Avec ce collectif, HEHE, composé de Helen Evans et Heiko Hansen, il sagit d'interroger, non sans humour, les besoins en ressources énergétiques de nos sociétés contemporaines et de visualiser les problématique sociales, industrielles et écologiques qui découlent des modes de production.

L'oeuvre est comme tombée dans les douves du Château des Ducs de Bretagne à Nantes

Thanks for all your comments and faves, much appreciated as

always.

 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4o7i16cDxQ

A fabulous location but the beautifully clear water flowing into St Ives bay belies the treacherous currents here.

Walking on the beach this morning I saw this guy coming out of the sea. I introduced myself and he told me his name was Mike. He went on to tell me he'd swam to the marina and back which was easy on the way there but on the way back there was an undercurrent and it was hard work.

Seen from edge of Fingest Wood, and one of the best views in the Chilterns. On the skyline in the centre of the image the fan-tail of Cobstone Windmill can just be seen, silhouetted against a tree, the village of Turville hidden in the valley on the other side.

 

Perhaps it's the prettiness of the English landscape with its cosy picture-book villages that look so safe and homely that has led it to be a favourite setting of fiction that hints at anything but. From Agatha Christie to The Avengers (TV series) and countless thriller writers, all love that nothing is what it seems; there's a dark undercurrent behind those twitching net curtains, and secrets and evil in the most innocuous places. Beware the smiling vicar, the waving District nurse and what that nice white haired old lady puts in her home-made jam. And woodlands are creepy.

Oil on canvas, 68”x17’. #contemporarypainting #contemporaryartist #indigenousartist #buffaloartist #niagarafallsnyartist

Copyright 2011 M. Fleur-Ange Lamothe

 

"Insects have had a poor press which has emphasized their role as ravagers, disease carriers or as nuisances. There is always an uncomfortable undercurrent of opinion that insects, in some fiendish manner, are trying to inherit our planet. Insects need an articulate public relations man."

Beatrice Trum Hunter

01 April 2018

Its into the 9th year since I shot this and the situation in the DTES has only deteriorated. Governments have worsened the situation by piling more social housing in the area adding to the “customers with no cash” syndrome. The area is named “Canada’s poorest postal code” by activists and the poverty pimps love the situation making the area one of “Canada’s richest postal codes”, the only differenence being the pimp money goes home at night. Helpful groups support too many by offering them food daily with zero obligation. Its become an impossible sitiuation to address given the current state of political governance.

I wish this was just a sick April Fools Day joke but unfortuantely not.

 

Sleeping on a sidewalk in the Downtown East Side (DTES) of Vancouver BC takes on a different sense of survival than is observed in many west side sleepers. A combination of mental issues, drug sale and use, area resident poverty and the resulting community of "Customers With No Cash" combine for a perfect locale to take advantage of people on the edge where living is not comparable to what most of us bring to mind in our own comfortable world. Prostitution and drugs are a large part of this community. One can not help feel sorry and remorseful this exists in self important Vancouver.

 

The irony of this photo is it was shot about 10 feet from the entrance of BC Housing's recently opened Orange Hall office (open 10 am to 4 pm Monday to Friday) 297 Hastings Street at Gore Ave. This situation has steadily gone downhill since the Federal Governemt cut back funding for social housing.

  

BLAH, BLAH, BLAH:

From BC Housing website:

October 3rd, 2014

VICTORIA – The B.C. government is strengthening the non-profit housing sector by transferring provincially-owned properties to non-profit housing providers.

 

The Province owns approximately 350 parcels of land throughout British Columbia that are currently leased long-term to non-profit housing providers who own and operate social housing buildings on these properties.

 

The non-profit housing sector has been asking for this step for many years. Having ownership of the land will improve a non-profit’s ability to support better long-term planning and selfsufficiency. Owning the lands they operate on will also help non-profits secure the financing they need to be sustainable.

 

In order to transfer title, the Province will end these leases, and then transfer ownership of the land to the societies. The properties will be transferred at fair market value. The Province will assist the societies to secure mortgages on the properties. The current operating agreement that BC Housing has with each non-profit society will remain in place. Approximately 115 properties will be transferred by March 31, 2015, and the rest will be transferred over the next three years.

 

In addition, the Province is looking to transfer ownership of two properties currently managed by BC Housing to non-profit societies. The Province will begin the process by posting Expressions of Interest for Nicholson Tower and Stamps Place in Vancouver shortly.

 

Tenants will not be impacted by these transfers, and the amount of affordable housing stock will remain stable. Non-profit societies have been providing social housing in B.C. for more than 60 years. Today more than 90% of social housing is managed by non-profit societies.

 

THE GLOBE & MAIL:

FRANCES BULA

VANCOUVER — The Globe and Mail

Published Monday, Oct. 13 2014

 

Vancouver won’t solve street homelessness until both the city and province focus on targeting the limited supply of expensive social housing to those who need it most, say experts.

 

That means help can’t go to anyone who passes through a shelter or an outdoor camp or even to someone who sleeps outside temporarily. In the vast majority of cases, people who become homeless experience it briefly and are able to avoid losing housing again.

 

But people working on eliminating homelessness do not always understand that the thousands of people who experience homelessness in a year don’t all need expensive subsidized housing. That should be reserved for the chronically homeless, who are not sufficiently helped by temporary assistance with rent or other social supports.

 

“For nearly 90 per cent of people counted as homeless, they’ll get themselves out of homelessness on their own,” says Tim Richter, who led Calgary’s 10-year plan to end homelessness and is now the president of the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness. “It’s critical to set priorities. It shouldn’t be first-come, first-served.”

 

One of the region’s most experienced homelessness researchers, former Vancouver city-hall staffer Judy Graves, said the city is reaping the results of city and provincial staff not always setting the right priorities for the past six years. This past winter, Vancouver still had a count of 533 people sleeping outside (less than in 2008, but more than in 2011), even though the province and city have opened up thousands of new social-housing units rented at welfare-level rates.

 

It’s an issue that is returning to haunt Vision Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson, who promised in 2008 to end street homelessness by 2015, during this fall’s civic-election campaign.

 

His administration, which has pushed the issue non-stop since he was first elected, has recently exceeded previous efforts by jumping last month into paying for all the costs of converting a downtown Quality Inn to transitional housing, as well as all the costs of a new shelter nearby. Usually the province covers the majority of costs for both of those kinds of housing.

 

But Ms. Graves said even that unusual effort, accompanied by several hundred other new provincial units about to open, isn’t going to solve the problem by January, 2015.

 

That’s because the province is only committed to using half of the incoming housing units for the chronically homeless. And city staff also don’t always correctly identify who is the most in need.

 

“Both the city and province have bought into housing by wait lists,” said Ms. Graves. “It just can’t work. You have to work as though you’re in a disaster zone.”

 

She said she had doubts that the majority of people who camped in Oppenheimer Park over the summer were homeless, but they got priority for the scarce number of rooms available.

 

As well, in the early stages of the province’s big social-housing construction push, which will see 14 towers completed with around 1,400 units by the end, non-profit operators were simply moving people from residential hotel rooms into the new buildings.

 

That meant the housing didn’t go to the chronically homeless and the most in need, but worse, it then allowed landlords in the residential hotels to do renovations, raise rents, or refuse new low-income tenants once the former tenants were relocated to social housing.

 

That then reduced the overall number of private, low-cost housing units in the city. Ms. Graves said the whole region is experiencing an acute shortage of those kinds of private units now. It has become a game of musical chairs for housing-outreach workers to get a low-cost unit for someone trying to get out of shelters or off the street, she said.

 

All cities are grappling with constant pressures that create more homelessness at the front end: low working-class incomes that can’t keep up with gentrification and rising rents key among them, said Ms. Graves. That has left cities trying to solve the problem at the back end, trying to house all the people made homeless as a result of many larger forces.

 

24 HRS VANCOUVER - 16 OCT 14

16 Oct 2014 24 Hours VancouverJANE DEACON Comment at vancouver.24hrs.c

Laura Dilley, PACE Society Action Week, PACE plans to draft housing recommendations for city council before the coming election.

“Oftentimes we will create housing models not including the voices of those we would be housing,” said Dilley.

Rising rent prices that force people out of SROs is a significant factor, as well as landlords who refuse to rent to sex workers out of legal concerns, said Dilley. Low- income housing conditions that require tenants stay in at night or guests to sign in are also significant barriers. She estimates between 10 to 15% of sex workers fall under the category of “survival” or street- based prostitution. For that vulnerable population, simply switching professions is often not an option, said Dilley.

“They’re really forced and entrenched to continuously do that work because they have no options out of it, because we have such stigma in our society that they can’t seek help, they can’t find affordable housing, so they’re really stuck in that situation,” she said.

 

17 April 2019:

 

B.C. drug users demand clean supply, but fear they won’t live to see it happen

By David P. BallStar Vancouver

Tues., April 16, 2019

  

VANCOUVER—Several hundred Vancouverites marked three years since the province declared a public health emergency over the thousands of people killed by overdoses.

 

But as they marched Tuesday from the safe-injection clinic Insite through downtown Vancouver, advocates say “contaminated” drugs have taken a toll on their own leaders.

 

For B.C. Association of People on Methadone member Garth Mullins, the losses are mounting, and it’s been destabilizing and “disorganizing” for the drug-reform movement.

 

“We’ve lost rank and file members and leaders in such high numbers over the last five years,” he said, wearing a distinctive black case of the overdose-reversing drug naloxone on his belt. “It’s hard to organize or think strategically when you’re always doing triage, planning a memorial.”

 

Just last month the president of his organization, Chereece Keewatin, died from a fentanyl overdose. Mullins knew Keewatin for at least six years, and invited her to join the editorial board of the podcast Crackdown, of which he is executive producer.

 

“Chereece was really little, but she had this tremendous capacity to lift people’s spirits,” he said in an interview. “You’d have meetings where we talk about really, really bleak subjects, but she had these funny asides to cut through the bleakness.

 

“She made people laugh. In that way, she took responsibility for the whole collective emotional state of the group.”

 

It’s not just the B.C. Association of People on Methadone that’s seen the direct “casualties” of what Mullins called “a war.” The Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users and the national Canadian Association of People who Use Drugs have also lost high-ranking board members in recent years.

 

Since 2016, nearly 11,000 people have died across Canada from opioid overdoses, according to the most recent federal and provincial data. The majority of those deaths were from opioids such as fentanyl or its more deadly variants, but B.C. remains the epicentre for roughly a third of those deaths, 1,500 of them last year alone.

 

On average, four British Columbians died every day from overdoses last year, much higher than the national average and largely unchanged since the province’s April 2016 declaration of a public health emergency.

 

11 May 2020

.

A wall mural in the DTES poses a valid question, "how do we end the drug crisis"? A more basic question, how did we get here?

 

Vancouver, B.C. is consistently ranked at the top of the list for the world’s most liveable cities - but not for many in the DTES.

 

The city has a dirty little secret that it has been trying to suppress for decades. The historic four-block area near East Hastings and Main Street — the DTES — known as one of the “poorest postal codes” in Canada, has a combination of drug use, HIV, homelessness, prostitution, mental illness, and crime all making up this poor off neighbourhood.

 

To be successful as a drug lord you need a steady, reliable, cheap supply of product, a location where you can operate relatively free from prosecution and away you go. The prime location ingredients Vancouver offers is the DTES.

 

Over the decades continuing city administrations have built a community of “customers with no cash” by loading the DTES with blocks of not for profit social housing. Along with the myriad of Single Room Occupancy hotels (SRO's) the area is prime territory for the drug trade.

 

Social housing should be spread throughout the city to provide a society of different financial means for common support - IMO.

 

Administrations over the years have been loath to attempt social housing in the rich city enclaves due to onerous push back. It was and still is more expedient to keep adding more social housing in the DTES where there is minimal opposition.

 

***** Today there are at least 6 City of Vancouver development permit applications on file for more social housing in the DTES.

 

The process is welcomed by the myriad of DTES support service groups who like their clientele close at hand and the clientele are fine with it as services are nearby.

 

DTES government and service support groups along with poverty pimp lawyers who have a hissy fit if anyone tries to change the dial, while also making money off the situation, has resulted in the perfect condition for drug dealers to flourish.

 

Social housing residents, many older, Asian and often mentally challenged are living in a hell hole neighbourhood with little individual voice.

 

In recent years, the area is seeing an east creeping gentrification. This is causing the DTES street population to be squeezed into a smaller footprint resulting in more confrontation and the appearance of a worsening situation even though overall the numbers of street people remains fairly constant.

 

The amount of taxpayer dollars spent in the area is staggering with little to show for the investment.

 

Vancouver has always had a drug problem. The opioids of choice — and the increasingly staggering death toll — have changed over the years.

 

In 2017 Fentanyl killed so many Canadians it caused the average life expectancy in B.C. to drop for the first time in decades. But for crime kingpins, it became a source of such astonishing wealth it disrupted the Vancouver-area real estate market.

 

SOME BACKGROUND:

Excerpt from the Province Newspaper by reporter Randy Shore 18 March, 2017.

 

When members of the Royal Commission to Investigate Chinese and Japanese Immigration came to Vancouver in 1901, they got an eyeful.

“There were whole rooms of Chinese lying stretched out on beds with the opium apparatus laid out before them — all unmindful that their attitudes and surrounding conditions are being taken note of to assist in keeping the remainder of their countrymen entirely out of Canada,” reported the Vancouver World newspaper.

 

The fringes of Vancouver’s Chinatown have always been the centre of Canada’s opiate trade. Ever more potent and easily smuggled versions emerged through the decades, culminating in the scourge of synthetic opiates — fentanyl and carfentanil — thousands of times more powerful and many times more deadly than opium.

 

Opium was a source of revenue for governments of the day. A federal duty imposed on importers fetched hundreds of thousands of dollars between 1874 and 1899. In B.C. ports, and cities charged hundreds of dollars to purveyors in the form of business licences.

 

Between 1923 and 1932, more than 700 Chinese men were deported for drug-related violations.

 

Under constant pressure from the police, opium users began to inject their hit, as the technique created no smoke or aroma and used smaller equipment, which could be easily hidden. In the 1920s and 1930s, white users tended to be young criminals, “racetrack hands, and circus and show people” who smoked opium or sniffed heroin.

 

By the mid-1930s, heroin was one of the most common drugs in circulation and white users were increasingly taking the drug intravenously, especially as prices rose due to scarcity brought about by vigorous law enforcement.

 

The outbreak of the Second World War put opiate addicts into a state of crisis, as opiate drugs were required in great quantities for the war wounded. The street price of a hit — whether heroin, morphine or codeine — shot up and crime along with it.

 

In the post-war period, right through to the mid-’60s, Vancouver was ground zero for Canada’s intravenous drug scene, made up mainly of petty criminals, troubled youths fed by drug lords.

 

Before the ’40s were over, highly refined white heroin had appeared and it was coming from overseas to satisfy a hungry market in Vancouver, home to half of the country’s drug users.

 

Heroin use remained a constant undercurrent in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside during the ’70s and ’80s, even as alcohol was the neighbourhood’s real drug of choice.

 

But a flood of a new and even more potent “China White” heroin arriving into the city reignited public outrage in the early ’90s. A spate of 331 overdose deaths in 1993 spurred B.C. coroner Vince Cain to call for the decriminalization of heroin and addicts be prescribed the drug to legally maintain their habit.

 

It would be nearly 15 years before the Study to Assess Long-term Opioid Maintenance Effectiveness (SALOME) began in Vancouver, just about the time a new threat emerged.

 

Up to 80 times as powerful as heroin, fentanyl hit the streets and reduced the risk for traffickers as it was so concentrated, transportation was easier.

 

The carnage wrought by fentanyl has been without precedent.

 

Heroin seized in drug busts is routinely cut with fentanyl and in recent months the presence of carfentanil.

 

SUMMARY:

 

Where will this go next, who knows ?

 

The richest of societies should be especially judged by how they treat their least fortunate, and Vancouver has its challenge set out for the foreseeable future.

 

UPDATE 23 MAY 2020 - VANCOUVER SUN

John Mackie: The Downtown Eastside is a war zone disaster — stop ghettoizing it.

John Mackie, Vancouver Sun 23 May 2020

Twenty years ago local musician Kuba Oms was recording at the Miller Block, a now defunct Hastings Street recording studio near Save-On-Meats.

 

He jaywalked and was stopped by a cop, who handed him a ticket.

 

“I said ‘Are you kidding me?’” Oms recounts. “You know there’s a guy shooting up over there, and a crack dealer over there. And the cop said ‘That’s a health issue.’”

 

That story pretty much sums up the city’s attitude toward the Downtown Eastside over the past few decades.

 

In some ways the cop was right — it is a Vancouver health issue. But letting people openly do drugs in public and turn Hastings and the wider Downtown Eastside into a ghetto is political correctness gone mad.

 

Drive down Hastings Street between Abbott and Gore and you’ll see dozens, even hundreds of people hanging out on the street, in various states of sobriety. They are definitely not social distancing. It’s a miracle that COVID-19 hasn’t swept the entire area.

 

The height of this madness was the recent occupation of Oppenheimer Park. Vancouver has real issues of homelessness, but to some degree Oppenheimer was about a fringe group of politicos manipulating the homeless.

 

Many police resources were diverted to the park and there was a crime wave in nearby Chinatown — one business closed because they were being robbed a dozen times a day.

 

The province recently made hotel rooms available for the homeless people occupying Oppenheimer Park, so things have calmed down somewhat. But the big question is what happens in a few months? Is government going to find permanent homes for them?

 

Odds are if they do, it will be in highrises in the Downtown Eastside. For decades that’s where the city and province have been concentrating social housing, especially for the mentally ill and drug addicted.

 

Their argument is these residents feel comfortable there. But the reality is the more poverty is concentrated, the worse the area seems to become.

 

Maybe it’s time for the city of Vancouver to give its head a shake and realize that its much-ballyhooed Downtown Eastside Plan is actually part of the problem, not the solution.

 

Part of the plan decrees you can’t build condos on Hastings between Carrall Street in Gastown and Heatley Avenue in Strathcona, or in historic Japantown around Oppenheimer Park.

 

Development in those areas has to be rental only, with at least 60 per cent social housing. This pretty much ensures that no market housing is built in the poorest area of the city.

 

When the plan was unveiled in 2014, Vancouver’s former head planner Brian Jackson said the aim was to ensure that low-income people in the Downtown Eastside weren’t displaced.

 

“The plan is attempting to achieve balance,” he explained then.

 

In fact, the plan does the exact opposite. There is no balance in the Downtown Eastside: It’s been turned into a ghetto. A friend who’s worked there for two decades calls it a war zone.

 

The city desperately need some market housing, co-ops and development on Hastings and around Oppenheimer. The anti-poverty activists will scream blue murder that it’s gentrification, but it’s actually normalization. You don’t have to displace anybody, you just have add a different mix to make it safer.

 

I live in Strathcona, where about 6,500 people live in social housing and about 3,500 in market homes. It’s a close-knit neighbourhood that has the balance Brian Jackson was taking about — it’s diverse and features a variety of incomes.

 

Japantown and the Downtown Eastside could be a real neighbourhood again if the city retained its stock of handsome historic buildings but allowed some development of its many non-descript structures.

 

It could be like Strathcona, even the West End. But I fear it could get even worse, if the planners and politicians continue to concentrate all the Lower Mainland’s poverty and social ills in one small area.

 

jmackie@postmedia.com

 

John Mackie is a veteran Postmedia reporter who has written several stories about Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside Plan.

 

13 JULY, 2020

Vancouver can’t catch up to its housing crisis

 

ADRIENNE TANNER

SPECIAL TO THE GLOBE AND MAIL

PUBLISHED 13 JULY 2020

 

It is obvious now the cheers that erupted when Vancouver’s longest running tent city was dismantled were wildly premature. Fearing a COVID-19 outbreak would take hold in the overcrowded inner-city camp, the provincial government in April acquired emergency housing in hotels for homeless people living there and cleared the site.

 

Many camp residents embraced the offer of a clean room. Some refused and relocated outdoors. The camp shifted, first to some empty Port of Vancouver land, and when a court order quickly shut it down, finally landed in Strathcona Park. With each move, it grew.

 

Today there are about 150 tents Strathcona Park, roughly double the number there were in Oppenheimer Park. How many inhabitants are truly homeless is anyone’s guess. Some of the tents were erected by activists with homes. Others belong to people living in single room occupancy hotels, the worst of which are noisy, bug-infested and so hot that some residents prefer to spend summer outside.

  

There is already an air of permanence to the camp; the city has installed porta-potties, fresh drinking water and handwashing stations. Park rangers drop by a few times daily. The area is reasonably clean, but these are early days.

 

Strathcona residents are largely sympathetic to homeless people, but are understandably unhappy about losing a large chunk of park space. They fear the same violence and social disorder that cropped up at Oppenheimer is inevitable; there has already been a small fire and there appears to be a bike chop shop on site. There are cries for the city to sanction a permanent tent city location – elsewhere, of course.

 

So how exactly did the province’s efforts to shut down a tent city and house homeless people backfire so badly? The city and provincial officials have been out-manoeuvered and out-organized by anti-poverty activists who seized a COVID-19 opportunity when they saw it.

 

The pandemic raised fears the Oppenheimer tent city would turn into a reservoir of disease that could overwhelm the health system. The activists know that’s why the government cleared the camp and purchased hotels for social housing. They understand this is the moment to highlight society’s failure to solve homelessness, even if their end goals seem to differ. Some are calling for permanent housing – others prefer the idea of a permanent, free-wheeling tent city.

  

The sorry truth is, even with the addition of 600 units of temporary modular housing and, more recently, the purchase of three downtown hotels, there are still more homeless people than homes. Successions of governments at all levels have allowed this crisis to grow. They’ve failed to build enough social housing. Failed to provide adequate mental health services. Failed to fund enough drug rehabilitation programs for those who want to quit and provide a safe drug supply for those who can’t.

 

So, now here we are with the largest homeless camp the city has ever seen and another stressed-out neighbourhood. Legally, the new tent city may prove more difficult to dismantle – it’s a large park and the tents are well spaced so the pandemic may not wash as a valid reason. And unless housing is available for everyone who is homeless, it is unlikely the courts would grant an injunction.

 

Solving problems associated with homelessness is a huge challenge. We can start with housing, but that alone is not nearly enough. Many of the people living in the hotels and park are drug users. Many are mentally ill. Some are both. It takes money – and lots of it – to provide decent housing and supports for this segment of society.

  

But to cave to demands for a permanent tent city is an American-style admission of defeat. The park board seems resigned to tent cities in parks and is considering a bylaw seeking to control locations. City council has resisted sanctioning a permanent spot, instead offering up land for new social housing. The province has stepped up with money for temporary modular housing and purchases of hotels.

 

It will be tough to keep neighbourhoods onside if more parks are rendered unusable for recreation. There is only one palatable solution; the provincial government must stay the course and keep adding decent, affordable housing. It won’t be cheap or easy. Catchup never is.

 

01 APRIL 2022

More than 2,200 British Columbians lost to illicit drugs in 2021

 

The toxic illicit drug supply claimed the lives of at least 2,224 British Columbians in 2021, according to preliminary data released by the BC Coroners Service.

 

“Over the past seven years, our province has experienced a devastating loss of life due to a toxic illicit drug supply,” said Lisa Lapointe, chief coroner. “This public health emergency has impacted families and communities across the province and shows no sign of abating. In 2021 alone, more than 2,200 families experienced the devastating loss of a loved one. In the past seven years, the rate of death due to illicit drug toxicity in our province has risen more than 400%. Drug toxicity is now second only to cancers in B.C. for potential years of life lost. We cannot simply hope that things will improve. It is long past time to end the chaos and devastation in our communities resulting from the flourishing illicit drug market, and to ensure, on an urgent basis, access across the province to a safe, reliable regulated drug supply.”

 

The last two months of 2021 saw the largest number of suspected illicit drug deaths ever recorded in the province, with 210 deaths in November and an additional 215 in December. The 2,224 total number of deaths is 26% more than the 1,767 illicit drug-related deaths investigated by the BC Coroners Service in 2020, and equates to an average of 6.1 lives lost every day.

 

The provincewide death rate in 2021 was 42.8 per 100,000 residents. Every health authority in B.C. experienced a record loss of lives.

 

Since the public health emergency into substance-related harms was first declared in April 2016, more than 8,800 British Columbians have been lost to toxic drugs.

 

Toxicological testing once again underscores the reality that the illicit drug supply continues to be unstable and increasingly toxic. Fentanyl was detected in 83% of samples tested in 2021. Carfentanil was present in 187 results, almost triple the number recorded in 2020 (66).

 

Additionally, 50% of samples in December tested positive for etizolam, more than three times the rate of detection in July 2020 (15%). Benzodiazepines create significant challenges for life-saving efforts as naloxone does not reverse its effects. As with previous reporting, almost all test results included the presence of multiple substances.

 

“We need decision-makers at all levels to recognize and respond to this public health emergency with the level of urgency it demands,” Lapointe said. “The reality is this: every day we wait to act, six more people will die. COVID-19 has shown what is possible when goverments act decisively to save lives. And in order to save lives in this public-heath emergency, we need to provide people with access to the substances they need, where and when they need them. Time has run out for research and discussion. It is time to take action.”

 

Additional key preliminary findings are below. Data is subject to change as additional toxicology results are received:

 

In 2021, 71% of those who died as a result of suspected drug toxicity were between 30 to 59, and 78% were male.

The townships that experienced the highest number of illicit drug toxicity deaths in 2021 were Vancouver, Surrey and Victoria.

By health authority, in 2021, the highest numbers of illicit drug toxicity deaths were in the Fraser and Vancouver Coastal health authorities (765 and 615 deaths, respectively), making up 62% of all such deaths during this period.

By health authority, in 2021, the highest rates of death were in Vancouver Coastal Health (49 deaths per 100,000 individuals) and Northern Health (48 per 100,000).

By Health Service Delivery Area, in 2021, the highest rates of death were in Vancouver, Thompson Cariboo, Northwest, Northern Interior and Fraser East.

By Local Health Area, in 2021, the highest rates of death were in Upper Skeena, Merritt, Enderby, Lillooet and North Thompson.

Quotes:

 

Dr. Nel Wieman, deputy chief medical officer, First Nations Health Authority –

 

“The number of deaths due to toxic drug poisonings for 2021 translates to devastating losses of First Nations people: daughters and sons, aunties and uncles, mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, and grandfathers and grandmothers. These are people who loved and were loved. In every year since this public health emergency was declared, B.C. First Nations people have been over-represented in toxic drug-poisoning events and deaths. We must change our understanding of the root causes of substance use and addiction, and work together to address the stigmas surrounding toxic drug use and the people who use drugs. We must continue to invest in Indigenous-specific, culturally safe harm-reduction, treatment and recovery services that are accessible, timely and free from discrimination and racism.”

 

Guy Felicella, peer clinical adviser, Vancouver Coastal Health –

 

“I join the thousands of British Columbians who are heartbroken, frustrated and angry over this unfathomable loss. Every one of these deaths was preventable and represents a failure to act, a failure to learn from mistakes. Change nothing and nothing changes. That’s been the story now for years as the approach throughout this crisis has been to meet policies where they’re at, rather than meeting people who use drugs where they’re at. This approach is killing and continues to kill people. Who has the courage to step forward and make this stop?”

 

AUGUST 2023

Today’s release of the report on drug toxicity deaths for the month of July 2023 by the BC Coroners Service is a stark reminder that the ongoing toxic-drug crisis continues to have a devastating impact on communities across our province. We hold in our hearts the memories of the 198 people lost in July in British Columbia.

 

The coroners service said the 1,455 deaths from January to July are the most ever reported in the first seven months of the year since a public health emergency over drug poisoning deaths in the province was declared in 2016.

 

It puts the province on pace to potentially exceed the 2,383 deaths recorded in 2022. A total of 12,739 people in the province have died from drug overdoses in the seven years.

 

30 NOVEMBER, 2023

At least 2,039 British Columbians have died from toxic drugs so far this year, according to preliminary figures released by the B.C. Coroners Service on Thursday, 29 November, 2023.

 

Of those, 189 people died in October, which is about 6.1 deaths a day. Most of the dead were between 30 and 59 years of age, and more than three-quarters were men, according to the coroner.

 

While the largest number of deaths reported so far has been in urban centres, such as Vancouver, Surrey and Victoria, the health authority with the highest rate of death in 2023 is Northern Health, with 61 deaths per 100,000 residents, according to the coroner.

 

As in previous months, fentanyl was found in most — 85 per cent — of the illicit drugs tested, often combined with other opioids or stimulants such as cocaine and methamphetamine.

 

Earlier this month, Interior Health issued a drug advisory warning for people who use drugs that some substances being advertised as hydromorphone on the black market contain isotonitazine, a drug the coroner says is as potent as fentanyl.

 

Unregulated drug toxicity is the leading cause of death in B.C. for people aged 10 to 59, accounting for more deaths than homicides, suicides, accidents and natural disease combined, the coroner said.

 

Since a public health emergency was declared in 2016, more than 13,000 people have died.

 

JANUARY 2024:

Jennifer Whiteside, Minister of Mental Health and Addictions, has released the following statement regarding the BC Coroners Service year-end report on illicit drug toxicity deaths:

 

“Today, as we reflect on the year behind us, our hearts are heavy with the loss of 2,511 people in British Columbia to toxic drugs. Each of these lives was precious and important, each with their own story, their own dreams and people who love them. They were part of our community, and their loss is felt deeply by us all.

 

So what is the game plane to stop it?

 

C. seeks to keep cash seized from Downtown Eastside gang

 

Courtesy Kim Bolan and the Vancouver Sun.

  

Kim Bolan is an experienced and award-winning journalist who has covered gangs in British Columbia for the past 40 years. Bolan also investigated the Air India bombing for 25 years until the publication in 2005 of her book, Loss of Faith.

  

The B.C. government has filed a lawsuit against a group of alleged Downtown Eastside drug traffickers, seeking the forfeiture of more than $150,000 seized from them.

 

The lawsuit, filed this week by the director of civil forfeiture, names four defendants that it alleges are part of a criminal organization investigated by the Vancouver Police Department.

  

While the group is not named in the statement of claim, details of the VPD probe outlined in the court document match an investigation into Zone 43 — a gang that originated in Montreal but has taken over the Downtown Eastside in recent years. Zone 43 has connections to B.C.’s notorious Wolfpack gang alliance.

 

In June, the VPD announced arrests of several Zone 43 gangsters, though they were released pending approval of charges.

 

The VPD said it had seized firearms, 24 kilos of drugs and $150,000 in cash during searches on May 14 in Vancouver and Burnaby.

 

The civil forfeiture lawsuit refers to three VPD searches done on the same date in the same cities and alleges Shayne Cozier-Flanagan, Evantee Jevontee Eustace Stoney, Tristin Johnson and Raimon Geday were “participating in the activities of a criminal organization.”

 

When police searched Stoney’s apartment on the 30th floor at 2388 Madison Ave. in Burnaby, they found $143,910.75 in Canadian currency and $607 in U.S. currency, the lawsuit said.

  

Officers seized another $5,800 at Cozier-Flanagan’s suite, also on the 30th floor, at 5665 Boundary Rd. in Vancouver, it said.

 

About $3,417 was seized from Johnson, who also lives in the Madison apartment, when he was arrested in the 300-block of East Hastings. Another $1,920 was found in Geday’s room in a supportive housing building on Kaslo Street, the lawsuit said.

 

The VPD also seized a 2017 Acura RDX, of which Stoney is the registered owner and which was used “to facilitate the trafficking of controlled substances,” the civil forfeiture director alleged.

 

The statement of claim notes that both Stoney and Geday have previous trafficking convictions and are banned from possessing firearms.

 

All four men named in the lawsuit “trafficked in controlled substances in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver and the surrounding areas,” the lawsuit alleges.

 

In the Boundary apartment, police also found a money counter and business cards with the number to call to purchase drugs — known as a ‘dialer’ number.

 

In the Madison suite, the VPD also found dilaudid pills, oxycodone pills and “score sheets” documenting drug sales, collection and debts.

 

In Geday’s room, police found crack cocaine, powdered cocaine, crystal methamphetamine and another 275 dilaudid pills, as well as score sheets, bear spray and “miscellaneous drug packaging materials.”

 

The cash and car should be forfeited to the government because they are proceeds of or were used for unlawful activity, the lawsuit alleged.

 

The crimes committed include possession for the purpose of trafficking and trafficking, committing offences for the benefit of a criminal organization, conspiracy, money laundering and failure to declare taxable income, it alleged

 

No statements of defence have yet been filed on behalf of the four men.

 

Vancouver Police Insp. Phil Heard said at the June news conference that Zone 43 gangsters “pose a very significant risk to the public. They’re involved in a well-documented conflict ongoing in the province of Quebec with a rival group.”

 

Sources say the gang is still selling drugs in the Downtown Eastside.

 

AUGUST 2025:

The law protects the rights of the most vulnerable among us to live in filth and despair

Pete McMartin: I'm tired of how homelessness and addiction take up so much oxygen in the social discourse.

 

Published Aug 03, 2025

 

In 2014, Vancouver Sun reporter Lori Culbert and I wrote a weeklong series of stories identifying the government social welfare programs — and their cost to taxpayers — in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.

 

Over 100 programs existed just for housing. Thirty provided health care, 30 offered family services and a miscellany of another 100 services — including a food bank for pets — brought the total to 260 social welfare agencies operating solely within the eight square blocks of the DTES.

 

Those 260 programs served just 6,500 clients.

 

Five years earlier, in 2009, Province reporter David Carrigg also did a survey of the programs available in the DTES, and he identified 174 social welfare agencies offering services to about 5,000 clients.

 

In other words, in the five years between Carrigg’s survey and Culbert’s and mine, not only had the number of people needing help grown but so had the number of agencies serving them.

 

And the cost to taxpayers?

 

Over $360 million annually.

 

That astounding figure — almost a million dollars a day — did little to satisfy the DTES’s voracious appetite for tax dollars. More to the point, it did nothing to eradicate the misery and living conditions of the people who lived there.

 

Rather than winning the war on poverty — and what a quaint phrase that seems now — governments engineered a truce, with the unstated understanding that if they couldn’t solve the problem or spend their way out of it, they could contain it. Those 260 social service bureaucracies weren’t solutions to an intractable problem; they were barricades. They ghettoized their impoverished clientele by concentrating the services on which they depended.

 

And let’s be honest: The public was complicit in this, and content for it to continue as long as the misery stayed confined within the borders of the DTES.

 

And yet here we are. The squalor spreads. It corrodes a once-vibrant downtown core. It infiltrates the suburbs. Daily acts of random violence and vandalism have become normalized, while a cornucopia of drugs — some decriminalized, some tolerated, many deadly — act as accelerants.

 

In 2016, a year after our survey, provincial health officer Dr. Perry Kendall declared a public health emergency under the Public Health Act due to the alarming rise in opioid-related overdose deaths. Since then, over 16,000 people have died from those opioids. That’s not progress. It’s a plague.

 

Nothing, absolutely nothing, has worked. Over the decades, the problem has been studied to death — admittedly, a poor choice of words — with consultants and academics and the legions of poverty industry advocates offering up solutions that ultimately fail. They fail because they’re predicated on two simple criteria:

 

1. Give us more money.

 

2. Give us more of everything — housing, hospital beds, food banks, drugs, injection sites, counselling or — and this is always implicit — empathy, with a side order of collective guilt.

 

I’ve seen this in my own newspaper.

 

In one recent opinion piece, the author laments that it has been the public’s and governments’ norm “to daily bypass our downtrodden, our homeless, our addicted or mentally ill on the street as though they are either invisible or merely equivalent to lampposts” — to which I have to reply: ‘Are you f—ng kidding me?’

 

The public and its governments have done exactly the opposite and, short of bathing their feet with Christ-like piety, have directed billions of tax dollars not only to ease the suffering of the homeless, the addicted and the mentally ill, but also to make them completely dependent upon those dollars.

 

Another Sun story — this one again by Culbert — examined the merits of involuntary care through the experiences of three addicts who underwent the process, and while two saw it as beneficial and helped them get clean, the third condemned it as “dehumanizing” and a cause of her PTSD. Though she no longer does drugs, she said that if she relapses she would prefer to take her chances with street drugs that could possibly kill her rather than be readmitted to hospital against her will.

 

Well, OK, I thought, ‘You’re an adult. Good for you for having the honesty to express that choice, however idiotic I may find it.’

 

But what I thought was missing in her testimonial was (a) any appreciation of the monumentally expensive efforts governments and the public had tried to make on her behalf, however ill-informed she may have believed those attempts to be, and (b) her failure to recognize the destructive effects that a relapse would have not just on her own health and family, but, more importantly, also on the collective health of the public, who would be asked to offer up yet more money, and deal yet again with her relapse — providing she survives it.

 

Finally, in The Sun, there was another column, this one by Sam Sullivan, who wrote that, after 52 years, it was time to end the DTES “experiment” and the restrictive housing policies that he believes led to the homelessness and violence bedevilling it.

 

Funny thing about that.

 

Between 1993 and 2005, Sullivan was a Vancouver city councillor, and for three years after that, he was mayor. Yet despite the fact that his 15-year tenure at city hall placed him in the midst of that DTES experiment, if not close to its helm, it is only now, 20 years later, that he publicly declares the experiment to be a failure, and — as far as I could tell from reading his opinion piece — without taking any responsibility for it.

 

I will refrain here, in my own column, from claiming to speak for the public or with any inkling of what popular sentiment might be.

 

But this is how I feel:

 

My patience is Exhausted.

 

I’m tired of the endless, self-regenerating calls for more studies and more funding when all I see is a colossal waste of money and effort leading to no improvement. I’m tired of how homelessness and addiction take up so much oxygen in the social discourse. I’m tired of civil rights that supersede my own, and treat the right to defecate in the streets with greater regard than my right to be offended by it.

 

Finally, I’m tired of a social welfare system that not only encourages dependency, but refuses, out of moral timidity, to also admit its complicity in it, and which shies away from asking hard questions about personal responsibility and the consideration of measures more draconian than safe injection sites — measures like a return to complete drug criminalization, a higher threshold of minimum sentences for trafficking, the establishment of rehabilitation centres or work camps exclusively in wilderness areas far from the temptations of cities, the discontinuation of any efforts that facilitate drug use, and yes, the robust expansion of an involuntary care system.

 

It’s also my opinion that none of these measures, given the current legal climate, will become reality, at least for the foreseeable future. Under our Constitution and the Criminal Code, the law, in its majestic equality, protects the rights of the most vulnerable among us to live in filth and despair, and, as so often happens, bring about their own deaths.

 

How enlightened we have become! What progress we have made! We’ve reached that point when now sleeping under bridges, begging in the streets and stealing one’s daily bread are no longer evidence of a system’s failure.

 

They are the system.

Finally, the moment I've been eagerly anticipating has arrived. Standing in the heart of Tokyo, gazing upon a scene that feels like a chapter from the past, yet imbued with the vibrancy of the present. It's a moment that evokes a rush of memories, a nostalgic wave washing over me like a gentle breeze.

 

As I gaze upon the man in the suit, perched on the stairway of an apartment building on his cigarette break, his silhouette framed against the backdrop of the city, I can't help but wonder about his story. Is he lost in thought, reminiscing like me about days gone by? Or perhaps he's simply savoring the quietude of the evening, a solitary figure amidst the hustle and bustle of urban life.

 

Captured from a vantage point high above, the scene unfolds before me like a tableau of memories. The street stretches into the distance, its path illuminated by the soft glow of streetlights, while iconic buildings punctuate the skyline, their silhouettes etched against the canvas of the night sky. It's the blue hour, a time when the world seems to hold its breath, caught between the fading light of day and the emergence of night.

 

And yet, despite the tranquility of this moment, there's an undercurrent of energy that courses through the air, a reminder of the vibrant city that lies just beyond the horizon.

 

For me, this image is more than just a photograph—it's a portal to the past, a bridge between worlds. In my mind I can hear the synthwave echo. It transports me back to the late '80s, a time of innocence and wonder, when the world was filled with endless possibilities. It's a time when I was just discovering the magic of technology, spending hours playing video games on my very first personal computer, and marveling at the latest gadgets to hit the market.

 

A time of firsts—a first kiss, the thrill of going to the movies, and the joy of discovering electronic music that still holds a special place in my heart. And as I stand here, in the midst of Tokyo's bustling streets, I can't help but feel a sense of gratitude for the journey that brought me here.

 

So as you gaze upon this image, I invite you to join me on a journey through time—a journey filled with memories, emotions, and the timeless allure of Tokyo. Let us revel in the nostalgia of days gone by, while embracing the beauty and excitement of the present.

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All images are exclusive property and may not be copied, downloaded, reproduced, transmitted, manipulated or used in any way without written permission of the photographer!

 

© Marcus Antonius Braun

www.therealthings.com

 

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Do not comment with images or awards, only text, thank you!

Anna Fasshauer: Hello Sinki

 

"Marking her Finnish debut, German artist Anna Fasshauer (b. 1975) will fill Galerie Forsblom with her eye-popping aluminum sculptures, which at first glance appear to be abstract, but soon begin to recall something familiar. Closer inspection reveals them to be gigantic straws that someone has absent-mindedly twisted and crushed into sculptural tangles. The combination of peppy colors and oversized replicas of everyday objects are highly reminiscent of Pop sculpture, notably the work of Claes Oldenburg (1929-2009). While thus being linked to the continuum of art history, the iconography of Fasshauer’s sculptures also speaks directly to the contemporary moment.

 

For as simple as it seems, a straw is anything but a neutral object. Plastic straws have come to symbolise marine pollution while representing a globally shared multilayered experience. We can all easily picture how it feels to crumple a plastic straw in our fingers, and we can just as easily retrieve memory traces of the anxious energy we experience as we fiddle with a straw. Fasshauer’s sculptures invoke a pervasive sense of unease through the most commonplace of objects. Her sculptures nevertheless retain an undercurrent of humor, their cold, stiff industrial material acquiring an endearing human quality. Fasshauer’s choice of material underscores the laden, thought-provoking contrast between her art’s theme and execution.

 

Anna Fasshauer graduated from the Chelsea School of Art and Design in London in 2001. She has exhibited her work in group and solo shows around the world, including venues such as the Jardin des Tuileries in Paris, Kunstverein Offenburg and Kunstverein Arnsberg in Germany, and the Goethe Institute in Beirut. The artist is based in Berlin."

www.galerieforsblom.com/exhibitions/anna-fasshauer

The sky looked threatening while we glide through the magnificent Mekong river. We witnessed strong undercurrent when looking into the river...

 

Please do visit my website and blog The Healing Pebbles if you have the time. Cheers

Another one of those images that imparts a sense of dreariness, but with a subtle undercurrent of imminent peril. This is the side yard of an abandoned house and for some reason, it gives off more of a negative vibe than the house itself. I've often wondered what happened here to cause this. The feeling of darkness is prevalent in my mind, but very sporadic in terms of the photos I take. If I'm actually channeling energy from some dark past, perhaps at times I'm concentrating too hard trying to capture it, or perhaps not enough. I think part of the trick is to just let it happen. I've noticed very subtle shifts in camera position greatly effect the outcome. I've learned to shoot multiple frames in situations like this. Standing in the same basic position, I tilt the lens slightly between shots. You would think this would make no difference, yet it does. There's usually only one magic frame in a series like this.

This was a very odd town. Even though everything looked nice and tidy there was a weird undercurrent of hostility/unrest that we both felt. Very strange...

Just a simple portrait of my awesome amazing lovely friend, Hope. Miss her <3

History

 

Early Life

 

Mera was born to King Ryus and his wife in the kingdom of Xebel, one of the seven Atlantean kingdoms of old which had split off from the main Atlantis during the event that swallowed the continent into the deep.

 

When Mera was young her mother died, and her father was left alone to raise her. One night Ryus took Mera out of the kingdom to see their ancient enemy Atlantis up close, where she was disgusted by its beauty, believing it didn't deserve such luxury.

 

Mera was incredibly close with her grandmother - Lammia, who trained the sea beasts used in Xebelian wars. Mera was forged into the perfect warrior over years of her life by her father's chief taskmaster- Leron. and was taught the royal secret of hydrokinesis.

 

Meeting Aquaman

 

As a young adult, Mera was promised to be wed to the military chief Nereus by her father. Ryus believed that vengeance should be exacted on Atlantis, and so tasked Mera with finding and assassinating the King of Atlantis, after returning from her job she was to marry Nereus.

 

Before she left, Mera was given a Shell of Sounds by her father, this device contained a message for Mera from her mother which she was to open after making it to the surface. With fury and hatred in her heart, Mera set out to find and execute the King of Atlantis.

 

Upon reaching the surface she asked a group of sailors where she could find the King of Atlantis. The sailors showed Mera a newspaper article of the supposed King of Atlantis - Arthur Curry/Aquaman, whom Mera learnt was a hero instead of a tyrant.

 

Eventually she found him rescuing wounded whales and was completely taken aback by his kindness. Impressed by her hydrokinesis powers, Arthur asked Mera to join him for lunch, which she agreed to. Arthur asked her what the shell around her neck meant, making her realize she hadn't listened to her mother's message yet.

 

In the message, her mother told Mera that she should make her own path in life instead of following the demands of her kingdom. Taking this advice to heart, Mera gave up on killing Aquaman and instead fell in love with the hero.

 

The Trench

 

Having decided to completely abandon Xebel to pursue a life on land with Arthur, Mera helped defend Amnesty Bay when it was attacked by a carnivorous underwater species called The Trench.

 

Mera and Aquaman followed the Trench, which had taken hostages to the Marianas Trench. There they discovered the predators dying out and desperately trying to feed their children in the remnants of an Atlantean craft.

 

Mera and Arthur saved the captives, and Aquaman reluctantly caused the Trenches' extinction by pushing a tectonic plate over the Trenches' lair to prevent further loss of human life. After this incident, Arthur and Mera adopted one of the victim's dog and named him Aquadog.

 

Shortly after, Mera was arrested while buying dog food when she broke the arm of a man who grossly harassed her. Although she initially struggled, Mera willingly gave herself up when she heard police chatter of a hostage situation she thought she could stop.

 

When the police got to the crime scene, Mera broke out, apprehended the criminal, and fled the scene. Later, a woman named Jennifer Posey, who had seen Mera get arrested, visited the hero and volunteered to get Mera supplies whenever necessary, as she knew what had really happened at the store and supported her.

 

Atlantean Invasion

 

While Mera and Aquaman were investigating some abnormal undersea activity with Batman in Gotham City, a giant wave began to emerge and threaten the city. Arthur believed that the wave was his brother's doing, following the Atlantean War plans against the surface.

 

Mera attempted to keep the wave back but was overwhelmed by its size. Arthur went to meet his brother the Ocean Master, who ordered war upon the surface due to a U.S. submarine firing on Atlantis. Ocean Master banished Aquaman and several other members of the Justice League to the Marianas Trench for opposing him, forcing Mera and Cyborg to rescue them.

 

After the heroes were saved, the Justice League unleashed the Trench to hold back the invading Atlantean army and stop Ocean Master's plot.

 

With Ocean Master captured and Aquaman restored to the throne, Arthur and Mera realized that the real person behind the war was Arthur's personal advisor and mentor Vulko, who hoped that the incident would incite Aquaman to return to his rightful place in Atlantis.

 

Return of the Dead King

Sometime after the invasion, Mera resided in Amnesty Bay, as she knew a princess of Xebel would not be welcomed in the kingdom of Atlantis. However, she was discovered and arrested for her previous assault charge. Mera fled from the police but encountered a mysterious man, who used ice manipulation to knock her unconscious.

 

Mera later woke up on a boat outside the Bermuda Triangle. Her kidnapper told her that he was the man who designed the imprisonment of Xebel, as he was Atlan the first King of Atlantis. Atlan wanted to use Mera to bypass Xebel's security. However, she escaped and attempted to warn the underwater city's inhabitants of the impending threat.

 

Upon getting to the bottom of Xebel she was greeted by Nereus, her former fiance, who asked her where she had been all those years.

 

Mera was deemed a traitor by Nereus after she told him about what had happened during her time on the surface. Before Mera could be arrested, Atlan broke through the barrier and froze all the people in Xebel including Mera.

 

Aquaman soon broke Mera out of her ice prison and began fighting Atlan while Mera began freeing the soldiers of Xebel. However, despite all this, the Xebelians sided with Atlan anyway as they saw him as their true king, forcing Aquaman and Mera to leave Xebel. Arthur and Mera attempted to warn Atlantis of the villainous king's return, but Aquaman was sent into a coma during a coincidental separate attack by the Scavenger. With their hero incapacitated and without a leader, Atlantis fell to Atlan.

 

Mera was imprisoned for six months, often going days without water as punishment for her escape attempts. Eventually Arthur returned and, together, he and Mera led a revolt and freed all of the imprisoned Atlanteans. Arthur forced Atlan into a lava bed where the old king melted away.

 

With their master defeated, Nereus and the Xebelians fled back to Xebel. As the threat was averted, Mera returned to Amnesty Bay to live her life of isolation but soon decided to rule alongside her partner, believing she could rise above the prejudice.

 

However, as she expected, she faced opposition. She would later survive an assassination attempt by xenophobic assailants loyal to Ocean Master and eventually brought them to justice.

 

Siren and the Coven

 

While investigating a collection of mysterious structures that appeared to kill anything they touched, Mera was kidnapped and held hostage by her sister Hila A.K.A. the Siren, and the Coven of Thule, who were behind the structures' sudden appearances.

 

The Coven were Atlantean warlocks who split Atlantis into two dimensions, where they could prepare for an invasion. Siren stole Mera's appearance using magic and ruled Atlantis for several months while she was captured, weakening it for the invasion.

 

However, eventually, Mera was able to break free and defeat her sister with the help of Garth, Tula, Swatt and Murk. With the help of their allies Mera and Arthur were able to destroy the Coven, ending their invasion.

 

Relations Collapse

 

Some time afterwards, Arthur asked Mera to be the face of the political campaign between Atlantis and the Surface World, which she accepted. Mera decided to fully embrace her new role as she donned the same Atlantean Chainmail as Arthur and began calling herself "Aquawoman", but this moniker was short lived.

 

While Wally West, the original Kid Flash, was escaping the Speed Force in what could be described as his "rebirth", Mera was brought to Paradise Island where Arthur proposed to her and the two became engaged.

 

Knowing of their engagement, Aquaman's arch nemesis Black Manta attempted to kill Mera to hurt Arthur. Arthur was able to defeat Manta, however the entire situation caused Spindrift - the facility where their fight was held - to lose its status as an embassy.

 

Due to this Mera and Aquaman traveled to the White House to discuss the problem with the President. Upon arrival, Arthur was arrested due to an American ship called the Pontchartrain being attacked by a group of "Atlanteans".

 

As tensions grew worse between Atlantis and the Surface World, Mera broke Arthur out of prison against his wishes. The pair fought off an entire U.S. battalion until Superman arrived on behalf of the government to stop them. Aquaman and Mera retreated into the water, but not before Superman encouraged them to fix the mess that had been created.

 

Arthur Usurped

 

At some point, it became clear that the people of Atlantis were displeased with Arthur and were planning a revolution to replace him with Corum Rath. After the coup started, Mera witnessed Arthur being seemingly killed by Atlantean soldiers and, for a period of time after this, went into a phase of mourning at the Curry lighthouse.

 

However this was short lived as Tula told her Arthur was possibly alive. Upon hearing this, Mera traveled to Atlantis where she used her powers for days, attempting to break through the Crown of Thorns, the invisible, magical barrier that had been placed around Atlantis.

 

Mera and the Justice League

 

Mera, while attempting to shatter the dome keeping her from her fiancé, was confronted by the Justice League due to the massive tidal waves she had unintentionally caused by her attacking the Crown of Thorns. After a lengthy battle between herself and the team, she eventually calmed down after hearing that her actions threatened millions of civilians.

 

Impressed by the extent of Mera's hydrokinetic abilities and her excellent skills in combat, Batman invited Mera to join the League as a temporary replacement for Aquaman until they could find a way to help him.

 

While working as a member of the League, Mera had a number of adventures on the surface world. She joined them in battle with Shirak, and also faced the time-displaced descendants of the Justice League. This undertaking led to Mera's encounter with her daughter from a possible future, Serenity.

 

The descendants of the League traveled back to the past in order to prevent the uprising of The Sovereign who had ravaged their futures.

 

Returning to rescuing Aquaman from the man who usurped their kingdom, Mera approached Garth - the former Aqualad - and pleaded with him to use his potent magical abilities against the Crown of Thorns. Knowing what was at stake, Garth agreed to help Mera bring down the Crown.

 

Mera successfully infiltrated Atlantis using a magic necklace Garth gave her, but the the item had an unexpected side effect that permanently removed her ability to breathe underwater, forcing her to flee to the surface.

 

During the invasion of the Dark Knights of the Dark Multiverse, Mera and the rest of Atlantis were changed into fish monsters known as Dead Water by the Drowned. She was returned to normal when the Dark Knights were defeated by the Justice League, with Aquaman, alive, among them.

 

Reclaiming the Throne

Mera survived another assassination attempted, this time by the villainous Eel. The assassin was hired by Corum Rath, the current ruler of Atlantis, who was threatened by the former queen's attempt to depose him.

 

Mera Queen of Atlantis

 

Mera also lost a fight to Ocean Master, having returned from his multi-year absence and declared that instead he would depose Corum Rath and take his rightful place as Atlantis' ruler.

 

After some level-headed discussion, the enemies decided to team up against their common foe.

 

Mera and Orm worked together to convince Nereus, Mera's ex-fiance and head of the Xebelian military, to aid them in deposing Rath. Nereus reluctantly agreed to help, but only if Orm was assured to get the throne, since he did not trust Mera.

 

In an attempt to show her worth through combat, Mera challenged Orm to a fight in a Xebelian arena where, by the skin of her teeth, using everything she had, managed to best the Ocean Master and become the true heir to the Atlantean throne.

 

In the months since Mera's departure Atlantis grew worse. Corum Rath had been corrupted by the Abyssal Dark, a foul magic which helped build Atlantis.

 

The dark transformed Corum into a hideous creature hell-bent on the destruction of Atlantis as he believed Atlantis could only be great again if it were reborn in the ashes of tradition.

 

Aquaman, working as a freedom fighter, led a last resort attack against the mad king in which his trident was shattered by the dictator.

 

When all seemed lost Mera arrived with the war hosts of Xebel to even the fight against Rath and his forces. In the final fight, Rath was defeated and his magic corrupted, turning him into a fish. Taking pity on him, Aquaman used his powers to commanded him to leave Atlantis and continue his new life among the other fish.

 

While celebrating their victory, all of a sudden the ground began to shake and Atlantis began to rise. Arthur told Mera that during his fight with the Dark Multiverse invaders he had worn a set of the reality-altering Tenth Metal armor and made a wish.

 

He had wished for a place that existed between the two worlds of land and sea, a place where he could live his life happily. Arthur's wish had been granted in the worst possible way, Atlantis had risen out of the water and onto the land.

 

The Suicide Squad Strikes

 

Sitting directly in the middle of Europe and the United States, Atlantis was immediately viewed with caution by the surface dwellers, many nations preparing for war.

 

Determined to prove that Atlantis meant no harm, Mera invited the Secretary of the United States to attend her coronation as Queen.

 

After her coronation, Queen Mera spent no time sitting idly in her throne waiting for her problems to sort themselves out, immediately scheduling a private meeting with U.S. ambassadors in order to quell the fear and distrust felt by many on the surface world. She also tasked many of her laborers to rebuild the parts of Atlantis destroyed during the civil war.

 

During the coronation, a secret penal black-ops team known as the Suicide Squad was sent by American xenophobic extremist Admiral Meddinghouse to destroy the kingdom.

 

Fortunately, Aquaman caught wind of this and led his former Undercurrent forces against the Squad. Disgusted that a member of the U.S. Government was attempting to destroy her city, Mera rose the water levels around America's coasts, threatening to sink America into the deep if they did not back down.

 

Fortunately Aquaman was able to stop the Squad and, in the aftermath, America and Atlantis returned to their fragile state of alliance. Admiral Meddinghouse was swiftly arrested on charges of high treason for sanctioning the mission.

 

Drowned Earth

 

Sometime after Mera's coronation as queen, the waters began to rise once again. However anyone who touched the water was turned into an aggressive sea beast hellbent on destruction.

 

Mera evacuated the civilians into the upper part of the city while Murk and the Drift attempted to hold off the infected. Ondine informed Mera that the oceans were rising all across the globe, with both humans and Atlanteans facing extinction.

 

After comforting some civilians, Mera contacted the Hall of Justice to see who of Earth's heroes remained alive. After a moment Batman answered her call and told her that Arthur had gone missing during a mission to the Arctic six hours prior and that the current crisis was probably alien in nature.

 

Mera held back the water from Atlantis as much as she could but failed to contain it all, and most of Atlantis' citizens were transformed into sea beasts. Out of options and time, Mera headed to the highest spire of Atlantis where Orm was kept locked away. Breaking through the wall of his cell she asked him for help, when he agreed she gave the Ocean Master his trident back and the two formed another uneasy alliance.

 

Mera and Orm began fighting their way outside of the city, eventually making it to the memorial to the dead kings of Atlantis. There, a man named Captain Gall introduced himself as an alien sea god and one of the three leaders of the invasion known as the Triumvirate of Sea Gods.

 

Gall instantly overwhelmed the pair, forcing Orm to transform into one of the sea-changed before Mera escaped.

 

Mera traveled across the globe until she found Superman and the Flash being chased by sea-changed heroes. After saving the pair from the clutches of Swamp Thing, she used a magical crown she acquired to teleport them to the location of an Atlantean weapon that could stop the invasion.

 

Discovering they were too late, Mera, Flash and Superman were met by Black Manta, who revealed that it was him and his allies in the Legion of Doom who had summoned the Triumvirate to Earth.

 

Mother Shark

 

When Mother Shark restores Arthur Curry's memories, it is revealed that Arthur actually survived the alien invasion and returned to Mera. However, they kept it a secret from the rest of Atlantis.

 

Mera stops them from being romantic to talk about the politics of Atlantis and how the Widowhood wants her to marry. Arthur confesses his love for Mera once again, again proposing they get married, but Mera is hesitant with all the drama they've endured. However, she then reveals she's pregnant.

 

Arthur affirms that he loves both Mera and their unborn child but, afraid that he won't be able to give his child the life it deserves, asks to go home and think. Mera, unhappy that she and her love don't seem to be on the same page, loses control, attacks Arthur, and is later found by the Widowhood and Atlantean guards.

 

Amnesty,Finale: Xebel's Daughter

 

As Mera's pregnancy progressed, Arthur returned to life and Amnesty Bay, however, he did not go to Mera nor she to him. Arthur's nemesis Black Manta destroyed an ancient Atlantean historical site to draw Mera to the surface, where she and Aquaman met and wordlessly reconciled.

 

Manta attacked the pair with Mecha Manta, provided by Lex Luthor. Mera and Arthur's new sidekick Jackson Hyde destroyed Mecha Manta with a giant electrified hydrokinetic construct of her, but the huge amounts of power she was forced to use put her in a coma.

 

She was rushed to an Atlantean hospital and gave birth shortly afterwards to a baby girl, who was named Andy.

 

The Wedding

 

Mera reawakens after 10 months in a coma. With the ruse of a fake wedding to Vulko she calls to Atlantis the leaders of the 7 underwater kingdoms. Prior to the wedding, she has the entire widowhood arrested.

 

Once all 7 kingdoms are assembled, to their surprise, Mera announces that she was dissolving the Atlantean monarchy and that she intended to hand power to the people. Orm attempts to take power for himself, however, Orm and his forces are stopped by Aquaman, assisted by the Justice league and the Sea gods.

 

Following this, Mera finally embraces her daughter, as she and Arthur settle down in Amnesty Bay. Soon afterwards Mera and Arthur marry in the presence of their family and friends, in what was originally planned as a welcome back party for her.

 

Following the abolition of the monarchy, Arthur and Mera intended to hold themselves apart from Atlantis to allow the city to govern itself, but they were forced to intervene when the Frost King's forces attacked the city during what was intended to be their honeymoon.

 

Arthur journeyed into the city's heating vents to meet with the Fire Tolls who lived in the tunnels below Atlantis, hoping they could be an ally against the Frost King. Originally Mera agreed to stay behind to guard Andy but quickly followed him, arriving in time to save Arthur from a Fire Troll with a hydrokinetic attack.

 

The Trolls were in awe of this and swore loyalty to her. With her army of Fire Trolls, Mera and Arthur defeated the ice creatures attacking Atlantis.

 

Aquamen

 

After abdicating the throne, Mera devoted herself to promoting democracy within Xebel and encouraging unification with Atlantis.

 

She had some success but was unable to get the Xebelian Guard to end the conscription of children. She also helped Jackson's mother Lucia, a refugee from Xebel, sneak Xebelians out of the city and secretly settled them in Amnesty Bay without Arthur's knowledge.

 

Mera was scheduled to speak at a peace conference in Xebel while Arthur was away on a mission to Mars. Jackson was framed for a terrorist attack and Mera helped him escape the city. Mera attended the conference as planned, which was attacked by a Xebelian terrorist group called the Xebelian Liberation Front.

 

She and the other delegates were saved by Jackson, Lucia and Lucia's secret daughter Delilah, but Lucia was critically injured and left in a coma. Mera gave an impassioned speech saying that they owed it to future generations to try to make a better world.

 

Orm attacked the United Nations Building but was foiled and captured by Arthur and Jackson. Shortly afterward, Jackson called Mera and told her that Arthur was secretly working with Black Manta and he needed to speak to the entire Aquaman Family.

 

He also asked her to bring an expert in Atlantean biology, so brought Stephen Shin in to consult. Jackson had brought the dead body of a man that Black Manta had supposedly killed and subsequently autopsied in Paris, and told them that when he had tried to arrest Manta for murder, Arthur had stopped him.

 

Garth and Tula believed that Arthur was trying to trick Black Manta somehow, but Mera admitted that Arthur had been acting strangely ever since he returned from Mars.

 

Doctor Shin examined the body and determined that the man had been born Atlantean but had been modified to be half-human, allowing him to survive on land without dehydrating.

 

He also had a transceiver installed in his brain, and they realized that the dead man had been some kind of deep-cover Atlantean agent. Suddenly Tula received a call from the surface that a house in Ohio had blown up and carbon had been left in the ground. The carvings were ancient Atlantean glyphs which read "Atlantis remembers" and the date of an oil spill which killed seven Atlanteans.

 

Mera realized there was more going on than they realized and went to Mars to speak with Frankenstein, who Arthur claimed to have been with while he was away, but Frankenstein told her that Arthur had been on Mars for only three hours and left again, despite being away from home for days.

 

When she returned home, one of her agents in the Atlantean Guard told her that Arthur and Manta had been spotted on the outskirts of Atlantis. She also learned that Jackson had gone to Orm's cell and tortured him for information, believing that he was behind the Atlantean sleeper agents.

 

Mera was concerned about Jackson's unusually aggressive and reckless behavior since Lucia was hurt, and called him to try and talk about it, but he would only tell her that he was in Gotham chasing down a lead.

 

She tracked down Arthur and Manta and demanded to know what was going on. Arthur admitted the truth to her: during his first reign many years ago, an Atlantean general named Mako took him to a hidden vault full of weapons developed for a potential war against the surface, and revealed that he had placed sleeper agents on the surface to retaliate in case the surface ever attacked Atlantis. Arthur had believed he shut the program down, but the sleepers had somehow been activated anyway.

 

Arthur met with the entire Aquaman Family and told them the truth about everything, including that he was working with Black Manta to stop the sleepers.

 

During the meeting Arthur revealed that he had lost some of his memories when he died and they had only just started returning, and Tula realized that Mera had been the one who killed him. Arthur told them all that he and Black Manta planned to use Manta's Orichalcum trident to deactivate the sleepers, but to do so they would need a broadcast tower.

 

Mera brought in Mister Terrific to design the tower, which she and Jackson would create from the waters of the Atlantic Ocean itself.

 

Mera and Jackson created the tower and began to broadcast the signal, although even with the two of them holding up such a huge construct was a great strain. Black Manta accidentally crashed into the tower while battling Orm's henchman Scavenger and knocked the trident out of position.

 

This forced Jackson to carry the trident back to the top of the tower and hold it in place, while Mera held up the tower alone. She eventually could no longer do it and the tower collapsed, but they managed to send the deactivation signal.

 

With the threat of the sleepers neutralized, Arthur gave Mera control over General Mako's vault and told her she could use or destroy the weapons inside as she saw fit. Mera was still angry with him for keeping secrets and lying to her, but before they could talk about it Arthur was called away by the Justice League on an emergency.

 

He left, promising they would talk when he got back. In the vault, Mera found a gauntlet which she discovered allowed her to use her hydrokinesis to heal.

 

The surface governments began debating a response to the attacks by the sleepers. Mera listened in on the meeting with hidden bugs, but just as they were about to vote to attack Atlantis, the world leaders all simultaneously received reports that the entire Justice League, including Arthur, were dead. Mera went to the dock outside the Curry Lighthouse to grieve, and Jackson came to comfort her.

 

Powers and abilities

 

As a Xebellian (a sub-race of Atlanteans from Xebel), she shares the common abilities of superhuman strength, speed, durability, and possesses the ability to breathe underwater. While on dry land, she possesses more acute senses that including limited night vision from her enhanced sight and more acute hearing compared to ordinary humans. In addition to her natural physical abilities, she possesses powerful hydrokinetic powers (called aquakinesis), allowing her to control bodies of water, create "hard water" constructs, and drawing water from other forms, including human beings. Her hydrokinetic powers also allow her to sense bodies of water, including what's in them. According to Corum Rath, she is considered perhaps the most powerful high-functioning aqua-kinetic ever recorded in the history of Atlantis.

 

In addition to her natural and hydrokinetic abilities, Mera is also an extremely proficient warrior; she is an expert in Atlantean-related martial arts and use of weaponry,[40] being skilled enough to battle Ocean Master in single combat. Mera was also trained in assassination and is considered a natural, proficient leader.

 

Weaknesses

 

As a natural-born Atlantean, Mera is prone to dehydration at a faster rate compared to ordinary human beings while on the surface. Powerful artifacts and strong users of telekinetic-related abilities (i.e. cryokinesis) can also resist and even negate her aquakinetic powers. Due to her abilities working through telekinetic connections, material that negates telepathic connections also disrupts her hydrokinetic powers. Earlier stories also placed some limits on her abilities such as susceptibility to lead.

 

⚡ Happy 🎯 Heroclix 💫 Friday! 👽

_____________________________

A year of the shows and performers of the Bijou Planks Theater.

 

Notable aliases: Aquawoman

Dead Water

Princess of Xebel

Queen of Atlantis

 

Publisher: DC

 

First appearance: Aquaman #11 (September 1963)

 

Created by: Jack Miller (Writer)

Nick Cardy (Artist)

 

Mera last seen in BP 2021 Day 32!

www.flickr.com/photos/paprihaven/50899831182/

Disfrutando como enanos de esta conocida localización.

When the winds are strong and wihps up the water in the Burrard Inlet, one can still see, however, the Lighthouse in Rocky Point Park in West Vancouver standing on the rocky shoreline. Foolish sailors can often be seen trying to navigate their boats on these churlish waves! Definitely not for the faint hearted as often their are deep undercurrents which are visible to the naked eye and make it very treacherous. Then logs are also floating in the water and those can rip a boat apart.

The surface of the sea squeezes out a tube of air after crests apparently merge between rocks before they meet with the final shore - a horizontal twister. The effect seems to be more than a merger of crests, with the possibility of a strong undercurrent from a past wave sucking and spinning approaching troughs which gives the effect of crests merging. Here the ephemeral tube can be seen as a silver line under the water surface. The tube of air moves with the surge forward releasing streamers of bubbles as it goes.

 

AJ

In the twilight realm where the ocean embraces the sky, there existed a sea of thoughts, vast and mysterious as the deepest trench. These thoughts, like currents, ebbed and flowed beneath the surface, concealed in shadows cast by the doubts that clouded the mind's horizon.

 

Once, there was a thought, delicate and fragile, like a bubble rising from the ocean floor. It was a dream, a wish for light, yearning to break free from the shadowy depths. But around it, darker thoughts swirled like stormy waves, threatening to engulf it in their tumultuous embrace.

 

Yet, the dream persisted, ascending slowly, determined to reach the surface where the sun's golden rays promised freedom and clarity. As it rose, it gathered other luminous thoughts—hopes and desires trapped in the undercurrents.

 

Together, weaving through the dark, a dance of light amidst the abyss. They spoke of a new life, of the strength found in unity, and the power of a single thought to change the course of the tides.

 

And then, just when the surface seemed too far, dawn approached. The first light, tender and hesitant, pierced the water's surface, unraveling the darkness with gentle fingers. The light, like a symphony of hope, played upon the waves, revealing the hidden beauty of each thought.

 

The dream, now not alone, breached the surface, greeted by the warm embrace of the sunrise. It shimmered in the light, no longer a prisoner of the deep, but a beacon for all those who still wandered in the shadows.

 

For in this ocean of thoughts, light always finds a way, illuminating the concealed with a special grace. It reminds us that even in the darkest waters, there is a path to the surface, where dreams are unveiled, and thoughts are set free.

 

Lost

Shells that wash ashore

It is a well-known fact that with an offshore wind due to the undercurrent that occurs towards the coast, many more shells wash ashore than with an onshore wind. It is also known that large quantities are sometimes thrown on the beach after storms. But this cannot explain: the sudden appearance of some kind of shell in large quantities, apparently independent of wind direction, force, or season.

 

The excess of 'razor blades' on the beach can partly be explained. They are the shells of the Ensis. And there are a lot of them in the North Sea. It is true that they actually belong in fairly warm seawater. In winter they do not survive the cold seawater of the North Sea and they die en masse. If a storm comes over, millions of these 'razors' will wash up on the North Sea beach.

For people who normally rarely go to the beach, it may be a special experience, for nature itself it is nothing more than 'business as usual'

 

Ensis is a genus of medium-sized marine shellfish, also referred to by the name "razor". Worldwide 11 to 12 species are known of living fauna, five of which live in the North Sea (including the exotic species Ensis leei). The oldest Ensis species are known from the Lower Miocene of Europe, where the genus seems to have its center of gravity even today.

 

Beside this big old bed is a paper lamp. It is a column of orange light whispering to someone I can’t see as I sit on the edge of the bed and wait for my thoughts to stop. I know something I cannot say, can’t even begin to articulate, and the orange light holds that knowledge in its secret supernatural voice like clear water in a metal bowl. The story of light has been trying to let me know something in my dreams. I have been resistant to it, like everyone else before me. But there is no denying the reality of its narrative, its power, its tricky strength, its trajectory of claiming. Filaments of orange light peer through little holes in the paper lamp’s cylindrical body and I think of a column of fire, a tongue of flame dancing and insistent. Something burning but stable and unchanging. When will I know what to do? When will the silent fire decide to speak my name? I sigh and slide between the cool white cotton of the bedsheets. The lamp’s glass bulb flickers like a candle, goes out for a second, then reappears, tinged with a purple undercurrent that is impossible to identify with my eyes but is somehow undeniably present nonetheless. I sit up and listen for the wind, for the way the branches of the shedding red oaks sound against the glass of the big windows that open onto the forest. A shower of acorns pelts the tin roof and the lamp gutters like a torch and goes out. Breathless but not exactly fearful, I close my eyes to hear what the fire has to say, adding a layer of chosen darkness to the hologram of orange and purple that inhabits the new dark of the air around me.

-----lks 2015

 

Started contemplating lately the factors that go into the decision to end a photo shoot. Seems to have much to do with the subject matter. My street portrait sessions begin and end in a matter of minutes. And for that series, it's more than ample. Quick, spontaneous, you got it or you didn't, click click and move on. Dragging out a situation like that pays no dividends. Then there's event shoots and some of those have kept me going literally until there was no battery power remaining in the camera. In sessions doing portrait work with my niece, I get this weird sort of NRA mentality, thinking "the shoot will end only when you rip this camera from my cold, dead hands"! But those are the extremes. Usually it's something in between. External factors sometimes bring the shoot to an end. Extreme cold, or finally getting tired of being out in the rain, wind, snow, etc. Loss of daylight (or whatever great lighting brought you out in the first place). Sometimes it's just a mental conclusion that you've done all you can do with the scene. Other times it's a matter of scheduling, having to be somewhere else. Then there's the times you are asked to leave. And that brings me to this photo. I've posted several images taken in this old burial ground and they stand out among the hundreds of others in my stream. There's just something about this place, somewhere between mystical and magical, but with a deep undercurrent of something darker. I've channeled this energy, yet feel distrustful and have often been scared here. Back in January, I came here on a wonderfully foggy mid-winter day. But it was a rather hasty trip. I wanted to visit several locations during the fog and so found myself moving hurriedly through here. My photos and actions were rather perfunctory, and I felt the lack of connection (and a subsequent review of the photos taken confirmed this). I suddenly had an urge to leave and in this place, that urge always feels as if it's coming from somewhere other than my own mind. It's more of a telepathic message: get out. And so I departed, as always, breathing a sigh of relief once I hear my car engine roaring back to life and again as my wheels regain the safety of the road. About a month later, I awoke on another foggy morning and realized this was my second chance. I returned to this place and this time did not try to rush things. I just stood in place and soaked in the atmosphere, then began to move about and channel photos rather than just taking pictures. It was overwhelmingly different this time. But just as before, time came to leave and once again, it felt as if this was being imparted on me. As I approached my car I hesitated, then turned and climbed back top the knoll in the center of the grounds. This is the resulting image. The arc of the tree branches over the stones, and the randomness of the stone positions, it all just felt right. Mindful that I was now officially overstaying my welcome, I slid back down the knoll and got into the car. The digital clock illuminated on the dash as the engine started. I was stunned to see nearly 90 minutes had elapsed in what felt to me like just 20. Far more time than I had been granted on my prior visit. Really pays to be more sensitive.

Taraxacum officinale. (Common Dandelion)

(Description to the insect Corizus hyoscyami, follows below)

Taraxacum officinale (F.H. Wigg)

Known as “The Common Dandelion”.

Family: Asteraceae.

The Dandelion is native to Europe and Asia and was introduced into North America from Europe.

The Common Dandelion is a perennial plant, which emerges from seed and the root develops into a perennial taproot system, that preserves over the winter months.

Ideally when temperatures reach around 10 centigrade (50 Fahrenheit) the plants will start to develop from seed. The seedlings will emerge from a soil depth of less than an inch. (2.5cm).

Dandelion plants thrive on soils rich in potassium and nitrogen, preferring soils low in calcium, does not like soils high in phosphorus conditions, which can be caused by the poor decay of organic matter.

Each dandelion plant has up to ten flower heads, each producing between 150 to 200 seedlings (known as “Pappus seedlings” (that look like upturned umbrellas), these are dispersed by the wind). So, on average,15000 seeds per plant, which can be dispersed over vast distances, as the pappus seedlings are ideally shaped to fly in the updrafts of the wind’s undercurrents. The seed does not lie dormant and will germinate immediately in the same year, given reasonable soil conditions.

Dandelion plants can become invasive, when given ideal soil conditions, it captures space and although not competitive for light, it will however take a lot of moisture and nutrients from the ground.

The common dandelion is an herb native to Europe, the whole of the plant is edible (flower, leaves and roots) and has been used for various infections, but little evidence supports its effectiveness against certain ailments.

These being: Decreasing swelling on parts of the body, increasing urine production by preventing crystals from forming in the urine, that could lead to infections entering the Kidneys and urinary tract.

Dandelions are one of the most vital early nectar sources, for a wide host of insect pollinators.

Corizus hyoscyami

Family: Rhopalidae.

Body length: 9mm

The markings on Corizus hyoscyami are distinctive, but are similar to some ground bug species.

Commonly known by a few names such as, “Scentless plant bug”, “Red and black Rhopalid” “Cinnamon bug” and also, “Black and Red Squash bug”.

This is a widespread species found in most of Europe, since the early 1990’s has been spreading more into the northern countries of Europe. This is mainly put down to climate change. In England it is more common in the southern counties (especially southern coastlines), also found along the Southern Coastline of Wales and up to North Wales. Recently has been recorded as far north, as Yorkshire.

Habitat: Preferring dry sunny areas, such as, meadows, gardens, parklands and open hedgerows. Will be seen on a wide variety of plants and shrubs.

Overwinters as an adult, the new generation begins late summer between August and September.

Nymphs are yellow to red-brown in colour, being quite hairy.

 

Chris Ofili completed his coursework in art foundation at Tameside College of Technology, greater Manchester, England. In 1992 he was awarded a travel scholarship to Zimbabwe, an experience that profoundly influenced his approach to painting. His early works incorporated layers of paint, resin, glitter collage and elephant dung, among other materials which were applied to the canvas or used as props. Olifi has appropriated sexual, cultural, historical and religious references to create uniquely aesthetic and physical works. His work exposes the darker undercurrents of society and racial stereotypes while also celebrating contemporary black culture.

Olifi’s recent works adopt simple, pared-down forms while continuing to be expansive, dynamic and romantic. They are full of references to sensuality, sexuality, and his on-going exploration or Biblical themes as well as exploring a more recent interest in the landscape any mythology of Trinidad where he has lived since 2005.

Cavendish Mews is a smart set of flats in Mayfair where flapper and modern woman, the Honourable Lettice Chetwynd has set up home after coming of age and gaining her allowance. To supplement her already generous allowance, and to break away from dependence upon her family, Lettice has established herself as a society interior designer, so her flat is decorated with a mixture of elegant antique Georgian pieces and modern Art Deco furnishings, using it as a showroom for what she can offer to her well heeled clients.

 

Today however we are not at Cavendish Mews. We have travelled east across London, through Bloomsbury, past the Smithfield Meat Markets, beyond the Petticoat Lane Markets* frequented by Lettice’s maid, Edith, through the East End boroughs of Bethnal Green and Bow, and through the 1880s housing development of Upton Park, to East Ham. It is here that we have followed Edith and her beau, grocery delivery boy Frank, to the Premier Super Cinema**, where, just before Christmas, Edith is being treated to her festive season gift from Frank.

 

The pair of lovers stand in the warmth of the cinema’s foyer, which as well as being a welcome place of warmth after the December chill of the journey up the High Street from the East Ham railway station, it is also brightly lit and cheerful. The cinema, renovated the previous year, isn’t called a picture palace for nothing, and no expense has been spared with thick red wall-to-wall carpets covering the floors and brightly coloured up-to-date Art Deco wallpaper covering the walls.

 

“And did Mrs. Boothby’s son like the book you gave him?” Frank asks his sweetheart.

 

Several months ago, Edith met Lettice’s Cockney charwoman*** Mrs. Boothby’s son, a forty-two year old man who is a sweet and gentle giant with the aptitude of a six year old, when Mrs. Boothby sold her a good quality second-hand hand treadle sewing machine. The old Cockney woman found it easier not to mention that she has a son, not because she is ashamed of him, but because not everyone outside of her Poplar neighbourhood would understand her wanting to keep and raise a child with such difficulties. Mrs. Boothby took Edith into her confidence by introducing her to her son, Ken, so aside from Frank, Edith hasn’t told anyone about Ken’s existence, not even her best friend Hilda. Several weeks ago, she bough Ken a copy of Beatrix Potter’s ‘The Tale of Benjamin Bunny’ from Selfridge’s as a Christmas gift because she discovered after meeting him how much he likes rabbits.

 

“Oh yes Frank! He loved it! He had me read it to him twice over when I visited Mrs. Boothby’s house for tea last Sunday. I think Mrs. Boothby was very touched that I should think of Ken at Christmas time. But why shouldn’t I? After all, if it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t have a beautiful new sewing machine to whip up frocks on. He’s ever such a sweet soul. No wonder he is known as the gentle giant of Poplar.”

 

“That’s my girl,” Franks says proudly. “Generous to, and thoughtful of others.”

 

“Oh Frank!” Edith blushes at the compliment.

 

“I have to say that you’re looking every inch a lady, like your Miss Chetwynd, Edith,” Frank says as he admires the companion on his arm, dressed smartly in her three-quarter length black winter coat and purple rose and black feather decorated straw hat. “Far too grand for the likes of me.”

 

“Oh nonsense, Frank!” Edith scoffs in reply. “I’m not wearing anything new. My coat came from a Petticoat Lane second-hand clothes stall.” She gathers the hem in her black glove clad hand. “I picked it up dead cheap and remodelled it myself. The hat I decorated with bits and bobs I picked up from Mrs. Minkin’s down in Whitechapel.”

 

“Well, with that fancy new bag of yours,” He points to her snakeskin handbag with the gold chain slung over her wrist. “You look like you could afford to buy every seat in the cinema.”

 

“Oh, get away with you Frank!” Edith playfully slaps his arm with her left hand, before winding her right arm more tightly through his left arm and snuggling closer against his shoulder. “It’s second hand from Petticoat Lane too.” She pauses for a moment before continuing. “Mind you, I did buy it because I really wanted one like Miss Lettice’s.”

 

“That’s my girl, bettering herself all the time.” Frank says proudly.

 

“But not enough to better myself from you, Frank Leadbetter.” she coos softly in return.

 

“I just wish I could have afforded to buy you a better Christmas gift, Edith.”

 

“What?” Edith cries. “A slap up tea at Lyons Corner House**** on Tottenham Court Road, some delicious Gainsborough Dubarry Milk Chocolates*****,” She pats the side of her handbag in which the chocolates sit. “And a trip to the pictures! What more could a girl ask for, for Christmas?”

 

“I’d have liked to have got you something proper though Edith.”

 

“Like what?”

 

“Like a nice brooch or something.” Frank admits with a disappointed tone in his voice. “A girl like you deserves a nice piece of jewellery from her chap.”

 

“I don’t need any jewellery from you, Frank.” Edith assures him. “You give me all I need.” She gives his arm a gentle squeeze, eliciting a blush from the young man. “I’d much rather you save your pennies than spend them on unnecessary frippery for me.”

 

“It’s not frippery when we’re talking about you, Edith.” Frank mutters.

 

“Yes, it is, when you’re talking about wanting to move away from your current lodging house, Frank. Aren’t you always complaining to me about how it smells of boiled cabbage, and that your landlady who won’t allow any of you to have lady callers even visit and sit in the parlour with her as chaperone?”

 

“You wouldn’t want to sit in Mrs. Chapman’s front parlour, believe me!” Frank assures her with raised eyebrows. “Between the stink of cabbage, the sticky oil cloth on the tea table and the miserly amount of coal she ever puts on the fire, it’s not a welcoming place.”

 

“Well then, Frank Leadbetter! All the better you save your pennies and move to a different house with a nicer landlady who doesn’t cook cabbage, does put coals on the fire, and welcomes visitors.”

 

“I might need a better paying job for that.” Frank admits. “But I’m hoping that Mr. Willison might give me an increase to my wages in the new year. I’ve been doing more for him, ever since Mrs. Willison became poorly after catching pneumonia last month and she’s had to rest at home, and he’s been spending more time at home taking care of her.”

 

“That’d be good, Frank.”

 

“I know! I’ve taken on a lot more duties and been a real help. Mr. Willison even said so not last week.”

 

“Well, I’ll keep my fingers crossed for you, Frank.”

 

“Just think, if I did get an increase in my wages, I could afford to buy you a nice piece of jewellery, Edith.”

 

“Now don’t go spending it before you get it, Frank.” Edith scolds her beau, not unkindly. “Come on. Let’s decide what we’re going to see.”

 

The pair of lovers scan the brightly coloured posters plastered across the walls. Rudolph Valentino looks smoulderingly into the eyes of Nita Naldi as he holds her dramatically in his arms in an advertisement for ‘Blood and Sand’******. Marion Davies looks sombre yet beautifully aristocratic draped in jewels as Mary Tudor in ‘When Knighthood was in Flower’*******. John Bowers looks grimly down upon them as he holds Madge Bellamy to his side in an advertisement for ‘Lorna Doone’********.

 

“Look at this, Frank!” Edith gasps, pointing to a stand upon which is advertised another film.

 

“The Gipsy Cavalier*********,” Frank reads aloud the title printed in red script on the promotional lobby poster. “It looks like a lavish production.” he adds as he scans the images in the poster.

 

“It’s made here in England,” Edith says excitedly as she scans the credit information in fine print at the bottom of the poster. “So it might star Wanetta Ward!”

 

“Didn’t you tell me that she works for Islington Studios**********, Edith, not Vitagraph***********.”

 

“Well, she’s a big star here now, so she may work for several studios. Can we see this, please Frank?”

 

“Well,” Frank replies. “This is your Christmas gift, so of course we can see it.”

 

A short while later, the pair mill about the brightly illuminated foyer along with a handful of other patrons outside the cinema door, waiting for the film currently showing to end. Eventually, the double doors open and with the voluble burble of cheerful chatter, people begin to file out the door in pairs or small groups. Edith and Frank stand aside, next to the board advertising The Gipsy Cavalier to let them pass. Amongst them are two girls around the same age as Edith, one slender with a hard face and angular features in a moss green coat and black cloche hat, and her companion, a dark haired, rather pale, and doughy girl in a dark brown coat and matching cloche. At the sight of Frank and Edith the larger girl comes to a sudden halt, pulling up her thinner friend with whom she has linked her arm, their animated conversation ceasing as the thinner one turns to see what her friend has stopped for.

 

“Frank Leadbetter!” the doughy girl says, her face hardening as she puts her hands featuring pale fingers that look like uncooked sausages on her heavy hips defiantly. “You’ve got some cheek showing your face around here.”

 

“Oh, give over Vi!” Frank says, placing his arms akimbo across his chest in defence of her sharp words.

 

Noticing Edith standing next to Frank, her arm entwined with his, Vi’s dark eyes grow cold as she looks her up and down. “So, this is who you threw me over for, is it? A cook’s assistant not good enough for you? You want some skinny tart who looks better in a skirt and hat than I do, eh?”

 

Edith is taken aback by this strange girl’s rough language and vehemence towards her. Having never been called something so horrible before, she blanches at the insult and tightens her grip around Frank’s arm, too afraid to say anything in her defence.

 

Around them, patrons murmur and mutter disgruntledly, suddenly alerted to the altercation by the girl’s vulgar word cutting through the conviviality and joviality of the theatre foyer like a knife.

 

“You better watch your mouth, Vi.” Frank growls back warningly in a deep voice. “This here is a lady,” He untwines his arm from Edith, but them wraps his arm protectively around her shoulder, pulling her closer to him in a chivalrous gesture. “Which judging by the way you are addressing her, you most definitely are not. Sounds like you’ve been hanging around pub corners a bit too much on your afternoons off, Vi.”

 

“Where I hang round on my afternoons off is none of your business, Frank Leadbetter!” Vi spits back bitterly, her whole body edging forward menacingly.

 

“You’re right there, Vi,” Frank agrees with a snort. “I don’t care what rocks you crawl under. I never promised you anything.”

 

“You’re just saying that, ‘cos she’s here!” Vi acknowledges Edith with a curt nod in her direction and a sneer of revulsion.

 

Edith shrinks further back into Frank, but doesn’t say anything as she wraps her hands around her snakeskin handbag.

 

More murmuring goes on around them as interest in the argument picks up amongst the other people waiting to enter the cinema, an electric undercurrent of excitement filling some, whilst others peer over at the quartet with unveiled interest.

 

“Say what you like, Vi, but you’re the one who wanted to walk out with me.” Frank replies bravely. “I never wanted to step out with you, and I didn’t. Whereas,” He turns his head and looks down with a proud smile at Edith. “This is my girl, and I am stepping out with her.”

 

“You’re a liar Frank Leadbetter!” Vi spits viciously. “I know I meant something to you.”

 

“Only in your mind, Vi.” he recounters.

 

“Come, Vi,” her thin friend mutters, tugging on her arm. Looking both Frank and Edith up and down quickly with a look of disgust, she adds, “He’s not worth it.”

 

Reluctantly, the larger girl reneges and recants, walking away with her friend, their two heads together muttering as they go.

 

“Alright ladies and gents,” Frank announces to those who have been standing around watching his argument with Vi. “The real show is about start.” He looks down at Edith. “Shall we?”

 

Frank escorts Edith through the crowd of chattering cinema goers and they go to their seats.

 

Inside the dimly lit theatre a fug of cigarette smoke fills the auditorium. The place is filled with the faint traces of various perfumes, which mix with the stronger traces of cigarettes, fried food, and body odour. Around them quiet chatter and the occasional burst of a cough resound. It feels cosy and safe. At the front of the theatre, in a pit below the screen, a middle aged woman in an old fashioned Edwardian gown with an equally outmoded upswept hairdo that wet out of fashion before the war plays an upright piano with enthusiasm, dramatically banging out palm court music for the audience before the beginning of the feature.

 

Settling in their plush red velvet seats in the middle of the auditorium, Frank tentatively puts his arm around Edith’s shoulder. “You do know that I was telling the truth back there, don’t you, Edith?” Frank asks nervously. He looks to see Edith’s face, but it is obscured by the feather and flower decorated brim of her black straw hat.

 

“Oh I know you wouldn’t lie to me,” comes her soft reply. “But who was she, Frank?”

 

“Vi,” he sighs. “Vi used to work as a cook’s assistant, well a glorified kitchen maid really, for the house of an earl in Pimlico. I used to do deliveries there for Mr. Willison, and she’d be loitering around the kitchen door, smoking a Woodbine************ waiting for me. She was nice at first. I had fun chatting with her – nothing intimate mind you – just a how do you do and a passing of the day. I sensed she was lonely and perhaps didn’t have many friends amongst the staff of the house. Then Vi took a fancy to me and wanted me to step out with her, but I wouldn’t.”

 

Turning her head towards him, Frank can see tears glistening in Edith’s blue eyes as they gather there. “She said the most horrible thing to me.”

 

“Oh, please don’t let her spoil my Christmas present to you, Edith.” Frank pleads. “She isn’t worth a second thought, much less one of your tears. Honestly!” He pauses for a moment before continuing his story. “Vi grew more and more insistent with her propositions. She made some rather lewd and vulgar suggestions, all unwarranted and as you saw, she can be a bit intimidating. Eventually, it got so uncomfortable for me that I complained to Mr. Willison, and then one day when I went to deliver groceries she wasn’t there anymore. I heard from the house’s hall boy************* that she’d upped and done a flit in the night after some kerfuffle with the cook – not an uncommon thing apparently owing to Vi’s rather fiery temper. I never saw her again until just before.”

 

“Well,” Edith says shakily, dabbing her eyes with a white lace trimmed handkerchief she pulls from the confines of her snakeskin purse. “Thank you for calling me a lady, and for being so chivalrous, Frank. That meant a great deal to me back there.”

 

“Of course I’ll defend you, Edith, and call you a lady, because you are a lady. You’re my lady.” Frank pauses and removes his arm from about Edith before looking down earnestly at her. “That is, if you still want to be my lady.”

 

Edith’s heart melts at the mixture of fear and hope that sculpt the young man’s features in the dim golden light of the picture theatre.

 

“Put your arm back, Frank.” she says softly, with a gentle smile. “Of course I want to be your lady. I know how much courage it took for you to ask me to step out with you. So, if that awfully overbearing woman was so racy as to proposition you, I know you would never have said yes to walking out with her. That’s why I like you, Frank. You aren’t like so many other men. You’re a gentleman, and a gentle man. You’re kind and considerate and unlike so many other men who only want one thing from a girl.” She flushes at the mention of it.

 

“Goodness!” gasps Frank as he returns his arm to drape around Edith’s shoulders. “Thanks awfully, Edith.”

 

“Best of all, Frank, you showed me that I could find love again. After Bert died in the war, and with so many young men our age killed, I never thought I’d be lucky enough to meet someone again.”

 

“Do you mean that, Edith?” Frank breathes. “Truly?”

 

“Yes, of course I do, Frank. I wouldn’t lie to you any more than you would to me. Why do you ask?”

 

“Well, because you’re really the only girl I’ve ever felt this way about, so it’s rather jolly that you should feel the same way about me.” He smiles broadly across at her.

 

“Well, that’s the best Christmas present you could ever give me, Frank. That means more to me than any tea at Lyon’s, or trips to the pictures, or any jewellery that you could give me.”

 

“Thank you Edith.”

 

Edith reaches into her bag and withdraws the box of chocolates Frank gave her at the beginning of the evening when they met outside the Lyon’s Corner House on Tottenham Court Road. Opening it, she holds the box of brightly foil wrapped sweets out to Frank. “Here, have a Dubarry milk chocolate, Frank.”

 

As the lights in the picture theatre start to dim, Frank turns to Edith.

 

“I do love you, you know, Edith.” he whispers.

 

“I know Frank,” she whispers in reply. “I love you too.”

 

Behind them the projector whirrs and suddenly the screen is illuminated in blinding, brilliant white as the pianist in the pit below the screen starts to play the dramatic opening bars to the music to accompany The Gipsy Cavalier.

 

*Petticoat Lane Market is a fashion and clothing market in Spitalfields, London. It consists of two adjacent street markets. Wentworth Street Market and Middlesex Street Market. Originally populated by Huguenots fleeing persecution in France, Spitalfields became a center for weaving, embroidery and dying. From 1882, a wave of Jewish immigrants fleeing persecution in eastern Europe settled in the area and Spitalfields then became the true heart of the clothing manufacturing district of London. 'The Lane' was always renowned for the 'patter' and showmanship of the market traders. It was also known for being a haven for the unsavoury characters of London’s underworld and was rife with prostitutes during the late Victorian era. Unpopular with the authorities, as it was largely unregulated and in some sense illegal, as recently as the 1930s, police cars and fire engines were driven down ‘The Lane’, with alarm bells ringing, to disrupt the market.

 

**The Premier Super Cinema in East Ham was opened on the 12th of March, 1921, replacing the 800 seat capacity 1912 Premier Electric Theatre. The new cinema could seat 2,408 patrons. The Premier Super Cinema was taken over by Provincial Cinematograph Theatres who were taken over by Gaumont British in February 1929. It was renamed the Gaumont from 21st April 1952. The Gaumont was closed by the Rank Organisation on 6th April 1963. After that it became a bingo hall and remained so until 2005. Despite attempts to have it listed as a historic building due to its relatively intact 1921 interior, the Gaumont was demolished in 2009.

 

***A charwoman, chargirl, or char, jokingly charlady, is an old-fashioned occupational term, referring to a paid part-time worker who comes into a house or other building to clean it for a few hours of a day or week, as opposed to a maid, who usually lives as part of the household within the structure of domestic service. In the 1920s, chars usually did all the hard graft work that paid live-in domestics would no longer do as they looked for excuses to leave domestic service for better paying work in offices and factories.

 

****J. Lyons and Co. was a British restaurant chain, food manufacturing, and hotel conglomerate founded in 1884 by Joseph Lyons and his brothers in law, Isidore and Montague Gluckstein. Lyons’ first teashop opened in Piccadilly in 1894, and from 1909 they developed into a chain of teashops, with the firm becoming a staple of the High Street in the United Kingdom. At its peak the chain numbered around two hundred cafes. The teashops provided for tea and coffee, with food choices consisting of hot dishes and sweets, cold dishes and sweets, and buns, cakes and rolls. Lyons' Corner Houses, which first appeared in 1909 and remained until 1977, were noted for their Art Deco style. Situated on or near the corners of Coventry Street, Strand and Tottenham Court Road, they and the Maison Lyonses at Marble Arch and in Shaftesbury Avenue were large buildings on four or five floors, the ground floor of which was a food hall with counters for delicatessen, sweets and chocolates, cakes, fruit, flowers and other products. In addition, they possessed hairdressing salons, telephone booths, theatre booking agencies and at one period a twice-a-day food delivery service. On the other floors were several restaurants, each with a different theme and all with their own musicians. For a time, the Corner Houses were open twenty-four hours a day, and at their peak each branch employed around four hundred staff including their famous waitresses, commonly known as Nippies for the way they nipped in and out between the tables taking orders and serving meals. The tea houses featured window displays, and, in the post-war period, the Corner Houses were smarter and grander than the local tea shops. Between 1896 and 1965 Lyons owned the Trocadero, which was similar in size and style to the Corner Houses.

 

*****Although packaged in a purple of the box the same colour as Cadbury’s trademark purple, Gainsborough’s Dubarry range of milk chocolates were not marketed as Cadbury’s, but rather Gainsborough’s, paying tribute to the market town of Gainsborough in Lincolnshire, where Rose Bothers manufactured and supplied machines that wrapped chocolates. The Rose Brothers are the people for whom Cadbury’s Roses chocolates are named.

 

******Blood and Sand is a 1922 American silent drama film produced by Paramount Pictures, directed by Fred Niblo and starring Rudolph Valentino, Lila Lee, and Nita Naldi. It was based on the 1909 Spanish novel Sangre y arena (Blood and Sand) by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez and the play version of the book by Thomas Cushing.

 

*******When Knighthood Was in Flower is a 1922 American silent historical film about the romantic travails of Mary Tudor directed by Robert G. Vignola, based on the novel by Charles Major and play by Paul Kester. The film was produced by William Randolph Hearst (through his Cosmopolitan Productions) for Marion Davies and distributed by Paramount Pictures. This was William Powell's second film.

 

********Lorna Doone is a 1922 American silent drama film based upon Richard Doddridge Blackmore's 1869 novel of the same name. Directed by French director Maurice Tourneur in the United States, the film starred Madge Bellamy and John Bowers.

 

*********A Gipsy Cavalier is a 1922 British historical drama film directed by J. Stuart Blackton and starring Georges Carpentier, Flora le Breton and Rex McDougall. It was one of three films made in Britain during the early 1920s by the British-born American founder of Vitagraph Studios. All involved elaborate sets, costumes and extras and set an example of showmanship to emerging British filmmakers. It was adapted from the novel My Lady April by John Overton.

 

**********Islington Studios, often known as Gainsborough Studios, were a British film studio located on the south bank of the Regent's Canal, in Poole Street, Hoxton in Shoreditch, London which began operation in 1919. By 1920 they had a two stage studio. It is here that Alfred Hitchcock made his entrée into films.

 

***********Vitagraph Studios, also known as the Vitagraph Company of America, was a United States motion picture studio. It was founded by J. Stuart Blackton and Albert E. Smith in 1897 in Brooklyn, New York, as the American Vitagraph Company. By 1907, it was the most prolific American film production company, producing many famous silent films.[1] It was bought by Warner Bros. in 1925.

 

************Woodbine was a brand of cigarettes launched in 1888 by W.D. and H.O. Wills. Noted for its strong unfiltered cigarettes, the brand was cheap and popular in the early Twentieth Century with the working-class, as well as with army men during the Great War and the Second World War. In the Great War, the British Army chaplain Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy MC was affectionately nicknamed "Woodbine Willie" by troops on the Western Front to whom he handed out cigarettes along with Bibles and spiritual comfort. The intricate nineteenth century packet design remained current until the mid 1960s. Although Wills changed the packaging, Woodbine sales continued to drop. In common parlance, the unfiltered high-tar Woodbine was one of the brands collectively known as "gaspers" until about 1950, because new smokers found their harsh smoke difficult to inhale. A filtered version was launched in the United Kingdom in 1948, but was discontinued in 1988. Woodbines came in four different packs: five cigarettes, ten cigarettes, twenty cigarettes and fifty cigarettes.

 

*************The hall boy or hallboy was a the lowest ranked male domestic position held by a young male worker on the staff of a great house, usually a young teenager. The name derives from the fact that the hall boy usually slept in the servants' hall.

 

This beautiful Art Deco cinema interior is not all it appears to be, for it is made up entirely with pieces from my miniatures collection.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

The posters around the cinema walls were all sourced by me and reproduced in high quality colour and print. “The Gipsy Cavalier” board is the only one I have created myself rather than printing an existing poster because there are no posters that I can find in the public domain for it. However all the images used in it, including the film reel images to either side of the main photo are all stills from the film, and the central image is a publicity shot for the film.

 

The chrome Art Deco smoker’s stand is a Shackman miniature from the 1970s and is quite rare. I bought it from a dealer in America via E-Bay.

 

The easel, table , vase of flowers and two flounced red velvet chairs all come from Kathleen Knight’s Doll’s House in the United Kingdom.

 

The geometric Art Deco wallpaper is beautiful hand impressed paper given to me by a friend, who did so in the hope that I would find a use for it in the “Cavendish Mews – Lettice Chetwynd” series.

 

The thick and bright red carpet is in fact a placemat which I appropriated in the late 1970s to use as a carpet for my growing miniatures collection. Luckily I was never asked to return it, and the rest of the set is long gone!

Borgarfjörður is a fjord in the west of Iceland near the town of Borgarnes. The waters of Borgarfjörður appear to be calm, however the fjord is on the contrary a rather dangerous part of the sea because of its undercurrents and shallows.

 

There are many flat islands lying in the fjord, but for the most part they are uninhabited.

 

The land around the fjord has been inhabited since the time of Icelandic settlement. Events in the Icelandic sagas such as that of Egill Skallagrímsson are situated here.

 

The name of the fjord seems to come from the farm of Borg, which according to the sagas was founded by Egill's father Skallagrímur, who took the land around the fjord and accordingly gave the fjord the name of Borgarfjörður.

These are the floodplains of the river IJssel in the Spring at Zutphen, the Netherlands. During a bike ride we saw these horses, geese and stork in nature.

 

Floodplains associated with the river landscape. These are the pieces of land between the main channel of a river and the high winter dike. At high tide they may undercurrents.

This will prevent the people living behind the dikes get wet feet.

Floodplains have not always heard in the rivers, because before there were dikes rivers had no floodplains.

Before there were floodplains, floods put large tracts of land under water.

 

Please see here more photos from Spring in Holland.

© www.tomjutte.tk

.

 

Glastonbury. John Peel Stage. Well, he isn't actually on the stage.

 

Making their name with full-bodied, hard-hitting punk rock reinforced with a hard rock undercurrent, Frank Carter & the Rattlesnakes were formed in 2015 by Carter, former lead singer with the successful U.K. punk band Gallows.

Along with the great trees and light, the geometry of this shot appealed to me.

when we come to the end of all we know , we have to have faith and either take the next step or we will drown in the undercurrents of life ... life rushes past us all , we must not let it overwhelm us .... and remember we need to help those who can't take that leap .... we have to beieve there is Someone in charge of it all !.

 

Sorry I have not been commenting as much as I`d like...

I am so busy with everything and now that I am an

admin for The World Through My Eyes

it makes my time limited...Keep up the great work on your photos...

and know that I love your work and value your friendship...

I am tumbled

in waves

pulled by the

undercurrent

I am disoriented

I come up

for air

I am not sure

which is sky

and which is

reflection

I am somewhere

in between

 

Oil on canvas.

70 x 100 cm.

09/2025.

1. when the air lost its silence. 57/365, 2. the undercurrent. 54/365 EXPLORED, 3. the reunion. 51/365, 4. a frosted denial. 48/365 EXPLORED, 5. the hidden hotel 60/365, 6. undercooked. 31/365, 7. when the wind blew. 34/365, 8. the unmoving town. 41/365, 9. stale oxygen. 42/365

she's amazing.

pictures speak for themselves.

WHOA.

so back to my torturous homework...just wanted to do this because i haven't done one in a while and she needed to be a wcs lol. see you all later guys :)

does anyone know how to find out when you first joined flickr?

Violet and the Undercurrents performing at the 2021 Roots N Blues Festival in Columbia, Missouri. Photography by Notley Hawkins. Taken with a Canon EOS R5 camera with a Canon RF24-70mm F2.8 L IS USM lens at ƒ/2.8 with a 1/1000-second exposure at ISO 100. Processed with Adobe Lightroom CC.

 

Follow me on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram

 

www.notleyhawkins.com/

 

©Notley Hawkins. All rights reserved.

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I was pretty much raised on film in the '60s and '70s, and one of my favorite genres was the gritty urban NY films of the '70s. "Taxi Driver". "Dog Day Afternoon". "Night of the Juggler". Seedy, grungy, sweaty, rain-soaked and neon-lit. Always a slightly dangerous undercurrent in the air, but if you belong there, people know it. On the other hand, if you DON'T belong there, people know it too.

 

Some days and nights, this neighborhood reminds me of that. There is a certain electricity in the air, and a little bit of swagger. I can't get enough of it.

The dam flooded several villages and shrines, submerging them completely, two cherry trees were taken from one of the submerged shrines and placed in Shirakawa-go where it is said that each petal represents a memory from someone who lived in the villages before they were flooded. - Miboro Dam

Aside several multi instrumentalists and a perfectly choreographed veil of archive filmic witness and emotive colourscapes, Olivia Ruiz is back. A voice carved with story and emotion with her latest concert assimilating the greater vistas from her last novel, so with a varied and compelling illumination of Spanish retirada and civil war song, mixed with personal commentaries at the altitude where generations of Spanish migrants remember, react and seed after forced migration.

 

The scale and balance of the theatre within the concert showed how Olivia Ruiz had matured with her past without loosing energy and vitality. Trumpet, trombone, Spanish guitar, a variety of lute; electric guitar, piano, saw, 'wine glass scale array' and perhaps a Nyckelharpa - all used when required and with the shared sense of time and place: perhaps the greatest achievement of this holistic group. Maybe there were some influence from the great Anna Morales (body shape and the silhouettes beyond voguing), perhaps some influence from the great Manu Chao - vivid minimalism and the range between quiet confession and sharper expressionisms.

 

The concert's undercurrent is the prelude in Spain to the Second World War - in retrospect a testing-ground for the then new Fascist alliances. Today, with the disturbed mind of totalitarian power back in its role as butcher of culture, nature and lifeforce, Olivia Ruiz offered a particularly relevant evening. An artist blossoming from her natural senses and one of the strangest and most successful logically informal endings to a concert I have yet to witness.

 

AJM 21.10.22

  

Ios (Greek: Ίος, locally Νιός - Nios) is a Greek island in the Cyclades group in the Aegean Sea. Ios is a hilly island with cliffs down to the sea on most sides, situated halfway between Naxos and Santorini. It is about 18 km (11 mi) long and 10 km (6 mi) wide, with an area of about 109 km² (42 mi²). Population was 2,024 in 2011 (down from 3,500 in the 19th century). Ios is part of the Thira regional unit. Ios was the setting for the movie Ginger and Cinnamon (Dillo con parole mie). Also, scenes from the film Big Blue (Le Grand Bleu) were shot in Manganari.

 

______________________________________________________________________________________________

 

Rod Stewart - Sailing [youtu.be/wBYNJ2zqWH4]

 

 

The Big Blue

 

"Le Grand Bleu" redirects here. For the yacht, see Le Grand Bleu (yacht). For the Suwon Samsung Bluewings supporters group, see Grand Bleu.

This article is about the movie sometimes called "The Big Blue". For other uses of this term, see Big Blue (disambiguation).

The Big Blue (French: Le Grand Bleu) is a 1988 English-language Cinéma du look film made by French director Luc Besson. The film stars Jean-Marc Barr, Rosanna Arquette, Jean Reno and depicts a fictionalized account of the sporting rivalry between two famed free divers. It is a cult-classic in the diving fraternit

   

The film charts the competition and friendship of real-life champions Jacques Mayol (played by Barr) and Enzo Maiorca (renamed in the film to "Enzo Molinari", and played by Reno). However the divers were not close in age in real life (four years apart) and did not compete. The action is divided into two timelines - the nascent rivalry between the two divers as children, and (as adults) their final competition at the world free-diving championships at the Sicilian town of Taormina. Mayol's search for love, family, "wholeness" and the meaning of life and death is a strong undercurrent of the latter timeline.

______________________________________________________________________________________________

Worth a Look Full Size !!!!

Borgarfjörður is a fjord in the west of Iceland near the town of Borgarnes. The waters of Borgarfjörður appear to be calm, however the fjord is on the contrary a rather dangerous part of the sea because of its undercurrents and shallows.

 

There are many flat islands lying in the fjord, but for the most part they are uninhabited.

 

The land around the fjord has been inhabited since the time of Icelandic settlement. Events in the Icelandic sagas such as that of Egill Skallagrímsson are situated here.

 

The name of the fjord seems to come from the farm of Borg, which according to the sagas was founded by Egill's father Skallagrímur, who took the land around the fjord and accordingly gave the fjord the name of Borgarfjörður.

 

When I was 12 I had a very scary experience in the pacific. Thanks to a man surfing nearby, it had a happy ending for me. This shot reminds me very much of that day.

www.carrieiverson.net

The Wharfe is very fast flowing through the Strid creating undercurrents and eddys - not safe for paddling

The Beautiful - 'Parasol'

By Geoff Byrd!

From the album: "Anthology" Strings arranged by 3 time Grammy winner Jimmie Haskell

www.geoffbyrd.com/music-49.html

Lyrics....

Undercurrent pulls her down

And it feels like she could drown underneath

And despite a broken heart

She really feels like it’s her part

 

Parasol

You’re ready to open

Block all the rain from

Falling down on every one of us

You want to protect him

Hold your emotions in

You’re exhausted as you start to fold

 

Years ago you were so bold

Now you’re dropping all those things you used to hold

You’re losing yourself

Leaving all your dreams on the shelf

 

Parasol

You’re ready to open

Block all the rain from

Falling down on every one of us

You want to protect him

Hold your emotions in

You’re exhausted as you start to fold

 

You only remember the good times baby

Never the one’s that made you cry

But where did the rest of your life go baby

You’ve got to wonder why

 

Guitar Solo

 

Parasol

You’re ready to open

Block all the rain from

Falling down on every one of us

You want to protect him

Hold your emotions in

You’re exhausted as you start to fold

You’re the shelter people hold

Parasol out in the cold

 

Geoff Byrd ASCAP Liquid Chrome Music 2010© 2010 Geoff Byrd

It's safer to just wade on this portion of the beach at Magalawa Island in Palauig town, Zambales, Philippines. Reason: a few people had already drowned in this area due to the strong undercurrents here.

Vernal Fall is a 96.6m waterfall on the Merced River just downstream of Nevada Fall in Yosemite National Park, California. Vernal Fall, as well as Nevada Fall, is clearly visible from Glacier Point. The waterfall runs all year long, although by the end of summer it is substantially reduced in volume and can split into multiple strands, rather than the single curtain of water seen here.

 

Yan-o-pah (little cloud) was the local name of the fall before it was named "Vernal" by Lafayette Bunnell, a member of the Mariposa Battalion in 1851.

 

Atop the falls there is a pool of water called the Emerald Pool around which hikers lounge and rest. There is also a 20˚ slope of rock with water flowing into the pool called the Silver Apron.

 

Swimming above Vernal Fall can carry with it a great deal of risk: rocks are slippery, and strong undercurrents exist that may not be visible from the surface. Tourists have been swept over Yosemite Valley's Vernal Fall to their deaths. Though warnings are clearly posted to stay out of the water, more than a dozen people have died in the last decade by entering the water above Vernal Fall, including the Silver Apron and Emerald Pool. In the past decade a number of deaths have occurred at other waterfalls in Yosemite, but the park continues to permit swimming in these area with signs advising against swimming.

 

One person died in May 2007 after hopping from rock to rock around Vernal Fall. Three people died after being swept over the falls in the same manner on 19 July 2011.

 

The fall is shown in error on a 1932 American colonial-era Philippines stamp. Although the stamp indicates that it depicts Pagsanjan Falls in the Philippines, it in fact shows Vernal Fall. - from Wikipedia.

 

Seen here in spring 2002. Scanned from a negative.