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I consider the first-generation, FWD Eldorado *the* high-water mark for Cadillac styling, ever.
I spotted this 1968 model on the way to pick up a print of the 1953 Chevrolet I had photographed this past Sunday. I can't stop smiling.
+++ DISCLAIMER +++Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based historical facts. BEWARE!
In October 1933, Hermann Göring sent out a letter requesting aircraft companies consider the design of a "high speed courier aircraft" - a thinly veiled request for a new fighter. In May 1934, this was made official and the Technisches Amt sent out a request for a single-seat interceptor for the Rüstungsflugzeug IV role, this time under the guise of a "sports aircraft". The specification was first sent to the most experienced fighter designers, Heinkel, Arado, and Focke-Wulf.
Heinkel's design was created primarily by twin brothers Walter and Siegfried Günter, whose designs would dominate most of Heinkel's work. They started work on Projekt 1015 in late 1933 under the guise of the original courier aircraft, based around the BMW XV radial engine. Work was already under way when the official request went out on 2 May, and on 5 May the design was renamed the He 112.
The primary source of inspiration for the He 112 was their earlier He 70 Blitz ("Lightning") design. The Blitz was a single-engine, four-passenger aircraft originally designed for use by Lufthansa, and it in turn was inspired by the famous Lockheed Model 9 Orion mail plane. Like many civilian designs of the time, the aircraft was pressed into military service and was used as a two-seat bomber (although mostly for reconnaissance) and served in this role in Spain. The Blitz introduced a number of new construction techniques to the Heinkel company; it was their first low-wing monoplane, their first with retractable landing gear, their first all-metal monocoque design, and its elliptical, reverse-gull wing would be seen on a number of later projects. The Blitz could almost meet the new fighter requirements itself, so it is not surprising that the Günters would choose to work with the existing design as much as possible.
The original He 112 was basically a scaled down version of Heinkel’s aerodynamically highly refined He 70 and shared its all metal construction, inverted gull wings, and retractable landing gear. Like the He 70, the He 112 was constructed entirely of metal, using a two-spar wing and a monocoque fuselage with flush-head rivets. The landing gear retracted outward from the low point of the wing's gull-bend, which resulted in a fairly wide span track, giving the aircraft excellent ground handling. Its only features from an older era were its open cockpit and fuselage spine behind the headrest, which were kept in order to provide excellent vision and make the biplane-trained pilots feel more comfortable.
The He 112 V1 started in the head-to-head contest when it arrived at Travemünde on 8 February 1936. The other three competitors had all arrived by the beginning of March. Right away, the Focke-Wulf Fw 159 and Arado Ar 80 proved to be lacking in performance, and plagued with problems, and were eliminated from serious consideration. At this point, the He 112 was the favorite over the "unknown" Bf 109, but opinions changed when the Bf 109 V2 arrived on 21 March. All the competitor aircraft had initially been equipped with the Rolls-Royce Kestrel engine, but the Bf 109 V2 had a Jumo 210. From that point on, it started to outperform the He 112 in almost every way, and even the arrival of the Jumo-engined He 112 V2 on 15 April did little to address this imbalance.
Eventually, the Bf 109 was chosen as the Luftwaffe’s new standard fighter, and Heinkel was left with an excellent but unwanted fighter. However, the He 112 was subsequently marketed to foreign customers, including Yugoslavia, The Netherlands, Finland, Romania and Hungary, and saw a mild export and license production success during WWII’s opening stages.
In the autumn 1937, a Japanese military delegation visited the Heinkel Flugzeugwerke's Marienehe plant. Impressed by the high performances and clean lines of the He 112 V9, an order for thirty similar He-112B-0s was placed, with options for a further 100 aircraft. The delegation returned to Japan, not only with the signed contract documents but with a demonstration aircraft, presumably the He 112 V5 (D-IIZO).
However, the Japanese Navy, at that time looking for a replacement for its A5M fighter was not impressed by the He 112 V5’s handling characteristics, and since it was unlikely that the He 112 could be modified for carrier operations, this option was not further pursued and eventually Mitsubishi's famous A6M fighter became Japan's standard fighter for naval operations.
Things changed quickly, though. The Japanese expansion to the Asian mainland in the Second Sino-Japanese War required a huge number of land-based aircraft, preferably with a long and the current types appreared obsolete. In order to bridge this gap until indigenous designs had entered full scale production, Japan once more turned to Germany and requested assistance in the form of aircraft deliveries or even license production.
Having been aware of the superior He 112 V9 and the resulting He 112 B-0 as production standard, a Japanese delegation visited Germany in summer 1940 and tested the more modern aircraft. The maneuverability of the Heinkel fighter was again found to be inferor to the Japanese A5M2, but the Imperial Japanese Navy purchased 12 Heinkel He 112B-0 fighters, which it designated both as the Heinkel A7He1 and as the "Navy Type He Air Defense Fighter", and secured rights for license production for the airframe as well as for German aircraft engines, namely the Daimler Benz 601Aa, which later became the Kawasaki Ha40.
The Japanese flew the A7He1 only briefly during the Second Sino-Japanese War, but phased it out of service before the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 in favor of the Mitsubishi A6M Zero. Allied Forces assigned the reporting name "Jerry" to the aircraft.
The A7He1 was disappointing, though, and as a result of the field tests the Kaigun Koku Gijyutsusho's (Testing Unit) issued a final report which concluded that the A7He1 was not the right choice as the main IJN fighter type, and cancellation of the options on additional aircraft was recommended. However, with the purchase of various production rights and tools it was decided to develop the aerodynamically highly sophisticated and sturdy A7He1 further, outfitted with a considerably more powerful Ha40 engine and other refinements and adaptations.
The resulting aircraft was the A7He2, but its development, as well as the integration of domestic parts and setting up serial production (also of the Ha40 engine), took until early 1943. The first Sentai (Air Group/Wing) fully equipped with the A7He2 were allocated to the Kwantung Army in Manchuoko, and additional deliveries were later made to units supporting Japan’s Fifteenth Army in Burma.
However, the machines were sent off of the production lines into a difficult theatre, where jungles and adverse weather conditions, coupled with a lack of spares, quickly undermined the efficiency of both men and aircraft. Because the A7He2 was totally new and the maintenance crews only used to more robust air-cooled radial engines, the type inevitably suffered from teething problems and the A7He2 tallied a disastrous series of failures and ongoing problems.
As a consequence, the pilots did not trust the new aircraft and morale was low. Beyond constant technical issues, the A7He2 was also unpopular due to its very different flight characteristics. Japanese pilots and aerial combat tactics had traditionally relied on agility, and the A7He2, with its focus on speed and superior rate of climb, was a totally different concept.
In fact, the A7He2 was not accepted as a classic fighter at all, and since the more "traditional" A6M had become available in ever growing numbers and updated variants, the A7He2 was soon relegated to ground attacks and CAS missions, in which its heavy gun armament, flight stability, endurance and the ability to take a lot of punishment (esp. hits from small caliber weapons) came in handy.
Occasionally, the A7He2 was deployed in interceptor missions against Allied bombers flying at high altitude, too, but direct dogfight confrontations with fighters were avoided and, if available, any other type was preferred by the IJN pilots.
In order to improve the situation, the A7He2 was modified in the field In the course of its limited career. Most notable changes were the addition of imported dust filters for the touchy engines, and some machines had their original pair of 7.7 mm (0.303 in) Type 97 aircraft machine guns with 500 rounds per gun on top of the engine replaced by two heavier 13mm Type 2 machine guns, for which a modified cowling with characteristic bulges had to be mounted. The machines retained their original designation, though.
Total A7He2 production reached roundabout 300 aircraft and ceased in 1944, when IJN officials recognized that the A7He2 was a dead end and the resources devoted to its production would be better spent in more capable aircraft. Anyway, due to material shortages, the "Jerry" remained in service, even though most machines were gradually replaced by A6M in frontline units until early 1945.
General characteristics:
Crew: 1
Length: 9.22 m (30 ft 11 7/8 in)
Wingspan: 9.09 m (29 ft 9¾ in)
Height: 3.82 m (12 ft 6¾ in)
Wing area: 17 m² (183 ft²)
Empty weight: 1,617 kg (3,565 lb)
Max. takeoff weight: 2,248 kg (4,957 lb)
Performance:
Maximum speed: 580 km/h (360 mph; 313 kn) at 5,000 m (16,000 ft)
Range: 1.150 km (715 mi)
Service ceiling: 9,500 m (31,200 ft)
Rate of climb: 17.0 m/s (3,345 ft/min)
Wing loading: 132 kg/m² (27.1 lb/ft²)
Powerplant:
1× Kawasaki Ha40 inverted liquid-cooled V-12 piston engine, 864 kW (1,159 hp)
Armament:
2× 20 mm Type 99-1 cannon with 100 RPG in the outer wings
2× 7.7 mm (0.303 in) Type 97 aircraft machine guns with 500 RPG
or 13mm Type 2 heavy machine with 250 RPG guns on top of the engine
2× 120 kg (265 lb) bombs or 2× 200l drop tanks under the inner wings
The kit and its assembly:
Another converted Heller He 112 B-0/B-1 in disguise, and this time I spun the type's potential career in/with Japan further. In real life the story ended with the delivery of a dozen He 112 B-0s, which were relegated to training duties and not much liked at all.
However, I had a spare He 112 in the stash and also a surplus Ki-61 fuselage at hand, and wouldn't a combination of the sleek He 112 airframe with a better engine (even of German origin!) be a plausible evolution? Well, said and done...
The He 112 remained close to the original, I just swapped the front end and the propeller (taken completely from a Fine Molds Ki-61 II, which is actually the Hasegawa Ki-61 I with extra parts) and replaced the large OOB stabilizers with more delicate parts from a Hobby Boss A6M5 - IMHO an overall improvement concerning the aircraft's proportions.
Small additions are the protruding gun barrels (hollow steel needles) and the pair of small bombs under the inner wings, inside of the landing gear.
The radiator bath was also enlarged, reflecting the engine’s higher output level, but it basically remained in the original position.
Painting and markings:
A slightly more tricky part - choosing a unit and a scheme were not easy, and I eventually ended up with a mash of styles for a machine of the IJN’s Tainan Air Group based on Formosa.
In 1943, most Japanese aircraft wore toned-down camouflage, the days of an overall light grey livery with flashy unit markings were over. However, I wanted to incorporate some old-school elements and eventually ended up with a basically all-grey aircraft (all-over Tamiya XF-12), onto which green makeshift camouflage (thinned acrylic Revell 363) had been added later in the field, applied around the original hinomaru and tactical markings.
Another unique design element, somewhat lent from the A6M, is a black engine cowling that elegantly merges with an anti glare panel in front of the windscreen. It gives the aircraft almost a racy look, and it underlines the He 112’s elegant lines, too, even with the bigger engine grafted onto it.
Being an aircraft of Japanese manufacture, the cockpit was painted in greenish yellow (“Bamboo”) and the landing gear wells, as well as the flaps’ interior, became Aodake Iro, a home-made mix of acrylic Revell 99 (Aluminum) and a teal clear window painting color. The effect is pretty good.
The markings were improvised and gathered from several sources. The hinomaru originally belong to an Airfix Ki-46, the blue stripes were manually cut from generic blue decal sheet (TL Modellbau); the tacticla code on the fin is of uncertain origin - very old, decals which ,unfortunately, partly desintegrated in the course of the build and had to be repainted manually.
The grey coat received a black ink wash and some panel shading; once the decals and the green camouflage had been applied, the surface was wet-sanded carefully, revealing again some of the grey basic paint and the risen surface details of the Heller kit.
Finally, some soot and exhaust stains were created with grinded graphite, and the kit finally sealed with matt acrylic varnish; the lower part of the black cowling received a sheen finish, though.
The third and last iteration of the Heller He 112 kit, at least for the moment. The engine change is not highly visible, and the paint scheme makes you think that it's rather an A6M with an inline engine than anything else? The wing shape also suggests a beefed-up A5M, it's really weird how a paint scheme can play tricks with your expectations and perception. The whole thing looks very elegant, though, and for a moment I was even tempted to leave the green camouflage away, because in its all-grey livery and with the black engine, the A7He2 looked almost like a race aircraft - and also very German!
I consider it essential that the photographer should do his own printing and enlarging. The final effect of the finished print depends so much on these operations.
- Bill Brandt
These days I no longer develop and print but instead I use Lightroom and Silver Efex Pro as my digital darkroom. I quite like it and see myself using it more and more. Although my friend, Josh White over at www.flickr.com/photos/jtinseoul/with/5602321623/, has been dabbling lately with the Ricoh GR21 and GR1V and I must say I'm quite smitten by those rich tones.
Anyway, let me walk you through this image. I noticed her as I approached the street corner to cross, I was on my way to get a haircut, and she just had the most wonderful eyes. I was immediately struck by her decisive walk and her stoic stance. I was standing literrally about 1.5 meters from her as I shot from the side, Daido style, as I've said before and this was my chosen frame which I believe capture her essence.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone !!!
Support the homeless via Camillus House.
Your comments and faves are very appreciated.
Press "L" for a lightbox view, its a must for this image.
Lanzarme al camino, sin maletas, limpia, sin cobijas que arrastrar, sin cargas internas.
Llevando conmigo solo aquello que la memoria considera suficiente para avanzar, para el gasto, aquello lo necesario
Caminando en silencio y contemplando internamente rostros de los conocidos aquellas personas que me ensancharon el alma de a poco, aquellos que han tenido un papel que cumplir en mi vida.
Hoy esa es la sensación.. caminar sambeadita, tomando lo que quiero un poco sonriente porque de repente me dejan... tocar, capturar o jugar.
De vez en cuando una mirada impertinente me retiene en la pupila, llega impertinente y se planta frente a mi, quiere intrigarme... me juega un juego con los ojos hace un par de dias, en ocasiones me pone algo nerviosa... otras deseosa...
Y me pregunto que ves... ???
Cuidado que ultimamente mi aceite sabe a miel... mejor no lo roses por tu boca, puede que luego te humedescaz mas o lo haga yo.
Puede que seamos en esencia distintos, puede que no tengas costumbre en tus dedos por enfriarse, puede que tu espalda no se contorsione en una imagen, puede que a mi me encante buscarle eso a la mia... en la arquitectura de tus manos edifiques con alguna linea sorpresiva una sonrisa que se me estrella en el rostro, puede que olvides los botones de censura... puede que yo no tenga ganas de respetar los de tu camisa...
Quiero respirar de tus venenos, irme con vos, que me pidas mas... que kieras resbalar sobre mi por un lapso, tira de mi... jala mi mano, caminando un rato libremente como el viento...
Se hace corta la vida, se hacen pocas las imagenes diarias que valen la pena guardarse... generemoslas... toma de mi. deja diseñarte y dejame enseñarme... no te asustes... dejame mostrarme tal cual puede que algo de lo mires te guste...
La vida es dulce si pones azucar, aromatica si pones la nariz en la pose correcta y el lugar indicado, vuela... si puedes, si me dejas yo te elevo... duerme menos, y respirame mas. Haceme un puñito un ratito solo de antojo... asi de cacharita, poneme el pecho en la espalda un buen rato... agua para beberte...
Manuel Francisco dos Santos (October 28, 1933 – January 20, 1983), known by the nickname "Garrincha" ("little bird"), was a Brazilian football right winger and forward who helped the Brazil national team win the World Cups of 1958 and 1962, and played the majority of his professional career for Brazilian club Botafogo. FIFA considers him the best Brazilian player ever after Pelé,[4] and in 1999, many eminent football historians in Brazil have also referred to him being at least the equal of Pelé. Widely regarded as the best dribbler in football history, he was also an excellent crosser and free-kick taker.
The word garrincha itself means wren. Garrincha was also known as Mané (short for Manuel) by his friends, a name which in Brazil also means "fool" or "half wit".[6] It was possibly used in that sense at some point – or even as a double entendre due to Garrincha's child-like personality. The combined "Mané Garrincha" is common among fans in Brazil. Due to his immense popularity in Brazil, he was also called Alegria do Povo (Joy of the People) and Anjo de Pernas Tortas (Angel with Bent Legs)
Keith Jarrett (born May 8, 1945 in Allentown, Pennsylvania) is an American pianist, composer and jazz icon.
His career started with Art Blakey, Charles Lloyd and Miles Davis. Since the early 1970s he has enjoyed a great deal of success in both classical music and jazz, as a group leader and a solo performer. His improvisation technique combines not only jazz, but also other forms of music, especially classical, gospel, blues and ethnic folk music. One of Jarrett's trademarks is his frequent, highly audible vocalization (grunting, groaning, and tuneless singing), similar to that of Glenn Gould, Thelonious Monk, Erroll Garner, and Oscar Peterson. Jarrett is also physically active while playing, writhing, gyrating, and almost dancing on the piano bench. Jarrett is notoriously intolerant of audience noise, including coughing and other involuntary sounds, especially during solo improvised performances. He feels that extraneous noise affects his musical inspiration. As a result, cough drops are routinely supplied to Jarrett's audiences in cold weather, and he has even been known to stop playing and lead the crowd in a "group cough."
Nastassja Kinski (born Nastassja Aglaia Nakszynski, January 24, 1961) is a German actress, who appeared in more than 60 international movies. Her starring roles include her Golden Globe Award-winning portrayal of 'Tess Durbeyfield' in Roman Polanski's film Tess, her roles in two erotic films (Stay As You Are and Cat People), and her parts in Wim Wenders' films The Wrong Move, Paris, Texas, and Faraway, So Close!. During the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, Kinski was widely regarded as an international sex symbol.
Woody Allen (born Allan Stewart Konigsberg; December 1, 1935) is an American film director, writer, actor, comedian, and playwright.
Allen's distinctive films, which run the gamut from dramas to screwball sex comedies, have made him one of the most respected living American directors. He is also distinguished by his rapid rate of production and his very large body of work. Allen writes and directs his movies and has also acted in the majority of them. For inspiration, Allen draws heavily on literature, sexuality, philosophy, psychology, Jewish identity, European cinema, and New York City, where he was born and has lived his entire life.
Allen is also a jazz clarinetist. What began as a teenage avocation has led to regular public performances at various small venues in his Manhattan hometown, with occasional appearances at various jazz festivals.
Major Anya Amasova (aka Agent XXX) is a fictional character in the James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me, portrayed by Barbara Bach. In the film Amasova is an agent of the KGB. Barbara Bach (born August 27, 1947) is an American actress and model, best-known as the Bond girl from the James Bond movie The Spy Who Loved Me (1977). She is married to musician Ringo Starr, former drummer of The Beatles.
Max Zorin is a fictional character and the main antagonist in the James Bond film A View to a Kill. He was portrayed by Christopher Walken, (born March 31, 1943) is an American film and theatre actor.
Walken is a prolific actor who has spent more than 50 years on stage and screen. He has appeared in over 100 movie and television roles, including The Deer Hunter, The Dead Zone, A View to a Kill, At Close Range, King of New York, Batman Returns, True Romance, Pulp Fiction, The Funeral, and Catch Me If You Can, and in TV's Kojak and The Naked City. Walken gained a cult following in the 1990s[citation needed] as the Archangel Gabriel in the first three The Prophecy movies, as well as his frequent guest-host appearances on Saturday Night Live. In the United States, films featuring Walken have grossed over $1.8 billion. He has also played the main role in the Shakespeare plays Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, and Coriolanus. His most famous film roles were Nikanor "Nick" Chevotarevich in The Deer Hunter and in Pulp Fiction, as Captain Koons, a Vietnam War veteran, which has since become a pop culture icon, despite his appearance being less than ten minutes at length.
John Steinbeck III (February 27, 1902—December 20, 1968) was an American writer. He wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath, published in 1939 and the novella Of Mice and Men, published in 1937. In all, he wrote twenty-five books, including sixteen novels, six non-fiction books and several collections of short stories. In 1962 Steinbeck received the Nobel Prize for Literature. Seventeen of his works, including The Grapes of Wrath (1940), Cannery Row (1945), The Pearl (1947), and East of Eden (1952), went on to become Hollywood films (some appeared multiple times, i.e., as remakes), and Steinbeck also achieved success as a Hollywood writer, receiving an Academy Award nomination for Best Story in 1944 for Alfred Hitchcock's Lifeboat.
Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 — July 2, 1961) was a novelist, short-story writer, and journalist. He was part of the 1920s expatriate community in Paris, and one of the veterans of World War I later known as "the Lost Generation." He received the Pulitzer Prize in 1953 for The Old Man and the Sea, and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954.
Hemingway's distinctive writing style is characterized by economy and understatement, and had a significant influence on the development of twentieth-century fiction writing. His protagonists are typically stoical men who exhibit an ideal described as "grace under pressure." Many of his works are now considered classics of American literature.The influence of Hemingway's writings on American literature was considerable and continues today. James Joyce called "A Clean, Well Lighted Place" "one of the best stories ever written". (The same story also influenced several of Edward Hopper's best known paintings, most notably "Nighthawks."[41] ) Pulp fiction and "hard boiled" crime fiction (which flourished from the 1920s to the 1950s) often owed a strong debt to Hemingway.
During World War II, J. D. Salinger met and corresponded with Hemingway, whom he acknowledged as an influence.[42] In one letter to Hemingway, Salinger wrote that their talks "had given him his only hopeful minutes of the entire war," and jokingly "named himself national chairman of the Hemingway Fan Clubs."[43]
Hunter S. Thompson often compared himself to Hemingway, and terse Hemingway-esque sentences can be found in his early novel, The Rum Diary. Thompson's later suicide by gunshot to the head mirrored Hemingway's.
Hemingway's terse prose style is known to have inspired Charles Bukowski, Chuck Palahniuk, Douglas Coupland and many Generation X writers. Hemingway's style also influenced Jack Kerouac and other Beat Generation writers. Hemingway also provided a role model to fellow author and hunter Robert Ruark, who is frequently referred to as "the poor man's Ernest Hemingway".
Popular novelist Elmore Leonard, who has authored scores of western- and crime-genre novels, cites Hemingway as his preeminent influence, and this is evident in his tightly written prose. Though Leonard has never claimed to write serious literature, he has said: "I learned by imitating Hemingway.... until I realized that I didn't share his attitude about life. I didn't take myself or anything as seriously as he did."
Salma Hayek Jiménez (born September 2, 1966) is a Mexican and American actress, director, television and film producer. Hayek has appeared in more than thirty films and performed as an actress outside of Hollywood in Mexico and Spain.
Hayek is the first Mexican national to be nominated for a Best Actress Oscar. She is one of the most prominent Mexican figures in Hollywood, since the legendary Dolores del Rio. She is also, after Fernanda Montenegro, the second of four Latin American actresses to achieve a Best Actress Oscar nomination.
Augusto Nicolás Calderón Sandino (May 18, 1895 – February 21, 1934) was a Nicaraguan revolutionary and leader of a rebellion against the U.S. military presence in Nicaragua between 1927 and 1933. He was labeled as a bandit by the U.S. government, and his exploits made him a hero throughout much of Latin America, where he became a symbol of resistance to U.S. domination. Drawing the United States Marines into an undeclared guerrilla war, his guerrilla organization suffered many defeats, but he successfully evaded capture. US troops withdrew from the country after overseeing the inauguration of President Juan Bautista Sacasa. Sandino was assassinated by General Anastasio Somoza García, who went on to seize power in a coup d'état two years later, establishing a family dynasty that would rule Nicaragua for over forty years. Sandino's legacy was claimed by the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), which overthrew the Somoza government in 1979.
Roberto Boninsegna (born November 13, 1943 in Mantua) is an Italian former football player. He started his career in Serie B (Italian 2nd division) with Prato in 1963-64 season. He transferred to FC Potenza, who was Serie B team in 1964-65 season. He also played for Varese in 1965-66 and Cagliari between 1966-1969. Boninsegna gained a status as an efficient striker with Internazionale and Italy in the 1970s. In Series A he totaled 171 goals in 281 games, and was top goalscorer in Italy in 1971 and 1972. He transferred to Juventus F.C. in 1976 and played 3 seasons for them. He finished his career at Verona end of 1979-80 season.
Boninsegna scored Italy's only goal (though at the time it was an important equaliser) in the 1970 FIFA World Cup final against Brazil, which Italy ultimately lost 4–1.
Leighton Koizumi was and is the lead singer of Gravedigger V and the Morlocks, two seminal garage punk band of the 80's. After the third album in the 1991, Leighotn Koizumi haddisappeared; someone guessed the aids killed him in 1990 but two years later some rumours from San Diego gave him out clean and ready to start again, then nothing else… Till the beginning of 1998 when they spread the groundless piece of news that he left us forever…but finally in the 1999 Koizumi had reformed the Morlocks.
Alberto Juantorena Danger (born 3 December 1950) is a former Cuban track athlete. At the 1976 Summer Olympics, White Lightning became the first and so far only athlete to win both the 400 and 800 m Olympic titles.
Born in Santiago de Cuba, Juantorena first played basketball, until he was discovered by a Polish track coach, Zygmunt Zabierzowski, who convinced him to start running. Only a year later, Juantorena was eliminated in the semi-finals of the 400 m event at the Munich Olympics (1972).
Juantorena became better known in the next years, winning a gold medal at the World University Games (1973) and a silver at the 1975 Pan American Games, both in the 400 m. He only seriously took up running the 800 m in 1976, so few thought he was a serious candidate for the Olympic gold that year. However, Juantorena made it to the Olympic final, and led the field for most of the race, eventually winning in a world record time of 1:43.50. Three days later, he also won the 400 m final, setting a low-altitude world record of 44.26.
Juantorena, now known at home as El Caballo (the horse), continued his career, although he would never reach the same level as in Montreal. He just missed out on a medal in the 400 m at the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, placing fourth. At the 1983 World Championships, his last international appearance in a major event, he broke his foot when he stepped on the inside of the track after qualifying in the first round of the 800m. Juantorena later served as the Vice Minister of Sports for Cuba.
Chris Cornell (born Christopher John Boyle on July 20, 1964) is an American rock musician best known as the lead singer and songwriter for rock bands Soundgarden (1984–1997) and Audioslave (2001–2007). He was the founder and frontman for Temple of the Dog.
Philippe Leroy , of his true name Philippe Leroy-Beaulieu , is a Acteur French, born on October 15th 1930 in Paris. It is revealed by the Film the Hole (1960) of Jacques Becker. It is directed quickly towards the Italy, where he becomes a much in demand actor. It obtains a great success by holding the main role of the whodunnit Seven men out of gold (1965) of Mario Vicario, where it interprets the organizer of a daring holdup. It shares then its career between the France and Italy, with a very clear preference for Italy, where it resides.
Colonel Rosa Klebb is a fictional character and the antagonist from the James Bond film and novel From Russia with Love. She was played by Lotte Lenya in the film version. Her name punningly derives from the popular Soviet phrase for women's rights, khleb i rozy, which in turn was a direct Russian translation of the internationally used Labor slogan bread and roses. Lenya was born Karoline Wilhelmine Charlotte Blamauer (October 18, 1898 – November 27, 1981) to working class Roman Catholic parents in Vienna, Austria. She moved to study in Zürich, Switzerland in 1914, taking up her first job at the Schauspielhaus using the stage name Lotte Lenja.
Vladimir Pyotrovich Tkachenko (September 20, 1957 in Golovinka, USSR) is a retired Ukrainian basketball player. The 7'3" (2.21m), 243 lbs, (110 kg) center won two Olympic medals and three FIBA World Championship medals in a career that lasted 16 years. He was named Mr Europa player of the year in 1979.
A great defensive player, Tkachenko could block out 2-3 opponents to give teammates a chance to grab a rebound. His offensive ability was however important too: His post up moves were basic but effective and his shooting was good for a player his size, with a range of approximately 17 feet.
Tkachenko began playing for Stroitel Kiev in 1973-74, when he was 16 years old. He continued to play for them through the 1980-81 season. In 1983 he began playing for CSKA Moscow and he stayed there until his retirement after the 1988-89 season.
From 1976 to 1987 Tkachenko played on the Soviet national team, participating in many European and World competitions. Highlights would include the two bronze medals at the Olympics (1976 and 1980), the gold medal at the 1982 FIBA World Championship (also silver medals in 1978 and 1986) and three gold medals in the European Championship in 1979, 1981 and 1985 (and silvers in 1977 and 1987).
Emilio Largo is a fictional character and the main antagonist from the James Bond novel Thunderball. In the novel he is depicted according to the British stereotypes about Italians as a large, olive-skinned, powerful man exuding animal charm, with a profile of a Roman emperor and hairy hands which are likened to crawling tarantulas. He also appears in the 1965 film adaptation, with Italian actor Adolfo Celi filling the role. Born in Messina in the 1922, Sicily, Celi appeared in nearly 100 movies, specializing in international villains. He also appeared as a protagonist in some Italian comedies like Amici Miei and Brancaleone alle Crociate. Another well-known role of his was as camp commandant Battaglia opposite Frank Sinatra and Trevor Howard's Allied POWs in the 1965 World War II escape drama Von Ryan's Express.
Celi was fluent in several languages, but his thick Sicilian accent meant that he was usually dubbed when appearing in an English language film.
During his early career, Celi was also successful as a stage actor in Argentina and Brazil, where he owned an actors' company along with the Brazilian stage greats Paulo Autran and Tonia Carrero. He directed three films in South America in the 1950s, including the Brazilian hit Tico-Tico no Fubá in 1952.
Fabrizio De André (Genova, February 18, 1940 - Milano, January 11, 1999) was an Italian singer-songwriter and poet. In his works he often told stories of prostitutes, marginalized and rebellious people. In Italy he is considered as a poet because of the quality of his lyrics.
Alessandro (Sandro) Pertini (September 25, 1896 - February 24, 1990) was an Italian socialist, probably the most popular President of the Italian Republic.Born in Stella (Province of Savona) as the son of a well to do landowner, Alberto, he studied at a Salesian college in Varazze, and completed his schooling at the "Chiabrera" lyceum (high school) in Savona. His philosophy teacher was Adelchi Baratono, a reformist socialist who contributed to his approach to Socialism and probably introduced him to the inner circles of the Ligurian labour movements. Pertini obtained a Law degree from the University of Genoa. Sandro Pertini was against Italy's participation in World War I, but served as a lieutenant and was awarded several medals as for bravery. In 1918 he joined the United Socialist Party, PSU, then he settled in Florence where he also graduated in political science with a thesis entitled La Cooperazione ("Cooperation"; 1924). While in the city, Pertini also came into contact with people such as Gaetano Salvemini, the brothers Carlo and Nello Rosselli, and Ernesto Rossi. Pertini was physically beaten by Fascist squads on several occasions, but never lost faith in his ideals. In 1935 he was interned on Santo Stefano Island, Ventotene (LT), Pontine Islands, an island in the Tyrrhenian Sea, where he remained through Italy's entry into World War II and until 1943. There he saved the famous diaries of Antonio Gramsci. Although he had begun suffering from severe illness, Pertini never demanded pardon. He was released a month after Benito Mussolini's arrest, and joined the Italian resistance movement against the Nazi German occupiers and Mussolini's new regime - the Italian Social Republic. Arrested by the Germans, he was sentenced to death but freed by a partisan raid. After April 25, 1945 (the end of the war in Italy) he was elected to the first Parliament of the Italian Republic (the parliament which created the modern Italian Constitution, and thus was called La Costituente). In the postwar era he was a prominent member of the directive board of the Italian Socialist Party. He was appointed president of the Italian Chamber of Deputies in 1968, and in 1978 President of the Italian Republic, the highest office in the Republic. As President he succeeded in regaining the public's trust in the State and institutions. During the Brigate Rosse terrorism period of the Anni di piombo, Pertini was a defender of the institutions he represented. His death in Rome was viewed by many as a national tragedy, and he is arguably one of modern Italy's most accomplished politicians.
Considéré comme le troisième plus haut sommet de l'île après le Piton des Neiges et le Gros Morne, il atteint 2 898 mètres d'altitude, ce qui fait de lui le point culminant de la commune de Trois-Bassins.
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An evening with a couple of different dresses - one a firm favourite, the other not worn so much.
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Mahamaham is a Hindu festival celebrated every 12 years in the Mahamaham tank located in the South Indian town of Kumbakonam in Tamil Nadu, India. Hindus consider taking a holy dip at the Mahamaham tank on the day of Mahamaham as sacred. The last Mahamaham was celebrated on February, 2016 with more than 10 lakh people from various places taking the holy dip in the Mahamaham tank.
Astronomically, maham or magha is a nakshatra (constellation) in Leo sign (Simha Rasi). Since Sun takes a year to go round (as viewed from earth, as if earth is stationary), this festival is celebrated in the month when full moon occurs as moon is passing Magha nakshatra (Leo sign) and Sun is on the other end in the opposite Acquarius sign (Kumnha Rasi). Jupiter or Guru takes twelve years to go around to complete one full revolution and during this sojourn, it spends one year in Leo once every twelve years. Mahamagham occurs once in twelve years when when the planet Jupiter's residence in Leo co-incides with full-moon in Leo. This is also considered a powerful astrological combination since Jupiter and Moon will be on the same constellation with Sun on the other side, which is considered very auspicious and highly beneficial. On the day of the festival, it is believed to bring all water bodies together and enrich the tank with minerals.
People are washing their sins and earning puniyam on the holy rivers like Ganges, Yamuna, Sarasvati River, Sarayu, Godavari River, Mahanadi River, Narmada River, Pavoshnl and Kaveri River. These rivers wanted to get rid of their sins and approached Lord Brahma. Lord Brahma advised these rivers if you meet together and take bath in Mahamaham would wash off all the sins. Hence, during the time of Mahamaham festival, it is also believed that taking bath in the holy stream of water from the famous rivers like Ganges, Yamuna, Sarasvati River, Sarayu, Godavari River, Mahanadi River, Narmada River, Pavoshnl and Kaveri River, which are mixed together in Mahamaham tank, would get rid of sins according to beliefs. The images of the deities indicating the legend, is housed in the nearby Kasi Viswanatha Temple.[1]
Mahamaham bathing festival is concentrated on a single day, the concourse of pilgrims being all the more. During this festival, thousands of Hindu devotees come to Kumbakonam, and take bath in a tank named Mahamaham tank, generally followed or preceded by a dip in the kaveri river at Kumbakonam. The tank has 20 holy wells. These wells are named after 20 holy rivers flowing across India. People get themselves drained in these wells. These wells are also called as "Theertham" (Holy water).
On the Mahamaham day people start with praying these Siva temples. This is continued by dips in the 20 wells, visit to Kumbeswarar Temple, dip in the holy tank and finally in Kaveri river to complete the process.
Source:Wiki
For more Info.
"Considera la vita e le sue probabilità. Di essere investito normalmente ci sono 1 possibilità su 14 mila. Se però indossi una benda in un incrocio difficilmente torni a casa. Questo deve far pensare perchè se invertiamo le situazioni, notiamo che con un po' di intelligenza tutto sarebbe più facile. Siamo quindi tonti o solo dannatamente pigri? "
I consider Raven Cliffs Falls to be one of the most scenic falls in Georgia. It is also one of the most difficult to photograph. The falls is recessed in a deep crack. For more information:
+++ DISCLAIMER +++
Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based historical facts. BEWARE!
Some background
The Dassault/Dornier Alpha Jet is a light attack jet and advanced trainer aircraft co-manufactured by Dornier of Germany and Dassault-Breguet of France. In the early 1960s, European air forces began to consider their requirements for the coming decades. One of the results was the emergence of a new generation of jet trainers. The British and French began a collaboration on development of what was supposed to be a supersonic jet aircraft in two versions: trainer and light attack aircraft. The result of this collaboration, the SEPECAT Jaguar, proved to be an excellent aircraft, but its definition had changed in the interim, and the type emerged as a full-sized, nuclear-capable strike fighter, which two-seat variants were used for operational conversion to the type, not for the general training.
This left the original requirement unfulfilled and so the French began discussions with West Germany for collaboration. A joint specification was produced in 1968. The trainer was now subsonic, supersonic trainers having proven something of a dead end. A joint development and production agreement was signed in July 1969 which indicated that the two nations would buy 200 machines, each assembled in their own country.
The Luftwaffe decided to use the Alpha Jet mainly in the light strike role, preferring to continue flight training in the United States on American trainer types instead of performing training in cloudy and crowded Germany. The first production German Alpha Jet performed its maiden flight on 12 April 1978, with deliveries beginning in March 1979. This version was designated the Alpha Jet A (the "A" standing for Appui Tactique or "Tactical Strike") or Alpha Jet Close Support variant. The Luftwaffe obtained 175 machines up to 1983, with the type replacing the Fiat G91R/3. Manufacture of Alpha Jet subassemblies was divided between France and Germany, with plants in each country performing final assembly and checkout. The different avionics fit made French and German Alpha Jets easy to tell apart, with French machines featuring a rounded-off nose and German machines featuring a sharp, pointed nose.
Even though the Alpha Jet A was suitable in the ground attack role and had even been tested in aerial combat against helicopters in 1979, the German Luftwaffe decided in the mid-80ies that – facing the Cold War threat from the east – a more powerful but still economic plane for the close attack role, esp. against hardened ground targets and attack helicopters like the Mi-24 would be needed. Even though such "Alternate Close Support" versions of the Alpha Jet were available at that time, even though these were modified two-seaters. Such planes were bought by Cameroon and Egypt, but from the German Luftwaffe a specialized, more capable plane with a higher strike and survival potential was requested.
In 1986, Dornier developed a respective specialized version, called the Alpha Jet C (for "combat"). This plane was heavily modified, optimized for the ground attack role. It featured a new, single-seated nose section with an armoured cockpit in a much higher position than on the original two-seater. The Alpha jet C version's prominent, pointed nose quickly gave it among its test pilots the nickname "Nasenbär" (Coati).
The new space was used for avionics and an internal Oerlikon 35mm cannon – a variant of the same cannon used in the Gepard anti aircraft tank, firing armour piercing shells with a muzzle velocity of 1,440 m/s (4,700 ft/s) and a range of 5.500m. Avionics includecd SAGEM ULISS 81 INS, a Thomson-CSF VE-110 HUD, a TMV630 laser rangefinder in a modified nose and a TRT AHV 9 radio altimeter, with all avionics linked through a digital databus.
New wings were developed, with a thicker profile and less sweep, and non-jettisonable wing tip tanks as well as two more weapon hardpoints (for a total of six, plus one under the fuselage) added. The landing gear was reinforced for a higher TOW and operation on improvised runways. Fuselage and tail externally looked much the same as the original Alpha Jet A, but internally most structures were reinforced and technical modules placed in new positions.
The C version was from the start powered by two more powerful Larzac 04-C20 turbofans which would also be used in an update for the Luftwaffe’s Alpha Jet As. The hydraulic system was doubled, so that both engines could run separately, and kevlar and titanium armour plating added to vital areas around the lower hull.
The first prototype 98+52 made its maiden flight at Friedrichshafen on 1st of June 1988. It was officially allocated to the JaboG 43 in Oldenburg, but actually spent almost all the time at the Luftwaffe’s Waffentechnische Dienststelle (Flight test center) WTD 61 in Manching near Munich, where it underwent a thorough testing program. More than once the prototype was transferred to Beja, Portugal, for weapon tests and training, as well as direct comparison with the standard Alpha Jet A and other NATO planes. A second airframe was built in 1987 but only used for static tests, system integration and finally damage resilience tests, after which it was written off and scrapped.
While the Alpha Jet C showed high agility at low level and a high survival potential in a hostile battlefield environment, the prototype remained a one-off. In the end, the German Luftwaffe did not want to add another type to its arsenal, despite its similarity with the standard Alpha Jet. Export chances for such a specialized, yet light aircraft were considered as low, since modified Alpha Jet versions were already available and other planes like the AMX or BAe Hawk offered more versatility, and were simply more up to date.
Hence, further development was stopped in September 1989, also under the influence of political changes and the breakdown of the Eastern Block. Even though 98+52 was kept at Manching as a test aircraft for various tasks, the plane was eventually lost in a crash due to hydraulic failure on 3rd of March 1993 – the pilot escaped safely, but 98+52 totally written off.
General characteristics:
Crew: 1
Length: 12.60 m (41 ft 4 in)
Wingspan: 10.73 m (35 ft 2 1/2 in)
Height: 4.24 m (13 ft 11 in)
Wing area: 213.7 ft² (19.85 m²)
Airfoil: NACA 23015 (modified) at root, NACA 4412 (modified) at tip
Empty weight: 3.680 kg (8.105 lbs)
Loaded weight: 5.900 kg (13.000 lbs)
Max. takeoff weight: 8.200 kg (18.060 lbs)
Powerplant: 2 × SNECMA Turbomeca Larzac 04-C20 turbofans, 14,12 kN (3.176 lbs) each
Performance
Maximum speed: 860 km/h (465 knots, 536 mph)
Stall speed: 167 km/h (90 knots, 104 mph) (flaps and undercarriage down)
Combat radius: 610 km (329 nmi, 379 mi) lo-lo-lo profile, w. underwing weapons incl. two drop tanks
Ferry range: 2,940 km (1,586 nmi, 1,827 mi)
Service ceiling: 14,630 m (48,000 ft)
Rate of climb: 57 m/s (11,220 ft/min)
Armament
1× 35 mm (1.38 in) Oerlikon KDA cannon w/150 rds under the lower forward fuselage, offset to starport side.
Seven hardpoints (one under fuselage, three under each wing) for a total external load of up to 3.085 kg (6.800 lbs), including AGM-65 Maverick, Matra rocket pods with 18× SNEB 68 mm rockets each, a variety of bombs (such as the Hunting BL755 cluster bombs) or Drop tanks for extended range, and AIM-9 Sidewinder or ASRAAM for self-defence
The kit and its assembly
Yes, another whif, and a modern type, too. The idea came when I found a pair of vintage wings from a vintage Matchbox BAC Strikemaster in good shape and thought "Well, where could these fit...?" Being a fan of the Su-25 I considered building something similar from scratch und using these 30 year old parts.
The Alpha Jet has a basically similar layout, and the wings would match in size. Then, the "new" plane should become a dedicated single-seater, not simply a two-seater with a covered rear cockpit. Browsing through the kit stack I found a A-4F from Revell, and its nose section turned out to be an almost perfect fit for the Alpha Jet fuselage (the vintage Heller kit).
Fitting these parts together required some major surgery and putty work, but the result looks quite convincing. Other additions are a Matchbox pilot figure and some cockpit details, a nose cone from a Fiat G.91 R/3 as an integral laser rangefinder housing, the Strikemaster wings, a modified landing gear (main wheels from the Skyhawk, front wheel from an IAI Kfir) and the armament in the form of the gun, seven hardpoints and the mixed ordnance from the German Luftwaffe arsenal - everything collected from the junkyard.
Painting
While German Luftwaffe machines can look rather boring, various camouflage trials have been conducted during the 80ies and 90ies for the F-4F, Alpha Jet and Tornado fleet. Esp. Phantom IIs saw extensive experiments for air superiority and ground attack paint schemes - and these schemes carried inofficial names like "Milchkuh" (Dairy Cow), "Polizeimühle" (Police Jalopy) or "Disco Bomber".
The whiffy Alpha Jet was a nice opportunity to incorporate one of these experimental schemes, and I settled for something which was applied to F-4F '37+07' and inofficially dubbed "Wolkenmaus" (Cloud Mouse). The Alpha Jet is a good subject, since its stepped side structure with engine nacelles and its spine tunnel is similar to the Phantom II, so that the cammo concept could be easily copied.
Anyway, the authentic "Wolkenmaus" colours are supposed to be (and what I used on the kit)...
On the upper sides:
● RAL 6014 Gelboliv (~FS 34087; Olive Drab, Testors 1711)
● RAL 7012 Basaltgrau (~FS 36152; Humbrol 27)
● RAL 9005 Tiefschwarz, even though I rather believe it to be RAL 7021 Schwarzgrau (darker than FS 36081; Humbrol 182)
Flanks::
● Mix of 2/3 RAL 7035 Lichtgrau + 1/3 RAL 7000 Fehgrau (~FS36473; Aircraft Grey, Testors 1731)
Undersides:
● Mix of 5/6 RAL 7035 Lichtgrau + 1/6 RAL 7000 Fehgrau (~RLM 63; Lichtgrau, Testors 2077)
The tones are just approximations, since I did not want to get original tones just for one project. Hey, it's just a model kit!
The landing gear and its wells were painted in aluminum, the respective covers' inside with Humbrol 81 (Olive Yellow) in a primer finish for some contrast. Cockpit interior as well as the air intakes were kept in in Light Gull Grey (FS 36640, Humbrol 129). The complex paint scheme was applied, as per usual, by brush and hand. The kit received a light black ink wash and some dry painting with lighter tones - the model was not supposed to look dirty, only a bit used.
Decals were scrapped together. JaboG 43 emblems and warning signs were taken from the original Heller decal sheet. The national insignia were taken from a Revell PAH-2 kit, the registration '98+52' was puzzled together with single digits from an aftermarket decal sheet from TL Modellbau. AFAIK, '98+52' has not been used yet by the Luftwaffe, which designates its test aircraft in the 98+XX and 99+XX range. A "true" and active Alpha Jet would have received a 40+XX or 41+XX.
Finally, everything was sealed under a water-based/acryllic matte coat - the Testors colours proved to be very touchy to the Humbrol varnish I normally use.
In the end, I achieved what I wanted, even though not truly perfect. But the kit looks like an 'analogue' Su-25, and actually the whiffy Alpha Jet C reminds much of the pre-Su-25 concepts: the SPB and subsequent LSSh/T-8 attack aircraft?
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Hallowe'en weekend part 2, out again Saturday night with Gemma.
Back at The Star again.
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Gemma came to stay over for Christmas and New Year. This was the night before Christmas Eve, and a trip to the Star was in order!
El Monumento al Divino Salvador del Mundo está localizado en la ciudad de San Salvador, El Salvador. Es considerado símbolo nacional de este país.
La estructura, diseñada por el arquitecto José María Barahona Villaseñor, consiste en la figura de Cristo, patrón del país, sobre un globo terráqueo que a la vez está montado sobre un pedestal. En un principio la imagen estuvo en la tumba del Dr. Manuel Enrique Araujo, presidente de la república a principios del siglo XX. La familia del mandatario obsequió la imagen al arzobispo de San Salvador Monseñor Luis Chávez y González en ocasión de celebrarse el Primer Congreso Eucarístico Nacional en 1942. Fue develado el 26 de noviembre de ese año.
Debido al terremoto de 1986 la estatua cayó al suelo dañándose considerablemente. Fue reconstruida y puesta nuevamente en su lugar meses después con la campaña “Levantemos el alma salvadoreña”. Por otro lado, desde esa zona, es costumbre iniciar la marcha de carrozas durante la celebración de las fiestas patronales de la ciudad.
Como parte del plan de reordenamiento que la alcaldía de San Salvador está impulsando en toda la ciudad, el actual alcalde Norman Quijano realizó la remodelación, así como el cambio de nombre de Plaza las Américas a Plaza Salvador del Mundo. La propuesta ganadora fue presentada por los Arquitectos Enrique Choussy y Carlos García. La remodelación incluyó la renovación total de las aceras, los graderíos y el área de las banderas. La imagen de Cristo, colocada a unos 18 m de altura, también fue remozada con nueva pintura.
Para la restauración se solicitó la intervención de la Secretaría de Cultura de la Presidencia y de la Dirección Nacional de Patrimonio Cultural. Los restauradores encargados del proyecto fueron Carmen Beatriz Castillo y Willson Alfaro.
Los trabajos dieron inicio el 7 de junio de 2010 y fue inaugurada el 18 de noviembre de ese mismo año. El proyecto estuvo a cargo de Grupo Roble. Uno de los objetivos principales de la renovación, es convertir esta plaza en un ícono de Centroamérica y un referente capitalino. El monto total de la reparación del sitio ascedió a unos $300.000.
Frente a este lugar, existe una estatua erigida en memoria de Óscar Arnulfo Romero.
Óscar Arnulfo Romero y Galdámez (* Ciudad Barrios, El Salvador; 15 de agosto de 1917 – † San Salvador, (Id.), 24 de marzo de 1980) conocido como Monseñor Romero,fue un sacerdote católico salvadoreño y el cuarto arzobispo metropolitano de San Salvador (1977-1980). Se volvió célebre por su predicación en defensa de los derechos humanos y murió asesinado en el ejercicio de su ministerio pastoral.
Como arzobispo, denunció en sus homilías dominicales numerosas violaciones de los derechos humanos y manifestó públicamente su solidaridad hacia las víctimas de la violencia política de su país. Su asesinato provocó la protesta internacional en demanda del respeto a los derechos humanos en El Salvador. Dentro de la Iglesia Católica se le consideró un obispo que defendía la "opción preferencial por los pobres". En una de sus homilías, Monseñor Romero afirmó: "La misión de la Iglesia es identificarse con los pobres, así la Iglesia encuentra su salvación." (11 de noviembre de 1977)
En 1994, una causa para su canonización fue abierta por su sucesor Arturo Rivera y Damas. A partir de este proceso, Monseñor Romero ha recibido el título de Siervo de Dios. En Latinoamérica muchos se refieren a él como San Romero de América. Fuera de la Iglesia Católica, Romero es honrado por otras denominaciones religiosas de la cristiandad, incluyendo a la Comunión Anglicana la cual lo ha incluído en su santoral. Él es uno de los diez mártires del siglo XX representados en las estatuas de la Abadía de Westminster, en Londres, y fue nominado al Premio Nobel de la Paz en 1979.
"Let us consider, beloved, how the Lord continually proves to us that there shall be a future resurrection, of which He has rendered the Lord Jesus Christ the first-fruits by raising Him from the dead. Let us contemplate, beloved, the resurrection which is at all times taking place. Day and night declare to us a resurrection. The night sinks to sleep, and the day arises; the day [again] departs, and the night comes on. Let us behold the fruits [of the earth], how the sowing of grain takes place. The sower goes forth, and casts it into the ground; and the seed being thus scattered, though dry and naked when it fell upon the earth, is gradually dissolved. Then out of its dissolution the mighty power of the providence of the Lord raises it up again, and from one seed many arise and bring forth fruit."
– Pope Clement's 1st letter to the Corinthians.
Today is the feast of Pope St Clement I who was martyred in 99.
This stained glass window is from Baltimore Cathedral.
St Peter Mancroft towers over the modern market in the centre of the city. The brutalist City Hall, to it's left, the Norman Keep to the right beyond the shops of Gentleman's Walk and Back of the Inns, and on the other side of the market is the flint Guildhall.
I wanted to return to to St Peter to look again at the font canopy, and the wonderful glass in the Chancel.
I approached the church just after one, I was hot and the walk from the Cathedral had made me hotter.
I walked to the glass door, and a hundred faces turned to look at me, as there was an organ recital going on. Should I stay or go?
I stayed in the cool of the church, even if I did overheat for ten minutes.
In front of me, a video screen showed the organist's hands and feet as he put the instrument through its paces. I learned from this the pedals on the floor didn't just make the organ loud or quiet, they played a melody too. So he played with all four limbs, and the music filled the church.
Yes, I wanted to get on to get my shots, but I needed this to make me stop and consider the space and what I should do with the rest of the day.
The concert ended at quarter to two, I rushed round to get my shots, before hoping to get to the station for the three o'clock train back to London.
-------------------------------------------
Norwich is a fine city. Or so the signs say on every road into it. But, and there can be no denying it, it is a jewel in the Norfolk countryside.
For me it is “just” Norwich Where used to go for our important shopping, for football and later for concerts. We, and I, would take for granted its cobbled streets, Norman cathedral and medieval churches by the dozen. Also it’s a pub for every day, the ramshackle market, and the Norman castle keep looking down on the city sprawled around.
Just Norwich.
Later, it also became where I bought new records from Backs in Swan Lane, and searched for punk classics in the Record and Tape Exchange.
Norwich is lucky that the industrial revolution passed by the city leaving few changes, the character and history intact. World War II did damage, some churches were abandoned, some rebuilt, but many survived.
And Norwich is a friendly city. It sees warm and colourful, and on a hot summer’s day when the locals were in shorts and t-shirts, much white flesh was on display. I also take the football club for granted. I have supported it from nearly 49 years, and being away from the city means I get my news and views largely second hand, but I also forget how central the club is to the people.
Sadly, Norwich isn't really on the way to anywhere, well except Great Yarmouth and Cromer, so people don't come here by accident. So it remains something of a secret to most but locals.
Other cities would have children dressed in any one of a dozen Premier League club’s replica shirts. In Norwich yellow and green was the dominant colour, even after a chastening season that saw us finish rock bottom of the league. The local sports “superstore” has a Norwich Fan’s fanzone, and a third of the window is given to the home city club.
I knew the city like the back of my hand, so knew the route I wanted to take to provide me with views that would refresh those in my mind. I didn’t dally, pressed on to my two targets, the Anglican Cathedral and St Peter Mancroft.
This wasn’t the original plan; that was to meet two friends I used to go to the football with, Ian and Ali, but they both caught a bug in Manchester watching the women’s Euros, so couldn’t meet with me. But I had an alternative plan, maybe with a pub stop or two.
The trip happened as I got a mail offering a tempting 20% off the trip that had been selling poorly, I checked with Ian and Alison, they said they were free, but had yet to fall ill. So seats were booked, as Jools liked the sound of an afternoon in Norwich and meeting my friends.
Up at quarter to five so we could catch the first High Speed service out of Dover, so to be in London in time to catch the railtour to Norwich.
Sun had yet to light up Dover Priory when we arrived, but a few people milling around, including two still at the end of their night out.
Folkestone was light by the warm light of the rising sun, and well worth a shot as we passed over Foord Viaduct.
Later, I was hoping the calm morning meant the Medway would be a mirror, but a breeze disturbed the surface ruining the reflections I had hoped for.
Finally, emerging into Essex, the line climbs as the go over the Dartford Crossing, just enough time to grab a shot.
It was already hot in London, so we stayed in the shade of the undercroft at St Pancras, had a coffee and a pasty from Greggs before walking over to Kings Cross to see if our tour was already at the buffers.
We walked across the road to King's Cross, and find the station packed with milling passengers, all eyes trained on the departure boards waiting for platform confirmations.
Ours was due to be platform 3, and the rake of carriages was indeed there, top and tailed by class 66 freight locomotives.
We get on the train and find we had been allocated a pair of seats nearest the vestibule. This meant that they were a few inches less wide than others, meaning Jools and I were jammed in.
Almost straight away, Jools's back and Achilles began to ache, and the thought of four hours of this in the morning and another four in the evening was too much, and so she decided to get off at the first stop at Potters Bar.
In the end, a wise choice I think.
The guy in the seat opposite to us talked the whole journey. I mean filling any silence with anything: how much he paid for the components of his lunch, his cameras and then his job. In great detail. He also collected train numbers. I didn't know that was really a thin in the days of EMUs, but I helped out from time to time telling him units he had missed.
We had a twenty minute break at Peterborough because of pathing issues, so we all got out to stretch our legs and do some extra trainspotting.
An Azuma left from the next platform, and another came in on the fast line. I snapped them both.
From Peterborough, the train reversed, and after the 20 minute wait, we went out of the station southwards, taking the line towards Ely.
Now that we had done our last stop, the train could open up and we cruised across the Fens at 70mph, the flat landscape botted with wind turbines and church towers slipped by.
Instead of going into Ely station, we took the rarely used (for passenger trains) freight avoiding line, now a single track. Emerging crossing the main line, taking the line eastwards towards Thetford.
Again, the regulator was opened, and we rattled along. Even so, the journey was entering its fourth hour, and with my travelling colleague and without Jools, time was dragging.
We were now back in Norfolk, passing the STANTA training area, all warning signs on the fences telling the trainee soldiers that that was where the area ended. I saw no soldiers or tanks. My only thought was of the rare flowers that would be growing there, unseen.
And so for the final run into Norwich, familiar countryside now.
Under the southern bypass and the main line from London, slowing down where the two lines merged at Trowse before crossing the River Wensum, before the final bend into Norwich Thorpe.
At last I could get off the train and stretch my legs.
Many others were also getting off to board coaches to take them to Wroxham for a cruise on the Broads, or a ride on the Bure Valley Railway, while the rest would head to Yarmouth for four hours at the seaside.
I got off the train and walked through the station, out into the forecourt and over the main road, so I could walk down Riverside Road to the Bishop’s Bridge, then from there into the Cathedral Close.
The hustle and bustle of the station and roadworks were soon left behind, as the only noise was from a family messing about in a rowing boat in front of Pulls Ferry and a swan chasing an Egyptian Goose, so the occasional splash of water.
I reached the bridge and passed by the first pub, with already many folks sitting out in the beer garden, sipping wines and/or summer beers. I was already hot and would loved to have joined them, but I was on a mission.
In the meantime, Jools had texted me and said if I fancied getting a regular service back home, then I should. And a seed grew in my brain. Because, on the way back, departing at just gone five, the tour had to have a 50 minute layover in a goods siding at Peterborough, and would not get back to Kings Cross until half nine, and then I had to get back to Dover.
I could go to the cathedral the church, walk back to the station. Or get a taxi, and get a train back to London at four and still be home by eight.
Yes.
I walked past the Great Hospital, then into the Close via the swing gate, round to the entrance where there was no charge for entry and now no charge for photography. But I would make a donation, I said. And I did, a tenner.
I have been to the cathedral a few times, but not as a churchcrawler. So, I made my way round, taking shots, drinking in the details. But the walk up had got me hot and bothered, I always run with a hot engine, but in summer it can be pretty damp. I struggled to keep my glasses on my nose, and as I went round I knew I was in no mood to go round again with the wide angle, that could wait for another visit.
The church is pretty much as built by the Normans, roof excepted which has been replaced at least twice, but is poetry in stone. And for a cathedral, not many people around also enjoying the building and its history.
At one, bells chimed, and I think The Lord’s Prayer was read out, we were asked to be quiet. I always am when snapping.
In half an hour I was done, so walked out through the west door, through the gate and into Tombland. I was heading for the Market and St Peter which site on the opposite side to the Guildhall.
I powered on, ignoring how warm I felt, in fact not that warm at all. The heat and sweats would come when I stopped, I found out.
I walk up the side of the market and into the church, and into the middle of an organ recital.
Should I turn round and do something else, or should I stop and listen. I stopped and listened.
Everyone should hear an organ recital in a large church. There is nothing quite like it. The organ can make the most beautiful sounds, but at the same time, the bass pipes making noises so deep you can only feel it in your bones.
Tony Pinel knew his way round the organ, and via a video link we could see his hands and feet making the noises we could hear. It was wonderful, but quite how someone can play one tune with their feet and another with their hands, and pulling and pushing knobs and stoppers, is beyond me. But glad some people can.
It finished at quarter to two, and I photograph the font canopy and the 15th century glass in the south chapel. Font canopies are rare, there is only four in England, and one of the others is in Trunch 20 miles to the north. Much is a restoration, but it is an impressive sight when paired with the seven-sacrament font under it.
The glass is no-less spectacular, panels three feet by two, five wide and stretching to the vaulted roof. I can’t photograph them all, but I do over 50%.
I go to the market for a lunch of chips, for old times sake. I mean that was the treat whenever we went either to Norwich or Yarmouth; chips on the market. I was told they no longer did battered sausage, so had an un-battered one, and a can of pop. I stood and ate in the alleyway between stalls, people passing by and people buying chips and mushy peas of their own.
Once done, I had thought of getting a taxi back to the station, but the rank that has always been rammed with black cabs was empty, and two couples were shouting at each other as to who should have the one that was there. So I walked to the station, across Gentleman’s Walk, along to Back of the Inns, then up London Street to the top of Prince of Wales Road and then an easy time to the station across the bridge.
I got my ticket and saw a train to Liverpool Street was due to depart at 14:32. In three minutes.
I went through the barrier and got on the train, it was almost empty in the new, swish electric inter-city unit. I was sweating buckets, and needed a drink, but there appeared to be no buffet, instead just electric efficiency and silence as the train slid out of the station and went round past the football ground to the river, then taking the main line south.
In front of me, two oriental ladies talked for the whole journey. I listened to them, no idea what they talked about to fill 105 minutes.
I thought it would be nearly five when the train got in, but helped by only stopping at Diss, Ipswich, Manningtree and Colchester we got in, on time, at quarter past four.
I walked to the main concourse and down into the Circle Line platforms, getting a train in a couple of minutes the four stops to St Pancras. I knew there was a train soon leaving, and after checking the board and my watch I saw I had five minutes to get along the length of the station and up to the Southeastern platforms.
I tried. I did, but I reached the steps up to the platforms and I saw I had 45 seconds, no time to go up as they would have locked the doors. So, instead I went to the nearby pub and had a large, ice-cold bottle of Weiss beer.
That was better.
I was all hot and bothered again, but would have an hour to cool down, and the beer helped.
At ten past five, I went up and found the Dover train already in, I went through the barriers and took a seat in a carriage I thought would stop near the exit at Dover Priory. I called Jools to let her know I would be back at quarter to seven, and she confirmed she would pick me up.
She was there, people got off all out on a night on the town, dressed in shiny random pieces of fabric covering boobs and bottoms. I was young once, I thought.
Jools was there, she started the car and drove us home via Jubilee Way. Across the Channel France was a clear as anything, and four ferries were plying between the two shores. Take us home.
Once home, Jools had prepared Caprese. I sliced some bread and poured wine. On the wireless, Craig spun funk and soul. We ate.
Tired.
It was going to be a hot night, but I was tired enough to sleep through it. Or so I thought.
-------------------------------------------
The great urban churches of northern Europe sit on their market places, especially in Cathedral cities. It is as if they were intended as late Medieval statements of civic pride. They are a reminder of the way that the cities rose to prominence in the decades after the Black Death, as if the old order had been broken and a new one was beginning. They were a great affirmation of Catholic orthodoxy and social communion, in the years before the merchants that paid for them embraced Protestantism and capitalism. They are European culture caught on the cusp of the Renaissance, the beacons that lead us into early modern Europe.
These things are more easily sensed in the great late medieval cities of Flanders and the Netherlands, for example at Bruges. The bridges, the medieval triumph, the tourist tat shops and the foreign voices can create an illusion of being in Cambridge or Oxford, but the great Market Church and Belfry on the main square recall Norwich, where St Peter Mancroft and the medieval Guildhall have a similar juxtaposition. The Industrial Revolution would bring a new wave of cities to prominence, but in the provincial cities that were prominent in the 15th century, Norwich, and Bristol, and York, you still sense the power of those times.
Looking at St Peter, the sophistication of its Perpendicular architecture feels a geological age away from the coarse, brutal Norman castle on the far side of the Main Croft ('Mancroft'), which is understandable. Four hundred years had passed since the Norman invasion, and St Peter Mancroft is as close in time to the Industrial Revolution as it is to the Normans. That is true of all late medieval churches, of course, but seeing the architecture in a city you get a sense that it looked to the future more than to the past. St Peter Mancroft feels entirely at home with the clean, Scandinavian lines of the adjacent 1930s City Hall, and perhaps even more so with the retro-Modernism of the new Forum, whch reflects it back to the city. The Forum was built to replace the Norwich City library, tragically destroyed by fire in 1994, but in style it echoes the confidence of a great 19th century railway station, the roof a triumph of engineering. You are reminded of Cologne, where to leave the railway station and step into the shadow of the west front of the great Cathedral is to merely move from one statement of civic pride to another.
The influence of Flanders and the Netherlands is familiar in East Anglia, of course, but it is only at Norwich you sense this sense of civic bullishness. Utilitarian, practical Ipswich demolished St Mildred on the Cornhill in the 19th century - the French Baroque town hall now stands on the site. In Cambridge, the market place has been skewed so that today St Mary the Great sits with its east window facing the stalls, as if keeping them at a distance. Worse, it now styles itself the 'University Church'. The great north side of St Peter Mancroft, its massive tower and clerestory like eternal truths rising above the deckchair jollity of the stall canopies, is a constant presence. You can never ignore it.
We know that the present church was begun by 1430, and was consecrated on St Peter's Day, 1455. That is, it is all of a piece. In the nave and chancel there are echoes of near-contemporary Holy Trinity, Long Melford, in Suffolk. The tower is something else again; idiosyncratic, a symbol of power and wealth. There's nothing else quite like it. Pevsner thought it more rich than aesthetically successful, and this is not helped by Street's spirelet of 1881, a flighty thing. There was a massive Victorian restoration here. Before the Streets, pere et fils, came along, diocesan architect Richard Phipson had given it a going over, and there is a sense of the grand 19th century civic dignity of his St Mary le Tower in Ipswich. Of course, hardly anything of these restorations is visible from the outside, apart from a mid-20th century meeting room down in the south-east corner, a jaunty Festival of Britain affair, now a parish tea room.
A processional way runs beneath the tower, and there is another beneath the chancel, the land sloping steeply away towards the east. You enter from either the north or south sides, through surprisingly small porches which lead into the aisles. Again, a sense of civic confidence pervades as the interior unfolds before you.
There is no chancel arch. The arcades run the full length of the church, the great east window is echoed by that to the west, and if you stand in the middle of the church and look to either end, only the west end organ tells you easily which direction you are facing. The furnishings are pretty much all Phipson's, uneasily heavy under the delicate fluting of the columns. How good modern wooden chairs would look in here! There are civic memorials the lengths of the aisle walls, but because the windows are full of clear glass they are not oppressive here as they are, say, at St Stephen.
At the west end of the north aisle sits the font on its pedestal. You can see at a glance that it was one of the seven sacraments series, and that all of its reliefs have been completely erased, as in the great churches of Southwold and Blythburgh in Suffolk. At Wenhaston, we know that this happened in the 19th century - could the same thing be true here? Above the font is the famous font canopy. Now, font canopies are so rare - there are only four of them, and they are all so different - that it is not particularly useful to compare them. Certainly, that here reflects the rather grander example at Trunch, some twenty miles away. Since the other two are either post-Reformation (Durham) or made of stone (Luton), it might make sense to think of the Norfolk two as a unique pair. Here at St Peter Mancroft, much of the upper part is a 19th century restoration, and there seems to have been some attempt to copy Trunch. The lower part is more interesting, with its niches and canopies. It must have been spectacular when the font was intact.
Pevsner tells us that the gilded reredos in the sanctuary is by JP Seddon, but that Ninian Comper restored and enlarged it in the early 1930s. It is not exciting, but that is probably as well, for above it is one of the greatest medieval treasures of East Anglia. This is the medieval glass that survives from the first few decades of the existence of the church. Some of it was probably in place that first Petertide. It has been moved around a bit since then; the whole east side was blown out by an explosion in 1648, and the glass has been removed on several occasions since, most recently during the Second World War. After East Harling, it is the finest expanse of Norwich School glass of the 15th century.
Books have been written about the glass at St Peter Mancroft, and there is neither time nor space to go into too much detail here. Suffice to say that this is the work of several Norwich workshops, probably working in the Conesford area of the city along what is today King Street. It is obvious that some other glass in East Anglia is from the same workshops using the same or similar cartoons, notably North Tuddenham in Norfolk and Combs in Suffolk, and of course most obviously, East Harling. Indeed, by comparison with East Harling in the 1920s, the historian Christopher Woodforde was able to deduce some of what was missing here, and what there.
There are several sequences, most notably the Story of Christ from the Annunciation to the day of Pentecost. This extends into a Marian sequence depicting the story of the Assumption. There are also scenes from the stories of St Peter and St John, and other individual Saints panels, including St Faith, a significant cult in late medieval Norwich. The panel of St Francis suggests that it was also once part of a sequence. The lower range depicts the donors, some of whom are identified. The central spine is largely modern glass by Clayton and Bell for the Streets in the 1880s. Some of the missing glass is now at Felbrigg Hall.
In any other church, the 1921 glass by Herbert Hendrie in the south chapel aisle chapel would be considered outstanding. It is in the style of Eric Gill, but feels rather heavy handed next to the extraordinary delicacy of its medieval neighbours.
While I was here, I stopped taking photographs for the one o'clock prayers. One of the custodians stood at the lectern and read very eloquently from the Acts of the Apostles, and said prayers for the city and its people. Apart from me, there were only two other listeners in the vast space. It was tenderly and thoughtfully done, but I couldn't help thinking that it is the exterior of this wonderful structure which is the Church's true act of witness in central Norwich now.
www.norfolkchurches.co.uk/norwichstpetermancroft/norwichs...
St Peter Mancroft towers over the modern market in the centre of the city. The brutalist City Hall, to it's left, the Norman Keep to the right beyond the shops of Gentleman's Walk and Back of the Inns, and on the other side of the market is the flint Guildhall.
I wanted to return to to St Peter to look again at the font canopy, and the wonderful glass in the Chancel.
I approached the church just after one, I was hot and the walk from the Cathedral had made me hotter.
I walked to the glass door, and a hundred faces turned to look at me, as there was an organ recital going on. Should I stay or go?
I stayed in the cool of the church, even if I did overheat for ten minutes.
In front of me, a video screen showed the organist's hands and feet as he put the instrument through its paces. I learned from this the pedals on the floor didn't just make the organ loud or quiet, they played a melody too. So he played with all four limbs, and the music filled the church.
Yes, I wanted to get on to get my shots, but I needed this to make me stop and consider the space and what I should do with the rest of the day.
The concert ended at quarter to two, I rushed round to get my shots, before hoping to get to the station for the three o'clock train back to London.
-------------------------------------------
Norwich is a fine city. Or so the signs say on every road into it. But, and there can be no denying it, it is a jewel in the Norfolk countryside.
For me it is “just” Norwich Where used to go for our important shopping, for football and later for concerts. We, and I, would take for granted its cobbled streets, Norman cathedral and medieval churches by the dozen. Also it’s a pub for every day, the ramshackle market, and the Norman castle keep looking down on the city sprawled around.
Just Norwich.
Later, it also became where I bought new records from Backs in Swan Lane, and searched for punk classics in the Record and Tape Exchange.
Norwich is lucky that the industrial revolution passed by the city leaving few changes, the character and history intact. World War II did damage, some churches were abandoned, some rebuilt, but many survived.
And Norwich is a friendly city. It sees warm and colourful, and on a hot summer’s day when the locals were in shorts and t-shirts, much white flesh was on display. I also take the football club for granted. I have supported it from nearly 49 years, and being away from the city means I get my news and views largely second hand, but I also forget how central the club is to the people.
Sadly, Norwich isn't really on the way to anywhere, well except Great Yarmouth and Cromer, so people don't come here by accident. So it remains something of a secret to most but locals.
Other cities would have children dressed in any one of a dozen Premier League club’s replica shirts. In Norwich yellow and green was the dominant colour, even after a chastening season that saw us finish rock bottom of the league. The local sports “superstore” has a Norwich Fan’s fanzone, and a third of the window is given to the home city club.
I knew the city like the back of my hand, so knew the route I wanted to take to provide me with views that would refresh those in my mind. I didn’t dally, pressed on to my two targets, the Anglican Cathedral and St Peter Mancroft.
This wasn’t the original plan; that was to meet two friends I used to go to the football with, Ian and Ali, but they both caught a bug in Manchester watching the women’s Euros, so couldn’t meet with me. But I had an alternative plan, maybe with a pub stop or two.
The trip happened as I got a mail offering a tempting 20% off the trip that had been selling poorly, I checked with Ian and Alison, they said they were free, but had yet to fall ill. So seats were booked, as Jools liked the sound of an afternoon in Norwich and meeting my friends.
Up at quarter to five so we could catch the first High Speed service out of Dover, so to be in London in time to catch the railtour to Norwich.
Sun had yet to light up Dover Priory when we arrived, but a few people milling around, including two still at the end of their night out.
Folkestone was light by the warm light of the rising sun, and well worth a shot as we passed over Foord Viaduct.
Later, I was hoping the calm morning meant the Medway would be a mirror, but a breeze disturbed the surface ruining the reflections I had hoped for.
Finally, emerging into Essex, the line climbs as the go over the Dartford Crossing, just enough time to grab a shot.
It was already hot in London, so we stayed in the shade of the undercroft at St Pancras, had a coffee and a pasty from Greggs before walking over to Kings Cross to see if our tour was already at the buffers.
We walked across the road to King's Cross, and find the station packed with milling passengers, all eyes trained on the departure boards waiting for platform confirmations.
Ours was due to be platform 3, and the rake of carriages was indeed there, top and tailed by class 66 freight locomotives.
We get on the train and find we had been allocated a pair of seats nearest the vestibule. This meant that they were a few inches less wide than others, meaning Jools and I were jammed in.
Almost straight away, Jools's back and Achilles began to ache, and the thought of four hours of this in the morning and another four in the evening was too much, and so she decided to get off at the first stop at Potters Bar.
In the end, a wise choice I think.
The guy in the seat opposite to us talked the whole journey. I mean filling any silence with anything: how much he paid for the components of his lunch, his cameras and then his job. In great detail. He also collected train numbers. I didn't know that was really a thin in the days of EMUs, but I helped out from time to time telling him units he had missed.
We had a twenty minute break at Peterborough because of pathing issues, so we all got out to stretch our legs and do some extra trainspotting.
An Azuma left from the next platform, and another came in on the fast line. I snapped them both.
From Peterborough, the train reversed, and after the 20 minute wait, we went out of the station southwards, taking the line towards Ely.
Now that we had done our last stop, the train could open up and we cruised across the Fens at 70mph, the flat landscape botted with wind turbines and church towers slipped by.
Instead of going into Ely station, we took the rarely used (for passenger trains) freight avoiding line, now a single track. Emerging crossing the main line, taking the line eastwards towards Thetford.
Again, the regulator was opened, and we rattled along. Even so, the journey was entering its fourth hour, and with my travelling colleague and without Jools, time was dragging.
We were now back in Norfolk, passing the STANTA training area, all warning signs on the fences telling the trainee soldiers that that was where the area ended. I saw no soldiers or tanks. My only thought was of the rare flowers that would be growing there, unseen.
And so for the final run into Norwich, familiar countryside now.
Under the southern bypass and the main line from London, slowing down where the two lines merged at Trowse before crossing the River Wensum, before the final bend into Norwich Thorpe.
At last I could get off the train and stretch my legs.
Many others were also getting off to board coaches to take them to Wroxham for a cruise on the Broads, or a ride on the Bure Valley Railway, while the rest would head to Yarmouth for four hours at the seaside.
I got off the train and walked through the station, out into the forecourt and over the main road, so I could walk down Riverside Road to the Bishop’s Bridge, then from there into the Cathedral Close.
The hustle and bustle of the station and roadworks were soon left behind, as the only noise was from a family messing about in a rowing boat in front of Pulls Ferry and a swan chasing an Egyptian Goose, so the occasional splash of water.
I reached the bridge and passed by the first pub, with already many folks sitting out in the beer garden, sipping wines and/or summer beers. I was already hot and would loved to have joined them, but I was on a mission.
In the meantime, Jools had texted me and said if I fancied getting a regular service back home, then I should. And a seed grew in my brain. Because, on the way back, departing at just gone five, the tour had to have a 50 minute layover in a goods siding at Peterborough, and would not get back to Kings Cross until half nine, and then I had to get back to Dover.
I could go to the cathedral the church, walk back to the station. Or get a taxi, and get a train back to London at four and still be home by eight.
Yes.
I walked past the Great Hospital, then into the Close via the swing gate, round to the entrance where there was no charge for entry and now no charge for photography. But I would make a donation, I said. And I did, a tenner.
I have been to the cathedral a few times, but not as a churchcrawler. So, I made my way round, taking shots, drinking in the details. But the walk up had got me hot and bothered, I always run with a hot engine, but in summer it can be pretty damp. I struggled to keep my glasses on my nose, and as I went round I knew I was in no mood to go round again with the wide angle, that could wait for another visit.
The church is pretty much as built by the Normans, roof excepted which has been replaced at least twice, but is poetry in stone. And for a cathedral, not many people around also enjoying the building and its history.
At one, bells chimed, and I think The Lord’s Prayer was read out, we were asked to be quiet. I always am when snapping.
In half an hour I was done, so walked out through the west door, through the gate and into Tombland. I was heading for the Market and St Peter which site on the opposite side to the Guildhall.
I powered on, ignoring how warm I felt, in fact not that warm at all. The heat and sweats would come when I stopped, I found out.
I walk up the side of the market and into the church, and into the middle of an organ recital.
Should I turn round and do something else, or should I stop and listen. I stopped and listened.
Everyone should hear an organ recital in a large church. There is nothing quite like it. The organ can make the most beautiful sounds, but at the same time, the bass pipes making noises so deep you can only feel it in your bones.
Tony Pinel knew his way round the organ, and via a video link we could see his hands and feet making the noises we could hear. It was wonderful, but quite how someone can play one tune with their feet and another with their hands, and pulling and pushing knobs and stoppers, is beyond me. But glad some people can.
It finished at quarter to two, and I photograph the font canopy and the 15th century glass in the south chapel. Font canopies are rare, there is only four in England, and one of the others is in Trunch 20 miles to the north. Much is a restoration, but it is an impressive sight when paired with the seven-sacrament font under it.
The glass is no-less spectacular, panels three feet by two, five wide and stretching to the vaulted roof. I can’t photograph them all, but I do over 50%.
I go to the market for a lunch of chips, for old times sake. I mean that was the treat whenever we went either to Norwich or Yarmouth; chips on the market. I was told they no longer did battered sausage, so had an un-battered one, and a can of pop. I stood and ate in the alleyway between stalls, people passing by and people buying chips and mushy peas of their own.
Once done, I had thought of getting a taxi back to the station, but the rank that has always been rammed with black cabs was empty, and two couples were shouting at each other as to who should have the one that was there. So I walked to the station, across Gentleman’s Walk, along to Back of the Inns, then up London Street to the top of Prince of Wales Road and then an easy time to the station across the bridge.
I got my ticket and saw a train to Liverpool Street was due to depart at 14:32. In three minutes.
I went through the barrier and got on the train, it was almost empty in the new, swish electric inter-city unit. I was sweating buckets, and needed a drink, but there appeared to be no buffet, instead just electric efficiency and silence as the train slid out of the station and went round past the football ground to the river, then taking the main line south.
In front of me, two oriental ladies talked for the whole journey. I listened to them, no idea what they talked about to fill 105 minutes.
I thought it would be nearly five when the train got in, but helped by only stopping at Diss, Ipswich, Manningtree and Colchester we got in, on time, at quarter past four.
I walked to the main concourse and down into the Circle Line platforms, getting a train in a couple of minutes the four stops to St Pancras. I knew there was a train soon leaving, and after checking the board and my watch I saw I had five minutes to get along the length of the station and up to the Southeastern platforms.
I tried. I did, but I reached the steps up to the platforms and I saw I had 45 seconds, no time to go up as they would have locked the doors. So, instead I went to the nearby pub and had a large, ice-cold bottle of Weiss beer.
That was better.
I was all hot and bothered again, but would have an hour to cool down, and the beer helped.
At ten past five, I went up and found the Dover train already in, I went through the barriers and took a seat in a carriage I thought would stop near the exit at Dover Priory. I called Jools to let her know I would be back at quarter to seven, and she confirmed she would pick me up.
She was there, people got off all out on a night on the town, dressed in shiny random pieces of fabric covering boobs and bottoms. I was young once, I thought.
Jools was there, she started the car and drove us home via Jubilee Way. Across the Channel France was a clear as anything, and four ferries were plying between the two shores. Take us home.
Once home, Jools had prepared Caprese. I sliced some bread and poured wine. On the wireless, Craig spun funk and soul. We ate.
Tired.
It was going to be a hot night, but I was tired enough to sleep through it. Or so I thought.
-------------------------------------------
The great urban churches of northern Europe sit on their market places, especially in Cathedral cities. It is as if they were intended as late Medieval statements of civic pride. They are a reminder of the way that the cities rose to prominence in the decades after the Black Death, as if the old order had been broken and a new one was beginning. They were a great affirmation of Catholic orthodoxy and social communion, in the years before the merchants that paid for them embraced Protestantism and capitalism. They are European culture caught on the cusp of the Renaissance, the beacons that lead us into early modern Europe.
These things are more easily sensed in the great late medieval cities of Flanders and the Netherlands, for example at Bruges. The bridges, the medieval triumph, the tourist tat shops and the foreign voices can create an illusion of being in Cambridge or Oxford, but the great Market Church and Belfry on the main square recall Norwich, where St Peter Mancroft and the medieval Guildhall have a similar juxtaposition. The Industrial Revolution would bring a new wave of cities to prominence, but in the provincial cities that were prominent in the 15th century, Norwich, and Bristol, and York, you still sense the power of those times.
Looking at St Peter, the sophistication of its Perpendicular architecture feels a geological age away from the coarse, brutal Norman castle on the far side of the Main Croft ('Mancroft'), which is understandable. Four hundred years had passed since the Norman invasion, and St Peter Mancroft is as close in time to the Industrial Revolution as it is to the Normans. That is true of all late medieval churches, of course, but seeing the architecture in a city you get a sense that it looked to the future more than to the past. St Peter Mancroft feels entirely at home with the clean, Scandinavian lines of the adjacent 1930s City Hall, and perhaps even more so with the retro-Modernism of the new Forum, whch reflects it back to the city. The Forum was built to replace the Norwich City library, tragically destroyed by fire in 1994, but in style it echoes the confidence of a great 19th century railway station, the roof a triumph of engineering. You are reminded of Cologne, where to leave the railway station and step into the shadow of the west front of the great Cathedral is to merely move from one statement of civic pride to another.
The influence of Flanders and the Netherlands is familiar in East Anglia, of course, but it is only at Norwich you sense this sense of civic bullishness. Utilitarian, practical Ipswich demolished St Mildred on the Cornhill in the 19th century - the French Baroque town hall now stands on the site. In Cambridge, the market place has been skewed so that today St Mary the Great sits with its east window facing the stalls, as if keeping them at a distance. Worse, it now styles itself the 'University Church'. The great north side of St Peter Mancroft, its massive tower and clerestory like eternal truths rising above the deckchair jollity of the stall canopies, is a constant presence. You can never ignore it.
We know that the present church was begun by 1430, and was consecrated on St Peter's Day, 1455. That is, it is all of a piece. In the nave and chancel there are echoes of near-contemporary Holy Trinity, Long Melford, in Suffolk. The tower is something else again; idiosyncratic, a symbol of power and wealth. There's nothing else quite like it. Pevsner thought it more rich than aesthetically successful, and this is not helped by Street's spirelet of 1881, a flighty thing. There was a massive Victorian restoration here. Before the Streets, pere et fils, came along, diocesan architect Richard Phipson had given it a going over, and there is a sense of the grand 19th century civic dignity of his St Mary le Tower in Ipswich. Of course, hardly anything of these restorations is visible from the outside, apart from a mid-20th century meeting room down in the south-east corner, a jaunty Festival of Britain affair, now a parish tea room.
A processional way runs beneath the tower, and there is another beneath the chancel, the land sloping steeply away towards the east. You enter from either the north or south sides, through surprisingly small porches which lead into the aisles. Again, a sense of civic confidence pervades as the interior unfolds before you.
There is no chancel arch. The arcades run the full length of the church, the great east window is echoed by that to the west, and if you stand in the middle of the church and look to either end, only the west end organ tells you easily which direction you are facing. The furnishings are pretty much all Phipson's, uneasily heavy under the delicate fluting of the columns. How good modern wooden chairs would look in here! There are civic memorials the lengths of the aisle walls, but because the windows are full of clear glass they are not oppressive here as they are, say, at St Stephen.
At the west end of the north aisle sits the font on its pedestal. You can see at a glance that it was one of the seven sacraments series, and that all of its reliefs have been completely erased, as in the great churches of Southwold and Blythburgh in Suffolk. At Wenhaston, we know that this happened in the 19th century - could the same thing be true here? Above the font is the famous font canopy. Now, font canopies are so rare - there are only four of them, and they are all so different - that it is not particularly useful to compare them. Certainly, that here reflects the rather grander example at Trunch, some twenty miles away. Since the other two are either post-Reformation (Durham) or made of stone (Luton), it might make sense to think of the Norfolk two as a unique pair. Here at St Peter Mancroft, much of the upper part is a 19th century restoration, and there seems to have been some attempt to copy Trunch. The lower part is more interesting, with its niches and canopies. It must have been spectacular when the font was intact.
Pevsner tells us that the gilded reredos in the sanctuary is by JP Seddon, but that Ninian Comper restored and enlarged it in the early 1930s. It is not exciting, but that is probably as well, for above it is one of the greatest medieval treasures of East Anglia. This is the medieval glass that survives from the first few decades of the existence of the church. Some of it was probably in place that first Petertide. It has been moved around a bit since then; the whole east side was blown out by an explosion in 1648, and the glass has been removed on several occasions since, most recently during the Second World War. After East Harling, it is the finest expanse of Norwich School glass of the 15th century.
Books have been written about the glass at St Peter Mancroft, and there is neither time nor space to go into too much detail here. Suffice to say that this is the work of several Norwich workshops, probably working in the Conesford area of the city along what is today King Street. It is obvious that some other glass in East Anglia is from the same workshops using the same or similar cartoons, notably North Tuddenham in Norfolk and Combs in Suffolk, and of course most obviously, East Harling. Indeed, by comparison with East Harling in the 1920s, the historian Christopher Woodforde was able to deduce some of what was missing here, and what there.
There are several sequences, most notably the Story of Christ from the Annunciation to the day of Pentecost. This extends into a Marian sequence depicting the story of the Assumption. There are also scenes from the stories of St Peter and St John, and other individual Saints panels, including St Faith, a significant cult in late medieval Norwich. The panel of St Francis suggests that it was also once part of a sequence. The lower range depicts the donors, some of whom are identified. The central spine is largely modern glass by Clayton and Bell for the Streets in the 1880s. Some of the missing glass is now at Felbrigg Hall.
In any other church, the 1921 glass by Herbert Hendrie in the south chapel aisle chapel would be considered outstanding. It is in the style of Eric Gill, but feels rather heavy handed next to the extraordinary delicacy of its medieval neighbours.
While I was here, I stopped taking photographs for the one o'clock prayers. One of the custodians stood at the lectern and read very eloquently from the Acts of the Apostles, and said prayers for the city and its people. Apart from me, there were only two other listeners in the vast space. It was tenderly and thoughtfully done, but I couldn't help thinking that it is the exterior of this wonderful structure which is the Church's true act of witness in central Norwich now.
www.norfolkchurches.co.uk/norwichstpetermancroft/norwichs...
It was a very pretty evening and the sun was reflecting its colors across the ice so I was very happy we found a spot to pull over...
All our snow is gone again but the forecast is calling for about 30 cm on the weekend...
i definitely do not consider myself a serious kawaii collector...i just like cute things, what can i say? :P especially stickers 0_0!
i remember when i 1st joined swap bot a lil over a year ago i was fascinated by a kawaii sticker sack someone had given me. i began collecting flakes (in random bits usually).
out of curiosity i counted & somehow i managed to accumulate almost 2000 flakes without realizing 0_0 haha.
when i told andy he just looked at me & said i'll be a great kindergarten teacher :P no seriously, they love stickers!!!
I consider myself a Photographer , I know I am not the most experienced one , nor I compare myself to the great ones , but today I heard someone said that you are not a photographer unless you have a studio , well . . . I beg to differ
___________________
Me considero fotografo , yo se q no soy el q tiene mas experiencia , mucho menos me comparo con los grandes , pero hoy escuche un comentario d un wey , q dijo q si no tienes estudio , no eres fotografo . . . yo solo digo : mis huevos !!
En México operan 88 organizaciones criminales vinculadas al tráfico ilegal de narcóticos, afirma un informe elaborado por la Procuraduría General de la República en marzo de 2013, del que Contralínea obtuvo copia. La información de los aparatos de inteligencia del Estado mexicano revela la supuesta desaparición del Cártel del Golfo y el encumbramiento del Cártel de la Barbie. Identificados con nombres y zonas de influencia, las organizaciones del narcotráfico, sus células y pandillas dominan extensas áreas donde también se asientan importantes regiones militares y navales. El territorio nacional, como se señala en el mapa adjunto a la presente investigación, en manos de la delincuencia organizada
La Procuraduría General de la República (PGR) revela a Contralínea que en México operan 88 organizaciones criminales dedicadas al tráfico ilegal de estupefacientes, cuyas ganancias anuales superarían los 39 mil millones de dólares (unos 468 mil millones de pesos). De éstas, ocho son consideradas como “grandes organizaciones del narcotráfico” por la dependencia que encabeza Jesús Murillo Karam.
Los Zetas, el Pacífico (o Sinaloa), los Arellano Félix, La Familia Michoacana, Los Caballeros Templarios, el Nuevo Cártel de Juárez, el Cártel de la Barbie y el Cártel de los Beltrán Leyva son las organizaciones que dan origen o cobertura a los otros 80 grupos delincuenciales, indica el informe Células delictivas con presencia en el país, fechado el 25 de marzo de 2013 y elaborado por la PGR con base en reportes de los aparatos de inteligencia del Estado mexicano.
El listado y el mapa, contenidos en el documento oficial, descubren que tanto para la Procuraduría como para el gobierno federal el Cártel del Golfo ha dejado de existir y ya no es un objetivo en su supuesta lucha contra el crimen organizado. Su presunta extinción se habría dado el año pasado, tras la captura de quien sería su último líder, Eduardo Costilla Sánchez, el Coss, ocurrida el 12 de septiembre de 2012.
De confirmarse la información de la PGR, la desaparición del otrora poderoso enemigo del Cártel de Sinaloa parecería el único “logro” de la “guerra” contra el narcotráfico, que supuestamente libró el pasado gobierno de Felipe Calderón Hinojosa y que cobró la vida de más de 100 mil civiles. No obstante, esta extinción se derivaría en sí del debilitamiento que le causó la ruptura a fines de 2009 y el posterior enfrentamiento con su brazo armado Los Zetas, al punto de llevar a la organización que consolidó Juan García Ábrego a unirse a su histórico enemigo Joaquín Guzmán Loera, el Chapo.
Para Jorge Luis Sierra –experto en el estudio de la seguridad nacional y la delincuencia organizada–, este punto del informe debe verse con reservas. El investigador considera que aún hay indicios que apuntan a una presencia mermada, pero no extinta, del Cártel del Golfo en regiones relevantes para el crimen organizado.
En su más reciente mapa de los cárteles –Mexican cartels. Map depicting areas of dominant influence–, elaborado en enero de 2012, la Agencia Antidrogas estadunidense reportaba que el Cártel del Golfo se ubicaba en la frontera entre Tamaulipas y Nuevo León, área que abarcaba Reynosa y Matamoros. También, que su influencia alcanzaba a Tampico, Tamaulipas; Veracruz, Veracruz; y Villahermosa, Tabasco.
El encumbramiento del Cártel de la Barbie es otro punto que sobresale en el informe Células delictivas con presencia en el país (entregado por la PGR a Contralínea por medio de la Ley Federal de Transparencia y Acceso a la Información Pública Gubernamental, oficio SJAI/DGAJ/5211/2013 relacionado con el recurso de revisión RDA0538/13); ello a pesar de que su cabecilla, Édgar Valdez Villarreal, fue detenido desde el 30 de agosto de 2010.
Hasta ahora, el narcotraficante conocido con el sobrenombre de Barbie había sido identificado como un criminal de rango medio: era el jefe de los sicarios del Cártel de los Beltrán Leyva.
Los cárteles más relevantes
De las ocho “grandes organizaciones del narcotráfico”, el Cártel de la Barbie es el que cuenta con más grupos afines: 23. Le sigue el de los Arellano Félix, con 14; el Cártel del Pacífico, con 12; La Familia Michoacana, con cinco; Los Zetas, con tres; y los Caballeros Templarios y el Nuevo Cártel de Juárez, con dos, respectivamente. Mientras que del Cártel de los Beltrán Leyva se habrían escindido 19.
Aunque en términos de número el Cártel de Sinaloa ocupa el tercer lugar, éste es el que tiene a las organizaciones más relevantes a su favor: Gente Nueva, Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación, Cártel del Poniente, Cártel de la Laguna, Los Mata-Zetas, Los Cabrera, La Barredora, el Comando del Diablo o Comando Guerrero Diablo, el Aquiles, el Tigre, los Artistas Asesinos y los Mexicles.
El consorcio criminal que encabeza Joaquín Guzmán Loera –y que se extiende a 50 países de los cinco continentes–, controla el mercado de la cocaína y las metanfetaminas. Pero sus negocios no se limitan a los llamados delitos contra la salud, al tráfico de armas y al lavado de dinero; también están involucrados en tráfico de personas, de animales en peligro de extinción, de maderas finas y piedras preciosas, trata de blancas, secuestro, robo de combustibles a Petróleos Mexicanos, robo de automóviles, piratería, extorsión y cobro de piso.
El informe de la PGR, del cual Contralínea tiene copia, señala que Gente Nueva se ubica en Chihuahua y Sinaloa; el Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación, en Jalisco, Colima, Michoacán y Veracruz; Los Cabrera, en Durango y Chihuahua; La Barredora y el Comando del Diablo, en Guerrero; el Cártel del Poniente, en Coahuila; el Cártel de la Laguna, en Durango y Coahuila; Los Mata-Zetas, en Veracruz y Jalisco; las pandillas del Aquiles y del Tigre, en Baja California; y las de los Artistas Asesinos y los Mexicles, en Chihuahua.
Para Jorge Luis Sierra, “todas las células [que menciona el reporte] han tenido un nivel de importancia alto, en la medida en que han funcionado como el brazo operativo y de recolección de inteligencia táctica de las grandes organizaciones. Cuando la situación se ha prestado, reciben las órdenes y ven condiciones favorables, todas ellas han ejercido de una u otra manera el mismo nivel de brutalidad y violencia”.
Los nexos de Los Zetas
Los Zetas, considerados como los narcotraficantes más violentos del país y cuyos negocios abarcan el Continente Americano y llegan hasta el Europeo, tendrían bajo su control, según la PGR, a tres organizaciones de menor nivel pero igual dimensión de brutalidad: Los Talibanes, Los Legionarios y Los Hijos del Diablo.
No obstante, al parecer dos se han deslindado del que era el brazo armado del Cártel del Golfo, conformado en un principio por militares de elite que desertaron de los grupos Aeromóvil y Anfibio de Fuerzas Especiales y de la Brigada de Fusileros Paracaidistas del Ejército Mexicano.
De acuerdo con la investigación de la Procuraduría, Los Talibanes se ubican en Tamaulipas y Quintana Roo. Esta facción, sin embargo, declaró la “guerra” a Los Zetas el 1 de junio de 2012. Ese día se colocaron en Zacatecas unas mantas presuntamente de su autoría, con las fotografías impresas del líder de Los Zetas, Heriberto Lazcano Lazcano, y de otros delincuentes que habían sido abatidos o capturados, bajas que entonces le achacaban al Lazca.
El 20 de agosto de 2012, el líder de esta célula Iván Velázquez Caballero, el Z-50 o el Talibán, rompió abiertamente su vínculo con Los Zetas tras señalar en unas mantas colocadas en Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, que Miguel Treviño –el Z-50– y Heriberto Lazcano se aliaron con “los federales” y traicionaron a sus jefes para controlar el cártel. El Z-50 fue capturado el 28 de septiembre y el Lazca fue “abatido” el 7 de octubre de ese mismo año por elementos de la Secretaría de Marina.
El segundo grupo que la PGR vincula a Los Zetas –Los Legionarios– opera en San Luis Potosí, Zacatecas, Nuevo León y Tamaulipas. Su objetivo, según refirieron el 20 de octubre de 2012 a través de unas mantas, es acabar con el Z-40 o Talibán. “Los Legionarios somos un grupo de Zetas renegados que fuimos traicionados por [el] ‘Z-40’. Los Legionarios tenemos claramente la orden de exterminar sólo a la gente de Los Zetas y familias… ojo por ojo”.
Los mensajes, reportados por algunos medios de información, concluían así: “Nuestro negocio es el narcotráfico, sólo y exclusivamente. Respetamos a las fuerzas federales y la lucha que hacen para terminar con el narco”.
De acuerdo con el informe de la Procuraduría, Los Hijos del Diablo se localizan en San Luis Potosí y Zacatecas. A esta célula se le vincula con el narcotraficante Miguel Treviño e incluso con miembros del supuestamente extinto Cártel del Golfo.
El investigador Jorge Luis Sierra observa que estas células operativas de los nuevos Zetas han ejercido altos niveles de violencia y brutalidad de manera más sistemática y constante que el resto de las pandillas.
Explica que en México “nunca ha habido un combate frontal [contra el crimen]. El combate frontal sería empleando todos los elementos del poder nacional, reforzando las instituciones, eligiendo un diseño apropiado de la fuerza y construyendo presencia del Estado mexicano en lugares donde es prácticamente inexistente”.
Las células de la Barbie
“Tras la ofensiva militar sostenida durante los 6 años [del gobierno de Calderón], en nuestros días los grupos criminales han sufrido tres modificaciones fundamentales. La primera es que se han fraccionado: los seis grupos originales que cubrían todo el territorio nacional se fraccionaron al influjo de los golpes policiacos y represivos del Ejército en un número muy amplio de organizaciones más pequeñas”, refiere el maestro en ingeniería financiera y experto en el estudio de la mafia trasnacional Jorge Retana Yarto.
Agrega que la segunda es que se convirtieron en organizaciones multicriminales: cometen más de 20 delitos específicos con los cuales nutren a su organización, sus finanzas y su actividad. Ya no sólo se trata de producir o traficar enervantes en la frontera Norte de México y Sur de Estados Unidos.
La tercera modificación, explica Retana Yarto, es que estos grupos de base nacional se han internacionalizado. Sus actividades ilícitas se cometen lo mismo en México que en el resto de América y en Europa.
El fraccionamiento de la mafia mexicana ha derivado en el ascenso del nuevo Cártel de la Barbie, como identifica la Procuraduría General de la República a una de las “grandes organizaciones del narcotráfico” y de la cual no se tenía registro hasta ahora.
Dicha organización tiene vínculos con El Indio, que opera en Chiapas, el Distrito Federal, el Estado de México, Guerrero, Morelos y Quintana Roo; Los Canchola, El Cabezas, El Panda, El Coyote y El Banda, en Morelos; La Oficina, el Cártel Independiente de Acapulco, Los Marquina, Santana Ríos Bahena, Iguala, El Mudo y EI Yey, en Guerrero; El Güero Guetamo, en Guerrero y Morelos; el Cártel del Centro, el Comandante 8 y el JJ y/o Batman, en el Estado de México; Los Pelones, en Guerrero, Morelos, Quintana Roo, Estado de México y Chiapas; El Javi, en Quintana Roo; El Pelón, en Chiapas; El Pelos, en Morelos, Distrito Federal, Estado de México y Guerrero; la Nueva Administración, en el Distrito Federal; y grupos al mando de una persona que se apellida Solano, en Morelos y Guerrero.
El general brigadier en situación de retiro Samuel Lara Villa, presidente de la Federación de Militares Retirados General Francisco J Múgica, AC, refiere que la responsabilidad de la proliferación de los grupos criminales es de quien llevó a México a un estado de guerra: las guerras siempre conllevan la generación de bandas y pandillas que aprovechan las situaciones de caos para delinquir impunemente.
Expansión criminal
Del informe Células delictivas con presencia en el país se desprende que de las 14 pandillas ligadas al Cártel de los Arellano Félix, 13 tienen presencia en Baja California (Don Balas, El Mario, El Melvin, El Chan, El Jorquera, grupos dirigidos por una persona de apellido García, grupos dirigidos por una persona que se apellida Barranco, Pelioni, El Kieto, Chikaka, El Bibi, El Licenciado y El Turbo) y una en Baja California Sur (Los Zamudio).
Las células ligadas a la Familia Michoacana son Guerrero(s) Unido(s) y/o la Nueva Empresa, que opera en Morelos, Guerrero y el Estado de México; La Resistencia, en Jalisco; Champis y/o Champis Crew, en Michoacán; Brown Side Family, en Michoacán; y la Empresa, en el Estado de México y Morelos.
Los Caballeros Templarios cuentan con la Guardia Morelense, en Morelos, y Los Troyano, en el Estado de México. Y el Nuevo Cártel de Juárez, con dos pandillas afines: la Línea y los Aztecas, que operan en Chihuahua.
Según la PGR, los Beltrán Leyva son los únicos que han perdido el apoyo de sus bases, pues de este cártel se han escindido 19 organizaciones: el Chico Malo, con presencia en Nuevo León; el H2, en Nayarit, Jalisco y Sinaloa; los Mazatlecos, en Sinaloa, Baja California Sur y Nayarit; los Tigres, en Sinaloa y Nayarit; el 2 Mil, en Sonora; los Granados, en Guerrero; los Rojos, en Guerrero y Morelos; Morelos Unidos, en Morelos; el Nuevo Cártel de la Sierra, en Guerrero; los Pineda, en Chiapas, Nuevo León, Estado de México y Morelos; los Zafiros, en Guerrero y Morelos; el Cártel del Pacífico Sur, en Morelos; La Oficina, en Aguascalientes y Baja California Sur; La Mano con Ojos, en el Distrito Federal y Estado de México; el Mosco, en el Distrito Federal y Oaxaca; los Gilos, en Sonora; el Tigre, en Guerrero; Los Ardillos, en Guerrero, y Los Arturos, en Baja California.
Para el general Francisco Gallardo, doctor en ciencias políticas y académico de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, ante la falta de estrategia, la “lucha” contra el narcotráfico se dedicó a exterminar los liderazgos. “Cada vez que había una aniquilación de una cabeza surgían otras tres, cuatro o cinco. Fue una multiplicación de pequeños grupos o fragmentos que buscaban un reacomodo. Los grupos delincuenciales con más poder fueron cooptando y controlando territorios que ahora se ven por zonas muy específicas, por ejemplo Tamaulipas, Nuevo León, Coahuila, por el lado del Este; y por el Occidente Norte, Tijuana, Sonora; en el centro, más abajo, Sinaloa, parte de Chihuahua, Durango, Nayarit y Jalisco”.
Gallardo señala que la falta de una estrategia derivó en una pérdida de control. “Calderón quiso legalizar [la lucha] a partir de la creación de la Ley de Seguridad Nacional, que por cierto está todavía en ciernes, cuando pudo haber emitido un estado de excepción apoyado por todas las fuerzas políticas para hacer una estrategia y un marco jurídico y constitucional del Poder Ejecutivo por el Poder Legislativo en su rama militar, con base en el Artículo 89, fracción sexta [de la Constitución]. Esta situación llevó a un caos y ahora va a ser muy difícil reestructurarlo porque, lejos de atacar el crimen organizado, rompió el tejido social en muchas regiones de México”.
Narco-México
El informe de la PGR revela que los 80 nuevos cárteles surgidos en el sexenio de la “guerra” contra el narcotráfico se ubican en 24 entidades de la República Mexicana, incluido el Distrito Federal.
En el nuevo mapa de la criminalidad, la mayoría de grupos narcotraficantes se localiza en el Norte y el centro del país: Baja California, Baja California Sur, Sonora, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León, Tamaulipas, Sinaloa, Durango, Zacatecas, San Luis Potosí, Veracruz, Nayarit, Jalisco, Colima, Michoacán, Aguascalientes, Estado de México y Morelos; mientras que en el Sur-Sureste se encuentran en Guerrero, Oaxaca, Chiapas y Quintana Roo.
De estas entidades, cuatro concentran la presencia del 85 por ciento de los medianos y pequeños cárteles, células y pandillas: Guerrero, gobernado por el perredista Ángel Aguirre; Morelos, encabezado por el también perredista Graco Ramírez; Baja California, que aún administra el panista José Guadalupe Osuna; y el Estado de México, en manos del priísta Eruviel Ávila.
Según la información de la PGR, Guerrero es donde hay una mayor presencia de organizaciones del narcotráfico. Se trata de cuatro grandes cárteles y 21 de menor tamaño. De éstos, dos están vinculados al Cártel del Pacífico; uno, al de La Familia Michoacana; 12, al de la Barbie; y seis se escindieron de los Beltrán Leyva.
La violencia en ese estado, considerado entre los más peligrosos del mundo, no ha cesado a pesar de los niveles de militarización a los que fue sometido desde inicios del sexenio pasado. Además de los operativos militares, como el actual Guerrero Seguro, ahí se ubican de forma permanente la Novena Región Militar, que dirige el general de división diplomado de Estado Mayor Genaro Fausto Lozano Espinosa; la Trigésima Quinta Zona Militar, a cargo del general de brigada diplomado de Estado Mayor Juan Manuel Rico Gámez; y la Octava Región Naval, que hasta hace unos días encabezaba el almirante Sergio Javier Lara Montellano, actual secretario de Seguridad Pública de Guerrero.
—¿Por qué no funcionó el despliegue militar permanente de las tres Fuerzas Armadas para contener y erradicar a las bandas del crimen organizado? –se le pregunta a Jorge Luis Sierra.
—Primero, porque la formación militar no es apropiada para luchar contra un enemigo que emplea medios no militares como la corrupción, la extorsión, el camuflaje en la población civil y el lavado del dinero. Segundo, las Fuerzas Armadas nunca recibieron el respaldo legal para hacer esa labor y operaban y han operado al margen de las propias leyes. Tercero, las Fuerzas Armadas nunca han recibido el presupuesto necesario para operar en el mar y sellar las fronteras marítimas, controlar el espacio aéreo efectivamente y ocupar por tiempos prolongados los lugares con actividad criminal intensa.
A pesar de ser una de las entidades más pequeñas en extensión territorial, Morelos ocupa el segundo sitio con mayor presencia de grupos criminales. Allí se asientan cuatro grandes organizaciones del narcotráfico y 19 de menor nivel: La Familia Michoacana y tres de sus pequeños cárteles, células o pandillas; Los Caballeros Templarios y uno de sus grupos aliados; la Barbie, con 10 organizaciones de menor tamaño; de los Beltrán Leyva, allí se escindieron cinco grupos. En ese estado también se ubica la Vigésima Cuarta Zona Militar.
El maestro Retana Yarto indica que el problema fundamental es que el crimen organizado le ha arrebatado las atribuciones de autoridad al Estado en distintas partes del territorio nacional. Y el Estado mexicano, a través de sus cuerpos armados, Policía Federal y Ejército, ha sido incapaz de restablecer su autoridad. “Después de todos estos años, el Estado no ha sido capaz de restituir su autoridad en distintos territorios en donde acciona o controla el grupo criminal”.
En la tercera posición se localiza Baja California, al registrar la presencia de tres grandes cárteles del narcotráfico y 17 pequeñas organizaciones criminales ligadas a éstos. De acuerdo con la PGR, 14 están vinculadas al Cártel de los Arellano Félix; dos, al del Chapo Guzmán, y la última se escindió de los Beltrán Leyva. Allí también está la presencia permanente de la Segunda Región y Segunda Zona Militar y de la Segunda Región Naval.
La cuarta entidad más asolada por el narcotráfico es el Estado de México, de donde es oriundo el presidente de la República, Enrique Peña Nieto. Ahí la PGR registra la presencia de cuatro grandes organizaciones de las que se desprenden otras 11: dos son escindidas del Cártel de los Beltrán Leyva; seis, ligadas al de la Barbie; dos, a La Familia Michoacana, y una, a Los Caballeros Templarios. En esta entidad se ubican la Vigésima Segunda Zona y Trigésima Séptima Zona Militares.
Jorge Luis Sierra opina que el impacto de estos 88 grupos criminales ha sido muy perjudicial para la sociedad, porque eso implica que el modelo de usar pandillas o pequeñas organizaciones delictivas para controlar zonas geográficas del país se basa en la expansión de la capacidad de reclutamiento voluntario o forzado de jóvenes que viven cerca de las zonas de operación de organizaciones o entran en contacto con ellas.
También, refiere, los negocios ilícitos han sufrido un impacto porque la delincuencia organizada cobra sus impuestos y se convierte en una Hacienda de facto para los negocios irregulares o francamente ilícitos. Así, los negocios lícitos se han visto afectados: “en zonas de la frontera, la delincuencia organizada se presenta de noche a los locales de negocios exitosos, lleva cerrajeros, cambian las cerraduras y le avisan al legítimo propietario que el negocio entero ha dejado de pertenecerle”.
—¿Cómo ha determinado esta presencia de cárteles, células y pandillas el conflicto que vive México?
—A medida que la fuerza militar se ha aplicado en las regiones del país, las organizaciones criminales han extendido su actividad en todo el territorio nacional para evitar su destrucción. Esta diseminación territorial fue una consecuencia inesperada de las políticas antidrogas mexicanas. Su extensión ayudó a la organización de nuevas células, más atomizadas, menos conectadas entre sí y por tanto más difíciles de identificar, perseguir y destruir. Por esa razón, por ejemplo, el Cártel de los Arellano Félix casi fue destruido, pero la violencia y el tráfico de drogas permanecieron debido a la existencia de muchas pequeñas células que llenaban los vacíos existentes –opina Sierra.
La ubicación de las 88 organizaciones del narcotráfico es parte de un amplio diagnóstico sobre la delincuencia organizada en poder del gobierno de Peña Nieto. Éste revela que en el gobierno de Felipe Calderón, lejos de combatir la criminalidad, la “guerra” generó 80 nuevos cárteles. Como lo ha documentado Contralínea (ediciones 286 y 295), en el sexenio pasado los narcotraficantes se consolidaron como empresas trasnacionales, y actualmente son 15 veces más rentables que el Grupo Carso de Carlos Slim. Su presencia alcanza a más de 50 países de los cinco continentes.
“Contrariamente a lo que se pensaba por parte del gobierno, de que la presencia del Ejército iba a intimidar a estos grupos delincuenciales, lo que hizo fue fragmentarlos y que le respondieran en el mismo tono: con las mismas armas, tácticas y, en muchas ocasiones, con mejores armas que las del gobierno. Las fuerzas de seguridad actuaron desarticuladas. Incluso había conflictos entre las mismas ramas de las Fuerzas Armadas, porque Calderón le dio más prioridad a la Secretaría de Marina y la sacó de su función de tutelar los mares y las costas y la involucró en la lucha contra el narcotráfico”, opina el general Francisco Gallardo.
Para combatir y desarticular este despliegue criminal, Jorge Luis Sierra opina que el gobierno federal debe emplear todos los elementos del poder nacional en una política de seguridad de largo plazo, transexenal, basada en marcos jurídicos modernizados que protejan los derechos humanos y refuercen los controles democráticos de la operación gubernamental. También se requiere pensar que no hay política de seguridad exitosa en México que olvide el combate a la corrupción gubernamental, el lavado de dinero y la pobreza en las zonas marginadas donde operan las células que apoyan al crimen organizado.
El investigador indica que México no es todavía un Estado fallido, pero está en riesgo de serlo. “La delincuencia organizada controla apenas entre el 8 y el 15 por ciento de los municipios del país y a veces sólo tiene control parcial en algunas zonas. Lo que si parece evidente es que lejos de ser acotada por la intención del gobierno anterior de ‘recuperar territorios’, la delincuencia organizada ha encontrado sus propias formas de expandirse a través del reclutamiento de la delincuencia semiorganizada y, en algunos casos, el control violento y brutal de la no organizada”.
Fuente: Contralínea 337 / Junio de 2013 / Nancy Flores / @Nancy_Contra
Fuente: www.contralinea.com.mx Periodismo de investigación contralinea.info/archivo-revista/index.php/2013/06/02/los...
Dog meat refers to the flesh and other edible parts derived from dogs. Historically, human consumption of dog meat has been recorded in many parts of the world, including East and Southeast Asia, West Africa, Europe, Oceania and the Americas.
In the 21st century, dog meat is consumed in many parts of China, Korea and Vietnam, parts of Switzerland, as well as parts of Europe, Americas, the African continent, such as Cameroon, Ghana and Liberia.
Today, a number of cultures view the consumption of dog meat to be a part of their traditional and day-to-day cuisine, while others - such as Western culture - consider consumption of dog to be a taboo, although they have been consumed in times of war and/or other hardships or in rural areas where food is scarce. It was estimated in 2014 that worldwide, 25 million dogs are eaten each year by humans.
DOG BREEDS USED FOR MEAT
NUREONGI
The Nureongi is a yellowish landrace from Korea. Similar to other native Korean dog breeds, such as the Jindo, nureongi are medium-sized spitz-type dogs, but are larger, with greater musculature and a distinctive coat pattern. They are quite uniform in appearance, yellow hair and melanistic masks. Nureongi are most often used as a livestock dog, raised for its meat, and not commonly kept as pets.
HAWAIIAN POI
The Hawaiian Poi Dog or ʻīlio (ʻīlio mākuʻe for brown-furred Poi dogs) is an extinct breed of pariah dog from Hawaiʻi which was used by Native Hawaiians as a spiritual protector of children and as a source of food.
XOLOITZCUINTLE (Mexican Hairless)
The Xoloitzcuintle, or Xolo for short, is a hairless breed of dog, found in toy, miniature and standard sizes. The Xolo also comes in a coated variety and all three sizes can be born to a single litter. It is also known as Mexican hairless dog in English speaking countries, is one of several breeds of hairless dog and has been used as a historical source of food for the Aztec Empire.
BY REGION
AFRICA
CAMEROON
The Mandara mountains people like dog meat. The Mayo-Plata (Mayo Sava district) market is well known for its dog meat outlets. Among the Vame people, domestic dogs are only eaten for specific rituals.
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO
Despite tests showing 156 dogs were infected with Ebola, the consumption of dog meat is no longer taboo. Several families may chip in to purchase a whole large dog.
GHANA
The Tallensi, the Akyim's, the Kokis, and the Yaakuma, one of many cultures of Ghana, consider dog meat a delicacy. While the Mamprusi generally avoid dog meat, it is eaten in a "courtship stew" provided by a king to his royal lineage. Two Tribes in Ghana, Frafra and Dagaaba are particularly known to be "tribal playmates" and consumption of dog meat is the common bond between the two tribes. Every year around September, games are organised between these two tribes and the Dog Head is the trophy at stake for the winning tribe
LIBERIA
Liberians are said to lump the term dog meat and bushmeat together. A local animal welfare group. Anti Pet & Bush Meat Coalition, claimed 75% of Liberians consume dog meat. 75% of Liberians rely on bush and pet meat as a staple diet.
MOROCCO
Islamic law bans the eating of dog meat as does the government of Morocco, however the consumption of dog meat still occurs particularly in poorer regions, often being passed off as other meats as was the case in 2013 and 2009 cases
NIGERIA
Dogs are eaten by various groups in some states of Nigeria, including Akwa Ibom, Cross River, Plateau, Ondo, Kalaba, Taraba and Gombe of Nigeria. They are believed to have medicinal powers.
In late 2014, the fear of contracting the Ebola virus disease from bushmeat led at least one major Nigerian newspaper to imply that eating dog meat was a healthy alternative. That paper documented a thriving trade in dog meat and slow sales of even well smoked bushmeat.
AMERICAS
CANADA
It is legal to sell and serve dog meat, providing that it must be killed and gutted in front of federal inspectors. If a dog is killed out of the view of federal inspectors, the killing might involve cruelty, which would be a violation of the Criminal Code, and those convicted may be sentenced to up to 5 years in prison.
ANCIENT MEXICO
In the time of the Aztec Empire in what is now central Mexico, Mexican Hairless Dogs were bred, among other purposes, for their meat. Hernán Cortés reported when he arrived in Tenochtitlan in 1519, "small gelded dogs which they breed for eating" were among the goods sold in the city markets. These dogs, Xoloitzcuintles, were often depicted in pre-Columbian Mexican pottery. The breed was almost extinct in the 1940s, but the British Military Attaché in Mexico City, Norman Wright, developed a thriving breed from some of the dogs he found in remote villages.
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
The term "dog" has been used as a synonym for sausage since 1884 and accusations that sausage makers used dog meat date to at least 1845. The belief that sausages contained dog meat was occasionally justified.
In the late 19th century, a cure for tuberculosis (then colloquially termed "consumption") using an exclusive diet of dog meat was tried. Reports of families eating dog meat out of choice, rather than necessity, were rare and newsworthy. Stories of families in Ohio and Newark, New Jersey who did so made it into editions of The New York Times in 1876 and 1885.
In the early 20th century, dog meat was consumed during times of meat shortage.
NATIVE AMERICANS
The traditional culture surrounding the consumption of dog meat varied from tribe to tribe among the original inhabitants of North America, with some tribes relishing it as a delicacy, and others (such as the Comanche) treating it as a forbidden food. Native peoples of the Great Plains, such as the Sioux and Cheyenne, consumed it, but there was a concurrent religious taboo against the meat of wild canines.
During their 1803–1806 expedition, Meriwether Lewis and the other members of the Corps of Discovery consumed dog meat, either from their own animals or supplied by Native American tribes, including the Paiutes and Wah-clel-lah Indians, a branch of the Watlatas, the Clatsop, the Teton Sioux (Lakota), the Nez Perce Indians, and the Hidatsas. Lewis and the members of the expedition ate dog meat, except William Clark, who reportedly could not bring himself to eat dogs.
The Kickapoo people include puppy meat in many of their traditional festivals. This practice has been well documented in the Works Progress Administration "Indian Pioneer History Project for Oklahoma".
AUSTRALIA
It is legal to eat dogs in most States and Territories, except for South Australia. However, it is illegal to sell dog meat in any Australian State or Territory.
ARTIC AND ANTARTIC
Dogs have historically been emergency food sources for various peoples in Siberia, northern Canada, and Greenland. Sled dogs are usually maintained for pulling sleds, but occasionally are eaten when no other food is available.
British explorer Ernest Shackleton and his Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition became trapped, and ultimately killed their sled dogs for food. Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen was known to have eaten sled dogs during his expedition to the South Pole. By eating some of the sled dogs, he required less human or dog food, thus lightening his load. When comparing sled dogs to ponies as draught animals he also notes:
"...there is the obvious advantage that dog can be fed on dog. One can reduce one's pack little by little, slaughtering the feebler ones and feeding the chosen with them. In this way they get fresh meat. Our dogs lived on dog's flesh and pemmican the whole way, and this enabled them to do splendid work. And if we ourselves wanted a piece of fresh meat we could cut off a delicate little fillet; it tasted to us as good as the best beef. The dogs do not object at all; as long as they get their share they do not mind what part of their comrade's carcass it comes from. All that was left after one of these canine meals was the teeth of the victim – and if it had been a really hard day, these also disappeared."
Douglas Mawson and Xavier Mertz were part of the Far Eastern Party, a three-man sledging team with Lieutenant B.E.S. Ninnis, to survey King George V Land, Antarctica. On 14 December 1912 Ninnis fell through a snow-covered crevasse along with most of the party's rations, and was never seen again. Mawson and Mertz turned back immediately. They had one and a half weeks' food for themselves and nothing at all for the dogs. Their meagre provisions forced them to eat their remaining sled dogs on their 507 km return journey. Their meat was tough, stringy and without a vestige of fat. Each animal yielded very little, and the major part was fed to the surviving dogs, which ate the meat, skin and bones until nothing remained. The men also ate the dog's brains and livers. Unfortunately eating the liver of sled dogs produces the condition hypervitaminosis A because canines have a much higher tolerance for vitamin A than humans do. Mertz suffered a quick deterioration. He developed stomach pains and became incapacitated and incoherent. On 7 January 1913, Mertz died. Mawson continued alone, eventually making it back to camp alive.
ASIA/PACIFIC
CHINA
Selling dog meat for consumption is legal in Mainland China and approximately 10 million dogs each year are slaughtered for consumption. The eating of dog meat in China dates back thousands of years. Dog meat (Chinese: 狗肉; pinyin: gǒu ròu) has been a source of food in some areas from around 500 BC and possibly even earlier. It has been suggested that wolves in southern China may have been domesticated as a source of meat. Mencius, the philosopher, talked about dog meat as being an edible, dietary meat. It is thought to have medicinal properties, and is especially popular in winter months in northern China, as it is believed to raise body temperature after consumption and promote warmth. Historical records have moreover shown how in times of food scarcities (as in war-time situations), dogs could also be eaten as an emergency food source.
Dog meat is sometimes called "fragrant meat" (香肉 xiāng ròu) or "mutton of the earth" (地羊 dì yáng) in Mandarin Chinese and "3–6 fragrant meat" (Chinese: 三六香肉; Cantonese Yale: sàam luhk hèung yuhk) in Cantonese (3 plus 6 is 9 and the words "nine" and "dog" have close pronunciation. In Mandarin, "nine" and "dog" are pronounced differently).
In modern times, the extent of dog consumption in China varies by region, most prevalent in Guangdong, Yunnan and Guangxi, as well as the northern provinces of Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning. It is still common to find dog meat served in restaurants in Southern China, where dogs are specially raised on farms. However, there are instances of finding stolen pet meat on menus. Chinese netizens and the Chinese police intercepted trucks transporting caged dogs to be slaughtered in localities such as Chongqing and Kunming. In 2014, 11 people in the Hunan province were sentenced to prison for allegedly poisoning over 1,000 dogs and selling the poisonous meat to restaurants. Since 2009, Yulin, Guangxi has held an annual festival of eating dog meat. This purportedly celebrates the summer solstice, however, in 2014, the municipal government published a statement that the festival is not a cultural tradition, rather, a commercial event held by restaurants and the public. Various dog meat dishes (and more recently, cats) are eaten, washed down by lychees wine. The festival in 2011 spanned 10 days, during which 15,000 dogs were consumed. Estimates of the number of dogs eaten during the festival range between 10 and 15 thousand. Festival organisers say that only dogs bred specifically for consumption are used, however, there are claims that some of the dogs purchased for slaughter and consumption are strays or stolen pets, as evidenced by their wearing collars. Some of the dogs eaten at the festival are burnt or boiled alive and there are reports that the dogs are sometimes clubbed or beaten to death in the belief that the increased adrenalin circulating in the dog's body adds to the flavour of the meat. At the 2015 festival, there were long queues outside large (300-seat) eateries which sold the dog meat for around £4 (€5.60) per kilogram. Prior to the 2014 festival, eight dogs (and their two cages) sold for 1,150 yuan ($185) and six puppies for 1,200 yuan. Prior to the 2015 festival, a protester bought 100 dogs for 7,000 yuan ($1,100; £710). The animal rights NGO Best Volunteer Centre claims the city has more than 100 slaughterhouses, processing between 30 and 100 dogs a day. However, the Yulin Centre for Animal Disease Control and Prevention claims the city has only eight dog slaughterhouses selling approximately 200 dogs, although this increases to about 2,000 dogs during the Yulin festival. There are several campaigns to stop the festival; more than 3,000,000 people have signed petitions against it on Weibo (China’s version of Twitter) and a petition to stop the festival (addressed to the Chinese Minister of Agriculture, Chen Wu) reads "Do the humane thing by saying no to this festival and save the lives of countless dogs that will fall victim to this event - an event that will butcher, skin alive, beat to death etc. thousands of innocent dogs." Prior to the 2014 festival, doctors and nurses staff were ordered not to eat dog meat there, and local restaurants serving dog meat were ordered to cover the word "dog" on their signs and notices.
The movement against the consumption of cat and dog meat was given added impetus by the formation of the Chinese Companion Animal Protection Network (CCAPN). Expanded to more than 40 member societies, CCAPN in 2006 began organizing protests against eating dogs and cat, starting in Guangzhou and following up in more than ten other cities with a positive response from the public. Before the 2008 Beijing Olympics, officials ordered dog meat to be taken off the menu at its 112 official Olympic restaurants to avoid offending visitors from various nations who might have been concerned by the offering of dog meat.
In 2010, draft legislation was proposed to prohibit the consumption of dog meat. The legislation, however, was not expected to be enforced, making the consumption of dog meat illegal if it passed. In 2010, the first draft proposal of the legislation was introduced, with the rationale to protect animals from maltreatment. The legislation includes a measure to jail people for up to 15 days for eating dog meat. However, certain cultural food festivals continue to promote the meat. For example, in 2014, 10,000 dogs were killed for the Yulin dog eating festival.
As of the early 21st century, dog meat consumption is declining or disappearing. In 2014, dog meat sales decreased by a third compared to 2013. It was reported that in 2015, one of the most popular restaurants in Guangzhou serving dog meat was closed after the local government tightened regulations; the restaurant had served dog meat dishes since 1963. Other restaurants that served dog and cat meat dishes in the Yuancun and Panyu districts also stopped serving these in 2015.
HONG KONG
In Hong Kong, the Dogs and Cats Ordinance was introduced by the British Hong Kong Government on 6 January 1950. It prohibits the slaughter of any dog or cat for use as food, whether for mankind or otherwise, on pain of fine and imprisonment. In February 1998, a Hong Konger was sentenced to one month imprisonment and a fine of two thousand HK dollars for hunting street dogs for food. Four local men were sentenced to 30 days imprisonment in December 2006 for having slaughtered two dogs.
TAIWAN
In 2001, the Taiwanese government imposed a ban on the sale of dog meat, due to both pressure from domestic animal welfare groups and a desire to improve international perceptions, although there were some protests. In 2007, another law was passed, significantly increasing the fines to sellers of dog meat. However, animal rights campaigners have accused the Taiwanese government of not prosecuting those who continue to slaughter and serve dog meat at restaurants. Although the slaughter and consumption of dog meat is illegal in Taiwan, there are reports that suggest the practice continues as of 2011. In Taiwan, dog meat is called "fragrant meat" (Chinese: 香肉; pinyin: xiāngròu). In 2007, legislators passed a law to fine sellers of dog meat NT$250,000 (US$7,730). Dog meat is believed to have health benefits, including improving circulation and raising body temperature.
INDIA
In India, dog meat is eaten by certain communities in the Northeast Indian border states of Mizoram, Nagaland, and Manipur where it is considered to be a delicacy. These states border Burma and may have been influenced by Chinese culture and traditions.
INDONESIA
Indonesia is predominantly Muslim, a faith which considers dog meat, along with pork to be "haraam" (ritually unclean) and therefore do not eat it. However, dog meat is eaten by several of Indonesia's non-Muslim minorities.
The consumption of dog meat is associated with the Minahasa culture of northern Sulawesi, Maluku culture, and the Bataks of northern Sumatra, where dog meat is considered a festive dish usually reserved for occasions such as weddings and Christmas.
Popular Indonesian dog-meat dishes are rica-rica, also called rintek wuuk or "RW", rica-rica waung, guk-guk, and "B1". On Java, there are several dishes made from dog meat, such as sengsu (tongseng asu), sate jamu, and kambing balap.
Dog consumption in Indonesia gained attention in United States where dog is a taboo food, during 2012 Presidential election when incumbent Barack Obama was pointed by his opponent to have eaten dog meat served by his Indonesian stepfather Lolo Soetoro during his stay in the country.
JAPAN
The consumption of dog meat is not a feature of modern Japanese culture because Japanese people believe that certain dogs have special powers in their religion of Shintoism and Buddhism. Dog meat was consumed in Japan until 675 AD, when Emperor Temmu decreed a prohibition on its consumption during the 4th–9th months of the year. Normally a dog accompanied the emperor for battle, so it was believed that eating a dog gave emperors bad luck. In Japanese shrines certain animals are worshipped, such as dogs as it is believed they will give people a good luck charm. Animals are described as good luck in scrolls and Kakemono during the Kofun period, Asuka period and Nara period. According to Meisan Shojiki Ōrai (名産諸色往来) published in 1760, the meat of wild dog was sold along with boar, deer, fox, wolf, bear, raccoon dog, otter, weasel and cat in some regions of Edo. Ōta Nampo recorded witnessing puppies being eaten in Satsuma Province in a dish called Enokoro Meshi (えのころ飯).
KOREA
Gaegogi (개고기) literally means "dog meat" in Korean. The term itself, however, is often mistaken as the term for Korean soup made from dog meat, which is actually called bosintang (보신탕; 補身湯, Body nourishing soup) (sometimes spelled "bo-shintang").
The consumption of dog meat in Korean culture can be traced through history. Dog bones were excavated in a neolithic settlement in Changnyeong, South Gyeongsang Province. A wall painting in the Goguryeo Tombs complex in South Hwangghae Province, a World Heritage site which dates from the 4th century AD, depicts a slaughtered dog in a storehouse. The Balhae people also enjoyed dog meat, and the modern-day tradition of canine cuisine seems to have come from that era.
Although their Mohe ancestors did not respect dogs, the Jurchen people began to respect dogs around the time of the Ming dynasty and passed this tradition on to the Manchu. It was prohibited in Jurchen culture to use dog skin, and forbidden for Jurchens to harm, kill, and eat dogs, as the Jurchens believed the "utmost evil" was the usage of dog skin by Koreans.
SOUTH KOREA
Dog meat is often consumed during the summer months and is either roasted or prepared in soups or stews. The most popular of these soups is bosintang and gaejang-guk, a spicy stew meant to balance the body's heat during the summer months. This is thought to ensure good health by balancing one's "Qi", the believed vital energy of the body. A 19th-century version of gaejang-guk explains the preparation of the dish by boiling dog meat with vegetables such as green onions and chili pepper powder. Variations of the dish contain chicken and bamboo shoots.
Over 100,000 tons of dog meat, or 2.5 million dogs, are consumed annually in South Korea. Although a fair number of South Koreans (approximately 42% to 60%) have eaten dog meat at least once in their lifetime, only a small percentage of the population is believed to eat it on a regular basis.
The Ministry of Food and Drug Safety recognizes any edible product other than drugs as food. South Korean Food Sanitary Law (식품위생법) does not include dog meat as a legal food ingredient. In the capital city of Seoul, the sale of dog meat was outlawed by regulation on February 21, 1984 by classifying dog meat as 'repugnant food' (혐오식품), but the regulation was not rigorously enforced except during the 1988 Seoul Olympics. In 2001, the Mayor of Seoul announced there would be no extra enforcement efforts to control the sale of dog meat during the 2002 FIFA World Cup, which was partially hosted in Seoul. In March 2008, the Seoul Metropolitan Government announced its plan to put forward a policy suggestion to the central government to legally classify slaughter dogs as livestock, reigniting debate on the issue.
The primary dog breed raised for meat, the Nureongi (누렁이), or Hwangu (황구); is a non-specific, mixed breed.
There is a large and vocal group of Koreans (consisting of a number of animal welfare groups) who are against the practice of eating dogs. Popular television shows like 'I Love Pet' have documented, in 2011 for instance, the continued illegal sale of dog meat and slaughtering of dogs in suburban areas. The program also televised illegal dog farms and slaughterhouses, showing the unsanitary and horrific conditions of caged dogs, several of which were visibly sick with severe eye infections and malnutrition. However, despite this growing awareness, there remain some in Korea that do not eat or enjoy the meat, but do feel that it is the right of others to do so, along with a smaller but still vocal group of pro-dog cuisine people who want to popularize the consumption of dog in Korea and the rest of the world. A group of pro-dog meat individuals attempted to promote and publicize the consumption of dog meat worldwide during the run-up to the 2002 FIFA World Cup, co-hosted by Japan and South Korea, which prompted retaliation from animal rights campaigners and prominent figures such as Brigitte Bardot to denounce the practice. Opponents of dog meat consumption in South Korea are critical of the eating of dog meat, as some dogs are beaten, burnt or hanged to make their meat more tender.
The restaurants that sell dog meat, often exclusively, do so at the risk of losing their restaurant licenses. A case of a dog meat wholesaler, charged with selling dog meat, arose in 1997 where an appeals court acquitted the dog meat wholesaler, ruling that dogs were socially accepted as food. According to the National Assembly of South Korea, more than 20,000 restaurants, including the 6,484 registered restaurants, served soups made from dog meat in Korea in 1998. In 1999 the BBC reported that 8,500 tons of dog meat were consumed annually, with another 93,600 tons used to produce a medicinal tonic called gaesoju (개소주).
NORTH KOREA
Daily NK reported that the North Korean government included dog meat in its new list of one hundred fixed prices, setting a fixed price of 500 won per kilogram in early 2010.
NEW ZEALAND
Dog meat is rarely eaten in New Zealand but has been said to be becoming more popular as it is not illegal as long as the dog is humanely killed.
A Tongan man living in New Zealand caused public outrage when he was caught cooking his pet dog in his backyard; this event led to calls for change in the law.
PHILIPPINES
The “Malays”, a sea-faring population that is now scattered throughout South-East Asia, introduced the practice of domesticating dogs for meat consumption to the indigenous population of the Philippines.
In the capital city of Manila, Metro Manila Commission Ordinance 82-05 specifically prohibits the killing and selling of dogs for food. Generally however, the Philippine Animal Welfare Act 1998 prohibits the killing of any animal other than cattle, pigs, goats, sheep, poultry, rabbits, carabaos, horses, deer and crocodiles, with exemptions for religious, cultural, research, public safety and/or animal health reasons. Nevertheless, the consumption of dog meat is not uncommon in the Philippines, reflected in the occasional coverage in Philippine newspapers,.
The Province of Benguet specifically allows cultural use of dog meat by indigenous people and acknowledges this might lead to limited commercial use.
Asocena is a dish primarily consisting of dog meat originating from the Philippines.
In the early 1980s, there was an international outcry about dog meat consumption in the Philippines after newspapers published photos of Margaret Thatcher, then British Prime Minister, with a dog carcass hanging beside her on a market stall. The British Government discussed withdrawing foreign aid and other countries, such as Australia, considered similar action. To avoid such action, the Filipino government banned the sale of dog meat, despite dog meat being the third most consumed meat, behind pork and goat. The ban eventually became totally disregarded, although it was reinstated by President Ramos in 1998 in the Animal Welfare Act (Republic Act 8485).
POLYNESIA
Dogs were historically eaten in Tahiti and other islands of Polynesia, including Hawaii at the time of first European contact. James Cook, when first visiting Tahiti in 1769, recorded in his journal, "few were there of us but what allow'd that a South Sea Dog was next to an English Lamb, one thing in their favour is that they live entirely upon Vegetables". Calwin Schwabe reported in 1979 that dog was widely eaten in Hawaii and considered to be of higher quality than pork or chicken. When Hawaiians first encountered early British and American explorers, they were at a loss to explain the visitors' attitudes about dog meat. The Hawaiians raised both dogs and pigs as pets and for food. They could not understand why their British and American visitors only found the pig suitable for consumption. This practice seems to have died out, along with the native Hawaiian breed of dog, the unique Hawaiian Poi Dog, which was primarily used for this purpose. The consumption of domestic dog meat is still commonplace in the Kingdom of Tonga, and has also been noted in expatriate Tongan communities in New Zealand, Australia, and the United States.
THAILAND
Unlike other countries where dog meat consumption has been shown to have historical precedents, Thailand does not have a mainstream culture of dog eating. However, in recent years, the consumption of dog meat in certain areas of the country, especially in certain northeastern provinces like Sakon Nakhon and Nakhon Phanom, notably Sakon Nakhon province's Tha Rae sub-district, which has been identified as the main center for the country's illegal, albeit lucrative, dog meat trade, has attracted widespread attention from the Thai population and local news media. This has led large groups of Thai citizens to become increasingly vocal against the consumption of dog meat and the selling of dogs that are transported through Laos to neighbouring Mekong countries, including Vietnam and China. According to news reports, a considerable number of these dogs continue to be stolen from people's homes by illegal carriers. This was also the case following the 2011 Thailand Floods. Dubbed as the country's 'Trade of Shame', Thai netizens, in particular, have now formed several informal animal welfare and rescue groups in an attempt to stop this illegal trade, with the collective attitude being that 'Dogs are not food'. Established not-for-profit animal charity organizations like the Soi Dog Foundation have also been active in raising awareness and working in conjunction with local Thai authorities to rehabilitate and relocate dogs rescued from trucks attempting to transport live dogs across the border to nearby countries. Significantly, this issue has strengthened the nation's animal rights movement, which continues to call on the Thai government to adopt a stricter and more comprehensive animal rights law to prevent the maltreatment of pets and cruelty against all animals.
TIMOR LESTE
Dog meat is a delicacy popular in East Timor.
UZBEKISTAN
Although not commonly eaten, dog meat is sometimes used in Uzbekistan in the belief that it has medicinal properties.
VIETNAM
Dog meat is consumed more commonly in the northern part of Vietnam than in the south, and can be found in special restaurants which specifically serve dog meat. Dog meat is believed to bring good fortune in Vietnamese culture. It is seen as being comparable in consumption to chicken or pork. In urban areas, there are sections that house a lot of dog meat restaurants. For example, on Nhat Tan Street, Tây Hồ District, Hanoi, many restaurants serve dog meat. Groups of customers, usually male, seated on mats, will spend their evenings sharing plates of dog meat and drinking alcohol. The consumption of dog meat can be part of a ritual usually occurring toward the end of the lunar month for reasons of astrology and luck. Restaurants which mainly exist to serve dog meat may only open for the last half of the lunar month. Dog meat is also believed to raise the libido in men. The Associated Press reported in October 2009 that a soaring economy has led to the booming of dog restaurants in Hanoi, and that this has led to a proliferation of dognappers. Reportedly, a 20 kilograms dog can sell for more than $100 — roughly the monthly salary of an average Vietnamese worker. The Vietnamese Catholic Church is a major consumer of dog meat during the Christmas holiday. There is a large smuggling trade from Thailand to export dogs to Vietnam for human consumption.In 2009, dog meat was found to be a main carrier of the Vibrio cholerae bacterium, which caused the summer epidemic of cholera in northern Vietnam. Prior to 2014, more than 5 million dogs were killed for meat every year in Vietnam according to the Asia Canine Protection Alliance. However, there are indications that the desire to eat dog meat in Vietnam is waning. Part of the decline is thought to be due to an increased number of Vietnamese people keeping dogs as pets, as their incomes have risen in the past few decades. “[People] used to raise dogs to guard the house, and when they needed the meat, they ate it. Now they keep dog as pets, imported from China, Japan, and other countries. One pet dog might cost hundreds of millions of dong [100 million dong is $4,677].”
EUROPE
BRITAIN & IRELAND
Eating dog meat is considered entirely taboo, as is common with most European societies, and has been taboo for many centuries outside of times of scarcity such as sieges or famines. However, early Brittonic and Irish texts which date from the early Christian period suggest that dog meat was sometimes consumed but possibly in ritual contexts such as Druidic ritual trance. Sacrificial dog bones are often recovered from archaeological sites however they were typically treated differently, as were horses, from other food animals. One of Ireland's mythological heroes Cuchulainn, had two geasa, or vows, one of which was to avoid the meat of dogs. The breaking of his geasa led to his death in the Irish mythology.
BELGIUM
A few meat shops sold dog meat during the German occupation of Belgium in World War I, when food was extremely scarce. According to The New York Times, in the 19th century the Council of the Veterinary School of Belgium occasionally recommended dog meat for human consumption after being properly inspected.
FRANCE
Although consumption of dog meat is uncommon in France, and is now considered taboo, dog meat has been consumed in the past by the Gauls. The earliest evidence of dog consumption in France was found at Gaulish archaeological sites, where butchered dog bones were discovered. French news sources from the late 19th century carried stories reporting lines of people buying dog meat, which was described as being "beautiful and light." During the Siege of Paris (1870–1871), there were lines at butcher's shops of people waiting to purchase dog meat. Dog meat was also reported as being sold by some butchers in Paris, 1910.
GERMANY
Dog meat has been eaten in every major German crisis since, at least, the time of Frederick the Great, and is commonly referred to as "blockade mutton". In the early 20th century, high meat prices led to widespread consumption of horse and dog meat in Germany.
The consumption of dog meat continued in the 1920s. In 1937, a meat inspection law targeted against trichinella was introduced for pigs, dogs, boars, foxes, badgers, and other carnivores. Dog meat has been prohibited in Germany since 1986.
SAXONY
In the latter part of World War I, dog meat was being eaten in Saxony by the poorer classes because of famine conditions.
THE NETHERLANDS
During severe meat shortages coinciding with the German occupation from 1940 to 1945, sausages found to have been made of dog meat were confiscated by authorities in the Netherlands.
POLAND
While dog meat is not eaten, some rural areas of Poland especially Lesser Poland, dog fat can be made into lard, which by tradition is believed to have medicinal properties — being good for the lungs, for instance. Since the 16th century, fat from various animals, including dogs, was used as part of folk medicine, and since the 18th century, dog fat has had a reputation as being beneficial for the lungs. It is worth noting that the consumption of such meat is considered taboo in Polish culture, also making lard out of dogs' fat is illegal. In 2009, a scandal erupted when a farm near Częstochowa was discovered rearing dogs to be rendered down into lard. According to Grazyna Zawada, from Gazeta Wyborcza, there were farms in Czestochowa, Klobuck, and in the Radom area, and in the decade from 2000 to 2010 six people producing dog lard were found guilty of breaching animal welfare laws (found guilty of killing dogs and animal cruelty) and sentenced to jail. As of 2014 there have been new cases prosecuted.
SWITZERLAND
Dogs, as well as cats, are eaten regularly by farmers in rural areas for personal consumption. While commercial slaughter and sale of dog meat is illegal, cultural attitudes toward slaughtering of animals for meat is traditionally liberal in Switzerland. The favorite type of meat comes from a dog related to the Rottweiler and consumed as 'mostbrockli' a form of marinated meat. Animals are slaughtered by butchers and either shot or bludgeoned.
In his 1979 book Unmentionable Cuisine, Calvin Schwabe described a Swiss dog meat recipe gedörrtes Hundefleisch served as paper-thin slices, as well as smoked dog ham, Hundeschinken, which is prepared by salting and drying raw dog meat.
It is illegal in Switzerland to commercially produce food made from dog meat, or to produce such food for commercial purposes.
WIKIPEDIA
Consider the moment before birth.
The darkness, pressure, and uncertainty.
There must be an opening.
The light shines through.
And in the right moment
We are born.
Melinda Field
Thanks for having a look.
A Tatuagem atualmente é considerada como uma forma de arte e expressão. No Japão, esta prática é conhecida pelo nome de Irezumi ou Horimono e dizem ter se originado por volta de 10.000 aC. Um dos métodos mais tradicionais de tatuagem no Japão é o “Tebori”, cujo significado é “entalhado à mão” ou “esculpido à mão”. Hoje utilizando a técnica tebori, foi desenvolvido a Microblading
Sobrancelhas realistas, com traços precisos, cores Impecáveis, tudo para realçar o seu olhar!!!
#condessacorpoeimagem #lilianvoriaestetica #lovemyjob #microblading #sobrancelhasperfeitas #muitoamorenvolvido
11 Likes on Instagram
Considero valore ogni forma di vita, la neve, la fragola, la mosca.
Considero valore il regno minerale, l'assemblea delle stelle.
Considero valore il vino finché dura il pasto, un sorriso involontario, la stanchezza di chi non
si è risparmiato, due vecchi che si amano.
Considero valore quello che domani non varrà più niente e quello che oggi vale ancora poco.
Considero valore tutte le ferite.
Considero valore risparmiare acqua, riparare un paio di scarpe, tacere in tempo, accorrere a un
grido, chiedere “permesso?” prima di sedersi, provare gratitudine senza ricordare di che.
Considero valore sapere in una stanza dov'è il nord, qual è il nome del vento che sta
asciugando il bucato.
Considero valore il viaggio del vagabondo, la clausura della monaca, la pazienza del
condannato, qualunque colpa sia.
Considero valore l'uso del verbo amare e l'ipotesi che esista un creatore.
(Molti di questi valori non ho conosciuto.)
E. da Luca
Wearing high heels is always sexy. A lot of women are very obsessed with high heels and stilettos and cannot seem to get enough of them even if they already have hundreds of pair inside their closet. The appeal and beauty that this kind of shoes could bring make them worth the price that is why...
www.latesthandmade.com/essential-glam-tips-consider-weari...
El Coro de la Catedral de Toledo -considerado como el más hermoso de las catedrales europeas- está realizado para albergar al Clero Catedralicio (Arzobispo, Canónigos, racioneros y capellanes de Coro). Está compuesto por la sillería alta realizada desde el sitial, en su lado derecho obra de Alonso Berruguete y su lado izquierdo por Felipe Bigarny. La sillería baja fue labrada por Rodrigo Alemán entre 1489 y 1495, en ella se representa los episodios de la conquista de Granada. En ambos laterales, dos grandes atriles de 1570 realizados por Nicolás de Vergara el Viejo y su hijo el Mozo. En su centro, el atril de águila obra de 1425 de mano alemana. Preside el altar de prima una bella escultura gótica francesa del XIV llena de la dulzura y belleza de la Madre, llamada la "Virgen Blanca" Cierra el Coro una reja labrada por Domingo de Céspedes entre 1541 y 1548. (www.catedralprimada.es)
La Catedral Primada de Toledo, consagrada a la Virgen María en su Asunción a los cielos, comenzó a construirse en el año 1227 sobre los cimientos de la Catedral visigoda del S. VI que había sido utilizada como mezquita. La construcción es de estilo gótico con una clara influencia francesa. Mide 120 m de largo por 60 m de ancho. Está compuesta por cinco naves, sostenida por 88 columnas y 72 bóvedas. Las naves laterales se prolongan por detrás de la Capilla Mayor rodeando el presbiterio y creando una girola con un doble pasillo semicircular. Su primer arquitecto fue el maestro Martín, de origen francés, a quien se deben las trazas de la planta y los comienzos de la obra en la cabecera del templo. En el siglo XIV se cerraron las naves laterales, y se construyó el claustro bajo con sus dependencias. En 1493 se cerró la última bóveda, dándose por concluida esta magna construcción. En el siglo XVI se construyó el retablo, la parte alta del coro y las rejas, se cerraron todas las vidrieras y se realizaron diversas modificaciones de planta.
146700
Anna Magnani
«La dea. Fantastica. Guardate che occhi! Che intensità. L'impegno completo su ogni cosa che ha fatto. Un impegno che scoppiava in tutto quello che
faceva.»
(Meryl Streep
Anna Magnani (Roma, 7 marzo 1908 – Roma, 26 settembre 1973) è stata un'attrice italiana.
Considerata una delle maggiori interpreti femminili della storia è tra le poche attrici (sicuramente la prima italiana) a essere celebrata come mito, talento unico e grande personalità artistica in tutto il mondo.]
Attrice simbolo del cinema italiano, spesso conosciuta con il soprannome "Nannarella" e per essere stata, insieme con Alberto Sordi e Aldo Fabrizi, una delle figure preminenti della romanità cinematografica del XX secolo. Celebri le sue interpretazioni, soprattutto in film come Roma città aperta, Bellissima, Mamma Roma e La rosa tatuata. Quest'ultimo le valse nel 1956 un Oscar alla miglior attrice protagonista (la prima attrice non di lingua inglese a ricevere il premio). Ha inoltre vinto due David di Donatello, cinque Nastri d'argento, un Globo d'oro, un Golden Globe, un BAFTA, due National Board of Review, un New York Film Critics Circle Award, una Coppa Volpi a Venezia e un Orso d'argento a Berlino.
Biografia
«Ho capito che non ero nata attrice. Avevo solo deciso di diventarlo nella culla, tra una lacrima di troppo e una carezza di meno. Per tutta la vita ho urlato con tutta me stessa per questa lacrima, ho implorato questa carezza. Se oggi dovessi morire, sappiate che ci ho rinunciato. Ma mi ci sono voluti tanti anni, tanti errori»
(Anna Magnani)
Anna Magnani nacque a Roma il 7 marzo 1908 in via Salaria 126, presso Porta Pia nell'odierno quartiere Nomentano. Sua madre Marina Magnani era una sarta originaria di Fano che, dopo aver dato alla luce la piccola Anna, la affidò definitivamente alle cure della nonna materna Giovanna Casadio (di origini ravennati); crebbe in via San Teodoro, tra il Campidoglio e il Palatino La bambina non conoscerà mai il padre naturale. Da adulta, effettuando delle ricerche sull'identità del padre, Anna scoprirà le sue origini calabresi e quello che avrebbe dovuto essere il suo cognome, Del Duce (il nome del padre era Pietro Del Duce); (dirà poi, ironicamente, di essersi fermata nelle ricerche perché non voleva passare come "la figlia del Duce").
Dopo aver abbandonato la figlia, Marina Magnani emigrò ad Alessandria d'Egitto, dove conobbe e sposò un ricco e facoltoso austriaco. Per questo motivo per lungo tempo si credette che la Magnani fosse nata in Egitto; successivamente però la verità venne a galla, prima per ammissione della stessa attrice, poi per le conferme del figlio. Anna venne quindi allevata dalla nonna in una casa abitata dalle cinque zie Dora, Maria, Rina, Olga e Italia. L'unica presenza maschile era quella dello zio Romano.
La nonna si impegnò a fondo per crescere e far studiare la nipotina, iscrivendola presso un collegio di suore francesi, dove però la bambina rimase solo pochi mesi. Anna intraprese ben presto lo studio del pianoforte e si iscrisse al Liceo Musicale Santa Cecilia, dove rimase per due anni. Nel frattempo, si recò ad Alessandria d'Egitto in visita alla madre, ma tornò molto provata da quell'esperienza che si era rivelata molto dolorosa perché tra le due donne non era riuscito a crearsi quel rapporto affettuoso madre-figlia che sempre le era mancato.
Rientrata a Roma, decise di abbandonare lo studio della musica, che non la soddisfaceva pienamente, e si indirizzò verso la recitazione.
Esordi
Nel gennaio 1927 iniziò a frequentare con Paolo Stoppa la scuola di arte drammatica Eleonora Duse diretta da Silvio D'Amicoavendo come insegnante Ida Carloni Talli. Silvio D'Amico capì subito la forza dirompente di quella ragazzina della quale, diceva, “la Scuola non poteva insegnarle molto di più di quello che ha già dentro di sé…”, perché lei aveva già quel carisma che l’avrebbe resa indimenticabile. Raccontava a sua sorella (sceneggiatrice) “Ieri è venuta una ragazzina, piccola, mora con gli occhi espressivi. Non recita, vive le parti che le vengono assegnate. È già un’attrice…”. Tra il 1929 e il 1932 fece parte della compagnia Vergani-Cimara, diretta da Dario Niccodemi.
Nel 1932 Anna Magnani e Paolo Stoppa si ritrovarono a lavorare insieme nella compagnia di Antonio Gandusio, il quale ben presto si innamorò della Magnani e apprezzò a tal punto le sue qualità da spingerla a tentare anche la strada del cinema. Nel 1934 passò alla rivista, accanto ai fratelli De Rege, lavorando poi, a partire dal 1941, in una fortunata serie di spettacoli con Totò. Nel 1944 recitò nella rivista Cantachiaro di Franco Monicelli, Italo De Tuddo, Garinei e Giovannini, e nel 1945 in Soffia so'... .
Il suo debutto cinematografico avvenne nel film La cieca di Sorrento (1934) di Nunzio Malasomma, nonostante nel 1928 fosse già apparsa, in un ruolo marginale, nella pellicola Scampolo di Augusto Genina. Il 3 ottobre 1935 sposò il regista Goffredo Alessandrini, con cui nel 1936 girò Cavalleria, dal quale si separò nel 1940, divorziando poi solo nel 1972. Nel 1938 prese parte al film La principessa Tarakanova, dove non recitò con la propria voce, ma fu doppiata da Marcella Rovena.
Successo
Dopo numerosi film in cui interpretava parti di cameriera o cantante, riuscì a imporsi per le sue eccezionali doti di interprete spiccatamente drammatica. Fu Vittorio De Sica a offrirle per la prima volta la possibilità di costruire un personaggio non secondario, quello di Loretta Prima, artista di varietà, nel film Teresa Venerdì (1941). Recitò nell'avanspettacolo di Totò e interpretò il ruolo della verduraia romana in Campo de' Fiori (1943) con Aldo Fabrizi.
Il 23 ottobre 1942 diede alla luce il suo unico figlio, Luca, frutto di una relazione con l'attore Massimo Serato, che l'abbandonò non appena rimase incinta. A causa della gravidanza la Magnani dovette rinunciare a girare il film di Luchino Visconti, Ossessione, venendo sostituita da Clara Calamai. L'attrice riuscì a imporre il proprio cognome al figlio, proprio come la madre Marina fece con lei, uno dei rari casi di genealogia matrilineare che si protrae per addirittura tre generazioni. Sempre nel 1942 recitò in Finalmente soli, dove fu doppiata da Tina Lattanzi.
Raggiunse la fama mondiale nel 1945 e vinse il suo primo Nastro d'argento grazie all'interpretazione nel film manifesto del Neorealismo, Roma città aperta di Roberto Rossellini (con il quale instaurò una relazione sentimentale), con Aldo Fabrizi, Marcello Pagliero e Maria Michi. Nel film Anna Magnani è protagonista di una delle sequenze più celebri della storia del cinema: la corsa dietro un camion tedesco, nel quale è rinchiuso il marito, al termine della quale il suo personaggio (la 'Sora Pina', ispirato alla figura di Teresa Gullace) viene ucciso dai colpi di mitra dei tedeschi. Nello stesso anno partecipò al film Quartetto pazzo, anche stavolta doppiata dalla Lattanzi, mentre l'anno successivo prese parte al film musicale Avanti a lui tremava tutta Roma, dove fu doppiata per le scene di canto lirico dal soprano Elisabetta Barbato.
Nel 1947 vinse il suo secondo Nastro d'argento e il premio per la miglior attrice alla Mostra internazionale d'arte cinematografica di Venezia per il film L'onorevole Angelina diretto da Luigi Zampa.
Rottura con Rossellini
Nel 1948 interpretò il suo ultimo film con Roberto Rossellini, prima della rottura della loro relazione, L'amore, diviso in due atti. Il primo (ispirato al dramma in atto unico di Jean Cocteau La voce umana) è un lungo monologo al telefono di una donna abbandonata dal compagno; il secondo è la storia di una popolana che si concede ad un giovane pastore (interpretato da Federico Fellini) credendolo San Giuseppe: per lei fu il terzo Nastro d'argento. Nel 1949 girò Vulcano diretto da William Dieterle e interpretato accanto a Rossano Brazzi e Geraldine Brooks, nell'isola vicina a quella dove Rossellini stava girando Stromboli (Terra di Dio) con la sua nuova compagna Ingrid Bergman. Le riprese dei due film sono ricordate dalla storia del cinema come la guerra dei vulcani.
Nel 1951, con il memorabile personaggio di Maddalena Cecconi, fu l'intensa protagonista del film Bellissima di Luchino Visconti, sceneggiato da Cesare Zavattini, con Walter Chiari, Corrado, Alessandro Blasetti, Tecla Scarano, e vinse il suo quarto Nastro d'argento. Il quinto e ultimo Nastro d'argento le sarà conferito per il film Suor Letizia - Il più grande amore (1956) di Mario Camerini.
Nel 1952 interpretò Anita Garibaldi nel film Camicie rosse, affiancata da Raf Vallone e diretta dall'ex marito Goffredo Alessandrini, con cui si scontrerà molto aspramente, tanto che quest'ultimo abbandonò il set prima della fine delle riprese (portate a termine dall'aiuto regista, l'allora debuttante Francesco Rosi). Nello stesso anno recitò in La carrozza d'oro di Jean Renoir, primo film europeo girato in technicolor. Nel 1953, interpretando sé stessa, venne nuovamente diretta da Visconti nel quinto episodio della pellicola Siamo donne.
Nella sua villa al Circeo accoglieva spesso un ristretto gruppo di amici, tra cui Marisa Merlini, Elsa De Giorgi, Franco Monicelli, Alberto Sordi e Suso Cecchi d'Amico.
L'Oscar e il prosieguo della carriera
Il 21 marzo 1956 fu la prima interprete italiana nella storia degli Academy Awards a vincere il Premio Oscar come migliore attrice protagonista, e la prima in assoluto madrelingua non inglese, conferitole per l'interpretazione di Serafina Delle Rose nel film La rosa tatuata (1955), con Burt Lancaster, per la regia di Daniel Mann. Per lo stesso ruolo, vincerà anche un BAFTA quale attrice internazionale dell'anno e il Golden Globe per la migliore attrice in un film drammatico. La Magnani non presenziò alla cerimonia: l'Oscar venne ritirato dalle mani di Jerry Lewis da Marisa Pavan, candidata al premio come migliore attrice non protagonista per lo stesso film. Quando un giornalista statunitense le annunciò che aveva vinto l'Oscar, la Magnani rimase in silenzio per poi esclamare: "Magnani is happy!".
Un altro riconoscimento internazionale, quello per la miglior attrice al Festival di Berlino, le venne conferito nel 1958 per l'interpretazione del film Selvaggio è il vento (1957) di George Cukor in cui fu affiancata da Anthony Quinn e Anthony Franciosa. Per lo stesso ruolo, sempre nel 1958, vinse anche il suo primo David di Donatello come migliore attrice e fu candidata per la seconda volta al premio Oscar, che venne assegnato a Joanne Woodward per La donna dai tre volti (1957) di Nunnally Johnson.
Nel 1959 vinse il suo secondo David di Donatello per il film Nella città l'inferno (1958) di Renato Castellani, interpretato assieme a Giulietta Masina: la pellicola, piuttosto inusuale nel panorama cinematografico italiano di allora, è ambientata in un carcere femminile. Nel 1960 tornò a Hollywood per l'ultima volta, per recitare accanto a Marlon Brando e Joanne Woodward nel film Pelle di serpente di Sidney Lumet, ove affrontò un personaggio tragico scritto apposta per lei da Tennessee Williams.
Nel 1960, e nonostante un primo interessamento, non divenne la protagonista de La ciociara: il film, la cui regia fu inizialmente affidata a George Cukor, avrebbe dovuto vederla nella parte di Cesira, mentre Sophia Loren era stata già scritturata per la parte della figlia Rosetta. La Magnani finì per rifiutare il ruolo perché si considerava troppo matura per quel personaggio, e non voleva interpretare la madre di Sophia Loren, e così fu la stessa Loren a interpretare la parte di Cesira (che le fruttò l'Oscar nel 1962), mentre il ruolo di Rosetta venne assegnata all'adolescente italo-americana Eleonora Brown. Senza la presenza della Magnani, Cukor decise di ritirarsi dalla produzione e venne sostituito da Vittorio De Sica. Sfumato il progetto, nello stesso anno affiancò Totò e Ben Gazzara nella commedia Risate di gioia di Mario Monicelli, film che doveva anche rilanciare l'attrice nel cinema italiano dopo la parentesi americana, ma che non ebbe molto successo.
Nel 1962 fu la protagonista di Mamma Roma di Pier Paolo Pasolini, regista con il quale instaurò un rapporto conflittuale. Pasolini, dopo l'esordio del 1961 con Accattone, cercò in ogni modo di lavorare con la grande attrice, ormai sempre più selettiva nello scegliere i propri ruoli; la Magnani accettò, ma entrambi rimasero insoddisfatti dal risultato ottenuto. Lei disse "Pasolini mi ha usata", mentre lui sosteneva che lei era stata "troppo borghese". In ogni caso, nonostante le loro incomprensioni, che comunque non andarono mai a intaccare la stima reciproca, il film ottenne un grande successo di pubblico e di critica soprattutto in Francia, mentre in Italia al grande successo di critica seguiranno invece incassi deludenti.
Nel 1963 si recò in Francia per recitare nella commedia La pila della Peppa di Claude Autant-Lara, insieme a Bourvil e Pierre Brasseur, che ebbe una difficile gestazione e scarso successo. Dopo essere apparsa nel 1965 in La Famiglia, uno degli episodi di Made in Italy di Nanni Loy, prese parte al suo ultimo film americano, girato in Italia, Il segreto di Santa Vittoria (1969) di Stanley Kramer, accanto a Anthony Quinn, Virna Lisi, Hardy Krüger e Giancarlo Giannini, e per il quale ottenne una candidatura alla migliore attrice al Golden Globe. Nel 1965 tornò a recitare in teatro con La lupa di Giovanni Verga, per la regia di Franco Zeffirelli, e nel 1966 con Medea di Jean Anouilh, diretta da Gian Carlo Menotti.
Da Wikipedia, l'enciclopedia libera.
Raccolta Foto De Alvariis
The Future might be stranger than we can imagine... but, honestly, Right Now is already pretty weird.
I consider this to be some of the finest automotive artwork ever. I don't know who the artist is, but he sure knew how to illustrate cars to bring out their best. The 1950 design was somewhat plain, but still an attractive car, especially in convertible form. This was the year before the hemi V-8 was introduced, so the buyer had to make do with the old 135 hp Spitfire L-head eight. Prestomatic Fluid Drive was available.
please consider this a work in progress.
.....ok, so I'm not so happy with this one. in fact every time I look at it I see something else I should correct so I figured I better hurry up and post it before it crashes and burns. I still like the basic concept, I think it's silly, that's good. not so happy with the fact that I washed out the top corner of the spinner by not holding it properly. still trying to learn how to work with better lighting. I've a way to go. anyway, we can share our disappointments as well as our successes, right?
have a twisterific evening everyone~
One can consider the presentation of this spectacular hardtop coupe as an ultimate afford to gain attention of the audience to persuade them for buying a Packard. The financial position of Packard was terrible in 1956. But it wasn't much of a help.
Richard 'Dick' Teague (Los Angeles, 1923-1991) designed the Predictor. It was built at Carrozzeria Ghia, Torino in Italy on a Clipper platform. In ninety days the Italians managed to get this project ready, just in time for the Chicago Car Show.
The Predictor had all kinds of new automotive features, like tilting headlights, roof doors rolled back when opening the door, lowering back window, swiveling seats, dashboard design which followed the hood profile, a power operated trunk lid, and a wraparound windshield that curved into the roof.
Many car brands copied several novelties: the grille at the 1958 Edsel, the roof line at the 1958 Lincoln Premier, the rear bumper at the 1958 Oldsmobile, opera windows or portholes in the rear pillar at the 1957 Thunderbird, and the headlights at the 1962 Corvette.
Only one Predictor was made. It still exists and is on display at the Studebaker National Museum, South Bend, Indiana (see photo).
6128 cc V8 engine.
Production Packard Predictor: 1956.
Image source:
Video still from a movie of a visit to the Studebaker National Museum, South Bend, Indiana, by OldModelTGuy.
Seen on YouTube.
Halfweg, July 16, 2024.
© 2024 Sander Toonen Halfweg | All Rights Reserved
La Cartuja de Santa María de Miraflores es un monasterio de la Orden de los Cartujos considerada una joya del arte gótico final. En el conjunto destaca la iglesia, cuya portada occidental, en estilo gótico isabelino, está decorada con los escudos de sus fundadores. El templo es de una sola nave, capillas laterales y ábside poligonal. La nave está cubierta con bóveda estrellada.
La cartuja de Miraflores fue fundada en 1442 por el rey Don Juan II de Castilla y León (1405-1454), aunque esta cartuja es, en realidad, obra casi exclusiva de su hija la reina Isabel la Católica. Tras algunas reticencias de los frailes, por ser muy frío y carecer de agua, la comunidad se establece y el edificio es puesto bajo la advocación de San Francisco (Cartuja de San Francisco de Miraflores). Los monjes, que procedían de las cartujas de Scala Dei y de El Paular, se instalaron en el palacio-alcázar. Pero no duró mucho este primer monasterio, porque en 1454 un incendio obligó a plantear un edificio de nueva planta.
En 1453 se decidió construir el actual edificio. Entre los años 1454 y 1488 se desarrollan las obras del nuevo monasterio, que ahora es puesto bajo la advocación de Santa María de la Anunciación (de Miraflores). Las obras se encargaron a Juan de Colonia, que trabajaba por entonces en la catedral de Burgos, y comienzan en 1454. Ese año Enrique IV sucede a su padre, Juan II, y las obras quedan casi paradas.
Es en 1477 cuando son impulsadas por la reina Isabel la Católica. En su reinado se termina el Retablo Mayor y el sepulcro de Juan II de Castilla e Isabel de Portugal, situado en el presbiterio. La iglesia de la cartuja es sobre todo un panteón real, ocupado por la familia de Isabel. Cuando muere Juan de Colonia, continua la tracería arquitectónica Garci Fernández de Matienzo. Este muere de peste en 1478 y es sucedido por Simón de Colonia , hijo de Juan de Colonia. Las obras para cubrir el templo se terminan hacia 1488.
Entre 1532 y 1539, se emprenden otras obras arquitectónicas en el monasterio bajo la dirección de Diego de Mendieta, para crear las capillas laterales (lado izquierdo solo) y dotar de mayor altura a la iglesia. Se procede también a incorporar agujas y pináculos, y se coloca la crestería gótica.
Consider k runners on a circular track of unit length. At t = 0, all runners are at the same position and start to run; the runners' speeds are pairwise distinct. A runner is said to be lonely at time t if he is at distance of at least 1/k from every other runner at time t. The lonely runner conjecture states that each runner is lonely at some time
Durante décadas, el imponente y emblemático edificio de la Universidad Laboral hubo de soportar críticas implacables desde distintos estamentos; se le tachaba de franquista, megalómano y anacrónico. Ha tenido que cumplir cincuenta años para que le llegara el definitivo reconocimiento de los medios oficiales a su valor patrimonial; el hasta hace poco alcalde de Gijón, Vicente Alvarez Areces, llega a considerarlo "el monumento arquitectónico más importante que se ha hecho durante este siglo en Asturias". En 1998 lo ponen de actualidad varios acontecimientos: en abril se recuerda su medio siglo de existencia; por mayo el Ayuntamiento de Gijón anuncia su rehabilitación con cargo a los fondos mineros, destinándose, al efecto, una partida de 5.000 millones; en el mes de septiembre, la Consejería de Cultura del Principado comienza los trámites para la declaración del conjunto arquitectónico como Bien de Interés Cultural. A todo ello se suma, en octubre, un congreso en torno a la figura de Luis Moya (1904-1990) — —arquitecto modelador de la Laboral—, organizado por la Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED); al término del mismo había coincidencia en dos ideas: el virtuosismo arquitectónico de Luis Moya al proyectarlo y lo inapropiado del calificativo de franquista para la edificación. El arquitecto gijonés José Díez Canteli, uno de los cuatro miembros del equipo director, rechazaba, en el pasado mes de enero, la filiación de la Laboral al Régimen: "Siempre se insistió en su carácter político, pero eso es falso. No es franquista, es la obra de Luis Moya... La construcción estuvo desprovista de gestos políticos: no hubo ni primera piedra ni inauguración y Franco se mantuvo al margen". De distinta opinión es el historiador A. Bonet Correa, para quien el conjunto es "un modelo reducido de ciudad totalitaria..., la titánica y tiránica emanación deificada del Estado absoluto, autosuficiente y encerrado en su propia autarquía".
Esta gigantesca obra, la más representativa del régimen franquista en Gijón, empezó a levantarse en la parroquia de Cabueñes (afueras de la ciudad) en 1948 y se inauguró en 1956.
Concebida en su conjunto como una ciudad ideal, independiente, cerrada y autosuficiente, muy en consonancia con el autarquismo de la época, asombra por sus colosales dimensiones —dos veces y media mayor que El Escorial—, «la riqueza de materiales y la reutilización de modelos arquitectónicos clásicos» (J. Zatón, J. Feito). El núcleo principal del edificio, compuesto por la iglesia —con capacidad para 1.000 personas—, el rectorado y el teatro —para 1.500 espectadores—, se dispone en torno a una gran plaza mayor, parcialmente porticada, en tanto que la organización de las aulas, las habitaciones de los alumnos y las de las monjas clarisas —responsables de los servicios domésticos— responde a un sistema claustral. En el contorno se ubican los talleres, la zona de recreo —provista de jardines, estanque, piscina y pistas de deporte— y la granja-escuela.
La antigua Universidad Laboral tiene el acceso por la torre-puerta de su frente oriental —de espaldas a Gijón—, donde llama la atención un escudo con águila, yugo y flechas soportado por dos ángeles. Tras sobrepasarla, se llega a un rectangular patio circundado por columnas graníticas, a través del cual se ingresa en un desmesurado y claro patio, de 150 m de largo y 50 de ancho (un tamaño muy parecido a la veneciana Plaza de San Marcos).
La torre, con sus 120 m de altura, y la iglesia son evidentes muestras del grandonismo que caracteriza al conjunto arquitectónico. El templo, su realización más impactante, posee un cuerpo central izado sobre escalinatas circulares y otro más bajo y ancho sostenido por columnas. Su altar mayor está rodeado por cuatro columnas de granito rosa, de 40 toneladas de peso y de una sola pieza cada una de ellas. Exteriormente, sobresalen sus siete hornacinas, una de las cuales acoge la entrada; la cónica cubierta, y el linternón de piedra, de 270 toneladas de peso y 17 m de altura. Su cúpula, que descansa sobre veinte pares de nervaduras de ladrillo (del que se emplearon 450.000 unidades), pasa por ser la mayor del mundo en planta elíptica.
Frente a la fachada sur de la antigua Laboral se construyó un impresionante jardín árabe.
La historia de este edificio se remonta a 1945 cuando se decide la creación de un Orfelinato Minero para hijos de fallecidos en accidentes laborales, al que se le da el nombre de Fundación José Antonio Girón, por entonces ministro de Trabajo, quien lo declara como «Obra de urgente ejecución», con las siguientes características: residencia para 1.000 alumnos, talleres industriales, instalaciones deportivas, granja-escuela para atender las necesidades de los alumnos y el aprendizaje de las labores agrícolas, así como suficiente extensión de terreno para los cultivos. También habría alumnos externos.
El diseño fue confiado a un equipo de arquitectos coordinado por Luis Moya Blanco, en el que figuraron su hermano Ramiro Moya, Pedro Rodríguez A. de la Puente y el gijonés José Díez Canteli.
Los jardines son trazados por Javier de Winthuyssen, por entonces Inspector Nacional de Parques y Jardines Artísticos. Las esculturas son obra de Manuel Álvarez Laviada y Florentino Trapero, y los mosaicos se confían a Santiago Padrós, quien recurre al dibujo previo de los mismos sobre cartones realizado por el pintor sevillano Joaquín Valverde.
En el transcurso de las obras el Ministerio de Trabajo decide crear Universidades Laborales para la formación profesional de los jóvenes, de ahí que el Orfelinato Minero acabe transformándose en la Universidad Laboral de Gijón.
La enseñanza y dirección del centro se encomendó a los jesuitas; las monjas clarisas, que llegaron de Zamora y hoy continúan como monjas de clausura, se ocuparon de los servicios de cocina, lavandería, etc.
En 1978 se sustituye a los jesuitas y se entrega la dirección a personal docente de las Universidades Laborales. Éstas acaban siendo sustituidas por la fugaz figura de los Institutos Nacionales de Enseñanzas Integradas, que, tras pasar a titularidad del Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia en 1981, acaban por denominarse Centros de Enseñanzas Integradas, nombre que aún se mantiene, aunque entre los asturianos el centro gijonés sigue siendo la Universidad Laboral o la Laboral.
Visitas: Todos los días, de 10 a 14 y de 16 a 20 h.
EL CENTRO DE ENSEÑANZAS INTEGRADAS, DE GIJON
PEDRO RODRÍGUEZ Y A. DE LA PUENTE
Arquitecto del equipo de Luis Moya
Madrid, diciembre de 1981
Con los ojos de ayer
Precisamente cuando la 2ª Revolución Tecnológica o del ordenador se va a iniciar en el mundo, nuestra ya muy extensa vida de trabajo, siempre profundo y reflexivo, sí que de alto coeficiente de dispersión, se encontró, por azar, en una transcedente encrucijada.
Se trataba de crear un excepcional centro de formación humana, profesional y social para poder encauzar a cierta parcela de nuestra más humilde juventud hacia buen fin. La idea, muy en embrión, se nos transmite, como miembro arquitecto que éramos de una entidad constructora y en la que se nos seleccionó para llevar a efecto tan loable objetivo. Muy a la española, lo primero que hacemos es lanzarnos a actuar. Luego meditamos: lo que se nos pide ha de ser excepcionalmente importante. ¿Hay garantía de éxito con nuestra humilde designación? Más bien, no. Nuestra incipiente vida profesional, con mucha y profunda vocación, eso sí, podría dar el fruto apetecido, mas no hay garantía de ello.
Entre tanto, la entidad que había de hacer realidad las ideas previstas abandona la labor. Con alto sentido de la responsabilidad profesional, pensamos después de la duda anterior que, si recayó sobre nosotros la designación, en mérito a ser miembro de tal organismo, debemos dimitir. Así lo hacemos, mas al hacerlo se nos pide consejo para proseguir con éxito la idea. Indicamos una terna de profesionales ya consagrados. Encabeza tal terna quien fuera nuestro catedrático: D. Luis Moya Blanco. Se acepta nuestra sugerencia, mas teniendo en cuenta la plena satisfacción con que ya se ha actuado por nuestra parte, se resuelve que, en cualquier caso, no se nos admite la dimisión, sino que por el contrario habremos de llevar la labor adelante, en colaboración con el que se designe, que lo fue D. Luis Moya. Así queda aceptado por nosotros, y rápidamente entramos en contacto los dos designados. Dado el extraordinario volumen de la labor a desarrollar, D. Luis Moya Blanco propone, y se acepta, la colaboración de otros dos compañeros para colaborar: D. Ramiro Moya Blanco y D. Enrique Huidobro Pardo. Este último abandona en el inicio de los trabajos, quedando la labor en manos de los otros tres.
Así se empieza en el año 1946 a trabajar intensivamente en la labor de proyecto, si bien con anterioridad se había realizado ya por nuestra parte y en colaboración con el ingeniero agrónomo D. Gabino Figar el Proyecto de Granja Agronómica (1ª parte), que luego se hizo realidad. Tal granja, según los fines previstos por la superioridad, había de tener como fin ayudar económicamente al mantenimiento futuro de la institución a crear. La idea, muy loable por cierto, iba encaminada a conseguir que los presuntos educandos pudiesen aportar su esfuerzo al propio mantenimiento. La explotación racional de los productos de la región valdría para su manutención. El exceso de la misma permitiría adquirir el resto.
Se inició la labor del Proyecto de la edificación principal (que a su terminación se llamó Universidad Laboral), con la colaboración de los tres arquitectos. El tono y directrices generales a seguir fue marcado por D. Luis Moya y seguido con devoción por los tres. Así, se adoptó el sistema modular, con 2,40 metros de módulo, que estructuró todo el conjunto. Así, también, se concibió la idea de resolver los temas de cubiertas y aun de forjados de piso, a base de bóvedas tabicadas; los muros resistentes, en piedra natural, con sillarejo a la española en paramentos exteriores; las composiciones arquitectónicas en fachadas, en base a normas griegas, etc., etc.
El arduo y penoso trabajo se organizó, tanto para para el proyecto como para la dirección de la obra y aun de las contratas, de forma bastante desdoblada: las líneas generales de la composición y las partes más destacadas arquitectónicamente de la misma fueron asumidas por D. Luis Moya; nuestra parte estuvo en lo más estrictamente funcional y prosaico, y la de D. Ramiro Moya compartió ambos aspectos.
Al comienzo de las obras y dado que los tres arquitectos citados residíamos en Madrid, se advirtió la conveniencia de la designación de un arquitecto local para compartir la dirección del todo, a pie de obra. Fue designado, a tal efecto, D. José Marcelino Díez Canteli, quien participó así en la totalidad de la obra ejecutada, ocupándose además y específicamente de las cuestiones puramente económicas.
La precisión que se hizo de población a alojar y formar fue de 1.000 alumnos internos, a base de 400 estudiantes y 600 aprendices. Al mismo tiempo se consideró un número variable y proporcionado de alumnos externos.
La labor de Proyecto se realizó a base de proyectos parciales, sucesivos, llegándose al número de 16 de éstos (aunque alguno no se llevó a efecto). Los diversos proyectos parciales se fueron sacando a concurso público, con apertura de pliegos ante notario, adjudicándose de manera inmediata y sucesiva. Cada uno de los arquitectos proyectistas se ocupó de la dirección de obra correspondiente a cada proyecto parcial, colaborando en la de todos ellos el arquitecto a pie de obra. Como dato curioso y anecdótico y a pesar de la existencia del arquitecto residente, el número de kilómetros recorridos para la asistencia a las obras de cada uno de los tres arquitectos de Madrid fue sensiblemente equivalente a tres vueltas al mundo, pasando por el ecuador.
La redacción de los proyectos se hizo a la manera tradicional hasta entonces, con definición general y algunos planos de detalle. En la marcha de las obras y según cronológica necesidad, exhaustiva aportación de planos, con definición rigurosa de todos los elementos de las obras (arquitectónicos, estructurales, instalaciones, etc.). Esta última aportación, bastante superior a lo tradicional y complicado con el hecho de adoptar, en general, soluciones constructivas al margen de lo común. No hubo ninguna pereza para complicarse el trabajo, en aras de los óptimos resultados arquitectóncios y constructivos. Se huyó, por todos los caminos de la frivolidad, ligereza y vanalidades decorativas (escayolas, ornatos insustanciales, carpinterías de serie, etc.).
Se entraba en los problemas, con profundidad severa y siempre pendientes del futuro mantenimiento. Dada la extraordinaria dimensión de la creación arquitectónica, se rehuyó toda solución que comportase un mantenimiento delicado y problemático. Se adoptó lo muy experimentado y sencillo, en materia de instalaciones.
La pizarra, adaptada para el todo como material de cubiertas, se fijó a una capa de mortero pobre de cemento, con grapas cadmiadas (el galvanizado usual, en aquel clima, podía dar problemas y los dio, precisamente por entonces, en el Parador de Valgrande —Pajares—, donde hubo de reponerse toda la cubierta por mala fijación).
La recogida de aguas pluviales, en general, se hizo sólo a nivel de suelo, con vertido libre desde cornisas de piedra, por goterones, y sin limas, canalones, ni bajantes de ningún tipo.
En las carpinterías, en general, de ventanas, las clásicas humedades bajo la peana del cerco, que afectan el interior tan corrientemente, se eliminaron a base de un sencillo goterón de madera, sobre las peanas de piedra.
Las humedades que, por capilaridad, suelen aparecer en las zonas bajas de los muros se evitaron intercalando en el arranque de los mismos una capa de 7 cm de mortero hidrófugo.
El aislamiento térmico y de humedades en suelos habitables de planta baja se consiguió mediante bóvedas de 2 hojas de rasilla, enjutadas con mortero pobre y apoyos de pie de ladrillo cada 2,40 m, formando cámara de aire.
Los paramentos, en general, de las zonas principales de tráfico de alumnos se revistieron con teselas de material vítreo y con alicatado de cerámica decorada a mano. En las zonas de estar y comedor, también se emplearon estos materiales, embebiendo en comedores, mosaicos decorativos, en el revestimiento vítreo.
En la zona de servicios de la Residencia de alumnos, se organizó: la preparación de alimentos, a base de bancadas de fábrica con tapa de mármol y peanas de ladrillo revestidas de material vítreo; la zona de hogares y marmitas de vapor se alojó bajo un chapitel abovedado, que remata en torreón con las salidas de humos, de cocinas y calderas. Se dio, así, una solución discreta a las necesarias chimeneas, que darían bajo la torre principal.
Los servicios higiénicos de la zona de Residencia de alumnos se resolvieron a la americana, a base de mamparas de mármol, con sujeción y apoyos de piezas especiales de fundición cromada (que hubieron de proyectarse, al no existir en el mercado). Se evitaron, así, los focos de suciedad.
La vidriería, en general, del conjunto se realizó a base de luna «securizada», por imposición de la propiedad que, en principio, pareció exagerada y luego se comprobó acertada. [Según nos dicen, en tanto tiempo transcurrido sólo se ha roto una «luneta» (?), mientras visitando el Centro de Córdoba, oímos las quejas sobre el disparatado gasto anual por roturas.]
Para las instalaciones de calefacción, realizamos un profundo estudio sobre rendimientos de combustibles. Se infirió de él que, a pesar de ser entonces equivalente el precio del combustible sólido (carbón) y líquido (fuel-oil), resultaba una gran ventaja económica y de mantenimiento en favor del líquido. Con carbón, se consume lo mismo siempre, al margen de la temperatura exterior. Con el líquido, de acuerdo con la temperatura ambiente. Con el primero, las calorías que sobran han de evacuarse por las ventanas; con el segundo, sólo llegan las necesarias. Ello unido al automatismo de funcionamiento, que evita mano de obra, nos llevó a instalar el combustible líquido (fuel-oil).
Hubo otras disquisiciones curiosas. Tal, la creación de la zona deportiva, con la programación conveniente. En nuestro país, el deporte madre indiscutible es el fútbol. Grave problema. Estudiada a fondo la cuestión, resulta ser un deporte insano, por asimétrico, según el plano horizontal (el tenis, también, según el vertical). Si se une ese hecho a la aberración, que todavía sigue en el país a costa del espectáculo en que se practica, nos llevó a eliminarlo en nuestros planes. Mas luego, recapacitando, se llegó a encauzarlo hábilmente. Valdría más que se practique en toda regla que a hurtadillas.
Los deportes sanos (balonvolea, baloncesto, balomnano a 7 y a 11, natación, etc.) se potenciaron debidamente en el programa. La pelota, con sus variantes, por su rancia solera hispana, se incluyó.
Con cuanto antecede hemos pretendido emitir unos reflejos de lo vivido y meditado en el principio, con su parte anecdótica.
Con los ojos de hoy
Vamos, ahora, a tratar de mirar hacia nuestra obra con los ojos de hoy.
Coincide el origen de los trabajos con la aparición del ordenador electrónico en Norteamérica. Es un hecho de la máxima trascendencia humana, que en principio sorprende a Europa, aunque ésta no le conceda por entonces la importancia que habría de tener para la vida toda de la humanidad. El hecho es tan trascendente que hoy se juzga que, a partir de él y debido a él, la humanidad ha progresado más que en toda su larga vida. El progreso en los últimos 30 años es superior al logrado en tantos milenios anteriores.
La creación de tal máquina electrónica produce instantáneamente una convulsión inaudita. El progreso todo lo desborda, rompiendo vertiginosamente toda inercia de la vida anterior. Se consiguió, de alguna manera, aplicar la «máquina», surgida 100 años antes (Primera Revolución Industrial) al pensamiento humano. Se abrieron los caminos a la máquina pensante.
Nace así la llamada 2ª Revolución Industrial o tecnológica, en la cual nos hallamos inmersos. La vida toda de la sociedad cambió, cambia y cambiará. La marcha es vertiginosa, los logros sucesivos, sorprendentes. Mas ¿hacia dónde vamos? Nadie lo sabe.
Los frutos conseguidos, día a día, son tan ubérrimos que el hombre se limita a recogerlos sobre la marcha y digerirlos rápidamente. Traen el bienestar corporal, mas no el espiritual. Tanta velocidad impide reconocer el camino. El espíritu vive preocupado.
Y mientras, cada cual ha de ir resolviendo su vida y previniendo, en lo posible, su futuro. Labor difícil y muy aleatoria. La sociedad toda está convulsa, alterada, desorientada, ante tanta sorprendente maravilla. Se está más dispuesto al aprovechamiento propio de los frutos logrados que a pensar en las consecuencias de los mismos. Todos, a ver la televisión y a ser posible en color; cada cual, a aportar toda clase de automatismos a su labor; cada cual, a comunicarse con los demás, por radiofrecuencia y si es preciso por vía satélite; algunos, a escudriñar con aeronaves, a millones de kilómetros de la Tierra; otros, a buscar la ayuda de los rayos láser para sus específicas labores, y, en fin, algún privilegiado... a dar un paseo por la Luna. ¡Sorprendente!
Damos así una idea sobre el panorama que sirve de fondo a nuestra visión de hoy de la labor de ayer en Gijón.
El ojo de este observador, ¿cómo no?, también está alterado. Mira desde la función docente, que al final de su activa vida de trabajo le trajo la felicidad a través de la convivencia educativa con nuestra maravillosa juventud actual. Impartimos, ahora, la apertura hacia la formación matemática en un Instituto Femenino de Bachillerato de la capital. Precisamente de la materia filosófica, que trajo tan inconmensurable progreso.
El hecho actual es que la sociedad anterior, la que había a la hora de concebir nuestra obra, ya no vale. Ha de cambiar para atemperarse. La formación de la juventud hoy ha de ser muy distinta a la concebible entonces. Es una realidad que nos cuesta, en nuestro añejo país, asimilar. Hay que enfocar los caminos a seguir por cada cual, por encima de todo, en el terreno de la eficacia del servicio a la sociedad, pero absolutamente desprovistos de prejuicios anacrónicos, que ya no deben existir. Esto al país le cuesta tanto que por ahora la frustración es palpable. Todos hacia el pomposo título académico y, a ser posible, que éste sea el superior. Grave desprecio del trabajo manual: la llamada Formación Profesional, como recurso de fracasados. Disparate total, que ahora mismo el M.E.C. trata de eliminar. Mas ¿cómo? Dignificando como se merece el trabajo total, sea instelectual, sea corporal.
Los valores humanos son tantos que sólo una mínima parte de ellos se pone en rendimiento. La mayoría muere con la persona, en estado potencial. Lo razonable ha de ser, sin discriminación alguna, analizar el caudal de valores de cada individuo y poner en rendimiento la parcela de los mismos que mejor pueda producir un resultado óptimo profesional y ello enfocado objetivamente a llenar los huecos que la sociedad pueda demandar. Lo demás es gravemente erróneo en una sociedad presidida por la eficacia.
Trabajo cerebral y trabajo corporal no son conjuntos disjuntos, sino complementarios. Ambos merecen el máximo respeto. Así ha de ser y así es, en efecto, en los países a la cabeza del desarrollo (USA, Suiza, Japón, etc.). En España no se acaba de entender así. Esperemos que muy pronto la feliz iniciativa del MEC pueda resolverlo.
En Estados Unidos se aplica el ordenador para componer con las cualidades que comporta cada individuo un perfecto profesional para cada uno de las miles de profesiones que allí existen.
En Suiza, sin ninguna clase de prejuicios sociales, cada educndo es encajado hacia la profesión que mejor le va. Si ha de acabar de ingeniero superior en Zurich, previamente realizará cuatro cursos de aprendizaje y práctica de oficios manuales. Si ha de acabar en albañil, se le dará una sólida base cultural adecuada a su función, con clases teóricas debidamente programadas y clases prácticas proporcionadas. (Al darnos cuenta en una importante conferencia dada por un «Orientador Profesional» de aquel país, en el Colejo Suizo de Madrid, cierto padre español observó: «Veo yo que es más difícil ser albañil en Suiza que ingeniero de Caminos en España». Curioso.)
En Alemania todas las enseñanzas de todas las profesiones llevan tal complemento de trabajos manuales que da lugar, al final, al hecho de que cuando dos profesionales se casan lo corriente sea que entre ambos se decoren y amueblen su alojamiento. (Cierto español inteligente, precisamente de la familia leonesa-gijonesa, al acabar brillantemente su carrera de Ingeniero Superior, inició por propia iniciativa su vida profesional con los más variados oficios, como obrero en industrias de Alemania. A su vuelta, una empresa japonesa, para su nueva factoría en España, solicitaba, por un anuncio en un diario, ingeniero español con curriculum vitae adecuado. Rápidamente, nuestro hombre acudió a la llamada y tuvo éxito contundente; con sueldo mensual superior a las 400.000 pesetas, fue designado director de la factoría.)
En Japón el trabajo corporal está casi eliminado. Las factorías trabajan a base de automátas, que han de ser creados a base de culturizar extraordinariamente a los que deberían ser operarios. No existe paro y las huelgas consisten en trabajar en exceso, alterando lo previsto por la dirección de empresa. Culminación del progreso actual, con el resentimiento competitivo del mercado mundial.
Y siendo así los tiempos que vivimos, resulta reconfortante mirar nuestro Censo de Enseñanzas Integradas y descubrir que, para el mundo de hoy, resulta tan atemperado que hasta el tan pomposo, como inadecuado, título que se le dio a su final, Universidad Laboral, respondía, aunque por exceso, al deseo de dignificar la llamada Formación Profesional. Así mismo, las miras de entonces de que arquitectónica y funcionalmente fuera algo extraordinario con soluciones y ambientes fuera de lo común, ¿no respondería a lo mismo?
Lo cierto es que hoy día resulta muy acorde con la época. La conveniente orientación entre lo teórico o cerebral y lo práctico o manual está aquí y debidamente adobado. Inclusive, tanta simplicidad y ligereza como suele llevar la arquitectura hasta ahora vigente resulta aquí superado, algo de acuerdo con la reacción, que ya se apunta, de contenido histórico-espiritual.
Desde el punto de vista de la eficacia en su función, también resulta grato observar que lo que se llama en lenguaje industrial el «producto terminado» es aquí óptimo. Las personas aquí formadas están tan solicitdas que para ellas no hay problema de paro. Sin salir de la región siquiera, todas, prácticamente todas, laboran felices, en bien de todo nuestro gran país.
Apuntemos, finalmente, otro síntoma reconfortante: En la creciente visita del ministro de Educación de la URSS al Centro, mostró asombro y admiración, a la par que hacía ver que éste era el camino, al margen de lo que se viene haciendo por el mundo de hoy.
Meditación final
Analizado el inaudito progreso actual, fácilmente se colige que afecta especialmente a lo puramente material, mas no así a lo espiritual. Cualquier profesión, hoy, ejercida con eficacia, se ve compensada ampliamente, en lo material (todos con coche, televisión, vacación, electrodomésticos, etc.). Mas la verdadera felicidad anda por otros caminos, más bien espirituales. Es el caso de una boyante empresa de ahora que organiza un viaje de recreo a Florencia, o Siena, por ejemplo. Todos llegan triunfantes allí, mas sus aires triunfales poco a poco decaen ante tanta maravilla espiritual. El inverosímil cúmulo de creaciones humanas espirituales (religiosas, artísticas, etc.) les deja absortos y bastante deprimidos. La vuelta es más bien depresiva.
Pues bien, traducido este aspecto al ejercicio profesional del arquitecto, la cuestión es clara. La arquitectura que hoy ha de practicarse perdió con el progreso actual la mayoría de sus indiscutibles encantos espirituales. La clave de hoy está en encajar a través de los proyectos toda clase de dispositivos logrados con el progreso. Labor penosamente aburrida y difícil. ¡Son tantos! El objetivo final indiscutible: producir beneficios (?). (Recientemente, un compañero arquitecto de Madrid trazaba las ideas primeras de un complejo e importante conjunto de bloques de viviendas para una empresa francesa de prefabricación. Al mostrar dos variantes posibles al directivo de tal empresa, opinó: «Esta solución me parece más bonita». «Bien —respondió el empresario—, y la estética ¿cuánto me renta a mí?». Es lo de hoy.)
Vistas así las cosas y así son. ¿Qué duda cabe que los arquitectos que hace unos treinta años tuvimos la suerte de poder hacer nuestra arquitectura en Gijón fuimos por encima de todo felices con ello?
Trabajo excesivo, superlativo. Del estudio, al tren; del tren, a la obra, y vuelta rápida al estudio. Planos y planos y miles de planos. Felicidad de crear en libertad total, un algo nuevo, útil a la sociedad, pero todo ello regido por el agrado espiritual.
Y ¿qué decir de la atmósfera vivida en las obras, rodeados de tantos y tantos maravillosos artesanos, que ya no hay apenas, llámense albañiles, canteros, cerrajeros, carpinteros, etc.?
Queremos, en esta ocasión, rendir tributo de admiración y cariño al recuerdo de todo aquel plantel de personas, de todas las condiciones sociales, que tanto y tanto y con tanta satisfacción y esmero hicieron para que todas nuestras buenas intenciones fueran una realidad, que hoy tonifica nuestra ya 3ª edad.
Y un último triste recuerdo a aquel modesto trabajador que en un trágico día halló la muerte, bajo una pesada dovela pétrea, de nuestro porche de recreo cubierto, en las clases de estudiantes. Desgraciada maniobra de desapuntalamiento, análoga a otra que causó muchas víctimas al realizar las obras del Canal de Isabel II, en Madrid. Los empujes transmitidos por una sucesión de arcos se absorben en los extremos, al final. En ambos casos, se pensó que ya estaban absorbidos, erróneamente. La impresión de aquel triste entierro sigue en nosotros. Descanse en paz.
Have you experience calling a printing company asking for their services and when you do go to their store to give your files you found out that they don’t carry the printing process that you want? Or you called a print shop, asked for a quote and when you were about to have your file printed the
www.scoop.it/t/christopherbec/p/4040023468/2015/03/26/why...
The WWF considers the Indian Elephant widely distributed, but classified as an endangered species since 1996 by the Asian Elephant Specialist Group, the current population of the Indian Elephant is in the range of 20,000-25,000;Â Indian Elephants are threatened by several factors such as ivory tusks traffic, loss of habitat due to human pressure on forested areas and human conflict; the isolated wild elephants in individual wildlife sanctuaries are also endangered by loss of habitat; wild elephants often enter villages and kill people, like in Orissa, recently, Indian authorities have decided to stop keeping elephants in zoos, and transferred them to national parks
© Eric Lafforgue