Like watercolor we all should blend as one nation of equal citzens!

 

"Virtue can only flourish among equals. - Mary Wollstonecraft"

 

Macro Monday project – 04/15/13

“Rainbow"

セっしゅ is captured and tied to a pole. He tries to free himself but it is hopeless. He starts to cry. As his tears fall to the ground he starts to draw a painting of a mouse with his feet using his tears as the paint. He creates a master works and is pardoned.... So the legend says... These famous places is where Fiz-iks is happy to shoot at; rich in history and culture and somewhat famous.

 

We dialed them up in hopes of getting permission. We received a very positive response on the phone with a "you should shoot here" type of attitude. We told the person on the phone that we would be there after 9pm....

 

We arrived at 9:45 and ring the bell as instructed on the phone to announce our presence. We were greeted by a monk who seemed impartial to meeting us. He was simply fulfilling his duty and showing any emotion was obviously not accepted. Just as doors were closing and we were about to start shooting the head priest shows up.... A booming voice shouts "Who are you?" We desperately tried to explain that we had phoned earlier but he was angered and was taking zero excuses. He dishes out a nasty scolding like he is talking to a group of 5 year old children... it hurt to listen to and out of respect of the Japanese people I was with I did not unleash my own scolding as it was obvious he was drunk and simply awoken by our visit which resulted in his angry tirade. I thought monks were forgiving and kind. This guy was drunk and belligerent....

 

We shot this and, against the advice of my mates, shot one more before leaving way earlier than we had planned...

 

5Dm2 + 17-40L, temple lit with xenon torch and "eye" done with LEDs. SOOC.

I was tagged by some f-friends so this is my wishlist, partial and impartial! :D

 

I omitted many dolls and dresses (contemporary and Non-Mattel dolls), I would been extremely cheeky if I had written everything! :D

 

Okay, from the top to the bottom (dolls):

- yes, the first - a #1 Barbie - blonde or brunette, doesn't really matters to me (LOL!!)

- # 3 blonde ponytail with blue eyeliner (the only variant of this doll missing in my collection)

- Standard Barbie blonde (in any shade) and red haired

- no bangs Francie, better blonde

- standard (straight legs) blonde Francie

- platinum blonde side part bubblucut Barbie, either stiff or AG body. (FOUND IT IN 2017)

(vintage dresses group)

- Pretty as a picture

- Golden Glory (FOUND IT IN 2017)

- Reception line

- Disc Date

(mod dresses group)

- Special sparkle

- Goldswinger

- Extravaganza

(Francie dresses group)

- Shoppin' Spree

- Sissy Suit

- Tenterrific

- Pertners in print

- Border-line

- The silver cage

 

I started to collect dolls in 1996, I reached many important goals during all these years, I'm a happy and satisfied collector. :-)

Only one thing is always the same after all these year, my enthusiasm, I will restart over and over again! :-)

I think this photo says it all! Am I scraping the bottom of the barrel do you think? I don't mind this one, but then I'm not quite impartial.

No preconceived notion of the impossibility of its objects shall be permitted to interfere with the candour and impartiality which the investigation of Truth demands. George Boole, Preface to The Mathematical Analysis of Logic (1847).

 

Olympus OM-1 and Durst Neotar 50mm F/3.5 enlarger lens with OM to M39 adapter and extension tube. Birmingham Flickr Meet 12th Oct 2008. Jessops rebranded APX100 in caffenol-C (20 mins).

Well, as hinted at before: despite believing they might actually leave the signage alone in the Southaven Walmart, they went and changed it anyway. And despite us calling it cheap looking, I'm sure the people making and installing those signs are charging Walmart a small fortune to dumb the place down! At the time of this photo in early October, it appeared as if the small signs were still in a state of transition. The super flat, super boring Home Décor and Bedding signs are the newer, Cheap Impact versions; while the "classic" style Project Impact versions are the ones in the foreground. Hope this was a fair and impartial photo comment (LoL!).

____________________________________

Walmart, 1998-built, Southcrest Pkwy near Goodman Rd., Southaven, MS

The day before midsummer, the queen bee used to fly the enormous distance to a far-off ocean. She plunged to its depths in search of the rare sea flower: Neptune’s Clover. No other bee in all history could accomplish such a feat. For two thousand years, this same queen had gathered the rejuvenating and curative pollen from Neptune’s Clover.

 

As the days rolled on, the queen still had not returned. The colony was besides itself in worry and set forth to find her. They all latched their feet onto the hive, which was as large as a hill, and flapped their wings for lift off. When finally, they arrived to what they believed to be the area of Neptune’s Clover, their exhausted wings failed. The queen bee was nowhere to be seen. The hive, heavy with honey, and all its pilots fell into the sea. The two-thousand-year-old colony perished on a beautiful, calm afternoon, beneath the impartial waves.

 

Nowadays, bees might construct their hives in the nooks and crannies of human architecture. Unbeknownst to the people, their floating civilization is built right over the site of the sunken hive. Perhaps the bees of this century instinctively feel its presence, and so we find them in profusion adding their honeycombs to the present architecture.

 

Sunken Honey is the Arts & Entertainment Region

 

Sponsored by Misfit Dance

 

Sunken Honey by Lilia Artis and Haveit Neox

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is a church in the Christian Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem. According to traditions dating back to the 4th century, it contains the two holiest sites in Christianity: the site where Jesus was crucified, at a place known as Calvary or Golgotha, and Jesus's empty tomb, where he is believed by Christians to have been buried and resurrected. Each time the church was rebuilt, some of the antiquities from the preceding structure were used in the newer renovation. The tomb itself is enclosed by a 19th-century shrine called the Aedicule. The Status Quo, an understanding between religious communities dating to 1757, applies to the site.

 

Within the church proper are the last four stations of the Cross of the Via Dolorosa, representing the final episodes of the Passion of Jesus. The church has been a major Christian pilgrimage destination since its creation in the 4th century, as the traditional site of the resurrection of Christ, thus its original Greek name, Church of the Anastasis ('Resurrection').

 

Control of the church itself is shared, a simultaneum, among several Christian denominations and secular entities in complicated arrangements essentially unchanged for over 160 years, and some for much longer. The main denominations sharing property over parts of the church are the Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox and Armenian Apostolic, and to a lesser degree the Coptic, Syriac, and Ethiopian Orthodox churches.

 

Following the siege of Jerusalem in AD 70 during the First Jewish–Roman War, Jerusalem had been reduced to ruins. In AD 130, the Roman emperor Hadrian began the building of a Roman colony, the new city of Aelia Capitolina, on the site. Circa AD 135, he ordered that a cave containing a rock-cut tomb be filled in to create a flat foundation for a temple dedicated to Jupiter or Venus. The temple remained until the early 4th century.

 

After allegedly seeing a vision of a cross in the sky in 312, Constantine the Great began to favor Christianity, signed the Edict of Milan legalising the religion, and sent his mother, Helena, to Jerusalem to look for Christ's tomb. With the help of Bishop of Caesarea Eusebius and Bishop of Jerusalem Macarius, three crosses were found near a tomb; one which allegedly cured people of death was presumed to be the True Cross Jesus was crucified on, leading the Romans to believe that they had found Calvary. Constantine ordered in about 326 that the temple to Jupiter/Venus be replaced by a church. After the temple was torn down and its ruins removed, the soil was removed from the cave, revealing a rock-cut tomb that Helena and Macarius identified as the burial site of Jesus. A shrine was built, enclosing the rock tomb walls within its own.

 

In 327, Constantine and Helena separately commissioned the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem to commemorate the birth of Jesus.

 

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, planned by the architect Zenobius, was built as separate constructs over the two holy sites: a rotunda called the Anastasis ("Resurrection"), where Helena and Macarius believed Jesus to have been buried, and across a courtyard to the east, the great basilica, an enclosed colonnaded atrium (the Triportico, sometimes called the Martyrium) with the traditional site of Calvary in one corner. The church was consecrated on 13 September 335. The Church Of The Holy Sepulchre site has been recognized since early in the 4th century as the place where Jesus was crucified, buried, and rose from the dead.

 

This building was destroyed by a fire in May of AD 614, when the Sassanid Empire, under Khosrau II, invaded Jerusalem and captured the True Cross. In 630, the Emperor Heraclius rebuilt the church after recapturing the city. After Jerusalem came under Islamic rule, it remained a Christian church, with the early Muslim rulers protecting the city's Christian sites, prohibiting their destruction or use as living quarters. A story reports that the caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab visited the church and stopped to pray on the balcony, but at the time of prayer, turned away from the church and prayed outside. He feared that future generations would misinterpret this gesture, taking it as a pretext to turn the church into a mosque. Eutychius of Alexandria adds that Umar wrote a decree saying that Muslims would not inhabit this location. The building suffered severe damage from an earthquake in 746.

 

Early in the 9th century, another earthquake damaged the dome of the Anastasis. The damage was repaired in 810 by Patriarch Thomas I. In 841, the church suffered a fire. In 935, the Christians prevented the construction of a Muslim mosque adjacent to the Church. In 938, a new fire damaged the inside of the basilica and came close to the rotunda. In 966, due to a defeat of Muslim armies in the region of Syria, a riot broke out, which was followed by reprisals. The basilica was burned again. The doors and roof were burnt, and Patriarch John VII was murdered.

 

On 18 October 1009, Fatimid caliph al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah ordered the complete destruction of the church as part of a more general campaign against Christian places of worship in Palestine and Egypt. The damage was extensive, with few parts of the early church remaining, and the roof of the rock-cut tomb damaged; the original shrine was destroyed. Some partial repairs followed. Christian Europe reacted with shock and expulsions of Jews, serving as an impetus to later Crusades.

 

In wide-ranging negotiations between the Fatimids and the Byzantine Empire in 1027–28, an agreement was reached whereby the new Caliph Ali az-Zahir (al-Hakim's son) agreed to allow the rebuilding and redecoration of the church. The rebuilding was finally completed during the tenures of Emperor Constantine IX Monomachos and Patriarch Nicephorus of Constantinople in 1048. As a concession, the mosque in Constantinople was reopened and the khutba sermons were to be pronounced in az-Zahir's name. Muslim sources say a by-product of the agreement was the renunciation of Islam by many Christians who had been forced to convert under al-Hakim's persecutions. In addition, the Byzantines, while releasing 5,000 Muslim prisoners, made demands for the restoration of other churches destroyed by al-Hakim and the reestablishment of a patriarch in Jerusalem. Contemporary sources credit the emperor with spending vast sums in an effort to restore the Church of the Holy Sepulchre after this agreement was made. Still, "a total replacement was far beyond available resources. The new construction was concentrated on the rotunda and its surrounding buildings: the great basilica remained in ruins."

 

The rebuilt church site consisted of "a court open to the sky, with five small chapels attached to it." The chapels were east of the court of resurrection (when reconstructed, the location of the tomb was under open sky), where the western wall of the great basilica had been. They commemorated scenes from the passion, such as the location of the prison of Christ and his flagellation, and presumably were so placed because of the difficulties of free movement among shrines in the city streets. The dedication of these chapels indicates the importance of the pilgrims' devotion to the suffering of Christ. They have been described as 'a sort of Via Dolorosa in miniature'... since little or no rebuilding took place on the site of the great basilica. Western pilgrims to Jerusalem during the 11th century found much of the sacred site in ruins." Control of Jerusalem, and thereby the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, continued to change hands several times between the Fatimids and the Seljuk Turks (loyal to the Abbasid caliph in Baghdad) until the Crusaders' arrival in 1099.

 

Many historians maintain that the main concern of Pope Urban II, when calling for the First Crusade, was the threat to Constantinople from the Turkish invasion of Asia Minor in response to the appeal of Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos. Historians agree that the fate of Jerusalem and thereby the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was also of concern, if not the immediate goal of papal policy in 1095. The idea of taking Jerusalem gained more focus as the Crusade was underway. The rebuilt church site was taken from the Fatimids (who had recently taken it from the Abassids) by the knights of the First Crusade on 15 July 1099.

 

The First Crusade was envisioned as an armed pilgrimage, and no crusader could consider his journey complete unless he had prayed as a pilgrim at the Holy Sepulchre. The classical theory is that Crusader leader Godfrey of Bouillon, who became the first Latin ruler of Jerusalem, decided not to use the title "king" during his lifetime, and declared himself Advocatus Sancti Sepulchri ("Protector [or Defender] of the Holy Sepulchre"). By the Crusader period, a cistern under the former basilica was rumoured to have been where Helena had found the True Cross, and began to be venerated as such; the cistern later became the Chapel of the Invention of the Cross, but there is no evidence of the site's identification before the 11th century, and modern archaeological investigation has now dated the cistern to 11th-century repairs by Monomachos.

 

According to the German priest and pilgrim Ludolf von Sudheim, the keys of the Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre were in hands of the "ancient Georgians", and the food, alms, candles and oil for lamps were given to them by the pilgrims at the south door of the church.

 

Eight 11th- and 12th-century Crusader leaders (Godfrey, Baldwin I, Baldwin II, Fulk, Baldwin III, Amalric, Baldwin IV and Baldwin V — the first eight rulers of the Kingdom of Jerusalem) were buried in the south transept and inside the Chapel of Adam. The royal tombs were destroyed by the Greeks in 1809–1810. It is unclear if the remains of those men were exhumed; some researchers hypothesize that some of them may still be in unmarked pits under the church.

 

William of Tyre, chronicler of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem, reports on the renovation of the Church in the mid-12th century. The Crusaders investigated the eastern ruins on the site, occasionally excavating through the rubble, and while attempting to reach the cistern, they discovered part of the original ground level of Hadrian's temple enclosure; they transformed this space into a chapel dedicated to Helena, widening their original excavation tunnel into a proper staircase. The Crusaders began to refurnish the church in Romanesque style and added a bell tower. These renovations unified the small chapels on the site and were completed during the reign of Queen Melisende in 1149, placing all the holy places under one roof for the first time. The church became the seat of the first Latin patriarchs and the site of the kingdom's scriptorium. It was lost to Saladin, along with the rest of the city, in 1187, although the treaty established after the Third Crusade allowed Christian pilgrims to visit the site. Emperor Frederick II (r. 1220–50) regained the city and the church by treaty in the 13th century while under a ban of excommunication, with the curious consequence that the holiest church in Christianity was laid under interdict. The church seems to have been largely in the hands of Greek Orthodox patriarch Athanasius II of Jerusalem (c. 1231–47) during the Latin control of Jerusalem. Both city and church were captured by the Khwarezmians in 1244.

 

There was certainly a recognisable Nestorian (Church of the East) presence at the Holy Sepulchre from the years 1348 through 1575, as contemporary Franciscan accounts indicate. The Franciscan friars renovated the church in 1555, as it had been neglected despite increased numbers of pilgrims. The Franciscans rebuilt the Aedicule, extending the structure to create an antechamber. A marble shrine commissioned by Friar Boniface of Ragusa was placed to envelop the remains of Christ's tomb, probably to prevent pilgrims from touching the original rock or taking small pieces as souvenirs. A marble slab was placed over the limestone burial bed where Jesus's body is believed to have lain.

 

After the renovation of 1555, control of the church oscillated between the Franciscans and the Orthodox, depending on which community could obtain a favorable firman from the "Sublime Porte" at a particular time, often through outright bribery. Violent clashes were not uncommon. There was no agreement about this question, although it was discussed at the negotiations to the Treaty of Karlowitz in 1699. During the Holy Week of 1757, Orthodox Christians reportedly took over some of the Franciscan-controlled church. This may have been the cause of the sultan's firman (decree) later developed into the Status Quo.

 

A fire severely damaged the structure again in 1808, causing the dome of the Rotunda to collapse and smashing the Aedicule's exterior decoration. The Rotunda and the Aedicule's exterior were rebuilt in 1809–10 by architect Nikolaos Ch. Komnenos of Mytilene in the contemporary Ottoman Baroque style.[citation needed] The interior of the antechamber, now known as the Chapel of the Angel, was partly rebuilt to a square ground plan in place of the previously semicircular western end.

 

Another decree in 1853 from the sultan solidified the existing territorial division among the communities and solidified the Status Quo for arrangements to "remain in their present state", requiring consensus to make even minor changes.

 

The dome was restored by Catholics, Greeks and Turks in 1868, being made of iron ever since.

 

By the time of the British Mandate for Palestine following the end of World War I, the cladding of red marble applied to the Aedicule by Komnenos had deteriorated badly and was detaching from the underlying structure; from 1947 until restoration work in 2016–17, it was held in place with an exterior scaffolding of iron girders installed by the British authorities.

 

In 1948, Jerusalem was divided between Israel and Jordan and the Old City with the church were made part of Jordan. In 1967, Israeli forces captured East Jerusalem in the Six Day War, and that area has remained under Israeli control ever since. Under Israeli rule, legal arrangements relating to the churches of East Jerusalem were maintained in coordination with the Jordanian government. The dome at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was restored again in 1994–97 as part of extensive modern renovations that have been ongoing since 1959. During the 1970–78 restoration works and excavations inside the building, and under the nearby Muristan bazaar, it was found that the area was originally a quarry, from which white meleke limestone was struck.

 

East of the Chapel of Saint Helena, the excavators discovered a void containing a second-century[dubious – discuss] drawing of a Roman pilgrim ship, two low walls supporting the platform of Hadrian's second-century temple, and a higher fourth-century wall built to support Constantine's basilica. After the excavations of the early 1970s, the Armenian authorities converted this archaeological space into the Chapel of Saint Vartan, and created an artificial walkway over the quarry on the north of the chapel, so that the new chapel could be accessed (by permission) from the Chapel of Saint Helena.

 

After seven decades of being held together by steel girders, the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) declared the visibly deteriorating Aedicule structure unsafe. A restoration of the Aedicule was agreed upon and executed from May 2016 to March 2017. Much of the $4 million project was funded by the World Monuments Fund, as well as $1.3 million from Mica Ertegun and a significant sum from King Abdullah II of Jordan. The existence of the original limestone cave walls within the Aedicule was confirmed, and a window was created to view this from the inside. The presence of moisture led to the discovery of an underground shaft resembling an escape tunnel carved into the bedrock, seeming to lead from the tomb. For the first time since at least 1555, on 26 October 2016, marble cladding that protects the supposed burial bed of Jesus was removed. Members of the National Technical University of Athens were present. Initially, only a layer of debris was visible. This was cleared in the next day, and a partially broken marble slab with a Crusader-style cross carved was revealed. By the night of 28 October, the original limestone burial bed was shown to be intact. The tomb was resealed shortly thereafter. Mortar from just above the burial bed was later dated to the mid-fourth century.

 

On 25 March 2020, Israeli health officials ordered the site closed to the public due to the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the keeper of the keys, it was the first such closure since 1349, during the Black Death. Clerics continued regular prayers inside the building, and it reopened to visitors two months later, on 24 May.

 

During church renovations in 2022, a stone slab covered in modern graffiti was moved from a wall, revealing Cosmatesque-style decoration on one face. According to an IAA archaeologist, the decoration was once inlaid with pieces of glass and fine marble; it indicates that the relic was the front of the church's high altar from the Crusader era (c. 1149), which was later used by the Greek Orthodox until being damaged in the 1808 fire.

 

The courtyard facing the entrance to the church is known as the parvis. Two streets open into the parvis: St Helena Road (west) and Suq ed-Dabbagha (east). Around the parvis are a few smaller structures.

 

South of the parvis, opposite the church:

 

Broken columns—once forming part of an arcade—stand opposite the church, at the top of a short descending staircase stretching over the entire breadth of the parvis. In the 13th century, the tops of the columns were removed and sent to Mecca by the Khwarezmids.

The Gethsemane Metochion, a small Greek Orthodox monastery (metochion).

On the eastern side of the parvis, south to north:

 

The Monastery of St Abraham (Greek Orthodox), next to the Suq ed-Dabbagha entrance to the parvis.

The Chapel of St John the Evangelist (Armenian Orthodox)

The Chapel of St Michael and the Chapel of the Four Living Creatures (both are disputed between the Copts and Ethiopians), giving access to Deir es-Sultan (also disputed), a rooftop monastery surrounding the dome of the Chapel of St Helena.

North of the parvis, in front of the church façade or against it:

 

Chapel of the Franks (Chapel of Our Lady of Sorrows): a blue-domed Roman Catholic Crusader chapel dedicated to Our Lady of Sorrows, which once provided exclusive access to Calvary. The chapel marks the 10th Station of the Cross (the stripping of Jesus's garments).

Oratory of St. Mary of Egypt: a Greek Orthodox oratory and chapel, directly beneath the Chapel of the Franks, dedicated to St. Mary of Egypt.

The tomb (including a ledgerstone) of Philip d'Aubigny aka Philip Daubeney (died 1236), a knight, tutor, and royal councilor to Henry III of England and signer of the Magna Carta—is placed in front of, and between, the church's two original entrance doors, of which the eastern one is walled up. It is one of the few tombs of crusaders and other Europeans not removed from the Church after the Khwarizmian capture of Jerusalem in 1244. In the 1900s, during a fight between the Greeks and Latins, some monks damaged the tomb by throwing stones from the roof. A stone marker[clarification needed] was placed on his tomb in 1925, sheltered by a wooden trapdoor that hides it from view.[citation needed]

A group of three chapels borders the parvis on its west side. They originally formed the baptistery complex of the Constantinian church. The southernmost chapel was the vestibule, the middle chapel the baptistery, and the north chapel the chamber in which the patriarch chrismated the newly baptized before leading them into the rotunda north of this complex. Now they are dedicated as (from south to north)

 

The Chapel of St. James the Just (Greek Orthodox),

The Chapel of St. John the Baptist (Greek Orthodox),

The Chapel of the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste (Greek Orthodox; at the base of the bell tower).

 

The 12th-century Crusader bell tower is just south of the Rotunda, to the left of the entrance. Its upper level was lost in a 1545 collapse. In 1719, another two storeys were lost.

 

The wooden doors that compose the main entrance are the original, highly carved arched doors. Today, only the left-hand entrance is currently accessible, as the right doorway has long since been bricked up. The entrance to the church leads to the south transept, through the crusader façade in the parvis of a larger courtyard. This is found past a group of streets winding through the outer Via Dolorosa by way of a souq in the Muristan. This narrow way of access to such a large structure has proven to be hazardous at times. For example, when a fire broke out in 1840, dozens of pilgrims were trampled to death.

 

According to their own family lore, the Muslim Nuseibeh family has been responsible for opening the door as an impartial party to the church's denominations already since the seventh century. However, they themselves admit that the documents held by various Christian denominations only mention their role since the 12th century, in the time of Saladin, which is the date more generally accepted. After retaking Jerusalem from the Crusaders in 1187, Saladin entrusted the Joudeh family with the key to the church, which is made of iron and 30 centimetres (12 in) long; the Nuseibehs either became or remained its doorkeepers.

 

The 'immovable ladder' stands beneath a window on the façade.

 

Just inside the church entrance is a stairway leading up to Calvary (Golgotha), traditionally regarded as the site of Jesus's crucifixion and the most lavishly decorated part of the church. The exit is via another stairway opposite the first, leading down to the ambulatory. Golgotha and its chapels are just south of the main altar of the catholicon.

 

Calvary is split into two chapels: one Greek Orthodox and one Catholic, each with its own altar. On the left (north) side, the Greek Orthodox chapel's altar is placed over the supposed rock of Calvary (the 12th Station of the Cross), which can be touched through a hole in the floor beneath the altar. The rock can be seen under protective glass on both sides of the altar. The softer surrounding stone was removed when the church was built. The Roman Catholic (Franciscan) Chapel of the Nailing of the Cross (the 11th Station of the Cross) stretches to the south. Between the Catholic Altar of the Nailing to the Cross and the Orthodox altar is the Catholic Altar of the Stabat Mater, which has a statue of Mary with an 18th-century bust; this middle altar marks the 13th Station of the Cross.

 

On the ground floor, just underneath the Golgotha chapel, is the Chapel of Adam. According to tradition, Jesus was crucified over the place where Adam's skull was buried. According to some, the blood of Christ ran down the cross and through the rocks to fill Adam's skull. Through a window at the back of the 11th-century apse, the rock of Calvary can be seen with a crack traditionally held to be caused by the earthquake that followed Jesus's death;[78] some scholars claim it is the result of quarrying against a natural flaw in the rock.

 

Behind the Chapel of Adam is the Greek Treasury (Treasury of the Greek Patriarch). Some of its relics, such as a 12th-century crystal mitre, were transferred to the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate Museum (the Patriarchal Museum) on Greek Orthodox Patriarchate Street.

 

Just inside the entrance to the church is the Stone of Anointing (also Stone of the Anointing or Stone of Unction), which tradition holds to be where Jesus's body was prepared for burial by Joseph of Arimathea, though this tradition is only attested since the crusader era (notably by the Italian Dominican pilgrim Riccoldo da Monte di Croce in 1288), and the present stone was only added in the 1810 reconstruction.

 

The wall behind the stone is defined by its striking blue balconies and taphos symbol-bearing red banners (depicting the insignia of the Brotherhood of the Holy Sepulchre), and is decorated with lamps. The modern mosaic along the wall depicts the anointing of Jesus's body, preceded on the right by the Descent from the Cross, and succeeded on the left by the Burial of Jesus.

 

The wall was a temporary addition to support the arch above it, which had been weakened after the damage in the 1808 fire; it blocks the view of the rotunda, separates the entrance from the catholicon, sits on top of four of the now empty and desecrated Crusader graves and is no longer structurally necessary. Opinions differ as to whether it is to be seen as the 13th Station of the Cross, which others identify as the lowering of Jesus from the cross and located between the 11th and 12th stations on Calvary.

 

The lamps that hang over the Stone of Unction, adorned with cross-bearing chain links, are contributed by Armenians, Copts, Greeks and Latins.

 

Immediately inside and to the left of the entrance is a bench (formerly a divan) that has traditionally been used by the church's Muslim doorkeepers, along with some Christian clergy, as well as electrical wiring. To the right of the entrance is a wall along the ambulatory containing the staircase leading to Golgotha. Further along the same wall is the entrance to the Chapel of Adam.

 

The rotunda is the building of the larger dome located on the far west side. In the centre of the rotunda is a small chapel called the Aedicule in English, from the Latin aedicula, in reference to a small shrine. The Aedicule has two rooms: the first holds a relic called the Angel's Stone, which is believed to be a fragment of the large stone that sealed the tomb; the second, smaller room contains the tomb of Jesus. Possibly to prevent pilgrims from removing bits of the original rock as souvenirs, by 1555, a surface of marble cladding was placed on the tomb to prevent further damage to the tomb. In October 2016, the top slab was pulled back to reveal an older, partially broken marble slab with a Crusader-style cross carved in it. Beneath it, the limestone burial bed was revealed to be intact.

 

Under the Status Quo, the Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Armenian Apostolic Churches all have rights to the interior of the tomb, and all three communities celebrate the Divine Liturgy or Holy Mass there daily. It is also used for other ceremonies on special occasions, such as the Holy Saturday ceremony of the Holy Fire led by the Greek Orthodox patriarch (with the participation of the Coptic and Armenian patriarchs). To its rear, in the Coptic Chapel, constructed of iron latticework, lies the altar used by the Coptic Orthodox. Historically, the Georgians also retained the key to the Aedicule.

 

To the right of the sepulchre on the northwestern edge of the Rotunda is the Chapel of the Apparition, which is reserved for Roman Catholic use.

 

In the central nave of the Crusader-era church, just east of the larger rotunda, is the Crusader structure housing the main altar of the Church, today the Greek Orthodox catholicon. Its dome is 19.8 metres (65 ft) in diameter, and is set directly over the centre of the transept crossing of the choir where the compas is situated, an omphalos ("navel") stone once thought to be the center of the world and still venerated as such by Orthodox Christians (associated with the site of the Crucifixion and the Resurrection).

 

Since 1996 this dome is topped by the monumental Golgotha Crucifix, which the Greek Patriarch Diodoros I of Jerusalem consecrated. It was at the initiative of Israeli professor Gustav Kühnel to erect a new crucifix at the church that would not only be worthy of the singularity of the site, but that would also become a symbol of the efforts of unity in the community of Christian faith.

 

The catholicon's iconostasis demarcates the Orthodox sanctuary behind it, to its east. The iconostasis is flanked to the front by two episcopal thrones: the southern seat (cathedra) is the patriarchal throne of the Greek Orthodox patriarch of Jerusalem, and the northern seat is for an archbishop or bishop. (There is also a popular claim that both are patriarchal thrones, with the northern one being for the patriarch of Antioch — which has been described as a misstatement, however.)

 

South of the Aedicule is the "Place of the Three Marys", marked by a stone canopy (the Station of the Holy Women) and a large modern wall mosaic. From here one can enter the Armenian monastery, which stretches over the ground and first upper floor of the church's southeastern part.

 

West of the Aedicule, to the rear of the Rotunda, is the Syriac Chapel with the Tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, located in a Constantinian apse and containing an opening to an ancient Jewish rock-cut tomb. This chapel is where the Syriac Orthodox celebrate their Liturgy on Sundays.

 

The Syriac Orthodox Chapel of Saint Joseph of Arimathea and Saint Nicodemus. On Sundays and feast days it is furnished for the celebration of Mass. It is accessed from the Rotunda, by a door west of the Aedicule.

 

On the far side of the chapel is the low entrance to an almost complete first-century Jewish tomb, initially holding six kokh-type funeral shafts radiating from a central chamber, two of which are still exposed. Although this space was discovered relatively recently and contains no identifying marks, some believe that Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus were buried here. Since Jews always buried their dead outside the city, the presence of this tomb seems to prove that the Holy Sepulchre site was outside the city walls at the time of the crucifixion.

 

The Franciscan Chapel of St. Mary Magdalene – The chapel, an open area, indicates the place where Mary Magdalene met Jesus after his resurrection.

 

The Franciscan Chapel of the Apparition (Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament), directly north of the above – in memory of Jesus's meeting with his mother after the Resurrection, a non-scriptural tradition. Here stands a piece of an ancient column, allegedly part of the one Jesus was tied to during his scourging.

 

The Arches of the Virgin are seven arches (an arcade) at the northern end of the north transept, which is to the catholicon's north. Disputed by the Orthodox and the Latin, the area is used to store ladders.

 

In the northeast side of the complex, there is the Prison of Christ, alleged to be where Jesus was held. The Greek Orthodox are showing pilgrims yet another place where Jesus was allegedly held, the similarly named Prison of Christ in their Monastery of the Praetorium, located near the Church of Ecce Homo, between the Second and Third Stations of the Via Dolorosa. The Armenians regard a recess in the Monastery of the Flagellation at the Second Station of the Via Dolorosa as the Prison of Christ. A cistern among the ruins beneath the Church of St. Peter in Gallicantu on Mount Zion is also alleged to have been the Prison of Christ. To reconcile the traditions, some allege that Jesus was held in the Mount Zion cell in connection with his trial by the Jewish high priest, at the Praetorium in connection with his trial by the Roman governor Pilate, and near the Golgotha before crucifixion.

 

The chapels in the ambulatory are, from north to south: the Greek Chapel of Saint Longinus (named after Longinus), the Armenian Chapel of the Division of Robes, the entrance to the Chapel of Saint Helena, and the Greek Chapel of the Derision.

 

Chapel of Saint Helena – between the Chapel of the Division of Robes and the Greek Chapel of the Derision are stairs descending to the Chapel of Saint Helena. The Armenians, who own it, call it the Chapel of St. Gregory the Illuminator, after the saint who brought Christianity to the Armenians.

 

Chapel of St Vartan (or Vardan) Mamikonian – on the north side of the Chapel of Saint Helena is an ornate wrought iron door, beyond which a raised artificial platform affords views of the quarry, and which leads to the Chapel of Saint Vartan. The latter chapel contains archaeological remains from Hadrian's temple and Constantine's basilica. These areas are open only on request.

 

Chapel of the Invention of the Cross (named for the Invention (Finding) of the Holy Cross) – another set of 22 stairs from the Chapel of Saint Helena leads down to the Roman Catholic Chapel of the Invention of the Holy Cross, believed to be the place where the True Cross was found.

 

An Ottoman decree of 1757 helped establish a status quo upholding the state of affairs for various Holy Land sites. The status quo was upheld in Sultan Abdülmecid I's firman (decree) of 1852/3, which pinned down the now-permanent statutes of property and the regulations concerning the roles of the different denominations and other custodians.

 

The primary custodians are the Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox and Armenian Apostolic churches. The Greek Orthodox act through the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate as well as through the Brotherhood of the Holy Sepulchre. Roman Catholics act through the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land. In the 19th century, the Coptic Orthodox, the Ethiopian Orthodox and the Syriac Orthodox also acquired lesser responsibilities, which include shrines and other structures in and around the building.

 

None of these controls the main entrance. In 1192, Saladin assigned door-keeping responsibilities to the Muslim Nusaybah family. The wooden doors that compose the main entrance are the original, highly carved doors. The Joudeh al-Goudia (al-Ghodayya) family were entrusted as custodian to the keys of the Holy Sepulchre by Saladin in 1187. Despite occasional disagreements, religious services take place in the Church with regularity and coexistence is generally peaceful. An example of concord between the Church custodians is the full restoration of the Aedicule from 2016 to 2017.

 

The establishment of the modern Status Quo in 1853 did not halt controversy and occasional violence. In 1902, 18 friars were hospitalized and some monks were jailed after the Franciscans and Greeks disagreed over who could clean the lowest step of the Chapel of the Franks. In the aftermath, the Greek patriarch, Franciscan custos, Ottoman governor and French consul general signed a convention that both denominations could sweep it. On a hot summer day in 2002, a Coptic monk moved his chair from its agreed spot into the shade. This was interpreted as a hostile move by the Ethiopians and eleven were hospitalized after the resulting fight. In another incident in 2004, during Orthodox celebrations of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, a door to the Franciscan chapel was left open. This was taken as a sign of disrespect by the Orthodox and a fistfight broke out. Some people were arrested, but no one was seriously injured.

 

On Palm Sunday, in April 2008, a brawl broke out when a Greek monk was ejected from the building by a rival faction. Police were called to the scene but were also attacked by the enraged brawlers. On Sunday, 9 November 2008, a clash erupted between Armenian and Greek monks during celebrations for the Feast of the Cross.

 

In February 2018, the church was closed following a tax dispute over 152 million euros of uncollected taxes on church properties. The city hall stressed that the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and all other churches are exempt from the taxes, with the changes only affecting establishments like "hotels, halls and businesses" owned by the churches. NPR had reported that the Greek Orthodox Church calls itself the second-largest landowner in Israel, after the Israeli government.

 

There was a lock-in protest against an Israeli legislative proposal which would expropriate church lands that had been sold to private companies since 2010, a measure which church leaders assert constitutes a serious violation of their property rights and the Status Quo. In a joint official statement the church authorities protested what they considered to be the peak of a systematic campaign in:

 

a discriminatory and racist bill that targets solely the properties of the Christian community in the Holy Land ... This reminds us all of laws of a similar nature which were enacted against the Jews during dark periods in Europe.

 

The 2018 taxation affair does not cover any church buildings or religious related facilities (because they are exempt by law), but commercial facilities such as the Notre Dame Hotel which was not paying the municipal property tax, and any land which is owned and used as a commercial land. The church holds the rights to land where private homes have been constructed, and some of the disagreement had been raised after the Knesset had proposed a bill that will make it harder for a private company not to extend a lease for land used by homeowners. The church leaders have said that such a bill will make it harder for them to sell church-owned lands. According to The Jerusalem Post:

 

The stated aim of the bill is to protect homeowners against the possibility that private companies will not extend their leases of land on which their houses or apartments stand.

 

In June 2019, a number of Christian denominations in Jerusalem raised their voice against the Supreme Court's decision to uphold the sale of three properties by the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate to Ateret Cohanim – an organization that seeks to increase the number of Jews living in the Old City and East Jerusalem. The church leaders warned that if the organization gets to control the sites, Christians could lose access to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. In June 2022, the Supreme Court upheld the sale and ended the legal battle.

 

The site of the church had been a temple to Jupiter or Venus built by Hadrian before Constantine's edifice was built. Hadrian's temple had been located there because it was the junction of the main north–south road with one of the two main east–west roads and directly adjacent to the forum (now the location of the Muristan, which is smaller than the former forum). The forum itself had been placed, as is traditional in Roman towns, at the junction of the main north–south road with the other main east–west road (which is now El-Bazar/David Street). The temple and forum together took up the entire space between the two main east–west roads (a few above-ground remains of the east end of the temple precinct still survive in the Alexander Nevsky Church complex of the Russian Mission in Exile).

 

From the archaeological excavations in the 1970s, it is clear that construction took over most of the site of the earlier temple enclosure and that the Triportico and Rotunda roughly overlapped with the temple building itself; the excavations indicate that the temple extended at least as far back as the Aedicule, and the temple enclosure would have reached back slightly further. Virgilio Canio Corbo, a Franciscan priest and archaeologist, who was present at the excavations, estimated from the archaeological evidence that the western retaining wall of the temple itself would have passed extremely close to the east side of the supposed tomb; if the wall had been any further west any tomb would have been crushed under the weight of the wall (which would be immediately above it) if it had not already been destroyed when foundations for the wall were made.

 

Other archaeologists have criticized Corbo's reconstructions. Dan Bahat, the former city archaeologist of Jerusalem, regards them as unsatisfactory, as there is no known temple of Aphrodite (Venus) matching Corbo's design, and no archaeological evidence for Corbo's suggestion that the temple building was on a platform raised high enough to avoid including anything sited where the Aedicule is now; indeed Bahat notes that many temples to Aphrodite have a rotunda-like design, and argues that there is no archaeological reason to assume that the present rotunda was not based on a rotunda in the temple previously on the site.

 

The New Testament describes Jesus's tomb as being outside the city wall,[l] as was normal for burials across the ancient world, which were regarded as unclean. Today, the site of the Church is within the current walls of the old city of Jerusalem. It has been well documented by archaeologists that in the time of Jesus, the walled city was smaller and the wall then was to the east of the current site of the Church. In other words, the city had been much narrower in Jesus's time, with the site then having been outside the walls; since Herod Agrippa (41–44) is recorded by history as extending the city to the north (beyond the present northern walls), the required repositioning of the western wall is traditionally attributed to him as well.

 

The area immediately to the south and east of the sepulchre was a quarry and outside the city during the early first century as excavations under the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer across the street demonstrated.[citation needed]

 

The church is a part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site Old City of Jerusalem.

 

The Christian Quarter and the (also Christian) Armenian Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem are both located in the northwestern and western part of the Old City, due to the fact that the Holy Sepulchre is located close to the northwestern corner of the walled city. The adjacent neighbourhood within the Christian Quarter is called the Muristan, a term derived from the Persian word for hospital – Christian pilgrim hospices have been maintained in this area near the Holy Sepulchre since at least the time of Charlemagne.

 

From the ninth century onward, the construction of churches inspired by the Anastasis was extended across Europe. One example is Santo Stefano in Bologna, Italy, an agglomeration of seven churches recreating shrines of Jerusalem.

 

Several churches and monasteries in Europe, for instance, in Germany and Russia, and at least one church in the United States have been wholly or partially modeled on the Church of the Resurrection, some even reproducing other holy places for the benefit of pilgrims who could not travel to the Holy Land. They include the Heiliges Grab ("Holy Tomb") of Görlitz, constructed between 1481 and 1504, the New Jerusalem Monastery in Moscow Oblast, constructed by Patriarch Nikon between 1656 and 1666, and Mount St. Sepulchre Franciscan Monastery built by the Franciscans in Washington, DC in 1898.

 

Author Andrew Holt writes that the church is the most important in all Christendom.

 

Jerusalem is an ancient city in West Asia, on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is one of the oldest cities in the world, and is considered holy to the three major Abrahamic religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Both Israel and Palestine claim Jerusalem as their capital; Israel maintains its primary governmental institutions there, and the State of Palestine ultimately foresees it as its seat of power. Neither claim, however, is widely recognized internationally.

 

Throughout its long history, Jerusalem has been destroyed at least twice, besieged 23 times, captured and recaptured 44 times, and attacked 52 times. The part of Jerusalem called the City of David shows first signs of settlement in the 4th millennium BCE, in the shape of encampments of nomadic shepherds. During the Canaanite period (14th century BCE), Jerusalem was named as Urusalim on ancient Egyptian tablets, probably meaning "City of Shalem" after a Canaanite deity. During the Israelite period, significant construction activity in Jerusalem began in the 10th century BCE (Iron Age II), and by the 9th century BCE, the city had developed into the religious and administrative centre of the Kingdom of Judah. In 1538, the city walls were rebuilt for a last time around Jerusalem under Suleiman the Magnificent of the Ottoman Empire. Today those walls define the Old City, which since the 19th century has been divided into four quarters – the Armenian, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim quarters. The Old City became a World Heritage Site in 1981, and is on the List of World Heritage in Danger. Since 1860, Jerusalem has grown far beyond the Old City's boundaries. In 2022, Jerusalem had a population of some 971,800 residents, of which almost 60% were Jews and almost 40% Palestinians. In 2020, the population was 951,100, of which Jews comprised 570,100 (59.9%), Muslims 353,800 (37.2%), Christians 16,300 (1.7%), and 10,800 unclassified (1.1%).

 

According to the Hebrew Bible, King David conquered the city from the Jebusites and established it as the capital of the United Kingdom of Israel, and his son, King Solomon, commissioned the building of the First Temple. Modern scholars argue that Jews branched out of the Canaanite peoples and culture through the development of a distinct monolatrous—and later monotheistic—religion centred on El/Yahweh. These foundational events, straddling the dawn of the 1st millennium BCE, assumed central symbolic importance for the Jewish people. The sobriquet of holy city (Hebrew: עיר הקודש, romanized: 'Ir ha-Qodesh) was probably attached to Jerusalem in post-exilic times. The holiness of Jerusalem in Christianity, conserved in the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, which Christians adopted as their own "Old Testament", was reinforced by the New Testament account of Jesus's crucifixion and resurrection there. In Sunni Islam, Jerusalem is the third-holiest city, after Mecca and Medina. The city was the first qibla, the standard direction for Muslim prayers (salah), and in Islamic tradition, Muhammad made his Night Journey there in 621, ascending to heaven where he speaks to God, according to the Quran. As a result, despite having an area of only 0.9 km2 (3⁄8 sq mi), the Old City is home to many sites of seminal religious importance, among them the Temple Mount with its Western Wall, Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque, and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

 

Today, the status of Jerusalem remains one of the core issues in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. During the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, West Jerusalem was among the areas captured and later annexed by Israel while East Jerusalem, including the Old City, was captured and later annexed by Jordan. Israel captured East Jerusalem from Jordan during the 1967 Six-Day War and subsequently effectively annexed it into Jerusalem, together with additional surrounding territory.[note 6] One of Israel's Basic Laws, the 1980 Jerusalem Law, refers to Jerusalem as the country's undivided capital. All branches of the Israeli government are located in Jerusalem, including the Knesset (Israel's parliament), the residences of the Prime Minister (Beit Aghion) and President (Beit HaNassi), and the Supreme Court. The international community rejects the annexation as illegal and regards East Jerusalem as Palestinian territory occupied by Israel.

 

Etymology

The name "Jerusalem" is variously etymologized to mean "foundation (Semitic yry' 'to found, to lay a cornerstone') of the pagan god Shalem"; the god Shalem was thus the original tutelary deity of the Bronze Age city.

 

Shalim or Shalem was the name of the god of dusk in the Canaanite religion, whose name is based on the same root S-L-M from which the Hebrew word for "peace" is derived (Shalom in Hebrew, cognate with Arabic Salam). The name thus offered itself to etymologizations such as "The City of Peace", "Abode of Peace", "Dwelling of Peace" ("founded in safety"), or "Vision of Peace" in some Christian authors.

 

The ending -ayim indicates the dual, thus leading to the suggestion that the name Yerushalayim refers to the fact that the city initially sat on two hills.

 

Ancient Egyptian sources

The Execration Texts of the Middle Kingdom of Egypt (c. 19th century BCE), which refer to a city called rwšꜣlmm or ꜣwšꜣmm, variously transcribed as Rušalimum, or Urušalimum, may indicate Jerusalem. Alternatively, the Amarna letters of Abdi-Heba (1330s BCE), which reference an Úrušalim, may be the earliest mention of the city.

 

Hebrew Bible and Jewish sources

The form Yerushalem or Yerushalayim first appears in the Bible, in the Book of Joshua. According to a Midrash, the name is a combination of two names united by God, Yireh ("the abiding place", the name given by Abraham to the place where he planned to sacrifice his son) and Shalem ("Place of Peace", the name given by high priest Shem).

 

Oldest written mention of Jerusalem

One of the earliest extra-biblical Hebrew writing of the word Jerusalem is dated to the sixth or seventh century BCE and was discovered in Khirbet Beit Lei near Beit Guvrin in 1961. The inscription states: "I am Yahweh thy God, I will accept the cities of Judah and I will redeem Jerusalem", or as other scholars suggest: "Yahweh is the God of the whole earth. The mountains of Judah belong to him, to the God of Jerusalem". An older example on papyrus is known from the previous century.

 

In extra-biblical inscriptions, the earliest known example of the -ayim ending was discovered on a column about 3 km west of ancient Jerusalem, dated to the first century BCE.

 

Jebus, Zion, City of David

An ancient settlement of Jerusalem, founded as early as the Bronze Age on the hill above the Gihon Spring, was, according to the Bible, named Jebus. Called the "Fortress of Zion" (metsudat Zion), it was renamed as the "City of David", and was known by this name in antiquity. Another name, "Zion", initially referred to a distinct part of the city, but later came to signify the city as a whole, and afterwards to represent the whole biblical Land of Israel.

 

Greek, Roman and Byzantine names

In Greek and Latin, the city's name was transliterated Hierosolyma (Greek: Ἱεροσόλυμα; in Greek hieròs, ἱερός, means holy), although the city was renamed Aelia Capitolina for part of the Roman period of its history.

 

Salem

The Aramaic Apocryphon of Genesis of the Dead Sea Scrolls (1QapGen 22:13) equates Jerusalem with the earlier "Salem" (שלם), said to be the kingdom of Melchizedek in Genesis 14. Other early Hebrew sources, early Christian renderings of the verse and targumim, however, put Salem in Northern Israel near Shechem (Sichem), now Nablus, a city of some importance in early sacred Hebrew writing. Possibly the redactor of the Apocryphon of Genesis wanted to dissociate Melchizedek from the area of Shechem, which at the time was in possession of the Samaritans. However that may be, later Rabbinic sources also equate Salem with Jerusalem, mainly to link Melchizedek to later Temple traditions.

 

Arabic names

In Arabic, Jerusalem is most commonly known as القُدس, transliterated as al-Quds and meaning "the holy" or "the holy sanctuary", cognate with Hebrew: הקדש, romanized: ha-qodesh. The name is possibly a shortened form of مدينة القُدس Madīnat al-Quds "city of the holy sanctuary" after the Hebrew nickname with the same meaning, Ir ha-Qodesh (עיר הקדש). The ق (Q) is pronounced either with a voiceless uvular plosive (/q/), as in Classical Arabic, or with a glottal stop (ʔ) as in Levantine Arabic. Official Israeli government policy mandates that أُورُشَلِيمَ, transliterated as Ūrušalīm, which is the name frequently used in Christian translations of the Bible into Arabic, be used as the Arabic language name for the city in conjunction with القُدس, giving أُورُشَلِيمَ-القُدس, Ūrušalīm-al-Quds. Palestinian Arab families who hail from this city are often called "Qudsi" (قُدسي) or "Maqdasi" (مقدسي), while Palestinian Muslim Jerusalemites may use these terms as a demonym.

 

Given the city's central position in both Jewish nationalism (Zionism) and Palestinian nationalism, the selectivity required to summarize some 5,000 years of inhabited history is often influenced by ideological bias or background. Israeli or Jewish nationalists claim a right to the city based on Jewish indigeneity to the land, particularly their origins in and descent from the Israelites, for whom Jerusalem is their capital, and their yearning for return. In contrast, Palestinian nationalists claim the right to the city based on modern Palestinians' longstanding presence and descent from many different peoples who have settled or lived in the region over the centuries. Both sides claim the history of the city has been politicized by the other in order to strengthen their relative claims to the city, and that this is borne out by the different focuses the different writers place on the various events and eras in the city's history.

 

Prehistory

The first archaeological evidence of human presence in the area comes in the form of flints dated to between 6000 and 7000 years ago, with ceramic remains appearing during the Chalcolithic period, and the first signs of permanent settlement appearing in the Early Bronze Age in 3000–2800 BCE.

 

Bronze and Iron Ages

The earliest evidence of city fortifications appear in the Mid to Late Bronze Age and could date to around the 18th century BCE. By around 1550–1200 BCE, Jerusalem was the capital of an Egyptian vassal city-state, a modest settlement governing a few outlying villages and pastoral areas, with a small Egyptian garrison and ruled by appointees such as king Abdi-Heba. At the time of Seti I (r. 1290–1279 BCE) and Ramesses II (r. 1279–1213 BCE), major construction took place as prosperity increased. The city's inhabitants at this time were Canaanites, who are believed by scholars to have evolved into the Israelites via the development of a distinct Yahweh-centric monotheistic belief system.

 

Archaeological remains from the ancient Israelite period include the Siloam Tunnel, an aqueduct built by Judahite king Hezekiah and once containing an ancient Hebrew inscription, known as the Siloam Inscription; the so-called Broad Wall, a defensive fortification built in the 8th century BCE, also by Hezekiah; the Silwan necropolis (9th–7th c. BCE) with the Monolith of Silwan and the Tomb of the Royal Steward, which were decorated with monumental Hebrew inscriptions; and the so-called Israelite Tower, remnants of ancient fortifications, built from large, sturdy rocks with carved cornerstones. A huge water reservoir dating from this period was discovered in 2012 near Robinson's Arch, indicating the existence of a densely built-up quarter across the area west of the Temple Mount during the Kingdom of Judah.

 

When the Assyrians conquered the Kingdom of Israel in 722 BCE, Jerusalem was strengthened by a great influx of refugees from the northern kingdom. When Hezekiah ruled, Jerusalem had no fewer than 25,000 inhabitants and covered 25 acres (10 hectares).

 

In 587–586 BCE, Nebuchadnezzar II of the Neo-Babylonian Empire conquered Jerusalem after a prolonged siege, and then systematically destroyed the city, including Solomon's Temple. The Kingdom of Judah was abolished and many were exiled to Babylon. These events mark the end of the First Temple period.

 

Biblical account

This period, when Canaan formed part of the Egyptian empire, corresponds in biblical accounts to Joshua's invasion, but almost all scholars agree that the Book of Joshua holds little historical value for early Israel.

 

In the Bible, Jerusalem is defined as lying within territory allocated to the tribe of Benjamin though still inhabited by Jebusites. David is said to have conquered these in the siege of Jebus, and transferred his capital from Hebron to Jerusalem which then became the capital of a United Kingdom of Israel, and one of its several religious centres. The choice was perhaps dictated by the fact that Jerusalem did not form part of Israel's tribal system, and was thus suited to serve as the centre of its confederation. Opinion is divided over whether the so-called Large Stone Structure and the nearby Stepped Stone Structure may be identified with King David's palace, or dates to a later period.

 

According to the Bible, King David reigned for 40 years and was succeeded by his son Solomon, who built the Holy Temple on Mount Moriah. Solomon's Temple (later known as the First Temple), went on to play a pivotal role in Jewish religion as the repository of the Ark of the Covenant. On Solomon's death, ten of the northern tribes of Israel broke with the United Monarchy to form their own nation, with its kings, prophets, priests, traditions relating to religion, capitals and temples in northern Israel. The southern tribes, together with the Aaronid priesthood, remained in Jerusalem, with the city becoming the capital of the Kingdom of Judah.

 

Classical antiquity

In 538 BCE, the Achaemenid King Cyrus the Great invited the Jews of Babylon to return to Judah to rebuild the Temple. Construction of the Second Temple was completed in 516 BCE, during the reign of Darius the Great, 70 years after the destruction of the First Temple.

 

Sometime soon after 485 BCE Jerusalem was besieged, conquered and largely destroyed by a coalition of neighbouring states. In about 445 BCE, King Artaxerxes I of Persia issued a decree allowing the city (including its walls) to be rebuilt. Jerusalem resumed its role as capital of Judah and centre of Jewish worship.

 

Many Jewish tombs from the Second Temple period have been unearthed in Jerusalem. One example, discovered north of the Old City, contains human remains in a 1st-century CE ossuary decorated with the Aramaic inscription "Simon the Temple Builder". The Tomb of Abba, also located north of the Old City, bears an Aramaic inscription with Paleo-Hebrew letters reading: "I, Abba, son of the priest Eleaz(ar), son of Aaron the high (priest), Abba, the oppressed and the persecuted, who was born in Jerusalem, and went into exile into Babylonia and brought (back to Jerusalem) Mattathi(ah), son of Jud(ah), and buried him in a cave which I bought by deed." The Tomb of Benei Hezir located in Kidron Valley is decorated by monumental Doric columns and Hebrew inscription, identifying it as the burial site of Second Temple priests. The Tombs of the Sanhedrin, an underground complex of 63 rock-cut tombs, is located in a public park in the northern Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sanhedria. These tombs, probably reserved for members of the Sanhedrin and inscribed by ancient Hebrew and Aramaic writings, are dated to between 100 BCE and 100 CE.

 

When Alexander the Great conquered the Achaemenid Empire, Jerusalem and Judea came under Macedonian control, eventually falling to the Ptolemaic dynasty under Ptolemy I. In 198 BCE, Ptolemy V Epiphanes lost Jerusalem and Judea to the Seleucids under Antiochus III. The Seleucid attempt to recast Jerusalem as a Hellenized city-state came to a head in 168 BCE with the successful Maccabean revolt of Mattathias and his five sons against Antiochus IV Epiphanes, and their establishment of the Hasmonean Kingdom in 152 BCE with Jerusalem as its capital.

 

In 63 BCE, Pompey the Great intervened in a struggle for the Hasmonean throne and captured Jerusalem, extending the influence of the Roman Republic over Judea. Following a short invasion by Parthians, backing the rival Hasmonean rulers, Judea became a scene of struggle between pro-Roman and pro-Parthian forces, eventually leading to the emergence of an Edomite named Herod. As Rome became stronger, it installed Herod as a client king of the Jews. Herod the Great, as he was known, devoted himself to developing and beautifying the city. He built walls, towers and palaces, and expanded the Temple Mount, buttressing the courtyard with blocks of stone weighing up to 100 tons. Under Herod, the area of the Temple Mount doubled in size. Shortly after Herod's death, in 6 CE Judea came under direct Roman rule as the Iudaea Province, although the Herodian dynasty through Agrippa II remained client kings of neighbouring territories until 96 CE.

 

Roman rule over Jerusalem and Judea was challenged in the First Jewish–Roman War (66–73 CE), which ended with a Roman victory. Early on, the city was devastated by a brutal civil war between several Jewish factions fighting for control of the city. In 70 CE, the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and the Second Temple. The contemporary Jewish historian Josephus wrote that the city "was so thoroughly razed to the ground by those that demolished it to its foundations, that nothing was left that could ever persuade visitors that it had once been a place of habitation." Of the 600,000 (Tacitus) or 1,000,000 (Josephus) Jews of Jerusalem, all of them either died of starvation, were killed or were sold into slavery. Roman rule was again challenged during the Bar Kokhba revolt, beginning in 132 CE and suppressed by the Romans in 135 CE. More recent research indicates that the Romans had founded Aelia Capitolina before the outbreak of the revolt, and found no evidence for Bar Kokhba ever managing to hold the city.

 

Jerusalem reached a peak in size and population at the end of the Second Temple Period, when the city covered two km2 (3⁄4 sq mi) and had a population of 200,000.

 

Late Antiquity

Following the Bar Kokhba revolt, Emperor Hadrian combined Iudaea Province with neighbouring provinces under the new name of Syria Palaestina, replacing the name of Judea. The city was renamed Aelia Capitolina, and rebuilt it in the style of a typical Roman town. Jews were prohibited from entering the city on pain of death, except for one day each year, during the holiday of Tisha B'Av. Taken together, these measures (which also affected Jewish Christians) essentially "secularized" the city. Historical sources and archaeological evidence indicate that the rebuilt city was now inhabited by veterans of the Roman military and immigrants from the western parts of the empire.

 

The ban against Jews was maintained until the 7th century, though Christians would soon be granted an exemption: during the 4th century, the Roman emperor Constantine I ordered the construction of Christian holy sites in the city, including the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Burial remains from the Byzantine period are exclusively Christian, suggesting that the population of Jerusalem in Byzantine times probably consisted only of Christians.

 

Jerusalem.

In the 5th century, the eastern continuation of the Roman Empire, ruled from the recently renamed Constantinople, maintained control of the city. Within the span of a few decades, Jerusalem shifted from Byzantine to Persian rule, then back to Roman-Byzantine dominion. Following Sassanid Khosrau II's early 7th century push through Syria, his generals Shahrbaraz and Shahin attacked Jerusalem (Persian: Dej Houdkh) aided by the Jews of Palaestina Prima, who had risen up against the Byzantines.

 

In the Siege of Jerusalem of 614, after 21 days of relentless siege warfare, Jerusalem was captured. Byzantine chronicles relate that the Sassanids and Jews slaughtered tens of thousands of Christians in the city, many at the Mamilla Pool, and destroyed their monuments and churches, including the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. This episode has been the subject of much debate between historians. The conquered city would remain in Sassanid hands for some fifteen years until the Byzantine emperor Heraclius reconquered it in 629.

 

Middle Ages

After the Muslim conquest of the Levant, Byzantine Jerusalem was taken by Umar ibn al-Khattab in 638 CE. Among the first Muslims, it was referred to as Madinat bayt al-Maqdis ("City of the Temple"), a name restricted to the Temple Mount. The rest of the city "was called Iliya, reflecting the Roman name given the city following the destruction of 70 CE: Aelia Capitolina". Later the Temple Mount became known as al-Haram al-Sharif, "The Noble Sanctuary", while the city around it became known as Bayt al-Maqdis, and later still, al-Quds al-Sharif "The Holy, Noble". The Islamization of Jerusalem began in the first year A.H. (623 CE), when Muslims were instructed to face the city while performing their daily prostrations and, according to Muslim religious tradition, Muhammad's night journey and ascension to heaven took place. After 13 years, the direction of prayer was changed to Mecca. In 638 CE the Islamic Caliphate extended its dominion to Jerusalem. With the Muslim conquest, Jews were allowed back into the city. The Rashidun caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab signed a treaty with Christian Patriarch of Jerusalem Sophronius, assuring him that Jerusalem's Christian holy places and population would be protected under Muslim rule. Christian-Arab tradition records that, when led to pray at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, one of the holiest sites for Christians, the caliph Umar refused to pray in the church so that Muslims would not request conversion of the church to a mosque. He prayed outside the church, where the Mosque of Umar (Omar) stands to this day, opposite the entrance to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. According to the Gaullic bishop Arculf, who lived in Jerusalem from 679 to 688, the Mosque of Umar was a rectangular wooden structure built over ruins which could accommodate 3,000 worshipers.

 

When the Arab armies under Umar went to Bayt Al-Maq

Lady Justice

'I cannot pretend to feel impartial about colours.

I rejoice with the brilliant ones and am genuinely sorry for the poor browns.'

 

Sir Winston Churchill

British politician (1874 - 1965)

 

Large On Black

 

Tchaikovsky - Sérénade Mélancolique Op. 26

If only it were this easy to spot! Don't let corporations like Monsanto deceive you into thinking such products are safe without first putting them through rigorous and impartial scientific testing.

For Macro Monday - Deception

Kelly Woods

About Kelly Woods

 

Kelly is a Celtic term for ‘a wood’. The Kelly Glen was originally part of the estate around Kelly House (since burned down), so it’s a mix of planted specimens and natural regeneration. Although difficult to categorize, it could be classified as an W16 National Vegetation Classification (NVC) woodland community, which is defined as one with a predominance of oak and birch with wavy hair grass with a sub-community of blaeberry and broad buckler fern.

History

 

The first OS maps show the wood covering a much larger area than today and as being a mixture of conifer and broadleaf. The conifers were felled at some stage but their effects on the ground vegetation from shading and acidification are still being felt.

Current State

 

The woods are in a state of benign neglect with some areas being encroached by Rhododendron Ponticum. There is grazing pressure from deer, which may be hindering woodland regeneration. Luckily, there is a Tree Preservation Order (TPO) on the whole wood.

Objectives

Short Term Goals

 

Make contact with the owners of the wood.

 

Raise awareness of the value of the woods.

Long Term Goals

 

Eradicate Rhododendron Ponticum, in particular in the ravines, where the humid microclimate is ideal for rare species of ferns, mosses and lichens.

 

South Ayrshire (Scots: Sooth Ayrshire; Scottish Gaelic: Siorrachd Àir a Deas, is one of thirty-two council areas of Scotland, covering the southern part of Ayrshire. It borders onto Dumfries and Galloway, East Ayrshire and North Ayrshire. South Ayrshire had an estimated population in 2021 of 112,450, making it the 19th–largest subdivision in Scotland by population. With an area of 472 sq mi, South Ayrshire ranks as the 15th largest subdivision in Scotland.

 

South Ayrshire's administrative centre is located in its largest town, Ayr. The headquarters for its associated political body, South Ayrshire Council, is housed at the towns County Buildings located in Wellington Square. Ayr is the former county town of the historic Ayrshire county, with the political activity of the Ayrshire County Council being based at County Buildings.

 

History

South Ayrshire was created in 1996 under the Local Government etc. (Scotland) Act 1994, which replaced Scotland's previous local government structure of upper-tier regions and lower-tier districts with unitary council areas providing all local government services. South Ayrshire covered the same area as the abolished Kyle and Carrick district, and also took over the functions of the abolished Strathclyde Regional Council within the area. The area's name references its location within the historic county of Ayrshire, which had been abolished for local government purposes in 1975 when Kyle and Carrick district and Strathclyde region had been created.

 

In 2021, South Ayrshire submitted a bid for city status as part of the 2022 Platinum Jubilee Celebrations. The bid was based on the area's rich history and links to royalty, and received backing from organisations and businesses including Ayrshire College and Scottish Enterprise. The bid was ultimately unsuccessful, with eight other settlements across the UK, overseas territories and crown dependencies being awarded city status, including Scottish town Dunfermline.

 

Geographically, South Ayrshire is located on the western coast of Scotland, sharing borders with neighbouring local authorities East Ayrshire, Dumfries and Galloway and North Ayrshire. The climate in South Ayrshire, typical of that in western Scotland, is milder than that of eastern Scotland due to the stronger maritime influence, as the prevailing winds blow from the sea into South Ayrshire, which is located primarily on the western coast of Scotland. The warm Gulf Stream also has a strong influence on western Scotland. With winds mainly blowing from the sea the annual mean temperatures are in the range 9.5 to 9.9 °C (49.1 to 49.8 °F) in coastal areas of South Ayrshire such as Ayr and Troon.

 

The sea reaches its lowest temperature in February or early March so that on average February is the coldest month in some coastal parts of South Ayrshire along with the Rhins of Galloway, Kintyre and the Hebrides. In February the mean daily minimum temperature varies from about 2 °C in most of the islands, 1 to 2 °C along most of the Solway Firth and lowland inland areas, but less than −1 °C in parts of the Southern Uplands and central Highlands. Inland, where the influence of the sea is less, January is the coldest month with mean daily minimum temperatures generally between −3 and 0 °C.

 

The number of hours of natural sunshine in South Ayrshire is controlled by the length of day and by cloudiness. In general, December is the dullest month and May or June the sunniest. Sunshine duration decreases with increasing altitude, increasing latitude and distance from the coast. Local topography also exerts a strong influence and in the winter deep glens and north-facing slopes can be in shade for long periods. Industrial pollution and smoke haze can also reduce sunshine amounts, but the decline in heavy industry in the Ayrshire area, primarily in Ayr in South Ayrshire along with Kilmarnock in East Ayrshire, has resulted in an increase in sunshine duration particularly in the winter months.

 

Average annual rainfall totals range from less than 1,000 mm (39 in) in the upper Clyde valley and along the coasts of Ayrshire and Dumfries and Galloway to on average over 3,500 mm (140 in) over the higher parts of the west Highlands, approaching the maximum values found in the UK (over 4,000 millimetres or 160 inches further north).

 

South Ayrshire's population is mostly concentrated around the adjoining coastal towns of Ayr, Prestwick and Troon located to the north-west of the council, which represents 68% of the council's total population according to data derived from the 2011 census, with a combined population of 76,846. Other areas of significance include the towns of Maybole and Girvan which are located to the south of the council area in the district of Carrick.

 

The economy of South Ayrshire, like many other areas, was badly affected during the worldwide financial crisis from 2009–2012. Despite this, total Gross Value Added for South Ayrshire has seen a steady increase over the last 20 years, reaching a peak in 2015 of £2.4 billion. South Ayrshire's GVA represents 1.9% of the total Scottish Gross Value Added income which is consistent with the previous 20 years. The largest employment industry in South Ayrshire and Scotland is the public administration, education and health sector. Compared with Scotland, proportionally there are more South Ayrshire residents employed in this sector than Scotland, while there are proportionally fewer employed in banking, finance and insurance sector than Scotland. Despite being a costal area, the smallest employment in South Ayrshire is in the agriculture and fishing sector.

 

The council and its neighbours of East Ayrshire and North Ayrshire work together on economic growth as the Ayrshire Regional Economic Partnership, with support from the Scottish and UK governments and other private and public sector organisations.

 

Educational provision in South Ayrshire is offered via eight secondary schools, forty-one primary schools, two special needs schools and five stand-alone Early Years Centres (although some primary schools have Early Years Centres attached). In terms of early years provision, there are also a number of private establishments which are operated in conjunction with South Ayrshire Council, rather than managed and operated entirely by the council.

 

Based on figures from the 2016-2017 academic year, within South Ayrshire, there were 6,091 secondary school aged pupils, 7,855 primary school aged pupils and 251 pupils attending special educational needs provision establishments.

 

South Ayrshire Council

 

South Ayrshire is governed by South Ayrshire Council which has been under no overall control since 2003, in which time various coalitions and minority administrations have operated. Since the last election in 2022, the council has been led by a Conservative minority administration which took office with support from two independent councillors and abstentions from Labour. The next election is due in 2027.

 

The council's civic head takes the title of provost. This is a largely ceremonial role, chairing council meetings and acting as the area's first citizen. Although an elected councillor, the provost is expected to be politically impartial. Political leadership is provided by the leader of the council.

Wider politics

 

At the 2014 Scottish independence referendum South Ayrshire rejected independence by an above-average margin of 57.9% "No" to 42.1% "Yes". With a turnout of 86.1%, there were 34,402 "Yes" votes and 47,247 "No" votes. Nationally 55.3% of voters voted "No" in the referendum compared to 44.7%, who voted "Yes" – resulting in Scotland remaining a devolved part of the United Kingdom.

 

At the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum a majority of voters in South Ayrshire voted for the United Kingdom to remain a member of the European Union (EU), with 59% of voters in South Ayrshire voting for the United Kingdom to remain a member of the EU and 41% voting for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union. With a turnout of 69.8%, 36,265 votes were cast for remain and 25,241 were cast for leave. 62% of Scottish voters voted remain whilst 38% voted leave, whilst nationally 51.8% of voters in the United Kingdom as a whole voting to leave and 48.2% voting to remain

 

Vintage card. Richard Cromwell and Kathleen Burke in The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (Henry Hathaway, 1935).

 

With his smooth, boyish good looks, American actor Richard Cromwell (1910-1960) had the makings of a Hollywood star in the early 1930s. The handsome actor became well known with The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935), sharing top billing with Gary Cooper and Franchot Tone. His film career reached its pinnacle with Jezebel (1938) with Bette Davis and Henry Fonda and John Ford's Young Mr. Lincoln (1939) also with Fonda. But soon after that, his meteoric career crashed and burned.

 

Richard Cromwell was born LeRoy Melvin Radabaugh in Long Beach, California, in 1910. he was the second of five children of Fay B. (née Stocking) and Ralph R. Radabaugh, who was an inventor. In 1918, when Radabaugh was still in grade school, his father died of the Spanish flu. Roy earnestly delivered morning newspapers to help out the family's budget crisis. on a scholarship, he attended the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles, a precursor to the California Institute of the Arts. He continued to work part-time as a maintenance man, custodian and soda jerk. He set up a small art shop in Hollywood in the late 1920s and made masks and oil paintings there. He sold pictures, made lampshades, and designed colour schemes for houses. The handsome Cromwell made contacts with film stars of the time such as Anna Q. Nilsson, Colleen Moore, Beatrice Lillie, Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford and Tallulah Bankhead, some of whom he also immortalised in his paintings and masks. He painted scenery for community theatre productions and eventually took on acting roles. His first film appearance was an extra role in King of Jazz (John Murray Anderson, Walter Lantz, 1930), along with the film's star, Paul Whiteman and his orchestra. On a whim, his friends encouraged him to audition for the lead role in a Columbia remake of D.W. Griffith's silent classic Tol'able David (1921) starring Richard Barthelmess. Radabaugh won the role over thousands of hopefuls. In storybook fashion, studio mogul Harry Cohn gave him his screen name Richard Cromwell and launched his career. Cromwell earned $75 per week for his work on Tol'able David (John G. Blystone, 1930), which co-starred Noah Beery Sr. and John Carradine. Gary Brumburgh at IMDb: "the studio publicity machines worked overtime to promote both the film and their new leading man. Richard lived up to all the hype once the reviews came out, giving a terrific debut performance in a very difficult role. As the rather weak-willed young boy who finds the strength and courage to right the injustice done to him, he hit overnight stardom". Amid the flurry of publicity, Cromwell toured the country and was even invited to the White House to meet President Herbert Hoover. Cohn signed Cromwell to a multi-year contract based on the strength of his performance and the success at the box office of his debut. In the following years, Richard played several leading roles in smaller films, often in youthful, somewhat sensitive roles. Leslie Halliwell later described him in his Filmgoer's Companion as the "friendly hero of the early talkies". Cromwell maintained a deep friendship with Marie Dressler, which continued until her death from cancer in 1934. Dressler personally insisted that her studio bosses cast Cromwell on a loan-out in the lead opposite her in Emma (Clarence Brown, 1932), also with Myrna Loy. Dressler was nominated for a second Best Actress award for her portrayal of the title role in Emma. This was another break that helped sustain Cromwell's rising status in Hollywood. He was now much in demand and his next roles were in The Age of Consent (Gregory La Cava, 1932) co-starring Arline Judge and Eric Linden, Tom Brown of Culver (William Wyler, 1932), and Hoopla (Frank Lloyd, 1933), where he is seduced by Clara Bow, in her final film. He made an early standout performance as the leader of the youth gang in Cecil B. DeMille's unusual cult-favourite, This Day and Age (1933). To ensure that Cromwell's character used the right slang, DeMille asked high school student Horace Hahn to read the script and comment. Cromwell then starred with Jean Arthur in Most Precious Thing in Life (Lambert Hillyer, 1934). He had his definitive breakthrough when he co-starred with Gary Cooper and Franchot Tone in the adventure film The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (Henry Hathaway, 1935), which was nominated for seven Oscars. Cromwell played the son of a senior officer who is tortured by insurgents. His father refuses to rescue him in order to demonstrate his impartiality. After this promising start, Cromwell's career received a bump when he wanted more artistic independence.

 

Richard Cromwell's next pictures at Columbia Pictures and elsewhere were mostly inconsequential. Cromwell starred with Will Rogers in Life Begins at 40 (1935) and appeared in Poppy (1936) as the suitor of W.C. Fields' daughter, Rochelle Hudson. In 1937, he portrayed the young bank robber in love with Helen Mack and on the lam from Lionel Atwill in The Wrong Road (James Cruze, 1937). A challenge was his lead role in The Road Back (James Whale, 1937), a sequel to the classic All Quiet on the Western Front (Lewis Milestone, 1930). The film chronicled the story of young German soldiers readjusting to civilian life after WWI. Fearful that this film would not do well in Germany, the new regime at Universal Pictures severely edited the film before release, removing much of the strongly anti-Nazi slant that author Erich Maria Remarque included in the original novel, and which director James Whale had intended to retain in the film version. The resulting film was not well-received. Richard Cromwell took a detour in his career to Broadway for the chance to star as an evil cadet in an original play by Joseph Viertel, 'So Proudly We Hail!'. The military drama was directed by future film director Charles Walters, co-starred Edward Andrews and Eddie Bracken, and opened to much fanfare. The New York Herald Tribune called Cromwell's acting "a striking portrayal" and The New York Times said that he "ran the gamut of emotions" in the play. Cromwell had shed his restrictive Columbia contract and pursued acting work as a freelancer in other media. Cromwell guest-starred on the radio in 'The Royal Gelatin Hour' (1937) hosted by Rudy Vallee, in a dramatic skit opposite Fay Wray. Enjoying the experience, Cromwell acted in the role of Kit Marshall on the radio soap opera Those We Love, which ran from 1938 until 1942. On-screen, Cromwell appeared in Storm Over Bengal (Sidney Salkow, 1938), for Republic Pictures, in order to capitalise on his success in The Lives of a Bengal Lancer. He stood out in supporting roles as Henry Fonda's brother, who kills a man in a duel of honour, in the romantic drama Jezebel (William Wyler, 1938) starring Bette Davis and as defendant Matt Clay to Henry Fonda's title performance in Young Mr. Lincoln (John Ford, 1939). In 1939, Cromwell again tried his luck on stage in a regional production of Sutton Vane's play 'Outward Bound', co-starring Dorothy Jordan. Cromwell drifted into secondary features. He enjoyed an active social Hollywood life with friends including Barbara Stanwyck, Joan Crawford, Franchot Tone, George Cukor, Cole Porter and William Haines. For Universal Pictures, Cromwell starred as a draftsman who thwarts the Nazis in Enemy Agent. He went on to appear in marginal but still watchable fare such as Baby Face Morgan (Arthur Dreifuss, 1942), with Mary Carlisle. Cromwell enjoyed a career boost with Cosmo Jones, Crime Smasher (1943), the film adaptation of the hit radio serial. However, he was next up at Monogram Pictures, where he was cast as a doctor working covertly for a police department to catch mobsters in the forgettable though endearing Riot Squad.

 

During the last two years of World War II, Richard Cromwell served with the United States Coast Guard. Upon returning to California following the war's end, he acted in local theatre productions. He also signed on for live performances in summer stock in the East during this period. Cromwell's break from films due to his stint in the Service meant that he was not much in demand after the War's end. He failed to make a comeback as a film actor with a role in the Film Noir Bungalow 13 (Edward L. Cahn, 1948) and he retired from the film industry. All told, Cromwell's film career spanned 39 films. In the 1950s, he returned to his artistic roots and studied ceramics. He built a pottery studio on his property, becoming especially known and admired for his creative tile designs. Returning to the name Roy Radabaugh, Cromwell also wrote extensively, producing several published stories and an unfinished novel in the 1950s. Cromwell was married once, briefly (1945–1946), to actress Angela Lansbury, when she was 19 and Cromwell was 35. They were married in a small civil ceremony in Independence, California. Lansbury later stated in a 1966 interview that her first marriage was a mistake because Cromwell was gay. His homosexuality had been kept secret from the public and Lansbury had not known about it before the marriage. However, Cromwell and Lansbury remained friends until his death in 1960. She later described him as "charming with a good knowledge of jazz music". In 1960 he tried a second comeback in the film business. In July 1960, Cromwell signed with producer Maury Dexter for 20th Century Fox's planned production of The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come (Andrew V. McLaglen, 1961), starring singer Jimmie Rogers. Diagnosed with liver cancer shortly thereafter, he was forced to withdraw and Chill Wills replaced Cromwell in the film. Richard Cromwell was a heavy smoker for many years and at times advertised Lucky Strike. He died on 11 October 1960 in Hollywood, at the age of 50. He is interred at Fairhaven Memorial Park in Santa Ana, California. For his services to the film industry, Cromwell has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (1627 Vine Street). Cromwell's legacy is preserved today by his nephew Dan Putnam and his cousin Bill Keane IV. In 2005, Keane donated materials relating to Cromwell's radio performances to the Thousand Oaks Library's Special Collection, "The American Radio Archive". In 2007, Keane donated memorabilia relating to Cromwell's film career and ceramics work to the AMPAS Margaret Herrick Library in Beverly Hills.

 

Sources: Gary Brumburgh (IMDb), Leslie Halliwell (Filmgoer's Companion), Wikipedia (English and German) and IMDb.

 

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

A late afternoon in March at the beautiful Lee Metcalf Wildlife Refuge in Stevensville, Montana coaxed me into a black and white capture of the wetlands and the Bitterroot Mountains in the background. Impartiality being my middle name, I like the

black and white version just as much as I like the colorized version. For now, I offer up the former.

The various ducks and geese and other waterfowl were busy swimming and feeding in other pools, allowing me to get this rare open-water shot before the wild creatures returned to turn it into an occupied wildlife photograph.

 

The Shahbag Mass Movement of 2013 in Bangladesh began on February 5, 2013 in Dhaka, Bangladesh, with the demand of capital punishment for Abdul Quader Mollah and all other accused war criminals of the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War.

 

On February 5, 2013, the Bangladesh International Crimes Tribunal sentenced Mollah to life in prison because he was proved guilty of committing genocide, murder and rape (including rape of underage girls) during the liberation war. International human rights groups have, however, raised questions about the conduct of the tribunals.

    

Human Rights Watch has said, "The trials against (...) the alleged war criminals are deeply problematic, riddled with questions about the independence and impartiality of the judges and fairness of the process; and that they had found that "glaring violations of fair trial standards" became apparent in the course of 2012.

    

Mollah was found guilty by this tribunal of being behind a series of killings including large-scale massacres in the Mirpur area of Dhaka, which earned him the nickname of "Mirpurer Koshai (মিরপুরের কসাই)" - Butcher of Mirpur.

    

The movement began at the Shahbag intersection in the heart of Dhaka city. The intersection was soon referred by participants and media as Projonmo Chottor (প্রজন্ম চত্ত্বর), or Generation Square (English translation), which hints at the spontaneous protests and mass movement of youth.

    

Tens of thousands have been holding vigil at Shahbag demanding that they will not leave the streets until Mollah receives capital punishment.

 

Patty: “Charlie, I’m glad you organized this little lunch so we could make those Halloween plans.”

Charlie: “Why, thank you, Patty. I was taught that if you want to build a good group, begin with food.”

Anita: “You can’t beat that idea.”

Marty: “Right, Anita. And Charlie, I have an idea for the dance band.”

Charlie: “Who would that be?”

Marty: “My father and his band! They would rock your socks off!”

Patty: “And we could have a costume party for the best dressed boy and girl, and for the best couple.”

Anita: “That sounds great. But, what about the dragon idea?”

Marty: “The costumes would have to have something to do with a dragon.”

Patty: “Perfect idea! Who would we get to be judges, though? We shouldn’t do it.”

Charlie: “I’ve got an idea. Let’s ask the teachers at the school. If they dress up, no one will recognize them, and they could judge impartially.”

Marty: “That sounds good to me.”

Anita: “Me, too!”

Patty: “Let’s eat. I’m starving!”

 

  

My soul laid bare to your midsummer fire,

O just, impartial light whom I admire,

Whose arms are merciless, you have I stayed

And give back, pure, to your original place.

Look at yourself . . . But to give light implies

No less a somber moiety of shade.

-The Graveyard By The Sea

Never thought I would like the modern Sub as much as I do today. In fact, I never even expected myself to like the Sub Date. All this while, the goal was a 14060 but I have to say that I am extremely pleased with this 116610.

 

The new enhancements - glidelock, solid links, maxi dial, ceramic bezel, are all very good additions. I personally prefer the green Superluminova of older Subs and am impartial to Rolex's Chromalight.

I've always been impartial to the hat. Not really a fan, but don't really hate it. I'm just really excited to see the theater at the end of the street now! It's going to fit the theme of HS better! Anyway, this shot is the one time I've stayed past closing to get a shot with no people! I knew I needed at least one good shot before I left since it won't be there ever again!

Deadwood became known for its lawlessness; murders were common, and justice for murders not always fair and impartial. The town attained further notoriety when gunman Wild Bill Hickok was killed on August 2, 1876.

On Holocaust Memorial Day, I thought I would share pictures of a memorial to one of my heroes, Raoul Wallenberg.

 

Raoul Wallenberg was a Swedish businessman who in 1944 accepted an assignment from the US War Refugee Board to help save members of the Jewish Community in Budapest, Hungary from the Nazis. Classed as a “Diplomat”, he did this by issuing protective passports and setting up “safe houses” as Swedish diplomatic missions. He has been attributed to saving more than 100,000 Jews.

 

However, Raoul Wallenberg did not enjoy freedom after the war. In January 1945 he was arrested by the Soviet Union. From this time onwards he was lost in the Soviet prison system. It appears that the Soviets considered him a spy, and despite many sightings after 1945, it took many years for the Soviet Union to admit they had arrested him.

 

Eventually the Soviet Union produced a death certificate, stating he died in Lubyanka Prison on 17 July 1947. However, witnesses have reported seeing Raoul Wallenberg as late as 1980. Research to find out what actually happened is still being chased by the Wallenberg family, but until the archives in Russia are opened to impartial researchers, the truth of what happened to Raoul will never be known.

 

www.theopenmind.org

‘’The BBC would never be allowed to broadcast any message from Jesus because Jesus told us to love our neighbours and if the arch bishop of Canterbury read the 10 commandments he might upset the Israeli government. And now I say this to you because it is very important that we remember who we are I’ll tell you who we are today we are the human race standing outside the BBC, it doesn’t matter whether you are a Muslim, a Jew, a Christian, a Buddhist, an atheist whether you’re black or white, it doesn’t matter... we are people, and this is the people’s voice demanding justice ......what we are doing today is not just talking to the dot boshes of the BBC I wouldn’t bother with them I’m talking to the journalists and the presenters to all the people who have the opportunity of broadcasting to tell the world how to help the people of Gaza by god they suffered..I know how they feel because I lived in London during the blitz in 1940, 30,000 people were killed in London during that blitz I was a kid at 15 and every night I went to the shelter...I was frightened... I came up in the morning and 500 people were killed where I lived... London burning...the church I went to bombed...and it’s no good pretending that you could ignore that human suffering in the interests of one the BBC call impartiality...how can you be impartial between life and death you can’t be impartial and therefore what we are doing today is of great importance...I think this is a momentous day that will be recorded in the history of the middle east and the history of this country because people like us got together and said we will not allow others to die when we have the opportunity to save their lives....free Palestine! Free Palestine!’’- TONY BENN

 

To Donate: www.dec.org.uk/

One of the hallmarks of Donald Trump's impeachment inquiry has been the Republican's partisan approach to discovery, that is, to the facts of the case against the President. To many, these facts are clear. Donald Trump used his position to strong-arm Ukraine into investigating his political rival, Joe Biden. In addition, he obstructed the House of Representatives' investigation by not allowing key witnesses to testify, such as Mick Mulvaney, Acting White House Chief of Staff, Don McGahn, former White House Counsel, and John Bolton, former National Security Advisor.

 

The Republicans stated this was a politically-motivated vendetta against the President, perpetuated by Democrats, who, they said, wanted to impeach Trump from Day 1. Democrats saw it differently, not as a political move, but as a legal one: the President had committed "high crimes and misdemeanors" in carrying out the duties of his office. During the House's inquiry many public servants corroborated these details. But, rather than offer counter evidence, the GOP simply focused on the procedures of the investigation. Why? Perhaps it was because they didn't have any evidence to the contrary. We can speculate, but this seems to be the most obvious answer. If members of Trump's staff had any details that offered alternate explanations, why weren't they allowed to testify?

 

It seems likely, the House will vote to impeach the President. But, it also seems likely the Senate will not vote to remove him from office. Again, the vote will fall directly on partisan lines. Republicans, who are the majority in the Senate, reject the veracity of this impeachment. And, they reject even considering the evidence. Yet, Senators are jurors in this impeachment trial. And, like jurors in criminal or civil trials, they take an oath to "do impartial justice according to the Constitution and laws."

 

However, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has already stated, "I’m not trying to pretend to be a fair juror." So much for impartiality. Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, has publicly stated he is working directly with the White House in orchestrating the probable Senate trial. In addition, he has rejected efforts by Democrats to bring in members of the White House administration as witnesses. Donald Trump has stated the process is unfair because he can't defend himself. Yet, he refuses to allow his staff to testify. So Trumpian.

 

This partisan divide is very different than the bipartisan approach taken during Bill Clinton's impeachment. Then, Senate leaders Trent Lott (R-MS) and Tom Daschle (D-SD) "made a concerted effort to protect the integrity of the Senate and negotiated a bipartisan proposal that had the unanimous backing of the chamber on some parameters of Clinton’s trial." [Washington Post]

 

Many questions remain. Why didn't the GOP produce evidence that would exonerate President Trump? Why are they doing everything they can to suppress anyone's testimony from the White House? What are they hiding and what are they afraid of? And, most importantly, why are they ignoring the mandates of our Constitution, which they swore to uphold?

 

Americans deserve to know the truth. And, rather than let all the evidential pieces fall where they may (whether Trump is innocent or guilty), we are being denied the opportunity to see this come to a factual conclusion. The Republicans have made this Constitutional procedure into a farce.

 

All the king's horses and all the king's men refuse to put American back together again.

  

See the rest of the posters from the Chamomile Tea Party! Digital high res downloads are free here (click the down arrow on the lower right side of the image). Other options are available. And join our Facebook group.

 

Follow the history of our country's political intransigence from 2010-2018 through a six-part exhibit of these posters on Google Arts & Culture.

   

Hodding Carter III, Crusading Editor and Jimmy Carter Aide, Dies at 88

As a journalist in Mississippi, he championed civil rights. He later became the face of the U.S. government during the Iranian hostage crisis.

 

Image

A black and white photo of Mr. Carter standing at a lectern laden with microphones and pointing, presumably at a member of the news media, during a news conference. He has dark hair that spills across his forehead and wears a gray suit and a dark necktie. A large map of Europe is behind him.

Hodding Carter III speaking to the press in 1979. For months during the Iranian hostage crisis, he appeared regularly on network evening news programs as a spokesman for the U.S. government. He later became a commentator on television, winning several Emmys.Credit...Teresa Zabala/The New York Times

By Robert D. McFadden

May 12, 2023

Updated 2:21 p.m. ET

Hodding Carter III, a crusading Mississippi newspaperman who championed civil rights for Black Americans in the 1960s, and as a Carter administration official was the nation’s prime source of information on the Iranian hostage crisis in 1979 and 1980, died on Thursday in Chapel Hill, N.C. He was 88.

 

His daughter Catherine Carter Sullivan said his death, at a retirement community, was caused by complications of a series of strokes. Mr. Carter had taught at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill beginning in 2006.

 

In a career that paralleled the emergence of the New South as a region of rising racial tolerance and changing politics, Mr. Carter, a gregarious, ruddy-faced patrician with a magnolia drawl, was a journalist, author, Democratic Party reformer, national television commentator, press critic and university lecturer.

 

The son of the journalist Hodding Carter Jr., who won a Pulitzer Prize for editorials calling for racial moderation in the old segregated South, Hodding Carter III succeeded his father as editor and publisher of The Greenville Delta Democrat-Times and as a voice of conscience in a state torn by violence and social change during the struggles of the civil rights era.

 

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But after 5,000 editorials and years of journalistic trench warfare, Mr. Carter took his fight into politics.

 

“Those of us who stayed on in Mississippi and in other places in the South were always contemptuous of short-term soldiers,” Mr. Carter told The New York Times in 1977, referring to seasonal volunteers who joined protests and registered voters. “Now the question is less dramatic for a Southerner — it’s what do you want to do for the next few years? We — the South — are on the plateau the rest of the nation wanted us to get to.”

 

In the 1976 presidential campaign, Mr. Carter helped engineer a narrow victory in Mississippi for Jimmy Carter, who was no relation, and was rewarded with an appointment as assistant secretary of state for public affairs. As chief spokesman for the State Department, he delivered nuanced statements on foreign policy with candor and wit, and developed a good if sometimes acerbic rapport with the diplomatic press corps.

 

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And he became the national face of the Carter administration during the Iranian hostage crisis, which broke on Nov. 4, 1979, when militants took over the United States Embassy in Tehran and seized 52 Americans. Their captivity lasted 444 days — virtually the remainder of President Carter’s single term in office, a tenure ended by a frustrated electorate that chose Ronald Reagan for president in 1980.

 

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A black and white photo of Mr. Carter in a black tuxedo and black tie speaking to another man with curly gray hair and wearing dark-framed glasses as well as a tuxedo.

Mr. Carter in 1980 with Kenneth D. Taylor, the Canadian ambassador to Iran who helped shelter six Americans after militants overran the United States Embassy there.Credit...Associated Press

For months as the crisis unfolded, Hodding Carter appeared regularly on network evening news programs as President Carter and Secretary of State Cyrus R. Vance purposely remained in the background of a delicate standoff in which miscues by senior American officials might have jeopardized chances for the hostages’ release or even endangered their lives.

 

Colleagues in government and the news media gave Mr. Carter high marks for fielding tough questions on what was known, and not known, of the fate of the Americans. Aside from one episode in which he threw a rubber chicken at a persistent questioner, he coolly conveyed at press briefings the sensitivity of the diplomatic contretemps.

 

After the deadly failure of an attempt to rescue the hostages in a helicopter raid in April 1980, Mr. Vance resigned in protest, and Hodding Carter, a close associate, followed suit in early July. His family had recently sold The Delta Democrat-Times, and he did not return to Greenville.

 

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Instead, in 1981, he became the anchor and chief correspondent of “Inside Story,” a new weekly PBS public affairs program that examined the performance of the press in society. It dealt with an ambitious range of often complicated stories, including coverage of a civil war in El Salvador, a series of murders in Atlanta, the leftist Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua and the American invasion of Grenada.

 

Mr. Carter won several Emmy Awards and praise from most critics, who called the program thoughtful. Others called it a flawed guide to the press that did not live up to expectations. As sponsor support faded, Mr. Carter left after four years. Over the next decade he wrote for newspapers and magazines and became a prominent television political commentator, correspondent, analyst and anchor.

 

William Hodding Carter III, who did not use his first name, was born on April 7, 1935, in New Orleans, the eldest of three sons of Hodding Jr. and Betty Werlein Carter. He and his brothers, Philip and Thomas, grew up in Greenville, a river town where their father had founded The Delta Star and merged it with The Democrat-Times in the 1930s. It ran a weekly book page in the heartland of William Faulkner, Walker Percy and Shelby Foote.

 

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A black and white photo of Mr. Carter standing at a lectern and speaking into microphones. A placard on the lectern reads, “Re-Elect President Carter and Vice President Mondale.” Behind him is a Carter-Mondale poster showing the two candidates. At left two men seated in chairs are conferring, one man speaking into the other’s ear.

Mr. Carter spoke at a news conference in 1980 for a new campaign group, Diplomats for Carter-Mondale, of which Averell Harriman, the former ambassador, seated right, was the chairman. At left was R. Sargent Shriver, also a former ambassador and the founding director of the Peace Corps.Credit...Tasnadi/Associated Press

For decades, The Democrat, as it was known locally, stood for racial moderation in the South — steady, nonviolent progress toward justice, although it considered public school integration unwise and federal anti-lynching laws unnecessary. It condemned the Ku Klux Klan, and it covered the news of racial outrages with an accuracy and impartiality that was lacking in most Southern newspapers.

 

Hodding Carter Jr., the publisher, who won a Pulitzer in 1946 for his editorials, was revered by many liberals and members of the journalistic fraternity but widely regarded as the most hated man in Mississippi. There were obscene calls and death threats, effigy hangings, burning crosses and boycotts against the newspaper. The brothers sometimes saw their father sitting out on the porch with a shotgun at night, awaiting an attack that never came.

 

Hodding III attended Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire but graduated from Greenville High School in 1953 and from Princeton in 1957.

 

In 1957, he married Margaret Ainsworth, known as Peggy. The couple had a son, Hodding Carter IV, and three daughters, Catherine, Margaret and Finn, before the marriage ended in divorce in 1978. That year, he married Patricia Derian, an assistant secretary of state for human rights. She died in 2016 at 86.

 

In 2019, he married Patricia Ann O’Brien, an author and retired reporter who worked in the Knight Ridder Washington Bureau and at The Chicago Sun-Times.

 

In addition to his daughter Catherine, he is survived by his wife; his children Hodding IV, Finn Carter and Margaret Carter Joseph; his stepchildren Mike, Craig and Brooke Derian; a brother, Philip; and 12 grandchildren.

 

In 1959, after two years in the Marine Corps, Mr. Carter gave up plans to go into the Foreign Service and returned to Greenville. “We felt that we owed it to Dad and the paper to go back there and give it one year,” he recalled in an interview with The New York Times Magazine in 1977.

 

It turned into 17 years. He began as a reporter but was soon writing editorials. He eventually became editor and publisher, taking over from his father, who was losing his eyesight, resulting from a detached retina and an old Army injury that had left him blind in one eye.

 

The son’s early editorials were expressions of moderation similar to his father’s. But as the civil rights struggle spread across the South in the 1960s, they became more strident, condemning the brutality of the police who attacked nonviolent demonstrators and politicians who upheld white supremacy.

 

They were his words, but his father’s legacy.

 

“He had a great reputation for courage, which he deserved,” Mr. Carter said of his father in an interview with People magazine in 1981. “And yet I never knew a time when he wasn’t afraid of the consequences of what he was writing and doing. I learned from my father what courage was really about — it was being afraid, but doing what you had to do.”

 

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A color photo of three men in dark suits sitting on a stage in chairs. Mr. Carter, center, is laughing. The man at right has his arms folded.

Mr. Carter, center, was a speaker at a memorial celebration for R.W. Apple, the longtime New York Times reporter and editor and a Princeton classmate, in 2006. With him were Todd S. Purdum, left, a former Times reporter, and Joseph Lelyveld, the former executive editor of The Times. Credit...Jamie Rose for The New York Times

Mr. Carter became increasingly active in Mississippi politics, a participant as well as a chronicler of the struggle for full Black participation. In 1964, he worked for Lyndon B. Johnson’s successful presidential campaign. He later co-founded the Mississippi Loyalist Democrats, an amalgam of civil rights advocates that edged out the state’s white party regulars at the Democratic National Convention in 1968.

 

After his work in the Carter administration and as the anchor of “Inside Story,” Mr. Carter wrote columns and articles for The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and other publications. He also held positions with ABC, NBC, PBS and other networks. He won another Emmy and the Edward R. Murrow Award for his documentaries.

 

In 1994, he became a professor of journalism at the University of Maryland, and from 1998 to 2005 was president of the Knight Foundation, a nonprofit organization that supports excellence in journalism. In recent years, he taught leadership and public policy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he lived.

 

He was the author of “The South Strikes Back” (1959), about White Citizens’ Councils formed to resist racial integration, and “The Reagan Years” (1988).

 

Shivani Gonzalez contributed reporting.

 

Robert D. McFadden is a senior writer on the Obituaries desk and the winner of the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for spot news reporting. He joined The Times in May 1961 and is also the co-author of two books.

Kelly Woods

About Kelly Woods

 

Kelly is a Celtic term for ‘a wood’. The Kelly Glen was originally part of the estate around Kelly House (since burned down), so it’s a mix of planted specimens and natural regeneration. Although difficult to categorize, it could be classified as an W16 National Vegetation Classification (NVC) woodland community, which is defined as one with a predominance of oak and birch with wavy hair grass with a sub-community of blaeberry and broad buckler fern.

History

 

The first OS maps show the wood covering a much larger area than today and as being a mixture of conifer and broadleaf. The conifers were felled at some stage but their effects on the ground vegetation from shading and acidification are still being felt.

Current State

 

The woods are in a state of benign neglect with some areas being encroached by Rhododendron Ponticum. There is grazing pressure from deer, which may be hindering woodland regeneration. Luckily, there is a Tree Preservation Order (TPO) on the whole wood.

Objectives

Short Term Goals

 

Make contact with the owners of the wood.

 

Raise awareness of the value of the woods.

Long Term Goals

 

Eradicate Rhododendron Ponticum, in particular in the ravines, where the humid microclimate is ideal for rare species of ferns, mosses and lichens.

 

South Ayrshire (Scots: Sooth Ayrshire; Scottish Gaelic: Siorrachd Àir a Deas, is one of thirty-two council areas of Scotland, covering the southern part of Ayrshire. It borders onto Dumfries and Galloway, East Ayrshire and North Ayrshire. South Ayrshire had an estimated population in 2021 of 112,450, making it the 19th–largest subdivision in Scotland by population. With an area of 472 sq mi, South Ayrshire ranks as the 15th largest subdivision in Scotland.

 

South Ayrshire's administrative centre is located in its largest town, Ayr. The headquarters for its associated political body, South Ayrshire Council, is housed at the towns County Buildings located in Wellington Square. Ayr is the former county town of the historic Ayrshire county, with the political activity of the Ayrshire County Council being based at County Buildings.

 

History

South Ayrshire was created in 1996 under the Local Government etc. (Scotland) Act 1994, which replaced Scotland's previous local government structure of upper-tier regions and lower-tier districts with unitary council areas providing all local government services. South Ayrshire covered the same area as the abolished Kyle and Carrick district, and also took over the functions of the abolished Strathclyde Regional Council within the area. The area's name references its location within the historic county of Ayrshire, which had been abolished for local government purposes in 1975 when Kyle and Carrick district and Strathclyde region had been created.

 

In 2021, South Ayrshire submitted a bid for city status as part of the 2022 Platinum Jubilee Celebrations. The bid was based on the area's rich history and links to royalty, and received backing from organisations and businesses including Ayrshire College and Scottish Enterprise. The bid was ultimately unsuccessful, with eight other settlements across the UK, overseas territories and crown dependencies being awarded city status, including Scottish town Dunfermline.

 

Geographically, South Ayrshire is located on the western coast of Scotland, sharing borders with neighbouring local authorities East Ayrshire, Dumfries and Galloway and North Ayrshire. The climate in South Ayrshire, typical of that in western Scotland, is milder than that of eastern Scotland due to the stronger maritime influence, as the prevailing winds blow from the sea into South Ayrshire, which is located primarily on the western coast of Scotland. The warm Gulf Stream also has a strong influence on western Scotland. With winds mainly blowing from the sea the annual mean temperatures are in the range 9.5 to 9.9 °C (49.1 to 49.8 °F) in coastal areas of South Ayrshire such as Ayr and Troon.

 

The sea reaches its lowest temperature in February or early March so that on average February is the coldest month in some coastal parts of South Ayrshire along with the Rhins of Galloway, Kintyre and the Hebrides. In February the mean daily minimum temperature varies from about 2 °C in most of the islands, 1 to 2 °C along most of the Solway Firth and lowland inland areas, but less than −1 °C in parts of the Southern Uplands and central Highlands. Inland, where the influence of the sea is less, January is the coldest month with mean daily minimum temperatures generally between −3 and 0 °C.

 

The number of hours of natural sunshine in South Ayrshire is controlled by the length of day and by cloudiness. In general, December is the dullest month and May or June the sunniest. Sunshine duration decreases with increasing altitude, increasing latitude and distance from the coast. Local topography also exerts a strong influence and in the winter deep glens and north-facing slopes can be in shade for long periods. Industrial pollution and smoke haze can also reduce sunshine amounts, but the decline in heavy industry in the Ayrshire area, primarily in Ayr in South Ayrshire along with Kilmarnock in East Ayrshire, has resulted in an increase in sunshine duration particularly in the winter months.

 

Average annual rainfall totals range from less than 1,000 mm (39 in) in the upper Clyde valley and along the coasts of Ayrshire and Dumfries and Galloway to on average over 3,500 mm (140 in) over the higher parts of the west Highlands, approaching the maximum values found in the UK (over 4,000 millimetres or 160 inches further north).

 

South Ayrshire's population is mostly concentrated around the adjoining coastal towns of Ayr, Prestwick and Troon located to the north-west of the council, which represents 68% of the council's total population according to data derived from the 2011 census, with a combined population of 76,846. Other areas of significance include the towns of Maybole and Girvan which are located to the south of the council area in the district of Carrick.

 

The economy of South Ayrshire, like many other areas, was badly affected during the worldwide financial crisis from 2009–2012. Despite this, total Gross Value Added for South Ayrshire has seen a steady increase over the last 20 years, reaching a peak in 2015 of £2.4 billion. South Ayrshire's GVA represents 1.9% of the total Scottish Gross Value Added income which is consistent with the previous 20 years. The largest employment industry in South Ayrshire and Scotland is the public administration, education and health sector. Compared with Scotland, proportionally there are more South Ayrshire residents employed in this sector than Scotland, while there are proportionally fewer employed in banking, finance and insurance sector than Scotland. Despite being a costal area, the smallest employment in South Ayrshire is in the agriculture and fishing sector.

 

The council and its neighbours of East Ayrshire and North Ayrshire work together on economic growth as the Ayrshire Regional Economic Partnership, with support from the Scottish and UK governments and other private and public sector organisations.

 

Educational provision in South Ayrshire is offered via eight secondary schools, forty-one primary schools, two special needs schools and five stand-alone Early Years Centres (although some primary schools have Early Years Centres attached). In terms of early years provision, there are also a number of private establishments which are operated in conjunction with South Ayrshire Council, rather than managed and operated entirely by the council.

 

Based on figures from the 2016-2017 academic year, within South Ayrshire, there were 6,091 secondary school aged pupils, 7,855 primary school aged pupils and 251 pupils attending special educational needs provision establishments.

 

South Ayrshire Council

 

South Ayrshire is governed by South Ayrshire Council which has been under no overall control since 2003, in which time various coalitions and minority administrations have operated. Since the last election in 2022, the council has been led by a Conservative minority administration which took office with support from two independent councillors and abstentions from Labour. The next election is due in 2027.

 

The council's civic head takes the title of provost. This is a largely ceremonial role, chairing council meetings and acting as the area's first citizen. Although an elected councillor, the provost is expected to be politically impartial. Political leadership is provided by the leader of the council.

Wider politics

 

At the 2014 Scottish independence referendum South Ayrshire rejected independence by an above-average margin of 57.9% "No" to 42.1% "Yes". With a turnout of 86.1%, there were 34,402 "Yes" votes and 47,247 "No" votes. Nationally 55.3% of voters voted "No" in the referendum compared to 44.7%, who voted "Yes" – resulting in Scotland remaining a devolved part of the United Kingdom.

 

At the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum a majority of voters in South Ayrshire voted for the United Kingdom to remain a member of the European Union (EU), with 59% of voters in South Ayrshire voting for the United Kingdom to remain a member of the EU and 41% voting for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union. With a turnout of 69.8%, 36,265 votes were cast for remain and 25,241 were cast for leave. 62% of Scottish voters voted remain whilst 38% voted leave, whilst nationally 51.8% of voters in the United Kingdom as a whole voting to leave and 48.2% voting to remain

 

Greater Manchester Police proudly welcomed 152 new officers in the force's largest attestation ceremony to date on the evening of Tuesday 22nd October 2019, at Stockport Town Hall.

 

In front of family and friends, all officers partook in the Police Oath which is their promise to the Queen in front of a magistrate to uphold the office of constable with fairness, integrity, diligence and impartiality.

 

The ceremony marks the official start of the officers commencing their duties, and is a milestone to be celebrated.

 

Chief Constable Ian Hopkins was in attendance to welcome each and every new recruit to the force.

 

Also in attendance were Greater Manchester’s Deputy Mayor, Baroness Beverley Hughes and the Mayor of Stockport, Councillor Laura Booth.

 

For more information about Policing in Greater Manchester please visit our website. www.gmp.police.uk

 

To contact Greater Manchester Police for a less urgent matter or make a report online you can also visit www.gmp.police.uk.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Life has no other discipline to impose, if we would but realize it, than to accept life unquestioningly.

 

Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate or despise, serves to defeat us in the end.

 

What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy and strength, if faced with an open mind.

 

Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such.

  

~ Henry Miller

  

*für Caecar (9th August 2005)*

Pierre Mukeba "Impartiality" 2018 Brush-tipped pen, printed fabric on cotton

 

The New Orleans Public Belt Railroad (NOPB) is a Class III switching railroad that serves the Port of New Orleans and connects with six major Class I railroads. Founded in 1908, the NOPB was created to provide neutral and impartial access to the Port of New Orleans for multiple railroads. Most of its locomotives are secondhand units leased or acquired from other railroads.

 

NOPB No. 3002 is a General Motors EMD GP40 locomotive, new to the Louisville and Nashville Railroad in 1967. It is seen here at Riverview Drive crossing near Audubon Park on 16th October 2013.

 

IMG_6184

WE INTERRUPT THIS PHOTOSTREAM, TO BRING YOU…

 

Another winner, from my talented daughter’s eye (naturally, in the impartial opinion of her photographer-father)…!

 

Antwerp, Belgium: The sign, affixed to the far wall of this girls’-school’s parking lot, reads, “Please place the scooters orderly in a row.” (1/2)

 

(Best viewed LARGE…)

I've only really drawn the front row here but a big wedge of suits was there while we looked on from the balcony. He does carry his head at a strange angle though, as if its a bit heavy or maybe even shy.

 

The best bit was that everyone's speeches were carefully typed and printed out apart from Gordon Brown's which was a mass of scribbles and crossed lines. Which is a good thing, I like written notes. He was a good speaker with an acknowledgment of the BBC's impartiality, his Scottish connections and a good reference to Martin Luther King. It did lose me at the end with a "we have to be strong in the face of these difficult times" finale.

 

The letter "A" mysteriously appears in the clouds. Lots of interesting words begin with this letter. Which one d'ya suppose the clouds had in mind?

 

POEM STORAGE LOCKER

 

HOMELAND INSECURITY

 

Remember the Weapons of Mass

Destruction? The ones they never

Found? There are those who’ll tell

You they still exist somewhere, but

It’s a secret. With all the technology

And good old American know-how

They still can’t tell us what became

Of those WMDs, their excuse for

Spilling all that blood. When they

Shrieked 'the sky is falling, let us

Save you', the whole country bent

Over and said 'as you wish'. Now,

As then,they don’t even need an

Excuse, never mind a court order –

To spy on you because they think

You’re interesting. Better not be

Too interesting. Better be a bland,

Dull, boring little drone, otherwise

If it’s a slow day they’ll aim all that

Technology at you just to find out,

In the name of public safety, who

An interesting person gets to sleep

With, and whether you’re concealing

A WMD between your sheets.

  

SHEEPDOG

 

When I come up with something

That seems halfway intelligent,

I try and put it into some form

I can share with you, because

Most of my day I’m just as

Speechless as everyone else.

I look at things and just go,

What the f—k. I feel like a

Sheepdog trying to keep my

Charges from falling prey to

The freedom that comes so

Naturally to them, and which

Wolves depend on. And who

Do they get mad at? The wolf?

No, me. Need I explain further

Why I’m mostly speechless?

 

BOOKS

 

What a sentimental dinosaur I

Must sound like, seriously sad

That the era of books seems to

Be ending. Global warming will

Mean fewer trees for paper, and

A cheap alternative to printing –

Texts right to your computer -

Already exists, so it’s really a

No-brainer. What paper that

Remains will be needed for

Toilet tissue, until computers

Can wipe our asses too.

 

SANTA

 

Consumerism and spirituality dance a

Mutually suspicious tango together

In December. Alas, my letter to Santa

Would reveal I’m just as materialistic

As anyone else. But if you were Santa,

I’d ask that you slide the benefit of a

Doubt down my chimney. And were

I to find even the smallest present of

Your trust under my tree, that would

Move me far more than any glittering

Bling from the mall. I’d put forgiveness

On my wish list, along with healing,

Acceptance and grace. If we could

Share the gift of understanding, then

I think we’d be getting closer to what

Christmas is all about.

 

JIMCARE

 

I know I should have asked you

First, but you're my doctor - that's

All there is to it. You've got the

Cure if you ever want to use it.

 

SKIN

 

My skin may be thick but it’s full

Of nerve endings. Honestly, my

Thoughts can’t all come from my

Well-ordered, logical brain, which

Actually prefers the comfortable,

Logical, practical, and reasonable.

Nope, my edgy thoughts must

Come from my skin when it rubs

Against poison plants or gets

Surly over weather variations or

Bristles at certain personalities.

My normal conversation wouldn’t

Resemble some of my more out

There observations, unless you

Were to listen to my skin.

 

CONFUSED WITH FOOD

 

Don’t you just wish sometimes

People were like food, existing

Just to please, just for your

Benefit, just for you well-being?

Don’t you love how food says,

Do anything you want with me.

Eat me hot, freeze me for later,

Spice me to your taste, bathe

Me in seasoning till I make

Your mouth water. Yum, yum,

Honey I’m home for dinner.

I believe I’ve illuminated the

Obesity epidemic spreading

Across America insidiously as

Communism in the ‘50s, but

Were I your food, I’d sincerely

Want to be a balanced meal,

Lots of what you like but also

Lots of what’s good for you.

 

WITCHY

 

If magic wands weren’t standard

Issue just for wicked witches, I’d

Wave one and say presto, abra

Cadabra, it’s all sorted out and

Everyone’s happy. All loose ends

Reconnected, all pressing questions

Answered or rendered irrelevant,

All with Heaven’s smiling approval

Because it’s done right. That’s what

I’d do if I had a magic wand. While

We’re at it, a broomstick in lieu of

Plane tickets would be great too.

 

MAGIC

 

You can’t rely on magic, but that

Doesn’t mean it’s not there. It’s

Fickle, it hides, it’s unreliable, it

Would make a lousy employee.

Even Wizards get wounded when

Their spells backfire. Magic won’t

Make you a superhero. Magic is

Best approached with a certain

Humility, maybe a willingness to

Nurture without a constant eye

Towards a desired harvest. Keep

A pleasant garden for magic. It

Holds dear safe places it can rest

Without demands put upon it.

Magic wants to help, but knows

Too much help can be more like

Harm. Still, who knows, when it

Wakes it could always sprinkle

Your day with unexpected grace.

 

KITCHEN

 

This house feels like a home

Because of the ones who

Were here with me over the

Years, many long passed on,

But the kitchen feels like

They’re still here. This is

Where they took care of

Life’s most basic business –

Food, drink, doing dishes,

And I still live by what I

Learned from them. Do we

Really have any choice about

Ideas of right or wrong

Drummed into our heads?

Is it anyone’s fault the ones

Doing the drumming had no

Way of knowing the world

Beyond their kitchen?

 

SEE

 

How do you really see someone?

Can you put on sunglasses to cut

Their glare without perceiving

Them as darker than they really

Are? Does what you see through

Rose colored glasses really have

A rose fragrance to go with it?

Can you put someone under a

Microscope in the name of science,

Analyze their germs in the hope of

Curing their sickness without

Catching it yourself? Different

Ways of seeing give you different

Images, but the word image is

Always close to the word imagine.

The truest way to see someone

Is the way they see themselves,

But how would I know what that

Is when I can only look from afar?

 

LITERALLY

 

When they say don’t love the world,

They really ought to qualify that as,

Don’t love the world of man. As for

Our planet, it needs all the love we

Can spare. The world of man is an

Abstraction, indicating our species

Considers itself separate from its

Own origins. Just because man

Invented language, our definitions

And dogmas don’t make us more

Than a luckier class of monkeys.

Like monkeys that discovered how

Bones made excellent weapons

And proceeded to hit each other

Over the head just because they

Could, our so-called discoveries

Have just as often been our own

Undoing as our salvation. Relative

To our species’ long tenure at this

Address, we only recently

“Discovered” that we live on a

Rock floating through space. Left

To our devices, we ruin our planet

As casually as an infant soils its

Diapers. Don’t love the world?

Hey, the world gave you a tongue

To say those words with. And this

Is what you give back?

 

LAUNDRY

 

Carelessly piled in rude proximity

To each other’s soils and smells,

Pelted with goo or white flake,

(Usually by a white flake), then

Drowned in darkness as the

Heartless machine’s waters turn

Hostile. It’s receding leaves us a

Crumpled, damp distortion of our

Once beautiful selves. And as a

Final indignity, we’re spun about

Violently for what seems like an

Eternity till we collapse in a

Bewildered heap. Is this what you

Have to go through to get clean?

Beware, housewives of America –

What goes around comes around.

Precious, I’m on to you by now –

You throw me in that torturous,

Spinning thing, but I know you’ll

Just make me dirty all over again.

 

ACKNOWLEDGE

 

How do you acknowledge all

That you know, all that you’ve

Felt, and all that you’ve thought

Without making it seem all of

That's more important than

Everything you’ve yet to know,

Yet to feel and yet to think?

Only by choice. Sometimes

Even the wise pretend that

Yesterday never happened,

While only the most foolish

Pretend tomorrow never will.

 

SCALE

 

Hope in change for the better,

Fear of change for the worse –

The scale starts out balanced

Equally, then we start moving

Around, acting, reacting, beliefs

And feelings and feelings start

Shifting from one side of the

Scale to the other. I wish I could

Weigh in just on the good side,

But I’m only part of the balance

And sometimes my choices

Put me on a different side than

I’d intended. I need someone

To jump on the good side with

Me. We could tip the scale, I

Know we could.

 

PISCES

 

There’s a built in flaw with words –

It’s nice to catch thoughts, but

Thoughts are life fish, they don’t

Have life unless they flow. Don’t

Take anything I share with you as

The last word. Thoughts need to

Be fluid, not frozen, not stuffed

Like trophies, not canned, labeled

And sold at competitive prices to

Stimulate the economy, not made

Into sandwiches nor marketed as

Fast food hamburger alternatives.

Think living fish, moving. Truth is,

Like the moods of the sea, one

Thought flows into another, then

Into another, ad infinitum, which

Is why what’s hurting us today

We often end up laughing about

Tomorrow, and vice versa.

 

BAD STUFF

 

Nobody wants to hear about the

Bad stuff, but it’s what makes the

Good stuff good by comparison.

How to stay off those subjects

When they’re part of what forms

The story, part of why things are

The way they are today? The bad

Stuff is like a horrible creature that

Emerges from the sewer at night.

The bad stuff will hurt you, and

You know very well it’s there but

Not how to talk about it. Yet it

Holds the key to unlock the

Reservoir of pain, let it empty

So something more joyful can

Fill it instead. The bad stuff is as

Ugly as sin. Have you got the

Guts to look it in the eye?

 

COOL AS ME

 

People cool as me never admit to

Needing someone. People cool as

Me are expected to act like if they

Want company there’s a menu of

Willing individuals only too happy

To comply, but mostly they just

Want privacy. People cool as me

Act like they’re married to their

Mission in life, regardless of how

Long ago we got a messy divorce

From it that we’ll forever be

Paying off. People cool as me are

Alone on Valentine’s Day, wishing

They had someone they could be

Themselves with, someone to

Hold in confidence, someone to

Enjoy the world with, someone

By their side to while away those

Lonely hours even the coolest

People can’t avoid.

 

VOICE

 

I found a voice, and dammit,

I’m gonna use it. Do I really

Have anything to say? Does

Anyone? Actually, I do have

Something to say, but it’s

Not something you’d say

Outright. It’s there between

The lines. And it’s not just

Having a voice that makes

Speaking worthwhile, it’s

Knowing there’s someone

Listening. You have more

Power than you realize –

You’re really the poem,

I’m just the voice.

 

SUPERHERO

 

Superhero, now we need you. Go

Make Russia mind its own business.

Throw their tanks back across the

Ukraine. Make them stop being

Such vodka brains. Superhero,

Scare off their armies, tell them go

Direct traffic in Communist Square,

Not invade other countries. Cause

Russians are weirdos with nothing

To lose and a chip on their shoulder

From way too much vodka and too

Much cold weather and no rock and

Roll and they’re mean to Pussy Riot

And Communism never worked

Anyway - no wonder they’re mad,

But when mad equals stupid, we

Need Superheroes for villains like

Godzilla and Russia under Putin.

 

WISH I KNEW WHAT TO BELIEVE

 

Wish I knew what to believe.

Is it just up to me? Would you

Leave such a crucial definition

To the village idiot? If nothing

Else, at least you’ll get an

Unusual perspective, but alas,

Not necessarily one that will

Change things much. Is it the

Acceptance of things as they

Are or the persistence in trying

To make things different that

Defines an idiot? Or is it both?

Someone said no, no, that’s all

Wrong, it’s all about where

You’re coming from. Well, I’ll

Have you know, I aspire to

Come from someplace clean,

Honest, honorable, true, but

All I know for sure is, I come

From my mom. Or so I’m told.

Wish I knew what to believe.

 

UNSOLVED MYSTERIES

 

Conspiracy theorists are already

Tweeting it was aliens took that

Plane from the sky. There’s a

New Bermuda Triangle up in the

Skies above Asia. Planes fly in but

Don’t come back out, or maybe

They all will in 500 years, when

The Triangle expunges the lot in

A single eruption, like a giant fart

In the time-space continuum.

Unsolved mysteries suggest too

Many possibilities, that’s why we

Don’t like them. If it wasn’t aliens

It could have been hungry clouds.

Or there’s a giant bird up there

Collecting planes the same way

Some of us collect butterflies. Or

The plane flew into a time warp

To 1000 years in the future, the

Planet of the Apes, where a fuzzy

Faced Sarah McLaughlin is on TV

This very minute singing “In The

Arms Of An Angel” on behalf of

The passengers and flight crew.

 

BEARS IN WINTER

 

Winter sends her message in

Such a cold way. We need to

Learn secrets of survival when

All turns to ice for awhile. Only

For awhile – in time even this

Freeze will melt so the water

Can flow again. For now, time

Out, red light, cease fire, halt

Till further notice, hunker down,

Carry on as usual – if you want

To freeze to death. Unlike the

Bears who have the right idea

And sleep through it, I’m awake,

Feeling every cold moment.

 

DEMANDING BASTARD

 

I guess I could get better pictures

If I used a fancier camera, but as

I’ll explain to anyone who’ll listen,

In my experience life goes by too

Fast to focus a fancy camera on it.

Fancy cameras are for when you

Have the luxury of subjects who’ll

Hold still for you. I need my quick

And dirty little point-and-shoot for

The kind of subjects I catch. I want

People living, not posing. What a

Demanding bastard I can be. Am I

Enough of a cunt yet that you’d

Consider me some kind of artist?

 

SHE HAD A TERRIBLE VISION

 

She had a terrible vision in the

Post office parking lot. She saw

Samoa fifty years from now,

When most Samoans will look

Like me, in denim instead of a

Lava lava, and worse still, part

White. All I did was get out of

My car and I gave this old lady

A terrible vision in the post

Office parking lot. I know I did.

It was written all over her face,

I felt her terror and sorrow,

And now I’m just as scared.

 

FREUDIAN SLIPPERS

 

Psychological mechanism, whether

You’re aware of it or not, it’s what

You do on impulse, without thinking,

Almost as if it did itself. Like when

You shut me out, not just once, but

Time and time again. Makes me

Wonder what you’re thinking, why

You believe that’s what I deserve.

When you spoke to me, is that the

Impression I gave? In my company,

Is that how I made you feel, like

Someone you need to shut out, not

Someone you need to open up to?

What you need to know is, I don’t

Have a clue. I take my cues from you,

But sometimes I wonder whether

You even know why you so naturally,

Spontaneously, automatically shut

Me out like you’re a vampire and

I’m sunlight.

 

ALL YOUR FAULT

 

Investigate, detective, analyze

The crime scene. Compile a

Profile of the perpetrator, try

Guessing their motive. Using

Wit and intuition, crack their

Puzzle, expose them in the

News, soothe public concerns

The criminals are taking over.

No, criminals are predictable

And secretly long to be caught.

They just crave the stimulation

Of knowing they’ve engaged a

Mind as brilliant as yours to

Figure them out. In fact, were

It not for you, detective, the

Criminals wouldn’t find crime

Even worth it.

 

PRODUCTS PROMISE

 

Does roll-on or spray keep you cool,

Calm and collected better when

Someone you care about gets you

Really upset? Can this glue can hold a

Relationship together? Which plastic

Container will best protect my heart

From being jostled and bruised?

Which of these scissors is quickest

For cutting through the bullshit? If

She drinks this cola, will she really

Open her happiness for me? Every

Single item in this store says made

In China. So what would Chinese

Buy if they were trying to connect

With someone special? Whatever

Looks most American? That would

Not quite explain overpopulation,

In China, unless their condoms are

About as reliable as their radios.

 

ROCK & ROLL

 

Old folks can’t rock & roll so well

Anymore on the dance floor, but

In their hearts the music never

Stops. When I say you rock me,

I mean you move me. I don’t

Know why, you just do, for or

Against my will, either way, and

I’d rather celebrate it than hate it.

We needn't drag each other through

Hell. Rock & roll has a dark side,

As does most things first intended

For a more Heavenly purpose. It’s

Just the way we feel each other’s

Rhythms, and when you and I find

Our groove, it’s like the angels

Are rocking out.

 

CIRCLE

 

In the days when Samoa was further

From the center of western society

Than most could even contemplate,

White men who saw it would jump

Ship and hide in her mountains. They

Thought they’d found Paradise, and

By comparison America or Europe

Was a hell they had no wish to ever

See again. Nowadays we don’t worry

Much about sailors jumping off ship,

More about locals trying to jump on.

Western society has always had some

Trying to escape from it, so now we’ve

Come full circle and some from here

Are trying to escape island society.

I guess your perception of Paradise

Depends a great deal on what you

Can compare it to. I wonder whether

Those longing to escape island society

For its first world counterpart could

Ever see Samoa the way it looked to

Those first eyes that knew enough to

Make that comparison so long ago.

 

FROM BABIES

 

Babies know joy instinctively, even

In the midst of the worst troubles

Going on around them. When adults

Aren’t causing pain under a misguided

Notion it will keep pain from being

Inflicted on them, they’re desperately

Trying to dull whatever pain still

Penetrates their armor, even though

Not feeling is just the same misery

In different makeup. With all the open

Pain warfare around us, it’s not as if

We’re unaware that others hurt too,

It’s more like we don’t care. Pain is

The currency of exchange between

Our bodies, minds and spirits. Spirit

Pain is the deepest hurt a person can

Feel, and many don’t realize how deep

Into darkness their spirit has sunk until

Something or someone unlocks the

Chains and their spirit can fly again.

Some say we take our sensitivity too

Seriously, but when we stop giving in

To the agitation of disquieting ideas,

These same sensitivities can make us

Sensitive to joy. This might take some

Re-learning, some remembering but

Luckily you can learn a lot from babies.

 

RECIPE

 

I speak to you in my mind and maybe

Occasionally say the right thing. We

Are more than just our ideas, way

More, but ideas shine a light on

What’s going on inside our walking

Balloons of flesh, blood and bones.

I put things together for you, like

A recipe, hoping my creation is to

Your taste. There’s a taste in my

Dreams, engages all the senses,

And I wake knowing there’s only

One real point in coming back from

Slumber at all. Whatever powers

I have of thought, speech or action,

I wish only that they be right for

Bringing you the recipe that comes

To me from somewhere inside.

 

NO WAY TO TREAT A GUEST

 

Goes by like a shadow outside the door.

Shiver. Ghosts don’t show up during the

Day – must mean this one couldn’t wait.

Is something urgently needed before it’s

Too late? Ok, I’m waiting, but I haven’t

Got all day. What is it you want me to

Realize? Is there something you hope

That I’ll recognize? I’m wide open to

Suggestions, but can you do more than

Just skirt the shadows of my awareness?

Uh oh, I think I’ve just insulted the ghost –

Spoke before thinking - you’re supposed

To be mysterious and it’s very special,

Very sacred, even very blessed in a way

That an entity from the other side would

Feels strongly enough about something

Here on this one to intervene. So here I

Sit, calm, clear, open. Seconds tick,

Nothing happens. Apprehension grows

I’ve insulted the ghost. I like to believe

I don’t intuit spirits when there really

Are none, but now there really isn’t.

No mysterious tingle, no strange noises,

No unusual signs. Not even a hint of what

It meant or what it wanted. It could be a

Misunderstanding, true, but there’s no

Mistaking the emptiness of feeling sure

Something came to me but wouldn’t stay.

 

MOON IN ARIES

 

My sun sign is Cancer, but my moon

Sign is Aries, which coincidentally the

Sun just went into. Man, my planets

Get kind of mixed up sometimes. I

Googled “moon in Aries” and was

Kind of horrified to find that what

It described wasn’t the person that

I am, but rather the person I try not

To be – impatient, inconsiderate,

Innocently self-centered, as in, why

Of course I’m the center of the

Universe. I’m Jim and your’re not!

No, no, I’ve consciously cultivated

Being kind when I can and even when

My first impulse is to kill dead. I take

Things very personally. Treat me like

Someone you want nothing to do with

And I will have a very, very hard time

Ever opening up to you. Treat me like

Your friendship is genuine, comes as

Naturally as breathing, and I’ll never

See you any other way. If I scare you,

Congratulations, your wits serve you

Well, but even celestial egomaniacs

Are capable of evolving. Honest.

 

MOTHER HEN

 

It’s really funny you feel threatened.

Hey Einstein, if I was capable of doing

Something crazy I already would have.

But my craziness takes the form of

Expression, and if anything I’m more

Of a threat to myself than anyone

Else, just like Van Gough caught a

Form of craziness that caused him to

Cut off his own ear and offer it to a

Prostitute, not as payment but as

Some kind of token. True story. Pure

Madness, but look at the paintings

That came out of him. As for me, I

Can say with about 95% confidence

My ear is safe. At heart I’m more of

A mother hen, taking care of other

People hella more than anyone takes

Care of me, but that’s my token, I

Just try and look after things. You’re

Not threatened, you just bring out

The part of me that wants to express.

 

PEACH

 

Aries is the time when impatience

Comes naturally – when it feels like

Whatever is supposed to happen

Should have happened already.

There may be a time and place for

Such a sentiment – it keeps things

From getting stagnant, shakes up

Our routines, reminds us that life

Needs to move, needs to feel new.

Once man feels the power of his

Actions to effect things, he thinks

Action is the answer to everything,

And inaction is worthy of contempt.

But what happens when you want a

Ripe peach right now, and the tree

Says sorry, it’s not ready yet? In a

Fit of impatience and contempt,

Should you take an axe and show

The tree who’s boss?

 

COLD ON A SUNNY DAY

 

Anxiety causes tension that affects

The body, weakens the immune

System. Anxiety can be like birds

Making noise, birds that feed on

Feelings, constantly announcing

Their presence, attracting even

More birds, making more noise.

Birds only know one song, but they

Give the performance their all. I’ve

Heard the same song interpreted

Many times, and you have to give

Them credit for staying faithful to

The original. It never changes, it’s

Constant as the color of the sky.

No one complains about the color

Of the sky, they just learn to see

It as beautiful. My immune system

Isn’t applauding the constancy,

But birds aren’t about to change

Their tune just because of me.

 

WHY IS THE DEVIL?

 

Why is the devil so attracted to this

Family? He must like our banter, the

Pomposity of our place in society

Echoed in our accents of faraway lands.

Why does Lucifer join us at our table

Every time the whole family’s in the

Same room? He must delight in seeing

Supposedly civilized community icons

Turn into savages after a few drinks,

Cutting and bashing each other with

Words instead of clubs, the nervy ones

Jockeying to establish dominance like

Apes forming a mating hierarchy. Why

Is God’s fallen angel always co-counsel

To our lawyers whenever our family

Mess inevitably winds up in court? The

Devil specializes in turning imported

Laws against the importers, reminding

Us that the higher the privilege, the

More prolonged the payment.

 

QUIET MONARCHY

 

America’s mainstream spirit lives

Under house arrest in the gated

Community where the quiet

Monarchy bide their time. Now

That they’ve captured the voice

Of the silent majority, have you

Noticed it’s endless variations on

The same commercial? The ads

Promoting our country as global

Cash register, moral arbitrator,

Cultural enforcer? America’s

Mainstream spirit sleeps in its

Comfortable prison, its dreams

Often tormented by the older

Ghost of American humanity and

Idealism. America’s mainstream

Spirit doesn’t mean to demonize

The excluded, but in celebrating

The included, well, that contrast

Just has to stand out somehow.

Like a golden vision of perpetual

Prosperity, at least for some, the

Rockets’ red glare shines forever

In the lights of Las Vegas, where

For every spent Elvis waiting to

Die one morning on the toilet, for

Every spent engine of industry like

Detroit waiting for the scrap heap,

There is one more diamond in the

Crown of America’s quiet monarchy.

 

QUIET ANARCHY

 

We all make our own choices, and

Mine have grown mellower with age

But once in awhile there’s still this

Quiet anarchy I feel, where I want

To just burn down everything and

Everyone who’s ever caused me to

Hurt, caused me to believe you’ve

Been dealing me cards all along

From a dirty deck, cause me to

Realize I’ll never succeed in any

Way unless I play a bullshit game

That feeds someone else’s control

And profit. See the old anarchist

Walking his dog with plastic gloves

And a paper bag. I have to clean up

My mess or else face a fine, while

You go scott free every time you

Take your glorious dump on me

And everyone else.

 

PUNISHMENT

 

Such a painful situation

You wish you could punish

Somebody for it. Wish you

Could cast the first stone,

Wish you could bear damning

Witness, wish you could join

The witch hunt, but you won’t.

Punishment might provide a

Pleasurable revenge, but don’t

Forget, in love it’s better to

Give than to receive. Can you

Say the same of punishment?

 

CONSISTENCY

 

I’m always wrong, but at least

The reason keeps changing.

One day I’m wrong cause of

This, next day I’m wrong cause

Of that, in a week I’ll be wrong

Cause of something else. I’m

The barometer or baseline by

Which you gauge what’s wrong.

If I’m always going to be wrong,

What can I do? Be wrong in

Creative ways, be wrong in

Original ways, be wrong in

Inspired ways, be wrong in

Ways that are at least true

To myself, be wrong in ways

An impartial observer might

Conclude are only wrong

Depending on one’s point of

View, which I’m sure you’ll

Immediately shift accordingly.

 

OIL AND VINEGAR

 

It isn’t someone whose faith

Blinds them that we need, it’s

Someone whose faith opens

Their eyes. And perfection

Isn’t what we should seek in

Another, but rather someone

Whose imperfections mix with

Our own like oil and vinegar

Rather than gasoline and fire.

Oil and vinegar are not terribly

Romantic, I know, but see how

Together they elevate the

Salad from bland to sublime.

 

GOING COWBOY

 

I don’t feel so at home on the

Range, where the deer and the

Antelope make territorial noises,

While my own thoughts about

Unclear boundaries compromise

The night’s quiet. Like a Hamlet

On horseback, the uncertainty of

A stalemate situation eats away

At my peace of mind. Any kind

Of move would be going cowboy,

Riding in with pistols blazing.

Might save the day, might just

Leave a big mess. Feels like a

Rescue is called for, though no

One is yelling help. It’s fine to

Go cowboy, follow no rules but

Your own, if you want to break

Free, but if you want to return,

You ride alone, trying to recall

The trail home on a dark night.

 

SPEECH DEFECT

 

Just a way to get a word in, talking

Without voices, without eye contact,

Just words symbolizing meaning,

Representing feelings, self-centered

By necessity because propaganda is

Always a distorted exchange, forever

Open to interpretation. Hardly the

Optimum way to communicate, but

The alternative is total silence, history

Interpreted in opposite ways, with no

Basis for agreement or understanding,

No common meaning because you

Can’t treat meaningfully someone

You don’t acknowledge even exists

Anymore. How strange to feel like a

Ghost in someone else’s world when

You’re not even dead yet.

 

COUNTRIES

 

American Samoa was born in 1900.

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Was born in 1922. American Samoa,

Which is not quite America and not

Quite Samoa, is still trying to figure

Out what it is. The USSR, which was

A Union only by force, rape by any

Other name, Soviet and Socialist only

For as long as it was convenient, until

Its Republics grew strong enough to

Assert they wanted to be countries

Themselves, is also still trying to figure

Out what it is. I was born in the late

1950s, and I’m still trying to figure out

Who I am. You were born in the late

1980s, so if you haven’t figured out

Anything yet, that’s understandable

Given historical precedent.

 

COSTUMES

 

Costumes and uniforms, I’ll dress

The way I need to. One day one,

Another the next, any kind of

Outfit to please you. What we

Wear will make some kind of

Statement. It’s better, I guess,

Than walking ‘round naked. Put

On, put on, take off too. Same

Old me but the costume is new.

 

MR. FIXIT

 

Poor Mr. Fixit has forgotten about

All the things he can fix perfectly

To obsess on one thing he can’t

Quite figure out how to repair. Yes,

He says, I’m well aware there are

Things only God can fix, but if He’s

Not working through me then it

Must be due to some fault on my

Part. To find the solution within, I’ll

Purify myself. Friends say, Mr. Fixit,

If you were any more pure you’d be

Invisible. Friends say it’s turned

Into a battle of wills, of pride, of

Honor, of ego between Mr. Fixit

And the one thing he can’t fix. He

Knows they’ll never understand

How desperately motivation needs

A victory or else accomplishment

May as well be an accident. Besides,

He wonders, how can they say I’m

Overdoing it if I can’t get it done?

 

SWEETIE

 

Sweetie, I think your poetry

Is beautiful, just like you are.

You move me, always have.

Sweetie, I think you’re scared

Of me, and I can’t say I blame

You, but come on - compared

To Jesus, we all kind of suck.

 

THE DREADFUL PINK EYE

 

If you don’t want to catch the dreadful Pink Eye

Don’t look at someone like you wish they would die

Because if they suss that that’s what you think

They’ll punch both your eyes until they turn pink

Don’t antagonize with the things that you say

Or you’ll wear sunglasses all night and all day

Don’t provoke somebody to charge like a rhino

Or friends will all ask if you’re turning albino

 

MIDDLE AGED PRAYER

 

Age brings the same old problems,

Just with a more thoughtful response.

Still the same old choices soon as you

Wake. Always wishing things could be

Better for everyone, things could be

Fairer, things could be kinder, but the

World’s the way it is like a cookie

Crumbles the way it does, sort of by

Design but mostly at random. Lord,

Deliver us from randomness, except

When it brings something wonderful.

 

QUESTIONABLE CONDUCT

 

Opinions on what exactly constitutes

Questionable conduct will usually

Vary depending on who you ask and

Whatever/however their relation is

To the one whose conduct is called

Into question. If we all understood

Each other perfectly, no conduct

Would be questionable because

Whatever question there is would

Already be answered. Therefore,

To question another’s conduct is

Really to say you don’t understand.

As to the question of whether or

Not understanding is any business

Of yours… That actually explains a

Lot of suffering and violence. It

Could just as easily be, how dare

You not care, as how dare you

Interfere. It can be harder to act

Than to understand, but I still say

You’re worse off when it’s harder

To understand than to act.

You bring love to be impartial, then how do you slack insensitive,

For now that I think my heart still dearly.

How much pain I keep on their own, where you the one that you keep the peace.

Please return me the day new acquaintances innocent

The passing of the 10,000,000 views in the joy of accomplishment to capture the thrill of creative effort. 3333 images are shown in the gallery and 20 are over 50,000 views. Most viewed image exceeds 300,000 views Numerology is naturally an interest that occurs during awakening because many individuals will find themselves starting to see repeated numerological sequences over and over, sometimes even to the point where these numbers begin to haunt them. The most common being 11:11 however the more you notice the more you see, numbers such as 12:34, 111, 1:33, 333, 444, 555, etc. begin to follow you everywhere you go. Many people believe they are simply “Angelic Numbers” or “Messages from the Angels” but in truth Numerology is a very complex system. Each number corresponds to the system of the Kabbalah and the Tarot. The way to understand each of the numerological sequences you have to study the tree of life, archetypes, geometry and various symbolism throughout ancient history. Each number is a point on the dimensional plane of the system of the mind. Numerology works in a way that triggers a subconscious archetypal response within your long term memory all going right back to processing numbers like a futuristic computer. Carl Jung has studied this concept of subconscious triggers extensively within his work such as Man and His Symbols. They are essentially mind relapse triggers that influence our long term memory and change our DNA. You could say they’re “upgrades” but what they are doing is triggering your subconscious mind into the act of remembrance of who you are.What does seeing Numerology such as 11:11, 12:34, 1:11, 3:33… mean to me?

In reality while there is much symbolism behind each number, the true meaning all comes down to what resonates with you most. They could be said these are “Codes” that unlock our dna strands and awaken old memories of who we used to be but they are honestly a trigger like a talisman. 11:11 is by far the most common as well as 111,222,333,444,555, etc. Any of the master numbers can/will start showing up repeatedly denoting a particular sequential message. It’s always good to pay attention to your thoughts at the particular time you see the number or look at what you are doing. Being conscious of our surroundings, what we’re doing or what is around us at the time such as a symbol can sometimes help to figure out the meaning behind the message of the number.

 

There are various theories out there for why numbers are displaying a particular message. Some of these include:

 

Binary DNA Activation – Reality is composed from numbers, our mind is similar to a computer which relies on binary codes (1’s and 0’s). These Numbers such as 11:11 are working as a form of binary that activates your dormant (junk) DNA.

11:11 Gateway/Portal – Also known as Stargates, 10.10. 10. 11.11.11 12.12.12 These are astrological alignments that are created during a specific date in time. They are most known for being an Energetic Gateway for others to Awaken and also known to create energetic shifts. It could also signify that “11:11 is the doorway between two worlds – between the 3rd dimensional and the 5th dimensional worlds” [ref]In5d All About 11:11[/ref]

Making a Wish – Many Teenagers used to play the game “make a wish it’s 11:11”, perhaps their subconscious knew more than they did about this mysterious phenomena.

Life Path Numbers – Life Path numbers are a different form of numerology but are connected to Symbolic interpretation. They are found by adding your birth date and birth year together into a single digit.

Angel or Spirit Guide Messages – The more popular theory by Doreen Virtue that Numerology is basically messages from your angels or spirit guides trying to communicate with you. These messages include similar sayings such as “you are on the right direction of your spiritual path” or “stay positive, you have nothing to fear in regards to your soul purpose”

Fibonacci Sequence/Golden Ratio – Our reality is made around the Golden Ratio even our bodies are composed from the beautiful sequence of Phi, perhaps the numbers are simply reminding us of who we are?

Global Consciousness – Cosmic consciousness, sometimes people just simply think that these numbers are here to tell us we are connected to one another.

Wake Up Call – The most popular interpretation, Wake up call to GLOBAL AWAKENING. Numerology is mainly noticed by people who are going through the process of a Spiritual/ Kundalini Awakening. These numbers could simply mean you are on the right track and they signify your own Awakening Journey.

Since Numerology is linked to archetypal symbolism, the most direct interpretation will always be the symbolic representation of the Number itself. The numbers are there to guide us but the most powerful meaning is the one you put in front of the symbol. What resonates with you?

The Master Numbers:

1010 – reality is a biogenetic experiment created from numbers

911 – 9=Endings. 11=DNA. 911=ending code of our DNA program in this reality.

111 – The vision, illumination, channel to the subconscious, insight without rational thought, the gateway

222 – Duality – Polarity – Reality is created by an electromagnetic energy grid. 2+2=2=6=Flower of Life

333 – Represents a higher octave of 9 = closure in 3D

444 – Represents a higher octave of 3 = 4d mastery of thought and illusion

555 – All elements(air, earth, water, fire, ether) combined is a sphenic number. In base 10, it is a repdigit, and because it is divisible by the sum of its digits, it is a Harshad number. It is also a Harshad number in binary, base 11, base 13 and hexadecimal. Represents 5D

 

666 – Creating the merkabah, star of david, aligning the elements and the senses together in understanding. the number of man elements of earth combined with spirit

777 – Spiritual divine connection (connected to crown chakra)

888 – Rebirth, infinity, paradise regained

999 – Karma codes ending, life cycles complete. It is the Triple Triad – Completion; fulfillment; attainment; beginning and the end; the whole number; a celestial and angelic number – the Earthly Paradise.

10 – Completion and back to the source energy field or universal cosmic consciousness. Ten is the number of the cosmos—-the paradigm of creation. The decad contains all numbers and therefore all things and possibilities. It is the radix or turning point of all counting.

 

The representation of all master numbers connects to the universal sequence of 369.

0 – Tree of life, zero point

3 – Density line, creation for all. 3d. creation, the triangle, the student, the third solution, the creation of a double charge, the progression through life.

6 – Perfect balance, which ideally transmit the will of God on earth. Heaven uniting with earth. double-builder 33, the power of the material world, balance

9 – Completion, whole creation, all thought, divine, full circle, bio-energy, complete creation, power, brilliance, triple connection and balance.

[mks_separator style=”dotted” height=”2″]The 11 is the most intuitive of all numbers. It represents illumination; a channel to the subconscious; insight without rational thought; and sensitivity, nervous energy, shyness,andimpracticality. It is a dreamer. The 11 has all the aspects of the 2, enhanced and charged with charisma, leadership, and inspiration. It is a number with inborn duality, which creates dynamism, inner conflict, andothercatalyses with its mere presence. It is a number that, when not focused on some goal beyond itself, can beturnedinward to create fears and phobias. The 11 walks the edge between greatness and self-destruction. Its potential for growth, stability, and personal power lies in its acceptance of intuitive understanding, and of spiritual truths. For the 11, such peace is not found so much in logic, but in faith. It is the psychic’s number.The 22 is the most powerful of all numbers. It is often called the Master Builder. The 22 can turn the most ambitious of dreams into reality. It is potentially the most successful of all numbers. It has many of the inspirational insights of the 11, combined with the practicality and methodical nature of the 4. It is unlimited, yet disciplined. It sees the archetype, and brings itdown to earth in some material form. It has big ideas, great plans, idealism, leadership, and enormous self-confidence. If not practical, the 22s waste their potential. Like the 11, the 22 can easily shrink from its own ambition, causing difficult interior pressures. Both the 11 and the 22 experience the pressure-cooker effect very strongly, particularly at an early age. It must work toward the realization of goals that are larger than personal ambition. The 22 serves the world in a practical way.The 33 is the most influential of all numbers. It is the Master Teacher. The 33 combines the 11 and the 22 and brings their potential to another level. When expressed to the fullest, the 33 lacks all personal ambition, and instead focuses its considerable abilities toward the spiritual uplifting of mankind. What makes the 33 especially impressive, is the high level of sincere devotion. This is shown in its determination to seek understanding and wisdom before preaching to others. The 33 in full force is extremely rare. [ref]Numerology: Key to Your Inner Self By Hanz Decoz[/ref]

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Numbers Their Culture and Their Meanings:

The Numbers explained Further Curiosity of Crystalinks [ref]Crystalinks.com A major thank you to Ellie who let us use her pages for reference[/ref]:

Zero

Zero is a powerful number which brings great transformational change, sometimes occurring in a profound manner. It has much intensity, so caution is needed wherever it appears to ensure that extremes are not encountered.

Zero represents the Cosmic Egg, the primordial Androgyne – the Plenum. Zero as an empty circle depicts both the nothingness of death and yet the totality of life contained within the circle. As an ellipse the two sides represent ascent and descent, evolution and involution.

Before the One (meaning the Source—not the number) there is only Void, or non-being; thought; the ultimate mystery, the incomprehensible Absolute. Begins with meanings such as, Non-existence; nothingness; the unmanifest; the unlimited; the eternal. The absence of all quality or quantity.

Cultural References

Taoism: It symbolizes the Void; non-being.

Buddhism: It is the Void and no-thingness.

Kabbalism: Boundless; Limitless Light; the Ain.

Pathagoras saw zero as the perfect. Zero is the Monad, the originator and container of All.

Islamic: Zero is the Divine Essence.

Zero Number connected to Fibonacci Numbers

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One (1)

1 (one) is a number, numeral, and the name of the glyph representing that number. It is the natural number following 0 and preceding 2. It represents a single entity. One is sometimes referred to as unity or unit as an adjective. For example, a line segment of “unit length” is a line segment of length 1. Is considered to be a primordial unity. The beginning. The Creator. It the First Cause or as some cultures refer, the First Mover. One is the sum of all possibilities. It is essence, the Center. One is referred to isolation. One springs forth, upsurges. It is seen as the number that gives cause to duality as multiplicity and back to final unity. Chinese: refer to one as Yang, masculine; celestial. It is seen as an auspicios number. One is The Monad. Christian : God the Father; the Godhead.

Hebrew: Adonai, the Lord, the Most High, the I am, hidden intelligence. Islamic: One refers to one as God as unity; the Absolute; self sufficient. Pathagorean: One as meaning Spirit; God, from which all things come. It is the very essence, the Monad. Taoism “Tao begets One, One begets Two, Two begets Three and Three begets all things.” [mks_separator style=”dotted” height=”2″]

Two (2)

Duality. Alteration; diversity; conflict; dependence. Two is a static condition. It is rooted, seen as balance (two sides); stability; reflection. Two are the opposite poles. Represents the dual nature of the human being. It is desire, since all that is manifest in duality is in pairs of opposites. As One represents a point, two represents a length. The Binary is the first number to recede from Unity, it also symbolizes sin which deviates from the first good and denotes the transitory and the corruptible.Two represents two-fold strength—that is symbolized by two of anything, usually in history, by animals in pairs. Cultural References In Alchemy, two are the opposites, sun and moon. King and Queen. Sulpher and quicksilver, at first antagonistic but finally resolved and united in the androgyne. Buddhist: see two as the duality of samsara; male and female. Two is theory and practice; wisdom and method. It is blind and the lame united to see the way and to walk it.

Chinese, two is Yin , feminine; terrestrial; inauspicious. Christian: Christ with two natures as God and human.

Revelation: Two is the number of witness. The disciples were sent out by two’s (Mark 6:7). Two witnesses are required to establish truth (Deu 17:6, John 8:17, 2 Cor 13:1). Examples in Revelation are the beast out of the earth who has two horns like a lamb but spoke like a dragon (13:11). He is the false prophet. However the two witnesses are the true prophets of God (11:3). Hebrew: Two is The life-force. In Qabalism wisdom and self-consciousness. Hindu: Two is duality, the shakta-shakti. Islamic: Two Spirit. Platonic: Plato says two is a digit without meaning as it implies relationship, which introduces the third factor. Pythagorean: Two is The Duad, the divided terrestrial being. Taoist says two is representative of The K’ua, the Two. Determinants, the yin-yang. Two is a weak yin number as it as no center. Duality. Alteration; diversity; conflict; dependence. Two is a static condition. It is rooted, seen as balance (two sides); stability; reflection. Two are the opposite poles. Represents the dual nature of the human being. It is desire, since all that is manifest in duality is in pairs of opposites. As One represents a point, two represents a length. The Binary is the first number to recede from Unity, it also symbolizes sin which deviates from the first good and denotes the transitory and the corruptible.Two represents two-fold strength—that is symbolized by two of anything, usually in history, by animals in pairs. Cultural References

In Alchemy, two are the opposites, sun and moon. King and Queen. Sulpher and quicksilver, at first antagonistic but finally resolved and united in the androgyne. Buddhist: see two as the duality of samsara; male and female. Two is theory and practice; wisdom and method. It is blind and the lame united to see the way and to walk it. Chinese, two is Yin , feminine; terrestrial; inauspicious. Christian: Christ with two natures as God and human. Revelation: Two is the number of witness. The disciples were sent out by two’s (Mark 6:7). Two witnesses are required to establish truth (Deu 17:6, John 8:17, 2 Cor 13:1). Examples in Revelation are the beast out of the earth who has two horns like a lamb but spoke like a dragon (13:11). He is the false prophet. However the two witnesses are the true prophets of God (11:3). Hebrew: Two is The life-force. In Qabalism wisdom and self-consciousness. Hindu: Two is duality, the shakta-shakti. Islamic: Two Spirit. Platonic: Plato says two is a digit without meaning as it implies relationship, which introduces the third factor. Pythagorean: Two is The Duad, the divided terrestrial being. Taoist says two is representative of The K’ua, the Two. Determinants, the yin-yang. Two is a weak yin number as it as no center [mks_separator style=”dotted” height=”2″]

Three (3). The third dimension – we do things in threes so they will manifest in our physical realm. It’s roots stem from the meaning of multiplicity. Creative power; growth. Three is a moving forward of energy, overcoming duality, expression, manifestation and synthesis. Three is the first number to which the meaning “all” was given. It is The Triad, being the number of the whole as it contains the beginning, a middle and an end. The power of three is universal and is the tripartide nature of the world as heaven, earth, and waters. It is human as body, soul and spirit. Notice the distinction that soul and spirit are not the same. They are not. Three is birth, life, death. It is the beginning, middle and end. Three is a complete cycle unto itself. It is past, present, future. The symbol of three is the triangle. Three interwoven circles or triangles can represent the indissoluble unity of the three persons of the trinity. Others symbols using three are: trident, fleur-de-lis, trefoil, trisula, thunderbolt, and trigrams. The astral or emotional body stays connected to the physically body for three days after death. There is scientific evidence that the brain, even when all other systems are failing takes three days to register complete shutdown. There are 3 phases to the moon. Lunar animals are often depcited as 3 legged.

Three is the heavenly number, representing soul, as four represents body. Together the two equal seven (3+4=7 ) and form the sacred hebdomad. The 3×4=12 representing the signs of the Zodiac and months of the year. Pythagorean three means completion. There are three wishes, genies have three wishes, three leprecons, three prince or princesses, three witches, three weird sisters among others. Cultural References Africa Ashanti: the moon goddess is three people, two black, and one white. Arabian, Pre-Islamic: the Manant is a threefold goddess representing the 3 Holy Virgins, Al-Itab, Al-Uzza, and Al-Manat. They are depicted as aniconic stelae, stones or pillars, or as pillars surmounted by doves. Buddhist: tradition the theme of 3 is represented by, The Tri-ratna, The Three Precious Jewels, and the Buddha, Dharma, Sangha.

Chinese: Sanctity; the auspicious number; the first odd, yang number….The moon toad, or bird, is three-legged. Celtic: Bridgit is threefold; there are the Three Blessed Ladies and innumerable Triads, often a threefold aspect of the same divinity. Christianity: Three represents the Trinity, the soul, the union of body and soul in human in the church. There were three gifts of the Magi to Christ as God-King-Sacrifice; three figures of transformation, temptations, denials by Peter (one of the 12 Apostles—- 12=3 (1+2=3). There were 3 crosses at Calvary, He died on The Hills, there were 3 days to the death process for Christ, and there were 3 appearances after his death. There were 3 Marys, and there are 3 qualities or theological virtutes being Faith, Hope, Love or more commonly known as Charity. The number 3 gives to the meaning the embracing Godhead – Father, Mother, Son/Daughter. Egyptian: Hermetic tradition, Thoth is the Thrice Great, ‘Trismegistus’. The Supreme Power. The opening line of the Emerald Tablets of Thoth the Atlantean. Tablet 11

Three is the mystery, come from the great one, Hear, and light on thee will dawn. In the primeval dwell three unities,Other than these none can exist. These are the equilibrium, source of creation,One God, One Truth, One Point of Freedom.Three come forth from the three of the balance, All Life, all Good, all Power.Three are the qualities of God in his light-home Infinite Power, Infinite Wisdom, Infinite Love. Three are the circles (or states) of Existence: The Circle of Light where dwells nothing but God, and only God can traverse it, The Circle of Chaos where all things by nature arise from Death, The Circle of Awareness where all things spring from Life. All things animate are of three states of existence, Chaos or death, liberty in humanity, and felicity of Heaven. There is an ancient wisdom that’s says; ‘Messages or events that come in three’s are worth noticing. ‘Whenever anything is mentioned three times it is a witness to us that these things are of utmost importance. Three symbolizes manifestation into the physical. It is the triangle – pyramid shape in the vesica pisces – see image below. The TV Show ‘Charmed’ deals the ‘Power of Three Sister Witches’, known as the Charmed Ones. Their job is to vanquish evil forces in their many forms and sometimes non-forms. knot The symbol to the side, called a Triquetra (tri-KET a Latin word meaning ‘three cornered’) appears on The Book Of Shadows.an ancient book of spells that assists these ‘Charmed Ones’ in dealing with the evil forces they are continually encountering. In some episodes so called evil and good must work together to bring balance to a situation. They cancel each other out in the end – poof – gone – disappeared! ‘Power of Three’ has to do with Alchemy. The Egyptian god Thoth or the Greek Hermes Trismegistus (Thrice Blessed or Thrice Great) are the progenitors of the Emerald Tablets describing the mysteries of Alchemy. The alchemy of three is demonstrated by its power of multiplicity. For example, in understanding the numbers – One gave rise to Two (1+1=2) and Two gave Rise to Three (2+1=3) and Three gave rise to all numbers (3+1=4, 3+2=5, 3+3=6, 3+4=7, 3+5=8 3+6=9). Thus in addition to being a number of good fortune, Three is also the number of multiplicity and alchemy among other things. Many believe the Triquetrais an ancient symbol of the female trinity, because it is composed of three interlaced yonic Vesica Pisces (a.k.a. PiscisSLatin for “Vessel of the Fish”) and is the most basic and important construction in Sacred Geometry, which is the architecture of the universe.

A Vesica is formed when the circumference of two identical circles each pass through the center of the other in effect creating a portal. ‘The Triquetra’ represents the ‘Power of Three’ or the threefold nature of existence i.e. body, mind and spirit; life, death and rebirth; past, present and future; beginning, middle and end; Sun, Moon and Earth; and the threefold co-creative process described as thought, word, and deed. Sphere=ovum Vesica Pisces – Oval opening of the penis The creation process as described in the Vedas is unfolding, maintaining, and concluding as in birth, life and death. There are innumerable trinities and triads throughout myth and religious traditions, such as the triple goddess; maiden, mother, crone. One example in Greek mythology is Kore, Demeter, Hecate. The Christian trinity is Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Vedic trinities include Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva with their consorts Saraswati, Lakshmi and Kali to name just a few. [mks_separator style=”dotted” height=”2″]

Four (4)

Four is the 4th dimension = time which is illusion. Four is seen as the first solid number. Spatial in scheme or order in manifestation.Static as opposed to the circular and the dynamic Wholeness; totality; completion; solid Earth; order

Rational – relativity and justice Symbol of measurement

Foundation The are four cardinal points; four seasons; four winds; four directions (as in North, South, East, West); four elements (Fire, Water, Air, Earth) in the western culture. There are four sides to a square; four arms to a cross. There are four rivers to Paradise, that formed a cross (the Garden of Eden was said to be within the four rivers). Within Paradise were four infernal regions, seas, and sacred mountains. There are four watches of the night and day, quarters of the moon. There are four quarters to the earth. There are four tetramorphs. The Divine Quaternity is in direct contrast to the Trinity. Four is a symbolic number used throughout in the Old Testament. The quaternary can be depicted as the quatrefoil as well as the square and the cross.Cultural References

Native American: As in other cultures, ceremonies and ritual acts are repeated in fours. The Native Amercican cultures have used the number 4 most frequently as in the four cardinal directions. The four winds are depicted by the symbol of the cross and by the symbol of the swastika. The swastika as some misbelieve was not created by Hitler. It was instead borrowed from the Native American and occult beliefs of which Hitler had great interests. Hitler derived his “insanity” of power from his misdirected interpretation and use of metaphysical principles. He used knowledge that his human consciousness couldn’t possibly understand and the use of this knowledge for personal gain is part of the imbalance that creates the chaos and karma. Buddhism: The Damba Tree of Life has four limbs and from its roots four sacred streams of Paradise that represent the the four boundless wishes of compassion, affection, love impartiality. It also represents the four directions of the heart as well. Chinese Buddism: there are four celestial guardians of cardinal points are Mo-li Ch’ing, the East, with the jade ring and spear; Virupaksha, the West, the Far-gazer, with the four-stringed quitar; Virudhaka, the South, with the umbrella of choas and darkness and earthquakes; Vaisravenna, the North, with the whips, leopard-skin bag, snake and pearl. Chinese: Four is the number of the Earth, symbolized by square. There are four streams of immortality. Four is even an number. It is Yin in polarity.

Christian: Four is the number representing the body, with three representing the soul. Again we see the theme of the four rivers in Paradise. There are four Gospels, Evangelists, chef arch-angels, chef-devils, four Fathers of the Church, Great Prophets. There are four cardinal virtues—prudence, fortitude, justice, temperance. The are four winds from which the One Spirit is said to come. There are four horsemen of the Apocalypse. Revelation: There four angels standing at the four corners of the Earth, holding back the four winds of the earth (Rev 7:1). The great multitude from every nation, tribe, people and language (four-fold description) – Rev 5:9 11:9 13:7 14:6 the four-fold description indicates that these people come from all over the earth. Egyptian: Four is the sacred number of Time, measurement of the sun. Four pillars support the vault of heaven. There are four canopic jars placed around the dead at the four corners guarded by the four sons of Horus who are associated with the cardinal points. In the Hermetic it is the divine quaternity. It represents God. Gnostic: belief in Barbelo, the Four-ness of God. Greek: Four is the sacred number of Hermes Hebrew: Four represents measuring; beneficence; intelligence. In the Kabbalah four is memory; four represents the four worlds of the Kabbalah.It also represents the four directions of space and the four levels of the hierarchical organism of the Torah. Hindu: Four is Totality; plenitude; perfection. Brahma, the Creator is four faced. The temple is based on the four sides of the square, symbolizing order and finality. There are four tattvas the four bodies bodies of human and kingdoms of nature which are animal, vegetable, mineral, mind. There are four yugas. Four is the winning throw of the dice. There are four castes and pairs of opposites. Islamic: tradition the four terms of the quaternary are the Principle which is Creator; Universal Spirit; Universal Soul; and the primordial matter. These correspond to the four worlds of Kabbalism. There are four angelic beings and four houses of death. There are four levels to the Bardo. Mayan culture four giants support the celestial roof. Four is seen as the number of support .Pythagorean: Four is Perfection; harmonious proportion; justice; the earth. Four is the number of the Pythagorean oath. Four and ten are divinities. The Tetraktys 1+2+3+4=10. Scandinavian: there are four rivers of milk flowing in Asgard.Sumero-Semitic: Four astral gods are indentified with the four cardinal points. Teutonic: four dwarfs support the world. Taoist: There are four celestial guardians, Li, with the pagoda; Ma, with the sword; Cho with two swords; Wen with a spiked club. [mks_separator style=”dotted” height=”2″] Five (5)

Five is the symbol of human microcosm. The number of the human being. Human forms—-the pentagon when arms and legs are out stretched. The pentagon is endless —-sharing the symbolism of perfection and power of the circle. Five is a circular number as it produces itself in its last digit when raised to its own power. The pentacle, like the circle symbolizes whole, the quincunx being the number of its center and the meeting point of heaven, earth, and the four cardinal points plus the center point. Five is also representative of the Godhead – Central Creator of the four fours plus itself equalling five. Five is the marriage of the hieros gamos as combination of feminine and the masculine. Feminine being even, as 2, in frequency and masculine being odd as 3 in frequency = 5. The number five symbolizes meditation; religion; versatility. It represents the five senses (taste, touch, smell, sight, hearing) everywhere except in the East. In the East there are six—-the extra being Mind. We find meanings to five in the five petaled flower, five pointed leaves—especially the ROSE. The Rose has much symbolism, but also the lily, vine, all of which represent the microcosm.

The five pointed star depicts individuality and spiritual aspiration, and education when it points upward. The five pointed star pointing downward represents witchcraft, and it is used in black magic. Noted: There is a very broad difference between witchcraft and black magic. The number five formed the first counting process from which all else came. Cultural References Alchemy: The five petaled flower and five pointed star symbolizing the quintessence.

Buddhist: belief the heart has four directions— the heart center makes five, symbolizing, universality. This idea is also symbolized by the Sacred Mountains surrounded by the four islands. There are five Dhyani Buddhas: Vairocana, the Brillant, who is represented by the wheel, the witness; Akshobhya, the Imperturbable, with vajra, the East and blue; Ratnasambhava, the Jewel-born, jewel, south, yellow; Amitabha, Boundless Light, lotus, West, red; Amoghasiddhi, Infallible Success, sword, North, green. Chinese: There are five elements. Five atmospheres; conditions; planets; sacred mountains; grains, colors, tastes, poisons; powerful charms; cardinal virtues; blessings; eternal ideas; relations to human kind. Christian: Five depicts human beings after the Fall in the Garden of Eden. There are five senses; five points to the cross; wounds of Christ; fishes feeding five thousand; and books of Moses. Egyptian: There are five crocodiles of the Nile. Graeco-Roman: Five is the nuptial number of love and union.. It is the number of Venus. Venus years are completed in groups of five. Apollo as god of light has five qualities: omniscience, omnipresence; omnipotence, eternity, and unity.

Hebrew: Five represents strength and severity; radical intelligence. In kabbala five represence fear. Hindu: Five is the quinary groups of the world; the five elements of the subtle and coarse states; their primary colors; of senses; five faces of Siva and the twice-five incarnations of Vishnu. Islamic: There are five pillars of religion; five Devine Presences; five fundamental dogmas; five actions; and five daily times of prayer. Parsee: Five is a significant number in Parsee and Mandaean rites – possibly connected with the five sacred intercalary days of light. Pythagorean: Hieros, gamos, the marriage of heaven, earth. It represents Apollo as God of light and his five qualities. Crystalinks: The Pentagram Pentagrams often show up on palms – hands [mks_separator style=”dotted” height=”2″]

Six (6) Six represents equilibrium; harmony – balance. It is the perfect number within the decad: 1+2+3=6. It is the most productive of all numbers. It symbolizes union of polarity, the hermaphrodite being represented by the two interlaced triangles, the upward- pointing as male, fire and the heavens, and the downward-pointing as female, the waters and the earth. Six is the symbol of luck; love; health; beauty; chance. It is a winning number at the throw of the dice in the West. There are six rays of the solar wheel and there are six interlaced triangles. There are six pointed stars or Seal of Solomon – and Star of David – Merkabah Cultural References;Chinese: Six represents Universe, with its four cardinal points and the Above and Below – making it a total of six directions. Chinese culture there are six senses: tastse, touch, smell, sight, hearing, the sixth being mind. The day and night each have six periods. Christian: Six is perfection; completion because man was created on the sixth day. Six is man’s number The most obvious use of this number is in the notorious passage containing 666. (Rev 13:18 NIV) This calls for wisdom. If anyone has insight, let him calculate the number of the beast, for it is man’s number. His number is 666. Hebrew: There are six days of creation. It symbolizes meditation and intelligence. Kabbalism: Six is creation, and beauty. Pythagorean: Luck Sumerian: Six days of creation

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Seven (7)

If 6 represents humanity then 7 – the center of the spiral is humanity’s connection to its source, god, Christ consciousness – or whatever name you prefer.

Seven is the number of the Universe. It is the three of the heavens (soul) combined with the four (body) of the earth; being the first number containing both the spiritual and the temporal. In looking over the list of meanings it doesn’t take long to figure out why the seven has become significant in metaphysical, religious and other spiritual doctrines – as seven represents the virginity of the Great Mother – feminine archetype – She who creates.

There are 7 ages of man ancient wonders of the world circles of Universe cosmic stages days of the week heavens hells

pillars of wisdom rays of the sun musical notes – sound as frequency plays a key roll in matters of Universe. There are over 80 octaves of frequency – each governing a specific manifestation in Universe. Cultural References In all cultures, myths and legends seven represents…completeness and totality macrocosm perfection plenty reintegration rest

security safety synthesis The writings about the seven-headed dragon appear throughout India, Persia, the Far East, especially Cambodia, but also Celtic and other Mediterranean myths. The seventh ray of the sun is the path by which the human beings pass from this world to the next. Seven days is the period for fasting and penitence. The seventh power of any number, both square and a cube and thus was given great importance. Alchemy – There are seven metals involved with the Work. Astrology: There are seven stars of the Great Bear which are indestructible. There are seven Pleiades— sometimes referred to as the, Seven Sisters. Buddhist: Seven is the number of ascent and of ascending to the higest; attaining the center. The seven steps of Buddha symbolize the ascent of the seven cosmic stages transcending time and space. The seven-storied prasada at Borobadur is a sacred mountain and axis mundi, culminating in the transcendent North, reaching the realm of Buddha. Chinese culture the meaning and symboligies are intertwined throughout in their myths and legends of fairies and animal spirits. Christian: Seven is idealogogy. God is represented by the seventh ray in the center of the six rays of creation. There are seven sacraments; gifts of spirit; the seven of 3+4 theological and cardinal virtues; deadly sins, tiers of Purgatory (in metaphysical belief this would be one of the lower astral planes – or in Buddhism, one of the Bardo planes). There are 7 councils of the early church – crystal spheres containing the planets – devils cast out by Christ – joys and sorrows of Mary the Blessed Virgin, mother of Jesus – liberal arts – major prophets – periods of fasting and penitence – seventh day after the six of creation In the Old Testament there are the seven altars of Baalam; oxen and rams for sacrifice; trumpets; circuits of Jericho; seven times Naaman bathed in the Jordan. Seven is the number of Samon’s bonds; the child raised by Elisha sneezed seven times. The Ark rested on the seventh month and the dove was sent out after seven days. The number seven is used 55 times in Revelation. It usually means fullness or completeness as in seven days of the week. God rested on the seventh day. Examples abound: seven churches, seven trumpets, seven seals, seven bowls, seven eyes etc etc. Egyptian mythology: There are seven Hathors as Fates and the priestesses of Hathor have seven jars in their seven tunics. Ra has seven hawks representing the seven Wise Ones. Six cows and a bull represent fertility. There are seven houses of the underworld, as depicted in Egyptian myths, with three times seven gates. Seven is the sacred number of Osiris. Graeco-Roman: Sacred to Apollo, whose lyre has seven strings, and to Athene/Minerva and Ares/Mars; Pan had seven pipes (again a reference to seven musical notes and frequency); there seven Wise Men of Greece. Hebrew tradition: Seven is the number of occult intelligence. There are seven Great Holy Days in the Jewish year; the Menorah has seven branches; the Temple took seven years to build; and there are seven pillars of wisdom. Hinduism there are Seven Jewels of the Brahmanas and seven gods before the floods and seven Wise Men saved from it. Islamic: The perfect number is seven. In Islamic tradition there are references to seven: heavens climates earths and seas

colors prophets (active powers) states or stations of the heart The Ka’aba is circumambulated seven times representing the seven attributes of God. Magic: There are seven knots in a cord for “spellbinding” and incantations are sevenfold. Certain orders of Brotherhood use theme of tying seven knots in their rope sash worn around their waist. Mithraic: The cave of Mithras has seven doors, seven altars, and a ladder with seven rungs depicting the seven grades of initiation into the mystery schools. Pythagorean: Seven is a cosmic number with three of heaven and four of the world. Sumero-Semitic: There are seven lunar divisions and days of the week. “Thou shalt shine with horns to determine six days and on the seventh with half a crown.”, the seventh thus becomes opposition to the sun and symbolizes darkness and balefulness and therefore is dangerous to undertake anything on the seventh day because that is the day of rest. We can see here the influence of this belief in other religious contexts. There are seven zones of earth; heavens, symbolized by the planes of ziggurat. There are seven branches to the Tree of Life each having seven leaves. Leaves are symbols of fertility, renewal and growth. There are seven gates of hell, seven demons of Tiamat and seven winds to destroy her—-interesting to note that in many belief systems it is said that the astral plane has seven levels to it—one sound on one of those levels is “wind”.

Seven is a mystic number traditionally associated with Venus and more recently with Neptune. It is the number of feelings and of instincts – of the Group Mind, of Love, whether that strange, indescribable but pervasive feeling of love is towards another person, a pet, oneself or one’s God. ‘Love’ embodies tremendous sexual energy, the emotions of which may be directed in various ways.

 

theawakenedstate.net/numerology/

Two Kinds of Wisdom

 

Who is wise and understanding among you? Let them show it by their good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom. But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth. Such “wisdom” does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice.

 

But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. Peacemakers who sow in peace reap a harvest of righteousness.

 

[James 3:13-18 NIV]

 

5 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW:

 

1. Like it or not, we are ALL sinners: As the Scriptures say, “No one is righteous—not even one. No one is truly wise; no one is seeking God. All have turned away; all have become useless. No one does good, not a single one.” (Romans 3:10-12 NLT)

 

2. The punishment for sin is death: When Adam sinned, sin entered the world. Adam’s sin brought death, so death spread to everyone, for everyone sinned. (Romans 5:12 NLT)

 

3. Jesus is our only hope: But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners. (Romans 5:8 NLT) For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:23 NLT)

 

4. SALVATION is by GRACE through FAITH in JESUS: God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it. For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago. (Ephesians 2:8-10 NLT)

 

5. Accept Jesus and receive eternal life: If you openly declare that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. (Romans 10:9 NLT) But to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God. (John 1:12 NLT) And this is what God has testified: He has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have God’s Son does not have life. (1 John 5:11-12 NLT)

 

Read the Bible for yourself. Allow the Lord to speak to you through his Word. YOUR ETERNITY IS AT STAKE!

Panel 3, detail. The judge Aiakos, seated on a chair or rock, is depicted as a venerable old man leaning on his staff. He is, wrapped in a thick yellow'—brown himation, which leaves the breast and one shoulder uncovered (in the usual fashion of ancient Greece). His hair is tied with a fillet and a wreath indicating his function and perhaps also the fact that he is heroised. He faces left, deep in thought before pronouncing his judgement.

According to the myth, Aiakos judged the souls who came from Europe, Rhadamanthys those from Asia, and difficult cases were referred to the arbitration of Minos, to ensure impartiality. Aiakos is the main judge of the dead person.

 

Source: Katerina Rhomiopoulou, “Lefkadia – Ancient Mieza”

 

Macedonian Tomb

325 – 300 BC

Lefkadia, Macedonia, Greece

 

11 May 2009. I got another email from former councillor Harry Lister, until 13 May 2009 Chief Whip of Haringey Labour Group.

 

► This is the third instalment on this topic.

Click here for Part 1 ; and here for Part 2.

________________________________________________

 

The story so far.

 

Our hero, Hank Lister, former Marshal of Haringeyville, is tipped-off by the councillor-with-no-name that Al Stanton has bin a-postin' on the notorious Flickr website. Al is tellin' inconvenient truth an' askin' awkward questions about some fine upstandin' citizens & pillars of the local political community.

 

Stubbin' out his ceegar and loadin' up a top-secret report, Marshall Lister heads fer the Civic Centre and a showdown at High 7 pm.

 

§ Link to councillor-with-no-name theme music. (Updated 15 June 2012. Thanks to JS.)

§ Great version by the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain.

(Yup Hank, pardner. Them's a-playin' yor toon.)

 

Click the BACK button to return to Haringeyville.

 

¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯

From : Cllr Harry Lister, Chief Whip, Haringey Labour Group

To : Cllr Alan Stanton

Sent : Monday, May 11, 2009 1:08 PM

Subject : Special Group Meeting

 

Alan,

 

I urge you to attend the meeting on Tuesday at 7pm at which point you will get sight of the report. This is completely in accordance with the rules. I had hoped to discuss the matter in more detail on the 5th of May but this is an opportunity you declined to accept.

 

As you will see in Clause XIII (Breach of Rule), 3.A. of Chapter 13 of the Labour Party Rule Book, I am required to ensure that there is no party discussion on the proposed action outside the meeting with the group officers that I held last week. This is made especially hard because you have decided to make this process public. That is why you cannot expect me to be flexible with the rules and give you confidential, internal information when you are not entitled to it.

 

You are quite right that you will be allowed to speak either by way of rebutting my particular findings or in mitigation but contrary to what you might believe, there is no provision for you to have early sight of my report. I have laid out the rules that I think you have broken (the charges) on a number of occasions; I will present my evidence at the meeting as required and I look forward to seeing you there.

 

Regards,

 

Harry

 

----- Original Message -----

From : Alan Stanton

To : Cllr Harry Lister

cc : Labour Councillors

Sent : Monday, May 11, 2009 4:27 PM

Subject : Special Group Meeting

 

Cllr Lister

 

I got your email above. I note that you once again you refuse to give me the evidence for your 'charges'. And that I must wait until "Tuesday at 7pm at which point you will get sight of the report" .

 

Your 'explanation' that I am not entitled to it because it "contains confidential, internal information" is laughable. How "internal" and "confidential" can anything be which you say I've posted on a website or which has appeared in a newspaper?

 

Can I please refer you to Clause XI. 3.B of the Labour Party Rules which appears to say that the matter shall be determined with "evidence taken in writing, from the defendant and from witnesses as necessary".

 

Are you proposing that I attend the meeting tomorrow evening and write my evidence at the same time as I read your report and listen to you present it? And at the same time as I consider questions; and respond to questions from other people?

 

Even were you to email me your report this evening, I will not have time to read it and write my response.

 

I may indeed wish to call witnesses, but until I see your report and the evidence you base it on, I don't know which witnesses, if any, may be appropriate.

 

I've already explained why I didn't attend your investigatory meeting. Once again, for the record, you did not tell me the details of what you were investigating. In any case, I believe you have a conflict of interest, are not impartial, and should not have conducted any such investigation.

 

I realise that the principles of Natural Justice are sometimes a little inconvenient.

 

You are a full time official of UNISON, a union with a proud tradition for ensuring justice in the workplace. Would this process stand up to their / your scrutiny?

Experimenting with the Displacement Tool

Nine tarot cards completed!

 

I'm still enjoying the process, not noticing the huge amounts of time going by.

 

Card four: The Magician - unique, talented and self aware. On the table in front of him lie the contents of The Fool's knapsack: a wand, a cup, a sword and a pentacle. The Magician has deep knowledge of the purpose of each and has learned to blend their energies, elements and qualities to create all kinds of magic. He is a master of illusion and will have you doubting what you see, or convince you that you see something other than you do. When The Magician appears it would be advisable for you to look closer or deeper into your situation as everything may not be as it appears.

 

Card five: The Queen of Pentacles ( representative of the element of Earth) -The Queen of Pentacles is very much a homebody and so likes to spend a lot of time in or around the house. She considers her home and garden her sanctuary and feels secure there. The Queen of Pentacles enjoys status and social prestige. Therefore she likes her things, her possessions and to luxuriate in all her success has afforded her. This Queen turning up in your reading can represent prosperity.

Of the characters in the novel, "The Chronicles of Amber" she is Fiona.

 

Card six: The World Card - a woman stands in the centre of a large Laurel Wreath. The woman is naked except for a flowing sash which swirls around her body. She holds two wands loosely in her hands. The woman appears to be in motion, as if in dance. The Laurel Wreath symbolises her success and achievements. Infinity symbols suggest an awareness that there is no beginning or end, and that like The World itself, life is continuously moving and rotating. This leads to her understanding that although this particular journey may be over for her right now, more will come to follow. Life is constantly renewing itself and the Universe will not permit stagnation for that will lead to decay. The apparent movement of The Woman’s body within the Laurel Wreath suggests this very understanding. She may have achieved her goals, found fulfilment and inner-happiness but there are many more goals to achieve and other mountains to climb. If she were to stand still she would die and for her death is not an option. She only believes in rebirth and renewal. Death is but an illusion.

 

Card seven: The Wheel of Fortune -There is great depth to The Wheel of Fortune for it teaches us some hard lessons. As far as the Sphinx (sitting at top of wheel) is concerned there is no fortune or ‘Lady Luck’ involved in which part of The Wheel you ride on, for be it on the downward or upward turn you are fully responsible for your position. No finger can be pointed at another in blame or that fate or the Gods are shining down on or cursing you. You got here all by yourself and the Sphinx advises that if you are clever and wise you should stop and be observant as to how you got where you are on The Wheel, for it is not by chance. Be it on the upward or downward turn it is the right place for you at this point of time. However, The Wheel is in constant motion so wherever you are on it, remember that this time too will pass, the Wheel will turn once more and what is in the now will soon become the past.

 

Card eight: The Page of Cups - represents the emotional level of consciousness and are associated with love, feelings, relationships and connections. The Page of Cups is dressed in a blue tunic with floral print all over it. The young man stands alone on the seashore with a single golden cup in his hand. The Page of Cups indicates the surprising and unexpected nature of inspiration that comes to us from the realm of the unconscious and the spirit. Inspiration is seen to be something which comes upon us most unexpectedly and often in a manner which we do not understand.

Of the characters in the novel, The Chronicles of Amber, he is Gerard.

 

Card nine: King of Swords - stands for the law and the enforcement of it. He presides over the courts, the police force and forensics. He is determined to bring matters to a just and fair conclusion by dealing with the ultimate facts laid bare before him regardless of people’s feelings or dramatic displays of emotions. For him to achieve this it is imperative that he remains impartial to the human elements involved in his decision-making process. The King of Swords appearing in a reading especially if the Justice card accompanies it can represent legal issues surrounding you or decisions being made. Solicitors, lawyers, courtrooms and legal documents may be relevant. When upright his appearance suggests that the outcome will be in your favour or that it will be fair and balanced.

Of the characters in the novel, The Chronicles of Amber, he is Oberon.

 

(Information is from the Truly Teach Me Tarot site)

  

Time so far: 46hrs

The day before midsummer, the queen bee used to fly the enormous distance to a far-off ocean. She plunged to its depths in search of the rare sea flower: Neptune’s Clover. No other bee in all history could accomplish such a feat. For two thousand years, this same queen had gathered the rejuvenating and curative pollen from Neptune’s Clover.

 

As the days rolled on, the queen still had not returned. The colony was besides itself in worry and set forth to find her. They all latched their feet onto the hive, which was as large as a hill, and flapped their wings for lift off. When finally, they arrived to what they believed to be the area of Neptune’s Clover, their exhausted wings failed. The queen bee was nowhere to be seen. The hive, heavy with honey, and all its pilots fell into the sea. The two-thousand-year-old colony perished on a beautiful, calm afternoon, beneath the impartial waves.

 

Nowadays, bees might construct their hives in the nooks and crannies of human architecture. Unbeknownst to the people, their floating civilization is built right over the site of the sunken hive. Perhaps the bees of this century instinctively feel its presence, and so we find them in profusion adding their honeycombs to the present architecture.

 

Sunken Honey is the Arts & Entertainment Region

 

Sponsored by Misfit Dance

 

Sunken Honey by Lilia Artis and Haveit Neox

Consul Titus Manlius Torquatus Orders the

Beheading of his Son, 1661 - 1664

by Ferdinand Bol 1616 – 1680

SK-A-613 Rijksmuseum Amsterdam 31 March 2016

 

This picture was painted for the headquarters of the Admiralty of Amsterdam. It represents a story from Roman times in which a consul condemns his son to be beheaded for ignoring a command. The Admiralty intended this image to proclaim that insubordination would be severely punished. It also reminded officers that they must always remain impartial. ... Rijksmuseum

 

www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/search/objects?q=SK-A-613&p=1&a...

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titus_Manlius_Torquatus_(dictator)

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_Bol

www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/search?s=objecttype&p=1&ps=...

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rijksmuseum

 

The artist Ferdinand Bol (1616-1680) grew up in Dordrecht. He learned to paint either there or in Utrecht under the artist Abraham Bloemaert. Later, Bol worked for a period at the studio of Rembrandts in Amsterdam, before setting up as an independent artist in 1642. Bol mainly produced portraits and history paintings. At first his work resembled Rembrandt's, but after 1650 he developed a more colourful and elegant style. Bol received numerous commissions, including for the Amsterdam town hall and the Admiralty. After 1669 and his second marriage to Anna van Arckel, Bol, now a wealthy man, hardly painted anymore. His self portrait of the late 1660s is one of his last works. ... Rijksmuseum

   

A Sikh is a follower of Sikhism, a monotheistic religion which originated during the 15th century in the Punjab region. The term "Sikh" has its origin in the Sanskrit words शिष्य (śiṣya; disciple, student) or शिक्ष (śikṣa; instruction). A Sikh is a disciple of a guru. According to Article I of the Sikh Rehat Maryada (the Sikh code of conduct), a Sikh is "any human being who faithfully believes in One Immortal Being; ten Gurus, from Guru Nanak to Guru Gobind Singh; Guru Granth Sahib; the teachings of the ten Gurus and the baptism bequeathed by the tenth Guru". "Sikh" properly refers to adherents of Sikhism as a religion, not an ethnic group. However, because Sikhs often share strong ethno-religious ties, many countries, such as the U.K., recognize Sikh as a designated ethnicity on their censuses. The American non-profit organization United Sikhs has fought to have Sikh included on the U.S. census as well, arguing that Sikhs "self-identify as an 'ethnic minority'" and believe "that they are more than just a religion".

 

Male Sikhs usually have "Singh" (Lion), and female Sikhs have "Kaur" (Princess) as their middle or last name. Sikhs who have undergone the khanḍe-kī-pahul (the Sikh initiation ceremony) may also be recognized by the five Ks: uncut hair (kesh); an iron or steel bracelet (kara); a kirpan (a sword tucked into a gatra strap); kachehra, a cotton undergarment, and kanga, a small wooden comb. Baptized male Sikhs must cover their hair with a turban, which is optional for baptized female Sikhs. The greater Punjab region is the historic homeland of the Sikhs, although significant communities exist around the world.

 

HISTORY

Sikh political history may be said to begin with the death of the fifth Sikh guru, Guru Arjan Dev, in 1606. Guru Nanak was a religious leader and social reformer in the 15th-century Punjab. Religious practices were formalized by Guru Gobind Singh on 30 March 1699. Singh baptized five people from a variety of social backgrounds, known as the Panj Piare (the five beloved ones) to form the Khalsa, or collective body of initiated Sikhs. Sikhism has generally had amicable relations with other religions, except for the period of Mughal rule in India (1556–1707). Several Sikh gurus were killed by the Mughals for opposing their persecution of minority religious communities including Sikhs. Sikhs subsequently militarized to oppose Mughal rule. The emergence of the Sikh Confederacy under Ranjit Singh was characterized by religious tolerance and pluralism, with Christians, Muslims and Hindus in positions of power. The confederacy is considered the zenith of political Sikhism, encompassing Kashmir, Ladakh and Peshawar. Hari Singh Nalwa, the commander-in-chief of the Sikh army in the North West Frontier, expanded the confederacy to the Khyber Pass. Its secular administration implemented military, economic and governmental reforms. The months leading up to the partition of India in 1947 were marked by conflict in the Punjab between Sikhs and Muslims. This caused the religious migration of Punjabi Sikhs and Hindus from West Punjab, mirroring a similar religious migration of Punjabi Muslims from East Punjab.

 

The 1960s saw growing animosity between Sikhs and Hindus in India, with the Sikhs demanding the creation of a Punjab state on a linguistic basis similar to other states in India. This was promised to Sikh leader Master Tara Singh by Jawaharlal Nehru, in return for Sikh political support during negotiations for Indian independence. Although the Sikhs obtained the Punjab, they lost Hindi-speaking areas to Himachal Pradesh, Haryana and Rajasthan. Chandigarh was made a union territory and the capital of Haryana and Punjab on 1 November 1966.

 

Tensions arose again during the late 1970s, fueled by Sikh claims of discrimination and marginalisation by the Hindu-dominated Indian National Congress party and tactics adopted by the Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.

 

According to Katherine Frank, Indira Gandhi's assumption of emergency powers in 1975 resulted in the weakening of the "legitimate and impartial machinery of government", and her increasing "paranoia" about opposing political groups led her to institute a "despotic policy of playing castes, religions and political groups against each other for political advantage". Sikh leader Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale articulated Sikh demands for justice, and this triggered violence in the Punjab. The prime minister's 1984 defeat of Bhindranwale led to an attack on the Golden Temple in Operation Blue Star and to her assassination by her Sikh bodyguards. Gandhi's assassination resulted in an explosion of violence against Sikh communities and the killing of thousands of Sikhs throughout India. Khushwant Singh described the riots as a Sikh pogrom; he "felt like a refugee in my country. In fact, I felt like a Jew in Nazi Germany". Since 1984, relations between Sikhs and Hindus have moved toward a rapprochement aided by economic prosperity. However, a 2002 claim by the Hindu right-wing Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) that "Sikhs are Hindus" disturbed Sikh sensibilities. The Khalistan movement campaigns for justice for the victims of the violence, and for the political and economic needs of the Punjab.

 

In 1996, United Nations Commission on Human Rights Freedom of Religion or Belief Special Rapporteur Abdelfattah Amor (Tunisia, 1993–2004) visited India to report on religious discrimination. The following year Amor concluded, "In India it appears that the situation of the Sikhs in the religious field is satisfactory, but that difficulties are arising in the political (foreign interference, terrorism, etc.), economic (in particular with regard to sharing of water supplies) and even occupational fields. Information received from nongovernment (sic) sources indicates that discrimination does exist in certain sectors of the public administration; examples include the decline in the number of Sikhs in the police force and the military, and the absence of Sikhs in personal bodyguard units since the murder of Indira Gandhi".

 

Although Sikhs comprise 10 to 15 percent of all ranks of the Indian Army and 20 percent of its officers, they make up 1.87 percent of the Indian population.

 

During the 1999 Vaisakhi, Sikhs worldwide celebrated the 300th anniversary of the creation of the Khalsa. Canada Post honoured Sikh Canadians with a commemorative stamp in conjunction with the 300th anniversary of Vaisakhi. On April 9, 1999, Indian president K.R. Narayanan issued a stamp commemorating the 300th anniversary of the Khalsa.

 

DEFINITION

According to Guru Granth Sahib:

One who calls himself a Sikh of the Guru, the True Guru, shall rise in the early morning hours and meditate on the Lord's Name. Upon arising early in the morning, the Sikh is to bathe, and cleanse himself in the pool of nectar. Following the Instructions of the Guru, the Sikh is to chant the Name of the Lord, Har. All sins, misdeeds and negativity shall be erased. Then, at the rising of the sun, the Sikh is to sing Gurbani; whether sitting down or standing up, the Sikh is to meditate on the Lord's Name. One who meditates on my Lord, Har, with every breath and every morsel of food – that Gursikh becomes pleasing to the Guru's Mind. That person, unto whom my Lord and Master is kind and compassionate – upon that Gursikh, the Guru's Teachings are bestowed. Servant Nanak begs for the dust of the feet of that Gursikh, who himself chants the Naam, and inspires others to chant it.

 

Simran of the Lord's name is a recurring theme of Guru Granth Sahib, and Sukhmani Sahib were composed to allow a devotee to recite Nam throughout the day. Rising at Amrit Velā (before sunrise) is a common Sikh practice. Sikhism considers the spiritual and secular lives to be intertwined: "In the Sikh Weltanschauung ... the temporal world is part of the Infinite and partakes of its characteristics." According to Guru Nanak, living an "active, creative, and practical life" of "truthfulness, fidelity, self-control and purity" is superior to a purely contemplative life.

 

FIVE Ks

The five Ks (panj kakaar) are five articles of faith which all baptized Sikhs (Amritdhari Sikhs) are obliged to wear. The symbols represent the ideals of Sikhism: honesty, equality, fidelity, meditating on God and never bowing to tyranny. The five symbols are:

- Kesh: Uncut hair, usually tied and wrapped in a Dastar

- Kanga: A wooden comb, usually worn under a Dastar

- Katchera: Cotton undergarments, historically appropriate in battle due to increased mobility when compared to a dhoti. Worn by both sexes, the katchera is a symbol of chastity.

- Kara: An iron bracelet, a weapon and a symbol of eternity

- Kirpan: An iron dagger in different sizes. In the UK Sikhs can wear a small dagger, but in the Punjab they might wear a traditional curved sword from one to three feet in length.

 

MUSIC & INSTRUMENTS

The Sikhs have a number of musical instruments: the rebab, dilruba, taus, jori and sarinda. Playing the sarangi was encouraged in Guru Har Gobind. The rubab was first played by Bhai Mardana as he accompanied Guru Nanak on his journeys. The jori and sarinda were designed by Guru Arjan. The taus was made by Guru Hargobind, who supposedly heard a peacock singing and wanted to create an instrument mimicking its sounds (taus is the Persian word for peacock). The dilruba was made by Guru Gobind Singh at the request of his followers, who wanted a smaller instrument than the taus. After Japji Sahib, all of the shabda in the Guru Granth Sahib were composed as ragas. This type of singing is known as Gurmat Sangeet.

 

When they marched into battle, the Sikhs would play a Ranjit Nagara (victory drum) to boost morale. Nagaras (usually two to three feet in diameter, although some were up to five feet in diameter) are played with two sticks. The beat of the large drums, and the raising of the Nishan Sahib, meant that the singhs were on their way.

 

DISTRIBUTION

Numbering about 27 million worldwide, Sikhs make up 0.39 percent of the world population; approximately 83 percent live in India. About 76 percent of all Sikhs live in the north Indian State of Punjab, where they form a majority (about two-thirds) of the population. Substantial communities of Sikhs (more than 200,000) live in the Indian states or union territories of Haryana (more than 1.1 million), Rajasthan, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Maharashtra, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh Assam and Jammu and Kashmir.

 

Sikh migration from British India began in earnest during the second half of the 19th century, when the British completed their annexation of the Punjab. The British Raj recruited Sikhs for the Indian Civil Service (particularly the British Indian Army), which led to Sikh migration throughout India and the British Empire. During the Raj, semiskilled Sikh artisans were transported from the Punjab to British East Africa to help build railroads. Sikhs emigrated from India and Pakistan after World War II, most going to the United Kingdom but many to North America. Some Sikhs who had settled in eastern Africa were expelled by Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in 1972. Economics is a major factor in Sikh migration, and significant communities exist in the United Kingdom, Canada, the United States, Malaysia, East Africa, Australia and Thailand.

 

Although the rate of Sikh migration from the Punjab has remained high, traditional patterns of Sikh migration favouring English-speaking countries (particularly the United Kingdom) have changed during the past decade due to stricter immigration laws. Moliner (2006) wrote that as a consequence of Sikh migration to the UK "becom[ing] virtually impossible since the late 1970s", migration patterns evolved to continental Europe. Italy is a rapidly growing destination for Sikh migration, with Reggio Emilia and Vicenza having significant Sikh population clusters. Italian Sikhs are generally involved in agriculture, agricultural processing, the manufacture of machine tools and horticulture.

 

Primarily for socio-economic reasons, Indian Sikhs have the lowest adjusted growth rate of any major religious group in India, at 16.9 percent per decade (estimated from 1991 to 2001). Johnson and Barrett (2004) estimate that the global Sikh population increases annually by 392,633 (1.7 percent per year, based on 2004 figures); this percentage includes births, deaths and conversions.

 

REPRESENTATION

Sikhs have been represented in Indian politics by former Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh and the deputy chairman of the Indian Planning Commission, Montek Singh Ahluwalia. Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal is also a Sikh. Past Sikh politicians in India include former president Giani Zail Singh, Sardar Swaran Singh (India's first foreign minister), Speaker of Parliament Gurdial Singh Dhillon and former Chief Minister of Punjab Pratap Singh Kairon.

 

Politicians from the Sikh diaspora include the first Asian American member of the United States Congress, Dalip Singh Saund, British MPs Piara Khabra, Parmjit Dhanda and Paul Uppal, the first couple to sit together in a Commonwealth parliament (Gurmant Grewal and Nina Grewal, who requested a Canadian government apology for the Komagata Maru incident), former Canadian Shadow Social Development Minister Ruby Dhalla, Canadian Minister of State for Sport Baljit Singh Gosal and Legislative Assembly of Ontario members Vic Dhillon and Jagmeet Singh. Ujjal Dosanjh was the New Democratic Party Premier of British Columbia from July 2004 to February 2005, and was later a Liberal frontbench MP in Ottawa. In Malaysia, two Sikhs were elected MPs in the 2008 general elections: Karpal Singh (Bukit Gelugor) and his son, Gobind Singh Deo (Puchong). Two Sikhs were elected assemblymen: Jagdeep Singh Deo (Datuk Keramat) and Keshvinder Singh (Malim Nawar).

 

Sikhs comprise 10 to 15 percent of all ranks in the Indian Army and 20 percent of its officers, while making up 1.87 percent of the Indian population. The Sikh Regiment is one of the most-decorated regiments in the army, with 73 Battle Honours, 14 Victoria Crosses, 21 first-class Indian Orders of Merit (equivalent to the Victoria Cross), 15 Theatre Honours, five COAS Unit Citations, two Param Vir Chakras, 14 Maha Vir Chakras, five Kirti Chakras, 67 Vir Chakras and 1,596 other awards. The highest-ranking general in the history of the Indian Air Force is a Punjabi Sikh, Marshal of the Air Force Arjan Singh. Plans by the United Kingdom Ministry of Defence for a Sikh infantry regiment were scrapped in June 2007.

 

Historically, most Indians have been farmers and 66 percent of the Indian population are engaged in agriculture. Indian Sikhs are employed in agriculture to a lesser extent; India's 2001 census found 39 percent of the working population of the Punjab employed in this sector. The success of the 1960s Green Revolution, in which India went from "famine to plenty, from humiliation to dignity", was based in the Punjab (which became known as "the breadbasket of India"). The Punjab is the wealthiest Indian state per capita, with the average Punjabi income three times the national average. The Green Revolution centred on Indian farmers adopting more intensive and mechanised agricultural methods, aided by the electrification of the Punjab, cooperative credit, consolidation of small holdings and the existing, British Raj-developed canal system. According to Swedish political scientist Ishtiaq Ahmad, a factor in the success of the Indian green revolution was the "Sikh cultivator, often the Jat, whose courage, perseverance, spirit of enterprise and muscle prowess proved crucial". However, not all aspects of the green revolution were beneficial. Indian physicist Vandana Shiva wrote that the green revolution made the "negative and destructive impacts of science [i.e. the green revolution] on nature and society" invisible, and was a catalyst for Punjabi Sikh and Hindu tensions despite a growth in material wealth.

 

Punjabi Sikhs are engaged in a number of professions which include science, engineering and medicine. Notable examples are nuclear scientist Piara Singh Gill (who worked on the Manhattan Project), fibre-optics pioneer Narinder Singh Kapany and physicist, science writer and broadcaster Simon Singh.

 

In business, the UK-based clothing retailers New Look and the Thai-based Jaspal were founded by Sikhs. India's largest pharmaceutical company, Ranbaxy Laboratories, is headed by Sikhs. UK Sikhs have the highest percentage of home ownership (82 percent) of any religious community. UK Sikhs are the second-wealthiest (after the Jewish community) religious group in the UK, with a median total household wealth of £229,000. In Singapore Kartar Singh Thakral expanded his family's trading business, Thakral Holdings, into total assets of almost $1.4 billion and is Singapore's 25th-richest person. Sikh Bob Singh Dhillon is the first Indo-Canadian billionaire. The Sikh diaspora has been most successful in North America, especially in California’s fertile Central Valley. American Sikh farmers such as Harbhajan Singh Samra and Didar Singh Bains dominate California agriculture, with Samra specialising in okra and Bains in peaches.

 

Sikh intellectuals, sportsmen and artists include writer Khushwant Singh, England cricketer Monty Panesar, former 400m runner Milkha Singh, Indian wrestler and actor Dara Singh, former Indian hockey team captains Ajitpal Singh and Balbir Singh Sr., former Indian cricket captain Bishen Singh Bedi, Harbhajan Singh (India's most successful off spin cricket bowler), Bollywood actress Neetu Singh, Sunny Leone, actors Parminder Nagra, Neha Dhupia, Gul Panag, Mona Singh, Namrata Singh Gujral, Archie Panjabi and director Gurinder Chadha.

 

Sikhs have migrated worldwide, with a variety of occupations. The Sikh Gurus preached ethnic and social harmony, and Sikhs comprise a number of ethnic groups. Those with over 1,000 members include the Ahluwalia, Arain, Arora, Bhatra, Bairagi, Bania, Basith, Bawaria, Bazigar, Bhabra, Chamar, Chhimba, Darzi, Dhobi, Gujar, Jatt, Jhinwar, Kahar, Kalal, Kamboj, Khatri, Kumhar, Labana, Lohar, Mahtam, Mazhabi, Megh, Mirasi, Mochi, Nai, Rajput, Ramgarhia, Saini, Sarera, Sikligar, Sunar, Sudh, Tarkhan and Zargar.

 

An order of Punjabi Sikhs, the Nihang or the Akalis, was formed during Ranjit Singh's time. Under their leader, Akali Phula Singh, they won many battles for the Sikh Confederacy during the early 19th century.

 

IN THE INDIAN & BRITISH ARMIES

Sikhs supported the British during the Indian Rebellion of 1857. By the beginning of World War I, Sikhs in the British Indian Army totaled over 100,000 (20 percent of the force). Until 1945 fourteen Victoria Crosses were awarded to Sikhs, a per-capita regimental record. In 2002 the names of all Sikh VC and George Cross recipients were inscribed on the monument of the Memorial Gates on Constitution Hill, next to Buckingham Palace. Chanan Singh Dhillon was instrumental in campaigning for the memorial.

 

During World War I, Sikh battalions fought in Egypt, Palestine, Mesopotamia, Gallipoli and France. Six battalions of the Sikh Regiment were raised during World War II, serving in the Second Battle of El Alamein, the Burma and Italian campaigns and in Iraq and receiving 27 battle honours. Around the world, Sikhs are commemorated in Commonwealth cemeteries.

 

In the last two world wars 83,005 turban wearing Sikh soldiers were killed and 109,045 were wounded. They all died or were wounded for the freedom of Britain and the world, and during shell fire, with no other protection but the turban, the symbol of their faith.

—General Sir Frank Messervy

 

British people are highly indebted and obliged to Sikhs for a long time. I know that within this century we needed their help twice [in two world wars] and they did help us very well. As a result of their timely help, we are today able to live with honour, dignity, and independence. In the war, they fought and died for us, wearing the turbans.

—Sir Winston Churchill

 

IN THE WEST

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Sikhs began to emigrate to East Africa, the Far East, Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom. In 1907 the Khalsa Diwan Society was established in Vancouver, and four years later the first gurdwara was established in London. In 1912 the first gurdwara in the United States was founded in Stockton, California.

 

Since Sikhs (like Middle Eastern men) wear turbans, some in Western countries have been mistaken for Muslim or Arabic men since the September 11 attacks and the Iraq War. Several days after the 9/11 attacks Sikh Balbir Singh Sodhi was murdered by Frank Roque, who thought Sodhi was connected with al-Qaeda. CNN suggested an increase in hate crimes against Sikh men in the United States and the UK after the 9/11 attacks.

 

Since Sikhism has never actively sought converts, the Sikhs have remained a relatively homogeneous ethnic group. The Kundalini Yoga-based activities of Harbhajan Singh Yogi in his 3HO (Happy, Healthy, Holy) organisation claim to have inspired a moderate growth in non-Indian adherents of Sikhism. In 1998 an estimated 7,800 3HO Sikhs, known colloquially as ‘gora’ (ਗੋਰਾ) or ‘white’ Sikhs, were mainly centred around Española, New Mexico and Los Angeles, California. Sikhs and the Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund overturned a 1925 Oregon law banning the wearing of turbans by teachers and government officials.

 

In an attempt to foster Sikh leaders in the Western world, youth initiatives by a number of organisations have begun. The Sikh Youth Alliance of North America sponsors an annual Sikh Youth Symposium, a public-speaking and debate competition held in gurdwaras throughout the U.S. and Canada.

 

ART & CULTURE

Sikh art and culture are nearly synonymous with that of the Punjab, and Sikhs are easily recognised by their distinctive turban (Dastar). The Punjab has been called India’s melting pot, due to the confluence of invading cultures (Greek, Mughal and Persian) from the rivers from which the region gets its name. Sikh culture is therefore a synthesis of cultures. Sikhism has forged a unique architecture, which S. S. Bhatti described as "inspired by Guru Nanak’s creative mysticism" and "is a mute harbinger of holistic humanism based on pragmatic spirituality".

 

During the Mughal and Afghan persecution of the Sikhs during the 17th and 18th centuries, the latter were concerned with preserving their religion and gave little thought to art and culture. With the rise of Ranjit Singh and the Sikh Raj in Lahore and Delhi, there was a change in the landscape of art and culture in the Punjab; Hindus and Sikhs could build decorated shrines without the fear of destruction or looting.

 

The Sikh Confederacy was the catalyst for a uniquely Sikh form of expression, with Ranjit Singh commissioning forts, palaces, bungas (residential places) and colleges in a Sikh style. Sikh architecture is characterised by gilded fluted domes, cupolas, kiosks, stone lanterns, ornate balusters and square roofs. A pinnacle of Sikh style is Harmandir Sahib (also known as the Golden Temple) in Amritsar.

 

Sikh culture is influenced by militaristic motifs (with the Khanda the most obvious), and most Sikh artifacts - except for the relics of the Gurus - have a military theme. This theme is evident in the Sikh festivals of Hola Mohalla and Vaisakhi, which feature marching and displays of valor.

 

Although the art and culture of the Sikh diaspora have merged with that of other Indo-immigrant groups into categories like "British Asian", "Indo-Canadian" and "Desi-Culture", a minor cultural phenomenon which can be described as "political Sikh" has arisen. The art of diaspora Sikhs like Amarjeet Kaur Nandhra and Amrit and Rabindra Kaur Singh (the "Singh Twins") is influenced by their Sikhism and current affairs in the Punjab.

Bhangra and Giddha are two forms of Punjabi folk dancing which have been adapted and pioneered by Sikhs. Punjabi Sikhs have championed these forms of expression worldwide, resulting in Sikh culture becoming linked to Bhangra (although "Bhangra is not a Sikh institution but a Punjabi one").

 

PAINTING

Sikh painting is a direct offshoot of the Kangra school of painting. In 1810, Ranjeet Singh (1780–1839) occupied Kangra Fort and appointed Sardar Desa Singh Majithia his governor of the Punjab hills. In 1813 the Sikh army occupied Guler State, and Raja Bhup Singh became a vassal of the Sikhs. With the Sikh kingdom of Lahore becoming the paramount power, some of the Pahari painters from Guler migrated to Lahore for the patronage of Maharaja Ranjeet Singh and his Sardars.

 

The Sikh school adapted Kangra painting to Sikh needs and ideals. Its main subjects are the ten Sikh gurus and stories from Guru Nanak's Janamsakhis. The tenth Guru, Gobind Singh, left a deep impression on the followers of the new faith because of his courage and sacrifices. Hunting scenes and portraits are also common in Sikh painting.

 

WIKIPEDIA

A Sikh is a follower of Sikhism, a monotheistic religion which originated during the 15th century in the Punjab region. The term "Sikh" has its origin in the Sanskrit words शिष्य (śiṣya; disciple, student) or शिक्ष (śikṣa; instruction). A Sikh is a disciple of a guru. According to Article I of the Sikh Rehat Maryada (the Sikh code of conduct), a Sikh is "any human being who faithfully believes in One Immortal Being; ten Gurus, from Guru Nanak to Guru Gobind Singh; Guru Granth Sahib; the teachings of the ten Gurus and the baptism bequeathed by the tenth Guru". "Sikh" properly refers to adherents of Sikhism as a religion, not an ethnic group. However, because Sikhs often share strong ethno-religious ties, many countries, such as the U.K., recognize Sikh as a designated ethnicity on their censuses. The American non-profit organization United Sikhs has fought to have Sikh included on the U.S. census as well, arguing that Sikhs "self-identify as an 'ethnic minority'" and believe "that they are more than just a religion".

 

Male Sikhs usually have "Singh" (Lion), and female Sikhs have "Kaur" (Princess) as their middle or last name. Sikhs who have undergone the khanḍe-kī-pahul (the Sikh initiation ceremony) may also be recognized by the five Ks: uncut hair (kesh); an iron or steel bracelet (kara); a kirpan (a sword tucked into a gatra strap); kachehra, a cotton undergarment, and kanga, a small wooden comb. Baptized male Sikhs must cover their hair with a turban, which is optional for baptized female Sikhs. The greater Punjab region is the historic homeland of the Sikhs, although significant communities exist around the world.

 

HISTORY

Sikh political history may be said to begin with the death of the fifth Sikh guru, Guru Arjan Dev, in 1606. Guru Nanak was a religious leader and social reformer in the 15th-century Punjab. Religious practices were formalized by Guru Gobind Singh on 30 March 1699. Singh baptized five people from a variety of social backgrounds, known as the Panj Piare (the five beloved ones) to form the Khalsa, or collective body of initiated Sikhs. Sikhism has generally had amicable relations with other religions, except for the period of Mughal rule in India (1556–1707). Several Sikh gurus were killed by the Mughals for opposing their persecution of minority religious communities including Sikhs. Sikhs subsequently militarized to oppose Mughal rule. The emergence of the Sikh Confederacy under Ranjit Singh was characterized by religious tolerance and pluralism, with Christians, Muslims and Hindus in positions of power. The confederacy is considered the zenith of political Sikhism, encompassing Kashmir, Ladakh and Peshawar. Hari Singh Nalwa, the commander-in-chief of the Sikh army in the North West Frontier, expanded the confederacy to the Khyber Pass. Its secular administration implemented military, economic and governmental reforms. The months leading up to the partition of India in 1947 were marked by conflict in the Punjab between Sikhs and Muslims. This caused the religious migration of Punjabi Sikhs and Hindus from West Punjab, mirroring a similar religious migration of Punjabi Muslims from East Punjab.

 

The 1960s saw growing animosity between Sikhs and Hindus in India, with the Sikhs demanding the creation of a Punjab state on a linguistic basis similar to other states in India. This was promised to Sikh leader Master Tara Singh by Jawaharlal Nehru, in return for Sikh political support during negotiations for Indian independence. Although the Sikhs obtained the Punjab, they lost Hindi-speaking areas to Himachal Pradesh, Haryana and Rajasthan. Chandigarh was made a union territory and the capital of Haryana and Punjab on 1 November 1966.

 

Tensions arose again during the late 1970s, fueled by Sikh claims of discrimination and marginalisation by the Hindu-dominated Indian National Congress party and tactics adopted by the Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.

 

According to Katherine Frank, Indira Gandhi's assumption of emergency powers in 1975 resulted in the weakening of the "legitimate and impartial machinery of government", and her increasing "paranoia" about opposing political groups led her to institute a "despotic policy of playing castes, religions and political groups against each other for political advantage". Sikh leader Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale articulated Sikh demands for justice, and this triggered violence in the Punjab. The prime minister's 1984 defeat of Bhindranwale led to an attack on the Golden Temple in Operation Blue Star and to her assassination by her Sikh bodyguards. Gandhi's assassination resulted in an explosion of violence against Sikh communities and the killing of thousands of Sikhs throughout India. Khushwant Singh described the riots as a Sikh pogrom; he "felt like a refugee in my country. In fact, I felt like a Jew in Nazi Germany". Since 1984, relations between Sikhs and Hindus have moved toward a rapprochement aided by economic prosperity. However, a 2002 claim by the Hindu right-wing Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) that "Sikhs are Hindus" disturbed Sikh sensibilities. The Khalistan movement campaigns for justice for the victims of the violence, and for the political and economic needs of the Punjab.

 

In 1996, United Nations Commission on Human Rights Freedom of Religion or Belief Special Rapporteur Abdelfattah Amor (Tunisia, 1993–2004) visited India to report on religious discrimination. The following year Amor concluded, "In India it appears that the situation of the Sikhs in the religious field is satisfactory, but that difficulties are arising in the political (foreign interference, terrorism, etc.), economic (in particular with regard to sharing of water supplies) and even occupational fields. Information received from nongovernment (sic) sources indicates that discrimination does exist in certain sectors of the public administration; examples include the decline in the number of Sikhs in the police force and the military, and the absence of Sikhs in personal bodyguard units since the murder of Indira Gandhi".

 

Although Sikhs comprise 10 to 15 percent of all ranks of the Indian Army and 20 percent of its officers, they make up 1.87 percent of the Indian population.

 

During the 1999 Vaisakhi, Sikhs worldwide celebrated the 300th anniversary of the creation of the Khalsa. Canada Post honoured Sikh Canadians with a commemorative stamp in conjunction with the 300th anniversary of Vaisakhi. On April 9, 1999, Indian president K.R. Narayanan issued a stamp commemorating the 300th anniversary of the Khalsa.

 

DEFINITION

According to Guru Granth Sahib:

One who calls himself a Sikh of the Guru, the True Guru, shall rise in the early morning hours and meditate on the Lord's Name. Upon arising early in the morning, the Sikh is to bathe, and cleanse himself in the pool of nectar. Following the Instructions of the Guru, the Sikh is to chant the Name of the Lord, Har. All sins, misdeeds and negativity shall be erased. Then, at the rising of the sun, the Sikh is to sing Gurbani; whether sitting down or standing up, the Sikh is to meditate on the Lord's Name. One who meditates on my Lord, Har, with every breath and every morsel of food – that Gursikh becomes pleasing to the Guru's Mind. That person, unto whom my Lord and Master is kind and compassionate – upon that Gursikh, the Guru's Teachings are bestowed. Servant Nanak begs for the dust of the feet of that Gursikh, who himself chants the Naam, and inspires others to chant it.

 

Simran of the Lord's name is a recurring theme of Guru Granth Sahib, and Sukhmani Sahib were composed to allow a devotee to recite Nam throughout the day. Rising at Amrit Velā (before sunrise) is a common Sikh practice. Sikhism considers the spiritual and secular lives to be intertwined: "In the Sikh Weltanschauung ... the temporal world is part of the Infinite and partakes of its characteristics." According to Guru Nanak, living an "active, creative, and practical life" of "truthfulness, fidelity, self-control and purity" is superior to a purely contemplative life.

 

FIVE Ks

The five Ks (panj kakaar) are five articles of faith which all baptized Sikhs (Amritdhari Sikhs) are obliged to wear. The symbols represent the ideals of Sikhism: honesty, equality, fidelity, meditating on God and never bowing to tyranny. The five symbols are:

- Kesh: Uncut hair, usually tied and wrapped in a Dastar

- Kanga: A wooden comb, usually worn under a Dastar

- Katchera: Cotton undergarments, historically appropriate in battle due to increased mobility when compared to a dhoti. Worn by both sexes, the katchera is a symbol of chastity.

- Kara: An iron bracelet, a weapon and a symbol of eternity

- Kirpan: An iron dagger in different sizes. In the UK Sikhs can wear a small dagger, but in the Punjab they might wear a traditional curved sword from one to three feet in length.

 

MUSIC & INSTRUMENTS

The Sikhs have a number of musical instruments: the rebab, dilruba, taus, jori and sarinda. Playing the sarangi was encouraged in Guru Har Gobind. The rubab was first played by Bhai Mardana as he accompanied Guru Nanak on his journeys. The jori and sarinda were designed by Guru Arjan. The taus was made by Guru Hargobind, who supposedly heard a peacock singing and wanted to create an instrument mimicking its sounds (taus is the Persian word for peacock). The dilruba was made by Guru Gobind Singh at the request of his followers, who wanted a smaller instrument than the taus. After Japji Sahib, all of the shabda in the Guru Granth Sahib were composed as ragas. This type of singing is known as Gurmat Sangeet.

 

When they marched into battle, the Sikhs would play a Ranjit Nagara (victory drum) to boost morale. Nagaras (usually two to three feet in diameter, although some were up to five feet in diameter) are played with two sticks. The beat of the large drums, and the raising of the Nishan Sahib, meant that the singhs were on their way.

 

DISTRIBUTION

Numbering about 27 million worldwide, Sikhs make up 0.39 percent of the world population; approximately 83 percent live in India. About 76 percent of all Sikhs live in the north Indian State of Punjab, where they form a majority (about two-thirds) of the population. Substantial communities of Sikhs (more than 200,000) live in the Indian states or union territories of Haryana (more than 1.1 million), Rajasthan, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Maharashtra, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh Assam and Jammu and Kashmir.

 

Sikh migration from British India began in earnest during the second half of the 19th century, when the British completed their annexation of the Punjab. The British Raj recruited Sikhs for the Indian Civil Service (particularly the British Indian Army), which led to Sikh migration throughout India and the British Empire. During the Raj, semiskilled Sikh artisans were transported from the Punjab to British East Africa to help build railroads. Sikhs emigrated from India and Pakistan after World War II, most going to the United Kingdom but many to North America. Some Sikhs who had settled in eastern Africa were expelled by Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in 1972. Economics is a major factor in Sikh migration, and significant communities exist in the United Kingdom, Canada, the United States, Malaysia, East Africa, Australia and Thailand.

 

Although the rate of Sikh migration from the Punjab has remained high, traditional patterns of Sikh migration favouring English-speaking countries (particularly the United Kingdom) have changed during the past decade due to stricter immigration laws. Moliner (2006) wrote that as a consequence of Sikh migration to the UK "becom[ing] virtually impossible since the late 1970s", migration patterns evolved to continental Europe. Italy is a rapidly growing destination for Sikh migration, with Reggio Emilia and Vicenza having significant Sikh population clusters. Italian Sikhs are generally involved in agriculture, agricultural processing, the manufacture of machine tools and horticulture.

 

Primarily for socio-economic reasons, Indian Sikhs have the lowest adjusted growth rate of any major religious group in India, at 16.9 percent per decade (estimated from 1991 to 2001). Johnson and Barrett (2004) estimate that the global Sikh population increases annually by 392,633 (1.7 percent per year, based on 2004 figures); this percentage includes births, deaths and conversions.

 

REPRESENTATION

Sikhs have been represented in Indian politics by former Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh and the deputy chairman of the Indian Planning Commission, Montek Singh Ahluwalia. Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal is also a Sikh. Past Sikh politicians in India include former president Giani Zail Singh, Sardar Swaran Singh (India's first foreign minister), Speaker of Parliament Gurdial Singh Dhillon and former Chief Minister of Punjab Pratap Singh Kairon.

 

Politicians from the Sikh diaspora include the first Asian American member of the United States Congress, Dalip Singh Saund, British MPs Piara Khabra, Parmjit Dhanda and Paul Uppal, the first couple to sit together in a Commonwealth parliament (Gurmant Grewal and Nina Grewal, who requested a Canadian government apology for the Komagata Maru incident), former Canadian Shadow Social Development Minister Ruby Dhalla, Canadian Minister of State for Sport Baljit Singh Gosal and Legislative Assembly of Ontario members Vic Dhillon and Jagmeet Singh. Ujjal Dosanjh was the New Democratic Party Premier of British Columbia from July 2004 to February 2005, and was later a Liberal frontbench MP in Ottawa. In Malaysia, two Sikhs were elected MPs in the 2008 general elections: Karpal Singh (Bukit Gelugor) and his son, Gobind Singh Deo (Puchong). Two Sikhs were elected assemblymen: Jagdeep Singh Deo (Datuk Keramat) and Keshvinder Singh (Malim Nawar).

 

Sikhs comprise 10 to 15 percent of all ranks in the Indian Army and 20 percent of its officers, while making up 1.87 percent of the Indian population. The Sikh Regiment is one of the most-decorated regiments in the army, with 73 Battle Honours, 14 Victoria Crosses, 21 first-class Indian Orders of Merit (equivalent to the Victoria Cross), 15 Theatre Honours, five COAS Unit Citations, two Param Vir Chakras, 14 Maha Vir Chakras, five Kirti Chakras, 67 Vir Chakras and 1,596 other awards. The highest-ranking general in the history of the Indian Air Force is a Punjabi Sikh, Marshal of the Air Force Arjan Singh. Plans by the United Kingdom Ministry of Defence for a Sikh infantry regiment were scrapped in June 2007.

 

Historically, most Indians have been farmers and 66 percent of the Indian population are engaged in agriculture. Indian Sikhs are employed in agriculture to a lesser extent; India's 2001 census found 39 percent of the working population of the Punjab employed in this sector. The success of the 1960s Green Revolution, in which India went from "famine to plenty, from humiliation to dignity", was based in the Punjab (which became known as "the breadbasket of India"). The Punjab is the wealthiest Indian state per capita, with the average Punjabi income three times the national average. The Green Revolution centred on Indian farmers adopting more intensive and mechanised agricultural methods, aided by the electrification of the Punjab, cooperative credit, consolidation of small holdings and the existing, British Raj-developed canal system. According to Swedish political scientist Ishtiaq Ahmad, a factor in the success of the Indian green revolution was the "Sikh cultivator, often the Jat, whose courage, perseverance, spirit of enterprise and muscle prowess proved crucial". However, not all aspects of the green revolution were beneficial. Indian physicist Vandana Shiva wrote that the green revolution made the "negative and destructive impacts of science [i.e. the green revolution] on nature and society" invisible, and was a catalyst for Punjabi Sikh and Hindu tensions despite a growth in material wealth.

 

Punjabi Sikhs are engaged in a number of professions which include science, engineering and medicine. Notable examples are nuclear scientist Piara Singh Gill (who worked on the Manhattan Project), fibre-optics pioneer Narinder Singh Kapany and physicist, science writer and broadcaster Simon Singh.

 

In business, the UK-based clothing retailers New Look and the Thai-based Jaspal were founded by Sikhs. India's largest pharmaceutical company, Ranbaxy Laboratories, is headed by Sikhs. UK Sikhs have the highest percentage of home ownership (82 percent) of any religious community. UK Sikhs are the second-wealthiest (after the Jewish community) religious group in the UK, with a median total household wealth of £229,000. In Singapore Kartar Singh Thakral expanded his family's trading business, Thakral Holdings, into total assets of almost $1.4 billion and is Singapore's 25th-richest person. Sikh Bob Singh Dhillon is the first Indo-Canadian billionaire. The Sikh diaspora has been most successful in North America, especially in California’s fertile Central Valley. American Sikh farmers such as Harbhajan Singh Samra and Didar Singh Bains dominate California agriculture, with Samra specialising in okra and Bains in peaches.

 

Sikh intellectuals, sportsmen and artists include writer Khushwant Singh, England cricketer Monty Panesar, former 400m runner Milkha Singh, Indian wrestler and actor Dara Singh, former Indian hockey team captains Ajitpal Singh and Balbir Singh Sr., former Indian cricket captain Bishen Singh Bedi, Harbhajan Singh (India's most successful off spin cricket bowler), Bollywood actress Neetu Singh, Sunny Leone, actors Parminder Nagra, Neha Dhupia, Gul Panag, Mona Singh, Namrata Singh Gujral, Archie Panjabi and director Gurinder Chadha.

 

Sikhs have migrated worldwide, with a variety of occupations. The Sikh Gurus preached ethnic and social harmony, and Sikhs comprise a number of ethnic groups. Those with over 1,000 members include the Ahluwalia, Arain, Arora, Bhatra, Bairagi, Bania, Basith, Bawaria, Bazigar, Bhabra, Chamar, Chhimba, Darzi, Dhobi, Gujar, Jatt, Jhinwar, Kahar, Kalal, Kamboj, Khatri, Kumhar, Labana, Lohar, Mahtam, Mazhabi, Megh, Mirasi, Mochi, Nai, Rajput, Ramgarhia, Saini, Sarera, Sikligar, Sunar, Sudh, Tarkhan and Zargar.

 

An order of Punjabi Sikhs, the Nihang or the Akalis, was formed during Ranjit Singh's time. Under their leader, Akali Phula Singh, they won many battles for the Sikh Confederacy during the early 19th century.

 

IN THE INDIAN & BRITISH ARMIES

Sikhs supported the British during the Indian Rebellion of 1857. By the beginning of World War I, Sikhs in the British Indian Army totaled over 100,000 (20 percent of the force). Until 1945 fourteen Victoria Crosses were awarded to Sikhs, a per-capita regimental record. In 2002 the names of all Sikh VC and George Cross recipients were inscribed on the monument of the Memorial Gates on Constitution Hill, next to Buckingham Palace. Chanan Singh Dhillon was instrumental in campaigning for the memorial.

 

During World War I, Sikh battalions fought in Egypt, Palestine, Mesopotamia, Gallipoli and France. Six battalions of the Sikh Regiment were raised during World War II, serving in the Second Battle of El Alamein, the Burma and Italian campaigns and in Iraq and receiving 27 battle honours. Around the world, Sikhs are commemorated in Commonwealth cemeteries.

 

In the last two world wars 83,005 turban wearing Sikh soldiers were killed and 109,045 were wounded. They all died or were wounded for the freedom of Britain and the world, and during shell fire, with no other protection but the turban, the symbol of their faith.

—General Sir Frank Messervy

 

British people are highly indebted and obliged to Sikhs for a long time. I know that within this century we needed their help twice [in two world wars] and they did help us very well. As a result of their timely help, we are today able to live with honour, dignity, and independence. In the war, they fought and died for us, wearing the turbans.

—Sir Winston Churchill

 

IN THE WEST

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Sikhs began to emigrate to East Africa, the Far East, Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom. In 1907 the Khalsa Diwan Society was established in Vancouver, and four years later the first gurdwara was established in London. In 1912 the first gurdwara in the United States was founded in Stockton, California.

 

Since Sikhs (like Middle Eastern men) wear turbans, some in Western countries have been mistaken for Muslim or Arabic men since the September 11 attacks and the Iraq War. Several days after the 9/11 attacks Sikh Balbir Singh Sodhi was murdered by Frank Roque, who thought Sodhi was connected with al-Qaeda. CNN suggested an increase in hate crimes against Sikh men in the United States and the UK after the 9/11 attacks.

 

Since Sikhism has never actively sought converts, the Sikhs have remained a relatively homogeneous ethnic group. The Kundalini Yoga-based activities of Harbhajan Singh Yogi in his 3HO (Happy, Healthy, Holy) organisation claim to have inspired a moderate growth in non-Indian adherents of Sikhism. In 1998 an estimated 7,800 3HO Sikhs, known colloquially as ‘gora’ (ਗੋਰਾ) or ‘white’ Sikhs, were mainly centred around Española, New Mexico and Los Angeles, California. Sikhs and the Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund overturned a 1925 Oregon law banning the wearing of turbans by teachers and government officials.

 

In an attempt to foster Sikh leaders in the Western world, youth initiatives by a number of organisations have begun. The Sikh Youth Alliance of North America sponsors an annual Sikh Youth Symposium, a public-speaking and debate competition held in gurdwaras throughout the U.S. and Canada.

 

ART & CULTURE

Sikh art and culture are nearly synonymous with that of the Punjab, and Sikhs are easily recognised by their distinctive turban (Dastar). The Punjab has been called India’s melting pot, due to the confluence of invading cultures (Greek, Mughal and Persian) from the rivers from which the region gets its name. Sikh culture is therefore a synthesis of cultures. Sikhism has forged a unique architecture, which S. S. Bhatti described as "inspired by Guru Nanak’s creative mysticism" and "is a mute harbinger of holistic humanism based on pragmatic spirituality".

 

During the Mughal and Afghan persecution of the Sikhs during the 17th and 18th centuries, the latter were concerned with preserving their religion and gave little thought to art and culture. With the rise of Ranjit Singh and the Sikh Raj in Lahore and Delhi, there was a change in the landscape of art and culture in the Punjab; Hindus and Sikhs could build decorated shrines without the fear of destruction or looting.

 

The Sikh Confederacy was the catalyst for a uniquely Sikh form of expression, with Ranjit Singh commissioning forts, palaces, bungas (residential places) and colleges in a Sikh style. Sikh architecture is characterised by gilded fluted domes, cupolas, kiosks, stone lanterns, ornate balusters and square roofs. A pinnacle of Sikh style is Harmandir Sahib (also known as the Golden Temple) in Amritsar.

 

Sikh culture is influenced by militaristic motifs (with the Khanda the most obvious), and most Sikh artifacts - except for the relics of the Gurus - have a military theme. This theme is evident in the Sikh festivals of Hola Mohalla and Vaisakhi, which feature marching and displays of valor.

 

Although the art and culture of the Sikh diaspora have merged with that of other Indo-immigrant groups into categories like "British Asian", "Indo-Canadian" and "Desi-Culture", a minor cultural phenomenon which can be described as "political Sikh" has arisen. The art of diaspora Sikhs like Amarjeet Kaur Nandhra and Amrit and Rabindra Kaur Singh (the "Singh Twins") is influenced by their Sikhism and current affairs in the Punjab.

Bhangra and Giddha are two forms of Punjabi folk dancing which have been adapted and pioneered by Sikhs. Punjabi Sikhs have championed these forms of expression worldwide, resulting in Sikh culture becoming linked to Bhangra (although "Bhangra is not a Sikh institution but a Punjabi one").

 

PAINTING

Sikh painting is a direct offshoot of the Kangra school of painting. In 1810, Ranjeet Singh (1780–1839) occupied Kangra Fort and appointed Sardar Desa Singh Majithia his governor of the Punjab hills. In 1813 the Sikh army occupied Guler State, and Raja Bhup Singh became a vassal of the Sikhs. With the Sikh kingdom of Lahore becoming the paramount power, some of the Pahari painters from Guler migrated to Lahore for the patronage of Maharaja Ranjeet Singh and his Sardars.

 

The Sikh school adapted Kangra painting to Sikh needs and ideals. Its main subjects are the ten Sikh gurus and stories from Guru Nanak's Janamsakhis. The tenth Guru, Gobind Singh, left a deep impression on the followers of the new faith because of his courage and sacrifices. Hunting scenes and portraits are also common in Sikh painting.

 

WIKIPEDIA

The Truth is in Here!

 

I think that the structure of my self is rather like that of "The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo" (Trailer,Trailer #2). I think I contain a fantasy of a controlled, hollow, abused Lisbeth/Nikita woman who works as the medium, or intermediary for a man with super-sight, who is trying to be a detective. The most horrible thing about the structure is that since these roles take place inside me (no wonder Lisbeth looks pissed off), it is also auto-erotic transsexualism, and then some. For this reason I think that the super duo of Lisbeth and Cal Lighthouse in the above photo, are generally accompanied by a sex criminal in many of the detective series in which detectives and their intermediaries feature. [Why is it that about 10 million Americans watch sex criminals get their come-uppance a week on one series, Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, alone?]

 

First to recap, there are many US mystery series featuring men, and more frequently recently women, who are in contact with supernatural phenomena (The Dead Zone, The Listener, , The X-Files, Seeing Things, The Medium, Tru Calling, Ghost Whisperer), of women that act as intermediaries for men whose power of perception is almost supernatural (Lie to Me, Monk, The Mentalist, Millenium, The X-Files), and there are recently an increasing number of Nikita type violent, abused, hollow women controlled by men (Nikita, Nikita, Dark Angel, Alias, Dollhouse, etc). Many of these heroes kill or put greedy, especially sexually greedy, criminals behind bars.

 

In the USA there are many more types of television series. Here in Japan, these three genres stand out as being particularly well represented. I am of the opinion that these genres are well represented because they are the most popular in the US, rather than their being particularly popular in Japan.

 

The reason why I think that these television series may have something to do with the structure of myself is because I have seen them both. The structure of myself was far more horrifying and icky that even the nasties scenes in The Girl with a Dragon Tatoo, so I will try and be theoretical first.

 

The Self in Social Psychology

 

Factoring in William James, George Herbert Mead explains how the human self is formed, from three parts: the I or consciousness, the me, the idea we have of ourselves with whom we identify, and the internalised "generalised other" from which perspective we see the "me."

 

The first and second of these elements (consciousness, and my idea of me) are fairly easy to confirm. Mead's "generalised other" (Freud's "super ego", Bakhtin's "super adressee", Lacan's "Other," Adam Smith's "Invisible hand" and "impartial observer") is much more contraversial.

 

That there is consciousness, even if I can say nothing about it, seems pretty clear. When I am awake there is not nothing. When I dream, the lights come on as it were. I may be able to say very little about this "great blooming, buzzing confusion,” but I feel that I can not deny it. Generally speaking I am more inclined to think of consciousness as the world, or evidence of the world -- the lights, sounds, hot and cold -- but at the same time perhaps, especially but not only, as a child, "consciousness"may also be said to be who "I" really am.

 

And at the same time I have notions of who I am very separate from consciousness - a bald old Englishman living in Japan, which a certain age, family, house, and face. That is "me."

 

What is the "generalised other," and where is it hiding?

 

First of all Mead argues that in order to gain an idea who "me" is then I need to take an objective view point upon myself. Mead argues that unless we are carrying a mirror, or permanently in front of an audience, our ability to gain an objective idea of ourselves depends upon our ability to express who we are in language and understand our language from the point of view of other listeners.This ability to hear ones own self-referential, self addressed language, such as "I am bald" as said to myself, and to know when one has not said the truth, allows us to form a linguistic model of who we are. Language, Mead presumes, provides us with a mirror of internalised other. Mead argues, as do Hermans and Kempen (who base their analysis on the Bakhtin's linguistics), that we are always speaking to others in our heads. People talk to their friends, their family, their workmates, and all those that they are likely to meet, in their heads all the time. And we are able to judge when these our imaginary friends would not agree with what we are saying. In the complete absence of any audience, real or imagined, I could claim that "I have loads of hair", or anything, even that "I am Elvis Presley," and it would not matter because there would be no one there to disagree with me. But since we do speak to others even if they are imaginary others, we imagine our audience's understanding of our words, their reaction, and know when we are speaking bullshit.

 

But while many of us may accept that we often imagine that we are speaking to, or thinking to other people, what of the *generalised* other. As far as I am aware Mead only explains the need for a generalised as a cognitive requirement. If we see ourselves only from the viewpoints of our friends, then we will see ourselves as rather nicer than we are from the point of view of our enemies. If we see ourselves from the point of view of our enemies, we see ourselves rather more negatively than our friends see us, and rather more negatively than we in fact are, because presumably we are that person at the intersection of these various viewpoints rather than as understood from any one subjective position.

 

So far so good. We may be able to accept that we address ourselves to a variety of imaginary friends. And that unless we understand our self speech from the point of view of a view from an objective, generalised position then we will not have an ongoing objective understanding of ourselves. However this explanation would not prevent us from "generalising" after the fact, or "off line". In other words we might model the understanding of our friends and family, our detractors and various people in the street, and perform some sort of averaging only afterward. Is it clear that we need to model a generalised other, in real time?

 

Bakhtin argues that even as we are speaking to real or imaginary friends and all manner of second person addressees, we also imagine that there is another person listening to what we have to say, since otherwise our meaning would be limited by the understanding of our real or imagined listener. Being so limited to specific others (be they real or imagined) would be, he argues, hellish. We would be trapped in web of relationships unable to be anyone but that which our others understand us to be. To escape from this hell, which is other people, we continually model a super-addressee (Bakhtin, 1986. p126) which corresponds I believe to Mead's generalized other.

 

Bakhtin's "hell" starts to sound more persuasive but all the same, phenomenologically where is the generalized other in my head? I can feel myself simulating my friends. Why can't I feel myself simulating a generalised other?

 

I think that theists may find the answer to this question very easy. Theists typically feel that they are addressing a generalised other, who sees them from an objective viewpoint, in the form of their God. Of course for a theist it is not a question of simulating a generalised listener, but rather that there is one, and as such perhaps theists are always conscious of the meaning of their words, truthfully and honestly in the understanding of an ever present "impartial spectator." This latter term was that used by the economist (of Lutheran upbringing) Adam Smith. This is all very well for theists but, when I am not dabbling in theism, and even when I do, I do not find myself aware, or strikingly aware, of a God as generalised other, impartial spectator, or super-addressee. If this super-addressee was felt ever present, then for instance, would there be so many atheists and agnostics, and would they be so militant in their denial of God? If a super-addressee were clearly ever present in our psyche then the atheists among us would be more likely to say "Oh, yeah, that. (S)he is only my simulation of a generalised other, not any supernatural being." Calling that entity God or a mental simulation would become almost a question of nomenclature. It seems to me however that most atheists are not aware of any such "super-addressee," listening in on their thoughts, modelled by themselves, far less directly and supernaturally bugging their brain.

 

To Bakhtin's "hell", and Mead's need for objective self awareness, I think that there are a couple of other reasons why we need a generalised other and why it should be something that we are commonly unaware of it.

 

First of all applying Arimasa Mori's cultural theory, it may become clear that a generalised other is a requirement for my identification with my "me". That we should identify (and it is not clear what "identify" means) which any idea or conception that we have of ourselves is strange. Why would anyone identify with a self-concept if they are aware that it is a conceptualisation?

 

This kind of question has been asked for instance by philosophers and psychologists in the field of narrative psychology. It is clear that we do narrate ourselves, do think to and narrate ourselves, about who we are and what we are doing, but why should we, or do we, identify with that which is described in the narrative? Why does our self-cognition not remain on the level of self-hypothesis, a fiction about ourselves that may or not be correct. Why do we believe in that our self0narration, or the me therein described is ourselves? Or why do we believe that there is a underlying, ongoing entity that conforms to some static linguistic cognition of self?

 

Arimasa Mori argues the way in which first person pronouns and first person self-representations depend on the second person of Japanese speech - that there is no "third person" (Mori's word for the generalised other), results in an absence of self on ongoing and independent self among Japanese. IF being is to be understood, and self-understanding is dependent upon other understanding, then in the radical absence of others would, not our ability to identify with an ongoing independent self be switching on and off. Hence, if we believe in an ongoing self independent of social situation, then this may imply the presumed presence of a "third person perspective."

 

Here ends my attempt at theoretical analysis.

 

Finally, while the connection is somewhat tenuous, the structure of the television series outlined above remind me of my experience of the structure of my self, which fell apart and became visible about a quarter of a century ago when I felt (and I think I did) go mad. I have written this before, but I think that it is a good idea to write it again.

 

My experience was momentary and my memory is not as good as it used to be, but I still find it instructive. I think that I should have tried harder to share the experience with other people. The reason why I have not blogged or otherwise written about the experience is because I found the experience particularly disgusting. As I said above, and this is the first part of the analogy between "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" and the structure of myself, they both appeared to have very harrowing elements. The movie was stressful, but watching the movie was a walk in the park by comparison to my experience of the parts of myself. After that fleeting experience 25 years aog, I found myself traumatised for about 6 months afterwards, and indeed for the rest of my life. Here I am an old man, still talking about an experience I had when I was about 22. And at the same time, the reason why I am still talking about the experience was because it was, and to an extent remains, so difficult, so disgusting as to make it difficult to talk about.

 

Of course, my experience may have been of only the structure of my particular self, but as I see these often extremely violent, and sexually twisted television series and movies proliferate I wonder if, at last, my experience was more universalisable than I had initially thought. I thought I was just simply a mad **** at the time. But here lies, the most important thing about what I have to say: it is possible that the self appears to be a unity to most people, and its structure indivisible, and invisible, because that structure is, or would be, to most people, so utterly disgusting. Far more so than the worst scenes in "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo."

 

So here is my experience again. I find it easiest to explain my experience with the analogy of a ventriloquist since in retrospect it seems very similar. When my self fell apart, into its parts, I felt that I was experiencing a ventriloquism act with the following parts: (1) an enormous consciousness of proportion so vast as to be other-worldly (2) a listening persona (2) A speaking persona.

 

I felt the enormous consciousness, for a flash of an instant, to be my true self. It seemed that this enormous consciousness was engaging in something similar to a ventriloquism act in that he was throwing his voice and pretending to hear that voice from the perspective of a third person.

 

When looking at a ventriloquist's stage act we can forget that ventriloquists are pretending to be two people. ventriloquists fabulate two people. We notice that they are "throwing their voice" and giving their dummy a life of its own. We may forget however, even as we are watching a ventriloquist, that the real stage performer is usually pretending to be not only the dummy, but also pretending to be another persona by putting on feigned belief in the dummy, and fabulating or feigning a character that listens to and banters with the dummy's remarks.

 

The experience thus far can largely be understood by reference to one of Nina Conti's ventriloquism acts, where she makes it clear that one need not use a dummy to perform ventriloquism, and even suggests that the dummy-less-dummy or voice, is as real as the listener.

 

And so it was with my experience. It was *not* that I became aware of the "dummy". The "dummy" or rather just my interior narrative was myself, the self that I generally (these days and then) thought myself to be. I heard myself speak/think in much the same way as I always speak/think. The difference was that I suddenly realised who I was speaking to and why. I became aware of the act that the massive ventriloquists putting on, the listener that feigns interest. The worst part about it was the act that I was performing, for myself, "in my head", was auto-erotic, transsexual, and then some -- it was also incestuous.

 

"The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo," stopped short of portraying real incest and of course the incest that I discovered in my head (my soul/psyche/self) was not real. Lisbeth was a ward of the state and she was raped by her guardian. The Lisbeth-gardian parent-child relationship was in name only, but their sex was real. I found that I was chatting up a woman, not unlike a Listbeth or Nikita, that I was simulated in my head who was clearly based upon my own mother. I was cross-dressing as it were mentally and feigning a female listener to my self-narrative. While this listener never spoke, her (my) unspoken reaction to my self speak was clearly sympathetic, loving, in a mother-child and at the same time romantic way. I felt like the murderer in the famous Hitchcock movie, Psycho except that instead of dressing up as my mother, I was creating her in my brain.

 

The enormous consciousness that was witnessing the whole event was entirely aware of what was going on and he was disgusted, with me the speaker that I guess he was also inventing. Somehow, strangely, in that experience the blame fell on the narratival voice (me) despite the fact that, presumably, it was the consciousness that was pulling all the strings, and behind all the parts. Nonetheless that enormity was disgusted and angry with the nasty little voice and the hollow woman that he had in his mind.

 

That was most of my experience. Does my experience have anything other than one warped individual, or does it bear any similarity with the structure of the programs I am analysing, other than the fact that popular television series often have sexually twisted antagonists?

 

The greatest similarity for me between my experience and the television series is not the detectives but the women as mediums, intermediaries and Nikitas. The woman that I was fabulating, as my internal listener, was disgusting only because she turned out to be myself. I loved that fantasy with an expectant longing brighter and purer than the sun. It was only when she turned out to be myself that the passion and purity of my love, precisely because it was felt to be so passionate and pure, that the whole thing became so disgusting. My internal doll, my cranial perfect woman, had a distinct similarity to the characters portrayed in my previous blog posts -- to the Lisbeth's and Nikita's of modern fiction. It may help a little, perhaps, that I remembered my mother as a young woman as a rather spiky, depressive, and in some senses dark individual. The important point is not the reality but how I fabulated my mother. I think to a large extent I fabulated her as a Nikita, killa, wild, abused, fighting girl. In my experienced I realised that my listener was a fantasy and in that sense, hollow, programmed, a sort of doll, or robot, or alias, like many of the Nikita types that are seen on TV.

 

It seems to me that I have identified in my experience of 1/4 of a century ago, a sort of sex criminal and a hollow, programmed intermediary of a Nikita type figure.

 

Finally what of the super-sighed genius "Monk," or "Patrick Jane." To an extent the giant person that I discovered was a bit like that, the all seeing consciousness, the supernatural being (supernatural only in so far as he was not a voice-puppet) upon which Nikita was superimposed upon as a mask, that Nikita acted as a "Medium" for that entity which Nikita hid, just as she alone saw.

 

So I wonder if anyone else has a psyche as disgusting as mine, or whether I am just seeing coincidences where there aren't any.

 

Addendum

Having reread it seems to me that there is no way that I am going to persuade anyone that my self-structure is anything but an anomaly unless I give more reasons as to why it should be universal for theoretical reasons and or by seeking links between the genres of video that I am analysing.

 

There are several things that do not match up.

 

My female fantasy listened rather than spoke, but the female Medium or intermediary is often the spokesperson for the super or supernatural male.

 

The sex-criminal in my self-fantasy was felt to by speech (made human) or perhaps my giant consciousness self. The criminals in US television series do not necessarily speak, the Monk-like all seeing consciousness like detectives do not involve themselves in sex at all.

 

The other thing is, that my experience of the breakdown of myself was accompanied by my realisation that I was gay. I assumed therefore that non-gay persons would have different persona in their selves. I thought that heterosexual men might be modelling their father rather than their young, Nikita-like fantasy mother. The fact that I felt myself to be gay at the time I had my falling apart experience may reduce the applicability of the structure that I became aware of. I am not sure how.

 

The take-home conclusion of this post is, imho, we watch so many TV series about hollowed out abused girls, who are mediums and intermediaries for super savant males, that kill sex criminals because The Truth is in Here.

 

I have had another idea about why the woman is a murderer based upon Graham Swift's novel "The Light of Day," another book in this genre. Obvious really.

 

Images are copyright their respective copyright holders. Please please comment below or contact me via nihonbunka.com to have my remove any of these images.

Bakhtin, M. M. (1986). Speech Genres and Other Late Essays. (V. W. McGee, Trans., C. Emerson & M. Holquist, Eds.) (Second Printing.). University of Texas Press. pubpages.unh.edu/~jds/BAKHTINSG.htm

 

Addendum (Big Mistake)

"My head" is inside my narrative and field of view, not the other way around! This is a very important point and the danger of the scientific worldview. The scientific world is a product of our narration as even some scientists a vow (Wheeler, Mach). Our head is also something we see in our field of view in mirrors, or our nose and brow directly. Our perceptions (including of our whispers) are not inside "me" or my body. To think so would be double death.

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