously dark.

This inebriating darkness is my beloved Kali.

—Sri Ramakrishna

This is clear in the works of such contemporary artists as Charles Wish, and Tyeb Mehta, who sometimes take great liberties with the traditional, accepted symbolism, but still demonstrate a true reverence for the Shakta sect.

 

POPULAR FORM

Classic depictions of Kali share several features, as follows:

 

Kali's most common four armed iconographic image shows each hand carrying variously a sword, a trishul (trident), a severed head, and a bowl or skull-cup (kapala) catching the blood of the severed head.

 

Two of these hands (usually the left) are holding a sword and a severed head. The Sword signifies Divine Knowledge and the Human Head signifies human Ego which must be slain by Divine Knowledge in order to attain Moksha. The other two hands (usually the right) are in the abhaya (fearlessness) and varada (blessing) mudras, which means her initiated devotees (or anyone worshipping her with a true heart) will be saved as she will guide them here and in the hereafter.

 

She has a garland consisting of human heads, variously enumerated at 108 (an auspicious number in Hinduism and the number of countable beads on a Japa Mala or rosary for repetition of Mantras) or 51, which represents Varnamala or the Garland of letters of the Sanskrit alphabet, Devanagari. Hindus believe Sanskrit is a language of dynamism, and each of these letters represents a form of energy, or a form of Kali. Therefore, she is generally seen as the mother of language, and all mantras.

 

She is often depicted naked which symbolizes her being beyond the covering of Maya since she is pure (nirguna) being-consciousness-bliss and far above prakriti. She is shown as very dark as she is brahman in its supreme unmanifest state. She has no permanent qualities - she will continue to exist even when the universe ends. It is therefore believed that the concepts of color, light, good, bad do not apply to her - she is the pure, un-manifested energy, the Adi-shakti.

 

Kali as the Symbol of Creation , Freedom , Preservation and Destruction

 

The head that hangs in Kali's hand is a symbol of Ego and the scimitar which she is holding represents power and energy.It is believed that Kali is protecting the human race by that scimitar and also destroying the negativity and ego within human being. The body lying under Kali symbolizes ruination, is actually a form of Shiva. Kali steps her leg on the chest of the body and suppress ruination . Since she is standing on the pure white chest of Lord Shiva who, as pure primal awareness, lays in a passive reclining position, peacefully lies with his eyes half open in a state of bliss. Her hair is long, black and flowing freely depicting Her freedom from convention and the confines of conceptualization. The white teeth which Kali has stands for conscience and her red tongue represents greed. By pressing her white teeth on her tongue Kali refers to control greed.The goddess may appear terrible from outside but every symbol in Kali signifies truth of life. Since the earth was created out of darkness, the dark black color of Kali symbolizes the color from which everything was born. Her right hand side arms she shows the Abhaya mudra(gesture of fearlessness) and Vara mudra (gesture of welcome and charity) respectively . But on the other arm in left side she holds a bloody scimitar and a severed head depicting destruction and end of ego.

Kali as the Symbol of Mother Nature

 

The name Kali means Kala or force of time. When there were neither the creation, nor the sun, the moon, the planets, and the earth, there was only darkness and everything was created from the darkness. The Dark appearance of kali represents the darkness from which everything was born. Her complexion is deep blue, like the sky and ocean water as blue. As she is also the goddess of Preservation Kali is worshiped as mother to preserve the nature.Kali is standing calm on Shiva, her appearance represents the preservation of mother nature. Her free, long and black hair represents nature's freedom from civilization. Under the third eye of kali, the signs of both sun, moon and fire are visible which represent the driving forces of nature.

 

SHIVA IN KALI ICONOGRAPHY

In both these images she is shown standing on the prone, inert or dead body of Shiva. There is a legend for the reason behind her standing on what appears to be Shiva's corpse, which translates as follows:

 

Once Kali had destroyed all the demons in battle, she began a terrific dance out of the sheer joy of victory. All the worlds or lokas began to tremble and sway under the impact of her dance. So, at the request of all the Gods, Shiva himself asked her to desist from this behavior. However, she was too intoxicated to listen. Hence, Shiva lay like a corpse among the slain demons in order to absorb the shock of the dance into himself. When Kali eventually stepped upon Shiva, she realized she was trampling and hurting her husband and bit her tongue in shame.

 

The story described here is a popular folk tale and not described or hinted in any of the puranas. The puranic interpretation is as follows:

 

Once, Parvati asks Shiva to chose the one form among her 10 forms which he likes most. To her surprise, Shiva reveals that he is most comfortable with her Kali form, in which she is bereft of her jewellery, her human-form, her clothes, her emotions and where she is only raw, chaotic energy, where she is as terrible as time itself and even greater than time. As Parvati takes the form of Kali, Shiva lies at her feet and requests her to place her foot on his chest, upon his heart. Once in this form, Shiva requests her to have this place, below her feet in her iconic image which would be worshiped throughout.

 

This idea has been explored in the Devi-Bhagavata Purana [28] and is most popular in the Shyama Sangeet, devotional songs to Kali from the 12th to 15th centuries.

 

The Tantric interpretation of Kali standing on top of her husband is as follows:

 

The Shiv tattava (Divine Consciousness as Shiva) is inactive, while the Shakti tattava (Divine Energy as Kali) is active. Shiva and Kali represent Brahman, the Absolute pure consciousness which is beyond all names, forms and activities. Kali, on the other hand, represents the potential (and manifested) energy responsible for all names, forms and activities. She is his Shakti, or creative power, and is seen as the substance behind the entire content of all consciousness. She can never exist apart from Shiva or act independently of him, just as Shiva remains a mere corpse without Kali i.e., Shakti, all the matter/energy of the universe, is not distinct from Shiva, or Brahman, but is rather the dynamic power of Brahman. Hence, Kali is Para Brahman in the feminine and dynamic aspect while Shiva is the male aspect and static. She stands as the absolute basis for all life, energy and beneath her feet lies, Shiva, a metaphor for mass, which cannot retain its form without energy.

 

While this is an advanced concept in monistic Shaktism, it also agrees with the Nondual Trika philosophy of Kashmir, popularly known as Kashmir Shaivism and associated most famously with Abhinavagupta. There is a colloquial saying that "Shiva without Shakti is Shava" which means that without the power of action (Shakti) that is Mahakali (represented as the short "i" in Devanagari) Shiva (or consciousness itself) is inactive; Shava means corpse in Sanskrit and the play on words is that all Sanskrit consonants are assumed to be followed by a short letter "a" unless otherwise noted. The short letter "i" represents the female power or Shakti that activates Creation. This is often the explanation for why She is standing on Shiva, who is either Her husband and complement in Shaktism or the Supreme Godhead in Shaivism.

 

To properly understand this complex Tantric symbolism it is important to remember that the meaning behind Shiva and Kali does not stray from the non-dualistic parlance of Shankara or the Upanisads. According to both the Mahanirvana and Kularnava Tantras, there are two distinct ways of perceiving the same absolute reality. The first is a transcendental plane which is often described as static, yet infinite. It is here that there is no matter, there is no universe and only consciousness exists. This form of reality is known as Shiva, the absolute Sat-Chit-Ananda - existence, knowledge and bliss. The second is an active plane, an immanent plane, the plane of matter, of Maya, i.e., where the illusion of space-time and the appearance of an actual universe does exist. This form of reality is known as Kali or Shakti, and (in its entirety) is still specified as the same Absolute Sat-Chit-Ananda. It is here in this second plane that the universe (as we commonly know it) is experienced and is described by the Tantric seer as the play of Shakti, or God as Mother Kali.

 

From a Tantric perspective, when one meditates on reality at rest, as absolute pure consciousness (without the activities of creation, preservation or dissolution) one refers to this as Shiva or Brahman. When one meditates on reality as dynamic and creative, as the Absolute content of pure consciousness (with all the activities of creation, preservation or dissolution) one refers to it as Kali or Shakti. However, in either case the yogini or yogi is interested in one and the same reality - the only difference being in name and fluctuating aspects of appearance. It is this which is generally accepted as the meaning of Kali standing on the chest of Shiva.

 

Although there is often controversy surrounding the images of divine copulation, the general consensus is benign and free from any carnal impurities in its substance. In Tantra the human body is a symbol for the microcosm of the universe; therefore sexual process is responsible for the creation of the world. Although theoretically Shiva and Kali (or Shakti) are inseparable, like fire and its power to burn, in the case of creation they are often seen as having separate roles. With Shiva as male and Kali as female it is only by their union that creation may transpire. This reminds us of the prakrti and purusa doctrine of Samkhya wherein prakāśa- vimarśa has no practical value, just as without prakrti, purusa is quite inactive. This (once again) stresses the interdependencies of Shiva and Shakti and the vitality of their union.

 

Gopi Krishna proposed that Kali standing on the dead Shiva or Shava (Sanskrit for dead body) symbolised the helplessness of a person undergoing the changing process (psychologically and physiologically) in the body conducted by the Kundalini Shakti.

 

DEVELOPMENT

In the later traditions, Kali has become inextricably linked with Shiva. The unleashed form of Kali often becomes wild and uncontrollable, and only Shiva is able to tame her just as only Kali can tame Shiva. This is both because she is often a transformed version of one of his consorts and because he is able to match her wildness.

 

The ancient text of Kali Kautuvam describes her competition with Shiva in dance, from which the sacred 108 Karanas appeared. Shiva won the competition by acting the urdva tandava, one of the Karanas, by raising his feet to his head. Other texts describe Shiva appearing as a crying infant and appealing to her maternal instincts. While Shiva is said to be able to tame her, the iconography often presents her dancing on his fallen body, and there are accounts of the two of them dancing together, and driving each other to such wildness that the world comes close to unravelling.

 

Shiva's involvement with Tantra and Kali's dark nature have led to her becoming an important Tantric figure. To the Tantric worshippers, it was essential to face her Curse, the terror of death, as willingly as they accepted Blessings from her beautiful, nurturing, maternal aspect. For them, wisdom meant learning that no coin has only one side: as death cannot exist without life, so life cannot exist without death. Kali's role sometimes grew beyond that of a chaos - which could be confronted - to that of one who could bring wisdom, and she is given great metaphysical significance by some Tantric texts. The Nirvāna-tantra clearly presents her uncontrolled nature as the Ultimate Reality, claiming that the trimurti of Brahma, Vishnu and Rudra arise and disappear from her like bubbles from the sea. Although this is an extreme case, the Yogini-tantra, Kamakhya-tantra and the Niruttara-tantra declare her the svarupa (own-being) of the Mahadevi (the great Goddess, who is in this case seen as the combination of all devis).The final stage of development is the worshipping of Kali as the Great Mother, devoid of her usual violence. This practice is a break from the more traditional depictions. The pioneers of this tradition are the 18th century Shakta poets such as Ramprasad Sen, who show an awareness of Kali's ambivalent nature. Ramakrishna, the 19th century Bengali saint, was also a great devotee of Kali; the western popularity of whom may have contributed to the more modern, equivocal interpretations of this Goddess. Rachel McDermott's work, however, suggests that for the common, modern worshipper, Kali is not seen as fearful, and only those educated in old traditions see her as having a wrathful component. Some credit to the development of Devi must also be given to Samkhya. Commonly referred to as the Devi of delusion, Mahamaya or Durga, acting in the confines of (but not being bound by) the nature of the three gunas, takes three forms: Maha-Kali, Maha-Lakshmi and Maha-Saraswati, being her tamas-ika, rajas-ika and sattva-ika forms. In this sense, Kali is simply part of a larger whole.

 

Like Sir John Woodroffe and Georg Feuerstein, many Tantric scholars (as well as sincere practitioners) agree that, no matter how propitious or appalling you describe them, Shiva and Devi are simply recognizable symbols for everyday, abstract (yet tangible) concepts such as perception, knowledge, space-time, causation and the process of liberating oneself from the confines of such things. Shiva, symbolizing pure, absolute consciousness, and Devi, symbolizing the entire content of that consciousness, are ultimately one and the same - totality incarnate, a micro-macro-cosmic amalgamation of all subjects, all objects and all phenomenal relations between the "two." Like man and woman who both share many common, human traits yet at the same time they are still different and, therefore, may also be seen as complementary.

 

Worshippers prescribe various benign and horrific qualities to Devi simply out of practicality. They do this so they may have a variety of symbols to choose from, symbols which they can identify and relate with from the perspective of their own, ever-changing time, place and personal level of unfolding. Just like modern chemists or physicists use a variety of molecular and atomic models to describe what is unperceivable through rudimentary, sensory input, the scientists of ontology and epistemology must do the same. One of the underlying distinctions of Tantra, in comparison to other religions, is that it allows the devotee the liberty to choose from a vast array of complementary symbols and rhetoric which suit one's evolving needs and tastes. From an aesthetic standpoint, nothing is interdict and nothing is orthodox. In this sense, the projection of some of Devi's more gentle qualities onto Kali is not sacrilege and the development of Kali really lies in the practitioner, not the murthi.

 

A TIME magazine article of October 27, 1947, used Kali as a symbol and metaphor for the human suffering in British India during its partition that year. In 1971, Ms. Magazine used an image of Kali, her multiple arms juggling modern tasks, as a symbol of modern womanhood on its inaugural issue.

 

Swami Vivekananda wrote his favorite poem Kali the Mother in 1898.

 

KALI IN NEOPAGAN AND NEW AGE PRACTICE

An academic study of Western Kali enthusiasts noted that, "as shown in the histories of all cross-cultural religious transplants, Kali devotionalism in the West must take on its own indigenous forms if it is to adapt to its new environment."[60] The adoption of Kali by the West has raised accusations of cultural appropriation:

 

A variety of writers and thinkers have found Kali an exciting figure for reflection and exploration, notably feminists and participants in New Age spirituality who are attracted to goddess worship. [For them], Kali is a symbol of wholeness and healing, associated especially with repressed female power and sexuality. [However, such interpretations often exhibit] confusion and misrepresentation, stemming from a lack of knowledge of Hindu history among these authors, [who only rarely] draw upon materials written by scholars of the Hindu religious tradition. The majority instead rely chiefly on other popular feminist sources, almost none of which base their interpretations on a close reading of Kali's Indian background. The most important issue arising from this discussion - even more important than the question of 'correct' interpretation - concerns the adoption of other people's religious symbols. It is hard to import the worship of a goddess from another culture: religious associations and connotations have to be learned, imagined or intuited when the deep symbolic meanings embedded in the native culture are not available.

 

INCARNATIONS OF KALI

Draupadi, Wife of Pandavas, was an avatar of Kali, who born to assist Lord Krishna to destroy arrogant kings of India. There is a temple dedicated to this incarnation at Banni Mata Temple at Himachal Pradesh. The vedic deity Nirriti or the Puranic deity Alakshmi is often considered as incarnations of Kali.

 

WIKIPEDIA

The Dakshinkali Temple is located 22 kilometers from Kathmandu next to the village of Pharping. It's one of the main temples in Nepal. Twice every week thousands of people come here to worship the goddess Kali by sacrificing life animals, particularly cockerels and uncastrated male goats.

 

GODDESS KALI

Kālī (/ˈkɑːli/; Sanskrit: काली & Bengali: কালী; IPA: [kɑːliː]), also known as Kālikā (Sanskrit: कालिका), is the Hindu goddess associated with empowerment, or shakti. She is the fierce aspect of the goddess Durga. The name of Kali means black one and force of time; she is therefore called the Goddess of Time, Change, Power, Creation, Preservation, and Destruction. Her earliest appearance is that of a destroyer principally of evil forces. Various Shakta Hindu cosmologies, as well as Shākta Tantric beliefs, worship her as the ultimate reality or Brahman; and recent devotional movements re-imagine Kāli as a benevolent mother goddess. She is often portrayed standing or dancing on her husband, the god Shiva, who lies calm and prostrate beneath her. Worshipped throughout India but particularly South India, Bengal, and Assam, Kali is both geographically and culturally marginal.

 

ETYMOLOGY

Kālī is the feminine form of kālam ("black, dark coloured"). Kāla primarily means "time", but also means "black"; hence, Kālī means "the black one" or "beyond time". Kāli is strongly associated with Shiva, and Shaivas derive the masculine Kāla (an epithet of Shiva) from her feminine name. A nineteenth-century Sanskrit dictionary, the Shabdakalpadrum, states: कालः शिवः। तस्य पत्नीति - काली। kālaḥ śivaḥ। tasya patnīti kālī - "Shiva is Kāla, thus, his consort is Kāli".

 

Other names include Kālarātri ("black night"), as described above, and Kālikā ("relating to time"), and Kallie ("black alchemist"). Coburn notes that the name Kālī can be used as a proper name, or as a description of color.

 

Kāli's association with darkness stands in contrast to her consort, Shiva, whose body is covered by the white ashes of the cremation ground (Sanskrit: śmaśāna) where he meditates, and with which Kāli is also associated, as śmaśāna-kālī.

 

ORIGINS

Hugh Urban notes that although the word Kālī appears as early as the Atharva Veda, the first use of it as a proper name is in the Kathaka Grhya Sutra (19.7). Kali is the name of one of the seven tongues of Agni, the [Rigvedic] God of Fire, in the Mundaka Upanishad (2:4), but it is unlikely that this refers to the goddess. The first appearance of Kāli in her present form is in the Sauptika Parvan of the Mahabharata (10.8.64). She is called Kālarātri (literally, "black night") and appears to the Pandava soldiers in dreams, until finally she appears amidst the fighting during an attack by Drona's son Ashwatthama. She most famously appears in the sixth century Devi Mahatmyam as one of the shaktis of Mahadevi, and defeats the demon Raktabija ("Bloodseed"). The tenth-century Kalika Purana venerates Kāli as the ultimate reality.

 

According to David Kinsley, Kāli is first mentioned in Hinduism as a distinct goddess around 600 CE, and these texts "usually place her on the periphery of Hindu society or on the battlefield." She is often regarded as the Shakti of Shiva, and is closely associated with him in various Puranas. The Kalika Purana depicts her as the "Adi Shakti" (Fundamental Power) and "Para Prakriti" or beyond nature.

 

WORSHIP AND MANTRA

Kali could be considered a general concept, like Durga, and is mostly worshiped in the Kali Kula sect of worship. The closest way of direct worship is Maha Kali or Bhadra Kali (Bhadra in Sanskrit means 'gentle'). Kali is worshiped as one of the 10 Mahavidya forms of Adi Parashakti (Goddess Durga) or Bhagavathy according to the region. The mantra for worship is

 

Sanskrit: सर्वमङ्गलमाङ्गल्ये शिवे सर्वार्थसाधिके । शरण्ये त्र्यम्बके गौरि नारायणि नमोऽस्तु ते ॥

 

ॐ जयंती मंगल काली भद्रकाली कपालिनी । दुर्गा शिवा क्षमा धात्री स्वाहा स्वधा नमोऽस्तु‍ते ॥

 

(Sarvamaṅgalamāṅgalyē śivē sarvārthasādhikē . śaraṇyē tryambakē gauri nārāyaṇi namō'stu tē.

 

Oṃ jayantī mangala kālī bhadrakālī kapālinī . durgā śivā ksamā dhātrī svāhā svadhā namō'stu‍tē.)

 

YANTRA

Goddesses play an important role in the study and practice of Tantra Yoga, and are affirmed to be as central to discerning the nature of reality as are the male deities. Although Parvati is often said to be the recipient and student of Shiva's wisdom in the form of Tantras, it is Kali who seems to dominate much of the Tantric iconography, texts, and rituals. In many sources Kāli is praised as the highest reality or greatest of all deities. The Nirvana-tantra says the gods Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva all arise from her like bubbles in the sea, ceaselessly arising and passing away, leaving their original source unchanged. The Niruttara-tantra and the Picchila-tantra declare all of Kāli's mantras to be the greatest and the Yogini-tantra, Kamakhya-tantra and the Niruttara-tantra all proclaim Kāli vidyas (manifestations of Mahadevi, or "divinity itself"). They declare her to be an essence of her own form (svarupa) of the Mahadevi.In the Mahanirvana-tantra, Kāli is one of the epithets for the primordial sakti, and in one passage Shiva praises her:At the dissolution of things, it is Kāla [Time]. Who will devour all, and by reason of this He is called Mahākāla [an epithet of Lord Shiva], and since Thou devourest Mahākāla Himself, it is Thou who art the Supreme Primordial Kālika. Because Thou devourest Kāla, Thou art Kāli, the original form of all things, and because Thou art the Origin of and devourest all things Thou art called the Adya [the Primordial One]. Re-assuming after Dissolution Thine own form, dark and formless, Thou alone remainest as One ineffable and inconceivable. Though having a form, yet art Thou formless; though Thyself without beginning, multiform by the power of Maya, Thou art the Beginning of all, Creatrix, Protectress, and Destructress that Thou art. The figure of Kāli conveys death, destruction, and the consuming aspects of reality. As such, she is also a "forbidden thing", or even death itself. In the Pancatattva ritual, the sadhaka boldly seeks to confront Kali, and thereby assimilates and transforms her into a vehicle of salvation. This is clear in the work of the Karpuradi-stotra, a short praise of Kāli describing the Pancatattva ritual unto her, performed on cremation grounds. (Samahana-sadhana)He, O Mahākāli who in the cremation-ground, naked, and with dishevelled hair, intently meditates upon Thee and recites Thy mantra, and with each recitation makes offering to Thee of a thousand Akanda flowers with seed, becomes without any effort a Lord of the earth. Oh Kāli, whoever on Tuesday at midnight, having uttered Thy mantra, makes offering even but once with devotion to Thee of a hair of his Shakti [his energy/female companion] in the cremation-ground, becomes a great poet, a Lord of the earth, and ever goes mounted upon an elephant.The Karpuradi-stotra clearly indicates that Kāli is more than a terrible, vicious, slayer of demons who serves Durga or Shiva. Here, she is identified as the supreme mistress of the universe, associated with the five elements. In union with Lord Shiva, she creates and destroys worlds. Her appearance also takes a different turn, befitting her role as ruler of the world and object of meditation. In contrast to her terrible aspects, she takes on hints of a more benign dimension. She is described as young and beautiful, has a gentle smile, and makes gestures with her two right hands to dispel any fear and offer boons. The more positive features exposed offer the distillation of divine wrath into a goddess of salvation, who rids the sadhaka of fear. Here, Kali appears as a symbol of triumph over death.

 

BENGALI TRADITION

Kali is also a central figure in late medieval Bengali devotional literature, with such devotees as Ramprasad Sen (1718–75). With the exception of being associated with Parvati as Shiva's consort, Kāli is rarely pictured in Hindu legends and iconography as a motherly figure until Bengali devotions beginning in the early eighteenth century. Even in Bengāli tradition her appearance and habits change little, if at all.

 

The Tantric approach to Kāli is to display courage by confronting her on cremation grounds in the dead of night, despite her terrible appearance. In contrast, the Bengali devotee appropriates Kāli's teachings adopting the attitude of a child, coming to love her unreservedly. In both cases, the goal of the devotee is to become reconciled with death and to learn acceptance of the way that things are. These themes are well addressed in Rāmprasād's work. Rāmprasād comments in many of his other songs that Kāli is indifferent to his wellbeing, causes him to suffer, brings his worldly desires to nothing and his worldly goods to ruin. He also states that she does not behave like a mother should and that she ignores his pleas:

 

Can mercy be found in the heart of her who was born of the stone? [a reference to Kali as the daughter of Himalaya]

Were she not merciless, would she kick the breast of her lord?

Men call you merciful, but there is no trace of mercy in you, Mother.

You have cut off the heads of the children of others, and these you wear as a garland around your neck.

It matters not how much I call you "Mother, Mother." You hear me, but you will not listen.

 

To be a child of Kāli, Rāmprasād asserts, is to be denied of earthly delights and pleasures. Kāli is said to refrain from giving that which is expected. To the devotee, it is perhaps her very refusal to do so that enables her devotees to reflect on dimensions of themselves and of reality that go beyond the material world.

 

A significant portion of Bengali devotional music features Kāli as its central theme and is known as Shyama Sangeet ("Music of the Night"). Mostly sung by male vocalists, today even women have taken to this form of music. One of the finest singers of Shyāma Sāngeet is Pannalal Bhattacharya.

 

In Bengal, Kāli is venerated in the festival Kali Puja, the new moon day of Ashwin month which coincides with Diwali festival.

 

In a unique form of Kāli worship, Shantipur worships Kāli in the form of a hand painted image of the deity known as Poteshwari (meaning the deity drawn on a piece of cloth).

 

LEGENDS

SLAYER AND RAKTABIJA

In Kāli's most famous legend, Devi Durga (Adi Parashakti) and her assistants, the Matrikas, wound the demon Raktabija, in various ways and with a variety of weapons in an attempt to destroy him. They soon find that they have worsened the situation for with every drop of blood that is dripped from Raktabija he reproduces a clone of himself. The battlefield becomes increasingly filled with his duplicates. Durga, in need of help, summons Kāli to combat the demons. It is said, in some versions, that Goddess Durga actually assumes the form of Goddess Kāli at this time. The Devi Mahatmyam describes:

 

Out of the surface of her (Durga's) forehead, fierce with frown, issued suddenly Kali of terrible countenance, armed with a sword and noose. Bearing the strange khatvanga (skull-topped staff ), decorated with a garland of skulls, clad in a tiger's skin, very appalling owing to her emaciated flesh, with gaping mouth, fearful with her tongue lolling out, having deep reddish eyes, filling the regions of the sky with her roars, falling upon impetuously and slaughtering the great asuras in that army, she devoured those hordes of the foes of the devas.

 

Kali consumes Raktabija and his duplicates, and dances on the corpses of the slain. In the Devi Mahatmya version of this story, Kali is also described as a Matrika and as a Shakti or power of Devi. She is given the epithet Cāṃuṇḍā (Chamunda), i.e. the slayer of the demons Chanda and Munda. Chamunda is very often identified with Kali and is very much like her in appearance and habit.

  

DAKSHINA KALI

In her most famous pose as Daksinakali, popular legends say that Kali, drunk on the blood of her victims, is about to destroy the whole universe when, urged by all the gods, Shiva lies in her way to stop her, and she steps upon his chest. Recognizing Shiva beneath her feet, she calms herself. Though not included in any of the puranas, popular legends state that Kali was ashamed at the prospect of keeping her husband beneath her feet and thus stuck her tongue out in shame. The Devi-Bhagavata Purana, which goes into great depths about the goddess Kali, reveals the tongue's actual symbolism.

 

The characteristic icons that depict Kali are the following; unbridled matted hair, open blood shot eyes, open mouth and a drooping tongue; in her hands, she holds a Khadga (bent sword or scimitar) and a human head; she has a girdle of human hands across her waist, and Shiva lies beneath her feet. The drooping out-stuck tongue represents her blood-thirst. Lord Shiva beneath her feet represents matter, as Kali energy. The depiction of Kali on Shiva shows that without energy, matter lies "dead". This concept has been simplified to a folk-tale depicting a wife placing her foot

 

on her husband and sticking her tongue out in shame. In tantric contexts, the tongue is seen to denote the element (guna) of rajas (energy and action) controlled by sattva.

 

If Kali steps on Shiva with her right foot and holds the sword in her left hand, she is considered to be Dakshina Kali. The Dakshina Kali Temple has important religious associations with the Jagannath Temple and it is believed that Daksinakali is the guardian of the kitchen of the Lord Jagannath Temple. Puranic tradition says that in Puri, Lord Jagannath is regarded as Daksinakalika. Goddess Dakshinakali plays an important role in the 'Niti' of Saptapuri Amavasya.

 

One South Indian tradition tells of a dance contest between Shiva and Kali. After defeating the two demons Sumbha and Nisumbha, Kali takes up residence in the forest of Thiruvalankadu or Thiruvalangadu. She terrorizes the surrounding area with her fierce, disruptive nature. One of Shiva's devotees becomes distracted while performing austerities, and asks Shiva to rid the forest of the destructive goddess. When Shiva arrives, Kali threatens him, and Shiva challenges Kali to a dance contest, wherein Kali matches Shiva until Shiva takes the "Urdhvatandava" step, vertically raising his right leg. Kali refuses to perform this step, which would not befit her as a woman, and becomes pacified.

 

SMASHAN KALI

If the Kali steps out with the left foot and holds the sword in her right hand, she is the terrible form of Mother, the Smashan Kali of the cremation ground. She is worshiped by tantrics, the followers of Tantra, who believe that one's spiritual discipline practiced in a smashan (cremation ground) brings success quickly. Sarda Devi, the consort of Ramakrishna Paramhansa, worshipped Smashan Kali at Dakshineshwar.

 

MATERNAL KALI

At the time of samundra manthan when amrit came out, along with that came out poison which was going to destroy the world hence on the request of all the gods, Lord Shiva drank it to save the world but as he is beyond death he didn't die but was very much in pain due to the poison effect hence he became a child so that Kali can feed him with her milk which will sooth out the poison effect.

 

MAHAKALI

Mahakali (Sanskrit: Mahākālī, Devanagari: महाकाली), literally translated as Great Kali, is sometimes considered as a greater form of Kali, identified with the Ultimate reality of Brahman. It can also be used as an honorific of the Goddess Kali, signifying her greatness by the prefix "Mahā-". Mahakali, in Sanskrit, is etymologically the feminized variant of Mahakala or Great Time (which is interpreted also as Death), an epithet of the God Shiva in Hinduism. Mahakali is the presiding Goddess of the first episode of the Devi Mahatmya. Here she is depicted as Devi in her universal form as Shakti. Here Devi serves as the agent who allows the cosmic order to be restored.

 

Kali is depicted in the Mahakali form as having ten heads, ten arms, and ten legs. Each of her ten hands is carrying a various implement which vary in different accounts, but each of these represent the power of one of the Devas or Hindu Gods and are often the identifying weapon or ritual item of a given Deva. The implication is that Mahakali subsumes and is responsible for the powers that these deities possess and this is in line with the interpretation that Mahakali is identical with Brahman. While not displaying ten heads, an "ekamukhi" or one headed image may be displayed with ten arms, signifying the same concept: the powers of the various Gods come only through Her grace.

 

ICONOGRAPHY

Kali is portrayed mostly in two forms: the popular four-armed form and the ten-armed Mahakali form. In both of her forms, she is described as being black in color but is most often depicted as blue in popular Indian art. Her eyes are described as red with intoxication, and in absolute rage, her hair is shown disheveled, small fangs sometimes protrude out of her mouth, and her tongue is lolling. She is often shown naked or just wearing a skirt made of human arms and a garland of human heads. She is also accompanied by serpents and a jackal while standing on a seemingly dead Shiva, usually right foot forward to symbolize the more popular Dakshinamarga or right-handed path, as opposed to the more infamous and transgressive Vamamarga or left-handed path.

 

In the ten-armed form of Mahakali she is depicted as shining like a blue stone. She has ten faces, ten feet, and three eyes for each head. She has ornaments decked on all her limbs. There is no association with Shiva.

 

The Kalika Purana describes Kali as possessing a soothing dark complexion, as perfectly beautiful, riding a lion, four-armed, holding a sword and blue lotuses, her hair unrestrained, body firm and youthful.

 

In spite of her seemingly terrible form, Kali Ma is often considered the kindest and most loving of all the Hindu goddesses, as she is regarded by her devotees as the Mother of the whole Universe. And because of her terrible form, she is also often seen as a great protector. When the Bengali saint Ramakrishna once asked a devotee why one would prefer to worship Mother over him, this devotee rhetorically replied, "Maharaj", when they are in trouble your devotees come running to you. But, where do you run when you are in trouble?"

 

According to Ramakrishna, darkness is the Ultimate Mother, or Kali:

 

My Mother is the principle of consciousness. She is Akhanda Satchidananda;

indivisible Reality, Awareness, and Bliss. The night sky between the stars is perfectly black.

The waters of the ocean depths are the same; The infinite is always mysteriously dark.

This inebriating darkness is my beloved Kali.

—Sri Ramakrishna

This is clear in the works of such contemporary artists as Charles Wish, and Tyeb Mehta, who sometimes take great liberties with the traditional, accepted symbolism, but still demonstrate a true reverence for the Shakta sect.

 

POPULAR FORM

Classic depictions of Kali share several features, as follows:

 

Kali's most common four armed iconographic image shows each hand carrying variously a sword, a trishul (trident), a severed head, and a bowl or skull-cup (kapala) catching the blood of the severed head.

 

Two of these hands (usually the left) are holding a sword and a severed head. The Sword signifies Divine Knowledge and the Human Head signifies human Ego which must be slain by Divine Knowledge in order to attain Moksha. The other two hands (usually the right) are in the abhaya (fearlessness) and varada (blessing) mudras, which means her initiated devotees (or anyone worshipping her with a true heart) will be saved as she will guide them here and in the hereafter.

 

She has a garland consisting of human heads, variously enumerated at 108 (an auspicious number in Hinduism and the number of countable beads on a Japa Mala or rosary for repetition of Mantras) or 51, which represents Varnamala or the Garland of letters of the Sanskrit alphabet, Devanagari. Hindus believe Sanskrit is a language of dynamism, and each of these letters represents a form of energy, or a form of Kali. Therefore, she is generally seen as the mother of language, and all mantras.

 

She is often depicted naked which symbolizes her being beyond the covering of Maya since she is pure (nirguna) being-consciousness-bliss and far above prakriti. She is shown as very dark as she is brahman in its supreme unmanifest state. She has no permanent qualities - she will continue to exist even when the universe ends. It is therefore believed that the concepts of color, light, good, bad do not apply to her - she is the pure, un-manifested energy, the Adi-shakti.

 

Kali as the Symbol of Creation , Freedom , Preservation and Destruction

 

The head that hangs in Kali's hand is a symbol of Ego and the scimitar which she is holding represents power and energy.It is believed that Kali is protecting the human race by that scimitar and also destroying the negativity and ego within human being. The body lying under Kali symbolizes ruination, is actually a form of Shiva. Kali steps her leg on the chest of the body and suppress ruination . Since she is standing on the pure white chest of Lord Shiva who, as pure primal awareness, lays in a passive reclining position, peacefully lies with his eyes half open in a state of bliss. Her hair is long, black and flowing freely depicting Her freedom from convention and the confines of conceptualization. The white teeth which Kali has stands for conscience and her red tongue represents greed. By pressing her white teeth on her tongue Kali refers to control greed.The goddess may appear terrible from outside but every symbol in Kali signifies truth of life. Since the earth was created out of darkness, the dark black color of Kali symbolizes the color from which everything was born. Her right hand side arms she shows the Abhaya mudra(gesture of fearlessness) and Vara mudra (gesture of welcome and charity) respectively . But on the other arm in left side she holds a bloody scimitar and a severed head depicting destruction and end of ego.

Kali as the Symbol of Mother Nature

 

The name Kali means Kala or force of time. When there were neither the creation, nor the sun, the moon, the planets, and the earth, there was only darkness and everything was created from the darkness. The Dark appearance of kali represents the darkness from which everything was born. Her complexion is deep blue, like the sky and ocean water as blue. As she is also the goddess of Preservation Kali is worshiped as mother to preserve the nature.Kali is standing calm on Shiva, her appearance represents the preservation of mother nature. Her free, long and black hair represents nature's freedom from civilization. Under the third eye of kali, the signs of both sun, moon and fire are visible which represent the driving forces of nature.

 

SHIVA IN KALI ICONOGRAPHY

In both these images she is shown standing on the prone, inert or dead body of Shiva. There is a legend for the reason behind her standing on what appears to be Shiva's corpse, which translates as follows:

 

Once Kali had destroyed all the demons in battle, she began a terrific dance out of the sheer joy of victory. All the worlds or lokas began to tremble and sway under the impact of her dance. So, at the request of all the Gods, Shiva himself asked her to desist from this behavior. However, she was too intoxicated to listen. Hence, Shiva lay like a corpse among the slain demons in order to absorb the shock of the dance into himself. When Kali eventually stepped upon Shiva, she realized she was trampling and hurting her husband and bit her tongue in shame.

 

The story described here is a popular folk tale and not described or hinted in any of the puranas. The puranic interpretation is as follows:

 

Once, Parvati asks Shiva to chose the one form among her 10 forms which he likes most. To her surprise, Shiva reveals that he is most comfortable with her Kali form, in which she is bereft of her jewellery, her human-form, her clothes, her emotions and where she is only raw, chaotic energy, where she is as terrible as time itself and even greater than time. As Parvati takes the form of Kali, Shiva lies at her feet and requests her to place her foot on his chest, upon his heart. Once in this form, Shiva requests her to have this place, below her feet in her iconic image which would be worshiped throughout.

 

This idea has been explored in the Devi-Bhagavata Purana [28] and is most popular in the Shyama Sangeet, devotional songs to Kali from the 12th to 15th centuries.

 

The Tantric interpretation of Kali standing on top of her husband is as follows:

 

The Shiv tattava (Divine Consciousness as Shiva) is inactive, while the Shakti tattava (Divine Energy as Kali) is active. Shiva and Kali represent Brahman, the Absolute pure consciousness which is beyond all names, forms and activities. Kali, on the other hand, represents the potential (and manifested) energy responsible for all names, forms and activities. She is his Shakti, or creative power, and is seen as the substance behind the entire content of all consciousness. She can never exist apart from Shiva or act independently of him, just as Shiva remains a mere corpse without Kali i.e., Shakti, all the matter/energy of the universe, is not distinct from Shiva, or Brahman, but is rather the dynamic power of Brahman. Hence, Kali is Para Brahman in the feminine and dynamic aspect while Shiva is the male aspect and static. She stands as the absolute basis for all life, energy and beneath her feet lies, Shiva, a metaphor for mass, which cannot retain its form without energy.

 

While this is an advanced concept in monistic Shaktism, it also agrees with the Nondual Trika philosophy of Kashmir, popularly known as Kashmir Shaivism and associated most famously with Abhinavagupta. There is a colloquial saying that "Shiva without Shakti is Shava" which means that without the power of action (Shakti) that is Mahakali (represented as the short "i" in Devanagari) Shiva (or consciousness itself) is inactive; Shava means corpse in Sanskrit and the play on words is that all Sanskrit consonants are assumed to be followed by a short letter "a" unless otherwise noted. The short letter "i" represents the female power or Shakti that activates Creation. This is often the explanation for why She is standing on Shiva, who is either Her husband and complement in Shaktism or the Supreme Godhead in Shaivism.

 

To properly understand this complex Tantric symbolism it is important to remember that the meaning behind Shiva and Kali does not stray from the non-dualistic parlance of Shankara or the Upanisads. According to both the Mahanirvana and Kularnava Tantras, there are two distinct ways of perceiving the same absolute reality. The first is a transcendental plane which is often described as static, yet infinite. It is here that there is no matter, there is no universe and only consciousness exists. This form of reality is known as Shiva, the absolute Sat-Chit-Ananda - existence, knowledge and bliss. The second is an active plane, an immanent plane, the plane of matter, of Maya, i.e., where the illusion of space-time and the appearance of an actual universe does exist. This form of reality is known as Kali or Shakti, and (in its entirety) is still specified as the same Absolute Sat-Chit-Ananda. It is here in this second plane that the universe (as we commonly know it) is experienced and is described by the Tantric seer as the play of Shakti, or God as Mother Kali.

 

From a Tantric perspective, when one meditates on reality at rest, as absolute pure consciousness (without the activities of creation, preservation or dissolution) one refers to this as Shiva or Brahman. When one meditates on reality as dynamic and creative, as the Absolute content of pure consciousness (with all the activities of creation, preservation or dissolution) one refers to it as Kali or Shakti. However, in either case the yogini or yogi is interested in one and the same reality - the only difference being in name and fluctuating aspects of appearance. It is this which is generally accepted as the meaning of Kali standing on the chest of Shiva.

 

Although there is often controversy surrounding the images of divine copulation, the general consensus is benign and free from any carnal impurities in its substance. In Tantra the human body is a symbol for the microcosm of the universe; therefore sexual process is responsible for the creation of the world. Although theoretically Shiva and Kali (or Shakti) are inseparable, like fire and its power to burn, in the case of creation they are often seen as having separate roles. With Shiva as male and Kali as female it is only by their union that creation may transpire. This reminds us of the prakrti and purusa doctrine of Samkhya wherein prakāśa- vimarśa has no practical value, just as without prakrti, purusa is quite inactive. This (once again) stresses the interdependencies of Shiva and Shakti and the vitality of their union.

 

Gopi Krishna proposed that Kali standing on the dead Shiva or Shava (Sanskrit for dead body) symbolised the helplessness of a person undergoing the changing process (psychologically and physiologically) in the body conducted by the Kundalini Shakti.

 

DEVELOPMENT

In the later traditions, Kali has become inextricably linked with Shiva. The unleashed form of Kali often becomes wild and uncontrollable, and only Shiva is able to tame her just as only Kali can tame Shiva. This is both because she is often a transformed version of one of his consorts and because he is able to match her wildness.

 

The ancient text of Kali Kautuvam describes her competition with Shiva in dance, from which the sacred 108 Karanas appeared. Shiva won the competition by acting the urdva tandava, one of the Karanas, by raising his feet to his head. Other texts describe Shiva appearing as a crying infant and appealing to her maternal instincts. While Shiva is said to be able to tame her, the iconography often presents her dancing on his fallen body, and there are accounts of the two of them dancing together, and driving each other to such wildness that the world comes close to unravelling.

 

Shiva's involvement with Tantra and Kali's dark nature have led to her becoming an important Tantric figure. To the Tantric worshippers, it was essential to face her Curse, the terror of death, as willingly as they accepted Blessings from her beautiful, nurturing, maternal aspect. For them, wisdom meant learning that no coin has only one side: as death cannot exist without life, so life cannot exist without death. Kali's role sometimes grew beyond that of a chaos - which could be confronted - to that of one who could bring wisdom, and she is given great metaphysical significance by some Tantric texts. The Nirvāna-tantra clearly presents her uncontrolled nature as the Ultimate Reality, claiming that the trimurti of Brahma, Vishnu and Rudra arise and disappear from her like bubbles from the sea. Although this is an extreme case, the Yogini-tantra, Kamakhya-tantra and the Niruttara-tantra declare her the svarupa (own-being) of the Mahadevi (the great Goddess, who is in this case seen as the combination of all devis).The final stage of development is the worshipping of Kali as the Great Mother, devoid of her usual violence. This practice is a break from the more traditional depictions. The pioneers of this tradition are the 18th century Shakta poets such as Ramprasad Sen, who show an awareness of Kali's ambivalent nature. Ramakrishna, the 19th century Bengali saint, was also a great devotee of Kali; the western popularity of whom may have contributed to the more modern, equivocal interpretations of this Goddess. Rachel McDermott's work, however, suggests that for the common, modern worshipper, Kali is not seen as fearful, and only those educated in old traditions see her as having a wrathful component. Some credit to the development of Devi must also be given to Samkhya. Commonly referred to as the Devi of delusion, Mahamaya or Durga, acting in the confines of (but not being bound by) the nature of the three gunas, takes three forms: Maha-Kali, Maha-Lakshmi and Maha-Saraswati, being her tamas-ika, rajas-ika and sattva-ika forms. In this sense, Kali is simply part of a larger whole.

 

Like Sir John Woodroffe and Georg Feuerstein, many Tantric scholars (as well as sincere practitioners) agree that, no matter how propitious or appalling you describe them, Shiva and Devi are simply recognizable symbols for everyday, abstract (yet tangible) concepts such as perception, knowledge, space-time, causation and the process of liberating oneself from the confines of such things. Shiva, symbolizing pure, absolute consciousness, and Devi, symbolizing the entire content of that consciousness, are ultimately one and the same - totality incarnate, a micro-macro-cosmic amalgamation of all subjects, all objects and all phenomenal relations between the "two." Like man and woman who both share many common, human traits yet at the same time they are still different and, therefore, may also be seen as complementary.

 

Worshippers prescribe various benign and horrific qualities to Devi simply out of practicality. They do this so they may have a variety of symbols to choose from, symbols which they can identify and relate with from the perspective of their own, ever-changing time, place and personal level of unfolding. Just like modern chemists or physicists use a variety of molecular and atomic models to describe what is unperceivable through rudimentary, sensory input, the scientists of ontology and epistemology must do the same. One of the underlying distinctions of Tantra, in comparison to other religions, is that it allows the devotee the liberty to choose from a vast array of complementary symbols and rhetoric which suit one's evolving needs and tastes. From an aesthetic standpoint, nothing is interdict and nothing is orthodox. In this sense, the projection of some of Devi's more gentle qualities onto Kali is not sacrilege and the development of Kali really lies in the practitioner, not the murthi.

 

A TIME magazine article of October 27, 1947, used Kali as a symbol and metaphor for the human suffering in British India during its partition that year. In 1971, Ms. Magazine used an image of Kali, her multiple arms juggling modern tasks, as a symbol of modern womanhood on its inaugural issue.

 

Swami Vivekananda wrote his favorite poem Kali the Mother in 1898.

 

KALI IN NEOPAGAN AND NEW AGE PRACTICE

An academic study of Western Kali enthusiasts noted that, "as shown in the histories of all cross-cultural religious transplants, Kali devotionalism in the West must take on its own indigenous forms if it is to adapt to its new environment."[60] The adoption of Kali by the West has raised accusations of cultural appropriation:

 

A variety of writers and thinkers have found Kali an exciting figure for reflection and exploration, notably feminists and participants in New Age spirituality who are attracted to goddess worship. [For them], Kali is a symbol of wholeness and healing, associated especially with repressed female power and sexuality. [However, such interpretations often exhibit] confusion and misrepresentation, stemming from a lack of knowledge of Hindu history among these authors, [who only rarely] draw upon materials written by scholars of the Hindu religious tradition. The majority instead rely chiefly on other popular feminist sources, almost none of which base their interpretations on a close reading of Kali's Indian background. The most important issue arising from this discussion - even more important than the question of 'correct' interpretation - concerns the adoption of other people's religious symbols. It is hard to import the worship of a goddess from another culture: religious associations and connotations have to be learned, imagined or intuited when the deep symbolic meanings embedded in the native culture are not available.

 

INCARNATIONS OF KALI

Draupadi, Wife of Pandavas, was an avatar of Kali, who born to assist Lord Krishna to destroy arrogant kings of India. There is a temple dedicated to this incarnation at Banni Mata Temple at Himachal Pradesh. The vedic deity Nirriti or the Puranic deity Alakshmi is often considered as incarnations of Kali.

 

WIKIPEDIA

[5dmk2, 35mm, f1.4L, CS3]

 

UK is in the grip of the coldest winter in 30 years. We have had heavy snowfall in parts of the country. Schools are closed, people struggle to work, there is a shortage of grit for the roads, cars slide about uncontrollably, it's less than -20C in places, there is general chaos... but the kids are having a lot of fun making snowmen and tobogganing down slopes :-)

Basanta Utsav literally means the 'celebration of spring'. ...

 

Annually celebrated in March, the festival is an occassion to invite the colourful spring season with utmost warmth. What is appreciated is the grace and diginified manner in which Vasant Utsav is celebrated in Bengal as compared to uncontrollable Holi witnessed in most parts of India. The beautiful tradition of celebrating spring festival in Bengal was first started by Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore at Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan.

Basanta Utsav literally means the 'celebration of spring'. ...

 

Annually celebrated in March, the festival is an occassion to invite the colourful spring season with utmost warmth. What is appreciated is the grace and diginified manner in which Vasant Utsav is celebrated in Bengal as compared to uncontrollable Holi witnessed in most parts of India.

 

The beautiful tradition of celebrating spring festival in Bengal was first started by Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore at Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan.

and yes, he's funny as hell. i found it difficult to take pictures while laughing uncontrollably...

 

and if you don't...

You would think that growing up in the country would prevent and/or squash any fear of creepy crawlies you might have. Not for me. I can't see anything that resembles or moves like a spider without having an involuntary mini-seizure and cursing uncontrollably.

 

My fear naturally means that bugs often show up in my dreams. To torment me, naturally.

I took this the afternoon he had his stitches out. He acquired those when the wound inflicted on him from a savage uncontrollable Alsation called Monty, owned by a local knobhead called Stewart went bad and he had to have several hundred pounds worth of surgery. Sadly, neither the police, nor local dog wardens are remotely interested in dog on dog attacks so he got away with it scot free.

I know he's not a little dog.........but he is a big puppy in disguise, and he has a silly grin that makes him look like he's laughing!! And he's my big baby boy!!

I do love a good lolcat, but finding them involves a lot of sifting through terribly unfunny dross.

 

Thankfully this one made me laugh uncontrollably in the office this morning.

Bonkers tail hanging out his chigura - it's his way of letting us know where he is. (That and his odor from his uncontrollable bladder.)

Yet another First Leeds Wrights Eclipse Gemini bodied Volvo B9 has succombed to the dreadful paint disease that is spreading wildly through First Group depots with uncontrollable speed at the present time....................

37117 YK07AYS is seen here...... BUT she is a long long way from her home patch but where is she.

Copyright CD Munden

Basanta Utsav literally means the 'celebration of spring'. ...

 

Annually celebrated in March, the festival is an occassion to invite the colourful spring season with utmost warmth. What is appreciated is the grace and diginified manner in which Vasant Utsav is celebrated in Bengal as compared to uncontrollable Holi witnessed in most parts of India. The beautiful tradition of celebrating spring festival in Bengal was first started by Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore at Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan.

Basanta Utsav literally means the 'celebration of spring'. ... Annually celebrated in March, the festival is an occassion to invite the colourful spring season with utmost warmth. What is appreciated is the grace and diginified manner in which Vasant Utsav is celebrated in Bengal as compared to uncontrollable Holi witnessed in most parts of India. The beautiful tradition of celebrating spring festival in Bengal was first started by Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore at Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan.

Kiviõli, Estonia. Pentax 67, 200mm f4

This was meant to take on the world this was, but sadly it didn’t get very far! The Rover 800 had so many possibilities, so many variants could have been derived from it, but unfortunately the management was once again very quick to nip this beautiful car in the bud, and the Rover 800 would join that long line of ‘what-could-have-been’ motors that seem to pave British motoring history.

 

The origin of the Rover 800 goes back to the late 1970’s, when nationalised British car manufacturer and all around general failure British Leyland was absolutely desperate to fix its seemingly endless list of problems. The company had now garnered a reputation for creating some of the worst, most outdated cars of all time, the likes of the Morris Marina, the Austin Allegro and the Triumph TR7 being derided in both critical and customer reviews. A mixture of strike action by uncontrollable Trade Unions led by the infamous Red Robbo had meant that cars were only put together for a few hours per day on a three day week. As such, reliability was atrocious on a biblical scale, be it mechanical, cosmetic or electrical.

 

As such, in 1979, British Leyland began talks with Japanese car manufacturer Honda to try and help improve the reliability of their machines. The pioneer of this brave new deal was the Triumph Acclaim of 1980, BL’s first reliable car and not a bad little runabout. Basically a rebadged Honda Ballade, the Acclaim wasn’t meant to set the world ablaze, but it certainly helped get the company back onto people’s driveways, selling reasonably well thanks to its reliable mechanics (even if rust was something of an issue). As such, BL decided that from now on it would give its fleet a complete overhaul, basing their new models on Japanese equivalents. From 1984, the Rover 200 arrived on the scene, again, a rebadged Honda Ballade, while the Maestro and the Montego ranges also took on several tips from their Japanese counterparts, though they were primarily based on British underpinnings.

 

The Rover 800 however spawned quite early on, in 1981 to be exact. Following the catastrophic failure of the Rover SD1 in the American market, which only sold 774 cars before Rover removed itself from the USA altogether, the company was desperate to get another foothold across the pond. As such, the new project, dubbed project XX, would be the icing on the cake in terms of British Leyland’s fleet overhaul, a smooth and sophisticated executive saloon to conquer the world. However, plans were pushed back after the launch of the Montego and the Maestro, and thus project XX wouldn’t see the light of day again until about 1984.

 

Still in production and suffering from being long-in-the-tooth, the Rover SD1 was now coming up on 10 years old, and though a sublime car in terms of style and performance, it was now struggling in sales. Rover really needed to replace this golden oldie, and thus project XX was back on. In the usual fashion, Honda was consulted, and it was decided that the car would be based on that company’s own executive saloon, the Honda Legend. Jointly developed at Rover’s Cowley plant and Honda’s Tochigi development centre, both cars shared the same core structure and floorplan, but they each had their own unique exterior bodywork and interior. Under the agreement, Honda would supply the V6 petrol engine, both automatic and manual transmissions and the chassis design, whilst BL would provide the 4-cylinder petrol engine and much of the electrical systems. The agreement also included that UK-market Honda Legends would be built at the Cowley Plant, and the presence of the Legend in the UK would be smaller than that of the Rover 800, with profits from the 800 shared between the two companies.

 

Launched on July 10th, 1986, the Rover 800 was welcomed with warm reviews regarding its style, its performance and its reliability. Though driving performance was pretty much the same as the Honda Legend, what put the Rover above its Japanese counterpart was its sheer internal elegance and beauty, combined with a differing external design that borrowed cues from the outgoing SD1. The 800 also provided the company with some much-needed optimism, especially following the gradual breakup of British Leyland by the Thatcher Government between 1980 and 1986.

 

Following her election in 1979, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher took a no nonsense attitude to the striking unions, and the best form of defence was attack. To shave millions from the deficit, she reduced government spending on nationalised companies such as British Airways, British Coal Board, British Steel and British Leyland by selling them to private ownership. For British Leyland, the slow breakup of the company started with the sale of Leyland Trucks and Buses to DAF of Holland and Volvo, respectively. 1984 saw Jaguar made independent and later bought by Ford, but when rumours circulated that the remains of British Leyland would be sold to foreign ownership, share prices crashed, and the company was privatised and put into the hands of British Aerospace on the strict understanding that the company could not be sold again for four years. With this move, British Leyland was renamed Rover Group, the Austin badge being dropped, and the only remaining brands left being the eponymous Rover and sporty MG.

 

In the light of this tumultuous period, many of Rover and MG’s projects had to be scrapped in light of turbulent share prices and income, these projects including the Austin AR16 family car range (based largely off the Rover 800) and the MG EX-E supercar. The Rover 800 however was the first model to be released by the company following privatisation, and doing well initially in terms of sales, hopes were high that the Rover 800 would herald the end of the company’s troubled spell under British Leyland. The Rover 800 was planned to spearhead multiple Rover ventures, including a return to the US-market in the form of the Sterling, and a coupe concept to beat the world, the sublime Rover CCV.

 

However, British Leyland may have been gone, but their management and its incompetence remained. Rather than taking the formation of Rover Group as a golden opportunity to clean up the company’s act, to the management it was business as usual, and the Rover 800 began to suffer as a consequence. A lack of proper quality control and a cost-cutting attitude meant that despite all the Japanese reliability that had been layered on these machines in the design stage, the cars were still highly unreliable when they left the factory.

 

Perhaps the biggest sentiment to the 800’s failure was the Sterling in America. The Sterling had been named as such due to Rover’s reputation being tarnished by the failure of the unreliable SD1. Initial sales were very promising with the Sterling, a simple design with oodles of luxury that was price competitive with family sedan’s such as the Ford LTD and the Chevy Caprice. However, once the problems with reliability and quality began to rear their heads, sales plummeted and the Sterling very quickly fell short of its sales quota, only selling 14,000 of the forecast 30,000 cars per annum. Sales dropped year by year until eventually the Sterling brand was axed in 1991.

 

With the death of the Sterling came the death of the CCV, a luxury motor that had already won over investors in both Europe and the USA. The fantastic design that had wooed the American market and was ready to go on sale across the States was axed unceremoniously in 1987, and with it any attempt to try and capture the American market ever again.

 

In 1991, Rover Group, seeing their sales were still tumbling, and with unreliable callbacks to British Leyland like the Maestro and Montego still on sale, the company decided to have yet another shakeup to try and refresh its image. The project, dubbed R17, went back to the company’s roots of grand old England, and the Rover 800 was the first to feel its touch. The R17 facelift saw the 800’s angular lines smoothed with revised light-clusters, a low-smooth body, and the addition of a grille, attempting to harp back to the likes of the luxurious Rover P5 of the 1960’s. Engines were also updated, with the previous M16 Honda engine being replaced by a crisp 2.0L T16, which gave the car some good performance. The car was also made available in a set of additional ranges, including a coupe and the sport Vitesse, complete with a higher performance engine.

 

Early reviews of the R17 800 were favourable, many critics lauding its design changes and luxurious interior, especially given its price competitiveness against comparable machines such as the Vauxhall Omega and the Ford Mondeo. Even Jeremy Clarkson, a man who fervently hated Rover and everything it stood for, couldn’t help but give it a good review on Top Gear. However, motoring critics were quick to point out the fact that by this time Honda was really starting to sell heavily in the UK and Europe, and people now asked themselves why they’d want to buy the Rover 800, a near carbon-copy of the Honda Legend, for twice the price but equal performance. Wood and leather furnishings are very nice, but not all motorists are interested in that, some are just interested in a reliable and practical machine to run around in.

 

As such, the Rover 800’s sales domestically were very good, it becoming the best-selling car in the UK for 1992, but in Europe not so much. Though Rover 800’s did make it across the Channel, the BMW 5-Series and other contemporary European models had the market sown up clean, and the Rover 800 never truly made an impact internationally. On average, the car sold well in the early 1990’s, but as time went on the car’s place in the market fell to just over 10,000 per year by 1995. Rover needed another shake-up, and the Rover 75 did just that.

 

In 1994, Rover Group was sold to BMW, and their brave new star to get the company back in the good books of the motoring public was the Rover 75, an executive saloon to beat the world. With this new face in the company’s showrooms, the Rover 800 and its 10 year old design was put out to grass following its launch in 1998. Selling only around 6,500 cars in its final full year of production, the Rover 800 finished sales in 1999 and disappeared, the last relic of the British Leyland/Honda tie up from the 1980’s.

 

Today the Rover 800 finds itself under a mixed reception. While some argue that it was the last true Rover before the BMW buyout, others will fervently deride it as a Honda with a Rover badge, a humiliation of a Rover, and truly the point where the company lost its identity. I personally believe it to be a magnificent car, a car with purpose, a car with promise, but none of those promises fulfilled. It could have truly been the face of a new Rover in the late 1980’s, and could have returned the company to the front line of the motoring world, at least in Britain. But sadly, management incompetence won again for the British motor industry, and the Rover 800 ended its days a lukewarm reminder that we really didn’t know a good thing until it was gone.

Just like anyone on social media, I like to fill my feed with happy images and highlights from my personal and professional life….but it’s time to start talking about the REAL stuff too!

Although it may seem like I have all of the happiness and confidence in the world if you look at my social media accounts, I have struggled with self esteem issues my entire life.

As a child, I grew up in an abusive environment filled with unresolved generational traumas where I was made to feel like I was the problem in myfamily, and unknowingly internalized that I as an individual was bad.

As with most abusive households, mine was an environment where nothing felt safe….even being myself. So, I began to develop a laundry list of unhealthy coping mechanisms, and a state of “survival mode” became my baseline as I entered my developmental years.

I felt so powerless under my father’s endless emotional abuse and violent outbursts at home, that I not only began to believe that type of behavior was normal, but also constantly felt the need to gain agency and assert my own will wherever possible. Which, obviously, did not go over well with my peers and teachers, and only caused me to more deeply internalize that I must be bad as I began to establish my sense of self outside of my family.

 

Like millions of other people with unresolved trauma, as things got worse for me emotionally, I turned to food for comfort, and quickly found myself significantly larger than almost everyone around me in elementary school. Something that my peers and father often made note of in cruel ways that hurt me so deeply and only further caused me to internalize that I must be bad.

Eventually, all of the shame that I felt during my childhood snowballed into deep depression and uncontrollable anxiety that I tried to heal with piles of prescriptions from different doctors that couldn’t seem to figure out what was “wrong” with me. When, in reality there was nothing “wrong” with me. I simply needed to find peace and be reminded that I AM GOOD.

 

Over the years - especially as I became an expectant mother at 17 years old and faced so much judgement for my choice to leave school in order to work while I was a pregnant - I found that excelling at my job served as an excellent surrogate for the validation I was seeking in my personal relationships, and I began to throw myself into my career, both as a way to support myself and my daughter as a single parent, and as a way to prove to myself through tangible means like paychecks and promotions that I was good.

It wasn’t until all of the unresolved trauma that I had been trying to bury with work began to manifest itself physically, that I finally accepted it was time to begin trying to show myself the love I knew I needed in order for my body to heal….even if the concept of being lovable still seemed totally forgeign to me, and I had no idea where to begin!

 

Abuse is a hard cycle to break, and self love is a hard lesson to learn. So, my path to healing was far from linear, or easy, but once I made that commitment to find and nurture the parts of myself that I loved, amazing things began to happen!

I’m pretty sure my friends and family thought I was losing my mind more than finding myself at first! But, as I began to explore myself as an energetic being and learn more about inner child and shadow work, I discovered that I wasn’t bad. I had just learned to protect (rather dysfunctionally) the vibrant, loving and vulnerable little Melissa who had learned that she needed to stay hidden in order to stay safe so long ago!

As anyone who has recovered from abuse can tell you, the hardest part about breaking the cycle is having no example of how to be any other way. My life had been filled with negativity for so long that I struggled to find myself in a peaceful situation even as I worked to heal myself.

As anyone who has recovered from abuse can also tell you, you just get used to it.

The pain and chaos becomes your baseline, and even when you are consciously in a state of growth away from that state of being, it’s all too easy to find yourself slipping back into relationships that make you feel most comfortable - even if they are simply toxic AF. Which is exactly what I was doing…..until I met Nate.

 

Before I met Nate, I had no idea what it felt like to be seen completely, and not only be accepted for who I was, but adored for it.

Most importantly though, Nate made me feel safe.

For the first time in my life, I was able to stop just surviving, and started thriving in ways I had forgotten that I was capable of.

It was like I had been trudging through mud my entire life, and was finally walking on solid ground for the first time when I finally learned to accept his love.

I began to see the entire world differently.

Instead of an endless stream of stressful situations and impending disasters, I started to see my life as promising and full of possibilities.

I began to see myself differently.

Instead of someone I felt I should be ashamed of, I started to see myself as someone kind and capable that I was proud to share with other people.

 

Once that shift occurred, I began to accomplish so many more things I felt that I could be proud of!

I learned to show myself the kindness I wish I had been shown, and found how freeing it can be to see the world through a less defensive lense.

I launched a successful private chef business out of nothing but my passion for food while I was still waiting tables and had nothing but my intuition to guide me.

I grew that little business into something that could provide a better life, and was finally able to start working for myself.

I built second, and third, businesses that provided me with more opportunities to do what I love, and a real sense that I was capable of so much good.

I started to be able to show up as my authentic self in social situations with less fear of being “seen” and judged for it.

But, even with all of those things to be proud of, I still held so much shame and anxiety around the idea that I was still somehow fundamentally bad at my core, and it was only a matter of time before I, and everyone else, would start to see it again.

 

The way that I had once used paychecks and promotions to provide myself with tangible evidence that I was good, I began to use images on social media as a tangible way for me to remind myself of all the positives when the negative self talk began to sneak into my mind.

At the time, I didn’t really think much into my motivation for posting about my life’s highlights on social media, because after all, it’s what everyone else does too and, let’s be honest - who doesn’t like getting likes?!

But when the pandemic hit last year and my ability to produce content that I felt I could use to prove to myself that I AM good was halted, it forced me to really examine the deeper emotional reasons that I felt it was so important for me to only share things that aligned with an image of positivity and success.

Being positive, and constantly focused on growth, is a huge part of who I am at my core - but it’s far from who I am all the time.

While I spent hours scrolling through social media during the early days of quarantine, I felt completely paralyzed as I watched other people post photos and videos of themselves functioning in ways I couldn’t even imagine in the moment.

It might sound silly, but when I felt the most lost in my emotions, just being able to just create and share a post about how to make a healthy smoothie made me feel like I was at least doing one thing I could be proud of, no matter how ashamed of myself I felt in the moment.

 

Thankfully, resilience seems to be my super power (dysfunctional as some of my survival mechanisms may be.) So, it didn’t take long for me to snap out of that depression and into that familiar feeling of “survival mode” that allowed me to begin working on ways to keep my businesses alive.

Being able to snap myself out of that paralyzing depression reminded me that I am a survivor and gave me the energy I needed to keep moving forward, but it also triggered all kinds of unhealthy coping mechanisms that I had worked so hard to move away from.

On the outside, I was pivoting like a pro. But, internally, it felt like my emotional state was falling to pieces.

Even though I knew that almost everyone else was struggling with their emotions as well, I just couldn’t bring myself to authentically share any of that darkness on social media.

I shared the smoothies.

I shared the healthy dinners.

I shared all of the milestones as I worked to rebuild my businesses.

Because that’s what made me feel safe.

 

What I didn’t share, was the insecurity.

What I didn't share, were the days that I could barely motivate myself to eat, let alone create something beautiful, or inspire anyone else to embrace taking care of themselves.

What I didn’t share, was the fear that everyone might see me at my worst and judge me for it.

What I didn’t share, was that I was really posting all of that for me, to prove to myself that I was still worthy of love - even though the only one who was even questioning that, was me!

Once I realized that I was using images on social media as a mask, I knew it was time to start healing those pieces of me that I still felt that I needed to hide.

I also knew that I wanted to share my story more authentically on social media somehow. But, I didn’t quite know how…..until I saw a post on Facebook from a local photographer working on a project about women sharing their authentic stories on social media, and it just spoke to me!

 

The concept was an unstyled shoot that showed the authentic me, accompanied by an essay to do the same - which seemed simple. But, it proved to be such a greater struggle than I had imagined!

The essay I could edit, and I’ve always loved to write, so I wasn’t worried about that. But, the photoshoot made me SO nervous!

Having grown up in a home where appearance and projecting the right image seemed to be of paramount importance, the idea of photos that might not portray me in the best light being published on the internet triggered all kinds of insecurities for me.

On the day of the shoot, I just chose to wear what was comfortable - the things I actually wear when I’m not trying to look a certain way.

I didn’t style my hair, or bother with more than my everyday makeup that consists of tinted moisturizer, a bit of bronzer and a little mascara.

If it were any regular day I would have felt perfectly comfortable with the way I looked.

In fact, I had made plans to meet a friend for dinner right after the shoot and felt great about the way I looked for that experience! But, the idea of being photographed like that, especially outside by the water where the wind would inevitably reveal angles of my face that I find unflattering, gave me anxiety for days before the shoot.

 

When I arrived for the shoot, I was nervous and far from the outgoing, confident Melissa that usually arrives at photoshoots when I’m styled perfectly and feeling my best.

As we walked through the quiet woods with the snow crunching beneath my boots, I realized that I felt so nervous because I had shown up to this photoshoot as the little Melissa that I had learned to hide and protect.

As we began to shoot, I started to feel sad, and strange that this would be the side of me captured on camera for this project. But, I quickly realized that it wasn’t sadness for the situation at hand that I was feeling.

It was sadness for little Melissa who had internalized that she wasn’t worth being seen just as she was.

Throughout the shoot, I couldn’t seem to shake that sense of sadness and I worried the photos would be ruined because of it.

But, when I saw the photos from the shoot a few weeks later, I realized that as we were walking and talking throughout the shoot, the images that Nikki captured began to tell a story.

The first photos looked posed and happy. But, of course they did. Because that’s my favorite mask, especially in front of the camera! So, I obviously felt fine about those being shared.

But, then there were some awkward attempts at me actually being natural in front of a camera. Which completely triggered all of the negative self-talk that typically leads to me taking great measures to avoid photos like that from ever seeing the light of day.

As we moved on, I could see the vulnerability in my eyes as I tried to let my guard down, and I felt so exposed knowing that side of myself would be shared.

Once we were by the water though, I started to see a sense of ease, and even strength emerging in the photos. Even if they weren’t my best angles and my hair was a mess, it looked like ME!

Not the styled, polished version of myself that I feel safest showing the world, but the authentic me that I have no problem sharing with the people I feel safe with.

 

Don’t get me wrong - I very authentically do LOVE to get dressed up, and genuinely think it’s fun to play with personal styling. It’s just fun for me! But, participating in this project has really helped me to reflect on how much I had been using my image as a mask to protect myself from negative self-talk.

As we all know now, wearing a mask can keep us safe, but it also prevents us from being fully seen.

Yes, taking off your mask can be a risk, just like letting other people see you completely can be a risk.

But, as we all know now after a year full of physical masking, nothing feels better than FINALLY being able to take off your mask and just breathe!

 

The Men Are Called Horsemen There

 

I know we’ve all been asked this before, but have you ever fallen in love with someone you shouldn’t have fallen in love with? We’ll come back to my answer on that in a second.

 

Staying in the village of Omalo changed my life in some quiet ways. Having made the effort and endured the stress involved in getting there (for a nervous traveller like myself) finally erased the nerves I had been feeling almost everyday during my trip. Experiencing a life stripped bare of all but the essentials burned away so much of the clutter that I had been carrying in my mind since I left home. Having nothing but time and space to lose myself in allowed a flurry of emotions, both positive and negative, to rise up and have their time and for once, I stopped analysing them and just allowed them to work through me and took from them what I could. These things were all personal to me though: elements of a unique place whose claustrophobic isolation gave me the arena in which I could give myself up to emotion and thought.

 

There was another, more external element of Omalo that made a marked impact upon myself. Maybe it did not change anything of my personality or drive home any paradigm shifting insights. It has however stayed with me as a memory so tangible that when recalled, I still feel it as if I am experiencing those moments anew.

 

That experience was watching the children, not the men, tend the horses that remained one of the main methods of both transport and income generation. The Tushetan horsemen are legends in their own valley. Renowned for both their skill on the horse and their endurance of some harsh living conditions.

 

4 of these horsemen stayed in the homestay where I lived. They rode up one sunny morning and all but fell of their horses. The oldest, who was around 50 looked closer to 70. The youngest, a sprightly 18 looked as if he was approaching his 30’s. They were clad in denims, leathers and wool that looked like it would have to be chiselled off them so caked were they in dirt and dust. Their faces were burnt brown and lined with the elements, their eyes portraying I sat on the front porch in my woolly slippers (made by the lady of the house) supping on my coffee. If I’m honest, I had been feeling pretty hardy and brave as a result of my solo treks to Omalo but in front of these men I looked every inch and more the cosseted western traveller that I was.

 

To return to the question at the top of the page though, it wasn’t them who made such an impact on me: it was the kids who rolled out of the houses and down the various tracks and paths that lined the village towards my homestay. Some of them were as young as 7 or 8 yet they approached the horses with no nerves and no concern. It was their job to tend to the horses, to take them to pastures or to clean them up. It was also their right to take the horses for a ride through the village, and it was a right they took full advantage of.

 

Some walked the tired steeds down to the fields around the village but some jumped on the horses, often bareback, dug their heels into the horses side and set off. That day the village was alive with the stamp of hooves, the shouts of the kids and gusts of furious equine breathes. I was mesmerised. The kids had been around during my whole stay but barely said hello to me. They were kind, respectful, shy and seemed so very young. Yet here they were, in full control of these massive animals. They would tear past me at incredible speeds, facing forward with delight writ across their eyes. For all I had been made to feel like one of the villagers, the contrast between their world and mine never felt more obvious.

 

I walked the village with my camera that day, just waiting for a moment to capture some of the incredible scenes. Some shots were taken but I never felt that I really had the moment I could share. The clouds rolled down over the mountain tops and began to descend, rain was on the way and soon I would have to be indoors. It was when I was about to give in and settle for one more coffee and my nice warm slippers that I saw the son of my homestay owner in the distance. He was riding the largest horse and heading straight for me.

 

He was a quiet kid, too embarrassed to say hello and always, always obedient to his mothers prompts and commands. His skin was still young, unmarked by the life that was to come and untouched by any of the ugly elements life can bring. Those words are true for the small boy who walked the house, not for the man who rode towards me that day.

 

The horse was kicking against him, rearing and flailing in direction as if furious at its use as a child’s plaything. It looked uncontrollable to me, muscles and bone kinetic in temper in a way that made me stop and stare. The kid (whose name I never knew, he was too shy to tell me) barely registered the tempest that was kicking up beneath him. He was watching me, watching my camera and for the only time in our time together, he looked unconcerned. All the time watching me he pulled that horse under his control, forcing it to submit to him. His eyes were serious but calm, his body clearly working but never straining. Eventually he got the horse to the top of a small hill that marked the village centre and pulled it to a stop. The cloud cloaked mountains rose behind him, the rain began to fall on me but he just sat there, watching me as I pressed the camera 2 or 3 times. It was as if he wanted to show me who he really was: or what I really was.

 

Back at the homestay I showed the pictures to two Israeli friends who were staying that night. I couldn’t and still can’t find the words to get across what that moment was to me. Maybe it is only because of photography that it affected me so much or possible it was because I was open to the world that week, I don’t know and I don’t really care. I felt as if I was someone new. I felt something like love, or at least a respect free of any conditions for that kid and for the people of this village for all that they did for me and all that they had to do to survive.

 

Later that evening the kid sat next to me at the dinner table. His Mum asked me to take a picture of him but he flushed red, put his head down and wouldn’t look up until the camera was gone. The mother ruffled his hair and he smiled like a child. I smiled too, sat back on my seat and felt like I was home.

 

(if you like horses, check out the SadSummerSea photostream. Always a pleasure to view her work)

   

Pataphysical Studios was bursting with art, poetry, music and dance on this first sunny day of the season. The good doctors spent an enchanted afternoon playing together, diving fearlessly into wondrous new dimensions.

 

This week, we had two new visitors: Dr. Rafe and his son Dr. Leo, who picked up the vibe right away and seemed to enjoy this next-to-last demo of the ‘Pataphysical Slot Machine, before its move to the Figurines Ranch. We also held an initiation ceremony for Dr. Jardin, who received her own purple lab coat from Dr. Rindbrain, to the ritual chant of ‘Gooble gobble, we accept her, one of us’.

 

We then discovered another important new ritual: dance breaks! As ‘Johnny Be Good’ started playing, we all started shaking our buns uncontrollably -- and kept on rockin’ through many more tracks from the past. … Judging from the grins on everyone’s faces, this is likely to become a mandatory ritual from now on (albeit a hard one to shoot in low-light, pardon the blurs).

 

In other news, Drs. Igor and Rindbrain taught calligraphy to Drs. Canard and Figurine, so they may make many more words beautiful. Dr. Skidz concocted mysterious plans to paint an art virus on canvas. Dr. Canard whistled to the Golden-Crowned Sparrow, who just flew back in our neck of the woods. Dr. Figurine added a new infinity snake symbol from Dr. Rindbrain to her coat. Dr. Fabio got the sounds working for the Bali Cuckoo Clock and Time Flies wonderboxes. Dr. Igor got all other boxes to play sounds, except one: Mother of Yes — which we will tame next week, just in time for our move. :)

 

Spring is back in the inspiration island. Time for all art makers to come out and play … Follow your bliss!

 

View more 'Pataphysical photos: www.flickr.com/photos/fabola/albums/72157623637793277

 

Watch 'Pataphysical videos: vimeo.com/album/3051039

 

Learn more about Pataphysical Studios: pataphysics.us/

Basanta Utsav literally means the 'celebration of spring'. ...

 

Annually celebrated in March, the festival is an occassion to invite the colourful spring season with utmost warmth. What is appreciated is the grace and diginified manner in which Vasant Utsav is celebrated in Bengal as compared to uncontrollable Holi witnessed in most parts of India.

 

The beautiful tradition of celebrating spring festival in Bengal was first started by Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore at Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan.

Jan. 14 - Feb 5th, 2011 at Roq La Rue Gallery. www.roqlarue.com.

 

mandygreer.wordpress.com

 

About “Honey and Lightening”

 

“Honey and Lightening” is a show of installation chambers, sculptures of talismanic birds and a series of staged photographs all revolving around examining the mercurial nature of human desire. The substances honey and lightening both have literary, mythical and archetypal references to the occurrence and evolution of desire and it’s fading. I see one as the slow ooze of pleasure and the other as the dangerous, uncontrollable and inexplicably instant occurrence of magnetism between two bodies.

 

Two installation chambers create full body experiences of these ephemeral phenomena and crystallize them in tangible form as a way to signify the human longing for a perfect stasis of experience – which is impossible as emotion begins to degrade, evolve, fold in upon itself after the initial strike.

 

The Honey Moon chamber is a 10 foot tall mirrored jewelry box spanning 12 feet, enclosing a giant engorged golden chandelier formation encrusted with tens of thousands of gold-colored trinkets – the cheapest of the trashiest materials but representing the purest element from the bowels of the earth that has induced lust to the point of violence since pre-history. This giant mass of gold, as well as the body of the viewer, is reflected infinitely in 35 mirrored panels that create a simultaneously claustrophobic and expansive encounter that memorializes a temporary event. The mythology of honey, a bodily fluid produced from flowers, has long been associated with the ooze of erotic perfection. An ambrosial month of drinking honey-wine has followed the wedding ceremony since the Pharaohs. But locked up in the folklore of this transitional period is that the delirium ends and the state of bliss is forever sought after.

 

Sponsored in part by by the City of Seattle Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs CityArtist Grant and 4Culture/King County Lodging Tax Revenue.

 

photo: Mark Woods

Nothing really to update 3 years down the road from when she first came along Millie is just about where I would want her to be, just a normal 5 year old Collie who likes to go out in filthy weather and expects me to stand out there as well throwing the tennis balls for her.

 

A few things I learnt along the way and want to pass on.

 

Use Huggies which are normally used on top of a babies mattress to soak up any moisture. Lay a couple down by the doorway and get the dog to go down on all fours and stay there for a few minutes, the Huggies soak up the excess wet and collect the mud and therefore you don’t get it walked through the house.

 

A dog will do anything for a tiny piece of sausage or cheese.

 

One of the best weapons in your armoury when teaching a dog that barking will not get your attention and enable them to get what they want. Is to walk up to the dog and turn your back on it, they don’t like being ignored and it confuses them and they can’t handle it. Now I just need to stand at the window and turn my back on Millie.

 

If the dog is uncontrollable just do a very quick training session “sit”, “down” and lots of praise. Up until recently I would only let Millie in the garden attached to a lead with a 20 foot rope so that she was always under control and I could always catch her, now I can control her without the need for the rope.

 

The inspiration for this Wasteland Scavenger came directly from the DC comics universe. The character "Bane", enemy of Batman, to be exact.

 

The tanks on his back are filled with a potent Mutagen that is pumped through hoses throughout his body. This Mutagen has increased the subjects strength, agility, and intelligence. Not to mention made him extremely ugly. The Mutagen also causes uncontrollable rage.

Delighted to have been invited to contribute a poster to the 4th Illustration Research Symposium Pitt Rivers Museum on the 7th and 8th of November! Here's are some small sections of the image I produced for the poster exhibition at the Oxford Museum of Natural History about Thomas Harriot's notational inventions for use in mathematics in the 1600's and the inherit (uncontrollable?) ambiguity (indeterminacy?) of imagery.

 

Thomas Harriot invented the square root sign around 1600. He is entering an oven in this part of the image.

#Gosip Top :Kim Woo Bin Hibur Kekecewaan Penggemar karena Uncontrollably Fond0

Basanta Utsav literally means the 'celebration of spring'. ...

 

Annually celebrated in March, the festival is an occassion to invite the colourful spring season with utmost warmth. What is appreciated is the grace and diginified manner in which Vasant Utsav is celebrated in Bengal as compared to uncontrollable Holi witnessed in most parts of India. The beautiful tradition of celebrating spring festival in Bengal was first started by Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore at Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan.

Algorithmic Drive | Conduite algorithmique

Camera: SLR-680 SE

Film: 600 (expired 01/09)

This is the first try at still life project. It takes hundreds of shots to finally get one OK image of the fire. I tried adding smoke too so double the uncontrollable variables. the glass popped shortly and could have caused some harm too.

Waiting for Bárðarbunga | En attendant Bárðarbunga

Composite shot of the nightmare I had about uncontrollably falling. Model: Joey Hinojosa via 500px ift.tt/1GxmiRN

One of my favorite parts of driving the Mother Road was seeing the Route 66 emblems painted on the pavement. Every single time I saw one I was uncontrollably compelled to get out and photograph it. This one is, perhaps, my absolute favorite on a segment of Main Street USA near Essex, California.

  

View On Black <- - - you know it will look better

  

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

 

Route 66 Emblems <- - - a flickr set of all of the emblems I found on Route 66

 

To read more about Route 66, see more photos and read what it's like driving The Mother Road, be sure to visit Adventures of a GoodMan on Route 66

1947 Iola, Kansas Cubs

 

Front Row: Fred Lablanc, Bob Hewson, Buck Walz, Al Reitz (Mgr), Jim Yates and Hal Fortine.

 

Middle Row: Dick "Whitey" Wood, Alba Etie, Ken Aubrey, Joe Pollock, Jesse Raines and Leo Blandina.

 

Back Row: Oscar "Pappy" Walterman, John Barley (Business Manager), Jake Curnal, Paul Vickery and Roy Switzer.

 

(This is part of a two part photo submission covering the KOM career of Paul Ray Vickery.)

 

The KOM League

Flash Report

for week of

April 26 through May 2, 2015

 

Warning:

 

Everything these days, from medical prescriptions to golf balls, comes with a warning . Don’t over dose on medications or let someone hit you in the head with a golf ball else both could lead to pain, long suffering or death. You get my drift.

 

Fearful that these reports are far too voluminous I have come up with my own set of warnings.

 

1.Don’t consume in large doses. Read a little at each sitting. Pay attention to all warning labels.

2.Don’t attempt to drive or operate heavy machinery while around this report.

3.Never read while you are eating or drinking anything either extremely hot or cold.

4.Never share this medicine (report) with another person.

5.These reports may evoke strong emotions such as laughing out loud or sobbing uncontrollably. That is probably due to poor composition of thought on the part of the author.

6.Keep out of the hands of small children, adults up to age 65 and English teachers. None of these groups will understand the verbiage or syntax, let alone recognize the names of any of the people mentioned in the report.

7.In case of severe reaction take two aspirin and go immediately to bed. If symptoms persist erase the report from your computer and contact the author to request the reports never be sent again.

 

Any other problems encountered with these reports should be taken up with a competent expert in the field who can alleviate the distress. If you are not pleased with this product please return the unused portion for the amount of money it cost you to purchase it. Now, proceed at your own risk.

______________________________________________

Note from one of my proof readers.

 

I think the following line from the Report might have a typo at the end of the sentence: Jeptha McCormick was an Airman First Class during the Korean War and died in 2003 in North, South Carolina. Again, nice report and try not to get into any fisticuffs with Stanka - sounds a little dangerous! -Jerry in Arkansas

 

Ed reply:

 

North is a town in Orangeburg County, South Carolina. The population was 813 at the time of the 2000 census. North, South Carolina has been noted for its unusual place name.

 

Jerry’s reply:

 

I was thinking maybe "North, South Carolina" was a typo but maybe there is a North, South Carolina!

 

Ed reply:

 

Did you get my statement verifying that fact? There is also a town by the name of 96, South Carolina and there was a major league pitcher from there who turns out to be the only person ever to wear the name of his hometown on the back of his uniform. Do you know who that was?

 

Jerry’s reply:

 

Who wore the old 96 for his hometown?

 

Ed reply:

 

Wonder of wonders. If you pull up this site and look at the photos that pop up on Google you'll see a photo of the 96 on the back of Big Bill Voiselle. www.google.com/search?rls=aso&client=gmail&q=Bill...

 

Jerry’s reply:

 

There you go. Mr. Voiselle in his good old number 96. Cool.

 

________________________________________________

Note from television newsman.

 

John: I don't know any of these fellas, but I love baseball and history and very much admire your dedication in keeping up this work. Thank you for including me on your list. Scott Thompson—KOTV Tulsa, OK

 

Ed note:

 

In 1996, Scott Thompson and his cameraman covered the first KOM league reunion. It was held in Pittsburg, KS. His coverage won him some major awards and in my opinion was the best coverage done at any KOM event of which there were a dozen. Thompson made many of the former players at that reunion famous one more time in their lives. Somewhere there is still video of that coverage just waiting to “burst forth” once more. (Hint, hint.)

________________________________________________

Note from a surrogate reader

 

Did not know Rechichar played baseball. I did remember he held the 56 yard record for a long time & that he played for Baltimore. Kuenn was always a favorite of mine. Guess I got a real deal when Neil had you send me your Mickey book! Dave—in Texas

 

Ed comment:

 

For many years Neil Gibson of Arlington, Texas was one of the most faithful and supportive members of the KOM family. He never played in it but was still fascinated by those who did. I was his house guest during a trip to Arlington, Texas to celebrate the 60th wedding anniversary of Aletha and Boyd Bartley. Shortly before Gibson’s passing he introduced my Flash Report to one of his Army Ranger buddies. At first his friend was skeptical of what he was receiving but like a good soldier he went along with what his friend was sharing. After Gibson departed the scene, Dave, became the eyes for his departed friend. In many ways they are like twin brothers. They like and dislike a lot of the same things and hold similar views on a myriad of issues. Neil Gibson lives on through his pal Dave.

 

Ed reply:

 

Dave, I can tie everything and everybody to the KOM league. Last night I mentioned those "free" books and both my cell and home phones lit up like a Christmas tree. I heard from three of Mickey's first cousins who ordered nearly two dozen of those “free” books for their children. At the same time Mantle's first roommate in professional ball was also calling. So, within 15 minutes of releasing that free book announcement I had calls from Farmington, NM; Denver, CO; along with Afton, Glenpool and Oklahoma City. I didn't know I had some of those readers.

 

Harvey Kuenn and Len Van de Hey crossed paths many times in their youth activities in baseball and football and Van de Hey was always the better of the two. I think in the right organization Van de Hey would have gone all the way to the top. He told me he had six children and four became lawyers but he still loved them.

 

Van de Hey had his chance, one spring, to win a spot with the Giants. All he had to do was beat out incumbent Whitey Lockman and prospects like Bill White, Orlando Cepeda, Willie Kirkland and Willie McCovey for the job.

________________________________________________

Time for a trip down memory lane

 

Unless you click on this site you will not be able to participate in this version of “Who is it?”

www.flickr.com/photos/missouristatearchives/6198899206/

 

This is a site that I accidentally came across recently. For those of you without access to the URL I’ll describe the photo. There are five guys in it with four standing and one kneeling. All the players were wearing Joplin Miner uniforms. The caption claimed this was a 1950’s team and the fellow standing second from the right was Mickey Mantle. My first glance caused me to say “No way Jose.” It was obviously Jim Finigan. The fellow kneeling was also recognizable as it was Johnny Sturm the Joplin manager in 1948 and 1949. That information alone narrowed the photo to those two years. The trouble was that both Sturm and Finigan were both there for at least parts of those seasons.

Johnny Sturm replaced Lou Gehrig at first base after the Iron Horse’s retirement. www.google.com/search?rls=aso&client=gmail&q=Obit...

 

An attempt to figure out who the guy on the far right was led me to get in touch with Bob Hamric for he was on the Joplin roster in 1949. Hamric and I could both recognize Finigan and Sturm but not the other three. I leaned toward the big guy on the far right as either being Tom Hesketh or Dick Wuestling. To be able to identify either of those guys positively would have nailed down the date of that photo since neither Hesketh or Wuestling were with Joplin during the same year. But, I couldn’t do it. So, if you played for the Independence Yankees and Joplin Miners in the 1948-49 you may be able to identify that photo. Here’s hoping Cal Neeman pulls up that URL and gets in touch. I think he’s the guy with the best chance of telling me who those five guys are in that photo. (Note: At the time this report was prepared the site carrying that photo had not updated all my comments on the photo identification.)

 

As with most things when you are searching for something, you find something else. A member of the 1949-50 Joplin Miner pitching staff was a right-handed pitcher from Cincinnati, Ohio. When I was writing the Mantle book, a decade ago, (the ones I’m now nearly giving away) I spoke with Tom Hesketh. Here is what I discovered when preparing this report.

 

The Cincinnati Enquirer—this was from May 21, 2004.

GREEN TOWNSHIP - Thomas F. Hesketh Jr., co-owner of Brogan/Hesketh Formal Wear & Bridal Shoppe in Price Hill, died Tuesday at University Hospital.

His death resulted from a head injury he suffered after falling on ice Feb. 12. "He seemed to be recovering, then he got pneumonia," his wife, Susan E. Johnson Hesketh, said. Mr. Hesketh was 75.

He had been partners in the formalwear business with friend Dave Brogan of Delhi Township for 27 years. "It was a real venture," Brogan said.

"We had some good times (and) bad times. Our relationship lasted longer than some marriages."

At one time they operated four stores around Greater Cincinnati.

"It was a wonderful experience for me," Brogan said. "I was 20 years younger than Tom, (so) he sort of showed me the way. I looked up to him as a father image."

After growing up in Mount Auburn and graduating from the old Woodward High School (which was in the building that now houses the School for the Creative and Performing Arts), he attended Michigan State University with the goal of becoming a veterinarian.

But he left his studies and became a pitcher in the New York Yankees farm system. "At one point Mickey Mantle was his roommate," his wife said. "But Mickey Mantle didn't stay too long down in the minor leagues." (Ed note: He was a teammate of Mantle’s at Joplin. Mantle’s roommate was Tommy Gott).

Mr. Hesketh came home in the late 1950s and joined the Cincinnati Fire Department. "He spent almost all of his career at Engine Co. 5 at Vine and McMicken," his wife said. He retired in 1981.

He also owned and trained race horses. "That was his dream," his wife said. At the time of his death he was a part-owner of several horses including Suddenly Gone, with whom he had some success at Turfway Park.

Mr. Hesketh was devoted to his seven children and was a "big-time Elder fan," his wife said.

"He coached grade school when I was young," said his daughter, Linda Froehlich of Pleasant Ridge. "He just loved young kids. He enjoyed going to high school athletic events more than college or pro. That and his horses were it."

In addition to his wife of 36 years and his daughter, survivors include: another daughter, Patty L. Bloomfield of Batavia; five sons, Thomas F. Hesketh III of Camden, Ark., Robert S. Hesketh of Louisville, Charles E. Hesketh of Newtown and Timothy A. and Anthony T. Hesketh, both of Green Township; two brothers, Stanley Hesketh of Anderson Township and Bruce Hesketh of Monfort Heights; 15 grandchildren; and seven great-grandchildren.

Visitation is 4-8 p.m. today at Radel Funeral Home, 650 Neeb Road in Delhi Township. Mass of Christian burial is 10 a.m. Saturday at Our Lady of Visitation Church, 3180 South Road in Mack.

(This might be a good time to stop reading this report for a while. Beware eye fatigue may result from reading any further without a long rest.)

Passing of Ray Nemec

 

It would be difficult to count the times Ray Nemec and I communicated over the past 20 years. He inherited the Heilbroner material that was commonly known as the Blue Books. In that collection was the largest source of biographical and player information anywhere on this planet or any planet for that matter.

 

We had another thing in common, old time radio. We exchanged a lot of information of radio station call letters and performers on such stations as KOAM in Pittsburg, KS, KWTO in Springfield, MO, WIBW Topeka, KS, KFRU in Columbia, MO and even the town where that station originated circa 1927—Bristow, OK. Nemec is one of the few people I ever ran across outside of Southeast Kansas, Northeast Oklahoma and Southwest Missouri who ever heard a KOM league broadcast. The station he could pick up in the metropolitan Chicago area, at night, was KGLC operating at 910 kilocycles from Miami, OK which was only a 1,000 watt station. He heard the play-by-play done by Russ Martin who broadcast all Miami games except for those played on Sunday. That day he was busy preaching to the largest congregation in the city at the First Christian Church. Martin’s side-kick for a couple of years was former KOM leaguer, Joe Pollock. A Catholic from Cleveland, Pollock even went to the church Martin pastured. After Martin left town Pollock was back to the Catholic Church and that is where I last viewed his physical remains when I delivered his eulogy on July 21, 2003.

 

In one of our conversations I mentioned A. J. Cripe and his Town Talk Boys who I heard on KOAM at Pittsburg, KS from the time I was first aware of anything. A few days after the conversation about Cripe I had two cassette tapes in my mailbox and they were old Cripe radio show recordings. That only proved to me what many people told me over the years “A. J. Cripe isn’t all that good.” He was rather “corn ball” in fact.

 

Tying Cripe into the KOM league fabric isn’t difficult. For example he was from Garnett, Kansas as was Jim Morris. Long before Morris went into WWII he was a chauffeur from Cripe when he was doing his country music shows, running for the Kansas legislature and promoting his bread business. Cripe aired his 10:30 a. m. country show from the Bess Hotel in Pittsburg which was the place many of the visiting KOM league teams stayed when they played the local Browns club. The more affluent teams stayed at the Bess and those less so were housed at the Stilwell. I was told by many of the ballplayers that they made fun of Cripe’s music.

 

Every baseball team in the history of the KOM league was always facing hard financial times. During the 1948 season the Carthage Cardinals were in dire straits and decided to have a special night to boost attendance. They decided to bring to town A. J. Cripe and his Town Talk Boys to play before, during and after the game. As a result of this big promotion the attendance was far less than the already poor regular turnout. Yet, the baseball club was out the expense of Cripe and the boys making the 30-mile trip to town.

 

Russ Martin, on the other hand, was quite a personality. He always signed off his sports shows and baseball broadcasts with the Grantland Rice quote “When the one great comes to mark against your name he’ll write not that you won, or that you lost, but how you played the game.” (Ed note: That is the way I recall it.) In the case of Ray Nemec he “played” the game very well. He will be missed by a lot of people. The last note he ever sent me was wishing I’d get feeling better for I had been making a lot of mistakes in my reports. I wrote him back with the statement that I had spoken with my doctor’s and that I’d never be in any better health than I was currently experiencing. I informed him that I’d either have to cease sending the reports or he’d have to accept them for what they were. That was true a year or so ago and nothing has changed.

 

His obituary is listed here:

www.legacy.com/obituaries/chicagotribune/obituary.aspx?n=...

 

When copied and then pasted it is difficult to reading because of the background but here it is for those of you who can’t pull up that site.

 

Raymond J. Nemec, 85, born June 19, 1929 passed away April 17, 2015. Raymond is survived by his loving wife of 60 years, Loretta (nee Majerczyk); children, Thomas, Allen (Patti Pasquesi), Alice (Gary Blasen), and Jennifer Nemec; grandchildren, Brook and Stacie Blasen; great granddaughter, Hannah Boleyn; sister-in-laws, Felipa (late Robert) Nemec, Helen (late Martin) Jakubek, and brother-in-law John (Margaret) Majerczyk. Cousins Adelyn Krcek and Dorothy Bero, and many nieces, nephews. He was preceded in death by his parents, Anton and Anastasia (nee Rezabek) Nemec; brother, Robert; parents-in-law, Adolph and Josephine (nee Majka) Majerczyk; infant great granddaughter Makayla Boleyn. Ray was a man of many passions. After his family, came baseball statistics. At age 11, Ray knew he was more interested in statistics then playing; he would calculate his batting average, while running to first base. Ray made his mark as one of baseball's greatest minor league researches. He served as a founding member of SABR, Society for American Baseball Research. In August 1971 he and the group were inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY. Ray contributed accurate player records to many publications. He served as the official score keeper for the Kane County Cougars in the late 90's. Ray coached and managed a little league team in Downers Grove. His love of numbers translated to a successful career in logistics and planning for Corn Products Co., serving 45 years in various capacities. Another interest was Radio. While serving in the Army, he announced live talent shows on the Armed Forces Radio. He hosted a radio show in the early 70's called, "Music, News & Nemec" airing on WDGC-FM. Growing up near trains fueled a love for LGB train's and Garden Railroading. Ray was a Charter Member of the Antique Doorknob Collectors of America; as a board-member, he spent years as editor of the newsletter. He was a kind, reserved and always-complimentary man. He had an amazing gift for numbers and remembering details. He will be missed by all those who loved him. Visitation will be Tuesday April 21st 3:00-9:00PM at Friedrich-Jones Funeral Home & Cremation Services, 44 S. Mill Street, Naperville, IL. The Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated on Wednesday, April 22nd 11:00am at SS. Peter & Paul Catholic Church, 36 N. Ellsworth, Naperville, IL. In lieu of Flowers, donations can made to Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth, 310 N River Road, Des Plaines, IL 60016, Attn.: Sister M. Phyllis. For information please call 630-355-0213 or visit www.friedrich-jones.com

- See more at: www.legacy.com/obituaries/chicagotribune/obituary.aspx?n=...

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All time Iola team at least from 1946-50

 

Readers of the Iola Register, in the spring of 1951, were encouraged to vote on an All-Star team of former Iola Cubs and Indians who played there from 1946-50. This article begins by announcing the contest and then I got lost in the weeds for some of the stories were too interesting to ignore. Finally, I followed the bouncing ball until it led to the announcement of the all-time best Iola players and then to one of the players who was far from the best at his position but still won.. That in turn led me to track the fellow who wasn’t the best all the way to his tragic demise in 1984. Try to make it through this story. It will increase your knowledge of KOM league history

•

THE I0LA REGISTER, TUESDAY EVENING, MARCH 20, 1951. SPORTS News and Views: Boyd Bartley, four - time Ponca City baseball manager, is out of army service again now after doing a brief winter hitch and is looking for reassignment, in the Brooklyn Dodger organization. (Ed note: I found that mention of Bartley being out of the service by March of 1951surprising, since I own a letter that he sent to the Miami, Okla. Eagles asking them for an opportunity for his Camp Crowder team to play them in a spring exhibition game. The offer, by the way, was declined as Miami had already firmed up their spring schedule.

 

After seeing that statement contact was made with Bartley’s widow, Aletha. I asked about the series of events in early 1951. She replied with this. “1951 was the year he was recalled and we were in Camp Chaffee (Arkansas). Due to having boo coos (lots--a great quantity. from French "beaucoup") of kids he finally got his release and ended up scouting as (George) Scherger had the Ponca City team by then.”

 

Boyd was back at Ponca City in 1952 and Aletha picks up on their best summer in baseball. “We were so happy to get back home (Ponca City) as all the windows leaked in the (Arkansas) rental house, we had a real bad snow storm had towels stuck in all the cracks. It felt strange Boyd scouting that summer. Our best summer was when he had the Thomasville club (1954); he hit an umpire so was released as manager. We then went to Vero Beach for the rest of the summer as Boyd was part of the boys camp.”

•

(The Iola Register column picks up again)

Ed Simmons won't be the all-time Indian catcher, but he is getting a surprising number of votes in the current all-star contest. It wasn't realized the fans did have such regard for him. This department's catching choices, in order, are Gene Daily, Ed Simmons, and Buck Walz.

 

Carthage has received official word from the sponsoring Chicago Cubs that Don Anderson will again be the choice as manager of the Cub KOM entry in 1951.

 

—His Baseball Prize "Please split the. $5 equally between the Red Cross and Salvation Army," orders W. B. Kerr, while mailing an entry in the all-star baseball contest. He offers these names in the poll to select all-time Iola first and second teams in the KOM league: First team- Paul Vickery, c; Bob Yuhas, Hal Brydle and Bill Upton, p; Joe Pollock, Larry Singleton, and Don Bruss, of; Gordon Geibel, lb; Alba Etle, 2b; Ken Aubrey, 3b; Leo Blandina, ss. Second team-Al Dunterman, c; Jimmy Yates, Hugh Bisges, Paul Schnieders, p; Walter Dunkovich, Hal Fortine, Leo Kedzierski, of; Jack Curnal, lb; John Paul. 2b; Jerry Whalen, 3b; Art Sullivan, ss; Whitey Wood, utility. The Register is offering $5 to the fan whose first and second squad selections most nearly match the combined vote of all those participating.

 

—Mickey Mantle Hits 420-Foot Home Run Los Angeles (AP) — Mickey Mantle, the rookie 19-year old from Commerce, Okla., has enthused veteran and rookie alike in the New York Yankee training camp. The switch hitting and speed of the Yankee youngster has everybody in camp talking. On Saturday, Mickey socked a mighty homer that carried approximately 420 feet. Monday night in the Yanks' 6-3 loss to Hollywood of the Pacific Coast league, he got a single in his only time at bat to boost his average to .571 —12 for 21.

 

April 18, 1951

 

The All-Time Player: Ken Aubrey, third baseman of the 1946 and 1947 team apparently is the all-tune favorite of local KOM league baseball fans, and the 1946 club was the beat Iola has had In five seasons, results of a Register poll indicate. Only one of the fans voting failed to place Aubrey on the .first team. Four 1946 performers, Gordon Giebel, John Paul, Larry Singleton, and Aubrey are first team choices. Others are Paul Vickery. Bob Yuhas, Bill Upton, Windy Johnson, Ray Khoury, Hal Fortine, and Joe Pollock. Winner of the $65 prize for coming the closest in his own choices to the combined selections of all fans participating is Walt Stranghoner, 330 North Street. Stranghoner disagreed with the majority only in the case of Hal Fortine. He substituted Dick Getter for Fortine, giving Fortine a second team spot. The second closest selector was Earle Fatherlln, who missed by having Don Bruss in the outfield and Bob Phillips catching on his first team.

 

Credit was given for agreement on second team choices, but it did not affect the decision on the $5 prize. In third place was Earl Dulinsky, leaving out Fortine and Bill Upton. He put Dick Getter and Paul Schnieders on his first lineup. .

 

The surprise player showing might be credited to Bob Yuhas, pitcher who was here in 1948, and opened the season with a seven- inning no-hit game against Independence. (Ed note: Before his death Yuhas sent me that baseball.) Yuhas led all the 60 or more pitchers the Indians have had in five seasons. In fact, he almost doubled the point score on his nearest teammate. Bill Upton. Only three participants leftYuhas off. Yuhas won 15 games and lost 12 on Iola's seventh place 1948 club. He had an earned run average of 3.34, eighth in the league in that department. Knowledge of his baseball whereabouts last season is not at hand for mention, here. His name has not been found in the record books for 1950. (Ed Note: Iola had two pitchers who had brothers who played major league baseball. Bill Upton’s older brother Tommy started out with the St. Louis Browns and Bob Yuhas’s older brother, Ed, had one great year with the St. Louis Cardinals before ruining his arm by throwing a rock at a squirrel prior to the start of spring training in 1953. Bill Upton also had a short stint in the big leagues.).

 

Another who ran away from others in the poll at his position was Paul Vickery, 1947 catcher, despite the fact he caught in only one-fourth of the games in his one season here and had a batting average of .161. Fans took a decided fancy to him. Three of his 20 hits were home runs. The only close voting was on second basemen, where John Paul edged out Jack Jordan and Al Etie, who tied for the second team nomination. The five-year teams:

(Paul)Vickery, c

(Bob) Phillips, c

(Bob) Yuhas, p

(Hal) Brydle, p

(Bill) Upton, p

(Oscar) Walterman, p

(Windy) Johnson, p

(Jesse) Raines, p

(Gordon) Giebel, lb

(Jacob) Curnal, lb

(John) Paul, 2b

(Jack) Jordan-(Alba) Etie, 2b

(Ray) Khoury, ss

(Leo) Blandina, ss

(Kenneth) Aubrey, 3b

(Mervin) Dubbers, 3b

(Larry) Singleton, of

(Leo) Kedzierski, of

(Joe) Pollock, of

(Dick) Getter, of

(Hal) Fortine, of

(George) Boselo. of

 

(Now is the time to take another break in reading this report assuming anyone has gotten this far. Failure to do so will result in extreme boredom and/or fatigue)

 

The foregoing was an early 1951 season project to gin up some interest in the forthcoming baseball season. A few highlights from the Iola Register were selected. What that attempt at naming an All-Time Iola team which covered 1945-50 indicates that people don’t necessarily vote with a great deal of understanding but rather who they liked based upon the player’s personality.

 

One fellow who did very little to earn a spot on the All-Time Iola club was Paul Vickery. He unabashedly proclaimed to the Iola Register that he was the best looking player on Iola team during his 36-game stint in the “Oil city.” Vickery had graduated from a Dallas, Texas high school in 1944 and was signed by the Chicago Cubs (He could have possibly played between his junior and senior year in high school.). He spent some time that year with Marion in the Ohio State league and one game with Nashville in the Southern Association. He was back to baseball, in 1947, with Iola and Hutchinson, KS.. At Iola he hit .161 which wasn’t all-star stats. The next I knew of him was when he showed up at Ponca City, OK as their business manager in 1951. I have a photo of him taken at that time and I’d have to rely on the ladies to judge his self-declared handsomeness. On second thought his image will be posted on the Flickr version of this report.

 

A couple of years ago, I think it was, I wrote a rather lengthy story about Vickery. He spent his life in Dallas and was involved in the social life of that city. He even worked for the Dallas Cowboys in their sales and marketing functions for a while. All seemed to be going well until September 14, 1984. That was the day there was a tragedy in his home that took three lives and the former Iola All-Star was one of those involved. At the time of his death Vickery was the Vice President of Leader International Inc. and a member of the Prestonwood Baptist Church in Dallas. He regrettably left this life at the young age of 57. This citation contains the obituaries of Vickery and his wife. wcd.stparchive.com/Archive/WCD/WCD09191984P11.php I trust readers will be able to pull up that Find-A-Grave citation. If you can access the site it will provide you with the details which I am not doing. Vickery was buried at Minneola a town east of Dallas. www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GSln=VIC&am...;

 

Not all stories about the KOM league have happy endings and the life of Paul Ray Vickery fits into that category. However, very few lives have a “happy ending.”

 

Post script:

 

Not many of the fellows mentioned in the Iola All-Star balloting survive other than, Leo Blandina, Dick Getter, George Boselo and Buck Walz. Howard “Buck” Walz is a native of Jefferson City, MO who now resides in Arizona. I sent him a note asking about the time Paul Vickery was with the Iola club. Walz caught for Iola in 1946-47-48 and should have been voted on the All-Time Iola team ahead of Vickery. Regarding Vickery here was Walz’ comment: “I remember Paul Vickery. He was a good looking guy. I think he was Italian. He would hang out with (Jacob) Jack Curnal. I never heard him say he was good looking. I can't believe the story of his life…. Thank you for this update.”

 

To document my case, during the 1947 season, Buck Walz appeared in 66 games with 55 being behind the plate. Vickery played in 36 games with 34 of them as the backstop. At the plate Vickery hit .161 while Walz hit .255. Go figure. As far as fielding was concerned they had nearly identical statistics.

________________________________________________

 

Just for fun:

 

The site that carried the photo of the five Joplin Miners and one of the guys who they attributed to being Mickey Mantle when it was obviously, Jim Finigan, had a number of other historical Missouri photos. Many of them couldn’t be identified as to where they were captured or who was in the photo. I found two that I’m sure I correctly identified and sent comments to that effect to the site manager. For you who are major league fans tell me who the other three St. Louis Cardinals are in this photo taken between 1948-53.

www.flickr.com/photos/missouristatearchives/6198382757/in... If you pull up this site and go to the comments you will see my opinion as to who the fellows in this photo are with Red Schoendienst.

 

www.flickr.com/photos/missouristatearchives/6198382885/in...

There are a few comments beneath that photo which I submitted. A number of e-mails went back and forth with the daughters of the late Goldie Howard, former KOM league player/manager, regarding their memories of this place when they were young girls and their mother and father worked at that camp. Some of the instructors at that camp operated by Carl Bolin were former big leaguers: Jim Bottomley, Eddie Miller, Wally Schang, Ty Cobb, (yes, the Georgia Peach) along with Goldie Howard.

 

I could write an entire Flash Report on this place. One of the better stories about it is in a book by a very fine writer, Paul Hemphill. Here is a snippet from that publication. books.google.com/books?id=bjfiyaFfUBMC&pg=PT130&l... There are a number of pages here so read a while. The guy Hemphill described as a “brawny former minor league power hitter” was Goldie Howard.

 

A photo of two former KOM leaguers, who attended the camp, was sent to Howard’s daughters. The two guys in the photo were Benny Leonard and Billy Wade Creech who both wound up in the KOM league. They had attended the Ozark Baseball Camp in 1944 and were living in Henryetta, OK at the time. Creech, a left-handed pitcher and Leonard, a catcher, both wound up at Iola in 1949 and Leonard stayed another year for good measure and played the outfield. Gotta’ stop that tale here. There is more to this story, with photos. Maybe that can be addressed at another time. And, then again maybe not. As I say “I have a long way to go with this material and a short time to get there.”

 

The final item: A great obituary regarding Stanley, North Dakota’s gift to many

 

In the past year I have mentioned Lewis Saum who had a week and a half with the Iola Indians, in 1951, but never got into a game. He was owned by the New York Yankees. In my searching for him I contacted his wife and learned his health was failing. About a year later I heard from her once again informing me of her husband’s death. In recent weeks I was promised his obituary and it came this week. This is it:

•

Lewis Oliver Saum was born on his grandparents’ farm outside Stanley, North Dakota, on December 19, 1933. His birth coincided with an unusually heavy snow storm, even for North Dakota, and the temperature fell below 36 degrees. His parents divorced when he quite young; he and his brother, Estle, were raised by his mother, Elsie Hunter Saum, and helped by relatives, particularly his Aunt Beatrice and Uncle Howard. At school he played sports, loved Latin and greatly admired his school principal.

 

At 17 he won a scholarship to Minot State College where he played baseball. He was a pitcher. Baseball scouts spotted Lew and signed him to the minor leagues. An old acquaintance wrote that Lew was the youngest player in the league. He played for teams owned by the New York Yankees and the then Washington Senators in small towns across the Midwest and Texas. After two years Uncle Sam drafted him into the army. Lew served at a radar base in Silver Spring, Maryland, and at a small base near Wiesbaden, Germany. He remembered not so fondly spending his 21st birthday on guard duty in Germany, matching in heavy snow. By March he was playing baseball for the army, far from the base and Wiesbaden. He enjoyed playing on an army team but said he regretted it left his little time to travel in Europe. When the season ended, he returned to the U.S. and to Minot State. There he met and married his first wife, Elizabeth. His only daughter, Joanne, was born in Minot in 1957.

 

After graduation, Lew won a graduate scholarship at the University of Missouri in Columbia to study Intellectual U.S. history. He received his Ph.D. there. One of his former professors from University of Missouri wrote that Lew had been one of the History Department’s most gifted students. Lew taught for two years at Missouri State in Springfield before he left the Midwest in 1965 for the University of Washington. He moved west in body but not completely in spirit. He always remained a country boy from North Dakota.

 

In Seattle he began his long (34 years) and distinguished teaching-research-writing career in the History Department at the University of Washington. He published 4 books on topics such as fur traders, Native Americans, everyday folk, newspaper men, actresses, soldiers, and scoundrels. He utilized a combination of letters, government documents, and newspapers as he researched for his books as well as his many, many, scholarly articles. His talents were recognized and he won many major research fellowships. While he was at the UW, he served as Managing Editor of the Pacific Northwest Quarterly for five years. Several of his colleagues have written that they thought that Lew’s prose was so “precise,” he always had the “exact word” that “conveyed his meaning.” Others have written on his unique sense of humor, generous, never sharp. He was “one of a kind.”

 

At age 65, in 1998, Lew retired from teaching and moved to Chico, California, to be with his wife Judith Raftery, who taught at California State University, Chico. They had met at the Huntington Library in 1983 where he was researching his third book and she was finishing her Ph.D. dissertation, also in U.S. history. They married in 1994. In Chico Lew continued his daily routine of library research and writing. His fourth book and several articles were published while he lived in Chico. Judy and Lew made summerly treks, almost always by car, to libraries in Washington, Missouri, North Dakota, Minnesota, Colorado and places in between They often stopped to see Estle and Shirley, and after Estle’s death, to see Shirley. Lew accompanied Judy to the Philippines, Washington DC, New York, and other places in the east for her research. They tried as often as possible to return to the Huntington Library. Lew found items of interest wherever he went. He never used a computer and continued to rely on his typewriter. When he finished a manuscript, he sent it to a typist in Seattle who transcribed it on a disk and then sent to an editor.

 

Unfortunately, as his memory faded, he stopped his scholarly activities. His last article was published in 2006. He died in Chico on June 23, 2014, after a long illness.

 

Lew grew up very poor during the Depression and that early poverty affected him greatly. He was one of those people who never needed anything and he used a credit card only to hold a reservation. He preferred Travelers’ Cheques. Friends have written that they thought that Lew was very courtly, rather formal, with old-fashioned manners or at least manners uncommon in the 21st century. He was extremely private person who rarely spoke about himself. He had a wicked sense of humor and a twinkle in his eye when something amused him. I think Lew would like to be remembered as a kind and loyal man, as a highly regarded historian, a professor, an author, a baseball pitcher, and a football enthusiast from Stanley, North Dakota.

This report is now over. You can review it in the future on the Flickr site at: www.flickr.com/photos/60428361@N07/16644908453/

   

A-37B.

Unknown unit.

May 1973.

This was meant to take on the world this was, but sadly it didn’t get very far! The Rover 800 had so many possibilities, so many variants could have been derived from it, but unfortunately the management was once again very quick to nip this beautiful car in the bud, and the Rover 800 would join that long line of ‘what-could-have-been’ motors that seem to pave British motoring history.

 

The origin of the Rover 800 goes back to the late 1970’s, when nationalised British car manufacturer and all around general failure British Leyland was absolutely desperate to fix its seemingly endless list of problems. The company had now garnered a reputation for creating some of the worst, most outdated cars of all time, the likes of the Morris Marina, the Austin Allegro and the Triumph TR7 being derided in both critical and customer reviews. A mixture of strike action by uncontrollable Trade Unions led by the infamous Red Robbo had meant that cars were only put together for a few hours per day on a three day week. As such, reliability was atrocious on a biblical scale, be it mechanical, cosmetic or electrical.

 

As such, in 1979, British Leyland began talks with Japanese car manufacturer Honda to try and help improve the reliability of their machines. The pioneer of this brave new deal was the Triumph Acclaim of 1980, BL’s first reliable car and not a bad little runabout. Basically a rebadged Honda Ballade, the Acclaim wasn’t meant to set the world ablaze, but it certainly helped get the company back onto people’s driveways, selling reasonably well thanks to its reliable mechanics (even if rust was something of an issue). As such, BL decided that from now on it would give its fleet a complete overhaul, basing their new models on Japanese equivalents. From 1984, the Rover 200 arrived on the scene, again, a rebadged Honda Ballade, while the Maestro and the Montego ranges also took on several tips from their Japanese counterparts, though they were primarily based on British underpinnings.

 

The Rover 800 however spawned quite early on, in 1981 to be exact. Following the catastrophic failure of the Rover SD1 in the American market, which only sold 774 cars before Rover removed itself from the USA altogether, the company was desperate to get another foothold across the pond. As such, the new project, dubbed project XX, would be the icing on the cake in terms of British Leyland’s fleet overhaul, a smooth and sophisticated executive saloon to conquer the world. However, plans were pushed back after the launch of the Montego and the Maestro, and thus project XX wouldn’t see the light of day again until about 1984.

 

Still in production and suffering from being long-in-the-tooth, the Rover SD1 was now coming up on 10 years old, and though a sublime car in terms of style and performance, it was now struggling in sales. Rover really needed to replace this golden oldie, and thus project XX was back on. In the usual fashion, Honda was consulted, and it was decided that the car would be based on that company’s own executive saloon, the Honda Legend. Jointly developed at Rover’s Cowley plant and Honda’s Tochigi development centre, both cars shared the same core structure and floorplan, but they each had their own unique exterior bodywork and interior. Under the agreement, Honda would supply the V6 petrol engine, both automatic and manual transmissions and the chassis design, whilst BL would provide the 4-cylinder petrol engine and much of the electrical systems. The agreement also included that UK-market Honda Legends would be built at the Cowley Plant, and the presence of the Legend in the UK would be smaller than that of the Rover 800, with profits from the 800 shared between the two companies.

 

Launched on July 10th, 1986, the Rover 800 was welcomed with warm reviews regarding its style, its performance and its reliability. Though driving performance was pretty much the same as the Honda Legend, what put the Rover above its Japanese counterpart was its sheer internal elegance and beauty, combined with a differing external design that borrowed cues from the outgoing SD1. The 800 also provided the company with some much-needed optimism, especially following the gradual breakup of British Leyland by the Thatcher Government between 1980 and 1986.

 

Following her election in 1979, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher took a no nonsense attitude to the striking unions, and the best form of defence was attack. To shave millions from the deficit, she reduced government spending on nationalised companies such as British Airways, British Coal Board, British Steel and British Leyland by selling them to private ownership. For British Leyland, the slow breakup of the company started with the sale of Leyland Trucks and Buses to DAF of Holland and Volvo, respectively. 1984 saw Jaguar made independent and later bought by Ford, but when rumours circulated that the remains of British Leyland would be sold to foreign ownership, share prices crashed, and the company was privatised and put into the hands of British Aerospace on the strict understanding that the company could not be sold again for four years. With this move, British Leyland was renamed Rover Group, the Austin badge being dropped, and the only remaining brands left being the eponymous Rover and sporty MG.

 

In the light of this tumultuous period, many of Rover and MG’s projects had to be scrapped in light of turbulent share prices and income, these projects including the Austin AR16 family car range (based largely off the Rover 800) and the MG EX-E supercar. The Rover 800 however was the first model to be released by the company following privatisation, and doing well initially in terms of sales, hopes were high that the Rover 800 would herald the end of the company’s troubled spell under British Leyland. The Rover 800 was planned to spearhead multiple Rover ventures, including a return to the US-market in the form of the Sterling, and a coupe concept to beat the world, the sublime Rover CCV.

 

However, British Leyland may have been gone, but their management and its incompetence remained. Rather than taking the formation of Rover Group as a golden opportunity to clean up the company’s act, to the management it was business as usual, and the Rover 800 began to suffer as a consequence. A lack of proper quality control and a cost-cutting attitude meant that despite all the Japanese reliability that had been layered on these machines in the design stage, the cars were still highly unreliable when they left the factory.

 

Perhaps the biggest sentiment to the 800’s failure was the Sterling in America. The Sterling had been named as such due to Rover’s reputation being tarnished by the failure of the unreliable SD1. Initial sales were very promising with the Sterling, a simple design with oodles of luxury that was price competitive with family sedan’s such as the Ford LTD and the Chevy Caprice. However, once the problems with reliability and quality began to rear their heads, sales plummeted and the Sterling very quickly fell short of its sales quota, only selling 14,000 of the forecast 30,000 cars per annum. Sales dropped year by year until eventually the Sterling brand was axed in 1991.

 

With the death of the Sterling came the death of the CCV, a luxury motor that had already won over investors in both Europe and the USA. The fantastic design that had wooed the American market and was ready to go on sale across the States was axed unceremoniously in 1987, and with it any attempt to try and capture the American market ever again.

 

In 1991, Rover Group, seeing their sales were still tumbling, and with unreliable callbacks to British Leyland like the Maestro and Montego still on sale, the company decided to have yet another shakeup to try and refresh its image. The project, dubbed R17, went back to the company’s roots of grand old England, and the Rover 800 was the first to feel its touch. The R17 facelift saw the 800’s angular lines smoothed with revised light-clusters, a low-smooth body, and the addition of a grille, attempting to harp back to the likes of the luxurious Rover P5 of the 1960’s. Engines were also updated, with the previous M16 Honda engine being replaced by a crisp 2.0L T16, which gave the car some good performance. The car was also made available in a set of additional ranges, including a coupe and the sport Vitesse, complete with a higher performance engine.

 

Early reviews of the R17 800 were favourable, many critics lauding its design changes and luxurious interior, especially given its price competitiveness against comparable machines such as the Vauxhall Omega and the Ford Mondeo. Even Jeremy Clarkson, a man who fervently hated Rover and everything it stood for, couldn’t help but give it a good review on Top Gear. However, motoring critics were quick to point out the fact that by this time Honda was really starting to sell heavily in the UK and Europe, and people now asked themselves why they’d want to buy the Rover 800, a near carbon-copy of the Honda Legend, for twice the price but equal performance. Wood and leather furnishings are very nice, but not all motorists are interested in that, some are just interested in a reliable and practical machine to run around in.

 

As such, the Rover 800’s sales domestically were very good, it becoming the best-selling car in the UK for 1992, but in Europe not so much. Though Rover 800’s did make it across the Channel, the BMW 5-Series and other contemporary European models had the market sown up clean, and the Rover 800 never truly made an impact internationally. On average, the car sold well in the early 1990’s, but as time went on the car’s place in the market fell to just over 10,000 per year by 1995. Rover needed another shake-up, and the Rover 75 did just that.

 

In 1994, Rover Group was sold to BMW, and their brave new star to get the company back in the good books of the motoring public was the Rover 75, an executive saloon to beat the world. With this new face in the company’s showrooms, the Rover 800 and its 10 year old design was put out to grass following its launch in 1998. Selling only around 6,500 cars in its final full year of production, the Rover 800 finished sales in 1999 and disappeared, the last relic of the British Leyland/Honda tie up from the 1980’s.

 

Today the Rover 800 finds itself under a mixed reception. While some argue that it was the last true Rover before the BMW buyout, others will fervently deride it as a Honda with a Rover badge, a humiliation of a Rover, and truly the point where the company lost its identity. I personally believe it to be a magnificent car, a car with purpose, a car with promise, but none of those promises fulfilled. It could have truly been the face of a new Rover in the late 1980’s, and could have returned the company to the front line of the motoring world, at least in Britain. But sadly, management incompetence won again for the British motor industry, and the Rover 800 ended its days a lukewarm reminder that we really didn’t know a good thing until it was gone.

if my feminism makes you feel icky, and produces the uncontrollable need to say NOT ME NOT ME NOT ME instead of WOW how the fuck do we change that?! ... then you are the problem

Basanta Utsav literally means the 'celebration of spring'. ...

 

Annually celebrated in March, the festival is an occassion to invite the colourful spring season with utmost warmth. What is appreciated is the grace and diginified manner in which Vasant Utsav is celebrated in Bengal as compared to uncontrollable Holi witnessed in most parts of India.

 

The beautiful tradition of celebrating spring festival in Bengal was first started by Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore at Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan.

Just like anyone on social media, I like to fill my feed with happy images and highlights from my personal and professional life….but it’s time to start talking about the REAL stuff too!

Although it may seem like I have all of the happiness and confidence in the world if you look at my social media accounts, I have struggled with self esteem issues my entire life.

As a child, I grew up in an abusive environment filled with unresolved generational traumas where I was made to feel like I was the problem in myfamily, and unknowingly internalized that I as an individual was bad.

As with most abusive households, mine was an environment where nothing felt safe….even being myself. So, I began to develop a laundry list of unhealthy coping mechanisms, and a state of “survival mode” became my baseline as I entered my developmental years.

I felt so powerless under my father’s endless emotional abuse and violent outbursts at home, that I not only began to believe that type of behavior was normal, but also constantly felt the need to gain agency and assert my own will wherever possible. Which, obviously, did not go over well with my peers and teachers, and only caused me to more deeply internalize that I must be bad as I began to establish my sense of self outside of my family.

 

Like millions of other people with unresolved trauma, as things got worse for me emotionally, I turned to food for comfort, and quickly found myself significantly larger than almost everyone around me in elementary school. Something that my peers and father often made note of in cruel ways that hurt me so deeply and only further caused me to internalize that I must be bad.

Eventually, all of the shame that I felt during my childhood snowballed into deep depression and uncontrollable anxiety that I tried to heal with piles of prescriptions from different doctors that couldn’t seem to figure out what was “wrong” with me. When, in reality there was nothing “wrong” with me. I simply needed to find peace and be reminded that I AM GOOD.

 

Over the years - especially as I became an expectant mother at 17 years old and faced so much judgement for my choice to leave school in order to work while I was a pregnant - I found that excelling at my job served as an excellent surrogate for the validation I was seeking in my personal relationships, and I began to throw myself into my career, both as a way to support myself and my daughter as a single parent, and as a way to prove to myself through tangible means like paychecks and promotions that I was good.

It wasn’t until all of the unresolved trauma that I had been trying to bury with work began to manifest itself physically, that I finally accepted it was time to begin trying to show myself the love I knew I needed in order for my body to heal….even if the concept of being lovable still seemed totally forgeign to me, and I had no idea where to begin!

 

Abuse is a hard cycle to break, and self love is a hard lesson to learn. So, my path to healing was far from linear, or easy, but once I made that commitment to find and nurture the parts of myself that I loved, amazing things began to happen!

I’m pretty sure my friends and family thought I was losing my mind more than finding myself at first! But, as I began to explore myself as an energetic being and learn more about inner child and shadow work, I discovered that I wasn’t bad. I had just learned to protect (rather dysfunctionally) the vibrant, loving and vulnerable little Melissa who had learned that she needed to stay hidden in order to stay safe so long ago!

As anyone who has recovered from abuse can tell you, the hardest part about breaking the cycle is having no example of how to be any other way. My life had been filled with negativity for so long that I struggled to find myself in a peaceful situation even as I worked to heal myself.

As anyone who has recovered from abuse can also tell you, you just get used to it.

The pain and chaos becomes your baseline, and even when you are consciously in a state of growth away from that state of being, it’s all too easy to find yourself slipping back into relationships that make you feel most comfortable - even if they are simply toxic AF. Which is exactly what I was doing…..until I met Nate.

 

Before I met Nate, I had no idea what it felt like to be seen completely, and not only be accepted for who I was, but adored for it.

Most importantly though, Nate made me feel safe.

For the first time in my life, I was able to stop just surviving, and started thriving in ways I had forgotten that I was capable of.

It was like I had been trudging through mud my entire life, and was finally walking on solid ground for the first time when I finally learned to accept his love.

I began to see the entire world differently.

Instead of an endless stream of stressful situations and impending disasters, I started to see my life as promising and full of possibilities.

I began to see myself differently.

Instead of someone I felt I should be ashamed of, I started to see myself as someone kind and capable that I was proud to share with other people.

 

Once that shift occurred, I began to accomplish so many more things I felt that I could be proud of!

I learned to show myself the kindness I wish I had been shown, and found how freeing it can be to see the world through a less defensive lense.

I launched a successful private chef business out of nothing but my passion for food while I was still waiting tables and had nothing but my intuition to guide me.

I grew that little business into something that could provide a better life, and was finally able to start working for myself.

I built second, and third, businesses that provided me with more opportunities to do what I love, and a real sense that I was capable of so much good.

I started to be able to show up as my authentic self in social situations with less fear of being “seen” and judged for it.

But, even with all of those things to be proud of, I still held so much shame and anxiety around the idea that I was still somehow fundamentally bad at my core, and it was only a matter of time before I, and everyone else, would start to see it again.

 

The way that I had once used paychecks and promotions to provide myself with tangible evidence that I was good, I began to use images on social media as a tangible way for me to remind myself of all the positives when the negative self talk began to sneak into my mind.

At the time, I didn’t really think much into my motivation for posting about my life’s highlights on social media, because after all, it’s what everyone else does too and, let’s be honest - who doesn’t like getting likes?!

But when the pandemic hit last year and my ability to produce content that I felt I could use to prove to myself that I AM good was halted, it forced me to really examine the deeper emotional reasons that I felt it was so important for me to only share things that aligned with an image of positivity and success.

Being positive, and constantly focused on growth, is a huge part of who I am at my core - but it’s far from who I am all the time.

While I spent hours scrolling through social media during the early days of quarantine, I felt completely paralyzed as I watched other people post photos and videos of themselves functioning in ways I couldn’t even imagine in the moment.

It might sound silly, but when I felt the most lost in my emotions, just being able to just create and share a post about how to make a healthy smoothie made me feel like I was at least doing one thing I could be proud of, no matter how ashamed of myself I felt in the moment.

 

Thankfully, resilience seems to be my super power (dysfunctional as some of my survival mechanisms may be.) So, it didn’t take long for me to snap out of that depression and into that familiar feeling of “survival mode” that allowed me to begin working on ways to keep my businesses alive.

Being able to snap myself out of that paralyzing depression reminded me that I am a survivor and gave me the energy I needed to keep moving forward, but it also triggered all kinds of unhealthy coping mechanisms that I had worked so hard to move away from.

On the outside, I was pivoting like a pro. But, internally, it felt like my emotional state was falling to pieces.

Even though I knew that almost everyone else was struggling with their emotions as well, I just couldn’t bring myself to authentically share any of that darkness on social media.

I shared the smoothies.

I shared the healthy dinners.

I shared all of the milestones as I worked to rebuild my businesses.

Because that’s what made me feel safe.

 

What I didn’t share, was the insecurity.

What I didn't share, were the days that I could barely motivate myself to eat, let alone create something beautiful, or inspire anyone else to embrace taking care of themselves.

What I didn’t share, was the fear that everyone might see me at my worst and judge me for it.

What I didn’t share, was that I was really posting all of that for me, to prove to myself that I was still worthy of love - even though the only one who was even questioning that, was me!

Once I realized that I was using images on social media as a mask, I knew it was time to start healing those pieces of me that I still felt that I needed to hide.

I also knew that I wanted to share my story more authentically on social media somehow. But, I didn’t quite know how…..until I saw a post on Facebook from a local photographer working on a project about women sharing their authentic stories on social media, and it just spoke to me!

 

The concept was an unstyled shoot that showed the authentic me, accompanied by an essay to do the same - which seemed simple. But, it proved to be such a greater struggle than I had imagined!

The essay I could edit, and I’ve always loved to write, so I wasn’t worried about that. But, the photoshoot made me SO nervous!

Having grown up in a home where appearance and projecting the right image seemed to be of paramount importance, the idea of photos that might not portray me in the best light being published on the internet triggered all kinds of insecurities for me.

On the day of the shoot, I just chose to wear what was comfortable - the things I actually wear when I’m not trying to look a certain way.

I didn’t style my hair, or bother with more than my everyday makeup that consists of tinted moisturizer, a bit of bronzer and a little mascara.

If it were any regular day I would have felt perfectly comfortable with the way I looked.

In fact, I had made plans to meet a friend for dinner right after the shoot and felt great about the way I looked for that experience! But, the idea of being photographed like that, especially outside by the water where the wind would inevitably reveal angles of my face that I find unflattering, gave me anxiety for days before the shoot.

 

When I arrived for the shoot, I was nervous and far from the outgoing, confident Melissa that usually arrives at photoshoots when I’m styled perfectly and feeling my best.

As we walked through the quiet woods with the snow crunching beneath my boots, I realized that I felt so nervous because I had shown up to this photoshoot as the little Melissa that I had learned to hide and protect.

As we began to shoot, I started to feel sad, and strange that this would be the side of me captured on camera for this project. But, I quickly realized that it wasn’t sadness for the situation at hand that I was feeling.

It was sadness for little Melissa who had internalized that she wasn’t worth being seen just as she was.

Throughout the shoot, I couldn’t seem to shake that sense of sadness and I worried the photos would be ruined because of it.

But, when I saw the photos from the shoot a few weeks later, I realized that as we were walking and talking throughout the shoot, the images that Nikki captured began to tell a story.

The first photos looked posed and happy. But, of course they did. Because that’s my favorite mask, especially in front of the camera! So, I obviously felt fine about those being shared.

But, then there were some awkward attempts at me actually being natural in front of a camera. Which completely triggered all of the negative self-talk that typically leads to me taking great measures to avoid photos like that from ever seeing the light of day.

As we moved on, I could see the vulnerability in my eyes as I tried to let my guard down, and I felt so exposed knowing that side of myself would be shared.

Once we were by the water though, I started to see a sense of ease, and even strength emerging in the photos. Even if they weren’t my best angles and my hair was a mess, it looked like ME!

Not the styled, polished version of myself that I feel safest showing the world, but the authentic me that I have no problem sharing with the people I feel safe with.

 

Don’t get me wrong - I very authentically do LOVE to get dressed up, and genuinely think it’s fun to play with personal styling. It’s just fun for me! But, participating in this project has really helped me to reflect on how much I had been using my image as a mask to protect myself from negative self-talk.

As we all know now, wearing a mask can keep us safe, but it also prevents us from being fully seen.

Yes, taking off your mask can be a risk, just like letting other people see you completely can be a risk.

But, as we all know now after a year full of physical masking, nothing feels better than FINALLY being able to take off your mask and just breathe!

Ces moments ...

Your laughing uncontrollably.

The Summer Sangha came back better than ever! Nine bhaktis, eight days, lots of kirtan, a group art project and some uncontrollable laughter made up this year's Summer Sangha. Take a look at some of the highlights below!

 

bhaktimarga.org

See this one on black... www.flickr.com/photos/jungle_mama/5635314760/page2/#/phot...

 

I love the golden green highlights in this exhausted Bufo's eyes and the shiny blue Surface Tension ring glistening around its neck after a night of mating and croaking! And no sleep for either one of us!

 

The Full Moon means the Bufo toads mate. When they do, they make sounds that, when I first moved into my house, made me so mad that I was ready to scream at my neighbors for running a grinding machine all night! Fortunately I found the paired post-mating toads and their long clear strings of eggs floating on top of my pond and realized my neighbors weren't the ones making that horrible, sleep-disturbing noise! It was a pair of large brown toads!

 

No, far worse than ot just one night when an industrious neighbor worked with a grinding wheel, every month on the full moon their screeching mating ritual occurs. If you have a pond here in South Florida, you have Bufos! The male gets on one side of the pond and the female on the other side and they scream, croak, rattle... I don't know what to call it. Just imagine the most annoying sound you could possibly hear... and hearing it all night long and a couple of hours the next morning!

 

Then I find pairs like this still locked together, the small male on top, the larger female on the bottom. And they rest this way near their egg strands for hours before disconnecting.

 

Bufos are big toads, 5-6 inches across and much longer back to front. And they are poisonous. If your dog gets one in his mouth, the toxins can kill him if you don't take immediate action. How do you know whether your dog has bitten a Bufo? Because the dog will have uncontrollable slobbering and start shaking his head to try to get rid of the poison. My dog used to run inside to get me so I could get a soapy washrag and thoroughly scrub out his mouth. Some people take their pets to the vet immediately but my dog always gave me a heads up before the poison could do him too harm.

 

*Surface tension is a property of the surface of a liquid that allows it to resist an external force. It is revealed in floating of some objects on the surface of water, even though they are denser than water, and in the ability of some insects (water striders) and even reptiles (basilisk) to run on the water surface. This property is caused by cohesion of like molecules, and is responsible for many of the behaviors of liquids. It is Surface Tension that is creating this lustrous blue ring!

 

Biscayne Park, FL

www.susanfordcollin.com

This is life outside the tourist path -business as usual for the locals in the cattle market which is done once a week . It was such a chaos but which by no doubt had entertained us watching animals stampeding in the entrance including few camels , a randy mad buffalo with uncontrollable urges to mate . I noticed baksheeesh was never known in the this place - I took many photos as I can without being asked for money in exchange . If I were to pay ,i must have paid loads for each shots I took that day or maybe skip few meals / a dinner inluded to pay for the shots hahaha.

 

As often the case ,if i sensed the person is aware of me about to take shots ,I send a simple gesture showing my camera and maybe a little smile - then you look straight to the eyes of the person and you'll know the mood , you are welcome or you aren't . Either take the option of getting shots quick without seconds looking into their eyes or reading their minds or looking for cues - then if they say 'no' or any gesture related , so be it then ,but photos are already taken, then leave as quick as you can. If comes the smiles from the faces , it feels better because it reassures what you're doing wasn't a blatant intrusion of their privacy or anything offensive you've done .I would feel some form of relief and peace within me as I leave the area when i see people smiling - not the crocodile smile though .