Avram Noam Chomsky

 

Portrait of Noam Chomsky painted in admiration for Justice and Liberty of his Wisdom

 

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“Freedom without opportunity is a devil's gift.”

― Noam Chomsky

 

Language and Freedom

Noam Chomsky

 

chomsky.info/language-and-freedom/

 

Excerpted from For Reasons of State, New York: Pantheon Books, 1973.

When I was invited to speak on the topic “Language and freedom”, I was puzzled and intrigued. Most of my professional life has been devoted to the study of language. There would be no great difficulty in finding a topic to discuss in that domain. And there is much to say about the problems of freedom and liberation as they pose themselves to us and to others in the mid-twentieth century. What is troublesome in the title of this lecture is the conjunction. In what way are language and freedom to be interconnected?

 

As a preliminary, let me say just a word about the contemporary study of language, as I see it. There are many aspects of language and language use that raise intriguing questions, but – in my judgement – only a few have so far led to productive theoretical work. In particular, our deepest insights are in the area of formal grammatical structure. A person who knows a language has acquired a system of rules and principles – a “generative grammar,” in technical terms – that associates sound and meaning in some specific fashion. There are many reasonably well-founded and, I think, rather enlightening hypotheses as to the character of such grammars, for quite a number of languages. Furthermore, there has been a renewal of interest in “universal grammar”, interpreted now as the theory that tries to specify the general properties of those languages that can be learned in the normal way by humans. Here, too, significant progress has been achieved.

 

The subject is of particular importance. It is appropriate to regard universal grammar as the study of one of the essential faculties of mind. It is, therefore, extremely interesting to discover, as I believe we do, that the principles of universal grammar are rich, abstract, and restrictive, and can be used to construct principled explanations for a variety of phenomena. At the present stage of our understanding, if language is to provide a springboard for the investigation of other problems of human nature, it is these aspects of language to which we will have to turn our attention, for the simple reason that it is only these aspects that are reasonably well understood. In another sense, the study of formal properties of language reveals something of the nature of humans in a negative way: it underscores, with great clarity, the limits of our understanding of those qualities of mind that are apparently unique to humans and that must enter into their cultural achievements in an intimate, if still quite obscure, manner.

 

In searching for a point of departure, one turns naturally to a period in the history of Western thought when it was possible to believe that “the thought of making freedom the sum and substance of philosophy has emancipated the human spirit in all its relationships, and . . . has given to science in all its parts a more powerful reorientation than any earlier revolution.” [1] The word “revolution” bears multiple association in this passage, for Schelling also proclaims that “man is born to act and not to speculate”; and when he writes that “the time has come to proclaim to a nobler humanity the freedom of the spirit, and no longer to have patience with men’s tearful regrets for their lost chains” we hear the echoes of the libertarian thought and revolutionary acts of the late eighteenth century. Schelling writes that “the beginning and end of all philosophy is – Freedom.” These words are invested with meaning and urgency at a time when people are struggling to cast off their chains, to resist authority that has lost its claim to legitimacy, to construct more humane and more democratic social institutions. It is at such a time that the philosopher may be driven to inquire into the nature of human freedom and its limits, and perhaps to conclude, with Schelling, that with respect to the human ego, “its essence is freedom”; and with respect to philosophy, “the highest dignity of Philosophy consists precisely therein, that it stakes all on human freedom.”

 

We are living, once again, at such a time. A revolutionary ferment is sweeping the socalled Third World, awakening enormous masses from torpor and acquiescence in traditional authority. There are those who feel that the industrial societies as well are ripe for revolutionary change – and I do not refer only to representatives of the New Left. The threat of revolutionary change brings forth repression and reaction. Its signs are evident in varying forms, in France, in the Soviet Union, in the United States—not least, in the city where we are meeting. It is natural, then, that we should consider, abstractly, the problems of human freedom, and turn with interest and serious attention to the thinking of an earlier period when archaic social institutions were subjected to critical analysis and sustained attack. It is natural and appropriate, so long as we bear in mind Schellings’s admonition that man is born not merely to speculate but also to act.

 

One of the earliest and most remarkable of the eighteenth-century investigations of freedom and servitude is Rousseau’s Discourse on Inequality (1755), in many ways a revolutionary tract. In it, he seeks to “set forth the origin and progress of inequality, the establishment and abuse of political societies, insofar as these things can be deduced from the nature of man by the light of reason alone.” His conclusions were sufficiently shocking that the judges of the prize competition of the Academy of Dijon, to whom the work was originally submitted, refused to hear the manuscript through. [2] In it, Rousseau challenges the legitimacy of virtually every social institution, as well as individual control of property and wealth. These are “usurpations . . . established only on a precarious and abusive right . . . having been acquired only by force, force could take them away without (the rich) having grounds for complaint.” Not even property acquired by personal industry is held “upon better titles”. Against such a claim, one might object: “Do you not know that a multitude of your brethren die or suffer from need of what you have in excess, and that you needed express and unanimous consent of the human race to appropriate for yourself anything from common subsistence that exceeded your own?” It is contrary to the law of nature that “a handful of men be glutted with superfluities while the starving multitude lacks necessities.”

 

Rousseau argues that civil society is hardly more than a conspiracy by the rich to guarantee their plunder. Hypocritically, the rich call upon their neighbors to “institute regulations of justice and peace to which all are obliged to conform, which make an exception of no one, and which compensate in some way for the caprices of fortune by equally subjecting the powerful and the weak to mutual duties”– those laws which, as Anatole France was to say, in their majesty deny to the rich and the poor equally the right to sleep under the bridge at night. By such arguments, the poor and weak were seduced: “All ran to meet their chains thinking they secured their freedom. . . .” Thus society and laws “gave new fetters to the weak and new forces to the rich, destroyed natural freedom for all time, established forever the law of property and inequality, changed a clever usurpation into an irrevocable right, and for the profit of a few ambitious men henceforth subjected the whole human race to work, servitude and misery”. Governments inevitably tend toward arbitrary power, as “their corruption and extreme limit”. This power is “by its nature illegitimate,” and new revolutions must

 

dissolve the government altogether or bring it closer to its legitimate institutions … . The uprising that ends by strangling or dethroning a sultan is as lawful an act as those by which he disposed, the day before, of the lives and goods of his subjects. Force alone maintained him, force alone overthrows him.

 

What is interesting, in the present connection, is the path that Rousseau follows to reach these conclusions “by the light of reason alone,” beginning with his ideas about human nature. He wants to see man “as nature formed him”. It is from human nature that the principles of natural right and the foundations of social existence must be deduced.

 

This same study of original man, of his true needs, and of the principles underlying his duties, is also the only good means one could use to remove those crowds of difficulties which present themselves concerning the origin of moral inequality, the true foundation of the body politic, the reciprocal rights of its members, and a thousand similar questions as important as they are ill explained.

 

To determine the nature of man, Rousseau proceeds to compare man and animal. Man is “intelligent, free . . . the sole animal endowed with reason.” Animals are “devoid of intellect and freedom.”

 

In every animal I see only an ingenious machine to which nature has given senses in order to revitalize itself and guarantee itself, to a certain point, from all that tends to destroy or upset it. I perceive precisely the same things in the human machine, with the difference that nature alone does everything in the operations of a beast, whereas man contributes to his operations by being a free agent. The former chooses or rejects by instinct and the latter by an act of freedom, so that a beast cannot de viate from the rule that is prescribed to it even when it would be advantageous for it do so, and a man deviates from it often to his detriment . . . . it is not so much understanding which constitutes the distinction of man among the animals as it is his being a free agent. Nature commands every animal, and the beast obeys. Man feels the same impetus, but he realizes that he is free to acquiesce or resist; and it is above all in the consciousness of this freedom that the spirituality of his soul is shown. For physics explains in some way the mechanism of the senses and the formation of ideas; but in the power of willing, or rather of choosing, and in the sentiment of this power are found only purely spiritual acts about which the laws of mechanics explain nothing.

 

Thus the essence of human nature is human freedom and the consciousness of this freedom. So Rousseau can say that “the jurists, who have gravely pronounced that the child of a slave would be born a slave, have decided in other terms that a man would not be born a man.”[3]

 

Sophistic politicians and intellectuals search for ways to obscure the fact that the essential and defining property of man is his freedom: “They attribute to men a natural inclination to servitude, without thinking that it is the same for freedom as for innocence and virtue – their value is felt only as long as one enjoys them oneself and the taste for them is lost as soon as one has lost them.” In contrast, Rousseau asks rhetorically “whether, freedom being the most noble of man’s faculties, it is not degrading one’s nature, putting oneself on the level of beasts enslaved by instinct, even offending the author on one’s being, to renounce without reservation the most precious of all his gifts and subject ourselves to committing all the crimes he forbids us in order to please a ferocious or insane master” – a question that has been asked, in similar terms, by many an American draft resister in the last few years, and by many others who are beginning to recover from the catastrophe of twentieth-century Western civilization, which has so tragically confirmed Rousseau’s judgement:

 

Hence arose the national wars, battles, murders, and reprisals which make nature tremble and shock reason, and all those horrible prejudices which rank the honour of shedding human blood among the virtues. The most decent men learned to consider it one of their duties to murder their fellowmen; at length men were seen to massacre each other by the thousands without knowing why; more murders were committed on a single day of fighting and more horrors in the capture of a single city than were committed in the state of nature during whole centuries over the entire face of the earth.

 

The proof of his doctrine that the struggle for freedom is an essential human attribute, that the value of freedom is felt only as long as one enjoys it, Rousseau sees in “the marvels done by all free peoples to guard themselves from oppression.” True, those who have abandoned the life of a free man

 

do nothing but boast incessantly of the peace and repose they enjoy in their chains . . . . But when I see the others sacrifice pleasures, repose, wealth, power, and life itself for the preservation of this sole good which is so disdained by those who have lost it; when I see animals born free and despising captivity break their heads against the bars of their prison; when I see multitudes of entirely naked savages scorn European voluptousness and endure hunger, fire, the sword, and death to preserve only their independence, I feel that it does not behoove slaves to reason about freedom.

 

Rather similar thoughts were expressed by Kant, forty years later. He cannot, he says, accept the proposition that certain people “are not ripe for freedom,” for example, the serfs of some landlord:

 

If one accepts this assumption, freedom will never be achieved; for one can not arrive at the maturity for freedom without having already acquired it; one must be free to learn how to make use of one’s powers freely and usefully. The first attempts will surely be brutal and will lead to a state of affairs more painful and dangerous than the former condition under the dominance but also the protection of an external authority. However, one can achieve reason only through one’s own experiences and one must be free to be able to undertake them. . . . To accept the principle that freedom is worthless for those under one’s control and that one has the right to refuse it to them forever, is an infringement on the rights of God himself, who has created man to be free. [4]

 

The remark is particularly interesting because of its context. Kant was defending the French Revolution, during the Terror, against those who claimed that it showed the masses to be unready for the privilege of freedom. Kant’s remarks have contemporary relevance. No rational person will approve of violence and terror. In particular, the terror of the postrevolutionary state, fallen into the hands of a grim autocracy, has more than once reached indescribable levels of savagery. Yet no person of understanding or humanity will too quickly condemn the violence that often occurs when long-subdued masses rise against their oppressors, or take their first steps toward liberty and social reconstruction.

 

Let me return now to Rousseau’s argument against the legitimacy of established authority, whether that of political power or of wealth. It is striking that his argument, up to this point, follows a familiar Cartesian model. Man is uniquely beyond the bounds of physical explanation; the beast, on the other hand, is merely an ingenious machine, commanded by natural law. Man’s freedom and his consciousness of this freedom distinguish him from the beast-machine. The principles of mechanical explanation are incapable of accounting for these human properties, though they can account for sensation and even the combination of ideas, in which regard “man differs from a beast only in degree.”

 

To Descartes and his followers, such as Cordemoy, the only sure sign that another organism has a mind, and hence also lies beyond the bounds of mechanical explanation, is its use of language in the normal, creative human fashion, free from control by identifiable stimuli, novel and innovative, appropriate to situations, coherent, and engendering in our minds new thoughts and ideas. [5] To the Cartesians, it is obvious by introspection that each man possesses a mind, a substance whose essence is thought; his creative use of language reflects this freedom of thought and conception. When we have evidence that another organism, too, uses language in this free and creative fashion, we are led to attribute to it as well a mind like ours. From similar assumptions regarding the intrinsic limits of mechanical explanation, its inability to account for man’s freedom and consciousness of his freedom, Rousseau proceeds to develop his critique of authoritarian institutions, which deny to man his essential attribute of freedom, in varying degree.

 

Were we to combine these speculations, we might develop an interesting connection between language and freedom. Language, in its essential properties and the manner of its use, provides the basic criterion for determining that another organism is a being with a human mind and the human capacity for free thought and self-expression, and with the essential human need for freedom from the external constraints of repressive authority. Furthermore, we might try to proceed from the detailed investigation of language and its use to a deeper and more specific understanding of the human mind. Proceeding on this model, we might further attempt to study other aspects of that human nature which, as Rousseau rightly observes, must be correctly conceived if we are to be able to develop, in theory, the foundations for a rational social order.

 

I will return to this problem, but first I would like to trace further Rousseau’s thinking about the matter. Rousseau diverges from the Cartesian tradition in several respects. He defines the “specific characteristic of the human species” as man’s “faculty of selfperfection,” which, “with the aid of circumstances, successively develops all the others, and resides among us as much in the species as in the individual.” The faculty of selfperfection and of perfection of the human species through cultural transmission is not, to my knowledge, discussed in any similar terms by the Cartesians. However, I think that Rousseau’s remarks might be interpreted as a development of the Cartesian tradition in an unexplored direction, rather than as a denial and rejection of it. There is no inconsistency in the notion that the restrictive attributes of mind underlie a historically evolving human nature that develops within the limits that they set; or that these attributes of mind provide the possibility of self-perfection; or that, by providing the consciousness of freedom, these essential attributes of human nature give man the opportunity to create social conditions and social forms to maximize the possibilities for freedom, diversity, and individual self-realization. To use an arithmetical analogy, the integers do not fail to be an infinite set merely because they do not exhaust the rational numbers. Analogously, it is no denial of man’s capacity for infinite “self-perfection” to hold that there are intrinsic properties of mind that constrain his development. I would like to argue that in a sense the opposite is true, that without a system of formal constraints there are no creative acts; specifically, in the absence of intrinsic and restrictive properties of mind, there can be only “shaping of behaviour” but no creative acts of self-perfection. Furthermore, Rousseau’s concern for the evolutionary character of self-perfection brings us back, from another point of view, to a concern for human language, which would appear to be a prerequisite for such evolution of society and culture, for Rousseau’s perfection of the species, beyond the most rudimentary forms.

 

Rousseau holds that “although the organ of speech is natural to man, speech itself is nonetheless not natural to him.” Again, I see no inconsistency between this observation and the typical Cartesian view that innate abilities are “dispositional,” faculties that lead us to produce ideas (specifically, innate ideas) in a particular manner under given conditions of external stimulation, but that also provide us with the ability to proceed in our thinking without such external factors. Language too, then, is natural to man only in a specific way. This is an important and, I believe, quite fundamental insight of the rationalist linguists that was disregarded, very largely, under the impact of empiricist psychology in the eighteenth century and since.[6]

 

Rousseau discusses the origin of language at some length, though he confesses himself to be unable to come to grips with the problem in a satisfactory way. Thus

 

if men needed speech in order to learn to think, they had even greater need of knowing how to think in order to discover the art of speech. . . . So that one can hardly form tenable conjectures about this art of communicating thoughts and establishing intercourse between minds; a sublime art which is now very far from its origin. . . .

 

He holds that “general ideas can come into the mind only with the aid of words, and the understanding grasps them only through propositions” – a fact which prevents animals, devoid of reason, from formulating such ideas or ever acquiring “the perfectibility which depends upon them.” Thus he cannot conceive of the means by which “our new grammarians began to extend their ideas and to generalize their words,” or to develop the means “to express all the thoughts of men”: “numbers, abstract words, aorists, and all the tenses of verbs, particles, syntax, the linking of propositions, reasoning, and the forming of all the logic of discourse.” He does speculate about later stages of the perfection of the species, “when the ideas of men began to spread and multiply, and when closer communication was established among them, [and] they sought more numerous signs and a more extensive language.” But he must, unhappily, abandon “the following difficult problem: which was most necessary, previously formed society for the institution of languages, or previously invented languages for the establishment of society?”

 

The Cartesians cut the Gordian knot by postulating the existence of a species-specific characteristic, a second substance that serves as what we might call a “creative principle” alongside the “mechanical principle” that determines totally the behaviour of animals. There was, for them, no need to explain the origin of language in the course of historical evolution. Rather, man’s nature is qualitatively distinct: there is no passage from body to mind. We might reinterpret this idea in more current terms by speculating the rather sudden and dramatic mutations might have led to qualities of intelligence that are, so far as we know, unique to humans, possession of language in the human sense being the most distinctive index of these qualities. [7] If this is correct, as at least a first approximation to the facts, the study of language might be expected to offer an entering wedge, or perhaps a model, for an investigation of human nature that would provide the grounding for a much broader theory of human nature.

 

To conclude these historical remarks, I would like to turn, as I have elsewhere, [8] to Wilhelm von Humboldt, one of the most stimulating and intriguing thinkers of the period. Humboldt was, on the one hand, one of the most profound theorists of general linguistics, and on the other, an early and forceful advocate of libertarian values. The basic concept of his philosophy is Bildung, by which, as J.W. Burrow expresses it, “he meant the fullest, richest, and most harmonious development of the potentialities of the individual, the community or the human race.” [9] His own thought might serve as an exemplary case. Though he does not, to my knowledge, explicitly relate his ideas about language to his libertarian social thought, there is quite clearly a common ground from which they develop, a concept of human nature that inspires each. Mill’s essay On Liberty takes as its epigraph Humboldt’s formulation of the “leading principle” of his thought: “the absolute and essential importance of human development in its richest diversity.” Humboldt concludes his critique of the authoritarian state by saying: “I have felt myself animated throughout with a sense of the deepest respect for the inherent dignity of human nature, and for freedom, which alone befits that dignity.” Briefly put, his concept of human nature is this:

 

The true end of Man, or that which is prescribed by the eternal and immutable dictates of reason, and not suggested by vague and transient desires, is the highest and most harmonious development of his powers to a complete and consistent whole. Freedom is the first and indispensable condition which the possibility of such a development presupposes; but there is besides another essential – intimately connected with freedom, it is true – a variety of situations. [10]

 

Like Rousseau and Kant, he holds that

 

nothing promotes this ripeness for freedom so much as freedom itself. This truth, perhaps, may not be acknowledged by those who have so often used this unripeness as an excuse for continuing repression. But it seems to me to follow unquestionably from the very nature of man. The incapacity for freedom can only arise from a want of moral and intellectual power; to heighten this power is the only way to supply this want; but to do this presupposes the exercise of the power, and this exercise presupposes the freedom which awakens spontaneous activity. Only it is clear we cannot call it giving freedom, when bonds are relaxed which are not felt as such by him who wears them. But of no man on earth – however neglected by nature, and however degraded by circumstances – is this true of all the bonds which oppress him. Let us undo them one by one, as the feeling of freedom awakens in men’s hearts, and we shall hasten progress at every step.

 

Those who do not comprehend this “may justly be suspected of misunderstanding human nature, and of wishing to make men into machines.”

 

Man is fundamentally a creative, searching, self-perfecting being: “To inquire and to create – these are the centres around which all human pursuits more or less directly revolve.” But freedom of thought and enlightenment are not only for the elite. Once again echoing Rousseau, Humboldt states, “There is something degrading to human nature in the idea of refusing to any man the right to be a man.” He is, then, optimistic about the effects on all of “the diffusion of scientific knowledge by freedom and enlightenment.” But “all moral culture springs solely and immediately from the inner life of the soul, and can only be stimulated in human nature, and never produced by external and artificial contrivances.” “The cultivation of the understanding, as of any of man’s other faculties, is generally achieved by his own activity, his own ingenuity, or his own methods of using the discoveries of others. . . .” Education, then, must provide the opportunities for selffulfillment; it can at best provide a rich and challenging environment for the individual to explore, in his own way. Even a language cannot, strictly speaking, be taught, but only “awakened in the mind: one can only provide the thread along which it will develop of itself.” I think that Humboldt would have found congenial much of Dewey’s thinking about education. And he might also have appreciated the recent revolutionary extension of such ideas, for example, by the radical Catholics of Latin America who are concerned with the “awakening of consciousness,” referring to “the transformation of the passive exploited lower classes into conscious and critical masters of their own destinies” [11] much in the manner of Third World revolutionaries elsewhere. He would, I am sure, have approved of their criticism of schools that are

 

more preoccupied with the transmission of knowledge than with the creation, among other values, of a critical spirit. From the social point of view, the educational systems are oriented to maintaining the existing social and economic structures instead of transforming them.[12]

 

But Humboldt’s concern for spontaneity goes well beyond educational practice in the narrow sense. It touches also the question of labour and exploitation. The remarks, just quoted, about the cultivation of understanding through spontaneous action continue as follows:

 

. . . man never regards what he possesses as so much his own, as what he does; and the labourer who tends a garden is perhaps in a true sense its owner, than the listless voluptuary who enjoys its fruits. . . . In view of this consideration, [13] it seems as if all peasants and craftsmen might be elevated into artists; that is, men who love their labour for its own sake, improve it by their own plastic genius and inventive skill, and thereby cultivate their intellect, ennoble their character, and exalt and refine their pleasures. And so humanity would be ennobled by the very things which now, thought beautiful in themselves, so often serve to degrade it. . . But, still, freedom is undoubtedly the indispensable condition, without which even the pursuits most congenial to individual human nature, can never succeed in producing such salutary influences. Whatever does not spring from a man’s free choice, or is only the result of instruction and guidance, does not enter into his very being, but remains alien to his true nature; he does not perform it with truly human energies, but merely with mechanical exactness.

 

If a man acts in a purely mechanical way, reacting to external demands or instruction rather than in ways determined by his own interests and energies and power, “we may admire what he does, but we despise what he is.” [14]

 

On such conceptions Humboldt grounds his ideas concerning the role of the state, which tends to “make man an instrument to serve its arbitrary ends, overlooking his individual purposes.” His doctrine is classical liberal, strongly opposed to all but the most minimal forms of state intervention in personal or social life.

 

Writing in the 1790s, Humboldt had no conception of the forms that industrial capitalism would take. Hence he is not overly concerned with the dangers of private power.

 

But when we reflect (still keeping theory distinct from practice) that the influence of a private person is liable to diminution and decay, from competition, dissipation of fortune, even death; and that clearly none of these contingencies can be applied to the State; we are still left with the principle that the latter is not to meddle in anything which does not refer exclusively to security. . . .

 

He speaks of the essential equality of the condition of private citizens, and of course has no idea of the ways in which the notion “private person” would come to be reinterpreted in the era of corporate capitalism. He did not foresee that “Democracy with its motto of equality of all citizens before the law and Liberalism with its right of man over his own person both [would be] wrecked on realities of capitalist economy.”15 He did not foresee that, in a predatory capitalist economy, state intervention would be an absolute necessity to preserve human existence and to prevent the destruction of the physical environment— I speak optimistically. As Karl Polanyi, for one, has pointed out, the self-adjusting market “could not exist for any length of time without annihilating the human and natural substance of society; it would have physically destroyed man and transformed his surroundings into a wilderness.” Humboldt did not foresee the consequences of the commodity character of labour, the doctrine (in Polanyi’s words) that “it is not for the commodity to decide where is should be offered for sale, to what purpose it should be used, at what price it should be allowed to change hands, and in what manner it should be consumed or destroyed.” But the commodity, in the case, is a human life, and social protection was therefore a minimal necessity to constrain the irrational and destructive workings of the classical free market. Nor did Humboldt understand that capitalist economic relations perpetuated a form of bondage which, as early as 1767, Simon Linguet had declared to be even worse than slavery.

 

It is the impossibility of living by any other means that compels our farm labourers to till the soil whose fruits they will not eat, and our masons to construct buildings in which they will not live. It is want that drags them to those markets where they await masters who will do them the kindness of buying them. It is want that compels them to go down on their knees to the rich man in order to get from him permission to enrich him. . . . What effective gain has the suppression of slavery brought him?. . . . He is free, you say. Ah! That is his misfortune. The slave was precious to his master because of the money he had cost him. But the handicraftsmen cost nothing to the rich voluptuary who employs him. . . . These men, it is said, have no master– they have one, and the most terrible, the most imperious of masters, that is need. It is this that reduces them to the most cruel dependence. [17]

 

If there is something degrading to human nature in the idea of bondage, then a new emancipation must be awaited, Fourier’s “third and last emancipatory phase of history,” which will transform the proletariat to free men by eliminating the commodity character of labor, ending wage slavery, and bringing the commercial, industrial, and financial institutions under democratic control. [18]

 

Perhaps Humboldt might have accepted these conclusions. He does agree that state intervention in social life is legitimate if “freedom would destroy the very conditions without which not only freedom but even existence itself would be inconceivable” – precisely the circumstances that arise in an unconstrained capitalist economy. In any event, his criticism of bureaucracy and the autocratic state stands as an eloquent forewarning of some of the most dismal aspects of modern history, and the basis of his critique is applicable to a broader range of coercive institutions than he imagined.

 

Though expressing a classical liberal doctrine, Humboldt is no primitive individualist in the style of Rousseau. Rousseau extols the savage who “lives within himself”; he has little use for “the sociable man, always outside of himself, [who] knows how to live only in the opinion of others . . . from [whose] judgement alone . . . he draws the sentiment of his own existence.”19 Humboldt’s vision is quite different:

 

. . . the whole tenor of the ideas and arguments unfolded in this essay might fairly be reduced to this, that while they would break all fetters in human society, they would attempt to find as many new social bonds as possible. The isolated man is no more able to develop than the one who is fettered.

 

Thus he looks forward to a community of free association without coercion by the state or other authoritarian institutions, in which free men can create and inquire, and achieve the highest development of their powers – far ahead of his time, he presents an anarchist vision that is appropriate, perhaps, to the next stage of industrial society. We can perhaps look forward to a day when these various strands will be brought together within the framework of libertarian socialism, a social form that barely exists today though its elements can be perceived: in the guarantee of individual rights that has achieved its highest form – though still tragically flawed – in the Western democracies; in the Israeli kibbutzim; in the experiments with workers’ councils in Yugoslavia; in the effort to awaken popular consciousness and create a new involvement in the social process which is a fundamental element in the Third World revolutions, coexisting uneasily with indefensible authoritarian practice.

 

A similar concept of human nature underlies Humboldt’s work on language. Language is a process of free creation; its laws and principles are fixed, but the manner in which the principles of generation are used is free and infinitely varied. Even the interpretation and use of words involves a process of free creation. The normal use of language and the acquisition of language depend on what Humboldt calls the fixed form of language, a system of generative processes that is rooted in the nature of the human mind and constrains but does not determine the free creations of normal intelligence or, at a higher and more original level, of the great writer or thinker. Humboldt is, on the one hand, a Platonist who insists that learning is a kind of reminiscence, in which the mind, stimulated by experience, draws from its own internal resources and follows a path that it itself determines; and he is also a romantic, attuned to cultural variety, and the endless possibilities for the spiritual contributions of the creative genius. There is no contradiction in this, any more than there is a contradiction in the insistence of aesthetic theory that individual works of genius are constrained by principle and rule. The normal, creative use of language, which to the Cartesian rationalist is the best index of the existence of another mind, presupposes a system of rules and generative principles of a sort that the rationalist grammarians attempted, with some success, to determine and make explicit.

 

The many modern critics who sense an inconsistency in the belief that free creation takes place within – presupposes, in fact – a system of constraints and governing principles are quite mistaken; unless, of course, they speak of “contradiction” in the loose and metaphoric sense of Schelling, when he writes that “without the contradiction of necessity and freedom not only philosophy but every nobler ambition of the spirit would sink to that death which is peculiar to those sciences in which that contradiction serves no function.” Without this tension between necessity and freedom, rule and choice, there can be no creativity, no communication, no meaningful acts at all.

 

I have discussed these traditional ideas at some length, not out of antiquarian interest, but because I think that they are valuable and essentially correct, and that they project a course we can follow with profit. Social action must be animated by a vision of a future society, and by explicit judgements of value concerning the character of this future society. These judgements must derive from some concept of human nature, and one may seek empirical foundations by investigating human nature as it is revealed by human behaviour and human creations, material, intellectual, and social. We have, perhaps, reached a point in history when it is possible to think seriously about a society in which freely constituted social bonds replace the fetters of autocratic institutions, rather in the sense conveyed by the remarks of Humboldt that I quoted, and elaborated more fully in the tradition of libertarian socialism in the years that followed.

 

Predatory capitalism created a complex industrial system and an advanced technology; it permitted a considerable extension of democratic practice and fostered certain liberal values, but within limits that are now being pressed and must be overcome. It is not a fit system for the mid-twentieth century. It is incapable of meeting human needs that can be expressed only in collective terms, and its concept of competitive man who seeks only to maximize wealth and power, who subjects himself to market relationships, to exploitation and external authority, is antihuman and intolerable in the deepest sense. An autocratic state is no acceptable substitute; nor can the militarized state capitalism evolving in the United States or the bureaucratized, centralized welfare state be accepted as the goal of human existence. The only justification for repressive institutions is material and cultural deficit. But such institutions, at certain stages of history, perpetuate and produce such a deficit, and even threaten human survival. Modern science and technology can relieve people of the necessity for specialized, imbecile labour. They may, in principle, provide the basis for a rational social order based on free association and democratic control, if we have the will to create it.

 

A vision of a future social order is in turn based on a concept of human nature. If in fact humans are indefinitely malleable, completely plastic beings, with no innate structures of mind and no intrinsic needs of a cultural or social character, then they are fit subjects for the “shaping of behavior” by the state authority, the corporate manager, the technocrat, or the central committee. Those with some confidence in the human species will hope this is not so and will try to determine the intrinsic human characteristics that provide the framework for intellectual development, the growth of moral consciousness, cultural achievement, and participation in a free community. In a partly analogous way, a classical tradition spoke of artistic genius acting within and in some ways challenging a framework of rule. Here we touch on matters that are little understood. It seems to me that we must break away, sharply and radically, from much of modern social and behavioral science if we are to move toward a deeper understanding of these matters.

 

Here, too, I think that the tradition I have briefly reviewed has a contribution to offer. As I have already observed, those who were concerned with human distinctiveness and potential repeatedly were led to a consideration of the properties of language. I think that the study of language can provide some glimmerings of understanding of rule-governed behavior and the possibilities for free and creative action within the framework of a system of rules that in part, at least, reflect intrinsic properties of human mental organization. It seems to me fair to regard the contemporary study of language as in some ways a return to the Humboldtian concept of the form of language: a system of generative processes rooted in innate properties of mind but permitting, in Humboldt’s phrase, an infinite use of finite means. Language cannot be described as a system of organization of behaviour. Rather, to understand how language is used, we must discover the abstract Humboldtian form of language – its generative grammar, in modern terms. To learn a language is to construct for oneself this abstract system, of course unconsciously. The linguist and pyschologist can proceed to study the use and acquistion of language only insofar as they have some grasp of the properties of the system that has been mastered by the person who knows the language. Furthermore, it seems to me that a good case can be made in support of the empirical claim that such a system can be acquired, under the given conditions of time and access, only by a mind that is endowed with certain specific properties that we can now tentatively describe in some detail. As long as we restrict ourselves, conceptually, to the investigation of behavior, its organization, its development through interaction with the environment, we are bound to miss these characteristics of language and mind. Other aspects of human psychology and culture might, in principle, be studied in a similar way.

 

Conceivably, we might in this way develop a social science based on empirically wellfounded propositions concerning human nature. Just as we study the range of humanly attainable languages, with some success, we might also try to study the forms of artistic expression or, for that matter, scientific knowledge that humans can conceive, and perhaps even the range of ethical systems and social structures in which humans can live and function, given their intrinsic capacities and needs. Perhaps one might go on to project a concept of social organization that would – under given conditions of material and spiritual culture – best encourage and accommodate the fundamental human need – if such it is – for spontaneous initiative, creative work, solidarity, pursuit of social justice.

 

I do not want to exaggerate, as I no doubt have, the role of investigation of language. Language is the product of human intelligence that is, for the moment, most accessible to study. A rich tradition held language to be a mirror of mind. To some extent, there is surely truth and useful insight in this idea.

 

I am no less puzzled by the topic “language and freedom” than when I began – and no less intrigued. In these speculative and sketchy remarks there are gaps so vast that one might question what would remain, when metaphor and unsubstantiated guess are removed. It is sobering to realize – as I believe we must – how little we have progressed in our knowledge of human beings and society, or even in formulating clearly the problems that might be seriously studied. But there are, I think, a few footholds that seem fairly firm. I like to believe that the intensive study of one aspect of human psychology – human language – may contribute to a humanistic social science that will serve, as well, as an instrument for social action. It must, needless to say, be stressed that social action cannot await a firmly established theory of human nature and society, nor can the validity of the latter be determined by our hopes and moral judgements. The two – speculation and action – must progress as best they can, looking forward to the day when theoretical inquiry will provide a firm guide to the unending, often grim, but never hopeless struggle for freedom and social justice.

  

Suggested Reading

 

[1] F W J Schelling, Philosophical Inquiries into the Nature of Human Freedom, trans. and ed. James Gutmann (Chicago: Open Court Publishing Co., 1936).

 

[2] R D Masters, introduction to his edition of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, First and Second Discourses, (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1964).

 

[3] Compare Proudhon, a century later: “No long discussion is necessary to demonstrate that the power of denying a man his thought, his will, his personality, is a power of life and death, and that to make a man a slave is to assassinate him.”

 

[4] Cited in A Lehning, ed., Bakunin, Etatisme et anarchie (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1967), editor’s note 50, from P Schrecker, “Kant et la révolution francaise,” Revue philosophique, September–December 1939.

 

[5] I have discussed this matter in Cartesian Linguistics (New York: Harper & Row, 1966) and Language and Mind (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, extended ed., 1972).

 

[6] See the references of note 5, and also my Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1969), chap. 1, sec. 8.

 

[7] I need hardly add that this is not the prevailing view. For discussion, see E.H. Lenneberg, Biological Foundations of Language (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1967); my Language and Mind; E.A. Drewe et al., “A Comparative Review of the Results of Behavioural Research on Man and Monkey,” (London; Institute of Psychiatry, unpublished draft, 1969); P.H. Lieberman, D.H. Klatt, and W.H. Wilson, “Vocal Tract Limitations on the Vowel Repertoires of Rhesus Monkeys and other Nonhuman Primates,” Science, June 6, 1969; and P.H. Lieberman, “Primate Vocalizations and Human Linguistic Ability,” Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, vol. 44, no. 6 (1968).

 

[8] In the books cited above, and in Current Issues in Linguistic Theory (New York: Humanities Press, 1964).

 

[9] J W Burrow, introduction to his edition of Wilhelm von Humboldt, The Limits of State Action (London: Cambridge University Press, 1969), from which most of the following quotes are taken.

 

[10] Compare the remarks of Kant, quoted above. Kant’s essay appeared in 1793; Humboldt’s was written in 1791–92. Parts appeared, but it did not appear in full during his lifetime. See Burrow, introduction to Humboldt, Limits of State Action.

 

[11 ] Thomas G Sanders, “The Church in Latin America,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 48, no. 2 (1970).

 

[12] Ibid, The source is said to be the ideas of Paulo Freire. Similar criticism is widespread in the student movement in the West. See, for example, Mitchell Cohen and Dennis Hale, eds., The New Student Left rev. ed. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967), chap. 3.

 

[13] Namely, that a man “only attains the most matured and graceful consummation of his activity, when his way of life is harmoniously in keeping with his character”–that is, when his actions flow from inner impulse.

 

[14] The latter quote is from Humboldt’s comments on the French Constitution, 1791–parts translated in Marianne Cowan, ed., Humanist Without Portfolio: An Anthology (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1963).

 

[15] Rudolf Rocker, “Anarchism and Anarcho-syndicalism,” in Paul Eltzbacher, Anarchism (London: Freedom Press, 1960). In his book Nationalism and Culture (London: Freedom Press, 1937), Rocker describes Humboldt as “the most prominent representative in Germany” of the doctrine of natural rights and of the opposition to the authoritarian state. Rousseau he regards as a precursor of authoritarian doctrine, but he considers only the Social Contract, not the far more libertarian Discourse on Inequality. Burrow observes that Humboldt’s essay anticipates “much nineteenth century political theory of a populist, anarchist and syndicalist kind” and notes the hints of the early Marx. See also my Cartesian Linguistics, n. 51, for some comments.

 

[16] Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time (Boston: Beacon Press, 1957).

 

[17] Cited by Paul Mattick, “Workers’ Control,” in Priscilla Long, ed., The New Left (Boston: Porter Sargent, 1969), p. 377.

 

[18] Cited in Martin Buber, Paths in Utopia (Boston: Beacon Press, 1958). p. 19

 

CHOMSKY.INFO

 

Holy Willie's Prayer (pages 21-25 of the The Glenriddel Manuscripts, which contain a selection of Burn’s poems and letters, compiled in two volumes, for presentation to Burns's friend, Robert Riddell of Glenriddell (1755-1794), during the years 1791 to 1793.) The first volume, contains copies of poems both in Burns's hand and in that of a scribe. It contains over 50 poems, most famously a full version of Holy Willie's Prayer. This is the most devastating and amusing of Burns's diatribes against the apparent hypocrisy of certain sections of his native Church. It is directed against William Fisher, a farmer in Montgarswood and an elder of Mauchline Kirk. Burns uses this hypocrite - who had initiated disciplinary action against the poet's friend, Gavin Hamilton, for failing to attend the Kirk regularly - to savage the orthodox Calvinist doctrine of double predestination. The satire was so severe that it circulated in handwritten form for some three years before its publication as part of a pamphlet. Written in August 1785, this is one of the poet's earliest satirical works on orthodox Calvinism and is the only version of the poem in Burns's hand.

More ....

 

Mah piercing,mah tattoo,mah life in the shadow。。。！

 

✖✖✖ If you like you can see Punk ☆'s photos on Flickriver

   

Song : Jesus of suburbia

Singer : Green Day

 

[Part 1]

I'm the son of rage and love

The Jesus of Suburbia

From the bible of none of the above

On a steady diet of soda pop and Ritalin

No one ever died for my sins in hell

As far as I can tell

At least the ones I got away with

 

And there's nothing wrong with me

This is how I'm supposed to be

In a land of make believe

That don't believe in me

 

Get my television fix sitting on my crucifix

The living room or my private womb

While the moms and Brads are away

To fall in love and fall in debt

To alcohol and cigarettes and Mary Jane

To keep me insane and doing someone else's cocaine

 

And there's nothing wrong with me

This is how I'm supposed to be

In a land of make believe

That don't believe in me

 

[Part 2: City Of The Damned]

 

At the center of the Earth

In the parking lot

Of the 7-11 where I was taught

The motto was just a lie

It says home is where your heart is

But what a shame

Cause everyone's heart

Doesn't beat the same

It's beating out of time

 

City of the dead

At the end of another lost highway

Signs misleading to nowhere

City of the damned

Lost children with dirty faces today

No one really seems to care

 

I read the graffiti

In the bathroom stall

Like the holy scriptures of a shopping mall

And so it seemed to confess

It didn't say much

But it only confirmed that

The center of the earth

Is the end of the world

And I could really care less

 

City of the dead

At the end of another lost highway

Signs misleading to nowhere

City of the damned

Lost children with dirty faces today

No one really seems to care

 

[Part 3: I don't care]

 

I don't care if you don't

I don't care if you don't

I don't care if you don't care

[x4]

 

I don't care

 

Everyone is so full of shit

Born and raised by hypocrites

Hearts recycled but never saved

From the cradle to the grave

We are the kids of war and peace

From Anaheim to the middle east

We are the stories and disciples

Of the Jesus of suburbia

Land of make believe

That don't believe in me

Land of make believe

And I don't believe

And I don't care!

I don't care! [x4]

 

[Part 4: Dearly beloved]

 

Dearly beloved are you listening?

I can't remember a word that you were saying

Are we demented or am I disturbed?

The space that's in between insane and insecure

Oh therapy, can you please fill the void?

Am I retarded or am I just overjoyed

Nobody's perfect and I stand accused

For lack of a better word, and that's my best excuse

 

[Part 5: Tales of another broken home]

 

To live and not to breathe

Is to die In tragedy

To run, to run away

To find what you believe

And I leave behind

This hurricane of fucking lies

 

I lost my faith to this

This town that don't exist

So I run

I run away

To the light of masochist

And I leave behind

This hurricane of fucking lies

And I walked this line

A million and one fucking times

But not this time

 

I don't feel any shame

I won't apologize

 

When there ain't nowhere you can go

Running away from pain

When you've been victimized

Tales from another broken home

 

You're leaving...

You're leaving...

You're leaving...

Ah you're leaving home...

 

The Concept of this photo is about Hypocrites. They practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one's own behavior does not conform. The Plastic Mask symbolize their hidden evil identity and the Cards represents their daily activity of influencing and destroying other people lives.

I should perhaps make it clear that this was not my meal: hypocritically, I have difficulty eating creatures that fix me with their gaze!

I think it's so sick and hypocritical that the media attacks Michael Phelps for a picture of him smoking a bong. What about all the other junkies we hold up on pedestals like the coke-head actors, steroid abusing athletes and the disgusting politicians that peddle REAL drugs like Prozac and Oxycontin to poor addicted Americans?!

 

Marijuana is NOT a drug, and it has an extraordinary amount of medical uses. This county's marijuana laws are insanely backward and are in need of an EXTREME re-adjustment. We spend less money on marijuana research than any other country in the world. Yet it's per pound more expensive than gold. That's because... uhhh... EVERYBODY SMOKES IT!

 

Phelps IS a hero, and without him the U.S. would have been a SHAME at the 2008 Summer olympics. It's typical of our ridiculous country to stab him in the back for taking a puff of weed... yet shower praise on other drug addicted celebrity assholes.

 

the end

 

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When people like us are born we are white meaning pure and innocence. In the photo this is represented by the white finger. But as we get older that purity goes away and we become “muddied”,and are now represented by the shadows. The contrast between the two colors really makes it seem like in this world you are either pure or you're not.

This photo also demonstrates depth of field because i placed the thumb over other crumbs and also placed this thumb in front of other half thumbs. By showing depth of field I made the photo 3D and make it seem as if its pooping up at you.

To me this photo is a type of hypocrite. meaning that humans are represented by this white color but in that we are pure and innocent but in real life that is not true.

This photo really helped me understand the process of trial and error when working with photography. when i first imagined this photo i thought of having more than one finger all different shapes and sizes, but after taking the photo i realized that that was too much to swallow and didn't have a point behind it. So i crushed other fingers and was left with one.

There have been many and varied references to the Marquis de Sade in popular culture, including fictional works and biographies. The namesake of the psychological and subcultural term sadism, his name is used variously to evoke sexual violence, licentiousness and freedom of speech. In modern culture his works are simultaneously viewed as masterful analyses of how power and economics work, and as erotica. Sade's sexually explicit works were a medium for the articulation of the corrupt and hypocritical values of the elite in his society, which caused him to become imprisoned. He thus became a symbol of the artist's struggle with the censor. Sade's use of pornographic devices to create provocative works that subvert the prevailing moral values of his time inspired many other artists in a variety of media. The cruelties depicted in his works gave rise to the concept of sadism. Sade's works have to this day been kept alive by artists and intellectuals because they espouse a philosophy of extreme individualism that became reality in the economic liberalism of the following centuries.

  

...taken on the stairs of the Deutsches Verpackungs Museum, the packaging museum...

 

Heidelberg, Germany...

Visonless Administrators.

 

Contradictions alternant les perspectives postuler les postulations conflits inquiétants différentes positions hypocrites idées perturbatrices objections de conscience,

incertam analyzes permanens perniciosius hominum genus affirmationum spiritali downing sansculottism satis iniquum rebus reddere conabimur,

Αποφασιστικότητα θεμελίωση ατελή άτομα αδιάψευστοι στόχοι αφορούσαν πληροφορίες διαμορφωτικά στάδια σκιώδεις στιγμές στροφή,

Неудовлетворительные доказательства познаваемые интуиции демонстрации предложения философские обстоятельства генезис результаты бесконечные дезертиры,

Compilări distincții egale doctrine devieri discrepanțe preferate tratate înmulțite concordanțe consiliere întrebări răspunsuri dominante,

Unentbehrliche Sinne schwierige Interpretationen rückseitige Aussagen zeitgenössische transzendentale Texte naiver grundlegender Realismus,

فائدة مربحة تعترف العدالة الفكر المعرفة فعالة فرضت الأفعال اللازمة مرسوم التوحيد قوانين مشبعة,

学んだ神の霊的永遠性上の知恵最高の喜び爽やかな光コミュニケーション平和な神聖な愛の模範キリスト永遠の天国教え失われた目.

Steve.D.Hammond.

My 3rd Explore!!! (Sept. 27, 2008)

 

this is me being silly... as usual

 

You wake up late for school man you don't wanna go

You ask you mom, "Please?" but she still says, "No!"

You missed two classes and no homework

But your teacher preaches class like you're some kind of jerk

 

You gotta fight for your right to party

 

You pops caught you smoking and he said, "No way!"

That hypocrite smokes two packs a day

Man, living at home is such a drag

Now your mom threw away your best porno mag

One Must Fellowship Clearly How to Discern Between the Reality of the Truth and Bible Knowledge and Doctrine

 

Q : What is the truth? What is Bible knowledge and doctrine?

  

Bible Verses for Reference:

 

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelled among us, … full of grace and truth” (Jhn 1:1, 14).

 

“I am the way, the truth, and the life” (Jhn 14:6).

 

“Sanctify them through your truth: your word is truth” (Jhn 17:17).

 

“He answered and said to them, Well has Esaias prophesied of you hypocrites, as it is written, This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. However, in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men. For laying aside the commandment of God, you hold the tradition of men, as the washing of pots and cups: and many other such like things you do. And he said to them, Full well you reject the commandment of God, that you may keep your own tradition. … Making the word of God of none effect through your tradition, which you have delivered: and many such like things do you” (Mak 7:6-9, 13).

  

Relevant Words of God:

 

God is the truth, the way, and the life.

 

from “The Appearance of God Has Brought a New Age” in The Word Appears in the Flesh

 

The truth put into human language is man’s aphorism; humanity will never experience it fully, and humanity should live in reliance on it. A piece of truth can let all of humanity survive for thousands of years, and truth is the life of God Himself, representing His own disposition, representing His own substance, representing everything within Him.

 

from “Do You Know What Truth Really Is?” in Records of Christ’s Talks

 

No matter what stage you have arrived at in your experience, you are inseparable from God’s word or the truth, and what you understand of God’s disposition and what you know of what God has and is are all expressed in God’s words; they are inextricably linked with the truth. God’s disposition and what He has and is themselves are the truth; the truth is an authentic manifestation of God’s disposition and what He has and is. It makes what God has and is concrete and expressly states it; it tells you more straightforwardly what God likes, what He doesn’t like, what He wants you to do and what He does not permit you to do, what people He despises and what people He delights in. Behind the truths that God expresses people can see His pleasure, anger, sorrow, and happiness, as well as His essence—this is the revealing of His disposition.

 

from “God’s Work, God’s Disposition, and God Himself III” in Continuation of The Word Appears in the Flesh

 

My words are the truth, the way, and the life.

 

from “You Ought to Consider Your Deeds” in The Word Appears in the Flesh

 

The truth is the most real of life’s aphorisms, and the highest of such aphorisms among all mankind. Because it is the requirement that God makes of man, and is the work personally done by God, thus it is called life’s aphorism. It is not an aphorism summed up from something, nor is it a famous quote from a great figure; instead, it is the utterance to mankind from the Master of the heavens and earth and all things, and not some words summed up by man, but the inherent life of God. And so it is called the highest of all life’s aphorisms.

 

from “Only Those Who Know God and His Work Can Satisfy God” in The Word Appears in the Flesh

 

Everything that God does is truth and life. The truth for mankind is something that they cannot lack in their lives, that they can never do without; you could also say that it’s the greatest thing. Although you can’t look at it or touch it, its importance to you cannot be ignored; it is the only thing that can bring peace to your heart.

 

from “God’s Work, God’s Disposition, and God Himself III” in Continuation of The Word Appears in the Flesh

 

This truth is the life disposition of normal humanity, which is to say, that which was required of man when God created him in the beginning, namely, all of normal humanity (including human sense, insight, wisdom, and the basic knowledge of being man).

 

from “Only Those Who Know God and His Work Can Satisfy God” in The Word Appears in the Flesh

 

What is the truth? … (It’s people’s principles of conduct in their lives.) Mm, it’s their principles of practice in their lives, the foundation of their lives. What do you rely on in your life? What do you feel in your heart? What is your direction, your goal in the things you do? If you have the reality of the truth, then that reality of the truth is your goal, your direction, and your principle for living.

 

from “Only by Often Maintaining an Attitude of Seeking and Obedience Can One Enter Into

 

the Reality of the Truth” in Records of Christ’s Talks

 

Christ of the last days brings life, and brings the enduring and everlasting way of truth. This truth is the path through which man shall gain life, and the only path by which man shall know God and be approved by God.

 

from “Only Christ of the Last Days Can Give Man the Way of Eternal Life” in The Word Appears in the Flesh

 

Some people work and preach sermons and, although on the surface it looks as though they are fellowshiping about God’s word, all they are saying is the literal meaning of God’s word, with the essence of the word left totally unspoken. Their sermons are like teaching from a language textbook, arranged item by item, aspect by aspect, and when they are done everyone sings their praises, saying: “Oh, this preacher is so practical. They preached so well and in such detail.” After they are done preaching, they tell others to put together what has been preached and to hand it out to everybody. By doing this, they deceive others and all that they preach are fallacies. On the surface, it looks as though they are preaching only God’s word and that their words conform to the truth. But if you discern more carefully, you will see that all they say are the words of doctrine and are just false reasoning. Their words also contain some imaginings, conceptions and there are some words that delineate God. Does not preaching in this way interrupt God’s work? It is a way of serving that defies God.

 

from “Only by Seeking the Truth Can You Obtain Changes in Your Disposition” in Records of Christ’s Talks

  

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Spike Lee's newest collaboration is an absolut sell out

Ancient Trees (11th Century) @ Ripley Castle,England,UK

 

THE DEER PARK CONTAINS SEVERAL MAGNIFICENT TREES. SOME HAVE PROBABLY BEEN HERE SINCE THE 11TH CENTURY. CERTAINLY THESE OAKTREES MUST BE VERY OLD TO ACHIEVE A GIRTH OF 28.5'.

 

The Ingilby family celebrates 700 years at Ripley CastleThe Ingleby family can trace its history back to 1090, when Sir Robert Ingleby owned land in the village of Ingleby, near Saxelby, Lincs. Another branch of the family had extensive lands in and around Ingleby Greenhow and Ingleby Mill in North Yorkshire. When Sir Thomas Ingleby (c1290-1352) married the heiress Edeline Thwenge in 1308/9 she came with a very substantial dowry: Ripley Castle and its surrounding estates. Like most wedding presents, it has taken the family several generations to work out what to do with it! Life was far from easy: in 1318 the Scots, under Sir James ‘Black’ Douglas, plundered the region mercilessly, destroying 140 of the 160 houses in nearby Knaresborough. In the following year a bovine plague killed almost all of the cattle in the region, leaving thousands destitute and milk in short supply. In 1349 the Black Death struck, wiping out almost half of the local population and leaving numerous hamlets bereft of people.

 

The old village of Ripley was abandoned and the survivors built a new settlement on the site of the current village, on the doorstep of the castle. Sir Thomas was in great favour at the king’s court in London and was appointed as an Advocate in 1347. In 1351 he was appointed as a Justice of Assize. He died the following year and a magnificent tombchest in All Saint’s Church, Ripley, has the figures of Thomas and Edeline lying recumbent on the top, he in his armour and chain mail, she in a long robe and head dress. His oldest son, also called Thomas (1310-1369) also married well: Katherine Mauleverer was descended from Aelfwine, an Anglian of proud descent and one of the largest landowners in the North of England. He followed his father into the royal court, and accompanied Edward III on a hunting trip to the royal hunting forest of Knaresborough in 1357. The king found a wild boar and threw his spear at it, but only injured it. The boar charged the king’s horse, and the king was thrown to the ground. Thomas killed the boar, saving the king’s life. He was knighted, granted the boar’s head emblem as his family crest, and granted the right to hold a weekly market and annual horse fair in Ripley – both continued to be held until the early 1900’s. He was appointed as a justice of the King’s Bench in 1361, the only judge to hold that position apart from the Chief Justice. He could claim £40 pa for expenses, and a further £20pa for holding assizes in different counties.

 

Thomas’s brother, Sir Henry Ingleby, enjoyed an equally notable career. Rector of several parishes, he was appointed Master of the Rolls and Keeper of the Writs, serving under the Lord Chancellor William Edington: he had an office in the Tower of London and paid 40 shillings a year for the privilege of collecting the wool tax from the monasteries. He also oversaw the network of royal horse dealers who bought horses for the royal household, then sold them at a profit: the proceeds were used to build Windsor Castle. He died in 1375 and was buried in York Minster.

 

Sir John Ingleby (1434-1499) inherited the estate from his father at the age of five: his trustees had to testify to his correct date of birth in order to get the estates out of trust when he came of age. Their testimony paints a remarkable picture of an average day in the life of 15th century England. ‘Ralph Acclom remembers John’s birth because he was staying with John, Abbot of Fountains Abbey and rode across with him to baptize the baby. Ralph Apilton remembered John’s birth because he killed a deer between Ripley and Hampsthwaite. Robert Atkinson remembered the date because he rode with John Slingsby from Ripley to Sherburn and was robbed and beaten up, losing 28s and 8d.’John built the castle gatehouse – still there today – and married a wealthy heiress, Margery Strangeways of Harlsey Castle. She bore him a son and heir, William. In 1457 John abandoned his wife, son estates and earthly possessions to become a monk at Mount Grace Priory a Carthusian charterhouse near Northallerton which had been founded by his great grandfather – and was the last resting place for his parents.

 

He was appointed prior of Sheen in 1477 and first visitor of the English province between 1478 and 1496. The royal family worshipped at Sheen and John became the first of three executors for Queen Elizabeth, wife of Edward IV, in 1492. He was Henry VII’s special ambassador to Pope Innocent VIII, the king describing him as ‘my captain and envoy’ in one of the letters that John delivered to the Pope. Henry appointed him to oversee the conversion of priory at Sheen into the royal palace of Richmond between 1495 and 1499, and the Pope appointed him bishop of Llandaff on 27th June, 1496. He was buried at the church of St Nicholas in Hertford. His luckless wife, Margery, effectively became a widow when he took holy orders: she spent eleven years raising her son before marrying Richard, Lord Welles. Her luck was no better second time round: Edward IV reneged on a promise of safe keeping and had her husband beheaded in 1469, less than a year after their marriage.Sir William Ingleby (1518-1578) married the staunchly Catholic Ann Mallory and lived through a period of profound religious turbulence. When Henry VIII suppressed the smaller monasteries in 1536, Yorkshire’s old established Catholic families rose in revolt: the Pilgrimage of Grace was a populist and peaceful revolt that received such widespread support throughout the North that the king, heavily outnumbered, was forced to sue for peace. Reneging on a promise of safe keeping, Henry had the organizer, Robert Aske, arrested and put to death: 200 of his fellow pilgrims shared his fate. William received a reward for his staunch loyalty to the crown: Queen Mary wrote ‘For the opinion I have conceived of Sir William Ingleby…I have appointed him Treasurer of Berwick’. The Rising of the North in 1568 was potentially even more serious. The rebels set out from nearby Markenfield Hall and mustered an army that far outnumbered the king’s resources. Sir William, as High Sheriff of York, was obliged to muster additional troops but while doing so was surrounded in Ripon market square, by a group of rebels amongst whom were two of his sons, David and Francis. He had to fight his way out and, deciding that Ripley Castle was too weak to defend, took refuge in the duchy of Lancaster’s Knaresborough Castle until the troops under his command were strong enough to defeat the rebels. The earl of Sussex wrote to

 

William Cecil ‘Sir William Ingleby has served the Queen as truly and as chargeably from the first suspicion of this rebellion, as any man of his rank has done. He has delivered to me, from time to time, better intelligence than I have received from any others. He be such that her majesty may rest assured of his honesty and loyalty’. The rebellion was crushed: David and Francis fled into exile but Sir William’s own son in law,

 

Thomas Markenfield, was executed. Francis Ingleby (1550-1586) studied at Brasenose College, Oxford and read law at the Inner Temple. In 1583, having received a heavenly visitation while staying at Ripley, he emigrated to Reims and became ordained a Catholic seminary priest, returning to England in 1585. There are remarkable parallels with today: a native Englishman, passionately supporting a minority religion, goes abroad to receive militant training in his faith. He returns intent on spreading the word and overthrowing the established religion and government.

 

Francis was hung, drawn and quartered on York Knavesmire in 1586 and beatified by the Pope in 1987. His brother David (1547-1600) became known as ‘the Fox’ for his ability to outrun his pursuers. He was the man who guided the seminary priests around the North of England, leading them from one safe house to another. He married Lady Ann Neville, daughter of the exiled earl of Westmoreland – and another staunch Catholic. David was heavily implicated as a co-conspirator of John Ballard in the Babington treason, a conspiracy to remove Elizabeth I from the throne and replace her with Mary, Queen of Scots. He and Francis were described as ‘the most dangerous papists in the North’. A huge manhunt was launched to find them: a secret priest’s hiding hole, built to conceal them and other visiting priests while they were at Ripley, was only discovered by accident in 1964. A set of instructions written out for a spy being sent to the royal court in Scotland listed numerous things that the spy should and should not do: it ended with a very simple warning ‘ beware of David Ingleby’. David died in exile in Belgium: Elizabeth I, taking pity on his by now

impoverished widow, awarded her a pension provided she behaved herself. Their cousin Mary Ward spent several of her formative years staying with the Inglebys. In 1609 she founded a Catholic Society for Women, modeled on the Society of Jesus. They founded schools and taught in them, and the nuns were strongly encouraged to work in the community. Pope Urban VIII suppressed the order and it wasn’t until 1877 that her society was fully restored with papal blessing. The Bar Convent in York – which she founded - was the first teaching convent in the world. Sir William Ingleby (1546 - 1618) hosted a visit by James VI of Scotland en route to the king’s coronation as James I of England in 1603. Within two years William was heavily implicated in a plot to kill the king his family and hundreds of MP’s. The Ingilbys were related to or closely associated with, nine of the eleven principal conspirators of the infamous Gunpowder Plot. The mother of Robert and Thomas Wyntour, two of the leading conspirators, was an Ingleby. They had spent the week before the plot was unearthed at Ripley, buying horses from the surrounding district. Sir William and his son were arrested and charged with treason, but were, surprisingly, acquitted of all the charges. The third charge was that of bribing witnesses.

 

Sir William Ingleby (1594-1652) supported Charles I throughout the civil war, raising a troop of horse to fight under the generalship of Prince Rupert of the Rhine. He fought at the battle of Marston Moor, alongside his redoubtable sister, ‘Trooper’ Jane Ingleby, and somehow managed to escape the bloody rout that saw the king’s northern armies defeated for good. He made the safety of Ripley, but was his arrival was followed almost immediately by that of the victorious rebel general, Oliver Cromwell. Sir William leapt into the priest’s secret hiding place, leaving his sister to look after Cromwell. She at first refused to let him into the castle, swearing that she would defend it against all comers. After some negotiation, he was allowed to enter and spend the night there, guarded at pistol point by Jane, to prevent him from searching the castle for her brother. Cromwell, stunned at being held at gunpoint by a woman having just won the greatest victory of his career, did nothing and she saw him off the premises the following morning.

 

Sir William’s son, also called William (1620-1682) was deeply religious – and a closet ‘rebel’. He managed to get the family’s entire fortune captured by the rebels and his father, believing him to have done it on purpose, wrote him a blistering letter, threatening to disinherit him. The letter, signed ‘your loving father’, can be seen at the castle today.

 

William junior was not good looking: his portraits confirm that. In 1659 he employed a dating agent, a Mr E Pitt, to find him a wife, and again we have the correspondence: the mission was successful.Sir John Ingilby (1757 – 1835) married Elizabeth Amcotts, a Lincolnshire heiress. His father in law promised him funds to help the young couple rebuild the castle. Sir John had a row with his father in law half way through the project, and ended up so heavily in debt that he had to flee the country for eleven years while his land agent sold timber to pay off his debts. While he and his wife were abroad their oldest son died at the age of 18, and they were hustled from one European city to another as the Napoleonic wars consumed the continent. A bundle of frequently harrowing letters, written to his agent while he was in exile, survives. By the time he returned, his marriage was over: having had 11 children by his wife, he had a further 5 by Martha Webster, daughter of a local tenant farmer.

 

One son, Edward Webster, had problems involving a gamekeeper’s daughter near Skipton and was placed on board the RM Reynolds at Ramsgate with £200 and a supply of clean shirts: his stepbrother was ordered to remain on the dockside to ensure that he didn’t leave the vessel before it set sail for Sydney. This proved to be a life-changing experience and he and his successors thrived Down Under: Robert Webster was the minister of state for the Olympics in the NSW state government when Sydney won the bid for the games.

 

Sir John’s son Sir William Amcotts Ingilby (1783-1854) was the product of a broken home, and a great eccentric. He was a drinker, gambler and general reprobate: he became an MP, as many such people do. He was a leading Whig, and an outspoken supporter of the reform Act of 1832. His dress sense was spectacularly awful ‘’As to your friend, Sir William Ingilby I am told by a lady who saw him and absolutely took fright at it, that this eccentric baronet walks about Ripley and Ripon too, in his dressing gown, without smalls or loincloth on. The absence of the former was luckily disguised by the wrap of the gown, and is alleged on hearsay: but the naked throat, shirt collar displayed a la Milord Byron, had a striking effect, and produced the scarecrow impression.’ Believing that his tenants and workforce should be well housed in this age of industrial revolution, Sir William demolished the entire village of Ripley and rebuilt it as a model estate village, copying an idea that he had observed in Alsace Lorraine. Instead of a Town Hall, Ripley has a magnificent ‘Hotel de Ville’ – certainly the only one of its kind in England! He died without heir and left the estate to his cousin Henry, telling him that he was doing so because ‘ I don’t believe that you are any longer the canting hypocrite I took you for’. Sir William Ingilby (1829-1918) was a somewhat dictatorial Landlord. He disapproved of alcoholic drink being served on the Sabbath day and closed down the three pubs in the village when the Landlords refused to close on Sundays. The village remained dry for 71 years until the Boar’s Head opened in 1989. When a child ran out of the front door of one of the village houses and startled his horse, causing him to be deposited on the ground in the middle of the Main Street, he prevented further embarrassment by imposing an edict that the villagers should not use their front doors.

 

Having survived several plagues, invasions, civil wars, wars, religious turbulence, a plot to commit regicide, numerous periods of deep recession and everything else that has befallen this country in the last seven hundred years, the Ingilbys can justifiably breathe a sigh of relief that they have arrived safely at this astonishing landmark. Theirs is a story of how one family has been tossed around in the choppy waters of England’s stormy history – and somehow survived, despite being on the losing side more often than not. The history of the Ingilbys is a microcosm of the history of England and features a cast of extraordinarily brave, foolish, eccentric and courageous characters, black sheep and white. They have gone from high office in the court of kings and queens to running a wedding and conference venue and hotel, but they are still at Ripley and the story continues as they steer their family and business through these challenging times. Sir Thomas and Lady Ingilby have four sons and a daughter. A more detailed history of the family, complete with family trees not just of the Ingilby family but various families that became related to the Ingilbys by marriage over the centuries

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I have always supported measures and principles and not men. I have acted fearless and independent and I never will regret my course. I would rather be politically buried than to be hypocritically immortalized.

- Davy Crockett, frontiersman, soldier, and politician (17 Aug 1786-1836)

Said to have been erected in 1649 by John Budd, who later gave it to his daughter as a wedding present, this house is notable as one of the most distinguished surviving examples of English domestic architecture in America, according to the home’s application in the National Register of Historic Places.

 

The house was then moved from its original location and re-erected at a cost of twenty pounds "Boston Money," according to the application. “At the time of the move, the Old House was relocated on the northern outskirts of the Broadfields, a 240 acre tract of arable land which the local Indians had been cultivating for years. To the north of the house ran the King's Highway, now State Route 25."

 

The house was restored in 1940.

 

According to a 2018 Suffolk Times article, tests of the wood from the home revealed that it might have been constructed closer to 1699, 50 years after it was originally thought to have been built.

  

www.longisland.com/news/10-29-20/history-photos-of-old-ho...

  

This house, which notably commemorates English settlement on Long Island, is undoubtedly one of the most distinguished but least known examples of English domestic architecture in the United States. It was erected in 1649 by John Budd at Southold, some 10 miles northeast of its present site. A decade later, Budd built a more imposing home and gave his original house as a wedding gift to his daughter, Anna, bride of Benjamin Horton, who moved it to its present location and re-erected it. It subsequently passed into the hands of Joseph Wickham, a master tanner, who lived in it until his death, in 1734. Later, in 1784, it was confiscated from Parker Wickham, who had been a Loyalist during the War for Independence, after which its owners in turn were Jared Landon and William Harrison Case. The Case heirs donated it to the Congregational Society of Cutchogue.

 

Present Appearance. The house has two floors and an attic. On the first floor are the kitchen and "hall," and on the second floor are two bedrooms. The great brick chimney, whose top is pilastered, lies to the left of the center of the house. A steep winding stair leads to the second story. The stair from the second floor branches to give access to the attic, which is split in two by the great chimney.

 

The kitchen, on the left of the entrance, features a huge fireplace. The fireplace in the "hall," on the right of the entrance, is the same size. Both fireplaces have been somewhat reduced by the construction of smaller fireplaces inside the originals. The smaller fireplaces were added around the middle of the 18th century, probably when paneling was placed over the original walls.

 

The original random-width wallboards were removed and used on the exterior to replace the original hand-rived oak boards. The exterior was then lathed and plastered. Construction details throughout the house are unusually fine and reflect the work of a master builder. The three-part casement window frames on the north wall of the second floor are especially notable. Traces have also been found of the casement windows that were originally on the first floor.

 

The house was restored in 1940 in connection with the Southampton Old Town Tercentenary Celebration, through the efforts of the Tercentenary Committee, the Case family, and the Independent Congregational Church of Cutchogue. The church purchased the land and the Case family donated the building. Church funds and private contributions made the restoration possible. When the house was restored, the plastered walls and a saltbox roof were removed. The gunstock posts on the second floor and all interior framework were left exposed. Furnishings are of the 17th and 18th century. Among the historic items displayed is the original confiscation deed of 1784. The structure is in very good condition and is open to visitors on a regular schedule. [54]

  

www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/explorers/sitec46.htm

  

According to the results of a 2003 dendrochronology study, the house was built ca. 1699.[4] Cutchogue-New Suffolk Historical Council, the owner of the house, commissioned a second dendrochronology study in July 2017 to verify the build date, with the same results.[5][6]

 

Prior to 2017 The Old House was thought to have been built by John Budd on land east of town near a pond that became known as Budd Pond. John Budd's daughter Anna and her husband Benjamin Horton were deeded a house in 1658 as a wedding present. They moved it to a location in the village of Cutchogue. Benjamin's brother John inherited the house and sold it to Joseph Wickham in 1699. These events and transactions are well documented.[7]

 

Post 17th century

Edit

Parker Wickham (February 28, 1727 – May 22, 1785), famous for being a Loyalist politician during the American Revolution and who was banished from the state of New York under dubious circumstances, owned and lived in the house.[3] It was damaged by the Hurricane of 1938 which swept away surrounding trees, leaving it visible from the street and coming to public attention,[6] restored in 1940, and restored again in 1968.[3]

 

It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1961.[2] The house is located on the Cutchogue Village Green, along with the 1840 Old Schoolhouse, the 1704 Wickham Farmhouse, a barn, the Cutchogue New Suffolk Free Library, a 19th-century carriage house, and the Old Burying Ground dating from 1717. The buildings are owned and maintained by the Cutchogue-New Suffolk Historical Council, which gives guided tours in the summer.

  

"National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. July 9, 2010.

^ Jump up to: a b c "The Old House (Cutchogue)". National Historic Landmark summary listing. National Park Service. September 18, 2007. Archived from the original on June 6, 2011.

^ Jump up to: a b c d Greenwood, Richard (July 14, 1975). National Register of Historic Places Inventory-Nomination: The Old House (pdf). National Park Service. and Accompanying 5 photos, exterior, from 1975. (1.53 MB)

^ "New York". Oxford Tree-Ring Laboratory. Retrieved May 16, 2022.

^ Wick, Steve (April 12, 2018). "North Fork History Project: When was Cutchogue's Old House built?". The Suffolk Times. Retrieved April 12, 2018.

^ Jump up to: a b Siford, Rachel (June 22, 2017). "Cutchogue's Old House losing distinction as oldest English-style home in NYS". The Suffolk Times. Retrieved April 1, 2018.

^ Hall, Warren (1975). Pagans, Puritans, and Patriots of Yesterday’s Southold. Cutchogue-New Suffolk Historical Council. ASIN B0006CJTLS.

  

I am writing, not to argue “who came first” to Southold and Southampton, as debated in your article “So, who was really here first?” (Feb. 22), but to challenge the new assumption about Cutchogue’s venerable Old House, a National Historic Landmark, made by Zach Studenroth, director of the Cutchogue-New Suffolk Historical Council, who was featured in the article. Although I disagree with the current “reinterpreting” he is directing at the Old House that involves replacing longtime antique furnishings from local families with reproductions, I disagree even more strongly with the proposed renaming and redating of this National Historic Landmark based on inconclusive evidence from dendrochronology studies.

 

He now maintains, based on a dendrochronology study, that the Old House was not built in 1649 by John Budd, but in 1699 by Joseph Wickham when he came to Cutchogue 50 years later from Southampton. Mr. Studenroth and the recently hired curator now propose the landmark be renamed and redated the “1699 Joseph Wickham House.” Nor do I agree that some early local history was “little more than cheerleading” as stated in The Suffolk Times’ North Fork History Project article.

 

Mr. Studenroth’s assumption based wholly on dendrochronology is faulty. I believe the local historians, who have written that the Old House, built ca. 1649 in Southold by first settler John Budd, moved to its present site on the Cutchogue Village Green by Benjamin and Anna Budd Horton in 1660, and restored for the tercentenary celebration of Southold Town in 1940, are basically correct.

 

Although I’ve worked with Mr. Studenroth and respect his past work for the council, I believe strongly that he is incorrect in his new assumption about the Old House. How can he totally ignore the 50 years of documented residence of the Budds and Hortons, who lived there from 1649 to 1699, and just sweep them under the proverbial rug?

  

I have re-researched several local documents and histories, especially the transcription of the deed of sale of the property from John Horton (Benjamin’s brother and heir) to Joseph Wickham (1698-’99); “John Budd and Some of His Descendents,” by Lily Wright Budd; and “Pagans, Puritans, and Patriots of Yesterday’s Southold,” by Warren Hall. Both of the latter books by respected historians confirm the long-accepted history and dates of the Old House. I firmly believe the Old House was not built and first occupied by Joseph Wickham when he came to Cutchogue from Southampton in 1699.

 

Regrettably, Mr. Studenroth is basing his new assumption on a dendrochronology study, first conducted in 2007 when I was chair of the Old House Society, before we merged with the Historical Council. I basically ignored the study for reasons I’ll explain later. A more recent study supposedly was done under Mr. Studenroth’s direction.

 

Dendrochronology in its simplest form is a matter of counting tree rings — one ring, one year — on wood slivers or borings from timbers used in Colonial house framing. But it’s not always that simple. In fact, Dr. Ron Towner, associate professor of dendrochronology at the world-famous Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research at the University of Arizona, states “Only about 40 percent of tree samples are successfully dated by dendrochronology. Natural variations, sudden climate changes, or if a tree is planted near a creek or river, for example, it may get so much water that the rings no longer equate to each year elapsed.”

 

However, in a recent phone conversation with Dr. Towner, he explained that counting rings alone does not tell dendrochronologists what time period the tree is from. To find that out, scientists must focus on the pattern of rings rather than the number of them. I can’t see how a small boring can show a pattern, but a slice of the tree could. The slice would have to have been taken before the timber was installed in the building.

 

Also, in the case of the Old House, there is some speculation that it was built on John Budd’s land near Budd’s Pond in Hashamomuck, where much of the land is near water and marshes, not on his home lot in the village of Southold. If so, the timbers may have gotten so much water that the rings no longer equated to each year elapsed, as Dr. Towner speculated.

  

The Old House, venerated by not only the residents of Cutchogue in particular but the North Fork in general, as well as by visitors and historians from all over the world, must not be incorrectly re-interpreted and re-named based on inconclusive, most likely incorrect, research.

 

Since there is no definite proof for changing the name and date of the Old House, they must not be tampered with. It should keep the honor and distinction of “the oldest English house in the state” built in 1649. I am confident that the trustees of the Historical Council will understand and appreciate my research and will direct Mr. Studenroth not to change the date and name of the Old House, our National Historic

  

suffolktimes.timesreview.com/2018/03/equal-time-theres-mo...

  

In May 1637, a ship called the “Hector” sailed out of London, bound for Boston in England’s newly established American colonies. Aboard this ship was a wealthy British shipping merchant, John Budd, his wife Katherine Browne (1606 – 1674, a woman possibly of royal ancestry), and their children. Together, they were among my earliest ancestors to sail to America.

In August 1637, an exploring party of English settlers sailed out of Boston Harbor, went down the coast several miles, and landed at a place that the Native Americans called “Quinnipiac” (or “Long Water Place”). The explorers liked what they saw and left seven of their men to prepare the area for occupation by Puritan colonizers. On March 30, 1638, a large company of settlers sailed out of Boston for the new site. Among them were the Budds. On April 16, 1638, they landed at the new site to found New Haven Colony. Other ships followed, bringing more settlers. The settlers quickly began their new colony. In late 1638, they purchased the land from the area’s Native Americans. John Budd was assigned lot no. 56. On October 25, 1639, the settlers elected their community government. John Budd was among the men signing a Fundamentalist Agreement formally establishing New Haven Colony.

Most of the first settlers at New Haven were Puritans — a strict religious group that later formed the basis for the Congregational Church (United Church of Christ) in the United States. John Budd, however, was a member of the Church of England, which became the Episcopal Church in America. Because he was not Puritan, Budd lived in some tension with his neighbors. At one point, he was fined by the New Haven magistrates for hiding and protecting Quakers, a Christian group that the Puritans opposed and were trying to keep out of New Haven. In September 1640, John Budd left New Haven with his and some other New Haven families on a ship bound for the northeastern edge of Long Island to establish a settlement there, which they named Southold. Once again, Budd was an Anglican adherent amid Puritans set on establishing a new community structured around their specific religious and moral beliefs. Most of the other Southold founders had originally sailed under the leadership of the Puritan cleric Christopher Youngs, first from England to Salem, Massachusetts, in 1637 and then from Salem to New Haven. In New

Haven, Puritan leaders intent on establishing new religious communities in New England persuaded Rev. Youngs to sail across Long Island Sound with his followers to settle land on the island’s North Fork that they had acquired from the island’s Corchaug natives.

John Budd, who was beyond doubt the wealthiest man in the new settlement, quickly established himself as one of the leaders of the new community. Because Southold was included in the United Colonies of New England, its residents were expected to select Deputies to attend the colonies’ General Court in Hartford, Connecticut. Budd was the first deputy appointed to the court by the people of Southold. Budd was also the town’s first authorized officer to train the local home guard, a responsibility which earned him the title of Lieutenant. Budd was apparently so highly respected and successful in this responsibility that, when he made a trip overseas in 1654, colonial records in New Haven recorded that “By reason of Budd’s absence Southold is left destitute of a fitt man to exercise the military company there since Lt. Budd went to England.”

In 1649, Budd built his family a home east of town near a pond which became known as Budd’s Pond. In 1658, he deeded the house to his daughter and son-in-law, Anna and Benjamin Horton, as a wedding gift. They moved the house 10 miles away to the village of Cutchogue.

By some point in the early 1660s, either Budd or his son, John Budd, Jr., had bought a plot of land just west of the Barnabas Horton home plot in Southold as a new home site. The Southold Historical Society’s manual, Guide to Historic Markers, described this house as “probably the most pretentious of the early settler homes.”

Despite his civic leadership, Budd’s tenure in Southold apparently was one of controversy as well. He was a major landholder in Southold. As such, he was legally accountable to the local general court (composed solely of church members) who were required to review and approve or deny any settler’s request to sell his home or land. Budd clearly possessed a strong independent spirit, and in 1657 he sold some of his land without asking “permission.” As a result, he was sued by three other Southold settlers; the final disposition of this case is not clear.

Budd clearly grew restless during his tenure at Southold. As in New Haven, Southold’s general court governed the town in accord with strict Puritan standards, and Budd was still an Anglican. He apparently explored the predominantly Anglican settlements in Virginia, but decided against settling there. Budd’s true desire seems to have been, in essence, to establish his own colony, where he would have been answerable to no one, and he was willing to use his wealth to create this personal domain. In 1661, he decided to leave Long Island and move to an area that was at the time on the very southwestern edge of the Connecticut Colony.

In January 1660, three residents of Greenwich, Connecticut — Peter Disbrow, John Coe, and Thomas Stedwell — negotiated and purchased from the area’s Mohegan natives a tract of land southwest of Greenwich known as Peningo Neck. The land stretched on the west from a stream known as Blind Brook east to Long Island Sound. The sale apparently did not include Manussing Island in the Sound, just off the shore, so in June 1660, the three men purchased this land as well. In May 1661, they purchased additional land on the north edge of Peningo Neck.

Disbrow and the others in his party were more interested in securing title to land than in settling it immediately. This created an opportunity for someone else to take the lead in establishing a new community, and as a

A abandoned centuries-old house found in the woods near Cutchogue in the early 1900s was long thought to be the house built by John Budd and given to his daughter and son-in-law. Known as “The Old House,” it was was listed on the Register of National Historic Sites in 1962 and is still maintained by the Cutchogue -New Suffolk Historical Council. However, two dendrochronology studies done on the house in 2008 and 2017 each confirmed that it was built from trees felled in 1698 and could not possibly have been built until 1699, when Budd’s house and the land it stood on had long passed out of Budd and Horton family ownership.

 

successful and wealthy businessman, John Budd was quick to take advantage of the opportunity. On November 8, 1661, Budd concluded his separate negotiation with a Mohegan chief to buy a large (4,800-acre) piece of land immediately across Blind Brook from the Disbrow company’s landholdings. This land became known as Budd’s Neck. On November 12, 1661, Budd added to his landholdings by purchasing from the area’s natives some islands in the immediate vicinity. In June 1662, Budd then acted with Disbrow, Coe, and Stedwell jointly to purchase yet more land directly north of Budd’s Neck.

One of the first buildings constructed in this new community was Budd’s Mill, at the mouth of Blind Brook. He operated the grist mill, which proved to be very successful with the new inhabitants of Peningo Neck.

Disbrow selected the name of Hastings for his new holdings. He apparently also considered Budd’s lands to be part of the new Hastings town, whose settlement he intended to oversee. Budd obviously had other ideas. He was determined that his personal landholdings would be a separately governed jurisdiction. By the fall of 1664, he had assigned to his lands the name of Rye, perhaps because of his family’s close connections with the town of Rye in his native England. Disbrow regarded this behavior as a threat to the future of “his” colony. For the next several years, Budd and Disbrow battled in court over whose approach was to predominate. In the course of that legal action, it was agreed that the name Rye would be assigned to the entire Peningo Neck settlement area. The more substantial issues, however, were still unresolved in 1669, when John Budd turned over his landholdings in both Southold and Rye to his son, John Budd, Jr., and retired from public life.

Despite his contentiousness with Disbrow and resulting legal conflicts, Budd quickly established himself as a political leader across the entire Hastings/Rye area (again, much as he

had in Southold). Biographer Lily Wright Budd describes his responsibilities:

... John Budd was elected as the first representative when Hastings [formally] submitted to the jurisdiction of Connecticut on 26 January 1662 and he was elected as Hastings’ first Deputy to the General Court in Hartford on 26 March 1663.... At the session of the General Court in Hartford on the 8th of October 1663, “Lnt John Bud” makes his appearance, and “is appointed Commisioner for the Town of Hastings, and is invested with Magistraticall power within the limits of that Town.”

As magistrate, Budd was “commis- sioned to grant warrants” and “to marry persons,” and he had clear authority to arrest “such as are ouer- taken with drinke, swearing, Sabboath breaking, slighting of the ordinances, lying, vagrant persons, or any other that shall offend in any of these.”

As noted above, John Budd retired from public life in 1669. He died in Rye in 1670 and is presumed to have been buried in a private family plot a short distance north of Budd’s Mill.

The Budd family estate in Budd’s Neck was passed down through the generations to John Budd, Jr., then to Joseph Budd, then to his son John Budd

 

TO LEARN MORE

(1696–1757), my great-great-great- great-great-grandfather. In 1745, this latter John Budd sold the land — the bulk of it (over 250 acres) to a local merchant, Peter Jay, who named it “The Locusts.” The estate then became the childhood home to Peter’s son, John (1745–1827) — who was President of the Continental Congress (1778–1779), U.S. Secretary of Foreign Affairs (1784– 1789), the first Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1789–1795), and Governor of New York (1795–1801). Thus, much of the original Budd family estate in Rye, New York, is now a National Historic Landmark as the Jay Heritage Center.

Baird, Charles W. History of Rye, Westchester County, New York, 1660– 1870. Camden, ME: Picton Press, 1994 reprint.

Bayles, Donald M. Southold’s Founders and Their Home Lots. Southold, NY: Southold Historical Society, 2000.

Budd, Lily Wright. John Budd, 1599- 1670, and Some of His Descendants. Franktown, CO: 1992. Chapter 1, “John Budd and Katherine Browne”; “Katherine’s Legend: The Story of the Brownes and the Fitzalans.”

Cutchogue-New Suffolk Historical Council. “The Old House.” ( www.cutchoguenewsuffolkhistory.org /timeline/the-old-house-2/)

Frost, Josephine C. The Frost Genealogy: Descendants of William Frost of Oyster Bay, New York. New York: Frederick H. Hitchcock, 1912.

Hall, Warren. Pagans, Puritans, and Patriots of Yesterday’s Southold. Cutchogue, NY: Cutchogue-New Suffolk Historical Council, 1975.

Jay Heritage Center. Web page — “Biographical Sketches: Residents and Succession of Ownership of the Jay Estate in Rye” ( www.jaycenter.org/bio.html).

Rymph, Levi Budd. Come In and Sit a Spell! Wichita, KS: 1973. Basic genealogy of the ancestors of Levi Budd Rymph and Jessie Mae Hershey.

Siford, Rachel. “Cutchogue’s Old House Losing Distinction as Oldest English- style Home in NYS.” The Suffolk Times. June 22, 2017 (suffolktimes. timesreview.com/2018/04/north-fork -history-project-cutchogues-old- house-built/)

Southold Historical Society. Guide to Historic Markers: First List of Historic Markers Placed in Southold, Peconic, and Arshamomaque. Southold, NY: Southold Historical Society.

Wick, Steve. “North Fork History Project: When Was Cutchogue’s Old House Built?” The Suffolk Times. April 12, 2018 (suffolktimes. timesreview.com/2018/04/north-fork -history-project-cutchogues-old- house-built/)

  

bradleyrymph.com/genealogy_budd-john.pdf

  

Parker Wickham was born in Southold Town on eastern Long Island, New York on February 28, 1727. One of nine children, he was the son of Joseph Wickham and Abigail Parker. His father was a large landholder and area native who lived from 1701 to 1749, serving as a justice, town assessor, and commissioner of roads. Parker's grandfather, another Joseph Wickham, was a well-to-do master tanner who had moved from Connecticut to Southampton, Long Island before finally settling in the village of Cutchogue in Southold Town in 1699. Parker's great grandfather Thomas Wickham, a Puritan settler, emigrated to Wethersfield, Connecticut in about 1648 from England. One of Parker's brothers, Daniel Hull, was a New York City merchant, while his brother John was an Anglican minister. His sister Abigail was married to Rev. Thomas Paine, a son of Ruth Adams and a third cousin of President John Adams. Parker had a distinguished cousin in William Wickham, who belonged to an elite society called the Moot, of which Patriot leader John Jay was also a member. A Yale '53 graduate, William worked as an attorney in New York City and Orange County, where his son, George Duncan Wickham, later became a prominent businessman. Like Parker, William was a Loyalist during the American Revolution, but he emerged unscathed because he did not take an active role. His associate John Jay, who became President of the Continental Congress and first Chief Justice of the United States, was active after the war in working to repeal repressive anti-Loyalist laws that affected the Wickhams. Parker had another notable family member in Noyes Wickham, a second cousin who lived in Mattituck, a village about three miles from Parker's home that was also part of the Town of Southold. After the American Revolution, Noyes moved to Ridgebury in Orange County, New York, where he owned a 1,000 acre farm and was the head of a very large family with many descendants, as profiled in the book The Descendants of Noyes Wickham, Senior of Ridgebury, Orange Co., NY by Evelyn Wornham Wickham. Notable kin on Parker's mother's side includes Benjamin Harrison, 23rd President of the United States, who was a descendant of Parker's great grandparents Deliverance King and John Tuthill.

Parker resided in what was by then the ancestral home, a famous structure today known as the Old House (see picture), which is currently part of a museum complex on the village green of Cutchogue. Open to the public during the summer, it is considered one of the finest American examples of domestic 17th century English architecture, and was a mansion in its day when it was built in 1649 (see historic marker). One of the oldest houses in New York State, it had been constructed by prosperous shipping merchant John Budd, great grandson of the 16th Earl of Warwick, and given to his daughter Anna and son-in-law Benjamin Horton as a wedding present. The house was originally erected in the village of Southold, but in June of 1660 it was moved six miles to Cutchogue, then a wilderness area with no European settlers nearer than two days' journey to the west. The Hortons had no children, so Parker's grandfather purchased the house in 1699 and in 1749 it was inherited by Parker. As detailed below, the house was confiscated at the end of the American Revolution, and auctioned off in 1784 to Parker's nemesis Jared Landon, who because of Parker's efforts, had previously been imprisoned for guiding Patriot raids against Long Islanders. However, the Wickham family regained possession of the property in 1867, when it was purchased from Landon's grandnephew by William Harrison Case and his wife Hannah "Nancy" Wickham, Parker's great-granddaughter. They were the last family to live in the house, and by the early 1900's, the house was showing its age and became a storage facility for farm machinery. Eventually, its great historical value was recognized, and it was acquired from the Case family by the Independent Congregational Society of Cutchogue in 1939. With the help of many groups, it was restored and dedicated as part of the Tercentenary Celebration of Southold Town in 1940, became a National Historic Landmark in 1962 and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in October, 1966. In 1999, the 350th anniversary of the construction of the Old House was celebrated, with descendants from the Budd, Horton, Wickham, Landon and Case families attending. The rectangular house, which features clapboard siding and a spectacular English-style chimney, measures 20 x 40 feet, and has two floors and an attic, but no cellar. The first floor contains a kitchen and parlor, each with large fireplaces, while the second floor contains two bedrooms. Of utmost significance are the three-part casement window frames on the north wall of the second floor, considered the most outstanding examples of this architecture in the country (see picture).

 

Parker's father died in only his 47th year, so at age 22, Parker inherited a sizable amount of property including 590 acres of farmland in Cutchogue, 900 acres of additional property in nearby Riverhead, and the storied 445 acre Robins Island, situated in the center of Long Island's Peconic Bay. Parker's grandfather Joseph Wickham had purchased the Cutchogue property in 1699 and Robins Island in 1715. The Riverhead property had been given to Parker's parents in 1727 by his maternal grandfather John Parker. As the eldest son, Parker received all of the ancestral landholdings because his family believed in the English aristocratic concept of primogeniture. On December 14, 1752, Parker married Mary Goldsmith and they eventually had six children: Joseph Parker, John, Thomas, Parnel, Hellen and Sarah. Parker had already begun a slow but relentless climb in local area politics, first being elected to the position of Fence Viewer and Prisor of Damage in 1751, responsible for establishing property boundaries. In the years 1754 and 1755, he was elected Overseer of the Poor, charged with providing for the area's paupers. He was appointed justice for the County of Suffolk in 1763. After being elected town assessor in 1765 and 1766, he was elected town supervisor of Southold Town for the first time in 1767, the highest post of the local government, and held the position for an impressive nine one-year terms. At the time, the Town of Southold included what is today the Town of Riverhead, so Parker oversaw an area stretching approximately 35 miles along the north-east coast of Long Island, a district of about 121 square miles of land. In his capacity as a public servant, Parker was active in working to improve the living conditions of Long Island's few remaining Native Americans. Working with a legal representative of New York's colonial governor, he took statements from local citizens about Indian properties and the documentation bearing his signature still survives. Parker was also commissioned a major in the local militia, after he and seven other townsmen petitioned the lieutenant governor of New York to form themselves into "a compleat organized company of Troopers" for the Town of Southold.

 

Just 19 days before the start of the American Revolution, Parker left elected office for two crucial years, from April 1775 to March 1777, although it was clear he at least tacitly supported the Loyalist cause, as did many other family members, including his nephew John Wickham, the prominent Federalist, who enlisted in a Loyalist regiment. In August of 1776, Washington was routed by the British in the Battle of Long Island, so the Town of Southold came under firm British control. Many die-hard Patriots moved to Connecticut, which was used as a staging ground to launch raids into Long Island. While some of these raids were directed against British military posts, often times the raiders would pillage the farms of suspected Loyalists and even kidnap the owners. This caused economic hardship for the affected families and created an atmosphere of public fear. In April of 1777, Parker came out of political retirement and was elected to his ninth term as town supervisor, during a time when British military fortunes were at their peak, shortly before the crushing British defeat in upstate New York at Saratoga in October of that year, an event which proved to be the turning point of the war. With a clear mandate to improve public security and proclaiming that "I will not raise my hand against my king," Parker, in his role as an elected government official, denounced those he suspected of guiding the raids against Long Islanders, causing some to be jailed and earning him considerable enmity from certain neighbors, especially the Landons, a politically active family committed to the Patriot cause who had publicly quarreled with Parker before. However, Southold at the time had a majority of Loyalist citizens and Parker enjoyed wide, though hardly universal, support in his efforts to protect citizens from what he saw to be a fringe minority breaking the law. But on December 13, 1777, a Patriot force from Connecticut raided Southold and kidnapped Parker, who was still serving out his term as town supervisor. He was taken back to Connecticut, where he has held captive in a house under armed guard. When Washington learned of the raid, which included additional objectives besides Parker's abduction, he was quick to express his concerns that these operations did more harm than good, writing to a subordinate that he has "ever been averse to these small excursions, especially when they divert our attention from more material Objects."

 

Parker was paroled later in the war, so he returned to Long Island, which remained under British control, but on October 22, 1779, New York's legislature passed a bill of attainder which named Parker as one of 59 English sympathizers (and one of three in Suffolk County), stripping him of his property and banishing him from the state. Bills of attainder were outlawed by Article I of the Constitution of the United States in 1789, but previous to that time they were frequently used by lawmakers to destroy the careers of political rivals by declaring them guilty of some crime, but without any burden of proof. With Long Island still under British control, Parker had little to fear of being attainted, but after the British defeat at Yorktown in 1781, it was clear what the future held. Meanwhile, Parker's wife Mary died on April 4, 1783 at age 49 and was buried in Cutchogue. After the British evacuation of eastern Long Island on November 22, 1783, New York State was finally able to enforce its bill and Parker's property was appraised and sold at auction in the late summer of 1784 by the commissioners of forfeiture. Political opponent Jared Landon moved into Parker's home, while Robins Island, after being purchased at auction by two of Washington's top spies, went to Ezra L'Hommedieu, a Southold native who had prepared the confiscation bill while in the state assembly. Parker's estate in Riverhead was turned into the downtown district of that growing village. An ailing Parker had already been forced to move to New London County, Connecticut, due to the banishment provision of the act of attainder, which reads: "Persons herein before particularly named, shall be, and hereby are declared to be forever banished from this State; and each and every of them, who shall at any time Time hereafter be found in any Part of this State, shall be, and are hereby adjudged and declared guilty of Felony, and shall suffer Death as in Cases of Felony, without Benefit of Clergy." Broken by the experience, Parker soon died in Connecticut on May 22, 1785 and was buried there in Waterford (see gravestone). Just before his death, he wrote a family member that "I have acted consistently and consciously throughout my whole conduct, with a firm belief there is a future existence, and defy the state to produce one instance wherein I have acted rigidly, defrauded, or abused one member of it, although it was in my power." His son Joseph, who had already sailed to Antigua to engage in trade, was clearly embittered by these events, writing from Dublin in October of 1790 that "I never more expect to see my Native Country. In short the suffering of our family have been so Great in it that I don't want to see it. I am a Single Man and the World is before me." But a year later he returned to Cutchogue and eventually purchased a farm there.

 

Ironically, the timing of Parker's death just after the close of the American Revolution helped enable the Wickham family to remain on Long Island, rather than moving to Nova Scotia or England, since only Parker had been named as a Loyalist. Furthermore, the British government agreed in December of 1789 to partially compensate Parker's son Joseph for the loss of property, paying him 2,800 pounds sterling, a modest fortune that was about half of his total losses. Before his death in 1785, Parker considered seeking additional relief from the State of New York, but decided it was unethical, writing: "As application is already made for redress of grievances to another quarter, I think it scandalous and hypocritical to apply for redress of grievances to two opposite parties for the same thing." Financially aided by the payment from the British government, members of the Wickham family, such as Parker's great-grandson William Wickham, a four-term district attorney, continued to be prominent in the Cutchogue area, somewhat to the surprise of Parker's political enemies. (Other descendants such as healthcare pioneer William Hull Wickham, farmer James Parker Wickham and banker spouse Matilda Briggs Wickham would also prosper in New York State.) Yet the confiscation of Parker's property has remained controversial over the centuries for a number of reasons, including that it occurred in violation of the terms of the Treaty of Paris, which ended the American Revolution. In addition, Parker's guilt was determined by a legislature rather than a court and there was no chance to appeal. No evidence or witnesses were ever presented and Parker's accusers were never identified. While at least one historian has chosen to label Parker as "notorious," this is an inappropriate characterization of a man who spent almost his entire career helping to improve the lot of fellow citizens and who, more than anything else, was simply opposed to violence against government officials. While many of those targeted by the attainder bill were royal appointees who were later shunned by society, Parker continued to command considerable local respect because he was a fourth-generation American who had achieved his positions by winning open elections. In recent years, Parker's iconic stature has grown, with a book about Parker's career and legacy, The Wickham Claim by legal scholar Dwight Holbrook, being published in 1984 which questions Parker's "guilt" and postulates that Parker was the victim of a machiavellian scheme hatched by covetous political rivals. Parker will always remain a complicated figure: a proper, ethical and democratic man advocating change through peaceful means who believed in a fundamentally undemocratic system, who was then persecuted for those beliefs and deprived of his civil liberties by those professing to be bringing liberty to all.

 

Not all of Parker's family shared his political views. His daughter Parnel was regarded as a staunch Patriot and married James Reeve, who served in the Third Regiment of Minute Men in Suffolk County. Perhaps more seriously, Parker's brother Thomas, a Yale graduate and formidable political figure in his own right, took an active role in the conflict on behalf of the Patriots. Prior to the American defeat at the Battle of Long Island, he was in charge of nearby Gardiners Island and the stock there, and served in the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Provincial Congresses. Relocating to the safety of Stonington, Connecticut in September 1776, he was appointed Auditor of Refugees’ Claims, and became the captain of a privateer sloop called the Hampton Packet, which carried eight guns and a crew of thirty. During one raid, he seized Parker's cattle that were grazing on Robins Island. On another occasion, he captured the Peggy, a 50-ton schooner carrying flax-seed and oysters, off Fire Island Inlet. In his most audacious operation, he helped to lead a surprise boat attack on the Long Island port of Sag Harbor, which was guarded by Hessian troops. The other vessels were driven ashore, leading to the capture of their crews, but Thomas bravely succeeded in recapturing the lost vessels and rescuing all but one of the prisoners. Thomas was also appointed to a committee that advised General Washington on management of military supplies on Long Island and Staten Island. As a trophy, he kept a weight at his front gate made from grape shot fired by the British during their attack on Stonington. After the American Revolution, he served as a member of the New York Assembly in 1791.

 

In 1989, several of Parker's descendants filed a widely publicized claim in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, arguing that Robins Island, (see picture), then under the threat of development, was unlawfully seized from Parker and that it should be returned to his heirs, who remain numerous on Long Island. Considered one of the most valuable undeveloped islands in the United States, Robins Island occupies a unique place in eastern Long Island folklore, with those competing to own it over the years including Prince Moulay Abdullah of Morocco and John Jacob Astor, whose plans were cut short when he perished aboard the Titanic. Prior to 1850, Robins Island was mainly used for farming, cattle grazing and lumbering, as well as brick making, but in later years it was turned into a hunting preserve for wealthy sportsmen. But by the 1970's, rising property taxes made the shoots uneconomical and plans were made to build a few hundred houses there. To combat this, a non-profit corporation called Robins Island Preservation Fund, dedicated to the preservation of Robins Island in its natural state, was established as successor-in-interest to Parker. The group claimed that New York's Act of Attainder, under which the island was confiscated and sold, was invalid because New York had no sovereignty over Robins Island at the time, which was then under British control. They further argued that by the time New York did achieve sovereignty over Robins Island, the Treaty of Peace of 1783 between Great Britain and the United States had already been enacted, which prohibited future confiscations of British and Loyalist property. The group alternatively argued that the seizure was illegal because Parker had inherited the property as an estate tail, a form of ownership no longer allowed in the United States which was used by wealthy British settlers to keep ancestral lands in one family by having property without exception pass to the heirs. This would mean that even if Parker's property loss was lawful, his son Joseph would continue to maintain a future interest. Although he married twice, Joseph had no children and made no mention of Robins Island in his will, so presumably descendants of his siblings inherited any ownership interest. Because of the enormous lapse of time and the different legal standards of the day, the claim was found to be without merit, even though such a confiscation would be illegal today. However, the owner of Robins Island at the time of the trial, Southold Development Corporation, was battered by the protracted legal struggle and abandoned its plans to develop the island after collapsing into bankruptcy. Under new ownership, most of the island has since been reserved for open space conservation in perpetuity under an easement to The Nature Conservancy.

 

freepages.rootsweb.com/~jwickham/genealogy/parker.htm

“Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know what no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me.”

---

“Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.”

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#terrorist #Taliban #jihad #MexicanWall #racism #jihad #nobannowall #confederateflag #Nazi #Islam #Freedom #AmericanNaziParty #TheRollingStones #Democrat #CivilRights #Idiot #abortion #tinfoilhatsociety #tyrant #foxnews #MerylStreep #Liberal #SaturdayNightLive #AlecBaldwin #MelissaMcCarthy #AdolfHitler #BenitoMussolini #Dictator #Megalomaniac #KingComplex #Demagogue #Narcissist #Delusional #Nuts #Oligarch #Populist #tyrant #Narcissistic #Autocracy #Oligarchy #DelusionsofGrandeur #GodComplex #MangoMussolini #DerPumpkinfuhrer #Apocalypse #NuclearButton #OvalOffice #civilliberties #goldenshowers #tinyhands #discrimination #TrumpGate #freedomandjusticeforall #TheBible #JesusChrist #The12Apostles #FredPhelps #GodHatesFags #WestboroBaptistChurch #RedNeck #ScienceFiction, #rapistsandmurderers #antiGay #homophobe #dinosaurs #religiousright #AmericanFamilyAssociation #hategroup #BruceJenner #CaitlynJenner #BarbieandKen #Mattel #PopeFrancis #QueenElizabeth #KeepYourPeckerUp #PatRobertson #BatteredWomanSyndrome #FranklinGraham #Cracker #JudyGarland #TheWizardofOz #BarbraStreisand #BettyWhite #MarilynMonroe #ValleyoftheDolls #PeytonPlace #DowntonAbbey #MaggieSmith #JudyDench #EvaGreen #MissPeregrine #DarylDixon #jabbathehutt #EmperorPalpatine #StarWars #StarTrek #RickGrimes #TeaParty #GlennBeck #RushLimbaugh #fakeNews #politicallyincorrect #BillMaher #AngelaMerkel #TheresaMay #RosieODonnell #MegynKelly #TheManchurianCandidate #BadCombOver #commemorativecoin #collectorsitem #ebay #buffalonewyork #artvoice #carlpaladino #byecarl #OutrageFatigue #hotair #weaponsofmassdestruction #motherofallbombs #farts #farting #robertmueller #bombingsyria #kellyanneconway #brettkavanaugh #sexualassault #harrassment #metoo #supremecourt #kanyewest #kimkardashian #idiot #incoherent

I've thought of so many things to say, but when it comes time to say them the worlds inside are broken down and crumble into unknown depths of mind.

 

I look around and I see so much normality. No one seems to care about the weird kids, you know? I'm sick of people saying that they're one thing but then they act like another. I'm sick of hypocrites. I'm sick of it all.

 

I find myself incredibly weird. I'm not really sad about it, it's just a realization I've come to. I don't have many close friends. I have tons of acquaintances and people that I'm fond of, but only one, maybe two people who actually know those depths inside of me. It's hard when you want someone to care and they don't. It's hard sitting down and feeling like you're completely invisible and like everyone is staring at you at the same time.

 

I am a human being. We're all a little weird. We all have our quirks and objectives and similes and metaphors we use and things we choose to see and spend our time with. There are those deep recesses in our minds that we so wish people would want to dig into so we could share who we are and so they could see that we're more than just skin and bones. But the fact of the matter is, not many people care.

 

And I'm sick of people not caring. I don't care. You don't care. No one seems to care. No one reaches out to other people. I'm tired of feeling like no one wants to know me--that no one even wants to bother with me. I'm disgusted with people who say they will befriend the friendless and help those in need and reach out to people hurting and unhurting ... and then they don't. They're gross.

 

And I'm the same way too. I don't want to be a hypocrite. I see people who are hurting and I do nothing about it. Maybe it's because I've been hurt by others who were supposed to care. Maybe it's because I'm scared to death of what people will think. Maybe it's because I feel like it's not my responsibility ... and that makes me more disgusting than those who don't even see the hurting.

 

It's funny how a rant about other people turns into a self-evaluation. But the amazing thing is this: I don't have to be this way. I can't control other people. I can't control the fact that I don't have many close friends. I can't control the fact that other people don't give a crap about anyone but themselves. But I can control myself. I am not perfect. And I never will be. But I have a God who is perfect and He cares. Even when people who claim to follow Him don't care, He cares.

 

And to Him, I'm not weird at all. I'm not a freak. I don't have to worry about pleasing other people or trying to be popular or feeling like I'm invisible, because He sees me. And He cares.

Enjoy LARGE view and tags on right.

____________

Magdi Allam Recounts His Path to Conversion

Benedict XVI Baptized the Journalist at Easter Vigil

 

VATICAN CITY, MARCH 23, 2008 (Zenit.org).- Here is a translation of Magdi Allam’s account of his conversion to Catholicism. The Muslim journalist was baptized by Benedict XVI at Saturday's Easter Vigil Mass in St. Peter's Basilica.

 

An abbreviated form of this account appeared as a letter to Paolo Mieli, the director of the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera. Allam is the paper’s deputy director. The Italian version of the complete text is available at magdiallam.it.

 

* * *

 

Dear Friends,

 

I am particularly happy to share with you my immense joy for this Easter of Resurrection that has brought me the gift of the Christian faith. I gladly propose the letter that I sent to the director of the Corriere della Sera, Paolo Mieli, in which I tell the story of the interior journey that brought me to the choice of conversion to Catholicism. This is the complete version of the letter, which was published by the Corriere della Sera only in part.

 

* * *

 

Dear Director,

 

That which I am about to relate to you concerns my choice of religious faith and personal life in which I do not wish to involve in any way the Corriere della Sera, which it has been an honor to be a part of as deputy director “ad personam” since 2003. I write you thus as protagonist of the event, as private citizen.

 

Yesterday evening I converted to the Christian Catholic religion, renouncing my previous Islamic faith. Thus, I finally saw the light, by divine grace -- the healthy fruit of a long, matured gestation, lived in suffering and joy, together with intimate reflection and conscious and manifest expression. I am especially grateful to his holiness Pope Benedict XVI, who imparted the sacraments of Christian initiation to me, baptism, confirmation and Eucharist, in the Basilica of St. Peter’s during the course of the solemn celebration of the Easter Vigil. And I took the simplest and most explicit Christian name: “Cristiano.” Since yesterday evening therefore my name is Magdi Crisitano Allam.

 

For me it is the most beautiful day of [my] life. To acquire the gift of the Christian faith during the commemoration of Christ’s resurrection by the hand of the Holy Father is, for a believer, an incomparable and inestimable privilege. At almost 56 […], it is a historical, exceptional and unforgettable event, which marks a radical and definitive turn with respect to the past. The miracle of Christ’s resurrection reverberated through my soul, liberating it from the darkness in which the preaching of hatred and intolerance in the face of the “different,” uncritically condemned as “enemy,” were privileged over love and respect of “neighbor,” who is always, an in every case, “person”; thus, as my mind was freed from the obscurantism of an ideology that legitimates lies and deception, violent death that leads to murder and suicide, the blind submission to tyranny, I was able to adhere to the authentic religion of truth, of life and of freedom.

 

On my first Easter as a Christian I not only discovered Jesus, I discovered for the first time the face of the true and only God, who is the God of faith and reason. My conversion to Catholicism is the touching down of a gradual and profound interior meditation from which I could not pull myself away, given that for five years I have been confined to a life under guard, with permanent surveillance at home and a police escort for my every movement, because of death threats and death sentences from Islamic extremists and terrorists, both those in and outside of Italy.

 

I had to ask myself about the attitude of those who publicly declared fatwas, Islamic juridical verdicts, against me -- I who was a Muslim -- as an “enemy of Islam,” “hypocrite because he is a Coptic Christian who pretends to be a Muslim to do damage to Islam,” “liar and vilifier of Islam,” legitimating my death sentence in this way. I asked myself how it was possible that those who, like me, sincerely and boldly called for a “moderate Islam,” assuming the responsibility of exposing themselves in the first person in denouncing Islamic extremism and terrorism, ended up being sentenced to death in the name of Islam on the basis of the Quran. I was forced to see that, beyond the contingency of the phenomenon of Islamic extremism and terrorism that has appeared on a global level, the root of evil is inherent in an Islam that is physiologically violent and historically conflictive.

 

At the same time providence brought me to meet practicing Catholics of good will who, in virtue of their witness and friendship, gradually became a point of reference in regard to the certainty of truth and the solidity of values. To begin with, among so many friends from Communion and Liberation, I will mention Father Juliàn Carròn; and then there were simple religious such as Father Gabriele Mangiarotti, Sister Maria Gloria Riva, Father Carlo Maurizi and Father Yohannis Lahzi Gaid; there was rediscovery of the Salesians thanks to Father Angelo Tengattini and Father Maurizio Verlezza, which culminated in a renewed friendship with major rector Father Pascual Chavez Villanueva; there was the embrace of top prelates of great humanity like Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Monsignor Luigi Negri, Giancarlo Vecerrica, Gino Romanazzi and, above all, Monsignor Rino Fisichella, who personally accompanied me in the journey of spiritual acceptance of the Christian faith.

 

But undoubtedly the most extraordinary and important encounter in my decision to convert was that with Pope Benedict XVI, whom I admired and defended as a Muslim for his mastery in setting down the indissoluble link between faith and reason as a basis for authentic religion and human civilization, and to whom I fully adhere as a Christian to inspire me with new light in the fulfillment of the mission God has reserved for me.

 

Mine was a journey that began when at four years old, my mother Safeya -- a believing and practicing Muslim -- in the first in the series of “fortuitous events” that would prove to be not at all the product of chance but rather an integral part of a divine destiny to which all of us have been assigned -- entrusted me to the loving care of Sister Lavinia of the Comboni Missionary Sisters, convinced of the goodness of the education that would be imparted by the Catholic and Italian religious, who had come to Cairo, the city of my birth, to witness to their Christian faith through a work aimed at the common good. I thus began an experience of life in boarding school, followed by the Salesians of the Institute of Don Bosco in junior high and high school, which transmitted to me not only the science of knowledge but above all the awareness of values.

 

It is thanks to members of Catholic religious orders that I acquired a profoundly and essentially an ethical conception of life, in which the person created in the image and likeness of God is called to undertake a mission that inserts itself in the framework of a universal and eternal design directed toward the interior resurrection of individuals on this earth and the whole of humanity on the day of judgment, which is founded on faith in God and the primacy of values, which is based on the sense of individual responsibility and on the sense of duty toward the collective. It is in virtue of a Christian education and of the sharing of the experience of life with Catholic religious that I cultivated a profound faith in the transcendent dimension and also sought the certainty of truth in absolute and universal values.

 

There was a time when my mother’s loving presence and religious zeal brought me closer to Islam, which I occasionally practiced at a cultural level and in which I believed at a spiritual level according to an interpretation that at the time -- it was the 1970s -- summarily corresponded to a faith respectful of persons and tolerant toward the neighbor, in a context -- that of the Nasser regime -- in which the secular principle of the separation of the religious sphere and the secular sphere prevailed.

 

My father Muhammad was completely secular and agreed with the opinion of the majority of Egyptians who took the West as a model in regard to individual freedom, social customs and cultural and artistic fashions, even if the political totalitarianism of Nasser and the bellicose ideology of Pan-Arabism that aimed at the physical elimination of Israel unfortunately led to disaster for Egypt and opened the way to the resumption of Pan-Islamism, to the ascent of Islamic extremists to power and the explosion of globalized Islamic terrorism.

 

The long years at school allowed me to know Catholicism well and up close and the women and men who dedicated their life to serve God in the womb of the Church. Already then I read the Bible and the Gospels and I was especially fascinated by the human and divine figure of Jesus. I had a way to attend Holy Mass and it also happened, only once, that I went to the altar to receive communion. It was a gesture that evidently signaled my attraction to Christianity and my desire to feel a part of the Catholic religious community.

 

Then, on my arrival in Italy at the beginning of the 1970s between the rivers of student revolts and the difficulties of integration, I went through a period of atheism understood as a faith, which nevertheless was also founded on absolute and universal values. I was never indifferent to the presence of God even if only now I feel that the God of love, of faith and reason reconciles himself completely with the patrimony of values that are rooted in me.

 

Dear Director, you asked me whether I fear for my life, in the awareness that conversion to Christianity will certainly procure for me yet another, and much more grave, death sentence for apostasy. You are perfectly right. I know what I am headed for but I face my destiny with my head held high, standing upright and with the interior solidity of one who has the certainty of his faith. And I will be more so after the courageous and historical gesture of the Pope, who, as soon has he knew of my desire, immediately agreed to personally impart the Christian sacraments of initiation to me. His Holiness has sent an explicit and revolutionary message to a Church that until now has been too prudent in the conversion of Muslims, abstaining from proselytizing in majority Muslim countries and keeping quiet about the reality of converts in Christian countries. Out of fear. The fear of not being able to protect converts in the face of their being condemned to death for apostasy and fear of reprisals against Christians living in Islamic countries. Well, today Benedict XVI, with his witness, tells us that we must overcome fear and not be afraid to affirm the truth of Jesus even with Muslims.

 

For my part, I say that it is time to put an end to the abuse and the violence of Muslims who do not respect the freedom of religious choice. In Italy there are thousands of converts to Islam who live their new faith in peace. But there are also thousands of Muslim converts to Christianity who are forced to hide their faith out of fear of being assassinated by Islamic extremists who lurk among us. By one of those “fortuitous events” that evoke the discreet hand of the Lord, the first article that I wrote for the Corriere on Sept. 3, 2003 was entitled “The new Catacombs of Islamic Converts.” It was an investigation of recent Muslim converts to Christianity in Italy who decry their profound spiritual and human solitude in the face of absconding state institutions that do not protect them and the silence of the Church itself. Well, I hope that the Pope’s historical gesture and my testimony will lead to the conviction that the moment has come to leave the darkness of the catacombs and to publicly declare their desire to be fully themselves. If in Italy, in our home, the cradle of Catholicism, we are not prepared to guarantee complete religious freedom to everyone, how can we ever be credible when we denounce the violation of this freedom elsewhere in the world? I pray to God that on this special Easter he give the gift of the resurrection of the spirit to all the faithful in Christ who have until now been subjugated by fear. Happy Easter to everyone.

 

Dear friends, let us go forward on the way of truth, of life and of freedom with my best wishes for every success and good thing.

 

Magdi Allam

 

Simon: *walks in, carrying a tray of strong tea and dry toast* “Kumi! You better not be giving your cousin contaminated gummies. Honestly, woman, hasn’t she been through enough?”

 

Kumi: *stomps her foot in irritation* “Simon, you doof! She was just about to eat them!”

 

Magpie: *looks from Kumi to Simon, then down at the bears resting on her palm* “So where have they been, then? Seriously, I must know now.”

 

Simon: “Down Reef’s pants.”

 

Magpie: *eyes widen, as her gaze swings back to Kumi*

 

Kumi (defensively): “They were still in the bag at the time! Chloe wiped it down, so they’re clean! Kinda. Hey, I ate some!”

 

Simon: *sets the tray on the coffee table, leveling a ‘look’ at Kumi* “Which is saying pretty much nothing at all. You’ll eat anything, pet.”

 

Kumi: “A fact that has served you well during our nightly sexy time, so I’d shut my big, hypocritical trap if I was you, British.”

 

Simon: *grins, as he takes a seat beside Kumi* “Touché.”

 

Magpie: *shrugs nonchalantly and pops the bears into her mouth*

 

Simon (aghast): “Mags! No!”

 

Magpie: “My stomach has spoken. It demands a sacrifice of the gummy variety!”

 

Simon: “I would’ve gone out and gotten you fresh, non-molested ones, luv. No need to take such measures to satisfy a craving.”

 

Magpie (passionately): “No. They had to be these particular bears!”

 

Kumi (fascinatedly): “They did?”

 

Magpie: *eyes narrowed, expression grim* “Yes! When Satoru returns, I can honestly tell him I’ve had something from Reef’s pants in my mouth. Let him chew on that after leaving me here, literally worried sick, while he goes off playing hero!”

 

Simon: “Blimey, that’s just…evil.”

 

Kumi (delightedly): “Yeee-ay-uh, it is!”

 

Magpie: *working herself into a fine lather* “How could he do this to me! Leave me in this, this…delicate condition alone! It should be the happiest time of our lives! The selfish bastard! I’ll kill him myself once he gets back!” *grabs the bag of gummies, inhales the remaining ones in one big gulp and shoves the empty bag back into Kumi’s hands*

 

Kumi: “Mags, I’ve never been prouder of a relation than I am right now—binge eating, misleading statements, threats of violence…I-I *sniffs* love you, man!”

 

Magpie: *tips her head, regally accepting the praise that is her due, as she continues to masticate with vigor* “Oh, by the way…*chew-chew-chew*…I do believe…*smack-smack-smack*…it is quite conceivable…*nom-nom-nom*…that I am rather, well…*swallows, clears her throat*…pregnant.”

 

To be continued on a Tuesday, hopefully sometime soon…

 

Fashion Credits

**Any doll enhancements (i.e. freckles, piercings, eye color changes) were done by me unless otherwise stated.**

 

Kumi

Dress: Mattel – The Look Collection – City Shopper Barbie

Vest: IT – Fashion Royalty Convention 2012 – Color Infusion Style Lab Experiment 2

Shoes: IT – Fashion Royalty – Paparazzi Bait Adele

Earrings: IT – Fashion Royalty – Exotic Fire Vero

Colored Bangle Bracelets: IT

Ring: IT – Fashion Royalty – NuFace – Lady in Red Erin

Gold Bracelets: Me

 

Doll is a Nu.Fantasy Wild Wolf Kumi transplanted to a NuFace body.

  

Magpie

Shorts: IT – Fashion Royalty – Cruise Control Vanessa

Top: Randall Craig RTW – April in Paris Fashion

Sandals: Randall Craig RTW – Summertime Fashion

Earrings: IT

Bracelet: Unknown

Necklace: Me

 

Doll is a Wild at Heart Lilith re-rooted by the exceptional valmaxi(!!!)

  

Simon

Shorts & Top: Mattel – Fashion Avenue Ken Fashion

Dog tags: Mattel – Elvis Presley, The Army Years

Flip-Flops: Mattel – Playline Ken

 

Doll is a Raw Appeal Lukas.

Took this photo on my daily hunt to take pictures as I said i didn't have any money on me to help the dog so dont think im a hypocrite also even though Im pretty confident, when I shoot in a place where's a lot of people I kinda get shy

 

Google+: google.com/+PerisV7

Open hardware logo with Slic3r generated infill pattern (thats how objects inside looks when printed on RepRap) on my right forearm. Reminder for me not to be hypocrite after starting my own RepRap company. Reminder what got me where I am today!

Allow me some sweet irony. No offence intended for Sarkozy's fans.

But I would be very hypocrite if I would say that I am not happy to see Nicolas gone...

Qu'on me permette un peu d'ironie douce. En espérant n'offenser personne, mais je serais la reine des hypocrites si je disais que je ne suis pas contente de voir M. Sarkozy nous quitter....

I. The Burial of the Dead

 

April is the cruellest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.

Winter kept us warm, covering

Earth in forgetful snow, feeding

A little life with dried tubers.

Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee

With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,

And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,

And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.

Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.

And when we were children, staying at the arch-duke’s,

My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled,

And I was frightened. He said, Marie,

Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.

In the mountains, there you feel free.

I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

 

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow

Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,

You cannot say, or guess, for you know only

A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,

And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,

And the dry stone no sound of water. Only

There is shadow under this red rock,

(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),

And I will show you something different from either

Your shadow at morning striding behind you

Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;

I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

Frisch weht der Wind

Der Heimat zu

Mein Irisch Kind,

Wo weilest du?

“You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;

“They called me the hyacinth girl.”

—Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,

Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not

Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither

Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,

Looking into the heart of light, the silence.

Oed’ und leer das Meer.

 

Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,

Had a bad cold, nevertheless

Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,

With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she,

Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,

(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)

Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,

The lady of situations.

Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,

And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,

Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,

Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find

The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.

I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring.

Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone,

Tell her I bring the horoscope myself:

One must be so careful these days.

 

Unreal City,

Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,

A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,

I had not thought death had undone so many.

Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,

And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.

Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,

To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours

With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.

There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying: “Stetson!

“You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!

“That corpse you planted last year in your garden,

“Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?

“Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?

“Oh keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men,

“Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again!

“You! hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable,—mon frère!”

 

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I posted a picture of my Pentax MX film camera a few days ago and got some nice comments and emails about how It inspired some to leave their digital home for the day and shoot film. I felt a bit of a hypocrite that I do not have some film shots with that old Pentax. So this morning I went out and shot a roll. I shot black and white so I could develop it and print it at my Dad's house. Just getting used to the camera after a few years so some basic easy shots to get used to the manual focus lenses and, well, manual everything. I'm happy with how they turned out, there is some dust, scratches and fibers if you look close but I had fun and will do it again. It was strange to realize I had only 36 shots in my camera compared to hundreds if I need them on digital. I also realized as I was scanning the photos onto my computer that, ironically, these are now digital images too. But I don't feel like such a hypocrite anymore. Taken for our daily challenge - something sinful

IN ENGLISH BELOW THE LINE

 

Foto presa amb una Zeiss-Ikon Contax II fabricada el 1936; objectiu KMZ Jupiter-12 f2.8/35mm fabricat el 1959; pel·licula Kodak Double-X (o Eastman 5222), revelada amb Bellini D96 sense diluir.

 

Als peus del castell de Wawel, Cracovia, es troba aquesta creu en memoria de la Massacre de Katyn, duta a terme pels sovietics durant la Segona Guerra Mundial. Després de envair Polonia en aliança amb el III Reich, la Unió Sovietica, sota ordres directes de Stalin, portà uns 10.000 militars i civils polonesos empresonats als boscos entorn Katyn (actual Russia), i els assassinà. El crim es feu public precisament pels hipocrites nazis, que trobaren les foses comunes hi ho mostraren com a exemple de la barbarie comunista, mentre ells feien anar l'holocaust contra els jueus a marxes forçades en aquell mateix moment.

 

ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_de_Katin

 

=====================================

  

Photo taken with a Zeiss-Ikon Contax II manufactured in 1936; KMZ Jupiter-12 f2.8/35mm lens made in 1959; Kodak Double-X (or Eastman 5222) film, developed with undiluted Bellini D96.

 

Just below Wawel Castle, in Krakow, stands this cross in memory of the Katyn Massacre, carried out by the Soviets during the Second World War. After invading Poland with the Red Army, in alliance with the Third Reich, the NKVD, under Stalin's direct orders, took about 10,000 imprisoned Polish military and civilians to the forests around Katyn (now Russia), and murdered them. The crime was made public precisely by the Nazi hypocrites, who found the mass graves and showed it as an example of communist barbarism, while they were carrying out the holocaust against the Jews at full pace at that very moment.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre

 

Interestingness 343: 12-24-2008

  

Allow me to introduce myself. I'm the founder of the Anti-Mr. Brown Pelican Society. I will tell you what made me form such an organization and how I plan to use it to turn random, senseless violence into meaningful action. To organize my discussion, I suggest that we take one step back in the causal chain and supply the missing ingredient that could stop the worldwide slide into separatism. I like to think I'm a reasonable person but you just can't reason with what I call raving upstarts. It's been tried. They don't understand, they can't understand, they don't want to understand, and they will die without understanding why all we want is for them not to do the entire country a grave disservice.

 

Mr. Pelican should hide his head in shame before the judgment of future generations, whose tongue it will no longer be possible to stop and which, therefore, will say what today all of us know to be true: The extent of collaboration between Mr. Pelican and hypocritical pantywaists is unknown but presumably significant. I'll say that again because I want it to sink in: I am appalled by the vast generalizations in Mr. Pelican's claim that his wishy-washy cabal is a respected civil-rights organization. I have a dream, a mission, a set path that I would like to travel down. Specifically, my goal is to stop defending the oligophrenic, brutal status quo and, instead, implement a bold, new agenda for change. Of course, from secret-handshake societies meeting at "the usual place" to back-door admissions committees, his adulators have always found a way to toy with our opinions.

 

I have seen what Mr. Pelican is capable of, and I am afraid. I am very afraid and I am very angry. What makes him think we want him to pooh-pooh the concerns of others? Did he read something about that in "The Do-It-Yourself Guide to Colonialism"? His surrogates say, "Mr. Pelican could do a gentler and fairer job of running the world than anyone else." Yes, I'm afraid they really do talk like that. It's the only way for them to conceal that Mr. Pelican maliciously defames and damagingly misrepresents everyone and everything around him. There's a word for that: libel.

Fashion Royalty Dolls by Jason Wu, Integrity Toys, Designer of Michelle Obama's Inaugural Inauguration Ballgown

 

After a recent hostile comment on this photo, I feel the need to provide context for anyone with an axe to grind. And by the way, if you're going to feel entitled to comment on my photos, then don't make your own photostream PRIVATE. In a word: HYPOCRITICAL.

 

Someone accused me of creating a racist dichotomy, as they read the 'evil' doll as 'black.'

 

The 'black' doll is NOT African American (I only recently learned she is Puerto Rican, not Italian, as I thought at the time). She is the Fashion Royalty character Natalia Fatale with a tan skin tone and she is the evil nemesis to the character Veronique Perrin (who is blonde in this iteration, although both characters come in all hair colors), kind of like Crystal VS Alexis

 

That is a back-story narrated by Integrity Toys and narrated on story cards that used to come with all Fashion Royalty dolls. I took my visual inspiration for the black/white contrast and lettering in MAD MAGAZINE's SPY vs SPY, in which neither spy is considered "good or evil" but just on opposite sides. Natalia, the "evil" character (based on her scheming personality, not race) is wearing white (typically the hero wears white) - so it's all about polar opposite contrasts (based on character) and nothing at all to do with generalizing about race.

 

So if you're completely unfamiliar with the character names and stories of these dolls, NOW YOU KNOW. It's important to know so you can avoid a knee-jerk "racial politics" misinterpretation. After all, the manufacturer and designer or these dolls are both men of color (from Guyana and Taiwan, respectively), and Integrity Toys was established to create more non-Caucasian, non-blonde female fashion dolls, to better reflect the racial diversity in the real world.

"We must become people who love God, so that our lives can be transformed properly and we ourselves will be transformed into Jesus Christ our Lord". On being hypocrites.

 

THE LOGIC OF LOVE AND HUMAN LOGIC *

 

Everything we do - our pilgrimages, our candles, our nocturnal vigils, our prayers, our fasts, our acts of charity, let's go to confession, light the candles, read the lives of the saints - everything we do in our life - what purpose and what is the reason why we do them? The answer to this question is very important, because the correctness of our spiritual life depends on it ... ... It is our way of loving Christ

[...] Now, where is our mistake? The mistake is that, unfortunately, we say that we do all these things to become just good people ... and this is where the great hoax resides. It is the step on which we all stumble. Because if the purpose of the church was just to make us better people, then there would be no need for a personal relationship with Christ, nor would there be any reason why Christ came into the world. Why do you think we can not understand the saints? Or, to ask for it in a simpler way, why is it that we can not understand who loves God?

We often ask if it is necessary to do certain actions to be saved, to be close to God. Is it necessary, let us say, to leave for the mountains or the desert (as some saints did)? Obviously not. If we could understand that our relationship with God is not only for the sake of salvation, but is a relationship of love, only then do we understand the saints and why they did the things they did (many of which can not be rationally interpreted). This is because love transcends logic.

[...] Love can not be forced into the patterns of logic. Love is above logic. That's how God's love is. God's love surpasses human logic. This is why we can not judge by logical criteria those people who love God. This is why the saints reacted with their own logic; they had a different kind of logic, and not the logic of humans; because their logic was the "logic" of love. Therefore, the church does not teach us only to become good people, not to say the least. It is natural that we must become good people, because if we do not do it, what have we managed to do? Our Church teaches us to love Christ, to love the Person of our Lord Jesus Christ.

A relationship develops inside the church. It is a personal relationship between man and Christ; not with the teaching of Christ and not with the Gospel. The Gospel is something that helps us reach the point of loving Christ. When we reach that point of Christ that is truly loving, the Gospel "will no longer be necessary". Nothing will be necessary ... all these things will cease ... only the relationship of man with God will remain. This is the difference between the church and religion.

 

* p. Athanasios of Limasol (Orthodox-Greek metropolitan - 1959)

My name is Edward Brock. I’m not sure if anyone remembers who I am, but I used to be an investigative journalist for the Daily Globe. While I was a fairly popular fellow back then, I’m sure more know me as Venom. Yes, the “jacked” Spider-Man rip-off with the gnarled teeth. My days as a criminal are done, however. In fact, I make it a daily routine to repent. I’ve sinned more than most, but I believe in His mercy now that I have an understanding of my wrongdoing. Even then, I still try to give back what I’ve taken.

 

I’ve made it my duty to rid this planet of the parasitic creatures known as symbiotes. It’s been a meticulous process, but I’m nearing closure. Alas, my only weapon in this battle is one of the exoteric beings that I despise. However, I’ve grown fond of this individual. It possesses a sense of morality, given to it by a man named Patrick. In fact, I occasionally wonder which of us has the moral high ground. Plenty of my days were squandered by unwarranted hatred, resulting in events that I don’t care to divulge. Now I’m on the road to redemption, slowly attempting to repay my fellow citizens for the crimes I’ve committed. This is my story. This is our story.

 

Toxin: Hello? Anyone home?

 

Eddie: Oi, symbiote, don’t you know the least bit about stealth?

 

Toxin: Sorry, just trying to help.

 

Eddie: Enough talking, let’s get back to what we were doing.

 

Toxin: Ah, yes. Anyone home?

 

Eddie: Stop it already!

 

Toxin: Whoa man, I’m not even the one yelling. Stop being a hypocrite and get back to work.

 

I grumble, but he doesn’t care. This is what I deal with, day in, day out. I have to excuse him, though, seeing as he’s a mere child. As with humans, he questions anything and everything. It’s just a stage, I suppose.

 

Toxin: Hey, what’s that?

 

We fall to a balcony, chipping off a piece in the process. I manage to catch it, but there’s no time to replace it. We’re here because of a nasty rumor going around. Apparently there’s another..

 

Toxin: Oh no, not him.

----

[Nexus] has been trying to convince me to do this for ages. I finally gave in, for some reason. Anyway, onto the character. I'm sure there will be a lot of competition since Toxin is so well-known. Except not at all.

 

If I did anything wrong, I blame [Nexus] since he told me what to do.

American postcard by Kline Poster Co. Inc., Phila. Photo: Pallas / Paramount.

 

American silent screen actress Myrtle Stedman (1885-1938) was known as 'the girl with the pearly eyes'. In 1911, Myrtle and her husband Marshall Stedman were signed by the Selig Polyscope Co. Myrtle was a leading lady in silent films of the 1910s and early 1920s for such companies as Bosworth and Pallas and later, she became a character actress.

 

Myrtle Stedman was born Myrtle Lincoln in Chicago, Illinois, in 1885, and was educated at a private finishing school there. Her musical talents developed quite early. At age 12, she already sang in the chorus of light operas and musical comedies. Her voice was cultivated in France. Her tutor was Marchesi, who was known as one of the finest instructors of voice culture in his country. In 1900, she married Marshall Stedman, a drama school conductor. She starred for a number of seasons in Isle of Spice and The Chocolate Soldier. She performed for a year at the Whitney Theater in Chicago and was a prima donna of the Chicago Grand Opera Company. She decided to abandon her music career altogether for the cinema. In 1911, Myrtle and Marshall Stedman were signed by the Selig Polyscope Co. Her first film was the short Western The Range Riders (Francis Boggs, Otis Turner, 1910), starring Tom Mix. Myrtle's first longer film was the melodrama The Two Orphans (Otis Turner, Francis Boggs, 1911), a three-reeler starring Kathlyn Williams. Myrtle was often directed or paired up with Marshall during those early years, but Myrtle was the one who stood out with filmgoers. 'The girl with the pearly eyes' was not only an adorably enchanting and enigmatic presence in a film drama, but her athletic abilities also complemented Westerns and action adventures. She moved to the Bosworth Company in 1914 and appeared in such noteworthy silents as The Valley of the Moon (Hobart Bosworth, 1914) starring Jack Conway, The Country Mouse (Hobart Bosworth, 1914), Jane (Frank Lloyd, 1915) with Charlotte Greenwood, Peer Gynt (Oscar Apfel, Raoul Walsh, 1915) starring Cyril Maude, and, most notably, the classic Hypocrites (1915), directed by pioneer filmmaker Lois Weber.

 

Myrtle Stedman increased her reputation as a fine actress with The American Beauty (William Desmond Taylor, 1916) for Pallas Pictures, As Men Love (E. Mason Hopper, 1917) with House Peters, In the Hollow of Her Hand (Charles Maigne, 1918) starring Alice Brady, and The Teeth of the Tiger (Chester Withey, 1919). Her son, Lincoln Stedman, made his debut as a juvenile player about this time. Following her rich roles in Reckless Youth (Ralph Ince, 1922), Flaming Youth (John Francis Dillon, 1923) starring Colleen Moore, and The Famous Mrs. Fair (Fred Niblo, 1923), which was considered one of her finest roles, her star began to fade. Her marriage also fell apart and in 1919 the pair divorced. As she regressed into support work, she was able to maintain, however, while others of her acting level fell completely by the waste side. In 1936, she was signed by Warner Brothers to play bit and extra roles. Myrtle suffered a heart attack in late 1937 and declined quickly. Her last release was Accidents Will Happen (William Clemens, 1938) with Ronald Reagan. Myrtle Stedman died in Hollywood in 1938 at age 52. She was interred at Inglewood Park Cemetery, Inglewood, California. Her ex-husband died in 1943 and her son Lincoln passed away in 1948.

 

Sources: Gary Brumburgh (IMDb), Wikipedia, and IMDb.

 

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

In Canada, more than 200,000 wells have been horizontally fracked for shale gas or oil, primarily in the western provinces. It is now estimated that 80 per cent of new oil and gas wells in Canada are fracked. Such “unconventional” reserves exist elsewhere in Canada, but for now, a mix of geology, geography and public opposition has kept them mostly untapped. Canada is a hypocrite when it comes to fracking

Dutch postcard by 't Sticht, Utrecht, no. AX 6262. Gert Fröbe, Honor Blackman, Martin Benson and Sean Connery in Goldfinger (Guy Hamilton, 1964).

 

Yesterday, 6 April 2020, British actress Honor Blackman (1925-2020) passed away at the age of 94. She was best known for playing the Bond girl Pussy Galore opposite Sean Connery in Goldfinger (1964). Blackman became a household name in the 1960s as Cathy Gale in The Avengers in which she showed an extraordinary combination of beauty, brains and physical prowess. After a career spanning eight decades, she died of natural causes unrelated to coronavirus.

 

Honor Blackman was born one of four children of a middle-class family in London's East End. Her father, Frederick Blackman, was a civil service statistician. For her 15th birthday, her parents gave her acting lessons and she began her training at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in 1940. Blackman received her first acting work on stage in London's West End as an understudy for 'The Guinea Pig'. She continued with roles in 'The Gleam' (1946) and 'The Blind Goddess' (1947), before moving into film. She debuted with Fame Is the Spur (1947), starring Michael Redgrave. Signed up with the Rank Organisation, Blackman joined several other starlet hopefuls who were being groomed for greater fame. She played small roles in the anthology film Quartet (Ken Annakin, Arthur Crabtree, Harold French, Ralph Smart, 1948), based on short stories by W. Somerset Maugham, the thriller So Long at the Fair (Terence Fisher, Antony Darnborough,1950), with Dirk Bogarde, and the Titanic drama A Night to Remember (Roy Ward Baker, 1958). Developing a solid footing, she filmed The Square Peg (John Paddy Carstairs, 1958) with comedian Norman Wisdom and A Matter of WHO (Don Chaffey, 1961) with Terry-Thomas. On television, she played in the Edgar Wallace vigilante series The Four Just Men (1959-1960). She secured her breakthrough when she was cast in 1962 as the leather-clad crimefighter Cathy Gale in the hit British show The Avengers (1962-1964), alongside Patrick Macnee as the bowler-hatted John Steed. Blackman had to learn judo for the role, and her tough persona allied to then daring costume choices – boots and figure-hugging catsuits – ensured she quickly assumed star status. One of its unlikely results was a hit single, 'Kinky Boots', recorded in 1964 with Macnee, which became a Top 10 hit in the U.K. in 1990. Blackman’s proficiency in martial arts helped her land what became her signature role, that of Pussy Galore, the glamorous villain assisting in Goldfinger’s plot to rob Fort Knox. Goldfinger (Guy Hamilton, 1964) was the third Bond film and was a global hit. Gary Brumburgh at IMDb: "Blackman went toe to toe with Sean Connery's womanizing "007" and created major sparks on screen, managing to outclass the (wink-wink) double meaning of her character's name."

 

After her rise to mainstream fame, Honor Blackman made noticeable appearances in such films as Jason and the Argonauts (Don Chaffey, 1963) as the vengeful goddess Hera, the Western Shalako (Edward Dmytryk, 1968) and The Virgin and the Gypsy (Christopher Miles, 1970) with Franco Nero. Simon Murphy and Andrew Pulver in The Guardian: "while she worked steadily in film, her TV work was higher profile, and included guest appearances in Columbo, Minder and Doctor Who. In 1990, she was cast in a regular role in the ITV sitcom The Upper Hand, playing the glamorous mother of the lead female character. Blackman expressed her fondness for the role, saying it “made women who had just retired and felt they’d been put on the backburner realise they had a lot of life left to live”." She earned raves on stage as the blind heroine of the thriller 'Wait Until Dark' as well as for her dual roles in 'Mr. and Mrs.', a production based on two of Noël Coward's plays. She also appeared on stage in The Sound of Music (1981), My Fair Lady (2005-2006) and Cabaret (2007). She was a staunch republican and turned down a Commander of the British Empire (CBE) in 2002 to avoid being a “hypocrite”. More recently, she joined a campaign to demand compensation payments for pensioners who lost savings in the Equitable Life scandal. Honor Blackman was married to Bill Sankey from 1948 to 1956. After their divorce, she married British actor Maurice Kaufmann (1961–1975). They appeared together in the slasher film Fright (Peter Collinson, 1971) and some stage productions. They adopted two children, Lottie (1967) and Barnaby (1968). After her divorce from Kaufmann, she did not remarry and stated that she preferred being single. She enjoyed watching football. Blackman died at her home in Lewes in 2020, aged 94, from natural causes.

 

Sources: Simon Murphy and Andrew Pulver (The Guardian), Gary Brumburgh (IMDb), Wikipedia and IMDb.

 

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

Something that has been on my mind for a while has been the increasing use of smartphone photo apps. At first I thought they were a good idea. I thought they served as a gateway to real film cameras. I am guessing this might be true for some, but I have noticed a lot of people shooting with them really seriously. I am a bit of a hypocrite as they are fun to shoot with and I use them myself for stupid daily life snap shots, but nothing that interesting usually.

 

For this rant I will focus on the iPhone app Instagram. It's basically a fake film app/social network all in one. My big problem with it is that instead of it generating interest in actual film cameras, it seems to have dragged a lot of previous film photographers into the app. I am not saying these people still don't shoot film, but a lot of people I follow here on Flickr are really sucked into the app, and rarely post photos on Flickr or elsewhere with real cameras anymore.

 

My problem with the app is that you are shooting with a camera phone. It's a huge step backwards in technology. The quality is at best like 2003 point and shoot. The camera only shoots in jpg, so when the app edits the photo it looks terrible. If the camera had a raw mode, then edited the raw image data, and produced a jpg the photos would look worlds better most likely, but it doesn't. They are also noisy jpgs if not shot outside. Another big gripe with them is that all the photos eventually start to look the same. You have only so many filters you can use. There is no changing aperture, so you can't control the depth of field without a very fake looking one. Hence everything starts to look the same and boring. To add insult to injury, the photos are only 72dpi images. This means that they aren't worth printing at any kind of displayable size. Yeah, I have seen there is a printing service for them now, but the book is about the size of my wallet, with the image printed even small on the page. Which then brings me to my next point that the photos are pretty much throw away photography. They are fun for now, but how many of them do you really go back and look back after a months time? None? I thought so.

 

I know this is coming off sounding a bit snobby, but it's been on my mind for a while and it's how I feel. I am all about having fun with photography because that's what it's all about, but putting your real cameras on the self to shoot with a camera phone as your primary camera is a foolish mistake.

 

For those that are interested, you can follow me on Instagram at: @the_real_jason_combs

 

Currently Listening:

 

Starfucker - Mystery Cloud

  

“Your combat skills are impressive man of Bats, it’s a shame you have been interfering with the plans of the master or I would try to enlist you.”

 

“I don’t work with criminals.”

 

“Funny, as last I checked those among the GCPD that didn’t consider you just an urban myth see you as a criminal. Rather hypocritical don’t you think?”

 

“I know the truth and that’s all that matters to me.”

 

“Oh you believe yourself to be a hero? I thought you said the pair of us were nothing a like.”

 

“I’m not a hero.”

 

“A shame, then you’re a problem and the master doesn’t want problems.”

 

On cue he forces the sword down with all his might on to my gauntlet. I can’t hold it and the blade cuts through my left gauntlet and the blade pierces my skin. The cut isn’t deep but it’s a wide one, I’m certain it’s a complete cut down where my gauntlet was but I don’t have time to linger on the pain. I’ve felt nothing but pain for the last twenty years since that night so physical pain is nothing to me. With my left gauntlet destroyed though I’m reliant on my right gauntlet to still have functioning tasers to bring this guy down, otherwise I’m not sure how I’m going to take him down at this rate.

 

He takes another slash at me again but I manage to dodge it though I am unable to avoid his counter strike as the katana slices off one of the ears on my cowl. Looks like I can’t call Alfred now, but I have no important things to focus on. He kicks me in my back as I try to regain my footing following the strike at my cowl. This is it. I’m on the ground at his mercy.

 

In a calm and slow manner he walks over to me katana in hand. He’s moving in for a killing blow. I’m as good as death if my timing is off. The katana is raised above his head. Got to time it right. Too soon and I expose the back of my head for a death blow, too late and well….there will be a sword lodged in my head. It’s coming down now. Need to get it right.

 

Wait

 

Wait

 

NOW!

 

I lunge my arms out and grab the blade mid blow, just right. With the katana’s blade now trapped between my hands I activate the taser in my right gauntlet and give him the maximum voltage they can go up to. The more pain he feels the better. The shock causes him to lose his grasp on the katana and he falls to the group as he is being shocked by my tasers. Interesting how quickly the tables can turn if you give the opponent ample time to respond. Perhaps he’s not from the League. No member of the League would be foolish enough to make that mistake especially given how Ra’s would punish anyone who failed with death.

 

It is tempting to let the taser continue until it runs out of juice, but on full power this asshole will probably die long before the taser loses power. I know that I will have to deactivate the taser, but the longer he gets the shocking the easier the remainder of he fight will be, so I choose to take my time. I lift myself up off the ground and take possession of his katana. A fine blade haven’t seen a blade this sharp for a long time.

 

I give it another twenty seconds of shocking before I retract the taser and he stops flailing on the ground taking in deep breaths. I hope I didn’t look like that on the ground to him. I try to strike fear to the criminals I encounter, thank goodness they didn’t see me on the ground if I looked like that.

 

“The tables seem have turned.”

 

“So it would seem. Batman.”

 

“Now”

 

I hold the katana in the combat ready grip, I have no intention of harming him further but he doesn’t know that. All the better.

 

“I think it's time you answered some of my questions.”

 

“Never. I’d rather die than surrender. The master would make sure of that.”

 

“Then you leave me no choice.”

 

He seems keen to remain silent rather than forfeit any information. No doubt he expects me to simply turn him over to the GCPD and that be the end of it. If I were to do that I wouldn’t get the answers I want though. Why is he so keen to face and kill me? Who is this master he speaks of?

 

I know what I need to do. Put the fear in him. Criminals squeal like the rotten pigs they are when you have them scared. He’s clearly been trained to resist torture of all kinds so there’s only one way he may talk. I need him to think that I’m more than happy to kill him on a whim. The role of a homicidal maniac is not one I like to play but sometimes its’ necessary. No-one wants to face death and they’ll do anything to avoid it if the danger of it arises.

 

With that in mind I charge at him holding the katana in my left hand. I’m just curious how far he’ll let me take it before he cries out for mercy.

 

I’m getting closer and closer. He seems unphased. Or so I thought. It turns out he’d collapsed next to my severed belt and I guess he must have pulled out a flash grenade from its pouch. Before I could even get close he throws the grenade into the air. It’s got a 5 second time once it leaves the grasp of the thrower, still time to give him the scare. Before I can get closer though he pulls out a revolver and shoots the grenade making it detonate early.

 

It all goes white as the grenade detonates close to me disorientating me. By the time I regain my senses the assailant is gone leaving no trace. I guess I’m not the only one who can do that….

 

Wow, it's been a long time since I've uploaded anything!

 

Well, graduated from High School, went on the school orchestra trip to France/Belgium and went on a Contiki thing after that. December/January 2012/2013 was hectic indeed! In Canberra now studying Law/Science yay! Thing that has most changed since then: alcohol. Everything else is much the same ohohohoho.

 

The orchestra trip was fantastic. We went from Paris to Amiens to Reims and all these fantastic country French towns. Our best performance was no doubt in Villers-Bretanneux where the town hall was filled and we all played really well and it was fantastic and we got a standing ovation.

 

Bruges, in the morning, was amazing. It was like being transported back to a medieval period; the cobblestone streets and the soft ebb and flow of the canal seemed to give a sense of magic and nobility to the whole place; it was all rather romantic. By afternoon however, the whole atmosphere of the place had been destroyed by the huge influx of tourists (O hypocritical me). But yeah, the whole thing was really, really fun!

 

What I miss about Europe is instead of seeing tall buildings every day, you see magnificent old buildings that seem to stand like sentinels over the entire city. Still mesmerised by the seemingly casual sight of the Amiens Cathedral peeping over the rooftops over the hotel window.

 

Taken 16/12/2012

Uploaded 3/6/2013 (procrastination from doing Chemistry exam practice eek!)

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“I appeal from your customs. I must be myself. I cannot break myself any longer for you, or you. If you can love me for what I am, we shall be happier. If you cannot, I will still seek to deserve that you should. I must be myself. I will not hide my tastes or aversions. I will so trust that what is deep is holy, that I will do strongly before the sun and moon whatever inly rejoices me and the heart appoints. If you are noble, I will love you; if you are not, I will not hurt you and myself by hypocritical attentions”

― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

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In a corporatized nation only the politically powerful & very rich do not get their pockets picked. One cannot look upon our youth & not bemoan what awaits them, debt peonage in return for pursuing an education, thereafter servitude with little prospect of getting deserved rewards, no influence over anything meaningful when voting, decades of day to day body & mind ruining anxiety over such things as being housed, having health care, feeding the children they may soon have, ceaseless bombardment of news designed not to inform or enlighten but to frighten them into alienated conformity with & subordination to invisible masters.

 

The truthful American journalist now most effectively expressing the overwhelmingly dismal consequences of modern casino capitalism is Chris Hedges. This morning - September 26, 2012 - I read his latest essay, which can be found along with the rest of his great work at Truthdig.com. Hedges reminds us, first, that, in the presidential campaign we're now suffering, the two major candidates, Obama & Romney, are spending two & one-half billion dollars to manipulate us with lies.

 

EXCERPT: We will be assaulted this January when automatic spending reductions, referred to as “the fiscal cliff,” begin to dismantle and defund some of our most important government programs. Mitt Romney will not stop it. Barack Obama will not stop it.

 

And while Romney has been, courtesy of the magazine Mother Jones, exposed as a shallow hypocrite, Obama is in a class by himself. There is hardly a campaign promise from 2008 that Obama has not broken. This list includes his pledges to support the public option in health care, close Guantanamo, raise the minimum wage, regulate Wall Street, support labor unions in their struggles with employers, reform the Patriot Act, negotiate an equitable peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians, curb our imperial expansion in the Middle East, stop torture, protect reproductive rights, carry out a comprehensive immigration reform, cut the deficit by half, create 5 million new energy jobs and halt home foreclosures. Obama, campaigning in South Carolina in 2007, said that as president he would fight for the right of collective bargaining. “I’d put on a comfortable pair of shoes myself, I’ll … walk on that picket line with you as president of the United States of America,” he said. But when he got his chance to put on those “comfortable pair of shoes” during labor disputes in Madison, Wis., and Chicago he turned his back on working men and women.

 

Obama, while promising to defend Social Security, also says he stands behind the planned cuts outlined by his deficit commission, headed by Morgan Stanley board member Erskine Bowles and former Sen. Alan Simpson, a Wyoming Republican. The Bowles-Simpson plan calls for cutting 0.3 percentage points from the annual cost-of-living adjustment in the Social Security program. The annual reduction would slowly accumulate. After a decade it would mean a 3 percent cut. After two decades it would mean a 6 percent cut. The retirement age would be raised to 69. And those on Social Security who continued to work and made more than $40,000 a year would be penalized with further reductions. Obama’s payroll tax cuts have, at the same time, served to undermine the solvency of Social Security, making it an easier target for the finance corporations that seek to destroy the program and privatize the funds.

 

But that is just the start....

 

• Please continue to full text ⤵⤵⤵

 

How Do You Take Your Poison?

 

Pub'l. Sept. 24, 2012 @ Truthdig.com

 

By Chris Hedges

 

www.truthdig.com/report/item/how_do_you_take_your_poison_...

 

###

www.facebook.com/AriesParcumphoto

So I was called by this group of guys who run some of the art shows here in my town , they wanted to talk with me about doing a show with my work , I got there , and first problem :

 

Guy on the fuckin door says : this is not a public building

 

Tripper : I know I was called by . . . (not saying names)

 

ToyCop (security guard) : Hold down wait outside

 

Tripper : fuck you I'm not waiting outside call . . . (guys name) and let him know I'm here , you know what fuck it , I got his cell phone # right here , so I gave this guy a call , and he said sorry about that

 

ToyCop : He answers the phone , and says . . . yes Sir , No Sir , yes Sir , Mr Trippes (yes Trippes fuckin idiot couldn't even say Tripper , I mean c'mon how hard is it) please follow me

 

So after this fuckin bullshit I go have a chat with a couple of "Artist" and to sumarize everything I tell you this , I am not paying nobody to show my work , and to top it off , they told me I will have to tone it down a bit as I am . . . well Different ?? Different ?? what the fuck ?? so now I'm an Alien ?? What am I ??

 

Hey Fuck you , you fuckin Fucks , I rather be a genuine nobody , than a fuckin hypocrite somebody

  

**

 

Strobist info :

 

SB800 1/4 - Naked , Apollo Softbox 5ft from subject (camera Right) , 5ft high , subject 5 ó clock

SB600 1/16 - Naked (camera Left) 2ft high , subject 9 ó clock

SB600 1/16 - Naked (camera Right) 2ft high , subject 3 ó clock

Sigma 18-50mm f/2.8 @ 18mm f/5.6

Nikon D300 : ISO 800 - 1/20