Weathered black shales disconformably overlying limestones in the Devonian of Kentucky, USA.

 

The rocks in the upper part of the photo are weathered black shales of the New Albany Shale, a Devonian-aged formation in Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, and eastern Missouri. The unit is dominated by dark-colored marine mudshales of Late Devonian age. These black shales were deposited in a moderately deep, anoxic seafloor environment. This was a widespread lithofacies during the Late Devonian's Global Anoxia Event. The New Albany Shale is equivalent to the Ohio Shale, the Antrim Shale, and the Chattanooga Shale in surrounding states.

 

The basal New Albany here is the Blocher Member - it consists of dolomitic black shales (dolosiltites, actually). The fissile nature of Blocher rocks is due to post-depositional compaction. Blocher beds are rich in organic carbon and have been homogenized by bioturbation.

 

The rocks in the lower part of the picture are the Middle Devonian North Vernon Limestone, which is part of a widespread sheet of Devonian carbonates that extends from New York State to the Midwest. The North Vernon Limestone represents deposition in a subtropical, shallow-water, carbonate platform environment. The limestone here is fossiliferous, with decent-sized camerate crinoid columnals. An encrinite bed is present in the top-preserved North Vernon.

 

Just above the top of the North Vernon Limestone is a thin, lensoidal lag unit with phosphatic nodules, glauconitic pellets, and conodonts.

 

The New Albany-North Vernon contact represents missing time - such stratigraphic boundaries are called unconformities, which are surfaces of erosion and/or non-deposition of sediments. This is a disconformity, with horizontal sedimentary rocks above and below the contact.

 

Oxidative weathering of pyrite (FeS2 - iron sulfide; "fool's gold") at the New Albany-North Vernon boundary has produced iron oxide minerals such as reddish-brown hematite and yellowish-brown limonite. The iron oxides have stained the underlying rocks via descending meteoric waters (rain and runoff). The end result is a "bleeding unconformity".

 

Stratigraphy: lowermost-preserved New Albany Shale (uppermost Givetian Stage to lower Frasnian Stage, uppermost Middle Devonian to lower Upper Devonian) disconformably over the Beechwood Member of the North Vernon Limestone (Givetian Stage, upper Middle Devonian)

 

Locality: roadcut along the western side of the south-bound entrance ramp to Interstate 65 at the Route 245-Interstate 65 interchange, north-northeast of Belmont & south of Sherpherdsville, south-central Bullitt County, north-central Kentucky, USA (37° 55' 24.45" North latitude, 85° 41' 18.33" West longitude)

----------------------------------

Info. at:

 

Schieber, J. & R. Lazar (eds.). 2004. Devonian black shales of the eastern U.S. New insights into sedimentology and stratigraphy from the subsurface and outcrops in the Illinois and Appalachian Basins. Field Guide for the 2004 Annual Field Conference of the Great Lakes Section of SEPM. Indiana Geological Survey Open-File Study 04-05. 90 pp.

 

I noticed this girl walking along the street with her ice cream cone, and thought I would get a photo of her. But then my bus suddenly pulled ahead and left her behind, before I could get a shot.... but then, a block later, it got stuck in a traffic jam and just sat there for a few minutes. Lo and behold, the girl continued walking along, and eventually drew alongside the bus. I think she spotted me as I took this photo, but she was clearly focused on enjoying her ice cream...

 

Note: I chose this photo, among the 10 that I uploaded to Flickr on the evening of Jun 25, 2011, as my "photo of the day."

 

Moving into 2013, the photo was published in a May 19, 2013 blog simply titled "Athens."

 

***************************

 

When we hear the phrase “first impression,” we tend to think of a person. Was the politician I recently voted for as inspiring when I heard his first speech as he was years later? (More so, sadly.) Was the girl that I married as beautiful at 13 as she was years later, in her twenties and thirties? (Yes, and yes.) Did Bob Dylan’s Blowin’ in the Wind send more of a shiver down my spine in 1963 than it did when I heard it drifting from a car radio 45 years later? (No. It stops me dead in my tracks every time I hear it.)

 

It’s not just people that make first impressions on me. Cities do, too, perhaps because I encountered so many of them while my family moved every year throughout my childhood. Or perhaps it’s because, after seeing so many cities that I thought were different in the United States, I was so completely unprepared for the wild variety of sights and sounds and smells that I encountered as a grown man, when I traveled to Europe and South America, to Africa and Asia and Australia. And even today, there are cities that I’m visiting for the first time, and which continue to take me by surprise.

 

Athens is one of those cities. I don’t know what I was expecting… Something old, of course, something downright ancient, filled with smashed statues and marble columns like Rome, engraved with unreadable inscriptions in a language I never learned — but probably not as ancient as Cairo. Something hot and noisy and polluted and smelly, perhaps like Calcutta or the slums of Mumbai. Something gridlocked with noisy, honking traffic congestion, perhaps like Moscow.

 

What I didn’t expect was the wide, nearly-empty highways leading from the airport into the city. I didn’t expect the cleanliness of the tree-lined streets that ran in every direction. I did expect the white-washed buildings and houses that climbed the hills that surround the city — but the local people told me that buildings in Athens were positively gray compared to what I would have seen if I had stayed longer and ventured out to the Greek islands.

 

I also didn’t expect the graffiti that covered nearly every wall, on every building, up and down every street. They were mostly slogans and phrases in Greek (and therefore completely unintelligible to me), but with occasional crude references in English to IMF bankers, undercover policemen, a politician or two, and the CIA. There were a couple slogans from the Russian revolution of 1917, from the Castro uprising in Cuba, and even from the American revolution (“united we stand, divided we fall.”)

 

Naturally, I thought all of this had come about in just the past few months, as Greece has wrestled with its overwhelming financial crisis. But I was told by local citizens that much of the graffiti has been around for quite a bit longer than that – just as it has been in cities like New York and London. Some of it was wild and colorful, with cartoon figures and crazy faces … though I don’t think it quite rises to the level of “street art” that one sees in parts of SoHo, Tribeca, and the East Village in New York. What impressed me most about the graffiti in Athens was its vibrant energy; I felt like the artists were ready to punch a hole through the walls with their spray-cans.

 

These are merely my own first impressions; they won’t be the same as yours. Beyond that, there are a lot of facts, figures, and details if one wants to fully describe a city like Athens. Its recorded history spans some 3,400 years, and it includes the exploits of kings and generals, gods and philosophers, athletes and artists. There are statues and columns and ruins everywhere; and towering above it all is the breath-taking Acropolis. It’s far too rich and complex for me to describe here in any reasonable way; if you want to know more, find some books or scan the excellent Wikipedia summary.

 

It’s also hard to figure out what one should photograph on a first visit to a city like Athens. It’s impossible not to photograph the Acropolis, especially since it’s lit at night and visible from almost every corner of the city. I was interested in the possibility of photographing the complex in the special light before dawn or after sunset, but it’s closed to visitors except during “civilized” daytime hours. It’s also undergoing extensive renovations and repair, so much of it is covered in scaffolding, derricks, and cranes. In the end, I took a few panorama shots and telephoto shots, and explored the details by visiting the new Acropolis Museum, with the camera turned off.

 

Aside from that, the photos you’ll see here concentrate on two things: my unexpected “first impression” of the local graffiti, and my favorite of all subjects: people. In a couple cases, the subjects are unmistakably Greek – Greek orthodox priests, for example – and in a couple cases, you might think you were looking at a street scene in São Paulo or Mexico City. But in most of the shots, you’ll see examples of stylish, fashionable, interesting people that don’t look all that much different from the people I’ve photographed in New York, London, Rome, or Paris. Maybe we can attribute that to the homogenization of fashion and style in today’s interconnected global environment. Or maybe we can just chalk it up to the fact that people are, well … interesting … wherever you go.

 

In any case, enjoy. And if you get to Athens yourself, send me some photos of your own first impressions.

06.06.2015

"Tutaj upał jest zawsze ;)"

 

Zdjęcie prezentujące wieże wymienników ciepła oraz silosy homogenizacji mąki surowcowej widziane pomiędzy piecami obrotowymi Cementowni Warta II. Temperatura w miejscu wykonywania fotografii była naprawdę bardzo wysoka, co ciekawe miałem także możliwość poruszanie się galerią wzdłuż pieca. Przebywanie w bezpośrednim rejonie pieca nawet w upalny dzień wiąże się z koniecznością założenia ubioru, tak aby uchronić skórę przed poparzeniami. W sumie, w zimę przy piecu musi być naprawdę fajnie ;)

In the ladle at the ladle station the steel slags over except for where a special "porous plug" bubbles argon from the bottom to homogenize the mixture and float impurities to the surface. This makes an "eye" in the steel and that's what it's actually called. Overhead a larger stir lance that can inject larger amounts of argon to stir the ladle waits to be used if needed.

 

So, it's over.

 

The steel mill where I've worked for 22 years has closed the "melt shop" where now steel is made by melting scrap and refining it into new and better steel grades. No more.

 

I went in early AM to catch the last heat melted and followed it down the line.

 

Most photos taken with the Fujifilm X100S and some with a Fujifilm X-M1 and Fujinon 35mm f/1.4.

 

Please like my Facebook Artists page: entropic remnants photography on facebook Also, please visit the Entropic Remnants website, my Entropic Remnants blog, and my Entropic Remnants YouTube page -- THANKS!

Portfolio || Flickr Archive || Instagram

 

This Case feature is extra special for me because he was one of the first writers I met in '95 when I didn't know anybody and we were still in high school. Case has been famous twice, both as a writer and as Video director when he won an Juno for a video with Arcade Fire.

 

1.) How long have you been actively writing for?

I started writing in '92. I slowed down in 2002 to a couple pieces a year, but I never stopped writing. So it's been 28 years.

 

2.) How has your work changed or evolved since you started, and what made it change?

My work has gotten better since I started... First couple years were pretty toy. But at my peak, my work was known worldwide, I got the chance to paint with Daim, Loomit, Seen, Duster, Tats Cru and many other international writers. Also in the big magazines like The Source, 12oz Prophet, etc. All these experiences improved my style and made me look at pushing graffiti further.

 

3.) Tell me about your approach to street art?

My approach comes from a freestyle frame of mind. I like to paint to the wall instead of to the sketch. I sketch to practice but when I paint I rarely use sketch's. I find them to constricting. I do all aspects from 2d to 3d to characters and backgrounds.

  

4.) Any other interests you have apart from painting/art?

Apart from art, Im interested in film making and have directed and animated many music videos for a variety of recording artist from 2001-2009

  

5.) How do you see the further evolution of your work? The city, and scene at large? Seems to have changed alot in the last decade.

My work has evolved onto canvases using Spray paint in a different way. Portraits, scenics and abstracts that adhere to the traditional rules of graffiti - no stencils, no brushes, just pure freehand spray painting. The scene really changed with the advent of the internet. Regional styles started disappearing and a more homogenized style replaced it. Street cred was easier to fake and the real street culture turned into legal walls and sponsored jams. Its great to see many writers from the pre-internet era coming back and still kings. Shout out to the graffiti grandpa's keeping it real and my crews Kwota, TDV, AFC and BIF.

 

You can see more of Case's art here: casemackeen.com

 

He also has a show coming up at Run Gallery in Toronto opening Dec 12, 2020.

 

AIN SOKHNA: In the labyrinthine world of politics, ever more complicated by the global phenomenon of the “businessman-politician” it’s not always easy to separate the wheat from the chaff.

 

Nothing is simpler than lumping the usual suspects together – politicians with powerful party affiliations, who double as businessmen, running huge conglomerates, and developing mega-projects that target the crème de la crème of society and, of course, making a sizable fortune in the process.

 

So when the chairman of a weighty establishment like Amer Group, National Democratic Party member and former MP Mansour Amer, organizes a field visit for the press to tour his project in Ain Sokhna, it’s difficult not to be suspicious of his “real” intentions.

 

After all, we are journalists and it’s our job to be suspicious of those with power and influence.

 

But first, a disclaimer: I don’t usually accept such invitations because it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that most of these “site trips” are only after some good free publicity.

 

So why did I go? I was simply curious to meet the man whose new concept in Porto Marina in the North Coast was the talk of the town all summer. But if I thought there was nothing worth writing about, I said to myself, I won’t write a single word.

 

When we arrived at Porto Sokhna, we were greeted warmly by an extremely down-to-earth Amer, who ushered us into French café/patisserie Alain Le Notre, one of Amer Group’s restaurants which include other international chains like Chili’s and Johnny Carino’s.

 

I was surprised to find that even though the first phase of the project was not complete, a huge part of it was fully functional, with sizable luxury hotel rooms, restaurants and a marina boasting some very sleek yachts.

 

After getting the dime tour of the completed part of the facility, we were driven up a craggy mountain road about 190 meters above sea level, where a tent was pitched to house the press roundtable discussion.

 

There was nothing there but the tent and the power of Amer’s contagious imagination, which had us envision his plans for this rough plateau of seemingly impenetrable mountain overlooking the glorious Red Sea: A residential and vacation resort covering 2.5 million square meters of cliff face with the highest point measuring some 270 square meters above sea level.

 

This would be a good 20-or so minute drive uphill, except that when Amer is through with it, residents and vacationers won’t have to drive anywhere, all they’ll need to do is hop on to Egypt’s first and only cable car.

 

“And when you reach the highest peak, you’ll find yourself at a picturesque replica of an ancient Italian village packed with designer boutiques, restaurants and coffee shops,” he explained.

 

All I was thinking was why on earth would anybody come to Ain Sokhna to buy an Armani suit, or a pair of Christian Dior boots?

 

Only during the ensuing discussion did I comprehend the scale of Amer Group’s Porto Sokhna project, dubbed their most ambitious enterprise yet.

 

At a cost of LE 3 billion, Amer said, “we are creating a destination and changing the map of tourism in the area.”

 

The source of funding, he explained, was a combination of personal, pre-sale and bank loans, which will not exceed 10 percent of the total cost.

 

Banking on Ain Sokhna’s year-round warm climate, Amer sees no reason why this destination would not be as popular as the Swiss Alps and the Lebanese mountains.

 

And there’s no dearth of superlatives when it comes to listing the facilities on offer: a 2 million-square meter world class, 18-hole mountain golf course, a yacht marina, the largest spa compound in the region housing five spa resorts of various themes over a 5000-square meter area, three shopping malls with a total number of 260 shops, restaurants and cinemas, the largest swimming pool in the country at 30,000 square meters, and a 250-person capacity gymnasium.

 

With a luxurious hotel, hotel apartments, villas and ranches, Amer Groups hopes to promote the vacation home concept where the Group would lease the apartments year round on behalf of the owners in return for 30 percent of the rent value.

 

“By offering complete housekeeping facilities, the owners, who don’t spend more than one month of the year there, will get a return on their investment and we will be keeping the destination alive all year. With 400 hotel rooms and 1,690 vacation homes, we will target 2,686,400 tourist nights per year,” said Amer.

 

“We want to change the notion of Ain Sokhna as a weekend destination, and rebrand it as ‘Cairo’s Beach’.”

 

Powering this massive project, he said, is the strategic decision to allow charter flights to land at Cairo Airport, which means that vacationers are merely a couple of hours’ drive away from Ain Sokhna.

 

Marketing it mainly as a family destination, Amer reaffirms his commitment to the Group’s no-alcohol and none-smoking policy — none of his facilities sell alcohol or shisha, but guests and residents are free to bring their own drinks — and the resort’s focus on sports, where he hopes to attract teams from all over the world to hold their training camps.

 

Another interesting addition to the mix, though I’m not quite sure how it fits in, were plans to build a boarding school that offers world-class education and enjoys all the sports facilities available at the site.

 

Asked whether he’s targeting Egyptian or foreign buyers, Amer said that it made no difference. “The point is that now the owners will be the new stake-holders.”

 

“But will average Egyptians be able to afford any of this ‘elite’ living as you advertise it?” I asked Amer.

 

“I am not targeting the highest-end buyer,” he said. “Where else in the world would you be able to buy a luxury apartment overlooking a golf course for $50,000? As for the hotel rates, it’s a matter of supply and demand. The more rooms available, the lower the rates.”

 

Suites at the 650-room hotel at Porto Marina, however, cost anywhere between LE 4,000-7,500 per night, while a standard double room goes for LE 1,200-2,000 per night.

 

I wasn’t convinced.

 

And as we embarked on the bumpy ride down the hill and I was once more faced with the massive concrete construction site that lay beneath, just a couple of hundred meters from the marina, I suddenly wondered about the environmental impact of tampering with the Red Sea coast’s topography.

 

What about marine life? And will the new Koraymat highway be able to absorb all the truck traffic and improve road safety? How can Porto Sokhna market itself as a health tourism destination when merely 40 km away, there’s an industrial zone with cement factories? What about homogenization — Porto Marina, Porto Sokhna and perhaps the newest kid on the block Porto Golf — all replicas of each other? Is that a good thing?

 

Then I remembered that this project alone provides jobs for about 7,000 people — nearly 8 million paid working days until it is complete in November 2009.

 

Enough said. (FROM NET)

Les Lotissements

Explored on June 8, 2012

 

Alternate titles: "Couple Sucking Face", "Dilbert's Secret Rendezvous with Colonel Sanders", "Intimacy Unlocked!", "Private Moments on Public Display", "How to Secretly Photograph People in Unguarded Situations and Post Them Publicly In Order to Further Your Career", "Slice of Wonder Bread", "Asphalt, Cracked Paint and Rocks".

 

I caught this couple going at it on the IRT Flushing Line. It was late, they thought they were alone but the lighting was perfect and they happened to be in front of an ironic ad. That's all the incentive I needed! Click, title, post! But wait…

 

Due to some electrical issue with the tracks ahead, we were stopped in a cellular dead zone which made posting the photo immediately, impossible. Damn rain! But this gave me time to reflect on what I had done. I had essentially just captured the intimate moment of two complete strangers with the intent to broadcast it to an international network of voyeurs.

 

Normally, I would be feeling great knowing that, once the photo was posted, my "camera" would soon be chiming with the comforting notification sounds of retweets, likes and favs. My followers and I would be able to live another day vicariously through the moments of others. "I'm just like them!" "I'm glad I'm not just like them!"

 

But instead of the usual warm feeling of accomplishment and self satisfaction, I felt a nagging pang of guilt. No wait, that is impossible. Lets call it, "uncertainty".

 

It occurred to me that I certainly value my privacy. I don't like it when others steal my "moments" and claim them as theirs. I don't think I would be cool with someone posting my…um, habits in a "public" restroom for all to see. Is the public subway any different? How is it different? Both have doors. Both are under the same unwritten "laws" of public decency. Where does one draw the line?

 

After smiling quietly to myself at the irony of questioning privacy issues in public restrooms while on the Flushing line, I came to the realization that I just didn't care, or perhaps it didn't matter. After all, as far as I'm concerned, the world revolves around me and my ability to use a camera to take pictures for public display. This is a unique skill shared only by millions of others and must be preserved at all costs. But how?

 

For the most part, I know nothing about the people I photograph, their thoughts, motivations, dreams. Frankly, I'm sure most of their expressions are due to being pissed off that some stranger is taking their picture without permission. Caught! LOL! That, or they are just too exhausted from trying to make ends meet that they just don't feel like metaphorically holding hands with their fellow "man" and singing Kumbaya on a crowded subway. Then there are the shots of "freaks on streets". Strange people are funny!

 

But this is NYC. These moments are as uncommon as a soccer mom in a suburban shopping mall or a pair of shoes on feet. But one can't just post average photos of common occurrences without a hook. How would people know just how great I was at capturing the extraordinary if I posted ordinary images and left it up to the viewer to interpret them?

 

That's when I noticed the newspapers strewn all around me. Stories. Of course! Through the respected art of storytelling I could not only present my work in a greater light than perhaps it deserved, but I could simultaneously reduce the potential for the viewer to question my act of exploitation. In hindsight, I realize this was probably a silly concern. After all, this is the age of the "Social Disease"; a time when everyone knows where everyone is and what they are eating. Boundaries are continuously being opened, blurred and homogenized. And this is great, right?

 

So "Love's Fleeting Embrace" it is! Simple, sappy, saccharine. People will get it and be able to apply it to their own experiences within an "Instagram second". I don't know if these people love each other. For all I know, one or both could be prostitutes! I don't know how fleeting this moment is, but unrequited love sells product! And lets be honest, misdirection and misrepresentation works. Don't believe me? How many of you looked at this photo and had even a passing concern for the privacy of its subjects?

 

That's what I thought.

 

Another in my "Street Photography" series where questions about questioning are brought into question; questionably.

More graffiti, on what appears to be an abandoned building in the middle of the city...

 

Note: I chose this photo, among the ten that I uploaded to Flickr on the evening of Jun 29, 2011, as my "photo of the day". It's obviously dominated by graffiti, but it's not the angry, confrontational "political" graffiti that I saw in most other parts of Athens; instead, it's a colorful, artistic, almost exuberant form of "playful" graffiti. And the wall of the old building was interesting, too, especially in contrast the more-or-less whitewashed buildings in other parts of the city...

 

***************************

 

When we hear the phrase “first impression,” we tend to think of a person. Was the politician I recently voted for as inspiring when I heard his first speech as he was years later? (More so, sadly.) Was the girl that I married as beautiful at 13 as she was years later, in her twenties and thirties? (Yes, and yes.) Did Bob Dylan’s Blowin’ in the Wind send more of a shiver down my spine in 1963 than it did when I heard it drifting from a car radio 45 years later? (No. It stops me dead in my tracks every time I hear it.)

 

It’s not just people that make first impressions on me. Cities do, too, perhaps because I encountered so many of them while my family moved every year throughout my childhood. Or perhaps it’s because, after seeing so many cities that I thought were different in the United States, I was so completely unprepared for the wild variety of sights and sounds and smells that I encountered as a grown man, when I traveled to Europe and South America, to Africa and Asia and Australia. And even today, there are cities that I’m visiting for the first time, and which continue to take me by surprise.

 

Athens is one of those cities. I don’t know what I was expecting… Something old, of course, something downright ancient, filled with smashed statues and marble columns like Rome, engraved with unreadable inscriptions in a language I never learned — but probably not as ancient as Cairo. Something hot and noisy and polluted and smelly, perhaps like Calcutta or the slums of Mumbai. Something gridlocked with noisy, honking traffic congestion, perhaps like Moscow.

 

What I didn’t expect was the wide, nearly-empty highways leading from the airport into the city. I didn’t expect the cleanliness of the tree-lined streets that ran in every direction. I did expect the white-washed buildings and houses that climbed the hills that surround the city — but the local people told me that buildings in Athens were positively gray compared to what I would have seen if I had stayed longer and ventured out to the Greek islands.

 

I also didn’t expect the graffiti that covered nearly every wall, on every building, up and down every street. They were mostly slogans and phrases in Greek (and therefore completely unintelligible to me), but with occasional crude references in English to IMF bankers, undercover policemen, a politician or two, and the CIA. There were a couple slogans from the Russian revolution of 1917, from the Castro uprising in Cuba, and even from the American revolution (“united we stand, divided we fall.”)

 

Naturally, I thought all of this had come about in just the past few months, as Greece has wrestled with its overwhelming financial crisis. But I was told by local citizens that much of the graffiti has been around for quite a bit longer than that – just as it has been in cities like New York and London. Some of it was wild and colorful, with cartoon figures and crazy faces … though I don’t think it quite rises to the level of “street art” that one sees in parts of SoHo, Tribeca, and the East Village in New York. What impressed me most about the graffiti in Athens was its vibrant energy; I felt like the artists were ready to punch a hole through the walls with their spray-cans.

 

These are merely my own first impressions; they won’t be the same as yours. Beyond that, there are a lot of facts, figures, and details if one wants to fully describe a city like Athens. Its recorded history spans some 3,400 years, and it includes the exploits of kings and generals, gods and philosophers, athletes and artists. There are statues and columns and ruins everywhere; and towering above it all is the breath-taking Acropolis. It’s far too rich and complex for me to describe here in any reasonable way; if you want to know more, find some books or scan the excellent Wikipedia summary.

 

It’s also hard to figure out what one should photograph on a first visit to a city like Athens. It’s impossible not to photograph the Acropolis, especially since it’s lit at night and visible from almost every corner of the city. I was interested in the possibility of photographing the complex in the special light before dawn or after sunset, but it’s closed to visitors except during “civilized” daytime hours. It’s also undergoing extensive renovations and repair, so much of it is covered in scaffolding, derricks, and cranes. In the end, I took a few panorama shots and telephoto shots, and explored the details by visiting the new Acropolis Museum, with the camera turned off.

 

Aside from that, the photos you’ll see here concentrate on two things: my unexpected “first impression” of the local graffiti, and my favorite of all subjects: people. In a couple cases, the subjects are unmistakably Greek – Greek orthodox priests, for example – and in a couple cases, you might think you were looking at a street scene in São Paulo or Mexico City. But in most of the shots, you’ll see examples of stylish, fashionable, interesting people that don’t look all that much different from the people I’ve photographed in New York, London, Rome, or Paris. Maybe we can attribute that to the homogenization of fashion and style in today’s interconnected global environment. Or maybe we can just chalk it up to the fact that people are, well … interesting … wherever you go.

 

In any case, enjoy. And if you get to Athens yourself, send me some photos of your own first impressions.

5/14/98! Oh the fun of early merger eras, before homogenized fleets of orange GE's took over! Here BN SD40-2 7064 leads B40-8W 526 and ATSF (one of the last three!) F45 6550 on a westbound stack train!

4/12/11 NOTES FROM GM HIP-HOP SURVEY SESSION 3 of 3

(also included at bottom is session 1) [ To see the rest of this, if it gets cut off, go to hearingtheword2.posterous.com/41211-notes-from-hip-hop-su... ] HIP-hop session #3 of 3 (B. Santelli leading) : [he's reviewing some books as I arrive] ...Tricia rose, hop hop wars..I took her place at rutgers....another..written colloquial....book..new history of.."big payback"...also nelson George..fellow journalist..jersey,,opinionated, but well-written.I was a rollng stone writer..

 

'500 greatest albums"..not many hip hop..very white..mtv did a series on greatest hop hop..wanted to go over greatest emcees. 10) ll cool j, 9 eminem, 8) ice cube 7) big daddy kane 6) krx-1 5) nas 4) rakim (william griffin, aka ra) 3) notorious b.I.g, aka biggie, 2) tupac

1) jayzee [conversation]..rock roll hall fame..they put us rolling stone writers..together..sppsd to pick 500..sppsd to be fun, but..by wed we were @ eachothers throats..who's missing? No females. Lauren hill? ..[what about lil wayne?]

 

& the albums? 10) pub enemy, nation of millions 9) tupac 8) 7) nwa 6)jayzee 5)run dmc raising hell

4) biggie, ready to die, 3). ..2)? 1)paid in full (eric b. & rakim [spare, stripped down..rhyming, flawless,..his fav, raising hell ..6 of 10 from gangsta rap era ..[has this guy abandoned anglos..has he caved? Or is he speaking to his primary audience ? Only a handful of whites in the room of maybe 50]

 

...hip hop orig was new york centric..like 50's in memphis & orleans..but now things changing..begin. here in L.A. large af am pop in late 80's..lot of kids rapping , deejaying..public enemy (long island), ..why so amazing..first class..am bl roots of hip hop ..we mentioned gil scott herron..changing..g.master flash.. some dies..pub enemy brings it back.chuck d. Knows his ...pub enemy makes a political mess. ..from a white perspective..bob dylan..

 

Fear of a black planet..nation of millions..huge..brought over to white...white intells..get more intrsted..then nwa and tupac..gangsta rap..west coast..using what pub enemy doing back east..more outrageous & angry than pub enemy..

 

What we hear..chuck D....at rock of fame..had him come & lecture ..he said it was a refl of blues..language previously couched..in blues..now able to scream it..listen to tupac, ... in harlem..best pedigree..black panther..he was deep into it..early life a mess..what tupac ... shakur.this man had a..he was a 5 tool player....genuine anger..he was intelligent..bitter but intelligent..most important..listen to cadence of words..anyone can rhyme..but cadence..

 

Eminem..too many words..don't apprec his stuff as much..tupac best ever..right in middle..perfect storm..east west..1990's..mid 90's..bitter rivalry east v west ..ironic ...and tupac ...then ----- killed..neither murder solved..//Why a feud ? East jealous? Tupac..death row l.a..; bad boy east..so 2 diff schools forming..

Then puff daddy..sean combs (aka diddy, p diddy, puff daddy, p daddy) .west... tupac..

 

2 "m words" .1) MEDIA..hip hop mags..source..vibe..'88 mtv raps ..2) MONEY ..early 90's..can make money..on radio...mtv..also white element..beastie boys..middle class white kids in suburbs..

 

Bold personalities..incendiary..tupac murdered..later biggie (notorious B.I.G, Real name Christopher Wallace, aka biggie smalls) killed..media gets hold of it ..society says its out of control....when Biggie dies..album..double platinum..

Also the tree..acid jazz, socially conscious hip hop, funk jazz, trip hop, some from england ..england didn't embrace hip hop at first ..

 

Arrested development..? Hip hop? Some music lost relevancy..blues, big band ..glenn miller..ragtime..some become "historical"..mid-90's..hip hop not dying, but branching out..moody blues..I hated it...but difference between hating versus respecting [I actually liked moody blues & saw them @ hollywood bowl]

 

Who else ? Outcasts, wootang, lords of underground, onyx,.[several others shouted out] .hip hop 90's taking over...Now beyond nyc & LA..master P...new orleans..tree exploding..geographic connections..diff sound..good businessman..he also played b-ball..also atlanta...in south, but northern sensib.,,,also houston..health..multi-billion $ business..mainstreaming of hip hop,,,gangsta rap dies out...invention, re-invention..

 

...also, rise of detroit..eminem..major figure...brings detroit to forefront..making detroit hip..and then kid rock ..real..metal..fringe genres..coming together w/ hop hop..limp biscit, korn,..

 

Today? Hip hop becoming irrelevant? ..making lots of money..stop changing..less experimentation..less bold, ..fashion from hip hop ...u know u become mainstream when grammy recognizes u..heresy for me to say but..

Recording academy..being in biz..producer, writer, ..

 

[Plays vid eminem & elton jon..given hip hop's homophobic culture..this was seminal] [ was it a seminal moment as the beginning of the END of hip-hop, as it lost its verve?] ..2006 nas comes out saying hip hop dead..didn't want to stay stuck in rut...had nas here....rock hall of fame brings in hip hop, grammy awards..world knows hip hop

 

After we did whitehouse thing..state dept..calls..cultural diplomacy..obama revived it.. they asked me to organize hop hop to go to muslim countries.[hip hop to muslim countries as a form of diplomacy ?! Please explain how that would appease muslims or appeal to muslims who already think of America as godless] .as did armstrong & ellington 50 yrs ago ...I couldn't run it..

 

Where is hop hop now ? Ring tone..commercialize..sound same..its on life support now..homogenized..mentions nicky menaj opening for britney spears in upcoming tour..360 degrees ..piracy..economy ..

 

Country music still buys cd's ..loyalty..not download..not w/ hip hop....need audience with means to support act ..when economy of art form goes away..trouble ..younger gen doesn't feel the concept of spportin.."

 

BELOW are the NOTES from SESSION 1 of 3

(I missed session 2 )

--------------------------------

 

3/29/11 NOTES FROM HIP-HOP SURVEY COURSE (1 of 3) taught by Bob @ GM: "...learn more abt music forums....like hip hop..whats a middle age white guy teaching hip hop..I'm a musical historian...af am music my specialty..not hip hop.this class not like the elvis class.this is a survey course..3 periods as an overview..will have other courses..hip hop america's pop music now last quarter century..its a survey class..people who live this culture..if u want to add, embellish..can never learn too much..my expertise. Af am music..also reggae..after hip hop comes bob marley exhibit..a hip hop museum ready to launch..in bronx..I'm on board...maybe russel simmons on board..anybody see him here a few weeks ago....others coming chris blackwell, ..pbs special..kate..@ whitehouse..kate did this exhibit..don't need to agree..its interpretive..subjectivity..otherwise just read in book ..used to teach @ rutgers..this is not academia..try to do this in colloquial way..not preach to u..meant to be entertaining..some here b/c I asked u to come..I didn't come quickly to hip hop..even tho I was there in the early 70's...think of 20th century..america's century..come to age as superpower..after fall of comm ..also musically, no country can touch what we have given to the world musically in 20th century..separate bl & wh culture..look @ af am contribs..as to amt..# of new forms..brilliant artists..overall impact.entire world..not all clear cut..jazz black music form..but dig down.others contrib too ..but in general..louis armstrong et al..blues blues jazz, soul, funk, r & b, disco, hip hop, bee bop swing, cool, fusion,,of all these forms..all given due..endorsed exported..except hip hop until now...revol music..challenges..polit..most recent..hasn't gotten its due.celeb gospel blues...maybe too controversial to get credit..still...what made it so..give & take of african cult..also anglo irish..also racism..extra tension..in nutshell..bl & wh celbr..where r we now..first time..af ams bouncing ...haven't had major music..lately..last was grunge..late 80's, 90's..music slowed down ?ess imp..25% decrease in concert att...here to ..soul music..motown..also...and atlantic..golden age..also rock roll..then 1970's..chronolog..musically '63 to '73..that's the 60's music era..hip hop..not 60's ..bronx..how go from soul ..then..to funk...I don't know re hip hop in '73 ..have to wait 6 years..before recorded artifact..rappers delight ..sugar hill gang..why in this ? .69 71 motown losing lustre..stevie wonder..migrated..motown leaves detroit comes here..but not like it used to be..sly & family stone..loses sensib as..couple key bands & artists..2 huge..gil scott herron ..last poets..black..music...."when revol comes.."..gangsta rap..not on radio..last poets..many blacks didn't even know of this music..marvin gaye..more known..cnsdrd greatest of all times..70-73 ..clip.."far too many of u dying.."...[red hat]..also "sounds of philadelphia"..the oj's..signed in cleve but rcrded in phillie.."love train" ....revolution vs love..this is backdrop to bronx ..no q..rock surfaces memphis ..why hip hop fr bronx..music to be created & sustained..not just artist but audience..in bronx..it was like beirut or baghdad..suffered incredibly..ny in bad condition..bronx pushed aside..gangs ..drugs..south bronx..maybe mother cabrini projrcts chicago..maybe south l.a....become so isolated..create in a vacum w/o outside interference or ack..seattle..grunge..a seam..pearl jam, nirvana..already formed b/f world knew..a lot carribeans settled nyc ..jamaicans..brooklyn..1962 jamaica indep..many got out..s. bronx...late 60's..kid campbell..clive ..from jamaica..brings..reggae..sound systems..everything outdoors ..disc jockey....toast over dub plates..jamaicans come to usa with this..clive campbell..longs for jamaica..wonders what he's doing in bronx..sound system..he didn't know he was creating history...invit..come to dj cool hercs party set up jamaica style..earliest hip hop...rap..part of af am cult..verbal battles..here at herks party..af ams and jamaicans together..'73..sudden concept of spinning records..unique way, art form..74 75..another frm..also hispanic & gay..disco..gets no respect...but it was important..w/o disco no m. Jackson, no usher..in manhattan..records..disc spun..if white grate dead, almond bros,..underground movement, black hispanic gay..dance again..mixing..never leave dance floor..77 sat night fever..mst imp of all time..j. travolta..exported disco cult..drugs..all this happ.. bee gees..trammpps...burn baby burn..disco inferno..red & white outfits..early hip hop would borrow from.some day will do disco shoe exhibit....or rush..sex pistols.springsteen..u had to select what u would embrace....people dressed their music..

 

Then bob marley..new sensib..lively up yourself..all this happening..rappers delight..sugarhill gang....soul train on tv..imp for black..this was seminal..just happened to catch it on camera..not the best

 

Three main entities..curtis blow..then up to run dmc ..hip hop is developing a consc style.that will explode...grand wizard theatre..scratching..then grand master flash. Popularized it..then .barbada (?)..flash a seminal giant..

 

Dj & mc..back then dj..was the guy..age of mc in future..dancing why they're spinning records..bee boy bee girl..bboy break dancing..some of best break dancers were latino ..

 

Tagging..grafitti..becomes part..cey dams..tagging did a piece here ..been dodging cops for 3 decades...there's a f you mentality in bronx..didn't want to be part of discos..taggers..socs & psys studied.. I was in zurich..most expensive place in world..cab..graffitti wall..

 

[He periodically makes some of his prejudices obvious..re "conservative zurich"..wouldn't apprec it in des moines iowa.."no offense to des moines"..let's "rock n roll"..(it was a term for sexual icourse)..he's talking to white christians....jazz also fr black culture ..means sex icourse.."

St Monica's - This is a impressive old stone building. Its basement provides one of the Dehumanising Horrors of the slave trade. A stone staircase leads down from the entrance hallway to what is reputed to be the dungeon where slaves were kept before being taken to market.

 

The East African Slave Trade Exhibit.

 

Stone Town, because of its unique Architecture & Culture, it was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2000.

 

Contains fine buildings that refiect its particular culture, which has brought together & homogenized disparate elements of cultures of Portuguese, British, Africa, the Arab region, India over more than a millenium.

Entry in category 4. Video loop; Copyright CC-BY-NC-ND: Melanie Gut

 

To extract all protein from tissue we have to homogenize the samples as good as possible.

The tissue sample is placed in buffer and small glas beads are added. This mixture is shook fastly to destroy the tissue and tear it into small pieces which then are treated with chemicals to extract proteins.

  

This man clearly looks disgruntled, and he was stomping across the street from a park (out of view, on the left side of the frame) where there were a bunch of protesters and demonstraters ...

 

Note: this photo was published in a Jun 28, 2011 blog titled "Griekenland gaat plat."

 

***************************

 

When we hear the phrase “first impression,” we tend to think of a person. Was the politician I recently voted for as inspiring when I heard his first speech as he was years later? (More so, sadly.) Was the girl that I married as beautiful at 13 as she was years later, in her twenties and thirties? (Yes, and yes.) Did Bob Dylan’s Blowin’ in the Wind send more of a shiver down my spine in 1963 than it did when I heard it drifting from a car radio 45 years later? (No. It stops me dead in my tracks every time I hear it.)

 

It’s not just people that make first impressions on me. Cities do, too, perhaps because I encountered so many of them while my family moved every year throughout my childhood. Or perhaps it’s because, after seeing so many cities that I thought were different in the United States, I was so completely unprepared for the wild variety of sights and sounds and smells that I encountered as a grown man, when I traveled to Europe and South America, to Africa and Asia and Australia. And even today, there are cities that I’m visiting for the first time, and which continue to take me by surprise.

 

Athens is one of those cities. I don’t know what I was expecting… Something old, of course, something downright ancient, filled with smashed statues and marble columns like Rome, engraved with unreadable inscriptions in a language I never learned — but probably not as ancient as Cairo. Something hot and noisy and polluted and smelly, perhaps like Calcutta or the slums of Mumbai. Something gridlocked with noisy, honking traffic congestion, perhaps like Moscow.

 

What I didn’t expect was the wide, nearly-empty highways leading from the airport into the city. I didn’t expect the cleanliness of the tree-lined streets that ran in every direction. I did expect the white-washed buildings and houses that climbed the hills that surround the city — but the local people told me that buildings in Athens were positively gray compared to what I would have seen if I had stayed longer and ventured out to the Greek islands.

 

I also didn’t expect the graffiti that covered nearly every wall, on every building, up and down every street. They were mostly slogans and phrases in Greek (and therefore completely unintelligible to me), but with occasional crude references in English to IMF bankers, undercover policemen, a politician or two, and the CIA. There were a couple slogans from the Russian revolution of 1917, from the Castro uprising in Cuba, and even from the American revolution (“united we stand, divided we fall.”)

 

Naturally, I thought all of this had come about in just the past few months, as Greece has wrestled with its overwhelming financial crisis. But I was told by local citizens that much of the graffiti has been around for quite a bit longer than that – just as it has been in cities like New York and London. Some of it was wild and colorful, with cartoon figures and crazy faces … though I don’t think it quite rises to the level of “street art” that one sees in parts of SoHo, Tribeca, and the East Village in New York. What impressed me most about the graffiti in Athens was its vibrant energy; I felt like the artists were ready to punch a hole through the walls with their spray-cans.

 

These are merely my own first impressions; they won’t be the same as yours. Beyond that, there are a lot of facts, figures, and details if one wants to fully describe a city like Athens. Its recorded history spans some 3,400 years, and it includes the exploits of kings and generals, gods and philosophers, athletes and artists. There are statues and columns and ruins everywhere; and towering above it all is the breath-taking Acropolis. It’s far too rich and complex for me to describe here in any reasonable way; if you want to know more, find some books or scan the excellent Wikipedia summary.

 

It’s also hard to figure out what one should photograph on a first visit to a city like Athens. It’s impossible not to photograph the Acropolis, especially since it’s lit at night and visible from almost every corner of the city. I was interested in the possibility of photographing the complex in the special light before dawn or after sunset, but it’s closed to visitors except during “civilized” daytime hours. It’s also undergoing extensive renovations and repair, so much of it is covered in scaffolding, derricks, and cranes. In the end, I took a few panorama shots and telephoto shots, and explored the details by visiting the new Acropolis Museum, with the camera turned off.

 

Aside from that, the photos you’ll see here concentrate on two things: my unexpected “first impression” of the local graffiti, and my favorite of all subjects: people. In a couple cases, the subjects are unmistakably Greek – Greek orthodox priests, for example – and in a couple cases, you might think you were looking at a street scene in São Paulo or Mexico City. But in most of the shots, you’ll see examples of stylish, fashionable, interesting people that don’t look all that much different from the people I’ve photographed in New York, London, Rome, or Paris. Maybe we can attribute that to the homogenization of fashion and style in today’s interconnected global environment. Or maybe we can just chalk it up to the fact that people are, well … interesting … wherever you go.

 

In any case, enjoy. And if you get to Athens yourself, send me some photos of your own first impressions.

Italien / Lombardei - Gardasee

 

Three-Church-tour at Salò

 

Drei-Kirchen-Rundgang bei Salò

 

Lake Garda has a lot to offer in cultural terms. Near Salò in south Lake Garda, you can combine visits to various places of pilgrimage on a wonderful hike while enjoying the beautiful surroundings.

 

The three-church tour runs over a nine-kilometre contemplative hiking trail. It leads through the typical landscape of southern Lake Garda to the three churches of pilgrimage of Sanctuary Madonna del Rio, Santuario della Madonna di Buon Consiglio and Santuario San Bartolomeo.

 

The hike starts just before the town of Renzano. Here, you can park the car and reach your first destination: the village of Renzano. In the village of Renzano, path number 16 begins, which leads to the first place of pilgrimage Madonna del Rio. The wild, yellow-painted church dates from the 18th century. At that time, the Virgin Mary appeared in a nearby grotto and left her footprints in white stone. These impressions are still testimony to the miraculous event. To the left of the church, a forest path takes you to a lovely waterfall.

 

The second stage leads through the woods, past the villages of Milordino and Milord, to Bagnolo with the picturesque, cypress-surrounded Sanctuary of the Madonna di Buon Consiglio at 516 metres.

 

You reach the third and last destination via path 17b. First, it goes to the Passo della Stacca at 458 metres. Then you follow the number 17 towards Bassa Via del Garda to Gardesina and the stone Santuario San Bartolomeo at 480 metres.

 

Just below the church, path number 17 leads through olive groves to the Gardesana Occidentale, where it goes back to the starting point. Overall, this, not to be underestimated, circular walk with reflection factor, can be hiked in 4.5 hours.

 

(garda-see.com)

 

Lake Garda (Italian: Lago di Garda [ˈlaːɡo di ˈɡarda] or (Lago) Benaco [beˈnaːko]; Eastern Lombard: Lach de Garda; Venetian: Ƚago de Garda; Latin: Benacus; Ancient Greek: Βήνακος) is the largest lake in Italy. It is a popular holiday location in northern Italy, about halfway between Brescia and Verona, and between Venice and Milan on the edge of the Dolomites. Glaciers formed this alpine region at the end of the last Ice Age. The lake and its shoreline are divided between the provinces of Verona (to the south-east), Brescia (south-west), and Trentino (north). The name Garda, which the lake has been referred to in documents dating to the 8th century, comes from the town of the same name. It is evolved from the Germanic word warda, meaning "place of guard", "place of observation" or "place of safety".

 

Geography

 

The northern part of the lake is narrower, surrounded by mountains, the majority of which belong to the Gruppo del Baldo. The shape is typical of a moraine valley, probably having been formed under the action of a Paleolithic glacier. Although traces of the glacier's actions are evident today, in more recent years it has been hypothesised that the glacier occupied a previously existing depression, created by stream erosion 5 to 6 million years ago.

 

The lake has numerous small islands and five main ones, the largest being Isola del Garda, where, in 1220 St. Francis of Assisi founded a monastery. In its place now stands a 19th-century building in the Venetian Gothic style. Nearby to the south is Isola San Biagio, also known as the Isola dei Conigli ("Island of the Rabbits"). Both are offshore of San Felice del Benaco, on the lake's western side. The three other main islands are Isola dell'Olivo, Isola di Sogno, and Isola di Trimelone, all farther north near the eastern side. The main tributary is the Sarca River, others include the Ponale River (fed by Lago di Ledro), the Varone/Magnone River (via the Cascate del Varone) and various streams from both mountainsides, while the only outlet is the Mincio River (79 metres (259 ft), at Peschiera). The subdivision is created by the presence of a fault submerged between Sirmione and Punta San Vigilio which is almost a natural barrier that hampers the homogenization between the water of the two zones.

 

If the water level of the Adige river is excessive, water is diverted to the lake through the Mori-Torbole tunnel.

 

History

 

Battle of Lake Benacus, in which Roman forces defeated the Alamanni on the shores of Lake Garda, in the year 268.

Battle between Milan and Venetian Republic in 1438 following the military engineering feat of galeas per montes.

Battle of Rivoli, in 1797 during the French campaign of Napoleon I in Italy against Austria.

Battle of Solferino in 1859, during the Italian Risorgimento. The terrible aftermath of this battle led to the Geneva Convention and the formation of the Red Cross.

The lake was the site of naval battles in 1866 between Italy and Austria.

As persuaded by the Nazis, Benito Mussolini established the capital of his Italian Social Republic in late 1943 in a villa in the town of Salò on its shores. It served as a nexus for military operations and communications for German troops who occupied northern Italy in late 1943 during World War II.

 

Mythology

 

According to the Greco-Roman mythology, the River Mincius was the child of the Lake Benacus.

 

(Wikipedia)

 

Der Gardasee hat in kultureller Hinsicht vieles zu bieten. Am südlichen Gardasee bei Salò können Sie die Besichtigung verschiedener Wallfahrtsorte bei einer herrlichen Wanderung kombinieren und gleichzeitig die wunderschöne Gegend genießen.

 

Der Drei-Kirchen-Rundgang in Salò verläuft über einen neun Kilometer langen beschaulichen Wanderweg. Dieser führt durch die typische Landschaft am südlichen Gardasee zu den drei Wallfahrtskirchen Santuario Madonna del Rio, Santuario della Madonna di Buon Consiglio und Santuario San Bartolomeo.

 

Die Wanderung beginnt kurz vor dem Ort Renzano. Hier kann das Auto geparkt und gleich das erste Ziel angesteuert werden: das Dorf Renzano. Dort beginnt der Weg Nr. 16, der bis zum ersten Wallfahrtsort Madonna del Rio führt. Die wild umwachsene, gelb getünchte Kirche stammt aus dem 18. Jahrhundert. Damals soll in einer nahegelegenen Grotte die Gottesmutter Maria erschienen sein und ihre Fußabdrücke in weißem Stein hinterlassen haben. Diese Abdrücke sollen noch heute Zeugnis über das wundersame Ereignis ablegen. Links von der Kirche bringt ein Waldweg zum Wasserfall des Ortes.

 

Die zweite Etappe führt durch den Wald, vorbei an den Ortschaften Milordino und Milord, nach Bagnolo mit dem malerischen, von Zypressen umgebenen Santuario della Madonna di Buon Consiglio auf 516 Metern.

 

Das dritte und letzte Ziel kann über den Weg 17b erreicht werden. Zunächst geht es zum Passo della Stacca auf 458 Metern. Danach geht es der Nr. 17 folgend weiter Richtung Bassa Via del Garda bis nach Gardesina und dem steinernen Santuario San Bartolomeo auf 480 Metern.

 

Direkt unter der Kirche führt der Weg Nr. 17 durch Olivenhaine bis auf die Gardesana Occidentale von der es wieder zurück zum Ausgangspunkt geht. Insgesamt kann diese, nicht zu unterschätzende, Rundwanderung mit Besinnungsfaktor in 4,5 Stunden erwandert werden.

 

(garda-see.com)

 

Der Gardasee (italienisch Lago di Garda oder Bènaco), einer der oberitalienischen Seen, ist der größte See Italiens, benannt nach der Gemeinde Garda am Ostufer. Sein antiker Name lautete von etwa 200 v. Chr. bis 800 n. Chr. Lacus benacus. Der Name soll von einer alten Gottheit namens Benacus abstammen. Der Gardasee wurde in der vergangenen Eiszeit durch einen Seitenast des Etschgletschers geformt, dessen Spuren man noch heute verfolgen kann, insbesondere durch die Endmoränen um das Südufer z. B. bei Lonato del Garda, Solferino, Valeggio sul Mincio und Custoza. Erste Besiedlungen des Seeufers datieren um das Jahr 2000 v. Chr.

 

Geographie

 

Lage

 

Der Gardasee liegt zwischen den Alpen im Norden und der Po-Ebene im Süden und ist daher ein Alpenrandsee. Der Norden des Sees gehört zur Region Trentino-Südtirol, der Westen zur Lombardei und der Osten zu Venetien. Damit teilen sich die drei Provinzen Trient (Norden), Verona (Osten) und Brescia (Westen) die Verwaltung.

 

Das nördliche Ufer des Sees ist von Zweitausendern der Gardaseeberge wie dem Monte Baldo umsäumt; das südliche Ufer liegt bereits in der norditalienischen Tiefebene.

 

In der Nähe des Sees befinden sich bekannte Weinbaugebiete:

 

Südlich von Desenzano del Garda liegt das Lugana-Gebiet

Östlich vom Gardasee finden sich die Gebiete des Bardolino- und des Soave-Weins

Ebenfalls östlich (zwischen dem Gardasee und Verona) liegt das Valpolicella-Gebiet

 

Zu- und Abflüsse

 

Der Gardasee wird hauptsächlich durch den Fluss Sarca gespeist. Dieser fließt am Nordende bei Torbole in den See. Als Mincio verlässt der Fluss bei Peschiera del Garda den Gardasee und fließt später in den Po. Neben den insgesamt 25 Zuflüssen gibt es noch einen künstlichen Zufluss in Form des 1959 fertiggestellten Etsch-Gardasee-Tunnels, dessen Tunnelausgang am südlichen Ortsausgang von Torbole liegt und der im Falle einer stark Hochwasser führenden Etsch geöffnet wird.

 

Pegel

 

Der Pegelnullpunkt liegt bei Peschiera del Garda bei 64,027 m s.l.m. Er unterliegt zum Teil starken saisonalen Schwankungen, da das Wasser des Gardasees über seinen Abfluss Mincio zur Bewässerung der intensiv landwirtschaftlich genutzten Flächen zwischen Verona und Mantua genutzt wird. Zum anderen sind die Schwankungen auch durch die Wasserentnahme für die Stromerzeugung im Oberlauf der Sarca bedingt.

 

Der Pegeltiefstand wurde in den Jahren 2003 und 2007 mit jeweils 8 cm unter Pegelnull erreicht, der Höchststand lag am 2. Juli 1879 bei 216 cm über Pegelnull. 1960 stand der Pegel bei 212 cm aufgrund der Öffnung des Etsch-Gardasee-Tunnels. Nicht festlegen lässt sich der Pegel von 1673 und 1746, als der Ort Desenzano del Garda überschwemmt wurde. Außer in Peschiera wird der Pegelstand auch in Riva del Garda und Torri del Benaco gemessen.

 

Inseln

 

Im See befinden sich fünf Inseln, die größte, Isola del Garda mit der Villa Borghese, liegt in der Nähe von Salò. Etwa zwei Kilometer südlich davon, ebenfalls in der Bucht von Manerba und San Felice, liegt die Isola San Biagio auch als „i Conigli“ (deutsch: die Kaninchen) bezeichnet. San Biagio ist ein beliebtes Ausflugsziel, das mit dem Boot oder zu Fuß vom Festland (je nach Wasserstand hüfttief oder trockenen Fußes) erreicht werden kann. Vor Assenza (zwischen Porto di Brenzone und Malcesine) liegt die Isola di Trimelone, diese ist allerdings militärisches Sperrgebiet. Etwas weiter nördlich von Trimelone liegt bei Malcesine im Val di Sogno die Isola del Sogno und nördlich davon die Isola dell’Olivo.

 

Geschichte

 

Aus der Bronzezeit stammen zahlreiche Pfahlbautensiedlungen, die direkt am Seeufer oder im unmittelbaren Hinterland des Gardasees errichtet wurden und seit 2011 zum UNESCO-Weltkulturerbe zählen.

 

Die Schlacht am Lacus Benacus (lateinisch für Gardasee) wurde im November des Jahres 268 an den Ufern des Gardasees in Norditalien zwischen Alamannen und Römern unter Kaiser Claudius Gothicus ausgetragen.

 

Unter den Signorie fiel der Gardasee zwischen dem 13. und 14. Jahrhundert unter den Einflussbereich der Scaliger, die zahlreiche Burgen insbesondere an den östlichen und südlichen Uferorten (Malcesine, Torri del Benaco, Lazise und Sirmione) errichteten. Im 15. Jahrhundert wurde der See und seine Uferorte zum Schauplatz im Kampf um die Vorherrschaft in Oberitalien zwischen dem Herzogtum Mailand unter den Viscontis und der Republik Venedig. Als militärische Glanzleistung zählte hierbei der Transport einer venezianischen Flotte vom Etschtal über die Berge nach Torbole im Jahr 1439, ein von der Republik Venedig als Galeas per montes bezeichnetes Unternehmen. Mit der im Frieden von Lodi 1454 festgelegten Grenze am Fluss Adda fiel der Gardasee endgültig unter den Einflussbereich der Dogenrepublik. Letztere baute insbesondere Peschiera am strategisch wichtigen Abfluss des Mincio zur Festung aus, die 2017 von der UNESCO zum Weltkulturerbe erklärt wurde.

 

Während des Spanischen Erbfolgekrieges zu Beginn des 18. Jahrhunderts versuchte General Vendôme mit seinen Truppen über das Nordufer in Richtung Norden vorzustoßen und hinterließ eine Spur der Verwüstung. Dabei wurden zahlreiche Burgen von den Franzosen zerstört, wie Castel Penede in Nago, die Burg von Arco oder Castel Drena, die als Ruinen erhalten sind. Am 19. April 1706 schlug Vendôme in der Schlacht bei Calcinato am Südufer des Sees die kaiserlichen Truppen unter dem Oberbefehl von Christian Detlev von Reventlow.

 

Die Schlacht bei Rivoli, die im Ersten Koalitionskrieg im Januar 1797 in der Nähe des Ortes Rivoli (südöstlich von Garda) stattfand, war ein Schlüsselerfolg der französischen Armee unter Napoleon Bonaparte im Italienfeldzug über ein zahlenmäßig überlegenes habsburgisches Heer unter Feldmarschall Alvinczy. Aufgrund des Vertrages von Pressburg vom 26. Dezember 1805, mit dem die Grafschaft Tirol zu Bayern fiel, gehörte die Nordspitze des Gardasees von Anfang 1806 bis Anfang 1810 als sogenannter Etschkreis zum Königreich Bayern und anschließend, wie der übrige See auch, zum Königreich Italien. Nach dem Wiener Kongress 1815 fiel der gesamte See dem Kaisertum Österreich zu und war Bestandteil des Königreichs Lombardo-Venetien.

 

Die Schlacht von Solferino am Südufer war die Entscheidungsschlacht im Sardinischen Krieg zwischen dem Kaisertum Österreich und dem Königreich Sardinien und dessen Verbündetem Frankreich unter Napoléon III. Durch die Niederlage der Österreicher bei Solferino am 24. Juni 1859 wurde der Weg zur Einigung Italiens frei gemacht. Die Grausamkeit der Schlacht und die Hilflosigkeit der verwundeten Soldaten veranlassten Henry Dunant (1828–1910) zur Gründung des Roten Kreuzes und führten zur Vereinbarung der Genfer Konvention von 1864.

 

Nach dem Verlust der Lombardei und dem dazugehörigen Westufer des Gardasees 1859, verlor Österreich 1866 nach dem Dritten Italienischen Unabhängigkeitskrieg mit Venetien auch das Ostufer, nur die Nordspitze, mit Riva del Garda, verblieb bis 1918 bei Österreich-Ungarn. Der See wurde in dieser Zeit auch „Gartsee“ genannt. Während des Ersten Weltkrieges verlief die Front direkt am Nordufer des Sees entlang, an dem zahlreiche Festungsanlagen errichtet worden waren.

 

Nach dem Sturz Mussolinis 1943 wurde auf Forderung der deutschen, nationalsozialistischen Regierung in Nord- und Mittelitalien die Marionettenregierung der faschistischen Italienischen Sozialrepublik (Repubblica Sociale Italiana, auch: Republik von Salò) unter Mussolinis Führung als Gegenregierung installiert, die im gleichnamigen Ort am Westufer des Gardasees ihren Regierungssitz hatte. Der Staat bestand zwischen dem 23. September 1943 und dem 25. April 1945. Am 30. April 1945 endete mit der Befreiung von Torbole und Riva durch die 10. US-Gebirgsdivision der Zweite Weltkrieg am Gardasee.

 

Tourismus

 

Der Gardasee ist ein beliebtes Reiseziel. Rund um den See gibt es Hotels, Pensionen, Ferienwohnungen und Campingplätze. Ein Großteil der Ferienunterkünfte ist von Ende März bis Anfang Oktober geöffnet. Die Hauptsaison ist Juli und speziell der August. In den Wintermonaten sind die meisten Hotels, Cafés und Restaurants geschlossen. 2018 gab es am Ufer 24 Millionen Übernachtungen.

 

Am Südufer des Sees befinden sich zahlreiche Freizeitparks wie das Gardaland oder das Canevaworld. Das Nordufer ist vor allem bei Kletterern, Mountainbikern und Surfern beliebt.

 

(Wikipedia)

Pedestrian bridge is part of the Calvin S. Hamilton Pedway:

 

"The Calvin S. Hamilton Pedway, as the system is formally known, is a network of elevated walkways that was first presented in the 1970 Concept Los Angeles: The Concept for the Los Angeles General Plan. Hamilton was the city planning director at the time, having taken the position in 1964. The plan, adopted by the city in 1974, promoted dense commercial developments connected to one another by a rapid transit system. The plan was abandoned in 1981 when federal funding for the project was eliminated. Hamilton stepped down from his position in 1985 after a criminal investigation."

www.kcet.org/socal/departures/landofsunshine/block-by-blo...

 

"The pedways fall within the Downtown Center Business Improvement District, but the organization's CEO says its strained resources can only cover maintenance crews on the pedways about once a week."

articles.latimes.com/2013/may/23/opinion/la-ed-pedways-20...

 

----

 

Westin Bonaventure:

404 South Figueroa Street

Built: 1974–76.

Architect: John Portman

 

ZIMAS data:

Central City Community Plan Area, Los Angeles State Enterprise Zone, Freeway Adjacent Advisory Notice for Sensitive Uses, Greater Downtown Housing Incentive Area, General Plan Land Use ="Regional Center Commercial", Downtown Adaptive Reuse Incentive Area, Bunker Hill Redevelopment Project, w/in 500 feet of USC Hybrid High, Downtown Center Business Improvement District, Central City Revitalization Zone

 

Assessment:

Assessed Land Val.: $31,878,705

Assessed Improvement Val.: $20,033,803

Last Owner Change: 12/18/95

Last Sale Amount: $260,002

...

Year Built: 1976

 

Famous for the elevators, the revolving cocktail lounge, the mirror glass exterior, et cetera et cetera, and for being the star of a famous essay by Fredric Jameson on postmodernism.

 

Before I get into that, let me just say that what I currently find interesting about the Westin Bonaventure and the urbanism of this section of Figueroa and Bunker Hill in general are the really complex histories about what was happening with and against modernism from the 1950s through the 1980s, especially in Los Angeles, especially with regards to Bunker Hill, housing, car culture, et cetera.

 

But with the Westin Bonaventure in particular, I'm also interested in visual/formal comparisons with both Prentice Women's Hospital in Chicago (1975), the BMW headquarters in Munich (1968–73), and LaForet Harajuku (1975–80).

www.nytimes.com/2012/10/18/arts/design/adapting-prentice-...

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_Headquarters

www.mori.co.jp/en/img/article/en081121.pdf

 

Or in terms of textures and materials, there's the more local Samuel Goldwyn Theater:

www.flickr.com/photos/jannon/4653822940/

(There used to be a lot more examples in Los Angeles of mirror glass facades combined with concrete, but I feel like a lot have been torn down.)

 

Because of its dramatic qualities and because of how Jameson explicated them, people don't really talk about this building in the context of Brutalism, even though that style arguably was just as interested in dramatic effects and complexity. (There's also the totally different social uses of the "main" buildings of each style as well, of course.)

 

Of course, I'm probably just massively ignorant and there are a ton of good books already out there that are full of chapters that explicitly talk about connections between architecture and urban planning in Los Angeles and the UK, with lovely details about Victor Gruen Associates and Milton Keynes and the Barbican and the Glendale Galleria. Even better if they also bring in Metabolism and connections with what was going on in Japan. Particularly since Mori Yoshiko seems a lot more important and successful at building the massive city-in-a-city projects than John Portman, on the whole. Anyway, if so, let me know what they are?

 

Jameson's essay (or at least the beginning of it):

newleftreview.org/I/146/fredric-jameson-postmodernism-or-... (original version, 1984, sub required)

books.google.com/books?id=oRJ9fh9BK8wC&lpg=PA39&v... (book version, first few pages of the part on the Westin Bonaventure)

books.google.com/books?id=wfd-c0blcb0C&lpg=PA103&... (another book version, w/ an intro by Asa Berger, again the first few pages about the Westin Bonaventure)

 

More of other people quoting Jameson:

" In Frederick Jameson’s essay on the utterly bizarre Westin Bonaventure in Los Angeles, he describes a 'postmodern hyperspace,' an emblem of the 80s trend in which building design hoped to create hermetically sealed miniature cities. At the Bonaventure, human activity is directed in a space threaded with fitness centers, plants that thrive without any natural light and functionless open spaces offering the blank hyperreality of grandeur and respite contained in concrete."

www.newmediacaucus.org/wp/a-room-to-view/

 

"Citing the example of the Westin Bonaventure hotel in Los Angeles, Jameson argues that 'this latest mutation in space -- postmodern hyperspace -- has finally succeeded in transcending the capacities of the individual human body to locate itself, to organize its immediate surroundings perceptually, and cognitively to map its position in a mappable external world'. The effect on cultural politics, according to Jameson, is that the subject 'submerged' by this postmodern hyperspace is deprived of the 'critical distance' that makes possible the 'positioning of the cultural act outside of the massive Being of capital.'"

muse.jhu.edu/journals/dia/summary/v029/29.3reynolds.html

 

"Its reflective glass façades seemed to disappear into their surroundings. Behind them (for those who could afford it) there opened up a city within a city. Portman’s Hotels—where client, financier, and architect were all one and the same—are for Jameson the epitome of late-capitalist space. He writes of the lobby: 'I am tempted to say that such space makes it impossible for us to use the language of volume or volumes any longer, since these are impossible to seize. ... A constant busyness gives the feeling that emptiness is here absolutely packed, that it is an element within which you yourself are immersed, without any of that distance that formerly enabled the perception of perspective or volume. You are in this hyperspace up to your eyes and your body.'"

www.olafureliasson.net/studio/pdf/Ursprung_Taschen_S.pdf

 

Or drawing on Jameson:

"In his book Postmodern Geographies: the reassertion of space in critical social theory (1989), Edward W. Soja describes the hotel as 'a concentrated representation of the restructured spatiality of the late capitalist city: fragmented and fragmenting, homogeneous and homogenizing, divertingly packaged yet curiously incomprehensible, seemingly open in presenting itself to view but constantly pressing to enclose, to compartmentalize, to circumscribe, to incarcerate. Everything imaginable appears to be available in this micro-urb but real places are difficult to find, its spaces confuse an effective cognitive mapping, its pastiche of superficial reflections bewilder co-ordination and encourage submission instead. Entry by land is forbidding to those who carelessly walk but entrance is nevertheless encouraged at many different levels. Once inside, however, it becomes daunting to get out again without bureaucratic assistance. In so many ways, its architecture recapitulates and reflects the sprawling manufactured spaces of Los Angeles' (p. 243-44)."

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westin_Bonaventure_Hotel

See also Soja on Jameson on the Westin Bonaventure for the BBC: www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWlu3OlvL58

 

"Writing from California, Jameson imagined the whole new era was summed up in the alienating 'disorientation' one felt in hotels like John Portman's Westin Bonaventure in Los Angeles. Lost in its lobby, without any 'cognitive map,' Jameson found an allegory of a supposedly late phase in capitalism (coming before what?), which explained the kind of space to which French theory had unwittingly been leading us. For architecture, the art closest to capitalism, was the one best able to point out late capitalism's 'totality.' Frank Gehry, for one, was not pleased; more generally, at the very moment Jameson was confidently offering his allegory, architects like Gehry were departing from so-called po-mo (quotationalist, historicist) architecture, often to rediscover modernist strategies. Indeed, the architects that the Museum of Modern Art would group together in a 1988 exhibition as 'deconstructivists' (e.g., Gehry, Rem Koolhaas, and Peter Eisenman) were linked less by any sustained interest in Derrida than by their contempt for postmodernism. Jameson, though, was unable or unwilling to give up the 'totality-allegory' view of works, and in the face of this and other difficulties, he was gradually forced to admit that he no longer knew what to do with the categories modernity and postmodernity. In the absence of new works or ideas to 'totalize,' he tried to look back and reassert the Marxist sources of critical theory, now itself in a late or disappointed state."

—John Rajchman, "Unhappy Returns: John Rajchman on the Po-Mo Decade. (Writing the '80s)," Artforum International, Vol. 41 (2003), No. 8

www.questia.com/library/1G1-101938549/unhappy-returns-joh...

 

"The programmed music of the Westin Bonaventure Hotel in Los Angeles follows patterns of use typical to that of most programmed music. In the large open expanse of the lobby/atrium, music is always playing in the background. During the mornings and early afternoon typical small jazz group arrangements are played, never with vocals, and as the day progresses and the bar opens for the evening the music slowly shifts towards a more upbeat genre, signaling to the guests that the objectified content of the contemporary nightlife experience is beginning. Speaking to the maître d’ at the reception desk, however, he informed me that the neither the amplitude of the music nor its aesthetic intensity ever crosses above a consciousness level threshold where any guest would be forced to acknowledge its presence."

music.columbia.edu/~alec/page2/assets/Muzak%20as%20the%20...

 

"Downtown Los Angeles is notoriously quiet in the evening; the streets develop an abandoned, out-of-season feel, and the BonaVista Lounge shared some of this atmosphere. At first we were the only customers. Two people drinking alone in a revolving restaurant -- now there's an existential image for you. . . . It had been a clear, sunny day and now the sky was coalescing into a spectacular sunset. Because we were downtown we had a close-up view of some very untypical Los Angeles features: the few skyscrapers in this essentially low-rise city, shiny corporate blocks; then beyond them were the more familiar Los Angeles sights -- mountains, interweaving freeways, the vast ground-hugging grids of street lights, all bathed in a deep orange light. I wasn't so naïve, or so easily satisfied, as to think that I'd really found the perfect revolving restaurant; but for an hour or so, with the city far below, with a Cloud Buster in my hand, I found it hard to imagine anything better."

www.nytimes.com/2003/07/13/travel/done-to-a-turn-at-360-d...

 

"The Westin Bonaventure Hotel looks like something out of Robocop. Typical of architect John C. Portman Junior's style, at its heart is a large atrium and multi-story labyrinth of walkways, shops, and mostly empty seating pods. The building's inward orientation and imposing exterior make it feel, if not as impregnable as a fortress ideally is, something like an arcology, biosphere or space station. It's designed to provide everything one would need for tourists and business travelers within its walls, although most of it shuts down after lunch. I just managed to grab a bánh mì from Mr. Baguette before its closing time of 3:00 pm. Forced to order my food to-go, after wandering around the building I ventured back out into the lawless outlands."

www.kcet.org/socal/departures/landofsunshine/block-by-blo...

 

www.thebonaventure.com

www.thebonaventure.com/history/

www.starwoodhotels.com/westin/property/overview/index.htm...

www.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk/architecture/events/kreider-oleary...

www.nytimes.com/2006/06/22/travel/22iht-hotdesign.html?pa...

www.artslant.com/ny/articles/show/11785

memory.loc.gov/phpdata/pageturner.php?type=contactminor&a...

 

John Portman:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Portman,_Jr.

www.nytimes.com/2011/10/20/garden/john-portman-symphonic-...

Times Square is a major commercial intersection and neighborhood in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, at the junction of Broadway and Seventh Avenue, and stretching from West 42nd to West 47th Streets. Brightly adorned with billboards and advertisements, Times Square is sometimes referred to as The Crossroads of the World, The Center of the Universe, and the heart of The Great White Way. One of the world's busiest pedestrian intersections, it is also the hub of the Broadway Theater District and a major center of the world's entertainment industry. Times Square is one of the world's most visited tourist attractions, drawing an estimated fifty million visitors annually. Approximately 330,000 people pass through Times Square daily, many of them tourists.

 

Formerly Longacre Square, Times Square was renamed in 1904 after The New York Times moved its headquarters to the newly erected Times Building, the site of the annual ball drop which began on December 31, 1907, and continues today, attracting over a million visitors to Times Square every New Year's Eve.

 

Duffy Square, the northernmost of Times Square's triangles, was dedicated in 1937 to Chaplain Francis P. Duffy of New York City's U.S. 69th Infantry Regiment and is the site of a memorial to him, along with a statue of George M. Cohan and the TKTS discount theatre tickets booth.

 

When Manhattan Island was first settled by the Dutch, three small streams united near what is now 10th Avenue and 40th street. These three streams formed the "Great Kill" (Dutch: Grote Kill). From there the Great Kill wound through the low-lying Reed Valley, known for fish and waterfowl and emptied into a deep bay in the Hudson River at the present 42nd Street. The name was retained in a tiny hamlet, Great Kill, that became a center for carriage-making, as the upland to the south and east became known as Longacre.

 

Before and after the American Revolution, the area belonged to John Morin Scott, a general of the New York militia, in which he served under George Washington. Scott's manor house was at what is currently 43rd Street, surrounded by countryside used for farming and breeding horses. In the first half of the 19th century, it became one of the prized possessions of John Jacob Astor, who made a second fortune selling off lots to hotels and other real estate concerns as the city rapidly spread uptown.

 

By 1872, the area had become the center of New York's carriage industry. The area not having previously been named, the city authorities called it Longacre Square after Long Acre in London, where the carriage trade in that city was centered and which was also a home to stables. William Henry Vanderbilt owned and ran the American Horse Exchange there until the turn of the 20th century.

 

As more profitable commerce and industrialization of lower Manhattan pushed homes, theaters, and prostitution northward from the Tenderloin District, Long Acre Square became nicknamed the Thieves Lair for its rollicking reputation as a low entertainment district. The first theater on the square, the Olympia, was built by cigar manufacturer and impresario Oscar Hammerstein I. "By the early 1890s this once sparsely settled stretch of Broadway was ablaze with electric light and thronged by crowds of middle- and upper-class theatre, restaurant and cafe patrons."

 

In 1904, New York Times publisher Adolph S. Ochs moved the newspaper's operations to a new skyscraper on 42nd Street at Longacre Square, on the site of the former Pabst Hotel, which had existed on the site for less than a decade. Ochs persuaded Mayor George B. McClellan, Jr. to construct a subway station there, and the area was renamed "Times Square" on April 8, 1904. Just three weeks later, the first electrified advertisement appeared on the side of a bank at the corner of 46th Street and Broadway. The north end later became Duffy Square.

 

The New York Times, according to Nolan, moved to more spacious offices west of the square in 1913. The old Times Building was later named the Allied Chemical Building. Now known simply as One Times Square, it is famed for the Times Square Ball drop on its roof every New Year's Eve.

 

In 1913, the Lincoln Highway Association, headed by entrepreneur Carl G. Fisher, chose the intersection of 42nd Street and Broadway, at the southeast corner of Times Square, to be the Eastern Terminus of the Lincoln Highway, the first road across the United States, which originally spanned 3,389 miles (5,454 km) coast-to-coast through 13 states to its western end in Lincoln Park in San Francisco, California.

 

As the growth in New York City continued, Times Square quickly became a cultural hub full of theatres, music halls, and upscale hotels.

 

Times Square quickly became New York's agora, a place to gather to await great tidings and to celebrate them, whether a World Series or a presidential election

—James Traub, The Devil's Playground: A Century of Pleasure and Profit in Times Square

 

Celebrities such as Irving Berlin, Fred Astaire, and Charlie Chaplin were closely associated with Times Square in the 1910s and 1920s. During this period, the area was nicknamed The Tenderloin because it was supposedly the most desirable location in Manhattan. However, it was during this period that the area was besieged by crime and corruption, in the form of gambling and prostitution; one case that garnered huge attention was the arrest and subsequent execution of police officer Charles Becker.

 

The general atmosphere changed with the onset of the Great Depression in the 1930s. Times Square acquired a reputation as a dangerous neighborhood in the following decades. From the 1960s to the early 1990s, the seediness of the area, especially due to its go-go bars, sex shops, and adult theaters, became an infamous symbol of the city's decline.

1970s–1980s

 

As early as 1960, 42nd Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenue, was described by The New York Times as "the 'worst' [block] in town", Times Square in that decade, as depicted in Midnight Cowboy, was gritty, dark and desperate, and it got worse in the 1970s and 1980s, as did the crime situation in the rest of the city things were worse still. By 1984, an unprecedented 2,300 annual crimes occurred on that single block, of which 460 were serious felonies such as murder and rape. At the time, since police morale was low, misdemeanors were allowed to go unpunished. William Bratton, who was appointed New York City Police Commissioner in 1994 and again in 2014, stated, "The [NYPD] didn't want high performance; it wanted to stay out of trouble, to avoid corruption scandals and conflicts in the community. For years, therefore, the key to career success in the NYPD, as in many bureaucratic leviathans, was to shun risk and avoid failure. Accordingly, cops became more cautious as they rose in rank, right up to the highest levels." As the city government did not implement broken windows theory at first, the allowance of low-profile crime was thought to have caused more high-profile crimes to occur. Formerly elegant movie theaters began to show porn, and hustlers were common. The area was so abandoned at one point during the time that the entire Times Square area paid the city only $6 million in property taxes, which is less than what a medium-sized office building in Manhattan typically would produce in tax revenue today in 1984 dollars.

 

In the 1980s, a commercial building boom began in the western parts of Midtown as part of a long-term development plan developed under Mayors Ed Koch and David Dinkins. In the mid-1990s, Rudolph Giuliani led an effort to clean up the area, an effort that is described by Steve Macekin in Urban Nightmares: The Media, the Right, And the Moral Panic Over the City: Security was increased, pornographic theatres were closed, and “undesirable” low-rent residents were pressured to relocate, and then more tourist-friendly attractions and upscale establishments were opened. Advocates of the remodeling claim that the neighborhood is safer and cleaner. Detractors have countered that the changes have homogenized or "Disneyfied" the character of Times Square and have unfairly targeted lower-income New Yorkers from nearby neighborhoods such as Hell's Kitchen.

 

In 1990, the state of New York took possession of six of the nine historic theatres on 42nd Street, and the New 42nd Street non-profit organization was appointed to oversee their restoration and maintenance. The theatres underwent renovation for Broadway shows, conversion for commercial purposes, or demolition.

 

In 1992, the Times Square Alliance (formerly the Times Square Business Improvement District, or "BID" for short), a coalition of city government and local businesses dedicated to improving the quality of commerce and cleanliness in the district, started operations in the area. Times Square now boasts attractions such as ABC's Times Square Studios, where Good Morning America is broadcast live, an elaborate Toys "Я" Us store, and competing Hershey's and M&M's stores across the street from each other, as well as multiple multiplex movie theaters. Additionally, the area contains restaurants such as Ruby Foo's, a Chinese eatery; the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company, a seafood establishment; Planet Hollywood Restaurant and Bar, a theme restaurant; and Carmine's, serving Italian cuisine. It has also attracted a number of large financial, publishing, and media firms to set up headquarters in the area. A larger presence of police has improved the safety of the area.

 

The theatres of Broadway and the huge number of animated neon and LED signs have been one of New York's iconic images, as well as a symbol of the intensely urban aspects of Manhattan. The prevalence of such signage is because Times Square is the only neighborhood with zoning ordinances requiring building owners to display illuminated signs. The neighborhood actually has a minimum limit for lighting instead of the standard maximum limit. The density of illuminated signs in Times Square rivals that in Las Vegas. Officially, signs in Times Square are called "spectaculars", and the largest of them are called "jumbotrons." This signage ordnance was implemented in accordance with guidelines set in a revitalization program that New York Governor Mario Cuomo implemented in 1993.

Notable signage includes the Toshiba billboard directly under the NYE ball drop and the curved seven-story NASDAQ sign at the NASDAQ MarketSite at 4 Times Square on 43rd Street and the curved Coca-Cola sign located underneath another large LED display owned and operated by Samsung. Both the Coca-Cola sign and Samsung LED displays were built by LED display manufacturer Daktronics. Times Square's first environmentally friendly billboard powered by wind and solar energy was first lit on December 4, 2008. On completion, the 20 Times Square development will host the largest LED signage in Times Square at 18,000 square feet. The display will be 1,000 square feet larger than the Times Square Walgreens display and one of the largest video-capable screen in the world.

2000s–present

 

In 2002, New York City's mayor, Rudy Giuliani, gave the oath of office to the city's next mayor, Michael Bloomberg, at Times Square after midnight on January 1 as part of the 2001–2002 New Year's celebration. Approximately 500,000 revelers attended. Security was high following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, with more than 7,000 New York City police officers on duty in the Square, twice the number for an ordinary year.

 

Since 2002, the summer solstice has been marked by "Mind over Madness", a mass yoga event involving up to 15,000 people. Tim Tompkins, co-founder of the event, said part of its appeal was "finding stillness and calm amid the city rush on the longest day of the year".

 

On February 26, 2009, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that traffic lanes along Broadway from 42nd Street to 47th Street would be de-mapped starting Memorial Day 2009 and transformed into pedestrian plazas until at least the end of the year as a trial. The same was done from 33rd to 35th Street. The goal was to ease traffic congestion throughout the Midtown grid. The results were to be closely monitored to determine if the project worked and should be extended. Bloomberg also stated that he believed the street shutdown would make New York more livable by reducing pollution, cutting down on pedestrian accidents and helping traffic flow more smoothly.

 

The pedestrian plaza project was originally opposed by local businesses, who thought that closing the street to cars would hurt business. The original seats put out for pedestrians were inexpensive multicolored plastic lawn chairs, a source of amusement to many New Yorkers; they lasted from the onset of the plaza transformation until August 14, 2009, when they were ceremoniously bundled together in an installation christened "Now You See It, Now You Don't" by the artist Jason Peters, and shortly afterward were replaced by sturdier metal furniture. Although the plaza had mixed results on traffic in the area, injuries to motorists and pedestrians decreased, fewer pedestrians were walking in the road and the number of pedestrians in Times Square increased. On February 11, 2010, Bloomberg announced that the pedestrian plazas would become permanent.

 

By December 2013, the first phase of the Times Square pedestrian plaza, at the southern end of the square, was complete, in time for the Times Square Ball drop of New Year's Eve 2013. The project will be complete by the end of 2015. Snøhetta is responsible for the renovations.

 

from Wikipedia

 

Times Square is a major commercial intersection and neighborhood in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, at the junction of Broadway and Seventh Avenue, and stretching from West 42nd to West 47th Streets. Brightly adorned with billboards and advertisements, Times Square is sometimes referred to as The Crossroads of the World, The Center of the Universe, and the heart of The Great White Way. One of the world's busiest pedestrian intersections, it is also the hub of the Broadway Theater District and a major center of the world's entertainment industry. Times Square is one of the world's most visited tourist attractions, drawing an estimated fifty million visitors annually. Approximately 330,000 people pass through Times Square daily, many of them tourists.

 

Formerly Longacre Square, Times Square was renamed in 1904 after The New York Times moved its headquarters to the newly erected Times Building, the site of the annual ball drop which began on December 31, 1907, and continues today, attracting over a million visitors to Times Square every New Year's Eve.

 

Duffy Square, the northernmost of Times Square's triangles, was dedicated in 1937 to Chaplain Francis P. Duffy of New York City's U.S. 69th Infantry Regiment and is the site of a memorial to him, along with a statue of George M. Cohan and the TKTS discount theatre tickets booth.

 

When Manhattan Island was first settled by the Dutch, three small streams united near what is now 10th Avenue and 40th street. These three streams formed the "Great Kill" (Dutch: Grote Kill). From there the Great Kill wound through the low-lying Reed Valley, known for fish and waterfowl and emptied into a deep bay in the Hudson River at the present 42nd Street. The name was retained in a tiny hamlet, Great Kill, that became a center for carriage-making, as the upland to the south and east became known as Longacre.

 

Before and after the American Revolution, the area belonged to John Morin Scott, a general of the New York militia, in which he served under George Washington. Scott's manor house was at what is currently 43rd Street, surrounded by countryside used for farming and breeding horses. In the first half of the 19th century, it became one of the prized possessions of John Jacob Astor, who made a second fortune selling off lots to hotels and other real estate concerns as the city rapidly spread uptown.

 

By 1872, the area had become the center of New York's carriage industry. The area not having previously been named, the city authorities called it Longacre Square after Long Acre in London, where the carriage trade in that city was centered and which was also a home to stables. William Henry Vanderbilt owned and ran the American Horse Exchange there until the turn of the 20th century.

 

As more profitable commerce and industrialization of lower Manhattan pushed homes, theaters, and prostitution northward from the Tenderloin District, Long Acre Square became nicknamed the Thieves Lair for its rollicking reputation as a low entertainment district. The first theater on the square, the Olympia, was built by cigar manufacturer and impresario Oscar Hammerstein I. "By the early 1890s this once sparsely settled stretch of Broadway was ablaze with electric light and thronged by crowds of middle- and upper-class theatre, restaurant and cafe patrons."

 

In 1904, New York Times publisher Adolph S. Ochs moved the newspaper's operations to a new skyscraper on 42nd Street at Longacre Square, on the site of the former Pabst Hotel, which had existed on the site for less than a decade. Ochs persuaded Mayor George B. McClellan, Jr. to construct a subway station there, and the area was renamed "Times Square" on April 8, 1904. Just three weeks later, the first electrified advertisement appeared on the side of a bank at the corner of 46th Street and Broadway. The north end later became Duffy Square.

 

The New York Times, according to Nolan, moved to more spacious offices west of the square in 1913. The old Times Building was later named the Allied Chemical Building. Now known simply as One Times Square, it is famed for the Times Square Ball drop on its roof every New Year's Eve.

 

In 1913, the Lincoln Highway Association, headed by entrepreneur Carl G. Fisher, chose the intersection of 42nd Street and Broadway, at the southeast corner of Times Square, to be the Eastern Terminus of the Lincoln Highway, the first road across the United States, which originally spanned 3,389 miles (5,454 km) coast-to-coast through 13 states to its western end in Lincoln Park in San Francisco, California.

 

As the growth in New York City continued, Times Square quickly became a cultural hub full of theatres, music halls, and upscale hotels.

 

Times Square quickly became New York's agora, a place to gather to await great tidings and to celebrate them, whether a World Series or a presidential election

—James Traub, The Devil's Playground: A Century of Pleasure and Profit in Times Square

 

Celebrities such as Irving Berlin, Fred Astaire, and Charlie Chaplin were closely associated with Times Square in the 1910s and 1920s. During this period, the area was nicknamed The Tenderloin because it was supposedly the most desirable location in Manhattan. However, it was during this period that the area was besieged by crime and corruption, in the form of gambling and prostitution; one case that garnered huge attention was the arrest and subsequent execution of police officer Charles Becker.

 

The general atmosphere changed with the onset of the Great Depression in the 1930s. Times Square acquired a reputation as a dangerous neighborhood in the following decades. From the 1960s to the early 1990s, the seediness of the area, especially due to its go-go bars, sex shops, and adult theaters, became an infamous symbol of the city's decline.

1970s–1980s

 

As early as 1960, 42nd Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenue, was described by The New York Times as "the 'worst' [block] in town", Times Square in that decade, as depicted in Midnight Cowboy, was gritty, dark and desperate, and it got worse in the 1970s and 1980s, as did the crime situation in the rest of the city things were worse still. By 1984, an unprecedented 2,300 annual crimes occurred on that single block, of which 460 were serious felonies such as murder and rape. At the time, since police morale was low, misdemeanors were allowed to go unpunished. William Bratton, who was appointed New York City Police Commissioner in 1994 and again in 2014, stated, "The [NYPD] didn't want high performance; it wanted to stay out of trouble, to avoid corruption scandals and conflicts in the community. For years, therefore, the key to career success in the NYPD, as in many bureaucratic leviathans, was to shun risk and avoid failure. Accordingly, cops became more cautious as they rose in rank, right up to the highest levels." As the city government did not implement broken windows theory at first, the allowance of low-profile crime was thought to have caused more high-profile crimes to occur. Formerly elegant movie theaters began to show porn, and hustlers were common. The area was so abandoned at one point during the time that the entire Times Square area paid the city only $6 million in property taxes, which is less than what a medium-sized office building in Manhattan typically would produce in tax revenue today in 1984 dollars.

 

In the 1980s, a commercial building boom began in the western parts of Midtown as part of a long-term development plan developed under Mayors Ed Koch and David Dinkins. In the mid-1990s, Rudolph Giuliani led an effort to clean up the area, an effort that is described by Steve Macekin in Urban Nightmares: The Media, the Right, And the Moral Panic Over the City: Security was increased, pornographic theatres were closed, and “undesirable” low-rent residents were pressured to relocate, and then more tourist-friendly attractions and upscale establishments were opened. Advocates of the remodeling claim that the neighborhood is safer and cleaner. Detractors have countered that the changes have homogenized or "Disneyfied" the character of Times Square and have unfairly targeted lower-income New Yorkers from nearby neighborhoods such as Hell's Kitchen.

 

In 1990, the state of New York took possession of six of the nine historic theatres on 42nd Street, and the New 42nd Street non-profit organization was appointed to oversee their restoration and maintenance. The theatres underwent renovation for Broadway shows, conversion for commercial purposes, or demolition.

 

In 1992, the Times Square Alliance (formerly the Times Square Business Improvement District, or "BID" for short), a coalition of city government and local businesses dedicated to improving the quality of commerce and cleanliness in the district, started operations in the area. Times Square now boasts attractions such as ABC's Times Square Studios, where Good Morning America is broadcast live, an elaborate Toys "Я" Us store, and competing Hershey's and M&M's stores across the street from each other, as well as multiple multiplex movie theaters. Additionally, the area contains restaurants such as Ruby Foo's, a Chinese eatery; the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company, a seafood establishment; Planet Hollywood Restaurant and Bar, a theme restaurant; and Carmine's, serving Italian cuisine. It has also attracted a number of large financial, publishing, and media firms to set up headquarters in the area. A larger presence of police has improved the safety of the area.

 

The theatres of Broadway and the huge number of animated neon and LED signs have been one of New York's iconic images, as well as a symbol of the intensely urban aspects of Manhattan. The prevalence of such signage is because Times Square is the only neighborhood with zoning ordinances requiring building owners to display illuminated signs. The neighborhood actually has a minimum limit for lighting instead of the standard maximum limit. The density of illuminated signs in Times Square rivals that in Las Vegas. Officially, signs in Times Square are called "spectaculars", and the largest of them are called "jumbotrons." This signage ordnance was implemented in accordance with guidelines set in a revitalization program that New York Governor Mario Cuomo implemented in 1993.

Notable signage includes the Toshiba billboard directly under the NYE ball drop and the curved seven-story NASDAQ sign at the NASDAQ MarketSite at 4 Times Square on 43rd Street and the curved Coca-Cola sign located underneath another large LED display owned and operated by Samsung. Both the Coca-Cola sign and Samsung LED displays were built by LED display manufacturer Daktronics. Times Square's first environmentally friendly billboard powered by wind and solar energy was first lit on December 4, 2008. On completion, the 20 Times Square development will host the largest LED signage in Times Square at 18,000 square feet. The display will be 1,000 square feet larger than the Times Square Walgreens display and one of the largest video-capable screen in the world.

2000s–present

 

In 2002, New York City's mayor, Rudy Giuliani, gave the oath of office to the city's next mayor, Michael Bloomberg, at Times Square after midnight on January 1 as part of the 2001–2002 New Year's celebration. Approximately 500,000 revelers attended. Security was high following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, with more than 7,000 New York City police officers on duty in the Square, twice the number for an ordinary year.

 

Since 2002, the summer solstice has been marked by "Mind over Madness", a mass yoga event involving up to 15,000 people. Tim Tompkins, co-founder of the event, said part of its appeal was "finding stillness and calm amid the city rush on the longest day of the year".

 

On February 26, 2009, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that traffic lanes along Broadway from 42nd Street to 47th Street would be de-mapped starting Memorial Day 2009 and transformed into pedestrian plazas until at least the end of the year as a trial. The same was done from 33rd to 35th Street. The goal was to ease traffic congestion throughout the Midtown grid. The results were to be closely monitored to determine if the project worked and should be extended. Bloomberg also stated that he believed the street shutdown would make New York more livable by reducing pollution, cutting down on pedestrian accidents and helping traffic flow more smoothly.

 

The pedestrian plaza project was originally opposed by local businesses, who thought that closing the street to cars would hurt business. The original seats put out for pedestrians were inexpensive multicolored plastic lawn chairs, a source of amusement to many New Yorkers; they lasted from the onset of the plaza transformation until August 14, 2009, when they were ceremoniously bundled together in an installation christened "Now You See It, Now You Don't" by the artist Jason Peters, and shortly afterward were replaced by sturdier metal furniture. Although the plaza had mixed results on traffic in the area, injuries to motorists and pedestrians decreased, fewer pedestrians were walking in the road and the number of pedestrians in Times Square increased. On February 11, 2010, Bloomberg announced that the pedestrian plazas would become permanent.

 

By December 2013, the first phase of the Times Square pedestrian plaza, at the southern end of the square, was complete, in time for the Times Square Ball drop of New Year's Eve 2013. The project will be complete by the end of 2015. Snøhetta is responsible for the renovations.

 

from Wikipedia

 

Times Square is a major commercial intersection and neighborhood in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, at the junction of Broadway and Seventh Avenue, and stretching from West 42nd to West 47th Streets. Brightly adorned with billboards and advertisements, Times Square is sometimes referred to as The Crossroads of the World, The Center of the Universe, and the heart of The Great White Way. One of the world's busiest pedestrian intersections, it is also the hub of the Broadway Theater District and a major center of the world's entertainment industry. Times Square is one of the world's most visited tourist attractions, drawing an estimated fifty million visitors annually. Approximately 330,000 people pass through Times Square daily, many of them tourists.

 

Formerly Longacre Square, Times Square was renamed in 1904 after The New York Times moved its headquarters to the newly erected Times Building, the site of the annual ball drop which began on December 31, 1907, and continues today, attracting over a million visitors to Times Square every New Year's Eve.

 

Duffy Square, the northernmost of Times Square's triangles, was dedicated in 1937 to Chaplain Francis P. Duffy of New York City's U.S. 69th Infantry Regiment and is the site of a memorial to him, along with a statue of George M. Cohan and the TKTS discount theatre tickets booth.

 

When Manhattan Island was first settled by the Dutch, three small streams united near what is now 10th Avenue and 40th street. These three streams formed the "Great Kill" (Dutch: Grote Kill). From there the Great Kill wound through the low-lying Reed Valley, known for fish and waterfowl and emptied into a deep bay in the Hudson River at the present 42nd Street. The name was retained in a tiny hamlet, Great Kill, that became a center for carriage-making, as the upland to the south and east became known as Longacre.

 

Before and after the American Revolution, the area belonged to John Morin Scott, a general of the New York militia, in which he served under George Washington. Scott's manor house was at what is currently 43rd Street, surrounded by countryside used for farming and breeding horses. In the first half of the 19th century, it became one of the prized possessions of John Jacob Astor, who made a second fortune selling off lots to hotels and other real estate concerns as the city rapidly spread uptown.

 

By 1872, the area had become the center of New York's carriage industry. The area not having previously been named, the city authorities called it Longacre Square after Long Acre in London, where the carriage trade in that city was centered and which was also a home to stables. William Henry Vanderbilt owned and ran the American Horse Exchange there until the turn of the 20th century.

 

As more profitable commerce and industrialization of lower Manhattan pushed homes, theaters, and prostitution northward from the Tenderloin District, Long Acre Square became nicknamed the Thieves Lair for its rollicking reputation as a low entertainment district. The first theater on the square, the Olympia, was built by cigar manufacturer and impresario Oscar Hammerstein I. "By the early 1890s this once sparsely settled stretch of Broadway was ablaze with electric light and thronged by crowds of middle- and upper-class theatre, restaurant and cafe patrons."

 

In 1904, New York Times publisher Adolph S. Ochs moved the newspaper's operations to a new skyscraper on 42nd Street at Longacre Square, on the site of the former Pabst Hotel, which had existed on the site for less than a decade. Ochs persuaded Mayor George B. McClellan, Jr. to construct a subway station there, and the area was renamed "Times Square" on April 8, 1904. Just three weeks later, the first electrified advertisement appeared on the side of a bank at the corner of 46th Street and Broadway. The north end later became Duffy Square.

 

The New York Times, according to Nolan, moved to more spacious offices west of the square in 1913. The old Times Building was later named the Allied Chemical Building. Now known simply as One Times Square, it is famed for the Times Square Ball drop on its roof every New Year's Eve.

 

In 1913, the Lincoln Highway Association, headed by entrepreneur Carl G. Fisher, chose the intersection of 42nd Street and Broadway, at the southeast corner of Times Square, to be the Eastern Terminus of the Lincoln Highway, the first road across the United States, which originally spanned 3,389 miles (5,454 km) coast-to-coast through 13 states to its western end in Lincoln Park in San Francisco, California.

 

As the growth in New York City continued, Times Square quickly became a cultural hub full of theatres, music halls, and upscale hotels.

 

Times Square quickly became New York's agora, a place to gather to await great tidings and to celebrate them, whether a World Series or a presidential election

—James Traub, The Devil's Playground: A Century of Pleasure and Profit in Times Square

 

Celebrities such as Irving Berlin, Fred Astaire, and Charlie Chaplin were closely associated with Times Square in the 1910s and 1920s. During this period, the area was nicknamed The Tenderloin because it was supposedly the most desirable location in Manhattan. However, it was during this period that the area was besieged by crime and corruption, in the form of gambling and prostitution; one case that garnered huge attention was the arrest and subsequent execution of police officer Charles Becker.

 

The general atmosphere changed with the onset of the Great Depression in the 1930s. Times Square acquired a reputation as a dangerous neighborhood in the following decades. From the 1960s to the early 1990s, the seediness of the area, especially due to its go-go bars, sex shops, and adult theaters, became an infamous symbol of the city's decline.

1970s–1980s

 

As early as 1960, 42nd Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenue, was described by The New York Times as "the 'worst' [block] in town", Times Square in that decade, as depicted in Midnight Cowboy, was gritty, dark and desperate, and it got worse in the 1970s and 1980s, as did the crime situation in the rest of the city things were worse still. By 1984, an unprecedented 2,300 annual crimes occurred on that single block, of which 460 were serious felonies such as murder and rape. At the time, since police morale was low, misdemeanors were allowed to go unpunished. William Bratton, who was appointed New York City Police Commissioner in 1994 and again in 2014, stated, "The [NYPD] didn't want high performance; it wanted to stay out of trouble, to avoid corruption scandals and conflicts in the community. For years, therefore, the key to career success in the NYPD, as in many bureaucratic leviathans, was to shun risk and avoid failure. Accordingly, cops became more cautious as they rose in rank, right up to the highest levels." As the city government did not implement broken windows theory at first, the allowance of low-profile crime was thought to have caused more high-profile crimes to occur. Formerly elegant movie theaters began to show porn, and hustlers were common. The area was so abandoned at one point during the time that the entire Times Square area paid the city only $6 million in property taxes, which is less than what a medium-sized office building in Manhattan typically would produce in tax revenue today in 1984 dollars.

 

In the 1980s, a commercial building boom began in the western parts of Midtown as part of a long-term development plan developed under Mayors Ed Koch and David Dinkins. In the mid-1990s, Rudolph Giuliani led an effort to clean up the area, an effort that is described by Steve Macekin in Urban Nightmares: The Media, the Right, And the Moral Panic Over the City: Security was increased, pornographic theatres were closed, and “undesirable” low-rent residents were pressured to relocate, and then more tourist-friendly attractions and upscale establishments were opened. Advocates of the remodeling claim that the neighborhood is safer and cleaner. Detractors have countered that the changes have homogenized or "Disneyfied" the character of Times Square and have unfairly targeted lower-income New Yorkers from nearby neighborhoods such as Hell's Kitchen.

 

In 1990, the state of New York took possession of six of the nine historic theatres on 42nd Street, and the New 42nd Street non-profit organization was appointed to oversee their restoration and maintenance. The theatres underwent renovation for Broadway shows, conversion for commercial purposes, or demolition.

 

In 1992, the Times Square Alliance (formerly the Times Square Business Improvement District, or "BID" for short), a coalition of city government and local businesses dedicated to improving the quality of commerce and cleanliness in the district, started operations in the area. Times Square now boasts attractions such as ABC's Times Square Studios, where Good Morning America is broadcast live, an elaborate Toys "Я" Us store, and competing Hershey's and M&M's stores across the street from each other, as well as multiple multiplex movie theaters. Additionally, the area contains restaurants such as Ruby Foo's, a Chinese eatery; the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company, a seafood establishment; Planet Hollywood Restaurant and Bar, a theme restaurant; and Carmine's, serving Italian cuisine. It has also attracted a number of large financial, publishing, and media firms to set up headquarters in the area. A larger presence of police has improved the safety of the area.

 

The theatres of Broadway and the huge number of animated neon and LED signs have been one of New York's iconic images, as well as a symbol of the intensely urban aspects of Manhattan. The prevalence of such signage is because Times Square is the only neighborhood with zoning ordinances requiring building owners to display illuminated signs. The neighborhood actually has a minimum limit for lighting instead of the standard maximum limit. The density of illuminated signs in Times Square rivals that in Las Vegas. Officially, signs in Times Square are called "spectaculars", and the largest of them are called "jumbotrons." This signage ordnance was implemented in accordance with guidelines set in a revitalization program that New York Governor Mario Cuomo implemented in 1993.

Notable signage includes the Toshiba billboard directly under the NYE ball drop and the curved seven-story NASDAQ sign at the NASDAQ MarketSite at 4 Times Square on 43rd Street and the curved Coca-Cola sign located underneath another large LED display owned and operated by Samsung. Both the Coca-Cola sign and Samsung LED displays were built by LED display manufacturer Daktronics. Times Square's first environmentally friendly billboard powered by wind and solar energy was first lit on December 4, 2008. On completion, the 20 Times Square development will host the largest LED signage in Times Square at 18,000 square feet. The display will be 1,000 square feet larger than the Times Square Walgreens display and one of the largest video-capable screen in the world.

2000s–present

 

In 2002, New York City's mayor, Rudy Giuliani, gave the oath of office to the city's next mayor, Michael Bloomberg, at Times Square after midnight on January 1 as part of the 2001–2002 New Year's celebration. Approximately 500,000 revelers attended. Security was high following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, with more than 7,000 New York City police officers on duty in the Square, twice the number for an ordinary year.

 

Since 2002, the summer solstice has been marked by "Mind over Madness", a mass yoga event involving up to 15,000 people. Tim Tompkins, co-founder of the event, said part of its appeal was "finding stillness and calm amid the city rush on the longest day of the year".

 

On February 26, 2009, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that traffic lanes along Broadway from 42nd Street to 47th Street would be de-mapped starting Memorial Day 2009 and transformed into pedestrian plazas until at least the end of the year as a trial. The same was done from 33rd to 35th Street. The goal was to ease traffic congestion throughout the Midtown grid. The results were to be closely monitored to determine if the project worked and should be extended. Bloomberg also stated that he believed the street shutdown would make New York more livable by reducing pollution, cutting down on pedestrian accidents and helping traffic flow more smoothly.

 

The pedestrian plaza project was originally opposed by local businesses, who thought that closing the street to cars would hurt business. The original seats put out for pedestrians were inexpensive multicolored plastic lawn chairs, a source of amusement to many New Yorkers; they lasted from the onset of the plaza transformation until August 14, 2009, when they were ceremoniously bundled together in an installation christened "Now You See It, Now You Don't" by the artist Jason Peters, and shortly afterward were replaced by sturdier metal furniture. Although the plaza had mixed results on traffic in the area, injuries to motorists and pedestrians decreased, fewer pedestrians were walking in the road and the number of pedestrians in Times Square increased. On February 11, 2010, Bloomberg announced that the pedestrian plazas would become permanent.

 

By December 2013, the first phase of the Times Square pedestrian plaza, at the southern end of the square, was complete, in time for the Times Square Ball drop of New Year's Eve 2013. The project will be complete by the end of 2015. Snøhetta is responsible for the renovations.

 

from Wikipedia

 

a garden competition in quebec. myself, a grandchild of northern irish immigrants, and my partner, seh kang, an american with south korean roots.

 

garden not symbolic, ecological, or reflection on nature alone but a cultural, didactic tool. representative of contemporary strife between iconic tradition and global homogenization. a space to celebrate the heritage and traditions of korea, ireland, and the quebecois through positive cultivation, play and partaking in shared space. a garden refuge imbued with tradition that looks forward to the cultural mingling brought about by globaliztion, that utilizes traditional symbols and meaning not to separate but to bring co existence while respecting movement towards a diverse global community

 

I don't think any of these people look like "typical" Greek citizens. If you didn't know better, you might well think this photograph was taken somewhere in South America

 

***************************

 

When we hear the phrase “first impression,” we tend to think of a person. Was the politician I recently voted for as inspiring when I heard his first speech as he was years later? (More so, sadly.) Was the girl that I married as beautiful at 13 as she was years later, in her twenties and thirties? (Yes, and yes.) Did Bob Dylan’s Blowin’ in the Wind send more of a shiver down my spine in 1963 than it did when I heard it drifting from a car radio 45 years later? (No. It stops me dead in my tracks every time I hear it.)

 

It’s not just people that make first impressions on me. Cities do, too, perhaps because I encountered so many of them while my family moved every year throughout my childhood. Or perhaps it’s because, after seeing so many cities that I thought were different in the United States, I was so completely unprepared for the wild variety of sights and sounds and smells that I encountered as a grown man, when I traveled to Europe and South America, to Africa and Asia and Australia. And even today, there are cities that I’m visiting for the first time, and which continue to take me by surprise.

 

Athens is one of those cities. I don’t know what I was expecting… Something old, of course, something downright ancient, filled with smashed statues and marble columns like Rome, engraved with unreadable inscriptions in a language I never learned — but probably not as ancient as Cairo. Something hot and noisy and polluted and smelly, perhaps like Calcutta or the slums of Mumbai. Something gridlocked with noisy, honking traffic congestion, perhaps like Moscow.

 

What I didn’t expect was the wide, nearly-empty highways leading from the airport into the city. I didn’t expect the cleanliness of the tree-lined streets that ran in every direction. I did expect the white-washed buildings and houses that climbed the hills that surround the city — but the local people told me that buildings in Athens were positively gray compared to what I would have seen if I had stayed longer and ventured out to the Greek islands.

 

I also didn’t expect the graffiti that covered nearly every wall, on every building, up and down every street. They were mostly slogans and phrases in Greek (and therefore completely unintelligible to me), but with occasional crude references in English to IMF bankers, undercover policemen, a politician or two, and the CIA. There were a couple slogans from the Russian revolution of 1917, from the Castro uprising in Cuba, and even from the American revolution (“united we stand, divided we fall.”)

 

Naturally, I thought all of this had come about in just the past few months, as Greece has wrestled with its overwhelming financial crisis. But I was told by local citizens that much of the graffiti has been around for quite a bit longer than that – just as it has been in cities like New York and London. Some of it was wild and colorful, with cartoon figures and crazy faces … though I don’t think it quite rises to the level of “street art” that one sees in parts of SoHo, Tribeca, and the East Village in New York. What impressed me most about the graffiti in Athens was its vibrant energy; I felt like the artists were ready to punch a hole through the walls with their spray-cans.

 

These are merely my own first impressions; they won’t be the same as yours. Beyond that, there are a lot of facts, figures, and details if one wants to fully describe a city like Athens. Its recorded history spans some 3,400 years, and it includes the exploits of kings and generals, gods and philosophers, athletes and artists. There are statues and columns and ruins everywhere; and towering above it all is the breath-taking Acropolis. It’s far too rich and complex for me to describe here in any reasonable way; if you want to know more, find some books or scan the excellent Wikipedia summary.

 

It’s also hard to figure out what one should photograph on a first visit to a city like Athens. It’s impossible not to photograph the Acropolis, especially since it’s lit at night and visible from almost every corner of the city. I was interested in the possibility of photographing the complex in the special light before dawn or after sunset, but it’s closed to visitors except during “civilized” daytime hours. It’s also undergoing extensive renovations and repair, so much of it is covered in scaffolding, derricks, and cranes. In the end, I took a few panorama shots and telephoto shots, and explored the details by visiting the new Acropolis Museum, with the camera turned off.

 

Aside from that, the photos you’ll see here concentrate on two things: my unexpected “first impression” of the local graffiti, and my favorite of all subjects: people. In a couple cases, the subjects are unmistakably Greek – Greek orthodox priests, for example – and in a couple cases, you might think you were looking at a street scene in São Paulo or Mexico City. But in most of the shots, you’ll see examples of stylish, fashionable, interesting people that don’t look all that much different from the people I’ve photographed in New York, London, Rome, or Paris. Maybe we can attribute that to the homogenization of fashion and style in today’s interconnected global environment. Or maybe we can just chalk it up to the fact that people are, well … interesting … wherever you go.

 

In any case, enjoy. And if you get to Athens yourself, send me some photos of your own first impressions.

 

YOGURT

Yogurt, yoghurt or yoghourt (/ˈjoʊɡərt/ or /ˈjɒɡərt/; from Turkish: yoğurt) is a food produced by bacterial fermentation of milk. The bacteria used to make yogurt are known as yogurt cultures. The fermentation of lactose by these bacteria produces lactic acid, which acts on milk protein to give yogurt its texture and characteristic tart flavor. Cow's milk is commonly available worldwide and, as such, is the milk most commonly used to make yogurt. Milk from water buffalo, goats, ewes, mares, camels, and yaks is also used to produce yogurt where available locally. The milk used may be homogenized or not, even pasteurized or raw. Each type of milk produces substantially different results.

 

Yogurt is produced using a culture of Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus and Streptococcus thermophilus bacteria. In addition, other lactobacilli and bifidobacteria are sometimes added during or after culturing yogurt. Some countries require yogurt to contain a certain amount of colony-forming units (CFU) of bacteria; in China, for example, the requirement for the number of lactobacillus bacteria is at least 1 million CFU per milliliter.

 

To produce yogurt, milk is first heated, usually to about 85 °C , to denature the milk proteins so that they do not form curds. After heating, the milk is allowed to cool to about 45 °C. The bacterial culture is mixed in, and that temperature of 45 °C is maintained for 4 to 12 hours to allow fermentation to occur.

 

ETYMOLOGY AND SPELLING

The word is derived from Turkish: yoğurt, and is usually related to the verb yoğurmak, "to knead", or "to be curdled or coagulated; to thicken". It may be related to yoğun, meaning thick or dense. The sound ğ was traditionally rendered as "gh" in transliterations of Turkish from around 1615–1625. In modern Turkish the letter ğ marks a diaeresis between two vowels, without being pronounced itself, which is reflected in some languages' versions of the word (e.g. Greek γιαούρτι giaoúrti, French yaourt, Romanian iaurt).

 

In English, the several variations of the spelling of the word include yogurt, yoghurt, and to a lesser extent yoghourt or yogourt.

 

HISTORY

Analysis of the L. delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus genome indicates that the bacterium may have originated on the surface of a plant. Milk may have become spontaneously and unintentionally exposed to it through contact with plants, or bacteria may have been transferred from the udder of domestic milk-producing animals. The origins of yogurt are unknown, but it is thought to have been invented in Mesopotamia around 5000 BC. In ancient Indian records, the combination of yogurt and honey is called "the food of the gods". Persian traditions hold that "Abraham owed his fecundity and longevity to the regular ingestion of yogurt".

 

The cuisine of ancient Greece included a dairy product known as oxygala (οξύγαλα) which is believed to have been a form of yogurt. Galen (AD 129 – c. 200/c. 216) mentioned that oxygala was consumed with honey, similar to the way thickened Greek yogurt is eaten today. The oldest writings mentioning yogurt are attributed to Pliny the Elder, who remarked that certain "barbarous nations" knew how "to thicken the milk into a substance with an agreeable acidity". The use of yogurt by medieval Turks is recorded in the books Dīwān Lughāt al-Turk by Mahmud Kashgari and Kutadgu Bilig by Yusuf Has Hajib written in the 11th century. Both texts mention the word "yogurt" in different sections and describe its use by nomadic Turks. The earliest yogurts were probably spontaneously fermented by wild bacteria in goat skin bags.

 

Some accounts suggest that Indian emperor Akbar's cooks would flavor yogurt with mustard seeds and cinnamon. Another early account of a European encounter with yogurt occurs in French clinical history: Francis I suffered from a severe diarrhea which no French doctor could cure. His ally Suleiman the Magnificent sent a doctor, who allegedly cured the patient with yogurt. Being grateful, the French king spread around the information about the food which had cured him.

 

Until the 1900s, yogurt was a staple in diets of people in the Russian Empire (and especially Central Asia and the Caucasus), Western Asia, South Eastern Europe/Balkans, Central Europe, and India. Stamen Grigorov (1878–1945), a Bulgarian student of medicine in Geneva, first examined the microflora of the Bulgarian yogurt. In 1905, he described it as consisting of a spherical and a rod-like lactic acid-producing bacteria. In 1907, the rod-like bacterium was called Bacillus bulgaricus (now Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus). The Russian Nobel laureate and biologist Ilya Mechnikov, from the Institut Pasteur in Paris, was influenced by Grigorov's work and hypothesized that regular consumption of yogurt was responsible for the unusually long lifespans of Bulgarian peasants. Believing Lactobacillus to be essential for good health, Mechnikov worked to popularize yogurt as a foodstuff throughout Europe.

 

Isaac Carasso industrialized the production of yogurt. In 1919, Carasso, who was from Ottoman Salonika, started a small yogurt business in Barcelona, Spain, and named the business Danone ("little Daniel") after his son. The brand later expanded to the United States under an Americanized version of the name: Dannon. Yogurt with added fruit jam was patented in 1933 by the Radlická Mlékárna dairy in Prague.

 

Yogurt was introduced to the United States in the first decade of the twentieth century, influenced by Élie Metchnikoff's The Prolongation of Life; Optimistic Studies (1908); it was available in tablet form for those with digestive intolerance and for home culturing. It was popularized by John Harvey Kellogg at the Battle Creek Sanitarium, where it was used both orally and in enemas, and later by Armenian immigrants Sarkis and Rose Colombosian, who started "Colombo and Sons Creamery" in Andover, Massachusetts in 1929.

 

Colombo Yogurt was originally delivered around New England in a horse-drawn wagon inscribed with the Armenian word "madzoon" which was later changed to "yogurt", the Turkish name of the product, as Turkish was the lingua franca between immigrants of the various Near Eastern ethnicities who were the main consumers at that time. Yogurt's popularity in the United States was enhanced in the 1950s and 1960s, when it was presented as a health food by scientists like Hungarian-born bacteriologist Stephen A. Gaymont. By the late 20th century, yogurt had become a common American food item and Colombo Yogurt was sold in 1993 to General Mills, which discontinued the brand in 2010.

 

NUTRITION AND HEALTH

Yogurt (plain yogurt from whole milk) is 81% water, 9% protein, 5% fat, and 4% carbohydrates, including 4% sugars (table). A 100-gram amount provides 406 kilojoules (97 kcal) of dietary energy. As a proportion of the Daily Value (DV), a serving of yogurt is a rich source of vitamin B12 (31% DV) and riboflavin (23% DV), with moderate content of protein, phosphorus, and selenium (14 to 19% DV; table).

 

VARIETIES AND PRESENTATION

Dahi is a yogurt of the Indian subcontinent, known for its characteristic taste and consistency. The word dahi seems to be derived from the Sanskrit word dadhi ("sour milk"), one of the five elixirs, or panchamrita, often used in Hindu ritual. Sweetened dahi (mishti doi or meethi dahi) is common in eastern parts of India, made by fermenting sweetened milk. While cow's milk is considered sacred and is currently the primary ingredient for yogurt, goat and buffalo milk were widely used in the past, and valued for the fat content (see buffalo curd).

 

Dadiah or dadih is a traditional West Sumatran yogurt made from water buffalo milk, fermented in bamboo tubes. Yogurt is common in Nepal, where it is served as both an appetizer and dessert. Locally called dahi, it is a part of the Nepali culture, used in local festivals, marriage ceremonies, parties, religious occasions, family gatherings, and so on. One Nepalese yogurt is called juju dhau, originating from the city of Bhaktapur. In Tibet, yak milk (technically dri milk, as the word yak refers to the male animal) is made into yogurt (and butter and cheese) and consumed.

 

In Northern Iran, Mâst Chekide is a variety of kefir yogurt with a distinct sour taste. It is usually mixed with a pesto-like water and fresh herb purée called delal. Common appetizers are spinach or eggplant borani, Mâst-o-Khiâr with cucumber, spring onions and herbs, and Mâst-Musir with wild shallots. In the summertime, yogurt and ice cubes are mixed together with cucumbers, raisins, salt, pepper and onions and topped with some croutons made of Persian traditional bread and served as a cold soup. Ashe-Mâst is a warm yogurt soup with fresh herbs, spinach and lentils. Even the leftover water extracted when straining yogurt is cooked to make a sour cream sauce called kashk, which is usually used as a topping on soups and stews.

 

Matsoni is a Georgian yogurt in the Caucasus and Russia. Tarator and Cacık are cold soups made from yogurt during summertime in eastern Europe. They are made with ayran, cucumbers, dill, salt, olive oil, and optionally garlic and ground walnuts. Tzatziki in Greece and milk salad in Bulgaria are thick yogurt-based salads similar to tarator.

 

Khyar w Laban (cucumber and yogurt salad) is a dish in Lebanon and Syria. Also, a wide variety of local Lebanese and Syrian dishes are cooked with yogurt like "Kibbi bi Laban" Rahmjoghurt, a creamy yogurt with much higher fat content (10%) than many yogurts offered in English-speaking countries. Dovga, a yogurt soup cooked with a variety of herbs and rice, is served warm in winter or refreshingly cold in summer. Jameed, yogurt salted and dried to preserve it, is consumed in Jordan. Zabadi is the type of yogurt made in Egypt, usually from the milk of the Egyptian water buffalo. It is particularly associated with Ramadan fasting, as it is thought to prevent thirst during all-day fasting.

 

SWEETENED AND FLAVORED

To offset its natural sourness, yogurt is also sold sweetened, sweetened and flavored or in containers with fruit or fruit jam on the bottom. The two styles of yogurt commonly found in the grocery store are set-style yogurt and Swiss-style yogurt. Set-style yogurt is poured into individual containers to set, while Swiss-style yogurt is stirred prior to packaging. Either may have fruit added to increase sweetness.

 

Lassi and moru are common beverages in India. Lassi is stirred liquified curd that is either salted or sweetened with sugar commonly, less commonly honey and often combined with fruit pulp to create flavored lassi. Mango lassi is a western favorite, as is coconut lassi. Consistency can vary widely, with urban and commercial lassis being of uniform texture through being processed, whereas rural and rustic lassi has curds in it, and sometimes has malai (cream) added or removed. Moru is a South Indian summer drink, meant to keep drinkers hydrated through the hot and humid summers of the South. It is prepared by considerably thinning down yogurt with water, adding salt (for electrolyte balance) and spices, usually green chili peppers, asafoetida, curry leaves and mustard.

 

Large amounts of sugar – or other sweeteners for low-energy yogurts – are often used in commercial yogurt. Some yogurts contain added modified starch, pectin (found naturally in fruit), and/or gelatin to create thickness and creaminess artificially at lower cost. This type of yogurt is also marketed under the name Swiss-style, although it is unrelated to the way yogurt is eaten in Switzerland. Some yogurts, often called "cream line", are made with whole milk which has not been homogenized so the cream rises to the top. In the UK, Ireland, France and United States, sweetened, flavored yogurt is common, typically sold in single-serving plastic cups. Common flavors include vanilla, honey, and toffee, and fruit such as strawberry, cherry, blueberry, blackberry, raspberry, mango and peach. In the early twenty-first century yogurt flavors inspired by desserts, such as chocolate or cheesecake, have been available. There is concern about the health effects of sweetened yogurt, due to its high sugar content.

 

STRAINING

Strained yogurt has been strained through a filter, traditionally made of muslin and more recently of paper or non-muslin cloth. This removes the whey, giving a much thicker consistency. Strained yogurt is made at home, especially if using skimmed milk which results in a thinner consistency. Yogurt that has been strained to filter or remove the whey is known as Labneh in Middle Eastern countries. It has a consistency between that of yogurt and cheese. It may be used for sandwiches in Middle Eastern countries. Olive oil, cucumber slices, olives, and various green herbs may be added. It can be thickened further and rolled into balls, preserved in olive oil, and fermented for a few more weeks. It is sometimes used with onions, meat, and nuts as a stuffing for a variety of pies or kibbeh balls.

 

Some types of strained yogurts are boiled in open vats first, so that the liquid content is reduced. The East Indian dessert, a variation of traditional dahi called mishti dahi, offers a thicker, more custard-like consistency, and is usually sweeter than western yogurts. Strained yogurt is also enjoyed in Greece and is the main component of tzatziki (from Turkish "cacık"), a well-known accompaniment to gyros and souvlaki pita sandwiches: it is a yogurt sauce or dip made with the addition of grated cucumber, olive oil, salt and, optionally, mashed garlic. Srikhand, a dessert in India, is made from strained yogurt, saffron, cardamom, nutmeg and sugar and sometimes fruits such as mango or pineapple.

 

In North America and Britain, strained yogurt is commonly called “Greek yogurt”. Strained yogurt is sometimes marketed in North America as "Greek yogurt" and in Britain as "Greek-style yoghurt". In Britain the name "Greek" may only be applied to yogurt made in Greece.

 

BEVERAGES

Ayran, doogh ("dawghe" in Neo-Aramaic) or dhallë is a yogurt-based, salty drink. It is made by mixing yogurt with water and (sometimes) salt.

 

Borhani (or burhani) is a spicy yogurt drink. It is usually served with kacchi biryani at weddings and special feasts. Key ingredients are yogurt blended with mint leaves (mentha), mustard seeds and black rock salt (Kala Namak). Ground roasted cumin, ground white pepper, green chili pepper paste and sugar are often added.

 

Lassi is a yogurt-based beverage that is usually slightly salty or sweet, and may be commercially flavored with rosewater, mango or other fruit juice. Salty lassi is usually flavored with ground, roasted cumin and red chilies, may be made with buttermilk.

 

An unsweetened and unsalted yogurt drink usually called simply jogurt is consumed with burek and other baked goods. Sweetened yogurt drinks are the usual form in Europe (including the UK) and the US, containing fruit and added sweeteners. These are typically called "drinkable yogurt". Also available are "yogurt smoothies", which contain a higher proportion of fruit and are more like smoothies.

 

PLANT-MILK YOGHURT

A variety of plant-milk yogurts appeared in the 2000s, using soy milk, rice milk, and nut milks such as almond milk and coconut milk. So far the most widely sold variety of plant milk yogurts is soy yogurt. These yogurts are suitable for vegans, people with intolerance to dairy milk, and those who prefer plant milks.

 

HOMEMADE

Yogurt is made by heating milk to a temperature that denaturates its proteins (scalding), essential for making yogurt, cooling it to a temperature that will not kill the live microorganisms that turn the milk into yogurt, inoculating certain bacteria (starter culture), usually Streptococcus thermophilus and Lactobacillus bulgaricus, into the milk, and finally keeping it warm for several hours. The milk may be held at 85 °C for a few minutes, or boiled (giving a somewhat different result). It must be cooled to 50 °C or somewhat less, typically 40–46 °C. Starter culture must then be mixed in well, and the mixture must be kept undisturbed and warm for some time, anywhere between 5 and 12 hours. Longer fermentation times produces a more acidic yogurt. The starter culture may be a small amount of live (not sterilized) existing yogurt or commercially available dried starter culture.

 

Milk with a higher concentration of solids than normal milk may be used; the higher solids content produces a firmer yogurt. Solids can be increased by adding dried milk. The yogurt-making process provides two significant barriers to pathogen growth, heat and acidity (low pH). Both are necessary to ensure a safe product. Acidity alone has been questioned by recent outbreaks of food poisoning by E. coli O157:H7 that is acid-tolerant. E. coli O157:H7 is easily destroyed by pasteurization (heating); the initial heating of the milk kills pathogens as well as denaturing proteins. The microorganisms that turn milk into yogurt can tolerate higher temperatures than most pathogens, so that a suitable temperature not only encourages the formation of yogurt, but inhibits pathogenic microorganisms. Once the yogurt has formed it can, if desired, be strained to reduce the whey content and thicken it.

 

COMMERCIAL YOGURT

Two types of yogurt are supported by the Codex Alimentarius for import and export, implemented similarly by the US Food and Drug Administration.

 

Pasteurized yogurt ("heat treated fermented milk") is yogurt pasteurized to kill bacteria.

Probiotic yogurt (labeled as "live yogurt" or "active yogurt") is yogurt pasteurized to kill bacteria, with Lactobacillus added in measured units before packaging.

Yogurt probiotic drink is a drinkable yogurt pasteurized to kill bacteria, with Lactobacillus added before packaging.

 

Research suggests Homemade Yogurt and Live Yogurt are much more beneficial than 'Heat Treated Fermented Milk' (Pasteurized Yogurt). European Food Safety Authority has confirmed the probiotic benefits of Yogurt containing 108 CFU 'live Lactobacilli'

 

LACTOSE INTOLERANCE

Lactose intolerance is a condition in which people have symptoms due to the decreased ability to digest lactose, a sugar found in dairy products. In 2010, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) determined that lactose intolerance can be alleviated by ingesting live yogurt cultures (lactobacilli) that are able to digest the lactose in other dairy products. The scientific review by EFSA enabled yogurt manufacturers to use a health claim on product labels, provided that the "yoghurt should contain at least 108 CFU live starter microorganisms (Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus and Streptococcus thermophilus) per gram. The target population is individuals with lactose maldigestion."

 

WIKIPEDIA

Biennale di Venezia 2014 - 14th International Architecture Exhibition - Fundamentals.

Fundamentals consists of three interlocking exhibitions:

1.Absorbing Modernity 1914-2014 is an invitation to the national pavilions to show the process of the erasure of national characteristics.

2.Elements of Architecture, in the Central Pavilion, pays close attention to the fundamentals of our buildings used by any architect, anywhere, anytime.

3.Monditalia dedicates the Arsenale to a single theme – Italy – with exhibitions, events, and theatrical productions.

 

The 14th International Architecture Exhibition, titled Fundamentals, directed by Rem Koolhaas and organized by la Biennale di Venezia, chaired by Paolo Baratta, was open to the public from June 7 through November 23, 2014, in Venica Italy. 65 National Participations were exhibiting in the historic pavilions in the Giardini, in the Arsenale, and in the city of Venice. They examine key moments from a century of modernization. Together, the presentations start to reveal how diverse material cultures and political environments transformed a generic modernity into a specific one. Participating countries show, each in their own way, a radical splintering of modernity's in a century where the homogenizing process of globalization appeared to be the master narrative

 

Absorbing Modernity 1914–2014 has been proposed for the contribution of all the pavilions, and they too are involved in a substantial part of the overall research project, whose title is Fundamentals. The history of the past one hundred years prelude to the Elements of Architecture section hosted in the Central Pavilion, where the curator offers the contemporary world those elements that should represent the reference points for the discipline: for the architects but also for its dialogue with clients and society. Monditalia section in the Corderie with 41 research projects, reminds us of the complexity of this reality without complacency or prejudice, which is paradigmatic of what happens elsewhere in the world; complexities that must be deliberately experienced as sources of regeneration. Dance, Music, Theatre and Cinema with the programmes of the directors will participate in the life of the section, with debates and seminars along the six-month duration of the exhibition.

 

Elements of Architecture / Central Pavilions

This exhibition is the result of a two-year research studio with the Harvard Graduate School of Design and collaborations with a host of experts from industry and academia. Elements of Architecture looks under a microscope at the fundamentals of our buildings, used by any architect, anywhere, anytime: the floor, the wall, the ceiling, the roof, the door, the window, the façade, the balcony, the corridor, the fireplace, the toilet, the stair, the escalator, the elevator, the ramp. The exhibition is a selection of the most revealing, surprising, and unknown moments from a new book, Elements of Architecture, that reconstructs the global history of each element. It brings together ancient, past, current, and future versions of the elements in rooms that are each dedicated to a single element. To create diverse experiences, we have recreated a number of very different environments – archive, museum, factory, laboratory, mock-up, simulation.

The last half of '66, just out of high school, time to set out in the world, to seek my fortune. I ended up working the railroad by day, teaching guitar by night.

 

It wasn't to last long, Vietnam was raging, and anybody not in school soon found themselves wearing green (instead of railroad blue) real soon. Besides, (though I didn't know it at the time), the ill-fated Casey Jones was an ancestor from the Welsh branch of the family tree--so railroading was a career field was probably best abandoned after that summer.

 

I gathered a few skills that helped me endure the military time that was inevitably to come (type 60 wpm, shoot a camera, drive truck, answer a phone with a suitably homogenized midwest/California accent)--and headed down the road on Life's Journey.

 

Looking back at my past self, what magical words of advice would I share? "Facebook"? "Craigslist, Microsoft, digital photography?" (This was a time when "Honda" meant 50cc minibikes.) No, even if I could do it, there would be no projecting the future into that past. "I am from the future and here to tell you, jump into computers and meld CB radio to your typewriter (already an IBM Selectric)--move to Palo Alto, and look for these guys, Gates & Allen, and tell them you want to clean their garage for free?" Hah. Leave the poor kid alone, he'll find his own way.

 

It's what I try to remind myself with my own kids now. Stay in the present. Every moment gets shattered and battered by the past and future--instead, trust the moment! There will always be enough money, perhaps not as much as you might like, but enough. Enough food, enough whatever, as long as you enjoy the present, and learn from the dog. Stay awake, live like your grandparents, and Be "Bhole Baba" (easily pleased).

     

Portfolio || Flickr Archive || Instagram

 

This Case feature is extra special for me because he was one of the first writers I met in '95 when I didn't know anybody and we were still in high school. Case has been famous twice, both as a writer and as Video director when he won an Juno for a video with Arcade Fire.

 

1.) How long have you been actively writing for?

I started writing in '92. I slowed down in 2002 to a couple pieces a year, but I never stopped writing. So it's been 28 years.

 

2.) How has your work changed or evolved since you started, and what made it change?

My work has gotten better since I started... First couple years were pretty toy. But at my peak, my work was known worldwide, I got the chance to paint with Daim, Loomit, Seen, Duster, Tats Cru and many other international writers. Also in the big magazines like The Source, 12oz Prophet, etc. All these experiences improved my style and made me look at pushing graffiti further.

 

3.) Tell me about your approach to street art?

My approach comes from a freestyle frame of mind. I like to paint to the wall instead of to the sketch. I sketch to practice but when I paint I rarely use sketch's. I find them to constricting. I do all aspects from 2d to 3d to characters and backgrounds.

  

4.) Any other interests you have apart from painting/art?

Apart from art, Im interested in film making and have directed and animated many music videos for a variety of recording artist from 2001-2009

  

5.) How do you see the further evolution of your work? The city, and scene at large? Seems to have changed alot in the last decade.

My work has evolved onto canvases using Spray paint in a different way. Portraits, scenics and abstracts that adhere to the traditional rules of graffiti - no stencils, no brushes, just pure freehand spray painting. The scene really changed with the advent of the internet. Regional styles started disappearing and a more homogenized style replaced it. Street cred was easier to fake and the real street culture turned into legal walls and sponsored jams. Its great to see many writers from the pre-internet era coming back and still kings. Shout out to the graffiti grandpa's keeping it real and my crews Kwota, TDV, AFC and BIF.

 

You can see more of Case's art here: casemackeen.com

 

He also has a show coming up at Run Gallery in Toronto opening Dec 12, 2020.

 

Times Square, NYC

 

by navema

www.navemastudios.com

 

Times Square is a major intersection in Manhattan, a borough of New York City, at the junction of Broadway and Seventh Avenue and stretching from West 42nd to West 47th Streets. The Times Square area consists of the blocks between Sixth and Eighth Avenues from east to west, and West 40th and West 53rd Streets from south to north, making up the western part of the commercial area of Midtown Manhattan.

 

Times Square, nicknamed "The Crossroads of the World," has achieved the status of an iconic world landmark and has become a symbol of New York City. Times Square is principally defined by its spectaculars, animated, digital advertisements.

 

HISTORY:

 

Before and after the American Revolution, the area belonged to John Morin Scott, a general of the New York militia where he served under George Washington. Scott's Manor House was at what is now 43rd Street, surrounded by countryside used for farming and breeding horses. In the first half of the 19th century it became one of the prized possessions of John Jacob Astor, who made a second fortune selling off lots to hotels and other real estate concerns as the city rapidly spread uptown.

 

In 1904, New York Times publisher Adolph S. Ochs moved the newspaper's operations to a new skyscraper on 42nd Street at Longacre Square. Ochs persuaded Mayor George B. McClellan, Jr. to construct a subway station there, and the area was renamed "Times Square" on April 8, 1904. Just three weeks later, the first electrified advertisement appeared on the side of a bank at the corner of 46th Street and Broadway.

 

The New York Times, according to Nolan, moved to more spacious offices across Broadway in 1913. The old Times Building was later named the Allied Chemical Building. Now known simply as One Times Square, it is famed for the Times Square Ball drop on its roof every New Year's Eve.

 

Also in 1913, the Lincoln Highway Association, headed by entrepreneur Carl G. Fisher, chose the intersection of 42nd Street and Broadway, at the southeast corner of Times Square, to be the Eastern Terminus of the Lincoln Highway, the first road across the United States, which originally spanned 3,389 miles coast-to-coast through 13 states to its Western Terminus in Lincoln Park in San Francisco, California.

 

As the growth in New York City continued, Times Square quickly became a cultural hub full of theaters, music halls, and upscale hotels. Celebrities such as Irving Berlin, Fred Astaire, and Charlie Chaplin were closely associated with Times Square in the 1910s and 1920s. During this period, the area was nicknamed The Tenderloin because it was supposedly the most desirable location in Manhattan. However, it was during this period that the area was besieged by crime and corruption, in the form of gambling and prostitution.

 

The general atmosphere changed with the onset of the Great Depression in the 1930s. Times Square acquired a reputation as a dangerous neighborhood in the following decades. From the 1960s to the early 1990s, the seediness of the area, especially due its go-go bars, sex shops, and adult theaters, became an infamous symbol of the city's decline.

 

In the 1980s, a commercial building boom began in the western parts of the Midtown as part of a long-term development plan developed under Mayor Ed Koch and David Dinkins. In the mid-1990s, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani (1994–2002) led an effort to "clean up" the area, increasing security, closing pornographic theaters, pressuring drug dealers and "squeegee men" to relocate, and opening more tourist-friendly attractions and upscale establishments. Advocates of the remodeling claim that the neighborhood is safer and cleaner. Detractors, on the other hand, argue that the changes have homogenized or "Disneyfied" the character of Times Square and have unfairly targeted lower-income New Yorkers from nearby neighborhoods such as Hell's Kitchen.

 

In 1990, the state of New York took possession of six of the nine historic theatres on 42nd Street, and the New 42nd Street non-profit organization was appointed to oversee their restoration and maintenance. The theatres underwent renovation for Broadway shows, conversion for commercial purposes, or demolition.

 

The theaters of Broadway and the huge number of animated neon and LED signs have long made them one of New York's iconic images, and a symbol of the intensely urban aspects of Manhattan. Times Square is the only neighborhood with zoning ordinances requiring building owners to display illuminated signs. The density of illuminated signs in Times Square now rivals that of Las Vegas. Officially, signs in Times Square are called "spectaculars", and the largest of them are called "jumbotrons."

 

Times Square now boasts attractions such as ABC's Times Square Studios, where Good Morning America is broadcast live, an elaborate Toys "Я" Us store, and competing Hershey's and M&M's stores across the street from each other, as well as restaurants such as Ruby Foo's, the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company, Planet Hollywood Restaurant and Bar and Carmine's, along with a number of multiplex movie theaters. It has also attracted a number of large financial, publishing, and media firms to set up headquarters in the area. A larger presence of police has improved the safety of the area.

 

On February 26, 2009, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that traffic lanes along Broadway from 42nd Street to 47th Street would be de-mapped starting Memorial Day 2009 and transformed into pedestrian plazas until at least the end of the year as a trial. The same was done from 33rd to 35th Street. The goal is to ease traffic congestion throughout the Midtown grid.

 

Times Square is the site of the annual New Year's Eve ball drop. On December 31, 1907, a ball signifying New Year's Day was first dropped at Times Square, and the Square has held the main New Year's celebration in New York City ever since.

Due to Foundation, I suddenly got a bit interested in economies and political systems and saw this lying around (in papa's messy bookshelf). I couldn't find the Foundation sequels in any bookshop here so until I did, I thought I might as well read this book. Was not boring or slow or trivial or too academic - a nice fun pop eco book :).

 

Some nice parts:

 

He proved that not only are all perfect markets efficient, all efficient outcomes can be achieved using a competitive market, by adjusting the starting position.

 

We recognize that food, clothes, and houses cannot be free or we would quickly run out of them. It is because roads are free that we have run out of spare road space.

 

In a world where environmentalism is merely a moral issue, even the environmentalists themselves cannot work out the environmental impact of everyday decisions. Which is worse: disposable diapers (which clog up landfill sites) or washable diapers (where the washing process uses electricity and releases polluting detergents)? Even with the best will in the world, it is hard to know how to make the right choice. More importantly, the diaper problem, like any other environmental issue large or small, will certainly not be solved by a tiny minority arguing inconclusively over the morally appropriate individual action. While the Green minority lacks the right signals about environmental damage to act appropriately, the majority of people would not inconvenience themselves even if they understood environmental problems. Both information and incentives are necessary, and as we discovered in chapter 3, markets can provide both. Economists have long been in the forefront of analyzing environmental problems, and this double difficulty is why they advocate externality pricing. Economists care about the environment but dream of a world where it is no longer an issue that invites moral posturing, but is properly integrated into markets and the world of truth, which would provide both the information and the incentives necessary to persuade ordinary people to behave in an environmentally responsible way. In such a world, we would all have clear signals about the costs of our actions within a market price.

 

Just as negative externalities will tend to lead to too much pollution or congestion, positive externalities will leave us undervaccinated, with scruffy neighbors, and a dearth of pleasant cafés. And while negative externalities attract all the attention, positive externalities may be even more important: so many of the things that make life worth living are, in fact, subject to positive externalities and are underprovided: freedom from disease, honesty in public life, vibrant neighborhoods, and technological innovation. Once we realize the importance of positive externalities, the obvious solution is the mirror image of the policies we considered to deal with negative externalities: instead of an externality charge, an externality subsidy.

 

Most economics has very little to do with GDP. Economics is about who gets what and why. Clean air and smooth-flowing traffic are part of the “economy” in this sense. It’s possible that congestion charging would increase GDP because people would get to work more quickly and produce more, and prices in stores would be lower because of more efficient distribution. But it’s perfectly possible that congestion charging would reduce GDP. This does not, in fact, matter in the slightest. We know for certain that it would make us better off in a much more meaningful sense: that we would have many new choices open to us about where we go and what we do. There is much more to life than what gets measured in accounts. Even economists know that.

 

This isn’t to say that share prices are completely out of touch with reality—simply that many major fund managers, who make decisions concerning vast sums of money, are being paid to follow fashion instead of pick the right shares. That’s bound to mean that the stock market will make mistakes.

 

The hidden premise is that if we are in an economic revolution, shares should be very valuable. This premise is wrong. Shares should rise in price only if there’s good reason to think that future profits will be high.

 

The lesson of the story might appear to be that self-interested and ambitious people in power are often the cause of wastefulness in developing countries. The truth is a little sadder than that. Self-interested and ambitious people are in positions of power, great and small, all over the world. In many places, they are restrained by the law, the press, and democratic opposition. Cameroon’s tragedy is that there is nothing to hold self-interest in check.

 

The legal reforms necessary are often trivial; and while they still rely on sensible and benevolent government, all it takes is a single minister with his head and his heart in the right place, rather than hoping for an entire civil service to permanently reform.

 

Like racial intermixing, economic and cultural integration will take a long time. Furthermore, new ideas and new technologies are always arriving. Globalization will never homogenize what we have, not while new ideas are always appearing and adding fresh ingredients to the slowly turning blender of economic integration. Those who fear a terrible global sameness must remember that new ideas, welcome or unwelcome, will always arise faster than they can be mixed in.

 

In 2003, Yang Li did what many Chinese workers have done: she left home to work in a sweatshop in the Pearl River delta. A month later, after working thirteen-hour shifts, she decided to go home and start her own business—a hair salon. “Every day at the factory was just work, work,” she says. “My life here is comfortable.” Yang Li’s parents had to survive the Cultural Revolution; her grandparents, the Great Leap Forward. Yang Li has real choices, and she lives in a country where those choices mean something for her quality of life. She tried factory work and decided it wasn’t for her. Now she says that “I can close the salon whenever I want.”

Economics is about Yang Li’s choice.

Weathered black shales disconformably overlying limestones in the Devonian of Kentucky, USA.

 

The rocks in the upper part of the photo are weathered black shales of the New Albany Shale, a Devonian-aged formation in Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, and eastern Missouri. The unit is dominated by dark-colored marine mudshales of Late Devonian age. These black shales were deposited in a moderately deep, anoxic seafloor environment. This was a widespread lithofacies during the Late Devonian's Global Anoxia Event. The New Albany Shale is equivalent to the Ohio Shale, the Antrim Shale, and the Chattanooga Shale in surrounding states.

 

The basal New Albany here is the Blocher Member - it consists of dolomitic black shales (dolosiltites, actually). The fissile nature of Blocher rocks is due to post-depositional compaction. Blocher beds are rich in organic carbon and have been homogenized by bioturbation.

 

The rocks in the lower part of the picture are the Middle Devonian North Vernon Limestone, which is part of a widespread sheet of Devonian carbonates that extends from New York State to the Midwest. The North Vernon Limestone represents deposition in a subtropical, shallow-water, carbonate platform environment. The limestone here is fossiliferous, with decent-sized camerate crinoid columnals. An encrinite bed is present in the top-preserved North Vernon.

 

Just above the top of the North Vernon Limestone is a thin, lensoidal lag unit with phosphatic nodules, glauconitic pellets, and conodonts.

 

The New Albany-North Vernon contact represents missing time - such stratigraphic boundaries are called unconformities, which are surfaces of erosion and/or non-deposition of sediments. This is a disconformity, with horizontal sedimentary rocks above and below the contact.

 

Oxidative weathering of pyrite (FeS2 - iron sulfide; "fool's gold") at the New Albany-North Vernon boundary has produced iron oxide minerals such as reddish-brown hematite and yellowish-brown limonite. The iron oxides have stained the underlying rocks via descending meteoric waters (rain and runoff). The end result is a "bleeding unconformity".

 

Stratigraphy: lowermost-preserved New Albany Shale (uppermost Givetian Stage to lower Frasnian Stage, uppermost Middle Devonian to lower Upper Devonian) disconformably over the Beechwood Member of the North Vernon Limestone (Givetian Stage, upper Middle Devonian)

 

Locality: roadcut along the western side of the south-bound entrance ramp to Interstate 65 at the Route 245-Interstate 65 interchange, north-northeast of Belmont & south of Sherpherdsville, south-central Bullitt County, north-central Kentucky, USA (37° 55' 24.45" North latitude, 85° 41' 18.33" West longitude)

----------------------------------

Info. at:

 

Schieber, J. & R. Lazar (eds.). 2004. Devonian black shales of the eastern U.S. New insights into sedimentology and stratigraphy from the subsurface and outcrops in the Illinois and Appalachian Basins. Field Guide for the 2004 Annual Field Conference of the Great Lakes Section of SEPM. Indiana Geological Survey Open-File Study 04-05. 90 pp.

 

I'm pretty sure this is the National Library. Maybe the pigeons were all waiting for the library to open, so they could go in and check out a couple books...

 

***************************

 

When we hear the phrase “first impression,” we tend to think of a person. Was the politician I recently voted for as inspiring when I heard his first speech as he was years later? (More so, sadly.) Was the girl that I married as beautiful at 13 as she was years later, in her twenties and thirties? (Yes, and yes.) Did Bob Dylan’s Blowin’ in the Wind send more of a shiver down my spine in 1963 than it did when I heard it drifting from a car radio 45 years later? (No. It stops me dead in my tracks every time I hear it.)

 

It’s not just people that make first impressions on me. Cities do, too, perhaps because I encountered so many of them while my family moved every year throughout my childhood. Or perhaps it’s because, after seeing so many cities that I thought were different in the United States, I was so completely unprepared for the wild variety of sights and sounds and smells that I encountered as a grown man, when I traveled to Europe and South America, to Africa and Asia and Australia. And even today, there are cities that I’m visiting for the first time, and which continue to take me by surprise.

 

Athens is one of those cities. I don’t know what I was expecting… Something old, of course, something downright ancient, filled with smashed statues and marble columns like Rome, engraved with unreadable inscriptions in a language I never learned — but probably not as ancient as Cairo. Something hot and noisy and polluted and smelly, perhaps like Calcutta or the slums of Mumbai. Something gridlocked with noisy, honking traffic congestion, perhaps like Moscow.

 

What I didn’t expect was the wide, nearly-empty highways leading from the airport into the city. I didn’t expect the cleanliness of the tree-lined streets that ran in every direction. I did expect the white-washed buildings and houses that climbed the hills that surround the city — but the local people told me that buildings in Athens were positively gray compared to what I would have seen if I had stayed longer and ventured out to the Greek islands.

 

I also didn’t expect the graffiti that covered nearly every wall, on every building, up and down every street. They were mostly slogans and phrases in Greek (and therefore completely unintelligible to me), but with occasional crude references in English to IMF bankers, undercover policemen, a politician or two, and the CIA. There were a couple slogans from the Russian revolution of 1917, from the Castro uprising in Cuba, and even from the American revolution (“united we stand, divided we fall.”)

 

Naturally, I thought all of this had come about in just the past few months, as Greece has wrestled with its overwhelming financial crisis. But I was told by local citizens that much of the graffiti has been around for quite a bit longer than that – just as it has been in cities like New York and London. Some of it was wild and colorful, with cartoon figures and crazy faces … though I don’t think it quite rises to the level of “street art” that one sees in parts of SoHo, Tribeca, and the East Village in New York. What impressed me most about the graffiti in Athens was its vibrant energy; I felt like the artists were ready to punch a hole through the walls with their spray-cans.

 

These are merely my own first impressions; they won’t be the same as yours. Beyond that, there are a lot of facts, figures, and details if one wants to fully describe a city like Athens. Its recorded history spans some 3,400 years, and it includes the exploits of kings and generals, gods and philosophers, athletes and artists. There are statues and columns and ruins everywhere; and towering above it all is the breath-taking Acropolis. It’s far too rich and complex for me to describe here in any reasonable way; if you want to know more, find some books or scan the excellent Wikipedia summary.

 

It’s also hard to figure out what one should photograph on a first visit to a city like Athens. It’s impossible not to photograph the Acropolis, especially since it’s lit at night and visible from almost every corner of the city. I was interested in the possibility of photographing the complex in the special light before dawn or after sunset, but it’s closed to visitors except during “civilized” daytime hours. It’s also undergoing extensive renovations and repair, so much of it is covered in scaffolding, derricks, and cranes. In the end, I took a few panorama shots and telephoto shots, and explored the details by visiting the new Acropolis Museum, with the camera turned off.

 

Aside from that, the photos you’ll see here concentrate on two things: my unexpected “first impression” of the local graffiti, and my favorite of all subjects: people. In a couple cases, the subjects are unmistakably Greek – Greek orthodox priests, for example – and in a couple cases, you might think you were looking at a street scene in São Paulo or Mexico City. But in most of the shots, you’ll see examples of stylish, fashionable, interesting people that don’t look all that much different from the people I’ve photographed in New York, London, Rome, or Paris. Maybe we can attribute that to the homogenization of fashion and style in today’s interconnected global environment. Or maybe we can just chalk it up to the fact that people are, well … interesting … wherever you go.

 

In any case, enjoy. And if you get to Athens yourself, send me some photos of your own first impressions.

 

I posted my comment on Amazon:

"I have had many friends with breast cancer - and none of them look like Barbie - a white anorexic blonde with two breasts. To assign a plastic face such as Barbie to such a socially complex health issue, is really disappointing. It homogenizes the breast cancer population and ignores the class dimensions of access to healthcare that increases the chances of optimal treatment. For example, here is a quote from the Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved.

"The lower rate of utilization of mammography and cervical cancer screening observed for Latinas in the United States has been attributed to cultural, economic, and linguistic barriers they may encounter."

muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_health_care_for_the_poor...

 

In addition, the physical body of Breast Cancer Barbie is problematic because many survivors have had to get masectomies, and some have chosen to not have their breast(s) reconstructed. It also brings up the gender biases of males as reconstructrion surgeons, in that they assume a woman post-masectomy wants new breasts and may want to use reconstruction as an opportunity to increase their breast size. For example, it is noted that most women don't reconstruct their breasts post-masectormy and that white women have the highest rates of reconstruction www.medscape.com/viewarticle/522469. In a study that came out in September 2006, they found that women who have reconstruction are 75% more likey to commit suicide www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/09/060920081703.htm. "Figures from the American Society of Plastic Surgeons show a 22% decline in breast reconstruction procedures between 2000 and 2004," dailynews.att.net/cgi-bin/health?e=pub&dt=common&...

 

I bring up these articles to show that showing "a pair of breasts" for a Breast Cancer Barbie is a highly contentious decision for a company that has been know to create beautiful Barbies and philanthropically has donated money to causes, but has now constructed an actual doll that doesn't fully represent the heterogeneous breast cancer population is problematic.

 

And BTW MATTEL - many chemo patients are thin like Barbie NOT BY CHOICE! It's because of all the raditation and chemo drugs that are pumped into them that causes them to lose their appetite and therefore look thin, emaciated and weak. Being thin like Barbie is NOT A HEALTHY IDEAL for breast cancer patients!

 

Here is doll on Amazon: www.amazon.com/Barbie-Collector-Pink-Ribbon-Doll/dp/B000E...

 

My friends adriene who is a breast cancer survivor and documented her process online softservegirl.com/2005/archives.html, wrote this comment about the doll:

 

"I am a breast cancer survivor and I find this pink dressed, blond "doll" of perfection rather insulting to my female self, the perfect perky boobs, the long blond hair, the body that does not exist on a woman after the ravages of chemotheraphy. I can perfectly understand Mattel wanting to support breast cancer research and donate a portion of proceedes towards funding (and thank you for your generosity), but to do it under the guise of selling a "doll" which does not reflect the community of women who have experienced the challenges of recovery and survivorship...a doll which does not look like a survivor is literally painful and insulting! Why doesn't this doll have a wig? Why doesn't she have a breast removed? Why doesn't she have a bra fitted with a form to mimic the shape of a breast? What is wrong with reality? Why can't Mattel acknowledge the true nature of this disease and make a doll which comforts, not insults the sensibility of women who have suffered from this disease. I will purchase this doll, just because I am horrified by the product itself. I will disrobe her, and with a saw, cut off her breast so that she will look more like me, a survivor, a woman of pride. I will dismantle the construct of supposed beauty and make this image more like my own - because I am what is woman, not the facade of a false construction."

 

Set of milk and dairy farm product labels.

 

Want to use this image? Grab it here: stockfresh.com/image/3119194/?affiliate=785

this seemed like a hit back in the day so I didn't just wanna get rid of it, but at the time there was some notable confusion over the terminology I used, so:

 

"n00bz" should probably be replaced with "trolls," whereas "newbs" is more effectively rendered "KFOLs" (though honestly the standard for KFOL and TFOL building has increased exponentially in the past few years, albeit with some unfortunate homogenization as a side effect)

MONOLOGUE OF THE ARTIST, top quadrant of the center diptych of the West Wall. The entire monologue may be read below.

 

STUDIO SECTION 2008-2009 is an extension of the “non-specific autobiography” realized and examined by Robert Cremean in VATICAN CORRIDOR, A Non-Specific Autobiography. It consists of three parts: East Wall: Calvary—Donors With Crucifixion, in which the artist gives unprecedented voice both to Gestas and to Dismas who were crucified with Jesus; Il Passetto, the corridor in which he makes a metaphoric exposition of the treatment of women by the three “hats”: the helmet of the warrior, the mitre of religion, and the bowler of commerce; and West Wall: Self-Portrait As a Young Artist in which “the young artist” is addressed verbally and metaphorically through three monologues: the Monologue of Art, the Monologue of the Artist, and the Monologue of History. Listening to the conflicting and diametrically opposing views written on the diptych behind him on the West Wall is the bust of the young artist who looks with an inscrutable gaze through the horrors of Il Passetto to the horrors of Calvary on the East Wall and at the Donors, aloof and blinded to the controlled chaos behind and in front of them.

 

These are but a few of the ideas and images contained within STUDIO SECTION 2008-2009. As in any work of art, the viewer may create his own world out of the images, metaphors and words confronted therein.

 

STUDIO SECTION 2008-2009

East Wall: Calvary--Donors With Crucifixion

West wall: Self-Portrait As A Young Artist

Middle: Il Passetto

 

2008-2009

Wood, wood mâché, metal, gesso, modeling paste, acrylic, graphite

Each of the six diptychs measures 8' x 8' 1"

Over all dimension for exhibition: 40' x 40'

 

Collection:

Toledo Art Museum

Toledo, Ohio

  

Monologue of the Artist

 

Who I am signifies nothing. What I am signifies something. What I seek signifies everything. I know not who I am. I know not what I am. I exist as a question that has no answer—as an answer that has no question—as the cleaving wedge between absolutes—as the mortar that cements opposites—as the paradox that eludes reproach. I am feared, resented, titillating and tiresome. I am the gray space between black and white, untransversable and obliquitous...an unfathomable separation that spawns questions and inhibits answers...shades of gray in osmotic separation unto infinity. My very existence belies the metaphors of dogma...this I know, but I do not know what it signifies, not for me, not for my work— and not for others. I sense that I must redefine myself in terms of a new configuration. How I have been shaped must be reconfigured...undone and reconfigured, for I was shaped to hate myself, to hate the very spine of my selfness. Through the deception of love and duty, my selfness, the core of me, was crucified, without pain or permission—the agony postponed. My re-creation of selfness, my pursuit of that which was stolen and perverted through love and through fear is one of profound joy. This I that I am I have ripped from the womb of mediocrity and it will end because I will end, and I will end because it is over. Knowing that there can be no judgement other than my own, I intend to live my life in neither intimidation nor subservience, pandering neither to culture nor to history. Being hierarchies of winners and losers, they are simply that, playgrounds in a separate reality. I am, was, and will always be a young artist; Death is my only concession to age and death is only an inconvenience that will leave my work unfinished. My distance from the horizon has never wavered. I continue to exist on an unchanging arc of possibility. I would speak now of my one exquisite experience with transparency, that once and only orgasm of exile which rips one from the security and complacency of a past and future into the chaos of the eternal now. There is no return...the experience is overwhelming, the orgasm, explosive and inexplicable. There are no words, only the knowing that one must survive within a seismic shift of metaphor. I now exist on the other side of the mirror; the hierarchies of history and culture, incoherent. I have embraced failure—reward, a distant memory. I speak now from inevitability. Time is of no consequence. There is only now. I cannot project forward or back for they do not exist. What I was and what I will be is for the metaphors of others. I speak from the now for that is my amness. There is no other. Another event that requires no sequel to reinforce instruction occurred while viewing Donatello’s Judith and Holofernes: A pigeon alighted on Judith’s head and shat, thus proclaiming Art’s nothingness. Art, history, and culture exist within human solipsism. Humankind and its realities are artifacts and nothing is as it should or must be. Only the pigeon had the advantage to inform...Nature does not share our reality. The entire human condition is an invention. I find great beauty and horror in this enlightenment. We are both free and enslaved by choice. Religion, culture, Art, war, history—civilization, nothing, absolutely nothing, has to be the way it is. Humankind is a gestalt of many metaphors jockeying for the alpha position of reality; that image which flatters the majority in the mirror of possibility. The war for position is engaged ceaselessly on battlefields of live or die intensity bloody with error and circumvention. It is a winner take all conflagration where losers are slaughtered like flies on tongues salivating acid...What we accept is an accumulation of repeats. It is on the common battlefield of culture and art history that my conflict lies. It is their aura of inevitability that galls. But they, too, are artifacts, artificial and self-proclaimed arbiters of a synthetic intellectual systematization which imposes the smothering order of sameness protecting predictable repeat from the chaotic impulses of response and epiphany. Nothing must be the way it is—especially the bland mediocrity of processed thought. How contained and neatly packaged it is now where every programmed gesture becomes a new ism; how quickly dealt this one card deck, the avant-garde, the expected and demanded Ace in the play of hierarchies and linearities. Commerce and culture have homogenized into an inseparable putrescence fit only for blind consumption. Even irony—especially irony—has lost its edge. Vulgarity has outdistanced its subtlety. Only the culture and history itself lend credence to irony’s persistence. Art history, still enthralled with its reflection of masculine metaphors, continues to perceive itself as creator and anointer of movements and moments...this is irony of the highest order. Since 8/6/45 all metaphors of masculinity have been struggling to remain indelible as they fade into the palimpsest of evolution. History, by virtue of its definition in the human lexicon, is ironical in the extreme for it has failed to record its own demise. 8/6/45 was not a link like any other in a chain of linear recordation. It was the definitive event marking the end of history and the laying down of fossils. Art history has become the ultimate authority in the validation of artifacts and the culture dutifully collects these would be fossils for the presumptive proof of time’s linear progression. This retention of evidence has assumed a bathos bordering on pathology...But I am not a culture-maker, neither critic nor curator of artifacts or articles. I am an artist and must seek—or invent—the truth...and that, too, is an artifact. I search, then, for that which I have invented, an abstraction as ephemeral and duplicitous as I, myself, an invention layered invention upon invention, like fossils in sectioned complexity. As I descend this purpled plane, this triangle wedged between Art and history, their opposing forces press me smaller. Soon they will be rid of me, the who of me, leaving an ascending wedge of whatness to re-engage separation. This hourglass is the who and what of me, my life, my truth, my isness, and homogenization of Failure and Desire. I am in the time of strangers...Names no longer signify. Spaces have been emptied and refilled with unlined faces. Dark hair turned white and dark again. Genders shifted, sexes changed. Whos have turned to whats and back again. Dreams and memories have blurred boundaries of premonition. What is this schism of histories that has left me on one side of the horizon and culture on the other? Personal memory is my truth and all else is hearsay. Art demands this loyalty and I abide. This is not choice—it is abdication. If I subside, so be it. If I am lonely, so be it, for I reside among strangers...But I am not lonely; my perceived loneliness, an exclusivity of purpose. I sense I am wrestling with a chimera—a tactility of fabulous dimension, a reality more significant than my own life. I am dwarfed by it, attaining stature only through engagement. My life ended with it’s first embrace—and only then did my life begin. Now I know no other and am exalted in its suffocation. It is my isness and by it must I be measured. I expect nothing more...I demand nothing less. My whoness wanders the vaults of what might have been. So many choices and yet no choice at all. I have done what I am doing and rejoice in its possibility. Always there is failure, always there is possibility. Only in death can success find purchase...And still I am torn by history, by remembrance, by the idea of never being forgotten, to live on in my artifacts...And here lurks hope, that monstrous seducer, destroyer of the now, hope, grasping, snatching purveyor of misery and perpetuator of culture, enemy of Art. Culture demands allegiance and exacts punishment for non compliance. Art is its enemy and is a threat to any culture that must, by definition, be cumulative and hierarchical. Any defection or deviation is a depletion of authority, power, and control; a direct and unadulterated response to Art is anarchy. Art’s endurance and survival is serendipitous. It relies neither on cultural intimidation nor the recordation of history. It is free associating and catalytic affording any viewer, at any time, at any place, with any artifact the possibility for response exclusive of the culture-maker’s obsession for intimidation and indoctrination. My now is dominated by the parity of art and culture. They are become synonymous.This presents for me two questions: What difference does it make? And: What are you bitching about? My answer to the first question is: Because I am an artist...and my answer to the second: Because I am an artist. I revolt against enforced historicity—especially when there is no history to enforce; then it is tyranny, and then, as always, is now. Consensus is neo this and neo that. The distance between isms has shrunk to preposterous dimension. One can smell the fear and anticipation. History is being manufactured beyond draftsmanship and its frangibility is percussive. Our culture-makers would have us believe that “contemporary art stresses the importance of multiple coexisting interpretations and the role of the viewer’s perceptions in ‘completing’ the work.” This appears to be the law of first pretensions: the denial of vacuity and the con of altruism. From where comes this preening self-serving superiority to presume to know what art should be and the roles artist and viewer should play to “complete the work” and to complete what work? Obviously, “the work” refers to that of the culture-maker since it is he who has created the roles and set the rules for the continuing homogenization of art and culture. With his metaphors of investment and entertainment, Art is being vitiated from the inside out. “Art for fun and profit” is not my metaphor. It is this culture’s own. When culture-makers “discovered” the masses, art became just another stall in the marketplace. Viewing the now with the monocularity of a young artist with a 77 year old male homosexual is justified by their juxtaposition. The struggle for the furtherance of self has been similar and singular, a laminate of expansion and contraction to avoid cracking and crumbling. The desire to annihilate and erase has been experienced from both gay basher and critic. The intent of an insecure critic who commits an ignorant insecure hatchet attack review is no different from the ignorant, insecure, and bigoted rants of the homophobe. The desire to inflict pain and fear is the same. This is not a complaint—rather, perhaps, a clarification. A young artist, no less than a young person, is prepared for such assault and I, for one, have never met an old artist—only, perhaps, dead ones. But death can come at any age...even to critics and homophobes. The walking dead surround us. As I work this wall, my mind slips through the narrow throat of this descension onto the plain of possibility. New work is scattered and obtuse. I wander this wall as a familiar though it will not release me until failure is confirmed. What if there were nothing worth saving from a culture such as this that depends so heavily on history to commend it for having taken up time and space? Primarily this culture exists in magazines, photographs, reviews and bloated intellectualism...a belief system, really, that relys on wealth and intimidation. Art=culture...Culture=art. A simple, elegant equation. Unfortunately, it is a lie. It resembles Catholicism; all aspects are outsized, ritualized, and hierarchical...Whos beneath whats and small whats beneath larger whats, huge imposing galleries with huge imposing artifacts with huge imposing prices by artists with huge imposing names, all manufactured by huge imposing culture-movers with blind taste, all operating behind the humble non-self-serving, cultural metaphor of “...stressing the importance of multiple co-existing interpretations and the viewers perceptions in ‘completing’ the work.” This farce is so obviously naive—or devious—that it defies credibility. Just as Catholicism has nothing to do with Jesus, this cultural metaphor has nothing to do with Art. It is all bullshit and pomegranates, having only to do with commerce and commodification. Desire is the essence of human isness. Everything that I have ever been or will ever be springs from this single source, and from here springs history, culture, and Art. And each spawns artifacts and ideas; metaphors vying for survival. The human condition’s struggle for survival has been magnificent and, in the face of what is to come, erased.

  

And now a bit of a break from the SCAA posts.

 

This is my first (well, third) steaming attempt with the new Toroid frothing pitcher from espro.ca. Funky mojo rosetta heart is the result. The deets:

 

- Steaming Pitcher: 20oz Toroid from Espro

- Grinder: Anfim Super Caimano with the Timer Mod

- Machine: La Marzocco FrankenLinea, 202.5 / 199.0 (with the offset)

- Coffee: blowing my mind Matt Riddle USBC 2007 comp blend

- Dose: 17g, 50ml extraction, 28 seconds.

- Milk: Plain old Homogenized, 3.25% fat

 

Tasted to die for.

Etrigan the Demon was mystically bound to his human host, Jason Blood, in an uneasy arrangement and they eventually made a compact to become more like each other. Blood became more like Etrigan and Etrigan, true to his demonic nature, became more like Etrigan as well. Etrigan believed men were little more than chariots of wrath by demons driven but were he more keenly aware of human nature, he might have known that men, when driven to fear, could transform each other into demons without resorting to magic.

 

In sociology, the term "folk devils" refers to people demonised by society for their deviant ways. Stanley Cohen described in his book how they may change their forms dramatically over time -- "the Mod, the Rocker, the Greaser, the student militant, the drug fiend, the vandal, the soccer hooligan, the hippy, the skinhead" -- but folk devils are always deemed by society to be "visible reminders of what we should not be". The naming and condemnation of the folk devil is part of the social control that takes place during a moral panic.

 

"Moral panics are expressions of disapproval, condemnation, or criticism, that arise every now and then to phenomenon, which could be defined as deviant," Cohen explained in an interview. "The moral part is the condemnation and social disapproval, and the panic is the element of hysteria and over reaction."

 

The moral panic label is earned when the controversy is blown all out of proportion in two ways: the incident itself is exaggerated and it is relatively minor in comparison with the major issues of the day. Cohen used the Mods and Rockers incident in England as a case study and the fact most would be blissfully unaware of that Sixties moral panic serves to illustrate just how overblown these short-lived incidences can be.

 

Cohen identified the three key elements necessary for a successful moral panic. "First, a suitable enemy: a soft target, easily denounced, with little power and preferably without even access to the battlefields of cultural politics." Next, "a suitable victim: someone with whom you can identify, someone who could have been and one day could be anybody." And finally, "a consensus that the beliefs or action being denounced were not insulated entities ('it's not only this') but integral parts of the society or else could (and would) be unless 'something was done'."

 

Once in the grip of a moral panic, the public and press bring such immense pressure upon the authorities to do something that previously unthinkable measures are considered acceptable.

 

Proposed solutions usually include casting out the folk devils (e.g. "… we must get rid of the Mods and Rockers by either driving them out, or by not letting them in the first place; we don't care where they go …"). Cohen wrote, "These demands echo the sanction of banishment used in tribal and other simpler communities, the same primal in-group aggression towards the deviant enshrined in our folklore by Westerns in which the outlaw is 'ridden out of town'."

 

But the primary danger during moral panics is legislative overreaction after the government is implored to take action. The Fifties panic over comic books serves as the perfect example.

 

"Comic books were an adaptable demon," wrote David Hadju. "While American patriots rallied to stop them from spreading unconventional and probably Communist ideas, a leader of the Socialist movement in the UK lead the English in a campaign to banish American comics" because "crime and horror comics served as tangible evidence of the monstrous vulgarity of American popular culture; they represented the sociopolitical plague of cultural imperialism."

 

The widespread disapproval of comic books made it easier for lawmakers to take action. A Gallup poll in 1954 revealed "some 70 percent of American adults said they believed that comic books deserved to be blamed for juvenile delinquency."

 

Laws were hastily proposed on both sides of the Atlantic to deal with the menace. "The legal engineering was wondrous in its variety, yet simple in its intent: to do something--anything--about those nasty comic books," Hadju wrote. "In January 1955, the British cabinet announced support for legislation to ban horror comics, ostensibly to reduce a potential impetus to crime, despite the fact that juvenile arrests were in decline throughout the UK. The resulting bill, called the Children and Young Persons (Harmful Publications) Act, would prohibit the sale or the publication of 'horror comics' explicitly; in addition, it would bar all publications which 'would tend to incite or encourage to the commission of crimes or acts of violence or cruelty, or otherwise to corrupt, a child or young person into whole hands it might fall.'"

 

On the same day the British law passed, teachers at a Catholic school in Illinois had their students burn comics featuring those dangerously subversive characters, Superman and Captain Marvel.

 

"The comics business was collapsing under pressure not only from the schools, the churches, and the legislatures, but also from the distributors and the industry's own desperate, overzealous attempts to regulate itself. There were fewer and fewer comics to purchase, and those available were so bowdlerized that they were losing their idiosyncratic appeal to young people," Hadju noted. "Between 1954 and 1956, more than half the comic books on the newsstands disappeared; the number of titles published in the United States dropped from about 650 to some 250."

 

National/DC artist Carmine Infantino recounted, "It was like the plague. The work dried up, and you had nowhere to go, because comics were a dirty word. You couldn't say you were a comics artist, and you had nothing to put in your portfolio. If you said you drew comic books, it was like saying you were a child molester."

 

Cohen made it plain moral panics over deviant behaviour caused by new and therefore suspect media forms are mainly driven by more traditional media in the business of highlighting deviance e.g. "sensational crimes, scandals, bizarre happenings and strange goings on."

 

Cohen wrote, "It is largely created by the media: no media – no moral panic. The media are carriers of moral panics, which they either initiate themselves, or they carry the message of other groups."

 

However, he also noted, "The media play a disingenuous game. They know that their audiences are exposed to multiple meanings and respond differently to the 'same' message. They use this knowledge to support their indignation that they could have any malignant effect; they forget this when they start another round of simple-minded blaming of others. The powerful, increasingly homogenized and corporate news media blame other media forms. But their own effect is the most tangible and powerful, shaping the populist discourse and political agenda-setting."

 

A classic example of the press playing this disingenuous game of blaming other media forms could be seen in the aftermath of Orson Welles's War of the Worlds radio broadcast. This was a minor incident which was exaggerated by a press threatened by a new medium competing with it for attention and advertising.

 

W. Joseph Campbell wrote, "… by 1938, radio's immediacy in bringing news to Americans had become all-too apparent, and troubling, to newspapers." The newspapermen had a very low opinion of radio and an even lower opinion of its listeners. The Chicago Tribune sniffed, "Perhaps it would be more tactful to say that some members of the radio audience are a trifle retarded mentally, and that many a program is prepared for their consumption." The newspaper trade journal Editor and Publisher dispensed with 1930s tact and simply warned "the nation as a whole continues to face the danger of incomplete, misunderstood news over a medium which has yet to prove, even to itself, that it is competent to perform the news job."

 

The irony is incompetent newspaper coverage of the War of the Worlds panic was accepted credulously for decades. Campbell wrote, "Inaccurate reporting gave rise to a misleading historical narrative and produced a savory and resilient media-driven myth." As a measure of just how resilient this media myth was, The New York Times repeated the radio panic narrative in 2019 -- a mere 10 days after pointing out it was a media-driven myth.

 

Although it's generally assumed moral panics are bad, Cohen suggested it was sometimes desirable to foment a moral panic over serious issues to call public attention to them. Yet the typical moral panic detracts from more serious concerns.

 

"The pathetic ease and gullibility with which the mass media are lured into conventional moral panics may be contrasted to the deep denial behind their refusal to sustain a moral panic about torture, political massacres or social suffering in distant places," Cohen wrote.

 

"This is why moral panics are condensed political struggles to control the means of cultural reproduction," he explained. "It also allows us to identify and conceptualize the lines of power in any society, the ways we are manipulated into taking some things too seriously and other things not seriously enough."

 

Matters aren't helped in this regard by the involvement of moral crusaders -- "the Mary Whitehouses, the Lord Longfords, the Cyril Blacks". They share in common a "single-mindedness, dedication, self-righteousness, a tendency to exaggerate grossly and over-simplify even more so."

 

According to Cohen, "The crusader is moved by righteous indignation as well as self-interest. Unlike the pragmatist, he sees the action as a 'cause' or a 'mission' and he sees the enterprise as continuing even after the short-term goals are achieved. Indeed, objective evidence means little to him …" It's very much in the interests of the moral crusaders to perpetuate the moral panic in order to raise their profile and justify their own actions.

 

Although Cohen did not address it in his book, it's also possible moral panics could be used as a cynical political strategy. For instance, political operatives and their media accomplices could turn supporters of a rival political candidate into folk devils to smear that candidate by association. One imagines this approach could well succeed in a political contest but might backfire spectacularly in a later election. Moral panics tend to benefit demagogues who thrive in a climate of fear.

 

If there's a tendency by the media and moral crusaders to overreact and turn minor incidents into moral panics, there is also a tendency by their critics to dismiss any issue as a moral panic to downplay its seriousness. Cohen wrote, "For cultural liberals (today's 'cosmopolitans'), this was an opportunity to condemn moral entrepreneurs, to sneer at their small-mindedness, puritanism or intolerance; for political radicals, these were easy targets, the soft side of hegemony or elite interests."

 

Cohen noted "the term has been used by left liberals (and their sociological cronies) to undermine conservative ideologies and popular anxieties by labelling their concerns as irrational." He added, "We cannot expect to find conservatives trying to expose liberal or radical concerns as being 'moral panics.'" That failed to anticipate the possibility the far-left might turn puritanical once it wholeheartedly embraced politics as a substitute for religion and would go on to police culture with all the zeal of the new convert. The modern moral panic is just as likely to be driven by the "small-mindedness, puritanism and intolerance" of the left as it is of the right.

 

"Between 1984 and 1991 (inclusive) there were about 8 citations of 'moral panic' in the UK newspapers; then 25 in 1992, then a sudden leap to 145 in 1993. From 1994 to 2001, the average was at 109 per year," Cohen wrote.

 

This increased awareness doesn't mean the public is going to be any less susceptible to moral panics. Indeed, there might be more of them as the economic, geographical and cultural separation of the haves and the have-nots grows ever greater. "As long as there is not one single set of moral values across a whole society, there will always be these episodes of moral panic," Cohen concluded.

 

It doesn't necessarily have to be that way. If moral panics are primarily caused by media-amplified fearmongering campaigns, the solution is to overcome that fear by refusing to give in to it. When confronted by a media-constructed folk devil, simply place it in proper context to diminish its exaggerated power. The final step is to swallow your fear. It may be easier than it seems. As Etrigan once observed, "Fear, no matter how small it has grown, retains a certain flavor of its own."

I passed under the shade of The Bendy Tree for 25 years, more than half of the time I have been alive.

 

In the early days of my time in this neighborhood, I carried a coffin to The Bendy Tree and hundreds of us held an open-casket funeral there for a remarkable East Villager, back in the days when alarmed cops were still capable of making room for alarming things. We were adamant about passing, so the police blocked First Avenue for our procession, and granted us several police-free hours in the park.

 

For years I burned incense under The Bendy Tree, and left flowers, in memory of my friend.

 

Later, whenever death entered my life, I went to The Bendy Tree. I left beads and feathers, photos, letters. As it turned out, there were many memorials there over the years, and not just mine.

 

This weekend my dog and I went to visit The Bendy Tree and discovered a ridiculous police cordon, surrounded by red crime scene tape. A small official notice from an "arborist" declared that the tree had been determined to be "structurally unsound."

 

Many years ago, in true East Villager fashion, The Bendy Tree decided to start heading off THAT way. In perfect alignment with the gentrified and homogenized new East Village, the eccentric tree was cordoned off and condemned to death.

 

I found myself unexpectedly upset, as if this tree represented the last reminder of everything I had once loved about the neighborhood. I went home after taking this picture, despondent, but saw a message from Reverend Billy, inviting people to come out for a night of prayers and songs for The Bendy Tree.

Portfolio || Flickr Archive || Instagram

 

This Case feature is extra special for me because he was one of the first writers I met in '95 when I didn't know anybody and we were still in high school. Case has been famous twice, both as a writer and as Video director when he won an Juno for a video with Arcade Fire.

 

1.) How long have you been actively writing for?

I started writing in '92. I slowed down in 2002 to a couple pieces a year, but I never stopped writing. So it's been 28 years.

 

2.) How has your work changed or evolved since you started, and what made it change?

My work has gotten better since I started... First couple years were pretty toy. But at my peak, my work was known worldwide, I got the chance to paint with Daim, Loomit, Seen, Duster, Tats Cru and many other international writers. Also in the big magazines like The Source, 12oz Prophet, etc. All these experiences improved my style and made me look at pushing graffiti further.

 

3.) Tell me about your approach to street art?

My approach comes from a freestyle frame of mind. I like to paint to the wall instead of to the sketch. I sketch to practice but when I paint I rarely use sketch's. I find them to constricting. I do all aspects from 2d to 3d to characters and backgrounds.

  

4.) Any other interests you have apart from painting/art?

Apart from art, Im interested in film making and have directed and animated many music videos for a variety of recording artist from 2001-2009

  

5.) How do you see the further evolution of your work? The city, and scene at large? Seems to have changed alot in the last decade.

My work has evolved onto canvases using Spray paint in a different way. Portraits, scenics and abstracts that adhere to the traditional rules of graffiti - no stencils, no brushes, just pure freehand spray painting. The scene really changed with the advent of the internet. Regional styles started disappearing and a more homogenized style replaced it. Street cred was easier to fake and the real street culture turned into legal walls and sponsored jams. Its great to see many writers from the pre-internet era coming back and still kings. Shout out to the graffiti grandpa's keeping it real and my crews Kwota, TDV, AFC and BIF.

 

You can see more of Case's art here: casemackeen.com

 

He also has a show coming up at Run Gallery in Toronto opening Dec 12, 2020.

 

2005-2007

80" x 96"

Colored pencil, graphite, acrylic on wood panels

 

Collection:

Crocker Art Museum

 

(Robert Cremean: Metaphor and Process, the video, may be seen at www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgrxW8xSvrA)

 

Hereafter is a transcription of the handwritten text on the diptych above:

 

ECCE HOMO

 

This is as it is. Behold me. I am you, a reflection in the artist’s eye; and as I see you, myself, I reflect on our condition. Ecce homo. I do not wash my hands of responsibility. I embrace it. It is not for me to judge. I am a simple craftsman of recordation and as an artist I am pledged to record what I see. This is neither excuse nor evasion; rather, a simple statement of isness. I accept full responsibility for my reflection. This is what I see. If what I see is viewed as judgement, this is a reflection of the beholder. As I accept responsibility as artist, I expect the beholder to accept his. We meet only on this plane of shared reflection. Only here does intimacy occur free of interpretation, cultural catechism and correctness. If you insist on encumbering yourself in the armor of cultural correctness, your performance here will be clumsy and predictable. In a sense, sensuality on this plane is similar to sexual intimidation. Your ability to perform and to penetrate lies within your bourn of possibility. If you predetermine my limitations by your reflection, our mirror will remain opaque, your image obscured, and your subservience to cultural and historical prudery reified. I have the disinterest of a whore. It is not my business to guarantee gratification. I can only service the possibility. Consider the compass of our sexuality; setting the due male North, the due female South, the due homosexual male West, and the due female homosexual East creates a 360° horizon of infinite possibility. Although the magnetic North has always determined the direction of human entelechy, that entelechy has a 360º choice of direction. Due North is no longer viable. That way lies oblivion. This is as it is. The diameter stretches from due East to due West, a horizontal demarcation between life and death. The arrow points South, a 180º shift of our vision of expectation. We must establish now an entirely new triangle of possibility, a state of being shorn of masculine hegemony, an oppositeness of all that was and all that was always expected to be. All of masculine entelechy has become toxic. The entire hemisphere must be abandoned. As we continue to explore the sphere of human possibility, the Northern Hemisphere with its redundancies and repetitious predictability is barren of resource, hackneyed and clichéd. It has been exploited ad nauseum and further indulgence threatens continuance. If we, the explorers of human entelechy, were to turn 180º to confront possibility rather than repeat, what new discoveries and alternatives might be presented. What new metaphors might flower in the nourishing soil of oppositeness...through technology, masculine necessity is redundant; only his metaphors continue to control the human condition. War, religion, commerce, history, tradition—this gestalt of metaphors which make masculine human reality is no longer viable. We must turn our back on death and face a new world for survival and fecundity. What the Masculine has made finite, the feminine must make possible. The alternative is repetition unto oblivion. A 90º shift to the West on the horizon of possibility is now credible; the homosexual male can replace the heterosexual masculine in all ways including, through technology, reproduction of the species. It is the unexplored West that pulls tight the severing horizon line on the vertical axis of Masculine redundancy. The remaining poles of diversity which describe the human compass present an infinity of possibilities for the survival of all species and the nourishing planet. As the technology of death advances beyond the stasis of masculine gestalt, humankind can no longer tolerate the immutability of mankind’s Isness. If we continue to define ourselves in the mirror of masculine redundancy, our extinction is assured. The severing horizontal diameter of the East/West homosexual horizon offers the human condition the rationale for redrawing the maps of possibility. Through decapitation of the necrophagous North, an entire frontier of new metaphors based on other gendered realities would be explored. Ecce Homo. As I view the simplistic vertical axis of staff and distaff, the linear reality of repetition is entropy, a metastasis of boredom and predictability of repeat. Inevitability is the saddest of life’s consequences. 8/6/45. I am an artist at the end of history. In this final concentric ripple of linear time, the confusion is noisome, an explosion of masculine frustration and hypocrisy. Man’s surrogate, god, is everywhere, an excuse for slaughter, pillage and destruction. Art is a frantic recordation of nihility to support a culture our culture-makers can no longer create. Information and intimidation have unnerved personal response and we eat what we are fed and live in fantasy and fabrication pretending to a culture that does not exist. We claim that what Is is not and what is not Is. Our drift into entropy and stasis has created an illusion of movement as the groove of repetition digs deeper and deeper our blind addiction to a necrophagous gestalt. Situated on the East/West homosexual horizon, I view the possibility for human extension by the light of a setting sun. I cast my glance at what has been, not as historical accumulation but as evidence of what might be because it always was. The compass of human Isness is dominated by the magnetic arrow of a due masculine imperative. The arrow now points toward death. The pointer must be demagnetized so that the compass can be turned without the constant insistence of a dogmatic actuality. The monocularity of this actuality has erased the horizon line and replaced it with a single and simplistic vanishing point. Infinity. This ignorance of the sensual curvature of the sphere of human possibility makes phobic the human condition and toxic our repetitive diminution into entropy. As an artist, I find perspective to be the most complex and challenging of the many disciplines of Making. What one sees, how one sees, and how one relates that which is seen, is an artist’s statement. Further, perspective is for the artist a monocular though ever-shifting viewpoint of a multidimensional universe, an examination of interior and exterior landscapes as seen through the dual silvered mirror of self. The way he sees, his so-called “style,” is an admission of limitation rather than an academic virtue of cultural and historical value. For me, the most fascinating discovery was the difference between Greek and Roman perspective wherein Roman or scientific perspective establishes the vanishing points on the horizon whereas Greek perspective implants the vanishing point within the mind of the viewer. The philosophical difference is explosive, separating the masculine hemisphere from the feminine along the homosexual diameter of the sphere of comprehension. By placing the vanishing point within the bourn of the viewer, humankind’s exploration of Isness is internalized and enlarged through a demystification of the masculine horizon. Objects and concepts are adjusted to the expanding interior universe as they pass through the lens of human understanding. It is the inner world of human possibility that incubates reality rather than obdurate dogmas and rote that inculcate fear of self-discovery through the imposition of unquestionable answers. Metaphors and concepts are diminished as they pass through the lens; their viability, objectified. They assume human proportion in terms of the reflecting curvature of the sphere. It is the viewer who commands the 360º horizon of human possibility from the infinity of centered entelechy. Because objects and concepts enlarge as they recede from the eyes of the viewer, Greek perspective, by placing the vanishing point within the bourn of human perception, affirms humanity’s absoluteness in terms of unique Isness. Ecce Humanitas. By spanning the horizon across dual lobes of perception, the focus of human need is internalized according to interpretation. By this process is reality created and communicated through metaphor. I embrace chaos. My desire to shear the magnetic needle of cultural/historical imperium from the compass of possibility fuels my enterprise. Every viewer has choice. Response cannot be forced regardless of critical intervention or cultural intimidation. Your being here with me on this plane at this time commits us to nothing. If, by chance, esthetic orgasm occurs, your release confirms your existence on this plane. I will never know you as I have never known you. I am an object if conveyance, nothing more. This plane confirms your existence—not mine. Only in the act of making do I exist. Only on this plane do I convey. The orgasm is yours. You have created me in your desire for creation. And on this plane, you are the creator. You are creating yourself. And this is Art. And the creating of Art is the essence of human Isness. It is the pinnacle of our reality. No artist aspires to the creation of Art; he is enveloped in the process of Making. This process is circumstantial to the viewer and his creation. Through making, the artist creates himself. Through response, the viewer may experience epiphany. Whether the responder can or will demagnetize the needle of hegemonic gestalt and embrace the chaos of self-creation is not the maker’s concern; it lies within the bourn of the creator.... I, the maker, have attended this plane time after innumerable time. This is a place I have known always and yet is always unknown. There is no place more mysterious and exotic than this foreign place. Here, I am always a stranger. I come here to create shadows out of pure light. I come here to destroy my face. I come here to create a stranger. If my enterprise here is successful, my failure is worthy of return. Here, on this plane of paradox where viewer becomes creator, anarchy is born. The chimera of hierarchy is dissolved into noisome pixels of deposed authority. Silence erases dimension and actuality reforms to a palimpsest of alternate realities. always the way it was becomes always the way it is and always the way it might have been and always the way it might be. Always there is choice. Always there is choice until a final choice is made. Ecce humanitas.... I speak now for myself as maker, as skater across a seamless and boundless plane of light, a single glide of ever increasing weightlessness and space. There is no sound, there are no shadows. I remember only the future. The unforgiving coldness of this place inflames me. I embrace it as it enfolds me. As it has always enfolded me. I am in and of its vacuity and provoke its indifference. I would be recognized but shun all that would recognize me. I skate this plane like one pursued by shame, erasing, and honing my blades against distraction and obstruction, clearing and cutting a path through the shadowless light. I am dissolved by light and hidden in its brilliance. The light has eaten my edges and destroyed definition. Do not seek me here. I am finished with it. Only you, the viewer, responder, perhaps creator can define this space. For me, it has become a weighted opacity, an artifact of indifference. As this triangle impends to infinity, the ghosts of new work present themselves. As I prepare to leave this plane, they will consort me. It is they who have prepared my next place of encounter which is this same place...which I will not recognize. I sense their presence. I know they are here, pressing altering, shifting their weights and contours in spasms of peripheral excitation, creases and undulations in the light. These glimpses are the essence of Greek perspective. I grasp their enormity as they distance themselves in ambiguity. As my desire enlarges, my hand is hastened in anticipation. I must quit this plane before they materialize, before objectification. They yearn for closure. They seek unbroken light as this plane layers, a triplicity of past, present and future, a scumbled erasure of recordation. Stains of the past cavort with ghosts of the future on the labored plane of the present in a noise of absence, a clamor of silence. Completion becomes an auto-da-fé, an execution enforcing conversion. An admission, of sorts, that the plane of the Future could not be homogenized beyond recognition. My failure can only be rectified by the creator. Purity exists only in his response and ever and always I, the maker, remain senseless of creation. I search not so that others can find. There is no selflessness in my production. I make only to free myself of repetition, to free myself of linearity and history and compilation. I long to create absence...to be free of evidence...to be pure light...to exist in orgasm and epiphany. To destroy my face. Recognition repels me. I court no audience and leave this plane to its creator. Only through his creations will I be erased. By his self-creation are we become light. As the triplicity tilts more and more this plane toward the future, the present bends into a shadowing and weighted past. It can no longer sustain purchase. I, the maker, must enforce the present on this plane of possibility through the reification of light. I cannot erase the stains of the past from this bent and bended plane; they are beyond redemption. In order to retain balance and achieve departure, I must restrict peripheral vision and banish ghosts of the future to their predestination. Narrow is the way to withdrawal from this emptied space. No curiosity attends my departure as to its future occupancy. If I, the maker, have furnished this space and enhanced its capacity for occupation, then my stripping of self has served further purpose. This plane, for me, has entered into palimpsest and erasure. My success will once again be measured in the unforgiving light of failure on a new plane in a foreign place in the paradox of self-creation...Ecce Humanitas. The triangle descends from the horizon of east/west diversity to its apex of direction pointing toward survival on the compass of human possibility. The imperium of masculine gestalt must be castrated, the directive needle de-magnetized, the reality of repeat annihilated. In redundancy, mankind must learn to destroy its face, its mask which was never a face whose empty sockets stare blindly toward a future which is no future which is neither past nor present but the end of time and dimension and all things measurable, which is the completion of direction and directive, which is the end of the human experiment and the fulfillment of prophecy which was no prophecy but, rather, the obfuscation of process. An excuse for inevitability, the obviousness of conclusion. Ecce homo.

   

old school QNS signage. I'm missing these as they are being torn down and replaced with homogenized awning -- three font options, regulates sizes, and shapes. For what? To strip the city of its character?

This milk hasn't been homogenized so tomorrow morning when I take it out of the regfrigerator I'll see a layer of delicious fat at the top of my milk bottle.

Kumbabhishegam or Consecration is a Hindu Temple ritual that is believed to homogenize,synergize and unite the mystic powers of the deityKumbha means the Head and denotes the crown of the temple,usually in the Gopuram or Tower ang abishgam is ritual bathin with holy waters

In Los Angeles, Allison Lang is a bored girl from an upper class dysfunctional family that acts and dresses like a slut. Her wealthy boyfriend and friends are totally influenced by the hip-hop culture, behaving like rappers, dressing and imitating their lifestyle. When they decide to drive to East L.A. for fun, they meet a Latin gang of drug-dealers and Allison and her best friend Emily become fascinated with their "gangsta" lifestyle. Later they return to the ghetto to visit and excite Hector and his friends, expecting to join their 16th Street gang. When the guys propose them to have sex as a form of initiation, they change their mind, leading to a tragic consequence. Written by Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

 

The lives of wealthy teenagers living in Los Angeles whose exposure to "hip hop culture" inspires them to imitate the "gangsta lifestyle." Although, they soon run into trouble when they come face-to-face with a real gang of Latino drug dealers. Written by Zeno

 

A pair of naive young girls learn that even the most insignificant actions can have lasting consequences. Influenced by the hip-hop thug lifestyle and seeking to explore life outside of their insulated, culturally homogenized suburb, pretty young teenagers Allison and Emily set their sights on East L.A. to experience the "gangsta" lifestyle firsthand. By the time the pair meet a ruthless Mexican drug dealer named Hector, some true-life Latino gang-bangers, and realize just how far out of their element they really are, it may already be too late to turn back.

 

Dos chicas adolescentes de clase acomodada abandonan la seguridad de sus hogares en las afueras de la ciudad para explorar el peligroso ambiente de Los Ángeles Este, un barrio conflictivo donde aprenden que hasta las acciones más inocentes pueden tener consecuencias...

  

Anne Hathaway ... Allison Lang

Bijou Phillips ... Emily

Shiri Appleby ... Amanda

Michael Biehn ... Stuart Lang

Joseph Gordon-Levitt ... Sam

Matt O'Leary ... Eric

Freddy Rodríguez ... Hector

Laura San Giacomo ... Joanna Lang

Mike Vogel ... Toby

Raymond Cruz ... Chino

Alexis Dziena ... Sasha

Channing Tatum ... Nick

Jose L. Vasquez ... Manuel (as Johnny Vasquez)

Luis Robledo ... Ace

Sam Hennings ... Mr. Rubin

 

Rating: 5/10

Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C.

 

Electronic Superhighway: Continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii 1995

 

Nam June Paik

born Seoul, Korea 1932-died Miami Beach, FL 2006

 

When Nam June Paik came to the United States in 1964, the interstate highway system was only nine years old, and superhighways offered everyone the freedom to "see the U.S.A. in your Chevrolet." Walking along the entire length of this installation suggests the enormous scale of the nation that confronted the young Korean artist when he arrived. Neon outlines the monitors, recalling the multicolored maps and glowing enticements of motels and restaurants that beckoned Americans to the open road. The different colors remind us that individual states still have distinct identities and cultures, even in today's information age.

 

Paik augmented the flashing images "seen as though from a passing car" with audio clips from The Wizard of Oz, Oklahoma, and other screen gems, suggesting that our picture of America has always been influenced by film and television. Today, the Internet and twenty-four-hour broadcasting tend to homogenize the customs and accents of what was once a more diverse nation. Paik was the first to use the phrase "electronic superhighway," and this installation proposes that electronic media provide us with what we used to leave home to discover. But Electronic Superhighway is real. It is an enormous physical object that occupies a middle ground between the virtual reality of the media and the sprawling country beyond our doors.

 

49-channel closed circuit video installation, neon, steel and electronic components | approx. 15 x 40 x 4 ft.

 

Smithsonian American Art Museum

Gift of the artist.

 

Comments Welcome.

Portfolio || Flickr Archive || Instagram

 

This Case feature is extra special for me because he was one of the first writers I met in '95 when I didn't know anybody and we were still in high school. Case has been famous twice, both as a writer and as Video director when he won an Juno for a video with Arcade Fire.

 

1.) How long have you been actively writing for?

I started writing in '92. I slowed down in 2002 to a couple pieces a year, but I never stopped writing. So it's been 28 years.

 

2.) How has your work changed or evolved since you started, and what made it change?

My work has gotten better since I started... First couple years were pretty toy. But at my peak, my work was known worldwide, I got the chance to paint with Daim, Loomit, Seen, Duster, Tats Cru and many other international writers. Also in the big magazines like The Source, 12oz Prophet, etc. All these experiences improved my style and made me look at pushing graffiti further.

 

3.) Tell me about your approach to street art?

My approach comes from a freestyle frame of mind. I like to paint to the wall instead of to the sketch. I sketch to practice but when I paint I rarely use sketch's. I find them to constricting. I do all aspects from 2d to 3d to characters and backgrounds.

  

4.) Any other interests you have apart from painting/art?

Apart from art, Im interested in film making and have directed and animated many music videos for a variety of recording artist from 2001-2009

  

5.) How do you see the further evolution of your work? The city, and scene at large? Seems to have changed alot in the last decade.

My work has evolved onto canvases using Spray paint in a different way. Portraits, scenics and abstracts that adhere to the traditional rules of graffiti - no stencils, no brushes, just pure freehand spray painting. The scene really changed with the advent of the internet. Regional styles started disappearing and a more homogenized style replaced it. Street cred was easier to fake and the real street culture turned into legal walls and sponsored jams. Its great to see many writers from the pre-internet era coming back and still kings. Shout out to the graffiti grandpa's keeping it real and my crews Kwota, TDV, AFC and BIF.

 

You can see more of Case's art here: casemackeen.com

 

He also has a show coming up at Run Gallery in Toronto opening Dec 12, 2020.

 

  

“Solutions don’t come from above. What is socialism? I don’t live in socialism? But I live and suffer in capitalism. Some people have told us that what we’re doing in Tlaxcala is anarchism. But we said, ‘what we’re doing is Tlaxcalan.’ Grand schemes won’t work. It’s got to start with the people. We don’t know what the grand solutions are. But we know what we don’t want.” ---Luz Rivera-Martinez, thru interpreter Tony Nelson of Mexico Solidarity Network.

  

Don’t waste time and energy on believing those in power will solve our problems for us.

  

“It’s much easier to think that someone else is going to do my work and solve something for me. It’s much easier to leave my responsibility in the hands of others. Unfortunately, here as in Mexico, those above have their own worries which are not ours. They’re looking for ways they can easily do their jobs against the people. So why are we wondering about whether they’re going to come and solve something for us ? The person who has hunger has to fight to have food. If you’re from below, you look for others that also have hunger and you look for communal food or a roof or some land where you can grow food.”

 

She said those in power are doing their homework when it comes to defending their interests.

 

“It doesn’t surprise us they do what they have to do. The question is, are we doing what we have to do to change the situation? If we look at those above, we end up just hurting our necks, and never see those who are at our side. That’s my equal, someone who has the same needs as me and suffers the same things that those who are above are putting on us.”

 

Love

 

“If you work with the people, it represents a great love for humanity. I would not throw flowers at those that promote hatred and degradation against the people who are fighting for their rights. I don’t believe in hatred, but I believe firmly in dignity. So if it’s about love for people of my class, the people who are at my side, then it’s very welcome love.

 

“For those that are above, I don’t have any respect or love. I have a profound disrespect for them. Even though they are human beings, I never make the mistake of knowing who they are. They are those who are putting humanity and this planet at risk.

 

Violence and nonviolence

 

“From what I see, the violence has been coming from the police against the people in the Occupy movement. I saw an old woman in Seattle that was bathed in pepper spray. I saw how in Portland they unleashed a complete attack on the people with Occupy Portland…The history of violence is the history of those from above, of those who exploited, dominated and conquered. We shouldn’t be surprised that when you are opposed to being someone’s slave they sacrifice you like they did in Spartacus. It’s the story of humanity. Are going stay slaves? Are we going to forgive them for destroying us?

 

“ I have to speak in the name of my organization, not about my own personal beliefs. My organization is profoundly civil and pacifist. Those that attack us and those that have others attack us are the people in power. But our patience is running out. We’re not going to be constantly ok with those that act violently against us. We simply want to live with dignity. We want to work without being exploited. We want them to respect what is ours. We don’t want them to take what is ours. We don’t want them to look down on us. Part of our work is to make people see that those who hate, those who are making wars, those that are exploiting and destroying humanity are those from above.”

 

The Fight for Water

 

“Here in the US, you open the tap and water comes out…In Tlaxcala, we’ve fought for years for water, for just one hydrant. And we had to fight for a well. After that, we worked to organize with each other on how to put together all the tubes and the other equipment for getting the water to houses. We worked hard to put together groups of people for doing this. Then, when we got it set up, the government said ‘we need to administer the water and we need to charge your for it.’ When there was no water, there was no one from the government to help. But when we did all the work in our communities to get the water, then they come around to charge us for it.”

 

Monsanto and the Fight for Corn

 

Tlaxcala means land of the men and women of the corn.

 

“They want to take away our name. They hit us and beat us. Some say ‘be quiet.’ But we in CNUC are breaking the silence. One of the fights we’re taking on is the defense of our corn. Monsanto has a name but not a face. They want to take away what’s been our work for centuries. We don’t put a price on our tradition of corn. We put our sweat and pain into it. But they want to brand our corn and take away our knowledge of much more than our seeds.”

 

She said government officials passed a law to enable Monsanto to do this.

 

“The law asks all Tlaxcalans to register their seeds. But one of the campesinos said ‘how, can I register what belongs to the whole community?’ Those who don’t register their seeds are going to end up having property of Monsanto.”

 

“We put in many resources and signatures against this law. We’ve been doing seed exchanges so we don’t get transgenic seeds. This law passed last year. The government made an offense against our organization. ..There was a big freeze that killed all the corn in the state. It was a bad year for CNUC.

 

Rivera said there are 52 types of corn in Tlaxcala, but that the introduction of GMO crops threatens this diversity.

 

“For us, corn is more than just food. It’s our life. It’s not a brand. It’s purple, white, yellow, red…It comes from the mountains.

 

Rivera said the corn ethanol industry has badly affected Chiapas, Mexico’s most impoverished state.

 

“They didn’t think about ridding hunger. They thought of making the corn into fuel. This is the best example of what’s wrong in a world where profit is put before the needs of people. They don’t care what the land is for unless it’s for ethanol or housing complexes or buildings.”

 

One of the ways those who lead Monsanto get their way is by blurring the lines between industry insiders and what are supposed to be government regulators. Rivera said the agriculture in Tlaxcala formerly worked for Monsanto.

 

“This applies to the US too, as men of business want to turn everything in the world into merchandise. Over the centuries we developed our corn with great care. Corn isn’t created in a lab. Every seed was cared for to make the next crop better. This didn’t come from a test tube.”

 

GMO corn is problematic, said Rivera.

 

“Corn is very promiscuous. The wind, birds, and the bees make it so it is everywhere. So, if GMO seeds are introduced to Tlaxcala, the contamination will be spread far and wide.”

 

She said some people in Tlaxcala have used GMO seeds because of not knowing it and because of being desperate.

 

“Most of them don’t know it’s GMO, the same as when they hide it from people here in the US. People in our community gave each other GMO seeds. We realized that because of the corn stalks. There were many ears, but they were very small. It didn’t fill the husks and the corn was so tough some of the animals we fed it to had blood in their mouths when they chewed it. So, we identified those GMOS and we uprooted them and burned them.”

 

Rivera said that for Tlaxcalans freeing themselves from GMOs is as challenging getting away from chemical fertilizers.

 

“First the fertilizers were gifts from the government. Now they sell it and it’s expensive. So, we must create a relationship of respect for the land. We compost. Every time we do it, the government says, ‘fertilizer is cheap, but making compost is hard.’ In the political campaigns they say, ‘don’t tire yourself, let me gift you with fertilizer.’”

   

Building the Global Justice Movement

 

“We don’t want to homogenize or hegemonize. What unites us is the fight, not the names (of organizations) So CNUC is with Sonoreros and with the transportation collectives, and we are with you here in Columbus. We have the same problem: capital. It squeezes and exploits us. We stand up to take what is ours. They have the resources to beat us and jail us and kill us.

 

“We oppose the denigration of the poor, people of color, women, the young, those who are different, those who are not heterosexual, those outside of the market. They want to take our water, our land, and the resources from our mines.”

 

She said the fight against the exploitation from capitalism is global.

 

“When you realize you don’t want this, you start walking. Every step you take, you find more people ready for change.”

 

She said capitalism risks destroying the planet.

 

“A global movement can do away with the black night of capital, and illuminate the many better ways. Use the Tlaxcalan style here in Columbus. We’ll use the Columbus style in Tlaxcala. In the future, CNUC has many important battles. Now we’re defending our corn. None of the political parties opposed this law which is going to walk thru our lands. There is also the fight against Coca Cola. It’s many fights, not just Monsanto. Before they wanted gold, now it’s everything-- water, seeds, land…They say it’s progress. But, no, it’s business.”

 

Rivera said take part in the global movement against the exploitation from capitalism by fighting the battles we have here, such as those with the banks.

 

She said solidarity within communities builds and then recedes and then builds up again. She accepts this as a natural process in social movements.

 

Speaking to a small gathering in a classroom at Ohio State University, she said peasant farmers who are fighting for their rights graduate from one stage in their rebellion to another, similar to how students progress thru their formal education.

 

She said these steps apply to activists in the US as they do to people fighting for their rights in Tlaxcala.

 

“In the first stage, we think no one will listen to us. In the second, we learn there are many others with us. In the third, we form respect between equals. In the fourth, we win a victory.” After that, the process repeats, said Rivera. She said CNUC learned about this from the Zapatista Liberation Army.

 

She said it’s important to come together as humans across generations and borders.

 

“Don’t believe what’s happening in your country is not also happening in other countries,” said Rivera.

 

Rivera said the movement that CNUC has been building has more than just one vision. It has many ways of looking at things.

 

“When you come from Tlaxcala, the needs are many. The Zapatistas have a good saying, ‘we want a world where many worlds fit.’”

 

Amid loses and wins, she said it’s important to never give up on fighting for justice. She said she respects what she’s seen of the Occupy Movement.

 

“These are important historic moments. The repression we’re experiencing in Mexico is going on all over the world. We don’t accept what they propose. We’re coming up with alternatives. As men and women of the planet, we’re not going to let capitalism destroy it.”

 

Nelson said Tlaxcala is the geographically smallest state in Mexico but among its most important because of the resistance work of CNUC, translated in English as National Rural and Urban Council.

 

Rivera said when the Chiapas uprising happened, she and other activists in her community identified with it.

 

“We said, ‘this is our program too. We’re not going to complicate things.’ We walked the path as they did. The first thing to do is to question. We say ‘walk while questioning,’ not with the arrogance of thinking we know all the answers but with the humility to ask people in their community what their needs are. Everything falls into place when we come together and talk about the problems we have.”

 

Nelson said the same.

 

“The responsibility of people is to find out what part of capital we can defeat from where we are.”

 

Nelson continued.

 

“CNUC is very organized. A lot of the time we in the US think ‘how can we help them?’ But when we go to Tlaxcala, we’re humbled and say, ‘how can we learn from you?’ We hear about mining companies exploiting villages. But we in the US don’t hear about the resistance movements there.”

 

Nelson said apply the 99 percent concept globally.

 

Rivera told the gathering here in Columbus she doesn’t compare resistance efforts in Tlaxcala to see if she and her communities are more organized than people standing up for their rights in other parts of the world.

 

“ I need to learn from you, too. The Zapatistas tell us to stop pretending we have all the answers. We need lots of questions and listening campaigns. We shouldn’t get discouraged if there’s not an immediate answer for replacing capitalism,” Rivera said.

 

Nelson said people in Tlaxcala last fall asked him and his study abroad students to explain the Occupy Movement that as it gained global attention.

 

“I told them ‘I don’t know. I’m here in Tlaxcala.’ But it was interesting when some of the people with Occupy got worried about the disagreements people were having within the movement. I was in Tlaxcala and some of the people there told me, ‘Don’t worry. It’s a new movement. They’re trying to figure it out.’”

 

Both Nelson and Rivera said don’t stop the movement; creatively grapple with disagreements within and among groups.

 

Rivera said there is not yet an alliance between CNUC and peasant farmers in India, though they face common foes such as Monsanto.

 

“We want to work with movements in other countries but we don’t have access to global media. Laws in favor of Monsanto turn campesinos into criminals. So we have to globalize the struggle against Monsanto. There are many places in the world where people are taking on this fight. It’s a fight with no guarantee of victory. But we have to break thru that fear or we won’t be happy.”

 

She said CNUC is not working with Via Campesina. Rivera said governments convinced some organizations within Via Campesina to support NAFTA.

 

“We believe they now think it was a huge error. But we remember the betrayal, so we’re not with Via Campesina.”

  

Beyond Socialism- Vs- Capitalism

 

One of the authors in the anthology The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Nonprofit Industrial Complex suggests social movements in the Global South have outgrown seeing their options as a choice between capitalism and socialism. Rivera agreed with this, though she denounced capitalism.

 

“Solutions don’t come from above. What is socialism? I don’t live in socialism? But I live and suffer in capitalism. Some people have told us that what we’re doing in Tlaxcala is anarchism. But we said, ‘what we’re doing is Tlaxcalan.’ Grand schemes or recipes won’t work. It’s got to start with the people. We don’t know what the grand solutions are. But we know what we don’t want. And we have questions. Why are they taking away our corn? Why are the banks taking away the houses of people here in your country? Why are supermarkets filled with every type of food when so many people are hungry?”

 

NAFTA: We’re Dreamers but We’re not Naïve

 

“It’s difficult for some people in the US to understand how NAFTA exploited and displaced us. We didn’t want NAFTA. We didn’t want to be displaced or exploited. We didn’t want something created from above. We’re 15 times more dependent on the US for corn, after NAFTA. There are no farm subsidy supports, no matching grants. We maintain agriculture however we can in the face of competition that is different from the competition farmers have in the US and Canada.”

 

She said she and other peasant farmers anticipated the negative effects of NAFTA.

 

“We saw the storm coming, so we prepared ourselves. That is how CNUC was born in 1993.” The English translation of what the acronym stands for is National Urban-Rural Council.

 

“We weren’t born overnight. We came from campesinos and we came from urban struggles.”

 

She said proponents of NAFTA said it was for equalizing trade between the US, Canada, and Mexico.

 

“We’re dreamers, but we’re not naïve. We don’t believe in the good intentions of those in power. The government said NAFTA would bring development. But it’s like everything from above that doesn’t take the people into account.

 

Rivera said the elite of the 3 countries created a mechanism for exploiting and dislocating agrarian people.

 

“The political class permitted NAFTA. So we distance ourselves from them. In every step we take, we want to walk with those who are forgotten. We have no respect for the government. They don’t know how to govern other than by doing the bidding of capital.

 

Child Labor

 

Rivera said she other members of her community shut down a maquiladora that was using child labor.

 

“We learned about this thru the teachers at the primary school when they said their students were falling asleep in class and not doing their homework. By talking with teachers and students, we were able to find out where this factory was.”

 

They called the press and gathered with mothers of the children. It was like the bursting of a dam, she said. They found about 100 other houses where children were working for less than $1 per day.

 

After her community fought back in this way, owners of the machines took them away, Rivera said. She said they also took away the grinder for making corn flour, and that a local government official threatened to take away from their community all services except for medical exams for those who prick their fingers while sewing.

 

"Lisa: Mom, romance is dead. It was acquired in a hostile takeover by Hallmark and Disney, homogenized, and sold off piece by piece. "

 

(updated: also, check out Toy Collection from snailbooty)

The Palace of Versailles is a former royal residence commissioned by King Louis XIV located in Versailles, about 19 kilometers (12 mi) west of Paris, France.

 

The palace is owned by the French Republic and since 1995 has been managed, under the direction of the French Ministry of Culture, by the Public Establishment of the Palace, Museum and National Estate of Versailles. About 15,000,000 people visit the palace, park, or gardens of Versailles every year, making it one of the most popular tourist attractions in the world.

 

Louis XIII built a simple hunting lodge on the site of the Palace of Versailles in 1623. With his death came Louis XIV who expanded the château into the beginnings of a palace that went through several changes and phases from 1661 to 1715. It was a favorite residence for both kings, and in 1682, Louis XIV moved the seat of his court and government to Versailles, making the palace the de facto capital of France. This state of affairs was continued by Kings Louis XV and Louis XVI, who primarily made interior alterations to the palace, but in 1789 the royal family and capital of France returned to Paris. For the rest of the French Revolution, the Palace of Versailles was largely abandoned and emptied of its contents, and the population of the surrounding city plummeted.

 

Napoleon, following his coronation as Emperor, used Versailles as a summer residence from 1810 to 1814, but did not restore it. Following the Bourbon Restoration, when the king was returned to the throne, he resided in Paris and it was not until the 1830s that meaningful repairs were made to the palace. A museum of French history was installed within it, replacing the apartments of the southern wing.

 

The palace and park were designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1979 for its importance as the center of power, art, and science in France during the 17th and 18th centuries. The French Ministry of Culture has placed the palace, its gardens, and some of its subsidiary structures on its list of culturally significant monuments.

 

History

Main article: History of the Palace of Versailles

An engraving of Louis XIII's château as it appeared in 1652

Versailles around 1652, engraving by Jacques Gomboust [fr]

In 1623, Louis XIII, King of France, built a hunting lodge on a hill in a favorite hunting ground, 19 kilometers (12 mi) west of Paris and 16 kilometers (10 mi) from his primary residence, the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye The site, near a village named Versailles, was a wooded wetland that Louis XIII's court scorned as being generally unworthy of a king; one of his courtiers, François de Bassompierre, wrote that the lodge "would not inspire vanity in even the simplest gentleman". From 1631 to 1634, architect Philibert Le Roy replaced the lodge with a château for Louis XIII, who forbade his queen, Anne of Austria, from staying there overnight, even when an outbreak of smallpox at Saint-Germain-en-Laye in 1641 forced Louis XIII to relocate to Versailles with his three-year-old heir, the future Louis XIV.

 

When Louis XIII died in 1643, Anne became Louis XIV's regent, and Louis XIII's château was abandoned for the next decade. She moved the court back to Paris, where Anne and her chief minister, Cardinal Mazarin, continued Louis XIII's unpopular monetary practices. This led to the Fronde, a series of revolts against royal authority from 1648 to 1653 that masked a struggle between Mazarin and the princes of the blood, Louis XIV's extended family, for influence over him. In the aftermath of the Fronde, Louis XIV became determined to rule alone. Following Mazarin's death in 1661, Louis XIV reformed his government to exclude his mother and the princes of the blood, moved the court back to Saint-Germain-en-Laye, and ordered the expansion of his father's château at Versailles into a palace.

 

Louis XIV had hunted at Versailles in the 1650s, but did not take any special interest in Versailles until 1661. On 17 August 1661, Louis XIV was a guest at a sumptuous festival hosted by Nicolas Fouquet, the Superintendent of Finances, at his palatial residence, the Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte. Louis XIV was impressed by the château and its gardens, which were the work of Louis Le Vau, the court architect since 1654, André Le Nôtre, the royal gardener since 1657, and Charles Le Brun, a painter in royal service since 1647. Vaux-le-Vicomte's scale and opulence inspired Louis XIV's aesthetic sense, but also led him to imprison Fouquet that September, as he had also built an island fortress and a private army. Louis XIV was also inspired by Vaux-le-Vicomte, and he recruited its authors for his own projects. Louis XIV replaced Fouquet with Jean-Baptiste Colbert, a protégé of Mazarin and enemy of Fouquet, and charged him with managing the corps of artisans in royal employment. Colbert acted as the intermediary between them and Louis XIV, who personally directed and inspected the planning and construction of Versailles.

 

Construction

Work at Versailles was at first concentrated on gardens, and through the 1660s, Le Vau only added two detached service wings and a forecourt to the château. But in 1668–69, as a response to the growth of the gardens, and victory over Spain in the War of Devolution, Louis XIV decided to turn Versailles into a full-scale royal residence. He vacillated between replacing or incorporating his father's château, but settled on the latter by the end of the decade, and from 1668 to 1671, Louis XIII's château was encased on three sides in a feature dubbed the enveloppe. This gave the château a new, Italianate façade overlooking the gardens, but preserved the courtyard façade, resulting in a mix of styles and materials that dismayed Louis XIV and that Colbert described as a "patchwork". Attempts to homogenize the two façades failed, and in 1670 Le Vau died, leaving the post of First Architect to the King vacant for the next seven years.

 

Le Vau was succeeded at Versailles by his assistant, architect François d'Orbay. Work at the palace during the 1670s focused on its interiors, as the palace was then nearing completion, though d'Orbay expanded Le Vau's service wings and connected them to the château, and built a pair of pavilions for government employees in the forecourt. In 1670, d'Orbay was tasked by Louis XIV with designing a city, also called Versailles, to house and service Louis XIV's growing government and court. The granting of land to courtiers for the construction of townhouses that resembled the palace began in 1671. The next year, the Franco-Dutch War began and funding for Versailles was cut until 1674, when Louis XIV had work begun on the Ambassadors' Staircase , a grand staircase for the reception of guests, and demolished the last of the village of Versailles.

 

Following the end of the Franco-Dutch War with French victory in 1678, Louis XIV appointed as First Architect Jules Hardouin-Mansart, an experienced architect in Louis XIV's confidence, who would benefit from a restored budget and large workforce of former soldiers. Mansart began his tenure with the addition from 1678 to 1681 of the Hall of Mirrors, a renovation of the courtyard façade of Louis XIII's château, and the expansion of d'Orbay's pavilions to create the Ministers' Wings in 1678–79. Adjacent to the palace, Mansart built a pair of stables called the Grande and Petite Écuries from 1679 to 1682 and the Grand Commun, which housed the palace's servants and general kitchens, from 1682 to 1684. Mansart also added two entirely new wings in Le Vau's Italianate style to house the court, first at the south end of the palace from 1679 to 1681 and then at its north end from 1685 to 1689.

 

War and the resulting diminished funding slowed construction at Versailles for the rest of the 17th century. The Nine Years' War, which began in 1688, stopped work altogether until 1698. Three years later, however, the even more expensive War of the Spanish Succession began and, combined with poor harvests in 1693–94 and 1709–10, plunged France into crisis. Louis XIV thus slashed funding and canceled some of the work Mansart had planned in the 1680s, such as the remodeling of the courtyard façade in the Italianate style. Louis XIV and Mansart focused on a permanent palace chapel, the construction of which lasted from 1699 to 1710.

 

Louis XIV's successors, Louis XV and Louis XVI, largely left Versailles as they inherited it and focused on the palace's interiors. Louis XV's modifications began in the 1730s, with the completion of the Salon d'Hercule, a ballroom in the north wing, and the expansion of the king's private apartment, which required the demolition of the Ambassadors' Staircase In 1748, Louis XV began construction of a palace theater, the Royal Opera of Versailles at the northernmost end of the palace, but completion was delayed until 1770; construction was interrupted in the 1740s by the War of the Austrian Succession and then again in 1756 with the start of the Seven Years' War. These wars emptied the royal treasury and thereafter construction was mostly funded by Madame du Barry, Louis XV's favorite mistress. In 1771, Louis XV had the northern Ministers' Wing rebuilt in Neoclassical style by Ange-Jacques Gabriel, his court architect, as it was in the process of falling down. That work was also stopped by financial constraints, and it remained incomplete when Louis XV died in 1774. In 1784, Louis XVI briefly moved the royal family to the Château de Saint-Cloud ahead of more renovations to the Palace of Versailles, but construction could not begin because of financial difficulty and political crisis. In 1789, the French Revolution swept the royal family and government out of Versailles forever.

 

Role in politics and culture

The Palace of Versailles was key to Louis XIV's politics, as an expression and concentration of French art and culture, and for the centralization of royal power. Louis XIV first used Versailles to promote himself with a series of nighttime festivals in its gardens in 1664, 1668, and 1674, the events of which were disseminated throughout Europe by print and engravings. As early as 1669, but especially from 1678, Louis XIV sought to make Versailles his seat of government, and he expanded the palace so as to fit the court within it. The moving of the court to Versailles did not come until 1682, however, and not officially, as opinion on Versailles was mixed among the nobility of France.

 

By 1687, however, it was evident to all that Versailles was the de facto capital of France, and Louis XIV succeeded in attracting the nobility to Versailles to pursue prestige and royal patronage within a strict court etiquette, thus eroding their traditional provincial power bases. It was at the Palace of Versailles that Louis XIV received the Doge of Genoa, Francesco Maria Imperiale Lercari in 1685, an embassy from the Ayutthaya Kingdom in 1686, and an embassy from Safavid Iran in 1715.[

 

Louis XIV died at Versailles on 1 September 1715 and was succeeded by his five-year-old great-grandson, Louis XV, then the duke of Anjou, who was moved to Vincennes and then to Paris by Louis XV's regent, Philippe II, Duke of Orléans. Versailles was neglected until 1722, when Philippe II removed the court to Versailles to escape the unpopularity of his regency, and when Louis XV began his majority. The 1722 move, however, broke the cultural power of Versailles, and during the reign of Louis XVI, courtiers spent their leisure in Paris, not Versailles.

 

During Christmas 1763, Mozart and his family visited Versailles and dined with the kings. The 7-year-old Mozart played several works during his stay and later dedicated his first two harpsichord sonatas, published in 1764 in Paris, to Madame Victoria, daughter of Louis XV.

 

In 1783, the palace was the site of the signing of the last two of the three treaties of the Peace of Paris (1783), which ended the American Revolutionary War. On September 3, British and American delegates, led by Benjamin Franklin, signed the Treaty of Paris at the Hôtel d'York (now 56 Rue Jacob) in Paris, granting the United States independence. On September 4, Spain and France signed separate treaties with England at the Palace of Versailles, formally ending the war.

 

The King and Queen learned of the Storming of the Bastille in Paris on 14 July 1789, while they were at the palace, and remained isolated there as the Revolution in Paris spread. The growing anger in Paris led to the Women's March on Versailles on 5 October 1789. A crowd of several thousand men and women, protesting the high price and scarcity of bread, marched from the markets of Paris to Versailles. They took weapons from the city armory, besieged the palace, and compelled the King and royal family and the members of the National Assembly to return with them to Paris the following day.

 

As soon as the royal family departed, the palace was closed. In 1792, the National Convention, the new revolutionary government, ordered the transfer of all the paintings and sculptures from the palace to the Louvre. In 1793, the Convention declared the abolition of the monarchy and ordered all of the royal property in the palace to be sold at auction. The auction took place between 25 August 1793 and 11 August 1794. The furnishings and art of the palace, including the furniture, mirrors, baths, and kitchen equipment, were sold in seventeen thousand lots. All fleurs-de-lys and royal emblems on the buildings were chambered or chiseled off. The empty buildings were turned into a storehouse for furnishings, art and libraries confiscated from the nobility. The empty grand apartments were opened for tours beginning in 1793, and a small museum of French paintings and art school was opened in some of the empty rooms.

 

By virtue of an order issued by the Versailles district directorate in August 1794, the Royal Gate was destroyed, the Cour Royale was cleared and the Cour de Marbre lost its precious floor.

 

19th century – history museum and government venue

When Napoleon became Emperor of the French in 1804, he considered making Versailles his residence but abandoned the idea because of the cost of the renovation. Prior to his marriage with Marie-Louise in 1810, he had the Grand Trianon restored and refurnished as a springtime residence for himself and his family, in the style of furnishing that it is seen today.

 

In 1815, with the final downfall of Napoleon, Louis XVIII, the younger brother of Louis XVI, became King, and considered returning the royal residence to Versailles, where he had been born. He ordered the restoration of the royal apartments, but the task and cost was too great. Louis XVIII had the far end of the south wing of the Cour Royale demolished and rebuilt (1814–1824) to match the Gabriel wing of 1780 opposite, which gave greater uniformity of appearance to the front entrance. Neither he nor his successor Charles X lived at Versailles.

 

The French Revolution of 1830 brought a new monarch, Louis-Philippe to power, and a new ambition for Versailles. He did not reside at Versailles but began the creation of the Museum of the History of France, dedicated to "all the glories of France", which had been used to house some members of the royal family. The museum was begun in 1833 and inaugurated on 30 June 1837. Its most famous room is the Galerie des Batailles (Hall of Battles), which lies on most of the length of the second floor of the south wing. The museum project largely came to a halt when Louis Philippe was overthrown in 1848, though the paintings of French heroes and great battles still remain in the south wing.

 

Emperor Napoleon III used the palace on occasion as a stage for grand ceremonies. One of the most lavish was the banquet that he hosted for Queen Victoria in the Royal Opera of Versailles on 25 August 1855.

 

During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871, the palace was occupied by the general staff of the victorious German Army. Parts of the château, including the Gallery of Mirrors, were turned into a military hospital. The creation of the German Empire, combining Prussia and the surrounding German states under William I, was formally proclaimed in the Hall of Mirrors on 18 January 1871. The Germans remained in the palace until the signing of the armistice in March 1871. In that month, the government of the new Third French Republic, which had departed Paris during the War for Tours and then Bordeaux, moved into the palace. The National Assembly held its meetings in the Opera House.

 

The uprising of the Paris Commune in March 1871, prevented the French government, under Adolphe Thiers, from returning immediately to Paris. The military operation which suppressed the Commune at the end of May was directed from Versailles, and the prisoners of the Commune were marched there and put on trial in military courts. In 1875 a second parliamentary body, the French Senate, was created and held its meetings for the election of a President of the Republic in a new hall created in 1876 in the south wing of the palace. The French Senate continues to meet in the palace on special occasions, such as the amendment of the French Constitution.

 

20th century

The end of the 19th and the early 20th century saw the beginning of restoration efforts at the palace, first led by Pierre de Nolhac, poet and scholar and the first conservator, who began his work in 1892. The conservation and restoration were interrupted by two world wars but have continued until the present day.

 

The palace returned to the world stage in June 1919, when, after six months of negotiations, the Treaty of Versailles, formally ending the First World War, was signed in the Hall of Mirrors. Between 1925 and 1928, the American philanthropist and multi-millionaire John D. Rockefeller, Jr. gave $2,166,000, the equivalent of about thirty million dollars today, to restore and refurbish the palace.

 

More work took place after World War II, with the restoration of the Royal Opera of Versailles. The theater was reopened in 1957, in the presence of Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom.

 

In 1978, parts of the palace were heavily damaged in a bombing committed by Breton terrorists.

 

Starting in the 1950s, when the museum of Versailles was under the directorship of Gérald van der Kemp, the objective was to restore the palace to its state – or as close to it as possible – in 1789 when the royal family left the palace. Among the early projects was the repair of the roof over the Hall of Mirrors; the publicity campaign brought international attention to the plight of post-war Versailles and garnered much foreign money including a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation.

 

One of the more costly endeavors for the museum and France's Fifth Republic has been to repurchase as much of the original furnishings as possible. Consequently, because furniture with a royal provenance – and especially furniture that was made for Versailles – is a highly sought-after commodity on the international market, the museum has spent considerable funds on retrieving much of the palace's original furnishings.

 

21st century

In 2003, a new restoration initiative – the "Grand Versailles" project – was started, which began with the replanting of the gardens, which had lost over 10,000 trees during Cyclone Lothar on 26 December 1999. One part of the initiative, the restoration of the Hall of Mirrors, was completed in 2006. Another major project was the further restoration of the backstage areas of the Royal Opera of Versailles in 2007 to 2009.

 

The Palace of Versailles is currently owned by the French state. Its formal title is the Public Establishment of the Palace, Museum and National Estate of Versailles. Since 1995, it has been run as a Public Establishment, with an independent administration and management supervised by the French Ministry of Culture.

 

The grounds of the palace will host the equestrian competition during the 2024 Summer Olympics.

 

Architecture and plan

The Palace of Versailles is a visual history of French architecture from the 1630s to the 1780s. Its earliest portion, the corps de logis, was built for Louis XIII in the style of his reign with brick, marble, and slate, which Le Vau surrounded in the 1660s with Enveloppe, an edifice that was inspired by Renaissance-era Italian villas. When Mansart made further expansions to the palace in the 1680s, he used the Enveloppe as the model for his work. Neoclassical additions were made to the palace with the remodeling of the Ministers' Wings in the 1770s, by Ange-Jacques Gabriel, and after the Bourbon Restoration.

 

The palace was largely completed by the death of Louis XIV in 1715. The eastern facing palace has a U-shaped layout, with the corps de logis and symmetrical advancing secondary wings terminating with the Dufour Pavilion on the south and the Gabriel Pavilion to the north, creating an expansive cour d'honneur known as the Royal Court (Cour Royale). Flanking the Royal Court are two enormous asymmetrical wings that result in a façade of 402 metres (1,319 ft) in length. Covered by around a million square feet (10 hectares) of roof, the palace has 2,143 windows, 1,252 chimneys, and 67 staircases.[

 

The palace and its grounds have had a great influence on architecture and horticulture from the mid-17th century to the end of the 18th century. Examples of works influenced by Versailles include Christopher Wren's work at Hampton Court Palace, Berlin Palace, the Palace of La Granja, Stockholm Palace, Ludwigsburg Palace, Karlsruhe Palace, Rastatt Palace, Nymphenburg Palace, Schleissheim Palace, and Esterházy Palace.

 

Royal Apartments

The construction in 1668–1671 of Le Vau's enveloppe around the outside of Louis XIII's red brick and white stone château added state apartments for the king and the queen. The addition was known at the time as the château neuf (new château). The grands appartements (Grand Apartments, also referred to as the State Apartments[141][142]) include the grand appartement du roi and the grand appartement de la reine. They occupied the main or principal floor of the château neuf, with three rooms in each apartment facing the garden to the west and four facing the garden parterres to the north and south, respectively. The private apartments of the king (the appartement du roi and the petit appartement du roi) and those of the queen (the petit appartement de la reine) remained in the château vieux (old château). Le Vau's design for the state apartments closely followed Italian models of the day, including the placement of the apartments on the main floor (the piano nobile, the next floor up from the ground level), a convention the architect borrowed from Italian palace design.

 

The king's State Apartment consisted of an enfilade of seven rooms, each dedicated to one of the known planets and their associated titular Roman deity. The queen's apartment formed a parallel enfilade with that of the grand appartement du roi. After the addition of the Hall of Mirrors (1678–1684) the king's apartment was reduced to five rooms (until the reign of Louis XV, when two more rooms were added) and the queen's to four.

 

The queen's apartments served as the residence of three queens of France – Marie-Thérèse d'Autriche, wife of Louis XIV, Marie Leczinska, wife of Louis XV, and Marie-Antoinette, wife of Louis XVI. Additionally, Louis XIV's granddaughter-in-law, Princess Marie-Adélaïde of Savoy, duchesse de Bourgogne, wife of the Petit Dauphin, occupied these rooms from 1697 (the year of her marriage) to her death in 1712.

 

Ambassador's Staircase

The Ambassadors' Staircase (Escalier des Ambassadeurs) was an imperial staircase built from 1674 to 1680 by d'Orbay. Until Louis XV had it demolished in 1752 to create a courtyard for his private apartments, the staircase was the primary entrance into the Palace of Versailles and the royal apartments especially. It was entered from the courtyard via a vestibule that, cramped and dark, contrasted greatly with the tall, open space of the staircase – famously lit naturally with a skylight – so as to overawe visitors.

 

The staircase and walls of the room that contained it were clad in polychrome marble and gilded bronze, with decor in the Ionic order. Le Brun and painted the walls and ceiling of the room according to a festive theme to celebrate Louis XIV's victory in the Franco-Dutch War. On the wall immediately above the staircase were trompe-l'œil paintings of people from the Four Parts of the World looking into the staircase over a balustrade, a motif repeated on the ceiling fresco. There they were joined by allegorical figures for the twelve months of the year and various Classical Greek figures such as the Muses. A marble bust of Louis XIV, sculpted by Jean Warin in 1665–66, was placed in a niche above the first landing of the staircase.

 

The State Apartments of the King

The construction of the Hall of Mirrors between 1678 and 1686 coincided with a major alteration to the State Apartments. They were originally intended as his residence, but the King transformed them into galleries for his finest paintings, and venues for his many receptions for courtiers. During the season from All-Saints Day in November until Easter, these were usually held three times a week, from six to ten in the evening, with various entertainments.

 

The Salon of Hercules

This was originally a chapel. It was rebuilt beginning in 1712 under the supervision of the First Architect of the King, Robert de Cotte, to showcase two paintings by Paolo Veronese, Eleazar and Rebecca and Meal at the House of Simon the Pharisee, which was a gift to Louis XIV from the Republic of Venice in 1664. The painting on the ceiling, The Apotheosis of Hercules, by François Lemoyne, was completed in 1736, and gave the room its name.

 

The Salon of Abundance

The Salon of Abundance was the antechamber to the Cabinet of Curios (now the Games Room), which displayed Louis XIV's collection of precious jewels and rare objects. Some of the objects in the collection are depicted in René-Antoine Houasse's painting Abundance and Liberality (1683), located on the ceiling over the door opposite the windows.

 

The Salon of Venus

This salon was used for serving light meals during evening receptions. The principal feature in this room is Jean Warin's life-size statue of Louis XIV in the costume of a Roman emperor. On the ceiling in a gilded oval frame is another painting by Houasse, Venus subjugating the Gods and Powers (1672–1681). Trompe-l'œil paintings and sculpture around the ceiling illustrate mythological themes.

 

The Salon of Mercury

The Salon of Mercury was the original State Bedchamber when Louis XIV officially moved the court and government to the palace in 1682. The bed is a replica of the original commissioned by King Louis-Philippe in the 19th century when he turned the palace into a museum. The ceiling paintings by the Flemish artist Jean Baptiste de Champaigne depict the god Mercury in his chariot, drawn by a rooster, and Alexander the Great and Ptolemy surrounded by scholars and philosophers. The Automaton Clock was made for the King by the royal clockmaker Antoine Morand in 1706. When it chimes the hour, figures of Louis XIV and Fame descend from a cloud.

 

The Salon of Mars

The Salon of Mars was used by the royal guards until 1782, and was decorated on a military theme with helmets and trophies. It was turned into a concert room between 1684 and 1750, with galleries for musicians on either side. Portraits of Louis XV and his Queen, Marie Leszczinska, by the Flemish artist Carle Van Loo decorate the room today.

 

The Salon of Apollo

The Salon of Apollo was the royal throne room under Louis XIV, and was the setting for formal audiences. The eight-foot-high silver throne was melted down in 1689 to help pay the costs of an expensive war, and was replaced by a more modest throne of gilded wood. The central painting on the ceiling, by Charles de la Fosse, depicts the Sun Chariot of Apollo, the King's favorite emblem, pulled by four horses and surrounded by the four seasons.

 

The Salon of Diana

The Salon of Diana was used by Louis XIV as a billiards room, and had galleries from which courtiers could watch him play. The decoration of the walls and ceiling depicts scenes from the life of the goddess Diana. The celebrated bust of Louis XIV by Bernini made during the famous sculptor's visit to France in 1665 is on display here.

 

Private apartments of the King and Queen

The apartments of the King were the heart of the château; they were in the same location as the rooms of Louis XIII, the creator of the château, on the first floor (second floor US style). They were set aside for the personal use of Louis XIV in 1683. He and his successors Louis XV and Louis XVI used these rooms for official functions, such as the ceremonial lever ("waking up") and the coucher ("going to bed") of the monarch, which was attended by a crowd of courtiers.

 

The King's apartment was accessed from the Hall of Mirrors from the Oeil de Boeuf antechamber or from the Guardroom and the Grand Couvert, the ceremonial room where Louis XIV often took his evening meals, seated alone at a table in front of the fireplace. His spoon, fork, and knife were brought to him in a golden box. The courtiers could watch as he dined.

 

The King's bedchamber had originally been a Drawing Room before Louis XIV transformed it into his own bedroom in 1701. He died there on 1 September 1715. Both Louis XV and Louis XVI continued to use the bedroom for their official awakening and going to bed. On 6 October 1789, from the balcony of this room Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, joined by the Marquis de Lafayette, looked down on the hostile crowd in the courtyard, shortly before the King was forced to return to Paris.

 

The bed of the King is placed beneath a carved relief by Nicolas Coustou entitled France watching over the sleeping King. The decoration includes several paintings set into the paneling, including a self-portrait of Antony van Dyck.

 

Private apartments of The Queen

The petit appartement de la reine is a suite of rooms that were reserved for the personal use of the queen. Originally arranged for the use of the Marie-Thérèse, consort of Louis XIV, the rooms were later modified for use by Marie Leszczyńska and finally for Marie-Antoinette. The Queen's apartments and the King's Apartments were laid out on the same design, each suite having seven rooms. Both suites had ceilings painted with scenes from mythology; the King's ceilings featured male figures, the Queen's featured females.

 

Hall of Mirrors

The Hall of Mirrors is a long gallery at the westernmost part of the palace that looks out onto the gardens. The hall was built from 1678 to 1681 on the site of a terrace Le Vau built between the king and queen's suites. The hall is clad in marble and decorated in a modified version of the Corinthian order, with 578 mirrors facing 17 windows and reflecting the light provided by them. The ceiling fresco, painted by Le Brun over the next four years, embellishes the first 18 years of Louis XIV's reign in 30 scenes, 17 of which are military victories over the Dutch. The fresco depicts Louis XIV himself alongside Classical figures in the scenes celebrating moments in his reign such as the beginning of personal rule in 1661, breaking from earlier frescoes at Versailles that used allegories derived from Classical and mythological scenes.

 

The Salon of War and the Salon of Peace bookend the Hall of Mirrors on its northern and southern ends respectively. The Salon of War, constructed and decorated from 1678 to 1686, celebrates French victories in the Franco-Dutch War with marble panels, gilded bronze trophies of arms, and a stucco bas-relief of Louis XIV on horsebask riding over his enemies. The Salon of Peace is decorated in the same fashion but according to its eponymous theme.

 

Royal Chapel

The Royal Chapel of Versailles is located at the southern end of the north wing. The building stands 40-meter (130 ft) high, and measures 42 meters (138 ft) long and 24 meters (79 ft) wide. The chapel is rectangular with a semicircular apse, combining traditional, Gothic royal French church architecture with the French Baroque style of Versailles. The ceiling of the chapel is constituted by an unbroken vault, divided into three frescos by Antoine Coypel, Charles de La Fosse, and Jean Jouvenet. The palette of motifs beneath the frescoes glorify the deeds of Louis IX, and include images of David, Constantine, Charlemagne, and Louis IX, fleur de lis, and Louis XIV's monogram. The organ of the chapel was built by Robert Clicquot and Julien Tribuot in 1709–1710.

 

Louis XIV commissioned the chapel, its sixth, from Mansart and Le Brun in 1683–84. It was the last building constructed at Versailles during Louis XIV's reign. Construction was delayed until 1699, however, and it was not completed until 1710. The only major modification to the chapel since its completion was the removal of a lantern from its roof in 1765. A full restoration of the chapel began in late 2017 and lasted into early 2021.

 

Royal Opera

The Royal Opera of Versailles was originally commissioned by Louis XIV in 1682 and was to be built at the end of the North Wing with a design by Mansart and Vigarani. However, due to the expense of the King's continental wars, the project was put aside. The idea was revived by Louis XV with a new design by Ange-Jacques Gabriel in 1748, but this was also temporarily put aside. The project was revived and rushed ahead for the planned celebration of the marriage of the Dauphin, the future Louis XVI, and Marie-Antoinette. For economy and speed, the new opera was built almost entirely of wood, which also gave it very high quality acoustics. The wood was painted to resemble marble, and the ceiling was decorated with a painting of the Apollo, the god of the arts, preparing crowns for illustrious artists, by Louis Jean-Jacques Durameau. The sculptor Augustin Pajou added statuary and reliefs to complete the decoration. The new Opera was inaugurated on 16 May 1770, as part of the celebration of the royal wedding.

 

In October 1789, early in the French Revolution, the last banquet for the royal guardsmen was hosted by the King in the opera, before he departed for Paris. Following the Franco-German War in 1871 and then the Paris Commune until 1875, the French National Assembly met in the opera, until the proclamation of the Third French Republic and the return of the government to Paris.

 

Museum of the History of France

Shortly after becoming King in 1830, Louis Philippe I decided to transform the palace into a museum devoted to "All the Glories of France," with paintings and sculpture depicting famous French victories and heroes. Most of the apartments of the palace were entirely demolished (in the main building, practically all of the apartments were annihilated, with only the apartments of the king and queen remaining almost intact), and turned into a series of several large rooms and galleries: the Coronation Room (whose original volume was left untouched by Louis-Philippe), which displays the celebrated painting of the coronation of Napoleon I by Jacques-Louis David; the Hall of Battles; commemorating French victories with large-scale paintings; and the 1830 room, which celebrated Louis-Philippe's own coming to power in the French Revolution of 1830. Some paintings were brought from the Louvre, including works depicting events in French history by Philippe de Champaigne, Pierre Mignard, Laurent de La Hyre, Charles Le Brun, Adam Frans van der Meulen, Nicolas de Largillière, Hyacinthe Rigaud, Jean-Antoine Houdon, Jean-Marc Nattier, Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, Hubert Robert, Thomas Lawrence, Jacques-Louis David, and Antoine-Jean Gros. Others were commissioned especially for the museum by prominent artists of the early 19th century, including Eugène Delacroix, who painted Saint Louis at the French victory over the British in the Battle of Taillebourg in 1242. Other painters featured include Horace Vernet and François Gérard. A monumental painting by Vernet features Louis Philippe himself, with his sons, posing in front of the gates of the palace.

 

The overthrow of Louis Philippe in 1848 put an end to his grand plans for the museum, but the Gallery of Battles is still as it was, and is passed through by many visitors to the royal apartments and grand salons. Another set of rooms on the first floor has been made into galleries on Louis XIV and his court, displaying furniture, paintings, and sculptures. In recent years, eleven rooms on the ground floor between the Chapel and the Opera have been turned into a history of the palace, with audiovisual displays and models.

 

Estate of Versailles

The estate of Versailles consists of the palace, the subsidiary buildings around it, and its park and gardens. As of June 2021, the estate altogether covers an area of 800 hectares (8.0 km2; 2,000 acres), with the park and gardens laid out to the south, west, and north of the palace. The palace is approached from the east by the Avenue de Paris, measuring 17 miles (27 km) from Paris to a gate between the Grande and Petite Écuries. Beyond these stables is the Place d'Armes, where the Avenue de Paris meets the Avenue de Sceaux and Avenue de Saint-Cloud (see map), the three roads that formed the main arteries of the city of Versailles. Exactly where the three roads meet is a gate leading into the cour d'honneur. hemmed in by the Ministers' Wings. Beyond is the Royal Gate and the main palace, which wraps around the Royal and finally Marble Courts

 

The estate was established by Louis XIII as a hunting retreat, with a park just to the west of his château. From 1661, Louis XIV expanded the estate until, at its greatest extent, the estate was made up by the Grand Parc , a hunting ground of 15,000 hectares (150 km2; 37,000 acres), and the gardens, called the Petit Parc, which covered 1,700 hectares (17 km2; 4,200 acres). A 25-mile (40 km) long, 10-foot (3.0 m) high wall with 24 gateways enclosed the estate.

 

The landscape of the estate had to be created from the bog that surrounded Louis XIII's château using landscape architecture usually employed in fortress building. The approach to the palace and the gardens were carefully laid out via the moving of earth and construction of terraces. The water from the marsh was marshalled into a series of lakes and ponds around Versailles, but these reservoirs were not sufficient for the palace, city, or gardens. Great lengths were taken to supply Versailles with water, such as the damming of the river Bièvre to create an inflow in the 1660s, the construction of an enormous pumping station at the river Seine near Marly-le-Roi in 1681, and an attempt to divert water from the river Eure with a canal in the later 1680s.

 

Gardens

The gardens of Versailles, as they have existed since the reign of Louis XIV, are the work of André Le Nôtre. Le Nôtre's gardens were preceded by a simple garden laid out in the 1630s by landscape architects Jacques Boyceau and Jacques de Nemours, which he rearranged along an east–west axis that, because of Louis XIV's land purchases and the clearing of woodland, were expanded literally as far as could be seen. The resulting gardens were a collaboration between Le Nôtre, Le Brun, Colbert, and Louis XIV, marked by rigid order, discipline, and open space, with axial paths, flowerbeds, hedges, and ponds and lakes as motifs. They became the epitome of the French formal garden style, and have been very influential and widely imitated or reproduced.

 

Subsidiary structures

The first of the subsidiary structures of the Palace of Versailles was the Versailles Menagerie [fr],[199][200] built by Le Vau between the years 1662 and 1664, at the southern end of the Grand Canal. The apartments, overlooking the pens, were renovated by Mansart from 1698 to 1700, but the Menagerie fell into disuse in 1712. After a long period of decay, it was demolished in 1801. The Versailles Orangery, just to the south of the palace, was first built by Le Vau in 1663, originally as part of the general moving of earth to create the Estate.[191] It was also modified by Mansart, who, from 1681 to 1685, totally rebuilt it and doubled its size.

 

In late 1679, Louis XIV commissioned Mansart to build the Château de Marly, a retreat at the edge of Versailles's estate, about 5 miles (8.0 km) from the palace. The château consisted of a primary residential building and twelve pavilions, in Palladian style placed in two rows on either side of the main building. Construction was completed in 1686, when Louis XIV spent his first night there. The château was nationalized and sold in 1799, and subsequently demolished and replaced with industrial buildings. These were themselves demolished in 1805, and then in 1811 the estate was purchased by Napoleon. On 1 June 2009, the grounds of the Château de Marly were ceded to the Public Establishment of the Palace, Museum and National Estate of Versailles.

 

La Lanterne, is a hunting lodge named after the lantern that topped the nearby Menagerie that was built in 1787 by Philippe Louis de Noailles, then the palace governor. It has since 1960 been a state residence.

 

Petit Trianon

The Petit Trianon, whose construction from 1762 to 1768 led to the advent of the names "Grand" and "Petit Trianon", was constructed for Louis XV and the Madame du Barry in the Neoclassical style by Gabriel. The building has a piano nobile, basement, and attic, with five windows on each floor. On becoming king, Louis XVI gave the Petit Trianon to Marie Antoinette, who remodeled it, relaid its gardens in the then-current English and Oriental styles, and formed her own court there.

 

In 1668, Louis XIV purchased and demolished the hamlet of Trianon, near the northern tip of the Grand Canal, and in its place, he commissioned Le Vau to construct a retreat from court, remembered as the Porcelain Trianon. Designed and built by Le Vau in 1670, it was the first example of Chinoiserie (faux Chinese) architecture in Europe, though it was largely designed in French style. The roof was clad not with porcelain but with delftware, and was thus prone to leaks, so in 1687 Louis XIV ordered it demolished. Nevertheless, the Porcelain Trianon was itself influential and copycats were built across Europe.

 

The Grand Trianon

The Grand Trianon with courtyard and gardens. The wing at left is a residence of the President of France.

The Grand Trianon with courtyard and gardens. The wing at left is a residence of the President of France.

 

To replace the Porcelain Trianon, Louis XIV tasked Mansart with the construction in 1687 of the Grand Trianon, built from marble in three months. The Grand Trianon has a single story, except for its attached service wing, which was modified by Mansart in 1705–06. The east façade has a courtyard while the west faces the gardens of the Grand Trianon, and between them a peristyle. The interiors are mostly original,[214] and housed Louis XIV, the Madame de Maintenon, Marie Leszczynska, and Napoleon, who ordered restorations to the building. Under de Gaulle, the north wing of the Grand Trianon became a residence of the President of France.

 

The Queen's hamlet and Theater

Near the Trianons are the French pavilion, built by Gabriel in 1750 between the two residences, and the Queen's Theater and Queen's Hamlet, built by architect Richard Mique in 1780 and from 1783 to 1785 respectively. These were both built at the behest of Marie Antoinette; the theater, hidden in the gardens, indulged her appreciation of opera and is absolutely original, and the hamlet to extend her gardens with rustic amenities. The building scheme of the Queen's Hamlet includes a farmhouse (the farm was to produce milk and eggs for the queen), a dairy, a dovecote, a boudoir, a barn that burned down during the French Revolution, a mill and a tower in the form of a lighthouse.

 

Modern political and ceremonial functions

The palace still serves political functions. Heads of state are regaled in the Hall of Mirrors; the bicameral French Parliament—consisting of the Senate (Sénat) and the National Assembly (Assemblée nationale)—meet in joint session (a congress of the French Parliament) in Versailles to revise or otherwise amend the French Constitution, a tradition that came into effect with the promulgation of the 1875 Constitution. For example, the Parliament met in joint session at Versailles to pass constitutional amendments in June 1999 (for domestic applicability of International Criminal Court decisions and for gender equality in candidate lists), in January 2000 (ratifying the Treaty of Amsterdam), and in March 2003 (specifying the "decentralized organization" of the French Republic).

 

In 2009, President Nicolas Sarkozy addressed the global financial crisis before a congress in Versailles, the first time that this had been done since 1848, when Charles-Louis Napoleon Bonaparte gave an address before the French Second Republic. Following the November 2015 Paris attacks, President François Hollande gave a speech before a rare joint session of parliament at the Palace of Versailles. This was the third time since 1848 that a French president addressed a joint session of the French Parliament at Versailles. The president of the National Assembly has an official apartment at the Palace of Versailles. In 2023 a state visit by Charles III to France included a state banquet at the Palace.

Suspended Animation Classic #9

First published on Sun. March 5, 1989

 

Archie Comics Digest #95

By Michael Vance

 

Who’s the most famous Archie in literature? Only a meathead would answer Archie Bunker. The title belongs to a teenager with orange hair and a big R on his sweater.

The sides of his head are a tic-tac-toe of lines, and this kid’s no Jughead. He’s Archie Andrews, and since 1941, he’s been every parent’s dream of the “perfect” teenager.

For forty-eight years, long before television’s Dobie Gillis, Welcome Back Kotter, and Head of the Class, Archie has been entertaining millions worldwide.

Archie and his pals live in a generic world outside of time. Trends in fashion, slang, and politics are generally ignored, creating a timeless setting unaffected by stoical change, an eternal Mr. Rogers’ neighborhood.

Plots spring more from clearly defined personalities and teenage problems always faced at school or home than from outside influences. And therein may lay the universal appeal of Archie’s formula.

Archie is cute, fun and safe.

Archie’s Comics Digest #95 doesn’t digress from simple stories told simply either. In the first brief tale, Archie is caught by principal Weatherbee arriving late at school. Weatherbee demands Archie’s best behavior; a representative of the state education association arrives tomorrow, but on his way to Riverdale the following day, Archie stops to help a stranded motorist. He is late to school.

Can you guess the ending?

The stranded motorist turns out to be the stranded (fill in the blank).

In the second story, Weatherbee catches Archie wearing a fake mustache, but learns it’s for a barber shop quartet.

The principal loves this, and encourages other students to don mustaches and join quartets, but the outraged teacher, Miss Gundy, also sees the mustached students and rushes to report to Weatherbee. There, she discovers that Weatherbee is also wearing (fill in the blank).

These comic books alternate short, caustic stories with half or single page jokes. Will this homogenized formula ever change? Why change what works?

Archie Comics Digest #95/$1.35/128 pages/for all ages/various artists and writers/available everywhere.