DISCLAIMER

Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based historical facts. BEWARE!

 

The Chinese J-7FS was a direct descendant of the J-7E. The Chengdu J-7 itself has a long heritage of development, even though it is originally a Soviet design, a license-built MiG-21F, which has its roots in the mid 50ies.

 

It took China long way to develop and produce a true supersonic fighter aircraft: in March, 1964, Shenyang Aircraft Factory began the first domestic production of the J-7 jet fighter. However, the mass production of the aircraft, which had been developed through Soviet help, license production and reverse-engineering, was severely hindered by an unexpected problem—the Cultural Revolution. This incident and its consequences resulted in poor initial quality and slow progress.

 

This, in turn, resulted in full scale production only coming about in the 1980s, by which time the J-7 design was showing its age. However, through the years the J-7 saw constant development and refinement in China, and the J-7FS was one of the many directions the simple, basic design went in order to imporve performance and to keep it up to date.

 

The J-7FS was designed in the late 90ies as a dedicated interceptor, and as a lighter option than the twin-engined J-8 fighter of indigenous design. Main task was to incorporate a true air-to-air radar with surveillance capabilities, since the J-7 only featured a rader-based range finder in the central shock cone of the air intake.

 

Fitting a more capable radar required a larger radome, which meant either a bigger central shock cone (as in the 2nd generation MiG-21 fighters) or a totally new nose and air intake arrangement. The accordingly modified J-7FS saw first daylight as a technology demonstration aircraft built by CAC. Its most prominent feature was a redesigned under-chin inlet, reminiscent of the F-8 or A-7 nose, which provided air for a WP-13IIS engine. Above the air intake, a fixed conical radome offered space for a bigger radar dish. “139 Red”, how the first aircraft was coded, first flew in June 1998, starting a 22-month test program. Two prototypes were built, but only the first aircraft was to fly – the second machine was only used for static tests.

 

"139 Red" soon saw major progress in design and equipment: it received a new double-delta wing which nearly doubled internal fuel capacity and improved performance, a modified fin, a more potent WP-13F turbojet engine, and a new 600 mm slot antenna planar array radar using coherent technology to achieve scan, look-down and shoot-down capabilities.

The revamped aircraft also received a sand/green camouflage paint scheme, less flashy than the original white/red livery. The new wing, which was also introduced on the J-7E, made the aircraft 45% more maneuverable than the MiG-21F-like J/F-7M, while the take-off and landing distance is reduced to 600 meters, in comparison to the 1.000 meter take-off distance and 900 meter landing distance of earlier versions of the J-7.

 

The production J-7FS which was ready for service in summer 2000 featured even more changes and novelties: the J-7FS incorporated HOTAS, which has since become standard on other late J-7 versions, too. This version is also the first of J-7 series to be later upgraded with helmet mounted sights (HMS). However, it is reported that the helmet mounted sight is not compatible with radars, and air-to-air missiles must be independently controlled by either HMS or radar, but not both.

 

The serial production radome now had an ogival shape with an even larger base diameter, and for additional avionics such as weapon management, global positioning and flight data recording systems, the production J-7FS featured a bulged spine, reminiscent of the 3rd generation MiG-21 (or the respective Chengdu J-7C, a reverse-engineered MiG-21MF). The aircraft was even able to carry medium range AAMs, e .g. the Chinese PL-11 missile, a license-built Selenia Aspide AAM from Italia, itself a modernized descendant of the venerable AIM-7 Sparrow. Another feature which set the FS version apart was the ventral, twin-barreled Type 23-III gun instead of the single-barelled 30mm cannon at the flank.

 

The role of the J-7FS in the People's Liberation Army was to provide local air defense and tactical air superiority, even though it certainly was only a stop-gap until the introduction of the much more potent Chengdu J-10, which started to enter PLAAF service in 2005 after a long development time. With its more powerful radar the J-7FS was supposed to act as a kind of mini AWACS platform, guiding groups of less potent J-7Es to potential targets. It is known that the J-7FS’s new radar had a range greater than 50 km and could track up to eight targets simultaneously. The aircraft's overall performance is expected to be similar to early F-16 variants.

 

The number of built specimen is uncertain, but it is supposed to be less than 100, probably even less than 50. It is rumored that the type had also been offered to Bangladesh and Sri Lanka around 2001, but was not bought.

  

General characteristics:

Crew: 1

Length: 14.885 m (Overall) (48 ft 10 in)

Wingspan: 8.32 m (27 ft 3½ in)

Height: 4.11 m (13 ft 5½ in)

Wing area: 24.88 m² (267.8 ft²)

Aspect ratio: 2.8:1

Empty weight: 5,292 kg (11.667 lb)

Loaded weight: 7,540 kg (16.620 lb)

Max. take-off weight: 9.100 kg (20.062 lb)

 

Powerplant:

1 × Guizhou Liyang WP-13F(C) afterburning turbojet with 44.1 kN (9.914 lb) dry thrust and 66.7 kN (14.650 lb) with afterburner:

 

Performance

Maximum speed: Mach 2.0, 2,200 km/h (1.189 knots, 1.375 mph)

Stall speed: 210 km/h (114 knots, 131 mph) IAS

Combat radius: 850 km (459 nmi, 528 mi) (air superiority, two AAMs and three drop tanks)

Ferry range: 2,200 km (1.187 nmi, 1.367 mi)

Service ceiling: 17,500 m (57.420 ft)

Rate of climb: 195 m/s (38.386 ft/min)

 

Armament:

1× twin-barreled Type 23-III 23mm (0.9") cannon with 250 rounds under the fuselage;

5× hardpoints (4× under-wing, 1× centerline under-fuselage) with a capacity of 2,000 kg maximum (up to 500 kg each); Ordnance primarily comprises air-to-air missiles, including PL-2, PL-5, PL-7, PL-8, PL-9 and PL-11 AAMs, but in a secondary CAS role various rocket pods an unguided bombs of up to 500kg caliber could be carried

  

The kit and its assembly:

This whif is based on the real world J-7FS, which actually flew but never made it beyond the technical demonstrator stage. However, I found the air intake design with its raked shape and the pointed radome interesting, and since I had a crappy Matchbox MiG-21MF with misprinted decals in store I decided to use that kit for a whif conversion. There’s even a resin kit of the first J-7FS (still with the standard delta wing, though, and horribly expensive) available, but I wanted to create a more advanced what-if model, if the type had somehow entered service.

 

The kit saw major modification all around the fuselage: the wing tips were clipped and scratch-built ends for the J-7E double delta wing shape attached. The shape is certainly not correct, but it's IMHO the impression that counts. The MiG-21MF's deep fin was replaced by a donation part from an F-16 – the 2nd J-7FS already featured a distinctive kink at the fin’s top which made it already look rather F-16ish, and the taller and more slender fin suits the MiG-21 well.

 

A brake parachute housing with a disctinctive, blunt end was added just above the jet exhaust, and some antennae and pitots were added in order to enhance the bleak Matchbox kit a little. The Type 23-III cannon was sculpted from a piece of sprue, just like the brake parachute housing.

 

The nose section/radome is the front half of an F-18 drop tank. An oval, tapered piece of styrene was implanted as the raked intake lip, trying to copy the look of the real thing according to the few pictures I had at hand. I also added a central splitter in the air intake, which houses the front wheel bay.

 

Some putty work was necessary to blend the new nose into the front fuselage, as well as the dorsal spine into the new fin, but that turned out to be easier than expected.

 

The jet exhaust originally is just a vertical "plate" in the MiG-21's tail. I opened it and implanted a new cover inside of the fuselage, in a deeper position. For some more detail I also added a (simple) jet nozzle, IIRC it is a leftover part from a Matchbox Jaguar kit, probably 30 years old... Not much, but it defininitively enhances the rear view of the machine.

 

The original cockpit only consists of a bulky seat and the pilot figure, and the clear canopy is clear but horribly thick. Hence, I decided to keep the cockpit closed, but nevertheless I added a floor and some side panels, and used an Airfix pilot figure.

 

The missile ordnance comes from the scrap box, reflecting “modern” Chinese air-to-air weaponry: two PL-7 (Matra Magic AAMs from an Italeri NATO weapons kit) on the outer and two PL-11 (two Aspide missiles from the same set ) on the inner wing hardpoints. All wing hardpoints come from MiG-21F kits, one pair is from the Academy kit, the other from the vintage Hasegawa kit, both have the launch rails molded into the weapon pylon. The drop tank is a typical Chinese item - it resembles the Russian/soviet PTB-490 drop tank, but has a more blunt nose and smaller fins - it comes from a FC-1 kit from Trumpeter.

  

Paintings and markings:

Since it is an air superiority aircraft, I wanted an appropriate livery, but not the dull overall grey of contemporary PLAAF fighters. But I found some weird real life paint schemes which inspired the final camouflage.

Since the plane was not supposed to look too American through FS tones I rather used 'other' colors for a wraparound scheme. The basic tone is Testors 2123 (Russian Underside Blue), and from above a darker contrast color was added, Humbrol 230 (PRU Blue). Both tones have a greenish/teal hue, which complements each other well. Together they create a pretty distinctive look, though, esp. with the red and yellow insignia and codes. IMHO these colors suit the fighter well.

 

The kit received a light black ink wash and some dry painting with lighter blue-grey shades (Humbrol 87 and 128), but no weathering, since modern Chinese aircraft tend to look pretty clean and pristine.

 

The decals were puzzled together from the scrap box, IIRC the insignia originally they belong to a Il-28 Trumpeter kit. The 5 digit code comes from a Revell MiG-29 and the number itself is based on the information published in the 2010 book “Chinese Air Power” by Yefim Gordon und Dmitriy Komissarov, where the Chinese code system is explained – I hope that it is more or less authentic ;)

  

So, all in all a rather simple kit conversion, and certainly not a creative masterpiece. To be honest, the similarity with the real thing is just at first glance - but since it is whif world, I am fine with the outcome. ^^

The National Offender Management Service event, Actions Have Consequences, was delivered to pupils at schools in Oldham, Rochdale, Salford and Bolton by a Her Majesty's Prison (HMP) officer, dog handler Paul McGovern MBE and GMP were there to support the event.

   

Prison Officer Paul McGovern MBE, from HMP Manchester, works within the Prison Community Team which engages with children in local schools to break the cycle of children being peer pressured into local crime gangs and subsequently being imprisoned when they are adults.

   

The aim of the Actions Have Consequences programme is to build bridges between local children, their teachers, local neighbourhood policing teams, school based officers and the youth offending team.

   

The programme is carried out in a fun but serious way and covers 46 subjects, some of which include the realities of knife crime, gang wars, drugs, anti-social behaviour, relationship breakdown, and the a real-life experience of being in prison.

   

Local GMP officers and pupils interact throughout the session and the pupils soon see through the police uniform and see the individual underneath, who are not only there for when they are in trouble but are also there to help them.

   

Since it began in 2010 the programme has been delivered to over one million children throughout the country with the support of the local neighbourhood teams, school based officers and the youth offending teams.

   

GMP is committed to educating young people, engaging with the community and taking part in programmes like these that are vital in helping to shaping people's future.

   

Prison Officer Paul McGovern MBE comments that: "I put a lot of energy into the day so it is quite tiring but if it stops one person from being killed or stops someone being imprisoned, the aim of the programme has worked.

   

"I do have to mention my two prison dogs G and J who also come along on the day. They always receive lots of attention but when I need a volunteer for someone to wear the sleeve - everyone goes strangely quiet.

   

"I have received positive feedback from those schools I have attended so I must be doing something right as I am always asked when I am coming back".

   

Chief Inspector Danny Atherton commented that: "We have worked with Paul and the programme for many years and find it is a valuable input for the young people of Greater Manchester.

   

“It is a powerful way to educate them as they approach adulthood, so they make the right decisions when a situation arises to keep themselves and their friends safe.

   

"I'm proud to support such an inspiring project and I'd like to thank everyone that works hard to make it happen. Sadly, these examples and situations are some people's reality, but by sharing them we hope they will make good choices in the future and speak to ourselves if they need help."

   

Deputy Mayor of Greater Manchester Bev Hughes said: “We are committed, not only to strong enforcement against violent crime, but also to trying to prevent it happening first place. Greater Manchester’s Violence Reduction Unit takes a public health approach to violence reduction; this means focusing on understanding what lies behind the problem, the root causes, on testing and evaluating interventions to find out what works best, then and delivering those interventions more widely.

   

“Interventions such as the Actions have Consequences programme help to build positive relationships between children, their teachers and the police.

   

“By working with young people, families and communities we can understand and address the reasons how and why people, particularly young people, can get drawn into violent crime. If we can turn young people away from violence at the earliest possible opportunity we can make a real difference to them and our communities."

The National Offender Management Service event, Actions Have Consequences, was delivered to pupils at schools in Oldham, Rochdale, Salford and Bolton by a Her Majesty's Prison (HMP) officer, dog handler Paul McGovern MBE and GMP were there to support the event.

   

Prison Officer Paul McGovern MBE, from HMP Manchester, works within the Prison Community Team which engages with children in local schools to break the cycle of children being peer pressured into local crime gangs and subsequently being imprisoned when they are adults.

   

The aim of the Actions Have Consequences programme is to build bridges between local children, their teachers, local neighbourhood policing teams, school based officers and the youth offending team.

   

The programme is carried out in a fun but serious way and covers 46 subjects, some of which include the realities of knife crime, gang wars, drugs, anti-social behaviour, relationship breakdown, and the a real-life experience of being in prison.

   

Local GMP officers and pupils interact throughout the session and the pupils soon see through the police uniform and see the individual underneath, who are not only there for when they are in trouble but are also there to help them.

   

Since it began in 2010 the programme has been delivered to over one million children throughout the country with the support of the local neighbourhood teams, school based officers and the youth offending teams.

   

GMP is committed to educating young people, engaging with the community and taking part in programmes like these that are vital in helping to shaping people's future.

   

Prison Officer Paul McGovern MBE comments that: "I put a lot of energy into the day so it is quite tiring but if it stops one person from being killed or stops someone being imprisoned, the aim of the programme has worked.

   

"I do have to mention my two prison dogs G and J who also come along on the day. They always receive lots of attention but when I need a volunteer for someone to wear the sleeve - everyone goes strangely quiet.

   

"I have received positive feedback from those schools I have attended so I must be doing something right as I am always asked when I am coming back".

   

Chief Inspector Danny Atherton commented that: "We have worked with Paul and the programme for many years and find it is a valuable input for the young people of Greater Manchester.

   

“It is a powerful way to educate them as they approach adulthood, so they make the right decisions when a situation arises to keep themselves and their friends safe.

   

"I'm proud to support such an inspiring project and I'd like to thank everyone that works hard to make it happen. Sadly, these examples and situations are some people's reality, but by sharing them we hope they will make good choices in the future and speak to ourselves if they need help."

   

Deputy Mayor of Greater Manchester Bev Hughes said: “We are committed, not only to strong enforcement against violent crime, but also to trying to prevent it happening first place. Greater Manchester’s Violence Reduction Unit takes a public health approach to violence reduction; this means focusing on understanding what lies behind the problem, the root causes, on testing and evaluating interventions to find out what works best, then and delivering those interventions more widely.

   

“Interventions such as the Actions have Consequences programme help to build positive relationships between children, their teachers and the police.

   

“By working with young people, families and communities we can understand and address the reasons how and why people, particularly young people, can get drawn into violent crime. If we can turn young people away from violence at the earliest possible opportunity we can make a real difference to them and our communities."

The National Offender Management Service event, Actions Have Consequences, was delivered to pupils at schools in Oldham, Rochdale, Salford and Bolton by a Her Majesty's Prison (HMP) officer, dog handler Paul McGovern MBE and GMP were there to support the event.

   

Prison Officer Paul McGovern MBE, from HMP Manchester, works within the Prison Community Team which engages with children in local schools to break the cycle of children being peer pressured into local crime gangs and subsequently being imprisoned when they are adults.

   

The aim of the Actions Have Consequences programme is to build bridges between local children, their teachers, local neighbourhood policing teams, school based officers and the youth offending team.

   

The programme is carried out in a fun but serious way and covers 46 subjects, some of which include the realities of knife crime, gang wars, drugs, anti-social behaviour, relationship breakdown, and the a real-life experience of being in prison.

   

Local GMP officers and pupils interact throughout the session and the pupils soon see through the police uniform and see the individual underneath, who are not only there for when they are in trouble but are also there to help them.

   

Since it began in 2010 the programme has been delivered to over one million children throughout the country with the support of the local neighbourhood teams, school based officers and the youth offending teams.

   

GMP is committed to educating young people, engaging with the community and taking part in programmes like these that are vital in helping to shaping people's future.

   

Prison Officer Paul McGovern MBE comments that: "I put a lot of energy into the day so it is quite tiring but if it stops one person from being killed or stops someone being imprisoned, the aim of the programme has worked.

   

"I do have to mention my two prison dogs G and J who also come along on the day. They always receive lots of attention but when I need a volunteer for someone to wear the sleeve - everyone goes strangely quiet.

   

"I have received positive feedback from those schools I have attended so I must be doing something right as I am always asked when I am coming back".

   

Chief Inspector Danny Atherton commented that: "We have worked with Paul and the programme for many years and find it is a valuable input for the young people of Greater Manchester.

   

“It is a powerful way to educate them as they approach adulthood, so they make the right decisions when a situation arises to keep themselves and their friends safe.

   

"I'm proud to support such an inspiring project and I'd like to thank everyone that works hard to make it happen. Sadly, these examples and situations are some people's reality, but by sharing them we hope they will make good choices in the future and speak to ourselves if they need help."

   

Deputy Mayor of Greater Manchester Bev Hughes said: “We are committed, not only to strong enforcement against violent crime, but also to trying to prevent it happening first place. Greater Manchester’s Violence Reduction Unit takes a public health approach to violence reduction; this means focusing on understanding what lies behind the problem, the root causes, on testing and evaluating interventions to find out what works best, then and delivering those interventions more widely.

   

“Interventions such as the Actions have Consequences programme help to build positive relationships between children, their teachers and the police.

   

“By working with young people, families and communities we can understand and address the reasons how and why people, particularly young people, can get drawn into violent crime. If we can turn young people away from violence at the earliest possible opportunity we can make a real difference to them and our communities."

A coolie (alternatively spelled cooli, cooly, quli, koelie, and other such variations), during the 19th and early 20th century, was a term for a locally sourced unskilled labourer hired by a company, mainly from the Indian subcontinent or Southern China.

 

Today, it is used varyingly as a legal inoffensive word (for example, in India for helpers carrying luggage in railway stations) and also used as a racial slur in Africa for certain people from Asia, particularly in South Africa

 

ETYMOLOGY

The origins of the word are uncertain but it is thought to have originated from the name of a Gujarati sect (the Kolī, who worked as day labourers) or perhaps from the Tamil word for a payment for work, kuli (கூலி). An alternative etymological explanation is that the word came from the Urdu qulī (क़ुली, قلی), which itself could be from the Turkish word for slave, qul. The word was used in this sense for labourers from India. In 1727, Dr. Engelbert Kämpfer described "coolies" as dock labourers who would unload Dutch merchant ships at Nagasaki in Japan.

 

The Chinese word 苦力 (pinyin: kǔlì) literally means "bitterly hard (use of) strength", in the Mandarin pronunciation.

 

HISTORY OF THE COOLIE TRADE

An early trade in Asian labourers is believed to have begun sometime in or around the 16th century. Social and political pressure led to the abolition of the slave trade throughout the British Empire in 1807, with other European nations following suit. Labour-intensive industries, such as cotton and sugar plantations, mines and railway construction, in the colonies were left without a cheap source of manpower. As a consequence, a large scale slavery-like trade in Asian (primarily Indian and Chinese) indentured labourers began in the 1820s to fill this vacuum. Some of these labourers signed contracts based on misleading promises, some were kidnapped and sold into the trade, some were victims of clan violence whose captors sold them to coolie brokers, while others sold themselves to pay off gambling debts. British companies were the first to experiment with this potential new form of cheap labour in 1807, when they imported 200 Chinese men to work in Trinidad.

 

The coolie trade was often compared to the earlier slave trade and they accomplished very similar things.

 

Although there are reports of ships for Asian coolies carrying women and children, the great majority of them were men. Finally, regulations were put in place, as early as 1837 by the British authorities in India to safeguard these principles of voluntary, contractual work and safe and sanitary transportation although in practice this rarely occurred especially during examples such as the Pacific Passage or the Guano Pits of Peru. The Chinese government also made efforts to secure the well-being of their nation's workers, with representations being made to relevant governments around the world.

 

CHINESE COOLIES

Workers from China were mainly transported to work in Peru and Cuba, but they also worked in British colonies such as Jamaica, British Guiana (now Guyana), British Malaya, Trinidad and Tobago, British Honduras (now Belize) and in the Dutch colonies Dutch East Indies and Suriname. The first shipment of Chinese labourers was to the British colony of Trinidad in 1806.

 

In 1847 two ships from Cuba transported workers to Havana to work in the sugar cane fields from the port of Xiamen, one of the five Chinese treaty ports opened to the British by the Treaty of Nanking in 1842. The trade soon spread to other ports in Guangdong province and demand became particularly strong in Peru for workers in the silver mines and the guano collecting industry. Australia began importing workers in 1848 and the United States began using them in 1865 on the First Transcontinental Railroad construction. These workers were deceived about their terms of employment to a much greater extent than their Indian counterparts, and consequently, there was a much higher level of Chinese emigration during this period.

 

The trade flourished from 1847 to 1854 without incident, until reports began to surface of the mistreatment of the workers in Cuba and Peru. As the British government had political and legal responsibility for many of the ports involved, including Amoy, the trade was shut down at these places. However, the trade simply shifted to the more accommodating port in the Portuguese enclave of Macau.

 

Many coolies were first deceived or kidnapped and then kept in barracoons (detention centres) or loading vessels in the ports of departure, as were African slaves. In 1875, British commissioners estimated that approximately eighty percent of the workers had been abducted. Their voyages, which are sometimes called the Pacific Passage, were as inhumane and dangerous as the notorious Middle Passage of the Atlantic slave trade. Mortality was very high. For example, it is estimated that from 1847 to 1859, the average mortality for coolies aboard ships to Cuba was 15.2 percent, and losses among those aboard ships to Peru were 40 percent in the 1850s and 30.44 percent from 1860 to 1863.

 

They were sold and were taken to work in plantations or mines with very bad living and working conditions. The duration of a contract was typically five to eight years, but many coolies did not live out their term of service because of the hard labour and mistreatment. Those who did live were often forced to remain in servitude beyond the contracted period. The coolies who worked on the sugar plantations in Cuba and in the guano beds of the Chincha Islands (the islands of Hell) of Peru were treated brutally. Seventy-five percent of the Chinese coolies in Cuba died before fulfilling their contracts. More than two-thirds of the Chinese coolies who arrived in Peru between 1849 and 1874 died within the contract period. In 1860 it was calculated that of the 4000 coolies brought to the Chinchas since the trade began, not one had survived.

 

Because of these unbearable conditions, Chinese coolies often revolted against their Ko-Hung bosses and foreign company bosses at ports of departure, on ships, and in foreign lands. The coolies were put in the same neighbourhoods as Africans and, since most were unable to return to their homeland or have their wives come to the New World, many married African women. The coolies' interracial relationships and marriages with Africans, Europeans and Indigenous peoples, formed some of the modern world's Afro-Asian and Asian Latin American populations.

 

Chinese immigration to the United States was almost entirely voluntary, but working and social conditions were still harsh. In 1868, the Burlingame Treaty allowed unrestricted Chinese immigration into the country. Within a decade significant levels of anti-Chinese sentiment had built up, stoked by populists such as Denis Kearney with racist slogans - "To an American, death is preferable to life on a par with the Chinese."

 

Although Chinese workers contributed to the building of the first Transcontinental Railroad in the United States and of the Canadian Pacific Railway in western Canada, Chinese settlement was discouraged after completion of the construction. California's Anti-Coolie Act of 1862 and the federal Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 contributed to the curtailment of Chinese immigration to the United States.

 

Notwithstanding such attempts to restrict the influx of cheap labour from China, beginning in the 1870s Chinese workers helped construct a vast network of levees in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. These levees made thousands of acres of fertile marshlands available for agricultural production.

 

The 1879 Constitution of the State of California declared that "Asiatic coolieism is a form of human slavery, and is forever prohibited in this State, and all contracts for coolie labour shall be void."

 

Colonos asiáticos is a Spanish term for coolies. The Spanish colony of Cuba feared slavery uprisings such as those that took place in Haiti and used coolies as a transition between slaves and free labor. They were neither free nor slaves. Indentured Chinese servants also labored in the sugarcane fields of Cuba well after the 1884 abolition of slavery in that country. Two scholars of Chinese labor in Cuba, Juan Pastrana and Juan Perez de la Riva, substantiated horrific conditions of Chinese coolies in Cuba and stated that coolies were slaves in all but name. Denise Helly is one researcher who believes that despite their slave-like treatment, the free and legal status of the Asian laborers in Cuba separated them from slaves. The coolies could challenge their superiors, run away, petition government officials, and rebel according to Rodriguez Pastor and Trazegnies Granda. Once they had fulfilled their contracts the colonos asiáticos integrated into the countries of Peru, The Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and Cuba. They adopted cultural traditions from the natives and also welcomed in non-Chinese to experience and participate into their own traditions. Before the Cuban Revolution in 1959, Havana had Latin America's largest Chinatown.

 

In South America, Chinese indentured labourers worked in Peru's silver mines and coastal industries (i.e., guano, sugar, and cotton) from the early 1850s to the mid-1870s; about 100,000 people immigrated as indentured workers. They participated in the War of the Pacific, looting and burning down the haciendas where they worked, after the capture of Lima by the invading Chilean army in January 1880. Some 2000 coolies even joined the Chilean Army in Peru, taking care of the wounded and burying the dead. Others were sent by Chileans to work in the newly conquered nitrate fields.

 

The Chinese Engineering and Mining Corporation, of which later U.S. president Herbert Hoover was a director, was instrumental in supplying Chinese coolie labour to South African mines from c.1902 to c.1910 at the request of mine owners, who considered such labour cheaper than native African and white labour. The horrendous conditions suffered by the coolie labourers led to questions in the British parliament as recorded in Hansard.

 

In 1866, the British, French and Chinese governments agreed to mitigate the abuse by requiring all traders to pay for the return of all workers after their contract ended. The employers in the British West Indies declined these conditions, bringing the trade there to an end. Until the trade was finally abolished in 1875, over 150,000 coolies had been sold to Cuba alone, the majority having been shipped from Macau. These labourers endured conditions far worse than those experienced by their Indian counterparts. Even after the 1866 reforms, the scale of abuse and conditions of near slavery did not get any better - if anything they deteriorated. In the early 1870s increased media exposure of the trade led to a public outcry, and the British, as well as the Qing government, put pressure on the Portuguese authorities to bring the trade at Macau to an end; this was ultimately achieved in 1874. By that time, a total of up to half a million Chinese workers had been exported.

 

The term coolie was also applied to Chinese workers recruited for contracts on cacao plantations in German Samoa. German planters went to great lengths to secure access to their "coolie" labour supply from China. In 1908 a Chinese commissioner, Lin Shu Fen, reported on the cruel treatment of coolie workers on German plantations in the western Samoan Islands. The trade began largely after the establishment of colonial German Samoa in 1900 and lasted until the arrival of New Zealand forces in 1914. More than 2000 Chinese "coolies" were present in the islands in 1914 and most were eventually repatriated by the New Zealand administration.

 

INDIAN COOLIES

By the 1820s, many Indians were voluntarily enlisting to go abroad for work, in the hopes of a better life. European merchants and businessmen quickly took advantage of this and began recruiting them for work as a cheap source of labour. The British began shipping Indians to colonies around the world, including Mauritius, Fiji, Natal, British East Africa, and British Malaya. The Dutch also shipped workers to labour on the plantations on Suriname and the Dutch East Indies. A system of agents was used to infiltrate the rural villages of India and recruit labourers. They would often deceive the credulous workers about the great opportunities that awaited them for their own material betterment abroad. The Indians primarily came from the Indo-Gangetic Plain, but also from Tamil Nadu and other areas to the south of the country.

 

Without permission from the British authorities, the French attempted to illegally transport Indian workers to their sugar producing colony, the Reunion Island, from as early as 1826. By 1830, over 3000 labourers had been transported. After this trade was discovered, the French successfully negotiated with the British in 1860 for permission to transport over 6,000 workers annually, on condition that the trade would be suspended if abuses were discovered to be taking place.

 

The British began to transport Indians to Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, starting in 1829. Slavery had been abolished with the planters receiving two million pounds sterling in compensation for the loss of their slaves. The planters turned to bringing in a large number of indentured labourers from India to work in the sugar cane fields. Between 1834 and 1921, around half a million indentured labourers were present on the island. They worked on sugar estates, factories, in transport and on construction sites.

 

In 1837, the Raj issued a set of regulations for the trade. The rules provided for each labourer to be personally authorised for transportation by an officer designated by the Government, it limited the length of service to five years subject to voluntary renewal, it made the contractor responsible for returning the worker after the contract elapsed and required the vessels to conform to basic health standards

 

Despite this, conditions on the ships were often extremely crowded, with rampant disease and malnutrition. The workers were paid a pittance for their labour, and were expected to work in often awful and harsh conditions. Although there were no large scale scandals involving coolie abuse in British colonies, workers often ended up being forced to work, and manipulated in such a way that they became dependent on the plantation owners so that in practice they remained there long after their contracts expired; possibly as little as 10% of the coolies actually returned to their original country of origin. Colonial legislation was also passed to severely limit their freedoms; in Mauritius a compulsory pass system was instituted to enable their movements to be easily tracked. Conditions were much worse in the French colonies of Reunion and Guadeloupe and Martinique, where workers were 'systematically overworked' and abnormally high mortality rates were recorded for those working in the mines.

 

However, there were also attempts by the British authorities to regulate and mitigate the worst abuses. Workers were regularly checked up on by health inspectors, and they were vetted before transportation to ensure that they were suitably healthy and fit to be able to endure the rigours of labour. Children under the age of 15 were not allowed to be transported from their parents under any circumstances.

 

The first campaign against the 'coolie' trade in England likened the system of indentured labour to the slavery of the past. In response to this pressure, the labour export was temporarily stopped in 1839 by the authorities when the scale of the abuses became known, but it was soon renewed due to its growing economic importance. A more rigorous regulatory framework was put into place and severe penalties were imposed for infractions in 1842. In that year, almost 35,000 people were shipped to Mauritius.

 

In 1844, the trade was expanded to the colonies in the West Indies, including Jamaica, Trinidad and Demerara, where the Asian population was soon a major component of the island demographic.

 

Starting in 1879, many Indians were transported to Fiji to work on the sugar cane plantations. Many of them chose to stay after their term of indenture elapsed and today they number about 40% of the total population. Indian workers were also imported into the Dutch colony of Suriname after the Dutch signed a treaty with the United Kingdom on the recruitment of contract workers in 1870. In Mauritius, the Indian population are now demographically dominant, with Indian festivals being celebrated as national holidays.

 

This system prevailed until the early twentieth century. Increasing focus on the brutalities and abuses of the trade by the sensationalist media of the time, incited public outrage and lead to the official ending of the coolie trade in 1916 by the British government. By that time tens of thousands of Chinese workers were being used along the Western Front by the allied forces (see Chinese Labour Corps).

 

SEX RATIOS AND INTERMARRIAGE AMONG COOLIES

A major difference between the Chinese coolie trade and the Indian coolie trade was that the Chinese coolies were all male, while East Indian women (from India) were brought alongside men as coolies. This led to a high rate of Chinese men marrying women of other ethnicities like Indian women and mixed race Creole women. Indian women and children were brought alongside Indian men as coolies while Chinese men made up 99% of Chinese colonies. The contrast with the female to male ratio among Indian and Chinese immigrants has been compared by historians. In Sumatra in the Dutch East Indies just 18,731 Chinese women and 92,985 Chinese men served as coolies on plantations. Chinese women migrated less than Javanese and Indian women as indentured coolies. The number of Chinese women as coolies was "very small" while Chinese men were easily taken into the coolie trade. In Cuba men made up the vast majority of Chinese indentured servants on sugar plantations and in Peru non-Chinese women married the mostly male Chinese coolies.

 

Chinese women were scarce in every place where Chinese indentured laborers were brought, the migration was dominated by Chinese men. Up to the 1940s men made up the vast majority of the Costa Rican Chinese community. Males made up the majority of the original Chinese community in Mexico and they married Mexican women.

 

In the early 1900s, the Chinese communities in Manila, Singapore, Mauritius, New Zealand, Victoria in Australia, the United States, and Victoria in British Columbia in Canada were all male dominated.

 

WIKIPEDIA

Tuesday 22 November 2016, saw local Greater Manchester Police officers join HMP Manchester Community Team in a visit to St. Edward’s RC Priamry School in Lees, Oldham as part of the ‘Actions Have Consequences’ campaign.

‘Actions Have Consequences’ workshops inform pupils on how their actions can affect them and their local community and the negative outcomes that could occur if they were to stray off the beaten track.

 

Subjects include nuisance 999 calls, bullying, anti-social behaviour, stranger danger, internet safety as well as others. Although the workshops carry a serious message, they are structured to be fun, informative and engaging.

  

The HMP Community Team gave the young people an idea of the harsh reality of prison life and the dangers of knife and gang-related crime.

 

To find out more about Greater Manchester Police please visit our website.

www.gmp.police.uk

 

You should call 101, the new national non-emergency number, to report crime and other concerns that do not require an emergency response.

 

Always call 999 in an emergency, such as when a crime is in progress, violence is being used or threatened or where there is danger to life.

 

You can also call anonymously with information about crime to Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.

 

Check out a new post on thegoldensieve.com

 

The mission and a word about post content.

I have long had my eye on the weathered facade of Mission San Carlos Borroméo del río Carmelo, popularly known as the Carmel Mission. I have family that lives nearby and have heard about it's historical and aesthetic value in the past. I had a few days in Monterey for work recently and sneaked away to get a few images, stopping for nearly an hour at the mission. In the past, I've posted a single image per day. For a while this was fun, but then I found out that an image per day had a number of unintended consequences. Whenever I was taking photographs, knowing that I was going to post a one per day, I began to think about how many times I needed to come up with something worthy of the blog. Sometimes this meant posting a series of photographs that were very similar or separating photographs that belonged together. Though grabbing 365 interesting images per year isn't very difficult - this accounting exercise is extremely stifling to one's creativity - yet it is impossible to understand how limiting it is until you free yourself from this constraint. Some of my readers undoubtedly shoot for a blog or project that requires one image per day. I wonder, do you ever head out with your camera and in the midst of naturally reacting to what you see - say to yourself, "I need a few more," even when you've grabbed your best images? Do you photograph things you don't value or love, just to get images? Maybe I'm alone here, but I doubt it. Today's post features many images, as will most future posts, so I hope you enjoy (and can wait out posts that are spaced more liberally)!

Ancient history by our standards.

The Mission proper, that is a Christian congregation run by its founder, Father Junípero Serra was first established in Monterey in 1770. Serra, with permission of the Viceroy of New Spain, Carlos Francisco de Croix, marqués de Croix, then moved the Mission to what is now the city of Carmel-by-the-Sea in 1771 because of a power struggle with the military enclave. Depending on the source (either the official Mission website or the various historical brevia available online) this struggle is framed either as a desire to control the direction of New Spanish colonialism or as a battle over the mistreatment of the natives by the governor and his soldiers. The mission Serra founded in Monterey eventually became the Cathedral of San Carlos Borromeo, a.k.a. the Royal Presidio Chapel and still stands as a National Historical Landmark in Monterey. The edifice you see in the photographs below was built by later mission leaders in what is now Carmel-by-the-Sea, the neophytes being served from a smaller, make-shift structure during the first decades of its existence. Typically, I take one or two record shots of information that is available at the site while photographing so that I can retain the information on dates and places that I sometimes have trouble remembering properly. This time I found precious little information in the Basilica and instead had to find as much out online as I could. Interestingly, there is no readily available information online about the interesting statues, curios and relics that are located throughout this beautifully restored mission. Much of what I learned after the fact was about the history of what some call the most beautifully preserved of the California mission chain.

Here is a link to the Wikipedia article on the mission, which contains some information about Father Junípero Serra and his efforts related to this mission, but is woefully short on a number of accounts. I am not a religious person by any stretch of imagination. In fact, I find myself securely camped in the opposite extreme, but this is not the place or the time for a discussion about God or faith, etc. Instead, I am interested in the mission as it relates to human history and the early history of California. Furthermore, I have an interest in how we connect to the narrative thread of historical places like the mission and how I can use my camera to capture moments of beauty within these places.

The story of the Camel Mission is but one fascinating chapter in the story of the Spanish colonization of Mexico and the Americas. At the time, these missions and the nearby Presidios (military outposts) represented the first formal European establishments focused on colonizing the west coast. The Viceroys sent explorers, soldiers and members of the Franciscan Order to bring "civilization" (and it's attendant religious trappings) to the native Americans. Within this post I will refrain from considering what benefits, if any, were brought to the native peoples by the introduction of the mission chain into Alta California. New Spain was an empire whose lifespan is still longer than the American timeline, with aristocratic titles originating in the 16th century. The trail of European devastation through native populations begins at about the same time and includes names of these original dignitaries - Cortés and Pizarro. Although Christians may feel differently, it isn't clear to me that Serra and the mission movement brought anything to the Indians besides an acceleration of destructive European influence. Yet, some readers will note that waves of devastation had damaged native populations throughout the Americas both before and after the arrival of Europeans, and that by all accounts the Father Serra was a truly dedicated missionary and cared deeply about fulfilling his oaths and tending his flock. The magnitude of devastation both natural, domestically made and of European origin are topics I do not pretend to fully comprehend. How the mission system fits into the tragic backdrop of these events is something I think is best left to the historians. Serra, true to his word, worked until death building the mission and died with nothing more than a cot, his habit and a few other daily trappings - having worked continually to do what he thought was best for the native members of his congregation. There was, and still is, a chain of 21 missions extending from San Diego to Sonoma, north of San Francisco, and the Mission San Carlos Borroméo del río Carmelo is widely accepted as one of the most faithfully restored/preserved.

A large step backward in time.

I love visiting places like the mission because they represent such a strong counterpoint to much of the tourist-trap culture in which an out-of-towner like myself might normally find himself. There is a reason you'll never see a photograph of Disneyworld on this blog. Some places, though commercially successful and valuable for one reason (or person) or another, for me possess no aesthetic or cultural value and will simply not see the business end of my camera. I think all people make this mental calculation when photographing and each person's calculation will be different from his peers. Here at the mission, outside of the labyrinthian giftshop, I find myself standing in a square flanked by a museum and the stately, aging facade of the capilla of the Mission San Carlos Borroméo del río Carmelo. The rose window, Moorish bell-tower dome and roughly hewn door are your first clues that stepping inside is stepping back over 200 years in time.

The chapel is no stranger to a camera, but whenever I am in a place like this I am very careful not to disturb the atmosphere of the place or my fellow visitors. I extend my tripod legs outside the building and, if I am taking bracketed images for HDR, wait between taking images so that I don't create a continual noise of my shutter clacking open and closed.

Just inside the wooden doors the soft white light of Monterey marine-layer-noon drops to zero and the chapel is lit by a single hanging lamp, votive candles and a few recessed windows. A large stoup of holy water is held within an ancient iron basin atop a carved wooden pedestal placed upon an ornate and plush rug. A long center aisle extends beyond the stoup, through the pews to the apse.

The walls are adorned with various oil paintings of religious and historical personages and events. Just past the first set of pews is the entrance to the burial chapel to the left and an image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus to the right. The air is cool and calm and I was nearly alone here in the nave.

The burial chapel has no external light and is instead lit by a single set of votives and the hanging lamp. I could not find any information on the figure of Our Lady of Bethlehem within glass frame above the altar, but did discover that the previous Pope, John Paul II had visited the mission in September of 1987 and designated it a Minor Basilica. As I took these images, I waited for many other visitors to percolate through the burial chamber. Many of these folks would stop and take a photograph of the plaque you see on the floor commemorating the papal visit. I found this to be a particularly interesting vignette of the sieving capacity of memory. Within the hallowed grounds of this mission there are layers of memory and narrative history to which we connect in different ways. Perhaps more than any other pope I can name, the previous Catholic leader was truly an example of a fascinating individual who used his political influence for good, yet I do not connect to his story as strongly as I do to the historical thread of the California missions. Then again, I'm not a Catholic.

Through the central aisle, up to the altar and then to the left is a claustrophobic and darkened alcove with a small altar and votive. I found this corner of the mission the most interesting to photograph. Here the room is lit by a small gas lamp and a round votive stand, the light flickering and revealing the carefully painted walls and ceilings. The air is richly perfumed by the hanging thurible above the votives. A mirror and door provide all the frames a photographer could possibly need and I played a bit with my position relative to the door to frame both the door to the sacristy and the relic containing the fragments of the Fray Serra's original coffin. Here we go beyond the literal narratives within the mission and invent our own stories. A penitent or devout missionary shuffles through these halls, observing his duties and escaping the damp cold of a coastal winter. A modern pilgrim stops to say a prayer and light a votive, sharing the same footsteps as his invisible predecessor. Recreating the mood and memory of places like this little alcove by an act as simple as taking a photograph is my favorite pastime.

The beautified Serra is interred just before the altar along with several other figures who feature prominently within the history of the Carmel Mission.

Abraham Mignon. 1640-1679. Utrecht.

Nature morte aux fruits et au homard.

Still life with fruit and lobster.

Douai. Musée de la Chartreuse

 

LE RÉALISME NÉERLANDAIS et SCANDINAVE.

 

Le réalisme néerlandais, plus exactement flamand et néerlandais, s'enracine dans une culture qui correspond au peuplement germanophone des Pays Bas au sens large (Pays Bas et Belgique actuels).

La partie sud du pays, flamande, se développe beaucoup plus précocement que la partie nord, néerlandaise. Dès le 11è siècle la Flandre est avec la plaine du Pô un des tous premiers moteurs de la Renaissance de l'Europe après les Ages Sombres consécutifs au lent dépérissement de l'Empire Romain et à la série d'invasion germaniques, scandinaves et arabo-berbères qui l'accompagnent et en aggravent encore les conséquences.

En peinture l'école de Bruges, que certains historiens d'art appellent encore "les primitifs flamands", n'a rien de primitif et constitue un excellent témoin du développement économique et politique de la Flandre au 15è siècle et 16è siècle.

L'Europe de l'ouest étant catholique, les oeuvres de ces peintres sont essentiellement orientées par les thèmes religieux. Mais le réalisme naturaliste, l'esprit concret et pragmatique de cette population apparaît déjà très clairement comme en témoignent Jérôme Bosch (1450-1516) et surtout Bruegel Pierre l'Ancien (1525-1569). Ce dernier notamment peint tout aussi souvent des tableaux profanes que des oeuvres sacrées, notamment ses kermesses, danses de mariage, travaux des saisons. Mais en outre ses tableaux religieux relèguent bien souvent le thème spécifiquement sacré en fond de scène, et en fait un prétexte à une restitution très détaillée de la vie quotidienne à son époque.

Cette caractéristique flamande va se développer encore, après la Réforme, aux Pays Bas du Nord dont le démarrage économique plus tardif prend tout son essor au 17è siècle.

La Réforme de tendance calviniste qui triomphe aux Pays Bas est religieusement presque iconoclaste. Le protestantisme néerlandais n'interdit certes pas absolument les représentations imagées religieuses -heureusement pour Rembrandt- mais il les limite considérablement. Les intérieurs des églises sont dépouillés du décor peint ou sculpté des temps catholiques. Les thèmes religieux qui demeurent sont essentiellement tirés de l'Ancien Testament, la Vierge et donc le Christ enfant, les Saints et les Saintes disparaissent. En outre l'Eglise ayant été chassée du pays un mécène essentiel disparaît.

Les artistes des Pays Bas du Nord doivent se reconvertir, ils vont le faire de manière exemplaire, en devenant les inventeurs d'une peinture profane, séculière, tout à fait particulière, qui restera originale en Europe encore jusqu'au 19è siècle.

Les artistes néerlandais n'ont peut être pas, dans l'absolu, créé les genres de la peinture de paysage, de la peinture de nature morte, ou de la peinture de moeurs, mais ils leur ont donné un tel développement, bien avant les autres régions de l'Europe, que cela équivaut à une invention.

Avant les artistes des Pays Bas du Nord le paysage est presque toujours le décor d'une scène historique ou mythologique. C'est aux Néerlandais que l'on doit le développement du paysage sans autre thème que la nature, et les banales et quotidiennes activités humaines contemporaines. Le thème certes déjà connu "des travaux et des jours" se généralise, se sécularise, et sort des livres d'heures.

Les peintres des Pays Bas vont aussi considérablement développer la peinture de moeurs en quittant les milieux aristocratiques pour s'intéresser aux paysans, artisans et bourgeois. Un domaine où leur réalisme et leur sens de l'observation font merveille. Les artistes flamands et néerlandais nous permettent, bien mieux que les peintres baroques ou classiques des écoles de l'Europe du Sud ou de l'Allemagne d'observer les modes de vie de l'époque.

Une vache qui pisse, un cochon qui ronfle, une femme qui boit, qui range son linge dans l'armoire, ou épouille sa fille, des paysans avinés qui se disputent, ou des bourgeois qui patinent sont des thèmes très distinctifs des Pays Bas. Des thèmes qui ne se rencontrent pas, ou très peu, ailleurs en Europe. Ce n'est pas du tout la peinture française de l'époque de Louis XIII et Louis XIV. Même les frères Le Nain sont très loin du réalisme flamand et néerlandais.

Enfin la nature morte, qui peut avoir quelques vagues connotations religieuses avec les "vanités", prend aussi un essor qui est spécifique de cette région de l'Europe.

Dans le domaine du portrait l'Europe catholique avait depuis longtemps ouvert la voie et les Pays Bas sont moins originaux, sauf à privilégier le portrait bourgeois par rapport au portrait aristocratique. Mais quand le milicien bourgeois des "grandes compagnies" porte l'épée on voit bien qu'il n'est pas un aristocrate. De même que les régentes des hopitaux, béguinages, orphelinats et oeuvres charitables diverses ne peuvent pas se confondre avec les grandes dames de la noblesse - et de la religion- française, hispanique ou germanique.

Les artistes des Pays Bas nous restituent ainsi, encore une fois, avec réalisme, le décor humain de leur époque, à un niveau social que les peintres du sud de l'Europe ignorent car leur clientèle est toujours ailleurs: Les Rois, les Princes, l'Aristocratie ou une très grande bourgeoisie assimilée, et bien sûr l'Eglise.

Toutes ces caractéristiques se retrouvent, deux siècles plus tard, au 19è, dans la peinture des pays scandinaves, plus au nord de l'Europe, eux aussi réformés.

 

THE DUTCH AND SCANDINAVIAN REALISM

 

The Dutch realism, more precisely Flemish and Dutch, is rooted in a culture that corresponds to the German-speaking population of the Netherlands in the broad sense (the Netherlands and Belgium today).

The southern part of the country, Flemish, develops much earlier than the northern part, Dutch. From the 11th century Flanders was, with the plain of the Po and Tuscany, one of the first engines of the Renaissance of Europe after the Dark Ages consecutive to the slow decline of the Roman Empire and to the series of Germanic Scandinavian and Arabic-Berbers invasions that accompany it and further aggravate the consequences.

In painting the school of Bruges, which some art historians still call " the Flemish primitives", is nothing primitive and is an excellent witness to the economic and political development of Flanders in the 15th and 16th centuries.

The Western Europe being Catholic, the works of these painters are essentially oriented by religious themes. But the naturalistic realism, the concrete and pragmatic spirit of this population, already appears very clearly as evidenced by Jerome Bosch (1450-1516) and especially Bruegel Peter the Elder (1525-1569). The latter, in particular, paints profane paintings as often as sacred works, notably his kermesses, wedding dances, works of the seasons. But in addition his religious pictures often relegate the specifically sacred theme to the background, making it a pretext for a very detailed restitution of everyday life in his time.

This Flemish characteristic will continue to develop after the Reformation in the Northern Netherlands, whose later economic growth took off in the 17th century.

The Reformation of Calvinist tendency which triumphs in the Netherlands is religiously almost iconoclastic. Dutch Protestantism does certainly not absolutely forbid religious images - fortunately for Rembrandt- but he limits them considerably. The interiors of the churches are stripped of the painted or carved decoration of Catholic times. The religious themes that remain are essentially drawn from the Old Testament, the Virgin and therefore the Christ Child, the Saints and the Holy Women disappear. In addition the Church having been expelled from the country, an essential patron disappears.

The artists of the Low Countries of the North must reconvert, they will do so in an exemplary way, becoming the inventors of a profane, secular painting, quite particular, which will remain original in Europe until the 19th century.

The Dutch artists may be not have, in absolute terms, created the genres of landscape painting, of still life painting, or painting of manners, but they have given them such a development long before other regions of Europe, that is equivalent to an invention.

Before the artists of the Low Countries of the North the landscape is almost always the decor of a historical or mythological scene. It is the Dutch to development of the landscape with no other theme than nature, and the banal and daily contemporary human activities. The theme already known "works and days" is generalized, secularized, and comes out of the books of hours.

The painters of the Netherlands will also considerably develop the painting of manners by leaving the aristocratic circles, to take an interest in peasants, craftsmen and bourgeois. An area where their realism and their sense of observation are wonderful. Flemish and Dutch artists allow us, far better than the Baroque or classical painters of the schools of Southern Europe or Germany, to observe the ways of life of the time.

A cow that pisses, a pig that snores, a woman who drinks, who puts her clothes in the cupboard, or chases his daughter's lice, drunken peasants who dispute, or bourgeois who skate, are very distinctive themes of the Netherlands . Topics that do not meet, or very little, elsewhere in Europe. This is not at all the French painting of the time of Louis XIII and Louis XIV. Even the Le Nain brothers are far from Flemish and Dutch realism.

Finally, still life, which may have some vague religious connotations with the "vanities", also takes a boom that is specific to this region of Europe.

In the field of portraiture Catholic Europe had long opened the way, and the Netherlands is less original, except to favor the bourgeois portrait in relation to the aristocratic portraiture. But when the bourgeois militiaman of the "big companies" bears the sword, it is clear that he is not an aristocrat. Just as the regentes of hospitals, beguines, orphanages and various charitable works can not be confused with the great ladies of the nobility - and of the French, Hispanic or Germanic religion.

The artists of the Netherlands thus restore to us, once again, with realism, the human decor of their time, on a social level that the painters of southern Europe ignore because their clientele is always elsewhere: The Kings, Princes, The Aristocracy or a very large assimilated bourgeoisie, and of course the Church.

All these characteristics are found, two centuries later, in the 19th century, in the painting of the Scandinavian countries, further north of Europe, also reformed.

  

Truth or Consequences, NM.

I try not to think about the consequences of my most personal decisions. But I know I have to accept them, whatever those may be

The Royal Courts of Justice was opened by Queen Victoria in 1882 and became the permanent home of the Supreme Court. The history of the administration of justice in England and Wales spans many centuries. By the mid-19th century‚ a number of separate courts had come into existence at different times and to meet different needs. Many anomalies and archaisms had arisen and it was recognised that this state of affairs was unacceptable‚ and‚ in consequence‚ the Judicature Acts of 1873-75 reconstituted all the higher courts. The Judicature Acts abolished the former courts and established in their place a Supreme Court of Judicature‚ the name of which was changed in 1981 to the Supreme Court of England and Wales.

 

The Supreme Court consists of two courts: the High Court of Justice and the Court of Appeal. The High Court consists of three Divisions dealing mainly with civil disputes: the Chancery Division (which took over the work of the old High Court of Chancery)‚ the Queen’s Bench Division (which incorporated the jurisdiction of the three former common law courts: the Court of King’s Bench‚ the Court of Common Pleas and the Court of Exchequer) and the Probate‚ Divorce and Admiralty Division which took over the former Court of Admiralty‚ Court of Probate and Court for Divorce. This last division has itself been replaced by the Family Division which was created in 1970.

 

When Queen Victoria opened the Royal Courts of Justice on 4th December 1882 she was drawing a line under a long and difficult effort to achieve a home for the Supreme Court for England and Wales.

 

Before 1875‚ courts had been housed in Westminster Hall‚ Lincoln’s Inn and various other buildings around London and pressure had been mounting for a grand new building and in 1866 Parliament announced a competition for the design.

 

The eleven architects competing for the contract for the Law Courts each submitted alternative designs with the view of the possible placing of the building on the Thames Embankment. The present site was chosen only after much debate.

 

In 1868 it was finally decided that George Edmund Street‚ R.A. was to be appointed the sole architect for the Royal Courts of Justice and it was he who designed the whole building from foundation to varied carvings and spires.? Building was started in 1873 by Messrs. Bull & Sons of Southampton.

 

There was a serious strike of masons at an early stage which threatened to extend to other trades and caused a temporary stoppage of the works. In consequence‚ foreign workmen were brought in - mostly Europeans. This aroused bitter hostility on the part of the men on strike and the newcomers had to be specially protected by the police and were housed and fed in the building.? However‚ these disputes were eventually settled and the building took eight years to complete and was officially opened by Queen Victoria on the 4th of December‚ 1882. Sadly‚ Street died before the building was opened.

 

Parliament paid ?1‚453‚000 for the 7.5 acre site. It was reported that 4‚175 people lived in 450 houses. In two houses in Robin Hood Court 52 people had their abode‚ in Lower Serle’s Place 189 people slept in 9 houses. The site also housed the Kit Kat Club.

 

The building was paid for by cash accumulated in court from the estates of the intestate to the sum of ?700‚000. Oak work and fittings in the courts cost a further ?70‚000 and with decoration and furnishing the total cost for the building came to under a million pounds.

 

The dimensions of the building (in round figures) are: 470 feet (approx.143 metres) from East to West; 460 feet (approx.140 metres) from north to south; 245 (approx 74 metres) feet from the Strand level to the tip of the fleche.

 

Entering through the main gates in the Strand one passes under two elaborately carved porches fitted with iron gates. The carving over the outer porch consists of heads of the most eminent Judges and Lawyers. Over the highest point of the upper arch is a figure of Jesus Christ; to the left and right at a lower level are figures of Solomon and Alfred; that of Moses is at the northern front of the building. Also at the northern front‚ over the Judges entrance are a stone cat and dog representing fighting litigants in court.

 

The walls and ceilings (of the older‚ original Courts) are panelled in oak which in many cases is elaborately carved. In Court 4‚ the Lord Chief Justice’s court‚ there is an elaborately carved wooden royal Coat of Arms.? Each court has an interior unique to itself; they were each designed by different architects.

 

There are‚ in addition to the Waiting Rooms‚ several Arbitration and Consultation Chambers together with Robing Rooms for the members of the Bar.

  

By the time Selma hit the street, she was in the grip of a cold self-conscious fear. Bert was showing amazing talent at leatherworking. Given a week to make her a nice leather gift, he'd made this, all while working his two jobs and enrolled full time in soc at UCLA. But when she explained that her childhood in the town of Truth or Consequences, NM, had given her a western sensibility, she could only guess that Bert's lovelorn fingers were warped and deceived by his San Francisco mind into some drag queen mockery of western style. Instead of the braided leather belt with some intricate carving on the back that she'd expected to receive, she was decked out in carved and crenalated and tassled leather, head to toe. Bert had lovingly dressed her, from the 10 gallon leather hat carved with scenes of Native Americans hunting buffalo, to the chaps and spurs. And then, the piece de resistance: the saddlebag. One stirrup was the clasp, and the other hung - it seemed redundant or merely insufficient to suggest decoratively - from the other side. The saddle itself was the lid of the purse, revealing a satin lined two chamber space within. That was what got Selma. The concern involved in sewing in an extra chamber into the purse had moved Bert from overly sappy paramour to slightly creepy potential stalker.

 

And now, because she had been wholly unprepared for what Bert was doing to her, she had to walk in this getup down to a bus stop and go to a lunch date with a friend. Keeping her head down and putting one foot in front of the other had gotten her to the bus stop, but she realized that she was going to have to sit and wait for the bus. She briefly thought of running back to Bert's: making him take it all back, yelling a bit and running off again. But Bert would most likely not be there when she got back. Why had she ever agreed to walk out in this getup in the first place? The only explanation was shock. He was so broken up with.

 

She peeked at the world from under her brim. As expected, a crowd of locals was staring at her. Her bench was empty, despite a growing crowd. She was the person at an LA bus stop that no one would sit next to. The bus arrived, and she sat down next to an old lady. The old lady sized her up, and leaned in close.

 

"Who did this to you, honey?", she whispered.

 

"Um" she said. "My new boyfriend. About to be ex-boyfriend. Uh, he's from San Francisco, He's a little odd."

 

The old lady sat back, looking her over again, and nodding very slowly to herself, until almost inperceptively the nod transmogrified into a shake.

 

"No he ain't" she announced. "He's a space alien."

 

Could this get any worse? Selma coughed, getting ready to politely refute the lady's claim.

 

"He is," she went on, "easy to spot their handiwork when you know what to look for."

 

She looked out the window and back at Selma, leaving no room for rebuttal. "He, or should I say it, is here studying us humans. Mmm uh huh. It'll have several jobs that expose it to humans, and be studying them in some schooling, I figure. That's how they operate. Mmm. And this," here she motioned to Selma's getup, "is like they do, taking a little idea you give them and blowing it up way too much. You think back. It's the way 'he' is about everything, like he just don't quite get humans at all. Once you start looking for them, you see them everywhere. This one is markng you for its own. Means it's thinkin of abducting you."

 

With that the lady turned abck to the window, her own demons clearly exorcised and passed on to Selma.

 

She'd had enough. She noticed a used clothing store fly by the bus window, and grabbed the cord. The bus lurched into the stop, and she made her way back. She snuck in as best she could, depositing bits of her outfit over different shelves and racks. She grabbed a blouse and slipped it on unseen and made for the door again. Before she'd even made it out the door she could her a slightly androgenous voice behind her.

 

"How much is this saddlebag thingy? It's fabulous, but there's no tag on it."

 

Fine, she thought. Let them be marked for alien abduction.

Mental illness comes in many forms - or in this case three.

Digitally manipulated variation triptych of an original image lifted from a Hertfordshire local newspaper assault case report video still frame, requesting ID from the public of this unwholesomely frightening and disturbed individual

 

Truth or Consequences, New Mexico Fiesta 2013 parade .

Truth Or Consequences NM Police Dept 2012 Dodge Pickup in pre mid 2013 graphics. Truth or Consequences Is the County seat of Sierra County .

doing a second and final run!

 

these books are sewn/hand bound by me. price is $10 to $15 -- whatever you can afford personally (this would cover shipping as well). if you want one, send me a message and i'll send you instructions/we can make arrangements :) you can also tell me if you have a color preference for the cover! (now also available in yellow, cream and lavender)

 

for a sample of my writing, you can see this post and this post. there are a total of 12 stories in the book, including these two. inside looks like this.

 

thanks!

Inspector Matt Bailey-Smith and the pint that could cost £50,000.

 

Car wreckage and a £50,000 pint come to Manchester

 

People in Manchester were be exposed to two very different consequences of drink driving by Greater Manchester Police this week. The wreckage of a car whose owner was killed in drink driving crash went on display at the University of Manchester, alongside a pint worth £50,000 – the personal financial cost of a conviction.

 

The £50,000 pint, displayed behind velvet ropes and housed in a protective glass case, represents the personal financial cost of drink-driving, calculated for the first time by the Institute of Advanced Motorists. The calculation reflects the fines, legal costs, rise in insurance premiums and possible job losses faced by those who are convicted.

 

The wreckage, known as the Think! Car, was owned by a 21-year-old man who lost control of his car on his way home and hit a tree, sadly killing him.

 

The activity was part of the University ‘Wellbeing Week’ and involved police conducting on the spot breathalyser tests and handing out free ‘scratchcards’, as well as activity highlighting the dangers posed to cyclists and bikers straying into the blind spots of HGVs and buses.

 

Inspector Matt Bailey-Smith from Greater Manchester Police said: "Drink driving ruins lives. It can cost motorists their family, job and worse still their life or that of somebody else.

 

"Many people do not think of the consequences of driving under the influence of alcohol until it is too late and police are committed to tackling this issue so that we can make the roads of Greater Manchester a safer place to be.

 

"If you are planning on driving then the safest choice you can make is to avoid alcohol all together, and if you see somebody else attempting to drink and drive then make sure you stop them. It could be the difference between life and death."

 

Road Safety Minister Stephen Hammond said:

 

“It might only look like a humble pint of beer, but it could end up costing much more than a few quid – in fact it comes with an eye-watering hidden cost if it pushes you over the limit.

 

“Most people know not to drink and drive but a small number still do, which is why we are highlighting the consequences of a drink drive conviction through our THINK! campaign.

 

“Anyone thinking of drinking and driving should be without any doubt – if you are caught driving over the limit you will face a heavy court fine and lose your licence – you could even go to prison.”

 

To find out more about Greater Manchester Police please visit our website.

www.gmp.police.uk

 

You should call 101, the new national non-emergency number, to report crime and other concerns that do not require an emergency response.

 

Always call 999 in an emergency, such as when a crime is in progress, violence is being used or threatened or where there is danger to life.

 

You can also call anonymously with information about crime to Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111. Crimestoppers is an independent charity who will not want your name, just your information. Your call will not be traced or recorded and you do not have to go to court or give a statement.

  

On Monday April 10th ,2017 City of Truth or Consequences ( T OR C ) Police and Street Depts along , Sierra Vista Hospital Held a ceremony for the arrival of new vehicles . They where obtain through a USDA grant .The event took place at Healing waters Plaza in T or C ,the county seat of Sierra County NM .

 

T or C PD 2017 Ford Police Interceptor Utilitys in early 2016 to present graphics

 

 

The spill of light from a projector showing a video-art installation creates unintended potential

ITM1692074

 

At a crossroads – Needing to make an important decision

When you are at a crossroads, you are at a point in your life where you need to make a decision. The implication is that the decision you make will have big, life-altering consequences.

Bad apple – Bad person

You can use this idiom to describe someone who is not nice and maybe even criminal.

Barking up the wrong tree – Pursuing the wrong course

When you “bark up the wrong tree” you are pursuing the wrong solution to your problems.

Be closefisted – Stingy

If you are being “closefisted”, you don’t want to spend a lot of money.

Be cold-hearted – Uncaring

If you decide to be “cold-hearted”, you are making a deliberate decision not to care about someone or something.

Be on solid ground – Confident

When you are “on solid ground”, you are confident in your position or feel that you are safe.

Beat around the bush – Avoid saying

When you do this, you are taking a long time to say what you really need to say. You may be doing this because the “truth” is embarrassing or your unsure about how the listener will take it.

Behind you – Supportive

When you are “behind” someone, you are saying that they have your support.

Between a rock and a hard place – Facing difficulties

When you have to choose between two options, neither of which are ideal or “good”.

Blow off steam – Try to relax

When you are stressed or upset about something, sometimes you need to do something to keep you from thinking about it.

Born with a silver spoon in their mouth – Born wealthy

This idiomatic expression is used to describe someone who was born into a wealthy family.

Break the bank – Spend a lot

When you “break the bank”, you spend a lot of money on something. If something will “break the bank”, then it’s expensive.

Bright spark – Smart

A “bright spark” is someone who is smart and valuable to an organization.

Build a case – Argue your point

When you “build a case” for something, you are preparing to argue a point or convince someone that your opinion is the right one.

Build castles in the sky – Daydream

When you fantasize about something you hope to have or achieve.

Burn your bridges – End a relationship

When you “burn your bridges” you end a relationship permanently.

Butter up – Flatter

When you “butter” someone up, you are telling them nice things about themselves.

Bought a lemon – Bad bargain

If something you bought is a “lemon” it is a bad product. In a sense, you wasted your money on it.

Break the ice – Start a conversation

When you start a conversation strangers with the end goal of making new friends.

Calm before the storm – Peaceful

When you use this to describe your state of being or mind, you’re talking about a quiet period before anticipated trouble comes your way.

Chasing rainbows – Pursuing dreams

When you try to follow your dreams. The implication here, however, is that you might be better off forgetting your dreams.

Clear as mud – Hard to understand

When you are confused about something or a situation.

Cool as a cucumber – Calm

This idiomatic expression is meant to describe someone who is calm and relaxed.

Couch potato – Lazy

A couch potato is a lazy person. Specifically, someone who sprawls on their couch watching TV almost all day.

Cross that bridge when we get to it – Think about it later

When you say this, you are telling someone that you will think about something later. The implication is that it’s a problem or a decision that can be put off for now.

Chew it over – Think had about something

This idiom implies that you need to make an important decision and can’t afford to be hasty about it.

Come to light – Be revealed

When something “comes to light” something that was originally concealed from you is revealed.

Cut back on – Reduce

When you use this idiom, you are reducing something.

Cut to the chase – Speak concisely

When you tell someone to “cut to the chase”, you are expressing impatience. This is usually used when someone feels someone else is taking to long to deliver important news.

Crystal clear – Easy to understand

When you say that something is “crystal clear”, you are saying that it is understood.

Dead-end job – No more opportunities

When you are stuck in a “dead-end job”, you are in a career situation where there is no more room for advancement.

Dig deep – Strive

When you “dig deep” you put a lot of effort into a task.

Digging into – Looking closer

When you “dig into” something, you are looking for more information.

Don’t run before you can walk – Don’t assume something is easy

This is a descriptive idiom, it’s meant to make you think about how a baby needs to learn how to walk before they can run. It’s supposed to caution you about assuming you can just do something without learning the basics.

Down to earth – Practical

This describes someone who is known for being sensible and practical.

Eat like a bird – Small appetite

This is used to describe someone who doesn’t eat a lot.

Eat like a horse – Eat a lot

If you eat like a horse, you are eating a lot. You can “eat like a bird” most of the time but “eat like a horse” at a specific time because you are either very hungry or you really like the food.

Eat your words – Admit you were wrong

When you “eat your words” you are admitting that something you said earlier turned out to be wrong.

Every cloud has a silver lining – Things will get better

When you say this, you are telling yourself or someone else that you will get through your troubles.

Face the music – Face the consequences

When you “face the music”, you are owning up to a mistake and trying to make amends.

Find your feet – Adapt

When you are “finding your feet” you are learning how to adapt to a new situation, like a new job.

Follow in their footsteps – Imitate

This idiom is often used between children and their parents, but it can also refer to a mentor or someone you admire. If you “follow in someone’s footsteps”, you do the same thing that they did.

Food for thought – Something to think about

If you are given “food for thought” you have been given something to think about.

A frosty reception – To be unwelcome

If you received a “frosty reception”, you are not welcome.

Fly off the handle – Rages

You can use this idiom to describe someone who is visibly angry over a situation. Often this means that someone is shouting and maybe gesturing violently and even causing damage to property. It also implies that the angry reaction is disproportionate to the situation.

Get on with your life – Continue on after a setback

This is something you can say and should do after going through some problems.

Give them a run for their money – Compete

If you are competing with someone, you are giving them a “run for their money.”

Go Dutch – Split the bill

You can use this idiomatic expression when dining out with friends.

Go with the flow – Relax and get along

When you “go with the flow” you keep calm and just go along with whatever is happening around you.

Got off scot-free – Escaped

When you “get off scot-free”, you managed to escape any consequences for your actions.

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Hard to swallow – Unbelievable

If someone told you something that you just can’t believe, they told you something that is “hard to swallow”.

Have your whole life in front of you – Young

Someone who has their whole life in front of them is young and full of promise.

Hold out an olive branch – Apologize

When you do this, you try to make amends or peace with someone you’ve hurt or angered.

In hot water – In trouble

This idiomatic expression can be used to say that you are in a less than ideal situation.

Inching forward - Making slow progress

When you say this, you’re saying things are proceeding slowly.

Keep on the straight and narrow – Keep out of trouble

When you say this, you are implying that you are going to live in a morally correct way.

Keep your chin up – Stay positive

Even if you’re going through a hard time, you should keep thinking positive.

Kicked the bucket – Died

This is an irreverent phrase to say that someone has died. Be careful how you use it.

Let the cat out of the bag – Spoiled the secret

You “let the cat out of the bag” when you accidentally let someone in on a secret that they weren’t meant to know.

Look up to – Respect

When you “look up to” someone you are acknowledging that you respect them and value their opinion.

Loaded – Rich

When you call someone “loaded” you are saying that they are rich.

Lost at sea – Confused

If a situation is making you feel confused or lost, this is the idiom to use.

Making ends meet – Careful budgeting

If you. don’t have much money, you need to “make ends meet”. This means you carefully budget what you do have to meet your needs.

Make a mountain out of a molehill –Exaggerate

This idiom is used to say that someone is being over-dramatic with their complaints or concerns.

Make waves – Change things

When you “make waves”, you change a situation dramatically. This can also mean that you caused trouble.

Nip in the bud – Stop

When you do this, you take action to keep a situation from getting worse.

No sweat – Easy

When you say “no sweat” you are saying that a task was easy

Not your cup of tea – Not something you like

If you say that something is “not your cup of tea” you are saying it’s not something you particularly like or enjoy.

Once in a blue moon – Rare

This implies something that either won’t happen or rarely happens.

Out in the open – Public knowledge

When something is “out in the open”, it is a matter of public knowledge.

Over the moon – Very happy

You can use this to describe the feeling of getting something you’ve been looking forward to for a long time.

On cloud nine – Very happy

Similar to being over the moon.

Packed like sardines – Crowded

If people are “packed like sardines” in a venue, they are standing very close together in a small space.

Piece of cake –Easy

If you say something is a “piece of cake” you are saying that it is easy.

Pitch in - Contribute

When you “pitch-in”, you work with a group of people to reach a common goal.

Point of view – An opinion

Your “point of view” is what you think about someone or a situation.

Pony up – Pay

If you are paying back a debt, you are “ponying up” the money.

Pour oil on troubled waters – Calm things down

This basically means that you played peacemaker and kept an argument from developing into a physical fight.

Put your head in the sand – Deny something unpleasant

When you have your “head in the sand”, you are deliberately ignoring a bad situation.

Rags to riches – Became rich

Someone who went from “rags to riches” was born poor or underprivileged, but is now in a better social position.

Rain or shine – No matter what

This idiomatic expression is used to express the idea that nothing will stop you.

Reap the rewards – Received the benefits

When you “reap the rewards”, you are getting the benefits of your good work.

Rings a bell – Sounds familiar

When you think that you’ve heard a piece of information before but are not so sure.

Rule of thumb – General practice

A “rule of thumb” is an unwritten rule that is followed by the majority.

Separate the wheat from the chaff – Decide what is valuable

This picturesque idiom refers to how, when you harvest wheat, you need to separate it from the stalks and leaves. So, it means that you pick out or choose what is valuable to keep.

Shell out money – Pay

When you “shell out money”, you pay for an item.

Sitting on the fence – Neutral

When you “sit on the fence” you are avoiding making a decision. Often, this is a decision between two people with different opinions.

Smart cookie – Smart person

You can use this idiom to describe someone intelligent.

Spice things up – Make things interesting

When you “spice things up” you do something to break out of your normal routine.

Spill the beans – Tell

When you do this, you tell someone something they didn’t know. It may or not have been a secret previously.

Sticky fingers – Thief

If you accuse someone of having “sticky fingers” you are basically calling them a thief.

Take a side – Choose who to support

When you “take a side” in an argument, you are agreeing with one of those arguing.

Throw light on – Explain something

When you “throw light on” a situation, you help make sure that it is understood.

To move at a snail’s pace – Move slowly

This is another idiomatic phrase that’s meant to paint a picture. A snail moves slowly, so to move at its pace means things are going slowly.

Tread carefully – Be cautious

This implies that a situation is fraught and it might be easy to offend those involved.

Under the table – Secretive

When you do something “under the table”, you are trying to do something so that only a small amount of people are aware of it. It’s commonly used to describe something that is possibly unscrupulous. For example, bribes are given “under the table”.

Undermine your position – Act unconvincingly

When you behave in a way that makes you and your opinion seem untrustworthy.

Up in the air – Uncertain

When you say something is “up in the air”, you are saying that you are not sure that an event is happening.

Weather the storm – Survive

When you “weather the storm”, you endure a bad situation.

When it rains, it pours – Trouble comes

This refers to the fact that sometimes, many bad things happen to people at one time.

So there you have it, 10 idiomatic expressions and their meanings. These idioms are used by native English language speakers to add some color to their daily speech.

 

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incident mind This relaxation technique really eases mind finally finally move out from old apartment pull baby niece likes pull hair return give tickles return free best things life are free military dad military price This price pay lying report Did report this police less am praying less stress this coming new year according According weather report it’s going rain today decision This big decision explain I’ll explain everything later promise son son cute! hope hope I’ll have son one day even Even they’ve broken up they still remain friends develop That rash could develop into something more serious view This view amazing! relationship They’ve taken their relationship next level carry carry bag town This town extremely quiet road There’s road that leads edge woods drive can’t drive there need walk arm broke arm during practice true It’s true I’m leaving company federal Animal abuse now federal felony! break Don’t break law better better learn how follow rules difference What’s difference between happiness contentment thank forgot thank pie she sent us receive Did receive pie sent value value friendship much international Their brand has gone international! building This building tall! action next action going critical full work load full now model great leader great model how things join wants join soccer team season Christmas favorite season! society Their society holding fund raiser because I’m going home because mom needs tax How much current income tax director director yelled ‘Cut!' early I’m too early appointment position position your hand properly when drawing player That basketball player cute agree agree! cute! especially especially like blue eyes record record minutes this meeting pick Did pick color theme already wear that you’re going wear party paper use special paper your invitations special Some special paper are even scented! space leave some space write down your phone number ground ground shaking form new island was formed after that big earthquake support need your support this project event We’re holding big event tonight official official wedding photos are out! whose Whose umbrella this matter does it matter anyway everyone Everyone thinks stole that file center hate being center attention couple couple on their honeymoon now site This site big! end It’s end era project This project file due tomorrow hit hit burglar with bat base All moms are their child’s home base activity musical activity suggest toddler star son draw star! table saw draw it while was writing on table need need enroll good preschool court There’s basketball court near house produce Fresh farm produce best eat could eat that all day American sister dating American teach love teach English lessons oil Could buy some cooking oil at store half Just half liter situation situation getting out hand easy thought said this was going easy cost cost fuel has increased! industry fuel industry hiking prices figure government figure out how fix this problem face can’t bear face this horrendous traffic again again street Let’s cross street image There’s image stored inside mind itself bike itself pretty awesome phone Plus it has phone holder either either walk or commute work data How simplify this data cover Could cover during emergencies quite I’m quite satisfied with their work picture Picture this: lake cabin lots peace quiet clear That picture clear inside head practice Let’s practice dance number piece That’s piece cake! land Their plane going land soon recent This most recent social media post describe Describe yourself one word product This favorite product their new line cosmetics doctor doctor wall post this up on wall patient patient much pain now worker She’s factory worker news saw that on news test have pass this English test movie Let’s watch movie later certain There’s certain kind magic air now north Santa lives up north love l love Christmas! personal This letter very personal open Why did open read it support support simply simply won’t tolerate bad behavior third This third time you’ve lied technology Write about advantages technology catch Let’s catch up soon please! step Watch your step baby baby adorable computer turn on computer type need type your password attention have your attention draw draw this film That film absolutely mind-blowing Republican Republican candidate tree That tree has been there generations source are source strength red I’ll wear red dress tonight nearly nearly died that accident! organization Their organization doing great things street kids choose Let choose color cause have see cause effect this experiment hair I’ll cut hair short change look look at items bought point point all this century We’re living 21st century Mary evidence evidence clearly shows that guilty window I’ll buy window curtains next week difficult Sometimes life difficult listen have listen your teacher soon launch course soon culture hope they understand culture better billion target have 1 billion dollars account by end year chance there chance that this brother brother always have back energy Now put that energy into walking period They covered period twenty years course Have seen course already summer I’ll go beach summer less Sometimes less more realize just realize that have meeting today hundred have hundred dollars that lend available am available work on your project plant Plant seed likely It was likely deer trail opportunity It was perfect opportunity test theory term I’m sure there’s Latin term it short It was just short stay at hotel letter already passed letter intent condition know condition am choice have no choice place Let’s meet out at meeting place single am single parent rule It’s rule law daughter knows how read now administration take this up with administration south am headed south husband just bought ring birthday Congress It debated at Congress floor She floor manager campaign handled their election campaign material She had nothing material report population population nearest big city was growing well wish well call am going call bank economy economy booming medical -She needs medical assistance hospital I’ll take nearest hospital church saw church last Sunday close -Please close door thousand There are thousand reasons learn English! risk Taking risk rewarding current your current address fire Make sure your smoke alarm works case fire future -The future full hope wrong That wrong answer involve need involve police defense your defense or reason did this anyone Does anyone know answer increase Let’s increase your test score security Some apartment buildings have security bank need go bank withdraw some money myself clean up by myself certainly certainly help clean up west drive West arrive California sport favorite sport soccer board see board seek Seek find per Lobster $20 per pound subject favorite subject English! officer Where find police officer private This private party rest Let’s take 15 minute rest behavior This dog’s behavior excellent deal used car good deal performance Your performance affected by your sleep fight don’t fight with throw German ball! top are top student quickly Let’s finish reading this quickly past past English was as good as it today goal speak English fluently second second goal increase confidence bed go bed around 10pm order would like order book author author this series world-famous fill need fill (up) gas tank represent represent family focus Turn off your phone TV focus on your studies! foreign It’s great having foreign friends drop don’t drop eggs! plan Let’s make plan blood hospital needs people give blood upon Once upon time princess lived castle agency Let’s contract agency help with marketing push door says ‘push ’ ‘pull ' nature love walking nature! colou color blue no ‘No’ one shortest complete sentences recently cleaned bathroom most recently think it’s your turn this time store I’m going store buy some bread reduce reuse recycle are ways help environment sound like sound wind chimes note take notes during lesson fine movie let’s buy popcorn! near Near far wherever are believe that heart goes on movement environmental movement international movement page turn page 62 enter enter building on left share Let share idea than Ice cream has more calories than water common Most people find something common with each other poor had poor harvest this year because it was dry other This pen doesn’t work try other one natural This cleaner natural there aren’t chemicals it race watched car race on TV concern Thank your concern but I’m fine series your favorite TV series significant job earns significant amount money similar These earrings don’t match but they are similar hot Don’t touch stove it’s still hot language Learning new language fun each Put flower each vase usually usually shop at corner store response didn’t expect response come soon dead phone dead let charge it rise sun rise at 7:00 a m animal kind animal that factor Heredity factor your overall health decade I’ve lived this city over decade article Did read that newspaper article shoot wants shoot arrows at target east Drive east three miles save save all cans recycling seven There are seven slices pie left artist Taylor Swift recording artist away wish that mosquito would go away scene painted colorful street scene stock That shop has good stock postcards career Retail sales good career some people despite Despite rain still have picnic central There good shopping central London eight That recipe takes eight cups flour thus haven’t had problems thus far treatment propose treatment plan your injury beyond town just beyond those mountains happy Kittens make happy exactly Use exactly one teaspoon salt that recipe protect coat protect from cold weather approach cat slowly approached bird lie Teach your children lie size size that shirt dog think dog good pet fund have savings fund college serious She serious she never laughs occur Strange things occur that empty house media That issue has been discussed media ready Are ready leave work sign That store needs bigger sign thought I’ll have give it some thought list made list things do individual buy individual or group membership simple appliance comes with simple instructions quality paid little more quality shoes pressure There no pressure finish right now accept accept credit card answer Give your answer by noon tomorrow hard That test was very hard resource library has many online resources identify can’t identify that plant left door on your left as approach meeting We’ll have staff meeting after lunch determine Eye color genetically determined prepare I’ll prepare breakfast tomorrow disease Face masks help prevent disease whatever Choose whatever flavor like best success Failure back door success argue It’s good idea argue with your boss cup Would like cup coffee particularly It’s particularly hot outside just warm amount It take large amount food feed elephant ability has ability explain things well staff There are five people on staff here recognize recognize person this photo indicate reply indicated that she understood character trust people good character growth company has seen strong growth this quarter loss farmer suffered heavy losses after storm degree Set oven 300 degrees wonder wonder Bulls win game attack army attack at dawn herself She bought herself new coat region internet services are your region television don’t watch much television box packed dishes strong box TV There good movie on TV tonight training company pay your training pretty That pretty dress trade stock market traded lower today deal got good deal at store election Who think win election everybody likes ice cream physical Keep physical distance six feet lay baby crib general impression restaurant was good feeling have good feeling about this standard standard fee $10 00 bill electrician send bill message have text message on your phone fail fail see funny about that outside cat goes outside sometimes arrive When your plane arrive analysis I’ll give analysis when I’ve seen everything benefit There are many health benefits quinoa name What’s your name sex know sex your baby yet forward Move car forward few feet lawyer legal helped write present everyone present meeting begin section stadium are sitting environmental science economy politics political politician issues are news glass much heavier than plastic answer Could answer question skill best skill woodworking sister lives close PM movie starts at 7:30 PM professor Dr Smith professor operation mining operation employs thousands people financial keep accounts at financial institution crime police fight crime stage caterpillar larval stage butterfly ok Would it ok eat out tonight compare should compare cars before buy one authority City authorities make local laws miss you when see again design need design new logo sort Let’s sort these beads according color one only have one cat act I’ll act on your information today ten baby counted ten toes knowledge have knowledge fix that gun Gun ownership controversial topic station There train station close house blue favorite color blue state After accident was state shock strategy new corporate strategy written here little prefer little cars clearly instructions clearly written discuss We’ll discuss that at meeting indeed Your mother does indeed have hearing loss force It takes lot force open that door truth tell truth song That’s beautiful song example need example that grammar point democratic Does Australia have democratic government check check work sure it’s correct environment live healthy environment leg boy broke leg dark Turn on light it’s dark here public Masks must worn public places various That rug comes various shades gray rather Would rather have hamburger than hot dog laugh That movie always makes laugh guess don’t know just guess executive company’s executives are paid well set Set glass on table study needs study test prove employee proved worth hang hang your coat on hook entire ate entire meal 10 minutes rock There are decorative rocks garden design windows don’t open by design enough Have had enough coffee forget Don’t forget stop at store since She hasn’t eaten since yesterday claim made insurance claim car accident note Leave note you’re going late remove Remove cookies from oven manager manager look at your application help Could help move this table close Close door sound dog did make sound enjoy enjoy soda network Band name internet network legal legal documents need signed religious She very religious she attends church weekly cold feet are cold form fill out this application form final divorce was final last month main main problem lack money science studies health science at university green grass green memory has good memory card They sent card birthday above Look on shelf above sink seat That’s comfortable seat cell Your body made millions cells establish They established their business 1942 nice That’s very nice car trial They are employing on trial basis expert Matt IT expert that Did see that movie spring Spring most beautiful season firm ‘no was very firm she won’t change mind Democrat Democrats control Senate radio listen radio car visit visited museum today management That store has good management care She cares mother at home avoid should avoid poison ivy imagine imagine pigs could fly tonight Would like go out tonight huge That truck huge! ball threw ball dog no said ‘no ’ don’t ask again close Close window finish Did finish your homework yourself gave yourself haircut talk talks lot theory theory that’s good plan impact drought had big impact on crops respond hasn’t responded text yet statement police chief gave statement media maintain Exercise helps maintain healthy weight charge need charge phone popular That’s popular restaurant traditional They serve traditional Italian food there onto Jump onto boat we’ll go fishing reveal Washing off dirt revealed boy’s skinned knee direction direction city from here weapon No weapons are allowed government buildings employee That store only has three employees cultural There cultural significance those old ruins contain carton contains dozen egges peace World leaders gathered peace talks head head hurts control Keep control car base glass has heavy base it won’t fall over pain have chest pain apply Maria applied job play children play at park measure Measure twice cut once wide doorway was very wide shake Don’t shake soda fly fly France next year interview job interview went well manage Did manage find keys chair table has six matching chairs fish don’t enjoy eating fish particular That particular style looks good on camera use camera on phone structure building’s structure solid politics Mitch very active politics perform singer perform tonight bit It rained little bit last night weight Keep track your pet’s weight suddenly storm came up suddenly discover You’ll discover treasures at that thrift store candidate There are ten candidates position top flag flies on top that building production Factory production has improved over summer treat Give yourself treat job well done trip are taking trip Florida January evening I’m staying home this evening affect bank account affect how much buy inside cat stays inside conference There expert presenters at conference unit foot unit measure best Those are best glasses buy style dress out style adult Adults pay full price but children are free worry Don’t worry about tomorrow range doctor offered range options mention mention your story rather Rather than focusing on bad things let’s grateful good things far don’t move far from family deep That poem about life deep front face front edge stand close edge cliff individual These potato chips are individual serving size package specific Could more specific writer are good writer trouble Stay out trouble necessary It necessary sleep throughout Throughout life have always enjoyed reading challenge challenge better fear have fears shoulder have shoulder all work on your own institution Have attended institution higher learning middle am middle child with one older brother one younger sister sea sail seven seas dream have dream bar bar place where alcohol served beautiful are beautiful property own property like house instead Instead eating cake have fruit improve am always looking ways improve stuff When moved realized have lot stuff! claim claim fast reader but actually am average

 

At a crossroads – Needing to make an important decision

When you are at a crossroads, you are at a point in your life where you need to make a decision. The implication is that the decision you make will have big, life-altering consequences.

Bad apple – Bad person

You can use this idiom to describe someone who is not nice and maybe even criminal.

Barking up the wrong tree – Pursuing the wrong course

When you “bark up the wrong tree” you are pursuing the wrong solution to your problems.

Be closefisted – Stingy

If you are being “closefisted”, you don’t want to spend a lot of money.

Be cold-hearted – Uncaring

If you decide to be “cold-hearted”, you are making a deliberate decision not to care about someone or something.

Be on solid ground – Confident

When you are “on solid ground”, you are confident in your position or feel that you are safe.

Beat around the bush – Avoid saying

When you do this, you are taking a long time to say what you really need to say. You may be doing this because the “truth” is embarrassing or your unsure about how the listener will take it.

Behind you – Supportive

When you are “behind” someone, you are saying that they have your support.

Between a rock and a hard place – Facing difficulties

When you have to choose between two options, neither of which are ideal or “good”.

Blow off steam – Try to relax

When you are stressed or upset about something, sometimes you need to do something to keep you from thinking about it.

Born with a silver spoon in their mouth – Born wealthy

This idiomatic expression is used to describe someone who was born into a wealthy family.

Break the bank – Spend a lot

When you “break the bank”, you spend a lot of money on something. If something will “break the bank”, then it’s expensive.

Bright spark – Smart

A “bright spark” is someone who is smart and valuable to an organization.

Build a case – Argue your point

When you “build a case” for something, you are preparing to argue a point or convince someone that your opinion is the right one.

Build castles in the sky – Daydream

When you fantasize about something you hope to have or achieve.

Burn your bridges – End a relationship

When you “burn your bridges” you end a relationship permanently.

Butter up – Flatter

When you “butter” someone up, you are telling them nice things about themselves.

Bought a lemon – Bad bargain

If something you bought is a “lemon” it is a bad product. In a sense, you wasted your money on it.

Break the ice – Start a conversation

When you start a conversation strangers with the end goal of making new friends.

Calm before the storm – Peaceful

When you use this to describe your state of being or mind, you’re talking about a quiet period before anticipated trouble comes your way.

Chasing rainbows – Pursuing dreams

When you try to follow your dreams. The implication here, however, is that you might be better off forgetting your dreams.

Clear as mud – Hard to understand

When you are confused about something or a situation.

Cool as a cucumber – Calm

This idiomatic expression is meant to describe someone who is calm and relaxed.

Couch potato – Lazy

A couch potato is a lazy person. Specifically, someone who sprawls on their couch watching TV almost all day.

Cross that bridge when we get to it – Think about it later

When you say this, you are telling someone that you will think about something later. The implication is that it’s a problem or a decision that can be put off for now.

Chew it over – Think had about something

This idiom implies that you need to make an important decision and can’t afford to be hasty about it.

Come to light – Be revealed

When something “comes to light” something that was originally concealed from you is revealed.

Cut back on – Reduce

When you use this idiom, you are reducing something.

Cut to the chase – Speak concisely

When you tell someone to “cut to the chase”, you are expressing impatience. This is usually used when someone feels someone else is taking to long to deliver important news.

Crystal clear – Easy to understand

When you say that something is “crystal clear”, you are saying that it is understood.

Dead-end job – No more opportunities

When you are stuck in a “dead-end job”, you are in a career situation where there is no more room for advancement.

Dig deep – Strive

When you “dig deep” you put a lot of effort into a task.

Digging into – Looking closer

When you “dig into” something, you are looking for more information.

Don’t run before you can walk – Don’t assume something is easy

This is a descriptive idiom, it’s meant to make you think about how a baby needs to learn how to walk before they can run. It’s supposed to caution you about assuming you can just do something without learning the basics.

Down to earth – Practical

This describes someone who is known for being sensible and practical.

Eat like a bird – Small appetite

This is used to describe someone who doesn’t eat a lot.

Eat like a horse – Eat a lot

If you eat like a horse, you are eating a lot. You can “eat like a bird” most of the time but “eat like a horse” at a specific time because you are either very hungry or you really like the food.

Eat your words – Admit you were wrong

When you “eat your words” you are admitting that something you said earlier turned out to be wrong.

Every cloud has a silver lining – Things will get better

When you say this, you are telling yourself or someone else that you will get through your troubles.

Face the music – Face the consequences

When you “face the music”, you are owning up to a mistake and trying to make amends.

Find your feet – Adapt

When you are “finding your feet” you are learning how to adapt to a new situation, like a new job.

Follow in their footsteps – Imitate

This idiom is often used between children and their parents, but it can also refer to a mentor or someone you admire. If you “follow in someone’s footsteps”, you do the same thing that they did.

Food for thought – Something to think about

If you are given “food for thought” you have been given something to think about.

A frosty reception – To be unwelcome

If you received a “frosty reception”, you are not welcome.

Fly off the handle – Rages

You can use this idiom to describe someone who is visibly angry over a situation. Often this means that someone is shouting and maybe gesturing violently and even causing damage to property. It also implies that the angry reaction is disproportionate to the situation.

Get on with your life – Continue on after a setback

This is something you can say and should do after going through some problems.

Give them a run for their money – Compete

If you are competing with someone, you are giving them a “run for their money.”

Go Dutch – Split the bill

You can use this idiomatic expression when dining out with friends.

Go with the flow – Relax and get along

When you “go with the flow” you keep calm and just go along with whatever is happening around you.

Got off scot-free – Escaped

When you “get off scot-free”, you managed to escape any consequences for your actions.

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Hard to swallow – Unbelievable

If someone told you something that you just can’t believe, they told you something that is “hard to swallow”.

Have your whole life in front of you – Young

Someone who has their whole life in front of them is young and full of promise.

Hold out an olive branch – Apologize

When you do this, you try to make amends or peace with someone you’ve hurt or angered.

In hot water – In trouble

This idiomatic expression can be used to say that you are in a less than ideal situation.

Inching forward - Making slow progress

When you say this, you’re saying things are proceeding slowly.

Keep on the straight and narrow – Keep out of trouble

When you say this, you are implying that you are going to live in a morally correct way.

Keep your chin up – Stay positive

Even if you’re going through a hard time, you should keep thinking positive.

Kicked the bucket – Died

This is an irreverent phrase to say that someone has died. Be careful how you use it.

Let the cat out of the bag – Spoiled the secret

You “let the cat out of the bag” when you accidentally let someone in on a secret that they weren’t meant to know.

Look up to – Respect

When you “look up to” someone you are acknowledging that you respect them and value their opinion.

Loaded – Rich

When you call someone “loaded” you are saying that they are rich.

Lost at sea – Confused

If a situation is making you feel confused or lost, this is the idiom to use.

Making ends meet – Careful budgeting

If you. don’t have much money, you need to “make ends meet”. This means you carefully budget what you do have to meet your needs.

Make a mountain out of a molehill –Exaggerate

This idiom is used to say that someone is being over-dramatic with their complaints or concerns.

Make waves – Change things

When you “make waves”, you change a situation dramatically. This can also mean that you caused trouble.

Nip in the bud – Stop

When you do this, you take action to keep a situation from getting worse.

No sweat – Easy

When you say “no sweat” you are saying that a task was easy

Not your cup of tea – Not something you like

If you say that something is “not your cup of tea” you are saying it’s not something you particularly like or enjoy.

Once in a blue moon – Rare

This implies something that either won’t happen or rarely happens.

Out in the open – Public knowledge

When something is “out in the open”, it is a matter of public knowledge.

Over the moon – Very happy

You can use this to describe the feeling of getting something you’ve been looking forward to for a long time.

On cloud nine – Very happy

Similar to being over the moon.

Packed like sardines – Crowded

If people are “packed like sardines” in a venue, they are standing very close together in a small space.

Piece of cake –Easy

If you say something is a “piece of cake” you are saying that it is easy.

Pitch in - Contribute

When you “pitch-in”, you work with a group of people to reach a common goal.

Point of view – An opinion

Your “point of view” is what you think about someone or a situation.

Pony up – Pay

If you are paying back a debt, you are “ponying up” the money.

Pour oil on troubled waters – Calm things down

This basically means that you played peacemaker and kept an argument from developing into a physical fight.

Put your head in the sand – Deny something unpleasant

When you have your “head in the sand”, you are deliberately ignoring a bad situation.

Rags to riches – Became rich

Someone who went from “rags to riches” was born poor or underprivileged, but is now in a better social position.

Rain or shine – No matter what

This idiomatic expression is used to express the idea that nothing will stop you.

Reap the rewards – Received the benefits

When you “reap the rewards”, you are getting the benefits of your good work.

Rings a bell – Sounds familiar

When you think that you’ve heard a piece of information before but are not so sure.

Rule of thumb – General practice

A “rule of thumb” is an unwritten rule that is followed by the majority.

Separate the wheat from the chaff – Decide what is valuable

This picturesque idiom refers to how, when you harvest wheat, you need to separate it from the stalks and leaves. So, it means that you pick out or choose what is valuable to keep.

Shell out money – Pay

When you “shell out money”, you pay for an item.

Sitting on the fence – Neutral

When you “sit on the fence” you are avoiding making a decision. Often, this is a decision between two people with different opinions.

Smart cookie – Smart person

You can use this idiom to describe someone intelligent.

Spice things up – Make things interesting

When you “spice things up” you do something to break out of your normal routine.

Spill the beans – Tell

When you do this, you tell someone something they didn’t know. It may or not have been a secret previously.

Sticky fingers – Thief

If you accuse someone of having “sticky fingers” you are basically calling them a thief.

Take a side – Choose who to support

When you “take a side” in an argument, you are agreeing with one of those arguing.

Throw light on – Explain something

When you “throw light on” a situation, you help make sure that it is understood.

To move at a snail’s pace – Move slowly

This is another idiomatic phrase that’s meant to paint a picture. A snail moves slowly, so to move at its pace means things are going slowly.

Tread carefully – Be cautious

This implies that a situation is fraught and it might be easy to offend those involved.

Under the table – Secretive

When you do something “under the table”, you are trying to do something so that only a small amount of people are aware of it. It’s commonly used to describe something that is possibly unscrupulous. For example, bribes are given “under the table”.

Undermine your position – Act unconvincingly

When you behave in a way that makes you and your opinion seem untrustworthy.

Up in the air – Uncertain

When you say something is “up in the air”, you are saying that you are not sure that an event is happening.

Weather the storm – Survive

When you “weather the storm”, you endure a bad situation.

When it rains, it pours – Trouble comes

This refers to the fact that sometimes, many bad things happen to people at one time.

So there you have it, 10 idiomatic expressions and their meanings. These idioms are used by native English language speakers to add some color to their daily speech.

 

Google is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence,[9] and consumer electronics. It has been referred to as "the most powerful company in the world"[10] and one of the world's most valuable brands due to its market dominance, data collection, and technological advantages in the area of artificial intelligence.[11][12][13] Its parent company Alphabet is considered one of the Big Five American information technology companies, alongside Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft.

Google was founded on September 4, 1998, by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were PhD students at Stanford University in California. Together they own about 14% of its publicly listed shares and control 56% of the stockholder voting power through super-voting stock. The company went public via an initial public offering (IPO) in 2004. In 2015, Google was reorganized as a wholly owned subsidiary of Alphabet Inc. Google is Alphabet's largest subsidiary and is a holding company for Alphabet's Internet properties and interests. Sundar Pichai was appointed CEO of Google on October 24, 2015, replacing Larry Page, who became the CEO of Alphabet. On December 3, 2019, Pichai also became the CEO of Alphabet.[14]

The company has since rapidly grown to offer a multitude of products and services beyond Google Search, many of which hold dominant market positions. These products address a wide range of use cases, including email (Gmail), navigation (Waze & Maps), cloud computing (Cloud), web browsing (Chrome), video sharing (YouTube), productivity (Workspace), operating systems (Android), cloud storage (Drive), language translation (Translate), photo storage (Photos), video calling (Meet), smart home (Nest), smartphones (Pixel), wearable technology (Pixel Watch & Fitbit), music streaming (YouTube Music), video on demand (YouTube TV), artificial intelligence (Google Assistant), machine learning APIs (TensorFlow), AI chips (TPU), and more. Discontinued Google products include gaming (Stadia), Glass,[citation needed] Google+, Reader, Play Music, Nexus, Hangouts, and Inbox by Gmail.[15][16]

Google's other ventures outside of Internet services and consumer electronics include quantum computing (Sycamore), self-driving cars (Waymo, formerly the Google Self-Driving Car Project), smart cities (Sidewalk Labs), and transformer models (Google Brain).[17]

Google and YouTube are the two most visited websites worldwide followed by Facebook and Twitter. Google is also the largest search engine, mapping and navigation application, email provider, office suite, video sharing platform, photo and cloud storage provider, mobile operating system, web browser, ML framework, and AI virtual assistant provider in the world as measured by market share. On the list of most valuable brands, Google is ranked second by Forbes[18] and fourth by Interbrand.[19] It has received significant criticism involving issues such as privacy concerns, tax avoidance, censorship, search neutrality, antitrust and abuse of its monopoly position.

In March 1999, the company moved its offices to Palo Alto, California,[52] which is home to several prominent Silicon Valley technology start-ups.[53] The next year, Google began selling advertisements associated with search keywords against Page and Brin's initial opposition toward an advertising-funded search engine.[54][22] To maintain an uncluttered page design, advertisements were solely text-based.[55] In June 2000, it was announced that Google would become the default search engine provider for Yahoo!, one of the most popular websites at the time, replacing Inktomi.

 

In 2003, after outgrowing two other locations, the company leased an office complex from Silicon Graphics, at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway in Mountain View, California.[59] The complex became known as the Googleplex, a play on the word googolplex, the number one followed by a googol zeroes. Three years later, Google bought the property from SGI for $319 million.[60] By that time, the name "Google" had found its way into everyday language, causing the verb "google" to be added to the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary, denoted as: "to use the Google search engine to obtain information on the Internet".[61][62] The first use of the verb on television appeared in an October 2002 episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.[63]

Additionally, in 2001 Google's investors felt the need to have a strong internal management, and they agreed to hire Eric Schmidt as the chairman and CEO of Google.[49] Eric was proposed by John Doerr from Kleiner Perkins. He had been trying to find a CEO that Sergey and Larry would accept for several months, but they rejected several candidates because they wanted to retain control over the company. Michael Moritz from Sequoia Capital at one point even menaced requesting Google to immediately pay back Sequoia's $12.5m investment if they did not fulfill their promise to hire a chief executive office, which had been made verbally during investment negotiations. Eric

Truth or Consequences NM Police department units in the pre mid 2013 graphics. Truth or Consequences Is the County seat of Sierra County .

Sign seen on Hefner road, west of May.

Dr. Maderline Hsu’s interview in English

 

Trieu Giang: We have heard that Center for Asian American Studies at UT will offer a

"Vietnamese American Heritage & History" course in this spring semester.

This is very happy news for Vietnamese American students as well as the

Vietnamese American community. Can you tell us the reason why CAAS has made

this move?

 

Dr. Madeline Hsu: CAAS has wanted to offer this course for a long time to help students and the UT community better understand the important history and sociopolitical dynamics of

the trajectory of Vietnamese Americans. This course explores the meaning and

consequences of American wars overseas and highlights the nature of the

relationship between the U.S. and its Asian allies and Asian peoples as well as

exploring how refugee experiences shape lives in the U.S. We wanted also to

offer this class to serve the many Vietnamese American students on campus and

to complement our other ethnic specific course offerings in South Asian

Diasporic Literature, South Asian Activism, and Filipino and Chinese American

history.

 

Trieu Giang: Will this course be a credited course and if so, will it strictly be an

elective or is it a mandatory course for certain minors or majors.

Students can take this course for credit and it can be counted toward the AAS

major and minor.

 

Dr. Madeline Hsu: What is the student enrollment response for the class so far?

As anticipated, enrollment is healthy at about 35 students so far.

 

Trieu Giang: What graduated student can do with their AAS’s degree?

 

Dr. Madeline Hsu: They can work for a marketing or a public service company such as the Red Cross or many other companies that need an expert on Asian American community. They also can go to law shools or persue higher education for a Master degree in social studies.

 

Trieu Giang: Beside this course, is CAAS offering any Vietnamese Language courses?

A former director of CAAS, Rowena Fong, pushed for Vietnamese language courses

to be offered through the Department of Asian Studies.

 

Trieu Giang: Does CAAS have any plans for expansion of offering "Vietnamese American Studies" as a minor?

 

Dr. Madeline Hsu: At present we do not have such plans. As far as I know, no AAS program in theUS has such a major.

 

Trieu Giang: We have heard that CAAS will have some collaboration with The Vietnamese American Heritage Foundation on this subject. Can you tell us a little bit

about it?

 

Dr. Madeline Hsu: We are hoping to work with VAHF to preserve local Asian American history through collaborative efforts. One project is to have students collect oral histories. We are also hoping to develop a community service learning course to have

students learn more about the local Asian American community and organizations

through internships.

 

Trieu Giang: Do you have any messages for Vietnamese American students as well as the

Vietnamese community on this subject?

We are continuing to try to recruit faculty with expertise on Southeast Asian

Americans and Southeast Asia. Our program is still in the process of

developing and growing and support from students and community members is still

invaluable as we struggle to gain attention and resources. We hope in the next

five years to have an expanded range of courses and programming to better

address the interests and concerns of all Asian American groups on campus and

in Austin.

 

Trieu Giang: what can an individual who would like to support CAAS of gaining attention and resorce can do in partically?

 

Dr. Madeline Hsu: You can write or contact with the Dean office with UT’s officials who are in charge of scheduling to address your concerns and support to the work of CAAS

 

Trieu Giang: Thank you so much for granting me this interview. Best whishes to your plan.

  

Linda Ho Peche interview in English

  

Trieu Giang: Can you tell us about the content of the Vietnamese American Culture &

History course that you will teach at UT next Springs?

 

Linda Ho: The course is called Vietnamese American Culture and History. Students will learn how and why Vietnamese Americans have come to the United States. They will also learn how Vietnamese Americans have been represented in American history and popular culture.

 

Trieu Giang This subject is considered very new in the classroom and it required lot

of researches from you? Can you tell us a little bit about your work? Can

you also let us know why you are interested in this subject?

 

Linda Ho: This is a new course that is offered at UT, and a relatively new subject. There are many books about the Vietnam War, but only recently have scholars begun to study how Vietnamese refugees have created a Vietnamese American identity and community. Instead of focusing on displacement and psychological trauma, I would like to focus on the creative cultural aspects that make vibrant Vietnamese American communities. My own doctoral research will examine the practice of respecting the ancestors and creating religious altars in Houston, Texas. These spiritual and religious altars connect families all over the U.S. and in Vietnam as well. This transnational connection is fascinating to me.

 

Trieu Giang: What do you anticipate the students will do in this course?

 

Linda Ho: In this course, students will learn about the Vietnamese American experience by conducting oral history interviews with family and other members of the community. They will ask about the reasons for leaving home, the dangers of the journey, and the difficulties of adapting to a new life in the United States. The Vietnamese American Heritage Foundation in Austin, Texas has offered to archive these interviews and to make these stories available to the wider public. Students will also create story panels based on the interviews to display at The Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum in the spring. The Vietnamese American Heritage Foundation will coordinate the exhibit, and they hope to be able to travel to other public history venues around the state.

 

Trieu Giang: What do you expect student will learn after taking the course?

 

Students will have the opportunity to examine the Vietnamese American experience through first-hand oral history interviews. They will learn how Vietnamese Americans have been represented--as Asians, refugees, and immigrants. They have been represented as poor, uneducated, boat people on the one hand and as model minorities and successful immigrants on the other. Students will learn the history of these stereotypes of the community. Students will also have the opportunity to create their own representations of Vietnamese Americans by helping create a public exhibit.

 

Trieu Giang: Any future plan for expansion?

 

Linda Ho: This course is offered through the Center for Asian American Studies at UT. The course will be offered again if there is student interest in the subject. Currently, the course is almost full for the spring 2008. However, I would encourage student who interest in this class to register even the class was full, because from now until the class begin, there will be a lot of drops and ads, due to the schedule conflict or other reasons the registered student may not be able to attend and you have a good chance to get in.

 

Trieu Giang: Thank you and best whishes to your class.

 

Chieu Anh Interview in English

 

Trieu Giang: We have heard that you have been appointed as VAHF's coordinator to work with Ms. Linda Ho Peche', the instructor of UT who will teach The Vietnamese American Culture and History course at UT in this coming spring, can you tell us about your roll?

 

Ann Pham: My role is still being defined at the moment. However, my strength is in networking, coordinating, and implementing. I hope to be able to identify key profiles, schedule interviews, and coordinate the logistics of the overall project. I should have a more definitive description in the next few weeks but regardless, I will support UT and VAHF to the best of my abilities.

 

Trieu Giang: Who do you think you will invite to be in the interview for this oral history collection?

 

Ann Pham: My team and I will discuss the profile criterions with Linda in December 2007. We haven't selected the full spectrum of the criterions but since the oral history collection project has a timeline of only four months, I believe my team will focus and carefully consider individuals who 1) shown a huge amount of dedication to the preservation of our Vietnamese culture, 2) experienced any military, religious, or political prosecution, 3) have made a huge contribution to the American or Vietnamese community, and 4) would like to share their immigrant stories.

 

Trieu Giang: What is the most challenge that you can foresee in your work?

Ann Pham: I believe the biggest challenge is getting people to share and talk openly about their experiences, joys, disappointments, and achievements. As a society, we are taught to be modest and humble. My team project manager has participated and lead many outreach projects so I believe this will help us get more people to share their experiences for the oral history collection.

 

Trieu Giang: You are also teaching at Saint Edwards University in Austin, can you tell us why you doing all this? What kind of rewards are you receiving?

 

Ann Pham: Yes, I teach at Saint Edward's University in the School of Business and Management. I teach undergraduate students in the fields of Business Communication, Public Speaking, and Business Management. Next semester, I will also teach International Business. There are so many rewards I receive when I teach. First, I learn just as much as the students do. Second, I believe it is a duty and responsibility to share my global and domestic experiences with the younger generation. I want to guide them as they make their career choices and teach them that there is a difference between theory and application. There is an old Chinese proverb, "Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for a li fetime." My personal goal with my students is to teach them to think for a lifetime.

 

Trieu Giang: What message you would like to send to Vietnamese American community in term of asking people in our community to assist you to achieve your goal?

 

Ann Pham: First, I ask that anyone who would be interested in having their oral history collected to contact the project manager - Thuy Phan, Linda Peche, Nancy Bui or myself (Chieu-Anh Pham). Also, I would ask that the Vietnamese American community come out and support us in April 2008. When we finish our project, we will have an exhibit at the Texas State History Museum. We would love for the entire community to come out to see and hear our immigrant stories. My mom has always put an emphasis on giving back to others. For this reason, I have been volunteering since I was 16 years old. My biggest reward from volunteering with VAHF is that I have an opportunity to help preserve, promote, and celebrate the Vietnamese heritage for future generations. I have made great friendships and learned a great deal from the multi-talented volunteers in this organization.

  

Phỏng vấn: Đại diện Đại học Texas và

Hội Bảo Tồn Lịch Sử và Văn Hoá Người Mỹ Gốc Việt

 

* Lần đầu tiên môn Lịch Sử và Văn Hoá Người Mỹ Gốc Việt được giảng dạy

• Còn cần nhiều đến sự hỗ trợ của sinh viên, phụ huynh và cộng đồng

• Một sự kết hợp thật đôc đáo và mang nhiều ý nghiã!

• Sinh viên sẽ thực hành với kỹ thuật làm “Lịch sử thu thanh”

 

* Triều Giang

  

Nhân dịp Đại học Texas tại Austin lần đầu tiên khai giảng môn học “Lịch sử và Văn Hoá Người Mỹ Gốc Việt”, với sự cộng tác của hội Bảo Tồn Lịch Sử và Văn Hoá Người Mỹ Gốc Việt (VAHF). Môn học sẽ giảng dạy về lịch sử tị nạn CS của người Việt, những kinh nghiêm quý giá của người Việt trong việc làm quen với cuộc sống mới, và nền văn hóa đặc thù với những sinh hoạt sinh động của cộng đồng người Mỹ gốc Việt. Đặc biệt, sinh viên theo học môn học này sẽ được thực hành qua chương trình thực tập để thực hiện “lịch sử thu thanh” qua các cuộc phỏng vấn một số cá nhân và hội đoàn trong cộng đồng người Việt, rồi ghi lại bằnh âm thanh và hình ảnh để làm tài liệu cho các cuộc triển lãm.

 

Để tìm hiểu vấn đề một cách cặn kẽ hơn, người viết đã thực hiện 4 cuộc phỏng vấn dành cho hai đại diện Đại học Texas là Tiến sĩ Madeline Hsu và giảng viên Linda Hồ, và hai đại diện của hội VAHF là Bà Khúc Minh Thơ, chủ tịch Ban Quản trị và cô Ann Phạm, một thành viên của Ban Quản trị, người đã được cử làm phối trí viên cuả VAHF cho một sự kết hợp độc dáo giữa một bên là một đại học danh tiếng và bên kia là một tổ chức thiện nguyện hoạt động trong lãnh vực bảo tồn lịch sử và văn hoá của người Mỹ gốc Việt. Mới quý độc giả theo dõi.

 

Phỏng vấn Tiến sĩ Madeline Hsu,

Giám đốc Trung Tâm Á Châu Học Viện tại Đại học Texas,Austin

 

“Mong muốn từ lâu! Còn gặp nhiều khó khăn

trong việc gây được sự chú tâm và hỗ trợ!”

  

Hính 1- Tiến sĩ Madeline Hsu, Giám đốc Trung Tâm Á Châu Học viện tại Đại Hoc Texas (UT) tại Austin. Tiến sĩ Hsu hoàn tất bằng tiến sĩ Sử học tại Đại học Yale năm 1996. Đạt được nhiều giải thưởng quốc gia về môn lịch sử về các sắc dân thiểu số tại Hoa Kỳ. Bà chuyên giảng dạy môn lịch sử người Mỹ gốc Trung Hoa và xuất bản nhiều sách về môn học này (Hình của University of Texas Office of Public Affairs)

 

Triều Giang: Được biết Trung Tâm Á Châu Học Viện (CAAS) của Đại học UT tại Austin lần đầu tiên sẽ khai giảng môn học Lịch Sử và Văn hoá Người Mỹ Gốc Việt vào mùa Xuân sáp tới, đây là một tin vui cho sinh viên và cộng đồng người Mỹ gốc Việt, xin bà cho biết mục đích của CAAS trong việc dạy môn học này?

 

TS. Madeline Hsu: CAAS từ lâu đã muốn dạy môn học này để giúp sinh viên và cộng đồng thuộc hệ thống đại học UT hiểu rõ hơn về một phần lịch sử quan trọng, và những động lực chính trị, xã hội trong quỹ đạo người Mỹ gốc Việt. Môn học này sẽ còn nghiên cứu về ý nghiã và hoàn cảnh của những cuộc chiến tranh tại ngoại quốc của người Mỹ, và sẽ chú tâm đặc biệt về mối tương giao giữa nước Mỹ và các quốc gia đồng minh Á Châu và người dân châu Á. Môn học này cũng sẽ nghiên cứu về việc làm thế nào những người tị nạn đã thích ứng với cuộc sống mới tại Mỹ. Chúng tôi cũng muốn thật nhiều sinh viên người Mỷ gốc Việt học môn học này cùng với những môn học về các nhóm thiểu số khác, đặc biệt là môn Văn Chương của Người Nam Á Tị Nạn, và Lịch sử người Mỹ gốc Phi Luật Tân và Trung Hoa.

 

Triều Giang: Đây là một môn học có tín chỉ? Và là môn chính hay môn phụ cuả ngành học nào?

 

TS. Madeline Hsu: Sinh viên sẽ được cấp tín chỉ cho môn học và sẽ được tính vào tổng số điểm của bằng cử nhân AAS chính ngành (major), hay ngành phụ (minor)

 

Triều Giang: Sinh viên ra trường với bằng cử nhân AAS sẽ có thể tìm việc trong những ngành nghề nào?

 

TS. Madeline Hsu: Các em có thể làm cho các công ty tiếp thị, các tổ chức phục vụ xã hỗi, hoặc thi vào trường Luật hoặc học lên cao học với các ngành xã hội học hay còn nhiều ngành nghề khác cần đến kiến thức về các dân tộc Á châu.

 

Triều Giang: Khóa học muà xuân đã gần tới, xin bà cho biết hiện có bao nhiêu sinh viên đã ghi danh?

 

TS. Madeline Hsu: Như dự tính, số sinh viên ghi danh rất tốt. Đã có khoảng 35 em.

 

Triều Giang: Ngoài môn học này CAAS có dạy thêm những lớp tiếng Việt hay không?

 

TS. Madeline Hsu: Bà Rowen Fong, cựu gíám đốc của trung tâm đã cố gắng mở lớp tiếng Việt và theo chỗ tôi hiểu thì trong khóa mùa xuân sắp tới có hai lớp tiếng Việt sẽ được giảng dạy tại CAAS.

 

Triều Giang: Trong tương lai, CAAS có dự tính phát triển ngành học Người Mỹ Gốc Việt như một ngành phụ cho bằng cử nhân.

 

TS, Madeline Hsu: Hiện tại CAAS chưa có dự tính này. Theo chỗ tôi được biết thì chưa một đại học nào trên đất Mỹ có chương trình này.

 

Triều Giang: Chúng tôi cũng được biết hội VAHF sẽ cộng tác với CAAS trong vấn đề này, bà cho biết một ít chi tiết?

 

TS. Madeline Hsu: Chúng tôi hy vọng được làm việc với hội VAHF để bảo tồn lịch sử của người Mỹ Gốc Việt tại địa phương trong tinh thần hợp tác. Dự án của chúng tôi là sẽ hướng dẫn sinh viên sưu tầm những “lịch sử thu thanh”. Ngoài ra chúng tôi cũng hy vọng sẽ phát trển được môn học về phục vụ cộng đồng ( community service learning course) để sinh viên hiểu rõ hơn về các tổ chức và cộng đồng người Mỹ gốc Á tại địa phương qua các chương trình thực tập.

 

Triều Giang: Bà có lời nhắn gửi gì tới sinh viên và cộng đồng người Mỹ gốc Việt trong dịp này hay không?

 

TS. Madeline Hsu: Chúng tôi tiếp tục cố gắng tuyển các giáo sư và giảng viên với khả năng chuyên môn về người Mỹ gốc Nam Á và Đông Nam Á. Chương trình của chúng tôi hiện vẫn còn trong giai đoạn phát triển và tăng trưởng. Do đó, chúng rất cần đến sự hỗ trợ của các sinh viên và cộng đồng về nỗi khó khăn mà chúng tôi còn vướng phải nhằm lôi kéo được sự chú tâm cũng như những nguồn tài trợ. Chúng tôi hy vọng trong 5 năm sắp tới, chúng tôi có thể có được nhiều môn học và chương trình học rộng rãi để có thể nới lên được tất cả những vấn đề đang bận tâm bởi tấy cả các nhóm người Mỹ gốc Á tại UT và Austin.

 

Triều Giang: Bà nói cần sự hỗ trợ của sinh viên và cộng đồng, bà có thể cho biết cụ thể sinh viên và cộng đồng có thể làm gì để giúp CAAS thực hiện được những mục tiêu đã nêu trên?

 

TS. Madeline Hsu: Sinh viên và phụ huyng cũng như thành viên trong các cộng đồng có thể viết thư, email, hoặc gọi điện thoại cho văn phòng Dean, hoặc cho những người điều hành việc sắp xếp chương trình của đại học UT về sự quan tâm cũng như ủng hộ những chương trỉnh của CAAS. Địa chỉ của văn phòng Dean tại:

The University of Texas at Austin

Office of the Dean of Students

1 University Station A5800

Austin, Texas 78712-0175

Phone: (512) 471-1201

Fax: (512) 471-7833 .Email: dos75@uts.cc.utexas.edu

 

Triều Giang: Xin chân thành cám ơn bà về cuộc phỏng vấn và những nỗ lực đưa lịch sử người Việt tị nạn vào đại học. Chúc bà và CAAS gặt hái được nhiều kết quả tốt đẹp.

 

Phỏng vấn Giảng viên Linda Ho Peche’

Giảng viên môn Lịch sử và Văn Hoá Người Mỹ Gốc Việt

 

"Học về Lịch sử và Văn hóa Ngưòi Mỹ gốc Việt

Thực hành bằng những “lịch sử thu thanh”

  

Hình 2- Gỉảng viên ng ười Mỹ gốc Việt, Linda HỒ Peche’ đang làm luận án Tiến sĩ môn Nhân Chủng học (Anthopology). Ngoài việc giảng dạy tại UT, cô còn làm việc bán thời gian với chức vụ Phối trí viên Liên hệ Cộng đồng cho cuộc triển lãm “Galveston Immigration” sẽ được tổ chức vào năm 2009 tại Viện Bảo Tàng Tiểu bang Texas, tại Austin. (Hình của VAHF)

 

Triều Giang: Cô có thể cho biết về nội dung môn học cô sắp giảng dạy tại UT vào niên khóa muà xuân sắp tới?

 

Linda Hồ: Môn học có tên là “Lịch Sử và Văn Hoá Người Mỹ Gốc Việt”. Sinh viên sẽ được học về lý do và hoàn cảnh người Mỹ gốc Việt đã đến Mỹ như thế nào? Sinh viên cũng sẽ được học về người Mỹ gốc Việt đã được diễn tả như thế nào trong lịch sử Mỹ và trong nền văn hoá đại chúng?

 

Triều Giang: Đây là một môn học mới trong lớp học của đại học Hoa kỳ, nó đòi hỏi thật nhiều việc nghiên cứu, tìm tòi, cô có thể cho biết về phương pháp nghiên cứu và công việc của cô trong việc huẩn bị cho việc giang dạy này? Và vì sao cô lại chọn môn này?

 

Linda Hồ: Đúng như vậy, đây là một môn học tương đối mới mẻ. Tuy đã có khá nhiều sách viết về chiến tranh Việt Nam . Nhưng gần đây mới có một số nhà nghiên cứu bắt đầu chú tâm vào cộng đồng tị nạn Việt nam. Những người đã có nhiều nỗ lực để tạo cho họ một căn cước đặc thù và một cộng đồng thật sinh động. Trong môn học, tôi sẽ chú trọng tới khiá cạnh vừa nêu trên thay vì tìm kiếm những sai lạc, khủng hoảng. Riêng về luận án tiến sĩ của tôi, tôi còn đang nghiên cứu thêm về sự tôn kính tổ tiên của người Việt và tinh thần tôn giáo đặc biệt của người Việt tại Houston, Texas. Tâm linh và tôn giáo liên kết các gia đình Việt Nam trên toàn nước Mỹ, và tới cả Việt Nam. Sự liên kết đa quốc gia này khiến tôi thật say mê!

 

Triều Giang: Cô dự định cho học sinh làm những gì trong môn học này?

 

Linda Hồ: Trong môn học này, sinh viên sẽ được học về những kinh nghiệm của người Mỹ gốc Việt qua việc phỏng vấn những cá nhân trong cộng đồng người Việt. Sinh viên sẽ hỏi những người được phỏng vấn về lý do họ phải ra đi? Sự nguy hiểm của cuộc hành trình, và những khó khăn trong việc thích ứng với cuộc sống mới tại Hoa Kỳ. Hội VAHF đã nhận lời sắp xếp những cuộc phỏng vấn này vào trong bộ sưu tầm của họ để có thể phổ biến tới công chúng. Sinh viên cũng có thể tổ chức các buổi thảo luận căn cứ vào những cuộc phỏng vấn này, rồi tập trưng bày. Cuối cùng, kết quả sẽ được triển lãm tại Viện Bảo tàng Bob Bullock của Tiểu bang Texas vào cuối muà xuân sắp tới. Hội VAHF sẽ đứng ra tổ chức buổi triển lãm này, và hội cũng hy vọng sẽ có thể đưa cuộc triển lãm này luân lưu tới các trung tâm lịch sử khác trong tiểu bang Texas.

 

Triều Giang: Cô kỳ vọng sinh viên sẽ học được những gì sau khi hoàn tất khoá học.

 

Linda Hồ: Sinh viên sẽ có cơ hội để tìm hiểu và phân tích những kinh nghiệm thẳng từ chính những người được phỏng vấn. Sinh viên cũng sẽ được học về người Mỹ gốc Việt đã được diễn tả là những người Á Châu tị nạn và di dân như thế nào. Họ đã từng bị diễn tả như nhóm người nghèo khó, ít học, như những thuyền nhân. Mặt khác, người Mỹ gốc Việt cũng đã được diễn tả như một nhóm thiểu số gương mẫu, hoặc là những người di dân thành công . Sinh viên sẽ được nghiên cứu về những mẫu người vưà kể trên trong cộng đồng. Sinh viên cũng được hướng dẫn để các em có thể tự tổ chức một cuộc triển lãm để giới thiệu về người Mỹ gốc Việt với công chúng.

 

Triều Giang: Cô có chương trình phát triển gì cho môn học này không?

 

Linda Hồ: Môn học này được mở dưới Trung Tâm CAAS. Nó sẽ được tiếp tục nếu có nhiều sinh viên quan tâm và theo học. Hiện tại, lớp học này đã gần đầy cho muà xuân tới. Nếu có sinh viên nào muốn theo học nên ghi danh càng sớm, càng tốt. Nếu thấy lớp đầy cũng đừng nản. cứ ghi danh vào dự khuyết vì từ nay tới lúc khoá học khai giảng sẽ còn nhiều thay đổi, có những người ghi danh trước có thể không theo học đưọc vì thời khoá biểu của họ không cho phép.

 

Triều Giang: Xin chân thành cám ơn và chúc khoá học nhiều thú vị và thành công.

      

Phỏng vấn Bà Khúc Minh Thơ,

Chủ tịch Hội đồng Quản Trị Hội VAHF

 

“Một sự hợp tác độc đáo và đầy ý nghiã!”

 

Hình 3-Bà Khúc Minh Thơ, Chủ tịch Ban Quản trị hội VAHF, Chủ tịch hội Gia đình Tù nhân Chính trị VN (FVPPA) . Bà Khúc Minh Thơ đã sát cánh tranh đấu suốt cuộc đời với cộng đồng người Mỹ gốc Việt cho chương trình Humanitarian Operation (HO); đòi hỏi chính quyền CSVN thả tự do cho các tù nhân chính trị VN và cho họ và gia đình họ đi định cư tại Mỹ. Đã có trên 300,000 người được định cư tại Mỹ dưới diện HO. Hồ sơ tranh đấu 30 năm của Hội FVPPA đã được chuyển giao sang cho hội VAHF để đóng góp vào kho tài liệu lịch sử của người Mỹ gốc Việt (Hình của VAHF)

 

Triều Giang: Bà có thể cho biết mục đích của hội VAHF trong việc hợp tác với Đại học Texas trong môn học Lịch sử và Văn Hoá Người Mỹ gốc Việt? Theo ý kiến của bà thì việc hợp tác này mang một ý nghiã như thế nào đối với cộng đồng người Mỹ gốc Việt của chúng ta?

 

Bà KM THơ: Mục đích của hội VAHF là sưu tầm, gìn giữ, phổ biến và tán dương lịch sử và văn hoá người Mỹ gốc Việt, kết hợp với đại học UT tại Austin, một trung tâm giáo dục hàng đầu của Hoa kỳ, hội VAHF đã đi đúng với mục tiêu đã đề ra cuả mình. Việc hướng dẫn sinh viên sưu tầm tài liệu qua những cuộc phỏng vấn, đó là công tác sưu tầm. Khi những tài liệu thu thập này được dùng làm tài liệu để nghiên cứu, giảng dạy trong lớp học , và còn được dùng vào việc triển lãm cho công chúng thì mục tiêu phổ biến,và gìn giữ của hội đã được đạt tới. Về phía đại học Texas, tôi nghĩ rằng Ban lãnh đạo trường thể hiện qua sự điều hành của TS. Madeline Hsu và CAAS đã có một sáng kiến độc đáo trong việc xây dựng và phát triển một ngành học tương đối là mới mẻ bằng cách kết hợp một bên là chuyên môn là trường đại học, một bên là một hội đoàn có sự liên hệ chặt chẽ với cộng đồng, nơi lịch sử đang được tàng trữ với những nhân chứng sống, với những kinh nghiệm đầy ắp cần phải được học hỏi. Thật là một kết hợp độc dáo, khôn ngoan và đầy ý nghiã. Tiện đây tôi cũng xin gửi lời cám ơn chân thành tới đại học Texas, tới TS Madeline Hsu và CAAS, tới giảng viên Linda Hồ đã sốt sắng trong công việc đem lịch sử chính thống của người Việt tị nạn vào hoc đường.

 

Triều Giang: Hội VAHF đã làm việc trong bao lâu để đi đến kết quả hôm nay?

 

Bà KM Thơ: Nếu tôi nhớ không lầm, hội gặp Tiến sĩ Madeline Hsu lần đầu tiên khoảng hơn một năm nay. Sau nhiều cuộc hội họp đã đi đến kết quả ngày hôm nay. Tôi xin nhân dịp này được tuyên dương chị hội trưởng Nancy Bùi, Ban điều hành và tất cả các hội viên của hội VAHF đã hy sinh nhiều thời gian và công sức cho dự án này.

 

Triều Giang: Hội VAHF sẽ được hưởng thù lao hoặc bất kỳ quyền lợi nào trong sự hợp tác này hay không?

 

Bà KM Thơ: Không có thù lao hoặc bất kỳ phần thưởng vật chất nào. Phần thưởng tinh thần duy nhất là đã được tiếp tiếp tay vào công việc đua lịch sử và văn hóa của người Việt tự do vào trương lớp để cho cả sinh viên Việt Nam và tất cả mọi người bất kể nguồn gốc từ đâu cũng thể theo học. Tôi nghĩ rằng đó, chính là một phần thưởng vô gíá!

 

Triều Giang: Bà có lời kêu gọi gì đối với cộng đồng của chúng ta trong việc hỗ trợ hội VAHF trong công tác văn hóa quan trọng này?

 

Bà KM THơ: Đối với cộng đồng của chúng ta thi tôi nghĩ đây là một chiến thắng lớn. Con em của chúng ta sẽ được học về kinh nghiệm máu xương của chúng ta, về lịch sử và văn hoá chính thống của người Việt tự do. Chúng ta hãy vui mừng và hỗ trợ cho đại học UT Austin và hội VAHF bằng cách quảng bá, khuyến khích con em chúng ta ghi danh học môn này, viết thư,email hoặc bất cứ hình thức liên lạc nào tới ban lãnh đạo cuả trương UT Austin để bày tỏ sự quan tâm và tiếp tay với hội VAHF trong việc giới thiệu cũng như chia xẻ về kinh nghiệm của chính quý vị cho những cuộc phỏng vấn khi có yêu cầu.

 

Triều Giang: Bà có lời khuyên gì đối với các sinh viên sắp học hoặc đang muốn học môn học này?

 

Bà KM Thơ: Các em nên đi học và quảng bá với bạn bè và người thân quen về môn học này. Môn học này sẽ giúp các em hiểu và hãnh diện nguồn gốc của mình, Để mai sau ra đời. các em không phải xấu hổ khi gặp một người ngoại quốc mà họ lại am tường về nguồn gốc, văn hoá của mình hơn chính mình. Tôi nghĩ rằng, môn học còn khiến cho các em yêu quí cha mẹ. gia đình, cộng đồng và chính bản thân của các em hơn vì các em sẽ được hiểu về những hy sinh to lớn của cha ông cho cái gía của cuộc sống tự do. Các em cứ thử học và nhớ cho tôi biết kết quả sau khi tham dự lớp học. Chúc các em vạn sự thành công và một tương lai tươi sáng.

  

Phỏng vấn Cô Ann Phạm,

Phối trí viên của Hội VAHF

 

“Khó khăn nhất sẽ là có được sự hợp tác

của những người cần được phỏng vấn”

    

Hình 4 – cô Ann Phạm, thành viên của hội đồng quản trị của hội VAHF. Phối trí viên của VAHF trong chương trình tập sự dành cho sinh viên UT, môn Lịch sử và Văn hoá Người Mỹ gốc Việt. Cô Ann Phạm còn là giảng viên tại đai học St. Edwards, tại Austin với ngành Quản trị Kinh doanh. Cô Ann Phạm có bằng Cao học về Quản trị Kinh Doanh Quốc tế ( Master Degree of International Business Management). (Hình cuả VAHF)

 

Triều Giang: Được biết cô được cử làm Phối trí viên cho hội VAHF để làm việc với giảng viên Linda Hồ trong việc hướng dẫn chương trình tập sự của sinh viên theo học môn Lịch sử và Văn hoá Người Mỹ Gốc Việt, cô có thể cho biết chi tiết về vai trò của cô?

 

Ann Phạm: Hiện tại thì vai trò này còn đang được định nghĩa cho rõ hơn. Nới chung thì sở trường của tôi là phối trí, điều hành, và giao dịch. Tôi hy vọng sẽ tìm ra được những biểu tượng chính của từng gian đọan lịch sử để lập hồ sơ về họ, rồi liên hệ, lập thời khoá biểu cho việc phỏng vấn, và điều hành toàn bộ dự án này dưới sự hướng dẫn của VAHF . Tôi sẽ có nhiều chi tiết hơn về toàn bộ vai trò cuả mình trong vài tuần tới. Dù trong hoàn cảnh nào, tôi sẽ làm việc với hết khả năng cuả mình để giúp UT và VAHF hoàn tất dự án này.

 

Triều Giang: Ai là những người mà cô sẽ chọn để phỏng vấn cho bộ sưu tần “Lịch sử thâu thanh” này?

 

Ann Phạm: Nhóm của tôi sẽ bàn về những tiêu chuẩn để chọn người được phỏng vấn trong tháng 12 này. Chúng tôi cũng chưa bàn xong phần tổng thể của các tiêu chuẩn này. Tuy nhiên, với thới gian bốn tháng, tôi nghĩ rằng chúng tôi sẽ chú tâm đến những cá nhân có những thành tích về: 1) cống hiến một lượng thời gian lâu dài và có những nỗ lực to lớn trong việc gìn giữ lịch sử và văn hoá Việt. 2) Trài qua những cuộc tù đày vì từng ở trong quân đội, vì lý do tôn giáo, hoặc chính trị. 3) Có những đóng góp to lớn trong việc xây dựng cộng đồng người Mỹ gốc Việt và cuối cùng là sẵn sàng chia xẻ câu chuyện của họ .

 

Triều Giang: Đâu là những khó khăn nhất của công việc này?

 

Ann Phạm: Tôi tin rằng, điều khó khăn nhất vẫn là tìm được ngưòi đúng những tiêu chuẩn đã đăt ra và thuyết phục họ sẵn sàng chia xẻ, bằng cách nói về những kinh nghiệm riêng, những vui buồn, những bất mãn, những thành tựu của họ. Chúng ta sống trong một xã hội mà chúng ta đã được dạy dỗ là cần phải kín đáo và khiêm nhường. Thật là khó để cho mọi người sẵn sàng nói về minh, nhưng tôi cũng tin tưởng rằng những người điều hành VAHF đã từng thực hiện thành công rất nhiều dự án cần đến sự hợp tác của các cá nhân trong cộng đồng, tôi tin tưởng chúng tối sẽ làm tròn nhiệm vụ cuả mình.

 

Triều Giang Cô cũng đang phụ trách giảng dạy tai đai học Saint Edwards, tai Austin, cô có thể cho biết vì sao cô làm công việc thiện nguyện này?

 

Ann Phạm: Vâng, tôi đang là gỉảng viên ngành Quản Trị Kinh doanh trong đại học Saint Edwards. Tôi dạy các môn Kỹ thuật nói truyện trước công chúng và trong thương trường ( Business Communication, Public Speaking, and Business Management), và Quản trị Kinh doanh. Niên học tới, tôi cũng sẽ dạy lớp “Kinh doanh Quốc tế ( International Business” Dạy học đối với tôi là một phần thưởng nhiều ý nghiã. Trước hết nó giúp tôi tiếp tục học hỏi cùng với sinh viên. Kế đến là tôi có thể chia xẻ kinh nghiệm của tôi tại nội địa và toàn cầu tới thế hệ trẻ. Tôi muốn hướng dẫn họ để họ có thể có những chọn lựa tốt và hiểu biết được sự khác biệt giữa lý thuyết và thực hành. Đông phương chúng ta có câu ngạn ngữ :” Cho một người một con cá, họ có thể ăn trong một ngày, nhưng dạy họ câu cá thì họ có thể ăn một đời”. Mục tiêu của tôi là có thể dạy học trò của của mình nghĩ cho cả cuộc đời của họ (think for a life time). Đó là phần thưởng cho công việc chuyên môn của tôi. Riêng với công việc thiện nguyện với VAHF, phần thưởng của tôi là niềm vui giúp cộng đồng của chúng ta gìn giữ được lịch sử và văn hoá cho thế hệ hôm nay và tương lai. Mẹ tôi luôn nhắc nhở tôi phải dành thì giờ để làm việc công ích. Khi làm việc với VAHF, tôi có cơ hội cho tôi được trả ơn cho cộng đồng, xã hội, và đưọc quen biết một nhóm anh chị em thật tốt bụng, họ hy sinh thời gian để làm một công việc thật có ý nghiã.

 

Triêu Giang: Cô có gì nhắn gửi cộng đồng và đặc biệt là lớp người trẻ trong việc tiếp tay với cô trong dự án sắp tới?

 

Ann Phạm: Trước hết, tôi kêu gọi tất cả quý vị muốn chia xẻ kinh nghiệm hãy liên lạc với trưởng nhóm cuả chúng tôi là anh Thụy Phan, cô Linda Hồ, chị Nancy Bùi, và cá nhân tôi qua điện thoại số 512-844-9417. Sau cùng là tôi mong mỏi toàn thể cộng đồng hãy đến và ủng hộ cuộc triển lãm vào tháng 4 năm 2008 cuả hội VAHF tại Viện Bảo Tàng Lịch sử của Tiểu bang Texas tại Austin để cùng chia xẻ những câu chuyện của những người Việt tị nạn.

 

Triều Giang: Cám ơn cô và chúc mọi việc thành công tốt đẹp.

 

Cũng nên nhắc lại, hội VAHF đã được thành lập từ năm 2004 với mục đích sưu tàm, gìn giữ, phổ biến và tán dương lịch sử người Mỹ gốc Việt. Hội đã sưu tầm được trêm 200,000 trang tài liệu và hình ảnh hiện đang được tàng trữ tại Việt Nam Center thuộc đại học Texas Tech, Hội đả hướng dẫn phái đoàn gồm 17 người sang đảo Guam để đón nhận những tài liệu về người Việt tị nạn tại đây do Thống đốc đảo Guam, Đại học Guam cùng người dân đảo Guam vào dip 30 tháng 4 năm 2006. Hội cũng đã phối hợp với một số hội đoàn tại Houston dẹp bỏ những sách độc hại tại hệ thống thư viện Houston, và mới đây đã hợp tác với Đại học Texas tại Austin để dưa lịch sử người Mỹ gốc Việt vào đại học Hoa Kỳ.

 

Mọi liên lạc với VAHF, xin điện thoại tới số (512) 844-8417. Hoặc email tới địa chỉ: triumph@texas.net

 

Triều Giang

Tháng 12/2007

  

Also titled The Price of Freedom, Operation Daybreak is a retelling of the terrible consequences attending the assassination of Nazi-occupation leader Richard Heydrich. When Heydrich puts all of Czechoslovakia under his thumb, a group of Czech expatriates parachute into their homeland to kill the man known as "The Hangman." They succeed, and in retaliation the Nazis wipe the tiny Czech village of Lidice off the map, killing its male residents and carting off its women and children to concentration camps. For the purposes of the plot, assassins Timothy Bottoms and Martin Shaw survive the massacre, albeit only briefly. The Heydrich/Lidice tragedy was previously dramatized in two wartime films, Hangmen Also Die (1943) and Hitler's Madman (1943). Operation Daybreak was adapted from Seven Men at Daybreak, a novel by Alan Burgess. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Insertion[edit]

     

Jozef Gabčík

    

Jan Kubiš

Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš were airlifted along with seven soldiers from Czechoslovakia’s army-in-exile in the United Kingdom and two other groups named Silver A and Silver B (who had different missions) by a Royal Air Force Halifax of No. 138 Squadron into Czechoslovakia at 10 pm on 28 December 1941. Gabčík and Kubiš landed near Nehvizdy east of Prague; although the plan was to land near Pilsen, the pilots had problems with orientation.[9] The soldiers then moved to Pilsen to contact their allies, and from there on to Prague, where the attack was planned.

 

In Prague, they contacted several families and anti-Nazi organisations who helped them during the preparations for the targeted kill.[10] Gabčík and Kubiš initially planned to kill Heydrich on a train, but after examination of the logistics, they realised that this was not possible. The second plan was to kill him on the road in the forest on the way from Heydrich’s seat to Prague. They planned to pull a cable across the road that would stop Heydrich’s car but, after waiting several hours, their commander, Lt. Adolf Opálka (from the group Out Distance), came to bring them back to Prague. The third plan was to kill Heydrich in Prague.

 

The attack in Prague[edit]

     

Another of Heydrich's Mercedes 320 Convertible B cars, similar to the one in which he was mortally wounded (currently in the Military History Museum in Prague)

On 27 May 1942, at 10:30, Heydrich proceeded on his daily commute from his home in Panenské Břežany to Prague Castle. Gabčík and Kubiš waited at the tram stop at a tight curve near Bulovka Hospital in Prague 8-Libeň. The spot was chosen because the curve would force the car to slow down. Valčik was positioned about 100 metres north of Gabčík and Kubiš as lookout for the approaching car.

 

As Heydrich’s open-topped Mercedes 320 Convertible B reached the curve two minutes later, Gabčík stepped in front of the vehicle and tried to open fire, but his Sten submachine gun jammed. Heydrich ordered his driver, SS-Oberscharführer Klein, to stop the car. When Heydrich stood up to try to shoot Gabčík with his Luger pistol, Kubiš threw a modified anti-tank grenade[11] (concealed in a briefcase) at the vehicle and its fragments ripped through the car’s right rear bumper, embedding shrapnel and fibres from the upholstery in Heydrich’s body, even though the grenade failed to enter the car. Kubiš was also injured by the shrapnel.[12]

 

Following the explosion, Gabčík and Kubiš fired at Heydrich with their handguns but, shocked by the explosion as well, failed to hit him.[13] Heydrich, apparently unaware of his shrapnel injuries, staggered out of the car, returned fire and tried to chase Gabčík but soon collapsed. Klein returned from his abortive attempt to chase Kubiš, who fled the scene by bicycle. Now bleeding profusely, Heydrich ordered Klein to chase Gabčík on foot.[14] Klein chased him into a butcher shop, where Gabčík shot him twice with his revolver, severely wounding him in the leg, and then escaped to a local safe house via tram.[15][16] Gabčík and Kubiš were initially convinced that the attack had failed.

 

Medical treatment and death[edit]

 

A Czech woman went to Heydrich's aid and flagged down a delivery van. Heydrich was first placed in the driver's cab, but complained that the truck's movement was causing him pain. He was then transferred to the back of the truck, placed on his stomach and taken to the emergency room at Na Bulovce Hospital.[17] He had suffered severe injuries to his left side, with major diaphragm, spleen and lung damage as well as a fractured rib. A Dr. Slanina packed the chest wound, while Dr. Walter Diek, the Sudeten German chief of surgery at the hospital, tried unsuccessfully to remove the splinters. Professor Hollbaum, a Silesian German who was chairman of surgery at Charles University in Prague, operated on Heydrich with Drs. Diek and Slanina's assistance.[17] The surgeons reinflated the collapsed left lung, removed the tip of the fractured eleventh rib, sutured the torn diaphragm, inserted several catheters and removed the spleen, which contained a grenade fragment and upholstery material.[18] Heydrich’s direct superior, Himmler, sent his personal physician, Karl Gebhardt, who arrived that evening. After 29 May, Heydrich was entirely in the care of SS physicians. Postoperative care included administration of large amounts of morphine. There are contradictory accounts concerning whether sulfanilamides were given, but Gebhardt testified at his 1947 war crimes trial that they were not.[18] The patient developed a high fever of 38–39 °C (100.4–102.2 °F) and wound drainage. After seven days, his condition appeared to be improving when, while sitting up eating a noon meal, he collapsed and went into shock. Spending most of his remaining hours in a coma, he died around 4:30 the next morning.[18] Himmler’s physicians officially described the cause of death as septicemia, meaning infection of the bloodstream.[19] One of the theories was that some of the horsehair used in the upholstery of Heydrich’s car was forced into his body by the blast of the grenade, causing a systemic infection.[20] It has also been suggested that he died of a massive pulmonary embolism. In support of the latter possibility, at autopsy particles of fat and blood clots were found in the right ventricle and pulmonary artery, and severe edema was noted in the upper lobes of the lungs, while the lower lobes were collapsed.[18]

 

Botulinum poisoning theory[edit]

 

The authors of A Higher Form of Killing claim that Heydrich died from botulism; i.e. botulinum poisoning.[21] According to this theory, the Type 73 anti-armor hand grenade used in the attack had been modified to contain botulinum toxin. This story originates from comments made by Paul Fildes, a Porton Down botulism researcher. There is only circumstantial evidence to support this allegation[18][22] (the records of the SOE for the period have remained sealed), and few medical records of Heydrich's condition and treatment have been preserved.[18]

 

The general evidence cited to support the theory includes the modifications made to the Type 73 grenade: the upper third part of this British anti-tank grenade had been removed, and the open end and sides wrapped up with tape. Such a specially modified weapon could indicate an attached toxic or biological payload. Heydrich received excellent medical care by the standards of the time. His autopsy showed none of the usual signs of septicemia, although infection of the wound and areas surrounding the lungs and heart was reported.[18] The authors of a German wartime report on the incident stated, "Death occurred as a consequence of lesions in the vital parenchymatous organs caused by bacteria and possibly by poisons carried into them by bomb splinters ... ".

 

Heydrich's condition while hospitalized was not documented in detail, but he was not noted to have developed any of the distinctive paralytic or other symptoms associated with botulism (which have a gradual, progressive onset). Two others were also wounded by fragments of the same grenade: Kubiš, the Czech soldier who threw the grenade, and a bystander, but neither was reported to have shown any sign of poisoning.[18][23] Given that Fildes had a reputation for "extravagant boasts", and that the grenade modifications could have been aimed at making it lighter, the validity of the botulinum toxin theory has been disputed.[18] Two of the six original modified grenades are kept by the Military History Institute in Prague.[24]

 

Consequences[edit]

 

Reprisals[edit]

     

Memorial plaques with names of the victims at the Kobylisy shooting range in Prague, where over 500 Czechs were executed in May and June 1942.

On the very day of the assassination attempt Hitler ordered an investigation and reprisals, suggesting that Himmler send SS General Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski to Prague; according to Karl Hermann Frank's postwar testimony, Hitler knew Zelewski to be even harsher than Heydrich.[25] Hitler favored killing 10,000 politically unreliable Czechs, but after he consulted Himmler, the idea was dropped because Czech territory was an important industrial zone for the German military and indiscriminate killing could reduce the productivity of the region.[26]

 

The Nazi retaliation ordered by Himmler was brutal nonetheless. More than 13,000 were arrested, including Jan Kubiš' girlfriend Anna Malinová, who subsequently died in the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp. First Lieutenant Adolf Opálka's aunt, Marie Opálková, was executed in the Mauthausen camp on 24 October 1942;[27] his father, Viktor Jarolím, was also killed.[28] According to one estimate, 5,000 were killed in reprisals.[29]

 

Intelligence falsely linked the assassins to the villages of Lidice and Ležáky. A Gestapo report identified Lidice as the assailants' suspected hiding place since several Czech army officers exiled in England at the time were known to have come from there. In addition, the Gestapo had found a resistance radio transmitter in Ležáky.[30] In the village of Lidice, destroyed on 9 June 1942, 199 men were executed, 95 children taken prisoner (81 later killed in gas vans at the Chełmno extermination camp; eight others were taken for adoption by German families), and 195 women were immediately deported to Ravensbrück concentration camp. All adults, men and women, in the village of Ležáky were murdered. Both towns were burned, and the ruins of Lidice leveled (razed to the ground).[31][32]

 

The possibility that the Germans would apply the principle of "collective responsibility" on this scale in avenging Heydrich's assassination was either not foreseen by the Czech government-in-exile, or else was deemed an acceptable price to pay for eliminating Heydrich and provoking reprisals that would reduce Czech acquiescence to the German administration.

 

Britain’s wartime leader, Winston Churchill, was infuriated enough to suggest leveling three German villages for every Czech village the Nazis destroyed. Two years after Heydrich's death a similar assassination attempt was planned, this time targeting Hitler in Operation Foxley, but not approved.

 

Operation Anthropoid remains the only successful government-organized targeted killing of a top-ranking Nazi. The Polish underground killed two senior SS officers in the General government (see Operation Kutschera and Operation Bürkl); also in Operation Blowup, General-Kommissar of Belarus Wilhelm Kube was killed by Soviet partisan Yelena Mazanik, a Belarussian woman who had managed to find employment in his household in order to assassinate him.[33]

 

Investigation and manhunt[edit]

     

Bullet-scarred window of the Church of Saints Cyril and Methodius in Prague where the attackers were cornered.

In the days following Lidice, no leads on those responsible for Heydrich's death were found despite the Nazis' zealous impatience to find them. During that time, a deadline set for the assassins to be apprehended by 18 June 1942 was publicly issued to the military and the people of Czechoslovakia. If they were not caught by then, the Germans threatened to spill far more blood as a consequence, believing that this threat would be enough to force a potential informant to sell out the culprits. Many civilians were indeed weary and fearful of further retaliations, making it increasingly difficult to hide information much longer. The assailants initially hid with two Prague families and later took refuge in Karel Boromejsky Church, an Eastern Orthodox church dedicated to Sts. Cyril and Methodius in Prague. The Germans were unable to locate the attackers until Karel Čurda of the "Out Distance" sabotage group was arrested by the Gestapo and gave them the names of the team’s local contacts[34] for the bounty of 500,000 Reichsmarks.

 

Čurda betrayed several safe houses provided by the Jindra group, including that of the Moravec family in Žižkov. At 05:00 on 17 June, the Moravec flat was raided. The family was made to stand in the hallway while the Gestapo searched their flat. Mrs. Maria Moravec, after being allowed to go to the toilet, bit into a cyanide capsule and thereby killed herself. Mr. Moravec, unaware of his family's involvement with the resistance, was taken to the Peček Palác together with his 17-year-old son Ata, who though interrogated with torture throughout the day, refused to talk. The youth was finally stupefied with brandy, shown his mother's severed head in a fish tank and warned that if he did not reveal the information they were looking for, his father would be next.[35] That finally caused him to crack and tell the Gestapo what they wanted to know.

 

Waffen-SS troops laid siege to the church the following day but, despite the best efforts of over 700 SS soldiers under the command of Generalleutnant Karl Fischer von Treuenfeld, they were unable to take the paratroopers alive; three, including Kubiš, were killed in the prayer loft (although he was said to have survived the battle, he died shortly afterward from his injuries) after a two-hour gun battle.[36] The other four, including Gabčík, committed suicide in the crypt after repeated SS attacks, attempts to smoke them out with tear gas, and Prague fire brigade trucks brought in to try to flood the crypt.[37] The Germans (SS and police) suffered casualties as well, 14 SS allegedly killed and 21 wounded according to one report[38][39] although the official SS report about the fight mentioned only five wounded SS soldiers.[40] The men in the church had only small-caliber pistols, while the attackers had machine guns, submachine guns and hand grenades. After the battle, Čurda confirmed the identity of the dead Czech resistance fighters, including Kubiš and Gabčík.

 

Bishop Gorazd, in an attempt to minimize the reprisals among his flock, took the blame for the actions in the church and even wrote letters to the Nazi authorities, who arrested him on 27 June 1942 and tortured him. On 4 September 1942 the bishop, the church's priests and senior lay leaders were taken to Kobylisy Shooting Range in a northern suburb of Prague and shot by Nazi firing squads. For his actions, Bishop Gorazd was later glorified as a martyr by the Eastern Orthodox Church.

 

Design & artwork by buna

Last upload were of non-edited shots, here are the better ones!

 

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The Temple Church was consecrated in honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary on 10 February 1185 by Heraclius, Patriarch of Jerusalem.

 

The whole Temple community had moved from an earlier site in High Holborn, considered by the 1160s to be too confined. The church was the chapel serving the London headquarters of the Knights Templar, and from them it took its name. The Templars – as the knights were popularly known – were soldier monks.

 

After the success of the First Crusade, the order was founded in Jerusalem in a building on the site of King Solomon’s temple. Their mission was to protect pilgrims travelling to and from the Holy Land, but in order to do this they needed men and money. For more details of the Templars and this early history of the Church, see The Round Church, 1185.

 

The London Temple was the Templars’ headquarters in Great Britain. The Templars’ churches were always built to a circular design to remind them of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, a round, domed building raised over the site of the sepulchre where Jesus was buried. At first, the Templars were liked and respected. St Bernard of Clairvaux became their patron and they gained many privileges from popes and much support from kings.

 

In England, King Henry II was probably present at the consecration of the church; King Henry III favoured them so much that he wished to be buried in their church. As a consequence of this wish, the choir of the church was pulled down and a far larger one built in its place, the choir which we now see. This was consecrated on Ascension Day 1240 in the presence of the king. However, after Henry died it was discovered that he had altered his will, and he was buried in Westminster Abbey.

 

On 10 February 1185 Heraclius, Patriarch of Jerusalem, processed into the Round for the church’s consecration. The King was almost certainly present. A grand church for a grand occasion; for the Round had no such quiet austerity as we see in it today. The walls and grotesque heads were painted: the walls most probably with bands and lozenges of colour. The Round was proudly modern: Heraclius entered through the Norman door to find the first free-standing Purbeck columns ever cut; above them curved in two dimensions Gothic arches rising to the drum. A chancel, some two thirds of the present chancel’s length, stretched to the east. There the Patriach’s procession will have come to rest for Mass. And there the altar stayed. What, then, – on that great day or later – was the function of the Round?

 

Its most important role was played by its shape. Jerusalem lies at the centre of all medieval maps, and was the centre of the crusaders’ world. The most sacred place in this most sacred city was the supposed site of Jesus’ own burial: the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Here the crusaders inherited a round church. It was the goal of every pilgrim, whose protection was the Templars’ care. This was the building, of all buildings on earth, that must be defended from its enemies.

 

In every round church that the Templars built throughout Europe they recreated the sanctity of this most holy place. Among the knights who would be buried in the Round was the most powerful man of his generation: William the Marshal, Earl of Pembroke (died 1219), adviser to King John and regent to Henry III. His sons’ effigies lie around his own. The Marshal himself (who lies recumbent and still) took the Cross as an old man; his sons (drawing their swords) did not. Their figures lie frozen in stone, forever alert in defence of their father’s long-forgotten cause. Such burial was devoutly to be desired; for to be buried in the Round was to be buried ‘in’ Jerusalem.

 

The Patriarch Heraclius may well have been the most ignorant, licentious and corrupt priest ever to hold his see. Our reports of his character, however, reach us from his enemies. The great Western chronicler of the Crusades, William of Tyre, was for decades Heraclius’ opponent and rival. In 1180 William had (and had been) expected to be appointed Patriarch of Jerusalem. But the king of Jerusalem was swayed by his mother, said to be a mistress of Heraclius – who was duly appointed Patriarch. William himself was honorably reticent in the face of this reverse. His followers were less restrained. ‘Ernoul’ tells (with more indignation, it seems, than accuracy) how his hero William was excommunicated by the new patriarch, went into exile and died at the hands of Heraclius’ own doctor in Rome. William’s narrative was expanded and continued in Old French as L’Estoire d’ Eracles: its story starts with the Emperor Heraclius who recovered the True Cross in 628 – and includes a prophecy that the Cross, secured by one Heraclius, would be lost (as it was) by another.

 

Can anything redeem our Heraclius’ reputation? Far more was at stake on his visit than at first appears. He was in London as part of a larger mission:- King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem was dying. His kingdom was riven by factions and under threat from Saladin. He had drawn up in his will the rules for the succession: if his nephew, due to become the child-king Baldwin V, were to die before the age of ten, a new ruler should be chosen through the arbitration of four potentates: the Pope, the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, the King of France and Henry II of England. Late in 1184 a deputation headed west from the Kingdom of Jerusalem: Heraclius, the Grand Master of the Templars and the Hospitallers’ Grand Prior. They visited the Pope, Frederick, Philip II Augustus – and finally Henry. The emissaries reached Reading. As credentials they brought the keys of the Tower of David and the Kingdom’s royal standard. According to some English chroniclers, they offered the Kingdom itself to Henry. The incident is hard to analyse. To plead for protection was to offer the power that would make such protection effective. Did that call for the Kingdom itself? The apparent offer of keys and standard may have been misread; for the ambassadors were reworking a performance already presented to Philip of France. (One French chronicler later derides Heraclius: he was offering the keys to any prince he met.) But the Kingdom of Jerusalem was in desperate straits; and behind the pageant may have lain hopes for the subtlest solution of all: to side-step Jerusalem’s factions; and instead to secure one – any one – of Europe’s leaders as king. How strange, to entrust any such delicate mission to the buffoonish Patriarch of myth.

 

The story offered welcome ammunition to Henry II’s enemies. Gerald of Wales, bitterly opposed to the Angevins, sees here the turning-point in Henry’s reign: the king failed to rise to this one supreme test; from then on his own and his sons’ adventures faced ruin. Gerald inherited the topos from an old story with a quite different cast. His new version gave Heraclius a starring role. The Patriarch confronted Henry, Gerald tells us, at Heraclius’ departure from Dover. Here is the king’s last chance. ‘Though all the men of my land,’ said the king, ‘were one body and spoke with one mouth, they would not dare speak to me as you have done.’ ‘Do by me,’ replied Heraclius, ‘as you did by that blessed man Thomas of Canterbury. I had rather be slain by you than by the Saracen, for you are worse than any Saracen.’ ‘I may not leave my land, for my own sons will surely rise against me in my absence.’ ‘No wonder, for from the devil they come and to the devil they shall go.’

 

Gerald’s Heraclius was no coward, and no fool. ‘That blessed man Thomas of Canterbury’ had been killed in 1170. The penance of the four knights who killed him was to serve with the Templars for fourteen years. Henry himself promised to pay for two hundred Templar knights for a year; and in 1172 he undertook to take the Cross himself. Thirteen years had passed. Henry was growing old. Such a vow, undischarged, threatened his immortal soul – as both Heraclius and he knew well. Henry must tread carefully. He summoned a Great Council at Clerkenwell. Surrounded by his advisers, he gave Heraclius his answer: ‘for the good of his realm and the salvation of his own soul’ he declared that he must stay in England. He would provide money instead. Heraclius was unimpressed: ‘We seek a man even without money – but not money without a man.’ Virum appetimus qui pecunia indigeat, non pecuniam quae viro.

 

***

 

Our church’s consecration was deep within the diplomatic labyrinth at whose centre lay the future of Jerusalem. The Templars had come a long way. The Order was founded in 1118-9 by a knight of Champagne, Hugh of Payns, who led a group of his fellow-knights in vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. At their foundation they were deeply suspect: it was unnatural for one man to be soldier and monk together. A handful of such ambivalent knights had little chance, it might seem, of attracting support. In the twelfth century the significance of their seal was well known: Matthew Paris, monk of St Albans, explained that the two knights on one horse recalled their lack of horses and poor beginnings.

 

In Champagne and Burgundy lay the Order’s origin and the seed of its success. Over the course of fifty years a star-burst of spiritual energy illumined all of Europe; and its centre lay in a small area of eastern France. Hugh’s town of Payns was near Troyes, the local city of one Robert, who became a Cluniac monk. In 1075 this Robert, already an abbot, left his monastery with a group of hermits to found a new house: at Molesme. The list of those influenced by Robert and his houses reads as a roll-call of Europe’s spiritual leaders. There was Bruno, who lived briefly as a hermit near Molesme before establishing the most ascetic of all houses, La Grande Chartreuse; Bruno had already been master to Odo, who later became Pope Urban II and preached the First Crusade. When Robert moved again, in search of a yet more rigorous life, he took with him Stephen Harding, later Archbishop of Canterbury. They set up their house at Citeaux.

 

Harding would in time become abbot. The rigour of the house made it few friends among the local nobility. Its future was uncertain. And then arrived as remarkable a monk as any of that remarkable age: Bernard. He spent three years at Citeaux before a local lord, Hugh Count of Champagne, gave him in 1116 an area of inhospitable woodland well to the north, back in the neighbourhood of Payns. It was known as the Valley of Gall. Bernard gave it a new name: Clairvaux, the Valley of Light.

 

Bernard secured single-handed the Templars’ future. Hugh of Champagne became a Templar; so did Bernard’s own uncle Andrew. The Templars’ constitution, the Rule, shows all the marks of Bernard’s influence; at the Council of Troyes in 1129 he spoke up for the Order; and, most influential support of all, at the repeated request of Hugh of Payns Bernard wrote In Praise of the New Knighthood.

 

The New Knighthood’s first half is well-known: in a text advising and praising and warning the knights, Bernard speaks as well to their critics. He is under no illusions: Europe was as glad to be rid of these warring knights as the Holy Land (in Bernard’s eyes) was glad to see them; their army could be a force for good – or for lawless violence. In the tract’s second half Bernard turns to the Holy Land and to Jerusalem itself. Here was his sharpest spur to the pilgrims’ understanding and to the Templars’ own.

Bernard reads Jerusalem itself like a book. In the tradition of Cassian’s fourfold reading of scripture, dominant throughout the Middle Ages, Bernard saw beneath the appearance of the city’s famous sites a far more important spiritual meaning. The land itself invited such a reading:- Bethlehem, ‘house of bread’, was the town where the living bread was first manifest. The ox and ass ate their food at the manger; we must discern there, by contrast, our spiritual food, and not chomp vainly at the Word’s ‘literal’ nourishment. Next, Nazareth, meaning ‘flower’: Bernard reminds us of those who were misled by the odour of flowers into missing the fruit.

And so to Jerusalem itself:- To descend from the Order’s headquarters on the Temple Mount across the Valley of Josaphat and up the Mount of Olives opposite, – this was itself an allegory for the dread of God’s judgement and our joy at receiving his mercy. The House of Martha, Mary and Lazarus offers a moral: the virtue of obedience and the fruits of penance. And above all: in the Holy Sepulchre itself the knight should be raised up to thoughts of Christ’s death and of the freedom from death that it had won for his people: ‘The death of Christ is the death of my death.’ Bernard draws on Paul’s famous account of baptism, and finds in the pilgrims’ weariness the process of their necessary ‘dying’: ‘For we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we should walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, so we shall be also in the likeness of the resurrection. How sweet it is for pilgrims after the great weariness of a long journey, after so many dangers of land and sea, there to rest at last where they know their Lord has rested!’

 

***

 

The Temple Church is now famous as a backwater, a welcome place of calm. The tides of history have shifted; their currents have dug deep channels far from our own Round Church. It was not always so. The effigies of the Marshal and his sons bear telling witness to the Temple’s role in the court’s and nation’s life. In the 16th century the chronicler Stow described the Templars’ seal. The story of their poverty was by then forgotten or incredible. Stow saw rather an emblem of Charity: a knight on horseback takes a fellow Christian out of danger. Perhaps there had always been romance in that picture of knights sharing a horse. The Order’s Rule, after all, allowed each knight three horses and a squire.

 

The effigies testify as well to a rich ‘reading’ of Jerusalem. The New Knighthood is double-edged: all that Bernard writes in praise of Jerusalem frees the faithful from the need to travel there: it is the spiritual sense of the city that matters – a sense as readily grasped at home. To find ‘Jerusalem’, as Bernard would have it, the faithful should rather come to Clairvaux, and not just on pilgrimage. So resolute a reading was hard to sustain. Bernard might detach Jerusalem from the benefits its contemplation could bring; but those around him sooner attached Jerusalem’s blessings to such places as fostered its contemplation.

 

Our effigies seem to us frozen in stone, their figures forever poised to fight battles that ended 700 years ago. But these knights’ eyes are open. They are all portrayed in their early thirties, the age at which Christ died and at which the dead will rise on his return. The effigies are not memorials of what has long since been and gone; they speak of what is yet to come, of these once and future knights who are poised to hear Christ’s summons and to spring again to war.

 

By 1145 the Templars themselves wore white robes with red crosses. White was linked with more than purity. In the Book of Revelation the martyrs of Christ, clad in white robes washed in the blood of the Lamb (Rev 7.14), are those who will be called to life at the ‘first resurrection’. For a millennium they will reign with Christ; at its end Satan will lead all the nations of the earth against ‘the beloved city’ (Rev 20.9). The final battle will be in Jerusalem. Our knights have good reason to draw their swords. For buried in ‘Jerusalem’, in Jerusalem they shall rise to join the Templars in the martyrs’ white and red. Here in the Temple, in our replica of the Sepulchre itself, the knights are waiting for their call to life, to arms and to the last, climactic defence of their most sacred place on earth.

 

Little more than fifty years after the consecration of the chancel, the Templars fell on evil times. The Holy Land was recaptured by the Saracens and so their work came to an end. The wealth they had accumulated made them the target of envious enemies, and in 1307, at the instigation of Philip IV King of France, the Order was abolished by the Pope. The papal decree was obeyed in England and King Edward II took control of the London Temple.

 

Eventually he gave it to the Order of St John – the Knights Hospitaller – who had always worked with the Templars. At the time, the lawyers were looking for a home in London in order to attend the royal courts in Westminster. So the Temple was rented to two colleges of lawyers, who came to be identified as the Inner and Middle Temples. The two colleges shared the use of the church. In this way, the Temple Church became the “college chapel” of those two societies and continues to be maintained by them to the present day.

 

It was King Henry VIII who brought about the next change in the church. In 1540 he abolished the Hospitallers and confiscated their property. The Temple again belonged to the Crown. It was then for Henry to provide a priest for the church, to whom he gave the title ‘Master of the Temple’.

 

‘Be of good comfort,’ said Hooker: ‘we have to do with a merciful God, rather to make the best of that little which we hold well; and not with a captious sophister who gathers the worst out of every thing in which we err.’

 

Richard Hooker was appointed Master of the Temple in 1585. England was in alarm. The threat from Catholic Europe had revived: there had been rebellion against the Queen and Settlement in 1569; in 1570 the Pope had excommunicated Elizabeth and declared her subjects free from their allegiance; Mary Queen of Scots was linked with ever further conspiracy against her cousin; and the danger of Spanish invasion was growing.

 

England’s radical reformers were convinced: England’s only hope of spiritual and political safety lay in the example of Calvin’s godly state, Geneva. The ‘head and neck’ of English Calvinism were Thomas Cartwright and Walter Travers. Since 1581 Travers had been the Reader (lecturer) of the Temple. In 1584 the Privy Council ordered the Inner Temple to continue his stipend ‘for his public labours and pains taken against the common adversaries, impugners of the state and the authorities under her Majesty’s gracious government.’ Hooker and Travers were to be colleagues. Their differences soon became clear. To recover the purity of the primitive church, Travers would be rid of all that intervened and would forge the English church anew. Hooker was steeped in classical and medieval thought; saw the roots of his own (and Travers’) understanding in Aristotle, Augustine, Thomas and Calvin himself; and acknowledged –even valued – the differences to which such a rich tradition could give rise: ‘Be it that Peter has one interpretation, and Apollos has another; that Paul is of this mind, and Barnabas of that. If this offend you, the fault is yours.’ As then, so now: ‘Carry peaceable minds, and you may have comfort by this variety.’ When Hooker carefully and bravely explored the possibility that individual Catholics could be saved, the scene was set for the most famous public debated of the day. ‘Surely I must confess unto you,’ said Hooker: ‘if it be an error to think that God may be merciful to save men, even when they err, my greatest comfort is my error. Were it not for the love I bear unto this “error”, I would neither wish to speak nor to live.’

 

We hear of Hooker’s preaching at the Temple: ‘his voice was low, stature little, gesture none at all, standing stone still in the pulpit, as if the posture of his body were the emblem of his mind, immovable in his opinions. Where his eye was left fixed at the beginning, it was found fixed at the end of the sermon. …The doctrine he delivered had nothing but itself to garnish it.’ Travers, by contrast, was a natural orator, and he was himself a distinguished thinker; he later became the first Provost of Trinity College, Dublin. Hooker held his ground and deepened his reasoning. It was to disclose and offer the comfort of faith that he spoke: ‘Have the sons of God a father careless whether they sink or swim?’ The Temple sermons that survive stress the simple conditions of salvation: ‘Infidelity, extreme despair, hatred of God and all godliness, obduration in sin – cannot stand where there is the least spark of faith, hope, love or sanctity; even as cold in the lowest degree cannot be where heat in the first degree is found.’

 

The debate was brought to an end by Archbishop Whitgift: In March 1586 Travers was forbidden to preach. In 1591 Hooker resigned, and was appointed vicar of Bishopsbourne in Kent. Here he developed his thought in his masterpiece, Ecclesiastical Polity, the foundational – and still, perhaps, the most important – exploration of doctrine in the history of the Anglican church. Hooker elaborated a theory of law based on the ‘absolute’ fundamental of natural law: this is the expression of God’s supreme reason and governs all civil and ecclesiastical polity. ‘Of Law there can be no less acknowledged, than that her seat is the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world: all things in heaven and earth do her homage, the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted from her power: both angels and men and creatures of what condition soever, though each in different sort and manner, yet all with uniform consent, admiring her as the mother of their peace and joy.’ Hooker’s influence has pervaded English thought ever since. He was admired by Laud and by the puritan Baxter, extolled by the Restoration bishops, and brought once more to prominence by Keble and the Oxford Movement; he has now been rediscovered (in a recent monograph by Richard Atkinson) within the modern evangelical church. His reach has extended far beyond theologians. Ecclesiastical Polity was the starting-point for Clarendon’s History and seminal for Locke’s philosophy; its self-critical balance touched Andrew Marvell; and Samuel Pepys read it at the recommendation of a friend who declared it ‘the best book, and the only one that made him a Christian.’

   

THE BATTLE OF THE PULPIT

In 1585 the Master of the Temple, Richard Alvey, died. His deputy – the Reader, Walter Travers – expected to be promoted, but Queen Elizabeth I and her advisers regarded his views as too Calvinist, and Travers was passed over.

 

Instead a new Master, Richard Hooker, was appointed from Exeter College, Oxford. On Hooker’s arrival, a unique situation arose. Each Sunday morning he would preach his sermon; each Sunday afternoon Travers would contradict him. People came to call it the Battle of the Pulpit, saying mischievously that Canterbury was preached in the morning and Geneva in the afternoon. There was a lasting result of all this: Hooker published his teaching as Ecclesiastical Polity and came to be recognised as the founding father of Anglican theology.

 

By the end of the 16th century, the two Inns of Court had erected many fine buildings at the Temple, yet their position as tenants was not a secure one. In order to protect what they had built up from any future whims of the Crown, they petitioned King James I for a more satisfactory arrangement. On 13 August 1608 the King granted the two Inns a Royal Charter giving them use of the Temple in perpetuity.

 

One condition of this was that the Inns must maintain the church. The Temple and the church are still governed by that charter. In gratitude, the Inns gave King James a fine gold cup. Some years later, in the Civil war, his son Charles I needed funds to keep his army in the field. The cup was sold in Holland and has never been traced.

 

In February 1683, the treasurers of the two Societies of the Temple commissioned an organ from each of the two leading organ builders of the time, Bernhard Smith (1630-1708) and Renatus Harris (1652-1708). The organs were to be installed in the halls of the Middle and Inner Temple, to enable them to be played and judged. Smith was annoyed to discover that Harris was also invited to compete for the contract; he was under the impression that the job had already been offered to him. Smith petitioned the treasurers and won permission to erect his instrument in the church instead of in one of the halls. It was set on a screen which divided the round from the quire. This advantage was short-lived as Harris sought and obtained approval to place his organ at the opposite end of the church, to the south side of the communion table. It is thought that both organs were completed by May 1684.

 

Harris and Smith engaged the finest organists to show off their respective instruments and were put to great expense as the competition intensified and each instrument became more.

 

In 1841 the church was again restored, by Smirke and Burton, the walls and ceiling being decorated in the high Victorian Gothic style. The object of this was to bring the church back to its original appearance, for it would have been brightly decorated like this when first built. Nothing of the work remains, however, for it was destroyed by fire bombs exactly a century after its completion. After the Victorian restoration, a choir of men and boys was introduced for the first time. The first organist and choirmaster was Dr Edward John Hopkins who remained in this post for over 50 years, 1843-96, establishing the Temple Church choir as one of the finest in London, a city of fine choirs. This tradition of high-quality music was maintained by Hopkins’ well-known successor, Henry Walford Davies, who stayed until 1923.

 

In 1923 Dr GT Thalben-Ball was appointed organist and choirmaster. This musician, later world- renowned, was to serve the church even longer than his predecessor, John Hopkins, retiring in 1982 after 59 years in office. One reason for his fame was the record made in 1927 of Mendelssohn’s Hear My Prayer by Thalben-Ball and the boy soloist Ernest Lough. The recording became world-famous and brought visitors to the church from all parts of the globe.

 

In 1941 on the night of 10 May, when Nazi air raids on London were at their height, the church was badly damaged by incendiary bombs. The roof of the round church burned first and the wind soon spread the blaze to the nave and choir. The organ was completely destroyed, together with all the wood in the church. Restoration took a long time to complete. The choir, containing a new organ given by Lord Glentannar, was the first area of the church to be rededicated in March 1954. By a stroke of good fortune the architects, Walter and Emil Godfrey, were able to use the reredos designed by Wren for his 17th-century restoration. Removed by Smirke and Burton in 1841, it had spent over a century in the Bowes Museum, County Durham, and was now re-installed in its original position. The round church was rededicated in November 1958.

 

Probably the most notable feature of today’s church is the east window. This was a gift from the Glaziers’ Company in 1954 to replace that destroyed in the war. It was designed by Carl Edwards and illustrates Jesus’ connection with the Temple at Jerusalem. In one panel we see him talking with the learned teachers there, in another driving out the money-changers. The window also depicts some of the personalities associated with Temple Church over the centuries, including Henry II, Henry III and several of the medieval Masters of the Temple.

 

www.templechurch.com/history-2/timeline/

Austrian postcard, Iris Verlag 5311. Aafa Film. Lux-Film-Verleih.

 

Livio Pavanelli (1881-1958) was an Italian actor of the Italian and in particular German silent cinema. He also worked in Italian sound cinema as actor and as production manager. He directed four Italian films, both in the silent and the sound era.

 

Livio Pavanelli was born September 7th, 1881, in Copparo and was member of a big family of farmers and merchants from the Ferrara area – his father Andrea being also a notable patriot in the Italian Risorgimento – but as a consequence of financial disasters in the family he moved with his parents to Bologna where he visited the technical school. During his adolescence he wandered around Italy, eager for excitement. When in Venice in 1898, he fell in love with the stage while assisting a show of wandering artists, and started a theatrical career, performing with various companies like that of Antono Gandusio, and in 1902 the Venetican company of Emilio Zago. He then shifted to the company of Gustavo Salvini and Ermete Zacconi, before reaching Eleonora Duse’s company with whom he stayed for 9 years, accompanying her in her foreign tours as well.

 

In the 1910s Pavanelli’s film career started, performing leads in various films, firstly in a series of films with Pina Fabbri like Il delitto della via di Nizza (Henri Etievant 1913) and Il romanzo di due vite (Attilio Fabbri 1913), from 1914 on in a series of films with Hesperia like L’ereditiera (1914) and L’agguato (1915); with Mercedes Brignone like Il re dell’Atlantico (1914) and Mezzanotte (1915); and with Gianna Terribili-Gonzales; mostly directed by Baldassare Negroni, or by others like Zorzi or Genina. In 1916-1917 Pavanelli didn’t appear in films, but in 1918 he was back in film, opposite Francesca Bertini in various parts of the series I sette peccati capitali (1918, directed by various filmmakers), La piovra (Edoardo Bencivenga 1919) and Anima allegra (Roberto Roberti 1919); and opposite Lyda Borelli in Carnevalesca (Amleto Palermi 1918) and Una notte a Calcutta (Mario Caserini 1918). In 1918 he also played Saint Sebastian in Enrico Guazzoni’s epic Fabiola, opposite Elena Sangro in the title role, and he had a part in the propagandistic fake biopic of and with Francesca Bertini: Mariute. In those years, Thea Pavanelli, aka as simply Thea, played with Pavanelli in La reginetta Isotta (1918), based on Balzac. She might have been his wife, but no additional information is available about this.

 

In the late 1910s and early 1920s, Pavanelli really was a star of Italian silent cinema, not only in epic films like Il sacco di Roma (Enrico Guazzoni/Giulio Aristide Sartorio 1920), but also in long list of diva films with Pina Menichelli such as La storia di una donna (Eugenio Perego 1920), La verità nuda (Telemaco Ruggeri 1921), L’età critica (Palermi 1921), La seconda moglie (Palermi 1922), and La biondina (Palermi 1923). Other actresses opposite whom Pavanelli acted in the early 1920s years were Tilde Kassay, Diomira Jacobini, and Cecil Tryan. In Saitra la ribelle (Palermi 1924), Coiffeur pour dames (Palermi 1924) and Vedi Napoli, poi muori (Perego 1924), Pavanelli played opposite Leda Gys, and he played the lead of Turiddu opposite Tina Xeo as Santuzza in the adaptation of Verga’s story and Mascagni’s opera Cavalleria rusticana (Mario Gargiulo 1924).

 

Because of the crisis in Italian cinema, Pavanelli moved first to Austria and then to Germany in 1924, where he proceeded his succesful career, performing opposite the female stars of Weimar cinema, such as Lee Parry (Die schönste Frau der Welt, 1924), Fern Andra (Die Liebe is der Frauen Macht, 1924), Liane Haid (Ich liebe dich!, 1924; Im weissen Rössl, 1926; Als ich wieder kam, 1926), Ossi Oswalda (Niniche, 1924), Ida Wüst (Kammermusik, 1925), Maria Corda (Der Tänzer meiner Frau, 1925), Elga Brink (Der Ritt in die Sonne, 1926; Das Gasthaus zur Ehe, 1926), Marcella Albani, Lya De Putti, and male stars like Hans Albers (Mein Freund der Chauffeur, 1926). In 1926 Pavanelli played in various boulevard comedies: he had the male lead as the industrial Franz Kaltenbach in Familie Schimeck/Wiener Herzen (Alfred Halm, Rudolf Dworsky), opposite Olga Tschechowa as his wife Olga, and also the male lead in der lachende Ehemann (Rudolf Walther-Fein, Rudolf Dworsky), opposite Elisabeth Pinajeff as his wife, but he also played with Dolly Davis, André Roanne and Agnes Esterhazy in Fräulein Josette, meine Frau (Gaston Ravel), with Mady Christians and Roanne in Die Königin der Moulin Rouge (Robert Wiene), with Xenia Desni in Küssen ist keine Sund (Walther-Fein/Dworsky) and Schützenliesel (same directors), with Mary Nolan in Die Königin des Weltbades (Viktor Janson), and with Jenny Jugo in Die ledige Töchter (Carl Boese). It is clear that 1926 was Pavanelli’s most prolific year.

 

More films with Mary Nolan, Mady Christians and in particular Xenia Desni followed in 1927, but also parts in the Henny Porten drama Die grosse Pause (Carl Froehlich). In 1927 Pavanelli was temporarily back in Italy to play Florette in the adaptation of the popular boulevard comedy Florette et Patapon (Palermi 1927), with French actor Marcel Levesque as Patapon, and German actress Ossi Oswalda as Riquette Florette. In 1928 followed parts in the Lyda de Putti comedy Charlott is etwas verrückt (Adolf E. Licho), the Cilly Feindt vehicle Gefährdete Mädchen (Hans Otto), the Arlette Marchal drama Die Frau von gestern und morgen (Heinz Paul), the Spanish-German production Herzen ohne Ziel/Corazones sin rumbo (Benito Perojo/Gustav Ucicky), the Italo-German coproduction Scampolo (Genina), and the Ossi Oswalda vehicle Das Haus ohne Männer (Rolf Randolf). In 1929 Pavanelli played the lead in Liebfraumilch (Carl Froehlich) and Sir Henry Baskerville in Der Hund von Baskerville (Richard Oswald, next to smaller parts in other films like the Maria Paudler drama Liebe im Schnee (Max Obal/Walther-Fein) and Hotelgeheimnisse (Friedrich Feher). Even in 1930 Pavanelli continued to play in German films, such as Freiheit in Fesseln (Carl Heinz Wolff), starring Fritz Kampers and Vivian Gibson, and Ehestreik (Carl Boese), with Georg Alexander and Maria Paudler.

 

When sound cinema set in, Pavanelli first played opposite former silent star Maria Jacobini in the film Perché no?, an Italian version of The Lady Lies, shot in the Paramount studios in Paris and directed by Palermi. Pavanelli next had one part in the German sound film Liebeskommando (Geza von Bolvary 1931), and then returned to Italy, where his star as actor declined while still acting in films like Pergolesi (Guido Brignone 1932), with Elio Steiner in the title role, and L’ultimo dei Bergerac (Gennaro Righelli 1933). Pavanelli had one last film performance in Germany in the film Frühlingsmärchen (Carl Froehlich 1934), in which he appropriately played a singing master from Milan. According to Wikipedia Pavanelli played both in the Italian and the German version of Max Neufeld’s La canzone del sole/Das Lied der Sonne (1934), starring Vittorio De Sica. He also performed in Gustav Machaty’s Italian production Ballerine (1936). In the 1930s Pavanelli also became producer, scriptwriter and director. Wikipedia claims one of his productions was opera singer Tito Schipa’s success film Vivere of 1937, while IMDB lists Pavanelli not as producer but as production manager or unit manager for 10 different films between 1939 and 1954, often for Guido Brignone such as La mia canzone al vento (Brignone 1939) and Romanzo di un giovane povero (Brignone 1942), but also the postwar epic Messalina (Carmine Gallone (1951). In 1939 Pavanelli was also scriptwriter for La mia canzone al vento. In 1941-42 he directed his sole sound feature Solitudine, starring Carola Höhn (Pavanelli had already directed three films in the silent era: Silvio Pellico, 1915; La complice muta, 1920; Madonnina, 1921). Livio Pavanelli’s last film as actor was L’altra (1947) by Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia, in which he played a French impresario. After that he only continued as production or unit manager. His last job was production management of the epic Cortigiana di Babilonia (Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia 1954), starring Rhonda Fleming. Livio Pavanelli died at the hospital San Giovanni in Rome on 29 April 1958.

 

Sources: Italian Wikipedia, IMDB, filmportal.de.

   

Last upload were of non-edited shots, here are the better ones!

 

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The Temple Church was consecrated in honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary on 10 February 1185 by Heraclius, Patriarch of Jerusalem.

 

The whole Temple community had moved from an earlier site in High Holborn, considered by the 1160s to be too confined. The church was the chapel serving the London headquarters of the Knights Templar, and from them it took its name. The Templars – as the knights were popularly known – were soldier monks.

 

After the success of the First Crusade, the order was founded in Jerusalem in a building on the site of King Solomon’s temple. Their mission was to protect pilgrims travelling to and from the Holy Land, but in order to do this they needed men and money. For more details of the Templars and this early history of the Church, see The Round Church, 1185.

 

The London Temple was the Templars’ headquarters in Great Britain. The Templars’ churches were always built to a circular design to remind them of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, a round, domed building raised over the site of the sepulchre where Jesus was buried. At first, the Templars were liked and respected. St Bernard of Clairvaux became their patron and they gained many privileges from popes and much support from kings.

 

In England, King Henry II was probably present at the consecration of the church; King Henry III favoured them so much that he wished to be buried in their church. As a consequence of this wish, the choir of the church was pulled down and a far larger one built in its place, the choir which we now see. This was consecrated on Ascension Day 1240 in the presence of the king. However, after Henry died it was discovered that he had altered his will, and he was buried in Westminster Abbey.

 

On 10 February 1185 Heraclius, Patriarch of Jerusalem, processed into the Round for the church’s consecration. The King was almost certainly present. A grand church for a grand occasion; for the Round had no such quiet austerity as we see in it today. The walls and grotesque heads were painted: the walls most probably with bands and lozenges of colour. The Round was proudly modern: Heraclius entered through the Norman door to find the first free-standing Purbeck columns ever cut; above them curved in two dimensions Gothic arches rising to the drum. A chancel, some two thirds of the present chancel’s length, stretched to the east. There the Patriach’s procession will have come to rest for Mass. And there the altar stayed. What, then, – on that great day or later – was the function of the Round?

 

Its most important role was played by its shape. Jerusalem lies at the centre of all medieval maps, and was the centre of the crusaders’ world. The most sacred place in this most sacred city was the supposed site of Jesus’ own burial: the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Here the crusaders inherited a round church. It was the goal of every pilgrim, whose protection was the Templars’ care. This was the building, of all buildings on earth, that must be defended from its enemies.

 

In every round church that the Templars built throughout Europe they recreated the sanctity of this most holy place. Among the knights who would be buried in the Round was the most powerful man of his generation: William the Marshal, Earl of Pembroke (died 1219), adviser to King John and regent to Henry III. His sons’ effigies lie around his own. The Marshal himself (who lies recumbent and still) took the Cross as an old man; his sons (drawing their swords) did not. Their figures lie frozen in stone, forever alert in defence of their father’s long-forgotten cause. Such burial was devoutly to be desired; for to be buried in the Round was to be buried ‘in’ Jerusalem.

 

The Patriarch Heraclius may well have been the most ignorant, licentious and corrupt priest ever to hold his see. Our reports of his character, however, reach us from his enemies. The great Western chronicler of the Crusades, William of Tyre, was for decades Heraclius’ opponent and rival. In 1180 William had (and had been) expected to be appointed Patriarch of Jerusalem. But the king of Jerusalem was swayed by his mother, said to be a mistress of Heraclius – who was duly appointed Patriarch. William himself was honorably reticent in the face of this reverse. His followers were less restrained. ‘Ernoul’ tells (with more indignation, it seems, than accuracy) how his hero William was excommunicated by the new patriarch, went into exile and died at the hands of Heraclius’ own doctor in Rome. William’s narrative was expanded and continued in Old French as L’Estoire d’ Eracles: its story starts with the Emperor Heraclius who recovered the True Cross in 628 – and includes a prophecy that the Cross, secured by one Heraclius, would be lost (as it was) by another.

 

Can anything redeem our Heraclius’ reputation? Far more was at stake on his visit than at first appears. He was in London as part of a larger mission:- King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem was dying. His kingdom was riven by factions and under threat from Saladin. He had drawn up in his will the rules for the succession: if his nephew, due to become the child-king Baldwin V, were to die before the age of ten, a new ruler should be chosen through the arbitration of four potentates: the Pope, the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, the King of France and Henry II of England. Late in 1184 a deputation headed west from the Kingdom of Jerusalem: Heraclius, the Grand Master of the Templars and the Hospitallers’ Grand Prior. They visited the Pope, Frederick, Philip II Augustus – and finally Henry. The emissaries reached Reading. As credentials they brought the keys of the Tower of David and the Kingdom’s royal standard. According to some English chroniclers, they offered the Kingdom itself to Henry. The incident is hard to analyse. To plead for protection was to offer the power that would make such protection effective. Did that call for the Kingdom itself? The apparent offer of keys and standard may have been misread; for the ambassadors were reworking a performance already presented to Philip of France. (One French chronicler later derides Heraclius: he was offering the keys to any prince he met.) But the Kingdom of Jerusalem was in desperate straits; and behind the pageant may have lain hopes for the subtlest solution of all: to side-step Jerusalem’s factions; and instead to secure one – any one – of Europe’s leaders as king. How strange, to entrust any such delicate mission to the buffoonish Patriarch of myth.

 

The story offered welcome ammunition to Henry II’s enemies. Gerald of Wales, bitterly opposed to the Angevins, sees here the turning-point in Henry’s reign: the king failed to rise to this one supreme test; from then on his own and his sons’ adventures faced ruin. Gerald inherited the topos from an old story with a quite different cast. His new version gave Heraclius a starring role. The Patriarch confronted Henry, Gerald tells us, at Heraclius’ departure from Dover. Here is the king’s last chance. ‘Though all the men of my land,’ said the king, ‘were one body and spoke with one mouth, they would not dare speak to me as you have done.’ ‘Do by me,’ replied Heraclius, ‘as you did by that blessed man Thomas of Canterbury. I had rather be slain by you than by the Saracen, for you are worse than any Saracen.’ ‘I may not leave my land, for my own sons will surely rise against me in my absence.’ ‘No wonder, for from the devil they come and to the devil they shall go.’

 

Gerald’s Heraclius was no coward, and no fool. ‘That blessed man Thomas of Canterbury’ had been killed in 1170. The penance of the four knights who killed him was to serve with the Templars for fourteen years. Henry himself promised to pay for two hundred Templar knights for a year; and in 1172 he undertook to take the Cross himself. Thirteen years had passed. Henry was growing old. Such a vow, undischarged, threatened his immortal soul – as both Heraclius and he knew well. Henry must tread carefully. He summoned a Great Council at Clerkenwell. Surrounded by his advisers, he gave Heraclius his answer: ‘for the good of his realm and the salvation of his own soul’ he declared that he must stay in England. He would provide money instead. Heraclius was unimpressed: ‘We seek a man even without money – but not money without a man.’ Virum appetimus qui pecunia indigeat, non pecuniam quae viro.

 

***

 

Our church’s consecration was deep within the diplomatic labyrinth at whose centre lay the future of Jerusalem. The Templars had come a long way. The Order was founded in 1118-9 by a knight of Champagne, Hugh of Payns, who led a group of his fellow-knights in vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. At their foundation they were deeply suspect: it was unnatural for one man to be soldier and monk together. A handful of such ambivalent knights had little chance, it might seem, of attracting support. In the twelfth century the significance of their seal was well known: Matthew Paris, monk of St Albans, explained that the two knights on one horse recalled their lack of horses and poor beginnings.

 

In Champagne and Burgundy lay the Order’s origin and the seed of its success. Over the course of fifty years a star-burst of spiritual energy illumined all of Europe; and its centre lay in a small area of eastern France. Hugh’s town of Payns was near Troyes, the local city of one Robert, who became a Cluniac monk. In 1075 this Robert, already an abbot, left his monastery with a group of hermits to found a new house: at Molesme. The list of those influenced by Robert and his houses reads as a roll-call of Europe’s spiritual leaders. There was Bruno, who lived briefly as a hermit near Molesme before establishing the most ascetic of all houses, La Grande Chartreuse; Bruno had already been master to Odo, who later became Pope Urban II and preached the First Crusade. When Robert moved again, in search of a yet more rigorous life, he took with him Stephen Harding, later Archbishop of Canterbury. They set up their house at Citeaux.

 

Harding would in time become abbot. The rigour of the house made it few friends among the local nobility. Its future was uncertain. And then arrived as remarkable a monk as any of that remarkable age: Bernard. He spent three years at Citeaux before a local lord, Hugh Count of Champagne, gave him in 1116 an area of inhospitable woodland well to the north, back in the neighbourhood of Payns. It was known as the Valley of Gall. Bernard gave it a new name: Clairvaux, the Valley of Light.

 

Bernard secured single-handed the Templars’ future. Hugh of Champagne became a Templar; so did Bernard’s own uncle Andrew. The Templars’ constitution, the Rule, shows all the marks of Bernard’s influence; at the Council of Troyes in 1129 he spoke up for the Order; and, most influential support of all, at the repeated request of Hugh of Payns Bernard wrote In Praise of the New Knighthood.

 

The New Knighthood’s first half is well-known: in a text advising and praising and warning the knights, Bernard speaks as well to their critics. He is under no illusions: Europe was as glad to be rid of these warring knights as the Holy Land (in Bernard’s eyes) was glad to see them; their army could be a force for good – or for lawless violence. In the tract’s second half Bernard turns to the Holy Land and to Jerusalem itself. Here was his sharpest spur to the pilgrims’ understanding and to the Templars’ own.

Bernard reads Jerusalem itself like a book. In the tradition of Cassian’s fourfold reading of scripture, dominant throughout the Middle Ages, Bernard saw beneath the appearance of the city’s famous sites a far more important spiritual meaning. The land itself invited such a reading:- Bethlehem, ‘house of bread’, was the town where the living bread was first manifest. The ox and ass ate their food at the manger; we must discern there, by contrast, our spiritual food, and not chomp vainly at the Word’s ‘literal’ nourishment. Next, Nazareth, meaning ‘flower’: Bernard reminds us of those who were misled by the odour of flowers into missing the fruit.

And so to Jerusalem itself:- To descend from the Order’s headquarters on the Temple Mount across the Valley of Josaphat and up the Mount of Olives opposite, – this was itself an allegory for the dread of God’s judgement and our joy at receiving his mercy. The House of Martha, Mary and Lazarus offers a moral: the virtue of obedience and the fruits of penance. And above all: in the Holy Sepulchre itself the knight should be raised up to thoughts of Christ’s death and of the freedom from death that it had won for his people: ‘The death of Christ is the death of my death.’ Bernard draws on Paul’s famous account of baptism, and finds in the pilgrims’ weariness the process of their necessary ‘dying’: ‘For we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we should walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, so we shall be also in the likeness of the resurrection. How sweet it is for pilgrims after the great weariness of a long journey, after so many dangers of land and sea, there to rest at last where they know their Lord has rested!’

 

***

 

The Temple Church is now famous as a backwater, a welcome place of calm. The tides of history have shifted; their currents have dug deep channels far from our own Round Church. It was not always so. The effigies of the Marshal and his sons bear telling witness to the Temple’s role in the court’s and nation’s life. In the 16th century the chronicler Stow described the Templars’ seal. The story of their poverty was by then forgotten or incredible. Stow saw rather an emblem of Charity: a knight on horseback takes a fellow Christian out of danger. Perhaps there had always been romance in that picture of knights sharing a horse. The Order’s Rule, after all, allowed each knight three horses and a squire.

 

The effigies testify as well to a rich ‘reading’ of Jerusalem. The New Knighthood is double-edged: all that Bernard writes in praise of Jerusalem frees the faithful from the need to travel there: it is the spiritual sense of the city that matters – a sense as readily grasped at home. To find ‘Jerusalem’, as Bernard would have it, the faithful should rather come to Clairvaux, and not just on pilgrimage. So resolute a reading was hard to sustain. Bernard might detach Jerusalem from the benefits its contemplation could bring; but those around him sooner attached Jerusalem’s blessings to such places as fostered its contemplation.

 

Our effigies seem to us frozen in stone, their figures forever poised to fight battles that ended 700 years ago. But these knights’ eyes are open. They are all portrayed in their early thirties, the age at which Christ died and at which the dead will rise on his return. The effigies are not memorials of what has long since been and gone; they speak of what is yet to come, of these once and future knights who are poised to hear Christ’s summons and to spring again to war.

 

By 1145 the Templars themselves wore white robes with red crosses. White was linked with more than purity. In the Book of Revelation the martyrs of Christ, clad in white robes washed in the blood of the Lamb (Rev 7.14), are those who will be called to life at the ‘first resurrection’. For a millennium they will reign with Christ; at its end Satan will lead all the nations of the earth against ‘the beloved city’ (Rev 20.9). The final battle will be in Jerusalem. Our knights have good reason to draw their swords. For buried in ‘Jerusalem’, in Jerusalem they shall rise to join the Templars in the martyrs’ white and red. Here in the Temple, in our replica of the Sepulchre itself, the knights are waiting for their call to life, to arms and to the last, climactic defence of their most sacred place on earth.

 

Little more than fifty years after the consecration of the chancel, the Templars fell on evil times. The Holy Land was recaptured by the Saracens and so their work came to an end. The wealth they had accumulated made them the target of envious enemies, and in 1307, at the instigation of Philip IV King of France, the Order was abolished by the Pope. The papal decree was obeyed in England and King Edward II took control of the London Temple.

 

Eventually he gave it to the Order of St John – the Knights Hospitaller – who had always worked with the Templars. At the time, the lawyers were looking for a home in London in order to attend the royal courts in Westminster. So the Temple was rented to two colleges of lawyers, who came to be identified as the Inner and Middle Temples. The two colleges shared the use of the church. In this way, the Temple Church became the “college chapel” of those two societies and continues to be maintained by them to the present day.

 

It was King Henry VIII who brought about the next change in the church. In 1540 he abolished the Hospitallers and confiscated their property. The Temple again belonged to the Crown. It was then for Henry to provide a priest for the church, to whom he gave the title ‘Master of the Temple’.

 

‘Be of good comfort,’ said Hooker: ‘we have to do with a merciful God, rather to make the best of that little which we hold well; and not with a captious sophister who gathers the worst out of every thing in which we err.’

 

Richard Hooker was appointed Master of the Temple in 1585. England was in alarm. The threat from Catholic Europe had revived: there had been rebellion against the Queen and Settlement in 1569; in 1570 the Pope had excommunicated Elizabeth and declared her subjects free from their allegiance; Mary Queen of Scots was linked with ever further conspiracy against her cousin; and the danger of Spanish invasion was growing.

 

England’s radical reformers were convinced: England’s only hope of spiritual and political safety lay in the example of Calvin’s godly state, Geneva. The ‘head and neck’ of English Calvinism were Thomas Cartwright and Walter Travers. Since 1581 Travers had been the Reader (lecturer) of the Temple. In 1584 the Privy Council ordered the Inner Temple to continue his stipend ‘for his public labours and pains taken against the common adversaries, impugners of the state and the authorities under her Majesty’s gracious government.’ Hooker and Travers were to be colleagues. Their differences soon became clear. To recover the purity of the primitive church, Travers would be rid of all that intervened and would forge the English church anew. Hooker was steeped in classical and medieval thought; saw the roots of his own (and Travers’) understanding in Aristotle, Augustine, Thomas and Calvin himself; and acknowledged –even valued – the differences to which such a rich tradition could give rise: ‘Be it that Peter has one interpretation, and Apollos has another; that Paul is of this mind, and Barnabas of that. If this offend you, the fault is yours.’ As then, so now: ‘Carry peaceable minds, and you may have comfort by this variety.’ When Hooker carefully and bravely explored the possibility that individual Catholics could be saved, the scene was set for the most famous public debated of the day. ‘Surely I must confess unto you,’ said Hooker: ‘if it be an error to think that God may be merciful to save men, even when they err, my greatest comfort is my error. Were it not for the love I bear unto this “error”, I would neither wish to speak nor to live.’

 

We hear of Hooker’s preaching at the Temple: ‘his voice was low, stature little, gesture none at all, standing stone still in the pulpit, as if the posture of his body were the emblem of his mind, immovable in his opinions. Where his eye was left fixed at the beginning, it was found fixed at the end of the sermon. …The doctrine he delivered had nothing but itself to garnish it.’ Travers, by contrast, was a natural orator, and he was himself a distinguished thinker; he later became the first Provost of Trinity College, Dublin. Hooker held his ground and deepened his reasoning. It was to disclose and offer the comfort of faith that he spoke: ‘Have the sons of God a father careless whether they sink or swim?’ The Temple sermons that survive stress the simple conditions of salvation: ‘Infidelity, extreme despair, hatred of God and all godliness, obduration in sin – cannot stand where there is the least spark of faith, hope, love or sanctity; even as cold in the lowest degree cannot be where heat in the first degree is found.’

 

The debate was brought to an end by Archbishop Whitgift: In March 1586 Travers was forbidden to preach. In 1591 Hooker resigned, and was appointed vicar of Bishopsbourne in Kent. Here he developed his thought in his masterpiece, Ecclesiastical Polity, the foundational – and still, perhaps, the most important – exploration of doctrine in the history of the Anglican church. Hooker elaborated a theory of law based on the ‘absolute’ fundamental of natural law: this is the expression of God’s supreme reason and governs all civil and ecclesiastical polity. ‘Of Law there can be no less acknowledged, than that her seat is the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world: all things in heaven and earth do her homage, the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted from her power: both angels and men and creatures of what condition soever, though each in different sort and manner, yet all with uniform consent, admiring her as the mother of their peace and joy.’ Hooker’s influence has pervaded English thought ever since. He was admired by Laud and by the puritan Baxter, extolled by the Restoration bishops, and brought once more to prominence by Keble and the Oxford Movement; he has now been rediscovered (in a recent monograph by Richard Atkinson) within the modern evangelical church. His reach has extended far beyond theologians. Ecclesiastical Polity was the starting-point for Clarendon’s History and seminal for Locke’s philosophy; its self-critical balance touched Andrew Marvell; and Samuel Pepys read it at the recommendation of a friend who declared it ‘the best book, and the only one that made him a Christian.’

   

THE BATTLE OF THE PULPIT

In 1585 the Master of the Temple, Richard Alvey, died. His deputy – the Reader, Walter Travers – expected to be promoted, but Queen Elizabeth I and her advisers regarded his views as too Calvinist, and Travers was passed over.

 

Instead a new Master, Richard Hooker, was appointed from Exeter College, Oxford. On Hooker’s arrival, a unique situation arose. Each Sunday morning he would preach his sermon; each Sunday afternoon Travers would contradict him. People came to call it the Battle of the Pulpit, saying mischievously that Canterbury was preached in the morning and Geneva in the afternoon. There was a lasting result of all this: Hooker published his teaching as Ecclesiastical Polity and came to be recognised as the founding father of Anglican theology.

 

By the end of the 16th century, the two Inns of Court had erected many fine buildings at the Temple, yet their position as tenants was not a secure one. In order to protect what they had built up from any future whims of the Crown, they petitioned King James I for a more satisfactory arrangement. On 13 August 1608 the King granted the two Inns a Royal Charter giving them use of the Temple in perpetuity.

 

One condition of this was that the Inns must maintain the church. The Temple and the church are still governed by that charter. In gratitude, the Inns gave King James a fine gold cup. Some years later, in the Civil war, his son Charles I needed funds to keep his army in the field. The cup was sold in Holland and has never been traced.

 

In February 1683, the treasurers of the two Societies of the Temple commissioned an organ from each of the two leading organ builders of the time, Bernhard Smith (1630-1708) and Renatus Harris (1652-1708). The organs were to be installed in the halls of the Middle and Inner Temple, to enable them to be played and judged. Smith was annoyed to discover that Harris was also invited to compete for the contract; he was under the impression that the job had already been offered to him. Smith petitioned the treasurers and won permission to erect his instrument in the church instead of in one of the halls. It was set on a screen which divided the round from the quire. This advantage was short-lived as Harris sought and obtained approval to place his organ at the opposite end of the church, to the south side of the communion table. It is thought that both organs were completed by May 1684.

 

Harris and Smith engaged the finest organists to show off their respective instruments and were put to great expense as the competition intensified and each instrument became more.

 

In 1841 the church was again restored, by Smirke and Burton, the walls and ceiling being decorated in the high Victorian Gothic style. The object of this was to bring the church back to its original appearance, for it would have been brightly decorated like this when first built. Nothing of the work remains, however, for it was destroyed by fire bombs exactly a century after its completion. After the Victorian restoration, a choir of men and boys was introduced for the first time. The first organist and choirmaster was Dr Edward John Hopkins who remained in this post for over 50 years, 1843-96, establishing the Temple Church choir as one of the finest in London, a city of fine choirs. This tradition of high-quality music was maintained by Hopkins’ well-known successor, Henry Walford Davies, who stayed until 1923.

 

In 1923 Dr GT Thalben-Ball was appointed organist and choirmaster. This musician, later world- renowned, was to serve the church even longer than his predecessor, John Hopkins, retiring in 1982 after 59 years in office. One reason for his fame was the record made in 1927 of Mendelssohn’s Hear My Prayer by Thalben-Ball and the boy soloist Ernest Lough. The recording became world-famous and brought visitors to the church from all parts of the globe.

 

In 1941 on the night of 10 May, when Nazi air raids on London were at their height, the church was badly damaged by incendiary bombs. The roof of the round church burned first and the wind soon spread the blaze to the nave and choir. The organ was completely destroyed, together with all the wood in the church. Restoration took a long time to complete. The choir, containing a new organ given by Lord Glentannar, was the first area of the church to be rededicated in March 1954. By a stroke of good fortune the architects, Walter and Emil Godfrey, were able to use the reredos designed by Wren for his 17th-century restoration. Removed by Smirke and Burton in 1841, it had spent over a century in the Bowes Museum, County Durham, and was now re-installed in its original position. The round church was rededicated in November 1958.

 

Probably the most notable feature of today’s church is the east window. This was a gift from the Glaziers’ Company in 1954 to replace that destroyed in the war. It was designed by Carl Edwards and illustrates Jesus’ connection with the Temple at Jerusalem. In one panel we see him talking with the learned teachers there, in another driving out the money-changers. The window also depicts some of the personalities associated with Temple Church over the centuries, including Henry II, Henry III and several of the medieval Masters of the Temple.

 

www.templechurch.com/history-2/timeline/

DragonCenterDrumTibetButterflyLeungLeeJap

 

People's choice in Iran: Tehran Time suggests only 10K Iraqi soldiers death, but 600K civilian casualties in Iraq war,

 

Consequences of US withdrawal from Iraq

 

Teheran Time: "The loss of the lives of British soldiers and a great number of Iraqis (somewhere between 100,000 and 600,000), "MAINLY civilians." "

 

People's choice in Iran: The statement suggests only 10K Iraqi soldiers death, but 600K civilian casualties in Iraq War. It also suggests that every muslim killed by infidel is innocent except the Saddam family.

 

2002: Bush called Iran, Iraq, and North Korea Axis of Evil.

 

"In his State of the Union address, Bush focused his speech on the continuing war against terror -- which, he said, "is only beginning."

 

Illustrating the widening scope of that conflict, he singled out North Korea, Iran and Iraq as states he said were allying themselves with terrorists to form "an axis of evil."

 

With these states seeking to develop weapons of mass destruction, Bush called on the "civilized world" to act against them, saying "the price of indifference would be catastrophic." "..........CNN

 

January 30, 2002 Posted: 10:46 AM EST (1546 GMT)

 

22:00 The death of Alexander the Great and the cost of casualties in blood and life, a tragedy of greed, self-destruction, betrayal and treason.

 

Q: President Bush has talked about our staying in Iraq for 50 years — (cut off by McCain) ... Just wondering, how does McCain plan to pay for our 100 year occupation of Iraq? ...

 

The United States military could stay in Iraq for "maybe a hundred years" and that "would be fine with me," John McCain told two ...

 

"Anyone can go to Baghdad. Real men go to Tehran."

Senior Bush Official, May 2003

 

January 17, 2006

Did al-Qaeda's Gambit Work? Have They Baited Bush into Disastrous Missteps in the Middle East?

Real Men Go to Tehran

By M. SHAHID ALAM

 

FIRST POSTED SEPTEMBER 4, 2007

"Real men don't go to Baghdad, they go to Tehran."

 

Quotation from internet:

 

Release statements concerning Lee and Leung in English and Chinese.

Release statements concerning racial relation with the West and in North America.

www.tehrantimes.com/Index_view.asp?code=213504

www.tehrantimes.com/Index_view.asp?code=200306

www.tehrantimes.com/Index_View.asp?code=202559

www.tehrantimes.com/Index_view.asp?code=10858

www.tehrantimes.com/index_View.asp?code=214532

www.tehrantimes.com/index_View.asp?code=214545

 

"Most amazing of all was that Blair declined an invitation to express any regret. He couldn’t even bring himself to say he regretted the loss of the lives of British soldiers and a great number of Iraqis (somewhere between 100,000 and 600,000), "mainly civilians." To my way of thinking that makes him less than fully human.

 

Blair described Saddam Hussein as “a monster who threatened the world.” There’s an old English saying, “It takes one to know one.”" ..................By Alan Hart

 

"TEHRAN -- Photographer Mehdi Monem is convinced that his pictorial book “War Victims,” portraying the victims of 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, conveys a message of peace to the world." ......................Tehran Times Culture Desk

 

If you and your people were exploited for hundreds of years, you don't ask for a dinner. You ask for a NATION!!!

 

Quebec has every right to defend himself my all means necessary. The international community should provide all the assistance including manpower to the people of Quebec for their struggle of national identity and justice.

 

中東不同日本, 美國沒有在中東建立永久性的軍事基地, 當地人民的戰鬥意志和民族性是關鍵.

 

日本是日美安保條約下的奴才, 沒有一個自強不息的民族會相信奴才. 如果美國的貴族一定以擁有美國國產汽車自豪, 為了國家的尊嚴, 一個中國武術宗師冒些險, 靠空手奪白刃和皮帶打敗日本劍道高手又算什麼, 這是民族性的問題.

 

十年前, 一名加拿大人曾警告我不該對敵人的小孩太好. 我冒生命危險保護過很多人, 其中包括敵人的小孩, 一名加拿大人說我死得不值, 我的血白流了......保護過敵人的小孩或許這是我一生中唯一的錯誤.

 

Fan of Lee and Leung repeatedly woke me up at night and broadcasted voice recording on how they gang raping women in public street for the past several years. At the same time, they repeatedly asked me my role as professional boxer, diplomat, and military advisor during the Cold War between year 1988 and 1992, although they never have the courage to talk to me in person and in public during these period for possible casualties resulted from confrontation. They are simply coward and disgusting. Lee and Leung also use method of torture, drug, violence, sleep deprivation, and beating on other key individuals in order to understand more about major events happened during the Cold War between 1989 and 1992

 

In several occasions, Lee and Leung suddenly woke me up at night with loud noise and said “Yu Fung Liu overthrow the USSR.” In other occasions, Lee and Leung woke me up at night again with noise in lower frequency and said “Yu Fung Liu is a sympathizer of leftist.”

 

During my stay in Canada, Lee and Leung told me several times that the KGB kidnapped me to USSR and Japan. However, Lee and Leung told me that the Taiwanese spy network was behind the kidnapping during my stay in Asia. In either case, Lee and Leung refused to testify their statements and back up their claims in public and in writing. It appears that the KGB does not care about Lee and Leung at all. Lee and Leung have to rely on drug, poison, and criminal fans to get their point across.

 

Lee and Leung employed different tactics of sleep deprivation on me for almost ten years whenever they had a chance. Their harassment intensified after they learnt about my injury in a car accident in Canada between 2002 and 2005, although they still do not have the courage to show up in front of me and settle their claims.

 

Other Lee and Leung insist that the gulf war never happened. They, posing as other, threaten to kidnap friends and family members of those participated in American veterans to Gulf States where camels are native species over the phone.

 

Credible evidences suggested that fan of Bruce Lee and several prominent members of Liang's family are involved in the blackmail

 

They poisoned me for more than 10 years so that I forgot my contribution, family, and in part tried to weaken my physical strength over time. However, I was able to accomplished most objectives and defeated many assassinators despite of aging and the lack of exercise for more than 8 years.

 

During my 12 years stay in the USA, someone tried to poison me many times; but it never turn into a mess until I moved to Canada where under British sphere of influence after year 2000.

 

Blair the British neo-con

By Alan Hart

 

Putting Tony Blair on trial would be much too cruel. The man is ill, delusional, quite possibly to the point of madness. What he needs most of all is psychiatric help. Any doubts I might have had about that diagnosis were removed by his six-hour presentation to the Chilcot Inquiry of his reasons for joining the neo-conned “Dubya” Bush in the war on Iraq.

 

Without understanding why, I never thought Blair was Bush’s puppet. Now, thanks to the access Blair gave us to the workings of his mind for six hours, I do understand. He was ahead of Bush in the war on terrorism game because he is a neo-con, the real thing, whereas Bush had to be won over, conned, by America’s mad men. Blair didn’t. He was always with them in spirit. After 9/11, immediately after it, probably while the towers were still collapsing, their agenda was his agenda.

 

Though the Chilcot Inquiry is concerned only with Iraq – how Blair’s government made the decision to go to war and what lessons should be learned – Blair could not resist beating the drum for war on Iran. He did that four times. One might have been listening to John Bolton or any of America’s or Israel’s lunatics.

 

When he was going on about terrorism being a threat to all, he threw in: “It’s a constant problem for Israel. They get attacked.” That there is a cause-and-effect relationship between Israeli occupation and Israel’s frequent demonstrations of state terrorism and a degree of violence directed at the Zionist regime from time to time is not something Blair the neo-con can, or ever will, get his deluded minded around.

 

At one point during his display of insufferable, Zionist-like self-righteousness, Blair denied he had said in an interview with the BBC’s Fern Britton that he favored regime change in Iraq. “I didn’t use the words regime change in that interview,” he said to the Chilcot Inquiry. He was telling the truth in that he did not use those actual words. What then did he say on camera to Fern Britton on 13 December 2009? She asked him if knowing what we all know today (that Saddam Hussein did not possess weapons of mass destruction) would he still have gone to war. Blair replied, “I would still have thought it right to remove him. If that is not regime change, what is?!

 

Blair still insists that the invasion of Iraq and the removal of Saddam Hussein has “made the world a safer place”. The reality is that Blair and Bush together were the best recruiting sergeants for violent Islamic fundamentalism in many manifestations, not only the Al-Qaeda franchise.

 

Most amazing of all was that Blair declined an invitation to express any regret. He couldn’t even bring himself to say he regretted the loss of the lives of British soldiers and a great number of Iraqis (somewhere between 100,000 and 600,000), mainly civilians. To my way of thinking that makes him less than fully human.

 

Blair described Saddam Hussein as “a monster who threatened the world.” There’s an old English saying, “It takes one to know one.”

 

(Source: Alanhart.net)

 

“War Victims” transmits message of peace to world: photographer

Tehran Times Culture Desk

 

TEHRAN -- Photographer Mehdi Monem is convinced that his pictorial book “War Victims,” portraying the victims of 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, conveys a message of peace to the world.

 

All the photos feature the non-combatant citizens who were injured during the war, said Monem whose book will be introduced during a ceremony on Wednesday at Tehran’s Laleh Hotel.

 

The 120-page book contains 96 black and white photos. An exhibition is also being arranged in the hotel where a selection of photos will go on display.

 

“The photos are divided in three categories; the first depicts victims of mine explosions, the second features victims of residential area bombardments and the third features victims of chemical weapons,” said Monem.

 

“All the years that I was working as the photographer for IRNA on war fronts, I kept this idea in my mind to follow people whose lives were unwillingly caught in the war and suffered irreparable injuries as a result.

 

“I spent all these years in close contact with the victims and took their photos. I really intended to remind those who initiated the wars of their consequences. I hope this book would be a reminder to all of the necessity to preserve peace,” he explained.

 

He also noted that the introduction of the book bears signatures of 10 Iranian photographers including Nasrollah Kasraian, Mahmud Kalari, Seifolah Samadian, and Maryam Zandi, aiming to introduce this book as a statement in support of the war victims.

 

Monem expressed hope that photographers would help to spread the message of peace to the world.

 

Toyota says hybrid sales reach two-million mark

 

TOKYO (Asiaone) - Toyota Motor said Friday that global sales of its hybrid vehicles had topped the two-million mark since their launch in 1997, led by the Prius - Japan's top-selling car for the past four months.

 

Toyota passed the new milestone just two years and three months after its hybrid sales reached the one-million mark, helped by brisk demand for its re-modelled Prius which was launched in mid-May.

 

The company said that as of August 31 it had sold about 2,016,900 hybrids, which run on a combination of petrol and electricity and are in strong demand because of concerns about high fuel prices and global warming.

 

Toyota sold 21,669 Prius vehicles in Japan in August, keeping the top rank in the car market that it has held since May, the Japan Automobile Dealers Association said.

 

With government tax breaks and subsidies spurring growing interest in fuel-efficient vehicles, rival Honda sold 7,900 of its Insight hybrid in August.

 

Automakers hope that the popularity of fuel-efficient cars will breathe new life into the ailing market, which was battered by the global recession.

 

Japan's domestic vehicle sales showed the first year-on-year increase in 13 months in August, the same association reported earlier in the week.

 

Toyota and Honda are going head-to-head in the fast growing market. The Insight was the best-selling hybrid in April in Japan before being overtaken by the Prius.

 

The Insight sells at 1.89 million yen (S$29,484) while the Prius has a price tag starting from 2.05 million yen.

 

Rival Nissan is staking its future on pure electric vehicles and plans to start selling its first such car in late 2010.

 

Aqazadeh: Iran Does Not Intend to Produce Nuclear Weapons

 

MOSCOW The visiting Head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization (IAEO) Gholam Reza Aqazadeh here Monday stressed that the Islamic Republic of Iran has no intention of producing nuclear weapons. Speaking to reporters, he dismissed baseless U.S. claims. Aqazadeh said that Washington has been assisting the Zionist regime to expand its nuclear weapons programs and therefore its policies on non-proliferation of atomic weapons is nothing but a deceit Resort of the Zionist regime to nuclear weapons poses a serious threat to regional peace and stability, he said.

 

Iran will produce nuclear fuel plates in four months

Tehran Times Political Desk

 

TEHRAN -- Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast has announced that Iran will produce plate type nuclear fuel in four months.

 

“Those who claim that Iran is not capable of producing nuclear fuel plates should wait, because they will see the results of our work in four months,” he told the IRNA news agency on Saturday.

 

Russia will honor Iran missile deal: minister

 

MOSCOW (AFP) – Russia will honor a contract to deliver advanced air defense missiles to Iran, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Riabkov said Friday.

 

""There is a contract on the delivery of these systems to Iran and we will honor it,"" the Interfax news agency quoted him as saying.

 

Origins

In February 1948, the founder of Pakistan Muhammad Ali Jinnah announced:

 

“ The weak and the defenseless in this world invite aggression from others. The best way we can serve peace is by removing the temptation from the path of those who think we are weak and, for that reason, they can bully or attack us. That temptation can only be removed if we make ourselves so strong that nobody dare entertain any aggressive designs against us. Pakistan has come to stay and no power on earth can destroy it.[7][8] ”

 

In 1974, in response to India's Smiling Buddha nuclear tests, Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto announced:

 

“ If India builds the bomb, we will eat grass and leaves for a thousand years, even go hungry, but we will get one of our own. The Christians have the bomb, the Jews have the bomb and now the Hindus have the bomb. Why not the Muslims too have the bomb?[9][10]

 

Indian "Peaceful Nuclear Explosive",

 

On 7 September 1972, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi gave verbal authorization to the scientists at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) to manufacture the nuclear device they had designed and prepare it for a test. Throughout its development, the device was formally called the "Peaceful Nuclear Explosive", but it was usually referred to as the Smiling Buddha.

 

Aqazadeh: Iran Does Not Intend to Produce Nuclear Weapons

 

Iran will produce nuclear fuel plates in four months

 

Zionist regime to nuclear weapons poses a serious threat to regional peace and stability

 

The Temple Church was consecrated in honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary on 10 February 1185 by Heraclius, Patriarch of Jerusalem.

 

The whole Temple community had moved from an earlier site in High Holborn, considered by the 1160s to be too confined. The church was the chapel serving the London headquarters of the Knights Templar, and from them it took its name. The Templars – as the knights were popularly known – were soldier monks.

 

After the success of the First Crusade, the order was founded in Jerusalem in a building on the site of King Solomon’s temple. Their mission was to protect pilgrims travelling to and from the Holy Land, but in order to do this they needed men and money. For more details of the Templars and this early history of the Church, see The Round Church, 1185.

 

The London Temple was the Templars’ headquarters in Great Britain. The Templars’ churches were always built to a circular design to remind them of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, a round, domed building raised over the site of the sepulchre where Jesus was buried. At first, the Templars were liked and respected. St Bernard of Clairvaux became their patron and they gained many privileges from popes and much support from kings.

 

In England, King Henry II was probably present at the consecration of the church; King Henry III favoured them so much that he wished to be buried in their church. As a consequence of this wish, the choir of the church was pulled down and a far larger one built in its place, the choir which we now see. This was consecrated on Ascension Day 1240 in the presence of the king. However, after Henry died it was discovered that he had altered his will, and he was buried in Westminster Abbey.

 

On 10 February 1185 Heraclius, Patriarch of Jerusalem, processed into the Round for the church’s consecration. The King was almost certainly present. A grand church for a grand occasion; for the Round had no such quiet austerity as we see in it today. The walls and grotesque heads were painted: the walls most probably with bands and lozenges of colour. The Round was proudly modern: Heraclius entered through the Norman door to find the first free-standing Purbeck columns ever cut; above them curved in two dimensions Gothic arches rising to the drum. A chancel, some two thirds of the present chancel’s length, stretched to the east. There the Patriach’s procession will have come to rest for Mass. And there the altar stayed. What, then, – on that great day or later – was the function of the Round?

 

Its most important role was played by its shape. Jerusalem lies at the centre of all medieval maps, and was the centre of the crusaders’ world. The most sacred place in this most sacred city was the supposed site of Jesus’ own burial: the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Here the crusaders inherited a round church. It was the goal of every pilgrim, whose protection was the Templars’ care. This was the building, of all buildings on earth, that must be defended from its enemies.

 

In every round church that the Templars built throughout Europe they recreated the sanctity of this most holy place. Among the knights who would be buried in the Round was the most powerful man of his generation: William the Marshal, Earl of Pembroke (died 1219), adviser to King John and regent to Henry III. His sons’ effigies lie around his own. The Marshal himself (who lies recumbent and still) took the Cross as an old man; his sons (drawing their swords) did not. Their figures lie frozen in stone, forever alert in defence of their father’s long-forgotten cause. Such burial was devoutly to be desired; for to be buried in the Round was to be buried ‘in’ Jerusalem.

 

The Patriarch Heraclius may well have been the most ignorant, licentious and corrupt priest ever to hold his see. Our reports of his character, however, reach us from his enemies. The great Western chronicler of the Crusades, William of Tyre, was for decades Heraclius’ opponent and rival. In 1180 William had (and had been) expected to be appointed Patriarch of Jerusalem. But the king of Jerusalem was swayed by his mother, said to be a mistress of Heraclius – who was duly appointed Patriarch. William himself was honorably reticent in the face of this reverse. His followers were less restrained. ‘Ernoul’ tells (with more indignation, it seems, than accuracy) how his hero William was excommunicated by the new patriarch, went into exile and died at the hands of Heraclius’ own doctor in Rome. William’s narrative was expanded and continued in Old French as L’Estoire d’ Eracles: its story starts with the Emperor Heraclius who recovered the True Cross in 628 – and includes a prophecy that the Cross, secured by one Heraclius, would be lost (as it was) by another.

 

Can anything redeem our Heraclius’ reputation? Far more was at stake on his visit than at first appears. He was in London as part of a larger mission:- King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem was dying. His kingdom was riven by factions and under threat from Saladin. He had drawn up in his will the rules for the succession: if his nephew, due to become the child-king Baldwin V, were to die before the age of ten, a new ruler should be chosen through the arbitration of four potentates: the Pope, the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, the King of France and Henry II of England. Late in 1184 a deputation headed west from the Kingdom of Jerusalem: Heraclius, the Grand Master of the Templars and the Hospitallers’ Grand Prior. They visited the Pope, Frederick, Philip II Augustus – and finally Henry. The emissaries reached Reading. As credentials they brought the keys of the Tower of David and the Kingdom’s royal standard. According to some English chroniclers, they offered the Kingdom itself to Henry. The incident is hard to analyse. To plead for protection was to offer the power that would make such protection effective. Did that call for the Kingdom itself? The apparent offer of keys and standard may have been misread; for the ambassadors were reworking a performance already presented to Philip of France. (One French chronicler later derides Heraclius: he was offering the keys to any prince he met.) But the Kingdom of Jerusalem was in desperate straits; and behind the pageant may have lain hopes for the subtlest solution of all: to side-step Jerusalem’s factions; and instead to secure one – any one – of Europe’s leaders as king. How strange, to entrust any such delicate mission to the buffoonish Patriarch of myth.

 

The story offered welcome ammunition to Henry II’s enemies. Gerald of Wales, bitterly opposed to the Angevins, sees here the turning-point in Henry’s reign: the king failed to rise to this one supreme test; from then on his own and his sons’ adventures faced ruin. Gerald inherited the topos from an old story with a quite different cast. His new version gave Heraclius a starring role. The Patriarch confronted Henry, Gerald tells us, at Heraclius’ departure from Dover. Here is the king’s last chance. ‘Though all the men of my land,’ said the king, ‘were one body and spoke with one mouth, they would not dare speak to me as you have done.’ ‘Do by me,’ replied Heraclius, ‘as you did by that blessed man Thomas of Canterbury. I had rather be slain by you than by the Saracen, for you are worse than any Saracen.’ ‘I may not leave my land, for my own sons will surely rise against me in my absence.’ ‘No wonder, for from the devil they come and to the devil they shall go.’

 

Gerald’s Heraclius was no coward, and no fool. ‘That blessed man Thomas of Canterbury’ had been killed in 1170. The penance of the four knights who killed him was to serve with the Templars for fourteen years. Henry himself promised to pay for two hundred Templar knights for a year; and in 1172 he undertook to take the Cross himself. Thirteen years had passed. Henry was growing old. Such a vow, undischarged, threatened his immortal soul – as both Heraclius and he knew well. Henry must tread carefully. He summoned a Great Council at Clerkenwell. Surrounded by his advisers, he gave Heraclius his answer: ‘for the good of his realm and the salvation of his own soul’ he declared that he must stay in England. He would provide money instead. Heraclius was unimpressed: ‘We seek a man even without money – but not money without a man.’ Virum appetimus qui pecunia indigeat, non pecuniam quae viro.

 

***

 

Our church’s consecration was deep within the diplomatic labyrinth at whose centre lay the future of Jerusalem. The Templars had come a long way. The Order was founded in 1118-9 by a knight of Champagne, Hugh of Payns, who led a group of his fellow-knights in vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. At their foundation they were deeply suspect: it was unnatural for one man to be soldier and monk together. A handful of such ambivalent knights had little chance, it might seem, of attracting support. In the twelfth century the significance of their seal was well known: Matthew Paris, monk of St Albans, explained that the two knights on one horse recalled their lack of horses and poor beginnings.

 

In Champagne and Burgundy lay the Order’s origin and the seed of its success. Over the course of fifty years a star-burst of spiritual energy illumined all of Europe; and its centre lay in a small area of eastern France. Hugh’s town of Payns was near Troyes, the local city of one Robert, who became a Cluniac monk. In 1075 this Robert, already an abbot, left his monastery with a group of hermits to found a new house: at Molesme. The list of those influenced by Robert and his houses reads as a roll-call of Europe’s spiritual leaders. There was Bruno, who lived briefly as a hermit near Molesme before establishing the most ascetic of all houses, La Grande Chartreuse; Bruno had already been master to Odo, who later became Pope Urban II and preached the First Crusade. When Robert moved again, in search of a yet more rigorous life, he took with him Stephen Harding, later Archbishop of Canterbury. They set up their house at Citeaux.

 

Harding would in time become abbot. The rigour of the house made it few friends among the local nobility. Its future was uncertain. And then arrived as remarkable a monk as any of that remarkable age: Bernard. He spent three years at Citeaux before a local lord, Hugh Count of Champagne, gave him in 1116 an area of inhospitable woodland well to the north, back in the neighbourhood of Payns. It was known as the Valley of Gall. Bernard gave it a new name: Clairvaux, the Valley of Light.

 

Bernard secured single-handed the Templars’ future. Hugh of Champagne became a Templar; so did Bernard’s own uncle Andrew. The Templars’ constitution, the Rule, shows all the marks of Bernard’s influence; at the Council of Troyes in 1129 he spoke up for the Order; and, most influential support of all, at the repeated request of Hugh of Payns Bernard wrote In Praise of the New Knighthood.

 

The New Knighthood’s first half is well-known: in a text advising and praising and warning the knights, Bernard speaks as well to their critics. He is under no illusions: Europe was as glad to be rid of these warring knights as the Holy Land (in Bernard’s eyes) was glad to see them; their army could be a force for good – or for lawless violence. In the tract’s second half Bernard turns to the Holy Land and to Jerusalem itself. Here was his sharpest spur to the pilgrims’ understanding and to the Templars’ own.

Bernard reads Jerusalem itself like a book. In the tradition of Cassian’s fourfold reading of scripture, dominant throughout the Middle Ages, Bernard saw beneath the appearance of the city’s famous sites a far more important spiritual meaning. The land itself invited such a reading:- Bethlehem, ‘house of bread’, was the town where the living bread was first manifest. The ox and ass ate their food at the manger; we must discern there, by contrast, our spiritual food, and not chomp vainly at the Word’s ‘literal’ nourishment. Next, Nazareth, meaning ‘flower’: Bernard reminds us of those who were misled by the odour of flowers into missing the fruit.

And so to Jerusalem itself:- To descend from the Order’s headquarters on the Temple Mount across the Valley of Josaphat and up the Mount of Olives opposite, – this was itself an allegory for the dread of God’s judgement and our joy at receiving his mercy. The House of Martha, Mary and Lazarus offers a moral: the virtue of obedience and the fruits of penance. And above all: in the Holy Sepulchre itself the knight should be raised up to thoughts of Christ’s death and of the freedom from death that it had won for his people: ‘The death of Christ is the death of my death.’ Bernard draws on Paul’s famous account of baptism, and finds in the pilgrims’ weariness the process of their necessary ‘dying’: ‘For we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we should walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, so we shall be also in the likeness of the resurrection. How sweet it is for pilgrims after the great weariness of a long journey, after so many dangers of land and sea, there to rest at last where they know their Lord has rested!’

 

***

 

The Temple Church is now famous as a backwater, a welcome place of calm. The tides of history have shifted; their currents have dug deep channels far from our own Round Church. It was not always so. The effigies of the Marshal and his sons bear telling witness to the Temple’s role in the court’s and nation’s life. In the 16th century the chronicler Stow described the Templars’ seal. The story of their poverty was by then forgotten or incredible. Stow saw rather an emblem of Charity: a knight on horseback takes a fellow Christian out of danger. Perhaps there had always been romance in that picture of knights sharing a horse. The Order’s Rule, after all, allowed each knight three horses and a squire.

 

The effigies testify as well to a rich ‘reading’ of Jerusalem. The New Knighthood is double-edged: all that Bernard writes in praise of Jerusalem frees the faithful from the need to travel there: it is the spiritual sense of the city that matters – a sense as readily grasped at home. To find ‘Jerusalem’, as Bernard would have it, the faithful should rather come to Clairvaux, and not just on pilgrimage. So resolute a reading was hard to sustain. Bernard might detach Jerusalem from the benefits its contemplation could bring; but those around him sooner attached Jerusalem’s blessings to such places as fostered its contemplation.

 

Our effigies seem to us frozen in stone, their figures forever poised to fight battles that ended 700 years ago. But these knights’ eyes are open. They are all portrayed in their early thirties, the age at which Christ died and at which the dead will rise on his return. The effigies are not memorials of what has long since been and gone; they speak of what is yet to come, of these once and future knights who are poised to hear Christ’s summons and to spring again to war.

 

By 1145 the Templars themselves wore white robes with red crosses. White was linked with more than purity. In the Book of Revelation the martyrs of Christ, clad in white robes washed in the blood of the Lamb (Rev 7.14), are those who will be called to life at the ‘first resurrection’. For a millennium they will reign with Christ; at its end Satan will lead all the nations of the earth against ‘the beloved city’ (Rev 20.9). The final battle will be in Jerusalem. Our knights have good reason to draw their swords. For buried in ‘Jerusalem’, in Jerusalem they shall rise to join the Templars in the martyrs’ white and red. Here in the Temple, in our replica of the Sepulchre itself, the knights are waiting for their call to life, to arms and to the last, climactic defence of their most sacred place on earth.

 

Little more than fifty years after the consecration of the chancel, the Templars fell on evil times. The Holy Land was recaptured by the Saracens and so their work came to an end. The wealth they had accumulated made them the target of envious enemies, and in 1307, at the instigation of Philip IV King of France, the Order was abolished by the Pope. The papal decree was obeyed in England and King Edward II took control of the London Temple.

 

Eventually he gave it to the Order of St John – the Knights Hospitaller – who had always worked with the Templars. At the time, the lawyers were looking for a home in London in order to attend the royal courts in Westminster. So the Temple was rented to two colleges of lawyers, who came to be identified as the Inner and Middle Temples. The two colleges shared the use of the church. In this way, the Temple Church became the “college chapel” of those two societies and continues to be maintained by them to the present day.

 

It was King Henry VIII who brought about the next change in the church. In 1540 he abolished the Hospitallers and confiscated their property. The Temple again belonged to the Crown. It was then for Henry to provide a priest for the church, to whom he gave the title ‘Master of the Temple’.

 

‘Be of good comfort,’ said Hooker: ‘we have to do with a merciful God, rather to make the best of that little which we hold well; and not with a captious sophister who gathers the worst out of every thing in which we err.’

 

Richard Hooker was appointed Master of the Temple in 1585. England was in alarm. The threat from Catholic Europe had revived: there had been rebellion against the Queen and Settlement in 1569; in 1570 the Pope had excommunicated Elizabeth and declared her subjects free from their allegiance; Mary Queen of Scots was linked with ever further conspiracy against her cousin; and the danger of Spanish invasion was growing.

 

England’s radical reformers were convinced: England’s only hope of spiritual and political safety lay in the example of Calvin’s godly state, Geneva. The ‘head and neck’ of English Calvinism were Thomas Cartwright and Walter Travers. Since 1581 Travers had been the Reader (lecturer) of the Temple. In 1584 the Privy Council ordered the Inner Temple to continue his stipend ‘for his public labours and pains taken against the common adversaries, impugners of the state and the authorities under her Majesty’s gracious government.’ Hooker and Travers were to be colleagues. Their differences soon became clear. To recover the purity of the primitive church, Travers would be rid of all that intervened and would forge the English church anew. Hooker was steeped in classical and medieval thought; saw the roots of his own (and Travers’) understanding in Aristotle, Augustine, Thomas and Calvin himself; and acknowledged –even valued – the differences to which such a rich tradition could give rise: ‘Be it that Peter has one interpretation, and Apollos has another; that Paul is of this mind, and Barnabas of that. If this offend you, the fault is yours.’ As then, so now: ‘Carry peaceable minds, and you may have comfort by this variety.’ When Hooker carefully and bravely explored the possibility that individual Catholics could be saved, the scene was set for the most famous public debated of the day. ‘Surely I must confess unto you,’ said Hooker: ‘if it be an error to think that God may be merciful to save men, even when they err, my greatest comfort is my error. Were it not for the love I bear unto this “error”, I would neither wish to speak nor to live.’

 

We hear of Hooker’s preaching at the Temple: ‘his voice was low, stature little, gesture none at all, standing stone still in the pulpit, as if the posture of his body were the emblem of his mind, immovable in his opinions. Where his eye was left fixed at the beginning, it was found fixed at the end of the sermon. …The doctrine he delivered had nothing but itself to garnish it.’ Travers, by contrast, was a natural orator, and he was himself a distinguished thinker; he later became the first Provost of Trinity College, Dublin. Hooker held his ground and deepened his reasoning. It was to disclose and offer the comfort of faith that he spoke: ‘Have the sons of God a father careless whether they sink or swim?’ The Temple sermons that survive stress the simple conditions of salvation: ‘Infidelity, extreme despair, hatred of God and all godliness, obduration in sin – cannot stand where there is the least spark of faith, hope, love or sanctity; even as cold in the lowest degree cannot be where heat in the first degree is found.’

 

The debate was brought to an end by Archbishop Whitgift: In March 1586 Travers was forbidden to preach. In 1591 Hooker resigned, and was appointed vicar of Bishopsbourne in Kent. Here he developed his thought in his masterpiece, Ecclesiastical Polity, the foundational – and still, perhaps, the most important – exploration of doctrine in the history of the Anglican church. Hooker elaborated a theory of law based on the ‘absolute’ fundamental of natural law: this is the expression of God’s supreme reason and governs all civil and ecclesiastical polity. ‘Of Law there can be no less acknowledged, than that her seat is the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world: all things in heaven and earth do her homage, the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted from her power: both angels and men and creatures of what condition soever, though each in different sort and manner, yet all with uniform consent, admiring her as the mother of their peace and joy.’ Hooker’s influence has pervaded English thought ever since. He was admired by Laud and by the puritan Baxter, extolled by the Restoration bishops, and brought once more to prominence by Keble and the Oxford Movement; he has now been rediscovered (in a recent monograph by Richard Atkinson) within the modern evangelical church. His reach has extended far beyond theologians. Ecclesiastical Polity was the starting-point for Clarendon’s History and seminal for Locke’s philosophy; its self-critical balance touched Andrew Marvell; and Samuel Pepys read it at the recommendation of a friend who declared it ‘the best book, and the only one that made him a Christian.’

   

THE BATTLE OF THE PULPIT

In 1585 the Master of the Temple, Richard Alvey, died. His deputy – the Reader, Walter Travers – expected to be promoted, but Queen Elizabeth I and her advisers regarded his views as too Calvinist, and Travers was passed over.

 

Instead a new Master, Richard Hooker, was appointed from Exeter College, Oxford. On Hooker’s arrival, a unique situation arose. Each Sunday morning he would preach his sermon; each Sunday afternoon Travers would contradict him. People came to call it the Battle of the Pulpit, saying mischievously that Canterbury was preached in the morning and Geneva in the afternoon. There was a lasting result of all this: Hooker published his teaching as Ecclesiastical Polity and came to be recognised as the founding father of Anglican theology.

 

By the end of the 16th century, the two Inns of Court had erected many fine buildings at the Temple, yet their position as tenants was not a secure one. In order to protect what they had built up from any future whims of the Crown, they petitioned King James I for a more satisfactory arrangement. On 13 August 1608 the King granted the two Inns a Royal Charter giving them use of the Temple in perpetuity.

 

One condition of this was that the Inns must maintain the church. The Temple and the church are still governed by that charter. In gratitude, the Inns gave King James a fine gold cup. Some years later, in the Civil war, his son Charles I needed funds to keep his army in the field. The cup was sold in Holland and has never been traced.

 

In February 1683, the treasurers of the two Societies of the Temple commissioned an organ from each of the two leading organ builders of the time, Bernhard Smith (1630-1708) and Renatus Harris (1652-1708). The organs were to be installed in the halls of the Middle and Inner Temple, to enable them to be played and judged. Smith was annoyed to discover that Harris was also invited to compete for the contract; he was under the impression that the job had already been offered to him. Smith petitioned the treasurers and won permission to erect his instrument in the church instead of in one of the halls. It was set on a screen which divided the round from the quire. This advantage was short-lived as Harris sought and obtained approval to place his organ at the opposite end of the church, to the south side of the communion table. It is thought that both organs were completed by May 1684.

 

Harris and Smith engaged the finest organists to show off their respective instruments and were put to great expense as the competition intensified and each instrument became more.

 

In 1841 the church was again restored, by Smirke and Burton, the walls and ceiling being decorated in the high Victorian Gothic style. The object of this was to bring the church back to its original appearance, for it would have been brightly decorated like this when first built. Nothing of the work remains, however, for it was destroyed by fire bombs exactly a century after its completion. After the Victorian restoration, a choir of men and boys was introduced for the first time. The first organist and choirmaster was Dr Edward John Hopkins who remained in this post for over 50 years, 1843-96, establishing the Temple Church choir as one of the finest in London, a city of fine choirs. This tradition of high-quality music was maintained by Hopkins’ well-known successor, Henry Walford Davies, who stayed until 1923.

 

In 1923 Dr GT Thalben-Ball was appointed organist and choirmaster. This musician, later world- renowned, was to serve the church even longer than his predecessor, John Hopkins, retiring in 1982 after 59 years in office. One reason for his fame was the record made in 1927 of Mendelssohn’s Hear My Prayer by Thalben-Ball and the boy soloist Ernest Lough. The recording became world-famous and brought visitors to the church from all parts of the globe.

 

In 1941 on the night of 10 May, when Nazi air raids on London were at their height, the church was badly damaged by incendiary bombs. The roof of the round church burned first and the wind soon spread the blaze to the nave and choir. The organ was completely destroyed, together with all the wood in the church. Restoration took a long time to complete. The choir, containing a new organ given by Lord Glentannar, was the first area of the church to be rededicated in March 1954. By a stroke of good fortune the architects, Walter and Emil Godfrey, were able to use the reredos designed by Wren for his 17th-century restoration. Removed by Smirke and Burton in 1841, it had spent over a century in the Bowes Museum, County Durham, and was now re-installed in its original position. The round church was rededicated in November 1958.

 

Probably the most notable feature of today’s church is the east window. This was a gift from the Glaziers’ Company in 1954 to replace that destroyed in the war. It was designed by Carl Edwards and illustrates Jesus’ connection with the Temple at Jerusalem. In one panel we see him talking with the learned teachers there, in another driving out the money-changers. The window also depicts some of the personalities associated with Temple Church over the centuries, including Henry II, Henry III and several of the medieval Masters of the Temple.

 

www.templechurch.com/history-2/timeline/

This really is an image of very little consequence -- I was simply looking for an excuse to post this link to some of the best life advise there is. Take five minutes, listen to it. You'll be happy you did.

 

And big thanks to Riitta for reminding me of this.

 

Explore #495 on July 4th, 2010. Thanks everyone! You see: Mr. Luhrmann's advise works.

(Read the entire text it the 'note' section). The playwright based “Dear Madam City Attorney McLean”upon his experiences/discussions with City of Santee, California, City Attorney Don McLean. The play examines the consequences of unethical conduct bygovernment lawyers. The play is available to anyone gratis!

 

TITLE: Dear Madam City Attorney McLean

! &n bsp; by Richard W. White

Copyright 1997; Edited, 2000.

 

CLASSIFICATION:Three-act, contemporary political drama

 

RATING: G

 

CAST: RICK - male, near fifty; thin; worn;

McLEAN – male, used to giving orders.

TAX LADY - female; self-assured; over bearing;

Ms. HOWARD - female; handsome; well dressed.

GEORGE - friendly; city cowboy; well fed.

 

LENGTH:50 minutes, plus or minus.

 

REQUIREMENTS: Permission to produce “Dear MadamCity Attorney McLean” is granted to any public or private school or theater.The playwright asks to be informed on any production of this work.

 

“Dear Madam City Attorney McLean” was written for the classroom or community theater setting, with minimal set requirements or rehearsal. Thecharacter McLEAN may be entirely read from the script, since the player is never seen. The character RICK may read much of his dialogue “from the computer monitor” (since he is writing it as he is speaking it). The glowing light (the McLEAN effect) maybe a flashlight or a small spotlight.

 

CONTACTING THE PLAYWRIGHT OR THE MAYOR:

The playwright may be contacted through by email firecat2@sbcglobal.net

  

NOTES: The playwright based “Dear Madam CityAttorney McLean” upon his experiences/discussions with Santee City Attorney DonMcLean. The play examines the consequences of unethical conduct by government lawyers. The characters of the play examine the political drama genre in contemporary America.

     

DEAR MADAM CITYATTORNEY McLEAN

  

A political drama

 

by RICHARD W.WHITE

based upondiscussions with

Donald McLean,City Attorney

City of Santee,California

        

© 1997 by Richard W. White

   

Theauthor hereby grants to everyone the right to use this play gratis!

DEARMADAM CITY ATTORNEY McLEAN

 

APolitical Drama by RICHARD W. WHITE

Based upondiscussions with

Don McLean,City Attorney,

City of Santee,California

 

CHARACTERS

 

RICK TAX LADY

McLEAN DIRECTOR

! Ms. HOWARD

GEORGE

UNNAMED COUNCILMAN

MRS. McLEAN

 

With the curtain closed, RICK, a thin, cleanbut worn man near fifty, hurrying toward old age, appears at the center of thestage.

RICK: I’m going to start byreading the first two pages of the letter I read to the Santee City Council inApril 1995. Then, I’ll get on with the play.

Rick walks to the side of the stage andtakes his place behind a small podium.

RICK: Good evening, Mr. Mayorand Santee City Council. My name is Rick: I’m a former twenty yearresident and business owner. And I came here this evening to tell you straightout, the City of Santee cheated me on the Prospect Avenue bridge project.

The City engineer, Cary Stewart, concealed survey error from me and heconcealed plan error from the surveyors. And the result was chaos. Piles weren't centered under the footings. Footings weren't aligned underthe abutments. The bridge deck had to be lowered and reduced inthickness. Some alignments were off as much as two (2) foot.

City Engineer Cary Stewart concealed the survey error because he didn't want topay for fixing his mistakes. They were his mistakes because his planswere wrong and I should have been paid for fixing the accumulated errors. But I wasn't paid. I was cheated and Cary couldn't have cheated mewithout the help of City Attorney McLean. Period.

Cary also requested extra work, which he didn't pay for. The asphaltbikeway; lowering the bridge deck and cutting off the rebar; extra rip rap; changesin the manholes. Cary kept a 'log of extras', but when the project wasfinished, Cary wouldn't pay for any of it and he wouldn't give us any reasonfor not paying.

Nearly a year after we finished the work, we demanded arbitration before theState Board. In answer to our demand, City Attorney McLean sued claiming theState didn’t have authority to hear it.

But Cary and Attorney McLean weren't satisfied to see me cheated. Andthey weren't satisfied to see me wasting my! time an d money playing lawyergames. They decided to destroy my business with a bogus defaultresolution voted on by this city council without advance notice to me. The State found 100% in my favor two months after Santee defaulted me. It’s been years: Why hasn't the Santee rescinded the default resolution? Why haven’t I been paid? Why was I cheated? Why is it okay for Santee tocheat?

Good evening.

As Rick begins to walk behind the curtain,councilwoman Lori Howard blocks his path.

RICK: If you don’t mind, we’lldo this scene here, instead of in your coffee shop, to save on set cost.

LORI: Rick, you can’t do thisplay. The council has talked about it in closed session. You can’t do it,in my coffee shop or anywhere else.”

A rotund city cowboy, George Tockstein, CityManager enters.

RICK: Hi ya,George. I’ve been wanting to talk to you.

GEORGE: (Smiling andfriendly)Rick, we, I mean the council, we, the city, would rather just rely on thefinding of the court.

RICK: George, there has neverbeen a hearing on the merits. There has never been a finding by anycourt, except the one that decided Cary’s labor complaint was bogus. Whydon’t you just ask Cary Stewart why he didn’t pay me?

LORI: You can’t do thisplay! We aren’t asking or answering anything. Come on, George,let’s get out of this play.

UnnamedCouncilman steps into Rick’ path.

MRS. McLEAN: “I don’tcare if you use my name, in this play. It’s my married nameanyway.”

UNNAMED COUCILMAN: “Rick, you can’t do this play. On the phone or anywhere else.”

RICK: I won’t say yourname, or try to describe your peculiar voice or overly long sideburns. Iwill only work with your voice and the threat that you made to me. I tookit as a threat when you told me on the phone ‘this time you have gone too far,’in response, I thought, you’d said that to me for the barbeque I had thrown forthat intercity pop-Warner football team I sponsored. I gave the barbeque as aprize for the team having won the league championship. And I won’t saynothing about seeing you at five o’clock in the morning stuffing Jack Doylecampaign signs in the truck of your late model Japanese make sedan. Ihave already decided to keep the Mayor’s name out of this by referencing themayor of La Mesa, Art Madrid, who, I ran into in the parking lot of La MesaCity Hall.”

Nameless Councilmanleaves in a huff, as Lori and George walk from the stage. The curtainopens to reveal an early morning scene. Rick takes his seat, a foldingsteel chair at a folding table, which serves as his desk, facing theaudience. He is under the glow of a desk lamp, typing at the green hazeof his small computer monitor. Books are stacked on the d! esk, whi ch is setbetween two (tall) old steel filing cabinets. The walls of the room behindthe desk are primarily old scaffolding and two-by-four wall studs with noplaster covering. The house has been gutted by reconstruction. Framed pictures hang about on open-wall studs. A door is at the back ofthe stage. A wooden plank on saw horses serves as a counter top on stageright. An electric coffee pot is set upon the plank, together with coffeecup, a jar of instant coffee, a pill bottle and a grocery bag. Twocardboard boxes, stuffed with clothing, covered with plastic trash bags, are onthe floor at the back of the stage and a sleeping bag. Drying laundryhangs about. Old books, under plastic sheets, are stacked about on thefloor.

RICK: (Reading aloudin monotone from his computer monitor.) Opening scene. At his desk in his sparsepremises, Rick is reading from his computer screen, making a sternpronouncement: (Announcing, narrative style, still reading from thecomputer screen.) Since the beginning of history, productive people have organized themselves …

(The green glow of t! he compu ter screenbecomes tinged with orange, causing RICK to stop reading.)

RICK: McLean, move offmy monitor. I can’t see to read.

McLEAN: (A demanding, butdistant sounding man who is used to giving orders, speaking from high offstage.) It’s cold over here. The warmth feels good.

RICK: (Grinning.) Then go to hell.

(The orange glow fades from the computerscreen as a glow of light appears on the small gray cloth screen that is aboveand in front of R! ick.)&nb sp;

McLEAN: That little exercisebefore the city council last night was a waste of time.

RICK: The necessity of it goesbeyond what we can see or understand just now.

McLEAN: So why did you bother?

RICK: This experience needs tobe shared. The helplessness of one man’s humanity, the richness ofpoverty, the peace I am feeling: all of this deserves to be celebrated. But more importantly, you’re not the only crooked government lawyer: peopleneed to shown what happens when the government cheats.

McLEAN: What people? Idon't understand. Who are you are talking about? You should beworking.

RICK: Michaelanglo once toldthe Pope, ‘A man doesn't work with his hands alone.’ My heart is tootroubled to work.

McLEAN: Your soul is troubled.

RICK: Look who'stalking.

McLEAN: I was surprised howgood you looked last night.

RICK: Appearances is thecheapest of modern lifes’ necessities. It’s the one perk I allow mypride.

McLEAN: Pride? You don't evenown a bed.

RICK: When all my bills arepaid, I’ll buy a bed. (Softly speaking to McLean) Now please, I’m tryingto work. (After a slight pause, starting again with the narratorvoice.) Sincethe beginning, productive people have organized themselves into governments forthe purpose of mutual benefit. Where government is honest and withoutcorruption, society prospers. Where government is dishonest, societyfails to thrive.

For thoseliving it, the correlation between the ethics of government and quality of lifeis obscure, but it is observable, by a stroke as brief and brilliant as theflash of lighting, which unites the earth and sky in the night. I haveseen this coruscation as its power passed through my existence, vaporizing mylife’s work. And I come before you as a witness, for having lived throughit, (a pause, then the dialogue flows quickly) I know that the great unseendanger that America faces today, (slowly) is the ethical depravity which is creepinginto the ranks of our government lawyers.

McLEAN: That indictment is alittle enthusiastic.

RICK: (Quietly to McLEAN): I am still editing. Nowhush, I want to finish this. (! Narratin g) For America to prosper,we need to publicly condemn the crooked government lawyer.

McLEAN: What is allthis?

RICK: I’m writing a play aboutus.

McLEAN: Us? Doesn’t seem very productive.

(RICK types during thefollowing dialogue, reading it as he types it.)

RICK: (Speaking offhand): Realistically, my options arevery limited. My only asset is experience, which would count a negativein any other enterprise, but in this play writing business, it may be anadvantage. And the risk in this undertaking is minimal, which makes itattractive. (Rick stops typing) McLean, read this, please.

McLEAN (Poetically): In search of understanding,you trespassed into timeless contemplation, and for this offense, fate has castyou adrift upon a cosmic tide, where the jetsam of humanity twines with dybbuksand bobbing ossuaries in a slick of black ink on a windless white page, toawait Dies Irae. (Plainly): This play is crap.

RICK: What should I do tocontribute to America? Go door to door, to collect secondhand integrityand slightly worn ethics for you and your law partner wife?

McLEAN: Where do you get theseideas?

RICK: I asked you thatquestion while you were still living and you did the same thing: Why don’t youanswer me? I’m trying to do some good here: or should I write Mrs. McLeana letter, setting out my concerns for America’s future?

McLEAN: Reading oldbooks?

RICK: My experience is asomber treasure. For it to have value, it must be cast into the pool ofliterature, where in the ageless waters of humanly acceptable conclusions, allthe obtuse, precisely objective, impersonal phenomenon of science and law blendtogether … to become understanding … eventually.

(RICK types the words that McLEAN isspeaking.)

McLEAN: (Conciliatory,condescending): It’s these old books, isn’t it? These used up, very old books.

RICK: (RICK stops histyping and looks at McLEAN): George Bernard Shaw was self-taught.

McLEAN: And he to was afailure, painting his ideological graffiti in other peoples’ minds. (Apause) This idea is lunacy. Why don’t you get back into business?

RICK: (Looking to McLEAN): Lunacy is inspiration indisguise, since a man with many more brains than his fellows, necessarilyappears as mad to them as one who has less.

McLEAN: And cynicism is thelast refuge of a quitter.

RICK: ‘No man is abovethe law’. Did you ever read my letters?

McLEAN: Your little ethicslessons were misdirected: I was the law.

RICK: And that is preciselythe problem: You were the government of my part of America, functioning withthe ethics of an open pit toilet, a putrid, infected zit on the economic hullof America.

McLEAN: If America has aproblem, it’s people like you, failing to contribute their talents.

RICK: One more man on the oarswon’t save a leaky boat.

McLEAN: You’re pumping bilgewater onto the deck of the sturdiest democracy ever to set sail.

RICK: I’m simply plugging thelegal rot below the waterline.

McLEAN: If this country sinks,the fatal damage will more likely spring from the infectious negative mentalityof your ilk, rather than from structural damage, legal or otherwise.

RICK: The economic hull ofAmerica is taking on water, but you are still loading lawyer ballast. Don’t you realize each business lost in a free enterprise system is anotherhole in the ship of state?

McLEAN: What ken yourintellect brings to the American political discussion is as shallow as thisso-called play.

RICK: Allowing government lawyerslike you to smash small businessmen like me, with impunity, brings this countryto a potentially dangerous crossroads. The greatness of America comesfrom the diversity of its entrepreneurs sailing in the shallows; theinnovators; the small shops; individuals working alone who aren’t swimming withthe main stream. Ben Franklin with his kite; the Wright brothers in theirbicycle shop; Ford, with his first gasoline motor on his kitchen sink onChristmas eve.

McLEAN: (Enunciatingsternly) Isee the problem here: you imagine yourself a sort of mental ventriloquist whocan cleverly project his thoughts into other people’s minds. That’s whatyou used to do with your letters to me, wasn’t it? Well, you should know,your constant little lessons in good citizenship were a waste of postagestamps.

RICK: The drama of life isn’tplayed out with thoughts alone, lawyer McLean. (The telephone ringsand RICK answers it.) Hello. (He smiles proudly.) Yeah, this is Grandpa. (Helistens carefully for a moment.) No, I didn’t die. It’s just hard for me tocome and visit. (Listening, then gently) Mommy is driving on thelittle tire? (A pause.) Oh, gee. We’ll have to do something aboutthat. (Pause a beat) Is Mommy at work? (Pause) Okay. Grampa willthink of something. You better get ready for school. Grampa lovesyou. Bye-bye.

(RICK hangs up the telephone and typesMcLEAN’s dialogue as he speaks it.)

McLEAN: A rational manacting in the real world will strike a balance between what he desires and whatcan be done. It is only in imaginary worlds that we can do whatever wewish.

RICK: (Looking at McLean) (Typing the next line ofdialogue):This is my play and I imagine you gone. Go away. I don’t need thephilosophical counsel of a crooked government lawyer.

(RICK dials the telephone while McLeanreads.)

McLEAN: Choose your friends onmoral principles and you’ll soon have less company then you have now.

RICK: (Speaking tothe telephone) Isthe boss there?

McLEAN: I am here as the voiceof reality. You can’t continue to subsist like a Brahmanistictramp.

(A noisy jet passes low, shaking the house.)

RICK: (Speaking to McLean,offhand.) Reality in practical affairs is simply a series of tradeoffs. I choose tosurvive without material flourish. (Speaking into the telephone.) Hello, John. Hey,do you still want a structural slab behind the shop? (A pause.) I’ll make you a trade: fourtires for the slab. You buy the mud. (A pause.) Thanks. (Hehangs up the handset.)

McLEAN: You have turned yourlife into a lonely tragedy.

RICK: (Typing as hespeaks): This solitude is a thing of beauty.

McLEAN: It’s been years. Have you lost all sense of time?

RICK: Contemplation is thetimeless sense and best practiced in isolation, for as Emerson said, ‘alone iswisdom’. Leave me.

McLEAN: You are not happy inthis state.

RICK: Emerson said, ‘alone ishappiness’. Leave me.

McLEAN: You need to get outamong normal people.

RICK: Emerson said, ‘the crowdthat you are obstructs my contentment’. Leave me.

McLEAN: Emerson also said,‘Life consists of what a man is thinking of all day.’

(A moment of silence.)

McLEAN: You’re a talentedfellow. You should contribute.

RICK: This is mycontribution. You were the government: why did you cheat me?

McLEAN: For me to discussparticulars of the matter would violate the attorney/client privilege. Itwould be unethical.

RICK: (Looking to McLEAN,sans typing):So tell me of your ethics.

McLEAN: You should be doingsomething.

RICK: This play issomething. Help me with it or leave me alone.

McLEAN: You don’t really wantme to leave. Without me, you would have nothing at all and you reallywould be all alone.

RICK: Why did you cheatme?

McLEAN: I was protecting myclient.

RICK: Your client was thetaxpayer, not City engineer Cary Stewart. Your duty was to the law, notyour fat wallet. ABA Rule one point two D: ‘A lawyer shall not … assist aclient in conduct that … is … fraudulent.’

McLEAN: I will not respond toyour egregious slander. I assert it was my job to protect the City.

RICK: Your engineer CaryStewart ordered the work and then wouldn’t pay for it. When I demanded Statearbitration, you sued the State, claiming it had no authority to settle thematter. It was all legal baloney, to fatten your own wallet.

McLEAN: I love the law; I wastop of my class at Cal Western in sixty-two; but I’m not being paid to argueand I won’t do it.

RICK: So then leave.

McLEAN: I see you better thanyou realize. You turned your anger inside and now it is coming fullcircle, inside out, until it’s directed against those who would help you.

RICK: You are not helpingme.

McLEAN: You’re bulliedby your own ego; you’re trying to undo what happened with shear will power. It can’t be done. You can’t shift a single grain of sand with willpower. You should start a new business. You have the ability tocreate jobs.

RICK: (Typing as hespeaks): Ihave created a new job: I am a prospector, panning the sands of my experience, (gesturingto the books)exploring the veins of these old pages, in search of understanding.

McLEAN: (Laughs): Look around you. You made a better brick layer.

RIC! K: Brick s were a hobby,something for me to love: nothing more.

McLEAN: Your hobby made asplash at City Hall when they featured your home in the newspaper homesection.

RICK: Cary used to walk hisdog by every night, to make a splash on my bricks, after Santee defaulted me.

McLEAN: I’m notsurprised. You put him on the defensive. He needed to do somethingto assuage his ego.

RICK: Your loyalty wasmisplaced in Cary. Shielding him from the Engineer’s Board investigationwas a disservice to the community and a breach of your professionaleth! ics.&nbs p;

McLEAN: For me to commentwould be a breach of the attorney client privilege.

RICK: Cary wasn’t yourclient. It was a professional breach to stonewall the engineer’s boardinvestigation for five years.

McLEAN: What’s thepoint? It’s been eight years.

RICK: (RICK puts his handsto his forehead and looks to McLean through his fingers) Eight years and I am stillunable to make any sense of it. Eight years of document searches,depositions, motions, law! yer game s. Eight years with my spirit frustrated,my aspirations chained, my family in disarray. Eight years since I spentthe last of my pride, since I could afford self respect.

McLEAN: Forget it.

RICK: All I have is my memory:it is the most of me; and it needs healing: it must be healed, because ourfuture rests on our memories; memories are the foundation of our spirit - butto be healed, they must be exposed to the light.

McLEAN: (After a long pause.) Have you read this allthe way through? You sound stilted, on artificial wooden words that willalways be too long for your social stature. Believe me, you need to getback into business.

RICK: (Tinged with irony,his hands over his lowered head): The business I know has no sense to it, ifgovernment can cheat with impunity.

McLEAN: Government must putits own interest, the good of all, before that of any individual citizen.

(Rick rises and pours himself a cup ofcoffee while speaking the following dialogue.)

RICK: ‘Injusticeanywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. Whatever affects one directly,affects all indirectly’. Dr. King wrote that in his letter fromBirmingham jail.

McLEAN: And what did itget him? He was dead within six months.

RICK: What hope do any of ushave, if our government cheats?

Consequences are serious

Dans l'agglomération d'Agen de nombreux administrés pensent manger sainement en cultivant leur potager mais à chaque fois qu'ils laissent une heure ou deux décanter l'eau de la nappe phréatique dans un arrosoir propre, un film huileux se forme à la surface.

 

Par leur je-m'en-foutisme et par leur inaction de nombreux entrepreneurs, ainsi que les autorités locales sont indéniablement responsables de nombreux cancers.

 

Il faut mettre les irresponsables qui sont censés gérer l'agglomération d'Agen en prison!

Historic Sierra County Courthouse in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. The Territorial Revival style building was built in 1939 as a New Deal Works Progress Administration (WPA) project.

One of the stars of Disney Pixar's original animated feature - 'Cars' is Doc Hudson, a 1951 Hudson Hornet.

 

Dod Hudson is the antagonist in Lightning McQueen's (the central story character), misadventure in the town of Radiator Spring. Lightning has ended up in Radiator Springs as a consequence of rolling out of the back of his transporter truck 'Mack' on the way to Los Angeles for a race.

 

Doc is a grumpy old character, who has no love for racecars, though this theme is developed out from Doc's involvement in oval racing in the 1950's. Doc was involved in a season ending crash in 1954, and forgotten. This is a parallel metaphore for the Hudson Motor company, maker of the 6-cylinder Hornet, which was unable to compete financially with the US Big three (GM, Ford and Chrysler), and was merged with Nash-Kelvinator in 1954 to form American Motor Company (AMC).

 

In the Disney Pixar story, Doc punishes Lightning for tearing up the town road, and forces him to tow the resealing machine, and fix the road. After many conversations, including the discussion of his 1954 crash, Doc ultimately reveals Lightning location to his race team, who come and collect him from Radiator Springs, and take him onto Los Angeles.

 

Doc is redeemed, by showing up part way through the race, and acting as Lightning's crew chief. The oither characters help Lightning go on to lead the race. When the Plymouth Superbired character of Mr The King is involved in a massive car crash, appearing crippled on the inside of the circuit (as Doc appears in his similar story), Lightning skids to a halt, allowing Chick Hits to pass him, just before the finish line, for the win.

 

The metaphore here is that people are more important winning. And that character is built by doing the right thing.

 

Doc and the rest of the characters return to Radiator Springs, with Lightning as a new hero.

 

Doc Hudson does not return for the sequel movie 'Cars 2', as his character voice star, Paul Newman, passed away between the production of the two movies.

 

Doc Hudson has been built as a Lego model for Flickr LUGNuts 60th Build Challenge, our fifth birthday, the 44th challenge theme, - 'Cars, Too!' - celebrating all things automotive from Disney / Pixar movies, including 'Cars' and 'Cars 2'.

The Brisbane Courier

Wed 22 Aug 1866

 

HOLMES' CAMP

(From our own correspondent)

 

A proof of the present state of this portion of the line was given yesterday. Some twentyfive navvies, who had been working near Helidon, armed themselves with sticks and guns and perambulated the upper portions of the line, with the avowed intetion of compelling all who might be out of work to join them in a general emeute. Luckily they had so badly arranged their plans that, ere they had been in the open air many minutes, the whole of their policy was laid bare and means taken to circumvent them. Sergeant Raleigh, who has been for some time stationed at Fountain's Camp, immediately on hearing of the intentions of this body of men, followed in their wake, with the view of maintaining peace and order, but did not consider it necessary to telegraph to Ipswich for any reinforcements, as the men had promised to conduct themselves in such a manner as would prevent any breach of the peace. On the arrival of the men at this camp they complained of hunger, and went to Mr Dixon's, who gave them about forty pounds of meat; next to Mr Davidson's, where they obtained tea and sugar; and after that they visited two bakers, and got a goodly allowance of bread; but all without any attempt at intimidation. They camped for the night, and expressed their intention of proceeding to Toowoomba, and enlisting as many of the unemployed as would join them, with a view of proceeding to Brisbane, to lay their grievances before the authoritees; but, after going about three miles, without receiving any sympathy from the men on the line, considered that discretion was the better part of valor, and retired from the contest, going home again in a body. Too much praise cannot be given to Sergeant Raleigh for the firm but yet considerate manner in which he and the men under his charge acted throughout - nipping the affair in the bud, and giving the men no chance of creating a disturbance.

 

Petty robberies are still very numerous, and it is really essential that some permanent force should be stationed here, this being the most populous part fo the line, and without any protection.

 

Today was the usual sub-day, but again there is no money. Many of the navvies have been looking forward anticipating they would receive something to carry on with, but they are now left to the tender mercies of the storekeeper, who will not give one shilling credit to any of them; the consequence therefore is, they must either borrow or starve, and then comes the question, "Where will it end?"

 

Queensland State Archives Digital Image ID 3383

Consequences after a huge storm.

The "new" order on Arriva's routes 86 and 87 in Leicester. This Alexander ALX400 bodied DAF DB250 was new to Arriva London, as fleet number DLA292, in May 2001. It has just entered service at Wigston depot, in Leicestershire, where it has ousted a 2 year old Enviro 200 single-decker. It's a bit of a kick in the teeth bringing in vehicles which are 11 years senior than those they're replacing and the reason isn't altogether clear, but I would speculate that it's one (or a combination) of the following:

 

1) Passenger numbers are too high on the routes for the Enviro 200s to cope with (assuming the timetable is reliable).

 

2) The timetable is not robust enough to deliver a reliable and punctual service. As a consequence, the buses on the services bunch up meaning that the first little Enviro 200 to turn up takes a hammering. Yes, it's a capacity problem but slightly different from point one as the resources aren't being efficiently used.

 

3) The traffic calming humps around Eyres Monsell are still problematic to the Enviro 200s, causing damage to skirt panels and the like.

 

The iBus database tells us that this bus was last used in London service on 03/01/2013, when it worked on route 243 (Wood Green - Waterloo via Stamford Hill and Dalston). Sister buses noted in service for the first time from Wigston, on 07/03/2014, included:

 

4803 - Y485 UGC (formerly DLA285) on services 86 / 87.

4806 - X502 GGO (formerly DLA230) on services 47 / 48.

ROMA ARCHEOLOGIA e RESTAURO ARCHITETTURE: Italy's fears that corporate-sponsored restoration projects will lead to the Disneyfication of its cultural heritage, WASHINGTON POST | INDEPENDENT, U.K., (6-7|09|2014).

 

-- The fall of Rome? Italy's fears that corporate-sponsored restoration projects will lead to the Disneyfication of its cultural heritage, INDEPENDENT, U.K., (07|09|2014).

 

__________

 

‘…With this we come to deal with what may be rightly considered the new problems in the restoration of ruins, referring in particularly to the refined spectacular effect of the restoration and the numerous consequences owing to the impact of tourism. Already in 1965, with considerable farsightness, the Master [Prof. Cesare Brandi] warned of the dangers that the indiscriminate desire for massive tourism entail[s]:

 

“monumenti antichi riporti alla lezione con cui li ammanniscono nei polpettoni dell pellicole storiche. Sicche’ per un pelo si e` capitolato pericolo di veder sorgere a Roma, una Roma in miniatura tipo Disneyland."

 

‘In fact, while on the one hand tourism can provide an important opportunity for the enhancing the cultural heritage of a country, on the other, it is undoubtedly one of the direct causes of its deterioration,’

 

Fonte | source:

 

– Prof. Cesare Brandi, ‘La situazione archeologica. Ulisse, 2, Sansoni, 1966, pp. 9-15; in: Dott. Arch. Maria Grazia Ercolino”The preservation of ruins. The topicality of Cesare Brandi’s theory,” pp. 205-204; J. D. Rodrigues & J.M. Mimoso (edt.), Theory and Practice in Conservation, National Laboratory of Civic Engineering, LISBON (2006).

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__________

 

They have clothed the world’s wealthy fashionistas and bejeweled Hollywood stars. Now, Italy’s kings of fashion are poised to give this nation’s crumbling monuments a makeover to restore them to their former glory, something the cash-strapped Italian government cannot do.

 

But as Italy courts private cash to rescue some of the globe’s best-known relics of the ancient world, a debate is raging over the commercialisation of history. The Italians have been careful to avoid, say, the kind of US-style rebranding that could lead to Prada’s Pompeii or the Leaning Tower of Gucci. But critics are already fretting about corporate exploitation of Italy’s national patrimony.

 

Yet something, everyone agrees, needs to be done. Caked with pollution and, in some cases, falling apart, a number of major sites have long been in jeopardy here. Hit by erosion, stone laurel leaves have dropped from the Trevi Fountain like foliage in a mythical winter. The original color of the Colosseum — an off-ivory in the glory days of Roman gladiators — has been darkened by the exhaust of Rome’s new chariots, cars.

 

Fearing the Disneyfication of its landmarks, the Italian government has largely eschewed private donations and sponsorships for upkeep and renovations. But in the face of Italy’s multi-year economic malaise and the gravity of deterioration at some sites, the Italians have done an about-face. Portraying themselves now as merely caretakers of some of humanity’s most important artifacts, they are rallying billionaires, companies and even foreign governments to their cause.

____________

s.v.,

 

-- ROMA ARCHEOLOGIA e RESTAURO ARCHITETTURE: "THE FALL OF ROME?... in: 'Archiwatch', Il Blog di Prof. Arch. Giorgio Muratore, Pubblicato il 7 settembre 2014.

 

archiwatch.it/2014/09/07/the-fall-of-rome/

 

-- ROMA ARCHEOLOGIA e BENI CULTURALI: Archaeology and Privatization – Italy, the New ‘Grand Tour’ – Rome | the New American Disneyland Approach to Italian Archaeology, LA REPUBBLICA (18|04|2014).

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-- ITALIA ARCHEOLOGIA e BENI CULTURALI: Archaeology and Privatization – Italy, the New ‘Grand Tour’ – Rome | Pompeii and the New American Disneyland Approach to Italian Archaeology, l’Espresso; il manifesto; & Corr. Della Sera (18|04|2014).

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-- ROMA ARCHEOLOGIA e BENI CULTURALI: Una Flop – the New American Disneyland Approach to Italian Archaeology, First, “3D Rome Rewind (= Prof. Bernard Frischer, Rome Reborn)”, now “Time Elevator Roma” = “Don’t waste your money on this tourist trap|crap”, (30|03|2014).

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-- ROMA ARCHEOLOGIA e RESTAURO ARCHITETTURE: Judith Harris, [Rome's] Warrior Archaeologists on the March [26.02.2009]).

 

www.flickr.com/photos/imperial_fora_of_rome/4307600590/

 

-- ROMA ARCHEOLOGIA e RESTAURO ARCHITETTURE: ELISABETTA POVOLEDO, Angst Among the Ruins: [Archeologists] Protests in Italy. THE NEW YORK TIMES ONLINE EDITION (March 11th, 2009) & Originally published in print on March 12, 2009, page C3.

 

www.flickr.com/photos/imperial_fora_of_rome/4345011442/

 

-- ROMA ARCHEOLOGIA e RESTAURO ARCHITETTURE: Prof. Arch. Giorgio Muratore & “Roma Non Puo’ Diventare Una Disneyland.” Secolo d’ Italia (21|02|2004), p. 12.

 

www.flickr.com/photos/imperial_fora_of_rome/683088173/

 

-- ROMA ARCHEOLOGIA e RESTAURO ARCHITETTURE: Rome, The New Celian Hill Theme Park – “A Phony Rome for Lazy Tourists.”? Cited from the Il Messaggero 1959, in: The New York Times (15|07|1959), p. 6.

 

NYT (15|07|1959), Pg. 1 =

 

www.flickr.com/photos/imperial_fora_of_rome/683953525/

 

NYT (15|07|1959), Pg. 2 =

 

www.flickr.com/photos/imperial_fora_of_rome/684814162/

 

--POMPEI e ERCOLANO ARCHEOLOGIA e BENI CULTURALI: Prof. Giacomo Boni & Prof. Corrado Ricci, Entrambi si oppongono gli investitori stranieri facoltosi negli scavi di Ercolano, THE MARION ENTERPRISE, NEWSPAPER, USA (1909) & NEW YORK TIMES (1907).

 

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As the Italians peddle their monuments like so many troubled children in need of sponsors, the dandies of Italian fashion have come to the rescue. They are throwing millions of euros toward desperately needed restorations in exchange for various sponsorship rights, helping spur one of the single-largest periods of archaeological and artistic renewal in modern Italian history.

 

Even as the scaffolding goes up around ancient structures and an army of skilled restorers gets set to work, not all Italians are pleased about the invading horde of private cash. They say Italy — in a quest for sponsorship — may be selling its soul. Some companies making donations, for instance, will receive discreet recognition near monuments, something purists say could nevertheless make the landmarks of Rome seem like so many fashion accessories.

 

The Trevi Fountain by Fendi.

 

The Colosseum by Tod’s.

 

The Spanish Steps by Bulgari.

 

“I am very worried that the Italian government doesn’t have a line,” said Maria Luisa Catoni, associate professor of ancient art history and archeology at Italy’s IMT Lucca University. “This is a question of preservation and restoration, but also a question of taste.”

 

The Italian state once viewed national patrimony in highly proprietary terms. But local and national politicians began a major shift two years ago, with massive new tax breaks for restoration donations taking effect this year. It happens as Italy’s own cultural budget has shrunk precipitously under a succession of fraught governments, even as disrepair at landmarks worsened. The fast-deteriorating condition of Pompeii — including a wall that fell down at the Temple of Venus after heavy rain last March — has, for instance, sparked a global outcry from alarmed archaeologists.

 

Outside money, the Italians say, is the only answer. The city of Rome, for example, recently struck a preliminary agreement with Saudi Arabia to fund the restoration of the Mausoleum of Augustus.

 

Ignazio Marino, a former transplant surgeon who worked for years in the United States and is the mayor of Rome, will hold a symposium in California this month in a bid to tap Silicon Valley’s tech millionaires for donations. He will argue that the Italians are taking drastic steps to ensure preservation — including his own highly controversial decision to ban cars near the Colosseum to reduce deterioration from vehicle exhaust. “But the world also needs to help,” Marino said. “We cannot do this alone.”

 

The national government, meanwhile, is weighing a more substantial new push, including the possibility of allowing private companies to run small museums or archeology sites, and possibly even opening for-profit cafes or bookshops, on site.

 

“In Italy, the list of beauty is infinite,” said Dario Franceschini, Italy’s minister of culture. “And even if this weren’t a time of cuts to public expenditures, Italy’s cultural heritage is too vast. So I don’t really see why we should ever say ‘no’ to opening up to private interests.”

 

In the past, however, some Italian cities have seemed to not only cross the line of commercialism, but bulldoze over it. During the restorations around Venice’s Bridge of Sighs and the Palazzo Ducale, for instance, the city signed an agreement allowing the construction company doing the restoration to sell ads to offset its costs. The scheme resulted in garish and massive ads for the likes of Coca-Cola and Bulgari that fueled public outrage.

 

But more recent campaigns for donations and sponsorship have largely yielded more tasteful publicity, particularly in Rome. In exchange for Fendi’s $2.8 million (£1.7 million) donation to restore the Trevi Fountain, for instance, its chief executive, Pietro Beccari, said the brand will only receive a small plaque “about the size of a shoe box” near the fountain to mark its role in the project.

 

“The state is not in a position to care for all of these things,” Beccari said. “We want to help, not have our name in huge letters over a fountain.”

 

To date, the most controversial deal has also been the largest — the $33 million (£20 million) donated from the Italian luxury leather maker, Tod’s, to give the Colosseum its most complete restoration in modern history. On a recent afternoon, artisans were perched on the scaffolding that surrounds the ancient structure, using water sprays and lime in their painstaking work. Before and after segments of the Colosseum already show a dramatic change — from soot-stained rock, its color is being transformed to a pale oatmeal more closely resembling its appearance when ancient Romans gathered for bloodsport.

 

But the contract struck with Tod’s president, billionaire Diego Della Valle, has provoked the ire of a local citizens group, which claims it was too generous. For a limited time, Tod’s will have the right to put its logo on hundreds of thousands of Colosseum tickets sold each year. It also won the right to associate its brand with the Colosseum’s restoration in promotional material for up to 15 years.

 

Della Valle, however, insists that critics are seeing ulterior motives where there are none, saying he pushed forward with the donation because he simply relished the idea of seeing the famous structure renewed.

 

“Donating in order to support any form of art should be considered unsurprising, and without rewards of any kind,” he said in an e-mail. “Companies lucky enough to be doing well should give some positivity back to the country.”

 

The mayor of Rome also dismisses critics.

 

“If someone wants to give you €25 million euros to restore the Colosseum, you know what? You take it,” he said.

 

FONTE | SOURCES:

 

-- World, Will corporate cash save Roman monuments or diminish them? THE WASHINGTON POST, WASH. D.C., USA (06|09|2014).

 

www.washingtonpost.com/world/will-corporate-cash-save-rom...

 

-- The fall of Rome? Italy's fears that corporate-sponsored restoration projects will lead to the Disneyfication of its cultural heritage, THE INDEPENDENT, U.K., (07|09|2014).

 

www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/the-fall-of-rome-...

   

Miramar, Fla.-based Spirit is calling it a “DOTUC fee,” for Department of Transportation Unintended Consequences, and the airline says it covers costs to the airline for holding fares 24 hours after booking without penalty.

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........***** All images are copyrighted by their respective authors ........

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......item 1) .... Las Vegas Sun News ... www.lasvegassun.com/news .... TRANSPORTATION:

 

Spirit Airlines says DOT ignoring cost impact to customers, adds ‘unintended consequences’ fee

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img code photo .... A Spirit Airlines jet

 

photos.lasvegassun.com/media/img/photos/2011/08/26/scaled...

 

A Spirit Airlines jet takes off from McCarran International Airport on Friday, Aug. 26, 2011.

 

Sam Morris

 

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FEBRUARY 2, 2012

 

By Richard N. Velotta (contact)

Tuesday, Jan. 31, 2012 | 3:13 p.m.

 

www.lasvegassun.com/news/2012/jan/31/spirit-airlines-says...

  

The battle between discount air carrier Spirit Airlines and the U.S. Department of Transportation escalated today with the airline — the fastest growing carrier at McCarran International Airport last year — adding a new $2 fee to ticket prices to cover costs associated with new consumer regulations that took effect last week.

 

Miramar, Fla.-based Spirit is calling it a “DOTUC fee,” for Department of Transportation Unintended Consequences, and the airline says it covers costs to the airline for holding fares 24 hours after booking without penalty.

 

The Department of Transportation ordered new consumer protection rules that took effect on Thursday. Spirit, Southwest Airlines and Allegiant Air, all prominent operators at McCarran, have been the most vocal in their displeasure with the rules.

 

Spirit’s passenger counts at McCarran grew by 228 percent last year over 2010. Southwest is the busiest carrier at McCarran while Las Vegas-based Allegiant is poised to grow substantially in 2012 after having a 6.4 percent increase in local passengers last year.

 

The new rules order airlines to include all taxes and fees when advertising or displaying costs of airfares. Airlines don’t have to disclose fees that may not apply to all travelers, such as baggage and booking fees. The rules also order airlines to hold passengers’ fares when booking and allow them to be canceled or changed without penalty for 24 hours.

 

“People love the idea of not having to commit to a reservation, but this regulation, like most, imposes costs on consumers,” Spirit President and CEO Ben Baldanza said in a company release issued today.

 

“Wouldn’t we all like to eat all we want and not get fat?” Baldanza said. “Regulators like to try to sell the idea of this rule but have ignored the cost impact to consumers. You simply can’t eat all you want without consequences.”

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img code photo ... Senate Ethics Committee Chair Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.

 

photos.lasvegassun.com/media/img/photos/2011/05/12/AP1105...

 

Senate Ethics Committee Chair Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., is pursued by reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, May 12, 2011, after speaking on the Senate floor about former Nevada Sen. John Ensign.

 

AP PHOTO/J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE

 

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Baldanza was on the receiving end of a scathing letter from Sen. Barbara Boxer of California, who criticized Spirit for emailing customers and telling them the government is encouraging airlines to hide federal taxes. It is Spirit’s contention that by requiring airlines to display the full cost of a ticket that customers won’t see how much of it is taxes and fees and how much of it is the airline’s fare.

 

“I have been shocked by the failure of your airline to tell the truth in an email sent to your customers earlier this week as well as warnings posted on Spirit.com that read, ‘New government regulations require us to HIDE taxes in your fares.’ Nothing could be further from the truth,” Boxer wrote.

 

“What the rule says is that you have to tell your customers the full cost of a ticket," she continued. "It prohibits Spirit or any other airline from advertising fares ‘that exclude taxes, fees or other charges since the major impact of such presentations is to confuse and deceive consumers.’

 

“And despite Spirit's claim that the airline must now hide relevant information, the rule ‘allows carriers to advise the public in their fare solicitations about government taxes and fees ...’

 

“Today's consumers are faced with many options when planning air travel, and being able to compare the full price before purchase is both necessary and fair. Your recent statement that ‘the better form of transparency is to break out costs so that consumers know exactly what they are buying’ is exactly what this new DOT rule will help do,” her letter said.

 

Airlines like Spirit, Southwest and Allegiant are more sensitive to the new rules because they traditionally have offered lower fares and the displays that include taxes and fees come across as sticker shock to potential customers.

 

Spirit and Allegiant have business models that offer greatly discounted fares but numerous fees for baggage, booking by phone or online and for seat selection. Southwest fares appear higher with taxes and fees, but its counterparts don’t have to disclose bag fees it doesn’t have.

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Back to St Mary, this having taken the precaution of making sure it would be unlocked. Many thanks to the former vicar and one of the current wardens to take time to reply.

 

Much more inside than I remember, wooden hatchments and more tablet memorials than you can shake a stick at.

 

The walls lean, the windows are set in recesses that look off centre.

 

But it works.

 

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Nonington is a village of two junctions. The church is on the lesser of the two delightfully framed by a picture postcard cottage and venerable Yew. Opposite the gate is an amazing memorial giving you the two alternative routes through life. You really have to see it. The church is large, open and welcoming....though it's interior does have something of a Victorian feel to it. The chancel arch shows signs of once having an infilled Tympanum as the slots are still visible and there is an entrance to the Rood Loft on the north side. The south wall has a large window in a similar position but its stonework is renewed and its difficult to tell if it was there to give light to the rood, or if it was added later to give light to the pulpit that now stands there. The chancel south wall is full of memorial tablets and four hatchments whilst the north chapel is similarly crammed in with tablets. The altar has a very queer companion which takes the form of tiled Decalogue and Lord's Prayer, whilst the altar itself has a fine inlaid reredos. The fine north chapel has what was once a good tomb recess but at some later stage this was pierced with a window to create a light family pew. At the back of the church the pews are tiered (see also Newnham) and overshadow the fine mid seventeenth century font doubtless purchased to replace one destroyed during the Commonwealth. My favourite things here are the two south chancel windows of St Alban and St George designed just after the First World War by Mary Lowndes who was a significant player in the Arts and Crafts movement.

 

www.kentchurches.info/church.asp?p=Nonington

 

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NONINGTON.

The next parish eastward is Nonington, which lies partly, that is, so much as is within the borough of Kettington, and of Nonington, alias Ratling, in this hundred of Wingham; and the remainder, containing the boroughs of Esole, and Frogham, in the lower half of the hundred of Eastry.

 

THIS PARISH is, as to soil and situation, much the same as that of Goodnestone last described, being in a fine open champaign country, exceedingly dry and healthy; it is about three miles across each way, the village called Church-street, with the church in it, is nearly in the middle of the parish, in a valley, in which, at no great distance from it, is the seat of St. Alban's, a low situation, looking up to the uninclosed lands. Near it is the hamlet of Esole, usually called Isill-street, and further eastward the estate of Kettington belonging to Sir Narborough D'Aeth, bart. In the bottom, at some distance south-west from the church, among some small inclosures, is the seat of Fredville, a damp and gloomy situation; near it are the small hamlets of Frogham and Holt, now called Old-street, near which is a place called Oxendenden, from whence the family of that name are said to derive their origin. At the northern boundary of the parish is the hamlet of Acol, which had once owners of that name, who bore for their arms, Quarterly, argent, and azure, over all, a bend componee, or, and gules, as they were formerly painted in the windows of this church. It now belongs to Sir Brook William Bridges, and at the western boundary that of Ratling-street. In this parish is the estate of Curleswood park, now commonly called the Park farm, belonging to the archbishop, the lessee of it being Sir Brook William Bridges. There is a fair held yearly in Church-street, on Ascension day, for pedlary, &c.

 

The MANOR OF WINGHAM claims paramountover the greatest part of this parish, and the manor of Eastry over the remainder. Subordinate to the former is

 

The MANOR OF RETLING, usually called Ratling, in that part of this parish adjoining to Adisham, which was antiently held of the archbishop by a family of the same name, who bore for their arms, Gules, a lion rampant, between an orle of tilting spears heads, or, as they were on the surcoat of Sir John de Ratling, formerly painted in one of the windows of this church, in which it continued down to Sir Richard de Retling, who died possessed of it in the 23d year of king Edward III. leaving a sole daughter and heir Joane, who marrying John Spicer, entitled him to it. After which, by Cicely, a daughter and coheir of this name, it passed in marriage to John Isaac, of Bridge, who died possessed of it anno 22 Henry VI. and his descendant Edward Isaac, esq. in king Henry VIII.'s reign, alienated it to Sir John Fineux, chief justice of the king's bench, whose son William Fineux, esq. of Herne, alienated it to Thomas Engeham, gent. of Goodneston, who by his will in 1558, gave it to his second son Edward, and his son, William Engeham sold it to William Cowper, esq. who afterwards resided here, and was first created a baronet of Nova Scotia, and then, in 1642, a baronet of Great Britain. His great-grandson Sir William Cowper, bart. was by queen Anne, being then lord keeper of the great seal, created lord Cowper, made lord chancellor, and afterwards, anno 4 George I. created earl Cowper, and in his descendants, earls Cowper, this manor has descended down to the right hon. PeterFrancis, earl Cowper, the present owner of this manor. (fn. 1) There has not been any court held for it for many years past.

 

ARCHBISHOP PECKHAM, on the foundation of Wingham college, anno 1286, endowed the first subdiaconal prebend of it, which he distinguished by the name of the prebend of Retling, with the tithes of the demesne lands, which Richard de Retling and Ralph Perot held of him in Nonyngton, between the highway which led from Cruddeswode to the cross of Nonyngtone, and from thence to the estate of the prior, of Addesham. (fn. 2)

 

OLD-COURT is an estate in this parish, situated about a mile northward from the church, which was antiently the property of the family of Goodneston, who took their name from their possession and residence in that parish, and it continued in an uninterrupted succession in this family, of whom there is frequent mention in private evidences, which, though without date, appear to be made in the reigns of king Henry III. and king Edward I. till at length Edith, daughter and heir of William Goodnestone, carried it in marriage to Vincent Engeham, whose son Thomas Engeham, esq. of Goodneston, by his will in 1558, gave it, together with the lands in Nonington, late Mr. Sidley's and John Bewe's, to his second son Edward, whose son William Engeham, gent. passed it away in queen Elizabeth's reign to Thomas Wilde, esq. descended from an antient family of that name in Chester, and his son Sir John Wilde, of St. Martin's hill, near Canterbury, in the next reign of James I. alienated it to Thomas Marsh, gent. of Brandred, in Acrise, whose descendant John Marsh resided here till the year 1665, when he removed to Nethersole, in Wimlingwold. Since which it has continued, in like manner as that seat, down to his descendant John Marsh, esq. now of Chichester, in Sussex, the present owner of it.

 

ST. ALBANS COURT, antiently called, at first Eswalt, and afterwards Esole, is a manor situated in the valley, north-eastward from the church, in the borough of its own name, which with another estate near it, called Bedesham, (all that remains of the name of which is a grove behind St. Albans house, called Beauchamp wood, in which are many foundations of buildings, being now esteemed as part of the manor of St.Albans court) was in the time of the Conqueror, part of the possessions of Odo, bishop of Baieux, and they are accordingly both thus entered in the record of Domesday:

 

Adelold holds of the bishop Eswalt. It was taxed at three sulings. The arable land is . . . . In demesne there is one carucate, and six villeins, with two borderers having three carucates. There are two servants, and a small wood for fencing. In the time of king Edward the Confessor it was worth nine pounds, now fifteen. Alnod Cilt held it of king Edward.

 

And Somewhat further below:

 

Osbert, the son of Letard, holds of the bishop, Bedesham. It was taxed at one yoke and an half. The arable. land is . . . . In demesne there is one carucate, with one villein and four borderers. In the time of king EdEdward the Confessor it was worth sixty shillings, and afterwards thirty shillings, now fifty shillings. Godisa held it of king Edward. In the same manor ten thanes held of Osbern himself one suling and half a yoke, and there they themselves have four carucates and an half. In the time of king Edward the Confessor it was worth one hundred shillings, and afterwards thirty shillings, now sixty shillings.

 

On the bishop of Baieux's disgrace, in the year 1084, it came, with the rest of his estates, into the hands of the crown, whence the manor of Esole, alias St. Albans, seems to have been granted to William de Albineto, or Albini, surnamed Pincerna, who had followed the Conqueror from Normandy hither, whose son, of the same name, earl of Albermarle, gave it, by the name of the manor of Eswelle, to the abbot of St. Alban's, in Hertfordshire; which gift was afterwards confirmed by king Stephen; (fn. 3) and from thence it gained the name of St. Albans. And anno 7 king Edward I. the abbot of St. Albans claimed and was allowed, before the justices itinerant, free-warren and other liberties within this manor. After which it continued in the possession of the abbey till the 30th year of king Henry VIII. when the abbot and convent, with the king's consent, sold it, with its lands, appurtenances, and tithes belonging to it, as well of corn, grain, hay, and otherwise, then in the occupation of John Hammond, to Sir Christopher Hales, master of the rolls. Which alienation having been made in consequence of the licence by the king's word only, was confirmed by act the next year, specially for that purpose. On whose death in the 33d year of that reign, (fn. 4) his three daughters became his coheirs, of whom Elizabeth, then married to John Stocker, and Margaret, then unmarried, joined in the sale of their shares in it, to Alexander Culpeper, who had married Mary, the other daughter, and he quickly afterwards alienated the whole of it to his eldest brother Sir Thomas Culpeper, of Bedgbury, who in the 2d and 3d of Philip and Mary, sold it to Thomas Hammond, gent. who at that time resided here, being the direct descendant of John Hamon, or Hammond, who was resident here in king Henry the VIIIth.'s time, as tenant to the abbot and convent of St. Alban's, who died in 1525, and was buried in this church, as were his several descendants afterwards, in whom it continued down to William Hammond, esq. of St. Albans, who married Charlotte, eldest daughter of Dr. Wil liam Egerton, prebendary of Canterbury, by whom he left William, of whom hereafter; Anthony, rector of Ivychurch, and vicar of Limne, and three daughters, Anna-Maria; Charlotte, married to Thomas Watkinson Payler, esq. of lleden, and Catherine. William Hammond, esq. the eldest son, married Elizabeth, eldest daughter of Osmund Beauvoir, D.D. by whom he has issue two sons and five daughters, viz. William-Osmond, Maximilian-Dudley-Diggs; Elizabeth-Mary, Mary-Elizabeth, Charlotte, Julia-Jemima, and Jemima-Julia. He bears for his arms, Argent, on a chevron, sable, between three ogresses, each charged with a martlet of the field, three escallop-shells, or, all within a bordure engrailed, vert; which arms were granted by Barker, garter, to Thomas Hamon, gent. of Nonington, anno 1548, and confirmed by Cooke, clarencieux, and they were certified to the college of arms by William Hammond, esq. last-mentioned, his descendant, in 1779, (fn. 5) and he is the present owner of this manor and seat, at which he resides.

 

A court baron is held for this manor, which extends over some part of the borough of Wingmere, in Eleham, and over a few acres of land in Barham.

 

SOLES is a manor at the boundary of this parish, next to Barfreston, which at the taking the survey of Domesday, in 1080, was part of the possessions of Odo, bishop of Baieux, under the general title of whose lands it is thus entered in that record:

 

Ansfrid holds of the bishop Soles. It was taxed at one suling. The arable land is . . . In demesne there are two carucates, and eight viheins with half a carucate. In the time of king Edward the Confessor it was worth one hundred shillings, and afterwards twenty shillings, now six pounds. Elmer held it of king Edward.

 

Four years after which, on the bishop's disgrace, the king seized on this estate among the rest of his possessions. After which it was granted to the family of Crevequer, and made a part of that barony, being held of it by the tenure of performing ward to Dover castle. Of Hamo de Crevequer it was held by knight's service in king Edward I.'s reign, by Richard de Rokesle, and of him again by Hamo and John de Soles, who certainly took their name from it, but this name was extinct here in the beginning of king Henry IV.'s reign, for in the 4th year of it Thomas Newbregge, of Fordwich, was become possessed of it, whose descendant sold it to Rutter, from which name it passed; about the beginning of king Edward IV. to Litchsield, whose descendant Gregory Litchfield alienated it in king Henry VIII.'s reign to John Boys, esq. of Nonington, in whose descendants it continued down to John Boys, esq. of Hode-court, who in Charles I.'s reign alienated it to Sir Anthony Percival, of Dover, comptroller of the customs there; in whose descendants it remained till, not many years since, it was by one of them passed away to Major Richard Harvey, who sold it to Thompson, of Ramsgate, after whose death it came by marriage to Mr. Stephen Read, of Canterbury, who afterwards alienated it to John Plumptree, esq. of Fredville, the present owner of it. A court baron is held for this manor.

 

FREDVILLE is a manor in this parish, which in antient deeds is sometimes written Froidville, from its cold situation, which is both low and watry. It was held of the castle of Dover, as part of those lands which made up the barony of Maminot, afterwards, from its succeeding owners, called the barony of Saye. In the reign of king Edward I. it was held, in manner as above-mentioned, by John Colkin, in whose posterity it remained till the latter end of king Richard II.'s reign, when it was conveyed by sale to Thomas Charleton, and he, by sine levied anno 2 Henry IV. passed it away to John Quadring, whose descendant Thomas Quadring leaving an only daughter and heir Joane, she carried it in marriage to Richard Dryland, and he, about the latter end of king Edward IV. alienated it to John Nethersole, who by fine levied in the 2d year of king Richard III. conveyed it to William Boys, esq. of Bonnington, (fn. 6) and he died possessed of it in 1507, and by his will gave this manor to his eldest son John Boys, esq. of Fredville. His descendant Major Boys, of Fredville, being a firm loyalist, suffered much by sequestration of his estates. He had seven sons and a daughter, who all died s.p. Two of his elder sons, John and Nicholas, finding that there was no further abode at Fredville, to which they had become entitled, departed each from thence, with a favourite hawk in hand, and became pensioners at the Charter-house, in London. (fn. 7) Before which they had, in 1673, sold it to Denzill, lord Holles, from whose descendant it afterwards came to Thomas Holles, duke of Newcastle, who in 1745 sold it to Margaret, sister of Sir Brook Bridges, bart. of Goodnestone, and she in 1750, marrying John Plumptree, esq. of Nottinghamshire, he became in her right possessed of it. He was descended from a family who had been long settled in that county, who bore for their arms, Argent, a chevron, between two mullets in chief, and an annulet in base, sable. (fn. 8) He served in parliament for Penryn, in Cornwall, and afterwards for Nottingham. By his first wife above-mentioned, he had no issue; but by his second, daughter of Philips Glover, esq. of Lincolnshire, he had one son John Plumptree, esq. married to Charlotte, daughter of the Rev. Jeremiah Pemberton, of Cambridgeshire; and a daughter, married to R. Carr Glynn, esq. He rebuilt this seat, in which he afterwards resided, and dying in 1791, was succeeded by his only son John Plumptree, esq. beforementioned, who now resides in it.

 

At a small distance from the front of Fredvillehouse, stands the remarkable large oak tree, usually known by the name of the Fredville oak. It measures twenty-seven feet round in girt, and is about thirty feet in height; and though it must have existed for many centuries, yet it looks healthy and thriving, and has a most majestic and venerable appearance.

 

Charities.

EDWARD BOYS, son of William Boys, esq. of Nonington, gave by his will in 1596, and annnity of 40s. out of lands which he had purchased in Nonington and Barfreston, containing 15 acres, to be yearly paid among the poorest of this parish.

 

ROBERT BATGHAR, yeoman, of Bridge, by will in 1600, gave to the parson and churchwardens of Nonington, the rents and profits of his house there, for the relief of the poor.

 

SIR EDWARD BOYS, of Nonington, by will in 1634, gave to the poor of Nonington, 6l. to be employed for a stock to set the poor at work, and not otherwise to be employed, so as the overseers or any sufficient man of the parish be bound yearly to the heirs of Fredville, whereby the stock be not lost.

 

A PERSON UNKNOWN gave to two poor housekeepers of this parish, two houses and an acre and an half of land, in it, at Frogham, to each, with a sack of wheat to each housekeeper every Christmas; now vested in the Reverend James Morrice, owner of Betshanger manor, and of the annual produce of 5l. 10s.

 

The poor constantly relieved are about thirty, casually forty.

 

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

 

The church, which is dedicated to St. Mary, consists of two isles and two chancels, having a tower steeple at the north corner at the west end, in which are three bells. In the south isle are the figures of a man between his two wives, traced on the stone, and inscription for John Hamon and Margaret and Mary his wives, obt. 1526. A memorial for Wm. Hammond, obt. 1717. In the south or high chancel, against the wall, a brass plate for Alicia, daughter and heir of William Sympson, esq. once marshal of Calais, and Catherine Gemecot, wife to Francis Wilford, obt. 1581. A stone, and inscription in brass, for John Cooke, vicar, obt. March 7, 1528. Several memorials for the Hammonds. In the north chancel, now made use of as a school, a memorial for Edward Boys, esq. obt. 1597. A monument for Mary, daughter of Edward Boys, and wife of J. Hole, obt.— Several memorials for Trotter and Wood. A monument for Sir John Mennes. In the windows of this church were formerly several shields of arms, long since destroyed; and the figure of a knight, kneeling on his surcoat, the arms of Boys, of Bonnington, and opposite to him the figure of a woman kneeling, and on her coat the arms of Roper. Another like figure of a knight, and on his surcoat the arms of Ratling, being Gules, a lion rampant or, an orle of Spears heads argent.

 

The church of Nonington was antiently a chapel of ease to that of Wingham, and was on the foundation of the college there by archbishop Peckham, in 1286, separated from it, and made a distinct parish of itself, (fn. 9) and then given to the college, and becoming thus appropriated to the college, continued with it till its suppression in king Edward VI.'s reign, when this parsonage appropriate, with the advowson of the vicarage or curacy of it, came into the hands of the crown, where it did not remain long, for in the year 1558, queen Mary granted it, among others, to the archbishop, but the rectory or parsonage appropriate, with the chapel of Wimlingswold appendant, continued in the crown till queen Elizabeth, in her 3d year, granted it in exchange, to the archbishop, when it was valued at thirty-three pounds, reprises to the curate 13l. 6s. 8d. At which rent it has continued to be leased out ever since, and it now, with the patronage of the curacy, remains parcel of the possessions of the see of Canterbury. William Hammond, esq. is the present lessee of the parsonage.

 

At the time this church was appropriated to the college of Wingham, a vicarage was endowed in it, which, after the suppression of the college, came to be esteemed as a perpetual curacy. It is not valued in the king's books. The antient stipend paid to the curate as above, was, in 1660, augmented by archbishop Juxon with the addition of twenty pounds, but by the addition of Mr. Boys's legacy of the small tithes in this parish and Wimlingswold, mentioned below, it is now, with that chapel, of the yearly certified value of 71l. 6s. 8d. In 1588 here were two hundred and thirty-five communicants.

 

¶Edward Boys, esq. of Nonington, by his will in 1596, gave towards the maintenance of a minister, being licenced and preaching every other Sunday at farthest at Nonington, yearly, for ever, all the profits of the small-tithes of Nonington and Wemingewell, (excepting those of the lands in his occupation, and the oblations and obventions due out of them, and the tithes of wood of all the lands and farms he had, or his heirs should have, within the parish) the said minister paying to him and his heirs the yearly sum of 40s.

 

www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-kent/vol9/pp251-262

 

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St. Mary’s Church appears to have been built on or near a farm or settlement on the Manor of Oesewalum (also Oeswalum & Oesuualun) which had belonged to the Abbesses of Minster Abbey, on the Isle of Thanet, and Southminster Abbey, at Lyminge, in the late 8th and early 9th centuries before eventually passing into the possession of Christchurch Priory of Canterbury. The abbess’s ownership of Oesewalum most likely give rise to the name Nunningitun, the nuns farm or manor, which in turn became Nonington. The manor of Oesewalum would have been administered on behalf of the abbess by a manorial steward and his house would have been the focal point of the settlement and possibly eventually became the site of the chapel that became St. Mary’s Church.

 

The manor of Oesewalum came into the personal possession of Wulfred, Archbishop of Canterbury, in 824 and he willed it to Werhard, his kinsman, on the proviso that Werhard would in turn will it to Christ Church Priory. In his will drawn up in the 830’s Werhard made the following provisions:

 

“ To five paupers at Harrow (Middlesex), five at Otford (Kent), two at Graveney (Kent), seven at Oesuualun ( in Nonington, Kent) and six in the city of Canterbury (Kent) let enough to eat be given each day as is convenient and over the year let each pauper be given twenty-six pence for clothing”

 

(The original Latin text was “Apud Hergan .v. pauperes; apud Otteford .v.; apud Cliue .ii.; apud Grauenea .ii.; apud Oesuualun .vii.; in ciuitate Dorobernia .vi. Unicuique detur cotidie ad manducandum quod conuenienter sit satis et per annum cuique pauperi ad uestitum .xxvi. denarii.”).

 

In order to distribute “enough to eat be given each day as is convenient” to the seven paupers at Oesewalum /Oesuualun the food must have either been brought in from Christchurch Priory or one of its other estates on a regular basis, although not necessarily daily, or there must have been a local source of supply.

Werhard’s will records Oesewalum /Oesuualun as extending to 10 hides and the revenue Werhard derived from the holding would therefore have been more than able to adequately provide the specified bounty. A hide was the nominal amount of land required to keep a family for a year and was used for taxation. In East Kent a hide would probably have measured some thirty to fifty modern acres, depending on the quality of the land. The daily ration would have to be distributed and the most logical place to distribute this would be the manorial steward’s house, either by the steward or another servant of Christchurch. As it was an ecclesiastical manor this may then have led to a small chapel being established which by the 1070’s had become the origin of the present St. Mary’s Church.

 

However, there is some evidence to show that the chapel itself may actually pre-date possession by Christchurch and may have been founded or existed during the ownership of Oesewalum by the Benedictine Abbeys of Minster on the Isle of Thanet and Southminster at Lyminge as both abbey churches were named after St. Mary the Virgin, the same saint as the present Nonington church. Nonington church is next to an ancient road which linked the abbey on the Isle of Thanet with the abbey at Lyminge.

 

The first Minster Abbey was built on the site of St. Mary’s church, and opposite to the minster across the now silted up Wantsum Channel was St. Mary the Virgin on Strand Street in Sandwich’s, the town’s oldest church and the site of a lost convent. From Sandwich the road went on through Eastry, Nonington, Elham, and Lyminge, settlements whose churches are all dedicated to St. Mary the Virgin. Lyminge church was jointly dedicated to St. Mary and St. Ethelburgha, founder of the abbey there.

 

Christ Church Priory seem to have lost Oesewalum /Oesuualun at some time in the late 9th century and it came into the possession of the King. Parts of the manor, including the area around the present church, came back into the possession the Archbishop of Canterbury as part of the Manor of Wingham and remained in the See’s possession until Archbishop Cranmer exchanged the Manor of Wingham for other properties with Henry VIII in 1538.

 

www.nonington.org.uk/st-marys-church/

Here is a project I have been working on, on and off, for over a year, finally complete. It is my 3rd work of embroidery with functional LEDs embedded in the design, but this time the LEDs behave in a decidedly more complicated manner than in the previous 2 pieces. I dedicate it to Dean Larsen without whose help the circuitry design may never have been solved.

 

This video was taken through the glass front of the display cabinet the work is in, so the stitching details are not as sharp as could be desired. I will choose one or more still photos to post to try to show the intricacy of the stitching.