I wanted to share this story of one hour in the day of the NSW, Australian delta variant lockdown - Saturday 21 August 2021.

 

‘WALKING HOUR: DAY 54’

 

On this second last Saturday of the month of August, the midmorning sunshine reminds us winter is almost done.

 

As we verture out on our one hour covid-safe five kilometre radius walk heading along Linthrope Street from our home in Newtown. Upon the uneven narrow path next to the cycleway, in single file we parallel the inner west railway, heading north towards our city of Sydney.

 

Wearing our facemasks from this Monday will become mandatory for all outdoor activities. My breathing becomes strained with each walking step, as the straps wrapped around my ears fighten there grip producing a mild throbbing pain. Yet despite this physical annoyance and because of it, there is a glorious joy in this freedom allowed.

 

Such a simple pleasure behind protected covering finds me in a state of kindness. projected, looking onwards as other locals alike enjoy this blissful warm winter sun.

 

Passing interconnected terraces only distinguishable by there families individual small front gardens of vivid colours and perfumed with early Spring Jasime. Do I encounter a fellow traveller. Hidden is her face behind patterned handmade mask.

 

Her silver shinning hair, ocean pool eyes and fluffy puppy dog are just waiting for connection. I smile with my eyes saying ‘Hello may I pat your dog?’ Knowing cautiously to maintain our common rule of one point five distance spacing.

 

This kind lovely local with her COVID-19 rescue dog, gives graciously me and her companion a gift of connection. The happy puppy enjoys my pats, as I enjoy his physical attachment, just now, for a few moments in time.

 

We chat about her new family member, only five Months old, the warming sunshine, while avoiding any chat of delta variant cases. With much appreciation and thankfulness expressed, we depart into each our own adventures again.

 

Now with pace in my steps, swiftly do I catch up with my Julian ahead, as he patiently waits for me.

 

Our road opens at this intersection on this corner. The new cafe busy serving takeaway customers. A family of four cyclists give way as we cross onto the recently reconstructed walkway. Heading now to Eveleigh where the Carriage Works Farmer’s Market is open once again. Producing organic providence and artisan goods, at high cost indeed.

 

Open each Saturday for a few hours, these grounds of what was once a pivital Industrial Railway Workshop. Established between 1880 and 1889. Then by the 1900's thousands of men worked here building and maintaining locomotive engines and carriages, while the ever expanding rail network shaped the development of Sydney for over 100 years.

 

Now though with rusted and preserved treasures of this place transformed into a modern space of creative endeavour. We walk to the entrance of the markets with smart phones ready, scanning, showing our compliance of entry, proving we have registered our presence with the ‘Service NSW COVID’ safe check-in-App.

As Security guards click there number counters with correct ratio of humans, as outdoor rules enforced, within Pandemic -Propper apply.

 

Moving in unison together, walking through well trodden, always interesting side alleyways.

 

With this our counting of time, of only one hour, as our moral compass in good conscience dictates.

 

We see in close horizon stationery men and women in distinctive New South Wales police uniforms.

 

Miradering through Cadigal Green, a beautifully Constructed park on the grounds of the University of Sydney in the suburb of Darlington. For today on this second last Saturday in August is a:

 

“Democratic Freedom Day Protest” rally. In eight locations across six States and one Terterotry for 12 midday, concurrently, collectively.

 

Here in New South Wales, anti-lockdown, anti-vaccination protesters are planning to meet at and march from the grounds of Victoria Park. To then walk along George Street into Sydney - this park is just around the corner, from where we are now.

 

In less than half an hour this protest rally will begin, as New South Wales records the largest number of delta cases Australia wide since the begining of this pandemic, as reported in the 11:00am daily news press conference.

 

Mencing helicopters invading, fading in and out of sound and vision, that were only just before out of mind. Snap into sharp focus this evolving new reality into narrow optic dilation.

 

Unmarked police cars patrolling the streets around us, as stationary vehicles of flashing blue and red highlight them; guarding invisible boundaries of entrance’s into the enchanted district of old Sydney town.

 

These sweeping powers from Parlement House, only 24 hours before, enacted now. We witness this power of pandemic laws fortified with: Stop and Question; Search and detain; Of on the spot monetry fines, to lawfully enforce citizens return back to there local government ‘Area of Concern’. Upon which 14 days self-emposed quarantine within there dwelling they must abide.

 

Because of this act of Parliament here now before us, we decide our best course of direction. Turning back along Maze Crescent, still on the grounds of Sydney University with convict Sydney sandstone heritage lecture halls, international modern architectural tall accomitations 'ghosted’ of international students.

 

Counting the assemblies of uniformed officers. Seven there blocking that side street access. Four over here chatting, laughing. Now another six blocking pedestrians, cyclists, cars from entry via this short cut through Redfern into Sydney.

 

With 1,500 general duty officers, the riot squad, highway patrol officers stopping all vehicles to question drivers and passengers intent.

A proabition on share cars and taxis, until 5pm at the conclusion of the citywide police operation. Halting so many livelihoods in the process.

 

This invisible ring of ‘razor-wire-fence’ keeping some citizens in and others out. Reminds me now, of the days when I worked in my profession as a Chef on contract at John Moroney Correctional Centre.

Each shift I’d collect the imates waiting behind actual ‘razor-wire-fence’. The ones I knew, with this, their privilege in minimum security correctional centre.

Of a payment per hour of $1.50, who would effectively, efficiently work in our production kitchen cooking and portioning meals.

My job of supervising them, as they portioned the meals into individual trays, blast-chilled ready for delivery into seven New South Wales jails, supplying 30,000 meals a week.

 

I see in my minds eye these roads and side streets as small winding creeks, brooks and rivers rushing in tidel flow - protesters towards a billabong swamp.

 

For prior to European settlement of 1788, the Gadigal Clans of the Eroa Nation lived along Blackwattle creek, in campsites located on the original banks of this tidal water course as a source of fresh water and a place for fishing.

 

This creek flowed from swampy lands in a valley thick with wattle trees, that are now within the grounds of the University of Sydney, into and through a pond, that today is know as Victory Park in the suburb of Broadway.

 

As the deadline to midday quickens, we walk back behind the United States Studies Centre. Here we gleam a twenty something young woman.

 

Her back against this convict Sandstone wall of embedded wrought iron fence that’s holding together an entwined ancient living fig tree, as its branches so strong, stretch out to shade her now.

 

For seven male police officers and three female police officers in physically distanced semi-circle, hovering, have her pinned with their discretionary powers displayed.

 

Closer now bearing witness we navigate the footpath weaving through this semi-circle of red and blue power.

 

Listening to her quivering voice explaining while showing her identification as proof of residency in local five kilometre approved one hour walk.

 

In this moment with actual and perceived force of law. I feel a strange confusion, racing, bubbling through my blood, as it manifests into a bright red flush of rage and anger upon my face.

 

We did not render assistance, nor did we wait, observe or know what happened.

 

For self preservation pushed us forward as we also had become a target of an unmarked police car with four offices in plain clothes, starring us down, as they kept pace with our deliberate slothful steps.

 

And so I remember this intimidating fearful moment of sweeping powers exhibited in delta variant national democratic freedom day protest.

As it fizzled into nothingness.

 

We walked back via King Street, Newtown safe to our home. With my fingers holding onto memory so sharp. I write this story of this, our lived experience on this ‘WALKING HOUR: DAY 54’ of 107 days of delta variant lockdown in August of 2021.

 

As this city crumbles under the weight of unresolved history, reminding us three things:

 

1. Powerful people controlling our lives;

2. There will be more variants of concern to come;

3. Legacies of homogenous liberal democracies are in decline.

I think this idea comes from the picture I uploaded on Friday back from 2012. I'm trying to show how my childhood is fairly unresolved and it was just left, I had to grow up.. fast, I had to leave it behind. But it's still there, sort of waiting.

 

Hope that makes some sense! If you're not sure about the message read my description for Friday's post HERE

 

Y x

Blue Reincarnation Narcissus by Jaisini

  

The theme of Narcissus in Paul Jaisini’s “Blue…” may be paralleled with the problem of the two-sexes-in-one, unable to reproduce and, therefore, destined to the Narcissus-like end. Meanwhile, the Narcissus legend lasts.

  

In the myth of Narcissus a youth gazes into the pool. As the story goes, Narcissus came to the spring or the pool and when his form was seen by him in the water, he drowned among the water-nymphs because he desired to make love to his own image.

  

Maybe the new Narcissus, as in “Blue Reincarnation,” is destined to survive by simply changing his role from a passive man to an aggressive woman and so on. To this can be added that, eventually, a man creates a woman whom he loves out of himself or a woman creates a man and loves her own image but in the male form. The theme of narcissism recreates the ‘lost object of desire.’ “Blue” also raises the problem of conflating ideal actual and the issue of the feminine manhood and masculine femininity.

  

There is another story about Narcissus’ fall which said that he had a twin sister and they were exactly alike in appearance. Narcissus fell in love with his sister and, when the girl died, would go to the spring finding some relief for his love in imagining that he saw not his own reflection but the likeness of his sister. “Blue” creates a remarkable and complex psychopathology of the lost, the desired, and the imagined. Instead of the self, Narcissus loves and becomes a heterogeneous sublimation of the self. Unlike the Roman paintings of Narcissus which show him alone with his reflection by the pool, the key dynamic in the Jaisini’s “Blue” is the circulation of the legend that does not end and is reincarnated in transformation when auto-eroticism is not permanent and is not single by the definition.

  

In “Blue,” we risk being lost in the double reflection of a mirror and never being able to define on which side of the mirror Narcissus is. The picture’s color is not a true color of spring water. This kind of color is a perception of a deep seated human belief in the concept of eternity, the rich saturated cobalt blue.

  

The ultra-hot, hyper-real red color of the figure of Narcissus is not supposed to be balanced in the milieu of the radical blue. Paul Jaisini realizes the harmony in the most exotic colors combination. While looking at “Blue,” we can recall the spectacular color of night sky deranged by a vision of some fierce fire ball. The disturbance of colors create some powerful and awe-inspiring beauty.

  

In the picture’s background, we find the animals’ silhouettes which could be a memory reflection or dream fragments. In the story, Narcissus has been hunting - an activity that was itself a figure for sexual desire in antiquity. Captivated by his own beauty, the hunter sheds a radiance that, one presumes, reflects to haunt and foster his desire. The flaming color of the picture’s Narcissus alludes to the erotic implications of the story and its unresolved problem of the one who desires himself and is trapped in the erotic delirium. The concept can be applied to an ontological difference between the artist’s imitations and their objects. In effect, The Jaisini’s Narcissus could epitomize artistic aspiration to the control levels of reality and imagination, to align the competition of art and life, of image with imaginable prototype.

  

Paul Jaisini’s “Blue” is a unique work that adjoins the reflection to reality without any instrumentality. “Blue” is a single composition that depicts the reality and its immediate reflection. Jaisini builds the dynamics of the desire between Narcissus and his reflection-of-the-opposite by giving him the signs of both sexes, but not for the purpose of creating a hermaphrodite. The case of multiple deceptions in “Blue” seems to be vital to the cycle of desire. Somehow it reminds one of the fate of the artists and their desperate attempts to evoke and invent the nonexistent.

  

“Blue” is a completely alien picture to Jaisini’s “Reincarnation” series. The pictures of the series are painted on a plain ground of canvas that produces the effect of free space filled with air. “Blue,” to the contrary, is reminiscent of an underwater lack of air; the symbolic meanings of this picture’s texture and color contributes to the mirage of reincarnation.

  

“Blue Reincarnation” (Oil painting) by Paul Jaisini

New York 2002, Text Copyright: Yustas Kotz-Gottlieb

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  

www.fwhc.org/poems/blue-reincarnation.htm

A fleeting moment in India.

A child leans out of a rickshaw, hand extended — not begging, not waving, just reaching.

Toward what? Air, light, a gesture of hope?

His family sits behind him, faces half-lit by movement and stillness.

This image is not posed. It is life.

Tender, unresolved, and deeply human.

  

Un instant suspendu, quelque part en Inde.

Un enfant sort la main d’un rickshaw — il ne mendie pas, il ne salue pas. Il tend la main.

Vers quoi ? L’air ? Un signe ? Une réponse ?

Sa famille est derrière lui, silencieuse.

Ce n’est pas une scène mise en scène. C’est la vie.

Tendre, incertaine, profondément humaine.

   

Marked geographical variation, and very preliminary genetic studies suggest that this species may, in fact, represent an unresolved species swarm. Races divided into three groups, iredalei forming one group, annamensis another, and remaining four races forming “nominate group”. Race annamensis is morphologically distinct, and its separation as a full species could well be justified on this basis alone. Some SE Asian populations of this species of uncertain racial affinity: thus, birds in NW Thailand presumed to belong with pulchellus, those in EC Laos (.. View all taxonomy...

Two people were arguing about a flag flapping in the wind. "It's the wind that’s moving," stated the first one. "No, it’s the flag that’s moving," contended the second. A Zen master, who happened to be walking by, overheard the debate and interrupted them. "Neither the flag nor the wind is moving. It is MIND that moves."

 

We don’t have to ponder the considerably complex philosophical ideas embedded in this classic Zen story, but its basic point rings true for our appreciation of photography. When we look at an image, we can experience motion because the human mind miraculously creates it even though it might not “objectively” be there. The mind perceives movement because the mind itself moves. Let’s explore the different ways this can happen in a photograph.

 

The Rhythm of Repeating Elements

 

When photographers talk about movement in an image, they often refer to the rhythmic effect of some visual element that repeats itself – for example, people standing in a line or a row of birds sitting on the branch of a tree. Repeating patterns and motifs can have a similar rhythmic feeling. Recurring elements create a sense of momentum and continuation, much like notes on a page of music. Your eye flows from one, to another, to another. It’s a visual beat.

 

Because in many cultures people read from left to right, a repetition that moves in that direction will feel more natural than the opposite path from right to left, which might feel more tense and uneven. Try moving your eyes slowly from left to right, then right to left. You’ll notice that difference between smooth and jagged motion. Because we usually perceive movement laterally in our visual world, the eye also tends to notice horizontal beats more easily than vertical ones.

 

The borders of the photograph tend to limit the repetition, so we experience only one segment of the rhythm, one measure of beats. However, thanks to the Gestalt perceptual law known as “continuation,” we might sense that the repetition does indeed go beyond the frame of the image, into the unknown space outside its boundaries. Depending on the visual and symbolic qualities of the photo, we might even sense an everlasting, eternal beat.

 

According to traditional concepts in visual design, the sense of motion created by a recurring element might become boring when it repeats itself without change, or is in some way very predictable. Personally, I often enjoy such images for their soothing, hypnotic consistency, like a steady roll of waves in the ocean or the ticking of a clock – but I see the point made by the traditionalists. They would suggest breaking up the repetitive rhythm with some anomaly, as in a scene where a quarter appears in a seemingly endless array of pennies.

 

In her Color Workbook, Becky Koenig draws on ideas in music to describe different types of visual rhythm. Some are legato involving sustained, connected, and smoothly flowing elements along a visual path. A staccato rhythm is a broken, on-again-off-again configuration of disconnected repetitious parts. A progressive rhythm emanates or gradates from a given point in a radiating fashion, while an alternating rhythm involves a shift between two or more different types of rhythmic structures. To the list we might add syncopated rhythm where some elements occur off the previously established main beat of the visual pattern, during the down beat.

 

In designing a photograph it might help to actually visualize how sheet music looks. Try to sense the movement in the progression, rise and fall, and shape of the notes; in the lines of the staff, the sequence of measures, and the appearance of rest stops, legato lines, and staccato marks. Even for photographers who aren’t musicians, the visual rhythms of sheet music can be inspiring.

 

Gradation

 

Becky Koenig also talks about gradated changes that suggest movement – as in progressive changes of scale, shape, color, position, texture, tone, and complexity. Imagine a line of bottles similar in shape, but decreasing in size from one to the other; a bright foreground that transforms to grayscale in the background; or a complex pile of paperclips that gradually tapers to a single isolated paperclip.

 

Gradation implies motion because it simulates transition and the passage of time in a visual sequence of events. There is a metamorphosis taking place - a feeling of before, during, and after. The bottle shrinks, the scene fades, one paper clip extracts itself from the pile. The eye follows gradation through the coherent progression to its natural conclusion. The gradation might also lead to a focal point, which we perceive as the final resting place of the movement.

 

Blur

 

With slower shutter speeds, a moving subject appears blurry. The more blur, the greater the perceived movement. In real life the eye naturally registers fast moving objects as blurry, but because we’re all accustomed to looking at photographs, we accept the blur of a person casually walking as an indication of movement, even though in real life we’d see the scene in perfect focus. Blur is photo-speak for “motion.”

 

Sometimes it’s the camera that’s moving rather than the subject – for example, when we shake, pan, or wave it during the shot. This kind of camera blur presents the viewer with some interesting perceptual options. The effect might be our sensing that the subject or scene is shaking, gliding, or sweeping. On the other hand, we might experience the photographer – and we, the viewers, who identify with the photographer – as shaking, gliding, or sweeping. What’s happening in the scene will tend to reinforce one perception or the other. If there’s any indication of something moving in the scene, like a person walking, then the sense of movement created by camera blur might supplement it. If the scene logically should be static, like a landscape, we might suspect we and the photographer are in motion, as when shooting out the window of a moving car. In some cases we may sense that both the photographer and something in the scene are in motion, as in the classic panning shot of a person, vehicle, or animal speeding by. We can see that the subjects are traveling while the blurry background tells us that we’re following along with our head and eyes.

 

Blur filters in Photoshop and other image editing programs come in handy for creating different types of movement sensations, with effects ranging from wildly extreme to so subtle that the viewer feels but cannot consciously verbalize it. Photoshop’s “motion blur” can be varied in strength and direction, which simulates panning when applied to the whole photo and subject movement when applied selectively to the subject. “Radial blur” comes in two flavors: “spin” for rotating sensations and “zoom” for the feeling of pushing in towards the subject, much like racking the lens during a shot. In fact, even a narrow depth of field, created either during the shot with a wide aperture or in post-processing using selectively applied blur, creates a sensation of movement – as if our eyes or the scene itself is snapping into focus at a specific spot, much like the pull-focus technique in cinematography. Any of these techniques combined and/or applied selectively to different areas of a photograph can create unusual, even surrealistic experiences of movement.

 

Optical Effects

 

Op Art became famous for creating geometric patterns that play tricks on the eye. The optical illusions cause us to see the image as swelling, warping, flashing, or vibrating. For example, when patterns contain complementary colors that are close to each other, they seem to pulse, as if the colors are repelling one another. The effect is particularly strong with green and red.

 

These optical vibrations are more difficult to achieve in photography than in art and graphic design because real world scenes containing these patterns are uncommon. However, some famous photographers, like László Moholy-Nagy, specialized in them. In our modern age of digital photography, post-processing gives us more control in creating these effects.

 

Optical effects also include the sense of movement created by different lenses, such as wide angles producing a feeling of “fanning out,” while telephoto lenses “zoom” us to a point of focus. Lens flare, camera leaks, and pinhole photographs immerse us into the streaking, swirling, and radiating movements of light.

 

Frozen and Implied Motion

 

Because we’ve been looking at photographs all our lives, we’ve grown accustomed to the idea that they capture a moment frozen in time. Consciously or unconsciously, we assume there is a before and after that flow into and out of that moment, that this magically static instant points to the world we know is filled with movement.

 

High shutter speed shots that freeze people, animals, vehicles, rivers, balls, and other subjects in motion clearly let us know that the photo is extracted from a scene with action. The mind fills in the rest. We humans are so acutely aware of our own body language that almost any shot of people encourages us to read movement into their postures, even if they are sitting, lying, standing. If you look at the last three words in that previous sentence, they are all verbs suggesting action, albeit subtle action, what psychologists who work with the Rorschach inkblot test call “passive movement.” Even the direction in which people, animals, cameras, weapons, etc. are looking (“line of sight”), as well as someone or something facing a certain direction, imply movement in that direction. Any photo that reminds us of gravity, like a rock perched on the edge of a cliff, implies a force that says “going down.”

 

Eye Movement in Composition

 

Eye movement is intrinsic to vision. In order to see anything the eye must continually move around a scene. It never stops scanning, even in a situation where everything is at rest. Composition in photography is all about controlling how the viewer’s eye progresses through the image and the resulting subliminal experience of movement. It establishes the rhythm for how the eye scans.

 

Because the eye tends to move along lines, different types of lines create different feelings of movement. This effect is sometimes referred to as “vectors” and “kinetics.” Verticals go up and down to cooperate with or defy gravity; horizontals shift from side to side; diagonals cut across the scene with force and unresolved tension; curved lines, which continually change direction, present graceful flow or quick acceleration depending on their degree of bend; s-lines and zig-zags oscillate back and forth in either predictable or unpredictable fashions. How do the lines diverge, converge, radiate, circle, zoom in, zoom out, focus the eye on something or open up the field of view? How do the various line movements interact with each other – by joining forces to enhance a particular sensation of motion; by modifying or competing with each other’s movement; by creating a dynamic tension such as going up versus going down, or going left versus going right?

 

A variety of other composition strategies can generate the ambiance of movement. Competition, contrast, or ambiguity between foreground and background, or between figure and ground, creates a back and forth shifting. Elements with visual weight placed near the bottom of the image suggest a settling or sinking feeling, while placing them near the top encourages a gravity-defying lift. A sense that the various parts of the photo are balanced or unbalanced reminds us of stable versus teetering things. Unusual objects and peculiar placing of objects keep drawing the eye back to them, while negative space creates an osmotic pull on the subject down the visual concentration gradient. Even a well-unified composition implies a hidden force that provides order and structure, as if the composition pulls together and binds the visual elements into a coherent structure. In fact, it’s our experience of that invisible force that makes such compositions beautiful.

 

Do All Photos Move?

 

Of course some images possess more activity than others, and it would be silly to argue that movement in photographs is on par with what we see in movies. Nevertheless, I find it impossible to imagine a photo that doesn’t involve any kind of motion. By simply looking at it we immerse ourselves into the activity called seeing. On top of that, our imagination projects all sorts of movement into the photo. In the final analysis, do we conclude that all photos move? Not exactly. It's the mind that moves.

 

** This image and essay are part of a book on Photographic Psychology that I’m creating within Flickr. Here's an easier to read and navigate version of

Photographic Psychology

 

For the first time, astronomers have identified a still-forming galaxy that weighs about the same as our Milky Way if we could wind back the clock to see our galaxy as it developed. The newly identified galaxy, the Firefly Sparkle, is in the process of assembling and forming stars, and existed about 600 million years after the Big Bang.

 

The image of the galaxy is stretched and warped by a natural effect known as gravitational lensing, which allowed researchers to glean far more information about its contents. (In some areas of Webb’s image, the galaxy is magnified over 40 times.)

 

While it took shape, the galaxy gleamed with star clusters in a range of infrared colours, which are scientifically meaningful. They indicate that the stars formed at different periods, not all at once.

 

Since the galaxy image is stretched into a long line in Webb’s observations, researchers were able to identify 10 distinct star clusters and study them individually, along with the cocoon of diffuse light from the additional, unresolved stars surrounding them. That’s not always possible for distant galaxies that aren’t lensed. Instead, in many cases researchers can only draw conclusions that apply to an entire galaxy. “Most of the other galaxies Webb has shown us aren’t magnified or stretched and we are not able to see the ‘building blocks’ separately. With Firefly Sparkle, we are witnessing a galaxy being assembled brick by brick,” explains astronomer Lamiya Mowla, assistant professor at Wellesley College in Massachusetts.

 

There are two companion galaxies 'hovering' close by, which may ultimately affect how this galaxy forms and builds mass over billions of years. Firefly Sparkle is only about 6500 light-years away from its first companion, and 42 000 light-years from its second companion. Let’s compare these figures to objects that are closer to home: the Sun is about 26 000 light-years from the centre of our Milky Way galaxy, and the Milky Way measures about 100 000 light-years across. Not only are Firefly Sparkle’s companions very close, the researchers also suspect that they are orbiting one another.

 

[Image description: Horizontal split down the middle. At left, thousands of overlapping objects at various distances are spread across this galaxy cluster. A box at bottom right is enlarged on the right half. A central oval identifies the Firefly Sparkle galaxy, a line with 10 dots in various colours.]

 

Read more

 

Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, C. Willott (NRC-Canada), L. Mowla (Wellesley College), K. Iyer (Columbia); CC BY 4.0

 

Sadness is a natural feeling which, if unfelt, just stays in our array of unresolved trauma knots. As with other emotions, feel it and it will go away. Resist feeling it and it hangs around forever, periodically erupting inappropriately in our body's attempt to rid itself of associated trauma knots.

NGC7635's bubble, around 10ly diameter, is a star remnant illuminated gas cloud c 11,000ly distant.

NGC7654 (M52) lower right is an open cluster of undetermined distance*

NGC7538 lower left is bright nebula

Up is 5˚ E of N

All processing with PixInsight

77 x 180Sec + 30 x 300 Sec

, over multiple nights.

BIAS and Optimised DARK files used for calibration**.

ASI294MC, Esprit ED80, AVX mount.

  

*Current estimates are 3.5-5.0ly due intervening gas clouds

**There is an unresolved issue with FLATS for the relevant nights

 

I had planned on bagging a couple galaxy observations on the night/morning of June 25 & 26th. However, the skies were not up to the task over the local park that I was observing from. With the change in observing plans I turned the 110mm refractor to Sadr (the center star in the northern cross). The Milky Way is thick with stars in this area along with the scattered patches of nebulosity collectively called IC 1318. The area is covered in named objects representing real or suspected Open Clusters in modern star atlases. The view through the eyepiece is so star choked it is at times difficult to locate some of the more subtle named Open Clusters or suspected Open Clusters.

 

Two collections of stars labeled as IC 1311 and Dolidze 2 are located a couple of degrees NE of Sadr. On the star maps Dolidze 2 surrounds the much smaller IC 1311. Through the 110mm refractor, Dolidze 2, looks like it might be a loose Open Cluster, but it really did not standout, for me, against the Milky Way background stars. Based on the most current literature sources, Dolidze 2 is likely just a chance gathering of fifteen or so bright stars which have no gravitational attraction to each other (an Asterism).

 

The smaller IC 1311 is another animal all together. A confirmed Open Cluster with its faint 70-plus stars produce an unresolved circular hazy glow in the eyepiece through the 110mm refractor. I can see why historically it was misidentified as a globular cluster.

 

There's not much I know about you

Fear will always make you blind

But the answer is in clear view

It's amazing what you find

Face to face

 

It clearly didn't make sense

Just to leave this unresolved

Its not hard to go the distance

When you finally get involved

Face to face!

 

Face To Face

---Daft Punk

Changeable Hawk-eagle (Nisaetus cirrhatus) being chased by Brahminy Kite (Haliastur indus)Brahminy Kite (Haliastur indus) pair.

  

Changeable Hawk-Eagle (Nisaetus cirrhatus)

  

The changeable hawk-eagle or crested hawk-eagle (Nisaetus cirrhatus) is a bird of prey species of the family Accipitridae. It was formerly placed in the genus Spizaetus, but studies pointed to the group being paraphyletic resulting in the Old World members being placed in Nisaetus (Hodgson, 1836) and separated from the New World species.

 

Changeable hawk-eagles breed in the Indian subcontinent, mainly in India and Sri Lanka, and from the southeast rim of the Himalaya across Southeast Asia to Indonesia and the Philippines. This is a bird occurring singly (outside mating season) in open woodland, although island forms prefer a higher tree density. It builds a stick nest in a tree and lays a single egg.

  

Description

 

The changeable hawk-eagle is a medium-large raptor at about 60–72 centimetres (24–28 in) in length with a 127–138 centimetres (50–54 in) wingspan, and a weight ranging from 1.2 to 1.9 kg.[3] It is a relatively slender forest eagle with some subspecies (especially N. c. limnaetus) being dimorphic giving the name "changeable". This and their complicated phylogeny further complicate precise identification.

 

Normally brown above, they have white below with barring on the undersides of the flight feathers and tail; black longitudinal streaks occur on the throat and chocolate streaks occur on the breast. Some subspecies have a crest of four feathers, but this is all but absent in others. The sexes are quite similar in their plumage, but males are about 15% smaller than females. The underparts and head of juveniles are whitish or buff with few dark streaks.

 

The wings are long and parallel-sided, and are held flat in flight, which helps to distinguish this species from the similar mountain hawk-eagle. In overhead flight, comparatively rounded wings (upturned at tip), longish tail, white body (spotted with brown) and grey underside of wings (streaked and spotted) are leading pointers.

 

Their call is a loud, high-pitched ki-ki-ki-ki-ki-ki-ki-ki-kee, beginning short, rising in crescendo, and ending in a scream.

  

Ecology

 

Changeable hawk-eagles eat mammals, birds, and reptiles. They keep a sharp lookout perched bolt upright on a bough amongst the canopy foliage of some high tree standing near a forest clearing. There, they wait for junglefowl, pheasants, hares, and other small animals coming out into the open. The bird then swoops down forcefully, strikes, and bears the prey away in its talons.

  

Nesting

 

Season: December to April

Nest: a large stick platform lined with green leaves, high up in a forest tree

Eggs: a single one, greyish white, unmarked or with faint specks and blotches of light reddish at the broad end

  

Systematics

 

The Flores hawk-eagle has traditionally been treated as a subspecies of the changeable hawk-eagle, but it is now often treated as a separate species, N. floris.

 

Two distinct groups exist in the changeable hawk-eagle; one with crests and one without or with hardly visible crests. Dark morphs exist for some populations.

  

Changeable hawk-eagle

 

N. c. cirrhatus

- Gangetic plain southwards throughout India

- Crested, no dark morph

 

N. c. ceylanensis

- Sri Lanka (possibly also Travancore)

- Smaller than nominate, crest proportionally longer on average, apparently no dark morph

  

Crestless changeable hawk-eagle

 

N. c. limnaeetus

- Nepal, northeast India, via Burma and Malay Peninsula along Wallace Line to Philippines

- Much like nominate except crest, dimorphic, with the dark morph chocolate-brown all over, tail base might appear lighter in flight

 

N. c. andamanensis

- Andaman Islands

- Similar to N. c. limnaeetus, apparently no dark morph

 

N. c. vanheurni

- Simeulue Island

- Similar to N. c. limnaeetus, apparently no dark morph

  

Gamauf et al. (2005) analyzed mtDNA cytochrome b and control region sequence data of a considerable number of specimens of the crested hawk-eagle and some relatives. Despite the large sample, even the most conspicuous dichotomy - that between the crested and crestless groups - was not as well resolved as it might have been expected to be.

 

The three small-island taxa (N. c. andamanensis, N. c. vanheurni, and N. floris) also appear as monophyletic lineages. Their placement is even more unresolved, with N. floris being apparently a very ancient lineage. The other two seem quite certainly to derive from N. c. limnaeetus. The latter taxon has a confusing phylogeny. Different lineages exist that are apparently not stable in space and time, are best described as polytomy, from which the similar island taxa derive.

 

Obviously, N. c. limnaeetus does not represent a monophyletic lineage. Neither the biological nor the phylogenetic species concepts, nor phylogenetic systematics can be applied to satisfaction. The crested group apparently is close to becoming a distinct species. The island taxa derived from N. c. limnaeetus appear to have undergone founder effects, which has restricted their genetic diversity. In the continental population, genetic diversity is considerable, and the evolutionary pattern of the two studied genes did not agree, and neither did the origin of specimens show clear structures. N. c. limnaeetus thus is best considered a metapopulation.

 

Gamauf et al. (2005) therefore suggest the island taxa which are obviously at higher risk of extinction are, for conservation considered evolutionary significant units regardless of their systematic status. This case also demonstrates that a too-rigid interpretation of cladistics and the desire for monophyletic taxa, as well as universal application of single-species concept to all birds will undermine correct understanding of evolutionary relationships. It would even not be inconceivable to find mainland lineages to group closely with the western island taxa, if little genetic drift had occurred in the initial population. nonetheless, the divergence of this species' lineages seems to have taken place too recently to award them species status, as compared to the level of genetic divergence at which clades are usually considered distinct species.

 

N. c. limnaeetus appears for all that can be said with reasonable certainty basal pool of lineages in the crestless group that, despite not being monophyletic, should be considered a valid taxon as long as gene flow is possible through its range. In addition, as ancient DNA from museum specimens was used extensively, the possibility of ghost lineages must be considered. If it is assumed that all or most of the ancient lineages still exist today, considerable recombination must have taken place as the two genes' phylogenies do not agree much, indicating a healthy level of gene flow. Whether this still holds true today remains to be determined.

  

Black-winged Kite (Elanus Caeruleus)

 

The black-winged kite (Elanus caeruleus) is a small diurnal bird of prey in the family Accipitridae best known for its habit of hovering over open grasslands in the manner of the much smaller kestrels. This Eurasian and African species was sometimes combined with the Australian black-shouldered kite (Elanus axillaris) and the white-tailed kite (Elanus leucurus) of North and South America which together form a superspecies. This kite is distinctive, with long-wings, white, grey and black plumage and owl like forward-facing eyes with red irises.

 

Although mainly seen on the plains, they are sometimes seen on grassy slopes of hills in the higher elevation regions of Asia. They are not migratory, but make short-distance movements in response to weather.

  

Description

 

This long-winged raptor is predominantly grey or white with black shoulder patches, wing tips and eye stripe. The long falcon-like wings extend beyond the tail when the bird is perched. In flight, the short and square tail is visible and it is not forked as in the typical kites of the genus Milvus. When perched, often on roadside wires, it often adjusts its wings and jerks its tail up and down as if to balance itself.

 

The sexes are alike in plumage. Their large forward-facing eyes and velvety plumage are characters that are shared with owls and the genus itself has been considered as a basal group within the Accipitridae.

  

Distribution and habitat

 

The black-winged kite is a species primarily of open land and semi-deserts in sub-Saharan Africa and tropical Asia, but it has a foothold within Europe in Spain and Portugal. The species range appears to be expanding in southern Europe and possible in West Asia.

 

Several geographic populations have been named as subspecies and these include the nominate subspecies which occurs in Spain, Africa and Arabia. The subspecies vociferus is found east of this range across South Asia and into Southeast Asia. Along Sumatra, Java, Borneo and the Philippines subspecies hypoleucus (sometimes considered a full species) is found while wahgiensis is restricted to New Guinea. Subspecies sumatranus is not always recognized. The white-tailed kite and the black-shouldered kite were formerly included with this species but have since been treated as separate species.

 

Although found mainly on the plains they have been seen at higher altitudes in Sikkim (3,650 m (11,980 ft)),[9] the Nilgiris (Doddabetta, 2,670 m (8,760 ft)) and Nagaland (2,020 m (6,630 ft)).

 

They are said to be winter visitors in some parts of their range such as the Western Ghats.

  

Behaviour and ecology

 

The black-winged kite breeds at different times of the year across its range. Although nesting has been noted throughout the year in India, they appear not to breed in April and May. Courtship is noisy and involves chases and once the pair is formed they copulate frequently. The nest is a loose platform of twigs in which 3 or 4 eggs are laid. The female spends more effort in the construction of the nest than the male. The eggs are pale creamy with spots of deep red. Both parents incubate but when the chicks hatch, the male spends more time on foraging for food. Females initially feed the young, sometimes hunting close to the nest but will also receive food from the male. After fledging the young birds continue to be dependent for food on the male parent for about 80 days, initially transferring food at perch and later in the air.

 

The prey include grasshoppers, crickets and other large insects, lizards and rodents. Injured birds, small snakes and frogs have also been recorded. The slow hunting flight is like a harrier, but it will hover like a Kestrel. It has on rare occasions been known to hunt prey in flight. Favourite perches are used for hunting and for feeding but large prey may sometimes be handled on the ground.[15] In southern Africa, they appear to favour roadside verges for foraging and are sometimes killed by collisions with vehicles.

 

These birds roost communally with groups of 15 to 35 (larger numbers in Europe) converging at a large leafy tree. They are extremely silent and the calls recorded include a high-pitched squeal or a soft whistle. They call a lot mainly during the breeding season.

 

A species of nematode, Physaloptera acuticauda, has been recorded as a parasite of the species in South Africa.

 

[Credit: en.wikipedia.org]

 

Throughout our lives, certain archetypes shape our sense of self, the world, the road we’re on, and the goals we seek. Our idea of good and evil, male and female, leaders, parents, mentors, friends, and more are framed in the stories of the Bible. The picture’s not always pleasant, but it never fails to be instructive and is sometimes downright revelatory. Mirror, mirror on the wall: what’s the purpose of us all?

Topics of the Day:

Sunday, Day 1: “Introduction” and “Your Life as Revelatory Source. How did you get to be who you are? Your life is a sacred text read by all.

Monday, Day 2: “The Character of God” and “The Male/Female Thing” You and I meet God in sacramental and sacred encounters. But in Scripture, we meet the God who is one character among many in the remarkable story of faith. And our second topic — Gender is complicated. Adam and Eve were just the beginning of the conflict. Gender issues remain with us in secular and sacred realms.

Tuesday, Day 3: “Follow the Leader” and “The Parent Trap”

Leadership styles come and go. From biblical patriarchs and kings to modern-day presidents and celebrities, we follow the leaders we invent and choose. And our 2nd topic – The Ten Commandments bid us to honor our father and our mother. Jesus says we should hate our parents. Please explain!

Wednesday, Day 4:“The Guiding Light” & “You’ve Got a Friend” Elisha had Elijah. Timothy and Titus had Paul. Thank God for mentors: those significant folks along the way who show us how life works. Our second topic — It’s not good for us to be alone, as Genesis attests. Famous friendships help us explore the role of holy companioning.

Thursday, Day 5: “Who’s Your Devil?” and “What a Wonderful World” Everyone fears the Dark Side. Who’s the enemy, and where does it reside? And our second topic — The universe is beautiful. Earth is our home. The Bible and science agree it will come to an end one day. What’s our relationship to a fragile planet?

Friday, Day 6: “And the Purpose of It All Is” We’re born, we live, and we die. For most of us, that’s a pretty full plate of responsibilities. What should we do with this “one wild and precious life?”What qualities are we looking for in the aspirants at Saint-Sulpice? Parish Experience - Before an aspirant joins the Society, Sulpicians want to ensure that an aspirant has completed at least two years of parish work, which will have allowed him/her to develop a strong sense of belonging to the diocese and an attachment to the parish ministry. Indeed, they need priests who live and love their priesthood and who wish to assist the bishops in the service of seminarians and diocesan priests. Ability to work in a team - Sulpicians are looking for candidates who are able to work in a community environment and are able to work collegially on a mission in consultation with fellow priests as well as with lay people or religious. To know how to share one's faith through a life of prayer that nourishes a true enthusiasm for Christ and his Gospel, for the Church and the priesthood. The Apostolic Spirit who animated their founder, Jean-Jacques Olier, is the source of this sharing. Special gifts that open the way to a quality intellectual and professional preparation in several fields: spiritual accompaniment, teaching of philosophy or theology, pastoral animation. This presupposes the openness to learning of a constantly renewed Sulpician pedagogy. How can a priest become a Sulpician? Prerequisites - To be a diocesan priest incardinated in a diocese, to have completed at least two years of parish ministry in the diocese of origin and to be available for service in the Canadian Priests of St. Sulpice Province. Initial recognition - If a priest meets these prerequisites, he or she can contact the Sulpician Vocations Officer for his or her region (see list below). He will inform him about the regular meetings organized for the aspirants to the Society and he will be in charge of this first experience with Saint-Sulpice until the Provincial Council accepts him as a candidate. His participation in these meetings will give him sufficient information about the Company and the demands of Sulpician life. This priest will also be accompanied spiritually in discerning his possible Sulpician vocation. Candidature - After this time of discernment, with the support of the Sulpician Vocations Officer in his region, he asked his bishop for written authorization to make an experience in Saint-Sulpice. The aspirant then applies by contacting the provincial superior or the provincial delegate in writing. First experience in Saint-Sulpice - If formally accepted and admitted as a candidate, the Provincial Council becomes directly responsible for his experience with the Priests of Saint-Sulpice. He then took over his duties and gave him a first appointment to a team in the Canadian Province from the moment his bishop relieved him of his duties. Usually, this first experience in the Company lasts at least two years.The expression "art Saint-Sulpice" is misleading, because it encompasses very different periods and artists in the same name and in the same discredit, because it confuses art of reproduction and wide circulation with the search for an authentic sacred art which has been continuous for nearly two centuries.

 

In the proper sense, Sulpician art refers to the objects that are sold in the specialized shops that surround the church of the same name in Paris: industrial and economic art, of poor quality, where the mimicry and the fading of style reassure and somehow carry the seal of an official art, orthodox and without excess. Thus understood, Sulpician art is of all times and every effort to renew religious art naturally secretes its counterfeiting. The virgins and saints, with their white eyes and pale air, coming from Ary Scheffer and his raphaelism, the statues of the Virgin of Lourdes, poor translation of the mediocre model of the pious sculptor Cabuchet, the overly sensitive effigies of Thérèse de Lisieux or Saint Anthony of Padua, even the neo-byzantine works, pale reflection. In fact, the interest of Sulpician art is not only sociological; it is also, as in countertype, the revealing of the interest that religious art has never ceased to arouse, against all appearances. Holy Mirror! The creatures on the reverse will be merged in the reflected image but probably not in a laplacian way - just as concentric circles. If anyone has a magic mirrorWe first address the problem of simultaneous image segmentation and smoothing by approaching the paradigm from a curve evolution perspective. In particular, we let a set of deformable contours define the boundaries between regions in an image where we model the data via piecewise smooth functions

 

www.vallombrosa.org/the-holy-mirror-discovering-ourselves...

 

Origin of the Holy Mirrors!

Mirrors have been regarded as sacred at least since the Han Dynasty in China. Many of these mirrors and from the subsequent Wei dynasty have been found in Japan. They bore images of gods and sacred animals particularly the Chinese dragon (1,2) . They were very popular, and possibly later manufactured, in Japan. The bronze mirrors are found in great number in ancient (kofun period) burial mounds in Japan. In the biggest archeological find of 33 mirrors, the mirrors were placed surrounding the coffin such that their reflective surface faced the deceased. The Han mirrors were "magic" in that while they reflected they were also able to project an image usually of the deities and animals on the back and refered to as "light passing mirrors" (透明鑑） (Needham, 1965, p.xlic; Needham & Wang, 1977, pp. 96-97).This magic property is due to the their method of construction. When polishing the reflective face of the mirror, the patter on the back influences the pressure brought to bear on the reflective surface and change the extent to which it is concave. Muraoka also claims that Differences in the (slight) "inequality of curvature" (Ayrton & Perry, 1878, p 139; see also Thompson, 1897, and Needham & Wang, 1977, p96 for a diagram) of the mirror result in the mirror reflecting light bearing the pattern shown on the reverse. More recent research has elucidated the precise mathematical model describing the optics of these mirrors as a laplacian image (Berry, 2006), a type of spatial filter today used for edge detection and to blend two images together. It is not known whether the mirrors popular in ancient Japan were also able to project, but later during the Nara period mirrors were found to concel magic Buddhist images, and during the Edo period, concealed Christians (Kurishitan) concealed images of the cross or of the Holy Mary within their bronze "magic" mirrors. Mirrors in Japan contined to be made of brass, until the arrival of Western glass mirrors, and were "magic" in that they displayed the patter on their reverse when reflecting sunlight or other powerful light source (Thompson, 1897). Ayrton (Ayrton & Perry, 1878; Ayrton & Pollock, 1879) claims that in Japan mirror vendors were unaware of the "light passing" quality, and that there is no mention of this 'magical' quality known to Han Chinese in Japanese texts. Even a Japanese mirror maker was unaware of how to make magic mirrors though had inadvertently made one himself by extensive polishing a mirror with a design on its back (Ayrton & Perry, 1878, p135). Unlike the ancient Korean mirror top right (3), the ancient Han and Japanese mirrors were made to be rotated, displaying images in the four directions of the compas. The reason for the holes in the central "breast" (or nipple) is unclear but it is found to be pierced with a hole (of varying shape depending upon the manufacturer) from which the mirror was suspended by a rope. Bearing in mind that the images on the mirrors required that the mirrors be rotated, the central nodule might also have enabled the mirrors to be spun like a top. I am not sure why someone would want to spin a mirror but my son does (see the toy explained later). I would very much like to see what the reflected "magic" image becomes when spun. The creatures on the reverse will be merged in the reflected image but probably not in a laplacian way - just as concentric circles. If anyone has a magic mirror I would like them to try spinning it to see. Skipping the holy mirrors in shrines, mirror rice cakes, and the mirror held by the Japanese version of Saint Peter at the Pearly Gates, King Enma, which holds a record of ones life, and, jumping to the present day... Mirrors are popular in the transformational items used by Japanese superheros. The early 1970's Mirror Man transformed using a Shinto amulet infront of any mirror or reflecting surface. Shinkenja, a group of Super Sentai or Power Rangers, that transforms thanks to their ability to write and then spin Chinese characters in the air, also transforms with the aid of an Inro Maru (4) upon which is affixed a inscribed disk. When the disk is attactched to the mirror the super hero inside the mirror is displayed. Transformation (henshin) by means of a mirror is popular too among Japanese femail super heros notably Himitsu no Akko Chan (Secret Akko), who could change into many things that were displayed in her mirror, sailor moon, and OshareMajo (6). The female super heroes mirrors usually make noises rather than contain inscriptions. The latest greatest Kamen Rider OOO sometimes transforms by means of his Taja-Spina which spins three of his totem-badge "coins" inside a mirror (video). In this ancient tradition we see recurrence of the following themes 1) Mirrors being of great benefit to the bearer enabling him to transform. 2) Mirrors containing hidden deities 3) Mirrors being associated with symbols: iconic marks, and incantations. 4) Mirrors being made to be rotated or spun. Thanks to James Ewing for the Mirror Man (Mira-man) reference and to Tomomi Noguchi for the Ojamajo Doremi reference, and to Taku Shimonuri and my son Ray for getting me interested in Japanese superheros. Addendum One of My students (A Ms. Tanaka, and a book about the cute in Japan) pointed out that the Japanese are into round things, and it seems to me that this Japanese preference for the round may originate in the mirror. Anpanman and Doraemon and many "characters" have round faces The Japanese Flag features a circle representing the sun and the mirror Japanese coats of arms (kamon) Japanese holy mirrors are round "Mirror rice cakes", and many other kinds of rice cake, are round The Sumo ring is round Pictures of the floating world (Ukiyoe) often portray the sitter in a round background Japanese groups always have to end up by standing in a round The Japanese are fond of domes and have many of the biggest The Japanese are fond of seals (inkan), which are round Japanese groups just can't help standing in a round The taiko drum is round The mitsudomoe is round Mount Fuji is round But then there are probably round things in every culture?

Cast and polished bronze mirrors, made in China and Japan for several thousand years, exhibit a curious property [1–4], long regarded as magical. A pattern embossed on the back

is visible in the patch of light projected onto a screen from the reflecting face when this is illuminated by a small source, even though no trace of the pattern can be discerned

by direct visual inspection of the reflecting face. The pattern on the screen is not the result of the focusing responsible for conventional image formation, because its sharpness is independent of distance, and also because the magic mirrors are slightly convex. It was established long ago that the effect results from the deviation of rays by weak undulations on the reflecting surface, introduced during the manufacturing process and too weak to see directly, that reproduce the much stronger relief embossed on the back. Such ‘Makyoh imaging’ (from the Japanese for ‘wonder mirror’) has been applied to detect small asperities on nominally flat semiconductor surfaces [5–8]. My aim here is to draw attention (section 2) to a simple and beautiful fact, central to

the optics of magic mirrors, that has not been emphasized—either in the qualitative accounts or in an extensive geometrical-optics analysis : in the optical regime relevant to

magic mirrors, the image intensity is given, in terms of the height function h(r) of the relief.on the reflecting surface, by the Laplacian ∇2 h(r) (here r denotes position in the mirror plane: r = {x, y}). The Laplacian image predicts striking effects for patterns, such as those on magic mirrors, that consist of steps ; these predictions are supported by experiment

The detailed study of reflection from steps throws up an unresolved problem concerning the relation between the pattern embossed on the back and the relief on the reflecting surface. The Laplacian image is an approximation to geometrical optics, which is itself an approximation to physical optics. The appendix contains a discussion of the Laplacian image starting from the wave integral representing Fresnel diffraction from the mirror surface. Geometrical optics and the Laplacian image If we measure the height h(r) from the convex surface of the mirror (figure 3), assumed to

have radius of curvature R0, then the deviation of the surface undulations from a reference plane (figure 3) is η(r) = − r22R0+ h(r. The specularly reflected rays of geometrical optics are determined by the stationary value(s) of

the optical path length L from the source (distance H from the reference plane) to the position

R on the screen (distance D from the reference plane) via the point r on the mirror. This is L = (H − η(r))2 + r2 +(D − η(r

))2 + (R − r)2≈ H + D + (r, R), (2)where in the second line we have employed the paraxial approximation (all ray angles small), with (r, R) = r2 2H+(R − r)2 2D+ r2 R0− 2h(r). In applying the stationarity condition ∇r(r, R) = 0, it is convenient to define the magnification M, the reduced distance Z, and the ;demagnified observation position r referred to the mirror surface: M ≡ 1 +D H+2D R0, Z ≡ 2D M , r ≡ R M . We note an effect of the convexity that will be important later: as the source and screen distance increase, Z approaches the finite asymptotic value R0. With these variables, the position r

(r,Z), on the mirror, of rays reaching the screen position r, is the solution of r = r − Z∇h(r). The focusing and defocusing responsible for the varying light intensity at r involves the

Jacobian determinant of the transformation from r to r, giving,after a short calculation,Igeom(r,Z) = constant × ∂x ∂x

∂y ∂y − ∂x ∂y ∂y ∂x−1 r→r (r,Z)= 1 − Z∇2 h(r) + Z2

∂h(r) ∂x2 ∂h(r) ∂y2 − ∂h(r) ∂x ∂y2−1r→r(r,Z), ().where the result has been normalized to Igeom = 1 for the convex mirror without surface relief (i.e. h(r) = 0). So far, this is standard geometrical optics. In general, more than one ray can reach r—that is, can have several solutions r—and the boundaries of regions reached by different numbers of rays are caustics. In magic mirrors, however, we are concerned with a

limiting regime satisfying Z Rmin 1, where Rmin is the smallest radius of curvature of the surface irregularities. Then there is only one ray, simplifies to r ≈ r, (9) and the intensity simplifies to ILaplacian(r,Z) = 1 + Z∇2 h(r). This is the Laplacian image. Changing Z affects only the contrast of the image and not its form, so explains why the sharpness of the image is independent of screen position, provided holds. The intensity is a linear function of the surface irregularities h, which

is not the case in general geometrical optics (i.e. when is violated), where, as has been emphasized the relation is nonlinear. And, as already noted, for a distant source and

screen Z approaches the value R0, implying that (8) holds for any distance of the screen if R0 Rmin, that is, provided the irregularities are sufficiently gentle or the mirror is sufficiently

convex. Alternatively stated, the convexity of the mirror can compensate any concavity of the irregularity h, in which case there are no caustics for any screen position.The theory based on the Laplacian image accords well with observation, at least for the mirror studied here. The key insight is that the image of a step is neither a dark line nor a bright line,

as sometimes reported , but is bright on one side and dark on the other. It is possible that there are different types of magic mirror, where for example the relief is etched directly onto

the reflecting surface and protected by a transparent film , but these do not seem to be common. Sometimes, the pattern reflected onto a screen is different from that on the back, but

this is probably a trick, achieved by attaching a second layer of bronze, differently embossed, to the back of the mirror.

Pre-focal ray concentrations leading to Laplacian images are familiar in other contexts, though they are not always recognized as such. An example based on refraction occurs in old windows, where a combination of age and poor manufacture has distorted the glass. The distortion is not evident in views seen through the window when standing close to it. However,when woken by the low morning sun shining through a gap in the curtains onto an opposite

wall, one often sees the distortions magnified as a pattern of irregular bright and dark lines. If the equivalent of is satisfied, that is if the distortions and propagation distance are not too

large, the intensity is the Laplacian image of the window surface. (When the condition is not satisfied, the distortions can generate caustics.) Only the optics of the mirror has been studied here. The manner in which the pattern embossed on the back gets reproduced on the front has not been considered. Referring to ,this involves the sign of the coefficient a in the relation between hback and h. There have been several speculations about the formation of the relief. One is that the relief is generated while the mirror is cooling, by unequal contraction of the thick and thin parts of the pattern ; it is not clear what sign of a this leads to. Another is that cooling generates stresses, and that during vigorous grinding and polishing the thin parts yield more than the thick parts, leading to the thick parts being worn down more; this leads to a 0: bright (dark) lines on the image, indicating low (high) sides of the steps on the reflecting face, are associated with the low (high) sides of the

steps on the back , not the reverse (figure 7(b)). This suggests two avenues for further research. First, the sign of a should be determined by direct measurement of the profile of the reflecting surface; I predict a > 0. Second, whatever the result, the mechanism should be investigated by which the process of manufacture reproduces onto the reflecting surface the

pattern on the back. The fact that h0 = 378 nm is smaller than the wavelengths in visible light does not imply that the Laplacian image is the small-κ limit of (A.3), namely the perturbation limit corresponding to infinitely weak relief. Indeed it is not: the perturbation limit, obtained by

expanding the exponential in (A.3) and evaluating the integral over τ , with a renormalized denominator to incorporate the known limit I = 1 for ξ = ±∞, isψpert(ξ , ζ, κ) = 1 − iκ erf(ξ/√1+iζ /κ)

√ 1 + κ2 . For the gentlest steps, this predicts low-contrast oscillatory images, very different from the Laplacian images of geometrical optics; this is illustrated in figure 8(b), calculated for k =0.05, corresponding to h0 = 5.2 nm.

  

European journal of physics, 27, 109. Retrieved from www.phy.bris.ac.uk/people/Berry_mv/the_papers/berry383.pdf Spatial Filters - Laplacian/Laplacian of Gaussian. (n.d.). Retrieved April 19, 2012, from homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/rbf/HIPR2/log.htm Thompson, S. P. (1897). Light Visible and Invisible: A Series of Lectures at Royal Institution of Great Britain. Macmillan. Retrieved from www.archive.org/stream/lightvisibleinvi00thomuoft#page/50...

 

In the industrial and materialist period that began in the 19th century, Catholicism, even though it had to give in to its official positions, underwent glorious revival. In the years 1830-1880, an attempt was made to revive an authentic religious art, in the image of restored faith, through examples of medieval art. The Gothic cathedral, in its 13th century purity, Fra Angelico, the painter who paints on his knees, will be the models unceasingly questioned and translated through the teaching of Ingres.

 

Title: "Hollow"

Story By: Cate Infinity

Location: secondlife.com/destination/pendle-hill

 

In the eerie, abandoned ghost town of Cedar Hollow, a place frozen in time, Jane Bluesville, a curious and adventurous photographer, stumbles upon a secret that will change her life forever. As she explores the desolate streets and crumbling buildings, she uncovers a hidden world of forgotten stories and restless spirits.

 

Jane's camera captures more than just images; it reveals the souls trapped in the town's hollow existence. With each photograph, she inadvertently awakens the ghosts of Cedar Hollow, and they seek her help to find closure and peace. As she delves deeper into the town's tragic history, Jane becomes entangled in a web of secrets, lost love, and unresolved conflicts.

 

Haunted by her new companions and determined to uncover the truth, Jane embarks on a heart-pounding journey to solve the mysteries of Cedar Hollow. Along the way, she forges unlikely bonds with the spirits she has awakened and gains a deeper understanding of their desires and regrets. Jane's quest to bring closure to the ghost town becomes a race against time as malevolent forces threaten to keep the spirits trapped in their never-ending torment.

 

In "Hollow," Jane Bluesville must confront her own fears and uncertainties to set the spirits of Cedar Hollow free and put the town's tragic past to rest. This ghostly adventure weaves a tale of redemption, courage, and the power of human connection in the most unlikely of places.

   

Done in Ai, Finalized in Photoshop.

 

Ghostly remnants of betrayals so intense they took form.

 

Thorned Shades are spectral entities birthed from moments of deep betrayal — a final breath filled with betrayal, a poisoned promise, or a blade from behind. When the emotional wound is strong enough, the soul does not depart. It curdles, tangles, and blooms into a Shade — thorns and all.

 

️ Appearance

 

Appears as a spectral figure draped in ethereal white fabric, its form human but unnaturally still. From beneath its skin and through its clothing, black thorned vines twist outward, crowned with blood-rose blossoms that bloom where memories fester.

 

A radiant rose glows at its chest — a symbolic wound made visible, pulsing with betrayal remembered.

 

The face is delicate, mournful, framed by a crown of living thorns and roses, beautiful and cruel in equal measure.Wisps of spectral matter woven with thorny growths, as if the memory of pain grew roots.

 

Faces flicker between their former selves and the moment of their betrayal.

 

Barbed vines coil through their semi-transparent forms, dripping with regret.

 

🌒 Behavior

 

Attracted to unresolved betrayal — in places or people.

 

Appear silently, often mistaken for memories until it’s too late.

 

They whisper not to frighten, but to remind.

 

️ Abilities

 

Memory Thorning: Inflicts psychic wounds by replaying the betrayal that birthed them — or your own.

 

Entangle of Blame: Wraps targets in spectral vines that feed on guilt.

 

Shatter Presence: Vanishes in a burst of emotional backlash when confronted with honest remorse.

 

⚠️ Themes

 

Represent the danger of unresolved pain made manifest.

 

Encountering one often forces characters to face guilt they’ve buried.

 

“They are not here to haunt. They are here to be heard.”

This new NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope picture shows C/2012 S1, better known as Comet ISON, a high-profile celestial visitor to the Solar System. Hubble has already snapped this comet twice this year (opo1314a, opo1331a), but for some time it was temporarily blocked from view by the Sun. It was spotted again in August 2013, and this new image shows the comet as it appeared in our skies in early October. ISON will be brightest in our skies in late November, just before and after it hurtles past the Sun. As it gets brighter, it may even become visible as a naked eye object, before it fades throughout December — the month of its closest approach to Earth. Depending on its fate as it passes close to the Sun, it could become spectacular or, on the contrary, it could completely disintegrate. Many observatories, as well as several ESA and NASA missions, aim to observe this icy visitor over the coming months. In this Hubble image, taken on 9 October 2013, the comet's solid nucleus is unresolved because it is so small. If it had broken apart — a possibility as the Sun slowly warms it up during its approach — Hubble would have likely seen evidence for multiple fragments instead. Links NASA release Hubble Heritage release ISONblog, an online source offering analysis of Comet ISON by Hubble Space Telescope astronomers and staff at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, USA.

 

Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

 

Read more: spaceinimages.esa.int/Images/2013/10/Hubble_s_new_view_of...

Visiting Changeable Hawk Eagle accidentally entered Black Winged Kite territory and being chased by later pair.

 

Changeable Hawk-Eagle (Nisaetus cirrhatus)

  

The changeable hawk-eagle or crested hawk-eagle (Nisaetus cirrhatus) is a bird of prey species of the family Accipitridae. It was formerly placed in the genus Spizaetus, but studies pointed to the group being paraphyletic resulting in the Old World members being placed in Nisaetus (Hodgson, 1836) and separated from the New World species.

 

Changeable hawk-eagles breed in the Indian subcontinent, mainly in India and Sri Lanka, and from the southeast rim of the Himalaya across Southeast Asia to Indonesia and the Philippines. This is a bird occurring singly (outside mating season) in open woodland, although island forms prefer a higher tree density. It builds a stick nest in a tree and lays a single egg.

  

Description

 

The changeable hawk-eagle is a medium-large raptor at about 60–72 centimetres (24–28 in) in length with a 127–138 centimetres (50–54 in) wingspan, and a weight ranging from 1.2 to 1.9 kg.[3] It is a relatively slender forest eagle with some subspecies (especially N. c. limnaetus) being dimorphic giving the name "changeable". This and their complicated phylogeny further complicate precise identification.

 

Normally brown above, they have white below with barring on the undersides of the flight feathers and tail; black longitudinal streaks occur on the throat and chocolate streaks occur on the breast. Some subspecies have a crest of four feathers, but this is all but absent in others. The sexes are quite similar in their plumage, but males are about 15% smaller than females. The underparts and head of juveniles are whitish or buff with few dark streaks.

 

The wings are long and parallel-sided, and are held flat in flight, which helps to distinguish this species from the similar mountain hawk-eagle. In overhead flight, comparatively rounded wings (upturned at tip), longish tail, white body (spotted with brown) and grey underside of wings (streaked and spotted) are leading pointers.

 

Their call is a loud, high-pitched ki-ki-ki-ki-ki-ki-ki-ki-kee, beginning short, rising in crescendo, and ending in a scream.

  

Ecology

 

Changeable hawk-eagles eat mammals, birds, and reptiles. They keep a sharp lookout perched bolt upright on a bough amongst the canopy foliage of some high tree standing near a forest clearing. There, they wait for junglefowl, pheasants, hares, and other small animals coming out into the open. The bird then swoops down forcefully, strikes, and bears the prey away in its talons.

  

Nesting

 

Season: December to April

Nest: a large stick platform lined with green leaves, high up in a forest tree

Eggs: a single one, greyish white, unmarked or with faint specks and blotches of light reddish at the broad end

  

Systematics

 

The Flores hawk-eagle has traditionally been treated as a subspecies of the changeable hawk-eagle, but it is now often treated as a separate species, N. floris.

 

Two distinct groups exist in the changeable hawk-eagle; one with crests and one without or with hardly visible crests. Dark morphs exist for some populations.

  

Changeable hawk-eagle

 

N. c. cirrhatus

- Gangetic plain southwards throughout India

- Crested, no dark morph

 

N. c. ceylanensis

- Sri Lanka (possibly also Travancore)

- Smaller than nominate, crest proportionally longer on average, apparently no dark morph

  

Crestless changeable hawk-eagle

 

N. c. limnaeetus

- Nepal, northeast India, via Burma and Malay Peninsula along Wallace Line to Philippines

- Much like nominate except crest, dimorphic, with the dark morph chocolate-brown all over, tail base might appear lighter in flight

 

N. c. andamanensis

- Andaman Islands

- Similar to N. c. limnaeetus, apparently no dark morph

 

N. c. vanheurni

- Simeulue Island

- Similar to N. c. limnaeetus, apparently no dark morph

  

Gamauf et al. (2005) analyzed mtDNA cytochrome b and control region sequence data of a considerable number of specimens of the crested hawk-eagle and some relatives. Despite the large sample, even the most conspicuous dichotomy - that between the crested and crestless groups - was not as well resolved as it might have been expected to be.

 

The three small-island taxa (N. c. andamanensis, N. c. vanheurni, and N. floris) also appear as monophyletic lineages. Their placement is even more unresolved, with N. floris being apparently a very ancient lineage. The other two seem quite certainly to derive from N. c. limnaeetus. The latter taxon has a confusing phylogeny. Different lineages exist that are apparently not stable in space and time, are best described as polytomy, from which the similar island taxa derive.

 

Obviously, N. c. limnaeetus does not represent a monophyletic lineage. Neither the biological nor the phylogenetic species concepts, nor phylogenetic systematics can be applied to satisfaction. The crested group apparently is close to becoming a distinct species. The island taxa derived from N. c. limnaeetus appear to have undergone founder effects, which has restricted their genetic diversity. In the continental population, genetic diversity is considerable, and the evolutionary pattern of the two studied genes did not agree, and neither did the origin of specimens show clear structures. N. c. limnaeetus thus is best considered a metapopulation.

 

Gamauf et al. (2005) therefore suggest the island taxa which are obviously at higher risk of extinction are, for conservation considered evolutionary significant units regardless of their systematic status. This case also demonstrates that a too-rigid interpretation of cladistics and the desire for monophyletic taxa, as well as universal application of single-species concept to all birds will undermine correct understanding of evolutionary relationships. It would even not be inconceivable to find mainland lineages to group closely with the western island taxa, if little genetic drift had occurred in the initial population. nonetheless, the divergence of this species' lineages seems to have taken place too recently to award them species status, as compared to the level of genetic divergence at which clades are usually considered distinct species.

 

N. c. limnaeetus appears for all that can be said with reasonable certainty basal pool of lineages in the crestless group that, despite not being monophyletic, should be considered a valid taxon as long as gene flow is possible through its range. In addition, as ancient DNA from museum specimens was used extensively, the possibility of ghost lineages must be considered. If it is assumed that all or most of the ancient lineages still exist today, considerable recombination must have taken place as the two genes' phylogenies do not agree much, indicating a healthy level of gene flow. Whether this still holds true today remains to be determined.

  

Black-winged Kite (Elanus Caeruleus)

 

The black-winged kite (Elanus caeruleus) is a small diurnal bird of prey in the family Accipitridae best known for its habit of hovering over open grasslands in the manner of the much smaller kestrels. This Eurasian and African species was sometimes combined with the Australian black-shouldered kite (Elanus axillaris) and the white-tailed kite (Elanus leucurus) of North and South America which together form a superspecies. This kite is distinctive, with long-wings, white, grey and black plumage and owl like forward-facing eyes with red irises.

 

Although mainly seen on the plains, they are sometimes seen on grassy slopes of hills in the higher elevation regions of Asia. They are not migratory, but make short-distance movements in response to weather.

  

Description

 

This long-winged raptor is predominantly grey or white with black shoulder patches, wing tips and eye stripe. The long falcon-like wings extend beyond the tail when the bird is perched. In flight, the short and square tail is visible and it is not forked as in the typical kites of the genus Milvus. When perched, often on roadside wires, it often adjusts its wings and jerks its tail up and down as if to balance itself.

 

The sexes are alike in plumage. Their large forward-facing eyes and velvety plumage are characters that are shared with owls and the genus itself has been considered as a basal group within the Accipitridae.

  

Distribution and habitat

 

The black-winged kite is a species primarily of open land and semi-deserts in sub-Saharan Africa and tropical Asia, but it has a foothold within Europe in Spain and Portugal. The species range appears to be expanding in southern Europe and possible in West Asia.

 

Several geographic populations have been named as subspecies and these include the nominate subspecies which occurs in Spain, Africa and Arabia. The subspecies vociferus is found east of this range across South Asia and into Southeast Asia. Along Sumatra, Java, Borneo and the Philippines subspecies hypoleucus (sometimes considered a full species) is found while wahgiensis is restricted to New Guinea. Subspecies sumatranus is not always recognized. The white-tailed kite and the black-shouldered kite were formerly included with this species but have since been treated as separate species.

 

Although found mainly on the plains they have been seen at higher altitudes in Sikkim (3,650 m (11,980 ft)),[9] the Nilgiris (Doddabetta, 2,670 m (8,760 ft)) and Nagaland (2,020 m (6,630 ft)).

 

They are said to be winter visitors in some parts of their range such as the Western Ghats.

  

Behaviour and ecology

 

The black-winged kite breeds at different times of the year across its range. Although nesting has been noted throughout the year in India, they appear not to breed in April and May. Courtship is noisy and involves chases and once the pair is formed they copulate frequently. The nest is a loose platform of twigs in which 3 or 4 eggs are laid. The female spends more effort in the construction of the nest than the male. The eggs are pale creamy with spots of deep red. Both parents incubate but when the chicks hatch, the male spends more time on foraging for food. Females initially feed the young, sometimes hunting close to the nest but will also receive food from the male. After fledging the young birds continue to be dependent for food on the male parent for about 80 days, initially transferring food at perch and later in the air.

 

The prey include grasshoppers, crickets and other large insects, lizards and rodents. Injured birds, small snakes and frogs have also been recorded. The slow hunting flight is like a harrier, but it will hover like a Kestrel. It has on rare occasions been known to hunt prey in flight. Favourite perches are used for hunting and for feeding but large prey may sometimes be handled on the ground.[15] In southern Africa, they appear to favour roadside verges for foraging and are sometimes killed by collisions with vehicles.

 

These birds roost communally with groups of 15 to 35 (larger numbers in Europe) converging at a large leafy tree. They are extremely silent and the calls recorded include a high-pitched squeal or a soft whistle. They call a lot mainly during the breeding season.

 

A species of nematode, Physaloptera acuticauda, has been recorded as a parasite of the species in South Africa.

 

[Credit: en.wikipedia.org]

 

"FIGURAZIONI"

2 paintings on paper and 4 terracotta.

 

For "SOGNO LUCIDO" solo show, at Antonio Colombo Arte Contemporanea - Milano

 

Curated by Michela D'Aquisto

 

colomboarte.com/108-sogno-lucido/

 

It's clear that 108's shapes sink their roots into the intangible. Essential and yet perfectly eloquent, they are sections of shadow with irregular borders, projected by something indefinite. They don't represent anything directly recognizable, laden instead with meanings belonging to a liminal dimension.

Equally obvious is the return to colors: always integral components in the artist's works, over time their proportion compared to the black – constantly dominant – has changed several times. In the works immediately preceding these, color had assumed a marginal role in representing their small rational element, reduced to thin lines that entered the preponderant irrationality of the dark stains and were largely absorbed by them.

Now, in an impulsive process strongly inspired by the writings of Huxley concerning perception and by Kandinsky's theory of colors, 108 re-evaluates their sensitive properties capable of bringing reality closer to the spiritual plane. It's therefore no coincidence that blue, associated with the sphere of the supernatural, is present in most of the works that make up Sogno Lucido (Lucid Dream), intent as they are to explore the dimension of dreams, the unconscious, the irrational part: «The inclination of blue to deepen is so strong that its inner appeal is stronger when its shade is deeper. The deeper the blue the more it beckons man into the infinite, arousing a longing for purity and the supersensuous. […] When very dark, blue develops an element of repose. When it sinks into black, it echoes a grief that is hardly human»1. Present as well are the hues of the earth during fall – to which the artist is inextricably attached – such as yellow, which «is also akin to the utter waste when the last rays of summer strike the intense autumn leaves»2, the variable and vibrant shades of red, the stillness of green, and white and its winter shades, which recall the absolute silence of the sky waiting for the snow.

 

What stays unchanged is the prevalence of black, «[...] the least harmonious colour yet, for that reason, any other colour, even the weakest, will appear stronger and more precise in front of it»3. Introspective and irrational, with an incomparable symbolic and visual impact, it also formally expresses the marked duality of 108's works – as it's plenitude and, at the same time, emptiness.

The artist's entire work is aimed at freeing itself from the subordination of reality and at releasing the most instinctive part of its essence, at least on the level of the immaterial. The arrangement itself of the works in the gallery perfectly summarizes the tension resulting from the attempt to reconcile rational and non-rational: the linearity of the installation is interrupted in the project room, where a random accumulation of primitive ceramics and irregular shapes – in 108's own words, a “museum to the inexplicable” – reflects the inexorable affirmation of irrationality over reason.

 

Above all, the unresolved nature of the shapes persists. In adapting and altering the lexicon of geometry to represent what lies beyond the visible, 108 is rightfully among the artists that reject figuration to represent spirituality exclusively through geometric abstraction: above all, the Swedish Hilma Af Klint, who after coming into contact with Helena Blavatsky's Theosophical Society and the anthroposophical theories of Rudolf Steiner, creates a cycle composed of hundreds of diagrammatic paintings, directed by superior entities to which she dedicates the monumental work of her whole lifetime. Already active during the decade before the one in which Kandinsky works, she's just one in a presumably infinite series of authors who assimilate abstraction and immateriality: from the best known Malevič and Mondrian, to Emma Kunz, who in the first half of Twentieth century's Switzerland realizes drawings on large-scale graph paper that share both aesthetics and function with the mandala, and Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn, a peer of Jung, who translates his archetypes into vivid works with an important symbolic value.

108 is associated to these artists not only by the absolute necessity to transcend reality, to invent and mold it as in a lucid dream – during which one is aware that one is dreaming and therefore it becomes possible to orientate its narrative – but also by the need to act as a medium between art and spiritual, abandoning the control of rationality and working guided solely by the unconscious.

 

The depersonalization carried out by giving up his own name and the choice to be instead identified as 108 – three numbers, commutable in a line and three circles, with a sacred meaning for many religions – fully accomplishes this purpose: in this way the artist works anonymously, uniquely in function of a transcendent drive that goes beyond mere artistic practice.

For 108, the latter is tantamount to an instinctive process ascribable to an intensely private ritual, the result of which is an all-encompassing work, also declined in photography and music, which encloses each and every aspect of his life: the clear influences of Arp and the laws of chance – and, more generally, of the avant-gardes of the Twentieth century – the Eastern cultures and religions encountered during his studies and travels, which are opposed to the primordial cults and the folk traditions of his Piedmont.

Not for nothing, the diptych Portali D'Inverno (Winter's Gates) refers already from the title to all that is dear to the artist: chance and the repetitions that govern nature, the cold season and its colors, the 108 shapes with elusive meaning that behave as abstract openings in communication with other realities. Equally intense is Ingresso Al Sogno (Entrance To The Dream), emblem of the entire exhibition, in which a single blue stain with an exceptional hypnotic power induces a state of artificial calm, as a prelude to dreamlike visions.

 

Although apparently simple, 108 works are inexplicable through words. Or rather, I notice an obvious limitation in using language to describe the art of someone who communicates exceptionally without any kind of mediation.

I met his works for the first time thirteen years ago, in a group show: even if very different from the current ones, they already distinguished themselves from all the others. Only long afterwards, following a completely random series of events and meetings, I came back into contact with his works, which in the meantime had freed themselves of the superfluous, reaching the extraordinary expressive quality that still makes them unique. In that moment they revealed to me something that at the time I didn't know yet about myself, the necessity – and the possibility – of finding in art a sense of belonging to something superior. This is what I feel when in front of the works of some of the artists I have mentioned in this essay, but more frequently through those of 108 and all the anonymous creators or those guided by spirits, of those who produce art unwittingly and without constraints. I have rarely felt the same in galleries and museums; much more often when walking surrounded by the nature of lower Piedmont, where both Guido and I come from.

Observing his black shapes, abstract yet organic, incredibly simple and hypnotically repetitive, is for me a modality of aniconic meditation. They hold and reveal a belonging to the earth and its primordial cults, a knowledge rooted in the underworld and, in their essentiality, they connect to the purest state of awareness.

Pour les passionnés de Mars : on y découvre les projets de la NASA sur la planète rouge, et on peut tester ses compétences d’explorateur (petit quizz : Il faudrait plus de six Mars pour remplir le volume de la Terre, si vous pesiez 100 livres sur Terre, vous ne pèseriez que 38 livres sur Mars, une année sur Mars est presque deux fois plus longue qu'une année sur Terre). L'attraction, qui utilise des projections vidéo à grande échelle, des expositions dimensionnelles et des expériences interactives, est conçue pour plonger les visiteurs dans l'aventure et les défis non résolus de l'exploration spatiale future. L'exposition comprend des simulateurs de fixation orbitale et d'atterrissage lunaire, un modèle de développement complet pour un véhicule d'équipage, un modèle de véhicule d'exploration spatiale et des modèles de la famille de rover Mars: Curiosity , Spirit , Opportunity et Sojourner .

 

For fans of Mars: we discover the projects of NASA on the red planet, and we can test his skills as an explorer (small quiz: It would take more than six March to fill the volume of the Earth, if you weighed 100 books on Earth, you would only weigh 38 pounds on Mars, a year on Mars is almost twice as long as a year on Earth). The attraction, which uses large-scale video projections, dimensional displays and interactive experiences, is designed to immerse visitors in the adventure and unresolved challenges of future space exploration. The exhibition includes orbital and lunar landing simulators, a complete development model for a crew vehicle, a space exploration vehicle model and models from the Mars rover family: Curiosity, Spirit, Opportunity and Sojourner.

 

Set of 5 - 1 of reserve & 4 about the machine. On the photo of the reserve the white dot on the horizon is the machine.

 

Please see photo with all the details about the Walking Dragline, the oldest surviving machine of its type in Europe.

  

St Aidan's is a 400-hectare (990-acre) Country Park between Leeds and Castleford in West Yorkshire, England. The land was formerly an opencast coal mining area.

 

The Country Park opened to the public in May 2013 under the care of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB). The car park and visitor centre were subsequently closed in July 2013 due to unresolved land issues. With the successful transfer of St Aidan's to Leeds City Council, a 99-year lease was signed from the council to the RSPB in March 2017. The site is now open and functioning as an RSPB reserve.

 

It is a brilliant reserve with 4 waymarked loops of approx. 1.1, 1.7, 2.0 & 3 miles long so you can do as much or as little as you wish. Or merely sit outside the visitors centre & enjoy a coffee!

St Aidan's is a 400-hectare (990-acre) Country Park between Leeds and Castleford[1] in West Yorkshire, England. The land was formerly an opencast coal mining area.

 

The Country Park opened to the public in May 2013 under the care of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB). The car park and visitor centre were subsequently closed in July 2013 due to unresolved land issues. With the successful transfer of St Aidan's to Leeds City Council, a 99-year lease was signed from the council to the RSPB in March 2017. The site is now open and functioning as an RSPB reserve.

 

It is a brilliant reserve with 4 waymarked loops of approx. 1.1, 1.7, 2.0 & 3 miles long so you can do as much or as little as you wish. Or merely sit outside the visitors centre & enjoy a coffee!

 

The large structure on the horizon is a dredging machine & is next to the visitors centre, sort of gives scale to the size of the reserve.

Cormorant (Disambiguation)

 

Phalacrocoracidae is a family of approximately 40 species of aquatic birds commonly known as cormorants and shags. Several different classifications of the family have been proposed recently, and the number of genera is disputed. The great cormorant (P. carbo) and the common shag (P. aristotelis) are the only two species of the family commonly encountered on the British Isles, and "cormorant" and "shag" appellations have been later assigned to different species in the family somewhat haphazardly.

 

Cormorants and shags are medium-to-large birds, with body weight in the range of 0.35–5 kilograms (0.77–11.02 lb) and wing span of 45–100 centimetres (18–39 in). The majority of species have dark feathers. The bill is long, thin and hooked. Their feet have webbing between all four toes. All species are fish-eaters, catching the prey by diving from the surface. They are excellent divers, and under water they propel themselves with their feet with help from their wings; some cormorant species have been found to dive as deep as 45 metres (150 ft). They have relatively short wings due to their need for economical movement underwater, and consequently have the highest flight costs of any flying bird.

 

Cormorants nest in colonies around the shore, on trees, islets or cliffs. They are coastal rather than oceanic birds, and some have colonised inland waters – indeed, the original ancestor of cormorants seems to have been a fresh-water bird.[citation needed] They range around the world, except for the central Pacific islands.

  

Names

 

No consistent distinction exists between cormorants and shags. The names 'cormorant' and 'shag' were originally the common names of the two species of the family found in Great Britain, Phalacrocorax carbo (now referred to by ornithologists as the great cormorant) and P. aristotelis (the European shag). "Shag" refers to the bird's crest, which the British forms of the great cormorant lack. As other species were discovered by English-speaking sailors and explorers elsewhere in the world, some were called cormorants and some shags, depending on whether they had crests or not. Sometimes the same species is called a cormorant in one part of the world and a shag in another, e.g., the great cormorant is called the black shag in New Zealand (the birds found in Australasia have a crest that is absent in European members of the species). Van Tets (1976) proposed to divide the family into two genera and attach the name "cormorant" to one and "shag" to the other, but this flies in the face of common usage and has not been widely adopted.

 

The scientific genus name is Latinised Ancient Greek, from φαλακρός (phalakros, "bald") and κόραξ (korax, "raven"). This is often thought to refer to the creamy white patch on the cheeks of adult great cormorants, or the ornamental white head plumes prominent in Mediterranean birds of this species, but is certainly not a unifying characteristic of cormorants. "Cormorant" is a contraction derived either directly from Latin corvus marinus, "sea raven" or through Brythonic Celtic. Cormoran is the Cornish name of the sea giant in the tale of Jack the Giant Killer. Indeed, "sea raven" or analogous terms were the usual terms for cormorants in Germanic languages until after the Middle Ages. The French explorer André Thévet commented in 1558, "... the beak [is] similar to that of a cormorant or other corvid," which demonstrates that the erroneous belief that the birds were related to ravens lasted at least to the 16th century.

  

Description

 

Cormorants and shags are medium-to-large seabirds. They range in size from the pygmy cormorant (Phalacrocorax pygmaeus), at as little as 45 cm (18 in) and 340 g (12 oz), to the flightless cormorant (Phalacrocorax harrisi), at a maximum size 100 cm (39 in) and 5 kg (11 lb). The recently extinct spectacled cormorant (Phalacrocorax perspicillatus) was rather larger, at an average size of 6.3 kg (14 lb). The majority, including nearly all Northern Hemisphere species, have mainly dark plumage, but some Southern Hemisphere species are black and white, and a few (e.g. the spotted shag of New Zealand) are quite colourful. Many species have areas of coloured skin on the face (the lores and the gular skin) which can be bright blue, orange, red or yellow, typically becoming more brightly coloured in the breeding season. The bill is long, thin, and sharply hooked. Their feet have webbing between all four toes, as in their relatives.

  

Habitat

 

They are coastal rather than oceanic birds, and some have colonised inland waters – indeed, the original ancestor of cormorants seems to have been a fresh-water bird, judging from the habitat of the most ancient lineage. They range around the world, except for the central Pacific islands.

  

Behaviour

 

All are fish-eaters, dining on small eels, fish, and even water snakes. They dive from the surface, though many species make a characteristic half-jump as they dive, presumably to give themselves a more streamlined entry into the water. Under water they propel themselves with their feet, though some also propel themselves with their wings. Some cormorant species have been found, using depth gauges, to dive to depths of as much as 45 metres (150 ft).

 

After fishing, cormorants go ashore, and are frequently seen holding their wings out in the sun. All cormorants have preen gland secretions that are used ostensibly to keep the feathers waterproof. Some sources state that cormorants have waterproof feathers while others say that they have water permeable feathers.[8][9] Still others suggest that the outer plumage absorbs water but does not permit it to penetrate the layer of air next to the skin. The wing drying action is seen even in the flightless cormorant but commonly in the Antarctic shags and red-legged cormorants. Alternate functions suggested for the spread-wing posture include that it aids thermoregulation or digestion, balances the bird, or indicates presence of fish. A detailed study of the great cormorant concludes that it is without doubt to dry the plumage.

 

Cormorants are colonial nesters, using trees, rocky islets, or cliffs. The eggs are a chalky-blue colour. There is usually one brood a year. The young are fed through regurgitation. They typically have deep, ungainly bills, showing a greater resemblance to those of the pelicans, to which they are related, than is obvious in the adults.

  

Taxonomy

 

The cormorants are a group traditionally placed within the Pelecaniformes or, in the Sibley–Ahlquist taxonomy, the expanded Ciconiiformes. This latter group is certainly not a natural one, and even after the tropicbirds have been recognised as quite distinct, the remaining Pelecaniformes seem not to be entirely monophyletic. Their relationships and delimitation – apart from being part of a "higher waterfowl" clade which is similar but not identical to Sibley and Ahlquist's "pan-Ciconiiformes" – remain mostly unresolved. Notwithstanding, all evidence agrees that the cormorants and shags are closer to the darters and Sulidae (gannets and boobies), and perhaps the pelicans or even penguins, than to all other living birds.

 

In recent years, three preferred treatments of the cormorant family have emerged: either to leave all living cormorants in a single genus, Phalacrocorax, or to split off a few species such as the imperial shag complex (in Leucocarbo) and perhaps the flightless cormorant. Alternatively, the genus may be disassembled altogether and in the most extreme case be reduced to the great, white-breasted and Japanese cormorants.

 

Pending a thorough review of the Recent and prehistoric cormorants, the single-genus approach is followed here for three reasons: first, it is preferable to tentatively assigning genera without a robust hypothesis. Second, it makes it easier to deal with the fossil forms, the systematic treatment of which has been no less controversial than that of living cormorants and shags. Third, this scheme is also used by the IUCN, making it easier to incorporate data on status and conservation. In accordance with the treatment there, the imperial shag complex is here left unsplit as well, but the king shag complex has been.

 

The cormorants and the darters have a unique bone on the back of the top of the skull known as the os nuchale or occipital style which was called a xiphoid process in early literature. This bony projection provides anchorage for the muscles that increase the force with which the lower mandible is closed. This bone and the highly developed muscles over it, the M. adductor mandibulae caput nuchale, are unique to the families Phalacrocoracidae and Anhingidae.

 

Several evolutionary groups are still recognizable. However, combining the available evidence suggests that there has also been a great deal of convergent evolution; for example the cliff shags are a convergent paraphyletic group. The proposed division into Phalacrocorax sensu stricto (or subfamily "Phalacrocoracinae") cormorants and Leucocarbo sensu lato (or "Leucocarboninae") shags does indeed have some degree of merit. The resolution provided by the mtDNA 12S rRNA and ATPase subunits six and eight sequence data[25] is not sufficient to properly resolve several groups to satisfaction; in addition, many species remain unsampled, the fossil record has not been integrated in the data, and the effects of hybridisation – known in some Pacific species especially – on the DNA sequence data are unstudied.

  

List of genera

 

The family contains three genera:[26]

 

- Microcarbo (5 species)

- Phalacrocorax (22 species, including one extinct in 19th century)

- Leucocarbo (15 species)

  

Evolution and fossil record

 

Cormorants seem to be a very ancient group, with similar ancestors reaching back to the time of the dinosaurs. In fact, the earliest known modern bird, Gansus yumenensis, had essentially the same structure. The details of the evolution of the cormorant are mostly unknown. Even the technique of using the distribution and relationships of a species to figure out where it came from, biogeography, usually very informative, does not give very specific data for this probably rather ancient and widespread group. However, the closest living relatives of the cormorants and shags are the other families of the suborder Sulae—darters and gannets and boobies—which have a primarily Gondwanan distribution. Hence, at least the modern diversity of Sulae probably originated in the southern hemisphere.

 

While the Leucocarbonines are almost certainly of southern Pacific origin—possibly even the Antarctic which, at the time when cormorants evolved, was not yet ice-covered—all that can be said about the Phalacrocoracines is that they are most diverse in the regions bordering the Indian Ocean, but generally occur over a large area.

 

Similarly, the origin of the family is shrouded in uncertainties. Some Late Cretaceous fossils have been proposed to belong with the Phalacrocoracidae:

A scapula from the Campanian-Maastrichtian boundary, about 70 mya (million years ago), was found in the Nemegt Formation in Mongolia; it is now in the PIN collection. It is from a bird roughly the size of a spectacled cormorant, and quite similar to the corresponding bone in Phalacrocorax. A Maastrichtian (Late Cretaceous, c. 66 mya) right femur, AMNH FR 25272 from the Lance Formation near Lance Creek, Wyoming, is sometimes suggested to be the second-oldest record of the Phalacrocoracidae; this was from a rather smaller bird, about the size of a long-tailed cormorant.

 

As the Early Oligocene Sula" ronzoni cannot be assigned to any of the suloid families—cormorants and shags, darters, and gannets and boobies—with certainty, the best interpretation is that the Phalacrocoracidae diverged from their closest ancestors in the Early Oligocene, perhaps some 30 million years ago, and that the Cretaceous fossils represent ancestral suloids, "pelecaniforms" or "higher waterbirds"; at least the last lineage is generally believed to have been already distinct and undergoing evolutionary radiation at the end of the Cretaceous. What can be said with near certainty is that AMNH FR 25272 is from a diving bird that used its feet for underwater locomotion; as this is liable to result in some degree of convergent evolution and the bone is missing indisputable neornithine features, it is not entirely certain that the bone is correctly referred to this group.

 

During the late Paleogene, when the family presumably originated, much of Eurasia was covered by shallow seas, as the Indian Plate finally attached to the mainland. Lacking a detailed study, it may well be that the first "modern" cormorants were small species from eastern, south-eastern or southern Asia, possibly living in freshwater habitat, that dispersed due to tectonic events. Such a scenario would account for the present-day distribution of cormorants and shags and is not contradicted by the fossil record; as remarked above, a thorough review of the problem is not yet available.

  

Two distinct genera of prehistoric cormorants are widely accepted today, if Phalacrocorax is used for all living species:

 

- Limicorallus (Indricotherium middle Oligocene of Chelkar-Teniz, Kazakhstan)

- Nectornis (Late Oligocene/Early Miocene of Central Europe – Middle Miocene of Bes-Konak, Turkey) – includes Oligocorax miocaenus

  

The proposed genus Oligocorax appears to be paraphyletic – the European species have been separated in Nectornis, and the North American ones are placed in the expanded Phalacrocorax. A Late Oligocene fossil cormorant foot from Enspel, Germany, sometimes placed herein, would then be referable to Nectornis if it proves not to be too distinct. All these early European species might belong to the basal group of "microcormorants", as they conform with them in size and seem to have inhabited the same habitat: subtropical coastal or inland waters. Limicorallus, meanwhile, was initially believed to be a rail or a dabbling duck by some. There are also undescribed remains of apparent cormorants from the Quercy Phosphorites of Quercy (France), dating to some time between the Late Eocene and the mid-Oligocene.

 

Some other Paleogene remains are sometimes assigned to the Phalacrocoracidae, but these birds seem quite intermediate between cormorants and darters (and lack clear autapomorphies of either). Thus, they may be quite basal members of the Palacrocoracoidea. The taxa in question are:

 

- Piscator (Late Eocene of England)

- "Pelecaniformes" gen. et sp. indet. (Jebel Qatrani Early Oligocene of Fayum, Egypt) – similar to Piscator?

- Borvocarbo (Late Oligocene of C Europe)

 

The supposed Late Pliocene/Early Pleistocene "Valenticarbo" is a nomen dubium and given its recent age probably not a separate genus.

  

In human culture

 

Cormorant fishing

 

Humans have used cormorants' fishing skills in various places in the world. Archaeological evidence suggests that cormorant fishing was practiced in Ancient Egypt, Peru, Korea and India, but the strongest tradition has remained in China and Japan, where it reached commercial-scale level in some areas. In Japan, cormorant fishing is called ukai (鵜飼). Traditional forms of ukai can be seen on the Nagara River in the city of Gifu, Gifu Prefecture, where cormorant fishing has continued uninterrupted for 1300 years, or in the city of Inuyama, Aichi. In Guilin, China, cormorants are famous for fishing on the shallow Lijiang River. In Gifu, the Japanese cormorant (P. capillatus) is used; Chinese fishermen often employ great cormorants (P. carbo). In Europe, a similar practice was also used on Doiran Lake in the region of Macedonia.

 

In a common technique, a snare is tied near the base of the bird's throat, which allows the bird only to swallow small fish. When the bird captures and tries to swallow a large fish, the fish is caught in the bird's throat. When the bird returns to the fisherman's raft, the fisherman helps the bird to remove the fish from its throat. The method is not as common today, since more efficient methods of catching fish have been developed, but is still practiced as a cultural tradition.

 

In folklore, literature, and art

 

Cormorants feature in heraldry and medieval ornamentation, usually in their "wing-drying" pose, which was seen as representing the Christian cross, and symbolizing nobility and sacrifice. For John Milton in Paradise Lost, the cormorant symbolizes greed: perched atop the Tree of Life, Satan took the form of a cormorant as he spied on Adam and Eve during his first intrusion into Eden.

 

In some Scandinavian areas, they are considered good omen; in particular, in Norwegian tradition spirits of those lost at sea come to visit their loved ones disguised as cormorants.[36] For example, the Norwegian municipalities of Røst, Loppa and Skjervøy have cormorants in their coat of arms. The symbolic liver bird of Liverpool is commonly thought to be a cross between an eagle and a cormorant.

 

In 1853, a woman wearing a dress made of cormorant feathers was found on San Nicolas Island, off the southern coast of California. She had sewn the feather dress together using whale sinews. She is known as the Lone Woman of San Nicolas and was later baptised "Juana Maria" (her original name is lost). The woman had lived alone on the island for 18 years before being rescued. When removed from San Nicolas, she brought with her a green cormorant dress she made; this dress is reported to have been removed to the Vatican.

 

The bird has inspired numerous writers, including Amy Clampitt, who wrote a poem called "The Cormorant in its Element". The species she described may have been the pelagic cormorant, which is the only species in the temperate U.S. with the "slim head ... vermilion-strapped" and "big black feet" that she mentions.

 

A cormorant representing Blanche Ingram appears in the first of the fictional paintings by Jane in Charlotte Brontë's novel Jane Eyre.

 

The cormorant served as the hood ornament for the Packard automobile brand.

 

Cormorants (and books about them written by a fictional ornithologist) are a recurring fascination of the protagonist in Jesse Ball's 2018 novel Census.

  

[Credit: en.wikipedia.org]

 

Taken in my garden in Northwest Leicestershire.

Started to open yesterday, so waited until today to take some shots of this elegant Snowdrop.

 

According to the RHS it has a unresolved name.

I have searched the internet and have found two references, one as the nomenclature has Galanthus elwesii 'Snow Fox' the other as Galanthus nivalis 'Snow Fox',

The VISIR instrument on ESO’s VLT captured this stunning image of a newly-discovered massive binary star system. Nicknamed Apep after an ancient Egyptian deity, it could be the first gamma-ray burst progenitor to be found in our galaxy. Apep’s stellar winds have created the dust cloud surrounding the system, which consists of a binary star with a fainter companion. With 2 Wolf-Rayet stars orbiting each other in the binary, the serpentine swirls surrounding Apep are formed by the collision of two sets of powerful stellar winds, which create the spectacular dust plumes seen in the image. The reddish pinwheel in this image is data from the VISIR instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), and shows the spectacular plumes of dust surrounding Apep. The blue sources at the centre of the image are a triple star system — which consists of a binary star system and a companion single star bound together by gravity. Though only two star-like objects are visible in the image, the lower source is in fact an unresolved binary Wolf-Rayet star. The triple star system was captured by the NACO adaptive optics instrument on the VLT.

St Aidan's is a 400-hectare (990-acre) Country Park between Leeds and Castleford in West Yorkshire, England. The land was formerly an opencast coal mining area.

 

The Country Park opened to the public in May 2013 under the care of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB). The car park and visitor centre were subsequently closed in July 2013 due to unresolved land issues. With the successful transfer of St Aidan's to Leeds City Council, a 99-year lease was signed from the council to the RSPB in March 2017. The site is now open and functioning as an RSPB reserve.

 

It is a brilliant reserve with 4 waymarked loops of approx. 1.1, 1.7, 2.0 & 3 miles long so you can do as much or as little as you wish. Or merely sit outside the visitors centre & enjoy a coffee!

Bon bon, on ne peut pas dire que vous avez pris beaucoup de risques à essayer de deviner les origines de Lewis, c'est probablement parce que j'ai promis Lewis comme récompense à qui trouverait.

Vous trouverez en commentaire son analyse ADN. Comme vous le verrez il est composé en grande partie de corniauds sur plusieurs générations, mais au moins une des races de ses arrière-grands-parents a de quoi surprendre.

Les origines de ses immenses oreilles, de ses larges hanches et de sa queue en crochet resteront parmi les énigmes non-résolues.

 

Well, not many of you took the risk to guess Lewis's origins, it's probably because I promised Lewis as a reward to who would find it.

You will find in comment his DNA analysis. As you will see, it is composed largely of mongrels (do you say so? I mean crossed breeds) over several generations, but at least one of the breeds of his great-grandparents is quite surprising.

The origins of his huge ears, his wide hips and his tail will remain among the unresolved enigmas.

 

The story of the Hawker Tempest is very much a story of redemption, starting from the rather disastrous Hawker Typhoon. Designed to replace both Spitfire and Hurricane, the Typhoon failed in all accounts, lacking the necessary high-altitude performance due to excessively thick wings, and killing lots of its pilots through engine fires, leaking CO into the cockpit or simply breaking mid-air due to insufficiently strong tail section. Even after solving some of its most dangerous issues, it ended up as the RAF’s primary attack aircraft, a far cry from its intended fighter role, and was removed from the frontline immediately after the war. On the other hand, the Tempest turned out to be everything the Typhoon was promised, and more, and its developments were the last piston-engined fighters used by RAF and Royal Navy.

 

About the aircraft

 

After the Typhoon proved to be a disappointment in terms of performance, Hawker’s team led by Sydney Camm started to work on Typhoon II, which was to feature a much thinner, laminar flow wing, in the hope of enhancing the high-altitude qualities of the aircraft. The aircraft was also to feature an elongated fuselage and a number of other improvements. Last but not least, the designers were looking to a number of different alternatives for a powerful Napier Sabre engine, which at that point still suffered from a number of unresolved issues. In November 1941 an official contract was issued, and in February 1942 the aircraft was renamed to Tempest. In total, 6 prototypes were built, representing 5 different Marks: Mk.I (Napier Sabre Mk.IV engine), Mk.II (Bristol Centaurus Mk.IV engine), Mk.III (Rolls-Royce Griffon 85 engine), Mk.IV (never completed, Griffon 61 engine), and Mk.V (Napier Sabre Mk.II, the same as in Typhoon). As can be expected, the first to fly was the Mk.V prototype, which represented the most incremental improvement over Typhoon. The first flight took place on 2 September 1942, and the Tempest quickly proved to be superior to its predecessor in all respects. Due to this, even though some of the other variants possessed even better performance, the Mk.V was rushed into production, with the first coming off the production line in June 1943. However, it was not until April 1944, that the first Tempest Mk.V squadrons became operational. In units, the Tempest Mk.V was widely considered the best low-altitude fighter in Allied service, and its primary missions were low-level intercepts, armed reconnaissance, and ground attack missions over the continent. It excelled especially in shooting down V-1 flying bombs, scoring 638 of a total of 1846 destroyed by the aircraft. In total, Tempest Mk.V is credited with 239 air-to-air kills, including 11 Me 262. After the war, Tempest Mk.V continued service until its retirement in 1948. But it was not the end of Tempest’s history, as Tempest Mk.II and its carrier-based development, the Sea Fury, continued their service, with the latter taking part in the Korean War (even shooting down MiG-15), and ending up retired by the Burmese Air Force as late as 1968.

 

About the building process

 

I’ve always respected the Tempest, but it was never among my favorites. With only 1702 produced, it has never achieved the recognition of Mustang, Spitfire, or even Typhoon. But after finishing my P-51B, I was looking for the next subject, and it struck me that the nose of the Tempest should work really well with Lego. The initial results were very encouraging, so I decided to try to make it work. First off, the Tempest is enormous compared to Spitfire, Bf 109, or even Mustang. It simply dwarfs them, so it was a bit different building experience. The biggest challenge was to make it stiff enough, as on one hand it still utilizes the techniques similar to my other IIWW models, but on the other, every piece of it is significantly heavier. The next problematic part was the tear-drop canopy, it took me a moment to figure it out. The elliptical wings were also not an easy thing to get right, especially with a limited selection of wedge bricks in necessary colors, and lastly, the tapering of the fuselage required a lot of tinkering. After finishing the initial prototype, it turned out that the camouflage is also a bit of a headache, due to the limited availability of the necessary parts – I had to opt for the invasion stripes not because of the aesthetics, but simply because it was the only way to get it all right. I would say that the final result was worth it, as in terms of the pure shaping it might be my best IIWW model to date.

 

About the plane

 

The model represents Hawker Tempest Mk.V series I, JN751/R-B in 1/33 scale, in camouflage from June 1944. It was a personal mount of Wg. Cdr. Roland Prosper “Bee” Beamont, a British ace credited with 9 air-to-air kills. While flying in the cockpit of JN751, he shot down 1 Fw 190, and 31 V-1 flying bombs. He also served as an experimental pilot for Hawker and was responsible for introducing both Typhoon and Tempest into service, playing a vital role in pioneering the Typhoon’s ground attack capabilities, and anti-V-1 tactics. In October 1944 he was shot down by flak, and taken prisoner, returning home in May 1945. After the war he continued his flying career, ending up as flight operations director for BAC, and later Panavia. The JN751 here is represented with the invasion stripes, which were designed to reduce the risk of friendly fire during the Normandy Landings. The aircraft was also one of the first Tempests to feature longer barrel cannons and smaller main wheels. As usual, the model has a working landing gear (both main and rear), movable flaps, and a working horizontal tail.

 

Finsbury Square

A postally unused postcard published by Ogden Foods Service Corp., Box 6, San Simeon, Calif. 93452. The Plastichrome photograph was taken by Colourpicture of Boston, Mass.

 

On the back of the card the publishers have printed:

 

'Hearst San Simeon

State Historical Monument.

San Simeon, California, on

Scenic Highway 1, between

Monterey and San Luis Obispo.

Interior of the Roman Pool

gleams with hand-set mosaic

tiles.

Alabaster lights give a

moonlight effect and sparkle

on tiles of 18 carat gold, fused

in glass'.

 

The indoor pool was in fact never popular amongst Hearst's guests, and tended to be used mainly by the mansion's domestic staff.

 

Hearst Castle

 

Hearst Castle, known formally as La Cuesta Encantada ("The Enchanted Hill"), is an estate in San Simeon, located on the Central Coast of California. Conceived by William Randolph Hearst, the publishing tycoon, and his architect Julia Morgan, the castle was built between 1919 and 1947.

 

George Bernard Shaw described Hearst Castle as:

 

"What God would have built

if he had had the money."

 

Today, Hearst Castle is a museum open to the public as a California State Park and registered as a National Historic Landmark and California Historical Landmark.

 

George Hearst, William Randolph Hearst's father, had purchased the original 40,000-acre (162 km2) estate in 1865 and Camp Hill, the site for the future Hearst Castle, was used for family camping vacations during Hearst's youth.

 

In 1919 William inherited $11,000,000 (equivalent to $172,000,000 in 2021) and estates, including the land at San Simeon. He used his fortune to further develop his media empire of newspapers, magazines and radio stations, the profits from which supported a lifetime of building and collecting.

 

Within a few months of Phoebe Hearst's death, he had commissioned Morgan to:

 

"Build something a little more

comfortable up on the hill."

 

This was the genesis of the present castle. Morgan was an architectural pioneer:

 

"America's first truly independent

female architect."

 

She was the first woman to study architecture at the School of Beaux-Arts in Paris, the first to have her own architectural practice in California, and the first female winner of the American Institute of Architects' Gold Medal.

 

Julia worked in close collaboration with Hearst for over twenty years, and the castle at San Simeon is her best-known creation.

 

In the Roaring Twenties and into the 1930's, Hearst Castle reached its social peak. Originally intended as a family home for Hearst, his wife Millicent and their five sons, by 1925 he and Millicent had effectively separated and he held court at San Simeon with his mistress, the actress Marion Davies.

 

Their guest list comprised most of the Hollywood stars of the period; Charlie Chaplin, Cary Grant, the Marx Brothers, Greta Garbo, Buster Keaton, Mary Pickford, Jean Harlow and Clark Gable all visited, some on multiple occasions.

 

Political luminaries encompassed Calvin Coolidge and Winston Churchill, while other notables included Charles Lindbergh, P. G. Wodehouse and George Bernard Shaw.

 

Visitors gathered each evening at Casa Grande for drinks in the Assembly Room, dined in the Refectory and watched the latest movie in the theater before retiring to the luxurious accommodation provided by the guest houses of Casa del Mar, Casa del Monte and Casa del Sol.

 

During the days, they admired the views, rode, played tennis, bowls or golf and swam in "the most sumptuous swimming pool on earth".

 

While Hearst entertained, Morgan built; the castle was under almost continual construction from 1920 until 1939, with work resuming after the end of World War II until Hearst's final departure in 1947.

 

Hearst, his castle and his lifestyle were satirized by Orson Welles in his 1941 film Citizen Kane. In the film, which Hearst sought to suppress, Charles Foster Kane's palace Xanadu is said to contain:

 

"Paintings, pictures, statues, the very stones

of many another palace – a collection of

everything so big it can never be cataloged

or appraised; enough for ten museums; the

loot of the world".

 

Welles's was referring to Hearst's mania for collecting; the dealer Joseph Duveen called him the "Great Accumulator".

 

With a passion for acquisition almost from childhood, he bought architectural elements, art, antiques, statuary, silverware and textiles on an epic scale. Shortly after starting San Simeon, he began to conceive of making the castle:

 

"A museum of the best

things that I can secure".

 

Foremost among his purchases were architectural elements from Western Europe, particularly Spain. Over thirty ceilings, doorcases, fireplaces and mantels, entire monasteries, paneling and a medieval tithe barn were purchased, shipped to Hearst's Brooklyn warehouses and transported on to California.

 

Much was then incorporated into the fabric of Hearst Castle. In addition, he built up collections of more conventional art and antiques of high quality; his assemblage of ancient Greek vases was one of the world's largest.

 

In May 1947, Hearst's health compelled him and Marion Davies to leave the castle for the last time. He died in Los Angeles in 1951, and Morgan died in 1957. The following year, the Hearst family gave the castle and much of its contents to the State of California, and the mansion was opened to the public on the 17th. May 17, 1958.

 

It has since operated as the Hearst San Simeon State Historical Monument, and attracts about 750,000 visitors annually.

 

The Hearst family retains ownership of the majority of the 82,000 acres (332 km2) wider estate and, under a land conservation agreement reached in 2005, has worked with the California State Parks Department and American Land Conservancy to preserve the undeveloped character of the area.

 

Early History to 1864

 

The coastal range of Southern California has been occupied since prehistoric times. The indigenous inhabitants were the Salinans and the Chumash. In the late 18th. century, Spanish missions were established in the area in order to convert the Native American population.

 

The Mission San Miguel Arcángel, one of the largest, opened in what is now San Luis Obispo county in 1797. By the 1840's, the mission had declined and the priests departed. In that decade, the governors of Mexican California distributed the mission lands in a series of grants.

 

Three of these were Rancho Piedra Blanca, Rancho Santa Rosa and Rancho San Simeon. The Mexican–American War of 1846–1848 saw the area pass into the control of the United States under the terms of the Mexican Cession. The California Gold Rush of the next decade brought an influx of American settlers, among whom was the 30-year old George Hearst.

 

Buying the land: 1865–1919

 

Born in Missouri in 1820, George Hearst made his fortune as a miner of gold and silver, notably at the Comstock Lode and the Homestake Mine. He then undertook a political career, becoming a senator in 1886, and bought The San Francisco Examiner.

 

Investing in land, he bought the Piedra Blanca property in 1865, and subsequently extended his holdings with the acquisition of most of the Santa Rosa estate, and much of the San Simeon lands.

 

In the 1870's George Hearst built a ranch house on his estate, which remains a private property maintained by the Hearst Corporation. The San Simeon area became a site for family camping expeditions, including his young son, William. A particularly favored spot was named Camp Hill, the site of the future Hearst Castle.

 

Years later Hearst recalled his early memories of the place:

 

"My father brought me to San Simeon

as a boy. I had to come up the slope

hanging on to the tail of a pony.

We lived in a cabin on this spot and I

could see forever. That's the West –

forever."

 

George Hearst developed the estate somewhat, introducing beef and dairy cattle, planting extensive fruit orchards, and expanding the wharf facilities at San Simeon Bay. He also bred racehorses.

 

While his father developed the ranch, Hearst and his mother traveled, including an eighteen-month tour of Europe in 1873, where Hearst's life-long obsession with art collecting began.

 

When George Hearst died in 1891, he left an estate of $18 million to his widow including the California ranch. Phoebe Hearst shared the cultural and artistic interests of her son, collecting art and patronizing architects.

 

She was also a considerable philanthropist, founding schools and libraries, supporting the fledgling University of California, Berkeley, including the funding of the Hearst Mining Building in memory of her husband, and making major donations to a range of women's organizations, including the YWCA.

 

During the late 1890's, Mrs Hearst encountered Julia Morgan, a young architecture student at Berkeley. On Phoebe Hearst's death in 1919, William Hearst inherited the ranch, which had grown to 250,000 acres and 14 miles (23 km) of coastline, as well as $11 million.

 

250,000 acres is a huge area for an estate - to accommodate that area in a square, it would need sides of over 19.8 miles (32 km).

 

Within days of his mother's death, William was at Morgan's San Francisco office.

 

Julia Morgan

 

Julia Morgan, who was born in 1872, was 47 when Hearst entered her office in 1919. Her biographer Mark A. Wilson has described her subsequent career as that of:

 

"America's first independent

full-time woman architect".

 

After studying at Berkeley, where she worked with Bernard Maybeck, and in 1898 she became the first woman to win entry to the prestigious École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Passing out from the École in 1902, Morgan returned to San Francisco and took up a post at the architectural practice of John Galen Howard.

 

Howard recognized Morgan's talents, but also exploited them:

 

"The best thing about this person

is, I pay her almost nothing, as it is

a woman."

 

In 1904, Julia passed the California architects' licensing examination, the first woman to do so, establishing her own office in 1906 at 456 Montgomery Street in San Francisco.

 

During her time with Howard, Morgan was commissioned by Phoebe Hearst to undertake work at her Hacienda del Pozo de Verona estate at Pleasanton. This led to work at Wyntoon and to a number of commissions from Hearst himself; an unexecuted design for a mansion at Sausalito, north of San Francisco, a cottage at the Grand Canyon, and the Los Angeles Examiner Building.

 

In 1919, when he turned up at Morgan's office, Hearst was fifty-six years old, and the owner of a publishing empire that included twenty-eight newspapers, thirteen magazines, eight radio stations, four film studios, extensive real-estate holdings and thirty-one thousand employees.

 

He was also a significant public figure: although his political endeavors had proved largely unsuccessful, the influence he exerted through his direct control of his media empire attracted fame and opprobrium in equal measure.

 

In 1917, one biographer described him as:

 

"The most hated man

in the country".

 

The actor Ralph Bellamy, a guest at San Simeon in the mid-1930's, recorded Hearst's working methods in a description of a party in the Assembly Room:

 

"The party was quite gay. And in the midst of it,

Mr Hearst came in. There was a teletype machine

just inside, and he stopped and he read it.

He went to a table and picked up a phone.

He asked for the editor of his San Francisco

newspaper and he said, 'Put this in a two-column

box of the front pages of all the newspapers

tomorrow morning.'

And without notes he dictated an editorial."

 

Morgan and Hearst's partnership at San Simeon lasted from 1919 until his final departure from the castle in 1947. Their correspondence, preserved in the Julia Morgan archive in the Robert E. Kennedy Library at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, runs to some 3,700 letters and telegrams.

 

Victoria Kastner, Hearst Castle's in-house custodian, has described the partnership as "a rare, true collaboration," and there are many contemporary accounts of the closeness of the relationship. Walter Steilberg, a draughtsman in Morgan's office, once observed them at dinner:

 

"The rest of us could have been a

hundred miles away; they didn't pay

any attention to anybody ... these

two very different people just clicked".

 

Thomas Aidala, in his 1984 history of the castle, made a similar observation:

 

"Seated opposite each other, they

would discuss and review work,

consider design changes, pass

drawings back and forth ... seemingly

oblivious of the rest of the guests."

 

Having a Ball: 1925–1938

 

Hearst and his family occupied Casa Grande for the first time at Christmas, 1925. Thereafter, Hearst's wife, Millicent, went back to New York, and from 1926 until they left for the last time in 1947, Hearst's mistress Marion Davies acted as his chatelaine at the castle.

 

The Hollywood and political elite often visited in the 1920's and 1930's. Among Hearst's guests were Calvin Coolidge, Winston Churchill, Charlie Chaplin, Cary Grant, the Marx Brothers, Charles Lindbergh, and Clark Gable.

 

Churchill described his host, and Millicent Hearst and Davies, in a letter to his own wife:

 

"A grave simple child – with no doubt a

nasty temper – playing with the most

costly toys.

Two magnificent establishments, two

charming wives, complete indifference

to public opinion, oriental hospitalities."

 

Weekend guests were either brought by private train from Glendale Station north of Los Angeles, and then by car to the castle, or flew into Hearst's airstrip, generally arriving late on Friday evening or on Saturday. Cecil Beaton wrote of his impressions during his first visit for New Year's Eve in 1931:

 

"We caught sight of a vast, sparkling white

castle in Spain. It was out of a fairy story.

The sun poured down with theatrical

brilliance on tons of white marble and white

stone.

There seemed to be a thousand statues,

pedestals, urns. The flowers were unreal in

their ordered profusion.

Hearst stood smiling at the top of one of

the many flights of garden steps".

 

Guests were generally left to their own devices during the day. Horseback riding, shooting, swimming, golf, croquet and tennis were all available, while Hearst would lead mounted parties for picnics on the estate. The only absolute deadline was for cocktails in the assembly room at 7.30 on Saturday night.

 

Alcohol was rationed; guests were not permitted to have liquor in their rooms, and were limited to one cocktail each before dinner. This was due not to meanness on Hearst's part, but to his concerns over Davies's alcoholism, though the rule was frequently flouted.

 

The actor David Niven later reflected on his supplying illicit alcohol to Davies:

 

"It seemed fun at the time to stoke up

her fire of outrageous fun and I got a

kick out of feeling I had outwitted one

of the most powerful and best informed

men on earth, but what a disloyal and

crummy betrayal of him, and what a

nasty potential nail to put in her coffin."

 

Dinner was served at 9.00 in the refectory. Wine came from Hearst's 7,000-bottle cellar. Charlie Chaplin commented on the fare:

 

"Dinners were elaborate -- pheasant, wild

duck, partridge and venison -- but were

also informal: amidst the opulence, we

were served paper napkins, it was only

when Mrs Hearst was in residence that

the guests were given linen ones."

 

The informality extended to the ketchup bottles and condiments in jars which were remarked on by many guests.

 

Dinner was invariably followed by a movie; initially outside, and then in the theater. The actress Ilka Chase recorded a showing in the early 1930's:

 

"The theater was not yet complete – the plaster

was still wet – so an immense pile of fur coats

was heaped at the door, and each guest picked

one up and enveloped himself before entering...

Hearst and Marion, close together in the gloom

and bundled in their fur coats, looked for all the

world like the big and baby bears".

 

Movies were generally films from Hearst's own studio, Cosmopolitan Productions, and often featured Marion Davies. Sherman Eubanks, whose father worked as an electrician at the castle, recorded in an oral history:

 

"Mr Hearst would push a button and call up to

the projectionist and say 'Put on Marion's Peg

o' My Heart'.

So I've seen Peg o' My Heart about fifty times.

This is not being critical. I'm simply saying that's

the way it was. This repetition tended to put a

slight strain on the guests' gratitude."

 

In 1937, Patricia Van Cleeve married at the castle, the grandest social occasion there since the visit of President and Mrs Coolidge in February 1930. Ken Murray records these two events as the only occasions when formal attire was required of guests to the castle.

 

Van Cleeve, who married the actor Arthur Lake, was always introduced as Marion Davies' favorite niece. It was frequently rumored that she was in fact Davies and Hearst's daughter, something she herself acknowledged just before her death in 1993.

 

In February 1938, a plane crash at the San Simeon airstrip led to the deaths of Lord and Lady Plunket, who were traveling to the castle as Hearst's guests, and the pilot Tex Phillips. The only other passenger, the bobsledding champion, James Lawrence, survived.

 

The Specter at the Feast: Hearst, Welles and Xanadu

 

Hearst Castle was the inspiration for Xanadu, and Hearst himself the main model for Charles Foster Kane in Orson Welles's 1941 film Citizen Kane.

 

Having made his name with the Mercury Theatre production of The War of the Worlds in 1938, Welles arrived in Hollywood in 1939 to make a film version of Joseph Conrad's novel, Heart of Darkness for RKO Pictures.

 

The film was not made, and Welles began a collaboration with the screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz on a screenplay originally entitled American. The film tells the stories of Kane, a media magnate and aspiring politician, and of his second wife Susan Alexander, a failed opera singer driven to drink, who inhabit a castle in Florida.

 

Filming began in June 1940, and the movie premiered on the 1st. June 1941. Although at the time Orson Welles and RKO denied that the film was based on Hearst, his long-time friend and collaborator, John Houseman was clear:

 

"The truth is simple: for the basic concept

of Charles Foster Kane and for the main

lines and significant events of his public life,

Mankiewicz used as his model the figure of

William Randolph Hearst".

 

Told of the film's content before its release – his friends, the gossip columnists Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons having attended early screenings – Hearst made strenuous efforts to stop the premiere. When these failed, he sought to damage the film's circulation by alternately forbidding all mention of it in his media outlets, or by using them to attack both the movie and Welles.

 

Hearst's assault damaged the film at the box office, and harmed Welles' subsequent career.

 

Since its inception in 1952 through to 2012, the Sight and Sound Critics' Poll voted Citizen Kane the greatest film of all time in every decade of polling. On the 9th. March 2012 the film was screened in the movie theater at Hearst Castle for the first time as part of the San Luis Obispo International Film Festival.

 

Depression, Death and After: 1939–Present

 

By the late 1930's, the Great Depression and Hearst's profligacy had brought him to the brink of financial ruin. Debts totaled $126 million, and he was compelled to cede financial control of the Hearst Corporation. Newspapers and radio stations were sold, and much of his art collection was dispersed in a series of sales, often for much less than he had paid.

 

Hearst railed against his losses, and the perceived incompetence of the sales agents, Parish-Watson & Co:

 

"They greatly cheapened them and us,

he advertises like a bargain basement

sale. I am heartbroken".

 

Construction at Hearst Castle virtually ceased. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the castle was closed up and Hearst and Davies moved to Wyntoon, which was perceived to be less vulnerable to enemy attack.

 

They returned in 1945, and construction on a limited scale recommenced, finally ending in 1947. In early May of that year, with his health declining, Hearst and Davies left the castle for the last time. The pair settled in at 1007 North Beverly Drive in Beverly Hills.

 

William Randolph Hearst died in 1951, his death abruptly severing him from Davies, who was excluded from the funeral by Hearst's family:

 

"For thirty-two years I had him,

and they leave me with his

empty room".

 

In 1950 Julia Morgan closed her San Francisco office after a career of forty-two years. Ill health marred her retirement and she died, a virtual recluse, in early 1957.

 

In 1958 the Hearst Corporation donated Hearst Castle, its gardens, and many of its contents, to the state of California. A plaque at the castle reads:

 

"La Cuesta Encantada presented to

the State of California in 1958 by the

Hearst Corporation in memory of

William Randolph Hearst who created

this Enchanted Hill, and of his mother,

Phoebe Apperson Hearst, who

inspired it".

 

The castle was opened to the public for the first time in June 1958. Hearst Castle was added to the National Register of Historic Places on the 22nd. June.

 

Hearst was always keen to protect the mystique of his castle. In 1926, he wrote to Morgan to congratulate her after a successful party was held on the hill:

 

"Those wild movie people said it was

wonderful and that the most extravagant

dream of a movie picture fell far short of

this reality. They all wanted to make a

picture there but they are NOT going to

be allowed to do this."

 

Commercial filming at the castle is still rarely allowed. Since 1957 only two projects have been granted permission:

 

-- Stanley Kubrick's 1960 film Spartacus used the castle to stand in as the villa of Marcus Licinius Crassus, played by Lawrence Olivier.

 

-- In 2014, Lady Gaga's music video for "G.U.Y." was filmed at the Neptune and Roman Pools.

 

On the 12th. February 1976, the Casa del Sol guesthouse was damaged by a bomb. The device was placed by allies of the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), in retaliation for Patty Hearst, Hearst's granddaughter, testifying in court at her trial for armed robbery, following her kidnapping by the SLA in 1974.

 

On the 22nd. December 2003, an earthquake occurred with its epicenter some three miles north of the castle. With a magnitude of 6.5, it was the largest earthquake recorded at San Simeon. The very limited structural damage which resulted was a testament to the quality of the castle's construction.

 

Since its opening, the castle has become a major California tourist attraction, attracting over 850,000 visitors in 2018. Recent changes to the tour arrangements now allow visitors time to explore the grounds independently at the conclusion of the conducted tours.

 

The Hearst family maintains a connection with the castle, which was closed for a day in early August 2019 for the wedding of Amanda Hearst, Hearst's great-granddaughter.

 

The castle closed in March 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. After 2 years of closure and repairs to the access road due to rainstorm damage, the castle reopened on the 11th. May 2022.

 

Architecture of Hearst Castle

 

Hearst's original idea was to build a bungalow, according to Walter Steilberg, one of Morgan's draftsmen who recalled Hearst's words from the initial meeting:

 

"I would like to build something up on

the hill at San Simeon. I get tired of

going up there and camping in tents.

I'm getting a little too old for that.

I'd like to get something that would

be a little more comfortable".

 

However within a month, Hearst's original ideas for a modest dwelling had greatly expanded. Discussion on the style began with consideration of "Jappo-Swisso" themes. Then the Spanish Colonial Revival style was favored. Morgan had used this style when she worked on Hearst's Los Angeles Herald Examiner headquarters in 1915.

 

Hearst appreciated the Spanish Revival but was dissatisfied with the crudeness of the colonial structures in California. Mexican colonial architecture had more sophistication, but he objected to its abundance of ornamentation.

 

Thomas Aidala, in his 1984 study of the castle, notes the Churrigueresque influence on the design of the main block:

 

"Flat and unembellished exterior surfaces;

decorative urges are particularized and

isolated, focused mainly on doorways,

windows and towers".

 

The Panama-California Exposition of 1915 in San Diego held the closest approximations in California to the approach Hearst desired. But William's European tours, and specifically the inspiration of the Iberian Peninsula, led him to Renaissance and Baroque examples in southern Spain that more exactly suited his tastes. He particularly admired a church in Ronda, Spain and asked Morgan to model the Casa Grande towers after it.

 

In a letter to Morgan dated 31st. December 1919, Hearst wrote:

 

"The San Diego Exposition is the best source

of Spanish in California. The alternative is to

build in the Renaissance style of southern Spain.

We picked out the towers of the church at Ronda...

a Renaissance decoration, particularly that of the

very southern part of Spain, could harmonize well

with them.

I would very much like to have your views on what

style of architecture we should select."

 

This blend of Southern Spanish Renaissance, Revival and Mediterranean examples became San Simeon's defining style:

 

"Something a little different than other

people are doing out in California".

 

The architectural writers Arrol Gellner and Douglas Keister describe Casa Grande as

 

"A palatial fusion of Classicism and Mediterranean

architecture that transcended the Mission Revival

era and instead belonged to the more archaeological

Period Revival styles that gained favor after the

Panama-California Exposition of 1915".

 

Hearst Castle has a total of 42 bedrooms, 61 bathrooms, 19 sitting rooms, 127 acres (half a square kilometer) of gardens, indoor and outdoor swimming pools, tennis courts, a movie theater, an airfield and, during Hearst's lifetime, the world's largest private zoo.

 

Hearst was an inveterate rethinker who would frequently order the redesign of previously agreed, and often built, structures: the Neptune Pool was rebuilt three times before he was satisfied.

 

He was aware of his propensity for changing his mind; in a letter dated the 18th. March 1920, he wrote to Morgan:

 

"All little houses stunning. Please complete

before I can think up any more changes".

 

As a consequence of Hearst's persistent design changes, and financial difficulties in the early and later 1930's, the complex was never finished.

 

By the late summer of 1919, Morgan had surveyed the site, analyzed its geology, and drawn initial plans for Casa Grande. Construction began in 1919 and continued through 1947 when Hearst left the estate for the last time.

 

During the early years of construction, until Hearst's stays at San Simeon became longer and more frequent, his approval for the ongoing design was obtained by Morgan sending him models of planned developments.

 

By the late 1920's the main model, designed by another female architect Julian C. Mesic, had become too large to ship, and Mesic and Morgan would photograph it, hand-color the images, and send these to Hearst.

 

Construction of Hearst Castle

 

The castle's location presented major challenges for construction. It was remote; when Morgan began coming to the estate for site visits in 1919, she would leave her San Francisco office on Friday afternoon and take an eight-hour, 200-mile train journey to San Luis Obispo, followed by a fifty-mile drive to San Simeon.

 

The relative isolation made recruiting and retaining a workforce a constant difficulty. In the early years, the estate lacked water, its limited supplies coming from three natural springs on Pine Mountain, a 3,500-foot-high (1,100 m) peak seven miles (11 km) east of Hearst Castle.

 

The issue was addressed by the construction of three reservoirs, and Morgan devised a gravity-based water delivery system that transported water from the nearby mountain springs to the reservoirs, including the main one on Rocky Butte, a 2,000-foot (610 m) knoll less than a mile southeast of Hearst Castle.

 

Water was of particular importance; as well as feeding the pools and fountains Hearst desired, it provided electricity, by way of a private hydroelectric plant, until the San Joaquin Light and Power Corporation began service to the castle in 1924.

 

The climate presented a further challenge. The proximity to the coast brought strong winds in from the Pacific Ocean, and the site's elevation meant that winter storms were frequent and severe.

 

After a period of severe storms in February 1927, Hearst wrote a letter:

 

"We are all leaving the hill. We are drowned,

blown and frozen out. Before we build anything

more, let's make what we have practical,

comfortable and beautiful.

If we can't do that we might just as well change

the names of the houses to Pneumonia House,

Diphtheria House and Influenza Bungalow.

The main house we can call the Clinic."

 

Water was also essential for the production of concrete, the main structural component of the houses and their ancillary buildings.

 

Morgan had substantial experience of building in steel-reinforced concrete and, together with the firm of consulting engineers Earl and Wright, experimented in finding suitable stone, eventually settling on that quarried from the mountain top on which the foundation platform for the castle was built.

 

Combining this with desalinated sand from San Simeon Bay produced concrete of exceptionally high quality. Later, white sand was brought in from Carmel. Material for construction was transported either by train and truck, or by sea into a wharf built in San Simeon Bay below the site. In time, a light railway was constructed from the wharf to the castle, and Morgan built a compound of warehouses for storage and accommodation for workers by the bay.

 

Brick and tile works were also developed on site, as brick was used extensively, and tiling was an important element of the decoration of the castle. Morgan used several tile companies to produce her designs, including Grueby Faience, Batchelder, California Faience and Solon & Schemmel.

 

Albert Solon and Frank Schemmel came to Hearst Castle to undertake tiling work, and Solon's brother, Camille, was responsible for the design of the mosaics of blue-and-gold Venetian glass tile used in the Roman pool and the murals in Hearst's Gothic library.

 

Morgan worked with a series of construction managers; Henry Washburn from 1919 to 1922, then Camille Rossi from 1922, until his firing by Hearst in 1932, and finally George Loorz until 1940. From 1920 to 1939, there were between 25 and 150 workmen employed in construction at the castle.

 

Costs of Hearst Castle

 

The exact cost of the entire San Simeon complex is unknown. Kastner makes an estimate of expenditure on construction and furnishing the complex between 1919 and 1947 as "under $10,000,000".

 

Thomas Aidala suggests a slightly more precise figure for the overall cost at between $7.2 and $8.2 million. Hearst's relaxed approach to using the funds of his companies, and sometimes the companies themselves, to make personal purchases made clear accounting for expenditure almost impossible.

 

In 1927 one of his lawyers wrote:

 

"The entire history of your corporation

shows an informal method of withdrawal

of funds".

 

In 1945, when the Hearst Corporation was closing the Hearst Castle account for the final time, Morgan gave a breakdown of construction costs, which did not include expenditure on antiques and furnishings.

 

Casa Grande's build cost is given as $2,987,000, and that for the guest houses, $500,000. Other works, including nearly half a million dollars on the Neptune pool, brought the total to $4,717,000.

 

Morgan's fees for twenty-odd years of almost continuous work came to $70,755. Her initial fee was a 6% commission on total costs. This was later increased to 8.5%. Many additional expenses, and challenges in getting prompt payment, led her to receive rather less than this.

 

Kastner suggests that Morgan made an overall profit of $100,000 on the entire, twenty-year, project. Her modest remuneration was unimportant to her. At the height of Hearst's financial travails in the late 1930's, when his debts stood at over $87 million, Morgan wrote to him,

 

"I wish you would use me in any way

that relieves your mind as to the care

of your belongings. There never has

been, nor will there be, any charge in

this connection, it is an honor and a

pleasure".

 

Casa del Mar

 

Casa del Mar, the largest of the three guest houses, provided accommodation for Hearst himself until Casa Grande was ready in 1925. He stayed in the house again in 1947, during his last visit to the estate.

 

Casa del Mar contains 5,350 square feet (546 square meters) of floor space. Although luxuriously designed and furnished, none of the guest houses had kitchen facilities, a lack that sometimes irritated Hearst's guests. Adela Rogers St. Johns recounted her first visit:

 

"I rang and asked the maid for coffee.

With a smile, she said I would have to

go up to the castle for that.

I asked Marion Davies about this. She

said W. R. Hearst did not approve of

breakfast in bed."

 

Adjacent to Casa del Mar is the wellhead from Phoebe Hearst's Hacienda del Pozo de Verona, which Hearst moved to San Simeon when he sold his mother's estate after her death in 1919.

 

Casa del Monte

 

Casa del Monte was the first of the guest houses, originally entitled simply Houses A (del Mar), B (del Monte) and C (del Sol). It was built by Morgan on the slopes below the site of Casa Grande during 1920–1924.

 

Hearst had initially wanted to commence work with the construction of the main house, but Morgan persuaded him to begin with the guest cottages because the smaller structures could be completed more quickly.

 

Each guest house faces the Esplanade, and appears as a single story at its front entrance. Additional stories descend rearward down the terraced mountain side. Casa del Monte has 2,550 sq ft (237 sq. meters) of living space.

 

Casa del Sol

 

The decorative style of the Casa del Sol is Moorish, accentuated by the use of antique Persian tiles. A bronze copy of Donatello's David stands atop a copy of an original Spanish fountain.

 

The inspiration for the fountain came from an illustration in a book, The Minor Ecclesiastical, Domestic and Garden Architecture of Southern Spain, written by Austin Whittlesey and published in 1919.

 

Hearst sent a copy to Morgan, while retaining another for himself, and it proved a fertile source of ideas. The size of the house is 3,620 square feet (242 sq. meters).

 

Morgan's staff were responsible for the cataloguing of those parts of Hearst's art collection which were shipped to California, and an oral record made in the 1980's indicates the methodology used for furnishing the buildings at San Simeon:

 

"We would set the object up, and then I would

stand with a yardstick to give it scale. Sam Crow

would take a picture. Then we would give it a

number and I would write a description.

These were made into albums.

When Mr Hearst would write and say 'I want a

Florentine mantel in Cottage C in Room B, and

four yards of tiles,' then we would look it up in

the books and find something that would fit."

 

Casa Grande

 

Construction of Casa Grande began in April 1922. Work continued almost until Hearst's final departure on the 2nd. May 1947, and even then the house was unfinished. The size of Casa Grande is 68,500 square feet (5,634 sq. meters).

 

The main western façade is four stories. The entrance front, inspired by a gateway in Seville, is flanked by twin bell towers modeled on the tower of the church of Santa Maria la Mayor.

 

The layout of the main house was originally to a T-plan, with the assembly room to the front, and the refectory at a right angle to its center. The subsequent extensions of the North and South wings modified the original design.

 

As elsewhere, the core construction material is concrete, though the façade is faced in stone. In October 1927 Morgan wrote to Arthur Byne:

 

"We finally took the bull by the horns

and are facing the entire main building

with a Manti stone from Utah."

 

Morgan assured Hearst that it would be "the making of the building".

 

A cast-stone balcony fronts the second floor, and another in cast-iron the third. Above this is a large wooden overhang or gable. This was constructed in Siamese teak, originally intended to outfit a ship, which Morgan located in San Francisco.

 

The carving was undertaken by her senior carver Jules Suppo. Sara Holmes Boutelle suggests Morgan may have been inspired by a somewhat similar example at the Mission San Xavier del Bac in Arizona. The façade terminates with the bell towers, comprising the Celestial suites, the carillon towers and two cupolas.

 

The curator Victoria Kastner notes a particular feature of Casa Grande, the absence of any grand staircases. Access to the upper floors is either by elevators or stairwells in the corner turrets of the building. Many of the stairwells are undecorated and the plain, poured concrete contrasts with the richness of the decoration elsewhere.

 

The terrace in front of the entrance, named Central Plaza, has a quatrefoil pond at its center, with a statue of Galatea on a Dolphin. The statue was inherited, having been bought by Phoebe Hearst when her son was temporarily short of money.

 

The doorway from the Central Plaza into Casa Grande illustrates Morgan and Hearst's relaxed approach to combining genuine antiques with modern reproductions to achieve the effects they both desired. A 16th.-century iron gate from Spain is topped by a fanlight grille, constructed in a matching style in the 1920's by Ed Trinkeller, the castle's main ironmonger.

 

The castle made use of the latest technology. Casa Grande was wired with an early sound system, allowing guests to make music selections which were played from a Capehart phonograph located in the basement, and piped into rooms in the house through a system of speakers. Alternatively, six radio stations were available.

 

The entire estate was also equipped with 80 telephones, operated through a PBX switchboard, which was staffed 24 hours a day, and ran under the exclusive exchange 'Hacienda'.

 

Fortune recorded an example of Hearst's delighting in the ubiquitous access the system provided:

 

"A guest) fell to wondering about the result

of a ball game while seated by a campfire

with Mr Hearst, a day's ride from the castle.

'I'll tell you' volunteers Mr Hearst and,

fumbling with the rock against which he was

leaning, pulls from there a telephone, asks

for New York, and relieves his guest's curiosity".

 

The Assembly Room

 

The assembly room is the main reception room of the castle, described in 1985 by Taylor Coffman as:

 

"One of San Simeon's most

magnificent interiors".

 

The fireplace, originally from a Burgundian chateau in Jours-lès-Baigneux, is named the Great Barney Mantel, after a previous owner, Charles T. Barney, from whose estate Hearst bought it after Barney's suicide.

 

The ceiling is from an Italian palazzo. A concealed door in the paneling next to the fireplace allowed Hearst to surprise his guests by entering unannounced. The door opened off an elevator which connected with his Gothic suite on the third floor.

 

The assembly room, completed in 1926, is nearly 2,500 square feet in extent, and was described by the writer and illustrator Ludwig Bemelmans as:

 

"Looking like half of Grand

Central Station".

 

The room held some of Hearst's best tapestries. These include four from a set celebrating the Roman general Scipio Africanus, designed by Giulio Romano, and two copied from drawings by Peter Paul Rubens depicting The Triumph of Religion.

 

The need to fit the tapestries above the paneling and below the roof required the installation of the unusually low windows.

 

The room has the only piece of Victorian decorative art in the castle, the Orchid Vase lamp, made by Tiffany for the Exposition Universelle held in Paris in 1889. It was bought by Phoebe Hearst, who had the original vase converted to a lamp. William placed it in the assembly room in tribute to his mother.

 

The Refectory

 

The refectory was the only dining room in the castle, and was built between 1926 and 1927. The choir stalls which line the walls are from the La Seu d'Urgell Cathedral in Catalonia, and the silk flags mounted on the walls are Palio banners from Siena.

 

Hearst originally intended a "vaulted Moorish ceiling" for the room but, finding nothing suitable, he and Morgan settled on the Italian Renaissance example, dating from around 1600, which Hearst purchased from a dealer in Rome in 1924.

 

Victoria Kastner considered that the flat roof, with life-size carvings of saints:

 

"Strikes a discordant note of

horizontality among the vertical

lines of the room".

 

The style of the whole is Gothic, in contrast to the Renaissance approach adopted in the preceding assembly room. The refectory is said to have been Morgan's favorite interior within the castle.

 

The design of both the refectory and the assembly room was greatly influenced by the monumental architectural elements, especially the fireplaces and the choir stalls used as wainscoting, and works of art, particularly the tapestries, which Hearst determined would be incorporated into the rooms.

 

The central table provided seating for 22 in its usual arrangement of two tables, which could be extended to three or four, on the occasion of larger gatherings. The tables were sourced from an Italian monastery, and were the setting for some of the best pieces from Hearst's collection of silverware. One of the finest is a wine cooler dating from the early 18th. century and weighing 14.2 kg by the Anglo-French silversmith David Willaume.

 

The Library

 

The library is on the second floor, directly above the assembly room. The ceiling is 16th. century Spanish, and a remnant is used in the library's lobby. It comprises three separate ceilings, from different rooms in the same Spanish house, which Morgan combined into one.

 

The fireplace is the largest Italian example in the castle. Carved from limestone, it is attributed to the medieval sculptor and architect Benedetto da Maiano.

 

The library contains a collection of over 5,000 books, with another 3,700 in Hearst's study above. The majority of the library collections, including Hearst's choicest pieces from his sets of, often signed, first editions by Charles Dickens, his favorite author, were sold at sales at Parke-Bernet at 1939 and Gimbels in 1941. The library is also the location for much of Hearst's important holding of antique Greek vases.

 

The Cloisters and the Doge's Suite

 

The Cloisters form a grouping of four bedrooms above the refectory and, along with the Doge's Suite above the breakfast room, were completed in 1926. The Doge's Suite was occupied by Millicent Hearst on her rare visits to the castle.

 

The room is lined with blue silk, and has a Dutch painted ceiling, in addition to two more of Spanish origin, which was once the property of architect Stanford White.

 

Morgan also incorporated an original Venetian loggia in the suite, refashioned as a balcony. The suite leads on to Morgan's inventive North and South Duplex apartments, with sitting areas and bathrooms at entry level and bedrooms on mezzanine floors above.

 

The Gothic Suite

 

The Gothic suite was Hearst's private apartment on the third floor. He moved there in 1927. It comprises the Gothic study or library and Hearst's own South Gothic bedroom and private sitting room.

 

The ceiling of the bedroom is one of the best Hearst bought; Spanish, of the 14th. century, it was discovered by his Iberian agent Arthur Byne who also located the original frieze panels which had been detached and sold some time before.

 

The whole was installed at the castle in 1924. The space originally allocated for the study was too low to create the impression desired by Morgan and Hearst, a difficulty Morgan surmounted by raising the roof and supporting the ceiling with concrete trusses.

 

These, and the walls, were painted with frescoes by Camille Solon. Light was provided by two ranges of clerestory windows. The necessity of raising the roof to incorporate the study occasioned one of the few instances where Hearst hesitated:

 

"I telegraphed you my fear of the cost...

I imagine it would be ghastly."

 

Nevertheless Morgan urged further changes and expense. The result vindicated Morgan. The study, completed in 1931, is dominated by a portrait of Hearst at age 31, painted by his life-long friend, Orrin Peck.

 

The Celestial Suites

 

The Celestial bedrooms, with a connecting, shared, sitting room, were created between 1924 and 1926. The bell towers were raised to improve the proportions of the building, and the suites constructed in the spaces created below.

 

The relatively cramped spaces allowed no room for storage, and en-suite bathrooms were "awkwardly squeezed" into lower landings. Ludwig Bemelmans, a guest in the 1930's, recalled:

 

"There was no place to hang your

clothes, so I hung mine on wire

coat hangers that a former tenant

had left hanging on the arms of

two six-armed gold candelabra,

the rest I put on the floor".

 

The sitting room contains one of the most important paintings in Hearst's collection, Bonaparte Before the Sphinx (1868) by Jean-Léon Gérôme. The suites are linked externally by a walkway, the Celestial Bridge, which is decorated with elaborate tiling.

 

The North and South Wings

 

The North, or Billiard, and the South, or Service, wings complete the castle, and were begun in 1929.

 

The North wing houses the billiard room on the first floor, which was converted from the original breakfast room. It has a Spanish antique ceiling and a French fireplace, and contains the oldest tapestry in the castle, a Millefleur hunting scene woven in Flanders in the 15th. century.

 

The spandrel over the doorcase is decorated with a frieze of 16th. century Persian tiles depicting a battle. The 34 tiles originate from Isfahan and were purchased by Hearst at the Kevorkian sale in New York in 1922.

 

The theater, which leads off the billiard room, was used both for amateur theatricals and the showing of movies from Hearst's Cosmopolitan Studios. The theater accommodated fifty guests and had an electric keyboard that enabled the bells in the carillon towers to be played. The walls are decorated in red damask, which originally hung in the Assembly room, and feature gilded caryatids.

 

The upper stories of the North Wing were the last to be worked upon, and were never completed. Activity recommenced in 1945 and Morgan delegated the work to her assistant, Warren McClure. Many of the rooms are unfinished, but Aidala considers that the bathrooms in the wing represent first-rate examples of streamline design.

 

The Service Wing contains the kitchen. The hotel-scale units and worktops are constructed in Monel Metal, an expensive form of nickel alloy invented in 1901. The wing contains further bedroom suites, a staff dining room, and gives entry to the 9,000 square foot basement which contained a wine cellar, pantries, the boiler plant which heated the main house, and a barber shop, for the use of Hearst's guests.

 

Planned but Uncompleted Elements

 

Hearst and Morgan intended a large ballroom or cloister to connect the North and South wings at the rear of Casa Grande and unify the whole composition, but it was never undertaken.

 

In 1932, Hearst contemplated incorporating the reja (grille) he had acquired from Valladolid Cathedral in 1929 into this room. He described his vision in a letter to Morgan dated that year:

 

"A great ballroom and banqueting hall,

that is the scheme! Isn't it a pippin."

 

The letter was signed "Sincerely, Your Assistant Architect".

 

Other structures that did not develop beyond drawings and plans included two more guest houses, in English and Chinese architectural styles.

 

Collections

 

After a visit to Ansiglioni's workshop in 1889, William wrote the following in a letter to his mother:

 

"Why didn't you buy Ansiglioni's Galatea. It is

superb...I have a great notion to buy it myself,

the one thing that prevents me is a scarcity of

funds.

The man wants eight thousand dollars for the

blooming thing. I have the art fever terribly.

Queer, isn't it?

I never miss a gallery and I go and nosey about

the pictures and statuary and wish they were mine."

 

Hearst was a voracious collector of art, with the stated intention of making the castle "a museum of the best things that I can secure."

 

The dealer Joseph Duveen, from whom Hearst bought despite their mutual dislike, called him the "Great Accumulator." His robust approach to buying, particularly the purchase and removal of entire historic structures, generated considerable ill-feeling, and sometimes outright opposition.

 

William's deconstruction and removal of the 14th. century Bradenstoke Priory in England led the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings to organize a campaign which used language so violent that its posters had to be pasted over for fear of a libel suit.

 

Hearst sometimes encountered similar opposition elsewhere. In 1919 he was writing to Morgan about:

 

"The patio from Bergos (sic) which, by the

way, I own but cannot get out of Spain".

 

The dismantling of a monastery in Sacramenia, which Hearst bought in its entirety in the 1920's, saw his workmen attacked by enraged villagers.

 

Hearst's tardiness in paying his bills was another less attractive feature of his purchasing approach; in 1925 Morgan was obliged to write to Arthur Byne:

 

"Mr. Hearst accepts your

dictum – cash or nothing".

 

Some of the finest pieces from the collections of books and manuscripts, tapestries, paintings, antiquities and sculpture, amounting to about half of Hearst's total art holdings, were sold in sales in the late 1930's and early 1940's, when Hearst's publishing empire was facing financial collapse, but a great deal remains.

 

William's art buying had started when he was young and, in his tested fashion, he established a company, the International Studio Arts Corporation, as a vehicle for purchasing works and as a means of dealing with their export and import.

 

In 1975, the Hearst Corporation donated the archive of Hearst's Brooklyn warehouses, the gathering point for almost all of his European acquisitions before their dispersal to his many homes, to Long Island University.

 

As of 2015, the university has embarked on a digitization project which will ultimately see the 125 albums of records, and sundry other materials, made available online.

 

Antiquities

 

The ancient Egyptian, Greek and Roman antiquities are the oldest works in Hearst's collection. The oldest of all are the stone figures of the Egyptian goddess Sekhmet which stand on the South Esplanade below Casa Grande. They date from the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Dynasties, approximately 1550 to 1189 BC.

 

Morgan designed the pool setting for the pieces, with tiling inspired by ancient Egyptian motifs. In the courtyard of Casa del Monte is one of a total of nine Roman sarcophagi collected by Hearst, dated to 230 AD, and previously held at the Palazzo Barberini, which was acquired at the Charles T. Yerkes sale in 1910.

 

The most important element of the antiquities collection is the holding of Greek vases, on display in the second-floor library. Although 65 vases were purchased by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York after Hearst's death, those which remain at the castle still form one of the world's largest private groups. Hearst began collecting vases in 1901, and his collection was moved from his New York homes to the castle in 1935.

 

At its peak, the collection numbered over 400 pieces. The vases were placed on the tops of the bookshelves in the library, each carefully wired in place to guard against vibrations from earthquakes. At the time of Hearst's collecting, many of the vases were believed to be of Etruscan manufacture, but later scholars ascribe all of them to Greece.

 

Sculptures

 

Hearst often bought multiple lots from sales of major collections; in 1930 he purchased five antique Roman statues from the Lansdowne sale in London. Four are now in the collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and one in the Metropolitan.

 

William collected bronzes as well as marble figures; a cast of a stone original of Apollo and Daphne by Bernini, dating from around 1617, stands in the Doge's suite.

 

In addition to his classical sculptures, Hearst was content to acquire 19th. century versions, or contemporary copies of ancient works:

 

"If we cannot find the right thing

in a classic statue, we can find a

modern one".

 

He was a particular patron of Charles Cassou, and also favored the early 19th. century Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen whose Venus Victorious remains at the castle.

 

Both this, and the genuinely classical Athena from the collection of Thomas Hope, were displayed in the Assembly room, along with the Venus Italica by Antonio Canova. Other works by Thorvaldsen include the four large marble medallions in the Assembly room depicting society's virtues.

 

Two 19th. century marbles are in the anteroom to the Assembly room, Bacchante, by Frederick William MacMonnies, a copy of his bronze original, and Pygmalion and Galatea by Gérôme.

 

A monumental statue of Galatea, attributed to Leopoldo Ansiglioni and dating from around 1882, stands in the center of the pool on the Main terrace in front of Casa Grande.

 

Textiles

 

Tapestries include the Scipio set by Romano in the Assembly room, two from a set telling the Biblical story of Daniel in the Morning room, and the millefleur hunting scene in the Billiard room. The hunting scene is particularly rare, one of only "a handful from this period in the world".

 

Hearst also assembled and displayed an important collection of Navajo textiles at San Simeon, including blankets, rugs and serapes. Most were purchased from Herman Schweizer, who ran the Indian Department of the Fred Harvey Company.

 

Originally gathered at Hearst's hacienda at Jolon, they were moved to Wyntoon in 1940 before being brought to San Simeon. They were finally donated to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1942.

 

Hearst was always interested in pieces that had historical and cultural connections to the history of California and Central and Latin America. The North Wing contains two Peruvian armorial banners. Dating from the 1580's, they show the shields of Don Luis Jerónimo Fernández Cabrera y Bobadilla, Count of Chinchón and viceroy of Peru.

 

Nathaniel Burt, the composer and critic evaluated the collections at San Simeon thus:

 

"Far from being the mere kitsch that

most easterners have been led to

believe, San Simeon is full of real

beauties and treasures".

 

Paintings

 

The art collection includes works by Tintoretto, whose portrait of Alvisius Vendramin hangs in the Doge's suite, Franz Xaver Winterhalter who carried out the double portraits of Maximilian I of Mexico and his empress Carlota, located in Casa del Mar, and two portraits of Napoléon by Jean-Léon Gérôme.

 

Hearst's earliest painting, a Madonna and Child from the school of Duccio di Buoninsegna, dates from the early 14th. century. A gift from his friend, the editor Cissy Patterson, the painting hangs in Hearst's bedroom.

 

Portrait of a Woman, by Giulio Campi, hangs in a bedroom in the North Wing. In 1928 Hearst acquired the Madonna and Child with Two Angels, by Adriaen Isenbrandt.

 

The curator Taylor Coffman describes this work, which hangs in the Casa del Mar sitting room, as perhaps "San Simeon's finest painting". In 2018, a previously unattributed Annunciation in the Assembly room was identified as a work of 1690 by Bartolomé Pérez.

 

The Gardens and Grounds of Hearst Castle

 

The Esplanade, a curving, paved walkway, connects the main house with the guest cottages; Hearst described it as:

 

"Giving a finished touch to the big

house, to frame it in, as it were."

 

Morgan designed the pedestrianized pavement with great care, to create a coup de théâtre for guests, desiring:

 

"A strikingly noble and saississant effect

be impressed upon everyone on arrival."

 

Hearst concurred:

 

"Heartily approve. I certainly want that

saississant effect. I don't know what it

is, but I think we ought to have at least

one such on the premises".

 

A feature of the gardens are the lampposts topped with alabaster globes; modeled on "janiform hermae", the concept was Hearst's. The Swan lamps, remodeled with alabaster globe lights to match the hermae, were designed by Morgan's chief draftsman, Thaddeus Joy.

 

Others who influenced Hearst and Morgan in their landscaping include Charles Adams Platt, an artist and gardener who had made a particular study of the layout and planting of Italian villas. Also Nigel Keep, Hearst's orchardman, who worked at San Simeon from 1922 to 1947, and Albert Webb, Hearst's English head gardener who was at the hill from 1922 to 1948.

 

The Neptune Pool

 

The Neptune Pool, "the most sumptuous swimming pool on earth", is located near the edge of the hilltop. It is enclosed by a retaining wall and underpinned by a framework of concrete struts to allow for movement in the event of earthquakes.

 

The pool is often cited as an example of Hearst's changeability; it was reconstructed three times before he was finally satisfied. Originally begun as an ornamental pond, it was first expanded in 1924 as Millicent Hearst desired a swimming pool.

 

It was enlarged again during 1926–1928 to accommodate Cassou's statuary. Finally, in 1934, it was extended again to act as a setting for a Roman temple, in part original and in part comprising elements from other structures which Hearst transported from Europe and had reconstructed at the site.

 

The pool holds 345,000 gallons of water, and is equipped with seventeen shower and changing rooms. It was heated by oil-fired burners. In early 2014, the pool was drained due to drought conditions and leakage.

 

After a long-term restoration project to fix the leaking, the pool was refilled in August 2018. The restoration of the pool was recognized with a Preservation Design Award for Craftsmanship from the California Preservation Foundation in 2019.

 

The pool is well-supplied with sculpture, particularly works by Charles Cassou. His centerpiece, opposite the Roman temple, is The Birth of Venus. An even larger sculptural grouping, depicting Neptune in a chariot drawn by four horses, was commissioned to fill the empty basin above the Venus. Although carved, it was never installed.

 

Roman Pool

 

The Roman Pool, constructed under the tennis courts, provided an indoor alternative to the Neptune pool. Originally mooted by Hearst in 1927, construction did not begin until 1930, and the pool was not completed until 1935.

 

Hearst initially wanted the pool to be fed by salt-water, but the design challenges proved to be insuperable. A disastrous attempt to fulfill Hearst's desires by pouring 20 tons of washed rock salt into the pool saw the disintegration of the cast-iron heat exchanger and pump.

 

Inspiration for the mosaic decoration came from the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia in Ravenna. The tiles are of Murano glass, with gold-leaf, and were designed by Solon and manufactured in San Francisco.

 

Although a pool of "spectacular beauty", it was little used as it was located in a less-visited part of the complex.

 

The Pergola and Zoo

 

Two other major features of the grounds were the pergola and the zoo. The pergola, an ornamental bridleway, runs to the west of Casa Grande. Comprising concrete columns, covered in espaliered fruit trees, Morgan ensured that it was built to a height sufficient to allow Hearst, "a tall man with a tall hat on a tall horse", to ride unimpeded down its mile-long length.

 

Plans for a zoo, to house Hearst's large collection of wild animals, were drawn up by Morgan, and included an elephant house and separate enclosures for antelopes, camels, zebras and bears. The zoo was never constructed, but a range of shelters and pits were built, sited on Orchard Hill.

 

The Estate

 

At the height of Hearst's ownership, the estate totaled more than 250,000 acres. W. C. Fields commented on the extent of the estate while on a visit:

 

"Wonderful place to bring up children.

You can send them out to play. They

won't come back till they're grown."

 

23 miles to the north of the castle, Morgan constructed the Milpitas Hacienda, a ranch-house that acted as a trianon to the main estate, and as a focus for riding expeditions.

 

Appraisals of Hearst Castle

 

As with Hearst himself, Hearst Castle and its collections have been the subject of considerable criticism. From the 1940's the view of Hearst and Morgan's most important joint creation as the phantasmagorical Xanadu of Orson Welles's imagination has been commonplace.

 

Some literary depictions were gently mocking; P. G. Wodehouse's novel of 1953, The Return of Jeeves has a character describe her stay:

 

"I remember visiting San Simeon once,

and there was a whole French Abbey

lying on the grass."

 

John Steinbeck's unnamed description was certainly of Hearst:

 

"They's a fella, newspaper fella near the

coast, got a million acres. Fat, sof' fella

with little mean eyes an' a mouth like a

ass-hole".

 

The writer John Dos Passos went further, explicitly referencing Hearst in the third volume of his 1938 U.S.A trilogy:

 

"The emperor of newsprint retired to his

fief of San Simeon where he built an

Andalusian palace and there spends his

last years amid the relaxing adulations

of screen stars, admen, screenwriters,

publicity-men, columnists.

Until he dies, a spent Caesar grown old

with spending."

 

The English architectural writer Clive Aslet was little more complimentary about the castle. Disliking its "unsympathetic texture of poured concrete", he described it as "best seen from a distance".

 

The unfinished, and unresolved, rear façade of Casa Grande has been the subject of particular negative comment; Carleton Winslow and Nicola Frye, in their history from 1980, suggest:

 

"The flanking North and South wings

compete rather disastrously with the

central doge's suite block."

 

Others questioned the castle's very existence; the architect Witold Rybczynski asked:

 

"What is this Italian villa doing on the

Californian Coastal Range? A costly

piece of theatrical décor that ignores

its context and lacks meaning."

 

Hearst's collections were similarly disparaged. The art historian William George Constable echoed Joseph Duveen when he assessed Hearst as:

 

"Not a collector but a gigantic

and voracious magpie."

 

Later decades after Hearst's death have seen a more sympathetic and appreciative evaluation of his collections, and the estate he and Morgan created to house them.

 

The director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Thomas Hoving, although listing Hearst only at number 83 in his evaluation of America's top 101 art collectors, wrote:

 

"Hearst is being reevaluated. He may

have been much more of a collector

than was thought at the time of his

death."

 

The curator Mary Levkoff, in her 2008 study, Hearst the Collector, contends that he was indeed a collector, describing the four separate "staggeringly important" collections of antique vases, tapestries, armor and silver which Hearst had brought together.

 

She wrote of the challenge of bringing their artistic merit to light from under the shadow of his own reputation.

 

Of Morgan's building, its stock has risen with the re-evaluation of her standing and accomplishments, which saw her inducted into the California Hall of Fame in 2008. She became the first woman to receive the American Institute of Architects Gold Medal in 2014, and to have an obituary in The New York Times as recently as 2019.

 

The writer John Julius Norwich recorded his recantation after a visit to the castle:

 

"I went prepared to mock; I remained

to marvel. Hearst Castle is a palace in

every sense of the word."

 

Final Thoughts From William Randolph Hearst

 

"News is something somebody doesn't

want printed; all else is advertising.”

 

"Don't be afraid to make a mistake,

your readers might like it."

The above quote is that of William Herschel who observed, NGC 6638, in 1814. This dense small Globular Cluster was my surprise for the night. I believe that if it were not stuck between the two large Globular Clusters M22 and M28 that it would be more observed and appreciated than it is.

 

NGC 6638 is also easy to find since it is only ¾ of a degree from the bright star Lambda Sagittarii and the cluster’s bright core is easily seen in the same low-power eyepiece as the star. In the drawing, Lambda Sagittarii is the bright star at the edge of the drawing at 9:00 o’clock.

 

Although the brightest stars in the cluster shine at magnitude 14 and thus below the resolution of my 110mm refractor, I could still see that this globular had a complicated internal structure. Its core seemed knotted with subtle extended arms of unresolved stars radiating from its center. I found this globular mesmerizing for it seemed to not let me visually solidify its core, but instead seemed to dance gracefully to a celestial rhythm that I could not hear.

 

To see additional astronomy drawings visit: www.orrastrodrawing.com

 

Tate Modern - a strikingly beautiful and unusual building with a panoramic viewing gallery on the 10th floor.

 

A blue filter was used here to bring out the detail in the clouds.

 

Our photo group went to London for a day of pure B&W image taking.

 

Whilst there, we were made aware of a huge row over privacy.

 

To the south of the Tate, there are some luxury high rise apartments with full height glass external walls, which cost between £4.5 - 6.5million each. However, the tenth floor viewing gallery at the Tate allows people to see directly into these luxury apartments.

 

There is a huge campaign for action to be taken to preserve the privacy of the owners of the luxury apartments.

 

The Tate design complies with Planning requirements for the "overlooking" aspect between new and existing buildings.

 

The dispute remains unresolved.

 

www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/sep/21/net-curtains...

 

Do you think the architect left plans for the builders with a crease in them and that's how the builders built it?

  

Anthraxolite from the Precambrian of Ontario, Canada.

 

Anthraxolite is a carbon-rich rock that has historically been mistaken for anthracite coal. This example is from Ontario's Sudbury Impact Basin, which formed about 1.85 billion years ago. In the area, anthraxolite veins occur intruding somewhat metamorposed sedimentary rocks of the Onwatin Formation. Like anthracite, anthraxolite will burn in a fire, but leaves much ash after burning (ash is microscopic mineral matter in coal or coal-like rocks that does not burn).

 

The geologic origin of anthraxolite in the Sudbury Basin is unresolved - many hypotheses have been proposed. Published analyses of anthraxolite veins suggest they formed by metamorphic mobilizaation of carbon from the underlying Black Member of the Onaping Formation. Mobilization apparently occurred near the end of the Penokean Orogeny, at about 1.7 billion years ago. The carbon in rocks of the Black Member is thought to be derived from microbial blooms in the water-filled Sudury Basin, not long after the impact event.

 

Geologic context: anthraxolite-rich vein in the Onwatin Formation, middle Whitewater Group, upper Paleoproterozoic; vein emplacement apparently at ~1.7 Ga

 

Locality: undisclosed site in the Sudbury Impact Basin, southeastern Ontario, southeastern Canada

 

Lake Bodom on a foggy October morning in Espoo, Finland.

 

Lake Bodom is notorious for murders that occurred in 1960, which left unresolved.

 

Photo taken with Sony NEX-5 and SEL16F28 pancake lens.

Blue Duck (Hymenolaimus malacorhynchos), Turangi, New Zealand

 

Ebird checklist:

ebird.org/view/checklist/S42282530

 

The blue duck (Hymenolaimus malacorhynchos) is a member of the duck, goose and swan family Anatidae endemic to New Zealand. It is the only member of the genus Hymenolaimus. Its exact taxonomic status is still unresolved, but it appears to be most closely related to the tribe Anatini, the dabbling ducks. The Māori name, sometimes used in English, is whio (pronounced "fee-oh"), which is an onomatopoetic rendition of the males' call.

 

Source: Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_duck

Along with Mister Mxyzptlk, one of the ultimate expressions of writer's fiat!

 

Writer's Fiat, or Author's Fiat, can be innovative and exciting writing, or the mark of lazy writing that will frustrate you with illogical story events.

 

It is basically an event or shift in the narrative that happens, not because previous events and direction can be seen to logically lead towards it, but just because the author decided so.

 

This unexpected, and nonsensical, and often unappreciated plot device can be known as a deus ex machina, while the impetus itself sources from Writer's Fiat.

 

Reaching the conclusion of a narrative, if the writer realizes there are unresolved elements or apparent contradictions that can create significant plot-holes, the lazy writer, rather than going back to rework the narrative, will simply introduce some new element that "explains away" the questions.

 

Or it may be that the narrative itself is a bit of a challenge and the writer is feeling lazy. Particularly in a situation where, month in and month out, you have to come up with a plausible adversity for a protagonist that is quite powerful, resourceful, and adept.

 

How to have a monthly challenge for a character like Superman? Who, or what, can really challenge the Man of Steel? One way of course is to threaten his far weaker loved ones, witness Lois tied to train tracks every other issue. OR, simply create a character like Mister Mxyzptlk who can do anything at any moment, with no limitations.

 

Or, with the Fantastic Four, introduce the Impossible Man whose very name is a wink at the writer's fiat. WIth these characters, things happen for no reason other than the author wants them to.

 

Now, obviously, with stories, everything happens for that reason, but Writer's Fiat removes the need to think out the plot with all of its interconnected repercussions. No need to worry about the pesky needs of logical cause-and-effect. It just happens, the story moves along and is quickly done. A quick day's 'work', and the author is free to move on.

 

═════════════════════════════════════

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

  

M33 Triangulum Galaxy

 

The first thing to realise is that at my field of view the M33 galaxy is much smaller than the galaxy. This means that right to the edge of this image contains the galaxy only and no background space, this is why there is not black sky and the resultant image looks slightly speckled due to the unresolved stars. I could do with much more luminance data on this object which I may get next year and then reprocess. This version is slightly brightened compared to V1 also posted and shows more of the outlying structure of the slightly unresolved arms.

 

File - M33_LRGB_Int V4 Curves LHE Hist MLT Curves.jpg

 

Description - This is the first serious attempt at a galaxy through the scope now I have the tertiary baffle fitted. I have now added the colour to the original luminance frames that I stacked 1 year ago! I'm quite pleased with he result. I lost a bit of the image due to a slight rotation in the RGB frames from that of the luminance. However the galaxy is large and fills my chip. I would have to mosaic to fit it all in. I thought I was having problems removing noise and finally realised it was small unresolved stars across the entire galaxy, after checking many other photos on the web and some from the Subaru telescope.

 

QSI 683 with no filter

 

OTA - Officina Stellare 305 RiDK 12" Corrected Dall Kirkham

 

Mount - Paramount ME II

 

Total Exp - 8.5 hrs

L - 30 x 300s

RGB - 12 x 600s each filter

 

Hampshire, England, UK

 

93m above sea level

 

Luminance Taken 8th December 2015

RGB Taken 24th and 28th November 2016

Processed 26th & 27th December 2016

seen from Empire State Building

 

gesehen vom Empire State Building

 

Jersey City is the second-most populous city in the U.S. state of New Jersey, after Newark. It is the county seat of Hudson County as well as the county's largest city. The 2020 United States census showed that the city's population was 292,449, ranking as the 71st-most-populous incorporated place in the nation. The 2020 census represents an increase of 18.1% from the 2010 United States Census, when the city's population stood at 247,597.

 

After a peak population of 316,715 measured in the 1930 census, the city's population saw a half-century-long decline to 223,532 in the 1980 census. Since then, the city's population has rebounded, with the 2020 population reflecting an increase of 44,852 (18.1%) from the 247,597 counted in the 2010 Census, which had an increase of 7,542 (+3.1%) from the 240,055 counted in the 2000 census, which had in turn increased by 11,518 (+5.0%) from the 228,537 counted in the 1990 census.

 

Part of the New York metropolitan area, Jersey City is bounded on the east by the Hudson River and Upper New York Bay and on the west by the Hackensack River and Newark Bay. A port of entry, with 30.7 miles (49.4 km) of waterfront and extensive rail infrastructure and connectivity, the city is an important transportation terminus and distribution and manufacturing center for the Port of New York and New Jersey. Jersey City shares significant mass transit connections with Manhattan. Redevelopment of the Jersey City waterfront has made the city one of the largest centers of banking and finance in the United States and has led to the district and city being nicknamed Wall Street West.

 

History

 

Lenape and New Netherland

 

The land comprising what is now Jersey City was inhabited by the Lenape, a collection of tribes (later called Delaware Indian). In 1609, Henry Hudson, seeking an alternate route to East Asia, anchored his small vessel Halve Maen (English: Half Moon) at Sandy Hook, Harsimus Cove and Weehawken Cove, and elsewhere along what was later named the North River. After spending nine days surveying the area and meeting its inhabitants, he sailed as far north as Albany. The contemporary flag of the city is a variation on the Prince's Flag from the Netherlands. The stripes are blue, white and yellow, with the center of the flag showing the city seal, depicting Hudson's ship, the Half Moon, and other modern vessels.

 

By 1621, the Dutch West India Company was organized to manage this new territory and in June 1623, New Netherland became a Dutch province, with headquarters in New Amsterdam. Michael Reyniersz Pauw received a land grant as patroon on the condition that he would establish a settlement of not fewer than fifty persons within four years. He chose the west bank of the North River (Hudson River) and purchased the land from the Lenape. This grant is dated November 22, 1630, and is the earliest known conveyance for what are now Hoboken and Jersey City. Pauw, however, was an absentee landlord who neglected to populate the area and was obliged to sell his holdings back to the Company in 1633. That year, a house was built at Communipaw for Jan Evertsen Bout, superintendent of the colony, which had been named Pavonia (the Latinized form of Pauw's name, which means "peacock"). Shortly after, another house was built at Harsimus Cove and became the home of Cornelius Van Vorst, who had succeeded Bout as superintendent, and whose family would become influential in the development of the city. Relations with the Lenape deteriorated, in part because of the colonialist's mismanagement and misunderstanding of the indigenous people, and led to series of raids and reprisals and the virtual destruction of the settlement on the west bank. During Kieft's War, approximately eighty Lenapes were killed by the Dutch in a massacre at Pavonia on the night of February 25, 1643.

 

Scattered communities of farmsteads characterized the Dutch settlements at Pavonia: Communipaw, Harsimus, Paulus Hook, Hoebuck, Awiehaken, Pamrapo, and other lands "behind Kill van Kull". The village of Bergen (located inside a palisaded garrison) was established on what is now Bergen Square in 1660 and officially chartered on September 5, 1661, as the state's first local civil government. As a result, it is regarded as the first permanent settlement and oldest municipality in what would become the state of New Jersey. In addition, the oldest surviving houses in Jersey City are of Dutch origin including the Newkirk House (1690),[40] the Van Vorst Farmhouse (1740), and the Van Wagenen House (1740).

 

19th century

 

In 1804, Alexander Hamilton, now a private citizen, was focused on increasing manufacturing in the greater New York City area. To that end, he helped to create the Associates of the Jersey Company which would lay the groundwork for modern Jersey City through private development. The consortium behind the company were predominantly Federalists who, like Hamilton, had been swept out of power in the election of 1800 by Thomas Jefferson and other Democratic-Republicans. Large tracts of land in Paulus Hook were purchased by the company with the titles owned by Anthony Dey, who was from a prominent old Dutch family, and his two cousins, Colonel Richard Varick, the former mayor of New York City (1789 - 1801), and Jacob Radcliff, a Justice of the New York Supreme Court who would later become mayor of New York City (twice) from 1810 to 1811 and again from 1815 - 1818. They laid out the city squares and streets that still characterize the neighborhood, giving them names also seen in Lower Manhattan or after war heroes (Grove, Varick, Mercer, Wayne, Monmouth and Montgomery among them).

 

Despite Hamilton's untimely death in August 1804, the Association carried on, though the enterprise was mired in a legal dispute between New York City and the state of New Jersey over who owned the waterfront. The unresolved dispute would continue until the Treaty of 1834 where New York City formally ceded control of Jersey City to New Jersey. Over that time though, the Jersey Company applied to the New Jersey Legislature to incorporate the Town of Jersey. The legislature enacted "An Act to incorporate the City of Jersey, in the County of Bergen" on January 28, 1820. Under the provision, five freeholders (including Varick, Dey, and Radcliff) were to be chosen as "the Board of Selectmen of Jersey City," thereby establishing the first governing body of the emerging municipality. The city was reincorporated on January 23, 1829, and again on February 22, 1838, at which time it became completely independent of North Bergen and was given its present name. On February 22, 1840, it became part of the newly created Hudson County.

 

During the 19th century, former slaves reached Jersey City on one of the four routes of the Underground Railroad that led to the city.

 

Soon after the Civil War, the idea arose of uniting all of the towns of Hudson County east of the Hackensack River into one municipality. A bill was approved by the state legislature on April 2, 1869, with a special election to be held on October 5, 1869. An element of the bill provide that only contiguous towns could be consolidated. While a majority of the voters across the county approved the merger, the only municipalities that had approved the consolidation plan and that adjoined Jersey City were Hudson City and Bergen City. The consolidation began on March 17, 1870, taking effect on May 3, 1870. Three years later the present outline of Jersey City was completed when Greenville agreed to merge into the Greater Jersey City.

 

In the late 1880s, three passenger railroad terminals opened in Jersey City next to the Hudson River (Pavonia Terminal,[52] Exchange Place and Communipaw). Tens of millions of immigrants passed through these stations as they made their way westward from Ellis Island into the United States.[53] The railroads transformed the geography of the city by building the Erie Cut as well as several large freight rail yards.

 

20th and 21st centuries

 

Jersey City was a dock and manufacturing town for much of the 19th and 20th centuries. Much like New York City, Jersey City has always been a destination for new immigrants to the United States. In its heyday before World War II, German, Irish, and Italian immigrants found work at Colgate, Chloro or Dixon Ticonderoga. In 1908, the first permanent disinfection system for drinking water in the U.S. was installed on the water supply for the city by John L. Leal. The Hudson Tubes opened in 1911, allowing passengers to take the train to Manhattan as an alternative to the extensive ferry system. The Black Tom explosion occurred on July 30, 1916, as an act of sabotage on American ammunition supplies by German agents to prevent the materials from being used by the Allies in World War I.

 

From 1917 to 1947, Jersey City was governed by Mayor Frank Hague. Originally elected as a candidate supporting reform in governance, the Jersey City History website says his name is "synonymous with the early twentieth century urban American blend of political favoritism and social welfare known as bossism". Hague ran the city with an iron fist while, at the same time, molding governors, United States senators, and judges to his whims. Boss Hague was known to be loud and vulgar, but dressed in a stylish manner, earning him the nickname "King Hanky-Panky". In his later years in office, Hague would often dismiss his enemies as "reds" or "commies". Hague lived like a millionaire, despite having an annual salary that never exceeded $8,500. He was able to maintain a fourteen-room duplex apartment in Jersey City, a suite at the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan, and a palatial summer home in the seaside community of Deal, and travel to Europe yearly in the royal suites of the best ocean liners.

 

After Hague's retirement from politics, a series of mayors including John V. Kenny, Thomas J. Whelan and Thomas F. X. Smith attempted to take control of Hague's organization, usually under the mantle of political reform. None were able to duplicate the level of power held by Hague, but the city and the county remained notorious for political corruption for years. By the 1970s the city experienced a period of urban decline that saw many of its wealthy residents leave for the suburbs, due to rising crime, civil unrest, political corruption, and economic hardship. From 1950 to 1980, Jersey City lost 75,000 residents, and from 1975 to 1982, it lost 5,000 jobs, or 9% of its workforce.

 

Beginning in the 1980s, development of the waterfront in an area previously occupied by rail yards and factories helped to stir the beginnings of a renaissance for Jersey City. The rapid construction of numerous high-rise buildings increased the population and led to the development of the Exchange Place financial district, also known as "Wall Street West", one of the largest financial centers in the United States. Large financial institutions such as UBS, Goldman Sachs, Chase Bank, Citibank, and Merrill Lynch occupy prominent buildings on the Jersey City waterfront, some of which are among the tallest buildings in New Jersey. Simultaneous to this building boom, the light-rail network was developed.[67] With 18,000,000 square feet (1,700,000 m2) of office space as of 2011, it has the nation's 12th-largest downtown.

 

City Ordinance 13.097, passed in October 2013, requires employers with ten or more employees to offer up to five paid sick days a year. The bill impacts all businesses employing workers who work at least 80 hours a calendar year in Jersey City.

 

Geography

 

Jersey City is the seat of Hudson County and the second-most-populous city in New Jersey. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city had a total area of 21.13 square miles (54.74 km2), including 14.74 square miles (38.19 km2) of land and 6.39 square miles (16.55 km2) of water (30.24%). As of the 1990 census, it had the smallest land area of the 100 most populous cities in the United States.

 

Jersey City is bordered to the east by the Hudson River, to the north by Secaucus, North Bergen, Union City and Hoboken, to the west, across the Hackensack River, by Kearny and Newark, and to the south by Bayonne.

 

Jersey City includes most of Ellis Island (the parts awarded to New Jersey by the 1998 U.S. Supreme Court in the case of New Jersey v. New York). Liberty Island is surrounded by Jersey City waters in the Upper New York Bay. Given their proximity and accessibility by rapid transit to Manhattan, Jersey City and Hudson County are sometimes referred to as New York City's Sixth borough.

 

Jersey City (and most of Hudson County) is located on the peninsula known as Bergen Neck, with a waterfront on the east at the Hudson River and New York Bay and on the west at the Hackensack River and Newark Bay. Its north–south axis corresponds with the ridge of Bergen Hill, the emergence of the Hudson Palisades. The city is the site of some of the earliest European settlements in North America, which grew into each other rather than expanding from a central point. This growth and the topography greatly influenced the development of the sections of the city and its various neighborhoods.

 

(Wikipedia)

 

Jersey City ist eine Stadt im US-Bundesstaat New Jersey in den Vereinigten Staaten mit rund 292.000 Einwohnern (Volkszählung 2020, U.S. Census Bureau). Der Ort ist Verwaltungssitz (County Seat) des Hudson County.

 

Geographie

 

Die Stadt liegt am Hudson River und an der Upper New York Bay in direkter Nachbarschaft zu New York City nördlich von Bayonne und südlich von Hoboken, etwa 25 Meter über dem Meeresspiegel. Die geographischen Koordinaten sind 40,71 Grad nördlicher Breite und 74,06 Grad westlicher Länge.

 

Nach den Angaben des United States Census Bureaus hat die Stadt eine Gesamtfläche von 54,7 km², wovon 38,6 km² Land und 16,1 km² (29,37 %) Wasser sind.

 

Geschichte

 

Kolonialzeit

 

Der Bereich des heutigen Jersey City war ein Siedlungsgebiet der Lenni-Lenape-Indianer, die auch als Delawaren bekannt sind. Die ersten europäischen Siedler erreichten dieses Gebiet nach dem Kapitän Henry Hudson mit der Halve Maen das Gebiet von Sandy Hook flussaufwärts des North River, der später den Namen Hudson River erhielt, erkundet hatte. Als Folge davon kam dieses Gebiet unter die Verwaltung der niederländischen Kolonie Nieuw Nederland. Aus dieser Ära haben sich einige Gebäude der Stadt erhalten. Dazu gehören unter anderem das Van Vorst House, das Newkirk House und das Van Wagenen House. Sie gehören zu den ältesten Gebäuden im Bundesstaat New Jersey. Nachdem die Kolonie in den Besitz der Engländer überging blieb das Stadtgebiet auch während des Unabhängigkeitskrieges in der Hand der Briten, daran änderte auch die Überraschenden Einnahme des Forts bei Paulus Hook nichts. In der Nacht des 19. August 1779 konnte Light Horse Harry Lee das Fort einnehmen und Dutzende Gefangene machen, bevor er sich vor Tagesanbruch zurückziehen musste.

 

Am 10. Dezember 2019 kam es zu einem mutmaßlich antisemitischen Anschlag in Jersey City, bei dem sechs Menschen ums Leben gekommen sind.

 

(Wikipedia)

NGC 1514 (Crystal Ball Nebula), Taurus

 

NGC1514 is a planetary nebula in Taurus, near the Perseus constellation border. When discovered by W. Herschel in 1790, the object was described as "a most singular phenomenon" consisting of a single star "surrounded with a faintly luminous atmosphere." It led Herschel to consider that some nebulae might be composed of gas instead of a multitude of unresolved stars. Unlike Abell 39 which is almost perfectly spherical and homogeneous [ www.flickr.com/photos/140097441@N02/51279810091/in/photos... ], NGC 1514 consists of two distorted shells filled with densities and cavities, 2.35 arcmin in diameter, and a faint, diffuse halo, about 3 arcmin in diameter. Infrared imaging by NASA's WISE Observatory also shows two large rings in the configuration of number 8, or an hour-glass, formed where the central star ejecta collide with a large surrounding molecular and dust cloud [ arxiv.org/abs/2105.01495 ]. The nebula is 9.43 in visual apparent magnitude, and is thought to be expanding from the central star at 25 km/s. Distance estimates vary between 650 and 2,200 light years, but approximately 800 ly appears most likely.

 

Planetary nebulae form when red giant stars of intermediate mass, 0.8-8 solar, run out of central nuclear fuel, and gravitationally collapse into white dwarfs, ejecting their outer layers into surrounding space. The expanding gas shell fluoresces due to the ultraviolet energy emitted by the central star, and remains visible for several tens of thousands of years before diffusing into space. Another mechanism which generates planetary nebulae involves a binary star system composed of a red giant and an orbiting white dwarf, which continuously accretes matter from the atmosphere of the red giant, and ejects a significant portion into interstellar space. Such a system, thought to be at the center of NGC 1514, results in multiple deformed gas shells, speckled with knots, densities, cavities, and rings, often further perturbed by magnetic fields and interactions with surrounding molecular and dust clouds.

  

Harrier XW175 was unique as a military aircraft as it spent all of its working life at RAE Bedford and Boscombe Down in support of innovative STOVL research programmes. XW175, a two-seat second development batch T2 aircraft, first flew in 1969. It was delivered to RAE Bedford from BAe in February 1975. The aircraft extended the VTOL legacy at RAE Bedford following the Bedstead and the Short's SC1, and operated in research and development tasks for future STOVL concepts.

 

In the early 1970’s RAE was tasked by MoD to enable Sea Harriers to recover to a vertical landing on a ship at night in poor visibility. XW175 was allocated as the trials aircraft and thus began its illustrious 38 year research career at RAE Bedford and then post 1996 at Boscombe Down.

 

During 1977/78 two sea trials were completed with HMS Hermes. The research programmes included recovery to the ship using MADGE guidance, Head Up Display symbology, ski-jump launch, auto-stabiliser and autopilot development, pilot work-load measurements using heart rate measurements and later Forward Looking Infra Red vision demonstrations. The aircraft is illustrated on the deck of HMS Hermes during these trials.

 

In the early 1980’s, studies into future advanced STOVL aircraft concepts, as a planned replacement for the Harrier, indicated that flight control at low speed and hover would be more complex than the Harrier. This situation started a research programme into novel pilot control methods to address ASTOVL control and was led by XW175. The basic idea was that the pilot's control of the aircraft was to be as similar as possible to conventional aircraft thus significantly reducing type conversion time for pilots and the training costs.

 

To test the design principles the aircraft had to be converted to a fly-by-wire aircraft such that digital techniques could be implemented. The aircraft modifications were made at the College of Aeronautics, Cranfield, The installations provided a full authority fly-by-wire system with links to the aerodynamic surface actuators and the engine thrust and thrust vector control actuation. It retained the basic mechanical control system to provide flight safety and meet airworthiness requirements. This approach allowed software to be introduced without having to address the rigour required to meet the full flight safety standards of fly-by-wire aircraft. The aircraft was also fitted with the MODAS recording system and a telemetry system for trials monitoring. The aircraft became known as the Vectored thrust Aircraft Advanced Control (VAAC).

 

Over the period 1986-2004, several different control and safety concepts were developed with UK Universities and Industry. Simulation played a major role in concept testing and the Bedford Advanced Flight Simulator with its large motion capability was critical for this task. Concept designs were assessed against a range of flight specific tasks prior to flight trials. The most important task was the ability to land vertically on a rolling, pitching and heaving ship deck which was where the Bedford Advanced Flight Simulator with its visual and motion systems provided a risk free and realistic testing environment. This method also provided the confidence to proceed to flight trials and ultimately the first ever deck landing with what became known as the 'Unified' control technique.

 

The implementation allowed an untrained Harrier pilot to fly the aircraft like a conventional aircraft with the addition that there were no restrictions due to the conventional wing stall speed. Thus it made possible the continued control of the aircraft down to zero airspeed with the wing lift blending from aerodynamic control seamlessly to direct lift control from the engine without any additional effort required from the pilot, unlike the conventional Harrier. Initially the technique was not well received by the majority of experienced Harrier pilots.

 

Many further assessments were to slowly change the mind set with much discussion in two pilot camps as to the pros and cons of the technique. Between the mid 1980's to mid 1990's RAE collaborated with NASA Ames research centre into the application of advanced digital control techniques to support ASTOVL aircraft concepts. This joint platform provided not only an excellent exchange of ideas between UK and US pilots and scientists but also promoted pilot debate on the merits of such advanced control methods. Pilot acceptability remained unresolved up to the early part of the Joint Strike Fighter programme. Then the Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) contribution to the programme through the JSF Program Office (JPO) became significant through a joint targeted programme in support of the JSF STOVL variant (Lockheed Martin F-35B).

 

In 2002 the Bedford Unified control concept was selected for the JSF STOVL variant. JSF BF-01 is illustrated opposite under the flight control of the Bedford Unified control method. XW175 was also part of the Empire Test Pilots School's training syllabus for a few years at this time.

 

The JPO continued to support further STOVL developments with several ship trials with XW175 and HMS Illustrious, HMS Invincible and the French carrier Charles de Gaulle. These trials introduced guidance techniques for automatic recovery along side a ship with an automatic vertical landing capability, some 30 years after the original HMS Hermes trials with XW175 in 1977 and some 35 years after the certification of Civil automatic landing systems back in the BLEU days. Technology advancements had bridged this time period and the gradual acceptance of the new control concepts.

 

With the established STOVL flight control standard, XW175 in its new livery continued to support JSF recovery requirements to ships with a 60 knot airspeed approach and landing method referred to as 'Ship Rolling Vertical Landing' (SRVL). This approach speed provided JSF with ship recovery flexibility as a percentage of wing lift at this airspeed would offset engine direct lift and enhance safety margins.

 

In conjunction with this programme ship deck lighting was developed for poor visibility and night recovery to ships. This programme produced the new 'Bedford Array' of deck lights to provide an unambiguous touch down point irrespective of the ship deck motion. The 'Bedford Array' with SRVL provided an effective and alternative solution to ship recovery at night in poor visibility and hence operational flexibility.

 

Having conducted its last research trial in support of JSF development at Boscombe Down on 18 November 2008, XW175’s final resting place remains to be resolved. BAHG has expressed strong interest in bringing the aircraft back to Bedford, its spiritual home. It is to be hoped that an appropriate resting place can be found for this illustrious aircraft of the Harrier fleet, but which became so unique providing the MOD with many products over its lifetime due to the combined efforts of all the pilots, scientific staff and engineers who had the great privilege to work with her.

“Listen, their cruelty towards you has nothing to do with you. It has to do with how cruel the world has been to them. It has to do with their inability to deal with their pain. It has to do with their unresolved trauma.”

― Nida Awadia

The Postcard

 

A postally unused postcard that was published in 1991 by Impact of Pittsburg, California. The card, which has a divided back, was designed and distributed in the USA, and printed in Korea on recycled paper. The photography was by Dean Hurd.

 

Hearst Castle - The Four Images

 

The following has been printed on the divided back of the card:

 

'Top Left -- William Randolph Hearst

and architect Julia Morgan review

plans on site - Courtesy Boston

Archives.

 

Top Right -- One of many early sketches

by Julia Morgan of Casa Grande --

Courtesy Special Collections, Cal Poly.

 

Bottom Left -- Casa Grande and the fourth

floor Celestial Suite under construction in

1924.

 

Bottom Right -- Aerial View of Hearst

Castle as it looks today.'

 

Hearst Castle

 

Hearst Castle, known formally as La Cuesta Encantada ("The Enchanted Hill"), is an estate in San Simeon, located on the Central Coast of California. Conceived by William Randolph Hearst, the publishing tycoon, and his architect Julia Morgan, the castle was built between 1919 and 1947.

 

George Bernard Shaw described Hearst Castle as:

 

"What God would have built

if he had had the money."

 

Today, Hearst Castle is a museum open to the public as a California State Park and registered as a National Historic Landmark and California Historical Landmark.

 

George Hearst, William Randolph Hearst's father, had purchased the original 40,000-acre (162 km2) estate in 1865 and Camp Hill, the site for the future Hearst Castle, was used for family camping vacations during Hearst's youth.

 

In 1919 William inherited $11,000,000 (equivalent to $172,000,000 in 2021) and estates, including the land at San Simeon. He used his fortune to further develop his media empire of newspapers, magazines and radio stations, the profits from which supported a lifetime of building and collecting.

 

Within a few months of Phoebe Hearst's death, he had commissioned Morgan to:

 

"Build something a little more

comfortable up on the hill."

 

This was the genesis of the present castle. Morgan was an architectural pioneer:

 

"America's first truly independent

female architect."

 

She was the first woman to study architecture at the School of Beaux-Arts in Paris, the first to have her own architectural practice in California, and the first female winner of the American Institute of Architects' Gold Medal.

 

Julia worked in close collaboration with Hearst for over twenty years, and the castle at San Simeon is her best-known creation.

 

In the Roaring Twenties and into the 1930's, Hearst Castle reached its social peak. Originally intended as a family home for Hearst, his wife Millicent and their five sons, by 1925 he and Millicent had effectively separated and he held court at San Simeon with his mistress, the actress Marion Davies.

 

Their guest list comprised most of the Hollywood stars of the period; Charlie Chaplin, Cary Grant, the Marx Brothers, Greta Garbo, Buster Keaton, Mary Pickford, Jean Harlow and Clark Gable all visited, some on multiple occasions.

 

Political luminaries encompassed Calvin Coolidge and Winston Churchill, while other notables included Charles Lindbergh, P. G. Wodehouse and George Bernard Shaw.

 

Visitors gathered each evening at Casa Grande for drinks in the Assembly Room, dined in the Refectory and watched the latest movie in the theater before retiring to the luxurious accommodation provided by the guest houses of Casa del Mar, Casa del Monte and Casa del Sol.

 

During the days, they admired the views, rode, played tennis, bowls or golf and swam in "the most sumptuous swimming pool on earth".

 

While Hearst entertained, Morgan built; the castle was under almost continual construction from 1920 until 1939, with work resuming after the end of World War II until Hearst's final departure in 1947.

 

Hearst, his castle and his lifestyle were satirized by Orson Welles in his 1941 film Citizen Kane. In the film, which Hearst sought to suppress, Charles Foster Kane's palace Xanadu is said to contain:

 

"Paintings, pictures, statues, the very stones

of many another palace – a collection of

everything so big it can never be cataloged

or appraised; enough for ten museums; the

loot of the world".

 

Welles's was referring to Hearst's mania for collecting; the dealer Joseph Duveen called him the "Great Accumulator".

 

With a passion for acquisition almost from childhood, he bought architectural elements, art, antiques, statuary, silverware and textiles on an epic scale. Shortly after starting San Simeon, he began to conceive of making the castle:

 

"A museum of the best

things that I can secure".

 

Foremost among his purchases were architectural elements from Western Europe, particularly Spain. Over thirty ceilings, doorcases, fireplaces and mantels, entire monasteries, paneling and a medieval tithe barn were purchased, shipped to Hearst's Brooklyn warehouses and transported on to California.

 

Much was then incorporated into the fabric of Hearst Castle. In addition, he built up collections of more conventional art and antiques of high quality; his assemblage of ancient Greek vases was one of the world's largest.

 

In May 1947, Hearst's health compelled him and Marion Davies to leave the castle for the last time. He died in Los Angeles in 1951, and Morgan died in 1957. The following year, the Hearst family gave the castle and much of its contents to the State of California, and the mansion was opened to the public on the 17th. May 17, 1958.

 

It has since operated as the Hearst San Simeon State Historical Monument, and attracts about 750,000 visitors annually.

 

The Hearst family retains ownership of the majority of the 82,000 acres (332 km2) wider estate and, under a land conservation agreement reached in 2005, has worked with the California State Parks Department and American Land Conservancy to preserve the undeveloped character of the area.

 

Early History to 1864

 

The coastal range of Southern California has been occupied since prehistoric times. The indigenous inhabitants were the Salinans and the Chumash. In the late 18th. century, Spanish missions were established in the area in order to convert the Native American population.

 

The Mission San Miguel Arcángel, one of the largest, opened in what is now San Luis Obispo county in 1797. By the 1840's, the mission had declined and the priests departed. In that decade, the governors of Mexican California distributed the mission lands in a series of grants.

 

Three of these were Rancho Piedra Blanca, Rancho Santa Rosa and Rancho San Simeon. The Mexican–American War of 1846–1848 saw the area pass into the control of the United States under the terms of the Mexican Cession. The California Gold Rush of the next decade brought an influx of American settlers, among whom was the 30-year old George Hearst.

 

Buying the land: 1865–1919

 

Born in Missouri in 1820, George Hearst made his fortune as a miner of gold and silver, notably at the Comstock Lode and the Homestake Mine. He then undertook a political career, becoming a senator in 1886, and bought The San Francisco Examiner.

 

Investing in land, he bought the Piedra Blanca property in 1865, and subsequently extended his holdings with the acquisition of most of the Santa Rosa estate, and much of the San Simeon lands.

 

In the 1870's George Hearst built a ranch house on his estate, which remains a private property maintained by the Hearst Corporation. The San Simeon area became a site for family camping expeditions, including his young son, William. A particularly favored spot was named Camp Hill, the site of the future Hearst Castle.

 

Years later Hearst recalled his early memories of the place:

 

"My father brought me to San Simeon

as a boy. I had to come up the slope

hanging on to the tail of a pony.

We lived in a cabin on this spot and I

could see forever. That's the West –

forever."

 

George Hearst developed the estate somewhat, introducing beef and dairy cattle, planting extensive fruit orchards, and expanding the wharf facilities at San Simeon Bay. He also bred racehorses.

 

While his father developed the ranch, Hearst and his mother traveled, including an eighteen-month tour of Europe in 1873, where Hearst's life-long obsession with art collecting began.

 

When George Hearst died in 1891, he left an estate of $18 million to his widow including the California ranch. Phoebe Hearst shared the cultural and artistic interests of her son, collecting art and patronizing architects.

 

She was also a considerable philanthropist, founding schools and libraries, supporting the fledgling University of California, Berkeley, including the funding of the Hearst Mining Building in memory of her husband, and making major donations to a range of women's organizations, including the YWCA.

 

During the late 1890's, Mrs Hearst encountered Julia Morgan, a young architecture student at Berkeley. On Phoebe Hearst's death in 1919, William Hearst inherited the ranch, which had grown to 250,000 acres and 14 miles (23 km) of coastline, as well as $11 million.

 

250,000 acres is a huge area for an estate - to accommodate that area in a square, it would need sides of over 19.8 miles (32 km).

 

Within days of his mother's death, William was at Morgan's San Francisco office.

 

Julia Morgan

 

Julia Morgan, who was born in 1872, was 47 when Hearst entered her office in 1919. Her biographer Mark A. Wilson has described her subsequent career as that of:

 

"America's first independent

full-time woman architect".

 

After studying at Berkeley, where she worked with Bernard Maybeck, and in 1898 she became the first woman to win entry to the prestigious École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Passing out from the École in 1902, Morgan returned to San Francisco and took up a post at the architectural practice of John Galen Howard.

 

Howard recognized Morgan's talents, but also exploited them:

 

"The best thing about this person

is, I pay her almost nothing, as it is

a woman."

 

In 1904, Julia passed the California architects' licensing examination, the first woman to do so, establishing her own office in 1906 at 456 Montgomery Street in San Francisco.

 

During her time with Howard, Morgan was commissioned by Phoebe Hearst to undertake work at her Hacienda del Pozo de Verona estate at Pleasanton. This led to work at Wyntoon and to a number of commissions from Hearst himself; an unexecuted design for a mansion at Sausalito, north of San Francisco, a cottage at the Grand Canyon, and the Los Angeles Examiner Building.

 

In 1919, when he turned up at Morgan's office, Hearst was fifty-six years old, and the owner of a publishing empire that included twenty-eight newspapers, thirteen magazines, eight radio stations, four film studios, extensive real-estate holdings and thirty-one thousand employees.

 

He was also a significant public figure: although his political endeavors had proved largely unsuccessful, the influence he exerted through his direct control of his media empire attracted fame and opprobrium in equal measure.

 

In 1917, one biographer described him as:

 

"The most hated man

in the country".

 

The actor Ralph Bellamy, a guest at San Simeon in the mid-1930's, recorded Hearst's working methods in a description of a party in the Assembly Room:

 

"The party was quite gay. And in the midst of it,

Mr Hearst came in. There was a teletype machine

just inside, and he stopped and he read it.

He went to a table and picked up a phone.

He asked for the editor of his San Francisco

newspaper and he said, 'Put this in a two-column

box of the front pages of all the newspapers

tomorrow morning.'

And without notes he dictated an editorial."

 

Morgan and Hearst's partnership at San Simeon lasted from 1919 until his final departure from the castle in 1947. Their correspondence, preserved in the Julia Morgan archive in the Robert E. Kennedy Library at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, runs to some 3,700 letters and telegrams.

 

Victoria Kastner, Hearst Castle's in-house custodian, has described the partnership as "a rare, true collaboration," and there are many contemporary accounts of the closeness of the relationship. Walter Steilberg, a draughtsman in Morgan's office, once observed them at dinner:

 

"The rest of us could have been a

hundred miles away; they didn't pay

any attention to anybody ... these

two very different people just clicked".

 

Thomas Aidala, in his 1984 history of the castle, made a similar observation:

 

"Seated opposite each other, they

would discuss and review work,

consider design changes, pass

drawings back and forth ... seemingly

oblivious of the rest of the guests."

 

Having a Ball: 1925–1938

 

Hearst and his family occupied Casa Grande for the first time at Christmas, 1925. Thereafter, Hearst's wife, Millicent, went back to New York, and from 1926 until they left for the last time in 1947, Hearst's mistress Marion Davies acted as his chatelaine at the castle.

 

The Hollywood and political elite often visited in the 1920's and 1930's. Among Hearst's guests were Calvin Coolidge, Winston Churchill, Charlie Chaplin, Cary Grant, the Marx Brothers, Charles Lindbergh, and Clark Gable.

 

Churchill described his host, and Millicent Hearst and Davies, in a letter to his own wife:

 

"A grave simple child – with no doubt a

nasty temper – playing with the most

costly toys.

Two magnificent establishments, two

charming wives, complete indifference

to public opinion, oriental hospitalities."

 

Weekend guests were either brought by private train from Glendale Station north of Los Angeles, and then by car to the castle, or flew into Hearst's airstrip, generally arriving late on Friday evening or on Saturday. Cecil Beaton wrote of his impressions during his first visit for New Year's Eve in 1931:

 

"We caught sight of a vast, sparkling white

castle in Spain. It was out of a fairy story.

The sun poured down with theatrical

brilliance on tons of white marble and white

stone.

There seemed to be a thousand statues,

pedestals, urns. The flowers were unreal in

their ordered profusion.

Hearst stood smiling at the top of one of

the many flights of garden steps".

 

Guests were generally left to their own devices during the day. Horseback riding, shooting, swimming, golf, croquet and tennis were all available, while Hearst would lead mounted parties for picnics on the estate. The only absolute deadline was for cocktails in the assembly room at 7.30 on Saturday night.

 

Alcohol was rationed; guests were not permitted to have liquor in their rooms, and were limited to one cocktail each before dinner. This was due not to meanness on Hearst's part, but to his concerns over Davies's alcoholism, though the rule was frequently flouted.

 

The actor David Niven later reflected on his supplying illicit alcohol to Davies:

 

"It seemed fun at the time to stoke up

her fire of outrageous fun and I got a

kick out of feeling I had outwitted one

of the most powerful and best informed

men on earth, but what a disloyal and

crummy betrayal of him, and what a

nasty potential nail to put in her coffin."

 

Dinner was served at 9.00 in the refectory. Wine came from Hearst's 7,000-bottle cellar. Charlie Chaplin commented on the fare:

 

"Dinners were elaborate -- pheasant, wild

duck, partridge and venison -- but were

also informal: amidst the opulence, we

were served paper napkins, it was only

when Mrs Hearst was in residence that

the guests were given linen ones."

 

The informality extended to the ketchup bottles and condiments in jars which were remarked on by many guests.

 

Dinner was invariably followed by a movie; initially outside, and then in the theater. The actress Ilka Chase recorded a showing in the early 1930's:

 

"The theater was not yet complete – the plaster

was still wet – so an immense pile of fur coats

was heaped at the door, and each guest picked

one up and enveloped himself before entering...

Hearst and Marion, close together in the gloom

and bundled in their fur coats, looked for all the

world like the big and baby bears".

 

Movies were generally films from Hearst's own studio, Cosmopolitan Productions, and often featured Marion Davies. Sherman Eubanks, whose father worked as an electrician at the castle, recorded in an oral history:

 

"Mr Hearst would push a button and call up to

the projectionist and say 'Put on Marion's Peg

o' My Heart'.

So I've seen Peg o' My Heart about fifty times.

This is not being critical. I'm simply saying that's

the way it was. This repetition tended to put a

slight strain on the guests' gratitude."

 

In 1937, Patricia Van Cleeve married at the castle, the grandest social occasion there since the visit of President and Mrs Coolidge in February 1930. Ken Murray records these two events as the only occasions when formal attire was required of guests to the castle.

 

Van Cleeve, who married the actor Arthur Lake, was always introduced as Marion Davies' favorite niece. It was frequently rumored that she was in fact Davies and Hearst's daughter, something she herself acknowledged just before her death in 1993.

 

In February 1938, a plane crash at the San Simeon airstrip led to the deaths of Lord and Lady Plunket, who were traveling to the castle as Hearst's guests, and the pilot Tex Phillips. The only other passenger, the bobsledding champion, James Lawrence, survived.

 

The Specter at the Feast: Hearst, Welles and Xanadu

 

Hearst Castle was the inspiration for Xanadu, and Hearst himself the main model for Charles Foster Kane in Orson Welles's 1941 film Citizen Kane.

 

Having made his name with the Mercury Theatre production of The War of the Worlds in 1938, Welles arrived in Hollywood in 1939 to make a film version of Joseph Conrad's novel, Heart of Darkness for RKO Pictures.

 

The film was not made, and Welles began a collaboration with the screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz on a screenplay originally entitled American. The film tells the stories of Kane, a media magnate and aspiring politician, and of his second wife Susan Alexander, a failed opera singer driven to drink, who inhabit a castle in Florida.

 

Filming began in June 1940, and the movie premiered on the 1st. June 1941. Although at the time Orson Welles and RKO denied that the film was based on Hearst, his long-time friend and collaborator, John Houseman was clear:

 

"The truth is simple: for the basic concept

of Charles Foster Kane and for the main

lines and significant events of his public life,

Mankiewicz used as his model the figure of

William Randolph Hearst".

 

Told of the film's content before its release – his friends, the gossip columnists Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons having attended early screenings – Hearst made strenuous efforts to stop the premiere. When these failed, he sought to damage the film's circulation by alternately forbidding all mention of it in his media outlets, or by using them to attack both the movie and Welles.

 

Hearst's assault damaged the film at the box office, and harmed Welles' subsequent career.

 

Since its inception in 1952 through to 2012, the Sight and Sound Critics' Poll voted Citizen Kane the greatest film of all time in every decade of polling. On the 9th. March 2012 the film was screened in the movie theater at Hearst Castle for the first time as part of the San Luis Obispo International Film Festival.

 

Depression, Death and After: 1939–Present

 

By the late 1930's, the Great Depression and Hearst's profligacy had brought him to the brink of financial ruin. Debts totaled $126 million, and he was compelled to cede financial control of the Hearst Corporation. Newspapers and radio stations were sold, and much of his art collection was dispersed in a series of sales, often for much less than he had paid.

 

Hearst railed against his losses, and the perceived incompetence of the sales agents, Parish-Watson & Co:

 

"They greatly cheapened them and us,

he advertises like a bargain basement

sale. I am heartbroken".

 

Construction at Hearst Castle virtually ceased. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the castle was closed up and Hearst and Davies moved to Wyntoon, which was perceived to be less vulnerable to enemy attack.

 

They returned in 1945, and construction on a limited scale recommenced, finally ending in 1947. In early May of that year, with his health declining, Hearst and Davies left the castle for the last time. The pair settled in at 1007 North Beverly Drive in Beverly Hills.

 

William Randolph Hearst died in 1951, his death abruptly severing him from Davies, who was excluded from the funeral by Hearst's family:

 

"For thirty-two years I had him,

and they leave me with his

empty room".

 

In 1950 Julia Morgan closed her San Francisco office after a career of forty-two years. Ill health marred her retirement and she died, a virtual recluse, in early 1957.

 

In 1958 the Hearst Corporation donated Hearst Castle, its gardens, and many of its contents, to the state of California. A plaque at the castle reads:

 

"La Cuesta Encantada presented to

the State of California in 1958 by the

Hearst Corporation in memory of

William Randolph Hearst who created

this Enchanted Hill, and of his mother,

Phoebe Apperson Hearst, who

inspired it".

 

The castle was opened to the public for the first time in June 1958. Hearst Castle was added to the National Register of Historic Places on the 22nd. June.

 

Hearst was always keen to protect the mystique of his castle. In 1926, he wrote to Morgan to congratulate her after a successful party was held on the hill:

 

"Those wild movie people said it was

wonderful and that the most extravagant

dream of a movie picture fell far short of

this reality. They all wanted to make a

picture there but they are NOT going to

be allowed to do this."

 

Commercial filming at the castle is still rarely allowed. Since 1957 only two projects have been granted permission:

 

-- Stanley Kubrick's 1960 film Spartacus used the castle to stand in as the villa of Marcus Licinius Crassus, played by Lawrence Olivier.

 

-- In 2014, Lady Gaga's music video for "G.U.Y." was filmed at the Neptune and Roman Pools.

 

On the 12th. February 1976, the Casa del Sol guesthouse was damaged by a bomb. The device was placed by allies of the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), in retaliation for Patty Hearst, Hearst's granddaughter, testifying in court at her trial for armed robbery, following her kidnapping by the SLA in 1974.

 

On the 22nd. December 2003, an earthquake occurred with its epicenter some three miles north of the castle. With a magnitude of 6.5, it was the largest earthquake recorded at San Simeon. The very limited structural damage which resulted was a testament to the quality of the castle's construction.

 

Since its opening, the castle has become a major California tourist attraction, attracting over 850,000 visitors in 2018. Recent changes to the tour arrangements now allow visitors time to explore the grounds independently at the conclusion of the conducted tours.

 

The Hearst family maintains a connection with the castle, which was closed for a day in early August 2019 for the wedding of Amanda Hearst, Hearst's great-granddaughter.

 

The castle closed in March 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. After 2 years of closure and repairs to the access road due to rainstorm damage, the castle reopened on the 11th. May 2022.

 

Architecture of Hearst Castle

 

Hearst's original idea was to build a bungalow, according to Walter Steilberg, one of Morgan's draftsmen who recalled Hearst's words from the initial meeting:

 

"I would like to build something up on

the hill at San Simeon. I get tired of

going up there and camping in tents.

I'm getting a little too old for that.

I'd like to get something that would

be a little more comfortable".

 

However within a month, Hearst's original ideas for a modest dwelling had greatly expanded. Discussion on the style began with consideration of "Jappo-Swisso" themes. Then the Spanish Colonial Revival style was favored. Morgan had used this style when she worked on Hearst's Los Angeles Herald Examiner headquarters in 1915.

 

Hearst appreciated the Spanish Revival but was dissatisfied with the crudeness of the colonial structures in California. Mexican colonial architecture had more sophistication, but he objected to its abundance of ornamentation.

 

Thomas Aidala, in his 1984 study of the castle, notes the Churrigueresque influence on the design of the main block:

 

"Flat and unembellished exterior surfaces;

decorative urges are particularized and

isolated, focused mainly on doorways,

windows and towers".

 

The Panama-California Exposition of 1915 in San Diego held the closest approximations in California to the approach Hearst desired. But William's European tours, and specifically the inspiration of the Iberian Peninsula, led him to Renaissance and Baroque examples in southern Spain that more exactly suited his tastes. He particularly admired a church in Ronda, Spain and asked Morgan to model the Casa Grande towers after it.

 

In a letter to Morgan dated 31st. December 1919, Hearst wrote:

 

"The San Diego Exposition is the best source

of Spanish in California. The alternative is to

build in the Renaissance style of southern Spain.

We picked out the towers of the church at Ronda...

a Renaissance decoration, particularly that of the

very southern part of Spain, could harmonize well

with them.

I would very much like to have your views on what

style of architecture we should select."

 

This blend of Southern Spanish Renaissance, Revival and Mediterranean examples became San Simeon's defining style:

 

"Something a little different than other

people are doing out in California".

 

The architectural writers Arrol Gellner and Douglas Keister describe Casa Grande as

 

"A palatial fusion of Classicism and Mediterranean

architecture that transcended the Mission Revival

era and instead belonged to the more archaeological

Period Revival styles that gained favor after the

Panama-California Exposition of 1915".

 

Hearst Castle has a total of 42 bedrooms, 61 bathrooms, 19 sitting rooms, 127 acres (half a square kilometer) of gardens, indoor and outdoor swimming pools, tennis courts, a movie theater, an airfield and, during Hearst's lifetime, the world's largest private zoo.

 

Hearst was an inveterate rethinker who would frequently order the redesign of previously agreed, and often built, structures: the Neptune Pool was rebuilt three times before he was satisfied.

 

He was aware of his propensity for changing his mind; in a letter dated the 18th. March 1920, he wrote to Morgan:

 

"All little houses stunning. Please complete

before I can think up any more changes".

 

As a consequence of Hearst's persistent design changes, and financial difficulties in the early and later 1930's, the complex was never finished.

 

By the late summer of 1919, Morgan had surveyed the site, analyzed its geology, and drawn initial plans for Casa Grande. Construction began in 1919 and continued through 1947 when Hearst left the estate for the last time.

 

During the early years of construction, until Hearst's stays at San Simeon became longer and more frequent, his approval for the ongoing design was obtained by Morgan sending him models of planned developments.

 

By the late 1920's the main model, designed by another female architect Julian C. Mesic, had become too large to ship, and Mesic and Morgan would photograph it, hand-color the images, and send these to Hearst.

 

Construction of Hearst Castle

 

The castle's location presented major challenges for construction. It was remote; when Morgan began coming to the estate for site visits in 1919, she would leave her San Francisco office on Friday afternoon and take an eight-hour, 200-mile train journey to San Luis Obispo, followed by a fifty-mile drive to San Simeon.

 

The relative isolation made recruiting and retaining a workforce a constant difficulty. In the early years, the estate lacked water, its limited supplies coming from three natural springs on Pine Mountain, a 3,500-foot-high (1,100 m) peak seven miles (11 km) east of Hearst Castle.

 

The issue was addressed by the construction of three reservoirs, and Morgan devised a gravity-based water delivery system that transported water from the nearby mountain springs to the reservoirs, including the main one on Rocky Butte, a 2,000-foot (610 m) knoll less than a mile southeast of Hearst Castle.

 

Water was of particular importance; as well as feeding the pools and fountains Hearst desired, it provided electricity, by way of a private hydroelectric plant, until the San Joaquin Light and Power Corporation began service to the castle in 1924.

 

The climate presented a further challenge. The proximity to the coast brought strong winds in from the Pacific Ocean, and the site's elevation meant that winter storms were frequent and severe.

 

After a period of severe storms in February 1927, Hearst wrote a letter:

 

"We are all leaving the hill. We are drowned,

blown and frozen out. Before we build anything

more, let's make what we have practical,

comfortable and beautiful.

If we can't do that we might just as well change

the names of the houses to Pneumonia House,

Diphtheria House and Influenza Bungalow.

The main house we can call the Clinic."

 

Water was also essential for the production of concrete, the main structural component of the houses and their ancillary buildings.

 

Morgan had substantial experience of building in steel-reinforced concrete and, together with the firm of consulting engineers Earl and Wright, experimented in finding suitable stone, eventually settling on that quarried from the mountain top on which the foundation platform for the castle was built.

 

Combining this with desalinated sand from San Simeon Bay produced concrete of exceptionally high quality. Later, white sand was brought in from Carmel. Material for construction was transported either by train and truck, or by sea into a wharf built in San Simeon Bay below the site. In time, a light railway was constructed from the wharf to the castle, and Morgan built a compound of warehouses for storage and accommodation for workers by the bay.

 

Brick and tile works were also developed on site, as brick was used extensively, and tiling was an important element of the decoration of the castle. Morgan used several tile companies to produce her designs, including Grueby Faience, Batchelder, California Faience and Solon & Schemmel.

 

Albert Solon and Frank Schemmel came to Hearst Castle to undertake tiling work, and Solon's brother, Camille, was responsible for the design of the mosaics of blue-and-gold Venetian glass tile used in the Roman pool and the murals in Hearst's Gothic library.

 

Morgan worked with a series of construction managers; Henry Washburn from 1919 to 1922, then Camille Rossi from 1922, until his firing by Hearst in 1932, and finally George Loorz until 1940. From 1920 to 1939, there were between 25 and 150 workmen employed in construction at the castle.

 

Costs of Hearst Castle

 

The exact cost of the entire San Simeon complex is unknown. Kastner makes an estimate of expenditure on construction and furnishing the complex between 1919 and 1947 as "under $10,000,000".

 

Thomas Aidala suggests a slightly more precise figure for the overall cost at between $7.2 and $8.2 million. Hearst's relaxed approach to using the funds of his companies, and sometimes the companies themselves, to make personal purchases made clear accounting for expenditure almost impossible.

 

In 1927 one of his lawyers wrote:

 

"The entire history of your corporation

shows an informal method of withdrawal

of funds".

 

In 1945, when the Hearst Corporation was closing the Hearst Castle account for the final time, Morgan gave a breakdown of construction costs, which did not include expenditure on antiques and furnishings.

 

Casa Grande's build cost is given as $2,987,000, and that for the guest houses, $500,000. Other works, including nearly half a million dollars on the Neptune pool, brought the total to $4,717,000.

 

Morgan's fees for twenty-odd years of almost continuous work came to $70,755. Her initial fee was a 6% commission on total costs. This was later increased to 8.5%. Many additional expenses, and challenges in getting prompt payment, led her to receive rather less than this.

 

Kastner suggests that Morgan made an overall profit of $100,000 on the entire, twenty-year, project. Her modest remuneration was unimportant to her. At the height of Hearst's financial travails in the late 1930's, when his debts stood at over $87 million, Morgan wrote to him,

 

"I wish you would use me in any way

that relieves your mind as to the care

of your belongings. There never has

been, nor will there be, any charge in

this connection, it is an honor and a

pleasure".

 

Casa del Mar

 

Casa del Mar, the largest of the three guest houses, provided accommodation for Hearst himself until Casa Grande was ready in 1925. He stayed in the house again in 1947, during his last visit to the estate.

 

Casa del Mar contains 5,350 square feet (546 square meters) of floor space. Although luxuriously designed and furnished, none of the guest houses had kitchen facilities, a lack that sometimes irritated Hearst's guests. Adela Rogers St. Johns recounted her first visit:

 

"I rang and asked the maid for coffee.

With a smile, she said I would have to

go up to the castle for that.

I asked Marion Davies about this. She

said W. R. Hearst did not approve of

breakfast in bed."

 

Adjacent to Casa del Mar is the wellhead from Phoebe Hearst's Hacienda del Pozo de Verona, which Hearst moved to San Simeon when he sold his mother's estate after her death in 1919.

 

Casa del Monte

 

Casa del Monte was the first of the guest houses, originally entitled simply Houses A (del Mar), B (del Monte) and C (del Sol). It was built by Morgan on the slopes below the site of Casa Grande during 1920–1924.

 

Hearst had initially wanted to commence work with the construction of the main house, but Morgan persuaded him to begin with the guest cottages because the smaller structures could be completed more quickly.

 

Each guest house faces the Esplanade, and appears as a single story at its front entrance. Additional stories descend rearward down the terraced mountain side. Casa del Monte has 2,550 sq ft (237 sq. meters) of living space.

 

Casa del Sol

 

The decorative style of the Casa del Sol is Moorish, accentuated by the use of antique Persian tiles. A bronze copy of Donatello's David stands atop a copy of an original Spanish fountain.

 

The inspiration for the fountain came from an illustration in a book, The Minor Ecclesiastical, Domestic and Garden Architecture of Southern Spain, written by Austin Whittlesey and published in 1919.

 

Hearst sent a copy to Morgan, while retaining another for himself, and it proved a fertile source of ideas. The size of the house is 3,620 square feet (242 sq. meters).

 

Morgan's staff were responsible for the cataloguing of those parts of Hearst's art collection which were shipped to California, and an oral record made in the 1980's indicates the methodology used for furnishing the buildings at San Simeon:

 

"We would set the object up, and then I would

stand with a yardstick to give it scale. Sam Crow

would take a picture. Then we would give it a

number and I would write a description.

These were made into albums.

When Mr Hearst would write and say 'I want a

Florentine mantel in Cottage C in Room B, and

four yards of tiles,' then we would look it up in

the books and find something that would fit."

 

Casa Grande

 

Construction of Casa Grande began in April 1922. Work continued almost until Hearst's final departure on the 2nd. May 1947, and even then the house was unfinished. The size of Casa Grande is 68,500 square feet (5,634 sq. meters).

 

The main western façade is four stories. The entrance front, inspired by a gateway in Seville, is flanked by twin bell towers modeled on the tower of the church of Santa Maria la Mayor.

 

The layout of the main house was originally to a T-plan, with the assembly room to the front, and the refectory at a right angle to its center. The subsequent extensions of the North and South wings modified the original design.

 

As elsewhere, the core construction material is concrete, though the façade is faced in stone. In October 1927 Morgan wrote to Arthur Byne:

 

"We finally took the bull by the horns

and are facing the entire main building

with a Manti stone from Utah."

 

Morgan assured Hearst that it would be "the making of the building".

 

A cast-stone balcony fronts the second floor, and another in cast-iron the third. Above this is a large wooden overhang or gable. This was constructed in Siamese teak, originally intended to outfit a ship, which Morgan located in San Francisco.

 

The carving was undertaken by her senior carver Jules Suppo. Sara Holmes Boutelle suggests Morgan may have been inspired by a somewhat similar example at the Mission San Xavier del Bac in Arizona. The façade terminates with the bell towers, comprising the Celestial suites, the carillon towers and two cupolas.

 

The curator Victoria Kastner notes a particular feature of Casa Grande, the absence of any grand staircases. Access to the upper floors is either by elevators or stairwells in the corner turrets of the building. Many of the stairwells are undecorated and the plain, poured concrete contrasts with the richness of the decoration elsewhere.

 

The terrace in front of the entrance, named Central Plaza, has a quatrefoil pond at its center, with a statue of Galatea on a Dolphin. The statue was inherited, having been bought by Phoebe Hearst when her son was temporarily short of money.

 

The doorway from the Central Plaza into Casa Grande illustrates Morgan and Hearst's relaxed approach to combining genuine antiques with modern reproductions to achieve the effects they both desired. A 16th.-century iron gate from Spain is topped by a fanlight grille, constructed in a matching style in the 1920's by Ed Trinkeller, the castle's main ironmonger.

 

The castle made use of the latest technology. Casa Grande was wired with an early sound system, allowing guests to make music selections which were played from a Capehart phonograph located in the basement, and piped into rooms in the house through a system of speakers. Alternatively, six radio stations were available.

 

The entire estate was also equipped with 80 telephones, operated through a PBX switchboard, which was staffed 24 hours a day, and ran under the exclusive exchange 'Hacienda'.

 

Fortune recorded an example of Hearst's delighting in the ubiquitous access the system provided:

 

"A guest) fell to wondering about the result

of a ball game while seated by a campfire

with Mr Hearst, a day's ride from the castle.

'I'll tell you' volunteers Mr Hearst and,

fumbling with the rock against which he was

leaning, pulls from there a telephone, asks

for New York, and relieves his guest's curiosity".

 

The Assembly Room

 

The assembly room is the main reception room of the castle, described in 1985 by Taylor Coffman as:

 

"One of San Simeon's most

magnificent interiors".

 

The fireplace, originally from a Burgundian chateau in Jours-lès-Baigneux, is named the Great Barney Mantel, after a previous owner, Charles T. Barney, from whose estate Hearst bought it after Barney's suicide.

 

The ceiling is from an Italian palazzo. A concealed door in the paneling next to the fireplace allowed Hearst to surprise his guests by entering unannounced. The door opened off an elevator which connected with his Gothic suite on the third floor.

 

The assembly room, completed in 1926, is nearly 2,500 square feet in extent, and was described by the writer and illustrator Ludwig Bemelmans as:

 

"Looking like half of Grand

Central Station".

 

The room held some of Hearst's best tapestries. These include four from a set celebrating the Roman general Scipio Africanus, designed by Giulio Romano, and two copied from drawings by Peter Paul Rubens depicting The Triumph of Religion.

 

The need to fit the tapestries above the paneling and below the roof required the installation of the unusually low windows.

 

The room has the only piece of Victorian decorative art in the castle, the Orchid Vase lamp, made by Tiffany for the Exposition Universelle held in Paris in 1889. It was bought by Phoebe Hearst, who had the original vase converted to a lamp. William placed it in the assembly room in tribute to his mother.

 

The Refectory

 

The refectory was the only dining room in the castle, and was built between 1926 and 1927. The choir stalls which line the walls are from the La Seu d'Urgell Cathedral in Catalonia, and the silk flags mounted on the walls are Palio banners from Siena.

 

Hearst originally intended a "vaulted Moorish ceiling" for the room but, finding nothing suitable, he and Morgan settled on the Italian Renaissance example, dating from around 1600, which Hearst purchased from a dealer in Rome in 1924.

 

Victoria Kastner considered that the flat roof, with life-size carvings of saints:

 

"Strikes a discordant note of

horizontality among the vertical

lines of the room".

 

The style of the whole is Gothic, in contrast to the Renaissance approach adopted in the preceding assembly room. The refectory is said to have been Morgan's favorite interior within the castle.

 

The design of both the refectory and the assembly room was greatly influenced by the monumental architectural elements, especially the fireplaces and the choir stalls used as wainscoting, and works of art, particularly the tapestries, which Hearst determined would be incorporated into the rooms.

 

The central table provided seating for 22 in its usual arrangement of two tables, which could be extended to three or four, on the occasion of larger gatherings. The tables were sourced from an Italian monastery, and were the setting for some of the best pieces from Hearst's collection of silverware. One of the finest is a wine cooler dating from the early 18th. century and weighing 14.2 kg by the Anglo-French silversmith David Willaume.

 

The Library

 

The library is on the second floor, directly above the assembly room. The ceiling is 16th. century Spanish, and a remnant is used in the library's lobby. It comprises three separate ceilings, from different rooms in the same Spanish house, which Morgan combined into one.

 

The fireplace is the largest Italian example in the castle. Carved from limestone, it is attributed to the medieval sculptor and architect Benedetto da Maiano.

 

The library contains a collection of over 5,000 books, with another 3,700 in Hearst's study above. The majority of the library collections, including Hearst's choicest pieces from his sets of, often signed, first editions by Charles Dickens, his favorite author, were sold at sales at Parke-Bernet at 1939 and Gimbels in 1941. The library is also the location for much of Hearst's important holding of antique Greek vases.

 

The Cloisters and the Doge's Suite

 

The Cloisters form a grouping of four bedrooms above the refectory and, along with the Doge's Suite above the breakfast room, were completed in 1926. The Doge's Suite was occupied by Millicent Hearst on her rare visits to the castle.

 

The room is lined with blue silk, and has a Dutch painted ceiling, in addition to two more of Spanish origin, which was once the property of architect Stanford White.

 

Morgan also incorporated an original Venetian loggia in the suite, refashioned as a balcony. The suite leads on to Morgan's inventive North and South Duplex apartments, with sitting areas and bathrooms at entry level and bedrooms on mezzanine floors above.

 

The Gothic Suite

 

The Gothic suite was Hearst's private apartment on the third floor. He moved there in 1927. It comprises the Gothic study or library and Hearst's own South Gothic bedroom and private sitting room.

 

The ceiling of the bedroom is one of the best Hearst bought; Spanish, of the 14th. century, it was discovered by his Iberian agent Arthur Byne who also located the original frieze panels which had been detached and sold some time before.

 

The whole was installed at the castle in 1924. The space originally allocated for the study was too low to create the impression desired by Morgan and Hearst, a difficulty Morgan surmounted by raising the roof and supporting the ceiling with concrete trusses.

 

These, and the walls, were painted with frescoes by Camille Solon. Light was provided by two ranges of clerestory windows. The necessity of raising the roof to incorporate the study occasioned one of the few instances where Hearst hesitated:

 

"I telegraphed you my fear of the cost...

I imagine it would be ghastly."

 

Nevertheless Morgan urged further changes and expense. The result vindicated Morgan. The study, completed in 1931, is dominated by a portrait of Hearst at age 31, painted by his life-long friend, Orrin Peck.

 

The Celestial Suites

 

The Celestial bedrooms, with a connecting, shared, sitting room, were created between 1924 and 1926. The bell towers were raised to improve the proportions of the building, and the suites constructed in the spaces created below.

 

The relatively cramped spaces allowed no room for storage, and en-suite bathrooms were "awkwardly squeezed" into lower landings. Ludwig Bemelmans, a guest in the 1930's, recalled:

 

"There was no place to hang your

clothes, so I hung mine on wire

coat hangers that a former tenant

had left hanging on the arms of

two six-armed gold candelabra,

the rest I put on the floor".

 

The sitting room contains one of the most important paintings in Hearst's collection, Bonaparte Before the Sphinx (1868) by Jean-Léon Gérôme. The suites are linked externally by a walkway, the Celestial Bridge, which is decorated with elaborate tiling.

 

The North and South Wings

 

The North, or Billiard, and the South, or Service, wings complete the castle, and were begun in 1929.

 

The North wing houses the billiard room on the first floor, which was converted from the original breakfast room. It has a Spanish antique ceiling and a French fireplace, and contains the oldest tapestry in the castle, a Millefleur hunting scene woven in Flanders in the 15th. century.

 

The spandrel over the doorcase is decorated with a frieze of 16th. century Persian tiles depicting a battle. The 34 tiles originate from Isfahan and were purchased by Hearst at the Kevorkian sale in New York in 1922.

 

The theater, which leads off the billiard room, was used both for amateur theatricals and the showing of movies from Hearst's Cosmopolitan Studios. The theater accommodated fifty guests and had an electric keyboard that enabled the bells in the carillon towers to be played. The walls are decorated in red damask, which originally hung in the Assembly room, and feature gilded caryatids.

 

The upper stories of the North Wing were the last to be worked upon, and were never completed. Activity recommenced in 1945 and Morgan delegated the work to her assistant, Warren McClure. Many of the rooms are unfinished, but Aidala considers that the bathrooms in the wing represent first-rate examples of streamline design.

 

The Service Wing contains the kitchen. The hotel-scale units and worktops are constructed in Monel Metal, an expensive form of nickel alloy invented in 1901. The wing contains further bedroom suites, a staff dining room, and gives entry to the 9,000 square foot basement which contained a wine cellar, pantries, the boiler plant which heated the main house, and a barber shop, for the use of Hearst's guests.

 

Planned but Uncompleted Elements

 

Hearst and Morgan intended a large ballroom or cloister to connect the North and South wings at the rear of Casa Grande and unify the whole composition, but it was never undertaken.

 

In 1932, Hearst contemplated incorporating the reja (grille) he had acquired from Valladolid Cathedral in 1929 into this room. He described his vision in a letter to Morgan dated that year:

 

"A great ballroom and banqueting hall,

that is the scheme! Isn't it a pippin."

 

The letter was signed "Sincerely, Your Assistant Architect".

 

Other structures that did not develop beyond drawings and plans included two more guest houses, in English and Chinese architectural styles.

 

Collections

 

After a visit to Ansiglioni's workshop in 1889, William wrote the following in a letter to his mother:

 

"Why didn't you buy Ansiglioni's Galatea. It is

superb...I have a great notion to buy it myself,

the one thing that prevents me is a scarcity of

funds.

The man wants eight thousand dollars for the

blooming thing. I have the art fever terribly.

Queer, isn't it?

I never miss a gallery and I go and nosey about

the pictures and statuary and wish they were mine."

 

Hearst was a voracious collector of art, with the stated intention of making the castle "a museum of the best things that I can secure."

 

The dealer Joseph Duveen, from whom Hearst bought despite their mutual dislike, called him the "Great Accumulator." His robust approach to buying, particularly the purchase and removal of entire historic structures, generated considerable ill-feeling, and sometimes outright opposition.

 

William's deconstruction and removal of the 14th. century Bradenstoke Priory in England led the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings to organize a campaign which used language so violent that its posters had to be pasted over for fear of a libel suit.

 

Hearst sometimes encountered similar opposition elsewhere. In 1919 he was writing to Morgan about:

 

"The patio from Bergos (sic) which, by the

way, I own but cannot get out of Spain".

 

The dismantling of a monastery in Sacramenia, which Hearst bought in its entirety in the 1920's, saw his workmen attacked by enraged villagers.

 

Hearst's tardiness in paying his bills was another less attractive feature of his purchasing approach; in 1925 Morgan was obliged to write to Arthur Byne:

 

"Mr. Hearst accepts your

dictum – cash or nothing".

 

Some of the finest pieces from the collections of books and manuscripts, tapestries, paintings, antiquities and sculpture, amounting to about half of Hearst's total art holdings, were sold in sales in the late 1930's and early 1940's, when Hearst's publishing empire was facing financial collapse, but a great deal remains.

 

William's art buying had started when he was young and, in his tested fashion, he established a company, the International Studio Arts Corporation, as a vehicle for purchasing works and as a means of dealing with their export and import.

 

In 1975, the Hearst Corporation donated the archive of Hearst's Brooklyn warehouses, the gathering point for almost all of his European acquisitions before their dispersal to his many homes, to Long Island University.

 

As of 2015, the university has embarked on a digitization project which will ultimately see the 125 albums of records, and sundry other materials, made available online.

 

Antiquities

 

The ancient Egyptian, Greek and Roman antiquities are the oldest works in Hearst's collection. The oldest of all are the stone figures of the Egyptian goddess Sekhmet which stand on the South Esplanade below Casa Grande. They date from the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Dynasties, approximately 1550 to 1189 BC.

 

Morgan designed the pool setting for the pieces, with tiling inspired by ancient Egyptian motifs. In the courtyard of Casa del Monte is one of a total of nine Roman sarcophagi collected by Hearst, dated to 230 AD, and previously held at the Palazzo Barberini, which was acquired at the Charles T. Yerkes sale in 1910.

 

The most important element of the antiquities collection is the holding of Greek vases, on display in the second-floor library. Although 65 vases were purchased by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York after Hearst's death, those which remain at the castle still form one of the world's largest private groups. Hearst began collecting vases in 1901, and his collection was moved from his New York homes to the castle in 1935.

 

At its peak, the collection numbered over 400 pieces. The vases were placed on the tops of the bookshelves in the library, each carefully wired in place to guard against vibrations from earthquakes. At the time of Hearst's collecting, many of the vases were believed to be of Etruscan manufacture, but later scholars ascribe all of them to Greece.

 

Sculptures

 

Hearst often bought multiple lots from sales of major collections; in 1930 he purchased five antique Roman statues from the Lansdowne sale in London. Four are now in the collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and one in the Metropolitan.

 

William collected bronzes as well as marble figures; a cast of a stone original of Apollo and Daphne by Bernini, dating from around 1617, stands in the Doge's suite.

 

In addition to his classical sculptures, Hearst was content to acquire 19th. century versions, or contemporary copies of ancient works:

 

"If we cannot find the right thing

in a classic statue, we can find a

modern one".

 

He was a particular patron of Charles Cassou, and also favored the early 19th. century Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen whose Venus Victorious remains at the castle.

 

Both this, and the genuinely classical Athena from the collection of Thomas Hope, were displayed in the Assembly room, along with the Venus Italica by Antonio Canova. Other works by Thorvaldsen include the four large marble medallions in the Assembly room depicting society's virtues.

 

Two 19th. century marbles are in the anteroom to the Assembly room, Bacchante, by Frederick William MacMonnies, a copy of his bronze original, and Pygmalion and Galatea by Gérôme.

 

A monumental statue of Galatea, attributed to Leopoldo Ansiglioni and dating from around 1882, stands in the center of the pool on the Main terrace in front of Casa Grande.

 

Textiles

 

Tapestries include the Scipio set by Romano in the Assembly room, two from a set telling the Biblical story of Daniel in the Morning room, and the millefleur hunting scene in the Billiard room. The hunting scene is particularly rare, one of only "a handful from this period in the world".

 

Hearst also assembled and displayed an important collection of Navajo textiles at San Simeon, including blankets, rugs and serapes. Most were purchased from Herman Schweizer, who ran the Indian Department of the Fred Harvey Company.

 

Originally gathered at Hearst's hacienda at Jolon, they were moved to Wyntoon in 1940 before being brought to San Simeon. They were finally donated to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1942.

 

Hearst was always interested in pieces that had historical and cultural connections to the history of California and Central and Latin America. The North Wing contains two Peruvian armorial banners. Dating from the 1580's, they show the shields of Don Luis Jerónimo Fernández Cabrera y Bobadilla, Count of Chinchón and viceroy of Peru.

 

Nathaniel Burt, the composer and critic evaluated the collections at San Simeon thus:

 

"Far from being the mere kitsch that

most easterners have been led to

believe, San Simeon is full of real

beauties and treasures".

 

Paintings

 

The art collection includes works by Tintoretto, whose portrait of Alvisius Vendramin hangs in the Doge's suite, Franz Xaver Winterhalter who carried out the double portraits of Maximilian I of Mexico and his empress Carlota, located in Casa del Mar, and two portraits of Napoléon by Jean-Léon Gérôme.

 

Hearst's earliest painting, a Madonna and Child from the school of Duccio di Buoninsegna, dates from the early 14th. century. A gift from his friend, the editor Cissy Patterson, the painting hangs in Hearst's bedroom.

 

Portrait of a Woman, by Giulio Campi, hangs in a bedroom in the North Wing. In 1928 Hearst acquired the Madonna and Child with Two Angels, by Adriaen Isenbrandt.

 

The curator Taylor Coffman describes this work, which hangs in the Casa del Mar sitting room, as perhaps "San Simeon's finest painting". In 2018, a previously unattributed Annunciation in the Assembly room was identified as a work of 1690 by Bartolomé Pérez.

 

The Gardens and Grounds of Hearst Castle

 

The Esplanade, a curving, paved walkway, connects the main house with the guest cottages; Hearst described it as:

 

"Giving a finished touch to the big

house, to frame it in, as it were."

 

Morgan designed the pedestrianized pavement with great care, to create a coup de théâtre for guests, desiring:

 

"A strikingly noble and saississant effect

be impressed upon everyone on arrival."

 

Hearst concurred:

 

"Heartily approve. I certainly want that

saississant effect. I don't know what it

is, but I think we ought to have at least

one such on the premises".

 

A feature of the gardens are the lampposts topped with alabaster globes; modeled on "janiform hermae", the concept was Hearst's. The Swan lamps, remodeled with alabaster globe lights to match the hermae, were designed by Morgan's chief draftsman, Thaddeus Joy.

 

Others who influenced Hearst and Morgan in their landscaping include Charles Adams Platt, an artist and gardener who had made a particular study of the layout and planting of Italian villas. Also Nigel Keep, Hearst's orchardman, who worked at San Simeon from 1922 to 1947, and Albert Webb, Hearst's English head gardener who was at the hill from 1922 to 1948.

 

The Neptune Pool

 

The Neptune Pool, "the most sumptuous swimming pool on earth", is located near the edge of the hilltop. It is enclosed by a retaining wall and underpinned by a framework of concrete struts to allow for movement in the event of earthquakes.

 

The pool is often cited as an example of Hearst's changeability; it was reconstructed three times before he was finally satisfied. Originally begun as an ornamental pond, it was first expanded in 1924 as Millicent Hearst desired a swimming pool.

 

It was enlarged again during 1926–1928 to accommodate Cassou's statuary. Finally, in 1934, it was extended again to act as a setting for a Roman temple, in part original and in part comprising elements from other structures which Hearst transported from Europe and had reconstructed at the site.

 

The pool holds 345,000 gallons of water, and is equipped with seventeen shower and changing rooms. It was heated by oil-fired burners. In early 2014, the pool was drained due to drought conditions and leakage.

 

After a long-term restoration project to fix the leaking, the pool was refilled in August 2018. The restoration of the pool was recognized with a Preservation Design Award for Craftsmanship from the California Preservation Foundation in 2019.

 

The pool is well-supplied with sculpture, particularly works by Charles Cassou. His centerpiece, opposite the Roman temple, is The Birth of Venus. An even larger sculptural grouping, depicting Neptune in a chariot drawn by four horses, was commissioned to fill the empty basin above the Venus. Although carved, it was never installed.

 

Roman Pool

 

The Roman Pool, constructed under the tennis courts, provided an indoor alternative to the Neptune pool. Originally mooted by Hearst in 1927, construction did not begin until 1930, and the pool was not completed until 1935.

 

Hearst initially wanted the pool to be fed by salt-water, but the design challenges proved to be insuperable. A disastrous attempt to fulfill Hearst's desires by pouring 20 tons of washed rock salt into the pool saw the disintegration of the cast-iron heat exchanger and pump.

 

Inspiration for the mosaic decoration came from the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia in Ravenna. The tiles are of Murano glass, with gold-leaf, and were designed by Solon and manufactured in San Francisco.

 

Although a pool of "spectacular beauty", it was little used as it was located in a less-visited part of the complex.

 

The Pergola and Zoo

 

Two other major features of the grounds were the pergola and the zoo. The pergola, an ornamental bridleway, runs to the west of Casa Grande. Comprising concrete columns, covered in espaliered fruit trees, Morgan ensured that it was built to a height sufficient to allow Hearst, "a tall man with a tall hat on a tall horse", to ride unimpeded down its mile-long length.

 

Plans for a zoo, to house Hearst's large collection of wild animals, were drawn up by Morgan, and included an elephant house and separate enclosures for antelopes, camels, zebras and bears. The zoo was never constructed, but a range of shelters and pits were built, sited on Orchard Hill.

 

The Estate

 

At the height of Hearst's ownership, the estate totaled more than 250,000 acres. W. C. Fields commented on the extent of the estate while on a visit:

 

"Wonderful place to bring up children.

You can send them out to play. They

won't come back till they're grown."

 

23 miles to the north of the castle, Morgan constructed the Milpitas Hacienda, a ranch-house that acted as a trianon to the main estate, and as a focus for riding expeditions.

 

Appraisals of Hearst Castle

 

As with Hearst himself, Hearst Castle and its collections have been the subject of considerable criticism. From the 1940's the view of Hearst and Morgan's most important joint creation as the phantasmagorical Xanadu of Orson Welles's imagination has been commonplace.

 

Some literary depictions were gently mocking; P. G. Wodehouse's novel of 1953, The Return of Jeeves has a character describe her stay:

 

"I remember visiting San Simeon once,

and there was a whole French Abbey

lying on the grass."

 

John Steinbeck's unnamed description was certainly of Hearst:

 

"They's a fella, newspaper fella near the

coast, got a million acres. Fat, sof' fella

with little mean eyes an' a mouth like a

ass-hole".

 

The writer John Dos Passos went further, explicitly referencing Hearst in the third volume of his 1938 U.S.A trilogy:

 

"The emperor of newsprint retired to his

fief of San Simeon where he built an

Andalusian palace and there spends his

last years amid the relaxing adulations

of screen stars, admen, screenwriters,

publicity-men, columnists.

Until he dies, a spent Caesar grown old

with spending."

 

The English architectural writer Clive Aslet was little more complimentary about the castle. Disliking its "unsympathetic texture of poured concrete", he described it as "best seen from a distance".

 

The unfinished, and unresolved, rear façade of Casa Grande has been the subject of particular negative comment; Carleton Winslow and Nicola Frye, in their history from 1980, suggest:

 

"The flanking North and South wings

compete rather disastrously with the

central doge's suite block."

 

Others questioned the castle's very existence; the architect Witold Rybczynski asked:

 

"What is this Italian villa doing on the

Californian Coastal Range? A costly

piece of theatrical décor that ignores

its context and lacks meaning."

 

Hearst's collections were similarly disparaged. The art historian William George Constable echoed Joseph Duveen when he assessed Hearst as:

 

"Not a collector but a gigantic

and voracious magpie."

 

Later decades after Hearst's death have seen a more sympathetic and appreciative evaluation of his collections, and the estate he and Morgan created to house them.

 

The director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Thomas Hoving, although listing Hearst only at number 83 in his evaluation of America's top 101 art collectors, wrote:

 

"Hearst is being reevaluated. He may

have been much more of a collector

than was thought at the time of his

death."

 

The curator Mary Levkoff, in her 2008 study, Hearst the Collector, contends that he was indeed a collector, describing the four separate "staggeringly important" collections of antique vases, tapestries, armor and silver which Hearst had brought together.

 

She wrote of the challenge of bringing their artistic merit to light from under the shadow of his own reputation.

 

Of Morgan's building, its stock has risen with the re-evaluation of her standing and accomplishments, which saw her inducted into the California Hall of Fame in 2008. She became the first woman to receive the American Institute of Architects Gold Medal in 2014, and to have an obituary in The New York Times as recently as 2019.

 

The writer John Julius Norwich recorded his recantation after a visit to the castle:

 

"I went prepared to mock; I remained

to marvel. Hearst Castle is a palace in

every sense of the word."

Set of 5 - 1 of reserve & 4 about the machine. On the photo of the reserve the white dot on the horizon is the machine.

 

Please see photo with all the details about the Walking Dragline, the oldest surviving machine of its type in Europe.

  

St Aidan's is a 400-hectare (990-acre) Country Park between Leeds and Castleford in West Yorkshire, England. The land was formerly an opencast coal mining area.

 

The Country Park opened to the public in May 2013 under the care of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB). The car park and visitor centre were subsequently closed in July 2013 due to unresolved land issues. With the successful transfer of St Aidan's to Leeds City Council, a 99-year lease was signed from the council to the RSPB in March 2017. The site is now open and functioning as an RSPB reserve.

 

It is a brilliant reserve with 4 waymarked loops of approx. 1.1, 1.7, 2.0 & 3 miles long so you can do as much or as little as you wish. Or merely sit outside the visitors centre & enjoy a coffee!

+++ DISCLAIMER +++

Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based on historical facts. BEWARE!

  

Some background:

The Panther tank, officially Panzerkampfwagen V Panther (abbreviated PzKpfw V) with ordnance inventory designation Sd.Kfz. 171, was a German medium tank of World War II. It was used on the Eastern and Western Fronts from mid-1943 to the end of the war. The Panther was intended to counter the Soviet T-34 medium tank and to replace the Panzer III and Panzer IV. Nevertheless, it served alongside the Panzer IV and the heavier Tiger I until the end of the war. It is considered one of the best tanks of World War II for its excellent firepower, protection, and mobility although its reliability in early times were less impressive.

The Panther was a compromise. While having essentially the same Maybach V12 petrol (700 hp) engine as the Tiger I, it had better gun penetration, was lighter and faster, and could traverse rough terrain better than the Tiger I. The trade-off was weaker side armor, which made it vulnerable to flanking fire. The Panther proved to be effective in open country and long-range engagements.

 

The Panther was far cheaper to produce than the heavy Tiger I. Key elements of the Panther design, such as its armor, transmission, and final drive, were simplifications made to improve production rates and address raw material shortages. Despite this the overall design remain described by some as "overengineered". The Panther was rushed into combat at the Battle of Kursk in the summer of 1943 despite numerous unresolved technical problems, leading to high losses due to mechanical failure. Most design flaws were rectified by late 1943 and early 1944, though the bombing of production plants, increasing shortages of high-quality alloys for critical components, shortage of fuel and training space, and the declining quality of crews all impacted the tank's effectiveness.

 

Though officially classified as a medium tank, at 44.8 metric tons the Panther was closer to a heavy tank weight and the same category as the American M26 Pershing (41.7 tons), British Churchill (40.7 tons) and the Soviet IS-2 (46 tons) heavy tanks. The Panther's weight caused logistical problems, such as an inability to cross certain bridges, otherwise the tank had a very high power-to-weight ratio which made it highly mobile.

 

The Panther was only used marginally outside of Germany, mostly captured or recovered vehicles, some even after the war. Japan already received in 1943 a specimen for evaluation. During March–April 1945, Bulgaria received 15 Panthers of various makes (D, A, and G variants) from captured and overhauled Soviet stocks; they only saw limited (training) service use. In May 1946, Romania received 13 Panther tanks from the USSR, too.

After the war, France was able to recover enough operable vehicles and components to equip its army and offer vehicles for sale. The French Army's 503e Régiment de Chars de Combat was equipped with a force of 50 Panthers from 1944 to 1947, in the 501st and 503rd Tank Regiments. These remained in service until they were replaced by French-built ARL 44 heavy tanks.

In 1946, Sweden sent a delegation to France to examine surviving specimens of German military vehicles. During their visit, the delegates found a few surviving Panthers and had one shipped to Sweden for further testing and evaluation, which continued until 1961.

 

However, this was not the Panther’s end of service. The last appearance by WWII German tanks on the world’s battlefields came in 1967, when Syria’s panzer force faced off against modern Israeli armor. Quite improbably, Syria had assembled a surprisingly wide collection of ex-Wehrmacht vehicles from a half-dozen sources over a decade and a half timeframe. This fleet consisted primarily of late production Panzer V, StuGIII and Jagdpanzer IVs, plus some Hummel SPAAGs and a handful Panthers. The tanks were procured from France, Spain, and Czechoslovakia, partly revamped before delivery.

 

All of the Panthers Syria came from Czechoslovakia. Immediately after Germany’s collapse in May 1945, the Soviet army established a staging area for surrendered German tanks at a former Wehrmacht barracks at Milovice, about 24 miles north of Prague, Czechoslovakia. By January 1946, a total of roughly 200 operational Panzer IVs and Panthers of varying versions were at this facility. Joining them was a huge cache of spare parts found at a former German tank repair depot in Teplice, along with ammunition collected from all over Czechoslovakia and the southern extremity of the Soviet occupation zone in Germany. Throughout 1946, the Czechoslovak government’s clean-up of WWII battlefields recovered more than one hundred further tank wrecks, of which 80 were pieced back together to operational status and handed over to the Czechoslovakian Army,

 

In early 1948, the now-nationalized CKD Works began a limited upkeep of the tanks, many of which had not had depot-level overhauls since the war. A few were rebuilt with a Czechoslovak-designed steering system, but this effort was halted due to cost. These tanks remained operational in the Czechoslovak army until the end of 1954, when sufficient T-34s were available to phase them out.

 

A Syrian military delegation visited Prague from 8 April – 22 April 1955. An agreement was struck for the sale, amongst other items, of 45 Panzer IVs and 15 Panthers. Despite their obsolescence the Czechoslovaks were not about to just give the tanks away and demanded payment in a ‘hard’ western currency, namely British pounds. The cost was £4,500 each (£86,000 or $112,850 in 2016 money), far above what they were probably worth militarily, especially considering the limited amount of foreign currency reserves available to the Damascus government. The deal included refurbishment, a full ammunition loadout for each, and a limited number of spare parts. Nonetheless, the deal was closed, and the tanks’ delivery started in early November 1955.

 

The Syrians were by that time already having dire problems keeping their French-sourced panzers operational, and in 1958, a second contract was signed with CKD Works for 15 additional Panzer IVs and 10 more Panthers, these being in lesser condition or non-operational, for use as spare parts hulks. An additional 16 refurbished Maybach engines for both types were also included in this contract, as well as more ammunition.

 

The refurbished Panthers for Syria had their original 7.5 cm KwK 42 L70 replaced with the less powerful Rheinmetall 7.5 cm KwK 40 L48 gun – dictated by the fact that this gun was already installed in almost all other Syrian tanks of German origin and rounds for the KwK 42 L70 were not available anymore. and the Panther’s full ammo load was 87 rounds. The KwK 40 L48 fired a standard APCBC shell at 750 m/s and could penetrate 109 mm (4.3 in) hardened steel at 1.000 m range. This was enough to take out an M4 Sherman at this range from any angle under ideal circumstances. With an APCR shell the gun was even able to penetrate 130 mm (5.1 in) of hardened steel at the same distance.

 

Outwardly, the gun switch was only recognizable through the shorter barrel with a muzzle brake, the German WWII-era TZF.5f gunsight was retained by the Syrians. Additionally, there were two secondary machine guns, either MG-34s or MG-42s, one coaxial with the main gun and a flexible one in a ball mount in the tank’s front glacis plate.

A few incomplete Panther hulls without turret were also outfitted with surplus Panzer IV turrets that carried the same weapon, but the exact share of them among the Syrian tanks is unknown – most probably less than five, and they were among the batch delivered in the course of the second contract from 1958.

 

As they had been lumped all together in Czechoslovak army service, the Syrians received a mixed bag of Panzer IV and Panther versions, many of them “half-breeds” or “Frankensteins”. Many had the bow machine gun removed, either already upon delivery or as a later field modification, and in some cases the machine gun in the turret was omitted as well.

An obvious modification of the refurbished Czech export Panthers for Syria was the installation of new, lighter road wheels. These were in fact adapted T-54 wheels from Czechoslovakian license production that had just started in 1957 - instead of revamping the Panthers’ original solid steel wheels, especially their rubberized tread surfaces, it was easier to replace them altogether, what also made spare parts logistics easier. The new wheels had almost the same diameter as the original German road wheels from WWII, and they were simply adapted to the Panther’s attachment points of the torsion bar suspension’s swing arms. Together with the lighter main gun and some other simplifications, the Syrian Panthers’ empty weight was reduced by more than 3 tonnes.

 

The Czechoslovaks furthermore delivered an adapter kit to mount a Soviet-made AA DShK 12.7mm machine gun to the commander cupola. This AA mount had originally been developed after WWII for the T-34 tank, and these kits were fitted to all initial tanks of the 1955 order. Enough were delivered that some could be installed on a few of the Spanish- / French-sourced tanks, too.

 

It doesn’t appear that the Czechoslovaks updated the radio fit on any of the ex-German tanks, and it’s unclear if the Syrians installed modern Soviet radios. The WWII German Fu 5 radio required a dedicated operator (who also manned the bow machine gun); if a more modern system was installed not requiring a dedicated operator, this crew position could be eliminated altogether, what favored the deletion of the bow machine gun on many ex-German Syrian tanks. However, due to their more spacious hull and turret, many Panthers were apparently outfitted with a second radio set and used as command tanks – visible through a second whip antenna on the hull.

 

A frequent domestic Panther upgrade were side skirts to suppress dust clouds while moving and to prevent dust ingestion into the engines and clogged dust filters. There was no standardized solution, though, and solutions ranged from simple makeshift rubber skirts bolted to the tanks’ flanks to wholesale transplants from other vehicles, primarily Soviet tanks. Some Panthers also had external auxiliary fuel tanks added to their rear, in the form of two 200 l barrels on metal racks of Soviet origin. These barrels were not directly connected with the Panther’s fuel system, though, but a pump-and-hose kit was available to re-fuel the internal tanks from this on-board source in the field. When empty or in an emergency - the barrels were placed on top of the engine bay and leaking fuel quite hazardous - the barrels/tanks could be jettisoned by the crew from the inside.

 

Inclusive of the cannibalization hulks, Syria received a total of roughly 80 former German tanks from Czechoslovakia. However, at no time were all simultaneously operational and by 1960, usually only two or three dozen were combat-ready.

Before the Six Day War, the Syrian army was surprisingly unorganized, considering the amount of money being pumped into it. There was no unit larger than a brigade, and the whole Syrian army had a sort of “hub & spokes” system originating in Damascus, with every individual formation answering directly to the GHQ rather than a chain of command. The Panthers, Panzer IVs and StuG IIIs were in three independent tank battalions, grossly understrength, supporting the normal tank battalions of three infantry brigades (the 8th, 11th, and 19th) in the Golan Heights. The Jagdpanzer IVs were in a separate independent platoon attached to a tank battalion operating T-34s and SU-100s. How the Hummel SPGs were assigned is unknown.

 

The first active participation of ex-German tanks in Syrian service was the so-called “Water War”. This was not really a war but rather a series of skirmishes between Israel and Syria during the mid-1960s. With increasing frequency starting in 1964, Syria emplaced tanks on the western slope of the Golan Heights, almost directly on the border, to fire down on Israeli irrigation workers and farmers in the Galilee region. Surprisingly (considering the small number available) Syria chose the Panzer IV for this task. It had no feature making it better or worse than any other tank; most likely the Syrians felt they were the most expendable tanks in their inventory as Israeli counterfire was expected. The panzers were in defilade (dug in) and not easy to shoot back at; due to their altitude advantage.

 

In 1964, Syria announced plans to divert 35% of the Jordan River’s flow away from Israel, to deprive the country of drinking water. The Israelis responded that they would consider this an act of war and, true to their word, engaged the project’s workers with artillery and sniper fire. Things escalated quickly; in 1965, Israeli M4 Shermans on Israeli soil exchanged fire with the Syrian Panzer IVs above inconclusively. A United Nations peacekeeping team ordered both sides to disengage from the border for a set period of time to “cool off”, but the UN “Blue Berets” were detested and considered useless by both the Israelis and Syrians, and both sides used the lull to prepare their next move. When the cooling-off period ended, the Syrians moved Panzer IVs and now some Panthers, too, back into position. However, the IDF had now Centurion tanks waiting for them, with their fire arcs pre-planned out. The Cold War-era Centurion had heavy armor, a high-velocity 105mm gun, and modern British-made optics. It outclassed the WWII panzers in any imaginable way and almost immediately, two Syrian Panzer IVs and a Panther were destroyed. Others were abandoned by their crews and that was the end of the situation.

 

Syria’s participation in the Six Say War that soon followed in 1967 war was sloppy and ultimately disastrous. Israel initially intended the conflict to be limited to a preemptive strike against Egypt to forestall an imminent attack by that country, with the possibility of having to fight Syria and Jordan defensively if they responded to the operations against Egypt. The war against Egypt started on 5 June 1967. Because of the poor organization of the Syrian army, news passed down from Damascus on the fighting in the Sinai was scarce and usually outdated by the time it reached the brigade level. Many Syrian units (including the GHQ) were using civilian shortwave radios to monitor Radio Cairo which was spouting off outlandish claims of imaginary Egyptian victories, even as Israeli divisions were steamrolling towards the Suez Canal.

 

Syrian vehicles of German origin during the Six Day War were either painted overall in beige or in a dark olive drab green. Almost all had, instead of tactical number codes, the name of a Syrian soldier killed in a previous war painted on the turret in white. During the Six Day War, no national roundel was typically carried, even though the Syrian flag was sometimes painted to the turret flanks. However just as the conflict was starting, white circles were often painted onto the top sides of tanks as quick ID markings for aircraft, and some tanks had red recognition triangles added to the side areas: Syrian soldiers were notoriously trigger-happy, and the decreased camouflage effect was likely cancelled out by the reduced odds of being blasted by a comrade!

 

During the evening of 5 June, Syrian generals in Damascus urged the government to take advantage of the situation and mount an immediate invasion of Israel. Planning and preparation were literally limited to a few hours after midnight, and shortly after daybreak on 6 June, Syrian commanders woke up with orders to invade Israel. The three infantry brigades in the Golan, backed up by several independent battalions, were to spearhead the attack as the rest of the Syrian army mobilized.

There was no cohesion at all: Separate battalions began their advance whenever they happened to be ready to go, and brigades went forward, missing subunits that lagged behind. A platoon attempting a southern outflank maneuver tried to ford the Jordan River in the wrong spot and was washed away. According to a KGB report, at least one Syrian unit “exhibited cowardice” and ignored its orders altogether.

 

On 7 June, 24 hours into their attack, Syrian forces had only advanced 2 miles into Israel. On 8 June, the IDF pushed the Syrians back to the prewar border and that afternoon, Israeli units eliminated the last Egyptian forces in the Sinai and began a fast redeployment of units back into Israel. Now the Syrians were facing serious problems.

On 9 June, Israeli forces crossed into the Golan Heights. They came by the route the Syrians least expected, an arc hugging the Lebanese border. Now for the first time, Syria’s panzers (considered too slow and fragile for the attack) were encountered. The next day, 10 June 1967, was an absolute rout as the Syrians were being attacked from behind by IDF units arcing southwards from the initial advance, plus Israel’s second wave coming from the west. It was later estimated that Syria lost between 20-25% of its total military vehicle inventory in a 15-hour span on 10 June, including eight Panthers. A ceasefire was announced at midnight, ending Syria’s misadventure. Syria permanently lost the Golan Heights to Israel.

 

By best estimate, Syria had just five Panthers and twenty-five Panzer IVs fully operational on 6 June 1967, with maybe another ten or so tanks partially operational or at least functional enough to take into combat. Most – if not all – of the ex-French tanks were probably already out of service by 1967, conversely the entire ex-Spanish lot was in use, along with some of the ex-Czechoslovak vehicles. The conflict’s last kill was on 10 June 1967 when a Panzer IV was destroyed by an Israeli M50 Super Sherman (an M4 Sherman hull fitted with a new American engine, and a modified turret housing Israeli electronics and a high-velocity French-made 75mm gun firing HEAT rounds). Like the Centurion, the Super Sherman outclassed the Panzer IV, and the Panther only fared marginally better.

 

Between 1964-1973 the USSR rebuilt the entire Syrian military from the ground up, reorganizing it along Warsaw Pact lines and equipping it with gear strictly of Soviet origin. There was no place for ex-Wehrmacht tanks and in any case, Czechoslovakia had ended spares & ammo support for the Panzer IV and the Panthers, so the types had no future. The surviving tanks were scrapped in Syria, except for a single Panzer IV survivor sold to a collector in Jordan.

  

Specifications:

Crew: Five (commander, gunner, loader, driver, radio operator)

Weight: 50 tonnes (55.1 long tons; 45.5 short tons)

Length: 6.87 m (22 ft 6 in) hull only

7.52 m (24 ft 7¾ in) overall with gun facing forward

Width: 3.42 m (11 ft 3 in) hull only

3,70 m (12 ft 1¾ in) with retrofitted side skirts

Height: 2.99 m (9 ft 10 in)’

Ground clearance: 56 cm (22 in)

Suspension: Double torsion bar, interleaved road wheels

Fuel capacity: 720 liters (160 imp gal; 190 US gal),

some Syrian Panthers carried two additional external 200 l fuel drums

 

Armor:

15–80 mm (0.6 – 3.93 in)

 

Performance:

Maximum road speed: 56 km/h (35 mph)

Operational range: 250 km (160 mi) on roads; 450 km (280 mi)with auxiliary fuel tanks

100 km (62 mi) cross-country

Power/weight: 14 PS (10.1 kW)/tonne (12.7 hp/ton)

 

Engine & transmission:

Maybach HL230 V-12 gasoline engine with 700 PS (690 hp, 515 kW)

ZF AK 7-200 gearbox with 7 forward 1 reverse gear

 

Armament:

1× 7,5 cm KwK 40 (L/48) with 87 rounds

2× 7.92 mm MG 34 or 42, or similar machine guns;

one co-axial with the main gun, another in the front glacis plate

with a total of 5.100 rounds (not always mounted)

Provision for a 12.7 mm DShK or Breda anti-aircraft machine gun on the commander cupola

  

The kit and its assembly:

A rather exotic what-if model, even though it’s almost built OOB. Inspiration came when I stumbled upon the weird Syrian Panzer IVs that were operated against Israel during the Six Day War – vehicles you would not expect there, and after more than 20 years after WWII. But when I did some more research, I was surprised about the numbers and the variety of former German tanks that Syria had gathered from various European countries, and it made me wonder if the Panther could not have been among this shaggy fleet, too?

 

I had a surplus Dragon Panther Spähpanzer in The Stash™, to be correct a “PzBeobWg V Ausf. G”, an observation and artillery fire guidance conversion that actually existed in small numbers, and I decided to use it as basis for this odd project. The Dragon kit has some peculiarities, though: its hull is made from primed white metal and consists of an upper and lower half that are held together by small screws! An ambiguous design, because the parts do not fit as good as IP parts, so that the model has a slightly die-cast-ish aura. PSR is necessary at the seams, but due to the metal it’s not easy to do. Furthermore, you have to use superglue everywhere, just as on a resin kit. On the other side, surface details are finely molded and crisp, even though many bits have to be added manually. However, the molded metal pins that hold the wheels are very robust and relatively thin – a feature I exploited for a modified running gear (see below).

 

For the modified Panther in my mind I had to retrograde the turret back to a late standard turret with mantlet parts left over from a Hasegawa kit – they fitted perfectly! The PzBeobWg V only comes with a stubby gun barrel dummy. But I changed the armament, anyway, and implanted an aftermarket white metal and brass KwK 40 L48, the weapon carried by all Syrian Panzer IVs, the Jagdpanzer IVs as well as the StuG IIIs. This standardization would IMHO make sense, even if it meant a performance downgrade from the original, longer KwK 42 L70.

 

For a Syrian touch, inspired by installations on the Panzer IVs, I added a mount for a heavy DShK machine gun on the commander’s cupola, which is a resin aftermarket kit from Armory Models Group (a kit that consists of no less than five fiddly parts for just a tiny machine gun!).

To change and modernize the Panther’s look further, I gave it side skirts, leftover from a ModelCollect T-72 kit, which had to be modified only slightly to fit onto the molded side skirt consoles on the Panther’s metal hull. A further late addition were the fuel barrels from a Trumpeter T-54 kit that I stumbled upon when I looked for the skirts among my pile of tank donor parts. Even though they look like foreign matter on the Panther’s tail, their high position is plausible and similar to the original arrangement on many Soviet post-WWII tanks. The whip antennae on turret and hull were created with heated black sprue material.

 

As a modern feature and to change the Panther’s overall look even more, I replaced its original solid “dish” road wheels with T-54/55 “starfish” wheels, which were frequently retrofitted to T-34-85s during the Fifties. These very fine aftermarket resin parts (all real-world openings are actually open, and there’s only little flash!) came from OKB Grigorovich from Bulgaria. The selling point behind this idea is/was that the Panther and T-54/55 wheels have almost the same diameter: in real life it’s 860 vs. 830 mm, so that the difference in 1:72 is negligible. Beneficially, the aftermarket wheels came in two halves, and these were thin enough to replace the Panther’s interleaved wheels without major depth problems.

Adapting the parts to the totally different wheel arrangement was tricky, though, especially due to the Dragon kit’s one-piece white metal chassis that makes any mods difficult. My solution: I retained the inner solid wheels from the Panther (since they are hardly visible in the “3rd row”), plus four pairs of T-54/55 wheels for the outer, more rows of interleaved wheels. The “inner” T-54/55 wheel halves were turned around, received holes to fit onto the metal suspension pins and scratched hub covers. The “outside” halves were taken as is but received 2 mm spacer sleeves on their back sides (styrene tube) for proper depth and simply to improve their hold on the small and rounded metal pin tips. This stunt worked better than expected and looks really good, too!

  

Painting and markings:

Basically very simple, and I used pictures of real Syrian Panzer IVs as benchmark. I settled for the common green livery variant, and though simple and uniform, I tried to add some “excitement” to it and attempted to make old paint shine through. The hull’s lower surface areas were first primed with RAL 7008 (Khakigrau, a rather brownish tone), then the upper surfaces were sprayed with a lighter sand brown tone, both applied from rattle cans.

 

On top of that, a streaky mix of Revell 45 and 46 – a guesstimate for the typical Syrian greyish, rather pale olive drab tone - was thinly applied with a soft, flat brush, so that the brownish tones underneath would shine through occasionally. Once dry, the layered/weathered effect was further emphasized through careful vertical wet-sanding and rubbing on all surfaces with a soft cotton cloth.

The rubber side skirts were painted with an anthracite base and the dry-brushed with light grey and beige.

 

The model then received an overall washing with a highly thinned mix of grey and dark brown acrylic artist paint. The vinyl tracks (as well as the IP spare track links on the hull) were painted, too, with a mix of grey, red brown and iron, all acrylic paints, too, that do not interact chemically with the soft vinyl.

 

The decals/markings are minimal; the Arabian scribble on the turret (must be a name?), using the picture of a Syrian Panzer IV as benchmark, was painted in white by hand, as well as the white circle on the turret roof. The orange ID triangles are a nice contrast, even though I was not able to come up with real-life visual evidence for them. I just found a color picture of a burned T-34-85 wreck with them, suggesting that the color was a dull orange red and not florescent orange, as claimed in some sources. I also found illustrations of the triangles as part of 1:35 decal sets for contemporary Syrian T-34-85s from FC Model Trend and Star Models, where they appear light red. For the model, they were eventually cut out from decal sheet material (TL-Modellbau, in a shade called “Rotorange”, what appears to be a good compromise).

 

Dry-brushing with light grey and beige to further emphasize edges and details followed. Finally, the model was sealed with matt acrylic vanish overall, and some additional very light extra dry-brushing with silver was done to simulate flaked paint. Dirt and rust residues were added here and there with watercolors. After final assembly, the lower areas of the model were furthermore powdered with mineral pigments to simulate dust.

  

The idea of a modernized WWII Panther: a simple idea that turned into a major conversion. With the resin DShK machine gun and T-54/55 wheel set the costs of this project escalated a little, but in hindsight I find that the different look and the mix of vintage German and modern Soviet elements provide this Panther with that odd touch that sets it apart from a simple paint/marking variation? I really like the outcome, and I think that the effort was worthwhile - this fictional Panther shoehorns well into its intended historical framework. :-D

 

Day Three-Hundred and Fifty Two, "Meet Shadow" theme, eighteenth shot.

 

"DAAAaaaad, I want to be a fairy princess!"

This is the answer to the question "What costume should dad buy you for carnival? Baby lion? Baby bear? Baby penguin?", yeah, dad has some unresolved issues with baby wild animals, but come one, have you ever seen a two years kid dressed as a penguin? I mean, it's a full size penguin running around!... anyway, the answer would always be "fairy princess", and after a while Claudia and I had to capitulate and check Amazon for fairy costumes. Which we found and got today.

If you have or ever had a little girl you'll know how volatile they can be, so you'll know that is way better to double check their will with a real-life test. That's why I wanted to see if she really liked the dress before finding myself handling a major crisis a few hours before the carnival party. Hence, as soon as I brought Agata back from school I gave her the costume and dressed her up in it.

She loved it. And Ombra too, since she tried to chew on the wings anytime Agata would turn around. Which ended up in Agata standing on the little green chair, and Ombra laying on her pillow pretending she wasn't interested.

  

365 Days of RX1 - one camera, one lens, 12 projects

www.lucarossini.it/category/365-days-of-rx1/

 

www.lucarossini.it

www.facebook.com/LucaRossiniPhotographer

British postcard by Rotary Photo, London, no. S. 63-2. Photo: Moody, N.Y.

 

Mary Miles Minter (1902-1984) was an American silent screen actress.

 

Mary Miles Minter was born Juliet Reilly in Shreveport as the daughter of Broadway actress Charlotte Shelby. Shelby himself wanted that Juliet and her older sister Margaret also became stage actresses. One night when there was no babysitter available Juliet accompanied her sister to an audition, was discovered and got her first stage role. In order to avoid the Child Labor Act, she used her cousin's passport and took the name "Mary Miles Minter". As a result, she debuted in film in 1912 and in 1915 got her first substantial lead in a feature, The Fairy and the Waif (Marie Hubert Frohmann, George Irving, 1915). With her innocent appearance, Soon after, she started to work for Metro Pictures, while in 1916 she moved on to Mutual Pictures - always playing the leads, despite her young age. In 1917 she moved to the American Film Company, where Henry King often directed here, and in 1918 she traded American for Paramount. Minter became popular and grew into the rival of Mary Pickford.

 

In 1919 Mary Miles Minter made her most famous film, Anne of Green Gables (presumably a lost film), with director William Desmond Taylor. The film became a huge success, as a result of which Taylor started to promote the actress so that she would grow into a legendary star. Eventually, she got into a relationship with the 30-year-old man. Several films with Minter in the lead were made by their newly founded production company Realart Pictures, but distributed by Paramount. Taylor initially directed her there, but after a few films, various other directors stepped in, such as Paul Powell and Joseph Henabery.

 

In 1922 Taylor was murdered in his house. Mary Miles Minter told in an interview in 1970 that she collapsed when she saw his body in the morgue. His death became a popular topic in the media and took place while Minter was in the prime of her career. The perpetrator could not be found and her mother Charlotte Shelby was long known as a suspect. In 1937, when the case was still unresolved, Minter demanded that she be given a prison sentence or that the case would be left alone. Eventually, it was announced in 1999 that Ella Margaret Gibson admitted on her deathbed in 1964 that she had committed the murder. Not much later she died of a heart attack.

 

After the death of Taylor, Mary Miles Minter made four more films for Paramount. Trail of the Lonesome Pine, her latest film, was released in 1923. After her contract was not renewed, she received many other offers, but she refused all because she said she was never happy during the times that she was an actress. Minter has told in interviews that she was much happier after her Hollywood years, although she was robbed in her own home in the 1970s and 1980s. She also sued her mother for all the money she had gained by filming and got a settlement out of court. Minter died of a stroke at the age of 82. All in all, she did some 55 films of which just a little over a fifth survives.

 

Sources: Wikipedia (English and Italian) and IMDb.

 

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

Artist/maker: George Nelson

Culture: Kwakwaka'wakw

Materials: Cedar wood. Paint, Iron metal. Adhesive

Subjects:

Slaves, Killer whales

Date Made: c. 1906

Date Acquired: 1956

How Acquired: Transferred

Measurements: Part d: 4 m x 1.1 m

Place made: Canada: British Columbia, Quatsino; Xwatis

Location: Great Hall / Crossroads

Object Number: A50009 d

Museum of Anthropology

University of British Columbia

  

About this object

 

History of use

 

The beams and figures stood as part of a house frame, and acted as structural supports. Figures represented on house frames were supernatural beings which the family living in the house had the right, through their history and origins, to represent.

 

Narrative

 

Klix’ken Gukwdzi, or Sea-Lion House, was built sometime around 1906. Like other houses in the village it had a modern exterior with milled-lumber front and windows. Yet it also featured carved sea-lion posts supporting the boardwalk, and inside, a monumental post-and-beam structure with carved and painted house posts, beams, and other symbols of the family’s history. Klix’ken House was the last old-style dwelling erected in Xwatis as a home for an extended family or lineage—and probably one of the last built on the entire coast.

 

Cultural context

 

Status

 

Iconographic meaning

 

Slaves were captured members of other Northwest Coast groups.

  

Physical description

 

Part of interior house frame (also see records a-c and g-h). The large wooden human figure (part d) is carved in high relief in a seated position. It is painted with a killer whale on its chest and broken coppers on both arms. In between his hands and below the killer whale is a small white face. The head is large, has a protruding nose and mouth, large carved eyes and is heavily decorated with yellow, white and black Northwest Coast stylized designs. Before the figure stands a wooden platform or seat supported by two kneeling slave figures (parts e-f), with unusual grimacing faces. Both figures have their outside arm rested on the ground while the other is turned backwards as if to support the seat that rests on their backs. Their eyes and bared teeth are carved in shallow relief while the rest of their face is carved in high relief. Their arms and upper body are painted green with black rings around the wrist and forearm. Their faces are painted green, white and black with Northwest Coast stylized designs.

 

Museum photos: collection-online.moa.ubc.ca/search/item?keywords=a50009&...

 

Slavery

This monumental house post was part of the internal frame of Sea-Lion House, the last traditional-style lineage dwelling built in the village of Xwatis, around 1906. The central seated figure—painted with crest imagery including a killer whale and broken coppers—rests above a platform supported by two crouching slave figures. Their exaggerated grimaces, twisted limbs, and burdened posture reflect the brutal social reality of hereditary slavery on the Northwest Coast. This is not symbolic—it is literal social commentary carved in wood.

 

Slavery in Kwakwaka’wakw and neighboring Indigenous societies—Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, Nuu-chah-nulth—was an ancient, normalized institution. It dates back at least 2,500 years, likely much earlier, and was interwoven into kinship, economy, and status systems. The boundaries of the tradition extended along the entire Northwest Coast from the Columbia River to Southeast Alaska, including the coastlines and islands of British Columbia and parts of Washington State.

 

Slaves were captives taken during warfare or raiding, often from rival groups farther inland or up and down the coast. Over time, their status became hereditary: the children of slaves were born into bondage. Estimates vary, but 10–25% of the population in some Northwest Coast societies may have been enslaved—a figure comparable to or even exceeding that of classical Greece or the American South before emancipation.

 

Slaves were traded among high-ranking families, given as gifts, or redistributed in potlatch ceremonies, where public displays of wealth and hierarchy were enacted. Though not the primary economic engine, slave labor was integral to building houses, gathering food, processing materials, and assisting in ceremonial life.

 

There is evidence of ritual human sacrifice, particularly during high-ranking funerals and potlatches, where slaves might be killed to accompany a chief to the spirit world, or as offerings to supernatural beings. Such acts, though rare, reinforced the sacred and absolute authority of lineage heads. A notable recorded case describes the slow killing of a slave during the carving of a canoe, to transfer spiritual power to the object.

 

This post, made in the early 20th century, reflects a moment of cultural persistence under increasing colonial pressure. Though slavery had been outlawed by British and later Canadian authorities in the mid-19th century, the memory and meaning of the institution endured in ceremonial and artistic contexts. The figures here are not satirical. They are assertions of hereditary status and power, preserved in wood even as the old social order began to erode.

 

The reality of slavery among Indigenous societies—especially in the Pacific Northwest—poses a significant challenge to the sentimental or romanticized myth of pre-contact North America as a peaceful, egalitarian Eden undone solely by European colonialism.

 

This myth—promoted most often by well-meaning non-Indigenous individuals in settler or progressive circles—paints Indigenous peoples as spiritually superior, ecologically harmonious, and socially just in all respects. While this impulse may stem from guilt, admiration, or a desire to offer reparative narrative space, it too often flattens the complexities of Indigenous cultures and replaces one form of distortion with another.

🌿 The Problem with the "Noble Savage" Redux

 

This myth echoes the old "noble savage" trope, just updated for modern political sensibilities. In this version:

 

European colonists bring hierarchy, violence, gender inequality, greed, and ecological destruction;

 

Indigenous societies are cast as egalitarian, peaceful, and wise stewards of the land, free from coercion, patriarchy, or internal violence;

 

The existence of practices like slavery, ritual killing, raiding, and class stratification complicate or outright contradict that image.

 

In the Pacific Northwest, many Indigenous groups—particularly the Kwakwaka’wakw, Haida, Tlingit, and Tsimshian—developed complex, hierarchical, and materially affluent societies long before contact. These societies included:

 

Hereditary slavery on a large scale;

 

Social classes (nobility, commoners, slaves);

 

Warfare and raiding for captives and territory;

 

Ritual violence, including human sacrifice in some elite funerary and potlatch contexts;

 

Accumulation and symbolic destruction of wealth (e.g., coppers, blankets) as forms of status display and social competition.

 

None of this diminishes the brilliance or richness of these cultures—it simply acknowledges that power, exploitation, and inequality are human universals, not colonial inventions.

 

⚖️ The Danger of Utopianism

 

Romanticizing Indigenous societies erases:

 

The real ethical complexity of their histories;

 

The agency Indigenous people have always exercised—even when that included perpetuating internal systems of dominance;

 

The lived reality of Indigenous descendants of slaves, who still exist and whose identities complicate claims of cultural unity or purity.

 

It also distorts the moral landscape: if Indigenous cultures are idealized as perfect, then their suffering at colonial hands is treated not as a tragedy affecting real societies, but as the shattering of a fantasy. That is its own form of erasure.

 

What the House Post Tells Us

 

The 1906 house post you shared is not just an artwork—it’s a memory structure. It remembers lineage power, supernatural legitimacy, and a society where enslavement was normalized and ritually inscribed.

 

To take that seriously is not to diminish the culture—it’s to respect it enough not to lie about it.

 

🔎 1. Are descendants of slaves aware of their status?

 

Yes—in many cases, they are. Within some families and communities, ancestry linked to slavery is remembered, sometimes as oral history, sometimes as an open secret, and occasionally as a source of intra-community stigma that lingers to this day.

 

Slavery on the Northwest Coast was hereditary, and although it was officially abolished in the 19th century under colonial law, its social residues persisted, including in marriage eligibility, ceremonial roles, and internal status hierarchies.

 

In the words of several Indigenous scholars and community members, some descendants of enslaved people were, and sometimes still are, considered "lesser" or outside full hereditary status, particularly in contexts where lineage and clan descent remain important.

 

This creates a difficult legacy: some descendants of slaves are aware of that heritage, but there is also silence and discomfort, both due to shame and due to the fact that this internal history challenges the dominant narrative of Indigenous solidarity and external victimization.

 

2. Is there a movement to atone for or reckon with slavery?

 

There is no widespread, organized movement for atonement within Pacific Northwest Indigenous communities on the scale of, say, post-apartheid truth commissions or American university reckonings with slavery. However, there are pockets of discussion and acknowledgment emerging, especially among:

 

Younger Indigenous scholars, artists, and historians who are asking questions about internal power structures, the legacy of hereditary hierarchy, and the place of descendants of slaves within modern tribal identity;

 

Cultural revitalization movements, particularly those tied to potlatch, crest rights, and clan inheritance, where these histories must be confronted in order to authentically revive ceremonial practices;

 

Anthropological and museum settings, where Indigenous curators and collaborators are being forthright about what carvings (like the house post you showed) actually depict and how they should be interpreted.

 

That said, this is still a difficult conversation. In many communities, talking openly about historical slavery is seen as divisive, and in some cases, as airing internal matters to settler audiences, which carries a risk of misunderstanding or co-option.

 

️Indigenous Voices on the Topic

 

A few Indigenous scholars and thinkers who have touched on or addressed this history include:

 

Dr. Sarah Hunt (Tłaliłila’ogwa, Kwagu’ł) – who has written about Indigenous belonging, hierarchy, and the limits of unity narratives.

 

Marianne Ignace and Ronald Ignace – whose ethnohistorical work includes accounts of social hierarchy and enslaved peoples among the Secwépemc and other Interior and coastal nations.

 

Chief Robert Joseph (Kwakwaka’wakw) – while not focused on slavery per se, has spoken of the importance of truth-telling and internal healing in reconciliation.

 

⚖️ Final Thought

 

There’s no denying the power and beauty of Northwest Coast Indigenous cultures, but part of respecting them is recognizing that they, like all human cultures, contain contradictions, hierarchies, and histories of internal injustice. The story of slavery—its memory, its erasure, and its unresolved legacies—is one of those.

 

So while no formal atonement movement exists, the conversation has begun—and will likely deepen as Indigenous communities continue the work of cultural truth-telling on their own terms.

 

While slavery in the PNW and in the American South involved human bondage, PNW slavery was status-based, limited in scale, and embedded in kinship and prestige economies, whereas Southern slavery was racialized, industrialized, and ideologically justified for economic exploitation. The psychological, economic, and political aftershocks of American chattel slavery have been far more profound and enduring.

  

This text is a collaboration with Chat GPT.