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Here are some tips on how to eat to preserve your memory and keep your brain healthy.
Key Points
Limiting candy in your diet may support brain health, as high added sugar intake could increase the risk of Alzheimer’s disease.
A brain-healthy lifestyle includes regular exercise, managing chronic diseases, staying socially engaged and following diets like the MIND diet.
Making mindful dietary and lifestyle choices can enhance cognitive health and overall well-being over time.
More than 55 million people have dementia worldwide, with Alzheimer’s disease being the most common form, contributing to 60% to 70% of dementia cases. Having Alzheimer’s disease means living with a progressive disorder that causes brain cells to degenerate and die, leading to a continuous decline in memory, thinking skills and the ability to perform everyday tasks. Sadly, as the disease progresses, even basic activities and communication become challenging.
Several factors influence the risk of developing dementia, with some being completely beyond your control. Aging is the most significant risk factor, as individuals over the age of 65 are more susceptible. Genetics also play a crucial role, with specific genetic mutations directly linked to Alzheimer’s disease. However, along with unchangeable factors, certain lifestyle choices can help lower the risk of cognitive decline, with diet being a pivotal piece of the puzzle. “Some of the best foods for brain health are antioxidant-rich wild blueberries, salad greens for B vitamins, salmon for its anti-inflammatory fatty acids, fiber-rich black beans, and walnuts, the best source of plant-based omega-3 ALA among nuts,” says Maggie Moon, M.S., RD. There are some foods you should avoid when focusing on brain health support too, with candy being the #1 food on that list.
Why You Should Limit Candy for Brain Health
Taking steps to reduce dementia risk is one positive step for brain health. While there isn’t one food that will cause dementia, high-added-sugar candy tops the list of foods that should be limited on a brain-healthy diet.
“Candies are not your brain’s friend,” Moon says. She points to a study that found that eating too much added sugar more than doubled the risk for dementia. “That includes added sugar from candies, as well as other sweets like pastries, sweetened café drinks and sodas,” she says. Researchers think that high blood sugar and insulin levels are risk factors for Alzheimer’s because insulin resistance may also occur in the brain, which may impact memory.
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Of course, everything can be eaten in moderation in a healthy, balanced eating plan. “While fine once in a while, research has found that a diet that is consistently high in added sugar may increase the amyloid plaque buildup in the brain,” says Laura M. Ali, M.S., RDN. "These plaques disrupt the communication system in our brain, and scientists have found that people with Alzheimer’s disease tend to have more of these plaques.”
In fact, says Ali, one study found that every 10 grams of added sugar consumed per day (equivalent to 2½ teaspoons of sugar or 8 gummy candies) was associated with a 1.3% to 1.4% increased risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. Those with the highest daily added sugar intake had 19% higher odds of developing Alzheimer’s disease.
Don't Miss
The #1 Habit to Start Now to Reduce Your Dementia Risk
Other Ways to Reduce Your Risk of Dementia
Limiting sweetened candy doesn't guarantee that you won't get dementia, but it is a positive step forward. Along with limiting added sugar in your diet, here are some other ways to reduce your dementia risk:
Exercise by participating in both aerobic activity and resistance exercise.
If you smoke cigarettes, take the first steps to quit.
Limit alcohol intake. If you regularly drink alcohol, try to do so in moderation. Excessive drinking is linked to cognitive decline. Moderate drinking means two drinks or less in a day for men and one drink or less in a day for women.
Stay socially engaged. Maintaining social connections builds your cognitive reserve to maintain good brain function with age.
If you have chronic diseases, such as high blood pressure and diabetes, make sure you’re managing these well. Stiffness in arteries and blood vessels can damage the brain. If you need help or individualized advice, reach out to a healthcare professional.
Include brain-healthy foods in your diet. The MIND diet emphasizes foods like whole grains, nuts, berries, vegetables and olive oil, which research shows may help support brain health. “The brain-healthy MIND diet limits foods high in saturated fats and added sugars because both are linked to oxidative stress, inflammation and the brain plaques and tangles associated with Alzheimer’s disease,” says Moon. She clarifies that this diet limits—but does not eliminate—fried foods, pastries and sweets, red meat, whole-fat cheese and butter.
Our Expert Take
Nothing will guarantee that you will live a life free from dementia. But certain steps may help reduce your risk, with your dietary choices being one factor. And along with eating brain-healthy foods, limiting your candy intake can help keep you cognitively sharp. Enjoying a small handful of candy corn on Halloween or conversation hearts on Valentine’s Day won’t “cause” dementia. “It’s important to remember that no single food eaten once, or even once in a while, is going to make or break your brain health,” Moon adds.
8 Sources:
World Health Organization. Dementia.
Alzheimer’s Association. What is Alzheimer’s Disease?
National Institute on Aging. Thinking about your risk for Alzheimer’s Disease? Five questions to consider.
Dhana K, James BD, Agarwal P, Aggarwal NT, et al. MIND Diet, Common Brain Pathologies, and Cognition in Community-Dwelling Older Adults. J Alzheimers Dis.;83(2):683-692. doi: 10.3233/JAD-210107.
Agarwal P, Ford CN, Leurgans SE, Beck T, Desai P, Dhana K, Evans DA, Halloway S, Holland TM, Krueger KR, Liu X, Rajan KB, Bennett DA. Dietary sugar intake associated with a higher risk of dementia in community-dwelling older adults. J Alzheimers Dis. 2023;95(4):1417-1425. doi:10.3233/JAD-230013
Liu L, Volpe SL, Ross JA, Grimm JA, Van Bockstaele EJ, Eisen HJ. Dietary sugar intake and risk of Alzheimer's disease in older women. Nutr Neurosci. 2022 Nov;25(11):2302-2313. doi:10.1080/1028415X.2021.1959099
Alzheimer’s Association. Risk reduction.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Dietary guidelines for alcohol.
What are You doing?
(George Mylne, "Lessons for the Christian's Daily Walk" 1859)
"Where the word of a King is, there is power! Who may say to Him: What are You doing?" Ecclesiastes 8:4
What word, what power, are like the Lord's? With earthly kings words may be loud — and power small. Not so with God. His purpose knows no hindrance. His word can never fail. Who can resist His power? With God, purpose, and word, and power are but one.
Who, then, may say to God: "What are You doing?" To hinder His purpose, you must be able to overcome Omnipotence! Infinite, unchangeable, almighty — with God to will, is to perform; to speak, is to proclaim His past eternal purpose, and His endless might. Who can arrest His hand, or thwart His providence? Who can? That is not the word. Rather, who ought to wish it? Who ought to quarrel with His will, or say, either with bold or fretful opposition, "What are You doing?"
Your child has died; or perhaps a shipwreck has bereft you at one stroke, of all your family; or other ills untold, unspeakable, have made you drink the wine of desperation. My friend, these things were ordained by God "before the world began." In God's eternal mind it was written — it was settled long ago. How vain to say, "What are You doing?" And when the time was come, God sent His messengers — noiseless, unseen, invisible — to do His righteous will. Could you have said, "What are You doing with my child? What are You doing with the winds and waves? Forbear!"
Your will was not consulted — your permission was not asked. Do not say, "What are You doing?" Be silent before the omnipotent Disposer! "I was silent; I would not open my mouth, for You are the one who has done this!" (Psalm 39:9.) "But what can I say? He Himself has done this! I will walk humbly all my years because of this anguish of my soul." (Isaiah 38:15.) Go softly all your years — yet not "in anguish of soul." If you have faith in Christ, you are better taught than this. Go softly — yet in faith, in patience. Looking to Jesus, let your language be: "It is the Lord! Let my Lord do what seems good in His eyes!" (1 Samuel 3:18.)
It apparently means that I will have to post a photo of mine, and write 16 things about me. Wonder, why 16 things? That sounds a bit too much to me. But I will bite :)
1. I am male (in case you are still not sure by looking at the picture ;)
2. and single.
3. Born in Cox'sbazar, Bangladesh, I grew up mostly in Chittagong, Bangladesh.
4. I am a doctor by profession, graduated from Bangladesh.
5. I left Bangladesh in 1995 for USA and did higher training in Internal Medicine there.
6. I currently live in Thames, New Zealand. It is a beautiful little town with lovely beaches and lovely people. I have been working at Thames Hospital since 1999. I work as an emergency doctor.
7. I am pretty easy going with a smile on my face most of the time. Most of my patients like me for that, although one patient in my long career didn't like it. She asked me, 'What's so amusing?'
I believe I have a good sense of humor... wink wink :)
(Are you still awake?)
8. For me, photography is a hobby and a medium of expression. I try to learn and do better all the time, but I don't sweat for it. I am not sure what I want to do with this passion of mine in future, but I am not worried about it.
9. I am a cameraholic, but I don't use all of them regularly. Almost 50% of my cameras and other gears have been gifted away.
10. I love tea and coffee. I don't like coke-pepsi kind of beverages that much.
11. Simple Bangladesh style food is my most favorite, but I eat and enjoy everything (except pork). I have tried Ostrich, Kangaroo and Crocodile; loved Crocodile most. Snake is my next target.... I heard its yummy :).
12. I love traveling; I usually take two holidays every year. I like sports. Soccer is my most favorite.
13. I love to read, listen to music, watch movies and spend time with friends.
14. I try to make others happy, and if I can’t do that I try not to hurt or harm anyone.
This keeps me happy.
(If you are still with me, then something about my belief/dream)
15. I believe that all people on earth should live as one nation; the concept of countries and borders and patriotism etc. is old. But we are not matured or developed enough yet to make this happen. So, we will have to wait.
16. I believe that as human beings our actions/choices are mostly predetermined. Our actions are almost exclusively controlled by our gene (which controls our thought process, analytic capabilities etc) and circumstances. Each particular circumstance is a culmination of a complex series of preceding events (all going back thousands of years) on which we don’t/didn't have any control, and as such was unchangeable. What appears to be the ‘choices’ we make, is in fact the only 'choice' we would have 'made' in any given situation.
Free will is a necessary illusion.
I finally got to see Bright Star and words cannot express how much i loved it. I feel like it was made for me. I'm pissed that it didn't get any Oscar attention.
Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art--
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors--
No--yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever--or else swoon to death.
~john keats
Off flickr nhéeee
You can kiss a fool, you can let a fool kiss you, but never let a kiss fool you
Friendship is a promise made in the heart. Silent. Unwritten. Unbreakable by distance. Unchangeable by time.
It is the eye of ignorance that assigns a fixed and unchangeable color to every object; beware of this stumbling block.
-- Paul Gauguin
Unborn, yet continuing without interruption,
neither coming nor going, omnipresent,
Supreme Dharma,
unchangeable space, without definition,
spontaneously self-liberating--
perfectly unobstructed state--
manifest from the very beginning,
self-created, without location,
with nothing negative to reject,
and nothing positive to accept,
infinite expanse, penetrating everywhere,
immense, and without limits, without ties,
with nothing even to dissolve
or to be liberated from,
manifest beyond space and time,
existing from the beginning,
immense ying inner space,
radiant through clarity
like the Sun and the Moon,
self-perfected,
indestructible like a Vajra,
stable as a mountain,
pure as a lotus,
strong as a lion,
incomparable pleasure beyond all limits,
illumination, equanimity,
peak of the Dharma,
light of the Universe,
perfect from the beginning.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_of_the_Sun_and_Moon
Text Analysis of the Union of Sun and Moon Tantra (nyid zla kha sbyor rgyud) from the Tibetan Renaissance Seminar
Background
The Tantra of the Great Secret Union of the Sun and Moon (Nyi ma dang zla kha sbyor) is one of the Seventeen Tantras (rgyud bcu bdun) within the Nyingma (rnying ma) school’s Seminal Heart (snying thig) tradition. According to Nyingma sources, this tantra was first taught in India by Garab Dorje (dga’ rab rdo rje), who lived three hundred and sixty years after the historical Buddha, to Manjusrimitra. Eventually, it was transmitted to Tibet. The Emporer Trisong Detsen hid the scripture in the eighth century, and it was revealed as Terma (gter ma), or treasure text, by Dangma Lhüngyel (Davidson, 230). According to Ronald Davidson, the written version of the seventeen tantras was most probably a product of the Chè (lce) clan in the eleventh and twelfth centuries (228).
The contents of this text deal with the teaching of the bardos (bar do), or intermediate states, that all beings are subject to. Although the number of intermediate states ranges from four to six depending on the source, the Tantra of the Great Secret Union of the Sun and Moon names five: the bardo of nature, the bardo of the state of samadhi, the bardo of dream, the bardo of birth and death, and the bardo of existence. This discussion on the bardos predates the more popularly known treatment of the bardos in the fourteenth century treasure text, Self Liberation Through Hearing (Bar do thos grol) .
Character
This tantra is in sangiti form, in which the buddha Dorje Chang (rdo rje chang, Skt. Vajradhara) teaches esoteric Buddhist doctrine to a bodhisattva (Orofino, 20). The bodhisattva in this tantra is Mitog Thuba (mi rtog thub pa) who asks Dorje Chang a series of questions concerning how sentient beings can attain liberation in the various intermediate states. Most of the text is in verse.
Summary
The first section of this text, discussing the Bardo of Present Life (rang bzhin bar do) is not available in English translation. It contains detailed explanations of a yoga system that allows practitioners to control and channel their physical and mental energies towards the goal of spiritual enlightenment (Orofino, 20).
The second section of the text is devoted to the Bardo of Death (’chi khai’i bar do). Mitog Thuba asks Dorje Chang to explain the signs of death, and methods of preventing death if one sees these signs. Dorje Chang discusses various signs of death. For example, if one’s nose flattens out, he will die in five days, or, if black spots appear on one’s tongue, he will die after two days (Orofino 22-23). He goes on to explain magical rituals that one can perform to reverse the course of death. Then, the buddha in the dialogue suddenly switches from Dorje Chang to Vajrasattva. Mitog Thuba asks Vajrasattva, how one is to recognize the pure state of wisdom at the moment of death.
Vajrasattva’s reply begins with a description of the physical process of death: at death, the various elements of one’s body dissolve into each other - earth into earth, water into water, fire into fire, and air into air. Each of these dissolutions is accompanied by a physical sign like the cooling of the body or the stiffening of the limbs.
The moment of death, though, also represents an opportunity to unify one’s mind with the wisdom of the Buddha, thus achieving enlightenment. This involves taking the "position of the sleeping lion," entering into a state of profound meditation, and then directing the mind to the eyes. In a moment of pure focus, where pure awareness is concentrated into a single point, the person achieves enlightenment and does not have to wander in the bardo. This, however, is a very difficult task to perform.
Vajrasattva outlines particular ways that a master or dharma brother can help a dying practitioner perform this task.
The third section of this text deals with the Bardo of Essential Reality (chos nyid bar do). Vajrasattva explains that during the Bardo of Essential Reality, one sees visions of the mandala of the five rays of light. One sees "subtle, mobile, trembling, quivering, scintillating" masses of multi-coloured light which shine "disctinctly and marvelously". One experiences the light from one’s heart engaging with these visions. Finally, one experiences the eight ways in which the light arises. This represents an opportunity for liberation - if one understands that these visions are manifestations of one’s own mind, one attains enlightenment. If not, one will be frightened, and will enter into the next bardo, the Bardo of Existence.
The final section discusses the Bardo of Existence (srid pa’i bardo) where the individual begins the process of being reborn into a new body. In this intermediate state, the individual sees visions of the six types of beings: gods, demi-gods, animals, hungry spirits, hell-beings, and humans. One also sees visions of temples, houses, hoards of people, desert land, caves, ruins, and precipices. The latter three visions represent future rebirth in a womb. Vajrasattva then describes the development of the fetus after the individual has entered into the womb, and finishes by reminding Mitog Thuba that transmigration is an unending cycle that one can only escape through wisdom.
Analysis and Interpretation
Life and Death
One of the most remarkable things about this text is its treatment of the themes of life and death. In our culture, death is seen as a profoundly negative thing. Suffice to say, death is not a preferred topic of discussion either in the public or the private sphere. Death represents failure--the failure of the surgeon to fix a child’s heart, the failure of an individual to "hold on" to life, or the failure of a cancer patient to "beat" the illness. In contrast, life is what people desperately hold onto, and, in their quest for eternal life, people willingly spending large sums of money on face lifts, anti-aging creams, and antioxidants. In our culture, we tend to focus on life and to be in a perpetual state of denial about death.
In the Tantra of the Great Secret Union of the Sun and Moon, on the other hand, life is not particularly glorified and death is not particularly belittled. This text speaks of life and death in a candid and matter-of-fact sort of way. In keeping with basic Buddhist doctrine, the tantra describes life as impermanent, and invokes a series of similes: life is like a "dream," "rushing water," "wind," "magical enchantment," "illusion," and itinerant "pilgrim," and a "rain cloud" that will pass over soon (Orofino, 31). These similes convey a sense of the ungraspable nature of life; no matter how hard we try, we can never make things stand still. The naturalistic similes of rushing water, wind, and rain clouds convey a sense of naturalness to the course of life, while the similes of dream and magical enchantment convey a sense of the fleeting nature of both the things that we encounter in life and life itself. The simile of the itinerant pilgrim conveys how life, as much as we oftentimes celebrate it, is a long and tiring journey. Despite this, life is generally seen as an important moment for learning the Buddhist dharma because it represents an opportunity where one can attain spiritual enlightenment. Buddhist tantric practitioners are also instructed to practice diligently during their lifetimes in order to take advantage of this opportunity. Thus, although life is definitely not something entirely negative, it is certainly not seen as something that is particularly extraordinary.
In the same way that life is not seen as something extraordinary, death is also seen as a perfectly ordinary event the inevitably occurs over the course of time. There is a certain nonchalance in the tone of the tantra’s discussion of death: Death is not a failure but is simply when "one’s life is exhausted" and when the "elements of one’s body is consumed" (Orofino 36, 32). Death is a perfectly inevitable natural occurrence. The one occasion where death seems to be something that one should fear is when Vajrasattva describes death as something "sudden," "not forseen," and "unstoppable" (Orofino 32). The implication is that death can hit us at any time, and that we should be prepared. Nevertheless, death also represents a rare opportunity for spiritual enlightenment. According to Tantric Buddhist teachings on the intermediate states, if we are able to recognize the clear light at death, or the light found in the subsequent intermediate states as the projection of one’s mind, one attains instantaneous enlightenment.
In fact, life and death are portrayed in the Tantra of the Great Secret Union of the Sun and Moon as rather similar phenomena. Both are natural occurrences over the course of time, neither is privileged over the other, both represent an opportunity to attain enlightenment, and neither are inherently sacred or special. Both life and death go hand in hand: life is an opportunity to prepare oneself for death, and death is an opportunity to attain buddhahood in an efficient way. Life and death are not polarized to the extent that they are in our culture.
Existence, Material Existence
An important polarization in the Tantra of the Great Secret Union of the Sun and Moon is the privileging of disembodied enlightened existence over material unenlightened existence. Though this type of polarization may seem unsurprising in a tradition where spiritual enlightenment and freedom are the ultimate goal, it is particularly interesting that this polarization is also reflected on a textual level: the imagery and metaphors of this text reflect this greater argument.
In the Bardo of Essential Reality, the individual receives a taste of what enlightenment could be like. In this bardo, one no longer has a physical body of flesh and blood, but a "body of light" that "is free of impurities, and all visions manifest themselves in the dimension of happiness" (Orofino, 45). The link to the physical senses is severed, and one only comes into contact with "mental knowledge (Orofino, 45). The visions that one sees are stunning: one sees five-coloured light that appears "beyond material limits," without inside or outside, and "subtle, mobile, trembling, vibrant, quivering, scintillating" (Orofino, 46). Furthermore, the individual is not a passive observer; she participates in the process when light from her heart joins with the light of the manifestations around her. This is described as "the union of the state of pure Awareness with the light" (Orofino, 47). The images of light, movement, and the intangible suggest a certain spontaneity, freedom, and joy to enlightened reality.
In contrast to this, the imagery in the Bardo of Existence is dominated by images that suggest a grimy, trapped, and painful existence. As the individual moves from the previous bardo to the Bardo of Existence, she loses the spiritual freedom and contentment of the former bardo. Instead, she feels "provoked" by past desires, and feels pressured into becoming "involved" (52). The visions that she sees suggest the gloomy din of industrial towns and cities: she sees "temples, houses, fire, fog, rain and the sounds of groups of people" (53). "Damned" to a rebirth, she sees "desert, caves, ruins, precipices," all of which represent the womb (54). Thus, the womb is not seen as a fertile symbol of life, but a symbol of entrapment in the ceaseless cycle of rebirth. In a series of evocative similes, the tantra conveys the predicament that the individual finds herself in:
One feels the desire to move but feels held back by a net because one is blocked, like straw that has taken fire, or like being stuck in the mud./ One is like a bird in a trap that has been dug in the earth: in the trap of desire without control, that is transmigration. (53)
Images like the net and the bird in a trap suggest the imprisonment of the individual in the cycle of transmigration, while images like the "mud" and "earth" suggest the griminess of the samsaric condition. Finally, the simile of the "straw that has taken fire" suggests the visceral immediacy of the pain found in cyclic existence.
Therefore, the Tantra of the Great Secret Union of the Sun and Moon reflects the privileging of disembodied enlightened existence over material unenlightened existence even on the level of metaphor and imagery. The metaphor and imagery have the effect of acutely conveying a larger argument that privileges the freedom of enlightenment over the suffering of cyclic existence.
Works Cited
Orofino, Giacomella. Sacred Teachings on Death and Liberation: Texts from the most ancient traditions of Tibet. Bridport: Prism Press, 1990.
Davidson, Ronald. Tibetan Renaissance: Tantric Buddhism in the Rebirth of Tibetan Culture. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005.
collab.itc.virginia.edu/wiki/renaissanceold/Text%20Analys...
Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art--
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors--
No--yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever--or else swoon to death.
Keats
Better on black press L..
"You Are God Alone"
[Verse 1:]
You're not a God created by human hands
You're not a God dependent on any mortal man
You're not a God in need of
Anything we can give
By Your plan, that's just the way it is
[2x]
[Chorus:]
You are God alone, from before time began
You were on Your throne, You are God alone.
And right now, in the good times and bad
You are on Your throne, You are God alone.
[Verse 2:]
You're the only God whose power none can contend
You're the only God whose name and
Praise will never end
You're the only God who's worthy
Of everything we can give
You are God, that's just the way it is
[Chorus]
[Bridge:]
You're unchangeable (Unchangeable)
Unshakable (Unshakable)
Unstoppable (Unstoppable)
That's who you are (That's who you are)
[2x]
The mute swan (Cygnus olor) is a species of swan and a member of the waterfowl family Anatidae. It is native to much of Eurosiberia, and (as a rare winter visitor) the far north of Africa. It is an introduced species in North America, home to the largest populations outside of its native range, with additional smaller introductions in Australasia and southern Africa. The name "mute" derives from it being less vocal than other swan species. Measuring 125 to 160 cm (49 to 63 in) in length, this large swan is wholly white in plumage with an orange beak bordered with black. It is recognizable by its pronounced knob atop the beak, which is larger in males.
Taxonomy
The mute swan was first formally described by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin as Anas olor in 1789 and was transferred by Johann Matthäus Bechstein to the new genus Cygnus in 1803. Both cygnus and olor mean "swan" in Latin; cygnus is a variant form of cycnus, borrowing from Greek κύκνος kyknos, a word of the same meaning.
Despite its Eurasian origin, its closest relatives are the black swan of Australia and the black-necked swan of South America, not the other Northern Hemisphere swans of the genus Cygnus. The species is monotypic, with no living subspecies.
Evolution
Mute swan subfossils, 6,000 years old, have been found in post-glacial peat beds of East Anglia, Great Britain. They have been recorded from Ireland east to Portugal and Italy, and from France, 13,000 BP (Desbrosse and Mourer-Chauvire 1972–1973). Cygnus olor bergmanni, a paleosub species which differed only in size from the living bird, is known from fossils found in Azerbaijan. A related paleospecies recorded from fossils and subfossils is the Giant swan, Cygnus falconeri, a flightless species which lived on the islands of Malta and Sicily during the Middle Pleistocene.
Fossils of swan ancestors more distantly allied to the mute swan have been found in four U.S. states: California, Arizona, Idaho and Oregon. The timeline runs from the Miocene to the late Pleistocene or 10,000 BP. The latest find was in Anza Borrego Desert, a state park in California. Fossils from the Pleistocene include Cygnus paloregonus from Fossil Lake, Oregon, Froman's Ferry, Idaho, and Arizona, referred to by Howard in The Waterfowl of the World as "probably the mute type swan".
Description
Adults of this large swan typically range from 140 to 160 cm (55 to 63 in) long, although can range in extreme cases from 125 to 170 cm (49 to 67 in), with a 200 to 240 cm (79 to 94 in) wingspan. Males are larger than females and have a larger knob on their bill. On average, this is the second largest waterfowl species after the trumpeter swan, although male mute swans can easily match or even exceed a male trumpeter in mass. Among standard measurements of the mute swan, the wing chord measures 53–62.3 cm (20.9–24.5 in), the tarsus is 10–11.8 cm (3.9–4.6 in) and the bill is 6.9–9 cm (2.7–3.5 in). The plumage is white, while the legs are dark grey. The beak of the mute swan is bright orange, with black around the nostrils and a black nail.
The mute swan is one of the heaviest extant flying birds. In several studies from Great Britain, males (known as cobs) were found to average from about 10.6 to 11.87 kg (23.4 to 26.2 lb), with a weight range of 9.2–14.3 kg (20–32 lb) while the slightly smaller females (known as pens) averaged about 8.5 to 9.67 kg (18.7 to 21.3 lb), with a weight range of 7.6–10.6 kg (17–23 lb). While the top normal weight for a big cob is roughly 15 kg (33 lb), one unusually big Polish cob weighed almost 23 kg (51 lb) and this counts as the largest weight ever verified for a flying bird, although it has been questioned whether this heavyweight could still take flight.
Young birds, called cygnets, are not the bright white of mature adults, and their bill is dull greyish-black, not orange, for the first year. The down may range from pure white to grey to buff, with grey/buff the most common. The white cygnets have a leucistic gene. Cygnets grow quickly, reaching a size close to their adult size in approximately three months after hatching. Cygnets typically retain their grey feathers until they are at least one year old, with the down on their wings having been replaced by flight feathers earlier that year.
All mute swans are white at maturity, though the feathers (particularly on the head and neck) are often stained orange-brown by iron and tannins in the water.
Polish swan
The colour morph C. o. morpha immutabilis (immūtābilis is Latin for "immutable, unchangeable, unalterable"), also known as the "Polish swan", has pinkish (not dark grey) legs and dull white cygnets; as with white domestic geese, it is found only in populations with a history of domestication. Polish swans carry a copy of a gene responsible for leucism.
Behaviour
Mute swans nest on large mounds that they build with waterside vegetation in shallow water on islands in the middle or at the very edge of a lake. They are monogamous and often reuse the same nest each year, restoring or rebuilding it as needed. Male and female swans share the care of the nest, and once the cygnets are fledged it is not uncommon to see whole families looking for food. They feed on a wide range of vegetation, both submerged aquatic plants which they reach with their long necks, and by grazing on land. The food commonly includes agricultural crop plants such as oilseed rape and wheat, and feeding flocks in the winter may cause significant crop damage, often as much through trampling with their large webbed feet, as through direct consumption. It will also feed on small proportions of aquatic insects, fish and frogs.
Unlike black swans, mute swans are usually strongly territorial with just a single pair on smaller lakes, though in a few locations where a large area of suitable feeding habitat is found, they can be colonial. The largest colonies have over 100 pairs, such as at the colony at Abbotsbury Swannery in southern England, and at the southern tip of Öland Island, Ottenby Preserve, in the coastal waters of the Baltic Sea, and can have nests spaced as little as 2 m (7 ft) apart. Non-mated juveniles up to 3–4 years old commonly form larger flocks, which can total several hundred birds, often at regular traditional sites. A notable flock of non-breeding birds is found on the River Tweed estuary at Berwick-upon-Tweed in northeastern England, with a maximum count of 787 birds. A large population exists near the Swan Lifeline Station in Windsor and lives on the Thames in the shadow of Windsor Castle. Once the adults are mated they seek out their territories and often live close to ducks and gulls, which may take advantage of the swan's ability to reach deep water weeds, which tend to spread out on the water surface.
The mute swan is less vocal than the noisy whooper and Bewick's swans; they do, however, make a variety of sounds, often described as "grunting, hoarse whistling, and snorting noises." During a courtship display, mute swans utter a rhythmic song. The song helps synchronize the movements of their heads and necks. It could technically be employed to distinguish a bonded couple from two dating swans, as the rhythm of the song typically fails to match the pace of the head movements of two dating swans. Mute swans usually hiss at competitors or intruders trying to enter their territory.[30] The most familiar sound associated with mute swans is the vibrant throbbing of the wings in flight which is unique to the species and can be heard from a range of 1 to 2 km (0.6 to 1 mi), indicating its value as a contact sound between birds in flight. Cygnets are especially vocal and communicate through a variety of whistling and chirping sounds when content, as well as a harsh squawking noise when distressed or lost.
Nesting in spring, Cologne, Germany
Mute swans can be very aggressive in defence of their nests and are highly protective of their mate and offspring. Most defensive acts from a mute swan begin with a loud hiss and, if this is not sufficient to drive off the predator or intruder, are followed by a physical attack. Swans attack by striking at the threat with bony spurs in their wings, accompanied by biting with their large bill, while smaller waterbirds such as ducks are normally grabbed with the swan's bill and dragged or thrown clear of the swan and its offspring. Swans will kill intruders into their territory, both other swans, and geese and ducks, by drowning, climbing onto and pecking the back of the head and forcing the other bird underwater.
The wings of the swan are very powerful, though not strong enough to break an adult man's leg, as is commonly misquoted. Large waterfowl, such as Canada geese, (more likely out of competition than in response to potential predation) may be aggressively driven off, and mute swans regularly attack people who enter their territory.
The cob is responsible for defending the cygnets while on the water, and will sometimes attack small watercraft, such as canoes, that it feels are a threat to its young. The cob will additionally try to chase the predator out of his family territory and will keep animals such as foxes and raptors at bay. In New York (outside its native range), the most common predators of cygnets are common snapping turtles. Healthy adults are rarely preyed upon, though canids such as coyotes, felids such as lynx, and bears can pose a threat to infirm ones (healthy adults can usually swim away from danger and nest defence is usually successful.) and there are a few cases of healthy adults falling prey to the golden eagles. In England, there has been an increased rate of attacks on swans by out-of-control dogs, especially in parks where the birds are less territorial. This is considered criminal in British law, and the birds are placed under the highest protection due to their association with the monarch. Mute swans will readily attack dogs to protect themselves and their cygnets from an attack, and an adult swan is capable of overwhelming and drowning even large dog breeds.
The familiar pose with the neck curved back and wings half raised, known as busking, is a threat display. Both feet are paddled in unison during this display, resulting in more jerky movement. The swans may also use the busking posture for wind-assisted transportation over several hundred meters, so-called windsurfing.
Like other swans, mute swans are known for their ability to grieve for a lost or dead mate or cygnet. Swans will go through a mourning process, and in the case of the loss of their mate, may either stay where their counterpart lived or fly off to join a flock. Should one of the pair die while there are cygnets present, the remaining parent will take up their partner's duties in raising the clutch.
Breeding
Mute swans lay from 4 to 10 eggs. The female broods for around 36 days, with cygnets normally hatching between May and July. The young swans do not achieve the ability to fly before about 120 to 150 days old. This limits the distribution of the species at the northern edge of its range as the cygnets need to learn to fly before the ponds and lakes freeze over.
Distribution and habitat
The mute swan is found naturally mainly in temperate areas of Europe then across the Palearctic as far east as Primorsky Krai, near Sidemi.
It is partially migratory throughout northern latitudes in Europe and Asia, as far south as North Africa and the Mediterranean. It is known and recorded to have nested in Iceland and is a vagrant in that area as well as in Bermuda, according to the UN Environment Programme chart of international status chart of bird species, which places it in 70 countries, breeding in 49 countries, and vagrant in 16 countries.[citation needed] While most of the current population in Japan is introduced, mute swans are depicted on scrolls more than 1,000 years old, and wild birds from the mainland Asian population still occur rarely in winter. Natural migrants to Japan usually occur along with whooper and sometimes Bewick's swans.[citation needed]
The mute swan is protected in most of its range, but this has not prevented illegal hunting and poaching. It is often kept in captivity outside its natural range, as a decoration for parks and ponds, and escapes have happened. The descendants of such birds have become naturalised in the eastern United States and Great Lakes, much as the Canada goose has done in Europe.
World population
Mute swans with cygnets in Wolvercote, Oxfordshire
The total native population of mute swans is about 500,000 birds at the end of the breeding season (adults plus young), of which up to 350,000 are in Russia. The largest single breeding concentration is 11,000 pairs in the Volga Delta.
The population in the United Kingdom is about 22,000 birds as of the 2006–2007 winter, a slight decline from the peak of about 26,000–27,000 birds in 1990. This includes about 5,300 breeding pairs, the remainder being immatures. Other significant populations in Europe include 6,800–8,300 breeding pairs in Germany, 4,500 pairs in Denmark, 4,000–4,200 pairs in Poland, 3,000–4,000 pairs in the Netherlands, about 2,500 pairs in Ireland, and 1,200–1,700 pairs in Ukraine.
For many centuries, mute swans in Great Britain were domesticated for food, with individuals being marked by nicks on their webs (feet) or beaks to indicate ownership. These marks were registered with the Crown and a Royal Swanherd was appointed. Any birds not so marked became Crown property, hence the swan becoming known as the "Royal Bird". This domestication saved the mute swan from extirpation through overhunting in Great Britain.
Populations in Western Europe were largely exterminated by hunting pressure in the 13th–19th centuries, except for semi-domesticated birds maintained as poultry by large landowners. Better protection in the late 19th and early 20th centuries allowed the species to expand and return to most or all of their former range. More recently in the period from about 1960 up to the early 1980s, numbers declined significantly again in many areas in England, primarily due to lead poisoning from birds swallowing lead shots from shooting and discarded fishing weights made from lead. After lead weights and shots were mostly replaced by other less toxic alternatives, mute swan numbers increased again rapidly.
Introduced populations
Since being introduced into North America, the mute swan has increased greatly in number to the extent that it is considered an invasive species there. Populations introduced into other areas remain small, with around 200 in Japan, fewer than 200 in New Zealand and Australia, and about 120 in South Africa.
North America
The mute swan was introduced to North America in the late 19th century. Recently, it has been widely viewed as an invasive species because of its rapidly increasing numbers and its adverse effects on other waterfowl and native ecosystems. For example, a study of population sizes in the lower Great Lakes from 1971 to 2000 found that mute swan numbers were increasing at an average rate of at least 10% per year, doubling the population every seven to eight years. Several studies have concluded that mute swans severely reduce the densities of submerged vegetation where they occur.
In 2003, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed to "minimize environmental damages attributed to Mute Swans" by reducing their numbers in the Atlantic Flyway to pre-1986 levels, a 67% reduction at the time. According to a report published in the Federal Register of 2003 the proposal was supported by all thirteen state wildlife agencies which submitted comments, as well as by 43 bird conservation, wildlife conservation and wildlife management organisations. Ten animal rights organisations and the vast majority of comments from individuals were opposed. At this time mute swans were protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act due to a court order, but in 2005 the United States Department of the Interior officially declared them a non-native, unprotected species. Mute swans are protected in some areas of the U.S. by local laws, for example, in Connecticut.
The status of the mute swan as an introduced species in North America is disputed by the interest group "Save the Mute Swans". They assert that mute swans are native to the region and therefore deserving of protection. They claim that mute swans had origins in Russia and cite historical sightings and fossil records. These claims have been rejected as specious by the U.S. Department of the Interior.
Oceania
The mute swan had absolute protection in New Zealand under the Wildlife Act 1953, but this was changed in June 2010 to a lower level of protection. It still has protection, but is now allowed to be killed or held in captivity at the discretion of the Minister of Conservation.
A small feral population exists in the vicinity of Perth, Australia; however, it is believed to number less than 100 individuals.
In popular culture
The mute swan has been the national bird of Denmark since 1984. Before that, the skylark was considered Denmark's national bird (since 1960).
The fairy tale "The Ugly Duckling" by Hans Christian Andersen tells the story of a cygnet ostracised by his fellow barnyard fowl because of his perceived unattractiveness. To his delight (and to the surprise of others), he matures into a graceful swan, the most beautiful bird of all.
Today, the British Monarch retains the right to ownership of all unmarked mute swans in open water, but King Charles III exercises his ownership only on certain stretches of the Thames and its surrounding tributaries. This ownership is shared with the Vintners' and Dyers' Companies, who were granted rights of ownership by the Crown in the 15th century.
The mute swans in the moat at the Bishops Palace at Wells Cathedral in Wells, England have for centuries been trained to ring bells via strings attached to them to beg for food. Two swans are still able to ring for lunch.
The pair of swans in the Boston Public Garden are named Romeo and Juliet after the Shakespearean couple; however, it was found that both of them are females
It is the eye of ignorance that assigns a fixed and unchangeable color to every object; beware of this stumbling block.
Paul Gauguin
Tones get softer and the light turns on, making new shadows and lights, new colors. They are now unchangeable but not lasting long. Someone’s hand will just turn them on one moment and all will go to sleep, except from those who made too much use of the bar. Those will have to proceed to the unsung songs...
The Life and Doctrines of Jacob Boehme,
Man in his cosmic aspect is a being very superior to that which is commonly looked upon as a "man," and which is described in books on anthropology, anatomy, &c. Such external sciences deal only with the grossly material body of external terrestrial man, while the essential body of macrocosmic and microcosmic man is beyond the reach of external observation. In the study of man as a cosmic being there are three subjects to be considered, although the three are only three aspects of one. These three subjects are God, Nature, and Man, and neither one of them can be understood in its inner essence without an understanding of the other two. External science, "natural philosophy," and theology seek to separate them. They regard man as a being separated, distinct, and independent of nature, and nature as something independent of man; while of God they know nothing, and regard the divine power, which is the cause of all life, as if it were something external to nature and man, and beyond their reach. For this reason the "man" of modern science has become an unnatural being, without any conceivable object for his existence, and nature is to him an organism evolved by accidence and subject to no other than mechanically acting law. The divine, spiritual, creative, and hidden powers in man and in nature are entirely removed from the field of perception of the "rationalist." spirit, a self-conscious, luminous sphere of unimaginable extent; as, in fact, at present the mental sphere of man has no defined limits; it reaches as far as his thoughts can go. He was created for the purpose of being the image of God. The glory of God was residing in him, and he was penetrated by the light of divine love. In man is contained everything, God, and the Christ, and the angels, the celestial and terrestrial kingdoms, and the powers of hell. Outside of him is nothing of which he can conceive; he can know nothing except that which exists in his mind. No god or devil, no spirit or any power whatever, can act within man unless it enters into his constitution. Only that which exists in him has existence for him. Without a realisation of this fact the mysteries of religion will remain incomprehensible. It may be interesting and amusing to speculate about all the different gods and celestial hosts that go to make up the Pantheons of the various nations, but such a study does not constitute real knowledge. Only when man's spiritual perceptions are unfolded and he attains divine knowledge of self, then will he know the Christ and all the celestial powers whose aggregate goes to make up the kingdom of God existing within himself.
"The Spirit of God resides from eternity to eternity only in heaven—that is to say, in His own essence, in the power of the majesty. When it became inbreathed into the image of man, then was heaven in man; for God willed to reveal Himself in man, as in an image created after His own likeness, and to manifest the great wonders of His eternal wisdom." (Stiefel, i. 36.) "Simultaneously with the introduction of His divine image, Adam received also the living word of God (spiritual intelligence) to furnish food for his soul." (Menschwerdung, i. 3, 24.) "God created Adam to (enjoy) eternal life in Paradise in a state of paradisiacal perfection. Divine love illumined his interior, as the sun is illuminating the world." (Stiefel, i. 36.) "In Paradise there is perfect life without disturbance, and a perpetual day, and the paradisiacal man is clear like transparent glass, and he is fully penetrated by the light of the divine sun." 1 (Signature, xi. 5 1.)
His body likewise appeared luminous, because its terrestrial substance was absorbed in the celestial essence. It radiated a pure, divine light. 2
"The inner holy corporeity of the pure element penetrated through the four elements and kept the Limus of earth—that is to say, the external sulphuric (terrestrial) body within itself as in a state of absorption. Nevertheless, that body was actually present, but in such a way as darkness dwells in light, so that the darkness cannot manifest itself on account of the light." (Mysterium, xvi. 6.) "All the qualities of the inner and holy body, together with the external ones, were in primordial man attuned in one harmony. Neither of them lived in its own state of desire; but they had their desire in the soul wherein the divine light was manifest. This, the divine light radiated through all the qualities, and produced in them an equal, harmonious temperature." (Mysterium, xvi. 5.) "The inner man kept the external one imprisoned within itself and penetrated it in a manner comparable to iron, which glows if it is penetrated by fire, so that it seems as if it were itself fire. But when the fire becomes extinct, then does the black, dark iron become manifest." (Mysterium, xvi. 7.) "The pure element penetrated through the external roan and overpowered the four elements; moreover, the power of the heat and the cold was in the flesh. But as the light of God was shining therein, they were in equal harmony, so that neither one of them became manifest before the other. Thus God the Father is called a wrathful, jealous God and a consuming fire, and He is all that in regard to His qualities; but of these qualities nothing becomes manifest in His light." (Stiefel, xi. 75.) "Primordial man in Paradise, being fixed therein, was in a state such as time is before God and God in time. As time is a spectacle before God, likewise the external life of man was a spectacle before the inner and holy man, who was the true image of God." (Mysterium, xvi. 8.) In the same sense the Bhagavad Gita says that the true self, the God, Atma, or " Christ," is not a participator, but merely a spectator in that which concerns the external illusion. "The inner body was a dwelling-place of the Godhead, an image of divine substantiality. In that body the soul had her meekness, and her fire was rendered mild thereby, for she received there the love and meekness of God." (Tilk., i. 233.) Owing to this resemblance to God, Adam's will and thoughts were as one. His mind was pure and uncomplicated, childlike, unsophisticated, and devoted to God; he did not need to speculate about the unknown, because he had the power to perceive that which he wanted to know. He enjoyed the perception of divine and terrestrial things. 1 "The mind of Adam was innocent like that of a child, playing with the wonders of its Father. There was in him no self-knowledge of evil will, no avarice, pride, envy, anger, but a pure enjoyment of love." (Threefold Life, xi. 23.) "When Adam was created in Paradise, there his life was burning like a flame of pure oil. Therefore his perception was celestial, and his intelligence was surpassing and comprehending things beyond nature." (Signature, vii. 2.) "The inner man stood in heaven; his essences were the Paradise; his body was indestructible. He knew the language of God and the angels, and the language of nature, as may be seen by Adam giving names to all creatures, to each according to its own essence and quality." (Forty Questions, iv. 7.) "Adam, after having been created by God, was in Paradise in a state of joy and glorification, beautiful and filled with knowledge. God then brought before him, as the lord of the world, all the animals, so that he might behold them, and give a name to each according to its special essence and power. And Adam knew that he was within every creature, and he gave to each its appropriate name. God can see into the hearts of all things, and the same could be done by Adam." 1 (Three Principles, x. 17.) In this state of godlike being he had power over all things; for all things existed in him and he in all, and there was nothing that could have done him any external injury. To express it in other words, all things existed subjectively in his mind, as they now do in ours, but his mind was his " body," and where the centre of his consciousness was, there was his "form." 2 "As God is a Lord over all, so man in the power of God was to be a lord over this world." (Menschwerdung, i. 4, 7.) "The soul in the power of God penetrates through all things, and is powerful over all, as God Himself; for she lives in the power of His heart." (Three Principles, xxii. 17.) "As gold is incorruptible in the fire, so man was subject to nothing, only to the One God dwelling in him, and manifested in him by the power of His holy being." (Mysterium, xvi. 12.) "Everything was subject to Adam; his rule extended into heaven and over the earth, and in all elements and stars. This was because divine power was manifested in him." 1 (Mysterium, xvi. 2.) "The will-spirit of man penetrated through all creatures, and was injured by none, because none could grasp it. No creature can apprehend the power and light of the sun in its own will, but must remain passive to become penetrated by it; thus it was then the case with the will-spirit of man." (Grace, vii. 2.)
"Before his fall, man could rule over the sun and the stars. Everything was in his power. 2 Fire, air, water, and earth could not tame him; no fire burned him, no water drowned, no air suffocated him; all that lived stood in awe of him." (Threefold Life, xi. 23.) "No heat, no cold, no sickness, nor accident, nor any fear could touch or terrify him. His body could pass through earth and rocks without breaking anything in them; for a man who could be overpowered by the terrestrial nature, or who could be broken to pieces, would not be eternal." 3 (Menschwerdung, i. 2, 13.) Likewise that nature which surrounded him, and which is called Eden, was illuminated by the celestial light, and it was thereby exalted to paradisiacal magnificence. "Adam was in Paradise, that is to say, in the temperature. Thereby he was placed in a certain locality, namely, in that where the holy world was blooming out through the earth and bearing the fruits of Paradise." (Grace, v. 34.) "'Eden' means the locality, but 'Paradise' is the out-flowing or the life of God in divine harmony." (Letters, xxxi. 28.) "In Paradise the substance of the divine world penetrated the substance belonging to time, comparable to the power of the sun penetrating a fruit growing on a tree, and endowing it with such qualities as render it lovely to the sight and good to the taste." (Mysterium, xvii. 5.) "Thus the holy divine world was predominant through all the three principles of the human quality, and there was an equal accord, and no enmity or opposite will was manifest betwixt the principles." 1 (Mysterium, xvii. 20.) There were in Paradise all the products which we meet in the terrestrial world, but they were there in a state of ethereality and of supernatural beauty. This paradisiacal beauty was, however, not manifested in all parts of the world. "In Paradise there are growths, the same as in this world, but not in (terrestrial) tangibility. There Heaven is in the place of the earth, the Light of God instead of the sun, and the Eternal Father in the place of the power of the stars." (Three Principles, ix. 20.) "The Paradise is not anything corporeal or tangible in a terrestrial sense, but its corporeity and tangibility is like that of the angels. It is there a clear,
visible, substance, as if it were material, and it is actually "material;" but it is formed only out of the power, without any addition of terrestrial matter, and it is, therefore, perfectly transparent." (Three Principles, ix. 18.)
"The tangible world, or nature, before the time of the wrath of God, was thin, ethereal, lovely, and clear, so that the sourcive spirits could look through everything and penetrate it. There were therein neither terrestrial rocks nor earth, and there was no created light needed, such as it is now; but the light was generated in all things in the midst of each thing, and everything was in the light." (Aurora, xviii. 29.) The whole world would have been all Paradise if it had not been corrupted by Lucifer. But as God knew that Adam was going to fall, it bloomed out in only one place, wherein man might find a suitable dwelling-place, and be fortified therein." (Mysterium, xvii. 7.) "God saw and knew that man was going to fall, and therefore the Paradise did not bloom and bear fruits in the whole of the world by means of the earth, although it was manifest everywhere, but only in the Garden of Eden, wherein Adam was tempted, did it become revealed in its full magnificence." 1 (Letters, xxxix. 28.) For all that, man, although having been endowed with great splendour by the Creator, did not yet enjoy true similarity with God. 2 "In Adam was manifest the kingdom of grace, the divine life, because he lived in the temperature (harmony) of the qualities, but he did not know that God was revealed in him. Likewise his self-will did not know that which is good, because it had as yet experienced no evil. How could there be any joy where no sorrow is known?" (Grace, ix. 15.) "The soul was in her own essence from eternity, but as a created thing she was formed to represent the image of God at the time of the creation of the body. Nevertheless she is per se not yet the true image, but only an essential fire for its production." (Tilk., i. 81.)
"The soul of man, which has been breathed into him by God, is from the Eternal Father; but with that she has not yet attained the birth of the Son, wherein is the end of nature, and from which no created being issues." (Three Principles, ix. 13.)
Man can attain real similarity to God and perfect beatitude only by decisively willing to put his will into the Son, as the Heart or Light of the Father. "God has the eternal and unchangeable will to generate His Heart and his Son, and thus the soul should put her immutable will into the heart of God. Then would she be in heaven and Paradise, and enjoy the inexpressible happiness of God the Father, which He enjoys in the Son, and she would hear the inexpressible words in the heart of God." 1 (Three Principles, x. 14.) "Adam was conceived in the love of God and born into this world. He was in possession of a divine substantiality, and his soul was of the will, the first principle, the quality of the Father. This will should be directed, together with the imagination, into the heart of the Father, that is to say, into the Word and the Spirit of love and purity. Then would man's soul retain the substance of God in the Word of Life." (Menschwerdung, i. 10,
"The living soul, from the eternal will of the Father, was breathed into man, and this will has no other purpose than to give birth to His only Son. 1 Of this will God the Father infused into man, and this is the eternal soul of man. The soul ought to put her regenerated will into the eternal will of the Father, in the heart of God. Then will she receive the power of the heart of God and also His holy eternal light, wherein arises the Paradise and the celestial kingdom and eternal joy." (Three Principles, xxvi. 16.) "If the soul sinks her will into the meekness, i.e., the obedience of God, she becomes a fountain of the heart of God, and receives divine power, and all her essences become angelic and joyful. Then her harsh essences will also be useful to her, and appear to her more mild and useful, than if they had already originally been entirely sweet and mild." (Three Principles, xiii. 31.) It was within his power to decide, and he was free to do so, because there was in him not only the principle of light, but also the fire-principle,—not only perception, but will. "The light and the power of the light is a desire, and wants to come in possession of the noble image made after God's likeness, because it has been created for the world of light. Likewise the dark world or the craving wrath desires the same, for man has all the worlds within himself, and there is a great battle taking place in man. That principle with which he identifies himself with in his desire and his will, will rule in him." (Tilk., i. 381.) "As the soul is essential and her very substance is a
desire, it is clear that she is in two kinds of Fiat. The first is her own soul-property; the other belongs to the second principle, issuing from the will of God in the soul. The soul desiring for God for the purpose of forming herself in His image and likeness, this desire of God acts as a Fiat in her own centre; for the desire of God wants to possess the soul. On the other hand, she herself desires to possess the centre in the power of the fire, wherein the life of the soul originates." (Eye, vii.)
"The will of the soul is free, and she can either sink into nothing within herself and conceive of herself as the nothing, when she will sprout like a branch out of the tree of divine life, and eat of the love of God; or she may in her own self-will rise up in the fire and desire to become a separate tree." 1 (Forty Questions, ii. 2.) There existed in man also the third principle, wherein resides sensual desire. He was not endowed with this principle for the purpose of surrendering himself to it, but that he might introduce it into the light of God, and glorify Him by means of that light."Man was a mixed individuality, and destined to be an image according to the inner, and also according to the outer world; but as the symbol of God, he was to rule with the inner consciousness over the external one." (Menschwerdung, i. 3, 13.) "When man remains in harmonious order, so as not to let one world into the other, he is then the likeness of God; but the image or the mirror of the world. of light he should surely introduce into the external world." (Six Theosophical Points, vi. 12.) "The constellation (the astral influences) of the macrocosm should not be permitted to rule over man; but he has his own constellation (the spirit, the idea) within himself, which is capable of becoming attuned to the harmony of the rise and evolution of the divine world within." (Letters, i. 8.) "All of man's desire should have been placed into the light; then would the light have shone within his essence and desire, and filled everything as with one will." (Tilk., i. 542.) "The soul of Adam could have ruled powerfully over the external principle if she had entered again with her will into the heart of God, into the word of the Lord." 1 (Forty Questions, iv. 2.) Thus it was intended that, by means of the instrumentality of man, the paradisiacal splendour should be continually spread out and increased over terrestrial nature, and that all the hidden treasures of nature should be uncovered. "The external world is also of God and belonging to God, and man has been created therein, so that he may bring again the external into the internal one; the end into the beginning." (Letters, xi. 18.) "Adam was also created in the external quality, so that he may manifest in forms and execute in works that which had been perceived in eternal wisdom." (Menschwerdung, i. 4.) "Man has been created in Paradise, for it was out-blooming through the earth, and from the earth of Paradise was Adam's body created, because he was a lord of the earth, and it was his destiny to unfold the wonders of the earth. If it had not been for that purpose, God might have endowed him with an angelic body; but in that case the substantiated being with its wonderful qualities would not have been unfolded." 1 (Menschwerdung, ii. 12.)
People that remain unchangeable for a long time ("I am as I am") gain features of things. For example they wear down.
The rock-like mud unfroze a little and rills
Ran and sparkled down each side of the road
Under the catkins wagging in the hedge.
But earth would have her sleep out, spite of the sun;
Nor did I value that thin gilding beam
More than a pretty February thing
Till I came down to the old Manor Farm,
And church and yew-tree opposite, in age
Its equals and in size. The church and yew
And farmhouse slept in a Sunday silentness.
The air raised not a straw. The steep farm roof,
With tiles duskily glowing, entertained
The mid-day sun; and up and down the roof
White pigeons nestled. There was no sound but one.
Three cart-horses were looking over a gate
Drowsily through their forelocks, swishing their tails
Against a fly, a solitary fly.
The Winter's cheek flushed as if he had drained
Spring, Summer, and Autumn at a draught
And smiled quietly. But ’twas not Winter—
Rather a season of bliss unchangeable
Awakened from farm and church where it had lain
Safe under tile and thatch for ages since
This England, Old already, was called Merry.
For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable – what then? (G. Orwell, 1984)
Part of the series “we are the dead”, inspired by George Orwell’s “1984”.
More here: nickiupstairs.com/we-are-the-dead
Photography/Set design/Video: Nicki Panou
Photographer’s assistant: Kiriaki Papadopoulou
Costumes: Nicki Panou, Kiriaki Papadopoulou
Models: Stathis Papoulidis
In youth I dreamed, as other youths have dreamt,
Of love, and thrummed an amateur guitar
To verses of my own, – a stout attempt
To hold communion with the Evening Star
I wrote a sonnet, rhymed it, made it scan.
Ah me! how trippingly those last lines ran. –
O Hesperus! O happy star! to bend
O'er Helen's bosom in the trancéd west,
To match the hours heave by upon her breast,
And at her parted lip for dreams attend –
If dawn defraud thee, how shall I be deemed,
Who house within that bosom, and am dreamed?
For weeks I thought these lines remarkable;
For weeks I put on airs and called myself
A bard: till on a day, as it befell,
I took a small green Moxon from the shelf
At random, opened at a casual place,
And found my young illusions face to face
With this: – 'Still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair Love's ripening breast
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest;
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever,--or else swoon to death.'
O gulf not to be crossed by taking thought!
O heights by toil not to be overcome!
Great Keats, unto your altar straight I brought
My speech, and from the shrine departed dumb.
– And yet sometimes I think you played it hard
Upon a rather hopeful minor bard.
"God's great love is as unchangeable a part of God as His holiness..."
~ Billy Graham
a memory from Ofuna Flower Garden in Kamakura (Japan)
(19.5 X 25.5 in.)
more: www.justinduerr.com
WHAT HAND HAS TRACED THE CURVE OF THE EYE OF THE RAREST OF BIRDS - WHO ALONE GRACES WITH WATCHFUL PRESENCE THE CANOPY OF THE UNMOLDED HEAVENS. AND WHAT HAND HAS GRASPED THE FURTHEST SWEEPING CURVE OF A SUPERNAL FEATHER WHICH TUMBLED THROUGH THE CLOUDS LIKE A TRAIL OF CALLIGRAPHY, ONLY SEEN ONCE IN HISTORY, AND ONLY ABLE TO OCCUR IN THE FUTURE. WHAT HAND HAS SET THE STAGE UPON WHICH WE PLAY, UNAWARE OF ANY MACHINATION BEYOND THE UNLIVING ROOM WHICH CONTAINS OUR ENSOULMENT. THE HAND THAT WINDS THE CLOCKWORK ON WHICH OUR HEARTS ARE SET, THE ENGINE OF POTENTIALITY, DRIVING THE CREATION OF FROZEN, UNCHANGEABLE MOMENTS. (Time's craftwork edges me on in compulsive desire to feel it's will move through my fingers. The poem's fate is unknown, sealed in a filigreed box of impossible dimension. As one side of a reflection is pouring out of the eyes, hidden from their gaze, a curtain is pulled across one side of time. This is where ideas come from, and the hand which forged them awaits also to unwind our guts. The angles combine in consonancy, convolving inward until the tone congeals as this poem and the hand that records it's presence.)
The weather is unchangeable these days. My father complains of the cold but he may be right in a sense. We tend to think it is hot because the thermometer shows e.g. 25℃ in the room.
Sophia existing in the human person (and all of nature) is an organ for perceiving the heavenly Sophia who is then capable of leading the repentant seeker to God.
-The Submerged Reality: Sophiology and the Turn to a Poetic Metaphysics by Michael Martin, Adrian Pabst
The hillock became a cloud of dust, and through the cloud I saw the glorified face of my beloved. In her eyes eternity reposed. I laid hold of her hands, and the tears became a sparkling bond that could not be broken. Into the distance swept by, like a tempest, thousands of years. On her neck I welcomed new life with ecstatic tears. Never was such another dream; then first and ever since I hold fast an eternal, unchangeable faith in the heaven of Night, and its Light, the Beloved.
--The Submerged Reality: Sophiology and the Turn to a Poetic Metaphysics by Michael Martin, Adrian Pabst
Now available from SRX Industries!
Instead of buying a solid color Rahkshi Minifigure, you can buy parts in the correct colors!
Instead of buying all the parts together, which only allows you to choose one color, There are 2 color packs available, the Grey Parts Pack (Includes left and right legs, body, shoulders, and 2 arms) and the Color Parts Pack (includes Head/Back/Spine and 2 hands)
Links
Shop: Link
Grey Parts Pack: Link
Only available in Dark Grey
$10.00
Dark Grey Strong and Flexible
Color Parts Pack: Link
Available in White, Black, Winter Red, Indigo, and Transclear
$4.00
White Strong and Flexible
Transparent Detail (Recommended)
$5.00
White Strong and Flexible Polished (Recommended)
$7.00
Black Strong and Flexible
Winter Red Strong and Flexible
Indigo Strong and Flexible
Complete Minifigure Set: Link
$10.00:
White Strong and Flexible
White Strong and Flexible Polished (Recommended)
$13.00:
Black Strong and Flexible
Winter Red Strong and Flexible
Indigo Strong and Flexible
Dark Grey Strong and Flexible
Frosted Detail (Recommended) (Featured above)
White Detail
Black Detail
Transparent Detail
$18.00:
Frosted Ultra Detail
$40.00
Stainless Steel
Staffs are sold separately.
Join the SRX flickr Group!
www.flickr.com/groups/srxindustries/
Shapeways has an unchangeable spending minimum of $25. You must create a Shapeways account in order to buy from the website. (It doesn't take that long, and will be well worth the time in the end.)
The mute swan (Cygnus olor) is a species of swan and a member of the waterfowl family Anatidae. It is native to much of Eurosiberia, and (as a rare winter visitor) the far north of Africa. It is an introduced species in North America, home to the largest populations outside of its native range, with additional smaller introductions in Australasia and southern Africa. The name "mute" derives from it being less vocal than other swan species. Measuring 125 to 160 cm (49 to 63 in) in length, this large swan is wholly white in plumage with an orange beak bordered with black. It is recognizable by its pronounced knob atop the beak, which is larger in males.
Taxonomy
The mute swan was first formally described by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin as Anas olor in 1789 and was transferred by Johann Matthäus Bechstein to the new genus Cygnus in 1803. Both cygnus and olor mean "swan" in Latin; cygnus is a variant form of cycnus, borrowing from Greek κύκνος kyknos, a word of the same meaning.
Despite its Eurasian origin, its closest relatives are the black swan of Australia and the black-necked swan of South America, not the other Northern Hemisphere swans of the genus Cygnus. The species is monotypic, with no living subspecies.
Evolution
Mute swan subfossils, 6,000 years old, have been found in post-glacial peat beds of East Anglia, Great Britain. They have been recorded from Ireland east to Portugal and Italy, and from France, 13,000 BP (Desbrosse and Mourer-Chauvire 1972–1973). Cygnus olor bergmanni, a paleosub species which differed only in size from the living bird, is known from fossils found in Azerbaijan. A related paleospecies recorded from fossils and subfossils is the Giant swan, Cygnus falconeri, a flightless species which lived on the islands of Malta and Sicily during the Middle Pleistocene.
Fossils of swan ancestors more distantly allied to the mute swan have been found in four U.S. states: California, Arizona, Idaho and Oregon. The timeline runs from the Miocene to the late Pleistocene or 10,000 BP. The latest find was in Anza Borrego Desert, a state park in California. Fossils from the Pleistocene include Cygnus paloregonus from Fossil Lake, Oregon, Froman's Ferry, Idaho, and Arizona, referred to by Howard in The Waterfowl of the World as "probably the mute type swan".
Description
Adults of this large swan typically range from 140 to 160 cm (55 to 63 in) long, although can range in extreme cases from 125 to 170 cm (49 to 67 in), with a 200 to 240 cm (79 to 94 in) wingspan. Males are larger than females and have a larger knob on their bill. On average, this is the second largest waterfowl species after the trumpeter swan, although male mute swans can easily match or even exceed a male trumpeter in mass. Among standard measurements of the mute swan, the wing chord measures 53–62.3 cm (20.9–24.5 in), the tarsus is 10–11.8 cm (3.9–4.6 in) and the bill is 6.9–9 cm (2.7–3.5 in). The plumage is white, while the legs are dark grey. The beak of the mute swan is bright orange, with black around the nostrils and a black nail.
The mute swan is one of the heaviest extant flying birds. In several studies from Great Britain, males (known as cobs) were found to average from about 10.6 to 11.87 kg (23.4 to 26.2 lb), with a weight range of 9.2–14.3 kg (20–32 lb) while the slightly smaller females (known as pens) averaged about 8.5 to 9.67 kg (18.7 to 21.3 lb), with a weight range of 7.6–10.6 kg (17–23 lb). While the top normal weight for a big cob is roughly 15 kg (33 lb), one unusually big Polish cob weighed almost 23 kg (51 lb) and this counts as the largest weight ever verified for a flying bird, although it has been questioned whether this heavyweight could still take flight.
Young birds, called cygnets, are not the bright white of mature adults, and their bill is dull greyish-black, not orange, for the first year. The down may range from pure white to grey to buff, with grey/buff the most common. The white cygnets have a leucistic gene. Cygnets grow quickly, reaching a size close to their adult size in approximately three months after hatching. Cygnets typically retain their grey feathers until they are at least one year old, with the down on their wings having been replaced by flight feathers earlier that year.
All mute swans are white at maturity, though the feathers (particularly on the head and neck) are often stained orange-brown by iron and tannins in the water.
Polish swan
The colour morph C. o. morpha immutabilis (immūtābilis is Latin for "immutable, unchangeable, unalterable"), also known as the "Polish swan", has pinkish (not dark grey) legs and dull white cygnets; as with white domestic geese, it is found only in populations with a history of domestication. Polish swans carry a copy of a gene responsible for leucism.
Behaviour
Mute swans nest on large mounds that they build with waterside vegetation in shallow water on islands in the middle or at the very edge of a lake. They are monogamous and often reuse the same nest each year, restoring or rebuilding it as needed. Male and female swans share the care of the nest, and once the cygnets are fledged it is not uncommon to see whole families looking for food. They feed on a wide range of vegetation, both submerged aquatic plants which they reach with their long necks, and by grazing on land. The food commonly includes agricultural crop plants such as oilseed rape and wheat, and feeding flocks in the winter may cause significant crop damage, often as much through trampling with their large webbed feet, as through direct consumption. It will also feed on small proportions of aquatic insects, fish and frogs.
Unlike black swans, mute swans are usually strongly territorial with just a single pair on smaller lakes, though in a few locations where a large area of suitable feeding habitat is found, they can be colonial. The largest colonies have over 100 pairs, such as at the colony at Abbotsbury Swannery in southern England, and at the southern tip of Öland Island, Ottenby Preserve, in the coastal waters of the Baltic Sea, and can have nests spaced as little as 2 m (7 ft) apart. Non-mated juveniles up to 3–4 years old commonly form larger flocks, which can total several hundred birds, often at regular traditional sites. A notable flock of non-breeding birds is found on the River Tweed estuary at Berwick-upon-Tweed in northeastern England, with a maximum count of 787 birds. A large population exists near the Swan Lifeline Station in Windsor and lives on the Thames in the shadow of Windsor Castle. Once the adults are mated they seek out their territories and often live close to ducks and gulls, which may take advantage of the swan's ability to reach deep water weeds, which tend to spread out on the water surface.
The mute swan is less vocal than the noisy whooper and Bewick's swans; they do, however, make a variety of sounds, often described as "grunting, hoarse whistling, and snorting noises." During a courtship display, mute swans utter a rhythmic song. The song helps synchronize the movements of their heads and necks. It could technically be employed to distinguish a bonded couple from two dating swans, as the rhythm of the song typically fails to match the pace of the head movements of two dating swans. Mute swans usually hiss at competitors or intruders trying to enter their territory.[30] The most familiar sound associated with mute swans is the vibrant throbbing of the wings in flight which is unique to the species and can be heard from a range of 1 to 2 km (0.6 to 1 mi), indicating its value as a contact sound between birds in flight. Cygnets are especially vocal and communicate through a variety of whistling and chirping sounds when content, as well as a harsh squawking noise when distressed or lost.
Nesting in spring, Cologne, Germany
Mute swans can be very aggressive in defence of their nests and are highly protective of their mate and offspring. Most defensive acts from a mute swan begin with a loud hiss and, if this is not sufficient to drive off the predator or intruder, are followed by a physical attack. Swans attack by striking at the threat with bony spurs in their wings, accompanied by biting with their large bill, while smaller waterbirds such as ducks are normally grabbed with the swan's bill and dragged or thrown clear of the swan and its offspring. Swans will kill intruders into their territory, both other swans, and geese and ducks, by drowning, climbing onto and pecking the back of the head and forcing the other bird underwater.
The wings of the swan are very powerful, though not strong enough to break an adult man's leg, as is commonly misquoted. Large waterfowl, such as Canada geese, (more likely out of competition than in response to potential predation) may be aggressively driven off, and mute swans regularly attack people who enter their territory.
The cob is responsible for defending the cygnets while on the water, and will sometimes attack small watercraft, such as canoes, that it feels are a threat to its young. The cob will additionally try to chase the predator out of his family territory and will keep animals such as foxes and raptors at bay. In New York (outside its native range), the most common predators of cygnets are common snapping turtles. Healthy adults are rarely preyed upon, though canids such as coyotes, felids such as lynx, and bears can pose a threat to infirm ones (healthy adults can usually swim away from danger and nest defence is usually successful.) and there are a few cases of healthy adults falling prey to the golden eagles. In England, there has been an increased rate of attacks on swans by out-of-control dogs, especially in parks where the birds are less territorial. This is considered criminal in British law, and the birds are placed under the highest protection due to their association with the monarch. Mute swans will readily attack dogs to protect themselves and their cygnets from an attack, and an adult swan is capable of overwhelming and drowning even large dog breeds.
The familiar pose with the neck curved back and wings half raised, known as busking, is a threat display. Both feet are paddled in unison during this display, resulting in more jerky movement. The swans may also use the busking posture for wind-assisted transportation over several hundred meters, so-called windsurfing.
Like other swans, mute swans are known for their ability to grieve for a lost or dead mate or cygnet. Swans will go through a mourning process, and in the case of the loss of their mate, may either stay where their counterpart lived or fly off to join a flock. Should one of the pair die while there are cygnets present, the remaining parent will take up their partner's duties in raising the clutch.
Breeding
Mute swans lay from 4 to 10 eggs. The female broods for around 36 days, with cygnets normally hatching between May and July. The young swans do not achieve the ability to fly before about 120 to 150 days old. This limits the distribution of the species at the northern edge of its range as the cygnets need to learn to fly before the ponds and lakes freeze over.
Distribution and habitat
The mute swan is found naturally mainly in temperate areas of Europe then across the Palearctic as far east as Primorsky Krai, near Sidemi.
It is partially migratory throughout northern latitudes in Europe and Asia, as far south as North Africa and the Mediterranean. It is known and recorded to have nested in Iceland and is a vagrant in that area as well as in Bermuda, according to the UN Environment Programme chart of international status chart of bird species, which places it in 70 countries, breeding in 49 countries, and vagrant in 16 countries.[citation needed] While most of the current population in Japan is introduced, mute swans are depicted on scrolls more than 1,000 years old, and wild birds from the mainland Asian population still occur rarely in winter. Natural migrants to Japan usually occur along with whooper and sometimes Bewick's swans.[citation needed]
The mute swan is protected in most of its range, but this has not prevented illegal hunting and poaching. It is often kept in captivity outside its natural range, as a decoration for parks and ponds, and escapes have happened. The descendants of such birds have become naturalised in the eastern United States and Great Lakes, much as the Canada goose has done in Europe.
World population
Mute swans with cygnets in Wolvercote, Oxfordshire
The total native population of mute swans is about 500,000 birds at the end of the breeding season (adults plus young), of which up to 350,000 are in Russia. The largest single breeding concentration is 11,000 pairs in the Volga Delta.
The population in the United Kingdom is about 22,000 birds as of the 2006–2007 winter, a slight decline from the peak of about 26,000–27,000 birds in 1990. This includes about 5,300 breeding pairs, the remainder being immatures. Other significant populations in Europe include 6,800–8,300 breeding pairs in Germany, 4,500 pairs in Denmark, 4,000–4,200 pairs in Poland, 3,000–4,000 pairs in the Netherlands, about 2,500 pairs in Ireland, and 1,200–1,700 pairs in Ukraine.
For many centuries, mute swans in Great Britain were domesticated for food, with individuals being marked by nicks on their webs (feet) or beaks to indicate ownership. These marks were registered with the Crown and a Royal Swanherd was appointed. Any birds not so marked became Crown property, hence the swan becoming known as the "Royal Bird". This domestication saved the mute swan from extirpation through overhunting in Great Britain.
Populations in Western Europe were largely exterminated by hunting pressure in the 13th–19th centuries, except for semi-domesticated birds maintained as poultry by large landowners. Better protection in the late 19th and early 20th centuries allowed the species to expand and return to most or all of their former range. More recently in the period from about 1960 up to the early 1980s, numbers declined significantly again in many areas in England, primarily due to lead poisoning from birds swallowing lead shots from shooting and discarded fishing weights made from lead. After lead weights and shots were mostly replaced by other less toxic alternatives, mute swan numbers increased again rapidly.
Introduced populations
Since being introduced into North America, the mute swan has increased greatly in number to the extent that it is considered an invasive species there. Populations introduced into other areas remain small, with around 200 in Japan, fewer than 200 in New Zealand and Australia, and about 120 in South Africa.
North America
The mute swan was introduced to North America in the late 19th century. Recently, it has been widely viewed as an invasive species because of its rapidly increasing numbers and its adverse effects on other waterfowl and native ecosystems. For example, a study of population sizes in the lower Great Lakes from 1971 to 2000 found that mute swan numbers were increasing at an average rate of at least 10% per year, doubling the population every seven to eight years. Several studies have concluded that mute swans severely reduce the densities of submerged vegetation where they occur.
In 2003, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed to "minimize environmental damages attributed to Mute Swans" by reducing their numbers in the Atlantic Flyway to pre-1986 levels, a 67% reduction at the time. According to a report published in the Federal Register of 2003 the proposal was supported by all thirteen state wildlife agencies which submitted comments, as well as by 43 bird conservation, wildlife conservation and wildlife management organisations. Ten animal rights organisations and the vast majority of comments from individuals were opposed. At this time mute swans were protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act due to a court order, but in 2005 the United States Department of the Interior officially declared them a non-native, unprotected species. Mute swans are protected in some areas of the U.S. by local laws, for example, in Connecticut.
The status of the mute swan as an introduced species in North America is disputed by the interest group "Save the Mute Swans". They assert that mute swans are native to the region and therefore deserving of protection. They claim that mute swans had origins in Russia and cite historical sightings and fossil records. These claims have been rejected as specious by the U.S. Department of the Interior.
Oceania
The mute swan had absolute protection in New Zealand under the Wildlife Act 1953, but this was changed in June 2010 to a lower level of protection. It still has protection, but is now allowed to be killed or held in captivity at the discretion of the Minister of Conservation.
A small feral population exists in the vicinity of Perth, Australia; however, it is believed to number less than 100 individuals.
In popular culture
The mute swan has been the national bird of Denmark since 1984. Before that, the skylark was considered Denmark's national bird (since 1960).
The fairy tale "The Ugly Duckling" by Hans Christian Andersen tells the story of a cygnet ostracised by his fellow barnyard fowl because of his perceived unattractiveness. To his delight (and to the surprise of others), he matures into a graceful swan, the most beautiful bird of all.
Today, the British Monarch retains the right to ownership of all unmarked mute swans in open water, but King Charles III exercises his ownership only on certain stretches of the Thames and its surrounding tributaries. This ownership is shared with the Vintners' and Dyers' Companies, who were granted rights of ownership by the Crown in the 15th century.
The mute swans in the moat at the Bishops Palace at Wells Cathedral in Wells, England have for centuries been trained to ring bells via strings attached to them to beg for food. Two swans are still able to ring for lunch.
The pair of swans in the Boston Public Garden are named Romeo and Juliet after the Shakespearean couple; however, it was found that both of them are females
My first major project in Blender, the War Hound. Created in Blender, all renders made using the Cycles internal render engine. Decals and editing done in both Photoshop and paint.net.
Major Credit to the following people :
- Νεκρό - for his original design, the Πολέμου κυνηγόσκυλο.
www.flickr.com/photos/47971857@N04/14595370063/in/datepos...
Thanks for the great design, which I deemed worthy of modeling. However, I ended up changing the design somewhat to better suit the 3d environment I was working in.
- Blending Jacob - for his Blender camo material. I used his node configuration to add the camo to the receiver material. Thanks!
blendingjacob.blogspot.com/p/fabric-materials.html
- Doug7070 - for helping me greatly throughout the entire process. Since this was my first serious Blender project, I had no idea where to start, or even how to do a quarter of the things I now know. Thank god for edge split. Also, thanks for rewriting my technical descriptions. Check out his gallery!
- mrhd - for his help in explaining decal texturing. Wouldn't have got this look without you, helped me a ton.
- ukitakumuki and exizt for the inspiration and presentation layout. Was heavily inspired by both.
- I used several vectors off of google images, the authors which I do not remember, These include the battery decal, and the 'eye' next to 'ORTHO'. Thanks!
*Aetherium Defence United. This organization of space, ground, naval and aerospace forces derives its members from clans and free nations from across Aether, and are charged with the ultimate goal of defending Aether from external attack by any means necessary.
*Intelligent, sentient automatons. Combatants are created by the combination of factory-manufactured metallic and synthetic husks combined with ‘nanomesh’ - an artificial being composed of a swath of nanomachines left behind on Aether by the same ancient aliens that left the region eons ago. They are, for all intents and purposes, fully alive. They are named as so due to their original use by Atherians as war machines - golems - during their dark ages. Nanomesh cannot be found on Majoris.
*Majoris is a habitable planet sharing an orbit with Aether - the two planets revolve around each other. Due to artificial but unchangeable circumstances, Majoris residents are not as aware of the inhabitants of their planetary counterpart as Aether is of Majoris, but Aether residents are prepared for violent first contact as Majoris enters their Space Age.
Due to the same artificial circumstances, Majoris residents exhibit almost supernatural abilities, allowing them to develop psionics of great power which are in reality caused by nanomachines left by aliens eons ago as an experiment on their own kind. Aether inhabitants do not share these powers in any great number (1 in a million exhibit abilites, but these people often never realize that they can use ‘powers’), but they are much greater in population as well as technological prowess
"Non-injury to all living beings is the only religion.”
“In happiness and suffering, in joy and grief, we should regard all creatures as we regard our own self, and should therefore refrain from inflicting upon others such injury as would appear undesirable to us if inflicted upon ourselves.”
“This is the quintessence of wisdom; not to kill anything.
All breathing, existing, living sentient creatures should not be slain, nor treated with violence, nor abused, nor tormented, nor driven away.
This is the pure unchangeable Law.
Therefore, cease to injure living things.”
“All living things love their life, desire pleasure and do not like pain; they dislike any injury to themselves; everybody is desirous of life and to every being, his life is very dear.”
(Yogashastra - Jain Scripture, c. 500 BC)"
This picture was shot a few hours ago as the first shades of sunset started to give this golden light to the tallest Jain thirthankara (saint) rockcut statue (about 20 meters) which is standing under Gwalior Fort.
The 24 statues are overlooking the city of the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.
She kept her songs, they took so little space,
The covers pleased her:
One bleached from lying in a sunny place,
One marked in circles by a vase of water,
One mended, when a tidy fit had seized her,
And coloured, by her daughter -
So they had waited, till in widowhood
She found them, looking for something else, and stood
Relearning how each frank submissive chord
Had ushered in
Word after sprawling hyphenated word,
And the unfailing sense of being young
Spread out like a spring-woken tree, wherein
That hidden freshness sung,
That certainty of time laid up in store
As when she played them first. But, even more,
The glare of that much-mentioned brilliance, love,
Broke out, to show
Its bright incipience sailing above,
Still promising to solve, and satisfy,
And set unchangeably in order. So
To pile them back, to cry,
Was hard, without lamely admitting how
It had not done so then, and could not now.
People swear by someone greater than themselves, and the oath confirms what is said and puts an end to all argument. Because God wanted to make the unchanging nature of his purpose very clear to the heirs of what was promised, he confirmed it with an oath. God did this so that, by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled to take hold of the hope set before us may be greatly encouraged. We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain, where our forerunner, Jesus, has entered on our behalf. He has become a high priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek.
[Hebrews 6:16-20 NIV]
5 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW:
1. Like it or not, we are ALL sinners: As the Scriptures say, “No one is righteous—not even one. No one is truly wise; no one is seeking God. All have turned away; all have become useless. No one does good, not a single one.” (Romans 3:10-12 NLT)
2. The punishment for sin is death: When Adam sinned, sin entered the world. Adam’s sin brought death, so death spread to everyone, for everyone sinned. (Romans 5:12 NLT)
3. Jesus is our only hope: But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners. (Romans 5:8 NLT) For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:23 NLT)
4. SALVATION is by GRACE through FAITH in JESUS: God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it. For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago. (Ephesians 2:8-10 NLT)
5. Accept Jesus and receive eternal life: If you openly declare that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. (Romans 10:9 NLT) But to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God. (John 1:12 NLT) And this is what God has testified: He has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have God’s Son does not have life. (1 John 5:11-12 NLT)
Read the Bible for yourself. Allow the Lord to speak to you through his Word. YOUR ETERNITY IS AT STAKE!
The Certainty of God’s Promise
When God made his promise to Abraham, since there was no one greater for him to swear by, he swore by himself, saying, “I will surely bless you and give you many descendants.” And so after waiting patiently, Abraham received what was promised.
People swear by someone greater than themselves, and the oath confirms what is said and puts an end to all argument. Because God wanted to make the unchanging nature of his purpose very clear to the heirs of what was promised, he confirmed it with an oath. God did this so that, by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled to take hold of the hope set before us may be greatly encouraged. We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain, where our forerunner, Jesus, has entered on our behalf. He has become a high priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek.
[Hebrews 6:13-20 NIV]
5 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW:
1. Like it or not, we are ALL sinners: As the Scriptures say, “No one is righteous—not even one. No one is truly wise; no one is seeking God. All have turned away; all have become useless. No one does good, not a single one.” (Romans 3:10-12 NLT)
2. The punishment for sin is death: When Adam sinned, sin entered the world. Adam’s sin brought death, so death spread to everyone, for everyone sinned. (Romans 5:12 NLT)
3. Jesus is our only hope: But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners. (Romans 5:8 NLT) For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:23 NLT)
4. SALVATION is by GRACE through FAITH in JESUS: God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it. For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago. (Ephesians 2:8-10 NLT)
5. Accept Jesus and receive eternal life: If you openly declare that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. (Romans 10:9 NLT) But to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God. (John 1:12 NLT) And this is what God has testified: He has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have God’s Son does not have life. (1 John 5:11-12 NLT)
Read the Bible for yourself. Allow the Lord to speak to you through his Word. YOUR ETERNITY IS AT STAKE!
A small colourful metal advertising sign promoting the Coon Chicken Inn in Seattle, Washington USA.
One historical link:
www.ferris.edu/news/jimcrow/links/chicken/
History: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coon_Chicken_Inn
Coon Chicken Inn was an American chain of four restaurants founded by Maxon Lester Graham and Adelaide Burt in 1925,[1] which prospered until the late 1950s. The restaurant chain was popular in their day. The restaurant's name (which uses an ethnic slur), trademarks, and entrances of the restaurants were designed to look like a smiling blackface caricature of an African-American porter. The smiling capped porter head also appeared on menus, dishes, and promotional items. Due to change in popular culture and the general consideration of being culturally and racially offensive, the chain has since been discontinued and is now defunct.
The first Coon Chicken Inn was opened in suburban Salt Lake City, Utah in 1925. In 1929, another restaurant was opened in then-suburban Lake City near Seattle, Washington,[2] and a third was opened in the Hollywood District of Portland, Oregon, in 1931. A fourth location was advertised but never opened in Spokane, Washington. Later, a cabaret, orchestra, and catering were added to the Seattle and Salt Lake restaurants.[3]
An advertisement for the restaurant is shown in the 2004 mockumentary C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America where it is depicted as being successful in a fictional timeline where the Confederacy defeats and annexes the United States in 1864 with the help of the United Kingdom and France.
A Coon Chicken Inn advertisement also appears in Ghost World, a 2001 American comedy-drama film directed by Terry Zwigoff.
Restaurant chain located in the Pacific Northwest from the late 1920s through the late 1940s. The chain was famous for its ubiquitous ‘Coon’ logo, a caricatured African-American male rooted in 19th century minstrel theatre and early 20th century advertising. The most prominent manifestation of the Coon caricature was the 12-foot high ‘Coon head’ that served as the entrance to each restaurant location.
Maxon Lester Graham and his wife Adelaide founded the Coon Chicken Inn in Salt Lake City, Utah in 1925. The early success of this location prompted the opening of two additional chains in Portland, Oregon and Seattle, Washington in the early 1930s. The patrons and employees of the Coon Chicken Inn chains were predominantly white, though African-Americans were hired to work in the kitchen of the Salt Lake City branch.
Graham adopted the Coon caricature and created the ‘Coon head’ as a gimmick to attract customers in the emerging age of roadside restaurants, novelty architecture, and automobile convenience. Graham additionally promoted the chain through the distribution of postcards, newspaper advertisements, matchboxes, children’s fans, spare tire covers, and delivery cars, all of which prominently featured the Coon Chicken Inn logo. The Coon logo saturated the restaurants’ interiors as well. Plates, forks, menus, and placemats featured the caricature, as did menu items such as the ‘Baby Coon Special’ and the ‘Coon Fried Steak.’
African Americans opposed this blatant display of racial hostility. In 1930, the Seattle branch of the National Association for the Advancement for Colored People (NAACP) and Seattle’s African American newspaper The Northwest Enterprise protested the opening of the local Coon Chicken Inn by threatening Graham with a lawsuit for libel and defamation of race. In response, Graham agreed to change the style of advertising by removing the word ‘Coon’ from the restaurant’s delivery car, repainting the ‘Coon head’ entrance to the restaurant, and canceling an order of 1,000 automobile tire covers. This small stride, however, was not enough to fully erase the image of the caricature from Seattle. Graham violated his agreement with the NAACP but managed to evade the lawsuit by changing the color of the Coon logo from black to blue.
Graham closed the Seattle and Portland locations in 1949. The Coon Chicken Inn restaurant in Salt Lake City, however, remained open until 1957. It is remembered today in films such as Ghost World and The Confederate States of America; relics of the Coon Chicken Inn are generally regarded as Black Memorabilia collectables.
Sources:
depts.washington.edu/civilr/coon_chicken.htm; www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/links/chicken/; Williams-Forson,Psyche A.Building Houses out of Chicken Legs: Black Women, Food, and Power (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006)
- See more at: www.blackpast.org/aaw/coon-chicken-inn#sthash.QwiXVuo2.dpuf
In the early 1930s, Joseph Staton, an employee of The Northwest Enterprise, a prominent African-American newspaper in Seattle, was arrested and booked in jail for vandalizing an automobile parked on the corner of 3rd and Yesler in Pioneer Square. In court a few days later, the judge requested to see a section of a spare tire cover that Staton had removed. When the court attendants brought it out, the judge laughed and remarked, “Well, I’ll just fine you three dollars and you go on home.”[1]
The image that Staton removed from the spare tire cover featured the logo of the Coon Chicken Inn, a fried chicken restaurant chain in the Northwest whose logo featured a ‘Coon’, or a racist caricature of an African-American male popular in 19th century minstrel theatre and early 20th century advertising. The Coon Chicken Inn’s ‘Coon’ wore a Porter’s uniform; its face featured a winking left eye and enlarged red lips forever gaping to expose the words ‘Coon Chicken Inn’ etched on the top row of its shining white teeth.
To fully comprehend the significance of the CCI logo, it is important to step back and examine the history of the ‘Coon’ caricature itself. The term coon emerged in early America as a shortening of raccoon and, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, soon became synonymous with “a sly, knowing fellow,” and, subsequently, “a Negro.”[2] Though originally associated with white ‘backcountry folk’, the shift in the use of coon from an expression describing a country rube to a derogatory term for an African-American is connected to the introduction and instant success of the 19th century minstrel show character Zip Coon.[3]
Though not the first blackface character in the minstrel tradition, according to cultural critic John Strausbaugh, Zip Coon became the first popular minstrel personality to represent the “black urban dandy… a ‘negar’ who ‘acts white.”[4]. For whites who feared job competition once slavery ended, the Zip character served as a symbol of “the terror that lower-class whites had of being left at the bottom if ‘niggars’ like Zip got too uppity.”[5]. On stage, Zip Coon would act like a braggart and a fool, eliciting laughter and fascination while reinforcing white supremacy and hostility toward African-Americans.
In the late 19th century, the Coon caricature was revised to fit the predilections of post-Civil War whites who, according to historian Kenneth Goings, were not prepared to “handle the status of African-Americans as free and technically equal.”[6] The Coon caricature became a way for both northerners and southerners to relive a nostalgic memory of the Old South, one where black slaves were cared for by benevolent white masters and in which African-American males loved to sing, dance, and steal chickens. The origin of this chicken-thieving stereotype is unclear, but is likely rooted in 18th and 19th century narratives and images and in the fact that slaves often did steal chickens and livestock from masters as a form of protest or to augment their meager food rations.[7][8] After emancipation, the inclusion of such stereotypes and caricatures of African-Americans in collectibles and advertising became an effective way for whites to reinforce the myth of the Old South in the collective national memory.
The representation of blacks as servile dependents flourished in American advertising and in the ‘trinket market’ of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Aunt Jemima, the character behind the ready-made pancake, was sold to a receptive American market in 1889 and with her came a proliferation of advertisements and collectables featuring the Mammy, the simple, ever-faithful slave woman who cooked, supervised other house slaves, watched the children, and completed countless additional tasks. ‘Uncle Tom’, originally a character in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, became another popular stereotype who, like Mammy, submissively and contentedly served the ‘massa’. Sambo, Jim Crow, Pickaninny, and Jezebel are further examples of black stereotypes used to sell anything from soap to tobacco and who appeared as objects as diverse as rag dolls and salt and pepper shakers. And of course, the Coon remained an ever-popular stereotype prominent throughout the United States. Coon Cards, or minstrel-themed postcards, became an established form of communication with captions like “The Evolution of a Coon,” “Golly, see dem chickens fly! Dey know a nigger’s goin’ by” and “A Home Run with a Chicken in His Pants.”[9] Like the minstrel shows, these cards depicted blacks with “exaggerated and animal-like features … thick lips, kinky hair, flat noses, big ears, and big feet.”[10]
The fact that the Coon Chicken Inn opened its doors one hundred years after Zip Coon first danced across the stage to the delight of white working-class audiences serves not only as a testament to the power of the Coon image, but also to enduring racial tensions in the Pacific Northwest in the early 20th century. The restaurant was founded in Utah in 1925 by Maxon Lester Graham. According to a brief historical account written by Graham’s grandson and published on the website of Ferris State University’s Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia, Lester Graham and his wife Adelaide got into the fried chicken business after spending many Sundays driving to a small town south of Salt Lake City to eat at a restaurant that served “excellent chicken.” Deciding that fried chicken would do well in suburbia, they built a small restaurant in the Salt Lake suburb of Sugar House. The business immediately gained popularity. However, in July of 1927, the restaurant caught fire and burnt to the ground. In a large publicity stunt, Graham rebuilt the Coon Chicken Inn in 10 days. Four years later, two additional roadside Coon Chicken Inns opened in Portland and Seattle and a fourth branch would eventually open in Spokane, Washington.[11] The massive Coon head served as the entryway to all four of the restaurants. The chain flourished for nearly two decades until Graham closed the branches in the late 1940s. Though Graham never revealed what inspired him to use the Coon caricature as the gimmick for his fried chicken restaurant, the prevalent stereotype of African-Americans as chicken lovers proved to be identifiable and marketable enough to attract white consumers who saw the image as comedic, not cruel. The name connected African-Americans and their ‘favorite dish,’ implicitly signifying that the chicken was authentic and high quality, even for the ‘Coon’.
In Seattle, the twelve-foot grinning Coon head erected in plain view of the increasingly active Bothell Highway served as a reminder of racial segregation in the city and the surrounding area. The 20th century migration of blacks to the Northwest left many white Seattleites wary of the changing racial landscape of the city. Racial restrictive covenants – housing restrictions that prevented nonwhites from buying or renting homes in most Seattle neighborhoods – took root in the 1920s as a reaction to this black migration. For example, a Lake City covenant covering property near the Bothell Highway from 1930 reads:
“Said lot or lots shall not be sold, conveyed, or rented nor leased, in whole or in part, to any person not of the White race; nor shall any person not of the White race be permitted to occupy any portion of said lot or lots or of any building thereon, except a domestic servant actually employed by a White occupant of such building.”[12]
Consequently, by 1930 the majority of African-Americans were concentrated in the area later known as the Central District—located 8 miles from the Coon Chicken Inn.
Though Lake City remained outside of the Seattle city limits until 1954, the Old Bothell Highway played a role in setting Seattle’s racial landscape from the early 20th century. The area gained township status in 1949 after a flood of families flocked to the suburbs after World War II. Lake City’s development was always dependent on the automobile; in 1911, King County improved the Bothell Highway, an old logging road, by paving it with Warrenite. An unincorporated area of King County easily accessible by automobile, the Old Bothell Highway proved to be a prime location for roadside restaurants. As early as 1919, southern and minstrel-themed fried chicken restaurants were attracting Seattleites who, according to Hattie Graham Horrocks’ guide to Seattle restaurants, “wished to drive out-of-town for the occasional dinner.” My Southern Inn, renown for “frying chicken in the window in plain sight of passersby,” became one of the first, soon followed in 1921 by Bob’s Place and in 1923 by Mammy’s Shack.[13] Though historian John A. Jakle argues that most roadside restaurants facades were “quite utilitarian,” a few, like the CCI, embraced a more fanciful, programmatic architectural design. Like the landmark Brown Derby restaurant in Los Angeles or the Teapot Dome Service Station in Zillah, Washington, programmatic, or novelty architecture aimed to “arrest the attention of the speeding public” by erecting unconventional structures.
Once situated on the Old Bothell Highway, Lester Graham vigorously promoted the new restaurant. On August 31st, 1930, an advertisement for the CCI took up almost a full page in the Seattle Times.[15] Under the heading Coon Chicken Inn Opened in Seattle, the page featured the short columns, “Coon Chicken? Ask Anyone Who Came From South,” which defined ‘coon’ chicken as “the way the fowl is cooked by the real, old-fashioned Mammy;” “Highway Resort is One of Huge National Chain” (though at this time only the Salt Lake location existed); “Inn is Built From Local Materials;" “Utah Folk are Champions of Fried Chicken;” “Telephone Will Bring Chicken to Your Home;” and “Parking Space is Provided at Inn for 500 Autos.” The page also included a large advertisement for the CCI, complete with this description of the restaurant:
“The best fried chicken you ever tasted! That’s a mighty strong statement, but you’ll agree after visiting Seattle’s newest, most unique eating place that it’s a mighty true one. Coon Chicken Inn brings to Seattle and the Northwest a nationally-famous method of cookery, and provides a novel, pleasing restaurant at which you’ll enjoy eating. Good food served in a cheerful atmosphere! A service that will fit in with your every plan—party, after-theatre affair, or the wish for a splendid meal! Throughout America our splendid foods have pleased the most discriminating palates. Coon Chicken Inn is not ‘just another restaurant’—it is an innovation providing a pleasurable change from the ordinary café—a new eating place whose cuisine is considered in a class by itself, head and shoulders above the average.”
The advertisement makes no mention of African Americans, a conspicuous silence considering the restaurants logo and architecture and one that speaks to just how uncontroversial the Coon image was for most Seattleites. Of course, for African Americans, the imagery was enough to announce the North End’s hostility towards blacks and let all races know who was and who was not welcome. A photograph of the newly opened CCI building displayed the gaping-mouthed Coon-head entrance with its large red lips, winking eye, and porter’s hat sitting atop a bald, black head. On August 31st, The Seattle Times provided the publicity the restaurant needed to show off its “uniqueness” to all Seattle—black and white communities alike. Though the edifice of the CCI stood in North Seattle, the image of the Coon manifested itself in places beyond the restrictive covenant lines; it infiltrated areas of Seattle where the Coon image did not resonate with citizens.
Though the black population was predominantly restricted to the Central District area, the CCI paraded its logo on public and portable spaces, inundating African-Americans with the offensive Coon caricature. The Seattle Times ad was just one form of invasive advertising employed by the CCI. Another form manifested itself any time a customer ordered chicken for delivery. Orders were filled by a deliveryman driving the ‘Coon Car’, which brought “piping hot, crisp, delicious” chicken to “any part of the city—and right quickly too.” Plastered with the CCI logo, the ‘Coon Car’ allowed the racist imagery to infiltrate “any part of the city” from “10 o’clock in the morning till 2 o’clock the next.”[16]
But the most racially charged form of advertising lay in the spare tire cover. In the early years of the CCI, Graham ordered more than 1,000 automobile spare tire covers that prominently featured the restaurant’s Coon logo.[17] Consumers placed the covers over the spare tire on the back of their vehicles. In displaying these covers, the consumer advertised the CCI and implicitly claimed an affinity with the blatant racial hostility and fear that the image represented.
Though the CCI advertisements served up a continual reminder of the place of black people in Seattle’s racial landscape, African-Americans did not take this exhibition of racial hostility lying down. Like reactions to other “little nasties,” which historian Quintard Taylor identifies as the casually bigoted behavior that typified racism in Seattle, black Seattleites objected vigorously. During the early years of the CCI, African-Americans protested on both individual and community levels, employing remarkable vigilance and determination to fight back against the grossly offensive Coon image.[18]
Joseph Staton was among those who took individual action against the CCI on a small-scale. In an oral history interview recorded by Ester Mumford in 1975, Staton relayed the story of his arrest in the 1930s for slicing the Coon image out of a CCI spare tire cover. Staton and four friends created what Staton referred to as a “contest”: each friend put in 50 cents and whomever cut the most Coon faces out of tire covers after thirty days would win the pot. W. H. Wilson, the editor of the Northwest Enterprise and Staton’s employer, would lend Staton his automobile for work; one day while borrowing Wilson’s car and driving downtown with his friends, Staton watched one of his friends hop out of the car and cut out the Coon logo on a CCI tire cover as part of the contest. The automobile owner noted the license of Wilson’s car and the police traced the prank back to Joseph Staton, who was subsequently arrested, booked, and fined the three dollars.[19]
In an another act of protest, The NAACP and The Northwest Enterprise teamed up in a two-year battle with Lester Graham over the CCI’s Coon logo. The first sign of the battle appeared in a column posted in the Enterprise on September 18, 1930—not a month after Seattleites were greeted by the picture of the Coon in The Seattle Times. The article, headlined “Citizens Protest Against ‘Coon’ Chicken Inn,” informed the predominantly African-American readership that Clarence R. Anderson, a black attorney, William H. Wilson, the editor of the Northwest Enterprise and president of the Seattle NAACP, and Horace R. Cayton, an NAACP member and long-standing civil rights advocate, collectively filed a complaint against the CCI over its advertising. The three activists demanded that the company change its method of advertising “or be charged with libel and defamation of a race.”[20] Similar to a 1930 lawsuit filed by the Seattle NAACP against the local packaging plant, Fresh Products Inc., whose peanut product, ‘Three Little Niggers’, displayed “three colored children standing in a peanut shell,”[21] the NAACP/NW Enterprise protest against the CCI took shape in an impressive legal framework that boldly challenged the derogatory representation of blacks in advertising. A follow up column in the Enterprise on September 25th claimed victory on the side of the protesters. It stated that Graham agreed to change the style of advertising by removing the word ‘Coon’ from the ‘Coon Car’, repainting the front of the CCI, and canceling an order of the 1,000 automobile tire covers.[22]
It proved a somewhat hollow victory, however. In 1931 The NW Enterprise reported on a protest filed by W. H. Wilson against the CCI for violating its previous agreement to “discontinue the distribution of offensive tire covers.” Despite this, the column did note a success: the repainting of the CCI door logo from black to red.[23] This small stride, however, was not enough to fully erase the image of the Coon from Seattle. Not only did Graham claim the restaurant name to be copyrighted and therefore unchangeable, he managed to evade the lawsuit altogether by merely changing the color of the Coon logo. The final column in the NW Enterprise reads as follows:
“Chicken Inn Dodges Suit with Blue Paint: Threatened with prosecution by the Seattle NAACP who charged them with advertising defamatory to colored people the ‘CCI’ is avoiding the charge by changing the black background of their advertising to blue… Miss Codetis Thiel, assistant prosecutor held the owners of the chicken inn were subject to prosecution if they used a black face labeled ‘coon’ in their advertising. The Company has now dodged prosecution by using a blue color in their advertising and [removing] the word ‘coon’ from the teeth of the man’s mouth”[24]
Although their campaigns were unsuccessful, both Joseph Staton’s ‘contest’ and the NAACP/NW Enterprise’s joint protest against the CCI are impressive demonstrations of black agency in Seattle, and they garnered some support from white authorities. The African-American population, while still only .9 percent of Seattle’s population in 1930 and 1 percent in 1940, established itself as a fighting force for equality in the first half of the century.[25] Nevertheless, regardless of the battles waged by the black community, the racial hostility of whites in Seattle reigned throughout the 1930s, keeping the image of the Coon alive and the CCI in business.
It is interesting to note that the CCI opened its doors in the midst of the Great Depression, yet the restaurant not only endured throughout the Depression’s worst years—it thrived. Whites did not seem to find the Coon logo problematic in the least. Indeed, while overt hostility toward African-Americans was not uncommon, the dominant attitude of white Seattleites toward evidence of racism and campaigns for equality was simply apathy. In this way, the Coon Chicken Inn served as a beacon of white bigotry in the North End and tapped deep into the race and class-consciousness of Seattleites, bringing to light the reality of white and black relations of the day.
On the Old Bothell Highway, the Coon-head gimmick certainly managed to attract the attention of passersby, but the question arises of who actually frequented the restaurant. In looking back at the Seattle Times’ August 1930 advertisement for the recently opened CCI, one wonders whom Lester Graham envisioned as the typical clientele. Roadside-restaurants, according to Jakle, aimed to attract more “affluent customers motoring out for pleasure from cities and towns,” seeking “dining experiences removed from the ordinary.”[26] The Seattle Times advertisement did, as Jakle contends, cater to white middle and upper class customers with “discriminating palate[s]” and enough money to frequent the theatre, host parties (complete with fried chicken), and appreciate a cuisine “in a class by itself.” Its presence in the Seattle Times, a paper with citywide distribution, also suggests Graham was reaching out to many different white neighborhoods in Seattle.[27]
But while the CCI tried to paint itself as a restaurant “head and shoulders above the average,” the real composition of the clientele remains in question. Paul de Barros describes the CCI as a local college hangout where students went to hear live music at Club Cotton, a venue able to accommodate more than 250 people that opened in 1934, located around the corner and down the stairs from the CCI.[28] Hattie Horrock also mentions the CCI as being very popular, especially with young people.[29] At least one group of college students went there: a menu found in a college scrapbook that belonged to a woman who graduated from the University of Washington in 1945 has the words, “Barn Dances, Chicken Dinners, Fun” scribbled on its interior.[30]
Born in February 1930, just months before the CCI opened its doors, Seattle native Jean Stewart recalls growing up a mere three blocks south of the CCI. She describes the restaurant as a “lower class place” and one that would have been “racy” to go to.[31] Stewart grew up in a newly developed neighborhood, her house built in 1928 with her father being the original owner. The neighborhood was upper middle class, even through the Depression years, and Stewart adds that it was “extremely class conscious.” Drawing a very distinct line between Lake City and her own neighborhood, Stewart describes why her family never talked about eating at the CCI if they did go:
“You didn’t go up there. You went to the University District. Pretty racy to go there … we didn’t go there often because it was a lower class place. It was simply people who … you see, we were very class conscious … you never took a step down, particularly with my German grandfather. It was very tight, very uncomfortable living … the pressure of all these small things was just too much. You always had to be proper, trying harder … it was very structured.”[32]
Whether or not Stewart was merely ultra-sensitive to the social strata, her description of the CCI makes one thing abundantly clear: discussing the offensiveness of the Coon logo seemed a low priority when comparing it to white class issues.
This indifference to the racist nature of the CCI in favor of class concerns becomes even more evident when one considers a joint labor protest against the CCI by the Bartenders, Cooks, Waiters, and Waitresses Union (BCWW) and the Musicians Union that took place in March of 1937. The unions picketed the CCI for a week, protesting against the unfair treatment of organized labor and demanding that the CCI be completely unionized. On March 18th, E. B. Fish, the labor counsel for the Seattle Chamber of Commerce labor relations department; Jack Weinberger, the international representative of the BCWW; and Lester Graham signed the standard agreement of the unions.[33] The Times report of the agreement makes no mention of the bigoted logo. A photograph of the protest, published in the Seattle Post Intelligencer with the caption, “Big Crowd, Little Profit,” captures a large crowd of white males standing in front of the giant Coon head. The men are holding picketing signs with the word “Unfair” written in bold while the Coon-head winks in the background, as if covertly communicating that he understands the irony of this photograph.[34]
These demonstrations of apathy and indifference towards the racial dimension of the CCI leave the question of why it seemed to resonate with Seattleites for 20 years. The Coon image appeared on every dish, silverware, menu, matchbox (the image even appeared on the matchsticks), and children ‘fans’ produced for the restaurant. The giant Coon face greeted customers as they entered the restaurant, spat them out when they left, or just gaped with its giant red lips at motorists on the Old Bothell Highway. Inside the restaurant, patrons were welcome to consume the “Southern Fried Coon Chicken”, the “Baby Coon Special” (complete with crisp French fries, hot buttered Parkerhouse Rolls, an olive, and a pickle), or the “Coon Fried Steak.”[35] Down the road, one could visit the Associated Poultry Co., which proudly advertised its role in supplying the CCI (the poultry store was conveniently owned by Graham).[36] Or, one was welcome to frequent Club Cotton and dance next to a Coon cutout while listening to the all-white Johnny Maxon’s Orchestra.[37]
The abundance of Coon-related imagery—from drinking glasses to fried chicken specials to matchsticks—was but another manifestation of the racism that reinforced white supremacy in an increasingly diverse and modernizing city. Although surely the success of The CCI is attributable to more than just the memorable logo, the image was a blatantly visible declaration of bigotry in North Seattle—in its own inimitable way, it echoed the restrictive covenants and other discriminatory measures in the wink of its twinkling black eye. The historical Coon image was revived and, not surprisingly, adapted to fit the needs of the community it served: the Coon of the CCI was both the dandy and the chicken lover, but this particular Coon took on a new characteristic. He was well behaved and content to be servile. This Coon was not stealing chickens or merely lazing about, and although he dressed in nice clothing much like a dandy, the CCI Coon was a waiter through and through. Ironically, no blacks were ever employed at the CCI.[38] This representation of blacks being contented in their place in society reveals the deep-seated fear of upheaval and change that helped fuel the development and popularity of the CCI logo, which in turn reaffirmed the existing racial discrimination and bigotry.
Though the CCI does not appear in newspapers in the 1940s, the restaurant persisted on the Old Bothell Highway until late 1949, when Lester Graham removed the Coon head from public view and closed the restaurant’s doors. But neither Graham nor the CCI disappeared from Seattle completely. In December 1949, the Lake City Citizen featured an advertisement for the newly opened G.I. Joe’s New Country Store, giving its location as the old Coon Chicken Inn building (Lester Graham owned the Country Store).[39] This advertisement demonstrates that even after the CCI closed, the Coon-face remained a landmark for years to come. As there is no evidence that Graham closed the CCI due to protests or objections to the name, logo, or method of advertising, one can only speculate the reason the CCI’s days ended.
The coming of World War II in Seattle brought with it a surge of African-American migration, increasing the black population in Seattle from 3,789 to 15,666, or 413 percent between 1940 and 1950.[40] Finding limited employment opportunities at such companies as Boeing and experiencing blatant acts of discrimination, many African-Americans campaigned for equal employment and desegregation. In 1949, the Fair Employment Practices law was passed and in 1948, racial restrictive covenants were declared no longer enforceable by the United States Supreme Court. Perhaps this change in the racial landscape of Seattle and the nation made hostile images like the Coon increasingly unpopular. Another possibility is that the migration of young white families to Lake City after World War II affected the out-of-town dining experience that early CCI customers seem to have found appealing in the CCI. Perhaps it is a combination of these factors. As the city progressed and expanded, Graham may have found the G.I. Joe’s Country Store to be a more modern and profitable venture than the chicken-restaurant enterprise.
Today the original CCI building is gone. Ying’s Drive Inn, a Chinese restaurant near 18th NE and NE 85th Street, sits on the piece of land where the Coon-head once grinned, where the Baby Coon Special was served, and where the Johnny Maxon Orchestra once played to enthusiastic all-white audiences. Though it is gone, the Coon Chicken Inn should not be forgotten. It offers a window into understanding the racial climate of Seattle during the 1930s and 1940s; the popularity of its caricatured logo helps us make sense of the white hostility and oppression harbored against African-Americans as well as allows us to see how African-Americans reacted defiantly to that oppression. Furthermore, the Coon Chicken Inn is a way to measure the progress Seattle has made over the past sixty years in terms of racial equality—and to envision the progress yet to be made.
Copyright (c) Catherine Roth 2009
HSTAA 498 Fall 2008
[1]MacIntosh, Heather. "Staton, Joseph Isom: An Oral History." HistoryLink. 4 Nov. 2008
[2] Oxford English Dictionary
[3] Strausbaugh, John. Black Like You: Blackface, Whiteface, Insult & Imitation in American Popular Culture (New York: Penguin, 2006). An alternate explanation for the origin of the term “coon” comes out of the transatlantic slave trade. As captured Africans awaited loading onto the slave ships that carried them on the Middle Passage to Brazil, the Caribbean, and North America they were held in makeshift pens called “barracoons.”
[4] Ibid
[5] Ibid, 95
[6] Goings, Kenneth W. Mammy and Uncle Mose: Black Collectibles and American Stereotyping (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1994).
[7] Williams-Forson, Psyche A. Building Houses out of Chicken Legs: Black Women, Food, and Power (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 48
[8] Ibid
[9] “‘Coon Cards’: Racist Postcards Have Become Collectors’ Items,” The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, No. 25 (Autumn 1999), 72.
[10] Ibid.
[11] "Coon Chicken Inn Opened in Seattle," The Seattle Times, 31 Aug. 1930: 13.
[12] “Restrictive Covenant Database.” The Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project. Last accessed 7 Dec. 2008 depts.washington.edu/civilr/database.htm
[13] Horrocks, Mrs. Hattie Graham, Restaurants of Seattle, 1853-1960
[14] Soda Fountain Magazine, as quoted in John A. Jakle, Fast Food: Roadside Restaurants in the Automobile Age (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2002), 44.
[15] "Coon Chicken Inn Opened in Seattle," The Seattle Times 31 Aug. 1930: 13.
[16] Ibid.
[17] Davidson English, Arline, "Coon Chicken Inn to Change Advertising," Northwest Enterprise 25 Sep. 1930: 8.
[18] Taylor, Quintard, The Forging of a Black Community: Seattle's Central District from 1870 through the Civil Rights Era (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1994), 81
[19] Staton Interview.
[20] Davidson English, Arline, "Citizens Protest Against 'Coon' Chicken Inn," Northwest Enterprise 18 Sep. 1930: 8.
[21] Taylor, Forging, 80; NW Enterprise December 11, 1930
[22] The NW Enterprise, Sep. 25, 1930
[23] McIver, Sadie, “Files Protest Against ‘Coon Chicken’ Advertisement,” Northwest Enterprise July 16, 1931: 8.
[24] Black, Candace, "Chicken Inn Dodges Suit with Blue Paint," Northwest Enterprise 17 Mar. 1932: 6.
[25] Taylor, Forging, Appendix.
[26] Jakle, Fast Food, 49.
[27] Advertisement, The Seattle Times, August 1930.
[28] Club Cotton Advertisement in possession of the Shoreline Historical Museum.
[29] Horrocks, 50
[30] Menu in possession of the Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project
[31] Personal Interview with Jean Stewart, Nov. 8, 2008.
[32] Stewart Interview.
[33] "C. of C. Helps to End Dispute," The Seattle Times 18 Mar. 1937.
[34] "Big Crowd - Little Profit!" Seattle Post-Intelligencer 8 Mar. 1937.
[35] Menu in possession of the Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project.
[36] Photograph of the Associated Poultry Co. in possession of the Shoreline Historical Museum.
[37] De Barros, Paul. Jackson Street After Hours: The Roots of Jazz in Seattle (Seattle: Sasquatch Books, 1993).
[38] Stewart Interview; "Big Crowd - Little Profit!"
[39] “Joe’s Country Store,” Lake City Citizen, December 8, 1949
[40] Taylor, Forging, 136.
The mute swan (Cygnus olor) is a species of swan and a member of the waterfowl family Anatidae. It is native to much of Eurosiberia, and (as a rare winter visitor) the far north of Africa. It is an introduced species in North America, home to the largest populations outside of its native range, with additional smaller introductions in Australasia and southern Africa. The name "mute" derives from it being less vocal than other swan species. Measuring 125 to 160 cm (49 to 63 in) in length, this large swan is wholly white in plumage with an orange beak bordered with black. It is recognizable by its pronounced knob atop the beak, which is larger in males.
Taxonomy
The mute swan was first formally described by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin as Anas olor in 1789 and was transferred by Johann Matthäus Bechstein to the new genus Cygnus in 1803. Both cygnus and olor mean "swan" in Latin; cygnus is a variant form of cycnus, borrowing from Greek κύκνος kyknos, a word of the same meaning.
Despite its Eurasian origin, its closest relatives are the black swan of Australia and the black-necked swan of South America, not the other Northern Hemisphere swans of the genus Cygnus. The species is monotypic, with no living subspecies.
Evolution
Mute swan subfossils, 6,000 years old, have been found in post-glacial peat beds of East Anglia, Great Britain. They have been recorded from Ireland east to Portugal and Italy, and from France, 13,000 BP (Desbrosse and Mourer-Chauvire 1972–1973). Cygnus olor bergmanni, a paleosub species which differed only in size from the living bird, is known from fossils found in Azerbaijan. A related paleospecies recorded from fossils and subfossils is the Giant swan, Cygnus falconeri, a flightless species which lived on the islands of Malta and Sicily during the Middle Pleistocene.
Fossils of swan ancestors more distantly allied to the mute swan have been found in four U.S. states: California, Arizona, Idaho and Oregon. The timeline runs from the Miocene to the late Pleistocene or 10,000 BP. The latest find was in Anza Borrego Desert, a state park in California. Fossils from the Pleistocene include Cygnus paloregonus from Fossil Lake, Oregon, Froman's Ferry, Idaho, and Arizona, referred to by Howard in The Waterfowl of the World as "probably the mute type swan".
Description
Adults of this large swan typically range from 140 to 160 cm (55 to 63 in) long, although can range in extreme cases from 125 to 170 cm (49 to 67 in), with a 200 to 240 cm (79 to 94 in) wingspan. Males are larger than females and have a larger knob on their bill. On average, this is the second largest waterfowl species after the trumpeter swan, although male mute swans can easily match or even exceed a male trumpeter in mass. Among standard measurements of the mute swan, the wing chord measures 53–62.3 cm (20.9–24.5 in), the tarsus is 10–11.8 cm (3.9–4.6 in) and the bill is 6.9–9 cm (2.7–3.5 in). The plumage is white, while the legs are dark grey. The beak of the mute swan is bright orange, with black around the nostrils and a black nail.
The mute swan is one of the heaviest extant flying birds. In several studies from Great Britain, males (known as cobs) were found to average from about 10.6 to 11.87 kg (23.4 to 26.2 lb), with a weight range of 9.2–14.3 kg (20–32 lb) while the slightly smaller females (known as pens) averaged about 8.5 to 9.67 kg (18.7 to 21.3 lb), with a weight range of 7.6–10.6 kg (17–23 lb). While the top normal weight for a big cob is roughly 15 kg (33 lb), one unusually big Polish cob weighed almost 23 kg (51 lb) and this counts as the largest weight ever verified for a flying bird, although it has been questioned whether this heavyweight could still take flight.
Young birds, called cygnets, are not the bright white of mature adults, and their bill is dull greyish-black, not orange, for the first year. The down may range from pure white to grey to buff, with grey/buff the most common. The white cygnets have a leucistic gene. Cygnets grow quickly, reaching a size close to their adult size in approximately three months after hatching. Cygnets typically retain their grey feathers until they are at least one year old, with the down on their wings having been replaced by flight feathers earlier that year.
All mute swans are white at maturity, though the feathers (particularly on the head and neck) are often stained orange-brown by iron and tannins in the water.
Polish swan
The colour morph C. o. morpha immutabilis (immūtābilis is Latin for "immutable, unchangeable, unalterable"), also known as the "Polish swan", has pinkish (not dark grey) legs and dull white cygnets; as with white domestic geese, it is found only in populations with a history of domestication. Polish swans carry a copy of a gene responsible for leucism.
Behaviour
Mute swans nest on large mounds that they build with waterside vegetation in shallow water on islands in the middle or at the very edge of a lake. They are monogamous and often reuse the same nest each year, restoring or rebuilding it as needed. Male and female swans share the care of the nest, and once the cygnets are fledged it is not uncommon to see whole families looking for food. They feed on a wide range of vegetation, both submerged aquatic plants which they reach with their long necks, and by grazing on land. The food commonly includes agricultural crop plants such as oilseed rape and wheat, and feeding flocks in the winter may cause significant crop damage, often as much through trampling with their large webbed feet, as through direct consumption. It will also feed on small proportions of aquatic insects, fish and frogs.
Unlike black swans, mute swans are usually strongly territorial with just a single pair on smaller lakes, though in a few locations where a large area of suitable feeding habitat is found, they can be colonial. The largest colonies have over 100 pairs, such as at the colony at Abbotsbury Swannery in southern England, and at the southern tip of Öland Island, Ottenby Preserve, in the coastal waters of the Baltic Sea, and can have nests spaced as little as 2 m (7 ft) apart. Non-mated juveniles up to 3–4 years old commonly form larger flocks, which can total several hundred birds, often at regular traditional sites. A notable flock of non-breeding birds is found on the River Tweed estuary at Berwick-upon-Tweed in northeastern England, with a maximum count of 787 birds. A large population exists near the Swan Lifeline Station in Windsor and lives on the Thames in the shadow of Windsor Castle. Once the adults are mated they seek out their territories and often live close to ducks and gulls, which may take advantage of the swan's ability to reach deep water weeds, which tend to spread out on the water surface.
The mute swan is less vocal than the noisy whooper and Bewick's swans; they do, however, make a variety of sounds, often described as "grunting, hoarse whistling, and snorting noises." During a courtship display, mute swans utter a rhythmic song. The song helps synchronize the movements of their heads and necks. It could technically be employed to distinguish a bonded couple from two dating swans, as the rhythm of the song typically fails to match the pace of the head movements of two dating swans. Mute swans usually hiss at competitors or intruders trying to enter their territory.[30] The most familiar sound associated with mute swans is the vibrant throbbing of the wings in flight which is unique to the species and can be heard from a range of 1 to 2 km (0.6 to 1 mi), indicating its value as a contact sound between birds in flight. Cygnets are especially vocal and communicate through a variety of whistling and chirping sounds when content, as well as a harsh squawking noise when distressed or lost.
Nesting in spring, Cologne, Germany
Mute swans can be very aggressive in defence of their nests and are highly protective of their mate and offspring. Most defensive acts from a mute swan begin with a loud hiss and, if this is not sufficient to drive off the predator or intruder, are followed by a physical attack. Swans attack by striking at the threat with bony spurs in their wings, accompanied by biting with their large bill, while smaller waterbirds such as ducks are normally grabbed with the swan's bill and dragged or thrown clear of the swan and its offspring. Swans will kill intruders into their territory, both other swans, and geese and ducks, by drowning, climbing onto and pecking the back of the head and forcing the other bird underwater.
The wings of the swan are very powerful, though not strong enough to break an adult man's leg, as is commonly misquoted. Large waterfowl, such as Canada geese, (more likely out of competition than in response to potential predation) may be aggressively driven off, and mute swans regularly attack people who enter their territory.
The cob is responsible for defending the cygnets while on the water, and will sometimes attack small watercraft, such as canoes, that it feels are a threat to its young. The cob will additionally try to chase the predator out of his family territory and will keep animals such as foxes and raptors at bay. In New York (outside its native range), the most common predators of cygnets are common snapping turtles. Healthy adults are rarely preyed upon, though canids such as coyotes, felids such as lynx, and bears can pose a threat to infirm ones (healthy adults can usually swim away from danger and nest defence is usually successful.) and there are a few cases of healthy adults falling prey to the golden eagles. In England, there has been an increased rate of attacks on swans by out-of-control dogs, especially in parks where the birds are less territorial. This is considered criminal in British law, and the birds are placed under the highest protection due to their association with the monarch. Mute swans will readily attack dogs to protect themselves and their cygnets from an attack, and an adult swan is capable of overwhelming and drowning even large dog breeds.
The familiar pose with the neck curved back and wings half raised, known as busking, is a threat display. Both feet are paddled in unison during this display, resulting in more jerky movement. The swans may also use the busking posture for wind-assisted transportation over several hundred meters, so-called windsurfing.
Like other swans, mute swans are known for their ability to grieve for a lost or dead mate or cygnet. Swans will go through a mourning process, and in the case of the loss of their mate, may either stay where their counterpart lived or fly off to join a flock. Should one of the pair die while there are cygnets present, the remaining parent will take up their partner's duties in raising the clutch.
Breeding
Mute swans lay from 4 to 10 eggs. The female broods for around 36 days, with cygnets normally hatching between May and July. The young swans do not achieve the ability to fly before about 120 to 150 days old. This limits the distribution of the species at the northern edge of its range as the cygnets need to learn to fly before the ponds and lakes freeze over.
Distribution and habitat
The mute swan is found naturally mainly in temperate areas of Europe then across the Palearctic as far east as Primorsky Krai, near Sidemi.
It is partially migratory throughout northern latitudes in Europe and Asia, as far south as North Africa and the Mediterranean. It is known and recorded to have nested in Iceland and is a vagrant in that area as well as in Bermuda, according to the UN Environment Programme chart of international status chart of bird species, which places it in 70 countries, breeding in 49 countries, and vagrant in 16 countries.[citation needed] While most of the current population in Japan is introduced, mute swans are depicted on scrolls more than 1,000 years old, and wild birds from the mainland Asian population still occur rarely in winter. Natural migrants to Japan usually occur along with whooper and sometimes Bewick's swans.[citation needed]
The mute swan is protected in most of its range, but this has not prevented illegal hunting and poaching. It is often kept in captivity outside its natural range, as a decoration for parks and ponds, and escapes have happened. The descendants of such birds have become naturalised in the eastern United States and Great Lakes, much as the Canada goose has done in Europe.
World population
Mute swans with cygnets in Wolvercote, Oxfordshire
The total native population of mute swans is about 500,000 birds at the end of the breeding season (adults plus young), of which up to 350,000 are in Russia. The largest single breeding concentration is 11,000 pairs in the Volga Delta.
The population in the United Kingdom is about 22,000 birds as of the 2006–2007 winter, a slight decline from the peak of about 26,000–27,000 birds in 1990. This includes about 5,300 breeding pairs, the remainder being immatures. Other significant populations in Europe include 6,800–8,300 breeding pairs in Germany, 4,500 pairs in Denmark, 4,000–4,200 pairs in Poland, 3,000–4,000 pairs in the Netherlands, about 2,500 pairs in Ireland, and 1,200–1,700 pairs in Ukraine.
For many centuries, mute swans in Great Britain were domesticated for food, with individuals being marked by nicks on their webs (feet) or beaks to indicate ownership. These marks were registered with the Crown and a Royal Swanherd was appointed. Any birds not so marked became Crown property, hence the swan becoming known as the "Royal Bird". This domestication saved the mute swan from extirpation through overhunting in Great Britain.
Populations in Western Europe were largely exterminated by hunting pressure in the 13th–19th centuries, except for semi-domesticated birds maintained as poultry by large landowners. Better protection in the late 19th and early 20th centuries allowed the species to expand and return to most or all of their former range. More recently in the period from about 1960 up to the early 1980s, numbers declined significantly again in many areas in England, primarily due to lead poisoning from birds swallowing lead shots from shooting and discarded fishing weights made from lead. After lead weights and shots were mostly replaced by other less toxic alternatives, mute swan numbers increased again rapidly.
Introduced populations
Since being introduced into North America, the mute swan has increased greatly in number to the extent that it is considered an invasive species there. Populations introduced into other areas remain small, with around 200 in Japan, fewer than 200 in New Zealand and Australia, and about 120 in South Africa.
North America
The mute swan was introduced to North America in the late 19th century. Recently, it has been widely viewed as an invasive species because of its rapidly increasing numbers and its adverse effects on other waterfowl and native ecosystems. For example, a study of population sizes in the lower Great Lakes from 1971 to 2000 found that mute swan numbers were increasing at an average rate of at least 10% per year, doubling the population every seven to eight years. Several studies have concluded that mute swans severely reduce the densities of submerged vegetation where they occur.
In 2003, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed to "minimize environmental damages attributed to Mute Swans" by reducing their numbers in the Atlantic Flyway to pre-1986 levels, a 67% reduction at the time. According to a report published in the Federal Register of 2003 the proposal was supported by all thirteen state wildlife agencies which submitted comments, as well as by 43 bird conservation, wildlife conservation and wildlife management organisations. Ten animal rights organisations and the vast majority of comments from individuals were opposed. At this time mute swans were protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act due to a court order, but in 2005 the United States Department of the Interior officially declared them a non-native, unprotected species. Mute swans are protected in some areas of the U.S. by local laws, for example, in Connecticut.
The status of the mute swan as an introduced species in North America is disputed by the interest group "Save the Mute Swans". They assert that mute swans are native to the region and therefore deserving of protection. They claim that mute swans had origins in Russia and cite historical sightings and fossil records. These claims have been rejected as specious by the U.S. Department of the Interior.
Oceania
The mute swan had absolute protection in New Zealand under the Wildlife Act 1953, but this was changed in June 2010 to a lower level of protection. It still has protection, but is now allowed to be killed or held in captivity at the discretion of the Minister of Conservation.
A small feral population exists in the vicinity of Perth, Australia; however, it is believed to number less than 100 individuals.
In popular culture
The mute swan has been the national bird of Denmark since 1984. Before that, the skylark was considered Denmark's national bird (since 1960).
The fairy tale "The Ugly Duckling" by Hans Christian Andersen tells the story of a cygnet ostracised by his fellow barnyard fowl because of his perceived unattractiveness. To his delight (and to the surprise of others), he matures into a graceful swan, the most beautiful bird of all.
Today, the British Monarch retains the right to ownership of all unmarked mute swans in open water, but King Charles III exercises his ownership only on certain stretches of the Thames and its surrounding tributaries. This ownership is shared with the Vintners' and Dyers' Companies, who were granted rights of ownership by the Crown in the 15th century.
The mute swans in the moat at the Bishops Palace at Wells Cathedral in Wells, England have for centuries been trained to ring bells via strings attached to them to beg for food. Two swans are still able to ring for lunch.
The pair of swans in the Boston Public Garden are named Romeo and Juliet after the Shakespearean couple; however, it was found that both of them are females
I feel so sure, so positive
So utterly unchangeably certain
Though I never was aware of loving you
'Til I suddenly realized there was love in you
More than ever, I'm glad there is you
There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the universe, and feel
What I can ne’er express, yet cannot all conceal.-
Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean-roll!
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;
Man marks the earth with ruin-his control
Stops with the shore;-upon the watery plain
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain
A shadow of man’s ravage, save his own,
When for a moment, like a drop of rain,
He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,
Without a grave, unknell’d, uncoffin’d, and unknown.
His steps are not upon thy paths-thy fields
Are not a spoil for him-thou dost arise
And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields
For earth’s destruction thou dost all despise,
Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies,
And send’st him, shivering in thy playful spray,
And howling, to his gods, where haply lies
His petty hope in some near port or bay,
And dashest him again to earth: there let him lay.
The armaments which thunderstrike the walls
Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake,
And monarchs tremble in their capitals,
The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make
Their clay creator the vain title take
Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war;
These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake,
They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar
Alike the armada’s pride, or spoils of Trafalgar.
Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee-
Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they?
Thy waters washed them power while they were free,
And many a tyrant since: their shores obey
The stranger, slave or savage; their decay
Has dried up realms to deserts:-not so thou,
Unchangeable, save to thy wild waves’ play-
Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow-
Such as creation’s dawn beheld, thou rollest now.
Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty’s form
Glasses itself in tempests; in all time
Calm or convulsed-in breeze, or gale, or storm,
Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime
Dark-heaving; boundless, endless and sublime-
The image of eternity-the throne
Of the invisible; even from out thy slime
The monsters of the deep are made; each zone
Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.
And I have loved thee, ocean! And my joy
Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be
Borne, like thy bubbles, onward: from a boy
I wanton’d with thy breakers-they to me
Were a delight; and if the freshening sea
Made them a terror-’twas a pleasing fear,
For I was as it were a child of thee,
And trusted to thy billows far and near,
And laid my hand upon thy mane – as I do here.
( Lord Byron )
BIBLICAL CONTEXT: Hebrews 6:16-20 NLT
(from biblegateway.com)
16 Now when people take an oath, they call on someone greater than themselves to hold them to it. And without any question that oath is binding. 17 God also bound himself with an oath, so that those who received the promise could be perfectly sure that he would never change his mind. 18 So God has given both his promise and his oath. These two things are unchangeable because it is impossible for God to lie. Therefore, we who have fled to him for refuge can have great confidence as we hold to the hope that lies before us. 19 This hope is a strong and trustworthy anchor for our souls. It leads us through the curtain into God’s inner sanctuary. 20 Jesus has already gone in there for us. He has become our eternal High Priest in the order of Melchizedek.
---------------------------------------------------------
5 MORE THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW:
1. Like it or not, we are ALL sinners: As the Scriptures say, “No one is righteous—not even one. No one is truly wise; no one is seeking God. All have turned away; all have become useless. No one does good, not a single one.” (Romans 3:10-12 NLT)
2. The punishment for sin is death: When Adam sinned, sin entered the world. Adam’s sin brought death, so death spread to everyone, for everyone sinned. (Romans 5:12 NLT)
3. Jesus is our only hope: But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners. (Romans 5:8 NLT) For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:23 NLT)
4. SALVATION is by GRACE through FAITH in JESUS: God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it. For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago. (Ephesians 2:8-10 NLT)
5. Accept Jesus and receive eternal life: If you openly declare that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. (Romans 10:9 NLT) But to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God. (John 1:12 NLT) And this is what God has testified: He has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have God’s Son does not have life. (1 John 5:11-12 NLT)
Read the Bible for yourself. Allow the Lord to speak to you through his Word. YOUR ETERNITY IS AT STAKE!
"the three porticos are separated by two large columns, and at the base of each lies a turtle or a tortoise (one to represent the land and the other the sea; each are symbols of time as something set in stone and unchangeable)." (Wikipedia)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
„Die drei Portiken sind durch zwei große Säulen getrennt, und an der Basis jeder liegt eine Wasser- oder eine Landschildkröte (eine soll das Land und die andere das Meer darstellen; beide sind Symbole der Zeit als etwas in Stein gemeißeltes und Unveränderliches).“ (Wikipedia und Google translate)
"A Shard of Time"
"But how does someone steal time!?" Penny yelled,as the Doctor piloted the Tardis
in a frenzy, flipping levers and switches.He fastened down the clock with a belt and a
blanket,leaping back to the controls just as an emergency sound went off. "It's not a concept
you can easily understand! its..well..if you take...its like if you ...AGGH!" the doctor cried in frustration
as the fought with the controls.The Tardis slammed to a stop,throwing both of them to the deck.
the Doctor jumped to his feet and grabbing the clock,was out the doors. "is it Dangerous!?"
Penny asked,hurrying after him.she skidded to a stop behind him,and her eyes widened
as she took in her surroundings.In every direction, large jagged mountains, like purple ice,and at the
base of them, orange rivers running into waterfalls that fell off into black pits.she took a deep breath
and stared in awe. "time isn't this straight line,"the doctor said, looking back over his shoulder at her.
"its never simple,but its also not complicated.its an infinite number of lines, crossing, curving, sometimes
doubling back.time can be erased.. and re-written. but when it's stolen.. he grimaced... When time is stolen
it leaves a hole.it removes it from ever existing.it plucks it out like the first slice of cake at a birthday party.
ok,maybe a bad analogy" he said as he rubbed his forehead. "So if someone stole time,we can just put it back
right? is that how a Terralon key is...?"Penny asked.he seemed to be thinking it over in his head..."no...
No a Terralon key is .. its like a prison,for time.you can seal it up,and unless you can time travel back to that moment
and release it ,it's never going to fit in again.getting it wrong could.. it could do things i don't even understand."
"it could be a weapon.. it could even be someone messing with things they know nothing about.. i brought it
here because it would be safe.we could leave it here.or.. i should detonate it. i don't know." he paced around
apparently talking to himself now. Penny had never seen him act so uneasy.
After a few more minutes the Doctor picked up the clock and examined the face.
"So you have seen a key like this before?" Penny asked,sitting down on a rock. "once... a long time ago."he
replied,squinting at the dials. "being as how they take 800 years to make,its not the kind of thing you find
laying around in the street" Penny's mouth fell open "800 years?! why on earth would anybody do that?"
The Doctor smiled and set the clock down. "a very long time ago.. it .. well,it was considered an honor to be part
of a family chosen to craft and build a Terralon key. it would take generation after generation. not so unlike
the Egyptian wall carvings of earth." he noted with a smile" fathers would grow old,and the sons would take over
and hand it off to their sons.. and most of the time the finished keys were given to Emperors. Rulers of not just
one world,but whole systems.it was the only version of Immortality they could get a grasp on,i guess" he mused
as he dusted off his knees and walked back towards the Tardis. Penny jumped up after him, looking back
at the clock. Once back inside she asked "So what is in it? did you see?" He shook his head, "seems harmless
enough,it still has room in it,meaning there isn't much inside.i figure we can remote open it from up above,and
make sure it doesn't fall into the wrong hands.they hovered a few hundred feet above and he flipped a few switches
and watched on the monitor as the lights began to glow on the clock again,and suddenly a burst of blue light
shot out of the top. Penny and the Doctor watched as ghost like streams floated out,a figure of a man and a
woman embracing.the woman appeared to be laying down in a bed,the man kneeling beside her,holding her close.
they heard him whisper "good bye,my love". they began to fade,as he reach out an arm beside him.
"thats when he shut the gate on the key ..." The Doctor said quietly.. a little taken back by the revelation.
"So ..."penny thoughtfully spoke "he was .. saving his last moments with her?"
"it appears so".. He replied,a slight tone of sadness in his voice. "he locked the moment
away and kept it. i still have no idea how he got a key,and what it was doing on earth in the first place... but i am
betting that Moment is at least 100 years old."
"and the other key you spoke of.. was it like this?" She asked,smiling slightly..
The doctors eyes became full of sorrow and a darker tone was in his voice," No.. the other
key was... much different. it was used to capture a moment,and hide it away from all of time. from everywhere
and everyone.to make what had been done, lost and unchangeable forever ." Penny gave a shudder of fear from the
doctors words. "but,as i said... a long time ago" he feigned a smile at her,and flipped a couple switches.
Bright Star
by John Keats
Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art--
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors--
No--yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever--or else swoon to death.
Hunting after sundown, I took this foto. Hope you like it; but I need to add these three items to contemplate as many ready to give THANKS for Mankind's blessings from ABOVE.
This handheld foto made facing east into the twilight resulted in unintended sights to see. In getting this one ready to upload, I ran across the very uplifting fotos at
www.flickr.com/photos/9162270@N03/page3/
Missbeautifull's lastest upload of church buddies quotes this from Psalm 128:1
"Happy are those who respect the Lord and obey him." Please join the joy and leave your tracks all over her brillant stream. Thanks so much for all you do for all of us others. Explore would not find anyone's best fotos without your visits, comments, and faves.
On imagination, I learned below at www.quotegarden.com/imagination.html
A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral. ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Flight to Arras, 1942
I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free. ~Michelangelo
I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do, and that enables you to laugh at life's realities. ~Dr. Theodore Geisel, a.k.a. Dr. Seuss
Nothing encourages creativity like the chance to fall flat on one's face. ~James D. Finley
Some stories are true that never happened. ~Elie Weisel
It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards. ~Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
My alphabet starts with this letter called yuzz. It's the letter I use to spell yuzz-a-ma-tuzz. You'll be sort of surprised what there is to be found once you go beyond 'Z' and start poking around! ~Dr. Seuss
The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, are of imagination all compact. ~William Shakespeare, Mid-Summer Night's Dream, 1595
They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea. ~Francis Bacon
Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try! ~Ted Geisel, a.k.a. Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Thinks You Can Think!
A fool-proof method for sculpting an elephant: first, get a huge block of marble; then you chip away everything that doesn't look like an elephant. ~Author Unknown
The Possible's slow fuse is lit
By the Imagination.
~Emily Dickinson
Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity. ~George Smith Patton, War as I Knew It, 1947
The creative person is both more primitive and more cultivated, more destructive, a lot madder and a lot saner, than the average person. ~Frank Barron, Think, November-December 1962
You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus. ~Mark Twain
Don't expect anything original from an echo. ~Author Unknown
I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them. ~Pablo Picasso
You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club. ~Jack London
There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds. ~G.K. Chesterton
Imagination and fiction make up more than three-quarters of our real life. ~Simone Weil
Personally, I would sooner have written Alice in Wonderland than the whole Encyclopedia Britannica. ~Stephen Leacock
Sometimes imagination pounces; mostly it sleeps soundly in the corner, purring. ~Leslie Grimutter
Creativity represents a miraculous coming together of the uninhibited energy of the child with its apparent opposite and enemy, the sense of order imposed on the disciplined adult intelligence. ~Norman Podhoretz
They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night. ~Edgar Allan Poe, "Eleonora"
He who has imagination without learning has wings but no feet. ~Joseph Joubert
Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. ~Lewis Carroll
There is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept. ~Ansel Adams
Things are only impossible until they're not. ~Jean-Luc Picard, Star Trek: The Next Generation
When you are describing,
A shape, or sound, or tint;
Don't state the matter plainly,
But put it in a hint;
And learn to look at all things,
With a sort of mental squint.
~Lewis Carroll
When I have a terrible need of - shall I say the word - religion. Then I go out and paint the stars. ~Vincent Van Gogh
The theoretician believes in logic and believes that he despises dreams, intuition, and poetry. He does not recognize that these three fairies have only disguised themselves in order to dazzle him.... He does not know that he owes his greatest discoveries to them. ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wartime Writings 1939-1944, translated from French by Norah Purcell
I think the world really boils down to two types of people - those who see shapes in cloud formations, and those who just see clouds. ~Danzae Pace
Trust that little voice in your head that says "Wouldn't it be interesting if..." And then do it. ~Duane Michals, "More Joy of Photography"
Perhaps imagination is only intelligence having fun. ~George Scialabba
It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see. ~Henry David Thoreau
To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,
One clover, and a bee,
And revery.
The revery alone will do,
If bees are few.
~Emily Dickinson, Poems
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom the emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause and stand wrapped in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed. ~Albert Einstein
Anyone who can be replaced by a machine deserves to be. ~Dennis Gunton
Really we create nothing. We merely plagiarize nature. ~Jean Baitaillon
Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures. ~Jessamyn West
People who lean on logic and philosophy and rational exposition end by starving the best part of the mind. ~William Butler Yeats
I remembered a story of how Bach was approached by a young admirer one day and asked, "But Papa Bach, how do you manage to think of all these new tunes?" "My dear fellow," Bach is said to have answered, according to my version, "I have no need to think of them. I have the greatest difficulty not to step on them when I get out of bed in the morning and start moving around my room." ~Laurens Van der Post
I doubt that the imagination can be suppressed. If you truly eradicated it in a child, he would grow up to be an eggplant. ~Ursula K. Le Guin, The Language of the Night
Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought. ~Albert Szent-Györgyi
I believe in the imagination. What I cannot see is infinitely more important than what I can see. ~Duane Michals, Real Dreams
I never did very well in math - I could never seem to persuade the teacher that I hadn't meant my answers literally. ~Calvin Trillin
Creative minds have always been known to survive any kind of bad training. ~Anna Freud
To think creatively, we must be able to look afresh at what we normally take for granted. ~George Kneller
When patterns are broken, new worlds emerge. ~Tuli Kupferberg
It is the eye of ignorance that assigns a fixed and unchangeable color to every object; beware of this stumbling block. ~Paul Gauguin
EXPLORE # 386 on Thursday, November 22, 2007, for 11-21.
Caption reads:
A kitchen is not the easiest room to decorate [they can say that again!]. So many objects are necessary to its functioning and wall space is often very limited. The choice for background in this kitchen is white. White, however, can look antiseptic, especially when in contrast with deep wood tones. To make this background look more interesting, a second color is added--blue. It appears in the hood and in the ceramic tile behind the range, where it is paired with black--a wise companion choice because black is neutral and a third color in the stripe would limit the scheme. For example, if the stripe were red, the accent color would be built in and unchangeable.
The ceiling gives this kitchen a personal stamp, making the room seem snug and wider. It is just about the only area with enough space to produce a different look.
Every area of trouble gives out a ray of hope; and the one unchangeable certainty is that nothing is certain or unchangeable. - John Fitzgerald Kennedy
Change the changeable, accept the unchangeable, and remove yourself from the unacceptable.
Denis Waitley
Now when people take an oath, they call on someone greater than themselves to hold them to it. And without any question that oath is binding. God also bound himself with an oath, so that those who received the promise could be perfectly sure that he would never change his mind. So God has given both his promise and his oath. These two things are unchangeable because it is impossible for God to lie. Therefore, we who have fled to him for refuge can have great confidence as we hold to the hope that lies before us. This hope is a strong and trustworthy anchor for our souls. It leads us through the curtain into God’s inner sanctuary. Jesus has already gone in there for us. He has become our eternal High Priest in the order of Melchizedek.
[Hebrews 6:16-20 NLT]
5 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW:
1. Like it or not, we are ALL sinners: As the Scriptures say, “No one is righteous—not even one. No one is truly wise; no one is seeking God. All have turned away; all have become useless. No one does good, not a single one.” (Romans 3:10-12 NLT)
2. The punishment for sin is death: When Adam sinned, sin entered the world. Adam’s sin brought death, so death spread to everyone, for everyone sinned. (Romans 5:12 NLT)
3. Jesus is our only hope: But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners. (Romans 5:8 NLT) For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:23 NLT)
4. SALVATION is by GRACE through FAITH in JESUS: God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it. For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago. (Ephesians 2:8-10 NLT)
5. Accept Jesus and receive eternal life: If you openly declare that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. (Romans 10:9 NLT) But to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God. (John 1:12 NLT) And this is what God has testified: He has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have God’s Son does not have life. (1 John 5:11-12 NLT)
Read the Bible for yourself. Allow the Lord to speak to you through his Word. YOUR ETERNITY IS AT STAKE!
"A true friend
freely, advises,
justly, assists
readily, adventures boldly
Take all patiently
defends courageously and
continuous a friend unchangeably."
-William Penn
The Mirrored Canal.
Curtains perçue studious effundebatur excite,
ontworpen spontaneous charming waters aflame,
whispering weeping blues fair and lime,
pleasant flowers mingle with murmuring fields ever green,
textured daises trod thy shaking tide,
shrouded natures gelatineachtig fowl so rich here and now,
rolling conscious canal épuisé oar eddyspace abides,
respirazione eastern moors leaning the imperious ore,
lessening hour feroce sun golden sets,
septennale swain haste protection sought,
lenitivo waves harvest splendour slender rhymes,
renfrogné scene assumes a toilsome illuminated rose,
plotseling speed thy fish writhing wild,
beautiful deepening poétique ringlet hath so arrayed,
glowing internum phantoms tarries laid,
essenza inherit the triumph hypnagogic lightnings rays,
leviathans waves torrid echo's atmosphérique fears,
άγριος shores unchangeable tempest thee,
compositions task comparativamente floats,
gilded joy exsultabunt in silence winds,
precious greens dispersés deep,
lessening tide pebbles speak,
zittern pillow unmooring thyself,
svolazzanti heart 'tis nothing but a 夢 !
Steve.D.Hammond.
It is the eye of ignorance that assigns a fixed and unchangeable color to every object.
Paul Gauguin
Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art--
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors--
No--yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever--or else swoon to death.
John Keats
Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art--
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors--
No--yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever--or else swoon to death.
Fulgida stella
come tu lo sei
fermo foss'io
non in solingo splendore
alto sospeso nella notte
con rimosse le palpebre in eterno
a sorvegliare come paziente insonne romito
di natura le immobili acque
il loro puro ufficio sacerdotale
di lavacro intorno ai lidi umani della terra
oppure guardar la molle maschera di neve
quando appena coprì monti e pianure
la odi pur sempre fermo
sempre senza mutamento
sul vago seno in fiore dell'amor mio come guanciale
sempre sentirne il su e giù soave d'onda
sempre desto in un dolce eccitamento
a udire sempre sempre il suo respiro attenuato
e così viver sempre
o se no venir meno nella morte.
John Keats
RYERSON, EGERTON (his complete given name was Adolphus Egerton but he never used the first), Methodist minister, author, editor, and educational administrator; b. 24 March 1803 in Charlotteville Township, Norfolk County, Upper Canada, fifth son of Joseph Ryerson and Mehetable Stickney; m. first 10 Sept. 1828 Hannah Aikman (d. 1832) at Hamilton, Upper Canada, and they had two children; m. secondly 8 Nov. 1833 Mary Armstrong at York (Toronto), Upper Canada, and they had two children; d. 19 Feb. 1882 at Toronto.
Two circumstances in Egerton Ryerson’s early life exercised a lasting influence on his career. One was the loyalist environment in which he grew up. His father, Joseph, and his uncle Samuel Ryerse*, both American born, had served as loyalist officers in the American revolution and afterwards had fled north to New Brunswick before moving to Upper Canada in the 1790s. As a half-pay officer Joseph had received a substantial land grant and established his family on a farm near Vittoria, the first capital of the London District. Appointed to a series of important local offices, both Joseph and Samuel became part of the loyalist establishment in the district while members of their families married into other leading loyalist clans in the area. Joseph and his three eldest sons all served against the Americans in the War of 1812. Egerton, too young to be actively involved, saw a brother badly wounded and the destruction of lands and property belonging to friends and relatives. Among the Ryerson family, memories of pioneering a new land and defending it, of principles sustained and loyalty reaffirmed, would breed a deep and abiding attachment to both their native land and the maintenance of the British connection in North America.
The second great formative influence was evangelical Christianity. Like so many of his generation Ryerson was touched early in life by the wave of Protestant revivalism that swept North America in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The Ryerson children were raised by a devout mother of Methodist sympathies who taught them a personal and vital form of Christian belief and her precepts were reinforced by the Methodist circuit-riders who criss-crossed Norfolk County during Egerton’s childhood. Some time immediately after the War of 1812, according to his own account, Egerton, like three of his elder brothers, “became deeply religious. . . . My consciousness of guilt and sinfulness was humbling, oppressive and distressing; and my experience of relief, after lengthened fastings, watching and prayers, was clear, refreshing and joyous. In the end I simply trusted in Christ, and looked to Him for a present salvation. . . .” In 1816 his mother and two of his older brothers joined the Methodist Church. His Anglican father was “extremely opposed” to the Methodists and when at 18 Egerton applied for membership in the local Methodist society he was told “you must either leave them or leave my house.” Egerton took the latter course. The rift lasted for two years and was repaired only when the father acquiesced in his son’s convictions. The episode reveals something of the determination and impetuosity characteristic of Ryerson all his life. It also reveals the depth of his “conversion” experience. From the time he was a young man Ryerson’s personal odyssey was defined by his determination “never to rest contented until he [Christ] becomes not only my wisdom, but my sanctification and my full redemption.” Loyalism and Methodism would form the warp and woof of Ryerson’s life and thought throughout his long career.
Ryerson’s family was sufficiently well off to enable him to take advantage of the limited educational facilities available at the time. Most of his schooling took place under James Mitchell at the London District Grammar School in Vittoria. Between 1821 and 1823 he served as an assistant to his brother George, who was master in the school. During these years Ryerson absorbed the essentials of an English and classical education and was also introduced to two works that would become lasting influences – William Paley’s Principles of moral and political philosophy and Sir William Blackstone’s Commentaries. In August 1824, perhaps with the intention of becoming a lawyer, Ryerson went to Hamilton to study with John Law at the Gore District Grammar School.
After only a few months’ study in Hamilton, Ryerson’s formal education was ended by a prolonged illness in the winter of 1824–25. During his recovery he became convinced that he had been preserved from death to serve God’s purpose as a Methodist minister. He irrevocably accepted God’s call on 24 March 1825, his 22nd birthday, and preached his first sermon at Beamsville on Easter Sunday of that year. Thus Egerton became one of five Ryerson boys to enter the Methodist ministry: he followed in the footsteps of William* and John* as George, the eldest, and Edway (Edwy) Marcus, the youngest, would follow in his. Formally received on trial in September 1825 by the Canada Conference, the governing body of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Upper Canada, Egerton served his apprenticeship on the York and Yonge Street circuit and then as a missionary among the Indians at the Credit River. In September 1827 he was admitted to full connection and ordained. He spent the next two years assigned to the Cobourg and Ancaster circuits.
During these years the rigorous routine of a travelling preacher’s life was interrupted by two diversions that would put Ryerson’s name before a much wider audience than any Methodist circuit could offer. In 1826 a sermon, delivered the previous summer at the funeral of Bishop Jacob Mountain* by John Strachan*, appeared in print; in it Strachan, the leading Church of England clergyman in Upper Canada, traced the rise of the Anglican church in the colony, contending that it was the established church and attacking the Methodists as ignorant American enthusiasts, unsound in religion and disloyal in politics. None of the arguments were new, but on this occasion the Methodists in York chose not to remain silent and Ryerson, still a probationary preacher, was one of those invited to frame a reply. In a long letter printed in the Colonial Advocate (York) in May 1826 he challenged all of Strachan’s assertions. No less than Strachan himself, Ryerson sought a society that was both Christian and British. But he denied that an established church was either scriptural or an essential part of the British constitution, and quoted authors ancient and modern to support his case. He rejected the charges of ignorance by citing the intellectual training required of all Methodist preachers and also challenged the contention that most of them were Americans. Ryerson’s letter and the ensuing debate in the provincial press “thrilled the Methodist mind in the country,” in the words of John Saltkill Carroll, and called attention to Ryerson’s remarkable abilities as a spokesman for the Methodist cause. In 1827 Strachan again put forward his claims in a series of letters written in England to garner support for both the Church of England and the colony’s newly chartered university. In the public uproar that followed, Ryerson was only one critic among many, but in eight clearly reasoned and broad-ranging letters, published first in the Upper Canada Herald (Kingston) in June 1828 and later that year as a pamphlet, he again defended the character of Methodism, argued the case for religious equality, and broadened his attack to include the educational policies of what he claimed to be an Anglican-dominated executive.
His forays against Strachan brought Ryerson to the centre of Methodist affairs. In 1829 he was elected by conference as the first editor of the new Methodist newspaper, the Christian Guardian. Over the next decade he would be its dominant editorial voice, responsible for the paper from the first issue in November 1829 until August 1832, from October 1833 until June 1835, and again from June 1838 until June 1840. A large Methodist constituency and Ryerson’s own editorial talents made the Guardian one of the most widely read and politically influential papers in the colony. From the beginning it reflected not only the temporal but also the spiritual concerns of Ryerson’s own life. One subsidiary object of the paper, he wrote in 1830, was “to support and vindicate religious and civil rights”; but the paper’s principal purpose was to promote “practical Christianity – to teach men how to live and how to die.” Serving also as book steward for 1829–32 and 1833–35, Ryerson established a book room and helped lay the foundations of a flourishing publishing establishment which eventually became the Ryerson Press.
During the early 1830s Ryerson was involved in another important aspect of the institutional development of his church. In 1832, at the invitation of the colonial administration, the politically conservative British Wesleyans decided to expand their own work into Upper Canada. Colonial Methodists were divided over the appropriate response. Although some objected to any cooperation at all, the majority of conference, led by John Ryerson, voted to support a union between the two churches in order to avoid wasteful duplication and open conflict and to disprove the continuing charges of American sympathies. Egerton vigorously supported this policy in the Guardian and within conference, and was selected to go to England to complete the negotiations with the English conference as well as to lay a variety of Methodist interests before the Colonial Office. He returned to Upper Canada in September 1833. Just 30 years of age, fresh from his first trip abroad and the successful representation of his church in Britain, and re-elected editor of the Guardian, Ryerson had begun to establish himself, in Carroll’s words, as the Methodists’ “leader in all public questions.”
The style and character of the man had also begun to take permanent shape. Summarizing contemporary opinion, Charles Bruce Sissons* concludes that Ryerson was a competent rather than an outstanding preacher. The basis for his public reputation would lie in the written rather than the spoken word. At his best Ryerson could write prose laced with vigorous rhetoric, flashes of wit, and powerful imagery. He could also, particularly as he grew older, be long-winded and pontifical, his prose weighted down by endless quotations and irrelevant appeals to the history of any subject from time immemorial. His style was shaped by the Methodist homiletics of the day and encompassed the best and the worst of the genre.
To his many friends and admirers Ryerson was a generous, warm, kind, inspiring man, “trusting and trustworthy,” endowed with “grand qualities of mind and heart.” Others, particularly those who ran afoul of him in controversy, did not share this opinion. In his younger days Ryerson was generally careful to distinguish between the personalities and the arguments of his opponents. As editor of the Guardian he did not routinely indulge in the character assassination and innuendo typical of contemporary colonial journalism. Yet he was also acutely sensitive to slights or imputations about his own character and principles, and when provoked could descend into excesses of personal abuse unbecoming in a clergyman and public figure. These tendencies increased as he grew older so that even a sympathetic contemporary observer was led to remark that “both in writing and in debate he is not very choice of the means by which he abolishes an opponent, so long as it is done.” His was not a singular failing in mid-19th-century Canada and in many instances Ryerson had a strong claim to just cause. None the less he himself recognized it as a flaw. “I have,” he told his daughter, Mrs Sophia Howard Harris, in 1870, “written and printed many things that I afterwards very much regretted. For many years I have been accustomed to keep for a day or a week what I have written, before committing it to press.”
When he believed it to be necessary Ryerson could rethink his positions and make tactical compromises but his reluctance to admit such shifts publicly left him open to recurring charges of disingenuousness and hypocrisy. Such assessments were also encouraged by a strain of self-righteousness in his personality. Though his diaries and private letters often reveal him struggling with self-doubt, his public demeanour bespoke great assurance that his designs and God’s were one. Thomas Dalton* was one of the first of Ryerson’s contemporaries who captured this trait when he wrote in 1834 that Ryerson “pretends to be Heaven’s Lord Chancellor, and consequently the depository of all the secrets of that high court.”
Throughout his life Ryerson was a relentless worker. He could call up enormous reserves of energy, endurance, and discipline – products of his early labours on his father’s farm, the physical rigours of a circuit-rider’s life, and above all, the conviction that he must be a worthy steward of the time God gave him. He was also a constant student. He was forever learning a new language: Ojibwa at the Credit River mission, Hebrew in his spare time in the early 1840s, French and German on his trips to the Continent. The core of his religious and social thought had been shaped by rigorous study of the scriptures and the great Methodist divines: Wesley himself, Adam Clarke, and Richard Watson. He was also an avid reader of the classics of British and European history and political thought, and the “serious” contemporary literature such as the great English quarterlies. On any subject he chose he could command a remarkable variety of sources and quotations. His persistent interest in secular knowledge and in contemporary cultural and political affairs tempered the asperities of a faith that in other men could breed a disdain for temporal things or even an outright anti-intellectualism. On the other hand his secular interests, reinforced and justified by his religious convictions, also drew him into the political conflicts that haunted the colony in the 1830s and 1840s to a degree that, amongst Upper Canadian clergymen, was matched only by his great antagonist, John Strachan.
As pamphleteer and editor between 1826 and 1832 Ryerson had gradually become associated in the public mind with those who identified themselves as political Reformers. It was a natural alliance at the time, for many of the issues that galvanized Reformers were also those of most concern to Methodist leaders: the disposition of the clergy reserves, the right to solemnize marriages, the control of many of the educational institutions by the Church of England, and a number of similar issues affecting denominational equality Ryerson’s spirited editorial attacks on Anglican ascendancy, his leading role in organizing and drafting the petition of the Friends of Religious Liberty in December 1830 [see Jesse Ketchum*], and his denunciation in 1831 of the attack by Sir John Colborne* on the Methodists for political meddling, all seemed to identify him not just as a leading Methodist but as a leading Reformer as well. Thus it was not surprising that in 1832 a Tory mob in Peterborough, looking for symbols of reform on which to vent their anger, set fire to effigies of both William Lyon Mackenzie* and Ryerson.
When Ryerson returned from England in the autumn of 1833, however, he struck an unexpected theme. In the first of a series of “Impressions of England,” published in the Guardian, he attacked as infidel, republican, and anti-Methodist, radical leaders such as Joseph Hume and John Arthur Roebuck* who were close allies of Canadian Reformers. At the same time he praised the English “moderate Tories” among whom were to be found “a considerable portion of the evangelical clergy and, we think, a majority of Wesleyan Methodists.” Their political prudence, “genuine liberality and religious beneficence,” he concluded, “claim respect and imitation.” The “Impressions” caused a political uproar. To friends and enemies alike Ryerson appeared to reverse direction and commit himself to Toryism. The Reform press had a field-day at his expense, condemning him as an apostate and traitor, and many of his Methodist brethren concurred. To Ryerson himself, however, the change was one of emphasis, not principle. His passionate recitals of the grievances of Upper Canada had in fact masked an intellectual temper that was profoundly loyalist and conservative.
Two central convictions, shaped by his early life and by his reading of Blackstone, Paley, Wesley, Clarke, and Watson, formed the core of his political thought. First, he revered the body of constitutional theory and practice developed in Britain since 1688 and inherited, he believed, by Upper Canadians through the Constitutional Act of 1791. To Ryerson, civil institutions were among the means established by God to enable man to seek sanctification in this life and everlasting happiness with God in the next. No system of government designed by man was better suited to serve these purposes than the British constitution. By providing institutional bulwarks against arbitrary rule, it protected the civil and religious liberties of the subject and, through petitions to parliament and appeals to the crown, it furnished the means of seeking redress of grievances. Because of its mixed nature – its incorporation of king, lords, and commons (in the colony, governor, council, and assembly) – it provided the mechanism to balance and reconcile the different interests of society and thereby secure good government for the whole community. Wise policy, Ryerson would repeatedly say, not only arose from but also ensured “both the prerogatives and due influence of the Crown, and the constitutional rights of the people.”
The second fundamental principle that shaped his political thought was the importance of the imperial tie. Given his warm attachment to British institutions, all proposals for outright independence were anathema. At the same time he believed that the imperial authority and its local representatives must be responsive to local interests and circumstances. Thus Ryerson, like so many others of his generation, had to come to grips with a proposition that, on the face of it, seemed absurd: Upper Canada could be both self-governing and a colony. If some believed that sentiment alone could keep separatist tendencies in check, many others, Ryerson included, did not. To him, the “responsible government” of Robert Baldwin* was but a first step to independence. Its logic was to destroy the mixed constitution by eliminating the independent prerogative of the crown, the most palpable link between colony and parent state. So long as the imperial government was broadly responsive to public opinion, preserved the right of appeal for redress, and followed existing constitutional usages in dealing with the colony, Ryerson would oppose any innovations that threatened to weaken the imperial tie or modify the constitution inherited by the colony.
From the late 1820s until the mid 1840s Ryerson would attempt to govern his political course in accordance with these two principles. It was not an easy task. It would lead him from one side of the political spectrum to the other and back again, and leave him open to charges of political opportunism that, in the eyes of many Upper Canadians though not in his own, were difficult to refute.
By late 1833, when he published “Impressions,” Ryerson had become convinced that the main enemy was the Reform movement, not the administration. He did not dispute the fact that Upper Canadians still had justifiable complaints but, he argued, appeals to the crown and the imperial parliament were bringing redress. In particular, the royal dispatches of 1832 and 1833 had led Lieutenant Governor Colborne to modify many of the partisan policies of the previous decade. To Ryerson, in other words, the cause of Reform had been largely won. Of course Methodists had changed their tune, he would reply to his critics in 1835, “and for a simple and sufficient reason, the administration of government towards them has been essentially changed.” The Reformers, on the other hand, were seeking no longer to remedy real grievances but to introduce organic changes in the constitution. Thus, with the same energy he had exerted on behalf of Reform in the early 1830s, by mid decade Ryerson had thrown himself into the defence of existing authority.
Ryerson was absent from Upper Canada from November 1835 to June 1837, having been sent by conference to England as part of an attempt to put the affairs of the Methodists’ new academy at Cobourg in order. Begun with the greatest optimism in the early 1830s, Upper Canada Academy was in the most desperate financial straits by mid decade. It was Ryerson’s job to obtain a royal charter for it and, more importantly, to travel throughout Britain soliciting money for its support. Both tasks proved difficult but the latter was the more painful: to be a stranger and to have to beg, he confided to his diary, was “the most disagreeable of all employments.” He obtained the charter, none the less, and promises of financial support from British Wesleyans and the imperial government. Though away from home during these months, he continued to be a force in Upper Canadian politics, writing lengthy letters to the Christian Guardian and to English newspapers criticizing the Reformers and defending the policies of Lieutenant Governor Sir Francis Bond Head*.
Ryerson ended 1837 with a blistering sermon condemning those who had participated in the rebellion. He himself, however, was already beginning to have second thoughts about Head’s administration. It was one thing to defend the existing constitution against “republican” or “democratic” radicalism but quite another to tolerate arbitrary rule. Despite the clearly expressed will of the crown and the assembly, the Legislative Council had refused to approve a loan to Upper Canada Academy in 1837 – a scandalous departure, Ryerson argued, from constitutional precedent. A Tory legislature appeared to be attempting once more to place the clergy reserves in Anglican hands. In the wake of the rebellion civil liberties were being trampled upon and early in 1838 the case of Marshall Spring Bidwell*, who had been forced into exile at the whim of the lieutenant governor, roused Ryerson to issue a ringing public denunciation of the authorities and a defence of the constitutional rights of the subject. In Ryerson’s view Head’s successor, Sir George Arthur*, brought no improvement; indeed Arthur seemed determined to sustain all of the most objectionable pretensions of traditional colonial Toryism. From June 1838, when Ryerson returned as editor of the Guardian, his energies were again directed towards attacking the policies of the local executive and its supporters inside and outside the legislature. Once more he had entered the camp of the anti-government alliance.
It was in these circumstances that Ryerson was temporarily converted to the constitutional proposals of Lord Durham [Lambton*]. To those who recalled with some glee his earlier opposition to colonial cabinet responsibility he replied in June 1839 that “the history of the last three years” had proved that no other means existed to ensure a just and equitable local administration. By the end of 1840, however, Ryerson had returned to more familiar ground. In Lord Sydenham [Thomson*], who was determined to form a broad party of moderate opinion, to treat all denominations equally, and to be responsive to public opinion while at the same time preserving the prerogatives of the crown, Ryerson believed he had found the patriot governor who could implement “truly liberal conservative policy” and thus sustain the mixed constitution in the colonial setting. When Sydenham died in 1841 Ryerson wrote an obituary that heaped encomium upon encomium. At its heart was an expression of his own most fervent wish for the province: “his Lordship has solved the difficult problem, that a people may be colonists and yet be free.”
In June 1840 Ryerson ended his last stint as editor of the Guardian and was assigned to a pastorate in Toronto. He remained, however, a central figure in Methodist affairs. A number of issues had begun to divide Canadian and British Wesleyans in the late 1830s, raising doubts about the value of the union into which they had entered in 1833. One of these was the editorial policy of the Guardian, which members of the British conference felt Ryerson had made into “a political and party organ” of colonial radicalism. Though Ryerson was sustained by large majorities at conference, clashes over this and other matters of policy led to the dissolution of the union in 1840. Egerton and his brother William were appointed delegates to the British conference and spent the summer of 1840 in England negotiating the details of separation. In the following year Egerton was selected as the first principal of Victoria College, the successor to Upper Canada Academy, though he was not formally inducted into the post until June 1842. He remained principal until 1847 but his active role in the college was short-lived. In 1844 he took up a new post as a government administrator and, at the same time, became involved in one of the most celebrated political conflicts in Upper Canadian history.
In November 1843, because of a dispute over control of patronage, Governor Sir Charles Theophilus Metcalfe*’s Reform ministers had resigned from office. In the next few months Metcalfe and his new chief minister in Canada West, William Henry Draper*, began to search for a base of support in the leading moderates of both parties and all denominations. Among those consulted for general advice was Ryerson and, most probably in January 1844, consultation turned into a more positive offer of a place in the administration.
It is not difficult to see why Metcalfe wanted Ryerson. An appointment for Ryerson would disprove charges that he was too partial to Anglicans and high Tories and would favourably influence the large Methodist vote. Ryerson was on close terms with other political moderates and his accession might bring their support as well. A place on the council itself was, however, out of the question. Ryerson did not want an unequivocally political appointment and Draper discovered that it was not possible in any case. Thus Ryerson was offered the post of superintendent of schools for Canada West, which was not formally political; his acceptance would, however, signify his support for the ministry.
Why Ryerson himself was tempted by the offer is another question. Certainly he believed that at stake was a major constitutional issue upon which men must declare themselves. Moreover, he had always thought that an effective system of national education was one of the highest goals of practical, liberal policy and he was no doubt deeply attracted by the chance to play a role in promoting its development. But there may have been other reasons as well. On two previous occasions in the early 1840s he had expressed an interest in becoming involved in primarily secular projects and it may have been that Ryerson was somewhat restless in these years and eager to test his talents in a wider sphere than that afforded by Upper Canadian Methodism alone.
He may also have been tempted by the new political atmosphere of the years after 1840. The many leading politicians of the decade with whom he was on close personal terms accorded him a degree of respect he had not received from an earlier generation of Upper Canadian notables. Moreover, whatever their differences on particular issues, Ryerson’s vision of the future development of Canadian society had much in common with that of such men as Draper and Francis Hincks. They were ready to recognize the legitimate interests of Methodists and other dissenters within the body politic, they were men of the centre who rejected the extremes of either radicalism or Toryism, and their concern for economic development and the modernization of public services and institutions was as great as their commitment to the preservation of a distinct British-American society. In other words, Ryerson may have been attracted to the job because he believed that politics and policy were moving in more congenial and promising directions than in the conflict-ridden decade of the 1830s. In any case and for whatever reasons, Ryerson accepted Metcalfe’s offer in early 1844, though his appointment was not formally announced until September.
Apparently Metcalfe and Draper had asked only that Ryerson agree to serve as superintendent of common schools. It seems to have been Ryerson himself who proposed that he also step into the public arena in defence of the governor. He did so in part because he thought that his appointment was at risk unless the ministry was sustained by the electorate. But his behaviour was also fully in character. For Ryerson it was never enough to stand up and be counted; he had to smite the enemy hip and thigh as well. Thus he set about writing Sir Charles Metcalfe defended against the attacks of his late counsellors, published first as a series of letters in the British Colonist (Toronto) in the late spring and early summer of 1844 and later that year as a pamphlet of some 165 pages.
Though the letters ranged widely over British and colonial constitutional and political history and included a variety of arguments favourable to Metcalfe’s position, Ryerson focused on the patronage question. The Reform ministry, he argued, proposed to use patronage to strengthen the grip of extreme partyism on the country. This in itself was dangerous enough, for partyism prized partisanship and factionalism over independent judgement and the public interest, and rewarded loyalty rather than merit. In this respect the Reformers were reviving all the evils of Family Compact rule when patronage had been used for the benefit of a faction and a sect rather than the community as a whole. But more importantly, by attempting to control patronage, the Reform ministers were attacking the British connection itself: to put the control of patronage primarily in the hands of the council was to undermine the independent authority of the governor and thereby fatally weaken the link with the crown. To accede to such a principle would give Canada “Responsible Government in a sense that would make the Crown a ‘tool’ in the hands of a party; or in a sense, as the Imperial Government emphatically declare, would make ‘Canada an independent republic.’” Thus the duty of the people of Canada in the present crisis was clear: to sustain the kind of responsible government which had been established by Sydenham, which was approved by the imperial government, “and which Sir Charles Metcalfe has most explicitly and fully avowed.”
The Metcalfe ministry won the elections of 1844 for many reasons, though no doubt Ryerson’s “Defence” and the loyalty cry he helped to raise played a part in influencing moderate opinion. His appointment to an important public position may also have influenced Methodist voters for it represented a long-delayed recognition of their importance and their claims to full membership in Upper Canadian society. The affair also won Ryerson the lasting enmity of some Reformers, George Brown* amongst them, and a recurring epithet, “Leonidas,” for Ryerson’s smug comparison of his own role in 1844 with that of the hero of Thermopylæ. Ryerson himself left Canada West in October 1844 for his first tour of educational establishments in Britain and on the Continent, and did not return until December 1845. In the following year, working closely with Draper, he began the task of reorganizing the structure of elementary education in the colony.
He could not, however, detach himself immediately from the political role he had played in 1844. He had publicly allied himself with Metcalfe and with Draper’s Conservative ministry. Upon the victory of the Reformers in the elections of 1847–48 it was commonly rumoured that Ryerson would be replaced as superintendent of schools. He survived for several reasons. Impressed by his competence, Lord Elgin [Bruce*] gave Ryerson his full support against those who wished to dismiss him for political reasons. Ryerson also had warm allies within the ministry, such as William Hamilton Merritt*, and influential admirers within the party. Above all, Francis Hincks, worried about the Methodist vote, was prepared to bury the political enmity of the mid 1840s. By late 1849 Ryerson had prevailed. His chief enemy in the ministry, Malcolm Cameron*, had resigned, new school legislation that undercut Ryerson’s position had been set aside, and Ryerson had been invited to remain in office and to prepare a revised school bill incorporating the experience of his four years as superintendent. The way was now clear for him to begin the most significant phase of his life’s work.
Ryerson’s main preoccupation in the two decades after 1850 was to give form and substance to his vision of the appropriate system of education for Canada West. That vision had been taking shape for years, derived in equal parts from the lessons of scripture and Methodist theology, from his reading of the early 19th-century debates in Britain and America about the importance of popular education, from his participation in the editorial warfare over educational policy in Upper Canada, and from his study of other school systems during his tour of Europe in 1844–45. Though Ryerson wrote voluminously about education throughout his public life, his ideas were expressed most fully and systematically in his Report on a system of public elementary instruction for Upper Canada, written after his return from Europe.
At the heart of his educational ideas lay his Christian faith. Next to religion itself, he believed, education was the great agent of God’s purpose for man. Carried out in a Christian context, education promoted virtue and usefulness in this world and union with God in the next. Because it made good and useful individuals it was also a key agent in supporting the good society, inasmuch as it helped to promote social harmony, self-discipline, and loyalty to properly constituted authority. To Ryerson it was the duty of education to develop “all the intellectual powers of man, teach him self-reliance as well as dependence on God, excite him in industry and enterprise, and instruct him in his rights as well as the duties of man.”
From these principles Ryerson drew his particular goals. First and foremost, a system of education must be Christian: a secular education was a danger to the child and the society as well as a denial of God’s message to mankind. Secondly, in order to have its intended effects on all children, schooling must be universal. A truly national system must also be “extensive” or “comprehensive”: it must meet the needs of all ranks and vocations by providing both elementary and advanced institutions of education. As well the system must be both British and Canadian. The schools had a duty to uphold the British tie and respect for British constitutional government, and at the same time to foster local patriotism and serve the particular needs and circumstances of Upper Canada’s social and economic life. Finally, the system must be the active concern of government. As an ordinance of God “designed by the Supreme Being ‘to be a minister of God for good’ to a whole people,” government had a duty to sustain and encourage those institutions which promoted the temporal and eternal welfare of its citizens. These were the goals Ryerson would pursue in his remarkably long career as superintendent of education in the upper province.
When Ryerson first took office in 1844 there were already more than 2,500 elementary schools in Canada West: financed by a combination of government grants, property taxation, and tuition fees; run by locally elected boards of education; and supervised and coordinated, though in a somewhat ineffective way, by an established central Education Office. Ryerson, in other words, did not create a school system; he inherited one. Throughout his career, moreover, his success was in large part the product of a climate of opinion highly favourable to his aims. Politicians, editors, and other public figures of all religious and political persuasions were sympathetic to the expansion of schooling. School boards and taxpayers provided most of the financial and political support at the local level and imposed broad limits within which central policy could operate. Thus system-building was a cooperative venture rather than the sole achievement of any one individual. More than anyone else, however, it was Ryerson who gave the emerging system its particular shape and character. Between 1844 and 1876 he was involved in a multitude of projects, ranging from the drafting of his major school legislation of 1846, 1850, and 1871 to writing school textbooks, promoting school libraries, and creating a museum of art and science. But his four major achievements were the creation of conditions which made universal access to elementary education possible, the promotion of improvements in the quality of the school programme, changes in the function and character of the grammar schools, and the establishment of an effective administrative structure.
He sought universality and improved quality in several ways. In a period when much of the province was still being settled Ryerson provided the legislative and financial devices that enabled even new, small communities to provide schools for themselves. He also led the campaign, which culminated in the Schools Act of 1871, to make every elementary school tuition-free and to introduce Ontario’s first tentative measure of compulsory attendance. For Ryerson, however, it was not enough to ensure that the rudiments alone were universally available. Through exhortation and regulation he tried to make certain that the programme of studies extended well beyond the “three Rs” so that the elementary schools not only began but completed all of the schooling most children and their parents would want or need. He tried to ensure that textbooks were pedagogically sound and reflected the political, social, and religious values he believed should underpin Upper Canadian society. Finally, he did what he could to promote improved teaching. In 1847 he established the first teacher-training institution and he constantly attempted to set progressively higher standards for the certification of elementary school teachers.
Ryerson’s achievement with respect to the grammar schools was twofold. First, by persuading the politicians and the public to accept the principle that grammar schools should have access to local taxation, he put these institutions on a sound financial footing for the first time in their history and transformed them into unequivocally public institutions. Secondly, he attempted to turn the grammar schools into effective secondary schools. By the gradual introduction of an entrance examination and a prescribed curriculum that clearly delimited the functions of elementary and grammar schools, he linked these institutions hierarchically. At the same time, he attempted to ensure that the grammar schools would offer a high-quality, broadly based education, consisting of English, mathematics, and classical studies, to that minority of students continuing beyond the elementary level.
By creating an effective administrative system for his own department, Ryerson became a member of that small group of pioneer public servants who, in J. E. Hodgetts’ words, made responsible government “a working reality.” He established a strong central authority and a system of local inspection designed to ensure that provincial policy could be implemented and enforced. His own daily routine was dominated by an immense volume of correspondence generated by the problems of institution-building at the local level – correspondence that required him to write hundreds of letters a month in response to requests for guidance and advice. By careful attention to the detail of the organizational machinery at his command he secured both financial and administrative responsibility throughout the system. He reduced the routine work of administration as well as his relations with the local authorities to a body of systematic procedure that covered everything from the gathering of a multitude of statistics to the means by which local boards could function fairly and efficiently in the day-to-day running of the schools. An intensely methodical administrator, Ryerson created the first effective social service bureaucracy in the province’s history.
He was, however, not only a school administrator but, in Alison Prentice’s phrase, a “school promoter” as well. Through his speeches, his educational tours of the province, and the Journal of Education for Upper Canada, which he edited from 1848 to 1875, he reported the best ideas from home and abroad, exhorted local boards to introduce this or that new idea, and launched his own campaigns for such major innovations as free schools and compulsory education.
Part of his promotional task, perhaps the least welcome part, was to defend the place of grant-aided Roman Catholic separate schools within the system. Though these schools represented only a small proportion of the total number of schools in operation, they became the subject of prolonged political, religious, and sectional controversy in the mid 19th century. Though Ryerson had no a priori objections to denominational schools where a common faith was shared by the whole population, he did not approve of sectarian schools in a denominationally diverse society like Canada West. He thought such schools impractical in most parts of the country, divisive, and unnecessary on the grounds that all the essential, shared doctrines of Christianity could be taught in the elementary schools without reference to the peculiar doctrines of each sect. None the less he had inherited responsibility for the separate schools from the School Act of 1841 and could see no way of abolishing them, given the union of the Canadas which ensured the Catholic minority of Canada West the powerful support in the legislature of their Lower Canadian brethren. Thus Ryerson found himself repeatedly forced to defend the status quo, or to justify a succession of unpalatable political compromises on the issue, in an attempt to fend off both the abolitionists and those who sought the extension of the Catholic system. The additional rights won by Roman Catholics in 1853, 1855, and 1863 were modest compared to their demands; Ryerson was largely successful in preserving the unity of the school system. But his role made him appear to endorse the survival of the separate schools against the clearly expressed will of the majority of politicians and electors in Canada West, and kept him deeply embroiled in public debate from 1852 to 1865, when the issue was finally disposed of as part of the confederation settlement.
If Ryerson disliked the separate school controversy, however, it was because he believed the question to be insoluble and divisive, not because he thought it inappropriate for public servants to become involved in political questions. The modern conventions of civil service neutrality and anonymity were still in a formative stage in the period and Ryerson stands out as a Canadian example of that transitional group of mid-Victorian reformer-bureaucrats whom George Kitson Clark has labelled “statesmen in disguise.” Because Ryerson believed that the disposition of educational issues should not be subject to politics or partyism, he had made the Education Office a semi-autonomous agency with no distinct ministerial head. Though formally responsible to the Executive Council, Ryerson himself assumed an almost ministerial role. He established policy, sought political support for it inside and outside parliament, and defended it in public. Moreover his notion of his public duty transcended responsibility to a particular ministry or even parliament. In effect he saw himself as the guardian of the public interest in all educational matters. Even in the late 1860s Ryerson did not think it anomalous, when his own views conflicted with those of a member of the cabinet, to confront the minister with the threat that he would take his side of the case directly to the public. Nor did he feel constrained to keep his activities within the formal jurisdiction of his office. While in England in 1851, for example, he acted as an emissary for the administration to the Colonial Office on the clergy reserves issue and published anonymous letters on the same subject in the Times. He regularly exchanged political gossip and advice with politicians to whom he was personally close, especially William Draper, Francis Hincks, and John A. Macdonald*, and on at least one occasion privately used his influence among Methodist leaders to sway their politics and their votes.
Throughout his superintendency, moreover, he remained an active participant in the affairs of Upper Canadian Methodism. With the exception of the year 1854–55, when a brief but tempestuous dispute over the rights of Methodist ministers to require attendance at class meetings led to Ryerson’s temporary resignation from conference, he continued to serve on important conference committees, including the board of Victoria College. In the late 1860s and in the 1870s he was an active supporter at conference of the negotiations for Methodist union and was honoured in 1874 for his contributions to the institutional development of Canadian Methodism by his election as the first president of the Methodist Church of Canada. This continuing clerical role, however, involved him once again in a highly contentious political issue, the university question.
Ryerson always claimed that he was a warm supporter of a provincial university, and no doubt he was in the sense that he generally supported any measure that would sustain effective professional schools and provide common standards for examinations and degrees among the various colleges in the province. Indeed he himself had written the original draft of Hincks’s University Act of 1853, which incorporated these ideas. But Ryerson was also a resolute defender of the denominational colleges as agencies for ensuring a Christian education and environment for young men who did not live at home. And he had an immense personal commitment to the survival of Victoria College, which he had done so much to foster in the 1830s and 1840s. For both reasons he was an energetic supporter of public aid to the denominational colleges throughout the 1850s and 1860s. He took a leading role between 1859 and 1863 in the concerted attempt by several denominations to force the government to give them access to the funds of the University of Toronto and in the abortive campaign in 1868 to prevent the new government of Ontario from abolishing the existing grants to the denominational colleges. In the controversy surrounding the question, Ryerson always attempted to claim the high ground as champion of the interests of Christianity and high standards in education. But to those who believed in the virtues of a civic university, free from sectarian control and large enough to offer a comprehensive liberal and professional education, he inevitably appeared as the partisan of denominational self-interest and sectarian political scheming.
The 1850s were for Ryerson among the most satisfying years of his life. He had experienced his share of personal tragedy in the two previous decades with the deaths of his first wife and both their children. By the 1850s, however, he and his second wife had settled in a comfortable house in Toronto, and had two growing children, Charles Egerton and Sophia. Though Charlie was a constant worry to his father because of his lack of earnestness and studiousness, he became a welcome sporting and sailing companion later in Ryerson’s life. Sophie, as Ryerson’s warm and often moving letters to his daughter reveal, was the love of his life, particularly since his relationship with his second wife was somewhat distant and at times strained. The 1850s were also among his most productive years as superintendent. In a sequence of major legislation between 1850 and 1855 he had put the common school system in order, begun the reform of the grammar schools, and played a role in reshaping the provincial university. He was on close terms with most of the influential politicians of the day, and received broad support from both parties and from the provincial press; even the Globe found good things to say about him for much of the decade. He basked in the accolades of Lord Elgin during ceremonies connected with the building of the Normal School in Toronto, and was invited in 1854 to serve as a member of a commission of inquiry into the state of King’s College (University of New Brunswick) in Fredericton, N.B. Among other ornaments of public approbation he accumulated three honorary degrees: a dd from Wesleyan University, Middletown, Conn., in 1842; an ma from the University of Toronto in 1857; and an lld from Victoria College in 1861. His reputation and his public role seemed permanently and securely established.
Towards the end of the decade, however, both his personal and his professional circumstances became more troubled. In the late 1850s his pride was badly wounded by a contretemps with John Langton*, the provincial auditor. Langton, the first to admit that Ryerson was a superb administrator, had written in 1856 that Ryerson had “the genius of order and system,” and that “his accounts and vouchers are a model for all our public departments.” But between 1855 and 1857 Langton also discovered and exposed the fact that Ryerson had personally collected the interest on public funds held in his name. It was not an illegal practice at the time, and Ryerson believed he had ministerial approval for it, but it was also ceasing to be acceptable conduct in the public mind. He promised to pay back the entire amount and a sympathetic government granted him virtually the equivalent sum in back salary. But he was stung by the accusations against his probity and shaken by the way in which those charges remained current long after the issue had been formally settled. Then, in 1862, approaching the age of 60, Ryerson suffered a prolonged and severe illness marked by the recurrence of headaches, dizziness, and coughing. His illness forced him to reduce his traditional schedule of work and as he recovered in the succeeding years he took his first real vacations and embarked on a regimen of vigorous exercise. Among other things he built a skiff, and over the next few years sailed and rowed nine times from Toronto to Long Point, five of these adventures, much to the consternation of friends and family, being undertaken alone. Though he would regain much of his strength by the mid 1860s, he would suffer relapses for the rest of his life and was never again able to carry the burden of work he had once borne.
From the late 1850s onwards, moreover, he discovered that there was a price to be paid for insulating the department from the political process, for he began to have difficulties persuading the politicians to interest themselves in his projects, carry forward his legislation, and defend him when he was under attack. These difficulties, perhaps more than anything else, convinced him by the late 1860s that a ministerial head was essential if the interests of the department and the school system were to be adequately protected. At the same time he began to accumulate a growing number of enemies. His public attack in 1858 on the educational policies of the short-lived coalition between George Brown and the Lower Canadian Reformers marked the reopening of hostilities between Ryerson and Brown which would last until the latter’s death. Along with this incident his role in the university question and his close relations with John A. Macdonald alienated many leading Brownite Liberals. Nor did Ryerson learn prudence from the political controversies in which he found himself involved. When in 1867 the Reform party called for an end to coalitions and a return to party politics, Ryerson replied with a pamphlet entitled The new Canadian dominion: dangers and duties of the people in regard to their government, in which he returned to the themes of 1844, warning against the dangers of partyism – its “intolerance,” its “excesses and oppressions,” and the “unscrupulous partisanship” of “this hermaphrodite spawn of cast-off colonial despotism and selfishness.” All of this controversy contributed to what Oliver Mowat* would describe, in a letter to Ryerson in 1873, as “the antagonism towards you which has so long prevailed in the Liberal party.”
Illness and the frustrations of public life led Ryerson to talk sporadically about retirement throughout the 1860s. At the same time, however, he was anxious to complete his agenda for educational reform. In 1866–67 he made his last educational tour of Europe and America, out of which came two reports, written in 1868: one on the education of the deaf, dumb, and blind, and the other on the state of American and European education along with recommendations for the improvement of the Ontario system. Late in the same year he submitted draft legislation designed to improve the details of school law and to introduce universal free elementary education, compulsory attendance, and a new structure for secondary education.
His initial hopes for quick and easy passage of the school bill were soon dashed. In part this disappointment was due to the constant attacks mounted by the opposition Liberals, many of them directed at Ryerson personally. But it was also due to the emergence of real public debate about a wide variety of educational issues. Differences of opinion in the legislature and the press, along with opposition to parts of the bill from teachers’ organizations and from local opinion expressed during Ryerson’s tour of the province in 1869, led to the temporary withdrawal of the bill and to considerable modification of it. The new School Act, finally passed early in 1871, contained most of Ryerson’s major recommendations in one form or another and remains as one of the great landmarks of his career. But it was passed amidst a degree of political debate and personal bitterness not experienced by Ryerson since the late 1840s.
Ryerson’s last years in office were unhappy ones. Again some of this unhappiness was due to the political and personal antagonisms among Liberals over the previous 30 years – antagonisms that boiled over in 1872 in his bitter and sustained public conflict with Edward Blake*. But it was not merely a matter of personalities and political differences. From the administration of John Sandfield Macdonald* onwards, successive ministries were determined to regularize the procedures of the Education Office and, more importantly, to exercise a firm hand in educational policy-making. In Ryerson’s view this effort was an invasion of his prerogatives as well as a denigration of his own role to that of “a clerk,” and seemed motivated by the most base political partisanship. Each incursion – from the simple attempt by the provincial treasurer in 1868 to impose financial controls on the department to the suspension of his school regulations in 1872 and the plans to modify his book depository – was met with resistance and, too often, with a barrage of invective hurled at those he conceived to be his persecutors. In 1872 Blake seemed to invite conflict; Mowat was far more conciliatory. He sought Ryerson’s advice, allowed him considerable latitude in the administration of the department, and applied liberal amounts of soft sawder when Ryerson’s sensitivities were bruised. But he was no less determined than Blake to be his own master. As Mowat put it on one occasion when a quarrel threatened: “I would much rather cooperate with you . . . but if I must have a fight with the Chief Superintendent . . . instead of his co-operation, as in my position I ought to have, I must still do what I consider to be my duty.”
The conflicts of the years 1872–75 invited either resignation or dismissal. Yet neither option could be exercised. Ryerson repeatedly expressed a wish to resign but he did not have the financial resources to sustain himself independently: for years he had given generously to help finance a variety of Methodist causes including Victoria College, he had a nephew to educate, and he may also have lived somewhat beyond his means. Thus he needed to assure himself of a government pension and could not afford to make any grand gestures over policies with which he disagreed. Either Blake or Mowat would probably have welcomed his resignation but there were political difficulties in providing him with a permanent pension and differences within the Liberal party itself over the kind of reorganization the Education Office should undergo. Dismissal, on the other hand, was out of the question. Ryerson’s reputation remained high in many quarters and he was still, as even the Liberals recognized, a power among Methodist voters. It was not until late 1875 that Mowat finally took the matter in hand, and made the decision to create a ministry of education [see Adam Crooks] and to provide a pension for Ryerson. He formally left office in February 1876, just over a month before his 73rd birthday.
Retirement, however, did not mean a life of leisure. Since the early 1860s Ryerson had devoted his spare moments to what he was convinced was his last “mission” in life – a history of the United Empire Loyalists. In 1876 the project became his full-time occupation and most of that year was spent in England where he put in long hours of research in the British Museum. Over the succeeding five years he finished the two large volumes that make up The loyalists of America and their times. Beyond that he completed a school textbook on political economy and a history of Canadian Methodism. He was working on his autobiography when, in the summer of 1881, his health began to fail. He died on 19 Feb. 1882. Following a large and impressive funeral service he was buried in Mount Pleasant Cemetery, Toronto.
Ryerson’s life spans the growth of Upper Canada virtually from first settlement to the social and economic maturity of the 1870s. For most of those years he was a major figure in its history. Particularly before 1850 he played a central part in the institutional growth of Methodism, one of the province’s largest denominations. As well, he helped to articulate and publicize “the grievances of Upper Canada,” and contributed to the debate about the nature of colonial-imperial relations. If most historians now reject an older view that Ryerson determined single-handed the results of the elections of 1836 and 1844, still he remains an influential figure in these events and one of the leading spokesmen for that majority of Upper Canadians who sought some middle way to reconcile self-government and the imperial tie.
But it is his contribution to Canadian education that remains his greatest legacy. He was one of the founders of Victoria College, its first principal, and a generous benefactor through some of its most difficult years. He was a vigorous protagonist of the right of all the denominational colleges to survive and prosper in the province. And he attempted to make the grant-aided schools universal and comprehensive and to create an effective system of public administration at both the local and provincial levels.
Few of his educational ideas were original. John Strachan, for one, had anticipated many of them, while others were the common coinage of an era when school systems were being constructed in many different places. Nor was his vision without flaws. He had an unsure hand when it came to providing for the advanced education of young women. To some of his contemporaries his version of non-denominationalism in education appeared as little more than a disguised and proselytizing form of evangelical Protestantism. And his hopes for social improvement through education were vitiated by a belief, widely shared by his generation, that social and economic inequalities were the unchangeable realities of man’s fallen estate. During his lifetime there were already divergent views about the merits of the school system, and since his death the assessments of his work have been diverse and conflicting. But on one point there has been consensus. More than any other person Ryerson gave the Ontario school system its particular character, one that, because of his enormous influence in his own generation, would become during the later 19th century a model for most of English-speaking Canada.