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More information: www.americanprogress.org/events/2009/09/deficit_event.html
This year, the federal deficit will exceed 11 percent of the gross domestic product—higher than at any point in the country's post-war history. Though the size of the current deficit is due largely to pre-existing policies, economic recession, and one-time policies to revive the economy, there is no question that public concern over the long-term fiscal gap has intensified.
Last month, the Congressional Budget Office and the Office of Management and Budget both released new projections that predict substantial budget deficits in each of the next 10 years. If left unchecked, these long-term deficits could pose significant challenges, including substantially weakening economic growth, constraining much needed public investments, and making the United States more dependent on foreign lenders.
Please join the Center for American Progress and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities for a conference designed to lay the intellectual groundwork for efforts that the administration and Congress should undertake—once the economy has fully recovered—to put the nation on a more sustainable fiscal path.
THIS SHORE LIGHTHOUSE GUARDS THE EAST SIDE OF THE ENTRANCE TO LOCH RYAN FROM A POINT JUST SOUTH EAST OF IT. IT STANDS ON CAIRN POINT WHICH PROJECTS INTO LOCH RYAN FROM A NARROW SHELF IN FRONT OF THE MAIN (A77) ROAD; A SOLID PORTION ON THE EAST SIDE OF THE LANTERN CONSTRAINS THE LIGHT TO SEAWARD. THE LIGHTHOUSE WAS BUILT BY ALAN STEVENSON AND FIRST LIT IN 1847. IT WAS CONVERTED TO OIL BURNING IN 1847, AND AUTOMATED (ELECTRIFIED AND MADE 'UNATTENDED') IN 1964.
english.news.cn/20221115/6521ac3498f24426b79256d4fc529bbb...
Xi meets French President Macron
BALI, Indonesia, Nov. 15 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping met with French President Emmanuel Macron here Tuesday morning.
Xi noted that in the past three years the two leaders maintained close communication in various ways, keeping the positive momentum in China-France relations and enabling important bilateral cooperation to make good progress.
Pointing out that the world today has entered a new period of turbulence and change, Xi said as two major forces in a multi-polar world, China and France and China and Europe should uphold the spirit of independence, openness and cooperation, promote the steady and sustained development of their bilateral relations on the right track, and inject stability and positive energy into the world.
Underscoring China's commitment to promoting high-standard opening up and advancing Chinese modernization, Xi said these efforts will offer France and other countries new opportunities.
The two sides need to make top-level planning for the bilateral relations with a view toward the future, respect each other's core interests and major concerns, deepen practical cooperation, and work for continued progress in traditional areas of cooperation while actively tapping into green energy, scientific and technological innovation and other areas for cooperation potential, Xi said.
China hopes that France will provide Chinese businesses there with a fairer, more equitable and non-discriminatory business environment, Xi added.
Emphasizing that, after many years of development, China and Europe have formed a strong relationship of economic interdependency, Xi said that the two sides should expand two-way trade and investment, keep global industrial and supply chains stable and smooth, and uphold international economic and trade rules and order.
China, Xi said, hopes France will encourage the EU to stay committed to an independent and positive China policy.
China stands ready to work with France to support Indonesia in hosting a successful G20 Bali summit, step up communication and coordination on issues including climate response and biodiversity conservation, jointly uphold true multilateralism, tackle global challenges such as food and energy security, and find solutions to the thorny issues confronting sustainable development, Xi said.
For his part, Macron extended warm congratulations to Xi on his re-election as general secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), and on the full success of the 20th CPC National Congress.
He noted that both France and China are committed to peace, development and economic prosperity in the world, and commended the Chinese path to modernization.
Noting France follows an independent foreign policy and stands against bloc confrontation, the French president said that amid a volatile international landscape, France hopes to continue working with China in the spirit of mutual respect, equality and mutual benefit, increase high-level exchanges and dialogue, and deepen cooperation in areas such as trade, economy, aviation and civilian nuclear energy.
France welcomes Chinese firms to the country for business cooperation, he added.
The president expressed France's readiness to work with China to increase communication and collaboration at multilateral fora, and jointly respond to global issues such as climate change, food crisis and biodiversity conservation, saying that France is willing to actively promote dialogue and cooperation between Europe and China.
The two sides exchanged views on the situation in Ukraine. Xi made the point that China's position on the Ukraine crisis is clear and consistent: China stands for ceasefire, cessation of the conflict and peace talks. The international community should create conditions for this to happen. China will also continue to work in its way to play a constructive role.
Ding Xuexiang, Wang Yi and He Lifeng were present at the meeting. ■
www.politico.com/news/2022/11/14/biden-xi-g-20-summit-ind...
Biden, Xi meet amid efforts to cool tensions between their nations
Biden says the two leaders will “manage this competition responsibly.” He also dismisses “new cold war” and pledges to restart climate talks with China.
BALI, Indonesia — As fears of a new cold war rise, President Joe Biden and China’s Xi Jinping met for nearly three hours, trying to find areas of common ground amid moments of stark disagreement as relations between the world’s two superpowers are at their lowest point in decades.
As they met on the sidelines of the massive G-20 summit in Indonesia, the leaders focused on creating a foundation for a relationship. And while there were clear tensions on China’s intentions toward Taiwan, Biden afterward said he believed that a conflict between the powers can be avoided.
“I absolutely believe there need not be a new cold war,” said Biden. “We’re going to compete vigorously but we’re not looking for conflict. We’re going to manage this competition responsibly.”
Biden said there was “little substitute to face-to-face” contact with Xi as the two men shook hands earlier Monday against a backdrop of flags. Biden said the two men had “blunt” disagreements but pledged to continue talking.
Few concrete accomplishments were achieved but just meeting at all was seen as an important step toward deescalation.
“The world has come to a crossroads [and] we need to chart the right course,” said Xi, whose words were translated into English. “The world expects that China and the United States will properly handle the relationship.”
The two men, along with their small team of aides and translators, then disappeared to begin their meeting, which lasted about three hours.
The high stakes for the summit felt incongruous with its backdrop: the sun-splashed beaches of Bali, normally a balmy vacation playground but on this day host to two dueling geopolitical behemoths. The summit was nearly two years in the making and came at a moment of rising tension between the two nations.
Taiwan was to be a centerpiece of the conversation. Multiple times in his presidency, Biden has said the U.S. would defend the self-governing island — Beijing has long sought for eventual unification — in case of a Chinese invasion. But each time, administration officials have stressed the U.S. posture of “strategic ambiguity” toward Taiwan had not changed.
After the meeting, both sides released statements making clear that the issue remained a flashpoint. The White House said the president “raised objections” to China’s “coercive and increasingly aggressive actions toward Taiwan, which undermine peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait and in the broader region, and jeopardize global prosperity.”
But China’s own statement sent a clear warning to the United States and its allies to leave Beijing to its own devices with Taiwan.
“It is the common aspiration of the Chinese people and nation to realize national reunification and safeguard territorial integrity,” the statement read. “Anyone that seeks to split Taiwan from China will be violating the fundamental interests of the Chinese nation; the Chinese people will absolutely not let that happen!”
There were some places of agreement.
The two nations pledged to restart climate talks and agreed their senior advisers should resume communication after months of silence. Biden said U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will soon travel to Beijing.
The president also pushed Xi on his relationship with Russia. Xi and Russia’s Vladimir Putin declared a friendship “without limits” between their two countries in February, just days before Russia invaded Ukraine.
But since then, Russia’s war has faltered and Putin — who was set to skip the G-20 — has been turned into a global pariah. China has largely refrained from public criticism of the war but, while it has not supplied arms to Moscow, continues to be a significant buyer of Russian energy, helping finance Putin’s war machine. Both Xi and Biden agreed “a nuclear war should never be fought and can never be won and underscored their opposition to the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine,” according to the White House statement.
In the news conference afterward, Biden suggested that Ukraine’s win in Kherson — recapturing what had been a Russian prize — was “a significant victory” in the war and pledged Washington would continue sending aid to Kyiv.
Back home, the meeting’s results prompted GOP skepticism. “I don’t see what the president got out of the meeting,” said Rep. Michael McCaul, ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “Seems like China is the only one to walk away with a win with the promise of a visit by Secretary Blinken — I fear the president is not projecting strength.”
But the Biden-Xi summit buoyed hopes for some in the U.S. business community waiting for relief in rancor between the two nations. The meeting could eventually yield a new framework “to advance confidence building measures and tackle long standing issues in the bilateral relationship,” Craig Allen, president of the U.S.-China Business Council, said in a statement.
The fact that Monday’s meeting came together was being sold as a win. U.S. officials had been eager for Biden to meet face-to-face with Xi, to take measure of the changes within a man with whom he spent considerable time while vice president. And both men came into the meeting emboldened, with a renewed grip on power.
Xi recently secured another five-year term as president during a Communist Party congress and some observers believe he could eventually make a bid to hang onto power for life. Biden, meanwhile, was bolstered by Democrats’ historic showing in last week’s midterms, the best showing in decades for a president and his party in power.
For Biden, the trip has become something of a victory lap.
The president was in Cambodia on Sunday when an election call in Nevada ensured that Democrats would keep control of the Senate, even as the House remained up for grabs. Jake Sullivan, the president’s national security adviser, told reporters that many of the world leaders Biden has encountered in Asia have congratulated him on his party’s wins.
“What we saw was the strength and resilience of the American democracy and we saw it in action and the American people proved once again that democracy is who we are,” Biden told reporters Monday. “There was a strong rejection of election deniers at every level from those seeking to lead our states and those seeking to serve in Congress, and also those seek to go oversee the elections.”
The president did acknowledge the limit of his renewed political capital, suggesting Democrats still did not have the votes needed to codify federal abortion rights.
But Biden’s in-person meeting with Xi highlighted the growing gulf between two countries that used to believe they could cooperate at least on global crises and trade. Even its Indonesian location — a neutral site on the sidelines of a multinational summit — hinted at the frosty relations as U.S. officials conceded it was difficult to conceive of the two meeting anytime soon in either Washington or Beijing.
Nearly all communication had ceased between Washington and Beijing the week of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s August trip to Taiwan, a visit that infuriated the Chinese. And there was public saber-rattling in the runup to the Bali bilat, with Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian declaring China “will firmly defend our sovereignty, security and development interests while Biden said he was “not willing to make any fundamental concessions.”
But Biden again reiterated Monday that while he viewed the 21st century as a rivalry between the U.S. and China he said he sought “competition, not conflict.” Further straining ties, the Biden administration blocked exports of advanced computer chips to China last month. That move, which was meant to bolster U.S. competition against Beijing, was quickly condemned by Chinese officials. The administration has also left in place Donald Trump-era tariffs on more than $350 billion worth of Chinese goods due to alleged unfair trade practices.
White House aides have left open the possibility that the two leaders could meet again next year.
“Any verbal agreement with Xi should not be relied on or taken seriously given the Chinese leader’s long record of saying one thing and doing something else,” said John Lee, a former Asia adviser to the Australian government, now a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute think tank. Instead, Biden’s focus this week should be to discuss ways to work more closely with Asian allies and partners to constrain China’s strategic options and deter Beijing from considering the use of force to realize its objectives.”
But Robert Daly, director of the Kissinger Institute on China and the United States at the Wilson Center, dismissed Monday’s meeting as “a non-event.”
“I don’t see any sign that either country is willing to change its assessment of the other, its intentions or its goals. So there’s a desire to understand [each other] which is good, but there’s no indication that either country is yet ready to reconsider any of its positions,” he said.
Daly, the former cultural exchanges officer at the U.S. embassy in Beijing, did call news about Blinken’s trip to China encouraging.
“A real face to face summit tends to mobilize bureaucracies, tamps down rhetoric, and provides at least an illusion of deliverables or some form of progress,” he said.
The Monday summit was the main event of Biden’s week in Asia. And the shadow of China has loomed over all of it.
In a speech to a gathering of Asian nations in Phnom Penh on Saturday, Biden pledged to help stand against China’s growing dominance in the region — without mentioning the other superpower by name. The U.S. has long derided China’s violation of the international rules-based order — from trade to shipping to intellectual property — and Biden tried to emphasize his administration’s solidarity with a region American has too often overlooked.
Niagara Falls is a city in Niagara County, New York, United States. As of the 2020 census, the city had a total population of 48,671. It is adjacent to the Niagara River, across from the city of Niagara Falls, Ontario, and named after the famed Niagara Falls which they share. The city is within the Buffalo–Niagara Falls metropolitan area and the Western New York region.
While the city was formerly inhabited by Native Americans, Europeans who migrated to the Niagara Falls in the mid-17th century began to open businesses and develop infrastructure. Later in the 18th and 19th centuries, scientists and businessmen began harnessing the power of the Niagara River for electricity and the city began to attract manufacturers and other businesses drawn by the promise of inexpensive hydroelectric power. After the 1960s, however, the city and region witnessed an economic decline, following an attempt at urban renewal under then Mayor Lackey. Consistent with the rest of the Rust Belt as industries left the city, old line affluent families relocated to nearby suburbs and out of town.
Despite the decline in heavy industry, Niagara Falls State Park and the downtown area closest to the falls continue to thrive as a result of tourism. The population, however, has continued to decline from a peak of 102,394 in the 1960s due to the loss of manufacturing jobs in the area.
Before Europeans entered the area, it was dominated by the Neutral Nation of Native Americans. European migration into the area began in the 17th century. The first recorded European to visit the area was Frenchman Robert de la Salle, who built Fort Conti at the mouth of the Niagara River early in 1679, with permission from the Iroquois, as a base for boatbuilding; his ship Le Griffon was built on the upper Niagara River at or near Cayuga Creek in the same year. He was accompanied by Belgian priest Louis Hennepin, who was the first known European to see the falls. The influx of newcomers may have been a catalyst for already hostile native tribes to turn to open warfare in competition for the fur trade.
The City of Niagara Falls was incorporated on March 17, 1892, from the villages of Manchester and Suspension Bridge, which were parts of the Town of Niagara. Thomas Vincent Welch, a member of the charter committee and a New York state assemblyman and a second-generation Irish American, persuaded Governor Roswell P. Flower to sign the bill on St. Patrick's Day. George W. Wright was elected the first mayor of Niagara Falls.
By the end of the 19th century, the city was heavily industrialized, due in part to the power potential offered by the Niagara River. Tourism was considered a secondary niche, while manufacturing of petrochemicals, abrasives, metallurgical products and other materials was the main producer of jobs and attracted a large number of workers, many of whom were immigrants.
Industry and tourism grew steadily throughout the first half of the 20th century due to a high demand for industrial products and the increased mobility of people to travel. Paper, rubber, plastics, petrochemicals, carbon insulators and abrasives were among the city's major industries. This prosperity would end by the late 1960s as aging industrial plants moved to less expensive locations. In addition, the falls were incompatible with modern shipping technology.[further explanation needed]
In 1956, the Schoellkopf Power Plant on the lower river just downstream of the American Falls was critically damaged by the collapse of the Niagara Gorge wall above it. This prompted the planning and construction of one of the largest hydroelectric plants to be built in North America to that time, generating a large influx of workers and families to the area. New York City urban planner Robert Moses built the new power plant in nearby Lewiston, New York. Much of the power generated there fueled growing demands for power in downstate New York and New York City.
The neighborhood of Love Canal gained national media attention in 1978 when toxic waste contamination from a chemical landfill beneath it forced United States President Jimmy Carter to declare a state of emergency, the first such presidential declaration made for a non-natural disaster. Hundreds of residents were evacuated from the area, many of whom were ill because of exposure to chemical waste.
After the Love Canal disaster, the city—which had already been declining in population for nearly two decades—experienced accelerated economic and political difficulties. The costs of manufacturing elsewhere had become less expensive, which led to the closure of several factories. The city's population eventually dropped by more than half of its peak, as workers fled the city in search of jobs elsewhere. Then, much like the nearby city of Buffalo, the city's economy plummeted when a failed urban renewal project destroyed Falls Street and the tourist district.
In 2001, the leadership of Laborers Local 91 was found guilty of extortion, racketeering and other crimes following an exposé by Mike Hudson of the Niagara Falls Reporter. Union boss Michael "Butch" Quarcini died before trial, while the rest of the union leadership was sentenced to prison.
In early 2010, former Niagara Falls Mayor Vincenzo Anello was indicted on federal charges of corruption, alleging the mayor accepted $40,000 in loans from a businessman who was later awarded a no-bid lease on city property. The charges were dropped as part of a plea deal after Anello pleaded guilty to unrelated charges of pension fraud, regarding a pension from the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, of which he is a member. He was sentenced to 10 to 16 months in prison.
The city's decline received national exposure from Bloomberg Businessweek in 2010.
On November 30, 2010, the New York State Attorney General entered into an agreement with the city and its police department to create new policies to govern police practices in response to claims of excessive force and police misconduct. The city committed to create policies and procedures to prevent and respond to allegations of excessive force, and to ensure police are properly trained and complaints are properly investigated. Prior claims filed by residents will be evaluated by an independent panel.
In 2020, a public square named Cataract Commons opened on Old Falls Street. It is a public space for outdoor events and activities.
The city has multiple properties on the National Register of Historic Places. It also has three national historic districts, including Chilton Avenue-Orchard Parkway Historic District, Deveaux School Historic District and the Park Place Historic District.
Niagara Falls is at the international boundary between the United States and Canada. The city is within the Buffalo–Niagara Falls metropolitan area and is approximately 16 miles (26 km) from Buffalo, New York.
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has an area of 16.8 square miles (44 km2), of which 14.1 square miles (37 km2) is land and 2.8 square miles (7.3 km2) (16.37%) is water. The city is built along the Niagara Falls and the Niagara Gorge, which is next to the Niagara River.
Niagara Falls has a humid continental climate (Dfa). The city experiences cold, snowy winters and hot, humid summers. Precipitation is moderate and consistent in all seasons, falling equally or more as snow during the winter. The city has snowier than average winters compared to most cities in the US, however less than many other cities in Upstate New York including nearby Buffalo and Rochester. Thaw cycles with temperatures above 32 °F (0 °C) are a common occurrence. The hottest and coldest temperatures recorded in the decade through 2015 were 97 °F (36 °C) in 2005 and −13 °F (−25 °C) in 2003, respectively. 38% of warm season precipitation falls in the form of a thunderstorm.
Buffalo Avenue – runs along the south end along the Niagara River once home to a vast number of old families with architecturally significant mansions; further east (past John Daly Boulevard) the street is surrounded by a number of industrial sites to 56th Street before returning to a residential area and ending at the Love Canal area at 102nd Street.
Central District
Deveaux – Located in the northwestern corner (west of the North End) along the Niagara River is residential area built in the 1920s to 1940s. Named for Judge Samuel DeVeaux who left his estate to be established as the Deveaux College for Orphans and Destitute Children in 1853 (closed 1971), now the site of DeVeaux Woods State Park and DeVeaux School Historical District.
Downtown – Area around the Falls and home to hotels including Seneca Niagara Resort Casino, Niagara Falls State Park, Niagara Falls Culinary Institute (formerly Rainbow Centre Factory Outlet)
East Side – the area bounded by the gorge on the west, Niagara Street on the south, Ontario Avenue on the North and Main Street (NY Rt 104) on the east.
Hyde Park – Located near the namesake Hyde Park next to Little Italy as well as home to Hyde Park Municipal Golf Course.
LaSalle – Bounded by 80th Street, Niagara Falls Boulevard, Cayuga Drive and LaSalle Expressway was built up in the 1940s to 1960s. Cayuga Island is linked to neighborhood. The actual neighborhood where the Love Canal was to be built.
Little Italy – home to a once predominately Italian community that runs along Pine Avenue from Main Street to Hyde Park Boulevard
Love Canal – Established in the 1950s on land acquired from Hooker Chemical Company. Most of the neighborhood was evacuated in the 1980s after toxic waste was discovered underground. Resettlement began in 1990.[24]
Niagara Street – residential area east of Downtown along Niagara Street (distinct from Niagara Ave.) once home to a predominately German and Polish community.
North End – runs along Highland Avenue in the north end of the city before it merges with Hyde Park Boulevard.
As of the census of 2010, there were 50,193 people, 22,603 households, and 12,495 families residing in the city. The population density was 2,987.7 people per square mile (1,153.5 per square km). There were 26,220 housing units at an average density of 1,560.7 per square mile (602.6/km2). The racial makeup of the city was 70.5% White, 21.6% African American, 1.9% Native American, 1.2% Asian, 0% Pacific Islander, 0.8% from other races, and 3.9% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 3.0% of the population.
There were 22,603 households, out of which 23.9% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 29.8% were married couples living together, 19.7% had a female householder with no husband present, and 44.7% were non-families. 38.1% of all households were made up of individuals, and 13.7% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.20 and the average family size was 4.02.
In the city, 22% of the population was under the age of 18, 10.1% aged from 18 to 24, 24.2% from 25 to 44, 28.2% from 45 to 64, and 15.5% were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 39 years. For every 100 females, there were 91.2 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 94.4 males.
The median income for a household in the city was $26,800, and the median income for a family was $34,377. Males had a median income of $31,672 versus $22,124 for females. 23% of the population was below the poverty line.
Niagara Falls has a number of places of worship, including the Salvation Army, First Assembly of God Church, First Unitarian Universalist Church of Niagara, St. Peter's Episcopal Church, First Presbyterian Church, St. Theresa Roman Catholic Church in Deveaux, and the Reform Jewish Temple Beth El. The Conservative Jewish Temple Beth Israel closed in 2012.
Niagara Falls has struggled with high rates of violent and property crime; FBI crime data indicate that the city has among the highest crime rates in New York state. In response to gun violence, volunteer groups such as Operation SNUG mobilized to promote positive community involvement in the troubled areas of the city.
Comptroller reported that Niagara Falls has "struggled through decades of population losses, rising crime and repeated attempts to reinvent itself from a manufacturing town with some tourism to a major tourist destination." The city became a boomtown with the opening of the New York State Power Authority's hydroelectric Niagara Power Plant in the 1960s; the cheap electricity produced by the plant generated power for a burgeoning manufacturing industry. Along with the rest of Western New York, Niagara Falls suffered a significant economic decline from a decline in industry by the 1970s. Today, the city struggles to compete with Niagara Falls, Ontario; the Canadian side has a greater average annual income, a higher average home price, and lower levels of vacant buildings and blight, as well as a more vibrant economy and better tourism infrastructure. The population of Niagara Falls, New York fell by half from the 1960s to 2012. In contrast, the population of Niagara Falls, Ontario more than tripled. In 2000, the city's median household income was 36% below the national average. In 2012, the city's unemployment rate was significantly higher than the statewide unemployment rate.
Significant sources of economic activity in the region includes the Niagara Falls International Airport, which was renovated in 2009; the Seneca Gaming Corporation's Seneca Niagara Casino & Hotel, which opened in the 2000s respectively; and the nearby Niagara Falls Air Reserve Station.
In late 2001, the State of New York established the USA Niagara Development Corporation, a subsidiary to the State's economic development agency, to focus specifically on facilitating development in the downtown area. However, the organization has been criticized for making little progress and doing little to improve the city's economy.
From 1973 to 2002, the city had a Convention and Civic Center on 4th street. In 2002 the venue was converted into the Seneca Niagara Casino & Hotel. In 2004, a new Niagara Falls Convention Center (NFCC) opened on Old Falls Street. The Old Falls Street venue has 116,000 square feet for exhibitions and meetings, and a 32,200-square-foot event/exhibit hall.
The city is home to the Niagara Falls State Park. The park has several attractions, including Cave of the Winds behind the Bridal Veil Falls, Maid of the Mist, a popular boat tour which operates at the foot of the Rainbow Bridge, Prospect Point and its observation tower, Niagara Discovery Center, Niagara Falls Underground Railroad Heritage Center, and the Aquarium of Niagara.
Several other attractions also near the river, including Whirlpool State Park, De Veaux Woods State Park, Earl W. Brydges Artpark State Park in nearby Lewiston (town), New York, and Fort Niagara State Park in Youngstown, New York.
Attractions in the downtown include the Seneca Niagara Casino & Hotel and Pine Avenue which was historically home to a large Italian American population and is now known as Little Italy for its abundance of shops and quality restaurants.
The Niagara Power of the New York Collegiate Baseball League play at Sal Maglie Stadium. The team is owned by Niagara University. The Cataract City Wolverines of the Gridiron Developmental Football League are a minor league football team based in Niagara Falls. The team played their inaugural season in 2021.
In 2017, the Tier III junior North American 3 Hockey League team, the Lockport Express, relocated to Niagara Falls as the Niagara Falls PowerHawks.
Former sports teams based in Niagara Falls include the Class-A Niagara Falls Sox, the Class-A Niagara Falls Rapids, the Niagara Falls Lancers of the Midwest Football League, and the Western New York Thundersnow of the Premier Basketball League and American Basketball Association.
The City of Niagara Falls functions under a strong mayor-council form of government. The government consists of a mayor, a professional city administrator, and a city council. The current mayor is Robert Restaino.
The city council serves four-year, staggered terms, except in the case of a special election. It is headed by a chairperson, who votes in all items for council action.
On a state level, Niagara Falls is part of the 145th Assembly District of New York State, represented by Republican Angelo Morinello. Niagara Falls is also part of the 62nd Senate District of New York State, represented by Republican Robert Ortt.
On a national level, the city is part of New York's 26th congressional district and is represented by Congressman Brian Higgins. In the United States Senate, the city and the state are represented by senators Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand.
Founded in 1892 Niagara Falls Police Department provide local law enforcement in the city with 155 sworn officers. This force is not to be mistaken for the Town of Niagara, New York which has a smaller force founded in 1954.
Residents are zoned to the Niagara Falls City School District. Niagara University and Niagara County Community College are the two colleges in Niagara County.
Since Niagara Falls is within the Buffalo–Niagara Falls metropolitan area, the city's media is predominantly served by the city of Buffalo.
The city has two local newspapers, the Niagara Gazette, which is published daily except Tuesday and The Messenger Of Niagara Falls, NY which is published quarterly. The Messenger Of Niagara Falls, NY, which is officially Niagara Falls, New York's, first black-owned and operated news publication, founded October 2018. The Messenger Of Niagara Falls, NY published its inaugural issue April 2019. The Buffalo News is the closest major newspaper in the area. The city also is the home to a weekly tabloid known as the Niagara Falls Reporter.
Three radio stations are licensed to the city of Niagara Falls, including WHLD AM 1270, WEBR AM 1440, and WTOR AM 770.
Niagara Falls is primarily served by the Buffalo Niagara International Airport for regional and domestic flights within the United States. The recently expanded Niagara Falls International Airport serves the city, and many cross border travellers with flights to Myrtle Beach, Fort Lauderdale, Orlando and Punta Gorda. Toronto's Pearson International Airport on the Canadian side is the closest airport offering long-haul international flights for the Niagara region.
The city is served by Amtrak's Maple Leaf and Empire train services, with regular stops at the Niagara Falls Station and Customhouse Interpretive Center at 825 Depot Ave West.
Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority is the public transit provider in the Buffalo metro area, with hubs at the Portage Road and Niagara Falls transportation centers.
Six New York State highways, one three-digit Interstate Highway, one expressway, one U.S. Highway, and one parkways pass through the city of Niagara Falls. New York State Route 31, New York State Route 104, and New York State Route 182 are east–west state roadways within the city, while New York State Route 61, New York State Route 265, and New York State Route 384 are north–south state roadways within the city. The LaSalle Expressway is an east–west highway which terminates near the eastern edge of Niagara Falls and begins in the nearby town of Wheatfield, New York. The Niagara Scenic Parkway is a north–south parkway that formerly ran through the city along the northern edge of the Niagara River. It remains in sections and terminates in Youngstown, New York.
Interstate 190, also referred to as the Niagara Expressway, is a north–south highway and a spur of Interstate 90 which borders the eastern end of the city. The highway enters the city from the town of Niagara and exits at the North Grand Island Bridge. U.S. Route 62, known as Niagara Falls Boulevard, Walnut Avenue, and Ferry Avenue, is signed as a north–south highway. U.S. Route 62 has an east–west orientation, and is partially split between two one-way streets within Niagara Falls. Walnut Avenue carries U.S. Route 62 west to its northern terminus at NY 104, and Ferry Avenue carries U.S. Route 62 east from downtown Niagara Falls. U.S. Route 62 Business, locally known as Pine Avenue, is an east–west route which parallels U.S. Route 62 to the south. Its western terminus is at NY 104, and its eastern terminus is at U.S. Route 62.
Two international bridges connect the city to Niagara Falls, Ontario. The Rainbow Bridge connects the two cities with passenger and pedestrian traffic and overlooks the Niagara Falls, while the Whirlpool Rapids Bridge, which formerly carried the Canadian National Railway, now serves local traffic and Amtrak's Maple Leaf service.
New York, sometimes called New York State, is a state in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. It borders New Jersey and Pennsylvania to its south, New England and the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec to its north, and the Atlantic Ocean to its east. With almost 19.6 million residents, it is the fourth-most populous state in the United States and eighth-most densely populated as of 2023. New York is the 27th-largest U.S. state by area, with a total area of 54,556 square miles (141,300 km2).
New York has a varied geography. The southeastern part of the state, known as Downstate, encompasses New York City, the most populous city in the United States, Long Island, the most populous island in the United States, and the lower Hudson Valley. These areas are the center of the New York metropolitan area, a sprawling urban landmass, and account for approximately two-thirds of the state's population. The much larger Upstate area spreads from the Great Lakes to Lake Champlain, and includes the Adirondack Mountains and the Catskill Mountains (part of the wider Appalachian Mountains). The east–west Mohawk River Valley bisects the more mountainous regions of Upstate, and flows into the north–south Hudson River valley near the state capital of Albany. Western New York, home to the cities of Buffalo and Rochester, is part of the Great Lakes region and borders Lake Ontario and Lake Erie. Central New York is anchored by the city of Syracuse; between the central and western parts of the state, New York is dominated by the Finger Lakes, a popular tourist destination. To the south, along the state border with Pennsylvania, the Southern Tier sits atop the Allegheny Plateau, representing the northernmost reaches of Appalachia.
New York was one of the original Thirteen Colonies that went on to form the United States. The area of present-day New York had been inhabited by tribes of the Algonquians and the Iroquois Confederacy Native Americans for several thousand years by the time the earliest Europeans arrived. Stemming from Henry Hudson's expedition in 1609, the Dutch established the multiethnic colony of New Netherland in 1621. England seized the colony from the Dutch in 1664, renaming it the Province of New York. During the American Revolutionary War, a group of colonists eventually succeeded in establishing independence, and the former colony was officially admitted into the United States in 1788. From the early 19th century, New York's development of its interior, beginning with the construction of the Erie Canal, gave it incomparable advantages over other regions of the United States. The state built its political, cultural, and economic ascendancy over the next century, earning it the nickname of the "Empire State." Although deindustrialization eroded a significant portion of the state's economy in the second half of the 20th century, New York in the 21st century continues to be considered as a global node of creativity and entrepreneurship, social tolerance, and environmental sustainability.
The state attracts visitors from all over the globe, with the highest count of any U.S. state in 2022. Many of its landmarks are well known, including four of the world's ten most-visited tourist attractions in 2013: Times Square, Central Park, Niagara Falls and Grand Central Terminal. New York is home to approximately 200 colleges and universities, including two Ivy League universities, Columbia University and Cornell University, and the expansive State University of New York, which is among the largest university systems in the nation. New York City is home to the headquarters of the United Nations, and it is sometimes described as the world's most important city, the cultural, financial, and media epicenter, and the capital of the world.
The history of New York begins around 10,000 B.C. when the first people arrived. By 1100 A.D. two main cultures had become dominant as the Iroquoian and Algonquian developed. European discovery of New York was led by the Italian Giovanni da Verrazzano in 1524 followed by the first land claim in 1609 by the Dutch. As part of New Netherland, the colony was important in the fur trade and eventually became an agricultural resource thanks to the patroon system. In 1626, the Dutch thought they had bought the island of Manhattan from Native Americans.[1] In 1664, England renamed the colony New York, after the Duke of York and Albany, brother of King Charles II. New York City gained prominence in the 18th century as a major trading port in the Thirteen Colonies.
New York played a pivotal role during the American Revolution and subsequent war. The Stamp Act Congress in 1765 brought together representatives from across the Thirteen Colonies to form a unified response to British policies. The Sons of Liberty were active in New York City to challenge British authority. After a major loss at the Battle of Long Island, the Continental Army suffered a series of additional defeats that forced a retreat from the New York City area, leaving the strategic port and harbor to the British army and navy as their North American base of operations for the rest of the war. The Battle of Saratoga was the turning point of the war in favor of the Americans, convincing France to formally ally with them. New York's constitution was adopted in 1777, and strongly influenced the United States Constitution. New York City was the national capital at various times between 1788 and 1790, where the Bill of Rights was drafted. Albany became the permanent state capital in 1797. In 1787, New York became the eleventh state to ratify the United States Constitution.
New York hosted significant transportation advancements in the 19th century, including the first steamboat line in 1807, the Erie Canal in 1825, and America's first regularly scheduled rail service in 1831. These advancements led to the expanded settlement of western New York and trade ties to the Midwest settlements around the Great Lakes.
Due to New York City's trade ties to the South, there were numerous southern sympathizers in the early days of the American Civil War and the mayor proposed secession. Far from any of the battles, New York ultimately sent the most soldiers and money to support the Union cause. Thereafter, the state helped create the industrial age and consequently was home to some of the first labor unions.
During the 19th century, New York City became the main entry point for European immigrants to the United States, beginning with a wave of Irish during their Great Famine. Millions came through Castle Clinton in Battery Park before Ellis Island opened in 1892 to welcome millions more, increasingly from eastern and southern Europe. The Statue of Liberty opened in 1886 and became a symbol of hope. New York boomed during the Roaring Twenties, before the Wall Street Crash of 1929, and skyscrapers expressed the energy of the city. New York City was the site of successive tallest buildings in the world from 1913 to 1974.
The buildup of defense industries for World War II turned around the state's economy from the Great Depression, as hundreds of thousands worked to defeat the Axis powers. Following the war, the state experienced significant suburbanization around all the major cities, and most central cities shrank. The Thruway system opened in 1956, signaling another era of transportation advances.
Following a period of near-bankruptcy in the late 1970s, New York City renewed its stature as a cultural center, attracted more immigration, and hosted the development of new music styles. The city developed from publishing to become a media capital over the second half of the 20th century, hosting most national news channels and broadcasts. Some of its newspapers became nationally and globally renowned. The state's manufacturing base eroded with the restructuring of industry, and the state transitioned into service industries.
The first peoples of New York are estimated to have arrived around 10,000 BC. Around AD 800, Iroquois ancestors moved into the area from the Appalachian region. The people of the Point Peninsula complex were the predecessors of the Algonquian peoples of New York. By around 1100, the distinct Iroquoian-speaking and Algonquian-speaking cultures that would eventually be encountered by Europeans had developed. The five nations of the Iroquois League developed a powerful confederacy about the 15th century that controlled territory throughout present-day New York, into Pennsylvania around the Great Lakes. For centuries, the Mohawk cultivated maize fields in the lowlands of the Mohawk River, which were later taken over by Dutch settlers at Schenectady, New York when they bought this territory. The Iroquois nations to the west also had well-cultivated areas and orchards.
The Iroquois established dominance over the fur trade throughout their territory, bargaining with European colonists. Other New York tribes were more subject to either European destruction or assimilation within the Iroquoian confederacy. Situated at major Native trade routes in the Northeast and positioned between French and English zones of settlement, the Iroquois were intensely caught up with the onrush of Europeans, which is also to say that the settlers, whether Dutch, French or English, were caught up with the Iroquois as well. Algonquian tribes were less united among their tribes; they typically lived along rivers, streams, or the Atlantic Coast. But, both groups of natives were well-established peoples with highly sophisticated cultural systems; these were little understood or appreciated by the European colonists who encountered them. The natives had "a complex and elaborate native economy that included hunting, gathering, manufacturing, and farming...[and were] a mosaic of Native American tribes, nations, languages, and political associations." The Iroquois usually met at an Onondaga in Northern New York, which changed every century or so, where they would coordinate policies on how to deal with Europeans and strengthen the bond between the Five Nations.
Tribes who have managed to call New York home have been the Iroquois, Mohawk, Mohican, Susquehannock, Petun, Chonnonton, Ontario and Nanticoke.
In 1524, Giovanni da Verrazzano, an Italian explorer in the service of the French crown, explored the Atlantic coast of North America between the Carolinas and Newfoundland, including New York Harbor and Narragansett Bay. On April 17, 1524, Verrazzano entered New York Bay, by way of the Strait now called the Narrows. He described "a vast coastline with a deep delta in which every kind of ship could pass" and he adds: "that it extends inland for a league and opens up to form a beautiful lake. This vast sheet of water swarmed with native boats". He landed on the tip of Manhattan and perhaps on the furthest point of Long Island.
In 1535, Jacques Cartier, a French explorer, became the first European to describe and map the Saint Lawrence River from the Atlantic Ocean, sailing as far upriver as the site of Montreal.
On April 4, 1609, Henry Hudson, in the employ of the Dutch East India Company, departed Amsterdam in command of the ship Halve Maen (Half Moon). On September 3 he reached the estuary of the Hudson River. He sailed up the Hudson River to about Albany near the confluence of the Mohawk River and the Hudson. His voyage was used to establish Dutch claims to the region and to the fur trade that prospered there after a trading post was established at Albany in 1614.
In 1614, the Dutch under the command of Hendrick Christiaensen, built Fort Nassau (now Albany) the first Dutch settlement in North America and the first European settlement in what would become New York. It was replaced by nearby Fort Orange in 1623. In 1625, Fort Amsterdam was built on the southern tip of Manhattan Island to defend the Hudson River. This settlement grew to become the city New Amsterdam.
The British conquered New Netherland in 1664; Lenient terms of surrender most likely kept local resistance to a minimum. The colony and New Amsterdam were both renamed New York (and "Beverwijck" was renamed Albany) after its new proprietor, James II later King of England, Ireland and Scotland, who was at the time Duke of York and Duke of Albany The population of New Netherland at the time of English takeover was 7,000–8,000.
Thousands of poor German farmers, chiefly from the Palatine region of Germany, migrated to upstate districts after 1700. They kept to themselves, married their own, spoke German, attended Lutheran churches, and retained their own customs and foods. They emphasized farm ownership. Some mastered English to become conversant with local legal and business opportunities. They ignored the Indians and tolerated slavery (although few were rich enough to own a slave).
Large manors were developed along the Hudson River by elite colonists during the 18th century, including Livingston, Cortlandt, Philipsburg, and Rensselaerswyck. The manors represented more than half of the colony's undeveloped land. The Province of New York thrived during this time, its economy strengthened by Long Island and Hudson Valley agriculture, in conjunction with trade and artisanal activity at the Port of New York; the colony was a breadbasket and lumberyard for the British sugar colonies in the Caribbean. New York's population grew substantially during this century: from the first colonial census (1698) to the last (1771), the province grew ninefold, from 18,067 to 168,007.
New York in the American Revolution
Further information: John Peter Zenger, Stamp Act Congress, Invasion of Canada (1775), New York and New Jersey campaign, Prisoners of war in the American Revolutionary War, and Intelligence in the American Revolutionary War
New York played a pivotal role in the Revolutionary War. The colony verged on revolt following the Stamp Act of 1765, advancing the New York City–based Sons of Liberty to the forefront of New York politics. The Act exacerbated the depression the province experienced after unsuccessfully invading Canada in 1760. Even though New York City merchants lost out on lucrative military contracts, the group sought common ground between the King and the people; however, compromise became impossible as of April 1775 Battles of Lexington and Concord. In that aftermath the New York Provincial Congress on June 9, 1775, for five pounds sterling for each hundredweight of gunpowder delivered to each county's committee.
Two powerful families had for decades assembled colony-wide coalitions of supporters. With few exceptions, members long associated with the DeLancey faction went along when its leadership decided to support the crown, while members of the Livingston faction became Patriots.
New York's strategic central location and port made it key to controlling the colonies. The British assembled the century's largest fleet: at one point 30,000 British sailors and soldiers anchored off Staten Island. General George Washington barely escaped New York City with his army in November 1776; General Sir William Howe was successful in driving Washington out, but erred by expanding into New Jersey. By January 1777, he retained only a few outposts near New York City. The British held the city for the duration, using it as a base for expeditions against other targets.
In October 1777, American General Horatio Gates won the Battle of Saratoga, later regarded as the war's turning point. Had Gates not held, the rebellion might well have broken down: losing Saratoga would have cost the entire Hudson–Champlain corridor, which would have separated New England from the rest of the colonies and split the future union.
Upon war's end, New York's borders became well–defined: the counties east of Lake Champlain became Vermont and the state's western borders were settled by 1786.
Many Iroquois supported the British (typically fearing future American ambitions). Many were killed during the war; others went into exile with the British. Those remaining lived on twelve reservations; by 1826 only eight reservations remained, all of which survived into the 21st century.
The state adopted its constitution in April 1777, creating a strong executive and strict separation of powers. It strongly influenced the federal constitution a decade later. Debate over the federal constitution in 1787 led to formation of the groups known as Federalists—mainly "downstaters" (those who lived in or near New York City) who supported a strong national government—and Antifederalists—mainly upstaters (those who lived to the city's north and west) who opposed large national institutions. In 1787, Alexander Hamilton, a leading Federalist from New York and signatory to the Constitution, wrote the first essay of the Federalist Papers. He published and wrote most of the series in New York City newspapers in support of the proposed United States Constitution. Antifederalists were not swayed by the arguments, but the state ratified it in 1788.
In 1785, New York City became the national capital and continued as such on and off until 1790; George Washington was inaugurated as the first President of the United States in front of Federal Hall in 1789. The United States Bill of Rights was drafted there, and the United States Supreme Court sat for the first time. From statehood to 1797, the Legislature frequently moved the state capital between Albany, Kingston, Poughkeepsie, and New York City. Thereafter, Albany retained that role.
In the early 19th century, New York became a center for advancement in transportation. In 1807, Robert Fulton initiated a steamboat line from New York to Albany, the first successful enterprise of its kind. By 1815, Albany was the state's turnpike center, which established the city as the hub for pioneers migrating west to Buffalo and the Michigan Territory.
In 1825 the Erie Canal opened, securing the state's economic dominance. Its impact was enormous: one source stated, "Linking the Atlantic Ocean and the Great Lakes, the canal was an act of political will that joined the regions of the state, created a vast economic hinterland for New York City, and established a ready market for agricultural products from the state's interior." In that year western New York transitioned from "frontier" to settled area. By this time, all counties and most municipalities had incorporated, approximately matching the state's is organized today. In 1831, the Mohawk and Hudson Railroad started the country's first successful regularly–scheduled steam railroad service.
Advancing transportation quickly led to settlement of the fertile Mohawk and Gennessee valleys and the Niagara Frontier. Buffalo and Rochester became boomtowns. Significant migration of New England "Yankees" (mainly of English descent) to the central and western parts of the state led to minor conflicts with the more settled "Yorkers" (mainly of German, Dutch, and Scottish descent). More than 15% of the state's 1850 population had been born in New England[citation needed]. The western part of the state grew fastest at this time. By 1840, New York was home to seven of the nation's thirty largest cities.
During this period, towns established academies for education, including for girls. The western area of the state was a center of progressive causes, including support of abolitionism, temperance, and women's rights. Religious enthusiasms flourished and the Latter Day Saint movement was founded in the area by Joseph Smith and his vision. Some supporters of abolition participated in the Underground Railroad, helping fugitive slaves reach freedom in Canada or in New York.
In addition, in the early 1840s the state legislature and Governor William H. Seward expanded rights for free blacks and fugitive slaves in New York: in 1840 the legislature passed laws protecting the rights of African Americans against Southern slave-catchers. One guaranteed alleged fugitive slaves the right of a jury trial in New York to establish whether they were slaves, and another pledged the aid of the state to recover free blacks kidnapped into slavery, (as happened to Solomon Northup of Saratoga Springs in 1841, who did not regain freedom until 1853.) In 1841 Seward signed legislation to repeal a "nine-month law" that allowed slaveholders to bring their slaves into the state for a period of nine months before they were considered free. After this, slaves brought to the state were immediately considered freed, as was the case in some other free states. Seward also signed legislation to establish public education for all children, leaving it up to local jurisdictions as to how that would be supplied (some had segregated schools).
New York culture bloomed in the first half of the 19th century: in 1809 Washington Irving wrote the satirical A History of New York under the pen name Diedrich Knickerbocker, and in 1819 he based Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow in Hudson Valley towns. Thomas Cole's Hudson River School was established in the 1830s by showcasing dramatic landscapes of the Hudson Valley. The first baseball teams formed in New York City in the 1840s, including the New York Knickerbockers. Professional baseball later located its Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. Saratoga Race Course, an annual summer attraction in Saratoga Springs, opened in 1847.
A civil war was not in the best interest of business, because New York had strong ties to the Deep South, both through the port of New York and manufacture of cotton goods in upstate textile mills. Half of New York City's exports were related to cotton before the war. Southern businessmen so frequently traveled to the city that they established favorite hotels and restaurants. Trade was based on moving Southern goods. The city's large Democrat community feared the impact of Abraham Lincoln's election in 1860 and the mayor urged secession of New York.
By the time of the 1861 Battle of Fort Sumter, such political differences decreased and the state quickly met Lincoln's request for soldiers and supplies. More soldiers fought from New York than any other Northern state. While no battles were waged in New York, the state was not immune to Confederate conspiracies, including one to burn various New York cities and another to invade the state via Canada.
In January 1863, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed the slaves in states that were still in rebellion against the union. In March 1863, the federal draft law was changed so that male citizens between 20 and 35 and unmarried citizens to age 45 were subject to conscription. Those who could afford to hire a substitute or pay $300 were exempt. Antiwar newspaper editors attacked the law, and many immigrants and their descendants resented being drafted in place of people who could buy their way out. Democratic Party leaders raised the specter of a deluge of freed southern blacks competing with the white working class, then dominated by ethnic Irish and immigrants. On the lottery's first day, July 11, 1863, the first lottery draw was held. On Monday, July 13, 1863, five days of large-scale riots began, which were dominated by ethnic Irish, who targeted blacks in the city, their neighborhoods, and known abolitionist sympathizers. As a result, many blacks left Manhattan permanently, moving to Brooklyn or other areas.
In the following decades, New York strengthened its dominance of the financial and banking industries. Manufacturing continued to rise: Eastman Kodak founded in 1888 in Rochester, General Electric in Schenectady, and Endicott-Johnson Shoe Company in the Triple Cities are some of the well-known companies founded during this period. Buffalo and Niagara Falls attracted numerous factories following the advent of hydroelectric power in the area. With industry blooming, workers began to unite in New York as early as the 1820s. By 1882, the Knights of Labor in New York City had 60,000 members. Trade unions used political influence to limit working hours as early as 1867. At the same time, New York's agricultural output peaked. Focus changed from crop-based to dairy-based agriculture. The cheese industry became established in the Mohawk Valley. By 1881, the state had more than 241,000 farms. In the same period, the area around New York harbor became the world's oyster capital, retaining that title into the early twentieth century.
Immigration increased throughout the latter half of the 19th century. Starting with refugees from the Great Famine of Ireland in the 1840s, New York became a prominent entry point for those seeking a new life in the United States. Between 1855 and 1890, an estimated 8 million immigrants passed through Castle Clinton at Battery Park in Manhattan. Early in this period, most immigrants came from Ireland and Germany. Ellis Island opened in 1892, and between 1880 and 1920, most immigrants were German and Eastern European Jews, Poles, and other Eastern and Southern Europeans, including many Italians. By 1925, New York City's population outnumbered that of London, making it the most populous city in the world. Arguably New York's most identifiable symbol, Liberty Enlightening the World (the Statue of Liberty), a gift from France for the American centennial, was completed in 1886. By the early 20th century, the statue was regarded as the "Mother of Exiles"—a symbol of hope to immigrants.
New York's political pattern changed little after the mid–19th century. New York City and its metropolitan area was already heavily Democrat; Upstate was aligned with the Republican Party and was a center of abolitionist activists. In the 1850s, Democratic Tammany Hall became one of the most powerful and durable political machines in United States history. Boss William Tweed brought the organization to the forefront of city and then state politics in the 1860s. Based on its command of a large population, Tammany maintained influence until at least the 1930s. Outside the city, Republicans were able to influence the redistricting process enough to constrain New York City and capture control of the Legislature in 1894. Both parties have seen national political success: in the 39 presidential elections between 1856 and 2010, Republicans won 19 times and Democrats 20 times.
By 1901, New York was the richest and most populous state. Two years prior, the five boroughs of New York City became one city. Within decades, the city's emblem had become the skyscraper: the Woolworth Building was the tallest building in the world from 1913, surpassed by 40 Wall Street in April 1930, the Chrysler Building in 1930, the Empire State Building in 1931, and the World Trade Center in 1972 before losing the title in 1974.
The state was serviced by over a dozen major railroads and at the start of the 20th century and electric Interurban rail networks began to spring up around Syracuse, Rochester and other cities in New York during this period.
In the late 1890s governor Theodore Roosevelt and fellow Republicans such as Charles Evans Hughes worked with many Democrats such as Al Smith to promote Progressivism. They battled trusts and monopolies (especially in the insurance industry), promoted efficiency, fought waste, and called for more democracy in politics. Democrats focused more on the benefits of progressivism for their own ethnic working class base and for labor unions.
Democratic political machines, especially Tammany Hall in Manhattan, opposed woman suffrage because they feared that the addition of female voters would dilute the control they had established over groups of male voters. By the time of the New York State referendum on women's suffrage in 1917, however, some wives and daughters of Tammany Hall leaders were working for suffrage, leading it to take a neutral position that was crucial to the referendum's passage.
Following a sharp but short-lived Depression at the beginning of the decade, New York enjoyed a booming economy during the Roaring Twenties. New York suffered during the Great Depression, which began with the Wall Street crash on Black Tuesday in 1929. The Securities and Exchange Commission opened in 1934 to regulate the stock market. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected governor in 1928, and the state faced upwards of 25% unemployment. His Temporary Emergency Relief Agency, established in 1931, was the first work relief program in the nation and influenced the national Federal Emergency Relief Administration. Roosevelt was elected President in 1932 in part because of his promises to extend New York–style relief programs across the country via his New Deal. In 1932, Lake Placid was host to the III Olympic Winter Games.
As the largest state, New York again supplied the most resources during World War II. New York manufactured 11 percent of total United States military armaments produced during the war and suffered 31,215 casualties. The war affected the state both socially and economically. For example, to overcome discriminatory labor practices, Governor Herbert H. Lehman created the Committee on Discrimination in Employment in 1941 and Governor Thomas E. Dewey signed the Ives-Quinn Act in 1945, banning employment discrimination. The G.I. Bill of 1944, which offered returning soldiers the opportunity of affordable higher education, forced New York to create a public university system since its private universities could not handle the influx; the State University of New York was created by Governor Dewey in 1948.
World War II constituted New York's last great industrial era. At its conclusion, the defense industry shrank and the economy shifted towards producing services rather than goods. Returning soldiers disproportionately displaced female and minority workers who had entered the industrial workforce only when the war left employers no other choice. Companies moved to the south and west, seeking lower taxes and a less costly, non–union workforce. Many workers followed the jobs. The middle class expanded and created suburbs such as the one on Long Island. The automobile accelerated this decentralization; planned communities like Levittown offered affordable middle-class housing.
Larger cities stopped growing around 1950. Growth resumed only in New York City, in the 1980s. Buffalo's population fell by half between 1950 and 2000. Reduced immigration and worker migration led New York State's population to decline for the first time between 1970 and 1980. California and Texas both surpassed it in population.
New York entered its third era of massive transportation projects by building highways, notably the New York State Thruway. The project was unpopular with New York City Democrats, who referred to it as "Dewey's ditch" and the "enemy of schools", because the Thruway disproportionately benefited upstate. The highway was based on the German Autobahn and was unlike anything seen at that point in the United States. It was within 30 miles (50 km) of 90% of the population at its conception. Costing $600 million, the full 427-mile (687 km) project opened in 1956.
Nelson Rockefeller was governor from 1959 to 1973 and changed New York politics. He began as a liberal, but grew more conservative: he limited SUNY's growth, responded aggressively to the Attica Prison riot, and promulgated the uniquely severe Rockefeller Drug Laws. The World Trade Center and other profligate projects nearly drove New York City into bankruptcy in 1975. The state took substantial budgetary control, which eventually led to improved fiscal prudence.
The Executive Mansion was retaken by Democrats in 1974 and remained under Democratic control for 20 years under Hugh Carey and Mario Cuomo. Late–century Democrats became more centrist, including US Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1977–2001) and New York City Mayor Ed Koch (1978–1989), while state Republicans began to align themselves with the more conservative national party. They gained power through the elections of Senator Alfonse D'Amato in 1980, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani in 1993, and Governor George Pataki in 1994. New York remained one of the most liberal states. In 1984, Ronald Reagan was the last Republican to carry the state, although Republican Michael Bloomberg served as New York City mayor in the early 21st century.
In the late 20th century, telecommunication and high technology industries employed many New Yorkers. New York City was especially successful at this transition. Entrepreneurs created many small companies, as industrial firms such as Polaroid withered. This success drew many young professionals into the still–dwindling cities. New York City was the exception and has continued to draw new residents. The energy of the city created attractions and new businesses. Some people believe that changes in policing created a less threatening environment; crime rates dropped, and urban development reduced urban decay.
This in turn led to a surge in culture. New York City became, once again, "the center for all things chic and trendy". Hip-hop and rap music, led by New York City, became the most popular pop genre. Immigration to both the city and state rose. New York City, with a large gay and lesbian community, suffered many deaths from AIDS beginning in the 1980s.
New York City increased its already large share of television programming, home to the network news broadcasts, as well as two of the three major cable news networks. The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times became two of the three "national" newspapers, read throughout the country. New York also increased its dominance of the financial services industry centered on Wall Street, led by banking expansion, a rising stock market, innovations in investment banking, including junk bond trading and accelerated by the savings and loan crisis that decimated competitors elsewhere in New York.
Upstate did not fare as well as downstate; the major industries that began to reinvigorate New York City did not typically spread to other regions. The number of farms in the state had fallen to 30,000 by 1997. City populations continued to decline while suburbs grew in area, but did not increase proportionately in population. High-tech industry grew in cities such as Corning and Rochester. Overall New York entered the new millennium "in a position of economic strength and optimism".
In 2001, New York entered a new era following the 9/11 attacks, the worst terrorist attack ever to take place on American soil. Two of the four hijacked passenger jets crashed into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, destroying them, and killing almost 3,000 people. One flew into the Pentagon demolishing the walls. The final one was almost taken back over by the passengers aboard and crashed into an open grassland with 296 out of the 500 people dead. Thousands of New Yorkers volunteered their time to search the ruin for survivors and remains in the following weeks.
Following the attacks, plans were announced to rebuild the World Trade Center site. 7 World Trade Center became the first World Trade Center skyscraper to be rebuilt in five years after the attacks. One World Trade Center, four more office towers, and a memorial to the casualties of the September 11 attacks are under construction as of 2011. One World Trade Center opened on November 3, 2014.
On October 29 and 30, 2012, Hurricane Sandy caused extensive destruction of the state's shorelines, ravaging portions of New York City, Long Island, and southern Westchester with record-high storm surge, with severe flooding and high winds causing power outages for hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers, and leading to gasoline shortages and disruption of mass transit systems. The storm and its profound effects have prompted the discussion of constructing seawalls and other coastal barriers around the shorelines of New York City and Long Island to minimize the risk from another such future event. Such risk is considered highly probable due to global warming and rising sea levels.
The famous 'Nationale 7' synonymous with the way to sunny vacations along the Mediterranean shores for generations of French families following the establishment of statutory summer holidays in 1936.
Long, warm days, no more time or job constrains; let's party.
fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Route_nationale_7_(France_métropolitaine)
fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villeneuve-Loubet
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Route_nationale_7
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villeneuve-Loubet
The monument is based on a French milestone (borne routière) with a cutout representing the shape of an old car with luggages on the roof and two silhouettes wawing hands out the windows.
fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borne_routière
Photo taken looking North-West.
View from above:
wikimapia.org/#lang=fr&lat=43.642073&lon=7.133244...
Another point of view:
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What is Offshore Web Hosting Good for?
Here are the resources I use: www.sidewages.com/resources/
Why Offshore Web Hosting?
- have you even heard of it before?
- benefits vary by country
- freedom is a primary key
- privacy is also an important factor
Legalities Across the Globe
- certain countries restrict certain sites
- other countries are more enabling
- laws can protect but possibly constrain, too
Privacy is Always in Mind
- can choose anonymous hosting
- protect your identity from the masses
- don't have to worry about random stalkers
- DON'T do this for unlawful reasons!
- think long term and world-wide impact
Consider the Costs
- some offshore hosting can be extremely cheap
- others can be crazy expensive
- other countries may open advertising routes
Freedom from Nature?
- natural disasters are a real concern
- you may not be able to relocate
- no reason you can't keep your data safe
- ensure website protection by location
But Where are these Offshore Places?
- the United States and United Kingdom
- Panama, Netherlands, Singapore
- China can be good, but be aware of spam rules
Wrapping Up Your Hosting Needs
- looking for reliability in any situation
- potentially powerful price for performance
- legalities and privacy are important
- do what's right and get to doing already
Here are the resources I use: www.sidewages.com/resources/
Absolutely wonderful evening at the 2024 Edinburgh International Book Festival last night. Acclaimed poet Raymond Antrobus was collaborating with the amazing Scottish musician Dame Evelyn Glennie, who has long been one of my musical heroines (I've seen her perform live several times, she's remarkable)
The theme of the work was "listening" - both the poet and internationally acclaimed musician are deaf, yet both have not only refused to allow that to constrain them, they have made it a part of themselves and their work, the way they communicate with the world through their art, and this event was just a beautiful example.
It was touching, warm, sometimes sad, sometimes funny, and very human. At one point Raymond had the sign language interpreter stand directly in front of him as he read, as if they were one voice, the one from the mouth, the other with hands and expressions, while Evelyn played.
Books, words, poetry and music, some of my favourite things, all stirring together then moving out across the audience to share. A very special evening.
This is only the second time I have been inside the new home of the book fest, the Edinburgh Futures Institute. I was in here back in early June for the programme launch (you can see the pictures a bit futher back in my timeline), which was in the same space as this event was in (although it can be reconfigured so it almost looked like a totally different space). I'm really liking the festival's new home.
5th Futurological Symposium On Free Cultural Spaces
Christiania, Copenhagen - 24-26.09.2015
Programm:
www.christianiaskulturforening.dk/2015/FREE%20CULTURAL%20...
Video:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSDrL5cjtiw
Photos:
www.flickr.com/photos/sterneck/albums/72157699018464575
Short Report:
www.freeculturalspaces.net/free-cultural-spaces-5th-sympo...
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Free Cultural Spaces
Christiania
Christianias Kulturforening
www.christianiaskulturforening.dk
Free Christiania *
www.flickr.com/photos/sterneck/albums/72157693213298290
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Wolfgang Sterneck:
In the Cracks of the World *
Photo-Reports : www.flickr.com/sterneck/sets
Articles (german / english) : www.sterneck.net
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The 5th FUTUROLOGICAL SYMPOSIUM
ON FREE CULTURAL SPACES:
Individuals and Collectives within Free Cultural Spaces, (a spiral meeting)
On the 24th, 25th, & 26th of September2015, Free-Town Christiania, in Copenhagen, Denmark, will host the 5th Futurological Symposium On Free Cultural Spaces (FCS): Individuals and Collectives within Free Cultural Spaces.
The term Futurological Symposium is taken from Stanislav Lem’s novel The Futurological Congress (1971) and refers to a deep commitment to developing an evolutionary perspective on Free Cultural Spaces (FCS) or Autonomous Zones. Ruigoord, the Dutch village that originated the Symposium idea, has been an active Free Cultural Space since 1973. Along with ThyLejren (the People’s Lair) and Christiania in Denmark, Ruigoord is one of the longest-lived of the Northern European utopian communities that emerged from the tumult of the Sixties. Its foundational principles, and thus those of the Futurological Symposia, rest on the notion of Homo Ludens, Playful Mankind ― the idea that free and playful interactions between people generate powerful communal impulses.
Since their inception, the Futurological Symposia have aimed to co-create a dynamic, lasting, sustainable, non-hierarchical global network of FCS; to originate a transnational platform for independent cultural experimentation; and to exchange ideas about the forms and content of free cultural circuits. Free Cultural Spaces take many forms, including squatted and hacker communities, pirate radio collectives and stations, free-towns, Eco-villages, perma-culture centers, independent festivals, (semi) nomadic groups, communes and communities, occupied grounds, Unceded Indigenous Territories, etc. When connected as an independent collaborative network, they have the potential to trigger profound changes in individual participants and society at large by disseminating values and practices that can generate new and creative alternatives to mainstream culture.
The 1st Symposium was organized as a response to an increasing oppression of Amsterdam’s counter-cultural communities and focused on the historical projects that had transformed the city into a pioneering Free-Town in the 60s and 70s.
The 2nd Symposium engaged different disciplines (philosophy, futurology, anthropology, politics, ecology, town planning etc.) and welcomed representatives from The Cultural Defense Line of Amsterdam in an attempt to conceptualize and organize a broad association of collective efforts.
The 3rd Symposium was an international gathering aimed at creating a solidarity league and formulating a treaty of mutual cooperation among FCS and the people involved with them. Representatives from Europe ― Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, The Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and the UK; Eastern Europe ― Russia; Asia ― Mongolia; North America ― the USA and Canada; and South America ― Colombia, gathered to share their visions. It was during this 3rd Symposium that the first steps were taken towards drafting a “Declaration of the Universal Spaces takes place in Christiania, Denmark on the 24th, 25th and 26th of September Value of Free Cultural Spaces.”
In August of 2014, the 4th Futurological Symposium: Creating Unity in Diversity took place at the Boom Festival, at Idahna-a-Nova Lake, Portugal. The Boom Symposium focused on festival culture. Festivals are playgrounds for the experience of freedom. They help shape group spirit and ethos and facilitate direct human contact among people who are nowadays often connected solely via the Internet. A festival experience often accelerate an individual’s awareness that life offers multiple alternatives to the constrained and constraining experiences that mainstream society advocates. It can establish deep and mutually enriching connections between FCS and experiences of personal liberation. The importance of festivals for the co-creation of a counter-cultural reality links festival culture to autonomous zones around the world.
The Boom Symposium explored the festival parameters of free cultural experience, and linked the Futurological Symposium project to Project Nuevo Mundo, an international network of sustainability-focused communities based in Mexico and Central America. Particularly interesting features of the “free culture” that animates FCS began to emerge, including the importance of developing and/or recognizing rites of passage to the mindsets that recognize the potentialities contained in FCS.
At Christiania, the 5th Symposium will debate the interactive importance of Individual and Collective Aims within Free Cultural Spaces.
The Futurological Symposiums are manifestations of a nomadic, decentralized event. Future Symposiums will take place in different FCS, and will focus on different aspects of FCS networks. The diversity between the projects and perspectives presented at each event will constitute its distinctive feature, with the connections, collaboration, and continuities it generates providing new and exciting synergies to the overall Futurological Symposium project.
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More information: www.americanprogress.org/events/2009/09/deficit_event.html
This year, the federal deficit will exceed 11 percent of the gross domestic product—higher than at any point in the country's post-war history. Though the size of the current deficit is due largely to pre-existing policies, economic recession, and one-time policies to revive the economy, there is no question that public concern over the long-term fiscal gap has intensified.
Last month, the Congressional Budget Office and the Office of Management and Budget both released new projections that predict substantial budget deficits in each of the next 10 years. If left unchecked, these long-term deficits could pose significant challenges, including substantially weakening economic growth, constraining much needed public investments, and making the United States more dependent on foreign lenders.
Please join the Center for American Progress and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities for a conference designed to lay the intellectual groundwork for efforts that the administration and Congress should undertake—once the economy has fully recovered—to put the nation on a more sustainable fiscal path.
What is Offshore Web Hosting Good for?
Here are the resources I use: www.sidewages.com/resources/
Why Offshore Web Hosting?
- have you even heard of it before?
- benefits vary by country
- freedom is a primary key
- privacy is also an important factor
Legalities Across the Globe
- certain countries restrict certain sites
- other countries are more enabling
- laws can protect but possibly constrain, too
Privacy is Always in Mind
- can choose anonymous hosting
- protect your identity from the masses
- don't have to worry about random stalkers
- DON'T do this for unlawful reasons!
- think long term and world-wide impact
Consider the Costs
- some offshore hosting can be extremely cheap
- others can be crazy expensive
- other countries may open advertising routes
Freedom from Nature?
- natural disasters are a real concern
- you may not be able to relocate
- no reason you can't keep your data safe
- ensure website protection by location
But Where are these Offshore Places?
- the United States and United Kingdom
- Panama, Netherlands, Singapore
- China can be good, but be aware of spam rules
Wrapping Up Your Hosting Needs
- looking for reliability in any situation
- potentially powerful price for performance
- legalities and privacy are important
- do what's right and get to doing already
Here are the resources I use: www.sidewages.com/resources/
Hoke Correctional Institution staff found this bag of K2 entangled in the inner fencing constraining wire on Aug. 19.
No.5 in a month long series using an SMC PENTAX (K) 85mm f1.8 lens. (Theme Day: Architecture)
The Australian tradition of a free-standing house and backyard on a quarter acre block is all but gone now, as the priority shifts to constraining infrastructure/service costs and maximising the financial return on residential land through medium and high density development.
Design for a CD compilation for the 4th in the series Stolen Music (for a group CD club). I chose to constrain myself to googling "Stolen Four" then using the results to create the cover. The painting is a Rembrandt that has been stolen four times, making it the most stolen painting of al times. I added in another level of the piece being made of four Stolen elements. The music/art/the type and the print (ink and paper) as no part was paid for. As this is a piece for fun it harms no one and creates the full reasoning on two levels.
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More information: www.americanprogress.org/events/2009/09/deficit_event.html
This year, the federal deficit will exceed 11 percent of the gross domestic product—higher than at any point in the country's post-war history. Though the size of the current deficit is due largely to pre-existing policies, economic recession, and one-time policies to revive the economy, there is no question that public concern over the long-term fiscal gap has intensified.
Last month, the Congressional Budget Office and the Office of Management and Budget both released new projections that predict substantial budget deficits in each of the next 10 years. If left unchecked, these long-term deficits could pose significant challenges, including substantially weakening economic growth, constraining much needed public investments, and making the United States more dependent on foreign lenders.
Please join the Center for American Progress and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities for a conference designed to lay the intellectual groundwork for efforts that the administration and Congress should undertake—once the economy has fully recovered—to put the nation on a more sustainable fiscal path.
""Here is the hour when the God in man awakens And measures himself with the creative Devas. Genius and Love announce the marvel The fire of heaven that falls to the black depths. For a new world, the winged soul sets sail. Be free, and you will be liberators! "Standing up, I'll write to myself: 'If the immortal flame that tames humans and makes man a king, hides in your hand, give me the spark! "But he replied: "The spark is in you; make it spring forth. I hear the crowd calling me from the hopeless sufferers and the faithless seekers. He left... and I saw a hollyhock, with a diamond in it, blooming at my bedside. But he was already walking in the customary shadow on the infinite road where his footsteps were engraved. A trail of light trailed behind him, and before him, the immense dawn was breaking.
Rudolf Steiner
The serpent was coiled on a cross for medieval alchemists, and Goethe experienced the beginning of modern science by understanding the primordial science borrowed from the Orient, al kemia, which became alchemy; alchemy is the secret fire that transforms matter. This fire enables the being to become this mysterious force.
For philosophers, it's a solar, serpentine fire that's both sacred and transformative. They represent the substances sulfur and mercury when in perfect balance. See the three fruits of the Earth that become a debt....This strength acquired through the serpent is said to heal all wounds of the soul. It is found in our organism and opens the Pineal Gland, the 7th chakra (Epiphysis) which secretes serotonin, the hormone of bliss. It brings harmony to all organs and activates the work of all other endocrine glands, including the pituitary gland (Hypophysis), 3rd eye, 6th Chakra. Alchemists knew that this mysterious force could be activated by sexual energy and transmutation, according to a person's will. It is awakened by a conscious Intelligence within us. Mystery schools the world over dealt with this. Initially, water awakened a healing fire. It represents the sexual energy from which the transformative and healing alchemical fire arises. The serpent is a powerful archetype of soul awakening, creative power and true self-knowledge. It enables you to paint your life like a real work of art, to discover your own Ethics.
The cosmic serpent is the bearer of the world and is said to be its origin. The Ouroboros (the snake that bites its own tail) is self-fecundating. It is synonymous with the principle of Life-Death-Life. Contraction, regeneration and expansion follow one another. It is a primordial, zodiacal wheel. At Chichen Itza (Mexico), on the day of the spring equinox, the shadow of the legendary feathered serpent Quetzalcóatl forms. It descends from the pyramid at the end of the day, in 7 exact triangles representing the 7 main chakras. He is the link between heaven and earth, day and night, the primordial waters of life and the earth. In short, the Materia Prima so dear to alchemists is our true nature. The power of the sacred feminine is known as the guardian of consciousness and Sophia. It helps us to let go of what constrains us, oppresses us and no longer serves any purpose. It's necessary to shed the past and humanity's collective suffering (patriarchy, slavery, abuse). We regenerate like Mother Earth. Quetzalcóatl succeeded in transforming himself into a divinity. Let's imitate him. Egyptian goddesses and oracles were represented by pythons and cobras protected by the god Apollo. Choosing our destiny and tearing back the veil of unconsciousness thanks to this Intelligence from the depths of the ocean is essential to the survival of our species. The power of the cosmos is represented by the serpent, the jaguar, the hummingbird and the eagle. The four fundamental powers of electromagnetism, the four bases of DNA in biology. Serpentine power is the love and passion of creation. Revealing our passions, biting the apple allows us to bite the fruit, to be healed and divine.
Shamans have revealed the return of the cosmic serpent to activate the earth's 7 chakras: 1st Mount Aconcagua Chile- Argentina 2ndMount Illimani Bolivia 3rdMount Salkantay Peru 4thPopocatépetl Mexico 5th Mount Shasta United States 6th Mount Logan Canada 7th Mount Denali Alaska. After 5,000 years, it left the Himalayas for the Andes to reconnect the feminine energies of South and North America. In the heart of Peru's secret valley, Pacha Tussa Mountain has received the ancestral consciousness of humanity's great serpent of light. Symbolic death and rebirth rituals are performed here. Inca prophecies indicate that humanity will face climatic and biological catastrophes on this initiatory path. Mother Earth loves her children, even though they have turned away from her.
Let us now transfer ourselves upon the Sun. There, the so-called Fire-Spirits had the same rank which human beings now have upon the earth. Of course, they did not have the same appearance, they did not look like men of to-day; these high individualities passed through the human stage upon the Sun under conditions which were quite different from the present human conditions. Also upon the Moon a host of Beings passed through the stage of humanity, and they came down to the Earth as higher Beings, as Lunar Pitris or Moon-Spirits, that had reached a higher stage than that of man upon the Earth. In Christian esotericism they are called Angeloi = Angels. Only upon the Earth the human being became MAN. The Lunar Pitris are Beings one degree higher than man, and above them stand the Fire-Spirits, who are one degree higher than the Lunar Pitris. The Fire-Spirits have reached a very high stage of development.Now we come to the Earth, to the Lemurian race which lived upon a continent situated between present-day Asia, Africa and Australia. There, man took on his present form through the fact that below, upon the physical earth, there lived highly developed beings, but physical beings, higher than the present animals and less developed than present-day man. These physical beings formed a kind of shell, a dwelling-place and they would have been condemned to decadence had they not been fructified by higher Beings. Only at that time the human souls entered the physical human bodies, and then began to shape the Subsequent form of the human body. In the past, the human soul was an integral part of higher Spiritual Beings. The physical shells of human bodies were upon the earth, and into these streamed the souls of higher Beings coming from above, from the spiritual worlds. In the spiritual worlds the souls were connected like drops of water in a sea, which were then poured into a number of vessels.
In 1795 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe produced his tale of tales-The fairytale of "The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily," an extraordinary masterwork that is unique among Goethe's works. An initiatory fable of transformation, the tale arose out of the Rosicrucian, alchemical impulses that play an important role in Faust and Goethe's other writings. Among those influenced by it was Rudolf Steiner, whose mystery dramas employ similar themes. The authors begin by placing the fairytale against the background of Goethe's life and cultural setting. They then discuss its importance in the development of Steiner's spiritual science. Finally, they describe its visual language, profound mystical insights, and relevance for us today. The book includes Carlyle's classic translation of the tale and illustrations, plus Steiner's essay on its inner meaning. The authors offer a positive look at the possibilities of the twenty-first century. They view Goethe's fairytale as fully relevant to our time, just as it was when Goethe first wrote it.
The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily (German title: Märchen or Das Märchen) is a fairy tale by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe published in 1795 in Friedrich Schiller's German magazine Die Horen (The Horae). It concludes Goethe's novella rondo Conversations of German Emigrants (1795). Das Märchen is regarded as the founding example of the genre of Kunstmärchen, or artistic fairy tale.[1] The story revolves around the crossing and bridging of a river, which represents the divide between the outer life of the senses and the ideal aspirations of the human being. The tale begins with two will-o'-the-wisps who wake a ferryman and ask to be taken across a river. The ferryman does so, and for payment, they shake gold from themselves into the boat. This alarms the ferryman, for if the gold had gone into the river, it would overflow. He forces the will-o'-the-wisps to agree to pay him three artichokes, three cabbages, and three onions. The ferryman takes the gold up to a high place, and deposits it in a rocky cleft, where it is discovered by a green snake. The snake eats the gold and becomes luminous, allowing him to observe an underground temple where there is an old man with a lamp which can only give light when another light is present. The snake investigates the temple and finds four kings made of metal: one of gold, one silver, one bronze, and one a mixture of all three. The story then switches over to the wife of the old man, who meets a melancholy prince. He has met a beautiful Lily, but his happiness is prevented by the fact that anyone who touches her will die. The snake is able to form a temporary bridge across the river at midday, and in this way, the wife and prince come to Lily's garden, where she is mourning her fate. As twilight falls, the prince succumbs to his desire for the beautiful Lily, rushes towards her, and dies. The green snake encircles the prince, and the old man, his wife, and the will-o'-the-wisps form a procession and cross the river on the back of the snake. Back in the land of the senses, and guided by the old man, Lily is able to bring the prince back to life — albeit in a dream state — by touching both the snake and the prince. The snake then sacrifices itself, transforming itself into a pile of precious stones, which are then thrown into the river. The old man then directs them towards the doors of the temple, which are locked. The will-o'-the-wisps help them enter by eating the gold out of the doors. At this point, the temple is magically transported beneath the river, surfacing beneath the ferryman's hut, which transforms into a silver altar. The three kings bestow gifts upon the sleeping prince and restore him. The fourth, mixed king collapses as the will-o'-the-wisps lick the veins of gold out of him. We also find that Lily's touch no longer brings death. Thus, the prince is united with the beautiful Lily, and they are married. When they look out from the temple, they see a permanent bridge which spans the river — the result of the snake's sacrifice — "and to the present hour the Bridge is swarming with travellers, and the Temple is the most frequented on the whole Earth". It has been claimed that Das Märchen was born out of Goethe's reading of The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz and that it is full of esoteric symbolism. In 1786, Goethe observed that The Chymical Wedding contains “a pretty fairy story” for which he had no time at the moment. Rudolf Steiner, in his 1918 book Goethe's Standard of the Soul, speaks of it as follows: “On the river stands the Temple in which the marriage of the Young Man with the Lily takes place. The ‘marriage’ with the supersensible, the realisation of the free personality, is possible in a human soul whose forces have been brought into a state of regularity that in comparison with the usual state is a transformation.”[3] This article led to an invitation to speak to the German Theosophical Society which eventually led to Steiner becoming its General Secretary. Tom Raines gives the following historical background for “The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily”: This Fairy Tale was written by Goethe as a response to a work of Schiller’s entitled Über die aesthetische Erziehung des Menschen (Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man). One of the main thoughts considered in these ‘letters’ centred around the question of human freedom... Schiller saw that a harmonious social life could only be founded on the basis of free human personalities. He saw that there was an "ideal human being" within everyone and the challenge was to bring the outer life experiences into harmony with this "ideal". Then the human being would lead a truly worthy existence.
Schiller was trying to build an inner bridge between the Person in the immediate reality and the 'ideal human being'. He wrote these ‘Letters’ during the time and context of the French Revolution. This revolution was driven by a desire for outer social changes to enable human personalities to become free. But both Schiller and Goethe recognised that freedom cannot be ‘imposed’ from the outside but must arise from within each person. Whilst he had an artistic nature, Schiller was more at home in the realm of philosophic thoughts and although Goethe found much pleasure in these ‘Letters’ of Schiller, he felt that the approach concerning the forces in the soul was too simply stated and, it should be said, working in abstract ideas was not Goethe's way. So he set about writing a Fairy Tale that would show, in imaginative pictures, the way in which a human soul could become whole and free, thereby giving rise to a new and free human community. And this was published in Die Horen in 1795.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Green_Snake_and_the_Beautiful_Lily
Whatever you may say,” continued the Snake, resuming the interrupted conversation, “the temple is built.
But it does not yet stand upon the river,” replied the beautiful Lily.
It still rests in the bowels of the earth,” continued the Snake. “I have seen the Kings, and spoken to them.
And when will they awake?” inquired the Lily.
The Snake answered, “I heard the mighty voice resound through the temple, announcing that the hour was come.
A ray of joy beamed from the face of the beautiful Lily as she exclaimed, “Do I hear those words for the second time to-day? When will the hour arrive in which I shall hear them for the third time?”
steinerlibrary.org/Books/22/APC1925/Chapter_04.html
www.rudolfsteinerbookcentre.com.au/product/2976/Time-is-a...
rsarchive.org/RelAuthors/GoetheJW/GreenSnake.html
The Green Snake
The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily
A Quest for the Higher Self
In 1920 Rudolf Steiner spoke of Goethe’s fairy tale TheGreen Snake and the Beautiful Lily as the archetypal seed of the Anthroposophical movement. The destiny of the first Goetheanum can be said to lead to ‘rebirth out of the ashes’. On 1 January, 1923, was the tragedy of the burning of the first Goetheanum. In retrospect (and from an alchemical point of view), it can be seen as a ‘mystical death’ by fire, Out of the living etheric forces of the First Goetheanum, Rudolf Steiner brought forth ‘The Foundation Stone Mantrum’ as an act of creative will. In response to the ‘cry of longing of mankind for the spirit’ had The House of the Word been built, and the 2nd Goetheaunum was to rise, phoenix-like out of the ashes.
An interesting way of exploring the time element in ‘The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily’ has been offered by Paul M. Allen in The Time Is at Hand.1)
I will also relate a short summary of the fairy tale in its sequence, as the times of days occur, woven into a tapestry, corresponding to the steps, which are involved in the alchemical transmutation inherent in this fairy tale.
‘Alchemy can perhaps best be described as a process of metamorphosis, a changing of form by means of the activity of the three fundamental powers of the soul; thinking, feeling and willing; These three can be likened to the nature of the substances Salt, Mercury, and Sulphur as they work upon the elements inherent in all created things Earth, Water, Air and Fire, transforming these from their fallen states of unredeemed matter to a restoration of their archetypal , original spiritual condition.’1)
I was privileged to know Agnes Linde, Herman’s daughter in the early to mid 1980’s, while I was living in Dornach. She was a Eurythmist and a painter. I was often able to observe the original illustrations made by her father of ‘The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily’, which portray the interwoven correspondence to Steiner’s first Mystery Play, ‘The Portal of Initiation’.
Now, let us begin with the following correlations involving the soul transformations of J. W. Goethe’s ‘The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily’:
At Midnight begins the Transmutation –Prima Materia, in Goethe’s allegorical fairy tale. This Corresponds to Study or Pure Thought in the Rosicrucian Initiation, as Rudolf Steiner spoke of at The Munich Conference.
Here begins the fairy tale…
‘In his little hut by the great river, which a heavy rain had swollen to overflowing, lay the ancient ferryman, asleep, wearied by the toil of the day’
This is the state at the beginning of the process of transmutation, ‘the given’, the basis, in musical expression, Prime. The ferryman meets the mischievous, unevolved, Will-o-the–Wisps who wish to cross the mysterious river, while boisterously shaking out heaps of glittering gold. The ire of the Ferryman is aroused; and disembarking, when he reaches the other side of the river, he gathers the gold pieces (which cannot be allowed to fall into that elemental stream), and throws them into a cleft of rock where they can safely lie.
Having now arrived on the other side of the realm, the earthly world, the Will-o-the-Wisps meet the Green Snake, who is swallowing the gold, (or the wisdom of spiritual science) and who is able digest it, having suffered and become open to spiritual understandings.
Afterwards, the Snake meets the Old Man with the Lantern in the subterranean temple, and undergoes a beginning step of initiation, as she answers the Sphinxlike questions of the four Kings in the temple, and comes to the first declaration of ‘The time is at hand’
In Christian Gnostic Initiation this can be compared with ‘The Washing of the Feet’
‘The time is at hand’, these words appear in the first verses of the book of Revelations. This ‘time’ is, paradoxically, referring to an individual as well as a universal moment of initiation.
At Dawn the alchemical experience of Separation or Clarification of the Elements occurs; this is Imaginative Knowledge, in the Rosicrucian Initiation, The Second in musical intervals.
The Wisps go to the Old Woman’s cottage, and rudely devour the gold from the walls of the cottage, and again shower the realm with gold pieces. They cannot comprehend the Old Woman’s wisdom either, but can only intellectualise or ‘parrot’ undigested knowledge. Their gold pieces kill the dog Mops.
The Old Woman has somehow promised the Will o the Wisps to repay their debt to the Ferryman for their crossing. He can take no gold, only ‘fruits of the earth’: three cabbages, three artichokes, and three onions, deeds of thinking, willing and feeling. However the Giant who is bathing in the river, spots the Old Woman with her basket of fruits of the earth. He is able with his shadow to snatch up an artichoke (which represents deeds of the will) out of the basket. Mops has also been taken along in the basket, to give to the Fair Lily, on the Spirit side of the river. She can mysteriously make dead things living, and living things dead. Such is her nature. Before meeting the Prince, the Old Woman is obliged to pay a debt to the river to make up for the lost artichoke, and enable her to cross the river; this entails placing her hand in the stream, which causes it to blacken. Painful but necessary, these events have a relation in the Gnostic Christian Initiation, to the Scourging.
Noon brings the Clarification and Uniting of Active and Passive, and the Rosicrucian stage of Inspiration. The interval of the Third is evoked. The Old Woman meets with the Prince, who is also seeking the fair Lily. The Prince is suffering from melancholy and can offer little information about his own being. They travel on the same path and cross the river together in reverence, at noon, on the back of the Green Snake who habitually offers service to all who are able to cross. This is the first bridge. In Christian Gnostic terms, it corresponds to the Crown of Thorns.
Twilight appears as the Mystical Death, the transmutation of substance into carbon (the Philosopher’s Stone) The stage of Intuition. This is the fourth interval of music. All meet in the Kingdom of the Lily. Mops is brought back to life by the Lily’s touch. The Youth, overcome with desire, passionately reaches out and touches the Lily, which causes his death. The Snake then forms a protective ring around the Youth and the Canary bird that she had inadvertently killed. These events would be comparable to The Crucifixion in the Christian Gnostic Initiation,
Midnight is the next time, the Washing or Purifying, Correspondence between the Microcosm and the Macrocosm the reuniting of the soul and the body, the greater and lesser worlds – Macrocosm and Microcosm; this is the fifth musical interval; the Old Man with the Lantern assigns tasks. The Old Man declares that at this point, ‘An individual helps not but he who combines himself with many at the proper hour does help.’ The procession crosses the bridge again on the back of the Snake. The Youth has a first awakening. For this to happen, the Lily must touch the Snake with the right hand and her lover with the left. The Snake then makes a final sacrifice and becomes a permanent jewelled bridge leading to the temple. All enter the temple and greet the Kings. This is related to The Mystical Death in the Christian Gnostic Initiation.
At Dawn is theBursting Out, Living into the Macrocosm where reborn purified element appears in many colours, the Macrocosm: the sixth interval of music; the Temple rises to the surface of the earth. The final initiation of the Youth and the investiture into Kingship then occurs, as does the demise of the Mixed King. This corresponds to the Burial and Resurrection in Christian Gnostic terms.
Bright Noonday brings aboutthe Chymical Wedding, the Stage of Divine Bliss, Royal Marriage, the Seventh interval in music, rejuvenation, including the healing of the Old Woman, and the transformation of the Giant.
‘All debts are paid’ There is a Michaelic bridge, the sacrifice of the Snake, now serving all of humanity. Goethe’s text end with the following words:… ‘and to the present hour the bridge is swarming with travellers, and the Temple is the most frequented on the whole earth. This stage must relate to the Ascension of the Soul in Christian Gnostic terms.
The Octave, then, would be related to the ultimate realities of the Eternal. Humanity will have been guided from the world of images in Space (the Earthly world, through events taking place in Time ( the Soul’s transformation ) as pictured allegorically in the ‘Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily’ – to pure Spirit, those ultimate eternal realities.
1) The Time is at Hand, Paul M.. Allen, Anthroposophic Press, RR4 Box 94 A-1, Hudson , NY 12534
www.exploringtheword.com.au/research/the-green-snake/
The beings who poured out the souls from above were those who had passed through their human stage upon the Moon, the Moon-Spirits, whose stage of development was one degree higher than that of Man so that they could pour one part of their being into mankind, thus enabling it to develop further, Man could then transform his organism more and more. He could lift himself up from the earth and stand upright, he learned to walk, to speak and to become independent.
There was a certain relationship between all these souls, for they came from a common spiritual chorus. All those who had received a drop from the same being, greatly resembled each other. Members, of the same tribe first had such related souls, then the members of a race or nation, for example, the whole Egyptian or the whole Jewish nation. They had souls that had come from a common source. From the Moon-Spirits man had received the Spirit-Self and this enabled him to become an independent being, an Ego.
But something which man could not obtain from the Moon Spirits, could only be given to him by a still higher Being, common to all men, who had already completed its humanity upon the Sun: a Fire-Spirit. Many Fire-spirits had developed upon the Sun and exercised their influence upon the Earth, for they were high spirits. One of these Fire-Spirits was called upon to pour out his being upon the whole of mankind. A Spirit who belonged to the whole Earth was able to pour out over the whole of mankind, into each one of its parts, the element of the Sun or Fire-Spirits, the Buddhi, or the Spirit of Life. But in the Lemurian and in the Atlantean age the human beings were not ripe enough to receive this from the Sun-Spirit.
When we read the Akasha Chronicle (See Rudolf Steiner's bookThe Akasha Chronicle) we find that something very strange took place at that time: The human beings consisted of physical body, etheric body, astral body and Spirit Self, but this only lived in them in a very weak form. The Buddhi or Life-Spirit soared above every human being — it could be perceived in the Akasha spaces. In the astral space every human being was surrounded by Buddhi, but it remained outside and was not strong enough to enter man. This Buddhi was a part of the great Fire Spirit who had poured out his drops on the human beings, but these drops could not enter the human beings.
Christ's deeds on earth gave man the capacity to absorb into his Manas what we designate as Buddhi.
What Christ fulfilled upon the earth, was prepared by other great teachers who had preceded him, by Buddha, by the last Zarathustra, by Pythagoras, who all lived about 600 years before Christ, and who were men who had already absorbed a great deal of what lived in the surroundings of man. They had absorbed the spark of Christ. Also Moses belongs to them. But the Ego of the other people had not yet absorbed this spark.
Into the physical, etheric and astral body of Jesus of Nazareth had entered the whole Fire-Spirit, the one source of all the different sparks that lived in the human beings. This Fire-Spirit is the Christ, the only divine Being who lived on earth in this form. He entered the body of Jesus of Nazareth and as a result, all those who feel united with Christ Jesus are able to absorb Buddhi. The possibility to absorb and take in the Buddhi begins with the appearance of Christ Jesus. St. John the Evangelist designates it as the Divine Creative Word. The Fire-Spirit that poured his sparks into men is this Divine Creative Word.
As a result, the following took place: Whereas the Moon-Spirits could create differentiated tribes among men by sending down their drops, Christ was a uniting Spirit for the whole earth, and the human beings were thus united into a family all over the world. Whereas the differentiations among men were brought about by the drops poured out by the different Moon-Spirits, the unity among men was brought about by the Spirit poured out by Christ Jesus. What unites men came down to the earth through Christ Jesus.
When speaking of the last Judgement, Christ says in his prophecy: “When the Son of Man shall Come in his glory” (he means by this: when the drops of Christ shall all have entered into the human beings, when all shall have become brothers) “he shall say unto them on his right hand: Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: For I was hungred and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty and ye gave me drink.” (St. Matthew 25, 35) Then the only difference among men will be that between good and evil.
Christ says to His disciples: “What ye have done unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done unto me.” This signifies: Christ Jesus indicates the time when the drops poured out by Him will all be absorbed, so that when one man faces another, this drop of Christ within him will face the drop of Christ in the other. The power whereby the Buddhi could be called into life in man, this power went out from the life of Christ upon the earth. We should therefore look upon Christ as the uniting Spirit of the Earth.
If we could look down upon the earth from a distant star, through an epoch of many thousands of years, we would find a moment when Christ was active on the earth, so that the whole astral substance of the earth was permeated by Christ. Christ is the Spirit of the Earth, and the Earth is His Body. Everything that grows upon the earth is Christ. He lives in every seed, in every tree, all that grows upon the earth. That is why Christ indicated the bread and said: “This is my Body.” And of the juice of the grapes (at the LAST SUPPER the juice of grapes was passed round, not fermented wine) he had to say: “This is my Blood,” for the juice of the fruits of the earth is his blood. Consequently mankind must appear to him like beings who walk about upon his body. That is why he told his disciples after having washed their feet: “He that eateth bread with me, lifts up his heel against me.” (Treads on me). This must be taken literally, in the meaning that the earth is the body of Christ Jesus. Because he took upon himself the evolution of the earth, a distant spiritual being might see that more and more of Christ's spirit flows into the human beings; the single drops of Christ Jesus penetrate into the individual human beings. Finally the whole earth will be peopled by transformed, Christianised men, by men who have become divine through Christ. Only those who do not participate in this, will be put aside as evil; they must wait for a later time in order to follow a course of development leading to goodness.
All the different nations had Mysteries, before Christ appeared on earth. The Mysteries revealed what was to take place in the future. After a long training, the pupils had to undergo a preparation which consisted in a sepulchre. The hierophant was thus able to transfer the pupil into a higher state of consciousness which made his body lie inert in a kind of deep slumber. In ancient times, the consciousness always had to be abated in order that the divine essence might enter man. In this lowered state of consciousness, the soul was led through the spheres of the spiritual world and after three days the hierophant called the pupil back into life. Through this experience he felt that he had become a new man and he obtained a new name. He was called Son of God. The whole process took place upon the physical plane, when Christ appeared and passed through the Mystery of Golgotha. In the ancient initiations the life-drops of Christ's spirit first called the pupils back into life and they were told: “He who will Christianize all men, will appear one day. And He will truly be the Incarnated Word. You can only experience this for three days, when you travel through the kingdoms of heaven; but One will come, Who will bring the Kingdoms of Heaven down to the physical world.”
The Initiate experienced upon the astral plane what Christ lived through upon the physical plane, namely that from the very beginning there existed a Divine Word that poured out its drops over the human beings; but the Ego-men could not absorb these drops. St. John, the herald of the Christianized Ego-man who has taken in the Christ, or the Word, reveals this. St. John speaks of the Word that existed upon the earth from the very beginning:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.
The same was in the beginning with God.
All things were made by him and without him was not anything made that was made.
In him was life and the life was the light of men.
And the light shone in the darkness, but the darkness comprehendeth it not.
There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.
The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the light, that all men through him might believe.
He was not the light-, but a witness of the Light.
For the true Light that lighteth every man was to come into the world.
He was in the world and the world was made by him and the world knew him not.
He came to each man (to the individual Ego-man) but the individual men (the Ego-men) received him not.
But as many as received him, to them he gave power to manifest themselves as children of God.
Those who believe in his name, are born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us and we have heard his teaching, the teaching of the only begotten of the Father full of grace and truth.
The word “grace” in verse 14 has for St. John the same meaning as Buddhi; “truth” is Manas, the Spirit-Self.
John bare witness of him and cried saying: This was he of whom I spoke. After me cometh one who existed before me. For he is my predecessor.
And of his fullness have we all received grace upon grace.
For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.
No man hath at any time seen God with eyes. The only begotten Son who lived in the bosom of the Cosmic Father hath become our guide in this vision.
[Dr.Rudolf Steiner's rendering of the text.]
All initiations into the Mystery of the Spirit pointed to the coming of Christ Jesus. This initiation was attained in the Yoga sleep, in the Orphic sleep, in the Hermes sleep. When the initiate woke up again and returned into his body, so that he could again hear and speak with his physical senses, he uttered the words which are rendered as follows in the Hebrew language: “Eli, Eli, lama sabathani.” The pupil of the Mysteries woke up with the words: “My God, My God, how thou hast raised me!”
This was the initiation during the ancient Jewish epoch. During his three days' sojourn in the higher worlds, the initiate experienced the whole course of mankind's future development, all that awaited him in the future development of humanity. As a rule, these future stages of human development were not perceived abstractly in his vision.. Each stage was represented by a personality. The seer saw twelve individualities. They represented twelve stages of soul-development. The soul-forces thus appeared in the external form of twelve persons. At a certain moment, the initiate saw a certain scene: His own individuality became transfigured — the stage which the whole of humanity will reach when it shall be filled by Buddhi, when it shall be Christianized. He identified himself with God and behind him he saw the twelve soul-forces. John was immediately behind, he was the last of the twelve who announced his fulfilment. And he saw himself transfigured, he saw the stage which he would reach when perfection will be attained; he saw his soul-forces in the external form of persons, and perceived St. John, the herald of the Christ-stage of development. During the Yoga-sleep, these twelve figures grouped themselves around him, and the scene arose which was designated as the Mystical Supper. This image had the following meaning: When the initiate sits there surrounded by his soul-forces, he says to himself: These are one with me; they have led me through the development of the earth; the feet of this apostle enabled me to walk on along my path, the hands of that apostle gave me the power to work. ... The Holy Supper is the expression of man's fellowship with the twelve soul-forces.
Human perfection consists in the falling away of the lower soul-forces, so that only the higher forces remain behind; in future, man will no longer have the lower forces; he will, for example, no longer have the forces of procreation. John's soul-power above all will raise those lower forces to the loving heart. It will send out streams of spiritual love. The heart is the most powerful organ, when Christ lives in man. The lower soul-forces are then raised from the abdominal regions to the heart.
Every initiate experienced this in the Mysteries of the heart. It re-echoed in the words: “My God, my God, how thou hast raised me!” With the appearance of Christ Jesus, the whole Mystery, the whole experience, became reality upon the physical plane. At that time there were brotherhoods in Palestine which had developed out of the old order of the Essenes. Among their institutions, they also had a meal symbolizing the mystical Holy Supper. “To eat the Easter Lamb” is a general expression for something which took place at Easter. Jesus sat down with the Twelve and inaugurated the Holy Supper with the words: “At the end of the evolution of the earth, all men will have absorbed what I brought down to the earth, and the words, ‘This is my Body, This is my Blood,’ will then be true.” Afterwards he said: “There is one among you who will betray me.” This is brought about by the power of egoism. But as surely as this power of egoism is the source of treason, so surely will this lower soul-force be raised to a higher stage. One of the disciples rested upon Jesus' bosom, he rested upon Jesus' heart. This means that all the lower forces, every form of egoism, will be raised to the heart. At this point Jesus repeated to his Disciples the words: “Eli, Eli, lama sabathani” — “Now the Son of Man is glorified, and God is glorified in Him!”
The same event which took place upon Golgotha took place in the ancient Mysteries. Under the Cross stood the Disciple “whom the Lord loved,” the Disciple who had rested upon his bosom and had been raised to his heart. Also the women are there under the Cross: the mother of Jesus, his mother's sister Mary, and Mary Magdalene. John does not say that the mother of Jesus was called “Mary,” but that this was the name of his mother's sister. His mother's name was “Sophia.”
John baptises Jesus in the river Jordan. A dove descends from heaven. At this moment a spiritual act of conception takes place. But who is the mother of Jesus who conceives at this moment.
The Chela, Jesus of Nazareth, at this moment divests himself of his Ego, his highly developed Manas is fructified and the Buddhi enters into it. The highly developed Manas that received the Buddhi is Wisdom — Sophia, the Mother who is fructified by the Father of Jesus. Maria, which is the same as Maya, has the general meaning of “Mother name.” The Gospel records: “The Angel came in unto her and said: Hail thou that art highly favoured, — behold thou shalt conceive in thy womb and bring forth a son — the Holy Ghost shall come upon thee and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee.” The Holy Ghost is Jesus' father: the descending dove fructifies the Sophia that lives in Jesus.
The Gospel should therefore be read as follows: “Under the Cross stood the mother of Jesus, Sophia.” To this mother Jesus says: “Woman, behold thy son.” He himself had transferred the Sophia that lived within him to the Disciple John; he transformed him into a son of Sophia and said: “Behold, thy mother.” “Henceforth you should recognise the divine wisdom as your mother and dedicate yourself to her alone.” John had recorded this divine wisdom; Sophia is embodied in the Gospel of St. John. Jesus had given him this wisdom, and he was authorized by Christ to transmit it to the world.
The highest Spirit of the Earth had to incarnate in a physical body; this body had to die, it had to be killed and its blood had to flow. A special meaning is attached to this. Wherever there is blood, there is Self. The Self rooted in the blood had to be sacrificed in order that the old communities based on Self might come to an end. All individual forms of egoism flow away with the blued of the Crucified Christ. The blood of racial communities changes into a blood which is common to the whole of mankind, because the blood of Christ was sacrificed at the moment when he hung upon the Cross.
Here too something took place which might have been observed by an astral observer in the astral atmosphere. When Christ died upon the Cross, the whole astral atmosphere changed, so that events could take place which could never have taken place before. This has become possible because by shedding His blood, Christ gave the whole of mankind a Self that is common to all. The blood that streamed out of the wounds of Christ Jesus gave to the whole of humanity a Self which is shared by all. His three bodies remained hanging upon the Cross and were then revived by the Risen Christ. When Christ abandoned his physical frame, the three bodies were so strong that they could utter the words of initiation which follow the transfiguration: “Eli, Eli, lama sabathani!”
To all who know something of the Mystery-truths, these words must have revealed that a Mystery had been enacted. A small correction in the Hebrew text therefore gave rise to the words contained in the Gospel: “Eli, Eli, lama sabathani!” “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me!”
When the creature gets big enough the "mother" orders him to steal milk from other farmers. He then runs out and moves very fast over the fields and steals milk from sheep and cows and delivers it into the "mother's" churn. The "mother" then makes butter out of it, so called tilberasmjör. If the sign smjörhnútur (butterknot) is carved on butter made from this milk, it will fall into little pieces.
When the "mother" gets older the tilberi becomes too big a burden for her and she can no longer tolerate his sucking of the thigh nipple.
She then has to order him to gather all the lamb droppings in three counties. This will cause the tilberi to burst of exhaustion, because he cannot constrain himself and is constantly in a hurry to get back to his nipple. The other way to exterminate it is to shoot it with a silver button marked with the butterknot.
The far massif in the centre of the photo is the loci for the dolmen de Sequets, the grottes de la Pyramid (neolithic) and the Grottes Janoye (Paleolithic). The tilted pan shaped valley to its right is the Bombic. That Reindeer used this passage to bypass the sheer cliffs of the Roc D'Anglar on their way north would make sense as it is relatively wide and the two sides to the obstacle (the Aveyron river) are without constrains. A second contournement velley with similar advantages arrives just before Feneyrol to the east. Floating hunted reindeer down river to cold processing zones at the foot of the Bruniquel cliff, and away from attracted scavengers and predators would make sense. A similar shift from the Feneyrol crossing down river to the cool processing at St Antonin's Abris Fontales might also be hypothesised.
10:1/17 AJM
Okay, this is part of the big project I mentioned earlier, which may be the most interesting thing I've ever done photographywise. I wanted to develop & scan everything and upload it all at the same time, but I'm lagging on that and decided there's no reason not to put up parts of it:
Fifty five years ago Sid Evans asked Lothar Meisel whether he could
make a Tertis pattern viola that would sound good -- sort of a bet.. Meisel was a
young luthier, recently arrived from an east German town called
Klingenthal, working in Evans' shop in Birmingham, England. Meisel,
though only recently qualified, was a ninth generation luthier. The
first violin to bear the family's name was made in the late 1600s by
Johann Meisel. Meisel accepted the challenge making his first Tertis
viola -- the second viola he'd ever made. Tertis himself was in the shop during the initial planning of the instrument. The instrument was
finished, but before it was ever set up and played; Meisel emmigrated
to the United States, settling first in Ohio, later (and finally) in
Owatonna, Minnesota, so he was not able to hear whether he'd
succeeded, though he did learn that the viola had been sold to a buyer
in New Zealand.
It's common to dismiss material things as insignificant, but
behind every made thing is a person or some set of people. Most of us
spend most of our lives in work of one sort or another. We're driven
to it by necessity. Necessity can constrain the choices we make about
work but we make choices -- what we will do, how we will go about it,
the care or lack of care we take. Made things are reflections of the
people who make them and communicate to anyone willing to look
something about the maker. That's easier to see with something like a
violin by Lothar Meisel (or a performance by my friend & teacher
Chelle Fulk), but it is always there and can be seen in the work.
Meisel, moreover, is part of an easily traced tradition. A tradition
that stretches back to Johann Meisel in the 1600s. And the Meisel
family worked as part of a larger tradition of instrument makers in
Klingenthal and the surrounding area and a larger tradition still,
incorporating the Amatis, the Guarneris., Stradivarius -- everyone who
made the violin what it is today. The genius of all these people is
there in the instruments they and their successors made, to be seen
and heard by those with the skill to draw it out. And the instruments
remain. They show us their makers even after the makers are gone.
After the war, Klingenthal fell on the wrong side of the iron curtain.
It became part of a communist state with all its attendant idiocies.
Even taking it at its idealistic face value, the East German state,
with its ideology of subordinating the individual to the common good
is at odds with what a Meisel violin represents. A handmade violin is
always the product of an individual working as an individual. It may
reflect a larger tradition but even that is a tradition of individuals
creating, innovating and perfecting as individuals, not according to
some grand plan for the common good.
And the authoritarian state was certainly was at odds with the
temprament of the Meisels. They left. Lothar first then, when it
could be arranged, his father. Escaped, rather. The story, which is
told in a book about his family's history, written last year, reads
very much like something from John LeCarre and, as with any such
story, one gets the sense that but for a great many happy coincidences
things would have been turned out very differently and much worse.
Even so, as Meisel told us, "escape" doesn't mean nearly enough. He
escaped a system, but left country, home, family, friends and a
tradition. When Meisel said goodbye to his grandfather the day he
left Klingenthal he knew he was saying goodbye for the last time.
"Escape" just doesn't say enough about loss to be exactly the right
word.
All kinds of loss are can be associated with that upheaval. At one
time a hundred master luthiers worked in Klingenthal. Today, Lothar
Meisel is last living maker from that tradition. Meisel himself is
retired now. He showed me the last Meisel violin made (not to be
confused with the products of the Meisel Stringed Instrument company
of New Jersey, which is not connected to Lothar).
Late last year I began taking lessons with Chelle Fuk and I listened
to her play her viola -- just a stunning instrument with a beautiful
big viola tone -- everything a viola should be, really. I asked her
about it and she told me that the maker was a man named Lothar Meisel.
She'd spent quite a lot of time (and made multiple trips to europe) in
an attempt to find the maker but with little success. Time and
technology, however, caught up and several years ago she was able to
find Meisel on an internet directory of makers. She met him in
Owatonna and he was able to tell her about her viola. A Tertis model,
made in Sid Evans's shop in Birmingham. The first Tertis model Meisel
made. She was able to play it for him and he to hear it for the first
time. He got to hear how decisively he'd won that bet.
The two of them talked, at the time, of her coming back someday
and going, together, to the National Music Museum in Vermilion, South
Dakota (which has, amazingly, one of the world's great musical
instrument collections. Quite apart from the stunning stringed
instrument collection which includes instruments by Stradivarius, the
Amatis and Jacob Steiner, there is a dazzling variety of early keyboards and
woodwinds, but also more modern instruments and related equipment (the
workshop -- bench, tools, even the old cigarette butts -- of the
guitarmakers D'Aquisto and D'Angelico) &c. There, he was to show her
the museum's collection of Meisel instruments. I searched for Meisel
on the web myself that evening & learned that he'd, a few months
before, published a book about the family. It was just too cool for
her not to have, so I bought a copy for her (and it really is too cool
not to have if you have any interest in this sort of thing -- it's a
stunning book). Shortly after, she wrote to Meisel to let him know
how much she enjoyed his book. They exchanged calls and made concrete
plans to make the trip. I begged to be allowed to go along and take
pictures. She said ok.
More information: www.americanprogress.org/events/2009/09/deficit_event.html
This year, the federal deficit will exceed 11 percent of the gross domestic product—higher than at any point in the country's post-war history. Though the size of the current deficit is due largely to pre-existing policies, economic recession, and one-time policies to revive the economy, there is no question that public concern over the long-term fiscal gap has intensified.
Last month, the Congressional Budget Office and the Office of Management and Budget both released new projections that predict substantial budget deficits in each of the next 10 years. If left unchecked, these long-term deficits could pose significant challenges, including substantially weakening economic growth, constraining much needed public investments, and making the United States more dependent on foreign lenders.
Please join the Center for American Progress and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities for a conference designed to lay the intellectual groundwork for efforts that the administration and Congress should undertake—once the economy has fully recovered—to put the nation on a more sustainable fiscal path.
This year held some surprises that could have an impact on commercial real estate, and the economy as a whole, in 2017. Here’s a look at five commercial real estate trends to watch in the coming year.
Non-bank lending
CMBS lending has slowed down this year, even as 10-year CMBS loans from the pre-recession boom continue to come due into 2017. And non-bank lenders like Blackstone are picking up some of the slack.
One presumed reason for the slowdown is that lenders are gearing up for the Dec. 24 implementation of the risk-retention requirement, the so-called “skin-in-the-game regulations” that are part of the Dodd-Frank Act and require sponsors of commercial mortgage-backed securities to hold on to 5% of every new deal or assign the risk to a B-piece buyer.
Overall, the top 10 non-bank lenders made up 13% of New York City commercial real estate lending in Q3, according to a CrediFi analysis.
Interest rates
The Federal Reserve announced this month it is raising interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point.
In addition, the Treasury yield moved up more than 50 basis points since the Nov. 8 presidential election, and was hovering around 2.5% ahead of the rate hike.
Some analysts are citing an expectation of growth based on economic stimulus, deregulation and a planned infrastructure program, as well as a bigger deficit, which can trigger inflation and higher interest rates. Concerns remain about the impact of a much-discussed trade reduction and potential friction between the U.S. and other world powers.
Higher interest rates could constrain property deals by making real estate less affordable, but it can also provide an incentive for borrowers and lenders to be more cautious in a bid to reduce risk. And higher interest rates typically signal a strong economy, which tends to be associated with a strong real estate market.
Financial legislation
President-elect Donald Trump has called the Dodd-Frank Act a “disaster” and a “disgrace,” and his transition team says it “will be working to dismantle” it. Experts have said that while it seems unlikely the law will be totally repealed, its effect could well be reduced under a Trump administration.
Less regulation is easier for financial institutions in the short term, and deregulation supporters argue that excess requirements stifle lending. Yet if overly relaxed standards result in looser lending practices, a high-risk environment could ultimately lead to another financial crisis, and that won’t be good for banks, commercial real estate or the Multifamily Leasing Technology economy in the long term.
White House and Wall Street
The extent of changes to financial legislation will depend in part on who’s in charge. Trump’s pick of former Goldman Sachs banker Steven Mnuchin as the next secretary of the treasury and Goldman president Gary Cohn as director of the National Economic Council is a good indication that regulatory changes are planned, not least because Mnuchin has explicitly said his No. 1 regulatory priority is to “strip back parts of Dodd-Frank that prevent banks from lending.”
hello again, from california. something i didn't expect has happened.
we haven't done very much since the accident. we've gotten a few things done: looking for health insurance, our taxes, junk like that. i've been icing my leg on and off, and taking some heavy duty ibuprofen. there's this very painful lump on my bruise, i fear that it's clotted blood, but fear knowing whether it is or not even more. i'm trying to stay off it, because it usually hurts when i move it too much. my whole body's sore, and i'm just plain tired.
but yesterday caroline and i had a very long and serious talk. i'm not gonna stay in california. let me explain.
i left, a little bit after college, on the highest note i'd ever been on. we'd just finished the coolest project of my life, i'd made a ton of wonderful friends, done all manner of exciting californian things, i was healthy, and i'd just met this amazing girl. i'd been offered what seemed like an amazing job, and i left to go on a roadtrip, thinking i'd be back in a few months to start working again with my two work partners. i went home for the summer, lost that high, and got stuck in new york. the rest since then has been a struggle between this desire to succeed despite sometimes less than ideal circumstances, and this longing to return to that wonderful, sun filled perfection that was southern california before i left.
california always felt like the solution; if i could get back to california, i could get back to being me. i could get back to that girl, that health, that confidence, those friends. california was the missing piece of the puzzle.
i got back here a week ago. i spent the first few days trying to find a sailboat to live on, because that's a dream of mine: sailing around the globe, adventuring without anything to tie me down, save my anchor when i chose to drop it. i figured living on a boat would be a good prep, and put me in a spot where i could learn how to sail. it wasn't working, the boats were kind of expensive, though not much more than a crappy studio somewhere, but all the people that were renting were sketchy, and not returning my calls and such. so i was looking at other places, less nice places, either close to Otis, where my friends are, or close to Caroline, so i could come to her place to work everyday. i wanted places that were month-to-month, so i wouldn't get stuck in a contract, and if i found a nice boat to live on, i could get out easily. they were tough to find, but i found a few decent ones, roughly the same price as a yearlong studio, or the boats.
and after the accident, i cared a lot more about health insurance. i can't go without much longer, whether i think health insurance as an industry is a scam or not. it's gonna cost more money per month than my previous health insurance plan, of nothing. and that plus the place, plus food, and the student loans i've been mostly ignoring. maybe the accident knocked some sense in to me, i joked, but i can't keep this up. we were walking on the beach in venice the other day, with our feet in the sand on a bright sunny day, my toes in the pacific ocean, and all i could feel was this cloud over my head. i felt trapped, even in a place that should have been the epitome of relief.
the reason california was so wonderful last time was not because it was california. it was because i took the effort to get my life together: i learned how to be confident, i learned how to do what i wanted, and i was in control of my life & my emotions. i need that.
and while all this was unconsciously brewing in my mind, i was cruising craigslist for deals on my own apartment. and i happened to find this article, completely by accident. shelter may be a necessitiy, but having my own apartment? that's just something i want. i hadn't thought of it like that before. this financial burden, that debt i have, felt like it'll constrain me until i'm dead. it felt like i couldn't do anything, and no matter what i did, i wouldn't have enough money to pay it off, and be free.
i have crazy dreams of living off in the middle of the jungle, or sailing from bay to bay on a coast in italy, or off in the woods in the middle of canada. i know that i would gladly sacrifice all kinds of modern conveniences to live like that, that's never been an issue. but i can't do it being financially trapped. having to pay $800 in student loans every month until I'm 45.
so. if i live at home, with my dad, my living expenses and food are covered. that's, probably, at least $1200 a month that i'm not spending. i can put pretty much all of my income into paying back this $81 thousand school debt that i've accrued. and then i'll be free. i can live off whatever meager salary i'm making after that, and not worry about anyone but me. i think, if i keep working hard, i can pay that whole amount off in 3 years. before, 3 years felt like a lifetime, but maybe 3 years isn't so bad, if it means i can do anything i want, forever, after that.
some people will be disappointed in me for this, and some will think it's a smart decision.
i was miserable at home, previously. i need to change that. i need to change my outlook and my habits, to get out of the house, have fun, enjoy alone time, and make real friends. maybe i can learn how to sail in skaneateles; it's spring now, afterall. i'll have a car, i can go exploring. maybe i can find a job that won't interfere with my company, to help me meet people. it's kind of like how some of my friends are taking 2 or 3 years to get their masters, only i'll be eliminating the biggest barrier between me and feeling like i'm free.
i'll stay in california for a few weeks – until a day or so after my birthday. it'll give me a chance to catch up with my friends here, enjoy the beauties of california, and say some proper goodbyes at the end. i just need the right attitude.
One of Wellington's endangered species scheduled to face extinction at the end of October, captured inbound on a Route 9 service to the Wellington Railway Station Interchange Hub on Thursday, 20 July 2017.
NZ Bus 369 (EWE103 10 March 2009) / 2009 Designline Citybus Trolley / VIN:7A874010908008247 / Designline B43DW bodywork. Go Wellington, Kilbirnie
CHRIS LAIDLAW: SOME CLEAR-EYED FACTS ABOUT WELLINGTON BUSES
Dominion Post, 21 July 2017
OPINION: You've got to hand it to Dave Armstrong – his opinion piece (The dirty truth about Wellington buses, July 17) makes the answer to the city's public transport challenges seem very simple.
And that answer? Soldier on with ageing, inefficient trolleybuses, ignoring the costs and the fact their presence constrains development of an efficient network.
He has clearly not noticed that Greater Wellington Regional Council is looking well beyond the immediate future to a modern all-electric bus fleet, and that this transformation is well under way.
Here are a few facts:
- Bringing the trolley infrastructure (overhead wires, substations, power supply and underground cabling) up to scratch would have cost ratepayers at least $50 million. Dave's figure of $18m is probably a reference to the $17m Wellington Electricity said was necessary solely to make the substations safe by modern standards (let alone efficient).
- Greater Wellington voted to replace the trolleys, not "quick smart" as Dave suggests, but after rational analysis of the huge upgrade cost, the additional running cost ($6m a year and climbing), the inflexibility of the trolley routes (which made modifying the wider bus network very difficult) and the arrival of full battery-electric bus technology.
- Wellington Electricity, which maintains the power supply and substations and supplies power to the overhead lines, said, significantly, that upgrading this outmoded form of transport was "throwing good money after bad". Keeping the trolleys running became effectively a non-option.
- Wrightspeed technology is hardly a "praiseworthy but flawed" approach to reducing emissions. Yes, such hybrid buses could consume 75 per cent of the fuel of a regular diesel bus, but that's the maximum consumption under extreme conditions (namely, fully loaded on steep hills). Overall, it would be a lot less. In spite of this, they don't seem to be green enough for Dave.
Here are some more facts: Greater Wellington does not have its head in the sand about climate change or the need to get a modern bus fleet on the region's roads as soon as possible. That was a fundamental factor in recent bus tenders, the results of which will become apparent from July next year when the region will have a fleet of 400 buses, most of them brand new. Eighty per cent will meet or better the Euro V emissions standard, and two-thirds will meet the Euro VI standard – the toughest in the world.
That achievement alone will give the region one of the cleanest fleets in the world. Harmful emissions will immediately fall 38 per cent in Wellington compared with current levels (and 86 per cent in the Hutt Valley where older buses operate). It's a massive improvement – not an "if" or a "maybe". It's a guarantee.
An all-electric fleet can't happen overnight just because Dave and others say it should. These things happen incrementally and we are on our way. From next July, thanks to investment by new operator Tranzit,10 all-electric double-deckers will begin operating in the city (along with 50 ultra-low-emission diesel versions). Another 22 all-electric double-deckers will follow over the next three years.
Some people still object to the fact it will take years to reach an all-electric fleet at this rate – to which I would answer: yes, but we will have the cleanest-burning diesels to carry us through the transition, and it is the longer-term guarantee that counts. And all going well, we will also have a fleet of Wrightspeed hybrid buses.
Finally, there's the $1.3 billion investment over the next five years in the region's transport services and infrastructure as the number of commuter trips on buses, trains and ferries rises from the present 36 million a year to 42 million by 2021. The result will be a modern, integrated public transport network – the best in the country – and one we can be proud to call our own. Such a network will attract commuters out of their cars – and that's where we can make the biggest impact on climate change.
Now there's a story worth writing about.
- Chris Laidlaw chairs Greater Wellington Regional Council.
THE DIRTY TRUTH ABOUT WELLINGTON BUSES – AND WHY GWRC WANTS TO KEEP IT SECRET
Stuff, July 17, 2017
OPINION: It's a situation every Wellington cyclist or pedestrian knows well. You come up behind a diesel bus stopped at the lights. Then the lights change and the bus moves forward. You are left choking and spluttering in the wake of sooty exhaust.
But the unpleasantness is only part of the problem. Diesel emissions contribute to greater air pollution – which ultimately leads to higher levels of respiratory disease, therefore higher health costs. Then there's climate change.
The Greater Wellington Regional Council (GWRC) might tell you that diesel emissions are the unfortunate but necessary cost of having a public bus system. Besides, the technology will eventually improve and get cheaper. GWRC chairman Chris Laidlaw even reckons we are 'likely' to see some electric buses in Wellington soon. "Hopefully", before you can say "melting polar icecap", Wellington will have entirely electric buses.
The trouble is, fully electric buses aren't yet available, and our clean, green trolleybuses are being sent to the electric chair at the end of October. That means our supposedly environmentally friendly city will be reliant on dirty diesel buses, probably cheap hand-me-downs from Auckland, for "at least" eight months.
Perhaps Wellington needs to replace the motto on its coat of arms from Suprema a Situ to Supremely Sooty until we're fully electric. Liberal Wellingtonians of the type who sit on the GRWC would be horrified to be compared with Donald Trump, but when it comes to climate change, are we that different?
So why did the GWRC get rid of trolley buses if there was no clean, cost-effective alternative readily available? Privately owned Wellington Electricity estimated that it would cost between $18 million and $52 million to upgrade the dilapidated electricity substations powering the trolleys. Funny how councillors who wanted to get rid of the trolleys only quoted the upper limit.
Why had the substations run down? That often happens when you privatise a public asset. After council-owned Capital Power was sold off in the 1990s – thanks a lot, Fran Wilde and Mark Blumsky – it went through four different owners to eventually become Wellington Electricity. Successive corporate owners have made handsome capital gains and profits, but haven't invested in infrastructure.
We don't know exactly how much upgrading the substations would have cost because the GWRC voted down a motion asking for an independent expert review of the estimated cost. They simply voted – with the exception of Greens Sue Kedgley and Paul Bruce – to get rid of the trolleys quick smart. Could this be the biggest environmental backfire since diesel buses first sputtered into town?
The good news is that new operator Tranzit will be using buses that emit 38 per cent less harmful pollutants than current ones. Even better, NZ Bus will be fitting 57 Wellington trolleybuses with Wrightspeed motors. These are hybrid engines with rechargeable electric batteries.
According to NZ Bus chief executive Zane Fulljames, the fleet of 57 trolleybuses "could" be converted in time for use on NZ Bus routes when new contracts start in July next year.
But how green are these buses really? According to NZ Bus, they could use as much as 75 per cent of the diesel used by a normal diesel bus, though the company is looking at ways to reduce this. A best-case scenario "could" see some buses running entirely on rechargeable batteries.
NZ Bus should be applauded for trying to come up with a solution, however flawed. Meanwhile, I propose that GRWC councillors who voted to get rid of the trolleys so soon should be made to travel on sooty diesel buses for the rest of their natural term – until the next election.
I'm not happy hearing councillors and providers using words like "likely", "might", "could", "hopefully", "ideally", "maybe", "element of risk" and "time will tell" when it comes to public transport. I want to commute on an efficient clean bus, not come in on a wing and a prayer.
In the meantime, can I suggest GWRC issues free face masks to ratepayers who have to walk or cycle near the diesel buses when they sputter down from Auckland. And the face masks could also work as cunning disguises during the next local body elections for GWRC councillors who voted to get rid of the trolleys.
Leaflet being handed out by protesters assembled outside the Organization of American States calling for OAS involvement in constraining the actions of the Maduro presidency in Venezuela.
Washington, DC / January 19, 2014
More information: www.americanprogress.org/events/2009/09/deficit_event.html
This year, the federal deficit will exceed 11 percent of the gross domestic product—higher than at any point in the country's post-war history. Though the size of the current deficit is due largely to pre-existing policies, economic recession, and one-time policies to revive the economy, there is no question that public concern over the long-term fiscal gap has intensified.
Last month, the Congressional Budget Office and the Office of Management and Budget both released new projections that predict substantial budget deficits in each of the next 10 years. If left unchecked, these long-term deficits could pose significant challenges, including substantially weakening economic growth, constraining much needed public investments, and making the United States more dependent on foreign lenders.
Please join the Center for American Progress and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities for a conference designed to lay the intellectual groundwork for efforts that the administration and Congress should undertake—once the economy has fully recovered—to put the nation on a more sustainable fiscal path.
More information: www.americanprogress.org/events/2009/09/deficit_event.html
This year, the federal deficit will exceed 11 percent of the gross domestic product—higher than at any point in the country's post-war history. Though the size of the current deficit is due largely to pre-existing policies, economic recession, and one-time policies to revive the economy, there is no question that public concern over the long-term fiscal gap has intensified.
Last month, the Congressional Budget Office and the Office of Management and Budget both released new projections that predict substantial budget deficits in each of the next 10 years. If left unchecked, these long-term deficits could pose significant challenges, including substantially weakening economic growth, constraining much needed public investments, and making the United States more dependent on foreign lenders.
Please join the Center for American Progress and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities for a conference designed to lay the intellectual groundwork for efforts that the administration and Congress should undertake—once the economy has fully recovered—to put the nation on a more sustainable fiscal path.
What is Offshore Web Hosting Good for?
Here are the resources I use: www.sidewages.com/resources/
Why Offshore Web Hosting?
- have you even heard of it before?
- benefits vary by country
- freedom is a primary key
- privacy is also an important factor
Legalities Across the Globe
- certain countries restrict certain sites
- other countries are more enabling
- laws can protect but possibly constrain, too
Privacy is Always in Mind
- can choose anonymous hosting
- protect your identity from the masses
- don't have to worry about random stalkers
- DON'T do this for unlawful reasons!
- think long term and world-wide impact
Consider the Costs
- some offshore hosting can be extremely cheap
- others can be crazy expensive
- other countries may open advertising routes
Freedom from Nature?
- natural disasters are a real concern
- you may not be able to relocate
- no reason you can't keep your data safe
- ensure website protection by location
But Where are these Offshore Places?
- the United States and United Kingdom
- Panama, Netherlands, Singapore
- China can be good, but be aware of spam rules
Wrapping Up Your Hosting Needs
- looking for reliability in any situation
- potentially powerful price for performance
- legalities and privacy are important
- do what's right and get to doing already
Here are the resources I use: www.sidewages.com/resources/
The images on the right have grey at the edges — this is a result of correcting distortion and forgetting to crop out the edges of the image.
The images on the right have been cropped to remove the grey edging.
Quick Tip:
The easiest fix for this is to check Constrain Crop when correcting perspective in Lightroom — it will automatically crop to the new dimensions.
Post Processing Tutorials:
Constrain Crop is mentioned in this tutorial: adobe.ly/wH0Q2v
My entry for the FBTB Moc Madness. This is Adjenka favorite method of holding captive prisoner: a custom made physical constraining module.
More information: www.americanprogress.org/events/2009/09/deficit_event.html
This year, the federal deficit will exceed 11 percent of the gross domestic product—higher than at any point in the country's post-war history. Though the size of the current deficit is due largely to pre-existing policies, economic recession, and one-time policies to revive the economy, there is no question that public concern over the long-term fiscal gap has intensified.
Last month, the Congressional Budget Office and the Office of Management and Budget both released new projections that predict substantial budget deficits in each of the next 10 years. If left unchecked, these long-term deficits could pose significant challenges, including substantially weakening economic growth, constraining much needed public investments, and making the United States more dependent on foreign lenders.
Please join the Center for American Progress and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities for a conference designed to lay the intellectual groundwork for efforts that the administration and Congress should undertake—once the economy has fully recovered—to put the nation on a more sustainable fiscal path.
The Sacral Chakra – Gateway to your sexuality and creativity
Continuing my series on the Chakras which are your power centers today we deal with the Chakra for our sexuality and creativity. Located around the womb/stomach area, this second chakra is believed to be the place from which we give birth, not literally but in its most creative sense. In the same way that the Empress in the Major Arcana of the Tarot is the great mother of all things, our Sacral Chakra is the origin of our power to create and experience abundance as well as the connection to our sexuality.
This area is considered important across many ancient and spiritual traditions. The Chinese call this area the Dan Tien, which some translate as ‘Elixir field’. It is believed to be the center of our physical and spiritual power and is linked with both thought and feeling, hence its importance in medicine, meditation, and martial arts. In the tradition of Yoga, this area is called the Manipura, and Prana – or life energy – is thought to radiate from here.
I believe this area has particular significance for women and our connection to ourselves, our bodies, our divine wisdom, and our sexuality.
Repressing our sexuality or creativity can inhibit our power. When it comes to our sexuality, this may mean loosening up around the labels that we use to define ourselves by who and how we love. We are all divine beings, capable of the most incredible love and intense connections and to try and constrain that magnificence within a word, a label or an identity can only place a limit around all that we are.
This is also the home of your creativity. You literally give birth to ideas and inspiration from this Chakra. If you feel creatively blocked then this is the Chakra to work on.
The amazing power source around this Chakra is hinted at in the way that we talk about the importance of going with our gut feelings, or not being able to stomach something. This is the area that strongly communicates our intuitions and can act as a powerful indicator of whether we are on the right track or heading in the wrong direction, and in terms of what is good for us and what we might need to be wary of.
Keeping your sacral Chakra turning
1/ Take the time to look at how you view your sexuality. Are you comfortable with who you are? Do you feel the need to define or explain yourself? If you lived in a world where there were no descriptions or judgments, how would you experience the depth of your connection to other people?
Masonic Wall Decoration in the Masonic West.
2nd degree fellowcraft tracing board artOn our way to the Sanctum Sanctorum, the newly made Mason undertakes a passage through what is commonly called the Middle Chamber. The reference into the middle way is through the temple of Solomon, and the pathway to the Holy of Holies, the adytum in which the Holy Ark of the covenant resides at the the Kodesh Hakodashim, or the place in which deity dwells. In that journey through the middle space, the Second degree brother is introduced to some of the more seemingly secular influenced aspects of the fraternity that begin to take on a double, or symbolic, meaning. On their surface, the basic notions of these things are obvious, but not until you start to look at them closely, at their deeper meanings, that we start to see their relationships to other more esoteric ideas. This is similar to religious traditions where withing one religious text there can be multiple layers of meaning, and multiple ways of interpretation which can lead to an allegorical, a moral, or a mystical meaning.
Indeed, as the degree is symbolically in King Solomon’s Temple, so to can it be seen as a symbolic metaphor to our own internal path, what Joseph Campbell calls the hero quest, and where you “leave the world that you you’re in and go into a depth or into a distance or up to a height.”[1]
This is not to assume that the Masonic degrees have a similar relevancy to sacred or Masonic symbols, tracing board, second degree, 2 degreespiritual texts, though some could argue that their significance is almost as powerful to some observants. It is a system of morality that strives to make good men better, which runs nearly in parallel with the many Volumes of the Sacred Law which seeks similar outcomes to achieve as it outlines and instructs its path to elevation. Whether its salvation or spiritual awakening the holy books seek to instruct its adherents to live better lives through their faith, the same that Freemasonry strives to through its practice – to make those good men better. In that process of making the good man a candidate for the degrees is made an entered apprentice, symbolically as he ascends Jacob’s ladder. Once at the top, he is presented a series of three groups of symbols which are set before him to become a Second Degree mason so as they may observe and contemplate them in their path of progression, their hero’s quest, to the third degree.
The story of the degree, from Duncan’s Masonic Ritual and Monitor*, picks up after the passage between the twin pillars of the degree with the conductor delivering this instruction:
Brother, we will pursue our journey. The next thing that attracts our attention is the winding stairs which lead to the Middle Chamber of King Solomon’s Temple, consisting of three, five, and seven steps.
The first three allude to the three principal stages of human life, namely, youth, manhood, and old age. In youth, as Entered Apprentices, we ought industriously to occupy our minds in the attainment of useful knowledge; in manhood, as Fellow Crafts, we should apply our knowledge to the discharge of our respective duties to God, our neighbors, and ourselves; so that in old age, as Master Masons, we may enjoy the happy reflections consequent on a well-spent life, and die in the hope of a glorious immortality.
They also allude to the three principal supports in Masonry, namely, Wisdom, Strength. and Beauty; for it is necessary that there should be wisdom to contrive, strength to support, and beauty to adorn all great and important undertakings.
They further allude to the three principal officers of the Lodge, viz.: Master, and Senior and Junior Wardens.
Let’s pause here and consider what some of the deeper meanings of these first steps infer. The first segment is fairly straight forward; with narrative telling us that the three steps allude to the three stages of human life – Youth, Manhood, and Old Age.
Youth is defined as:
Young persons, collectively.
A young person; especially, a young man.
The quality or state of being young; youthfulness; juvenility.
The part of life that succeeds to childhood; the period of existence preceding maturity or age; the whole early part of life, from childhood, or, sometimes, from infancy, to manhood.
from ThinkExist.com
This is a pretty straight forward idea, especially as it says to us that “we ought industriously to occupy our minds in the attainment of useful knowledge”, but how does this apply to an older initiate, someone who is no longer in his youth. Is it a wistful thought to what was achieved when younger and in still in school? Taken on a deeper level, it could allude to the idea of the degree itself, the First degree being synonymous to mean that in the first, the candidate comes to the lodge as a youth (despite his chronological or physical age) with a clean slate of perception and a clean pallet of interpretation. In a sense, he comes as blank slate to its teachings or to the ideas before him. The degree being his introduction from exterior life to interior life which ushers him both into the fraternity and into the concept of the undertaking. Pike, in the first degree lecture in Morals and Dogma, calls this the focusing of the aspirants “unregulated force” – the channel by which they constrain their previously raw, infantile state, into that of a focused and youthful aspirant no matter their age.
Next, the candidate enters into his Manhood, more literally the 2nd degree, of which the ceremony says of it “we should apply our knowledge to the discharge of our respective duties to God, our neighbors, and ourselves” which is a really active process to live by. We, in essence, are to achieve much by way of our doing, essentially, the work of our daily life towards our deity in worship and practice, our community in which we live and reside, but more specifically as we apply it to ourselves in continuing to apply what we’ve learned in our youth to this state of existence.
The Free Dictionary defines Manhood as:
1. The state or time of being an adult male human.
2. The composite of qualities, such as courage, determination, and vigor, often thought to be appropriate to a man.
3. Adult males considered as a group; men.
4. The state of being human.
In the third entry, we can take much from it beyond it simply being our middle state of being. It is in fact our ability to BE in the first place, our SELF in daily practice. Interesting as this is, the second degree in which our further education takes place is not only about the practice of our youth but also our ability to learn and apply that education to our life.
Campbell says of the age progression that “As a child, you are brought up in a world of discipline, of obedience, and you are dependant on others. All this has to be transcended when you come to maturity, so that you can live not in dependency but with self-responsible authority.”[2] This is, in essence, the heart of the three degree progression and the fundamental of the three steps – he becoming a man (or woman, respecting your discipline)!
Old age is a bit more of a troubling and complex issue. So often in modern society we look at old age as a point of retirement where work and physical activity dramatically changes or diminishes. In this description, the idea of old age holds true in that the degree says of old age that in it “we may enjoy the happy reflections consequent on a well-spent life, and die in the hope of a glorious immortality”
There are several interesting meanings we can take from this especially that it is in the degrees that these physical changes are metaphorically said to take place which can become a literal interpretation, and that once attained the Master Mason can live through them – literally to reflect on the life well spent. What’s troubling here is that the major portion of the work of the lodge is spent in the third degree and a caution must be considered so as to not see the work of the Master Mason as just one of reflection and of casual rest lest no work, as described in Manhood, be completed.
Old Age is essentially defined as ones age nearing or passing the average life span of human beings, and thus at the end of the human life cycle. In the U.S. this is considered to be 78 years old giving a distinct impression as to when one should then become a True Master. It really is at a twilight of life period, one of great age and maturity where little change and much reflection takes place. This gives us an interesting perspective on the meaning as it implies a near end of physical life period of time which squares with the degrees lesson as the period of reflection of a life well spent. We become the Master of our all, ready to pass our knowledge on to the next generation.
With this vantage, we can take pause to deeply consider that our daily working of the degrees, intrinsically, could (or should) be conducted in the 2nd state, our manhood in which we conversely learn and grow.
Cirlot, in his Dictionary of Symbols, makes an interesting point in that the idea of progression in the stages of age is not unique to Masonry. Besides the stages themselves, the number three (3) is a representation of synthesis and unites the “solution of conflict posed by dualism.” In other words, the third object brings about balance for the first two opposing states. Think of the balance of three dots, one stacked above two.
From this point, the degree breaks off to correlate these first steps with the three principal pillars of the lodge as Wisdom, Strength and Beauty which also has an interesting Kabalistic point of reference in the three pillars that make up the structure of the tree of life. Keep in mind, the orientation assumes the viewer reverse the structure to mirror ones own standing rather than simply reflect the observer.
Wisdom, the left hand pillar of mercy, is an active pillar and representativeof alchemical fire, which is the principal of spirituality, often called the pillar of Jachin. It is a masculine pillar, and relates to our mental energy, our loving kindness, and our creative inspiration as we traverse it up the Kabbalaistic tree through the Sephirot.
Strength is the right hand pillar and takes the form of severity, shaped into the alchemical symbol of water. It can represent darkness, but it is a passive symbol that is feminine in nature and called the pillar of Boaz. Upon it we find the points of our thoughts and ideas, our feelings and emotions, and the physicality of our physical experience, our sensations, each an aspect of its Cabalistic progression.
Beauty, then, takes on the role of synthesis of the two, the pillar of mildness; it is upon this pillar that the novitiate is transformed through his progressive states as he progresses. The central pillar of Beauty is representative of Jehovah, the Tetragrammaton which represents deity itself"mercurial transformation" upon which our crown of being resides balanced through feeling and emotion from our foundation of justice and mercy, all of which springs from our link to the everyday world.
These aspects of the Kabbalah are not specific attributes of the study in the blue lodge, rather elements of deeper esoteric study, found more specifically in the degrees of the Scottish Rite. Because of the pillars, and their deeper symbolic meaning, it does, however, necessitate looking at them deeper to see the relationship between them as the blue lodge degrees seem to have parallels in the study of the Kabbalah – a happy accident at some time past or with purpose to link the ideas together. Wisdom, Strength, and Beauty are specific aspects of the lower three degrees and emphasized here in the first three steps into the middle chamber, necessitating their deeper esoteric study to fully grasp their broader importance.
As the degree instructs – Wisdom is to contrive, Strength is to support, and Beauty is to adorn all great and important undertakings – which are the fundamentals of the three pillars in the Kabbalaistic study.
Conversely, as the degree states, these three pillars “allude to the three principal officers of the Lodge, viz.: Master, and Senior and Junior Wardens.” and can be interpreted as such in both a micro (in lodge) fashion and in a broader macro tradition of Masonry itself – in this Kabbalaistic formulation. When the alchemical aspects of wisdom and strength are combined we can see the 6 pointed star appears, the symbol of transformation, often depicted in the conjoining of the square and compass in which Masons are instructed to square their actions and circumscribe their passions, which also corresponds to the link between the Saints Johns – the Baptist as the principal of alchemical water, and the Evangelist as the symbol of alchemical fire, both of whom have much deeper esoteric connections in Masonry. Also, the figures of the lodge leadership have a deeper connection as you begin to look at their alchemical connections too, when you look at their relationship to the Sun and moon, and the aspirant candidate as the solution of conflict, as Cirlot described, and as defined in the first degree – the three sphere aspect to balance the two of conflict.
From these short first few tentative steps, we can see that there is a wealth of Masonic symbols at hand, but we are only one third into our progression. Our next step takes us deeper into the middle chamber to its central position where we encounter an interesting juxtaposition of the physical world to our very human aspect of being through our senses.
For now, reflect a time on these first three steps and consider what comes next upon the path.
The oases of the Maghreb region are green islands flourishing in a constraining and harsh environment. They are home to a diversified and highly intensive and productive system, which has been developed over millennia.
Photo credit must be given: ©FAO/Noureddine Nasr
More information:
www.yahoo.com/finance/news/boeing-rues-us-china-trade-040...
Boeing Rues US-China Trade War as Airbus Wins $37 Billion Deal
(Bloomberg) -- A giant aviation deal from China on Friday underscored how trade tension between Washington and Beijing can impact individual companies, with Boeing Co. left looking on as rival Airbus SE scooped up orders worth at least $37 billion
China’s top three airlines ordered almost 300 Airbus jets -- one of the European planemaker’s biggest ever single-day deals -- in the first major acquisitions since pandemic restrictions isolated the world’s second-largest economy. Such deals tend to be made during state visits or at big industry events, making the timing unusual -- the Farnborough International Airshow doesn’t start until July 18.
“It is disappointing that geopolitical differences continue to constrain US aircraft exports,” a Boeing spokesperson said, adding that sales to China historically support tens of thousands of American jobs.
China is a key market for Boeing’s 737 family of jets and Airbus’s A320s, mainstays of modern commercial aviation. Relations between China and the West have become increasingly strained in recent years, particularly with the US as a trade war erupted and widespread tariffs were imposed by both sides. Boeing is America’s biggest exporter.
In response to Boeing’s comments, an editorial in the Chinese state-run Global Times said the order was a “normal business transaction” and that aviation was a key plank of China-Europe economic and trade cooperation. It said the deal was potentially helped by Airbus having an assembly plant in China and the weaker euro.
“It is natural for the US side to feel sour after losing the competition to Airbus,” the Global Times said. “Judging from the performance of these two companies in the global market, since 2019, Airbus has been way ahead of Boeing in terms of competing for passenger plane orders and market share.”
Bloomberg Intelligence analysts including George Ferguson wrote that Friday’s order “underscores the ongoing trade rift with the US and the travails for the 737 Max, which still isn’t flying in the Asian country. Boeing’s build rates will remain stunted without China.”
Carriers typically order aircraft years in advance due to limited manufacturing capacity, and they get discounts when they book in bulk, along with lucrative service and maintenance deals. Both Boeing and Airbus are struggling with production disruptions, partly due to supplier delays.
Airbus Presses Ahead With Plan to Boost A320 Build Rates 50%
Chinese airlines and Hong Kong’s Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd. have 142 unfilled orders with Boeing, including for the 737 Max, the yet-to-enter-service 777X, 787 Dreamliners and six freighter versions of 777 jets, according to the planemaker.
In the latest order, China Eastern Airlines Corp. is buying 100 A320neo narrow-body jets, while Air China Ltd. and subsidiary Shenzhen Airlines will take 96. China Southern Airlines Co., which in May removed more than 100 Boeing 737 Max jets from its near-term fleet plans, will buy 96 A320neos and lease additional planes.
China Eastern said in a statement Sunday that it is in a better position to bargain as the aviation market hasn’t fully recovered. The airline said it “obtained conditions more favorable than ever in terms of pricing and some other commercial terms.” China Southern said its board believes the concessions for its order were “comparable” with previous ones.
Shares of Chinese airlines fell Monday, extending Friday’s declines on reports that many had announced record high fuel surcharges. Air China’s Hong Kong-traded shares were the worst performers of the “Big Three” state carriers, sliding as much as 9.8%. Airbus shares rose 3% Friday, while Boeing added 2.3%.
China was the first nation to ground Boeing 737 Max jets in March 2019 following the second of two fatal crashes involving the model. Other regulators soon followed but most have since allowed the Max to fly again. It still hasn’t restarted commercial services in China.
“Boeing has complained about ‘geopolitical differences’ affecting its business, but China is not the one to blame,” the Global Times said. “If there is any political factor in this, it can only be said that the US politicization of economic and trade issues has backfired.”
www.yahoo.com/finance/news/chinese-state-airlines-buy-alm...
Chinese state airlines to buy almost 300 Airbus jets
BEIJING/SYDNEY (Reuters) -China's "Big Three" state airlines pledged on Friday to buy a total of almost 300 Airbus jets, the biggest order by Chinese carriers since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and a breakthrough for Europe as Boeing remains partially frozen out of China.
In apparently coordinated announcements, Air China and China Southern Airlines said they would each buy 96 A320neo-family jets worth $12.2 billion at list prices. China Eastern Airlines said it would buy 100 airplanes of the same type, worth $12.8 billion.
Airlines typically receive substantial discounts to list prices and China Eastern said these were larger than usual.
China's huge market accounts for a quarter of Airbus and Boeing deliveries in a normal year. But China has largely stood back from the global jet market as it juggled both the impact of COVID-19 and protracted trade tensions with the United States.
Industry sources said Beijing broadly balances jet purchases between Europe and the United States over time, with such large deals typically held in reserve for state visits.
But Friday's deal signalled a visible step towards Beijing's European supplier, they said. Until now, global trade and diplomatic tensions have broadly had the effect of delaying politically sensitive import decisions across the board.
Boeing reacted sharply to the announcement, unusually crediting "constructive dialogue" between European governments and Beijing for the blockbuster order and urging the U.S. and Chinese governments to engage in productive discussions.
"As a top U.S. exporter with a 50-year relationship with China’s aviation industry, it is disappointing that geopolitical differences continue to constrain U.S. aircraft exports," Boeing said in an emailed statement.
"Boeing aircraft sales to China historically support tens of thousands of American jobs, and we are hopeful orders and deliveries will resume promptly."
'EXTENSIVE DISCUSSIONS'
Boeing's 737 MAX has yet to resume commercial flights in China, even though the country joined other regulators late last year in lifting a grounding order imposed during a safety crisis.
So far this year, Boeing has delivered only one commercial jet to China against 47 for Airbus. It has about 150 airplanes waiting to be delivered to China, according to some estimates.
Airbus painted the win as a purely commercial victory, saying it demonstrated "strong confidence in Airbus". In a statement, it said the deal followed "long and extensive discussions" but did not mention any diplomatic support.
One diplomatic source played down any political involvement but noted challenges in ramping up output to deliver such a large number of planes while global supply chain problems persist.
The deal is subject to Chinese government approvals.
Airbus shares rose more than 3%. Boeing rose around 1,3% after slipping in pre-market trading.
China's airline industry, which took a heavy hit after authorities locked down Shanghai in April, has been steadily recovering in recent weeks.
China Eastern said the new narrowbody jets would be mostly deployed on domestic routes and on flights to neighbouring countries.
Deliveries will run from 2023 to 2027, with the bulk expected from 2024. Air China said its purchase would represent a 10.4% increase, while China Southern expects a 13% increase.
China Eastern has been roiled by the crash of a Boeing 737-800 jet in March, killing 132 people on board. Investigators are examining the actions of the crew, with no evidence found of a technical malfunction, people briefed on the matter have said.
Due to high ISO, the picture quality is BAD but well, you get the "picture" to tell a story, sometimes "beautiful" pictures tells nothing... :-)
I was having an assignment at KLCC Kuala Lumpur City Center and my wife bring HaiQal to the AQuaria, due to time constrain I can't spent too much times with my family, so I was a little bit rush to get the picture, maybe I'll visit again next time... :-)
This will make the frame haters scream in anguish! The Vauxhall car I mentioned in a previous photo, the owner muttered "You won't get a decent photo from down there".
Today was the Annual Classic Car Show at Pencoed, near Bridgend. As I haven't been for a few years I felt it was time to make a visit. The plan was simple, arrive early so I could photograph exhibits as they arrive and before the ground became too crowded. In practise, this was fine for commercial vehicles but the car sections were so close together it was almost impossible to be creative, especially with a wide angle bolted on the front!
The weather was extremely hot and by lunch time I'd had enough, 700 cars and other attractions crammed into a site little larger than a football field is a little constraining photographically!
More information: www.americanprogress.org/events/2009/09/deficit_event.html
This year, the federal deficit will exceed 11 percent of the gross domestic product—higher than at any point in the country's post-war history. Though the size of the current deficit is due largely to pre-existing policies, economic recession, and one-time policies to revive the economy, there is no question that public concern over the long-term fiscal gap has intensified.
Last month, the Congressional Budget Office and the Office of Management and Budget both released new projections that predict substantial budget deficits in each of the next 10 years. If left unchecked, these long-term deficits could pose significant challenges, including substantially weakening economic growth, constraining much needed public investments, and making the United States more dependent on foreign lenders.
Please join the Center for American Progress and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities for a conference designed to lay the intellectual groundwork for efforts that the administration and Congress should undertake—once the economy has fully recovered—to put the nation on a more sustainable fiscal path.
The Gates of Paradise - Panels from the Italian Renaissance sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti
The Old Testament of the bible was condensed into 10 panels to produce one of the defining masterpieces of the Italian Renaissance
Due to the crowd and space constrain, I wasn't able to capture the whole door with 10 panels. The top most 2 panels weren't captured in this picture but taken from wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Baptistery) -
These are what the panels depict:
1. Adam and Eve
2. Cain and Abel
3. Noah
4. Abraham
5. Isaac with Esau and Jacob
6. Joseph
7. Moses
8. Joshua
9. David
10. Solomon and the Queen of Sheba.
More information: www.americanprogress.org/events/2009/09/deficit_event.html
This year, the federal deficit will exceed 11 percent of the gross domestic product—higher than at any point in the country's post-war history. Though the size of the current deficit is due largely to pre-existing policies, economic recession, and one-time policies to revive the economy, there is no question that public concern over the long-term fiscal gap has intensified.
Last month, the Congressional Budget Office and the Office of Management and Budget both released new projections that predict substantial budget deficits in each of the next 10 years. If left unchecked, these long-term deficits could pose significant challenges, including substantially weakening economic growth, constraining much needed public investments, and making the United States more dependent on foreign lenders.
Please join the Center for American Progress and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities for a conference designed to lay the intellectual groundwork for efforts that the administration and Congress should undertake—once the economy has fully recovered—to put the nation on a more sustainable fiscal path.
As you enter the MTC, you obviously will miss your family, and many aspects of your daily schedule will be new and challenging. But for a young man well on his way to becoming a missionary, the basic adjustment to the rigors of missionary work and lifestyle will not be overwhelming, burdensome, or constraining. Thus, a key element of raising the bar includes working to become a missionary before going on a mission.
Fathers, do you understand your role in helping your son to become a missionary before he goes on a mission? You and your wife are key in the process of his becoming a missionary. Priesthood and auxiliary leaders, do you recognize your responsibility to assist parents and to help every young man become a missionary before he goes on a mission? The bar also has been raised for parents and for all members of the Church. Prayerful pondering of the principle of becoming will invite inspiration tailored to the specific needs of your son or to the young men whom you serve.
Source: Understanding Mormonism
PI: David Baker, University of Washington
This project is advancing protein structure modeling capabilities to enable the design of novel proteins, including therapeutic peptides that target diseases such as Ebola, HIV, and Alzheimer’s. Artificial peptides represent a new class of drugs that have potential for greater efficacy and fewer side effects than traditional drugs. In addition, the computational tools can be used to design peptide catalysts and enzymes for various environmental, energy, and industrial applications.
A designed 29-residue peptide that uses the three-way crosslinker 1,3,5-tris(bromomethyl)benzene (dark gray) to covalently constrain the structure and to form hydrophobic packing interactions with other residues. This molecule is currently being synthesized for experimental examination.
Image credit: Vikram Mulligan, University of Washington
Scientific discipline: Chemistry
This research used resources of the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility at Argonne National Laboratory.