View allAll Photos Tagged consequence
Cpl. Jose L. Polanco (top), a 25-year-old heavy equipment mechanic for Combat Logistics Battalion 31, 31st Marine Expeditionary, and a native of Truth or Consequences, N.M., loosens a drive shaft mount with the assistance of Lance Cpl. Tanner M. Jones, a 19-year-old light armored vehicle mechanic for CLB-31, 31st MEU, and a native of Denver, Colo., in Bradshaw Field, Australia, Sept. 1, 2013. The Marines of CLB-31's maintenance section are working long days and late nights to keep pace with the required maintenance that comes with supporting the battalion-sized element currently executing Exercise Koolendong 13. Koolendong is a week-long, live-fire exercise that demonstrates the operational reach of the 31st MEU and reinforces why it is the force of choice for the Asia-Pacific region. Also participating in the exercise is the Marine Rotational Force - Darwin and soldiers of the 5th Royal Australian Army. The 31st MEU brings what it needs to sustain itself to accomplish the mission or to pave the way for follow-on forces. The size and composition of the 31st MEU makes it well suited for amphibious operations, which includes raids, assaults, evacuations and humanitarian assistance operations.
(U.S. Marine Corps photo by Sgt. Paul Robbins/Released)
- Canon 400 D
© sk.fotography
All Rights Reserved. Owner and Usage Rights belongs to © sk.fotography Any use of this work in hard or soft copy or transfer must be done with the expressed consent of © sk.fotography in written. Failing to do so will result in violation as per Section 63 of the Indian Copyrights Act, 1957 & Forgery, Fraud, Misrepresentation and Misinformation as per the Indian Penal Code Section 420 leading to severe legal consequences.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) provides the freshwater availability scenarios for Europe in 2050s. As consequences of climate change, states will face variations of water availability: some of them will contend with decreasing of runoff and increasing of drought frequency, others with the opposite situation. Governments have to realize the oncoming changing and develop their water management in order to satisfy their future internal demand.
Today just few countries invest substantial money in infrastructures and understand the necessity to get ready for the next condition; the most of them has just adequate water management that will be hardly succede try out.
The visualization below has two goals. The first one is to illustrate the consequences of climate change in the water availability of each European countries. The second one is to compare the “antrophic cycle” of water in two countries with very different water managements: UK and Romania. The balance between water availability and water demand needs funds to promote infrastructures and knowledge. By this representation is possible to realize which are the actors involved and their roles, how they are connected and how climate change will worsen the gap.
Project by:
Silvia Acerbi
Paola Berardelli
Lorenzo Berte'
Samantha Pietrovito
Irene Zocco
Muhahahahaha...... She will never tell our secrets!!!!
This one was done to follow up on Kendras (see link above)... Not exactly how I pictured it but I am ok pleased with it.
#133 in explore today!! yay!!!
As a responsible guardian, did I or did I not warn them, try to reason with them? My conscience is clear...."you are not in good enough shape" I said, "you are not experienced enough to brave the slopes; your arms are too short to box with god...besides you don't have winter clothing; fact is: you have no clothing...."
But "No!" they screamed, "we are going snow boarding....fuck you and your old geezer mentality...afraid of adventure....one foot in the grave, the other in a pile of dogshit....you are too boring for words," they said.....and off they went.....
The melting snow of spring sadly reveals the consequences of their bravado and folly (and yet, I still have one foot in the grave and the other in a pile of dogshit....and so it goes)
[The dolls have a new video uploaded a week ago with music by CocoRosie and Beth Gibbons]
Vimeo:
Veoh:
www.veoh.com/videos/v416116bxjqXC5C
IFilm:
www.ifilm.com/myifilm/shadowplay
Utube:
Consequence of a suicide attemp in another subway station
No edit
Taken with my Samsung Galaxy A21s phone
... and it may have consequences, as I think that hand is going for her coffee! ;D
Shot on Friday afternoon from inside my car while driving down to the Jazz Festival (being stuck in Montreal traffic is good for something).
Originally, I cloned out the hand and cropped the left side of the photo (because I feel so "guilty" about breaking the rule of centered subjects), but I prefer the atmosphere of this original SOOC shot.
Funny, the "no shooting while driving" or "use a tripod" rules, I have no problem breaking with impunity LOL.
Taken with the Canon 24 -105 f4 L lens. I adore that lens!
Oh, and this WAS SOOC, but I fixed up a few blemishes on her... I can't help myself. I like to think that, yes, I will have no qualms about shooting and posting a pic of you, but please know, I will ensure you look your best. =D
Have a relaxing and blessed Sunday, everyone!
(I am going to try and do the same... see you all later!)
Thanks for stopping by... muah!!
Conséquence de l'inconséquence de autorités locales et des entrepreneurs ?
Quand on voit l'état environnemental de la plupart des zones commerciales et industrielles agenaises, ça laisse rêveur!
Zone d'Activité Commerciale de la Tuque
Rue des artisans,
Castelculier.
Agglomération d'Agen.
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.
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.
Nothing will be the same again. It is only at that perfect moment that you gain the strength to know this. It’s time for amends.
Berlin boasts two zoological gardens, a consequence of decades of political and administrative division of the city. The older one, called Zoo Berlin, founded in 1844, is situated in what is now called "City West". It is the most species-rich zoo worldwide. The other one, called Tierpark Berlin ("Animal Park"), was established on the long abandoned premises of Friedrichsfelde Palace Park in the eastern borough of Lichtenberg, in 1954. Covering 160 ha, it is the largest landcape zoo in Europe. And honouring its past as landscape park, it still has large gardened areas.
Ex London Wrights Gemini Volvo B7 LF52USY Fleet number ( 134 / 2787 is seen here operating for Transdev Harrogate on school work. The bus was recently transferred from London to Rosso in Lancashire.
(c) 2009 butch leitz photography
All Rights Reserved
from a senior portrait session last week
made flickr explore #363
1.52
Hey everyone! I've been practically off the Flickr grid for a year. I got lost in building up my business and I lost my love for creative portraiture. This year I'm dedicating to my photography and I can't wait to better myself and my techniques. Thanks for all the support, I can't wait to get to know you all better throughout this year (:
film
Same bridge from two different vantage points....with some metal sculpture thingies punctuating the midground. I've just noticed I have an affection for bridges.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
MANIFESTO GLEITZEIT 2015
BY STELLY RIESLING
Featured below is another original art work of mine in homage to THE PIONEER OF INVISIBLE ART — PAUL JAISINI. Forget all the copycats that came after him — Master Paul Jaisini was the *FIRST* of a totally original concept and the *BEST*. My favorite thing about him is that he’s a voice, not an echo, which is quite rare.
DISCLAIMER: This is for anyone who is a hater OR wishes to better understand me, what I’m all about, so you can decide whether I’m weird or normal enough for you — a kind of very loose manifesto, rushed and unrevised, full of raw uncut emotion that I don’t like to be evident in my writing as lately I prefer a more professional, formal style, so we can consider this a rough draft of the more polished writing to come when I have extra time. I might return to this text later and clean it up or break it into separate parts. Right now it’s a long-winded hot mess, so if you manage to make any sense of it, BIG PROPS TO YOU. lol …and if you manage to read it ALL, you have my solemn respect!!! in a day when reading has been reduced to just catchy headliners and short captions of images once in a while. The consequence of this one-liner internet culture is non-linear, tunnel thinking, which is baaaaaad.
There lives among us a most enigmatic and charismatic creature named Paul Jaisini who led me into the wonderful world of art, not personally, but through descriptions of his artworks in essays written and published online by his friend, which painted the most fascinating images in my mind. Early on as a kiddo, I experimented with photography, simple point and shoot whatever looked attractive to me. Digital manipulation of my photographs with computer software followed… and somehow I learned useful drawing techniques along the way to combine existing elements with nonexistent ones, which allowed me to elevate the context for my ideas. Later, I started creating my own digital art from scratch for my friends and family as a favorite pastime. They would shower me with praise and repeatedly encouraged me to share my “different” vision with the rest of the world… it took a while and wasn’t easy to overcome the insecurity of not being good enough along with a gripping fear of being harshly criticized, but one day I woman-ed up and started publishing my work on the web, reminding myself that my livelihood didn’t depend on a positive reception.
Paul Jaisini’s role in all this has been to not disgrace myself, even if what I do is just a hobby. And I would never do him and other genius artists the disservice of calling myself a professional because I know I’ll never be as good as any of the GIANTS of pre-modern history. Be the best or be nothing, no middle ground.
People’s jealousy in the past, future and present over my obsessive love of Paul Jaisini, which they are well aware is purely plutonic, has caused them to despise the man and has made many relationships/friendships impossible for me. I refuse to have such people in my life because by harboring any negativity towards Paul, they unknowingly feel that way about me and express it to me. It’s their own problem for not realizing this. Paul’s new art movement, Gleitzeit, shaped me into the allegedly awesome girl I am today, giving my art more edge, more “sexy” because it refined my vision of the world and propelled me to attain the skills necessary to not dishonor my family name through tenacious pursuit of perfection. Since the beginning of my life, I attempted to depict what I saw in visual, musical and literal forms, but continuously failed without adequate training and determination. Paul Jaisini’s Gleitzeit was the answer to my prayers. Who I am today I owe mostly to him and his selfless ideals of the artverse that I’ve given unconditional loyalty to (he has this cool ability for hyper-vision to see whole universes, not itty bitty worlds, hence I call it an artverse instead of art world, with him in mind). So again, anyone who hates Paul Jaisini hates ME because, regardless of what he means to you, he is the most important person in my life for making me ME. The way a famous actor, dancer or singer inspires others to act, dance or sing, Paul inspired me to become a better artist, better writer, better everything. More people would understand if he was a household name because they’re wired to in society. But we’re inspiring each other all the time in our own little communities without being famous, so if someone has the ability to change even ONE person’s life immensely with creativity, it is a massive achievement. And passionate folks like myself are compelled to scream it from the cyber rooftops. So here I am. It’s whatever.
Furthermore, I’d like to address here a few pressing matters in light of some recent drama brought on by both strangers and former friends. To start, I never judge the passions, interests or likes of others, which are often in my face all over the place, so likewise they have no right to judge any of mine. It is quite unfortunate and frustrating how very little understanding and education the majority of people have or want to have. Their logic is as primitive as a chipmunk when it comes to promotion of fine art on the web: “spamming, advertising, report!” It’s their own problem that they fail to understand what it’s about due to the distorted lens through which they see the world or inability to think for themselves; an inherent lack of perception or inquisitiveness. Well, guess what? Every single image, every animation, every video, every post dedicated to Mr. Paul Jaisini and “Gleitziet” (to elaborate: a revolutionary new art movement Paul founded with his partner in crime and personal friend, EYKG, who discovered him and believed in him more than anyone) has an important purpose. Every one of those things you run across is a piece of a puzzle, a move in a game, an inch down a rabbit hole; the deeper you go, the more interesting it gets; the more levels you pass, the more clues unfold, the greater the suspense and nearer the conclusion (yet further). You earn awesome rewards like enlightenment, spiritual revelations, truths, knowledge, wisdom and the most profound reward of all: the drive to improve yourself to the absolute maximum, so an unending, unshakable drive. People often make a wrong turn in this cyber game and go back a few levels or get stuck. Those that keep on pushing, however, will come to find the effort has been worth it. And what awaits you in the end of it all? The greatest challenge to beating the game: YOUR OWN MIND. You will be forced to let go of every belief you held before you had reached the last level, to completely alter your mindset and perception of the world, of life, of yourself. But by the time you’ve gotten to that point, it will be as easy as falling off a cliff! (It is a kind of suicide after all — death and rebirth of spirit.)
Paul Jaisini does NOT, *I repeat* does NOT use mystery and obscurity to his advantage as a clever marketing ploy, no, he’s too next level for that with a consciousness so rich, he should wear a radioactive warning sign (he’ll melt your brain, best wear a tinfoil hat in his presence as I certainly would.) The statement he makes is loud and clear, hidden in plain site for those who take the time to connect the dots and have enough curiosity to fuel their journey into unknown territory (an open mind and flexible perception helps a lot). Actually, anyone with an IQ above 90 is sure to figure it out sooner or later. Hint: You don’t have to SEE an extraordinary thing with your eyes to know it exists, to understand it and realize its greatness — you can only feel it in your bone marrow, your spinal fluid, your heart and soul. The moment you do figure it out, as the skeleton key of the human soul, it will unlock the greatness and massive potential buried deep within, changing the doomed direction humanity is undoubtedly headed. I don’t speak in riddles, I speak in a clear direct way that intelligent humans will understand, so I’m counting on them.
GIG is an international group of artists and writers that support Paul Jaisini’s Gleitzeit. We started off as an unofficial fan club of Jaisini in 1996, comprised of only 6 individuals spanning 3 countries, and eventually escalated in status to an official fan group across the entire globe. A decade later it had grown to hundreds of fans. Nearly another decade later, there are thousands. Let’s not leave out another delightful group of vicious haters that have been around for nearly as long as us since the late 90s and have also grown in impressive numbers. Now, for the record (and please write this one down because I’m sick of repeating myself), Paul Jaisini himself is not part of our group and has nothing to do with us. He loves and hates us equally for butchering his name and making him appear as a narcissistic nut-job in his own words. He casts hexes on us for the blinding flash we layer over the art that members contribute to GIG — “disgusting-police-lights, seizure-inducing-laser-lightshow, bourgeois-myspace-effects retarded-raver shit” in Paul’s words. Ahh, how we love his sweet-talking us. In a desperate attempt to please him, those among us who make the art and animations have spent countless hours and sleepless nights trying to solve a crazy-complex quantum-physics type of equation = how to not create tacky or tasteless content. He does fancy some of it now, we got better, that’s something! In the reason stated below, our mission just got out of hand at some point.
What little is known about Paul Jaisini, even in all this time, is he’s a horrible perfectionist who slaughtered hundreds of innocent babies — I mean — artworks of remarkable beauty created by his own right hand (mostly paintings, some watercolors and drawings). He’s a fierce recluse who wants nothing to do with anyone or anything in life. But those few of us who know of an incredible talent he possesses (one could go as far as calling it a superpower), could not allow him to live his life without the recognition he FUCKING DESERVES more than any artist out there living today and, arguably, yesterday. We use whatever means necessary to reach more people, lots of flash and razzle-dazzle to lure them into our sinister trap of a higher awareness. Mwahaha! The visual boom you’ve witnessed in both cyber and real worlds, that is GIG’s doing — two damn decades of spreading an art virus — IVA. InVisibleArtitis… or a drug as in Intravenous Art. It’s whatever you want it to be, honey.
Our Gleitzeit International Group (GIG) started off innocently enough and gradually spiraled out of control to fight the haters, annoying the hell out of them as much as humanly possible. They don’t like what we do? WE DO MORE AND MORE OF IT. But never without purpose, without a carefully executed plan in mind collectively. If we have to tolerate an endless tidal wave of everyone’s vomit — e.g., idiotic memes and comics; dumbed-down one-liner quotes; selfies; so-called “art photography” passed through one-click app filters; mindless scribbles or random splatters by regular folks who have the nerve to call themselves serious/pro artists; primitive images of pets, babies, landscapes, random objects, etc… then people sure as shit are gonna tolerate what we put out, our animated and non-animated visual art designed for our beloved master, Paul Jaisini, who has shown us the light, the right path to follow, taught us great things and done so much for us — and so in our appreciation of him, we stamp his name on everything, for the sacrifices he has made in the name of art, to save our art verse, he’s a goddamn hero. There’s a book being written in his dedication where little will be left to the imagination about him.
If Paul Jaisini was as famous as Koons or Hirst, for example, people would know it’s not him posting stuff online with his name on it but fans creating fanart like myself among others. But noooooo, such a thing is unfathomable to most people - the promotion of another artist. Like, what’s in it for us? Uhh, nothing?? This is all NON-PROFIT bitches, the way art should be. It’s a passion FIRST, a commodity/commercial product/marketable item LAST and least. Its been that way for us since the early 90s to this day. Not a single member of GIG has sold an art work (neither has Paul Jaisini who’s a true professional) and we want to keep it that way. We do it for reasons far beyond ego. So advertising? Really? How the hell do you advertise or sell thin air, you know, invisible paintings, invisible anything? Ha ha, very funny indeed. The idea here is so simple, your neighbor’s dog can grasp it. Our motives: replace fast food for the mind with fine art, actual fine art. You know, creativity? Conscious thought? Talent? Skill? Knowledge? All that good stuff rolled into one to bring viewers more than a momentary ooohand aaahh reaction. Replace the recycled images ad nauseum; repetitious, worn-out ideas; disposable, gimmicky, money-driven fast art for simpletons. Stick with the highest of ideals and save the whole bloody planet.
Fine art is often confused with craft-making. This often creates bad blood between classically trained artists who put out paintings that leave a lasting impression, that make strong conversation pieces, that are thought-provoking and deep… and trained craftspeople whose skills are adequate to create decorative pieces for homely environments — landscapes, still lifes, animals, pretty fairies, common things of fantasy, and other simplicity. Skills alone are not enough for high art, you need a vision, a purpose, the ability to tell a story with every stroke of your brush that will both fascinate and terrify the viewers, arousing powerful emotions, illuminating. I have yet to see a visible painting in my generation that does anything at all for me, other than evoke sheer outrage and disgust. What a terrible waste of space and valuable resources it all is.
Paul Jaisini leads, we follow. He wishes to remain unknown - so do most of us. I’m next in line, slipping into recluse mode, no longer wanting to attach my face, my human image to my art stuff. I wish to be a nameless, faceless artist as well, invisible like P.J., and in his footsteps I too have destroyed thousands of my own artistic photography and digital art made with tedious, labor-intensive handwork. The whole point of this destruction is achieving the finest results possible by letting go of the imperfect, purging it on a regular basis, to make way for the perfect. I love what I do so it doesn’t matter, I know I’ll keep producing as much as I’m discarding, keeping the balance. Hoarding is an enemy of progress, especially the digital kind as there’s absolutely no limit to it. It’s like carrying a load of bricks on your back you’ll never use or need.
The watering down of creativity that digital pack ratting has caused as observed over the years is most tragic. For the creative individual, relying on terabytes of stock photos or OSFAP as I call them (Once Size Fits All Photos) instead of making your own as you used to when you had no choice, being 100% original, is a splinter in the conscience. It’s not evil to use stock of, say, things you don’t have access to (outer space, deep sea, Antarctica, etc.), but many digital artists I know today can’t take their own shot of a pencil ‘cause they “ain’t got no time for that!” How did they have time before? Did time get so compressed in only a decade?
Ohhhhh, and the edits, textures, filters, plug-ins and what-have-you available out there to everyone and their cats… are responsible for the tidal wave of rubbish that eclipses the magnificent light of the real talents.
I can tell you with utmost sincerity there is no better feeling on earth than knowing your creation is ALL yours, every pixel and dot, from the first to the last. It’s not always possible to make it so, but definitely the most rewarding endeavor. I’m most proud of myself when I can accomplish that.
Back to Paul Jaisini, from the start there have been a number of theories floating around on what his real story is. One of my own theories is that he stands for the unknowns of the world who can’t get representation, can’t get exhibited at a decent gallery because highly gifted/trained artists aren’t good enough - those kind of establishments prefer bananas, balloon dogs, feces, gigantic dicks/cunts, and all kinds of what-the-fucks…
So again, you don’t get the Paul Jaisini thing? That’s your problem. Don’t hate others for getting it. People are good, very good, at making baseless assumptions and impulsively spewing it as truth. They criticize and judge as if they’re high authorities on the subject yet they clearly lack education in fine art or art history and possess little to no talent or skill to back up their bullshit. My little “credibility radar” never fails. When they say I know this or I know that, I reply don’t say “I know” or state things as fact as a general rule of thumb - instead say “I assume/believe” and state the reasons you feel thus to appear less immature, especially about a controversial topic like invisible art. I have zero respect or tolerance for egomaniacs who think they know it all and act accordingly like arrogant pricks. Who can stand those, right? Once again, a good example would be: I, Stelly Riesling, believe everything I’ve written in this little manifesto to be correct based on personal experience and observation from multiple angles, thorough research and sufficient data collected from verifiable sources (and don’t go copying-pasting my own words back at me, be original). Just because you or I say so doesn’t make it so. Just because you or me think or believe so doesn’t make it true or right. I only ask that my opinions are regarded respectfully and whoever opposes them does so in a mature, civilized manner. We should only be entitled to opinions that don’t bring out the worst in us.
I don’t normally take such a position, but the time has come to stand up for what I believe in! It’s quite amusing and comical how haters think calling me names, attacking me or my interests or members of the project I’m part of for years is going to change something. It only makes more evident the importance of what I’m doing so I push on harder still.
Words of advise to those who can identify with me, with my frustrations over people’s reluctance to change their miserable ways, with our declining art world…
DON’T waste time on people who sweat the small stuff, whose actions are consistently inconsistent with their words. DO waste time on people who always keep their eye on the ball—the bigger picture of life.
Paul Jaisini’s invisible paintings are more than hype, more than your lame assumptions. Here’s one I got that’s pure gold: a cult! It started out as A JOKE OF MINE that was used against me. I told a then-good friend that he should come join our little “art cult” in a clearly lighthearted manner, and later he takes this idea I put in his head first and accuses me of being in an (imaginary) cult—the jokes on me eh?. But wait, aren’t cults religious? Our group consists of people around the world of different faiths (or none at all) so how could that ever work? If religion was about making fine (non-pop) art mainstream and bringing awesome, fresh, futuristic concepts to the collective consciousness, the world would not be so fucked up today because talent, creativity, originality and individuality would be the main focus, not superficial poppycock; those things would be praised and encouraged and supported in society by all institutions, not demonized and stigmatized.
Here is one thing I CAN state as solid fact: only one person close to Paul Jaisini knows the TRUE story, or at least some of it: EYKG. Everything else that has ever been said about him is myth, legend, gossip, speculation, the worst of which is said by jealous non-artists (wannabes, clones, posers, hang-ons, unoriginal ppl in general) and anti-artists (religious psychos, squares, losers and -duh- stupid ppl). Sadly, people are unable to see the bigger picture by letting their egos run their lives or repeating after others as parrots.
Commercial art, consumerism, and ignorance of the masses truly makes me want to curl up in a ball, not eat or drink or move until I die, just die in my sleep while dreaming of a better world, a world where real fine artists rule it with real fine art as they used to and life is beautiful once again….
Well I hope that settled THAT for now, or perhaps inadvertently made matters worse. I hope I didn’t sound too pissed from all these issues that keep popping up like penises on ChatRoulette… just got to me already! Can you tell? I had to put my foot down, stomp ‘em all!
To be continued, still lots more ignorance and pettiness to battle… Till then peace out my bambini. MWAH!
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
MANIFESTO GLEITZEIT 2015
PROLOGUE
Paul Jaisini was like a messiah, as you wish, who saw/understood the impending end and complete degeneration of Fine art or Art become and investment nothing more than that. He predicted the bubble pops art when everybody would eventually become an artist, including dogs cats and horses, because they as kids followed the main rule: express yourself without skills or knowledge or any aesthetic concerns. J. Pollack started pouring paints onto canvases; Julian Schnabel, former cab driver from NY, suddenly decided he could do better than what he saw displayed in galleries, so he started gluing dishes on canvases; A.Warhol, an industrial artist who made commercial silk-screen for the factories he worked in, started to exhibit "Campbell's soup" used for commercial adds... and later the thing that made him an "American Idol": by copying and pasting Hollywood celebrities (same type of posters he made before for movie theaters).
When Paul Jaisini stood out against the Me culture in the US by burning all of his own 120 brilliant paintings (according to the then-new director of Fort Worth MoMa Museum, who offered hin an exhibition of his art in 1992, and later the Metropolitan Museum curator, Phillippe de Montebello, in 1994).Paul probably assumed all fellow true fine artists would join him or stand by him against corruption of the art world.
And after 20 years of his stand-off...the time has finally come today. Many artists and humanitarians around the world took a place beside him. His invisible Paintings became a synonym for the future reincarnation of fine art and long lost harmony. The establishment is in panic! The "moneybags" (as Paul Jaisini named them) are in panic, because they invested BILLIONS of dollars in real crap made by
craftsmen. Now they realize that the reputation of American legends of expressionism was nothing but a copy of Russian avant-garde" Kazimir Malevich, Vasiliy Kandinsky and tens of others from France and Germany.. US tycoon investors were spending billions on "Me more original, than you". "Artist Shit" is a 1061 artwork by the Italian artist Piero Manzoni. The work consists of 90 tin cans, filled with feces. A tin can was sold for £124,000, 180,000 at Sothebys, 2007.
EPILOGUE
Before I resume promoting and admiring a very important art persona on today's international art arena, I'd like to clear up some BIG questions; people ask continuously and subconsciously, directly & indirectly: "Why does the name Paul Jaisini, flood the Internet in such "obnoxious" quantities that it's started suppressing some other activities that my friends might share with the rest of the Internet's Ego Me only Me www society? I can't just answer this... so I'll try to explain why I'm writing this: Jaisini's followers keep posting art and info about,
He IMHO the only hope in quickly decomposing visual fine art. "Paul Jaisini realized many years ago, in 1994, when he declared (at that time to himself only) the start of a New era, a New vision, that he is trying to redirect from the rat race, started by an establishment in post-war New York, long before the Internet culture.
Sub related information: Adolf Gottlieb, Mart Rothko, etc (after visiting Paris France in 1933):
"We must forget analytical art, we must express ourselves, as a 5 year old child would, without a developed consciousness. Forget about results - do what you feel, EXPRESS yourself with your own unique style"
With this statement Mark Rothko starts to teach his students, degeneration of fine art begins, and the generation of war of styles took a start signal of the material race, greatly rewarded by establishment "individual" - eccentric craftsmen - show business clowns.
Sub related Information: In the summer of 1936, Adolf Gottlieb painted more than 800 paintings, which was 20X more than he created in his whole art career as a painter, starting from the time of Gottlieb becomes a founding member of "The Ten" group in NYC "Group of Ten" was a very peculiar, enigmatic group... Based on a religious point of view;(where a human figure was prohibited from being created)
GLOSSARY
IN 1997, Paul Jaisini's best friend Ellen Y.K.Gottlieb started a cyber campaign by promoting on a very young Internet, back then, Paul Jaisini's burned paintings as Invisible Paintings, visible only through poetic essays. She and a handful of people saw his originals and were devastated that nobody could ever see them again. "We, his fans, believe that someday Paul will recreate his 120 burned paintings if he has any decency and moral obligation to his fans, who have dedicated decades to make it happen, for their Phoenix to rise from the ashes and the whole world will witness that all these years we spent to get him back to re-paint the Visuals again were not in vain," - said E.Y.K.Gottlieb in 2014 during the 20th anniversary celebration of Invisible Paintings to GIGroup in NYCity. So now, hopefully, this clears up why I and others do what we do - our "cyber terrorism" of good art, dedicated to Paul Jaisini's return, which is & and was our mission & our goal. We post good art to fight "troll art" which is worthless pics, after being passed through 1-click filters of free web apps. We are, in fact, against this www pops pollution, done with "bubble art" by the out of control masses with 5 billon pics a day: Pics of cats, memes, quotes,national geographic sunsets and waterfalls, not counting their own daily "selfies: and whatever self-indulging Me-ego-Me affairs, sponsored happily by photo gadget companies like Canon, Nikon, Sony...who churn out higher quality madness tools at lower cost.
This way Government taking away attention from the real world crisis of lowest morality & economical devastation. The masses are too easily re-engineered/manipulated by the Establishment PopsStyle delivered to them by pop music and Hollywood "super" stars. In 1992 Paul Jaisini's Gleitzeit theory predict such a massive, pops self-entertain madness, following technologicalexplosion, but not in illusive scales.
Uber Aless @2015 NYC USA
NOTE Date's numbers and events can be slightly inaccurate.
#gleitzeit #paul-jaisini #invisible #painting #art #futurism #art-news,
Breast cancer is relevant with all the illness wherever malignant cells build within the breasts. These malignant cells produce most generally inside the internal lining of milk ducts.Please visit our website for more details www.protonbeamtherapy.org/how-proton-treatment-works/
Highway 25 in New Mexico carried us from Albuquerque to Las Cruces on our road trip to Tucson Arizona. The highway provided beautiful views of sky, clouds, and Rocky Mountains as it passed through a town with an unusual history to go along with its unusual name: Truth or Consequences. The town is named after a television game show that was popular in the U.S. in 1950. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_or_Consequences,_New_Mexico) I couldn't resist spending a half hour driving through town to admire its historic section which looks much like what one sees in cowboy films of the west.
Truth or Consequences is not a large town and near the highway one finds the usual modern gas stations and fast food outlets, but my interest was the historical downtown district. We pulled over for me to take a couple of photos and then realized we were in front of the Visitor's Information Center. I stepped inside to get a bit of information about the town's history and was greeted by a friendly woman at the desk who said she was originally from Minnesota. She was eager to supply me with a bit of information and I noted that she was struggling to walk to the display rack for a brochure. When I expressed concern, she said the space heater didn't reach her desk and the cold was aggravating what I assume was the arthritis that may have prompted her move to the desert climate.
As we were talking this man came through the door carrying a large box which turned out to be an additional space heater which I could tell was a welcome delivery. He was dressed in traditional western wear and my stranger antenna was sparking the moment he entered with his black, western hat and friendly face. I introduced myself and my project immediately and explained that while his western hat may be everyday attire in Truth or Consequences, it was not in Toronto where I come from. We shook hands. Meet Jimmy.
Needless to say, Jimmy was surprised by my request to photograph him for my project, but more than willing. The Information Center was an older building and had a bay window with blinds which I quickly noted would serve as a good location for the portrait. The information lady began opening the blinds but I suggested having them closed would be better for the photo but if she needed the warmth of the sunlight, I would open them for her as soon as the photo was taken.
Jimmy explained that he works for the city, hence his delivering the heater to the Information Center. "So, are you from Truth or Consequences?" I asked. He smiled. "Pretty much." He told me he is 53. He had a warm manner but I could tell he was a man of few words - especially with a complete stranger. I commented that 53 seemed young to me, especially since I just turned 70 a week ago. He smiled and was kind enough to say "Boy, you sure don't look it." After that comment, I consider Jimmy a friend indeed.
I'm sure Jimmy had places to be and we still had miles to go before reaching Tucson so we parted with a friendly handshake and I signed the guest register for the Information Center before leaving.
Thanks for the information about the area and thank you Jimmy for allowing me to photograph you for The Human Family Group.
This is my 135th submission to The Human Family Group on Flickr.
This is my 135th submission to The Human Family Group.
You can view more street portraits and stories by visiting The Human Family.
Website: www.estefaniaalmarte.com
-
La consecuencia de dejarse llevar por no saber cómo actuar mejor, por dejar que el tiempo decida, creyendo que hay un porqué para todo y que es necesario.
Berlin boasts two zoological gardens, a consequence of decades of political and administrative division of the city. The older one, called Zoo Berlin, founded in 1844, is situated in what is now called the "City West". It is the most species-rich zoo worldwide. The other one, called Tierpark Berlin ("Animal Park"), was established on the long abandoned premises of Friedrichsfelde Manor Park in the eastern borough of Lichtenberg, in 1954. Covering 160 ha, it is the largest landcape zoo in Europe.
Rund 15 Prozent der Erdoberfläche werden von Savannen bedeckt. Damit gehören sie zu den größten und wichtigsten Lebensräumen des Planeten. Seit dem 26. Mai 2023 wird Besucher*innen im Tierpark Berlin ein Einblick in diese faszinierende Landschaft gewährt und sie können mehr über die unterschiedlichen Bewohner der ostafrikanischen Savanne und ihren natürlichen Lebensraum erfahren.
Ein wahrer Höhepunkt der neuen Tierpark-Savanne ist der 120 Meter lange Giraffenpfad: Hier werden die Gäste den bis zu fünf Meter hohen Grazien der Savanne zukünftig auf Augenhöhe begegnen können – wer sich traut, bahnt sich den Weg durch den Wald bis zu den Aussichtsplattformen über eine abenteuerliche Hängebrücke. Der Tierpark Berlin erreicht mit der Eröffnung der Afrikanischen Savannenlandschaft ein neues Etappenziel auf seinem Weg zu einem Zoo der Zukunft. Seit knapp neun Jahren wird der 1955 gegründete und 160 Hektar große Tierpark Berlin zu einem naturnahen Geozoo umgebaut. Um einen Einblick in den Lebensraum der einzelnen Tierarten und deren Interaktionen, Besonderheiten und Problematiken zu ermöglichen, werden die Tiere im Tierpark größtenteils nach geografischen Gesichtspunkten zu sehen sein.
de/de/aktuelles/alle-news/artikel/wil...
Around 15 per cent of the earth's surface is covered by savannahs. This makes them one of the largest and most important habitats on the planet. Since 26 May 2023, visitors to Tierpark Berlin have been given an insight into this fascinating landscape and can learn more about the different inhabitants of the East African savannah and their natural habitat.
A true highlight of the new zoo savannah is the 120-metre-long giraffe trail: here, guests will be able to meet the up to five-metre-high graces of the savannah at eye level in future - those who dare will make their way through the forest to the viewing platforms via an adventurous suspension bridge. With the opening of the African Savannah Landscape, Tierpark Berlin has reached a new milestone on its way to becoming a zoo of the future. For almost nine years, the 160-hectare Tierpark Berlin, which was founded in 1955, has been transformed into a near-natural geozoo. In order to provide an insight into the habitat of the individual animal species and their interactions, peculiarities and problems, the animals in the zoo will largely be seen according to geographical aspects.
Sierra County Sheriff's Office 2006 -2010 Dodge charger and Eleventh-generation Ford F-150 . Truth or Consequences ( T or C ) Is the County seat of Sierra County .
I try not to bring politics into Flickr but this image is perhaps timely in many ways - we seem to be moving into a world of extremes where differences have no middle ground. Just as these kids were partying hard and loud, like they were the only ones on an otherwise crowded beach and there was no tomorrow, I think it's dangerous not to think of the consequences. Hopefully, cooler heads will prevail.
Berlin boasts two zoological gardens, a consequence of decades of political and administrative division of the city. The older one, called Zoo Berlin, founded in 1844, is situated in what is now called "City West". It is the most species-rich zoo worldwide. The other one, called Tierpark Berlin ("Animal Park"), was established on the long abandoned premises of Friedrichsfelde Palace Park in the eastern borough of Lichtenberg, in 1954. Covering 160 ha, it is the largest landcape zoo in Europe. And honouring its past as landscape park, it still has large gardened areas.
A gibbet is any instrument of public execution (including guillotine, executioner's block, impalement stake, hanging gallows, or related scaffold). Gibbeting is the use of a gallows-type structure from which the dead or dying bodies of criminals were hanged on public display to deter other existing or potential criminals. Occasionally, the gibbet was also used as a method of execution, with the criminal being left to die of exposure, thirst and/or starvation. The practice of placing a criminal on display within a gibbet is also called "hanging in chains".
Display
Gibbeting was a common law punishment, which a judge could impose in addition to execution. As a sentence for murder, this practice was codified in England by the Murder Act 1751. It was most often used for traitors, robbers, murderers, highwaymen, and pirates and was intended to discourage others from committing similar offenses. The structures were therefore often placed next to public highways (frequently at crossroads) and waterways.
Exhibiting a body could backfire against a monarch, especially if the monarch was unpopular. The rebels Henry of Montfort and Henry of Wylynton, enemies of Edward II, were drawn and hanged before being exhibited on a gibbet near Bristol. However, the people made relics of these bloody and mutilated remains out of respect and later used the relics in violent protest. Miracles were even reported at the spot where the bodies were hanging.
Although the intention was deterrence, the public response was complex. Samuel Pepys expressed disgust at the practice. There was Christian objection that prosecution of criminals should end with their death. The sight and smell of decaying corpses was offensive and regarded as "pestilential", so it was seen as a threat to public health.
Pirates were sometimes executed by hanging on a gibbet erected close to the low-water mark by the sea or a tidal section of a river. Their bodies would be left dangling until they had been submerged by the tide three times. In London, Execution Dock is located on the north bank of the River Thames in Wapping; after tidal immersion, particularly notorious criminals' bodies could be hung in cages a little farther downstream at either Cuckold's Point or Blackwall Point, as a warning to other waterborne criminals of the possible consequences of their actions (such a fate befell Captain William Kidd in May 1701). There were objections that these displays offended foreign visitors and did not uphold the reputation of the law, though the scenes even became gruesome tourist attractions.
Variants
In some cases, the bodies would be left until their clothes rotted or even until the bodies were almost completely decomposed, after which the bones would be scattered.
In cases of drawing and quartering, the body of the criminal was cut into four or five portions, with the several parts often gibbeted in different places.
So that the public display might be prolonged, bodies were sometimes coated in tar or bound in chains. Sometimes, body-shaped iron cages were used to contain the decomposing corpses. For example, in March 1743 in the town of Rye, East Sussex, Allen Grebell was murdered by John Breads. Breads was imprisoned in the Ypres Tower and then hanged, after which his body was left to rot for more than 20 years in an iron cage on Gibbet Marsh. The cage, with Breads's skull clamped within the headframe, is still kept in the town hall.
Another example of the cage variation is the gibbet iron, on display at the Atwater Kent Museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The cage, created in 1781, was intended to be used to display the body of convicted pirate Thomas Wilkinson, so that sailors on passing ships might be warned of the consequences of piracy; Wilkinson's planned execution never took place, so the gibbet was never used.
Historical examples
Antiquity
The Old Testament and Torah law forbid gibbeting beyond sundown of the day that the body is hanged on the tree. Public crucifixion with prolonged display of the body after death can be seen as a form of gibbeting. Gibbeting was one of the methods said by Tacitus and Cassius Dio to have been used by Boudica's army in the massacre of Roman settlers in the destruction of Camulodunum (Colchester), Londinium (London) and Verulamium (St. Albans) in AD 60–61.
Bermuda
During the 17th and 18th centuries, gibbets were a common sight in Bermuda. Located in Smith's Parish at the entrance to Flatt's Inlet is Gibbet Island, which was used to hang the bodies of escaped slaves as a deterrent to others. The small island was used for this purpose because it was not on the mainland and therefore satisfied the beliefs of locals who did not want gibbets near their homes.
Canada
The gibbet in which Marie-Josephte Corriveau was exhibited after her execution, the "cage" of La Corriveau
Marie-Josephte Corriveau (1733–1763), better known as "La Corriveau", is one of the most popular figures in Québécois folklore. She lived in New France, was sentenced to death by a military tribunal of twelve British officers for the murder of her second husband, was hanged for it, and her body hung in chains. Her story has become legendary in Quebec, and she is the subject of numerous books and plays.
During the Napoleonic Wars, the Royal Navy used Hangman's Beach on McNab's Island in Halifax Harbour to display the hanged bodies of deserters, in order to deter the crews of passing warships.
Colony of New South Wales
A rocky outcrop not far into Port Jackson – originally called Mat-te-wan-ye in the local Aboriginal language, later renamed Rock Island by Governor Arthur Phillip but today known as Pinchgut Island and the location of Fort Denison – was a gibbeting site. It took its name after a convict, Thomas Hill, was sentenced to a week on the rock in iron chains sustained by only bread and water; the conditions literally pinched his gut, hence the name. The rock was levelled in the 1790s, and a gibbet installed in 1796. Francis Morgan, transported for life to New South Wales after being convicted of murder in 1793, killed again in 1796 and was hanged in chains on Pinchgut in November 1796. His dead body, later a skeleton, remained on display on the island for four years.
England
The head of Oliver Cromwell was displayed on a spike after his death, after monarchists disinterred his body during the restoration of the monarchy.
Robert Aske, who led the rebellion against Henry VIII known as Pilgrimage of Grace, was hanged in chains in 1537.
Germany
The leaders of the Anabaptist movement in Münster were executed in 1536; their dead bodies were gibbeted in iron cages hanging from the steeple of St. Lambert's Church, and the cages are still on display there today. Similarly, following his execution by hanging in 1738, the corpse of Jewish financier Joseph Süß Oppenheimer was gibbeted in a human-sized bird cage that hung outside of Stuttgart on the so-called Pragsattel (the public execution place at the time) for six years, until the inauguration of Karl Eugen, Duke of Württemberg, who permitted the hasty burial of his corpse at an unknown location.
The Netherlands
After the siege and capture of the city of Zutphen in 1591 by the Anglo-Dutch army, the English dug up the body of the former English commander Rowland York and hanged and gibbeted it as a reminder of York's treachery in 1587. He had handed over the Zutphen sconce to the Spaniards after the English army under the Earl of Leicester was defeated by the Spaniards in the Battle of Zutphen.
Iran
In 838, the Iranian hero Babak Khorramdin had his hands and feet cut off by the Abbasid Caliphate and was then gibbeted alive while sewn into a cow's skin with the horns at ear level to crush his head gradually as the skin dried out.
Malta
On 4 February 1820, six British pirates were hanged on their vessel in the middle of the harbour at Valletta. Thereafter, their bodies were hung in gibbets erected at the bastions of Fort Ricolli. Lieutenant Hobson of HMS Spey, in the tender Frederick, had apprehended them and their vessel in the harbour at Smyrna.
United States
During the colonial era, Bird Island and Nix's Mate island in Boston Harbor were used for gibbeting pirates and sailors executed for crimes in Massachusetts. Their bodies were left hanging as a warning to sailors coming into the harbor and approaching Boston. In 1755, a slave named Mark was hanged in Cambridge, Massachusetts and then gibbeted in chains in Charlestown, Massachusetts; twenty years later, Paul Revere passed the remains of Mark on his famous ride.
Six men were executed by gibbeting under civil authority in the Southern Colonies.[18] In Virginia, three men accused of piracy were executed by gibbeting in 1700. In South Carolina, three men were executed by gibbeting: one accused of poisoning in 1744, and two accused of murder in 1754 and 1759.
There have been no recorded executions using this method under the authority of the United States. However, a gang of Cuban pirates were gibbeted in New York c. 1815.
Last recorded gibbetings
Afghanistan
The January 1921 issue of National Geographic Magazine contains two photographs of gibbet cages, referenced as "man-cages," in use in Afghanistan. Commentary included with the photograph indicates that the gibbet was a practice still in active use. Persons sentenced to death were placed alive in the cage and remained there until some undefined time weeks or months after their deaths.
Australia
In 1837, five years after the practice had ceased in England, the body of John McKay was gibbeted near the spot where he had murdered Joseph Wilson near Perth, in the colony of Van Diemen's Land. There was a great outcry, but the body was not removed until an acquaintance of Wilson passed the spot and, horrified by the spectacle of McKay's rotting corpse, pleaded with the authorities to remove it. The place where this occurred was just to the right (when travelling towards Launceston, not to be confused with the private road with the same name) on the Midlands Highway on the northern side of Perth.
In the Colony of Western Australia, gibbeting of executed Indigenous people continued into the mid-1850s. In 1855, Aboriginal men Yandan and Yoongal were executed in Perth for separate murders, with their bodies then "conveyed under escort to York, there to be suspended in some conspicuous part of the district, where such a spectacle would be likely to prove a warning, and prevent a repetition of the murders which have of late been prevalent in the neighbourhood".
United Kingdom
The Murder Act 1751 stipulated that "in no case whatsoever shall the body of any murderer be suffered to be buried"; the cadaver was either to be publicly dissected or left "hanging in chains". The use of gibbeting had been in decline for some years before it was formally repealed by statute in 1834. In Scotland, the final case of gibbeting was that of Alexander Gillan in 1810. The last two men gibbeted in England were William Jobling and James Cook, both in 1832. Their cases are good examples of the changing attitudes toward the practice.
William Jobling was a miner hanged and gibbeted for the murder of Nicholas Fairles, a colliery owner and local magistrate, near Jarrow, Durham. After being hanged, the body was taken off the rope and loaded into a cart and taken on a tour of the area before arriving at Jarrow Slake, where the crime had been committed. Here, the body was placed into an iron gibbet cage. The cage and the scene were described thus:
The body was encased in flat bars of iron of two and a half inches in breadth, the feet were placed in stirrups, from which a bar of iron went up each side of the head, and ended in a ring by which he was suspended; a bar from the collar went down the breast, and another down the back, there were also bars in the inside of the legs which communicated with the above; and crossbars at the ankles, the knees, the thighs, the bowels the breast and the shoulders; the hands were hung by the side and covered with pitch, the face was pitched and covered with a piece of white cloth.
The gibbet was a one-foot (30 cm) in diameter with strong bars of iron up each side. The post was fixed into a one-and-a-half-long-ton (1,500 kg) stone base sunk into the Slake. The body was soon removed by fellow miners and given a decent burial.
James Cook was a bookbinder convicted of the murder of his creditor Paas, a manufacturer of brass instruments, in Leicester. During an attempted robbery, Cook beat Paas to death, and then took the body to his home, where he cut it into pieces and burned it to try to hide the evidence of the crime. He was executed on Friday, 10 August 1832, in front of Leicester prison. Afterwards:
The head was shaved and tarred, to preserve it from the action of the weather; and the cap in which he had suffered was drawn over his face. On Saturday afternoon his body, attired as at the time of his execution, having been firmly fixed in the irons necessary to keep the limbs together, was carried to the place of its intended suspension.
His body was to be displayed on a purpose-built gallows 33 feet (10 m) high in Saffron Lane near the Aylestone Tollgate. According to The Newgate Calendar:
Thousands of persons were attracted to the spot, to view this novel but most barbarous exhibition; and considerable annoyance was felt by persons resident in the neighbourhood of the dreadful scene. Representations were in consequence made to the authorities, and on the following Tuesday morning instructions were received from the Home Office directing the removal of the gibbet.
Hanging a body in chains was a post execution punishment that was used for those criminals who had committed heinous crimes. Smugglers were not usually hung in chains post execution. However during the mid nineteenth century a smuggling gang known as the Hawkhurst Gang, operated along the South coast of England between Kent and Dorset; their violent crimes coincided with the authorities desire to punish smugglers on the South coast and deter others from smuggling. Of the 75 members of the gang that were caught and convicted 14 were sentenced to gibbeting. Unusually the bodies were distributed around the area as a deterrent, rather than near where they lived, or the scene of the crime.
Although the practice of gibbeting had been abandoned by 1834 in Britain, during the British Raj of India in 1843, Charles James Napier threatened to have such structures built in parallel to any attempt to practice Sati, the ritualized burning of widows, to execute the perpetrators.
In popular culture
Works of art depicting gibbeting include:
Known as "Le Gibet", the second movement of composer Maurice Ravel's piano suite Gaspard de la nuit is based on the poems of Aloysius Bertrand.
The 2006 film Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest features a prisoner in a gibbet in one of the opening scenes, where he is graphically pecked to death by crows.
In the 1988 fantasy classic Willow, Val Kilmer's character Madmartigan is suspended in a gibbet at the beginning of the film.
Crow cages and other forms of gibbeting are shown in the 1982 film Conan the Barbarian.
Sweeney Todd the Barber, sung by Stanley Holloway in his album, 'Ere's 'Olloway, refers to Sweeney Todd's demise: "And there on the gibbet/He hangs in his chains..."
South Shields is a coastal town in South Tyneside, Tyne and Wear, England; it is on the south bank of the mouth of the River Tyne. The town was once known in Roman times as Arbeia and as Caer Urfa by the Early Middle Ages. It is the fourth largest settlement in Tyne and Wear, after Newcastle upon Tyne, Sunderland and Gateshead.
Historically within the ceremonial county of Durham, South Shields is south of North Shields and Tynemouth across the River Tyne; and east of Newcastle upon Tyne and Jarrow.
The first settlers of the South Shields area were the Brigantes, although there is no evidence they built a settlement at South Shields. The Romans built a fort there to help supply Hadrian's Wall. Many ruins still exist today. The fort was abandoned as the empire declined.
In the 6th century, northeast England became a centre of education as part of the Kingdom of Northumbria. The Vikings raided the area in the 9th century, establishing settlements and controlling most of northern England.
The town was founded in 1245, and developed as a fishing port. Salt-panning became began in 1499. During the Civil War, parliament's Scottish allies captured the town, leading the royalists to flee south, leading to the Battle of Boldon Hill.
In the Victorian era, coal mining led to a boom in the town, increasing from 12,000 in 1801 to 75,000 by the 1860s. The rapid growth made sanitation a problem. In the 1850s, shipbuilding became a prominent industry.
Zeppelin airships attacked the town in World War I, and Nazi air raids caused damage and death in World War II. Throughout the 20th century, industry declined and services and tourism played an increasing role in the economy.
Foundation and Roman Times
The earliest inhabitants of the area were the Brigantes, a strong and fiercely independent Briton tribe however there is no evidence to suggest they built a settlement where the present day town now stands. It was John Leland in the 16th century who first suggested the town had been known as 'Caer Urfa.' The Brythonic word 'Caer' meaning a fortified place or seat of royal power, 'Urfa' is suggested to be a simple corruption of 'Vide Infra' the Aramaic name for the Roman stronghold.[1] (broken link)
A large Roman fort has been excavated in South Shields on the Lawe Top, overlooking the River Tyne; it has been the setting for an investigation by the Channel 4 archaeological television programme Time Team. Founded c. AD 120 the fort is mentioned in The Notitia Dignitatum (a list of forts and bases compiled in the 4th century) where it is referred to as Arbeia. Arbeia, meaning "place of the Arabs" (one of the garrisons being the Tigris Boatmen from modern day Iraq), was intended as the maritime supply fort for Hadrian's Wall, and contains the only permanent stone-built granaries yet found in Britain. It was occupied until the Romans left Britain in the 5th century. A Roman gatehouse and barracks have been reconstructed on their original foundations, while a museum holds artefacts such as an altarpiece to a previously unknown god, and a Roman-era gravestone set up by a native Palmyrene to his freedwoman and wife, a Briton of the Catuvellauni tribe. There is also a tablet with the name of the emperor Alexander Severus (died 235) chiselled off. The fort was at the end of a road named Wrekendike, connected to a larger road which led between Newcastle (Pons Aelivs) and Chester-Le-Street (Congangis); parts of this road are still visible in Wrekenton near Gateshead. The Romans also built a small wharf in nearby Marsden Bay for the purposes of loading sandstone from a quarry. The wharf's remnants are still extant, although time and tide have left little to see. Arbeia was abandoned by the Romans c. 400, when Emperor Honorius informed the people of Britain that they must look to their own country's defence. One of the many peoples to take advantage of the Roman Empire's collapse were the Anglo-Saxons.
Dark Ages
Britain in the 6th century is often considered a confused and violent place, the Romans taking their laws, gods and legions with them, when they left. However, the north east of England became a centre of learning and education, a beacon of light throughout Europe. King Oswald of Northumbria united the kingdoms of Bernicia to the north of the River Tees and Deira to the South creating the powerful and influential Kingdom of Northumbria. In AD 647 King Oswy of Northumbria (Oswald's Brother)[2] at the request of St. Aidan allowed a monastery to be built. The site today is in the very town centre of South Shields and is named St. Hilda's Church although the original Anglo-Saxon building is but a remnant under the present Norman nave. St. Hilda's was one of many monastic institutions along the coast of north east England including Jarrow, where the Venerable Bede lived and worked.
C. AD 865 the monastery at St. Hilda's was raided by the Vikings . However the Vikings or Danes weren't just raiders; they created settlements, brought new customs, laws and Gods, effectively controlling all of northern England. This form of government was known as the Danelaw. The Anglian (or Danish) influence can be seen to this day; the Geordie accent which contains words of Danish origin and has many more Anglo-Saxon pronunciations than standard English.
Middle Ages
In 1100 the Normans built St Hilda's church where the nunnery once stood, in the town's market place. The church remains one of the oldest churches in the UK.
The first reference to 'Scheles' (fishermens' huts) occurs in 1235, and the town proper was founded by the Prior and Convent of Durham in 1245 . On account of the complaints of the burgesses of Newcastle upon Tyne, an order was made in 1258, stipulating that no ships should be laden or unladen at Shields, and that no shoars or quays should be built there. However, South Shields subsequently developed as a fishing port.
Salt panning along the Tyne began in 1499 and achieved major importance; Daniel Defoe speaks of the clouds of smoke being visible for miles, while a witness in 1743 mentions two hundred boiling-pans. Glass manufacturing was begun by Isaac Cookson in the 1730s and there were eight glass works by 1827 . Coal mining and chemical manufacture also became important. South Shields had the largest alkali works in the world.
In 1644, during the English Civil War, Parliament's Scottish allies under Alexander Leslie, 1st Earl of Leven wanted to capture the Tyne and Newcastle upon Tyne. Leslie captured the fort on the Lawe Top, following a lengthy siege. After the capture, the Royalist forces retreated to the south and evidence suggests a consequential skirmish may have occurred in the small town of Boldon, the ensuing skirmish is known as the Battle of Boldon Hill, though the topography of Boldon is not favourable for a battle.
19th century
Following the Reform Act of 1832, championed by Lord Grey and the Whigs, County Durham was able to return two members for two divisions, and the boroughs of Gateshead and South Shields acquired representation.
The coal industry flourished in Victorian times, drawing immigrants from far and wide. In South Shields the population soared from approximately 12,000 in 1801 to 75,000 by the late 1860s. Collieries in South Shields included:
Templetown (1805–1826)
St. Hilda's (1810–1940)
West Harton (1844–1969)
Boldon (1869–1982)
Marsden (1879–1968)
Whitburn (1879–1968)
Westoe (1909–1993)
Coal mining was very hazardous. Shafts could collapse at any time and before the safety lamp was invented in 1815 naked flames carried by miners to light their way could ignite gas underground causing explosions and many deaths. Some mines even had shafts that stretched several miles out under the sea.
Overcrowding in the town made sanitation a problem, partly solved by Cleadon Water Pumping Station (a large tower erected in 1858 above the town following an outbreak of cholera).
South Shields' place at the mouth of the Tyne with shifting and unpredictable sand bars and channels into the river meant that ships frequently ran aground. Following one such incident the world's first self-righting lifeboat was designed by William Wouldhave in 1790.
In the 1850s, with the Tyne's growing shipbuilding industry and the mouth of the Tyne. South and North Shields needed to stop the flow of sand that threatened shipping. In 1854 the first foundations were laid of the North and South Piers. They were both completed in 1885.
An engineering problem was encountered in managing the new piers. The sand on Littlehaven Beach was now flowing up the Tyne through the incoming tide. As a solution the Herd Groyne Pier was erected in 1882.
South Shields-born Charles Palmer opened his shipyard in 1851 at Jarrow, at first building wooden ships and then moving onto iron. His shipyard patented rolled armour-plate for warships. In 1865 Alderman John Readhead founded his shipyard John Readhead & Sons in South Shields, which built small cargo ships and colliers for clients the world over until the yard was closed in 1968. Various slipways and dry docks can still be seen today stretching from Tyne Dock towards the mouth of the Tyne.
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851. 'Shields on the River Tyne' 1823
Turner made an engraving of Shields on the River Tyne in 1823. This is now in Tate Britain in London. He also painted Keelmen Hauling Coals by Night in 1835, having himself rowed out into the Tyne at Jarrow Slake in order to do so.
The town became famous for its maritime industries and the Marine School was founded by Dr. Thomas Winterbottom in 1837. Originally in Ocean Road, it is now part of South Tyneside College in Westoe Village and has an international reputation. From the late 1980s to 2008 it possessed the nationally unique combined public observatory and planetarium, which has provided education and entertainment for twenty thousand children a year. During the industrial boom years of the 19th century, many notable public buildings were built across the town, reflecting its wealth. These included the Customs House of 1848.
South Shields was incorporated as a municipal borough in 1850 under the Municipal Corporations Act 1835. It became a county borough in 1889 with the passing of the Local Government Act 1888, and remained as such until 1974 when it became part of the Metropolitan Borough of South Tyneside in the (now former) county of Tyne and Wear.
The Shields Gazette, founded in 1849, is the oldest provincial evening newspaper in the United Kingdom.
20th century
In 1908–1909, The Harton Coal Company (which by this time owned all of the collieries in South Shields and the surrounding area, as well as the Marsden limestone quarries) embarked on a scheme to almost completely electrify their collieries, both above and below ground, including the network of lines connecting the collieries at St. Hilda, Harton and Westoe (then known as Benthouse) to staithes on the river. Wagons of coal from Boldon and Whitburn were steam-hauled to sidings in the town, where they could be collected by electric locomotives. Siemens carried out the electrification work, as well as supplying the locomotives for use on the electrified sections of the railway. When this work was completed, the electricity used by the HCC at the five collieries amounted to around 6% of that available to the coal industry as a whole, which for a time made it one of the largest single users of electricity in the entire country. The last of the "Harton Electrics" were retired in 1989. Four of the locomotives are preserved: E4 at the Stephenson Railway Museum, E2 at Beamish Museum, with E10 and the AEG-built E9 at the Tanfield Railway. The Rattler pub on the seafront is named after the passenger service run primarily for miners by the HCC between Westoe Lane Station and Whitburn Colliery, using a motley collection of second-hand rolling stock, which gave a very rough ride and resulted in its rather unflattering nickname. Most of the trackbed of the colliery railway has either been built on or turned into footpaths.
The impressive South Shields Town Hall of 1910 bears a copper weather vane in the form of a galleon. The town's crest (pre-1974) featured the lifeboat and the associated motto – Always Ready – which was later adopted as the motto of South Tyneside.
Zeppelin airships raided the Tyne in World War I and the town's seafront amusement park was attacked in 1915. In World War II, South Shields suffered well over 200 air raid alerts and 156 people were killed. Many houses were damaged, particularly by incendiary bombs and parachute mines. One direct hit on the market place killed more than 40 people who had taken shelter in tunnels below the square. There was a memorial to them in the form of a cobbled Union Flag on the ground of the market square, however, this was removed as part of an overhaul of the town centre in the late 1990s.
South Shields lost more seafarers than any other port in Britain during World War II.
The celebrated artist L S Lowry spent frequent periods at the Seaburn Hotel in Sunderland, and painted a number of works in South Shields.
Historically the town was part of County Durham, but it became part of Tyne and Wear in 1974.
In 1977 the town was visited by boxer Muhammad Ali, whose wedding was blessed in the local mosque at Laygate. The visit has since been the subject of a BBC documentary. Ali visited the town after receiving an invitation from a local boys' boxing club.
On 1 September 1987, Johnny Cash performed an open-air concert at Bents Park. Recently a 'lost' interview was discovered, the only interview granted by Cash just before this show.
South Shields has undergone significant economic change in the light of de-industrialisation. Service industries, including tourism and retail, play an increasing role in the economic make-up of the town and indeed across the wider area.
Original Caption: Dump Truck Enters Landfill Area at Spring Creek, on Jamaica Bay. Landfill Operation Is Being Conducted by the City of New York Environmentalists Fear Ecological Consequences 05/1973
U.S. National Archives’ Local Identifier: 412-DA-5492
Photographer: Tress, Arthur, 1940-
Subjects:
New York (New York state, United States) inhabited place
Environmental Protection Agency
Project DOCUMERICA
Persistent URL: catalog.archives.gov/id/547979
Repository: Still Picture Records Section, Special Media Archives Services Division (NWCS-S), National Archives at College Park, 8601 Adelphi Road, College Park, MD, 20740-6001.
For information about ordering reproductions of photographs held by the Still Picture Unit, visit: www.archives.gov/research/order/still-pictures.html
Reproductions may be ordered via an independent vendor. NARA maintains a list of vendors at www.archives.gov/research/order/vendors-photos-maps-dc.html
Access Restrictions: Unrestricted
Use Restrictions: Unrestricted
This is a special vehicle developed from the Neoplan N4426/3Ü Centroliner platform to be used as a Mobile Control Centre of the Ministry of the Russian Federation for Affairs for Civil Defence, Emergencies and Elimination of Consequences of Natural Disasters (EMERCOM) of the Russian Federation.
A personal consequence of BREXIT?
Haus Lange in Krefeld is an address of pilgrimage for architectural studies and those people interested in Ludwig Mies von der Rohe’s style setting early work. Splendid and ageless architecture and garden environment.
Most recently this building became a new home for BREXIT refugee family that felt no longer welcome in England. Has it really become ‘a home’? If you watch the series of photos I took you might feel shocked as I was when I first lingered thru the stylish rooms. The car was still packed. The door was open… I entered as invited, saw valuable furniture, most goods still in boxes, piles of books. The pantechnicon obviously just left. Also very obvious: The landlady, mother and wife also left and will stay absent: ‘You will never see me again’ written on the mirror. That wasn’t a good sign. I felt sorry.
Then to my utmost horror I found the host floating dead in the pool… A husband, a father: dead! And nobody seems to care!
Even more desperate the boy hiding in the dining room – his distressed body language seems to ask: Can this my home? Where is my mother? Who is my mother? Where are my roots?
You may form your own opinion on this photo story – but being uprooted is the worst prerequisite for a new and positive start. Reasons are manifold. But if it comes to politics as a cause: Think before you vote, choose well whom you elect. It might affect your families’ life, too.
The artists Michael Elgreen and Ingar Dragset make us think with their fictive story and installation of an unhappy start in Haus Lange, Krefeld.
I as a photographer tried to transfer this mood and the atmosphre into 17 picture series ‘Die Zugezogenen’.
Krefeld, February 2017
Thomas Kopf
Conséquence de la Révolution volée... dite du jasmin!
Perdu dans les cultures importées, perdu dans la bataille des différentes tendances politiques, ces pauvres gosses que je considère comme marionnettes entre les mains de différents metteurs en scènes étrangers à notre culture longtemps considérée comme modérée et disciplinée. Mes enfants je vous dis que LE LYCÉE EST NI UNE BOITE DE NUIT POUR DANSER AVEC CES TENUS NI UNE MOSQUÉE POUR PRÊCHER NI LE JOUR NI LA NUIT....
NI SALAFISMES... NI HARLEM SHAKE dans nos lycées
www.kapitalis.com/societe/14214-preche-salafiste-wahhabit...
www.1001infos.net/tunisie/abdellatif-abid-denigre-par-la-...
www.francetv.fr/culturebox/tunisie-un-harlem-shake-trop-s...
Consequence of the stolen Revolution... said jasmine revolution!
Lost in the imported cultures, lost in the battle of the different political tendencies, these childlike poor ones that I consider as puppets between the hands of different strange directors to our a long time considered culture as moderate and disciplined. My children I say you that THE HIGH SCHOOL IS NEITHER A NIGHT CLUB TO DANCE WITH THESE HELDS NOR A MOSQUE TO PREACH NEITHER THE DAY NOR THE NIGHT. ...
NEITHER SALAFISM .... NOR HARLEM SHAKE In our high shcool
www.asiaone.com/News/Latest%2BNews/Edvantage/Story/A1Stor...
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/t...
I have been trying to get inside Temple Church for some years now. Lat time was in January when the warden assured me it would be open on Saturday, only to find after travelling up from Dover that the door was locked, despite the sign on the door saying it was due to be open.
Anyway, all good things come to those that wait.
-----------------------------------------------------
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.