Well, vanity corner again, I've scraped over a million hits. Given many of my pics either weren't taken by me (hospitals, some of the trains), or anyone can get a decent image (old pots and tiles), I can't claim a lot of credit. And don't bother commenting that Flickr hits aren't what they used to be, and/or I am terminally sad for counting hits, of course you're right.

 

But thanks everyone. Here are some sorts of stats, given my photostream contains pics of 'all those bloody trains' as someone said; pots and tiles; old hospitals; wildlife; and a few odds and ends. Of the roughly 4500 public images:-

 

Top image, unsurprisingly is about sex. A love struck couple who've lost all sense of time during prolonged intercourse, trapped on the railway main line, rescued by yours truly in a feat of derring do just before being squished by a flying express train, warts and all. I hope it disappoints all the prurient searchers!

 

Second highest, Portmeirion Pottery (Monte Sol - not a particularly rare pattern)

 

Highest tile by (William Morris) (number 3)

 

Highest hospital, Halifax War Hosptial (number 24)

 

Daw Mill under demolition, number 29. Suggest look at the pictures of it in action!

 

Highest wildlife, crane in France, number 39. Though I must say my wildlife pictures are relatively low quality and get low hits, most feature well down the list. Will be trying harder.

 

Highest railway image from me, number 40, D70 at Etruria in 1972, gratifyingly one of the first railway pics I ever took.

 

Highest modern railway image, D1015 on the Wellingborough - Mountsorrel stone, one of the days it didn't break down and block the MML.

 

Highest modern loco, at number 53, 60049 at Daw Mill.

 

Highest butterfly, number 62, a Purple Emperor.

 

Highest class 66, number 841 - come on like Black 5's and 47's, you'll love them one day!

 

Sort by Flickr's 'interestingness', and the top 30 are all trains, such is the input and community that made my leave railphotoarchive for all your knowledge and enthusiasm! Thanks enormously.

Snuck up on us at the last minute as we were about to leave. Lucky to have snapped a good shot given that it was getting so dark! Three exposure merge.

   

Wigan Pier

 

From Wikipedia,

  

On the right, the reconstructed Wigan pier

Wigan Pier is the name given today to the area around the canal at the bottom of the Wigan flight of locks on the Leeds and Liverpool Canal.[1] It is a popular location for visitors and the local community in Wigan, Greater Manchester, England, situated just a few hundred yards south-west of the town centre. The name "Wigan Pier" has humorous connotations since it conjures an image of a seaside pleasure pier, whereas Wigan is in fact an inland and traditionally industrial town.

  

History[edit]

 

The original "pier" at Wigan was a coal loading staithe, probably a wooden jetty, where wagons from a nearby colliery were unloaded into waiting barges on the canal. The original wooden pier is believed to have been demolished in 1929, with the iron from the tippler (a mechanism for tipping coal into the barges) being sold as scrap.[1]

 

The name Wigan Pier was possibly invented by and was brought to popular attention by George Formby, Sr. in the Music Halls of the early twentieth century and later by George Formby, Jr. who incorporated it into his songs. Someone looking out of an excursion train to Southport in the fog and seeing a coal gantry asked "Where are we?" and was told "Wigan Pier".[2] The tippler became the favoured location when people subsequently wanted to see it. There are references to it in songs such as On the Wigan Boat Express.[3]

 

In 1937, Wigan was featured in the title of George Orwell's The Road to Wigan Pier, which dealt, in large part, with the living conditions of England's working poor. In response to a critic, Orwell insisted "He [Orwell] liked Wigan very much — the people, not the scenery. Indeed, he has only one fault to find with it, and that is in respect of the celebrated Wigan Pier, which he had set his heart on seeing. Alas! Wigan Pier had been demolished, and even the spot where it used to stand is no longer certain."[4] Some have embraced the Orwellian link, as it has provided the area with a modest tourist base over the years. "It seems funny to celebrate Orwell for highlighting all our bad points, but Wigan wouldn't be anywhere near as famous without him," said the Wigan Pier Experience's manager, Carole Tyldesley. "In the end George Orwell has proved to be a strong marketing tool."[5] Others regard this connection as disappointing, considering it an insinuation that Wigan is no better now than it was at the time of Orwell's writing.[6]

 

To see the difference, it is worth recalling a description of the canal scene from The Road to Wigan Pier: "I remember a winter afternoon in the dreadful environs of Wigan. All round was the lunar landscape of slag-heaps, and to the north, through the passes, as it were, between the mountains of slag, you could see the factory chimneys sending out their plumes of smoke. The canal path was a mixture of cinders and frozen mud, criss-crossed by the imprints of innumerable clogs, and all round, as far as the slag-heaps in the distance, stretched the ‘flashes’ — pools of stagnant water that had seeped into the hollows caused by the subsidence of ancient pits. It was horribly cold. The ‘flashes’ were covered with ice the colour of raw umber, the bargemen were muffled to the eyes in sacks, the lock gates wore beards of ice. It seemed a world from which vegetation had been banished; nothing existed except smoke, shale, ice, mud, ashes, and foul water."[7]

 

Today, the slag heaps have been removed or landscaped with trees, the factories are closed or converted to housing and the canal is only used for recreational boating and fishing.

 

Existing buildings[edit]

 

The pier was at the end of a narrow gauge tramway from a colliery. The wagons would be brought right to the edge of the canal to be tippled so that their contents went straight into the waiting barges. The original wooden pier is believed to have been demolished in 1929, with the iron from the tippler being sold as scrap. Because of the more recent pride in the area's heritage, a replica tippler, consisting of two curved rails, has been erected at the original location.[1]

  

The original terminus of the canal, completed 1777

The former Wigan Terminus Warehouses were built in the 18th century and refurbished in the 1980s. Boats could moor inside the building and off-load directly into the warehouse.[8]

 

A warehouse with covered loading bays, converted into a museum of Victorian life (often mistakenly thought to be Wigan Pier), and the home to The Way We Were museum,[9] was part of the Wigan Pier Experience museum and exhibition centre. The exhibition featured a Victorian school room, a colliery disaster, the Second Boer War and (on the top floor) a complete pub transported from Hope Street and reconstructed by shopping centre developers. The Wigan Pier Theatre Company used these displays to remind present generations of "The Way We Were" – not always a happy life.[10] The attraction closed on 20 December 2007.[11]

 

Gibson's Warehouse is a Victorian cotton warehouse, originally built in 1777, re-built in 1984 as The Orwell at Wigan Pier, is situated on the canalside.[12]

 

Trencherfield Mill is a former cotton mill, located across the road from Wigan Pier - currently[when?] being converted into luxury apartments.[13] It still contains the massive working steam engine which will be kept in the new development.

 

There are several bridges across the canal. Bridge #51 Pottery Changeline is a roving bridge, one which swaps the tow path from one side of the canal to the other, usually in such a way as to allow the horse pulling the barge to pass easily and without disconnecting its tow-rope.[14] Bridge #50 Seven Stars Bridge is adjacent to the Seven Stars public house, taking its name from "The Plough" star constellation.[15]

 

Tana Toraja Regency (Indonesian for Torajaland or Land of the Toraja, abbreviated Tator) is a regency (kabupaten) of South Sulawesi Province of Indonesia, and home to the Toraja ethnic group. The local government seat is in Makale, while the center of Toraja culture is in Rantepao. But now, Tana Toraja has been divided to two regencies that consist of Tana Toraja with its capital at Makale and North toraja with its capital at Rantepao.

 

The Tana Toraja boundary was determined by the Dutch East Indies government in 1909. In 1926, Tana Toraja was under the administration of Bugis state, Luwu. The regentschap (or regency) status was given on 8 October 1946, the last regency given by the Dutch. Since 1984, Tana Toraja has been named as the second tourist destination after Bali by the Ministry of Tourism, Indonesia. Since then, hundreds of thousands of foreign visitors have visited this regency. In addition, numerous Western anthropologists have come to Tana Toraja to study the indigenous culture and people of Toraja.

 

GEOGRAPHY

Tana Toraja is centrally placed in the island of Sulawesi, 300 km north of Makassar, the provincial capital of South Sulawesi. It lies between latitude of 2°-3° South and longitude 119°-120° East (center: 3°S 120°ECoordinates: 3°S 120°E). The total area (since the separation of the new regency of North Toraja) is 2,054.30 km², about 4.4% of the total area of South Sulawesi province. The topography of Tana Toraja is mountainous; its minimum elevation is 150 m, while the maximum is 3,083 above the sea level.

 

ADMINISTRATION

Tana Toraja Regency in 2010 comprised nineteen administrative Districts (Kecamatan), tabulated below with their 2010 Census population.

 

The Torajans are an ethnic group indigenous to a mountainous region of South Sulawesi, Indonesia. Their population is approximately 1,100,000, of whom 450,000 live in the regency of Tana Toraja ("Land of Toraja").[1] Most of the population is Christian, and others are Muslim or have local animist beliefs known as aluk ("the way"). The Indonesian government has recognised this animistic belief as Aluk To Dolo ("Way of the Ancestors").

 

The word Toraja comes from the Buginese language term to riaja, meaning "people of the uplands". The Dutch colonial government named the people Toraja in 1909. Torajans are renowned for their elaborate funeral rites, burial sites carved into rocky cliffs, massive peaked-roof traditional houses known as tongkonan, and colourful wood carvings. Toraja funeral rites are important social events, usually attended by hundreds of people and lasting for several days.

 

Before the 20th century, Torajans lived in autonomous villages, where they practised animism and were relatively untouched by the outside world. In the early 1900s, Dutch missionaries first worked to convert Torajan highlanders to Christianity. When the Tana Toraja regency was further opened to the outside world in the 1970s, it became an icon of tourism in Indonesia: it was exploited by tourism development and studied by anthropologists. By the 1990s, when tourism peaked, Toraja society had changed significantly, from an agrarian model—in which social life and customs were outgrowths of the Aluk To Dolo—to a largely Christian society. Today, tourism and remittances from migrant Torajans have made for major changes in the Toraja highland, giving the Toraja a celebrity status within Indonesia and enhancing Toraja ethnic group pride.

 

ETHNIC IDENTITY

The Torajan people had little notion of themselves as a distinct ethnic group before the 20th century. Before Dutch colonisation and Christianisation, Torajans, who lived in highland areas, identified with their villages and did not share a broad sense of identity. Although complexes of rituals created linkages between highland villages, there were variations in dialects, differences in social hierarchies, and an array of ritual practices in the Sulawesi highland region. "Toraja" (from the coastal languages' to, meaning people; and riaja, uplands) was first used as a lowlander expression for highlanders. As a result, "Toraja" initially had more currency with outsiders—such as the Bugis and Makassarese, who constitute a majority of the lowland of Sulawesi—than with insiders. The Dutch missionaries' presence in the highlands gave rise to the Toraja ethnic consciousness in the Sa'dan Toraja region, and this shared identity grew with the rise of tourism in the Tana Toraja Regency. Since then, South Sulawesi has four main ethnic groups—the Bugis (the majority, including shipbuilders and seafarers), the Makassarese (lowland traders and seafarers), the Mandarese (traders and fishermen), and the Toraja (highland rice cultivators).

 

HISTORY

From the 17th century, the Dutch established trade and political control on Sulawesi through the Dutch East Indies Company. Over two centuries, they ignored the mountainous area in the central Sulawesi, where Torajans lived, because access was difficult and it had little productive agricultural land. In the late 19th century, the Dutch became increasingly concerned about the spread of Islam in the south of Sulawesi, especially among the Makassarese and Bugis peoples. The Dutch saw the animist highlanders as potential Christians. In the 1920s, the Reformed Missionary Alliance of the Dutch Reformed Church began missionary work aided by the Dutch colonial government. In addition to introducing Christianity, the Dutch abolished slavery and imposed local taxes. A line was drawn around the Sa'dan area and called Tana Toraja ("the land of Toraja"). Tana Toraja was first a subdivision of the Luwu kingdom that had claimed the area. In 1946, the Dutch granted Tana Toraja a regentschap, and it was recognised in 1957 as one of the regencies of Indonesia.

 

Early Dutch missionaries faced strong opposition among Torajans, especially among the elite, because the abolition of their profitable slave trade had angered them. Some Torajans were forcibly relocated to the lowlands by the Dutch, where they could be more easily controlled. Taxes were kept high, undermining the wealth of the elites. Ultimately, the Dutch influence did not subdue Torajan culture, and only a few Torajans were converted. In 1950, only 10% of the population had converted to Christianity.

 

In the 1930s, Muslim lowlanders attacked the Torajans, resulting in widespread Christian conversion among those who sought to align themselves with the Dutch for political protection and to form a movement against the Bugis and Makassarese Muslims. Between 1951 and 1965 (following Indonesian independence), southern Sulawesi faced a turbulent period as the Darul Islam separatist movement fought for an Islamic state in Sulawesi. The 15 years of guerrilla warfare led to massive conversions to Christianity.

 

Alignment with the Indonesian government, however, did not guarantee safety for the Torajans. In 1965, a presidential decree required every Indonesian citizen to belong to one of five officially recognised religions: Islam, Christianity (Protestantism and Catholicism), Hinduism, or Buddhism. The Torajan religious belief (aluk) was not legally recognised, and the Torajans raised their voices against the law. To make aluk accord with the law, it had to be accepted as part of one of the official religions. In 1969, Aluk To Dolo ("the way of ancestors") was legalised as a sect of Agama Hindu Dharma, the official name of Hinduism in Indonesia.

 

SOCIETY

There are three main types of affiliation in Toraja society: family, class and religion.

 

FAMILY AFFILIATION

Family is the primary social and political grouping in Torajan society. Each village is one extended family, the seat of which is the tongkonan, a traditional Torajan house. Each tongkonan has a name, which becomes the name of the village. The familial dons maintain village unity. Marriage between distant cousins (fourth cousins and beyond) is a common practice that strengthens kinship. Toraja society prohibits marriage between close cousins (up to and including the third cousin)—except for nobles, to prevent the dispersal of property. Kinship is actively reciprocal, meaning that the extended family helps each other farm, share buffalo rituals, and pay off debts.

 

Each person belongs to both the mother's and the father's families, the only bilateral family line in Indonesia. Children, therefore, inherit household affiliation from both mother and father, including land and even family debts. Children's names are given on the basis of kinship, and are usually chosen after dead relatives. Names of aunts, uncles and cousins are commonly referred to in the names of mothers, fathers and siblings.

 

Before the start of the formal administration of Toraja villages by the Tana Toraja Regency, each Toraja village was autonomous. In a more complex situation, in which one Toraja family could not handle their problems alone, several villages formed a group; sometimes, villages would unite against other villages. Relationship between families was expressed through blood, marriage, and shared ancestral houses (tongkonan), practically signed by the exchange of water buffalo and pigs on ritual occasions. Such exchanges not only built political and cultural ties between families but defined each person's place in a social hierarchy: who poured palm wine, who wrapped a corpse and prepared offerings, where each person could or could not sit, what dishes should be used or avoided, and even what piece of meat constituted one's share.

 

CLASS AFFILIATION

In early Toraja society, family relationships were tied closely to social class. There were three strata: nobles, commoners, and slaves (slavery was abolished in 1909 by the Dutch East Indies government). Class was inherited through the mother. It was taboo, therefore, to marry "down" with a woman of lower class. On the other hand, marrying a woman of higher class could improve the status of the next generation. The nobility's condescending attitude toward the commoners is still maintained today for reasons of family prestige.

 

Nobles, who were believed to be direct descendants of the descended person from heaven, lived in tongkonans, while commoners lived in less lavish houses (bamboo shacks called banua). Slaves lived in small huts, which had to be built around their owner's tongkonan. Commoners might marry anyone, but nobles preferred to marry in-family to maintain their status. Sometimes nobles married Bugis or Makassarese nobles. Commoners and slaves were prohibited from having death feasts. Despite close kinship and status inheritance, there was some social mobility, as marriage or change in wealth could affect an individuals status. Wealth was counted by the ownership of water buffaloes.

 

Slaves in Toraja society were family property. Sometimes Torajans decided to become slaves when they incurred a debt, pledging to work as payment. Slaves could be taken during wars, and slave trading was common. Slaves could buy their freedom, but their children still inherited slave status. Slaves were prohibited from wearing bronze or gold, carving their houses, eating from the same dishes as their owners, or having sex with free women—a crime punishable by death.

 

RELIGIOUS AFFILATION

Toraja's indigenous belief system is polytheistic animism, called aluk, or "the way" (sometimes translated as "the law"). In the Toraja myth, the ancestors of Torajan people came down from heaven using stairs, which were then used by the Torajans as a communication medium with Puang Matua, the Creator. The cosmos, according to aluk, is divided into the upper world (heaven), the world of man (earth), and the underworld. At first, heaven and earth were married, then there was a darkness, a separation, and finally the light. Animals live in the underworld, which is represented by rectangular space enclosed by pillars, the earth is for mankind, and the heaven world is located above, covered with a saddle-shaped roof. Other Toraja gods include Pong Banggai di Rante (god of Earth), Indo' Ongon-Ongon (a goddess who can cause earthquakes), Pong Lalondong (god of death), and Indo' Belo Tumbang (goddess of medicine); there are many more.

 

The earthly authority, whose words and actions should be cleaved to both in life (agriculture) and death (funerals), is called to minaa (an aluk priest). Aluk is not just a belief system; it is a combination of law, religion, and habit. Aluk governs social life, agricultural practices, and ancestral rituals. The details of aluk may vary from one village to another. One common law is the requirement that death and life rituals be separated. Torajans believe that performing death rituals might ruin their corpses if combined with life rituals. The two rituals are equally important. During the time of the Dutch missionaries, Christian Torajans were prohibited from attending or performing life rituals, but were allowed to perform death rituals. Consequently, Toraja's death rituals are still practised today, while life rituals have diminished.

 

CULTURE

TONGKONAN

Tongkonan are the traditional Torajan ancestral houses. They stand high on wooden piles, topped with a layered split-bamboo roof shaped in a sweeping curved arc, and they are incised with red, black, and yellow detailed wood carvings on the exterior walls. The word "tongkonan" comes from the Torajan tongkon ("to sit").

 

Tongkonan are the center of Torajan social life. The rituals associated with the tongkonan are important expressions of Torajan spiritual life, and therefore all family members are impelled to participate, because symbolically the tongkonan represents links to their ancestors and to living and future kin. According to Torajan myth, the first tongkonan was built in heaven on four poles, with a roof made of Indian cloth. When the first Torajan ancestor descended to earth, he imitated the house and held a large ceremony.

 

The construction of a tongkonan is laborious work and is usually done with the help of the extended family. There are three types of tongkonan. The tongkonan layuk is the house of the highest authority, used as the "center of government". The tongkonan pekamberan belongs to the family members who have some authority in local traditions. Ordinary family members reside in the tongkonan batu. The exclusivity to the nobility of the tongkonan is diminishing as many Torajan commoners find lucrative employment in other parts of Indonesia. As they send back money to their families, they enable the construction of larger tongkonan.

 

Architecture in the style of a tongkonan is still very common. Various administration buildings were built in this style in recent years, e.g. the Kecamatan building in Rantepao.

 

WOOD CARVINGS

To express social and religious concepts, Torajans carve wood, calling it Pa'ssura (or "the writing"). Wood carvings are therefore Toraja's cultural manifestation.

 

Each carving receives a special name, and common motifs are animals and plants that symbolise some virtue. For example, water plants and animals, such as crabs, tadpoles and water weeds, are commonly found to symbolise fertility. In some areas noble elders claim these symbols refer to strength of noble family, but not everyone agrees. The overall meaning of groups of carved motifs on houses remains debated and tourism has further complicated these debates because some feel a uniform explanation must be presented to tourists. Torajan wood carvings are composed of numerous square panels, each of which can represent various things, for example buffaloes as a wish of wealth for the family; a knot and a box, symbolizing the hope that all of the family's offspring will be happy and live in harmony; aquatic animals, indicating the need for fast and hard work, just like moving on the surface of water.

 

Regularity and order are common features in Toraja wood carving (see table below), as well as abstracts and geometrical designs. Nature is frequently used as the basis of Toraja's ornaments, because nature is full of abstractions and geometries with regularities and ordering. Toraja's ornaments have been studied in ethnomathematics to reveal their mathematical structure, but Torajans base this art only on approximations. To create an ornament, bamboo sticks are used as a geometrical tool.

 

FUNERAL RITES

In Toraja society, the funeral ritual is the most elaborate and expensive event. The richer and more powerful the individual, the more expensive is the funeral. In the aluk religion, only nobles have the right to have an extensive death feast. The death feast of a nobleman is usually attended by thousands and lasts for several days. A ceremonial site, called rante, is usually prepared in a large, grassy field where shelters for audiences, rice barns, and other ceremonial funeral structures are specially made by the deceased's family. Flute music, funeral chants, songs and poems, and crying and wailing are traditional Toraja expressions of grief with the exceptions of funerals for young children, and poor, low-status adults.

 

The ceremony is often held weeks, months, or years after the death so that the deceased's family can raise the significant funds needed to cover funeral expenses. Torajans traditionally believe that death is not a sudden, abrupt event, but a gradual process toward Puya (the land of souls, or afterlife). During the waiting period, the body of the deceased is wrapped in several layers of cloth and kept under the tongkonan. The soul of the deceased is thought to linger around the village until the funeral ceremony is completed, after which it begins its journey to Puya.

 

Another component of the ritual is the slaughter of water buffalo. The more powerful the person who died, the more buffalo are slaughtered at the death feast. Buffalo carcasses, including their heads, are usually lined up on a field waiting for their owner, who is in the "sleeping stage". Torajans believe that the deceased will need the buffalo to make the journey and that they will be quicker to arrive at Puya if they have many buffalo. Slaughtering tens of water buffalo and hundreds of pigs using a machete is the climax of the elaborate death feast, with dancing and music and young boys who catch spurting blood in long bamboo tubes. Some of the slaughtered animals are given by guests as "gifts", which are carefully noted because they will be considered debts of the deceased's family. However, a cockfight, known as bulangan londong, is an integral part of the ceremony. As with the sacrifice of the buffalo and the pigs, the cockfight is considered sacred because it involves the spilling of blood on the earth. In particular, the tradition requires the sacrifice of at least three chickens. However, it is common for at least 25 pairs of chickens to be set against each other in the context of the ceremony.

 

There are three methods of burial: the coffin may be laid in a cave or in a carved stone grave, or hung on a cliff. It contains any possessions that the deceased will need in the afterlife. The wealthy are often buried in a stone grave carved out of a rocky cliff. The grave is usually expensive and takes a few months to complete. In some areas, a stone cave may be found that is large enough to accommodate a whole family. A wood-carved effigy, called Tau tau, is usually placed in the cave looking out over the land. The coffin of a baby or child may be hung from ropes on a cliff face or from a tree. This hanging grave usually lasts for years, until the ropes rot and the coffin falls to the ground.

 

In the ritual called Ma'Nene, that takes place each year in August, the bodies of the deceased are exhumed to be washed, groomed and dressed in new clothes. The mummies are then walked around the village.

 

DANNCE AND MUSIC

Torajans perform dances on several occasions, most often during their elaborate funeral ceremonies. They dance to express their grief, and to honour and even cheer the deceased person because he is going to have a long journey in the afterlife. First, a group of men form a circle and sing a monotonous chant throughout the night to honour the deceased (a ritual called Ma'badong). This is considered by many Torajans to be the most important component of the funeral ceremony. On the second funeral day, the Ma'randing warrior dance is performed to praise the courage of the deceased during life. Several men perform the dance with a sword, a large shield made from buffalo skin, a helmet with a buffalo horn, and other ornamentation. The Ma'randing dance precedes a procession in which the deceased is carried from a rice barn to the rante, the site of the funeral ceremony. During the funeral, elder women perform the Ma'katia dance while singing a poetic song and wearing a long feathered costume. The Ma'akatia dance is performed to remind the audience of the generosity and loyalty of the deceased person. After the bloody ceremony of buffalo and pig slaughter, a group of boys and girls clap their hands while performing a cheerful dance called Ma'dondan.

 

As in other agricultural societies, Torajans dance and sing during harvest time. The Ma'bugi dance celebrates the thanksgiving event, and the Ma'gandangi dance is performed while Torajans are pounding rice. There are several war dances, such as the Manimbong dance performed by men, followed by the Ma'dandan dance performed by women. The aluk religion governs when and how Torajans dance. A dance called Ma'bua can be performed only once every 12 years. Ma'bua is a major Toraja ceremony in which priests wear a buffalo head and dance around a sacred tree.

 

A traditional musical instrument of the Toraja is a bamboo flute called a Pa'suling (suling is an Indonesian word for flute). This six-holed flute (not unique to the Toraja) is played at many dances, such as the thanksgiving dance Ma'bondensan, where the flute accompanies a group of shirtless, dancing men with long fingernails. The Toraja have indigenous musical instruments, such as the Pa'pelle (made from palm leaves) and the Pa'karombi (the Torajan version of a jaw harp). The Pa'pelle is played during harvest time and at house inauguration ceremonies.

 

COGENDER VIEWS

Among the Saʼadan (eastern Toraja) in the island of Sulawesi (Celebes), Indonesia, there are homosexual male toburake tambolang shamans; although among their neighbors the Mamasa (western Toraja) there are instead only heterosexual female toburake shamanesses.

 

LANGUAGE

The ethnic Toraja language is dominant in Tana Toraja with the main language as the Sa'dan Toraja. Although the national Indonesian language is the official language and is spoken in the community, all elementary schools in Tana Toraja teach Toraja language.

 

Language varieties of Toraja, including Kalumpang, Mamasa, Tae, Talondo, Toala, and Toraja-Sa'dan, belong to the Malayo-Polynesian language from the Austronesian family. At the outset, the isolated geographical nature of Tana Toraja formed many dialects between the Toraja languages themselves. After the formal administration of Tana Toraja, some Toraja dialects have been influenced by other languages through the transmigration program, introduced since the colonialism period, and it has been a major factor in the linguistic variety of Toraja languages.

A prominent attribute of Toraja language is the notion of grief. The importance of death ceremony in Toraja culture has characterised their languages to express intricate degrees of grief and mourning. The Toraja language contains many terms referring to sadness, longing, depression, and mental pain. Giving a clear expression of the psychological and physical effect of loss is a catharsis and sometimes lessens the pain of grief itself.

 

ECONOMY

Prior to Suharto's "New Order" administration, the Torajan economy was based on agriculture, with cultivated wet rice in terraced fields on mountain slopes, and supplemental cassava and maize crops. Much time and energy were devoted to raising water buffalo, pigs, and chickens, primarily for ceremonial sacrifices and consumption. Coffee was the first significant cash crop produced in Toraja, and was introduced in the mid 19th century, changing the local economy towards commodity production for external markets and gaining an excellent reputation for quality in the international market.

 

With the commencement of the New Order in 1965, Indonesia's economy developed and opened to foreign investment. In Toraja, a coffee plantation and factory was established by Key Coffee of Japan, and Torajan coffee regained a reputation for quality within the growing international specialty coffee sector Multinational oil and mining companies opened new operations in Indonesia during the 1970s and 1980s. Torajans, particularly younger ones, relocated to work for the foreign companies—to Kalimantan for timber and oil, to Papua for mining, to the cities of Sulawesi and Java, and many went to Malaysia. The out-migration of Torajans was steady until 1985. and has continued since, with remittances sent back by emigre Torajans performing an important role within the contemporary economy.

 

Tourism commenced in Toraja in the 1970s, and accelerated in the 1980s and 1990s. Between 1984 and 1997, a significant number of Torajans obtained their incomes from tourism, working in and owning hotels, as tour guides, drivers, or selling souvenirs. With the rise of political and economic instability in Indonesia in the late 1990s—including religious conflicts elsewhere on Sulawesi—tourism in Tana Toraja has declined dramatically. Toraja continues to be a well known origin for Indonesian coffee, grown by both smallholders and plantation estates, although migration, remittances and off-farm income is considered far more important to most households, even those in rural areas.

 

TOURISM AND CULTURAL CHANGE

Before the 1970s, Toraja was almost unknown to Western tourism. In 1971, about 50 Europeans visited Tana Toraja. In 1972, at least 400 visitors attended the funeral ritual of Puang of Sangalla, the highest-ranking nobleman in Tana Toraja and the so-called "last pure-blooded Toraja noble." The event was documented by National Geographic and broadcast in several European countries. In 1976, about 12,000 tourists visited the regency and in 1981, Torajan sculpture was exhibited in major North American museums. "The land of the heavenly kings of Tana Toraja", as written in the exhibition brochure, embraced the outside world.

 

In 1984, the Indonesian Ministry of Tourism declared Tana Toraja Regency the prima donna of South Sulawesi. Tana Toraja was heralded as "the second stop after Bali". Tourism was increasing dramatically: by 1985, a total number of 150,000 foreigners had visited the Regency (in addition to 80,000 domestic tourists), and the annual number of foreign visitors was recorded at 40,000 in 1989. Souvenir stands appeared in Rantepao, the cultural center of Toraja, roads were sealed at the most-visited tourist sites, new hotels and tourist-oriented restaurants were opened, and an airstrip was opened in the Regency in 1981.

 

Tourism developers have marketed Tana Toraja as an exotic adventure—an area rich in culture and off the beaten track. Western tourists expected to see stone-age villages and pagan funerals. Toraja is for tourists who have gone as far as Bali and are willing to see more of the wild, "untouched" islands. However, they were more likely to see a Torajan wearing a hat and denim, living in a Christian society. Tourists felt that the tongkonan and other Torajan rituals had been preconceived to make profits, and complained that the destination was too commercialised. This has resulted in several clashes between Torajans and tourism developers, whom Torajans see as outsiders.

 

A clash between local Torajan leaders and the South Sulawesi provincial government (as a tourist developer) broke out in 1985. The government designated 18 Toraja villages and burial sites as traditional tourist attractions. Consequently, zoning restrictions were applied to these areas, such that Torajans themselves were barred from changing their tongkonans and burial sites. The plan was opposed by some Torajan leaders, as they felt that their rituals and traditions were being determined by outsiders. As a result, in 1987, the Torajan village of Kété Kesú and several other designated tourist attractions closed their doors to tourists. This closure lasted only a few days, as the villagers found it too difficult to survive without the income from selling souvenirs.

 

Tourism has also transformed Toraja society. Originally, there was a ritual which allowed commoners to marry nobles (puang) and thereby gain nobility for their children. However, the image of Torajan society created for the tourists, often by "lower-ranking" guides, has eroded its traditional strict hierarchy. High status is not as esteemed in Tana Toraja as it once was. Many low-ranking men can declare themselves and their children nobles by gaining enough wealth through work outside the region and then marrying a noble woman.

 

WIKIPEDIA

After being given a fantastic opportunity I closed down the old 11 m2 studio - to build a new one, on roughly 120 m2. The deal is to make what we can of the space. So this is where we document the building of a studio with room for four creative people - two LEGO geeks, a journalist and one unknown awesome person.

Look who's been given a new lease of life as a GO2 Spare!!

 

Still running on the route it has served well for the last three and a half years, this is due to it still being required until the weekend when the number of vehicles will be reduced when the 10 will go to Ruddington every 20 minutes, as opposed to 10. The 10 minute frequency will be retained from South Notts College to Nottingham only with the introduction of a 10A.

 

945 sparkles at Ruddington Green with a 10 to Nottingham via Wolds Estate and West Bridgford Asda.

LUGNuts' founder Lino Martins has graciously given me permission to replicate his series of automotive illustrations based on various mixed alcoholic drinks.

 

The first in this series is a Lego -model replication of 'Count Chocula' - Cadillac Coupe DeVille.

 

In Lino's own words.

 

"My second installment of a holy trinity of cars is a ‘73 Cadillac DeVille customized as a show car. Brown is an excellent color for 70’s era cars so I figured Count Chocula would be best suited for this one and also fits into the role as “The Father”. A gasser style fuel tank is installed in the grille and massive exhaust pipes adorn the sides all the way to the rear tires. Large flashy chrome rims and a deep chocolate paint scheme with a subtle gold flake adds bling to this ride. A chopped roof and a lowered stance exaggerates the DeVille’s already elongated features. Tan leather adorns the interior while the hood boasts plenty of real estate for full Count Chocula graphics. What do you think? Stay tuned for the final installment soon."

©All photographs on this site are copyright: ©DESPITE STRAIGHT LINES (Paul Williams) 2011 – 2021 & GETTY IMAGES ®

  

No license is given nor granted in respect of the use of any copyrighted material on this site other than with the express written agreement of ©DESPITE STRAIGHT LINES (Paul Williams). No image may be used as source material for paintings, drawings, sculptures, or any other art form without permission and/or compensation to ©DESPITE STRAIGHT LINES (Paul Williams)

 

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I would like to say a huge and heartfelt 'THANK YOU' to GETTY IMAGES, and the 47.057+ Million visitors to my FLICKR site.

  

***** Selected for sale in the GETTY IMAGES COLLECTION on Thursday 20th July 2023

  

CREATIVE RF gty.im/1555037446 MOMENT ROYALTY FREE COLLECTION**

  

This photograph became my 6,257th frame to be selected for sale in the Getty Images collection and I am very grateful to them for this wonderful opportunity.

  

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Photograph taken at an altitude of Two metres (Sea level) at 19:39pm on Wednesday 17th May 2023 looking towards an eagles nest on unnamed and uninhabited by mankind wilderness, some distance from Dawley Passage Provincial Park and Meares Island in the Alberni-Clayoquot region of British Columbia in Canada.

  

The Bald Eagle (Haliaeetus Leucocephalus), derives it's name from the Greek for 'Sea eagle', and the 'bald' denotation actually derives from an older meaning of 'white headed'.Bald Eagles can be up to forty inches in length with a wingspan up to seven and a half feet and can weigh up to 6.3kgs. The females are generally 25% larger than the males.

  

I was stationed in a seventy year old house I was renting in Campbell Street, Tofino in British Columbia in Canada. In this image I was seated at the front of a twenty three feet long Zodiac inflatable in full life saving gear.

  

Nikon D850 Single-lens reflex digital camera F Mount with FX CMOS 35.9mm x 23.9mm Image sensor 46.89 Million total pixels Focal length 600mm Shutter speed: 1/400s (Mechanical shutter) Aperture f/13.0 iso160 Image area Full Frame FX (36 x 24) NEF RAW L 45.4Million pixels (8256 x 5504) 14 Bit uncompressed Hand held with Tamron VC control enabled AF-C Priority Selection: Release Nikon Back button focusing enabled 3D Tracking watch area: Normal 55 Tracking points Exposure mode: Manual mode Metering mode: Matrix metering White balance on: Auto1, A1.00, M0.25 (4980k) Colour space: Adobe RGB Picture control: (A) Auto (Sharpening A+1.00/Clarity A+1.00)

  

Tamron SP 150-600mm F/5-6.3 Di VC USD G2. Nikon GP-1 GPS module. Hoodman HEYENRG round eyepiece oversized eyecup. Black Rapid Curve Breathe strap. My Memory 128GB Class 10 SDXC 80MB/s card. Lowepro Flipside 400 AW camera bag. Nikon EN-EL15a battery.

   

LATITUDE: N 49d 11m 15.0s

LONGITUDE: W 125d 46m 54.20s

ALTITUDE: 6.0m

  

RAW (TIFF) FILE: 130.00MB NEF: 93.9MB

PROCESSED (JPeg) FILE: 36.40MB

      

PROCESSING POWER:

  

Nikon D850 Firmware versions C 1.21 (8/12/2022) LD Distortion Data 2.018 (16/01/20) LF 1.00 Nikon Codec Full version 1.31.2 (09/11/2021)

  

HP 110-352na Desktop PC with Windows 10 Home edition AMD Quad-Core A6-5200 APU 64Bit processor. Radeon HD8400 graphics. 8 GB DDR3 Memory with 1TB Data storage. 64-bit Windows 10. My Passport USB 3.0 2TB portable desktop hard drive. Nikon NX STUDIO 64bit Version 1.2.2 (08/12/2022). Nikon Capture NX-D 64bit Version 1.6.2 (18/02/2020). Nikon Picture Control Utility 2 (Version 2.4.5 (18/02/2020). Nikon Transfer 2 Version 2.16.0 (08/12/2022). Adobe photoshop Elements 8 Version 8.0 64bit.

 

Any given Sunday Paseo de la reforma Mexico City

  

If you like this shot please go see my ALBUM "Any given Sunday in Mexico City"

 

www.flickr.com/photos/luajr/albums/72157638501177336

 

Or "street Shots"

www.flickr.com/photos/luajr/albums/72177720295921392

 

ALL credit for the assistance given to link me to the shelter helping Boy goes to Sharon ( Alaidh...PLEASE CHANGE IT BACK!!! ) A HUGE thank you, Sharon, from both Boy and me!!! (Sharon was also the person who linked me with VOKRA who took in Mango, treated him and found him a loving forever-home.) Sharon's been an angel. ♥

 

After not eating or drinking for over 5 days (except for a small mouse he caught Wed morning), I was convinced Boy might not last much longer. His walk was becoming more slow and unsteady, and when he came, he spent the whole time crouched in the meat-loaf position. I continued to offer canned food laced with catnip. While he seemed like he wanted to eat, he wouldn't. On his chin, he'd have a glob of saliva hanging and when he'd move, there'd be a small puddle of it where he'd been.

 

I was able to rent a humane cat trap from the Humane Society but I was doubtful he'd go in. Celia, from the Society gave me a small tin of kitty tuna, much stinkier than the food I'd been offering him. And after a great deal of hesitation, he actually went in! He came out licking his mouth so I knew he'd eaten some. But he didn't set off the trap.

 

After adjusting the door to make it more hair-trigger, I put more food in the bowl inside. This time, he set it off and we got him!! Honestly, I was so surprised he ate it!

 

As Sharon ( Alaidh...PLEASE CHANGE IT BACK!!! ) mentioned in the earlier post, Boy is now at Katie's Place shelter in Maple Ridge the next town towards Vancouver west of Mission (my town). He'll be thoroughly checked and looked after. Where he'll go after that isn't decided. I'll post more when we know.

 

I'm over-the-top happy now. I sat crying last night, feeling so powerless to help him. What I'm baffled about is why he never ate or drank for 5 days, yet he hadn't been at the shelter 5 minutes before he polished off a bowl of food. One of the volunteers was going to refill his bowl and when I looked at what they'd given him, I said "But that's one of the foods I'd offered!" I guess I'll have to wait to find out what was going on with him. One of the ladies there said it might have been mouth issues. Whatever the reason, I'm only so glad he's going to get care.

PHOTO CREDIT: Louise Coghill.

 

Strip search Pastors strip to expose refugees as people

 

Eight Church leaders faced court in Perth this morning. The group pleaded guilty and were given a spent conviction with three month conditional release (they cannot be charged or convicted of an offence in that time). Photos are available for publication: www.flickr.com/photos/lovemakesaway/sets/72157650100422857/

 

Outside court: Five Christian leaders in Perth have stripped to their underwear and placards reading “Refugees are People” - they are currently walking to Foreign Minister Julie Bishop’s office, calling for the release of the 135 children currently locked-up on Nauru and for an end to offshore detention

 

Following a court hearing in Perth this morning 5 Christian leaders have stripped to just their undergarments and placards reading “Refugees are People” and are currently walking from Perth Court to Foreign Minister Julie Bishop’s Subiaco office, calling for the release of the 135 children currently locked-up on Nauru and for an end to offshore detention.

 

“Attempts to humiliate and deter us have failed and we are more determined than ever to see the dignity of people in immigration detention recognised,” said Pastor Jarrod McKenna of WestCity Church of Christ.

 

“For those who seek to deter us we have a simple message: at the centre of our faith is a symbol of torture that God transformed into a symbol of love. There is nothing you can throw at us that we can’t see transformed for the freedom of others,” said Pastor McKenna.

 

This action comes after eight Christian leaders faced Perth court earlier this morning over a peaceful sit-in last month at the office of Foreign Minister Julie Bishop. The eight Christian leaders were arrested, strip searched and charged with trespass on 10 December 2014 after the peaceful sit-in which was part of the #LoveMakesAWay national day of action. Love Makes a Way is a national movement of Christians seeking an end to Australia's inhumane asylum seeker policies through prayer and nonviolent love in action.

 

“The Human Rights Law Centre described the strip-searches of peaceful protesters as ‘deeply concerning’,” said Pastor McKenna.

 

“Instead of strip searching Church leaders our nation needs to be searching its heart for a humane response to those seeking safety,” he said.

 

“Even if you strip-search us, even if you make us squat and cough, even if you threaten us, we will not stop fighting for freedom of all people in detention. We believe that love makes a way,” said Teresa Lee, co-founder of First Home Project who faced court earlier today after participating in the peaceful sit-in last month.

 

“Refugees are people, it is as simple as that. All people deserve to have a safe home and not one of the 1930 people currently locked up in detention deserve to have their future frozen indefinitely,” she said.

 

“Today we call on the Government to make a public commitment to release the 135 children currently imprisoned on Nauru. These children have been cruelly shipped off, locked-up, and left in limbo, deprived of their precious childhoods,” said Reverend Lorna Green, Anglican Rector of Serpentine-Jarrahdale who also faced court earlier today.

 

“We say to these children and all those people locked up on Manus Island and Nauru: we see you and we won’t give up on you,” said Pastor Alex McKellar from WA’s largest church, Riverview, also among the eight who faced court for the December action at the Foreign Minister's office.

Stromboli is a small island in the Tyrrhenian Sea, off the north coast of Sicily, containing one of the three active volcanoes in Italy. It is one of the eight Aeolian Islands, a volcanic arc north of Sicily. This name is derived from the Ancient Greek name Strongulē which was given to it because of its round swelling form. The island's population is between 400 and 850. The volcano has erupted many times and is constantly active with minor eruptions, often visible from many points on the island and from the surrounding sea, giving rise to the island's nickname "Lighthouse of the Mediterranean". The most recent major eruption was on 13 April 2009. Stromboli stands 926 m (3,034 ft) above sea level, and over 2,700 m (8,860 ft) on average above the sea floor.There are three active craters at the peak. A significant geological feature of the volcano is the Sciara del Fuoco ("Stream of fire"), a big horseshoe-shaped depression generated in the last 13,000 years by several collapses on the northwestern side of the cone. Two kilometers to the northeast lies Strombolicchio, the volcanic plug remnant of the original volcano.Mt. Stromboli has been in almost continuous eruption for the past 2,000 years. A pattern of eruption is maintained in which explosions occur at the summit craters, with mild to moderate eruptions of incandescent volcanic bombs, at intervals ranging from minutes to hours. This Strombolian eruption, as it is known, is also observed at other volcanoes worldwide. Eruptions from the summit craters typically result in a few short, mild, but energetic bursts, ranging up to a few hundred meters in height, containing ash, incandescent lava fragments and stone blocks. Mt. Stromboli's activity is almost exclusively explosive, but lava flows do occur at times when volcanic activity is high: an effusive eruption occurred in 2002, the first in 17 years, and again in 2003, 2007, and 2013-14.The two villages San Bartolo and San Vincenzo lie in the northeast while the smaller village Ginostra lies in the southwest. Administratively, they are one of the frazione of Lipari.In the early 1900s a few thousand people inhabited the island, but after several emigrations the population numbered a few hundred by the mid-1950s.

 

Stromboli è un'isola dell'Italia appartenente all'arcipelago delle isole Eolie, in Sicilia. Si tratta di un vulcano attivo facente parte dell'Arco Eoliano. Posta nel bacino Tirreno del mare Mediterraneo occidentale, l'isola è la più settentrionale delle Eolie e si estende su una superficie di 12,2 km².L'edificio vulcanico è alto 926 m s.l.m. e raggiunge una profondità compresa tra 1300 m e 2400 m al di sotto del livello del mare. Stromboli ha una persistente attività esplosiva ed è uno dei vulcani più attivi del mondo. A poche centinaia di metri a nord-est dell'isola di Stromboli si trova il neck di Strombolicchio, residuo di un antico camino vulcanico. L'isolotto ospita un faro della Marina, disabitato e automatizzato.Lo Stromboli è un vulcano esplosivo e le sue eruzioni avvengono con una frequenza media di circa una ogni ora. La sua attività "ordinaria" ha luogo ad una quota di 750 m s.l.m. dalle diverse bocche eruttive presenti nell'area craterica e allineate in direzione NE-SW. Tale attività consiste in esplosioni intermittenti di media energia, della durata di pochi secondi ad intervalli di 10–20 minuti, durante le quali vengono emesse piccole quantità di bombe scoriacee incandescenti, lapilli, cenere e blocchi, con velocità di uscita compresa tra 20 a 120 metri al secondo ed altezze comprese tra poche decine fino ad alcune centinaia di metri. L'attività eruttiva è associata ad un degassamento pressoché continuo dall'area craterica, il cui volume stimato è di 6000-12000 t/gi, e che consiste principalmente di H2O (3200-6300 t/g), CO2 (2900-5800 t/g), SO2 (400-800 t/g) e quantità minori di HCl e HF.Periodi di totale inattività, senza lanci di materiale, sono piuttosto rari. Il più lungo tra quelli registrati si è protratto per circa due anni, dal 1908 al 1910. Periodi di prolungata quiescenza, della durata di qualche mese, sono stati registrati più volte.

L'attività normale può essere periodicamente interrotta da esplosioni di maggiore energia, dette "esplosioni maggiori". Questi eventi consistono di brevi ma violente esplosioni, durante le quali vengono prodotti lanci balistici di blocchi e bombe di dimensioni anche metriche a distanze di alcune centinaia di metri, associati a piogge di lapilli e cenere; la distribuzione dei prodotti è solitamente confinata all'interno dell'area craterica. Sono distribuite non omogeneamente nel tempo, ma si tratta mediamente di 2,1 eventi ogni anno.

Le eruzioni stromboliane più violente mai accadute in tempi storici risalgono al 1919 e al 1930, ed entrambe (pare) furono causate da grandi infiltrazioni d'acqua marina nel camino vulcanico: il magma, a contatto con l'acqua, avrebbe causato violente esplosioni con grande emissione di vapori e scorie, accompagnate da violenti terremoti. Per la prima e finora unica volta nella storia del vulcano, delle colate laviche si riversarono anche al di fuori della Sciara del Fuoco, arrivando a lambire i centri abitati (Piscità fu sfiorata ad appena 20 metri), causando ingenti danni e numerose vittime, e causando un piccolo tsunami che generò un'onda di 2–3 m che arrivò a far danni fino a Capo Vaticano, in Calabria.I parossismi rappresentano le manifestazioni più energetiche del vulcano di Stromboli; consistono in violente ed improvvise esplosioni "tipo cannonata", durante le quali avviene l'emissione sostenuta di scorie incandescenti, ceneri, bombe e blocchi litici a distanze considerevoli, fino ad interessare le zone abitate dell'isola. Tali esplosioni possono produrre nubi convettive che raggiungono quote di 10 km. Durante i parossismi sono emessi volumi sensibilmente maggiori di materiali rispetto alle eruzioni normali e a quelle maggiori e frequentemente possono avvenire profonde modificazioni dell'area craterica. L'ultimo evento parossistico è avvenuto il 15 marzo 2007 all'interno dell'eruzione di febbraio-aprile 2007.Il 27 febbraio 2007, con un'iniziale effusione di lava dal cratere di NE, durata alcune ore e seguita dall'apertura di una bocca effusiva nella Sciara del Fuoco, a quota 400 m s.l.m. circa. Il 9 marzo 2007 si è aperta una seconda bocca sempre sulla Sciara del Fuoco, ma posizionata a circa 500 m s.l.m.; l'attività di questa bocca è stata comunque breve (circa 24 ore). Il 2 aprile 2007 è infine terminata anche l'effusione di lava dalla bocca di quota 400 m s.l.m. Il 4 maggio 2009 il vulcano ha ripreso l'attività eruttiva.

Nell'ultimo secolo sono riportati circa 26 episodi durante i quali si sono avute emissioni laviche. I prodotti emessi sono rappresentati principalmente da colate di spessore variabile; la morfologia del vulcano obbliga le colate di lava a riversarsi sul versante nord-occidentale, dove sono confinate all'interno della Sciara di Fuoco e quindi non rappresentano un pericolo per la popolazione dell'isola. Le colate fuoriescono generalmente attraverso fratture eruttive nella zona craterica o all'interno della Sciara del Fuoco, ma possono generarsi anche per tracimazione dal bordo craterico.La storia geologica dell'isola di Stromboli comincia circa 200.000 anni fa, quando un primo vulcano attivo di grandi dimensioni emerge dal mare, in posizione NE rispetto all'isola; di questo vulcano antico rimane soltanto il condotto solidificato (neck) rappresentato da Strombolicchio (vedi sotto).Il vero e proprio vulcano di Stromboli emerge dal mare circa 160.000 anni fa. Inizialmente i centri di emissione sono nella parte meridionale dell'isola, dove affiorano le unità più antiche appartenenti ai complessi del Paleostromboli I e II.Circa 35.000 anni fa il centro di emissione migra leggermente verso nord e le emissioni di lava e i depositi piroclastici legati a eruzioni esplosive danno origine ad un cono che raggiunge quota 700 m s.l.m. (Paleostromboli III).Le fasi successive della storia di Stromboli vedono la formazione ed il collasso calderico di vari edifici vulcanici. In particolare, a circa 34.600 anni fa risale il complesso eruttivo di Scari, osservabile presso Scari e a sud del paese sotto forma di spesse sequenze di bombe vulcaniche, lapilli e lahar. Mentre successivo (circa 26.000 anni fa) è il complesso del Vancori, caratterizzato da depositi piroclastici e basalti shoshonitici. In questa fase, la cima del vulcano era occupata probabilmente da una grande caldera. Il ciclo Scari-Vancori si conclude con il collasso laterale (una grande frana) del settore occidentale e nordoccidentale dell'edificio vulcanico.La fase successiva, a partire da circa 13.800 anni fa, vede la ricostruzione dell'edificio nel settore nordoccidentale. Il nuovo centro eruttivo, detto Neostromboli, è ubicato a nord del costone dei Vancori. Contemporaneamente, alcuni centri eruttivi secondari danno origine al "Timpone del Fuoco" presso Ginostra, alle lave di San Bartolo e di San Vincenzo.All'incirca tra 10000 e 5000 anni fa il settore nordoccidentale subisce nuovi collassi laterali (frane), lasciando una profonda depressione a forma di ferro di cavallo che si estende dalla cima fino ad una profondità di circa 2.000 m sotto il livello del mare: la Sciara del Fuoco. Lentamente la depressione viene riempita da materiale piroclastico e colate di lava. Il centro eruttivo attuale è rappresentato da un grande cono piroclastico che si trova nella parte sommitale della Sciara del Fuoco, a quota inferiore rispetto al Pizzo Sopra la Fossa, ed è caratterizzato, come detto sopra, dalla presenza di tre crateri allineati parallelamente alla Sciara, in direzione NE-SW.

Stromboli è nota, frequentata ed abitata fin dall'antichità remota, e la sua economia si è sempre fondata sulle produzioni agricole tipicamente mediterranee: olivo, vite (malvasia coltivato basso in giardini terrazzati), fichi - e poi sulla pesca e sulla marineria. Fino al XIX secolo questa economia fu fiorente e Stromboli arrivò a contare circa 2700 abitanti, precisamente nel 1891, secondo i dati ufficiali a disposizione (fonte Mastriani e ISTAT ).Il peggioramento delle condizioni economiche seguito all'unità d'Italia, il ripetersi di eruzioni e terremoti (in particolare l'eruzione del 1930) e infine l'attacco della peronospora che negli anni trenta sterminò la più redditizia coltura locale, quella della vite, fecero sì che una grandissima maggioranza degli strombolani prendesse la via dell'emigrazione, soprattutto verso l'Australia e l'America e l'isola rischiò seriamente di restare abbandonata.Venne riscoperta dopo la guerra da Roberto Rossellini che, con il film del 1949 Stromboli terra di Dio (con protagonista femminile la giovane Ingrid Bergman), portò l'isola e la sua straordinarietà all'attenzione del pubblico.Il vulcano è chiamato dai suoi abitanti (gli stombolani) Struògnoli, o anche Iddu (Lui in siciliano), in riferimento alla natura divina che un tempo era attribuita ai fenomeni naturali incontrollabili.Il nome proviene dal greco antico Στρογγύλη (rotondo) per via della sua forma. In siciliano strummulu significa trottola.Stromboli dà il nome a un tipo di vulcani caratterizzati da un'attività vulcanica effusiva detta Stromboliana.I principali borghi abitati sono San Vincenzo (o semplicemente il paese di Stromboli, anticamente era borgo degli agricoltori) con l'approdo storico di Scari, Piscità e Ficogrande, che anticamente era il borgo degli armatori.A sudovest, raggiungibile solo via mare, c'è Ginostra dove d'inverno restano circa 30 o 40 abitanti e dove l'unico mezzo di trasporto è il mulo.A Stromboli c'è una scuola elementare e media per i pochi ragazzi abitanti dell'isola. Dopo le scuole solitamente i ragazzi vanno a Lipari dove sono presenti alcune scuole secondarie di secondo grado.Da Napoli, Lipari, Milazzo e Messina Stromboli è raggiungibile col traghetto e, d'estate, anche in aliscafo da Messina, Reggio Calabria, Vibo Valentia e Tropea.Il flusso turistico verso l'isola, che costituisce la principale risorsa economica di Stromboli, fino agli anni settanta fu rappresentato soprattutto da persone alla ricerca di un ambiente particolare, naturale ed integro e non privo di scomodità come mancanza di elettricità, scarsità d'acqua. Nei decenni successivi le scomodità sono molto diminuite e il turismo è molto cresciuto, anche se resta limitato prevalentemente ai mesi centrali estivi.L'isola è meta di turisti in cerca di tranquillità: anche per questo nei locali dell'isola è vietato diffondere musica oltre le due di notte.Giornalmente, inoltre, si organizzano escursioni al vulcano con guide esperte, che portano ad oltre 900 metri sul livello del mare. Tramite imbarcazioni è inoltre possibile raggiungere nelle ore notturne la vicina e movimentata Panarea, lo scoglio di Strombolicchio e Ginostra, caratteristica località sull'isola di Stromboli dove l'unico mezzo di trasporto sono i muli (ne sono presenti una decina in tutto) e che è irraggiungibile per via terrestre dall'altra parte abitata dell'isola.Stromboli è anche meta, seppur in misura minore, di molti giovani, che si recano nei locali e nelle feste sulla spiaggia periodicamente organizzate nella stagione estiva.Caratteristica dell'isola, oltre alle stradine strette percorribili solo dal motocarro e dai motorini elettrici, che i turisti affittano sull'isola stessa, è la mancata illuminazione notturna nelle strade, che il Comune a cui l'isola fa riferimento, ovvero quello di Lipari, vuol mantenere come importante attrattiva turistica. Dall'Osservatorio, infine, si può vedere la lava del vulcano, l'unico delle Isole Eolie perennemente in attività e il cielo stellato evidenziato dalla mancanza di illuminazione.Durante la stagione turistica partono imbarcazioni per permettere ai turisti di fare il bagno presso lo scoglio di Strombolicchio.

 

Font : Wikipedia

 

From the handout given at the park:

 

O’Leno State Park and River Rise Preserve State Park Fact Sheet

 

•Together the parks number 6212 acres. 4,500 in River Rise Preserve and the remainder in the older O’Leno State Park.

•There are 18 different natural communities within the parks boundaries.

•Both parks contain the 3 mile “natural bridge” where the Santa Fe River flows into the sink and returns to the surface at the rise.

•Hernando De Soto traveled through these parks in 1539 while exploring the interior of Florida. Here he met members of local Timucan speaking tribes the Utina and Potano.

•The Park occupies property in both Alachua and Columbia Counties.

•We have 55 listed Cultural sites on park property.

•There are 19 miles of equestrian trails at River Rise Preserve State Park. With a 20 horse stall barn and primitive campsites.

•There are 61 family campsites with water and electric. Two primitive Youth Camps for 25 people apiece and one up to 10 person “hike in/hike out” primitive campsite.

•A town existed here first called Keno and later Ken that lasted from the 1840’s until the mid 1890’s. Hence the origin of the park’s name “Old Leno” becoming O’Leno.

•1935-36 the Civilian Conservation Corps Company 418 Camp P-67 constructed Camp O’Leno to be used as a park/forestry training area. Some of the CCC buildings are still being used today by the park.

•The camp became a park in 1940, and is one of the older state parks. River Rise was purchased as a Preserve in 1974.

•Florida’s First Federal Roadway, the Bellamy Road traveled through the park in the 1820’s. It originated from an earlier Indian trail and later the Camino Real which connected missions in the interior of Florida with St Augustine.

•There are 6 miles of hiking trails.

•There are 17 cabins and 8 support buildings in our Group Camp.

•Both parks receive about 65,000 visitors annually that spend over 2 million dollars annually in the local economy. 67 local jobs are generated because of the parks.

•The park creates over $230,000 in local sales tax revenue.

      

History of O’Leno State Park

O’Leno State Park occupies an historic crossroads area, unique compared to all of north Florida. The Santa Fe River along with its geologically unique disappearance into the ground and aquifer (River Sink) and its reappearance 3 miles to the south (River Rise) creating a natural land bridge, has the first basis of this land being a crossroads. Before the Spanish arrived in the 1500’s, Native Indian presence and villages were abundant in north Florida. Villages were close by. Research has also shown that the Santa Fe River was a boundary line between the Utina and Potano tribes of the Timucua Indians.

 

The first European to pass through the area was the Spanish explorer Hernando De Soto in 1539. In the Spanish mission period of the 1600’s, the Spanish used the Indian trail for their road running from St. Augustine, through the Santa Fe land bridge, to Tallahassee and Pensacola, calling it the El Camino Real.

 

About two hundred years later, when Florida was a U.S. territory, the federal government contracted with John Bellamy, a plantation owner, in 1824 to build the first federally-funded major road from St. Augustine to Tallahassee. This road followed the El Camino Real and also passed through the Santa Fe land bridge. This road became known as the Bellamy Road, now referred to today as the Old Bellamy Road.

 

Just a quarter mile of the River Sink and 2 miles north of the Old Bellamy Road was a fitting place for a town. A town was established on the west bank of the river in 1840 by a man named Henry Matier. The town as “Keno,” a popular bingo-type gambling game in those days. Later, in 1876, the General Store manager, Col. Whetstone, applied for a post office from the U.S. government. It is reported that the request was denied due to the name of the town being associated with gambling. Therefore, the town’s name was changed to Leno, and a post office was granted. Several years later, Col. Whetstone moved the post office to his seat of residence in Mikesville, three miles to the north.

 

In the latter 1800’s the town of Keno/Leno grew by the hard work defeating the odds of nature, establishing grist mills, saw mills, and cotton gins along the river by first creating a couple dams and channeling the river into the shoots, where the mills were strategically built. The dams were created by embedding cedar slats across the river, backed by barriers of large rocks to direct the river flow. Remnants of these dams, mill sites, and cedar slats and shoots can be seen today when the river is down low. Due to the grinding capability from the two grist mills and six cotton gins and circular saw mill, Leno became and agricultural hub for the area.

 

In the days of Keno/Leno, criss-crossing the Bellamy Road was the north-south “Alligator Road,” passing Keno/Leno, and heading north up to the city of Alligator, now Lake City. When the town heard in 1894 of a railroad coming through the area, they were hopeful. But the train bypassed Leno, going to Fort White instead. This struck a major blow to the town, and many of the residents moved to neighboring communities. A major freeze then occurred in 1896 killing the major crops in that day, oranges, cotton, and tobacco, which sealed a final blow to the once thriving town of Leno.

Given to Lizzie Griffin, aged 17, by her older brother.

Given to me by a friend of Neil

Baptismal class, Ebenezer Lutheran Church, Oaks, Oklahoma, ca. 1920s.

 

f. Snapshots given by Miss Nana Nielsen, taken at Indian Home and School, UELC, Oaks, Oklahoma.

United Evangelical Lutheran Church, Oaks Indian Mission files.

ELCA Archives image.

www.elca.org/archives

George KISS (1830-1882)

 

Extract from Australian Men of Mark, 1888-9

 

"SKETCH is given in this notice of the career of a successful colonist, drawn from the old yeoman farmer class of England, whose name was for years a household word amongst breeders of horses and stock in New South Wales. It is the story of a man who made his prosperity by hard work and ceaseless activity, and it conveys an idea of what the typical emigrant or settler in these colonies was expected to be, to command success and be of use in the land of his adoption.

 

George Kiss was born in Warwickshire, England, in 1830. His father was a well-to-do farmer in that county, and having received a good business education, he passed through a sound practical farmer's training under his father's eye, and afterwards entered formally on that pursuit. While so engaged he had the good fortune to meet with a returned colonist in the person of the late Mr. Fairfax, the founder of the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper, and from him he received such a promising account of the colony of New South Wales, and its resources and opportunities, that he began seriously to entertain the idea of emigration thither.

 

In the meantime he married - in 1850 - Miss Toward, an engaging young Scottish lady, and daughter of a Glasgow merchant. Shortly afterwards he again met Mr. Fairfax on that gentleman's second visit home, and the question of emigration was again discussed. Since their first conversation on the subject gold had been discovered in New South Wales and Victoria, and the fame of the colonies spread throughout the English-speaking world. But Mr. Fairfax wisely advised his young friend to forego the first-formed project of gold-seeking, for something safer, and recommended him to take with him some hackney carriages and open livery stables in Sydney. The suggestion was not received favourably at first by the spirited young yeoman, but wiser counsels in the end prevailed, and Mr. Fairfax assisted him to select the kind of carriages specially suited to Australian wants.

 

Mr. Kiss and his devoted young wife reached Sydney in 1852, and he at once began business in Surry Hills. He was the first to introduce to general use in the colony that comfortable and convenient mode of conveyance, the hansom cab. His business supplied a want, and Mr. Kiss prospered until, when Mr. Burt's well-known livery stables and horse bazaar in Pitt-street were sold, he became the purchaser, and in a few years attained a large and lucrative connection. His extensive sales were attended with so much success that his name as a salesman became widely known in stock circles throughout the colonies.

 

In the issue of the old Sydney Empire for 2nd May 1871 may be found a long account of Mr. Kiss's first sale of thoroughbred yearlings, in which ample testimony is borne to the auctioneer's popularity and success. From this his onward career was a most successful one. In 1875 he was elected one of the Aldermen of the Borough of Randwick, and shortly afterwards became Mayor. In 1879 the corporation of that municipality presented Mr. Kiss with an elaborate address, and tendered him a banquet on the occasion of his approaching visit to England. The leading paper in his native country greeted his visit with a glowing account of his colonial career, urging others to follow in his footsteps.

 

On returning to Sydney he quietly pursued his private business, and carried out his intention of making his house and grounds at " Ventnor," Randwick, one of the most attractive residences about Sydney. But as soon as his work was done, and before he had time to enjoy its fruits, he was carried off by illness, in the fifty-second year of his age. The Warwick paper before alluded to published an appreciative notice of the deceased, as an old resident of the county, and quoted at length from the Sydney Morning Herald in testimony of his successor as a colonist. We give the extract in full :-"

 

" Death of an Old Warwick Resident.

In our obituary of this week we have to record the death, on the 13th August last, of Mr. George Kiss, third son of the late Mr. Thomas Kiss, of Hampton Lodge, and brother of Mr. John Kiss, of Hampton-street. The deceased left Warwick about thirty years ago, and with his young wife went to seek his fortune in our great Australian colony. How far he succeeded the following from the Sydney Morning Herald of 15th August last (1882) will show :- Mr. George Kiss, who died on Sunday, at his residence, 'Ventnor,' Randwick, was one who had made himself by his business capacity and untiring energy a prominent position in Sydney. He was a native of Warwick, and soon after his arrival in the colony laid the foundation of the business with which his name is associated.

 

He took a lively interest in municipal matters, and displayed so much ability and administrative power that for two years he enjoyed the position of Mayor of Randwick, and at the time of his death was an Alderman of that borough. Mr. Kiss, in failing health, came over here last year to try what effect a change of climate would have upon his impaired health. A banquet was given him before setting out by his neighbours and friends, and hopes expressed for his recovery and safe return. He remained in Warwick all the summer months, and returned much improved, but his health again gave way, and he died in the bosom of his family in the fifty-third year of his age, and deservedly respected and esteemed by all who knew him."

 

Australian Men of Mark 1889, vol.2

 

Photos from the WTO Public Forum 2017 photo gallery may be reproduced provided attribution is given to the WTO and the WTO is informed. Photos: © WTO/Jay Louvion

Name: Alexander Clay

Arrested for: not given

Arrested at: North Shields Police Station

Arrested on: 4 August 1905

Tyne and Wear Archives ref: DX1388-1-75-Alexander Clay

 

The Shields Daily News for 4 August 1905 reports:

 

“CASE OF THEFT AT NORTH SHIELDS.

 

At North Shields Police Court today, Alexander Clay, a young man, was charged on remand with having stolen a brace, valued at £1, the property of Thos. Young Miller, Cartwright, Upper Toll Street.

 

The prosecutor said the accused had done work for him. On the 24th July he missed a brace from his office and gave information to the police. A week later he was shewn the brace in a pawnshop. Margaret Clay, mother of the accused, said that on July 22nd her son asked her to pledge a brace for a young man who had no money. She pledged it and received 2s 3d and a ticket, which she gave to her son. PC Radcliff gave evidence of arresting and charging the accused, who replied “Yes, that’s right”. On being charged with the theft the accused said “I took it because he owed me money”. The prosecutor admitted that he gave the accused two jobs to do either for money or for a bicycle. He elected to take the bicycle and commenced to do the work but it was not yet finished.

 

The Clerk (Mr R.F. Kidd): You had no right to help yourself to Mr Miller’s tools. The magistrates fined him 10s, including costs”.

 

These images are a selection from an album of photographs of prisoners brought before the North Shields Police Court between 1902 and 1916 in the collection of Tyne & Wear Archives (TWA ref DX1388/1).

 

(Copyright) We're happy for you to share this digital image within the spirit of The Commons. Please cite 'Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums' when reusing. Certain restrictions on high quality reproductions and commercial use of the original physical version apply though; if you're unsure please email archives@twmuseums.org.uk.

Heather Leigh West American dance music recording artist outside of Arena Nightclub in Times Square New York City at The Pill Awards. Heather Leigh West was a scheduled guest of DJ Junior Vasquez to perform her anthem Drop a House . Drop a house was first released under as a song from Urban Discharge feat She with the dance floor anthem Wanna Drop a House on that bi**h 01-25-2010

 

The Pill Awards honor queer filmmakers and talent in the LGBT community.

 

Awards given in categories such as

Best Short Film , Documentary Film , Activism , Music Video dance alternative electro , editing , art direction, lighting. The show

 

ADD-TV Attention Deficit TV was created as an alternative, edgy platform for queer filmmakers and talent.

  

The Pill Awards 2010 Season 6 Arena Event Space Times Square New York City 01-24-2010

  

in a period of my life where I was doubting myself and life in general, she made it go away. she gave me hope for a better tomorrow. she made me smile and forget about my troubles

book / 2014

64 pages ($25/$33)

please see my tumblr for more info:

e5books.tumblr.com/post/104413337367/a-given-amount-2014-...

The homeless in rural Florida have proven what I believed in all along. That they could help each other without paid staff, when given the proper resources. Homeless veterans, men, women, and children have shown that they can take a hand up, instead of a handout, and get their lives back in order. In less than three years there were five shelters; two for homeless Veterans.

 

We recently closed one shelter because the Mission in Citrus eliminated 75% of the homeless Veteran problem in Citrus County, and due to the slowdown in our present economy. Our shelters are geared to operate at the lowest cost, and to be moved or closed when necessary. They are located close to jobs and resources.

 

Close to 450 former residents still keep in contact with me through email, Facebook, or phone. I am so very proud of them, as their accomplishments are no less than a miracle. We are not faith based but live by faith. No one is forced to go to church, but over 90% attend services each week at the church of their choice. Our saying is that God runs things around here. And He does. Miracle after miracle has occurred during the past four years. A Good Samaritan to all in need. We are struggling now, as we have been denied funding because we do not have anyone who can write grants properly. But we are working on that. And all of the praise, glory, and honor, we give to God for all His blessings.

 

Over two thousand people were helped back into society since 2009, by using fewer dollars and more sense. Their success record is 80%, which is much higher than the national average. There are no security cameras or locked doors. Our foundation is based on that no one should lose their freedoms that so many Veterans have died for, unless they are a criminal. Since February 1st 2013, over 42 people moved into homes with jobs. That may seem small to many, but it was over 50% of our residents living at our shelters. Fourteen were children. Five were entire families.

 

Our 1st Veteran's shelter was opened on less than $5000, and a lot of faith. It is now approaching its fourth year of operation. Veterans have returned to society into their own homes after receiving their much deserved benefits. Similar shelters were built using millions. Formerly homeless Veterans run the shelter, after being helped themselves. All give a volunteer commitment. Fund raising is now in progress to increase their capacity. Our second shelter was designed after the John Wayne-type outposts in the old west. In rural areas, the homeless have to walk between 12-50 miles for help and services. The outpost provided meals, shelter, laundry, showers, and much more. It served many Veterans living in the woods and swamps, and those traveling around the country. The model was highly successful, before it’s closing due to lack of funds... Our next project is a mobile command center called Angels on Wheels. It will be able to help Veterans in any area with full service. The mobile vehicle will enable the Mission in Citrus to reach out to many Veterans, who are currently receiving little to no help.

 

“If we do not help them, who will?”

 

The Mission in Citrus Homeless Shelters were founded in 2008, after the Executive Director “I “became homeless. My research and personal experience showed that traditional shelters were not working, and too much of their budgets were spent on administration expenses, and not on the residents. Too many criminalized homelessness. Most of the homeless are not criminals; they just need the resources to get their lives back in order. A hand up, not a hand out. The focus is on jobs, and our Hire the Homeless program has been highly successful. The residents also help operate the shelter by paying for their upkeep with donations, once they find employment or receive disability. They volunteer thousands of hours to Habitat for Humanity, area food banks, Sertoma Club, Lion's Club, and many other nonprofits. No one is allowed to sit around. All earn their keep.

We have overcome many obstacles in the past four years, from 60 tents to 5 shelters. We had major fights with everyone from the Fire Marshal, Sheriff’s Dept., and many other agencies, including County Commissioners. We now have positive working relationships with all of them. We have earned their respect. We still have a long way to go.

 

Grant writing is hard because there is little time after helping so many people each day. We beg for 80% of our operating funds using collections sites, such as Wal-Mart, and County flea markets. Over 1000 people were helped last year with $120,000. The Mission in Citrus continues to fight for homeless rights. Our emails are sent to numerous government officials each day. Homelessness can decrease through more accountability of dollars. One shelter gets Federal funds, while operating at an annual cost of $38,000 a bed. It is cheaper to go to Harvard.

 

Our residents age from four days old to 72 years old. The new face of homelessness has become many homeless women and children. We are expecting two new babies in the next month. The days of the old homeless stereotype are over. The present economy is taking no prisoners.

Our long term goals are to share our system with others, and to increase our homeless Veterans beds by 150 by buying a motel. We soon hope to start a successful in-house drug and alcohol treatment shelter. The Mission in Citrus could easily become a movie as so many miracles have occurred there. When I turned 51 last year, over 200 former residents visited, Face booked, emailed, or called. That does not happen at normal shelters.

 

They take great pride as they have become a family, and lift each other up. We have two quotes. “If we do not help them…Who will? “And “We follow the parable of the good Samaritan.” We help all in need. In our history, we have never failed to feed and help anyone who has entered our gates. We even take food and water into the woods and swamps for many hard core Veterans, who have lost faith in society.

 

About The Mission in Citrus

 

Our Mission is to help all in need to the best of our ability. We follow the parable of the Good Samaritan, as there are no requirements for our services. We constantly reinvent the wheel to make it all work. The faces of homelessness can change as well as each individual’s circumstances. And there have been very few that we have not been able to help. Veterans have become our priority as we have seen their suffering the most.

 

To all the past and present residents of the Mission in Citrus. I am so very proud of you. You made it work. God gave us the direction and help through many. God bless you all and much Love to all of you

 

James M Sleighter – Founder and Executive Director of the Mission in Citrus

St Paul's Cathedral is an Anglican cathedral in London, England, and is the seat of the Bishop of London. The cathedral serves as the mother church of the Diocese of London. It is on Ludgate Hill at the highest point of the City of London. Its dedication in honour of Paul the Apostle dates back to the original church on this site, founded in AD 604. The present structure, which was completed in 1710, is a Grade I listed building that was designed in the English Baroque style by Sir Christopher Wren. The cathedral's reconstruction was part of a major rebuilding programme initiated in the aftermath of the Great Fire of London. The earlier Gothic cathedral (Old St Paul's Cathedral), largely destroyed in the Great Fire, was a central focus for medieval and early modern London, including Paul's walk and St Paul's Churchyard, being the site of St Paul's Cross.

 

The cathedral is one of the most famous and recognisable sights of London. Its dome, surrounded by the spires of Wren's City churches, has dominated the skyline for over 300 years. At 365 ft (111 m) high, it was the tallest building in London from 1710 to 1963. The dome is still one of the highest in the world. St Paul's is the second-largest church building in area in the United Kingdom, after Liverpool Cathedral.

 

Services held at St Paul's have included the funerals of Admiral Lord Nelson, the Duke of Wellington, Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher; jubilee celebrations for Queen Victoria; an inauguration service for the Metropolitan Hospital Sunday Fund; peace services marking the end of the First and Second World Wars; the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer; the launch of the Festival of Britain; and the thanksgiving services for the Silver, Golden, Diamond, and Platinum Jubilees and the 80th and 90th birthdays of Queen Elizabeth II. St Paul's Cathedral is the central subject of much promotional material, as well as of images of the dome surrounded by the smoke and fire of the Blitz. The cathedral is a working church with hourly prayer and daily services. The tourist entry fee at the door is £23 for adults (January 2023, cheaper if booked online), but no charges are made to worshippers attending advertised services.

 

The nearest London Underground station is St Paul's, which is 130 yards (120 m) away from St Paul's Cathedral.

 

History

Before the cathedral

The location of Londinium's original cathedral is unknown, but legend and medieval tradition claims it was St Peter upon Cornhill. St Paul is an unusual attribution for a cathedral, and suggests there was another one in the Roman period. Legends of St Lucius link St Peter upon Cornhill as the centre of the Roman Londinium Christian community. It stands upon the highest point in the area of old Londinium, and it was given pre-eminence in medieval procession on account of the legends. There is, however, no other reliable evidence and the location of the site on the Forum makes it difficult for it to fit the legendary stories. In 1995, a large fifth-century building on Tower Hill was excavated, and has been claimed as a Roman basilica, possibly a cathedral, although this is speculative.

 

The Elizabethan antiquarian William Camden argued that a temple to the goddess Diana had stood during Roman times on the site occupied by the medieval St Paul's Cathedral. Wren reported that he had found no trace of any such temple during the works to build the new cathedral after the Great Fire, and Camden's hypothesis is no longer accepted by modern archaeologists.

 

Pre-Norman cathedral

There is evidence for Christianity in London during the Roman period, but no firm evidence for the location of churches or a cathedral. Bishop Restitutus is said to have represented London at the Council of Arles in 314 AD. A list of the 16 "archbishops" of London was recorded by Jocelyn of Furness in the 12th century, claiming London's Christian community was founded in the second century under the legendary King Lucius and his missionary saints Fagan, Deruvian, Elvanus and Medwin. None of that is considered credible by modern historians but, although the surviving text is problematic, either Bishop Restitutus or Adelphius at the 314 Council of Arles seems to have come from Londinium.

 

Bede records that in AD 604 Augustine of Canterbury consecrated Mellitus as the first bishop to the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the East Saxons and their king, Sæberht. Sæberht's uncle and overlord, Æthelberht, king of Kent, built a church dedicated to St Paul in London, as the seat of the new bishop. It is assumed, although not proved, that this first Anglo-Saxon cathedral stood on the same site as the later medieval and the present cathedrals.

 

On the death of Sæberht in about 616, his pagan sons expelled Mellitus from London, and the East Saxons reverted to paganism. The fate of the first cathedral building is unknown. Christianity was restored among the East Saxons in the late seventh century and it is presumed that either the Anglo-Saxon cathedral was restored or a new building erected as the seat of bishops such as Cedd, Wine and Erkenwald, the last of whom was buried in the cathedral in 693.

 

Earconwald was consecrated bishop of London in 675, and is said to have bestowed great cost on the fabric, and in later times he almost occupied the place of traditionary, founder: the veneration paid to him is second only to that which was rendered to St. Paul. Erkenwald would become a subject of the important High Medieval poem St Erkenwald.

 

King Æthelred the Unready was buried in the cathedral on his death in 1016; the tomb is now lost. The cathedral was burnt, with much of the city, in a fire in 1087, as recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

 

Old St Paul's

The fourth St Paul's, generally referred to as Old St Paul's, was begun by the Normans after the 1087 fire. A further fire in 1135 disrupted the work, and the new cathedral was not consecrated until 1240. During the period of construction, the style of architecture had changed from Romanesque to Gothic and this was reflected in the pointed arches and larger windows of the upper parts and East End of the building. The Gothic ribbed vault was constructed, like that of York Minster, of wood rather than stone, which affected the ultimate fate of the building.

 

An enlargement programme commenced in 1256. This "New Work" was consecrated in 1300 but not complete until 1314. During the later Medieval period St Paul's was exceeded in length only by the Abbey Church of Cluny and in the height of its spire only by Lincoln Cathedral and St. Mary's Church, Stralsund. Excavations by Francis Penrose in 1878 showed that it was 585 feet (178 m) long and 100 feet (30 m) wide (290 feet (88 m) across the transepts and crossing). The spire was about 489 feet (149 m) in height.[citation needed] By the 16th century the building was deteriorating.

 

The English Reformation under Henry VIII and Edward VI (accelerated by the Chantries Acts) led to the destruction of elements of the interior ornamentation and the chapels, shrines, and chantries.

 

The would come to include the removal of the cathedral's collection of relics, which by the sixteenth century was understood to include:

 

the body of St Erkenwald

both arms of St Mellitus

a knife thought to belong to Jesus

hair of Mary Magdalen

blood of St Paul

milk of the Virgin Mary

the head of St John

the skull of Thomas Becket

the head and jaw of King Ethelbert

part of the wood of the cross,

a stone of the Holy Sepulchre,

a stone from the spot of the Ascension, and

some bones of the eleven thousand virgins of Cologne.

 

Old St Paul's in 1656 by Wenceslaus Hollar, showing the rebuilt west facade

In October 1538, an image of St Erkenwald, probably from the shrine, was delivered to the master of the king's jewels. Other images may have survived, at least for a time. More systematic iconoclasm happened in the reign of Edward VI: the Grey Friar's Chronicle reports that the rood and other images were destroyed in November 1547.

 

In late 1549, at the height of the iconoclasm of the reformation, Sir Rowland Hill altered the route of his Lord Mayor's day procession and said a de profundis at the tomb of Erkenwald. Later in Hill's mayoralty of (1550) the high altar of St Paul's was removed overnight to be destroyed, an occurrence that provoked a fight in which a man was killed. Hill had ordered, unusually for the time, that St Barnabus's Day would not be kept as a public holiday ahead of these events.

 

Three years later, by October 1553, "Alle the alteres and chappelles in alle Powlles churche" were taken down.[19] In August, 1553, the dean and chapter were cited to appear before Queen Mary's commissioners.

 

Some of the buildings in the St Paul's churchyard were sold as shops and rental properties, especially to printers and booksellers. In 1561 the spire was destroyed by a lightning strike, an event that Roman Catholic writers claimed was a sign of God's judgment on England's Protestant rulers. Bishop James Pilkington preached a sermon in response, claiming that the lightning strike was a judgement for the irreverent use of the cathedral building. Immediate steps were taken to repair the damage, with the citizens of London and the clergy offering money to support the rebuilding. However, the cost of repairing the building properly was too great for a country and city recovering from a trade depression. Instead, the roof was repaired and a timber "roo"’ put on the steeple.

 

In the 1630s a west front was added to the building by England's first classical architect, Inigo Jones. There was much defacing and mistreatment of the building by Parliamentarian forces during the Civil War, and the old documents and charters were dispersed and destroyed. During the Commonwealth, those churchyard buildings that were razed supplied ready-dressed building material for construction projects, such as the Lord Protector's city palace, Somerset House. Crowds were drawn to the north-east corner of the churchyard, St Paul's Cross, where open-air preaching took place.

 

In the Great Fire of London of 1666, Old St Paul's was gutted. While it might have been possible to reconstruct it, a decision was taken to build a new cathedral in a modern style. This course of action had been proposed even before the fire.

 

Present St Paul's

The task of designing a replacement structure was officially assigned to Sir Christopher Wren on 30 July 1669. He had previously been put in charge of the rebuilding of churches to replace those lost in the Great Fire. More than 50 city churches are attributable to Wren. Concurrent with designing St Paul's, Wren was engaged in the production of his five Tracts on Architecture.

 

Wren had begun advising on the repair of the Old St Paul's in 1661, five years before the fire in 1666. The proposed work included renovations to interior and exterior to complement the classical facade designed by Inigo Jones in 1630. Wren planned to replace the dilapidated tower with a dome, using the existing structure as a scaffold. He produced a drawing of the proposed dome which shows his idea that it should span nave and aisles at the crossing. After the Fire, it was at first thought possible to retain a substantial part of the old cathedral, but ultimately the entire structure was demolished in the early 1670s.

 

In July 1668 Dean William Sancroft wrote to Wren that he was charged by the Archbishop of Canterbury, in agreement with the Bishops of London and Oxford, to design a new cathedral that was "Handsome and noble to all the ends of it and to the reputation of the City and the nation". The design process took several years, but a design was finally settled and attached to a royal warrant, with the proviso that Wren was permitted to make any further changes that he deemed necessary. The result was the present St Paul's Cathedral, still the second largest church in Britain, with a dome proclaimed as the finest in the world. The building was financed by a tax on coal, and was completed within its architect's lifetime with many of the major contractors engaged for the duration.

 

The "topping out" of the cathedral (when the final stone was placed on the lantern) took place on 26 October 1708, performed by Wren's son Christopher Jr and the son of one of the masons. The cathedral was declared officially complete by Parliament on 25 December 1711 (Christmas Day). In fact, construction continued for several years after that, with the statues on the roof added in the 1720s. In 1716 the total costs amounted to £1,095,556 (£174 million in 2021).

 

Consecration

On 2 December 1697, 31 years and 3 months after the Great Fire destroyed Old St Paul's, the new cathedral was consecrated for use. The Right Reverend Henry Compton, Bishop of London, preached the sermon. It was based on the text of Psalm 122, "I was glad when they said unto me: Let us go into the house of the Lord." The first regular service was held on the following Sunday.

 

Opinions of Wren's cathedral differed, with some loving it: "Without, within, below, above, the eye / Is filled with unrestrained delight", while others hated it: "There was an air of Popery about the gilded capitals, the heavy arches ... They were unfamiliar, un-English ...".

 

Since 1900

St. Paul's was the target of two suffragette bombing attacks in 1913 and 1914 respectively, which nearly caused the destruction of the cathedral. This was as part of the suffragette bombing and arson campaign between 1912 and 1914, in which suffragettes from the Women's Social and Political Union, as part of their campaign for women's suffrage, carried out a series of politically motivated bombings and arson nationwide. Churches were explicitly targeted by the suffragettes as they believed the Church of England was complicit in reinforcing opposition to women's suffrage. Between 1913 and 1914, 32 churches across Britain were attacked.

 

The first attack on St. Paul's occurred on 8 May 1913, at the start of a sermon. A bomb was heard ticking and discovered as people were entering the cathedral. It was made out of potassium nitrate. Had it exploded, the bomb likely would have destroyed the historic bishop's throne and other parts of the cathedral. The remains of the device, which was made partly out of a mustard tin, are now on display at the City of London Police Museum.

 

A second bombing of the cathedral by the suffragettes was attempted on 13 June 1914, however the bomb was again discovered before it could explode. This attempted bombing occurred two days after a bomb had exploded at Westminster Abbey, which damaged the Coronation Chair and caused a mass panic for the exits. Several other churches were bombed at this time, such as St Martin-in-the-Fields church in Trafalgar Square and the Metropolitan Tabernacle.

 

War damage

The cathedral survived the Blitz although struck by bombs on 10 October 1940 and 17 April 1941. The first strike destroyed the high altar, while the second strike on the north transept left a hole in the floor above the crypt. The latter bomb is believed to have detonated in the upper interior above the north transept and the force was sufficient to shift the entire dome laterally by a small amount.

 

On 12 September 1940 a time-delayed bomb that had struck the cathedral was successfully defused and removed by a bomb disposal detachment of Royal Engineers under the command of Temporary Lieutenant Robert Davies. Had this bomb detonated, it would have totally destroyed the cathedral; it left a 100-foot (30 m) crater when later remotely detonated in a secure location. As a result of this action, Davies and Sapper George Cameron Wylie were each awarded the George Cross. Davies' George Cross and other medals are on display at the Imperial War Museum, London.

 

One of the best known images of London during the war was a photograph of St Paul's taken on 29 December 1940 during the "Second Great Fire of London" by photographer Herbert Mason, from the roof of a building in Tudor Street showing the cathedral shrouded in smoke. Lisa Jardine of Queen Mary, University of London, has written:

 

Wreathed in billowing smoke, amidst the chaos and destruction of war, the pale dome stands proud and glorious—indomitable. At the height of that air-raid, Sir Winston Churchill telephoned the Guildhall to insist that all fire-fighting resources be directed at St Paul's. The cathedral must be saved, he said, damage to the fabric would sap the morale of the country.

 

Post-war

On 29 July 1981, the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer was held at the cathedral. The couple selected St Paul's over Westminster Abbey, the traditional site of royal weddings, because the cathedral offered more seating.

 

Extensive copper, lead and slate renovation work was carried out on the Dome in 1996 by John B. Chambers. A 15-year restoration project—one of the largest ever undertaken in the UK—was completed on 15 June 2011.

 

Occupy London

In October 2011 an anti-capitalism Occupy London encampment was established in front of the cathedral, after failing to gain access to the London Stock Exchange at Paternoster Square nearby. The cathedral's finances were affected by the ensuing closure. It was claimed that the cathedral was losing revenue of £20,000 per day. Canon Chancellor Giles Fraser resigned, asserting his view that "evicting the anti-capitalist activists would constitute violence in the name of the Church". The Dean of St Paul's, the Right Revd Graeme Knowles, then resigned too. The encampment was evicted at the end of February 2012, by court order and without violence, as a result of legal action by the City of London Corporation.

 

2019 terrorist plot

On 10 October 2019, Safiyya Amira Shaikh, a Muslim convert, was arrested following an MI5 and Metropolitan Police investigation. In September 2019, she had taken photos of the cathedral's interior. While trying to radicalise others using the Telegram messaging software, she planned to attack the cathedral and other targets such as a hotel and a train station using explosives. Shaikh pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life imprisonment.

 

National events

The size and location of St Paul's has made it an ideal setting for Christian services marking great national events. The opportunity for long processions culminating in the dramatic approach up Ludgate Hill, the open area and steps at the west front, the great nave and the space under the dome are all well suited for ceremonial occasions. St Paul's can seat many more people than any other church in London, and in past centuries, the erection of temporary wooden galleries inside allowed for congregations exceeding 10,000. In 1935, the dean, Walter Matthews, wrote:

 

No description in words can convey an adequate idea of the majestic beauty of a solemn national religious ceremony in St Paul's. It is hard to believe that there is any other building in the world that is so well adapted to be the setting of such symbolical acts of communal worship.

 

National events attended by the royal family, government ministers and officers of state include national services of thanksgiving, state funerals and a royal wedding. Some of the most notable examples are:

 

Thanksgiving service for the Acts of Union 1707, 1 May 1707

State funeral of Horatio Nelson, 9 January 1806

State funeral of the Duke of Wellington, 18 November 1852

Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria, 22 June 1897

Thanksgiving service for the Treaty of Versailles, 6 July 1919

Silver Jubilee of George V, 6 May 1935

Thanksgiving services for VE Day and VJ Day, 13 May and 19 August 1945

Silver Jubilee of Elizabeth II, 7 June 1977

Wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer, 29 July 1981

Golden Jubilee of Elizabeth II, 4 June 2002

Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II, 5 June 2012

Ceremonial funeral of Margaret Thatcher, 17 April 2013

Thanksgiving service for the Queen's 90th Birthday, 10 June 2016

Platinum Jubilee National Service of Thanksgiving, 3 June 2022

 

Ministry and functions

St Paul's Cathedral is a busy church with four or five services every day, including Matins, Eucharist and Evening Prayer or Choral Evensong. In addition, the cathedral has many special services associated with the City of London, its corporation, guilds and institutions. The cathedral, as the largest church in London, also has a role in many state functions such as the service celebrating the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II. The cathedral is generally open daily to tourists and has a regular programme of organ recitals and other performances. The Bishop of London is Sarah Mullally, whose appointment was announced in December 2017 and whose enthronement took place in May 2018.

 

Dean and chapter

The cathedral chapter is currently composed of seven individuals: the dean, three residentiary canons (one of whom is, exceptionally, lay), one "additional member of chapter and canon non-residentiary" (ordained), and two lay canons. Each has a different responsibility in the running of the cathedral. As of October 2022:

 

Dean — Andrew Tremlett (since 25 September 2022)

Precentor — James Milne (since 9 May 2019)

Treasurer — vacant

Chancellor — Paula Gooder (since 9 May 2019; lay reader since 23 February 2019)

Steward — Neil Evans (since June 2022)

Additional member of chapter and canon non-residentiary — Sheila Watson (since January 2017).

Lay Canon — Pamela (Pim) Jane Baxter (since March 2014). Deputy Director at the National Portrait Gallery, with experience in opera, theatre and the visual arts.

Lay Canon — Sheila Nicoll (since October 2018). She is Head of Public Policy at Schroder Investment Management.

Lay Canon — Clement Hutton-Mills (since March 2021). He is also a Managing Director at Goldman Sachs.

Lay Canon — Gillian Bowen (since June 2022). She is Chief Executive Officer of YMCA London City and North and is a magistrate.

 

Director of Music

The Director of Music is Andrew Carwood. Carwood was appointed to succeed Malcolm Archer as Director of Music, taking up the post in September 2007. He is the first non-organist to hold the post since the 12th century.

 

Paul's Cathedral

Organs

An organ was commissioned from Bernard Smith in 1694.

 

In 1862 the organ from the Panopticon of Science and Art (the Panopticon Organ) was installed in a gallery over the south transept door.

 

The Grand Organ was completed in 1872, and the Panopticon Organ moved to the Victoria Rooms in Clifton in 1873.

 

The Grand Organ is the fifth-largest in Great Britain, in terms of number of pipes (7,256), with 5 manuals, 136 ranks of pipes and 137 stops, principally enclosed in an impressive case designed in Wren's workshop and decorated by Grinling Gibbons.

 

Details of the organ can be found online at the National Pipe Organ Register.

 

Choir

St Paul's Cathedral has a full professional choir, which sings regularly at services. The earliest records of the choir date from 1127. The present choir consists of up to 30 boy choristers, eight probationers and the vicars choral, 12 professional singers. In February 2017 the cathedral announced the appointment of the first female vicar choral, Carris Jones (a mezzo-soprano), to take up the role in September 2017. In 2022, it was announced that girls would be admitted to a cathedral choir in 2025.

 

During school terms the choir sings Evensong six times per week, the service on Mondays being sung by a visiting choir (or occasionally said) and that on Thursdays being sung by the vicars choral alone. On Sundays the choir also sings at Mattins and the 11:30 am Eucharist.

 

Many distinguished musicians have been organists, choir masters and choristers at St Paul's Cathedral, including the composers John Redford, Thomas Morley, John Blow, Jeremiah Clarke, Maurice Greene and John Stainer, while well-known performers have included Alfred Deller, John Shirley-Quirk and Anthony Way as well as the conductors Charles Groves and Paul Hillier and the poet Walter de la Mare.

 

Wren's cathedral

In designing St Paul's, Christopher Wren had to meet many challenges. He had to create a fitting cathedral to replace Old St Paul's, as a place of worship and as a landmark within the City of London. He had to satisfy the requirements of the church and the tastes of a royal patron, as well as respecting the essentially medieval tradition of English church building which developed to accommodate the liturgy. Wren was familiar with contemporary Renaissance and Baroque trends in Italian architecture and had visited France, where he studied the work of François Mansart.

 

Wren's design developed through five general stages. The first survives only as a single drawing and part of a model. The scheme (usually called the First Model Design) appears to have consisted of a circular domed vestibule (possibly based on the Pantheon in Rome) and a rectangular church of basilica form. The plan may have been influenced by the Temple Church. It was rejected because it was not thought "stately enough". Wren's second design was a Greek cross, which was thought by the clerics not to fulfil the requirements of Anglican liturgy.

 

Wren's third design is embodied in the "Great Model" of 1673. The model, made of oak and plaster, cost over £500 (approximately £32,000 today) and is over 13 feet (4 m) tall and 21 feet (6 m) long. This design retained the form of the Greek-Cross design but extended it with a nave. His critics, members of a committee commissioned to rebuild the church, and clergy decried the design as too dissimilar to other English churches to suggest any continuity within the Church of England. Another problem was that the entire design would have to be completed all at once because of the eight central piers that supported the dome, instead of being completed in stages and opened for use before construction finished, as was customary. The Great Model was Wren's favourite design; he thought it a reflection of Renaissance beauty. After the Great Model, Wren resolved not to make further models and not to expose his drawings publicly, which he found did nothing but "lose time, and subject [his] business many times, to incompetent judges". The Great Model survives and is housed within the cathedral itself.

 

Wren's fourth design is known as the Warrant design because it received a Royal warrant for the rebuilding. In this design Wren sought to reconcile Gothic, the predominant style of English churches, to a "better manner of architecture". It has the longitudinal Latin Cross plan of a medieval cathedral. It is of 1+1⁄2 storeys and has classical porticos at the west and transept ends, influenced by Inigo Jones's addition to Old St Paul's. It is roofed at the crossing by a wide shallow dome supporting a drum with a second cupola, from which rises a spire of seven diminishing stages. Vaughan Hart has suggested that influence in the design of the spire may have been drawn from the oriental pagoda. Not used at St Paul's, the concept was applied in the spire of St Bride's, Fleet Street. This plan was rotated slightly on its site so that it aligned, not with true east, but with sunrise on Easter of the year construction began. This small change in configuration was informed by Wren's knowledge of astronomy.

 

Final design

The final design as built differs substantially from the official Warrant design. Wren received permission from the king to make "ornamental changes" to the submitted design, and Wren took great advantage of this. Many of these changes were made over the course of the thirty years as the church was constructed, and the most significant was to the dome: "He raised another structure over the first cupola, a cone of brick, so as to support a stone lantern of an elegant figure ... And he covered and hid out of sight the brick cone with another cupola of timber and lead; and between this and the cone are easy stairs that ascend to the lantern" (Christopher Wren, son of Sir Christopher Wren). The final design was strongly rooted in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. The saucer domes over the nave were inspired by François Mansart's Church of the Val-de-Grâce, which Wren had seen during a trip to Paris in 1665.

 

The date of the laying of the first stone of the cathedral is disputed. One contemporary account says it was 21 June 1675, another 25 June and a third on 28 June. There is, however, general agreement that it was laid in June 1675. Edward Strong later claimed it was laid by his elder brother, Thomas Strong, one of the two master stonemasons appointed by Wren at the beginning of the work.

 

Structural engineering

Wren's challenge was to construct a large cathedral on the relatively weak clay soil of London. St Paul's is unusual among cathedrals in that there is a crypt, the largest in Europe, under the entire building rather than just under the eastern end. The crypt serves a structural purpose. Although it is extensive, half the space of the crypt is taken up by massive piers which spread the weight of the much slimmer piers of the church above. While the towers and domes of most cathedrals are supported on four piers, Wren designed the dome of St Paul's to be supported on eight, achieving a broader distribution of weight at the level of the foundations. The foundations settled as the building progressed, and Wren made structural changes in response.

 

One of the design problems that confronted Wren was to create a landmark dome, tall enough to visually replace the lost tower of St Paul's, while at the same time appearing visually satisfying when viewed from inside the building. Wren planned a double-shelled dome, as at St Peter's Basilica. His solution to the visual problem was to separate the heights of the inner and outer dome to a much greater extent than had been done by Michelangelo at St Peter's, drafting both as catenary curves, rather than as hemispheres. Between the inner and outer domes, Wren inserted a brick cone which supports both the timbers of the outer, lead-covered dome and the weight of the ornate stone lantern that rises above it. Both the cone and the inner dome are 18 inches thick and are supported by wrought iron chains at intervals in the brick cone and around the cornice of the peristyle of the inner dome to prevent spreading and cracking.

 

The Warrant Design showed external buttresses on the ground floor level. These were not a classical feature and were one of the first elements Wren changed. Instead he made the walls of the cathedral particularly thick to avoid the need for external buttresses altogether. The clerestory and vault are reinforced with flying buttresses, which were added at a relatively late stage in the design to give extra strength. These are concealed behind the screen wall of the upper story, which was added to keep the building's classical style intact, to add sufficient visual mass to balance the appearance of the dome and which, by its weight, counters the thrust of the buttresses on the lower walls.

 

Designers, builders and craftsmen

During the extensive period of design and rationalisation, Wren employed from 1684 Nicholas Hawksmoor as his principal assistant. Between 1696 and 1711 William Dickinson was measuring clerk. Joshua Marshall (until his early death in 1678) and Thomas and his brother Edward Strong were master masons, the latter two working on the construction for its entirety. John Langland was the master carpenter for over thirty years. Grinling Gibbons was the chief sculptor, working in both stone on the building itself, including the pediment of the north portal, and wood on the internal fittings. The sculptor Caius Gabriel Cibber created the pediment of the south transept while Francis Bird was responsible for the relief in the west pediment depicting the Conversion of St Paul, as well as the seven large statues on the west front. The floor was paved by William Dickinson in black and white marble in 1709–10 Jean Tijou was responsible for the decorative wrought ironwork of gates and balustrades. The ball and cross on the dome were provided by an armorer, Andrew Niblett. Following the war damage mentioned above, many craftsmen were employed to restore the wood carvings and stone work that had been destroyed by the bomb impact. One of particular note is Master Carver, Gino Masero who was commissioned to carve the replacement figure of Christ, an eight-foot sculpture in lime which currently stands on the High Altar.

 

Description

St Paul's Cathedral is built in a restrained Baroque style which represents Wren's rationalisation of the traditions of English medieval cathedrals with the inspiration of Palladio, the classical style of Inigo Jones, the baroque style of 17th century Rome, and the buildings by Mansart and others that he had seen in France. It is particularly in its plan that St Paul's reveals medieval influences. Like the great medieval cathedrals of York and Winchester, St Paul's is comparatively long for its width, and has strongly projecting transepts. It has much emphasis on its facade, which has been designed to define rather than conceal the form of the building behind it. In plan, the towers jut beyond the width of the aisles as they do at Wells Cathedral. Wren's uncle Matthew Wren was the Bishop of Ely, and, having worked for his uncle, Wren was familiar with the unique octagonal lantern tower over the crossing of Ely Cathedral, which spans the aisles as well as the central nave, unlike the central towers and domes of most churches. Wren adapted this characteristic in designing the dome of St Paul's.[91] In section St Paul's also maintains a medieval form, having the aisles much lower than the nave, and a defined clerestory.

 

Exterior

The most renowned exterior feature is the dome, which rises 365 feet (111 m) to the cross at its summit, and dominates views of the city. The height of 365 feet is explained by Wren's interest in astronomy. Until the late 20th century St Paul's was the tallest building on the City skyline, designed to be seen surrounded by the delicate spires of Wren's other city churches. The dome is described by Sir Banister Fletcher as "probably the finest in Europe", by Helen Gardner as "majestic", and by Sir Nikolaus Pevsner as "one of the most perfect in the world". Sir John Summerson said that Englishmen and "even some foreigners" consider it to be without equal.

 

Dome

Wren drew inspiration from Michelangelo's dome of St Peter's Basilica, and that of Mansart's Church of the Val-de-Grâce, which he had visited. Unlike those of St Peter's and Val-de-Grâce, the dome of St Paul's rises in two clearly defined storeys of masonry, which, together with a lower unadorned footing, equal a height of about 95 feet. From the time of the Greek Cross Design it is clear that Wren favoured a continuous colonnade (peristyle) around the drum of the dome, rather than the arrangement of alternating windows and projecting columns that Michelangelo had used and which had also been employed by Mansart. Summerson suggests that he was influenced by Bramante's "Tempietto" in the courtyard of San Pietro in Montorio. In the finished structure, Wren creates a diversity and appearance of strength by placing niches between the columns in every fourth opening. The peristyle serves to buttress both the inner dome and the brick cone which rises internally to support the lantern.

 

Above the peristyle rises the second stage surrounded by a balustraded balcony called the "Stone Gallery". This attic stage is ornamented with alternating pilasters and rectangular windows which are set just below the cornice, creating a sense of lightness. Above this attic rises the dome, covered with lead, and ribbed in accordance with the spacing of the pilasters. It is pierced by eight light wells just below the lantern, but these are barely visible. They allow light to penetrate through openings in the brick cone, which illuminates the interior apex of this shell, partly visible from within the cathedral through the ocular opening of the lower dome.

 

The lantern, like the visible masonry of the dome, rises in stages. The most unusual characteristic of this structure is that it is of square plan, rather than circular or octagonal. The tallest stage takes the form of a tempietto with four columned porticos facing the cardinal points. Its lowest level is surrounded by the "Golden Gallery" and its upper level supports a small dome from which rises a cross on a golden ball. The total weight of the lantern is about 850 tons.

 

West front

For the Renaissance architect designing the west front of a large church or cathedral, the universal problem was how to use a facade to unite the high central nave with the lower aisles in a visually harmonious whole. Since Alberti's additions to Santa Maria Novella in Florence, this was usually achieved by the simple expedient of linking the sides to the centre with large brackets. This is the solution that Wren saw employed by Mansart at Val-de-Grâce. Another feature employed by Mansart was a boldly projecting Classical portico with paired columns. Wren faced the additional challenge of incorporating towers into the design, as had been planned at St Peter's Basilica. At St Peter's, Carlo Maderno had solved this problem by constructing a narthex and stretching a huge screen facade across it, differentiated at the centre by a pediment. The towers at St Peter's were not built above the parapet.

 

Wren's solution was to employ a Classical portico, as at Val-de-Grâce, but rising through two storeys, and supported on paired columns. The remarkable feature here is that the lower story of this portico extends to the full width of the aisles, while the upper section defines the nave that lies behind it. The gaps between the upper stage of the portico and the towers on either side are bridged by a narrow section of wall with an arch-topped window.

 

The towers stand outside the width of the aisles, but screen two chapels located immediately behind them. The lower parts of the towers continue the theme of the outer walls, but are differentiated from them in order to create an appearance of strength. The windows of the lower story are smaller than those of the side walls and are deeply recessed, a visual indication of the thickness of the wall. The paired pilasters at each corner project boldly.

 

Above the main cornice, which unites the towers with the portico and the outer walls, the details are boldly scaled, in order to read well from the street below and from a distance. The towers rise above the cornice from a square block plinth which is plain apart from large oculi, that on the south being filled by the clock, while that on the north is void. The towers are composed of two complementary elements, a central cylinder rising through the tiers in a series of stacked drums, and paired Corinthian columns at the corners, with buttresses above them, which serve to unify the drum shape with the square plinth on which it stands. The entablature above the columns breaks forward over them to express both elements, tying them together in a single horizontal band. The cap, an ogee-shaped dome, supports a gilded finial in the form of a pineapple.

 

The transepts each have a semi-circular entrance portico. Wren was inspired in the design by studying engravings of Pietro da Cortona's Baroque facade of Santa Maria della Pace in Rome. These projecting arcs echo the shape of the apse at the eastern end of the building.

 

Walls

The building is of two storeys of ashlar masonry, above a basement, and surrounded by a balustrade above the upper cornice. The balustrade was added, against Wren's wishes, in 1718. The internal bays are marked externally by paired pilasters with Corinthian capitals at the lower level and Composite at the upper level. Where the building behind is of only one story (at the aisles of both nave and choir) the upper story of the exterior wall is sham. It serves a dual purpose of supporting the buttresses of the vault, and providing a satisfying appearance when viewed rising above buildings of the height of the 17th-century city. This appearance may still be seen from across the River Thames.

 

Between the pilasters on both levels are windows. Those of the lower storey have semi-circular heads and are surrounded by continuous mouldings of a Roman style, rising to decorative keystones. Beneath each window is a floral swag by Grinling Gibbons, constituting the finest stone carving on the building and some of the greatest architectural sculpture in England. A frieze with similar swags runs in a band below the cornice, tying the arches of the windows and the capitals. The upper windows are of a restrained Classical form, with pediments set on columns, but are blind and contain niches. Beneath these niches, and in the basement level, are small windows with segmental tops, the glazing of which catches the light and visually links them to the large windows of the aisles. The height from ground level to the top of the parapet is approximately 110 feet.

 

Fencing

The original fencing, designed by Wren, was dismantled in the 1870s. The surveyor for the government of Toronto had it shipped to Toronto, where it has since adorned High Park.

 

Interior

Internally, St Paul's has a nave and choir in each of its three bays. The entrance from the west portico is through a square domed narthex, flanked by chapels: the Chapel of St Dunstan to the north and the Chapel of the Order of St Michael and St George to the south. The nave is 91 feet (28 m) in height and is separated from the aisles by an arcade of piers with attached Corinthian pilasters rising to an entablature. The bays, and therefore the vault compartments, are rectangular, but Wren roofed these spaces with saucer-shaped domes and surrounded the clerestory windows with lunettes. The vaults of the choir are decorated with mosaics by Sir William Blake Richmond. The dome and the apse of the choir are all approached through wide arches with coffered vaults which contrast with the smooth surface of the domes and punctuate the division between the main spaces. The transepts extend to the north and south of the dome and are called (in this instance) the North Choir and the South Choir.

 

The choir holds the stalls for the clergy, cathedral officers and the choir, and the organ. These wooden fittings, including the pulpit and Bishop's throne, were designed in Wren's office and built by joiners. The carvings are the work of Grinling Gibbons whom Summerson describes as having "astonishing facility", suggesting that Gibbons aim was to reproduce popular Dutch flower painting in wood. Jean Tijou, a French metalworker, provided various wrought iron and gilt grilles, gates and balustrades of elaborate design, of which many pieces have now been combined into the gates near the sanctuary.

 

The cathedral is some 574 feet (175 m) in length (including the portico of the Great West Door), of which 223 feet (68 m) is the nave and 167 feet (51 m) is the choir. The width of the nave is 121 feet (37 m) and across the transepts is 246 feet (75 m). The cathedral is slightly shorter but somewhat wider than Old St Paul's.

 

Dome

The main internal space of the cathedral is that under the central dome which extends the full width of the nave and aisles. The dome is supported on pendentives rising between eight arches spanning the nave, choir, transepts, and aisles. The eight piers that carry them are not evenly spaced. Wren has maintained an appearance of eight equal spans by inserting segmental arches to carry galleries across the ends of the aisles, and has extended the mouldings of the upper arch to appear equal to the wider arches.

 

Above the keystones of the arches, at 99 feet (30 m) above the floor and 112 feet (34 m) wide, runs a cornice which supports the Whispering Gallery so called because of its acoustic properties: a whisper or low murmur against its wall at any point is audible to a listener with an ear held to the wall at any other point around the gallery. It is reached by 259 steps from ground level.

 

The dome is raised on a tall drum surrounded by pilasters and pierced with windows in groups of three, separated by eight gilded niches containing statues, and repeating the pattern of the peristyle on the exterior. The dome rises above a gilded cornice at 173 feet (53 m) to a height of 214 feet (65 m). Its painted decoration by Sir James Thornhill shows eight scenes from the life of St Paul set in illusionistic architecture which continues the forms of the eight niches of the drum. At the apex of the dome is an oculus inspired by that of the Pantheon in Rome. Through this hole can be seen the decorated inner surface of the cone which supports the lantern. This upper space is lit by the light wells in the outer dome and openings in the brick cone. Engravings of Thornhill's paintings were published in 1720.

 

Apse

The eastern apse extends the width of the choir and is the full height of the main arches across choir and nave. It is decorated with mosaics, in keeping with the choir vaults. The original reredos and high altar were destroyed by bombing in 1940. The present high altar and baldacchino are the work of W. Godfrey Allen and Stephen Dykes Bower. The apse was dedicated in 1958 as the American Memorial Chapel. It was paid for entirely by donations from British people. The Roll of Honour contains the names of more than 28,000 Americans who gave their lives while on their way to, or stationed in, the United Kingdom during the Second World War. It is in front of the chapel's altar. The three windows of the apse date from 1960 and depict themes of service and sacrifice, while the insignia around the edges represent the American states and the US armed forces. The limewood panelling incorporates a rocket—a tribute to America's achievements in space.

 

Artworks, tombs and memorials

St Paul's at the time of its completion, was adorned by sculpture in stone and wood, most notably that of Grinling Gibbons, by the paintings in the dome by Thornhill, and by Jean Tijou's elaborate metalwork. It has been further enhanced by Sir William Richmond's mosaics and the fittings by Dykes Bower and Godfrey Allen. Other artworks in the cathedral include, in the south aisle, William Holman Hunt's copy of his painting The Light of the World, the original of which hangs in Keble College, Oxford. The St. Paul's version was completed with a significant input from Edward Robert Hughes as Hunt was now suffering from glaucoma. In the north choir aisle is a limestone sculpture of the Madonna and Child by Henry Moore, carved in 1943. The crypt contains over 200 memorials and numerous burials. Christopher Wren was the first person to be interred, in 1723. On the wall above his tomb in the crypt is written in Latin: Lector, si monumentum requiris, circumspice ("Reader, if you seek his monument, look around you").

 

The largest monument in the cathedral is that to the Duke of Wellington by Alfred Stevens. It stands on the north side of the nave and has on top a statue of Wellington astride his horse "Copenhagen". Although the equestrian figure was planned at the outset, objections to the notion of having a horse in the church prevented its installation until 1912. The horse and rider are by John Tweed. The Duke is buried in the crypt. The tomb of Horatio, Lord Nelson is located in the crypt, next to that of Wellington. The marble sarcophagus which holds his remains was made for Cardinal Wolsey but not used as the cardinal had fallen from favour. At the eastern end of the crypt is the Chapel of the Order of the British Empire, instigated in 1917, and designed by John Seely, Lord Mottistone. There are many other memorials commemorating the British military, including several lists of servicemen who died in action, the most recent being the Gulf War.

 

Also remembered are Florence Nightingale, J. M. W. Turner, Arthur Sullivan, Hubert Parry, Samuel Johnson, Lawrence of Arabia, William Blake, William Jones and Sir Alexander Fleming as well as clergy and residents of the local parish. There are lists of the Bishops and cathedral Deans for the last thousand years. One of the most remarkable sculptures is that of the Dean and poet, John Donne. Before his death, Donne posed for his own memorial statue and was depicted by Nicholas Stone as wrapped in a burial shroud, and standing on a funeral urn. The sculpture, carved around 1630, is the only one to have survived the conflagration of 1666 intact. The treasury is also in the crypt but the cathedral has very few treasures as many have been lost, and on 22 December 1810 a major robbery took almost all of the remaining precious artefacts.

 

The funerals of many notable figures have been held in the cathedral, including those of Lord Nelson, the Duke of Wellington, Winston Churchill, George Mallory and Margaret Thatcher.

 

Clock and bells

A clock was installed in the south-west tower by Langley Bradley in 1709 but was worn out by the end of the 19th century. The present mechanism was built in 1893 by Smith of Derby incorporating a design of escapement by Edmund Denison Beckett similar to that used by Edward Dent on Big Ben's mechanism in 1895. The clock mechanism is 19 feet (5.8 m) long and is the most recent of the clocks introduced to St Paul's Cathedral over the centuries. Since 1969 the clock has been electrically wound with equipment designed and installed by Smith of Derby, relieving the clock custodian from the work of cranking up the heavy drive weights.

 

The south-west tower also contains four bells, of which Great Paul, cast in 1881 by J. W. Taylor of Taylor's bell foundry of Loughborough, at 16+1⁄2 long tons (16,800 kg) was the largest bell in the British Isles until the casting of the Olympic Bell for the 2012 London Olympics. Although the bell is traditionally sounded at 1 pm each day, Great Paul had not been rung for several years because of a broken chiming mechanism. In the 1970s the fastening mechanism that secured the clapper had fractured, sending both through the clock mechanism below and causing damage which cost £30,000 to repair. In about 1989 the clapper fractured completely, although less damage was sustained. On 31 July 2021, during the London Festival of the Bells, Great Paul rang for the first time in two decades, being hand swung by the bell ringers. The clock bells included Great Tom, which was moved from St Stephen's Chapel at the Palace of Westminster and has been recast several times, the last time by Richard Phelps. It chimes the hour and is traditionally tolled on occasions of a death in the royal family, the Bishop of London, or the Lord Mayor of London, although an exception was made at the death of the US president James Garfield. It was last tolled for the death of Queen Elizabeth II in 2022, ringing once every minute along with other bells across the country in honor of the 96 years of her life. In 1717, Richard Phelps cast two more bells that were added as "quarter jacks" that ring on the quarter hour. Still in use today, the first weighs 13 long cwt (1,500 lb; 660 kg), is 41 inches (100 cm) in diameter and is tuned to A♭; the second weighs 35 long cwt (3,900 lb; 1,800 kg), is 58 inches (150 cm) in diameter and is tuned to E♭.

 

The north-west tower contains a ring of 12 bells by John Taylor & Co of Loughborough hung for change ringing. In January 2018 the bells were removed for refurbishment and were rehung in September that year, being rung again for the first time on All Saints' Day. The original service or "Communion" bell dating from 1700 and known as "the Banger" is rung before 8 am services.

AC / DC mit Axel Rose Konzert - concert anlässlich der Rock or Bust Tour im Stade de Suisse in Bern im Kanton Bern der Schweiz

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Lead - Gitarre : Angus Young

 

Schlagzeug : Chris Slade ( 1990–1995, seit 2.0.1.5 )

 

Bass : Cliff Williams ( seit 1977 )

 

Gesang : Axel Rose ( G.uns `n` R.oses Sänger ersetzt für 2016 Brian Johnson ( seit 1980 )

 

Rhythmus - Gitarre : Stevie Young ( seit 2.0.1.4 )

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Setlist - Rock or Bust Tour - AC / DC mit Axel Rose - Stade de Suisse Bern

 

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Konzertbeginn ca. 20.20 Uhr

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- Rock or bust

 

- Shoot to thrill

 

- Hell ain't a bad place to be

 

- Back in black

 

- Got some rock & roll thunder

 

- Dirty deeds done dirt cheap

 

- Rock 'n' Roll damnation

 

- Thunderstruck

 

- If you want blood ( you've got it )

 

- High voltage

 

- Rock 'n' Roll train

 

- Given the dog a bone

 

- Have a drink on me

 

- Sin city

 

- T.N.T.

 

- Hells bells

 

- You shook me all night long

 

- Whole lotta Rosie

 

- Shot down in flames

 

- Let there be rock ( with Angus Young guitar solo )

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Zugaben

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- Highway to hell

 

- Riff raff

 

- For those about to rock ( we salute you )

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Konzerteende : 2230 Uhr

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AC / DC mit Axel Rose - Konzert im Stade de Suisse in Bern am Sonntag den 29. Mai 2016

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Kamera : Canon Power Shot SX130 IS

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Hurni160529 KantonBern AlbumKonzerte

 

E- Mail : chrigu.hurni@bluemail.ch

 

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Letzte Aktualisierung - Ergänzung des Textes : 290615

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NIF

Jeroen Matthes

 

For best view: Press L

© Jef Kusters - credit MUST be given at all times

As some of you may already know, I recently was given the opportunity to shoot for the NEON iCON... aka; RiFF RAFF -One of the hottest and most successful celebrities and rappers out there right now. I first shot for RiFF RAFF ViP status in Seattle, at Showbox... and I knew I needed to keep going. I then traveled 600 miles to the Knitting Factory, in Spokane, WA, absolutely determined to make a business connection with the man himself, in person.

 

Meeting the NEON PYTHON was a trip -This dude is real as fuck, sported a $50K NEFF chain around his neck when I met him, and shakes the floor at a solid 250 LBS -He is currently being trained by Hulk Hogan for the WWE. I'm really stoked I had the opportunity to meet him, this guy has been a huge inspiration to me. I shot the event sporting my NEON iCON T and some fresh Jordan Oreo 6's to match it -Had to let Jody know I was a part of NEON NATiON!

 

For this I used nothing but the Contax 645 and Fujifilm 800Z. After some consultation with the world renound wedding photographer and author of "Film Is Not Dead", Jonathan Canlas, I decided his Lab was the one for the job, and I sent my negatives to The FIND Lab for developing and scanning. Normally I use a Fuji Frontier SP-3000 scanner, however I needed to grab extra shadow detail so I used a Kodak Noritsu scanner for this batch. I gave my film as much light as I could while stopping some motion, and camped at f/2 on the 80mm and stayed between 1/125th and 1/60th shutter. I pushed the film +3 stops, to 6400 ASA. In the future when I shoot for JODY HiGHROLLER, I will be using CineStill 800T paired with Ilford HP5 films, and pushing one stop, or not at all. Fuji 800Z is a very light-hungry film, and I was lucky to get useable images from shooting with it. This particular image had to be converted to Black and White, due to under-exposure from dim Tungsten lighting.

 

This image was recently featured (As of TODAY -Which is why I am releasing the image) on RiFF RAFF's official merchandise Instagram page @riffraffmerch !!! Once a Media Outlet is decided on, these images will be released to Press! I'm definitely going after WORLDSTAR HIPHOP for these ones!

 

As of lately, getting work has been tough. The cost of film, darkroom fees, camera accessories, and running this business is only always going up -any support or follows from fans is greatly appreciated, my links can be found below:

 

---->>> Facebook | Blog Insta: @Ricky.Dekker <<<----

We are *so* gald that we were recommended to seek you jelp.

Given by my grandfather to my grandmother for her ruby wedding anniversary

 

Lighting information: one Olympus FL-600R camera right, diffused by Polaroid mini-diffuser. One Olympus FL-300R camera left, undiffused. Both triggered optically by Olympus FL-LM2, on camera, also contributing to the exposure.

 

See here for an illustration of the lighting setup: flic.kr/p/2n4Thjp

Given myself an alphabet soup game. Two new photos and another two from my photostream or archives, when possible.

 

A remote controlled boat on a river in Etampes. Taken in April 2011.

 

Thank you for your favourites. :O)

Given the right opportunity, the notorious Purple Loosestrife can show off it's beauty.

 

View On Black

Stromboli is a small island in the Tyrrhenian Sea, off the north coast of Sicily, containing one of the three active volcanoes in Italy. It is one of the eight Aeolian Islands, a volcanic arc north of Sicily. This name is derived from the Ancient Greek name Strongulē which was given to it because of its round swelling form. The island's population is between 400 and 850. The volcano has erupted many times and is constantly active with minor eruptions, often visible from many points on the island and from the surrounding sea, giving rise to the island's nickname "Lighthouse of the Mediterranean". The most recent major eruption was on 13 April 2009. Stromboli stands 926 m (3,034 ft) above sea level, and over 2,700 m (8,860 ft) on average above the sea floor.There are three active craters at the peak. A significant geological feature of the volcano is the Sciara del Fuoco ("Stream of fire"), a big horseshoe-shaped depression generated in the last 13,000 years by several collapses on the northwestern side of the cone. Two kilometers to the northeast lies Strombolicchio, the volcanic plug remnant of the original volcano.Mt. Stromboli has been in almost continuous eruption for the past 2,000 years. A pattern of eruption is maintained in which explosions occur at the summit craters, with mild to moderate eruptions of incandescent volcanic bombs, at intervals ranging from minutes to hours. This Strombolian eruption, as it is known, is also observed at other volcanoes worldwide. Eruptions from the summit craters typically result in a few short, mild, but energetic bursts, ranging up to a few hundred meters in height, containing ash, incandescent lava fragments and stone blocks. Mt. Stromboli's activity is almost exclusively explosive, but lava flows do occur at times when volcanic activity is high: an effusive eruption occurred in 2002, the first in 17 years, and again in 2003, 2007, and 2013-14.The two villages San Bartolo and San Vincenzo lie in the northeast while the smaller village Ginostra lies in the southwest. Administratively, they are one of the frazione of Lipari.In the early 1900s a few thousand people inhabited the island, but after several emigrations the population numbered a few hundred by the mid-1950s.

 

Stromboli è un'isola dell'Italia appartenente all'arcipelago delle isole Eolie, in Sicilia. Si tratta di un vulcano attivo facente parte dell'Arco Eoliano. Posta nel bacino Tirreno del mare Mediterraneo occidentale, l'isola è la più settentrionale delle Eolie e si estende su una superficie di 12,2 km².L'edificio vulcanico è alto 926 m s.l.m. e raggiunge una profondità compresa tra 1300 m e 2400 m al di sotto del livello del mare. Stromboli ha una persistente attività esplosiva ed è uno dei vulcani più attivi del mondo. A poche centinaia di metri a nord-est dell'isola di Stromboli si trova il neck di Strombolicchio, residuo di un antico camino vulcanico. L'isolotto ospita un faro della Marina, disabitato e automatizzato.Lo Stromboli è un vulcano esplosivo e le sue eruzioni avvengono con una frequenza media di circa una ogni ora. La sua attività "ordinaria" ha luogo ad una quota di 750 m s.l.m. dalle diverse bocche eruttive presenti nell'area craterica e allineate in direzione NE-SW. Tale attività consiste in esplosioni intermittenti di media energia, della durata di pochi secondi ad intervalli di 10–20 minuti, durante le quali vengono emesse piccole quantità di bombe scoriacee incandescenti, lapilli, cenere e blocchi, con velocità di uscita compresa tra 20 a 120 metri al secondo ed altezze comprese tra poche decine fino ad alcune centinaia di metri. L'attività eruttiva è associata ad un degassamento pressoché continuo dall'area craterica, il cui volume stimato è di 6000-12000 t/gi, e che consiste principalmente di H2O (3200-6300 t/g), CO2 (2900-5800 t/g), SO2 (400-800 t/g) e quantità minori di HCl e HF.Periodi di totale inattività, senza lanci di materiale, sono piuttosto rari. Il più lungo tra quelli registrati si è protratto per circa due anni, dal 1908 al 1910. Periodi di prolungata quiescenza, della durata di qualche mese, sono stati registrati più volte.

L'attività normale può essere periodicamente interrotta da esplosioni di maggiore energia, dette "esplosioni maggiori". Questi eventi consistono di brevi ma violente esplosioni, durante le quali vengono prodotti lanci balistici di blocchi e bombe di dimensioni anche metriche a distanze di alcune centinaia di metri, associati a piogge di lapilli e cenere; la distribuzione dei prodotti è solitamente confinata all'interno dell'area craterica. Sono distribuite non omogeneamente nel tempo, ma si tratta mediamente di 2,1 eventi ogni anno.

Le eruzioni stromboliane più violente mai accadute in tempi storici risalgono al 1919 e al 1930, ed entrambe (pare) furono causate da grandi infiltrazioni d'acqua marina nel camino vulcanico: il magma, a contatto con l'acqua, avrebbe causato violente esplosioni con grande emissione di vapori e scorie, accompagnate da violenti terremoti. Per la prima e finora unica volta nella storia del vulcano, delle colate laviche si riversarono anche al di fuori della Sciara del Fuoco, arrivando a lambire i centri abitati (Piscità fu sfiorata ad appena 20 metri), causando ingenti danni e numerose vittime, e causando un piccolo tsunami che generò un'onda di 2–3 m che arrivò a far danni fino a Capo Vaticano, in Calabria.I parossismi rappresentano le manifestazioni più energetiche del vulcano di Stromboli; consistono in violente ed improvvise esplosioni "tipo cannonata", durante le quali avviene l'emissione sostenuta di scorie incandescenti, ceneri, bombe e blocchi litici a distanze considerevoli, fino ad interessare le zone abitate dell'isola. Tali esplosioni possono produrre nubi convettive che raggiungono quote di 10 km. Durante i parossismi sono emessi volumi sensibilmente maggiori di materiali rispetto alle eruzioni normali e a quelle maggiori e frequentemente possono avvenire profonde modificazioni dell'area craterica. L'ultimo evento parossistico è avvenuto il 15 marzo 2007 all'interno dell'eruzione di febbraio-aprile 2007.Il 27 febbraio 2007, con un'iniziale effusione di lava dal cratere di NE, durata alcune ore e seguita dall'apertura di una bocca effusiva nella Sciara del Fuoco, a quota 400 m s.l.m. circa. Il 9 marzo 2007 si è aperta una seconda bocca sempre sulla Sciara del Fuoco, ma posizionata a circa 500 m s.l.m.; l'attività di questa bocca è stata comunque breve (circa 24 ore). Il 2 aprile 2007 è infine terminata anche l'effusione di lava dalla bocca di quota 400 m s.l.m. Il 4 maggio 2009 il vulcano ha ripreso l'attività eruttiva.

Nell'ultimo secolo sono riportati circa 26 episodi durante i quali si sono avute emissioni laviche. I prodotti emessi sono rappresentati principalmente da colate di spessore variabile; la morfologia del vulcano obbliga le colate di lava a riversarsi sul versante nord-occidentale, dove sono confinate all'interno della Sciara di Fuoco e quindi non rappresentano un pericolo per la popolazione dell'isola. Le colate fuoriescono generalmente attraverso fratture eruttive nella zona craterica o all'interno della Sciara del Fuoco, ma possono generarsi anche per tracimazione dal bordo craterico.La storia geologica dell'isola di Stromboli comincia circa 200.000 anni fa, quando un primo vulcano attivo di grandi dimensioni emerge dal mare, in posizione NE rispetto all'isola; di questo vulcano antico rimane soltanto il condotto solidificato (neck) rappresentato da Strombolicchio (vedi sotto).Il vero e proprio vulcano di Stromboli emerge dal mare circa 160.000 anni fa. Inizialmente i centri di emissione sono nella parte meridionale dell'isola, dove affiorano le unità più antiche appartenenti ai complessi del Paleostromboli I e II.Circa 35.000 anni fa il centro di emissione migra leggermente verso nord e le emissioni di lava e i depositi piroclastici legati a eruzioni esplosive danno origine ad un cono che raggiunge quota 700 m s.l.m. (Paleostromboli III).Le fasi successive della storia di Stromboli vedono la formazione ed il collasso calderico di vari edifici vulcanici. In particolare, a circa 34.600 anni fa risale il complesso eruttivo di Scari, osservabile presso Scari e a sud del paese sotto forma di spesse sequenze di bombe vulcaniche, lapilli e lahar. Mentre successivo (circa 26.000 anni fa) è il complesso del Vancori, caratterizzato da depositi piroclastici e basalti shoshonitici. In questa fase, la cima del vulcano era occupata probabilmente da una grande caldera. Il ciclo Scari-Vancori si conclude con il collasso laterale (una grande frana) del settore occidentale e nordoccidentale dell'edificio vulcanico.La fase successiva, a partire da circa 13.800 anni fa, vede la ricostruzione dell'edificio nel settore nordoccidentale. Il nuovo centro eruttivo, detto Neostromboli, è ubicato a nord del costone dei Vancori. Contemporaneamente, alcuni centri eruttivi secondari danno origine al "Timpone del Fuoco" presso Ginostra, alle lave di San Bartolo e di San Vincenzo.All'incirca tra 10000 e 5000 anni fa il settore nordoccidentale subisce nuovi collassi laterali (frane), lasciando una profonda depressione a forma di ferro di cavallo che si estende dalla cima fino ad una profondità di circa 2.000 m sotto il livello del mare: la Sciara del Fuoco. Lentamente la depressione viene riempita da materiale piroclastico e colate di lava. Il centro eruttivo attuale è rappresentato da un grande cono piroclastico che si trova nella parte sommitale della Sciara del Fuoco, a quota inferiore rispetto al Pizzo Sopra la Fossa, ed è caratterizzato, come detto sopra, dalla presenza di tre crateri allineati parallelamente alla Sciara, in direzione NE-SW.

Stromboli è nota, frequentata ed abitata fin dall'antichità remota, e la sua economia si è sempre fondata sulle produzioni agricole tipicamente mediterranee: olivo, vite (malvasia coltivato basso in giardini terrazzati), fichi - e poi sulla pesca e sulla marineria. Fino al XIX secolo questa economia fu fiorente e Stromboli arrivò a contare circa 2700 abitanti, precisamente nel 1891, secondo i dati ufficiali a disposizione (fonte Mastriani e ISTAT ).Il peggioramento delle condizioni economiche seguito all'unità d'Italia, il ripetersi di eruzioni e terremoti (in particolare l'eruzione del 1930) e infine l'attacco della peronospora che negli anni trenta sterminò la più redditizia coltura locale, quella della vite, fecero sì che una grandissima maggioranza degli strombolani prendesse la via dell'emigrazione, soprattutto verso l'Australia e l'America e l'isola rischiò seriamente di restare abbandonata.Venne riscoperta dopo la guerra da Roberto Rossellini che, con il film del 1949 Stromboli terra di Dio (con protagonista femminile la giovane Ingrid Bergman), portò l'isola e la sua straordinarietà all'attenzione del pubblico.Il vulcano è chiamato dai suoi abitanti (gli stombolani) Struògnoli, o anche Iddu (Lui in siciliano), in riferimento alla natura divina che un tempo era attribuita ai fenomeni naturali incontrollabili.Il nome proviene dal greco antico Στρογγύλη (rotondo) per via della sua forma. In siciliano strummulu significa trottola.Stromboli dà il nome a un tipo di vulcani caratterizzati da un'attività vulcanica effusiva detta Stromboliana.I principali borghi abitati sono San Vincenzo (o semplicemente il paese di Stromboli, anticamente era borgo degli agricoltori) con l'approdo storico di Scari, Piscità e Ficogrande, che anticamente era il borgo degli armatori.A sudovest, raggiungibile solo via mare, c'è Ginostra dove d'inverno restano circa 30 o 40 abitanti e dove l'unico mezzo di trasporto è il mulo.A Stromboli c'è una scuola elementare e media per i pochi ragazzi abitanti dell'isola. Dopo le scuole solitamente i ragazzi vanno a Lipari dove sono presenti alcune scuole secondarie di secondo grado.Da Napoli, Lipari, Milazzo e Messina Stromboli è raggiungibile col traghetto e, d'estate, anche in aliscafo da Messina, Reggio Calabria, Vibo Valentia e Tropea.Il flusso turistico verso l'isola, che costituisce la principale risorsa economica di Stromboli, fino agli anni settanta fu rappresentato soprattutto da persone alla ricerca di un ambiente particolare, naturale ed integro e non privo di scomodità come mancanza di elettricità, scarsità d'acqua. Nei decenni successivi le scomodità sono molto diminuite e il turismo è molto cresciuto, anche se resta limitato prevalentemente ai mesi centrali estivi.L'isola è meta di turisti in cerca di tranquillità: anche per questo nei locali dell'isola è vietato diffondere musica oltre le due di notte.Giornalmente, inoltre, si organizzano escursioni al vulcano con guide esperte, che portano ad oltre 900 metri sul livello del mare. Tramite imbarcazioni è inoltre possibile raggiungere nelle ore notturne la vicina e movimentata Panarea, lo scoglio di Strombolicchio e Ginostra, caratteristica località sull'isola di Stromboli dove l'unico mezzo di trasporto sono i muli (ne sono presenti una decina in tutto) e che è irraggiungibile per via terrestre dall'altra parte abitata dell'isola.Stromboli è anche meta, seppur in misura minore, di molti giovani, che si recano nei locali e nelle feste sulla spiaggia periodicamente organizzate nella stagione estiva.Caratteristica dell'isola, oltre alle stradine strette percorribili solo dal motocarro e dai motorini elettrici, che i turisti affittano sull'isola stessa, è la mancata illuminazione notturna nelle strade, che il Comune a cui l'isola fa riferimento, ovvero quello di Lipari, vuol mantenere come importante attrattiva turistica. Dall'Osservatorio, infine, si può vedere la lava del vulcano, l'unico delle Isole Eolie perennemente in attività e il cielo stellato evidenziato dalla mancanza di illuminazione.Durante la stagione turistica partono imbarcazioni per permettere ai turisti di fare il bagno presso lo scoglio di Strombolicchio.

 

Font : Wikipedia

 

Given myself an alphabet soup game. Two new photos and another two from my photostream or archives, when possible.

 

Taken in Etampes at the Foire d'Etampes in June 2011.

 

Thank you for your favourites. :O)

For best view: Press L

© Jef Kusters - credit MUST be given at all times

Given that Daw Mill colliery has closed forever and Didcot power station no longer is coal burning this shot of 66 548 on Hatton Bank on 24/03/11 with 6Z98 12.57 Daw Mill - Didcot p.s. is a historical shot. Things do move quickly these days.

Copyright Geoff Dowling; All rights reserved, no use to be made without consent.

YORK, ENGLAND - APRIL 11: during an i2i Soccer Academy Training Session at Haxby Road on April 11th 2023 in North Yorkshire, United Kingdom. (Photo by Matthew Appleby)

Given the Mayan's have decreed today to be the end of the world, the boys decided a feathered headdress in their honor would be appropriate.

 

It does give Zachary...

 

Daily Dog Challenge 416. "A Sense of Grandeur"

 

Our Daily Challenge - Dec 20, 2012 - "Apotheosis"

 

… don't you think?

 

Stop on by Zachary and Henry's blog: bztraining.blogspot.com

Tipu Sultan (Kannada: ಟಿಪ್ಪು ಸುಲ್ತಾನ್, Urdu: سلطان فتح علی خان ٹیپو ) (November 1750, Devanahalli – 4 May 1799, Seringapatam), also known as the Tiger of Mysore, was the de facto ruler of the Kingdom of Mysore. He was the son of Hyder Ali, at that time an officer in the Mysorean army, and his second wife, Fatima or Fakhr-un-nissa. He was given a number of honorific titles, and was referred to as Sultan Fateh Ali Khan Shahab, Tipu Saheb, or Bahadur Khan Tipu Sultan.

Given its proximity to the tube station and the Piazza, this is likely to get very busy with tourists.

 

Address: 10 James Street.

Owner: McMullen (website).

Links:

Fancyapint

Beer in the Evening

Qype

Dead Pubs (history)

When our Grade 2 class at C.I.M. was first introduced to, and given our materials, we were not sure what we were going to do with a takeout box of elastics. As a class, we looked at the variety of sizes and thicknesses of elastics, we began to formulate ideas that might use elastics to move an object by transferring the potential energy in the elastic to kinetic energy.

 

On our ideate portion of our project we broke into 5 groups of 5 students and discussed how we could use elastics to move and object. Students came up with the following ideas: a slingshot, a watercraft vehicle or a land vehicle. We looked at the following ideas and took a class vote as to which type of project we would like to pursue. The watercraft option received the majority of votes.

 

The next big step was to place students back into small groups to brainstorm materials on a planning sheet for the hull, propellers (motors), stabilizers and placement of elastics. Each group made a material list and then we tabulated the results on the board. All the ideas were great, so we decided to build a variety of boats using the different materials, and test each out to see how well each boat moved using an elastic that stored potential energy and converted it to kinetic energy.

 

Each group was given a basket of materials that they could choose from to build their boat. Each team decided on the type of material used for the hull (lunchable or water bottle), all decided to use dowels for boat stabilizers. Each group decided on a material for the propeller (motor) which included plastic spoons, or popsicle sticks (any length and configuration that was decided by the group). Last, each group chose their own size, thickness and number of elastics to hold the boat(s) together.

 

After construction was complete, students tested out the boats. If the propeller (motor) did not turn, students changed out the size of elastics and/or changed the distance between the boat stabilizers to allow for the motor to move freely. When the tightened elastic unwound on the propeller, the kinetic energy was released. The boats moved forward!

 

After every adjustment (stabilizer placement, changes in elastics size or number and motor placement, including the number of times the elastics needed to be wound around the motor, students went and tested their designs in our class swimming pool. The results were amazing and shown in our attached videos. They worked awesome!

 

The highlight of this project was watching each group work as a team to solve issues with their hull, stabilizer position, number of elastics and motor placement. They also realized that the direction of the boat changed, depending on the direction that they wound the elastic (forward/ backward) on the motor. The curiosity, teamwork, effort and learning that lead to the final product were amazing!

 

The challenge though minor, was that after students decided on a design plan, I needed to purchase a variety of additional supplies to contribute to the overall project. Additional materials may have been helpful to be included in the kit. Overall, amazing, cooperative learning experience!

Given a boat we might've bagged that pot of gold!

From the handout given at the park:

 

O’Leno State Park and River Rise Preserve State Park Fact Sheet

 

•Together the parks number 6212 acres. 4,500 in River Rise Preserve and the remainder in the older O’Leno State Park.

•There are 18 different natural communities within the parks boundaries.

•Both parks contain the 3 mile “natural bridge” where the Santa Fe River flows into the sink and returns to the surface at the rise.

•Hernando De Soto traveled through these parks in 1539 while exploring the interior of Florida. Here he met members of local Timucan speaking tribes the Utina and Potano.

•The Park occupies property in both Alachua and Columbia Counties.

•We have 55 listed Cultural sites on park property.

•There are 19 miles of equestrian trails at River Rise Preserve State Park. With a 20 horse stall barn and primitive campsites.

•There are 61 family campsites with water and electric. Two primitive Youth Camps for 25 people apiece and one up to 10 person “hike in/hike out” primitive campsite.

•A town existed here first called Keno and later Ken that lasted from the 1840’s until the mid 1890’s. Hence the origin of the park’s name “Old Leno” becoming O’Leno.

•1935-36 the Civilian Conservation Corps Company 418 Camp P-67 constructed Camp O’Leno to be used as a park/forestry training area. Some of the CCC buildings are still being used today by the park.

•The camp became a park in 1940, and is one of the older state parks. River Rise was purchased as a Preserve in 1974.

•Florida’s First Federal Roadway, the Bellamy Road traveled through the park in the 1820’s. It originated from an earlier Indian trail and later the Camino Real which connected missions in the interior of Florida with St Augustine.

•There are 6 miles of hiking trails.

•There are 17 cabins and 8 support buildings in our Group Camp.

•Both parks receive about 65,000 visitors annually that spend over 2 million dollars annually in the local economy. 67 local jobs are generated because of the parks.

•The park creates over $230,000 in local sales tax revenue.

      

History of O’Leno State Park

O’Leno State Park occupies an historic crossroads area, unique compared to all of north Florida. The Santa Fe River along with its geologically unique disappearance into the ground and aquifer (River Sink) and its reappearance 3 miles to the south (River Rise) creating a natural land bridge, has the first basis of this land being a crossroads. Before the Spanish arrived in the 1500’s, Native Indian presence and villages were abundant in north Florida. Villages were close by. Research has also shown that the Santa Fe River was a boundary line between the Utina and Potano tribes of the Timucua Indians.

 

The first European to pass through the area was the Spanish explorer Hernando De Soto in 1539. In the Spanish mission period of the 1600’s, the Spanish used the Indian trail for their road running from St. Augustine, through the Santa Fe land bridge, to Tallahassee and Pensacola, calling it the El Camino Real.

 

About two hundred years later, when Florida was a U.S. territory, the federal government contracted with John Bellamy, a plantation owner, in 1824 to build the first federally-funded major road from St. Augustine to Tallahassee. This road followed the El Camino Real and also passed through the Santa Fe land bridge. This road became known as the Bellamy Road, now referred to today as the Old Bellamy Road.

 

Just a quarter mile of the River Sink and 2 miles north of the Old Bellamy Road was a fitting place for a town. A town was established on the west bank of the river in 1840 by a man named Henry Matier. The town as “Keno,” a popular bingo-type gambling game in those days. Later, in 1876, the General Store manager, Col. Whetstone, applied for a post office from the U.S. government. It is reported that the request was denied due to the name of the town being associated with gambling. Therefore, the town’s name was changed to Leno, and a post office was granted. Several years later, Col. Whetstone moved the post office to his seat of residence in Mikesville, three miles to the north.

 

In the latter 1800’s the town of Keno/Leno grew by the hard work defeating the odds of nature, establishing grist mills, saw mills, and cotton gins along the river by first creating a couple dams and channeling the river into the shoots, where the mills were strategically built. The dams were created by embedding cedar slats across the river, backed by barriers of large rocks to direct the river flow. Remnants of these dams, mill sites, and cedar slats and shoots can be seen today when the river is down low. Due to the grinding capability from the two grist mills and six cotton gins and circular saw mill, Leno became and agricultural hub for the area.

 

In the days of Keno/Leno, criss-crossing the Bellamy Road was the north-south “Alligator Road,” passing Keno/Leno, and heading north up to the city of Alligator, now Lake City. When the town heard in 1894 of a railroad coming through the area, they were hopeful. But the train bypassed Leno, going to Fort White instead. This struck a major blow to the town, and many of the residents moved to neighboring communities. A major freeze then occurred in 1896 killing the major crops in that day, oranges, cotton, and tobacco, which sealed a final blow to the once thriving town of Leno.

I’d deliberately given myself about an hour between trains at the Gare du Nord this evening, hoping that I’d be able to pop across to Montmartre and catch the Paris skyline at golden hour before check-in for the Eurostar closed. I made it, but with so little time to explore before having to hurry back that I couldn’t find a position from where the Eiffel Tower was visible; as a result, the picture is perhaps not so obviously of Paris (at least to the outsider). Also, not only does the image lack that most distinctive landmark of the Paris skyline, but those others that it does contain aren’t particularly well-composed, either... I should’ve given myself longer for this.

 

22nd October 2011 — FRA, Île-de-France

 

Canon PowerShot S5 IS

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1628AD Mughal Empire of India Large Antique Islamic Muslim Silver Coin i44959

 

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About the item on this post:

 

What you see is an item just listed by Ilya Zlobin. Ilya Zlobin, a world-renowned ancient Greek, Roman, Biblical, Byzantine, Medieval and World numismatic coin, antiquities and artifact dealer, expert, author and enthusiast.

 

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Ilya Zlobin loves to keep everyone he deals with very happy with the amazing value they got, and having them return for an excellent experience is his goal. You can read what real customers have said about their experience by reading the reviews as feedbacks on eBay. By collecting ancient coins, you will be joining the ranks of some of the most famous people in the world.

 

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| www.trustedcoins.com | eBay Ancient Coin Shop | Youtube Video Channel | About Ilya Zlobin | Educational Emails about Ancient Coins signup |

 

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28 February 2022. Ashogha, Zheray district, Kandahar, Afghanistan. Mumtaz Baryal, local social mobilizer.

 

Photo credits must be given to: ©FAO/Alberto Trillo Barca. Editorial use only. Copyright FAO.

Sample: Arrrrgh! I'm you! You're me!

 

Somewhere in Konami, there is a box where all Really Stupid Ideas go. It may be an orange crate, a novelty cookie tin, or just a sturdy cardboard box that looked too useful to toss. I am convinced that the box exists, and that it was opened sometime in 1998, because no other facts will adequately explain Hybrid Heaven.

 

Let's take a deep breath and get started...

 

Aliens exist. Some of the aliens are nice, and others are evil. Evil but wily. They want to take over Earth, which just goes to show how desperate the galactic real estate situation is getting. So one of the evil aliens infiltrates the mothership of a nice alien race on its way to peacefully explore the planet Earth. The ship arrives at its landing site under New York City (apparently, the Manhattan bedrock is a myth), evil alien enslaves good aliens, and starts creating an unholy hybrid (of what, is not explained) clone army to take over the planet. All this multitasking leaves him little time; hence he has no name other than 'The Master'. He also makes hybrid clones that look exactly like certain people (like the American president) so he can pull switcheroos. The technology for sucking out people's memories comes in real handy whenever a swap takes place. Luckily, a lone Secret Service Agent has nothing better to do than get in The Master's way...

 

Is there even a point in criticizing a video game for having an appalling plot, terrible dialogue, and barely cardboard characters?

 

My answer is yes. There's 'pretty bad' like Metal Gear Solid, which wants to marry Clancy-style political-military-adventure thriller to the Japanese giant-robot anime tradition (some traditions should be dumped, and widow burning and giant robots are two of them), then there's bad like a rotten egg. Metal Gear's bad writing doesn't get in the way of much that is good about the game, while Hybrid Heaven's stinks to—well, high heaven. Hell, given a team of good disciplined writers with a sense of humor, it would still be possible to write a decent Metal Gear game. Outrageous villains, great gadgets, cool hero, hot babes, lots of suspension of disbelief -- this is stuff of James Bond after all. Can't say the same for Hybrid Heaven.

 

The hard truth is, the game industry is indifferent to decent writing overall, and particularly deluded when it comes to action games. The culture of the latter is that of teenage boys who aren't particularly interested in anything except what mainstream pop culture dishes out to them, and it shows. Having translated and played a fair number of plot-intensive video games, I can say with confidence that most of these writers do not have a clue what they are doing. They wouldn't last a day in even TV or film, yet they're allowed to put out crap like "You are Nick Vrenna. It is the year 2009. You have been falsely incarcerated inside a high security underground prison where illegal genetic experiments are taking place" without anybody batting an eyelash. Good thing too. Blinking might get in the way of shooting, causing you to lose precious, precious points.

 

So what if a game has great playability, beautiful graphics and all the works? If you're playing a game and the hero's girlfriend/communication officer (note to Hideo Kojima: you don't know a lot of women, do you?) is bugging him about commitment issues while he's hiding from recon inside an enemy installation, point at the so-called writers and laugh at them really loudly. In public. So these game producers think you're that stupid? Swallow it, give it good reviews, fail to call them on the idiocy and you've proven that yes, you are that stupid. Bring on the sequels, feed me more of that non-nourishing, vaguely headache-inducing stuff. I wouldn't recognize quality if it came up and bit me on my numb-from-too-much-sitting ass!

 

Demand better. It's no coincidence that there's nothing but sequels and formulas coming out of this relatively new, multibillion-dollar industry.

 

"Hybrid Heaven"™ and its characters and images are the property of Konami Corporation. This low-resolution image is solely used to identify the game in question. No free equivalent of this image exists. This image does not allow users to make illegal copies of the software, and does not diminish the copyright holder Konami's ability to market the software.

Begining a search.

 

More than 40 Special Constables have today (17/5/13) given up their day job to help Greater Manchester Police as part of Give & Gain Day 2013.

 

The national day will see more than 11,000 employees across the UK donate their time to help out the communities they live or work in.

 

Specials taking part in the day have been given a day’s paid annual leave to support the day of action and their bosses have been invited to see what they do first hand.

 

Businesses supporting the national day include Tesco, Inspire 2 Independence (i2i) Ltd, Willmott Dixon Construction, AKW, Trafford Park, Lloyds Banking Group, NHS Blood & Transplant Service, Ofsted, Dept of Work Pensions, Bury Council, Asda Pilsworth and BT.

 

Specials working on the day are taking part in a variety of different tasks including warrants, an ANPR operation and burglary initiative.

 

Chief Superintendent Nick Adderley, programme director for the Special Constabulary, said: “Every day I’m blown away by the dedication, commitment and good work being done by our Special Constables to keep communities safe.

 

“These are people who want to make a real difference to the area which is commendable in itself but when you add to this the fact that they are giving up their spare time and aren’t being paid, I have nothing but the uttermost respect for them.

 

“Being a Special Constable enables individuals to gain hands on experience in dealing with challenging situations that they might not encounter in any other career. This helps to improve confidence, develop communication skills and manage conflict, which can help them in both their personal and professional lives.

 

“I’m delighted to take part in Give & Gain Day 2013 and would like to extend a personal thank you to the organisations that have allowed their staff to take a day off to help make Greater Manchester a safer place to live, work and visit.”

 

Simon Butcher, Director of Operations of Willmott Dixon Construction Northern said: “As an organisation we recognise the significant contribution that specials make in the policing of Greater Manchester and the significant personal risks it brings in protecting the public and serving the community.

 

“At Willmott Dixon we are always happy to support whether that be at an event like today or time off work for duties and training. Furthermore we recognise the significant benefits it brings to both individuals and company. Chief Inspector Mike Walmsley is one of our ‘Top Flight’ Project Managers and I have no doubts that Mike’s career with Willmott Dixon has benefited by the experience and training he has received in his voluntary role with the Specials.

 

“I am very much looking forward to spending a day in the life of a Special Constable and witnessing with my own eyes the marvellous work that these people carry out.”

 

Special Constable Oliver Mayall, who is being supported by his employer Inspire 2 Independence (i2i), said: "I joined the Special Constabulary because I wanted to give something back to my community. However, my experiences in the challenging role of a volunteer police officer have also enabled me to further develop my own skills and abilities.

 

"My paid employer is supporting me in this day of action by giving me the day off to undertake policing duties within the communities of Manchester. This makes me feel fulfilled as an employee, as it shows that I work for an organisation that is not only supportive of my own personal development, but also keen to contribute towards increasing public safety and confidence within Greater Manchester.”

 

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

www.gmp.police.uk

 

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

 

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

 

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

  

We were given an old girls Ross bike from the 70s and it was trashed. I wanted to get rid of it, but Chloë had a vision.

We stripped it down to the frame and cleaned it up. Replaced the crank with a BMX one, used a mustache bar I had, replaced the chain, bought a freewheel cog for the rear.

The wheels were from a similar vintage Schwinn, cleaned up with some steel wool - White-Wall tires. We reused the front brake and replaced the lever (the old lever was too small for the mustache bar) - A little blue Cinelli wrap for the handlebars and this this is ready to roll.