In the south-west corner of Western Australia, there were Aboriginal communities full of mysteries, one of these mysteries was a boat that had come up from out of the sand, only the prow could be seen, the rest was imprisoned in the ground.

 

One day, the Little Girl Giant, busy with her travels, fell into one of the Aboriginal communities of the Noongar Nation, into one of those families who are in love with the barrab (sky), the boodja (earth), the yorgam (trees) and keap (water).

 

She was so welcomed that she decided to stay with them for a long time.

 

She then witnessed the evolution and change of these inhabitants in the face of the transformation of the Australian continent. She lived there as though it were a beelya (river), full of dreams that jumped like fish.

 

One day, one of the community’s children brought her an old book full of drawings. It was dog-eared, crumpled, aged. It told the story of a little girl in a lighthouse full of love and sorrow, who watched soldiers leaving Australia on ships, carrying hope into lost battles. It was 1915 on the beaches of Gallipoli where the sand, reddened by the blood of men, frightened the moon. Through the book, the Little Girl Giant, as she looked at the sky, saw the past, the present and even the future.

  

Her gaze plunged into the centre of the battle, and she could see men disappearing, like being suddenly wiped from the earth as an eraser would rub out on a drawing. She also saw a boat sink, snatched by a gust stronger than a cathedral and laid down on the bottom of the ocean, then an Australian diver, sent to find survivors, stuck in air bubbles. As he could not see a living soul on the seabed, he decided to stay there. Miraculously and without knowing it, he started walking and this removed the tubes and the air that filled his lungs. As he turned his head, he saw dozens of boats lying in the sand. Methodically, he entered each ship and brought dead men out of them. He dug the ground to bury each one and he continued, his muscles toned by an infernal will, so much so that around each sunken boat, there was a graveyard, like small heaps of sand without crosses, only small bellies emerging from the dust. There were hundreds like this around each boat, peaceful. With a madness which cannot be named, he continued his work. But from graveyard to graveyard, his body grew thicker, denser and without realising it, one day he was able to overturn the ships. He had monumental strength. He had quite simply grown like a child in a bath who suddenly realises that his feet are touching the taps. It was simply the story of a Giant who became big at the bottom of the sea.

 

In the Noongar country, the Little Girl Giant closed the last page of the book. The little Aboriginal child, his eyes full of colours, was sad then, in his gaze a rainbow flew away to the clouds.

 

He understood then that the Little Girl Giant had to leave to re-join her family, and when the sun lifted the horizon, he hurried to fetch his father. Whilst the stars hid in the sky, lying behind the morning light, all the people of the Noongar Nation saw a tear come from the Little Girl Giant’s eyelid. As it touched the ground, a small puddle was swallowed up by the soil. In this very spot, a tree could be seen growing in the space of two hours. From a small and barely awoken sprout, a trunk developed, full of branches with leaves that the wind enjoyed moving. It was just a tree in the boodja (country).

 

Then she thought that the buried boat could sail the earth to find the diver. The Aboriginals began digging and within ten days, the ship was ready on the ground. The Little Girl Giant climbed onto it and the Noongars began to sing the rain. Accompanied by the sound of the boomerangs, she crossed Western Australia. The sand made waves, the boodja filling with water. In short, she arrived in Minang boodja (Albany) from where she sent a hot air balloon, like a moon over the ocean, to call the diver. Then she headed to Whadjuk boodja (Perth).

 

Upon her arrival in the big city, she placed her head underwater and blew bubbles which echoed at the bottom of the ocean. Everyone knows that whales can hear sounds from 5,000 kilometres away when they call each other and that the sound of people’s footsteps on pavements reverberates to the centre of the earth.

 

The air bubbles that were pushed by the tide floated around the Giant Diver. With their large, small or tiny shapes, they followed one another like a convoy of boats and one after the other, they exploded in front of the Giant’s eyes. They expressed signals like Morse code: a point, a line, two points then nothing and again two lines and a point. It was a language the man of the sea knew well. He could then read sentences in which each message ended with ‘come’. No sooner had he understood he was surrounded by a tornado of fishes. They circled him faster and faster so that the swirl of force became a gust of wind. On the surface, the agitated fog started to cough so hard that a storm swallowed the bottom of the water, throwing the diver into the sky all the way into the clouds. Then, like a lost body, he fell down unconscious in Perth. The earth trembled and suddenly a great spray of water burst out of the ground between two buildings. A geyser was born, as if to greet through space the arrival of the Giants.

 

The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death are a series of nineteen (twenty were originally constructed) intricately designed dollhouse-style dioramas created by Frances Glessner Lee (1878–1962), a pioneer in forensic science. Glessner Lee used her inheritance to establish a department of legal medicine at Harvard Medical School in 1936, and donated the first of the Nutshell Studies in 1946 for use in lectures on the subject of crime scene investigation. In 1966, the department was dissolved, and the dioramas went to the Maryland Medical Examiner’s Office in Baltimore, Maryland, U.S. where they are on permanent loan and still used for forensic seminars.

 

The dioramas are detailed representations of death scenes that are composites of actual cases, created by Glessner Lee on a 1 inch to 1 foot (1:12) scale. She attended autopsies to ensure accuracy, and her attention to detail extended to having a wall calendar include the pages after the month of the incident, constructing openable windows, and wearing out-of-date clothing to obtain realistically worn fabric. The dioramas show tawdry and, in many cases, disheveled living spaces very different from Glessner Lee's own background. The dead include prostitutes and victims of domestic violence.

 

Glessner Lee called them the Nutshell Studies because the purpose of a forensic investigation is said to be to "convict the guilty, clear the innocent, and find the truth in a nutshell." Students were instructed to study the scenes methodically—Glessner Lee suggested moving the eyes in a clockwise spiral—and draw conclusions from the visual evidence. At conferences hosted by Glessner Lee, prominent crime-scene investigators were given 90 minutes to study each diorama.

Name: Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema

 

Born: Dronryp, Netherlands

8 January 1836

 

Died: Wiesbaden, Germany

25 June 1912

   

Born Lourens Tadema (Alma being his middle name) in Dronryp, Friesland, to Pieter Tadema, a notary, and his second wife Hinke Brouwer - from an early age he showed some artistic ability and the beginnings of his highly methodical and exacting nature as demonstrated in his paintings to follow. He only adopted the now familiar form of his name after moving to London in 1870.

 

At the age of 16 he enrolled at the Antwerp Academy where he studied under Gustav Wappers and, later, Nicaise de Keyser, both exponents of the Romantic movement in art. Later he became an assistant to the historical painter Baron Hendryk Leys whilst living in the house of an archaeologist, Louis de Taye. From these two men he began to develop his interest in history and archaeology , which was further developed from contact with the German Egytologist, Georg Ebers (later to become one of his biographers). He assisted Leys in painting historical murals in Antwerp's Town Hall.

 

His early works depicted the history of the Merovingian dynasty, rulers of Gaul from the 6th to 8th centuries AD. However, having visited the International Exhibition in London in 1862, he became inspired by the Elgin Marbles and Egyptian artefacts in the British Museum, leading him to turn increasingly to Egyptian themes in his work.

 

In 1863 he married a French woman, Marie Pauline Gressin de Boisgirard, and they honeymooned in Italy where he encountered the newly-excavated ruins of Pompeii. So fascinated was he by the Roman remains with their preponderance of marble that, within a few years, ancient Roman subject matter came to the fore in his work.

 

The Tademas soon moved to Paris where Lourens entered into a long-term contract with the well-known art dealer Ernest Gambart, an influential man with connections throughout Europe. Within a short time he transported his studio to Brussels.

 

However, in the 1860's, tragedy struck: his only son dying of smallpox in 1865 and his wife died in 1869, leaving him to care for his two daughters Anna and Laurence. But fortune in his career followed swiftly and, in that year, two of his paintings - A Roman Art Lover and Phyrric Dance - were exhibited at the Royal Academy in London. The latter work prompted the famous critic and writer John Ruskin to comment that:

 

" ... the general effect was exactly like a microscopic view of a small detachment of black-beetles in search of a dead rat."

 

Fortunately, this was one of very few adverse criticisms and, so well were his paintings received overall that, upon visiting England the same year to see a doctor, and in part due to the possible impending Prussian invasion of France, he moved his home to London in 1870.

 

The following year he married his seventeen-year-old pupil, Laura Epps, a doctor's daughter and member of a then well-known family of cocoa manufacturers. In 1873 he became a naturalized British citizen, at the same time consciously joining his middle name, Alma, to his surname. He didn't actually hyphenate it himself, but it was done by others and this has since become the convention. It also had the fortuitous 'side-effect' of elevating his name to a top position in alphabetical catalogues!

 

Soon after remarrying, they moved from a rented home in Camden Square to Townshend House, near Regent's Park. Elegant and cosmopolitan in decor, their home soon became a popular venue for gatherings of fellow artists. Fame and prosperity soon followed and in 1876 Alma-Tadema became an Associate of the Royal Academy, being elected to a full Royal Academician in 1879. The Grosvenor Gallery staged an exhibition of 287 of his paintings in 1882 - he had become one of the most famous painters in Britain.

 

'Building' on this success, he developed plans for a more spectacular home - the building for which he found in Grove End Road, St John's Wood. In fact it was the former home of James Tissot which had been abandoned by the artist in 1882 after the death of his mistress, Kathleen Newton. It was then fairly modest but had a number of classical features which appealed to him (such as the famous colonnade beside a garden pond, which featured in several of Tissot's canvases - see our reproduction TIJ001). However Alma-Tadema made it into almost a palace, designing every detail himself - from the weather vane in the form of an artist's palette and the doorway modelled on one from Pompeii, to the rainspouts in the form of lions' heads. The hall was lined with panels painted by fellow artists and the enormous galleried and marble-floored studio was crowned with a polished aluminium dome - the brightness of the light it reflected noticeably affected his paintings from then on.

 

Both of his London homes were famous for their extravagant and well-attended parties, often in fancy dress - the artist himlself having a predilection for dressing as Nero - and where music was always a feature. Distinguished guests included personalities such as Tchaikovsky and Enrico Caruso.

 

Alma-Tadema received awards and honours from around the world, although notably not from his own country of birth - including a knighthood from Britain in 1899 followed by the prestigious Order of Merit in 1905.

 

His clients included members of the British Royal family and the Russian Imperial Family - he was in fact a noted Society portraitist. Indeed approximately 60 of his 400 plus paintings are commissioned portraits of sitters ranging from the British Prime Minister Arthur Balfour to the Polish pianist and Prime Minister Ignacy Paderewski.

 

His wife, Lady Laura Alma-Tadema, died in 1909 and was buried at Kensal Green cemetary, alongside whom he had reserved a plot for himself. However, this was not to be, since, by the time of hos own death in 1912 at the German spa of Wiesbaden, he was so famous an artist that the British 'establishment' saw fit for him to be buried in St Paul's Cathedral. Soon afterwards, his famous house and contents were sold - the house being converted into apartments, leaving few of the the splended architectural details.

 

[Ref: "Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema" by Russell Ash, 1989, Pavilion Books]

 

+++ DISCLAIMER +++

Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based on historical facts. BEWARE!

  

Some background:

The Char B1 was a French heavy tank manufactured before World War II. It was conceived as a specialized offensive vehicle, armed with a 75 mm howitzer in the hull. Later a 47 mm gun in a turret was added, to allow it to function also as a Char de Bataille, a ‘battle tank’ fighting enemy armour, equipping the armoured divisions of the Infantry Arm. Starting in the early twenties, its development and production were repeatedly delayed, resulting in a vehicle that was both technologically complex and expensive, and already obsolescent when real mass-production of a derived version, the Char B1 "bis", started in the late thirties.

 

The outer appearance of the Char B1 reflected the fact that development started in the twenties: like the very first tank, the British Mark I tank of World War I, it still had large tracks going around the entire hull and large armour plates protecting the suspension—and like all tanks of that decade it had no welded or cast hull armour. The similarity resulted partly from the fact that the Char B1 was a specialized offensive weapon, a break-through tank optimized for punching a hole into strong defensive entrenchments, so it was designed with good trench-crossing capabilities and therefore the hull and the tracks had considerable length. The French Army thought that dislodging the enemy from a key front sector would decide a campaign, and it prided itself on being the only army in the world having a sufficient number of adequately protected heavy tanks. The exploitation phase of a battle was seen as secondary and best carried out by controlled and methodical movement to ensure superiority in numbers, so that the heavy tank’s mobility was of secondary concern. Although the Char B1 had a reasonably good speed for the time of its conception, no serious efforts were made to improve it when much faster tanks appeared.

 

More important than the tank's limitations in tactical mobility, however, were its limitations in strategic mobility. The low practical range implied the need to refuel very often, limiting its operational capabilities. This again implied that the armoured divisions of the Infantry, the Divisions Cuirassées, were not very effective as a mobile reserve and thus lacked strategic flexibility. They were not created to fulfill such a role in the first place, which was reflected in the small size of the artillery and infantry components of the divisions.

 

Another explanation of the similarity to the British Mark I lies in the Char B1's original specification to create a self-propelled gun able to destroy enemy infantry and artillery. The main weapon of the tank was its 75 mm howitzer, and the entire design of the vehicle was directed to making this gun as effective as possible. When in the early 1930s it became obvious that the Char B1 also had to defeat counterattacking enemy armour, it was too late for a complete redesign. The solution was to add the standard cast APX-1 turret which also equipped the Char D2 and the Somua S35. Like most French tanks of the period the Char B thus had a small one-man turret. The commander not only had to command the tank, but also to aim and load the anti-tank gun, and if he was a unit leader, he had to command his other tanks as well. This was in contrast with the contemporary German, British and to a lesser extent Soviet policy to use two or three-man turret crews, in which these duties were divided amongst several men, or to use dedicated command vehicles.

 

Among the most powerfully armed and armoured tanks of its day, the Char B1 was very effective in direct confrontations with early German armour during the Battle of France. The 60 mm (2.36 in) frontal armor was sloped, giving it an effective strength of near 80 mm (3.15 in), and it proved to be almost invulnerable to the 1940 Panzer II and III as well as the early Panzer IV with its short 75mm close-support gun. There were no real weak spots, and this invulnerability helped the B1 to close on targets, then destroy them with the turret 47 mm (1.85 in) or the brute force of the howitzer HE shells. However, its slow speed and high fuel consumption made it ill-adapted to the war of movement then being fought.

 

In the meantime, plans had taken shape to improve the Char B1, and this led to two developments that eventually entered the hardware stage: A further up-armoured version, the Char B1 "ter", was designed with sloped and welded 70 mm armour, weighing 36.6 tonnes and powered by a 350 hp (260 kW) engine. It was meant to replace the B1 bis to accelerate mass production, a change first intended for the summer of 1940 but later postponed to March 1941 and finally abandoned.

In the course of the redesign, space was provided for a fifth crew member, a "mechanic". Cost was reduced by omitting the complex Neader transmission for aiming the howitzer and giving the hull gun a traverse of five degrees to each side instead. The first prototype was shown in 1937, but only three prototypes could be partly finished before the defeat of France. Serial production was rejected due to the need to build totally new production lines for the much-modified Char B1 ter, so that this development was a dead end, even more so because it did not really cure the vehicle’s weakness of the overburdened commander and the split armament.

 

The latter issues were addressed with another development, a modernized variant of the existing Char B1 bis with a new weapon layout, the Char B1 “tetre”. Work on this variant started in 1936, as an alternative concept to the one-man turret and as an experimental carrier for a new high velocity semi-automatic 75 mm multi-purpose gun with a long barrel. Such a weapon was direly needed, because the biggest caliber of an anti-tank gun was a mere 47 mm, the SA 35 gun. The only recent alternative was the infantry’s 47 mm APX anti-tank gun from 1937, which could pierce 60 mm (2.4 in) at 550 meters (600 yd) or 80 mm (3.1 in) at 180 meters (200 yd), but it had not been adapted to vehicle use yet and was not regarded to be powerful enough to cope with tanks like the Char B1 itself.

 

This new 75 mm tank gun was already under development at the Atelier de Construction de Rueil (ARL) for a new medium 20-ton-tank, the Char G1 from Renault, that was to replace the Char B1. The gun, called “ARL 37”, would be mounted in a new three-man turret, and ARL was developing prototypes of both a turret that could be taken by the Char B1’s and S35’s limited turret ring, as well as the gun itself, which was based on the 75 mm high velocity gun with hydro-pneumatic recoil compensation from the vintage heavy FCM 2C tank

 

The ARL 37 had a mass of 750 kg (1,653.5 lb) and a barrel length of 3,281 mm (129.2 in) with a bore of 43 calibers. Maximum muzzle velocity was 740 m/s (2,400 ft/s). The gun was fitted with an electric firing mechanism and the breech operated semi-automatically. Only one-piece ammunition was used, and both HE and AP rounds could be fired – even though the latter had to developed, too, because no such round was available in 1937/38 yet. However, with early experimental Armour Piercing Capped Ballistic Cap (APCBC) rounds, the ARL 37 was able to penetrate 133 mm (5.2 in) of vertical steel plate at 100 m range, 107 mm (4.2 in) at 1.000 m and still 85 mm (3.3 in) at 2.000 m, making it a powerful anti-tank weapon of its era.

 

Since the new weapon was expected to fire both HE and AP rounds, the Char B1’s howitzer in the hull was omitted, its opening faired over and instead a movable 7.5 mm Reibel machine gun was added in a ball mount, operated by a radio operator who sat next to the driver. Another 7.5mm machine gun was mounted co-axially to the main gun in the turret, which had a cupola and offered space for the rest of the crew: a dedicated commander as well as a gunner and loader team.

The hexagonal turret was cast and had a welded roof as well as a gun mantlet. With its 70 mm frontal armor as well as the tank’s new hull front section, the conversions added a total of four net tons of weight, so that the Char B1 tetre weighed 36 tons. To prevent its performance from deteriorating further, it received the Char B1 ter’s uprated 350 hp (260 kW) engine. The running gear remained unchanged, even though the fully rotating turret made the complex and expensive Neader transmission superfluous, so that it was replaced by a standard heavy-duty piece.

 

Although promising, the Char B1 tetre’s development was slow, delayed by the lack of resources and many teething troubles with the new 75 mm cannon and the turret. When the war broke out in September 1939, production was cleared and began slowly, but focus remained on existing vehicles and weapons. By the time there were perhaps 180 operational B1 and B1 bis in all. They were used for the Sarre offensive, a short-lived burst without serious opposition, with a massive force of 41 divisions and 2.400 tanks. The Char B1 served with the armoured divisions of the infantry, the Divisions Cuirassées (DCr). The First and Second DCR had 69 Char B1s each, the Third 68. These were highly specialized offensive units, to break through fortified positions. The mobile phase of a battle was to be carried out by the Divisions Légères Mécaniques (mechanised light divisions) of the cavalry, equipped with the SOMUA S35.

 

After the German invasion several ad hoc units were formed: the 4e DCr with 52 Char B1s and five autonomous companies (347e, 348e, 349e, 352e and 353e Compagnie Autonome de Chars) with in total 56 tanks: 12 B1s and 44 B1 bis; 28e BCC was reconstituted with 34 tanks. By that time, a very limited number of Char B1 tetre had been produced and delivered to operational units, but their tactical value was low since sufficient 75 mm AP rounds were not available – the tanks had to use primarily the same HE rounds that were fired with the Char B1’s howitzer, and these posed only a limited threat to German tanks, esp. the upgraded Panzer III and IVs. The Char B1 tertre’s potential was never fully exploited, even though most of the tanks were used as command vehicles.

 

The regular French divisions destroyed quite a few German tanks but lacked enough organic infantry and artillery to function as an effective mobile reserve. After the defeat of France, captured Char B1 of all variants would be used by Germany, with some rebuilt as flamethrowers, Munitionspanzer, or mechanized artillery.

  

Specifications:

Crew: Five (driver, radio operator/machine gunner, commander, gunner, loader)

Weight: 36 tonnes (40 short tons, 35 long tons)

Length: 6.98 m (22 ft 10½ in) overall with gun forward

6.37 m (20 ft 11 in) hull only

Width: 2.46 m (8 ft 1 in)

Height: 2.84 m (9 ft 3¾ in)

Ground clearance: 40 cm (1 ft 3¾ in)

Climbing: 93 cm (3 ft ½ in)

Trench crossing: 2,4 m (7 ft 10½ in)

Suspension: Bogies with a mixture of vertical coil and leaf springs

Steering: Double differential

Fuel capacity: 400 liters

 

Armour:

14 to 70 mm (0.55 to 2.75 in)

 

Performance:

28 km/h (17 mph) on road

21 km/h (13 mph) off-road

Operational range: 200 km (124 mi) on road

Power/weight: 9.7 hp/ton

 

Engine:

1× Renault inline 6 cylinder 16.5 litre petrol engine with 350 hp (260 kW)

 

Transmission:

5 forward and 1 rear gear

 

Armament:

1x 75 ARL 37 high-velocity cannon with 94 rounds

2x 7.5 mm (0.295 in) Reibel machine guns with a total of 5,250 rounds

  

The kit and its assembly:.

This fictional Char B1 variant was based on the question what the tank could have looked like if there had been a suitable 75 mm gun available that could replace both its howitzer in the hull and the rather light anti-tank gun in the turret? No such weapon existed in France, but I tried to extrapolate the concept based on the standard Char B1 hull.

 

Two big changes were made: the first concerned the hull howitzer, which was deleted, and its recessed opening faired over with 1 mm styrene sheet and putty. This sound easier as it turned out to be because the suspension for the front right idler wheel had to be retained, and the complex shape of the glacis plate and the opening called for patchwork. A fairing for the co-driver was added as well as a ball mount for the new hull machine gun. New shackles were added to the lower front and, finally, new rows of bolt heads (created with white glue).

 

The turret was completely replaced with a cast turret from a 1943 T-34/76 (Zvezda kit). While its shape and gun mantlet are quite characteristic, I still used it mostly OOB because its size and shape turned out to be a very good match to contemporary French tank turrets. However, the gun barrel was moved and a fairing for a hydro-pneumatic recoil damper was added, as well as a French commander cupola. And an adapter had to be scratched to attach the new turret to the hull, together with small fairings for the wider turret ring.

  

Painting and markings:

I wanted a rather unusual paint scheme for this Char B1 derivative, and found inspiration in an operational museum tank that depicts vehicle “311/Rhin”: it carries a three-tone livery in two greens and brown, instead of the more common sand, dark green and earth brown tones or just two-tone schemes.

 

The colors were adapted to an irregular pattern, and the paints I used were Humbrol 120 (FS 34227, a rather pale interpretation of the tone), 10 (Gloss Dark Brown) and ModelMaster 1764 (FS 34092). As a personal twist, the colors were edged in black, enhancing the contrast.

The markings were puzzled together from various sources in an attempt to create suitable tactical codes of the early 1940 era. The “Ace of Spades” emblem on the turret is, for example, are a marking of the 1st section. The dot in front of the “K” probably indicated a command vehicle, but I am not certain.

 

Some post-shading was done as well as dry-brushing with light earth brown to emphasize edges and details. Then the model was sealed with matt acrylic varnish and received some dusting with grey-brown artist pigments, simulating dust around the running gear.

  

Well, not too much was changed, but the new, bigger turret changes the Char B1’s look considerably – it looks somewhat smaller now? Its new silhouette also reminds me of a duck? Weird, but the conversion worked out well – esp. the modified glacis plate without the howitzer’s recessed opening looks very natural.

 

Blessed Vincent Cabanes Badenes . Born in Torrent (Valencia) on February 25, 1908. Dress the Tertiary Capuchin habit in Godella (Valencia) on September 15, 1923 and March 12, 1932 he was ordained priest by Venerable Luis Amigo. Immediately began studies at the University of Valencia and the Institute for Criminal Studies. Specific exercises his ministry in Madrid Reform Schools and Amurrio (Álava). Alternate admirably study practices in the cabinet of psychology and spiritual direction of the fraternity. With children living parables of mercy with the joyful spirit of the Beatitudes. By late afternoon of August 27, 1936, some violently removed militiamen vicar house Amurrio (Álava) and move to Orduna (Vizcaya). They try to make him renounce. In the flat refusal of the religious turn to Amurrio. But forcing him out of the car and in the meadow of San Bartolome de Orduna, give him a cartload of shots, leaving him for dead. Mauled still manages to get to Don Epifanio Elejalde, who moved to Santo Hospital Orduna. The P. Vicente insistently asks a priest and a doctor. Given the seriousness, the wounded man was taken to the hospital of Basurto, Bilbao. In the early hours of Sunday September 30, 1936 dies but not before having confessed and granted forgiveness to his murderers. Vincent Cabanes religious character was gentle, sweet and extremely friendly. Achiever of his duties as a Christian and religious. He lived totally committed to the reform of lost youth, with lots of competition and a great zeal. Daily meditation of the mysteries of the passion, death and resurrection of the Lord placed his spirit to suffer martyrdom with the strength and courage of the Christian soldier.

 

Welcome Blessed Mary of Two Sisters (nee Jose Miguel Arahal). Born in Dos Hermanas (Seville) on June 17, 1887. Learn the first letters in the schoolhouses of the people and, at twelve, was going to have the Capuchin Tertiary Reform School San Hermenegildo, in his hometown. To be presented at the convent of Mount Sion of the Venerable Torrent Luis Amigo, it says, "Welcome to you, my son," and Welcome will henceforth his name in religion. The April 15, 1905 made ​​his first religious profession and, six years later, issued his final vows. In the spring of 1920 he was ordained a priest. In the congregation of Capuchin Tertiary plays higher charges, master of novices, and vicar general counsel and finally general of the congregation from 1927-1932. During his generalship vocation promotion drives, supports the scientific training of religious and promotes the opening of the work to Latin America. The P. Welcome always tries to instill the devotions which he practiced, especially the Blessed Sacrament, Our Lady of Sorrows, the Seraphic Father St. Francis and Sacred Heart of Jesus. When the July 20, 1936 Reform School Santa Rita de Madrid is assaulted, Fr Welcome continues his habit and is the last to leave. On 31 July, accompanied by two militia force, had to go to the Bank of Biscay first, then that of Spain, to take the funds of the School. Then snatch the money and violently driven Pradera de San Isidro, there was killed. His biographers trace the profile of the P. Welcome as a religious right spirit and strong, demanding of himself and others, adorned with large gifts of government, very tenacious in their apostolic purposes, very fond of the congregation and its juvenile rehabilitation work, a great promoter of vocations priesthood and religious life, and a deep spirituality.

 

Torrent Ambrosio Blessed Mary (nee, Salvador Chuliá Ferrandis). Born in Torrent (Valencia) on April 16, 1866. He studied in the Seminary Church of Valencia, but received the diaconate, he entered the Capuchin Tertiary. On April 4, 1892 he was ordained priest and issues its perpetual vows on July 5, 1898. Man of wide culture, but rather weak character and weak authority, is always manifested more inclined to exercise obedience to the command. In his pastoral ministry was manifested as a man of counsel, spiritual leader of the brotherhood, religious confessor and students. Imprisoned in the parental home, on August 21, 1936 is taken to the prison La Torre, his hometown. In the same Father Ambrose, Capuchin Tertiary nine more, carry virtually community life. From the street you could hear them singing Sorrows of the Virgin and the Wounds of P. San Francisco. In the early hours of September 18, 1936, with seven more priests and religious, is executed in the starting of the mantellina , also called Geez d'Alt . The P. Ambrosio, despite her shyness, is the one with greater courage arrostra encourages martyrdom and raising peers in the final moment, his hands to bless and forgive the perpetrators. In trying to delineate its outline the diverse spiritual biographers agree that the P. Franciscan was Ambrosio joins florecilla: simple, humble, conciliatory, poor, obedient, silent, taciturn, who spoke no ill of anyone and that all missed a good part. Also define it as a man of deep piety, devoted to the Eucharist, great apostle of the confessional and competent spiritual director. His remains lie in the Chapel of the Martyrs, in the parish of Our Lady of Mount Zion in Torrent.

 

Benito Blessed Mary of Burriana (nee, José Manuel Ferrer Jorda), is the brother of father of Blessed Laureano. Born in Burriana (Castellón) on November 26, 1872. In his home town learns the first letters and participate in parish associations. The June 21, 1890 he entered the novitiate of the Capuchin Tertiary, and two years later, on May 27, made ​​his religious profession. On June 5, 1898 issued her final vows, remaining as a religious Brother. In reforming schools Madrid, Seville and Zaragoza, for twenty long years, developing its youth ministry deviated from the path of truth and good, following the thought of his Venerable P. Founder. In the summer of 1932 became part of the College fraternity Caldeiro Foundation, Madrid, where he surprised the war. Expelled from the center, which immediately was transformed into Czech, Fray Benito seeks refuge in his hometown. came to His own, and His own did not receive him, why his steps to Torrent, host finding, along with his brother Laureano , home of the pious lady Trinidad Navarro. "From Fray Benito Maria de Burriana-type lady will tell you that he came home on 14 1936 sold out and went to jail the following September 14. This holy man, in all the time, not talk or a dozen words. His conversation was with the Queen of Heaven. On September 12, the feast of Holy Name of Mary, Rosary prayed nineteen parts. " Fray Benito was not involved in politics, he did not trial. He was killed in the farmhouse of Calabarra of Alzira (Valencia). It was a simple religious, austere, speech brief and very devoted to the Eucharist and Our Lady of Sorrows. In the apostolate of the specific mission of the congregation was always simple and kind Good Shepherd Swain. More changes getting his guys on the testimony of the person that gave them lessons.

 

Blessed Crescentius Garcia Pobo . He was born on April 15, 1903 in Celadas (Teruel). Deceased his good father, he is admitted to the Asylum St. Nicholas of Bari, in Teruel, run by the Capuchin Tertiary. In time, Crescendo feel the Lord's call to religious life. The September 15, 1921 issued his first vows as a religious Amigonian-six years later professes ever. The priestly ordination is taking over the Venerable Luis Amigo, its Founding Father, in Godella (Valencia) on September 16, 1928. His priestly ministry usually develops what reform schools, putting into practice the Lord's command to go after the lost sheep to return to the fold of the Good Shepherd. The first days of July 1936 House Guardianship returns Our Lady of Covadonga in Asturias, Prince Reformatory in Carabanchel Bajo, Madrid, in whose center was surprised a few days after the Spanish civil war. After several adventures, the P. Crescendo is host pious pension Dona Pilar Torres at Angel Square 3, Madrid, where he poses as a medical student. Arrested on August 2, 1936 Carretas street, and found no documentation was taken to the Security Directorate first, and then Sales jail. On 3 October, the Czech Development gave an order to have them delivered to their agents several prisoners, including our blessed, who immediately were shot near the Eastern Cemetery. The P. Crescendo was of medium height, round face, dark, young man. Of a happy, was shown as outgoing. However, inside was simple, humble, mortified and good religious. Spirit organized and methodical, especially distinguished by its generous and sacrificed to personal recovery and social reintegration of young people with problems.

 

Torrent Modesto Blessed Mary (nee, Wattle Gay Vicente). Born in Torrent (Valencia) on January 19, 1885. His parents, and then he, belong to the Venerable Third Order of St. Francis. The young Vincent studied at the Convent in which religious Amigonian admitted as the January 6, 1903. And possibly on the same date, but in 1911, issued his final vows. Repeatedly insists to his superiors in access to the priesthood, but stay on for life as a lay brother. The first ten years of religious exercises his ministry in centers dedicated to the specific task of recovering the lost youth, where masonry alternating with attention to the young applicants. And the last twenty years of religious life passes in the convent of Our Lady of Mount Zion, in his hometown, where he combines teaching admirably the first letters children to the service of household management. Fray Modesto was average height, a little plump, with a round face, brown. Between days eight y September 10, 1936 he was arrested and detained in the town jail, La Torre, where late at night the next 17 departed for martyrdom with seven other priests and religious, all of which killed 18 September 1936. His remains, and those of other religious, rest in the Chapel of the Martyrs, of the parish of Our Lady of Mount Zion, Torrent (Valencia). Those who knew well to delineate their profile Fray Modesto moral religious saying that was distinguished by his upright character and his Franciscan spirit, lover of simplicity and humility, and very delicate on the flyleaf of obedience, poverty alongside exquisite. And certainly virtue Franciscan obedience feature was accompanied by his industry and interest to excel personally and to be helpful to the congregation.

 

Blessed Urban Gil Saez . Born in Bronchales, diocese and province of Teruel Albarracin, on March 9, 1901. By staying fatherless soon, are admitted to the Asylum St. Nicholas of Bari, in Teruel, run by the Capuchin Tertiary. And St. Nicholas makes his primary and received first communion. Inclined to religious life, goes to the house of St. Joseph Novitiate Godella, Valencia, where he received the holy habit. Delivers his first religious vows on April 12, 1919 and in 1928 professes ever. Makes his debut with the children of the School Reform Savior, Amurrio (Álava). Your life can be read and interpreted perfectly, according to one biographer-low key evangelical compassion. It was one of those religious Amigonians always willing to become all things to all, according to the motto of the apostle Paul that the Venerable Luis Amigo liked to repeat. In 1926 pursuing a request to start studying for the priesthood, which was denied by the major superiors until 1935 when it became part of the brotherhood of the novitiate house Godella (Valencia), where he began his ecclesiastical studies. While in the latter war ensues residence Urban Fray shared across the fate and suffering of fraternity brothers. Finally, after an ordeal of interrogation and simulations squad, July 25, 1936 for Benaguacil part with Blessed Florentino Perez, who share avatars, shelter and martyrdom August 23, 1936. Biographers, so sparing in its spiritual character outline, we say it was an exemplary religious. By his cheerfulness was the joy of brotherhood where he lived and educated students. His joy contagious spontaneous and sincere. Its good that gave it a special charm.

 

Alboraya Blessed Dominic Mary (nee Augustine Hurtado Soler). Born in Alboraya (Valencia) on August 28, 1872, from a wealthy family, which enjoys great esteem in the village. He studied primary and secondary schools in the neighboring city of Valencia, and later Latin and philosophy at the Theological Seminary. Just founded the congregation of Capuchin Tertiary, go to the old monastery of Ara Christi Puig (Valencia), in which dwelt the religious Amigonians occasionally. In the third investiture, on June 21, 1889, took the habit, and June 24, 1890 is one of the first 19 religious issues its triennial vows in the hands of the founder Venerable Luis Amigo. The August 15, 1896 issued her final vows and a few months later, he was ordained priest. During his career alternating ecclesiastical and literary studies with harmony and composition, since it is very fond of music. Religious highly competitive and adorned with good social forms, played repeatedly higher charges, as well as a director and secretary general. In late 1935 became part of the School Reform Santa Rita, in the Carabancheles Madrid, where he suffers religious persecution. The P. Domingo was the first to drop out of school reform at home seeking refuge pious Pastor lawyer, young man who had helped him so much. Arrested and imprisoned for Fine Arts, August 15, 1936 was killed near the Retiro Park. The P. Domingo was tall and handsome. Patriarchal aspect. He had a great way with people and a special charisma to reform lost youth. Great composer, great speaker, host of community recreations, example of resignation to all martyr of Christ, according to his biographers.

 

Torrent Blessed Mary Valentine (nee, Jaunzarás Vicente Gómez). Born in Torrent (Valencia) on March 6, 1896. Educated to Tertiary Capuchin enters his congregation on October 15, 1911. Eight years later issued his final vows and was ordained priest in the first half of 1920. He exercises his ministry preferably specific mission centers, ie, reform schools, where it manifests as a great teacher. The P. Valentin, rather short, but sturdy and strong personality, fiery temper was. It manifested cheerful, talkative, optimistic and was always happy. The 28 or August 29, 1936 is held in the family home and held in the prison called La Torre, his hometown. On 15 and 17 September the monks sing in prison Sorrows of the Virgin and the Wounds of P. San Francisco. "Al P. Valentin could be heard across the square perfectly. " The P. Valentine is running on the Source of mantellina, in the early hours of September 18, 1936. Somewhat stern in appearance, but their preaching was simple and appealing. And he was very devoted to the Eucharist, the Virgin of Sorrows and P. San Francisco. Fully identified with the redemptive and merciful attitude of the Good Shepherd, played a large mission in the service of youth. There was always zealous for the glory of God and his love for the Church and the congregation, especially in his ministry of lost youth reform. Contagious his vocation to the children, who was excited with fervorines. He was also humble and simple religion, and was molt valent (was very brave).

 

Blessed Mary of Burriana Laureano (nee, Salvador Ferrer Cardet). Born in Burriana (Castellón) on October 13, 1884. Learn the first letters in the home village, and already at the age of eleven, following the example of his older brother, Blessed Benito Maria de Burriana, enters school seraphic the Tertiary Capuchins have installed in the convent of Mount Sion, of Torrent (Valencia). On December 8, 1900 issued his first vows and the April 12, 1907 the perpetual, was ordained a priest in September of that year in Valencia. He exercised his priestly ministry at the Royal Monastery of Yuste (Cáceres), School Reform Santa Rita (Madrid), in Teruel, in Dos Hermanas (Seville) and, finally, in Godella (Valencia), generally carrying the ministry superior, position that simultaneously with the general counsel. In war Godella surprised, and July 25, 1936 have to leave the convent, finding host pious Torrent, at Dona Trinidad Moreno. The days preceding his martyrdom employed them in prayer and preparation to it. When Ms. Trinidad said to him: "Father, you do not remember the red ', he replied:" Do not worry, it's not when the time comes. I'm preparing myself reading the book of Job. " Never entered politics. On September 13, was arrested with his brother Benito and taken to the town jail. Day 15 still sang with the other brothers of the Virgin of Sorrows. And the evening of the same day he was taken to the farmhouse of Calabarra, in terms of Alzira (Valencia), where he was killed on the morning of the 16th. The P. Laureano was of medium height, bald and early age of little beard, sparse, and pockmarked. Accommodating and friendly nature, his great goodness it surpassed everything. Notable for its delicacy and neatness, displayed a special gift in her delicate attentions to the poor, sick and needy. He said also great zeal for the expansion of the institute and a pious devotion to Our Lady of Sorrows.

 

Blessed Mary of Alacuás León (nee Manuel Legua Martí). Alacuás born, the garden village south of Valencia, on April 23, 1875. Make the first studies in his hometown, but being the son of a benefactor of the religious, a child becomes familiar with the monks of the convent of Torrent, whose congregation enters its just turned fifteen. The June 17, 1892 issued his religious vows in the hands of the Venerable Father Founder. A serious illness away from his brothers would, but again enters and perpetually professed April 12, 1904. In June 1906 he was ordained priest in Valencia. Aimed generally Reform schools in these exercises his ministry, first as vice-superior, and then as superior and general counsel. It's all an example of faithfulness in his service as spiritual director and animator of fraternities, as well as dedication to a lost youth from the path of truth and goodness. Assaulted Reform School Santa Rita de Madrid (which Father Leo was director) on July 20, 1936, the militia gathered all the religious center address. 'We did,' says one of the religious-an act of contrition collective absolution we found each other. There was a deep silence. We were all quiet. Not a single groan or sigh. Not a single act of trying to escape. " Achieved release, the P. Lion takes refuge in Madrid, at the home of a student of the School Reform, which is taken together with the father of her benefactor, for martyrdom. Leaving tells the lady of the house: "Take this handkerchief." To which a militiaman replied: "Do not worry that you're going to need." Both were killed on the road from Madrid to France on September 26, 1936. It was Fr Lion of a religious highly spiritual, totally devoted to the salvation of lost children, so he can be considered a martyr of specific apostolate of the Congregation, in imitation of the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep.

 

Blessed Francisco Maria de Torrent (nee, Just Lerma Martinez). Born in Torrent (Valencia) on November 12, 1886. His parents belonged to the Franciscan Venerable Third Order. Frequent small catechism classes and Convent, and belongs to the Royal Pious Union of St. Anthony of Padua. And in the Convent wears the habit Amigonian the April 14, 1905, and two years later issued his first vows as a religious Brother, Brother Francis never expressed a desire to enter the priesthood. In the Royal Monastery of Yuste, Cáceres, exercises his ministry the first five years of religious life, and the remaining twenty Caldeiro College Foundation, Madrid, whose fraternity civil war surprised. Fray Francisco was adorned with some unusual pedagogical skills for teaching exercise. In so successful work not infrequently arrived at Foundation College professors Caldeiro commissions with the sole purpose of religious congratulate how well prepared students. Evicted the center and become Czech, Fray Francisco strikes out of his hometown, taking refuge in the parental home. Stopped by order of the local committee is led to the town jail, which will depart for martyrdom night from 17 to 18 October 1936, together with seven other people's religious and priests. In his early years as a boy was dark, lively and playful, very loving little noise and study and work. But, as religious, was changed into a young thoughtful, hardworking and methodical. It was also of few words, rather serious, steady and skilled teacher. His spiritual profile shows him as a deeply religious prayer, tireless worker, attentive to everyone, simple and humble, who enjoyed great inner peace.

 

Torrent Reccared Blessed Mary (nee Jose Maria llopez Mora). Born in Torrent (Valencia) on August 22, 1874. His early studies were carried out in the village school, and enter as a religious Amigonian the June 21, 1889. Emits vows on day of the Immaculate, 1896 in Reform School Santa Rita, Madrid. Stay in religion as a lay brother. His apostolate merciful and redeeming the lost youth in various reform schools. In the ministry shows possess uncommon natural endowments for the education of maladjusted youth. The last years of his life were spent in the convent of Our Lady of Mount Zion, in his hometown, tirelessly devoted to his ministry of teaching catechism to children, free evening schoolhouses found for them as charity. Her small figure, but agile and friendly old man, always surrounded by children, visiting the sick and imprisoned and schools bringing food to poor and humble, make your profile highly attractive and friendly. Expelled from the Convent of Torrent with every fraternity, July 20, 1936 was pious shelter with a niece, Mary llopez, until August 4 that is held in the town jail. At dawn on September 18, together with Fr Ambrosio and P. Valentine, Modesto and Fr Fr Francisco, is killed at a place called The Fountain of mantellina, in term of Monserrat, bordering the Torrent. The spiritual profile of Fr Reccared presents it as a simple, humble, friendly, kind and very Franciscan. It has a great spirit of minority and was characterized as a religious pious rezador very observant in their religious and hardworking in his ministry with young people. Fray is a real little flower Reccared Franciscan convent of Our Lady of Mount Zion in Torrent.

 

Blessed Joseph Llosa Balaguer . He was born on August 23, 1901 in Benaguacil (Valencia). Learn the first letters in his hometown and at the age of twelve, he entered the minor seminary that Capuchin Tertiary They run in the convent of Our Lady of Mount Zion in Torrent. In the novitiate house in San Jose, Godella (Valencia) takes the habit on October 15, 1917. And two years later, on the same date, issued his first religious vows. Perpetually professed September 15, 1925. Studies concluded priesthood and was ordained deacon in 1928, but, not considered worthy for the priesthood, never agreed to the priesthood, always ministering in Madrid, whose fraternity Foundation House Caldeiro surprised religious persecution. Provided the corresponding pass, Fray José Llosa moved to Meliana first as his hometown after, but before the uncertainty of the moment, go for refuge in a mansion Velluters Valencia, located very close to Torres de Quart. On the night of October 1, 1936 he was arrested and taken to Civil Government first, and then held in the prison cell of the city. Casually aware that the next day would come for him to kill him, used the evening of that day to talk to a priest, also a prisoner, spiritual things and confession, stating their acceptance of martyrdom, his forgiveness of enemies and large devotion to Jesus and Mary. At dawn on October 7, 1936 was taken from prison and executed in the municipality of his hometown. His remains lie in the Chapel of the Communion of Benaguacil. Of temperament somewhat shy and timid, but very well endowed by nature for the art of music and song, Brother José Llosa received a thorough education cultural, religious and moral. It was a cultivated and sensitive religious, lover of his land and his family, very friendly and with great spirit of giving in his ministry of lost youth reform.

 

Blessed Bernardino María Andújar (nee, Pablo Martínez Robles). Born in Andújar (Jaén) on January 28, 1879. Just attended the local school because their parents, low-income, very soon engaged in the trade of saddler, alternating with agricultural work. He moved to Córdoba and soon became friends with the manager of the Hermits of Sierra Morena, with whom begins the novitiate. But, seeing that this was not his calling, he moved to the Royal Monastery of Yuste, Cáceres, run at the time by the Tertiary Capuchin religious, between those who took the habit, made ​​his novitiate, and issued his first vows on April 15 1909. In 1915 the same date perpetually professed. The twenty years following the passing in reform schools Madrid, Seville and Zaragoza working faithfully in the chores of cooking, and nursing field. His last residence was the Convent of Our Lady of Mount Zion, Torrent, which is handling his job as sexton of the church and where religious persecution surprised. Find pious host this population, but the August 13, 1936 he was arrested and detained in the town jail, where he is taken, with Fr Maria Laureano Burriana and brother Fray Benito Maria de Burriana, and killed the three in the farmhouse of Calabarra of Alzira (Valencia), the night of 15 September 16, 1936. Fray Bernardino was short, plump meats, quiet character, cozy, and with his wit Andalusian naturally not without the grace of the people of the south. It was the exact representation of the Franciscan more plump, always bearer of peace and prosperity exceed fraternal facilitated the convent. Noted for his intense prayer life, manifesting a particular devotion to the Eucharist, the Virgin of Sorrows and the Patriarch San Francisco.

 

Blessed Florentin Perez Romero . Born in Valdecuenca, people of the Serrania de Albarracin (Teruel), on March 14, 1902. Fatherless, are admitted to the Asylum St. Nicholas of Bari, Teruel, run by the Capuchin Tertiary religious. With them learn the alphabet, received his first communion and performs all his studies. As a child shows available for music, dedication to study and inclination to prayer. The September 15, 1919 saw the religious habit and two years later, the day of the Virgin of Sorrows, issued his first religious vows. Perpetually professed in 1927. The following year he was ordained priest by the founder, Venerable Luis Amigo. The P. Florentin begins his priestly ministry in reform school Our Lady of the Way, in Pamplona (Navarra), going to school soon seraphic of San Antonio, in the same city. From 1930-1935 exercises his ministry in the convent of Our Lady of Mount Zion, as a music teacher and educator of children. The revolution will be amazed at the San Jose novitiate Godella (Valencia). One day, with parents Ayelo Francisco Antonio de Massamagrell and a novice again appeared before the firing militants prepared to die. Parents were given acquittal mutually and prepared for martyrdom. Saved life for once, finds refuge with a benefactor of Benaguacil, but eventually was arrested. Spend three days in the town jail. Finally, along with Gil Urban fray, is sacrificed on August 23, 1936 on the exit road of Pobla de Vallbona Liria. The P. Florentin, physically a bundle of branches, had a cheerful and kind, without bitterness or malice, and easily earned the sympathy of all. It was a simple spirit, pious child. It was sweet, kind and patient. From naive and innocent spirit, always professed great devotion to Our Lady of Sorrows.

 

Benifayo Blessed Gabriel Mary (nee, José María Sanchis Mompó). Born in Benifayo (Valencia) on October 8, 1866. In his home town learns the first few letters and then exercising in the carpenter's trade, practiced until nearly twenty years when he decided to enter religion. The June 24, 1890 made ​​his first religious profession in the hands of the Venerable Luis Amigo and August 15, 1896 issued his final vows. Called to serve the Lord from the first hour of the Congregation of Capuchin Tertiary, in his long life toured most of the houses thereof, generally synchronizing administrator ministry with the carpenter's trade. The last thirteen years of his life in the house passes Godella novitiate, Valencia, where he showed his skills as administrative assistant and skill in the treatment of wood. And that's where the race surprised. The July 25, 1936 the novitiate leaves turning to his hometown in search of safer place. Find pious host at his niece Florence Sanchis. On August 14 he was taken violently from her niece's home and held in the town jail. And before dawn on August 16, about two in the morning, along with five other priests, sons of the people, was slain in the departure of La Coma, near the Espioca Mas, and the end of Picassent (Valencia ). Gabriel was a religious Fray very affable, kind and helpful. Manifested also very pious. It was the image of the popular Franciscan brother. It was the humble religious, sociable, friendly and hardworking, which created fraternity. Silent male gentleness, always manifested a reverence Franciscan priests their brethren in religion.

 

Blessed Francisco Tomás Serer . He was born on October 11, 1911 in Alcalalí, town in the province of Alicante and of the diocese of Valencia. Learn the first letters in the village and, at age twelve, his parents take him to school Godella seraphic of the Capuchin Tertiary, where he studied Latin and humanities and made ​​his novitiate. The September 15, 1928 issued his first religious vows and December 20, 1933, the perpetual. The May 24, 1934 receive the priesthood. The rest of his life dedicated to the service of youth lost in centers for the mission of the congregation. During the summer of 1935 made ​​a study trip to France and Belgium to give scientific soundness teaching methods of the congregation, to the time you start a career in medicine at the Central University of Madrid. During 1936 religious persecution found refuge in Madrid, at the home of benefactors. There waits for the shelter his superior, Fr Welcome Maria de Dos Hermanas. Given the delay, and risking his life, gets the steps in your search. At dawn the next day, August 3, his body was found next to the walls of the Prince of Asturias Reformatory in Madrid. Filial love him to go in search of his superior, giving his life in the attempt, and he was a martyr of Christ. The P. Francisco was very stylish and rather thin and normal appearance. Sweet-natured and extremely friendly. He was very pious and in the village caused a print copy. It was an exquisitely good and intelligent religious, why superiors distinguished him. According to his biographers, he was very wise, spoke little and always successfully. The tone of his voice was soft and sweet. At the Institute he had placed great hopes. He was the youngest of the martyrs of the Family Amigonian.

 

Blessed Timothy Valero Perez . He was born on January 24, 1901 in Terriente diocese and province of Teruel Albarracin. Enter the Asylum young St. Nicholas of Bari, Teruel, as charitable asylum for poor children and orphans that is. And he courses in Latin and humanities and turns it Amigonian religious vocation. The September 15, 1917 saw the Tertiary Capuchin habit and entered the novitiate. On the same date, but two years later he made ​​his first religious profession and, six years later, the life. The priestly ordination is taking over from his father and founder, Venerable Luis Amigo, in Godella (Valencia), the September 16, 1928. Develops his pastoral ministry in the House Caldeiro Foundation in Madrid. But most of his pastoral ministry is played in Reform School Santa Rita, also in Madrid, where he left an indelible mark on his service sacramentalization catechesis and youth astray. Particularly in the latter fraternity surprised religious persecution. Busy Reform School Santa Rita the July 20, 1936, religious scatter for shelter in Madrid. The P. Tim heads home of his brother Robert. Denounced by a neighbor, former employee of Santa Rita, militiamen searched the house, arrested him and took him to the Czech Development. On September 17 of that year, without there engaged in political and without trial, was executed and his body buried in a common grave in the cemetery of Vicálvaro (Madrid). The superiors had always intended to reform schools or paternal protection. And fully matched, as the P. Timothy was a young priest, of cheerful, jovial, jokester, easily connecting with youth. He was an excellent musician.

 

Blessed Rosary of Soano (nee, Petra Maria Victoria Quintana Argos). Born in Soano, delightful village of Cantabria, on May 13, 1866. At 13 he left motherless, so is the need to supply it in the care of her three younger siblings: Feliciana, John and Eleuterio. Very soon feel the vocation to the consecrated life to contact Montehano Capuchin convent in whom you put your trust. Meanwhile, his father remarries. Verging 23 years and he sets off to Valencia to join the Capuchin Tertiary Sisters of the Holy Family. The May 14, 1891 issued his first religious vows and completed the five years of temporary vows perpetual. Woman of great value is first local elected superior height fraternities, Massamagrell, Meliana and L'Ollería, novice then, later, general counsel and then general superior for two presidential terms, from 1914-1926, finally concluding his days in the office of director and vicar general of the congregation. Fulfilling this last service surprised religious persecution in the fraternity house Massamagrell novitiate (Valencia). Expelled from the convent the sisters, was the last to leave the house on July 20, 1936, finding refuge in pious home to Carmen dels Mudets first, then the house of a poor widow. Snatched at gunpoint from his refuge, was transferred to the Union of Puteoli (Valencia) and, after two days, the August 22, 1936, after deep humiliation and insults, shot to death at the end of More Macia, in the Way of Transit, of that people. At the supreme moment of martyrdom murderer granted pardon to the delivery of your ring bride of Christ. Soano Rosary, woman of great goodness, merciful and compassionate, was soul deep prayer and austerity manifest. He was distinguished for his humility, poverty and simplicity of life truly Franciscan.

 

Blessed Francis Xavier of Rafelbuñol (nee Mary Fenollosa Alcaina). Born in Rafelbuñol (Valencia) on May 24, 1901. It is the largest of the twelve children of Joseph and Mary Rosa consorts, both belonging to the Third Order of St. Francis. Get the first instruction and intellectual Christian village school. And, just may, be put to work to help support the family of simple farmers, patriarchal. Directed by the Capuchins of La Magdalena in Massamagrell, she suddenly wakes up in a religious vocation. When Mary wants to join the mother religion opposes, as it has in it an aid in the many chores. And when to turn 21 years old, he entered the Capuchin Tertiary. The May 11, 1921 began her novitiate in Altura, Castellón, on the same date two years later issued his first religious vows, and in 1928, the perpetual. The short course of his religious life as perfection walks fraternities Height (Castellón), Meliana, Benaguacil and Massamagrell (Valencia), in the latter convent civil strife surprised. The July 20, 1936 the mayor of the town gives the order to leave the convent. Our Blessed finds shelter in the family home in Rafelbuñol. Located, is forced to make housework Abbey, where he had established the Committee. The September 27, 1936 is arrested, along with his brother José Canon and uncle Don Juan Bautista, and murdered in the cemetery of Gilet, Valencia. "May God forgive you and I forgive you," she heard him say who was about to give the coup de grace. A sister in religion and trace the semblance of Francisca: "She was a young religious, cheerful, jovial and good. A very nice brown, with black eyes that spoke. He was very sociable with people and with the girls that arouse plan was in religious vocations. Alternated much with everyone. He studied music and played piano. She sang beautifully and nice voice. "

 

Ochovi Beata Maria Serafina (nee Manuela Fernández Fair Ibero). Born in Ochovi, village Navarra Pamplona basin, on August 6, 1872. It is the penultimate in a family of eight children, four of whom wear the Franciscan cheesecloth. Daughter of a large family, patriarchal, attended the school in the town until fifteen years when religion enters. The May 8, 1887 he joined the Capuchin Tertiary, in the Sanctuary of Montiel (Benaguacil, Valencia), founding the Institute home. The May 14, 1891 issued his first religious vows, and after five years of temporary vows perpetual. In this time and is shown as pious religious, observant and very loving poverty. It is because, by nature, very formal, serious and responsible. In 1902 he was elected general counsel, a position for which he is re-elected in the five following general chapters. Compatible with that office know that of the fraternities on superior Segorbe Massamagrell, height, L'Ollería, Carcaixent, Valencia Seminar and again Massamagrell, whose fraternity war surprised. The July 26, 1936 the sisters had to leave the religious house. The last to do is Sister Serafina, superior of the fraternity, who found shelter at the home of Carmen dels Mudets in the church square. On August 21, Friday, was arrested and, with Rosary Sister Soano, both brought to the Committee of Puteoli. The night of the 22nd, drew the sisters Rosario and Seraphina to "give the prom" and the murdered. Sister Serafina was of a serious, steady, yet frank, without equivocation or fold. I knew his character combine seemingly dry with humility in dealing with the sisters. He was demanding to itself, charitable and humble, fervent lover of work, especially the more modest, and exemplary in fulfilling their religious obligations. He was, indeed, the genius soon, but it was very noble. It was a whole person, nice. Talking to her was affectionate and loving. It was all heart.

 

Beata Carmen Garcia Moyon . He was born on September 13, 1888 in the French city of Nantes, daughter of a Spanish father and French mother. Religiously educated, Carmen soon gives his true feelings samples Christians, who later defended with all his might. Woman heroic temperament and boundless loveliness, stir bravely boil inside feeling the wrath of God, like another St. John Eudes to a heretic, to defend their own rights and those of the church. In the early twentieth century García-Moyon family returned to Spain, settling in the town of Segorbe, Castellón. Surely by contact with young daughters Carmen Venerable Luis Amigo turns in her religious vocation. In fact, the January 11, 1918 he joined the congregation of Capuchin Tertiary, but having completed his temporary vows, not renewed. In 1926 the city are already in Torrent, Valencia. Immediately contact the friars of the convent of Mount Zion. Eventually the French girl, as he was known, is used in teaching catechism to the children of the convent, review the sacred clothes, cleaning the beautiful church, and even put a sewing workshop at home, where he taught the young torrentinas the art of sewing, mending and embroidery clothes. A true catechist, parish and social worker cooperative. His religious beliefs led him to suffer a violent death on the night of January 30, 1937 in the ravine Canyes them, municipality of Torrent: the doused in petrol and set alight. Viva Cristo Rey! were his last words. Those who knew Carmen tell us, humanly, was very loving and caring, physically, was short, plump, handsome and serene and penetrating gaze, and, morally, very religious and very pious. It was a true female leader of Christian thought.

 

***

 

The Second Spanish Republic was proclaimed on April 14, 1931, came imbued with strong anticlericalism. Just a month later temples fires occurred in Madrid, Valencia, Malaga and other cities, without the government did nothing to stop them and not find those responsible to judge them according to law. The damage was immense, but the government did not noticed whether material or moral, for which he was accused of collusion. The Church in the Republic had complied not only with respect, but also a spirit of cooperation for the good of Spain. These were the instructions that Pope Pius XI and gave the Catholic bishops. But sectarian laws grew day by day. In this context it was suppressed the Society of Jesus and the Jesuits were expelled.

 

During the Communist Revolution of Asturias (October 1934), shed their blood many priests and religious, including the Ten Martyrs of Turon, 9 Brothers of the Christian Schools and Passionist canonized on November 21, 1999.

 

During the first half of 1936, after the victory of the Popular Front, made up of socialists, communists, and other radical groups, there were more severe attacks, with new fire temples, crosses demolitions, expulsions of priests, ban funerals and processions, etc.., and threats of more violence.

 

They broke with the rage, after July 18, 1936. Spain was again land of martyrs from that date until April 1, 1939, for in the Republican zone was triggered most known religious persecution in history from Roman times, even higher than that of the French Revolution.

 

It was a tragic and glorious three years at a time, that of 1936-1939, faithfully to remember not to miss the historic memory.

 

At the end of the persecution, the number of martyrs reached almost ten thousand: 13 bishops, 4,184 diocesan priests and seminarians, 2,365 religious, 283 nuns and lay several thousand, of either sex, members of Catholic Action and other apostolic associations , the final number is not yet possible to determine.

 

The most eloquent testimony of the prosecution gave Manuel de Irujo, republican government minister, at a meeting thereof held in Valencia-then-capital of the Republic, in early 1937, introduced the following Memorandum:

 

"The factual situation of the Church, from July, loyal throughout except Basque, is the following: a) All the altars, images and objects of worship, with very few exceptions, have been destroyed, the most with contempt. b) All churches have been closed for worship, which has been completely and utterly suspended. c) Much of the temples, in Catalonia as a matter of normal, were burned. d) The parks and government agencies were bells, chalices, candlesticks and other objects of worship, have been cast yet exploited for war or for industrial materials. e) In the churches have been installed deposits of all types, markets, garages, stables, barracks, shelters and various other modes of occupation. f) All have been evicted convents and religious life suspended in them. Its buildings, ceremonial objects and goods of all kinds were burned, looted, occupied and demolished. g) Priests and religious have been detained, imprisoned and executed without trial by thousands, facts that while amenguados continue further, not only in the rural population, where they have been hunted down and killed wild but in populations. Madrid and Barcelona and other major cities have hundreds of prisoners in its jails without other known cause your priest or religious character. h) It has come to the absolute prohibition of private retention of pictures and objects of worship. The home searches police practice, diving inside the rooms, from intimate personal or family life, ridicule and violence destroys images, prints, religious books and how it relates to worship or remember. "

 

To the priests, religious and lay people who gave their lives for God's people began to call them martyrs because they had no political involvement and made war against anyone. Therefore, they can not be considered fallen in wars or victims of ideological repression that occurred in the two areas, but martyrs for the faith. Yes, today venerate on the altars as martyrs for the Christian faith, because the Church has officially recognized who gave their lives for God during religious persecution in 1936.

My first hummingbird moth! While over at my parent's house last week I saw this little guy feeding on a patch of bee balm. I didn't have a camera with me but fortunately when I returned the next day it was again at the same patch of flowers. Fun to watch, it moved from flower to flower very similar to a bumble bee with the exception that it never landed on the flower but hovered like a hummingbird at each petal as it worked its way methodically around each flower.

 

So glad I got to see one of these!

Raymond Anthony Johnson

 

Upon discovering five months ago that Teddywedgers was for up for sale last April, I've made a point to come in and say hi to Ray more often. Since becoming the owner of Myles Teddywedgers Cornish Pasty in 2009 (when original owner Myles passed away), Ray has seen a lot change on the isthmus over the years. Many faces come and go, but as long as I've known of the existence of this wonderful place; Ray has always been there. About a month has passed since Ray and I last talked, but turns out he has recently found a new owner for Teddywedgers. I can only imagine the amount of work required to sell a business, but I'm very thankful that the new owner is going to keep making pasty's.

 

This evening I caught myself snapping photos of the many signs hiding the interior view from any passerby, but was happy to see Ray come out (as I couldn't see in I didn't know he was there). Turns out Teddywedgers is getting a little bit of a remodel inside, with new floors being the main focal point. Ray allowed me to sneak a peak inside, it was almost more alien then I could have ever imagined. No longer an aroma of baking pies, but a stale musty smell lingered. All the appliances had been moved from the walls, and tiles were ripped off the floor. Ray closed the door one final time, latching it with a methodical clunking noise and this chapter in his life drawn to a close.

 

Fate plays in strange ways, but conversing with Ray I found that this was to be the last night he would close the doors. Tomorrow, he was meeting with the new owner to sign over Teddywedgers and give up his ownership. While it was a bit bittersweet, he told me that it was time; all good things must come to an end. In reality, Ray has worked non-stop seemingly to provide the delicious pies to many a tourist and Madisonion in his time. He has passed down the craft to the new owner, and will be sticking around in the basement (in case there are questions ) til at least the end of September. Then he hopes to move to Rockford for a little while, before returning to his roots in Chicago.

 

He expressed to me that 30 years ago, he would have never believed he would have had the opportunities that Madison brought him. Whether having the best front row seat for many Madison events over the years, a smile crept on his face when he told me how nice it was to take in Jazz @5 without any work to do. He even stated there were times he feared he'd never get out of Chicago, and now here we were talking of the next chapter. While Teddywedgers will be closed for a few weeks for the remodel work, it was the most happy thing to hear that he will be able to relax for a change.

 

I requested a photo of Ray in front of Teddywedgers, as normally he's hiding behind the scenes; today I make him a celebrity. A proud moment for me, as well as for Ray; to know that tomorrow is yet to be made.

Year 2088.

A revolutionary leap in advanced rocket propulsion had shattered old frontiers. Humanity, no longer bound by the confines of the Solar System, began reaching outward—toward the stars. The great powers turned their gaze to neighboring systems, launching expeditions with relentless ambition.

 

The Russian nuclear space fleet advanced methodically, planetoid by planetoid, laying down autonomous research outposts like breadcrumbs across the void. Each mission, another step into the unknown.

 

Sergey was just another crew member—an astronaut trained more by circumstance than destiny. He and a small team had been deployed to a nameless, rock-strewn world. It didn’t even earn the dignity of a name, only a five-character alphanumeric code. But it had an atmosphere—and in deep space, that alone was enough to warrant interest.

 

Above him, the sky ignited with the light of departing ships—bright arcs carving through the dark as the fleet accelerated toward the next target. Sergey trudged across the desolate stone wastes, unaware that just beneath his boots, something ancient and alive stirred.

 

Unaware that fate had chosen him—a quiet man from Bryansk—for a moment that would forever divide human history into two eras: Before Contact… and After.

Not taking any chances, the lady is methodical in her approach to winning this game. The man at the upper right appears disinterested, but he is no doubt keeping a watchful eye out on the proceedings.

thegoldensieve.com

 

A good thing continues

 

Some six months ago, I posted almost 100 images and a few thoughts I felt were missing from the many existing RX1 reviews. The outpouring of support and interest in that article was very gratifying. When I published, I had used the camera for six full months, enough time to come to a view of its strengths and weaknesses and to produce a small portfolio of good images, but not enough time to see the full picture (pun intended). In the following six months, I have used the camera at least as frequently as in the first six and have produced another small set of good images. It should be noted that my usage of the RX1 in the last six (and especially in the last 3) months has involved less travel and more time with the family and around the house; I will share relatively few of these images but will spend some time sharing my impressions of its functionality for family snapshots as I am sure there is some interest. And let it be said here: one of the primary motivations to purchase the camera was to take more photos with the family, and after one full year I can confidently say: money well spent.

The A7/r game-changer?

 

In the past six months, Sony have announced and released two full-frame, interchangeable lens cameras that clearly take design cues from the RX1: the A7 and the A7r. These cameras are innovative and highly capable and, as such, are in the midst of taking the photography world by storm. I think they are compelling enough cameras that I wonder whether Sony is wasting its energy continuing to develop further A-mount cameras. Sony deserve credit for a bold strategy—many companies would have been content to allow the success of the the RX1 (and RX1R) generate further sales before pushing further into the white space left unexplored by camera makers with less ambition.This is not the place to detail the relative advantages and disadvantages of the RX1 versus the A7/r except to make the following point. I currently use a Nikon D800 and an RX1: were I to sell both and purchase the A7r + 35mm f/2.8 I would in many ways lose nothing by way of imaging capability or lens compatibility but would pocket the surplus $1250-1750. Indeed this loyal Nikon owner thought long and hard about doing so, which speaks to the strategic importance of these cameras for a company trying to make inroads into a highly concentrated market.Ultimately, I opted to hang onto the two cameras I have (although this decision is one that I revisit time and time again) and continue to use them as I have for the past year. Let me give you a quick flavor of why.

The RX1 is smaller and more discrete

 

This is a small a point, but my gut reaction to the A7/r was: much smaller than the D800, not as small as the RX1. The EVF atop the A7/r and the larger profile of interchangeable mount lenses means that I would not be able to slip the A7/r into a pocket the way I can the RX1. Further, by virtue of using the EVF and its loud mechanical shutter, the A7/r just isn’t as stealthy as the RX1. Finally, f/2 beats the pants off of f/2.8 at the same or smaller size.At this point, some of you may be saying, “Future Sony releases will allow you to get a body without an EVF and get an f/2 lens that has a slimmer profile, etc, etc.” And that’s just the point: to oversimplify things, the reason I am keeping my RX1 is that Sony currently offers something close to an A7 body without a built-in EVF and with a slimmer profile 35mm f/2.

The D800 has important functional advantages

 

On the other side of the spectrum, the AF speed of the A7/r just isn’t going to match the D800, especially when the former is equipped with a Nikon lens and F-mount adapter. EVFs cannot yet match the experience of looking through the prism and the lens (I expect they will match soon, but aren’t there yet). What’s more, I have made such an investment in Nikon glass that I can’t yet justify purchasing an adapter for a Sony mount or selling them all for Sony’s offerings (many of which aren’t to market yet).Now, all of these are minor points and I think all of them disappear with an A8r, but they add up to something major: I have two cameras very well suited to two different types of shooting, and I ask myself if I gain or lose by getting something in between—something that wasn’t quite a pocket shooter and something that was quite a DSLR? You can imagine, however, that if I were coming to the market without a D800 and an RX1, that my decision would be far different: dollar for dollar, the A7/r would be a no-brainer.During the moments when I consider selling to grab an A7r, I keep coming back to a thought I had a month or so before the RX1 was announced. At that time I was considering something like the NEX cameras with a ZM 21mm f/2.8 and I said in my head, “I wish someone would make a carry-around camera with a full frame sensor and a fixed 35mm f/2.8 or f/2.” Now you understand how attractive the RX1 is to me and what a ridiculously high bar exists for another camera system to reach.

Okay, so what is different from the last review?

 

For one, I had an issue with the camera’s AF motor failing to engage and giving me an E61:00 error. I had to send it out to Sony for repairs (via extended warranty and service plan). I detailed my experience with Sony Service here [insert link] and I write to you as a very satisfied customer. That is to say, I have 3 years left on a 4 year + accidental damage warranty and I feel confident enough in that coverage to say that I will have this beauty in working order for at least another 3 years.For two, I’ve spent significantly less time thinking of this camera as a DSLR replacement and have instead started to develop a very different way of shooting with it. The activation barrier to taking a shot with my D800 is quite high. Beyond having to bring a large camera wherever you go and have it in hand, a proper camera takes two hands and full attention to produce an image. I shoot slowly and methodically and often from a tripod with the D800. In contrast, I can pull the RX1 out, pop off the lens cap, line up and take a shot with one hand (often with a toddler in the other). This fosters a totally different type of photography.

My “be-there” camera

 

The have-everywhere camera that gives DSLR type controls to one-handed shooting lets me pursue images that happen very quickly or images that might not normally meet the standards of “drag-the-DSLR-out-of-the-bag.” Many of those images you’ll see on this post. A full year of shooting and I can say this with great confidence: the RX1 is a terrific mash-up of point-and-shoot and DSLR not just in image quality and features, but primarily in the product it helps me create. To take this thinking a bit further: I find myself even processing images from the RX1 differently than I would from my DSLR. So much so that I have strongly considered starting a tumblr and posting JPEGs directly from the RX1 via my phone or an iPad rather than running the bulk of them through Lightroom, onto Flickr and then on the blog (really this is just a matter of time, stay tuned, and those readers who have experience with tumblr, cloud image storage and editing, etc, etc, please contact me, I want to pick your brain).Put simply, I capture more spontaneous and beautiful “moments” than I might have otherwise. Photography is very much an exercise in “f/8 and be there,” and the RX1 is my go-to “be there” camera.

The family camera

 

I mentioned earlier that I justified the purchase of the RX1 partly as a camera to be used to document the family moments into which a DSLR doesn’t neatly fit. Over the past year I’ve collected thousands and thousands of family images with the RX1. The cold hard truth is that many of those photos could be better if I’d taken a full DSLR kit with me to the park or the beach or the grocery store each time. The RX1 is a difficult camera to use on a toddler (or any moving subject for that matter); autofocus isn’t as fast as a professional DSLR, it’s difficult to perfectly compose via an LCD (especially in bright sunlight), but despite these shortcomings, it’s been an incredibly useful family camera. There are simply so many beautiful moments where I had the RX1 over my shoulder, ready to go that whatever difficulties exist relative to a DSLR, those pale in comparison to the power of it’s convenience. The best camera is the one in your hand.

Where to go from here.

 

So what is the value of these RX1 going forward, especially in a world of the A7/r and it’s yet-to-be-born siblings without an EVF and a pancake lens? Frankly, at its current price (which is quite fair when you consider the value of the the body and the lens) I see precious little room for an independent offering versus a mirrorless, interchangeable lens system with the same image quality in a package just as small. That doesn’t mean Sony won’t make an RX2 or an RX1 Mark II (have a look at it’s other product lines to see how many SKUs are maintained despite low demand). Instead, I see the RX1 as a bridge that needed to exist for engineers, managers, and the market to make it to the A7/r and it’s descendants.A Facebook friend recently paid me a great compliment; he said something like, “Justin, via your blog, you’ve sold a ton of RX1 cameras.” Indeed, despite my efforts not to be a salesman, I think he’s right: I have and would continue to recommend this camera.The true value of the RX1 going forward is for those of us who have the thing on our shoulders; and yes, if you have an investment in and a love for a DSLR system, there’s still tremendous value in getting one, slinging it over your shoulder, and heading out into the wide, bright world; A7/r or no, this is just an unbelievably capable camera.

Schweiz / Berner Oberland - Jungfrau

 

seen from Morgenberghorn

 

gesehen vom Morgenberghorn

 

The Jungfrau (YOONG-frow[c], German pronunciation: [ˈjʊŋˌfʁaʊ̯], transl. "maiden, virgin"), at 4,158 meters (13,642 ft) is one of the main summits of the Bernese Alps, located between the northern canton of Bern and the southern canton of Valais, halfway between Interlaken and Fiesch. Together with the Eiger and Mönch, the Jungfrau forms a massive wall of mountains overlooking the Bernese Oberland and the Swiss Plateau, one of the most distinctive sights of the Swiss Alps.

 

The summit was first reached on August 3, 1811, by the Meyer brothers of Aarau and two chamois hunters from Valais. The ascent followed a long expedition over the glaciers and high passes of the Bernese Alps. It was not until 1865 that a more direct route on the northern side was opened.

 

The construction of the Jungfrau Railway in the early 20th century, which connects Kleine Scheidegg to the Jungfraujoch, the saddle between the Mönch and the Jungfrau, made the area one of the most-visited places in the Alps. Along with the Aletsch Glacier to the south, the Jungfrau is part of the Jungfrau-Aletsch area, which was declared a World Heritage Site in 2001.

 

Etymology

 

The name Jungfrau ("maiden, virgin"), which refers to the highest of the three prominent mountains overlooking the Interlaken region, along with the Mönch ("monk") and the Eiger ("ogre"), is most likely derived from the name Jungfrauenberg given to Wengernalp, the alpine meadow directly facing the huge northern side of the Jungfrau, across the Trummelbach gorge. Wengernalp was so named for the nuns of Interlaken Monastery, its historical owner. Contrary to popular belief, the name did not originate from the appearance of the snow-covered mountain, the latter looking like a veiled woman.

 

The "virgin" peak was heavily romanticized as "goddess" or "priestess" in late 18th to 19th century Romanticism. Its summit, considered inaccessible, remained untouched until the 19th century. After the first ascent in 1811 by Swiss alpinist Johann Rudolf Meyer, the peak was jokingly referred to as "Mme Meyer" (Mrs. Meyer).

 

Geographic setting

 

Politically, the Jungfrau (and its massif) is split between the municipalities of Lauterbrunnen (Bern) and Fieschertal (Valais). It is the third-highest mountain of the Bernese Alps after the nearby Finsteraarhorn and Aletschhorn, respectively 12 and 8 km (7.5 and 5 mi) away. But from Lake Thun, and the greater part of the canton of Bern, it is the most conspicuous and the nearest of the Bernese Oberland peaks; with a height difference of 3,600 m (11,800 ft) between the summit and the town of Interlaken. This, and the extreme steepness of the north face, secured for it an early reputation for inaccessibility.

 

The Jungfrau is the westernmost and highest point of a gigantic 10 km (6.2 mi) wall dominating the valleys of Lauterbrunnen and Grindelwald. The wall is formed by the alignment of some of the biggest north faces in the Alps, with the Mönch (4,107 m or 13,474 ft) and Eiger (3,967 m or 13,015 ft) to the east of the Jungfrau, and overlooks the valleys to its north by a height of up to 3 km (1.9 mi). The Jungfrau is approximately 6 km (3.7 mi) from the Eiger; with the summit of the Mönch between the two mountains, 3.5 km (2.2 mi) from the Jungfrau. The Jungfraujoch is the saddle between the Jungfrau and the Mönch and the Eigerjoch is the saddle between the Mönch and the Eiger. The wall is extended to the east by the Fiescherwand and to the west by the Lauterbrunnen Wall, although it follows different directions from the Jungfrau and the Eiger.

 

The difference of altitude between the deep valley of Lauterbrunnen (800 m or 2,600 ft) and the summit is particularly visible from the area of Mürren. From the valley floor, west of the massif, the altitude gain is more than 3 km (1.9 mi) for a horizontal distance of 4 km (2.5 mi).

 

The landscapes around the Jungfrau are extremely contrasted. In contrast to the vertiginous precipices of its northwest, the mountain's southeastern side emerges from the upper snows of the Jungfraufirn, one of the main feeders of the Aletsch Glacier, at around 3,500 meters (11,500 ft). The 20-kilometer-long (12 mi) valley of Aletsch on the southeast is completely uninhabited, and is surrounded by neighboring valleys with similar landscapes. The area as a whole constitutes the largest glaciated area not just in the Alps, but in Europe as well.

 

Climbing history

 

In 1811, the brothers Johann Rudolf (1768–1825) and Hieronymus Meyer, sons of Johann Rudolf Meyer (1739–1813), the head of a rich merchant family of Aarau, along with several servants and a porter picked up at Guttannen, first reached the Valais by way of the Grimsel, and crossed the Beich Pass, a glacier pass over the Oberaletsch Glacier, to the head of the Lötschen valley. There, they added two local chamois hunters, Alois Volken and Joseph Bortis, to their party and traversed the Lötschenlücke before reaching the Aletschfirn (the west branch of the Aletsch Glacier), where they established the base camp, north of the Aletschhorn. After the Guttannen porter was sent back alone over the Lötschenlücke, the party finally reached the summit of the Jungfrau by the Rottalsattel on August 3. They then recrossed the two passes named to their point of departure in Valais, and went home again over the Grimsel.

 

The journey was a most extraordinary one for the time, and some persons threw doubts at its complete success. To settle these, another expedition was undertaken in 1812. In this the two sons, Rudolf (1791–1833) and Gottlieb (1793–1829), of Johann Rudolf Meyer, played the chief parts. After an unsuccessful attempt, defeated by bad weather, in the course of which the Oberaarjoch was crossed twice (this route being much more direct than the long detour through the Lötschental), Rudolf, with the two Valais hunters (Alois Volker and Joseph Bortis), a Guttannen porter named Arnold Abbühl, and a Hasle man, bivouacked on a depression on the southeast ridge of the Finsteraarhorn. Next day (August 16) the whole party attempted the ascent of the Finsteraarhorn from the Studer névé on the east by way of the southeast ridge, but Meyer, exhausted, remained behind. The following day the party crossed the Grünhornlücke to the Aletsch Glacier, but bad weather then put an end to further projects. At a bivouac, probably just opposite the present Konkordia Hut, the rest of the party, having come over the Oberaarjoch and the Grünhornlücke, joined the Finsteraarhorn party. Gottlieb, Rudolf's younger brother, had more patience than the rest and remained longer at the huts near the Märjelensee, where the adventurers had taken refuge. He could make the second ascent (September 3) of the Jungfrau, the Rottalsattel being reached from the east side as is now usual, and his companions being the two Valais hunters.

 

The third ascent dates from 1828, when several men from Grindelwald, headed by Peter Baumann, planted their flag upon the summit. Next came the ascent by Louis Agassiz, James David Forbes, Heath, Desor, and Duchatelier in 1841, recounted by Desor in his Excursions et Séjours dans les Glaciers. Gottlieb Samuel Studer published an account of the next ascent made by himself and Bürki in 1842.

 

In 1863, a party consisting of three young Oxford University graduates and three Swiss guides successfully reached the summit and returned to the base camp of the Faulberg (located near the present position of the Konkordia Hut) in less than 11 hours (see the section below, The 1863 Ascent). In the same year Mrs Stephen Winkworth became the first woman to climb the Jungfrau. She also slept overnight in the Faulberg cave prior to the ascent as there was no hut at that time.

 

Before the construction of the Jungfraujoch railway tunnel, the approach from the glaciers on the south side was very long. The first direct route from the valley of Lauterbrunnen was opened in 1865 by Geoffrey Winthrop Young, H. Brooke George with the guide Christian Almer. They had to carry ladders with them in order to cross the many crevasses on the north flank. Having spent the night on the rocks of the Schneehorn (3,402 m or 11,161 ft) they gained next morning the Silberlücke, the depression between the Jungfrau and Silberhorn, and thence in little more than three hours reached the summit. Descending to the Aletsch Glacier they crossed the Mönchsjoch, and passed a second night on the rocks, reaching Grindelwald next day. This route became a usual until the opening of the Jungfraujoch.

 

The first winter ascent was made on 23 January 1874, by Meta Brevoort and W. A. B. Coolidge with guides Christian and Ulrich Almer. They used a sled to reach the upper Aletsch Glacier, and were accompanied by Miss Brevoort's favorite dog, Tschingel.

 

The Jungfrau was climbed via the west side for the first time in 1885 by Fritz and Heinrich von Allmen, Ulrich Brunner, Fritz Graf, Karl Schlunegger and Johann Stäger—all from Wengen. They ascended the Rottal ridge (Innere Rottalgrat) and reached the summit on 21 September. The more difficult and dangerous northeast ridge that connects the summit from the Jungfraujoch was first climbed on 30 July 1911 by Albert Weber and Hans Schlunegger.

 

In July 2007, six Swiss Army recruits, part of the Mountain Specialists Division 1, died in an accident on the normal route. Although the causes of the deaths was not immediately clear, a report by the Swiss Federal Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research concluded that the avalanche risk was unusually high due to recent snowfall, and that there was "no other reasonable explanation" other than an avalanche for the incident.

 

The 1863 Ascent

 

The Führerbuch of the Alpine guide Peter Baumann records an ascent of the Jungfrau made by himself with three men from England in July 1863. The foreign climbers were long thought to have been John Tyndall, J.J. Hornby and T.H. Philpott, until in 1958 the records were checked by the Alpine Club and the following conclusion was reached:

 

On July 23, 1963, Phillpotts, with James Robertson and H.J. Chaytor, climbed the Jungfrau (the entry shown in A.J. 32. 227 was wrongly transcribed by Montagnier, who says ‘T.H. Philpott’ for J.S. Phillpotts). The entry in Peter Baumann’s Führerbuch (facsimile in A.C. archives) says that the trio crossed the Strahlegg Pass and the Oberaarjoch, and then climbed the Jungfrau from the Eggishorn.

 

Tyndall, Hornby and Philpott were well-known Alpinists, but there is no record of their having attempted the Jungfrau in 1863. Robertson, Chaytor and Phillpotts were novices; they had recently graduated from Oxford University where they had all been keen members of the Oxford University Boat Club.

 

William Robertson (1839–1892), the leader of the expedition (wrongly called ‘James’ in the Note quoted above), was an Australian by birth, and the first non-British national to take part in the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race. He later became a barrister and member of parliament in Australia. He and H.J. Chaytor (possibly the father of the medievalist Henry John Chaytor) were both members of the victorious Oxford team in the 1861 Boat Race. James Surtees Phillpotts (1839–1930) was the third member of the team; he would later become headmaster of Bedford School. The trio had three Swiss guides, Peter Baumann, Peter Kaufmann ("Grabipeter", father of Peter Kaufmann the younger) and Rubi.

 

A description of the ascent of the Jungfrau is contained in a letter dated Sunday 26 July which Phillpotts wrote to his friend Alexander Potts (later to become the first headmaster of Fettes College). The letter is now in the possession of the Alpine Club. The following extracts are from that letter.

 

The Virgin certainly did not smile on the poor "fools who rushed in" on her sacred heights, i.e. in plain British, we had the treadmill slog, the biting wind, the half frost-bitten feet and the flayed faces that generally attend an Alpine ascent.

 

We got to the Faulberg hole about dark, and enjoyed the coffee the longman (Kauffmann) made, as one would in a hole in a rock in a cold evening. The "Faulberg Nachtlager" consists of two holes and a vestibule to the upper hole. The Upper Hole in which we lodged just contained Chay[tor], the Guv [Robertson] and myself, stretched at full length on a little hay over a hard rock mattress, convex instead of concave at the point where one likes to rest one's weight. Chaytor was in the middle, and as we were very close was warm and slept. The Guv and I courted Nature's soft nurse in vain. At two we got up and methodically put our feet into the stocks, i.e. our boots, breakfasted and shivered, then started (unwashed of course, as the cold gave us malignant hydrophobia) a little after 3:30.

 

The hole was about 150 feet [46 m] up one of the loose stone cliffs one now knows so well. So we groped our way down it and over the moraine – the stars still lingering, as day was just dawning. We could not start at 1:30, the proper time, as there was no moon and we wanted light as we had to tramp the glacier at once. Rubi led, and off we went, roped and in Indian file, in the old treadmill way over the slippery plowed-field-like snow that lay on the upper glacier, for a pull without a check of one or two hours.

 

At last we came to the region of bergschrunds and crevasses. They seemed to form at first an impassable labyrinth, but gradually the guides wound in and out between the large rifts, which were exquisitely lovely with their overhanging banks of snow and glittering icicles, and then trod as on pins and needles over a snowbridge here and there, or had to take a jump over the more feasible ones – and we found ourselves at the foot of the mountain; trudged up on the snow which ought to have been crisp but was even then more or less fresh fallen and sloppy; had to creep over about three crevasses, and after a tiresome pull, dragging one leg after another out of ankle or knee deep snow, we got on a crest of snow at right angles to the slope we had just come up. That slope with its crevasses on one side, and on the other a shorter and much steeper one which led in a few steps to a precipice.

 

All along this crest went a snakelike long crevasse, for which we had continually to sound, and go first one side and then the other; then we got to the foot of the saddle. Some twenty or thirty steps, some cut, some uncut, soon took us up a kind of hollow, and we got on a little sloping plateau of some six feet [1.8 m] large, where we left the grub and the knapsack, keeping my small flask of cognac only. Then up a steep ice slope, very steep I should say, down which the bits of ice cut out of the steps hopped and jumped at full gallop and then bounded over to some bottomless place which we could not see down. Their pace gave one an unpleasant idea of the possible consequence of a slip.

 

Here we encountered a biting bitter wind. Peter Baumann cut magnificent steps, at least he and Rubi did between them, the one improving on the other's first rough blows. After Rubi came Chaytor with Kauffmann behind him, then the Guv, and then myself, the tail of the string. Each step was a long lift from the last one, and as the snow was shallow they had to be cut in the ice which was like rock on this last slope.

 

Suddenly there burst upon us, on lifting our heads over the ridge, the green and cheerful valleys of Lauterbrunnen and Interlaken, of Grindelwald and a distant view of others equally beautiful stretching on for ever in one vast panorama. On the other side in grim contrast there was a wild and even awful scene. One gazed about one and tried in vain to see to the bottom of dark yawning abysses and sheer cliffs of ice or rock.

 

Tourism

 

Named after the Jungfrau, the Jungfrau Region of the Bernese Oberland is a major tourist destination in the Alps and includes a large number of railways and other facilities. While the mountain peak was once difficult to access, the Jungfrau Railway, a rack railway, now goes to the Jungfraujoch railway station at 3,454 m (11,332 ft), therefore providing an easy access to the upper Aletsch Glacier and a relatively short access to the Jungfrau itself, the height difference between the station and the summit being only 704 metres and the horizontal distance being slightly less than 2 kilometres. As a result, in the popular mind, the Jungfrau has become a mountain associated with the Bernese Oberland and Interlaken, rather than with Upper Valais and Fiesch.

 

In 1893, Adolf Guyer-Zeller conceived of the idea of a railway tunnel to the Jungfraujoch to make the glaciated areas on its south side more accessible. The building of the tunnel took 16 years and the summit station was not opened before 1912. The goal was in fact to reach the summit of the Jungfrau with an elevator from the highest railway station, located inside the mountain. The complete project was not realized because of the outbreak of the World War I. Nevertheless, it was at the time one of the highest railways in the world and remains today the highest in Europe and the only (non-cable) railway on Earth going well past the perennial snow-line.

 

The Jungfrau Railway leaves from Kleine Scheidegg, which can be reached from both sides by trains from Grindelwald, and Lauterbrunnen via Wengen. The train enters the Jungfrau Tunnel running eastward through the Eiger just above Eigergletscher, which is, since 2020, also accessible by aerial tramway from Grindelwald. Before arriving at the Jungfraujoch, it stops for a few minutes at two other stations, Eigerwand (on the north face of the Eiger) and Eismeer (on the south side), where passengers can see through the holes excavated from the mountain. The journey from Kleine Scheidegg to Jungfraujoch takes approximately 50 minutes including the stops; the downhill return journey taking only 35 minutes.

 

A large complex of tunnels and buildings has been constructed at the Jungfraujoch, referred to as the "Top of Europe". There are several restaurants and bars, shops, multimedia exhibitions, a post office, and a research station with dedicated accommodation facilities. An elevator enables access to the top of the Sphinx and its observatory, at 3,571 m (11,716 ft), the highest viewing platform of the area. Outside, at the level of the Jungfraujoch, there is a ski school, and the "Ice Palace", a collection of elaborate ice sculptures displayed inside the Aletsch Glacier. Another tunnel leads to the east side of the Sphinx, where one can walk on the glacier up to the Mönchsjoch Hut, the only hotel infrastructure in the area.

 

Apart from the Jungfraujoch, many facilities have been built in the Jungfrau Region, including numerous mountain railways. In 1908, the first public cable car in the world, the Wetterhorn Elevator, opened at the foot of the Wetterhorn, but was closed seven years later. The Schilthorn above Mürren, the Männlichen above Wengen, and the Schynige Platte above Wilderswil, offer good views of the Jungfrau and the Lauterbrunnen valley. On the south side, the Eggishorn above Fiesch also offers views of the Jungfrau, across the Aletsch Glacier.

 

Climbing routes

 

The normal route follows the traces of the first climbers, but the long approach on the Aletsch Glacier is no longer necessary. From the area of the Jungfraujoch the route to the summit takes only a few hours. Most climbers start from the Mönchsjoch Hut. After a traverse of the Jungfraufirn the route heads to the Rottalsattel (3,885 m or 12,746 ft), from where the southern ridge leads to the Jungfrau. It is not considered a very difficult climb but it can be dangerous on the upper section above the Rottalsattel, where most accidents happen. The use of the Jungfrau Railway instead of the much more gradual approach from Fiesch (or Fieschertal), via the Konkordia Hut, can cause some acclimatization troubles as the difference of altitude between the railway stations of Interlaken and Jungfraujoch is almost 3 km (1.9 mi).

 

(Wikipedia)

 

The Schwarzmönch (German for "black monk") (2,649 m) is a mountain of the Bernese Alps, overlooking Lauterbrunnen in the Bernese Oberland. It forms a huge buttress on the north-west side of the Jungfrau, to which it is connected by the ridge named Ufem Schwarzen Grat.

 

East the summit is located the Silberhorn Hut.

 

(Wikipedia)

 

The Morgenberghorn is a mountain of the Bernese Alps, overlooking Lake Thun in the Bernese Oberland. It lies at the northern end of the chain between the valleys of Frutigen and Lauterbrunnen, north of the Schwalmere.

 

(Wikipedia)

 

Die Jungfrau ist ein Berg in der Schweiz. Sie ist mit 4158 m ü. M. der dritthöchste Berg der Berner Alpen und bildet zusammen mit Eiger und Mönch eine markante Dreiergruppe, ein sogenanntes «Dreigestirn».

 

Am 13. Dezember 2001 wurde die Jungfrau zusammen mit südlich angrenzenden Gebieten als Schweizer Alpen Jungfrau-Aletsch in die Liste als UNESCO-Weltnaturerbe aufgenommen.

 

Lage und Umgebung

 

Über den Jungfrau-Gipfel verläuft die Grenze zwischen den Kantonen Bern und Wallis. Der Berg ist ausserordentlich vielgestaltig. Im Norden und Nordwesten, auf ihrer „weiblichen“ Schauseite (vgl. Foto) sind ihr Wengen-Jungfrau, Schneehorn, das Silberhorn, das Chly Silberhoren und der „Schwarzmönch“ vorgelagert sowie die zerrissenen Kühlauenen- und Giessengletscher. Im Westen erhebt sie sich fast eisfrei volle 3250 Meter über dem hinteren Lauterbrunnental. Es ist dies (nach dem Mont Blanc) der zweithöchste direkte Abhang in den Alpen. Ihre Südwand erhebt sich über dem versteckten Rottalgletscher und ihre Ostwand über den Firnen am Jungfraujoch.

 

Die Pläne, auf die Jungfrau eine Bergbahn zu bauen, wurden aufgrund finanzieller Schwierigkeiten nicht realisiert. Die ursprünglich bis unter den Gipfel geplante Jungfraubahn wurde bis 1912 mit Endstation Jungfraujoch fertiggestellt.

 

Auf dem untersten Absatz des Nordostgrats haben die PTT einen Funk-Umsetzer auf 3777 m ü. M. installiert.

 

Geologie

 

Die Jungfrau liegt im nördlichen Randbereich des Aarmassivs, eines der sogenannten Zentralmassive der Schweizer Alpen. Ihre höheren Lagen (Silberhorn, Wengen-Jungfrau und Hauptgipfel) sowie ihre Westflanke bis hinunter zum oberen Ende des Lauterbrunnentals sind weit überwiegend aus kristallinem Grundgebirge (prä-triassische Gneise, Glimmerschiefer u. ä.) der Helvetischen Zone aufgebaut. Die Nordwestflanke hingegen, der ganze «Vorbau» (Schwarzmönch, Rotbrett und Schneehorn) besteht aus sedimentärem, überwiegend jurassischem und kretazischem Deckgebirge des Helvetikums. Eine Besonderheit der Jungfrau ist, dass dort zwischen dem prinzipiell autochthonen Gipfel-Kristallin und dessen Deckschichten ein Überschiebungs-kontakt besteht; somit ist das Grundgebirge geringfügig auf sein Deckgebirge überschoben worden.

 

Name

 

Der Name Jungfrau dürfte sich von der Wengernalp am Fusse des Berges ableiten, die – nach den Besitzerinnen, den Nonnen vom Kloster Interlaken – früher Jungfrauenberg genannt wurde. Einer anderen Quelle zufolge leitet sich der Name vom Aussehen des Nordhanges des Berges ab, der aus der Ferne dem Schleier eines Mädchens ähneln soll.

 

Nach dem Berg ist die Jungfrau-Region benannt, die Tourismusorganisation der Orte Grindelwald, Wengen, Mürren und Lauterbrunnen, ausserdem die Jungfraubahn Holding AG, die neben der Jungfraubahn selbst auch die anderen Bergbahnen in der Region betreibt.

 

Besteigungsgeschichte

 

Bergsteiger auf dem Gipfel im Jahr 1878

Erstbesteiger waren Johann Rudolf Meyer und sein Bruder Hieronymus mit den Führern Joseph Bortis und Alois Volken, die am 3. August 1811 vom Lötschental her den Berg von Süden erklommen hatten. Sie folgten ungefähr der heutigen Normalroute. Der Volksmund taufte daraufhin die bis dahin unberührte Jungfrau «Madame Meyer».

 

1874 erfolgte die Winter-Erstbesteigung durch die Alpinistin Margaret Claudia Brevoort.

 

Die Jungfrau gilt, obwohl leicht erreichbar, als unfallträchtiger Berg. Bei einem der schwersten Unglücke stürzten am 12. Juli 2007 sechs Rekruten der Gebirgsspezialisten-Rekrutenschule Andermatt vom Rottalsattel 1000 Meter auf den darunterliegenden Rottalgletscher in den Tod, nachdem sie eine Lawine ausgelöst hatten. Das urteilende Militärgericht ging von einem falsch eingeschätzten, heimtückischen Lawinenrisiko aus und sprach in der Folge die verantwortlichen Bergführer frei.

 

Routen

 

Rottalsattel und Südostgrat (Normalroute)

 

Schwierigkeit: ZS-

Zeitaufwand: 4–5 Std. von der Mönchsjochhütte, 3½–4½ Std. vom Jungfraujoch

Ausgangspunkt: Mönchsjochhütte (3657 m)

Talort: Grindelwald (1034 m)

 

Innere Rottalgrat

 

Schwierigkeit: ZS

Zeitaufwand: 6–7 Stunden

Ausgangspunkt: Rottalhütte (2755 m)

Talort: Stechelberg (919 m)

 

Nordwestgrat oder „Rotbrettgrat“

 

Schwierigkeit: S

Zeitaufwand: 8–12 Stunden

Ausgangspunkt: Silberhornhütte (2663 m)

Talort: Stechelberg (919 m)

 

Nordostgrat

 

Schwierigkeit: S+, mit IV. UIAA-Grad Felskletterei

Zeitaufwand: 8–10 Stunden

Ausgangspunkt: Jungfraujoch (3454 m)

Talort: Grindelwald (1034 m)

 

Kunst

 

Erwähnt ist die Jungfrau unter anderem bei Friedrich Schiller, Wilhelm Tell, Vers 628 (1804). Lord Byrons Drama Manfred (1817) spielt am Fuss und auf dem Gipfel des Massivs. Ferdinand Hodler hat die Jungfrau mehrfach gemalt, darunter die perspektivisch verfremdete «Jungfrau über dem Nebelmeer». Alex Diggelmann gab 1958 eine Lithographienmappe unter dem Titel Die Jungfrau, mein Berg heraus. Stephan Bundi gestaltete 2005 eine Schweizer Gedenkmünze mit dem Bergmotiv.

 

Im Januar 2012 wurde zum 100-jährigen bestehen der Jungfraubahn eine übergrosse Schweizer Flagge vom Lichtkünstler Gerry Hofstetter an den Gipfel projiziert. Zeitweise waren neben dem Schweizer Kreuz auch ein Porträt des Zürcher Unternehmers Adolf Guyer-Zeller sowie ein Bild von einem der Züge zu sehen.

 

(Wikipedia)

 

Das Morgenberghorn ist ein 2249 m ü. M. hoher Berg am Südufer des Thunersees im Berner Oberland in der Schweiz. Es liegt im Westen des Saxettals.

 

Der Gipfel des Morgenberghorns ist nur zu Fuss erreichbar. Der Aufstieg erfordert keine Bergsteigerkenntnisse, jedoch Trittsicherheit. Aufstiegsmöglichkeiten bestehen ab Leissigen und Aeschi über den Nordwestgrat und von Saxeten aus über den Rengglipass und den Südgrat. Der Nordostgrat von Interlaken aus weist sehr schmale und ausgesetzte Stellen auf und ist keine offizielle Aufstiegsroute.

 

Südlich des Morgenbergs erhebt sich die Schwalmere (2777 m ü. M.), durch den Rengglipass (1879 m ü. M.) getrennt.

 

(Wikipedia)

 

Die Lobhörner sind eine Gruppe von Gipfeln im Berner Oberland in der Schweiz. Ihr höchster Gipfel erhebt sich auf 2566 m ü. M.

 

Die Lobhörner bilden einen Teil des Grates zwischen dem Saxettal im Norden und dem Soustal im Süden. Sie erheben sich als markante Zacken aus diesem Grat und sind mit dieser Form untypisch für die Region, da sie eher an die Dolomiten erinnern. Die Zackengruppe besteht aus zwei Teilen; dem kleinen Lobhorn (2519 m ü. M.) und dem grossen Lobhorn (2566 m ü. M.), dem imposantesten der Zacken, an welchen vier weitere kleinere Zacken anschliessen.

 

Während das kleine Lobhorn leicht für Bergwanderer begehbar ist, sind das Grosse Lobhorn und die kleineren Zacken nur durch Kletterei erreichbar. Die Erstbesteigung fand möglicherweise 1866 durch Gottlieb Wyss statt; gesichert ist jedoch erst die Besteigung durch Heinrich Dübi, Eduard und Max Müller sowie Markus von Steiger 1876. Ausgangspunkt für Bergtouren in diesem Gebiet ist die Lobhornhütte.

 

(Wikipedia)

The water buffalo or domestic Asian water buffalo (Bubalus bubalis) is a large bovid originating in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and China. Today, it is also found in Europe, Australia, and some American countries. The wild water buffalo (Bubalus arnee) native to Southeast Asia is considered a different species, but most likely represents the ancestor of the domestic water buffalo.

 

Two extant types of water buffalo are recognized based on morphological and behavioural criteria – the river buffalo of South Asia and further west to the Balkans, Egypt, and Italy, and the swamp buffalo, found from Assam in the west through Southeast Asia to the Yangtze valley of China in the east. The origins of the domestic water buffalo types are debated, although results of a phylogenetic study indicate that the swamp type may have originated in China and was domesticated about 4,000 years ago, while the river type may have originated from India and was domesticated about 5,000 years ago. Water buffalo were traded from the Indus Valley Civilisation to Mesopotamia, in modern Iraq, 2500 BC by the Meluhhas. The seal of a scribe employed by an Akkadian king shows the sacrifice of water buffalo.

 

At least 130 million domestic water buffalo exist, and more human beings depend on them than on any other domestic animal. They are especially suitable for tilling rice fields, and their milk is richer in fat and protein than that of dairy cattle. The large feral population of northern Australia became established in the late 19th century, and smaller feral herds are in New Guinea, Tunisia, and northeastern Argentina. Feral herds are also present in New Britain, New Ireland, Irian Jaya, Papua New Guinea, Colombia, Guyana, Suriname, Brazil, and Uruguay.

 

CHARACTERISTICS

The skin of river buffalo is black, but some specimens may have dark, slate-coloured skin. Swamp buffalo have a grey skin at birth, but become slate blue later. Albinoids are present in some populations. River buffalo have comparatively longer faces, smaller girths, and bigger limbs than swamp buffalo. Their dorsal ridges extend further back and taper off more gradually. Their horns grow downward and backward, then curve upward in a spiral. Swamp buffalo are heavy-bodied and stockily built; the body is short and the belly large. The forehead is flat, the eyes prominent, the face short, and the muzzle wide. The neck is comparatively long, and the withers and croup are prominent. A dorsal ridge extends backward and ends abruptly just before the end of the chest. Their horns grow outward, and curve in a semicircle, but always remain more or less on the plane of the forehead. The tail is short, reaching only to the hocks. Height at withers is 129–133 cm for males, and 120–127 cm for females. They range in weight from 300–550 kg, but weights of over 1,000 kg have also been observed.

 

Tedong bonga is a black pied buffalo featuring a unique black and white colouration that is favoured by the Toraja of Sulawesi.

 

The swamp buffalo has 48 chromosomes; the river buffalo has 50 chromosomes. The two types do not readily interbreed, but fertile offspring can occur. Buffalo-cattle hybrids have not been observed to occur, and the embryos of such hybrids do not reach maturity in laboratory experiments.

 

The rumen of the water buffalo has important differences from that of other ruminants. It contains a larger population of bacteria, particularly the cellulolytic bacteria, lower protozoa, and higher fungi zoospores. In addition, higher rumen ammonia nitrogen (NH4-N) and higher pH have been found as compared to those in cattle

 

ECOLOGY AND BEHAVIOR

River buffalo prefer deep water. Swamp buffalo prefer to wallow in mudholes which they make with their horns. During wallowing, they acquire a thick coating of mud. Both are well adapted to a hot and humid climate with temperatures ranging from 0 °C in the winter to 30 °C and greater in the summer. Water availability is important in hot climates, since they need wallows, rivers, or splashing water to assist in thermoregulation. Some breeds are adapted to saline seaside shores and saline sandy terrain.

 

DIET

Water buffalo thrive on many aquatic plants and during floods, will graze submerged, raising their heads above the water and carrying quantities of edible plants. They eat reeds (quassab), a giant reed (birdi), a kind of bulrush (kaulan), water hyacinth, and marsh grasses. Some of these plants are of great value to local peoples. Others, such as water hyacinth, are a major problem in some tropical valleys, and water buffalo may help to keep waterways clear.

 

Green fodders are used widely for intensive milk production and for fattening. Many fodder crops are conserved as hay, chaffed, or pulped. Fodders include alfalfa, berseem and bancheri, the leaves, stems or trimmings of banana, cassava, fodder beet, halfa, ipil-ipil and kenaf, maize, oats, pandarus, peanut, sorghum, soybean, sugarcane, bagasse, and turnips. Citrus pulp and pineapple wastes have been fed safely to buffalo. In Egypt, whole sun-dried dates are fed to milk-buffalo up to 25% of the standard feed mixture.

 

REPRODUCTION

Swamp buffalo generally become reproductive at an older age than river breeds. Young males in Egypt, India, and Pakistan are first mated at about 3.0–3.5 years of age, but in Italy

 

they may be used as early as 2 years of age. Successful mating behaviour may continue until the animal is 12 years or even older. A good river male can impregnate 100 females in a year. A strong seasonal influence on mating occurs. Heat stress reduces libido

 

Although buffalo are polyoestrous, their reproductive efficiency shows wide variation throughout the year. Buffalo cows exhibit a distinct seasonal change in displaying oestrus, conception rate, and calving rate. The age at first oestrus of heifers varies between breeds from 13–33 months, but mating at the first oestrus is often infertile and usually deferred until they are 3 years old. Gestation lasts from 281–334 days, but most reports give a range between 300 and 320 days. Swamp buffalo carry their calves for one or two weeks longer than river buffalo. It is not rare to find buffalo that continue to work well at the age of 30, and instances of a working life of 40 years are recorded.

 

TAXONOMIC HISTORY

Carl Linnaeus first described the genus Bos and the water buffalo under the binomial Bubalis bubalus in 1758; the latter was known to occur in Asia and as a domestic form in Italy. Ellerman and Morrison-Scott treated the wild and domestic forms of the water buffalo as conspecifics whereas others treated them as different species. The nomenclatorial treatment of wild and domestic forms has been inconsistent and varies between authors and even within the works of single authors.

 

In March 2003, the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature achieved consistency in the naming of wild and domestic water buffalo by ruling that the scientific name Bubalus arnee is valid for the wild form. B. bubalis continues to be valid for the domestic form and applies also to feral populations.

 

DOMESTICATION AND BREEDING

Water buffalo were domesticated in India about 5000 years ago, and in China about 4000 years ago. Two types are recognized, based on morphological and behavioural criteria – the river buffalo of the Indian subcontinent and further west to the Balkans and Italy, and the swamp buffalo, found from Assam in the west through Southeast Asia to the Yangtze valley of China in the east. The present-day river buffalo is the result of complex domestication processes involving more than one maternal lineage and a significant maternal gene flow from wild populations after the initial domestication events. Twenty-two breeds of the river type water buffalo are known, including Murrah, Nili-Ravi, Surti, Jafarabadi, Anatolian, Mediterranean, and Egyptian buffalo. China has a huge variety of buffalo genetic resources, comprising 16 local swamp buffalo breeds in various regions.

 

Results of mitochondrial DNA analyses indicate that the two types were domesticated independently. Sequencing of cytochrome b genes of Bubalus species implies that the domestic buffalo originated from at least two populations, and that the river and the swamp types have differentiated at the full species level. The genetic distance between the two types is so large that a divergence time of about 1.7 million years has been suggested. The swamp type was noticed to have the closest relationship with the tamaraw.

 

DISTRIBUTION OF POPULATIONS

The water buffalo population in the world is about 172 million.

 

IN ASIA

More than 95.8% of the world population of water buffalo are found in Asia including both river and swamp types. The water buffalo population in India numbered over 97.9 million head in 2003, representing 56.5% of the world population. They are primarily of the river type, with 10 well-defined breeds comprising Badhawari, Murrah, Nili-Ravi, Jafarabadi, Marathwada, Mehsana, Nagpuri, Pandharpuri, Toda, and Surti. Swamp buffalo occur only in small areas in the north-eastern part of the country and are not distinguished into breeds.

 

In 2003, the second-largest population lived in China, with 22.759 million head, all of the swamp type with breeds kept only in the lowlands, and other breeds kept only in the mountains; as of 2003, 3.2 million swamp-type carabao buffalo were in the Philippines, nearly three million swamp buffalo were in Vietnam, and 772,764 buffalo were in Bangladesh. About 750,000 head were estimated in Sri Lanka in 1997.

 

The water buffalo is the main dairy animal in Pakistan, with 23.47 million head in 2010. Of these, 76% are kept in the Punjab. The rest of them are mostly in the province of Sindh. Breeds used are Nili-Ravi, Kundi, and Azi Kheli. Karachi has the largest population of water buffalos for an area where fodder is not grown, consisting of 350,000 head kept mainly for milking.

 

In Thailand, the number of water buffalo dropped from more than 3 million head in 1996 to less than 1.24 million head in 2011. Slightly over 75% of them are kept in the country's northeastern region. The statistics also indicate that by the beginning of 2012, less than one million were in the country, partly as a result of illegal shipments to neighboring countries where sales prices are higher than in Thailand.

 

Water buffalo are also present in the southern region of Iraq, in the marshes. These marshes were drained by Saddam Hussein in 1991 in an attempt to punish the south for the uprisings of 1991. Following 2003, and the fall of the Saddam regime, these lands were reflooded and a 2007 report in the provinces of Maysan and Thi Qar shows a steady increase in the number of water buffalo. The report puts the number at 40,008 head in those two provinces.

 

IN EUROPE AND THE MEDITERRANEAN

Water buffalo likely were introduced to Europe from India or other Oriental countries. To Italy they were introduced about the year 600 in the reign of the Longobard King Agilulf. As they appear in the company of wild horses, they probably were a present from the Khan of the Avars, a Turkic nomadic tribe that dwelt near the Danube River at the time. Sir H. Johnston knew of a herd of water buffalo presented by a King of Naples to the Bey of Tunis in the mid-19th century that had resumed the feral state in northern Tunis.

 

European buffalo are all of the river type and considered to be of the same breed named Mediterranean buffalo. In Italy, the Mediterranean type was particularly selected and is called Mediterranean Italian breed to distinguish it from other European breeds, which differ genetically. Mediterranean buffalo are also found in Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Albania, Kosovo, and the Republic of Macedonia, with a few hundred in the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Hungary. Little exchange of breeding buffalo has occurred among countries, so each population has its own phenotypic features and performances. In Bulgaria, they were crossbred with the Indian Murrah breed, and in Romania, some were crossbred with Bulgarian Murrah. Populations in Turkey are of the Anatolian buffalo breed.

 

IN AUSTRALIA

Between 1824 and 1849, water buffalo were introduced into the Northern Territory from Timor, Kisar, and probably other islands in the Indonesian archipelago. In 1886, a few milking types were brought from India to Darwin. They have been the main grazing animals on the subcoastal plains and river basins between Darwin and Arnhem Land since the 1880s. In the early 1960s, an estimated population of 150,000 to 200,000 buffalo were living in the plains and nearby areas.

 

They became feral and are causing significant environmental damage. Buffalo are also found in the Top End. As a result, they were hunted in the Top End from 1885 until 1980. The commencement of the brucellosis and tuberculosis campaign (BTEC) resulted in a huge culling program to reduce buffalo herds to a fraction of the numbers that were reached in the 1980s. The BTEC was finished when the Northern Territory was declared free of the disease in 1997. Numbers dropped dramatically as a result of the campaign, but have since recovered to an estimated 150,000 animals across northern Australia in 2008.

 

During the 1950s, buffalo were hunted for their skins and meat, which was exported and used in the local trade. In the late 1970s, live exports were made to Cuba and continued later into other countries. Buffalo are now crossed with riverine buffalo in artificial insemination programs, and may be found in many areas of Australia. Some of these crossbreds are used for milk production. Melville Island is a popular hunting location, where a steady population up to 4,000 individuals exists. Safari outfits are run from Darwin to Melville Island and other locations in the Top End, often with the use of bush pilots. The horns, which can measure up to a record of 3.1 m tip-to-tip, are prized hunting trophies.

 

The buffalo have developed a different appearance from the Indonesian buffalo from which they descend. They live mainly in freshwater marshes and billabongs, and their territory range can be quite expansive during the wet season. Their only natural predators in Australia are adult saltwater crocodiles, with whom they share the billabongs, and dingoes, which have been known to prey on buffalo calves and occasionally adult buffalo when the dingoes are in large packs.

 

Buffalo were exported live to Indonesia until 2011, at a rate of about 3000 per year. After the live export ban that year, the exports dropped to zero, and had not resumed as of June 2013.

 

IN SOUTH AMERICA

Water buffalo were introduced into the Amazon River basin in 1895. They are now extensively used there for meat and dairy production. In 2005, the buffalo herd in the Brazilian Amazon stood at roughly 1.6 million head, of which 460,000 were located in the lower Amazon floodplain. Breeds used include Mediterranean from Italy, Murrah and Jafarabadi from India, and Carabao from the Philippines.

 

During the 1970s, small herds were imported to Costa Rica, Ecuador, Cayenne, Panama, Surinam, Guyana, and Venezuela.

 

In Argentina, many game ranches raise water buffalo for commercial hunting

 

IN NORTH AMERICA

In 1974, four water buffalo were imported to the United States from Guam to be studied at the University of Florida. In February 1978, the first herd arrived for commercial farming. Until 2002, only one commercial breeder was in the United States. Water buffalo meat is imported from Australia. Until 2011, water buffalo were raised in Gainesville, Florida, from young obtained from zoo overflow. They were used primarily for meat production, frequently sold as hamburger.[38] Other US ranchers use them for production of high-quality mozzarella cheese.

 

HUSBANDRY

The husbandry system of water buffalo depends on the purpose for which they are bred and maintained. Most of them are kept by people who work on small farms in family units. Their buffalo live in very close association with them, and are often their greatest capital asset. The women and girls in India generally look after the milking buffalo while the men and boys are concerned with the working animals. Throughout Asia, they are commonly tended by children who are often seen leading or riding their charges to wallowing places. Water buffalo are the ideal animals for work in the deep mud of paddy fields because of their large hooves and flexible foot joints. They are often referred to as "the living tractor of the East". It probably is possible to plough deeper with buffalo than with either oxen or horses. They are the most efficient and economical means of cultivation of small fields. In most rice-producing countries, they are used for threshing and for transporting the sheaves during the rice harvest. They provide power for oilseed mills, sugarcane presses, and devices for raising water. They are widely used as pack animals, and in India and Pakistan also for heavy haulage. In their invasions of Europe, the Turks used buffalo for hauling heavy battering rams. Their dung is used as a fertilizer, and as a fuel when dried.

 

Buffalo contribute 72 million tones of milk and three million tones of meat annually to world food, much of it in areas that are prone to nutritional imbalances. In India, river-type buffalo are kept mainly for milk production and for transport, whereas swamp-type buffalo are kept mainly for work and a small amount of milk.

 

DAIRY PRODUCTS

Water buffalo milk presents physicochemical features different from that of other ruminant species, such as a higher content of fatty acids and proteins. The physical and chemical parameters of swamp and river type water buffalo milk differ. Water buffalo milk contains higher levels of total solids, crude protein, fat, calcium, and phosphorus, and slightly higher content of lactose compared with those of cow milk. The high level of total solids makes water buffalo milk ideal for processing into value-added dairy products such as cheese. The conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) content in milk ranged from 4.4 mg/g fat in September to 7.6 mg/g fat in June. Seasons and genetics may play a role in variation of CLA level and changes in gross composition of the water buffalo milk.

 

Water buffalo milk is processed into a large variety of dairy products:

 

- Cream churns much faster at higher fat levels and gives higher overrun than cow cream.

- Butter from water buffalo cream displays more stability than that from cow cream.

- Ghee from water buffalo milk has a different texture with a bigger grain size than ghee from cow milk.

- Heat-concentrated milk products in the Indian subcontinent include paneer, khoa, rabri, kheer and basundi.

- Fermented milk products include dahi, yogurt, and chakka.

- Whey is used for making ricotta and mascarpone in Italy, and alkarish in Syria and Egypt.

- Soft cheeses made include mozzarella in Italy, karish, mish, and domiati in Egypt, madhfor in Iraq, alghab in Syria, kesong puti in the Philippines, and vladeasa in Romania.

- The semihard cheese beyaz peynir is made in Turkey.

- Hard cheeses include braila in Romania, rahss in Egypt, white brine in Bulgaria, and akkawi in Syria.

- Watered-down buffalo milk is used as a cheaper alternative to regular milk.

 

MEAT AND SKIN PRODUCTS

Water buffalo meat, sometimes called "carabeef", is often passed off as beef in certain regions, and is also a major source of export revenue for India. In many Asian regions, buffalo meat is less preferred due to its toughness; however, recipes have evolved (rendang, for example) where the slow cooking process and spices not only make the meat palatable, but also preserve it, an important factor in hot climates where refrigeration is not always available.Their hides provide tough and useful leather, often used for shoes.

 

BONE AND HORN PRODUCTS

The bones and horns are often made into jewellery, especially earrings. Horns are used for the embouchure of musical instruments, such as ney and kaval.

 

ENVIRONMENTAL EFFECTS

Wildlife conservation scientists have started to recommend and use introduced populations of feral domestic water buffalo in far-away lands to manage uncontrolled vegetation growth in and around natural wetlands. Introduced water buffalo at home in such environs provide cheap service by regularly grazing the uncontrolled vegetation and opening up clogged water bodies for waterfowl, wetland birds, and other wildlife. Grazing water buffalo are sometimes used in Great Britain for conservation grazing, such as in Chippenham Fen National Nature Reserve. The buffalo can better adapt to wet conditions and poor-quality vegetation than cattle.

 

Currently, research is being conducted at the Lyle Center for Regenerative Studies to determine the levels of nutrients removed and returned to wetlands when water buffalo are used for wetland vegetation management.

 

However, in uncontrolled circumstances, water buffalo can cause environmental damage, such as trampling vegetation, disturbing bird and reptile nesting sites, and spreading exotic weeds.

 

RESEARCH

The world's first cloned buffalo was developed by Indian scientists from National Dairy Research Institute, Karnal. The buffalo calf was named Samrupa. The calf did not survive more than a week, and died due to some genetic disorders. So, the scientists created another cloned buffalo a few months later, and named it Garima.

 

On 15 September 2007, the Philippines announced its development of Southeast Asia's first cloned buffalo. The Philippine Council for Agriculture, Forestry and Natural Resources Research and Development (PCARRD), under the Department of Science and Technology in Los Baños, Laguna, approved this project. The Department of Agriculture's Philippine Carabao Center (PCC) will implement cloning through somatic cell nuclear transfer as a tool for genetic improvement in water buffalo. "Super buffalo calves" will be produced. There will be no modification or alteration of the genetic materials, as in genetically modified organisms.

 

On 1 January 2008, the Philippine Carabao Center in Nueva Ecija, per Filipino scientists, initiated a study to breed a super water buffalo that could produce 4 to 18 litres of milk per day using gene-based technology. Also, the first in vitro river buffalo was born there in 2004 from an in vitro-produced, vitrified embryo, named "Glory" after President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Joseph Estrada's most successful project as an opposition senator, the PCC was created through Republic Act 3707, the Carabao Act of 1992.

 

IN CULTURE

Some ethnic groups, such as Batak and Toraja in Indonesia and the Derung in China, use water buffalo or kerbau (called horbo in Batak or tedong in Toraja) as sacrificial animals at several festivals.

 

- Legend has it that the Chinese philosophical sage Laozi left China through the Han Gu Pass riding a water buffalo.

- According to Hindu lore, the god of death Yama, rides on a male water buffalo.

- The carabao subspecies is considered a national symbol in the Philippines.

- In Vietnam, water buffalo are often the most valuable possession of poor farmers: "Con trâu là đầu cơ nghiệp". They are treated as a member of the family: "Chồng cày, vợ cấy, con trâu đi bừa" ("The husband ploughs, the wife sows, water buffalo draws the rake") and are friends of the children. Children talk to their water buffalo, "Bao giờ cây lúa còn bông. Thì còn ngọn cỏ ngoài đồng trâu ăn." (Vietnamese children are responsible for grazing water buffalo. They feed them grass if they work laboriously for men.) In the old days, West Lake, Hà Nội, was named Kim Ngưu - Golden Water Buffalo.

- The Yoruban Orisha Oya (goddess of change) takes the form of a water buffalo.

 

FIGHTING FESTIVALS

- Pasungay Festival is held annually in the town of San Joaquin, Iloilo in the Philippines.

- Moh juj Water Buffalo fighting, is held every year in Bhogali Bihu in Assam. Ahotguri in Nagaon is famous for it.

- Do Son Water Buffalo Fighting Festival of Vietnam, held each year on the ninth day of the eighth month of the lunar calendar at Do Son Township, Haiphong City in Vietnam, is one of the most popular Vietnam festivals and events in Haiphong City. The preparations for this buffalo fighting festival begin from the two to three months earlier. The competing buffalo are selected and methodically trained months in advance. It is a traditional festival of Vietnam attached to a Water God worshipping ceremony and the Hien Sinh custom to show martial spirit of the local people of Do Son, Haiphong.

- "Hai Luu" Water Buffalo Fighting Festival of Vietnam, According to ancient records, the buffalo fighting in Hai Luu Commune has existed from the 2nd century B.C. General Lu Gia at that time, had the buffalo slaughtered to give a feast to the local people and the warriors, and organized buffalo fighting for amusement. Eventually, all the fighting buffalo will be slaughtered as tributes to the deities.

- "Ko Samui" Water Buffalo Fighting Festival of Thailand, is a very popular event held on special occasions such as New Year's Day in January, and Songkran in mid-April, this festival features head-wrestling bouts in which two male Asian water buffalo are pitted against one another. Unlike in Spanish Bullfighting, wherein bulls get killed while fighting sword-wielding men, Buffalo Fighting Festival held at Ko Samui, Thailand is fairly harmless contest. The fighting season varies according to ancient customs & ceremonies. The first Buffalo to turn and run away is considered the loser, the winning buffalo becomes worth several million baht. Ko Samui is an island in the Gulf of Thailand in the South China Sea, it is 700 km from Bangkok and is connected to it by regular flights.

- "Ma'Pasilaga Tedong" Water Buffalo Fighting Festival, in Tana Toraja Regency of Sulawesi Island, Indonesia, is a very popular event where the Rambu Solo' or a Burial Festival took place in Tana Toraja.

 

RACING FESTIVALS

Carabao Carroza Festival is being held annually every May in the town of Pavia, Iloilo, Philippines.

Kambala races of Karnataka, India, take place between December and March. The races are conducted by having the water buffalo (he buffalo) run in long parallel slushy ditches, where they are driven by men standing on wooden planks drawn by the buffalo. The objectives of the race are to finish first and to raise the water to the greatest height and also a rural sport. Kambala races are arranged with competition, as well as without competition and as a part of thanks giving (to god) in about 50 villages of coastal Karnataka.

 

In the Chonburi Province of Thailand, and in Pakistan, there are annual water buffalo races.

 

Chon Buri Water buffalo racing festival, Thailand In downtown Chonburi, 70 km south of Bangkok, at the annual water buffalo festival held in mid-October. About 300 buffalo race in groups of five or six, spurred on by bareback jockeys wielding wooden sticks, as hundreds of spectators cheer. The water buffalo has always played an important role in agriculture in Thailand. For farmers of Chon Buri Province, near Bangkok, it is an important annual festival, beginning in mid-October. It is also a celebration among rice farmers before the rice harvest. At dawn, farmers walk their buffalo through surrounding rice fields, splashing them with water to keep them cool before leading them to the race field. This amazing festival started over a hundred years ago when two men arguing about whose buffalo was the fastest ended up having a race between them. That’s how it became a tradition and gradually a social event for farmers who gathered from around the country in Chonburi to trade their goods. The festival also helps a great deal in preserving the number of buffalo, which have been dwindling at quite an alarming rate in other regions. Modern machinery is rapidly replacing buffalo in Thai agriculture. With most of the farm work mechanized, the buffalo-racing tradition has continued. Racing buffalo are now raised just to race; they do not work at all. The few farm buffalo which still do work are much bigger than the racers because of the strenuous work they perform. Farm buffalo are in the "Buffalo Beauty Pageant", a Miss Farmer beauty contest and a comic buffalo costume contest etc.. This festival perfectly exemplifies a favored Thai attitude to life — "sanuk," meaning fun.

 

Babulang Water buffalo racing festival, Sarawak, Malaysia, is the largest or grandest of the many rituals, ceremonies and festivals of the traditional Bisaya (Borneo) community of Limbang, Sarawak. Highlights are the Ratu Babulang competition and the Water buffalo races which can only be found in this town in Sarawak, Malaysia.

Vihear Suor village Water buffalo racing festival, in Cambodia, each year, people visit Buddhist temples across the country to honor their deceased loved ones during a 15-day period commonly known as the Festival of the Dead but in Vihear Suor village, about 35 km northeast of Cambodia, citizens each year wrap up the festival with a water buffalo race to entertain visitors and honour a pledge made hundreds of years ago. There was a time when many village cattle which provide rural Cambodians with muscle power to plough their fields and transport agricultural products died from an unknown disease. The villagers prayed to a spirit to help save their animals from the disease and promised to show their gratitude by holding a buffalo race each year on the last day of "P'chum Ben" festival as it is known in Cambodian. The race draws hundreds of spectators who come to see riders and their animals charge down the racing field, the racers bouncing up and down on the backs of their buffalo, whose horns were draped with colorful cloth.

Pothu puttu matsaram, Kerala, South India, is similar to Kambala races.

 

WIKIPEDIA

‎WESTLAKE - It took nearly 150 ‪Los Angeles‬ ‪Firefighters‬ nearly two and a half hours to extinguish a major emergency fire in a vacant 2 story office building west of downtown Los Angeles Monday evening.

 

The Los Angeles Fire Department was summoned at 7:01 PM on June 13, 2016 to a structure fire at 2411 West 8th Street in the Westlake neighborhood not far from MacArthur Park. LAFD responders arrived quickly to find intense fire on the upper floor of a long vacant 14,351 square-foot two story office building, the site of previous blazes.

 

Firefighters used ground ladders to assist several imperiled persons at windows of the burning structure, with LAFD responders entering the building to performing the rescue of three others.

 

While extending hoselines to aggressively battle the flames within, LAFD crews sadly discovered and retrieved a dead man from the inferno, before the failing structure forced then to switch to defensive exterior operations twenty minutes into the firefight.

 

A total of 147 LAFD personnel under the command of Battalion Chief Jaime Moore, confined the blaze to the heavily damaged building of fire origin - which had no functional fire sprinklers, extinguishing the bulk of flame in just 2 hours and 22 minutes.

 

As a result of witnesses statements, Los Angeles Police Department Officers later detained and arrested an adult male suspected of starting the fire. He and one of the persons earlier rescued by firefighters, were taken to an area hospital by ambulance for evaluation of non-life threatening injuries.

 

With the flames extinguished well past darkness, firefighters remained at the structurally unsound premises to douse hotspots, prevent public harm and prepare for a further search at daybreak.

 

Early Tuesday, investigation teams from the LAFD Arson/Counter-Terrorism Section methodically processed the large and still-smoldering site to determine the fire's cause and origin, as highly-trained Human Remains Detection Dog and Handler teams performed a relentless search of the collapsed structure for deceased victims.

 

With the canines' help, firefighters discovered the remains of four adult victims, two men and two women, amid the rubble on the second floor of the building. Their discovery, combined with the male victim found deceased by firefighters battling the blaze, brought the death tally to five, all of whom appeared to be transients.

 

No firefighters sustained injury in the firefight, investigation or recovery operations.

 

A positive identification of the dead persons, to include the cause, time and manner of their death will be determined by the Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner-Coroner.

 

© Photo by Mike Meadows

 

LAFD Incident: 061316-1267

 

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The water buffalo or domestic Asian water buffalo (Bubalus bubalis) is a large bovid originating in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and China. Today, it is also found in Europe, Australia, and some American countries. The wild water buffalo (Bubalus arnee) native to Southeast Asia is considered a different species, but most likely represents the ancestor of the domestic water buffalo.

 

Two extant types of water buffalo are recognized based on morphological and behavioural criteria – the river buffalo of South Asia and further west to the Balkans, Egypt, and Italy, and the swamp buffalo, found from Assam in the west through Southeast Asia to the Yangtze valley of China in the east. The origins of the domestic water buffalo types are debated, although results of a phylogenetic study indicate that the swamp type may have originated in China and was domesticated about 4,000 years ago, while the river type may have originated from India and was domesticated about 5,000 years ago. Water buffalo were traded from the Indus Valley Civilisation to Mesopotamia, in modern Iraq, 2500 BC by the Meluhhas. The seal of a scribe employed by an Akkadian king shows the sacrifice of water buffalo.

 

At least 130 million domestic water buffalo exist, and more human beings depend on them than on any other domestic animal. They are especially suitable for tilling rice fields, and their milk is richer in fat and protein than that of dairy cattle. The large feral population of northern Australia became established in the late 19th century, and smaller feral herds are in New Guinea, Tunisia, and northeastern Argentina. Feral herds are also present in New Britain, New Ireland, Irian Jaya, Papua New Guinea, Colombia, Guyana, Suriname, Brazil, and Uruguay.

 

CHARACTERISTICS

The skin of river buffalo is black, but some specimens may have dark, slate-coloured skin. Swamp buffalo have a grey skin at birth, but become slate blue later. Albinoids are present in some populations. River buffalo have comparatively longer faces, smaller girths, and bigger limbs than swamp buffalo. Their dorsal ridges extend further back and taper off more gradually. Their horns grow downward and backward, then curve upward in a spiral. Swamp buffalo are heavy-bodied and stockily built; the body is short and the belly large. The forehead is flat, the eyes prominent, the face short, and the muzzle wide. The neck is comparatively long, and the withers and croup are prominent. A dorsal ridge extends backward and ends abruptly just before the end of the chest. Their horns grow outward, and curve in a semicircle, but always remain more or less on the plane of the forehead. The tail is short, reaching only to the hocks. Height at withers is 129–133 cm for males, and 120–127 cm for females. They range in weight from 300–550 kg, but weights of over 1,000 kg have also been observed.

 

Tedong bonga is a black pied buffalo featuring a unique black and white colouration that is favoured by the Toraja of Sulawesi.

 

The swamp buffalo has 48 chromosomes; the river buffalo has 50 chromosomes. The two types do not readily interbreed, but fertile offspring can occur. Buffalo-cattle hybrids have not been observed to occur, and the embryos of such hybrids do not reach maturity in laboratory experiments.

 

The rumen of the water buffalo has important differences from that of other ruminants. It contains a larger population of bacteria, particularly the cellulolytic bacteria, lower protozoa, and higher fungi zoospores. In addition, higher rumen ammonia nitrogen (NH4-N) and higher pH have been found as compared to those in cattle

 

ECOLOGY AND BEHAVIOR

River buffalo prefer deep water. Swamp buffalo prefer to wallow in mudholes which they make with their horns. During wallowing, they acquire a thick coating of mud. Both are well adapted to a hot and humid climate with temperatures ranging from 0 °C in the winter to 30 °C and greater in the summer. Water availability is important in hot climates, since they need wallows, rivers, or splashing water to assist in thermoregulation. Some breeds are adapted to saline seaside shores and saline sandy terrain.

 

DIET

Water buffalo thrive on many aquatic plants and during floods, will graze submerged, raising their heads above the water and carrying quantities of edible plants. They eat reeds (quassab), a giant reed (birdi), a kind of bulrush (kaulan), water hyacinth, and marsh grasses. Some of these plants are of great value to local peoples. Others, such as water hyacinth, are a major problem in some tropical valleys, and water buffalo may help to keep waterways clear.

 

Green fodders are used widely for intensive milk production and for fattening. Many fodder crops are conserved as hay, chaffed, or pulped. Fodders include alfalfa, berseem and bancheri, the leaves, stems or trimmings of banana, cassava, fodder beet, halfa, ipil-ipil and kenaf, maize, oats, pandarus, peanut, sorghum, soybean, sugarcane, bagasse, and turnips. Citrus pulp and pineapple wastes have been fed safely to buffalo. In Egypt, whole sun-dried dates are fed to milk-buffalo up to 25% of the standard feed mixture.

 

REPRODUCTION

Swamp buffalo generally become reproductive at an older age than river breeds. Young males in Egypt, India, and Pakistan are first mated at about 3.0–3.5 years of age, but in Italy

 

they may be used as early as 2 years of age. Successful mating behaviour may continue until the animal is 12 years or even older. A good river male can impregnate 100 females in a year. A strong seasonal influence on mating occurs. Heat stress reduces libido

 

Although buffalo are polyoestrous, their reproductive efficiency shows wide variation throughout the year. Buffalo cows exhibit a distinct seasonal change in displaying oestrus, conception rate, and calving rate. The age at first oestrus of heifers varies between breeds from 13–33 months, but mating at the first oestrus is often infertile and usually deferred until they are 3 years old. Gestation lasts from 281–334 days, but most reports give a range between 300 and 320 days. Swamp buffalo carry their calves for one or two weeks longer than river buffalo. It is not rare to find buffalo that continue to work well at the age of 30, and instances of a working life of 40 years are recorded.

 

TAXONOMIC HISTORY

Carl Linnaeus first described the genus Bos and the water buffalo under the binomial Bubalis bubalus in 1758; the latter was known to occur in Asia and as a domestic form in Italy. Ellerman and Morrison-Scott treated the wild and domestic forms of the water buffalo as conspecifics whereas others treated them as different species. The nomenclatorial treatment of wild and domestic forms has been inconsistent and varies between authors and even within the works of single authors.

 

In March 2003, the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature achieved consistency in the naming of wild and domestic water buffalo by ruling that the scientific name Bubalus arnee is valid for the wild form. B. bubalis continues to be valid for the domestic form and applies also to feral populations.

 

DOMESTICATION AND BREEDING

Water buffalo were domesticated in India about 5000 years ago, and in China about 4000 years ago. Two types are recognized, based on morphological and behavioural criteria – the river buffalo of the Indian subcontinent and further west to the Balkans and Italy, and the swamp buffalo, found from Assam in the west through Southeast Asia to the Yangtze valley of China in the east. The present-day river buffalo is the result of complex domestication processes involving more than one maternal lineage and a significant maternal gene flow from wild populations after the initial domestication events. Twenty-two breeds of the river type water buffalo are known, including Murrah, Nili-Ravi, Surti, Jafarabadi, Anatolian, Mediterranean, and Egyptian buffalo. China has a huge variety of buffalo genetic resources, comprising 16 local swamp buffalo breeds in various regions.

 

Results of mitochondrial DNA analyses indicate that the two types were domesticated independently. Sequencing of cytochrome b genes of Bubalus species implies that the domestic buffalo originated from at least two populations, and that the river and the swamp types have differentiated at the full species level. The genetic distance between the two types is so large that a divergence time of about 1.7 million years has been suggested. The swamp type was noticed to have the closest relationship with the tamaraw.

 

DISTRIBUTION OF POPULATIONS

The water buffalo population in the world is about 172 million.

 

IN ASIA

More than 95.8% of the world population of water buffalo are found in Asia including both river and swamp types. The water buffalo population in India numbered over 97.9 million head in 2003, representing 56.5% of the world population. They are primarily of the river type, with 10 well-defined breeds comprising Badhawari, Murrah, Nili-Ravi, Jafarabadi, Marathwada, Mehsana, Nagpuri, Pandharpuri, Toda, and Surti. Swamp buffalo occur only in small areas in the north-eastern part of the country and are not distinguished into breeds.

 

In 2003, the second-largest population lived in China, with 22.759 million head, all of the swamp type with breeds kept only in the lowlands, and other breeds kept only in the mountains; as of 2003, 3.2 million swamp-type carabao buffalo were in the Philippines, nearly three million swamp buffalo were in Vietnam, and 772,764 buffalo were in Bangladesh. About 750,000 head were estimated in Sri Lanka in 1997.

 

The water buffalo is the main dairy animal in Pakistan, with 23.47 million head in 2010. Of these, 76% are kept in the Punjab. The rest of them are mostly in the province of Sindh. Breeds used are Nili-Ravi, Kundi, and Azi Kheli. Karachi has the largest population of water buffalos for an area where fodder is not grown, consisting of 350,000 head kept mainly for milking.

 

In Thailand, the number of water buffalo dropped from more than 3 million head in 1996 to less than 1.24 million head in 2011. Slightly over 75% of them are kept in the country's northeastern region. The statistics also indicate that by the beginning of 2012, less than one million were in the country, partly as a result of illegal shipments to neighboring countries where sales prices are higher than in Thailand.

 

Water buffalo are also present in the southern region of Iraq, in the marshes. These marshes were drained by Saddam Hussein in 1991 in an attempt to punish the south for the uprisings of 1991. Following 2003, and the fall of the Saddam regime, these lands were reflooded and a 2007 report in the provinces of Maysan and Thi Qar shows a steady increase in the number of water buffalo. The report puts the number at 40,008 head in those two provinces.

 

IN EUROPE AND THE MEDITERRANEAN

Water buffalo likely were introduced to Europe from India or other Oriental countries. To Italy they were introduced about the year 600 in the reign of the Longobard King Agilulf. As they appear in the company of wild horses, they probably were a present from the Khan of the Avars, a Turkic nomadic tribe that dwelt near the Danube River at the time. Sir H. Johnston knew of a herd of water buffalo presented by a King of Naples to the Bey of Tunis in the mid-19th century that had resumed the feral state in northern Tunis.

 

European buffalo are all of the river type and considered to be of the same breed named Mediterranean buffalo. In Italy, the Mediterranean type was particularly selected and is called Mediterranean Italian breed to distinguish it from other European breeds, which differ genetically. Mediterranean buffalo are also found in Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Albania, Kosovo, and the Republic of Macedonia, with a few hundred in the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Hungary. Little exchange of breeding buffalo has occurred among countries, so each population has its own phenotypic features and performances. In Bulgaria, they were crossbred with the Indian Murrah breed, and in Romania, some were crossbred with Bulgarian Murrah. Populations in Turkey are of the Anatolian buffalo breed.

 

IN AUSTRALIA

Between 1824 and 1849, water buffalo were introduced into the Northern Territory from Timor, Kisar, and probably other islands in the Indonesian archipelago. In 1886, a few milking types were brought from India to Darwin. They have been the main grazing animals on the subcoastal plains and river basins between Darwin and Arnhem Land since the 1880s. In the early 1960s, an estimated population of 150,000 to 200,000 buffalo were living in the plains and nearby areas.

 

They became feral and are causing significant environmental damage. Buffalo are also found in the Top End. As a result, they were hunted in the Top End from 1885 until 1980. The commencement of the brucellosis and tuberculosis campaign (BTEC) resulted in a huge culling program to reduce buffalo herds to a fraction of the numbers that were reached in the 1980s. The BTEC was finished when the Northern Territory was declared free of the disease in 1997. Numbers dropped dramatically as a result of the campaign, but have since recovered to an estimated 150,000 animals across northern Australia in 2008.

 

During the 1950s, buffalo were hunted for their skins and meat, which was exported and used in the local trade. In the late 1970s, live exports were made to Cuba and continued later into other countries. Buffalo are now crossed with riverine buffalo in artificial insemination programs, and may be found in many areas of Australia. Some of these crossbreds are used for milk production. Melville Island is a popular hunting location, where a steady population up to 4,000 individuals exists. Safari outfits are run from Darwin to Melville Island and other locations in the Top End, often with the use of bush pilots. The horns, which can measure up to a record of 3.1 m tip-to-tip, are prized hunting trophies.

 

The buffalo have developed a different appearance from the Indonesian buffalo from which they descend. They live mainly in freshwater marshes and billabongs, and their territory range can be quite expansive during the wet season. Their only natural predators in Australia are adult saltwater crocodiles, with whom they share the billabongs, and dingoes, which have been known to prey on buffalo calves and occasionally adult buffalo when the dingoes are in large packs.

 

Buffalo were exported live to Indonesia until 2011, at a rate of about 3000 per year. After the live export ban that year, the exports dropped to zero, and had not resumed as of June 2013.

 

IN SOUTH AMERICA

Water buffalo were introduced into the Amazon River basin in 1895. They are now extensively used there for meat and dairy production. In 2005, the buffalo herd in the Brazilian Amazon stood at roughly 1.6 million head, of which 460,000 were located in the lower Amazon floodplain. Breeds used include Mediterranean from Italy, Murrah and Jafarabadi from India, and Carabao from the Philippines.

 

During the 1970s, small herds were imported to Costa Rica, Ecuador, Cayenne, Panama, Surinam, Guyana, and Venezuela.

 

In Argentina, many game ranches raise water buffalo for commercial hunting

 

IN NORTH AMERICA

In 1974, four water buffalo were imported to the United States from Guam to be studied at the University of Florida. In February 1978, the first herd arrived for commercial farming. Until 2002, only one commercial breeder was in the United States. Water buffalo meat is imported from Australia. Until 2011, water buffalo were raised in Gainesville, Florida, from young obtained from zoo overflow. They were used primarily for meat production, frequently sold as hamburger.[38] Other US ranchers use them for production of high-quality mozzarella cheese.

 

HUSBANDRY

The husbandry system of water buffalo depends on the purpose for which they are bred and maintained. Most of them are kept by people who work on small farms in family units. Their buffalo live in very close association with them, and are often their greatest capital asset. The women and girls in India generally look after the milking buffalo while the men and boys are concerned with the working animals. Throughout Asia, they are commonly tended by children who are often seen leading or riding their charges to wallowing places. Water buffalo are the ideal animals for work in the deep mud of paddy fields because of their large hooves and flexible foot joints. They are often referred to as "the living tractor of the East". It probably is possible to plough deeper with buffalo than with either oxen or horses. They are the most efficient and economical means of cultivation of small fields. In most rice-producing countries, they are used for threshing and for transporting the sheaves during the rice harvest. They provide power for oilseed mills, sugarcane presses, and devices for raising water. They are widely used as pack animals, and in India and Pakistan also for heavy haulage. In their invasions of Europe, the Turks used buffalo for hauling heavy battering rams. Their dung is used as a fertilizer, and as a fuel when dried.

 

Buffalo contribute 72 million tones of milk and three million tones of meat annually to world food, much of it in areas that are prone to nutritional imbalances. In India, river-type buffalo are kept mainly for milk production and for transport, whereas swamp-type buffalo are kept mainly for work and a small amount of milk.

 

DAIRY PRODUCTS

Water buffalo milk presents physicochemical features different from that of other ruminant species, such as a higher content of fatty acids and proteins. The physical and chemical parameters of swamp and river type water buffalo milk differ. Water buffalo milk contains higher levels of total solids, crude protein, fat, calcium, and phosphorus, and slightly higher content of lactose compared with those of cow milk. The high level of total solids makes water buffalo milk ideal for processing into value-added dairy products such as cheese. The conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) content in milk ranged from 4.4 mg/g fat in September to 7.6 mg/g fat in June. Seasons and genetics may play a role in variation of CLA level and changes in gross composition of the water buffalo milk.

 

Water buffalo milk is processed into a large variety of dairy products:

 

- Cream churns much faster at higher fat levels and gives higher overrun than cow cream.

- Butter from water buffalo cream displays more stability than that from cow cream.

- Ghee from water buffalo milk has a different texture with a bigger grain size than ghee from cow milk.

- Heat-concentrated milk products in the Indian subcontinent include paneer, khoa, rabri, kheer and basundi.

- Fermented milk products include dahi, yogurt, and chakka.

- Whey is used for making ricotta and mascarpone in Italy, and alkarish in Syria and Egypt.

- Soft cheeses made include mozzarella in Italy, karish, mish, and domiati in Egypt, madhfor in Iraq, alghab in Syria, kesong puti in the Philippines, and vladeasa in Romania.

- The semihard cheese beyaz peynir is made in Turkey.

- Hard cheeses include braila in Romania, rahss in Egypt, white brine in Bulgaria, and akkawi in Syria.

- Watered-down buffalo milk is used as a cheaper alternative to regular milk.

 

MEAT AND SKIN PRODUCTS

Water buffalo meat, sometimes called "carabeef", is often passed off as beef in certain regions, and is also a major source of export revenue for India. In many Asian regions, buffalo meat is less preferred due to its toughness; however, recipes have evolved (rendang, for example) where the slow cooking process and spices not only make the meat palatable, but also preserve it, an important factor in hot climates where refrigeration is not always available.Their hides provide tough and useful leather, often used for shoes.

 

BONE AND HORN PRODUCTS

The bones and horns are often made into jewellery, especially earrings. Horns are used for the embouchure of musical instruments, such as ney and kaval.

 

ENVIRONMENTAL EFFECTS

Wildlife conservation scientists have started to recommend and use introduced populations of feral domestic water buffalo in far-away lands to manage uncontrolled vegetation growth in and around natural wetlands. Introduced water buffalo at home in such environs provide cheap service by regularly grazing the uncontrolled vegetation and opening up clogged water bodies for waterfowl, wetland birds, and other wildlife. Grazing water buffalo are sometimes used in Great Britain for conservation grazing, such as in Chippenham Fen National Nature Reserve. The buffalo can better adapt to wet conditions and poor-quality vegetation than cattle.

 

Currently, research is being conducted at the Lyle Center for Regenerative Studies to determine the levels of nutrients removed and returned to wetlands when water buffalo are used for wetland vegetation management.

 

However, in uncontrolled circumstances, water buffalo can cause environmental damage, such as trampling vegetation, disturbing bird and reptile nesting sites, and spreading exotic weeds.

 

RESEARCH

The world's first cloned buffalo was developed by Indian scientists from National Dairy Research Institute, Karnal. The buffalo calf was named Samrupa. The calf did not survive more than a week, and died due to some genetic disorders. So, the scientists created another cloned buffalo a few months later, and named it Garima.

 

On 15 September 2007, the Philippines announced its development of Southeast Asia's first cloned buffalo. The Philippine Council for Agriculture, Forestry and Natural Resources Research and Development (PCARRD), under the Department of Science and Technology in Los Baños, Laguna, approved this project. The Department of Agriculture's Philippine Carabao Center (PCC) will implement cloning through somatic cell nuclear transfer as a tool for genetic improvement in water buffalo. "Super buffalo calves" will be produced. There will be no modification or alteration of the genetic materials, as in genetically modified organisms.

 

On 1 January 2008, the Philippine Carabao Center in Nueva Ecija, per Filipino scientists, initiated a study to breed a super water buffalo that could produce 4 to 18 litres of milk per day using gene-based technology. Also, the first in vitro river buffalo was born there in 2004 from an in vitro-produced, vitrified embryo, named "Glory" after President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Joseph Estrada's most successful project as an opposition senator, the PCC was created through Republic Act 3707, the Carabao Act of 1992.

 

IN CULTURE

Some ethnic groups, such as Batak and Toraja in Indonesia and the Derung in China, use water buffalo or kerbau (called horbo in Batak or tedong in Toraja) as sacrificial animals at several festivals.

 

- Legend has it that the Chinese philosophical sage Laozi left China through the Han Gu Pass riding a water buffalo.

- According to Hindu lore, the god of death Yama, rides on a male water buffalo.

- The carabao subspecies is considered a national symbol in the Philippines.

- In Vietnam, water buffalo are often the most valuable possession of poor farmers: "Con trâu là đầu cơ nghiệp". They are treated as a member of the family: "Chồng cày, vợ cấy, con trâu đi bừa" ("The husband ploughs, the wife sows, water buffalo draws the rake") and are friends of the children. Children talk to their water buffalo, "Bao giờ cây lúa còn bông. Thì còn ngọn cỏ ngoài đồng trâu ăn." (Vietnamese children are responsible for grazing water buffalo. They feed them grass if they work laboriously for men.) In the old days, West Lake, Hà Nội, was named Kim Ngưu - Golden Water Buffalo.

- The Yoruban Orisha Oya (goddess of change) takes the form of a water buffalo.

 

FIGHTING FESTIVALS

- Pasungay Festival is held annually in the town of San Joaquin, Iloilo in the Philippines.

- Moh juj Water Buffalo fighting, is held every year in Bhogali Bihu in Assam. Ahotguri in Nagaon is famous for it.

- Do Son Water Buffalo Fighting Festival of Vietnam, held each year on the ninth day of the eighth month of the lunar calendar at Do Son Township, Haiphong City in Vietnam, is one of the most popular Vietnam festivals and events in Haiphong City. The preparations for this buffalo fighting festival begin from the two to three months earlier. The competing buffalo are selected and methodically trained months in advance. It is a traditional festival of Vietnam attached to a Water God worshipping ceremony and the Hien Sinh custom to show martial spirit of the local people of Do Son, Haiphong.

- "Hai Luu" Water Buffalo Fighting Festival of Vietnam, According to ancient records, the buffalo fighting in Hai Luu Commune has existed from the 2nd century B.C. General Lu Gia at that time, had the buffalo slaughtered to give a feast to the local people and the warriors, and organized buffalo fighting for amusement. Eventually, all the fighting buffalo will be slaughtered as tributes to the deities.

- "Ko Samui" Water Buffalo Fighting Festival of Thailand, is a very popular event held on special occasions such as New Year's Day in January, and Songkran in mid-April, this festival features head-wrestling bouts in which two male Asian water buffalo are pitted against one another. Unlike in Spanish Bullfighting, wherein bulls get killed while fighting sword-wielding men, Buffalo Fighting Festival held at Ko Samui, Thailand is fairly harmless contest. The fighting season varies according to ancient customs & ceremonies. The first Buffalo to turn and run away is considered the loser, the winning buffalo becomes worth several million baht. Ko Samui is an island in the Gulf of Thailand in the South China Sea, it is 700 km from Bangkok and is connected to it by regular flights.

- "Ma'Pasilaga Tedong" Water Buffalo Fighting Festival, in Tana Toraja Regency of Sulawesi Island, Indonesia, is a very popular event where the Rambu Solo' or a Burial Festival took place in Tana Toraja.

 

RACING FESTIVALS

Carabao Carroza Festival is being held annually every May in the town of Pavia, Iloilo, Philippines.

Kambala races of Karnataka, India, take place between December and March. The races are conducted by having the water buffalo (he buffalo) run in long parallel slushy ditches, where they are driven by men standing on wooden planks drawn by the buffalo. The objectives of the race are to finish first and to raise the water to the greatest height and also a rural sport. Kambala races are arranged with competition, as well as without competition and as a part of thanks giving (to god) in about 50 villages of coastal Karnataka.

 

In the Chonburi Province of Thailand, and in Pakistan, there are annual water buffalo races.

 

Chon Buri Water buffalo racing festival, Thailand In downtown Chonburi, 70 km south of Bangkok, at the annual water buffalo festival held in mid-October. About 300 buffalo race in groups of five or six, spurred on by bareback jockeys wielding wooden sticks, as hundreds of spectators cheer. The water buffalo has always played an important role in agriculture in Thailand. For farmers of Chon Buri Province, near Bangkok, it is an important annual festival, beginning in mid-October. It is also a celebration among rice farmers before the rice harvest. At dawn, farmers walk their buffalo through surrounding rice fields, splashing them with water to keep them cool before leading them to the race field. This amazing festival started over a hundred years ago when two men arguing about whose buffalo was the fastest ended up having a race between them. That’s how it became a tradition and gradually a social event for farmers who gathered from around the country in Chonburi to trade their goods. The festival also helps a great deal in preserving the number of buffalo, which have been dwindling at quite an alarming rate in other regions. Modern machinery is rapidly replacing buffalo in Thai agriculture. With most of the farm work mechanized, the buffalo-racing tradition has continued. Racing buffalo are now raised just to race; they do not work at all. The few farm buffalo which still do work are much bigger than the racers because of the strenuous work they perform. Farm buffalo are in the "Buffalo Beauty Pageant", a Miss Farmer beauty contest and a comic buffalo costume contest etc.. This festival perfectly exemplifies a favored Thai attitude to life — "sanuk," meaning fun.

 

Babulang Water buffalo racing festival, Sarawak, Malaysia, is the largest or grandest of the many rituals, ceremonies and festivals of the traditional Bisaya (Borneo) community of Limbang, Sarawak. Highlights are the Ratu Babulang competition and the Water buffalo races which can only be found in this town in Sarawak, Malaysia.

Vihear Suor village Water buffalo racing festival, in Cambodia, each year, people visit Buddhist temples across the country to honor their deceased loved ones during a 15-day period commonly known as the Festival of the Dead but in Vihear Suor village, about 35 km northeast of Cambodia, citizens each year wrap up the festival with a water buffalo race to entertain visitors and honour a pledge made hundreds of years ago. There was a time when many village cattle which provide rural Cambodians with muscle power to plough their fields and transport agricultural products died from an unknown disease. The villagers prayed to a spirit to help save their animals from the disease and promised to show their gratitude by holding a buffalo race each year on the last day of "P'chum Ben" festival as it is known in Cambodian. The race draws hundreds of spectators who come to see riders and their animals charge down the racing field, the racers bouncing up and down on the backs of their buffalo, whose horns were draped with colorful cloth.

Pothu puttu matsaram, Kerala, South India, is similar to Kambala races.

 

WIKIPEDIA

I love these little dudes so much!!! This is a video compilation of Tardigrades which were isolated from moss samples which were collected from logs of a pear tree from a neighbour's garden that they cut down last year. The lower portions of the tree are completely covered in moss and every time I've taken samples from it, I've found tardigrades.

 

The moss was collected into a petri dish, then rain water was added to it. It was left for 24 hours initially, but then over the following 3 days I transferred small amount of the sample onto microscope slides and methodically worked my way around the slide looking for organisms. As always there were plenty of paramecia and a few Rotifera Bdelloidea (look for a separate video of the Rotifers). In addition, there were a number of tardigrades visible in the sample. Mostly they were playing hide and seek amongst the bits of moss and bark, and I didn't want to risk harming them by trying to separate them! I'm sure there were plenty more in the sample but I have been really unwell with a nasty 'flu virus and pleurasy, so after 3 days of studying the sample, it was returned to where it was found.

 

The microscope used is a C. Baker London vintage binocular histology microscope. The in-built light source wasn't bright enough so additional lighting came from a clip-on LED reading light. Camera was a Canon 1100D attached to the microscope with a T-ring and 10mm extension tube which sits in the eye piece holder. The 10x magnification was used on the turret, and at times the field of view was zoomed in by x1 or x1.5 using the adjustment at the top of the microscope. All the focusing was done on the microscope, with the live view on the back of the camera as a guide. These organisms are tiny when viewed on the live view screen so it was difficult to keep perfect focus on a small moving object. Next time I try this I want to have a go with Backyard EOS so I can view everything on screen because that will make life easier.

 

Video clips edited together using Movie Maker 10.

Music: "The Ants Built a City on his Chest" by Doctor Turtle, one of the in-built tracks on Movie Maker 10

 

‎WESTLAKE - It took nearly 150 ‪Los Angeles‬ ‪Firefighters‬ nearly two and a half hours to extinguish a major emergency fire in a vacant 2 story office building west of downtown Los Angeles Monday evening.

 

The Los Angeles Fire Department was summoned at 7:01 PM on June 13, 2016 to a structure fire at 2411 West 8th Street in the Westlake neighborhood not far from MacArthur Park. LAFD responders arrived quickly to find intense fire on the upper floor of a long vacant 14,351 square-foot two story office building, the site of previous blazes.

 

Firefighters used ground ladders to assist several imperiled persons at windows of the burning structure, with LAFD responders entering the building to performing the rescue of three others.

 

While extending hoselines to aggressively battle the flames within, LAFD crews sadly discovered and retrieved a dead man from the inferno, before the failing structure forced then to switch to defensive exterior operations twenty minutes into the firefight.

 

A total of 147 LAFD personnel under the command of Battalion Chief Jaime Moore, confined the blaze to the heavily damaged building of fire origin - which had no functional fire sprinklers, extinguishing the bulk of flame in just 2 hours and 22 minutes.

 

As a result of witnesses statements, Los Angeles Police Department Officers later detained and arrested an adult male suspected of starting the fire. He and one of the persons earlier rescued by firefighters, were taken to an area hospital by ambulance for evaluation of non-life threatening injuries.

 

With the flames extinguished well past darkness, firefighters remained at the structurally unsound premises to douse hotspots, prevent public harm and prepare for a further search at daybreak.

 

Early Tuesday, investigation teams from the LAFD Arson/Counter-Terrorism Section methodically processed the large and still-smoldering site to determine the fire's cause and origin, as highly-trained Human Remains Detection Dog and Handler teams performed a relentless search of the collapsed structure for deceased victims.

 

With the canines' help, firefighters discovered the remains of four adult victims, two men and two women, amid the rubble on the second floor of the building. Their discovery, combined with the male victim found deceased by firefighters battling the blaze, brought the death tally to five, all of whom appeared to be transients.

 

No firefighters sustained injury in the firefight, investigation or recovery operations.

 

A positive identification of the dead persons, to include the cause, time and manner of their death will be determined by the Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner-Coroner.

 

Photo Use Permitted via Creative Commons - Credit: LAFD Photo | Christopher Wan

 

LAFD Incident: 061316-1267

 

Connect with us: LAFD.ORG | News | Facebook | Instagram | Reddit | Twitter: @LAFD @LAFDtalk

CANOGA PARK- The Los Angeles Fire Department battled a Major Emergency Structure Fire in the west San Fernando Valley on Monday, October 18, 2021.

 

The fire at 8423 Canoga Avenue in Canoga Park, was first noted at 12:18 PM by an LAFD Paramedic Ambulance crew returning from a nearby emergency. Within moments of their reporting the fire, flames were through the roof of the 125' x 125' one-story industrial building that also housed an adjoining but unrelated business at 8425 Canoga Avenue.

 

As that first-arriving LAFD Paramedic crew circled the structure to gain situational awareness and guide fellow responders, they encountered the first of three adult male civilians with severe burn injuries outside the burning building. Two proved to be in critical condition and the other in serious condition. All three were taken to area hospitals. Sadly, one of the critically injured men died later while undergoing hospital care.

 

The rapid spread of intense flames and multiple explosions heard within the building guided first-arriving firefighters to quickly commence defensive operations, applying multiple large diameter hose streams from the exterior, including two from atop extended aerial ladders, to prevent flames from extending beyond the well involved structure.

 

With the exception of a forty square-foot section of the roof at 8427 Canoga Avenue destroyed by surface fire, the tactics proved successful in holding the blaze to the pair of unrelated businesses under one roof at 8423 and 8425 Canoga Avenue.

 

It took 150 Los Angeles Firefighter just 75 minutes to extinguish the flames.

 

Firefighters remained active through the night extinguishing hotspots and minimizing hazards at the structurally compromised building with the help of LAFD's robotic firefighting vehicle and heavy equipment.

 

At daylight Tuesday, LAFD crews resumed a systematic search within the largely destroyed premises. During their methodical search among tons of burnt debris inside the structure, firefighters discovered the remains of an adult male, bringing the overall patient count to four, with a total of two deceased and two remaining hospitalized.

 

No other injuries were reported.

 

Scientific testing of materials inside the building of fire origin yielded positive results for hemp, and it appears that the operation inside involved the extraction from hemp, not dissimilar to that used in the Butane Honey Oil extraction process.

 

Though the business was a legal enterprise, the operation inside appeared to be illegal, as it did not adhere to established permitting processes and safety requirements.

 

Pursuant to protocol, the fire's cause remains the focus of a joint active investigation by the Los Angeles Fire Department, Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles Interagency Metropolitan Police Apprehension Crime Task Force (L.A. Impact).

 

A positive identification of the dead men, as well as the cause, time and manner of their death will be determined by the Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner-Coroner.

 

© Photo by Austin Gebhardt

 

LAFD Incident 101821-0791

 

Connect with us: LAFD.ORG | News | Facebook | Instagram | Reddit | Twitter: @LAFD @LAFDtalk

www.phaselis.org/en/about/about-project

Phaselis Research

 

Phaselis

 

When compared with the previous period of research on the history of the city over the past quarter century it has undergone radical changes. While modern scientists follow the path of their predecessors in collecting data through systematic processes and methodically analysing them, they change the route whereby they approach the city as a context- and a process-oriented structure, having economic, social, cultural, political and environmental dimensions which come together at different levels.

 

This considerably more inclusive definition expands the discipline concerning the city’s historical research, which consists of archaeology, epigraphy, ancient history and the other ancillary sciences and it encourages scientists from the natural and health sciences to participate within these studies. This is because in the course of the exploration of an ancient settlement the study of both the environment and the ecological setting which make human life possible; together with health issues, such as diet and epidemics, form the context within which human beings live, and which are thereby as important as the human actors.

 

Within the context of the planned Phaselis Research, even certain knowledge such as the settlement’s appearing on the stage of history as a favorite break-point with its three natural harbours, it being famous for its roses, the frequent seismic upheavals at sea and on its shores and its citizens leaving their homes because of a devastating malaria epidemic suggest the necessity of the application of this multi-dimensional research methodology in order to understand more fully the historical adventure of this city.

 

By presenting this research project, we aim to implement and realize this multi-dimensional research method, which as yet lacks widespread application in the field in our country, however conceptually and practically with a multi-disciplinary research team consisting of both national and international scientists, we intend to register systematically every kind of data/information regarding all contexts of the city employing modern methods and to present the results to the scientific world in the form of regular reports and monographic studies, thus forming a strong tie between past and future research.

 

Phaselis Territorium

 

The boundaries of the ancient city of Phaselis’ territorium are today within the administrative borders of the township of Tekirova, in Kemer District, determined from the archaeological, epigraphic and historical-geographical evidence, reaching the Gökdere valley to the north, continue on a line drawn from Üç Adalar to Mount Tahtalı to the south and extend along the Çandır valley to the west.

 

Phaselis was discovered in 1811-1812 by Captain F. Beaufort during his work of charting the southern coastline of Asia Minor for the British Royal Navy. Beaufort drew Phaselis’ plan and in the course of conducting his cartographic studies, he saw the word Φασηλίτης ethnikon on the inscriptions and consequently identified these ruins with Phaselis. C. R. Cockerell, the English architect, archaeologist and author came to Phaselis by ship and met Beaufort there. Then in 1838 C. Fellows, the English archaeologist visited the city. He found the fragments of the dedicatory inscription over the monumental gate built in honour of the Emperor Hadrianus and mistakenly thought the Imperial Period main street was the stadion due to the seats-steps on either side of the street. In 1842 Lt. T. A. B. Spratt, the English hydrographer and geographer, and the Rev. E. Forbes, the naturalist came to Phaselis via the Olympos and Khimaira routes. Due to the fact that they all came by sea and they only stayed for a short time, their descriptions of the topography inland are without detailed and there are serious errors in orientation.

 

PhaselisThose researchers who visited Phaselis between the late 19th and the early 20th centuries concentrated primarily upon the discovery of inscriptions. In 1881-1882 while the Austrian archaeologist and the epigraphist O. Benndorf, the founder of the Austrian Archaeological Institute, and his team were conducting research in southwestern Asia Minor, they examined Phaselis. In the winter of 1883 and 1884 F. von Luschan from the Austrian team took the first photographs which provide information concerning the regional features of Phaselis’ shoreline. In the same year the French scientist V. Bérard also visited Phaselis. In 1892 the members of the Austrian research team, O. Benndorf, E. Kalinka and their colleagues continued their architectural, archaeological and epigraphical studies in Phaselis. In 1904 they were followed by D. G. Hogarth, R. Norton and A. W. van Buren from the British research team. In 1908 the Austrian classical philologist E. Kalinka visited the settlement again, collected epigraphic documents and conducted research on the history of city (published in TAM II in 1944). The Italian researchers R. Paribeni and P. Romanelli visited Phaselis in1913 and C. Anti in 1921. Anti returned to Antalya overland and in consequence discovered several epigraphs and the ruins of structures within the territorium of Phaselis.

 

Further archaeological, epigraphical and historical-geographical studies of Phaselis were conducted by the English researchers F. M. Stark and G. Bean, who came to the region after World War II. In 1968 H. Schläger, the German architect and underwater archaeologist began exploring the topographical and architectural structures of Phaselis’s harbours. After Schläger’s death in 1969, the research was conducted under the leadership of the archaeologist J. Schäfer in 1970. H. Schläger, J. Schäfer and their colleagues obtained important data concerning the architecture and history of Phaselis through the surface exploration of the city and its periphery. Following the excavations conducted along the main axial street of the city, in 1980 under the direction of Kayhan Dörtlük, the then Director of the Antalya Museum and between 1981-1985 under the leadership of the archaeologist Cevdet Bayburtluoğlu; underwater exploration was carried out in the South Harbour under the direction of Metin Pehlivaner, the then Director of the Antalya Museum.

  

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phaselis

 

What's in Your Geocaching Bag? Basic Essentials...

Contents:

Nikon S50,

Garmin 60Csx,

iPod Nano (Paperless Geocaching: GC details downloaded to "Notes" on iPod) in Umbra Bungee Holder,

Bigfoot Travel Bug,

Moleskine Grid Reporter Notebook,

Swiss Army Knife,

Altoids Gum,

Shortened Bic,

Mini Sharpie,

Pencil,

Camo Duct Tape,

Maglite Converted to push button LED,

Geocaching Lanyard,

Homemade CITO Film Can w/ Grocery Bag,

Waterproof Battery Container 8 AA,

Waterproof Battery Container 8 AA Rechargeable,

Wallet

Cell Phone

Keys

Dakine Digi Camo Small Backpack

 

Not Pictured: Swag Bag, Mini First Aid Kit, and Carmex or Chapstick.

shine

 

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∞

 

Last week I finally sent away my summer photo book and received Louise's back! It's beautiful and it's given me so many ideas and thoughts already. It's been so nice to look through her thought processes and see how she came to the final photos, we both work differently! She's much more methodical!

 

On another note, tomorrow I'm shooting my first wedding. Nervous much?

 

Photo may end up being part of my AS Level Photography project. Not sure yet. Not overly happy with it, but enjoyed this shoot with my sister full of glitter and fun.

"Karlstadt is a town in the Main-Spessart in the Regierungsbezirk of Lower Franconia (Unterfranken) in Bavaria, Germany. It is the administrative centre of Main-Spessart (Kreisstadt), and has a population of around 15,000.

 

Karlstadt lies on the River Main in the district (Landkreis) of Main-Spessart, roughly 25 km north of the city of Würzburg. It belongs to the Main-Franconian wine-growing region. The town itself is located on the right bank of the river, but the municipal territory extends to the left bank.

 

Since the amalgamations in 1978, Karlstadt's Stadtteile have been Gambach, Heßlar, Karlburg, Karlstadt, Laudenbach, Mühlbach, Rohrbach, Stadelhofen, Stetten, and Wiesenfeld.

 

From the late 6th to the mid-13th century, the settlement of Karlburg with its monastery and harbor was located on the west bank of the Main. It grew up around the Karlsburg, a castle perched high over the community, that was destroyed in the German Peasants' War in 1525.

 

In 1202, Karlstadt itself was founded by Konrad von Querfurt, Bishop of Würzburg. The town was methodically laid out with a nearly rectangular plan to defend Würzburg territory against the Counts of Rieneck. The plan is still well preserved today. The streets in the old town are laid out much like a chessboard, but for military reasons they are not quite straight.

 

In 1225, Karlstadt had its first documentary mention. In 1236, the castle and the village of Karlburg were destroyed in the Rieneck Feud. In 1244, winegrowing in Karlstadt was mentioned for the first time. From 1277 comes the earliest evidence of the town seal. In 1304, the town fortifications were finished. The parish of Karlstadt was first named in 1339. In 1369 a hospital was founded. Between 1370 and 1515, remodelling work was being done on the first, Romanesque parish church to turn it into a Gothic hall church. About 1400, Karlstadt became for a short time the seat of an episcopal mint. The former Oberamt of the Princely Electorate (Hochstift) of Würzburg was, after Secularization, in Bavaria's favour, passed in 1805 to Grand Duke Ferdinando III of Tuscany to form the Grand Duchy of Würzburg, and passed with this to the Kingdom of Bavaria.

 

The Jewish residents of the town had a synagogue as early as the Middle Ages. The town's synagogue was destroyed on Kristallnacht (the Night of Broken Glass, 9 November 1938) by Nazi SA men, SS, and Hitler Youth, as well as other local residents. Its destruction is recalled by a plaque at the synagogue's former site. The homes of Jewish residents were attacked as well, the possessions therein were looted or brought to the square in front of the town hall where they were burned, and the Jews living in the town were beaten.

 

Lower Franconia (German: Unterfranken) is one of seven districts of Bavaria, Germany. The districts of Lower, Middle and Upper Franconia make up the region of Franconia. It consists of nine districts and 308 municipalities (including three cities).

 

After the founding of the Kingdom of Bavaria the state was totally reorganised and, in 1808, divided into 15 administrative government regions (German: Regierungsbezirke, singular Regierungsbezirk), in Bavaria called Kreise (singular: Kreis). They were created in the fashion of the French departements, quite even in size and population, and named after their main rivers.

 

In the following years, due to territorial changes (e. g. loss of Tyrol, addition of the Palatinate), the number of Kreise was reduced to 8. One of these was the Untermainkreis (Lower Main District). In 1837 king Ludwig I of Bavaria renamed the Kreise after historical territorial names and tribes of the area. This also involved some border changes or territorial swaps. Thus the name Untermainkreis changed to Lower Franconia and Aschaffenburg, but the city name was dropped in the middle of the 20th century, leaving just Lower Franconia.

 

From 1933, the regional Nazi Gauleiter, Otto Hellmuth, (who had renamed his party Gau "Mainfranken") insisted on renaming the government district Mainfranken as well. He encountered resistance from Bavarian state authorities but finally succeeded in having the name of the district changed, effective 1 June 1938. After 1945 the name Unterfranken was restored.

 

Franconia (German: Franken, pronounced [ˈfʁaŋkŋ̍]; Franconian: Franggn [ˈfrɑŋɡŋ̍]; Bavarian: Frankn) is a region of Germany, characterised by its culture and Franconian dialect (German: Fränkisch).

 

Franconia is made up of the three Regierungsbezirke of Lower, Middle and Upper Franconia in Bavaria, the adjacent, Franconian-speaking, South Thuringia, south of the Thuringian Forest—which constitutes the language boundary between Franconian and Thuringian— and the eastern parts of Heilbronn-Franconia in Baden-Württemberg.

 

Those parts of the Vogtland lying in Saxony (largest city: Plauen) are sometimes regarded as Franconian as well, because the Vogtlandian dialects are mostly East Franconian. The inhabitants of Saxon Vogtland, however, mostly do not consider themselves as Franconian. On the other hand, the inhabitants of the Hessian-speaking parts of Lower Franconia west of the Spessart (largest city: Aschaffenburg) do consider themselves as Franconian, although not speaking the dialect. Heilbronn-Franconia's largest city of Heilbronn and its surrounding areas are South Franconian-speaking, and therefore only sometimes regarded as Franconian. In Hesse, the east of the Fulda District is Franconian-speaking, and parts of the Oden Forest District are sometimes regarded as Franconian for historical reasons, but a Franconian identity did not develop there.

 

Franconia's largest city and unofficial capital is Nuremberg, which is contiguous with Erlangen and Fürth, with which it forms the Franconian conurbation with around 1.3 million inhabitants. Other important Franconian cities are Würzburg, Bamberg, Bayreuth, Ansbach and Coburg in Bavaria, Suhl and Meiningen in Thuringia, and Schwäbisch Hall in Baden-Württemberg.

 

The German word Franken—Franconians—also refers to the ethnic group, which is mainly to be found in this region. They are to be distinguished from the Germanic people of the Franks, and historically formed their easternmost settlement area. The origins of Franconia lie in the settlement of the Franks from the 6th century in the area probably populated until then mainly by the Elbe Germanic people in the Main river area, known from the 9th century as East Francia (Francia Orientalis). In the Middle Ages the region formed much of the eastern part of the Duchy of Franconia and, from 1500, the Franconian Circle. The restructuring of the south German states by Napoleon, after the demise of the Holy Roman Empire, saw most of Franconia awarded to Bavaria." - info from Wikipedia.

 

Summer 2019 I did a solo cycling tour across Europe through 12 countries over the course of 3 months. I began my adventure in Edinburgh, Scotland and finished in Florence, Italy cycling 8,816 km. During my trip I took 47,000 photos.

 

Now on Instagram.

 

Become a patron to my photography on Patreon or donate.

LOGLINE:

Collective is a gripping, real-time docu-thriller that follows a heroic team of journalists as they expose shocking corruption in the Romanian national health-care system.

 

SYNOPSIS:

After an explosive fire claims the lives of 27 people at Bucharest nightclub, Colectiv, officials reassure the public that surviving victims will receive care in facilities that are “better than in Germany.” Weeks later, a rising causality count leads intrepid reporters at the Sports Gazette to investigate. Just as a crucial tip exposes Hexi Pharma, a local firm’s culpability, the firm’s owner dies under mysterious circumstances and the health minister quietly resigns amid the uproar -but this is only the first chapter in a thrilling, ever- twisting exposé.

Closely tracking the efforts of the Gazette team as they methodically discover layer upon layer of fraud and criminal malfeasance, Alexander Nanau’s COLLECTIVE is a fast- paced, real-time detective story about truth, accountability, and the value of an independent press in partisan times.

  

"When I started working on this film in early 2016, I never imagined that the year would be a major turning point for democracy all around the world. I never suspected that, by the end of the production, most of what could be said about Romanian society would be equally relevant for older, more established democracies, be it the UK, the US, Italy, Brazil, Hungary, Poland, Turkey, etc. There was a pattern of populists taking over, lying and attacking the free press, misusing state institutions in their own interest and perverting the very meaning of liberal values and social structures. 2016 tested democracies worldwide, but it also tested each and every one of us."

––Alexander Nanau

Sexy, violent, methodical. She's everything a gangster could want in a wife and more. But a boss only speaks to bosses. Mood Music = Bitch Better Have My Money by Rhianna www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnIeRkCqD-E

www.phaselis.org/en/about/about-project

Phaselis Research

 

Phaselis

 

When compared with the previous period of research on the history of the city over the past quarter century it has undergone radical changes. While modern scientists follow the path of their predecessors in collecting data through systematic processes and methodically analysing them, they change the route whereby they approach the city as a context- and a process-oriented structure, having economic, social, cultural, political and environmental dimensions which come together at different levels.

 

This considerably more inclusive definition expands the discipline concerning the city’s historical research, which consists of archaeology, epigraphy, ancient history and the other ancillary sciences and it encourages scientists from the natural and health sciences to participate within these studies. This is because in the course of the exploration of an ancient settlement the study of both the environment and the ecological setting which make human life possible; together with health issues, such as diet and epidemics, form the context within which human beings live, and which are thereby as important as the human actors.

 

Within the context of the planned Phaselis Research, even certain knowledge such as the settlement’s appearing on the stage of history as a favorite break-point with its three natural harbours, it being famous for its roses, the frequent seismic upheavals at sea and on its shores and its citizens leaving their homes because of a devastating malaria epidemic suggest the necessity of the application of this multi-dimensional research methodology in order to understand more fully the historical adventure of this city.

 

By presenting this research project, we aim to implement and realize this multi-dimensional research method, which as yet lacks widespread application in the field in our country, however conceptually and practically with a multi-disciplinary research team consisting of both national and international scientists, we intend to register systematically every kind of data/information regarding all contexts of the city employing modern methods and to present the results to the scientific world in the form of regular reports and monographic studies, thus forming a strong tie between past and future research.

 

Phaselis Territorium

 

The boundaries of the ancient city of Phaselis’ territorium are today within the administrative borders of the township of Tekirova, in Kemer District, determined from the archaeological, epigraphic and historical-geographical evidence, reaching the Gökdere valley to the north, continue on a line drawn from Üç Adalar to Mount Tahtalı to the south and extend along the Çandır valley to the west.

 

Phaselis was discovered in 1811-1812 by Captain F. Beaufort during his work of charting the southern coastline of Asia Minor for the British Royal Navy. Beaufort drew Phaselis’ plan and in the course of conducting his cartographic studies, he saw the word Φασηλίτης ethnikon on the inscriptions and consequently identified these ruins with Phaselis. C. R. Cockerell, the English architect, archaeologist and author came to Phaselis by ship and met Beaufort there. Then in 1838 C. Fellows, the English archaeologist visited the city. He found the fragments of the dedicatory inscription over the monumental gate built in honour of the Emperor Hadrianus and mistakenly thought the Imperial Period main street was the stadion due to the seats-steps on either side of the street. In 1842 Lt. T. A. B. Spratt, the English hydrographer and geographer, and the Rev. E. Forbes, the naturalist came to Phaselis via the Olympos and Khimaira routes. Due to the fact that they all came by sea and they only stayed for a short time, their descriptions of the topography inland are without detailed and there are serious errors in orientation.

 

PhaselisThose researchers who visited Phaselis between the late 19th and the early 20th centuries concentrated primarily upon the discovery of inscriptions. In 1881-1882 while the Austrian archaeologist and the epigraphist O. Benndorf, the founder of the Austrian Archaeological Institute, and his team were conducting research in southwestern Asia Minor, they examined Phaselis. In the winter of 1883 and 1884 F. von Luschan from the Austrian team took the first photographs which provide information concerning the regional features of Phaselis’ shoreline. In the same year the French scientist V. Bérard also visited Phaselis. In 1892 the members of the Austrian research team, O. Benndorf, E. Kalinka and their colleagues continued their architectural, archaeological and epigraphical studies in Phaselis. In 1904 they were followed by D. G. Hogarth, R. Norton and A. W. van Buren from the British research team. In 1908 the Austrian classical philologist E. Kalinka visited the settlement again, collected epigraphic documents and conducted research on the history of city (published in TAM II in 1944). The Italian researchers R. Paribeni and P. Romanelli visited Phaselis in1913 and C. Anti in 1921. Anti returned to Antalya overland and in consequence discovered several epigraphs and the ruins of structures within the territorium of Phaselis.

 

Further archaeological, epigraphical and historical-geographical studies of Phaselis were conducted by the English researchers F. M. Stark and G. Bean, who came to the region after World War II. In 1968 H. Schläger, the German architect and underwater archaeologist began exploring the topographical and architectural structures of Phaselis’s harbours. After Schläger’s death in 1969, the research was conducted under the leadership of the archaeologist J. Schäfer in 1970. H. Schläger, J. Schäfer and their colleagues obtained important data concerning the architecture and history of Phaselis through the surface exploration of the city and its periphery. Following the excavations conducted along the main axial street of the city, in 1980 under the direction of Kayhan Dörtlük, the then Director of the Antalya Museum and between 1981-1985 under the leadership of the archaeologist Cevdet Bayburtluoğlu; underwater exploration was carried out in the South Harbour under the direction of Metin Pehlivaner, the then Director of the Antalya Museum.

  

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phaselis

 

Gandhara is the name given to an ancient region or province invaded in 326 B.C. by Alexander the Great, who took Charsadda (ancient Puskalavati) near present-day Peshawar (ancient Purusapura) and then marched eastward across the Indus into the Punjab as far as the Beas river (ancient Vipasa). Gandhara constituted the undulating plains, irrigated by the Kabul River from the Khyber Pass area, the contemporary boundary between Pakistan and Afganistan, down to the Indus River and southward towards the Murree hills and Taxila (ancient Taksasila), near Pakistan"s present capital, Islamabad. Its art, however, during the first centuries of the Christian era, had adopted a substantially larger area, together with the upper stretches of the Kabul River, the valley of Kabul itself, and ancient Kapisa, as well as Swat and Buner towards the north.

   

A great deal of Gandhara sculptures has survived dating from the first to probably as late as the sixth or even the seventh century but in a remarkably homogeneous style. Most of the arts were almost always in a blue-gray mica schist, though sometimes in a green phyllite or in stucco, or very rarely in terracotta. Because of the appeal of its Western classical aesthetic for the British rulers of India, schooled to admire all things Greek and Roman, a great deal found its way into private hands or the shelter of museums.

  

Gandhara sculpture primarily comprised Buddhist monastic establishments. These monasteries provided a never-ending gallery for sculptured reliefs of the Buddha and Bodhisattvas. The Gandhara stupas were comparatively magnified and more intricate, but the most remarkable feature, which distinguished the Gandhara stupas from the pervious styles were hugely tiered umbrellas at its peak, almost soaring over the total structure. The abundance of Gandharan sculpture was an art, which originated with foreign artisans.

  

In the excavation among the varied miscellany of small bronze figures, though not often like Alexandrian imports, four or five Buddhist bronzes are very late in date. These further illustrate the aura of the Gandhara art. Relics of mural paintings though have been discovered, yet the only substantial body of painting, in Bamiyan, is moderately late, and much of it belongs to an Iranian or central Asian rather than an Indian context. Non-narrative themes and architectural ornament were omnipresent at that time. Mythical figures and animals such as atlantes, tritons, dragons, and sea serpents derive from the same source, although there is the occasional high-backed, stylized creature associated with the Central Asian animal style. Moldings and cornices are decorated mostly with acanthus, laurel, and vine, though sometimes with motifs of Indian, and occasionally ultimately western Asian, origin: stepped merlons, lion heads, vedikas, and lotus petals. It is worth noting that architectural elements such as pillars, gable ends, and domes as represented in the reliefs tend to follow the Indian forms

.

 

Gandhara became roughly a Holy Land of Buddhism and excluding a handful of Hindu images, sculpture took the form either of Buddhist sect objects, Buddha and Bodhisattvas, or of architectural embellishment for Buddhist monasteries. The more metaphorical kinds are demonstrated by small votive stupas, and bases teeming with stucco images and figurines that have lasted at Jaulian and Mora Moradu, outpost monasteries in the hills around Taxila. Hadda, near the present town of Jalalabad, has created some groups in stucco of an almost rococo while more latest works of art in baked clay, with strong Hellenistic influence, have been revealed there, in what sums up as tiny chapels. It is not known exactly why stucco, an imported Alexandrian modus operandi, was used. It is true that grey schist is not found near Taxila, however other stones are available, and in opposition to the ease of operating with stucco, predominantly the artistic effects which can be achieved, must be set with its impermanence- fresh deposits frequently had to be applied. Excluding possibly at Taxila, its use emerges to have been a late expansion.

  

Architectural fundamentals of the Gandhara art, like pillars, gable ends and domes as showcased in the reliefs, were inclined to follow Indian outlines, but the pilaster with capital of Corinthian type, abounds and in one-palace scene Persepolitan columns go along with Roman coffered ceilings. The so-called Shrine of the Double-Headed Eagle at Sirkap, in actuality a stupa pedestal, well demonstrates this enlightening eclecticism- the double-headed bird on top of the chaitya arch is an insignia of Scythian origin, which appears as a Byzantine motif and materialises much later in South India as the ga1J.qa-bheru1J.qa in addition to atop European armorial bearings.

 

In Gandhara art the descriptive friezes were all but invariably Buddhist, and hence Indian in substance- one depicted a horse on wheels nearing a doorway, which might have represented the Trojan horse affair, but this is under scan. The Dioscuri, Castor and Pollux, familiar from the previous Greek-based coinage of the region, appeared once or twice as standing figurines, presumably because as a pair, they tallied an Indian mithuna couple. There were also female statuettes, corresponding to city goddesses. Though figures from Butkara, near Saidan Sharif in Swat, were noticeably more Indian in physical type, and Indian motifs were in abundance there. Sculpture was, in the main, Hellenistic or Roman, and the art of Gandhara was indeed "the easternmost appearance of the art of the Roman Empire, especially in its late and provincial manifestations". Furthermore, naturalistic portrait heads, one of the high-points of Roman sculpture, were all but missing in Gandhara, in spite of the episodic separated head, probably that of a donor, with a discernible feeling of uniqueness. Some constitutions and poses matched those from western Asia and the Roman world; like the manner in which a figure in a recurrently instanced scene from the Dipankara jataka had prostrated himself before the future Buddha, is reverberated in the pose of the defeated before the defeater on a Trojanic frieze on the Arch of Constantine and in later illustrations of the admiration of the divinised emperor. One singular recurrently occurring muscular male figure, hand on sword, witnessed in three-quarters view from the backside, has been adopted from western classical sculpture. On occasions standing figures, even the Buddha, deceived the elusive stylistic actions of the Roman sculptor, seeking to express majestas. The drapery was fundamentally Western- the folds and volume of dangling garments were carved with realness and gusto- but it was mainly the persistent endeavours at illusionism, though frequently obscured by unrefined carving, which earmarked the Gandhara sculpture as based on a western classical visual impact.

  

The distinguishing Gandhara sculpture, of which hundreds if not thousands of instances have outlived, is the standing or seated Buddha. This flawlessly reproduces the necessary nature of Gandhara art, in which a religious and an artistic constituent, drawn from widely varied cultures have been bonded. The iconography is purely Indian. The seated Buddha is mostly cross-legged in the established Indian manner. However, forthcoming generations, habituated to think of the Buddha as a monk, and unable to picture him ever possessing long hair or donning a turban, came to deduce the chigon as a "cranial protuberance", singular to Buddha. But Buddha is never depicted with a shaved head, as are the Sangha, the monks; his short hair is clothed either in waves or in taut curls over his whole head. The extended ears are merely due to the downward thrust of the heavy ear-rings worn by a prince or magnate; the distortion of the ear-lobes is especially visible in Buddha, who, in Gandhara, never wore ear-rings or ornaments of any kind. As Foucher puts it, the Gandhara Buddha is at a time a monk without shaving and a prince stripped off jewellery.

  

The western classical factor rests in the style, in the handling of the robe, and in the physiognomy of Buddha. The cloak, which covers all but the appendages (though the right shoulder is often bared), is dealt like in Greek and Roman sculptures; the heavy folds are given a plastic flair of their own, and only in poorer or later works do they deteriorate into indented lines, fairly a return to standard Indian practice. The "western" treatment has caused Buddha"s garment to be misidentified for a toga; but a toga is semicircular, while, Buddha wore a basic, rectangular piece of cloth, i.e., the samghiifi, a monk"s upper garment. The head gradually swerves towards a hieratic stylisation, but at its best, it is naturalistic and almost positively based on the Greek Apollo, undoubtedly in Hellenistic or Roman copies.

 

Gandhara art also had developed at least two species of image, i.e. not part of the frieze, in which Buddha is the fundamental figure of an event in his life, distinguished by accompanying figures and a detailed mise-en-scene. Perhaps the most remarkable amongst these is the Visit to the Indrasala Cave, of which the supreme example is dated in the year 89, almost unquestionably of the Kanishka period. Indra and his harpist are depicted on their visit in it. The small statuettes of the visitors emerge below, an elephant describing Indra. The more general among these detailed images, of which approximately 30 instances are known, is presumably related with the Great Miracle of Sravasti. In one such example, one of the adjoining Bodhisattvas is distinguished as Avalokiteshwara by the tiny seated Buddha in his headgear. Other features of these images include the unreal species of tree above Buddha, the spiky lotus upon which he sits, and the effortlessly identifiable figurines of Indra and Brahma on both sides.

  

Another important aspect of the Gandhara art was the coins of the Graeco-Bactrians. The coins of the Graeco-Bactrians - on the Greek metrological standard, equals the finest Attic examples and of the Indo-Greek kings, which have until lately served as the only instances of Greek art found in the subcontinent. The legendary silver double decadrachmas of Amyntas, possibly a remembrance issue, are the biggest "Greek" coins ever minted, the largest cast in gold, is the exceptional decadrachma of the same king in the Bibliotheque Nationale, with the Dioscuri on the inverse. Otherwise, there was scanty evidence until recently of Greek or Hellenistic influences in Gandhara. A manifestation of Greek metropolitan planning is furnished by the rectilinear layouts of two cities of the 1st centuries B.C./A.D.--Sirkap at Taxila and Shaikhan Pheri at Charsadda. Remains of the temple at Jandial, also at Taxila and presumably dating back to 1st century B.C., also includes Greek characteristics- remarkably the huge base mouldings and the Ionic capitals of the colossal portico and antechamber columns. In contrast, the columns or pilasters on the immeasurable Gandhara friezes (when they are not in a Indian style), are consistently coronated by Indo-Corinthian capitals, the local version of the Corinthian capital- a certain sign of a comparatively later date.

 

The notable Begram hoard confirms articulately to the number and multiplicity of origin of the foreign artefacts imported into Gandhara. This further illustrates the foreign influence in the Gandhara art. Parallel hoards have been found in peninsular India, especially in Kolhapur in Maharashtra, but the imported wares are sternly from the Roman world. At Begram the ancient Kapisa, near Kabul, there are bronzes, possibly of Alexandrian manufacture, in close proximity with emblemata (plaster discs, certainly meant as moulds for local silversmiths), bearing reliefs in the purest classical vein, Chinese lacquers and Roman glass. The hoard was possibly sealed in mid-3rd century, when some of the subjects may have been approximately 200 years old "antiques", frequently themselves replicates of classical Greek objects. The plentiful ivories, consisting in the central of chest and throne facings, engraved in a number of varied relief techniques, were credibly developed somewhere between Mathura and coastal Andhra. Some are of unrivalled beauty. Even though a few secluded instances of early Indian ivory carving have outlived, including the legendary mirror handle from Pompeii, the Begram ivories are the only substantial collection known until moderately in present times of what must always have been a widespread craft. Other sites, particularly Taxila, have generated great many instances of such imports, some from India, some, like the appealing tiny bronze figure of Harpocrates, undoubtedly from Alexandria. Further cultural influences are authenticated by the Scytho Sarmatian jewellery, with its characteristic high-backed carnivores, and by a statue of St. Peter. But all this should not cloud the all-important truth that the immediately identifiable Gandhara style was the prevailing form of artistic manifestation throughout the expanse for several centuries, and the magnitude of its influence on the art of central Asia and China and as far as Japan, allows no doubt about its integrity and vitality.

 

In the Gandhara art early Buddhist iconography drew heavily on traditional sources, incorporating Hindu gods and goddesses into a Buddhist pantheon and adapting old folk tales to Buddhist religious purposes. Kubera and Harm are probably the best-known examples of this process.

  

Five dated idols from Gandhara art though exist, however the hitch remains that the era is never distinguished. The dates are in figures under 100 or else in 300s. Moreover one of the higher numbers are debatable, besides, the image upon which it is engraved is not in the conventional Andhra style. The two low-number-dated idols are the most sophisticated and the least injured. Their pattern is classical Gandhara. The most undemanding rendition of their dates relates them to Kanishka and 78 A.D. is assumed as the commencement of his era. They both fall in the second half of the 2nd century A.D. and equally later, if a later date is necessitated for the beginning of Kanishka`s time. This calculation nearly parallels numismatics and archaeological evidences. The application of other eras, like the Vikrama (base date- 58 B.C.) and the Saka (base date- 78 A.D.), would place them much later. The badly battered figurines portray standing Buddhas, without a head of its own, but both on original figured plinths. They come to view as depicting the classical Gandhara style; decision regarding where to place these two dated Buddhas, both standing, must remain knotty till more evidence comes out as to how late the classical Gandhara panache had continued.

   

Methodical study of the Gandhara art, and specifically about its origins and expansion, is befuddled with numerous problems, not at least of which is the inordinately complex history and culture of the province. It is one of the great ethnical crossroads of the world simultaneously being in the path of all the intrusions of India for over three millennia. Bussagli has rightly remarked, `More than any other Indian region, Gandhara was a participant in the political and cultural events that concerned the rest of the Asian continent`.

   

However, Systematic study of the art of Gandhara, and particularly of its origins and development, is bedeviled by many problems, not the least of which is the extraordinarily complex history and culture of the region.

   

In spite of the labours of many scholars over the past hundred and fifty years, the answers to some of the most important questions, such as the number of centuries spanned by the art of Gandhara, still await, fresh archaeological, inscriptional, or numismatic evidence.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gandhara

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gautama_Buddha

(Colbie Caillat: Circles) Let's see how many of her fans get diverted over here

Firstly. DavidStGr. I have beef with you. I thought you'd like this, it's calm-er ! But no, frantic was a word you used to describe it. There's just no pleasing some people is there? Just Joking David, Just Joking. I used my new light toy to make this and everything. I had a brainwave and POOF ! This was actually my first try, and I tried about 10 times, but I came to the conclusion that this was the best. I think when I don't actually methodically think about painting, something actually comes good. We'll see what the viewers think shall we; I put it to you, light painters. Not thinking does light painting a lot of good !

Straight . Out . Of . The . Camera

I'm going to watch the rugby right about now, I'm immensely excited due to the fact Sebastién Chabal is playing. He is hot to trott. I love him !

 

What Do I Use As a Light Source?

Migratory big white beautiful bird! They remain at White Rock Lake's Sunset Bay (Dallas, TX) until March or April. Click on image for best view.

 

One of the largest North American birds, the American White Pelican is majestic in the air. The birds soar with incredible steadiness on broad, white-and-black wings. Their large heads and huge, heavy bills give them a prehistoric look. On the water they dip their pouched bills to scoop up fish, or tip-up like an oversized dabbling duck. Sometimes, groups of pelicans work together to herd fish into the shallows for easy feeding. Look for them on inland lakes in summer and near coastlines in winter.

 

Size & Shape

 

A huge waterbird with very broad wings, a long neck, and a massive bill that gives the head a unique, long shape. They have thick bodies, short legs, and short, square tails. During the breeding season, adults grow an unusual projection or horn on the upper mandible near the tip of the bill.

 

Color Pattern

 

Adult American White Pelicans are snowy white with black flight feathers visible only when the wings are spread. A small patch of ornamental feathers on the chest can become yellow in spring. The bill and legs are yellow-orange. Immatures are mostly white as well, but the head, neck, and back are variably dusky.

 

Behavior

 

American White Pelicans feed from the water’s surface, dipping their beaks into the water to catch fish and other aquatic organisms. They often upend, like a very large dabbling duck, in this process. They do not plunge-dive the way Brown Pelicans do. They are superb soarers (they are among the heaviest flying birds in the world) and often travel long distances in large flocks by soaring. When flapping, their wingbeats are slow and methodical.

 

Habitat

 

American White Pelicans typically breed on islands in shallow wetlands in the interior of the continent. They spend winters mainly on coastal waters, bays, and estuaries, or a little distance inland.

 

www.allaboutbirds.org

 

Christmas day in Korea, at A Twosome Dessert Cafe, overlooking a frozen river.

The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death are a series of nineteen (twenty were originally constructed) intricately designed dollhouse-style dioramas created by Frances Glessner Lee (1878–1962), a pioneer in forensic science. Glessner Lee used her inheritance to establish a department of legal medicine at Harvard Medical School in 1936, and donated the first of the Nutshell Studies in 1946 for use in lectures on the subject of crime scene investigation. In 1966, the department was dissolved, and the dioramas went to the Maryland Medical Examiner’s Office in Baltimore, Maryland, U.S. where they are on permanent loan and still used for forensic seminars.

 

The dioramas are detailed representations of death scenes that are composites of actual cases, created by Glessner Lee on a 1 inch to 1 foot (1:12) scale. She attended autopsies to ensure accuracy, and her attention to detail extended to having a wall calendar include the pages after the month of the incident, constructing openable windows, and wearing out-of-date clothing to obtain realistically worn fabric. The dioramas show tawdry and, in many cases, disheveled living spaces very different from Glessner Lee's own background. The dead include prostitutes and victims of domestic violence.

 

Glessner Lee called them the Nutshell Studies because the purpose of a forensic investigation is said to be to "convict the guilty, clear the innocent, and find the truth in a nutshell." Students were instructed to study the scenes methodically—Glessner Lee suggested moving the eyes in a clockwise spiral—and draw conclusions from the visual evidence. At conferences hosted by Glessner Lee, prominent crime-scene investigators were given 90 minutes to study each diorama.

Edited Hubble Space Telescope image of the elliptical galaxy M89. Color/processing variant.

 

Original caption: This huge ball of stars — around 100 billion in total — is an elliptical galaxy located some 55 million light-years away from us. Known as Messier 89, this galaxy appears to be perfectly spherical; this is unusual for elliptical galaxies, which tend to be elongated ellipsoids. The apparently spherical nature of Messier 89 could, however, be a trick of perspective, and be caused by its orientation relative to the Earth. Messier 89 is slightly smaller than the Milky Way, but has a few interesting features that stretch far out into the surrounding space. One structure of gas and dust extends up to 150 000 light-years out from the galaxy’s centre, which is known to house a supermassive black hole. Jets of heated particles reach out to 100 000 light-years from the galaxy, suggesting that Messier 89 may have once been far more active — perhaps an active quasar or radio galaxy — than it is now. It is also surrounded by an extensive system of shells and plumes, which may have been caused by past mergers with smaller galaxies — and implies that Messier 89 as we know it may have formed in the relatively recent past. Messier 89 was discovered by astronomer Charles Messier in 1781, when Messier had been cataloguing astronomical objects for 23 years — ever since he mistook a faint object in the sky for Halley’s Comet. Upon closer inspection, he realised the object was actually the Crab Nebula. To prevent other astronomers from making the same error, he decided to catalogue all the bright, deep-sky objects that could potentially be mistaken for comets. His methodical observations of the night sky led to the first comprehensive catalogue of astronomical objects: the Messier catalogue! Messier 89 holds the record for being the last ever giant elliptical to be found by Messier, and the most perfectly spherical galaxy in the entire catalogue of 110 objects.

This is, in my opinion as someone who has scoured ebay regularly and methodically for more than 10 years, probably the rarest mass-produced cardboard puzzle with more than 6,000 pieces.

 

I learned about this puzzle circa 2000 from a web page called Jen's Completed Puzzles, which is still online after all these years (its author being a Google employee, I believe).

 

jen.alouysius.net/puzzles/jigsaw.html

 

Jen, a fellow puzzle collector, mentions how she once passed on buying this puzzle, and had never seen it again. I was intrigued, and since 2001 have kept a special eye out for it on ebay auctions, chat sites, etc., both in the U.S. and Europe. Until about two months ago, I had never seen evidence that it existed.

 

Then one morning as I did my usual search through of ebay, I saw it up for bid on eBay UK with an opening bid of £1.99. I was absolutely dumbfounded and had to have it!

 

As I don't live in the UK, and the auction was limited to UK residents only, I needed to find someone over there. I tracked down an old friend of mine who I knew had moved to England many years ago. I contacted her with my out-of-left-field request and she was happy to indulge me on it. We won it at the last moment for £82.

 

While the outer box looks as though a few cats had at it, the pieces are brand new and I believe it to be complete. Three of the four factory bags are unopened, and from the remaining assortment of smaller baggies I counted exactly 2,000 pieces. It looks as though someone gave up after 15 minutes.

 

The box is dated 1988. No. 7924. I am so excited to add this one to my collection and I think it may be the next one I assemble once I finish the Michelangelo. With all of the dark, muted colors, it will be a great challenge!

 

{Actual # of pieces: 8,000 (80X100)}

 

Gandhara is the name given to an ancient region or province invaded in 326 B.C. by Alexander the Great, who took Charsadda (ancient Puskalavati) near present-day Peshawar (ancient Purusapura) and then marched eastward across the Indus into the Punjab as far as the Beas river (ancient Vipasa). Gandhara constituted the undulating plains, irrigated by the Kabul River from the Khyber Pass area, the contemporary boundary between Pakistan and Afganistan, down to the Indus River and southward towards the Murree hills and Taxila (ancient Taksasila), near Pakistan"s present capital, Islamabad. Its art, however, during the first centuries of the Christian era, had adopted a substantially larger area, together with the upper stretches of the Kabul River, the valley of Kabul itself, and ancient Kapisa, as well as Swat and Buner towards the north.

 

A great deal of Gandhara sculptures has survived dating from the first to probably as late as the sixth or even the seventh century but in a remarkably homogeneous style. Most of the arts were almost always in a blue-gray mica schist, though sometimes in a green phyllite or in stucco, or very rarely in terracotta. Because of the appeal of its Western classical aesthetic for the British rulers of India, schooled to admire all things Greek and Roman, a great deal found its way into private hands or the shelter of museums.

 

Gandhara sculpture primarily comprised Buddhist monastic establishments. These monasteries provided a never-ending gallery for sculptured reliefs of the Buddha and Bodhisattvas. The Gandhara stupas were comparatively magnified and more intricate, but the most remarkable feature, which distinguished the Gandhara stupas from the pervious styles were hugely tiered umbrellas at its peak, almost soaring over the total structure. The abundance of Gandharan sculpture was an art, which originated with foreign artisans.

 

In the excavation among the varied miscellany of small bronze figures, though not often like Alexandrian imports, four or five Buddhist bronzes are very late in date. These further illustrate the aura of the Gandhara art. Relics of mural paintings though have been discovered, yet the only substantial body of painting, in Bamiyan, is moderately late, and much of it belongs to an Iranian or central Asian rather than an Indian context. Non-narrative themes and architectural ornament were omnipresent at that time. Mythical figures and animals such as atlantes, tritons, dragons, and sea serpents derive from the same source, although there is the occasional high-backed, stylized creature associated with the Central Asian animal style. Moldings and cornices are decorated mostly with acanthus, laurel, and vine, though sometimes with motifs of Indian, and occasionally ultimately western Asian, origin: stepped merlons, lion heads, vedikas, and lotus petals. It is worth noting that architectural elements such as pillars, gable ends, and domes as represented in the reliefs tend to follow the Indian forms

.

 

Gandhara became roughly a Holy Land of Buddhism and excluding a handful of Hindu images, sculpture took the form either of Buddhist sect objects, Buddha and Bodhisattvas, or of architectural embellishment for Buddhist monasteries. The more metaphorical kinds are demonstrated by small votive stupas, and bases teeming with stucco images and figurines that have lasted at Jaulian and Mora Moradu, outpost monasteries in the hills around Taxila. Hadda, near the present town of Jalalabad, has created some groups in stucco of an almost rococo while more latest works of art in baked clay, with strong Hellenistic influence, have been revealed there, in what sums up as tiny chapels. It is not known exactly why stucco, an imported Alexandrian modus operandi, was used. It is true that grey schist is not found near Taxila, however other stones are available, and in opposition to the ease of operating with stucco, predominantly the artistic effects which can be achieved, must be set with its impermanence- fresh deposits frequently had to be applied. Excluding possibly at Taxila, its use emerges to have been a late expansion.

 

Architectural fundamentals of the Gandhara art, like pillars, gable ends and domes as showcased in the reliefs, were inclined to follow Indian outlines, but the pilaster with capital of Corinthian type, abounds and in one-palace scene Persepolitan columns go along with Roman coffered ceilings. The so-called Shrine of the Double-Headed Eagle at Sirkap, in actuality a stupa pedestal, well demonstrates this enlightening eclecticism- the double-headed bird on top of the chaitya arch is an insignia of Scythian origin, which appears as a Byzantine motif and materialises much later in South India as the ga1J.qa-bheru1J.qa in addition to atop European armorial bearings.

 

In Gandhara art the descriptive friezes were all but invariably Buddhist, and hence Indian in substance- one depicted a horse on wheels nearing a doorway, which might have represented the Trojan horse affair, but this is under scan. The Dioscuri, Castor and Pollux, familiar from the previous Greek-based coinage of the region, appeared once or twice as standing figurines, presumably because as a pair, they tallied an Indian mithuna couple. There were also female statuettes, corresponding to city goddesses. Though figures from Butkara, near Saidan Sharif in Swat, were noticeably more Indian in physical type, and Indian motifs were in abundance there. Sculpture was, in the main, Hellenistic or Roman, and the art of Gandhara was indeed "the easternmost appearance of the art of the Roman Empire, especially in its late and provincial manifestations". Furthermore, naturalistic portrait heads, one of the high-points of Roman sculpture, were all but missing in Gandhara, in spite of the episodic separated head, probably that of a donor, with a discernible feeling of uniqueness. Some constitutions and poses matched those from western Asia and the Roman world; like the manner in which a figure in a recurrently instanced scene from the Dipankara jataka had prostrated himself before the future Buddha, is reverberated in the pose of the defeated before the defeater on a Trojanic frieze on the Arch of Constantine and in later illustrations of the admiration of the divinised emperor. One singular recurrently occurring muscular male figure, hand on sword, witnessed in three-quarters view from the backside, has been adopted from western classical sculpture. On occasions standing figures, even the Buddha, deceived the elusive stylistic actions of the Roman sculptor, seeking to express majestas. The drapery was fundamentally Western- the folds and volume of dangling garments were carved with realness and gusto- but it was mainly the persistent endeavours at illusionism, though frequently obscured by unrefined carving, which earmarked the Gandhara sculpture as based on a western classical visual impact.

 

The distinguishing Gandhara sculpture, of which hundreds if not thousands of instances have outlived, is the standing or seated Buddha. This flawlessly reproduces the necessary nature of Gandhara art, in which a religious and an artistic constituent, drawn from widely varied cultures have been bonded. The iconography is purely Indian. The seated Buddha is mostly cross-legged in the established Indian manner. However, forthcoming generations, habituated to think of the Buddha as a monk, and unable to picture him ever possessing long hair or donning a turban, came to deduce the chigon as a "cranial protuberance", singular to Buddha. But Buddha is never depicted with a shaved head, as are the Sangha, the monks; his short hair is clothed either in waves or in taut curls over his whole head. The extended ears are merely due to the downward thrust of the heavy ear-rings worn by a prince or magnate; the distortion of the ear-lobes is especially visible in Buddha, who, in Gandhara, never wore ear-rings or ornaments of any kind. As Foucher puts it, the Gandhara Buddha is at a time a monk without shaving and a prince stripped off jewellery.

 

The western classical factor rests in the style, in the handling of the robe, and in the physiognomy of Buddha. The cloak, which covers all but the appendages (though the right shoulder is often bared), is dealt like in Greek and Roman sculptures; the heavy folds are given a plastic flair of their own, and only in poorer or later works do they deteriorate into indented lines, fairly a return to standard Indian practice. The "western" treatment has caused Buddha"s garment to be misidentified for a toga; but a toga is semicircular, while, Buddha wore a basic, rectangular piece of cloth, i.e., the samghiifi, a monk"s upper garment. The head gradually swerves towards a hieratic stylisation, but at its best, it is naturalistic and almost positively based on the Greek Apollo, undoubtedly in Hellenistic or Roman copies.

 

Gandhara art also had developed at least two species of image, i.e. not part of the frieze, in which Buddha is the fundamental figure of an event in his life, distinguished by accompanying figures and a detailed mise-en-scene. Perhaps the most remarkable amongst these is the Visit to the Indrasala Cave, of which the supreme example is dated in the year 89, almost unquestionably of the Kanishka period. Indra and his harpist are depicted on their visit in it. The small statuettes of the visitors emerge below, an elephant describing Indra. The more general among these detailed images, of which approximately 30 instances are known, is presumably related with the Great Miracle of Sravasti. In one such example, one of the adjoining Bodhisattvas is distinguished as Avalokiteshwara by the tiny seated Buddha in his headgear. Other features of these images include the unreal species of tree above Buddha, the spiky lotus upon which he sits, and the effortlessly identifiable figurines of Indra and Brahma on both sides.

 

Another important aspect of the Gandhara art was the coins of the Graeco-Bactrians. The coins of the Graeco-Bactrians - on the Greek metrological standard, equals the finest Attic examples and of the Indo-Greek kings, which have until lately served as the only instances of Greek art found in the subcontinent. The legendary silver double decadrachmas of Amyntas, possibly a remembrance issue, are the biggest "Greek" coins ever minted, the largest cast in gold, is the exceptional decadrachma of the same king in the Bibliotheque Nationale, with the Dioscuri on the inverse. Otherwise, there was scanty evidence until recently of Greek or Hellenistic influences in Gandhara. A manifestation of Greek metropolitan planning is furnished by the rectilinear layouts of two cities of the 1st centuries B.C./A.D.--Sirkap at Taxila and Shaikhan Pheri at Charsadda. Remains of the temple at Jandial, also at Taxila and presumably dating back to 1st century B.C., also includes Greek characteristics- remarkably the huge base mouldings and the Ionic capitals of the colossal portico and antechamber columns. In contrast, the columns or pilasters on the immeasurable Gandhara friezes (when they are not in a Indian style), are consistently coronated by Indo-Corinthian capitals, the local version of the Corinthian capital- a certain sign of a comparatively later date.

 

The notable Begram hoard confirms articulately to the number and multiplicity of origin of the foreign artefacts imported into Gandhara. This further illustrates the foreign influence in the Gandhara art. Parallel hoards have been found in peninsular India, especially in Kolhapur in Maharashtra, but the imported wares are sternly from the Roman world. At Begram the ancient Kapisa, near Kabul, there are bronzes, possibly of Alexandrian manufacture, in close proximity with emblemata (plaster discs, certainly meant as moulds for local silversmiths), bearing reliefs in the purest classical vein, Chinese lacquers and Roman glass. The hoard was possibly sealed in mid-3rd century, when some of the subjects may have been approximately 200 years old "antiques", frequently themselves replicates of classical Greek objects. The plentiful ivories, consisting in the central of chest and throne facings, engraved in a number of varied relief techniques, were credibly developed somewhere between Mathura and coastal Andhra. Some are of unrivalled beauty. Even though a few secluded instances of early Indian ivory carving have outlived, including the legendary mirror handle from Pompeii, the Begram ivories are the only substantial collection known until moderately in present times of what must always have been a widespread craft. Other sites, particularly Taxila, have generated great many instances of such imports, some from India, some, like the appealing tiny bronze figure of Harpocrates, undoubtedly from Alexandria. Further cultural influences are authenticated by the Scytho Sarmatian jewellery, with its characteristic high-backed carnivores, and by a statue of St. Peter. But all this should not cloud the all-important truth that the immediately identifiable Gandhara style was the prevailing form of artistic manifestation throughout the expanse for several centuries, and the magnitude of its influence on the art of central Asia and China and as far as Japan, allows no doubt about its integrity and vitality.

 

In the Gandhara art early Buddhist iconography drew heavily on traditional sources, incorporating Hindu gods and goddesses into a Buddhist pantheon and adapting old folk tales to Buddhist religious purposes. Kubera and Harm are probably the best-known examples of this process.

 

Five dated idols from Gandhara art though exist, however the hitch remains that the era is never distinguished. The dates are in figures under 100 or else in 300s. Moreover one of the higher numbers are debatable, besides, the image upon which it is engraved is not in the conventional Andhra style. The two low-number-dated idols are the most sophisticated and the least injured. Their pattern is classical Gandhara. The most undemanding rendition of their dates relates them to Kanishka and 78 A.D. is assumed as the commencement of his era. They both fall in the second half of the 2nd century A.D. and equally later, if a later date is necessitated for the beginning of Kanishka`s time. This calculation nearly parallels numismatics and archaeological evidences. The application of other eras, like the Vikrama (base date- 58 B.C.) and the Saka (base date- 78 A.D.), would place them much later. The badly battered figurines portray standing Buddhas, without a head of its own, but both on original figured plinths. They come to view as depicting the classical Gandhara style; decision regarding where to place these two dated Buddhas, both standing, must remain knotty till more evidence comes out as to how late the classical Gandhara panache had continued.

 

Methodical study of the Gandhara art, and specifically about its origins and expansion, is befuddled with numerous problems, not at least of which is the inordinately complex history and culture of the province. It is one of the great ethnical crossroads of the world simultaneously being in the path of all the intrusions of India for over three millennia. Bussagli has rightly remarked, `More than any other Indian region, Gandhara was a participant in the political and cultural events that concerned the rest of the Asian continent`.

 

However, Systematic study of the art of Gandhara, and particularly of its origins and development, is bedeviled by many problems, not the least of which is the extraordinarily complex history and culture of the region.

 

In spite of the labours of many scholars over the past hundred and fifty years, the answers to some of the most important questions, such as the number of centuries spanned by the art of Gandhara, still await, fresh archaeological, inscriptional, or numismatic evidence.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gandhara

This Little Raven was methodically working its way along the south side of the Cathedral, looking for tasty treats. A little further eastwards there were Harlequin Bugs galore.

I detest digital as an imaging medium; however, I'm presently verging on obsessed with panoramic devices + the feature built into my iPhone --although stunningly inelegant + finicky as fuck--does reward smart composition in a way very few other devices do; namely, panorama mode will distort things with a head-spinning rapidity if you aren't methodical. But if you keep scenes in two point perspective and reasonably off center, you can approach 180 degrees before you hit aggressively unsightly distortion.

 

Further, given non-rectilinear biased environments, and obscuring part or all of the horizon, you can achieve almost miraculous results.

Face2Face type pictures.

 

There will be a story with this set as soon as I can get it written, and upload these pictures which I took while in the Hospital at Good Samaritan Regional Medical Center in Corvallis, Oregon.

 

This was in the Hospital somewhere, but not right in my room.

 

FALL OCCURRED IN THE SPRING

 

That’s right; fall occurred in the spring. Not the kind of fall like a beautiful autumn, but the kind of fall like Humpty Dumpty. The “splat” type of fall, which must have been painful for him. It was surely painful for me.

 

Let me digress a bit. I already have severe arthritis in both of my knees. I was very close to having the Orthopedic Physician’s Assistant refer me to the Orthopedist for knee replacements. The assistant had already seen me for seven to nine visits or so, and a series of Orthovisk® shots, which did not help me. I understand they are a great help to some people, but I wasn‘t one of them. He told me something I was completely unaware of. He said my teeth were bad, which is true. I have upper dentures and only one real tooth in my mouth. The bottom teeth except the one I just mentioned are all rotted away. They didn’t rot completely away; there are still parts of them in and below the gum line. He said they would all have to be surgically extracted before I could have knee replacements done. I asked him, “What do my teeth have to do with my knees?” He said infection can easily set in the rotten teeth and go to the knee or cause problems with my heart, major problems like death. Thus the reader can understand how I arrived at the title for my photo set about my hospital stay…The Knee Bone’s Connected to the Jaw Bone, Huh?

 

I have been walking around with very painful knees for quite awhile now, and I cannot afford the $1,600 to $2,000 to have my teeth surgically extracted. I already paid a dentist $180 for an appointment and a Panaray® X-Ray, over a year ago, just thinking it would be nice to finally get some lower dentures too. He split town, taking or disposing of his equipment and his files and x-rays. That $180 is long gone for me. I cannot recover the old x-ray. Even if I did recover it, some new dentist would probably say it was out of date.

 

Medicare, which I am on, will pay for the two knee replacements, but here is the rub. They will not pay for dental. I have been in a surgical limbo with all the free pain I can stand.

 

That is the background information probably needed for this little story to be understood. There will be some OMG moments and some laughter. If it were a TV show, they would probably advertise, “You’ll Laugh; You’ll Cry; You’ll Sell Your Chickens; You’ll Call Your Congressman, and You’ll No Doubt Charge Your Cell Phone!”

 

That brings us to Thursday the 15th of March, 2012. My daughter called to see if I could and would watch Rose all day Friday the 16th , as she had forgotten that she had signed up to be chaperone for her daughter, Anna Leigh’s, school field trip. It was going to be quite a bit out of town, the other direction from where I live. It was to be a special day. I wanted to be their hero; so I said sure. Some of you have seen Rose, the Hungarian Vizsla puppy among my photos. Rose is beautiful and young, and strong, and undisciplined and should probably be named Wild Rose. I love her, but she is a major handful. I had already watched her for 8 days while they went on a trip out of state, got one day off and then volunteered to do Friday the 16th.

 

Rose isn’t housebroken yet; so I took her out several times to encourage her to go outside. I was alone as far as other humans, and my daughter and granddaughter were about 60 miles away, on a school bus and then museum field trip. I live about 60 miles the other way from their home. It had been raining off and on and the ground and grass and driveway and mud were all pretty wet. My other trips outside with Rose that morning had been fine. I only had a thin shirt on, no extra shirt or jacket. I did not think I would be out in the yard very long.

 

Rose pulled on the leash too exuberantly, as she does often (she is five and a half months old, and has had puppy obedience training, but is in dire need of more of it). I slipped on a muddy and grassy slope. My right leg went out in front of me, and I fell on my rear end. My left leg folded underneath my thigh and toward my rear, and my weight, which is a lot, crunched it. It was bent backward way further than a knee is supposed to bend. I screamed bloody murder. I was afraid to even try to get up, as I thought I had probably torn a ligament or two.

 

Rose thought it was play time and was all over me. There was not a thing in sight that would give me any leverage to hold me up or to help me get up. I sat and I pondered what to do. My daughter and Anna Leigh would not be home for nearly 6 more hours. I thought, well I’ll just call 911 (the emergency number where we live). Wrong! No cell phone with me. It was inside their house, being charged up; ironically so it would be ready when I needed it.

 

I tried yelling for help. Nothing! A neighbor about a half an acre away, was mowing, and every time the mower cut off, I tried screaming for help. He must have had headphones on or something. Cars would drive by way down the driveway, and I would yell, but no one had their windows down on that day. Did you know that when you have upper dentures and no lower ones, and you yell really hard, that it blows the upper dentures right out of your mouth? Just thought I would throw that little trivia in. I didn’t know until that day. I knew I couldn’t make it back in the house. There were too many upward slopes and an exposed aggregate patio and a few stairs. The front of the house was even worse, as it had more stairs. I looked down the driveway and saw a vehicle which had some metal protrusions, on the order of a spare tire holder or something like that. I decided to try to scoot on my rear down to that metal thing. I thought perhaps it would give me leverage to get up. Rose thought that it was great fun to romp on and around me.

 

I thought the four chickens would be afraid to come around Rose. No, they are not very intelligent. They came right up to me and Rose and started pecking on me. I had never been pecked on my chickens before, and there I was on the ground with no help and Rose alternating between trying to attack the chickens and trying to play with me. Rose’s playfulness sort of resembles an attack, anyway. I scooted faster, much faster.

 

There was a light rain, but it was getting a little heavier. There was also a dusting of snow mixed with the rain. I was wondering how long it would take to get Exposure. I was wondering about Shock also. Can a person who has Exposure or Shock know that they have it? Ominous looking clouds were blowing quickly toward me. It was 1:30 P. M. when I fell. I didn’t have my phone, but I had my watch.

 

I scooted methodically toward the vehicle closest to me. I think it was about 100 feet. I got to it, and thought if worse came to worse with the weather, I could roll under the back of it. I did not relish thought of spiders, but thought it might be better to risk them than the weather. I saw some wide strapping tape on the spare tire, which was loose. I didn’t want to risk hoisting myself up on the spare and its frame, as it was quite loose. But I took the tape and wrapped it around the metal thing that was separate from the spare tire things, and made it softer for my arm to lean on. I tried to prop myself up. No use; I fell back down. Not enough leverage. I put Rose’s leash handle on the trailer hitch. I didn’t want to just let her run free and maybe get hit by a car.

 

I tried again to get up and made it to both knees. It hurt so badly I went back down again. I noticed the license plate on the vehicle renewed on the ninth month of 2011. That said 911. I thought, “Oh yeah right, you inanimate license plate. Go ahead and taunt me! You know I can’t call 911.” I got a chuckle out of my own joke, and gave myself a figurative pat on the back for being resourceful about trying to get up.

 

I tried again. I got on both knees but the right one was in gravel that really hurt. Then I thought which knee should I put forward and which one should I try to rise on. I tried one, and it didn’t seem as if it would work so I tried the other way. That wasn’t the right way either. Finally I tried the first way again. I told myself on the count of three I would stand up, even if it hurt excruciatingly, I would scream but I would still get up. False start! Down again! I tried again and got up. I was standing!

 

Now was the problem of how to go anywhere, not knowing if my left knee would buckle at any time. I thought I had to try. I spotted my own truck further down the driveway, and decided to try to make it to it. I walked between two vehicles very carefully and slowly and got to my truck. I unlocked it with the remote key which I had in my pocket. After 11 years of driving it, the seat is pretty well conformed to me; so I didn’t have to bend my knees to sit down in it. I just leaned into the seat and put my relatively good right leg in. It was painful to bend my left knee to get it in the truck, but I did. Rose was still tied to a trailer hitch further back in the yard, but she was safe.

 

I looked at my watch. It was 3:30 P. M. It took me two hours to stand up and to get to some degree of safety and warmth. I could drive, as my truck is automatic. I drove down the road to a house that Anna had pointed out was where a schoolmate lived. I thought I could ask them to go in my daughter’s house and get my cell phone for me. There was a very large barking dog in the driveway, and no sign of humans, and the mother of the schoolmate has never even met me. I decided to go back to Jennifer’s home.

 

I found a cane in my truck that a charity, a different one than the one later in my story, had given me a few months ago. It is not a very sturdy one, but better than nothing. I did not use it on a normal basis. I used the hook end of it to fetch a large stick lying near the driveway (larger than a normal hiking stick). I pulled it to me, and stood back up out of the truck and used the big stick and the cane and balanced against two vehicles, and decided to try to get back in the house. I did. I got in the recliner and pulled a blanket up over me and slept until they got home.

 

After they got home, we all decided to go to the nearest Emergency room. It was a Friday night by then, and no normal doctor’s hours. We went to one closest to them, but it was still about 27 miles or so. They checked me out and did an x-ray. I told the Physician’s assistant nurse type lady about my knee history. She was fun and nice and caring and a little bit of a comedienne. She said that my left knee was really “ratty” looking on the x-ray. I laughed, because I’m sure it was. I have just never, in all my doctor visits ever had a nurse refer to one of my body parts as “ratty”. I suspect it is not a medical term. They said I sprained my knee, and gave me some medical records to take up to the emergency room (or my doctor) closer to where I live, seventeen miles from my home, the other direction from Jen & Anna. I wanted to be closer to the doctors and hospital that I know. I was given a prescription similar to Vicodin. Someone kindly pointed out that Walgreen’s was visible about a block away and their drive-thru was open. At that point I was still getting around by hobbling and by leaning on Jennifer. So I sat in a chair and she and Anna and Rose drove over to Walgreen’s . It seems as if it took a long time for them get the prescription filled.

 

While I was sitting there waiting, a employee came out to the lobby with clipboard in hand and asked if I were the lady with an injured knee. I replied that I was. She said, OK, come with me and we’ll have you see a triage. I thought it odd that I had already been seen and now they wanted to start all over again. I told her I had already been seen and x-rayed and all. It turned out there was another lady in the waiting room with an injured knee. It probably would have blown the Physician’s Assistant’s mind if I had played dumb and gone through everything again, and then told her when she looked shocked, “I’m coming through again; and this time don’t call my knee “ratty! Funny to imagine, but not a good idea.

 

Finally, my daughter and granddaughter returned to the hospital waiting room. Jennifer had forgotten her checkbook. So back they went and then it turned out, Jennifer couldn’t sign for my prescription, and she didn‘t have my insurance information. Thus, we all drove back over there. I was in line ahead of Jen‘s car. I told the pharmacist that my window did not go down well on the driver’s side, and I could not reach the pills in the drawer. So I would give him paperwork and cards he needed, but to please leave the pills themselves in the slide-out drawer. I said my daughter was right behind me and her window worked; and she would pick them up with my permission. Finally she got the pain pills in the drawer, but when we got out of Walgreen’s I flagged her down to stop and be sure to give me the pills to have with me before we forgot. Jennifer got them and handed them over to me. We laughed about how, at that time of night, it looked for the entire world like some sort of illegal drug deal.

 

We tried to go out for dinner, and the restaurant we chose put the closed sign in their front window as we were approaching. That always makes one feel so welcome, not!

 

Saturday, I rested, and then Sunday they took me to Good Samaritan Regional Medical Center. I had called my normal doctor, and he was out of the country (probably on some Doctors without Borders type thing). He does many good will type things. The doctor filling in for him; said to go to the Emergency Room. So I did, and they did an MRI, and I had torn the meniscus in my left knee. I ended up in the hospital for 8 days. No surgery was done to repair anything, because of the dental situation. But I got a walker, and some really nice nurses and physical therapy. I saw all kinds of doctors, and Home Health care people, and Senior and Disabled specialists. They must have taken my blood pressure 100 times, it seems. They always seem surprised that it is very good.

 

Anna Leigh, who is seven years old, threw a coin in the Hospital Fountain and made good wishes for me. She is such a sweetie. My daughter helped to clean up my place so when I went home the walker would fit through the rooms. I don’t know what I would do without them. The first few days out of the hospital, I taught Anna how to play Monopoly, and she and Jennifer and I also did puzzles. There were some quality family moments. I one point I was eating a chip or cracker of some kind and trying to place a puzzle piece. I got absentminded and stuck the puzzle piece in my mouth. I realized what I had done because the food tasted like cardboard. I took it out of my mouth. Anna about went into hysterics over it. I was laughing too.

Anna’s Daddy called Jen about that time, and wanted to know what the laughter was all about. Anna wrote a note to show her Mom so her Mom could tell her Dad what happened. She spelled it phonetically, as she is only in first grade. I think she does really well, but Jen and I cracked up over how much Anna was laughing and over what she wrote. She wrote, “My grandmuther ate a pussel pees.” It looked substantially nastier than it was.

 

At first a physical therapist helped me with the walker and with some small steps. After a few days, I could roam around the hallways on my own with the walker. At that point I took my camera. As I was practicing with my walker I took a number of pictures. I tried very hard to only shoot artsy type things and nothing about any patients or doctors that would invade their privacy. I had a bulletin board in my room just about me. I wrote “Exemplary Patient Award” on the comments. I wanted to see if it would make the nurses laugh. I thought it was funny to give myself an award. I enjoy making people laugh. I was curious if they would erase it, but it was still there when I was discharged.

 

I graduated from the walker to a cane yesterday. A home health therapist came to see how I was doing, and brought me a very artsy cane. I like it. It suits me, and it is brand new. There is a charity in my area called Love, Inc. I don’t know if it is just local or nationwide. Anyway, they gave him the cane to bring to me. Really super! Of course, I need to take a photo of it, and add it to this set. I’ll probably do that in the daylight.

 

I am still in surgical limbo, but a charity is going to come out and install grab bars on my shower, and another charity will build up my recliner (which I sleep in) with a platform so it will be easier to get in and out of. It is suggested that I donate enough to cover the cost of the supplies but not the labor. I will probably make a donation, but I haven’t decided how much yet. I’m going to call my Congressman to see if something can be done about covering some dental procedures. Probably not, but I feel I have to try. Not just for me, but for a multitude of people.

 

I’ll close with a quote, although I don’t know who said it, “Be True to your Teeth and they will Never be False to You.” and “That is the Tooth, the whole Tooth, and Nothing but the Tooth.”

   

This shot on LACMA

 

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I am Camera Assistant & Grip. At present, I am learning English in Los Angeles. Also I am looking for job & internships.

Photography is my lifework.

 

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"No. 22 (right): Three-story half-hipped roof building with protruding ornamental half-timbered upper floors and two-story extension with a protruding half-timbered upper floor in a corner position, ground floor with drilled sandstone frames, 17th/18th century. century.

 

No. 24 (left): Until 1938 also a synagogue, three-story gable roof building with a one-sided crooked hip and decorative half-timbered upper floors projecting on consoles in the corner, 16th - 18th. century.

 

Karlstadt is a town in the Main-Spessart in the Regierungsbezirk of Lower Franconia (Unterfranken) in Bavaria, Germany. It is the administrative centre of Main-Spessart (Kreisstadt), and has a population of around 15,000.

 

Karlstadt lies on the River Main in the district (Landkreis) of Main-Spessart, roughly 25 km north of the city of Würzburg. It belongs to the Main-Franconian wine-growing region. The town itself is located on the right bank of the river, but the municipal territory extends to the left bank.

 

Since the amalgamations in 1978, Karlstadt's Stadtteile have been Gambach, Heßlar, Karlburg, Karlstadt, Laudenbach, Mühlbach, Rohrbach, Stadelhofen, Stetten, and Wiesenfeld.

 

From the late 6th to the mid-13th century, the settlement of Karlburg with its monastery and harbor was located on the west bank of the Main. It grew up around the Karlsburg, a castle perched high over the community, that was destroyed in the German Peasants' War in 1525.

 

In 1202, Karlstadt itself was founded by Konrad von Querfurt, Bishop of Würzburg. The town was methodically laid out with a nearly rectangular plan to defend Würzburg territory against the Counts of Rieneck. The plan is still well preserved today. The streets in the old town are laid out much like a chessboard, but for military reasons they are not quite straight.

 

In 1225, Karlstadt had its first documentary mention. In 1236, the castle and the village of Karlburg were destroyed in the Rieneck Feud. In 1244, winegrowing in Karlstadt was mentioned for the first time. From 1277 comes the earliest evidence of the town seal. In 1304, the town fortifications were finished. The parish of Karlstadt was first named in 1339. In 1369 a hospital was founded. Between 1370 and 1515, remodelling work was being done on the first, Romanesque parish church to turn it into a Gothic hall church. About 1400, Karlstadt became for a short time the seat of an episcopal mint. The former Oberamt of the Princely Electorate (Hochstift) of Würzburg was, after Secularization, in Bavaria's favour, passed in 1805 to Grand Duke Ferdinando III of Tuscany to form the Grand Duchy of Würzburg, and passed with this to the Kingdom of Bavaria.

 

The Jewish residents of the town had a synagogue as early as the Middle Ages. The town's synagogue was destroyed on Kristallnacht (the Night of Broken Glass, 9 November 1938) by Nazi SA men, SS, and Hitler Youth, as well as other local residents. Its destruction is recalled by a plaque at the synagogue's former site. The homes of Jewish residents were attacked as well, the possessions therein were looted or brought to the square in front of the town hall where they were burned, and the Jews living in the town were beaten.

 

Lower Franconia (German: Unterfranken) is one of seven districts of Bavaria, Germany. The districts of Lower, Middle and Upper Franconia make up the region of Franconia. It consists of nine districts and 308 municipalities (including three cities).

 

After the founding of the Kingdom of Bavaria the state was totally reorganised and, in 1808, divided into 15 administrative government regions (German: Regierungsbezirke, singular Regierungsbezirk), in Bavaria called Kreise (singular: Kreis). They were created in the fashion of the French departements, quite even in size and population, and named after their main rivers.

 

In the following years, due to territorial changes (e. g. loss of Tyrol, addition of the Palatinate), the number of Kreise was reduced to 8. One of these was the Untermainkreis (Lower Main District). In 1837 king Ludwig I of Bavaria renamed the Kreise after historical territorial names and tribes of the area. This also involved some border changes or territorial swaps. Thus the name Untermainkreis changed to Lower Franconia and Aschaffenburg, but the city name was dropped in the middle of the 20th century, leaving just Lower Franconia.

 

From 1933, the regional Nazi Gauleiter, Otto Hellmuth, (who had renamed his party Gau "Mainfranken") insisted on renaming the government district Mainfranken as well. He encountered resistance from Bavarian state authorities but finally succeeded in having the name of the district changed, effective 1 June 1938. After 1945 the name Unterfranken was restored.

 

Franconia (German: Franken, pronounced [ˈfʁaŋkŋ̍]; Franconian: Franggn [ˈfrɑŋɡŋ̍]; Bavarian: Frankn) is a region of Germany, characterised by its culture and Franconian dialect (German: Fränkisch).

 

Franconia is made up of the three Regierungsbezirke of Lower, Middle and Upper Franconia in Bavaria, the adjacent, Franconian-speaking, South Thuringia, south of the Thuringian Forest—which constitutes the language boundary between Franconian and Thuringian— and the eastern parts of Heilbronn-Franconia in Baden-Württemberg.

 

Those parts of the Vogtland lying in Saxony (largest city: Plauen) are sometimes regarded as Franconian as well, because the Vogtlandian dialects are mostly East Franconian. The inhabitants of Saxon Vogtland, however, mostly do not consider themselves as Franconian. On the other hand, the inhabitants of the Hessian-speaking parts of Lower Franconia west of the Spessart (largest city: Aschaffenburg) do consider themselves as Franconian, although not speaking the dialect. Heilbronn-Franconia's largest city of Heilbronn and its surrounding areas are South Franconian-speaking, and therefore only sometimes regarded as Franconian. In Hesse, the east of the Fulda District is Franconian-speaking, and parts of the Oden Forest District are sometimes regarded as Franconian for historical reasons, but a Franconian identity did not develop there.

 

Franconia's largest city and unofficial capital is Nuremberg, which is contiguous with Erlangen and Fürth, with which it forms the Franconian conurbation with around 1.3 million inhabitants. Other important Franconian cities are Würzburg, Bamberg, Bayreuth, Ansbach and Coburg in Bavaria, Suhl and Meiningen in Thuringia, and Schwäbisch Hall in Baden-Württemberg.

 

The German word Franken—Franconians—also refers to the ethnic group, which is mainly to be found in this region. They are to be distinguished from the Germanic people of the Franks, and historically formed their easternmost settlement area. The origins of Franconia lie in the settlement of the Franks from the 6th century in the area probably populated until then mainly by the Elbe Germanic people in the Main river area, known from the 9th century as East Francia (Francia Orientalis). In the Middle Ages the region formed much of the eastern part of the Duchy of Franconia and, from 1500, the Franconian Circle. The restructuring of the south German states by Napoleon, after the demise of the Holy Roman Empire, saw most of Franconia awarded to Bavaria." - info from Wikipedia.

 

Summer 2019 I did a solo cycling tour across Europe through 12 countries over the course of 3 months. I began my adventure in Edinburgh, Scotland and finished in Florence, Italy cycling 8,816 km. During my trip I took 47,000 photos.

 

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Gandhara is the name given to an ancient region or province invaded in 326 B.C. by Alexander the Great, who took Charsadda (ancient Puskalavati) near present-day Peshawar (ancient Purusapura) and then marched eastward across the Indus into the Punjab as far as the Beas river (ancient Vipasa). Gandhara constituted the undulating plains, irrigated by the Kabul River from the Khyber Pass area, the contemporary boundary between Pakistan and Afganistan, down to the Indus River and southward towards the Murree hills and Taxila (ancient Taksasila), near Pakistan"s present capital, Islamabad. Its art, however, during the first centuries of the Christian era, had adopted a substantially larger area, together with the upper stretches of the Kabul River, the valley of Kabul itself, and ancient Kapisa, as well as Swat and Buner towards the north.

   

A great deal of Gandhara sculptures has survived dating from the first to probably as late as the sixth or even the seventh century but in a remarkably homogeneous style. Most of the arts were almost always in a blue-gray mica schist, though sometimes in a green phyllite or in stucco, or very rarely in terracotta. Because of the appeal of its Western classical aesthetic for the British rulers of India, schooled to admire all things Greek and Roman, a great deal found its way into private hands or the shelter of museums.

  

Gandhara sculpture primarily comprised Buddhist monastic establishments. These monasteries provided a never-ending gallery for sculptured reliefs of the Buddha and Bodhisattvas. The Gandhara stupas were comparatively magnified and more intricate, but the most remarkable feature, which distinguished the Gandhara stupas from the pervious styles were hugely tiered umbrellas at its peak, almost soaring over the total structure. The abundance of Gandharan sculpture was an art, which originated with foreign artisans.

  

In the excavation among the varied miscellany of small bronze figures, though not often like Alexandrian imports, four or five Buddhist bronzes are very late in date. These further illustrate the aura of the Gandhara art. Relics of mural paintings though have been discovered, yet the only substantial body of painting, in Bamiyan, is moderately late, and much of it belongs to an Iranian or central Asian rather than an Indian context. Non-narrative themes and architectural ornament were omnipresent at that time. Mythical figures and animals such as atlantes, tritons, dragons, and sea serpents derive from the same source, although there is the occasional high-backed, stylized creature associated with the Central Asian animal style. Moldings and cornices are decorated mostly with acanthus, laurel, and vine, though sometimes with motifs of Indian, and occasionally ultimately western Asian, origin: stepped merlons, lion heads, vedikas, and lotus petals. It is worth noting that architectural elements such as pillars, gable ends, and domes as represented in the reliefs tend to follow the Indian forms

.

 

Gandhara became roughly a Holy Land of Buddhism and excluding a handful of Hindu images, sculpture took the form either of Buddhist sect objects, Buddha and Bodhisattvas, or of architectural embellishment for Buddhist monasteries. The more metaphorical kinds are demonstrated by small votive stupas, and bases teeming with stucco images and figurines that have lasted at Jaulian and Mora Moradu, outpost monasteries in the hills around Taxila. Hadda, near the present town of Jalalabad, has created some groups in stucco of an almost rococo while more latest works of art in baked clay, with strong Hellenistic influence, have been revealed there, in what sums up as tiny chapels. It is not known exactly why stucco, an imported Alexandrian modus operandi, was used. It is true that grey schist is not found near Taxila, however other stones are available, and in opposition to the ease of operating with stucco, predominantly the artistic effects which can be achieved, must be set with its impermanence- fresh deposits frequently had to be applied. Excluding possibly at Taxila, its use emerges to have been a late expansion.

  

Architectural fundamentals of the Gandhara art, like pillars, gable ends and domes as showcased in the reliefs, were inclined to follow Indian outlines, but the pilaster with capital of Corinthian type, abounds and in one-palace scene Persepolitan columns go along with Roman coffered ceilings. The so-called Shrine of the Double-Headed Eagle at Sirkap, in actuality a stupa pedestal, well demonstrates this enlightening eclecticism- the double-headed bird on top of the chaitya arch is an insignia of Scythian origin, which appears as a Byzantine motif and materialises much later in South India as the ga1J.qa-bheru1J.qa in addition to atop European armorial bearings.

 

In Gandhara art the descriptive friezes were all but invariably Buddhist, and hence Indian in substance- one depicted a horse on wheels nearing a doorway, which might have represented the Trojan horse affair, but this is under scan. The Dioscuri, Castor and Pollux, familiar from the previous Greek-based coinage of the region, appeared once or twice as standing figurines, presumably because as a pair, they tallied an Indian mithuna couple. There were also female statuettes, corresponding to city goddesses. Though figures from Butkara, near Saidan Sharif in Swat, were noticeably more Indian in physical type, and Indian motifs were in abundance there. Sculpture was, in the main, Hellenistic or Roman, and the art of Gandhara was indeed "the easternmost appearance of the art of the Roman Empire, especially in its late and provincial manifestations". Furthermore, naturalistic portrait heads, one of the high-points of Roman sculpture, were all but missing in Gandhara, in spite of the episodic separated head, probably that of a donor, with a discernible feeling of uniqueness. Some constitutions and poses matched those from western Asia and the Roman world; like the manner in which a figure in a recurrently instanced scene from the Dipankara jataka had prostrated himself before the future Buddha, is reverberated in the pose of the defeated before the defeater on a Trojanic frieze on the Arch of Constantine and in later illustrations of the admiration of the divinised emperor. One singular recurrently occurring muscular male figure, hand on sword, witnessed in three-quarters view from the backside, has been adopted from western classical sculpture. On occasions standing figures, even the Buddha, deceived the elusive stylistic actions of the Roman sculptor, seeking to express majestas. The drapery was fundamentally Western- the folds and volume of dangling garments were carved with realness and gusto- but it was mainly the persistent endeavours at illusionism, though frequently obscured by unrefined carving, which earmarked the Gandhara sculpture as based on a western classical visual impact.

  

The distinguishing Gandhara sculpture, of which hundreds if not thousands of instances have outlived, is the standing or seated Buddha. This flawlessly reproduces the necessary nature of Gandhara art, in which a religious and an artistic constituent, drawn from widely varied cultures have been bonded. The iconography is purely Indian. The seated Buddha is mostly cross-legged in the established Indian manner. However, forthcoming generations, habituated to think of the Buddha as a monk, and unable to picture him ever possessing long hair or donning a turban, came to deduce the chigon as a "cranial protuberance", singular to Buddha. But Buddha is never depicted with a shaved head, as are the Sangha, the monks; his short hair is clothed either in waves or in taut curls over his whole head. The extended ears are merely due to the downward thrust of the heavy ear-rings worn by a prince or magnate; the distortion of the ear-lobes is especially visible in Buddha, who, in Gandhara, never wore ear-rings or ornaments of any kind. As Foucher puts it, the Gandhara Buddha is at a time a monk without shaving and a prince stripped off jewellery.

  

The western classical factor rests in the style, in the handling of the robe, and in the physiognomy of Buddha. The cloak, which covers all but the appendages (though the right shoulder is often bared), is dealt like in Greek and Roman sculptures; the heavy folds are given a plastic flair of their own, and only in poorer or later works do they deteriorate into indented lines, fairly a return to standard Indian practice. The "western" treatment has caused Buddha"s garment to be misidentified for a toga; but a toga is semicircular, while, Buddha wore a basic, rectangular piece of cloth, i.e., the samghiifi, a monk"s upper garment. The head gradually swerves towards a hieratic stylisation, but at its best, it is naturalistic and almost positively based on the Greek Apollo, undoubtedly in Hellenistic or Roman copies.

 

Gandhara art also had developed at least two species of image, i.e. not part of the frieze, in which Buddha is the fundamental figure of an event in his life, distinguished by accompanying figures and a detailed mise-en-scene. Perhaps the most remarkable amongst these is the Visit to the Indrasala Cave, of which the supreme example is dated in the year 89, almost unquestionably of the Kanishka period. Indra and his harpist are depicted on their visit in it. The small statuettes of the visitors emerge below, an elephant describing Indra. The more general among these detailed images, of which approximately 30 instances are known, is presumably related with the Great Miracle of Sravasti. In one such example, one of the adjoining Bodhisattvas is distinguished as Avalokiteshwara by the tiny seated Buddha in his headgear. Other features of these images include the unreal species of tree above Buddha, the spiky lotus upon which he sits, and the effortlessly identifiable figurines of Indra and Brahma on both sides.

  

Another important aspect of the Gandhara art was the coins of the Graeco-Bactrians. The coins of the Graeco-Bactrians - on the Greek metrological standard, equals the finest Attic examples and of the Indo-Greek kings, which have until lately served as the only instances of Greek art found in the subcontinent. The legendary silver double decadrachmas of Amyntas, possibly a remembrance issue, are the biggest "Greek" coins ever minted, the largest cast in gold, is the exceptional decadrachma of the same king in the Bibliotheque Nationale, with the Dioscuri on the inverse. Otherwise, there was scanty evidence until recently of Greek or Hellenistic influences in Gandhara. A manifestation of Greek metropolitan planning is furnished by the rectilinear layouts of two cities of the 1st centuries B.C./A.D.--Sirkap at Taxila and Shaikhan Pheri at Charsadda. Remains of the temple at Jandial, also at Taxila and presumably dating back to 1st century B.C., also includes Greek characteristics- remarkably the huge base mouldings and the Ionic capitals of the colossal portico and antechamber columns. In contrast, the columns or pilasters on the immeasurable Gandhara friezes (when they are not in a Indian style), are consistently coronated by Indo-Corinthian capitals, the local version of the Corinthian capital- a certain sign of a comparatively later date.

 

The notable Begram hoard confirms articulately to the number and multiplicity of origin of the foreign artefacts imported into Gandhara. This further illustrates the foreign influence in the Gandhara art. Parallel hoards have been found in peninsular India, especially in Kolhapur in Maharashtra, but the imported wares are sternly from the Roman world. At Begram the ancient Kapisa, near Kabul, there are bronzes, possibly of Alexandrian manufacture, in close proximity with emblemata (plaster discs, certainly meant as moulds for local silversmiths), bearing reliefs in the purest classical vein, Chinese lacquers and Roman glass. The hoard was possibly sealed in mid-3rd century, when some of the subjects may have been approximately 200 years old "antiques", frequently themselves replicates of classical Greek objects. The plentiful ivories, consisting in the central of chest and throne facings, engraved in a number of varied relief techniques, were credibly developed somewhere between Mathura and coastal Andhra. Some are of unrivalled beauty. Even though a few secluded instances of early Indian ivory carving have outlived, including the legendary mirror handle from Pompeii, the Begram ivories are the only substantial collection known until moderately in present times of what must always have been a widespread craft. Other sites, particularly Taxila, have generated great many instances of such imports, some from India, some, like the appealing tiny bronze figure of Harpocrates, undoubtedly from Alexandria. Further cultural influences are authenticated by the Scytho Sarmatian jewellery, with its characteristic high-backed carnivores, and by a statue of St. Peter. But all this should not cloud the all-important truth that the immediately identifiable Gandhara style was the prevailing form of artistic manifestation throughout the expanse for several centuries, and the magnitude of its influence on the art of central Asia and China and as far as Japan, allows no doubt about its integrity and vitality.

 

In the Gandhara art early Buddhist iconography drew heavily on traditional sources, incorporating Hindu gods and goddesses into a Buddhist pantheon and adapting old folk tales to Buddhist religious purposes. Kubera and Harm are probably the best-known examples of this process.

  

Five dated idols from Gandhara art though exist, however the hitch remains that the era is never distinguished. The dates are in figures under 100 or else in 300s. Moreover one of the higher numbers are debatable, besides, the image upon which it is engraved is not in the conventional Andhra style. The two low-number-dated idols are the most sophisticated and the least injured. Their pattern is classical Gandhara. The most undemanding rendition of their dates relates them to Kanishka and 78 A.D. is assumed as the commencement of his era. They both fall in the second half of the 2nd century A.D. and equally later, if a later date is necessitated for the beginning of Kanishka`s time. This calculation nearly parallels numismatics and archaeological evidences. The application of other eras, like the Vikrama (base date- 58 B.C.) and the Saka (base date- 78 A.D.), would place them much later. The badly battered figurines portray standing Buddhas, without a head of its own, but both on original figured plinths. They come to view as depicting the classical Gandhara style; decision regarding where to place these two dated Buddhas, both standing, must remain knotty till more evidence comes out as to how late the classical Gandhara panache had continued.

   

Methodical study of the Gandhara art, and specifically about its origins and expansion, is befuddled with numerous problems, not at least of which is the inordinately complex history and culture of the province. It is one of the great ethnical crossroads of the world simultaneously being in the path of all the intrusions of India for over three millennia. Bussagli has rightly remarked, `More than any other Indian region, Gandhara was a participant in the political and cultural events that concerned the rest of the Asian continent`.

   

However, Systematic study of the art of Gandhara, and particularly of its origins and development, is bedeviled by many problems, not the least of which is the extraordinarily complex history and culture of the region.

   

In spite of the labours of many scholars over the past hundred and fifty years, the answers to some of the most important questions, such as the number of centuries spanned by the art of Gandhara, still await, fresh archaeological, inscriptional, or numismatic evidence.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gandhara

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gautama_Buddha

2 American white pelicans and 4 coots. The pelicans ignore the coots. Nothing gets in the way of their preening!

 

Migratory big white beautiful bird! They remain at White Rock Lake's Sunset Bay (Dallas, TX) until March or April. Click on image for best view.

 

One of the largest North American birds, the American White Pelican is majestic in the air. The birds soar with incredible steadiness on broad, white-and-black wings. Their large heads and huge, heavy bills give them a prehistoric look. On the water they dip their pouched bills to scoop up fish, or tip-up like an oversized dabbling duck. Sometimes, groups of pelicans work together to herd fish into the shallows for easy feeding. Look for them on inland lakes in summer and near coastlines in winter.

 

A huge waterbird with very broad wings, a long neck, and a massive bill that gives the head a unique, long shape. They have thick bodies, short legs, and short, square tails. During the breeding season, adults grow an unusual projection or horn on the upper mandible near the tip of the bill.

 

Adult American White Pelicans are snowy white with black flight feathers visible only when the wings are spread. A small patch of ornamental feathers on the chest can become yellow in spring. The bill and legs are yellow-orange. Immatures are mostly white as well, but the head, neck, and back are variably dusky.

 

American White Pelicans feed from the water’s surface, dipping their beaks into the water to catch fish and other aquatic organisms. They often upend, like a very large dabbling duck, in this process. They do not plunge-dive the way Brown Pelicans do. They are superb soarers (they are among the heaviest flying birds in the world) and often travel long distances in large flocks by soaring. When flapping, their wingbeats are slow and methodical.

 

American White Pelicans typically breed on islands in shallow wetlands in the interior of the continent. They spend winters mainly on coastal waters, bays, and estuaries, or a little distance inland.

 

allaboutbirds.org

 

operatheatre.perm.ru/ru/theatre/press/2012/09/1799/

 

Soloists of the Tatar Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre named after Musa Jalil Alexander Surodeeva and Ruslan Savdenov accepted the invitation to chief choreographer of the Perm Opera and Ballet Alexei Miroshnichenko go to Permian troupe. Partners not only on stage, but in real life, they make their debut on the stage of the Permian 17 and 19 October: Ruslan Savdenov appear in the image of Basil in "Don Quixote" by Minkus, Alexander Surodeeva performed the lead role of Odette and Odile in "Swan Lake" by Tchaikovsky.

 

Alexey Miroshnichenko, chief choreographer of the Perm Opera and Ballet Theatre. Tchaikovsky:

 

- Alexandra and Ruslan - great dancers. They are now at the peak of his form, in an age when there is a stage experience, and the strength and the energy to put it. Important for me was the fact that they have graduated from the Almaty Choreographic School - one of the strongest in the Soviet era, and today. At competitions, graduates of this school you can see a good methodical setting apparatus, technique and artistry. Alexander and Ruslana great potential, and I am delighted that they have agreed to go to the Perm Ballet company. I hope that our cooperation will be fruitful, and they will be involved not only in classical performances, but also show itself as a good modern dancers, for example, in Forsythe's ballet at the end of November.

 

With Perm Ballet already working and new teacher-coach. Also from Kazan to Perm moved Honored Artist of Russia, People's Artist of Tatarstan, winner of international competitions Elena Shcheglova and People's Artist of Tatarstan and Kazakhstan, laureate of international contests Bakhytzhan Smagulov.

 

Alexei Miroshnichenko teachers interested in being the successors of St. Petersburg school of ballet. Elena Shcheglova - famous student Lyudmila Sakharova, for many years headed the Perm Ballet School (College). Bakhytzhan Smagulov graduated from the Academy of Russian Ballet Vaganova (class Yuri Umrihina). He has successfully trained young dancers Tatar theater for ballet competitions them. Ekaterina Maximova "Arabesque" (2006, 2008, 2010, 2012) and the project "Big Ballet" (2012) TV channel "Russia-Culture."

 

Alexander Surodeeva - winner of international competitions, such as Ballet Competition "Arabesque" (2000, 2002), ballet competitions in Moscow, Helsinki, Barnes (2002) and "Vaganova-Prix» (St. Petersburg, 2002). In 2002, she graduated from the Almaty Choreographic School. AV Seleznev (teacher L. Shcherbakov), and was immediately invited to join the TAGTOiB them. Jalil. Permanent member of the International Festival of Classical Ballet. Rudolf Nureyev. Her repertoire includes: Odette-Odile ("Swan Lake" by Tchaikovsky), Masha ("The Nutcracker" by Tchaikovsky), Aurora, Florina ("Sleeping Beauty" by Tchaikovsky), Nikia Gamzatti ("La Bayadere" by Minkus), Juliet ("Romeo and Juliet" by Prokofiev), Gulnara, Medora ("Le Corsaire" Adam), Margaret ("The Lady of the Camellias" Verdi "), etc.

 

Ruslan Savdenov - winner TURKSOY (2010) and international ballet competitions in Astana, Moscow (2001), Barnes (2002), as well as Ballet Competition "Arabesque" (2006). Prize winner of the Theatre of the Republic of Tatarstan "Tintin-2012" in the category "Best Actor in Musical Theatre" (for Modest Alexeyevich role in the ballet "Annie" Gavrilin). Permanent member of the International Festival of Classical Ballet. Rudolf Nureyev. A graduate of the Almaty Choreographic School. AV Seleznev (class of W. and C. Mirseidova Kosmanova). In 2001 - the soloist GATOiB them. Abay, from 2002 to 2012 - a soloist TAGTOiB them. Jalil. Since 2011 - a guest soloist of the National Opera of Bordeaux (France). Repertoire: Basil ("Don Quixote" by Minkus), Prince, pas de deux, Moor ("The Nutcracker" by Tchaikovsky), Ali ("Corsair" Adam), Mercutio ("Romeo and Juliet" by Prokofiev), Crassus ( "Spartacus" Khachaturian), Arman ("The Lady of the Camellias" by Verdi)

Two images taken into little pools of water, edited into absolute unfamilarity using the curves function on my editing program. Does anyone else see the face on the left? Spooky. // These were two images I was going to let go by the wayside, but decided to edit them and ended up liking the results a lot. I feel like this year has been an exercise in not abandoning photos at first glance & being open to experimenting with photos like a mad scientist just to see what might happen. I've been thinking about the intersection of art & science a lot lately. Not like "photography is a technical practice/developing film is chemistry" or whatever....just like...I feel like I have a very scientific approach to making art in one sense. It's an intuitive approach, but also very methodical. I see the things I make as science experiments as much as anything else. Maybe they are one in the same? I'm not sure. Do you have a methodical or dreamy approach to making things? Or are those things one in the same?

  

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SUN VALLEY - The Los Angeles Fire Department successfully

rescued a trapped construction worker and provided medical care to he and two of his injured colleagues, when a large volume of concrete and soil toppled into a four foot deep trench with makeshift shoring the men were working in or near on the morning of February 5, 2022.

 

The first call to 9-1-1 at 10:13 AM, brought scores of LAFD rescuers to 9031 El Dorado Avenue, including firefighters uniquely trained and equipped to handle specialized Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) tasks.

 

The two men initially trapped were working on an unspecified purpose trenching project alongside the one story home, , when the poorly shored trench wall and portions of a concrete walkway on the property suddenly gave way, causing them both to sustain serious leg injuries. Though both men were initially trapped, one was able to free himself prior to LAFD arrival.

 

As rescuers focused on the still-trapped man, care and ambulance transportation to a local hospital was provided to the worker who escaped, as well as another man who came forward with unspecified back pain.

 

The LAFD USAR trained personnel worked methodically with specialty tools and the support of fellow firefighters for nearly 80 minutes to skillfully free the man, who was taken to a regional trauma center in serious but stable condition.

 

© Photo by Mike Meadows

 

LAFD Incident 020522-0575

 

Connect with us: LAFD.ORG | News | Facebook | Instagram | Reddit | Twitter: @LAFD @LAFDtalk

‎WESTLAKE - It took nearly 150 ‪Los Angeles‬ ‪Firefighters‬ nearly two and a half hours to extinguish a major emergency fire in a vacant 2 story office building west of downtown Los Angeles Monday evening.

 

The Los Angeles Fire Department was summoned at 7:01 PM on June 13, 2016 to a structure fire at 2411 West 8th Street in the Westlake neighborhood not far from MacArthur Park. LAFD responders arrived quickly to find intense fire on the upper floor of a long vacant 14,351 square-foot two story office building, the site of previous blazes.

 

Firefighters used ground ladders to assist several imperiled persons at windows of the burning structure, with LAFD responders entering the building to performing the rescue of three others.

 

While extending hoselines to aggressively battle the flames within, LAFD crews sadly discovered and retrieved a dead man from the inferno, before the failing structure forced then to switch to defensive exterior operations twenty minutes into the firefight.

 

A total of 147 LAFD personnel under the command of Battalion Chief Jaime Moore, confined the blaze to the heavily damaged building of fire origin - which had no functional fire sprinklers, extinguishing the bulk of flame in just 2 hours and 22 minutes.

 

As a result of witnesses statements, Los Angeles Police Department Officers later detained and arrested an adult male suspected of starting the fire. He and one of the persons earlier rescued by firefighters, were taken to an area hospital by ambulance for evaluation of non-life threatening injuries.

 

With the flames extinguished well past darkness, firefighters remained at the structurally unsound premises to douse hotspots, prevent public harm and prepare for a further search at daybreak.

 

Early Tuesday, investigation teams from the LAFD Arson/Counter-Terrorism Section methodically processed the large and still-smoldering site to determine the fire's cause and origin, as highly-trained Human Remains Detection Dog and Handler teams performed a relentless search of the collapsed structure for deceased victims.

 

With the canines' help, firefighters discovered the remains of four adult victims, two men and two women, amid the rubble on the second floor of the building. Their discovery, combined with the male victim found deceased by firefighters battling the blaze, brought the death tally to five, all of whom appeared to be transients.

 

No firefighters sustained injury in the firefight, investigation or recovery operations.

 

A positive identification of the dead persons, to include the cause, time and manner of their death will be determined by the Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner-Coroner.

 

© Photo by Mike Meadows

 

LAFD Incident: 061316-1267

 

Connect with us: LAFD.ORG | News | Facebook | Instagram | Reddit | Twitter: @LAFD @LAFDtalk

The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death are a series of nineteen (twenty were originally constructed) intricately designed dollhouse-style dioramas created by Frances Glessner Lee (1878–1962), a pioneer in forensic science. Glessner Lee used her inheritance to establish a department of legal medicine at Harvard Medical School in 1936, and donated the first of the Nutshell Studies in 1946 for use in lectures on the subject of crime scene investigation. In 1966, the department was dissolved, and the dioramas went to the Maryland Medical Examiner’s Office in Baltimore, Maryland, U.S. where they are on permanent loan and still used for forensic seminars.

 

The dioramas are detailed representations of death scenes that are composites of actual cases, created by Glessner Lee on a 1 inch to 1 foot (1:12) scale. She attended autopsies to ensure accuracy, and her attention to detail extended to having a wall calendar include the pages after the month of the incident, constructing openable windows, and wearing out-of-date clothing to obtain realistically worn fabric. The dioramas show tawdry and, in many cases, disheveled living spaces very different from Glessner Lee's own background. The dead include prostitutes and victims of domestic violence.

 

Glessner Lee called them the Nutshell Studies because the purpose of a forensic investigation is said to be to "convict the guilty, clear the innocent, and find the truth in a nutshell." Students were instructed to study the scenes methodically—Glessner Lee suggested moving the eyes in a clockwise spiral—and draw conclusions from the visual evidence. At conferences hosted by Glessner Lee, prominent crime-scene investigators were given 90 minutes to study each diorama.

LIFE photographer Margaret Bourke-White was with General George Patton’s troops when they liberated the Buchenwald concentration camps. Forty-three thousand people had been murdered there. Patton was so outraged that he ordered his men to march German civilians through the camp so that they could see, with their own eyes, what really happened to innocent people in these horrible “death camps” and so they could see what their own nation had wrought. Bourke-White’s pictures carried the horrible images to the world. In America, the pictures proved that reports of the Nazi’s methodical extermination of the Jews were true, and the country began a long process of rethinking its behavior, such as the decision not to bomb the camps. Bourke-White said, "I saw and photographed the piles of naked, lifeless bodies, the human skeletons in furnaces, the living skeletons who would die the next day... and tattoed skin for lampshades. Using the camera was almost a relief. It interposed a slight barrier between myself and the horror in front of me." LIFE published in their May 7, 1945 issue many photographs of these atrocities, saying, "Dead men will have indeed died in vain if live men refuse to look at them."

 

Landsberg, Alison. "America, the Holocaust, and the Mass Culture of Memory: Toward a Radical Politics of Empathy." New German Critique 71 (1997): 63-86.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buchenwald_concentration_camp

SUN VALLEY - The Los Angeles Fire Department successfully

rescued a trapped construction worker and provided medical care to he and two of his injured colleagues, when a large volume of concrete and soil toppled into a four foot deep trench with makeshift shoring the men were working in or near on the morning of February 5, 2022.

 

The first call to 9-1-1 at 10:13 AM, brought scores of LAFD rescuers to 9031 El Dorado Avenue, including firefighters uniquely trained and equipped to handle specialized Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) tasks.

 

The two men initially trapped were working on an unspecified purpose trenching project alongside the one story home, , when the poorly shored trench wall and portions of a concrete walkway on the property suddenly gave way, causing them both to sustain serious leg injuries. Though both men were initially trapped, one was able to free himself prior to LAFD arrival.

 

As rescuers focused on the still-trapped man, care and ambulance transportation to a local hospital was provided to the worker who escaped, as well as another man who came forward with unspecified back pain.

 

The LAFD USAR trained personnel worked methodically with specialty tools and the support of fellow firefighters for nearly 80 minutes to skillfully free the man, who was taken to a regional trauma center in serious but stable condition.

 

© Photo by Mike Meadows

 

LAFD Incident 020522-0575

 

Connect with us: LAFD.ORG | News | Facebook | Instagram | Reddit | Twitter: @LAFD @LAFDtalk

Saul Becker

Shore

46x86in | oil on linen on panel

www.saulbecker.com/paint-draw09.html

 

Horton & Liu

Slow Photography Sep 17 - Oct 11, 2009

Sunday LES, 237 Eldridge Street, New York, NY 10002

www.sundaynyc.com +1 212 253 0700

 

The phrase, "slow photography," might conjure images of large format cameras or glass plate techniques; even the idea of loading film may seem slow considering the efficient speed in which photographic images are created today. However, another connotation may not allude to a technology so much as it does a sensibility — an approach to understanding particular roles that photographs can play, a methodical and drawn out way to produce paintings. The three artists in Slow Photography use photography as a starting point, taking exorbitant amounts of time to produce ostensible "photos": paintings that appear to translate a photographic record, yet are something else entirely.

 

Lauren Warner's paintings of geyser eruptions revel in nature as a spectacle amusement park, coyly satisfying consumers’ desires for precise moments of ecstasy and picture perfect action shots. Warner's "greatest hits" of Old Faithful are a reminder that nature, in all its glory, can be consumed in ways similar to a sporting event, a spectacle to gaze upon. Lauren Warner (b. 1977, Cincinnati, OH) lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Her works were seen most recently in the prestigious Traveling Scholars exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA, where she received a grant to research and document the geysers of Yellowstone National Park.

 

Daniel Rich's painstaking working process starts with photographs primarily plucked from magazines, newspapers and other media outlets. The artist's exacting methods of enlarging, cropping, cutting, masking and color-coding offers an altered vantage point to understanding media imagery. To replicate a photograph in such a manner would not have the same impact without Rich's particular and disciplined approach and manipulations. Daniel Rich (b. 1977, Ulm, Germany) lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. In addition to SUNDAY, his work has been featured at Perry Rubenstein and Elizabeth Dee galleries, New York, NY, as well as the Maramotti Collection, Reggio Emilia, Italy. Rich’s second solo show at SUNDAY is scheduled for April 2010.

 

Saul Becker's paintings might seem "natural" in that they appear to depict an actual space, however, they are in fact a seamless combination of photographs from disparate landscapes. These photos, along with impressions from the artist's memory, create his measured, deliberate and lonely paintings. Becker has an acute disquiet that portrays the landscape as eerily strong and resilient, but never heroic. The photographic vantage point often acts as a subtle overseer, a reminder that the camera has forever distorted how anyone sees nature. Saul Becker (b. 1975, Tacoma, WA) lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. In addition to Horton & Co. and SUNDAY, his work has been featured in solo projects at Artists Space and Volta NY. His work has been discussed in The New York Times, The New Yorker, and NY Arts Magazine, among others. His work is in the collection of Wellington Management, Boston, MA, as well as the Progressive Art Collection, Cleveland, OH.

 

hortonliu.com/exhibition/61/pr

 

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